Adaptogens by Andrew Huberman

Without further ado, let's get to answering your questions, and as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible, as thorough as possible, and yet as concise as possible. The first question today is about.Adaptogens. Some of you may have heard of adaptogens. I'm guessing many of you have not heard of adaptogens. The strict definition of adaptogens is still evolving, meaning no one really knows what adaptogens mean and what's included in adaptogens and what's excluded from adaptogens. But the most common definition of an adaptogen is a compound.That is typically a supplement or a drug, although it could be a behavior if you really think about it, that helps you adapt to and buffer stress. So when you hear about adaptogens, there are three main categories of adaptogens that come to mind. The first are things that are contained in food, so these would be vitamins or micronutrients.One could easily find any food, but one would have to consume a fairly restricted number or type of foods in order to obtain those things, or consume a lot of those foods in order to get sufficient dosages of those adaptogen compounds in order to buffer stress.Some good examples of these would be any kind of vitamin, either water soluble or fat soluble, that can adjust or reduce what are so-called reactive oxygen species. And that's what gives rise to this idea that antioxidants are good for us. Now, over the last ten years or so there's been a shift. What shift has occurred well.About 10 years ago you often heard about antioxidants, antioxidants, antioxidants and vitamins, Antioxidants and this food, this super food etc.And why were people talking about antioxidants? Well, just remind you reactive oxygen species.Are types of reactions and molecules that occur in cells when cells get stressed and or age, and antioxidants are the compounds that reduce those reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species are bad for cells because they tend to hinder the function of mitochondria, which are associated with energy production in those cells.So what do we know for sure? We know that as cells get older, or as any cell or biological system, organ and tissue etcetera, get stressed a lot. Overtime, the number of reactive oxygen species increases in those cells and tissues and organs and antioxidants, which can include certain vitamins but also some micronutrients.Are effective in reducing those reactive oxygen species. Now what's occurred over the last ten years is that we know that reactive oxygen species are a major source.Of depleting cellular function by way of depleting mitochondrial function. But they are just one of many mechanisms that can deplete the cellular function mitochondrial function. So nowadays you'll hear about reactive oxygen species and antioxidants, but not as much as you used to. Now you hear a lot more about inflammatory responses and inflammatory cytokines.Also be an issue and the truth is all of these things are an issue. So going back to this question about adaptogens.Adaptogens include these three categories. I've told you the first, which are the vitamins and micronutrients that are contained in food that can reduce reactive oxygen species and other aspects of cellular stress, such as inflammatory cytokines. What are some of those things that occur in foods? Well, in order to answer that, let's just think about what sorts of.Includes themselves can act as adaptogens.It's commonly held that the dark leafy greens by foods for those of you that eat plants. I think Jordy of people out there being plants, I know that the carnivore diet and lion diet and some other diets tend to exclude plants. We'll address that in.At some point this discussion, but dark leafy greens are known to contain a number of compound.Form of vitamins and micronutrients that are very effective in reducing reactive oxygen species and inflammatory cytokines. So if you're somebody who's interested in adaptogens and adaptogenic processes reducing stress and buffering stress, which of course has its role in offering daily stress in order to help you shoot better than.Be selling function, functionality, sports, performance, cognitive performance. That is all good and it makes sense why people would be interested in adopting. But remember that the two main adaptations that you should think to first are going to be behaviors and nutrition that started with nutrition on purpose behaviors in the moment. So if you're interested in adopting things at all.I highly recommend that you include at least two to four servings of dark leafy greens and or cruciferous vegetables per day and would be highly everything this and just be aware that excessively.You don't need to use the service that can actually destroy their industries. Might be acting the way it does not blah blah you're calling well.Conscious.Christopher essentials and you don't want to overcook. What's the overcooking and what's undercooking? There's no strict cut opportunity temperature, but basically what the literature says that vegetables point where.Colored fluid.Long time.Water.When will they be well off to the guest, that fluid as well because you continue to live?Water fluid that changing out from the potential.A lot of them.OK. So I probably surprised people by starting off my answer to the question of whether that means are they worth thinking about in pursuing and if so, how can I get them by talking about speed. But I think it is important to understand, you know a lot of it that some of the best adaptive income from government.Mentioned that the other Chicago adaptogens.We're going to make supplement instead Adaptogens and then later laid out again here graphically find information buffer stress in a substantial and meaningful way in order to support cellular health, organ health and overall.Bing.So the second category of Adaptive Domain supplements and here again I just want to take a step back, make sure that when you are clear about our