Focus Toolkit: Tools to Improve Your Focus & Concentration | Huberman Lab Podcast #88

- 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 focus and concentration

and tools for improving your focus and concentration.

This is a topic that I've covered previously

on the Huberman Lab Podcast, but in different contexts.

For instance, we had a very popular episode on ADHD,

attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,

which of course relates to the topic of focus

and how to improve focus.

We've also talked a lot about dopamine motivation and drive.

In fact, that's the title of your previous

also quite popular episode of this podcast,

but never before have we had a single episode solely devoted

to the tools to improve focus and concentration.

The rationale for recording this episode

is to provide people one location where they can go

and quickly access the specific tools

for increasing focus and concentration

that are known to be the most powerful tools

and the most up to date tools.

In fact, today's episode is going to include description

of several peer reviewed studies

and the tools that emerge

from those scientific peer reviewed studies

that point to new,

and fortunately, even briefer protocols

than I've described before.

So what I'm basically describing here is tools

that in a very short amount of time

will allow you to significantly increase

your focus and concentration abilities.

Those tools will include behavioral tools,

nutrition based tools, supplement based tools,

brain machine interface based tools,

and for those of you that are working with a physician,

prescription drug tools.

Today's episode ought to benefit anybody,

young or old or anything in between

whether or not you have ADHD or not.

Today's episode is going to give you tools

that you can apply in your daily life,

most all of them are completely zero cost

and those tools will allow you

to tap into the neurochemistry

and the neurocircuits within your brain and body

that peer-reviewed science has reliably shown

can significantly improve

your focus and concentration abilities.

Just to give you a little teaser

of the kinds of tools that I'm going to provide you

on today's episode,

a previous guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast

was Dr. Wendy Suzuki.

Dr. Suzuki is a professor of psychology and neuroscience

at New York University, or NYU as it's commonly referred to.

She's also the Dean of Arts and Sciences at NYU.

Her laboratory made a very important discovery,

which was that a very brief, just 12,

actually 13 if you really count the intro,

but 13 minute daily meditation

performed for a period of about eight weeks

significantly increased

people's focus and concentration abilities.

And the great news is you didn't need all eight weeks,

it was just that's how long that you ran the study.

So during today's episode,

I will describe that protocol in detail.

I'll also provide you an even briefer

alternative to that protocol that you can use,

if for instance, you find yourself

with only three minutes or four minutes

or five minutes a day to meditate.

The great news is there's quality peer reviewed science

to support that form of meditation

for improving focus and concentration.

And that falls under the bin of these zero cost tools

that you can really use to tap into the neurochemistry

and neurocircuits that really allow you

to take control of your cognitive abilities

and improve them over time.

I'll also provide you important details

about that protocol and other protocols.

For instance,

contrary to popular belief, it is not,

I repeat it is not a good idea

to do a focused based meditation

within the four hours before bedtime.

Many people,

including some of the subjects in that study

performed by the Suzuki lab,

found that when they did a focusing meditation protocol,

even if it was very calming,

it led to difficulties in falling and staying asleep.

So that runs counter to a lot of what we've heard

about meditation being great for sleep.

It turns out meditation might be great for sleep,

it certainly is great for improving focus capacity,

but I highly recommend that if you're going to apply

a focus meditation tool

in order to improve your focus and concentration,

that you make sure that that's performed

not within four hours prior to bedtime.

So that's just a brief example

of the sorts of tools and protocols

and details about the tools and protocols

that I'll provide on today's episode.

I should mention that we have provided links

in the show note captions

so that you can quickly go to the studies that we describe

as well as some of the behavioral tools

and other tools that we'll cover,

things like the use of binaural beats,

supplements, et cetera.

Our goal here again

is to provide you the maximum number of tools

for focus and concentration that you can pick from

and choose from and apply in your life

and try to eliminate as much of the legwork required

to seek out and apply those tools.

I'm pleased to announce that the Huberman Lab Podcast

is now partnered with Momentous supplements.

We partnered with Momentous for several important reasons.

First of all,

they ship internationally,

because we know that many of you

are located outside of the United States, that's valuable.

Second of all, and perhaps most important,

the quality of their supplements is second to none,

both in terms of purity and precision

of the amounts of the ingredients.

Third, we've really emphasized supplements

that are single ingredient supplements

and that are supplied in dosages

that allow you to build a supplementation protocol

that's optimized for cost,

that's optimized for effectiveness,

and that you can add things

and remove things from your protocol

in a way that's really systematic and scientific.

This is really hard to do

if you're taking blends of different supplements

or if the dosages are such that you can't titrate,

or that is adjust the dosages, of a given supplement.

So by using single ingredient supplements,

you can really build out the supplement kit

that's ideal for you and your specific needs.

If you'd like to see the supplements

that we partner with Momentous on,

you can go to livemomentous.com/huberman.

There you'll see those supplements.

And just keep in mind

that we are constantly expanding the library of supplements

available through Momentous on a regular basis.

Again, that's livemomentous.com/huberman.

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 Thesis.

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And to be quite honest,

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And as a neuroscientist, I can tell you

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Rather, there are neural circuits

that are responsible for focus,

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Okay, let's talk about focus and concentration

and how you can improve your focus and concentration

using science based protocols.

Now because today's episode is mainly focused on tools

and not so much the underlying mechanisms,

I'm mainly going to focus on what to do and when

and how to do it.

But I just want to take about three minutes

and briefly describe a model,

that is a visual image that you can put in your mind,

that will help you incorporate the tools that I'll provide

and that generally will help you understand

at a mechanistic level how focus and concentration work.

So what I want you to imagine is an arrow.

And an arrow of course, has an arrowhead

and it has the shaft of that arrow.

And in the context of the neuroscience

of focus and concentration,

the neurochemical system

that really represents the shaft of that arrow,

right, the straight line is epinephrine,

also called adrenaline.

And today,

I'll refer to adrenaline and epinephrine interchangeably.

Turns out that epinephrine/adrenaline

are released within your brain from a little location,

a little cluster of neurons called locus coeruleus,

but you do not need to remember that name,

and from your body from the adrenal glands.

And the release of epinephrine from those two locations

overall increases energy, it increases alertness.

It does not alone increase focus, okay?

So the reason I've assigned epinephrine,

adrenaline as the shaft of the arrow

is that if focus is the arrow,

there is no focus without epinephrine.

So things,

whether or not they're behavioral or psychological

or supplements or drugs that increase epinephrine

allow focus to occur, they are necessary for focus,

but they are not sufficient for focus,

that is they are required

but they are not enough to create focus.

So we're going to need epinephrine in the equation.

Without epinephrine, there is no focus or concentration.

Now the arrowhead on this metaphorical arrowhead

that represents focus and concentration

is going to be represented

or related to the mechanisms of acetylcholine,

a different neurochemical

that also exists in the brain and body.

In fact, in the body,

it's responsible

for the contraction and movement of your muscles.

But today, we're talking about acetylcholine

not in that context,

but rather in the context of its release within the brain.

Acetylcholine is released

from a couple of different locations in the brain

and the best way to think about it is it's like a spotlight.

It highlights specific neurons, nerve cells

that should be active, or more active I should say,

than the other neurons in the environment.

So the reason I've assigned the arrowhead to acetylcholine

and acetylcholine to the arrowhead

is that if you have an arrow with a very big arrowhead

that's really broad, really broad,

imagine a mile wide arrowhead,

that's not very focused on any one location,

it's not really pointing to any one location, is it?

But with a narrow, really tightly focused arrowhead,

well, that's focused on one location.

So we have alertness, epinephrine,

and then we have the actual direction

in which our concentration and focus is placed,

and that's,

at least in this mental model I'm creating, acetylcholine.

And then in order to have ongoing focus,

we need another neurochemical.

And it turns out that that third neurochemical is dopamine,

a molecule often associated with pleasure and reward,

but it's really the molecule of motivation.

So here, I want you to imagine in your mind,

an arrow with an arrowhead,

think acetylcholine in the arrowhead,

a shaft or a line behind that arrowhead,

which is epinephrine also called adrenaline.

And then behind it,

a sort of an engine that keeps that focus moving forward,

right because we don't just want to be focused for a moment,

we want to be able to focus for 10 minutes or for an hour

or maybe even for two hours.

Turns out there's an optimal duration to focus,

I'll teach you that in just a little bit,

but these three neurochemicals together,

acetylcholine, epinephrine and dopamine really allow you

to get focused, to focus very precisely,

and in fact, increasingly precisely over time

to really narrow and narrow and narrow your focus

progressively within a single about of focus

and to continue to do that

and to be able to do that repeatedly whenever you want.

So here, I'm purely talking in metaphor

and in models and mental models of arrows,

but in a moment or two,

I'll start transitioning to discussing tools

in which I'll talk about

increasing dopamine and acetylcholine

or increasing epinephrine and dopamine

in various combinations with various approaches.

And what I'd like you to conceptualize

is how those are contributing

to creating a very narrowly pointed arrow

that has the capacity

to continue moving forward over and over

so that you can focus as sharply and as long as you like.

And of course, for those of you

that want to get really down in the weeds

of how dopamine works,

we have an entire episode

about dopamine motivation and drive

that really gets into neurotransmitter release

and dopamine baselines and thresholds

and all of that sort of thing.

We also have episodes on focus,

much longer episodes, I should say on focus

that incorporate a lot of the biology of acetylcholine.

It turns out acetylcholine is also involved

in neuroplasticity, et cetera,

and epinephrine of course, relates to stress

and our capacity to deal with and buffer stress

and on and on.

Those episodes are all available to you

in their long form at hubermanlab.com,

you can find them very easily.

They are all timestamped

so you can navigate to the particular topics

most of interest to you.

I mention this all not as a diversion

from what we want to cover today,

but I know that some of you are hungry

for a lot more mechanism,

but today's episode is really mainly focused on the tools,

I will of course touch on mechanism,

but if you really want to do the deep dive on mechanism,

go to hubermanlab.com

and you'll have more than you ever could want

about those mechanisms.

Let's jump into the tools for concentration and focus.

If you want to think about tools of any kind

to modify your biology or physiology in any way,

whether or not it's for cognitive function

or you want to get better at exercising,

or you want to build muscle,

or you want to improve your hormones,

you need to think and understand tools

in the context of modulation and mediation.

What do I mean by that?

Well, it's quite simple really.

Mediation is how specific types of chemicals and cells

and circuits and organs control very specific things

in your brain and body

whereas modulation

is the ability of chemicals and cells and circuits

to adjust how different things change,

how different things work in your brain and body,

but to do it more broadly.

