Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance

**Andrew 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, we're discussing supplements. We're more specifically, a rational guide to supplementation. Now, to be forthright, I want to tell you that I am not a fan of the word supplements, because it stems from this idea that all supplements are somehow food supplements or designed to compensate for what one could otherwise get from food. And that's simply not the case. Many supplements are compounds that are extremely efficacious, for instance, for enhancing sleep or for enhancing hormone function or for enhancing focus. And many of those compounds are simply not found in food or are not found in enough abundance in food to have the desired effect. Now, that raises the issue as to whether or not these compounds are good to take, safe to take and whether or not they are actually beneficial for us. And the short answer is that, like everything else, supplements can either be good for us or dangerous for us, depending on dosage, sourcing, et cetera. But more importantly, we need to think about supplements and a rational guide to supplementation as taking into account a number of different factors. And we need to set aside the idea that all non-prescription compounds that fall under this umbrella term supplements are simply things that could be extracted from food, but most people don't either ingest enough of those foods or pay enough attention to their diet in order to obtain them. In fact, during today's episode, I'm going to give you a number of different very specific questions that you can answer in order to decide whether or not you should be taking any so-called supplements or not. And whether or not you should be taking one type of supplement or another type of supplement more or less than the other. I'm also going to discuss safety, of course. And I will discuss cost because obviously monetary cost is a serious consideration for most if not everybody considering the use of supplements. During today's episode, I will also discuss which specific supplements are optimal for achieving specific endpoints, such as improved sleep, such as improved focus, and such as improved hormone function among other things. I plan to cover the full range of what are referred to as supplements, including so-called foundational supplements that are designed to act as a sort of insurance policy against any deficiencies that might exist within your diet, all the way up to very targeted outcome supplements and compounds. That is compounds that are non-prescription that are designed to achieve very specific endpoints, such as enhanced focus over the next four to six hours of physical work or mental work, so on and so forth. I plan to cover everything in between that as well. And I promise to cover how supplements interact with other things such as behavioral tools, prescription drugs, when supplements might be a good alternative to prescription drugs, when they might not be a good alternative to prescription drugs, when supplements can serve as an augment to already excellent nutrition and prescription protocols, and every feature of supplements as it relates to mental health, physical health and performance. By the end of today's episode, you should be armed with a number of different questions, as I mentioned before, that will allow you to develop the most biologically effective and cost effective supplement regimen for you. And of course, I want to acknowledge that for some people, the total amount or dosages of a given supplement or supplements that you might need to take could be zero. There are such individuals, but that many people can in fact arrive tremendous benefit from supplements in a way that can be more cost effective than trying to obtain the same non-prescription nutrients from food. As we head into today's conversation, I want to emphasize something very important, not just as it relates to supplements, but as it relates to all aspects of mental health, physical health and performance. And that is I take the stance that behavioral tools, that is specific actions that we take and specific actions that we avoid form the foundation of mental health, physical health and performance. So things like viewing morning sunlight and exercise are behavioral tools. They don't require the ingestion of anything. Within the realm of behavioral tools, there are also some don'ts or do nots that can greatly enhance our mental health, physical health and performance, such as avoiding bright light exposure to your eyes between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. or avoiding caffeine too late in the afternoon. because even if you can fall asleep after ingesting caffeine in the late afternoon, we know it disrupts the architecture of your sleep in ways that greatly diminish your mental health, physical health and performance the following day, for instance. So behavioral tools form the foundational layer of all tools for mental health, physical health and performance. Second to that, I would say the next layer is in fact nutrition. No amount of supplementation or non-prescription compounds or prescription compounds for that matter can ever compensate for poor nutrition, at least not for very long. Okay, so this is a key point. Even though many supplements are not simply food supplements because they are not designed to compensate for anything that you could otherwise get from food, that is not to say that you can live on supplements. I suppose you could live on whey protein and fish oil capsules and vitamin capsules or tablets for a short while. But before long, you'd either suffer from boredom to the extent that you'd want to go back to food or some other deficiency would show up. I think it's the rare individual that tries to survive entirely on food supplements and things of that sort. Most everybody, and I would hope everybody is paying attention to their nutrition, so I would place behavioral tools, do's and do nots, as layer one, the deepest layer, the bedrock of all mental health, physical health and performance. On top of that, I would place nutrition, and of course, that's going to mean different things to different people with the understanding that there's a huge array of different food choices and nutritional programs. Nutrition is fundamentally important for macronutrients, for storage of energy in the form of glycogen and fats and phosphor curitin stores and so forth, but also for obtaining basic nutrients, vitamins, minerals and micronutrients. Okay, so we've got behavioral tools, nutritional tools. Then on top of that, I would place what is typically called supplementation. Although today I'm trying to expand that word to include not just things that compensate for food deficiencies or that are layered on top of food as a way to enhance the amount of nutrients that you could get from food. But as I mentioned before, compounds that are non-prescription that can be for a variety of different purposes and many of which are not available in food. So I would place supplementation right on top of nutrition. Then past that, I would say prescription drugs, obviously prescribed from a board certified MD can serve a very vital purpose in the treatment or augmentation of mental health, physical health and performance goals. So some people do in fact need prescription antidepressants, other people do not. Some people do in fact need prescription drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or sleep related disorders, so on and so forth. The whole issue of whether or not there is an over prescription epidemic or not is a separate conversation for a separate podcast. I would argue that many prescription drugs do in fact save lives. This includes the category of prescription drugs related to statins and cardiovascular health related to any number of different things, even sleep disorders and insomnia, narcolepsy and so forth. That said, there are many instances in which people can either reduce their dosages of prescription compounds or can replace those prescription compounds with quality behavioral tools, nutrition and supplementation. But there are many instances in which prescription drugs are the only route by which people can achieve the mental health, physical health and performance goals that they wish to achieve. So I would place that as the fourth layer in this stack of layers directed towards mental health, physical health and performance. So just to list off again, I fundamentally believe that behaviors, dos and do nots form the foundation of mental health, physical health, performance. Next in line would be nutrition. That is the specific foods we eat, the amount that we eat, the combinations of foods that we eat in a given sitting and the timing in which we eat our food. Then on top of that, I would place supplementation, the topic of today's episode. And finally, prescription drugs. And of course, all of these things interact in important and interesting ways, many of which interactions we will discuss during today's podcast, as we drill into the topic of supplementation, developing a rational supplementation protocol and one that is most biologically and cost effective. Before moving further into today's episode, I want to emphasize a very important point, which is that I am not a physician. That is, I'm not a clinician, so I do not prescribe anything, nor am I going to do that today. I'm a professor. I review the research literature. I describe tools gleaned from the research literature and developed from the research literature. So I profess many things, but I do not prescribe anything. And I think it's vitally important that anytime you are thinking of adding or subtracting any behavioral protocols, nutritional protocols, supplementation-based protocols, and certainly prescription drug-based protocols, for whatever purpose, that you consult a trusted board-certified physician. That's absolutely essential. I don't say that merely to protect me. I mainly say that to protect you. The most important aspect of today's episode is not going to be that you discover one particular supplement or category of supplements or blend of supplements that is going to transform your mental health, physical health and performance. No, the purpose of today's episode is for you to understand where you have needs that can be met by supplementation better than any other approach. And most importantly, how to think about supplementation. That is how to think about the different categories of supplements that are out there and how those interact with your nutrition and your behaviors so that you can maximize your immediate and long-term health.