The Bossticks - Andrew Huberman Pt. 1 On Mastering Sleep, Stress, Anxiety, Hormones, & Improving Eyesight For Optimal Health Benefits

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

#457: Today is the first part of a two part episode this week with Andrew Huberman. Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and tenured Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Today we discuss how to master sleep, hormones, stress, anxiety, and how our eye sight can improve not only our vision but our overall health.  Dr. Andrew Huberman is hosting two live events this May. The first is in Seattle, WA on May 17, and the second is in Portland, OR on May 18. The events will include a discussion on "The Brain Body Contract" along with a live Q&A on all things human health & performance. It's almost sold out so be sure to visit https://hubermanlab.com/tour to get your tickets.  This episode is brought to you by Feel Free from Botanic Tonics. If you are looking for an alcohol alternative try this euphoric kava drink and get 40% off your order or subscription by using either code SKINNY40 or code SKINNY240 at www.botanictonics.com  To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) Produced by Dear Media   

The following podcast is a dear media production. Before we jump into this episode, I have a groundbreaking offer for you guys, and it is a good one. It has 40% off this product that I'm obsessed with. If you guys have been following along for a while, you know that I have completely kicked alcohol this year, just completely stopped consuming it. And listen, at some point I may go back, but for now, I'm just not consuming it. And I'm going to be honest, it was difficult in the beginning, but now I don't even think about it. And one of the reasons I don't even think about it is if I ever feel the it or if I'm ever out publicly

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All you have to do is go to Botanic Tonics. That's B-O-T-A-N-I-C-Tonics.com and use code skinny 40. And if you've already used that code because it's a one-time code, we have a special offer just for podcast listeners. If you use code Skinny 240, you can do it again. to try it again. I suggest doing the subscription to get the biggest discount, but it's up to you. So check it out. That's botanictonics.com and either code Skinny 40 or Skinny 240 for 40% off your entire order. It's a great offer. Enjoy. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.

Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential. Jim and her. If you give people a little bit of an understanding of the underlying mechanisms, it creates a system around any tool that makes it easier to do that practice and makes it more impactful as well. So what I mean is, you know, I could do a whole episode just listing off tools and protocols for everything from fat loss to focus and attention, mental health, depression, trauma, grief, et cetera, based on the data. But if I start each episode, which I do with a little bit of. bit of a description of the mechanism. Then when I go into some of the description about the tools, my hope is that people will have those mechanisms in mind or even just subconsciously they're embedded. And then not only are they going to be more willing to lean into those tools, but

those tools will be more impactful. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. That clip was from our guests of the show today, long awaited, Andrew Huberman. For those of you that aren't familiar with Andrew, Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine while he has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function, and neuroplasticity, which is the ability of our nervous systems to rewire and learn new behavior, skills, and cognitive functioning. I can't believe I just got through that. He has a phenomenal podcast called the Huberman Lab that both Lauren and I regularly

listen to. It's one of the few that we tune into weekly. And we use it as a resource for optimizing human health, performance, or just understanding the human body. and function. I'd highly recommend you guys check it out. I think after this episode, you definitely will. And it's not surprising that this show has become one of the most popular podcasts in existence, the human lab that is. And it's because his science-backed approach to information around optimization, the human body and mind is digestible, it's attainable, and it's beyond informative. This is for sure the longest episode that Lauren and I have ever recorded in a single session. It was almost two and a half hours just sitting down, shooting the shit, you know, maybe three

if you count the stuff that we were talking about off here before we even got to record. And there's just so much in here. I definitely think you guys are going to find this to be one of the most valuable episodes that we've done. And because of the length, we have broken this down into a two-part episode. So what you're listening to now will be part one of this two-part episode. And then Thursday, you know, we regularly release Mondays and Thursdays. This Thursday will be part two. So here's what you can expect in part one.

First, you can expect the conversation to start with how to get the highest sleep quality. We think starting with sleep was the most important thing to start. with because sleep affects almost everything we do. It affects our hormones. It affects our performance. It affects our mood. It affects just our general function. And with that, we're talking about circadium rhythm and just the best ways and best sleep packs to get so that you can get the best night's sleep. Then we start talking about eyes in the visual system, eye health. You know, many of you guys know, I've been talking about eye health. I firmly believe that Andrew Huberman helped me heal my eyes, which is a whole thing. My eyes are definitely improving and better.

And we learned in this episode that the eyes are connected to the brain. They're part of our hormonal system, they affect our mood, they affect our circadian rhythm, they affect so much, obviously, as well as our sight and everything that we see in our picture and our view of the world. Then we actually start talking about how there's science-backed proof and data on how our belief systems actually affect our performance, our health, our overall well-being. We talk all about that. And then we talk about managing stress and anxiety and how different types of breathing not only affect our energy levels, but potentially our facial structures, our sleep, our performance,

etc. So this one's jam-packed just in part one. Before we jump into the episode, I want to mention that Dr. Huberman is hosting two live events this made, the first in Seattle, Washington on May 17th, and the second in Portland, Oregon on May 18th. The events will include a discussion on the brain-body connection along with a live Q&A on all things, human health and performance. It's almost set out, so be sure to visit Hubermanlap.com slash tour to get your tickets now if you're in the area or if you want to travel to the area. With that, welcome to part one of our episode with Dr. Andrew Huberman.

Look out for part two this Thursday. Enjoy. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Andrew Huberman. I just told you, I don't know if there's been a man in my head more than you as a recent. And I got to say, I remember we spoke, when did we, we spoke on the phone, like, what was it, 20? Like right before you did the podcast, 2019. And in my line of work, as you imagine, I meet different people entering the space and talk about a guy fucking knocking it out of the park, man.

I think, like, phenomenal. Like, your podcast is incredible. Like, I don't ever know what else to say. It's everyone that's listening should just stop this. show right now and go listen. He listens to it while he's in an ice bath and a sauna and taking his athletic greens and doing everything you say. And doing my morning light and eye exercise, man, we're going to get into all of it. But anyways, man, welcome to the show. It been a long time coming. It has been a long time coming. Great to be here. And thank you and thank you for the kind words.

Yeah, we spoke about the possibility of working together. And at the time, there wasn't really a clearer idea in mind about doing a podcast. I just in 2019, I started posting science snippets to Instagram and then in 2020 with the world events, I just started putting out information about mental health and going on podcasts. And then at the end of 2020, it made sense to start a podcast. And yeah, we do touch on a lot of lifestyle applicable stuff. So if you're in the ice bath and listening to the podcast or not or drinking athletic greens or not, my wish and my goal for the podcast is just to share the beauty and utility of biology. That's what it is. It's really, you know, teach about biology and then teach about it in a way that can be useful for

mental health and physical health. You do such a good job, I think, because you make it digestible. Sometimes when you hear the word biology, if you're not a biologist, it's like very overwhelming, but you make it digestible and you give us like tangible tips to take away. So I think that's cool. Thank you. Yeah, I really believe, and based on my experience teaching in the classroom, which I still do, I teach medical students, graduate students, and undergraduates at Stanford. The belief that I hold very, very close is that if you give people a little bit of an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. It creates a system around any tool that makes it easier to do that practice and makes it more

impactful as well. So what I mean is, you know, I could do a whole episode just listing off tools and protocols for everything from fat loss to focus and attention, mental health, depression, trauma, grief, et cetera, based on the data. But if I start each episode, which I do with a little bit of a description of the mechanism, for instance, how cold impacts metabolism, how, for instance, a particular childhood attachment pattern to a parent translates to an adult romantic attachment pattern. Then when I go into some of the description about the tools,

my hope is that people will have those mechanisms in mind or even just subconsciously they're embedded. And then not only are they going to be more willing to lean into those tools, but those tools will be more impactful. And the last thing I'll say about this is I have a colleague at Stanford. I should introduce you guys because she'd make a phenomenal podcast. Guess her name is Ali Crum, Alia Crum. She is a tenure professor at Stanford. She's a trained clinical psychologist.

She was a Division I gymnast and she's a martial artist. And she works on beliefs and belief systems. And she has incredible data showing that the result of anything you do or what you eat is both the consequence of that thing. So like she's done experiments, for instance, where they, they give people milkshakes and they tell them, okay, this is a low calorie milkshake or they tell people this is a high calorie nutrient dense.

It's a regular milkshake. It's a milkshake. People drink that and they measure subjective reports of how fulfilling that and how much satiety, how much satisfaction it provides and for how long. And they measure hormones, insulin, grelin, all the hormones that are the consequence of eating. And what you find is that if you think,

what they find is that if people are told this a high calorie nutrient dent shake, it provides much more satisfaction for much longer than if they're told that it's a low calorie nutrient sparse shake. And the hormones that one secretes in response to that milkshake differ in the two groups, even though the milkshakes are absolutely identical. Because it's all about your beliefs. It's in part about your beliefs. Because of course, you know, you can't tell yourself that the entire chocolate cake is, you know, a bowl of broccoli and it's going to have the same effects as a bowl of broccoli. So anything you do, whether or not it's exercise, cold bath, what you consume is the consequence of that thing.

There's some undeniable, non-negotiable realities about your biology. And then there's the belief system. And the other example I'll give is they've done these beautiful studies where they tell one group, listen, stress is a part of life and it gives you dementia. It makes your thinking suffer. It can kill neurons. It can do all this terrible stuff. They tell another group.

