Productivity, Health, and Performance

Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #28

Protocol 1: Record Your Daily Waking Time & Temperature Minimum

Put phone on airplane mode if it is in the room. Knowing your average wake up time informs your temperature minimum. Two hours before typical wake up time.

Protocol 2: Self-Generate Forward Motion (Outdoors)

Take a walk. Visual images pass by (optic flow) as well as auditory flow, which has an effect of reducing neural activity in the amygdala, reducing levels of anxiety. It serves to push your neurology to be alert but not anxious.

Protocol 3: View Natural Light For 10-30min Every Morning

Get sunlight in the eye to promote metabolic wellbeing and mental health. Early in the day we receive a natural pulse of cortisol. It is important that it happens early in the day. The indirect light exposure will help to trigger it. The same mechanisms tend to apply in animals too. You can kill your goldfish by keeping lights on 24 hours a day.

What To Do If You Can’t View the Sun: Blue Light

You can use a light pad or a drawing pad to make yourself more alert. Blue light is the optimal light to cue this alertness. Just don’t view bright light at night.

Eliminating certain wavelengths of light is not natural.

Protocol 4: Hydrate Correctly

Drink room temperature water first thing with sea salt in it.

Protocol 5: Delay Caffeine 90-120m After Waking

The buildup of adenosine accumulates over the day. Caffeine antagonizes it. Delay it so you don’t have a late afternoon crash when it stops binding to receptors.

Protocol 6: Fast (or Fat-Fast) Until Noon

Increases levels of adrenaline, increasing focus and encoding ability. Drinking yerba mate should be fine.

What Actually Breaks a Fast & What Doesn’t?

Depends on your insulin sensitivity and eating history. However, anything that has calories is going to contribute.

Fat Loss & Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 (GLP1), Yerba Mate, Guayusa Tea

Yerba mate increases GLP1, increasing lipolysis. Keep the leaves and use it again. GLP1 substance release goes up with repeat use of the leaves.

Protocol 7: Optimize Deep Work: Visual Elevation, Ultradian Cycles, White Noise

When eyes are directed upward it creates a sense of alertness. Optimize your workstation so that the computer is at least eye level. Looking down will increase levels of sleepiness. Body posture in relation to eye position will dictate levels of alertness.

90-minute ultradian cycles of working allow you to focus heavily on something before the brain gets exhausted. You have a direct neural connection from your bladder to your brainstem that increase alertness. If we are focused on something all the peripheral stuff fades away. Turn the phone off or put it in another room.

Low level white noise at a low volume puts the brain at a state that is optimal for learning and workflow. There is also dopamine release.

Optimal Time of Day to Do Hard Mental Work

Your best work will usually be 4-6 hours after your temperature minimum. Your temperature rise will trigger the initial cortisol release which is used as fuel for the increase in temperature. Catch the portion of the steepest slope with that temperature rise.

Protocol 8: Optimal Exercise; 3:2 Ratio

Optimal for longevity of the brain. Strength:Endurance (3:2). After a 12 week cycle you can swap the ratio over. Keep workouts short (less than an hour). You want to exercise at least 5 times per week.

Movement is crucial for effective blood flow to the muscles, hormonal release, brain metabolism, etc.

Approximately 80% of resistance training should not go to failure. 80% of endurance work should not include the “burn.” Pushing the lactate threshold is okay for 20% of the time.

Tools for Training & Mental Focus: Fasting, Salt, Stimulants, Alpha-GPC

Training fasted has immediate and long-term benefits. It can help cellular and liver health, as well as improving fat loss.

Low blood sugar can give a sense of focus. Most people are actually low in electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium malate).

Stimulants before exercise can increase dopamine and epinephrine, etc. However, we shouldn’t rely on it. For focus we can use alpha-GPC.

Protocol 9: Eat for Brain Function & Mood

If you eat a large volume of anything, a lot of blood flow will go to the gut, and you may feel lethargic. Lower carbohydrates for lunch, with some form of protein. Dinner can have starches and more of other carbs because they tend to increase serotonin and sedation.

Ingesting sufficient EPA fatty acids can alleviate symptoms of depression.

Protocol 10: Get Your Testosterone & Estrogen in an Ideal Range

Manufactured from cholesterol.

Testosterone and estrogen levels are necessary for optimal brain function. Sleep well, eat, well, lower stress, etc.

Testosterone can exert its functions as free testosterone. Sex hormone binding globulin binds it preventing it from being free so it can travel to the brain. Tongat ali can increase free testosterone levels.

Fadogia agrestis can increase luteinizing hormone levels, and thereby test and estrogen.

Post prandial meals can improve nutrient utilization. Also, providing optic flow, and light cues to influence the circadian rhythm.

Protocol 11: Reset the Mind & Body, Enhance Neuroplasticity, Reveri.com

NSDR encompasses protocols that support better brain and body function. Deliberate and directed shift in one’s state toward a state of deeper relaxation. Yoga nidra is useful.

Relaxation, focus, and plasticity have been shown to be improved with hypnosis. Reveri.com

Hypnosis has been shown to activate the insula which can enhance our sense of interoception. Increasing areas for deep relaxation, focus, and self-awareness simultaneously.

Protocol 12: Hydrate Correctly, Nap Rules

Hydrate and nap. Naps should be 90 minutes or less. 20 minutes is fine.

Protocol 13: View Late Afternoon/Evening Light to Support Sleep & Dopamine

View light in the afternoon. Our retinas become very sensitive between 10pm-4am. Viewing light this late may mess with your learning and memory. Getting light in the afternoon (5-30 minutes) provides enough of a cue to safeguard you from some of the late-night light viewing. Your retina becomes less sensitive and the melatonin rhythm stays appropriate.

Protocol 14: Eat Dinner That Promotes Serotonin, Calm Sleep

More starches and other carbohydrates. Along with protein that has tryptophan. If you do physical training, you’ll need to replenish your glucose stores too. Many people on low-carbohydrate diets struggle with sleep. Supplementing with serotonin can cause trouble with sleep cycles.

Protocol 15: Optimize Falling & Staying Asleep; Tools & Supplements That Work

The drop in temperature at night is a trigger to fall asleep. You can use a hot bath or shower to facilitate this. Your body will cool itself off allowing a temperature drop.

There will be a growth hormone release from a sauna for 20 minutes. Longer bouts of GH you would want to get out, dry and cool off for 10 minutes, then jump back in. Good for muscle and cell growth as well as fat metabolism.

Keeping the room dark is beneficial. So is keeping it cool. Throughout the night you will put your hands or feet out to cool down. If you are in a room that is too warm it will be too difficult and your sleep quality will suffer.

Apigenin (in chamomile), theanine (can increase GABA and chloride channels), magnesium threonate – 300mg (can cross BBB and promote GABA release). These 3 can cause a synergistic effect.

Protocol 16: Preventing Middle of the Night Waking

Light inhibits melatonin, so try not to get too much light exposure. If you wake up late at night, try not to look at light. If you can’t sleep do a yoga nidra session.

Protocol 17: Weekends, Recovering from a Poor Night’s Sleep

Weekend drift, from an altered weekend schedule is fine, but still try to get sleep and managed sunlight daily. If you stay up late it is still better to get up at the same time. The next day don’t go to bed earlier than normal either.

Dr. Lex Fridman: Machines, Creativity & Love | Huberman Lab Podcast #29

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Our longing to create other intelligence systems. Perhaps more intelligent than us. As well as using technology to greater understand our own intelligence.

Neural networks are basic computational units (artificial neurons), with the task of learning over time, usually task related.

Supervised learning is where the neural network knows nothing in the beginning and needs help with examples of images. Once it gets a large enough database it can start to learn by example. Trying to get less supervision over time and instilling “common sense” ideas about objects in space.

Self-play mechanism (alpha-go, chess, etc.). Mutations of itself that it can play and progress in skill level quickly. Value alignment is essential for preventing runaway artificial intelligence.

Machine & Human Learning

The machine is essentially evolving over time by challenging clones of itself. There needs to be an objective function for machine learning, which speeds the process up in a straight forward manner. Evolution does not have a why and the goal post of existence is always changing. To solve a problem with artificial intelligence you need to formalize it first.

Curiosity

Curiosity is a symptom, not a goal. The exploration can look like curiosity to humans but it is just trying to optimize its objective function.

Story Telling Robots

Explainable AI: visualizing how it understands the world, why it failed or succeeded, and why it did what it did.

What Defines a Robot?

Similar to the question of “what is life?”

It can be a thinking thing and also an acting thing. A robot can perceive and act in the world.

How Robots Change Us

AI systems may help us to explore our loneliness and to know ourselves better.

Relationships Defined

Time and experience together. You can grow closer with somebody during struggle. Current machine learning systems still don’t have the capacity to remember the sharing of moments.

AI may have the potential to truly make you feel heard. Even real friendships tend to have an element of selfishness at their base. If they could remember unstructured time together with humans, we would get very attached.

Lex’s Dream for Humanity

Add a bit of magic/awe to every computing system. The connection of robots with humans, as a companion.

AI needs to collect everything about you to fully understand you. Each individual should be able to own all of their own data. We should be able to delete all of our own data and walk away.

Improving Social Media

Creating an AI system that is yours, not centralized, that is your representative online to help you. Not letting you go down that negative spiral and promoting your growth. To have your own AI that you can program to help you instead of having to give up your autonomy to be a part of a system. You should be able to tell your AI that you would like things to challenge your ideas. If we have the option to learn better and gather conflicting information, we should be able to better explore alternatives without any bias affecting it.

Challenges of Creativity

People around entrepreneurs and creatives know how difficult it is to build big ideas and there is a serious amount of doubt. Especially if you haven’t built a track record of success yet. When we look in the mirror it is hard to know what we are actually good or bad at.

Whenever you’re struggling, it is a good sign that if you keep going, you’re going to be alone at the end. Eventually your eyes adapt to the dark.

Empathy

Made roombas scream in pain when kicked to see how he felt.

Power Dynamics in Relationships

You can frame a dumb robot as being cute, to change relationship dynamics.

Power dynamics are not necessarily good or bad. Manipulation can be more of a push and pull than abuse.

Robot Rights

They will need to be considered entities that deserve respect if we are to make true AI.

Public vs. Private Life

It’s fulfilling to be the same in public and private life, given you don’t have any weird personal stuff. Just be kind towards others.

Positivity is typically suppressed even though it is enjoyable being nice. Almost as if people think you’re dumb if you’re nice.

The people who attack on the internet don’t consider the aggregate. A podcast can show this by compiling a while lot of content.

How To Treat a Robot?

The more robots become a part of our lives the harder it is to treat them differently from life. You would have to dissociate like a surgeon.

The Value of Friendship

Friends can inspire one to show up in the best way for them. Making life worth living. Being there in the hard times too.

Martial Arts

Fighting or direct physical contact creates a type of bond like no other. You’re so vulnerable so you have to be honest about your skills and abilities. A constant loss of reality. You aren’t that special.

The neurons that control sexual behavior and aggressive behavior are interdigitated.

Combat is primal and it feels right to do it. As if remembering a process that is hardwired.

How to Optimize Your Brain-Body Function & Health | Huberman Lab Podcast #30

Protocol 1: Fermented Foods, Not Fiber, to Reduce Inflammation

Individuals with a high fiber diet actually had lower biodiversity in the gut microbiome. Those who ate fermented foods had more biodiversity. Fiber is necessary but not sufficient.

Brain-Body: A Mechanical & Chemical Dialogue

The vagus nerve is a vast, enormous bunch of nerves. They leave the brain stem, which send information to your bodily organs to control them (how fast your heart is beating, how fast you’re breathing, how fast digestion is occurring, whether you should secrete killer cells from the spleen). Efferent.

They also send information back up to the brain too. Afferent.

Mechanical sensing (pressure, lack of it) and chemical sensing (acidic/not acidic gut, pathogens, oxygen/CO2). We have these senses everywhere in our body except for the brain. It has no sensation of its own. Headaches are due to receptors on the outside of the brain.

If your gut microbiome, acidity, happy spleen, healthy lungs, etc., your brain will function better.

LDB (Lung-Diaphragm-Brain) Dialogue

The diaphragm is actually skeletal muscle and you can take conscious control of it. How you breathe is also determined by intercostals.

Protocols 2, 3, 4: Control Heart Rate with Breathing

When you inhale, the alveoli fill up, lungs expand, thoracic cavity takes up space, diaphragm moves down, the heart has more space and gets physically bigger, slower flow of blood because of larger heart volume, the sinoatrial node senses this information, sends it to the brain, the brain sends a signal to speed the heart up. Inhale deeply with a short exhale to make yourself feel more alert, secreting lots of adrenaline.

When exhaling, diaphragm moves up, heart has less space, volume of blood gets smaller, the SA sends info via the vagus nerve, the brain sends back a message to slow the heart rate down. If you want to be calmer, emphasize exhales. A physiological sigh can be used.

Box breathing.

Sensing Lung Pressure: Piezo Receptors

Piezo receptors line many tissues to inform the brain about pressure. The lungs have piezo 2 receptors that react to the filling of the lungs, which can send the pressure change sensation to the brain.

Carbon Dioxide, From Air to Blood

We also have a collection of neurons in the brain that register when CO2 levels are too high in the bloodstream, triggering the gasp reflex.

Protocol 5: Alert While Calm

Sit, breathe in deep, passively let air “fall out”, essentially blowing off the CO2. 2:1 ratio. Increasing levels of adrenaline. Then after 25-30 exhale all air and hold your breath. Blowing off a lot of the CO2 has changed the chemistry of the blood, no longer triggering the neurons to elicit the gasp reflex. You should feel very alert, but very calm. Good if you usually feel jittery with coffee or don’t want to have a cold shower.

