#1042 - Dr Andrew Huberman - How to Reclaim Your Brain in 2026

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 186 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist, Associate Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a podcaster. There’s an overwhelming amount of information on how to level up your body and mind, and it can be difficult to know where the latest science truly stands. Thankfully, Dr. Andrew Huberman breaks down the research on habits, the brain, sleep, supplements, and his personal go-to protocols. Expect to learn why high cortisol isn’t actually a bad think to have a lot of, Andrew’s advice on how to overcome burnout, what the new science of better sleep would be, how to make and set better habits easier, what Andrew thinks of the new “protein in everything” trend, the next wave of supplements to take to optimise your life, Andrew’s take on religion and faith and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Most people think about cortisol as a bad thing that you want less of.
0:05.0	Is that the right way to think about it?
0:07.0	Not at all.
0:08.0	Cortisol has been labeled a stress hormone and it is involved in stress.
0:14.0	You have a bout of stress. You get a spike of cortisol, so to speak.
0:18.0	Cortisol, like other steroid hormones, is bound to things, and there's a
0:22.8	free form of cortisol. That's the active one. You don't want your free unbound cortisol to be
0:29.7	chronically high, but we need to really think about why it was called a stress hormone in the
0:35.3	first place. And the main reason is cortisol's job
0:38.4	is to deploy energy sources for your brain and body,
0:42.5	to be able to react to things, think, and move.
0:46.7	So cortisol naturally goes up a bit during stress
0:49.6	and it comes back again,
0:51.1	provided you don't ruminate on that stress too much, on the stressor, that is.
0:55.8	The big eye-opener for me was when I actually went into the modern textbooks on cortisol,
1:02.3	not the ones that most medical students learned from, but what the endocrinologists, the specialists,
1:06.9	really learned from, and what the circadian and sleep biologists now understand, which is
1:11.0	the reason you wake up every single morning, even if you have an alarm clock, is because of something
1:16.6	called the cortisol awakening response. So if we just step back from a typical healthy 24 hours,
1:22.2	it looks something like this. A couple hours before sleep, your cortisol is low, your heart rate's low,
1:27.4	you're calm,
1:28.9	hopefully it's dim in the room, you go to sleep. Your cortisol is then at its absolute lowest
	...

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