What do I mean by this?

Let me give an example.

For instance, I'm going to tell you now

that one of the most important things

to build and maintain your focus and concentration

is to optimize your sleeping behavior,

that is to get enough quality sleep

I would say 80% of the nights of your life.

Not everyone can get optimal sleep

100% of the nights of their life,

nobody, truly nobody achieves that.

However, sleep has been shown

to relate to cognitive performance, physical performance,

hormone output, and so many other things,

including immune system function.

What we can reliably say is that sleep modulates

just about every process in your brain and body.

So you have to get great sleep.

There is simply no tool that's going to allow you

to overcome chronic sleep deprivation

and allow you to remain focused,

no pill, no device, no supplement, no protocol whatsoever.

There are tools to overcome one night

or maybe two nights of sleep deprivation

and we'll talk about those,

but at a fundamental level,

we need to do the things

that modulate our focus and attention in powerful ways

and sleep really is that thing.

So we've done two episodes, one called "Master Your Sleep"

and the other episode is "Perfect Your Sleep."

The "Perfect Your Sleep"

is a little bit more like this episode,

more focused on protocols.

"Master Your Sleep" includes protocols and mechanism.

Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com.

We also have a sleep toolkit,

a distilled list of things to do

in order to optimize your sleep.

I highly recommend that you download that.

You can go to hubermanlab.com,

go to the Neural Network Newsletter, it is listed there.

If you want you can sign up for the newsletter,

but you don't have to,

you can simply download the PDF of that toolkit

for zero cost.

Why do I say sleep modulates focus and attention?

Well, I'll give an analogy.

If right now someone pulled a fire alarm in this building

or if we had a fire in this building,

my attention would drift,

it would not be on recording this podcast,

it would be on something else.

But would I say that the fire alarm mediates attention?

I mean fire alarms are not really involved in attention.

No, rather they modulate my attention.

The noise in the room modulates my attention.

That's quite a bit different

than a tool that I'll provide later

and I'll just give you a little hint of now,

in fact, I'll give it to you now,

which is that 40 HZ binaural beats

have been shown in a number of peer reviewed studies

to increase focus and concentration.

And if you'd like to access 40 HZ binaural beats

in order to improve your focus and concentration,

you can do that, you can actually get it at zero cost.

You can go into the app store,

for instance, the Apple App Store,

this is also available for Android phone,

there's an app called BrainWave,

and you can go there, you can dial in 40 HZ

and it'll play these binaural beats.

It's been shown in multiple quality peer reviewed studies

that playing a pattern of sound waves to one ear,

do, do, do, do, do,

and the other ear, which is slightly offset in frequency,

meaning not quite the same frequencies,

so more like do, do, do, do,

that that combination of frequencies

played to the different ears,

actually get integrated within deep brain centers

and can increase focus and concentration

in part by increasing levels

of the neurochemical dopamine and acetylcholine,

which we talked about a little bit earlier

in this arrow model of focus.

So we'll provide a link to that app,

I don't have any relationship to that app I should mention,

but it's an excellent one,

it's one that I've used for many years.

There are also additional functions within the app,

such as for sleep and for other things,

but the 40 HZ, 4-0-h-z is the way it reads out,

40 HZ stimulation

has been shown to improve focus and concentration.

Here is my recommendation and the way that I use it.

I would not use 40 HZ binaural beats

every time I'm doing a about of work.

What I tend to do

is use it for about five minutes prior to that work

and then turn it off and then do the work

and I'll talk about other tools to use during that work,

whether or not it's reading or math

or even just emailing or something where I require

a bunch of focus for a while.

However, there are times in which I'm in an area

or I'm in a state of mind

where I'm feeling very distractable

and then I'll keep the 40 HZ binaural beats on

the entire time

I'm doing that about of cognitive work.

I'll also sometimes use the 40 HZ binaural beats

prior to a workout,

in particular weight workouts,

where I really want to be able to focus on

and contract specific muscles.

So it's a very useful tool,

again, supported by quality peer reviewed science,

zero cost,

available out there not just in the BrainWave app

but in multiple apps.

I think many of you will benefit from it.

Some of you might not experience it immediately

as a total dropping into a tunnel of focus

in the same way that you might

with say the sorts of neurochemicals

that we'll talk about later,

like Alpha-GPC and some of these other things

that change neurochemicals directly,

but nonetheless 40 HZ binaural beats

are a very powerful tool,

again, zero cost non-pharmacologic tool

that tap into your own endogenous,

meaning within you or exists within you physiology

in order to increase acetylcholine

and some other neurochemicals

and they have been shown to work quite well.

Okay so assuming that you are sleeping well

80% of the nights of your life

or at least working on the various protocols and tools

to sleep well and sufficiently long

80% of the nights of your life,

and you are interested in additional tools

that are sound based

in order to improve your ability to concentrate and focus,

there are quality peer reviewed studies supporting the idea

that white noise or pink noise,

and believe it or not,

there is something called pink noise,

it has to do with the specific frequencies of sound

that are in the noise,

well white noise and pink noise

have been shown to not improve concentration per se,

but to improve people's ability

to transition into concentrated states.

So I don't tend to use white noise and pink noise

while I work, but I know a number of people that do.

I know people that also use what's called brown noise.

The folks I know

from the engineering and computer science side

get really into these details

of white noise, pink noise, brown noise.

You can find white noise, pink noise or brown noise

and listen to it through headphones or in the room.

There is indeed some data

to support the fact that white noise,

and to some extent, pink noise and brown noise

can support the release of particular neurochemicals,

but more data showing that they can amplify the activity

of neurons in the so-called prefrontal cortex,

this front area, sort of the bumper behind your forehead,

that is directly related to your ability

to direct your own focus

and remain focused on certain things.

So you have the option

of either using binaural beats before,

but not during your work, that is 40 HZ binaural beats,

or 40 HZ binaural beats throughout your attempt to focus.

You also have the option of not using binaural beats,

but using white noise, pink noise or brown noise.

Again, there are a lot of zero cost apps,

you can find also white noise, pink noise and brown noise

on YouTube.

Again, these are tools

that really have been shown over and over in humans

to allow people to focus with more depth

and to decrease the transition time into focus.

This is a really key point.

A lot of people are challenged

with getting into a mode of focus.

None of us, however, should be expected

to just sit down and drop directly into a state of focus.

I think that's completely an unfair request of ourselves.

I mean, for instance,

you wouldn't expect yourself to go out on the track

or go out for a run and not warm up.

You might jog for a few minutes

or even walk before you would jog

and then jog before you would run,

right, I would hope you would do that.

And if you're doing resistance training,

I doubt that you go over and load up the bar or the machine

with the maximum amount of weight that you can move

and then just drop right into that,

you always do a warmup.

And I think it's very important to understand

mental work, focus and concentration

as requiring that warmup.

What is that warmup?

Well, you know what that warmup is.

That warmup is the ramping up

or the increase of epinephrine, adrenaline,

acetylcholine, and dopamine.

Right, the way that neurochemicals work

is we don't just get to flip switches in our brain

because we decide to, that's a fantasy.

That's sort of the "Limitless" movie

or movies and ideas

that suddenly you're going to flip a switch on your arm

and all of a sudden you're going to be in a laser focus,

that is just not the way that your nervous system works.

There's a gradual dropping into any state,

whether or not that state is sleep,

right, you go from shallow sleep to deep sleep

and then out eventually.

Focus too, you go from shallow focus

to increasingly deep focus.

That is, in our metaphor of the arrow, it's very broad,

it's pointed at a lot of things.

And over time as we drop into focus,

that arrow is narrowing and narrowing and narrowing.

In fact, probably better to think about it narrowing

and then sometimes oscillating and getting wider again.

We might hear something down the hallway

or more typically our phone will buzz or we'll think,

oh, I wonder what so and so is doing

or I had to contact them about something.

Your focus is dynamic,

it is not what we call a step function.

It's not like you go from unfocused to focused

and then you drop into your maximal focus.

By understanding that it's dynamic,

by understanding that you are going to be continually

going in and out

of progressively but varying levels of focus,

you will greatly release the pressure on yourself

to feel focused all the time when you want to be.

This is very key.

People who are very good at focusing understand this

and understand that they can't expect themselves

to just immediately focus

and then snap into or out of focus.

Okay so be patient with yourself

and also understand that focus is an ability,

that you can improve your ability to focus

by engaging the neural circuits responsible for focus

repeatedly over time through so-called neuroplasticity,

the ability of your nervous system

to change in response to experience.

And that has a couple of different components,

but put very simply,

what we repeat gets etched into our nervous system

and becomes easier over time.

And the more emotionally important

or vital something feels to us,

the more likely it is to trigger neuroplasticity.

We're going to talk a little bit more

about how to increase neural circuits for focus later,

but right now, what you have in hand

is the key importance of sleep

and I again will direct you to hubermanlab.com

and the Neural Network Newsletter

to really work on optimizing your sleep.

We've also got two auditory sound based tools

for improving focus,

there's 40 HZ binaural beats used before or during

bouts of focus and concentration.

And if you don't like those, or even if you do,

you might alternate them with

or occasionally use white noise, pink noise or brown noise,

also readily available at zero cost.

A question I often get is how long should I try to focus?

Well, the research literature point to the key importance

of so-called ultradian cycles.

You've all probably heard of circadian cycles

or circadian biology, circa, the day, circadian,

is about 24 hour cycle.

Well, our brain and body operate within that day

or within each and every day I should say

with 90 minute ultradian cycles.

So my suggestion would be

anytime you're going to sit down and try and focus

or you're going to try and do a focused about

of physical exercise or skill learning or musical learning,

or maybe you're even just having a conversation,

maybe you're a therapist

or you're attending therapy or a class,

how long should it be?

And the ideal duration is about 90 minutes,

not exactly 90 minutes,

but we can reliably say 90 minutes or less,

okay, it doesn't have to be the full 90 minutes.

But trying to push yourself to be able to drop into

two hours of focus or three hours of focus,

while possible is not really in line

with what we know about the underlying biology.

Everything from our sleep states

or the different stages of sleep and our waking states

is divided into these 90 minute cycles

or so-called ultradian cycles.

So what I like to do is set a timer for 90 minutes.

I acknowledge and accept the fact

that under most conditions

unless I'm really pressed for a deadline

and I'm optimally caffeinated, et cetera,

the first five to 10 minutes of that 90 minutes

are a transition time, it's like the warm up for focus,

but I do include it in that 90 minutes.

