Dr. Andy Galpin

Appearances

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

No, actually, we haven't gone together, but we've just missed each other a bunch. We have a lot of the same friends.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I knew Joe before Andrew did. I knew Andrew way before. But I'm actually going this spring, I'm going on a bear hunt with Cam Haynes. I don't know if Joe's going to be there or not. He may be, but I haven't asked him about it. But we'll be up there together. Yeah, so we have many friends.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Depends on how you want to define quality. There's a lot of back and forth. Obviously, as we've just been talking about, I'm clearly a big fan of meat and animal meat. But I think there is ample evidence now that people can live a really high-performing life on plant-based stuff as well. I work with a bunch of plant-based athletes, and they perform fine. So we can get there as well.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I work with some really famous local musicians that they are plant-based. So you can get there. I'm not as bullish on that as I used to be. More evidence has come out that's like, okay, the only thing you got to pay attention to a little bit is, of course, limits options.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And you have to be really conscious of calories with that because you generally have to eat more of it or you have to get it in forms that are more calorically dense, right? So if you try to equate something like, you know, four ounces of Maui Nui axis deer to get the same amount of protein, as you get out of peanut butter, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You're going to be eating 150 calories of protein from the Maui Nui axis deer, and you're going to eat 700 calories from the peanut butter. So your overall calorie intake has to go way up, depending on how it's packaged.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Like, you know my opinion on that clearly, but it can be done well.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah. I have, at all times, I take... In fact, they were just around here a second ago. But those travel Momentous protein things, I always have like 20 of them with me at all times.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, I always take them. So if it's a... You know what's actually cool about Momentus, too? They just changed their whey protein formula. Have you seen this? Which, tell me. They took out... There's no gum anymore. There's no fillers. And there's no...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I mean, the artificial stuff in there. And they took the price way down. So it's way cleaner.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, no, I know this because, so I've been working with Momentous for a long time. Disclosure here, they are a sponsor to my show and I personally am on their advisory board. But I'm saying that because they asked me for many years and I said no for like several years. And then they changed leadership and these new people came in and they developed what they call the momentous standard.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And so every single product that they make is third-party tested.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's tested also for heavy metals, for pesticides, for herbicides, for toxins, for lead, for a ton of different stuff, right? Which very, very few supplement companies actually do. And then on top of that, most of their products have what's called NSF certified for sport, which is something we have to have for our athletes. So it's all third party tested.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And then a bunch of it has all this additional stuff. So it's when I saw them doing all that stuff, I was like, oh, You're actually putting your money where your mouth is. Because everybody says their products are the cleanest.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Define high performance for me, but some categorical rules I can answer here.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, I could believe it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I have no idea. It's weird. Probably, if I had to guess, knowing what I know about the supplement industry and the food industry in general, a lot of the times, multiple companies are buying from the same distributor. So my guess is something like that is happening. Ultimately, I don't really care because the fact that the products that I use are all tested anyways.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And there are other companies that make good stuff too in the supplement world, but I just particularly prefer Momentus. So if you don't like them for whatever reason, great, find another one. But just whatever you do, especially for things like supplements and food-based products, just make sure that they're at the same kind of level of testing. If they do, then fine, go with somebody else.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

If they don't, though, be careful.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Cognitive performance is a different answer here, right? So you can go into the small details with examples like people like to bring up blueberries. Lots of research, a cup of blueberries per day is actually going to have statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in cognitive function. We use this very routinely. It's been very well demonstrated.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, okay, actually, number one, you don't necessarily unless your company's... This is ridiculous. It sounds like we're doing a giant ad for Momentus.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I swear. Companies like Momentous, though, will let that testing available. So see it. Show me the testing results, right? The other way is, and this is something we don't talk about very often, but we will routinely see heavy metals and other toxins in people's blood work. And then you go back and see, oh, they stopped taking...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

those supplements from non-tested places or places that say that they're tested, but they're not. And you don't know it's from them, right? Things like mercury could be from anywhere, right? Totally, right? Or even lead could be a thousand places, right? And so not every time, but many times, the only change we make is we stop taking those low quality supplements. And then guess what happens?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's gone in their blood. Really? So there's many steps in logic. I jumped there. That would be a bad science experiment if I just said it that way. I didn't control for all variables. Generally, toxin in blood are acute exposures anyways. They clear. But it's happened enough times where I'm like, all right, you got to stop taking those crappy supplements.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I'd have to know exactly what the person said, but I can add a couple of things to that. Number one, if you're going to compare something like a whole food to the fruit juice.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I'm getting there. I'm getting there.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So let's start where we all agree.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Everyone would agree with that, right? Why we're missing the fiber intake almost exclusively, right? Fiber is going to mitigate blood glucose spikes and elevation. Great. Second step then is what if I take that whole apple, banana, peach, whatever it is, eat it as a whole apple versus blend it up? Well, you'll actually see the same thing with meat. A steak versus ground meat.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Ground meat versus actually blended meat because these studies have been done. You blend it up and you drink the meat.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, yeah. For this exact reason. It is what happens if I pre-digest, basically, pre-break down the food item. There are differences. There are differences in absorption. The amount that you actually get from the gut actually into the rest of your system is kind of how you can think about that. There are differences.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

That said, how much of a difference in that particular example of if I ate that peach or if I blended it up, how much more would that cause my blood glucose to spike? I would probably, if they showed me data that said it spiked it more when you blended it, for those other reasons, I'd believe it. Does it do it to a magnitude that I care about? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know the data.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I don't know the specific study that they're referring to. My initial skepticism, you can see there. I don't know if I would care enough. But it's plausible based on what I do know from studies in a very similar realm. So I'd say plausible, but I don't know. I don't really do that very often, so I'm not super worried about it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It depends on how far up or down that priority list it is for you. If everything else is really dialed and this is the last little thing to figure out, then maybe this is making a big enough of an impact.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

But if we're still worrying about this over top of the other big rocks we talked about earlier, you're eating 20 grams of protein a day, you're having irregular sleep schedule, then I'd be like, dude, you're way focused on the wrong thing. So it could be real, but whether you need to focus on it or pay attention to it would be up to what the individual situation is.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's all honestly super true. So if you then wind back to some of your previous questions on that, does it matter which format that you like to give yourself structure with? You're like, what the hell did he just say? You could have called that a diet. That's all diets are. They're just a different format that gives you structure.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Or missing a meal or whatever the case is, right? So would I rather have you blend your banana strawberry smoothie rather than just going to the store and buying a, yes, it's still whole real food. It's still better probably than adding additional processing steps to it. Totally, totally.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And I don't know, if it represents some marginal increase in blood glucose elevation, just go for a walk and it's all gone. So who cares? It's pretty easy to manage.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, it helps with, I mean, darn near everything, from short and long-term gut health to mitigating blood glucose elevation to nutrient absorption to helping manage cholesterol levels, a ton of other reasons to go after it. I would say, in general, we've probably increased fiber intake more than we've done the opposite.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And I say that because there actually have been, and we just had one last week, Young 32-year-old guy is just on top of everything. Lots of IBS symptoms, was just convinced he had something happening with gut health or whatever. Okay, run stool tests, things like that. Take a look at it and he's eating like 50 grams of fiber a day. Okay, what's that mean?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

The kind of rule of thumb we say is for every thousand calories you eat, you want to eat around 14 or so grams of fiber. So if you're eating 2,000 calories, you should be having, that would be 28 grams of fiber, which would mean, all right, somewhere between 25 and 30, like, you know, plus or minus. These numbers, like, don't get too specific with them.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

If you're at 3,000 calories a day, maybe something like 40, 50 grams of fiber a day. So when I saw he's like 50 grams of fiber a day, I'm like, oh, okay, you must be at a pretty high calorie load. Calorie load was like 1,800. And I was like, oh, well, I know why you think you have IBS. You have triple the fiber intake. And that's going to tear your stomach to pieces, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We also see this a lot with people that are really health conscious or trying to be really health conscious. And they jack up insoluble fiber really high on accident. They do things like, okay, I'm going to cut out all my starches. I'm not going to eat any more pasta, no more grains. And I'm eating all vegetables and their broccoli intake. They're eating three cups of broccoli per meal.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And all of a sudden they're just like, damn, and I'm getting like all this bloating. And I'm like, well, yeah. Yeah. How about we switch out a cup of broccoli and put in a pizza?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Really?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And all of a sudden they're like, yeah, my GI problems are going away. I'm like, well, no kidding.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Because remember, there's two types of fiber. There's soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. Insoluble fiber, here's a clear difference. If you took a glass of water and put it on the table and you put something in that water, if it would get soggy and soak up the water, like imagine putting a piece of bread in water. Fill up, okay? That is a soluble fiber. If you put a piece of broccoli in water,

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

it wouldn't do anything. That is insoluble, right? Well, the same thing happens in your GI tract. So both soluble and insoluble fiber are really healthy. They're really good for you, but they have different functions. So if you get a ton of soluble fiber, and you don't have insoluble fiber in there, like boom, things will shoot through.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You'll go, probably go like really constipated and then boom, diarrhea or like pretty new story, right? If you do the opposite and you jack insoluble fiber up way too high, you could just really have like tons of bowel movements. Maybe you're not watery, maybe not. Or you could, again, feel constipated.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

That's all it is, right? I don't even call them diets because it's nonsensical.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So both of these things could be causing either end of that spectrum, depending on where they're at. So when you just have way too much fiber intake, especially in a quick span. So you've just made this change. You went from eating like eight or 10 grams of fiber a day to now eating 35. You're going to just go bam.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Like your stomach is going to have one of two reactions and neither of them you want.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

That's the majority. I would probably say 90% of the time we've happened to give people more fiber. 10% of the time have been people eating like too much fiber. I would say if you had to pick one error on the side of 40% too much fiber rather than 3% too little.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Like really you want to make sure you're at or above the number, but if you're going crazy and you made all these changes and it's new to you, it's the change that matters, right? So if your GI system's not ready for that, And all of a sudden you're just like, man, I'm eating all these healthy foods and oh my God, my stomach is, I'm just gassy and like all these problems.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Then maybe tone down the broccoli, you know, for a little bit and get some easier to digest forms of fiber for a little bit. Then maybe work your way back up if you need to at all. But yes, most people are not eating enough fiber.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You can. We have used these a lot, whether they are things like FiberMend from Thorne is great, or Metamucil, right? Like psyllium husk, like lots of different things like that you can do.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

BioMe?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We've used those in times probably most often when, and this is not me, we have medical doctors and things like that on our team that'll do, if you actually have a gut problem, let me fix your gut, right? That's a big part of those gut healing protocols, right? But where we have used them more are things like in caloric deficits.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

That's garbage, like almost all nonsense out of that stuff. Fasting is insanely overrated. I like it. Do it a bunch. But if you're thinking that skipping breakfast in the morning is going to solve almost any of your health problems, you're generally massively misguided. If it is helping you, avoid triggers. Then awesome. If it is helping you manage your calories, awesome.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So as calories come down, sometimes micronutrients, vitamins, minerals come down. This is when supplements and stuff start to come into the equation, right? And oftentimes, a lot of the athletes we work with or general population will go through phases of caloric restriction. And then if fiber starts to get hurt there, we'll bring in then fiber as a supplement.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I usually would rather get fiber from whole food, but we will turn to supplements in those particular cases. And it's really helpful, particularly during those last few weeks. and you're just like, man, not really regular right now, and you're like, okay, great, and we can take some psyllium husk or something like that and get your stomach to not feel so suboptimal, then it's pretty helpful.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Supplements should be thought of as supplements. have good relationships, drink water, see the sunlight, move. This is all the stuff that changes your life. Now, if we want to add some little ice cream on top, this is where supplements come in. And so we use supplements quite regularly. Supplements do work.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

When people say things like supplements are a scam, they don't work, I just don't think they can read. I'm generally considering thinking they cannot physically read.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, well, there are thousands of studies on supplements, right? They're being kind of jerks when they say that, but what they're trying to say is, Supplements don't have the magnitude of impact that most people think. And that's true. So they do work, but they generally don't work like people think. It's uncommon for you to take one supplement and your life changes.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

That's not the kind of impact supplements tend to have. If you want numbers, I don't know, if I had to add every supplement in the whole world together, I'd probably say most supplements change whatever you're measuring by 3% to 10%. It's not 50%. Yeah, it's not that much. It's not 90%. But if you're at a certain level where you've done the big stuff, that does move the needle by 90% or 200%.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And you are looking for that last 5% or 10%. Well, now a supplement can potentially do that. Now, there are some supplements... like a fish oil. That will move the needle in those really big numbers, like fiber potentially. And then there are others like a creatine, where the impact is more gonna be in that three to 10% range, but the safety profile's high.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

They've been tested in every clinical population you can imagine, from brain damage to brain injuries to neurological disorders to pregnancy to kids to weight loss to young to old, right? And they very rarely have any negative side effects of any. And they generally improve a wide range of outcomes, like lean muscle, like brain health, like mood, like cognitive function. They're not doing a lot.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

They're not at the same order of magnitude as a drug would do. But this is a context. So if you hear that and you think, oh, I knew it, they're a scam. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

If you don't like breakfast in the morning, awesome. Totally fine. We actually just, this actually on the way over here, I submitted back revisions. Our paper should be accepted in the next couple of days. We ran a study on intermittent fasting in our laboratory. So I'm not against it at all, but I'm certainly against people thinking that they have to do it for any short or long-term reason.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You have to figure out a way to get yourself high-quality foods. You have to figure out a way to manage calories somehow. And if fasting is a way that checks those boxes on a positive, well, great. If it doesn't, then I don't care at all about it. I will promote a six meal a day diet as much as I will a one meal a day diet. Whatever is, those are not the factors that matter.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

The factors that matter are the other things. Now, having said that, We will use things like fasting a lot for cognitive performance with things like our surgeons and our firefighters and our other responders because they generally are going to go, hey, I can't take a break every two hours and go snack, right? I'm in a 16-hour surgery. I'm in a nine-hour surgery, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G.G gi, gi, gi, gi, gi, gi, g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I need to perform really well given these constraints. Awesome. I don't want a surgeon then getting hungry every two hours and like scrubbing. They're going to be like, dude, no, zero chance. So in situations like that, or again, the firefighters are another example or military where you're like, hey, I need to be able to be on for these big chunks of time and then feed and then great.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You know what I love about it the most? other than like being happy for him. He's so punk. He only ever does things the way he wants to do it. And from the gate, like he didn't do any things of like, oh, you have to do this to optimize. You have to do this. He's just like, no. Like I'm just like, and if it works, it works great. Like whatever.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Not from an arrogance perspective, but just being like true to himself. And like, this is what he wants to do. This is a topic he wants to talk about. These are the papers he wants to read. I'm like, that's what he's going to do. I like knowing that. It's great. It's great. Like no one deserves it more than he does.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, get in line with all the other people that— I don't want to get in line. He promised. Why does he promise? He shouldn't do that, though. You know, honestly, people get mad at him about this, but this is a—

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

here's what will happen with him he will genuinely be excited like super excited to do something and want to do it and he'll say yes and then he'll look at his calendar and it is going and he's like damn damn damn and then it just gets buried on the thing so it's not disingenuous at all when he says yes to something he legitimately is very excited about it and then reality sets in of like travel schedule and other things and it just like can't physically happen

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So he probably should be better at being more realistic about his commitments. I will say it that way. But it's never like, eh, she's not popular enough or he's not cool. It's always like, yeah, he's super into it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I can't promise you. I don't know.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's timing. It's fluke. It's...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's all the lucky things, right? All right, because I see him on Joe Rogan.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So I'll, I'll eat that stuff.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I'll eat those things as well as always some fruit in the morning and then generally some starch. And I have a pretty big variety of what I'm going to choose for those categories. Okay.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You can have too much of anything.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, calories matter.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, it doesn't matter, right? Are calories the only thing that matters? No. Is it the most important thing? Maybe not. Is calorie measuring the best dietary system? Maybe not. That doesn't mean calories don't count. There are ways that it looks like the calorie in, calorie out system's not working for you. But that generally means a miscalculation on calories in or calories out, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Because the body does lots of adaptive things. to mitigate and manage what happens there. So yeah, calories matter. Anything past that is details now, but you can't make an argument that calories just don't exist or matter, right? So all of my supplements are very specific to either my goals at that time and or what's happening in my physiology. So it changes. I don't just take the same thing.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

But I would never do that for a PGA golfer. Never, right? That would make no sense for us whatsoever to do that. We need to have different constraints and different performance variables. So those people generally eat way more frequently. If you have a personal preference, if you have anything. So it's always about precision.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Sure.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

somewhat high to none, right? So you're talking about a precursor for glutathione for the most part, right? So it has a, generally you can think of it as like a pretty potent antioxidant. Not something I would tell everyone to take. You have to be really careful, especially with timing of antioxidants, especially powerful ones like that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

If you're trying to induce any physiological adaptation, this comes in response to insult. So you cause an inflammatory response when you exercise. If you then block that inflammatory response with an NSAID, with NAC, with vitamin E, vitamin C, then you will mitigate and block adaptations. Really? This has been shown many times.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You have to take a pretty high amount, but if you're trying to cause stress and then you're stopping the stress from happening, you're stopping the physiological response. But I thought taking antioxidants is a great... Antioxidant supplements are something you should be very conscious of. High antioxidant foods are almost always okay.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So if you're eating more quality foods that are higher in antioxidants, this is almost always a good thing. But now when you're taking them in the form of a medication of a supplement, you're getting extremely high dosage in non-natural combinations, if you will. That becomes really problematic is almost a fair word to say.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

What I just explained. So if you're overly suppressing inflammation, inflammation is the signal for adaptation. It is the signal for blood clotting. It is the signal for cognitive change. It is the signal for neuroplasticity. If you're going in and smashing and maximally suppressing that, then you don't have any stimuli for adaptation. Like this becomes a problem.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So we do not just prophylactically take antioxidants of any kind. If we have a very structured reason for that, then we might put some in there. But then we're going to come off of them as soon as we've done. But we do not just put people on, especially high-powered ones like NAC, and just as like a, yeah, go take this forever thing.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Because their tournaments are not at the same time. Sometimes they tee off at 6 in the morning, and let's say they're a West Coaster, and they're going to go play a tournament on the East Coast, they're teeing off at what's 4 a.m. their time. And then they're going to play a five-hour round in August in Florida. It's going to be super hot, right? And they've got to turn around and then play.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Astaxanthin?

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah. It's great. That's your blueberry stuff. That's just like the ingredient down the list. And it's one of the many awesome things in blueberries, cherries, and things like that. It's phenomenal. Lots of research on it. It's great. Again, though, I would say the same thing. We're not going to take those unless we have a reason for that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Because you have to be conscious of what you're trying to do signaling-wise in your physiology. This is a potent one.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

No, definitely not the case. You can get away with higher than needed amounts of protein, of fiber. But you start getting into, here's a general rule. If it is a macronutrient, fiber, water, protein, carbs, fat, No big deal if you eat excess, okay? If it is a micronutrient, if it is a vitamin, if it's a water-soluble vitamin, you'll just pee it out.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So not a big deal for over-consuming water-soluble vitamins usually, with some exceptions, vitamin C, things like that. If you start getting into fat-soluble, and if you specifically get into minerals- be really, really careful of high concentrations of exogenous minerals, iron, calcium, even something like potassium. These can cause real significant and serious issues.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So I wouldn't go to any of these things. Phytochemicals are in the same realm. Antioxidants, you really should be conscious of using those things unless you have a reason. If you are training super hard and you're peaking for competition, we might add in some antioxidant supplementation.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

If we're in a particular area of the world, let's say, or traveling with a lot of pollutants, or you're going to be interacting with a lot of people and you're worried about, you're going to be sleeping a lot less, and you have other things that are going to suppress your immune system, we might add in some antioxidant support there. But if not, we're not going to touch those things.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Oftentimes, if we're having any immune-related issues, there's something causing it, and we're going to go back and solve that problem, and then just let your immune system and your physiology do what it wants to do and get out of the way.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I wouldn't take them unless you had a real reason for it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, again, if you have a reason for it, then... That was three years ago, though. Oh, my God. Well, you're not the same person.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, no, that's... I'd say, like, if you're all, like, at home and you're confused, don't have blood or whatever, if you are leading... an inactive lifestyle, and or you eat a bunch of low-quality food, or you do something that is known to be pretty deleterious, like excessive alcohol or smoking, or you live in a place that has really low air quality.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So our energy demands are really, really, really high on those tournaments.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Right, exactly. Right. Then, then okay. But if you're checking most of those boxes, I wouldn't, without blood work or without some particular reason, I'd probably stay away from most antioxidant supplements.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You're too busy to coach me. No, no, no, there is. You're going to coach me yourself. We have a program called Optima that I personally coach. You, you're going to coach me. That's me, that's me directly.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I'm going to hire you. Yeah, it's, look into the program.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's not a reasonable number that most people can afford.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

No, our coaching program, our full immersion coaching program is one program, one price. That's it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

10,000.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So if you want, what you can do

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I'm not embarrassed. It's just better this way.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So it's honestly, it's all the big stuff. You're going to manage calorie intake one way or the other, right? We're going to focus on getting high amounts of high quality foods. So we're eating mostly whole real foods. We want a variety of colors. We want a variety of preparation methods. We're going to use a lot of fruits, a lot of vegetables, a lot of meats if we can.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You can look in the program and you can see if it's your fit. And you do it yourself. The Optima program, I personally coach. This is where I personally coach.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah. When I say like I coach, this is not like people in my company. This is literally the people I'm coaching. Then we have a more affordable program that I have built. And I did coach for years and years in. And now I don't personally coach in that line anymore. At the same time, you can do something like just our blood work. So our blood work program is called Vitality. Okay.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

This will, it's like about 100 markers, I think, plus or minus.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, and then there's, again, probably another several thousand that it's calculating after that. But that will not only pull those markers, it'll analyze, it'll interpret, tell you exactly what all these markers and combinations and cross-reactions mean, and then tell you exactly what to do to not just fix the marker that is high or low, but to fix the cause.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's all automated in software.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So you'll run through it. Your results will come back in. You'll get an alert. You'll pop on and everything will be analyzed, interpreted for you. It can walk you through, hey, this number is high. This is what it means. This is what it's doing. And then do exactly this to correct, maybe not that number, but correct the cause of that problem. And it's all automated for you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Once, a one-time fee. Yeah, and if you buy, of course, semi-annual or multiple, it's cheaper.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You can go to a local lab car or whatever. You can do mobile phlebotomy. I think mobile phlebotomy is a separate charge on top of that, $1,200, but usually it's a couple hundred bucks or less or whatever. Or you can go to a lab car. So you can get into blood work. That's very affordable. Our Absolute Rest Sleep Program is...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's not at a price where you're like, I want to try that. It's not like a pair of shoes? The blood work program may be like in the number that you're like, oh, okay, I'll try that. Yeah, this is probably more... But this is not, this is like, you better be very serious, because it's almost a year-long program, and so...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Define big.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We've had the highest contract.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And we've had the highest contract in sports probably six or seven times.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Not LeBron. Patrick Mahomes? Not Patrick. Tom Brady. But we have had everything from Travis Barker. I still work with Travis. He's phenomenal. To Fred Warner, who's the number one linebacker in the NFL. Trevor Bauer, he signed the highest contract in Major League Baseball history, won the Cy Young. Jon Rahm. Behind Tiger Woods, you know, very likely the highest paid golfer in the world.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Probably a thousand that I'm forgetting at this point. I'm always terrible with remembering. But these are some of the big names that are like right now on the top of our list. But plenty of Hall of Famers, MVPs, Cy Young winners. Again, the highest contract at the time, at least six times.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Do you travel all the time? I do a little bit. And then, I mean, I lived here in LA for like 13 years.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So like Tatiana Suarez.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

my daughter knows her. They're like best buddies because she'd come to my house and like trains at my house.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, Brian Ortega, UFC fighter.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Like he lives here in LA, right? So hundreds of times.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, sort of. Like strength and conditioning coaches I know, you weren't really- Generally how we- Like you're not like- But like if you're asking like if I'm in the gym taking them through their training programs, yeah.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Four to six.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I did that for many, many years. I started actually, I first started coaching professional athletes like in the gym personally in 2003.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I've had a lot of pro athletes that like I have directly personally coached in my house, in the gym, in different formulas.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So I'm not in the gym with them as much anymore, like I said.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

But I'm still actively coaching many of them.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Which is great, too.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And my interest clearly is in a little bit of all of them.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So, I mean, I didn't have... Honestly, I didn't have it in me to be a full-time only strength coach or a full-time only sciences. I much prefer doing kind of a little bit of everything.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And then having a whole bunch of legitimate experts that I work with to bring in, to be true experts in those fields.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So all of our stuff is like a team approach, right? So we try to bring in the best physical therapist, the best behavioral therapist, the best conditioning coaches, the best medical providers and say like, whatever you need, you're going to get a legitimate world-class individual in that category.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And I generally sit kind of like on the top is a bad way to say it, but I'm kind of the first filter that goes, yo, yo, this is where we need to go.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And fruit and starch. Almost always, a few hours into the day, I'm going to have like a 40-gram protein ingestion right now for probably two months straight. That means I'm going to do a double scoop of Momentous. Like, I promise you that's true. I believe you, yep. So I'll hammer that and then maybe another piece of fruit, which makes me feel great.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And then we always do lunch and dinner is the same thing. And so we'll make dinner and then double the thing and have it for the next day. So I'll explain to you lunch and it's the same thing as dinner. But it's always a combination of six to eight ounces of meat of various kinds. a giant serving, like an entire plate of vegetables. And this is an enormous variety.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

My wife is a tremendous, I won't say chef, but basically a chef. So she makes all kinds of things. Some serving of fat there, whether that's gonna be nuts or a cheese or an oil or avocado, whatever the thing is. And then depending on the day, some varying amount of starch. So quinoa to rice to sweet potatoes to regular potatoes to sourdough bread to like any number of things.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And then the meal in between that could be something like yogurt and nuts or some other thing like that. So you kind of run that thing out and you can see like 200 grams of protein is pretty easy to get to.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, like in the afternoons is when I like to train. Sometimes that gets pushed back a little bit.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yes and no. Here's what I'd say. Intermittent fasting affects different people differently.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

If I'm going to be lifting weights, I'm generally going to be doing full body. I don't do body part splits at all. And then what I do is I will oftentimes rotate like strength training, and then some sort of conditioning.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And the reason I do that is, and because my travel schedule is what it is, I would not have success doing like a, I lift legs on Monday, or I just do the next workout the next day I have a chance. That's however I do it, right? So if I have seven days in a row, I'm going to train seven days in a row. Because I might have four days in a row of like terrible travel, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Or nonstop media, blah, blah, blah, right? Where I'm like, okay, there's just no reality of me getting a 45-minute lift in because I got to take my Uber for an hour. Yeah. I don't have three hours of a break, right, because I'm on the road. Or my hotel doesn't have a gym or whatever the case is.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, like depending on where you're at, like you get, you know, depending on what city you're in and you're all over the place and timing and things like that, right? Yeah. So I'll just do the next one. So my conditioning could be anything from, you know, like 15 minutes of really high intensity sprint work, or it could be longer duration, lower intensity.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It could be, you know, like an hour walk. It could be all kinds of different stuff I do. And then my workouts are generally going to be, again, like I have a coach. I have a full-time strength conditioning coach for my program.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Tim DeFrancesco does my stuff. He was a former strength and conditioning coach for the Lakers. So really, really high level, but like I pay him to write my program.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I did my own stuff for decades and it's just, I will never do it again.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Never. Yeah. So he does all my programs and he's awesome about changing stuff up as I'm going or whatever.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Honestly, personally, when I train, I don't want anybody around.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Like my whole life is talking to other people for the most part. I know. Whether it's our companies or my students or whatever. So when I can have an hour to myself, I'm like, I'm out.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So I love having a remote coach like that. But that's generally what it is. So my day, like that's what I'll eat. That's how I do it. The kids are home. Yeah. Usually like six o'clock, we're doing dinner and then it's like family time the rest of the day. They're in bed at eight o'clock. Eight o'clock is, you know, wife and I time to do whatever. And then it's wake up the next day and do it again.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

All good, all good.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, I'm in LA somewhat routinely, so we'll definitely do that.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah, well, yeah. I don't know about that, but okay.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Sure. I have coached world champion females in six different sports. And I have coached a countless amount of females non-athletes. I just, I can't honestly say, yes, women generally need to do more fasting.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I will say, like, of all the females we've coached, and this is 18-year-olds to 68-year-olds, right? I've coached the whole spectrum, a lot of them. It's just a person-to-person thing. Okay. More than it is a male versus female thing. Some of our... Women just do way better. when we eat more frequently. Some of them, it doesn't really matter.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Some of them, it's like, it's just, again, it's like an individual thing more than anything. So what we like categorically never do, and I'm trying to like triple check my brain, but yeah, I don't think there's anything we ever specifically do just because someone walks in and they're female versus male. Like there's no like, oh, automatically we train this way or we do this with our food.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We do the same individualized programming every day. Like that's, it's a variable we pay attention to, but there's no buckets you just go into because you show up in your male or you show up in your female or you show up in your anything else, right? So we're really going to pay attention to that. And we test, we're actually doing a trial right now.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

My grad student Zoe is running a study where we're actually doing the first ever detailed sleep analysis throughout the entire menstrual cycle. So we're looking at blood. We're directly testing high-fidelity sleep every single day throughout the entire cycle. We're directly testing blood. We're directly testing ovulation. We're testing these things every single day for maximum precision.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And one of the things you'll see is things like menstrual cycle length is not the same from woman to woman. Everyone knows that. But it's not even the same within each woman. But let's say it is. Let's just say you're a 28-day cycle all the time. Great. Your ovulation cycle is not the same. And this really, if you test it every single day, cycle after cycle, you'll see this pop up.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You don't necessarily ovulate on day 14.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

When like men are like, what is he even talking about? But girls are like, no, dude, it's finally, right? This is exactly. Totally, yeah. So we're not going to make critical decisions about their nutrition or supplementation or stuff based on like a, well, you're a woman, therefore you should be ovulating day 14, and therefore, here we go.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We're going to test these things and then go, okay, for you, this is what's going to go on. That's what we're going to do based on your physiology.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Calorie balance, whole real foods for the most part. We want a reasonable balance of macronutrients. By reasonable, that could mean some people do better on a really high-fat, low-carbohydrate. Some do the opposite. Really low-fat, really high-carbohydrates. Some don't care at all or are in a balance. So when I say reasonable, I'm just saying like... what is actually working for you or not.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And we can play games there. High performers, not high performers, lifestyle preferences, taste, digestion. We can mix and match, particularly fat and carbohydrates. We almost always, though, want a moderate to high protein intake. Almost always right there. And then we want a lot of variety. and our colors.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We need a variety of micronutrients, vitamins, chemicals, phytochemicals, minerals in there. And so we like a lot of color. We like a lot of different sources of those things. That's basically what everyone does. The way that we get there, different.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Sure. So most of the time I'm walking around about 170 pounds. So I'm looking for 200 grams of protein a day, like plus or minus, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I don't weigh and measure at this point hardly ever anymore. So some days I'm probably 130. Some days I'm well over 200. Right. Most days, though, I'm probably going to be swinging within 30 or 40 grams of that number, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So in the morning, I generally wake up. When we get going, I'm going to almost always have eggs and some sort of wild game meat.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I harvest my own. So I'm going to eat deer or elk or bear or like something every day. What?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

What do you mean, bear? Bear. Like the animal. You know, like Winnie the Pooh, the bear. Like a grizzly bear? I can't hunt grizzly bears very often, but black bears are pretty easy to get, so they're quite tasty.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

many times okay is it fatty is it like what is it it depends on what if you get them post hibernation like you do spring bear hunt they're going to be much leaner right you get them prior to like a later winter hunt and they're going to be much fattier it's not like any other animal though it's weird it is weird to me uh when people no offense but react this way because if i said like hey i ate a cow yeah of course

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

And then like I say, I ate a beer and you're like, like you can't comprehend.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Deer, people don't freak out. But then bear like, of course, right? They're like any other animal that we can hunt and eat.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

The general thing you'll hear people say about bear meat is it's greasier, right? So it has this weird thing, and that can be off-putting. It's not gamey, though. If you get a whitetail deer, and it's not processed properly, or you get it during the rut, then you'll get that classic gamey taste. That'll smell weird. But a normal non-deer, or non-poorly processed deer, it was going to taste fine.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Bear will be the same way. So if you get it when it's been feeding on a bunch of rotten salmon, then it's not going to taste tremendous. But you'll know it pretty quickly. But on average, if we had lunch right now and I made it for you, you would have had no idea.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

You'd eat it, whether we're eating like the steak or the burger of it or whatever the case, you'd be like, you wouldn't have had any idea of what I just put in front of you. If I gave you something like axis deer, then you'd be like, that's the most delicious thing I've ever had. What the hell is that? But you wouldn't be like, oh my God, I feel like I just ate a deer. You would have no idea.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's tremendous. I love wild meat.

