AMA #2: Improve Sleep, Reduce Sugar Cravings, Optimal Protein Intake, Stretching Frequency & More

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast

where we discuss science and science-based tools

for everyday life.

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I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology

and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today is an ask me anything or AMA episode,

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Without further ado, let's get to answering your questions.

And as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible,

as thorough as possible, and yet as concise as possible.

The first question is about how to improve sleep.

In particular, how to improve deep sleep

that is sometimes called slow-wave sleep.

This was a question that was asked by Jack Pritchard

and they got a lot of up votes.

Now, we've done multiple full-length episodes

of the Huberman Lab podcast on sleep

and tools to improve sleep,

including the Master Your Sleep episode

and Perfect Your Sleep episode,

as well as a toolkit that is available

completely zero cost at hubermanlab.com.

It's a downloadable PDF that lists out

the behavioral tools and other tools

that you can implement to improve your sleep.

Now Jack's question is specifically about

how to improve deep sleep.

He asks, I have a sleep analyzer and I typically observe

that I get a lot of REM sleep,

that is rapid eye movement sleep.

For him, he says it's 30% of his total sleep

is rapid eye movement sleep.

But he asks, my deep sleep is often low, around 10%,

and I would like to know if there

are any science-backed protocols

I can use to specifically increase my deep sleep.

Okay, so for those of you that may not know

what is deep sleep.

Now, deep sleep is sometimes referred to as slow-wave sleep,

that is slow-wave sleep and deep sleep are sometimes used

interchangeably to describe the same thing.

They aren't necessarily the same thing,

but they fall under the same mechanistic umbrella.

What is that mechanistic umbrella?

Well, when you go to sleep at night,

you cycle through a number of different stages of sleep.

And in the early part of the night,

I would say in the first half of your night or so,

most of your sleep is going to be slow-wave deep sleep.

But then as you transition into the second half

of your night, more of your sleep

will be rapid eye movement sleep.

Now that's the typical pattern

that is observed when you're not disrupting

your sleep architecture with things

like caffeine and alcohol.

We'll talk about caffeine and alcohol in a few minutes.

Deep sleep, aka slow-wave sleep,

at least for sake of this conversation,

is vitally important in particular

for repair of bodily tissues.

During deep sleep, you secrete growth hormone

and in fact you secrete growth hormone every night

when you go to sleep.

But most of that growth hormone release

is restricted to the first half of your sleep night.

The other feature of deep sleep

is that the dreams that occur during deep sleep

tend to be of a less emotional nature

than the sorts of dreams that one experiences

in rapid eye movement sleep.

So just to give a broad top contour of what deep sleep,

aka slow-wave sleep is really about,

it tends to occur in the first half of the night,

it also occurs in the second half of the night,

but in the first half of the night,

most of your sleep is going to be occupied by deep sleep,

aka slow-wave sleep.

It is the time when your bodily tissues are repaired

in part by release of growth hormone,

which is involved in metabolism,

but also protein synthesis, muscle repair,

repair of all cell types and tissues.

And during deep sleep,

your dreams tend to be somewhat mundane,

sometimes a little bizarre,

but typically not very emotionally loaded.

That can change if you're dealing

with a lot of emotionally laden circumstances

in your waking life, but in general,

the sleep and dreams that occur in the first part

of the night is deep

and it's not terribly emotionally ridden.

Your body also goes through specific patterns of metabolism.

Now, this relates to recent findings just this last year

in which researchers monitored

the output of people's breath

and the various metabolic factors present in the breath

as well as through blood draws,

So basically doing all this

while people are asleep in a laboratory.

And they observe that during the first half of the night

while people are in deep sleep,

their body is actually metabolizing energy very differently

than it does in the second half of the night.

I'll come back to this in a little while,

but this turns out to be very important

for establishing your metabolism

and the way you regulate insulin and blood glucose

during the daytime.

So all of this is to say that getting sufficient deep sleep,

slow-wave sleep, is vitally important.

And Jack's asking how he can increase the amount

of deep sleep that he's getting because

by his sleep tracking method,

he's observing far less deep sleep

than rapid eye movement sleep.

Now that raises the question of how much deep sleep

one should be getting overall.

