B (3:05)

Well, thanks for the kind words. And no, I had no idea. I'd never done anything public facing. It was kind of in me. Like, it was getting built up in me over the course of my academic career, because I've always been interested in health. I mean, after I broke my foot skateboarding a couple of times, I had to break the cardinal rule of skateboarding, which was I went to the football coach, because back then it was like jocks and skateboarders were two separate entities, right? It was like the Breakfast Club. And I went to him and I just said, listen, I'm getting hurt and I need to get strong. Also, I got a new girlfriend. My first, you know, real girlfriend, and her previous boyfriend had been on the football team. And I was like, this guy skiing. I was like, you know, I need to. I need to figure something out here. So he. He explained, you know, here's how you strengthen your body. Push ups, pull ups. Here's the weight room, you know. And so I'd sneak in there, not tell any of my skateboard friends I did that. Now, skateboarders, they all work out. They even train their neck because of all the trying to protect their bodies. They're athletes, after all. But back then, it was. You had to do it all in secret. And then I got really interested in nutrition and supplementation because of the. Yeah, sort of because of those. Community. You know, I spent a little bit of time in gyms, but none of the supplements. They were all like weight gainers and pre workouts and things like that. It was really because my dad's Argentine, and he had these strong feelings about, like, you need to eat meat and you need to eat eggs and vegetables. And my mom was more of a vegetarian type, so there was a little bit of a conflict there. And I decided to just kind of experiment and see how I felt best. And so pretty early on, I was like, this is wild. Like, we grew up eating decent food at home, but when I'm out with my friends, it's all crap. Like, everyone's like Taco Bell and, you know, and I started realizing, if I eat well, I feel better. Now. This was, like, completely outside what my peers were doing. But then when I went off to college, so I went to Santa Barbara.

A (5:02)

Yeah, go gauchos.

B (5:04)

Go gauchos. And that's when I got really excited about biology and psychology.

A (5:10)

And did you at that point think, oh, my gosh, I'm actually smart. Like, I'm capable of reading, researching, retaining information. Was That a turning point?

B (5:18)

Yeah. I mean, I've always been good at memorizing information and especially if I draw things out or I write things down.

A (5:24)

Yeah, your recall is bananas.

B (5:27)

Yeah, it's gotten a little shaky over the years, but, yeah, my colleagues used to joke that I had pubmed in my head.

A (5:33)

Right.

B (5:34)

I do. I don't have a photographic memory, but if I want to remember something, I generally can. It's like, this is not easy. It's hard. I had a lot of making up of gaps in my education to do, but I took all the courses I needed to take, and I was like, this is actually a lot easier than skateboarding because I can study 10 hours, but I don't break my bones. It doesn't hurt as much as. And I think I just wasn't destined to be an athlete. Falling in love with science repaired my relationship with my dad.

A (6:08)

Oh, that's so nice.

B (6:09)

Because he's a scientist. He's a theoretical physicist. We then had some common ground. I think I didn't appreciate until I was older that, you know, he was foreign. So it wasn't that he didn't care about my soccer games or he didn't care, but it was just hard for him to plug into the culture that we were in. And we've enjoyed a really great relationship talking about physics and talking about science and the culture of science, which is a whole other thing, the personalities. And so we, like, really, we bonded through that.

A (6:39)

Did you resent that in any sense that you had to? Sort of. You were the one that had to take on the career and the education that would then bring you to connection with him?

B (6:51)

Yeah. It's interesting. I think my dad and I have done some really good work. Not formal therapy, but really good work around psilocybin. I wish. I wish. I don't think my dad would do it. That would be cool. Dad, you want to do a psilocybin drilling with me? He probably would. Now he's 82 and still just firing on eight cylinders. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that is part of it. There was this resent, like, I'm not gonna be a scientist, you know, this kind of thing. And then, I mean, I think maybe it's just getting older. I'm like, how did I possibly expect him to know exactly what I needed at all times?

A (7:31)

It's like a resizing that we do of our parents in a way, it's like we afford them the dignity of being just a person. At the end of the day, I think It's a big milestone to cross as an adult.

B (7:45)

Yeah. No, I realize I'm getting a little emotional about it because I think I've finally come to this place where I got my mom's kind of sensitivity, and I'm very grateful to her for that. My mom would do, like, poetry clubs in the summer. We would all have to, like, remember poetry, and then we'd get a gummy worm or something like that. She's the lyrical one.

A (8:03)

I love it.

B (8:04)

And my dad. Yeah, his life was very foreign to me, I think, as I. That's what it is. I just realized now. Thank you. As I got into science and I realized it's like, this requires a lot of time and it occupies a lot of mental space, and that must have been what he was doing. So we got to communicate about that a bit, and now it's been great. And also, I should say my dad, he's a bit of an iconoclast because he was an experimental physicist turned theoretical physicist turned computer scientist, and he never allowed himself to be so central to one little sub community that they owned him. Like, no one can own him. And so I've got that spirit in me. I love podcasting, but, you know, I don't want to see myself just as a podcaster, just like I didn't want to see myself just as a scientist.

A (8:51)

I understand that very much. I do. What is the criteria you use to determine whether you're going to put somebody on the pod?

B (8:59)

You know, I really like people that are outside the box and are just, like, taken on, you know, built entire industries. You should come on the podcast, by the way. This has been in the back of my mind.

A (9:08)

I want it on for your podcast.

