back to indexHow Foods and Nutrients Control Our Moods | Huberman Lab Podcast #11
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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My name is Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
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at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools
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to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor today is Theragun.
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Theragun is a handheld percussive therapy device
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that releases deep muscle tension.
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I was first introduced to Theragun in 2017
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while on a laboratory expedition.
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We were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
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filming great white sharks for my laboratory studies
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on fear using virtual reality.
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We were working very hard around the clock,
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and I and other people on the trip
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were picking up a lot of aches and pains,
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and just kind of chronic soreness.
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A couple of people had injuries that were flaring up
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because of all the hard work and lack of sleep.
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Someone had a Theragun,
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and pretty soon it was getting passed around.
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It became the most coveted device on board.
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Everyone was using it to work
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on these different sites of soreness.
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And I really fell in love with the thing,
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so much so that when I got back,
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I immediately purchased one,
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and I've used it almost daily ever since.
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I use it on muscles that are sore.
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I use it on areas that I'm really working on
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to release tension and improve tissue quality, and so forth.
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The great thing about Theragun is it's really quiet,
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so you can use it while you're in a conversation
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or while you're watching a movie,
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and it doesn't disrupt those activities at all.
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If you want to try Theragun,
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you can try Theragun by going to theragun.com slash Huberman
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to get your Gen 4 Theragun.
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They start at $199,
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but if you think about it,
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a massage, which is an hour long or 90 minutes long,
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is typically in that range of cost.
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And this is something you can use every day
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whenever you want,
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and even while enjoying other activities.
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So that's theragun.com slash Huberman.
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The second sponsor of today's podcast is Inside Tracker.
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Inside Tracker is a personalized nutrition platform
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that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
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to help you better understand your body
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and help you reach your health goals.
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The great thing about Inside Tracker
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is that it gives you data that you can make sense of.
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I've long been a believer in getting blood samples taken,
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and more recently,
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I've become a believer in getting DNA samples taken.
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In order to understand what's going on at the level
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of hormones, metabolic factors,
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and other things that profoundly influence
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our immediate and long-term health.
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The problem always has been getting those samples taken
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and making sense of those samples.
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Inside Tracker makes all of that really easy.
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They'll even come to your home to take the samples.
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Then you get the information back,
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and while typically, after getting information back,
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there's these long list of numbers
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and nobody knows what to do with them,
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Inside Tracker makes it really easy
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to interpret what those numbers mean,
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and it points to things in terms of lifestyle,
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exercise, nutrition, and so forth
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that can help you adjust some of the numbers
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that you might need to bring down or up
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to put into the appropriate normal range.
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So I find this whole process to be immensely valuable
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for guiding my health choices,
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and also just for giving me peace of mind
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about how my body and the rest of my health
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are doing internally,
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something you just can't know without a blood and DNA test.
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If you want to try Inside Tracker,
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you can go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman,
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and you'll get 25% off any of their programs.
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You want to put Huberman at checkout,
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so that's insidetracker.com slash Huberman
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to get 25% off any of Inside Tracker's plans
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and put Huberman at checkout.
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The third sponsor of today's podcast is Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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I started using Athletic Greens in 2012,
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so I'm delighted that they're a sponsor of the podcast.
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The reason I started using Athletic Greens,
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and the reason I still take it once or twice per day,
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is that I find it very hard to know
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what vitamins and minerals I need to take.
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And by drinking Athletic Greens,
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I get it all in one, easy to consume, great tasting formula.
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I really do like the way it tastes.
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I mix mine with water and a little bit of lemon or lime juice
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and to me, it's delicious.
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The other thing about Athletic Greens
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that I really like are the probiotics.
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There's so much data out there now telling us,
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and I certainly believe based on the data that I've seen,
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that probiotics are really important
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for support of the gut microbiome,
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the gut brain axis, the immune system,
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and many other aspects of our biology.
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So with Athletic Greens, I get the vitamins,
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the minerals, and the probiotics that I need.
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If you want to try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that,
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they'll also give you a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.
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Vitamin D3, we also know is really important
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for things like immune system and metabolic support.
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So that's athleticgreens.com slash Huberman
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to get Athletic Greens, the year supply of vitamin D3K2,
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and they'll give you five free travel packs.
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Today, we're talking all about emotions.
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Emotions are central to our entire experience of life.
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Whether or not we're happy or sad or depressed or angry
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is our life experience.
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And yet I think with all the importance
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that we've placed on emotions,
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very few people actually understand how emotions arise
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in our brain and body.
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And I mentioned brain and body because as you'll see today,
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emotions really capture the brain-body relationship.
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We cannot say that emotions arise
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just from what happens in our head.
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It also involves events, biological events,
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chemical events within our body.
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The other thing about emotions is that
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there's no real agreement as to what's a good emotion
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Today, we're going to talk about the biology
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of the chemicals and pathways that give rise to emotions.
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And I'm going to equip you with several, if not many tools
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that will allow you to regulate and change
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and steer your emotions should you want,
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but not using the typical advice.
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Everyone's probably heard of this thing.
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Oh, if you're feeling depressed, just smile.
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It's impossible to be depressed while smiling.
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Look, if that were true,
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we wouldn't have any depressed people
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because depressed people don't want to be depressed.
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And it is not the case that simply smiling
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will reverse depression or sadness.
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And it's simply not the case
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that smiling can inhibit sadness.
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It just doesn't work that way.
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However, it is the case that certain things
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that are happening in our body
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influence how our brain functions
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and the chemicals that are released.
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And today we're going to talk a lot
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about how the brain and body interact
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to create these things called emotions
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in the context of food and nutrition.
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And the reason we're doing that
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is not because I'm beating the drum
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about particular diet regimens or anything.
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In fact, I'm not going to do any of that.
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What I'm going to do is I'm going to review
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some of the most important scientific data
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that point to how ingesting certain nutrients,
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both macronutrients like proteins, fats, and carbohydrates,
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as well as micronutrients can impact the chemicals
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in our brain that give rise to the feelings
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of being happy or sad or sleepy
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or alert when you want to be sleepy
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or sleepy when you want to be alert.
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So this is sure to be a broad discussion
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and yet we're going to get very specific
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about what emotions are, how they arise in the body,
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tools that one can use
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in order to better control their emotions,
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tools that people can use to, believe it or not,
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feel happier or feel calmer.
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And that's because in the last 20 years or so,
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there's been an explosion of scientific studies
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exploring how the brain and body interact
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to support certain neurochemicals
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that give us these feelings of being alert and happy
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or depressed or certain that our life is going to be terrible
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or certain that our life is going to be great.
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So as mysterious as all that might sound
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and confusing as all that might sound,
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we're going to make it very clear today.
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And you're going to come away from this conversation
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with a lot of tools that you can act on immediately.
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And those tools are grounded in scientific data.
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We are going to provide links to several of the studies.
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And I'm going to mention several of those studies
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But overall, the goal today is for you to understand
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how moods and emotions arise
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and the different pathways in your brain and body
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that allow them to happen
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and how you can use those pathways to change those emotions
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and the tools that you can rely on in very specific ways
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to shift from being, say,
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slightly depressed to feeling happier.
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There actually are ways to do that,
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or from feeling too alert and anxious to feeling calmer.
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And these are tools that are distinct
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from the tools I've talked about in previous episodes.
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The discussion around emotions has a long and rich history
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going back to Darwin and even long before Darwin.
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This is a conversation that philosophers and scientists
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have been having for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
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The idea that Darwin put forth
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and that was really attractive for about the last 100 years
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was that emotions are universal
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and that some of the facial expressions
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around emotion are universal.
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And other people have capitalized on that idea.
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And to some extent, it's true.
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I mean, I think that the two most robust examples of that
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would be when we see something or we smell something
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or we taste something that we like,
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there does tend to be a postural leaning in.
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We tend to inhale air at that time.
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We tend to bring in more
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of whatever chemical substance is there.
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So we tend to do these mmm and kind of lean in closer
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to things that are attractive to us.
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And when we see and experience things
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that we don't like, sometimes it's a mild aversion.
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We just kind of lean back or look away.
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Other times it's an intensive version of disgust
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and we tend to cringe our face.
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We tend to avoid inhaling any of the chemicals.
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This probably has roots in ancient biological mechanisms
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that are to prevent us from ingesting things
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that are bad for us, chemical compounds
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and tastes that might be poisonous.
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So much of the foundation of any discussion about emotion
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has to center around this kind of push-pull
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of attraction to things or aversion from things.
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Now that's a very basic way of thinking about emotions.
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But if you think about it,
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it works for a lot of different circumstances.
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everywhere from the deep circuits of the brain
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to the more kind of what we call higher order
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evolved centers of the brain,
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we have this push-pull thing.
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We're either, in a previous episode I talked about GO,
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the circuits that allow you to emphasize action
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and then no-go circuits,
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the circuits in the basal ganglia
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that allow you to de-emphasize action and prevent action.
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We talked about how that's a push-pull.
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So aversion and attraction is a push-pull too.
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Delight or happiness or excitement
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are attractions to certain things and ideas,
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songs, people, places, foods.
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Aversion is a leaning out.
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It's a disgust, it's an avoidance.
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And so we can break down the discussion about emotions
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into these simpler versions of themselves.
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But at the core of that, of attraction or aversion
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is an important theme that you might realize already
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but most people tend to overlook,
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which is that there's an action there.
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You're either moving forward
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or you're moving away from something.
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And anytime you're talking about action
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in the nervous system,
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you're talking about motor behaviors.
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You're talking about literally the contraction of muscles
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to move you toward or away from things.
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And anytime you're talking about nerve to muscle and action,
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you're talking about the brain and the body
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because the brain can't move itself.
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The brain has a body so that the organism can move.
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And the body has a brain so that the organism, you,
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can move toward or away from things
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that you deem to be good or bad for you.
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Now, some of these things that we're attracted to
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and some of them that we avoid
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are what we call innate or hardwired.
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When we taste bitter compounds,
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I'm not saying about bitter,
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like you like a little bit of bitters in your drink
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or something like that, but really bitter compounds,
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we tend to avoid those
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because they're associated with poisons.
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When we taste things that are sweet or that are savory,
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we tend to pursue more of those.
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We tend to lean toward those, so to speak.
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And we tend to not avoid them.
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So there are circuits in the brain for aversion
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and for attraction toward things.
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And the body is governing a lot of that.
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And so immediately in this conversation,
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I want to raise an important point,
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which is about a nerve pathway
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that many, many people have heard of
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that gets discussed all the time.
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And that is one of the most kind of oversold
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for the wrong reasons and undersold,
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unfortunately for its real power, which is the vagus nerve.
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So the vagus nerve is one, not the only,
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but one way in which our brain and body are connected
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and regulates our emotional states.
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Now, many of you have probably heard about polyvagal theory.
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I'm going to talk about this today.
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Polyvagal theory was popularized by Stephen Porges.
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And it's an interesting theory.
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Certain aspects of it, frankly, hold up to the science.
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Some of it doesn't.
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And I'm going to discuss all of that today.
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A lot of the vagus and the excitement about the vagus,
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V-A-G-U-S, is because it somehow got into the mind
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of the public that the vagus is involved in calming us down.
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So what is the vagus nerve?
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Okay, we're going to make this really simple.
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In particular, for those that are just listening,
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you can just imagine this.
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For those of you that are watching,
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I'll point to the various areas.
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But basically, the vagus is the 10th cranial nerve,
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which basically means that the neurons,
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the control center of each of those neurons in the vagus
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lives just kind of near the neck, right?
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And a branch of the vagus goes into the brain.
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They send a little wire into the brain.
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The other branch goes into the periphery,
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but not just the gut.
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It goes into the stomach, the intestines, the heart,
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the lungs, and the immune system.
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So this vagus nerve is incredible
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because it's taking information from the body
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and it has two directions.
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The first is what we call sensory.
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So it's sensing things that are happening
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in the gut, in the lungs.
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Everything, for example, in the lungs,
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when our lungs are distended,
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the vagus nerve senses that
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and sends that information up into the brain.
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It also can sense things in the gut,
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like how distended or empty your stomach happens to be.
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It can sense heart rate.
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It can sense your immune system,
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whether or not you have bacteria
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or things invading you in your body.
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So it sends that information up to the brain.
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So it's a two-way street
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and sensory information is going up to the brain.
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So it's like a super highway,
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sensory information going one way.
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And then the other direction is motor control.
