How to Enhance Your Gut Microbiome for Brain & Overall Health

**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 are going to discuss the gut and the brain, and we are going to discuss how your gut influences your brain, and your brain influences your gut. As many of you probably know, there is a phenomenon called your gut feeling, which tends to be something that you seem to know without really knowing how you know it. That's one version of the gut feeling. The other is that you sense something in your actual gut, in your body, and that that somehow drives you to think or feel or act in a particular way, maybe to move towards something or to move away from something. Now, today, we aren't going to focus so much on the psychology of gut feelings, but on the biology of gut feelings and how the gut and brain interact, because indeed, your gut is communicating to your brain both directly by way of neurons, nerve cells, and indirectly by changing the chemistry of your body, which permeates up to your brain and impacts various aspects of brain function. But it works in the other direction too. Your brain is influencing your entire gut. And when I say entire gut, I don't just mean your stomach, I mean your entire digestive tract. Your brain is impacting things like how quickly your food is digesting, the chemistry of your gut. If you happen to be stressed or not stressed, whether or not you are under a particular social challenge or whether or not you're particularly happy will in fact adjust the chemistry of your gut and the chemistry of your gut in turn will change the way that your brain works. I'll put all that together for you in the context of what we call the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome are the trillions of little bacteria that live all the way along your digestive tract and that strongly impact the way that your entire body works at the level of metabolism, immune system and brain function. And of course, we will discuss tools, things that you can do in order to maintain or improve your gut health. Because as you'll also soon see, gut health is immensely important for all aspects of our well-being at the level of our brain, at the level of our body. And there are simple actionable things that we can all do in order to optimize our gut health in ways that optimize our overall nervous system functioning. So we will be sure to review those today. This episode also serves as a bit of a primer for our guest episode that's coming up next week with Dr. Justin Sonnenberg from Stanford University. Dr. Sonnenberg is a world expert in the gut microbiome. And so we will dive really deep into the gut microbiome in all its complexity. We'll make it all very simple for you. We will also talk about actionable tools in that episode. This episode is a standalone episode, so you'll get a lot of information and tools. But if you have the opportunity to see this episode first, I think it will serve as a nice primer for the conversation with Dr. Sonnenberg. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that 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 elementlmnt.com/huberman.