And then I really try and drop into

doing focused mental work or learning of some sort,

again, this could be physical as well, motor skill learning

or anything, we're running or lifting weights, et cetera,

and really try and drop into that

across the full 90 minutes,

again accepting the fact,

okay it's not just an idea,

the fact that occasionally our focus will flicker,

it will jump out of focus,

and then a big part of being able to focus

is to go back to focusing.

The way I'd like you to conceptualize this perhaps

is that arrowhead suddenly getting very, very broad,

that you're focusing on many things

or that arrow shifts to a different location in the room.

The key is to be able to shift it back

and to narrow it once again and that's an active process,

so much so that it requires a lot of metabolic energy,

your brain is the chief consumer of metabolic energy.

The calories that you consume,

the so-called basal metabolic rate,

most of that isn't related

to movement or heartbeat or breathing,

it's related to brain function.

Your brain is a glutton with respect to caloric need.

So understand that at the end of 90 minutes

or maybe even after 45 minutes,

you might feel rather tired or even exhausted.

And it's very important that after a about of focus

that you take at least 10 minutes

and ideally as long as 30 minutes

and go through what I call deliberate defocus.

You really want to focus on somewhat menial tasks

or things that really don't require

a ton of your concentration.

This is starting to become

a little bit of a movement out there

in the kind of pop psychology and optimization world,

this idea of not looking at your phone

as you walk down the hall to the bathroom,

certainly not looking at your phone in the bathroom.

And I should mention, by the way,

this is a particular annoyance of mine,

have you noticed that wait times

for restrooms in public places

has increased substantially in the last 10 years?

The reason for that is not digestive, okay,

it's not the gut microbiome,

I mean it might be the gut microbiome,

but chances are

it's because people are on their phones in the bathroom.

So you're doing yourself and everybody else a favor

by staying off your phone in the restroom,

staying off your phone while walking down the hall.

Try and give yourself some time to deliberately decompress,

to let your mental states idle,

to not be focused on any one thing.

That period of idling

is essential for your ability to focus,

much in the same way

that rest between sets of resistance training

or rest between exercise

is vital to being able to focus and perform

during the actual sets or during the actual bouts

of running or cycling

or whatever your particular form of exercise might be.

So deliberate decompression is key.

And I know this is hard because we're all being drawn in

by the incredible rich array

of sensory information available

on our phones and other devices,

but I can't emphasize this enough,

our ability to focus is not just related

to what happens during the entry and movement

through those focused bouts but after those focused bouts.

We really need to deliberately decompress.

And of course, the ultimate decompress,

the time in which we are not directing

our thinking interaction is during sleep.

And so it's no wonder,

or I should say it holds together logically,

that that deep, long lasting duration

of not controlling where our mind is at

is in fact the ultimate form of restoration,

even if we have very intense dreams.

So take that period after each 90 minute or less focus about,

right, remember those focus bouts

don't have to be full 90 minutes,

let's say you do 45 minutes of work,

you're just done with it,

set it down and go do something for maybe five, 10,

maybe even 30 minutes that is functional for your day,

right, not just walking around in circles

or staring up at the sky

although if you can do that, do that,

but most of us have other things to do,

but do things that are rather automatic

or reflexive for you,

and try not to do any focused reading,

try not to bring your vision into a tight location,

such as your phone and try and deliberately decompress,

because that will allow you

to drop into intense spouts of focus

again repeatedly and repeatedly throughout the day.

I'm often asked how many ultradian cycles

one can perform throughout the day?

That depends on how well you've slept,

how well you are nourished,

which we'll talk about in a moment,

and how well trained up your focus capacity is.

And here's the paradox,

if you are very trained at focusing,

if you're very good at dropping into focus,

you're actually going to need

more deliberate decompression and defocus

and I recommend only doing about two,

maybe three deep work sessions per day.

So not one 90 minute session than expecting yourself

to do to another one and another one, another one,

but rather one deep work 90 minute session,

and maybe another in the afternoon.

A lot of people get surprised by this and say,

"Wait, how many people can afford

to just work three hours a day?"

I'm not saying just work three hours a day.

I'm really talking about the hard mental work.

And again, somewhat paradoxically,

the more you can concentrate,

the more deeply you can concentrate,

the fewer deep work concentration bouts

you can actually perform each day.

This makes sense, however,

if you think about it in the context

of say resistance training.

If you are stronger and stronger in the gym,

or you're an endurance athlete

and you can run ultra-marathons, 100 miles or so,

you are essentially cutting a deeper cut

into your recovery capacity

than somebody who's not very skilled at those things

or can't perform as much intense work.

So the intensity of the work scales directly

with how long you need to rest after that work.

I at this stage of my life am pretty good

at dropping into

and maintaining focused bouts of concentration

provided the landscape of my life is right,

you know, I don't have some burning stressful thing

that's essential or an emergency that I'm tending to

and that I put my phone away or turn it off,

I can do three 90 minute focus bouts per day,

but that's about it.

And then in between those focus bouts,

I'm doing other things that require less focus.

Some of you may be able to perform four.

What I highly recommend

is that you try doing at least one,

that is one 90 minute or less

about of focused concentrated work per day,

and yes, that means the weekends too.

And on the weekends, I like to read a book

with my phone nowhere in sight, not on a device,

that's what I do or I'll listen to an audiobook sometimes

while taking a walk,

but really concentrating on what I'm trying to learn,

what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing.

So again, a daily 90 minute about is one to start with

and I would say after about four weeks of that,

if you're able to stay concentrated

and work through the agitation,

then I would consider increasing the number of focus bouts.

Again, this is not to say

that you should go to your teacher

or your PhD advisor or your parent or your friends and say,

"Listen, I can't really concentrate or think about anything

for more than 90 minutes per day."

That's not what I'm saying.

These are deep focus bouts.

These are bouts of work,

or I should say mental work or physical work

where you're really forcing yourself to focus and refocus,

to sharpen the head of that arrowhead,

to redirect it to what you're trying to concentrate on,

and it is indeed hard work.

I would even think about it

more or less like a workout of any kind.

Before we continue with today's discussion,

we're going to take a brief pause

to acknowledge our sponsor Athletic Greens,

also called AG1.

I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012

so I'm delighted that they've been a sponsor

of this podcast.

Athletic Greens contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics,

digestive enzymes, and adaptogens,

so it's got a lot of things in there

and that's actually the reason I started taking it

and the reason I still take it once or twice a day.

It essentially covers all of my nutritional bases

and the probiotics in particular are important to me

because of the critical importance

of what's called the gut brain axis,

that is neurons and other cell types in the gut,

in the digestive tract that communicate with the brain

and the brain back to the digestive tract

in order to control things like mood, immune function,

hormone function, and on and on.

Whenever somebody has asked me,

what's the one supplement they should take,

I always answer Athletic Greens.

I gave that answer long before I ever had this podcast

and it's the answer I still give now

for all the reasons that I detailed just a moment ago.

If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman

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They'll give you five free travel packs

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Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman

to claim that special offer.

I'd like to call your attention

to a new and extremely useful tool

for learning and applying science based protocols

for mental health, physical health and performance.

It's called Virtusan, v-i-r-t-u-s-a-n, and it's an app.

And inside the app, you'll find what are called journeys.

Each journey is aimed at a specific goal,

such as improving your sleep or tracking your sleep

or improving your ability to focus and concentrate

or improving your nutrition or specific exercise programs.

The Virtusan app makes a lot of the protocols

that you've seen here

on the Huberman Lab Podcast and elsewhere

very easy to understand and access and practice.

And in fact, it tracks your progress

with each of these protocols.

I and several other researchers

have been directly involved

in developing the specific journeys and protocols

that you'll find within the Virtusan app.

In fact, a lot of it involves direct video tutorials from me

and others that you'll recognize

from social media and from podcasts.

Everything that you'll find within the Virtusan app

is geared towards giving you the latest science

in simple, straightforward protocols

to allow you to improve your mental health, physical health

and performance.

If you want check it out,

you can go to the App Store under Virtusan,

again, that's spelled v-i-r-t-u-s-a-n,

or you can go to virtusan.com/huberman.

Again, that's virtusan.com/huberman.

I mentioned the topic of nutrition a little bit ago,

and of course, nutrition is a complicated topic.

In fact, one of the quickest ways

to get yourself into a battle online

is to say something definitive about nutrition.

I just want to clearly state my stance about nutrition.

I fully support and applaud

those of you that are vegans for whatever reason,

those of you that are pure carnivore for whatever reason,

and those of you that are omnivores for whatever reason.

I happen to be an omnivore.

My goal is always to eat high quality,

minimally or non-processed foods

and to eat things in moderation.

So I do eat some meat

from sustainable sources or from organic sources,

I eat some starches and I eat vegetables and I eat fruits,

I try not to eat sugars

and I don't really like highly processed foods

at this point in my life.

That's me, that's what I do,

but I'm certainly not dictating what people should eat.

I know certain people are ketogenic,

and I can say that for people who achieve ketosis

and can get into ketosis,

yes indeed, there is a mental state associated with ketosis

that will allow your brain to function

and to think really clearly

that many people find very attractive

and keep them going back over and over again

to a ketogenic diet.

I'm somebody who for instance has not been in ketosis

many times in my life,

at least not deliberately so,

but I actually will ingest liquid ketones from time to time

because of the further cognitive enhancement

and physical enhancement that I experience

on top of nutrition that does include some carbohydrates.

So there are a lot of different ways to approach all this,

whether or not you're a vegan, omnivore,

vegetarian, carnivore, et cetera, the point is this,

your ability to focus,

and in fact, your ability of neurons

to encode specific information in your environment,

that is to represent what's out there in the world,

is actually related to your blood glucose level.

Now here I'm setting aside the discussion

of ketosis and ketogenic diets for the moment,

but there's a beautiful study

that was published in Neuron not long ago

that showed that the tuning,

that is the precision with which neurons in the brain

will represent things in our environment

is actually much greater

when there is sufficient glucose in the brain.

Translated into English, this means that when we are fasted

or when our blood glucose is very low,

we aren't able to perceive and think about things

as clearly.

Now there's a twist to this, however.

Many people who practice intermittent fasting,

and I should say

I practice a sort of pseudo intermittent fasting,

I generally eat my meals

between the hours of 11:00 AM and 8:00 PM

although sometimes there's some wiggle around that,

occasionally have an early breakfast,

I'm not super rigid about it,

but I know there are a number of people

who are doing longer fasts

or they're eating in a six hour window.

