Asking someone to look you in the eye kills listening: - Say "look at me while I talk" and the visual system takes over. They see your mouth move and hear their own thoughts - People listening hard close their eyes. That is not a coincidence - Closing the eyes creates a cone of auditory attention, the same capacity low and no vision people develop - Agitation while you focus is epinephrine in your system. If it feels hard, you are doing it right @hubermanlab

Why easy goals make you give up: Too easy and the goal never recruits your autonomic nervous system. Balsetus Lab saw no rise in systolic blood pressure, and people quit fast. Too lofty does the same thing. You get excited mentally, but your body never enters a state of readiness because it isn't tangible. Moderate goals - just outside your current abilities - nearly doubled systolic blood pressure and more than doubled the likelihood people kept pursuing them. Realistic, but never easy. @hubermanlab

Sunset light matters as much as morning light: - As the sun descends it triggers the same neurons in your eye that talk to your circadian clock - But it reaches the evening oscillators instead of the morning ones - That signals your brain that it's evening and sleep is coming - It also gives your body a second anchor point for where it is in time Don't stare at the sun. Blinking is fine. Just get low solar angle light in your eyes. @hubermanlab

3 deficiencies that lower your testosterone and estrogen: - Zinc, magnesium and vitamin D deficiencies negatively impact the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis and the sex steroid hormones (Wrzosek et al. 2020, Endocrinology and Metabolism Reviews) - That paper does not tell you how much to take. Dosing is context and individual dependent - Examine gives dosage ranges supported by specific studies, free - Get blood work so you know whether your androgen and vitamin D levels are actually sufficient @hubermanlab

Dopamine is a molecule of motivation not reward: - Serotonin makes you feel good about what you already have, your internal landscape and your resources - Dopamine points you outward, toward the things you want to pursue - Every time you accomplish something en route to a goal, a little dopamine is released and you feel more motivation - Mania is the extreme version: relentless pursuit of money and relationships, with a delusional sense that you have the resources to chase them @hubermanlab

Why you shouldn't ice bath right after lifting: - Avoid cold water immersion up to the neck right after strength or hypertrophy training and for about 4 hours after - If you want every last bit of strength and size move the cold exposure to a different day entirely - Cold showers are a different case - there are very few studies on them, and a brief cold shower short circuiting a whole training session is hard to imagine - Still want to be cautious? Wait the same 4 hours before the shower @hubermanlab

The 9:20 clock method for every plate: - Treat your plate as a clock. One hand to the 9, one to the 20, and a line up to 12 - Largest section is fibrous carbs: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, your pick - Those carry the micronutrients plus the fiber that blunts insulin and fills you up - Second largest is protein, every meal. The more active you are, the more you need - Smallest section is starchy carbs: sweet potato, rice, pasta, just not in the portions you usually see - Cook the protein with some sauce. Boiled chicken and steamed broccoli is not a plan you keep @trainer2thepros on @hubermanlab

The only reason blue eyes exist: - Dark eyes are the ancestral state - look at African populations and that's mostly what you see - Every other eye color evolved later, and each one was selected for - The selection was sexual: people want a mate who looks different and unique - Blue eyes carry no other known benefit beyond looking stoic and cool Dr. Beth Shapiro on @hubermanlab

The mind is not like a muscle: - In the gym you get a preview: stress the muscle and you feel what bigger and stronger will be like - Learning gives you the opposite - strain, frustration, elevated heart rate, maybe a headache, trouble holding focus - That agitation is not failure, it is the trigger that invokes the learning - Hit the point where it isn't sinking in, then sleep. The learning shows up later @hubermanlab

Depression takes music away from you: - In depression people stop getting pleasure from food, sex, social experiences, and music stops lifting them - After psilocybin, the positive emotions around music they like come back - Music that used to make them feel sad has a diminished capacity to do that - The change held long after the psilocybin wore off It rewires the connections between the emotion centers in the brain and the networks that control auditory perception of music. @hubermanlab

