A (13:30)

I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find.

B (13:42)

A more in depth program for analyzing.

A (13:44)

Blood, urine and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test. Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor informed insights on.

B (14:22)

How to best reduce those mercury levels.

A (14:24)

Which included limiting my tuna consumption because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so.

B (14:42)

Important for health and and while I've.

A (14:43)

Been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use that is Getting the tests done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are that I recently joined their advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try function, go to functionhealth.com Huberman Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com huberman to get early.

B (15:16)

Access to function so let's think about something now. Let's think about stress from not whether or not it's acute or chronic, whether or not it's good for us or Bad for us, but on three different timescales, because then we can arrive at what this is all about as it relates to emotions. But I really want you to understand the difference between the three kinds of stress on three different timescales. Short term, medium term and long term. And what it's good for and what it's bad for. I think we've all heard that stress is bad for us. We've seen these pictures intended to frighten us. And indeed they are frightening. You see the nice really plump brain on the left says healthy or control. And then you see the brain that says stressed above it on the right and it's like withered. Or, or we see that the hippocampus, an area involved in memory, is smaller. People that are stressed, I think we've all heard now so many times that stress is bad, but in that conversation, unfortunately it's eclipsed some of the really positive things that stress does for us in the short term. When the stress response hits, that is good for your immune system. I know that might be a tough pill to swallow, but it's absolutely true. In fact, stress often comes in the form of bacterial or viral infection. And the stress response is in part organized to combat bacterial and viral infection. So short term stress and the release of adrenaline in particular, or epinephrine, same thing, adrenaline. Epinephrine is good for combating infection. And this to me is just not discussed enough. So that's why I'm discussing it here. And it relates to a particular tool that many of you ask about, but I don't often get the opportunity to talk about in such an appropriate context. It's not that it's ever inappropriate to talk about, but what I'm about to talk about now is the use of again, respiration, breathing, to somewhat artificially activate the stress response. And that will accomplish two things. Okay, I'll return to medium and long term stress. But I wanna say short term stress is good because the dilation of the pupils, the changes in the optics of the eyes, the quickening of the heart rate, the sharpening of your cognition, and in fact that short term stress brings certain elements of the brain online that allow you to focus. Now it narrows your focus. You're not good at seeing the so called big picture, but it narrows your focus. It allows you to do these, what I call duration, path, outcome, types of analysis. It allows you to evaluate your environment, evaluate what you need to do. It primes your whole system for better cognition. It primes your immune system to combat infection, and that all Makes sense when you think about the fact that famine, thirst, bacterial infections, viral infections, invaders, all of this stuff liberates a response in the body that's designed to get you to fight back against whatever stressor that happens to be psychological, physical, bacterial, viral. Again, the stress response is generic. The tool takes advantage of the fact that when adrenaline is released in the body from the adrenals, it has the effect of also liberating a lot of these killer cells from the immune organs, in particular from the spleen, but from elsewhere as well, and interactions with the lymphatic system that combat infection. The way this works in the real world is best captured by a study that can be mapped back to so called Wim Hof breathing. Now, Wim Hof breathing is so named after the so called iceman Wim Hof. There are two components to a sort of breathing protocol that he developed that was based also on what's called tummo breathing. T U M M O so before whim there was tummo breathing, and before, many people call this now super oxygenation breathing. So it's deliberate hyperventilation. Why would somebody want to do this? Well, deliberate hyperventilation done for maybe 25 cycles. So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. That pattern of breathing, rapid movements of the diaphragm will liberate adrenaline from the adrenals. When adrenaline is released in the body, you are in a better position to combat infections. And so whether or not you breathe very quickly in these cycles of 25 breaths, and regardless of what you call it doesn't matter, adrenaline is released if you take a cold shower, adrenaline is released if you go into an ice bath deliberately. And even if you do it non deliberately, adrenaline is released. You are mimicking the stress response. And that adrenaline serves to suppress or combat incoming infections. And this was beautifully shown in a study that was published in a very fine journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the US it's literally called Proceedings the National Academy of usa to distinguish it from other proceedings of other national academies and other countries. The way the experiment went is that people were injected with endotoxin, or in some cases they were injected with a bacterial wall that mimics infection. It gives you a fever, it makes you feel nauseous, it makes you feel sick. It is not pleasant. Half of the people did a particular pattern of breathing that looked very much like the pattern of breathing I described a moment ago of doing 25 deep inhales and exhales, followed by an exhale holding their breath, then repeating 25 inhales, exhales, holding their breath. So this would look something like this or if you're listening, it sounds like 25, 30 times, you'll start feeling, feeling heated up. You'll start feeling the adrenaline response. You're liberating adrenaline in your body. Then exhale, hold your breath for 15 seconds and then repeat. Now I want to emphasize never, ever, ever do this anywhere near water. People have passed out, so called shallow water broke out, people have died. Please don't do it at all unless you get clearance to do it from your doctor because there are some pulmonary effects and whatnot. And the breath holds should definitely not be done by anyone that has glaucoma or pressure, you know, concerns for the eyes. But these repeated cycles of breathing that liberate adrenaline allowed the group that did that protocol to essentially experience zero symptoms from the ejection of this E. Coli, which is remarkable. They had much reduced or no symptoms. They didn't feel feverish, they didn't feel sick, they weren't vomiting, no diarrhea, which is remarkable but makes total sense when you think about the fact that the short term stress response, that what's typically called the acute stress response is designed to combat all stressors. Many of us are familiar with the experience of work, work, work, work, work, or taking care of a loved one or stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Then we finally relax, maybe we even go on vacation, like oh, now I'm finally going to get the break. And then we get sick. And that's because the adrenaline response crashed and your immune system crashed with it. So please understand this. Now many of you might say, well, how long is it? 2 hours, is it 3 hours? A lot of you out there that really like specificity, it will vary for everybody. I would just kind of use a rule of thumb when you are no longer able to achieve good sleep, what good sleep means to you, Please see the episodes on sleep. If you want more about tools to sleep when you are no longer able to achieve good sleep, you are now moving from acute stress to chronic stress. You need to be able to turn the stress response off.