In general, the goal should be to balance

the total amount of slow-wave sleep

and rapid eye movement sleep across the night.

However, I would not want people to obsess

over getting exactly 30% rapid eye movement sleep

and exactly 30% slow-wave sleep.

Your body is much more resilient than that,

but the closer those two numbers are to one another,

the better overall architecture of your sleep.

And he doesn't list out exactly

how he's measuring his sleep

so I do want to put an asterisk on both the question

and the answer I provide by stating

that a lot of sleep trackers,

whether or not they are WHOOP trackers or Ouras

or whether or not you're using a mattress based

or mattress cover based sleep tracker

like Eight Sleep or other,

is using heart rate and heart rate variability

and body movement to estimate

or to kind of predict whether or not

you're in slow-wave sleep or rapid eye movement sleep.

And that's because during rapid eye movement sleep,

you tend to be in what's called atonia,

you tend to be paralyzed, you can't move.

And during slow-wave sleep, that's not the case.

But no matter what the sleep tracking method is,

if it's a standard commercial sleep tracking method,

WHOOP or Eight Sleep, et cetera,

it is an estimate or a best guess

at what stage of sleep you're in.

Whereas when you go into a sleep laboratory,

like the sleep laboratory at Stanford,

at University of Pennsylvania or other

of the great sleep laboratories that are out there,

they're going to use other methods

including EEG and EMG.

These are just acronyms that refer to ways

to record brainwaves.

They actually are going to try and observe

for rapid eye movements beneath the eyelids, et cetera.

So sleep trackers give you a best guess

as to what stage of sleep you're in.

They are not perfectly accurately,

at least none of the commercially available

sleep trackers are perfectly accurate.

So we do want to highlight that.

Okay, so now let's answer Jack's question directly,

which is how to increase the total amount

of slow-wave sleep.

Well, there are a couple ways.

First of all are the don'ts

and then we'll talk about the dos.

Two things that you can do to really disrupt

your slow-wave sleep

are to drink alcohol within eight hours prior

to bedtime or even at all.

Some people will find that even if they have

a glass of wine or a beer with lunch,

that the amount of slow-wave sleep

and sometimes even the rapid eye movement sleep

that they get at night is reduced

and that their overall sleep architecture is disrupted.

This has been shown again and again.

Likewise, avoiding caffeine within eight

and ideally within 12 hours of bedtime

would be preferable.

And if you're not a caffeine drinker,

obviously you don't have to worry about this at all,

but avoiding caffeine intake within that 8 to 12 hours

of bedtime will greatly assist in you

getting more slow-wave sleep

and higher quality rapid eye movement sleep.

This has been shown again and again.

And as well avoiding cannabis use

and maybe even CBD use within 8 to 12 hours of sleep

can be very beneficial if your goal

is to improve the quality of your sleep.

Now, I know a lot of people rely on alcohol,

cannabis and CBD in order to get into sleep.

However, it's been shown many times in human studies,

and this was discussed in the podcast episode

that we did with the great Matt Walker,

who's a professor of neuroscience and psychology

at University of California, Berkeley,

and a world expert in sleep and sleep science.

Matt and I discussed the research showing

that even though alcohol helps you fall asleep,

even though cannabis can help you fall asleep,

and even though CBD can help people fall asleep,

that it does disrupt and in many ways reduce

the quality of sleep that one gets.

So that's disappointing news I know

for a number of the people that rely on cannabis,

CBD, or alcohol to fall asleep,

but I would encourage you to check out the episodes

of the Huberman Lab podcast that we did

about alcohol and about cannabis,

including some of the health benefits of cannabis

in certain situations,

but also some of the detrimental effects

of both alcohol and cannabis in other situations

in particular for improving slow-wave sleep.

So that's actually three major don'ts.

Avoid caffeine, alcohol, and cannabis,

and let's put under the umbrella of cannabis,

THC and CBD in the 8 and ideally within the 12 hours

prior to sleep if your goal is to improve

the total amount of slow-wave sleep that you're getting

and your overall sleep architecture.

In addition,

it's well known that avoiding food intake

in the two hours prior to sleep

is going to greatly assist in the amount

of growth hormone output that you achieve

during the early stages of the night

and the depth and duration of slow-wave sleep.