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Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Every day? Every day, yeah.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Of course. If my kid was right there and he'd be like, do you eat bear? They would be like, Yeah, like what? Like they wouldn't have any reaction at all to be like, of course, because they don't know any different.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Not everything, but we try to for the most part. Do you ever go to Whole Foods? No. I haven't been to a grocery store in many, many years.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Yeah. I mean, we'll eat, I don't know what a fair number is. Maybe, I don't know what percent. But we still buy grocery stuff, particularly if we want a specific cut or something that she's doing, she's making, where she wants a specific way it's prepared. Then she'll buy other stuff. But in terms of our general meat consumption...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

I probably have, I don't know, 400 pounds of frozen meat in my house right now between elk and axis deer. And I have some mule deer still. And then the salmon run just got done. So my nephew brought over a bunch of wild salmon. So we got a bunch of salmon in there. We got clams and we got a bunch of other stuff. What else do we have in there? Like, it's just like we're in the winter.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

So we just got done with all those, like the seafood season. So we got crabs in there. We got a bunch of other stuff. So yeah, we had a large portion, but we still buy... Like sometimes occasionally even buy cow and beef and things like that. Pork, of course.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

My wife's Jewish and my kids are Jewish too, but she's a bad Jew.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

No. Well, pork is more delicious. I will give you that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

It's just like not even a thing that pops up in my head is weird. It's just like so part of... That's just how I go.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Well, so the only thing about bear you got to be careful of is... There's a non-zero chance that it has trichinosis. And so you would not want to eat bear rare at all, or even medium rare. So even if you're, like very rarely, you don't do, the only part of bear that I'll eat a steak will be like the back straps or the tenderloins. which you can do, but you want to cook them well done.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

But outside of that, you're pretty much going to go to other cuts, stews or roasts or grounds or things like that. So you can make like stews are really easy. Grounds or soups and things like that are totally fine. And then the rest you'll do sausage and different grounds and things like that. So we eat a lot of- A bear sausage?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

Same as any other sausage. Take a bunch of meat, put it through a grinder, and then add any other stuff you want to add in there, depending on if you're trying to make bratwurst or breakfast sausage or spicy jalapeno or some other combination. You can make it however you want. We're out of bear meat right now, I think. We're pretty much done, but we're pretty loaded on axis deer right now.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work

We just got back. I got a really nice bull elk this year, so we got a lot of elk meat right now, too, which is tremendous.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, I have many things to say about the topic. First and foremost, again, I'm not a medical doctor. Yes, but you just play one on TV.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, I think it's just fairness. People listening might have been like, oh, he's a doctor, and assume I'm a medical doctor.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I think actually that's a really good question, first of all, because we define performance quite differently. Ultimately, I'm not a metabolism guy. I'm not a sleep guy. I'm not a muscle growth guy. What I am is a physiologist. And why that matters is I actually don't really particularly care how you yourself define performance.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, we do, but... I'm not a medical.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That said, I'm very supportive of hormone therapy, particularly for women, especially post-menopause. There's even for men, lots of reasons why hormone therapy is great. That said, I will say in my personal experience, we have had many people come into our coaching programs post-TRT, many men, because they were given it flippantly or haphazardly.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And that is a real significant problem because you will feel pretty good for six weeks, for six months. And then things get really bad and generally are going to stay bad for a long time unless you do something about it. So there are real concerns about giving people exogenous hormones in a very poor, underdeveloped, unmanaged way.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If someone's really paying attention, taking you through it, it can be safe and highly effective. There are problems with it because of the way that you got into it. Again, did you have a 15 minute teledoc and you said, I'm tired and I'm sleepy and they just gave you testosterone. To me, that's a really poor decision.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

We can use these easy examples because we actually just got our, pretty recently just got all of our mid-season blood work back from our NFL players. On average, we're seeing about 150 to 200 increase in testosterone mid-season in the NFL. We can't use exogenous hormones there.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So we're seeing now most Vanderbilt players are sitting like 700 plus testosterone, usually in the mid 500s at the beginning of the year. See the same thing with our baseball players and everybody else. So we are really consistently able to elevate people's testosterone without touching any hormones, any peptides, anything that's even close to this stuff.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

All we actually ever have to do is remove any major constraints from their physiology. What are the constraints? It could be suboptimal sleep, right? They could have a clinical sleep disorder, not realize it. You just get a small improvement in sleep and you will see 20% increases in testosterone really routinely. It might be something to do with their physiology. Good examples.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You look at somebody's testosterone on a blood test. Let's just say it's a male and we're talking total testosterone.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And that number is low. Great. First stop is, is that normal for that person? Second stop is, do they have any symptoms? Again, are they fatigued, libido, recovery, like anything there? Awesome. If you haven't even gone to those two steps, we probably shouldn't be jumping to therapies and things. But past that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Before I'm even worrying about any of those things, I'm gonna look at this and go, okay, why is testosterone low? And then I'm gonna look at things, the easy one that's gonna come to people's mind is things like cortisol. There's an antagonist relationship between cortisol and testosterone.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If your blood draw cortisol is super high, there's lots of ways to measure cortisol, that's why I specified blood. then before you go anywhere with testosterone, all you have to do is get cortisol back down and your testosterone will go up.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If we then start looking at things like sodium to potassium ratios, now again, both those numbers are probably gonna be fine, but that individual ratio itself will tell us a lot about acute versus chronic fatigue. So if I start looking at that and I start seeing, okay, resting cortisol is normal, but sodium potassium ratios are off. We don't have an acute stress issue.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You have a long-term stress management issue. Then I start poking around and we start looking at things like HRV, your respiratory rate, how often you're breathing, your CO2 tolerance, and some other functional categories there. Maybe we're looking at basic pH and we start seeing three or four or five signs of chronic stress. And what's key about this is that may or may not

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So the people that we coach, whether it's our athletes or our non-athletes, the science we do in my lab, the way that I communicate in the public sphere, it is designed to have somebody be able to come in and say, hey, Andy, I have these goals. I want more mental focus. I want to lose weight. I want to be strong. You tell me the goal.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

manifests itself in psychological stress. So the person may not be like, no, I'm not stressed. Depression, no, I'm fine. Anxiety, no, I'm good. Like, no, they may or may not have the symptoms, but we can look at it and see they are physiologically very stressed. So now all we do is resolve some or most of that physiological stress, and guess what happens to testosterone? It shoots right back up.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It depends on what the cause is.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Not really. Really? So what you're, what you're conflating, and I see the confusion, this is actually a really good question. You have to disentangle short acute with long chronic. So if you and I were to leave right now, go hit your gym right across the hall here, and we trained like crazy, did legs, did whatever, right? We would see a huge rise in cortisol right now.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

But by the time we got home tonight or tomorrow morning, it would actually be lower than where we are right now. So it's a short, really aggressive spike that comes back down to baseline and then typically goes lower than normal baseline. This is why chronic exercise is a stress reducer, but acute exercise is a massive short-term stressor, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So it's that small, it's called a hormetic stress, right? So it's a little bit of poison, makes you actually better.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's not a myth. It depends on what you mean when you say increase. If you say increase in terms of if we were to go train right now and we took your blood before the workout and after the workout, yes, it would go up. But the question is— Not long-term. exercise generally does increase testosterone long-term if it is suppressed. If it's normal, then it won't.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so there's always a difference in physiology for the most part going from suboptimal to normal, going from normal to super optimal. That's a different thing that gets you from normal to high. So if you were walking around and you were suppressed, then exercise would elevate it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

But if you're already super fit, your stress is managed, you sleep really well, blah, blah, blah, then working out is not going to make your testosterone keep going higher.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That absolutely happens. We see that very routinely. It's not the norm, but we see that really commonly. Too much high intensity can absolutely lead to, it's not going to lead to adrenal fatigue. It can certainly lead to cortisol dysfunction though.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And from my perspective, I'm trying to make sure your physiology aligns with that goal. And so that's why I've had success with NFL players executives, actors, musicians rather, tons of regular people. It's because I'm not focused on that last end of the niche, which is how do I optimize hitting a baseball? Or how do I run the fastest? Or how do I mobilize my big toe the best?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And we see this typically when things like really high intensity exercise are dosed too often in combination with really high stress lifestyles.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's it. So if you are like, oh, I train super hard and then I have this other down regulation practice I do. I have this other, my lifestyle is great. I'm not living in these high stress areas like geographically and so on and so forth. then it doesn't seem to be as much of a problem. It's also very person dependent.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

We work with a number of like legitimately fortune 10 executives and they are doing billions of dollars a year and every decision they make is worth hundreds of millions and they train like crazy. They're on just loads of stimulants and they're actually like very fine. We don't see these issues like they're okay.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Other folks, the opposite, where they have like a middle to lower stress lifestyle, they train kind of hard, but it is too much for them. And so I don't want people to just think that like all of a sudden you have to do these things or you can't train high intensity. What I want, the message I would like to get across is just make sure it's working for you because sometimes it's not.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

In the same token, we've had plenty of of executives and high performers where the exercise is not servicing them. It's actually making their life way worse because it's doing things like this. And when we pull them off of that high intensity training, everything in their life gets better.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so it's always not necessarily just about the person or the category of person, male versus female or middle-aged or executive. It's always about the individual physiology and their unique environment. So

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yep. Okay, great. Number one, I'm okay calling it cortisol dysfunction for the sake of kind of like learning, but it's not just that because your cortisol can be fine. And this is one thing to pay attention to is if you're like, well, I got my blood drawn or I did this cortisol test and it was fine. Great. There's many other physiological mechanisms that go into stress management.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Cortisol is just one of them. So just because your cortisol is bad, that doesn't mean this is you. And just because your cortisol is good, that doesn't mean you're free from this. either. So what are the symptoms? Things like reduced motivation to train, no more progress. You're not making any more progress in the gym. Another way that we will classically see this is delayed onset to sleep.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It takes me a long time to fall asleep at night. And when I fall asleep, I'm great or I'm okay, or I'm terrible. It doesn't matter, but it takes me a while to fall asleep. Awesome. What about in the wake of the middle of the night? If you get woken up in the night, do you have a really hard time falling back to sleep? Oh yeah. Never going to happen.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Hmm, great, another common thing we see pop up in people. Maybe they fall asleep really fast because they're exhausted, because they've been running on level nine all day, but if they wake up at all in the middle of the night, they'll never go back to sleep. If you look at their heart rate at night, if you look at some down regulation, we have a thing that we use in my sleep company,

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

called a wind down index. And you'll see that number is just awful with these people, right? So you'll start to see some signs and symptoms like that. So sleep is a great way to go about it. Another one is, again, the big lack of progress. Like I'm training super hard.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I'm not making progress. Okay, great. And then the other more classic ones like libido, like follow through, like I'm just like not getting stuff done that I used to like, I feel like I'm delaying and procrastinating projects. I never used to do that before. I'd say those are generally like the four or five things that are probably most likely to tip with people.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Or the last one that is less common will happen is just kind of like the feeling of like, I always feel anxious. Like I feel like my heart's like going, I don't even know why. I'm like not even stressed at work right now or whatever. But your system is just so waxed all the time. It never calms back down.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So the solution is, number one, resolve what's causing the problem. If it is truly too much high intensity exercise, take two weeks down. Don't take two weeks off.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I don't care about that end. What I make sure is that physiology is running at its highest level so that you can then deploy those capabilities however you're defining perform in your unique world. So that's why we've been able to gear our laboratory and our coaching programs in that fashion. And we've had success in so many different areas.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Still train. But just don't go to level 10 every time. Can you give me 7 out of 10 for two weeks?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Give me 7 out of 10.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

This is one of the classic signs and symptoms of, there's different terminology than overtraining, but for colloquially what you're referring to, yeah, this is, you will see, for example, testosterone. Testosterone will go down with overtraining almost every time. And it's this exact same pathway that you're in. But let's just continue on your example because I've heard this a thousand times.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, sure. Not like, okay, let's just say because mentally you won't allow it. Personality, you won't allow it. And by allow it, I mean backing off from training.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah. So a lot to dive into there. Number one would be fine. Again, I've heard this a bunch. And if, for example, you are an athlete, like our NFL players are in the playoffs right now. There is no, hey, let's tone it down for a couple weeks.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Not an option. So we have dealt with this, whether it's just because you're... You're being ridiculous and you won't back off a little bit. Or we have legitimate, we're two weeks from the Olympics. We're not going to back off. Oh, okay. Got it. Fine. No problem. So let's work backwards. What are you willing to do?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If you're not willing to trade off intensity with your exercise, will you trade off intensity somewhere else?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If you block that out, what are my other options? Are you doing something in your personal life that we can take to five out of 10? Are we doing something work-wise that we can take out of five out of 10? I'm not saying forever, again, short periods. Or if you're not willing to back down on stressor intake, you have to ramp up de-stress. Right? So you're not willing to reduce any stress intake.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You have to triple down now on down regulation processes. That's the only other side of the coin that we can play with now. Right. So what's that look like? Fine. You won't give up your training. You're not going to stop the work project. You're going to keep fighting with your friend or whatever you're in the middle of, and you just won't let it go for a week. Cool.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You owe me an hour and a half of focused down regulation every day. hour and a half, no, no, no, stop. Do you want this to get better or not? Like you have to pick something here. An hour and a half is like aggressive, but you get the point here, right? It's not like, okay, I'll do 10 minutes of breath work today. It's not going to be enough.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You have to legitimately do something that gives your system and physiology a chance to back up. What this could look like is maybe I'll give you some physical activity back and you can walk for 30 minutes twice a day with no headphones. No podcast, no stimuli coming in, no music, no talking on the phone. It is reduced arousal. You will have nothing but sympathetic drive coming in all day.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You have to give some processing time. Now, what's interesting that you said about that is if I took your exercise away, your mental health, whatever, however you want to phrase it, would tank. My mood. Sure.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

But you know what I just did in the second thing? What? I just forced you to deal with that. Because I said, we're going to go for a 30 minute walk and you don't get to distract yourself with podcasts and music. Which means what's going to happen in that 30 minute time? You're going to have to process. You're going to have to process things. And that sucks.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's why you want to train because you don't want to process.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

All the stuff you're doing in life is distraction. So you don't have to process either emotionally or subconsciously. You don't want to have to process those things. So you're just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If I just keep putting things in my ear, I won't have to deal with the things that are between my ears. Right. Now I'm taking that option away. And you have to go deal with it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

The fact that when you say that, and this is not my particular realm, I'm a physiologist, but we have a tremendous amount of behavioral therapists and psychologists and stuff on our teams. And we see this stuff so routinely. I feel a little bit fair to like go at it this way.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

This is exactly what that person, like if you came into our program, if you're in our chair right now, I would be like chuckling. I'd be like, Emily. You're on. Here you go.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Take her. Because we know this story. You've just seen it so many times. Like, I know the thing you're going to say. I know the next excuse you're going to say. Let me guess. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. Great. We've seen it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No doubt.

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Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It depends on how silly you want to be here. Let's be really silly, Andy. Now, I'm a physiologist, so I'm going to offend people right now on purpose. It's a joke, everyone. It's just a joke. But I always say that psychology is just misunderstood physiology. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. What I mean by that is, again, it's a joke, okay? Okay, it's not just mental for some people.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

In this case, it can be. But if there are things happening in your metabolism, it can be causing this whole process. So you feel like you have to run all the time, not because you actually have anything going on upstairs, but simply because things like your respiratory rate is greatly exceeding your metabolic input. And so when you feel that mismatch, you don't feel normal.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

When you feel normal then is when you increase your metabolic rate to match your respiratory rate and things are balanced again. And so people that are really addicted to exercise, not always, but a lot of the times, they have this going on. So this is actually a metabolic issue. It's just sending signals that are screaming to you like, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And it's not, it feels or can also be expressed as a psychological thing, but it is really at its core, in this case, driven by accelerated metabolism, if you wanna call it that, And you feel mismatched. That's what it is, right? And so what we can do is come backwards and go, yo, let's slow that thing down a little bit. And so you should feel normal at rest as well, but you're not.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So we can match you there. And this is exactly why we see this routinely where people feel more calm, more focused. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Genetics always matter. They matter for everything, right? There is just no world or reality in which me or you could do any training or modality of any kind and all of a sudden be the top athlete in the world in any sport, right? So clearly genetics matter.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Right? Now, all humans have the same genes. We're 99.9% the same. We all have some very slight variations in one of those allele pairs, one from mom, one from dad. And that's what gives us our unique characteristics, right? So we can all have basically the exact same genome, despite the fact that we are all, a billion of us will never be the same person.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So what that means is, yes, genes are there. Genetic testing for the most part for performance perspectives is almost entirely useless. It doesn't tell us much of anything. Where we become unique, different people is at the next level down, which is what we call the proteome. So your genetics are just a potential to create proteins. What are you actually making? What proteins are made?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Thank you. , , , , , ,, in P. P. P. P. P. P,實, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a a We take your sleep tracker away. We take your morning meditation away. We take your sauna stuff away because you can become hyper fixated on these things. Orthosomnia is very real, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

How are they functioning? That's what we're going to measure, right? That's blood work. That is performance testing. That's a hair sample. That's urine, saliva. It's a VO2 max test. Like all of these laboratory tests or emotional tests, like this is all at the level of the protein as a big kind of easy way to say it. So that is what's going to explain your uniqueness.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

They can. Some people, it doesn't matter. Some people, it's neutral. And some people, it's really deleterious. I've told this story a bunch, and I always tell people I have permission, but I coach a guy named Jon Rahm, one of the top golfers in the world. And he was pretty public about this. He threw that stuff away because it was very clearly making his stuff get worse.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

all other reasons so he's we've gone away from and he is one of the most highly paid athletes in the entire world he is yeah like insanely highly paid we can afford anything with his we can do anything we want technology wise with him and we don't use those things because he was just making things worse perfect yeah exactly right So what do you do with him?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Lots of different things that are specific to what he's doing. But the point I'm trying to make is it's not just about can you afford the technology? Can you afford the test? Because even those things that feel innocuous can be deleterious. I'll actually go back to the very beginning. And this is really important because of things like genetic testing.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

There are ample data now that will show pretty clearly that when people have tests done based on their genetics, that they take the information more seriously and they have bigger follow through. Now this is a huge, huge problem because if that information is poor, which it almost always is, then we tend to drive a lot of negative behavior and a lot of problems.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so the reason I'm bringing that up is people say things like, well, why not do that test? It's only a couple of hundred bucks. You'll get more data and there's no harm. There is harm. There is legitimately harm, even if it's a couple of hundred dollars in a sleep tracker, a couple of hundred dollars for genetic tests.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's why I care about that part, right? Because I actually don't really care what genetics you have because if the net genes aren't or not turned on or off, it's not gonna matter. So it's just a potential. It's sort of like saying, okay, I'm gonna invest in your company Well, you're in the space of protein powder. Okay, great. Well, therefore, I'm gonna give you a billion dollars.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Not gonna harm everybody, most people won't, but for some people, there is a risk here. It's not just a couple of hundred dollars. And so you need to be really careful whether you're coaching people or advising people or you're a clinician or it's you yourself. If the product or service is serving you, great, I'm all for it. Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for all I care.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If it is making things worse though, then you need to pay attention to that client. Pay attention to what they're saying and be really careful. Something as simple as a food tracker can really harm some people if they have poor associations and regulations with food. So it's not the technology. It's none of those things that I care about.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's just you really paying attention and realizing what's actually happening and going, oh yeah, great, great, great. We're going to take the red light away from you. Well, I realize, but no, no, no, no. But just because you right now, it's bad. Right, right, right. That's all it is. That's coaching.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Of course it's okay. In fact, it's, um, I mean, geez, that is a really, I hope it wasn't actually teed up that way from people. That'd be a really terrible message.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Like, whoa, the company could be great, terrible. Like, just because you're in the protein powder space, it tells me nothing about anything else. Like, that's just a stupid level to stop at. So going to the next level of saying like, what's your revenue? What's your, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, that would be what you actually care about. That is the protein level in our world.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah.

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Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I'm saying other people did.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, no, no. Okay. Okay. All right. Timeout here. Timeout here. Timeout. Okay. Exercise science 101 here. First and foremost, almost all forms of exercise are great, right? So I don't care what it is in terms of short and long-term health. Okay. In fact, if you look at any amount of data on longevity, lifespan, healthspan, strengthspan, wellnessspan, pick your terms here, you will routinely see

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

The best combination of all exercise over a long span is going to be the blend of something in the world of strength training and something in the world of cardiovascular training. That is unequivocal at this point. It is inarguable at this point. Now, can you hedge towards one over the other a little bit more? Sure.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Of course, if you like to do more endurance and conditioning and if you want to call it cardio work, great. But don't leave strength training off the table. If you're only cycling, only running, I would guarantee you, and as a scientist, I don't like saying things like that, but I would pretty much guarantee you, you're leaving some health and productivity on the table.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And I'd say the same thing about strength training. If you're only lifting weights and you're not doing anything else, I definitely would be comfortable in saying you are leaving health and performance in the short and long-term on the table. Like you're leaving gains there. So how do I blend these two? Well, there is a reality.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If you are trying to maximize any adaptation, you wanna get your legs stronger, you wanna get bigger shoulders, you wanna get more flexible, you wanna run your first marathon, I don't care.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I'm starting off on one side. Okay. Just making sure. If you want to maximize one adaptation, the more you focus on that and nothing else, the faster you'll get to that goal. So if you're like, wow, I want to run a marathon. great, I want to do a half marathon. Then I would say we are going to focus almost exclusively on running moderate to long distances.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Not entirely, but almost exclusively, right? I'm not going to be like, I'll run once a week and let's lift some weights. It'd be a terrible training program. Same thing if you said, I want to squat double body weight for the first time ever. All right, great. We're going to be squatting. This is not rocket science, right? That said...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

When you move past one individual specific goal and you're looking for well-roundedness, I wanna be lean and I wanna have energy and I don't want my joints to hurt and I want, fine, whatever those define you, then we're gonna have a combination of these two things. What you're referring to is what we would often call like a crossover or blocking effect, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Where if you do a bunch of strength training, it's not going to limit your gains in cardiovascular training. Very rarely are lifting weights or plyometrics or power training going to make an endurance athlete worse. Almost always it makes them better. But the opposite isn't true. If you do a bunch of volume conditioning-wise or endurance-wise, this will eventually limit muscle growth, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so getting to that level is actually what allows us to create those individualized plans. And the way that we think about it, we have a program called Arete, A-R-E-T-E, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Bodybuilders don't run 20 miles a day, very clearly, right? That got blown out of proportion though. And I was as guilty as that many years ago saying the same thing, right? So then this sort of got portrayed as like, hey, if you do any cardio, it's gonna block all your gains. No, it's not. No, it's not at all, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If you're trying to maximize strength, and I mean like really maximize it, not get stronger, I mean like set a world record, get the strongest you've ever been in your life, then you probably don't want to waste a lot of your energy and your recovery capacity on running miles. or swimming miles. Like that just makes a lot of sense.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Save all your energy so that you can truly go in, put a maximum effort in. Any amount of energy you don't have in recovery that you wasted on the treadmill takes away from that goal, right? The same thing for muscle growth. But does that mean you can't jog a couple of miles here and there? Of course you can.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Energy expenditure is a huge component to it. There is a number of review articles that have been published on this My colleague and friend, Dr. Kevin Murak at Arkansas and Jimmy Bagley at San Francisco State published a great one. And it basically said total volume, overall energy intake, the type of exercise you're doing.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So things like swimming don't have nearly as much of an interference effect on muscle growth as things like running, because it's an impact on your quads, right? You're trying to grow your quads, but then you're damp. You get the idea. So cycling doesn't have as much of an interference effect. It's not as landing. So all these factors go into it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

In terms of if you're trying to maximize muscle strength or growth. But that said, that running volume has to get pretty high for it to do any amount of interference. How much do you think you need to run to ruin your muscles? Depends on the person. If you don't run and I have you run two miles a day, that's going to crush you, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If you run a lot and you run two miles a day, it might not do anything at all.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

50 to 100 miles a week.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, I mean, that word arete has been used a trillion times.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, no, no, there isn't. I would say for you, three to four miles a day probably is getting on the line of limiting muscle growth and strength if you're trying to maximize that. So here's what I'd say to you. All right, you want to get, let's get jacked, right? You want to get as big as you can. Like you want to go, you want to put on some muscle right now.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Can we back that off to like two miles a day? Just for the next, say, eight weeks. Great. And after that, we're going to change our focus a little bit. We'll put some miles back in. We'll see if we can maintain this new muscle and strength for as long as we can. But I can't have everything pegged all the way up to the top and then expect progress.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

There you go. Right. Like, and then really was it a, was it this big molecular interference effect or was it the fact that it just took away your training quality? Right. It's not some big sciencey thing. You just didn't train as hard because of it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Of course. Yep. So what you can do in that scenario is a couple of things. Switch the order, train first, get your lift in first, and then you got any juice left, go for your run.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Not really. Nope.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yes. The easy rule here is priority. Do the thing that is the most important to you when you're the most fresh. And now to be clear, I'm saying most fresh. I'm not saying first in the day.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Some people, a lot of our competitive athletes, they train, like in a couple of weeks, one of my athletes is fighting for a UFC championship in Australia. A girl, Tatiana Suarez, right? Now, she is a main event fighter. When she fights, she fights at like 8 to 9 to 10 p.m. So she doesn't get up and do six o'clock workouts. That would be a terrible time, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You find there's like construction companies and there's mindset books.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So not her specifically, but people like that, we will do their best, most important training session late at night because that's when they're the most fresh. You get up and they train in the morning, they will train, but they're not actually ready to go because they're physiologically peaking at 6 p.m., 7 p.m. Other people are the opposite, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so it's not just first in the day, it is when are you at your absolute best and that's when we do the most important thing for you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Mentally, physically, all of it, right? Energetically, just like get through our mornings. We take them very slow. We're not up and going. And we are peaking in the evenings.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yep. NBA players, NFL players, like most of our performing athletes, that's how we operate.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It depends on the individual person, but oftentimes they're doing it after the game. After the game. Same thing. What's your priority today? Play the game. Like you're getting $2 million for that game, not for your workout. whatever you're making.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Right. Sure. There's like, no one owns that word. It comes from actual ancient Greek philosophy of reaching your full potential in all areas.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Totally. And now whatever you got left, we'll lift after the game. That's a really common thing in the NBA. Um, major league baseball, it's different. Nobody lifts for the most part after the game. Um, just cause it's, it's so late at night and other things. And, and baseball is a very easy, like physical sport.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, exactly. Um,

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If they're a morning person.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, so that is when I train always.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Two to three. If I train at six in the morning, I'm a very early riser. I get up really early.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If it's my preference in my world for foreign change in the morning, that's when I like to get up and get going.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

My morning routine is like six minutes.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Now I sleep in later now because I have little kids.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And like, there's this different scenario.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Well, but I mean, by that is now like I wake up at six and set it there.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's all it really stands for.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So like I can have time with them and stuff like that. Right. But like prior to kids, I was definitely a, I want to be up at like four or four 15 most mornings and like, like going right. But even when I get up in the morning, if I train two or three hours after waking up, I can get through it, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to be that great.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I actually like to get up and I'm usually really on. When I wake up in the morning, I'm like ready to go. I'm ready to go. I want to get up. Like I want to, I want to get to work. Like I want to get going on things like knocking stuff out. Like I'm doing a bunch of different stuff. And then I feel great after that. So then I train and then my energy's high. I feel good.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Like everything's out of my brain two or three o'clock in the afternoon.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Okay. I've been obsessed with the word since I was a kid. Oh. Right. I've just loved it. I've used it my whole life and things. So other people have too, but nonetheless. Within that program, we get as detailed as possible with testing so that we can provide a simple, straightforward solution. Okay.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, I feel great.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Uh, if I'm going to get up at four, then I'm going to be a better day. Okay.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Like energy for different things. So I have a lot of energy at 10, but I'd rather get stuff done work-wise.

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Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, so right now we are not getting up at four again because of kids.

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Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

My daughter's six and my son's four.

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Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I mean, as you know, it's a magical time that I don't want to miss. So I've changed my lifestyle.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Totally. To be around the kids, which is like fine. Okay, whatever. So I generally get up, always hang out with the kids for a solid like 20 minutes, make breakfast, do all that stuff, just mess around. Then they usually get off and go about their routine. I will take the dogs outside. I live up in the mountains. So I'm going to be in nature within 20 seconds. I'll be in the trees.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And like there's deer around, there's animals around, like there's coyotes, like They're a bear, elk around, like I'm in nature and moving for the most part there. I don't spend very much time out there initially. Like it's a really quick walk. I just get up going and then I get straight to work.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I don't do anything else in the morning, but then get right into work and I feel incredible and I'm usually stoked to get going.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I want to move a little bit. I want to move and I generally want to get like really cold or hot if I can or whatever, like just to get up and get moving. So I've gotten some family time in.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I've gotten food in. I've gotten moving. And now I'm ready to go.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Did you give me them?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

But what I'd say is one general mistake people make with exercise, if you're failing to make progress or hitting your goals, it's oftentimes just a few things. One, you probably don't have any structure to your plan. So people are kind of just like doing whatever they feel like that day and or what we call in the field program hopping.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So you're like, you did this kind of program for a week, and then you did this one or whatever, and there's not enough specificity and then not enough overload over time for you to actually drive any adaptations. So that's generally like problem number one. The second one is because of that or similar to it, it's lack of any true progression.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So you do the same workout at the same intensity, at the same repetition range, in the same range of motion, in the same order for years, and then why would you think you would actually make changes? Your body will get very adapted and accustomed to that. You'll be optimized for it. And because of that, you don't make any progress.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So without going into individual exercises and orders and things like that, because they can vary, the answer can be anything there. In general, if you're following a well-developed plan, at least kind of closely, and you're making some sort of intention for progressive overload, you should be seeing results. If you're not, then you got to go back to those things.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

The way to think about that is you can pick your goal. You want to get rid of your headaches. You want to sleep better. You feel fine. You just want to make sure you're optimizing for longevity. Like whatever the particular thing is you're interested in. Fine. No big deal. All right. The next step then is saying, well, what is the constraint in your physiology?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And if you're doing both of those things and you're not seeing progress, now we're probably at the point of consistency and effort. You're actually trying hard. You're working hard. You're like going hard. And are you doing it for more than a week and then falling off for a week and then doing it for two weeks and then you're missing five days?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's just going to be hard to make progress like that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, this is actually a really cool question. I did an entire podcast on this exact topic.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's like two and a half hours probably. So you can go into all the details. What are the signs? What are the symptoms? What do I measure? What do I pay attention to? Like, how do I know it? And then what do I do about it? I'll try to condense it into just a couple of minutes.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Give me a one minute version of it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

In general, the reason for plateaus is lack of intentional progression. That is simply it. You don't have a plan for how you're going to add weight or reps or many ways you can do it. You just kind of are working. And sometimes you work really hard, but there's no intentional judicious plan of saying this is how we're going to get to that number. Second big thing that causes it is distraction.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And what I mean by that is you did that lift. Oh, and then also you popped into an extra Pilates class this week. And then you did that extra 16 mile hike. And you're like, okay, there's not enough energy reserves left to put the stressor in that intentional spot. And so the body just kind of recovered everything a little bit. There's no intentionality there.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You have to train something hard, hard-ish, and then not distract it with other adaptations and other things that deplete energy reserves. So if it's not that, those first two things, then the third big thing that it comes down to is are you making some grand limitation in the other big rocks? You just don't have enough calories. You're not getting enough protein.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You're having big limitations in your sleep or something like that. So if it's not the stress input, which is those first two, then it is the stress output side of it, which is you're not allowing enough recovery capacity to actually build any structural change. So as long as you're taking care of those big things, most people will go right past plateaus.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Number five is if it's not any of those first four, it's just a time issue. The better you get, the more well-trained you are, the longer it takes to make progress. So when we hear people that are pretty well-trained and experienced and like, man, I'm plateaued, I'm plateaued. And I'm like, all right, how long has it been? Oh, it's been three weeks. Okay, that's not a plateau.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

What's the thing that's holding you back the most? What's creating the biggest limitation or problem? Well, you could just start by saying like, well, I'm gonna get really good at hydration or I'm gonna focus on food or I'm gonna do better with meditation. Like there's lots of things you can do. But how do you know which one is gonna make the most impact? You're just guessing.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That is a normal adaptation response time. Oh, it's been three months. How long have you been lifting? 15 years. Three months is nothing then. When we have our Olympic weightlifters and professional powerlifters, and the Olympic weightlifters, for example, are training for the Olympics, if we saw a gain every three months, we'd be breaking world records.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You plan the four years out and saying we're trying to get a peak at the end of this four years. So that's a pretty extreme example. But when you get really to the end of your strength spectrum or whatever you're after, it just takes a long time. And so you're probably not at a plateau. You're just at a level of where we can't perceive the progress.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

The increments are going slower than we realize, right? So if you want to think about it this way, you've gained a half a pound of strength. But how can I see that in the weight room?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's exactly right.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yep.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

That's exactly right.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yep. So now you have to just be a little more patient in your progress and realize that, yeah, when you first started your journey, you were losing five pounds every week or every time you went to the gym, you were adding more weight. Well, again, did you think that that was going to last forever and you were going to break world records by year one? Right. Like just do the basic math there.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You'd be squatting 6,000 pounds by next year.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Not going to happen, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You know, people will always say this. You don't make progress in the gym. Your progress comes at home, which is the way of saying like nothing will change, whether we're talking about gaining muscle, losing fat, neuroplasticity, enhanced, like you pick the physiological adaptation and it does not happen during the stimulus. It happens post-stimuli. So how important is recovery?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Like it is the only opportunity you actually have to make a change.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And you might guess right occasionally, but we would prefer the method of saying, well, let's test everything, identify what the biggest constraint or what we call performance anchor is. And now I can give you a program that is hyper-specific to that issue. And so in this particular case, I might say, hey, Jen, you know what? Like meditation is great. It's awesome. We love it all.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's a hard one to answer without saying similar things as I've said before, where it depends on what that person's limitation is. Could be sleep, could be nutrition. It could be down regulation. Those are the big ones that pop up. I'd say on aggregate, people just don't sleep as well as they think they do.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And I'd say the thing that will make the biggest impact in progress that is the most consistent problem is sleep. Generally, people even that think that they're sleeping okay are not. Or even I would say is okay sleep might be okay enough for regular people. But if you're trying to perform at your best, okay sleep is not enough.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And we see really big progress gains when people go from like okay sleep to really good sleep.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah. I mean, there's kind of like a handful of big categories for sleep. You can bucket it this way. You can think about physiology. This could be strictly a physiology problem. If you're not making appropriate neurotransmitters If any number of things in your physiology are off, high or low, this is gonna directly affect sleep. So it could be a physiology issue.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It could be psychological, of course, as you're alluding to. It could be pathology. There are a ton of people that have clinical or subclinical sleep disorders that don't realize it. In fact, the numbers are crazy. It's something like 30 to 50 million people have clinical sleep disorders and don't know it. Over 80% of sleep disorders go undiagnosed.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's really, really, really problematic and people don't realize it. And then within that, again, there are subclinical ones, which means you don't qualify for a technical disease. This is people who have said things like, I went to a sleep clinic, I got testing, and they said I have like mild sleep apnea.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Well, almost surely you have a whole host of fixable things going on, but you didn't meet a clinical diagnosis for that clinical disease, something you didn't get much help, right? So there's a ton of things we can do that are super easy to fix that will change people's lives that fall below that threshold. The fourth component of good sleep then is your environment.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So there's a whole host of things in your physical environment that people do not even realize. Everyone knows about temperature. Everyone knows about light and sound. It's all the other stuff going on in your environment that people are oblivious to that can be the single thing that is tormenting your sleep and you just have no idea. The smell.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

the CO2 concentration in the area, the way that the air flows through your room, sounds coming from your partner. We have fixed an enormous amount of sleep disorders in people that had nothing wrong with their sleep. It is all because of a disorder in their partner and neither one of them had any idea about it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So that's the type of stuff where we can go, we can fix A, B, and C. It's a passive fix oftentimes. And they're like, I just, I thought I had this stuff going on and you didn't have it. I thought my testosterone was low. I thought I was going, I just middle...

