AMA #3: Adaptogens, Fasting & Fertility, Bluetooth/EMF Risks, Cognitive Load Limits & More

Andrew D. Huberman (0:00)

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today is an Ask Me Anything or AMA episode, which is part of our premium subscriber content. Our premium channel was launched in order to raise support for the standard Huberman Lab podcast channel, which still comes out once a week, every Monday, and of course is zero cost to consumer. The premium channel is also designed to support exciting research being done at major universities like Stanford and elsewhere, research that's done on humans that should lead to protocols for mental health, physical health and performance in the near future. If you'd like to check out the premium channel subscription model, you can go to hubermanlab.com/premium, and there you can subscribe for $10 a month or $100 a year. We also have a lifetime subscriber option. For those of you that are already Huberman Lab podcast, premium subscribers, and you're watching and or hearing this, please go to hubermanlab.com/premium and download the premium podcast feed. And for those of you that are not already Huberman Lab premium podcast subscribers, you will be able to hear the first 15 minutes or so of this episode, and hopefully that will allow you to discern whether or not you would like to become a premium subscriber. Without further ado, let's get to answering your questions. And as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible, as thorough as possible, and yet as concise as possible. The first question today is about adaptogens. Some of you may have heard of adaptogens. I'm guessing many of you have not heard of adaptogens. The strict definition of adaptogens is still evolving, meaning no one really knows what adaptogens mean and what's included in adaptogens and what's excluded from adaptogens. But the most common definition of an adaptogen is a compound that is typically a supplement or a drug, although it could be a behavior if you really think about it, that helps you adapt to and buffer stress. So when you hear about adaptogens, there are three main categories of adaptogens that come to mind. The first are things that are contained in food. So these would be vitamins or micronutrients that one could easily find in food, but one would have to consume a fairly restricted number or type of foods in order to obtain those things or consume a lot of those foods in order to get sufficient dosages of those adaptogen compounds in order to buffer stress. Some good examples of these would be any kind of vitamin, either water-soluble or fat-soluble, that can adjust or reduce what are so-called reactive oxygen species. And then that's what gives rise to this idea that antioxidants are good for us. Now, over the last 10 years or so, there's been a shift. What shift has occurred? Well, about 10 years ago, you often heard about antioxidants, antioxidants, antioxidants and vitamins, antioxidants in this food, this superfood, et cetera. And why were people talking about antioxidants? Well, just to remind you, reactive oxygen species are types of reactions and molecules that occur in cells when cells get stressed and or age, and antioxidants are the compounds that reduce those reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species are bad for cells because they tend to hinder the function of mitochondria, which are associated with energy production in those cells. So what do we know for sure? We know that as cells get older or as any cell or biological system, organ, tissue, et cetera, get stressed a lot over time, the number of reactive oxygen species increases in those cells and tissues and organs, and antioxidants, which can include certain vitamins, but also some micronutrients, are effective in reducing those reactive oxygen species. Now what's occurred over the last 10 years is that we know that reactive oxygen species are a major source of depleting cellular function by way of depleting mitochondrial function, but they are just one of many mechanisms that can deplete cellular function, mitochondrial function. So nowadays you'll hear about reactive oxygen species and antioxidants, but not as much as you used to. Now you hear a lot more about inflammatory responses and inflammatory cytokines also being an issue. And the truth is all of these things are an issue. So going back to this question about adaptogens, adaptogens include these three categories. I've told you the first, which are the vitamins and micronutrients that are contained in food that can reduce reactive oxygen species and other aspects of cellular stress such as inflammatory cytokines. What are some of those things that occur in foods? Well, in order to answer that, let's just think about what sorts of foods themselves can act as adaptogens. It's commonly held that the dark leafy greens type foods, for those of you that eat plants, and I think the majority of people out there do eat plants. I know that the carnivore diet and lion diet and some other diets tend to exclude plants. We'll address that briefly at some point in today's discussion. But dark leafy greens are known to contain a number of compounds in the form of vitamins and micronutrients that are very effective in reducing reactive oxygen species and inflammatory cytokines. So if you're somebody who's interested in adaptogens and adaptogenic processes, reducing stress and buffering stress, which of course has its role in buffering daily stress in order to help you sleep better, to improve cellular function for longevity, sports performance, cognitive performance, that is all good. And it makes sense why people would be interested in adaptogens. But remember that the two main adaptogens that you should think to first are going to be behaviors and nutrition. I've started with nutrition on purpose. As I mentioned, we'll get to behaviors in a moment. So if you're interested in adaptogens at all, I highly recommend that you include at least two to four servings of dark leafy greens and or cruciferous vegetables per day. I think that'd be highly advantageous. And just be aware that excessively heating dark leafy greens or cruciferous vegetables can actually destroy the very nutrients and micronutrients that act in an adaptogenic way. That does not mean that you need to eat raw broccoli or cauliflower. just the thought of that makes me nauseous. It's very hard to digest. Some people might like that or can digest it more easily than others. So it's perfectly fine to cook your cruciferous vegetables and dark leafy greens, but you don't want to overcook them. What's overcooking and what's undercooking? There's no strict cutoff in terms of temperature. But basically what the literature says is that if you heat vegetables to the point where the colored fluid is leaching out of them into a broth type, into water or whatever fluid surrounds them, well, then you would be well off to ingest that fluid as well because it contained in the water or the fluid that's leaching out from the cruciferous vegetables or from the dark leafy greens are going to be a lot of those very adaptogenic molecules that you're interested in in the first place. Okay, so I probably surprised some people by starting off my answer to the question of what are adaptogens? Are they worth thinking about and pursuing? And if so, how can I get them? By talking about food. But I think it is important to understand