We did an entire episode about fasting,

you can again find that at hubermanlab.com,

we'll likely have Satchin Panda,

who's an expert in intermittent fasting, on the podcast.

Intermittent fasting

has a lot of different potential benefits.

For some people,

it's a convenient way to restrict their calories.

For other people, it's a convenient way to avoid eating,

that is it's easier to not eat than to eat a small portion

so they opt for intermittent fasting and so on and so forth.

But one of the things that you hear very often

is that some people like being fasted

because they like the clarity of mind that it provides.

Here's the situation.

Neurons, unless you're in a ketogenic diet,

really thrive on glucose, they love glucose.

And as I mentioned before,

your ability to think and perceive things

is actually enhanced

by having sufficient glucose in your bloodstream.

So why would it be that some people experience

a heightened state of mental clarity when they are fasted?

I've certainly experienced that before.

Well, I should say

that provided you're well hydrated enough

and you have enough electrolytes in your system,

what tends to happen is that when you ingest food,

there's a shift in your nervous system

towards so-called parasympathetic mode,

that is the more relaxed,

you've probably heard it as rest and digest,

although it does other things,

the more relaxed mode that can indeed make us very sleepy.

If we have too many carbohydrates,

it actually can make us quite sleepy.

However, if we have any food,

if we have enough of it,

that is if our gut is full,

it diverts blood to our gut

and we become sleepy and we can't focus as well.

So a lot of people really like fasting

and the state of being fasted for focus and concentration

because they don't have as much

of that parasympathetic activation,

they're just not as sleepy.

And in fact, under those conditions,

half as much caffeine will give you just as much lift

as twice as much caffeine will give you

on a full belly of pasta

and that's just the way that caffeine interacts

with blood glucose.

So what I'd like you to imagine

is if you had a measure of focus from zero to 10,

these are arbitrary units,

10 being maximally focused

and zero being not focused at all,

imagine a U-shaped function, right,

where if you're very fasted,

you're going to have high degree of focus and concentration,

but then if you ingest some food and your belly is full,

your focus and concentration is reduced.

But having enough blood glucose

and maybe even elevated blood glucose

will increase cognitive function.

So there are two ends of the spectrum.

On one end of the spectrum,

blood glucose is relatively low and you're fasted

and you can think and behave in a very concentrated way

and on the other end of the spectrum,

you have a lot of blood glucose, or I should say,

sufficient blood glucose,

you never want your blood glucose to be too high,

and that allows your neurons to encode and perceive

and basically allow you to think really clearly.

So you sort of have to pick your condition.

What do you want for your bouts of focus and concentration?

I actually do both.

So what I do is, as I mentioned before,

I eat my meal sometime around 11:00 AM,

my first meal typically

unless I'm very hungry when I wake up.

And so I will do my workout and one about of focused work.

I always think of this as my hard work early in the day

and I do that fasted,

I'll be consuming water with electrolytes,

maybe LMNT or other electrolytes,

maybe some caffeine as well in the form of yerba mate

or coffee, that's my first focus about of 90 minutes or less,

that is essentially done fasted and then I'll eat

and then I do notice after I eat,

I actually have a diminished capacity to focus.

But then again in the afternoon,

I will do another 90 minute about of focus,

and I'll talk about some of the tools I use

to make sure that that about of focus is optimal

for getting the most amount of focused work done,

whether or not it's mental work or physical work,

although I tend to do my physical work early in the day

and my mental work both early and late in the day.

So to make this very simple or as simple as I can for you

being fasted is great for focus and concentration

provided you're not thinking about food the entire time

and being fed is terrific for focus and concentration,

it actually can improve neuronal function

provided that you didn't eat too much food.

So one way to manage this

is if you're going to have a lunch,

to make sure that you don't stuff yourself at lunch,

that you're not overeating and to not get quite so full

that you put your nervous system

into this parasympathetic mode

and make it hard to focus in the afternoon.

I know a lot of people experience a dip

or even a crash in energy in the afternoon

that make it really hard to focus.

For that reason, I'll just remind people

of a tool I've talked about many times before,

which is based on the biology

of adenosine and caffeine, et cetera,

which is to delay your first caffeine intake

to 90 to 120 minutes after waking up.

I know that can be painful for certain people.

I violate that rule,

when I'm working out very early in the morning.

I'll drink my caffeine before my workout

which often occurs within 30 to 60 minutes of waking.

But in general, unless I'm working out very early,

I will ingest my caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after I wake up.

So again, I want to emphasize

that if you hear somebody out there say

being fasted is optimal for focus and concentration.

Well, that is true in one context

and perhaps ideal for a certain part of the day.

And other people will say, no, neurons run on glucose,

you need glucose in your bloodstream

in order to get those neurons to be tuned,

that is to respond with electrical activity

in the optimal way when you're reading something

or when you're trying to perform exercise.

Well, that's also true.

And of course, you can incorporate both.

I, in fact as I just described,

incorporate both fasted states and fed states

in order to optimize my concentration and focus.

And as a brief note about ketosis,

for those of you that actually managed

to transition into ketosis

and are maintaining a ketogenic state,

that, as I mentioned earlier,

can enhance brain function, concentration and focus

because of the way in which ketones can be used

as a so-called optimal fuel for neurons.

The ketogenic diet was originally designed, if you will,

for epilepsy,

it has a whole relationship to epilepsy

and controlling epileptic seizures,

and it can in fact allow people

to achieve focus, concentrated brain states.

So in the future, I'll do an episode about ketosis

and be sure to circle back on how to optimize ketosis

for focus and concentration.

Although I have to believe

that most of the people listening to this

are probably not in ketosis or following a ketogenic diet

so that's why I mainly focused

on fasted states and fed states.

And just to make sure that I'm thorough,

a fasted state to me

would be a state in which you haven't ingested any calories,

but may have ingested caffeine

or maybe even a small amount of artificial sweetener

or something like that,

but really haven't ingested

any significant number of calories

in the previous four to eight or maybe even 12 hours.

And again, there's tremendous variation here,

depending on how long people have fasted,

whether or not we're talking about the state

right after people wake up, et cetera.

Again, if you're interested in intermittent fasting,

both for the sake of mental

and physical health and performance,

check out our episode on fasting at hubermanlab.com.

I also want to touch back on this idea

of which foods can increase focus.

You know, in the episode on ADHD that I did,

I touched on this quite a bit

as it relates to elimination diets.

There's a whole industry

and a ton of interest for obvious reasons

into what sorts of things kids and adults

should and shouldn't eat

in order to reduce symptoms of ADHD.

I think that the sum total of those data point to the fact

that reducing simple sugar intake

and certainly highly processed foods,

so ice cream, candy, chips, et cetera,

those sorts of things,

really does seem to improve symptoms of ADHD

in both children and adults.

But once you move past that and you start to say,

well, which foods can improve concentration and focus?

Well, foods that for instance include a lot of tyrosine,

which is a precursor to dopamine,

and now you know why dopamine is important in this context,

are certainly going to increase concentration and focus.

So things like Parmesan cheese,

certain meats, certain nuts,

you can look up which foods

contain high amounts of tyrosine.

There are also some fruits and vegetables

that include high amounts of tyrosine,

but to be quite direct,

it doesn't matter whether or not you're ingesting foods

that are rich in the precursor amino acids

to dopamine, acetylcholine, et cetera,

if you are consuming large amounts of those foods.

That is one can look and see for instance,

that a steak includes a lot of the precursors

to acetylcholine.

It has amino acid precursors to dopamine as well

and there are other foods that will do that as well,

but if I were to ingest say two ribeye steaks,

that's a lot of meat

and it will direct a lot of blood to my gut

and it will cause me to be sleepy

and that will create challenges of me

being able to achieve states of focus and concentration.

So the simple way to put this is if you eat too much

or you eat a very large volume of food,

you are going to diminish your focus and concentration.

The key is to eat enough

that you're nourished for the certain activities,

mental and physical that you need to perform,

but if you're eating large meals,

you are going to diminish your concentration and focus

period.

I know many people are curious as to whether or not caffeine

can improve focus and concentration, and indeed it can.

There is an immense amount of data supporting the idea

that caffeine,

provided its consumed in the appropriate dosages,

can improve mental performance and physical performance,

and it largely does that

through improvements in focus and concentration.

The dosage of caffeine of course,

is going to depend on how caffeine adapted you are,

how much caffeine tolerance you have.

And that is going to vary tremendously

depending on whether or not you ingest that caffeine

with or without food, as I mentioned earlier.

But there is a kind of general range

in which we can talk about caffeine

as being useful for focus and concentration.

And the range is basically

from 100 milligrams to 400 milligrams.

I want to caution everybody out there,

if you're somebody who suffers from anxiety

or panic attacks,

and you're not used to ingesting caffeine

and you run out and ingest 400 milligrams of caffeine

in the form of espresso or yerba mate

or an energy drink or in pill form,

that is going to be very uncomfortable for you,

you're going to be sweating profusely,

your heart rate is going to increase,

you're going to be quite panicked in fact

or at least anxious.

So be cautious with your use and adopting of caffeine

if you're not already caffeine adapted,

but most people do quite well

to ingest 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine

prior to doing some focused work.

And again, I recommend delaying your caffeine intake

to 90 to 120 minutes after waking,

unless you're using that caffeine

to really jolt your system before a workout.

Caffeine can of course be ingested in various forms,

even pill form,

but most people ingest it in the form of coffee

or my particular favorite way to ingest caffeine

is yerba mate.

It is important and I should note

that you should actively avoid

the smoked versions of yerba mate

as they contain a lot of carcinogenic,

cancer promoting compounds.

There's some great yerba mate brands out there.

The most cost effective way to consume it

would be to use the loose leaf tea

and to pour water over that.

There's one particular brand that I like,

I don't have any affiliation to them whatsoever,

but I've been using it for years, it's Anna Park.

It's an organic brand that is sold, I buy mine on Amazon,

you can find it elsewhere on the internet as well.

Again, I don't have any affiliation to them,

it's just very cost effective, very clean,

it doesn't have the smoked flavor,

at least the one that I buy is not the smoked variety

so none of the carcinogenic compounds are in there

at least that I'm aware of and I like the way it tastes

and it provides a very even lift and stimulant

that I think certainly works for me

and that a number of people I know

that I have suggested to also enjoy.

Yerba mate or caffeine also have other additional benefits,

in particular, the caffeine in yerba mate and coffee

and other sources of caffeine

are known to increase the density and efficacy,

that is the number and the function of dopamine receptors,

and this has been shown in humans several times.