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So the vagus is not just for sensing things,
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it's actually for controlling things.
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It's got a sensory pathway and a motor pathway.
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So that's the first thing I think everyone should know
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In fact, it's so important
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that I feel like this is as important as people knowing
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that walking involves flexors and extensors.
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And if you don't think that's important,
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it's as important as walking frankly,
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because the vagus is the way in which you can govern
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the brain-body connection
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and in which you can steer various aspects
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of your mood and wellbeing.
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But most people just don't understand how to use it.
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So first you got to understand what it is.
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So you've got sensory information
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coming from all these different organs of the body
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You got motor information going from the brain
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And so you've got this super highway within you.
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Now what actually regulates the vagus?
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Oftentimes you'll hear things like,
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oh, this particular behavior,
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rubbing your face at a particular location
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or breathing in a particular way,
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or a warm bath or something stimulates the vagus.
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Well, right now I want everyone to know that quote unquote,
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stimulating the vagus broadly speaking
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is a terrible way to think about the vagus.
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Because did you know what?
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If you have a contaminant inside your body,
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the vagus senses that
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and projects that information to your brain
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and you start to generate a fever.
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You start to try and kill that contaminant in your body.
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So I don't know that you want to stimulate the vagus
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just as like a general theme.
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Today we're going to get specific
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about how you can activate particular circuits,
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certain pathways from certain organs to the brain
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in order to feel better or relieve certain conditions.
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But you certainly don't want to just stimulate the vagus.
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Now, excitement about the vagus in part
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is because of what quite honestly
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was a fairly pioneering theory about the vagus,
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which is this polyvagal theory.
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So polyvagal, the word poly means many,
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is cool because it acknowledges
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that the vagus has a lot of different branches.
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It's not just one thing.
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And so I really like that.
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I like the naming polyvagal.
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The idea that Portis put forward was that
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there's a dorsal vagus,
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which is kind of runs the back of the spinal cord,
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which is involved in alertness and activation
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and kind of fight or flight type stuff.
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And that there's a ventral pathway
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and that that's involved in more kind of empathic behaviors.
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That is not quite in agreement with the modern anatomy,
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but he was doing the best with what he had at the time.
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The problem I have with the polyvagal theory
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is the way that it's discussed.
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People will often say, oh, you know,
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if your dorsal vagus is too active,
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then you tend to be someone who's a little too keyed up.
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And people who are kind of in a state of freeze
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or kind of flaccid and kind of, you know,
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like just not really active and they're just lethargic.
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Well, then that pathway is hypoactive.
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It should be more active.
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So there are a lot of theories
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about how psychology maps onto the vagus
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that as far as I know, don't map to any real physiology.
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Now, the other problem with this kind of the way
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that the polyvagal theory is discussed,
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probably not by the real experts, but by a lot of people
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is that people start to diagnose different psychological
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and physical manifestations through the vagus.
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They would say things like, oh, you know,
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this person is hyper-flexible at the joints
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and therefore their dorsal vagus isn't active enough
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or something like that.
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And it's really kind of gone way outside the lane lines.
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So today we're going to clean up a lot of that.
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Let's make it really simple
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about how the vagus actually works
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at least as we understand it today in 2021.
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First of all, as I mentioned, you have sensory information.
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The same way that you detect light with your eyes
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or you hear sounds with your ears,
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you have sensors in your gut that sense how full
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or empty your gut is.
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It can also sense how acidic your gut is.
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It can sense various things within your gut.
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Your heart is doing the same.
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It's informing the brain how fast your heart is beating,
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how full your lungs are has been communicated,
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and then the status of your immune system.
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So the way to think about the vagus
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is the same way I would think about the eyes.
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The eyes are looking at colors.
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They're looking at motion.
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They're looking at how bright it is.
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And each one of those things, those features,
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is telling the brain something different
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so the brain can decide when to be awake or asleep,
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whether or not it's looking at somebody attractive
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The vagus nerve is also analyzing many features
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within the body and informing the brain
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of how to feel about that and what to do.
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So a really good example that I think is an exciting one
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is as it relates to sugar.
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So we all know that sweet things generally taste good.
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I'm not particularly a fan of very sweet things.
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I'd much rather have cheese or pizza or hamburger or steak.
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I like savory fatty foods, but I do like sweet foods.
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And most people find sweet foods to be attractive.
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They might, or they might not be able
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to regulate their behavior around them, but they want them.
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And what's really interesting is that for hundreds of years,
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people have thought that that's because of the way
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that sweet foods taste.
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So that makes sense, right?
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You eat something, it tastes sweet, you want more of it.
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Well, it turns out that it's much more interesting
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When you eat something sweet, within your stomach,
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you have cells, neurons, that sense the presence
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of sugary foods independent of their taste
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and signal to the brain.
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So those sensors, those neurons send information
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up the vagus to your brain,
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goes through a series of stations,
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and then you release dopamine,
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this molecule that makes you want more of whatever it is
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that you just ingested.
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In fact, this pathway is so powerful
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that they've done experiments where they completely numb
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all the taste and feeling in somebody's mouth.
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They're blindfolded so they don't know what they're eating.
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And they're eating a food that's either sugary
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And what they find is that even though people can't taste
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the sugary food, they crave more of the food
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that contains sugar because of the sensors in the gut
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So to put this differently, you actually have sensors
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within your body that make you crave sugar independent
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of the sweet taste of those things.
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Now that's incredible.
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And what it does and what it tells us is that we have
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circuits in our body that are driving us
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towards certain behaviors and making us feel good
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even though we can't perceive them.
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Now, for those of you that are really interested
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in gut intuition and kind of gut feelings,
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this is a gut feeling,
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except this is a chemical gut feeling.
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This is a particular set of neurons detecting that something
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in your body has a particular feature, in this case,
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the presence of sugars and sending information to the brain
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to essentially to control your behavior.
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And I find this remarkable because what it means
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is that what we call attractive,
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isn't always coming from our thoughts about that
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or our feelings or even our perception.
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We are drawn to particular foods and we're drawn to perhaps
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also to particular people, places and other things
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because of information that's coming from our body.
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And we're gonna talk about what one can do
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with this information.
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I know many people are thoughtful or concerned
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about sugars these days thinking,
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we all ingest too much sugar,
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there's sugar snuck into all the things we eat.
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And indeed that's true.
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I mean, this should completely reframe the way
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that we think about the sort of so-called hidden sugars
link |
What this means is that even if a food is very savory
link |
like a piece of pizza or a piece of bread
link |
or even like a salad dressing,
link |
if there's sugar snuck into that and you can't taste it,
link |
you will still crave more of that thing
link |
without knowing that you crave it because it has sugar.
link |
In other words, you might find yourself wanting
link |
certain foods and not knowing why you want those foods.
link |
So I find this to be a fascinating aspect of our biology.
link |
And yes, it relates to mood and emotion.
link |
And we'll talk about how that is in a moment.
link |
So let's just back up a bit and ask the question,
link |
why do we eat certain things?
link |
And why do certain foods make us feel good
link |
and other foods actually make us feel anxious?
link |
I think some people may be familiar with this,
link |
other people might not.
link |
But most people don't realize that as you approach eating,
link |
there's an anxiety associated with that.
link |
It's an alertness.
link |
Remember in the previous discussions,
link |
or even if you don't and you haven't seen those,
link |
all of your moods and feelings of wellbeing
link |
are anchored on this continuum of alertness versus calmness.
link |
And we hear so often about rest and digest,
link |
that, oh, after we eat, we feel really nice and full,
link |
hopefully comfortably full and not too full.
link |
Then we're relaxing and we feel satiated.
link |
It's associated with serotonin, this molecule of satiation.
link |
But what most people don't know is that there's an area
link |
of the hypothalamus, so deep in the brain,
link |
kind of in the middle deep portion of the brain,
link |
called the lateral hypothalamus.
link |
And the lateral hypothalamus is really interesting
link |
because it controls feeding, but it inhibits feeding.
link |
It stops us from feeding.
link |
And there's another area in the brain,
link |
if you want names, I'll give them to you.
link |
If you don't want names, just ignore them,
link |
delete them from your memory and awareness,
link |
called the locus coeruleus.
link |
Now the locus coeruleus sits back further in the brainstem
link |
and it releases norepinephrine,
link |
which is essentially adrenaline and makes us feel alert.
link |
Now locus coeruleus has a lot of different functions
link |
in the brain, but when we are going to eat,
link |
let's say we walk into a restaurant,
link |
we sit down or we're preparing a meal,
link |
locus coeruleus is known to release
link |
noradrenaline in the brain.
link |
It's creating a kind of alertness.
link |
This has ancient utility, but it's creating this alertness.
link |
And for many people, they experience that
link |
as they approach food as stress, as anxiety.
link |
But what's interesting is that as we approach food,
link |
locus coeruleus is releasing all these molecules
link |
that make us feel more anxious and alert.
link |
Sometimes it's felt as excitement
link |
and that has probably to do
link |
with how we feel about food generally.
link |
Are we happy with our relationship to food?
link |
Are we trying to restrict our relationship to food?
link |
Are people coming over for dinner?
link |
All that will play in of course,
link |
but there's a certain stress and anxiety
link |
on approach to food.
link |
And as we approach food and we feel that anxiety,
link |
locus coeruleus activates the lateral hypothalamus
link |
in a way that inhibits feeding,
link |
that makes us not want to eat.
link |
So a lot of people who have kind of pre-meal anxiety
link |
or anxiety around food,
link |
and they can't seem to just calm down and have a good meal
link |
to access that later rest and digest.
link |
A lot of that is because of this heightened stress
link |
upon approach to food.
link |
And a lot of the tools that are out there
link |
both for eating disorders
link |
and for just kind of the general public
link |
who isn't suffering from eating disorders,
link |
things like mindfulness around meals,
link |
they always tell you, you should never eat when stressed.
link |
I'm sorry, but my life is not organized
link |
in a way that I can't do that.
link |
I would never eat, right?
link |
Because I eat when I'm awake
link |
and I don't know if I'm stressed, but I don't think I am,
link |
but I tend to run around a lot during the day.
link |
I don't generally take time to do two or three deep breaths
link |
before I eat, I generally will eat.
link |
That can be healthy or unhealthy
link |
depending on the quality of your digestion.
link |
I think using digestion as a guide is good.
link |
But a lot of people aren't aware that this interaction
link |
between locus coeruleus and lateral hypothalamus
link |
is a basic mechanism where we are supposed to get
link |
a little bit alert and anxious around mealtime.
link |
And then as we eat, the mechanisms for calming
link |
and satiation are supposed to kick in.
link |
And those mechanisms involve,
link |
as I mentioned earlier, two things.
link |
One is how things taste.
link |
Digestion starts in the mouth, of course.
link |
We taste our food.
link |
Everyone tells us we should chew our food more.
link |
Yes, that can improve digestion.
link |
We're not supposed to drink too many fluids as we eat.
link |
But a lot of how we feel while we eat and after we eat
link |
is because of this vagus sensing of what's in our gut.
link |
It's sending information all the time.
link |
Are there contaminants?
link |
There are a lot of information,
link |
these so-called parallel pathways
link |
that are going up into our brain
link |
that regulate whether or not
link |
we want to eat more of something or not.
link |
And there are accelerators,
link |
things that make us want to eat more,
link |
like sugar and fats, because those are nutrient dense
link |
and they help generally, at least in the short term,
link |
support the survival of animals, but also amino acids.
link |
And this is very important.
link |
There are a lot of data,
link |
but much of what comes from the data on what people eat
link |
and how much they eat is from a subconscious detection
link |
of how many amino acids and what the array,
link |
meaning the constellation of amino acids is in a given food.
link |
And it's fair to say that the sum total of these studies
link |
point in a direction where people will basically eat
link |
not until their stomach is full,
link |
but until the brain perceives
link |
that they have adequate intake of amino acids.
link |
Now, this is a conversation that comes up
link |
in the context of the meat only, the keto,
link |
the kind of zone diet, the Mediterranean diet,
link |
I'm largely going to ignore the kind of strict camps today.
link |
I will talk a little bit about it
link |
because I think each one of them actually taps
link |
into something important about this brain body relationship
link |
that the other ones don't.
link |
But I don't want to get into a discussion
link |
about the ethics of different foods
link |
of animal-based or non-animal-based,
link |
because that's not the topic today.
link |
It's really about nutrient sensing and amino acid sensing.
