AMA #14: 2023 Philanthropy, Evening Routine, Light Therapy, Health Metrics & More

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. We are now live today with our annual and lifetime members of the Huberman Lab podcast Premium channel. First off, I just want to welcome everyone. Thanks so much for being here. I hope you're having good holidays and I'll wish you a happy new year at this point and again at the end. I want to kick off our discussion today by just highlighting some of the incredible things that you all have already done. The Premium channel, as most of you presumably know, provides support for important research. And when I say important research, we can define that as research that is done on humans, with humans, with their consent, of course, that we believe stands the highest probability of leading to new quality treatments and improvements in mental health, physical health and performance. So support from the Premium channel, that is from you, has already allowed us to make several substantial gifts to various laboratories as well as some other some other endeavors. So I'll just quickly tell you where those funds have gone and then I'll tell you something really truly exciting about where we're headed in 2024. We'll get to the questions in a moment, but I think this is important to hear. First of all, we made a year long gift. And when I say year long gift, we're talking gifts that I certainly can say from my perspective as a researcher who's run a laboratory for a very long time. These are the size gifts that allow researchers to do research that they otherwise would not have been able to to do. They pay salaries, they pay for materials in the laboratory, they pay for the sorts of things that allow science to happen that would not otherwise happen. We made a gift to Dr. Aaliyah Crumbs Laboratory at Stanford in the Department of Psychology. She studies mindset. Some of you may have seen the episode with Ally, as she's called Dr. Crumb on the Human Lab podcast. She's studying mindsets and how they affect both mental health and physical health in children and adults. And that work, hopefully we'll get a report back on at some point soon about how those mindsets can improve performance in school work, athletics and other areas of life. So the idea here is that you supported that work through the premium channel and then that work can happen and then we can get the information about what the conclusions of that work are out into the general population, meaning into the public so that people can benefit from that knowledge right away and in many cases implement that knowledge. We also made a gift to Dr. Sachin Panda at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Sachin Panda is an expert in circadian biology and intermittent fasting and the study he is using those funds for relates to intermittent fasting as a specific tool for improving mental health. We also made a gift to Dr. Carla Shatz in at Stanford University School of Medicine. She's studying how the immune system and maternal conditions, and in especially infections or of various kinds that pregnant women sometimes encounter or get, can affect the developing fetal brain. And that work also relates to stem cells. I know there's a lot of excitement about stem cells nowadays, so I'll give you an update on that as soon as I can. We also made a substantial gift to Dr. Joanna Steinglass at Columbia University School of Medicine. Dr. Steinglass has not yet been on the podcast, but hopefully she will have time to come on the podcast at some point soon. She's studying and developing novel treatments for eating disorders. If you didn't see the episode on healthy and disordered eating, sadly anorexia nervosa is the most deadly of all the psychiatric conditions. That is a great number of patients that have anorexia nervosa unfortunately go on to die of malnourishment and things related to malnourishment. So it's a critical, critical issue that's not talked about enough and frankly is not well funded enough at the level of federal funding. But through your support, there's now funding siphoning into her laboratory and she's directing those funds directly at novel treatments based on neuroscience and habit formation for eating disorders, anorexia and other eating disorders. Dr. Nolan Williams, also at Stanford, who does work on transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is a tool to non invasively alter neural circuits in the brain for purposes of relieving depression and PTSD. And excitingly, Dr. Williams Laboratory also combines TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation with psychedelic treatments, in particular ibogaine, but also psilocybin. I know there's a lot of excitement about that. And then last but certainly not least, we also funded a chronobiology conference. They were desperate for funds, reached out and we were delighted to provide the funds for that conference. Those funds allowed graduate students and postdocs who come from laboratories