Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Dr. Alia Crum

**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, my guest is Dr. Alia Crum. Dr. Crum is a tenured professor of psychology at Stanford University, and the founder and director of the Stanford Mind & Body Lab. Her work focuses on mindsets, how what we think and what we believe shapes the way that our physiology, our biology reacts to things like what we eat, or stress, or exercise. Indeed, as you will soon learn from my discussion with Dr. Crum, what you believe about the nutritional content of your food changes the way that food impacts your brain and body to a remarkable degree. And the same is true for mindsets about exercise and stress and even medication. For instance, recent work from Dr. Crum's laboratory shows that what we believe about the side effect profiles of different drug treatments or different behavioral treatments has a profound impact on how quickly those treatments work and the effectiveness of those treatments. I just want to mention one particular study that just came out from a graduate student in Dr. Crum's laboratory, Lauren Howe, H-O-W-E, showed that how kids react to a treatment for peanut allergies can be profoundly shaped by whether or not those kids were educated about the side effects of the treatment, such that if they learned that the side effects were a byproduct of a treatment that would help them, and they learned a little bit about why those side effects arose and that the side effects might even help them in route to overcoming their peanut allergy, had an enormous impact on how quickly they moved through the treatment and indeed how much they suffered, or in this case did not suffer from those side effects. And that is but one example that you will learn about today as we discuss what mindsets are, the number of different mindsets that exist, and how we can adopt mindsets that make us more adaptive, more effective, allow us to suffer less and to perform better in all aspects of life. I personally find the work of Dr. Alia Crum to be among the most important work being done in the fields of biology and psychology and the interface of mind-body. Everything that she's done up until now and published, and indeed the work that she continues to do has shaped everything within my daily routines, within my work routines, within my athletic routines. And we probably shouldn't be surprised by the fact that Dr. Crum works on all these things. She was not only an incredibly accomplished tenured research professor, she's also a clinical psychologist, and she was also a Division I athlete and an elite gymnast at one period in her life. So she really walks the walk in terms of understanding what mindsets are and applying them in different aspects of life. I'm sure you're going to learn a ton from this conversation, as did I, and come away with many, many actionable items that you can apply in your own life. In fact, as we march into today's conversation, you might want to just put in the back of your mind and think the question, what is my mindset about blank? So for instance, ask yourself, what is my mindset about stress? What is my mindset about food? What is my mindset about exercise? What is my mindset about relationships of different kinds? Because in doing that, you'll be in a great position to extract the best of the information that Dr. Crum presents, and indeed to adapt those mindsets in the way that is going to be most beneficial for you. 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. 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