GUEST SERIES | Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimal Nutrition & Supplementation for Fitness
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Welcome to the huberman lab guest series where I and an expert guest discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and am a professor of neurobiology and optometry gy at stanford school of medicine, today's epistemic. The sixteen final of the six episode series on fitness, exercise and performance.

And today's discussion is all about nutrition and supplementation to maximize your fitness, exercise and performance schools during the album. I'm super excited to discuss today's topic, which is nutrition and supplementation for performance and recovery. And i'm particularly excited about this conversation because i've been interested in supplementation and nutrition for performance really since my teens, but also because in recent years, we've witnessed a massive transformation in the general public in terms of their view of supplementation and nutrition.

First of all, more people are thinking about nutrition. What is good nutrition? What is not a very barb wire topic as you know, but there are some truth in there that will discuss but also supplementation. You know whether ten fifteen years ago, I think most people um would either be really into supplements that was a small percent people but the majority of people were either told or we're thinking, oh you know vitamins you mostly discrete them they are just expensive year n nowadays IT seems that many people, including many of my colleagues and physicians, although I down this sports performance experts, are taking and making recommendations about certain supplements.

And so the way that I like to think about supplements is that they aren't necessarily just supplements, which makes you sound like they are augmenting what should already be there but you're not quite getting enough of but indeed, a lot of these things we call supplements are very poor compounds that can transform our ability to perform in the short term to recover from exercise, and that can really shape brain chemistry, hormones, patterns acutely and when taking long term. So i'm very excited about today's topic and to be able to try to sort through this, let's call IT a cloud, hopefully not a storm, but this cloud of supplements that are out there because indeed, many of them are excEllent and can provide us a lot. Some of them are terrible and then some just don't do anything and therefore, are terrible because either the side effects or because they're very expensive and they don't do anything. And then of course, within the ROM of nutrition, they're an equal amount of of confusion. But that's why i'm talking to you because you're onna put clarity and structure and definition on these incredibly important topics.

You absolutely nail that there. One of the major reasons supplements can work is because you can consume nutrient and extremely high concentrations such that you would not get in nature through food. Having said that, you really do want to focus on the basic sleep, nutrition, hydration, and i'm going to get into a very specific detail later with some of those things.

That said, there are plenty of situations and circumstances when supplementation can do exactly what you said. Also though, because you are taking them as such high concentrations, they can also be unproductive, they can be destructive or they can be counterproductive. So in case if you're taking a couple of supplements over here and may actually be counteracting the benefits of some of the other supplements over there, so in the ideal situation, we would be able to work like a snipers here.

So we would be able to run full biological testing, so extensive blood work and saliva, and earn and school and have an end up analysis of your gut microbiome and your stress patterns and your time a day in your cortisol l curve. And like all the things that we do in our high performance folks with that, then we can get extremely high precision implementation in in quite honestly, our philosophers, we only give individuals exactly what they need. So even some of the standard, uh, generally safe and effective supplements, we don't really necessarily use them if there is no specific need.

And we've talked about the consequence ces of this. Things like antioxidant, even my simple stuff like stimulus and other tools are effective for recovery. We don't use them and also have a reason. That said, that's not the reality for a lot of people. They are not going able to do something like that or work somebody who can help them in that.

So there are a handful of supplements that I would consider to be in my my eighty twenty rule, which is sort like the twenty percent of supplements that are going to give you eighty percent of the benefit, little lowest cost. And so what I can actually use the sort of start there, even though this burns my skin and my soul little bit. I absolutely hate this.

I am the context guy, and IT depends a high precision guy. But let's be real. There are a number of supplements that are fairly effective and fairly cheap for a wide range of outcomes.

Uh, so this is for general public. This is form. People who want to do the three buckets, right? You want to look a certain way. So supply and and hands muscle growth and file um non hormonal day supplements, of course, supplements that can improve energy or physical performance again for everything from you know squat more to feeling Better in your yoga class, to having energy throughout the day, to our third major bucket that we've been talking about three thousand entire series, which are our longevity. So we can cover those first if you like to start there.

Yes, absolutely. Let's start there.

Often times when we think of supplements, we immediately jump to high sport performance type of things or viscous workout or or muscle building. So that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Uh, take for example, creating, and i've spoken about this at lying things there an candle who's done a tremendous amount research. I was just stopped at his lab recently in canada, and he has covered extensively.

In fact, like I think I put up a post perhaps second draw this up um where he laid out all the marriage of benefits of creating this is taken in the typically three to five grams per day of those of creating mono hydrate, which has the most recent behind IT seems to be extremely low side effects in almost anyone and the benefits including course things like uh, muscle performance and strength and things like that. And if you go back to our discussion in our episode on metabolism endurance, uh, we talked about the first of creating systems so you can figure out kind of what this is going to do in terms of effect. That said, there's excEllent information and data coming out known on the benefits of bone mineral density and creating.

There's a ton of work looking at a host of cognitive factors um from memory executive function uh to affect potentially on even things like depression, mood to alzheimer's parkins's uh all forms of neurodegeneration disease infect it's it's pretty obviously brain loves 3 as a fuel and so non we sort of discuss in the episode is being the fuel for skeleton mos contraction。 But the brain needs to do that as well. The extra sites are on the brain need to be able right energy such so is very clear that metabolism in the brain is reduced with things like tbi and potentially concussions.

So now to be extremely clear, creating does not prevent any of those diseases. IT does not treat any of them. And the data are mixed, but is more and more are coming.

Some show a little bit of benefit, some show? No, maybe none. But I am not aware of any research in those areas that show that has any downside. For the most part, side effects are extremely minimal, if not no, and then potentially some manifesting in, depending on the specific study. So we could put up a, if you like, a couple of links directly to those met analyses and folks and go through those things one by one.

So um I only say that to again, maybe expand our understanding and thinking about what these cypher supplements can do is not just about growing muscle or um no high performance sits everything to again, there's an association with recovery. So creatine is fantastic for recovery from muscle, for muscle damage helps and confindential aid in fat loss and a whole host of things. So you can actually also even look at a websites like examine doc. I have no affiliation ation with them whatsoever. But if you wanted just type in something like creating mono hydrate, you can see a whole list and you're going to see thousands of studies are the potential benefits uh of greeting so that is is always number one on my list.

I'm relieved to hear that creatine sits at the top of your supplementation list because well, first of all, I started taking IT when I was in college. At that time, I was taking IT in this kind of loading mode where you take IT in um you know anywhere from uh fifteen twenty five grams per day, often causing some gusty distress, often combining with fruit juice to try and shuttle into the muscles and then so called maintenance phase of a cy to ten or fifteen grams per day.

Nowadays just take about five grams or so, although later I know you're going to tell me why I should probably be taking more than five grams per day given my body weight. So we'll get into some of those specifics a little bit later. But in addition to expert seeing direct effects on uh, muscle size and strength, which I I don't know how IT contributed to my cognitive unction or if he does now because it's really no waited teeth that out with with standard at home tests like a scale.

But IT is very clear to me based on the literature um that you described in some of which we've covered on other episodes, the podcast that the Foster creating system is widely important for four brain function the forebrain of course being the a the a portion of brain broadly speaking, the portion of brain just behind your forehead that is responsible for planning action, setting rules in context so um even as simple as if you are going downfield in the game of soccer, basketball and you're on offence and then um you make an attempt on goal or basket and then it's switches and you go back now you're on defense. That being on difference is very different than being on offence and that goals excuse that rule switching is a prefrontal critical function, as is every context dependent way of thinking or or acting. And so anything that can favor function of the four brain, I think, is good for h humans in general.

Its suppresses anxiety. He allows us to interpret what's going on for us. And so i'm very um relieved and gratified to hear that creating sites at the top of the list also, as i'm sure you'll point out again later, creating is for the most part of relatively affordable supplement promotes people. So here, we're not talking about something that's really is so terrible or that you have to you know fly some remote location to get an infusion of. But although I .

apologized all you because I know the Price has skyrocket recently.

really yeah why is that?

I think is nobody else. But it's. Coral code to supply and uh, demand issue, if you will. So uh, those Prices have gone up. There's also, of course, when shipping problems in the world and think so, every time I I talk about creating right now, people just flame me for like, oh my god is so expensive now OMG, I know i'm sorry, but honestly, it's only so expensive because you're used to being so cheap.

So when when you count the fact you're like yeah like relative to the other stuff, you're probably taking relative to any other number purchases um for the is still lands very high. My R Y list, my eight, two, eight because of that is it's IT can be taken any time of the day IT doesn't have to be in magical combination. You talked about co ingesting with garden hydrates that can hands how quickly can get in the system.

In fact, it's going to work on the exact same mechanisms, will probably potentially talk about hydration, but these things are shuttle. So any time you're bring a carbon hydrate that's going to be shipped in the tissue as quickly as I can, creating and goes long gs to put right and then IT brings water through that you and hands hydrate. And so what it's important to have carbonyl rates when you're trying to hydrate.