that couldn't afford to send those students and postdocs to that conference to attend that conference. And I must say from a lot of years of experience in the scientific community, the ability to attend these high quality meetings is absolutely Critical for those young scientists to be able to glean important information and go back to their own laboratories and to make novel contributions also can be the difference between a new collaboration getting sparked up or not. And I should just mention that the research laboratories that we fund were at a much higher level than the conferences. But the conferences, I think are also a really important way to direct funds. For those of you that don't know, chronobiology is how the timing of light, temperature and exercise and eating affect health. So all things that I think people are interested in. So that's it for what we covered and what we supported in 2023. We're very proud of the support that we were able to provide thanks to your help. And I am very, very excited to announce that while in 2023 it was SCOM us the Human Lab podcast through your premium channel support that allows us to make that support. And we had a matching donation, dollar for dollar donation from the Tiny Foundation. Heading into 2024, Tiny foundation is going to continue to do a dollar dollar, a dollar for dollar match. Excuse me. Which is exciting. And we've brought on, in addition to that, two other donors who are going to also do dollar for dollar donations. So in other words, for every dollar that the Huberman Lab Premium channel has or raises in 2024, there will be $3 to match that. So this is phenomenal. And what it means is that the SciCom and the Huberman Lab podcasts are now doing what's considered on university campuses as major philanthropy. So very exciting. And so thank you oh so very much for your support. You are making a difference in the research. And I don't just say that. I know anytime there's fundraisers or things of that sort. By the way, this is not a fundraiser. This is us saying thank you to you. But it's always hard to know where those funds go. And we make sure that the whole process is very streamlined. We cut the fat on the on it in every dimension so that the money can go to discovering new tools for mental health, physical health and performance. So thank you so much. Okay, first question is up. Carolyn A. Writes, I am interested in studies about the anterior mid singulate cortex. Oh yes, such an interesting structure. Would you please share any information regarding those thank you for all you do in the advancement of science. Thank you for all you do and the advancement of science. Carolyn and others listening. Okay, so the anterior mid singular cortex, for those of you that may not have seen the episode on willpower and tenacity, but even if you have is a region of the brain that is involved in leaning into difficult challenges of all kinds. This is an area of the brain that gets larger when we embrace effort. That leads to a bit of internal anxiety, but it's something that's good for us, an adaptive thing. And this is an area of the brain that gets smaller when we don't engage in challenging endeavors. Now we need to define challenging endeavors very specifically, challenging endeavors that stimulate the growth of the anterior mid singlet cortex are challenging endeavors that we would prefer not to do. We may want the end goal, right? So we may want the the consequence of the exercise, the consequence of the learning, the consequence of whatever the challenge is, but that the challenge itself feels uncomfortable. In here, of course we want it to be uncomfortable. But safe challenges is what is what's going to grow the inter mid cingulate cortex. Now another thing about the intermitting cortex that's important is that for people that end up being successful dieter, successful pursuit of fitness, for people that complete a degree or finish an exam or things of that sort, the anterior mid singular cortex gets bigger. For people that fail to do the work required to prepare. So the preparation that is the anterior midsingulate cortex actually shows a bit of atrophy. So the anterior mid singlet cortex is an anatomic, a neural reflection of willpower and tenacity. And I think what people get wrong over and over about these sorts of findings is that the anterior mid singlet cortex is really responding to a variety of inputs as a lot of different inputs and outputs. We know that based on neural circuit tracing. But it absolutely responds best to things that feel like that they are indeed difficult, that they are a challenge. So if you're like me and you enjoy certain forms of exercise and it's just pure bliss for you the whole way through, that's not going to grow your anterior mid cingulate cortex. However, if you add a bit of let's say higher intensity work, I like doing a long run or hike on Sundays. I don't do sprints too often at the end of that. But if I were to do a couple of hill sprints at the end and I