Now, I want to place an asterisk on that statement

by saying if you go to sleep too hungry,

it can also disrupt your sleep.

So you're going to have to arrange your eating schedule

and your sleeping schedule such that

you're not eating too close to bedtime,

but you're also not going to bed so hungry

that you can't fall asleep or that you don't get

into deep sleep and stay asleep.

I can personally attest to the fact

that if I'm too hungry,

I can't fall asleep.

Now for me, most nights I'm going to eat dinner

sometime between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM

depending on time of year, schedules,

what's going on, traffic, et cetera.

And I tend to go to sleep somewhere between 10:00 PM

and 11:00 PM plus or minus an hour,

again, depending on time of year

and what else is going on in life.

So I normally have that buffer of two hours or so

before going to sleep.

However, there are some nights

where even if I eat dinner around 7:00 PM,

I'm quite hungry at 9:00 PM and I want to go to sleep.

In that case, eating a small amount of food,

ought not to disrupt your slow-wave sleep too much,

but you do want to avoid eating large meals

right before going to sleep unless,

unless completely fasting and not eating something

late at night will prevent you from getting

into any sleep at all.

In other words, it's better to make sure

that you're getting to sleep

than it is to avoid food just so that you get

increased growth hormone output and into slow-wave sleep.

I hope that's clear.

You know, I have had times in my life

where I'm working very, very hard

and I missed dinner or something comes up

and I know some people can fall asleep quite easily

on an empty stomach.

I've been able to do that,

in particular if I'm very exhausted.

I also rely on a handful of supplements

to fall asleep each night,

although I've not dependent on them.

There have been times when I haven't been able to access

those supplements and I can still fall asleep.

But the point is that you don't want to be so hungry

that you can't fall asleep.

And yet in an ideal circumstance,

especially if you're trying to increase

the amount of slow-wave sleep,

you would avoid food in the two hours or so

before going to sleep.

If you can avoid food for the three or four hours

prior to sleep and still fall and stay asleep easily,

that's even better for sake of increasing slow-wave sleep

and growth hormone output.

Now, there are some additional tools

for improving slow-wave sleep,

in particular, the transitions between slow-wave sleep

and the other sleep stages

because even though, as I mentioned earlier,

the early part of your night is occupied primarily

by slow-wave sleep, all night long

you're transitioning from slow-wave sleep

into an intermediate stage of sleep

and then into rapid eye movement sleep

and then back again.

It's just that in the early part of the night,

more of that time is going to be occupied

by slow-wave sleep.

The two ways to improve slow-wave sleep

that are well documented in the literature,

and here we can point to some really nice papers

that I'll reference in case you want to read further,

is the first one is entitled,

Exercise Improves the Quality of Slow-Wave Sleep

by Increasing Slow-Wave Stability.

Slow-wave Stability has to do with,

as researchers call it, the amount of power present

in the different aspects of slow-wave sleep,

So this gets a little bit technical,

but this is an instance in which they brought subjects

into the laboratory, they measured brainwaves by EEG,

they had some other measurements as well

included in subjective measures of sleep,

and they looked at whether or not people

were doing exercise or not prior to sleep.

Now, when I say prior to sleep,

I mean not within six hours prior to bedtime.

In fact, exercising intensely in the six hours

prior to bedtime, for many people, not all,

but for many people can disrupt the total amount

of slow-wave sleep that they get

and can also disrupt rapid eye movement sleep.

So the conditions of the study were pretty straightforward.

It was a randomized crossover trial.

Basically, they had people either sleeping

and monitoring their sleep

or they had people doing an hour of exercise at 60%

of their so-called VO2 max, you can look this up,

for 60 minutes.

60% of their VO2 max, that was the intensity.

It's breathing pretty hard, but not extremely hard.

If we were going to map that to the so-called zone,

zone 2 cardio being the kind of cardio

you can do steady state while holding a conversation.

This would be somewhere in the probably zone 3

or zone 4, although that's not exactly

what 60% of VO2 Max is going to map to every time.

Think about relatively challenging cardiovascular output

for 60 minutes, and they had them do that

at least six hours prior to bedtime,

and, this is an important and,

They did have the subjects in this study

in all conditions abstain from caffeine and alcohol,

so that's very important.