All that's true, by the way, in certain contexts. They tell another group, stress is a, part of life, but it can sharpen your thinking. It can bring out your best. It can stimulate your immune system as long as it doesn't last too long. And what they find is that the biological effects of stress on those two groups match what those people are taught about stress. Wow. And so you can't get around the realities of stress or calories or things of that sort. There's the laws of physics and the laws of biology. But belief systems have a powerful role in how the tools and practices that we engage in shape us. And so that's the logical back.

for teaching people a bit about the mechanism. Because if I say, hey, do an ice bath, you know, increases your metabolism, increases your resilience and can reduce pain and inflammation, help you sleep better at night, great. But lots of people are saying that. But if I say, listen, there's this pathway where when you get into cold water and it's really uncomfortable and you really want to get out, but you stay in for an extra minute, you stimulate this certain adrenaline-related pathway in your brain and body. Now when you do it and you hit that wall, you know, like, I really want to get out of here. You think, no, I want to stimulate that pathway. And then your belief and understanding about that pathway really does shape the fact that it works.

And so teaching mechanism is in part for me about educating and turning people on to the beauty of biology. But I realize, look, not everyone wants to be a biologist or a researcher. But I think everybody wants better mental health, physical health, and performance. And so mechanism has a real impact. No, to dumb it down, I mean, I was a poor student for a million reasons, but never did well in school. But I always felt that I would, and this is not a blame on the teachers. I have to take accountability just a lot from my actions. blame them too. There's some pretty lousy teachers. You know, I had these things where I felt like

people never explained the mechanism. I never understood the why. It was just like the high level stuff or like memorize this, memorize that. And I remember sitting there and kind of craving, like I want to understand why at the root I'm doing something or learning about something or, you know, something has an effect. And I do think that a lot of people go through the school, the school system and are inhibited from learning because they don't get that mechanism. So why I like your show so much in the way that you teach is that you get the mechanism first. And then, of course, you get very detailed. And I mean that is a compliment. I just think that it's important to point out. Well, and I'll put the compliment right back in a very sincere way. People are smart. If you explain

things in a clear, I like to think interesting and actionable way, people will use that information. They'll embed that information into their consciousness. There's a great physicist, Max Dillbrook, that said, anytime you teach, assume zero knowledge, but infinite intelligence. And so whether or not on social media or on the podcast or in any conversation, my belief is people are curious and that curiosity is its own form of intelligence. And so you just also, I have no interest in talking over people's heads. There's just like, there's no value in that for me. I would say that's the same with selling if you're going to sell something. I think sometimes with an influencer or something, I'll see someone trying to sell something in a way that's like cunning to the audience. It's like,

no, no, no, give them the, they're smart. Give them the real reasons of why they need that. Instead of just trying to get in a back door. I think the consumer is very, very smart now and they have access to a lot of different things at their fingertips. Absolutely. And there are plenty of online folks that are going to poke holes in things if we slip. And actually, I think they perform a useful role. I mean, I would never want to be a heel biter. You know, these people, their entire online presence is just about taking down other people. Seems like a heel biter. Yeah, I mean, it just seems like a pretty poor use of a life. But they do serve a role. And I actually really, appreciate them because they keep everybody in line. They raise our game, you know, make,

make sure that we button things up. And yeah, I think that, but to your point, I think that people want resources. They don't know who to trust. And so to the extent that you can give them information about at least your, or in this case, my reasoning for why I'm telling you this. I'm not just saying it because I feel like talking about it. I'm saying because I really think some of these things can be very useful. And I do believe that people are smart. I think they really are. So let's like I said, we're going to go through and for the audience, you know, definitely you're going to go through a host of your shows. They have so many different subjects. But I think to start, I want to start with what you started with on your show, which is sleep.

And I think I have an idea why you started there because it's so foundational to our health. But just to start, maybe that's a topic we could jump into. Sleep, let's dive in. What are people doing to inhibit sleep and what can they do to get better and more effective sleep? Yeah. Great question. I think if there were one, if we only, had time for one question, this would be the question. Sleep is absolutely the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Some people need more. Some people need less. It's going to vary depending on age circumstances. If you're pregnant, if you're not, if you're young or if you're older, if you're going through stress, et cetera. Everybody should prioritize getting quality

sleep of sufficient duration, meaning the sleep they need for at least 80% of the nights of their life. It's very clear that that's going to raise their performance in life. All you have to do is sleep deprive somebody or yourself for two or three nights and watch yourself fall apart. So I don't think there's much convincing needed. Now, I want to start off by saying that sleep-related anxiety is a big issue. I wouldn't want people to think that if they don't sleep well for a few nights that they're going to lose their mind or fall apart. That could happen. Meaning they stress so much about not getting sleep that they...

That's right. Okay. Yeah. So what are the things that get in the way of sleep? And then maybe we can list off a few of the things that everyone can do, most of which, I would say 90% of which are zero cost. They're just behavioral decisions that people need to make. Okay.

Things that people are doing that are disrupting their sleep. Drinking caffeine after 2 or 3 p.m. Even if you can fall asleep, that's going to disrupt the architecture of your sleep. Now, admittedly the other day, I had a double espresso dropped in coffee at 6 p.m. and did a workout and it was one of the best workouts I've had in a long time and I loved it and the sun was setting and it was outdoors and it felt so great. I slept okay that night, but I can guarantee that had we measured my sleep, it would not be as high quality deep sleep as the sort of sleep I would have gotten if I hadn't had that cup of coffee. So we all slip sometimes. But avoiding caffeine in the past

two or three p.m. is a good idea, maybe even earlier. The other one is too much bright light of any color, not just blue light, screen light, between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Now, people doing shift work or people up in the middle of the night feeding babies basically use as little light as required to do those activities safely. Clear stem. The owners were just on the podcast, Danielle and Kaylee, and they talked all things acne. This is a non-dustin. This is a non-stimed. toxic skincare brand that actually works to create positive change without sacrificing health. So they really, really disrupted the acne industry. I feel like they have come in. One of them is a practitioner who dealt with acne and the other one is known as the acne guru.

And they partnered to really create education that helps you identify your unique acne triggers. It was so wild. They told us on the podcast that one of the things that people don't realize is that eggs actually contribute to acne. You have to listen to that episode. Anyways, I went on their site, although I don't deal with acne myself, there's a lot of different skincare products on there and they're non-toxic. Like I said, they're also anti-aging and of course anti-acne. I like their mineral sunscreen that comes in a brush. It's like this brush situation that you can use on your hands. I use it on my car. It's like a mineral sunscreen, almost like a powder. And then I also can apply it over my makeup. So if you don't struggle with acne, definitely check that out. And you can use code skinny

at checkout for 20% off your purchase. It's clear stem skincare.com. That's C-L-E-R-S-T-E-M-Skincare.com. This is something that I heard from your show that we've implemented and it's been a game changer. Because, you know, we would sit on our phones or read on it, even read on an iPad or whatever. and I wonder why we weren't getting sleep. And now, you know, 10 p.m., everything's off as dark as possible. That's great. I mean, basically light coming in through the eyes, not just exposure to the skin, but through the eyes, is converted to a set of neurons in an area called the hypothalamus,

just sits over the roof of your mouth. It doesn't really matter what the name is. But light is a potent inhibitor of melatonin. It basically squashes the amount of melatonin that you naturally make down to zero. Melatonin is a hormone that you naturally release. not talking about supplemented melatonin right now, that starts to rise in the late evening and it promotes a sense of sleepiness

in the evening and night. It doesn't keep you asleep, but it helps you get to sleep. So if you look at a very, unfortunately, the reality is if you look at a very bright light, blue light or any color light at 9 p.m. for more than 10, 15 seconds. This includes phones.

If you dim your phone, you're okay. If you dim the screen, you're okay. It also has to do with the background light, So if you're going to, I got addicted to Ozark. It's easy to get addicted to. Easy to get to. Amazing show. If you're going to watch something on a screen or on your phone and the room is dark, it's that contrast that makes a big difference.

So I don't want people flipping on a lot of lights late in the evening. But if you are going to look at a screen, you're better off doing that in a room that's dimly lit. Oh, you don't want to just be staring at the TV because it's like, yeah, that makes sense. That's right. And some people are more sensitive to light than others. But the key thing here is that in the late evening, so 8 p.m. 9 p.m. 10 p.m. until about 4 a.m. Your eyes and your brain are exquisitely sensitive to light. So if you look at light, make sure it's very, very dim. And for shift workers, we have a whole

episode on shift work. First of all, thank you shift workers, because we need you. I just want to acknowledge them. But that's a whole other set of issues. There are ways to work around shift work, but most people are asleep sometime between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., I would hope. The other thing is, if you wake up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, keep the lights dim. and if you can keep the lights low in your physical environment, that's helpful. And the reason is that the cells in your eye, the neurons that reset your circading clock and wake you up,

they look at the upper visual field. So what I tend to do is in the evening, I just try and dim the lights in the house. I try and dim the lights on screens. Just really limit the amount of light exposure. Bright moonlight is fine, believe it or not, and candlelight is fine. Fireplaces are fine.

I have like a couple micro questions. Sure. Is this why? when I wake up in the middle of the night and if I look at my phone, my body, like I notice I get like almost sick to my stomach, like a nervous system kind of thing. Is that, am I like being intuitive with that? It's interesting. I think you have a strong, what we call interoception. Yeah. Is our perception of our internal state within our body, within the confines of our skin. Some people have a much higher interoception than others. It can be useful. It can also be tricky.