B (9:09)

No, you absolutely. Are. Are you kidding me? I mean, you're an amazing example of. Of somebody who has followed their interests, has built incredible businesses, but where there's so much. Of so much offering based on your experience. Right. I think that the. Yeah, I think that's really. It. Is that some people want their experience and their knowledge to be theirs and keep it in their community so that no one can kind of damage the bubble. And I think the really brave people. And truly, you know, you embody this like they're putting things out there with the understanding that some people aren't gonna like it, but so many people will love it and resonate with it and be like, that's really cool. So when I bring people on to talk about their work, if they're practitioners, it's. I wanna know what their mindset was how they cast away the history of their field, how they battled, challenge, how they frame things. I think that that's the human spirit, all the different elements braided together.

A (10:07)

Exactly.

B (10:07)

And there's always a sub story. Like it could be okay. The challenges of my childhood. But also these days, I more in like, my mom had a poetry club. I had a bird club with my friend Eddie. He's gonna kill me for saying this. And he's the chair of neurosurgery. He's the I will go on record and no one will battle me on this. In the community of neurosurgeon, he is the best neurosurgeon on the planet.

A (10:28)

Wow.

B (10:29)

And he's highly revered. He does surgeries no one else will do.

A (10:32)

Is he doing the Neuralink stuff?

B (10:33)

He has his own company doing that. Sorry, Elon. They would love to get him at Neuralink. He's doing things honestly, they're doing very cool stuff. He's doing things 10 times cooler. W been written up a number of times. I'm so proud of him for he's gotten people with locked in syndrome to speak.

A (10:51)

Oh, my gosh.

B (10:51)

He had a patient, Pablo, who hadn't spoken in 10 years. And through an AI interface that he built with decoding speech and language, which is really what Eddie's expert at Palabol said. Hello. He can communicate with people.

A (11:05)

Oh, my gosh.

B (11:06)

That's great. I mean, he's been written up a number of times for that and other feats. He's spectacularly good

A (11:12)

and he obviously has the heart of a poet as well. If he's having a bird club and also getting someone to speak, it's so poetic.

B (11:20)

It's amazing. It's amazing. I mean, he's changing neurosurgery, he's changing medicine. He saved a. I won't mention there's a very public facing physician who paralyzed himself with a stem cell injection into his spine recently. Don't get stem cells injected into the discs, I was told, because the discs can't receive stem cells.

A (11:38)

Oh, boy.

B (11:38)

But he went to a clinic. He was paralyzed. Eddie did the surgery. His team did the sur say that no one else would do. This gentleman is now walking again. They were going to sever his spinal cord. So these are real heroes. So I feel like a lot of the podcast for me was about my love of a topic, the beauty and

A (11:58)

utility of biology, and proliferate this wisdom throughout the culture. You have so many listeners. I mean, it's amazing to be like the tree and then the roots that spread from it.

B (12:10)

It's been fun, it's been wild. I mean, the public facing piece has been really hard. I was not prepared for that.

A (12:17)

You weren't? What was hard or what is hard?

B (12:20)

You said it in your discussion with Rick. You know, people kind of want to find. Keep you where they found you. And so I think people are like, oh, he's a science professor talking about biology. But, you know, I brought on former Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates on the podcast because he has the best training tools and he doesn't care if there's a double blind, placebo controlled study for that. We just wanted to showcase that knowledge so people see and then they go, wait, what's happened to your podcast? But I hate to say this, it sounds kind of selfish because there's always been a give in the podcast. But the podcast is called Huberman Lab for a reason. I mean, it's my podcast. If I want to talk to someone, I'm going to talk to them. I'm totally, you know, my PhD is still there. I'm still tenured. I'm not worried about whether or not I was or am a scientist. It's, you know, so it's obviously for the audience, but if I want to talk to Dorian or David Choir, I'm going to talk to them. And so the hard part, I think, is when people think that that fundamentally changes the information they heard before.

A (13:13)

Right.

B (13:14)

It's not different. It's still true. It's also been important, I think, for me to understand that vegans versus carnivore versus For a long time, resistance training was looked down upon for women. Now we know it's very important. The science takes a while to catch up.

A (13:31)

Yeah.

B (13:32)

And I think that it's exciting to me now that health and wellness is a hybrid of these things. I've got a colleague at Harvard Med, Chu Fu Ma, who studies acupuncture.

A (13:43)

Wow.

B (13:43)

He's figuring out that certain combinations of needle sites lead to either increases or decreases in inflammation. The ones that increase inflammation can increase mood because sometimes they'll stimulate dopamine release. The other ones can, you know, reliably reduce inflammation to get to gut health issues and things of that sort. So if five years ago or 10 years ago, I said, oh, you know, I'm going to host someone on the podcast to talk about acupuncture. People have been like, oh, God, like, what is this? You know, next, magic carpets?

A (14:13)

I'm aware.

B (14:14)

And so. But I think that the sand between the silos is really starting to show up and it's super exciting.

A (14:20)

It is. And I think that's also where, you know, the consumer in having this new sort of agency around their health and ideas are really forging forward in that sense. And I also think too, you know, there's. And I say this all the time, you know, in the early days of goop, people would say, like, why are you writing a piece on acupuncture or something, you know, in that world? And the other part is, you know, first of all, I believe always, like if something, if there's a modality that is generations and generations and generations old, there's going to be something in there. Like there's just always is. And also you always have to look at. And I'm not saying, of course we need double blind, placebo backed studies, especially when it comes to things like medications and all the things, but there's always somebody who stands to benefit from that monetarily and like, you know, somebody who goes out of their way to study acupuncture and puts the science behind it. Nobody's gonna patent that. It's not gonna become like a $3 billion drug. So the impetus isn't there a lot of times to study these things and to put scientific backing behind them, but there's still validity to them.