Baroreceptors: Hering-Breuer Reflex

The Hering-Breuer Reflex – when the lung is inflated, your desire to breathe is reduced.

Gut Volume & The Desire to Open Your Mouth

We are but a series of tubes. We have gut tubes, ventricles, vascular systems, etc. The digestive system communicates to the brain about the mechanical and chemical status of the tube, so that the brain can control it appropriately.

Pressure receptors in your gut, some are piezo receptors, communicate to the areas of your brain for feeding to say don’t eat anymore. Shutting down the neurons of desire to eat. When these receptors signal to the brain that the gut is empty, it drives the desire to take action for eating. Driving fixed action patterns for eating.

Protocol 6: Enhancing Gut-To-Brain Communication, Fasting

You can get better at registering a sense of fullness. Take 10-20s to sense the neurons in your gut to detect how full you are. Take conscious awareness to develop a sense of how full you are. This can teach you to override the piezo receptor pressure.

Having a period of fasting can be beneficial for triggering autophagy. Although, some people struggle because of the desperation to eat when the gut is deflated.

Intestines, Fatty Acids, Amino Acids & Sugar

GLP1R neurons in your neck send axons into the intestines to sense stretch. They then send up the neck into the brain to trigger to inhibit eating.

GPR65 neurons do the same thing as to whether there are certain nutrients in the digestive tract.

More neurons that sense for omega 3 fatty acids, amino acids, and sugars – making you want to eat more. They have nothing to do with taste here.

Protocol 7: Reducing Sugar Cravings with Specific Amino Acid Nutrients

For extreme sugar cravings, replace sugar with amino acids and fatty acids. Take a sip or two of glutamine to soothe cravings.

Gut Acidity (Is Good)

Bacteria thrive in alkaline conditions. You want your gut to be acidic. Antacids cause the sphincters above the gut to shut.

Making your gut more acidic can ameliorate acid reflux. Gastric juices are powerful modulators of brain state.

Improving Nasal Microbiome

We have microbiota on all our mucosal tissues. How acid or alkaline the tissue is will determine what type of microbiota live there.

Breathing nasally improves the nasal microbiome, making it better at fighting infections. You create an additional layer of immune defense. Mouth breathing is effectively lowering your defense.

Inflammation & Microbiome: Fiber vs. Fermented

You want your stomach to be more acidic. With a healthier microbiome you decrease inflammatory cytokines within the body and brain. The pro-inflammatory TNF-alpha or IL-6 are not at high levels.

High fiber diet vs. adding fermented foods to a normal diet. The study looked at the proteome (like a genome of proteins made in the body) with fecal samples and blood draw. They then returned them to their normal diet afterwards. Fermented food diet high outperformed the high fiber diet in lowering inflammatory markers and improving immune function. Some people who ate the high fiber diet had better carbohydrate digestion afterwards, but not everybody did well on it. How well you do on certain diets may well be determined by your food eating history.

Protocol 8: Reducing Inflammation & Enhancing Brain Function w/Fermented Foods

We should all be eating 2-3 servings of fermented foods daily. When the correct gut microbiota is present inflammation markers go down, autoimmune markers go down, cognition improves, sleep improves, autism spectrum symptoms get better, IBS improves, etc. Fermented foods help to improve acidity levels as well as provide pre and probiotics.

Leaking Guts, Auto-Immune Function & Glutamine

Your gut has tight junctions that form a barrier that only molecules of a certain size can get through. In leaky gut, these junctions can’t work at a certain pH and you create holes. Some foods leak through the gut into the bloodstream. Antibodies react to proteins that get through and people start to get food allergies and autoimmune conditions.

Ingesting glutamine can help alleviate leaky gut.

Gut Acidity: HCl (hydrochloric acid), Pepsin

Some people with food allergies or autoimmune disorders have been taking HCl to try to improve digestion during meals. Usually combined with the enzyme pepsin.

Probiotics & Brain Fog

People who supplement with a lot of probiotics may get brain fog, from putting too much of one strand in and lowering biodiversity. Just ingest fermented foods.

Conditions like sarcopenia have been shown to have reduced symptoms with a healthy microbiota.

Nausea: Happens in Your Brain; Area Postrema

Your BBB is like the gut lining, as it has tight junctions that only certain molecules can pass through. Because you can’t grow new neurons, you need the BBB.

Some chemicals can sneak through little holes into the brain. Some neurons sit behind the holes to sense the chemistry of the blood. The area postrema (brain stem) sits next to the chemoreceptor trigger zone. When there are pathogens or it is too acidic, these areas trigger motor reflexes in the abdominal wall that make you throw up. These areas respond to blood chemistry and also to things that we think and believe, and even particular memories. This is why when some people viewing somebody else vomiting or heaving makes them want to vomit too. The neurons in the area postrema are very sensitive to prior experience of interactions with negative things.

The neurons are here to keep the system safe. Alcohol at excessive levels in the bloodstream trigger the postrema to cause vomiting.

If you ingest something in lipid form, because cells are surrounded by them, fat can move through and lead to poisonous substances getting stuck.

Protocol 9: Reducing Nausea: Ginger, Peppermint, CBD, etc.

1-3g of ginger reducing ginger. Same with peppermint.

Cannabis and/or CBD change the threshold for firing in the postrema.

Fever: Triggers and Control Knobs: OVLT

Fever directly relates to interoception. Fever is an increase in body temperature triggered by neurons in the brain, which is triggered by toxins, viruses, or bacteria in the bloodstream.

Proteins that are normally not seen in a region and the body tries to cook the “bad” thing.

A set of neurons (circumventricular organs) that sit near the third ventricle, that can detect what’s in the cerebral spinal fluid. Having access to the chemical condition of the body. The organum vasculosum of the lateral terminalis (OVLT) neurons respond to toxins in the bloodstream and release inflammatory cytokines like ILK-1, as well as changes conditions in the body by communicating with the preoptic area – that cranks up the temperature.

Protocol 10: Cooling the Blood Properly

If you increase your body temperature up too much you can kill off neurons. If you put a cold towel or ice pack on the neck or head during fever you will cool the blood going to the brain, triggering the brain (preoptic area) to crack the temperature up in response. Cool the feet, hands, and face instead.

Taking NSAIDs can sometimes be good but in other circumstances because it reduces your fever it will allow pyrogens (pathogen causing high fever) to survive.

Sensing Feelings, Vagus Nerve, Stress

Whenever we hear about the vagus we think of it being relaxing since it is part of the PNS. The reality is it is mostly stimulating. It is not a calming system; it is a communicating system. As well as a motor system.

Stress itself will alter the chemistry of the gut, because of shutting the vagus nerve and quietening the communicating from gut to brain.

Mental Emotions Reflect Bodily Conditions

The vagus nerve is responsible for emotion by pooling or aggregating the conditions of your gut, heart rate, breathing – to send to the brain for emotions.

We tend to think of what bothers us as a cognitive event. However, the brain doesn’t know what to do with that information. All it knows are internal conditions. They give rise to how you feel. Displayed by facial expressions.

Your face, pupil size, tonality, the degree to which you’re smiling or frowning, can give others a signal of your gut and overall health.

Sensing Other People’s Emotions via the Body

When we know somebody well, our heart rate and breathing begins to mimic them. Registering internal states, even at a distance (NOT MIRROR NEURONS).

Protocol 11: Increasing Interoception, Sensing Heartbeat

You can enhance this ability very quickly. When you stop taking in exteroceptive information you can perceive your heartrate better.

Direct your awareness to your heartbeat. By practicing this, you can strengthen the vagal connections between body and brain. You can also develop the ability to detect when you are not feeling good about something earlier. Or when you feel really good about a person or situation.

Tuning one’s interoception is easy and extremely beneficial for engaging with others, focusing, and responding to your current chemical and mechanical conditions.

Controlling Your Dopamine for Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab Podcast #39

Introduction & Tool 1 to Induce Lasting Dopamine

Cold water exposure leads to high levels of norepinephrine and dopamine. Sitting in cold water progressively increased dopamine levels up to 250% and it was sustained afterwards.

What Dopamine (Really) Does

We you experience something or crave something really desirable, afterwards your baseline level drops. This is tonic (low level) and phasic (peaks above baseline).

Neurotransmitters mediate local communication between nerve cells and neuromodulators influence the communication of many neurons. Dopamine release can change the probability that certain neural circuits are active and others inactive.

It is responsible for motivation, drive, and time keeping. It is also important for movement. In Parkinson’s and Lewy bodies dementia, there is a depletion of dopamine, leading to shaky movements, loss of movement, and drops in affect.

Two Main Neural Circuits for Dopamine

Ventral tegmentum (ventral part of floor) to ventral striatum and the PFC (mesocorticolimbic pathway). This is the pathway where dopamine influences motivation, drive, and craving. This is the pathway that gets affected during addiction. The classic reward pathway.

The substantia nigra connects to the dorsal striatum (nigrostriatal pathway). Movement pathway.

How Dopamine Is Released: Locally and Broadly

Dopamine can be released from a synapse to bind locally, and also dumped in a broad volumetric release to affect many neurons.

Many drugs and supplements that increase dopamine will make it harder to sustain dopamine release over time as well as lowering your peaks. Volumetric release and local release at the same time makes the difference between peak and baseline smaller. How pleasurable or exciting something is, doesn’t just depend on the height of the peak, it also depends on the peak relative to the baseline.

Fast and Slow Effects of Dopamine

Dopamine works through g-protein coupled receptors, which is much slower than ionotropic receptors. However, they can have roader effects and gene transcription.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00455-7

Dopamine Neurons Co-Release Glutamate

Neurons that release dopamine, co-release glutamate, stimulating action. Dopamine tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal and alertness. Pursuing and craving things outside of yourself.

Your Dopamine History Really Matters

Your experience of life and level of motivation and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience.

If you scroll social media and you see something you really like, dopamine hit. Then you get to something else and it might be “meh.” When it may have been more interesting if you had of seen it first.

Parkinson’s & Drugs That Kill Dopamine Neurons. My Dopamine Experience

What MPTP does is it kills the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra and mesocorticolimbic pathway. This leads to a locked in syndrome.

He got giardia and the doctors injected thorazine (an antipsychotic), which blocked his dopamine receptors making him feel uncontrollably miserable.

Tool 3 Controlling Dopamine Peaks & Baselines

Some people are more mellow and others are more excitable and motivated. Epinephrine tends to wake up neural circuits and “hangs out” with dopamine. L-dopa->Dopamine->Epinephrine (adrenaline)->Norepinephrine (noradrenaline). Dopamine colors the subjective experience of an activity to make it more pleasurable. Epinephrine is more about energy. Alone, it can be fear, paralysis, and trauma. With dopamine, it can be excitement.

Chocolate, Sex (Pursuit & Behavior), Nicotine, Cocaine, Amphetamine, Exercise

What you eat or do will affect your dopamine levels transiently. Chocolate will increase base dopamine 1.5 times. The pursuit of sex and the act increase it 2 times. Nicotine that is smoked will increase 2.5 times above baseline (very short lived). Cocaine will increase 2.5 times. Amphetamine – 10 times. Exercise will have different increases depending on how much you like it – typically 2 times.

Tool 4 Caffeine Increases Dopamine Receptors

Will increase dopamine a little. Regular ingestion increases upregulation of certain dopamine receptors (D2 and D3). Meaning you’ll be able to experience more of dopamine’s effects. Layering lots of dopamine releasing activities can cause big problems to your motivation.

Pursuit, Excitement & Your “Dopamine Setpoint”

We need to pursue food, social acceptance/interaction, and sex to survive. Dopamine is a driver for these requirements as well as others. The going out into the wild and foraging part was driven by dopamine. The release after acquiring food drops so that you can pursue more. The more excited you are after something the bigger the drop will be. It always takes a while to get back to our baseline. Also, the more you keep doing the same thing to bring excitement, the less exciting it will be over time.

Your Pleasure-Pain Balance & Defining “Pain”

When we seek something we like, there’s some pleasure, but then there is a bit of pain that drives us to want more. Pain comes from the lack of dopamine that follows.

When released from synaptic vesicles (the readily releasable pool), dopamine will not be in high enough quantities after it has been taken back up.

Addiction, Dopamine Depletion, & Replenishing Dopamine

When somebody pursues a drug that boosts their dopamine, it drops well below baseline. They make the mistake of pursuing it again to get the peak again but it doesn’t feel as good. Eventually the dopamine hit only takes away some pain.

Dopamine is evoked by many activities but there is only the one currency. So, people can feel burnt out after a while of “working hard and playing hard.” The subtle change won’t be noticed until they can’t get pleasure from anything.

If we experience a drop in dopamine baseline (feeling depressed or inattentive), we should do a 30 day fast from the activities that are dopaminergic seeking behaviors.

Tool 5 Ensure Your Best (Healthy) Dopamine Release

Intermittent and random release of dopamine. Don’t expect or try to seek high dopamine levels. The internet, casinos, and social media are constantly preying on your evolutionary desire to keep pursuing. An intermittent reward schedule will keep your dopamine levels relatively stable.

By layering on too many dopamine releasing activities to get your “best experience,” such as taking a pre-workout drink before exercising, training with a friend, while listening to your favorite music, and then eating a high dopamine meal afterwards – you’ll make this activity heavily conditional. Sometimes you should just do the exercise instead of layering everything else on. Vary your reward. Your ability to experience motivation and pleasure for what comes next is affected by how you felt last time.