link |
So we generally will eat until our gut tells our brain
link |
that we have adequate amounts of these amino acids,
link |
amino acids of course are important
link |
because they are the building blocks of sure,
link |
muscle and the other things in our body that need repair.
link |
But what most people don't realize is that amino acids
link |
are what the neurochemicals in the brain are made from.
link |
Now this is vitally important, okay?
link |
So we've heard dopamine is this molecule
link |
that makes you feel good.
link |
Actually dopamine is a molecule that makes you feel good.
link |
It's released within the brain
link |
and it does feel very good when you have dopamine release.
link |
Dopamine release is caused by surprise, excitement,
link |
events that you're looking forward to and that turn out well.
link |
It is inhibited by events you're looking forward to
link |
that don't work out.
link |
When someone says they're going to call
link |
that you're really, really excited to talk to
link |
and then they don't.
link |
Or you thought a movie was going to be really great
link |
Or you expect a meal to be really delicious
link |
and it's kind of eh.
link |
And we actually, there's a name for that.
link |
It's called reward prediction error.
link |
So if, and you can actually use this
link |
in the context of meals and plans
link |
in a way that's very useful with yourself
link |
and people you know.
link |
Essentially, if you expect something to be really terrific,
link |
it really does place a higher expectation
link |
at the chemical level.
link |
So if you don't get as much dopamine
link |
as you're expecting from something,
link |
so you hear about a really great restaurant
link |
or a place that has a really,
link |
in my case, I wouldn't call it an addiction.
link |
I would call it more of an affliction for croissants.
link |
The best vegetable, of course, is the croissant.
link |
And I get really excited about the fact
link |
that someone will tell me, oh, there's this place
link |
and they have incredible croissants.
link |
You got to go there.
link |
So I get really excited and I'll go.
link |
And just them telling me
link |
that it's going to be really terrific raises an expectation,
link |
a dopamine expectation.
link |
And unless those croissants are amazing,
link |
chances are I'm going to experience them
link |
as less good, less satisfying.
link |
I will truly release less dopamine
link |
than I would had they just said,
link |
oh yeah, I think that there are croissants down the street
link |
or if I just tried one at random.
link |
And that's because of this reward prediction error.
link |
Your expectation of something releases dopamine
link |
and the actual event releases dopamine.
link |
And if the event related dopamine
link |
does not exceed the expectation or at least match it,
link |
there's a much higher tendency
link |
that you won't pursue that thing again.
link |
So dopamine is really powerful
link |
and it's not just the molecule of reward.
link |
It is the molecule of desire.
link |
It's the molecule of wanting,
link |
not just the molecule of having.
link |
since people often ask for book recommendations,
link |
I don't know the author personally, but I love the book.
link |
It's called The Molecule of More.
link |
It's a terrific book.
link |
I wish I had written it frankly,
link |
but if you want to learn more about dopamine,
link |
reward prediction error,
link |
and how dopamine regulates various aspects
link |
of your emotional and motivational life,
link |
it's a terrific read.
link |
Dopamine is what's going to lead us
link |
to want to eat more of something
link |
or to not want more of something
link |
because dopamine really is about craving.
link |
It's about motivation and it's about desire.
link |
And as I mentioned,
link |
these amino acid sensors in our gut
link |
are detecting how many amino acids,
link |
but they're also detecting which amino acids.
link |
And there's a particular amino acid called L-tyrosine,
link |
which comes from food.
link |
You can look up online which foods contain L-tyrosine.
link |
It is also in some plant-based foods.
link |
L-tyrosine is the precursor to a couple other molecules
link |
like L-dopa, et cetera, that make dopamine.
link |
And so there's a misconception out there
link |
that most of the serotonin is in our gut
link |
and most of the dopamine is in our gut
link |
and therefore our mood is in our gut.
link |
That's not quite the way it works.
link |
We'll talk about serotonin in a moment,
link |
but dopamine is synthesized from the amino acids
link |
However, the dopamine neurons that give rise
link |
to these feelings of good or wanting more
link |
or desire and motivation, those reside in the brain.
link |
So we don't want to get too confused.
link |
We want to respect and honor the power of the gut
link |
and this vagal pathway,
link |
but it's really neurons within your brain
link |
that drive the pursuit and decision-making.
link |
So what does this mean?
link |
Well, some people make too little dopamine.
link |
Some people make so little dopamine
link |
that they need prescription dopamine.
link |
People with Parkinson's take L-dopa
link |
and other compounds to increase dopamine
link |
because Parkinson's is associated
link |
with deficits in movement.
link |
It starts as a tremor,
link |
actually starts as some other things that are interesting.
link |
We'll talk about in a moment,
link |
but Parkinson's is a depression.
link |
It's a blunting of motivation and mood and affect,
link |
and it's a tremor.
link |
And then eventually in severe conditions,
link |
it's challenges in speaking and walking.
link |
So some famous examples would be Muhammad Ali,
link |
Michael J. Fox, the great boxing trainer, Freddy Roach.
link |
Like these people have Parkinson's
link |
and they at least later in their life
link |
had challenges speaking.
link |
Now, it's not just fighters that develop Parkinson's.
link |
As far as I know, Michael J. Fox wasn't a fighter.
link |
People can develop Parkinson's
link |
and Parkinson's is a depletion
link |
of dopamine neurons in the brain.
link |
And it's not just movement challenges,
link |
it's challenges with mood.
link |
Now, hopefully most of you,
link |
all of you don't have Parkinson's,
link |
but it's clear that dietary L-tyrosine
link |
supports the healthy production of things like dopamine
link |
and as well as other factors within the brain.
link |
Now, some people immediately ask,
link |
well, should I supplement L-tyrosine?
link |
So let's just talk about that
link |
because that's going to come up.
link |
Full disclosure, I sometimes take L-tyrosine.
link |
I'm not taking it right now,
link |
but I take it only occasionally.
link |
You can buy this in capsule form.
link |
It does increase kind of mood and elevation and alertness.
link |
It is over the counter.
link |
You have to check with your doctor.
link |
I'm not responsible for your healthcare
link |
and I'm not a doctor.
link |
Whether or not it's safe for you.
link |
People with preexisting hyper dopaminergic conditions
link |
like mania should probably not take L-tyrosine.
link |
The other thing about taking L-tyrosine
link |
is there is a crash, okay?
link |
It's not a massive crash
link |
if you take it at appropriate doses and it's right for you,
link |
but it can produce a crash and a lethargy
link |
and a kind of brain fog after the next day or so.
link |
And so L-tyrosine, however,
link |
can be ingested through foods or through supplementation
link |
to increase dopamine levels.
link |
That's well known.
link |
Taken chronically, however,
link |
it can disrupt those dopamine pathways.
link |
Now there are other drugs that will increase L-tyrosine
link |
and dopamine as well,
link |
but those are severe enough
link |
that they generally tend to have addictive properties.
link |
So things like methamphetamine,
link |
things like cocaine are terrible
link |
because they really ramp up the dopamine system so much
link |
that people really can't achieve dopamine release
link |
through any other mechanisms.
link |
But food and the ingestion of L-tyrosine
link |
has a profound effect on our levels of dopamine.
link |
It takes a little while,
link |
but that really will impact level of mood.
link |
Certain antidepressants fall into the category
link |
of dopaminergic antidepressants.
link |
One of the most famous ones, of course, is Wellbutrin.
link |
Wellbutrin was developed
link |
because a lot of the other antidepressants
link |
tend to make people feel kind of lethargic
link |
or they had side effect profiles that people didn't like.
link |
So they developed this thing that,
link |
the generic name is different,
link |
but it's generally called Wellbutrin.
link |
Wellbutrin activates dopamine and epinephrine,
link |
which is a substrate of dopamine.
link |
And both of those are involved in motivation
link |
and alertness and effort.
link |
So you might say, wow, this sounds like a great drug.
link |
However, this drug, the side effect profile
link |
tends to be the things that are associated
link |
with elevated mood and alertness.
link |
So this isn't like taking some L-tyrosine.
link |
This isn't like eating some tyrosine rich foods.
link |
This is really a much greater release of dopamine
link |
and epinephrine, and it increases things like anxiety,
link |
sweating, the pupils dilate.
link |
It has certain effects on,
link |
in particular people with epilepsy.
link |
It's been used somewhat successfully for smoking cessation,
link |
but again, it's not for everybody.
link |
And I'm not here to encourage the use of these things.
link |
I'm just describing the biology and the rationale
link |
for why these drugs were developed.
link |
So let's back up a second.
link |
Let's just kind of take stock of where we're at.
link |
We have a brain-body connection.
link |
There are many of them,
link |
but one of the main ones is the vagus nerve.
link |
The vagus collects information about a lot of things,
link |
breathing, heart rate, stuff that's happening in the gut,
link |
et cetera, and gut by the way,
link |
includes the stomach and the intestines,
link |
sends that information up to the brain.
link |
The brain is using that information
link |
to decide one of two things,
link |
move towards something or move away.
link |
It can also pause,
link |
but essentially pausing is not moving toward.
link |
So that's the dopamine pathway
link |
and foods rich in L-tyrosine generally give us
link |
an elevated mood and make us want to do more
link |
of whatever it is that we happen to be doing
link |
as well as other things.
link |
Motivation generalizes to other things.
link |
It's not unique to just ingesting foods,
link |
but foods that give us a big pulse of dopamine
link |
will make us crave more of that food.
link |
It will make us crave more of the activity
link |
that led to the ingestion of that food.
link |
And as I mentioned earlier,
link |
a lot of that is happening at a subconscious level
link |
that you're not even aware of.
link |
And this is why I think the concern about hidden sugars
link |
and over-ingestion of sugars is serious
link |
because it's not just that the sugars
link |
are impacting our blood glucose in negative ways,
link |
although often it is.
link |
It's not just the obesity crisis that's happening.
link |
It's also the fact that it's disrupting
link |
our dopamine systems.
link |
Now that doesn't mean all sugar is bad.
link |
Some people have a quite healthy relationship to sugar,
link |
but I think most people are just not aware
link |
that sugar isn't just operating at the level of taste.
link |
It's operating at the level of neurochemicals
link |
and it's doing it subconsciously.
link |
So I'd like to talk about some of the other pathways
link |
between brain and body that regulate our moods and emotions,
link |
but also are actionable.
link |
So the other neuromodulator that's really interesting
link |
in the context of the vagus is serotonin.
link |
Serotonin, just to remind you, is a neuromodulator.
link |
Therefore, it creates a bias in which neural circuits,
link |
which neurons in the brain and body are going to be active,
link |
and it makes it less likely
link |
that other ones are going to be active.
link |
I think it's fair to say, without ever having measured it,
link |
that my bulldog Costello must just,
link |
his brain and body must be swimming in serotonin
link |
because he's very calm and he eats a lot,
link |
but he generally feels pretty sated.
link |
He's kind of an animal that's obsessed with comforts.
link |
He's a bit of a hedonist.
link |
And serotonin, when it's elevated,
link |
tends to make us feel really comfortable
link |
and kind of blissed out wherever we are.
link |
And that contrasts with dopamine and epinephrine,
link |
which mainly put us in pursuit of things.
link |
Motivation is pursuit.
link |
Serotonin is more about feeling really comfy where we are.
link |
The conversation around the brain-body relationship
link |
and mood in serotonin for many years was,
link |
well, you eat a big meal, the gut is distended,
link |
you've got all the nutrients you need,
link |
you rest and digest, and serotonin is released.
link |
That's sorta true, but there's a lot more going on
link |
and a lot more that's interesting
link |
and actionable that's going on.
link |
First of all, some of you, but perhaps not all,
link |
have heard that more than 90% of the serotonin
link |
that we make is in our gut.
link |
And indeed, we have a lot of serotonin in our gut.
link |
We have neurons in our gut that make serotonin.
link |
We have neurons in our brain that make serotonin.
link |
But here's the deal.
link |
Most of the serotonin that impacts our mood
link |
and our mental state is not in our gut.
link |
Most of it is in the neurons of the brain
link |
in an area called the raphe nucleus of the brain.
link |
There are a few other locations too.
link |
And those are the neurons that control
link |
whether or not we feel satiated or not,
link |
whether or not we feel happy and calm.
link |
You can't have a discussion about serotonin
link |
without having a discussion about antidepressants
link |
because during the late 80s and early 90s,
link |
there was this explosion in the number
link |
of prescription drugs that were released,
link |
things like first one and most famous one is Prozac,
link |
Zoloft, and Paxil, a number of other ones
link |
that are so-called SSRI, Selective Serotonin
link |
Reuptake Inhibitors.