B (15:32)

Oh, absolutely. And I think that there are two areas that I learned about recently through the podcast that have just completely reframed the way I think about traditional and modern medicine. The first was I had a guy on the podcast, Chris McCurdy. He's a researcher down in Florida and he studies Kratom, which is this plant that causes both increases in alertness and it's also a mild sedative. And it's used in Indonesia and people chew on it there. And it's just part of the culture here. It's been used to isolate just Kratom from the plant and to create these very potent chemical derivatives that act like opioids. And so it's become a real problem. It's helped some people get off opioids, but it's become a real problem drug. It's sort of like taking the coca.

A (16:19)

It's like an over the counter thing. I saw it on the show.

B (16:22)

A lot of issues and you're gonna start hearing more about this. Just like the. And he explained that just like the coca, the coca leaf can be used to isolate cocaine, which obviously can cause problems for people, but that there are many things within the coca leaf that are beneficial. And that opened up a discussion where he said all the Drug companies have what are called bio prospectors. Most all of the drugs that we take, unless it's a synthetic version of a hormone or something, or a peptide, are drugs that were discovered because they have bio prospectors literally in the jungle learning about these different plants, bringing them back, isolating the different components and seeing which one would be good painkillers, which one would be opioids. So the notion that plants and plant medicine, outside of psychedelics as well, plant medicines, alkaloids and things like that would somehow be woo. Is ridiculous. These are the origin of most modern medicines.

A (17:19)

Right. Like isn't Willow the basis for aspirin?

B (17:22)

Absolutely.

A (17:22)

And berberine is the basis for metformin. Metformin, that's a tree, Mark.

B (17:27)

Yeah, Berberine works as well as metformin for regulating blood sugar, you know, at a fraction of the cost. And then I had a guy named David Fagenbaum on the podcast who was a physician who got Castleman's disease, who cured his own Castleman's disease.

A (17:41)

What is Castleman's disease?

B (17:42)

Castleman's disease, very serious disease. It's, it's a cancer like disease, I believe, Check me on that. But he was close to death in medical school and he actually had to sign away his life and his, you know, he just said, you know, the hell with it, I'm just going to start taking every approved medication in small combinations. And he cured his own Castleman's disease. He now has a not for profit called Every Cure, where people who or whose kids have diseases that are resistant to treatment can use AI to try and come up with using existing approved medications to treat their condition with great success. So here's what's interesting. Most drugs, once they pass through the patent, they're not of interest to the drug companies anymore because they can be sold so cheaply. So there are tons and tons of drugs that have 40, 50 different targets in the body that were marketed for one thing, passed through the patent and actually can be very effective for treating other things. But we don't know. Nobody's studying them in laboratories, no one's marketing them. And his examples in extreme one, but he's got dozens of other examples there. So it means that the so called pharmaceutical industry, while I do think they provide some useful things, it is a business. And right now GLPs obviously are a big deal. And there's something. And by the way, that was discovered because a biologist was studying Gila monsters. Gila monsters don't need to eat very often.

A (19:09)

What is a Gila monster?

B (19:10)

A Gila monster is one of those big, chubby, venomous South American reptiles. I think it was in that movie. What was that? Marlon Brando and Matt. And who's Sarah Jessica Parker's husband?

A (19:23)

Matthew Broderick.

B (19:24)

Roderick. And wasn't it. He was in a movie where there was like a Gila monster or Komodo dragon or something. Anyway, the Gila monster, spelled G I, L, A does not need to eat very often. Some nerdy biologist was like, I wonder how they don't get hungry. Isolated a peptide from the Gila monster.

A (19:42)

Oh, my gosh.

B (19:43)

Turns out that's the GLP one.

A (19:44)

Are you serious?

B (19:45)

Serious?

A (19:46)

I did not know that.

B (19:46)

So this is how biology, like nerd biology, basic science, can lead to cures for obesity, even though there's some issues with GLPs. Perhaps, but. So then you get the.

A (19:55)

What are they?

B (19:56)

Well, you get a lot of muscle loss unless people resistance train the early versions of the Mozempic munjaro, et cetera. For some people, they get a lot of gastric discomfort because there are receptors in the hypothalamus that controls hunger, and there are also receptors in the gut, so it makes people feel really full. And there are receptors for the GLPs all over the brain, just like serotonin SSRIs. It's not a clean treatment for depression. People get side effects. Same thing with the GLPs.

A (20:31)

You know what I find myself doing more and more? Just sitting with things, not rushing to a conclusion when I'm researching longevity protocols or trying to understand conflicting studies on hormone therapy. I need something that can go as deep as I want to go. That's why I've been using Claude. Claude doesn't just hand me a tidy answer and move on. It works through the complexity with me. If I'm reading a 200 page research paper, Claude can analyze the whole thing and help me understand what the data actually, actually says, not what someone wants it to say. And I trust what I'm getting. Clawd is built to be balanced, not to feed you whatever keeps you engaged. No algorithmic agenda, just thinking. Try Clawd for free at Claude AI Goop and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Can you explain why they're saying There are certain GOP's that are single agonists, double, and now there are triple agonists, which are purported to be better overall for the health or less, you know, disadvantageous to muscle loss. What does that mean?

B (21:49)

Yeah. So the.