Maybe flip a coin to work out your conditions.

Smart Phones: How They Alter Our Dopamine Circuits

Not only are we distracted when we use our phones, we are also lowering our baseline levels of dopamine by constantly scrolling (slot machine effect). Achieving a massive dopamine increase on the phone makes doing normal things boring and unfulfilling.

Stimulants & Spiking Dopamine: Counterproductive for Work, Exercise & Attention

A lot of energy drinks and pre-workouts have precursors to dopamine, which may undercut your motivation and progress.

Intermittent spiking of dopamine is the way to go, so you don’t chronically drop them.

Caffeine Sources Matter: Yerba Mate & Dopamine Neuron Protection

Yerba mate contains caffeine, GLP1, anti-oxidants, and is also neuroprotective to dopamine neurons in the movement and motivation pathway.

Caffeine & Neurotoxicity of MDMA

Caffeine has been shown to increase the efficacy of dopamine receptors, which can lead to neurotoxicity of MDMA when combined.

Amphetamine, Cocaine & Detrimental Rewiring of Dopamine Circuits

Ingesting amphetamine and cocaine limits plasticity and learning. Can put it into a state where it can’t learn or modify itself to get better for a long time.

Ritalin, Adderall, (Ar)Modafinil: ADHD versus non-Prescription Uses

The use of these substances to improve dopamine levels may lead to similar effects of amphetamines.

Tool 6 Stimulating Long-Lasting Increases in Baseline Dopamine

Cold water exposure for boosting the immune system, increasing dopamine baseline and releasing epinephrine quickly. The levels of epinephrine will depend on how familiar to the exposure you are. Dopamine reaches 2.5 times above baseline with a sustained period of exposure (1 hour).

There was a release of cortisol but it was transient. Calm yourself by widening your gaze. Or lean into the friction to release more epinephrine. Dopamine release will be triggered regardless.

Most people report a heightened level of calm after getting out. Once you are cold water adapted, you will no longer evoke this dopamine release.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004210050065

Tool 7 Tuning Your Dopamine for Ongoing Motivation

Because of the way dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard for the sake of a reward after can make hard work more challenging and less likely to want to do hard work again.

Intrinsic vs. extrinsic reward. Children rewarded for drawing made them less likely to do it on their own. If you get a peak, it will lower your baseline and your cognitive interpretation will be that you did it for a reward.

When we engage in an activity for the sake of reward, we extend the time of expectation. This leads to dissociation of the task from the reward at the end, resulting in less dopamine release for the task itself.

Growth mindset – striving is the end goal. Learn to access rewards from doing and being. Find reward in friction. Don’t focus on the end goal unless you want the activity to be more painful.

Don’t layer in more sources of dopamine. Embrace the pain and effort. Tell yourself the effort is the good part. Then it becomes reflexive for all types of effort. You are doing it by choice and you enjoy it. You want it to get better.

Tool 8 Intermittent Fasting: Effects on Dopamine

When we eat, we get a dopamine release, especially after a deprivation state. This is what happens to a lot of people who intermittently fast. Attaching dopamine release to the deprivation and getting more focus and a clear mind.

Knowledge of knowledge (benefits of fasting or studying) can help shape the circuits for reward.

Validation of Your Pre-Existing Beliefs Increases Dopamine

Hearing something that reinforces someone’s prior beliefs can lead to dopamine release.

Tool 9 Quitting Sugar & Highly Palatable Foods: 48 Hours

If you ingest something you like, then eat something sweet or savory, then eat the original food again, it won’t taste as good. Just go 2 days without overly palatable foods.

Pornography

The intensity of pornography can negatively shape real life interactions.

Wellbutrin & Depression & Anxiety

Wellbutrin increases dopamine and epinephrine. It seems to avoid sexual side effects usually found with SSRIs. Although, it can increase anxiety.

Tool 10 Mucuna Pruriens, Prolactin, Sperm, Crash Warning

Mucuna pruriens is pretty much L-DOPA. It can decrease prolactin, improve sperm concentration and quality. However, any dopamine increasing products will result in a dopamine crash afterwards.

Tool 11 L-Tyrosine: Dosages, Duration of Effects & Specificity

L-tyrosine is an amino acid precursor to dopamine. 500-1000mg. Can increase levels within 45 minutes and then drop about 30 minutes later.

Tool 12 Avoiding Melatonin Supplementation, & Avoiding Light 10pm-4am

Melatonin can impact the dopamine pathway 60 minutes after administration.

Tool 13 Phenylethylamine (with Alpha-GPC) For Dopamine Focus/Energy

PEA can increase synaptic levels of dopamine and is found in chocolate. A sharp increase for 30-45 minutes.

Tool 14 Huperzine A

Can increase acetylcholine production and increases of dopamine in the hippocampus and PFC.

Social Connections, Oxytocin & Dopamine Release

Oxytocin and social connection can directly stimulate the dopaminergic pathway (ventral tegmental area). Seeking social connections are important. This is why we have motivation to seek social interactions.

Direct & Indirect Effects: e.g., Maca; Synthesis & Application

Gut microbiome, maca root (reduce cortisol and indirectly increase dopamine), etc., indirectly increase dopamine.

Time Perception & Entrainment by Dopamine, Serotonin & Hormones | Huberman Lab Podcast #46

Introducing Time Perception, Note on Fasting & Supplements

Supplements breaking a fast will be contextual depending on glucose content and personal glucose responsiveness. Fish oil, athletic greens, and other low-no glucose containing supplements should be fine.

Entrainment, Circannual Entrainment, Melatonin

Entrainment is the way in which your internal processes, biology, or psychology are linked to a certain thing, such as circadian rhythms.

Light inhibits melatonin release, which is responsible for making you sleepy and regulating testosterone and estrogen. If you flick on a light at night, your melatonin levels will crash. Day length varies around the world and seasons. When days are short, melatonin levels are higher.

For a given 8-hour day in spring, melatonin levels are getting less and less, meaning the person feels more energetic. The melatonin signal is the way in which your internal state (mood, sense of energy, appetite) is entrained/matched to the rotation of the Earth around the sun.

Seasonal Oscillations in Testosterone & Estrogen, Tool 1

In longer days, people tend to release more testosterone and estrogen. Correlated with desire to seek romantic partners and interactions, aggression, and mood.

2 hours of light exposure to the skin resulted in significant increases in testosterone and estrogen. We are entrained and matched to the external dark/light cycle and as the day length changes, so do our hormones.

Our perception of time is both conscious and oscillatory (relating to daylight, hormones, and neuromodulators).

Circadian Timing, Tools 1, 2, 3 (for Circadian Entrainment)

Every cell has a 24-hour timer where a gene is expressed (inhibited) when there is very little of a specific protein around, leading to DNA making the RNA, translating it into a protein, this protein goes way up, then the gene is shut off. When that protein’s levels go down, the gene gets expressed again. This happens on a 24-hour cycle for certain proteins in all cells. Light and a lack of light entrain the cell timing to ensure this happens at the right time. If the cells aren’t linked to the sunlight, this can result in dysfunction.

View 10-30 minutes of sunlight upon waking, do it again in the afternoon, artificial lights are okay during the daytime, in the evening turn them off. Try not to wear sunglasses, normal eyeglasses are fine. The light viewing you do or the avoidance of it at night sets your fundamental layer of time perception.

Tool 4: Timing Physical Activity; Tool 5: Timing Eating Window

Engage in physical activity in fairly regular times of the day. It doesn’t need to be every day, but try to keep your timing consistent (+ or – 2 hours).

Eat at fairly regular times or within a certain window of time.

When Circadian Entrainment is Disrupted, Time Perception Suffers

People underestimate how long they’ve been somewhere without the cue of clocks, artificial light or sunlight. Even the perception of shorter time scales (2 minutes) was disrupted when their circadian clocks were disrupted. You want your entrainment to be really locked in for decent time perception.

Tool 6: Ultradian (90min) Cycles & Focus

Our daily and nighttime rhythms are broken up into ultradian rhythms. During learning periods, we have a 90-minute time block before our attention and focus tends to drop off. We are entrained to the release of particular neurochemicals, such as acetylcholine and dopamine, that allow your brain to focus (basic rest-activity cycle). After 90 minutes these neurons are far less likely to engage in releasing these chemicals.

You can initiate one of these cycles whenever you want. Meaning you can set a work schedule. It is suggested not to do more than 3 of these per day, spaced out 2-4 hours. Except for your sleep cycles.

Our Sense of the Passage of Time: Present, Prospective, Retrospective

Perception of the passage of time in the present (frame rate/interval timing).

Prospective timing is like a stop watch measuring things as they go forward.

Retrospective time is how you measured time from the past.

It all boils down to dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.

Dopamine (& Nor/epinephrine) Lead to Time Overestimation; Frame Rate

The more dopamine released, the more we tend to overestimate how much time has passed – feeling like time has gone much faster. Noradrenaline/norepinephrine too.

They cause fine slicing of your time bins, like increasing the frame rate of your camera.

Serotonin & Time Underestimation; Decreased Frame Rate

When serotonin is released, people tend to underestimate the amount of time that has passed. They’ve also tested this with cannabis, which increases serotonin and the cannabinoid receptor activation. Slower frame rates.

Dopamine vs. Serotonin Across the Day; Tool 7: When to Do Rigid vs. Creative Work

During the first half of the day, dopamine and norepinephrine is elevated in the brain, body, and bloodstream. The second half has more serotonin. Meaning our perception of the passage of time will be very different in the early part of the day compared to the evening.

Do the hardest or most important task in the morning. Less about sensing accomplishment and more about being more cognitively primed to perform better.

Activities that involve more creative thinking and blending of different aspects of memory, task utilization, and brainstorming would be better suited for the more serotonergic evening.

Example of Tool 7

Work that adheres to rigid rules, such as math, a recipe, execution of musical scales, physical skills, or accounting, essentially anything that requires precision should be done early on in the day. The afternoon should be anything that can be creative, where this is no right or wrong answer.

How Sleep Deprivation Degrades Performance

Sleep disruption dysregulates time perception, making it hard to concentrate.

Trauma, “Over-clocking” & Memories; Adjusting Rates of Experience

Many people who have been through traumatic experiences overclock, where levels of dopamine and norepinephrine go up so much during a particular event that everything feels slow motion.

The memory system is basically a space-time recorder, creating a record of what is happening. Particular neurons firing at specific rates get recorded, measuring the space code and rate code/relative firing/timing. Meaning you can take certain memories and stamp them with different firing rates and timing to prevent having to store a whole new memory. Overclocking is where the frame rate is so high that the memory gets stamped down, and people have a hard time shaking that memory and the emotions associated with it.

Dealing with this trauma requires dealing with the emotion and also changing the rate of the experience of the memory by deliberately speeding up or slowing down the memory. Trying to allow the person to take control of the rate of that memory. Allowing an uncoupling of the emotional weight. Turning a scream into a mumble.

Dopamine, Spontaneous Blinking & Time Perception; Tool 8

Time dilates after spontaneous blinking. Increases in dopamine are associated with increases in spontaneous blink rate. So, the more aroused we are, the higher the blink rate, and an overestimation of time.

Deliberate Cold Exposure, Dopamine, Tool 9: Adjusting Frame Rate in Discomfort

Cold exposure can increase baselines of dopamine dramatically, also changing your perception of time, making it feel slow motion.

Fun “Feels Fast” BUT Is Remembered as Slow; Boring Stuff “Feels Slow,” Recall as Fast

This seems to be an efficiency in the brain for storing memories. When people are isolated, time dilates. Timers also vary on our level of excitement. Dopaminergic fine slices and serotonergic blocks.

Retrospective Time, Context Variation & Enhanced Bonding with Places & People

The more novel experiences we have in a place, the longer we feel we’ve been there. This is also true for social interactions. When we move to multiple novel environments with somebody else, we tend to feel like we know them better. The context and experiences will contribute but it’s the actual perception of time and the storage of memory based on that slice of time will be logged differently.

Dopamine Release Resets the Start of Each Time Bin on Our Experience

Basketball watching experiment. You can measure surprise based on the release of dopamine in the mesolimbic reward pathway (VTA and nucleus accumbens). When something a subject wanted to see happened dopamine would be released, as well as unexpected/surprising events, even if it is a negative surprise. The frequency of that release will determine the perception of time at those markers. How often you release dopamine will set a new frame rate or phase of memories. Subconsciously carving up your experience.

Habits & Time Perception; Tool 10 (Setting Functional Units of Each Day)

Placing habitual routines throughout your day is a good way to incorporate your dopamine system. Meaning you can create time blocks and setting the frame rate of your day. Habits can invoke dopamine release and create time markers so you can distinguish periods of your day. Then you can break your day into smaller and more functional units.

Synthesis & Book Suggestion (Your Brain Is a Time Machine by D. Buonomano)

The Science of Making & Breaking Habits | Huberman Lab Podcast #53

Habits versus Reflexes, Learning, Neuroplasticity

Habits mean that our nervous system learns, not necessarily consciously. Learning is neuroplasticity. The process by which our nervous system changes in response to experience.

Goal-Based Habits vs. Identity-Based Habits

Immediate goal-based habits are habits that are designed to bring you a specific outcome when you do them. For example, a zone 2 exercise program for fat loss.

Identity-based habits are where there is a larger over-arching theme to the habit. For example, being a fit person.