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You just had shitty sleep. Yeah, you just had this thing going on in your physical environment and you can do all the down regulation and meditation you want. It's not going to fix the fact that this thing is in the air in your bedroom and it's tanking your sleep.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yep, we do that. What the hell is that? So this is my company, Absolute Rest. Okay. We run full clinical grade sleep studies on people from their house. So you never have to go to a sleep hospital ever again. We can do the whole thing from your house and we can do 50 nights if you want.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so is red light therapy and so is walking in age. All those things are awesome. But you right now specifically need additional B6 and 15 more minutes of cardiovascular exercise a day. Great. Everything else is good too. You can also do that, but you will get the most impact out of, and I just made those examples.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Instead of having to worry about like, you slept weird that one night when you're in the hospital and someone was watching, like, of course. Of course you're gonna sleep terrible in a sleep clinic, right? So it's super easy for us to just go in and send all this equipment to your house and run these sleep tests on you.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So what happens with the full sleep test is we're running everything from, we're detecting if your mouth is moving at night to your chest, to your stomach, we're running EEG analysis, direct brainwave analysis of your brain. We're taking blood and saliva and doing a whole host of testing there. What you're referring to is in addition to all that, we're looking and we're scanning your environment.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So we have a full-time, real-time analysis of all the particulate matter that's in your air, any dander, allergens, pollen, CO2 concentrations, anything like that that's in the atmosphere of your room. And that's all synced up directly against your sleep data. So if we see things like, well, you're moving a lot at this particular time, we can look back and go, oh, interesting.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

We saw this particular matter got really high in the air, and this had nothing to do with bruxism or anxiety or anything else. This was an actual environmental factor that was stuffing up your nose, causing you to breathe through your mouth a bunch, which then looked like it was causing sleep apnea or whatever the case is, and it was just an environmental factor.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No. The only way to do it is to go through our full absolute rest program.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Depending on your definition of expensive.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

A little bit more than. I mean, you're going to go through this. You meet directly with scientists. It's not a sleep test, by the way. It is a full coaching program. So you go through all this testing, and then we run experiments. We test things. We change things. We see if it's actually working rather than just being like, you have sleep apnea. Go do these things and sort of good luck.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's a full coaching program.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, you can't. And the reason for that is a couple of things. Number one, it won't tell you anything because it's just telling you about your environment.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Whether that is actually making an impact on your sleep, you don't even actually know. Right, right, right, right. And then secondly, we actually did that for a little bit where we let people do that and it caused so many problems with people freaking out.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And we were like, all right, like,

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah. So they're running, because we do this with our like athletes and stuff when they go on the road. It's like you test the hotel rooms. We take care of all these things ahead of time. Our performer, high performing, like executives are traveling, stuff like that. And when people didn't have that with proper context, they were honestly overemphasizing the environment thing and freaking out.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And we're just like, all right, no more of this because it's not always true. There can be things going on.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah. As you're seeing with all of our stuff, we generally just want to help people. And we don't want to upsell things and put people in this fear. And when we feel like something's doing that, then we're generally going to take it away.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

We don't have a physical facility. It's all remote.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Sort of, yeah. We actually just send people to you. So we send someone to your house and take care of everything remote. So it doesn't matter where in the country you are. We take care of it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Very reasonable tasting. Oftentimes these things taste terrible.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Right. Okay. So let me clarify what we're saying there. Number one, the amount of markers we take is a little bit dependent upon situations and scenario, right?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

This is basically exactly what all of our non-athletes say. Exactly. So our athletes will come in and have a very specific thing that they're after for the most part. And then all of our non-athletes are, you know, oftentimes your answer. Our analysis process takes about two months to get through. So we do, I said, an extraordinary amount of testing.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

We come from, and this program was built on situations like the Olympics.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Yeah, beyond that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Professional athletes where you have one shot. I don't have, hey, go try this and come back in eight weeks and let me know how you're feeling.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And then we'll just run this for three or four years and eventually your career's over. Right, right, right. Exactly. Right. In addition to people saying, look, I have more... money than I have time. So I don't want to wait three or four years for these headaches to go away. I can't wait two years for me to stop having diarrhea all the time.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Like I'd rather spend an extra a hundred dollars to do more testing that maybe we didn't need then wait six months and then come back and say, okay, now let's try this additional. Right. Like this trial and error thing. Totally. Right. We just said, what if we can go past all that and just get as much stuff as we can possibly get done initially. So it takes a couple of months.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Some people get done in two weeks, but on average it takes a couple of months. Now, what does that involve? It's a little bit different, but just making up as a direct example. It's everything from a ton of blood work, urine. How much blood work? Like how many markers are you checking? Directly, we're probably going to test 115.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

But off of that, we're going to run over 20,000 calculations on those. And why I'm saying that is it's not the marker. It's not, where's your free testosterone? Where's your cortisol? Where's your sodium? Blah, blah, blah. In addition to that, you have a whole bunch of calculations. You have relationships. You have patterns that you can recognize within that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And so this is when people have traditionally gotten blood work done, they'll look at a single marker and say that marker is high or that marker is low. Now they're saying that's high or low based on a number of problems. In other words, they look at the sheet and the sheet says that number is green, then I must be good.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Well, just be careful because I already speak a lot and I go quickly. So if you speak up at all, this might get worse for everybody.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Or that number says I'm red, like I must be bad. Well, there's a whole host of issues with this approach. First and foremost is the fact that what you're being compared against is called a reference range. So if you look at your albumin or your sodium, pick your favorite marker here. And it says, oh, your albumin is 7.0.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

They're going to be like, wow, you're really, really high because the average person, 95% of people will be within four to five. What's albumin? What is that? It's a protein. It is one example, but it's a protein that carries around carbon dioxide through your body. Cortisol has a whole bunch of transportation. It to me is reason I bring it up is it's my favorite marker of all things in the world.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

It's on every blood test you've ever gotten done. Almost nobody has ever seen their albumin out of normal, but it will still tell you everything that's going on in your body. So it's the one I pick because people go, oh, look, my albumin is normal. And I'll be able to tell them actually it's not. Like really consistently.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Because albumin is what's called an acute phase reactant, which means it's going to change in response to dehydration and inflammation. But it does it the opposite. So if you are dehydrated, albumin is going to go down. But if you're inflamed, it goes up. So guess what?

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

If you're slightly dehydrated and slightly inflamed, albumin will be smack in the middle.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

This is what I'm saying. You can't just look at the numbers and go, oh, everything's fine. Because it's not. I can look directly at your albumin. It can be perfectly right within that reference range. That's not a normal population group, by the way. It's not a healthy group of people. You're not in the population database that we create reference ranges from, right? You're way above it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

But nonetheless, you'll still be right in the middle. And then this is exactly what happens when people go, oh, I got my labs done and I looked pretty good.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You have to then, in this particular case, look at things like sodium, potassium, carbon dioxide, a ton of other things that are all still going to be the way, by the way, within the reference range. But if sodium is trending a little bit low, still within the green, potassium is a little bit high, carbon dioxide is a little below, you can start to see these patterns are going

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You're actually A, B, C, D, E, and F. Plus we ask you some questions and you're talking about how sometimes you get a little bit constipated. Oh, and then on the afternoons, you feel like you're getting a little additional brain fog. We tracked your hydration markers and you're slightly dehydrated.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Now we know that being dehydrated by as little as 1% can have significant, both clinical and statistically significant reductions in physical performance and cognitive capacity, mood, arithmetic, retention, sleep, all things like that. So I can look within the labs and go every single thing on your labs is within the reference range. You don't have a clinical disease, Jen.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

You don't have a disease. But this is why you're performing slightly suboptimally.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

In that particular case, it might be you're just slightly dehydrated. But not that day. Because we'll see that, right? It's not like, oh, you didn't drink enough water.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

No, no. So we'll see that in your blood as well. We have a number of short term, medium and long term markers to let us cross reference and go, oh, you know what? Actually, we're seeing dehydration for her, but her medium and long term markers are fine. So she just didn't drink enough water that day. False finding. Don't worry about it.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Some of them. Some of them change very acutely. Okay. Some of them are very chronic. And that's why you need to have a combination of both and be able to look at that independently and say, yeah, yeah, again, she's a little bit active. It could be sick. It could be trained or worked out really hard. Could be the food you had the night before.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Depending on what you're looking at in any host of functional areas. Right. Then you have to be able to cross-reference, again, short-term and long-term as well as symptomology. So how are you feeling? We're seeing some signs here of poor sleep. Oh, my sleep's tremendous. Oh, okay. Then maybe it's normal for your physiology.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

So you have to be able to match this entire thing, which honestly kind of goes back and answers your original question. When you say you don't treat the individual markers, this is exactly what I'm referring to. So we will almost always look at somebody's blood And we'll hear this all the time. Again, I've had a bunch of blood work done. Nothing's ever showed up really great.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

And we can look at it and go, boom, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And we actually do this as like, I do it all the time in like live seminars. We'll just like pull somebody's blood randomly. I don't know, you pull it up or whatever. And like, just watch us start telling you about your life. And they're like, what the? Are you serious? It's right there in your blood. Like no one's ever told me that.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

I'm like, yeah, because there's a different level of interpretation. from what we call high performance perspective. And so again, these are things that if you have a disease, I'm not gonna touch it. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm gonna say, you need to go talk to a doctor. Like you might have a disease. But this is high performance.

Habits and Hustle

Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

This is stuff that is still usually within the reference range or pretty close or subclinical, but it doesn't mean it's not affecting how you're living and feeling and performing. And that's what we do.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So we understand what we're trying to do with the nutrition or the micronutrient why they solve those problems, and then ultimately how that translates into reduction or elimination of these symptoms. So what's actually happening in the brain when we experience any of these three levels of a brain injury?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There's a couple of resources I want to give you if you want to learn more about this right now. I based a lot of this episode heavily off of these papers, so I want to give them their due credit. They will of course be linked and PDFs will be available in the show notes. You can find those at performpodcast.com.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There are obviously many factors that go into getting your brain to perform at its best. But today I want to focus specifically on what you can do from a nutrition perspective to reduce your risk of, as well as recover faster from brain injuries, concussions, and TBIs. I think it's worth reminding you though, that if it's good for preventing and returning faster from a brain injury,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But for those of you who want to write it down right now, a paper that I found particularly helpful came out just last year in 2023, and that is titled, Optimization of Nutrition After Brain Injury, Mechanistic and Therapeutic Considerations.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In addition to that, my friend and colleague, Dan Garner, has a product available for purchase on Amazon called the Brain Synergy Protocol, and I will talk about that a little bit later. And then finally, I honestly took the vast majority of this episode off of a paper that I co-authored, and that's, depending on when you're listening to this, either in review or potentially published by now.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

called Mitigating Traumatic Brain Injury, A Narrative Review of Supplementation and Dietary Protocols. This was led by Tommy Wood, the fantastic neuroscientist at the University of Washington, and was first authored by Federica Conti, another tremendous neuroscientist in her own right. So they did the bulk of the work here.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We contribute on this paper together, and I thought it was honestly so perfect. for a show that I thought I'm just gonna take this entire thing and make a whole episode out of it. But nonetheless, let's get into the paper right now. So what's actually happening in your brain when you experience an injury?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Typically, we've been told that when you have some sort of injury, you have to go through this whiplash experience. So you have to say a sudden stop, your brain inside your skull continues to travel and then smashes up against your skull, and then therefore has a bruise on the brain. And while that certainly can happen, that's actually probably pretty unlikely.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Generally, what's going to happen if that occurred is you would see the injury site being on the outside. So you can imagine, let's just say the front of your brain smashes into the front of your skull. You would expect the injury to be right on the front, on the outside part of your brain. The reality of it is that's not where most... Concussions and TBIs occur.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It generally happens more towards the middle of the brain. Remember, the outside of the brain is where your gray matter is. That's mostly where your neurons are. On the inside is the white matter that's made of mostly fat, and it helps you conduct messages more quickly throughout the brain. See, what typically happens in brain injuries is you get more of what I call the accordion effect.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so you have so much fluid in your brain that if you were to slosh it around a little bit, there's not much room to slosh. And so it protects your brain from hitting the skull. But what can happen though is an intense pressure inside the tissue because it squeezes together and then gets expanded back out.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Picture the accordion here, me taking my two hands, putting them closer together, smashing it, pulling it back apart. And so you have this kind of egg-looking oval that is supposed to be your brain, and it gets smashed down into a vertical piece of paper, and then extended way back out and stretched, and so on and so forth.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So it's not the actual connection or contact to the skull that is always the issue. Sometimes it's that stretching and pulling and that pressure wave that causes the damage on the interior or various portions of the brain. And so the injuries are highly varied in the brain. It can be everything from a capillary or blood flow supply that is damaged or torn. The axon themselves can be torn.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This then causes a host of issues that we'll get into step by step. But it's everything from temperature problems, energy problems, metabolism problems, inflammation, and physical structural damage. So many different options that can occur, but that's basically what happens for most, but not all. This is obviously a complicated area. I don't mean to oversimplify it.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's probably safe to assume it's also good for brain performance as well as long-term health. Now I'm particularly passionate about this subject having dealt with it a lot personally. I've had a concussion or two myself and I've spent much of my career working with athletes prone or at high risk of developing similar injuries.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

depending on if you had a single event, say a car crash or a single slip and fall, or numerous sub-concussive events. Think of blast injuries in folks in the military, small impacts with combat athletes or other people in professions that kind of bang their head a little bit, don't necessarily get huge symptoms, but they have a lot of these stack over time. All of it results in different problems.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I'm just trying to highlight a small example of what it can look like as a quick overview. That being said, there are some generalities and commonalities between different forms of TBIs, and I'll just cover them broadly right now. The top of our list here is what's called comprised excitotoxicity.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I'll explain what that means later, but this is arguably one of the bigger problems you will experience. There are ionic disturbances, so your positive and negative charges get all messed up. There are blood flow to the brain that's called cerebral blood flow, edemas and swellings, oxidative stress, inflammation.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And then, as I mentioned before, even damage or even death in the cells that are directly in the brain or related to the brain. That can actually be going on acutely for weeks or even months to decades throughout life. So I can't go over all of this. It would take me the entire show, if not many.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But I do want to cover a couple of very specific examples so you can start to grasp what this could look like. The first one is just if you've had capillaries burst. So remember, you have capillaries that surround all tissue in your body and that's where all of your blood exchanges happen. So you have this network and this bed of capillaries that surround your brain.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

When those burst, you can't get nutrients and fuel in, and you can't get waste products out. And so the most fundamental problem here is you don't get oxygen to the brain. So we lose cerebral blood flow, we lose energy production because we're not getting fuel in the brain because we've physically torn capillaries.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If this was on your arm like it is on mine right now, you might have a purple and black arm. Thank you, Cam Haines. But in your brain, you wouldn't see that. This goes right back to the invisible disease problem from earlier. More detailed example would be the following, though. Oftentimes, we'll break up TBIs into what we call the initial response and then the delayed or phase two response.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So let's say you had some sort of direct hit. Again, pick your example. It might look something like this. Your initial response would be an over-activation of the neurons. That's right. The nerves that are associated with the injury area become overly activated. Now this initial response is caused in large part by what's called over-activation of neighboring neurons.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So you remember all the nerves connected one to one to one, they're not actually physically connected. There's a small space in between them. And they communicate by releasing what's called neurotransmitters. So what happens in this area is you have a damage to one, it over-communicates to the next one, and you get way too much neuron activity.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This includes football players, wrestlers, fighters, boxers, and so forth. That said, those are not the only people at risk of a brain injury. In fact, those things are quite common and not only in athletes. So I'm really excited about this topic because brain injuries are really common. They can be completely debilitating.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That's called over-excitation, okay, or excitotoxicity, because you're excited so much that it comes to the level of toxicity. And excited being the neurons being too active. Now, this happens in large part because of a molecule called glutamate. You'll see this all over the TBI literature, supplementation, marketing. Very common to be talked about because it is very real and very important.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's the main neurotransmitter that's responsible for this excitatory activity. Now this gets released. In response to that, we have a whole downstream cascade of problems. And this starts off as an initial response, and then I'll show you how this turns into that delayed phase response later. So we have this overexcitation.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, if you go back to our episode on muscle, you'll learn more about how nerves and cells contract, why sodium and calcium and potassium and chloride are responsible for action potentials and so on and so forth. For now, sodium and calcium very specifically become overly activated. In fact, you literally oftentimes have damage to the plasma membrane.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So the little thing that surrounds your cells gets damaged, it gets broken. And so because of that, the things that are supposed to be in the cell and things that are not supposed to come in the cell start leaking everywhere. So sodium and calcium start coming in and out of the cell in inappropriate manners.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now this causes things that are eventually going to be cell death and degradation because of production of what's called ROS. ROS is R-O-S, a reactive oxygen species. So remember, oxygen is very reactive. It is good and bad. You have to have oxygen for fuel, allow you to create fuel rather. It's a byproduct needed to make aerobic metabolism.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

At the same time, excessive amounts of it are going to be damaging. This is how we break down tissue. This is how we create and clean out dead and debride cells. And so if we're generating way too much of this reactive oxygen species, this is almost synonymous every time with oxidative stress. These are kind of similar terms, not the exact same thing, but pretty close.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This also activates several enzymes that damage the cell structure. These are everything from what we'll call proteases, so an anase is an enzyme that breaks down a protein, to lipases, these are enzymes that break down fats, nitric oxides, synthases, and endonucleuses, and other things like that. A whole cask of enzymes that start breaking the thing down.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You don't know exactly what's happening here, but the cell thinks that there's problems, because there are, and so it just starts activating cell death. So we're having issues with that. In addition to that, that calcium specificity becomes a problem because it alone harms mitochondrial health and efficiency. And so the cells that do stay alive start getting really damaged mitochondria.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This is, again, because of a membrane damage issue that allows too much permeability of things in and out. And that Of course, eliminates or drastically reduces mitochondria's ability to work, which means your ability to make ATP. Remember, ATP is the cellular currency. It's the only way any living cell can create energy. And so mitochondria is not the only way we can make ATP. Hold on to that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We're going to come back to that. But it is a primary way, and it is the exclusive way in which we generate aerobic metabolism. So the way that we create fuel... with oxygen has to go for mitochondria. So damaged or ineffective mitochondria is going to directly lead to reduced ATP production. Reduced ATP production simply means we have way more cellular energy in our brain.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And there's actually a lot of evidence that nutrition and supplementation can have a big effect. And again, both reducing your risk of getting one as well as coming back faster once they've happened. And so I really want to make sure everyone knows what their options are from a supplementation as well as whole food perspective.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This idea of brain fog or fatigue or can't remember things, recall, executive decision, if you don't have energy, your brain can't think. That's quite literally what's happening. This is why some of the supplements and micronutrients we're going to talk about later have such positive effect, is they help you restore what's called that energy balance.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The damage occurred, you weren't able to get transportation of oxygen and things in, this allowed permeability of calcium, this allowed too much excitation, which means we're burning too much energy. At the same time, we don't create enough energy, and so we end up being in this really catabolic or negative energy state.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And now we can't think well, we're dealing with signs and symptoms, and overall, more importantly, our brain is actually physically unhealthy. And so because your brain is measuring energy production at all times, it knows this imbalance is occurring, it's going to try to alleviate it. And the best way to do that is to ramp up energy production.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But since it can't do it aerobically, it has to turn to anaerobic methods. And specifically what we're talking about here is anaerobic glycolysis. One more time, go back to our previous episode, I believe it was episode two on muscle, and we talk about the physiology and bioenergetics of how we use carbohydrates for fuel. It's the same.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We're in the brain here, we're not in muscle, but anaerobic glycolysis is still anaerobic glycolysis. It's still the breakdown of carbohydrates for the production of ATP. So in this particular case, since the ability to store glucose in the brain is quite limited, and the amount that we can get into the brain through the blood-brain barrier is also somewhat limited,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If we're only or mostly relying upon anaerobic glycolysis, you can quickly see we're not going to be able to handle all the supply because not only does the brain take an enormous amount of energy, it's in fact, depending on the situation, our most energy costly organ in the body, and now it's injured and it has more energy demands to recover and it has less energy production,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

we're going to be really running into problems with our energy deficit. So to summarize all that, effectively what's happening here is you've got this disrupted cell homeostasis. This leads to all kinds of problems like cell death or apoptosis, DNA fragmentation, necrosis, cytoskeletal degradation, and a whole host of other things that are short and long-term. And that's just the phase one part.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That's the initial response. From there, and once we've dealt with that, we now have to handle step two or the delayed or second phase, which is generally associated with neuroinflammation and prolonged oxidative stress. So what we're talking about here is this pervasive inflammatory cascade that is in combination with our metabolic changes specifically to the blood-brain barrier.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now remember, that's the thing that keeps things out of your brain and in your body and kind of keeps the separation there. If we've got a brain injury, we potentially have damage to that membrane as well. And so we've got excessive inflammation happening, not even talking about the acute response. Now it's staying there and persisting for days, weeks, months, or potentially even longer.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This causes a migration of what's called peripheral immune cells into the brain and releases a whole storm of cytokines. These are communication tools that come out of your body from one organ to the next. They're not necessarily good or bad, but in this case, it's so large and it's so extreme that it continues to exacerbate this inflammatory problem.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

on getting back and returning as fast as possible and minimizing the symptoms of brain injuries. Now, as I was saying, traumatic brain injuries, or what we'll refer to as TBIs, are really common. In fact, a lot of people in the field refer to them as the invisible disease because they don't come with a physical appearance.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This also causes activation of things that are called residual neural cells. There's a whole host of these things like astrocytes, complement proteins, and so on. These things release reactive oxidative species, they release that glutamate again, and they release those cytokines. And so you can see how this circle just sort of perpetuates itself.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's not always a bad response, but in this particular case, since there's been so much structural damage, one more time, the cycle just continues. This is gonna really harm the brain's healing. It's gonna facilitate formation of what are called membrane attack complexes. You could just hear from that term.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That's probably not a good thing again We're trying to clean out the damage, but it's gonna come with a lot of problems This is gonna create like very specifically pores in the membranes of the target cells Which means those are gonna often die now in the case of like a skeletal muscle from exercise. This is okay It's pretty easy to repair But when it's happening in your brain

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's a problem, right? So overall, we've got that oxidative stress response, and that's gonna start damaging fat, protein, and DNA, remember. A big portion of your brain is made of fat. So while we're typically not concerned about oxidative stress harming all the fat in the rest of our body, that represents a serious damage to our brain and one that potentially is not reversible.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now I know I got pretty technical there. So if I lost any of you, don't worry about it. Just think about it this way. At the highest level, TBI is going to involve some likelihood of a physical injury or damage. This could be your capillaries or any of your vessels, your blood brain barrier, your membranes of your cells, your astrocytes, your neurons are actually physically torn.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you were a house, this would mean your windows are smashed, your door is broken, you got a hole in a wall. It's not a functionality issue as it is an actual structure is broken and has to be repaired. Now, in addition to that, we're going to be dealing with a secondary problem, which is now because we don't have the physical structure to get in nutrients and get waste out, we can't make energy.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So problem number two is a massive energy deficit. Your brain's going to try to get around it. It's going to start ramping up our less effective methods of producing energy, but it's never going to catch up. And so physical damage, number one, energy deficit, number two. Number three in response to number one and two is this prolonged inflammatory response.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so we're sending in molecules that let the inflammation continue and they exacerbate it and they start breaking down and killing and getting rid of actual tissue. And so the ones that maybe were not injured initially will be injured or removed entirely in the weeks to months because of this inflammatory response. So effectively, those are our three big problems.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There's no cut, there's no bruise or joint sticking the wrong way, bone poking out of the skin. And so these things can happen and you don't necessarily know that an injury occurred. Other problems include the fact that the symptoms that are associated with a TBI or concussion are really similar to those generally associated with aging.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

which means now we can talk about what nutrition options we have to solve or mitigate or at least attenuate, slightly reduce some of those issues. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Momentous. Momentous makes supplements of the absolute highest quality.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Again, that's mauinuivenison.com slash perform for 20% off. Let's jump right into it with our very first nutrient compound, and that's creatine monohydrate. You're probably sick of hearing me talk about it because I've been doing it for so many years, but it's for good reason. There's so much data on it. It is by far the most widely studied sports supplement, and it's not even close.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's been studied in every population, healthy, diseased, young, old, men, women, kids, so on and so forth. And there's really very limited side effects, if any, that have been reported. Now creatine itself is a naturally occurring derivative of three very specific amino acids, methionine, glycine, and arginine. These are really, really common.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So you talk about memory recall issues, mood, sleep, and other things that people don't necessarily know are because of an injury, and they may think it's just due to normal aging.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Creatine itself, I typically have talked about how it's stored in muscle and used as a great fuel source. But many people don't realize it's actually also stored in your liver, testes, and brain. The last one, of course, is where we're gonna pay our attention to today. Now it's stored in the brain so that it can be used as a very quick fuel source. Your gears should be turning at this point.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Remember, one of the primary issues we have with the TBI is that energy demand problem. And so it made a ton of sense to scientists very early on to say, okay, we know that we have energy issues. We know that the fastest way any of our tissues can make energy is through creatine monohydrate. And we know it's in store in the brain already. It makes sense to try that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

to both prevent or reduce the risk of and then treat brain injuries. So it's no surprise when we look at the research here on both TBI as well as aging and normal brain health research to find that creatine monohydrate often improves cognitive function in both brain injury and normal healthy aging folks.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, it's not the world's most powerful nootropic, but it is effective and been shown again in many models and many studies across many laboratories. So because it's so effective at giving energy, especially in low oxygen situations, you'll see evidence across injury and TBI papers, but also just normal cognitive function in healthy individuals out to see benefit, right?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So creatine is effective in all of those populations, and the physiology, biochemistry make total sense. Now, specifically regarding TBIs and concussions, one of the things you want to pay attention to a lot is what's called the second impact syndrome. Many people have not heard of this, but this is the basic idea of repeated head blows cause more damage, as time goes on.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, we'll get into this a lot as the episode progresses, but a lot of the research on brain health with aging, Alzheimer's, dementia, and other related topics come from the same data sets that we work on for TBIs and concussions, and the inverse.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so one of the things that's been shown with creatine is it is really effective for that second impact syndrome. More specifically, it's been shown that the repeated head blows cause more damage if the creatine is depleted prior to the additional impacts. Okay, so imagine you had one single impact, the more creatine depletion you have, the worse damage you get if you have a secondary impact.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This is any athlete that's going to be in sparring or competitions where we're getting a lot of impacts. This is military or special forces or anything like that that is getting low impact repeated exposures or blasts. The more creatine depletion that happens, the worse the damage in your brain that occurs after the second or repeated impact. So right there,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

we can see that if you've had an injury, making sure your creaking stores are replenished as quickly as possible is really important if we're going to continue in that exposure. Now, that's important because many people don't recognize or realize the first injury happened to begin with. Most of them are unreported. Most don't realize it. Hard to diagnose.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so prophylactically, it just maybe makes some sense to make sure that you're taking care of business, not necessarily just when you have an injury, but if you even think you're at risk or in high-risk situations or prior to high-risk exposures or competitions.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

All right, good example of this, there's a pretty famous study, I think it was in high school, football players, high school or college, but nonetheless, football players, American football, that is, that did indicate that creatine stores in their brain, I think specifically in the motor and prefrontal cortex, reduced over the course of the season.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, this is not a perfect study design, but you can see what this is alluding to. If you're in a situation, again, with repeated head impacts over the course of a season, The number of impacts, in fact, maybe I'll back up quickly. In this particular study, what they did is they filmed the games. And so what they measured is, for each individual player, how many head contacts they had.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But there was an association between those players that had more head impacts, not even necessarily injuries, and the level of creatine reduction in the brain over the course of the season. So again, we're making some assumptions here, but I think it's fair to at least say it's plausible

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The more impacts on your brain, the more creatine is reduced, potentially the higher risk you are for second impact syndrome injuries. Now, before we go any further with the creatine research, I need to do a quick pause and explain to you what I mean when I say strong evidence or weak evidence. There's no perfect way to do that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So there's a huge overlap or event diagram between the types of research, the study design, the actual papers themselves, the interventions, the models, whether we're talking about data from humans or animals and rats and ferrets and things like that. There's a large overlap between these two bases. They're different, of course, and we'll try to highlight those.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

but an easy way to roughly understand is called the strength of evidence scale. So I will abbreviate that and the rest of today's episode by just calling it the SOE, the strength of evidence. This takes into account research design, the quality of the relevant studies, the applicability to patient care, and a number of other factors.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's up to you ultimately to decide what is an actionable level of evidence or not. Some people that are maybe suffering from a brain injury consider a study in animals to be enough, and others wanna see a randomized controlled trial in humans. That's not for me to decide, that's up to you, but I do wanna share with you where the level of evidence is, and you can make your choice from there.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So the SOE is on a scale of one to five. A score of one is the best. That is the highest score possible. This means we see consistent results across multiple studies. You've seen it in both randomized control trials as well as systematic reviews and so on and so forth. A score of say four or five would be the opposite. That would be our lowest score.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Maybe there's evidence there, but it's from case studies or case control studies. Maybe it's mechanism only or some other model that's close. Maybe research from aging or dementia. Not the same as brain injury, but it shares some mechanisms. You get the idea here. So for example, the SOE for creatine monohydrate is a two. My opinion personally, that's pretty good.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Summarizing the collective evidence here, there's been a lot of research on everything from kids to rugby players to mountain bikers. And collectively, you're going to see it supports cognitive health. It's been shown actually in psychiatric disorders.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There's, I believe, two randomized control trials that I'm aware of that have found five grams of creatine per day added in addition to antidepressant treatments improve depressive symptoms. So take that for what you will. Regarding TBIs and brain injuries, there's an argument we can make here for preventative use, specifically for neuronal damage and injury.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There's been shown to reduce cortical damage following a TBI by anywhere between 35% to 50%. That'd be 5-0. Pretty substantial amount there. Should catch your attention. They don't know exactly how it works, but it's thought to prevent some of that mitochondrial dysfunction I was talking about a few minutes ago. Helps maintain the membrane health.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Certainly has a role in fending off that downstream reactive oxygen species, ATP, calcium. So a lot of those things we just got done covering. That's why we covered them. Creatine probably has a role, again, we need more information here, but likely has a role in either eliminating or at least drastically reducing some of those issues.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And finally then, what you care more about is the downstream TBI effects have also been documented. What I mean here is sleep, cognition, and actual mood seem to be enhanced with the creatine. Furthermore, there's actually some studies that have specifically been done on kids. There's one I'm thinking of, In detail here, that was everything from 1 to 18 year olds that had severe TBIs.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In this particular paper, they gave them 0.4 grams per kilogram of body weight. If you do the math there, that ends up being a pretty standard dose, but appropriately it was done based on body size. You have two year olds and 18 year olds, so we can't give them all just five grams. So a relative dose was given to them within four hours post-injury and done so for six months.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But these are some of the reasons why I want to get in today's episode, even if you're not an athlete. Because many of you are still at risk of getting a TBI. In fact, the vast majority of concussions and TBIs do not come from sports. They come from accidental slips and falls and other problems like that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In that particular study, they found improvements in everything from amnesia to the length of stay in the ICU, improvements in communication, locomotion, and social skills. And more importantly, one of the things I loved most about this was the researchers were clear in the fact that the treatment provided costs significantly less than the standard treatment protocol.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And this is something I felt was really important because I know supplements are not cheap and many of you can't afford any cost whatsoever. But if you can, while creatine, I know, I know I hear this all the time, has gotten more expensive in recent years, it's still likely far cheaper than a standard hospital protocol. So if you can possibly afford it, seems to be a pretty good option.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Another thing I want to point out here, because it comes up all the time as well, in this study, again, remember, kids, six months of creatine, there were no signs of any kidney, liver, or heart side effects. So overall, we would deem creatine as a pretty strong chance of success in both the physiology as well as actual symptoms with a very low likelihood of injury or adverse effects.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