operational definition about what a supplement is, we had an episode all about how to design A rational guide to supplementation which.For example, the idea that for some people the optimal dosage of any supplements is going to be zero, and for other people it doesn't really something else. But to really pinpoint your key message from that episode that I'd like to reiterate now, but they keep. But a key message from that episode that I'd like to reiterate now is that many people think of supplements.As of just vitamin supplement.And for that reason, if you'll often hear the arguments, oh, aren't supplements just expensive? Urine couldn't get all of that from food? Aren't you just urinating out all the water soluble vitamins? Or maybe even storing excess amounts of the fat soluble vitamins in the way that's unhealthy or not cost effective? And so on.When we talk about supplements, yes, it should include vitamin supplements. However, there are many compounds that we would describe as supplements that are not vitamin supplements and that you could not obtain complete or that you could never obtain from food insufficient enough qualities to have a robust positive biological effect without consuming an enormous number of calories.Overriding your gut mechanic, for instance.Yes, there were shape. Any Herb talk about some things in the moment that contained an effective adaptogen?But you would never want to eat a plant itself or include that herb in any kind of recipe. Well then, chances are this herb, which we'll find in the moment, is not a vitamin supplement. It is.Probably not even the best thought of as a supplement. It's best thought of as a compound that sold over the counter, much like a prescription drug. Although it's not prescription, it doesn't require a prescription to get it. So there are a lot of things like that that we include under the umbrella of this word, supplements. And unfortunately because of that, a lot of people think, oh, you don't need supplements. And of course you don't need supplements per se, but many people.We derive tremendous benefit from them in the context of adaptogens that are two or three in particular that can be very beneficial for buffering stress response, especially over short periods of time with about two to three weeks.So when would you use these? Well, for instance, if you are in a particularly stressful mode of life, either because of family, or relational or school or work demands, or new kid in the house, or any number of different things that you've been ill or you're recovering from injury.Taking it and adaptogen in the form of supplement can actually be very useful for buffering this hormone and the general systems is associated with called cortisol. It's very healthy to have high levels of cortisol early in the day shortly after you wake up and then that ought to taper off toward the afternoon and evening. However, if cortisol is chronically elevated throughout the day.More of that teaching cord is always arriving too late in the day. That is known to be associated with mental health and physical health issues, as being shown by labs at Stanford and elsewhere. It's been shown in animal models and in humans.We've talked many times before and I'll just remind you again one of the best ways to restrict that.Cortisol peak to the early part of the day is to get morning sunlight in your eyes as soon as you can. Once the sun is up, get outside facing the direction of sun. Even on overcast days, don't wear sunglasses. Look at it for 5 to 30 minutes. Definitely blink so you don't damage your eyes. So on and so forth. Why 5 minutes or 30 minutes or five minutes on a clear day? Should be.Efficient modeling? Fine again, blink so that you protect your eyes when you guys needed based on the general direction of sun. On days when you have a lot of overcast, there's really good dark dense cloud cover within You wanna be outside longer. And if you don't have access to sunlight for whatever reason that you want to do the same thing with right artificial lights indoors either. so-called satellite.Otherwise, that's a great way to restrict that cortisol key to early in the day. But even if you're doing that, if you have a stressful life for whatever reason, even if you're getting that morning sunlight, which I hope you are, you're getting your exercise and trying to sleep better and more, as we all should most of the time, well, then you're you may be somebody who wants to take a.Adapted you in the form of a supplement and the three supplements that could be very effective in buffering cortisol are Ashwaganda.Which I'll talk about first. Lions, mane and chaga. Lions, mane and chaga are the fungi groups like count as mushrooms. They're not psychedelic mushrooms. Let's talk about ashwagandha first. Ashwagandha is at the top of the list because it is indeed a very potent adaptogenic. How can I say that? Well, there are a number of studies.Now including several excellent ones in humans.That report, that taking.Two doses of 300 milligrams of Ashwaganda.Per day can vary dramatically buffer cortisol, so this is something that you would have a near impossible time accessing from food. I can't imagine that unless you're cooking with the very sources of ashwaganda and extracting the exact amount that you'd be able to get this in any other form except supplement form. So here I'm going to just briefly reference.Paper and we can provide a reference to the reference link to this. That is, this is a paper from 2012 that's had a lot of excellent follow up papers that support it. The title of the paper is A prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study of safety and Efficacy of high concentration of full spectrum extract of Ashwagandha root in reducing stress and anxiety in adults.It's a really nice study, not a huge subject pool, but both men and women, and is carried out for long enough that they got to see some really interesting results. And they the I think that the most interesting