How Long It (Really) Takes to Form a Habit; Limbic-Friction

For the same habit to be formed, it can take 18 days all the way up to 254 days for different individuals to form that same habit. The habit this study looked at was going for a post-prandial walk. The habit was considered learned when they were doing it 85% of the time and not having to spend much mental effort to do it.

Probably has to do with how well people deal with limbic friction – the strain that is required in order to overcome anxiousness and feeling too tired or not motivated. Either too calm or too alert. Limbic friction can be used to determine how much activation energy is required to engage in a behavior.

Linchpin Habits

Certain habits that make other habits easier to execute. Usually things you enjoy. Placing the linchpin habits earlier bias the likelihood that we will do other habits that are similar or aligned.

Mapping Your Habits; Habit Strength, Context-Dependence

Habit strength is measured by how context dependent it is (do you do the same things the same way when you move through certain environments?) and how much limbic friction is required to execute those habits. How much top down/conscious override is required? Do you need to be really alert or really calm to get into the appropriate state for it?

Knowing these answers will tell you how embedded the habit is in your system.

Automaticity

Neural circuits can perform it automatically.

Tool 1: Applying Procedural Memory Visualizations

With each repetition of a habit, small changes occur in the cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with procedural memory. Getting into the mindset of procedural memory is very important to adopting a new habit. Think through each step in the mind to shift towards a much higher likelihood of doing it.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417

Hebbian Learning, NMDA receptors

When particular neurons are coactive. Involves activation of NMDA receptors. When the neuron gets a strong stimulus, this receptor results in triggering more receptors to come to the surface to lower the threshold of firing next time, making them slightly more reflexive.

Tool 2: Task Bracketing; Dorsolateral Striatum

The basal ganglia are involved in action execution and suppression (GO, NO-GO). Some people find it easier to do things than not to. Task bracketing involves neurons within the basal ganglia (dorsolateral striatum) and is important for the establishment of behaviors associated with the habit but not the habit itself. Activated at the beginning and end of the habit, framing the events. This underlies whether a habit will be context dependent or not. If these neurons are robust, it is likely we will go and complete the habit no matter what, e.g., brushing teeth.

When the dorsolateral striatum is engaged, your body and brain are primed to execute a habit.

States of Mind, Not Scheduling Time Predicts Habit Strength

It is a myth that if you’re really specific about when you are going to perform a habit that it will stick. It might be true short term but not long term. Our nervous system generates behaviors based on state, such as what level of activation must take place how much focus we have, how fatigued we are, etc. Not time.

Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan: Phase 1

0-8 hours after waking up. Assuming 7am-10pm waking time, but you can adopt it to your schedule.

Norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine are elevated. Cortisol is also higher as well as body temperature. View sunlight within first 30 minutes, physical exercise of some kind, cold exposure (less clothing, cold bath/shower, ice bath), caffeine ingestion, fasting (lead to more NE and dopa), foods rich in tyrosine, alpha GPC, etc. These will all place your body and brain in a state in which you are better able to engage in activities that require high limbic friction. Your whole system is action and focus oriented.

Take the habits that require the highest limbic friction and put them in this phase of the day. Creating task bracketing so your nervous system will predict when you are going to lean into friction.

Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan: Phase 2

9-14 hours after waking up.

The amount of dopamine, norepinephrine, and cortisol start to come down. Serotonin starts to rise. Lending itself to a more relaxed state of being.

Start tapering the amount of light viewing (artificial light) unless it is sunlight. NSDR (meditation, yoga nidra, self-hypnosis), heat and sauna (induces a higher serotonergic state), ashwagandha, etc.

Take on habits that require little friction. Journaling, practicing music (maybe a challenging piece), language learning, etc. Something you are already doing that doesn’t have much resistance but has a creative/learning component. Bracketing them will make them more likely to be done. Exercise can take place in this portion but maybe do NSDR or some other relaxation protocol afterwards to wind down quickly.

Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan: Phase 3

15-24 hours after waking up.

Facilitating neuroplasticity. Low to no light, room temperature low (body needs to drop 2-3 degrees), well fed enough so you don’t wake hungry but eating no later than 2-4 hours before sleep, magnesium threonate, theanine, apigenin, not drinking caffeine. If you wake up and struggle to get back to sleep, don’t turn lights on, maybe use the reveri app or NSDR protocols.

When you do things at particular phases of the day under particular conditions of neurochemistry, you are giving the brain predictable sets of sequences that during sleep it can better consolidate the information and reduce limbic friction.

Habit Flexibility

Moving a habit around can be beneficial for developing context independence. Meaning it is something that is truly engrained that can be integrated with other sensory maps. No longer needing to be bracketed.

If it doesn’t take much activation energy and you can do it in any context, you have truly formed a habit.

Should We Reward Ourselves? How? When? When NOT to.

Reward prediction error is a way to look at whether to reward ourselves or not. If you expect a reward and it comes, a behavior is more likely to occur again. However, the amount of dopamine reward experienced will be higher if unexpected.

If we expect a reward and it doesn’t come the pattern of dopamine release will follow a different contour. The level of dopamine will drop below baseline.

Tool 4: “Dopamine Spotlighting” & Task Bracketing

If you are trying to build or break a habit it is useful to think about the events that precede or follow the event to cast a spotlight around where dopamine will be released. Positively anticipate the onset and offset of the event, leaning into the effort.

You can’t lie to yourself, as you know when you’re lying. This is why you need to be honest to yourself. Mentally walking through the steps that need to be undertaken and to broaden the time bin, positively anticipating the period heading into the habit and the feeling afterwards. Drawing a larger envelope around the desired habit.

Pick a habit you want to form, write down or think about the sequence of steps involved to execute the habit, and then write down or think about what the sequence of events that need to precede that habit are (10-15 minutes before), as well as the immediate sequence of events/feelings that will occur after that habit, then call the whole thing a habit execution. Then positively associating with the idea that you are going to complete that entire sequence, you will engage reward prediction error in the proper way that the dopamine surge can lend itself towards motivation.

Tool 5: The 21-Day Habit Installation & Testing System

Set out to perform 6 new habits that you would like to do for 21 days. They will fit into specific periods of the day dependent on the Tool 3 exercise. The expectation is that you’ll only complete 4 of them per day. The real objective is the habit of creating habits. You can shuffle habits in and out of those time slots if need be.

If you miss a day, there is no punishment. It’s important that you don’t do habit slip compensation (doing more the next day). Just get right back on the horse. There seems to be a powerful effect in the scientific literature of doing 2-day bins. Doing these habits for 2 days in a row and then mentally resetting, as if you are testing out the ability to actually achieve them.

After 21 days you stop deliberately engaging in this tight schedule and just go on autopilot. Ask yourself how many of those particular habits are automatically incorporated. This means that every 21 days you don’t just try and add new habits. You just maintain the ones that work for you. It will allow you to assess if you actually can make room for more habits after the second round. Install habits first round and test the second round. Once you achieve those 6 habits you can move forward.

Breaking Habits: Long-Term (Synaptic) Depression

Stress reduction, positive routines, etc., will help to eliminate bad habits by proxy but if they are well engrained you may need to actively unlearn them (LTD).

If neuron A and neuron B is active, but at a different time or outside a particular temporal window then long term depression will begin.

To take them out of synchrony you can reward not doing an activity or punish yourself for doing it. Or, you can eliminate judgement altogether and just measure every time you do that behavior (food diary or recording screen time).

Notifications Don’t Work

Effective immediate term but not long term.

Electric shocks or paying out works but not if they are being monitored. The punishment just isn’t bad enough.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1539449219876877?journalCode=otjb

Tool 6: Break Bad Habits with Post-Bad-Habit “Positive Cargo”

You need to take the period immediately afterwards and capture the sequence of events and start integrating a new habit directly after. Engage in another positive behavior and you start to create a double habit. Say, if you picked up your phone, you would go hydrate or do breathwork afterwards. Creating a temporal mismatch (closed loop). Making it easier for you to intervene and rewrite the script of the bad habit. Changing the whole nature of the sequence of neurons, degrading the old habit with conscious awareness once remapping has happened.

Dr. Jack Feldman: Breathing for Mental & Physical Health & Performance | Huberman Lab Podcast #54

Why We Breathe

Mechanical: For body metabolism we need oxygen, when oxygen is utilized, it produces CO2. The CO2 affects the blood pH so we need to get rid of it to regulate that pH. Breathing expands the lungs, pressure drops, bringing air in to equalize that differential air pressure. The diaphragm presses down, the ribcage rotates up and out to expand the cavity. Exhale is passive, like letting go of a spring.

The breathing skeletal muscles (external intercostals) don’t do anything unless the nervous system tells them to. They contract via innervation from the brain stem.

Neural Control of Breathing: “Pre-Bötzinger Complex”

Found in the brainstem. Every breath begins with these neurons beginning to be active and then connecting to the motor neurons. Exhalation is the passive release of the lungs and ceasing of contraction.

Nose vs Mouth Breathing

At rest, a tendency to do nasal breathing. No reason to expect any modulation of where the air is coming from at the Pre-Bötzinger level.

Skeletal vs. Smooth Muscles: Diaphragm, Intercostals & Airway Muscles

Smooth muscles involved in breathing are specialized muscles that are capable of contracting and relaxing on their own. They line the airways and contract when necessary. Problems, such as asthma, display inappropriate activation of these muscles. Not necessarily causing asthma though.

Two Breathing Oscillators: Pre-Bötzinger Complex & Parafacial Nucleus

Active exhalation comes from the breathing oscillator, the parafacial nucleus. Oscillator is something that goes in a cycle.

They found a sensor in the brain stem called the retro-trapezoidal nucleus.

How We Breathe Is Special (Compared to Non-Mammals)

Mammals have a diaphragm, allowing them to actively inspire.

The rate at which oxygen passes into the bloodstream is determined by the characteristics of the membrane, what the distance is between the alveolus and the capillary, and the surface area (the bigger the more O2 can get through). The branching out, balling of the alveoli, and the expansion to increase the surface area. 4-500 million alveoli (about 70sqm). All possible because of the diaphragm.

At rest, the volume of air in the lungs is about 2.5l. When you breathe you take in about half a liter by pulling on the membrane. Taking the partial pressure from 40mm/Hg to 100mm/Hg. This is enough to sustain normal metabolism. The brain utilizes about 20% of the oxygen we intake.

A key step in the ability to develop a large brain with continuous demand for oxygen is the diaphragm. This seems to be a limitation in birds, preventing larger brain sizes. They have a different way of moving past these oxygen exchange limitations.

Stomach & Chest Movements During Breathing

By default, we are obligate diaphragmatic breathers.

Physiological Sighs, Alveoli Re-Filling, Bombesin

When we are stressed or unhappy, we tend to take a physiological sigh. We do this about every 5 minutes, way more than previously expected. The alveoli’s fluid lining (surfactant) makes it easier to stretch. Water has surface tension, making sides stick, meaning alveoli tend to collapse. Taking a physiological sigh can pop them back open by creating greater pressure in the lungs.

If you watch somebody on a ventilator, every so often there will be a big breath to pop open alveoli.

The hypothalamus releases peptides during stress states (bombesin peptides), stimulating the Pre-Bötzinger complex, which has specific receptors for them.

If We Don’t Sigh, Our Lung (& General) Health Suffers

No hyperinflation occurs and lung health deteriorates. Any mammal before death will have a dying gasp, possibly at an attempt to resuscitate. People with diseases which affect neurons in the Pre-Bötzinger often die during sleep, possibly due to apnea. ALS and Parkinson’s.

https://www.longevitylifehacks.me/glymphatic-brain-clearance-system-draining-the-brain/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6420699/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137615/

Breathing, Brain States & Emotions

Kevin Yackle. https://breathe.phhp.ufl.edu/tag/kevin-yackle/

Meditating Mice, Eliminating Fear

30 minutes per day for 4 weeks (slowed breathing). The ones who went through the fear protocol froze much less than control mice.

Humans can respond to placebo effect. This is why they experiment on mice, to see if there is an actual physiological cause.

Brain States, Amygdala, Locked-In Syndrome, Laughing

When you change breathing, it affects your emotional state, as well as top-down emotional states affecting your breathing.

Locked in syndrome patients have no volitional control of breathing and can’t hold their breath. However, they can laugh at funny jokes reflexively.

Facial Expressions

Individuals who can pretend to put on believable facial expressions (great actors) might have some connection to motor control system that others don’t have, which can be trained.

Locus Coeruleus & Alertness

The locus coeruleus has connections and communicate all over the brain. Pre-Bötzinger originated neurons have been found to lead there and act as a modulator.

Olfaction also has a modulatory effect, the vagus nerve has afferents that have signs of oscillatory activity from the lungs (piezo receptors), CO2 levels can have an effect on ventilation.

Breath Holds, Apnea, Episodic Hypoxia, Hypercapnia

Tummo/WHM/Cyclic hyperventilation

Episodic hypoxia: Low O2 mixture for 2 minutes, breathing level would go up from being starved of O2, normal again, breathing rate goes back to normal. 3 minutes of hypoxia (8% O2), 5 minutes normoxia, 3 minutes of hypoxia, 5 minutes normoxia, 3 minutes, 5 minutes. After the last episode, breathing comes down but then rises and stays up for hours. Having a positive effect on motor function and cognitive function.

During episodic hypoxia your CO2 is constant, it’s just the oxygen that is low.

Stroke, Muscle Strength, TBI

Weakness in ankle extension, exposed to episodic hypoxia, strength of ankle extension went way up.

Potential for TBI recovery.

Cyclic Hyperventilation

Doesn’t think WHM can get people down to clinical levels of hypoxia.