link |
That's a long acronym, but basically those drugs work
link |
by preventing the gobbling up of serotonin
link |
or reuptake of serotonin into neurons
link |
after it's been released,
link |
which leads to more serotonin overall,
link |
which means to elevate serotonin.
link |
And indeed, those drugs were and can be very useful
link |
for certain people to feel better in cases of depression
link |
and some other clinical disorders as well.
link |
So I really don't want to dismiss them
link |
as useless or dangerous for everybody.
link |
They can be quite useful for many people.
link |
Not everyone responds well to them
link |
as I'm sure you've all heard.
link |
And their side effect profile
link |
has effects like blunting affect.
link |
It can make people feel kind of flat, kind of meh.
link |
It can reduce appetite for food.
link |
It can reduce appetite for sex.
link |
It can do all sorts of things, or it can work really well.
link |
Sometimes it's a dose-related issue, et cetera.
link |
Serotonin is fascinating, however,
link |
because how well those neurons in the RAFAE work
link |
is impacted by some events within the gut,
link |
although you might be surprised
link |
to find out what those events are.
link |
So let's go a little bit deeper into the gut.
link |
And again, the gut includes the stomach
link |
and then the small intestine and the large intestine
link |
and ask like, what is going on with serotonin in the gut?
link |
How is it impacting serotonin in the brain?
link |
And let's think about this in the context
link |
of how some of us might want to increase
link |
or decrease our serotonin levels.
link |
So as far as I know,
link |
there aren't any really good at-home blood tests
link |
for things like serotonin and dopamine.
link |
There are some commercial products out there,
link |
but to me, just to me, I'm not particularly impressed.
link |
It's not the same as getting your hormones levels measured
link |
or your metabolic factors measured.
link |
That can be done and it can be done rigorously.
link |
There are tests out there.
link |
There are even some, believe it or not,
link |
there's some questionnaires.
link |
And I think actually last year
link |
it made some of the bigger newspapers.
link |
Are you more of a dopamine or a serotonin?
link |
Are you a this or a that?
link |
I find that stuff to be a little silly,
link |
although I do appreciate and like the fact
link |
that people are thinking about
link |
and talking about neuromodulators.
link |
There aren't really great ways to measure these things
link |
outside the clinic.
link |
There's some great clinical tools
link |
that you can get inside of a hospital
link |
or from a proper endocrinologist or neurologist,
link |
but no great at-home tool.
link |
So maybe that's a call to arms
link |
for some of you entrepreneurial folks out there
link |
to create these tests, accurate tests, please,
link |
that could be done at home.
link |
But some people feel like they're too anxious
link |
or they're always in a motivated state
link |
and they're trying to adjust their serotonin.
link |
Many people adjust their serotonin by just eating more food
link |
and carbohydrate-rich foods will increase serotonin.
link |
I've talked about this on a previous podcast,
link |
but I personally am a big fan, at least for me,
link |
as I usually fast and exercise
link |
in the early part of the day.
link |
I eat a relatively high protein and moderate fat,
link |
zero carb or low carb meal at lunch
link |
and in the afternoon to stay alert
link |
because those foods tend to favor dopamine production,
link |
acetylcholine production,
link |
epinephrine production, and alertness.
link |
My mood is generally pretty good most of the time.
link |
And then as evening comes around
link |
and I'm concerned about sleep and a good night's sleep,
link |
not concerned in an anxious way,
link |
but I want to get a good night's sleep,
link |
I will ingest foods that promote serotonin release
link |
because they contain a lot of tryptophan.
link |
So if I do eat meat,
link |
it would be like a white meat, turkey meat.
link |
I don't tend to, I've never liked turkey.
link |
I don't mind the animal, but I don't like ingesting the meat.
link |
But starchy carbohydrates will increase serotonin.
link |
Some people also will take serotonin.
link |
You can now buy 5-HTP supplements.
link |
This is a little bit tricky.
link |
5-HTP supplements can of course increase 5-HTP.
link |
It is 5-HTP or serotonin,
link |
but that sometimes can create problems
link |
in endogenous or self-made production of serotonin.
link |
So I'm never a fan of taking things
link |
very close to the chemical you're trying to increase
link |
for very long periods of time, maybe for occasional use.
link |
I have the problem that if I take serotonin supplements,
link |
5-HTP, I fall asleep, the sleep I have is very intense
link |
and I wake up three or four hours later.
link |
And we know based on sleep studies
link |
with good measurements in the lab
link |
that serotonin release tends to be
link |
in the later part of the night.
link |
And so by taking it early in the night,
link |
it really can disrupt the pattern of sleep
link |
and the depth of sleep.
link |
Nonetheless, some people are interested in taking serotonin
link |
to get some of the more blissed out effects.
link |
You can achieve that with foods, as I mentioned,
link |
that are carbohydrate rich.
link |
So as you're seeing,
link |
this isn't really a discussion about nutrition per se.
link |
This is a discussion about food,
link |
which contains amino acids.
link |
Amino acids being the precursors to neuromodulators
link |
and neuromodulators having a profound effect
link |
on your overall state of alertness or calmness,
link |
happiness, sadness, and wellbeing.
link |
So there are a number of things that one can take.
link |
As I mentioned, one of them being 5-HTP itself.
link |
Now I'm not recommending people take anything,
link |
but if you're interested in what this does
link |
and you want to explore this,
link |
of course you'd want permission from your doctor.
link |
You can go to this free website.
link |
I love this resource.
link |
They don't pay me to say that,
link |
but I just love this resource.
link |
I followed it for a long time called examine.com.
link |
Thank you folks at examine.com
link |
for putting this free resource out on the web
link |
that has links through what they call
link |
the human effect matrix.
link |
So it's links to all the PubMed studies
link |
for particular effects of particular compounds
link |
that one can buy and ingest.
link |
Incredible, as well as important health warnings.
link |
So I'm not going to read through everything,
link |
but if you were to go to examine.com, as I have now,
link |
and you'd put in 5-HTP,
link |
they're only looking at things that have strong evidence.
link |
PubMed articles, articles are in the PubMed archives.
link |
So for instance, I didn't know this,
link |
but 5-HTP produces a notable decrease in appetite.
link |
And this appetite suppression makes sense, of course,
link |
because we ingest foods to get serotonin.
link |
And if we have enough serotonin,
link |
then there's no reason to ingest more foods.
link |
It tends to have a blunting of appetite.
link |
It probably does that also through other mechanisms.
link |
So I'm not saying you should do this,
link |
but if someone's trying to blunt their appetite,
link |
it could be a interesting route.
link |
Although I don't recommend chronic use.
link |
Not surprisingly, there's a decrease in body weight
link |
as a consequence, an increase in cortisol.
link |
So that's kind of important to note
link |
that when you typically in biology,
link |
if you pull on one string really hard, another one moves,
link |
it's a little bit like a puppet
link |
and there's more than one string on the puppet.
link |
So it does seem to increase cortisol,
link |
though they report as a minor effect.
link |
Again, links to all those studies are there,
link |
which is why I'm not listing them out in our caption notes.
link |
You can go and get them at examine.com,
link |
put in serotonin and you'll find that.
link |
So I find it fascinating that nowadays
link |
there are things that are somewhere between doing nothing,
link |
getting serotonin from tryptophan in foods
link |
and prescription drugs.
link |
There's this other category of supplements
link |
that are really interesting for modulating
link |
these chemicals in the body.
link |
And I should mention before I move on,
link |
because I mentioned L-tyrosine,
link |
I neglected to mention earlier
link |
in our discussion about dopamine.
link |
If you're interested in the dopamine pathway,
link |
go to examine.com, put in mucuna pruriens,
link |
P separate word, P-R-U-R-I-E-N-S.
link |
It is a velvet bean that grows from vines
link |
and is very itchy to touch due to serotonin on its surface.
link |
Amazing, this bean has serotonin on its surface.
link |
And indeed serotonin, if you were to put it on your skin,
link |
would cause some irritation of the skin, amazing.
link |
Inside the bean is L-DOPA.
link |
Mucuna pruriens is not just something
link |
that promotes dopamine release
link |
because of some weird mystical ancient thing
link |
or whatever, or sorcery.
link |
It is chemically L-DOPA, the precursor to dopamine.
link |
It contains some other molecules as well
link |
and low levels of other psychoactives.
link |
This stuff is available over the counter, incredible.
link |
I personally find it incredible.
link |
Its effects are really interesting.
link |
I'm not going to read them all off,
link |
but I mentioned these effects
link |
not because I'm encouraging you to take it,
link |
but because you get a window
link |
into what acute dopamine increase does
link |
in the non-Parkinsonian context.
link |
And you can start to think about foods
link |
that are rich in L-tyrosine
link |
as biasing certain effects or not others.
link |
So when you hear food is medicine,
link |
food isn't really medicine, food is food,
link |
but food has these chemical effects as well.
link |
So first one listed is three studies with very high rigor
link |
that overall have a minor effect on,
link |
of all things, sperm quality.
link |
So it appears that sperm motility itself,
link |
I'm assuming when they say sperm quality,
link |
I don't know what features of sperm of quality
link |
they looked at with sperm.
link |
That's not a discussion I want to have,
link |
but I'm assuming it's motility
link |
because I know enough about reproductive biology
link |
to know that sperm ability to swim
link |
depends on some proteins that are present
link |
in the front of the sperm, et cetera,
link |
things like pentraxins,
link |
and sperm motility is generally associated
link |
with sperm quality.
link |
Sperm that don't move are generally not very useful sperm.
link |
Symptoms of Parkinson disease
link |
are notably degraded with macuna purines.
link |
So fascinating, that's not surprising.
link |
And there are a lot of other effects here,
link |
feelings of subjective wellbeing, testosterone,
link |
reductions in prolactin, not surprising.
link |
Prolactin is a hormone that's involved in milk letdown,
link |
it's in lactating mothers,
link |
it's involved in feelings of peace
link |
and generally is antagonistic to sexual desire
link |
in both men and female.
link |
So it's really interesting that things like macuna purines,
link |
which are L-DOPA, reduced prolactin, increased motility,
link |
increased testosterone, subjective wellbeing.
link |
So you're starting to see a theme, right?
link |
Dopamine really makes us motivated, feel in pursuit,
link |
makes us feel good.
link |
Serotonin makes us feel more relaxed and calm.
link |
Now, this whole month is about emotion.
link |
So you might be thinking, well, wait,
link |
where are we going with all this as it relates to emotions?
link |
But in the last episode,
link |
I said something I'm going to repeat it now briefly,
link |
which is that much of what we talk about
link |
as good emotions or bad emotions,
link |
there's a context to that, there's a social context.
link |
You can't really say an emotion is good or bad,
link |
grieving at a funeral is healthy, okay?
link |
Being happy at a funeral,
link |
assuming you loved the person that died,
link |
is most people probably wouldn't think that was healthy.
link |
So we can't really say that certain emotions like sadness
link |
or happiness are healthy, its context is important.
link |
Cultural context is important.
link |
Many of you have asked for book recommendations.
link |
This is an opportunity to raise a mention of another book.
link |
Again, I don't have any financial affiliation or anything,
link |
but if you want to read more about emotions
link |
and how the context and cultural things impact our emotions,
link |
I'm a huge fan of Lisa Feldman Barrett.
link |
I learned about her from the Lex Fridman podcast.
link |
I've had discussions with her on my Instagram live.
link |
She's at Northeastern University, a world expert in emotions.
link |
Her first book is How Emotions Are Made.
link |
This is not a book she sent me.
link |
I paid for this with my own money years ago,
link |
bought it, read it, loved it long before I met Lisa.
link |
I'm just delighted that we've got
link |
to known each other a little bit.
link |
It's a really interesting read into the psychology
link |
of emotions and some of the subjectivity of emotions.
link |
So whereas I'm talking about mainly the biology of emotions,
link |
this gets a little bit more into the psychology
link |
of the biology as well.
link |
And Lisa is just terrific.
link |
She's also putting a lot of information
link |
out into the world about emotions.
link |
So if you want to learn more about that, check out her work.
link |
Again, it's Lisa Feldman Barrett
link |
and that book is How Emotions Are Made.
link |
Hopefully she'll continue to write many more books.
link |
So now you understand the relationship, I hope,
link |
between foods and dopamine, foods and serotonin
link |
and that they're both being communicated
link |
to the brain via the vagus, right?