really was like this, this is rough, this sucks. That's actually the sort of thing that's going to stimulate the anterior mid cingulate cortex, the interior mid cingulate cortex, since Carolyn, you asked about studies was actually discovered in cases where people were stimulating this brain area and the subjects, these were people receiving neurosurgery for other reasons, feeling like something was impending Some not impending doom, but there was some challenge, like they were going to head into a storm. Something challenging was coming. But the other subjective feeling that they reported was feeling like they could lean into it. Like they're ready for. They were ready to meet that challenge. So what you're looking for when you are interested in growing your interior mid cingulate cortex, and I'll tell you why that's a good thing to do, is you're looking for that feeling of leaning into challenge, that friction. If something's too easy or it's too delightful, that's not going to contribute to your anterior mid singulate cortex function and growth. It might contribute to other things. Indeed it will. And life isn't all about leaning into challenge. But why would you want to stimulate your anterior mid cingulate cortex in this way? And by the way, those challenges can come from physical endeavors and come from language learning. It come from a hard conversation that you're, you've been putting off, that's hard for you to have. Lord knows we all, I'll have those aspects of our lives, the things that we're putting off or that are hard for us or that feel difficult. Again, keep these endeavors safe. Never want to do anything that would damage your mental health or physical health. But leaning into challenge in that way does seem to activate and grow the anterior mid singlet cortex. Now the advantages of that is that there are studies, excuse me, showing that the so called super agers. The super agers, I don't like that name so much. It should, it's a bit of a misnomer, they call them super agers, but they really should be called super non agers because these are people who seem to maintain healthy cognitive function much longer than most individuals. Their memory, their IQ remains stable into their much, much later, decades of their life or even improves over time. And then the correlation, and again, this is correlation. But these are these people's anterior mid singulate cortex does not atrophy. And in general, what the studies point to, and there still needs to be more data collected on this, is that these people are regularly engaging in things that are hard for them and challenging and they've embraced that challenge. So lots to say about interimicingulate cortex, but I think that grabs the top contour. And I'm a big fan of trying to do something difficult, at least one thing, ideally every week and perhaps even every day a little bit. It doesn't take much, maybe even just five minutes. It's that friction, that feeling, oh, I don't want to do this, I can't do this. And then continuing to practice or continuing to lean into that challenge safely, of course that is going to grow that enter mid signaling cortex. And I just think that's amazing. Right? We hear so much about brain atrophy and memory loss and et cetera, et cetera as we get older. A lot of data now about how to preserve healthy physical function. Here we're really talking about how to maintain healthy cognitive function. And the intermitting cortex seems to be a barometer of how well we are doing that. Mark S. Asks, would love to hear more about an evening routine and not just morning, especially when it comes to light. Ooh, I love this question. I love this question because I've made a lot of changes in the last year related to this because, you know, there's this guy on the Internet that talks about the importance of getting morning sunlight. Just kidding. There are several of us but. And gals. But I suppose I've been quite vocal about the importance of getting morning sunlight as soon as possible after waking. And of course, of course, of course. Unless you have powers I'm not aware of. If you wake up before the sun comes out, people always ask, what do I do? You wait till the sun comes out. If it's overcast, you get outside a bit longer. If you want to wake up before the sun comes out, turn on bright artificial lights. Now these days I've actually been playing around a little bit with some bright artificial lights before I. Because I tend to wake up before the sun is out. It's the winter months. But in any case, I've talked a lot about the morning routine in the early part of the day and a bit about the afternoon part of the day. Evening routine. Okay, well, I'll tell you ideal and then I'll tell you what I do. I'm always shooting for ideal, but I'm human. I think there's this idea on the Internet that I've seen that, you know, my whole life is protocols, protocol, protocol, protocol, and indeed sometimes it looks like that and indeed sometimes it doesn't. I'm human. Things happen. We all