Your Top Health Questions Answered

**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's episode is a solo episode of the podcast, meaning no guest. However, there will be a large number of outside voices heard on today's episode. And that's because I solicited for your questions on social media. That is, people had the opportunity to call in and literally record their questions about anything related to science and health. Well, really anything. But today we're going to focus on science and health. And I would answer them in real time, meaning I'm hearing them for the first time today, as you hear them for the first time today.
And we're going to cover, I'm told, because I haven't heard the questions yet, a large number of topics related to science and health that are relevant to women, to men, to people of all ages. And covering everything from health and fitness, to mental health, supplementation and on and on. I should mention that if you called in with a question for today's episode and you don't hear it on today's episode, that does not necessarily mean that it won't be included in a future Q&A episode. Again, we got many, many more questions than we could possibly include in a single episode. And I also want to say to everyone who called in with a question, thank you. We really appreciate the feedback. Even if your question isn't included, it does cue us to what people are interested in and absolutely will shape the future of guest episodes, global episodes, and again, perhaps a future Q&A of this sort. So without further ado, let's get to your questions. Okay, so just to remind you, you're going to hear the question from the audience member played in real time. And again, this is the first time that I'm hearing these questions.

**Anthony Richards** (1:42)
Hello, my name is Anthony Richards, and I just want to thank you so much for all the content that you put out. It's helped me profoundly in so many aspects of my life. My specific question right now is on pre-workouts. I work out late at night because of work, and I generally go to bed an hour and a half or so after I complete my workout. I'm curious as to what's the most effective pre-workout I could take to maximize my strength training without impairing my sleep.
Thank you.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:14)
Well, first off, Anthony, thank you for the kind words. I love to learn, I love to teach, and I especially love to teach information that I hope can be of use to people in their health journey. So in keeping with that, you asked what is the best pre-workout for someone who's working out late in the day, and in your case, going to sleep about an hour and a half after finishing your workout. And your workouts, as you mentioned, are going to be for strength and presumably for some muscle size as well, which suggests that they're going to be of moderate to high intensity, which means that they're going to pretty impressively increase cortisol over its baseline late in the day. And everyone hears that and they go, oh my gosh, cortisol, stress hormone. We don't want to do that.
Yes and no.
It is true that we want our cortisol high in the morning. You all know the ways to do that. You get your morning sunlight, you hydrate, you exercise, maybe drink some caffeine if you like to drink caffeine, get into your day, maybe even some stress, that's okay. But if you can't work out early in the day, what do you do? So your question about pre-workout is really a question of how do I get energized enough, enough autonomic arousal, enough alertness that I can generate the kind of intensity that's going to stimulate that cortisol peak, right? We don't want to avoid that high cortisol level during these workouts. That's part of the stimulus that's going to induce the adaptations that we want. How do we do that? Well, you've all heard me say that drinking caffeine in the eight to 10 hours before sleep is going to disrupt your sleep even if you can fall asleep after caffeine. So to be quite direct, one thing, and perhaps the only thing that I'm aware of that can give you an increase in alertness and that will allow you more focus and intensity for your workout, but that can also help your sleep, is something that increases levels of acetylcholine. And the most direct way to do that, over the counter, and the safest way that I'm aware of to do that, is to use the supplement Alpha GPC. 600 milligrams to 900 milligrams of Alpha GPC taken simply with water will give you an increase in focus and alertness that you can devote to that high intensity or moderate to high intensity workout. Alpha GPC is also one of the few supplements that I'm aware of that can increase the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that you get, REM sleep. And that REM sleep is critical for a number of things, for inducing neuroplasticity, so any learning that you did in the preceding day or days is going to be consolidated during REM sleep. And, importantly, REM sleep is critical for removing the emotional load of previous days, not just one day, but days' memories.