For me personally, I wouldn't hesitate to give this to one of my kids if they have it. It's entirely up to you to make your choice. I'm not advocating you do anything that you don't wanna do or are uncomfortable with. I'm just letting you know, for me, when I look at the research as a parent myself of two young kids, I would not hesitate at all to use this in my children.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So how do you actually use creatine? Well, you have a couple of options. One, you can try to get this from Whole Foods, and I'll present to you exactly what that would mean in amounts. Or you can use the supplementation route. I guess a third option would be to use a combination of both.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So most of the data on creatine monohydrate for brain injuries, they're typically using dosages of about 20 grams per day. Now that's four times the typical dose you'll see for performance benefits. So this is one of our major things we have to pay attention to. This is not a dosage that's just your standard five grams, five grams, five grams. It is much higher for the brain health benefits.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, oftentimes that's a little bit challenging. And so you'll see typical protocols instead of taking 20 grams at once are things like five grams administered four times per day, right? So the benefits are typically thought of as both acute and chronic. I know I've said many, many, many years now that creatine is not an acute thing. It's not caffeine.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In addition, they're still going to tell us a lot of indirect information about overall healthy brain aging. So the goal here will be to reduce our risk, of course, but if it does occur, to minimize the symptoms and return back to a healthy brain as fast as possible. Now, before we go too much further, I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsors because they make this show possible.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You don't take creatine right now and feel this big stimulation effects. It takes weeks or months to build up. However, One paper that came out recently kind of shook everyone's world, a 2024 paper. Just one paper here, so temper a little bit. I'm tempering my own expectations.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But a recent paper suggested that a very high dose, I think it was 0.35 grams per kilogram of body weight, was enough to attenuate the drop in cognitive performance after sleep deprivation. So you take people through sleep deprivation, the next day you give them this giant bolus of creatine, and those that took the creatine had less of a cognitive drop. from sleep deprivation.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I actually think the benefits started at about three and a half hours and lasted up to nine hours. So potentially say something bad happened and you didn't get a great night of sleep and you could take this maybe 20 gram dose in the morning and by noon or so or for the rest of the day, you might have some improvements in cognitive function.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That's the first paper I've ever seen that I'm aware of to show an acute effect of creatine. But since that was so dramatic, I wanted to make sure I drew it to your attention. So to me, you have an option there for brain health. And now if we consider this in context of the episode of today, even getting this creatine in immediately potentially has a brain impact.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And that's why I wanted to bring that study up as it relates to the current topic. Other studies have found that that 20 grams per day for seven days enhances cognitive function. This is specifically the mountain biker study I'm referring to.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so generally, me personally, this is not the studies, this is me personally, based on the work that I've read, I think five to 10 grams per day is probably plenty for most people as a prophylactic. So kind of an ongoing option to be at that number.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That said, and again, candidly, this is what I do for my athletes, seven days or so prior to a high risk situation, a competition, something like that, a race or an event, we're going to up that dose to 20 to 30 grams for that seven days. All right. Again, one more time, when I do that, it is hard to choke down 20 grams at once. That's a handful of scoops.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so we'll often try to get 5 to 10 grams in the morning, 5 to 10 grams at night, and split up the dosages throughout the day, simply from my practical perspective. Now, one of my favorite sayings is there are no free passes in physiology. Creatine is not perfect. It's not a panacea, and there are some potential risks. The biggest one is GI distress.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Some people have a gas or bloating or stomach cramps at even five grams a day. So taking them to 20 or 30 may cause some serious issues. It's not that frequently reported. I've never experienced it. I can't think of a situation where I've ever had an athlete or client reported, but it is a real thing. It is pretty uncommon, but it is reported. And so you will want to pay attention to that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Outside of that, there isn't really any documented problems associated, even with high dosages, 20 plus grams a day, for years. There have been studies in kids, elderly, various we'll call risky or unhealthy populations, for many, many years.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You can look all across basically all those studies and you just won't find really any other adverse events outside of the possible mild or moderate GI distress. Now, if the supplement does give you GI distress or you can't afford it, don't have access to it, or for any other reason, just don't like supplements,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You can theoretically get here with food, but it is admittedly very challenging, especially for those vegans and vegetarians, because the primary source of creatine from food comes from muscle or meat. The most common places of creatine in meat are gonna be things like beef, chicken, salmon, tuna, cod. And they mostly have somewhere between 400 to 600 milligrams of creatine per 100 grams of meat.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Not only are they on this list because they offer great products and services, but because I actually personally love them and use them myself. Today's episode is brought to you by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink mix that has an ideal ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, but has no sugar.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, I know in America, you're thinking, what the hell is 100 grams? The rest of the world knows exactly what that means. But 100 grams is about three and a half ounces. A typical serving size at a restaurant is seven ounces or so. And so you can kind of double it.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In other words, beef specifically has 600 milligrams of creatine per 100 grams, but a typical serving is 200 grams, so you'd be getting 1,200 milligrams. 1,200 milligrams is also 1.2 grams, okay? Now, the average American at least eats about 350 grams or 12 ounces of meat per day. So if you did some basic math there, which would mean you're at about 2,000 milligrams or 2 grams of creatine per day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So while it is possible theoretically to get all your creatine from food, it's honestly quite challenging. So supplementation just might be the better option in this case. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. AG1 is a foundational nutrition greens supplement.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That means AG1 provides a variety of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens in an easy to drink greens powder. Initially, I was very skeptical of AG1. as I am with all supplement companies, frankly.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But after months of discussions with their lead nutrition scientists and the team at AG1, I've been impressed by their commitment to sourcing the highest quality ingredients and rigorous testing to ensure that every single batch is free of banned substances, allergens, heavy metals, microbes, pesticides, herbicides, residual solvents, and mycotoxins.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's even earned the prestigious NSF Certified for Sport third-party testing approval. Now, AG1 is not a replacement for eating whole foods, but it is a great way to fill in the gaps, and it's been a big help pushing some of my clients just in the right direction for eating more high-quality foods because it helps them with cravings, digestion, and many other benefits.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, not everyone needs to consume greens powders, but if you're going to do so, you better make sure it actually includes the ingredients that it claims to and that those ingredients are of the best sourcing. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 plus K2.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Electrolytes are critical to proper hydration, which I've been harping on for years, but you can't do that by only drinking water. In fact, many of you will probably remember that I featured Element in my YouTube series on optimizing hydration all the way back in 2020, which is obviously long before this podcast even existed. So I've been a fan of Element for a long time.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Again, that's drinkag1.com slash perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 plus K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes protein bars unlike anything I've ever encountered. They have an amazing 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. Honestly, it's the best tasting protein bar I've ever had in my life by a mile. Now, I don't usually talk about products before their launch, but these bars by David represent a meaningful breakthrough in both macronutrients and taste. And when you guys try it, you will know what I mean.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

After lots of research and development, these David protein bars are releasing to the public in September of 2024. The macronutrients, one more time, are 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and 0 grams of sugar. And they do this with excellent ingredients.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you're interested in trying these bars for yourself, you can go to davidprotein.com slash perform to purchase if possible, or be notified when they're available. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash perform to purchase if possible, or be notified when they are available. Our next topic is fish oil. More specifically, what I mean here is DHA and EPA. DHEA is accumulated in the brain.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, it's about 10% of your brain or so. So it makes a lot of sense that this one's going to be pretty important. It's critical for everything from neurological function to injury risk, metabolic rate, prevention of neurodegeneration, aging and brain health, and Alzheimer's, dementia, and so on and so forth. Incredibly important to actual structure. EPA is a little bit different.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's mainly involved in vascular function, inflammation, oxygen delivery, nutrient delivery to the brain, and so on and so forth. So these are typically tied together, so I'm not going to really differentiate them as most omega-3s come with both EPA and DHA.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, while I said earlier that creatine is by far the most studied sports supplement, because it is, omega-3s are by far the most studied regarding traumatic brain injury. There are dozens and dozens of studies, systematic reviews, randomized control trials on omega-3s and brain-related injuries and various head traumas.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

However, you might be surprised to know I'm not aware of any direct evidence of omega-3s and TBIs. So this is a great example of me saying, hey, look, there's still a lot of good tangential or indirect evidence here, so much I feel like it's overwhelming, but not necessarily that much directly on TBIs. For the reasons we've described earlier, they're just hard studies to carry out.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In general, what you're going to see is, frankly, they work. They work for both pre and post impacts. The SOE is technically three here. And you generally see main effects and benefits from cerebral perfusion. So this is getting that blood and oxygen and flow of nutrients in and out of the brain.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Remember, the primary cause of injury there is that structural, that tissue and that axon shearing, that kind of ripping apart. And so what that does is cause that cascade of secondary insults that mismatch the blood flow and the metabolic demand. We talked about that earlier. Omega-3s land right on that problem for solutions.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, astute listeners will also realize these hydration videos were the genesis of the Galpin hydration equation, named not by me, but by the legendary neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And the reason is it helps dramatically with what's called arterial pliability and compliance. And so when we're having issues getting blood in, the arteries can either be broke or damaged or stiff, and omega-3s really help it become more pliable and pliable. open and close more effectively is one way to think about it.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's also why you see so much evidence and research on omega-3s for heart health and blood pressure and so on and so forth has the same effect essentially in the brain. Other thing it does that's a huge benefit outside of that cerebral perfusion is it modulates inflammation post-injury by regulating that ROS, reactive oxygen species.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It interacts with all kinds of cytokines like interleukin-1 and TNF-alpha, if you're familiar with those. If not, don't worry about it. Even actually, there's one in particular called NFKB. Brain folks will know exactly what I'm talking about here. This actually, functionally, it affects gene expression of a bunch of inflammatory things, so it kind of cuts off inflammation at the genetic level.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So lots of ways that it has an impact. To give you a couple specific examples, one of the most common issues associated with TBI Long-term is called atrophy of the hippocampus. Now that's associated in one of the areas that's mainly responsible for learning and memory. And we know that those are problems, right?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We know that higher omega-3 intake is associated with a bigger hippocampal volume, right? So we have cross-sectional studies here, longitudinal ones that suggest that people that consume more tend to have a larger hippocampus. And we also see a significant increase in these areas at the dosage of about 2.2 grams per day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

2.2 grams of fish oil per day associated with a bigger hippocampus, therefore potential to improve or enhance our learning and memory. Similar things have been done with memory specifically. In fact, one study looked at, I think it was a combination of 900 milligrams of EPA plus 260 milligrams of DHA. And that resulted in greater accuracy and speed of recall tasks. So mental recall memory.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I featured Element in these videos because their blend of 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium, and 60 milligrams magnesium really is different than any other electrolyte on the market and has great scientific support.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

EPA in general is often really associated with cognitive function, and the DHA is associated with axonal injuries. It works on a thing called neurofilament light, or NFL, and that's actually been specifically shown in college football players, I believe, again, at that two grams per day dosage of DHA.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so in general, to get to the end here, the dosage for brain-related injuries is somewhere between two to four grams per day, though... There's really little risk. The only adverse issue you're going to typically have here is potentially some loose stool. Again, there's not that much evidence of it, but if you consume a bunch of oil, that can kind of run through you a little bit.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Probably not going to see much happen there very often. The timing of it doesn't matter that much. You would certainly want to be taking it before the injury as well as after the injury. And the timing of the day is honestly totally irrelevant. And so pretty easy, pretty fast one to go through, very effective.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I personally will be totally honest, I take a lot more than four grams for other benefits, but very fairly, the available evidence on not necessarily directly TBI RCTs, but the other associated areas of brain health and injury and damage, pretty consistently show the effect happens at about two or so grams, and studies that have looked at higher doses don't see any additional benefit.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So I think it's very fair to say two grams a day or so is the effective dose, and more than that may not give you additional benefit. What's that look like from food? Another example where vegans and vegetarians really should honestly strongly consider supplementation here. We're going to get fish oil from fish, pretty obviously, right?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Salmon, herring, sardines, mackerels, trout are generally the most highest concentration ones. Salmon being the most obvious example, that's got about two grams of fish oil per hundred grams. of cooked meat. Again, that'd be three and a half ounces or so, which is not an outrageous dosage at all. Unfortunately, the standard American diet is typically about 100 milligrams of omega-3s per day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I personally use the citrus and watermelon flavors a ton to pre-hydrate before heading out on a full day of training or a long hike or a hunt since I know I'll be losing a bunch of fluids and won't have many opportunities to take things with me. Element has also just released a new line of canned sparkling Element. which I am all about.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And we need to get to two, right? So you're going to have to up your ante. It's totally possible, but most people just don't do enough of it. This is a really important one to go after. I know I just covered information, but I want to also highlight the fact that you can check

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

What I mean by that is unlike creatine where it's going to be really hard to measure your creatine monohydrate, especially in your brain levels, you as a preventative strategy should look at your omega-3 index and identify whether you have problems because there's a lot of evidence to suggest if you go into a brain injury with a better omega-3, the brain injury will be less significant.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So our starting place here is to actually not go into the injury with a problem. I mentioned this, but I'll be more clear. The omega-3 index is not a perfect way to measure it, but it is an effective blood test you can get done. And what that's going to effectively tell you is the percentage of EPA and DHA that's in the membrane of your red blood cells.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And there's been a handful of studies on this that are quite impressive, my opinion. Studies on football players and even basketball players have found that the mass majority of them have an omega-3 index of less than 5%. Optimal is like 8 to 10, maybe even 12. The overwhelming majority of these athletes are less than five.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, I think the studies I'm thinking of right now, the two kind of combined, basically none of the athletes had higher than 7%. Again, eight to 12 is what we're looking for. In fact, the reason we're doing that is because there's been known and shown documented cognitive benefits at 10% plus, even as low as 8% plus. So in these studies, no athletes are there.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, over 50% of the athletes in these studies had an omega-3 index of less than 4%. So it is really, really, really common in our athletes to see omega-3 status being really insufficient. And the same thing has happened in the general population. So you can 100% achieve enough for brain health through food if you'd like, you just need to make a considered effort for it.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And you can see and go back to hear the dosages. Or you can use supplements or a combination, but you absolutely want to make sure that you're doing this prophylactically as well as if you do experience an injury, getting right on the supplementation as quickly as you can. Next up is what's called vitamin B2 or riboflavin.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We're going into riboflavin next because it is a requirement for proper DHA utilization. Here's what I mean. There's some really nice studies showing that if you give people DHA, but they have insufficient B2, B6, B9, B12, and choline, they won't integrate that DHA into their brain.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So it's really, really hard technically to get the DHA to integrate into the phospholipid membrane without these B vitamins. And so part and parcel to our appropriate omega-3 status is making sure we're not vitamin B deficient. And specifically in this case, we're talking about riboflavin. So it is a coenzyme for ATP production. It's a part of many of our energy production cycles.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinklmnt.com slash perform to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinklmnt.com slash perform to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to you by Continuum. Continuum is a membership-only wellness club designed to help high performers reach their fitness and performance goals.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's also highly responsible for glutathione. You'll hear me bring this up again, but glutathione is our chief endogenous antioxidant. It's the big whopper, okay? So going back to our problems associated with injury, Riboflavin is going to play a role in two of those ones, energy production, as well as inflammation or antioxidant capacity. So really helpful from that regard.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Since we know TBI has metabolic problems, it makes sense that these B2 and other B vitamins are going to probably play an important role. The SOE on riboflavin is a three. Now, personally, that's enough for me to take action. You're welcome to choose your own level. I've actually not a score here, but I have utilized and will probably continue to utilize riboflavin for head-related injuries.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There's great data in rat studies that have shown riboflavin helps with some of the behavioral modification issues associated with downstream TBI problems. Humans, there's not that much research, candidly. Again, that's why it has an SOE score of 3, not 2 or 1. And what we do know is there's kind of two studies in particular that are classic, and they both used about 400 milligrams per day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

One of them is a bit older, 1998, I think it was published, and it was actually in migraines. And what it showed is that it was safe and well-tolerated. Now, interestingly, this was followed up in 2023, and they gave, again, 400 milligrams. I think they actually did it twice per day instead of once per day, starting 24 hours after injury.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I think they had 50 plus people in the study and they're all about 20 years old. Now in that, they found a significant reduction in the number of days of recovery by about half. So the group that did not get the supplement, the typical recovery day was 22 days long. The supplement group, it was cut down to 10. So this was a very, very, very impressive result.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so it seems to be a somewhat high reward, low risk option. Additionally, the other B vitamins like B6 and B12 have probably more limited research, but they're really plausible. They're also really safe. They've been studied a lot in a lot of unhealthy or risky populations, and they just don't really have that many negative side effects. So sounds logical to try these ones.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There is a little bit of work here, Particularly what I'm thinking of is some rat studies in cases of things like folate deficiency. When that happens, a little bit of a background there, when you are deficient in folate, you have higher levels of what's called homocysteine. Homocysteine is highly associated with additional oxidative stress and a whole host of other negative health cascades.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So really high homocysteine is bad news. Homocysteine is often also elevated when B vitamins are too low in general. That alone is associated with neuropathy of TBIs, brain atrophy, cognitive decline with aging, and so on and so forth. And so the clinical trials that have been done in this area where they combine these B vitamins and omega-3s have been shown to reduce homocysteine.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And that has then also been associated with a reduction in cognitive decline. So if you can, pay attention to all those B vitamins, try to get them as high as reasonable, or at least not in those danger areas. Take a look at homocysteine and pay attention to that. And if you do that, that will give those omega-3s a better chance to work more effectively, and you should be in a better spot.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So what's riboflavin look like in terms of supplementation and food? one more time the dosages that have been studied for migraines and headaches and brain health and things like that are 400 milligrams per day one of the studies did that dosage once per day another did it twice per day but those are really really common now you can look all over the internet and you will generally find

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Every multivitamin has riboflavin, but it's not very much. So multivitamins are not going to be the place you can go to to get enough B2 for this issue. You're going to have to go to companies that make B2 specifically. And in terms of timing, again, you want to take this...

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

after your brain injuries, certainly, but the better option is just to make sure your B status is high enough prior to going in, okay? But if you didn't do that or don't know, you'd want to take this post-injury. Time of day doesn't matter at all. Some people will feel a little bit of an energetic effect, so perhaps earlier in the morning. Others don't, but you might want to consider that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I'm not aware of any risks associated with it, Obviously, everything has some risk of some dosage in some people. But for the most part, there's very little harm here. B vitamins typically don't have many issues if you overconsume them, outside of perhaps wasting your money, I guess, if you want to think about it that way. But there's really very little consequences at reasonable dosages.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So you should be okay there. If you want to get this from whole food sources, this is where things like liver come in handy or fortified cereals. Whey protein actually has a decent amount. Beef liver specifically has 3.4 milligrams of riboflavin per 100 grams. Whey protein is about half that. I think it's about two actually. So it's not a terrible source.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So you can run the math very similar to how we just did it before. I won't drag you through it again. But if you have to eat something like 15 times-ish, the amount of the serving size I just listed, to get to that 400 milligrams per day, that's going to be a pound, a pound and a half. Sorry, a kilo or a kilo and a half of beef liver per day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So again, theoretically possible, but just pretty unlikely or pretty unrealistic for most people to get these at this dosage through just food. Now remember, these are not daily amounts you have to take. We're talking about the dosages specifically for a brain injury. And so it's actually not that crazy to think you're taking it if you've experienced something like this.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It's not something that you need to do every day your entire life. Next on our list is choline. Now this has a handful of functions. First, it's helpful in preserving that blood brain barrier. because it wards off membrane breakdown. It's critical to that cell membrane, so it has a handful of effects there.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The second big thing it does is it is the primary precursor to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. You may remember that acetylcholine is the primary neurotransmitter. It's the signal, the molecular signal that goes from one neuron to the next that activates it. We talked about this in a little more detail in a previous episode on muscle. So you can go back to that to learn more.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But the third thing it does, it is a precursor to that important antioxidant glutathione. So a handful of functions here, both structural, damage, cellular communication and activation, as well as antioxidant.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We also know from a lot of research in the area of brain aging, dementia, Alzheimer's and so forth, that higher dietary intake of choline is strongly associated with decreases in several biomarkers that are associated with that Alzheimer's, dementia and other risk factors. So from a dietary perspective,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

from a molecular and mechanistic perspective, is starting to line up as a pretty important molecule for both TBI as well as long-term brain health. To summarize the collective evidence, it is well tolerated and safe. It's plausibly helpful, like I just described. And there's even some minor benefits in both physiological and cognitive domains following head trauma.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The most common form of choline in the research is what's called acetylcholine or CDP choline, as you'll see it sometimes. And it's been tested in multiple TBI randomized controlled trials. In fact, a recent meta-analysis indicated that there's about a 20% likelihood of success or effectiveness with acetylcholine for TBI treatment. So it's not perfect, but 20% is pretty good, in my opinion.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Getting into the research just a little bit further, there's a handful of animal and human studies that are worth talking about at a very high level. The animal research looked at 100 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day, and I'm bringing up those numbers intentionally. I want to put some context behind that, honestly, because I've just heard people misinterpret this paper a lot.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So 100 milligrams per kilogram per day immediately after an injury, which resulted in significant improvements in what's called spatial memory performance. Now, you can't simply equate body weight here to humans. You'll get an absurd number that won't make sense. It doesn't actually work that way for details we don't want to talk about now.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But what this would equate to is something like 60 to 70 milligrams per kilogram in humans. And that is high. It's about three to five times the dosages used in human research, but it's not impossible either. So I do want to acknowledge that those numbers are, again, high, but it's not completely crazy either.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, some of the studies at 250 milligrams helped with the blood-brain barrier breakdown and edema were largely reduced in those trials and also had benefits in hippocampal neuronal death, for the seven days following injury. So pretty good mechanisms from the rat studies. In terms of the human, you will see that the studies are mixed, okay?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

One gram per day for 30 days has been found in at least mild TBI to produce statistically significant improvements in recognition memory, which is obviously an important downstream behavioral problem that's associated with TBIs. And that study was actually repeated about 20 years after the initial one. And they used a pretty similar protocol design and found actually no difference in TBI symptoms.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I think it was headaches, sleepiness, dizziness, and concentration and things like that. However, what's really important to note here is in this study, the majority of the participants had really minor TBIs, meaning their cholinergic pathways were probably not affected. This is a classic case of something I warned out at the beginning or earlier in our conversation.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you're not actually giving a supplement or taking a food that the mechanism of effect is not the mechanism of injury, then you shouldn't expect a benefit. So I think this is really a case of that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I actually do feel like the strength of the evidence for choline is okay and reasonable, but that 2023 follow-up study to me is not an indication that the original study was flawed or didn't work, but simply you had mild... injuries that didn't result in damage to that pathway. So the supplement provided very limited or mixed benefits.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In addition, I know of two meta-analyses that reported generally positive benefits here, regardless of TBI severity. So that's some more information on positive benefit. And the probably landmark study in this area came out fairly recently. It was called the COBRIT study. I think it stands for like cytokoline brain injury treatment trial.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You know how scientists always like to make these acronyms for our big studies. Again, honestly, I feel like this is being misinterpreted in my opinion. And so I want to touch on this just really briefly. But in that, they found no evidence of benefit for cognitive function or cognitive status 90 days post-injury with two grams a day of acetylcholine.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, a lot of people have used that to say, we told you it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and that's fine. People can interpret how they will. My personal opinion on this study, though, is that it's highly flawed. And I'm saying that because in it, they considered adherence to be 75%, meaning if the people in the study took their acetylcholine 75% of the time, they were considered to be adherent.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Only 44% of their participants met that 75% mark. 40% were considered to be non-adherent. So that means they took it less than 75%. And the rest, they don't even know. So for me, it's hard to suggest that it didn't work when the vast majority of people didn't actually take it most of the time, and those that did was still only 75% of the time.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So, cool study, helped add a lot of information, in my opinion, to the database, but I don't think it should be interpreted as saying that choline then therefore doesn't work, or it's a myth, or any of those other more extreme interpretations of these data.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

More directly for the context of our show today, been done on football players where brain choline, specifically in the primary motor cortex, is known to diminish across the season, similar to what we saw earlier with creatine. Probably as a result of those continuous head impacts, so it couldn't be inferred directly from this study, but pretty easy to make a guess that's likely scenario.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And this actually may contribute to that second impact syndrome and accumulation of damage. So, Similar idea here as creatine, to me, pretty strong case. So based on the different study designs, mixed results, and other limitations, the SOE for choline lands at a three. So what are we looking at in terms of food and supplements? Well, first of all,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

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Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

you're not going to find choline supplements on their own very commonly. It's almost always going to be in the form of what's called alpha GPC or in the more direct version of phosphatidylcholine. Now, alpha GPC is immediately metabolized into phosphatidylcholine or PC. once you orally ingest it. So you can think of these as similar products.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Many companies make either PC straight or alpha GPC, or have a little bit built into oftentimes like B complexes. Dosages are usually a little bit lower, 20 to 30 milligrams. If you're getting the alpha GPC directly, And Momentous, of course, the sponsor for the show, as well as other companies, generally will make dosages 300 to 400 milligrams per serving.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So you need to take, you know, three or so of those to get to this dosage level. But you will find that fairly commonly. Okay, now, in terms of timing... you probably want to take something like 500 milligrams per day as a daily dosage prophylactically. However, if you've had a direct head injury, this might be the time to ramp up to one to two grams. These generally do have a nootropic effect.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so you would want to take these earlier in the day. So you certainly don't have any problems cognitively or with sleep later on. In terms of food, if you need to get up to that one to two grams after an acute injury, you're probably going to want to use supplementation. But it's quite easy to get to that 500, that baseline prophylactic dosage, straight out of food.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

A couple of eggs and some turkey will almost always get you right there. The most common places to get choline in food are meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, beans, cruciferous vegetables. Beef liver, for example, has around 400 milligrams per 100 grams of liver. Eggs, it's about 150 milligrams per egg.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so you can actually see, all right, three or four eggs in a day gets you really close to that 500 number. Most people, a couple of eggs, a little bit of serving meat, you're going to be right there throughout the day, which again will put you in a pretty good spot. The average person, though, doesn't get enough choline. Typical numbers in men is around 400 milligrams.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Women, it's about 300 or so. which is well below the AI or adequate intake, which is 550 for men and 420 or so for women. So you would have to probably do something in the neighborhood of like 12 eggs to get you to that two grams of choline per day. So like I said, Totally fine to get this from food as your normal baseline health strategy.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But if you did want to get those upper dosage with an acute injury, you're probably gonna have an easier time getting a little bit of supplementation rather than trying to eat 14 or 15 eggs in a day. All right, moving on to our next one. We're looking at branched chain amino acids.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

To clarify, when I say BCAAs, I'm almost always talking about three amino acids in particular, isoleucine, leucine, and valine. Now, leucine is the primary driver of muscle growth or muscle protein synthesis, which is why there's so much steam behind BCAAs for muscle growth.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We'll talk about those details later, but in general, if you get enough protein, BCAAs are not really needed for muscle growth. That said, it does something different in the brain. The human data do suggest that the severity of your TBI symptoms correlate well with the degree of BCAA suppression in the brain. Bigger drop in BCAAs, more symptoms. The BCAAs have two big effects.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

One of them is the fact that they are what's called a nitrogen donor. And the other is that they help transportation interference across the blood-brain barrier. So let me walk you through what those mean really quickly, as it's important to understand why they actually work in this case, but perhaps are not so important for muscle growth.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, when I say nitrogen donor, what I mean is they are specifically used as in broken down to give off nitrogen, which can be used for glutamate and GABA. I already talked about glutamate earlier and how that is a primary problem with extreme excitotoxicity. So getting too excited, turning too many neurons on.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, before we get started on the details, I want to highlight a couple of things. First, remember, I have a PhD. I am a scientist. I've published in this area. In fact, I have recently submitted a literature review as a co-author, and we'll talk about that later. But I'm not a medical doctor.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, both GABA and glutamate are heavily involved in TBI pathology, like we just talked about. From the transporter perspective, when you eat protein, the amount, or just as food or supplement, the amount of BCAAs in your blood goes up. Makes sense. But a bunch of proteins in your stomach, they get broken down into amino acids. Amino acids in your blood go up.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you ate a complete protein, that will come with a bunch of BCAAs. The amount of those go up in your blood. Now, as the BCAA concentration goes up, two molecules called tryptophan and tyrosine. They happen to share the same transporters to get through the blood-brain barrier.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So if you have this big rise in BCAAs in your blood, the BCAAs will block up those transporters, which means the uptake of tyrosine and tryptophan are blocked. So they're not gonna get across the blood-brain barrier, not gonna get in the brain. So the amount actually in your brain of TNT, tyrosine and tryptophan,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

What that does is cause problems with things like serotonin because TNT act as precursors for serotonin, which of course is in a precursor for melatonin and various catecholamines. So this could be contributing to the TBI induced sleep problems. And so you can see the basic logic there.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The current evidence does suggest that actually sleep is not compromised with BCAAs, but actually even potentially improved. I know of actually a study coming to mind right now that looked at 30 grams of BCAAs administered twice per day. found it actually improved insomnia and other latency-related issues. This study, I think, was in veterans with chronic TBI.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so we know some about the mechanisms that I just outlined. It has a potential to be influencing some of our sleep-related problems, and it seems to be causing a positive and beneficial effect for sleep, which is a huge concern and one of the biggest symptoms associated with a brain injury. The SOE on BCAAs is surprisingly a 2. Remember, 1 is best, 5 is worst on this scoring.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So the data are actually pretty strong here. It is pretty clear that it works as much as we can define work. There is extensive evidence in post-impact for both mild and severe TBIs. The benefits range from cognitive deficits, so reductions in cognitive deficits,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

what I just described, some of these sleep-wake abnormalities, with the main effects probably being correction of that excitotoxicity issue and some of the GABA and other glutamate problems that we have just described. Probably the most famous study in this area is called the HIT Heads Trial. I believe this came out in 2024, actually, so pretty recent. It was a pilot randomized controlled trial.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you think you have any risk of or potentially have had or are suffering consequences from any type of brain-related injury, Please see a medical professional in this area. I want to focus this episode on nutrition and supplementation related to brain injury. But I also don't want anyone to think that I'm suggesting this is all you should do for your brain injury.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

They had, I think, like 10 to 35-year-olds in there, so teens, preteens, all the way up to normal age. And they followed them for three weeks or 21 days post-injury. And this was really cool. They had, I think, five arms in this study. So some of the participants just got a placebo. And then they broke up the rest of the intervention by dosage. So they got 15 grams a day, 30 grams, 45, or even 54.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I'm not sure why it's only 55. But they wanted to see, is there an effect at all compared to placebo? And if there is, what's the optimal dosage? And they gave them five different dosages from low dose to more moderate to pretty high and scaled all the way up. And one of the things that they found was a pretty clear dose response such that the most improvements were found in that 54 grams per day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

decreased symptoms of concussions, faster and better return to baseline. There were not benefits actually in what was called processing speed. So that had been shown in some of the earlier studies we talked about, but they didn't find that here for whatever reason. But they had all those other benefits.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

One more time, highlights the fact that not every supplement, not every food, not every nutrient fixes every problem. Okay, so benefits here in the concussion symptoms, but not necessarily the processing speed. But the effects one more time were dose dependent. And one more time, like we keep bringing up, there was no adverse effects reported.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The data that we currently have suggests up to 55 or 54 grams per day, more specifically, is a dosage. You would want to make sure you're at that higher dosage past injury. You can be at a much smaller one. Just honestly make sure your protein intake is high enough. You can use whatever number you like. We've talked many times, though.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I personally like one gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you're at that, you're probably getting enough BCAAs at baseline, and then we would go to only this higher dose post-brain injury. To break this down food-wise... BCAAs, it's protein, it's dairy products, it's meat and poultry. Most meat's gonna be three to four grams of BCAAs per 100 grams of serving.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so similar math that we've done before, okay? This is gonna result in you having to have like 40 or 50 ounces of meat per day. Not something you need baseline, but in these small cases, again, I don't want you to feel like I'm pushing you to supplements, but it is just significantly easier here for small times and for specific scenarios of a brain injury to go to supplementation here.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Our next micronutrient is magnesium. Oh my goodness, could I go on and on and on about the physiological benefits of magnesium. It is involved in well over 600 reactions in your body from cell signaling, vascular function, ATP production, protein synthesis, neuroplasticity, learning, memory, and I could basically think of anything that happens in your body and magnesium's central to that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I don't have to draw this out then. It's pretty easy for you to assume this is going to be an important role in your brain pre and post-injury.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We also have very strong data if you are deficient in magnesium, you have associations with a host of comorbidities, health conditions, type two diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, headaches is another common one, migraines, heart disease, so on and so forth. We know that it probably inhibits receptors that are directly targets

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

of antidepressants as well, and is a strong contributor to that brain excitotoxicity after injury. So you do not want to be deficient in magnesium. You can listen to, read almost anything in the sports performance realm, and you will see magnesium as a top tier supplementation. It is really robust and a strong line of evidence and recommended by, again, many people in this field.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I also don't want anyone to think that I'm suggesting this is enough to stop your chances of ever having a brain injury. So that being said, the landscape of the research and many of the scientists in this area are on the same page in the fact that there is emerging evidence that several micronutrients and what we'll call biological compounds

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But surprisingly, the SOE is only three here. There's a well-documented drop in magnesium, especially in your central neurons after a TBI. And the extent of that drop is associated with the severity of the injury and the level of behavioral disturbances. So not only the injury, but your symptoms as well. Animal and human research here from the animals, it's associated with edema.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

brain and blood concentrations, calcium problems, like we talked about earlier. These are going to result in those behavioral modifications, memory, cognitive function, spatial and working memory, and so on and so forth. From the actual human stuff, Couple of studies that are worth drawing attention to here.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