encounter different challenges. So to answer your question directly, Mark, I think it's. I know it's very important that if possible that you get a little splash of sunlight in your eyes in the afternoon and evening. Why? Why is that important? And what we're really talking about here is not necessarily seeing a sunset at the beach, although that would be great if you could do that. But getting some sunlight in your eyes before the sun Goes down maybe for five, 10 minutes. It's not as important as the morning sunlight, but it does have a great benefit. And the benefit is it adjusts the sensitivity of the neurons in your retina and in your brain such that it protects you against brighter artificial lights later in the evening. Now, it doesn't protect you completely, but what it does is if normally, and this is true, bright light viewed for 15 seconds or more between the hours of 10pm and 4am I'm talking about somebody on a standard schedule, not shift worker. Bright lights viewed for 15 seconds or more between the hours of 10pm and 4am can dramatically quash melatonin levels. Melatonin being the hormone that's involved in feeling sleepy and falling asleep. It does other things as well. Of course, it's secrete from the pineal. We know, based on a really nice study published in Science Reports, that if you view that afternoon, late afternoon, evening sunlight, you don't have to be too strict about the time get, you know, pop your sunglasses off as long as you can do that safely, get some sunlight in your eyes. Or if you can't look directly at the sun, and by the way, never stare directly at the sun, at least getting some daylight in your eyes before the sun goes down, that can offset that melatonin reduction by about 55,0%, which is pretty impressive. Now, you would still do well to dim the lights in the evening. And one thing that I've been playing with recently is using red lights. So a lot of people, when they hear red lights, they think, oh, you're talking about, you know, red light panel, which, that has its uses. Those tend to be very bright red lights or, you know, portable red light. I actually use a small portable red light. Looks like a piece of thick piece of toast. I use that for other reasons. This is not what we're talking about with evening routine. With evening routine, it can be beneficial and very, very cost effective to get some red bulbs and put them in, say, the bedroom where you read before you go to sleep, or in a particular room in your house that you tend to spend time in in the evening, makes for a nice mellow feel. But it also does several other things. First of all, it, if they're the correct red bulbs, and I'll mention the ones that I've been using in a moment, they eliminate all the blue wavelengths that tend to be stimulating for the, what we call the noradrenergic system. So adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, et cetera. Indeed, there's a study that shows that when shift workers who have to be up at night use red lights of the type that I'm describing, when they work under red light, they have less of a cortisol increase than were they to work under standard fluorescent lights or even standard LED lights. So number one thing would be dim the lights in the evening and at night as much as you safely can to perform whatever functions you need. Don't fall, you know, don't burn yourself at the stove. You know, if you have to write and do work, as I often do, you need light. But to the extent that you can shift to red lights, that can be helpful. And many people, many people and myself included, find that you get sleepier when you do that. So I might just do this for the last hour of the evening. Even if I'm up till 10 or 11 or if I do it earlier, then I tend to get really sleepy. But those red lights, you know, I put a little lamp above my bed, I'll do that. If I'm going to read in bed, I make it much easier to fall asleep probably because of the reduced cortisol associated with eliminating the blue wavelengths. And they tend to be fairly dim. And now there's one brand of red light that you actually can that actually will work on a dimmer. So this is important. I suppose you could use a red party lights or Christmas lights. Those could be very affordable. Some people do that, but it's kind of festive feel in the room. Other people like myself will use a red light that's dimmable. I want to mention that what I'm about to say, I don't have any financial relationship to this company. In terms of the bulbs. Red light panels are different. I use the joovv. I use joovv type. But for red lights that, for the purpose I'm talking about that would go into a standard lamp and that you dim where that's a very different purpose. Right. The red light panels have a very different purpose than. Than red bulbs that you would put into a standard light fixture. The dimmable ones are called they. You can find them as red light. You just put bon. It's the technical name of the company is. Sorry, forgive me for googling this now. Yeah, it's