The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2022

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I describe the mechanisms by which deliberate heat exposure impacts body temperature, metabolism, heart health, hormone production, exercise recovery, cognition, mood, and longevity. I detail specific protocols for deliberate heat exposure, including exposure times, temperature ranges to consider, time of day, and delivery mechanisms (sauna vs. hot bath vs. open air heat, etc.) in order to achieve different specific outcomes, including dramatic growth hormone releases, or reduction in cortisol levels. I also discuss the ability of locally applied heat to heal or otherwise improve various bodily tissues and new data on how local application of heat may induce the conversion of metabolically sluggish white fat to metabolically robust beige fat. 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) Heat & Health (00:03:37) Momentous Supplements (00:05:46) Sponsors (00:09:31) Body Shell Temperature vs. Body Core Temperature (00:13:28) Thermal Regulation, Hyperthermia (00:17:36) Heat Removal Circuits, Pre-Optic Hypothalamus (POA) (00:26:30) Protocols & Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure (00:33:37) Tools & Conditions for Deliberate Heat Exposure (00:38:47) Deliberate Heat Exposure, Cortisol & Cardiovascular Health (00:44:50) Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs), Molecular Mechanisms of Heat Regulation (00:47:56) Longevity & Heat Exposure, FOXO3 (00:52:30) Deliberate Cold & Heat Exposure & Metabolism (00:54:48) Deliberate Heat Exposure & Growth Hormone (01:04:32) Parameters for Heat & Cold Exposure (01:08:26) Circadian Rhythm & Body Temperature, Cold & Heat Exposure (01:12:00) Heat Exposure & Growth Hormone (01:16:20) Tool: Hydration & Sauna (01:17:10) Heat, Endorphins & Dynorphins, Mood (01:28:44) Tool: Glabrous Skin To Heat or Cool (01:35:33) Local Hyperthermia, Converting White Fat to Beige Fat, Metabolism (01:47:00) Hormesis/Mitohormesis & Heat/Cold Exposure (01:49:11) Benefits of Heat Exposure (01:51:10) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous Supplements, Instagram, Twitter, Neural Network Newsletter 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 are talking about the science of heat, and more specifically the science of heating, the verb,
0:22.0	meaning how our body heats up from both the outside and the inside. Heat is a remarkable stimulus,
0:30.0	meaning when we are in a hot environment it has a profound effect on our biology, and heating up from the outside
0:38.0	or as you will soon learn from the inside has a profound effect on many different aspects of our health,
0:46.0	including our metabolism, both in the immediate and long term, our cognition, meaning our ability to think more or less clearly,
0:54.0	and if you're immediately thinking that heating up makes you less capable of thinking, you're wrong.
1:01.0	Heat applied properly as a stimulus can engage certain neurochemical systems in your brain and body
1:07.0	that can allow your brain to function far better. We will talk about those data today.
1:12.0	We're going to talk about the science of heat and heating both in terms of their mechanisms and, as I know many of you are interested in,
1:20.0	the tools related to the use of heat, things like sauna, how often to do sauna, how long to be in the sauna,
1:27.0	how hot to be in the sauna for particular goals and outcomes.
1:31.0	We're also going to talk about the very exciting new science around local heating.
1:36.0	That is, the use of heat applied to specific areas of the body in order to heal or improve tissues at that location that you are heating,
1:45.0	as well as your biology and health overall.
1:48.0	In fact, we are going to talk about one very recently published paper that came out in the journal Cell.
1:54.0	Cell is one of the three apex journals, meaning three of the most competitive, most rigorous scientific journals.
2:00.0	Those are Nature, Science, and Cell. This particular paper was published in Cell, and I will go into it in more detail later.
2:06.0	But basically what this paper shows is that by locally heating up skin and fat, you can change the identity of certain fat cells at that location and elsewhere.
2:20.0	We have three kinds of fat, white fat, beige fat, and brown fat. And as you learn more about soon, white fat is not very metabolically active.
2:28.0	It's more of a fuel reserve. That's what we typically think of as blubbery fat.
	...

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