So by ingesting caffeine pretty regularly,

you're actually increasing the ability of dopamine

to have this effect of increasing motivation and drive.

I tend to ingest caffeine only early in the day,

I tend to cut off my caffeine intake

somewhere around one or 2:00 PM

to ensure that I can get into a good night's sleep,

but I realize that there are people out there

that ingest caffeine

as late as two or three in the afternoon

and can still sleep fine.

I will caution those of you

that think that you can drink caffeine

in the evening or nighttime and still fall asleep.

All of the research points to the fact

that the architecture of your sleep

and the depth of your sleep is disrupted.

Even if you're able to fall and stay asleep,

the sleep you're getting is simply not as good

as the sleep you would get

if you were to shut off your caffeine intake

at least eight hours before bedtime,

and ideally more like 10 or even 12 hours before bedtime.

But of course, there are practical constraints as well.

Okay so caffeine is increasing dopamine's function

by changing the number and efficacy of dopamine receptors,

but of course, it also increases our wakefulness,

our alertness,

and that is largely through the neurochemical systems

related to adenosine,

which is a molecule that builds up in our brain and body

the longer we are awake,

it's part of the sleepiness system if you will,

it makes us feel fatigued or tired,

and caffeine also operates on the epinephrine,

the adrenaline system.

In fact, if we ingest too much caffeine,

we'll sometimes get the jitters.

Those jitters are really the sympathetic, as it's called,

nervous system's bias toward movement,

and our pupils will dilate, they actually get broader.

Now somewhat paradoxically, when our pupils get bigger,

the pupils of our eyes that is,

our visual world actually narrows,

it becomes more tunnel-like.

A lot of people don't realize this.

When our pupils are really small, that means we are relaxed.

So if you ever see someone

with really tiny or pin size pupils,

they're very relaxed.

If their pupils are very big, they're very dilated,

well then they are very amped up,

they are very, very alert.

Caffeine increases alertness by increasing epinephrine,

adrenaline release both in the brain and within the body.

And so that's another way that it facilitates

focus and concentration.

Now there are other ways to increase epinephrine

in the brain and body besides caffeine or other stimulants,

and in fact, that has been studied.

There's an excellent study

that was carried out not that long ago on how stress itself

can increase our ability to focus and concentrate,

that's right how stress itself

can increase focus and concentration.

You know, most people think of stress

as impairing our ability to focus,

but that's actually not true.

When we are stressed, it involves the deployment,

the release of adrenaline, epinephrine,

and that that adrenaline both changes our visual field,

in other words, it narrows our vision

to a more tunnel-like focus,

that is it makes the arrow

in our metaphor of the arrow more sharp,

and it improves our concentration.

And this makes sense given what we know about stress.

When we're stressed,

we tend to be stressed about a specific thing,

we start anticipating or wondering or thinking

about what's going to happen next?

What led up to this?

How is this going to impact me?

How do I feel right now?

It really narrows the context

of our thinking and our behavior.

So one of my favorite studies that really illustrates

how stress can improve concentration and performance

is one that was published not that long ago

and I will provide a link to this in the show notes.

It's a paper published

in the "Journal of Experimental Psychology" in 2020.

The title of the paper is, not surprisingly,

"Acute stress improves concentration performance",

first author DeGroote, d-e-g-r-o-o-t-e.

And this study involved taking a number of subjects

and stressing them out or not

prior to a cognitive or concentration task.

And there are a lot of data in this paper,

but I'm just going to hone in on one specific set of data.

And I should mention as I go there,

that they measured things like cortisol, a stress hormone,

they measured anxiety, it was a quite thorough study.

And what they found was that concentration performance

improved manyfold, I should say, from,

there was a greater than doubling

of concentration and performance in the stress group.

And stress in this context was provided

using a standard way of inducing stress.

What they basically do

is they bring subjects into the laboratory

and they have to either do something fairly mundane

in the control group

or they have to do a simulated job interview,

an arithmetic task,

and they're being evaluated as they're doing this.

So this isn't intense psychosocial stress.

They're not watching anything disturbing,

they're not being traumatized in any kind of way.

This is fairly low levels of stress

that raised their levels of epinephrine,

and we know this from this study,

and their levels of cortisol, another stress hormone,

modestly within their brain and blood.

But that even modest increase in these stress hormones

and their reported psychological levels of stress

really enhanced their focus and concentration.

This may come as surprising 'cause like many people think,

gosh, stress really diminishes cognitive performance,

but that's absolutely wrong,

stress improves cognitive performance.

Now of course there are other ways to increase stress levels

and to do that in healthy ways

to improve concentration and performance

and one of the best ways to do that

because it's so sure fire and it's generally safe

provided you do it safely is deliberate cold exposure.

This is something I've talked about on the podcast before,

but deliberate cold exposure can be achieved

by getting into a cold shower for one to five minutes.

If you're not used to it,

you probably want to start with one minute,

or you can get into an ice bath,

and nowadays there are a number of different

commercial sources of circulating cold water

or if you have access to a body of cold water

like a lake or a pool or an ocean.

We know that getting into cold water or under cold water

greatly increases epinephrine levels and dopamine levels

in the brain and blood.

There's a beautiful study that was published

in the European Journal of Physiology

that showed that the increases in dopamine are massive,

near doubling or more

of dopamine levels that are very long lasting for hours,

and epinephrine, and indeed cortisol levels

are also increased,

and in ways that support

not just immune system function because they do that,

and mood because it does that,

but they can really improve concentration and focus.

I touched on this a little bit in an episode about memory

that there's an age old practice

really dating back to medieval times

of putting people into cold water

right after they learn something in order to spike,

to increase their epinephrine

as a way to consolidate those memories.

For the sake of today's discussion,

if you are interested

in ways to improve focus and concentration,

you need to increase your epinephrine,

your adrenaline levels.

Cold water exposure

is one of the most efficient ways to do that.

This is not a biohack.

I don't like the word hack,

I know it's commonly used,

but a hack is something where you're using one thing

for a different purpose than it was originally intended for

and here, I'm not referring

to the shower or the cold bath,

I'm referring to epinephrine.

Epinephrine is a neurochemical

that will place your vision into more of a tunnel mode,

which will allow you to focus

on cognitive work or physical work in a more specific way,

you're not going to be as distractable,

and it's very easy to achieve

by getting into a cold shower or a cold body of water

for a brief period of time.

People always ask how long to get under or into cold water

and how cold to make it.

Here's the thing, it should be uncomfortably cold,

but safe to stay in for one to five minutes.

Okay so uncomfortably cold, you really want to get out,

but safe to stay in,

not so cold that it's going to give you a heart attack

and not so warm that it's comfortable

that it doesn't create that adrenaline release.

Cold water exposure,

I should say deliberate, cold water

or non deliberate cold water exposure

reliably increases epinephrine levels.

It is incredibly useful as a tool for this,

and it is in fact, zero cost or even negative zero cost.

How could it be negative zero cost?

Well, you can certainly save on your heating bill

by taking a cold shower so that's one way.

And for those of you that have access to devices

or locations where you can get into cold water,

you can submerge,

well then that can work.

For those of you that don't, maybe you take a cold bath,

you get in up to your neck, that's going to be most efficient.

For those of you that can't do that,

you'll get under a cold shower.

Again, it should be comfortably cold

to the point where you want to get out,

but that you can safely stay in for one to five minutes.

How long should you do it before a workout?

Well, if you get into really cold water,

it's uncomfortably cold

and get out after about three minutes,

you're probably good to go, dry off and get to work.

Some of you might think this is a little bit silly

as a tool for focus and concentration,

but if you look at the data on epinephrine

and how powerfully it can increase focus,

I think you'd be very impressed.

I mean it certainly can increase one's ability

to attend to specific visual stimuli,

so for reading or math work, et cetera,

it's going to be very useful.

And of course you don't want to make it so cold

that you're shivering and chattering the whole time.

And of course you could, if you like,

combine this with 40 HZ binaural beats,

there's no reason

why you couldn't combine the two protocols.

But the point here is that a lot of people would love to

and I think ought to leverage

the health promoting and powerful effects

of increasing epinephrine on focusing concentration

and running out and getting stressed by a life event

or getting into an argument or something like that

simply as a way to increase focus and concentration

doesn't seem that adaptive to me.

So deliberate cold exposure

is a straightforward way to do that,

it doesn't involve anyone else,

I suppose you could do it with somebody else,

but it doesn't require anyone else.

And again, there are zero low

and even negative cost ways to approach that.

If you'd like to know how long

the positive effects of epinephrine last

toward improving focus and concentration,

well, if we look to that study from DeGroote et al,

the acute stress improves cognitive performance study,

they measured concentration before

and 30 minutes after the stress was induced

and there does appear to be a quite long lasting,

really up to an hour or more effect

of increasing epinephrine.

So how might you apply these sorts of protocols

early in the day or later in the day?

Well, one suggestion or one potential protocol would be

if you're going to sit down and do some work,

if you're already feeling alert and focused,

no need to reach to this tool,

but if you're feeling like your focus and alertness

isn't quite where you'd like it to be,

you could take a three minute very cold shower

or submerge yourself in cold water for three minutes,

you might have a cup of coffee as well

and then sit down and do that work,

maybe even throw in the 40 HZ binaural beats.

All of that would be layering in the different systems,

the different neurochemicals,

such as acetylcholine, epinephrine and dopamine,

that are going to lend themselves

to a really terrific 90 minute or less work about.

Now I'd like to discuss some of the purely behavioral tools

that quality peer reviewed science say

can improve focus and concentration significantly.

At the beginning of today's episode,

I talked about the study from Dr. Wendy Suzuki's lab

where they explored a 13 minute meditation

done every day for a period of eight weeks.

That meditation led to significant improvements

in focus and concentration ability,

as well as other aspects of cognitive performance.

It also improved mood and reduced stress.

So you might be wondering what exactly is this meditation?

The meditation is very simple

and it's one that anyone can perform.

What you would want to do is set a timer

for about 13 minutes,

I don't think it has to be exactly 13 minutes,

but since that's what they included in the study,

you would set a timer for 13 minutes.

You would sit or lie down, close your eyes,

and you would simply focus on your breathing.

Most people are going to benefit

from only doing that breathing through their nose,

but if you have some sort of obstruction

or inability to breathe just through your nose,

you could probably also do it

by breathing through your nose and mouth or just your mouth.

But ideally you would do just nasal breathing

for a period of 13 minutes,

concentrating on that breathing,

and concentrating, meaning bringing your awareness,

your so-called interoceptive awareness

if you wanted to get really technical about it,

your interoceptive awareness

to a point just about an inch inside of your forehead.