A (21:50)

Is that true?

B (21:51)

It is true. The big thing that's coming out soon is retatrutide, right? People are already taking it, but they're getting gray market versions or black market versions. So the early version of these drugs existed a while ago where you could agonize, meaning increase the amount of GLP1 that was used to treat diabetes pretty successfully. And those were two to four fold increases in GLP1. People did not lose much weight, if any. Then they developed ozempic Mounjaro, which increased levels of circulating GLP is like a thousandfold. So huge increases. The brain and body are not accustomed to seeing this, okay, but people would lose a ton of weight, but they would also lose muscle mass by not eating.

A (22:33)

Or there's a secondary.

B (22:36)

They would go into sub caloric mode so fast. They would reduce appetite so fast at the level of the brain and the body, so feeling full and not having the drive to eat. And they would lose so much weight so fast. And a large percentage of it was muscle mass. Unless they did resistance training, people quickly realized that they could take less and still get a really great effect. That irked the drug companies. The side effects thing kind of got out of control. And then it became somewhat political. You know, people were saying from the exercise community, I think unfairly said, hey, listen, you know, you just need to do lifestyle things. And I do think that once a person puts on enough adipose tissue, it changes the hormone environment, which changes the brain. And there's a lot of dysregulation that makes it really hard for them to, quote, unquote, just eat less. I'm not sure trying to give people a pass. I do think that people should take really good care of themselves, but these drugs were saving lives. We now have GLP3, which is retatrutide. Eli Lilly holds the patent. I said we. I don't have any relationship with Eli. I wish I bought stock because they're about to make a trillion or more dollars with retatrutide. Retatrutide is a more mild agonist of GLP1. It also increases glucagon and something called GIP. So it hits three different pathways, each a bit more subtly. So lower side effect profile. And people lose up to a third of their body weight across a year or so.

A (24:01)

Wow.

B (24:02)

And it does seem to have some muscle sparing effect. Now what people in the kind of exercise fitness community have realized is that there are places that will synthesize red at true tide. I'm not recommending people do this, but they're taking a gray market black market. We're getting it from compounding pharmacies. Eli Lilly is very upset about this because they stand to make an absolute fortune with this drug. But people are also realizing again that they can take less. They don't necessarily need to take the full prescription dose, which means they can extend the thousand dollar or whatever it is per month prescription. I don't know what the exact price is. They can share it with family members, which you're not supposed to do. People have gotten a little bit renegade about this stuff. It's sort of like sharing music. In the 2000s, people were like, I'm not gonna buy this. Are you kidding me? I'm not gonna buy this movie unless I really love the artist that people are starting to get stuff where they can find it. But I do recommend that people avoid black market and gray market sources because they can be less than pure and you don't actually know what you're getting.

A (25:02)

Well, it's pretty concerning. I mean, I think it's been interesting to observe this whole peptide craze. And I do understand that there are certain injectable peptides that are really helpful for brain health, gut health, retatrutide, this kind of thing. But there are like Chinese peptide, you know, where people are just. So how dangerous is that? I mean, how. What do you think people should, you know, because it's sort of like you've got, you know, naturopaths passing around peptides and you have kind of these sellers of peptides and they're getting them from China. So I mean, how dangerous?

B (25:44)

Yeah, I mean we're sort of where we were with supplements in the 90s where there's really no third party testing and it's kind of word of mouth and you know, I mean there were diet supplements in the 90s and 2000s that contained amphetamine and there were muscle building ones that had steroids in them. We know this. And then now we have third party testing and reputable brands and you know, the sort of big five or six brands that we all trust. And then for herbs, people trust certain brands. And so if you are absolutely committed to getting true pure red at true Tide, you'll have to get it from Eli Lilly.

A (26:21)

Right.

B (26:21)

If you.

A (26:23)

And what is the vehicle? Is it a needle from Eli Lilly?

B (26:26)

Yeah, they're thinking about. And they may even have an oral form, but it's going to be injectable. Injectable, subcutaneous. It's like a little, you know, little 31 gauge.

A (26:34)

It's dosed out.

B (26:35)

Yeah, most likely. Or you Just draw from the ampule. Oh, or they just draw from the ampule. Yeah, yeah, that's.

A (26:41)

You can undo the thing that.

B (26:43)

Oh, no. So you just. You'll get the ampule, draw out some into a disposable syringe and then inject or the pens and they change the needles on the pencil. I'm not recommending people do this. I'm not suggesting people do any of this. This is a good hack, but let's just say I've never taken a glp. But it'd be kind of interesting to do it as an experiment, see how I felt. But I like to eat. I love to eat. I eat Goop kitchen every single day. People think this is a promotional. I don't get paid to say that. I'm telling you, I love. I eat it every single day, just as I did before we met in person.

A (27:10)

Thank you.

B (27:11)

Yeah, love it. We'll get back to that, I'm sure. But I love to eat. The retatrutide is available now from gray market sources. The problem is that those who gray market sources can have what's called lipid polysaccharide LPS. It can say 99% purity. But that 1% means there could be some LPS. LPS will cause inflammation. One injection isn't going to do it. But multiple injections over time, I could see where that could become problematic. Compounding pharmacies are going to be better than online, you know, gray and black market sources. People say Chinese peptides as a way of kind of dissing foreign sources. But the truth is there are a lot of sources here in the United States that are dirty too.

A (27:54)

Right?