result is that taking 300 milligrams of ashwagandha twice a day.Led to enormous, I mean just enormous changes in serum cortisol. The statistical significance that they observed in the study was really fantastic, fantastically high statistical significance. They saw the effects of Ashwagandha on day 15, having initiated the.Ashwaganda consumption on on day one, of course, day 30 and day 45, and again this was dramatic reductions in stress.As perceived by people, so subjective stress and cortisol levels. So Ashwagandha is very potent at reducing cortisol. How would you recapitulate this if you wanted to use Ashwagandha to buffer stress? Well, a couple of key points.Mentioned earlier that you want your cortisol keeps coming earlier in the day.Therefore, you would not want to buffer cortisol early in the day. In fact, cortisol peaking early in the day provides an anti-inflammatory, immune supporting focus and mood supporting effect all day long. So I would recommend that people take their first dose of Ashwagandha anywhere from 250 to 300.Program sometime in the early afternoon and then again in the evening, as opposed to taking a morning dose in an afternoon dose. Also, if you're somebody who's exercising for sake of trying to induce adaptations like hypertrophy, the growth of muscles or strength, or improve your endurance in any way, muscular endurance or more traditional cardiovascular endurance.Then I recommend that you not take your ashwagandha prior to exercise, because part of the adaptation response is triggered by increases in cortisol during exercise, sort of in the same way that.Some of the best adaptations to exercise or reductions in blood pressure and resting heart rate, and those are stimulated by increases in blood pressure and increases in heart rate during exercise. That's just how these biological systems work. So the take away is pretty simple. If you're interested in using ashwagandha as an adaptogen, I would restrict it to later in the day if you can and not before.Exercise divided into two doses of 250 to 300 milligrams. That's what this paper and other papers like it might seem to indicate. And then a very important final point about Ashwagandha, which is that if you're going to take Ashwagandha, I recommend not taking it for longer than a month and 1/2 as they did in this study. In fact, I would suggest that you only take Ashwagandha.Periods of kind of moderate to extreme stress. What's moderate, what's extreme is going to depend on what you're going through. Only you know how much stress and life events you could tolerate. So if you've had trouble sleeping and that's unusual for you, you're dealing with a very difficult life circumstances or you know, excessive work demand or a new kid as I mentioned before.Well then buffering stress with Ashwagandha, buffering cortisol in the afternoon and evening can be very beneficial for you. But then I would say after about 30 days maximum, I would take at least two to four weeks off. Two weeks is probably not about four weeks off because you don't want to chronically buffer.Cortisol, it's just not a good idea. But that said, I think Ashwagandha is a very powerful adaptogen that I.Place at the top of the list of supplement based adaptogens, but keep in mind that even if you're taking a supplement based adoption, that's no reason to abandon the nutrition and behavioral type adaptogenic effects that you can create through eating dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables and we'll talk about behaviors in a moment. The other two supplement based adaptive gyms, as I mentioned, are lions main mushroom.Chaga and I get asked a lot about lions, mane and chaga for sake of their purported roles in acting as new tropics, as quote UN quote smart drugs. There are fewer data on the beneficial roles of mingling and chaga forsake of neutropenic effects of doing that.Entire episode on nootropics at some point, but there have been a few studies showing that lions may even supplementation and charter. Supplementation can improve memory and maybe even divergent thinking associated with current creativity and things of that sort. Again, these are not psychedelic mushrooms. That said, there are good data showing that.1000 milligrams, That is 1g of line training per day.And the boy?Talk about the game for portion of the moment and or chaga mushroom at 500 to 1500 milligrams per day.Can act as adaptogens in again reducing.Court is all but also and mainly reducing some of the anti-inflammatory cytokines that are known to circulate in high abundance when you're under a lot of psychological and or physical stress. It is like interleukin 6 and some related molecules. So here's what I would recommend if you are interested in exploring adaptogens. I'm a big fan as some of you probably know if you heard that.Episode on Rational Guide to Supplementation. I'm a big fan of mainly focusing on taking supplements in single ingredient formulations so that you can figure out what dosages are best for you and so that you can toggle in and out those adaptogens as needed. So I of course I'm a fan of taking certain blends and mixes, the one that we talked about a lot on this podcast.Response from the beginning I've taken for a decade now. Long before I ever had a podcast is athletic greens, which some of you might know does contain some ashwagandha. Although the levels of ashwagandha that are contained in athletic greens are low enough that I don't see any issue with taking athletic greens consistently day-to-day, every day.Because you're not getting anywhere near that 600 milligram dosage. But the idea is that if you were going to take.Any adoption forsake of buffering stress over the short term, say for a week or two weeks or a month, and then taking that recommended time off. I would start with Ashwaganda and then if you feel you need something else to buffer stress, keeping in mind of course that you're doing the behavioral nutritional things to buffer stress as well. You