a bond charge. B O n separate word charge. And those are dimmable and they have the proper wavelength. So that's what I use. They're not super cheap, but they're not expensive either in comparison to most red light therapies or something. So we're not talking about red light therapy. We're talking about reducing the overall amount of blue light in your environment, et cetera. Now, for many people who don't want to purchase something new, and again, I have no financial relationship to Bon Charge, so I don't glean anything. I buy them with my own money and I just have one or two of them, and I dim the lights. Even those red lights I dim while I'm reading at night and then fall asleep. If you don't want to use red lights for whatever reason, then you would be wise to just dim the lights that you have and where possible, to have those lights be set fairly low in your room environment. Now, why would that be? Okay, well, first of all, the cells that activate the alertness system in the brain via the retina, your eye tend to look up into your environment. And that makes sense because they're essentially there to view sunlight and the presence or absence of sunlight. But in addition to that, think about it logically. If I take a flashlight and I shine a beam on the ground or at a tree in the yard, it looks very bright. But you're not getting all those photons in your eyes. Right? You're seeing it at a distance as opposed to shining the light in your eyes, it's very, very bright. Okay? So when you have lights that are overhead and going into your eyes, it's very different than the light being on the floor or on a surface. This gets back to something that I often get asked. How could it be that viewing sunlight through a window takes 50 times longer to activate your circadian system than it does when you step outside? Well, let's think about that. When you step outside, there's sunlight everywhere. If you face the sun, there's even more coming at you. But when you're inside, unless there's a beam of light coming through that window and the window is very clear or open, for that matter, you're not really getting the light in your eyes in the same way that if you were outside with the sunlight in your eyes. Right. It's the same thing as like looking at a beam of light from a flashlight against a wall versus the beam of light going at your eyes. Okay, so we talked about dimming the lights, setting them low in the room. The I. It's not red light therapy, but changing over to red lights. Bon Charge is probably just one of many out there. I've seen it done pretty nicely with just somebody. People grab red party lights go on, whatever. Your favorite search engine sales site, red lights. And you could do that. That's going to Be better than any blue lights. And then if you're going to be on your screens, here's what I suggest. There's a shortcut function in your phone where you can triple click to switch your phone over to eliminate all the blues. This is different than just using the nighttime function. Very different. And I think we should probably put out a video on how to do this. But what you do is you go into the accessibility function on your phone, you go into color filters, and then you drag down the blues. But that's not how your phone is going to be set all day because then you don't see anything that's in blue. But you can introduce a triple click function. I'll put out a clip soon on how to do that. And so when I go to sleep at night or in the evening, what I'll do is I'll triple click and I'll switch my phone over to red only. And that's completely zero cost, by the way. It doesn't cost anything. And then in the morning when I wake up at click click click, I turn on. Although I try and get the sunlight in my eyes before I look at my phone. Okay, Tom M Asks light therapy recommendations for those that live in northern regions with limited morning light or too cold to get outside for morning light, dark. When waking, do red light therapy. Great question. I'm gonna take a sip of this bone broth because at the rate I'm speaking, if I try and keep this up for an hour and a half, I might get a little hoarse. Red light therapy is different than what I just described. Red light therapy is the use of red light panels. It can be smaller panels, like the small joov that I use, which is a unit. It's about the size of a piece. I guess they call it Texas toast. Right? Texas. A thick piece of toast. I don't know, maybe someone knows why it's called Texas toast. I guess it's big. It's about the size of a piece of toast. Provides very bright red light. And in between those red lights on there, there tends to be near infrared light. So far, red. So, you know, to a biologist, red doesn't mean as much as the wavelength of light. So wavelength, like the 650 to 800 nanometers is what we're talking about. Whereas blue light is down in the, you know, four and five hundreds and really like 535 to, you know, low sixes, you know, like the rainbow. Right? Red, orange, green, blue. There