The Joe Rogan Experience - #1958 - Andrew Huberman

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Andrew Huberman, PhD, is a neuroscientist and tenured professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. Andrew is also the host of the Huberman Lab podcast, which aims to help viewers and listeners improve their health with science and science-based tools. New episodes air every Monday on YouTube and all podcast platforms. www.hubermanlab.com

the Joe Rogan experience every now and then this is good for you right what is it what is your like when you what is your schedule

as far as like do you allow yourself bad food every now and then my vices in the food department are croissants. Thing is, you know, that hits the dopamine button and

it's all about more. I mean, I can sink five of those things. Chocolate croissants are my jam. Oh, really? I don't adulterate my croissants. Really? No, maybe extra butter. For me, it's all the savory stuff. Savory, salty. So it's croissants every once in a while. Have you

had a chocolate croissant? I have. Pretty goddamn good. You like them? I'm with him. I'm all butter. Really? Butter's nice. Butter's nice. I think the all butter for me justifies having three or four. When I lived in New York, I used to love buttered bagels or buttered rolls.

They do not have that out here for some strange reason. It's like a common thing. If you go to like a deli in New York, they always had buttered rolls. It was like just a roll with a lot of butter on it, and people would eat that with coffee. Out here, they don't have that for some strange reason. Or in L.A., they don't have it either.

I like how in New York when you get a soda, even at a little 7-Eleeleven type place they offer you a straw Yeah, it's one of the last civilized things in life to be offered a straw You know what I saw the there's a chart see if you could find this of you know how we're supposed to be not Using plastic straws anymore because turtles are dying You know that you know people give you a plastic, you know, they give you paper straws. I remember the six-pack container, those plastic things, and you see the seagull thing around.

Oh, yeah, like the turtle where it constricted his shell. Have you ever seen that one? Yeah. Like it got around a turtle when he was little, and as he grew, the shell became like an hourglass. It was really gross. But there was this chart of the countries in the world that pollute the ocean the most

and it's fucking stunning and if we stop using plastic straws we're not going to put a fucking dent in it unless they do like we're not even close to number one we're not even close to number six like the the leading countries that pollute the ocean. I think number one was Philippines. I was going to say Southeast. Why would Southeast Asia have that issue? I would imagine that when people are very poor, the last thing they're concerned about is not polluting. I would think that. I've seen those images of those giant like icebergs of plastic junk yeah and i always hope that's not real oh it's real yeah boy on slot is a gentleman who's been on the podcast before has developed this device for uh it's like it sifts the ocean it's like it floats over the top of the ocean

and it has this collector that sucks up plastic and then they take that plastic and use it and recycle it and make like eyeglasses out of it and all sorts of other different things like okay so number one is china by a by a wide by a wide margin wow countries polluting the oceans the most annual metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste and total amount ending up in global waters. This is fucking insane. So China is 8.80 metric tons. Indonesia is number two with 3.2. Philippines is number three with 1.9. You go all the way down to the United States is 0.30. Well, China's got no excuse because their GDP is way up there. They could actually manage it. But some of these other

countries, as you mentioned, are definitely lower GDP relative to the United States and China. Right. For sure. Like, yeah, definitely like Malaysia and Nigeria. But China's got no excuse. That's incredible. Yeah. Is some of that them buying our stuff, though? Don't we sell our trash? We buy it from them, bro. Oh, OK. I mean, oh, trash. Yeah.

Buy their trash. They take it and then we're like, here, you deal with it. I've heard of that happening. Not to a gigantic extent like that. I don't know about, you know. Right. For waste management, right? Yeah.

Like they might have a company that handles that. Perhaps. I mean, but also they produce so many plastic things i mean think about the amount of things that are plastic that are produced in china it's pretty extraordinary i remember for a while there was a discussion about kids toys with the the coloring you know and the tox toxins and plastics yeah good you know it i guess i don't know if we're gonna go there because uh we might as well. Right. Okay. Well, you know, it's interesting for starting 2019. I started posting things on Instagram.

That's how I got my stuff out. Then I was going on podcasts. Now we have the podcast. Right. But I'd stayed off Twitter largely until this last year when I started putting a lot of stuff there. So you put stuff there, you start reading stuff there. Oh no.

And then, well, what's been really interesting to me is I followed this whole lab leak thing. Right. Because early in the pandemic, people in my field started chattering about that. I was very, I love exotic animals, not to own them, right? But I'm really interested in animal conservation. And so the pangolin is an amazing animal. They pinned it on the pangolin early on, right? And there were articles published in good journals, several of which I'm on the editorial board for. So early in the pandemic, there were papers coming out really fast about, you know, the sequence of the virus in pangolins, which were being sold in the market, etc. And I was pretty disturbed by this, mostly because of the pictures of the Wuhan market, that exotic animal trade is just it's horrible, right? Okay, close confinement. You know, these are beautiful animals that there's no justification for this stuff. But pangolin meat is sold at, I forget what it is per pound, but it's a delicacy and it's considered very lucrative

to get pangolin meat of all things. There's actually a female pangolin meat influencer on YouTube. Really? Oh yeah, no. It starts to look like pangolin meat ASMR. It's crazy and disgusting. So they're, they're kind of mixing, you know, sexy women with exotic meats from these rare animals. It's just awful. So I was going deep

down this rabbit hole of trying to understand this exotic animal trade. And then, um, and then there was chatter in my field about the fact that one of the members of the laboratory in Wuhan that was working with these very high restriction viruses had done her training in the United States, which is true, has a master's degree, but was running a laboratory, which is unusual, right? Typically, the head of a laboratory is someone with a PhD, MD, or both. is unusual, right? Typically the head of a laboratory is someone with a PhD, MD, or both. Very rare for a so-called PI, a principal investigator,

like me or another, Matt Walker, for instance, principal investigator to have less than a PhD. The fact that she ran a lab or was important in running this lab as a masters, with only a masters is unusual. And then there was a lot of chatter in my field about the the idea that it might have something to do with the fact that her significant other was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. And so you know, that laboratory had deep ties to

government and vice versa. And that's true of all laboratories in China, all laboratories. So the whole notion of the lab leak hypothesis was not foreign to scientists like me. They thought, yeah, you know, my laboratory works with rabies viruses, adenoviruses, synbis viruses. None of these are as biohazardous as something like the coronavirus. But you work with these viruses and you have to use, you know, lab coats, gloves, bleach sterilization. You're careful, you know, hoods of property.

But human error happens. So I'm not at all convinced one way or the other that it was a deliberate leak. But the idea that it would leak from a laboratory to a scientist like me who has what's called a wet lab where you, you know, with solutions and beakers and things of that sort. Things happen all the time. Not in my laboratory. We're very careful. And everyone's checked up on often. But the idea that human error could cause this is like it was an of course to all scientists

Well, they have been cited in 2018 for violating safety protocols I mean all it takes is you know People might not be familiar with the pipetting is but it's basically taking a little straw that sucks up, you know Press a button it sucks up some fluid you move things, you between little tiny vials. It can be done by robots too, but typically it's done by humans. And that's how you put in a centrifuge, spin it, take off a little piece of that or take the pellet out of the bottom that spun down, this kind of thing. All it takes is one loose thumb and it's on a lab coat. All it takes is that lab coat going on a rack. All it takes is somebody leaving work, putting their lab coat on there and touching that lab coat and it's out in the world.

It's not that complicated. So it doesn't have to be that somebody had a plan to let this out. It could be, I don't have any knowledge of that, but the idea that it would come from a lab to me is far more plausible than the idea that it came from some pangolin sequence in the Wuhan market. So I think we were going down the wrong path on this for a long time. And I thought this is kind of bananas. And now everyone's so shocked. And it's like, I think to people who work in biomedical research, of course, this sort of thing could happen, of course, because human error is the cause of most of these kinds of things. Well, it was very clear that there was a concerted effort to dismiss the idea that it came from a lab and it wasn't logical and it wasn't scientific. And they ignored all the evidence that seemed to point that it originated from that lab,

including the people that worked in that lab who got sick. And now there's some new stupid story in the New York Times about a raccoon dog. They're saying it might've come from a raccoon dog. The civet? Is that the- No, no. So it's some sort of a raccoon dog. The civet? No. No. No. So it's some sort of a raccoon dog. A civet is actually a cat. It's like a ferret type thing, right?

A civet is like in the cat family, I believe. And that's where you get Kopi Luwak coffee from. Oh, yeah. From the poop of the civet. Have you ever had it? Oh, it's the Luwak coffee. Yeah. It's actually very good.

Yeah. When I was a postdoc, there was interest. So this is it. That's the raccoon dog? Yeah. That one doesn't eat coffee beans. It's actually very good. Yeah. When I was a postdoc, there was, there was, so this is it. That's the raccoon dog. Yeah. That one doesn't eat coffee beans. I don't think so. Maybe it does.

It doesn't look like it. It's a member of the canid family. It's also. It's a beautiful animal. Let's go with it. Back to where you were. Um, a group that also includes domestic dogs and the only member that hibernates. Oh, wow.

They, they hibernate. Interesting. But here's the problem. Um, Sagar and Jetty was. Interesting. But here's the problem. Sagar and Jetty was actually explaining this to me on Saturday night. He was like, there's direct evidence of people being infected that predates this establishment of this animal testing positive in that wet market. So I guess people were eating that animal. Is that the idea?

But many months before that, people were sick from this. Like this is, what was this in? I believe it was in December of 2019. Is that what they're saying? November or December of 2019. And it was March 2020 when everything kind of blasted, right? Yeah, but it was September or August of 2019 when the first people were infected. So it predates it by a considerable amount.

I think the lab leak hypothesis is far more plausible. Well, the Furman cleavage site, this thing that they've established that it seems to indicate that this virus was manipulated. Like this is the Furman cleavage site, excuse me. Yeah, there too, you know, we hear about gain of function research and now everyone associates gain of function with gain of function of this particular virus. But gain of function research happens all the time in essentially every laboratory in the US and abroad that does mouse genetics. You knock out a gene and you ask what happens to this animal in the absence of a gene and then you knock it in and you see if it replaces that because in humans human genetics is only loss

of function you don't have the option yet crisper will allow this to put things back in that are missing and so gain of function research is extremely common we do it in my we're no longer working on animals to be clear we only do do human studies now, but you're, this is something that you're trained to do as a postdoc. Everyone learns loss of function, gain of function. You need to do both. You know, the, the gain of function, actually there is that one CRISPR experiments beginning of interesting science out of China.

A guy, he actually was a postdoc at Stanford, um, worked for a guy named Steve Quake and then separately on his own without permission or anything from Stanford went off and started his own own laboratory in China, and stood up at a meeting a few years ago and said he had done CRISPR in human babies. This has been done. Yeah, he was arrested for this, right? Yeah, he mutated the HIV receptor, which everyone thinks, okay, that was designed to prevent these babies from getting HIV. It turns out that that mutation is thought to perhaps enhance memory by sort of parallel mechanisms. And then it was very unclear for a short while whether or not this guy was either going to get a Nobel Prize or that they were going to throw him in jail. And so everyone is very tense and waiting in my community thinking, okay, because when somebody's

kind of up for a big discovery like this, everyone kind of circles maybe wanting that maybe they should be involved in getting the accolades. But as the moment that the international community, I think rightfully so, said, this is horrible. You can't do this. There's no ethics committee. You need to think about what you're doing. Everyone was like, I had nothing to do with this guy. I'd never had anything. And you know, there was a deep excavation of emails and all sorts of everyone's like, I got nothing to do with this guy. So it was pretty interesting. Then China said, oh, we're going to, we're going to punish him, but I'd be willing to bet both hands that he's, his punishment consists of a jail cell that is

pretty luxurious with a laboratory. There's no question that CRISPR is going on there. CRISPR is going on in certain regions of, you know, of, you know, other, other locations on the globe where things aren't as regulated, because think about the potential payoff for Yeah. What is it? Huntington's disease, it's a deterioration of the parts of the brain that control motor function. The parts of the brain that control motor function have two main pathways. One is a go pathway, like reach for this coffee mug. And the other one is a no-go pathway, resisting movement. And the no-go pathway degenerates substantially. Other things too.

And people with Huntington's chorea end up with these writhing ballistic movements. And it's an inherited disease. So you know what gene. It's the Huntington gene. And if you know that your, for instance, parent has it, you can get tested for it. A lot of people don't want to get tested. They don't want the answer because it's late onset. So you can be normal a certain portion of your life and then get it. It's a tragic disease. But if you test positive for this gene, you know you're going to get Huntington's. In which case, with CRISPR, you could just put the gene back in and rescue function. What causes someone to eventually succumb to that disease?

If it's a late-onset disease, if they don't have it when they're young and they develop when they get older, what changes? Yeah, so it's not just deterioration of those particular neurons. It's deterioration of the neurons that control those neurons. And everything's working in a kind of a top-down suppression all the time. In fact, the head neurosurgeon at neural link who's somebody i know quite well named matthew mcdougall he came up through my laboratory elon made a great choice in hiring him um told me recently the best way to think about the frontal cortex is that basically its main job besides picking context and strategy for a given situation is to tell certain parts of your brain that really want to do things, shh.

That's the best description I've ever heard of prefrontal cortex. You know, it's what's keeping Jamie from doing things that he shouldn't right now, and me doing things that I shouldn't right now. And every time you have a crazy idea, like maybe I should jump off this bridge. Why would I think that?

That's a healthy operation of your brain saying, I want to, because I'm kind of curious, but I don't want to. So I'm not going to. With Huntington's, what happens is a slow deterioration of those neurons. But there's a lot of deterioration of these neurons that control motor function. And eventually what happens is the deeper neurons that control motor function start shutting down the autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate. And so eventually people just succumb to some basic, you know, we call them housekeeping functions, you know, so they'll have to be on a respirator and they have to, you know, they have to use a catheter tube and, you know, they have to defecate into a bag. And, you know, at some point they just become a deteriorated mess

of neurons. So what's first to go there, however, is the control of motor function. And it goes first in the direction of too much activity because of all these brakes and accelerators that we have in the brain. So in any case, CRISPR gene manipulation of the sort that this guy did in this laboratory in China, again, I think an ethics committee needs to tell the world or decide for the world what people should be allowed to do and not do. But you can imagine for something like Huntington's, it would be tremendously advantageous. Like if you had a child who you knew was someday going to get Huntington's, you'd want to do a CRISPR mutation and put the healthy gene back. Is there anything that's been shown to slow down the progress of Huntington's?

Anything that's been shown to slow down the progress of Huntington's? There I'm not so versed. It's a little bit like MS, another neurodegenerative disease, multiple sclerosis, where certain things exacerbate it, like inflammation of any kind. And those things can be almost random in some ways. Like some people who have MS will eat salad dressing with mustard in it, have a huge inflammatory response and have a flare up, blurry vision and get worse. And then it returns to mustard. Things like mustard is mustard inflammatory. Well, mustard mustard isn't necessarily whole body inflammatory, but if it's spicy mustard, it binds to what's called the substance P receptor or the or the capsaicin receptor. We have receptors for anything that's kind of hot and spicy. the capsaicin receptor. We have receptors for anything that's kind of hot and spicy. And those are the same receptors that respond to hot liquid. Heat and spicy, obviously, very closely linked,

and pain, all three of those very close. Whereas pain relief, very closely related to menthol and cool, not just the taste, but the actual physical sensation of cool. So heat, pain, and inflammation kind of are cousins in this sense. And cool, menthol, and lack of inflammation are also cousins in terms of receptors, neural circuits, this kind of thing. So can spicy food cause inflammation? Sure. Yeah. Really? Yeah. But I think one of the best ways to think about inflammation, and here I definitely hat tip to Lane Norton, who we both know, and Andy Andy Alpin who really both really impressed upon me the fact that if we were to measure somebody's blood pressure inflammatory markers heart rate and cortisol during a hard workout and you didn't know they were doing a hard

work and I just handed you the data and your medical doctor you'd say this person's dying right so inflammation is inflammation is robust during hard exercise. But I think what's so incredible about the human body is that the increase in blood pressure, inflammation, et cetera, is what triggers the adaptation so that blood pressure and inflammation, et cetera, are all much lower the other 23 hours of the day. And so there's something special about our system whereby, yeah, maybe if you had really hot peppers, like the most famous of these is the Carolina Reaper. The Carolina Reaper. I have some in my hot sauce. Yeah. Senor Lechuga made me this trio of hot sauces and there's Reapers in there. Is that a person or a brand, Senor Lechuga? It's a brand.

Is that a person or a brand? It's in your lechuga. It's a brand. Okay. Yeah. I thought it would be awesome. There's three hot sauces that we developed. One of them is my friends over at Half Face Blades.

They developed this one that I really like, so he added that to my little three collection, and it's like, I think it's Reapers, sun-dried tomatoes, and some other stuff. And, oh, and truffles. It's really good. Amazing. Yeah, and then he's got two other ones. One of them with habanero. But there it is. Those are the three.

What happened? Yeah, so if you like hot shit, I like it hot. This stuff is, like, legit. So one of them is heirloom tomatoes, winter truffles, and reapers. That's the Half Face Blades cooperative. And then the other one is, I don't even know how to say that word. Chulacalle? How do you say that?

I'm not. Chulacalle. Chulacalle. I'm not going to. I'm in Texas. I'll embarrass myself even more. Can you cut your car sure off that, please? Kalima salt and ghost pepper.

That one's rough. It's really delicious though and the other ones habanero Urfa chili and paprika and I love them all but I like really hot well they give you can't if you're like boy this Tabasco is rough stay the fuck away from that stuff because the stuff I like is pretty rough. Well, the Carolina Reaper in small amounts, I'm sure you can spice it just right. There are these pepper eating contests that people- Oh, I've seen them. We've played them on the podcast. So a few years back, somebody ate a Carolina Reaper

and ended up with what's called thunderclap headache. Thunderclap headache is a massive inflammation of the meninges of the brain. So you got your brain, it's sitting in fluid. Everyone knows that. And then there's some thick dura stuff around it. There's thick, thick fibrous tissue. Like, well, you're a hunter.