link |
We ingest these foods.
link |
These supplements are things people take.
link |
They don't put them directly into the brain.
link |
They put them in our gut.
link |
So yes, there's a gut brain connection
link |
but it's not about the serotonin in the gut
link |
that makes you feel calm and placid.
link |
It's not about the dopamine in the gut.
link |
It's just been oversold that way
link |
because I think there's something really attractive
link |
and I understand about the idea
link |
that because certain things about our experience of life
link |
and our emotions is happening in our body
link |
that maybe we have a little more control, right?
link |
Because this thing is a hard container.
link |
We can't just stuff some dopamine in there.
link |
I can't just, you know,
link |
I could probably take a macuna purines bean
link |
and stuff it in my ear.
link |
Please don't do that.
link |
It'd make my ear itchy
link |
because of the serotonin on the outside.
link |
But you can't get stuff in there.
link |
What you have to do is ingest things
link |
that are metabolized in certain ways
link |
that communicate to the brain
link |
or so maybe they pass into the brain themselves
link |
across what's called the blood brain barrier.
link |
I'll talk about the blood brain barrier in a minute.
link |
It's actually called the BBB.
link |
So it ends up sounding like baby, BBB.
link |
I guess that's like BB.
link |
But there are also nerves in the gut
link |
that are sensing the nutrient contents of food
link |
and then saying, oh, you should feel better and want more.
link |
Oh, that's got a lot of bitterness and acid taste to it.
link |
You should want less of that, okay?
link |
So as I transition out of the discussion
link |
about dopamine and serotonin and the gut,
link |
hopefully you've got some actionable items there
link |
under your belt, pun intended,
link |
where you can understand how certain foods
link |
and certain nutrients and you can look these up
link |
might impact your mood.
link |
If you're somebody who's really anxious and really wired,
link |
well, then the dopamine adrenaline pathway,
link |
epinephrine pathway is probably not one
link |
that you want to lean on any harder.
link |
If you tend to be someone who's pretty passive
link |
and you're having trouble with motivation,
link |
well, then think about ramping up the dopamine pathway.
link |
I always think behaviors and proper food choices
link |
is the best way to start
link |
and behaviors include things like exercise, et cetera.
link |
But one of the problems with the discussion
link |
around mood and exercise or mood and meditation
link |
is that it's so subjective.
link |
It's like, I love certain forms of exercise and not others.
link |
Certain ones are aversive to me.
link |
Certain ones are attractive to me.
link |
And it's never really clear.
link |
No one's ever told me, okay,
link |
you have to do 10 minutes on the bike
link |
at X number of RPM at so-and-so or on the skier
link |
in order to get your dopamine up.
link |
But we can actually say if you ingest more L-tyrosine,
link |
there's a high probability
link |
that you're going to make more dopamine.
link |
And I'm talking about ingesting it through food
link |
or through supplementation, if you like.
link |
Macuna purines I've tried, I should just mention,
link |
it was too dopaminergic for me.
link |
I really, really jazzed up
link |
and then severe crash for me the next day.
link |
But that's, I think, because I tend to ride pretty high
link |
on the kind of alertness and motivation scale.
link |
I'm always being told by Costello
link |
and other people in the podcast studio
link |
to slow my speech down.
link |
This is me uncaffeinated
link |
and I could probably afford
link |
a little more serotonin in my life.
link |
So whereas Costello, he could afford,
link |
well, he could afford to wake up every couple of days
link |
and just say hello to us.
link |
This dog sleeps more than any other creature.
link |
So there are things that we can do and they're actionable
link |
and they are, in some ways they're quantitative
link |
because you can regulate dosages
link |
and you can regulate amounts and you can regulate timing.
link |
And everyone has to play with these things
link |
and figure out what's right for them in terms of feeding.
link |
And everyone has to explore
link |
and understand what's safe and right for them.
link |
But, and of course, exercise is still very important.
link |
I talked about social connection in the last episode,
link |
super important for activation of serotonin.
link |
But when it comes to this gut brain,
link |
body brain relationship, what we eat really matters
link |
in terms of the neurochemicals that we make.
link |
So let's talk a little bit more about things
link |
that we ingest in our body and then allow our body
link |
to inform our brain to shift our mood.
link |
And this is something I've been doing for years
link |
and I just want to say,
link |
I've found to be a complete game changer.
link |
There's excellent science to support it.
link |
And I think most people are familiar with it
link |
in a different context,
link |
but I don't think most people know this simple fact,
link |
which is that the omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio
link |
has a profound effect on depression.
link |
It has a profound effect on mood.
link |
So much so that in a double blind placebo controlled study
link |
that I will provide the link to,
link |
this was a study first published in 2008,
link |
but there've been many others as well.
link |
First of all, in an experiment done in animals,
link |
they found there's a model of learned helplessness
link |
It's not very kind to the animals,
link |
but they put rats or mice in a jar.
link |
They let them swim and they'll swim, swim, swim
link |
to try and save their life.
link |
And eventually they give up.
link |
It's a learned helplessness.
link |
They don't let them drown.
link |
They take them out.
link |
Adjusting the omega-3 omega-6 ratio
link |
so that the omega-3s are higher
link |
led to less learned helplessness,
link |
meaning these animals would swim longer, okay?
link |
Now that's an animal that's a rat,
link |
not a particularly kind study,
link |
but that same study was essentially done in humans,
link |
although they didn't have them swim
link |
to the point of near drowning.
link |
What they did is they took people
link |
who were clinically depressed, major depression, okay?
link |
Major depression is severe maladaptive state,
link |
meaning it inhibits job, relationships, appetite,
link |
all sorts of negative health effects.
link |
And they did a comparison of 1,000 milligrams a day of EPA.
link |
So EPA is one of the elements
link |
that contains high levels of omega-3s
link |
that's in things like fish oil.
link |
Talk about other sources in a little bit,
link |
but it wasn't 1,000 milligrams of fish oil.
link |
It was 1,000 milligrams of EPA.
link |
Compare that to 20 milligrams of fluoxetine,
link |
which is Prozac, okay?
link |
Really increases serotonin.
link |
And in this study of 60 individuals,
link |
again, I'll provide the links to the study,
link |
they found that they were equally effective
link |
in reducing depressive symptoms.
link |
a food-based compound that you can't make without, right?
link |
This is not a situation
link |
where you can make your own omega-3s.
link |
You have to get them from food sources
link |
or from supplementation.
link |
Was as effective as 20 milligrams of fluoxetine
link |
over the course of eight weeks.
link |
And what was really interesting in addition to that
link |
is that the combination of 1,000 milligrams of EPA
link |
and fluoxetine had a synergistic effect
link |
in lowering depressive symptoms.
link |
I find this remarkable.
link |
I heard about this when it first came out
link |
and I wasn't sure what to make of it
link |
because there are a lot of studies that come out.
link |
And I generally like to focus my changes in behavior
link |
around things where there's a large center of mass.
link |
There's a lot of information.
link |
A couple of years later,
link |
I did in fact start taking 1,000 milligrams per day of EPA
link |
Now, there are a few side effects of fish oil.
link |
People who have blood, who are bleeders,
link |
who have factor V Leiden mutations
link |
or women who are taking birth control,
link |
which can make you,
link |
which can affect blood clotting and things of that sort
link |
really should talk to your doctor,
link |
make sure it's okay for you.
link |
Fish oil also can give people fishy breath,
link |
which is pretty gross, frankly,
link |
but there are now fish oils that
link |
either because of the encapsulations
link |
or because they put some lemon flavoring in there
link |
doesn't have that effect.
link |
In any event, 1,000 milligrams per day of EPA,
link |
I started ingesting that regularly.
link |
I just felt better.
link |
I wasn't clinically depressed,
link |
but I generally, I did feel, at least for me,
link |
an increase in mood and affect
link |
and a number of other things.
link |
It's supposed to reduce inflammation.
link |
The cardiovascular effects are controversial.
link |
For a long time, everyone thought
link |
the effects on platelets were really terrific.
link |
Then there were articles that came out
link |
in major newspapers saying maybe not so much,
link |
but the effects on mood are really profound.
link |
And now there are lots of studies.
link |
If you go into PubMed and you were to put EPA
link |
or fish oil and depression,
link |
you would find that there were a number
link |
of really impressive results showing
link |
that it's at least as effective
link |
as certain SSRIs antidepressants at these dosages.
link |
And it can amplify or improve
link |
the effect of low dosages of some of these SSRIs.
link |
So I feel like more people should know about this.
link |
This is nutrition, but it's profoundly affecting mood.
link |
And depression is terrible, right?
link |
Depression can have a component of anxiety in some cases
link |
where people are, they feel lousy and very uncertain.
link |
That's kind of how I talk about depression with anxiety
link |
is you talk to someone who's anxious
link |
and you can tell them everything's going to be okay, okay.
link |
And they're always concerned about what they might not know.
link |
You don't really know the plane isn't going to crash.
link |
You don't really know that life is going to go okay.
link |
And in some sense, they're right.
link |
No one has a crystal ball or can predict the future,
link |
but they tend to perseverate or fixate on the uncertainty.
link |
And then of course,
link |
there are the versions of depression that involve certainty.
link |
People are lethargic and they're certain.
link |
They say, yeah, I'm certain
link |
I'm never going to get another job.
link |
I'm certain I'm never going to meet anyone new.
link |
I'm certain I'm going to fail.
link |
So there's this kind of a divide
link |
in the sphere of depression
link |
around certainty and uncertainty.
link |
But what's interesting is this 1,000 milligrams per day
link |
has been shown to relieve both forms of depression.
link |
Now, does that mean it's going to work for everybody?
link |
No, I'm not here to try and play psychiatrist.
link |
I want to point you in the direction of these manuscripts
link |
so that you can make informed choices for yourself.
link |
You can discuss it with your doctor and family
link |
and make the choices that are right for you.
link |
But here's what's especially interesting
link |
about the heart effects,
link |
because we've heard that these omega-3s,
link |
which of course you can get from other sources too.
link |
You can get from fatty fish.
link |
There are flax seeds, hemp seeds.
link |
There are a number of chia seeds, these kinds of things.
link |
But the levels of EPA that are required are quite high.
link |
So this 1,000 milligrams per day,
link |
that's pretty hard to get from food,
link |
although it can be done depending on what you're eating.
link |
What's interesting is that the heart effects
link |
that are solid, that really stand up in the literature
link |
have a lot more to do with something we talked about
link |
in a previous episode and I'll mention again,
link |
which is heart rate variability.
link |
So we know that having a heart rate that's really high
link |
or a heart rate that's really low,
link |
neither of those are good.
link |
A lot of people think,
link |
oh, you just want a low heart rate, big stroke volume.
link |
You know, if you're running a lot,
link |
you may have 30 or 40 beats per minute.
link |
That's great to be in shape,
link |
but you still want heart rate variability.
link |
It has a lot to do with the tone
link |
of the autonomic nervous system.
link |
Talked about last time how when you inhale,
link |
it speeds up heart rate.
link |
When you exhale, it decreases heart rate.
link |
That's called respiratory sinus arrhythmia.
link |
That's the basis of heart rate variability.
link |
We'll maybe do a short post about this
link |
so you can get all the mechanism
link |
and the behaviors that spill out of that
link |
that might be useful for you.
link |
But the point is heart rate variability, HRV, is good.
link |
And what's interesting is that there was a study in 2009
link |
that showed that people who eat a diet
link |
and fail to supplement in a way
link |
that there's a high omega-6 to 3 ratio,
link |
so not enough omega-3s,
link |
not only are there markers of inflammatory cytokines
link |
elevated things like IL-6 and TNF-alpha,
link |
but they tend to be non-responders to antidepressants.
link |
Shifting that omega-3 omega-6 ratio did a couple things.
link |
First of all, increasing the amount of EPA,
link |
shifted the ratio so it was higher omega-3
link |
to omega-6 ratio, which was good,
link |
lowered the inflammation markers,
link |
and then allowed antidepressants to have their effect
link |
even at low doses.
link |
And here's the really interesting thing.
link |
It worked by increasing heart rate variability.
link |
And you think, well, how in the world would this happen?
link |
But that's a ton of effects.
link |
But the way it works is because of the way
link |
that these things are impacting the gut
link |
and the autonomic nervous system.
link |
Remember earlier I said the vagus includes connections
link |
from the heart signaling about sensory information
link |
about how fast the heart is beating to the brain,
link |
not just stuff from the lungs,
link |
but information from the heart.
