Using Caffeine to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance

**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 are discussing caffeine. Caffeine is one of the most widely used substances on the planet. Estimates are that more than 90% of adults and as many as 50% of kids, that is adolescents and teenagers, use caffeine on a daily basis. Caffeine is an amazing molecule. Most people are familiar with caffeine's ability to increase alertness and to reduce our feelings of sleepiness and fatigue. And indeed, it does that. But what most people are not aware of is that caffeine acts as a strong reinforcer. What I mean by reinforcer is that when caffeine is present in a drink or food, and yes, indeed caffeine is present in many foods, even unbeknownst to us, when it's present in drinks and foods, we actively come to like those foods and drinks more than if caffeine were not contained in those foods and drinks. So it reinforces our liking of particular foods and drinks. And indeed, it even reinforces our liking of the containers they are consumed from and the company we keep when we consume foods and drinks that contain caffeine. That is caffeine is not just a stimulant, caffeine is a reinforcer and it's a reinforcer that plays an active role in almost everybody's daily life. We can say that with confidence because as I mentioned a moment ago, more than 90% of people are consuming caffeine and most people think that they consume caffeine because it makes them feel more alert. But there are many reasons why you're consuming caffeine. And I'm not going to tell you that consuming caffeine is necessarily bad. In fact, today I'm going to tell you about many of the positive health benefits of caffeine, including neuroprotective effects, antidepressive effects, and certainly performance enhancing effects, both for mental performance and for physical performance. Now, that said, there are certain situations in which you want to avoid caffeine, and there are certain people who might opt to avoid caffeine. That's especially the case when one thinks about caffeine not just as a stimulant, but as a reinforcer. In fact, caffeine is such a strong reinforcer that if even tiny amounts of caffeine are present in certain foods and drinks, you will very quickly come to prefer those foods and drinks over other choices, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what sorts of food and drink choices you're trying to make. So today, I'm going to inform you about how caffeine works at a mechanistic level. I promise to do that with a minimum of nomenclature and such that even if you don't have a background in biology, you will be able to digest that information easily. And then I'll tell you how to use caffeine to your advantage, or conversely, how to avoid caffeine at certain times to your advantage. So today's episode will focus both on mechanisms and tools that is the use and leverage of caffeine to improve mental health, physical health and performance. Before we go any further into today's discussion, I want to tell you about some recent results about a molecule that's found in certain caffeinated beverages and that has been proven to be very useful for both weight loss, mental performance and controlling blood sugar levels. And that's GLP-1 or glucagon-like peptide-1. Glucagon-like peptide-1 is found in the brain and body. It acts both on the brain and body. It does many different things, but one of its primary effects that's been discovered is to reduce hunger. And it does that two ways. It does that by activating certain neurons in your hypothalamus. So that's a brain region that controls hunger and satiety. It makes us feel full at the level of the brain. So it makes us feel sated that is, and it actually makes us feel full. It turns out that GLP-1 acts on certain receptors in the gut to make us feel as if we've ingested enough food. It doesn't necessarily make us feel as if our gut is distended, but it makes us feel full. That's really interesting because if you think about it, when we eat, our stomach fills up, obviously, and that information has to be communicated to the brain such that the brain can then send satiety signals that actually shut off our hunger. And believe it or not, the brain actually activates signals to reduce the desire to chew when our stomach is full. And GLP-1, as I mentioned, works on the brain to create these feelings of satiety, as if we've had enough and to reduce our desire to eat more. And GLP-1 acts directly on the gut to give us a slight sense of fullness in the gut, which then is communicated to the brain. So really there are two parallel signals being sent when we have GLP-1 present in our system. Now, a little bit of relevant history on GLP-1, it was actually discovered in Gila monsters. These are these reptiles that can go long periods of time without eating and a very clever scientist decided to study why it is that certain animals like Gila monsters can go a long period of time without ingesting anything. And it's because they produce very large amounts of GLP-1. They isolate the peptide from GLP-1. Then they looked for the analogous peptide in humans. And it turns out that does exist. And as I mentioned, it's released in both brain and body to make you feel full and sated. Why am I telling you all this? Well, today we're going to talk about caffeine and there's one particular caffeine source, which is Yerba Mate. And there's some other forms of teas, similar to Yerba Mate, that stimulate the release of GLP-1 significantly. There are also nowadays drugs, which are called analogs of GLP-1. So these are drugs that mimic or are identical to the kind of GLP-1 that you would make. And those drugs are proving to be very effective for the treatment of certain forms of diabetes and for the treatment of obesity. But they trigger enormous amounts of GLP-1 pathway activation. And so those are extreme cases for people that are really struggling for weight loss. But the clinical trials and the data that are out there in the general population now are very, very promising for GLP-1 analogs. Yerba mate tea, provided it's not the smoked variety. And I mention that because a number of people have cued me to the fact that yerba mate teas come in smoked varieties and non-smoked varieties. And the smoked varieties are thought to perhaps be carcinogenic, that is pro-cancer causing. So