One looked at acute TBIs in kids and saw a significant reduction in post-concussion severity scores 48 hours after the injury when they used 400 milligrams of magnesium twice per day. Now, another study used a similar design and didn't find a benefit, but this was actually using magnesium from an IV for five days.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, no one really actually knows why this one trial worked and the other one didn't. The obvious thought is maybe there's something that happens when you ingest it through your stomach that aids in digestion or makes it more bioavailable. But when you took it with the IV, it didn't. To me, that's honestly not a great answer. But I don't have any other reason to think that that happened.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So really honestly, to summarize here, it is very, very safe. It's very little harm. It has so many other health and performance related benefits. There's so many health consequences that are associated with magnesium deficiency. It helps with symptoms and behaviors that are hallmarks of TBI, like we've talked about.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So I know the SOE is technically three, but personally it's about as high on the list as I could think one supplement could be. The dosages we described one more time, 400 milligrams per day. The timing doesn't matter. You'll want to have some in there pre as well as post injury, and you could take it at any point in the day.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, depending on the type or form that you use, you might want to take it later in the evening. Some people report, and depending on the type, magnesium helps you fall asleep. I personally feel no effect at all, but most people do. I still then take my magnesium at night just because, just in case. There's all kinds of forms.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You've heard of magnesium threonate at this point, bisglycinate, malate. And right now, I don't know of any compelling evidence to suggest one of those forms is any better than another. Obviously, magnesium threonate has become more popular recently. And that may turn out to be more effective. It may not. I'm not sure. There's just not enough data for us to have really an answer at this point.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so you can take whatever form sits best with you. The obvious risks associated with magnesium are the GI distress. Bisglycinate, malate, threonate are generally pretty well handled. And so you shouldn't have too many issues with it. If you want to get it strictly from food, you're looking now at things like pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, almonds, and spinach.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Typically, I think pumpkin seeds are about the highest you'll find. They've got around 200 milligrams of magnesium per 100 grams roasted. Again, you can do some math there and realize, all right, that's at least 200 grams of roasted pumpkin seeds I'd have to get to get to my 400 milligrams, which is honestly quite a lot. Not impossible.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

really do have the ability to reduce the risk, I hesitate to say prevent, but can help prevent and treat brain injuries, concussions, TBIs and related events. Now, over the course of today's show, I'm going to walk you through a bunch of different micronutrient and nutraceutical options you have. We'll cover the evidence, how much to take, the protocols and so on and so forth.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Some people eat tons of almonds and spinach and things like that, especially vegetarians and vegans. But it is quite a bit, given how cheap, effective, and easy to handle, and how many other things are benefited. Magnesium is a supplement. We use it pretty commonly. Our final food item to discuss is what's called anthocyanins. Now, these come almost always from blueberries.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So, henceforward, I'll call these blueberry anthos. That's how I refer to it. Now, these are phytochemicals in the flavonoid family. There's over 700 known anthocyanins. and we're honestly basically just learning about this stuff. So we have a ton of improvements needed, a ton more analysis and understanding of mechanisms and so on and so forth, but there's enough here to go on at this point.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We know that anthos are involved in cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, cancers, visions, skin health, inflammation, neurodegenerative disorders, and probably 50 more things. Really ubiquitous, really robust, and critical to a bunch of human functions. TBI specifically?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Animal research here, blueberry supplements or blueberry extracts post-injury have been shown to improve what's called brain-derived neurotropic factor, or what you may have heard of as BDNF, which is inversely correlated with indirect markers of memory, performance, and cognition. Now, a similar study has found that blueberries also protect against oxidative stress, which makes a ton of sense.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You've all probably heard about the antioxidant properties associated with blueberries and blueberry extracts. So this is no surprise for most people. The SOE for Anthos is a three. And in terms of human data, I don't think there's a single RCT, randomized controlled trial, that exists for blueberries and TBI at this point.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

That said, there have been studies, many RCTs, some in fact that range from developmental to aging to clinical populations, on brain health. And so this is a classic example of where we can infer some things from general brain health over to TBI at a pretty low risk, high reward possibility. The collective evidence indicates that it does help with attention, memory, executive function.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

There's a lot of evidence. Specifically, we use a handful of papers that have been done looking at blueberries prior to golf and enhancing brain performance in sport context. So there's a lot out there. We know it works, but we also know we're missing a lot of the details because of what I just described earlier. It's pretty new. A couple of examples.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

One study in kids in particular looked at 15 or 30 grams of freeze-dried wild blueberries and saw significant improvements in cognitive function in a dose-dependent fashion. The more blueberries, the better.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Other work has been done in older adults looking at things like 100 milligrams blueberry extracts and seeing better episodic memory performance, reduced cardiovascular disease, and so on and so forth. So what this would look like from a whole food source to get something like 500 milligrams Of the Anthos, you need 100 grams of blueberries, which is, I think, a cup has 150.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So I'll translate that for you a little bit. You have a cup of blueberries, and you're probably hitting your numbers. It's really that easy. I would actually say that of all the things we've discussed so far today, this is the easiest one to get out of straight food.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But before we do that, you have to actually understand a little bit of the terminology. Because depending on what type of brain injury you have, you may want to take a different route with your nutrition. So getting going with that point, what is a brain injury? You've heard me now say concussion, TBI, brain health, and a bunch of different terms like that. What is actually the difference?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You will be hard pressed to find a program that ever comes out of myself, our rapid health and performance company, or any other one that I'm associated with that doesn't have a cup of blueberries in it. And it's for these reasons and many more. So it's a pretty easy number to hit, pretty consistent and has a lot of benefits, right? I will also tell you,

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

People love to give blueberry olives a credit here, but it's not the only food item that's got the anthos in it. Strawberries, cranberries, they have it too. There's not as much data. I don't actually know if there's any data, but I imagine if they did those studies, you'd probably find the same benefits. So I'm actually not as particular on this one.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I don't have evidence to support myself, but I don't think it's that big of a stretch to think the same chemicals in this case that are in blueberries probably also exist in raspberries and strawberries and other similar forms. So we will spread our berries out. But if you want to stick to giving all the love to blueberries, you're not going to hurt my feelings.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

As far as I understand it, that represents all the evidence on food related items one can take for brain health, TBIs and concussions. The only thing I'm aware of that's actually detrimental for brain healing is caffeine. And there's enough evidence here that this is probably pretty bad news when trying to heal from a brain injury. It causes neurovascular constriction, it leads to less blood flow.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We know that caffeine consumers are more susceptible to diminished emotional health, bad sleep quality, depression, and somatic symptoms with brain injuries. And so what my recommendation here would be overconsumption. is the problem. Do not over-consume caffeine if you've experienced a brain injury.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I don't think there's any reason to think caffeine consumption is going to give you more risk to have a brain injury, but if you have one, you want to make sure you're really careful. Ask your doctor, check in there, but that's the only one on our list that we have reason to think that you should avoid. That concludes today's episode on nutrition for brain injury, TBIs, and concussion.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I think it's worth reminding you though that if it's good for preventing and returning faster from a brain injury, it's probably safe to assume it's also good for brain performance as well as long-term health.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

My goal of today as always was to provide you with a ton of information so that you can be excited, you can learn, you have some things to try, but to also be fair with the state of the data and you can make your decision about what you want to do or not do based upon that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Given this was episode 10, not only are we done with today's discussion, but we are done with season one of Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin. I can't thank you all for the support. I seriously was overwhelmed with comments from people I know, don't know. It was... blew past my expectations. And so I really just cannot thank you all enough. If you're a new listener, this is maybe your first episode.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

You can go back and check out all previous nine episodes on performpodcast.com. You can check out the notes. You can go to YouTube and you can see the exact sections of a particular video if you're interested in that. And we've made it as easy as possible, hopefully, for you to go straight to the information you're looking for and not spend time on things you are not.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

I can also share with you another fun announcement, and that is that Season 2 has officially been confirmed. It's going to be coming out pretty soon. If you want to know more about when that does hit the radio waves, you can stay tuned, of course, on my social media. But also, I would recommend signing up for our newsletter.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Finishing us off here, I cannot conclude this season without some very specific thank yous. First of all, to all the sponsors, it was overwhelming your support. The people jumped on board quickly and were really, really helpful. So this show would not have existed without them. So I know ad reads are a thing, but please do me a solid.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, do you even know the difference between a TBI and a concussion? It's been my experience that most people don't. And so we'll maybe just start right there. So a brain injury can mean a lot of different things. Honest answer here, there's not that much research in humans and randomized control trials on what to do to prevent or reduce an injury.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If you enjoyed any part of any of the episodes of the season, go check out the sponsors. They really are phenomenal products. I got to thank my special man, Vindog. You know who you are. Helped me a ton in preparing for this. He's not the front of the camera kind of guy, so appreciate it, Vince.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Natasha, of course, my wife, super, super supportive and all the time it spent to come up here and get this stuff done. My students, former and past and current, could not have done any of the stuff that allowed me to be up here without all of your support and truly doing all the work in the lab.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Same thing for all of my colleagues and fellow scientists whom helped me directly with this show or indirectly, and that I stole your research or read it at least and was able to have information to share with people. So science is not easy. And a lot of times people don't get the credit for it. And I thank you all for your contribution.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

All of my teammates and colleagues at my companies, Rapid, Health and Performance, Biomolecular Athlete, Absolute Rest, and Vitality. Again, tons and tons of support for everyone. So I appreciate that. And then finally, of course, my man here, my boys here at SciComm. And of course, Dr. Andrew Huberman. Love you all. Super appreciative of it. Thank you all so much for joining on this ride.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And I'll see you next season. Thank you for joining for today's episode. Our goal is to share exciting scientific insight that helps you perform at your absolute best. If the show resonates with you and you want to help ensure this information remains free and accessible to anyone in the world, there are a few ways that you can support.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

First, you can subscribe to the show on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. And on Apple and Spotify, you can leave up to a five-star review. Given that we're a new podcast, subscribing and leaving a review really does help us a lot. Second, please check out our sponsors. The show would not exist without them, and they really are exceptional products and services.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And then finally, you can share today's episode with a friend who you think would enjoy it. If you have any content questions or suggestions, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I really do try to read these and see what you have to say. If you have yet to sign up for our monthly newsletter, you can do so at performpodcast.com.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Our newsletter provides episode summaries with the key takeaways for each and every episode of the podcast. This includes topics like how to improve your VO2 max, how to build muscle mass and muscle strength, how to optimize your sleep for high performance, and much more. To sign up, just go to performpodcast.com, click Newsletter at the top of the screen, and then enter your email address.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Once you sign up, you receive access to all of our newsletters. I use my Instagram and Twitter also exclusively for scientific communication. So those are great places to follow along for more learning. My handle is DrAndyGalpin on both platforms. Thank you for listening. And never forget, in the famous words of Bill Bowerman, if you have a body, you're an athlete.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

In fact, if you think about research design, that's really hard to do. The only way to execute these kinds of studies in humans is to set up an enrollment center, say at a hospital, probably around an area that has a lot of kids playing in sports, wait for people to show up with an injury, ask them if you can enroll them in a study, and go on from that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We can't go out and give humans head injuries and concussions. And so it's really challenging. It's hard to get an adequate sample size. And you're also relying upon those people coming into the study having the same type of brain injury. And we know that that does not happen. And so brain injuries themselves, there's a lot to learn and there's lots of different types.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

It would be foolish to think that we know how to prevent all of them or recover from all of them. Some types of injuries we know more about, other types we know way less. And so there's not one type, which means there's not one solution. And this is going to explain why almost always you will see mixed results. Easy example here.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. For the final time this season, welcome back, friends. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor of kinesiology in the Center for Sport Performance at Cal State Fullerton.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

We're gonna talk about one of the major problems that are associated with brain injuries is sleep. So supplements that help with sleep, therefore, are going to be helpful for folks who are experiencing sleep-related problems with a brain injury. However, if you have a brain injury and are not suffering symptoms of sleep loss, then a sleep aid may or may not actually work.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

If both those individuals, let's say we had two people, one having issues with sleep, one not, both enrolled in the same study, you're going to see the magnitude of effect of the supplement or the nutritional factor gets a little bit washed out. So those are common themes you will see. I won't bring this up again, because honestly, I could do that with just about every single study.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

But it's something for you to really consider in the back of your mind. All right. Now, the goal then is to present to you information that I think has a strength of evidence, I'll explain to you what my criteria for a strong evidence is a little bit later. And things that I think kind of justify what we'll call low risk and high potential reward.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And we'll typically break those down into things you can do before the injury. during or immediately after the injury, as well as long-term post-recovery. So you can think about that as pre, peri, or post, or simply preventative, and then treatments post-injury. So in terms of terminology, I'm gonna try to be consistent with three basic phrases.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So a brain injury is often broken up into three categories based on the severity. There's mild, which is the lowest, moderate, and severe. Now fortunately, mild is by far the most common. In fact, some papers indicate that over 90 plus percent of brain injuries are qualified as mild. What that means typically is there is a 30 minute or less change in state of consciousness.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So if you were unconscious for a couple of minutes, you probably had a mild traumatic brain injury. This is often associated with things like confusion or post-traumatic impact amnesia. So you forgot what happened immediately afterwards or you had a little bit of a time travel, as I like to call it.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And this can occur for a couple of hours or even up to one day is the general line that we cross there. The overwhelming majority of recreational and sport-related concussions fall into this category. Therefore, almost always, though not always, but almost always when you hear the word concussion, you can generally translate that into a mild TBI.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

Now, not all TBIs are concussions, but all concussions are TBIs. Okay, so one more time in case I lost you there. Concussion is effectively a mild traumatic brain injury based on those categories. If you had worse effects, so you were unconscious for longer or your amnesia will lasted longer, then you may be actually be considered to be in a moderate category.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So far in the first season of PERFORM, we've talked about everything from muscle to the immune system to liver and lungs, metabolism, genetics, sleep, blood work. And so I thought we have to end this thing on what I hate giving credit to, because I'm a muscle guy, but probably deserves it. And that's the brain.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So moderate technically is defined as a loss of consciousness or amnesia for somewhere between 30 minutes to up to 24 hours. Symptoms associated with this are more severe. It is headaches, confusion, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, slurred speech, drowsiness, difficulty concentrating, so on and so forth.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And so another kind of back of the envelope way to differentiate between mild and moderate is mild, again, not always, but rough guidelines here. Mild is fairly acute. So in and immediately after the injury, you had symptoms, but then you're usually back to normal. Moderate often comes with downstream problems, not the injury themselves.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

So this is when you have behavioral changes because of the TBI. You've got, again, difficulty with memory that lasts a long time. That's, again, back of the envelope kind of distinction. If it is worse than that, we call it severe. That is technically a loss of consciousness or amnesia for somewhere between 24 hours to up to or more than seven days.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

And moderate and severe also have similar dementia-like symptoms. Now, I mentioned this earlier, but think about this. Severe TBIs oftentimes come with memory and attention problems, decision-making problems, learning impairments, mood, big sleep disturbances. And so you can imagine somebody who's in their 50s, 60s, or 70s who start experiencing things like that.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

They may personally just think, oh, this is, I'm getting old. Family members may think, oh, grandma's got, you know, starting to show dementia signs. Could be possible. Could also be possible that grandma's simply suffering from a severe TBI. And so this is what I was referring to earlier when I said there is actually a big crossover here. It's a bit of a gray area.

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

They can actually be the same thing. They can clearly be different as well, but there is a large crossover between them. So hopefully that helps you understand a little bit about what the difference between a concussion and a TBI is, what a mild, moderate, and severe traumatic pain injury are. And I started sneaking in some of the physiology about at least what's the symptoms?

Huberman Lab

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin: Nutrition to Support Brain Health & Offset Brain Injuries

What are the behavioral and actual consequences? That is important to understand because now that'll tell us what we do in terms of a treatment or prevention strategy. In order to finally connect that dot though, we got to walk through just a touch. And I promise this will be just a touch of the physiology or pathophysiology of each one of these categories.

Huberman Lab

Dr. Peter Attia: Supplements for Longevity & Their Efficacy

Mm-hmm.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

the science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. And today we're going to be talking about how to control your nervous system. My favorite example of this actually comes from a TV show.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We have hundreds of randomized control trials on people only doing down regulation work and it creating tons of positive experiences in their life. We've done this a bunch in my coaching programs. I've done this with my clients and athletes. No question that works there.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But that's a little bit different and not always the best scenario when somebody is having issues on both sides, upregulation and downregulation. Because what can happen is if you're only ever paying attention to that downregulation size, that highway starts to get smaller. All right.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So what you probably want to do, and if you actually look at the research in this space more carefully, a lot of the interventions are strategically implement both up-regulation and down-regulation.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Even if somebody is highly stressed, has a lot of anxiety or has other markers of overall dysfunction or problems in the nervous system, you're gonna see careful integration of both up-regulation and down-regulation. And that's because it works like a hormetic stressor. I've talked about this for many, many, many years. It's one of my favorite things to talk about.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And he performed, again, this whole host of insane physiological feats without moving. Now that part's critical, right?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But effectively what you're doing is you want yourself to downregulate. Well, just telling yourself to calm down doesn't always work very well. Sometimes the easiest way to calm down is to actually give yourself a supercharge up so that your body naturally swings back down as an equal and opposite reaction and the other way. So that is the framework with what we're going to talk about.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Let's get right into how we measure our nervous system. what tools we can use, and then we'll go into evaluation and interpretations from there. With that all in mind, let's dive into our first I, which is investigate. How do you measure this stuff? Well, there's no one answer here. I think it's easiest to describe this in three major categories. First one are what I call performance-based tests.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So when he did things like take his resting heart rate from 70 beats per minute to reportedly 300 beats per minute, and he held that for several seconds and then brought it back down, he did that not by running sprints up a hill or anything, but by just simply sitting there and having the conscious ability to control that aspect of his physiology.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So in the sporting world, you'll see groups do this where they'll take a vertical jump test every day. So you'll come in and every single day, you'll do say three or four maximum effort vertical jumps. And they look at the change, the assumption there being if your vertical jump is much lower today than it normally is, then there's a strong likelihood your nervous system is a little bit fatigued.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

That is a very common and classic approach in the sport performance world. Others do it with things like grip strength. Again, simple test, easy to do. There are reaction time drills. There's a ton of different apps and low or fairly inexpensive technologies to look at firing rates, fingering tap tests, how quickly can you move your thumb, lots and lots of different technologies here.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Others I've seen, and we've actually explored this a lot, have looked at things like range of motion and flexibility. And I've actually personally seen this one land pretty well. So a basic sit and reach test of your hamstrings and low back, a rotational test, a forearm or flexion extension test. I've seen all these in the field a ton, and I'll be totally honest with you, they're pretty good.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We spent many years, probably over four years, testing some of these things every single day. We stuck them directly up against other more scientifically validated measures, and they all came in pretty much the same. And so these are absolutely fine ways to measure it. It's obviously mostly used in, again, the sport performance world, and so they are hedging towards the performance aspect.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

If you're not jumping as high or moving as well, that's what they're concerned about. A totally different approach to this is more of a psychological assessment. Again, you'll see research and I've seen now huge databases. You're talking about millions of data points stacked directly up against something like mood. How you feel today?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And you'll be stunned, stunned on aggregate in large populations. Mood is a very strong predictor of overall nervous system state. How tired are you? So fatigue is another question. One we see often is called RPE, so rate of perceived exertion. Just different ways to ask about how do you feel today? What's your effort feel like today? How interested in training are you today?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Tons of different questions there. That's hedged more towards your subjective experience where the previous ones are obviously looking at objective performance, but there is classic overlap between both of them.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

The third one though that is more objective and where the bulk of the published research is, which doesn't mean they're better by the way, it just means they're used more scientifically, are in what I call the physiological markers. Common ones here are blood tests. I've spoke in season one. We had an entire episode on overtraining and overreaching.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We also had one on how to interpret blood tests for high performance. In both of those, I talked about a number of different blood and salivary markers you can use to assess overall fatigue and readiness and performance. We'll have direct links to those episodes in the show notes. You can go check them out and see what I'm talking about.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Another really impressive thing Swami was able to do was actually shock the scientific team. They thought he was in cardiac arrest. because his ECG stopped working. And what happened was he was able to bring his heart rate below 20 beats per minute at the same time, give himself what's called AFib. And so the machine itself thought his heart had been stopped for like 20 seconds.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But we're not going to get into that stuff today because we've covered a lot of it already. What we will get into for the most part are what I call the respiratory physiology markers. This is everything from resting heart rate to something called your heart rate variability or HRV to respiratory rate and CO2 tolerance. HRV, heart rate variability, is the king here.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Not saying it's the best, but it has the overwhelming majority of the research is on HRV. You don't see a lot anymore on resting heart rate, and that's because it's not very sensitive. We used to look at it a little bit more and we kind of walked away from it.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

If you get really shot for a long time, you're over-trained or highly chronically stressed or have a chronic disease, you will start to see increases in resting heart rates that are not being explained by a lack of physical fitness or cardiovascular fitness.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So you can see changes in heart rate as a result of this autonomic nervous system being pushed into a direction, in this case, more sympathetic than you'd like. but it takes a long time. You're not gonna see the resting heart rate move for several weeks before you would really notice. And then the amount of movement is small. So it's hard to understand kind of signal to noise ratio there.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So honestly kind of cross off resting heart rate, not a great marker. I don't know too many people that use it by itself or certainly use it as their first line of measurement. Now, heart rate variability is much more documented. Respiratory rate is growing. That's something we're learning much more about.

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And CO2 tolerance is something that I have used a lot, but there's not a ton of research behind that either. I will share with you my personal experiences with all these things, but I want to spend most of our attention today on HRV because we have so much more information to go off of. So let's dive into HRV. What is it? Why do you care? And how do we manipulate it?

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Heart rate variability is exactly what it sounds like. It is the variation in your heart rate. Let me use an example. Let's say your resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute. You would then assume that since there's 60 seconds in one minute, that your heart is then beating, in this example, every second on the second.

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And then if you sped your heart rate up to 670 or 80 or 90 or 100 beats per minute, you would simply shorten the time between each heartbeat. But that the time between each heartbeat would be the same. It'd be one second or half a second or three quarters of a second or whatever the case is. Well, in that particular case, there's no variation in your heart rate. That's not actually what happens.

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If your heart rate is 60 beats per minute, What's going to happen naturally is maybe it beats at 1.1 second, and the next beat comes at 1.2 seconds later, and the next beat after that comes 0.9 seconds later, and then it comes at 0.8, and then it goes to 1.3. And so there's variations. At the end of the 60 seconds, you'll still have done 60 beats, but it won't be a metronome.

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It doesn't happen every second on the second. How variable that is, is the marker we're talking about. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but the more variation, the more parasympathetic you are. So the more variation in your heart rate, the more down-regulated. If it becomes like a metronome, every second on the second, it's dialed in, that means you're in sympathetic drive.

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I guess he signaled that, you know, I'm fine, I'm okay here. And then eventually brought it back up. Arguably more impressive was some of the stuff he was able to do with his physical temperature. So they had him on the same hand change the temperature by I think like six degrees Celsius in his same hand, again, only inches away.

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Now, as I said, parasympathetic and sympathetic aren't on-off switches. They toggle back and forth. So HRV is just telling us kind of where at on that entire spectrum we are. Generally, on average here, we want to spend more time in parasympathetic, meaning a higher HRV, and less time in sympathetic. Most people struggle with spending too much time in sympathetic and therefore have a low HRV.

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Now, you can have the opposite problem, and we have seen that. I've coached people through that, where their HRV is extraordinarily high and they're lethargic with no energy, no motivation, and so on and so forth. But that's way more rare. Generally, I would probably say 95 times out of 100, it's the opposite.

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We're getting people out of so much time in sympathetic drive and more in parasympathetic. A million explanations for this, but just as a practical example, you can imagine going from a A high stress job, sitting in traffic, even if it's not a high stress job, but it's a job.

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You're around people, you're performing, you're in traffic, you're listening to podcasts, you're coming home, you're watching TV, and it's just sensory input all the time that requires your attention and reaction. If you're managing children, if you're managing other stuff, and there's just not enough quiet time that used to be around us.

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Plenty of other reasons to explain it, but that's a good way to kind of understand the idea here of why most people are probably in sympathetic drive. If you want to say that that means we're in a more stressed life than we used to be, I don't know. I'll leave that up to you.

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But just from a practical perspective, we have way more arousal coming in way more frequently than we probably had for most of our experience as a human species. That's what HRV is, it's that variation, and that's what it tells us. It is a snapshot into the autonomic nervous system, specifically parasympathetic and sympathetic drive. It is only one metric. It is not perfect.

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There's not a single metric I will show you today that is perfect, but it does have a lot of research behind it. So that's roughly what HRV is. It is, at our best guess, 50% genetic and 50% lifestyle. Admittedly, I am not thoroughly impressed with that research.

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I think that number is going to change over time, but it is inarguable that some point of it is not within your control and some part of it is. Why that matters? When we get to the interpretation stuff later, it's not VO2 max. I can't just look at your HRV and tell you you're good or bad. You have to consider the fact that a large part of it is not within your control. Tough to interpret.

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The numbers themselves aren't as specific as they are for other variables, again, like VO2 max. There's also a age-related decline that happens in your HRV. So it gets lower as you age. That said, a recent paper just came out, I think actually last year, And it argued pretty strongly that the age-related decline in HRV is not inevitable.

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And so clearly demonstrating some, not only control of his whole body temperature, but extreme precision of where that temperature was going and where it was not. But nonetheless, that was documented and published. And again, to this day is probably one of the more famous cases of such incredible control of one's what's supposed to be autonomic physiology.

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And if you maintain function and fitness through life, that HRV should not drop as much, if any, but certainly not as much as you think. And so those are things that we are learning more about, but that paper just came out, first time I've seen anybody even examine it. So we're going to have to see where those things end up shaking out to be.

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Now, HRV is generally associated with better health, and you can look at this in a variety of different ways, but from a physical, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary fitness perspective, it's generally pretty tied. It's not perfect. Just because VO2 max goes up doesn't mean HRV will go up, and the opposite as well.

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So they are related, but they're definitely not a one-to-one correlation, and it's, I'd say, a moderate correlation, so much so we basically factor them in independently. I've seen plenty of people with smashingly high and that will tell you almost nothing about their HRV and the opposite, okay?

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Now, the research will show, and I have seen this personally in my experience, we've coached a lot of men and a lot of women. Women just tend to be a little bit lower with their VO2 max. Doesn't mean it's worse, but it is just a little bit lower of a score, meaning more sympathetic drive, right? Not worse. Now, that may actually not mean that, but that's a conversation for another day.

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But nonetheless, Little bit of calibration on what this thing actually is. We now know HRV influences, and I won't say directly and only causes, something like attention and focus has dozens, if not hundreds of things that regulate it. So we need to make sure that we're hearing this correctly, right? It is just associated with, and it does influence, but it's not the only influence of HRV.

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Everything from attention to decision making, emotional control, and then other things like what are called mental endurance. Now this particularly matters because mental endurance under stress is resilience. This is why we're talking about it, right? I want you to be more resilient to stress. In this particular example, can you maintain decision-making? Can you maintain focus?

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Can you maintain attention and memory skills in the presence of stress? Not just when you're baseline, not when you're fresh and okay, but what about when you become fatigued? That's what a higher HRV allows you to do. And that's why we're going to press forward and give you tools to improve it, enhance it, or if it's already good, to maintain it.

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You could drown yourself in data, whether you want to look at systematic reviews or meta-analyses, but you'll find them. Heart rate variability is associated with an enormous number of health implications. Everything from...

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I'm being a little aggressive here, but basically every psychological or mental health metric, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and so forth, to things like cardiovascular disease, all cause mortality, inflammation, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, hypertension.

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I mean, pick your metric and you will find the meta-analysis or systematic review that shows, man, a bad HRV is going to be associated with bad health outcomes. One example I can give you here is things like that hyperglycemia. Now, that's high blood sugar, right? So think type 2 diabetes. Well, just think about it this way. If you were in a state of fight or flight,

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A decade later, and I'm gonna highlight this one as well, I think it was 1982 actually, a similar thing was done in a more extensive group. And so what actually happened here was a paper was published in Nature. Now, that's one of the most blue-ribbon, highest-esteem journals in all of science and physiology.

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you were fighting for your life, your adrenaline would be up. When your adrenaline goes up, your body releases a bunch of glucose into the bloodstream. And it does that because glucose will then go to your skeletal muscle. It gives them short-term energy and it can prepare for combat in this particular case. It doesn't actually matter if you're fighting.

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General point is this, stress goes up, adrenaline goes up, blood glucose goes up. Well, if this is happening consistently throughout the day, you're effectively giving yourself stress-induced diabetes because you're constantly smashing your insulin system, smashing the pancreas because you're throwing blood glucose up and down and you didn't do anything with food.

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This is why high stress and chronic stress management, one of the many reasons at least, why these things are associated with obesity. They are associated with inflammation. They are associated with high blood pressure and so forth. There's a direct physical reaction that happens from your psychology in this case, all the way down to your molecular biology. and it has consequences across systems.

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I can keep giving you examples, but I think you get the point by now. In fact, many of you may have already realized or known that bad HRV is associated with lots of bad health implications, and that's no good. What is less discussed and less understood in my experience is how it directly relates to resilience.

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And there's a couple of interesting papers that highlight this point, and so I want to dive into them in just a little bit more detail now. But if you remember, Your heart rate variability is driven by your autonomic nervous system. And one of the main things within that is called your vagus nerve. Now, when we hear vagus, we often think it's downregulation. But it's not just that.

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If you were to stimulate the vagus nerve, you could get arousal as well, upregulation, excitement, so on and so forth. It is this toggle, right? It's this ability to go back and forth between them. Well, we have evidence now, molecularly, of how the vagus nerve can directly activate and change the immune system. No surprise here. What happens when you are really cooked?

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You're shot, overworked, overstressed. Your immune system gets compromised, right? Why? Well, in part because of this. Now I'm not saying HRV caused that, but HRV would provide you that signal and says, hey, this is why you're not as resilient right now as you used to be.

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Vagus nerve, overused, altered immune system function, and now you got sick or got more sick than you should have got because of that overall stress response you were less resilient to. Now, another example of that is a really complicated study, but it was so beautiful. I wanted to point it out. What they looked at here was this resilience or what's called reactivity marker.

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And so what they found is kind of getting to the end of the paper here was when you were in the state of low HRV, sympathetic drive, That gave you higher sleep reactivity to stress. Meaning when we expose you to the same stressor, you had a exaggerated sleep response. In this case, a bad sleep response. That's exactly what we're talking about.

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So the same thing happened to you when you had a higher HRV, didn't affect your sleep. Now, when we give that thing to you and you have a low HRV, it affects your sleep a lot. That's higher reactivity. That is being less resilient to the same stressor. So same stress, big response. This is in circular, right? Because we also know at the same point, less sleep or worse sleep,

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And so, preeminent journal, it was published, and they looked at a bunch of Tibetan monks that lived in the Himalayas, studying and utilizing a practice that's called TUMMO, T-U-M-M-O. And they were able to do a bunch of similar things that Rami was able to do. I won't draw them out, but temperature controls, raising their body temperatures by like eight degrees consciously without moving.

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increases your risk of all kinds of problems. And in this specific paper, the problem that they're looking at was depression symptoms. So the lower amount of sleep increased the risk of experiencing higher depressive symptoms. Many actual examples of this, but that really does, again, encapsulates what I'm trying to talk about here. It's not just up or down.

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It is being more resilient to everything that happens in your life. And our autonomic nervous system is a great tool to measure and pay attention to for that. So if that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will, but I'm assuming at this point you're all on board. So how do you actually measure it? Let's talk about different ways where you can actually investigate your HRV level.

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Today's episode is sponsored by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink mix that has an ideal electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, but no sugar. Hydration is critical to performance, both physical and mental performance. Countless studies have shown that even a slight degree of dehydration, even as small as 1%, can lead to decreases in physical output and mental performance.

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Many of you probably remember the show, The Office, at least the American version. And I'll never forget one of the classic scenes, one of the characters, Dwight Schrute, was telling and bragging actually about how he had superior genes and he was able to, at his own will, raise his blood cholesterol levels.

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Again, that's livemomentus.com slash perform to get 20% off. Because HRV is so ubiquitous and you can get it all from just your heart, There's a ton of different cheap tools to measure. I have used historically something called Morpheus, and it is amazing for looking at changes in HRV over time, especially at a baseline.

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It's fantastic for improving your conditioning and knowing what exercise to do for the day. But the other ones I want to get into today function a little bit differently. And that is kind of more understanding and acute sense. What am I at right now? And if I go do something, can I see that change instantly? So for that, actually, I like a device that's a combination of a couple of things.

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In fact, one of the things that they did was they put wet sheets on top of them and put them in very cold, if not sub-zero conditions. And these individuals were able to not only stay neutral with temperature, stay neutral with their heart rate, but they were also able to physically dry the sheets within like 30 to 60 minutes. And so you can go on and on.

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Number one, I use a chest strap, Polar H10. I have no affiliation to Polar. I buy it. It's about $100 or so. This is the gold standard. And I like this the most because it is actually directly measuring EKG or ECG in the heart. Others, the ones that are worn like on your arm or on your wrist, are not directly measuring the heart.

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They're using a different technology or methodology, which doesn't matter. And they're okay in some spaces. Some of them are very good. But for me, if I'm going to make a change, if I'm going to pay attention, if I'm going to coach somebody on it, I'm not going to try to save $30 and buying something that's slightly cheaper. $100 is pretty reasonable for most people to get to.

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And so I want the highest standard there. So for me, I've just personally had the most success with the Polar H10 strap. On top of that, I have recently been shown by a colleague of mine, Dr. Jay Wiles, W-I-L-E-S. Jay is phenomenal in this area. He does a ton of research and clinical experience in this stuff. He recently showed me an app called Optimal HRV. Again, I have no association to them.