Actually, there's a really, just as a quick aside, if you want to know if you have a strong sense of interoception or not, see if you can count your own heartbeats without taking your pulse and have someone else take your pulse. She's really sensitive to light compared to me. Yeah. And that can do, some of that has to do with events within the eye. I'm looking at your eye color. This is also, I've never done a podcast with two people. It's also like the best looking couple on the planet. So I'm just sitting here, God, looking back and forth. So I'm looking at both your eyes and realizing that, okay, you have light eyes. So you're going to be more sensitive to light in general. So was my daughter. I, when he does, what he, he, he,

Just a little side note, the way he grew up, his dad would flick the lights on, like, wake him out of bed, rip him out of bed, cortisol. I didn't know what a dimmer was until this year, I think. My family was like dimmers and like incense and candles and the lights were locked. My dad's an ex-Navy guy, right? So, like, morning, lights on full blasts. Get up, go. My high school girlfriend, her dad used to come in at five in the morning, flip on the lights and sleeping in wasn't allowed in their home. You know, I think in general it's good to let kids and teenagers sleep until their natural waking time, if possible. try and get them to bed earlier.

My eyes are also very sensitive. If I sit outside on a bright day and I'm at a table at a cafe or something that's metallic, I can't tolerate. I need sunglasses. Some people can be outside without sunglasses just fine.

But in the evening, your eyes are very sensitive. So if you wake up in the middle of the night, really dim those screens. In general, it's great to keep the phone out of the bedroom. Okay. And the other thing is a lot of people keep their sleeping environment too warm.

When you wake up in the morning, part of the reason you wake up is an increase in body temperature. That body temperature will continue to increase throughout the day. You may feel a little sleepy in the afternoon, and right after that sleepy period, body temperature starts to drop again. The ability to get into sleep and to stay asleep depends critically on that one to three degree drop in body temperature. So if you're sleeping in a room that's too warm, you're going to wake up.

The best situation is to make the room cold or cool. How cold is cold? It's going to depend on how hot you warm. you run. You just people have- 68, too cold? That's not too cold. I'd sleep in a room that's about 67, 68 degrees, but then putting blankets on or wearing socks

if you need to. Turns out that you dump a lot of heat from your body through the palms of your hands, the upper half of your face and the bottoms of your feet. And so the best situation is to get into bed, ideally no socks, no gloves who wears, no one wears gloves to bed, unless there's something out there that I'm not aware of. Different topic, different all together. Get under the blanket so that you're warm. And then during the night, even while you're asleep,

you'll naturally move your feet out. You might find that you wake up in the morning with a foot hanging out. That's you trying to cool yourself off. So you need to be warm enough to fall asleep. But in it, if you think about it, if the room is too hot, how would you cool off? You'd need an ice bucket next to you or a cold water.

And so you're not gonna do that in your sleep. So keep the room cool at night, keep it dark and taper off the light in the evening and avoid caffeine, these sorts of things. Also, something I haven't talked about too much on the podcast is that The most alert you'll ever be throughout the day, believe it or not, is one hour before your natural sleep time.

Is that why you get kind of like that anxious feel right before you're in bed? You're running around, you're checking things. You're like you're hyper, you won't be able to go to bed. You suddenly feel like you might actually want to do the dishes. I hate doing the dishes period, but I especially hate doing them at night. But then there's that period right before you go to sleep

where you start waking up and a lot of people worry, oh no, I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight. That passes. This is beautiful work by a guy named Chuck Zeisler at Harvard Medical School has shown that there's this big peak and alertness right before your natural bedtime. You can also use that information to figure out what your natural bedtime is. A lot of people fall asleep around 10, 30, 11, maybe midnight, and they wake up at 3 in the morning, wide awake. Waking up to go use the rest of the middle of the night,

perfectly normal, especially if you're hydrating or overhydrating well. Totally normal. Just go back to sleep. And we can talk about ways to do that. But many people wake up and they're wide awake and they don't know what to do. They're probably going to bed too late, meaning their natural rise in melatonin was around 8 o'clock and they should have gone to bed at 9.30. But for social reasons, we don't tend to do that. And I think that a lot of people would do well to shift their to bedtime a bit earlier, or at least just get into bed. Speaking of caffeine before we move, I want to talk about eyes, Lauren's going to kill me because I had this whole eye thing when I listened to you and I actually feel better for it. But anyways, the caffeine, one last thing. One thing I implemented that I learned from you

was delaying caffeine. I was one of those guys that woke up. I would have my athletic greens and like three minutes after I'd have a big cup of coffee, black coffee. But then I listened to you, talk, you said, hey, delay it basically 90 minutes or two hours. And I've been doing that. I feel way better. Great. Way, way better. You weren't having introspection. Is that what you? Interception is, interception is a good one. I'm glad you write that up. That's the equivalent. That's the one that the therapist would all like us to have self-awareness of our thinking and our feelings. Interoception is just your awareness of the internal state of your body. You know, some people are like, oh, I ate the wrong thing.

You know, some people never notice how they feel in response to anything. That's how I felt about coffee. It felt really unnatural to wake up and just drink that. I felt like I needed to hydrate and then almost dehydrate with the coffee. Well, that's actually the better way to go. To answer your question, let's put this now in the category of things to do early in the day to help support sleep. So we cover the things to not do.

And maybe segue eyes here too, because I know that's a part. Absolutely. It's pretty critical. I would say it's the most critical practice that you can do for your overall health. If I had to pick one for benefits on sleep, benefits on metabolism, benefits on mood, benefits, all of that would be when you wake up in the morning, if it's still dark out, flip on as many bright lights in the house as you possibly can. You get so mad of me. Wake up your system. If you want to be awake, if you want to go back to sleep, go back to sleep, keep the lights dim. Once the sun is out, get outside and spend 10 to 30 minutes outside without sunglasses. Eyeglasses and contacts are fine. They'll just focus the light to your eyes. But not through a window. Not through a window. Most windows are filtering out the, it's called UVB with ultraviolet blue light. Everyone thinks blue light is bad. Blue light is great in the morning and throughout the day if you want to be alert. These bright lights that we have in here are terrific.

You wouldn't want it any other way, but then in the evening, you don't want UVB light. If you are getting really biohacky, you can use red light in your home at night, dim red light, because it doesn't stimulate the system as much. But early in the day, get outside and get some sunlight in your eyes. You don't have to, nor should you stare directly at the sun, obviously. Any light that's so bright that it's painful to look at, don't look at it directly. But indirect light to your eyes sends a signal into the brain that sets the timer for melatonin release about 12 to 16 hours later.

It's setting up the time that you're going to go to sleep. If you stay indoors and you don't get outside and get that light or you think that you can get it through a window or through a windshield, forget it. You're basically jet lagging yourself. You're at home, but your brain is traveling. You're delaying your circadian clock. These are clocks in the brain and body.

And it's going to be the case that around 8 or 9 p.m., you're going to have a hard time falling asleep or if you fall asleep, you're going to wake up. That bright light in your eyes, ideally from sunlight, is going to stimulate multiple pathways in the brain and body that promote metabolism, positive mood, focus, etc. Now, you asked about caffeine. When you wake up in the morning,

assuming you feel groggy or alert, it doesn't really matter. People differ how quickly they wake up. It has to do with how quickly your body warms up. In fact, if you want to wake up very fast, hop in a cold shower. When you hop in a cold shower, obviously you feel cold, but your body heats up in response to that which wakes you up.

There are other reasons as well. But if you wake up and you immediately reach for coffee or any form of caffeine, that's a problem for the following reason. The longer you're awake, the more you build up a molecule in your body called adenosine. Adenosine is kind of the sleepy molecule. It makes you feel sleepy and tired. Caffeine blocks the actions of adenosine. That's one of the main ways it works.

It has other effects too. So if you wake up in the morning, whether or not you slept enough or not, Most of the adenosine from the previous day is cleared out this sleepiness molecule. But there's always some residual adenosine. There's always some. If you immediately drink caffeine, you block the actions of adenosine,

which is fine, you feel alert and better. But then around 1 or 2 p.m., that caffeine wears off, and the adenosine has an even more powerful effect in making you sleep. And then people feel like they need that next cup and so on. Exactly, and then it perpetuates, and then they're not getting sleep

because they're drinking caffeine late in the day. So a simple solution to this is wake up, hydrate, as you pointed out. Some people even do well to put a little bit of salt in their water to get electrolytes, something we could discuss, but hydrate, delay caffeine intake for 90 to 120 minutes, so an hour and a half to two hours.

I don't expect people to make that leap all at once. You can push it out by about 15 minutes per day. My sister is so neurotically attached to caffeine that she's pushing it out by five minutes per day and she's not convinced she can get to the two hour mark. But anything you do to delay caffeine a little bit is going to prevent that afternoon crash. It's also going to prevent your need

for yet another shot of caffeine or multiple shots of caffeine in the afternoon and it will really enhance your sleep. So get light in your eyes early in the day, ideally sunlight, and I should, and push caffeine out 90 to 120 minutes. It will have an outsized positive effect on mood and alertness during the day

and sleep at night. And the last thing I'll say about this is, if it's cloudy where you live, still get outside. There is a lot of photons, light energy coming through cloud, far more than you could ever get from artificial lights inside. Now, if you live in Scandinavia in the depths of winter,

if you live in a cave, or for whatever reason, you absolutely cannot get outside, maybe someone's in a home or is in the hospital, you can get an artificial light to simulate the sunrise. I would not waste money on the more expensive ones. What I would do is just get a, you can just put into any search engine, you know, a 930 Lux L-U-X drawing pad.

tracing and those work just as well and they're a 10th or a 20th of the cost. I'm not a big fan of the kind of blue light simulators. They're designed to mimic sunrise. Most of them are way overpriced and all they really are is a bright LED light. We got those lights at one time that made you feel she was in Finland. Yeah, we had to. Yeah. And they know about this in in Scandinavia because it's so dark there. So I actually work with a light like that on my desk all day long just to get additional light. And that's the other point is you want to get as much bright light in your eyes as you safely can throughout the whole day. And then you want to start tapering it off. So I'm not crazy when I went to London that I felt seasonal depression. I felt depressed.