So you're just going to take IT in there. And that's also why you get corner cold cell swelling, which is a good thing like you're it's just enhancing hydration. We actually use a ton in our post weaning protocols.

So individuals, I have to cut water away. Uh, really a great thing to throw back. And there is gonna you rehydrate. It's also why when you take thirty grams of IT IT can pull a bunch of fluid in the in testing and and three go through a little bit of G I distress so um yeah there is a lot of fun things you can talk about there. Um I just had to flag that because every time i've been talking about a recently and I say g people killing me for IT so I apologize. I don't know how to make any cheaper but is still fair, fairly affordable .

yeah I would say relatively inexpensive compared to a lot of supplements out there. And when thinking about the return on investment is it's quite .

good yeah so I actually sorry, started cutting up. But I was also thinking there's been a number studies on, uh, sleep deprived is wealth greeting there can help so obvious ly sleep deprivation will generally reduce cogan and function and creating can emilie some of that drop. So if you think about in that context, I had a chrome night of sleep a well.

And if that enables you to perform a little bit Better on your job and you would make up the dollar or so whatever you paid for that days supply of creating. So IT is something I can on that note, it's not going to work as an acute response. So it's not something you're like I feel terrible and we throw some creating down the hatch.

I feel Better that that's not going to work. It's going to take several weeks to have a noticeable effect that needs to be stored in tissue and needs to be built up before you can actually do much of anything. So IT is unlike some other things like stimulus or caffeine that have an acute no response right now ah and so if you're going to take IT, you probably need to consume IT consistently.

If you can't do that, then really there's no point in doing IT. And the loading phase you matched distance or here is something you can do again if you need to enhances the storage of IT really quickly. So safe, for example, we've done this in some military cases, where is like you get back to base and you've only got a week and you've got to go back out, we may actually have to do little bit loading face then, but if that's not the case, um the loading faces unnecessary.

It's not really harmful other than maybe jy stress and maybe ways. But you are going to have three or four weeks, it's going to reach full saturation plying time to to be there. And if you're not three to seven grams per day range.

i'm glad you mention the slow accumulating positive effects of routine as compared to so called acute effects because the way that I think of health promoting a performance enhancing protocols like viewing morning sunlight or um in dance exercise for that matter, or creating or sleep for instance is that while they can have effects in the immediate term you might feel a little bit or in the case of a good night sleep a lot Better. It's really the accumulative effect of raising your baseline level of functioning.

No there's a another way think about is um this supplements or behaviors um and quality nutrition went done consistently over time and that doesn't mean one hundred percent of the but probably ty percent of the time lead to a sort of boy ency in your system that allows you to be more resilient under conditions where conditions aren't perfect, right and if conditions are made perfect or close to perfect and you already have that boy, that's when you really start to see the ultra high performance effects um that are so much fun but they have to be establish through consistent supplementation, consistent nutritional and so today I know are going distinguish between Normally they are called chronic and acute effects but that makes the sound like chronic almost as the moment people hear chronic well, they might think of other things but but in the context of health they typically think of the chronic illness. And we're not talking about that. What we're talking about is slow modulator effects in the body.

A lot of things in the body take time to build up, but once they have built up, they clearly can benefit us. And then other things, as you mentioned, you know stimulant for instance here has a very acute effect that is going to occur with you know peak within thirty minutes and wear off within you four hours or so can also have some chronic effects, but typically it's a short live effect. So just want to frame up the the language that will be using, and i'm really excited to dive into the top. I think creatine is a beautiful example of a supplement that has positive chronic mental and physical benefits down the road.

I can come back and talk a little bit more about creating and we can cover some other information regarding best practices for getting the most out of IT as well as we're certainly dive into some of the common side effects or at least a thought of side effects while we're at here, though I also could throw in a few other of these high impact, low cost, generally safe um things that are my eighty two thousand years, if you will.

So the way I actually kind of think about IT is you want one from each of three categories and these categories are fuel, stimulant and fatigue blockers. So creating is actually in the fuel. It's not a stimulant.

We talk about rony effect there, so we already knocked that one up. Another one from the fatigue locker is going to be anything like beta Allene or sold by carbonate. And then from the stimulate use, of course, we have anything like a beat root use to a caffeine or something of the equivalent. So we can come back again to talk about all those in more detail A A little bit later.

Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is also separate for doctor andy gala pins teaching research roles at costa foton. IT is, however, part of our desire and effort to bring zero costs to consumer information about science.

And science really tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, we'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is momentous.

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And this is, of course, important because we realized that many of the human and podcast listeners outside the united states, if you would like to try the various supplements mention on the huberman lab podcast, in particularly supplements for hormones, alth, for sleep optimization, for focus, as well as a number of other things, including exercise recovery, you can go to live momenta, spelt O U S. So that live, momentous dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by levels.

Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods and activities affect your health by giving you real time feedback on your blood blue coast using a continuous glucose monitor. Many people are aware that there are blood sugar, that is, their blood glucose level is critical for everything from fat loss to muscle gain to healthy cognition and indeed aging of the brain and body. Most people do not know, however, how different foods and different activities, including exercise or different temperatures environments, impact their blood blue coast levels.

And yet, blood lue coast is exquisitely sensitive to all of those things. I first started using levels about a year ago as a way to understand how different foods, exercise and timing of food relative to exercise and quality of sleep at night impact my black blue cose levels. And i've learned a tremendous amount from using levels and taught me when best to eat, what best to eat, when best to exercise, how best to exercise and how to moderate my entire schedule from work to exercise and even my sleep.

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I want to ask you about something that as soon as I say IT, some people might roll the ize or wonder, why are we even talking about that now? But that, I have to believe, is among the more fundamental, if not foundational, aspects of nutrition and supplementation for performance. And that's hydration, right? I mean, I think we hear hydration like, okay, we have to drink sixty glasses of water every day.

Our yarn should be relatively clear if it's too dark yellow, we're not doing good job of hydrating enough. How much of that is true? Um is alkaline water worthwhile for changing the alkalinity ity of my body? I learned when I was in college and graduate school that the alkalinity of the different tissues in your body is very well controlled in order to keep you alive and that you don't want to to shift too much, or you can enter pretty horrible states of season, vomiting and even death.

So tell me about hydration and woven into that, if you would educate me on electorates and hydration. Because I think most often when people in just electoral zed, sure they could be interesting. Sult tablets probably gave some electronic lights, by the way, electro lites, so you manius an peason through their food. I think most people think about drinking electorate. So water and electro lights, I think, is a vitally important topic to kick this off with.

Sure, we can jump right in here oakland water mother's perhaps much to say about this. Uh we can maybe revisit this in another seven part series on on its own. Um I would just say this way, there's probably a few things you should do before worrying about the alliance of your water and i'll just leave IT at that meaning .

the alkalinity the waters is sort of irrelevant .

not that you will only go that far is is probably remember we started started off talking about eighty twenty well this would be in my like ninety nine one in terms of like if we're really at the level of warn about the PH of you're drinking fluid, uh, we have optimized so many other things ah that then we can talk about that. But until we have nailed months and years of work on other things, this is is not going to make much of an impact.

great. Then perhaps you could tell us about what volume of water we should be drinking, when we should be drinking that water relative to training and just generally and anything else relate to water and electronic lights that can improve mental performance, physical performance and offset any you effects.

I like the fact you mentioned physical and mental performance because that's clear in both cases. We here that we need to drink more water. And I can give you some numbers, and I will in a second.

What we also recognized is there's this is hormesis. We talked about horses is say a few episodes es ago. And this is the case, right? Whether we talk about food or hydration or that I gave the example sign naturally occurring, your food, how water is the same way.

So if you are under hydrated or dehydrate, there is a clear negative effect on your body. And as I increase the level or improve the level of hydration, things get Better. Whether there are physical performance with that, this is mental performance.

In fact, we know that a body weight reduction of as low as two percent via dehydration. So imagine you're doing about of exercise and you're sweating and you lose two percent of your body weight. That alone is enough to reduce accuracy performance.

So the classic study we talk about here was in basketball players. So shooting accuracy. So free throw shooting, I think is specifically they looked that um significant reduction in performance with as little as two percent dead draw at that level. You also see a significant increase in perception of difficulty of exercise. And so only right at two percent I when I say two percent, I mean percent body would lost, right that's what that means.

You start getting the three, four, five percent the addiction, you start having a significant reduction in blood volume and that's incredibly important for enduring your blood becomes biscuits if it's hard to pump through um and you're going to start having all kinds of issues. So being dehydrated is again, not only going to reduce performance, but because of the mental aspects which we just walk through uh and there are muscular issue, you're gona lose accuracy, you're going to lose total indoor performance and you're going to lose speed and power. So we have to try out there.