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I pay normal full price for it. It's about five bucks a month. It's really, really cheap. It pairs perfectly with that Polar H10 strap. So you can put the strap on, you can pull up the app, and you can see your HIV in real time. So we can see it right now. We can go test something. We can go try something, and we can see the response. It's very intuitive.

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So you're talking $100, $115 or something like that. You could have yourself a nice HIV tool. One more time to be really clear. If we are concerned about HIV, we're going to go with one of those devices. We're going to measure it directly from the chest. We're not going to measure it from the finger or the wrist or anywhere else unless we absolutely have to.

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Now, it's been a long time since we talked about this, but earlier I brought up respiratory rate. And I'm going to come back to it now. There's not as much research here, but it is growing. And what's clear about respiratory rate is the information you get from it is different than what you get from heart rate variability. And so ideally, you're going to pay attention to both of these.

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Respiratory rate, like HRV... It is a non-specific, but highly sensitive measure of your nervous system. In other words, if your HRV is up or down, or your respiratory rate is up or down, something's happening. It's very sensitive to changes. You will see changes within a day. As I just described, you can change these things within minutes or seconds.

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If you see changes over a couple of days, it means something, but they're non-specific. They're not telling you, oh, this was your nutrition, or, oh, this is your mental stress, or, oh, this is hydration or bad sleep. You don't know what's happening. It's simply telling you something about the overall allostatic load, the total stress of the environment.

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So then you gotta go work to figure out what's happening there, but they are both highly relevant. Why I like respiratory rate arguably the most here is because I have personally, and now I'm walking away from the research here, I can't show this scientifically yet, But I have found it personally to be more sensitive. It'll show up fast.

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You could probably find many other case studies like this. And again, thousands of anecdotes and other stories throughout history. But I think one thing that I'm trying to highlight here that is inarguable There is clearly the ability to run control over your physiology if you really take the time and attention. Is it tummo? Is it visualization?

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Oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes in my personal experience, you'll see changes in respiratory rate before you'll see them in HRV. You know, anything that matters, but not always. And so we really pay high attention to both.

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There's a really wonderful article in a technology journal actually called Sensors published a couple of years ago by a scientist that I just love in this field, Andre Nicolo, called The Importance of Respiratory Rate Monitoring from Healthcare to Sport and Exercise. And in that paper, they walk you through a ton of the research, what's going on here, the fact that it is a critical vital sign

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It has been associated with everything from cardiac events and pneumonia to heat exposure and cold and exercise, emotional stress, cognitive load, and so on and so forth. You can go read about more of the details of respiratory rate there. I've thrown this out a couple of times at the beginning, but I wanted to finally tie a bow on this as well. What does this have to do with CO2 tolerance?

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If you're not familiar with that, This is a similar metric. So when we're looking at respiratory rate and we're looking at resting heart rate and HRV, we also like to pay attention to CO2 tolerance. This is a different way of examining the state of your nervous system.

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Specifically, the way that we have defined CO2 tolerance, this is developed, or rather was brought to me by a gentleman named Brian McKenzie. I don't know who created it initially, but Brian is the one who taught me about it.

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And the way that this works is it's effectively like a little bit of a breath hold test where you exhale continuously and you can see how long that you can continually exhale some small amount of air. It's a maximal effort test. In the show notes, we'll put a direct link to a video Brian has made that shows you how to go through the CO2 tolerance test. And I like it. We've used it a bunch.

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I also feel like it tells us something similar, but slightly different than both HRV and respiratory rate. So while I told you earlier, we look at both of those, we also look at CO2 as much as we can. I can't get CO2 tolerance though from a simple test on a resting test. You actually have to actively do it. It only takes about a minute.

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But because of that, people won't necessarily do it every day where I can check their heart rate easily, whether they're doing something or not. So that's the only reason why we don't use it necessarily every day. But here's the connection. The way that your physiology works is you will bring in oxygen when you take a breath in.

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And you're doing that because oxygen's primary job is to regulate metabolism. It's energy production, right? It's aerobic metabolism, which is what most of your body's doing most of the time. When you breathe out, you're breathing out CO2. The difference between oxygen and CO2 is that carbon molecule. That carbon is a byproduct of any metabolic process.

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So whether you're breaking down carbohydrates or fat, whether you're using that resulting energy for exercise or digestion or immune function or cognitive performance, it doesn't actually matter. It all is going to net result in you leaving a little bit of the water leftover, making some ATP, and having a bunch of free-floating carbon. That carbon in your system is highly problematic.

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And so your body will immediately attach it to an oxygen molecule forming CO2. And so the way we say this is the net end result of all metabolic processes are water, ATP, and CO2. Now, if you're in the case of, let's just say exercise, it doesn't matter, but let's just say we are doing that, the more metabolism you go through, the more CO2 is generated in your muscle.

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Well, probably, realistically, we've got tons of different options. And so what I'd like to do today is talk about just a few of them. What do we know? What does it mean to control your nervous system? What can we do? What can't we do? And then what are a bunch of tactics and strategies so that you can have a more resilient nervous system?

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Your muscle then puts it into your blood and then transmits through your blood, goes into your lungs, and then you exhale and get it out. That's the entire cycle of life. Plants do the opposite. They breathe in CO2, pull out the carbon, keep it, hold on it to themselves, and then get rid of the O2, right? That's the relationship living beings have with plants in terms of oxygen and CO2.

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Why this matters, again, you breathe in oxygen to regulate metabolism, but your CO2 levels are there to regulate your pH. It has nothing to do with your exercise performance. Your body will regulate blood pressure, it will regulate electrolytes, and it will regulate pH over almost anything. And one could argue it will regulate pH literally over anything else in the whole world.

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That is because most of your body, the vast majority of all enzymes in the world, have to run at a very specific pH. Too acidic or too alkaline, they don't work. If they don't work and your heart can't pump and your brain can't operate, you die pretty quickly. So your physiological pH levels are maintained at an incredibly tight number. Your testosterone can easily triple in a few minutes.

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Your adrenaline can go up many multiples. Your pH stays within an extremely tight window. It will move everything else around it to keep your pH at the right level. The primary way your body regulates your pH is by changing the amount of CO2 that it lets be in your blood. If CO2 levels get too high in your blood, This will tell your autonomic nervous system to breathe more. You don't feel it.

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This is subconscious. You're just breathing more. You have no idea what's happening. Not an active process, autonomic nervous system. It does that, it gets rid of the CO2, it brings the acidic level down. If the acidic level is too low, meaning you're too alkaline, it will have you slow your respiration down. You'll hold your breath. Again, you won't even know this.

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It'll let the CO2 levels increase more until it gets to the spot it wants, and then it'll bring your respiration back up. If you go start exercising, you start putting a bunch of CO2 in the blood, that's why your body makes you breathe more. Because it has to dump that CO2.

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In normal circumstances, the primary reason you get air hunger or you feel like you have to breathe, if I were to make you hold your breath right now, it's not because you're running low on oxygen. It's because CO2 levels are rising. CO2 concentrations in your blood are the primary mechanism that drive you to feel like you need to ventilate.

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So it can be conscious, you can feel it, but most of the time this is happening without you having any awareness at all of what's going on. If you are chronically breathing heavily, Not enough. You are under breathing, which doesn't happen much. CO2 levels would be getting really high, you'd be acidic. What's more common is the opposite. And there are papers on this, right? That you can see it.

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To start us off, I wanna make sure we're all on the same page when I say nervous system. The easiest way to conceptualize it is think about it in two large branches. The first is what's called the central nervous system. This is your brain and brain stem and spinal cord. And the second is what's called your peripheral nervous system.

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If you are breathing too much, whether you want to call this over breathing, like we tend to call it, Or if you are actually truly into what's called chronic hyperventilation, this is a medically diagnosable condition. Chronic hyperventilation is over breathing. What that really is, is you're putting too much CO2 out of your body into the atmosphere.

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So because of that, your CO2 levels in your body get too low. This is called hypocapnia, too low of CO2. This is incredibly problematic because again, one, we are out of pH range now. We're not acidic, we're alkaline, we're the opposite. So because of that, your kidneys, somewhere within a couple of days or a couple of hours to a couple of days, maybe even a few weeks, can respond to that.

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They don't always, but they can respond to that by putting you into what's called metabolic acidosis. And it's doing that because it's, again, trying to reestablish some acidity in the system to make everything happy. This then has a whole host of renal and kidney issues, hydration issues, and sodium, potassium, and electrolyte issues, and a bunch of other stuff that is just overall problematic.

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The other major problem with this over-breathing strategy is CO2 is a vasodilator. And so if you are exhaling too much of it and CO2 concentrations get too low, you get vasoconstriction. This means decreased cerebral blood flow. This means decreased blood flow everywhere else, it also alters what's called Bohr's effect. In general, what all this is meaning, you don't have as much oxygenation.

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Not exactly what it is, but if that helps you conceptualize what's going on here, then that's fine. And so we're seeing problems in health, cognitive performance, physical exercise performance, all of this stuff can be a response to chronic hyperventilation or over-breathing, however you would define those things. That said then, if I'm seeing HRV is fine, resting heart rate's fine,

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but I am chronically over breathing, I still have some work to do. And it is indicating something is happening potentially from a stress situation that's not going to be necessarily picked up by changes in sleep or changes in HRV or changes in overall resting heart rate. Why this becomes really problematic is they can then turn quickly into what are called sustaining factors.

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And so while something caused hyperventilation, which is a normal and healthy response, remember, I say I get scared right now. I want to go into sympathetic drive. I want adrenaline up. I want to start an anticipatory over-breathing strategy. I know CO2 is going to start increasing because I'm about to start doing something physically. So I'll start over-breathing. That's great.

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So this is everything else that goes out and comes back to the central nervous system. Now, focusing on the peripheral nervous system, that's where most of the action happens. In this case, the peripheral nervous system is broken up into a couple of other categories, one being what's called the somatic system. This is what you can actively control. We're not going to talk about that much today.

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Normal reactive strategy there. Healthy one. That's what we want. But if we're chronically doing that, We're chronically over breathing because we're chronically in this sympathetic drive. We're chronically in this high stress environment. That can be sustained. It can turn into a habit. It can turn into misattribution. It can turn into lots of different things.

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We have increased that sympathetic adrenergic tone. We are ready and dialed and primed for the same situation, the same smell, the same thing we hear, the same thing we see to drive us back into that hyperventilation strategy. We then can be causing the same problem and it can be cyclical, right? Because that hyperventilation itself can cause the same physiological problems.

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So it's hard strategy to break. So really important to pay attention to respiratory rate as well. I could go on, but again, for the sake of time, we'll stop right there. Important, highly correlated, highly overlapped with some of the other markers we've talked about, but it tells us unique information. Now, how do I measure this? Most of the wearables you have will measure respiratory rate.

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I will give you fair warning. There is no industry standard though on how that's calculated. So just like HRV, don't put a ton of stock in the absolute number. You want to pay most attention to trends and things like that, but at least be consistent with the device that you're using. Use whatever you like. It doesn't matter what you get, how you use it.

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It's a very simple measure that basically every wearable either directly has or it can have. If they're not reporting it, they're measuring it. They're just using it to calculate other stuff. So that can be done in a bunch of different ways. Hopefully, that gave you some more information about how you can calculate HRV, how you can calculate respiratory rate.

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You probably can infer how to calculate resting heart rate. And I gave you some tools on how to calculate and measure CO2 tolerance as well. It's time for us to now move on to where we figure out how to make sense of all that information and determine how do we interpret it all. We're gonna start off by talking about HRV.

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Anyone who works in this area will be squeamish when you ask them the question of what's a good one or a bad one. We all say the same thing, which actually to me is like a badge of honor that that person knows what they're talking about when I hear them say that. It's a hard thing to put a number on. I'll give you something though, to get started on most wearables.

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Most men are going to be something in the like forties to 60 range on their HRV score. Women are a little bit lower than that. If you are older than say 60 years old, then maybe tink that down a little bit. That all said, I wanted to start off with a number, but I don't know what that even means. And that's because every device actually has a different calculation they use to measure HRV.

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So we're not even necessarily always talking about the same thing. More importantly than that, though, there is a misuse of HRV in a bunch of different scenarios. And so you should pay attention to it. I made a long argument of why it's important, it's relevant. But I just started off by also saying the measurement itself is not the same between devices.

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So we want to use this as a measure of progress or regression rather than just comparing score to score, especially if you're comparing your score to your friends and you're on a ring and they're on a watch or something like that. The number is actually the calculation. The equation itself can be completely different.

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It's stuff you already know you have control over. What I want to focus more on is the other branch, and that's what's called the autonomic nervous system, the ANS. And so within the autonomic nervous system, we're talking about things like the parasympathetic system. You may have heard of that as rest and digest.

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There's many, many ways to calculate HRV that are scientifically validated, and the numbers are digits different than the other ones. That's an important point to pay attention to. I've already also talked about the fact that it could be normal for you when you have an HRV score that is, let's just to put numbers on it, say 25. Well, that actually might be normal for you. I don't know.

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If we look at your respiratory rate and your resting heart rate and your CO2 tolerance and your subjective feeling and your recovery and your performance and your cognition, and they're all great, well, then I might not be super worried about just your HRV. So we're never going to take it of itself, by itself, and only itself, and over-interpret its meaning.

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If you are going to calculate it, please collect good data. What do I mean by that? However you're testing it, be consistent. If you're wearing a ring, wear a ring. Use the same one. If you're testing it with a chest strap every morning, use it in the same position. Don't take it seated one day. Don't take it lying down the next day.

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Don't wake up and go to the bathroom one day and then check it and the next day you did it before going to the bathroom. Or you did it before breakfast and then you had coffee the next time and you had a giant pancake breakfast. You get the point here. Test it under the same consistent terms always. We want to pay attention mostly to trends over time.

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And the recommendation I'll give you here is to establish your own standard deviation. Here's what that means. Let's say you test your HRV for 30 days. And within those 30 days, don't do anything about it. Don't make any changes. on a piece of paper in an Excel file on your computer, just jot down the score on all 30 of those days. Then ask it to run a standard deviation calculation

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And this will basically tell you what your normal average number is and how far off, up or low, you tend to go within a 30-day window. This matters a ton because the amount of that deviation, number one, tells us something about your physiology that's maybe arguably more important than the actual number itself. Let me give you some mathematical examples. Let's say your HRV was 30 on your device.

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Whatever 30 is, whatever that means, it doesn't matter. and you calculated it after a month, and it said your average is 30, and your standard deviation was 20. That means you swing all the way down to 10, all the way up to 50. That is a very large standard deviation. Other people, their standard deviation might be three or five. And so you have to know What matters to you?

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If your standard deviation is 20 and you wake up one day and instead of being at 30, which is your average, you're at 27, that means nothing to you. That is nothing because that's such a low percentage of your normal deviation.

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the opposite person, whose standard deviation is normally five, and they wake up and they're seven high or low, then that actually tells them something's going on that their system is responding to. So if you want my honest answer of how to use HRV the most appropriate, this is what we're paying attention to. Typically, again, just a rule of thumb here,

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There are probably better ways we can describe it and more interesting applications of it. But nonetheless, we'll just keep it simple right now and say that the parasympathetic is rest and digest. You also have the sympathetic. That is your fight and flight. And so most of us stop right there and we think, okay, parasympathetic, I'm relaxed, I'm lethargic, I'm down, I'm chill, I'm zen.

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People that are more stable in their HRV are generally better. If you have a score that is doubling every other day, we would immediately start thinking, all right, this person's hyperreactive. Whatever they're doing is causing a huge change in their autonomic nervous system. We need to create more stability here. That's how we become more resilient. That's how we become more predictable.

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That's what we're after. If you're so tight, no matter what you do, we're getting the same response every day. Then we know that system is actually quite stable. And no matter what insult hits you that day, work stress, Environmental toxin, who cares? Your body is able to handle it. You're not hitting the wall on the highway. You're moving left and right, right?

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Your car is swerving, but you're not hitting the wall. So those numbers aren't changing. That's where we're bringing back that highway analogy. And that's what we're talking about when we're talking about nervous system stability. So we never make changes based on one day. We never use a cheap consumer wearable to tell us how to live our life.

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To exercise today or to not exercise, to sleep today or to not sleep today, that is, and I think the people behind most of these companies would say the same thing, that's not the best way to use something like an HRV score.

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Interpret your numbers in the appropriate context, but regardless, we should be able to get better and maybe become more resilient in our overall nervous system responses to stress. Back to our highway analogy. What causes people to be more stable versus less stable with their HRV is a bunch of different stuff, genetics. And then it's also the dumb stuff. It is an irregular sleep schedule.

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Once we get people sleeping just in a consistent time, HRV almost always goes up. In fact, so much so, it is very often the first thing I look at. When somebody asks me about their HRV, or we're going through their overall analysis of all their data, and we see HRV's poor, my eyes go right up to sleep irregularity. If their sleep is irregular, then I honestly don't go much past that.

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When their sleep irregularity goes up, HRV just goes up. So if you're like, man, I've been doing everything, I've been doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, my HRV doesn't go up, and your sleep's irregular, well, that's stop number one on the train. Other stuff is honestly, sorry to be sound this way, but it's kind of what I call the dumb stuff. It's alcohol.

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It is lots of bad negative health habits. All this stuff will bring it down. So if you remove all those from the equation, it's probably going to go up. Another one I wanted to bring up here. that people don't pay a lot of attention to. Two things have stood out when I was diving back through some of our databases. One was wild changes in exercise within the same week.

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So what I mean by that is if you're pretty standard throughout the week, and then you're the type of person who goes bonkers with your exercise on the weekend, We see this huge instability of HRV.

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So whether you do your 10 mile run on the weekend, or you do the multiple classes, or you like to play five hours of pickleball or whatever, and it is drastically different than your week, that will also explain a lot of instability with your HRV and your resting heart rate for that matter. So that one will sneak up on people.

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The last one I'll bring up is actually nutrition related, feeding frequency of food. Specifically, we have had a number of people come in for sleep-related issues, whether that is really bad sleep or just kind of suboptimal sleep, and they're eating one meal a day. Now, I'm not fundamentally opposed to one meal a day, but in our experience, this has led to really, really compromised HRVs.

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What has happened many times is these individuals feel good, okay, or great for 30 days or 45 days, maybe up to 90 days. But then you see the nervous system just starting to pay the price. I'm not trying to indicate that one meal a day is bad for your health. Again, I'm going on my personal experience and the data we have in our companies and we've just seen it not go well.

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Sympathetic, I'm fight, I'm flight, I'm up, I'm focused, I'm aroused, and so on and so forth. Reality of it is there's probably more things like the freeze mechanism. There's also the enteric system that happens here. This is kind of like most specifically referring to your gut.

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And we've at the same time seen people then who eat more frequently. in terms of they were eating one meal a day and they change and go to a two or three and the nervous system sends to recover. I want to be real clear here. I don't only mean their HRV score. That does happen. But it's other signs and symptoms as well.

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It's objective measures of say sleep quality, cognitive function, performance and so forth. They feel good. But their physiology in the longer term isn't responding how they think or hoping it really is. So if you are a one meal a day or fine, great. If you feel awesome, awesome. Keep doing it. I'm only bringing this up to where if you've made a change recently and you're like, what the heck?

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Why is my HIV going down? That, I think, is the most appropriate way to interpret it as this is maybe one of the things that happens with lack of feeding throughout the day is it creates some potentially somewhat of a neurological or nervous system stressor that will alter HRV. So lots of other things I could bring up here, but those are the ones that I thought were most interesting.

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It's a combination of some of the stuff that is most well-documented, the alcohol, the emotional regularity, so on and so forth, with some things I thought that maybe some of you would find interesting in that we've just seen behind the scenes that is not necessarily in the peer-reviewed literature. Today's episode is sponsored by 8sleep.

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or as my wife calls it, I'm a furnace. If I don't have something like an 8Sleep helping me cool down, I'll wake up in the middle of the night overheating and not feeling great. This is something I've also found in many of the people that I coach, especially those who are really physically active. The 8Sleep Pod 4 Ultra has two times more cooling power, yet is virtually silent.

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But for the most part, again, for the sake of time, we're going to focus on the interplay between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system because that provides us the ability to have a lot of control over what our nervous system is doing. And as I'll show here very soon, that has a significant impact on how you're looking, feeling, and performing in the short term. and long term.

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We have a little bit of an algorithm we use when determining if a change in HRV matters to us. So how do you interpret this context? Number one, we always check to make sure we got good data. I talked about that earlier. If they don't, then I disregard it. But let's say they do. Most of the time they do. So we've got good data, however you define that.

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Next question I'm asking is, are we talking about one day? Or has this been happening for more than three, ideally more than five to seven days? If it is acute, single day, second day, third day only, then I'm asking the next set of questions, which is, okay, what are we doing with your training right now? If we're in a phase where we're trying to cause physiological adaptations,

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I'm trying to stress you. So if your HRV is lower and I'm seeing signs of stress, that's exactly what we're pushing for. That's a good thing. We're not changing anything. This is one of the huge flaws of general technologies that just tell you what to do with your workout, your nutrition based on today's score. Oh, your HRV is low, therefore take a day off.

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That's a really bad approach because it doesn't understand what you're trying to do in the long term or even the medium term in this case. So if we see an HRV that is low, and it's been down for two or three days, and we're in a phase where we're in the off season, we're trying to build up change, we're in a caloric deficit, and we're working hard. I don't care. You are a little bit stressed.

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That's the point that's going to cause adaptation. We're going to ignore. That said, if we're in a phase where we're supposed to be peaking, I'm trying to feel good. Whether we're peaking for sports performance or you're simply saying, I need to be on today. I need to have a great day. This is a really important thing I'm doing in my family life or work life or something like that.

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My HRV has been down for a couple of days and I got to get it fixed because I'm trying to perform my best right now. Then we're going to do what I call acute state shifters. And I got a whole category of these things to cover for you here in one second. But I'm going to give them tons of different strategies that they can pull out one or more of these acute shifters.

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And I promise you, these will make that HRV go up right now. They'll go up today. They'll probably be up again tomorrow. And you'll be fine. We'll be back in the sweet spot. Going back up our algorithm a little bit. If we got good data... and this has not just been a one or two day thing, but it's been here for five or seven or 10 days or longer, then I'm gonna ask the same follow-up question.

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Number one, are we trying to induce adaptation? If so, I'm not gonna ignore it, but I'm gonna watch it carefully. Not necessarily gonna change your workout program today, but we are gonna watch it carefully. If it is really suppressed, meaning it's more than two standard deviations, outside your normal for more than five days, we're going to take action. We're going to do something. Okay.

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If that was really technical for you, if it's a really big change and it's around a long time and you're really feeling bad, your motivation, your energy, you feel junky, then, then we're going to, we're going to take action. Okay. If we're in a phase where we're trying to perform our best, and that's been down for a long time. Then we're gonna go to what I call chronic solutions.

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And I'm highlighting that because again, people don't necessarily realize how much control they actually have over those systems. They are autonomic, but you have the ability to move them up and down, you can recalibrate them, and you can consciously, critically control them, as I've given many examples of already.

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So we have our acute solutions and our chronic solutions. And so ultimately, we wanna make sure we're using the right tool for the right task. Now, I'm gonna go through all those Briefly, but before we do that, I wanna finish talking about respiratory rate as well, because it's a little bit of a different interpretation. I've given you some sample numbers earlier.

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I kept saying 14 breaths per minute or 15 breaths per minute. And I'm doing that because the literature will show you. The cutoff line seems to be about 16 breaths per minute. If you are over 16, there is clear and consistent literature tying that to everything from risk of a cardiovascular event, myocardial infarction or stroke,

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or things like that is tied to clinical deterioration pain emotional stress cognitive load and a whole host of things that you don't want to be anywhere near if you are at 16 you're right on that line and i'm not trying to overly scare you but if you're above that i'm going to make the case that you as long as our data are accurate which is again a whole other question

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But if you are up there, then we have a case of chronic over-breathing, whether that is chronic hyperventilation, that's a medical diagnosis, not for me to decide, but you are over-breathing in my opinion, and we're going to want to bring that thing down. Most of the time I'm looking at, if you are in the 10 to 14 range, and then I don't see anything else, I'm good here.

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If you're 15, I'm asking a lot of follow-up questions. You're 15, 16, I'm probably going to ask us to do something. If we have a bunch of other major issues, maybe I'm not too worried about it. But if you're over 16, then this is going to be one of our top tier priorities. Because of all the reasons I shared earlier about what happens when you're overventilating.

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Lots of short and long-term issues. And so this is exactly how we interpret those numbers. Let's say you're at 16 or 17. Okay, very first stop on this train, I want to make sure your breathing mechanics are okay. Very simple first principles here.

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If you are ineffective with your breathing strategy, whether you're breathing through your shoulders and your neck, or clavicular breathing, whether your diaphragm doesn't work appropriately, your intercostals are weak, your position or your posture is bad, so bad that it's infecting your, well, then you can't breathe well. You're going to have to bring more often.

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This is simply, if you're weak in a spot, you have to do it more often. If you can imagine being hunched over, right? Touch your front of your shoulder to your knee and try to breathe. You can't. So you're going to breathe more frequently to get the same amount of air in. That's an exaggerated example, but you get the point.

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So number one, before I'm worried about some long-term intervention with you, I just want to make sure that it's not a mechanical issue. Past that, we're gonna look at breathing problems. And what I mean by that are everything from allergies to nasal blockage to clinical sleep disorders. If you can't breathe through your nose, there's a strong chance you're gonna be hyperventilating.

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If we were to zoom all the way out, focusing on that autonomic nervous system, the ultimate goal is to not have too much time and attention spent on this thing. If it is firing and functioning appropriately, it's running in the background. It is the software that's running your computer. You don't need to be worrying about it.

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It's not a guarantee, but we've just seen that really highly associated. So step number one, the way that we're gonna interpret this higher respiratory rate, okay, maybe it's a sign that mechanical breathing technique is not great. Nope. How's your nose? Oh yeah, I'm stuffed up all the time. Have polyps. Can you breathe through your nose ever? No, never. Are you a mouth breather? Okay, great.

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Then we're going right there. I'm not going into anything else past this until we fix breathing out of your nose. Dehydration can do the same thing. So if you just notice your respiratory rates up one particular day, oh my gosh, and then you properly hydrate, it probably goes back down. Nothing to worry about long-term there. After that, things get a little bit more work intensive.

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So it could be a CO2 intolerance thing. If you're highly sensitive to that CO2, your brain can sometimes get miscalibrated. It thinks there's way too much CO2 in the system than there actually is. So you're either hyper-stressed or hypersensitive. And so it starts asking you to dump and offload that CO2 way sooner than it needs to. You're intolerant or hypersensitive, one of those two.

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In that case, we can confirm that. So we see your respiratory rate is elevated. We also then run that CO2 tolerance test on you. Oh, that's also poor? Then great. We don't need to do anything else with your respiratory rate. We fixed your CO2 tolerance and that respiratory rate will take care of itself. Other things to think about here if your respiratory rate is high.

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It could just be a long-term pattern. Remember earlier when I talked about how these can go from initiating factors to sustaining factors? We've experienced this a lot in our middle to later aged adults, right?

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These are often folks that came from high stress environments, high stress careers, whether these have been lots of former surgeons, military individuals, entrepreneurs, things like that, where they just had high stress for a long period of time. the over-breathing was appropriate because they were in a stressful environment. And then they sell the company, they retire, they reduce their hours.

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And then years later, they're still over-breathing. And in the cases where we've had years of data on people, we've seen this confirmed pretty well. That pattern just exists. You're just over-breathing and you don't know it. So that has happened a lot. You got to go break that pattern. One of the biggest causes of this has actually been pregnancy.

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A lot of things can happen post having a child for women, and those patterns can be established and stay permanent unless you go back in there and actively reframe and rebuild a new pattern. Last one then here is what we would finally call general elevated allostatic load, whether this is physical or mental.

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Remember, allostatic load is that colloquial term for kind of like global stress on your body, no matter how it comes in or not. I went through all that list for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is I want you to realize that that stress thing is the last one. We don't look at respiratory rate and go, oh, you're stressed.

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It's making your life easier and better, but you shouldn't spend a lot of conscious control over it. That said, sometimes it gets a little bit out of whack and you want to have the ability to toggle it and recalibrate it so that you can bring it up or back down based on a particular thing you're trying to do.

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That could be, but it could simply be the fact that you can't breathe out of your nose. It could be something, you're not hydrated. It could be the fact that you're just intolerant or sensitive to CO2 or any number of reasons. And that is the pecking order. That's the strategy we go off of when we try to solve those simple problems first.

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And in our experience, you get through one through four, mechanics, breathing problems, hydration, and CO2 tolerance. Most of the time, your situation is solved. Whether you pick any of the metrics I just talked about today, heart rate or respiratory rate or anything else, or you pick something else entirely different. I think most of us in this field would agree.

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You should not be overly fixated on one metric. There is no best number here. And there's problems with data and interpretation and normative values and so forth. Things like stress, things like recovery are multifaceted. You need multiple objective and subjective measures before you get too excited.

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Let's actually finally talk about what some of these interventions are and how we can improve overall nervous system resilience. It makes sense for us to start off with the acute changes. This is the stuff you can do right now in any given moment, and it will change how you're feeling and experiencing life. It will shift your state. You already know this.

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This is what I call the four by four matrix. So picture on one part of the matrix, your physiology, on another part, your autonomic nervous system. What I'm going to share with you is how physiology can change autonomic nervous system and it can make it go up or it can make it go down. Autonomic nervous system can do the same thing with physiology. So it's a four-way street here.

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Really easy examples. If you want to make your physiology change your autonomic nervous system and you want to make it go up, just scream. Yell right now. Flex your muscles as hard as you possibly can. You do anything like that with your physical body, that will cause your autonomic nervous system to change instantaneously. Heart rate will go up. Respiratory rate will change. Adrenaline levels.

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You picked your metric. Physiology directly increasing autonomic nervous system activity. You can also do the opposite. You could do a physiological double sigh. You could do progressive muscle relaxation. You simply relax your forearm, and this could cause a change in your autonomic nervous system. You get the idea. That is physiology to ANS. ANS to physiology is basically the opposite.

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You get scared. Big shot of adrenaline happens. This will physically increase your strength capacity, force production, and power output in your muscles. And autonomic nervous system change. You could do this with a supplement or a drug. We could go down. You could be more zen. You could take, again, a medication. It could lower your heart rate.

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And because of that, it could have a physical response as well. So you intuitively know the answer. You want to change and regulate your autonomic nervous system. You have the capacity and you already know the basics of it. I break these acute and chronic actions up into a bunch of different categories.

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And so all we're talking about really in today's episode is what happens when it gets again out of whack or is not as finely tuned to a particular thing that you'd like, and what can you do about it? That is ultimately today's version of controlling your nervous system. Now to be really clear, because we could go in a lot of different areas here, I'm also gonna qualify this talk even further.

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For me, that looks like there are food-based solutions, there are supplements, there are thermal stressors, so temperature. Of course, there's breath work. There are what I call brain distractions or brain alterations, basic rest or sleep. There's light things you can do like physical light. There's movement stuff, physical movement. And then there's what I call motivation.

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Tons and tons and tons of examples. Most of them though are acute. Let's take motivation, for example. If you scrolled on social media and came across a phenomenal Cameron Haynes or Jocko Willink quote, you might get inspired. That could change your autonomic nervous system. That could change your arousal state right now. You might have been low energy, lethargic.

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That could put you in more sympathetic drive. Your HRV will change if it is actually sufficiently motivating to you. You could read a story or a book or watch a movie. You could do a physical warmup, start training, do some hops. I mentioned earlier, flex as hard as you can.

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If I shine a bright light directly in your face, all these things would change your state in the moment, but none of those are gonna make your chronic HRV improve over time. These are mostly short-term solutions. The chronic ones are a little bit more difficult, okay? This is when we get into stuff like biofeedback training. If you have sleep issues, getting a chronic sleep improvement.

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If you are chronically under-exercised, start exercising more. If you are really off, particularly if you are low in caloric intake, you're hypocaloric for too long, this might have a chronic effect of bringing more calories back. And then there are things like, again, thermal exposure that can have a chronic effect, but most of that stuff is pretty direct and acute.

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Give you a really easy example. I've been doing a cold water immersion, cold water exposures for a very long time. I do not use them because I think it adds a minute to my life. I do not use them to burn more fat. You guys can all debate whether or not you think those things exist. But for me, we have used it for stuff like this. We actually ran a bunch of experiments.

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We never published this stuff. We didn't take it through IRB. We just ran it with a bunch of our athletes. And what we found was if you look at somebody's HRV very specifically, and then you put them in a cold bath, cold water for two to five minutes. How cold? I don't know. In American units here, somewhere between 30 to 50 degrees. It didn't really matter that much, to be honest.

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And you sat them there. Here's what would happen. Your HRV immediately post the ice bath when you got out would go down. No surprise. If you get in cold, really cold water, you get shot immediately into sympathetic drive. Low HRV. Remember, fight or flight. However, as quickly as 30 minutes post, your HRV will be 10 to 20% higher than more down-regulated than you were before the cold.

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And that continued to increase for about the next three hours or so. And we ran this stuff by actually checking HRV like every 15 minutes for several hours. So we had 30 minutes post, 45 minutes post, 60 minutes post, et cetera, et cetera, all the way up to 180 posts, and we stopped measuring at that.

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And still, 180 minutes post-cold water immersion, HRV was higher, significantly higher, 25 to 50%, depending on the person, higher. three hours after the cold bath. And so while I know that most of us think about it as like that short-term thing, No, I don't have peer-reviewed publications on this, but we saw this enough to where I was like, yeah, okay, great.