So I was telling Michael's like so bad. Well, here's the other problem. No, you're definitely not crazy. And it sounds like you're very sensitive to light, which is- I'm sensitive in general. Which is great, which is great because if you're sensitive to light, you can push in the other direction too. In fact, when I travel, I now bring that little light pad. It's nice and thin. It barely weighs anything. You can plug it into any wall socket.

And in the morning, because sometimes when you travel, your schedule is just messed up and you want to wake up. You put that thing in front of you and you get that light. And listen, some days I'll run off to a meeting and I don't get my morning light. I'm not perfect. I get it most days. I would say 80, 90% of the days. But sometimes I can't, in which case, that light becomes a really important element.

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Thank God for body suit. when you're pregnant. And I wanted to add some added flare to it. So I put on their woven strap mule. I actually showed it to you guys on Instagram. And I just felt in this outfit invincible. Okay. So if you want to refresh your closet for spring, they have so many beautiful on trend, excessively priced items. The woven mules, though, you've got to check out. I'm telling you, I know everyone listening will like them. Had to Vincecommodo.com slash podcast and use promo code podcast. You're going to get 20% off your next purchase with code podcast. While you're there, do yourself a favor and sign up to be a part of their VC VIP program

and you can earn member perks previews and exclusive offers on your next accessories hall. Terms and conditions apply. Head to Vincecommodo.com slash podcast and use promo code podcast. You're going to get 20% off your next purchase with code podcast. While you're there, do yourself a favor and sign up to be a part of their VC VIP program and you can earn member perks previews and exclusive offers on your next accessibility. Series Hall. Terms and conditions apply. So it sounds like, well, especially the way we've evolved. So many of us now, we wake up, we're in an indoor structure. We don't go outside till sometimes,

you know, you go right in your car, then you get into your office, you know, you're just not outside at all anymore. And it sounds like it contributes to a lot of, you know, anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, hormone imbalance, all of these things, would you agree with that assessment? Absolutely. And there are data to support that. When you wake up in the morning, that temperature rise and the light times the release of a hormone called cortisol. We've all heard cortisol. is bad. Cortisol at the wrong times of day is bad. Cortisol release early in the day is fantastic. First of all, it stimulates your immune system in positive ways, wakes you up, creates a state of alertness. It does a number of really important things. There are data from Stanford, not my lab,

but David Spiegel's lab and Bob Sapolsky's lab showing that if that cortisol increase is shifted into the evening. So if you are indoors all day and then you go out and get a bright light in the afternoon or you're somehow, and you're exercising in the evening, that shift in cortisol to later in the day is actually a marker of depression. It predicts depression. So we really were designed to get up not necessarily with the sun, but around the time of sunlight coming into our immediate environment, because of course where you live will depend on when that happens. And then to be in the dark at night, you don't have to be in pitch black at night, but it's really important. cortisol and melatonin are both regulated.

So you mentioned hormone health. The other thing I'll mention is that some really interesting studies being done now in humans. And by the way, I know that a lot of scientists talk about studies in mice and humans interchangeably. Unless I say otherwise, I'm talking about studies in humans, men and women. So for those that care about that.

So the other thing is that there's a beautiful study from the University of Colorado showing that if they took students into an environment, in this case camping, It was probably a fun experiment to be a part of. And they had them go to sleep sometime within three to four hours after sunset and wake up within one to two hours of sunrise.

That reset their melatonin and cortisol rhythms and other rhythms of hormones in the body for two weeks, even though they went back into their normal kind of chaotic environment of artificial lights. So do you have to sleep outside? No, but to the extent that you can just adhere to this idea, as much bright light, ideally sunlight, in the morning and throughout the day,

to your eyes, and also I'll talk about it in a moment, to your body, and then limiting lights of all colors and kinds, dim them way down between the hours of 10 PM and 4 a.m. There's no individual on this planet that won't benefit from that. And some people will benefit tremendously, both in terms of mental health and physical health.

And then of course, there are all these things about sleep and sleep depth and metabolism being reset by sleep and emotionality being reset by, I sleep. Matt Walker is the expert on that. I mean, I could talk about it. I'm somewhat versed in the data, but the point is that when you're sleeping really well, your waking life is better. But what we haven't been taught and what I'm really kind of emphasizing here is that you need to control your waking life. And that morning sunlight exposure is non-negotiable for me. And this is something everyone can do

for free. Yeah, it's easy. All of these things I'm talking about are zero cost. If anything, I just cut out your second cup of coffee in the afternoon. Maybe you do decaf or something. I don't need it anymore. So now I found with that I only really want the one. And I used to be somebody that would have one in the morning, one in the afternoon would feel that crash. I don't think you, I mean, when not you're pregnant, but we both don't really need as much anymore. One cup. I like to do two hours after I wake up.

I didn't even know that that was a thing. It's funny because on this show, a big topic and we get asked all the time is hormones. And we have different specialists in different conversations all the time. But it sounds like with these two things with getting the proper sleep hygiene and getting this morning light in the morning. you can solve a lot of the issues that may be underlying without having to get into all the other stuff to balance. Yeah, we could discuss hormones if you like that. That's actually a great segue for the stuff about getting light on the body. There's a beautiful study that came out recently in cell reports, cell press journal, excellent journal. This is peer review data showing that if you

have people go outside and get sunlight on their body, not completely naked, but just sleeveless, ideally shoulders exposed as well, no hat, no sunglasses, shorts, or whatever is culturally appropriate for three times a week for 20 to 30 minutes in the afternoon, you see significant increases in testosterone and estrogen that are appropriate for men and women because of course men and women both have testosterone and estrogen. All the guys think, I don't want my estrogen to go up. Actually, guys, if you're taking an estrogen blocker or if you reduce your estrogen just as a point, Libido in men, cognition in men and women, critically depends on having enough estrogen. We could talk about hormones as much as you like.

And obviously, testosterone is key too in both men and women. They saw significant increases in testosterone and estrogen, significant increases in libido, significant increases in feelings of well-being. And this is interesting, significant increases in the positive perception of romantic partners. Very interesting. And in fact, it has a little bit of a twist. the women, incidentally, experience more excitement about the physical attributes of their partners, whereas the men experience greater increases in the kind of obsessive thoughts about their partner,

totally in the opposite direction of the stereotype that you would expect, and kind of opens up a whole other discussion about hormones, which is my other favorite topic because I came up in the neuroendocrinology stuff. So we can talk about hormones. But here's the bottom line. Try and get some sun exposure each day to your skin as well. Now, I am aware that people are going to want to wear sunscreen, in some cases, some people know.

Sunscreens is a little bit of a controversial topic now. Some sunscreens actually contain substances that can go transdermal and can cross the blood-brain barrier, which is a scary thing. You don't necessarily want that. So you have to be really careful about which sunscreens you use if you're going to use sunscreen. But in any case-

Is there a brand that you use? So I don't use sunscreen. Okay. I'm just not a fan, but I don't tend to burn. My dad's Argentine. He's pretty dark, you know, dark eyes, dark skin. My mom's the one with the light eyes and light skin. So I can tolerate a lot.

of sun without burning. I just don't tend to, I don't wear sunglasses most of the time unless it's really bright. I don't wear sunscreen. But I would encourage people to explore. I think, you know, I'm going to defer to the experts on sunscreen here because there's some excellent stuff coming out and I'd be outside my wheelhouse to talk about it. Are there ingredients you don't like in sunscreen? Yeah. So there are things like, I think that it, and this is in some cleansers as well, things like triclosan, I think it's called, that can cross the blood brain barrier. You know, the blood brain barrier, just incidentally, is super interesting. you have a blood-brain barrier that prevents molecules that you bring into your body by eating

or drinking or rubbing on your skin, whatever it is, or inhaling from getting into your brain. And the reason for that is that neurons, nerve cells, they don't really turn over across the lifespan. You can't regenerate them. Maybe a few, but not many. The other barriers in your body that are really important are the blood to ovary barrier and the blood to testes barrier, which makes really good sense, right? You want to protect your DNA. You don't want to ingest something or put something on your skin and have it go mutate your

sperm and your DNA so that you're then that could be very problem that so biology is beautiful it's it's put these fences in for brain ovary and testes turns out that some of the substances in certain cleansers and soaps and uh conditioners and cosmetics but also in sunscreen can cross these very you know rigid barriers so i would encourage people to look into that and of course there are going to be a lot of conspiracy theories about what's terrible i just don't use sunscreen and you know some people are really extreme they won't use deodorant, they won't do anything, you know, I guess it sort of depends on how much your partner likes your natural scent, which itself is an interesting.

I've learned that I have to like it a lot now. She doesn't want to touch that deodorant ever, so. Well, I confess, I've learned to love it. Yeah, I confess, this is a weird, I don't often disclose these sorts of things. Yeah, I stopped wearing any kind of deodorant years ago. Now, I'm fortunate that my partner at least tells me that she likes the way I smell. But certainly, I'm aware that not everybody does. It's weird to put a chemical underneath your lymph system armpit. there's something that doesn't sit right with me. I just, Frank, yes, and I also just don't like the smell and the feel of them. And I realize that, you know, it's probably aversive to a number of people, what I'm describing.

But I want to emphasize that what I'm describing is not conspiracy theory. These are quality FDA and National Institutes of Health Supported Labs. This is, there's a lot on this. A good free website resource is examine.com for anything related to supplement. or things of that sort, they tend to compile the research with links to studies that anyone can access.