And no matter what you're interested in, it's gonna harmed by being dehydrated. That also is happening. And if you're starting your program, the hydrogen, so um if you're already one percent so high, maybe like a little and the loose a little bit sweat, you've already hit that two percent.

And so we're starting to see reductions um in performance there. The same happens on the other side of that, how metic curve. So if you are optimistic, yd rated in some large window, but you start going past that, we can start running in the equal problems.

Remember, there is a, there is a need for an optimal concentration of sodium and plastic and chloride between yours cell, inside yours cell, outside y're cell. These are electric. This is what we call osmotic. And as militaries, this is really to think of IT like concentration and osmotic of humor with those terms. So if we are trying to create a musical traction that requires an electrical gradient, and so sodium in patasse um specifically in magnesium, calcium are positively charged and glory is negatively charged.

And we need to have a certain amount inside the cell and outside the cell so that the positives and the negatives are baLanced appropriate um so that when we move on, we change the voltage and we have in the case of a muscle contraction. So I just came through a whole lot of a physiology to say, if you then go mess with flew ID only and you say, if I to give you a bullet of, you know, three leaders of pure water right now, you're going to dilute your blood. And so there's not going to be as many chemical, there won't as many electrical signals.

And there because you taken the same amount dia patatras and put IT in a larger volume of pure water. So that gradient is now changed. That becomes a significant problem for contraction.

Um I mean, quite literally, I can kill you. This is what we call hypo nat rima ah so nature mia built N A hypo being low type on a trivium. Um if you actually go to the period, R N A is what we use for sodium so high because the word is in a trimm, actually.

So that what that literally means is low sodium. And you didn't get that from sweating out of your sodium, you actually get hype and a treme from drinking too much water. So it's not that the total of sodium is low, is the fact the concentration low, excessive fluid intake.

So in the extremes fact, if you look at the the literature, you'll see um anywhere between like two to fifteen people who finished dn races are are indi hype and dreaming and that that varies wildly if you're doing iron man and cona verses like you know the marathon in denver n in october, right it's it's going to be totally different depending on other conditions, but these are all important um so well, like death happens that is sort of extreme. If you back up just a little bit, you start seeing the same types of performance circuits. In fact, the symptoms can be identical, brain fog, confusion, performance, a irritation, a gi distress and you think, man, these are symptoms of dehydration and you drink more water and you just exacerbating the problem and I can actually um give you one little example of this.

We had an executive, actually female C O. I'd say he is probably was in her early forties. And so he came to us and he thought, man, for sure, he had some sort of gut problem going on, because we hear a lot about kind of gut health and how IT affects everything.

And so he is like, I have brain fog and i've on all these things and I got blood, worked done and everything's fine. Like nothing going on. I think I must have some sort of good thing are going on, whatever is okay.

And we just started going through her stuff, and h SHE was, I think, about one hundred and seventy pounds poster minus. And he was consuming, like two hundred, fifty, sixty hands of water day. That's a tony water.

And we were like, holy shit, what are you doing this for? And this is like that sort like my thing was, but you didn't realize he was more like a nervous tick than I was anything else, right? SHE just like sipp sip sip water and like, man, how often you go page, she's like, yeah like every thirty minutes or something and like fantastic sleep problems focus so SHE smashing cafe .

you like a cup of coffee day.

which is a totally right so it's like, okay, we don't really need to come in and runa sleep study on you where is going to lower your water and he was like, what ah we dropped her down like one eighty. So basically announce per proud of body way which .

is still he did train answer SHE does .

work out so he needed to replenish themselves. We'll cover these numbers in the second instantly seeming like two days in she's like, oh my god, I have a slept six eight hours and years and then after that I was like basic test coming back to was right my focus, my brain fog is gone because he's in a very high pressure job um like everything is coming back like now he is down to three or so cups a day like the whole thing digestion improved all of IT SHE was sit like to her only problem.

After all, the analysis when he was just drinking way, way too much water and adding more salt to her would not have solved the problem because he would just had simply way too much fluid system. So he was having all kinds of eighty eight problems in a dose and like the whole thing and that that rose in the court as all the whole like system gets goes in the chaos. So um IT is important that you pay tension I dering um even though, as you sort of to mentioned, people tend to this kind of rule their eyes around IT because if you're in the middle is fine, but if you're anywhere past, not even the extreme extremes but just that first standard deviation away, you're going have problems. And you might be thinking a dream of fatigue, you might be thinking you're trust out like you really think all these things and you simply just have an actually doubt in your hydration.

I think people sometimes roll their eyes at the discussion of hydration because IT just doesn't sound very sexy. It's not like doesn't sound like a neuro transmitter or or hormone. IT just sounds like test oster and rested in our T H, A or dopamine, but IT actually is all of those things. Yes, IT sits at a level beneath all of those, but not beneath on a hierarchy, beneath in terms of a foundation. It's actually the without proper electronic baLance and hydration, none of the cells of the body can function.

And then I think people also hear that, oh you know we are seventy percent water and somehow like is that statistics alone um where that fact alone doesn't seem to stimulate any kind of action will take away like great, you know like gravity also know keeps us from jumping his eyes. We like what do I do and so I think um it's it's important that people understand that every cellars processes in the body critically relies on having enough sodium, a management potash around and the the way that is concentrated in fluid water is really the way that you allow every cell in your body to function as well as IT possibly could and respond to all the sorts of kind of ticket high performance tools yeah they we're talking about. The other thing i've observed many times over is that if people are interesting too much water and also drinking a lot of caffeine, and their electro lights are low, they get shaky, and they actually can have anxiety like symptoms.

When people come in to my lab to studies on anxiety. And here we ask a few questions, and those questions include how much water they've had that day. Also a sort of bizarre fact, but one that I think is worth mentioning is that when the blade is full, IT stimulates a sort of anxiety. If you ever had to urinate very badly and you're in the car or you can't your name, and then you get to the door like that talk about an um and that's because there's a direct neural pathway from the batter that registered the mechanical sensors, how much stretch there is on the batter that sends a signal to the brain stem alertness areas, broadly speaking, los realist and others um that wake us up these are that when we're awake and makes us more awake and when we're sleep, this is what makes us up to you .

in the middle night yeah that's actually why you can use a and as A A pretty good diagnostical sleep disorders. So if because of face of present, right, almost exactly what you're talking about, if you're having sleep to solar issues and you're staying wake and uh a visual present gets taken off, right? A P N goes straight to the kidneys.

Your kidneys are supposed to dormant basically at night. You know we felt doing a lot in producing a lot of you and at night, um if that's happening and and say you you have any number of happens kicking on or anything going on, this the president keeps going, keeps any signal kidney start filtering. So if you're waking up in paying multiple times a night that's called notorious is a very, very good sign that either one of two things happen.

You one, you have some sort of sleep to sort or two, you're drinking out rage's amounts of water. And so that's actually a bit of a backward cycle that right, because you're drinking wait too much water, you waking up and paying all night, that's actually running your sleep. And we have seen this a number of times with our sleep companies.

We go and this is like you don't need any this crap, you just need to be properly hydrated. Alternatively, if your hydration is sound and you're still waking up more than one time and night to pee on average, then you almost know I shouldn't say like that, but there's a potential that you actually have some sort of sleepy or a sleep condition going. And so the rule of thumb that this or here once or night, once a night or so of your nation is fine.

Um if IT is routinely or consistently more than two, you need to make some adjustments. Start with hydration is the simplest way, right? Getting a full sup study done, just figure out hydration. We've had this happen a number of times where people want to get more health conscious and they just get to hear things like this. And I like, I got to get to my water and then they just start train rain or sleep, they're waking IT up.

So if you're waking up multiple times and you're you're nation and IT is a large amount of your n for you and IT is clear, that's probably not sleep at the indus nocturnes probably successive midrates if you're waking up a bunch times and it's fairly small amounts of your and then it's probably not uh, the fluid issue is probably the fact that the basic present is kicking your kidneys in the gear. So that's not a perfect criteria, but this is just like a quick little tool you can sort use. That's actually we one of the reasons why we measure almost always uh, your body weight at night as well as in the morning.

So that's like the combat sport in the u fc, fighters, boxers, we call that your float so much, you float overnight. I like to know that number because I want to know as well your first morning boy, so when you wake up, you went to Better two pounds. You woke up the next morning at one ninety five.

Oh, you floated five pounds. Did you p last night? Yeah, yeah. Three times interesting another case, you woke up, you went to Better two pounds.

You wake up at one ninety nine point five, okay, you're dehydrated because you should have A A A certain amount of of flu that you're just rest worrying out as you're breathing without your nose or not ideally guarantee you going to wake up what was your earn like, oh yeah, little bit pretty dark. Like shocker. You're dehydrate.

You can kind of look at numbers like that. A general float is something like a pound to two pounds for the hundred and seventy plus one person. As you scale up, that number can go up a little bit, but you can kind of use these to trios a little bit about what's going on with this kind of combination.