A (22:48)

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs and it tastes great. Now I've been drinking AG1 since 2012 and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.comhuberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, go to drink ag1.comhuberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year'S supply of vitamin D3K2K2.

B (24:25)

Okay, so now let's talk about medium term stress. Medium term stress is gonna be stress that lasts anywhere from several days to several weeks. What is stress threshold? Well, stress threshold is actually our ability to cognitively regulate what's going on in our body. A lot of stress inoculation, a lot of managing medium term stress on the timescale of weeks or maybe even a couple months. So we're not talking about years stress. A lot of that has to do with raising our stress threshold. It's about capacity. And there are very simple tools, excellent tools, that will allow us to modulate our capacity for stress. And they look a lot like the tools I just described. They involve placing oneself deliberately into a situation where our adrenaline is increased somewhat, not to the extreme. And then when we feel flooded with adrenaline and normally we would panic, it's about cognitively, mentally, emotionally calming ourselves and being comfortable with that response in our body. And what would this look like? You can use the cyclic hyperoxygenation breathing to combat infection. If you're feeling kind of run down. And there is also a way in which you can use things like cold showers, or if you exercise and you bring your heart rate up very high, you kind of go into that high intensity realm where your heart is beating a little bit harder than you're comfortable with. The key in those moments is to learn to relax the mind while the body is very activated. One way that you can do this, and this is kind of fun, if it's approved by your physician and you're able to do this, you can bring your heart rate up. You could do this through an ice bath, if that's your thing, or a cold shower or something. Oxygenation, breathing. Or you could sprint or you could go hard on the bike, whatever it is that brings your heart rate up. And then what you want to do is you want to actually try and calm the mind while your body is in this heightened state of activation. When we are stressed, our pupils dilate. The effect of that pupil dilation is to create tunnel vision. It literally narrows our view of the visual world. We no longer see in panorama. And there's some other effects as well, but that's because the visual system, through this cranial nerve system that I described before for, is tethered and is part of this autonomic nervous system. By deliberately dilating your gaze, meaning not moving your head and eyes around, but by deliberately going from tunnel vision to broader panoramic vision, literally seeing more of your environment all at once, it creates a calming effect on the mind because it releases a particular circuit in the brainstem that's associated with alertness, AKA stress. Now, this is very powerful. If you're running, for instance, and you're at max capacity or close to it, or you're kind of hitting like 80, 90% of maximum on the bike, and you dilate your gaze, what you'll find is the mind can relax while the body is in full output. And this relates to work that in various communities, people are working with this in the sports community, military communities, et cetera. But it's a form, not really of stress inoculation. It's more about raising stress threshold so that the body is going to continue to be in a high alertness, high reactivity mode, high output, but the mind is calm. And so this isn't about unifying mind and body. This is actually about using body to bring up your level of activation, then dissociating, not the clinical dissociation kind of disorders, but dissociating the mental or emotional response from what's going on in your body. And over time. So if you do this, you know, a couple times, you don't have to do this every workout, but if you do this every maybe once a week or so, you start being comfortable at these higher activation states. What once felt overwhelming and like a lot of work now is manageable. It feels tolerable. So that's for navigating medium term stress and then there's long term stress. Now long term stress is bad. You do not want adrenaline up in your system for a very long time. In fact, ideally you would have your stress go up various times throughout the day, but it would never stay elevated and it would never prevent you from getting a good night's sleep. We know that chronic stress, elevated stress, and especially in the so called type A personalities, creates heart disease leading killer in most every country, but in particular in the US but, but by no means do you want to be stressed out all the time, chronically for months and months and months and years on end. The best tools, the best mechanisms that we know to modulate long term stress might surprise you a little bit. First of all, there are gonna be the things that don't surprise you, which is everyone knows getting regular exercise, getting good sleep, using real time tools to try and tamp down the stress response, et cetera, that's all going to be really useful. The data really point to the fact that social connection, and certain types of social connection in particular are what are going to mitigate or reduce long term stress. And this is a particularly important issue nowadays where we have all these proxies or surrogates for social connection. You know, we're online and texting with people a lot. Everyone has this kind of need to stay connected to one another. Humans are incredibly social creatures. The way to think about social connection and how it can mitigate some of the long term effects of stress is really through the systems of neuromodulation like serotonin. Serotonin again is a neuromodulator. Neuromodulators are a little bit like playlists in the brain. They tend to amplify or bias the likelihood that certain brain circuits and body circuits are going to be activated and that others will not. Serotonin generally gives us feelings of well being at very high levels. It makes us feel blissed and it tends to make us feel like we have enough in our immediate environment. When we see somebody that we recognize and trust, Serotonin is released in the brain and that has certain positive effects on the immune system and on other systems of neural repair and synapses and things that really reinforce force connections in the brain and prevent that long term withering of connections. So serotonin is tied to social connection. Now, social connection can take many forms. Some of those can be romantic attachments, those could be familial attachments that are non romantic, friendship, pets, even attachments to things that just delight us. Having a sense of delight, a sense of really enjoying something that you see and engage in, witness or participate in that is associated with the serotonin system. And certainly play is one of those things. Social connection of various forms, those are things to invest in, I'll be the first to admit. Social connection and friendship and relationships of all kinds to animals or humans or inanimate objects takes work, it takes investment, it takes time in not needing everything to be exactly the way you want it to be. Social connection is something that we work for, but it is incredibly powerful. Finding just a few people, even one or an animal or something that you delight in, believe it or not, has very positive effects on mitigating this long term stress, on improving various aspects of our life as it relates to stress and emotionality. Now, how do you know if you're making serotonin? You don't know in the moment, but you can learn if you pay attention to kind of recognize these feelings of comfort, trust, bliss, delight. And those are not weak terms, those are not associated just with psychological terms. They are every bit as physiological as the movement of your muscles or the secretion of adrenaline.