So when you want to take the brain out, people think, oh, you just kind of pop the brain out. You need a sharp razor, really sharp scissors to get through a sharp knife. The swelling of the meninges is what happened to this person. They got an unbelievable headache, and it's actually inflammation-induced brain damage. Now, that's only eating an extremely hot pepper in huge quantities. How many peppers did this guy eat? I don't know. I think...

Just eating one of those things. Like, you know, in the pepper sauce, my stuff, it's like the tiniest amount. It'll wreck you. Yeah, thunderclap headache. We know a couple other things about spice. And here I just, I always, I want to make sure I give proper attribution. The Nobel prize was given a couple of years ago to a guy down at the Scripps Institute in San Diego, Ardem Padapuchin and David, excuse me. Oh gosh. David Julius at UCSF for the discovery of these receptors for pressure, cool, heat.

And it's an amazing set of discoveries that just occurred really in the last 10 years. We know that all of those pathways go to areas of the brain that are involved in of course like behavior. Like if you touch something really hot, you taste something really hot. For most people, they're going to resist that.

But also to the hypothalamus, which houses all these hormone control areas, et cetera. People who can tolerate stronger spice, men and women, we know it's correlated with higher levels of circulating testosterone. That I think is interesting. What we're really talking about is higher pain threshold. And you and I have talked before about if there's one clear effect of testosterone, it's that it makes effort feel good, that that pain starts to have a little bit of a come hither kind of thing to it. It feels a little bit enticing when testosterone levels are elevated, when testosterone levels are lower, or if people have lower levels of testosterone, effort feels more overwhelming. How's that? And the other thing is that ingestion

of spicy peppers resets your calibration for what's spicy. I think we know that too. And in a way that also adjusts people's pain threshold. So if people get better eating hot peppers, they're better at dealing with all types of pain. And I find this fascinating because I know you and I are both kind of obsessed with ice baths and cold, cold punches. And I've been going deep into that literature around cold and what's really known about cold thermogenesis and not known. And it seems like these acute adrenaline, acute pain pathways, they do exactly what exercise does, which is in the moment, if you were to

measure somebody's inflammation, et cetera, you'd say this person is dying. They're in a terrible state. They might as well be getting, you know, open heart surgery with no anesthesia, the way some people react to the ice bath. It's kind of silly to us. But for people that don't like the cold, they're like, you got to be kidding me. I'd never go near it. They try and disparage it. They try and poke every hole in the data. They're just scared, right? They're just scared. We know this, but they are actually the people that benefit the most because that really acute adrenaline spike, that pain that you feel creates a higher pain threshold later, higher threshold for work output, all the things that most people seek. And so to me, it's always interesting that you have to look what's happening during and you have

to look at what's happening afterward. And for some reason, as humans, we like these creature comforts of massages, which are great. You know, the sauna, which is great. Although if you crank it up really hot, it's work at some level. It's always work at the end. There's that moment. The last five minutes of a 25 minute session at 190 degrees. Those are, that's work. Yeah. And there's something about the, the burning in the nose for me, at least my heart rate starts like, I want to get that burning in the nose. So are you using water on the rocks a lot? Yeah. So that's, what's giving you the burning in the nose yeah i'm you know it's always hard to know how hot it is right at the place where it reaches your body i've been cranking

way way up like what temperature like 260 what 260 but i cover six zero but i cover my head why what are you a brisket what the fuck fuck are you doing? Well, what I found is- Why are you doing that? So what's interesting is your desire to get out of the hot tub or the too hot hot tub is because of burning on the skin, right? But your desire to get out of the sauna is usually a brain thing. You'll notice this because if you go to a Russian banya, they all wear the little wool hats. That's to insulate their brain against the heat so they can stay in at hotter temperatures on their body. So I'm in at 260, but I've got my head covered with a wool cap. So it doesn't feel as stressful, but I'm doing it because I like to sweat. But if it doesn't feel as stressful,

wouldn't it have less of a positive effect? Okay. So this is great because what you're starting to do is tease out the variables. So this is where I think it gets interesting. You can get better at sweating. I know fighters do this in preparation, you know, dropping weight. You can get better by doing more sauna. You get to be a better sweater, which means that you can drop, you can cool more easily, even in clothes or if you're out running or hunting or doing anything. So there's some advantage to being a better at sweating and sweating itself is a whole interesting story. You actually have nerves that control the sweat glands. That's actually controlled by little nerve endings.

And those pathways can grow very, very quickly in the presence of heat. So what I've been trying to do is learn how to dump heat better. And if I don't use the hat, what happened was I was getting up to 220 and I'd sit in there for like 45 minutes. I'm thinking this is not doing anything for me anymore. I want to increase my sweating. Have you brought in an independent thermometer um if you're not trusting the 260 no no uh so what i did is i had the no i haven't so who makes your sauna um this is dundalk but so what i had the guy do who had installed it for me um is put the thermometer down low

right because it's a trigger right it's going to shut it off when it hits a certain temperature. So what I'm really trying to do is get it really, really hot down near the floor because then when I stand up when it's that hot, I'm just ready to pass out, no chance. But, you know, I think Laird, I don't want to get this wrong on the numbers, but, you know, I know Laird brings his Airdyne bike in there. With oven mitts on. So he's got to be putting himself at at least 260, right? Himself?

I don't think he has a sauna set at 260. I think his sauna's set in the 200s, though. I think it's like 215 or 220. But pedaling on the Airdyne, that's weird. No, he's a psycho. Yeah, that's psycho. But he's a different kind of human being. Yeah.

But I'm contrasting this with cold. Yeah. Well, that's a difference. Are you going cold and then 260? I'm a wimp. I start in the cold for a minute. Then I go into the sauna, then back into the cold for two minutes, back into the sauna, then three minutes.

But you're not a wimp. Why are you saying that? Well, listen, if I were tougher, I'd go five minutes in the cold straight off. Yeah. But I just had Susanna Soberg out for a podcast. And she taught me some really interesting things. First of all, this has really helped. I did this. We should explain that she's the woman who created the Soberg principle. deliberate cold exposure and its benefits. Because she actually did something that's remarkable, not just in that field, but overall, which is that she employed real world type experiences

and exercise of deliberate cold and sauna and turned it into a very rigorous study of brown fat thermogenesis, which is this sort of, think of it sort of like the oil in the candle of your body increases mitochondrial function and thermogenesis heats you up metabolism, subjective well being sleep, etc. She did all of that and publishes and sell reports medicine. And I realized it's just one study. But to do that

studies on humans is hard to do it with multiple variables is even harder. And to do it in a real world context is even harder. So what she showed was that if people get 11 minutes of deliberate cold exposure per week total, and this is divided up into sessions of one to three minutes or four minutes even. So it's not 11 minutes all at once. They fundamentally change the amount of brown fat that they have, which means they fundamentally change the number of mitochondria in the brown fat, which means they fundamentally changed their thermogenic properties of their body, increased their metabolism.

Now, the people who don't like cold say, well, the increase in metabolism wasn't enough to offset more than a few bites of a bagel or something. But that's not the point, really. What she also showed was that this increase in thermogenesis allowed people to be more comfortable in cold environments, even when they're not in the cold. And then people say, well, who cares, right? I'll throw on a jacket. Ah, but what she was able to show is that the ability to be comfortable in the cold correlates with a bunch of other important immune functions and metabolic functions and

insulin sensitivity, which is a good thing. And the inability to do that is likely to not be healthy for us. She also showed that 57 minutes per week is the threshold for sauna. So if people get 57 minutes per week of uncomfortably warm, but safe sauna exposure, they can get very similar effects. And it, and then that gave rise to this question. I always said, do you end with cold or you end with heat? And she said, end with cold because then your body is forced to warm itself back up. And that's what's now called the Soberg principle, which is when you end with cold, your body has to use its natural machinery to heat back up. In talking to her recently, I learned some really interesting things that I've been incorporating. First of all, I've always avoided putting my head under until the very end in the cold. It turns out that if you put your face in the water, right as you go in, you activate the

mammalian dive reflex. And this reflex increases the so-called parasympathetic activity of the autonomic nervous system, which is just nerd speak for it lowers your heart rate. It makes you calmer and it makes you better able to tolerate stress. So try this next time. You could even just put your face in before. I go right under. You go right under. So that's the right way to do it. I plug my nose. I go right under.

So I didn't know this. A lot of people that do deliberate cold get headaches. They don't feel good. And a lot of times it's because they slowly immerse themselves up to the neck. And then right at that interface of cold and hot, it creates change. There's a constriction right below a little bit. There's a dilation above. They get headaches.

They don't feel good. The heart rate is way too high. Putting your face under really helps. Isn't that anxiety, though? I just feel like that's all psychological. I really do. Because there's a moment when you get in the cold where there's a part of your brain that goes, let's get out of here. You can get out of this if you will.

Just get out right now. And you've got to go, shut the fuck up. But if you don't say shut the fuck up, then that thing runs rampant through your brain and that kicks your heart rate up and that kicks your anxiety up i really think it's psychological well it's psychological and it's physiological so here's physiological because of psychological absolutely uh absolutely so here's what we know for sure for the first 20 to 30 seconds of cold shock when you get in, just how it's described, that prefrontal cortex that normally has the job of handling context and says shh to the reflexes of the brain and the impulses of the brain very, there's a clear and logical reason for that. After that 20 or 30 seconds, the forebrain starts coming online again.

That's your opportunity to start negotiating with yourself of, oh, this is actually good for me. This is, I can handle this. I got through that so I can get through the next one. What I've been doing recently is trying to not go for time, but going for, the only way I can describe this would be walls. Like sometimes just getting in the thing is a wall for me. So I go, okay, I got over one wall just getting in the damn thing.

Then I'm like, oh, God, here it comes. Forebrain shutting down. I'm like panicking. I'm going to get through this. And then I'm watching for when I have the impulse to get out. And what I start to notice is that the gaps between those walls start getting longer and longer. The more you do it. The more you do it. You have one at your house? I do. Yeah. And then pretty soon what's happened is- How cold is it? It's hard. I suppose it's probably in the low

fifties. What? Low fifties or high forties. Why is it so warm? I don't know. Low fifties, high forties. Why do you do that? Stay in there longer. I don't know. Well, we have two. I confess we have the Morosco one, which is that one's really cold. And that one is. You avoid that one. Sometimes. I like to go in the sauna. I don't like when I'm here.

Well, here's the thing. I've been doing longer exposure in the warmer one. That's so much easier, though. It is. We had one here that was kind of broken. It was at 54 degrees. OK, that's too warm. I climbed in.

I'm like, this is a fucking joke. What, 50 is okay, though? All right. Listen. 34. 34? That's what I like. Yeah, you and Cam Haynes.

34. I like it where the ice breaks off the bottom of the thing and floats to the top. You realize I just uninvited myself on the Cam Haynes hunting trip because he was like, you should come hunting. I've never gone. But I think he'll probably just say I'm a wuss

until I get down to the 30s on these cold plunges. No. I did a workout with him. I went up there. I was sore for two weeks. Those high rep weight workouts. Yeah. They're insane.

Yeah. He does a lot of that stuff. Yeah. Like I'm a slow, lazy bear in the gym. Like I like to lift heavy. You know, this kind of thing. Well, he does a lot of endurance work. You know, he does a lot of his stuff is about muscular endurance and pain threshold.

And, you know, what you can tolerate. It's all repetitions because repetitions like if you just do three to five reps, it's pretty easy. As you said, testosterone rewards, that kind of effort. There's a big difference between that kind of stuff. And like, you know, he's an ultra marathon runner. He likes to push the mind. Yeah. Well, I'll do the long runs.

I do a long run on Sunday. I did two hours yesterday around. They call it a lake, but it looks like more like a river. It is a river. It's a, it's a branch of the Colorado river. So I kept going around that thing until I couldn't go around anymore. But, um, yeah, I need to go colder. I will get in the ice one. What is this will need to go? Why don't you just do it? Well, I, there are mornings I'll just jump in the cold one for 30 seconds. I do it every fucking day. I don't have any negotiation. There's no negotiation.

I'm not saying I don't go in every day. I'm saying I don't always go into that one first. I go first thing in the morning. Okay. Well, you're a better man. No, it's not a better man. Just do it. It's just if you have all these room, this negotiation room and all this leeway, then won't do it if you just i brush my teeth

every day do you twice a day yeah well get in the fucking cold just do it all right i'll start going just do it it's three minutes you know something but in the beginning when i first got it i would like procrastinate i'd get a cup of coffee then i looked on my phone it was 12 minutes later i was like i already be done okay i would have been done eight minutes ago well i'm gonna get thermometers a second thermometer for the sauna, verify. I'm going to verify the data, second independent measurement, and the cold. I may have to imagine that the Morosco one, because it has pieces of ice floating in it, has got to be colder than 50.

Yeah, I bet it is. You can tell if you know the Morosco has two lids. You have the lid where you climb in and there's another lid where the equipment is. If you lift up that equipment lid, you'll see a thermometer. You'll see a digital thermometer that's a setting. It's like what it's set at and what it's actually at. And I guarantee you're probably in the thirties. Okay. So I've been doing shorter exposures there and then longer exposures in the 51. What's the longer in the 51? Well, I'm in there a while. So that one, when I go in there, I'm staying, you know, 10, 20 minutes. And here's the longer in the 51? Well, I'm in there a while. Like how long? So that one, when I go in there, I'm staying, you know, 10, 20 minutes.

And here's the reason. The study that was published in the European Journal of Physiology that showed these huge increases in dopamine, that was the first of these sorts of studies. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but when you go in the cold for a very brief period of time, one to three minutes, and it's shockingly cold. You have to catch your breath, stabilize your mind. That evokes a dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine release. These three things together are called the catecholamines. Those normally would increase from, you know, you're seeing increases in dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine that are 2 to 3x above baseline. This is huge. Wow. This is huge.

This is on the order of many drugs. But the difference is most drugs spike dopamine and then drop it below baseline. The increases in this case are lasting many hours, two to four to even six hours. That's amazing. And there are very, you know, whenever people criticize deliberate cold exposure, they go, it's not leading to that much fat loss granted, but it's to my knowledge, there is no drug, nor is there any form of exercise, conventional forms of exercise that increase the catecholamines to that level for that long. And with dopamine, it's all about the amplitude

and the duration, how fast it rises, how fast it stays up there. There's nothing quite like it. And I did three plunges here. I'm staying at a place that actually has a plunge. I don't know the temperature, but it felt cold to me. So I did three minutes, three minutes, three minutes, and I had a hot tub.

So I bounced back and forth for a minute in between. And as you know, you feel better much of the day, if not the entire day. That is not a coincidence. Your system is circulating much higher levels of the catecholamines. And this is shown in that paper. It's now been shown in a series of other papers. My colleague, Craig Heller at Stanford has known this for a long time. And this is why, and for other reasons, the athletes at Stanford who use cold do it before their workouts. Yeah. Everyone now knows that it blocks hypertrophy if you do it after. But if you wait a few hours, you're okay. Four to six hours. Yeah. Yeah. I like to do it

first thing in the morning just because I don't want to do it first thing in the morning. And that's why I like when people complain about cold plunges, that's not worth it. It doesn't do anything. I'm like, fuck you. It doesn't. You just don't like the fact that other people can do it every day. And you don't like the fact that you can't do it every day. You're talking to me specifically. No, no.

Other people. Not you. You do. But there's people out there that will complain about something and find an excuse why it's not beneficial. Right. And the reason for that excuse is not that there's not data. The reason for that excuse is coming up with some sort of an excuse for themselves. That's what that is.

Absolutely. I mean, I think of health and performance, so mental health, physical health, and performance along fundamentals. You talk about these all the time. I think the five pillars if you will or Sunlight if I may getting light in your eyes. Yeah avoiding Too frequent bright light exposure in your eyes at night unless you're doing something you really enjoy. Okay, so you're doing comedy You're out past 10 p.m. Right? You're not gonna wear sunglasses or something necessarily That would be ridiculous be ridiculous, right? He's like would go, what the fuck is this weirdo doing with sunglasses on?

It's past 10 p.m. I have to have my blue blockers on. I've got friends that wear the red lights at night and dim all the lights, you know, that whole thing. That's a little extreme. That's a little extreme. Those people are always weird. Yeah. But sunlight, so sunlight during the day, morning and day, and trying to limit bright

light exposure at night as much as normally possible. Then I would say movement. So you got to move. Cardiovascular and resistance training. That's one of the beautiful things I think that's happened in the last couple of decades is that resistance training is no longer just considered the thing that football players

and bodybuilders do. Everyone, old, young, female, male. Women no longer, I hope, are concerned about getting quote unquote too big from weightlifting or something or turning into a bodybuilder. I think that's kind of gone away. I like to think that's gone away. Most women realize that the only reason why women do get too big is they take exogenous hormones.

Yeah. They're taking steroids. Yeah, you throw a bunch of Anovar in there, you get the square jaw. Yeah. That's what they want to avoid. But women who don't do that and who lift weights regularly look way better. They look way better. And our friend Peter Attia has talked about one of the major causes of death later is falls due to stepping down off things.

Inability to hang from a bar is correlated with lack of health in men and women. So being able to have some strength. So exercise, then nutrients, right? Macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. People now think about it. So you need all that stuff, vitamins, minerals, and then the other stuff. And then I think in addition to that sleep, right? I think Matt Walker deserves a tremendous debt of gratitude from everybody because 10 years ago, everyone was like, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Now we know you're probably not going to dissolve into a puddle of your own tears from a couple of bad nights sleep every once in a while,

but sleep makes you mentally, physically better. You perform better. And then the last one is this whole, um, not notion it's social connection, right? You can't stay isolated constantly or people lose their minds. So when you look at people that get very depressed or they're suicidal, one or several of those five things is going to be diminished. And then what happens is people hear about deliberate cold exposure. And if they don't like it or they want to poke at it, they say, oh, it blocks hypertrophy. OK, well, only if you do it in the four to six hours after a hypertrophy workout. I thought it was two.