Everything is everything, right? So like it's not just about one system. So you going to pay attention. You can also look, I know if you can jump in to, we can, but there's a whole munch of ways I can teach you to diagnose idrac. And maybe we can start there and then we can talk about hidden numbers.

Yes, I love to talk about diagnostics s for hydration over hydration dehydration tion. To start off, would you be willing to give us some numbers? How much water should we be drinking?

The classic rule here, and you're making me do what I hate. I won't give all the cavy at first. Go straight.

Your number half announced per pound of body weight is a rough rule. So a few way in two hundred pounds that would mean drink a hundred rounds. Ces of water day, most water bottles are like twelve to twenty answer something like that.

So you know you up drinking six or those years old a day kind like poster minus, which is not that unreasonable. Um this does depend on a number of factories at which I could go over, but that is A A rough starting place. The only other thing to add to that is that does not account for exercise induce water loss or sona or having like that.

So that's assuming just like basic daily needs, if you are a exercising or sweating at all for any reasons or work related. So um folks at work outside or the heater, uh a human environment, these numbers all change. You can slide the scale up, but you gently want to drink about one hundred and twenty five percent of the flu is you've lost during that physical activity .

back and how much you lose per hour express is that .

number ranges between one to five pounds depending on the person. Nicky didn't be hard with some of our a athletes like I can think of a number of N, F, L players right now. It's not in common for those guys to two, eight, nine pounds even not even like crazy circumstances if it's August and more n jacks and bill, it's not wild for us. Those guys go nine.

ten pounds. But what about the typical person who goes to a air condition gym or goes out for a run on a day that is somewhere between, let's say, fifty five degrees from in height and eighty five degrees from probably .

looking at like a pound, it's not extremely high. If you are totally soaked, might be like a pound and a half to two pounds if you're like to come back and like your pitzer a little sweet and there's a little bit of water kind of on your neck line, it's probably like a more like a pound and or so. So in that case, you might drink back a pound and .

a half of water. okay. So just to review these numbers to make sure that on the correct page here, a half an ounce of fluid per pound of body weight is a the sort of a foundation for hydration, and then you want to replace one hundred twenty five percent of the fluid loss during exercise. And exercise varies where exercises done varies with than not. People wear uniforms or helmets is going to impact how much flu they lose in a very hot environment, that the amount of fluid loss can be anywhere from, you know, one to five, maybe in ten pounds per hour of hard, hard decision from most exercise done in conditions of fifty five degrees from eight, seven, two, excuse me, eighty five degrees, very height done with some degree of effort. One might lose a pounder or two pounds of water.

Super easy way to find out all you have to do is way yourself naked. Go to your workout, come back and dry off way yourself naked. That'll tell you exactly what you lost.

If you win in your one hundred and sixty pounds, you come back out. You eight, you want to fifty eight, you've lost two pounds. Drink back to a half pounds water, you good. So that is a, is a honesty, is a fairly gold standard for identifying you can actually buy a whole bunch of technology for and they are using the exact same equation, which is your body quite when you were there. Now if you do that though, you do need to account for any fluid you drink during the workout because that then offset IT is simple.

But I think important question we're talking about a half announce of fluid propound a body weight. Does that include things like coffee, tea, so a press kit drinks, mid workout drinks, mota, mota, whatever? You know there's a year, but monday there are million things out there, or just water.

Any fluid for the most parties going to count?

And is IT true that fluid that contain caffeine generally causes your secret sodium?

yeah.

okay. So do you recommend including electoral light powder or a small ensure sodium? Or any number of other supplement type electronic lights that can replace that sodium magnesium in peason.

A couple of things we have to pay attention to do. Accurate answer that question. But you also sort of asked about, you may have not to realized, is this caffeine actually enhance dehydration, uh, which is not really what you ask, but is the probably a lot of people thought that as well.

So caffeine can but coffee doesn't necessarily do that because I remember you're coin just in that with fluid. And so uh, we used to say that all the time our coffee you hyder into IT doesn't, I might make your yarn yellow and certain in gives off an older in your yarn. But in general, coffee will not do that because you're does if you were now be taking cafe in hills alone.

Now there, there is a bit of a direct effect there. So you're going to earn how much maybe not enough you to be really concerned with, especially when you baLance that against the ergonomic facts and benefits of caine. It's not something we are concerned about. Second about your question, do you need to then offset the loss? So i'm not super concerned about the amount of sodium lost a caffeine. I am more concerned about simply the amount of sodium being correct because of the bigger circumstances like how much is actually in your system and how much you lost in the training session is not the caffeine than I care about that much relative to if you lost three grounds of sodium because of the training and you added another few milli grams because the caffeine I don't already .

care or or didn't i'm glad you brought up the difference between a substance like caffeine and the vehicle is containing like coffee. This is all really important and IT also raises a question by individual differences in sweating ability and I call IT sweating ability because I have a good friend i've known for ages really um actually work with him in my laboratory as well and he's one of these people that the moment he starts any physical activity it's like a flood warning, right? He just soaks through clothing is just the sweating adaptation is is exceedingly robust in him, other people less so.

So is IT true that sweating in our ability to dump heat through by loss of water is something that we turn very on, and that also that we can build up the capacity. I know a number of people are probably knows, why would I want to sweat more? But there is actually a huge adventure. Be able to dump body heat during exertion because body he in some ways sets the cap for performance many.

many ways, including mental performance.

Our ability to stay alert often is enhanced by being cold. And course we all want to warm up properly but um in terms of loss of fluid through sweating, is there way to easily bin ourselves into kind of a low sweater, medium sweater, heavy sweater that sounds like an article clothing but .

in any another a lot to say here. We had a whole series on .

this if we have to go seventeen hours, we can do IT. Just everybody hydrate. Well.

I think we've shown the listeners, uh, that is a real threat, is a very real threat.

Podcasting to failure. You want to do every set in the gym to failure. But here, where no podcasts ilu.

In all seriousness, what is the role of sweating ability? And is this something that any of us should care about or train for, or pay attention to us? This is kind of getting into the arkansas.

No one. You can train your ability to sweat. This is important for heat acclimation and why that matters when you sweat that actually is not what regulators your temperature uh what you want to have happen is the fluid to hit your skin and that to be evaporated. That's the actual mechanism. So in fact, um if you stop sweating, like you can guarantee with in a short amount of time, you're going to be done moving .

of very interesting. I hope people heard that and really are are highlighting down their mind that sweating as a process of bring fluid from your body under the surface of your skin and then the heat dumping aspect of sweating is the evaporation of that off of your body, which brings to mind all sorts of ideas about how to dress, string, exercise, that set.

But what you said is that if you are not sweet enough, you are limiting your output capacity. So it's not just about having ough fluid to sweat. It's also about being able to sweat and being dressed appropriately as to allow that sweat to move, to evaporate off your body. Yes, and he actually .

making training is as simple as that sounds. So just practice IT more. So, uh, if you're going into a process, you either need to be in a hot environment or you need to improve your sweat rate, you just need to practice sweating and your body will get Better.

That practice assa practice, you usi just getting those things and you will a improve your ability to do that. Now there is a huge genetic component. Um I have one individual, actually a uc fighter have been working with, I don't mind singing his name, you'll give me for permission.

Scotland ltd, many, many years. Um he's actually um fighting right now. Actually today he'll be going he is like he is like he described like buckets and buckets and buckets of floods come off this guy when he's tying issues and he just goes right like and we've we've improved that actually sweat too much.

We worked on that a lot early in his career and we we got some improvements down to get him to hold on to. The view is Better. That being said, i've worked at other individuals in his wake category and is the ops right? So we can have them literally do the exactly trying session together.

And Scott will dump six pounds and and other folks at his size will dump to to one half. So there's a general component that this is there and you don't need to worry about that there. So can you identify if you are a heavy salt sweater or not? Well, you have a whole bunch of routes for this.

Number one, as you can use the old free cost free test of just looking at your clothing and if you're seeing that White residue all over IT. So you've all have the friend who probably wears the same best baseball hat that you've had for eight years. If IT is covered in the White junk all over the place, um that's A A sign of a higher salt slaughter.

If the opposite happens, ends like you can pull their clothing back and there's nothing there. There maybe a little bit of a lower salt sweater and you can also use any number of a hydration test. I know that there is some coming out the market very, very soon. Now can give you theoretically real time um measurements is like A C G M would be uh although I haven't seen any data on if those are accurate or not have a used one yet.

But there are a number that are out super cheap and ten, fifteen, twenty blocks away up to a couple hundred dollars where you can buy these patches, put them on you and get a reasonable close estimate um and again, if those things are five or ten or twenty percent off, I don't know, have to see independent data come out first. But even if they are, you you not worried about this specific milligrams, right, whether you sweat out two hundred and fifty milligrams and work out if it's thirteen, forty IT doesn't really matter. You're trying to look for a big, big numbers, right? Are you lose in five hundred milligrams using three and half grams when you are out? So those things will give you in the a ball park to do exactly.