are also larger red light panels. And nowadays I also see a Lot of advertisements for red light panels. You actually lie down in red light beds. Here's the story. Red light will often be marketed as the most powerful, the most intensity, the most lux, most important is the proper wavelengths or are the proper wavelengths. So that's why I use the joovv because joovv has the proper wavelengths of red and far red. The distance to view a red light of that sort generally is about 18 inches, sometimes a little closer. Now sometimes people would put red light on different parts of their body. I covered a bit of this in the Light and health episode. But red light, because it's longer wavelength light, can permeate through tissues to fairly substantial depth. How deep depends on the tissue. If you put it up against your skull, is it going to get down into your brain? No, it's not going to get through your skull. Maybe a little bit. If it's a very high powered red light. If you're holding a red light of that power at home, something's wrong. I don't. That's a medical, that's a medical device. However, joovv are medical grade red light and near infrared lights and they are quite powerful. They're the right wavelengths actually. That's why I prefer joovv because they are medical grade. They can be directed at your eyes in the morning for the purpose of. There's a study out of two studies actually out of Glenn Jeffries Laboratory at the University College London showing that viewing red lights at a distance of about 18 inches or so in the morning for people who are over 40, but not for people younger by the way, that can offset some of the age related reductions in mitochondrial function and vision loss. So I look at a red light in this jute, my juve Texas toast light or I have a juve panel at a distance of about. I confess I stand about 12 to 18 inches away and I do not force myself to look at that light. I don't hold my eyelids open. I allow myself to blink so I'm comfortable. Truth told, you could probably close your eyelids and some of that red light is going to get through your eyelids. Not a ton, but some. So no problem blinking. You never ever, ever want to look at any light, sunlight or otherwise red light. Any light so bright that's painful to look at. If you have to blink, it's too bright. Step back. If you have to blink every once in a while, that's okay. But if you have to blink in order to close your eyes, in order to protect your eyes, then you're standing too close in the morning, you can do red light therapy on skin, you can do it on eyes. Will it wake your system up? Will it provide the kind of cortisol increase which by the way, you want early in the day and adrenaline and dopamine increase that sunlight can provide? The answer is no. Sunlight is unique in that way. However, if you live in an area of the world that's too dark or you wake up long before you get sunlight in your eyes, what can you do? Well, you can flip on artificial lights. You do that the opposite of how I recommend. In the evening you'd want to flip on overhead lights as bright as possible. If you have the disposable income and you want to invest in a 10,000 lux light panel or a 900 lux light panel. Again, I have no financial relationship to these companies, but there's a light panel 900 lux drawing tablet that I've set on my desk for a number of years. Recently, I confess, I've started experimenting with some of the 10,000 lux light panels that sit on your desk. Excuse me, those are very, very bright and I do use that. Now, if I wake up really early and I'm going to do some work, I'll turn that thing on and it sure wakes you up. Now, is it as good as sunlight? No, it doesn't have the right color features and alternation between yellow and blue that morning sunlight has and that evening sunlight has. And without doing a whole tutorial, when the sun is low in the sky, so called low solar angle sunlight, you'll notice if you take a picture with your phone provides not a cloudy day, you'll see that there's a lot of blue, yellow contrast and that's the optimal stimulus. That said, if it's overcast out, you should still get outside because some of those wavelengths are coming through even though you can't perceive the blue and the yellow. So these, you could get a 10,000 lux light. But if you can't afford that or you don't want to, oh, and by the way, those you, you set on your desk, you turn on for five, 10 minutes while you're making coffee or and things of that sort, they actually recommend that you don't keep them on too much. Some people actually can feel a little too euphoric and maybe even get a little headache because it's a lot of blue light. So that's one thing. The other thing you can do is that if you can't access light of any kind, dark, dark, dark, that's where the cold shower really can Help. Because you get that adrenaline bump early in the day, which is good. So early in the day, you know, provided you're not going into states of anxiety as a consequence of it, getting