How to get total focus on one project: - Dedicate all of yourself for that period, whether it's 20 min or 5 hrs, with no outside distraction - When you leave the work, do your best not to think about it - Don't bring materials with you. No works in progress to listen to during the day - Stay as far from it as possible when you're not directly engaging - Between sessions, fully engage project B, C or D instead of doing nothing Stewing over a problem is not how you solve it. Hold problems lightly. @RickRubin on @hubermanlab

Muscle protein synthesis caps out around 55 grams: - You assimilate all the protein you ingest, even 100 grams - But only about 50-55 grams goes into skeletal muscle protein synthesis - The rest is oxidized: used for fuel or gluconeogenesis, not stored - Hard resistance training in the hours before that meal does not raise the ceiling @drgabriellelyon on @hubermanlab

Hot flashes are not a nuisance symptom: - They are a biomarker of cardiometabolic disease, of bone loss, and of changes in the brain - Conventional medicine treats them as temporary: take a little estrogen and progesterone, turn down the room temperature, suck it up - Based on WHI, women are not offered hormone therapy unless the hot flashes and night sweats are severe - That leaves women in their 40s and 50s marching toward a greater risk of Alzheimer's disease - Most perimenopause symptoms are not driven by the ovaries. They are driven by the brain @DrGottfried on @hubermanlab

How much salt you should actually eat per day: - 8 to 12 grams of salt a day, per the author of The Salt Fix - That works out to 3.2 to 4.8 grams of sodium, or 1.5 to 2 teaspoons - Current guidelines sit at 2.3 grams of sodium, so this is 1.5 to 2x that - Pair it with 4 grams of potassium a day - Add 400 mg of magnesium - many people are deficient - Barring pre-hypertension, hypertension, or other specific health issues @hubermanlab

Not every experience changes your brain: - People love to say a lecture or a single day rewires you. That is one of the biggest lies out there - Past age 25 the nervous system does not change just because something happened to you - It changes when neurochemicals are released and the neurons active in that window strengthen or weaken their connections - Those chemicals show up with a selective shift in attention or experience that tells the brain it is time to change - If you want something to change bring an immense amount of attention to it @hubermanlab

You can lose a secure attachment style: - Secure attachment is the style that leads to the most stable and predictable long-term relationships - People in the anxious or avoidant categories can learn their way into secure attachment over time - It also runs the other way: being with someone who has a less adaptive style can move you out of secure and into anxious or avoidant - This happens at any age and any stage of life If you have a secure attachment style, protect it. @hubermanlab

The fat burning zone is a percentage trick: Sleeping is the highest percentage of fuel coming from fat of any activity you could ever do. If staying at low intensity burned more fat, the optimal strategy would be to sleep. At lower intensity a greater percentage of your fuel comes from fat, but total fuel expenditure is very low, so total carbon balance barely shifts. Same reason fasted training is irrelevant. With muscle glycogen, liver glycogen and blood glucose at sufficient levels, you have plenty of fuel sitting around. @DrAndyGalpin on @hubermanlab

'Why are you so emotional?' is a form of gaslighting: What that person means is your emotion is making them uncomfortable. Labeling you emotional is how they alienate you, and it kills the conversation. Gaslighting is getting you to believe something about yourself that isn't real. Most low self-esteem starts there, in childhood, and it's where bullying begins. We're not born self-critics. We're experience dependent. If the relationships around you are cruel, that becomes how you think about yourself. @drmarcbrackett on @hubermanlab

3 supplements shown to increase libido: - Maca, tongkat ali (longjack) and tribulus all have peer-reviewed research behind them - Maca: 2-3 grams per day, sold as a powder or capsule - Take it early in the day - it acts as a stimulant and can interfere with sleep - Studies ran 8-12 weeks, in men and women, athletes and non-athletes - Maca raised subjective sexual desire independent of hormones - no change in testosterone or estrogen - None of these are required, and check with your physician first @hubermanlab

Depression is a metabolic illness: A bankrupt body budget. So fatigued you can't move and so distressed you can't think your way out. Look at the symptoms and they are metabolic deficits. One hallmark is the loss of positive anticipation about the future. If you feel unpleasant you won't predict anything pleasant, and learning from prediction error is expensive, so even the things that could give you pleasure go unnoticed. @LFeldmanBarrett on @hubermanlab