can never abandon those, right?Well then I would suggest adding 1000kg or 1000 milligrams of chaga per day and seeing how that further benefits your your system in terms of buffering stress. How do you measure if your stress is being reduced? Well, you're going to be sleeping better at night, you're going to feel subjectively better, lower levels of anxiety, all the things that are measured in the types of studies I.Tried before.Now of course there's nothing preventing you from taking 600 milligrams of Ashwaganda, gram of lines, meaning and a gram of chaga. I know some people like to just kind of go full tilt into everything, but I am a big believer in really trying to isolate which supplements and molecules work best for you and which ones don't. Do you need to cycle on and off?Lions, Mane, and Chaga. I'm not aware of any data showing that you do. If, however, you're taking them everyday, I recommend that you cycle off them after a period of 30 days or so. And I want to be very clear about this. Just because I said cycle off after a period of 30 days or so does not mean that you can't take them for a shorter period of time. So for instance, if you know that you're coming up on a big week.Distress.Well then you could take Ashwaganda and or Lions main and or Chaga for that week or just that week or heading into that week or in the following week and then stop. There's no reason why you couldn't take them even just for one day, although the effects tend to be a bit cumulative, at least when we're talking about buffering anxiety in terms of buffering cortisol, that's a very potent.As far as we know, it's going to take place on day one. Again, keep that cortisol buffering effect away from exercise. At least don't take it before exercise and try and buffer your cortisol in the afternoon and evening. And this is assuming that you're working a conventional shift and you're not up all night and sleeping all day for sake of shift work. OK, so hopefully that.Clarifies things about what adaptogens are. In fact, I never actually read the specific question, but I think I've touched on a number.Of of issues that relate to the specific question and then I'll answer the last portion of the answer to this question in a moment. As it relates to behavioral tools that can act as adaptogens, the question itself was there's a lot of mixed information about out there about Adaptogens like Ashwagandha and I think that relates to what I said earlier, which is that the definition of an Adaptogen has not really been cemented.Come in various communities. It's different in different communities, and it's generally used as a matter of convenience rather than really strictly defining what it is. And hopefully we've defined it accurately and and broadly enough today is something that buffers stress. The second part of the question was what does the scientific evidence?About adopted into their ability to mediate body stress response. They say quite a lot. And they they say that the stress response can be buffered substantially by certain adaptogens, mainly dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, ashwagandha, lions, mane and chaga, And of course all the behavioral things that are critical list off in a moment.And then the third portion of the question is, is there any solid evidence that has an effect on neurotransmitters or the HPA which is part of the stress modulation axis? The best evidence is that adaptogens can reduce cortisol itself.There is very little evidence that adaptations can directly modulate neurotransmitters or neuromodulators like dopamine, serotonin, et cetera, but by adjusting the timing levels of cortisol, especially in the afternoon and evening.That is going to have indirect effects on levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, etc. And serotonin, but not direct effects. So the general contour that makes for an ideal diurnal schedule. You're nocturnal. The office is diurnal, being awake during the daytime and sleep at night. The ideal and of landscape of neurotransmitters is.Higher levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine in the early part of the day and cortisol, so-called catecholamine, dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine and high levels of cortisol early in the day as directed by sunlight, exercise, caffeine, hydration, movement, all that stuff being awakened, busy and outside or indoors with bright lights and.Moving about in the early part of the day and into the early afternoon, that's the best possible way that we are aware of to try and get those catecholamines released at the highest levels in the early part of the day. And then the ideal contour of a 24 hour cycle will be in the later half of the day. The evening and night time. You have higher levels of things like serotonin, the Gabaergic system, all the things that are somewhat.Sedative and preparing you for sleep and lower levels of the catecholamines and cortisol as I described before. So to directly answer the question, is there any evidence that adaptogens can alter your neurotransmitters?Yes, but only indirectly. And yet that indirect control over neurotransmitters is substantial and is important. And if you do what I described, such as getting morning sunlight. And ideally you'd get a little bit of deliberate cold water exposure, by the way, to boost adrenaline and nor norepinephrine and dopamine those catecholamines early in the day. So quick, one minute cold shower.Given our three minute cold shower, if you have access to a nice bath early in the day plus some sunlight, doesn't matter which one you do first. Doing that early in the day is really going to create that peak of cortisol, dopamine, epinephrine early in the day.I can't emphasize how beneficial all of that can be. And exercise if you can, early in the day. Some people can't exercise till later in the day. I'd rather see people exercise later in the day than not at all, provided it does not disrupt their nighttime sleep, which