But getting sunlight onto your body each day turns out to be important for hormone health. Now, this is interesting because it also changes the way that we think about skin. We think of skin as a barrier to the outside world, and indeed it is,

or something to hang adornments on, like people put earrings and things on. Skin is actually an endocrine organ. It's a hormone-related organ as well. So this study showed that when you get sunlight onto your, body for 20 or 30 minutes per day. There's a particular cell type in your skin called the caratinocytes. The caratinocyte makes a molecule. It's called P53. None of this matters, except again, if you

understand a little bit of mechanism, I like to think that it can be beneficial. And that P53 molecule sets off a signal to the testes and the ovaries and the adrenal glands to make more testosterone and estrogen in the proper ratios. This almost certainly has to do with an ancient form of seasonal breeding when there's a lot of sunlight. In general, there's a lot of food growing. There's a lot more light by which to hunt, et cetera. So this is a just-so story of why this would all work. So in times of abundance, our body feels safer to reproduce. In times of famine and darkness, right? If it's winter and you have to stay indoors, that generally means resources are scarce. And hormones are a way of sending out signals to the rest of the body of how to behave. Your body doesn't really know what's

going on in the outside world, except by two features. One, how much light is coming in through the eyes and on the skin? And temperature. Those are the two dominant or variables that you can learn to manipulate. I literally did not want to have sex in Finland. I love having sex. I did not want to have sex in Finland. We went there in like the dark of winter. That is so weird. I did not want you to touch me in Finland. Yeah. Huh. Looks like you're not going back to Finland. No. It was a nice show. We're not going back for a while. Okay. So, There is a phenomenon. I have Scandinavian relatives and actually giving a talk in, this isn't an advertisement for it, but I'm giving a talk in Copenhagen in June 3rd. And so I've been to Scandinavia

in the winter and it, I've been to Ohus, excuse me, forgive my pronunciation, Ohus in, which is, and it was dark. It was unbelievably dark. For the first day or so, it was fine because these mechanisms we're talking about are very slow acting. But by the third day, I needed out of there. I was feeling agitated. My sleep was disrupted. Now, of course, I was jet lag too. Scandinavia in the summer, however, it's the opposite effect. It's only light, right? People, there's a little bit of a mania associated with it. People are having a lot more sex.

They're partying. There's a kind of general increase in mood. And the reason is light coming in through the eyes and onto the skin, in particular sunlight, stimulates the release of a neuromodulator that most people are familiar with. It's called dopamine. Most people think of dopamine is a molecule that makes them feel good, and indeed it does, but it also makes them feel motivated to go pursue all the sorts

things that we're talking about. Dopamine is the molecule of, you know, motivation and craving and desire. And it's very closely related to the testosterone and estrogen pathways. And again, testosterone and estrogen are important for libido and sexual desire in both men and women. If you have not tried the pineapple bars by that's it, you are missing out. They are my favorite fruit bar. And that is because they have one ingredient. There's none of this added shit, like are in so many of these bars and snacks. It is, one ingredient and it's pineapple. They're chewy. They're perfect. I roll them into balls for Zaza. You could even cut them into little slices. They remind me of like a fruit roll up, but with not the

nasty shit ingredients. And I just eat them plain. I'll give one to Michael. I leave them in my purse. They're everywhere. And then of course, you know, I also have their kids, apple crunchables. They come in these little bags that are perfect to put in your handbag. And these crunchables are tiny little apple pieces, which is perfect because they're so little, but they're also so good. and they're only one ingredient too. It's literally just apple, organic apple. You should know they're crisp to perfection. They have no added sugar, no preservatives, no weird ingredients that you would normally find on the fruit snack aisle. Asaza is such a fan. She literally grabs these crunchibles out of my hand when I'm eating them. So my advice is to go to that's itfruit.com and use code skinny to get 25% off your order. Do not forget to get the pineapple bars and the kids apple crunchibles. I even know so many of my adult friends that eat the kids apple crunchibles. There's that good. One ingredient. That's that's itfruit.com. Use code skinny to get 25% off your order. So my advice is to go to that's it fruit.com and use code skinny to get 25% off your order. Do not forget to get the pineapple bars and the kids apple crunchibles. That's, that's it fruit.com.

Use code skinny to get 25% off your order. I want to talk about the eyes. He loves the eyes because you know why he loves the eyes so much because he had such a bad eye problem and you literally cured it. I'm not joking. the eye issue. Well, he loves eyes, way more than me. Well, I have a split appointment in neurobiology ophthalmology. I'm not an ophthalmologist, to be clear, I'm not a clinician, but I spent enough time with ophthalmologists. And yeah, basically my career was built initially on understanding of the visual system. So you have six hours? Do you have six hours? Because he's going to tell you about his eyes. What was the specific issue? Here was the issue.

I woke up one day and was driving and I just noticed, I was like, this is blurry. And it was a little bit uncomfortable, just the right eye. And I was like, that's strange. I've always had great vision. And I started doing this thing and I probably irritated where I kept going like going like this and like, what the hell is going on? I think after listening to you more and more that my brain just caught up that there may be like a slight of stigmatism in this eye. And I just never noticed it before. But I guess once the brain catches it, there's not a lot. But in addition to that, and I want to talk about this because I've heard and tell me if I'm misquoting, you said that we may have the equivalent of eye obesity in modern times. And I noticed like I'm somebody that

I'm working a lot on a phone and a lot on a computer. And I'm staring all the time. And I had the small phone. I just finally got the big phone. And I was looking at a computer all the time in light. And I just realized like when I was a kid, I grew up, I played all these sports. I was a boxer. I did these things.

And I played hockey. And so I had a visual system that was, you know, chasing a puck or chasing a football or so you have to look far. And I noticed as I've aged and as I've gotten more into my career, I'm staring at my phone. Like I think many adults are, like just staring at a computer, staring at a phone, not getting outdoors enough. And so I almost had like trained at a, stigmatism or my eyes to only see closer. And I would say like from a screen time perspective,

I was probably on the extreme end, way too much. And so I was like, what the fuck's going on here? It started to bother me. And then it started to feel like there was something stuck in the eye the whole time. You know that feeling we feel like there's an eyelash, but there's not? And it was driving me nuts. And the reason it affected me so much, and then I'll shut up, is that what I was trying to explain to Lauren, when the visual system changes out of nowhere like that, it hits your mood because it changes your whole picture of how you see the world. out of nowhere. And so I spent all this time and we can talk about it going through. I listened to all of your episodes on eyes, but namely the main focus in doing the different eye exercises and

the tracking and all that stuff. And it's helped a ton plus some supplements. But yeah, for a while there was free to me out. You saved our marriage because if he said the word I one more time, I was going to die. So literally he was doing all your exercise. I want you to, we've touched on the importance of light in the eyes, but I want you to touch on, you know, how people are potentially diminishing their eyesight in modern times with the way that we interact on these screens. First of all, thanks for sharing that. I have a feeling on a number of people suffer from that or are going to suffer from that if they don't take some remedial steps. And I'll also talk about a new tool that's based on some really exciting research that you can further, you know,

expand your improvements and vision. So the eye, your eyes are the only two parts of your brain that are outside your skull. They are not eyes. They are literally pieces of your brain. Okay. and they're there to wake up the rest of the brain at the appropriate times of day to gather light. Now, other animals don't necessarily use their eyes for the same purpose. So reptiles, and they have little pits on the top of their head so that the sunlight can get literally into their brain

directly to their pineal gland. We have to do all this through our eyes because we have a thick skull. Some of us thicker skulls than others. So that's critical to understand is that your eyes are a piece of your brain and your brain and your mood and your focus and your ability to focus largely depend on your visual focus.

For low vision or no vision people, it's largely going to relate to what you hear and touch. As a kind of interesting aside, blind people actually have, some of them have a kind of ADHD, except it's related to their touch and their hearing, right? For us, vision is the dominant sense by which we navigate the world and survive,

we anchor our attention, et cetera. Okay, so the eyes are pieces of brain, but they are not fixed structures that your eye actually change your shape. If you move your hand in closer or move it out further away, there's something called accommodation. The lens of your eye is really dynamic.

It's kind of a squishy lens. The eye changes shape. If you or especially kids view things up close for many hours a day, the eye actually becomes elongated, permanently elongated. Which is why I don't want our kids

staring at a screen too close too long. And then what happens is you have this lens and the light is focused, but it doesn't land on the part of the eye that it needs to land on. It lands in front, which is why it's called near-sighted. It's landing too near to the lens. Far-sighted is that it's focusing too far. So basically the picture of the world that your brain is getting is out of focus. That's sort of a scientific description of a duh.

Okay, great. What to do about it? Well, clinical trials involving now thousands, approaching tens of at least 10,000, and kids in China and elsewhere, have shown that two hours a day outdoors per day can offset or even reverse this myopia, nearsightedness. What's interesting is that it's, that time outside is having that positive effect

through two mechanisms. One is the UVB light coming in, which is important for eye growth and metabolism, and the other is viewing things off in the distance. The analogy that I'll give here is that what if I were to tie your ankles and shackles and have you shuffle around all day. You'd get where you needed to go, but your hip flexors would get tight, your back would get tight. It's a very different way to

locomote to move through life. We are now living in a visual world, or we are engaging with the world, I should say, in a way related to our visual system, that is the equivalent of putting our eyes into shackles where we're only looking out at short distances. Viewing a horizon at a distance several times a day is going to naturally relax your eyes. These mechanisms of accommodation just relax your eyes. If ever you're feeling stressed or strained on the computer, some people think it's blue light. Maybe it is, but again, you want as much blue light in your eyes throughout the day as possible. Every 20 minutes or so, go and view a horizon. And now doing it through a window is okay, although being outside would be even better. That's what I implemented

the most, because I realized I wasn't doing that anymore. And as a kid, I said I was an athlete, right? And I was fortunate enough when I discovered your episode, we were actually in Switzerland, and we were going skiing. Oh, wonderful. And I went by myself each day, and even driving to the mountain in the car, I was looking so far out. And then on the mountain,

I actually took off the goggles and was just looking as far as I couldn't. Honestly, within like a week, I noticed a huge change. Yeah, the beauty of the system is that it's plastic in both directions. You can make it a lot worse fast or you can make a lot better fast.