Well, they've looked immediately after, you know, again. Immediately after is bad. Immediately after is bad so if you work out but but you can do it after cardio right yeah like it like the only time i do it right after workouts is after i do a generally i do a really hard cardio workout and then i'll do the sauna for 25 minutes and then i'll do the cold plunge i'll end with the cold plunge yeah yeah i think that the that's okay right right i mean it I mean, it blocks, it lowers inflammation, which is what you want from the resistance training. Again, it goes back to this, it wasn't just these guys, but again, I point to Lane and to Andy Galpin, who've been shouting from the rooftops for years, blood pressure up,

inflammation up is a good thing. So you have to be careful when someone says, oh, you know, you eat the hormetic effect. You eat this, you become inflamed. Well, how long and what's the hormetic effect? And so in terms of, you know, deliberate cold exposure, people like to say, oh, it doesn't burn much fat, it blocks hypertrophy. But if you look at the mental benefits of having your catecholamines, dopamine or epineph, and epinephrine systemically elevated to two to three X for four to six hours after a 30 second to three minute protocol. You're not going to show me a drug or a form of exercise that can do that. For me, the best thing for sleep is sauna. Like sauna pre-sleep is amazing.

Do you know why that is? Why is that? It's really interesting. When you heat the surface of your body, you would think, oh, you know, my whole body temperature is getting really hot. But if I were to measure your core body temperature, what happens is your medial preoptic nucleus of the hypothalamus says, oh, the surface of my body is really hot. I'm going to cool down my core temperature. And falling asleep at night requires a one to three degree drop in bodily temperature. And when you wake up in the morning, you have a one to three degree increase in bodily temperature in the morning.

That triggers a cortisol spike. That triggers norepinephrine. And then you start waking up. So body temperature and the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep and wake up are very tightly correlated. But your whole circadian rhythm is temperature driven. wake up are very tightly correlated. But your whole circadian rhythm is temperature driven. And so, for instance, you probably have a best time of day for you to work out where you feel best.

You probably, if I were to have you train at, you know, 2 a.m. when you went to bed at, you know, a couple hours before, you'd feel miserable. You're not going to perform as well. Grip strength in the middle of the night. I wake you up, I take your grip strength measurement. It's going to be strong, but not as strong as it would be at your peak time during the day. If we looked at your body temperature, we'd find that your grip strength is weakest when your body temperature is lowest. So you'd say, well, I'm asleep. That's

why. Ah, but there's an easy experiment. This has been done. We just keep you awake for 24 hours. We measure your body temperature. It has a very regular circadian rhythm that persists. And we measure grip strength. That's been done numerous times. People living in caves, they've done those experiments. Have they done experiments where people do the sauna and then work out? Because if grip strength, and it's tied to body temperature, if you can raise your core body temperature from the sauna.

Sauna's dropping your core body temperature. The inside of it. Yeah. But even while you're at peak sauna, you're sweating like a pig. So at some point, you won't be able to thermoregulate anymore. And then your body temperature will go up and you can become hyperthermic. So when you are in the sauna and it's 210 degrees and you're sweating like a pig, your body temperature is lower?

Your core body temperature is fighting to get lower. And when you get out, your core body temperature continues to go down. That's right. And the exact opposite happens when you get in the cold plunge, you feel cold on the surface. So your body goes, oh shit. Hypothalamus again, medial preoptic area gets a signal from it's a, I mean, if you think about how beautiful this mechanism is, I still like get goosebumps and no pun intended. When I think about it, you have receptors on your skin surface that sense cold, send that to your hypothalamus, which says, ha, it's cold out there.

I'm going to generate heat. How do I generate heat? Well, there are two things you can do. I can make you shiver, which will generate heat, or I can make you move. Shivering is just another form of moving. Or I can activate this very specialized fat tissue, which is not under the skin.

It's not subcutaneous fat, but it's around your critical organs, which is the brown fat. Activate the mitochondria there. And basically at that very core level, get electrons moving and the brown fat in turn activates the thermogenic system and starts heating you up. It's so crazy. And then what's beautiful is that the brown fat has a sort of memory of that experience. So even after you get out, you're walking around right now, I did cold plunge this morning, you did cold plunge this morning, right? Yeah. Okay. So your body temperature is about one to three degrees hotter, probably about one or two degrees hotter than it normally would be. Dopamine's getting cranked out. And so all day long, you're warmer at, let's say, cool ambient temperature. In fact,

in Scandinavia, I learned this in researching the Soberg work. I went in and went deep into this cold thermogenesis world over there that they've been researching this really carefully. And they have a saying in Norway. I obviously don't know it in Norwegian, but it translates to essentially in the spring as it's getting warmer in Texas. What you want to do is to put, they say, put on more layers. Why? So that you can prepare yourself for being able to cool yourself off easily in the summer when it's really hot, you'll be more comfortable in the heat of summer in Texas. If you bundle up a bit more in the spring. Really? Yeah. Well, you're adapting. And then they say the opposite sounds annoying,

but then they say in the fall, what you're supposed to do is not walk around with a sweater you wear a t-shirt and then guess what in the winter you're thermogenically how about just fucking wear clothes for the weather this is ridiculous look i get the whole idea of sauna and cold plunge and adapting your body but now we're just you know i think too much of this is mental masturbation okay some people let me be clear it's it's the principle it's the principle i'm not i'm not science behind it yeah i'm not saying wear a sweatshirt in the spring Too much of this is mental masturbation. Okay. Some people. Let me be clear. It's, it's the principle. It's the principle. I understand the science behind it. Yeah.

I'm not saying wear a sweatshirt in the spring. Wear what's comfortable. Jesus Christ. What I'm saying is that when we, what's Jamie's laughing, he's from Ohio. They're just like, this is ridiculous. The it's cold enough out there. You don't need to. I'm from Boston.

Well, all right. I think the principle is what's interesting, right? Yes. It is interesting. Yes, it is interesting. If you teach your body to tolerate warm, then you will be more comfortable in very hot. It's sort of obvious. Yeah. And vice versa for cold. Well, I certainly think that there's a great benefit to being able to tolerate temperatures, whether it's cold temperature or warm temperature, because I think there's a mental resiliency aspect to it.

Yeah. What's interesting to me is when I get out of the cold, my entire body, my skin is bright red, where your body's trying to heat itself up because you're in there for three minutes or I'm in there for three minutes. But when I get out of the sauna, generally I stretch and my house is warm, right?

And at nighttime, I do the sauna in the house. And when I'm stretching, within a minute or two minutes after the sauna, I'm fucking freezing because my body's trying to cool off so quickly, you know, because it's gone through the whole 25-minute session. Well, the contrast of heat and cold is we know very good for our cardiovascular system because we think of the blood vessels and capillaries and arteries as just tubes, but they're really cells, endothelial cells. They're laid out like silly putty, linking them all like tubes, and they are very contractile. They need to do that because of

the pulsing of blood through them. That's the whole basis of systolic and diastolic blood pressure is the top measurement. It's a pressure when it's not blood pumping through and it's pressure when it's relaxed, okay? So the system can. Doesn't mean you don't want it rigid, especially given, you know, what Atiyah tells us. And I believe him is that the number one killer in the world is cardiovascular disease or cerebrovascular disease. You want the little micro capillaries of your body be very flexible, not rigid. So when you go heat cold, you're basically going vasoconstriction, dilation, vasoconstriction. But I'm not I'm not talking about heat cold. I'm just talking about heat and stretching, just getting out of it. My body cools itself off and I get

really cold and then like five minutes. So that could be the drop, which is when your, your blood goes to the center of your body to preserve your core organs. And then the surface of your body is cold. And then as you start to heat up again and you're, there's vasodilation and it goes out to the surface, your bot, your surface is cold and it actually cools the blood at the surface. And that's what's called the drop. And that's when your body temperature goes down. Now, once you put on clothes and head to your workout or head to work, what's going to happen is your body temperature is now going to increase more quickly. It normally would do that anyway early in the day.

As you wake up, your body temperature goes up, up, up, up, up, up. And then whenever you achieve sort of a dip in energy in the afternoon, there's probably one time in the afternoon, whether or not you need a nap or not, that you feel a little bit lethargic and then you kind of come back. That represents the peak in your body temperature for 24 hours. In fact, most people, if they want to figure out their sort of optimal bedtime, I know this gets pretty down in the weeds. You just look at that number. So maybe it's three o'clock and you say about seven hours after that, plus or minus an hour. That's probably when somebody should go to sleep. How do I know that?

Because that's when body temperature starts dropping by one to three degrees. So doing cold early in the day makes total sense. Doing cold, deliberate cold exposure before a workout. Total sense. Doing sauna before sleep. Total sense. Doing cold, deliberate cold exposure before a workout, total sense. Doing sauna before sleep, total sense. The cold in the morning, the other thing that it does when I get out is it makes me like really fucking happy, which is what you were talking about with the dopamine raise. It's so significant. I mean, it really, it is a joy of life feeling. And then as I start my

workout, I generally start really slow. I just do like a lot of like shadow boxing and maybe I'll skip a little rope to try to get my blood up. And then once I do that for a few minutes, then I have a series of a hundred pushups and a hundred body weight squats that I do every day. So I go through that and that's my warmup for everything else. Cause it's pretty low stress, low impact, very easy to do. And then by the time the 100 squats and 100 pushups are done, I'm warm. And then I start whatever workout I'm going to do. But God damn, I feel happy. The people that are trying to avoid it because, oh, you doesn't do anything.

Shut up. Just do it. Stop your excuses and stop arguing about it. You're only arguing about it because you don't want to experience discomfort i know what you're doing you know what you're doing we all know what you're doing shut the fuck up just get in there just do it it's great for everybody and if you can't fucking handle it don't talk about it but don't pretend that it's not good for you it's nonsense it's one of the most if you could sell that shit in a pill,

it would be so valuable. I mean, how many people are on SSRIs and they're like, I kind of feel better. Well, first of all, I completely agree with you. Completely agree. And I'm not, you know, again, Craig Heller in our biology department at Stanford has been talking in this general theme for a long time.

Anna Lemke, who you add on here, talked about patients of hers who got sober using cold plunges. You say, well, of hers who got sober using cold plunges. You say, well, how do they get sober using cold plunges? You just, you know, taking one addiction and replacing it with another? No, what's very clear is that when you're suffering or you're lazy or you're procrastinating,

doing something that's harder than the state that you're in bounces you back much faster. This is all based in the dynamics of dopamine. It's sort of crazy. You know how people are procrastinating to write something and they start cleaning the house? Something they normally don't want to do. Well, it's just something that's easier than the thing that you're supposed to do.

It turns out, and I learned this from Ana, if you do something that's even harder than the thing that you're trying to avoid, all of a sudden you're able to do that. And you're like, OK, well, it's just psychology, right? No, it's not psychology alone. It's psychology. But once dopamine is deployed at that level, you're a different person. And I know this because if you take someone's dopamine and lower it, that makes them depressed. That gives them, if you lower it even more and give a movement disorder, Parkinson's.

If you give them their dopamine and give them movement disorder, Parkinson's. If you give them their dopamine back, their focus increases. How do I know that? There's a reason there's an ADHD drug shortage right now. Ritalin, Adderall, they all tap into this system, the dopaminergic and adrenaline norepinephrine system. So one of the most prescribed

and over prescribed classes of drugs is the drug designed to try and get exactly this effect of cold plunges. And so I completely agree if people would just take a very cold shower or a very cold plungers a little bit longer at 50 degrees, but although I agree with you that shorter, colder is better. I, what I didn't describe and I'm not trying to rescue myself here, but I do that daily. But then on Tuesdays is the typical day where I do very, very hot and very, very cold back and forth for well over an hour back and forth. Yeah, you do that serious growth hormone increasing protocol. I'm trying to condition myself to really be able to tolerate heat and cold.

The other thing I learned, again, from Susanna, I take no credit for this, and I'm not suggesting people replace the cold plunge with this or a cold shower with this. You're starting to see more of this on social media. And it's embarrassingly silly to think that that's a replacement, what I'm about to describe as a replacement for cold plunges. But if you put, she taught me, she said, if you even just put a small portion of your skin in ice cold water, like your hand or your arm, you actually activate the brown fat system. That's how robust this system of surface temperature to body is. And so I don't think it's a good replacement, but now you're seeing people saying, oh, you just have to put your face in a bowl of ice water. There was a device that was going around a while back that people were using when they were lifting weights, where they're putting their hand into something that was freezing their hand and it increased their ability to do work quite

substantially. Do you know what I'm talking about? So this was developed by Craig Heller's lab. It's called the cool mitt. Um, it's a bit controversial and I'll tell you why. So you have on the surface of your hands, on the bottoms of your feet and on your upper face, you have what's called glabrous skin. It's the only skin on your body that's incapable of growing hair because there are no hair stem cells there. It's also the place where, believe it or not, it goes normally things go arteries, veins, capillaries.

But in this case, you're missing one of those components. And what it is, is that top of your face, the palms of your hands and the bottom of your feet are like radiators. You can, heat passes out of your body very readily. This is why animals like bears who are covered with hair will stand in cold water to cool off. It's very effective. It's also true that if you want to heat up, you do it through these portals. And so Craig's lab did two really important experiments. The first one was heating people up. It turns out when people come out of anesthesia, it's very slow.

And this is a problem for all sorts of critical reasons related to keeping people alive. And if you measure people's body temperature when they're coming out of anesthesia, it's very low. And as it heats up, they wake up just like out of sleep. His laboratory developed these heating devices that would heat people's palms or the bottoms of their feet.

And they found that they could bring them out of anesthesia much faster and recovery rates were much better. Super impressive result, not talked about often enough. And the reason it's not talked about often enough is all this stuff around thermogenic studies was really hot in like the 19, no pun, in the, sorry, in the 50s, 60s, 70s. And then it was sort of considered kind of like not lame, but it wasn't hot science. There we go again. I'm really not trying to pun here. Then what's happened in recent years is people have gotten into these protocols and it's become more popular. His laboratory also showed that one of the reasons why we fail on like a set of dips or chins, local muscular failure is due to

heating of the muscle locally due to work. And then there's an enzyme called pyruvate kinase, which is very heat dependent. When your muscle gets too hot, pyruvate kinase can't function and your muscle fails. It's one of the reasons you fail on a set. So what they figured out was if you cool people's core body temperature, they can do more work. Now it got a little confused. People say, oh, I didn't double my bench press after cooling my hands. Well, that's not really the point. The point is that let's say you can do 10 sets of 10

at a given weight with two minutes of rest in between, and that's all you can do. And you're hitting failure. Maybe you have to adjust the weight down on sets four, five, six, et cetera, classic 10 sets of 10. Now I don't know if people do German volume training or five sets of five. If you lower the core body temperature through the proper use

of Palmer cooling, as it's called, or through some other device, what you find is people can continue to get the same number of repetitions, provided they keep the rest the same, and they can double the amount or more of work that they're doing total. So they can increase their volume. The interesting thing is they preserve the training effect. So if you can go from doing, I don't know how many dips,

I saw you do a bunch of pushups right there on a podcast recently. You did like 75, right? So in theory, if we'd been cooling your palms, you would have been able to keep going much longer, possibly 150. And you say, well, how could that be? Well, it's just a local change in the enzymatic reaction at the level of muscle.

Now, the problem with palmar cooling is people will go out there and say, I'm going to hold ice packs. But if you do that, you'll constrict the portals. It has to be the right temperature so that you can continue to pass cool in. And that's why it requires a device to heat, excuse me, to cool your palms,

but not so cold that you vasoconstrict. And so there is the cool mitt device, to be honest,, but not so cold that you vasoconstrict. And so there is the cool mitt device, to be honest, is it a very effective device? They've never been very effective at marketing that device, but they use athletes at Stanford use it. But nowadays, what athletes mainly are doing, and I talked to pro basketball players, football players, tier one military, they're doing cold before they're training because it's just simpler and you don't need a device. Inter-workout or intra-workout cooling is really an interesting topic, but it hasn't been perfected at the level of devices. They're still kind of clunky. You got to go put your hand in the thing. No knock on cool, man. I mean, I think they're trying really hard.

I actually got one for Cam that I still need to deliver to him. Well, what if someone just is in the middle of a workout and they just get in a cold plunge for five seconds? Yeah, you need to lower your core body temperature. So in 20 seconds, half hour, like how long are you in there for? Probably. Here's what I think could really help. And you could try it. If you don't have access to a cool mitt and I can get you one for you to try.

But if you hold on, you'd want to hold something cold between your hands for maybe 20, 30 seconds. Well, I'd just dunk your hand into the cold plunge. You could do that too. Yeah. If you have your cold plunge right there. Yeah, my cold plunge is right next to the gym. I could just dunk my hands in there.

Yeah, the relationship between temperature and sleep, temperature and the deployment of these neurochemicals, temperature and performance is one of these variables that right now, professional sports teams and tier one military and scientists are really starting to understand like this is not a small variable. This is a super powerful variable. It's just not an easy one for the conventional gym to have. Maybe at some point in the future, every state, they'll have stations in the gym where you kind of plug in. Yeah.

And you can just do more work. It's all about the ability kind of plug in. Yeah. And you can just do more work. It's all about the ability to do more work. Yeah. And recover. And recover. And it's clear that the cold after training is if your goal is to train again, well, then you want inflammation down. But if your goal is to improve as a consequence of that training session, you have to be careful how much you're blocking the inflammation. Yeah.

