How to Optimize Your Brain-Body Function & Health

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2021

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode I describe how the organs of the body influence the function and health of our brain and how our brain controls our bodily organs. The conscious awareness of this brain-body dialogue is called interoception. I describe how two factors- mechanical forces (e.g., pressure, pain, volume, etc.) and chemical factors (e.g., gut acidity, microbiome diversity, etc.) combine to influence our moods, control inflammation, immune system, recovery from injury and more. I explain how specific actions of our lungs, heart, spleen, and diaphragm, control our brain via the vagus nerve and other neural pathways. I describe 11 science-supported protocols for enhancing brain-body health and the logic behind them. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Your Sense of Self: Interoception (00:01:25) Protocol 1: Fermented Foods, Not Fiber, to Reduce Inflammation (00:03:30) Attributions (00:08:22) Main Drivers of Feelings & Performance (00:11:45) Brain-Body: A Mechanical & Chemical Dialogue (00:17:50) LDB (Lung-Diaphragm-Brain) Dialogue (00:21:00) Protocols 2, 3, 4: Control Heart Rate With Breathing (00:29:08) Sensing Lung Pressure: Piezo Receptors (00:30:54) Carbon Dioxide, From Air to Blood (00:34:02) Protocol 5: Alert While Calm (00:40:50) Baroreceptors: Hering-Breuer Reflex (00:42:47) Gut Volume & The Desire to Open Your Mouth (00:48:18) Protocol 6: Enhancing Gut-To-Brain Communication, Fasting (00:51:50) Intestines, Fatty Acids, Amino Acids & Sugar (00:57:00) Protocol 7: Reducing Sugar Cravings with Specific Amino Acid Nutrients (00:58:58) Gut Acidity (Is Good) (01:02:20) Improving Nasal Microbiome (01:04:13) Inflammation & Microbiome: Fiber vs. Fermented (01:11:15) Protocol 8: Reducing Inflammation & Enhancing Brain Function w/Fermented Foods (01:13:10) Leaking Guts, Auto-Immune function & Glutamine (01:15:50) Gut Acidity: HCl (hydrochloric acid), Pepsin (01:18:30) Probiotics & Brain Fog (01:21:45) Nausea: Happens in Your Brain; Area Postrema (01:28:25) Protocol 9: Reducing Nausea: Ginger, Peppermint, CBD, etc. (01:30:40) Fever: Triggers and Control Knobs: OVLT (01:37:00) Protocol 10: Cooling the Blood Properly (01:38:53) Sensing Feelings, Vagus Nerve, Stress (01:41:50) Mental Emotions Reflect Bodily Conditions (01:45:00) Sensing Other People’s Emotions via the Body (01:46:00) Protocol 11: Increasing Interoception, Sensing Heartbeat (01:50:40) Conclusions & Resources Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:09.0	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
0:15.0	Today we continue in our discussion about sensation or how we sense things.
0:20.0	On previous episodes we talked about sensing light and sound waves for things like vision and hearing.
0:26.0	Today we are going to talk about our sense of self or what's called interoception.
0:31.0	Interoception is our sensing of our internal landscape, things like our heartbeat, our breathing, and our gut.
0:39.0	How full our gut might happen to be or how empty our gut might happen to be, but also our inner landscape with respect to chemistry,
0:47.0	how acidic or how good or bad we feel on the inside.
0:52.0	This discussion about sense of self and interoception has many important actionable items that relate to bodily health and brain health.
1:00.0	And believe it or not, our ability to perform well or perform poorly in life.
1:06.0	Indeed, it has profound influence on our rates of healing.
1:11.0	So today we are going to talk about all the aspects of our inner landscape and how our brain and body communicate,
1:17.0	and there will be many actionable protocols as we go along that discussion.
1:22.0	Before we begin our discussion about sense of self, I want to highlight some very recently published research findings that I believe are immediately actionable and that everybody should be aware of.
1:33.0	These are data that were published by my colleague Justin Sonnenberg's laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine.
1:39.0	And the data were published in the journal Cell, which is a very, very high stringency cell press journal.
1:45.0	So phenomenal data.
1:47.0	What this study showed was that individuals given a high fiber diet actually experienced less diversity of what's called the gut microbiome.
1:57.0	The number of positive or health promoting bacteria in the gut was actually reduced by a high fiber diet.
2:03.0	Whereas individuals that ate just a couple of servings of fermented food each day experience important and beneficial increases in anti-inflammatory markets.
2:14.0	And that could be traced back to improvements in the gut microbiome diversity, the diversity of bugs literally little bacteria that live in the gut, which might sound bad, but they are actually very health promoting.
2:27.0	I'm going to get into all the details of this study later in the episode, but I just wanted to emphasize these findings because they are immediately actionable.
	...

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