You just say my high, medium or low and there's a lot of them that that are using the past so that that's another way to go about IT. Um then what you want to do is probably match your election right intake to something close to what you so that's the ideal scenario. Um you can get a lot information on the duration from blood.

Um you can look at like a cute markers of the duration like him, a global homogeneity. Uh, if you're like your hima global is like fifteen plus. It's funny.

We have talked about this in a few episodes before, but I see that on my man that do superfit that's like a fifteen uh, for him that would be pretty high. Fourteen or so would be pretty good for a female as also the exact same thing is the sign of a cute addiction. Um so i'm adequate.

Same thing. If you're north of fifty percent, you probably hydroid. So you get like there are also though a lot of bio markers that can tell you more about chronic dehydration, so you can run through those things as well.

So good blood chemistry task can tell you a lot, and you can actually get some insights in your sodium peason. Our human is another fantastic way to to measure longer term addiction status is not these amazing global Lance that we sort of talk a lot about. So you can do all those things.

You can also simply measure the body weight, be imposed and use a sweat patch or not and you see the free your version of your clothing test and get a rough idea of what you're getting IT from. So those are good places to start. Um I want to go back to make sure I wasn't over terrifying the audience too much on a super piece.

If you're performing a type of training or exercise or sport in which you're not losing more than two percent your body way, you don't need to be overly concerned about hydrating in the sport. And so we can actually get in that to some equations for how much water to drink during training right now. But if if you're in losing less than that is not critical.

You can have some fluids if like makes you feel Better, but you're not going to be experiencing remedying a months of perform segments if you're you know again outplaying uh a baseball game and is fifty degrees out and you're fine, i'm going to drink some water. But that's not going to be proposed ing performance or recovery. So um we can actually then actually would like I can go through the three step system for optimizing hydration. But those are I I want to make sure plan that flags so people to terrify that they got to be gozen downer if they're going to their physical therapist. S for some stretching that's probably not super important.

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Understanding, of course, that you do not name of the gale in equation. Listen, folks, scientists can have things and after them. But in general, it's not reflective of healthy psychology if they named things after themselves, correct? Sometimes, yes, no anatomists used to do that.

But in any case, doctor and the gobin did not name the gallopin equation after himself. I named IT after him. And the galley in equation for how much flu to industry exercise is.

you want to take your body weight in ounds and divide that by thirty, and you want to consume that number, which should be an answers about every fifteen to twenty minutes. So in the example uh, of you being two hundred pounds, you would take two hundred divided by thirty, which is let us call that number seven to be close, which means you would consume about seven ounces of water every fifteen or twenty minutes or so. And now as a little bit of point, while I also did not name and I also didn't do the research, it's important to point out that other scientists figured these things out. I just read their papers and made that derivation of the equation to make a little of these, your frost folks who I do not work on the metric system.

Okay, couple of things. First of all, i'm not two hundred pounds, but IT doesn't matter how much I way because the point is that the listener, correct, should take their body weight in pounds provided by thirty and just that number of answers influent every fifteen minutes. And then for those out there outside the U. S. That are customer to thinking in mill leaders and leaders not answers and kilograms, not pounds, what is the galloping equation in the metric system?

This would be two midd leaders per kilogram, which again, if you were h, let's say two hundred pounds, that's going to be something roughly like or like ninety kilos s and so if you did two million per kilo, you'd be something like one hundred and eighty middle leaders of fluid again, every fifteen or twenty minutes.

great. And how should people in just that fluid? And of course, I would imagine that through their mouth top, I hope there are other surfaces that they might advise.

But let's not go there. They're drinking that water consistently or is IT every fifteen minutes they slug IT back. Does IT matter.

okay? Yeah, that's very good. Uh, handful of things in general. You talk hydration, the slower and steady you can go the matter n in fact, the reason these these two militaries partial gram uh number came out is because a number of trials were run when they looked at that every fifteen minutes, just one bowlers of IT you know in different derivation.

And that is pretty clear that the slower pace one could do at the Better. So whether you're doing in every ten minutes for fifteen or twenty minutes, a reason we actually give that gap is because you have to be also offset a little bit of G I. distress.

In fact, like other than the four golden rules of recovery, if you will, um we use all of three hours. You need to rebuild rehydrate and replenish what that really means as you need to have a continuous google stream, need to have a continuous acid stream, you need to hydrate, and you need to do all one, two and three without disturbing. You got too much.

And so in this particular case, IT was sort of found that we can hit that level in general and be just fine for most people. So in a little bit of context, the example we gave there in both cases is something like six to seven ounces for fifteen or twenty minutes. If you think about that, there are sixteen ounces and pound.

And most water bottles, like if you go buy a water bottle on the store here is they generally come in like sixteen ounce bottles. So six or seven announcers is really like a third of a water bottle maybe every fifteen or twenty years. So minutes.

So it's not some aggregate amount of water that you have to send down. Now that is influences heavily by how hydrated you started the session with, so how hyder you came in external factories like heat, humanity, temperature, things like that. But that gives you a rough idea um that again, and these are numbers that you would need to consume to optimize performance.

At the end of that then is when you would look to see how much I lost, like we talked about early, and then add back at one hundred and twenty five percent, taking into account how much fluid you adjusted. So if you're two hundred pounds and you drink a total of, say, a pound of water during the training, and he started off at two hundred and you finished at one ninety eight, you actually lost three pounds, not two pounds, because you lost three. You drink one during IT.

So your final net number is two. So now you know you really need to drink back one hundred and twenty five percent of that remaining two pounds to and out pounds, something like that um these numbers especially that one twenty five or there are just rough guidelines um some maxi papers suggest it's only up to hundred and fifty percent. So is just like an idea, don't measure out whether you need five point five ounces or six point two ounces. Like IT just started gives you an idea of where to start out. A few steps every fifteen, twenty minutes is close enough.

I've actually started using a the glp in equation to determine how much flew IT I need for mental work, given the now robust data that are out there on the relationship between hydration and mental workers been very effective for me. And again, there are p reviewed studies that that support the idea that hydration is important for proper mental clarity and energy and focus and that even being slightly the hydroid can disrupt that.

But if one is drinking so much water that they're frequently going to the restaurant and can't comfortable ly focus on the work they are doing, that's also an issue. So um that's very helpful. What are the three most critical features of hydration? And then i'd like to move on to um some of the more particularly about supplementation and nutrition.

Three parts start hydrated, maintain hydration throughout. Part three is hydrate post to fix IT. Okay, we gave you the half ounce per pounds of body way equation, so you start the training hydrated.

We gave you two million years per kilogram slash body way divided by thirty to stay hydrated. And we give you the one twenty five percent. But I can actually just give you sort of i'm giving you another list here.

I'm sorry, but IT is my five step cheater guide for optimizing hydration for performance. So I step number one, drink a lot of water first. The morning this gets everything kick started that you going in to also saves you from having a drink, a bunch water at night, which is then going to compromise your sleep.

What's a lot depending .

on how big you are. The general thing, i'll tell people, is like one of the very first thing you should do through your day. You wake up, go to the bathroom as you're consuming your sunlight, consume water. This is maybe chugging a four glass won to see what I do is not the best way out but I just get like sixteen nounce or so as great. It's fine if you're larger.

Um you know i'm one hundred sixty five to seventy pounds depending on what's gone on, maybe little hard sometimes if you're two hundred twenty five pounds maybe that numbers thirty answers so you just sort of scale up and down. And the only reason I say a lot is IT just depends on on what you're doing. And I also should clarify, I don't really literally mean hug just like sip because the faster you drink water, the faster it's going to expand blood volume. The faster extends blood volume, the faster you get rid of IT.

I don't think a lot people know that .

yeah this is maybe is clarifying. This is also we sort of talked about earlier, if you drink too much water, you'll delete the system. Well, if you have a deluded system, your body's first reaction is to rid of water to bring total blood volume down. I remember if you're going to go to a doctor and they looked to your total blood volume and like men, you're five and half leaders, you're going to be like, holy crap. You're going to be put on a dialectic because you don't want have a heart attack and a blood pressure.

I I wonder if people are drinking a sixteen hours glass of water or other fluid all at once before going to sleep, and that's why they're waking up in the midnight total. Given what you just said. Probably a Better protocol would be to sip on a glass of water in the final hour, two hours before sleep.

Generally the number we says three hours in the three hours proceeding sleep, you want to basically limit flood and take the sipping as needed.

I think that i'm going to start that tonight ah because I wake up generally once per night use the bathroom and I do drink some floods before I go to sleep pretty see at that time yeah um but i'm going to start sipping that water in the um three hours heading into sleep yeah .

so you can actually pay tension to is um to go back this actually I love doing the stuff, but if you're waking up at night and you have a very dry mouth.

me right.

because you can be one of two things you might actually be dehydrated. And so then the mistake people makes us like, man, my mouth is so dry, I keep getting up to drink water at night that makes you the in too much but that also indicates is probably your mouth breathing. So a lot of ways to fix people waking up in your dating too much night is to tape your mouth and or use A A dilecta over your nose.

