Journal club with Andrew Huberman: metformin as a geroprotective drug, the power of belief, and how to read scientific papers

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Welcome to a special episode of The Drive. This episode is actually a dual episode with Andrew Huberman, where we are going to be releasing our conversation on both the Huberman Lab podcast and on The Drive.
In this episode, Andrew and I have a journal club where we each present and talk through a paper that we have found interesting in the previous couple of months. Now, I hope this will help people not only understand the results of the specific papers we go through, which is part of the exercise, but also to give people an idea of how to read and interpret a paper that you might read. And really, in some ways, I think that's equally, if not more important as part of this exercise.
For my paper, we looked at a study on metformin by Keyes et al., which looked back at the 2014 study by Bannister et al. that initially got everyone really interested in metformin as a possible giroprotective molecule. Through looking at this paper, we discussed metformin as a possible giroprotective drug, but also had a general discussion around giroprotection and the current lack of biomarkers of aging. Andrew then presented a paper that addressed how our beliefs of the drug we take impacts the effect they have on us at a biological level. So not looking at placebo effects, but actual belief effects and what this could mean going forward. As a reminder, Andrew is an associate professor of neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the host of the very popular Huberman Lab podcast. He's also a former podcast guest on episode 249 So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Andrew Huberman.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:41)
Peter, so good to have you here.

**Peter Attia** (2:44)
So great to be here, my friend.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:46)
This is something that you and I have been wanting to do for a while. And it's basically something that we do all the time, which is to peruse the literature and find papers that we are excited about for whatever reason. And oftentimes that will lead to a text dialogue or a phone call or both. But this time we've opted to try talking about these papers that we find particularly exciting in real time for the first time as this podcast format. First of all, so that people can get some sense of why we're so excited about these papers. We do feel that people should know about these findings.
And second of all, that it's an opportunity for people to learn how to dissect information and think about the papers they hear about in the news, the papers they might download from PubMed if they're inclined. Also just to start thinking like scientists and clinicians and get a better sense of what it looks like to pick through a paper, the good, the bad and the ugly. So we're flying a little blind here, which is fun.
I'm definitely excited for all the above reasons.

**Peter Attia** (3:53)
Yeah, no, this is, you and I have been talking about this for some time and, you know, actually we used to run a journal club inside the practice where once a month, one person would just pick a paper and we would go through it in kind of a formal journal club presentation. We'd gotten away from it for the last year just because we've been a little stretched then. I think it's something we need to resume because it's a great way to learn. And it's a skill, you know, people probably ask you all the time, because I know I get asked all the time, hey, what are the dos and don'ts of interpreting, you know, scientific papers? Is it enough to just read the abstract?
And, you know, usually the answer is, well, no. But the how to is tougher. And I think the two papers we've chosen today illustrate two opposite ends of the spectrum. You know, you're gonna obviously talk about something that we're gonna probably get into the technical nature of the assays, the limitations, et cetera. And the paper, ultimately I've chosen to present, although I apologize, I'm surprising you with this, up until a few minutes ago, is actually a very straightforward, simple epidemiologic paper that I think has important significance. I had originally gone down the rabbit hole on a much more nuanced paper about ATP binding cassettes in cholesterol absorption, but ultimately I thought this one might be more interesting to a broader audience. By the way, I gotta tell you a funny story. So I had a dream last night about you.