link |
And the brain then adjusts heart rate
link |
by heart rate variability.
link |
So it's incredible that there's a way
link |
that one can use the gut,
link |
the ingestion of more of these EPAs,
link |
either through food or supplementation,
link |
to increase heart rate variability
link |
and thereby to improve symptoms,
link |
meaning reduce symptoms of depression,
link |
and to even make low levels of antidepressants
link |
that wouldn't otherwise work work.
link |
And I think I like this study so much
link |
because A, it's super cool.
link |
It bridges the brain-body axis.
link |
It incorporates nutrition and micronutrients in the brain,
link |
but also because it really points to something
link |
that we hear all the time,
link |
which is that our body is a whole system.
link |
It's working as a whole system.
link |
And the brain isn't working in isolation
link |
up there in the skull.
link |
It's reacting to things that are happening in the body,
link |
in the gut, and in the heart rate,
link |
and heart rate variability,
link |
and that the things we ingest
link |
can have a profound effect on them.
link |
Now, of course, I really want to emphasize something,
link |
which is that no one compound or nutrient
link |
or supplement or drug or behavior for that matter
link |
is going to be the be all end all
link |
of shifting out of depression
link |
or improving one's mood or improving sleep.
link |
It's a constellation of things.
link |
And this is especially true
link |
when people start to get excited about supplements
link |
and drugs of all kinds
link |
and their potential for various things.
link |
Right now, there's a lot of excitement about psychedelics
link |
and their therapeutic uses, and I think great.
link |
But as a good friend of mine who's a physician clinician
link |
says better living through chemistry
link |
still requires better living.
link |
You cannot expect to take a compound
link |
regardless of source or potency
link |
and have it completely shift your experience of life
link |
without having to continue to engage
link |
in the proper behaviors, all the things we know,
link |
proper sleep, exercise, social connection, food, et cetera.
link |
There are many others as well.
link |
So I still find that this collection of studies
link |
about omega-3 to omega-6 ratios to be profoundly important,
link |
so much so that it's completely changed the way
link |
that I think about food, the foods I eat, I do supplement.
link |
I don't necessarily think that's for everybody,
link |
but I really think it's incredible
link |
that there are these compounds
link |
that have these robust effects
link |
on our feelings of wellbeing.
link |
And there are others too.
link |
So that 1,000 milligram per day threshold
link |
of fish oil that's beneficial
link |
requires that one take a reasonable amount of these things
link |
either through food or through supplementation.
link |
I acknowledge that not everyone wants to take fish oil.
link |
There are a couple of reasons
link |
why one might want to avoid that.
link |
One would be for ethical reasons.
link |
You have an emotional relationship
link |
or a relationship to the environment
link |
that makes you not want to ingest fish related products.
link |
There's krill oil.
link |
Krill is still an organism.
link |
It's a little tiny thing that whales eat a lot of
link |
and people generally eat very little of.
link |
So krill is out there.
link |
I personally, just me, I don't know why,
link |
I didn't react well to krill.
link |
It didn't make me feel very good.
link |
I had some like kind of skin itches and things like that.
link |
And they stopped when I stopped taking it,
link |
but I don't want to bias you against it
link |
if that's your preference.
link |
Some people really like krill oil as a source of omega-3s.
link |
I did mention some of the other sources
link |
like chia seeds and flax seeds.
link |
But as you'll notice,
link |
these are not things that we tend to ingest a lot of
link |
on a regular basis.
link |
It is possible to get omega-3s from meats
link |
if the animals have grazed on grasses
link |
that contain a lot of omega-3s.
link |
So for those of you that ingest meat,
link |
the source of those meats is going to be very important
link |
as it relates to omega-3s.
link |
Even within the category of fish oil,
link |
there's a concern sometimes about mercury
link |
and other contaminants.
link |
You want to go with a brand that emphasizes
link |
that they've gone to really good sources
link |
and that they decontaminate regardless.
link |
And so you have to search out those brands.
link |
There is a test that you can do
link |
as to whether or not the fish oil is rancid or not.
link |
Some people take it in liquid form.
link |
Some people take it in capsule form.
link |
The liquid form is going to be more affordable.
link |
The capsule form is a little easier and a little more
link |
You can actually just chew one of the gel tablets.
link |
And if it tastes really fishy and kind of rancid,
link |
you'll know it's disgusting.
link |
You'll want to spit it out.
link |
And if it doesn't and it's tolerable,
link |
then you'll know that it's okay.
link |
Unfortunately, you have to buy it first
link |
in order to do that.
link |
Although, I don't know,
link |
maybe you can get them to open up the bottle for you
link |
in the store and tell them that you don't want to try it.
link |
Someday, perhaps, fish oil and omega-3s,
link |
it'll be like tasting wine at a restaurant
link |
where you can send it back.
link |
For now, I think you have to purchase it first,
link |
but find a brand you trust and like
link |
and then work with them
link |
if you decide to go that route, of course.
link |
There are other compounds that are also interesting
link |
for mood elevation
link |
that are essentially like foods or are supplement-based
link |
that now, fortunately,
link |
there are really good data from peer-reviewed studies.
link |
And the next one I want to mention,
link |
because I think it's really interesting,
link |
Now, L-carnitine has been around a long time
link |
and it's been discussed in the context of heart health
link |
and a number of other things.
link |
It was actually in tout is a bit of a weight loss agent
link |
but L-carnitine actually has some really impressive effects
link |
And again, we will look to PubMed
link |
because looking at examine.com is essentially,
link |
for me anyway, looking at PubMed.
link |
What is L-carnitine?
link |
L-carnitine is most prevalent in meat
link |
and in beef in particular.
link |
Now, for the vegans,
link |
please know that L-carnitine is available
link |
through non-meat sources as well,
link |
although it's not as enriched in non-meat sources.
link |
It's a really interesting molecule
link |
because L-cetyl L-carnitine
link |
is essentially what's made from L-carnitine,
link |
but it's acetylated.
link |
If you're interested in the biochemistry,
link |
you can look that up.
link |
It's acetylated into a form
link |
that can cross the blood-brain barrier.
link |
The blood-brain barrier or BBB is a barrier.
link |
It's a wall around the brain.
link |
And you have this barrier
link |
because the brain is so important
link |
and it has this feature that the neurons there
link |
don't recreate themselves after injury,
link |
like other organs of the body.
link |
There's not a lot of turnover of cells,
link |
despite what you might've heard.
link |
And so nature has created this BBB,
link |
this blood-brain barrier,
link |
to make sure that certain molecules,
link |
in particular large molecules,
link |
don't get across the blood-brain barrier
link |
because it can be damaging to those tissues.
link |
Incidentally, you also have a very rigid
link |
or stringent barrier around other organs,
link |
which are the gonads.
link |
So the ovaries and the testes and the brain
link |
are the organs of the body that nature has gone
link |
out of its way to protect,
link |
give this additional layer of the blood-brain barrier,
link |
or as you might imagine for the testes and the ovaries,
link |
it's going to be the blood gonadal barrier.
link |
So these barriers exist and make it such that
link |
just because you eat something,
link |
just because you ingest it,
link |
doesn't mean it's going to cross the blood-brain barrier.
link |
But L-carnitine, when taken,
link |
is acetylated and converted into this form
link |
that gets across the blood-brain barrier.
link |
And it has a lot of effects.
link |
It's involved in mitochondrial activation
link |
of long-chain fatty acids,
link |
which that's a big mouthful
link |
that we can get into sometime
link |
when we're talking about metabolic.
link |
But it has some interesting effects on the neuro side.
link |
So if you decide to check it out on examine.com,
link |
you'll see some really interesting things.
link |
Lots of effects on ammonia, C-reactive proteins,
link |
things of that sort, blood glucose is lowered, et cetera.
link |
That's all stuff that's the level of blood in periphery,
link |
slight effects in lowering cholesterol.
link |
Here's some interesting ones.
link |
Rates of pregnancy go way up
link |
when people are taking L-carnitine,
link |
both the father and the mother,
link |
both the source of sperm and the source of egg
link |
are affected in ways that favor pregnancy.
link |
It does increase, here we go again with sperm quality,
link |
sperm motility in males,
link |
and it seems to have positive effects on females
link |
that have polycystic ovary syndrome.
link |
So check that out.
link |
The effects are very strong.
link |
There are three studies listed there.
link |
Again, I'm not promoting this,
link |
but that people take L-carnitine,
link |
especially if you're trying to get pregnant,
link |
but check it out because the effects there
link |
and the studies that are mentioned
link |
are published in peer-reviewed rigorous journals.
link |
In terms of the neural effects,
link |
those are quite interesting.
link |
The effects on depression are still emerging,
link |
but they do seem to exist,
link |
that people feel a notable decrease in depressive symptoms.
link |
There are seven studies listed on examine.com
link |
that has a notable benefit in a variety of circumstances
link |
where participants have heightened depression already.
link |
They start taking L-carnitine and they start feeling better,
link |
and they talk about dosages in those various studies.
link |
It also has been shown to have a notable decrease
link |
in the symptoms of autism, which I find fascinating also.
link |
Again, the things we ingest impact the chemicals
link |
in our brain and how they impact the rest of our body.
link |
There's other things that's been used
link |
to treat certain forms of alcohol dependence.
link |
I think this is going to be
link |
a very exciting emerging area.
link |
We're going to do a whole month about addiction.
link |
I've got a great guest lined up for that month,
link |
but there's now an emerging field
link |
about what people can take and supplement
link |
to help ease the cravings and the withdrawal
link |
when trying to quit drugs of abuse,
link |
like cocaine, alcohol, heroin, and smoking,
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
So really interesting area.
link |
This is, I like to think is the early days,
link |
and then we're going to discover a lot more.
link |
There's a huge list of things here.
link |
Since we talked about pain in a previous episode,
link |
and I know a lot of people have written to me
link |
about fibromyalgia, it does, L-carnitine has been shown
link |
to reduce symptoms of fibromyalgia.
link |
Again, all the links to studies are on examine.com,
link |
totally free site, and that was my bulldog
link |
being a battering ram.
link |
There's nothing graceful about this bulldog.
link |
He's the side he wanted to leave to go get a drink of water,
link |
and so please forgive the noise.
link |
Okay, so now let's turn to another aspect
link |
of the gut-brain relationship that will surprise you,
link |
in some cases might shock you,
link |
and that has some really cool and actionable biology,
link |
and that's the gut microbiome, probiotics,
link |
I know today we're talking about emotions and not pain,
link |
but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention another effect
link |
of acetyl-L-carnitine that's been reported,
link |
and that you can find listed with link to study
link |
on examine.com, which is its effect
link |
in reducing the symptoms of migraine.
link |
This was a randomized control trial with 133 participants
link |
who had frequent migraines.
link |
They were taking 500 milligrams of L-carnitine,
link |
or nothing, for 12 weeks.
link |
So the control is a little bit,
link |
the control experiment there is a little bit tricky,
link |
but it had a significant effect
link |
on reducing the number of migraine attacks per month.
link |
So I find that really interesting,
link |
and there's a lot more listed there about the study,
link |
and I think these compounds are powerful.
link |
They carry risks for certain people, not for others.
link |
So again, you have to find out what's right for you,
link |
but I do think they are super interesting
link |
as potential therapeutics for various people.
link |
So what's the deal with the gut microbiome
link |
and the gut-brain axis?
link |
Today, we've actually been talking a lot already
link |
about the gut-brain axis
link |
that has nothing to do with microbiomes.
link |
We've been talking about this vagus nerve
link |
that connects providing sensory information
link |
from the body to the brain,
link |
and then the brain also sends, in the same nerve,
link |
motor information to control the motility
link |
the gut, the heart rate, how fast we breathe,
link |
and deployment of immune stuff, killer cells,
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
But oftentimes, when we hear about the gut-brain axis
link |
these days, it's a discussion about the gut microbiome.
link |
And once again, we're in a situation
link |
where there's incredible biology.
link |
I'm very happy there's so much discussion
link |
about the gut microbiome.
link |
I am somewhat dismayed and concerned
link |
that most of what I hear out there
link |
is either false or partially false.
link |
So we're going to clear up some of the misconceptions,
link |
first by understanding the biology,
link |
and then we're going to talk about
link |
some of the actionable items.
link |
It is true that we have a lot of these little
link |
microorganisms living in our gut.