The other thing is, if you look at people, and listen, I'm guilty of this too, walking down the street or taking their walk to get their morning sunlight and they're on their phone, I mean, you're basically looking up close. You might as well be indoors.

Now, you're getting a little bit of indirect UVB exposure, so that's good. It's better than, and you're walking, so that's better than sitting at a desk and doing this. But, you know, I would argue that a lot of the ADHD of the depression of the anxiety that kids are experiencing is that they're never getting out of their little cocoon of close viewing. And so we're going to have a lot of kids with myopia. And maybe to just frame it the other way, if you're a young, person or a parent or even just a mature person who does something to correct this, you're also placing yourself at a distinct advantage over others, right? It's not hard these days actually to be a healthy person. But being a healthy person nowadays mostly consists of not doing

certain things as opposed to doing certain things. I mean, here we're talking about things one can do, but a lot of those things are about not doing other things. And, you know, this gets, we don't need to get into the topic of nutrition because it's such a barbed wire topic. But I think it's fair to say that whether or not you're a vegan, a carnivore or an omnivore, everyone should just avoid highly processed foods for 90% of their food intake. You do that and you've just given yourself an outsized improvement in your health, regardless of what macronutrients you eat. In the same way, if you can view things at a distance, take a walk without your phone, get some UVB exposure, especially early in the day, and dim

down the lights in the evening. We're talking massive improvements in mental and physical health, all at zero cost and probably even saving cost, right? Because it's also about what you're not consuming and purchasing. With kids, two and up, say they're watching TV, would you just prescribe, in quotes to them to also make sure they're balancing that out with getting outside, or would you take the TV away? Tell you, tell your real. opinion. Yeah. Because my two-year-old just wants to watch Paw Patrol. Right. So a picture is worth a thousand words and a movie is worth a billion pictures. I mean, it's just unbelievable how motion and movies can captivate our minds. Child or adult, we just, we see a movie and it's just

immediately. You see it on Instagram feed, picture, picture, picture, movie. It's just the way the visual system and the brain work. So I have two answers. I'm not yet apparent, although at some point soon, hopefully there'll be a litter of kids. I've always wanted to be a little. I've always wanted to I'm going to be an old dad because I'm 46 and I, but I've always wanted. My dad had me old and it's like, it's been, he's my best friends, one of the best relationships I ever had. I think it's a good, what I got from that, this is a tangent is I had a mature dad that was able to teach me a lot and he kind of got through a lot of the shit that I'm probably in which is like still trying to figure out who you are. And he was always like very calm and

stable. So I think it was a good thing. Thank you. Yeah, I always had a plan to be an older dad. My plan also was, you know, we had high conflict divorce in my family growing up and a bunch and I decided I'm going to skip the first marriage. So, you know, I'm on my first. Great. And listen, any time I come into contact with a couple that clearly has it worked out and I realize it's ongoing work, it's such a pleasure. And I know many people make it work the first time around. But I just decided consciously, and I'm just going to skip the first marriage.

I also have leaned very hard into my career, juggling multiple careers and things and that sort. So I wanted to be fair to my partner and kids. But in any event, when I have kids, I will prevent, I will not allow them to engage with screens for, for particular designated parts of the day. However, I will have a TV in the home and computers in the home for the following reason. When you deprive a kid of something that is very, very dopaminergic that stimulates the release of a lot of dopamine,

and then they actually have access to that at a friend's house or something of that sort, it is going to create a massive increase in pleasure. So I think there's this issue of not eliminating things, things, but having a controlled relationship to these very, very powerful stimuli. I mean, movies are very powerful. You know, this is not the topic that we're talking about right now, but I get a lot of questions these days about dopamine and about pornography, for instance. Pornography, you know, removing all judgment from this, because that's not what the basis of the

conversation is, pornography has created an enormous number of problems for in certain countries in the last 10 years, mostly because of its immense availability and the intensity of the It's also wired up a lot of young brains to become aroused watching other people have sex as opposed to being in the physical act of sex themselves. So there's a lot of like you can't even call it third personing and they're not, you know, they're aroused by imagery that they're not actually participating in. And this is, and I hear a lot about, I get a lot of questions about this, especially from the younger audience. Am I saying all pornography is bad? No, not necessarily. I, you know, I don't know. Any discussion about sex and sexuality I always say we're of course framing it in the context of age appropriate consent. contextual context appropriate, species appropriate. So, but the point is that, you know,

anything that stimulates a lot of dopamine release is a very sharp blade. So if you eliminate it completely, great in the short term, potentially treacherous in the long term. That kid goes to a friend's house and sees, you know, a movie, let's just remove pornography from the conversation.

Or just a bag of cookies. Yeah, a bag of cookies. It's on there, it tastes candy for the first time. And the brain is hardwired to get very, very excited about that. So then you're dealing with a kid that potentially could get even more addicted to these things. So it just has to be controlled. It has to be controlled. Any potent stimulus, highly processed, highly palatable food, visual imagery, movies has to be controlled. And I actually think in the context of relationship too, you know, people that are really, really in love,

like your friend that's super in love, the new guy, the new person, and then comes the crash, right? They didn't regulate the dopamine around that experience. So with dopamine, what goes up, goes down. And there's always a mirror increase in the pain molecules after dopamine. So if a kid is watching a bunch of paw patrol, it's really, really excited. And then you take away Paw Patrol for three days. Pissed. There's a molecule called dinorphin, which is kind of a negative endorphin. That actually makes people feel miserable.

It's the same molecule that's released in alcoholics going through withdrawal. So you just have to be very careful with any high potency stimulus. And so in my home, there will be television, sure, but it will be for designated periods each day. And it won't be just kind of ad libidum, as we say in science, which is just geeks, geek speak for as much as you want. It'll be regulated. Now, going back to your eyes, so the key is look at your computer screen, look at your phone, but try and get an almost equivalent amount of distance viewing. If you get out in the morning and get that sunlight, even better to do it walking.

There's something very powerful about self-generating. optic flow. Okay, so when we cycle or walk or run through physical space, and sorry, the Peloton doesn't quite do it, treadmill and a gym won't quite do it, but just even simple walking will do this. Visual images are going by on our retina. That optic flow shuts down, or at least quiet, it's a brain center that some people might be familiar with called the amygdala, which is the center of the brain that's associated with fear and anxiety, and it's very calming. But if you're looking at your phone while you're walking, you're doing two things. You're making yourself more near-sighted.

You're changing the shape of your eyeball. You're not getting that optic flow. So is that what I did if I was staring too close for too long as I was actually changing the shape of my mind? Because I imagine that I am not unique in this case, especially nowadays, that I was actually physically changing the shape of my eyeball. And then over time, it got to a point where it actually diminished my eyesight. That's right. And it can get to the point where a lot of people will go to the ophthalmology. or optometrists, and then they'll put on corrective, they'll give you a corrective lens.

And then what are you doing? You're basically just making it comfortable to look at things up close. So if you need corrective lenses, get them, but a lot of people can repair their own vision. And then if you go on YouTube, they're also what are called smooth pursuit eye training, where you're basically following a small bead around the screen. And that smooth pursuit can help develop some of the muscles that move the eyes and can be very useful for repairing vision as well. So that's what they did is they gave me like a slight lens. And I've actually been trying, I mean, on the fence, I'm like, should I resist? Should I not? You have a prism? A little prism there? Like a little, yeah, it's like a stigmatism right here. And I'll tell you why you

don't want to do this. I guess we are in camera. So what I have a one as well from a childhood thing, it was just stupid. I was swimming, not using goggles and I kept closing and opening one eye. And when you're young, the brain is very plastic. And it only takes a couple of days of having one eye occluded for your brain to completely shift over. Wow. And the way to shift it back is you actually have to cover up the quote unquote good eye and repair it. This work that I'm referring to is the work of my scientific great grandparents,

David Huble and Torrance and Weasel, they won the Nobel Prize for this discovery. So they gave me a prism glass to shift the image so that I would feel comfortable, right? The images come in and it's just shifted slightly. The problem is watch this. I can actually move one eye in pretty creepy, right? This eye wants to move in.

And so when I started wearing that prism glass and I took it off, I had one eyeball that was strabismic, which was... So I don't want to do that. You do not want to do that unless you absolutely have to. All right, I'm going to be bothering you after the show. So corrective lenses can be really useful for certain people, but corrective lenses can cripple the visual system of certain people

and make you highly dependent on them. And Strabism is not something you want if you can avoid it. So if you are going to prescribe you, Andrew Huberman, to the high majority of people, the perfect setting in a day, how to use the visual system, what would it be? Okay, a couple of things. and this is also an opportunity to optimize workspace and alertness.