And then what happens is you don't feel like a heavy, dry mouths. You will get up to consume in the extra water throughout the night. So that actually reduces your, your fluid intakes. You don't have the problem of action.

Now, having so much fluid do IT and so is another reason why mouths taping can really, really help um if you are having those issues uh and or snaring those are not benie that that's really that you really should get some work on those um something. You you're not sleeping very well is the way I say it's does doesn't necessarily mean something in life threatening but it's not a good thing. So um you gna run kind of your trial ging things back and force.

So if you like, i'm waking up to be a lot, but my mouth isn't thirsty. Okay, great, then you may actually have just a water consumption issue. If IT is my mouths is dry, but i'm actually waking up and having these large your nations, then you're not actually dehydrated.

You're just bread through your mouth. If you wake up in your mouth is dry and there's not a lot of people there, then you actually might actually legitimately be under hydrated. So a little bit of a game you can play there.

Well, that's super informative. I think that the point alone that gulping a bunch of water all at once is going to cause you to need to excrete that water soon after is a really important point also for people that are going to you and give a talk or you don't want to have to get up to use the restaurant, you have to sit through a long meeting. Yeah, clearly, i'm violating all these rules up until right now.

I, you know, I follow the sea al approach to the consuming close in enormous volumes. I want to start sipping fluid instead. What are some of the other rules of hydration?

So you going to wake up, you to start your day and start so you're consuming a larger percentage of your water earlier in the day, then you get all the performance enhancing effects of water and you don't have to worry about a compromising your sleep. So that step number one, also now you going to start your session closer to hydration, right? great.

Number two, eat mostly real whole foods. why? interesting.

What you may or not have thought about is a huge to terminate of your hydration status is your food choices ah if you look at different foods are, for example, most fruit, watermelon. Watermelon is like ninety five plus percent water. Fantastic source.

Also, by the way, once we're here, IT is not extremely high. And car, by oe, it's not extremely high. And sugar, IT is my percentage. But IT, since this is almost exclusive water you're eating, IT is not something that is extremely dangerous in terms of sugar. Um I there alone probably of all the things we have talked about, the six, six episodes of that comment right there will probably blow the internet to pieces and i'll probably .

get hate mail .

e for life for but from people during .

water watermill .

yeah yeah I don't think the .

point is that sugar is necessary bad. I think the point is that for most people they're interesting too much sugar. Most people yeah and it's interesting often tense the people who are justifying the injustice of sugar exactly the kind of people that should not in just so much sugar. So there's a little bit about well, a user by the point .

here is if you're eating whole real food, this is like network. We're of splitting hairs about this. thanks.

So morning hydration food .

yeah now important point here. If you compare to other foods um like actually meat is is a very high percentage of fluid depending on how well or long you've cooked IT. You just remember you said earlier, seventy percent water, right? So if you're eating meat, you're getting actually a big chunk of water as you cook out.

Of course, you will lose some of that. But meat can be like, I wouldn't call IT a hydration food item, but IT is not as low as something like a biscuit, which can be actually like ten percent water as why is like dry and dense, which doesn't mean bad for you. But there, if you're eating highly processed foods almost by association, that means they're been dehydrate or partially, right? So you're just getting less total fluid in tech.

In addition, they have also been highly salted in general. And now where in this position where were under hydrate and highly ly salted about spot, if you now switch over to mostly and can just mostly whole real food dish, whatever that means, you then your hydration is going to a skyrocket. You're gonna a lot, so you're eating a toner food.

In fact, IT should be a large percentage of the fluid intake you have, actually should be coming from your food. You shouldn't have to be smashing water bottle up your water bottle all day in that case. So you do need assault back.

So we do see this a lot with people who try to make a transition for maybe a sub optimal nutritional life style. And they they give up a little of other process who they come over and they start having problems because are not actually consuming ough salt. So at that back, easy way to do that, you can use electoral ites.

So when we could talk about those numbers, if you want, if you just salt your food that you're making, you know, to taste, that's going to get most people in a pretty good spot. So start hydrated, consume hydrated foods. Step number two, step number three, you want a pre hydrate if you know you're gonna do a workout session and it's going to be hot, long or one of those things you want to look for that half a pond, uh, a per body way advances.

So that's the number we're looking forward. Start our hidden tion session. We do that. We're pretty much taking care.

And then I guess that I just depending on lifestyle, humanity and and other factors like that, um you can use what is called the what system. W U T, I think bob candified has done a tony research in this year. If you want to read more, look up his research.

Um IT is simply weight your in and first. So another check your body weight, look at your ear and color and engage your thirst. And actually, you can use through those three things and those uh can significantly predict actual hydration that is independent of actually measuring ing automatic as anything like that.

So those three metrics alone are pretty good indicator on where you're at. So you're going to have that Normal amount of water plus or minus if you miss that number for whatever reason you get distracted. The number we typically two people is like something like four hundred to five hundred million years of water in the hour proceeding the training, all right.

So that's like thirteen to twenty ounces. So like, you know, you're going to go work out three o'clock. It's two o'clock and you realized, man, I have not drink much water today. You don't need to go smash tones and tones and tones. Just look for something like that.

You know, call out a bottle of water, if you will, if that's not enough, if you're a really tough spot, you can do more like five to eight ounces, fifteen and twenty minutes before exercise. You want to be really careful about drinking a bunch of water like in the seconds before exercise because you're just going to feel the whole bunch of water bouncing up and in your stomach and nobody likes that. So one to three hundred million leaders, fifteen or so twenty minutes before.

And that assumes you're in this like hundred and eighty five pound range. Yes, again, if you talk in people of much larger size, you may need to increase those values accordingly. If you do all that, then you use a gulp, an ocasio for your interest workout donation and you're in a pretty good spot.

Um what you want to consume in that is what I call sweat. What I mean by that is you don't actually want to necessarily consume water only during a workout. You want to consume something that is ISO osmotic to your blood, so something that is the same concentration that you've lost in your sweat.

So if you've done a sweat test, you would then drink a fluid that is is of the same oslo um the short version of that, something in the neighborhood of two hundred to four hundred milligrams of sodium. Most electoral zed h products are going to be something like that. Now I know element is is a thousand milligrams and is a lot higher, but most products now that you're going to find our two hundred fifty to four hundred millions and they're typically in the like two to maybe up to three to one sodium to plastic range, right? Coconut waters actually cool. It's like basically the opposite like a cup of coconut think has something like two hundred h milligrams of sodium, but like six hundred milligrams of potassium so like spoiler alert but well, we use coconut a lot of fragrant just add a little insulting t because to bring the sodium way back up.

Yeah, one note about sodium. Obviously, people who have prehaps tension or hype tion want to be careful with their sodium intake in time. I ve suggested that people might consider ingesting more studio una.

It's like putting a target on on your back. And yet the data are pretty good, showing that if people are not getting enough sodium, they are mental clarity, their focus, their mental staminate, their physical staminate really suffers. And then people argue, well, most of us are getting too much salt.

That often is true for people that are eating a lot of process foods, training and not training. But for many people who are already or health conscious who are training, they're largely consuming or I should say, they're consuming largely non process or minimum process foods. And especially for folks who are not interesting many and our consuming caffeine know a lot of people don't know that carbo hydrates hold water.

And that makes you sound bad. It's not sadly, that you know, you're going to get subcutaneous welling of your body is bringing water in the your system and that holds water. So when you drop carbon hydrates, in particular, you you ate a lot more and when you drink cafe and you also urn nate a lot more as as you pointed out earlier.

So you start combining a few things like slightly lower carbon da or low carbo hydra eating, really quote code clean. You not getting a lot of sault in your food and during his caffeine and then exercising and then pretty soon, those numbers that come along with a gram of sodium in your electronic drink are not all that outrageous. And what you find is people feel much, much Better when they're getting enough sodium.

And of course should um say that there is no reason why someone has to adjust a supplement like element or something. There are plenty of other ways to bring sody in to your system. Use of a pinch of pink solter humala solter c solter even just table salt in water or just making sure that you're sault your food enough.

And I think that they are too salt appetite and salt taste is a pretty good guy. If you take something and IT IT taste really salty too, that's an indication that either it's really salty or you your salt stores are kind of tapped off. You're OK whether if you're craving salt and you and you're thinking, gosh, I really want to put salt on this already salty thing, not necessarily, but often times that means that you result efficient. So salt appetite is a pretty hard wired set of neural circuits and hormones and I think um we would all be wise to learn to tap into the are kind of intuition about salt of course.

the mature lood, of course, if you think you have some sort of a work with the medical specialist without without question, um those situations you laid out though were very real. A lot of people are living like that. And so important for those folks to understand if you are going through symptoms, fatigue, a lack of focus, cognitive unction performance is isn't there then hey, like you may be unsafe, ted.