And what they observed was an enhancement

of slow-wave sleep.

So exercise of this sort turns out

to be a very potent form of improving slow-wave sleep.

Now, I do not know, because the study

as far as I know has not been done,

whether or not doing resistance training

or some other type of exercise

would've led to the same effect,

although I have to imagine that if it's moderately intense

to intense resistance training

provided it's done far enough away from going to sleep

prior to six hours before sleep,

that one ought to see the same effects.

Although that was not a condition in this study.

But it's a very nice study.

They looked at everything from changes

in core body temperature to caloric expenditure.

They didn't see huge changes in core body

temperature changes, so that couldn't explain the effect.

It really appears that the major effect

of improving slow-wave sleep was due

to something in changing the fine structure

of the brain waves that occur during slow-wave sleep.

In fact, and this is an important point,

the subjects in this study did not report subjectively

feeling that much better from their sleep.

So you might say, well then why would I even want to bother?

However, it's well known that getting sufficient

slow-wave sleep is important not just for repair,

excuse me, for repair of bodily tissues,

but also for repair of brain tissues

and repair and wash out of debris in the brain.

And that debris is known to lead to things like dementia.

So getting the best quality slow-wave sleep

is extremely important for body and for brain.

And getting an hour of exercise

that's moderately intense and making sure

that you're not doing that exercise

within the six hours prior to bedtime,

and avoiding caffeine and alcohol,

certainly within the six hours prior to bedtime,

but I would say in the 8 to 12 hours

prior to bedtime would be even better

or not drinking alcohol at all,

or I know there are people out there

that don't drink caffeine at all,

I'm not one of those people,

but restricting that caffeine intake to

the very early part of the day,

that has been shown to improve the quality

and the overall architecture of sleep

and slow-wave sleep in particular.

That's really what this study points to.

There's another tool that can improve the amount

and quality of slow-wave sleep that you achieve at night.

This is actually a tool that I've started using

over the last six to eight months or so.

As many of you know,

I believe in getting behaviors right

before embracing changes in supplementation

or prescription drugs.

Behavioral tools consist of dos and don'ts,

and the dos and don'ts for sleep

are well documented in the Master Sleep episode

and the Perfect Your Sleep episode

and the toolkit for sleep.

They include getting morning sunlight in your eyes

or bright light of other kinds,

avoiding bright light from 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM,

et cetera, et cetera.

All that information is in the toolkit for sleep

and those other full-length episodes

of the Huberman Lab podcast.

Now, there are supplements that can greatly improve

the depth of your sleep

and that can shorten the latency to fall asleep.

And here I'm not referring to melatonin,

as many of you perhaps already know,

I'm not a fan of melatonin for a variety of reasons,

mainly the fact that most melatonin supplements out there

don't actually contain the exact amount of melatonin

that's listed on the bottle.

They contain either much, much more or much, much less.

And that melatonin is a potent hormone

that has impacts on not just sleep,

but on other hormone systems as well.

The supplements that I've suggested

and that I personally take in order to improve my sleep

are magnesium threonate, spelled T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E.

And interchangeably with that

one could use magnesium bisglycinate.

I do consider those interchangeable

because both cross into cells

and cross the blood brain barrier

in much the same way that makes them better candidates

for improving sleep

than some of the other forms of magnesium.

So magnesium threonate, theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E,

theanine, and something called apigenin,

which is essentially what you find in camomile

that is the reason why camomile can make you sleepy.

A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N, apigenin.

The dosages for those et cetera

are described in the toolkit for sleep

and why some people might want to avoid theanine.

I'll just tell you, for those of you

that have very intense dreams or that might

sleepwalk or have night terrors,

you might want to avoid theanine

because it can enhance the kind of emotional

and elaborate nature of dreams.

Other people like that.

So I'll take magnesium threonate, theanine, and apigenin

as a so-called sleep stack about 30 to 60 minutes

prior to sleep.

I do not take them during the day.

There is, however, another supplement

that used in combination with the sleep stack

that I just described or alone

can greatly enhance the quality of your sleep.

And in particular, people who are following

a low carbohydrate diet who have trouble falling

and staying asleep seem to benefit from it,

and that is so-called inositol.