adrenaline, dopamine, cortisol increases is great. And then as the day goes on in the evening and nighttime, certainly you want to taper the levels of those neurochemicals off. Now, of course, there's always going to be some cortisol. There's always going to be some epinephrine. There always be dopamine in your system. If you go out dancing, you go to a party at night. Should you worry about the lights? No. Okay. I am not. Despite what you might presume or hear or read, I am not the sort of person who wears sunglasses at a party. Although the other day I was at a party and someone was wearing sunglasses. I think it was for other reasons. The. That. That gives the impression there was something bad going on. I think they were just, like, looking cool, by the way. And they did look cool. But I don't do that. And if I drive at night, I don't wear. I don't wear sunglasses. I do. And I have been exploring the use of blue light filter glasses in the evening and those red lights in my house. But for, I think for most people, if you get out every once in a while, you go out to a late night, you go out dancing, you have a party with friends. You know, when you get home, dim the lights, maybe use those red lights, get to sleep early in the day. Bright lights, ideally from sunlight. Bright, bright, bright, bright, bright. How bright? As bright as possible. And as many as you is reasonable, except to the extent that it could damage your eyes. So don't be staring at any bright lights excessively. Okay. I think that pretty much summarizes it. And then, of course, early day, it's really about sunlight or light of other kinds of cold water. If that's your thing. If that's not your thing, that's fine. There was no tablet that descended down to us telling us that we had to get into cold water each day. It's an option. It's all an option. Dennis from Munich. I love Munich. I haven't been there in a while, but I used to go in Max Planck Munich for a number of times per year. And I missed the food, I missed the schnitzel. As we approach a new year, what health and fitness metrics do you recommend checking? Oh, good one. And could you share your annual medical fitness check routine? Okay, what I'm about to say I'm sure will generally jibe with what Dr. Peter Attia, who I'm sure you all know and who I respect tremendously, also grateful to call him a close friend, basically asserts is important for fitness. I think if you're going to do a fitness test, you know, Peter's got it in mind and I generally agree. You know, you deadlift your body weight 10 times in the same set, hang from a bar for a minute or more, okay, in the same set, these sorts of things. I tend to be far less PE class about it, frankly. My goal is always the same. I'm 48 years old. I've been doing the same training program ever since I was 16, more or less. I mean, I've had, you know, peaks and valleys in terms of my consistency based on other obligations. And of course, when I'm sick, I don't train sick people. Stay out of gyms, please. Nothing makes me more frustrated than people showing up to get their workout and getting everybody sick. Here's the deal. I try to be capable, that is ready for various things. What? The ability to go on a long hike. What's a long hike? 5 to 10 miles with some hills. The ability to sprint for the airplane without blowing a gasket. The ability, or that means hurting oneself or having a heart attack. The ability to carry some heavy furniture with assistance safely or God forbid, to take a trip and not damage myself. And of course to have some level of agility and coordination. So how does one do that? So what health fitness metrics do I recommend checking? Well, I'm going to do this next week because it's the end of the year, but pretty much every week it's the following three cardiovascular training sessions. One is long, meaning an hour to 90 minutes. That's going to be slow for me. So this could be a weighted hike. So weight vested hike. Or you could just put some weight in a backpack or just be a hike if it's really steep or a long slow jog once a week. For me it's jogging or hiking. For other people it's cycling or swimming. Sometime in the middle of week I'm doing a 35 minute run. So maybe five minutes of warmup and then a faster 35 minute run. You could also do it on a rower, you could also do it on a bike, but you're really pushing up around. I don't know, maybe. I don't tend to measure heart rate, but where it's. I could not hold a conversation. I'm working, I'm working, working. I'm not sprinting, but I'm working. And then another time during the week, a shorter workout of about 12 minutes. This is gonna be three minutes of warmup, some calisthenics, a little bit of cycling on an assault bike or something of that sort. Assault bikes are the ones where you have the handles with the fan. Or it could be a rower or it could be any. Sprinting a hill and then doing sometimes one minute on, one minute off for 12 minutes, sometimes doing 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for