link |
They're not there because they want to help us.
link |
They don't have brains.
link |
They are adaptive, however.
link |
They try and find and create environments
link |
that make it easier for them to proliferate.
link |
So they don't care about you and me,
link |
but they are perfectly willing to exploit you and me
link |
in order to make more of themselves,
link |
the same way viruses are.
link |
Viruses don't have a mind.
link |
They infect cells, they hijack the genome,
link |
and they use that genome to make more of themselves.
link |
The microbiota that live in us
link |
vary along the length of our digestive track.
link |
But let's just take a step back
link |
and think about how our body plan is made.
link |
We are actually a series of tubes.
link |
Our brain is actually a tube.
link |
You see it's all squishy on the outside,
link |
and then it's got that long thing,
link |
the spinal cord that goes down to the base of the spine.
link |
That's the central nervous system.
link |
That all started out as a tube.
link |
It just looks like a cauliflower on the other end
link |
up in the brain because the tube is so big
link |
and it has to be crammed into the skull
link |
so it gets all wrinkled up.
link |
But if we were to splay it out,
link |
you'd find that it's just one big tube.
link |
Similarly, our digestive tract and our airways
link |
are essentially one big tube.
link |
It starts with our mouth, also our nose,
link |
and then we have all these other tubes
link |
that go down through our throat and then into our stomach
link |
and then into our various intestines,
link |
and then the tube ends out the other end.
link |
So we are one long tube for digestion.
link |
And inside of that tube is a mucosal lining.
link |
It's these little microvilli, tiny, tiny, tiny,
link |
little like velvety ends of cells
link |
that are able to move and move things along,
link |
and mucus, mucosa.
link |
And the conditions of that mucosal lining
link |
set a number of different things.
link |
It sets the rate of our digestion
link |
and the quality of our digestion.
link |
It sets, for instance, our immune system.
link |
Most people probably don't realize this,
link |
but most infections in the environment,
link |
well, they have to get into our body somehow.
link |
Some of them are inhaled.
link |
A lot of them go into our mouth
link |
and lodge in the mucosal lining of the mouth,
link |
and then infections start there.
link |
You probably had the experience, unfortunately,
link |
of feeling like you have a tick in your throat,
link |
like something's irritating your throat,
link |
and then it kind of migrates up into a head cold
link |
Sometimes it'll start as a headache.
link |
Sometimes it won't.
link |
But things that can migrate down into the gut.
link |
So we're ingesting things all the time.
link |
Think about air, bacteria, viruses,
link |
they're making their way into our gut.
link |
And some of those bacteria live in the gut,
link |
and some of those bacteria bias the mucosal lining
link |
in the gut, stomach and intestines,
link |
to be more acidic or more basic
link |
so that they can make more of themselves,
link |
so they can replicate.
link |
They like a particular comfort.
link |
It's like they like a particular kind of bedding
link |
to lie down in and create more of themselves.
link |
Now, some of those mucosal linings that they promote
link |
make us feel better.
link |
They make us feel more alert.
link |
They bolster our immune system,
link |
and others make us feel worse.
link |
the microbiome isn't good or bad.
link |
Some of these little bugs that live in us
link |
do bad things to us.
link |
They make us feel worse.
link |
They lower our immunity.
link |
They affect us in negative ways.
link |
Some of them make us feel better.
link |
And they do that mainly by changing the conditions
link |
of our gut environment.
link |
In addition to that,
link |
they do impact the neurotransmitters
link |
and the neurons that live in the gut
link |
and that signal up to the brain
link |
to impact things like dopamine and serotonin
link |
that we've been talking about previously.
link |
So there's a vast world now
link |
devoted to trying to understand what sources of food,
link |
what kinds of foods are good or not good
link |
for the gut microbiome.
link |
So let's just talk about some general rules of thumb
link |
related to the research,
link |
quality research that's peer reviewed.
link |
And then in a future episode,
link |
we will go far deeper into the gut microbiome
link |
and gut brain axis.
link |
But here's a few things
link |
that I think you might find surprising.
link |
supporting a healthy gut microbiome is good for mood,
link |
great for digestion,
link |
and great for immune system function.
link |
However, that does not mean maxing out
link |
or taking the most probiotic and prebiotic
link |
that you can possibly manage.
link |
As I mentioned many times before,
link |
I do believe in probiotics,
link |
I take probiotics,
link |
but there are studies that show
link |
that if you take lots and lots of certain probiotics
link |
like lactobacillus and you really ramp up the levels more,
link |
it is not a case of more is better.
link |
There are things like brain fog that can come from that.
link |
Brain fog is just this inability to focus,
link |
people feel really not well generally.
link |
Some of those studies are a little bit controversial,
link |
but I think it's fair to say
link |
that if people really increase the amount of probiotic
link |
that they're taking beyond a certain amount,
link |
then they start feeling foggy in the mind.
link |
Now, what's too much?
link |
Well, I get probiotics from,
link |
I've mentioned before from athletic greens,
link |
you can get them from fermented foods
link |
like sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi,
link |
natto, these are different sources from around the world.
link |
Actually, I'd love to hear some of the other sources
link |
that people know, other foods from around the world.
link |
I'm fascinated by the way in which different cultures
link |
have all arrived at these foods
link |
that provide and support healthy microbiomes
link |
because they're fermented.
link |
I have a colleague at Stanford, Justin Sonnenberg,
link |
he and I have talked about this,
link |
I don't want to quote him inappropriately,
link |
but we've had discussions around,
link |
they've published that the ingestion of fermented foods
link |
is one of the best ways to support healthy levels
link |
of gut microbiota without exceeding the threshold
link |
that would cause things like brain fog.
link |
So foods and fermented foods are going to be the best source
link |
and there are a number of different ways
link |
that one could do that.
link |
Some people don't like fermented foods,
link |
however, some people supplement it.
link |
So it isn't a case of more is better, so we know that.
link |
The other is that it is true that healthy gut microbiota
link |
have been shown to improve symptoms
link |
of certain psychiatric illnesses,
link |
as well as certain conditions like particular features
link |
along the autism spectrum, which is interesting.
link |
And those effects are probably due to not just improvement
link |
of immune system function, but to the conditions
link |
in which the neurons that sense nutrients
link |
convey information to the brain
link |
and increase levels of serotonin and or dopamine.
link |
So gut microbiome provides kind of a foundation
link |
for healthy gut and healthy gut brain access.
link |
So much so that some people report
link |
that when they start eating small bits,
link |
because it doesn't require a lot of fermented foods,
link |
that their overall mood is better,
link |
not unlike the effects of EPA,
link |
although I don't think it's been looked at directly
link |
in the context of clinical depression yet.
link |
And if someone knows of a study,
link |
please mention it in the comments, that would be terrific.
link |
There are some things that you can do
link |
to really damage your gut microbiome.
link |
And this is where there's a huge misconception
link |
that I want to clear up.
link |
There was a study that was published in Nature,
link |
which is among the three top journals that we have
link |
in Science, you know, Nature, Science, and Cell
link |
are considered the top tops, but excellent journal
link |
that showed that artificial sweeteners,
link |
but a particular artificial sweetener, which was saccharin,
link |
can disrupt the gut microbiome in ways that is detrimental
link |
to a number of different health markers,
link |
increasing inflammatory cytokines,
link |
and all the other bad things that happen
link |
when the gut microbiome is thrown off kilter.
link |
That study was widely discussed,
link |
but there were a few things that were not mentioned there
link |
that are really important.
link |
That study was about saccharin in particular.
link |
Saccharin is not the most typical artificial sweetener
link |
The most typical artificial sweeteners that are used
link |
are things like aspartame, so-called NutraSweet,
link |
or sucralose, or these days, stevia.
link |
There's monk fruits.
link |
To my knowledge, and please correct me
link |
if anyone knows of any studies, to my knowledge,
link |
the negative effects of these artificial sweeteners
link |
on the gut microbiome were restricted to saccharin.
link |
Now, there is enough chemical similarity between saccharin
link |
and some of the other ones that I mentioned,
link |
but not all of them.
link |
For instance, stevia, monk fruit are distinct
link |
in their chemical makeup,
link |
so that they probably don't have, if they have any,
link |
have lower effects, negative effects on the gut microbiome,
link |
but it should still be tested.
link |
So saccharin is really,
link |
it was shown in this study and several other studies,
link |
can really negatively impact, excuse me,
link |
the quality of the gut microbiome.
link |
Interestingly, the narrative around artificial sweeteners
link |
in gut microbiome is incorrect.
link |
Most people thought, oh, saccharin is bad
link |
for the microbiome, it must kill the microbiome.
link |
And so you hear people saying, oh, you know,
link |
artificial sweeteners kill the microbiome.
link |
That's not true at all.
link |
In fact, in that very same study published in Nature,
link |
they showed that the negative effects of saccharin
link |
on the microbiome could be blocked or eliminated
link |
by giving antibiotics.
link |
So what happens is certain artificial sweeteners,
link |
in particular saccharin, disrupt the microbiome
link |
and make the environment within the gut,
link |
that mucosal lining, more favorable to bacteria,
link |
microbiota that are not good for the organism, okay?
link |
This is an important distinction.
link |
It's not just that a language thing where people say,
link |
oh, you know, it kills the microbiome.
link |
It doesn't kill the microbiome, it shifts the microbiome.
link |
And shifts in the microbiome can be good or they can be bad.
link |
And that takes us to another topic.
link |
That's a bit of a hot button topic,
link |
but I'm willing to go there
link |
because I think it deserves conversation,
link |
which is nowadays there are many examples out there
link |
where people have switched from a kind of standard diet
link |
or even a vegetarian diet to a,
link |
or vegan diet to a keto diet.
link |
Now, keto doesn't necessarily have to mean
link |
the ingestion of meats, but it can.
link |
And they experience positive effects for themselves,
link |
And I've talked previously about some of the
link |
kind of the incorrect,
link |
what I believe is incorrect marketing of keto
link |
as it relates to the cosmetic effects
link |
and some of the challenges with sleep that some people have,
link |
but some people love keto and it works great for them.
link |
But the ketogenic diet is interesting
link |
because when one shifts to the ketogenic diet,
link |
there is a shift in the gut microbiome
link |
and some people end up feeling better.
link |
Some people end up feeling worse.
link |
Likewise, some people go from ingesting animal products,
link |
including meat or they're vegetarian and they go to vegan
link |
and they experience positive shifts in mood and affect.
link |
And we know that the transition to a more plant-based diet
link |
and especially the enrichment of fiber
link |
that's present in those diets
link |
also creates dramatic shifts in the gut microbiome.
link |
Some people feel better doing that.
link |
Some people feel worse.
link |
And of course, it's going to depend on whether or not
link |
you're ingesting a lot of processed foods or not.
link |
There was a paper published in Cell, a Cell Press Journal,
link |
obviously, excellent journal,
link |
showing that ingestion of processed foods,
link |
regardless of whether or not they come from animal sources
link |
or non-animal sources,
link |
the processed foods themselves tend to create activity
link |
And this surely has roots in the nervous system
link |
that lead to over-consumption of calories and weight gain,
link |
even some weight gain that couldn't be explained
link |
by increased calories.
link |
In other words, processed foods are bad
link |
regardless of whether or not
link |
you're talking about animal products or non-animal products.
link |
Probably not surprising now,
link |
given what you know about these sugar sensing
link |
and other amino acid sensing cells in the gut
link |
that we talked about earlier.
link |
So the point of all this is that
link |
when I say you have to find what's right for you,
link |
that's not a throwaway statement.
link |
Some people's microbiome and the lining of their mucosa,
link |
excuse me, the mucosal lining of their throat,
link |
of their gut, of their nose,
link |
everything is improved by diets that are heavily meat-based
link |
and don't have many plants.
link |
Other people do much better on a plant-based diet
link |
without many meat products or animal products.
link |
It's highly individual.
link |
And this probably has roots in genetic makeup.
link |
This probably has roots in what people were raised on,
link |
because remember the nervous system,
link |
of course, is set up by your genes, your genetic program,
link |
but your nervous system,
link |
it adapts early in life to your conditions.
link |
That's what it's for.
link |
The reason you have a nervous system
link |
is to move your body appropriately
link |
towards things that are good for you
link |
and away from things that are not,
link |
but also it was designed to adapt.