B (27:54)

And they might not be retatrutide. It might be growth hormone, it might be. Who knows? And that's the problem. So you need a reliable source. I do think regardless of the source of the drug, you need to work with an md. So if you get it from an md, who, you know, gets it to you through a compounding pharmacy, right? Now, it's illegal to do that for retatrutide because Lilly holds the patent, but people are doing it. But things like BPC157, which seems everyone is now taking for tissue repair and inflammation. I'm not aware of a single adverse event. I'm also not aware of a single clinical trial in humans. There's one which looked at gut health, but it's not a great study. There is a company that owns the patent, but they're just not interested in the drug enough or in this peptide enough to pursue it and most people say that they heal faster and do better on BPC157.

A (28:48)

Have you ever tried any of the peptides?

B (28:50)

Yeah, I've tried a load of peptides. I'll experiment with things and I rarely continue to do things. So I tried a peptide called Pinealin, which has very little human data. I no longer take it, but I got great results from it. It gave me three hours a night of REM sleep.

A (29:06)

You're kidding.

B (29:07)

It was amazing. Three hours a night of REM sleep.

A (29:09)

Is that healthy to have?

B (29:11)

It felt great to me. I thought I'd try it. I'm a bit of an adventurer, you know, I didn't put it out there as a protocol or something to suggest to people because that's just me. That's my own use. I've taken BPC157. If I have a joint that's in pain. I maintained pretty. I've been lucky to be pretty much injury free, knock on wood.

A (29:31)

That's cause you hung up your skateboard.

B (29:32)

Cause I hung up the skateboard. And because I, you know, this is. If I can give any fitness advice to people is don't do the workout that you get challenged to do. Like when you go visit a friend, they're like, let's do this class or something. That's when people get hurt.

A (29:45)

You know, I always hurt myself putting down the heavy weight. That's every time.

B (29:50)

So picking up and putting down weight is often when people get hurt. Because we're not bracing, we're not ready for the lift, we're not thinking about that or even just. We're in a staggered stance and kind of leaning over. I don't know. Get someone else to put it back on the reactor. It'll be good for them too. So I think that. So Pinealin, bpc. I've tried. The problem is I don't have a control experiment. So Pinealin. I stopped taking because I couldn't find another clean source and I didn't really need it. My sleep's solid. Doing what I do with BPC157, I'm lucky to not have an injury I'm dealing with. But it's hard to get really true. BPC157 now, but it's out there.

A (30:38)

Why is that? Because this other company holds the patent.

B (30:40)

No one's really. Well, it's not supposed to be sold, so no one's compounding it. There might be some places that are, but they're not supposed to. And then I should say there Are a bunch of peptides like Tessamorelin, Ipamorelin, MK677. These are growth hormone secretagogues that people take before sleep to promote growth hormone release and sleep. And those are FDA approved for other things. So those are less kind of mysterious and at the cutting edge because they were approved for other purposes by drug companies.

A (31:12)

So what is Epamorellin approved for?

B (31:14)

For increasing growth hormone for people like with reduced stature. So some people take growth hormone to try and grow taller when they're kids. Other people will take a growth hormone secretag. There are a couple other clinical indications like I can't quite remember, but things like melanotan, which is related to a peptide that's essentially secreted from the pituitary and it literally causes tanning of the skin. It tends to make people hypersexual. Is a very interesting peptide, naturally occurring. Let me hear it down. Well, the problem is it can make people. So there's some really scary images online. People have taken too much melanitan and they look like they turn like deep bronze when their natural skin tone is not that. Wow, okay. So you might say, oh, that sounds great, but it looks a bit unnatural. Some of the orange people that you see on television are probably on melanin. Gives immense amounts of energy, increases libido like crazy, reduces fat. What's really interesting about the peptide that it mimics is it comes from in the pituitary. And not to nerd out here, but when we are in sunlight. Right? My favorite topic, when we're in sunlight, it increases the release of this particular peptide. Now this peptide tans people from the inside when they take it. But the pigmentation pathway, so melano is very closely related to the dopamine pathway. Again, I don't want to start getting into the biochemistry here, but there's a.

A (32:46)

We can handle it.

B (32:47)

There's an enzyme called tyrosinase which is in the. So tyrosine, which comes from foods like for instance, hard parmesan cheese. The crystals on the outside of parmesan cheese, that's basically tyrosine. It's amino acid, which is a precursor to dopamine. Incredible, right?

A (33:02)

Amazing.

B (33:04)

The mutation that creates albinism, or that is based on a mutation in the tyrosinase enzyme, which is a rate limiting enzyme in the synthesis of melanin and dopamine. Incredible. And then you think, well, what about the beautiful arctic fox which is white in the winter and is pigmented in the summer. And guess what? It's because sunlight activates this peptide and some other Pathways through tyrosinase activity or tyrosine activity, Tyrosinase, and then eventually dopamine. There's a bunch of steps there. L. Dopamine, then dopamine. The animal has now energy libido. It's pigmented and it goes out and finds mates and mates in the winter. It's a shutdown time. So sunlight is the thing that catalyzes these increases in dopamine in pigmentation and so on. And so a smart biochemist figured, oh, let's isolate this peptide. And a company said, oh, let's create Melanotan. And it's actually used to treat hyposexuality. It was approved for women first. I think the drug is called Vilisi or something like that. I could be getting that wrong. But this is taken in some niche communities I'm not aware, but I love. I've never taken it, but very interesting, right? Energy, libido, dopamine and mood levels of activity for long days, 14 hour days. You see this in the animal kingdom and you see it in humans. I'm not recommending people take Melanitan, but that's an FDA approved peptide, for instance.