Now, inositol comes in different forms,

but the form that I'm referring to here

in terms of enhancing slow-wave sleep is myo-inositol.

There are an enormous number of studies on inositol

for sake of mental health and for sake of

enhancing various aspects of cellular function

and for sake of improving sleep.

I'd like to just highlight one paper,

title of this paper will make it clear what it's about.

The title of the paper is The Impact of Myo-Inositol

Supplementation on Sleep Quality in Pregnant Women:

A Randomized Double-Blind Placebo Controlled Study.

Now, as I just told you,

the study was carried out on pregnant women,

but there have been other studies of inositol

on other populations.

And the major takeaway from these studies

is that inositol can improve

the quality of sleep and can adjust the architecture

of sleep in ways that make it a great candidate

for improving the structure

and maybe also the duration

of slow-wave sleep in particular.

I find that if I'm following a lower carbohydrate diet,

which I do from time to time,

I sometimes have trouble falling asleep.

Or if I eat four to six hours prior to bedtime,

then I tend to be pretty hungry around bedtime.

And sometimes if I'm exercising very hard

or if I'm working a lot,

even if I eat dinner around seven

and I go to sleep around 10:00 PM,

I might be a little bit hungry still at 10:00 PM.

In that case, I find that taking 900 milligrams

of myo-inositol in addition to the other sleep stack

that I just described greatly enhances my ability

to fall asleep and to get terrific quality sleep.

I do monitor my sleep.

I do that two ways.

I do that these days with my Eight Sleep sleep tracker,

and I use a WHOOP sleep tracker when I sleep.

The combination of those two

taps into different aspects of sleep tracking,

heart rate variability, movement, et cetera.

In a future episode, we'll talk about

what are the best devices for monitoring sleep,

which have certain advantages and others have disadvantages.

But I certainly see it in the objective data

that is from the sleep tracking data.

And I also observe subjectively

that taking 900 milligrams of inositol prior to sleep,

again 30 to 60 minutes prior to sleep,

can greatly enhance the ability to fall asleep

and for me to stay asleep throughout the night.

I also noticed another effect,

which is that if I wake up in the middle of the night

to use the restroom, which I often do,

I find it much easier to fall back asleep.

I don't tend to get into kind of looping thought

and things of that sort in the middle of the night.

And that may relate to the fact that myo-inositol

has been studied in many cases

for its role in controlling anxiety

that is for reducing anxiety.

And that's one of the reasons, in fact,

one of many reasons why people take myo-inositol

during the daytime.

There are studies of myo-inositol

for dealing with anxiety, for sleep as we're discussing now,

and even for improving fertility

and things of that sort, in particular in women.

So again, 900 milligrams of an inositol

can be a useful tool.

60 minutes of exercise, as described previously,

can be a tool, and certainly avoiding caffeine

and alcohol is an excellent tool

for enhancing the total amount of slow-wave sleep.

Jack had a second part to his question,

he asked is having a high level of rapid eye movement sleep

and a lower level of deep sleep

likely to cause any health issues?

And to be honest, it's not really clear

that it would cause any specific health issues,

although if we think about what the specific roles

of slow-wave sleep versus rapid eye movement sleep are,

again, rapid eye movement sleep

being laden with highly emotional dreams,

It's thought to act as a sort of trauma release

where people are paralyzed in body

and that's a healthy paralysis,

they're so-called sleep atonia,

but undergoing some pretty emotional stuff

within their dreams,

and there is a lack of ability for the body

to secrete adrenaline during rapid eye movement sleep,

that's thought to be important

for emotional repair, if you will,

during the night.

Certainly studies where people have been deprived

of rapid eye movement sleep

have shown that their ability to manage emotionally

during the daytime is reduced.

Certainly if you have reduced rapid eye movement sleep

for multiple nights, that's going to be the case.

The only caveat to that is that there are certain forms

of treating depression that involve

specifically depriving people of rapid eye movement sleep.

That's a whole other story that was covered

in the podcast episode with Dr. Nolan Williams.

So if you want to learn more as to why that's the case,

check out that episode.

But because slow-waves sleep,

which occurs again during the early part of the night,

is when growth hormones is released

and when there's this periodic washout

of debris within the brain,

and to some extent within certain tissues of the body,

you could imagine that reduced low-wave sleep

would lead to reduced ability to recover from exercise,

from injury, maybe even relate to the immune system.