One thing, don't look down at your screen. When your eyes are up, the brainstem centers, these cranial nerves for alertness get engaged. So literally looking up, wakes you up. So you don't want to be working on a laptop on your lap, looking down. And looking down and with eyes closed is associated with the sedation. Makes perfect sense when you hear it. So you want to be on a screen that's at least at eye level, at least at nose level,

or even slightly up. You don't want to recline to have to do that because it turns out that as you recline your brain actually gets sleepier through these brainstem mechanisms. It's all very logical related to gravity because most of the time when we're lying down, we're asleep. So try and get a screen,

set your screen or use a standing desk that is at eye level or slightly above and you're going to stay more alert. For every 20 to 45 minutes of work that you do, it'll depend, right? I mean, here we're indoors, we're talking, and we're not going to stop and go do some gazing out the window

that would be impractical. We haven't got to that part on the show. I'm happy to do it, but it's just, you know, or you're in meetings, sure, that's fine. But then afterwards, try and look off into the distance through a window if you can't get outside, or take a brief walk five minutes and just with some distance viewing and just let the images float by on your eyes.

And then you'll find that it's much easier, less eye strain, far fewer headaches. Migraines and photophobia are also related to getting light at the wrong times of day. A lot of the treatments for migraine now have to do with, adjusting the timing of light to the eyes. And in general, if you can take a 20 or 30 minute walk once a day and just, you know, you can be walking and talking. Sure, you can look at your phone, glance at it every once in a

while, look at the person you're talking to. But in general, just try and look off in the distance and you don't have to rigidly hold your view at a distance. And of course, you can blink. But just let your eyes do what you would normally do. You know, you have to kind of imagine your ancestral version of yourself where you do some hunting and focusing and gathering and some relaxing and just letting your eyes view things at multiple distances throughout the day. Well, like I said, I just think about when we were kids and you're outdoors and you're running. And we all grew up in a time where even on porn, like we were lucky to find a VHS back. We found a VHS on. We found out. We found out. There was no inner, you know.

There was the some kid would have a magazine and the kids would go over there. It was like a library or something. Here I'm not promoting this. It's just as a contrast to now where a kid with access to a laptop can just get access to all this very powerful. and almost assuredly confusing imagery, right? You just imagine that the brain is plastic and the reactions to that. Some of those reactions are hardwired. And even the porn back, I mean, it was pretty tame. Like now I imagine when you're a kid and you see some of this stuff, it's not, I mean, these are, this is like,

we're like jumping to the advanced echelon of sexual activity in a lot of these videos. So I think people, they think that's what sex is and then you get with a partner, it's probably not that for your first experiences. So it's also probably fucking up. the mechanism and how people even think about sex. We're obviously talking all about health, wellness, overall human optimization. And I'd be lying if I didn't mention that symbiotica,

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At this point, I'm on the vitamin D with the K-U-10 and the K-2. I'm on the B-12. I'm on the vitamin C. I take the mushrooms, the longevity mushrooms. I take the charcoal. I take the zinc. What else do I take? I take pretty much everything from the line because it's all the best ingredients.

A lot of its liposomal, so it absorbs the best in your body. And they just came out with a new plant protein that I think is phenomenal as well. So listen, I'm not saying you have to go and jump into every single product, but I definitely recommend if you're going to supplement and start taking supplements, especially after listening to this episode, that you check out this line. What I would start with, if I were you and I hadn't been taking any supplements, is I would definitely try the vitamin D 3K2 in K2 in K-10 supplement. I think the vitamin B-12 is also phenomenal.

And then definitely the magnesium 3-8. Those are the first three that I would recommend. I know Lauren's a huge fan of the plant protein. So if you're looking for a plant protein to swap out whatever you're taking right now and you want something clean and have the highest quality and you want that protein boost, definitely check that out. And of course, we have a code. We have an offer for you guys. Use code Skinny at checkout for 15% off your first purchase. This is in addition to the custom bundle discount so people can get up to 45% off.

That's a huge discount. Create your custom bundle at symbiotica.com and get 30% off using this. That's C-Y-M-B-B-I-O-T-I-A dot com and code skinny at checkout. trust me, you guys are going to love these products. They're phenomenal. Enjoy. It's a super important topic that if we can look at through the lens of biology and neuroscience and remove the judgment about the whys and the what's and all that, because that's not my place, right? And I'm sure there's great research on that as well. But what you realize is any very potent, powerful imagery, especially when it's seen by the young brain, has a lasting effect.

we could change the conversation to violence, right? Now, sex is a part of life. I mean, let's get one fact clear. All of us are here because a sperm met an egg either in vitro or in vivo. There's no way around that, at least to my knowledge. There's a certain species of vulture in which the females can reproduce. That was actually demonstrated this last year. But as far as we know, inhuman beings, that's not... That doesn't happen with humankind because we'll be in a lot of trouble us, I have a feeling that in the next few years, there are going to be examples of female to female fertilization done. It would involve some molecular chicanery. I'm sure. But that's happening. There's also now three-parent IVF, taking the DNA from the mother, sperm from the father, and then putting

the DNA from the mother into the egg with spindle with mitochondria of the donor. And so that's actually done in the UK. And it was in Mexico and in the Ukraine, because most of the aging of eggs has nothing to do with the DNA. It has to do with the aging and a malfunction of the spindle that pulls the chromosomes apart. Wow. So that's happening now. Three parent DNA IVF is happening. Just in this country, it's not FDA approved yet. But to sort of return to this idea, it's, you know, the more intense an experience, you know, even a triple espresso, for instance, as one's first experience of caffeine will generally change the way you think about a cup of coffee or a soda, right? So I don't want to create a situation where parents or kids are so freaked out about interacting with anything that's high potency. The brain is also resilient. Kids are resilient, adults are resilient. But chronic ongoing interaction with something that's very potent emotionally or physically changes your nervous system. It's almost like experience stretching. It is experience stretching. The brain, essentially for things like breathing and heartbeat and digestion is pretty hardwired. You come into the world, you don't have to train that stuff up. But,

The time between birth and age 25 is when you lay down a map, which is basically a map that predicts what's coming next. And that map is a predictive map so that as you go from age 26 and onward, you can move through the world without having to think about too much. So what we expose kids to, and even as adults, the brain is plastic. What we expose ourselves to is it impacts us. But it's not irreversible. I want to talk about stress and anxiety and take a shift. What are the biggest causes of stress that you see? So the number of stressors, the causes of stress, is near infinite.

Okay, so for people that suffer from stress and anxiety, here are a couple things. First of all, there are foundational practices, namely sleep and quality social interactions, right? Friendship, relationship, great sleep, great nutrition, exercise. those all provide buffers against stressors, right? When you're sleeping better and you feel socially supported and you're eating well and you're exercising, stressors don't have the same impact. But then there are some things that we can all do to offset stress. And there we get to the specific work of my laboratory, which is focused on stress and vision. There are two main ways to combat stress. One is what I call real time tools. So ways of reducing stress in the moment.

because we all know that exercise, meditation, massage, and et cetera, et cetera, are great for combating stress. But there are going to be times in life where someone cuts you off on the road or you're stuck in traffic or you look at your phone and something really troubling comes in. You need to be able to deal with that in real time. The best way that I'm aware of to reduce your anxiety and stress level in real time is through the use of breathing through respiration. And there's a couple of things that are important. First of all, taking a deep breath when you're stressed is the absolute worst thing to do. Absolute worst thing to do. When people say take a deep breath, terrible idea.

Why? I'm sure you're going to tell us why, but that's actually I haven't heard that yet. Yes, because there's something called respiratory arrhythmia that relates to your heartbeat. So when you inhale, your heart rate actually speeds up. And when you exhale, your heart rate slows down. And the reason for this is the movement of your diaphragm. So I'll just briefly describe for those that want to when you inhale, you inhale, you exhale, your heart rate slows down. your diaphragm moves down, your heart gets a little bit bigger physically, and blood moves

more slowly through that large space. The brain sends a signal to your heart, speed up. When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up. Your heart gets a little more compact. Blood moves more quickly through that small volume, and the brain sends a signal to slow your heart rate down. Sinus arrhythmia is the proper name. So if you take a deep breath, you're going to speed your heart up.

The important thing here to understand is that there's a mode of breathing that is hardwired that you do during sleep anytime you get stressed or there's a buildup of a molecule called carbon dioxide in your bloodstream. That's why you breathe. So the best way to calm down quickly is to take a very deep breath through the nose

until your lungs will then sneak in a little bit more air through your nose and then a long exhale through your mouth until you're completely lungs empty. Keep going. Okay, that is called a physiological sigh. That was discovered in the 1930s. Turns out you do this.

when you're claustrophobic. You do this in sleep when you become hypoxic and you need to get more oxygen. Is that why when you watch someone sleep and they do that thing? And they're like, okay. You actually do this every five minutes when you're awake and you don't know it. So your lungs are two big bags of air. This is an amazing system. You breathe in air and then the oxygen permeates into the bloodstream. And then when you exhale, you offload carbon dioxide. Now, but your lungs aren't just two big bags of air. They have hundreds of millions of these little sacks called avioli. Those little sacks deflate every once in a while when you're not breathing enough or deeply enough,

which is normal, like I'm talking right now, the avioli of my lungs are collapsing. And they're wet on the inside. And so they're very hard to reinflate. You know, if you ever tried to fill a balloon at a kid's party and you like blow into it, sometimes you'll have to go and then really blow hard. And that's because there's a fluid tension

to pop those sacks back open. So when you do a big inhale, your heart rate does speed up. But then if you do a second inhale before, exhaling again, even if it's a short one, and then what you're doing is you're re-inflating all those little sacks in your lungs, and then in the exhale, you offload all the carbon dioxide. Just one or three of those physiological size. So double inhale through the nose, long exhale through the mouth until you're completely lungs empty, will bring your level of stress and anxiety down considerably within seconds. And if you need to do it again and again, fine.