I know a lot of jiu-jitsu guys like to do cryotherapy post-training and they say that it helps tremendously. And because of that reduction of inflammation, because you're not really training for hypertrophy, you're training for volume and work and cardiovascular function and your ability to execute techniques over and over and over again. I mean, the ability to do more work is, I think, one of the not-so-secret secrets of performance-enhancing drugs, too. Yes. It's everything. It's even at the level of being able to get a really good night's sleep even when you're slightly overtrained. Yeah.

You know, people always say, well, what do these performance—do steroids make you grow muscle? Well, they'll increase protein synthesis. Well, look at Lance Armstrong. I mean, he was on steroids and he was real thin. It's not about that. It's about recovery. It's about what do you ask your body to do. He could just do more work.

Yeah. And I think, for all I know, I believe he's natural. But like you think about a guy like Floyd Mayweather, and I used to see him running in the middle of the night, you know, in Vegas. If his testosterone happens to be exceedingly high naturally, he can do more work and recover than the person whose testosterone is lower before they hit a wall. So I'm not saying he was using anything. What I'm saying is if somebody has higher levels of circulating testosterone, male or female, they can do more work and recover. That's just the way it is. Here it is.

Floyd Mayer reportedly took banned IV prior to Manny Pacquiao fight. But this is banned IV for what? It might be banned IV just because they had some sort of protocol set for, yeah, see USADA. So USADA, they're the ones who regulate the UFC testing. And they won't allow people to use IVs because IVs will allow you to mask whether or not you've done performance-enhancing drugs. I don't think it was just that. I think it was he tested positive for something. I mean, amphetamines cause a – it can vary by dose, et cetera. But at least a thousand-fold increase

in basal catecholamine levels. That's what they do. How many people do you know that are on Adderall? I don't have a lot of friends in the finance world, but of the ones that are, the friends I have who are in finance, 100%. The scientists I know, zero, but scientists generally aren't

of the Adderall type musicians not so much those are kind of the categories and podcasters I don't know how many quite a few podcasters there's a lot of people that are journalists that are on it a lot of writers and journalists are on it

I've been shocked when I talk to these people you know my feeling about writers and journalists are on it. I've been shocked when I talk to these people. You know my feeling about writers and journalists. What's your feeling? Well, I don't know if we bring this up or not. But, you know, I think the tides have changed in recent years. And, you know, conventional media has used to kind of they email you. They want a conversation.

You know, I think sometimes they're surprised you don't leap to to have that conversation. Or, you know, I think one of the problems with the traditional press is that it's hard to know where their heart is, like where they are on a topic. And so conversations with them have become a bit of a razor's edge, frankly. Well, they're they're also like deeply influenced by money like that. There's there's no that raccoon dog thing. I guarantee you there are some people behind the scenes that are trying to come up with some sort of a plausible scenario that who explain to me why this is most likely a lab leak. No one has – they're not arguing with this. So when someone comes along with this and they're saying, oh, we found it, like, no, you didn't. No, you know you didn't.

You're writing this article because you're being influenced to do so. Like someone is telling them that this is a good thing to put out. Someone is giving them information and saying, we believe this and you should print this. And there's money behind that that doesn't reach independent journalism. That's the difference. Like the amount of money behind an advertisement that goes to CNN or an advertisement that goes to The New York Times, it's a different thing than what goes to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar, than what goes to Matt Taibbi's Substack. There's none there. There's no influence there. These people are influenced by gigantic corporations.

That's why they put out articles that are not plausible. That's why people don't trust them anymore. That's why people think out articles that are not plausible. That's why people don't trust them anymore That's why you know people think they're fucking shady. Yeah, well that the you're right They're incentivized by a whole set of things that are not obvious from the articles themselves I'm a huge fan of what saga and crystal have done and are doing me to huge fans incredible It's incredible and it's important and And they're so fucking honest. They give you what is their actual take on whatever is going on in the news and it's well researched. And the fact that that exists now is so important because if it was not for independent journalism, we would be in a pickle. We would be in a pickle.

We would be in a really bad state because a lot of people got duped by the pharmacy, the pharmacological industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industry, the military industrial complex. They've been duped by so many different companies and corporations that have a vested interest in getting one narrative out. And if you can get that narrative out through the traditional pipelines of mainstream media with no one fact checking, no one interfering, no independent journalist saying, actually, that's not true at all. Here's why they did that. This was the influence. Here's where the money is. We have emails. We can show you they were influenced.

If it wasn't for them, we would be fucked fucked and it's one of the beautiful things about the internet today the internet today allows people like that to thrive because these Mainstream media corporations are so corrupt. They're so obviously indebted to the companies that pay for their advertising Yeah, I mean my my initial experience of them was for their advertising. Yeah. I mean, my, my initial experience of them was, uh, long before I had a podcast, didn't interview with traditional media. And then it comes out and, um, I was, they didn't say anything bad, but my quote was given to somebody else. Their quote was given to me. And then you say, and I wrote and said, Hey, you know, this is factually incorrect. I didn't say this. First of all, I'm not a medical doctor.

They swapped the names accidentally. And then I got this, oh, well, you know, kind of response, like too late, you know? And, but when it's- No retraction. But what, no. And when it's your neck on the line, you know, it's your name.

I mean, in science, all we have is our reputation. Yeah. In science or in anything, that's all we have is our reputation. So it's a scary thing to hand that over to somebody. So unless it's a particular few set of sources, I generally decline traditional media conversations. And now the fight isn't just for traditional, you know, over media, traditional or independent. You know, the universities, too, right?

We're asking, I have to say, and I'm not this is not to be, you know, politically correct or incorrect. I have to say, and I'm not this is not to be, you know, politically correct or incorrect. Stanford has been very good about letting different faculty at Stanford voice their differing opinions on everything from covid to politics. You know, there's a free speech, a right to free speech petition that's been going around the campus for a while. You can find this online. Now, a lot of people also will hear things about, oh, I hear on college campuses like Stanford, you're getting a lot of pressure to do this or a lot of pressure to do that. Yeah, there are pressures from students and top down. Listen, students are under pressure.

Administrators are under pressure. Faculty under pressure. But Stanford has been very good about allowing people to have their own independent social media channels and talk to the public the way they feel is best that's excellent and i and i have to say it's one of the things that makes me really proud to be there it's an amazing place too but if you and i'm not gonna throw out names here because it's not my place and they should probably just come on the podcast separately but you've got people at every end of the of the major debates out there about public health and everything in between on twitter fewer fewer on Instagram, but on Twitter, voicing their opinion. And honestly, I think it's beautiful that they are allowed to do it.

Well, they're allowed to now because Elon bought Twitter. But before Elon bought Twitter, people were being silenced for things that have been absolutely proven to be correct, which is crazy. for things that have been absolutely proven to be correct, which is crazy. The value that he's given back to people in the last, what has it been, four or five months since he's been in there? Yeah. Is tremendous. I mean, I remember people picking on, oh, it's this feature or that feature. We're going to have to buy a verified check or whatever.

You know, these things that when you compare that to the ability for people to have honest, open discourse, honest for them because, you know, there's no regulator. So that to me is incredible and, and fundamentally important. He's given people their voice back. And that includes both sides. That's what's often not, not stated is that people on both sides are starting to get the ax mostly on one side, but it's, it's really incredible. And I think we're, I'm hopeful. You know, I don't, I'm a live and let live type person. I really, as long as people aren't harming other people, I truly just encourage people to do what feels right to them. As we should all be. It's kind of bananas where we went between, you know, in the last few years. But what's happened in health and public health, I think is pretty remarkable and encouraging from my standpoint anyway, which is people now realize that medical doctors have a certain type of information that is extremely valuable.

And they come in a range of flavors and qualities. Same with psychologists. Same with scientists. Same with public health officials. Same with everything from your masseuse to your chiropractor. Like there is a range of quality and expertise and orientation. And to silence any one of those at the exclusion of the others

is not only foolish, it's dangerous. And so I think there's no going back. There's no going back. Now people seek advice on multiple dimensions. You know, a few years ago, if you said supplements, people were like, oh, that's expensive urine. Well, that's true if you're talking

about vitamins and minerals, but how many people do I know who during the pandemic started taking vitamin D, getting some sunshine? What do you mean by that's true if you're talking about vitamins and minerals? Well, I think when we hear the word supplements, it gets confusing for people. I actually am wishing for a better word because when people hear supplements, they think vitamin minerals. Isn't that just expensive urine? But it's not. Your body absorbs it if you take it with fat and protein and carbohydrates. And if you over ingest water-soluble vitamins, you will excrete some. But then there's a whole category of supplements like food supplements, protein, et cetera. And then there's an entire category of compounds that we call supplements that have nothing to do with proteins, fats, or carbohydrates, vitamins, or minerals.

Things that are known to have very potent effects. There's a reason why the National Institutes of Health has a division now simply for these types of studies. Things like ashwagandha can potently reduce cortisol. Shouldn't be used long-term, but in the short term, this can be very beneficial for people, especially late day, because late day peaks in cortisol, not good for us. We know this correlate with depression, anxiety, insomnia, which then has a cascade of negative effects. Things like creatine, not just for we think creatine muscles, and indeed, it brings water into the muscles and make you stronger. Most of the data clinical data on creatine are to enhance forebrain function. It's one because a nootropic, it's a nootropic, it post concussion,

post surgery, postpartum depression, headache, I mean, fish oils. So there's this whole category of things that in theory you could get from food, but the volumes that you would have to eat and the sourcing is just impractical. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, there's rhodiola rosea, which is, you know, reducing cortisol. There's interesting data on that. And then there's the stuff we've talked about before about hormone augmentation. But for the typical person out there nowadays, I think they're thinking about, well, what can I do? What can I eat? How can I take better care of myself? Am I magnesium deficient or not? Probably not.

But will taking some additional magnesium help me sleep? Yes. Will it hurt me? No. Well, are you magnesium deficient get your blood work done right like if you want to find out that get your blood work done everyone should have their blood but when i was curious about like why you were saying that it's just expensive urine like oh no no this this is what other people's right but they're wrong no this is what

like you know my you know when i was young i got into this you know training and supplementation early and people say oh it's just expensive urine. Don't spend your money on that. There are certain things like within supplementation, also the foundational supplementation, as I call it, like things like athletic greens, right? Or I guess they call it AG1 now. Things that are in such combinations of herbs and plant-based compounds, you can't take them one by one. And then other things like magnesiums for sleep or inositol and the data on depression

or inositol and insulin sensitivity. You know, the number of people that are out there who are pre-diabetic or type two diabetes, of course, they need to exercise and eat right. But things like inositol can improve insulin. What is inositol? Inositol is it's similar to a vitamin, but it works in a pathway that makes cells more insulin sensitive, which is good. So you can use the glucose and insulin that you make.

So you're not overproducing insulin. Type 2 diabetes is essentially overproduction of insulin because your cells aren't able to use the insulin that's around. So you crank out more of it. Type 1 diabetes, lack of insulin from the pancreas. That's why people have to inject it who have type 1 diabetes. So things like inositol. I mean, and the list just goes on and on, you know, and so to me, I think the view is changing, I hope that, you know, the idea previously was that before the

pandemic, frankly, was that supplements are just kind of like nootropic that or, you know, it's kind of you don't need it. I'm not saying you need it, but they are a powerful augment to good sleep, good nutrition, good training, good social connection yeah if you want to optimize the idea of needing it like what do you mean to exist right you don't you could eat mcdonald's and just live like if you want to optimize your health yeah supplements are very beneficial very beneficial but i think for you and me it's a it's a it's a duh but i think for a lot of people out there and so they they seem to think that there's something unique about prescription drugs that makes them better than supplements. Well, that's because they've been

lied to. That's the real problem is that the corporations who control these prescription drugs and sell these prescription drugs and sell advertising on television have got it into people's heads. That's why it was maddening when I had Peter Hotez on the podcast, and he was talking to me about the importance of vaccination. I said, do you exercise? How do you eat? Do you take vitamins? And there was zero going on with him.

He goes on walks occasionally. I mean, he eats fucking junk food. He wasn't taking vitamins. He told me that some internist told him to take vitamin D. So he took that for a while. I'm like, for a while? Yeah, D seems, vitamin D seems to have made it through the chute, like where anyone will take it because it doesn't seem scary to them or something. There was a recent study that talked about people that died or were hospitalized from COVID and they could have prevented somewhere in the neighborhood. See, we can find this.

It was a very high number, a very high percentage of hospitalizations and deaths could have theoretically been prevented with vitamin D supplementation. This was based on the number of people that were in the ICU that were deficient from COVID, or excuse me, deficient from vitamin D that were in the hospital for COVID. And it was in the high 80s or in the low 80% rather. And then they did this study showing what would have happened if they had just supplemented vitamin D. I mean, I know many physicians. Here it is. New study reveals vitamin D in the body can significantly reduce the risk of severe outcomes for COVID-19.

Does it have the numbers? What year is this from? Is this recent? Yeah, but this seems like a strange website. I'll be honest with you. Oh, is it? I clicked quick because it said two weeks ago. Original.newsbreak.com.

Yeah. Yeah, I think they're selling something. A little TikTok icon in the corner. God, people are selling things. It's so hard. There's so many wacky websites. You don't know what's real. I think that when I step back from what you were saying a few moments ago,

I think people need to remember that scientific journals, of which I'm on the advisory board of several and have been for a long time and are well-meaning things. Let's keep in mind, they're run by people. And the goal of those journals, ultimately, is to publish papers that are true, but that get people to read them, the more subscriptions, the more they sell, right? So I have a good friend who's a, is a senior editor at a journals, there's, there's really only three top tier journals, nature, cell and science. He said, and I asked him once, I said, what, what determines whether or not one paper is accepted or not? And he said, well, we get to

determine, obviously, the reviewers have to give it thumbs up at some point. But we get to determine the direction that the journal wants to go. So during the pandemic, there was enormous incentive for publishing papers, these in these journals that provided some either hope or fear or whatever it was exciting at the time because people were buying up these journals like crazy. I mean, they have to pay their staff too. So it's a business like anything else. Unfortunately, there is,

aside from the federal research budget, which is frankly, we have a much greater budget than in other countries for research relative to the total amount available, but it's still very low compared to what we need. But money is what drives research. I mean, it's not going to, the more money you have, the more margin for error you can have in terms of the people in your lab. Like if you only have a million dollar a year operating budget, like it's a business, you can have two or three really good people. And if someone's not so good, that's bad.

If you have a giant budget, you can have 20 people and 10 of them can suck. That's rare to see that. Usually it's a mixture of competent to talented, the occasional bad apple. And those bad apples are very, very dangerous. And the bad apples I'm talking about are not the kind of people that necessarily go around creating data out of nowhere. These are the people who slice off and make experiments that didn't work kind of disappear. Oh, there was something wrong with that mouse. That is a serious problem in science, far more than fabrication of data. And how often does that occur? Oh, it's incalculable, but I would say that kind of, I've been in laboratories, big and small across my career. I've been around them a lot. Everyone in every field knows the papers that are like, yeah, nobody believes that. And these papers are influenced by money.

Not directly. So the PIs, this is the way it works. The lab heads, to get to a position where you're running a laboratory at a major university or any university, frankly, you have to love what you're doing. I mean, you don't make a lot of money as a university professor. There are incentives through things like companies and a lot of professors now have companies and we can talk about that. And that's complicated sometimes or not complicated. But the point is that they want to, heads of labs want to make fundamental discoveries. They want to be true. The three biggest fears for a real scientist are to get something wrong and to get it wrong for the wrong reasons. The wrong reasons would

be someone comes to your laboratory and sees an opportunity to please the PI. This is, I think, one of the major sources of error in science. Publishing papers as a postdoc is what gets you a job. So I've known over the years postdocs, and there's a lot of discussion about this is inside ball of science, where someone gets there and realizes that the head of this lab has a pet hypothesis that's really exciting to them. Why is it exciting? Because it's exciting, they like the idea,

but also it would allow them to renew their funding. Yes, definitely money's involved. And then that person goes and does experiments and shows the PI the experiments that work and doesn't show them the experiments that don't work. And then tells themselves those experiments didn't work because the centrifuge was off or the mouse was sick the experiments that don't work and then tells themselves those experiments didn't work because, you know, the centrifuge was off or the mouse was sick or something, you know,

gives themselves reasons why it was okay to remove data that occurs. I think I'm going to guess here. I don't know, but I'm based on my observation. That's probably about 10 to 15% of the top tier published papers. I think don't last meaning in the years following, they don't replicate and they go nowhere. And I don't think it's because people made up data, quote unquote. I think it's because they threw out bad data or data that, excuse me, they threw out data that didn't fit their hypothesis and labeled it no good. That is very common. Now people who quote unquote fudge data, make up data, I would say that's 2%. But that's the Alzheimer's study. Okay. So the Alzheimer's stuff was legitimately a data fraud issue.