Now, of course,

that might sound kind of gory to some of you,

you've never actually been inside your forehead,

but just about an inch behind your forehead

is where you would want to place your concentration

while also concentrating on your breathing.

Now here's the thing about meditation

that all studies of meditation show,

which is that unless you are a very experienced meditator,

your concentration, your focus

will drift away from your breathing

and away from that location about an inch inside your head,

inside your brain, about just behind your forehead.

That will happen maybe every 10 seconds, every 20 seconds,

maybe even every five seconds,

but an important part of such a meditation practice

to improve concentration and focus

is that you are continually refocusing

back to that specific location

and refocusing back on your breath.

This is something that again, is not often discussed.

People think that if you do a meditation

and you're supposed to concentrate on your breath,

that if your mind drifts

that somehow you failed in that meditation,

but actually that's not the case.

A huge component of improving your ability

to focus and concentrate by way of neuroplasticity,

rewiring of the circuits for focus and concentration,

is the repeated return to a state of focus

from a state of non-focus or diminished focus.

So think about it like trying to drive down the freeway

and staying between the lane lines, excuse me.

And every once in a while,

because there's a bit of drift on the vehicle,

maybe the wheels aren't aligned correctly

or there's something else wrong with the chassis

or the steering device,

it starts to drift right a little bit,

then you hit the rumble strip to go rrrr,

and then you pull back to the center.

That's really what a focused meditation practice is about

as opposed to expecting yourself

to stay between the mental lane lines, so to speak.

So if you're somebody who's going to do a practice

of the sort that I described,

13 minute meditation practice every day,

you'd want to sit or lie down, close your eyes,

start to concentrate on your breath,

focus your attention

on a location about an inch behind your forehead,

and then fully expect that at some point,

you'll be thinking about something else,

and that's a cue to focus back to that location

just about an inch behind your forehead

and back to your breath.

By doing that repeatedly over and over,

what you're really training up

is the network within your brain

that indeed includes that prefrontal cortex

that you're focusing on as well as some other structures,

the inferior temporal cortex, indeed the hippocampus,

a structure associated with memory,

and other components of the neural circuit

that are involved in directing

our mental focus and concentration.

Again, I can't emphasize the importance

of this practice being one of focusing and refocusing.

In fact, I would prefer to call such a practice,

a refocus focused meditation, or a constantly refocusing,

or maybe you all can come up with a better name for it,

I'm certainly not that good at naming things,

but this sort of meditation practice

has been shown

in the study by the Suzuki lab and other studies

to really improve people's ability

to focus and remain focused,

so much so that in the beautiful book, "Altered States,"

they describe a number of different meditation practices,

some a little bit longer than the one that I described,

one that's 17 minutes, another one that's 30 minutes,

some people will meditate as long as 60 minutes a day,

although that's quite a long time, in my opinion.

The point here isn't how long you focus

or somehow trying to achieve total focus

for the entire 13 minute or 17 minute

or 60 minute about of meditation.

While that would be wonderful

and I think many people aspire to do that,

that's a lot of hard mental work.

I think for most people out there, including myself,

a relatively short meditation practice of about 13 minutes

in which you fully expect

your focus and concentration to drift,

but that you are continually refocusing

is going to be the most effective,

yes, indeed, the most effective

at teaching yourself to focus and stay concentrated.

In fact, I invite you to interpret

every time that you focus off that location

about one inch behind your forehead,

as an opportunity to refocus

and think about the refocusing as the trigger

for teaching your neural circuits

how to focus for extended periods of time.

And as a bonus to that sort of meditation practice,

the study from Wendy Suzuki's lab

also showed that people experience improvements in sleep

and improvements in memory,

so not just improvements in mood and reduction in stress

and improvements in focus and concentration,

but all these other positive benefits

from just doing that 13 minute a day meditation practice.

It's one that I've started to adopt

and have felt tremendous benefit from

and that I encourage many of you to try as well.

The one cautionary note

is the one that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode,

which is because the refocus as I'll call it, meditation,

does involve a significant amount of effort

and engagement of these prefrontal cortical circuits,

it is disruptive to sleep if performed too closely to sleep.

So if you are going to do that practice,

I recommend that you not do it

within the four hours prior to your bedtime.

Earlier I mentioned

that I would talk about ways to improve focus

if you are sleep deprived.

This is something that I'm all too familiar with.

I put a lot of effort into optimizing my sleep,

that's something that with each passing year,

I put more and more effort into,

again, because sleep is so vital

for mental health, physical health

and performance of all kinds,

but certainly in my role as a student,

in my role as a professor and in my role in life,

I've had numerous times

in which I simply did not get enough sleep

or my sleep was terrible for whatever reason,

and yet I still had work demands and social demands,

et cetera.

One practice that is very effective

at allowing you to focus

better than you would otherwise

under conditions of sleep deprivation

is so called non-sleep deep rest or NSDR.

This is also referred to sometimes as yoga nidra.

Yoga nidra actually means yoga sleep.

Yoga nidra is a practice of lying down for about 10 to 30

sometimes even as long as 60 minutes,

you listen to a script, it's an audio script,

that takes you through a progressive deep relaxation,

it involves a body scan,

some long exhale breathing.

It is very restorative in the sense that one tends to emerge

from yoga nidra or NSDR feeling greatly refreshed

compared to how you felt prior to it.

There is also terrific neuroimaging data

from laboratories in Denmark

showing that there's a restoration of dopamine levels

in the so-called basal ganglia after NSDR AKA yoga nidra.

Whether or not you call it yoga nidra or NSDR,

which is what I refer to it as, non-sleep deep rest,

you can find these scripts at zero cost in multiple places.

You can find there are certain apps that are NSDR

or yoga nidra apps.

There is a NSDR protocol

that was put out there by Madefor which is on YouTube

that you can access for free.

There is a NSDR or I should say a number of NSDR protocols

through the Virtusan app.

There are, again, number of different places

that one can access NSDR protocols.

I do NSDR for 10 to 30 minutes per day every single day,

not just on days where I'm sleep deprived.

If I happen to be sleep deprived,

I would extend that NSDR to 30 or 60 minutes.

And when you do that NSDR

will depend on when you have time for that NSDR.

When I haven't slept well,

what I'll try and do is find a quiet place

where I can do NSDR for 30 or ideally 60 minutes.

Sometimes I will fall back asleep during that NSDR,

that's fine if you do that,

but most people will stay awake during the NSDR,

and then I'll emerge from that and go about my day.

If in the afternoon,

I'm very fatigued because of lack of sleep,

I might do another NSDR of 10 to 30 or 60 minutes,

and then another work about.

Again, NSDR is something I do every day.

I talked a lot about this in the episodes related to sleep,

because it can help you get better

at falling and staying asleep at night

in addition to feeling restorative

in that immediate timeframe of the day

in which you do NSDR,

so it's immensely beneficial at various times

and for various purposes.

But here within the context

of trying to concentrate and focus

when you're sleep deprived,

NSDR, AKA yoga nidra is an immensely beneficial practice.

There's growing amounts of quality science

pointing to the neurochemical replenishing effects,

as I mentioned before, dopamine,

but also the potential for NSDR

to replace sleep that you've lost.

I would never want anyone to try and use NSDR

as a total replacement for sleep,

but under conditions in which you cannot control your sleep,

NSDR is going to be the best way that I am aware of

to restore your ability to focus and concentrate

for whatever purpose.

And if you emerge from your NSDR

and then drink some caffeine,

you'll notice an even greater capacity

for focus and concentration

for all the reasons directly related to caffeine.

So again, NSDR is a general tool

for enhancing your ability to sleep

and it's a tool that you can use

in order to compensate for, at least to some degree,

compensate for lost sleep

when you need to focus and concentrate.

One thing that really contrasts NSDR and yoga nidra

with the sort of focused meditation

that I talked about a few minutes ago,

the 13 minute meditation,

is that during the 13 minute meditation,

you're actively trying to refocus and focus,

whereas during NSDR and yoga nidra,

you're actually trying to defocus.

So you can think of the 13 minute meditation

for refocusing and focusing

as directly tapping into and mediating

improvements in the circuitry for focus and concentration

whereas you can think of NSDR and yoga nidra

as modulating your brain and body state

to allow you to focus and concentrate better.

Now another tool that you can use

to directly tap in

to the circuits for focus and concentration

and to greatly accelerate neuroplasticity, the improvements,

or I should say the changes in those circuits

that will allow you to focus and concentrate better

is hypnosis.

A lot of people hear hypnosis and they think stage hypnosis,

you know, people squawking like chickens

and doing things against their will,

but actually hypnosis is a atypical

but highly accessible brain state

that's been studied with a lot of rigor

at Stanford University School of Medicine

by my colleague, Dr. David Spiegel,

he's been a guest on this podcast previously.

Hypnosis is a unique brain state

because it's one in which you are deeply focused

and yet deeply relaxed.

So to just sort of set up the array of practices here

so you can think about them logically,

the focus refocus meditation

is based on and focused on focus, no pun intended.

NSDR and yoga nidra are aimed at deep relaxation.

Hypnosis is this atypical, very powerful brain state

in which you combine high levels of focus

and deep relaxation.

Now it's a little bit of a tough one

to just take oneself into,

but fortunately, there's a tool

based on a lot of quality peer-reviewed research

from the Spiegel lab and other labs

and that is the Reveri app, r-e-v-e-r-i.

The Reveri app is available for no cost,

at least for a period of time

and then I think they place certain elements of it

behind a pay wall,

but you can try at zero cost,

it's available for Apple,

soon I think also to be available for Android,

and they have specific hypnosis protocols

that you listen to, and these are very brief protocols,

follow the instructions,

you're listening to a particular audio script

of David Spiegel himself,

and some progressive breathing

and actually some eye movements

that are directly linked to the neural circuits

that allow for these highly focused, deeply relaxed states.

And there are components within the Reveri app

specifically geared

towards improving focus and concentration.

So again,

there's meditation for focus,

there's deliberate decompression, NSDR, yoga nidra,

which take you into deep relaxation,

and then hypnosis is this very special, very directed state

of highly focused and highly relaxed,

or I should say deeply relaxed,

that allow access to the neural circuits

for focus and concentration

and allow you to tune those up and to improve those

very significantly in a very brief amount of time.

And again, some of those hypnosis scripts

are as short as eight minutes,

some are as long as 13 minutes.

