LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman at Beacon Theatre in New York

**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. Recently, the Huberman Lab hosted a live event at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The event was entitled The brain Body Contract, and it consisted of a lecture followed by a question and answer session with the audience. We wanted to make the recorded version of that question and answer session available to everybody regardless of who could attend. So what follows is the question and answer period from the brain Body Contract live Huberman Lab event. I want to be sure to thank the sponsors from that event. They were Eight Sleep, which makes smart mattress covers with heating and cooling capacity. I started sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover about eight months ago, and it has completely transformed my sleep. I sleep so much deeper. I wake up far less during the middle of the night, if at all, and I wake up feeling far better than I ever have, even after the same amount of sleep. In fact, I love my Eight Sleep so much that when I travel, I'm quite bothered that Airbnbs and hotels don't have Eight Sleep mattress covers on them, and I've even shipped my Eight Sleep mattress cover out to meet me in the location that I arrive to so that I get the best possible sleep. If you want to try Eight Sleep, you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $400 off their sleep fit holiday bundle, which includes their new pod three cover. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, select countries in the EU and Australia. again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. I'd like to also thank our supplement partner, Momentous. They make the very highest quality supplements. They ship internationally, and they've formulated supplements as single ingredient formulations that match what is discussed on the Huberman Lab podcast. If you're interested in any of those supplements, please go to livemomentous.com/huberman. And now without further ado, the question and answer session from the live event held at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
You've said before that stress can be good for us, but how do we know when it's too much? That's a good question. And I should preface that by saying that there's some incredible work that was done by a colleague of mine, Dr. Alia Crum. Ali is how she goes by, Dr. Ali Crum, who is a, she was a Division I athlete. She has a, she's a tenured professor of psychology at Stanford. She's a licensed clinical psychologist. Like every once in a while, I look around at my colleagues. I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, who are these people? Very humbling place to be. But she's made some important discoveries and I want to just highlight one, which is this notion of mindset and know these are not placebo effects. But let me just tell you, when you think about stress, how you think about stress is really important. First of all, you can't lie to yourself, but if, for instance, you watch a one or three-minute video, as she's given subjects in her lab, about stress, and it tells you all the terrible things that stress does to your immune system and sleep, then you experience those things, increases in blood pressure, etc. However, if you watch a one to three-minute video that's also true about the fact that stress can sharpen your decision-making for certain kinds of things, actually can accentuate your immune system. I wish someone would help me get this narrative right out there. Stress does not deplete your immune system unless it goes on a long, long time. We'll talk about what long means in a moment. Why would it? Think about it. If you had to fast and move with family or whether a storm of any kind, emotional or physical, and you got sick, that wouldn't make any sense. It's usually after you're stressed. If you've ever been go, go, go or taking care of a loved one or studying or working hard, and then you finally go on vacation, you rest, you arrive and you get sick, it's because your immune system shut down, it's stopped. Your immune system is mobilized by that alertness side of your autonomic nervous system. But you do need sleep. You do need sleep and it's actually we think the slowing of circulation, and this is why it's probably not a good idea to exercise if you're already sick, and if you're veering towards sick, probably limit the intensity of any kind of interaction as best you can and just still yourself. Well, Ali's lab has clearly shown us over and over again that what we know, our knowledge base really does shape the physiology over those outcomes. Now you know that stress is both bad and good, so which one is it? Does it average to nothing? No. It turns out that you can bias this in one direction or the other, depending on which information you're listening to more often. I think this is really important. You know, I still am trying to get my head and my mind around what's happened over the last few years and where it's placed us. Where did it land us? Are we more resilient now or are we just really beat up? I don't know. I really don't know, but I think how we interpret the last few years is going to make a big difference in terms of how it impacts us.