Which is really crazy. Which is really crazy. It lasted for so long before people discovered it. So then you say, why could that happen? Because you explain to people what happened. Yeah. So basically the theory of Alzheimer's that's still very prominent is that it's the accumulation of these things called plaques and tangles, which you can see under the microscope. And they've always been considered a signature that you can see with your eyes of

neurodegeneration that's associated with Alzheimer's dementia. And it's been the way that people have measured whether or not a treatment has worked or not worked is the whether or not it could decrease these plaques and tangles in mouse tissue and sometimes in human tissue. Now, we have to be clear that plaques and tangles do accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer's and mice that have mutations that make them kind of like good models for Alzheimer's. But early on in the research on Alzheimer's, so dating back well over a decade now, there was basically a data fraud, fudging of data, we call it, where someone essentially said that there was a label for a particular plaque or tangle of protein that represented something that it didn't. And then

what this has cascaded into over many, many years is an entire set of theories about which drugs ought to be beneficial for the treatment of Alzheimer's. And I would say now trillions of dollars put into research along those particular lines of inquiry. So what we're basically saying is one mistake can cascade into a series of thousands or tens of thousands of mistakes that can take a field really far astray. And that's what's happened now. They realized that there was a problem with the early data. Now, the thing that's kind of baffling is how the field continued down this path for so long without actually considering alternative hypotheses with any seriousness. Why somebody didn't say, hey, let's go back and test the initial premise of all of this. And part of that has to do with if, you know, biotech is neither good nor bad, nor evil, nor anything. It's just,

has to do with if, you know, biotech is neither good nor bad, nor evil, nor anything. It's just, but it's a business. And there's a pretty quick runway from a big landmark discovery to a couple of verifications, to people founding companies, to big dollars coming in through investments. And then, I mean, how many times have we been told blockbuster finding in mice? And then when, and then people with Alzheimer's say, well, when is there going to be treatment? 10 years. How long treatment? 10 years. How long? About 10 years. This 10 years thing has been kicked down the road

for 50 years. I mean, I've been in the research game 30 years, close to it, you know, and so many things have just been kicked down the road. Now there are kind of maverick folks within science who test very alternative hypotheses, and they are really the heroes of science, in my opinion, because they're saying that's all fine and good, or maybe it's all false. I don't know. I'm going to go a different direction and explore. But in the sociology

of science and science funding, it is very, very hard to impossible to get funding from the federal government to do truly high risk pioneering science. You might say like, how could that be? In general, when you get funded by the government, my lab has been funded by the government for many years, you get funded for work that is already completed. You show it to them in a grant, you say, this is what I want to do. You get the money and wow, the paper comes out

like the same year, how did that happen? And then you use the money to fund the next thing. Every card carrying laboratory head knows this. Why? Because when you put in a grant that says, this is a really exciting idea, they're not going to fund that. So this is why philanthropy and private money comes into science and is very exciting and enticing to scientists because they can start testing things that the federal government funding bodies are just too conservative to test. But that also leaves it open to manipulation by bad actors.

The whole system is, there's no way to bulletproof the system against bad actors, meaning people who fudge data, or I think the more sinister aspect of my field are these individuals who come to a laboratory and go, I want a job. Being a postdoc, you're not paid much. Oftentimes they have families, they're under stress. I'm not justifying their actions. And people go, how do you get the job at the best places? Well, you get it by publishing papers in really great journals and with your name first. So what does that lead to? It leads to really high ambition people

working very, very hard. And science is hard. A lot of experiments fail. And some people will just figure out that if they can just give the lab director the figure out their pet hypothesis, like figure out what mommy and daddy like, what mommy or daddy like most and give them those results. Those people get promoted very quickly. Now, in the long run, they don't do well. Or what you'll find is they often just switch to an entire

new area of science when they start their lab. They kind of get there. And then years later or even a year later, you go, whatever happened to that result? Well, if you ask people in the laboratory, postdocs and graduate students, it's sort of I think probably like any career path. They know the truth. So if you ask them, what do you think of that paper? And they're like, yeah, I don't know. That means it's bullshit. Shouldn't they be allowed to like have one of those like witness things where they do their voice differently and shade their face? Well,

the problem is they're all colleagues. And science is weird too, because unlike in UFC or something like that, everyone's really nice to each other's faces. They're like, oh yeah, great to see you. Great to see you. Then you get the paper anonymous peer review. And then they're like, that's when people attack each other, kill people's grants, kill people's papers. Science is a, it's not a cutthroat game, but it's a very human game. And now I also want to highlight, cause I feel like as an ambassador for my field, I do want to say that there are excellent scientists who care so very much about the truth and who go through every detail of every paper. Their families suffer. Everybody suffers as a consequence of their neurotic tendency.

But those people are the heroes of science because they won't let something go to publication unless they know it's absolutely watertight. I think what you said is very important. It's a very human thing. Subject to human emotions and human instincts and ego and jealousy. And a partner at home who's probably like, hey, when are you going to get out of graduate school? And we're going to actually move out of this one bedroom apartment. I want kids or all our friends are like taking vacations in Tulum and we're like suffering here.

And yeah. Or people who think, you know, you get a Ph.D. and that guarantees a win. I mean, all it does is give you the opportunity to keep competing. guarantees a win. I mean, all it does is give you the opportunity to keep competing. So when you see people at the best institutions or even somebody at a not one of the top, top institutions who's able to keep their lab funded over a long period of time, that says one of two things. It says they're either really good at picking questions and being very consistent, or they are very good at hiring people that are extremely careful and hardworking or sometimes both. But listen, the bigger the labs, the more, the higher the probability of a bad

apple. And it happens all the time, all the time. It's just stunning when something like the amyloid plaques issue in terms of Alzheimer's is established and stays for so long. There was decades of people were acting on that bad. It wasn't just bad. It was falsified data. Well, it was truly falsified data. And there's a whole other aspect to the sociology of science that I think is not often discussed, which is that there's a huge incentive to be, to being promoted by your elders, by your graduate advisor and postdoc advisor, because they are the ones that write the letters, they get you promotions, et cetera. And so what tends to happen is people tend to continue to do science that pleases their elders. Now I have a, for myself, I had both the curse and the blessing of my

undergraduate advisor, graduate advisor, and postdoc. We're all incredible people and scientists in different ways. I was very, very blessed, but the first one killed himself. He had a bad depression, killed himself. Second one, cancer at 50. Third one had a heart attack across the desk from me. First day of work at Stanford. He was my postdoc advisor, eventually died of pancreatic cancer. So the joke in my field is you don't want me to work for you, right? Like it's like a death sentence. Now they're all dead, but the good, you know, is a terrible thing to be orphaned in science because promotions, things like that. Other people stepped in and helped me and I'm very grateful to those people. But one of the blessings, the hidden blessings,

the silver lining in all this is like, I didn't have to please anybody. And so when it came time to do a podcast or to look at data or review a paper, I was not worried about pleasing anyone. But prior to that, I'll tell you, I've been asked to write letters for people's tenure. You know, can this person have a job for life or not? They get 10 to 12 letters. And I've had people say, hey, listen, we're having a really hard time getting letters for this person. And, you know, this person really needs tenure and they've got a family and, you know, and you look at the work and, you know, and you want to say no. And you can't because you don't want that person to review your paper and give an ax your next paper. Now, I've been very lucky because I don't.

First of all, I think it's maybe just the way I'm wired. I just don't care about that aspect of human you know I'm one of these people I'm sort of like my bulldog Costello was like I'm gonna go along with things until you try and push me and then like I'm like I just have kind of a resistance thing it's some developmental error or something who knows but probably healthy I think it's helped me a lot because what I've told those people asking for letters is listen I think they're not getting strong letters because they're not good enough for tenure at this place. But that is unusual.

Everyone plays this nice, nice game because when you're nice to people, they think you get stuff. And it creates a rather dark underbelly of science that people don't talk about. So in this field of Alzheimer's, what ends up happening, what I think ended up happening was there was such incentive to go with the party line and publish things that were validating of previous papers because let's be honest, when you say nice things about other people in papers, it's easier to get your papers in. And scientists on Twitter is changing things

because now people will really pick apart a figure, they'll really go after the, I think it's great. It's great. It's great. And I learned from you early on and from Lex early on, if you're going to be out there as a scientist or on social media at all, you know, you have to ignore a lot of stuff, but if, you know, if there's something to pay attention to, like Lex and I talk about this, he and I, I'll just reveal a writing an article for one of the nature journals about science and social media. The journals are now starting to pay attention to podcasts. And so conversation and being able to really rip something apart and having a pretty thick skin about it, that's the nature of good science. And I think that that field of Alzheimer's was all pre-social media and people knew there was

bullshit in there and they just went along with it. Whole companies were founded, investor money. Where are those companies? Where are those drugs? It's so sketchy. And, you know, that's just one. I mean, we're talking about the Alzheimer's thing. That's one. And then the other one was connecting heart disease to saturated fat that was funded by the sugar companies in, I believe the 1960s, right? Was it in the 1960s? Yeah, this is less in my wheelhouse, but you know, the whole- But it's also fraudulent work. With the relationship between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol doesn't exist. The relationship between saturated fat

and serum cholesterol, however, I think there is a link there. This is more Atiyah's territory than mine. But even the markers that like he's really highlighted are so key, things like ApoB. He's a big on like your ApoB level is a critical determinant of your longevity. But what they were trying to do was take away the option that sugar was responsible. And so they were putting an improper blame on on other things. Sure. Sure. They were just doing this funded by the sugar companies. And it's transparent.

Like we know, and I think they were only paid like $50,000, which is kind of crazy because it changed dietary guidelines for fucking decades. Oh, scientists, you know, I guess this is an opportunity to bring up Jeff Epstein. So, you know, people sometimes wonder, you know, like we're scientists, you know, you know, hadn't hanging out with him to get, you know, to get with these young women or something. I know scientists. There are some scientists like that. They were spending time with him because he was giving their laboratories money that they didn't have to write grants for.

Why was he doing that? Oh, there are very strong opinions. He under I never met him. I know people who knew him, But he clearly understood social engineering. He understood that rich people have they can get anything they want, anything they want, except the one thing they can't easily control is their reputation, because that requires other people's perceptions. And just being rich doesn't make you necessarily respected by certain certain people, yes, by certain people, no. So he understood that very wealthy people

feel more important and can derive more sense of self-respect when they're surrounded by brilliant people. And he was very good at bringing truly brilliant people into that mix. People like Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark, right? He's a particle physicist. I mean, head of the Santa Fe Institute, Nobel Prize.

I mean, Gell-Mann used to pick on Richard Feynman. He was one of the few people who could, maybe not verbally joust with him, but at a scientific level, could pin that guy. So they were on more or less equal tier, but Gell-Mann was right up there. So Epstein understood, like, bring around the Gell-Manns, bring around the top genetic researchers from Harvard. By doing that, he made these rich people feel like they were in the company of interesting, important people. And why would scientists spend time with rich people? I'll be really honest. I do a lot of work for these days for talking about science and trying to generate science philanthropy. That's a big part of my life now, trying to generate money to give to studies

that are really interesting and valid. We could talk about that if you like. Scientists will show up to dinners that normally they'd rather be in their labs or writing grants or with their families, frankly, if there's the possibility of money being given to their laboratory because then they can hire more people

and do more science. Money alone doesn't drive good science, but the more money you have, the bigger margin of error you have. So if Epstein offers a offered laboratories, you know, a million dollars a year for four years to a guy of that wealth as trivial to a laboratory, that is four national institutes of health grants per year. And the workload to maintain those four grants is immense. So they'd show up with the possibility of getting money. That's where they were hanging out with a dirtbag like him. And they had blinders on. Either they knew or they didn't know what he was up to, but they had blinders on because they weren't thinking about the implications.

Well, it's also one of the things about something like that must be that if you go there and you see Steven Pinker and you see Lawrence Krauss and you see Bill Gates, it seems like you should be there. It seems fine to be there. Also on, you know, sinister, diabolical, narcissistic and sociopathic, but brilliant social engineering on the part of him. He understood that they felt comfortable in the room because of who else was there. Rich people like will show up to a place for who's not there, as we know. They like to have space, right? And scientists generally don't like to hobnob.

It's not really their thing. What they like to do is work on their pet projects. They're a little bit like comedians in the sense that they have a craft they want to be working on. They're only going to do things like go out and get money if they have to get money. And they do a lot to get money. Well, I'm sure there's a social aspect of it and hanging around with other brilliant scientists at a wonderful place. You have good food and drink and there's pretty girls around. It's probably exciting. It's probably exciting. Although I think that at some level, scientists, real scientists, dyed in the wool scientists would rather just be doing science and living their lives. I'm sure. I mean, this is a very

rare occasion. I'm sure that they're doing this. So he had the whole thing. The Harvard shirt. I mean, he kind of, he ingratiated himself in this community. He just understood. It was sort of like, I do some work with some professional sports teams, right? And the only people that they look up to are tier one

special operators. You tell a pro NBA player, like, oh, in the NFL, they do this, they're like special operators. You tell a pro NBA player like, oh, in the NFL, they do this to like, whatever you tell them that, you know, this will increase your, your output by 10%. They're like, whatever. They don't care. They want to play video games. They do not care. They want to hang out with their girlfriend or their four girlfriends, whatever it is. You tell them tier one operators who do high risk, high consequence work and are on deployment schedules that would dissolve you into a puddle of your own tears because it's a vampire schedule. You don't get to sleep when you want to and you get you potentially die. You potentially all die. And they're running times are faster.

Their recovery times are faster. Their shooting accuracy is far better than your shooting accuracy. And that's with a gun and getting shot at. And they go, OK, I'll listen. They look up to tier one operators. That's a fact. And so if you want them to listen, you understand that fact. You look at what tier one operators are doing. That's what professional sports teams are trying to glean that information. Billionaires, they have different interests, obviously. Some race yachts, some want to start new projects, but they want to be around really innovative, interesting people. And in academia, there are a very small subset of those running big laboratories. And Epstein just got that down to the detail. And then he understood, I think, with politicians, they can their reputations are everything. And so he gave them a vaulted world where they could behave how they wanted. I mean, in some sense, I mean, his story is one of multiple psychologies,

not just his. Yeah, that's why people that have studied him and the whole case believe that, and from other evidence and information as well, that he was part of some sort of an intelligence operation and there was compromising these people. Oh, I'm sure that at some point he had information on other people and he just used it as, and it doesn't have to be strong hand blackmail, right? He could just say, you know, we've got information, we'll hold it secure. Well, you would just, you don't even have to blackmail someone. If you know they have information on you and they have not used it, you will act in their best interest to try to get them

on your good side. Well, I mean, in the unraveling of all the dark, sordid shit around Weinstein, it was discovered, I think, in New York, like near that avenue, down in Alphabet City Police Precinct. It turns out that there were, you know, a boatload of files that date back ages. And, you know, there were, it's not that cops are corrupt, it's that they're incentivized by certain things too. And their bosses were telling them, you got to do certain things, you got to put away certain files. And, you know, people are trying to make careers. I think that's

why that show, it's a little outdated now, but from technology standpoint, but the wire was so brilliant is that every aspect of that was a human endeavor and science is a human endeavor. And I, we're kind of paying attention to the darker, unfortunate side. They're also, again, I always feel like I got to shine light where it belongs to, which is that a lot of amazing science is happening because of excellent philanthropy of people that are not pedophiles.

Right. And those people, you know, and, but let's be honest, walk onto any university campus, look at the names on the sides of the buildings. Do you think they're there to honor those people because those were great people? Sometimes they're great people. They're there because those people donated 50 to 100 million dollars. Right. I mean, and this has been known in law schools and business schools for a long time because you'd see it on this.

That was kind of more accepted there because it's business and law. Right, right. But if you walk onto any campus, I don't care if it's UT Austin or Stanford or it's Harvard, the names on those sides of buildings, sometimes it's the Kennedy building. Sometimes it's the Rockefeller building. More often than not, these are names of people you don't recognize anymore and names of people don't even live in the United States. They gave $100 million for a building that trains medical students. Universities are a business too, 100%. And it doesn't mean that they're trying to corrupt anybody, but they have to survive. You have to pay the janitor. You have to pay the cops on the campus. I mean, so it is a business.

And I think the human side, actually, to your credit, I learned from you. I think you may or may not remember, but a few years ago, we were talking about everything that was going on in the public health thing. And you're like, the reason I'm curious about this, and I don't trust this, these were your words more or less, was because I know about people. And that's at the end of the day, it's all about people and their psychology. Well, that is science as well. I mean, the human aspect of science is science. It's understanding motivations and incentives. And there's just a lot. I mean, look, that's how they got this whole FTX thing, you know, with Sam Bankman freed.

You know, he's, he's parked at home prison two blocks from Stanford campus. Is he really? You go visit him. No, he needs a haircut. That guy.

Does he? Well, have you seen guys? I don't know. I just see this kid with an Afro. It looks like he hasn't been really, I think what happened there is so, but no,

there was a lot of celebrity endorsements is my point. Tom Brady. But that's what it is. You get people to think, oh, Tom Brady's investing. It must be good. Oh, there you go. And that kind of thing is exactly the sort of methods that Jeffrey Epstein used. It's just like having this association with people that are respected and popular.

It's, um, how should I say this? It's, I, if I had a super high powered psychiatric microscope, I'd go back and find out how everyone that you would ever work with or that you're getting information from, you would find out what their kind of core developmental like dissatisfaction is right because i think they're in you you see it's like i'm sure everyone has this i'm sure bankman freed felt like a like this big as the consequence of something in his psychology or experience and as a consequence justified doing this horrible thing well i think he was clearly on amphetamines. That's part of the problem. Well, that won't help. That won't help. That whole organization was backed up by amphetamines. And this is publicly known. Like she tweeted, Caroline Elson, tweeted that talking to people when you're like normal people when you're on amphetamines is very boring.

And people are boring. This overuse of amphetamines is, I mean, all we know is that it, and we do know that they narrow your focus. They, they become very outward and goal directed. I mean, that's what cocaine and amphetamines do. They make you very of the, of what's in the future and what you can go get as opposed to being in bliss in yourself. Perhaps an interesting intersection of this idea of neurochemistry and psychology and universities and sciences. Recently, I was asked to give a talk at Stanford to a bunch of potential donors. And on the stage next to me was Michael Pollan, who I have tremendous respect for.

Love that guy. Yeah. Even though he's over at Berkeley, like we tolerate him. No, I'm kidding, Michael. That's a Stanford Berkeley joke. Ha ha. He is wonderful and amazing and such a pioneer of this whole psychedelic space. And you might say, well, there were others. There's Terence McKenna and there's the classic people.