Nasal Breathing, Memory, Right vs. Left Nostril

Hippocampus was more active, better recall during nasal breathing.

Nostril lateralization theory is plausible. Unsure on data.

Breathing Coordinates Everything: Reaction Time, Fear, etc.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia, pupils oscillate with the respiratory system (alert with inhale, pupils dilate, visual field narrows), fear response changes.

If you show individuals fearful faces, their measured response changes with inhalation (more fearful) vs. exhalation. Reaction time changes. Punching time/speed changes too.

Brain oscillations from breathing may be important for coordinating signals across neurons. Sensory signals coming from different areas of the brain need to be unified. Neurons are sensitive to changes in signals arriving by fractions of a millisecond. The oscillation of the brain, triggered by breathing rate, has the potential to unify those senses to better integrate them as one source of information.

Resetting the brain wave frequency in conditions like depression can be initiated by electroconvulsive shock, focal deep brain stimulation, and maybe breathing (30 minutes of slow breathwork possibly). The network will need to be broken down, once the breathing signal has weakened the previous “faulty” signal you can readjust the oscillations for a healthier thought pattern.

Dr. Feldman’s Breathwork Protocols, Post-Lunch

He gets positive effects from 5-20 minutes of box breathing (5:5:5 or 10). He is now trying Tummo. However, he is essentially still early on in his breathwork journey. 

Deliberately Variable Breathwork: The Feldman Protocol

The transition between states could be more important than the type of breathing practice itself. Variability providing autonomy and interoception.

Magnesium Threonate & Cognition & Memory

LTP seems to be better if you lower the background activity (noise) of neurons. This can be improved by increasing the amount of magnesium in the ECF in a tissue culture. Mice with more magnesium had higher cognitive function. Magnesium, in the form of other supplements, needs to be in too high of a concentration for cognitive effects, which results in diarrhea. Magnesium threonate is more effective at crossing the BBB. Threonate is a metabolite of vitamin C, which may supercharge the transporter. People usually report better sleeping. About 5% don’t tolerate threonate well.

The Science of Setting & Achieving Goals | Huberman Lab Podcast #55

Tool 1: Learn Fast(er) by the 85% Rule

Making errors for neuroplasticity: the state of frustration cues a greater number of brain areas to be more alert, so that subsequent attempts at learning have higher focus and a greater probability of acquiring the new information/skill. Errors are the entry point for neuroplasticity.

When trying to learn something new, you want to be succeeding about 85% of the time. Don’t make a goal too lofty, as you don’t make progress and end up quitting. Also, don’t make it too easy, as all it does is feed onto your self-esteem without subsequent growth.

While trying to learn, think pretty hard, but not so hard that you’re failing all of your attempts.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12552-4

Brain Circuits for Setting & Pursuing Goals

Humans are unique in our ability to orient our mind in terms of immediate goals, moderate term (week -month – year), and very long-term goals (years – decades). We can also have multiple goals at once. However, we need to juggle them appropriately so we don’t interfere with other regions of our life (people who prioritze work over family life for example).

The brains circuits involved in goal-directed behavior:

• The amygdala is involved in goal-directed behavior in the form of avoiding punishments (embarrassment, financial ruin, etc.). Anxiety and fear.
• The ventral striatum is part of the basal ganglia, which has two circuits (GO, NO-GO), for initiating action and preventing action.
• The lateral prefrontal cortex is involved in executive function, planning, thinking about things on different time scales and how our actions today will affect the future. Planning and thinking across different time scales.
• The orbitoprefrontal cortex is involved with meshing emotionality with the current state of progress and comparing to where it might be when closer to a goal. Emotionality in the present and where we will be with our goal.

It doesn’t matter what the goal is, the same circuits are involved.

Determining the Value of Goals

Value information: Is something worth pursuing?

Action: Which action to take and what not to take, given the perceived value of the goal.

Dopamine is the common currency by which we assess our progress towards things of a particular value. How we assess value of our pursuits.

Psychology of Goal Setting: Assessing Value, Action Steps

There seems to be a lot of redundant themes in the psychological literature. Especially in regards to when acronyms are used to popularize and remember ideas better. You sacrifice efficiency and necessity when trying to make them fit to a form that is aesthetically or psychologically pleasing.

• ABC method: Achievable, Believable, Committed.
• SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Bound.
• SMARTER: SMART, Ethical, and Rewarding.

The reality is, we only need to achieve the following:

• Goal setting: Know what “right” looks like. Have the end in mind.
• Assessment: Knowing if one is making progress.
• Goal Execution: Assessing value and if things are going well and action steps.

Peripersonal Space vs. Extrapersonal Space

Peripersonal is all the space within your body and your immediate environment. We have particular neural circuits and chemicals that are geared towards consumatory behaviors, such as using things and consuming things that are in your peripersonal space. Interoception (perception of internal body) and interacting with the environment to do something like drinking or eating things. Usually governed by the neuromodulator serotonin, and oxytocin to a lesser extent.

Extrapersonal space is everything beyond the confines of your reach. Some other location in space and time. The neuromodulators (mostly dopamine) are distinct from those of peripersonal space.

To be able to achieve our goals (becoming good at goal seeking) we need to be able to toggle between a clear understanding of our peripersonal space (what we have and how we feel in the immediate present) and the ability to understand what is out in the extrapersonal space and improving our ability to move into it.

We evaluate our progress in the peripersonal space (how we feel here and now), even if we haven’t initiated action yet. We need to orient ourselves into the extrapersonal space to actually move towards a goal.

It is a myth that visualization is the best way to achieve any goal. The following is a much better approach.

Visually Focusing on a Goal Line Improves Performance

Multitasking can be effective as it is placed at a particular time within your goal seeking behavior.

Most people can hold their attention for about 3 minutes at a time before switching to something else. Multitasking increases the release of epinephrine. Doing this before jumping into goal directed behavior can help us get into action. We use action to generate adrenaline. Just don’t multitask during the goal directed behavior. We require contracted focus/gaze to increase cognitive attention and focus.

When we focus on an external point (line on a wall), we are engaging in extrapersonal space/goal-seeking mode. When people had to focus on a goal line/finish line, they were more effective at reaching their goals (20% quicker) and with less perceived effort (17% less). Just by changing where somebody looks can elicit changes in the autonomic nervous system.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167219861438

How Vision Improves Performance: Blood Pressure

When our vision is brought to a common point (convergent eye movement), our visual system engages neurons that are involved in fine detail and fine changes over time.

The magnocellular pathway is involved in taking in global information about lots of things happening around us. Relaxation of the nervous system is involved with changes in alertness or attention.

The visual system can change the alertness level by communicating with the circulatory system. Blood pressure increases when we focus on a convergent point. Systolic pressure (when the heart contracts) increases, which creates a systemic increase in fuel utilization and oxygen availability. Adrenaline is also released, making us more likely to lean into our goals. Imagining a goal has to be combined with the physical pursuit of a goal.

When our vision is broad, there is a reduction in goal directed behavior and systolic blood pressure.

Tool 2: Use Focal Vision to Initiate Goal Pursuit

If you already know what goal you want to pursue, hold your visual attention to one point and hold it there for 30-60s. You can blink. This places your brain and body into a state of readiness before moving into actions that help you to pursue your goal.

Tool 3: Use Aged Self-Images to Self-Motivate

For long term goals, such as saving money for later in life, viewing an aged picture (at the age of when you will reap the rewards of your goals) makes you more likely to save for retirement. Thinking about the future vs. viewing pictures of ourselves shows that using the visual system, instead of just visualizing, is more powerful at generating behaviors that are conducive towards long-term goal success.

Tool 4: Visualization of Goals is Only Helpful at the Start

It is effective to think of “the win” to get the goal started, but not for continuing/maintaining pursuit. A ramping up of readiness in the beginning.

Tool 5: Visualizing Failure is the Best Ongoing Motivator

Visualizing failure near doubles the probability of success. Picturing what will happen if you don’t get up and work towards your goal. Much more effective than visualizing the win. Foreshadowing failure. The amygdala is a crucial part of goal-seeking neural circuitry and requires this foreshadowing of failure, and the subsequent increase of systolic blood pressure and adrenaline.

Tool 6: Make Goals Moderately Lofty

The probability of achieving a goal depends on whether one sets a goal that is easy, moderate, or impossible. When people set goals that are too easy it doesn’t recruit enough of the ANS to make pursuit likely. Systolic blood pressure doesn’t increase.

If the goal is too lofty, it doesn’t internally process as being likely, and thus does not increase systolic pressure and the associated changes either.

There is a near doubling of systolic blood pressure, and also the likelihood of achieving the goal, if the goal is moderate level (difficult but not so lofty that it crashes your system).

Tool 7: Avoid Goal Distraction; Focus on 1-2 Major Goals Per Year

Limit your options. Trying to pursue too many goals at once is counterproductive. 1-3 major goals per year is plenty.

The greater the number of things in our visual attention, the more we can draw our attention away from our goal. This results in people to buying more stuff in busy looking shops. Reduce distraction in your visual system to increase focus.

Tool 8: Ensure Specificity of Goals, Weekly Assessment

A concrete plan is essential for an achieved outcome. There needs to be action steps otherwise the progress will have little meaning.

Assessment of progress weekly is a good rule of thumb for assessing action goals.

Dopamine Reward Prediction Error, Controlling Dopamine

The greatest activation of dopamine is when something is positive and novel. If we anticipate something, there is a release in dopamine during that anticipation but the experience only has a smaller release. If we predicted something and it doesn’t happen, there is a drop in dopamine below baseline (disappointment).

The physiological effects of being forced to do something has opposing health effects to wanting to do something (rats getting fit and healthy running on wheel vs. getting sick and stressed when forced).

Pick a particular interval/milestone at which you will assess progress and make the reward cognitive. An interval that you can maintain consistently.

If we constantly place ourselves into a mode of thinking we are failing, we won’t churn out much dopamine. This is different to the act of picturing the possibility of failure as a motivating factor. Reward yourself cognitively weekly, by telling youself that you are on track based on your metrics. Dopamine itself, provides a state of motivation and readiness for achieving goals, also generating adrenaline for movement and action. A self-amplifying system. If you check yourself weekly you can also set yourself up for positive unexpected rewards, increasing motivation and likeliness of continuing the behavior.

Consistent waves of dopamine to allow consistent improvement. A huge wave will disrupt the system and recovery is needed, reducing the chance of continuing the behavior.

How Dopamine Influences Vision & Vice Versa

For people with normal levels of dopamine, visual circuitry is pretty constrained. However, those that lack dopamine have even less movement with their eyes, not evaluating horizons/extrapersonal space. When dopamine is restored, the visual expansion is enhanced, and goal seeking improved. This is why some people use L-tyrosine or caffeine to increase dopamine levels.

Behavioral tools engage neuroplasticity, whereas supplemental tools don’t. Getting better and better at being motivated and focused.

Behavior>nutrition>supplementation.

Interim Summary of Goal-Pursuit Steps

Set goals that are challenging, yet achievable.

Plan concretely.

Foreshadow failure. Only visualizing success for motivation at the beginning of the journey.

Focus on particular visual points and eliminate distractors.

Tool 9: Space-Time Bridging

Move cognition from interoception to exteroception. Space-time bridging is a way of stepping back from peripersonal to extrapersonal and back again, to give flexibility and control.

Preferably during the daytime and outside in nature. Close your eyes, focus your attention (even visual) onto interoceptive cues (heart rate, breathing, sensation), eliminating the external world for about 3 slow breaths. Then open your eyes and focus visual attention on some area of the surface of the body for 3 breaths (palm of hand), while still focusing on the internal state (90:10 – internal:external). Next, move visual attention to something outside the body, moving about 90% of the focus there, while leaving 10% for the cadence of the 3 breaths. Next, look as far away as possible for 3 breaths, almost 99% of attention. Then, expand your vision and attention as broadly as possible for 3 breaths. Finally, return back to purely interoception again. Repeat 2-3 times.

The visual system is about analyzing space and for matching time. Focused attention to a visual a narrow point slices time finely, paying attention to our immediate physiological experience. Focusing outwards, we engage the exteroceptive and dopamine system, and batch time differently. Broader spheres of vision carves our time up into larger slices.

This practice teaches us to use our visual system, cognitive system, and thereby reward system to orient different locations in space and time to improve goal directed behavior. The essence of setting a goal, thinking about what you want, setting intermediate milestones, assessing whether you are reaching those milestones, and correcting if necessary. Make a practice of stepping through these stations every day to teach the different systems related to goal setting to map different time frames.

Dr. Alia Crum: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Huberman Lab Podcast #56

What Is a Mindset & What Does It Do?

Core beliefs or assumptions that orientate us towards a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals. An assumption about a domain, such as if we see stress as a good thing or debilitating.

Do you believe your baseline of intelligences are set and inherent or malleable? These determine your motivation for something. Our culture seems to see stress as debilitating, healthy foods as disgusting and depriving, and intelligence as fixed. Exercise (do you get enough), illness (catastrophe or manageable and an opportunity), side effects of treatment (harmful or a sign the treatment is working), these all shape how our bodies respond.

Mindsets Change Our Biological Responses to Food

Our beliefs about what we’re eating can change the physiological response to them. When participants were told they were drinking a high caloric milkshake, their ghrelin levels dropped at a threefold rate compared to when they thought they were drinking a low-caloric shake.

The manner in which it affects our physiology is counter intuitive. When they thought they were eating something healthier, it left their bodies not feeling satiated. So, if you want to lose weight, you would be better off convincing yourself that you’re eating indulgently, and getting enough.