A (34:38)

Oh, is it?

B (34:39)

Yeah.

A (34:39)

Fascinating.

B (34:40)

Yeah. So whether or not you're talking about gila monsters and curing obesity or treating obesity because lifestyle is still important, or you're talking about Melanitan and Arctic foxes turning brown in the summer and mating only during the summer, see this in tons of different species. There's this beautiful relationship between the seasons, the sun, pigmentation and dopamine, and of course testosterone and estrogen, which is all downstream of that. So we're biological creatures and we have this brain override thing where we try and explain everything. I think we're a lot more susceptible to things like pheromones, even though pheromone effects in humans have been hard to find. But most odors, the most primitive form of communication between animals is their instructions. So people trust your nose when picking a romantic partner. I really mean that. If their sweat smells really bad to you, if they smell bad to you, I actually think they're bad for you.

A (35:40)

Interesting.

B (35:41)

I really believe this. I believe this. I don't have. There are some data, but like, I'm convinced that when people are afraid or they're anxious, they emit a certain odorant. And I think we're going to start to learn more about this. And I think it's one of the things that social media divorces us from

A (35:56)

a bit and divorces us from a lot.

B (35:59)

It divorces us From a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A (36:01)

Well, that's a whole other podcast.

B (36:03)

Yeah, yeah.

A (36:04)

What. What is the most, like, startling thing that you've learned doing the podcast in terms of information?

B (36:13)

I think the conclusion that I've come to is that we have all the biological mechanisms within us to really take control of our state of mind, of our state of body, to quiet our mind, or to simply be comfortable in the chaos of our mind, but that we're never taught that. So whether or not you use an ice bath to raise your adrenaline and then kind of lean into a hard day and make it feel easier, or you use exercise to raise your mood, or you use long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate, or you get morning sunlight to calibrate your whole system, which is really what it does. I think I'm just overwhelmed by how amazing the human body is. If we do the right things. I think that that's just. I'm still kind of in awe of it because I think other animals that have spent a lot of time thinking about their biology are exceptionally good at a couple of things. Our blessing and our curse is that we can be good at any number of different things, but we are all pretty terrible at regulating our internal systems until we know what those things are. So for me, the kind of the awe, the appreciation is like, it's all there. Whether or not you decide to do 15 minutes of journaling about a something really bothering you, three times the Pennebaker trauma treatment, the number of quality papers showing that that's extremely useful, you sit down and you Write out for 15 minutes about a really something that's got you in your mind that you can't shake. And then you do it again a few days later, same practice. Then you do it again a few days later. I mean, that's been shown to reduce symptoms of trauma, to help people come to understand things, to purge some of the inner chatter around that, the way it's waking them up and bott bothering them. So all of those things are available to us. I think that I'm also still blown away by neuroplasticity, the fact that we, unlike other animals, can reshape our neural circuitry because we decide to. And my scientific great grandparents, David Hubel and Torrensen Wiesel, they essentially showed that brain plasticity can really occur. We kind of knew it from language learning and some observations and in kids over centuries, but they really defined this thing that we call neuroplasticity. And whether or not somebody does therapy or the Pennebaker Journaling or breath work or goes on a solo hike for 10 days or a darkness retreat, something I hope to never do.

A (38:55)

Me neither.

B (38:56)

I do not want to go on a dark. I'll tell you one thing that's going to kill the darkness retreat industry. So forgive me, but someone I know did one and I said, not for me. Sell it to me. And she said, well, it was really tough because at the end they turned on the lights and there were all these spiders in there. And I was like, never. I was like, forget it. I don't mind spiders, but I need to be able to see them around me. I have no interest in it.

A (39:27)

I wonder too, if it's a specific personality type or specific Enneagram type that can weather. That would lose my mind.

B (39:35)

Yeah. Well, I'm a solid three on the Enneagram.

A (39:39)

Okay.

B (39:39)

Where I am in the terms of the ladder of health, that's up to. You know, you can pull people close to me, but I like to think I'm at least ascending as opposed to descending. Do you like the Enneagram?

A (39:49)

I'm a one. Yeah. I'm a one.

B (39:50)

Can you remind me what the One is?

A (39:51)

One is a reformer. So one is always trying to improve things all the time.

B (39:56)

That's a good one.

A (39:56)

And so it can index into, you know, like, the more beautiful aspect of that. And it can index into, like, perfectionism and beating yourself up, first of all.

B (40:07)

Yeah, yeah. I think the Enneagram is brilliant.

A (40:09)

I do too.

B (40:10)

I think it's really brilliant. I think I got a lot more out of the Enneagram than I did out of the sort of five personality dimensions.

A (40:16)

Yeah, me too. I didn't.

B (40:17)

Also, I'm very agreeable, except when it comes to what I actually do. You know, I'm kind of disagreeable. Like, I like people and I'll take it all in and then. But in the end, I gotta go my own way. So I felt like it didn't really disagreeableness. Thing is, like, how do you. When people offer a counter idea, what do you do? I'm not gonna fight them on it, but I'm gonna go home and I'm like, make a decision. So I felt like it didn't capture much, but the Enneagram seems to really capture people.

A (40:39)

It's very. It has a lot of depth to it. Like, there are many layers and aspects to it. The more you read about it, it's pretty fascinating. The three is like the achiever, right?