But I started off that evening by saying, we need to take a step back and just acknowledge what's happening here, which is saying the word psychedelics on a podcast for me, five, six years ago, could have cost me my job easily. Saying, yeah, I've taken MDMA as part of a clinical trial, three times, it was tremendously beneficial. I think psilocybin can aid with depression.

That would have cost me my job. Done, fired. I would have walked out of here, done. Now, just this last month, the cover of UCSF Magazine and Stanford Magazine, Alice in Wonderland, psychedelics, deep feature about MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin, DMT. What's happened now is this is what used to cost

university professors their jobs in the 60s and 70s and did cost them their jobs at places like Harvard in particular, is now the subject of research studies, clinical studies at Stanford and elsewhere, right? UCSF, Johns Hopkins. This is now really big science and pharma's moving in very quickly.

What they're trying to do is create non-psychedelic psychedelics, figure out what sorts of chemistry changes that doesn't give you hallucinations and create new antidepressants. That's what they want to do with psilocybin because doing two journeys on a drug and then you're done, that's not good business.

And what I love about what Michael Pollan is saying is that he's the one that's really, he's really hitting the drum on this one. He's saying these things work. The clinical data are showing that 65 percent plus success rate for what would otherwise be intractable, untreatable, suicidal depression. Incredible. And now the universities are behind it. But they're behind it because laboratories are getting funded to do it. Laboratories are getting funded to do it because there's there are grants. Why are there now grants from the federal government? Well, philanthropists came in early and provided money. And now the people are starting to see that there is there are big, big potential outcomes at the level of pharma. Now, the classic psychedelics community isn't going to like that. They're like, no, this is plant medicine. It's got a hundred thousand year history or more indigenous people, et cetera. Academia and pharma don't care about that. And I'm not I'm not I'm one of these people. I don't I'm not saying they're bad and they're good. I'm saying that it's humans again. suddenly okay with the idea of discussions about psychedelics in front of their top tier donors, the people that literally supply the blood to the university? Well, because top tier donors are now really interested in psychedelics. So what drives every aspect of it from the

student who's pipetting in the lab to the highest tier of administration in the university, all the way up to directors of NIH. It's all interconnected at the level of incentives. Right, but the top tier donors are clearly influenced by the zeitgeist. And the way people have approached and thought about psychedelics has radically changed over the last 10 years. And Michael Pollan is one of the reasons for that because the omnivores dilemma, he had established himself as a legitimate journalist who would comb through and parse through all the data to give you a comprehensive understanding of what exactly is going on.

And he went out and did them, or at least some of them as, as a kind of late, the typical person that not, you know, and didn't come out with, um, wearing a, you know, a robe, right. You know, and, or sit in the lotus position. And he can discuss them like a journalist. And then having podcasts discuss it, then you're getting these positive drug stories out to, and I don't even like calling them drugs, positive compound stories about psychedelics that are going out to millions and millions and millions of people. And you're hearing about these people, particularly soldiers who are coming back with PTSD, who are having tremendous results, people with overwhelming depression, people with all sorts of problems with drug addiction and so many different ailments that are being helped in this

way. Yeah, absolutely. And look, you deserve tremendous credit here. I know you're not one to sit here and take praise from your guests, but I'm going to just say that you've been talking about this for a long time, about the tremendous value of these things, not just for gaining new perspective, because I think in the 60s and 70s, it was, remember, it was tune in and drop out, right?

Now we're talking about the use of psychedelic medicine to be able to lean into life in a healthy way. That's the major difference. And you've really pioneered the discussion around that, Michael Pollan, and there are others too, I realize. But, you know, at a time when it was considered really wacky and out there, now it's becoming – it's headed towards mainstream medicine. And I think it's fundamentally important. I mean, I think Robin Cardart Harris's laboratory at UCSF has a paper out just today on the use of DMT for treatment of psychiatric illness. His laboratory has been looking at high-dose psilocybin, two sessions, guided sessions, treatment of anorexia, ADHD, and depression with very high success. Nolan Williams' lab at my university at Stanford. He's a triple board

certified psychiatrist, neurologist running the studies with veteran solutions, the group down in Mexico of tier one operators and other people who come back who are just messed up. They're, they're light. They're either heading towards suicidal depression or they're just not feeling quite right. And using Abigain DMT in tandem and getting tremendously positive results. So he's doing the neuroimaging on them. So times are really changing and you and Michael and others really deserve a token of gratitude. I've completely revamped my stance on psychedelics. I'm still yet to do a high dose psilocybin journey. I haven't done that yet. What was your original stance on psychedelics? I don't want to lose my job. And I'll be honest. So I was kind of a wild

youth, barely finished high school. And I did recreationally. I took LSD and psilocybin in high school, hung around with a wild bunch and we were just partying with it. I didn't know what I was doing. So my view of it was it was associated with a time in my life where I was pretty wayward. of a weed here and there, but never really liked weed very much. It just wasn't my thing. And then when I did this three sessions with MDMA, that completely transformed my understanding of how these drugs work. I also realized, and you might, you probably already know this, but I was very curious about MDMA and the reputation that puts holes in the brain, kills serotonin neurons. You know, the study on MDMA that showed neurotoxicity was retracted from science. They actually inadvertently injected methamphetamine into those monkeys. But you never hear about that. How do you inadvertently inject methamphetamine?

Oh, I thought it was aspirin. You don't hear about that retraction. So they now have data in humans asking, what are the safety profiles on MDMA for people that take it every once in a while to people who have taken hundreds of doses of MDMA. And there's one population of people that you can do this on that makes it a really good experiment. Those people can't do any other drugs

because then it becomes confounded by, are they doing meth, are they doing coke, are they getting psilocybin, what else? It's not a good experiment. You want single variable manipulation. There's only one group that you can do that on and that's who they did it on, and that's Mormons. So the Church of Latter-day Saints has one drug that's not on the banned substance list, and that's MDMA.

Wow. And I'm not saying all Mormons. They can't even drink coffee. It makes it an even better experiment. And so I'm not saying that Mormons are all taking MDMA, but there is a substantial number of LDS, Latter-day Saints, I think they call themselves now Mormons, as most people know them, who have taken tons of MDMA. And they've done brain imaging and psychiatric profiles on them. Those data say that as long as it's not contaminated with something else, which is a serious issue, the neurotoxicity is nil to none. Wow.

Amazing, right right at the appropriate dosages etc that's amazing amazing and the problem so i've changed my stance you know contaminated mdma is super common uh the recent data i saw was that um you go out and buy mdma from a quote-unquote trusted source and six out of ten are going to have potentially lethal levels of fentanyl in them oh Oh, my God. Yeah. Six out of ten? Yeah, and everyone nowadays knows to say, oh, this is from MAPS, you know, because it's like saying, like, you know, it's clean, right?

So in any way, I've completely changed my stance on psychedelics. I think they have tremendous power if done responsibly. I think that they hold the greatest promise for drug-based psychiatric treatments. that they hold the greatest promise for drug-based psychiatric treatments. And I think we're looking at a time in which it's absolutely clear that these things should be available to people. Robin will tell you the worst part

about running his laboratory is someone will come in with intractable suicidal depression, they'll do two psilocybin treatments and they're better. And then two years later, they'll come back and they'll say, "'How can I do another one? Because it made me feel so much better.'" And he'll say, sorry, they're still illegal. And he can't provide them. He'd lose his job. So right now, the legalization effort is really important. And I intend to get more vocal about this.

Well, that's great. I'm glad you will. And I think it's a popular stance now. I don't think it's nearly as dangerous as it was five, 10 years ago, which is kind of crazy because it's a popular stance now. I don't think it's nearly as dangerous as it was five, ten years ago. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy because it's – that's one of the more interesting aspects of the way podcasts have infected the popular opinion on things. Because it's sort of changed people's understanding through data and through talking to people like Michael Pollan or Rick Doblin or any of these experts that really could tell you what's actually going on and how this helps. And then there's many people that have these stances on these drugs that hear these things now and go, you know what? God damn it. Maybe I'm ruining my life by not being open. Like maybe this could actually help me. Maybe this could help my mom.

Maybe this could help my father. maybe this could help my mom maybe this could help my father maybe this could help my brother you know there's so many people out there that really could use some help and human beings have been using these compounds these substances and these mushrooms and these psychedelics for thousands of years there's a reason why they put them in rituals they may be the source them in rituals. They may be the source of most religious experiences. They may be the source of many religious texts. In fact, John Marco Allegro, one of the head, the guys who was hired to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls, he wrote a book called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross after translating the Dead Sea Scrolls for 14 years. His belief was that the

entire Christian religion was initially based on psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals. And so he wrote this book that was bought out by the Catholic Church. And then you had to buy like, it's reprinted now, but you had to to buy like copies used copies of it online to get it and so then he made another book called the dead sea scrolls and the christian myth that was based on the same material amazing yeah you know that this is really an opportunity to say that about that positive aspect of philanthropy you know one thing that i know about very wealthy people is they almost always have at least one family member who's really screwed up Really screwed up mentally especially

And I just wealthy people poor people too. But it's like oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely I'm talking about that you have a family member that's fucked right? So what's happened is a lot of the money that's going into psychedelic research that's coming from philanthropy is coming from these very They feel desperate, very wealthy people. And they're going to universities and saying, what can you do for my kid? And the university is saying, well, we've got transcranial magnetic stimulation

and that works on some people, but not others. And they're saying, great, what else do you have? And they're saying, well, we have talk therapy. And they're saying, well, that's important too, but what else do you have? And they're saying, well, there's these interesting compounds that seem to relieve depression. And they're like, well, why isn't that available? Well, it's still illegal. And we don't have money to fund it because the federal government's been very reluctant to get involved in it. I mean, it's it's an odd thing that we have. You know, we have bodies within the government that are designed to put people in prison for drugs. And then we also have bodies of the same government that funds from the top down that study drugs. But keep in mind that the NIH up until recently was

only studying drugs of abuse. Remember, it's NIDA, right? It's about drugs of abuse, addiction and abuse. So they're studying cocaine, amphetamine for their addictive properties. Studying psychedelics becomes a little bit of a tricky thing. Where are you going to fund that? Is it because they're – if anything, they're anti-addictive according to the data, right? And here I should be careful and say that like the Ibogaine studies, you know, there is a heart risk. They do have – they usually have someone measuring. For Ibogaine? Yeah, for Ibogaine. Have there been people died of heart attacks from Ibogaine?

No, but not that I know of, but they're always monitoring blood pressure and heart rates. For like veteran solutions, they have physicians there and they're very careful. Great organization. Ibogaine is a very strange one. I've never done it. I've never. But the people that have have had crazy stories. 22 hours.

Yeah. 22 hours and horrific experiences were just intensely introspective, breaking down of all the pathways in your mind that have been carved throughout all of your traumatic experiences, your whole life that led you to be the person you are today. I know multiple people that have done it because of an addiction to opiates. And it's helped them. It's helped them tremendously, kicked them. How can you argue with those data? I mean, when you hear that, I mean, opioid addiction is one of the hardest things for people to kick.

I mean, people die trying to go cold turkey. I mean, it's unbelievable. Yeah, I think Ibogaine was described to me by a friend who was a former SEAL team operator because he went down to Veteran Solutions, and he said it was eyes open, no hallucinations. Every time he would close his eyes, he would get a high definition movie quality

view of an experience from his life. And he had agency. He could move himself differently within that experience. And then it would move like a cube and he'd get another experience. And then he was in that experience, 22 hours. And then down there, they follow that up with DMT one or two. And he described DMT as being strapped to the shockwave of an atom bomb. This is somebody who's obviously been through some intense experiences anyway. And all of that might just sound really crazy and extreme, but keep in mind those same people

are coming back to Stanford and Nolan is scanning their brains before and after and seeing incredible changes in the positive direction. I think for most people, the psilocybin macrodose, two macrodoses seems to be the depression treatment. So this is 25 milligrams of psilocybin. I think it translates to about 2.5 to 5 grams of mushrooms. Is that about right?

That's what Robin tells me. That's the heroic dose. The heroic dose. And what's interesting is the microdosing, because now there's the comparison of daily one milligram, aka microdosing, versus the two heroic doses. The microdosing has not shown impressive results for treating depression. And I think people should know that. I'm not saying microdosing is bad, but in terms of treatment of depression, it has not proved to in the clinical studies.

So for that application. But I can tell you personally that microdosing for just daily life makes things really fun tell me more i enjoy it i enjoy it now no no no right now i'm not i'm not on anything with coffee but uh i have done it many times and i've taken a gram a day 30 days in a row okay so a gram a day 30 days in a row. Okay, so a gram a day is probably about 5 milligrams. I take days off here and there, but I enjoy it a lot. It gives you a silly, carefree consciousness that is unperturbed, meaning that it doesn't affect my judgment.

It doesn't affect my ability to have a conversation with someone. It doesn't affect my ability to do my job, whether it's do a podcast or even do UFC commentary or do anything else. It just puts me in this very appreciative, thankful, low anxiety state. Can I ask you a question about that and sort of earlier in an earlier podcast you brought up that when um things got a little hectic in life that you were doing mushrooms yeah those were those mushroom doses higher dose mushrooms no referring to one gram okay i mean i'm occasionally higher yeah yeah but one gram seems to be like the magic number for me like one gram just sort of you skate around for like four or five hours and there's no come down there's no it's just like you're just happy amazing yeah yeah people in my field have been encouraging me to do the macrodose psilocybin um it's uh it's in the it's in the books i'm

i really want to do it robin cardart harris again describes it as one of the more quote unquote honest psychedelics. Like you can't really decide what's going to come up. Yes. And a key thing he mentioned is that people need, this is, you may find interesting. I'd love to know if you believe this for your own experience as well. He said there are a couple of variables to these successful treatments of depression with high dose psilocybin. One of them is that people stay in the eye mask.

That if they spend too much time in the room with the eye mask off, they don't do enough of the introspective. Yeah, I would imagine that's the case because you're just distracted by visuals and you could concentrate on that instead of just, McKenna's used to always, Terrence McKenna used to always say silent darkness is the most important aspect to a real trip where you're learning and you're going in with the intention to interface with this divine consciousness and learn something. I got to pee. Let's pee and we'll come back. Okay. I'll be right back. I did an episode on water. Yeah. The water people are crazy. It's amazing. You think of all the people of all the topics that you could cover. You think,

oh, you know, water is very benign, right? The prescriptive that comes out of the data, if you want to keep your cognitive and physical function best, it's an average, not every hour, an average of eight ounces for every hour up to 10 hours after you're awake. So that's 80 ounces during the daytime. And then- You gotta be peeing constantly. Yeah, that's probably good.

Yeah. And then less at night. But yeah, the water people, because what happens is people go, oh, you know, pH water doesn't change your body's pH. True, but there are some advantages to pH water, it has minerals in it then people go no it's all about deuterium depleted water near the ocean there's more deuterium in water it not from ocean water and then people are like really into deuterium deplete water for cancer this is all

these niche communities and water osmot reverse osmosis water which has no magnesium or calcium then it's like people are really into that. People say that's terrible. And every free hydrogen water, structured water, and it's bananas. And so the key thing is there's the Galpin equation, which is your body weight in pounds divided by 30 equals the number of ounces of water to drink for every 15 minutes you train. Like Galpin's figured out that can improve performance. Like there's all this like water gets super geeky and I love it. One thing before I forget the Robin Carter Harris,

he said, I mask. And he said the power. I was so surprised. This is like a, this is like a hardcore researcher tells me the most important variables are the dose. So set and setting the,

obviously, but the, the eye mask and music. He's like, when people don't have music, somehow the music and that the music during a psilocybin journey have a kind of a build and then have a kind of more emotional soft tone in the kind of taper of the final hours or two. He said that he thinks that that's a very important component to guiding the introspection. He thinks that that's a very important component to guiding the introspection. And for me as a biomedical researcher at a school of medicine,

and he's at the school of medicine, dude, to hear this conversation, like I don't know whether to laugh or cry, because these are the kinds of conversations that A, would cause you to lose your job for legal reasons 10 years ago, or people would just say they've lost their minds. And this is the hottest topic

in biomedical research right now in terms of psychiatry, the hottest topic. Psychedelics or psychedelics with music? Psychedelics in general, just what's happening in a journey, how to do a journey properly, how much dosing. And so, you know, take your life five, 10 years ago, or even before things that you've been talking about with people for a long time. And now it's being talked about by these, by in the biomedical research community funded by- 20 years ago, I was being warned by producers of a television show. They're like, why are you doing this?

Like, you're talking about this openly. Like, this is terrible. Like, why are you doing this to your brain? I'm like, you guys don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, but I'm not scared to tell to express my opinions on things. I actually believe them. Well, this is my strongest stance in why I love your podcast, why I pay attention to podcasts in addition to scientific journals, is that if you look at let's say let's look at like this really niche, crazy field of bodybuilding. Like how many people want to look like Dariene Yates?

How many people want to look Arnold Schwarzenegger, female body? Very few, very, very few. And yet that niche community understood hormone augmentation at the extremes. And now we understand hormone augmentation at a healthy dosages in men and women has tremendous longevity, healthspan effects, mental and physical in terms of. And so there's value in these early niche communities, you know, psychedelics or in bodybuilding or martial arts or in yoga communities or in breath work. It's just that we see these extremes of like a Wim Hof or, you know, or somebody who's doing deliberate heat exposure and cold exposure.

And the question for a really good scientist should be, is there value there? What can we extract that the general population could benefit from at a more subtle level? Like weight training. Everyone used to say, oh, you only lift weights if you're going to the military, playing football, you're a bodybuilder. How about extending neural function in the brain

by stimulating the neuromuscular system, right? In people in their 70s. I mean, that's being done now. So I think that an open-mindedness is really what's needed in biomedical research and public health. And I think, I can't speak for you, obviously, but I get very frustrated,

as I think you do and other people do, when people are immediately just shut the door, like, oh, that's just like crazy bro science biohacking. Actually, there's a different name for it. It's called ahead-of-its- for it. It's called ahead of its time science. It's called paying attention to things that clearly have big effects and that at lower dosages or done in a particular way

might actually have tremendously positive effects. And the best example I can point to would be physical training, resistance training. But also, if you jogged in the 1950s, I'll never forget that scene in Mad Men where the woman's out for a jog and all the housewives are like, oh, what is she doing?