eight rounds. And it's real work. It's getting the heart rate all the way up, VO2 max. The combination of those three types of cardiovascular training sessions are that I'm ready to sprint for the airplane. I'm ready to take a long hike anytime I'm ready. I can go out for a two mile run and really enjoy that if I, if I need to. It's a readiness thing and I think it covers all bases. Am I ever going to be a marathoner or a champion sprinter with that or a miler? No, but that's not my goal and it never has been. Ran a cross country race in high school and we'll tell that story another time. It was a lot of fun until I hit the second mile. The other thing I do three times a week is I work out with resistance training. I train my legs one day, so that's calves, hamstrings, quads. I train my torso so that's. I do some pushing for my shoulders and upper chest and some dips, that kind of thing. Some pull ups, some rowing, the sore thing. And I train my neck because I'm a big believer in that for the upper spine. But don't go at it heavy. It's just really to maintain, you know, posture and to make sure that upper spine is supported, something that most people neglect. And then one day a week I do smaller body parts. Like I'll do my cal, train my calves again, biceps, triceps. I'll make sure that if there are any small body parts that happen to miss during the middle of the week because of scheduling, like rear delts or something, I'll do that. Maybe a little bit more neck work or some ab work. Okay. Those are spread out about a day apart. I don't get too obsessed with the spacing between those workouts, but they're not all stacked against one another. So it might be, in my case, it's. It's long run on Sunday. This is just how I do it. Monday tends to be off. Excuse me, long run on Sunday or hike. Monday is legs, excuse me, Monday is always legs, Tuesday off Wednesday. I generally would do that shorter run or the torso work. I flip flop them depending on how my legs are feeling. And the next day I do whatever I need to do either the torso resistance training or the, or the 35 minute run. And then Fridays, that faster clip cardio. Saturday tends to be the smaller body parts, biceps, triceps, et cetera. I must say these days of the week always have the ability, ability to slide one way or the other. So for instance, if I'm traveling and I don't get back on Sunday until late, I'll. If I was not able to do that training while I was on the road, then I will do it on Monday and then I'll just slide things around so that I finish off the week with everything done and I can get back on schedule. But the way I've arranged it, every body part gets hit twice. Once directly, once indirectly. And the cardiovascular training is, is covers all bases. Why train this way? Well, it ensures strength. It ensures whatever aesthetic changes you want. You can emphasize working harder and more sets perhaps for the things that you, you know, want to bring up certain body parts that are, that are weaker. You can certainly recover because you're only training legs once a week. But guess what, you're, you're doing them on Monday and you're sprinting on Friday. So they're getting hit indirectly on Friday. Even if it's on the bike though, that fast, hard pedaling with resistance is going to make sure that your legs aren't going to atrophy. You can still get, but you can still train them again on Monday again. So this schedule is designed in a very specific way. None of the workouts, except the longer workout on Sunday that jog or run is longer than an hour ever. It's 10 minutes of warmup and 55, 0 minutes of work in the gym, sometimes 60. Sometimes I'll truncate to 45 or 40 if I'm really. I have a bunch of things going on. So this sort of schedule sounds like a lot, but it's not. It's actually a very small investment. It's about an hour a day and not even on Tuesday, which is a rest day. So what are the metrics that I recommend checking? Well, I'm a big believer that if you're sleeping well and your appetite is consistent and you're feeling generally good, that's an important metric. It's a very subjective metric, but that's important. Are you sleeping well or Are you waking up sore and you're not able to recover? Are you feeling like no matter how much sleep you get, you can't feel rested? These kinds of things. Now, there could be other factors involved, but that's the, you know, sort of a basic one. The other one is how much energy and pep are you bringing to your workouts? That's important, and it will relate to caffeine and fueling and all those sorts of things, which we're not talking about right now. It's far too much to talk about here, but we did cover in the Foundational Fitness Protocol, by the way, all of this is put into a PDF that's available online at hubermanlab.com 0cost. Simply go to the newsletter tab under the menu and you can scroll down below that. Find the Foundational Fitness Protocol gets into sets and reps and loads and all that kind of stuff. Complete.