So what we're really talking about here are zero cost tools

that directly tap into the neural circuits,

the components within your brain,

that allow for deep relaxation, allow for deep focus,

and improve your ability to focus and concentrate over time

simply by repeating these.

How often do you need to repeat the Reveri hypnosis

for focus and concentration before you see benefits?

Well, that will vary from person to person.

I tend to use it once every third or fourth day

and have experienced tremendous benefits from it.

I don't think I'm unique in that sense,

they have a lot of data to support this Reveri app

and the protocols within it.

How long do you have to do NSDR

before you experience those benefits?

There, I would say the first time and every time,

because it's so deeply relaxing

that you emerge from it feeling quite restored

relative to how you went into it.

And as I mentioned earlier in the study on meditation,

it took about eight weeks

to see the effects that they observed in that study,

but they didn't observe shorter time points.

So I highly encourage people to explore meditation

geared towards focus and refocus,

also NSDR, nonsleep deep rest, AKA yoga nidra,

and the Reveri app,

Specifically the hypnosis within the Reveri app,

that's geared towards improving focus and concentration.

All of these have terrific science to support them,

this is not woo science or hacks

or just something that people came up with.

This is all grounded in work

from some of the best universities in the world,

from excellent groups

who've looked at underlying neural mechanisms

and measured things with a lot of rigor,

et cetera, et cetera.

These tools are available to you,

I highly recommend that you use them.

And if you're interested

in the optimal time of day to do these,

we already mentioned that the focus refocus meditation

shouldn't be done too close to sleep,

the Reveri hypnosis app can be done at any time really,

in fact, there's a component

of falling back of sleep in there,

in other words, a hypnosis specifically geared

toward helping people teach themselves to fall back asleep

when they wake up in the middle of the night.

NSDR, I always say,

can be done first thing in the morning, in the afternoon

or any time of day,

and in fact,

I'll sometimes do that in the middle of the night

if I happen to wake up and need to get back to sleep.

So really these tools can be applied most any time of day,

except for that one caveat

about the focus refocus meditation

not being done too close to sleep.

Now there's another set of behavioral tools

that can really help enhance one's ability to focus

and those are visual based tools.

In fact, the tools I'm about to describe

are actually being employed in a number of schools

in China and elsewhere in order to teach children

to focus better and for longer periods of time.

The key principle here is that much of our cognitive focus,

our ability to think about something in a very specific way

and stay focused on it,

to read or to follow a line of conversation

or math or music, et cetera,

is going to be directed by our visual system.

Our visual system has two forms of attention and focus.

One is overt focus, which is very straightforward.

If I'm looking at the tip of my pen,

for those of who are listening right now,

I'm looking at the tip of my pen, that's overt focus,

I'm focusing on it with my eyes,

and of course, the rest of my brain then will follow

and start to analyze the details of what I'm seeing

and the contours of the pen, et cetera.

It seems sort of obvious when you first hear it,

but our cognitive focus tends to follow

our overt visual focus.

That's also why they put blinders on horses.

That's also why sometimes wearing a hoodie or a hat

or limiting your visual field in some way

can help you enhance your cognitive focus,

it can help limit distraction.

You're just not seeing as much.

It's also why when we ingest caffeine

or any kind of stimulant or we are stressed

and our pupils dilate

and our vision becomes more tunnel-like,

less panoramic, but more tunnel-like,

you know they say a soda straw view of the world

or you're looking through a tunnel,

your focus, your visual focus

is actually driving your cognitive focus.

Your cognitive focus is narrower than it would be

if you were seeing the whole scene that you're in.

So when you hear this, it sounds obvious,

but for many people, including many scientists,

it's just not obvious that this would be the case.

However, that is the case,

your visual focus drives your cognitive focus.

So what is a practice

that has been studied in various laboratories

and that's being employed in various schools?

Is to have children or adults visually focus on one location

for a given period of time.

How long?

Anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes,

and believe it or not,

three minutes is a long time

to maintain visual focus at one location.

If you were to try that right now,

you'd probably find it to be a bit of a strain,

but if you want to try it, you can.

Keep in mind, you yes, are allowed to blink,

but also keep in mind that meditation refocusing practice

that we talked about earlier,

that the refocusing is the key component

of teaching yourself or your brain,

you are your brain, your brain is you,

but to teach yourself how to focus better.

So if you're going to incorporate this practice,

what you would want to do is pick a location,

it could be on a wall,

it could be on your computer in front of you,

although I would encourage it

to not be the contents of your computer screen,

you might just want to blank your screen,

you might want to put a piece of paper

with a crosshatch there, any sort of visual target,

or you can imagine a visual target

and then focus your visual attention on that target

and try to breathe normally, try and stay relaxed,

and certainly allow yourself to blink

so that your eyes don't try out.

This is not a test of how long you can go without blinking.

By focusing on that particular location

and by forcing yourself to refocus on that location

anytime your gaze, your vision drifts from that location,

you are encouraging the circuits for focus

to get better at focusing for longer and longer

and at refocusing when your focus

drifts off of that location.

This is incorporating neural circuits,

including the prefrontal cortex,

things like the frontal eye fields.

For those of you curious about the underlying biology,

this practice is recruiting certain elements

of your so-called prefrontal cortex,

also the frontal eye fields,

which are locations not far from the prefrontal cortex,

that are involved in deliberately directing your gaze

to particular locations in space,

not outer space,

although you could do this by focusing on stars I suppose,

but in visual space.

Now I mentioned before

that this is overt visual focus and attention,

you are overtly looking at that location,

but one also very powerful practice

for improving focus and concentration

is to use covert focus.

Covert focus is where my gaze,

my eyes are focused on one location, such as my pen,

but my focus is actually directed

elsewhere in the room or location that I'm in.

My mind and to some extent my peripheral vision

is focused in this case on the door just to my left

in the room that I'm in.

That takes a little bit more effort.

This is something that all old world primates,

of which we are old world primates, are able to do.

And it probably evolved as part of the mechanism

by which animals could evaluate their scene,

evaluate predators, evaluate other primates

while not necessarily staring at them directly

so they can obtain information,

we can obtain information without having to direct our gaze

specifically to one location.

Maybe we can obtain information from multiple locations,

indeed, we can.

Without getting too far down the rabbit hole

of how vision and cognition relate,

because we've done episodes on that previously,

and simply focusing on the tools that can be incorporated

to improve focus and concentration, here's what I recommend.

Set yourself a low bar at first and set a timer

and try to focus on one location for 30 seconds

and that's it for that day.

The next day, you might add five seconds,

and then the next day, five seconds after that.

If you miss a day, no big deal,

simply do the practice for the same amount of time

that you did the last time that you did the practice,

and then gradually try and increase the amount of time

that you can focus on one visual location overtly

by looking directly at that location.

If you like, and if you feel you have the ability,

you can try and do this through covert attention and focus

by looking straight forward for instance,

and attending to something in the corner of the room

and trying to do that for 30 seconds,

you'll find that that's quite a bit harder,

and then extending that by five seconds

every time you do the practice.

This is something that I don't think you necessarily

have to build up to being able to do for a full hour

in order to extract the benefits.

In fact, the best way to think about this practice

is as a means to get into a focused state.

If you remember back about an hour or so ago,

I was talking about how focused states

are not a drop all the way in and then exit type phenomenon.

We don't just drop into a focused state

the same way we don't drop into the peak performance

of a workout, we warm up.

So what I recommend is having a 30 second

to three minute period at the beginning of a about to focus

where you're going to do work or physical work

and anchoring your vision to one location

somewhere in the room

or if you want to do it covertly, you can do that,

setting a timer and trying to do that

for anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes.

What you're doing when you exercise that practice

is you are ramping up neural activity

within the neural circuits

that create focus and concentration.

Then, I would stop looking at that location

or that covert location

and then I would move to the work that you're trying to do,

either mental work or physical work.

And if about halfway through your 90 minute about

or at some point in your 90 minute about of work or exercise,

you feel that your concentration is drifting

rather than look at your phone

and scroll through the thousands of contexts

that exists within social media or your phone,

try just picking a location again on the wall,

focusing back on that location,

using that as a ramp up

to then direct your focus back towards,

if your weight training,

sets and reps that you might be performing,

if you're running,

you might do this, or cycling you might do this

by focusing on a particular location

and really homing in on that location physically.

And this is a practice that a lot of athletes use in fact,

and if you're say doing musical practice or math,

well then, you'd want to focus on something

other than the task that you're trying to perform.

But again, using visual focus

as a way to ramp up and increase your overall ability

to focus and concentrate,

and then applying that to whatever it is

that you're trying to learn or perform.

Next, I'd like to talk about compounds

that can improve concentration and focus,

and these are most often consumed as supplements,

although some of them, I should mention,

can also be derived from food.

Again, I just want to remind you

that there are things, in this case compounds,

that can modulate a biological mechanism,

that is can modulate focus and concentration,

and there are compounds that can mediate,

can directly contribute to concentration and focus.

One of the key compounds

that supports concentration and focus

because it generally supports mood, concentration and focus

and brain function in general

are the omega-3 essential fatty acids.

I've talked about the omega-3 essential fatty acids

in a variety of contexts, in particular depression,

but also ADHD, there are interesting data on that,

and it's really clear

that getting somewhere between one and three grams of EPA,

that is one to three grams

of EPA essential fatty acid per day can improve outcomes,

that is can improve mood and can improve cognitive function.

And while there's some debate

about whether or not it can improve cardiac function,

it's very clear, at least to me,

that ingesting one to three grams

of EPA essential fatty acid per day is beneficial.

But again, in the context of focus and concentration,

it's in modulating the neural circuits and brain function

that are going to support focus and concentration.

It's not as if taking one to three grams

of EPA essential fatty acid per day

is going to tap directly into

only the circuits for focus and concentration.

That said, and as discussed on the episode

of the Huberman Lab Podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick,

and on the episode on ADHD that I did,

and on the episode on depression that I did,

I make it a point to ingest one to three grams

of EPAs per day.

You can get those EPAs

from other sources besides supplements, of course,

but supplements are going to be the easiest way to do that.

You could do that through liquid form,

fish oil, cod liver oil,

some people who are vegan opt for other sources of EPAs,

you can find those out there certainly.

Some people even use prescription EPAs

to get the dosage really high.

Dr. Ronda Patrick talked about this in the episode with me,

that's actually something that she does.

I don't take the prescription form,

I get them through pill form

through our supplement affiliate, which is Momentous,

but there are a number of different quality sources

of EPAs out there.

And some of those quality sources also include things

like fatty fish, algae, and things of that sort.