Beliefs About Our Food Matter

The belief that a diet is the right one can lead to results regardless of the diet actually being effective or not. However, this does not mean that it doesn’t matter. The beliefs and the actual interaction with specific foods has a combinatorial effect.

Placebo vs Beliefs vs Nocebo Effects

Placebo should be reserved for inactive substances. Social context, mindsets and beliefs, and natural physiological processes in the brain and body in response to the treatment.

Nocebo, when negative beliefs create negative consequences. Physiology and attention changes to these negative beliefs.

Mindset (Dramatically) Impacts the Effects of Exercise

Participants who thought they were getting exercise that was good for them (cleaner example), had benefits to health (lost weight, changed BP, felt better about themselves). Compared to those that thought they were getting no exercise, who saw work as a cause of pain and an unfortunate necessity.

Motivational Messaging & Mindset About Fitness

We have to be more thoughtful about how we motivate people to exercise and teaching them about the benefits. Just telling people that they need to reach certain guidelines may make them worse off (decreasing motivation). Might be better to show people how much they are already getting first. Perception of exercise relative to others and actual exercise don’t correlate much. The perception of doing well is important for not making people feel horrible about themselves.

Try to make people feel like they are getting enough to train a healthy mindset about exercise, as well as maximizing health benefits.

The Power of a ‘Potency & Indulgence’ Mindset

Exercise and how you think of it both matter. Same with eating and thoughts about that food. You don’t want to be in a constant mindset of restraint. When times are good, we can become healthier and grow.

Mindsets About Sleep, Tracking Sleep

Fake negative feedback about the quality of sleep can actually result in poorer performance in cognitive tasks.

Making Stress Work For (or Against) You

A subjective score can be more useful than relying on device data (watches and rings) for greater performance during times of difficulty.

The experience of stress does not have to be debilitating. It enhances our focus, narrows our attention, speeds up information processing, build resilience, activation of anabolic hormones from catecholamine feedback. It can also provide a sense of joy and passion for living by enhancing a connection to values and others. The true nature of stress is a paradox.

When you view stress as a challenge rather than a threat, you respond and perform more positively to the stimuli. Fewer aches and pains, greater performance, and more positive physiological responses to stress when participants were primed with positive scientific facts about stress.

It doesn’t mean that stress needs to be enjoyable. We just need to remember that some stressors can enhanced us, making us stronger, fitter, wiser, etc. People who see stress with an enhancement mindset tend to have a more moderate increase in cortisol, and higher DHEA levels to stress. When you spike the adrenaline release, testosterone goes up. Meaning short term increase in adrenaline can also be anabolic in this fashion.

Mindsets Link Our Conscious & Subconscious

Mindsets are a portal between conscious and subconscious processes. They operate as a default setting in the mind. Our beliefs about stress are programmed by our upbringing, public health messages, media, etc. Your mindset will determine whether you rev up the things that protect you vs. rev up the things that help you grow. Top-down, conscious awareness is required to initiate the change before it becomes subconscious.

3 Best Ways to Leverage Stress

Clarify our definition of stress first. Stress is a neutral, yet to be determined effect, of experiencing or anticipating adversity in your goal related efforts. We only stress about things that matter to us. Because stress is connected to the things that we care about, it is not healthy to try to “manage” our stress levels without leveraging the experience.

Acknowledge that you are stressed, welcome it (using as an opportunity to reconnect with what you care about), and to utilize the stress response to achieve what you care about – rather than using energy and time to get rid of the stress.

4 Things That Shape Mindsets, Influencers & Mindsets

Upbringing (how our parents talked about and dealt with stress), culture and media, influential others (doctors and peers), and conscious choice to be mindful and change mindsets.

70-90% of influencers would fail the legal standards for advertising in the UK. Undeniably unhealthy advice. When people talk about unhealthy foods there is usually the air of excitement, danger, fun, sexiness, indulgence, etc. However, when people talk about healthy food it is often boring, bland, deprivation, etc.

Mindsets About Medicines & Side Effects

Food allergy treatment – gradually increasing doses of the things they are allergic to – improve the experience by reframing the mindset of the side effects to the kids. So, they could see the side effects as a consequence of their bodies getting stronger, resulting in better outcomes.

Reading the side effects of drugs primes you to see the drug as dangerous and unhelpful. If you have the mindset that you’re in good hands may reduce anxiety and reprioritize the body’s physiological response.

How to Teach Mindsets

Be aware that you have mindsets that interpret and assume what your experiences are about. There is no right or wrong, but there are helpful and harmful mindsets. Think more about the subjective reality of food, exercise, and stress.

Don’t get mad about having the “wrong” mindset. See what is serving you and what isn’t and work on changing to suit.

Optimizing Workspace for Productivity, Focus, & Creativity | Huberman Lab Podcast #57

Lighting Your Work in Phase 1

When you wake up, until a few hours later, you have high levels of dopamine and epinephrine. High alertness.

Being in a brightly lit environment can lend itself to optimal work throughout the day (not just the early phase). Sun exposure is the best way but lights overhead are useful too. Facilitating more dopamine and epinephrine release, and as a result, greater focus.

Phase 1 is the best time for analytic work. Utilizing sunlight exposure and lighting your work environment can improve your first 8-hour phase productivity.

Looking at sunlight through a window is 50% less effective than being outside.

Lighting Your Work in Phase 2

9-16 hours after waking you should start dimming your light exposure. Also, bringing the light closer to the visual horizon. Start reducing the blue light and converting to more yellow/red light. Dim your screen if you are working on a computer.

People have different retinal sensitivities and can tolerate bright light exposure differently.

Light-colored eyes tend to struggle to see in bright light compared to those with brown eyes.

Lighting Your Work in Phase 3

People who work night shifts or do all nighters need to manage their light exposure in this final phase of the day. Determine your trade off: whether you want to stay up and focus (lights on) or squeeze out a bit more work time without affecting your sleep as much with the light (dimmed and blue light eliminated).

Drinking 32oz of water and refusing to urinate makes you more alert. A circuit from the bladder to brain stem makes you more alert (the one that is disrupted in kids that have bedwetting issues).

Not recommended using stimulants to stay up.

Where to Look While You Work

Clusters of neurons in our brain stem control our eyelid muscles and eye movements. We have six muscles attached to the eyeball. 4 of them are located at the top and bottom and the two sides of the eyeball. There are also the muscles that can move the eyes at different angles.

The neurons that control eye movements downwards are related to neurons in the brainstem that release certain neuromodulators and neurotransmitters that are associated with calm, sleepiness, and inhibited alertness. Neurons that control moving the eyes upwards are associated with the area that control alertness and autonomic arousal.

Arranging Your Environment

If you want maximum amounts of focus, position your computer above your eyeline. At least to nose level. Wall mount, stack books, higher table, etc. This reduces the “c-neck” posture.

Body Posture

When we are standing, neurons in the locus coeruleus (release epinephrine and norepinephrine) become active. Even more so when we are ambulatory. When you sit and lie down, they fire less. The more you adjust the angle of the back of your chair the more of a dose dependent decrease of alertness occurs.

If the goal is to take a nap, get your feet elevated 10-15 degrees above your head.

How Long to Do Deep Work

If you are stressed about a deadline or excited about something, you tend to be able to focus instantly (dopamine and epinephrine release). Although, even at our most heightened periods of focus, we can only manage about 3 minutes before we switch tasks. Expect it will take about 6 minutes to fully engage in your work bout. Expect a ramp up time for focus and eliminate distractions from around your work area.

Set the Right Visual Window Size

Parvo cellular channel: Looking at things at specific points with high resolution.

Magnocellular system: Greater visual space at lower resolution. Better at detecting motion.

Parvo cellular mode creates the most focus and alertness by bringing the eyes into vergence, creating a narrower aperture visual window. Relaxing the eyes and dilating your gaze does the opposite. When working on something that requires focus, “put the blinders on.” Don’t let what you are working on extend too far out to the side or far away. Keep in mind that focusing on a narrow window requires energy and can fatigue the eyes.

However, if you restrict your visual window too much, you’ll end up changing the types of information you are best at processing.

45 min / 5 min Rule

For every 45 minutes that you are focusing on a narrow window, take 5 minutes of relaxing the eyes and getting into the magnocellular visual system. Getting outside and walking is a great way of doing this. Don’t check your phone as this is counter-productive.

The Cathedral Effect: Analytic vs Creative Work

People who are in high ceiling environments tend to shift their thinking to more abstract, creative, or “lofty” thinking. People in lower ceiling environments have more logical and analytical ideas.

Similar to being in small vs. large environments. All our senses adapt to our environment. The amplitude of movements scales down, or up, to wherever we are (elevator vs. field/stadium).

Our vestibular motor system and visual system are intimately linked. Extending your arms out to your side to test maximum flexibility, then look far left and far right, and retest. Your cerebellum controls the neural architecture that will allow you to have greater flexibility.

Using language and associations that imply a “grander” space will leverage that abstract thought result. As well as putting on a baseball cap on or blinders to increase focus and analytical thought. More importantly, leveraging the perception of the visual height of the ceiling will be what actually allows that thought process.

https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71190.pdf

Leveraging Background Noise

The amount of background noise somebody can handle is variable across individuals. Avoid humming of air conditioners as they can increase mental fatigue.

Our auditory system has a parallel to our visual system. In our visual system, light enters the eyes, triggering melanopsin cells, triggering hypothalamus, generating alertness (cortisol release). In the auditory system, that background noise is heard, even if you aren’t paying attention to it, triggering the activation of the hair cells. The locus coeruleus neurons are turned off and we experience relaxation when the noise is turned off.

White noise can cause hearing deficits in young babies and children by disrupting their auditory maps during development. White noise can be used to increase alertness in those whose focus in waning.

https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/10.0006383

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140130412331311390

Binaural Beats for Work

Isochronic tones (beeps, tones) contrasted with monoaural beats (repetitive beats delivered to one ear). Binaural are different patterns delivered to both ears. Because of the way the auditory system converges in the brainstem, the difference in sound results in interaural time difference, the difference between the two patterns leads to a 3rd pattern, that results in specific brain wave activity.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-021-06155-z

The Best Binaural Frequency for Work

40Hz seems to be the best frequency for improved cognitive function (memory, recall, reaction times).

Many apps superimpose binaural beats onto environmental sounds, which are not as effective. 7Hz with raindrops has a significant decrease in cognitive performance.

Using 40Hz binaural beats before doing work or a workout will prime you to shift into the preferred brain state. Not necessary to listen to them during the work period.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63980-y

How Binaural Beats Increase Focus

40Hz seems to have an effect on striatal dopamine. Striatal dopamine is related to motivation and focus. Measured indirectly by looking at spontaneous blink rate. Blink frequency correlates with alertness and the more these striatal dopamine neurons fire the more frequently we blink. Associated with a resetting of our visual window (time perception).

Dopamine is the substrate by which epinephrine is produced and released.

Minimizing Interruptions

Put up a sign or light that people around you know means you don’t want interruptions. It takes a long time to reengage the brain circuits to initiate focus again. You can acknowledge a person’s presence but not shift your body towards them. Preventing a shift in visual focus.

Say no to requests when busy. This will improve productivity.

Use the app “Freedom” to reduce distractions. Untether from your phone to improve success.

Sit or Stand, or Both?

Sitting is terrible for us – people who sit for 5-6 hours at work have issues such as poor sleep, neck pain, cognition suffers, cardiovascular effects, digestion, and even pelvic floor pressure effects.

People who decreased their sitting time by about 50% per day showed significant effects on reduced neck and shoulder pain, increased subjective health, vitality in work related environments, improved cognitive performance.

Spend half of your time sitting and standing. Conversely, standing too long can cause fatigue. Find out what works for you. The time periods can be broken up throughout the day.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11604

Movement in the Workspace

Doesn’t matter if you cycle or use a treadmill as an active workstation. Statistically significant improvement in attention and cognitive control scores during active working vs. seated scores. However, verbal memory scores got worse during active sessions. Probably not best to use this work station if your job requires verbal memory recall. Optic flow is known to quieten areas of the brain that are associated with vigilance. However, the act of engaging CPGs also reduces areas in the brain associated with anxiety. The physical movement increases epinephrine, improving attention and focus.

When in a workspace for a long period of time, change your position to keep environmental engagement novel, such as changing seats often during a conference. 

Dr. David Spiegel: Using Hypnosis to Enhance Health & Performance | Huberman Lab Podcast #60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PctD-ki8dCc

Clinical Hypnosis

Hypnosis is highly focused attention. Your somatic bodily sensation becomes integrated to allow a hypnotic experience.

Stage Hypnosis

Stage hypnotists make fools out of people and makes the patient lose control, whereas clinical hypnosis is supposed to be used to regain it.

Neurobiology of Hypnosis

Turning down Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (part of salience network/conflict detector) makes it less likely to be distracted from whatever state you are in.

Highly hypnotizable people have more functional connectivity between the DACC and the left dorsal lateral PFC (key region for executive control network). If they are coordinated the brain implies a safety message as it thinks it knows what is going on and to carry on with other possibilities.

The DLPFC has higher functional connectivity with the insula during hypnosis. Meaning to can activate things like gastric acid.

There is inverse functional connectivity between the DLPFC and the Posterior cingulate cortex (part of the default mode network), which results in dissociation during hypnosis. Also adding to cognitive flexibility, not feeling that you aren’t the sort of person that does these sorts of things.

ADHD

You can use self-hypnosis to enhance focus, which may be of use to those with ADHD. However, he guesses that people with ADHD would typically not be very hypnotizable.