of course sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health and performance. So yes, there's modulation of neurotransmitters, but most of those are downstream of the effects on cortisol.And talking about, so we've defined nutritional adaptogens, supplement based adaptogens, although I don't really like the word supplements anymore unless we're talking about vitamin supplements for reasons we talked about earlier. And then there's the third category of adaptogens, which are the behavioral tools that you can use to buffer stress, which qualifies those as an Adaptogen. And I think it's really important that we always keep in mind.But yes, there are supplements. Yes, there are prescription drugs out there. In fact, there are prescription drugs that you can get from a doctor that will potently 0 out your cortisol. But most doctors are very reluctant to prescribe those drugs because cortisol provides a very important and functional role early in the day.Behaviors are very effective at reducing cortisol. What are the most effective behaviors to reduce cortisol? Well, we talked about one to restrict cortisol, the early part of the day, which is viewing morning sunlight. But how would you buffer cortisol in the late afternoon? It's going to be all the things associated with reducing stress, for instance.10 minutes, or even my laboratory and other laboratories have shown, is even 5 minutes a day of just what would be called mindfulness meditation. Very simple. You don't need to overcomplicate this. You could use a great app like the Waking Up app or another app of the sort. Or you can simply sit down, eyes closed, breathe through your nose, and just concentrate on your breathing every time your mind drifts to something else.Get back to your breathing. That's shown to reduce stress. You could do a 5 minute deliberate breath work practice. My laboratory is published some work related to that and the breath work practice could be any number of things. The two that I recommend the most would be double inhale followed by a full exhale and then repeat for a period of 5 minutes known to substantially reduce anxiety stress.And the various physiological systems associated with arousal. You could also use box breathing, inhale, hold, exhale, hold for equal durations for a period of 5 minutes. We'll substantially reduce stress. I'm a big fan, as many of you know, of yoga nidra, which involves no movement. It involves just lying there listening to a script. Lots of yoga nidra scripts available online if you're not interested.The intentions and other things including yoga, Nidra. You can buffer stress using an adaptogen like NSDR, non sleep, deep breath. If you're interested in trying these sorts of things there's a an SDR protocol that's 10 minutes long. Just put my name, Huberman and NSTR into the search browser on YouTube and virtual SAN has provided.NASCAR that's completely 0 cost and works very well for reducing stress. It will also help teach your system and teach you how to learn to fall asleep better at night. So any of those practices 5 to 10 minute breathing practice or meditation or a NSDR yoga Nidra if you can do longer 20 or 30 minutes in the afternoon.That's known to buffer cortisol substantially as well. Anytime you're encountering stress in real time, I highly recommend a tool over and over because it's so effective. The fastest way we know to buffer stress and calm down is the so-called physiological side. Big inhale through the nose till your lungs are empty, but then sneak in a little bit more air by a second. Inhale.Maximally inflate the lungs that a long exhale until your lungs are empty. One to three of those will reduce your stress substantially. Overtime that should reduce. That is buffer your cortisol acting as an adaptation. There are a lot of things. You can take a hot bath, you can take a hot shower, you can listen to some pleasant music, you know anything that reduces your stress technically is an adaptogen, so.I hope I have thoroughly. I answered your question. By yours I mean this of course this answer is going out to all of you. This is a question that was asked by Justine Bevilacqua. I hope I pronounced that correctly Justine and thank you for that question. I think there are a lot of people interested in adaptogens. So now you know you can use nutrition such as cruciferous vegetables, dark leafy greens and I should also mention if you're not ingesting.Calories each day.Well, then you are going to be in a mild mode of stress. That's not to say that some people shouldn't take in fewer calories than they burn in order to lose weight. Some people really need to do that for their health or for whatever other reason. But if you restrict calories too much, you are going to increase cortisol output. So keep that in mind. So in just sufficient calories.For you and for your goals, aim to get dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables. Don't overcook them.If you want to explore supplements, the best supplements to act as adaptogens are going to be ashwagandha, lions, mane and chaga.One or two or three of those, although if you were going to pick one, I'd recommend Ashwagandha at 600 milligrams per day, taking it in the later half of the day. And then there are the behavioral tools that we just talked about now, which are anything that reduces stress can reduce cortisol.And in doing so are technically adaptogens. If you want to know more behavioral tools and other tools for adjusting stress and learn more about adaptations, we did a whole episode called Mastering Stress, so you can look to that. And that episode also pretty clearly defines. I'd like to think what short term, medium term, and long term stress really are. Keep in mind stress is part of life learning how to work with it.Gotta dance with it. Had a buffer. It is terrific. But zeroing out cortisol is not the goal. The goal is to learn to modulate and control your cortisol, and that's really what Adaptogens are all about.