So I'll leave it to you as to whether or not you supplement

with omega-3 fatty acids

in order to get that one to three grams per day

or whether or not you do it through food,

but I would encourage you to try and reach that threshold

because there are a number of known positive effects

for mood and brain function generally.

The other thing that can positively modulate brain function

and that actually works as a fuel for neurons to function

and can improve cognitive performance,

and particularly within the brain circuits,

such as the prefrontal cortex,

that are involved in concentration and focus is creatine.

I know many people are familiar with creatine monohydrate

for its effects on muscle growth

and strength and performance,

but it's quite clear that the bulk of scientific studies

have examined the role of creatine in the clinical context

and as its role in improving cognitive performance.

So my read of the literature has led to a practice

in which I ingest five grams per day

of creatine monohydrate,

the sort of standard form that's available in,

this is generally available as a powder,

that's certainly how I take it.

I'll take the creatine powder,

I'll mix it with water or with my Athletic Greens

or some sort of electrolyte drink,

whatever liquid happens to be convenient to ingest that in,

the time of day doesn't really seem to be important.

Some people are strong believers

in consuming creatine post-workout.

While that might be beneficial,

I simply take it in the morning or post-workout,

it sort of depends on when I remember to take it,

but that five grams of creatine per day,

in my case, really isn't geared towards muscle growth

or strength or performance

as much as it's geared toward

tapping into the creatine phosphate system within the brain

and specifically the benefits of creatine

for prefrontal cortical networks, again, modulating,

not directly mediating,

but modulating and generally supporting

the brain networks that are going to allow me

to generate focus and concentration.

So much like sleep, much like omega-3 fatty acids,

creatine monohydrate five grams a day

seems to generally support brain function,

which will generally support concentration and focus.

Now in terms of compounds

that more specifically mediate concentration and focus,

we have to go back to that arrow metaphor model

that we talked about at the beginning of the episode,

that included epinephrine, adrenaline, acetylcholine,

which acts as this attentional spotlight,

in fact, acetylcholine and elevated levels of acetylcholine

have been shown over and over again

through beautiful work from Mike Merzenich's lab at UCSF

and the Kilgard Lab down in Houston,

and a number of other labs,

including Norm Weinberger's lab at UC Irvine,

again and again,

to improve or even directly gate neuroplasticity

by increasing focus directly.

That's a lot of word soup,

but basically what happens is

if acetylcholine transmission

is increased even transiently within the brain,

there's a greater opportunity

for neuroplasticity to take place.

And the reason there's a greater opportunity

for neuroplasticity, AKA learning to take place,

is by way of the increased focus

that spiking acetylcholine can provide.

As I mentioned earlier,

there are a number of different foods which contain choline,

you can look those up online,

choline acting as an amino acid precursor to acetylcholine,

but of course, there are compounds, there are supplements

that can further and more acutely increase acetylcholine,

and indeed, I use these myself.

The most effective one I've found is Alpha-GPC.

Alpha-GPC consumed at dosages

of 300 milligrams to 600 milligrams

prior to a work about or prior to a workout

greatly increase one's ability to focus and concentrate,

at least that's been my experience,

and there are some good data in humans.

So how would I use Alpha-GPC?

I would use Alpha-GPC by taking it about 10 to 20 minutes

prior to any time I want to focus

or concentrate very deeply.

I've taken as much as 600 milligrams at one time,

although I find that 300 milligrams is enough for me,

and I tend to be quite sensitive to supplements

and caffeine in general,

so I'll sometimes take it alongside yerba mate

or with yerba mate or with coffee prior to a workout

or prior to a about of work

in which I'm focusing on mental work.

So it could be reading, writing,

could be math, could be data analysis,

could be anything

where I need a lot of focus and concentration.

Now a number of people have contacted me

about a recent study suggesting that Alpha-GPC

when taken chronically over many years

could increase one's vulnerability to stroke.

I've looked at those data and my read of the data

is that they're not very conclusive,

although anytime you see something like that,

a study that's pointing to the fact

that a given compound

might increase the propensity for stroke,

you obviously want to be concerned.

So we have to ask ourselves how, by what mechanism that is,

could Alpha-GPC be increasing the susceptibility to stroke?

And it seems to be related to increases in TMAO,

which is a marker related to the cardiovascular system.

And one known way to offset increases in TMAO

that are associated either with Alpha-GPC

or increases due to other things,

so ingestion of particular food compounds

actually can increase TMAO,

is to offset that by taking 600 milligrams of garlic.

Now I've been taking Alpha-GPC

pretty consistently for a number of years.

I do not take it every day.

I would say I take it about four days per week,

again, prior to workouts or bouts of cognitive work.

I have not seen my TMAO spike

and I've evaluated that by way of blood tests,

but nonetheless, I take 600 milligrams of garlic

in capsule form anytime I eat anyway

and I do that for general cardiovascular function

and there's some interesting data

on immune system function, et cetera for garlic.

So I've been consuming 600 milligram capsules of garlic

for some period of time.

Some days, I'll ingest just one 600 milligram capsule,

other times, I'll take two,

but based on this recent study and the concerns about TMAO,

I make it a point

to always ingest a 600 milligram capsule of garlic

anytime I take Alpha-GPC,

which again for me is about four days per week.

So in our model of attention and focus,

you can now clearly see why taking Alpha-GPC,

which increases acetylcholine transmission

would be beneficial for concentration and focus

and why taking it with a double espresso

or why taking it with yerba mate

would further increase concentration and focus

because as I mentioned earlier,

caffeine is going to increase epinephrine.

It's also going to increase the density

of dopamine receptors

and the Alpha-GPC is going to increase acetylcholine,

this spotlighting for cognition,

this ability to really amplify the activity

of specific neural networks,

which is largely what's happening

when you're trying to focus

and pay attention to something specifically.

So if one wants to increase

the amount of dopamine transmission in the brain and body

for sake of increasing concentration and focus,

one of the most efficient ways to do that

is by ingestion of the amino acid L-tyrosine.

Again, L-tyrosine can be derived from food sources,

I invite you to look up

those various food sources on the web,

simply go to a web browser and put in

foods that contain a lot of L-tyrosine

and you'll get a rich array of choices to select from.

But in my case, I use L-tyrosine in capsule form.

I will take 500 milligrams of L-tyrosine,

300 milligrams of Alpha-GPC and a cup of coffee.

I'm careful to do this early in the day,

certainly not after two or 3:00 PM

because I don't want to diminish my ability

to fall and stay asleep that night.

I'll do this early in the day before a workout

or before a about of concentrated mental work.

Again, I tend to do this about four days per week,

so certainly not every time I sit down to do work.

And I should also mention

that I still tend to do the behavioral tools.

I'll tend to use five minutes of binaural beats

or binaural beats throughout the work session,

sometimes do a ice bath or a cold shower before.

I don't want to give the impression

that I combine every tool that I've talked about today

for a given workout.

I mean, that would be pretty wild to take a cold shower,

pop an L-tyrosine, take an Alpha-GPC,

drink two espresso, listen to binaural beats.

That to me seems like a very inefficient way

to go about life.

In fact, I make it a point to try and use tools

to increase my ability to concentrate and focus,

but not to combine more than two or three of them

at any one time.

And when I say two or three,

what I mean is I will use supplements like Alpha-GPC,

L-Tyrosine and caffeine together before certain work bouts,

I might use the visual practice

of focusing on a given location for a minute

before I begin that work about,

I might combine those.

Then another time I might take a cold shower

prior to doing some work.

Other days, I confess, I've slept very well

or my enthusiasm about what I'm about to work on is such

that I don't require any of these tools.

Again, there's no requirement,

there's no pressure to use any of these tools,

behavioral, supplement based or otherwise.

It's simply a matter of using the tools

that are going to allow you

to achieve the states you want to achieve

and to improve your ability to go into those states

without any help at all.

And this is what I find

particularly attractive about supplements.

It's not so much that they put you

into the ideal state for that work

and then you accomplish that work

and then you always rely on those supplements.

I prefer to look at supplements

of the sort that I just described

as a route into a deeper trench of focus and concentration

that I use as a tool to teach myself

to focus and concentrate more deeply,

such that I don't need those tools

every single time I try and focus and concentrate.

I think this is an important point

because I think that many people think of supplements

as a crutch or a way of simply getting into a state

for which no other tool will suffice or replace.

But in that context,

I want to remind you of the larger context of pharmacology,

which is the vast landscape

of prescription pharmacology for ADHD,

for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Now I covered that landscape in intense detail

on the episode on ADHD and focus.

And just to summarize, there is of course,

Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, Modafinil, Armodafinil,

a number of different compounds,

all of which generally increase dopamine transmission

in the brain, so increasing dopamine,

and all of which generally increase epinephrine,

adrenaline transmission in the brain and body.

And many of those compounds

have been of tremendous benefit

to children and even some adults who suffer from ADHD.

So properly prescribed at the appropriate dosage,

those compounds can really help people

with clinically diagnosed ADHD.

The way they help those people is a bit surprising, however.

You might think, well they turn on the brain chemicals

that allow those people to concentrate and focus.

That's true,

but they also have the benefit

of teaching those brain circuits how to engage.

And that's one of the reasons why somewhat paradoxically

giving a stimulant like Ritalin or Adderall

to a kid that legitimately needs it,

obviously, you don't want to do this without the oversight

and careful evaluation of a psychiatrist,

but giving that to a kid who has severe ADHD,

you would think would make them more rambunctious,

less able to focus and more distractible overall.

After all, Ritalin, Modafinil, Armodafinil,

all these things are stimulants.

So you take a kid

who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

and give them these drugs

that increase transmission of dopamine and epinephrine

and you think, wow, it's going to make them

even more distractible and hyperactive

and indeed, it has the opposite effect.

It doesn't necessarily make them feel calm,

but it makes them feel that they can focus,

they really can anchor their attention.

And the idea is that it's teaching those neural circuits

or those neural circuits rather are teaching themselves

to engage and to focus and concentrate.

And the ideal situation is one in which

the total dosage of those compounds, those drugs,

can be reduced over time

as those circuits learn to come online

through purely behavioral tools.

Now oftentimes, there's a maintenance of those drugs

over long periods of time,

although there is a common practice nowadays

of trying to diminish the dosage overall.

That's in the context of ADHD and prescription medication

and I acknowledge that a lot,

indeed 80% or more of college students say the statistics

are using prescription drugs

when they are not in fact

prescribed those prescription drugs.

So basically what I'm saying

is there are a lot of people using drugs

designed for ADHD and narcolepsy

because those drugs