Hypnosis for Stress & Sleep

The mind-body connection is very helpful for reducing mental stress.

When people are anxious, their body tenses up, heart rate increases, etc., and they then notice this, believe it to be bad, and this leads to a positive feedback loop. Hypnosis can be useful for dissociating from the stressful state.

Hypnosis to Strengthen Neural Connections

The more you avoid phobias, the more your associated memories focus around fear. It is better to have a wider array of non-fear-related associations around a certain experience to drown out the fearful ones.

Ketamine Therapy

If dissociation during a traumatic episode is part of the adaptive strategy, why would ketamine be useful?

To treat trauma sometimes you need to re-approach the dissociative experience in order to deal with it. Trauma is experienced as helplessness. Hypnosis is a superb way of enhancing control over mind and body.

Self-directed Hypnosis, Reveri

Self-hypnosis vs. pain relief and nurse comfort. Self hypnosis had reduced pain by 80% in an hour and a half compared to the standard care group, using only half the opioids. No anxiety vs 5/10 anxiety in standard care.

Breast cancer group had half the pain by using self-hypnosis.

Eliminating Obsessive Thoughts, Superstitions

Hypnosis can sometimes be used for OCD. Depends on hypnotizability. People with OCD tend to be less hypnotizable, due to the trait of being unlikely to let go of control.

‘Hypnotizability’, the Spiegel Eye-roll Test

By the time you reach your early 20s, your hypnotizability becomes extremely fixed. More stable than IQ measures.

Look up at the ceiling and close your eyes. Sclera is the only thing present from eyeballs rolling back – very hypnotizable. If your eyes move down as you close your eyelids – not very hypnotizable.

4th and 6th cranial nerves are responsible for trying to keep the eyeballs up while closing the eyelids. When you look up you activate muscles forcing them to look up and when you close your eyelids you are causing them to relax. By not relaxing them you are breaking this connection. Looking up seems to be a signal to the brain to sleep as it is safe. 15% are highly hypnotizable and 1/3 are not at all.

We seem attracted to coastlines, possibly because we have protection in the back and vision on the front.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)

Another form of exposure-based therapy for trauma.

We need to get into a PNS state to get into sleep. Lateral eye movements might regulate affect as they don’t allow intrusions. More research needed.

Confronting Stress & Trauma

Deliberate confrontation of trauma and pain seems to be the hallmark of treatment. The feeling of being in control/putting things into perspective make all the difference.

The Mind-Body Connection

We need to think of our brain as a tool that can be used to manage stress and trauma. Pain is a signal that is neither right nor wrong. It needs to be accurately perceived to be useful.

Dealing with Grief

A natural stage of life. An incomprehensible loss needs to be comprehended. It’s never all or none, it is more or less. Expressing negative emotions can help people to be less anxious over time. Face a loss, live with the emotion, and realise the reason it hurts so much is because of how much they gave to you. Reflect on what you gained from them and remember you can use your memory of their advice still.

Hypnosis in Children & Groups

Can be very effective for children.

Drug Therapies & Hypnosis

Correlation between hypnotizability and GABA activity in the ACC. A sedative effect at the chemical level, like using medications. More hypnotizable people seem to have more GABA receptors.

People with benzos: if you’re very anxious, it might improve your hypnotic response. If you’re not, it may inhibit the hypnotic response.

Breathing Patterns, Peak Performance

Breathing practices may be a good way to augment hypnosis, rather than medication. There is also promise in eye movement states.

How to Enhance Your Gut Microbiome for Brain & Overall Health | Huberman Lab Podcast #61

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15R2pMqU2ok

Gut Microbiome

The gut communicates with the brain directly (neuronally) and indirectly (hormonally/chemically). The brain also influences gut chemistry and digestion. The connection is bidirectional. The gut includes the entire digestive tract. There are taste receptors and neurons located all the way along.

Gut-Brain Anatomy

The gut tube varies in acidity and gives rise to different microenvironments where different microbiota can survive. Certain behaviors will influence the environments and the populations of bacteria that can thrive. Including vaginal vs c-section birth, breast-fed or bottle-fed, who handled you, how much skin contact you have had, if you were premature, if you had pets, and if you were allowed to play outside in the dirt.

The digestive tract is about 9m long. The lumen is the hollow of the tube and the walls are made of mucosal lines and microvilli. Bacteria grow in both areas.

Microbiota vs. Gut Microbiome

The microbiome includes the biota and the genes they make. We have about 2-3kg of bacteria inside our gut.

The bacteria that thrive and the bacteria that leave is dependent on the chemistry of your gut, the foods you eat, and what you don’t eat.

Our microbiome is also made up of microbacteria that access our mouth by breathing, kissing, and skin contact.

Roles of Gut Microbiome

They contribute to digestion (enzyme production), some genes for fermentation, and change the way the brain functions (metabolizing neurotransmitters and converting them). 

Neuropod Cells: (Subconscious) Tasting with Your Stomach

Neurons (enteroendocrine cells/neuropod cells) in the mucosal lining can pay attention to the nutrients (sugar, fatty acids, and amino acids) and microbiota of the gut to communicate to the brain which can influence us to seek out certain foods.

They have a particularly strong activation to sugar via the vagus nerve. When the signal is sent up through the nodose ganglion and into the brain, dopamine is released to look around, chew, and reach for more of what provides satisfaction.

Even if you bypass taste, people will seek out more of that specific food (sweet food preference). By cutting off the sweet senses in the gut, you can reduce sweet preferences.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-neuro-091619-022657

Ghrelin: Slow Modulation of Your Brain in Hunger

Some nerve cells release hormones like CCK, PYY, and glucagon-peptide-1. The ghrelin pathway increases production of ghrelin during with fasting. It results in alertness/autonomic arousal by the release of epinephrine.

The nucleus of the solitary tract is influenced by circulating hormones to seek out food. There are parallel pathways to hunger.

Glucagon Like Peptide 1; GLP-1

Made by neurons in the gut and the brain – inhibits feeding and appetite. Semiglutide is a GLP-1 agonist. Yerba mate stimulates it too. Some high-fiber foods also stimulate release of GLP-1.

The ketogenic diet can increase levels of GLP-1.

GLP-1 changes the activity of neurons in the roof of the mouth, which also produces GLP-1, causing activation of neuronal circuits that promote feeding behavior.

Tools: ‘Free Will’ & Food Cravings

Events in our brain are determined by biological events that involve lower conscious detection which occur before we make decisions (Sapolsky). Our body shapes decisions that our brain makes.

Mechanical Cues from Gut to Brain

Distension in the gut is registered by neurons that communicate to the brain that suppress consumption behavior and even activate vomiting reflex on occasion (chemoreceptor trigger zone/area postrema).

Direct signaling – neurons in the gut to the brain stem to hypothalamus and PFC.

Dopamine, Vomiting

The area postrema is full of dopamine receptors and if dopamine levels go too high it can trigger vomiting. L-Dopa may cause this activation.

Mechanical and chemical signals always arrive in parallel.

Indirect Signals from Gut Microbiota

The gut microbiota is capable of synthesizing neurotransmitters, meaning the food you eat can influence your behavior.

Dopamine can be synthesized by bacillus and seratia. Eating foods that promote a healthy environment for them can result in a higher baseline of dopamine.

Candida, streptococcus, and strains enterococcus can support the baseline production of serotonin. Baseline might set overall mean. Individual events can influence peak levels in the brain.

Bifidiobacteria can raise the baseline of GABA.

Gut Microbiome “Critical Periods”

The first 3 years of life are critical for building a diverse microbiome. Babies with less diverse microbiomes may have worse long-term health outcomes. Early life antibiotic use is unwise.

How Gut Health Controls Overall Health

Mouse models found L.Reuteri corrected social deficits in autistic mice by stimulating the vagal nerve pathway that stimulates dopamine and oxytocin release.

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627318310092

Almost 60% of stools are live and dead bacteria. Some people can’t lose weight and after transplanting healthy participants’ stool sample had substantial improvements with weight loss. May be affecting the metabolome, and neurotransmitters (less likely).

Transfer of fecal matter from an obese donor may lead to the recipient developing metabolic syndrome.

The more diverse the microbiome, the lower incidence of loneliness.

• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.648475/full

PANS score (mood and wellbeing score) improved.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77673-z

What is a Healthy Gut Microbiome?

Probiotics and prebiotics can improve mood and digestion post-antibiotic treatment or those who were stressed. However, excessive microbiota diversity can lead to brain fog (lactic pathways of the gut).

• https://journals.lww.com/ctg/Fulltext/2018/06000/Brain_fogginess,_gas_and_bloating__a_link_between.6.aspx

Tools: Enhance Your Gut Microbiome

Stress can negatively affect the microbiome. However, some forms of stress, such as fasting, can have other positive effects on the body regardless of microbiome diversity decreasing.

The particular bacteria most companies put in probiotics don’t replenish the microbiota you need most, but they replenish others that will promote the ones you want when you start eating the appropriate foods (changing environment).

Fasting leads to erosion of the digestive tract and mucosal lining, causing a disruption of some healthy elements. However, when one breaks the fast appropriately there can be a compensatory effect/proliferation in healthy bacteria.

Under conditions of dysbiosis/diet change/travel/stress higher doses of pre and probiotics are useful.

Deep sleep of sufficient duration 80% of the time, social interaction, limited stressors, nutrition, hydration, etc.

Foods to Enhance Microbiota Diversity; Fermented Foods

Human studies. Fiber vs fermented foods for 6 weeks. Increasing fiber dramatically if you aren’t used to it will cause intestinal distress. Ramp up the quantity slowly.

The inflammatome was measured and a high fiber diet didn’t lead to increased microbiome diversity. The high-fermented food diet increased diversity and decreased inflammatory signals.

The number of servings was not a strong predictor. The longer the consumption the better.

Plain yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, natto, etc. Live active cultures. 4-6oz servings. Brine is the liquid surrounding sauerkraut and contains a lot of active cultures.

Increasing the amount of fiber increased the number of enzymes required to digest complex carbohydrates. One small cohort showed an increase in the inflammatome.

Make your own sauerkraut (read the 4-Hour Chef). Make kombucha with a scoby.

• https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00754-6

High-Fiber Diets & Inflammation

When the inflammatome is kept in a healthy range there is active signaling of the immune status to the brain. Conversely, microglia eat away components of the brain during high inflammation.

Artificial & Non-Caloric Sweeteners

Animals that consume large amounts of artificial sweeteners (saccharine/sucralose) lead to gut microbiome disruptions.

Neurons (neuropods) in the gut are capable of distinguishing between real and artificial sugars. The pattern of signaling is different when artificial sugars are present.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00982-7

Dr. Justin Sonnenburg: How to Build, Maintain & Repair Gut Health | Huberman Lab Podcast #62

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCWNRvPk20&t=1467s

https://profiles.stanford.edu/justin-sonnenburg?tab=publications

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00754-6.pdf

What is the Gut Microbiome?

In our noses, mouths, skin, and gut lining. 30-50% of fecal matter is microbes. Archaea, fungi, viruses, and eukaryotes are also present.

Gastrointestinal (GI) Tract & Microbiota Variability

Oral microbiota deals with oxygen well and grows in mats on teeth. Microbes in our esophagus and stomach aren’t very dense. Helicobacter pylori can cause stomach ulcers and cancers.

The small intestine has a denser population. The colon has a lot of metabolic activity and microbiome density. It is also the best studied.

Breast Feeding, C-Sections & Pets

The womb is a sterile environment. C-sections have gut microbiota that looks more like human skin, whereas vaginally birthed have more vaginal and stool microbiota. Breast-fed, pets, etc.

The microbes you colonize can send your metabolism and immune system into different developmental trajectories.

The Human Microbiome Project at Stanford

Context matters. What is healthy for one person may not be the case for another.

The microbiome genome is 100-500 larger than the human genome.

Traditional vs. Industrialized Populations

The healthy American microbiome is only healthy in the context of their lifestyle.

Resilience of the Microbiome

Microbiomes tend to exist in stable states so it is hard to change them to a new stable state. If you briefly change your diet, your gut microbiome may reconstitute when your old diet is restarted.

Regional Differences Along Your GI Tract

pH, nutrient, post-surface epithelium gradient. Bicarbonate is released into the small intestine to raise the pH of stomach acid. pH decreases again in the colon due to fermentation and other microbial biproducts. The immune system is quite active in the small intestine due to the permeable barrier.

The purpose of the mucosal layer is to keep microbes in the right spot and to allow nutrients and water to be absorbed in the small and large intestine. The mucus layer turns over slowly so bacteria can remain by living on it and eating it.

Some microbes live in crypts, and invaginations, where they can localize and maintain dominance in the gut.

Fasting, Cleanses & Gut Health

It is hard to work out whether fasting is good or not because of our poor baseline state.

Purely eating a high-fiber plant-based diet will result in less excessive sugar and meat consumption, more fiber, more pre and probiotics, etc.

Some microbiota bloom during fasting which excel at eating mucus.

Dietary Differences

Microbiota accessible carbohydrates = good carbs.

Adult lactase production is an adaptation from the last 10,000 years.

Most Americans who eat seaweed will have porforin (dietary fiber) shoot right through. Somebody from Southeast Asia will most likely have the microbe to produce enzymes to break it down.

The Hadza eat 100-150g of fiber per day. Relying on berries and tubers because hunting is difficult, even though they would prefer meat.

Simple vs. Complex Carbohydrates, Processed Foods

Consuming processed foods is generally bad for the microbiome. Artificial sweeteners can lead to metabolic syndrome. Shelf stabilizers can disrupt the mucus layer.