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We're not gonna be talking about stress management. emotions, or even really mental health. In fact, I would encourage you to go listen to a recent episode of the Huberman Lab podcast, one of the ones that's in the essentials catalog, where they break down a bunch of different tools and tactics on overall stress management and neurological control. I'm not going to cover any of those things today.

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And it also stacked up with what I feel. It's going to last today. Now, will this last weeks and months? I don't know. Don't think so. Probably, if I had to guess. But it certainly will give you a nice acute bump. And by acute, I mean several hours and several days, right? If you hate the ice, you think it is terrible or you don't like it at all, fine. I got 50 more examples I can give you.

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It's just one that showed up as really clear evidence to us. Changing gears entirely. You can do this without moving your physical body at all, without suffering, by just doing what are called visual resets. Mentioned him a couple of times now, but thank you, Dr. Andrew Huberman. Some of his early podcasts on his platform, his show, talked a lot about this.

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But visual resets, I know his lab worked on it a lot, are really compelling and really effective. Lots of ways you can do this. There are simple drills like eye circles. So you stand there and basically run a big loop with your eyes circling around. That will change your sympathetic drive.

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Other ones that, again, my colleague Emily Hightower I know uses a lot are things like a smooth H. You can see this, and the literature is really clear here. There's lots of different cortical and visual resets, but this stuff is really fantastic and super effective. A different one entirely. that I think a lot of you exercisers and strength trainers will like. It's a modified valsalva maneuver.

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The valsalva maneuver is that intra-abdominal pressure that you create when you're doing things like lifting weights or having a bowel movement. This is exactly how you use it. Again, we're still talking about chronic or acute rather. This is something you're going to do right now.

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It's not going to fix your long-term stuff, but it'll give you that change when you're feeling like you need it right now. So you're going to hold your breath. You can do an inhale and hold, or you can do an exhale and hold. It doesn't really matter, but you're going to hold and then create a bunch of intra-abdominal pressure.

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And what's really key about this is the pressure needs to be in a true 360 degree range. Here's the analogy I like in this one. Imagine you are a can of soda. So you're a barrel, if you will. And the bottom of the barrel that's sitting flat on the ground is your pelvic floor. And the top is your diaphragm. So these are running parallel to each other.

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And then the barrel, or the can of soda, however you like to think about it, is everything from the front of your stomach to the side of your stomach all the way to your back. You want to create pressure against all of those surfaces. So imagine you're trying to explode that barrel. Every way. You're trying to blow the bottom out. So blow the bottom into the ground.

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You're trying to blow the top up in the air and you're trying to blow every side out each individual way, right? That's how we do it. It's not just a crunch. It's not a back extension. It's not anything else. It is a all quadrants, vertical and horizontal. And you're going to do that and you're going to hold it for 10 seconds.

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In doing that, you're going to see your heart rate jump from 60, 70 beats per minute to 120. It'll shoot way, way, way up in the air. But then at the end of those 10 seconds, you exhale. And actually the literature suggests that it doesn't really matter how you exhale. Go slowly, go through your mouth, go through your nose, kind of let it all dump out quickly.

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It doesn't actually matter that much. In doing that, that heart rate will go from 110 or 120 all the way now down to like 40 or 50. So before you started the drill, you were at 60 or 70, and now your new baseline is significantly lower. Really effective. You can do it anywhere. It takes just a few seconds to do. It doesn't cost you any money at all.

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We're going an entirely separate route. I'm also not only talking about downregulation. I know personally for many years,

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And it is particularly good at altering what are called baroreceptors that have specific action on that vagus nerve. And so you can do this. The magnitude of effect is actually really, really high. You'll hear in a second, but there's different technology you can use to directly stimulate your vagus nerve. But the magnitude of effect is much lower than something like this Valsalva.

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So it's free, it's cheap, it's easy. You can do it a bunch and it has a big magnitude of effect. Couple of caveats here with this modified Valsalva though. If you are prone to orthostatic issues, you pass out a lot, you have low blood pressure, don't do this. Don't do this if you're by water or in a pool or in the ocean. Don't do this a whole bunch of times.

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Probably don't do this immediately during your workout. All the caveats aside, right? You're going to create a bunch of intra-abdominal pressure. You're going to block a lot of blood flow, if not occluded entirely. Don't pass out. Don't fall into water. Don't drown. Don't do all that stuff. Another option, like I just mentioned, are what are called those vagal nerve stimulators.

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i had this connotation whenever i thought about parasympathetic or recovery or relaxing i just always or breath work for that matter i just always thought it's all about down down down down down and it's not in fact i'm not only going to focus exclusively on breath work today either we're going to go well past those things what i really want to get at is again fine-tune control the ability to go down but also go back up

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These are somewhat new. There are a handful of FDA approved devices that you can use. You generally have to have a prescription to get them though. You can buy a ton of these as normal consumers. And I have not been impressed with any of them. The data are, I would say, weak at best on them. I have personally used many of them and found like I got nothing out of it.

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The people we had try it got nothing out of it at all. The studies that are the most supportive are ones that are funded by the companies themselves. So that doesn't inherently mean the data are wrong or bad or manipulated, but you all know what that means. So for me, when it comes to these commercially available nerve stimulators,

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Until we can see some more independent testing done and the data are more impressive, I generally don't like to use them. That said, if you had a different experience and you like it a lot, that's by all means, that's great. Use it. I have tried some of the clinical ones, the FDA approved ones, the ones that require a prescription, and those are far more powerful. Those have been effective.

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I specifically have used one called the Gamma Core. You have to have a RX for it, as I mentioned. No affiliation to the company. But it is quite effective. You'll notice it pretty substantially. Your data will change almost instantaneously if you're measuring it and monitoring it. So mostly when it comes to these things, these are coming from neurologists, people with severe migraines.

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This is generally the application. This is not something that we often think about as somebody who's like trying to make their HRV score better today. So don't swing a sledgehammer at a fly, if you know what I mean. But these things aren't out there. Hopefully that gives you a sense of a bunch of different tools and strategies. I intentionally picked things all over the map.

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Cold water to a breathing drill to technology from free to a little bit more expensive and a whole bunch of other things in between that can shift or improve that state instantaneously. We're going to transition now and finish up by talking about some of the things that will actually make improvements chronically.

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So let's get you out of that hole and let's make you a more permanent, more resilient nervous system. Remember our goal. We want to desensitize. We want that system running in the background and for us to have the ability to have some control over it when we want.

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If you think about basic desensitization, the exact same principles apply here, which means you can already intuit a lot of the solutions. I'll give you some, again, what the science shows us, what we've experienced, but there's obviously many, many more things or an unending list of stuff you could try. Think about this from the perspective of the immune system.

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Now, I'll tell you a personal story. My daughter has an incredibly severe allergy to cashews. We put her through a treatment, it took us about 18 months, and she now eats cashews every day. We were in a position for, when she was younger, to have to carry an EpiPen with us. If there was cashew dust in the air, there's a non-zero chance that she could die. It was that severe.

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How did that program work? Basic desensitization. You give them a very, very, very small load. Don't put anything else in the system that could irritate them. As time goes on, you give them a slightly higher amount of load until she got up to eating, again, multiple cashews a day.

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If you look at a totally different system, another personal experience I had many years ago, I had an athlete who was struggling a lot with low back pain. I called a colleague of mine, a physical therapist, Dr. Quinn Hennock.

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Quinn was fantastic and he basically said, hey, you're dealing with low back pain, take her all the way up to the point of low back pain, go right below that line and then train a bunch. Don't hurt her. Don't exaggerate it, right? Don't give my daughter a bunch of cashews and cause a huge reaction that makes the system worse, more sensitive, right? It's on high alert. No, no, no.

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Small doses and then build those doses up and desensitize the back pain. Worked perfectly well. The athlete has, it's been years that athlete not had back pain, chronic low back pain ever since. Completely different. And again, I'm showing you wildly different examples here because I want you to understand, in my opinion, this is a ubiquitous physiological thing.

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and making sure that system is functioning how you'd like it to function. So what we will talk about are of course the three I's. If you're new to the show, what that means is how to investigate it, how to measure your nervous system, what that even means, what you should look for. The second I is interpret.

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This is not specific to HRV, specific to the nervous system. It seems to be just a renowned physiological principle. So it carries a ton of weight. This looks a lot of different ways. I'm just going to give you some samples. The research is going to show you Most of the time, practices in this area, you're going to start to see changes in three to four weeks.

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You should feel noticeable changes, but it won't be a week. It won't be a day. Three to four weeks seems to be the number. The biggest impact seems to come around the six to eight week mark. consistently dosing for that long. Past eight weeks, you don't see as much continued progress.

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And so what oftentimes happens is you can, whatever you're doing, you can kind of back it down from doing it once or twice every day to maybe two or three times a week. So you're kind of at a maintenance dosage from there. That's what my daughter is with her cashews. She has a little bit of cashews a couple of times a week, and that keeps her immune system totally at bay.

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As far as we understand it, if we were to do that, pull the cashews away for a couple of months, she might actually regress all the way back to the beginning. Again, some analogy that helps out there. If you were to think about this from a growing muscle perspective, nobody in their right mind would go do one workout and then go to bed that night and go, my biceps aren't any bigger.

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This stuff sucks. It doesn't work. Strength training is a joke. It's fake. Woke up the next day, my arms aren't any bigger. Like you just know that doesn't work, right? But yet we expect the same thing to happen when we do breath work. Ah, I've been doing it for two days. Nothing happened. My HRV score is the same. Sure, of course it is. This is a system approach. This is a desensitization.

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You're reframing, you're building a new road here. It's going to take several weeks. That's where the benefit comes. If you feel better right now when you do it, great. That was an acute thing. But we're trying to get to chronic changes, right? So we want to be active now so that it can be passive later. What that means is during these first four to eight weeks, it's work. It's a lot.

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You're going to have to dedicate 10 to 15 minutes a day of doing something that you're not going to necessarily feel that much better in doing. But if you do this appropriately, we reset this baseline, then you can be on to maintenance dosage and not have to actively do this so much. So there's a bunch of examples for you. I'm going to go through a handful right now.

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And again, I've intentionally tried to choose these from a wide variety of activities. So let's dive into them. Very first one we're going to start with is exercise. You know about the hormetic stressor effects of exercise, right? You break it down to build it up. Not exactly what happens, but... That's what hormesis is, right? Small insult, come back better. We saw this with cold.

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So how do you make sense of, how do you judge or evaluate that information that you got from that previous test? And then the third one, which is intervene. What do you do about it? What are protocols? What are tools and technologies? What are things you can do at home? What are things that can be done at a higher level? that will make those positive impacts no matter which direction you're going.

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You get really, really cold, you dive into sympathetic drive, which then has this compensatory response into parasympathetic. Same thing here, same thing else. You can look across the research. I've got some papers specifically I pulled up that'll be in the show notes. Strength training, low intensity cardiovascular training, high intensity intervals, all of it works.

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If you want to directly compare them, looks like high intensity interval training seems to be the best for this specific marker. Same time, if you're doing max effort high intensity intervals every single day, you're going to run into a hole. You're going to run into a wall and it's going to go down eventually. So dose appropriately. We use a little bit of all of it.

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If we feel like somebody is doing way too much high intensity work, we will pull it back and HRV will improve. Respiratory rate will come down. Resting heart rate will come down. I've seen that more times than I can count.

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That said, if you're not exercising at all, or you're exercising a little bit or moderate amount, or you don't go that high of intensity very often, we will see the same positive responses by adding high intensity training, whether that's higher intensity strength training, higher intensity interval training, or cardiovascular training. Same thing.

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So this is just about the right dose for the right overall experience. Totally dependent upon your lifestyle and sleep and nutrition and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So not a one size fits all answer here, but pay attention to those things. So overall exercise wins. And this has been, again, documented so many times, I can't even count. Next one on that stop is breath work.

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Remember earlier, when you exercise more CO2, so you breathe more, So when you start thinking about it, what is structured breath work doing? It's kind of like manipulating a little bit of a lower level amount of exercise. It makes sense. The same physiology happens. The same basic benefits. It's really consistent. The framework we use to think about it is in three basic steps.

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If we're going to implement a specific breathing protocol for somebody, here's how we do it. Again, for these particular purposes. Number one, Before we actually put somebody on a breathing program, we reduce arousal. I said this a while ago now. But this is actually step number one.

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Before you have to go through this meditation or intentional breathwork protocol, we just got to reduce the sensory input. We have seen this a lot. Go for a walk in nature. No podcast. No music. Not as much time. You can't wake up in the morning, immediately go to your heavy metal music, work for 15 hours, come home, answer emails, and then fall asleep. You can because you burn a lot of energy.

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You're going to be tired, but that's going to keep you in a pretty high state of arousal. So I'm telling you right now, if you want to do breath work, you're into it, cool. We've had a lot of people who just don't like it. I'd be totally candid with you. I'm not the biggest fan myself personally. Always feels good, always works, but it's not like on my high list of things I enjoy doing every day.

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So that overall is our game plan today. Talk about how we can control our nervous system in all those forms and fashion. Today's episode is sponsored by AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral drink with probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens.

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And so I would rather just be like, man, I need some recovery. It's easier for me to just reduce physical arousal. Give me some more quiet time. No more sensory input for the day. That'll take care of most of it. If that's not enough, the next step we go to is more time doing nasal only breathing. Close your mouth, breathe through your nose.

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Whether this means you tape your mouth closed while you're working, or you go for a walk and you're breathing only through your nose, or you're doing some or all or any portion of your exercise with nasal only breathing, I don't really care. It activates the diaphragm more. It tends to on itself slow respiratory rate down because you can't move air like you can.

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You will notice hyperventilation through your nose when you won't necessarily notice hyperventilation through your mouth. You'll feel that, you'll hear that. That would be very different than it coming through your mouth. And we also know that nasal breathing is more parasympathetic on itself.

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So by doing that, reducing arousal, and then forcing people into some nasal-only breathing time, this basically takes care of all of our problems. If you like or want to still need to do more things past that, at that point, we will instill a specific breathwork protocol and it could look a bunch of different ways. But again, here are some samples.

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Intuitively here, just make your breath do what you want to feel like. What's that mean? Let's say you're trying to go up more energy. You're feeling lethargic or lack of motivation and you're down. and you're not breathing very much, and everything, heart rate's low, and energy's low. Think about it. What would your breath look like if you were at a high energy state? And then do that.

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Force your breath to do something, and as I talked about earlier, your physiology will respond to match it. This is hyperventilation. Breathe more. Any of you who have ever done hyperventilation breath work, you'll know within a few seconds, tingling in your arms, you might start sweating, temperature goes up really acutely. So just do that. Just hyperventilate.

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But it highlights the point of how can we actually have control over aspects of our physiology that most people think we can't. Maybe we have some control, but it's subconscious or otherwise. And that's what I'm referring to when I say control your nervous system. There is actually a bunch of science behind this. Probably the most famous initial scientifically documented experiment came in 1970.

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If you're in the opposite and you're trying to come down, just don't breathe as much. Tons of protocols. Yeah. Extended exhales. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But the basic concept is slow your breath work down. That's as complicated as it has to be. If you want individual protocols, cool, fine, got it. But that is the top line strategy here.

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Most other research and most practitioners who are effective at this are going to use a combination within one protocol. So you're going to do not just only extended exhales. Not just slowing your breath rate down, not just speeding it up, but you're going to use a combination to develop that hormetic stressor. So if you want to truly downregulate, you can just simply slow your breathing down.

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But actually within one session, a combination of slower and faster and slower and faster will lead to that hormetic response. And if you finish, especially on low, it's been our experience and the research would support this, you're going to oftentimes see more of a parasympathetic response than if you were to just do parasympathetic alone.

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So most of the time we're looking for a combination of up and down for the same reasons that we talked about with exercise, in other words. Conflicts of interest here. I am a board member, no pay here for a nonprofit, called the Health and Human Performance Foundation. I've been a part of this group for many years. I was one of the founding members.

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I'm bringing that up because that group, led by Tanya Bentley, recently published a phenomenal review article. We'll link it in the show notes. But I want to share with you what they found. They were looking directly at the relationship between breathwork for stress and anxiety. What do we know?

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In that review, they found, I think, 72 papers and something like 75 or 80% of the papers found that the breathwork helped. So just on a surface, if we want to say like, does breathwork actually help for anxiety and stress? I think pretty clearly the vast majority of the time it does.

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But what was really interesting that Tanya did there is she started breaking down the papers and saying, well, what was true among the papers that worked? And what was true among the papers that didn't? And can we glean anything from that? And the answer was yes. So here we go.

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There were a handful of things, in fact, five things specifically that were common among all those papers that showed it worked. And here they are. Number one, they avoided fast only breathing practices. I know these are very popular. People love the max inhalation, exhalation stuff. They like hyperventilation breathing.

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If your goal is to try to reduce stress and anxiety chronically, pretty clear evidence at this point, that alone will not do it. Doesn't mean you can't hyperventilate. Doesn't mean it can't be part of your practice. But if your only practice is chronic hyperventilate or consistent hyperventilation, probably not going to be effective for reducing your stress and anxiety long-term.

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Number two, the breath practice needs to be longer than five minutes. Number three, generally needs to be human guided. So people that do it by themselves, initially, probably not the best strategy. Whether you're physically in a room with somebody, that doesn't seem to matter. But you need to have somebody coaching you through something at some point, especially initially. Number four,

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It takes multiple sessions per week. You can't do this once in a while. You can do it and feel that acute effect, but it won't have that carry over chronic benefit. Number five, there need to be a little bit more of longer term practices. This is that four to six to eight week thing.

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So if we were to recap that, if you're using non-exclusively hyperventilation, you're doing it more than five minutes, ideally multiple times per day, someone that knows what they're doing has designed it, and you're giving yourself four to five, six weeks, you got about a 70 to 80% chance that it will meaningfully and clinically improve your anxiety and your stress.

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That's some framework for breath protocols. Should work. Most of that will take care of HRV, CO2 tolerance, resting heart rates, and respiratory rate. The next big category I want to talk about are what are called biofeedback mechanisms. There's a lot of things here, tons of research. I've actually been tinkering with this stuff for probably 15 years or so at this point.

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I want to categorize them for today's conversation into two main areas. One, what I'll call internal, and the other that are called external. So the internal ones are when you're trying to have that interoception. You're trying to pay attention to your heart rate. And I'm intentionally telling you to slow your breathing down. So that's an internal focus.

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External is when you're actually watching your physiology on some screen and you're just trying to make that thing improve. So I'm not telling you how to do it. I'm telling you what I want the response to be. And you're using that direct visual feedback to make alterations. Both are great. They're a little bit different. And there's a lot of tools within them.

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So getting a starter with a handful that I'll call internals. And these ones are free or close to it. The very first one is any sort of hypoxic exposure. I've talked about that earlier. Hold your breath. The Valsalva maneuver. Anything like that. This will give you an acute change and I'll absolutely reset you. It will change your subjective feeling by simply holding your breath.

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If you want to cue that to some physical exercise, like the Valsalva, or you want to do jumping jacks or pushups or something, you'd be surprised. But a very short burst of holding your breath combined with physical activity for a couple of seconds can change perception pretty immediately. And I'm calling this biofeedback because you're going to feel it. You're going to do it.

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I'm telling you to do something to your body. Ones that are more chronic though, which is what we're trying to get into now, is a cascade of them. One that we've used a lot is actually a meditation app, if you will, called Waking Up. This is by Sam Harris. There are plenty of ways to learn meditation. There are many different strategies for it.

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But I'm highlighting this one because we've used it a lot, as well as because it is a progressive system. So you can kind of take it, follow the course. And if you don't know anything about meditation, the lessons are pretty simple and small. And it kind of walks you through it. I've personally been paying for Waking Up for many years. We've given it to lots of clients plenty of times.

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But I've only recently learned you can try it for free for 30 days by going to wakingup.com slash Huberman. That's my friend, Dr. Andrew Huberman's sponsor to his podcast over there. So you can try it all there. And I hope you enjoy it. It's truly phenomenal. We've used it a lot.

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And why, again, I'm saying that is we maybe sometimes someone's done breath work or they won't do breath work or whatever. They're not interested in meditation. We can just send them that and say, hey, this is the only thing we're going to ask you to do. And they can kind of get hooked on a little bit. They can gamify it.

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It's for these reasons and many others that I personally take AG1 almost every day. Now, it's of course not a replacement for eating whole healthy foods, but it is a great way to make sure that you're plugging in any gaps in your nutrition to improve your energy, bolster your immune system, and just generally help promote a healthy gut microbiome and more.

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They can get there just focusing on paying attention to their breath, which is effectively what Sam is doing in that course. It's biofeedback. They have no connection with their breath. They don't understand what's going on. They're learning to connect to their breath and it makes a big difference. That's why that's in biofeedback. Another super simple one is what

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Brian McKenzie calls gear one walking. So you're going to walk 30 minutes, 45 minutes. We have one client who we have walking almost two hours a day like this. And why we're calling it biofeedback here is you're breathing through your nose, but you're breathing at a very specific and intentional breath rate. Two second inhale, two second exhale. That's a four second rhythm.

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What that matters is four multiplied by 15 is 60. That's 15 breaths per minute, right? As I said earlier, 15 is kind of that respiratory line where we start to be concerned. If you're sleeping and you're breathing 15 breaths per minute, we think that's a little bit high. But if you're walking, 15 breaths per minute is appropriate.

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So in doing this, what we're trying to do is match an appropriate breath rate with an appropriate caloric expenditure. We're not having you do sprints or you're running where your heart rate's really, really high and you're under breathing. We're trying to retrain your baseline of saying, this is what 15 should feel like.

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Now, when you go back and sleep, bring it down to 10 or 12 or whatever the case is. So it's a very intentional two in, two out. It feels very, very weird. It's nasal only. You can't listen to a podcast. You can't take work emails when you're this. You have to be in that space and you got to spend some time there, but it is quite effective. Third one here we'll talk about is the cold exposure.

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Now, what I didn't say earlier is how you can use cold exposure for biofeedback and retraining things like respiratory rate. Common one we have used many, many times. Get in your cold, whether this is your shower or your bath or whatever you're doing. I'll give you the first, say, one to three breath cycles to kind of calm yourself down.

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And then past that, we're not sitting in here for a particular amount of time. What we're trying to do is take 10 breaths under control. We are using the cold to regulate breath. We are learning resilience. I put you in a very physiological and psychological stressful situation. Your hormones, your adrenaline, your heart rate will be flying up.

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And I'm asking you to control them despite the fact that they are wanting to go up. That is exactly how you build stress inoculation. That's walking you up to that line of low back pain, but not pushing you over the edge. You're not scared. You can get out anytime. There's no danger here. But your body will be screaming at you that this is a, all those things. But you know it's not.

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You might panic, you might do a bunch of different things. Fine, get out, no problem. That's the game we're practicing. Just like Dr. Harris in waking up, the practice is not how much focus you can have on your breath. The practice is when you lose focus, can you bring it back? Same thing here. We're using the cold to intentionally put you out of control.

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And then we're saying, can you practice regaining control? That's all we're doing. Now, the things I just mentioned, I call biofeedback, but they're not the true scientific definition of that. What we're really getting into this field is stuff more specific to HRV-based biofeedbacks, and so we'll cover those things right now. A couple of examples.

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Many years ago, I had a colleague who was actually a sports psychologist who used biofeedback this way. He would put athletes in front of a computer screen, and he would have an electrode attached to their ear that was measuring things in a pulse oximeter. And they would look at a screen, and it was, say, a picture of a landscape or maybe kids playing at a park. and it was all in black and white.

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And he would not tell them anything, but he would simply say, make that picture turn into color. And they're staring at a screen, they're like, what? And then all of a sudden, the screen would start filling in color. And then it would go away, back to black and white. And it would take people a while, but once they realized, oh wow, when I bring my heart rate down, I get more colors on the screen.

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And so they would bring their heart rate down and the colors would start filling in, then they would get excited, and then the colors would go away. And so they're not paying attention. He's not telling them, bring your heart rate down, stop breathing as much, exhale, extended exhales. He's asking for an external solution and they are figuring out internally how to get there. Awesome, awesome.

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And then there's lots of different tools and technologies for that, but an awesome way of developing biofeedback that way. Really simple examples of stuff we've used for many years are things like a weight belt. They had 20 bucks on Amazon. You put this strap around your stomach and you can actually see increased proprioception in your core muscles. Lots of research on this.

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If you take a weight belt and you cinch it down really, really tight and you go to lift your weights, there's been many studies show a reduction in core strength in response to that. You make it so tight, think of it this way, the core muscles turn off. They don't have to do their work because the belt's doing it.

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That said, if you put the belt on just kind of a little bit, you can see increases in core strength. Why? Because it gives you a little bit of a tactile feedback. You know that you're not pressing hard with your core. You know you're not activating it in all spots because you can feel the belt pressing back up against it when you're contracting hard.

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So because of that, it gives somebody a biofeedback reminder, a tactile feedback, keep your core engaged, keep your core engaged. And so by keeping it engaged more often, you get more of a training effect. Same exact principle can be applied here. You can put people through a specific breath protocol, or you can put a weight belt on them. Put a bigger one.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

A lot of the ones we'll use are like fat-burning stomach belts, you know, the ones you put on, you're like plastic on them, and they're there to help people think they're going to have a six-pack. But what it's just doing is giving you that feedback. You don't necessarily have to give them a program. You can just say, hey, wear this for 20 minutes. Wear this for a couple of hours.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

You'll start to feel, man, I'm not breathing through my core. I'm breathing through my shoulders. I'm breathing through my neck. So number one, we're starting to make improvement and progress in breathing mechanics. It also generally tends to slow people's breath rate down because you feel, you'll hear that belt crunching and moving and going back and forth.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And you're like, geez, that's happened a lot. And you tend to just slow it down. Simple biofeedback, easy solutions, no complicated schemes at all, very effective. For those of you that want more structure and specific protocols to follow, this last one will get you really excited. There's a whole bunch of research on what's called resonant breathing. This is HRV biofeedback resonance.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

There's lots of different terms for it, but if you Google that phrase, this is what will come up. Same goal, trying to give you more ability to recognize and control your HRV. Recent meta-analysis found very positive benefits for self-reported stress and anxiety. Other papers have looked at this and found positive benefits for cognitive function and depression.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

They have an amazing 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from that protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. Honestly, it's the best tasting protein bar I've had by a mile.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

It has the same basic prescription of the other breathwork. You probably got to do it for about 20 minutes per day. It takes four or five weeks, ideally morning and night, morning and night rather. And so that stuff is fixed. But what is specific about this? It's really, really clever. A lot of the research here came from a guy named Paul Lehrer, L-E-H-R-E-R, I believe, out of Rutgers.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

In general, this resonance is supposed to be consistent throughout life. Now, I don't know if more research comes out that that'll change, but that is, as far as we understand it, it seems to be about the same. So this resonance frequency is something internal to you in which your respiratory rate starts to match up with your HRV and your heart rate. You're like, what? Here's what I mean.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

It's really, really clever stuff. It's just like really fascinating research. I use that Optimal HRV app I told you earlier. It's five bucks a month. The studies oftentimes will use another app called Paste Breathing. That is just simply an app that helps you watch the app and breathe in and out at the right time.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

All right, so on that Optimal HRV app, you can do this test that I'm about to take you through as well as the training. It's why I like it so much. So I can send people that polar strap, I can send them this app, say, do this resonance test, and then our training program is based upon the results of this particular test. It's telling you how long to inhale and exhale.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Remember earlier where I've said kind of like five in, five out, or six in, six out's a good starting place? That's true. But the individual response to people is different, and this is a phenomenal way to figure out which cadence is best for you. The test takes about 12 minutes. And effectively what happens is you start at a breath rate of about seven breaths per minute.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Now, depending on the study you'll find, most will actually start you at about six and a half. I think the optimal HRV, if I remember correctly, starts at six and a half. And then some have gone all the way down to as low as three breaths per minute, but most are gonna start you at like six and a half breaths per minute and drop you to four or so breaths per minute.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Here's exactly what I'm talking about. You breathe for two minutes at this specific cadence. Let's say six and a half seconds in, six and a half seconds out. And you do that for a total of two minutes. While you're doing that, it's measuring your HRV. What it's trying to identify is when your HRV gets the highest. So you're breathing in and out at seven, at six and a half breaths per minute.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And then you go from six and a half to six. So every two minutes, you lower your breathing rate by half a breath per minute. Now, for some people, when they go from six and a half to six, their HRV goes down. And some people, it goes up. And then you go from six to five and a half to five, all the way down, like I said, someone's down to three. At some point in that spectrum,

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

your HRV will be its highest. Where that lands is totally dependent upon the person. So let's say we do the test and my optimal HRV happens at six breaths per minute and yours happens at four. That's called our resonance frequency. I now know you will get the highest HRV right now when you breathe at four breaths per minute.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

While I often talk about the importance of getting one gram of protein per pound of body weight for things like muscle health and recovery and the promotion of lean body mass and satiety, the reality is that for most people, getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight is really challenging. However, David makes that easy.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So then you're going to spend more time breathing at four breaths per minute where I'm going to do six. That makes sense, right? So we're looking at how can I actually optimize my inhalation exhalation strategy to get the highest impact on my HRV? Well, it turns out this strategy is highly effective. I'll go over more of those details here in a moment.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But when we're defining high HRV, it's really actually important that the highest HRV score, like you're going to see on your wearables, is not what we're necessarily talking about here. There's three criteria that are used to determine best HRV score, and that RMSS thing is the lowest one. Highest on this is what's called low frequency power.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

This is another way of kind of defining and measuring your vagal nerve power. This is primitive. This is a thing we're optimizing for rather than that actual HRV score. Another really interesting one is looking at your HRV amplitude. I've talked about that before. It's the difference between kind of your maximum heart rate and your minimum heart rate in one breath cycle.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Remember, when you breathe in, heart rate goes up. When you breathe out, it goes down. And so let's say when you took a breath in, you went to 80 and you took a breath out and it went to 40. 80 minus 40 is 40. So therefore your amplitude is 40. One thing that you'll see is people that are really well-trained physically have a really big amplitude.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

People can go like a well-trained individual, cardiovascularly fit individual might have a resting heart rate of 40 and they might jump from 40 to like 90. So that amplitude would be 50 or someone who's not very physically fit might go from 60 to 70. My amplitude is 10. I know I'm throwing a lot of numbers and most of you are listening, so that's hard to follow along.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But just the amplitude, the difference, your ability of your heart rate to go from really high to really low within one breath cycle is a positive thing. That is indicative of a really, really resilient nervous system. And remember, from the very beginning, that's what we're talking about today. The HRV score itself, again, cool, it's on there, but it's the bottom list.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So that's what we're optimizing for. And I needed to draw that little technical detail out there because I wanted to make sure that it's landing so deeply in your brain that we're trying to go after that resilience, not the score. And those other two measures, that frequency power and that heart rate amplitude, are the things that are more important than just that HRV score.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So more to be said about the resident breathing thing, but it's just really phenomenal area that we love. I wish I had something to do with those companies. I don't, but they're just phenomenal products. So I wanted to make sure you had some specific example of something you could go try that I personally used and that I like.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Last thing I wanted to mention, and this is what some of you might deem to be outrageous, but again, full disclosure here, I have one of these things. I don't have anything to do with the company. But this is something that I've seen pop up a lot. I was just traveling around the country recently and saw a bunch of different professional and other groups using it.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Their bars taste incredible and are each packed with 28 grams of protein. I eat one almost every day and always have two or three in my backpack when I'm traveling, like literally always. It probably sounds funny, but I eat them as dessert all the time. When you try them, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

I have one at my home, and this is a chair called the Shift Wave. It is $10,000, but it is phenomenal. You lay in this chair, it has haptic feedback, so it will vibrate. It has sensory control, what you're seeing. what you're hearing, and it has a whole bunch of programs, it will directly measure your heart rate and HRV.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And you can do guided biofeedback through, again, movement, through light and sound and a bunch of different strategies. I've used it a bunch. We use it a lot with... against special groups of individuals, and it's been really impressive.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So those of you that just want to know what the best in the world are doing behind the scenes, I can't say that everyone's doing it, but I know some are, and it is really pretty awesome. And so there you go. Check out the Shiftwave chair if you'd like. If that is completely ridiculous, you'd like $10,000 for a chair, I totally get it.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And so we'll move on to our last couple of things that I just couldn't leave off the table. No good podcast can be done without talking briefly, and I do mean very briefly, about supplements. First and foremost, what we're talking about here mostly are acute benefits. Take caffeine, take a stimulant. You're going to change sympathetic drive, and you all know that.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But what's more interesting and I dove into a lot of was what do we know about chronic benefits? So if you're in that hole and HRV is way down for a long time, can supplements do much to bring you out of that hole and bring that HRV back up, bring that respiratory rate down or however we're defining autonomic control? The short answer is no. Not really.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Well, maybe they can, but there's not a lot of evidence to support that. Closest thing I found was there was actually several review articles and meta-analyses on omega-3s. Benefit doesn't seem to be huge. We know a lot of positive benefits of omega-3s, but this doesn't seem to be a massive one. But there's some indication that there's some help here. So that was pretty cool.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Other ones that we'll see, I actually found a study on watermelon juice. Now, this may surprise you, but people don't realize that citrulline and arginine, the nitric oxide capacity in watermelons is pretty high. So there's a pretty cool study, they actually did it in combination with like an oral glucose tolerance test.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And what they effectively found was it doesn't improve HRV, but what it does do is it blunts the HRV response when you dose them with something that should normally compromise it. It's stress inoculation. In fact, if you look at other things like ashwagandha, Very similar types of research.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So it's not that these things will take your resting HRV and make it get better, but what it will do is it helps you not be as responsive to a stressful stimuli. That is the true benefit. So whether this is high intensity exercise or a psychological stressor, things like watermelon juice or ashwagandha may blunt how much of an impact those things make on you.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

The macronutrients, one more time, are 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. If you're interested in trying these bars for yourself, you can go to davidprotein.com slash perform. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash perform. So to start us off, let's remember the ultimate goal. We would like, number one, that system to be operating independent of us.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So kind of stress inoculators, if you will, but they're not really recovering you from that hole, but worthy of mention nonetheless. A final one that I thought worthy of talking about was actually a review article on human studies that found an association between low vitamin D and B12 and low HRV. This was not a randomized controlled trial.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

This was not an intervention study, but it was interesting nonetheless. So I'll keep my eye out for more work in this area. Maybe we'll see that. Maybe if you take people who are low and getting vitamin D and B12, you will actually see a chronic improvement. And HRV over time. Maybe you won't. Not sure.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

I'd be willing to bet if you take and just give people who are normal in vitamin D and B12 those supplements, it probably won't do much. But we'll have to wait and see how the data pan out. So we've covered a lot of ground today. I think we should finish on a little bit of a wrap up. Want to keep this stuff in proper context. Remember that hormesis.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We want to stimulate, but we don't want to annihilate. You want to touch the boundaries. You want to desensitize, but we don't want to push people so far into an area where it actually creates a greater stress response, a greater protective mechanism. Small bump and uncomfortableness gives you a nice rebound. That's what we're looking for.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But a huge trauma is not helpful or potentially even sends us backwards. There are a couple of types of people in this world in this regard. I call them big feelers, people that have that high interoception. They pay attention to themselves too much and they cause themselves way too much stress because they're hyper-focused on every little thing. In that case, maybe don't use that technology.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Use more the feeling type of stuff or don't do anything. Pull them off of a lot of these things. Then you have the dull knives is what I call them, people that just have no contact with their body whatsoever. Maybe you want to use more of these technological solutions to get more calibrated and more aware. Other big conclusion we talked about is overall, the first step is just reducing arousal.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

This is critical. free thing you can do it's probably going to have multiple benefits across multiple areas of your life and so before we start worrying about specific protocols or supplements or anything like that let's just start by reducing our overall stress cup number three find things that work best for you this is fill your recovery cup this is something i haven't said yet

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But it's really what I've been getting at the whole time. It's not enough always to just reduce stimuli. Sometimes you gotta actively recover. Most people don't think about actively recovering until they desperately need it. So not being stressed is not the same as fully recovered. Spend time figuring out what hits it for you.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

I know some of the things that land for me and they're not the same for my wife. They're not the same for my family members or some of the athletes I work with. What really fills your recovery bucket up? Spend time tinkering with that and then use it honestly quite often and as much as you possibly can.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Final thing I'll say here is don't expect those acute solutions, whether it's the supplements or the thermal immersions or the motivational quote or the music, don't expect those acute things to fix chronic problems, right? When you use the chronic problem solution stuff, probably looking at more than five minutes a day,

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We want it to be that software that's running. And then two, we want to have some active control over it when we'd like, but we don't want to be spending our entire day mitigating and managing what's going on in our nervous system. So that goal is important because it lays the foundation of what we're trying to do. And so really you can bucket control of the system into two main areas.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

ideally every day, if not multiple times a day, at least for the first four to six weeks. Past that, you can back it down, maybe even as little as just a couple of times per week, and you should be in a pretty good spot. Want to finish it up by giving some thank yous, as people have mentioned several times now. Thank you, Dr. Jay Wiles. Jay, you were phenomenal. You were so helpful here.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We had a lot of conversations, and I deeply appreciate your help there. Jill Miller, I mentioned in your book, Body by Breath, covered a lot of these concepts. It was also incredibly helpful. Emily and Brian at Shift Adapt. And then somebody else, Martin McPhillamy, who I haven't had a chance to speak about yet, but has done a lot of great work in this area.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So all you people, thank you so much for your help. I appreciate all of you for listening. I hope you have some new skills, some new things to try, some direct tools. Some may be more interesting to a few of you. Others may be less so. But either way, I would really love to hear feedback.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

which ones did you like which ones have you had different experiences with and if any of you do take the time to go try something comments on YouTube would be a great place to fill me in on what worked what didn't and any other feedback you have thank you so much and I look forward to doing it again Thank you for joining for today's episode.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

My goal as always is to share exciting scientific insights that help you perform at your best. If the show resonates with you and you wanna help ensure this information remains free and accessible to anyone in the world, there are a few ways that you can support. First, you can subscribe to the show on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple.