I advise people to avoid smoked varieties of yerba mate tea. But yerba mate teas are known to stimulate significant amounts of GLP-1 release. And so they can be effective as a weight loss tool, mainly by blunting appetite. And again, they do that both at the level of the brain and at the level of the gut. Now all of what I just told you has been known for some period of time, but there are a new set of findings that were just published in Cell Reports Medicine, Cell Press Journal, excellent journal, which indicate exactly how it is that GLP-1 stimulates both satiety and can trigger additional weight loss through other mechanisms. And I find the mechanism to be really interesting and actually really important given some other topics we've covered on this podcast before. So the basic finding is that GLP-1, whether or not it's stimulated through the release of analog drug that one is prescribed, or by drinking yerba mate tea, for instance, and stimulated release of your own so-called endogenous GLP-1. Yes, it makes you feel more full at the level of brain and body, but it turns out it also stimulates thermogenesis. Now, thermogenesis is the active utilization of more metabolic energy and fat cells in particular, so-called beige and brown fat cells are a potent source of thermogenic activity in your body. The basic background is that you have white adipose cells, so white fat cells, you have beige fat cells and you have brown fat cells, and the beige and brown ones are fat cells that you actually want more of. They are not abundant under your skin, they're abundant really around your clavicles and your upper neck. They are the ones that generate heat, and the beige and brownness of them is actually the consequence of having a lot of mitochondria in those cells. When GLP-1 is elevated in your system, it turns out that it communicates to those white fat cells and helps convert them into beige and brown fat cells. That is, it takes fat cells that are not doing anything useful for you except being stored energy. And I think most people out there would like to have fewer of those white adipose cells. There are few of you out there that actually need more of them that are too thin, too lean, but most people are suffering from having too many of these white adipose cells. Well, when you ingest your Beaumonté tea, or you were to take a GLP-1 analog or stimulate GLP-1 in any number of different ways, yes, you stimulate increased satiety, but you're also stimulating the conversion of these white fat cells into beige and brown fat cells, which makes you more thermogenic, and over time raises your basal metabolic rate, so you're burning more calories even at rest. It also makes you feel as if you're more comfortable in colder environments at rest. This is very much the same as the mechanism that's induced when you were to, say, take a cold shower or do regular ice baths or get into cold water regularly. That, too, stimulates the conversion of white fat cells to beige and brown fat cells. So I like these findings very much because they provide a mechanistic coherence. They provide, that is, a really nice story as to how something like GLP-1 could be so effective for weight loss. Yes, on the one hand, GLP-1 is reducing appetite, and that, of course, will help people maintain or lose weight, but it's also increasing basal metabolic rate, and we now know how that's accomplished. It's likely accomplished at least through this one mechanism by the stimulation of conversion of these white fat cells, which don't do much for us except as energy storage units, to these metabolically mitochondrial-rich beige and brown fat cells, which you can think of as sort of the oil in the candle that allows your furnace, your metabolism, to burn at a higher temperature and a higher rate. So that's the mechanism, and the basic tool takeaway is that if you are somebody who's interested in losing weight and you want to leverage the GLP-1 pathway, drinking a cup or two of yerba mate tea early in the day would be a great way to stimulate GLP-1 release. There are other ways to stimulate GLP-1 release. You can get it through certain forms of exercise, in particular, fasted exercise. This is actually a vote in favor of fasted exercise. There's a debate as to whether or not fasted cardio burns more fat than non-fasted cardio. And the data basically say, no, it doesn't really matter, but that doesn't really take into account the longer arc of things like GLP-1 release. So that needs to be taken into consideration. So you could do fasted cardio, you could drink yerba mate tea, keeping in mind that yerba mate tea does contain caffeine. We'll talk more about the specific forms of stimulants, including caffeine that mate has. But mate would be a great way to stimulate GLP-1 release. And then of course, for those of you that are interested in more robust activation of GLP-1, then perhaps you might want to consider some of the new prescription GLP-1 analogs that are out there. But that's a more severe stimulus for GLP-1 of course. And for everybody, regardless of whether or not you're trying to lose weight, gain weight or maintain weight, I think we're going to be hearing a lot more about GLP-1 analogs and drinks and supplements and things of that sort that stimulate GLP-1 in the very near future, because it does appear to be a very important biological mechanism. 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 Element. Element is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium and potassium, the so-called electrolytes, and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potassium are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrolytes need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electrolyte concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits in cognitive and physical performance. Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of 1000 milligrams, that's one gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink Element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my body and make sure I have enough electrolytes. And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if I've been sweating a lot. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement. That's lmnt.com/huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with your purchase. again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman.