Improve Energy & Longevity by Optimizing Mitochondria | Dr. Martin Picard

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Life Sciences, Science, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 197 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Martin Picard, PhD, is a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University and an expert on how our behaviors and psychology shape cellular energy production and rates of aging. He explains that your mitochondria don’t just “make energy”; they translate what you do—your mindset and your relationships—into the energy you experience as vitality or lack thereof. He explains how exercise, nutrition, sleep, meditation, and even certain thought patterns and our sense of purpose can charge our cells like batteries. He also shares findings that hair greying is the result of cellular stress and is reversible. This episode links physical and mental ‘energy’ with cellular energy and provides science-supported tools to improve your physical and mental health. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Helix: https://helixsleep.com/huberman Lingo: https://hellolingo.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Martin Picard (00:03:50) What is Energy?, Energy Flow & Transformation (00:07:53) Energy, Vitality, Emotions, Sensory Perception (00:14:18) Sponsors: Helix Sleep & Lingo (00:17:19) “Mito-Centric” View of World, Mitochondrial Energy & Information Patterns (00:25:26) Organelles, Mitochondria & Energy Transformation; Maternal Genes (00:31:12) Mitotypes & Differentiation, Mitochondria as “Social Organisms” (00:36:52) Food & Dysfunctional Energy Transformation (00:40:02) Lifestyle Choices & Interests, Physiological Growth (00:46:39) Pregnancy, Amenorrhea; Illness & Tiredness (00:51:07) Sponsor: AG1 (00:52:29) Energy Transformation & Distribution; Body’s Wisdom, Feeling Sick (00:56:27) Tool: Feel Your Energy; Breath & Energy (01:02:31) Flow of Energy; Trade-Offs, Life Purpose & Enjoyment (01:10:15) Biology, Meaningful Experiences & Energy Flow (01:16:27) Sponsor: Function (00:18:15) Inflammation, Energetic Flow (01:20:43) Child Prodigies, Species Lifespan & Mitochondrial Metabolism; Aging (01:28:56) Lifestyle & Aging: Exercise, Fasting; Inflammation, Sleep, Stimulants (01:37:06) Energetic Stress Signals, GDF-15, Cancer, Heart Failure (01:42:18) Genes, Lifestyle & Aging (01:47:54) Gray Hair Reversal, Stress; Inflammation & Aging (01:57:37) Energy Recovery, Sleep & Mitochondrial Function, Stress, Meditation (02:05:16) Tools: Yoga Nidra, NSDR; Pre-Sleep Relaxation, Energy & Restorative Sleep (02:10:58) Diet & Individualization, Clinical Trials; Mitochondria & Nutrition, Keto (02:20:14) Alcohol & Energy Budget; Stress (02:25:02) Exercise, Increase Mitochondria, Overtraining; Resistance & Growth (02:33:06) Sponsor: Waking Up (02:34:41) Supplements & Mitochondria Health, Deficiencies, SS31, Methylene Blue (02:41:31) Energy Flow & Experiences, Balance (02:49:13) Transform Through Resistance, Energetic Awareness, Connection (02:56:05) Food Overconsumption & Mitochondria Disruption; Tissues & Mitochondria (03:01:02) Mitochondrial Health Test; Tool: Ways to Increase Energy; Meditation (03:06:10) Peptides; Fertility Supplements, Urolithin A; Electromagnetic Fields (03:12:16) Acknowledgements (03:14:15) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's the deal? Can people reverse the graying of their hair by reducing their stress? Can people accelerate the graying of their hair by stressing more?
0:07.8	Likely, both are true, yes. Okay. And I think what we discovered is that hair graying, at least temporarily, is reversible. This was surprising because it goes against this notion that aging is a linear, you know, process that just
0:23.2	happens over time no matter what you do. And here we should know, actually, a hallmark of aging,
0:28.2	which is, you know, depigmentation, losing color in your beard and your hair. It's something
0:33.5	that happens to almost everyone, but at different stages of life and so on.
0:38.5	And then on the same person, and the reason we got into this was that this felt like the perfect
0:42.9	experiment.
0:43.7	Every hair has the same genome.
0:45.8	They're all genetically identical twins, right?
0:48.2	And they're all exposed to the same exercise regime, the same food, the same stress levels.
0:53.7	Yet some hairs go gray when you're like late 30 stress levels, yet some hairs go gray when
0:55.8	you're like late 30s and then some hairs go gray when you're like in your 80s.
0:59.7	What the hell's happening? If we could figure this out, maybe we can understand why different
1:04.1	people age at different rates. Because it's very clear that there's no more than 10%
1:09.0	of how long you live that's genetically driven.
1:11.6	Like the best studies put this at around 7%.
1:13.8	7% of longevity is genetically inherited maybe, and then about 90% is not.
1:20.1	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
1:28.8	I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
1:35.5	My guest today is Dr. Martin Picard.
1:38.0	Dr. Martin Picard is a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University.
1:42.8	He is also a leading expert on how your daily behaviors and your mode of thinking,
	...

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