How to Optimize Your Brain-Body Function & Health

**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, we continue in our discussion about sensation, or how we sense things. On previous episodes, we talked about sensing light and sound waves for things like vision and hearing. Today, we are going to talk about our sense of self, or what's called interoception. Interoception is our sensing of our internal landscape, things like our heartbeat, our breathing, and our gut, how full our gut might happen to be, or how empty our gut might happen to be, but also our inner landscape with respect to chemistry, how acidic or how good or bad we feel on the inside. This discussion about sense of self and interoception has many important actionable items that relate to bodily health and brain health. And believe it or not, our ability to perform well or perform poorly in life. Indeed, it has profound influence on our rates of healing. So today we are going to talk about all the aspects of our inner landscape and how our brain and body communicate. And there will be many actionable protocols as we go along that discussion. Before we begin our discussion about sense of self, I want to highlight some very recently published research findings that I believe are immediately actionable and that everybody should be aware of. These are data that were published by my colleague Justin Sonnenberg's laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine. And the data were published in the journal Cell, which is a very, very high stringency cell press journal. So phenomenal data. What this study showed was that individuals given a high fiber diet actually experienced less diversity of what's called the gut microbiome. The number of positive or health promoting bacteria in the gut was actually reduced by a high fiber diet. Whereas individuals that ate just a couple of servings of fermented food each day experienced important and beneficial increases in anti-inflammatory markers. And that could be traced back to improvements in the gut microbiome diversity. The diversity of bugs, literally little bacteria that live in the gut, which might sound bad, but they are actually very health promoting. I'm going to get into all the details of this study later in the episode, but I just wanted to emphasize these findings because they are immediately actionable. I think for most people ingesting one or two servings of fermented food each day is reasonable and does not bring with it tremendous costs or tremendous inconvenience. And I think many people are ingesting high fiber diets thinking that that's the best way to improve their gut microbiome. So while these data may prove to be controversial among the folks out there in the nutrition community that really promote high fiber diet, I want to just emphasize that these data were looked at in a very unbiased way. They were done with large scale screens of all sorts of inflammatory markers. There was no specific hypothesis going in. It was purely exploratory, but the data are very, very clear. It doesn't mean you shouldn't eat fiber. Doesn't mean that fiber is bad, but it really shows that eating fermented foods, just one or two servings a day, and maybe even ramping up to three or four servings per day can be very beneficial for many aspects of health. Before we go any further, 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's supply of vitamin D3K2. 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's supply of vitamin D3K2. 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 drinklmnt.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.