B (40:50)

It's the achiever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My sister always gives me A hard time about that. She's like, you're a three. She's a therapist. I forget what she is. I think my dad's a four. Even though he's a scientist, he's like the romantic. You know, my dad constructs his days. He's like, I'm going to walk here. Then we're going to go there. Then we're going to have this for dinner. It's Argentine. You know, it's like everything. Everything's. And we were. He reports what he had for dinner. They're in Uruguay right now. He and his wife visiting his brother. Like, what are you doing? Oh, we had this. It's all about the daily structure in a way that's insane. Yeah, it's really. It's really cool.

A (41:26)

Do you use the Enneagram, like, at work, at hiring people or dating or anything like that?

B (41:31)

Oh, my God. No, I should.

A (41:35)

Yeah.

B (41:35)

Well, I should say for work. So I have this weird thing where when it comes to picking people from my lab or coworkers or business partners, I'm proud to say only Bullseyes.

A (41:48)

Wow.

B (41:48)

I mean, people always say, oh, you're gonna have this terrible relationship with your graduate. I had a great relationship with my graduate advisor. I knew she was the one to mentor me at that stage, and my postdoc advisor. And I hope my students would, you know, they've all done well. They're running labs or off doing their thing. I never had these big conf. And then with my podcast team, Rob Moore, and then the other guys I brought in also, I brought them in from skateboarding. Rob's not from that, but I knew he was the guy. I knew he was the guy to produce the podcast. And I said to him, hopefully he doesn't mind. I was like, I'll do this, but only if we're equal partners. I'm not gonna. None of this kind of. I'm the equal. And he was like, no way. And I'm like, well, then we're not doing it. He was like, okay. And then we brought other people in. He's a phenom. And I brought Mike Blaback, who's a famous skateboard photographer. He shot Danny Way jumping the Great Wall. I mean, he's iconic skateboard photographer, portrait photographer. I was like, we need photos, like, blaback. Like, who else would we bring? And then Chris Wray and Martin Fobes. They've won all sorts of awards for filming. They're on the Red Bull film team, and they skateboard and they work like nobody has Their work ethic.

A (42:56)

My husband was like, can you ask him about this protein intake thing? Because he's like, he has always been into fitness and l weights and everything, but he's like, he says the amount of protein that he's seeing recommended he thinks is insane. And like protein sequestered in every random thing. What are your thoughts?

B (43:16)

Yeah, it's insane.

A (43:16)

Okay, great.

B (43:17)

It's insane. I think if somebody, you know, like a teenager who's tr. Who's growing very fast should follow their appetite and eat nutritious food including a lot of protein and healthy fat, I think that. But this idea of 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, for some people, I can't. It's simple. For other people, you feel kind of poisoned. I actually have been. Whether you eat breakfast or you don't doesn't matter so much. I think that we can kind of sense when you've had enough, certainly animal protein. And I think that I don't have any hard studies to back this up, but if you start to feel like, oh like you're force feeding anything, it's bad, that's bad.

A (44:00)

But. And it's so conflicting. It's like, okay, you have to eat this much protein. It has to be like, you know, great quality animal protein, whatever grass fed dairy, whatever beef, et cetera. But then you have, you know, cardiologists saying don't eat red meat. And you have, you know, I was reading something really interesting lately around like low inflammation vegetarian diets being so good for lowering inflammation. So what's the deal?

B (44:32)

Yeah, so there's a great study here. We can look to some really great peer reviewed science from Justin Sonnenberg, who's actually my upstairs neighbor at Stanford, world expert in the microbiome. He and his wife Erica run probably the best microbiome lab anywhere. And Christopher Gardner, who's been a kind of champion of vegetarian diets. I'm not a vegetarian, I'm an omnivore. But they did a study where they looked at people who ingest low sugar fermented foods versus intentionally increasing low sugar fermented foods versus increasing amount of dietary fiber from vegetables, some fruit, but mostly vegetables, some grains, et cetera. And then it was a crossover design so people the idea to wash out. Then people switched groups and they looked at what's called the inflammatome. So looking at a bunch of different inflammatory markers, we can confidently say that ingesting a couple of servings or more per day, low sugar fermented food. So sauerkraut natto, kefir, kefir, kimchi, Bulgarian full fat yogurt is my favorite. Or Greek yogurt. Things like that greatly reduce the inflammatome. So wonderful by way of improving the gut microbiome in very significant ways.

A (45:42)

Thing that people say, well, if you have certain microbes and certain dysbiosis, then low sugar fermented isn't good. It feeds the wrong things.

B (45:50)

Yeah. We still don't know exactly which microbes are. Are ideal. But you don't want to be dysbiotic where you don't have enough diversity there. So we're not quite at the place where we can say it's these microbes specifically. There are a few that appear to be beneficial, but diversity of gut microbiome is great. Low sugar fermented foods and increasing them gradually is going to help so that you don't get a ton of gastric discomfort. But finding a few that you like and ingesting those every day. The fiber group was very interesting. People increased their fiber pretty dramatically. Some people had increases in inflammatory markers, and we know that some people because of lectins and grains. It seems that there's at least two different broad groups of people, some who can just eat lots and lots of vegetables of all kinds, and it doesn't seem to irritate their gut. I think it's highly individual. For instance, I can eat cooked broccoli. Love it. Cannot eat raw broccoli, cabbage. Love it. Other vegetables. It's tough for me. I feel kind of not well.

A (46:50)

Yeah.

B (46:50)

When I eat them. So you need to experiment and find what vegetables and fruits work for you.

