AMA #18: Cold Therapy Advice, Skin Health Tips, Motivation, Learning Strategies & More

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
Hi, everyone. I'm delighted to kick off this premium subscriber AMA. And today I have some great announcements to make, including the fact that we have now expanded our Scicom, that is the parent company of the Huberman Lab podcast. As some of you know, we've expanded our Scicom Huberman Lab podcast philanthropy to support great, exciting science that is going to directly relate to mental health, physical health and performance tools in the very near future. And we've been able to do that thanks to all of you, because we use a significant portion of the funds from the premium channel subscribers to support exciting work on humans. So these are laboratories working on questions such as improving mental health, physical health and performance from a variety of approaches at all major universities. And we've supported work at Stanford, Columbia University, University of Oregon coming up. We're actually supporting some programs related to student training and teaching in the realm of neuroscience and happiness. So some really exciting groundbreaking areas, all made possible thanks to you and the fact that we now have three dollar for dollar matches from exceptional donors. When we started this premium subscription model to support science, we had one still, have this one absolutely spectacular dollar for dollar donor match from the Tiny Foundation and now two others have joined in. So for every dollar that is used from the premium channel to support these exciting areas of research, we now have three dollars being donated to match that dollar. So we essentially have a forex what we would otherwise give in terms of supporting exciting new research on humans in various laboratories at Stanford and elsewhere. I'll just touch on a few areas that we are supporting going forward. This is not an exhaustive list, but for instance, we are supporting some exciting work using deliberate heat exposure to treat symptoms of depression, a really interesting and forward looking approach to treating depression for which there's already some really exciting preliminary results. We are going to be supporting work on goal setting at New York University. This is really exciting work. Many, many people struggle with goal setting and habit formation that can serve them in their career and in their personal life and fitness goals, health goals. This work directly relates to that. In other words, you're supporting that work. We are also supporting work on immune system, nervous system interactions. This is an area of science that's now really progressing quickly that explores how especially in babies and kids and young adults, but also in more mature adults, interactions between the brain and nervous system and the immune system can cause all sorts of interesting susceptibilities, but also patterns of resilience in people that do specific things as it relates to supporting their immune system. So thanks to you and these dollar for dollar matching donors, we are able together, but mainly thanks to you to support these exciting areas of human research. And as the data come in, we are going to relay what the new findings are. And of course, translate those where appropriate to protocols for improving mental health, physical health and performance. So I want to extend a deep, deep, deep message of gratitude to you for supporting science, for supporting new research and for supporting the evolution of new data to serve humanity. Thank you ever so much. Okay, so without further ado, let's get to answering your questions about mental health, physical health and performance. The first question comes from Robert. And the question is, is there any way to repair thinning skin as we age? I'm 77 years old and in the last few years, the skin on my arms has gotten noticeably thinner. Thank you. Well, thank you for this question. It's a very timely question given that we just had a solo episode. I did a solo episode about skin health and appearance on the podcast. I should mention that that episode was reviewed by a derm oncologist. I consulted with different dermatologists prior to that episode. And my general sense is that it's been received very well. There are a few areas within the skin health and appearance field that are of controversy, mainly around sunscreens. I'll just go on record saying that it's very clear that excessive sun exposure will age skin more rapidly. Okay, that's just categorically true. Okay, so if anyone's debating that, there's an issue there, right? There shouldn't be any debate about that. It's absolutely true that sunscreen can help. And there are sort of three major forms of sunscreen. This relates to how to protect skin from thinning. One is a physical barrier. Pretty much nobody disputes a physical barrier, a hat, a long sleeve shirt, long pants, et cetera. However, those don't always cover all the areas of the body that needs sun protection, such as the ears, the back of the neck, portions of the face and so forth. When it comes to sunscreen, sometimes called sunblocks, I think there's general agreement that the sunscreens, and I'll use sunscreen and sunblock interchangeably, that are mineral-based, that is inorganic, meaning that the active ingredients are either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, or some combination of those, up to a concentration of 25%, are generally deemed safe by most all dermatologists. Now, there are some people who will point out that there's some controversy around certain forms of titanium dioxide. The evidence for that, however, is not conclusive. I would say that if you're really, really concerned about any of that, then just stick with a pure zinc oxide formula up to 25%. Why would people not use zinc oxide formulas? Well, they tend to be kind of pasty and they don't spread on very easily compared to some other sunscreen formulas.