link |
The early life period has this incredible thing
link |
about plasticity that we spent a whole month on
link |
so that it can change so that, yes, indeed,
link |
some people may like certain foods
link |
and react to certain foods better than others
link |
because of the way that their nervous system was wired,
link |
this enteric, as it's called, nervous system
link |
that lines the gut and that communicates with the brain.
link |
So most of what I've talked about today
link |
is black and white.
link |
These are things that are present in all of us,
link |
the sugar-sensing neurons of the gut,
link |
the way the vagus is wired,
link |
the fact that omega-3, omega-6s tend to improve,
link |
the ratios tend to impact mood
link |
with high omega-3, omega-6 ratios improving mood.
link |
We talked about all sorts of things in the gut-brain
link |
and body-brain axis, but when it comes to the microbiome,
link |
the key thing is that we all have a microbiome.
link |
You want a microbiome,
link |
but you want to promote the microbiome that is right for you
link |
and that can be shifted and steered
link |
by ingesting certain categories of foods and not others.
link |
And one thing that really frustrates me
link |
is when the people show up with an agenda,
link |
like all meat agenda or a vegan agenda or a keto agenda,
link |
and they talk about these positive effects
link |
on the gut microbiome and it's all true, frankly,
link |
and so it's highly individual.
link |
Now, this doesn't get to any of the ethical issues
link |
around animals or the planet
link |
or and you hear rabid debates about that on both sides.
link |
And I am not qualified or equipped to talk about
link |
whether or not regenerative agriculture, animal products
link |
or farming or any of these things,
link |
how those actually impact the environment.
link |
That is not my expertise.
link |
But when it comes to your health and your microbiome,
link |
you want to support the microbiome.
link |
It's very clear that these fermented foods
link |
support the microbiome,
link |
that we should be ingesting at least two servings per day,
link |
which is quite a lot.
link |
That supplementation at low levels can be good.
link |
Supplementation at high levels can create this brain fog,
link |
even though some people say that result is controversial.
link |
I've experienced this myself
link |
and the data looked to me pretty darn solid.
link |
So that's one thing to think about as well.
link |
And the other thing about the gut microbiome
link |
is that it's highly contextual
link |
based on other things that you're doing.
link |
So even things like exercise and social wellbeing
link |
and connection, those things are also impacting
link |
the gut microbiome.
link |
So find the diet that's right for you
link |
and that works for you in the context of the other ethical
link |
and lifestyle choices that are important to you.
link |
A note about fasting.
link |
I have a colleague at Yale
link |
who's an expert in the gut microbiome.
link |
And he told me something really interesting,
link |
which is when we fast,
link |
we actually digest certain components
link |
within our dietary tract.
link |
It actually depletes a good amount of the gut microbiome.
link |
And this is interesting.
link |
I've had good results from,
link |
I guess you would call it intermittent
link |
or kind of circadian type fasting
link |
where I've never done long fast,
link |
but where I push out my first meal by a few hours.
link |
My first meal is generally around lunchtime or so.
link |
But the longer periods of fasting
link |
that go for a day or two or three days
link |
are known to deplete the gut microbiome in major ways.
link |
But that's not always necessarily a bad thing
link |
because when it's replenished,
link |
it often is replenished at levels
link |
that exceeded its previous level.
link |
But I think that some of the GI tract
link |
and even some of the mental effects
link |
of returning to eating after feeding,
link |
sometimes people don't feel so good when they start eating,
link |
they really want food, but then they start eating again,
link |
they don't feel as good as they did on the fast.
link |
Some of that may be related to the depletion
link |
of the microbiome that occurs during long fast.
link |
So again, this is something to think about
link |
and talk about with your doctor.
link |
But the idea that fasting across the board is good,
link |
there may be some merits to that,
link |
and certainly in some cases,
link |
but it does deplete the microbiome.
link |
And that depletion of the microbiome is significant
link |
because it means when you return to eating,
link |
you're actually not in the same position
link |
to digest and assimilate those foods.
link |
And those foods are not in the same position
link |
to impact your brain and body
link |
the same way they were prior to the fast.
link |
And this is, I think, why people suggest
link |
a kind of gradual transition back to consuming nutrients
link |
So as we round up, I want to share some results with you
link |
that without question will impact the way
link |
that you respond to food mentally and even physically.
link |
And I know that because that's the central theme
link |
of the studies I'm about to tell you about.
link |
I have a colleague at Stanford, Aaliyah Crum,
link |
who's done some remarkable experiments on mindset.
link |
And some people could think about these as placebo effects
link |
or belief effects,
link |
but they actually go way beyond those terms.
link |
And there are a number of different examples of this
link |
that Aaliyah's lab and her coworkers have demonstrated,
link |
but two that are particularly interesting to me,
link |
I want to share with you now
link |
because they really emphasize how our beliefs
link |
can really impact the way
link |
that our brain and body work together.
link |
I think the most famous of these is an experiment they did
link |
where they had two groups of individuals.
link |
They were each given a milkshake
link |
and they had some factors measured from their blood
link |
by an IV while they ingested the milkshake
link |
and then afterwards as well.
link |
And one of the factors that they were looking at
link |
was something called ghrelin, G-H-R-E-L-I-N.
link |
Ghrelin is a peptide that increases with hunger.
link |
So the longer you haven't eaten, the ghrelin goes up.
link |
And I know some of you say, well, I fast, I fast, I fast,
link |
and I eventually lose my appetite.
link |
Well, ghrelin still goes up and then it drops.
link |
So if you were one of these people
link |
that eats every three hours regularly,
link |
ghrelin kind of gets a little pulse
link |
as you get to that two hour and 50 minute mark.
link |
So it's a little bit of a timer as well.
link |
It's really interesting peptide.
link |
In any event, what they did is they gave people milkshakes,
link |
two groups, one group got a shake that they were told
link |
was a low calorie, healthy shake.
link |
The other group got a milkshake that they were told
link |
was the very decadent high calorie shake.
link |
I think it was something like two
link |
or maybe even two and a half times
link |
as many calories as the other, perhaps even more.
link |
I don't recall the details,
link |
but you had a high calorie and a low calorie condition.
link |
And then they drank the shake
link |
and then they measured ghrelin in these subjects' blood.
link |
And what they found was that the high calorie shake
link |
had a much more robust effect on blunting ghrelin
link |
and reducing ghrelin.
link |
But the interesting thing you probably guessed already
link |
is that it was the exact same shake given to both groups.
link |
So people's belief about the content of something
link |
impacted their physiology.
link |
And this speaks to the so-called top-down mechanisms
link |
or modulation of our physiology.
link |
In the previous episode about pain,
link |
we talked about the effects of obsessive,
link |
believe it or not, it was kind of obsessive infatuation
link |
and love on pain responses and pain thresholds.
link |
This is yet another example where beliefs
link |
or subjective feelings can impact physiology
link |
at the level of the periphery,
link |
because ghrelin is released in the periphery in the body.
link |
Now, these belief effects extend beyond examples like this.
link |
Another good example that I'd like to share
link |
is Allie, Dr. Crum, and her colleagues did an experiment
link |
where they took housekeepers,
link |
they were essentially hotel workers,
link |
divide them into two groups.
link |
They had them watch a short film.
link |
In one case, the film was about how their work was important,
link |
it helped people feel comfortable in the hotel,
link |
et cetera, et cetera.
link |
The other group heard that the activity
link |
that they were doing, cleaning and taking care of the hotel
link |
was good for them, it was good for their health,
link |
et cetera, et cetera.
link |
They controlled very nicely in the study
link |
for health parameters, for individual differences,
link |
and for the behaviors of these people
link |
in the period that followed this short tutorial.
link |
And what they found was eight weeks later,
link |
the group that had been told
link |
that the activity was good for them
link |
showed lower blood pressure,
link |
they had lost a significant amount of body fat,
link |
and they reported enjoying their work
link |
far more than the other group.
link |
The same work, simply biased mentally
link |
by the information that they were given,
link |
but their physiology followed that information.
link |
And so this is not just the placebo effect,
link |
this is an incredible set of findings
link |
that illustrate the extent to which
link |
whether or not we believe a food is going to be good for us
link |
or not good for us, well, we can't escape the reality.
link |
You can't tell yourself that a poison
link |
is going to be good for you and ingest that poison
link |
and expect it to not kill you,
link |
nor can you tell yourself that eating 12 croissants,
link |
confess I've done it,
link |
it was after a very long run, a long time ago,
link |
but you can't tell yourself that that's necessarily
link |
going to be good for you
link |
or that it's going to make you lose weight.
link |
These belief effects are not about lying to yourself.
link |
In these cases, in these experiments, as you'll notice,
link |
the subjects didn't have prior knowledge about ghrelin
link |
or about the effects of their daily routine
link |
on weight loss and blood pressure.
link |
So in order for them to work,
link |
you have to be naive to the information, right?
link |
You can't simply lie to yourself
link |
and tell yourself what you want to believe.
link |
And that's important, but also important
link |
is that the mind and the body
link |
are in this fascinating interplay.
link |
And today we've talked mainly about
link |
how the body and things that we put inside this tube,
link |
this that runs from our mouth to the other end,
link |
to our rectum basically is impacting all these cells,
link |
these neurons, microbiota in there,
link |
mucosal lining, heart, lungs,
link |
and how all that information is feeding up to the brain
link |
to impact how we feel up here.
link |
But also how we feel up here
link |
is impacting how our body reacts
link |
at levels of very core physiology
link |
that you couldn't just tell yourself
link |
that this was going to work.
link |
But what you believe about certain substances,
link |
certain foods, certain nutrients
link |
does have a profound effect
link |
on the magnitude of their impact
link |
and sometimes even the quality and direction of that impact.
link |
Well, first of all, I want to thank everybody
link |
for their support of this podcast,
link |
the response that we've received since releasing
link |
at the beginning of the new year has been tremendous
link |
and we're so grateful for it.
link |
I know some of you and people you know have said,
link |
well, it's a lot of information,
link |
it's like a college lecture.
link |
Indeed, there's a lot of information
link |
but I believe very strongly that if you learn mechanism
link |
and maybe even if you hear it several times over,
link |
eventually those mechanisms become embedded
link |
into the way that you view an entire topic.
link |
As well, I always try and put tools as I go along
link |
that you can look to immediately.
link |
Some of them might be right for you, others might not.
link |
Try them if you like and don't if you don't want to
link |
and if they don't work for you, then discard them.
link |
If however, you are finding benefits from the information
link |
and from the tools and you know others
link |
that you think could benefit from it,
link |
please pass along information about the podcast.
link |
Please subscribe to the YouTube channel
link |
if you haven't already.
link |
Please subscribe to us on Apple and Spotify
link |
if you haven't already.
link |
Please leave a review in the comment section
link |
Also, if you feel we deserve it,
link |
please give us a five-star review on Apple.
link |
All those things really help us.
link |
In addition, if you'd like to support the podcast further,
link |
we've set up a Patreon account.
link |
It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
link |
It allows you to support the podcast
link |
at a variety of levels.
link |
We have the 5HTP serotonin for $5 a month,
link |
the Costello, $10 a month in honor of Costello, et cetera.
link |
You don't have to, but if you'd like to,
link |
that would be terrific.
link |
In addition, please check out our sponsors
link |
that we've mentioned at the beginning of the podcast.
link |
That's one of the best ways to help support us.
link |
And we do believe in all the products that we support
link |
and our sponsors very much.
link |
Otherwise, we wouldn't be working with them.
link |
So much so that when I mentioned supplements
link |
and I talk about supplements
link |
throughout the course of the episodes,
link |
I don't mention specific brands,
link |
but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact
link |
that we have partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.
link |
And we've done that because we know
link |
that Thorne uses the highest levels of stringency
link |
in terms of the products they produce,
link |
what they say is in each capsule and tablet actually is,
link |
they're used by the Mayo Clinic,
link |
by all the major sports teams
link |
because of their level of stringency and rigor.
link |
If you want to know which supplements I take,
link |
you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman
link |
and you can see the supplements that I take
link |
and you can get those as well as any of the other supplements
link |
and products that Thorne makes for 20% off.
link |
So it's thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman
link |
to get 20% off any supplements that Thorne makes.
link |
So today's episode, we took a full journey
link |
into the brain-body relationship
link |
and discussed a lot of the mechanisms
link |
and the actionable items that you can approach
link |
if you want to explore this aspect of your biology
link |
and psychology further.
link |
Last, but certainly not least,
link |
I want to thank everybody for your time and attention today
link |
and as always, thank you for your interest in science.
link |
I'll see you next time.