Should you do it during meditation? So meditation's interesting. You can. You can do it during meditation. You should basically use it anytime you want to calm down. So telling someone take a deep breath, what generally happens is they'll go, they'll mouth breathe or they'll, and then they won't exhale long enough. So the ratio, the duration of inhale to exhale is very important.

So it makes it worse. Yes, it makes it worse. No wonder when I tell you to calm down and take a breath. And anytime we tell somebody to shift their state, even if they don't like the state they're in, it can be kind of a grading thing. Yeah, I found this out last night. Yeah. Did makeup come off my eye yet?

I'm just kidding. So it's hard to shift our state. But if people just understand that inhales tend to make us more alert, long exhales tend to make us more calm, then you can start playing some fun games. So that's a real-time tool to adjust stress

while you're public speaking or if you're in a hard conversation. If you want to be really sneaky, covert about it and you don't want someone to know you're doing it, you could do the whole thing through your nose. In general, we should all be nasal breathing

unless we are eating or speaking. Or you're doing some specific breathwork practice. Do you like mouth taping? Mouth taping is great for keeping certain people quiet. No, I'm just kidding. Moutaping is great. I'm sure there are other purposes too, topic of another podcast.

The mouth taping is great for people that have trouble with snoring or switching over to nasal breathing. One of the best science-supported practices for health is to get 150 to 200 minutes of Zone 2 cardio per week. zone two cardio can be measured on a on a monitor or you can take the zero cost approach which is to exercise just as hard as you can for without shutting down your ability to have a conversation or you can do even better and just tape your mouth shut or keep your mouth shut or even take a swig of water and do your zone two cardio with that water in your mouth and just nasal breathe

the whole time if you can do cardio with purely nasal breathing you're probably roughly in that zone too and you're teaching yourself to nasal breathe For those that think, oh, well, that's kind of crazy. First of all, there's a beautiful book called Jaws, a hidden epidemic written by my colleagues at Stanford. These are serious academics. That just came out recently. It came out a few years ago, but no one really knew about it

because it was too nerdy for most people. The book, Breath, the new science of a lost art by James Nestor is also an excellent book. Jaws shows a lot of images of twin studies and siblings in general who either were nose-breatzers or mouth-breaters. And some of these kids were mouth breathers because they got a pet hamster and they got an allergy

or because they lived in a culture where there was the consumption of a lot of soft foods. So chewing hard foods and nasal breathing, you look at these images of boys and girls and it's striking.

The jaw shape of people that are nose-breaters is very impressive and the quality of their teeth tooth alignment. The jaw shape and teeth of people that are mouth-breaters is dreadful.

In fact, the face will continue to elongate and the eyes droop and become tired looking in people that are mouth breathers because they're hypoxic and actually the sinuses, I should have brought a skull with me. The sinuses are actually little tunnels that run through the jaw.

So you actually have these little holes right here and holes here and holes here. And the sinuses can dilate over time if you become a nose breather. So that beautiful structure that we sometimes see in people that, you know, in the 1940s and 1950s and 60s, I don't know that they were all nose breathers or not. But probably it was the consequence of not slurping down a lot of food and calories,

but largely from chewing and eating their food. So it's been shown that if you eat foods that require a lot of chewing and you're chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, the jaw muscles and the whole shape of the face changes. People that are mouth breathers, the eyes become droopy, they look tired, the crow's feet start to drop. And it's striking. You look at these images and literally you see these two cute kids. Then they were raised apart.

One's a nose breather, one's a mouth breather, or one is chewing a lot of foods that require chewing, and others are slurping it down. And one kid looks, gore, or boy, looks incredibly attractive and just, you know, it looks like their bone structure, high cheekbones, nice jaw, all of this, teeth really nice, no braces, no dentistry. The other kid is a kind of unattractive kid. They look kind of tired. They look like they're kind of turning into a melted candle. And this can also be changed in adulthood. One of the most overlooked, aspects of cosmetic health and overall health. Turns out your nose is much better

at filtering out bacteria and viruses. Your nose, in fact, any contact of your body to the outside world, so surface of your skin, urethra, women have a vaginal microbiome. We have a nasal microbiome. And if you nose breathe, you improve the quality of the oxygenated species. It's a better filter than your mouth.

Much better filter. So be a nose breather, not a mouth breather, tease the mouth breathers because it's easy to fix. Don't tease them. I guess nowadays you get like teasing a moment. I was a mouth breather. my whole life and I had to have double jaw surgery and they had to break my entire face and move it for exactly that reason. But now I still sometimes notice my mouth breathed. So you would say to do

tape on my mouth. When you're doing your zone two cardio, which listen, everybody should get 150 to 200 minutes of zone two cardio per week. I think there's like zero debate as to whether or not this is useful for cardiovascular health. It's sort of one of those things that I don't even know that we should consider exercise. This can be walking, right? And you wouldn't do it at night. You would do it so the zone two cardio only. Well, I'm just saying if you want, I would still try and keep your mouth at night and breathe through your nose. Got it. A lot of people claim they have a deviated septum. They do not have a deviated septum. They're just not good at nose breathing. The best way to get become a nose breather is to nose breathing. You know who first taught us about that? I think we're

you know, Gabby recently, Laird Hamilton, big proponents of nose breathing working out. And when she told me she came on here and was telling me about that. I've been super conscious now when I work out. I try to do as much as I can. It's obviously more difficult, especially when you're starting out, but I feel I get a bigger energy boost by doing it as well. Well, you're oxygenating your brain far more. There are studies, really good quality studies in humans, again, showing that, believe it or not, when you inhale through your nose, your ability to learn and remember information is greater. These are several studies on this. And in fact, when you inhale, during the inhales, you're actually better at attending to and learning information than during your exhales.

It literally varies from moment to moment. Now you have to exhale. What if you have my daughter, sometimes she mouth breathes. What should I do? Tell her all the benefits of nose breathing. I would close the mouth. That's what I do. Close your mouth. In the same way that- I just go like this. Yeah, in the same way that if you saw your child walking with a shoulder that was this much lower and there wasn't an underlying physical cause like a difference in the length of their legs, you would probably, say, hey, you know, like try and keep that shoulder up when you walk. We got to do that. And the same way that if you see your child looking always at screens, you'd say, hey, look off in the distance a bit. This is especially true in kids, but in adults as well.

I think based on the data, it's absolutely clear that nasal breathing is so beneficial for our health in sleep and in wakefulness. I mentioned the cosmetic stuff because oftentimes people are brought to the table by the idea of a cosmetic enhancement. And it's exciting that this stuff is reversible. We're not saying you have to have a complete reconstruction of your sinuses. You can create that restructuring. Of course, there are circumstances like swimming where this isn't going to be possible,

but most people aren't in the pool all day. Sure. But you're saying basically, before you jump to all those cosmetic steps, if you get mouth breathing under control and get more nasal breathing, you could potentially reverse some of those effects and improve. Oh, absolutely. And so if the cosmetic effects are the motivator, great. You know, it's incredible.

In that book also, they show that, you know, there are a lot of animals out there that have perfect teeth, but they are nose-breaters. If you look at a bulldog, I had a bulldog mastiff for a long time. Their teeth are a disaster. They're mouth breathers. Dogs that are largely nasal breathers, unless they're panting, of course,

which is how they offload heat, have great teeth. Dogs that are mouth-breathes, the ones with short snouts, brachycephalic, as they're called nerd-nurd-speak for short-s. snout, the pugs, the bulldogs, the French bulldogs, et cetera. Their teeth are horrible. And they're underbite. And they're cute because we like that little like squishy face look. But as a human being, having an elongated face with droopy eyes, nasal passages and sinuses that are occluded and breathing through your mouth sets you up for colds and infections to be hypoxic sleep

sleep, sleep, it's a huge health risk for cardiovascular events in men and women, for sexual dysfunction in men for all sorts of issues related to the movement of blood and oxygen through your body. So becoming a nose breather during sleep is key. So a little bit of medical tape on the mouth. Can I do it pregnant? He's scared for me to do it pregnant. Well, I wouldn't nasal breathe during childbirth. I would just focus on getting that baby out as safely as possible. I don't see why you couldn't do it while pregnant. I mean, your fetus is perfectly happy to get more oxygen. Now, what I wouldn't do is sort of extreme breathwork training. What I didn't mention was the other way to protect against stress, which is to raise

your stress threshold. So there's real time tools, which is basically like, okay, you know, my system's too ramped up right now, I want to push back. That's the physiological side. We double inhale, long exhale. But then there are things that you can do to get better at dealing with stress. And the way to get better at dealing with stress is to get comfortable with high levels of adrenaline in your system.

To stop trying to live a life where you are removing all the stressors because they're going to happen. That's what we're going to talk about in a second. Thanks for listening, guys. If you like this episode, be sure to check out part two that's coming this Thursday, where we continue this conversation and discuss optimal types of workouts and the cadences of those workouts, i.e. when and how long, how often. We also discuss supplementation, diet, the immune system, support, testosterone, estrogen levels,

and then we also cover questions around biohacking tools like cold and heat exposure, which include cold showers, saunas, cold plunges, ice baths. We also discuss red light therapy and so much more. And we end the episode talking about sexual health and reproduction and all of these things. So definitely another jam-packed episode. Be sure to check it out. Before we jump into this episode, I have a groundbreaking offer for you guys. And it is a good one.

It has 40% off this product that I'm obsessed with. If you guys have been following along for a while, you know that I have completely kicked alcohol this year, just completely stopped consuming it. And listen, at some point I may go back. But for now, I'm just not consuming it. And I'm going to be honest. It was difficult in the beginning. but now I don't even think about it.

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