that you can get a lot of adaptogens from food and indeed some of the best adaptogens do come from dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables. So I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that. The other two categories of adaptogens are going to be supplement-based adaptogens and then behavioral adaptogens. Again, here adaptogen defined is anything that can buffer stress in a substantial or meaningful way in order to support cellular health, organ health and overall daily living and functioning, including sleep and performance and mental health. So the second category of adaptogens are going to be supplements. And here again, I just want to take a step back, make sure that we are clear about our operational definition about what a supplement is. We had an episode all about how to design a rational guide to supplementation, which included, for example, the idea that for some people the optimal dosage of many supplements is going to be zero. And for other people, the dosage will be something else. But to really pinpoint the key message from that episode that I'd like to reiterate now, but a key message from that episode that I'd like to reiterate now is that many people think of supplements as just vitamin supplements. And for that reason, you'll often hear the argument, oh, well, aren't supplements just expensive urine? Couldn't you get all of that from food? Aren't you just urinating out all the water-soluble vitamins and maybe even storing excess amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins in a way that's unhealthy or not cost-effective and so on? When we talk about supplements, yes, it can include vitamin supplements. However, there are many compounds that we would describe as supplements that are not vitamin supplements and that you could not obtain from food or that you could never obtain from food in sufficient enough qualities to have a robust positive biological effect without consuming an enormous number of calories or overriding your gut mechanically. For instance, if there were, say, a herb, and we'll talk about such herbs in a moment, that contained an effective adaptogen, but you would never want to eat the plant itself or include that herb in any kind of recipe, well, then chances are this herb, which we'll define in a moment, is not a vitamin supplement. It is probably not even best thought of as a supplement. It's best thought of as a compound that sold over the counter, much like a prescription drug, although it's not prescription. It doesn't require a prescription to get it. So there are a lot of things like that that we include under the umbrella of this word supplements. And unfortunately, because of that, a lot of people think, oh, you don't need supplements. And of course, you don't need supplements per se, but many people do derive tremendous benefit from them. In the context of adaptogens, there are two or three in particular that can be very beneficial for buffering the stress response, especially over short periods of time of about two to three weeks. So when would you use these? Well, for instance, if you are in a particularly stressful mode of life, either because of family or relational or school or work demands or new kid in the house or any number of different things, or you've been ill or you're recovering from injury, taking an adaptogen in the form of a supplement can actually be very useful for buffering this hormone and the general systems it's associated with called cortisol. It's very healthy to have high levels of cortisol early in the day, shortly after you wake up. And then that ought to taper off toward the afternoon and evening. However, if cortisol is chronically elevated throughout the day, or if that peak in cortisol is arriving too late in the day, that is known to be associated with mental health and physical health issues, has been shown by labs at Stanford and elsewhere. It's been shown in animal models and in humans. Talked many times before, and I'll just remind you again, one of the best ways to restrict that cortisol peak to the early part of the day is to get morning sunlight in your eyes as soon as you can. Once the sun is up, get outside, face in the direction of the sun, even on overcast days, don't wear sunglasses, look at it for five to 30 minutes, definitely blink so you don't damage your eyes, so on and so forth. Why five minutes or 30 minutes? Well, five minutes on a clear day should be sufficient, longer would be fine. Again, blink so that you protect your eyes, blink as needed, face in the general direction of the sun. On days when you have a lot of overcast or it's really dark, dense cloud cover, well, then you'd want to be outside longer. And if you don't have access to sunlight for whatever reason, then you want to do the same thing with bright artificial lights indoors, either so-called sad lamp or otherwise. That's a great way to restrict that cortisol peak to early in the day. But even if you're doing that, if you have a stressful life for whatever reason, even if you're getting that morning sunlight, which I hope you are, you're getting your exercise, you're trying to sleep better and more, as we all should most of the time. Well, then you may be somebody who wants to take a adaptogen in the form of a supplement. And the three supplements that can be very effective in buffering cortisol are ashwagandha, which I'll talk about first, lion's mane and chaga. Lion's mane and chaga are in the fungi group, so they count as mushrooms. They are not psychedelic mushrooms. Let's talk about ashwagandha first. Ashwagandha is at the top of the list because it is indeed a very potent adaptogen. How can I say that? Well, there are a number of studies now including several excellent ones in humans that report that taking two doses of 300 milligrams of ashwagandha per day can very dramatically buffer cortisol. So this is something that you would have a near impossible time accessing from food. I can't imagine that unless you're cooking with the very sources of ashwagandha and extracting exact amounts that you'd be able to get this in any other form except supplement form. So here I'm going to just briefly reference a paper and we can provide a reference link to this that is. This is a paper from 2012 that's had a lot of excellent follow up papers that support it. The title of the paper is a perspective randomized double blind placebo controlled study of safety and efficacy of high concentration of full spectrum extract of ashwagandha root in reducing stress and anxiety in adults. And it's a really nice study. Not a huge subject pool, but both men and women. And it's carried out for long enough that they got to see some really interesting results. And I think that the most interesting result is that taking 300 milligrams of ashwagandha twice a day led to enormous, I mean, just enormous changes in serum cortisol. The statistical significance that they observed in the study was really fantastic. Fantastically high statistical significance. They saw the effects of ashwagandha on day 15, having initiated the ashwagandha consumption on day one, of course, day 30 and day 45 And again, this was dramatic reductions in stress as perceived by people. So subjective stress and cortisol level. So ashwagandha is very potent at reducing cortisol. How would you recapitulate this if you wanted to use ashwagandha to buffer stress? Well, a couple of key points.