However, I am personally not aware of any studies

that specifically looked at the ratio

of slow-wave sleep to rapid eye movement sleep,

and that focused in particular on reduced slow-wave sleep

for bodily repair.

Those studies might be out there,

I was not able to find them.

If you are able to find them,

please put them in the comment section

and I would love to check out those studies.

So I don't think that one needs to be overly concerned

if you're not getting a balance of slow-wave sleep

to rapid eye movement sleep, that's perfect.

However, and as I mentioned earlier,

it would be good to strive to try and balance

the amount of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep

across the entire night.

If you think about it,

that will also tell you whether or not

you're getting sufficient total sleep.

And I don't want to open up another set of questions here

as I'm about to close out an answer to this question,

but I do often get asked the question

whether or not four hours is enough,

or six hours is enough, or eight hours is enough.

Well, it's impossible to know exactly

how much sleep each individual person needs.

And of course, each individual person

will need a different amount of total sleep

depending on the amount of stress

and physical strain and various other things

they're dealing with in their daily waking life.

However, it's generally the case

that kids and people that are undergoing puberty

and certainly in early infancy

need more sleep than adults do.

So as you age, you do in fact need less sleep.

One good metric of whether

or not you are getting enough sleep

is whether or not you're sleepy

during the daytime or not.

If you're falling asleep a lot during the daytime,

you're probably not getting enough sleep at night.

That's sort of a duh,

but it's an important duh to pay attention to.

And for those of us, like myself,

that need a 20 or 30 minute nap in the afternoon, great.

That doesn't necessarily mean

you're not getting enough sleep at night.

So if you get sleepy enough to want a nap in the afternoon,

that's not an indication necessarily

that you are not getting enough sleep at night.

However, if you're only sleeping four

or five hours per night,

it's very hard to imagine that you're getting

a balance of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

Once you get into the range of sleeping six to eight hours

and certainly 8 to 10 hours per night,

the probability that you're getting a balance

of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep

greatly increases.

So if I were to throw out a number,

I would say for most people,

that is for 95% of people out there,

getting at least six hours of sleep per night, at least,

and ideally more like seven or eight

is going to be the goal.

However, I've noticed, for instance, for myself,

unless I'm exercising extremely intensely

or I'm going through a lot of emotional

or physical stress in my daily life,

getting six and a half to seven hours of sleep per night

allows me to feel really good

and refreshed throughout the day.

And that's especially the case if I get

that 20 or 30 minute nap in the afternoon

or use NSDR, Non-Sleep Deep Rest.

So I hope that answers your question, Jack,

and there are, of course,

I'm extending the answer to all others

who upvoted that question

or who might be interested in improving

their slow-wave sleep.

There are some dos, there are some don'ts

that I just described.

I suggest trying various things one by one

to see what works best for you

so you don't necessarily need to leap

to doing the 60 minutes of exercise

plus the inositol, et cetera.

However, I do encourage everyone to avoid alcohol

and caffeine within the 8 to 12 hours prior to sleep.

And again, if you're not using either of those,

that would be even better,

at least in terms of sleep architecture.

Thank you for joining for the beginning

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in the first place.

Now, an especially exciting feature

of the Premium channel is that the Tiny Foundation

has generously offered to do a dollar for dollar match

on all funds raised for research

through the premium channel.

So this is a terrific way

that they're going to amplify whatever funds come in

through the premium channel to further support research

for science and science-related tools for mental health,

physical health, and performance.

If you'd like to sign up

for the Huberman Lab premium channel,

again, there's a cost of $10 per month,

or you can pay $100 upfront for the entire year.

That will give you access to all the AMAs,

you can ask questions and get answers to your questions,

and you'll of course get answers to all the questions

that other people ask as well.

There will also be some premium content

such as transcripts of the AMAs

and various transcripts and protocols

of Huberman Lab podcast episodes

not found elsewhere.

And again, you'll be supporting research

for mental health, physical health, and performance.

You can sign up for the premium channel

by going to hubermanlab.com/premium.

Again, that's hubermanlab.com/premium.

And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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