No one ran outside of PE class. Well, jogging craze, now it's like accepted to be a runner. It's encouraged to be a runner. Huge effects, psychedelics. And so I think I'm old enough now, I'm 47, to just see like, ah, the stuff that everyone thought was crazy, supplements, you don't need that. This is the stuff that everyone thought was crazy supplements. You don't need that.

This is the stuff that can make life better. And so I don't encourage people to die, but I encourage many of them to retire. I'm like, just a lot of voices just need to retire. Just go away and let the next generation come in and they'll eventually replace me too. I had to replace us all and they'll get replaced, but let these new ideas at least

be considered and talked about. That to me is what's exciting about podcasting and social media. And also if you're getting advice, particularly advice about physical health, about metabolic health or about mental health or about the possible, the actual benefits, whatever they may be. And it's very, it's not just dose dependent. When we're talking about psychedelics, it's dependent upon the psychology of the individual. It's dependent upon your life experiences, whether or not you have a tendency to schizophrenia. It's not like those people shouldn't do bipolar, bipolar schizophrenia. Very clearly you ramp up the dopamine and or serotonin system. You amplify psychosis. In fact, I, I was studying cannabis for

a while for an episode, clear health benefits of cannabis. And yet we also know that if young males in particular study out of Canada who have a predisposition to psychosis, do very high THC cannabis, they are at a much greater risk. The estimate is up to four times greater risk for a major and possibly permanent psychotic episode. Now, I am not saying that weed is bad. I'm saying that there are individuals for which it is not going to be a good idea. And there are other individuals for which it might be a very good idea. Yes. Look at the individual. Like if you're talking to someone who's fat and they're talking to you about health, maybe that person is not really qualified to have this discussion.

Maybe they haven't taken care of their own physical health, so they really shouldn't be distributing information. If you knew something that could radically change the way your body responded to diseases, the kind of energy levels that you would have, your mental health, but yet you were ignoring it for some strange reason, well, that person has a giant hole in their life game, right? And there's a lot of people out there distributing health advice that have a giant fucking hole in their health game. Oh, absolutely. Like Bill Gates is a great example of that. He's got this big fat belly and he's telling people they have to get vaccinated. Like this kind of binary thinking, this kind of ridiculous way of looking at the world through only pharmacological interventions, through only medicine, through only this, through only that.

There's so many different things that you have to do to be healthy, and it's too much work for most people. So they're not going to weight train enough. They're not going to eat the proper foods. They're not going to supplement train enough. They're not going to eat the proper foods. They're not going to supplement their hormones. They're not going to do blood work on a regular basis and have someone who is a qualified physician who goes over that blood work with them and gives them a comprehensive understanding of what they need to do or not need to do. Hey, your blood pressure is too high. Hey, your body fat's too high. Hey, you're this, you're dehydrated, you're this, you're that. You have low vitamin D, you have low magnesium. All that shit is massively important. So when you see someone who's distributing advice and they clearly

aren't paying attention to everything that we know today, well, they're not on the cusp. They're not ahead of the game. They shouldn't be the type of person that's telling the rest of the world what to do. Yeah, it's like a dentist with bad teeth. Yeah, exactly. But you know, cosmetic surgeons and dentists with bad teeth, you don't see them. You don't see a wrinkled doc with like a prune face. Because it's right there. That's the product that people

are paying for. Unless he's really good. This guy doesn't give a fuck about what he looks like but he can make you look great. Their reputations, I have to imagine, travel really fast. He'd have to be a genius. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I did an episode on hair recently, and it was like the guy who did a hair transplant for the first time. His name escapes me for the moment.

He, you know, he figured out how to make his practice popular. He worked on politicians and celebrities and word spread quickly. And, you know, he had a he was the one who was the the mind behind that brand Clinique. He said we should call it something clinical. So it sounds like medicine. That's hilarious. Yeah. Oh, and he was he died at 96 with a full head of hair, by the way.

It's it's interesting that, you know, you're talking about people won't do the thing right now. There's a lot of excitement about semaglutide. Yeah. OK, so this is a GLP-1 glucagon-like peptide. The story of that, since you like animals and the natural world, a guy down in South America was looking at Gila monsters, those really scary things. And he realized they don't have to eat very often. I wonder if they're hungry all the time or not. Turns out, takes their blood, isolates a peptide, which turns out to be GLP-1, puts it into other animals and realizes it suppresses appetite.

Amazing, right? Like this is what I love about biology. Some dude who studies Gila monsters. It turns out humans make GLP-1. GLP-1 is stimulated by things like yerba mate tea. Certain other compounds, plant compounds, stimulate its release. But what does it do in the hypothalamus?

It suppresses hunger by way of, there's a particular brain arcuate pathway, blah, blah, blah. But it also affects the mechanosensors of the gut so that you feel like your gut's full. It's almost like you're getting like a pharmacologic stapled stomach, right? So when people take a drug that mimics GLP-1, their brain is like, well, I'm not as hungry.

And their stomach feels full, even though it's empty. And so people lose weight. It has other effects too, but it's working on body and brain. This becomes obviously the blockbuster drug of our times. This is reminiscent of the fen-fen. Remember fen-fen? Yeah, I remember.

A couple of people died of fen-fen, right? I knew a gal who developed a heart problem. It's a valve thinning and some issues there. Gone. Done. It was off the market. I remember that. I was in college.

Fen-phen, gone. It was an amphetamine, right? It was an amphetamine. Yeah. Yeah. And it probably felt pretty good to be on too because things like Adderall, Ritalin, all that, people like that because it's amphetamine. If I show you the structure of amphetamine, I show you the structure of Adderall, Ritalin,

you don't have to be a chemist to just go, those look very similar. So GLP-1 is changing everything. Type 2 diabetes, people are taking it. Obesity, people are taking it. People crave food less. And somehow, and I don't know how to explain these data, Atiya would know far more about this than I would, is somehow it's also allowing people to lose weight

even though they're eating similar amounts. And so it's probably impacting metabolic pathways. It's not without its side effects, but getting, I think it's called a Zempic is the brand name. That's gonna be like Adderall soon. It's gonna be hard to find. Soon it will be because it is so, I mean,

everybody's trying to get this stuff. But won't they just ramp up production of it? If they can, if they can keep up. But right now there's an Adderall shortage. There's an Adderall shortage? And there's a huge, because of all the non-prescriptive, people get the prescriptions and sell it. Big, big money on college campuses, big money in finance. Then there must be a real problem with like cartel fake Adderall that's laced.

It's being cut. It's being cut and resolved. Yeah. So, but I think the semaglutide thing, you know, I'm more of the, I always feel like behaviors first, nutrition, supplementation, and then prescription. I have a question for you about, um, the semaglutide stuff, because one of the things that we've discovered when we started going into it and talking about on the podcast was that 34% of the weight loss was muscle mass, bone mass,

and connective tissue. And my thought was, was that because they were losing weight? Because if you just get someone to lose weight, if someone just stops eating food and just starts like really kind of starving themselves, they are 100% going to lose bone mass. They're going to lose muscle mass. And they'll probably lose some connective tissue mass too. Yeah. They get skinny fat. Is there anything that's been done to do – yeah, skinny fat.

Is there anything that's been done where they've examined people who have done weight training and done resistance training while they're taking semaglutide? And does that mitigate this, the effect of that stuff? I have to imagine it would. I'm not aware of any trials. I mean, you know, doing human research is so tedious and expensive. You'd have to have people, you could do it. You could, you know, and, but, you know, if you had 50 subjects in each group doing weight training and are they doing sets, how hard are they working out? So I'm not dismissing it.

It's an awesome study. You'd want to see that. You'd want to encourage people to weight train to offset the muscle loss and fat loss. One thing that's interesting is that when you trigger the hypothalamus with GLP-1, the hypothalamus sends out signals to multiple tissues, if not all the tissues of the body. So it doesn't just send signals to the adipose tissue saying, oh, you know, lose body fat. It's going to also signal to the musculature. And Lane and I get into some really deep dives on this kind of thing. You know, when years ago, there's a study of what's called NEAT, non-exercise induced thermogenesis. If you look at people that move around a lot, bounce their knee, kind of moving around,

those people are like very staccato with their movements. They can burn up to 1,800 calories more per day than a person that sits very still. This is beautiful work done by Rothwell and Stock. If people want to look up those papers, amazing papers. Is there a health benefit to that in any way or is it just a matter of burning off calories? Just burning calories. So micro movements. And so then, for instance, in the treatment of anorexia, the most deadly, by the way, of the psychiatric illnesses, many anorexics die and they have low muscle mass. This is where I'm going with this because it relates to the semaglutide

thing. They are often in their treatment forbidden from doing these kinds of fidgeting things because they're constantly trying to lose weight all the time. Anorexics are very aware of the caloric content of food. They have a near precision calculator in their head of the caloric content in foods. They can look at a hamburger and they can tell you how many fats, carbohydrates, and proteins are in there. They're a computer and it's horrible. And they're also always trying to lose weight, always trying to burn calories, always. And so this neat non-exercise induced thermogenesis, excuse me, is very robust.

In people that move around, even there's a study out of University of Texas Houston, this is wild, the soleus muscle, the wider muscle of the calf for those that don't know that, there's a guy down there who's running a human physiology laboratory and he's like, you know, insulin insensitivity is a real problem,

type two diabetes. The soleus muscle is 1% of our total musculature. And he asks a really great question. He's like, what if when people are sitting during the day, because everyone's sitting, they just bounced one, you know, did what he called a soleus pushup, which is kind of,

it's a one-legged seated calf raise, right? With no weight. And they're just bouncing their heel like this. Like I used to in class. What turns out the soleus is an unusual muscle because it's very small percentage of our total musculature, but its energy utilization is enormously high. What does he see? Well, when people just bounce their heel, their insulin sensitivity improves, their resting glucose improves, and all they're doing is moving a bit more, but they are moving their soleus. What's happening?

It's likely that they're mimicking walking enough during the day that they're getting these positive effects. Now, I'm not encouraging people to just do this. And when I put some of this out on social media, you know, the gym jockeys, you know, who I'm friends with, right. They, they sort of, they were like, dude, come on, don't get people thinking this is exercise. I'm not saying that people should just do this, but these micro movements that we do add up a lot during the day. So there's nothing wrong with facts. No, there's nothing wrong with that.

You're not, you're not saying this is all you need to do. If you were doing that, that would be an issue. I'm never, I try and avoid the words only as much as I can in life unless it's appropriate. So you asked about loss of musculature. When we are losing weight or when we have high levels of GLP-1, signals are actually sent to the musculature to become catabolic. Like the body wants to conserve its most precious resource, which is muscle and fat. And so GLP-1 very likely based on the output of, my knowledge of the output of the hypothalamus,

the animal studies tell us that it's signaling to the most metabolically expensive tissue of the body to conserve itself or to catabolize itself. So, you know, fat is one of the harder reserves to lose for that reason, but losing muscle is bad. And I guess the short and sweet of this is anyone trying to lose weight should be doing resistance exercise, especially if they're in a caloric deficit. What is this here? People take semiglutide, but don't resistance train, risk losing muscle as well as fat, doctors warn. Here's why it's important to have a healthy balance of the two.

I found a couple recent articles that say some doctors are telling people with this, you have to weight train or you're going to lose muscle. Well, that's good. That makes sense. But that is literally the case when people starve themselves. It's one of the things that happens when you starve yourself is your body starts, I mean, it happens to fighters when they're cutting weight. If they do it improperly, if you're not just cutting water, your body starts to absorb

your muscle tissue. And your body temperature, core body temperature goes down because you're less thermogenically active. Jamie, I don't think I've ever asked you to- Put that back up, please. Oh. There've been a few studies of muscle loss with semaglutide so far, but Japanese researchers reported that people lost half a kilo of muscle

after three months on the drug. That's not that much. Half a kilo of muscle is a pound. Why are they saying it that way? Like they're making it look like it's one pound of muscle. That's how much they had to start with. Traditional media. Right, but it's two pounds is a kilo, right?

I know. 2.2, yeah. So what the fuck are you saying? They lost a pound of muscle? That's not hard. It's a common problem with interventions to lose fat. But yes, that is a common problem with interventions to lose fat. It makes it imperative to also prescribe resistance training to prevent muscle loss.

But my concern is that semaglutide is seen as a magic bullet by some people and isn't always combined with exercise. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure. You know, there's so many confusions in exercise science and weight loss that I've learned about recently from Lane that just make me like I'm baffled. So, for instance, you hear that if you eat fewer carbohydrates, you burn more fat. Right. OK, so it seems like a simple statement. So people go, yeah, I'm going to have a low carb diet. I'll burn more fat. But when you say fat, what they're talking about is not necessarily body fat. Like when people mistake body fat from dietary fat, this is how, this is how like, like kindergarten or nursery

school or illiterate we are about our own health because people, so it is true that if you, Lane has been educating me on this. If you reduce your carbohydrate intake, yes, you'll burn a greater percentage of your calories from fat. But if you're eating a intake, yes, you'll burn a greater percentage of your calories from fat. But if you're eating a lot of fat, you're going to burn a greater percentage of it from those fat calories that you're eating. It doesn't necessarily mean you're losing fat stores. All that matters in the end is that calories in calories out balance. What helps people with, you know, like particularly things like the carnivore diet or something like that, what helps them is with satiety.

There's something about carbohydrates. They're so good. You want to keep eating them. If I have a steak by itself, I eat the steak and I'm good. But if there's lobster mashed potatoes or fries sitting there, I keep going and that's like an extra thousand calories at least. Well, part of that is the blood sugar response. Some people will say, why do I crave a big dessert or dessert something sweet after a big meal? That should make no sense, right? Well, that's a blood

sugar increase. But the other reason is your gut has neurons in it. Those neurons signal to the dopamine centers in your brain. And those neurons are looking for basically three things. They want amino acids. We are basically amino acid foraging machines, fatty acids, because fats are good for us too. That's my opinion, not in excess, but they're good for us and sugar. And when you get enough steak, you're getting enough amino acids and fatty acids. And that signal is sent to your brain and a

pathway shuts down that says, I need more. The moment you throw in a cookie after that steak, all of a sudden your appetite goes, and it's not blood sugar, or at least not blood sugar alone. It's those neurons in your gut going, oh, there's sugar coming into my system. Get more of that because it's an evolutionary conserved system designed to get you more resources. So this is why if you look at your gut brainbrain axis as, yes, there's a microbiome, and that's important too. But if you think about it as it's sensing things independent of taste, it's actually looking for specific nutrients. Then I think if people forage most for high-quality protein and high-quality fats, it's kind of obvious that that's the best way to build the basis of your diet. And then carbohydrates on a kind of as needed basis, right?

If you're doing a lot of weight training, depleting glycogen, et cetera. So that's where I think there's a place for lower zero carbohydrate diets. I tried carnivore with the fruit and honey and all that. And I just could gorge myself and gorge myself. I didn't do well on that. If I've ever just done meat, I actually feel pretty good. I confess, but I'm an omnivore. So you gorge yourself on fruit and honey?

Is that what you're doing? So I've done just meat and I felt pretty good to great. I mean, you feel lighter, you definitely lose weight. You're holding less water. I found it hard to train really hard with the weights. Yeah, me too. And so I asked Paul Saladino, I said, I want to bring in some rice and oatmeal here because I'm suffering in the gym and that's my, I love working out.

And he said, well, do fruit and honey in addition to that. So I added in fruit, non-pasteurized cheese and honey the way they do that. And sorry, Paul, for me, all it did was just send my appetite through the roof. I was just like gorging myself with cheese and fruit and meat all the time. I didn't feel well and I still couldn't train well. So for me, what works best is mostly quality proteins and quality fats. And I get some, I eat a bit of butter and saturated fats, but also carbohydrates. Is there any, yeah.

Is there any evidence that rice is bad for you? No. So I judge things on, you know, obviously on science, but also on how I feel after I eat them. And when I eat pasta, I feel like I ate a brick. I feel like I ate, like, paste. How much pasta are we talking? I eat a lot. Yeah.

I'm a glutton. I mean. I like a big bowl of spaghetti with, like, sausage and meatball. So good. I love it. Lasagna. I love it. But if you train hard, it should be fun, right?

I don't feel like that with rice. lasagna. I love it. But if you train hard, it should be fun, right? I don't feel like that with rice. When I have rice, like you say, if I have like a steak and some rice, I eat the rice and I'll feel full. I feel good, but I do not feel like, oh, I don't feel terrible. And it seems to give me energy for workouts. The problem that I had with pure carnivore was that I work out very hard. And when I work out very hard on pure carnivore, I was struggling. I didn't like it. When I added fruit though, I didn't have the same problem that you had. That's like most of my diet. We're talking like 90%. 90% of my diet is just meat and fruit. That's 90% of my diet. I'll eat a salad if i feel like eating a salad i enjoy

salads but i always make sure that i'm only putting olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette that's all i use i don't use like salad dressings because they're all filled with seed oils and sugar yeah it's all garbage it's like so many people think they're eating well like my god you have 500 calories of nonsense on your salad that you know and it's like it's not good for you yeah you and I eat pretty similar I do eat rice oatmeal typically after I train and in the evening I like some carbohydrates for my meal because it helps me sleep I've read things about glyphosate and oatmeal and that some oatmeal's have a very high level of glyphosate contamination or Shana Swan when or phthalates.

