How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods

**Andrew D. Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or twice a day is that it helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs. It makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, it has probiotics, which are vital for microbiome health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so-called gut microbiome and the ways in which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body. With Athletic Greens, I get the vitamins I need, the minerals I need and the probiotics to support my microbiome. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. There are a ton of data now showing that vitamin D3 is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health. Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin D3. And K2 is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function, calcium in the body and so on. Again, go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolytes are an element and those are sodium, magnesium and potassium, but it has no sugar. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the key role of hydration and electrolytes for nerve cell function, neuron function, as well as the function of all the cells and all the tissues and organ systems of the body. If we have sodium, magnesium and potassium present in the proper ratios, all of those cells function properly and all our bodily systems can be optimized. If the electrolytes are not present and if hydration is low, we simply can't think as well as we would otherwise. Our mood is off, hormone systems go off, our ability to get into physical action, to engage in endurance and strength and all sorts of other things is diminished. So with element, you can make sure that you're staying on top of your hydration and that you're getting the proper ratios of electrolytes. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element. That's lmnt.com/huberman and you'll get a free element sample pack with your purchase. They're all delicious. So again, if you want to try element, you can go to element lmnt.com/huberman.
Today's episode is also brought to us by thesis. Thesis makes what are called nootropics, which means smart drugs. Now, to be honest, I am not a fan of the term nootropics. I don't believe in smart drugs in the sense that I don't believe that there's any one substance or collection of substances that can make us smarter. I do believe, based on science, however, that there are particular neural circuits and brain functions that allow us to be more focused, more alert, access creativity, be more motivated, et cetera. That's just the way that the brain works, different neural circuits for different brain states. Thesis understands this. And as far as I know, they're the first nootropics company to create targeted nootropics for specific outcomes. I've been using thesis for more than six months now, and I can confidently say that their nootropics have been a total game changer. My go-to formula is the Clarity formula, or sometimes I'll use their Energy formula before training. To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit, go online to takethesis.com/huberman.
Take a three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. That's takethesis.com/huberman, and use the code Huberman at checkout for 10% off your first order. Today, we're talking all about emotions. Emotions are central to our entire experience of life. Whether or not we're happy or sad or depressed or angry is our life experience. And yet I think with all the importance that we've placed on emotions, very few people actually understand how emotions arise in our brain and body. And I mentioned brain and body, because as you'll see today, emotions really capture the brain-body relationship. We cannot say that emotions arise just from what happens in our head. It also involves events, biological events, chemical events within our body. The other thing about emotions is that there's no real agreement as to what's a good emotion or a bad emotion. Today we're going to talk about the biology of the chemicals and pathways that give rise to emotions. And I'm going to equip you with several, if not many tools that will allow you to regulate and change and steer your emotions should you want, but not using the typical advice. You know, everyone's probably heard of this thing. Oh, you know, if you're feeling depressed, just smile. Well, you know, it's impossible to be depressed while smiling. Look, if that were true, we wouldn't have any depressed people because depressed people don't want to be depressed. And it is not the case that simply smiling will reverse depression or sadness. And it's simply not the case that smiling can inhibit sadness. It just doesn't work that way. However, it is the case that certain things that are happening in our body influence how our brain functions and the chemicals that are released. And today, we're going to talk a lot about how the brain and body interact to create these things called emotions in the context of food and nutrition. And the reason we're doing that is not because I am beating the drum about particular diet regimens or anything. In fact, I'm not going to do any of that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to review some of the most important scientific data that point to how ingesting certain nutrients, both macronutrients like proteins, fats and carbohydrates, as well as micronutrients, can impact the chemicals in our brain that give rise to the feelings of being happy or sad or sleepy or alert when you want to be sleepy or sleepy when you want to be alert. So this is sure to be a broad discussion. And yet we're going to get very specific about what emotions are, how they arise in the body, tools that one can use in order to better control their emotions, tools that people can use to believe it or not, feel happier or feel calmer. And that's because in the last 20 years or so, there's been an explosion of scientific studies exploring how the brain and body interact to support certain neurochemicals that give us these feelings of being alert and happy or depressed or certain that our life is going to be terrible or certain that our life is going to be great. So as mysterious as all that might sound and confusing as all that might sound, we're going to make it very clear today. And you're going to come away from this conversation with a lot of tools that you can act on immediately. And those tools are grounded in scientific data. We are going to provide links to several of the studies. And I'm going to mention several of those studies as we go along. But overall, the goal today is for you to understand how moods and emotions arise and the different pathways in your brain and body that allow them to happen and how you can use those pathways to change those emotions and the tools that you can rely on in very specific ways to shift from being, say, slightly depressed to feeling happier. There actually are ways to do that, or from feeling too alert and anxious to feeling calmer. And these are tools that are distinct from the tools I've talked about in previous episodes. The discussion around emotions has a long and rich history, going back to Darwin and even long before Darwin. This is a conversation that philosophers and scientists have been having for hundreds, if not thousands of years.