Optimize Your Brain with Science-based Tools

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. My name is Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring you zero cost to consumer information about science and science related to tools. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all in one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking athletic greens, and the reason I still take athletic greens once or twice a day is that it helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs. It makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, it has probiotics, which are vital for microbiome health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so called gut microbiome and the ways in which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body. With athletic greens, I get the vitamins I need, the minerals I need, and the probiotics to support my microbiome. If you'd like to try athletic greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com huberman and claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D three K two there are a ton of data now showing that vitamin d three is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health. Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin d three and k two is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function, calcium in the body, and so on. Again, go to athleticgreens.com Huberman to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D three K two. Today's episode is also brought to us by element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolytes are an element, and those are sodium, magnesium, and potassium. But it has no sugar. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the key role of hydration and electrolytes for nerve cell function, neuron function, as well as the function of all the cells and all the tissues and organ systems of the body. If we have sodium, magnesium and potassium present in the proper ratios, all of those cells function properly and all our bodily systems can be optimized. If the electrolytes are not present and if hydration is low, we simply can't think as well as we would otherwise. Our mood is off, hormone systems go off. Our ability to get into physical action, to engage in endurance and strength and all sorts of other things is diminished. So with element, you can make sure that you're staying on top of your hydration and that you're getting the proper ratios of electrolytes. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element. That's lmmnt.com huberman and you'll get a free element sample pack with your purchase. They're all delicious. So again, if you want to try element, you can go to elementlmnt.com Huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up. Waking up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga, NidRa sessions, and NSDR nonsleep deep rest protocols. I started using the waking up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditations since my teens and I started doing yoga Nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the waking up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states and that he liked it very much. So I gave the waking up app a try, and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up app has lots of different types of yoga Nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga Nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations, and there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga Nidra and something similar to it called non sleep deep rest, or NSTR, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to wakingup.com huberman and access a free 30 day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com Huberman to access a free 30 day trial, let's talk about neuroplasticity. More specifically, let's talk about how we can optimize our brains. Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature of our nervous system that allows it to change itself even in ways that we consciously decide. Now, that's an incredible property. Our liver can't decide to just change itself. Our spleen can't decide to just change itself through conscious thought or through feedback from another person. The cells in those tissues can make changes, sure, but it's our nervous system that harbors this incredible ability to direct its own changes in ways that we believe or we're told will serve us better. Now, today is a really special episode because while we are going to talk about science and as always, we will delve into mechanism, today's episode is really geared toward answering your most common questions about how to leverage neuroplasticity. The previous episodes were about focus and how to achieve focus for sake of plasticity, as well as the last episode, which is what are some of the portals into plasticity that relate to movement? How behavior can activate plasticity, as well as how to activate plasticity for behavior itself, how to get better at learning certain movements. Today's podcast is really directed toward answering your most common questions and the bigger theme of how does one go about optimizing their brain? Or even think about optimizing the brain? What is this thing that we're calling optimizing the brain? In doing so, I'm also going to share some of my typical routines and tools. I don't share these because I think that they are the only ones that are available out there. Certainly they're not. Nor do I share them because I think that everyone should do them just because I do them. Certainly not. I share them because many of you have asked for very concrete examples of what I do and when, and so I'll share those with you, and you can decide whether or not those protocols are for you or not. Everybody's different. But there are some common features of how we are all put together at the level of the nervous system and body that direct us toward particular practices, particular routines that can be especially powerful for neuroplasticity. So I want to open up the discussion today by emphasizing something that's fundamentally important, which is that plasticity is not the goal. Plasticity is never the goal. Plasticity is simply a state or a capacity for our nervous system to change. And so nothing makes me more frustrated, perhaps, than when I hear, oh, you know, this pill, this potion, this practice, it gives you plasticity. Plasticity is just change. The real question is, what are you trying to change? And specifically, what end goal are you trying to achieve? Specific end goals might be extremely specific. Like, you want to learn how to speak a particular language, or you want to learn a new motor skill, or you want to get very good at calculus, or you'd like to forget the bad emotions related to a particular human being or experience. Or it can be more general, like, you'd like to be more creative. We'll actually talk about creativity today. Or you would like to achieve more focus, or you'd like to be less stressed. So it's very important that you understand that plasticity and achieving plasticity is the first step in what we call optimizing your brain. You don't want your brain to be plastic all the time. In fact, one of the major questions, one of the major unsolved mysteries of neuroscience, is how each and every one of us wakes up every day and knows who we are. Why should that be? Well, the brain is plastic. It has a capacity to change throughout the lifespan. But it's not so plastic that every night when we go to sleep or in our waking, that the connections get reconfigured, so much so that we forget who we are, or how to walk or how to eat. It's a good thing that we don't have such robust plasticity or ongoing plasticity that we have to restructure ourselves each day. It's part of what gives our life continuity. So remember, plasticity is not, and is never the goal. The goal is to figure out how to access plasticity and then to direct that plasticity toward particular goals or changes that you would like to achieve. And I should just mention, there's no rule that in life you have to leverage this incredible thing called neuroplasticity. No one said you had to do that. This podcast and this episode is particularly for people who are either happy or unhappy with where they're at, with a particular aspect of their life, and they want to shift it in some positive way. And many of you listening might say, well, wouldn't everyone want to do that? Well, actually, there are a certain number of people that are pretty good where they're at, and they don't want to change. And that's terrific. And I tip my hat to them, and I think that's wonderful. If ever they decide that they want to leverage these plasticity mechanisms, they can at any stage throughout the lifespan. Let's start by talking about the different systems within the nervous system that are available for plasticity. And in doing so, I'll frame them in the context of what I do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and on a yearly basis. First of all, there are several forms of plasticity.