And again, actually a good amount of blood chemistry work can unravel that a lot. And I can sort of tell you, if you're going out of work, there are a number of folks who are extremely sensitive sodium in terms of health risk and that that is a real thing. Again, work with her um individual folks on that.

I don't work with anyone for disease treatment and management at all. I've said that probably four times. I'll say six more times um I would take people who are healthy and trying to make a perform at their best possible level. So it's actually funny mentioned that because I was going to give people in my recommendation for sodium intake in general throughout the day. And then I decided i'm not gna say that because all it's going to do is make all the rest of people who come to me for the watermelon comment.

come after me for that saw everyone's coming after, but everyone has learned something of value. You've already given us tremendous insights and active information on creating and hydration. And along those lies, d, i'd love for you to tell us about some of the things that we can do with supplementation in order to enhance training by taking certain things before we train. And I also have the question of how long before training should we start thinking about supplying nutrient and supplements for the training session?

I'm not sure I actually finished my fibre. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about the last once. I just want to tie that that both and will go next one yeah no is not be my fault so that uh in addition to the goal and equation terms of amount, uh I I A recommended IT roughly three one so you into the national recommendation and I gave you some rough numbers.

Things look like I actually, in honesty, used probably six to ten different h companies depending on the situation. Some of them are really good in the case. Again, like element, it's nice about that is there's no car behind rate. However, the downside is, is no carbon yd. So sometimes I want copy rates in the training because as you mentioned, there's significant evidence going back actually several decades on the benefit of carbo hydrates during exercise.

So if you're a situation, uh, where you're trying to get maximize actual exercise performance, you especially if IT is either longer'n more than two hours or extremely high intensity, and this has to be well north of hundred person of your view to max. And that situation, as we talked about the enduring episode, you can actually start having a department performance because of a drop of muslim package agen glial black agen car start coming down, if that's the case, augmenting with the carbo hydrates during the training that is going to enhances performance. It's going to do what we call spare deliver.

And it's going to keep my second rule of my four, which is maintain a glucose injustice. It's going to keep that going. In general. What you're going to find is the number is like a five to nine percent glucose concentration in your food, which turns out to be like exactly the number that most sports drinks as well as I think that pretty much exactly what a cold water is.

The downside of sport strength since we're here is they actually tend to be understood, ted, and so that they don't provide enough of them. If you look at the numbers are going to say something like six to one hundred grams of carbo hydroid per hour is the target. And now if you're using the sort of gamp and equation, you're split that up into fifteen in intervals.

It's something again, like twenty or so grams of carbs for fifteen to twenty minutes if you're doing, again, our long plus train well. So admittedly, hundred grams, uh, is a bit much for some folk depending on your size. So H, I would recommend starting in that h sixty gram are so ranged again per hour total is what you want to get to.

And all the in the situation, which muscle like in depletion is becoming a limiting factor to performance. So the other benefit of that is, as you mention, that actually drives water into the cell. And so you're going to be in that nice sweet spot of you're actually keeping glucose going, which is going to hank performance and you're helping hydration at the same time.

So the other little part that's important to page new here is the type of carbon hydrate matters. So you can use actually a whole combination of things called the resistance starches, which I will use for a long bouts of exercise. But in the want to work out, you're going to want to focus on glucose in fractus, mostly glucose, typically at least a two or three to one ratio of glucose to fructose.

And the reason is those actually get tissue through separate transporters. And so what happens as once the glucose transporters get full, you can bring anything else in. However, since fruit tos comes in a separate road, you can maximize total carbohydrates intake by using two different unique forms.

That there's a lot of ways you can do this um but this is where the momentous fuel product is. Is that specifically has that exactly in IT? So it's fantastic. You can use food, no problem.

You can use the combination of things like honey and different easily uh absorb able unusable and things you can actually like maybe put and a drink um to get away. So there's lots of rows for but you want to look in that that sort of combination uh of five to nine percent roughly glucose for there. So you do need to in your gut, so do not do anything.

And there's a generally a good rule, do not do anything in your competition that you've never done in practice. So try these food items, try these amounts, the carbon hydrates numbers. Try the sodium numbers, try the total amount, water start low. You can always increase what you don't want to do, have to run out or the middle, your spin class, and spread to the bathroom and hope nobodies in your way, which in the lab we've seen will just say accidents like that occur more than once. So um just be careful of your stomach.

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Any of inside tracking er's plans again, that inside tracker dotcoms lash huberman to get twenty percent off. I realized that jumped the gun a little bit, asking about supplementation for before daring and after a workout, because what I neglected ask about was training in the fasted state. This is something that we talked about in an early episode.

I think it's worth highlighting. now. Sometimes the best way to supplement, if you will, a workout or or per workout is interesting. Nothing, i'm one of these people. I actually prefer to do my weight training somewhere between seven and eighty each morning, sometimes a little later, sometimes a little bit later.

I drink fluid water and I do in just cafe in prior to those uh training days um on days when I don't train, I do as I often recommend um people do delay my cafe and take ninety, two hundred and twenty minutes after waking but in any event it's water and cafe in your bermont or coffee or some sort of stimulant for weight training workouts and generally not for cardio asa training workout although sometimes yes so i'm training fasted that said, i'm interesting carbon HDR at the night before to make sure that might I have like agg's stores that are topped off and so it's fasted but with that covey at what are your thoughts on training fasted? And what I just described is faster overnight, but some people are training in the afternoon and they may opt to not eat anything in the you know two to four hours prior to training or maybe even longer. I personally find that caffeine hits my system a lot Better when i'm fasted Better.

Many just seems have more of a pot effect. There are some reasons for that. And of course, we dissuade people from interesting cafe too late the day because it'll disrupt sleep.

So i'm not saying fast for three hours then drink caffeine, but who knows? Maybe that's in your protocol. The simple version of this question is, what are your thoughts on training fasted? And if people are going to train fasted, how should they modulate their fluid and take.

if at all, what happens with exercise in the entrance and metabolic episode we walk through in the fact that no matter what you're using for fuel, car behind rates or fat or even um other potential sources, the end product of all of those is A T P C O two and water, right? So you're trying to make atp that is the fuel for exercise. Now atp is a denison try, force faith.

So one, two, three fast face on top of the cy. Well, what you may have not put together is if you hybridize atp and you break up on those states, you now have A D P. If you do again, you have A M P, A dancing mono fos fight.

If you do IT one more time now, you just have a dentical. And if you have, then therefore, run through a lot of exercise, burn a lot of energy, you have increased the amount of a deny that voting around. Now, if you have a high concentration of a denisse, what's I onna make you want to do? That's kind of binaural researchers.

And we know when those researchers to get bound to you fall left, bingo. Caffeine will competitive buying to those receptors ors. Therefore, that's why caffeine stops you from feeling like you want to go to sleep, right? So we have a very clear relationship between exercise few.

In fact, if you look at the literature, there is a pretty clear relationship between the more coLoring expenditure and different sports and the higher amount of hours needed for sleep. So there is a nice time between how hard you're exercise, how much energy you're burning, how much you to sleep stimulants, which brings us all the way back to your question of feeling. So do I need a fuel prior to my exercise about if you're going to be limited in your exercise about buy fuel, then feeling is necessary, one or the other. If IT is a type of train that is not, then it's not going to matter. And so the examples we gave a if you're doing, if you're gonna go do a thirty second about a maximum exertion and you going to do one time, you don't need to worry about you at all.

We're eating within your workout because only thirty second .

yeah you get thirty second. You don't need to worry about hydration, those sexercise. You don't need to worry about recovery, total energy expenditure. Ure was nothing. Uh, if you're gonna um you know you going to go practice, you going to go to the driving range and practice your calls swing. You don't need to worry about the total count of energy expenditure is is not high. In fact, in that case, you might want to keep IT somewhat low because you want to keep blood global fairly even and you don't want to bring in to the system. You certainly wouldn't want to use stimulus, right, because you may get over the inside in all of these things.

We probably should have started up our conversation with this in terms of macromedia ts, the total amount throughout the day is more important generally than the timing of them, which is why you can do things like have a bunch of car behind rate at night, not eat the next morning and lifts and be just fine IT doesn't matter that you didn't have them in a few hours before your muscle like a genus top, top of your liver is like genus top, top. You're absolutely find your planning a few, even if you you're to wait a few more hours. In fact, even if you were to do conditioning, you're probably fine.

I have plenty about this to prefer to to many other train sessions faster the morning for personal reasons, not because IT enhanced performance, but if IT doesn't enhances or a harmful then and it's a personal preference thing, fine. If you're onna, go to a session though, where you're going to be really concerned most also like a interception. And again, go back that absolutely learn different types.