Yes, phthalates. Glyphosate's a different thing. That's Roundup. Yeah, I think the nutrition, you know, it's clear. Again, I'm citing him a lot because, frankly, he's like an encyclopedia for this stuff, and he can call it meta-analysis like nobody's business. You know, Lane's made it very clear by pointing out the data

that carbohydrates aren't going to disrupt your ability to burn fat, right? It's about keeping calories in. Calories in calories out. Lane is very specific about that. And I think he's absolutely right. You know, there's so many people that have these ideas that if you eat carnivore, you burn fat because of how you eat less calories. You get satisfied quicker. You eat less calories. Well, I have one idea that I'm hoping someone will test, which is when you're on a low-carbohydrate diet or you're doing intermittent fasting, one thing that's very clear is that your adrenaline and noradrenaline, epinephrine levels, are higher. And one of the things that you see is that people are more alert, and when they're more alert, they move more. And that brings us back to NEAT, this non-exercise-induced thermogenesis.

As you said, you eat a big bowl of pasta, and it tends to make you feel kind of sedentary. Whereas when you just eat meat, you can go, go, go. I ran into Jordan Peterson not that long ago. And he's really big. He does three steaks a day. And not just for his age, he looks very fit and he feels strong. Now, I don't know what he's doing in the realm of training. I don't think he lifts weights. Exactly. So I don't think he has to replenish glycogen the same way many people do. But I think for people who are doing mostly cardiovascular exercise, some resistance training, I think he does some. The carnivore thing may work very well. But I think that also just being a mobile moving person.

And, you know, this thing about meat was discovered because they noted that people that were very thin tend to move a lot. It was a reverse. It was kind of correlation in both directions, whereas people who are larger tend to be pretty sedentary and they move slower. I think one of the best examples online, at least of someone who's on a pure carnivore diet, who's very active is Sean Baker. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Sean Baker is just I mean, he regularly posts his workouts. He's 56 years old. Oh, yeah. He doesn't incorporate organs. He doesn't do anything else. I mean, I don't know if he's taking any vitamins or minerals, but I mean, most of what that guy eats is steak. He looks super fit. Great. He's very fit. I know a number of police officers and firefighters are doing that now because a lot of their job, especially police officers, is sedentary and then it's go, go, go.

And they seem to like that. There's a study on intermittent fasting that was done by Satyam Panda's lab out of the Salk on firefighters because their schedules are crazy. And being a night owl and then swing shifts is just terrible, wreaks havoc on your metabolic system. I mean it's just one of the quickest ways to make yourself ill. But we need shift workers, right? Thank you, shift workers. So the, the, the intermittent fasting and these more, let's just call them elimination diets where it's mainly carnivore really helped them. Those communities stay fitter and more active. There's a guy on Instagram. I don't, I don't know his name, but I love his police posts.

He has, he shows us amazing. And he sometimes puts up this post. I love these ones. I do see how intense that job is and like, wow. And then, but he'll post like supplements and it's a steak, you know, he's just all about protein training and the job, you know, in other aspects of life, he keeps quiet, um, uh, for good reason, of course, but it's clear that for people that need to be active or just, or who are sitting a ton that the carnivore diet might be a great thing. And now I'm not talking about the carnivore fruit, meat, honey thing. Again, apologies, Paul, I'm not saying that's bad but these are people are mainly just doing meat yeah and they just feel like their appetite

is more regular and cops you kind of see it's a binary distribution they're either really fit or they're really unfit yeah and and listen it's got to be an incredibly hard job firefighters the fitness part it seems a little bit more aligned to like working out at the station and things like that in any case um they have a, um, they have a lot more downtime. They have a lot more downtime. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, um, we were talking, uh, I think last time we spoke about, um, supplementation as it relates to, you know, metabolic pathways. And one thing I've been tracking pretty closely is this whole, you know, the NMN thing has now taken a different direction. I was going to bring that up before we wrap this up. So, yeah. So let's explain NMN for people.

It's a precursor for NAD+. Right. So NAD is critical to energy production in all cells. Vital. And levels of NAD tend to go down as we age. It's an absolute requirement for cellular health and life. You need it. Some years ago, as David Sinclair came on this podcast and discussed that his laboratories, a tenured professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School, and other laboratories are starting to explore stimulating the NAD pathway as a tool for extending lifespan in mice.

extending lifespan in mice. And that there were already some data from yeast. There are now some clinical trials in humans. You can't just take NAD or you can, but it doesn't get into cells very easily here. I'm painting with a broad brush, but there are basically two ways that you can tickle this pathway, increase NAD. One is to take NMN, right? Some people will try different B vitamins, but NMN, which the idea is that it gets into cells and is converted into NAD. Some people are more proponents of taking NR, okay? So, and the end product is thought to be the same. However, there's a lot of controversy

about whether or not NAD or NR are better. NR is what was initially sold under the brand name Elysium with a unbelievable cast of scientific advisors, Nobel Prize winners is a very East Coast oriented thing. But a colleague of mine right downstairs for me at Stanford School of Medicine, who has a Nobel Prize for studying this for discovering the structure of RNA, Roger Kornberg, his daddy discovered RNA, Arthur Kornberg, there was an there was literally an ad of him holding a true nitrogen bottle like this, you know? And it's like, okay, I started paying attention to this. NR and NMN, they're taking an oral form in capsules.

Some people are giving NAD infusions out there. This is a more expensive boutique thing, but after David started talking about NMN, a lot of people, including myself, started experimenting with it. Now, just to take a step back, I know a lot of people, including myself, started experimenting with it. Now, just to take a step back, I know a lot of people out there, like if there isn't a double-blind placebo-controlled trial,

you know, random trial, then why would you ever take something? And then there are a lot of people, like David or me, or a lot of people out there who think, well, if there are some mouse data or something safe, why wouldn't I try, right? Because when it comes to longevity, nobody wants to be in the control group.

Yeah, right. It's like, you know. So this is a highly contentious field. But then what's happened is, so you can take NMN as a subliminal powder. Which seems to be more effective, NMN or NR? Okay, there are people who will argue NR. Are there people that take both?

I was taking both for a while. How did you feel? I felt like I had more energy. Now, it's subjective. It's an NM1 thing. But I still take NMN sublingually. I take a pretty high dose. So the recommendation was anywhere from 500 milligrams to about a gram and a half.

When you say sublingually, are you taking it? I take a powder and put it under my tongue. No, how are you getting this powder? So should I tell you how it was banned and how I'm still getting it? I was buying it. You could buy it from Renew by Science. And now it's banned?

Yeah, I have no relationship to Renew by Science. But now it's banned officially? Yeah, so what happened was this last year, something was sent to the FDA. There's a company called Metro International Biotech, sometimes just referred to as Metro Biotech. This is a company that has a trial. They're studying something similar to NMN. It's a slight variation on NMN. It's an experimental drug. And the way the FDA works is if something is being explored as an experimental potential prescription drug or pharmaceutical compound, it cannot be sold as a supplement. So it's a question of what went in first. Now, this happened a few years ago for something called NAC, N-A-C-D-O-L-C-I-S-T-E-N.

And NAC is still available despite it initially getting banned. And I'll tell you how it was rescued from that. despite it initially getting banned. And I'll tell you how it was rescued from that. So it turns out that Metro International Biotech is a company that has a pretty impressive advisory board, Liwei Tsai from MIT, who I know, Alzheimer's researcher, some other folks. David Sinclair is part of the company.

It's either his company or he's certainly on the head of the advisory board or on the advisory board. That's what the website says. So there are a lot of people that are a bit inflamed, if you will, because this thing was popularized through the discussion of NMN and its potential virtues. And then now the FDA sent out a ruling early this year that supplement

companies cannot sell it. Many supplement companies responded to that and said, okay, we won't sell it. Other companies such as Renew by Science, we'll see what happens after this podcast, have continued to sell it. If you go on there this morning, you could buy NMN. So the FDA- I want to buy some before this podcast gets to air. Yeah, I have a boatload. I'll give you some too. And it's clean. Yeah, so the bags of it are the best way to go because you can buy it in pretty high volume and the bags are canisters. And I personally take, because I'll tell you the results that I experienced, which I really liked. I take about two grams per morning under my tongue. Definite increase in subjective feeling of increase in energy. And you believe

that sublingual is the way to go as opposed to taking it in oral form and pills? Yeah. And that's because a Tia who, again, Peter, forgive me if I'm misspeaking here, but Atiyah was like, there's no way that's going to get into your cells, taking his capsules. And I said, what about sublingual? He's like, I just don't see how it could happen. But it's been proven that it gets in through IV. Right. It gets in through IV and they're also electrophoretic patches, some NAD patches. I managed to stock up on those. I can send you some of those have a huge cache of those so this is a patch you put on it slow release of nad yeah yeah it's got two elect electrodes and you just put it yeah it's pretty it's good stuff that's some robot shit so alex friedman you know who takes no supplements he lives on meat athletic greens element and mint

tea you know well yeah those are all good and elements a good supplement athletic greens is awesome yeah so people are upset um because they feel like they were turned on to this stuff and then it's now um right so this could soon be a prescription drug now keep in mind that the resveratrol thing was similar in the sense that there was a variation on resveratrol that was patented and sold to a company. And that sort of didn't pan out or is still a work in progress. And you can still buy resveratrol. It's not a problem because it was different enough. So the FDA decided to let NAC stay on the market because many, many people wrote letters to the FDA saying, this is ridiculous. This is a value. And it was out as a supplement. You can't do that. What's the benefits of a knack

knack is again, in these metabolic pathways for metabolic health. This isn't my area of expertise. I don't want to talk out of turn here. Um, and I don't know the specific details of why people are taking, I don't take that. So part of the reason I think it's healthy to have this conversation is to understand how this stuff happens. NMN could soon be a prescription drug that you can only get with a prescription. And then I think Metro International Biotech will likely hold the patent. If people are interested in certain compounds remaining on market, they should definitely write to the FDA. The FDA, as much as that's a mysterious, you know, big stone block kind of company, very opaque to us.

I think they listen when things happen in large volume. And so I'm certainly going to write letters. And I think that keeping NMN on the market as a supplement would be wonderful for many people that want to take it. Now, the folks who who are involved with NR companies are delighted because for them, this is, again, I'm not going to get into the debate of what's better, NR or NMN, because I just don't have the expertise to parse that. There are other people that are better suited to do that. But the people that work on NR are thinking, like, this is great. Like, let this whole NMN thing pan out because it's a market competition. Does NR have a shelf life?

this whole thing pan out because it's a market competition. Does NR have a shelf life? Like does NR, like if you like have a jar of that stuff from a year ago, is it still good? I have to imagine it is. I, I didn't refrigerate my true nitrogen. Um, and I was, I liked true nitrogen. I experienced the same effects. Again, I have no relationship to that company. They're all podcast bonds. They don't pay me a dime, etc The problem is it's very expensive to take the kind of dosages that I'm taking And whereas we think high dosages is the way to go. I do. Yeah I just didn't experience much of a of a subjective effect at low so something like Elysium That's some yeah, same like how much you we taking of that? I was getting up to a gram and a half How many pills is that? I was up to like seven or eight pills. I think I don't quite recall, but I will say with

NMN, a couple of things happen. First of all, energy, my recovery from workouts much better. I had to take an early day cause it was giving me a lot of energy. And then I'm not into my nails and hair. Frankly, I don't, not one of those when my hair start, which is starting to go, I'm just going to let go. But I did notice like my hair and nails growing at a ridiculous rate and then i came off it just as a control experiment slowed down again so it's really interesting i think there's something there in cellular growth pathways interesting and i didn't change anything else i was doing blood work i still do blood work regularly so you know is it going to make me live longer i don't know but i don't know how i'm gonna the day i die i won't know whether or not i would have lived

shorter or longer yeah it's what how do you feel now is what's important yeah so i i really like the sublingual nmn there's some other talk about the fda making testosterone something where you're going to have to go to your doctor once a month yeah they don't want it by telehealth yeah there's so i think I saw one of Chris Bell that. Yes. Something about this. There are a lot of click click clinics, as I call them, online clinics are prescribing testosterone at whatever dosages that they deem are appropriate for someone based on blood work. I mean, if you go to the doctor, you're basically going to get the same blood work. I don't really- Once a month is preposterous. People do not have the time to go to a doctor once a month. That is very annoying. Well, originally what they wanted to do with TRT, remember people were going in and getting their full 200 milligrams, because it's typically testosterone cypionate in this country, 200 milligrams per mil, which is one syringe full, if it's a one ml syringe, obviously. People were getting that once every two weeks.

And that's a crazy dosage scheme. The best way we know is to divide it up. Sublingually every three days. Subcutaneous. Subcutaneous, excuse me. Yeah, don't go under the tongue. Yeah, don't do that. There was an oral version

that they were working on for a while. There was an oral version of testosterone. Well there are, I mean things like oxandrolone and anivar were always taken as pills. Yeah, but it was a spray. Oh, oh interesting it was a sublingual spray there's the cream there's the dermal scrotal patches that gets weird but subcutaneously every three days is supposed to be the way to go yeah every other day or every three days at a lower dose so spread it out because because the testes normally kick out somewhere between seven and 15 milligrams of testosterone per day. So, and you got two testes, most people anyway. So most men have two testes, obviously. So what

you're talking about is 200 migs on one day and then coming back two weeks later is crazy, but that was really serving the physicians well, because you had to go in for a clinic visit, et cetera. But people would get these giant spikes and then the crash. And the conversion to estrogen from a massive dose all at once. A ridiculous dose that you should never take. And sometimes too big a dose can crush libido. It's a mess. So I think if people are, people need to be able to self-administer.

And all this ruling would do, frankly, is send people into gray market routes. That's all it would do. There's like a zero minus one. Is that going to happen? I sure hope not. I sure hope not. Because I think the number of people that can afford to go to a physician

who's really good, who's going to dose it correctly, is so infinitesimally small. And testosterone is not particularly expensive, but I'm very sensitive to the idea that a lot of the things that hold great health benefits are just outside, you know, a lot of the things that hold great health benefits are just outside the financial reach

of a lot of people. Well, it will become outside the financial reach if you're making people have a doctor's appointment once a month. That's crazy. You're going to have to pay for that appointment unless there's, I mean, I don't imagine your insurance

is going to cover all of that. No, I think it's going to kick up the black market. Yeah. So right now, I'm sure there are people who are starting to stock up Cipionate so they can sell it. It's sending us back into the dark ages, frankly, of that stuff. So hopefully not. If someone tells me who to talk to or petition, you know, as you can tell, I'm getting more vocal about stuff. I also feel safer nowadays to talk about things than I did a few years ago because things are becoming more commonplace,

mostly because I have colleagues who contact me and say like, hey, how do I get on testosterone? Do I need testosterone? Once they start getting older and they see you still look healthy. Psilocybin. Yeah, psilocybin, testosterone, so many different things that are very beneficial. Just look at people that are healthy and happy. What are they doing? And are they honest? Talk to them. And beautiful thing about a podcast is people who are healthy and happy will tell you, this is what I do, and this is what you can do. And this is the pros. This is the cons. Go to a doctor. Get yourself checked out. Don't do it if you're this.

Don't do it if you're that. But there's probably a great number of people that could benefit from these things. Yeah, absolutely. And to say, because we were talking about NMN and David Sinclair, I mean, he's going to know the nuance there. I mean, I don't know all the nuance. I haven't talked to him in a while, but, you know, I think he's definitely in the camp of people in science who are thinking, you know, what's possible, taking some significant steps based on mouse work. And I do want to be fair to people that do that, right?

I do that too. on mouse work. And I do want to be fair to people that do that, right? I do that too. I mostly focused on human studies and human stuff, but there are many people out in the world that are interested in things they can do for their health. And they know that if they're waiting for the random controlled trial and huge numbers of subjects, and especially for people with diseases in their family or that have diseases, like they're not interested in waiting. They don't want to do anything sketchy or dangerous, but they're not interested in waiting. They don't want to do anything sketchy or dangerous, but they're not interested in waiting. So I think David's,

you know, he's really driving certain things hard and some people agree with him. Some people don't, but he's got a vision. The one thing I can say for sure about David is he's got a vision and he's going for it. And, and there are,

you know, this thing about FDA controlling or non FDA controlling, I think it's vexing some people. And it'll be interesting to see how it goes. But if you're interested in keeping NMN or anything on the market, write letters. I know it sounds like a high school thing, like write letters. But in the absence of those letters, there's no chance of things going the way you want. In the presence of those letters, it's like one letter.

You can type it and just email it or email it five times, you know, and see what happens. Okay. Well, Andrew, it's always a treat having you on. I have to process so much information. I have to listen to this three or four times after it's over. But I appreciate you very much. And tell people about your podcast, where they can download it. Well, thank you for having me on.

My pleasure. I always enjoy these conversations. I always learn from you, and I really appreciate you and your team. I really do. The podcast is Huberman lab. Um, that's how we, so Huberman lab.com, you can find all our episodes and they're linked out in all the formats from there. And then wealth of information. Yeah. You just scroll. It's sort of infinite scroll. One thing that we have that I'll, maybe I'll just mention is if you go to the menu and you go to a newsletter, uh, we have a lot of people don't have time to listen to the whole podcast. You can subscribe for free, but if you scroll down,

I've got PDFs of like deliberate heat exposure protocols, deliberate cold exposure. You don't have to sign up. You can literally just get the PDF. And so there's no ask here. You can just get toolkit for sleep and all that stuff with link out. That's amazing. You know, because I do realize that, you know, not everybody has, you know, four and a half hours or two hours to listen to all the details with a notebook. I would hope people would listen. But anyway, that's all there for people. And so they can grab that content if they want. That's fantastic.

I'm so glad you provide that. That's really, really cool. Thanks so much. I appreciate your brother. Appreciate it. Bye, everybody. Thank you.