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And on Apple and Spotify, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Subscribing and leaving a review really does help us a lot. Also, please check out our sponsors. The show would not exist without them and their exceptional products and services. Finally, you can share today's episode with a friend who you think would enjoy it.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

If you have any content questions or suggestions, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I really do try my best to read them all and to see what you have to say. I use my Instagram and X profiles also exclusively for scientific communication. So those are great places to follow along for more learning. My handle is at Dr. Andy Galpin on both platforms.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We also have an email newsletter that distills all of our episodes in the most actionable takeaways. We have newsletters on how to improve fitness in a VO2 max, how to build muscle and strength, and much more. To subscribe to the newsletter, just go to performpodcast.com and click newsletter. It's completely free and we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you for listening.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

And never forget in the famous words of Bill Bowerman, if you have a body, you are an athlete.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Number one is what we simply call READ. You need to be able to read your current state. You can use this with technology. So you can buy something or use something that tells you what's happening in your own internal physiology. Or you can learn what's called interoception or interoception, which means you can feel it yourself. Now, some people are really good at that.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Some people are completely terrible at it. But either way, we've got to figure out where you currently are. The second then step is to regulate. So know where I'm at, number one. Number two, move it. And when I say regulate, I'm going to break today's discussion up into two parts, what I call acute, things that move it right now. So you're feeling flustered right now.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

What can you do about it in this second? Are you feeling tired right now? You're losing focus right now. What are tips and tricks we can do that'll instantly change my state? And then the chronic ones are ones I refer to of what are going to move the baseline permanently.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

There was a famous gentleman, I think his name is Swami Rama. I hope I pronounced that appropriately. But Swami was able to do a host of feats that still baffle most of us. What eventually happened was he sat in a room with a handful of scientists, and they placed what are called ECGs to measure electrical conductivity of his heart, as well as EEGs to measure directly into his brain.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Where we get confusion or oftentimes people that have tried things like this, where they've maybe been disappointed in the past is they're using things that are an acute stimuli and hoping it makes a chronic or permanent change. I'm really hopeful by the end of today's talk that you'll understand the difference and you can use the ones in the right form and fashion appropriately.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But that's what we're after. In either case, what we're really trying to do is make sure that we're widening the range of our sympathetic and parasympathetic experience rather than sensitizing it. What do I mean by that? It's not about just reducing stress. It's not about just down-regulating. It's the opposite. In fact, maybe not the opposite, but it is complementary.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

The analogy I like to give here is imagine driving down a road and you're going down a one-lane highway. It's very likely for you to hit the guardrails on one side of the road when another car comes by because there's just not a lot of room to work. But if you expanded that highway from a one-lane road to a seven-lane road, you're far less likely to hit the guardrails. That's what I mean.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

When we become overly sensitized to the down regulation or the up regulation, we're driving on a one-lane highway. We want to not only become better drivers, right? I want you to have more control so you're not weaving as much. That alone will help you reduce your likelihood of hitting the wall.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But mostly what we're after is widening out that lane, giving you seven lanes so that when you do lose a little bit of control, you can feel it, see it, but you're not smashing up against walls. When I teach this, I like to use that highway analogy. That said, if you were to look at the research or talk to clinicians that work in this space,

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

you're generally going to see it described more as resilience. And what that means is you have the ability to experience high and low levels of changes in your autonomic nervous system without it having a dramatic impact on your lived experience.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

Whether this is your psychology, your happiness, your anxiety, your depression, your perceived stress load, or your actual physiology, your hormone health, your energy, your metabolism, your sleep, your recovery, your physical performance.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

We want you to all to be able to live a life that is your best, meaning you can handle things that challenge and change your body from a psychological perspective or a physiological perspective. And those things don't have dramatic consequences for you in the short or long term.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

So I feel comfortable in saying that most of us are better off with a more resilient rather than sensitive nervous system. What does that technically and practically look like? I will give you some tangible examples a little bit later.

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Enhance Your Physical & Mental Resilience (HRV, Respiratory Rate, RHR)

But one thing you want to think about here is if you are somebody who feels like you are on constant sympathetic drive, you work out really hard at high intensity, you have a high stress personal life, a high stress place that you live, personal experiences, jobs, so on and so forth, then you might need to just focus on downregulation. That's fine.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

the science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today, I'm speaking with Jill Miller.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

It is the best parts of yoga that, again, for me personally, what I was looking for in myself and clients and the scientific experience, as well as there's so many other ways we can go about Self-care, the physical body, recovery. There's just there's so many ways you can get to. And I've yet to see anybody put it together better than you.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So as an introduction, there was no question there, but it was just letting, you know, framing when I think about the reasons why I was dying to get you in here for this conversation. It is all that stuff. And I have a I have literally three pages of notes in front of me, as you can see. And I'm super excited to go into that stuff.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

This is actually amazing. What you're saying is if you were to do that prior to your workouts and this had some sort of a pain dampening effect, you could then train closer to that pain ceiling but below it. Is this deadening the nerves? Is this getting them – that the pain receptors calm down more? Like is this exactly what you were talking about as a way for your pain management strategy? Yes.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

If I, and I've seen people do this a thousand times, if I were to take a tennis ball and put it underneath the bottom of my foot right now, maybe a baseball, a harder one. And I would roll on that for two minutes. I would probably stand up and if I were to bend over and touch my toes, my range of motion would be greater, right? This is the fascial connection, right?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So if it's okay with you, I would love to talk a ton about all those things in a bunch of different areas.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So I've undone some of the fascia, however you want to think about this, and the bottom of my foot. And since they transferred all the way up to the back of my spine and then all the back of my head, hopefully that has created some change in range of motion. How long does that last? A few minutes? A few hours? What do we know about the length of a single acute session for that range of motion?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And is that range of motion, if that's all I did, is that going to have any chronic effect?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And that makes a ton of sense. It would be pretty silly to think if I were to roll on a foam roller for two minutes and then all of a sudden I get up and I have a structural change in the anatomy of my quad.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

That would be pretty ridiculous to think, right? So how long is that typically going to last? A few minutes, a few hours? As you alluded to earlier, if your only strategy is foam rolling... Or whatever the case is, it's probably not correcting it. So what other stuff do I have to do? What things can I tack on that give me a higher likelihood of this being a more permanent change?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I want to know what a sample model of that could look like. But before we do that, I've got a couple of quick questions on this particular topic. We asked about duration changes. My assumption is the harder you press, the more pain you're in, the better things get here, right?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Jill is an expert in everything from mobility to breathwork to bodywork, and especially in what's called self-myofascial release. Now, in this episode, you're going to learn more about what these things actually are and how to use them best. There are many broad applications of these techniques that extend beyond just pain relief and range of motion and mobility.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

That's how I really get these things changed, right? And I'm not actually joking because that was actually my strategy. Thank you, Kelly Starrett. Pain cave was my approach. And I always thought the more pain I'm in, the more it's solving the problem, it's causing the release, whatever was working. So what do we know about pain? The dosage, how long does it have to be? How hard do I have to press?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

More pain, less pain? Give me the quick rubdown on that part of it before we get into these more comprehensive strategies.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Okay. Yep.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Oh, damn.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I will tell you right now, the soft tools were 500 times more effective for me.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So that's a part of this conversation strategy, right?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Great. I have both your books. I have many of your products. I've been to your courses. I'm like such a Jill Miller fan. It's ridiculous. All that to say, I thought maybe we could just start directly with this first idea.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

When I traditionally had always thought of foam rolling, It was just compression. It was if your hamstring is tight, you smash it and it gets untight. And I don't know if the science works or I don't care how it works, the physiology. I just know if I smashed it on there, like I felt a little bit better in those moments. Mm-hmm.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

The ones that put themselves in more pain got better, right?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, well, I'm still going to try to beat it out, but I appreciate you and your science, Jill. The glare. If you all just saw the glare she just gave me. No, I don't do it. I've learned my lesson from there.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

What is the difference between that compression is what I'll just keep calling it. And maybe that's the wrong term, but let me know. Style of foam rolling versus other options. And maybe actually we'll just start right there. Like what is the compression stuff doing? What do we know about it? How's it working? Is it working?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Today's episode is sponsored by AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral drink with probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Initially, I was extremely skeptical of AG1, as I am with all supplement companies, but after months of discussions with their lead nutrition scientist and the general team at AG1, I've been impressed by AG1's commitment to sourcing the highest quality ingredients and constantly updating their formulas to have the right ingredients in the optimal amounts.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

By now, it is abundantly clear that the gut microbiome plays a critical role in everything from body composition to bone health to mental health. And the probiotics and prebiotics in AG1 help to promote a healthy gut microbiome, improve digestion, reduce food cravings, and increase short-chain fatty acids, which play a critical role in regulating metabolism and immune responses.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

It's for these reasons and many others that I personally take AG1 almost every day. Now, it's of course not a replacement for eating whole healthy foods, but it is a great way to make sure that you're plugging in any gaps in your nutrition to improve your energy, bolster your immune system, and just generally help promote a healthy gut microbiome and more.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2. Today's episode is also sponsored by Element.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Element is an electrolyte drink mix that has an ideal electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, but no sugar. Hydration is critical to performance, both physical and mental performance. Countless studies have shown that even a slight degree of dehydration, even as small as 1%, can lead to decreases in physical output and mental performance.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

We also know that electrolytes are critical to proper hydration, which I've been harping on for years. But you can't do that. proper hydration by only drinking water. You need to get the right amount of electrolytes in the right ratios, and that's why I'm a huge fan of Element.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

In fact, many of you will probably remember that I featured Element in my YouTube series on optimizing hydration nearly five years ago. I featured Element in these videos because their blend of 1000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium really is unique and different than any other electrolyte on the market, and it has great scientific support.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And then from there, let's explore some of the other ideas and ways and strategies we can actually maybe do things better.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I use Element constantly, particularly when I'm sweating a lot, and I routinely make it a part of my clients' optimization programs. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinklmnt.com slash perform to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinklmnt.com slash perform to claim a free sample pack.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I would imagine the same logic extends to formal massage. So this is, if you're thinking about the classic Swedish massage and deep tissue, right? So obviously the normal thing feels good. Deep tissue is great, but probably the same thing for any type of self-care, any type of stretching.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

If you're to the point of extreme discomfort, potentially not your best strategy because of protective mechanisms, locking up and stuff. So some amount of Discomfort, but not past what, like 3 out of 10, 4 out of 10?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah. I would imagine then what you're saying is if you're, If your myofascial release strategy is check your phone, hands are supposed to come up with emails while you're cruising on a foam roller for three minutes, what you're trying to tell me is that's probably not the most effective strategy.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Because it's just smashing, moving.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I think this is a really nice way to frame it because— it's still not negative, right? You hop on a foam roller for one minute, but bad things didn't happen. But are you getting the most bang for your buck? And this allows people to level up when they want to, right? So if you need to check out for a few minutes on the massage table, check out, great.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

But if you're also then trying to use this as a strategy for many other things, there are options. And just people knowing you can use modalities like this to go after bigger problems, It's something that I don't think a lot of folks really realize. So I know you have many examples of that.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

But before we get to any of that, I really want to dwell on double, triple, quadruple tap on this compression idea.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I want you to walk me through, you said glide earlier. This is what I said earlier was I didn't realize you could do it. I didn't realize self-massage could be anything besides compression.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So hit me with... Why am I pulling? You gave the examples earlier of your skin. I had no idea your skin should move, right? When you pull it up and pop it, like, okay, great. But I didn't know it should glide past and feel like that. I didn't know when it got pinned down that that was telling me anything.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I didn't realize if I grabbed the outside of my quad and I punched the skin off there, it should slide past itself. Once I realized that, once I started using your strategies and then I started watching and looking at people doing things like cupping, I was like, oh, there is way more to this game than just compression.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So whether this is massage compression, self-massage compression, foam rolling, we're still talking compression, compression, compression, right? What's the other side of this equation or the other two sides or however you frame it to be?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I love it so much.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

How do I perform decompression by myself? As I was alluding to earlier, this is what changed for me, right? I can foam roll my back. I feel a little bit better for five seconds. But when I do traction, when I do decompression, for specifically my low back, that's the big changes I get. And that lasts hours. Hours. For me personally. It's not the same.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Other areas of my body feel better actually with compression, with smashing. But certainly it is always going to be traction. You mentioned glide and slide. You talked about...

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

twisting and for people at home like visualizes literally pinch your skin like your little brother would pinch you and twist it and do that and keep doing that and move it around and then you'll let it go and once the kind of pain from the pinch goes away you realize like oh my gosh that whole area is moving better now i would just love a few more direct examples how can people do traction and decompression all by themselves

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yes. I know the science hates self-myofascial release.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And nothing hurt.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

There is, I would say, I don't know, probably a doubling of the literature in myofascial release in the last couple of years. It is really, really exploding. There was not much to... I mean, I literally think it's probably doubled. You're right. So we're learning more clearly. We don't have all the answers. This is a field where...

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

We have to lean on clinicians, is my opinion, because the science is catching up. We're getting there. But we need to have people like you who can simply tell us this is what I've done and this is the people and this is the coaching access to give us more tools because the science is just going to be behind us for some time. So I know that there is distension with the term myofascial release.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And you've alluded to that earlier. It doesn't necessarily only mean that the myofascial themselves are being released. So do you know, is there a more appropriate scientific term? Is that still kind of up for debate or landing?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Treatment?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Well, we don't have a great term.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Sure. Because the actual result, the release, we can't guarantee. We can guarantee the massage part or the manipulation. Right, and the manipulation.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Quick question. Do you have any sample videos online if someone wanted to see that exercise, something like that, that we can link to the show notes? Yes.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Okay, great. So you guys want to go try that out. We can link all that directly in the show notes. Today's episode is sponsored by David. David makes protein bars unlike any I have ever encountered. They have an amazing 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from that protein.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. Honestly, it's the best tasting protein bar I've had by a mile.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

While I often talk about the importance of getting one gram of protein per pound of body weight for things like muscle health and recovery and the promotion of lean body mass and satiety, the reality is that for most people, getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight is really challenging. However, David makes that easy.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Their bars taste incredible and are each packed with 28 grams of protein. I eat one almost every day and always have two or three in my backpack when I'm traveling, like literally always. It probably sounds funny, but I eat them as dessert all the time. When you try them, you'll know exactly what I mean.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

The macronutrients one more time are 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. If you're interested in trying these bars for yourself, You can go to davidprotein.com slash perform. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash perform. You alluded to this earlier. You spoke about the diaphragm. I want to go to this side of the equation.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Can we start by walking us through the two primary diaphragms we're going to be worried about here? People hear diaphragm, they forget there's like multiple, four of them. Top one, bottom one. What are they doing here and what's this got to do with our conversation?

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And you can see, again, the point I'm working to here is, like, how do we actually use the gut very physiologically and anatomically to get pain gone from everywhere else in my body?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Sure.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

The respiratory diaphragm specifically.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

That's exactly what I felt. Yep.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, it was. I think I described it as it was so different it didn't even feel like the same body parts. It was as different as my right knee is from my left elbow. It was completely separate.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah. Only because I know where it is when we do different parts of breathing, I would know that. But I have no kinesthetic or proprioceptive awareness at all of my diaphragm.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Jill will talk about things like the role of the fascia and some of the science that's emerging and how that's regulating everything from your digestive system to your pain to your physical performance, strength, and power output. And so I know that whether you are dealing with pain yourself or physically,

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

There's your horizontal movement right there.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Duly noted. I went for gut smash first, for the record.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Okay, fairness. It's an easy story to tell. If my diaphragm isn't working, I can see how this could reduce performance, right? I could reduce my endurance because I'm not breathing correctly. I can see all the things. My question is past that. How do I know? How can I tell if my diaphragm's working or not? I can't feel it, like you said earlier.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Maybe my back doesn't hurt, so I don't have any sign of dysfunction. How is one to know if their diaphragm is working correctly? I believe you. It is the center of human movement. It's all those things. How do I know?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Okay, fair.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yep.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

How would I know if I'm in one, two, or three? What would be sign symptoms? Help me figure that one out.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Bruxism, chronic headaches. I would imagine this would be the same story, right? Pretty, you can't go as far as to say that's always because you're breathing that way. But I would imagine there's some pretty reasonable correlation between somebody who is in zone three breathing, as you're mentioning, and again, chronic headaches, migraines, bruxism, chock lynching, the whole thing, right?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And so what you're really trying to do is to get them to be more self-aware by spending more time in two.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

You're saying you'll realize you're in three and you don't even know it.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Could you give me one sample of what something like that would look like? I'm laying there on my side. How many breaths am I taking? How long am I staying there for? Am I doing this every day, multiple times a day? I know the answer is, you know, depends on all the situations. But what would be kind of a sample strategy here?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So I'd imagine once a day to start, to get that going and see what happens, right? You could probably do better. Yeah.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Morning or night would be better.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

You got one still. Give me one. Do I got to do it? Let's say I'm dealing with headaches and jaw pain at night.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Okay. You're not going to just let me get away with the morning.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, it makes sense, right? Get into good positions before you go train and then get into good positions before you go to bed. How could you not do that? When we think about stress, autonomic nervous system, we have our two branches. We'll keep it as two for now. So we have our sympathetic nervous system, fight and flight. We have our parasympathetic, rest and digest.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

There's more to the story here, friends. Yes, I'm aware, but For the sake of conversation, we'll keep it right there. Most people assume if I'm not at a high heart rate, if I'm not mentally stressed right now, that my central nervous or my sympathetic nervous system, my fight or flight is not on. But there's a very clear difference between not being on

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

and actively pressing the gas or turning, what is it, turning off on?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Turning on the off switch. How should we think about this? What are strategies we can do to be more effective at turning the off switch on more? Did I capture that correctly?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Today's episode is sponsored by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, sleep tracking, and more. I've personally been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for years now, and it's absolutely glorious. I love it so much that I hate traveling away from home because it means I can't sleep on my Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

As you'll hear me talk about endlessly on this podcast, there really is nothing you can do that makes more of an impact on your health and performance than getting tremendous sleep. And getting great sleep requires having your body temperature drop a couple of degrees at night. And that's hard to do on your own. The eight sleep has been a game changer for me because I run hot at night.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

or as my wife calls it, I'm a furnace. If I don't have something like an Eight Sleep helping me cool down, I'll wake up in the middle of the night overheating and not feeling great. This is something I've also found in many of the people that I coach, especially those who are really physically active.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

you like yoga, you're into body work, breath work, or anywhere in between, you're going to find something in this episode that you may have not heard before, or at least you find tremendous value in. So with that said, please enjoy today's conversation with Jill Miller. Jill Miller, thank you so much for coming and chatting today.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

The Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra has two times more cooling power, yet is virtually silent, and it has high-fidelity sleep tracking, and even has snoring detection that'll automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, Go to 8sleep.com slash perform to save $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Super easy. I really appreciate you laying that out. That is going to be phenomenally effective for a lot of people. I guarantee it. The last thing I want to draw into all this is then how does this relate to things like the pelvic floor, right? So I said earlier, there's multiple diaphragms. Pelvic floor is a diaphragm, right? It's just the bottom one, right? I admittedly don't spend a ton of time

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

on pelvic floor development, but this is a clear aspect of it, right? So how does the pelvic floor, and we could certainly do an entire discussion, many of them on the pelvic floor, but what are the top hitting things as it relates to the conversation thus far that we should be thinking about with the diaphragmic floor?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

It looks quite similar to the respiratory diaphragm, by the way, like reasonably similar.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

8sleep currently ships to the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and even Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash perform. Today's episode is also sponsored by Momentus. Momentus makes the highest quality supplements on the market, period. Many of you know me, and you know that I do not trust the vast majority of supplement companies. And for good reason.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

That's actually really, really helpful. People have oftentimes heard of things like rib flaring, right? And you just described it a little bit differently. So imagine, again, the bottom of your ribs are opening up. Instead of the bottom of your ribs pointing directly down, they're pointing, say, at a 45-degree angle up.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Therefore, when you breathe and you're expanding that, that pressure is now going outwards, horizontal to your body instead of vertically, which then pushes on the pelvic floor to get it to move correctly. You're also then reducing pressure posteriorly, right? Yes. And that matters because that's the low back getting pinned down.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Right?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Right. There you go. Right. So it's all of this stuff. That's why stacking is like we'll use that term pretty colloquially stacking those two diaphragms on top of each other is the optimal scenario. Yes. They're both tilted front or back. We can live. It's when they are off kilter and the pressure, whether it's the bottom one, by the way. Or the top one.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So whether this is pelvic tilt causing the problem or rib flaring or the opposite, either way, we're in dysfunction, which can manifest itself, as we've been saying all day, in a thousand different things.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah. What are the accepted best practices for dealing with diastasis recti?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Many studies have shown that anywhere between 10 to up to 40% of supplements have accidental contaminants, intentional alterations, mislabeling, or other serious issues. But Momentus is different. I literally spent years vetting the company, their products, and leadership team before personally officially partnering with them in 2023.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

You can imagine playing—what's the game, like the doctor game? Where the kids can go in and try to... Operation. Operation, right? So you imagine a slit going from your sternum all the way down. You would splay left and right, horizontally, and you would splay vertically, right? You would open up in all four areas. That's exactly the line you're talking about.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

If you can imagine... And I'm basically saying this little piece for the male audience because I know every female listening knows exactly what you're talking about already. But if you think about a... Six-pack. And you think about the muscles are two columns of three, right? So one next to each other, left and right.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that middle line between the two columns is exactly what you're talking about. This is a fascia. This is a connective tissue issue. This is why we're talking about it, right? So when that becomes splayed open, you have that effect of the operation. You've had a tight line. You called it a zipper. Perfect analogy.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

It's supposed to keep those two sides connected so force can transfer and everything else. It's not working. It's damaged or damaged. How are we going to phrase that?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Every single one of Momentus' products is third-party tested to ensure quality, and many are even NSF certified for sport. Now, while I love all of their products, the ones I use the most, both personally and with my clients, are what I call the big three. And these are the omega-3 fish oil, creatine, and newly improved whey protein formula.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

You have to.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Okay. Well, that's important to know. Again, speaking, I'm sorry to offend, but mostly to the male side of the equation here, a year. Not six weeks. No, not six weeks. Not 16 weeks, right? This is two-thirds by a year, which means a third still after a year are not back, right?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

These three supplements have fantastic data supporting their benefits. Whey protein for lean muscle mass, omega-3s for brain health, and creatine for both muscle and brain support. And they have been shown to be very safe across basically all populations of people, young, old, men, women, et cetera. Now, nobody has to use supplements, and I hope you never feel pressured to do so.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Amazing. We could certainly do a whole show just on DR without question, but I think we'll leave people right now with saying pelvic floor physical therapist would be the place to go. And generally your recommendation for this area, for people that want a program they're dealing with right now, or maybe they're pregnant or going to become pregnant, so on and so forth, that would be the

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

the broad category of people to start off with at least, right?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

What you're talking about is a case of kind of hypermobility, right?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

But if you're interested in supplements, it's important that you get them from the highest quality providers. You don't want mercury in your fish oil or lead in your whey protein or anything like that. So that's why I stick exclusively to Momentus. If you'd like to give Momentus a try, go to livemomentus.com slash perform to get 20% off your order.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Makes sense.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Again, that's livemomentus.com slash perform to get 20% off. I think if you were to ask most people, massage, foam roll, does it help range of motion? You'd probably say, oh yeah, I kind of rolled up my hamstrings and I stretched afterwards. I felt better. If you ask them about, does it reduce pain, muscle soreness?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Going to the other end of the spectrum, somebody that needs to gain flexibility, needs to gain mobility. Outside of, of course, the foam rolling and things you've described so far. Where does static stretching land in this equation? Do you like it? Do you hate it? Should it be done in a particular way?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Again, you would maybe see some conflicting results, but a lot of people say, yeah, like I was really tight and sore. I'm not as sore.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

You mentioned at the very beginning and I said when I tend to think of manual therapy. I almost always associate this as pain. In other words, I did too much training in my quad. I'm going to roll it out so I'm not so sore. Or I think about I'm tight, right? So I'm going to use these two things. I basically didn't think about this area at all outside of those two cases.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Either I'm tight, so I want to release things more. My back's bound up. I'm tight from a 12-hour plane flight or you follow and stuff. Or and I'm sore.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

You just alluded to some of them now, but what are some of the other benefits that have been shown either scientifically that you're aware of or just you've seen in your clinical practice that we can get from, and we'll just keep calling it self-myofascial release or similar-ish things?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

No, but there's a lot on actual strength and torque in this specific realm. So regardless of that other section, who cares? We know for sure, and it's been shown again many times at many angles, that this stuff will enhance acute force production.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

There you go. That's great. Yeah.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, of course.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Right.

Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah, we get it.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Well, I'm sure we'll find that and hopefully put it in the show notes for you. But I can appreciate all this stuff because I didn't appreciate any of that before really coming across some of the stuff you were doing. And I know that the field is evolving. We're learning more. This is a particular area that I actually don't care that much about the molecular mechanisms. I'm interested in it.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I think it's really cool.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I know. I know you are. But why I'm saying I almost don't care is I didn't care that this was working because it was repairing tissue damage inside a muscle or if this was a nervous system or if this was a connective. I didn't really care. What I cared about was I don't hurt as much anymore afterwards. Or I'm seeing this change. Is this helping me get better? It's interesting.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Of course, the physiologists like to hear the things. We'll learn more about it. I'm sure the field will get more specific. You'll find different tools, different strategies, techniques work for better applications and outcomes and all that. But it's incredibly valuable, in my opinion, to have people like you who know the science and

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

based on where it stands now, we know the limitations, we know what we don't know, we know what's been shown to not work, but then you have on the other side of this equation, thousands of hours, years of experience with countless types of clientele, personally, with courses, with seminars, and you can really add context to saying, well, we've tried this and we've seen this and we've noticed this.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

So when you have a field like this, where the science is just is where it is, having that clinical experience is incredibly valuable. So I can't thank you enough for coming by today, sharing a ton of research, a ton of physiology, lots of personal anecdotes. I know that people, if they want to see direct examples, they can go and check out all your videos and your free things you put out there.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And we'll link to all of that, of course. So thank you so much for all of that and all the years as well. And we really appreciate you coming by today.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Awesome. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion with Jill Miller as much as I did. To find direct links to the videos we referred to earlier, Jill's courses, seminars, products, and other services, please check out the links provided in the show notes. Thank you for joining for today's episode.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And on Apple and Spotify, you can leave us up to a five-star review. Subscribing and leaving a review really does help us a lot. Also, please check out our sponsors. The show would not exist without them and their exceptional products and services. Finally, you can share today's episode with a friend who you think would enjoy it.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

If you have any content questions or suggestions, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I really do try my best to read them all and to see what you have to say. I use my Instagram and X profiles also exclusively for scientific communication. So those are great places to follow along for more learning. My handle is at Dr. Andy Galpin on both platforms.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

We also have an email newsletter that distills all of our episodes in the most actionable takeaways. We have newsletters on how to improve fitness in VO2max, how to build muscle and strength, and much more. To subscribe to the newsletter, just go to performpodcast.com and click newsletter. It's completely free and we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you for listening.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

And never forget in the famous words of Bill Bowerman, if you have a body, you are an athlete.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

My introduction to your work was, I think, from Kelly Starrett. Probably. 15 years ago or more, Brian McKenzie. But what really grabbed my attention was I had dabbled a lot and paid attention to the world of, we'll call it yoga. Okay. And for the most part, threw it all away. I just felt like there's just nothing here for what I'm doing.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Yeah. Okay. So. The data on muscle soreness specifically is probably the most pronounced in terms of the most studies in this area. If we're talking all things fascial, if we're talking all things myofascial release, if we're talking all things kind of this whole area. When you get outside of muscle soreness, then the questions start arising.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

What other benefits am I getting from, again, we'll just collectively call all these things there. A lot of questions, a lot of different areas. But I want to start at the very, very, very top, right? So we know that this compression stuff works. Let me start off with a couple of misconceptions, things I'm not sure on.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

When I'm doing a foam roll, when I'm doing a massage, what is actually happening right there? Am I breaking up scar tissue? Are my fibers misaligned and I'm rolling them back together? What is actually happening at the tissue level that explains any of those other benefits that we're going to get to way, way later? What's the mechanism here?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

Got it.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I didn't realize the nervous system connection or the actual nerve connection into fascia.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

But wait, there's more. Oh, I'm sure. But you have your skin. Yeah. Your skin and you have your muscle. When we think of these areas, again, stretching and massage and I'm in pain, my muscles are sore. Before your work and before paying attention to all this stuff in fascia, my assumption was that these were muscle problems. My muscle is sore.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

People think that they've got micro damage in their muscles after workouts. What is this fascia stuff?

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

That's the seams. That's the connection, right? That's the way through. So if I'm looking at like your jean jacket right now, like the jacket is my skin potentially. Your body is underneath that and the seams literally are the things connecting the muscle to the skin and well, from toe to toe to chin.

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Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

I had gone through several experiences and didn't really appreciate it. And then I saw what you were doing, and I thought, this is the extraction. This is the stuff I wanted to get out of yoga, just me personally. And I thought, this girl's nailed it. You're all over it. So my thoughts of you still to this day are that.

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