A (46:55)

Yeah. And it's interesting when people do the food sensitivity blood tests, which I don't know if those are really, you know, mirror what's good for you or not. But like a lot of people have an inflammatory response to broccoli or, you know.

B (47:09)

Yeah. Or even, you know, if you do some blood tests, they'll show that you make antibodies to, say, strawberries. I do that for him. I love strawberries. But the fact that I have antibodies probably reflects the fact that as a kid I had some mild allergic reaction to them. In fact, I remember getting a little rash because I would eat a whole bowl of strawberries. But now I can eat them just fine because I have antibodies. So we have to be a little careful with the blood testing versus the actual allergic reaction piece. You were asking about protein, but the reason I'm taking this route to it is that great to eat enough fiber. This is important. But pick the right fibrous foods. And some people don't do well eating grains. They just don't. So when the cardiologists are saying too much red meat isn't good, what else are people eating? I think that if people are going to increase their red meat consumption, and I love a good steak four nights a week, Argentina, I don't tend to eat that many grains. I have some rice, some oatmeal, I like some sourdough. I'll eat homemade pasta. But I don't tend to mix those at the same meal, at least in large quantities. So I actually think the best studies have not been done of separating your high protein. And then maybe you have a pasta dish later that hasn't really been done. It's always so extreme. And so I don't really trust most of the studies, frankly, on nutrition. I think most of them are completely worthless. I really do. At the extremes, I think the conclusions are real. Too much saturated fat, not good. Especially if you're consuming a lot of starchy carbohydrates and sugar. The combination of starch and sugar and fat, that's where things get problematic because we can just consume so much of them. But when it comes to one thing that I've been doing recently, and I learned this from Sean Mackey, our head of the pain division at Stanford, when he came on the podcast, I said, what do you think of these kind of woo stuff for gut pain? And he said he used to think it was ridiculous, but then he himself had some really serious gut issues. And he discovered that onions and other histamine producing foods would do this. And some of this might run in families. And so my sister, for instance, said to me that she started taking a. It's an enzyme to help before any kind of histamine containing food or meal. I was like, I'll do that. It's like a little pill. And I take it. Oh my goodness, I feel so much better. I used to get this kind of thing where I'd feel like a little bit. Bit itchy, feel a little tired. If I had dairy a little bit later, it was subtle, but I now take this little tiny histamine. I forget what the name of is. Hoa. That's a homeowner's association. Something else. Anyway. Oh, and here I'm talking about my memory. Anyway, whatever the. It's an enzyme that you take before meals that have high histamine content. I don't care what anyone tells me. I'm not waiting for a study. I feel for pennies A day I feel a so much better. So some people might be susceptible to histamines and Dr. Sean Mackey's MD, PhD. After all, he said it relieved his gut pain to avoid high histamine containing foods or to take an enzyme that can help digest histamine containing foods. So I think we're very individual based on genetic lineage and how we grew up and on and on. I think that getting for men, probably getting 100 grams of quality protein per day minimum, should be pretty easy to do. Even if you're eating twice a day, that's pretty easy to do. Depending on woman and her size and weight, maybe slightly less than that. But if you're doing a ton of resistance training, you're working very long hours. Sure, increase the amount of protein. But that protein can come from a variety of sources. I don't like to eat meat more than once a day. It's too hard to digest. I get tired. I don't like to eat meat too close to bedtime. I end up with the meat sweats thing. And I think we should all experiment and figure out what works for us. I couldn't agree, but I don't think he should feel pressured to get, get whatever it is, one gram per pound of body weight, especially if he's happy with his, you know, with his body composition and he feels like he's holding onto the muscle he's got.

A (50:57)

I'm so grateful to you because, you know, my son who's 19, who has, you know, this generation of kids, they have stuff, right? They have anxiety stuff. And you honestly have given him permission to really think about himself as an autonomous person. You know, he wakes up, the first thing he does is go outside.

B (51:20)

Awesome.

A (51:21)

He's timing, you know, because he's not a good sleeper either. So he follows you religiously and you know, I'm like, don't you want a cup of coffee? He's like, no, I have to wait, you know, the 60 Minutes.

B (51:31)

He's cultivating good habits. Well, great. I look forward to meeting him. You have my phone number, so if he has any questions, he can reach out. I'm always happy to know self care is, is the best. It sets you up to be very successful.

A (51:45)

It does. And I think, you know, it's like I'm his mom, so he's seen it this way. But it's just been so nice that he's, you know, has found you and he loves you. So. Thank you.

B (51:54)

Well, thank you. Please give him my regards. I look forward to meeting him. And I'll say this was not promotional, but I continue to eat Goop Kitchen every day.

A (52:01)

I'm sorry.

B (52:01)

No. They don't pay me a sale. I just love it. I started ordering it. I get it for my team. I love, love, love it. Yes. I eat the Huberman chili and the roasted potatoes and the salads and the bone broth. The chicken broth. Yeah. It's awesome.

A (52:15)

Thank you.

B (52:15)

It's awesome. It's so good.

A (52:17)

It's so good. And it's. And the ingredients are so clean, and I'm so proud of it. I think there's. As you know, food is medicine. You talked about it today. It's just that when we're conscious about. And it's a privilege so if we're lucky enough to be conscious about what we're eating, to be able to provide meals like that that are so delicious and healthy, it's like a lifelong dream fulfilled.

B (52:43)

It's awesome.

A (52:44)

Thank you.

B (52:45)

Thank you.

A (52:50)

Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.