A (32:21)

I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about 1 to 3 degrees. 8 Sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle and end of the night.

B (33:02)

I've been sleeping on an eight Sleep.

A (33:04)

Mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod cover called the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity. I find that very useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even.

B (33:22)

Colder in the middle of the night.

A (33:23)

And warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and and rapid eye movement sleep. It also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.comhuberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.comhuberman now there are a.

B (33:52)

Plethora of things that will also impact well being and allow you to modulate modulate your long term stress reduce the likelihood that you'll engage in long term stress. There are compounds that are not prescription compounds that can modulate the stress system and sometimes because of the way that life is, we just don't have the opportunity to control life and to control our response to stress. The three I want to focus on and one that I think you need to be cautious about that I've mentioned before include Ashwagandha, L Theanine and melatonin. Let's talk about melatonin first. Melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal in direct relationship to how much darkness you are in. Not emotional darkness, but light suppresses melatonin. Melatonin helps you fall asleep. It doesn't help you stay asleep. I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin because it's supplemented typically at very high levels, you know, one to three milligrams or even more. That is an outrageously high dose. It also has a number of potentially negative effects on the reproductive axis and hormones there. The other is L. Theanine. I've talked about L. Theanine, which provided it safe for you, can be taken 100mg or 200mg about a 30 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep. It can enhance the transition to sleep and depth of sleep for many people. It increases gaba, this inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It tends to turn off our forebrain a little bit or reduce the activity of our kind of thinking systems and ruminating systems help people fall asleep. But theanine has also been shown for people that are chronically anxious or chronically stressed to significantly increase relaxation. It is known to have a minor effect on anxiety, but eight studies have shown that it definitely has a notable effect on stress. The other supplement that can be very useful is Ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is known to lower anxiety and cortisol. This is great. I mean the opportunity for me anyway to be able to take something that can help me reduce my cortisol so that I don't get some of the long term effects of stress. And I'm not going to take ashwagandha year round. I would only do this if I was feeling like I wasn't managing my short and medium term stress well. So I don't take it on a regular basis. I do take it when I'm in these times when things are particularly stressful. So social connection and some supplementation of course, diet, exercise, sleep for long term stress. So I hope today you were able to take a slightly different view of this thing that we call stress. Not just see it as evil, but see it as powerful and useful in certain contexts. Great for us in certain contexts and problematic in other contexts. And as well to think about the various tools that I've presented that can allow you to adjust and modulate your internal levels of alertness or calmness so that you can lean more effectively into life, which includes sleep and social connection and the work you have to do. And of course acknowledges that the events in the world are beyond our control. What's in our control is how we react to them. Something that's commonly said in the wellness and self help and psychology world, but for which there often aren't as many concrete tools that we can really look to and trust in real time. As always, really appreciate your time and attention today. I hope you practice some of the tools if they're right for you. I hope you think hard about stress and how you can control your stress. And above all, as always, thank you for your interest in science.