Complex fibers get digested by microbiome and produce butyrate (SCFA).

Simple carbs = high blood sugar and spiked insulin.

Dietary Fiber & Fermented Foods

Pickles in jars at the supermarket are not fermented. They’ve been put in acetic acid and vinegar to reconstitute the flavor and microbes have been killed. Go to the fridge section.

Homebrew beer may be beneficial.

High-Fiber vs. High-Fermented Diet; Inflammation

Individualized responses to high fiber. Higher microbial diversity and decreased inflammatory markers with high fermented foods.

Gradual ramping of fermented foods will restrict the bloating effect.

Ripple Effects of a Healthy Diet

Less constipation, better bowel movements.

Does a High-Fiber Diet Make Inflammation Worse

People with the highest diversity at the start of the study were most likely to have a decrease in inflammation. Most of us may not have a diverse enough microbiome to break down a high fiber diet.

Over Sterilized Environments

Limited access to new microbial environments. The sanitation of our environment has gone overboard. Work out a cost-benefit analysis.

The Gut Microbiome’s Effect on Physiology

As soon as “beneficial” bacteria migrate away from the right spot, the immune system can monitor and eliminate them. Dendritic cells send processes into the lumen to sample microbes. Receptors on the cell wall can also recognize certain microbes and stimulate an inflammatory reaction.

Gut-Brain Connection

Cerebrospinal fluid contains microbial metabolites.

People with kidney disease can have microbial metabolite buildup in the bloodstream leading to brain fog (shuttled across BBB).

Probiotics: Benefits & Risks

A lot of probiotics don’t have what they say they have on the label. The data is not overwhelmingly positive. Find a study that says it does what you’re looking for and stick to that probiotic.

Prebiotics: Essential?

If you layer the Western diet on rapidly fermentable fiber you can result in weird digestive effects.

Tools for Enhancing Your Gut Microbiota

Avoid highly processed foods and highly palatable foods, high fiber and fermented foods are good, and slowly ramp up if you don’t usually eat them.

Optimize & Control Your Brain Chemistry to Improve Health & Performance | Huberman Lab Podcast #80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65RDBiB5Hs

Sleep & Maintaining Healthy Metabolism

Sleep states regulate more than 50% of all metabolite features detected in the breath (lipid metabolism, carbohydrate, etc.).

The switch from sleep to wakefulness reduces fatty acid oxidation and vice versa. REM to other cycles brings about the TCA cycle. Quality and depth of sleep, as well as duration, will allow you to transition through the different forms of metabolism and to use the metabolites that are beneficial for wellbeing and healthy wakeful states.

Less REM makes you more emotionally labile and also affects glucose metabolism during the night.

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01373-5

Tools: How to Wake Up Earlier, Night Owls

Targeted light exposure (limited artificial lights), consistent sleep-wake times (2-3 hours before usual bedtime and including weekends), fixed meal times (within 30 minutes), caffeine intake (none after 3 pm), no naps after 4 pm, and exercise (morning). Improvements in mood, cognitive improvement, grip strength, etc., even though they were asked to wake up 2-3 hours earlier than usual.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388?via%3Dihub

Nervous System Overview

Chains of specific neurons lead to different states of mind rather than any given area being responsible for any function. Which neural circuits are active or not active depends on hormones and neuromodulators. Neuromodulators are chemicals that make it likely that certain circuits will be more active than others.

How Neuromodulators Work

Fast-acting and slow-acting (baseline) features. We always have some amount of dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, and acetylcholine. Just present at different levels. They also don’t work alone. The fast actions occur in seconds up to an hour.

Baseline Neuromodulator Levels, 3 Daily Phases

Phase 1: 0-9 hours after waking, dopamine and epinephrine are at their highest.

Phase 2: 9-16 hours, dopamine and epinephrine subside and serotonin increases and dominate.

Phase 3: 17-24 hours, chaos – peaks and troughs of dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine. Roles in dreaming and aspects of sleep. Not necessarily random though.

Acetylcholine is controlled by what we happen to be doing. For example, if we are learning and moving.

Hormones Modulate Neuromodulators

Hormones, such as steroid hormones, can control gene expression and the identity of the cells. They can also have fast-acting effects, such as adrenaline from the adrenal glands speeding up the heart rate and blood flow.

Testosterone tends to increase and collaborate with dopamine. In general, when corticosterone increases, like cortisol, epinephrine goes up. In general, when oxytocin or prolactin go up serotonin goes up.

Sunlight on a large portion of the body each day works to increase testosterone and estrogen levels. The mood effects are due to the effects of testosterone and estrogen on dopamine and serotonin.

• https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01013-5

Prolactin tends to be an antagonist to dopamine.

The 4 Major Types of Neuromodulators

Dopamine, when elevated above baseline, tends to show increases in motivation, drive, and focus (to some extent). Motivation, craving, and pursuit for goals or things outside of our possession and experience.

Epinephrine is mainly responsible for generating energy (how high your rpm is). When high, we feel agitated, when low, we have less energy and mental energy. Epinephrine is manufactured from dopamine. Greater levels are released when we are stressed.

Serotonin provides feelings of relief, soothing, contentness, happiness, and satiety. When very high, people can be sedated and unmotivated. When low, they can feel agitated and stressed.

Acetylcholine is mainly associated with states of focus, as they relate to learning and neuroplasticity. Opens up plasticity. Not necessarily associated with highly motivated learning. It can be associated with calm states, such as when having a child and simultaneously being flooded with oxytocin. Parents in love with newborn babies become hyper-focused on their children.

Tool Kit 1: Increase Baseline Dopamine & Focus

View early morning sunlight (first 3 hours) and expose the skin. Just don’t get burnt or blind yourself. This will have fast-acting effects on dopamine release, increase genes related to thyroid hormone, and dopamine receptors (DRD4). The genes for the dopamine receptor 4 are under photic control.

• https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/825083v1

You can increase the effect of dopamine by increasing the number or efficacy of D3 and D3 receptors. Regular ingestion of caffeine (100-250mg) will increase D2 and D3 receptors. Dopamine in your system will have a greater effect.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201546

Tyrosine-rich Foods & Dopamine

Certain meats, parmigiana cheese, etc.

Cheese effect if taking an MAO inhibitor: Too much tyrosine, and as result dopamine, may cause migraines, headaches, and blood pressure up.

Dopamine Supplementation: Mucuna Pruriens, L-tyrosine & Phenylethylamine

Cocaine, meth, etc., can increase and crash dopamine. Prescription drugs, like Ritalin, Adderall, modafinil, etc., can increase dopamine too.

Mucuna pruriens in 90% L-dopa. Not advisable because there is a substantial crash afterwards.

L-tyrosine (500-100mg) can increase dopamine in a short-term way. He takes before work bouts or workouts, once per week. It depends on a person’s natural baseline of dopamine though.

Phenylethylamine relates to the PEA molecule. Increases dopamine and metabolites related to dopamine (300-600mg along with L-tyrosine). More motivated and alert.

Deliberate Cold Exposure & Dopamine

Putting people in cold water had long sustained increases in dopamine transmission and circulation. Shorter bouts of colder water suffice.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004210050065?noAccess=true

Tool Kit 2: Additional Tips to Increase Dopamine

B6 can reduce prolactin levels. Excessively high levels can cause peripheral neuropathy.

Avoid bright light exposure between 4-10 pm. Activates the habenular and reduces dopamine levels.

All these tools depend on the phases of the day and your desired behavior.

Tool Kit 3: Increase Epinephrine (Adrenaline) & Alertness

Epinephrine is released in the brain (locus coeruleus) and the body (adrenal glands). Increasing the desire to move. If the pupils are big and the eyes are open, there are usually high levels of epinephrine.

Increasing adrenaline earlier in the day can be useful for motivation. Any physical activity will increase levels. The locus coeruleus works bidirectionally. Exercise burns caloric energy but results in neural energy. Caffeine increases it too.

Cyclic hyperventilation: Deep inhalation and passive exhalation for 25 repetitions will increase adrenaline.

Cold water exposure too.

L-tyrosine will increase dopamine and the availability of epinephrine, but there aren’t really foods for increasing total adrenaline.

Tool Kit 4: Increase Acetylcholine & Attention/Learning; Choline-rich Foods

Narrows our cognitive aperture (visual and auditory as well). Released from the nucleus basalis for strengthening plasticity, and the back of the brain to increase the fidelity of information (the extent of information reaching our attention and consciousness).

Acetylcholine Supplements: Nicotine, Alpha GPC, Huperzine

Increased before and during learning to increase chances information will sink in. Regularly ingest foods that include choline. Beef liver is the greatest source of choline. Eggs, beef, soybeans, chicken, fish, mushrooms, etc.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are located throughout the body. Smoking nicotine will activate them. Chewing Nicorette will do the same thing without the negative health effects of inhalation.

Alpha-GPC is in the choline pathway. Huperzine is in the enzymatic pathway. He takes 300mg of A-GPC prior to workouts 3-4x per week. A few studies showed an increased risk for stroke in those who take it chronically. 2-4 hours of focus. You may notice a TMAO increase. To prevent this is to take 600mg of garlic (allicin).

Tool Kit 5: Behavior to Increase Focus & Acetylcholine

Focus can increase acetylcholine. Deliberately narrowing your visual field can lead to this.

Behavior ->Nutrition -> Supplementation -> Prescription drugs if necessary.

Tool Kit 6: Behavior to Increase Serotonin & Feelings of Well-being

If serotonin levels go too high there will be a decrease in appetite and libido. Potential serotonergic syndrome.

Physical contact with friends, loved ones, animals, etc., can increase serotonergic transmission.

Receiving gratitude has the most potent effects on serotonergic pathways. Observing others giving and receiving gratitude can also have an effect.

Tools: Tryptophan-Rich Foods & Serotonin

Tryptophan is upstream of serotonin synthesis. White meat turkey, whole milk, canned tuna, oats, cheese, nuts and seeds, chocolate, and some fruits like bananas and apples.

Tools: Serotonin Supplements: Cissus Quadrangularis, 5-HTP, Myo-inositol

Cissus Quadrangularis – 300-600mg shown to increase circulating serotonin by 30-39%. Should be cycled.

• https://lipidworld.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-511X-6-4

5-HTP prior to sleep. Although, this will mess with your natural sleep cycle and you may wake up again a few hours later. People vary in their sensitivity to serotonin.

Myo-inositol (900mg every 3 days or so) can have the effect of increasing serotonin and other neurochemicals. Can lead to deeper sleep. Good for anxiety, migraine, bipolar, etc. Dosages are often very high in recent studies and have a sedative effect. TALK TO PHYSICIAN.

Food will typically affect baseline serotonin and supplements affect the peak amount.

Dr. Emily Balcetis: Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals | Huberman Lab Podcast #83

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YGZZcXqKxE

Tool: Narrowing Visual Focus & Improving Exercise

Become hyper-focused, set a landmark, put up blinders etc. to improve exercise performance. Imagine there is a spotlight shining on a specific target and recalibrate your attention to it. The athletes recorded tended to be sprinters.

Hyper-focus can result in less pain and greater performance in exercise studies.

Adjusting Visual Attention & Perceived Fatigue

Longer distance runners begin by looking more expansively. When they are most tired or want to perform on the final sprint, they can use the narrowing of attention trick.

Tool: Visual Focus “Spotlight”

Imagine a circular point/light to maintain your focus.

Tool: Goal Gradient Hypothesis, Visual Spotlight to Increase Effort

The closer you get to a goal, the harder you try to reach it. Animal models sped up when they got in closer proximity to their goals. You can create an illusion of proximity to improve performance.

Defining Goals vs. Accomplishing Goals, Dream Boards & Goal Lists

Make a list or visual manifestation of things you intend on achieving to keep the ideas in focus. However, this does not help you actually achieve the goal. If you focus on what life will be once you reach the goal, you rest on your laurels and lower your blood pressure, which is not conducive to doing tasks. Vision boards may backfire by making people relax without achieving the goal. Too much dopamine reward without action.

Tool: How to Setting Better Goals & Identify Obstacles

How are we going to get there? Manageable goals for big picture.

Practical day to day plans?

Obstacles that stand in the way of success? Time, resources, etc.? Come up with a plan B, C, and D. Demystify alternate pathways.

Vision is Unique, Challenging the Visual System, Realistic Goals & Micro-Goals

Vision has more real estate in the brain than other senses. We prioritize what we see over what we hear. Our visual experience is rarely second guessed.

Set micro goals to maintain attention and motivation.

Do Fit People View the World Differently? States of Body & Visual Experiences

Overweight, tired, and elderly people perceive distances as being further than healthy and energized people.

If you have more energy, the world looks easier and distances don’t look as far.

Caffeine, Stimulants, Visual Windows & Motivation

If you think you are more energized, even if you don’t actually have caffeine, you may still have that placebo effect and improved focus. Just allocate your attention to something.

Tools: Goal Setting & Cognitive (Non-Physical) Goals, Data Collection

Overcome bad/faulty memories and traits that you identify with that hold you back. Giving yourself a deadline helps to hone focus on certain goals. Memories of previous abilities consume much needed energy for potential learning. We often downplay our progress because it is hard to compare it to past faulty memories.

If intermediate goals are not visual, it helps to create imagery in relation to it.

Visual Tools & Mental Health, Depression & Visual Priming

When we are depressed, we prime ourselves unintentionally for threatening elements in the environment. By intentionally looking for positive aspects of the environment it won’t fix depression, but it will help give an avenue for change.