And when those specials hits and what worry about, then the feeling would be important. You would either need to have something before the session or consuming during the session. So one of the other things we like to say here is recovery starts during the previous workout, right? So if you're working out right now and you optimize nutrition right now, even if you don't necessarily need IT for the current workout, if you can get a head on recovery, then you're going to be fine the next day.

And the differentiation here between carbo hydra protein is important, so the total amount of protein you ingest throughout the day is probably a bigger determined for things like muscle growth than the timing. So the post exercise animal window IT doesn't unnecessarily matter. Carbohydrate is different.

The timing of that does matter. IT needs to be around than available. You can max ize, both hydration and muslim, like a recently sis, which is restoring the muscle like a you burn during exercise. I also work with athletes at train multiple times a day. So those particular cases, recovery window is half what you Normally have.

So if you're in a situation when you have two or three days before you work out again, you don't need to worry about getting carver hindered in before, during or after, because by the time you go to train again, you will have restorage. You must look like at in levels easily. However, if you're training every day or twice in a day, then the timing of carbon hydrate really starts the matter.

In that case, I see no reason to not. And just those nutrient, either before, during or after, you don't didn't necessarily do IT, but you can the general ruth M. I give is something like this um if you're doing something where you're trying to really work hard, but this is hyperdrive training or a lot of endurance, energy expenditure can be high, potential muscle damages high and or energy unitization is high.

What you want to look for is a number, something in the area of like half a gram of carbo hydra per pound of body weight. So you were two hundred pounds. You want to make sure that either premit or post or total, you bring in a hundred grams of carbon hydrate is just a very rough number to start.

Protein is about half of that. So it's about a quarter of your body weight, right? So those numbers would be if your two hundred pounds, you have a hundred grams of carbs and fifty grams of protein.

And again, IT doesn't necessarily have to be before or during or after. Enjoy being a good fight. All you need to do then is alter. What I do, I should say, is all through the amount carbo hydrate based on energy, expand data. So a lower energy and easier workout.

Instead of having one hundred grams of carbs, I might tack that down to seventy five, even fifty, and be at a one to one carb protein ratio. If IT was even harder, more sun, hotter outside, more fluid loss, I might go from one hundred grams of carbs up to one hundred and fifty or two hundred and closer, like a three to one or four to one carbo hydrate approaching ratio. So those are the numbers that I generally go by.

Well, I take a sip of my double less americano here. I'd love free to tell us about stimulates.

Sure, there is no shortage of these in most of our lives. And of course, you can cover the health benefits of IT later. Maybe you have an epsom. Yes.

we have an episode on caffeine. And IT does have certain health benefits, although one has to use caffeine correctly in order to drive.

So there's caffeine is the easy one to start with. And we won't believe the point here. The evidence is strong. IT has an effect. Uh, you can take IT at whatever dosage is reasonable for you.

Of course, there is A A bit of a learning curve there such that obviously, the more you take IT, the more you need to take even though there's actually some recent evidence showing even folks who are uh actually mated to IT will still see an ergonomic benefit even if they don't feel a big boost of IT. So typically, that takes thirty to forty five minutes or so, but it's highly dependent upon the person. So some people can smell coffee and and really feel Better.

And that's probably working after through a different mechanism um of anticipation. But you can take there at the half life of IT is you know four to six hours or something like that. I can totally depends the person, so don't let IT run your sleep.

But if you take a prior to performance, IT has a noticeable effect on a particularly interest maximum strength maybe less, quite clearly less so um in fact, the data are mixed there. And what that actually does anything for peak string, although I think most people would uh would suggest that you know you're going to take IT prior to trying to truly lift this is I as trying to lift a one. Opposition max are similar, but most of the the document effects are on the the enduring space sectional vie.

yes. So my read of the literature in terms of performance enhancing effects of are that one to three milligrams? I want to make sure that people hear the units correctly before you blitz themselves out.

Caving one to three milligrams per kilogram of body weight about thirty minutes prior to exercise has a definite performance hands ing effect, and also has a definite mental performance enhancing effect, especially when people who are regular caffeine users have abstained from caffeine for anywhere from two to fifteen days and and that's an extremely rare circumstance but even if they have not IT appears that one to three milligrams per kilogram of body weight of caffeine taking about it's not super precise as far as I can see about thirty minutes before the event starts um can really enhance reaction time and power output and as as well as as you mention endurance. When I was researching in the caffeine epo de, one interesting caveat that um I discovered was that if people are not cafe fine adapted, they are not regular users of caffeine. The sudden introduction of caffeine can really degrade performance, mostly because people don't know how to Operate at that high level of autonomic rosal. Have you ever .

yeah hundred percent fact that a data up as highs milligrams, which is in you cross the five milligram per kilogram threshold, you will start seeing performance documents. So there is absolutely such a thing of ruining your performance with too much caffeine. So most people listening to this, if you're thinking, wow, they said caffeine, i'm all in and then you just stop listening and now, you know, go for your qua spasso shop before you every time you go to work out and you're probably you're passing that thrush old. If you think about those numbers, one to three milligrams per kilogram body weight, if you weigh hundred, the grams at two hundred twenty pounds, that be something like two to five hundred milligrams of caffeine, which is like a pretty high amount um but you know a coffee is going to get you close and express is going to get you somewhat that ball parked depending on source of so you don't really need to go and blister your brain with caffeine. And in fact, if you do is it's quite common and in fact likely that you actually make performance worse right?

Yeah the amount of caffeine and different coffee and soda that set up, of course, varies. One thing that people ought to know is that the smallest of commercially available um coffees at the most popular commercial vendors um generally contain anywhere from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty milligrams of caffeine.

What that means is that the so called medium and the large contain as much as five hundred milligrams or one gram of caffeine. So for you morning a large coffee and commercial vender a drinkers, if you're wondering why you get a headache, if you're thirty minutes late on that caffeine or um if you can access that caffeine IT at all or even if you're drinking coffee, excuse me from another source, you're funny. Like all it's really not doing IT for me, it's because.

The amount of caffeine in the now commercially sold a coffee is exceedingly high. It's about two or three times higher than the standard. Look up tables that you will see on the internet. So i'm not saying that to demonize, uh, cafe, we can pretty adapt to informer tolerance to cafe. Um some people never really can get over the gitter other people um are just fine with uh even a thousand milligrams of caine but only because they're been drinking a lot of caffeine .

consistently anyway. It's also wildly inconsistent from location and location at the blue type of functionality. So yeah that that stuff can be very hard to figure out what what's happening.

There's only one way really to a objectively measure caffeine and use cafe tablets and they worked pretty well. Actually someone I know um who's prominent in the podcast space uses one hundred to two hundred milligrams of caffeine tablet form combined with tea. So they've now condition themselves to think that arbel t actually has this Cindy effect. But um tablet form caffeine while i'm not recommending to uh out right IT is going to give you the best sense of how much caffeine you can tolerate and how much is performance enhancing or is performance degrading.

There's actually another line of supplementation that we can go down here, which is not technical, is stimulant but is something I used to help performance when you don't want caffeine. And so this seeks specifically if you're one of those folks who have to exercise at night and you want a little bit of boost for your training, but you don't want have ka think, because that messes up your sleep.

And this is when you can turn to the whole like citrine argenton, nta oxide sort out and will skip the explanation there effectively. What happens is that triaxial is this wonderful compound that causes visual dilation. And of course, that's going to aid then in transporting new trends in and out of the cell.

Um so he has an organic effect. You have a number of ways you can go about this. Um some of them have more person cons and others and and there are more and more data coming out specifically on sitting.

And more recently, if you look though, in my opinion, the most consistent evidence for the most consistent effect is in the supplement of beat, root or beat, reduce or extract or something like that. So you can find those supplements. And they tend to, again, the pretty effective in enhancing performs, specifically anything moderate to longer duration and dance performance. And they are not a stimulant, so they won't ruin your left that much.

One note of caution for those who we they're interested in, specially in or beat root because they are in the argentine pathway. If you're somebody who has um a pretty position to cold source um or al cold source, that is other forms of cold source that um because activation of the argentine pathway can exacerbate some of the neural related aspects of cold source and that's because the viruses that cause those cold source actually live on neurons, then you want to be very cautious with situations, especially hyda citrine. I can really amplify that the equal or response.

What about non stimulant yet um focus enhancing supplements, things like alpha G P C um for example, I routinely used three hundred to six hundred milligrams of alpha gpc prior to hard physical training, typically wait training. But occasionally i'll take three hundred milligrams of alpha gpc prior to a mental workout um less often these days because I kind of reserve IT for physical training and I don't tend to use IT every day, maybe once every third or fourth workout combined with caffeine。 So that combination is pretty a pretty poor I find. And so technically, because it's a colon erg c agonist is not a stimulant in the traditional sense but IT has a um focusing in an alertness promoting aspect to IT. What are your thoughts on those sorts of compounds?

There is not much human exercise performance data on those. They are certainly cognitive functioning tests on those. So you're not going to find a lot of information.

Now though there isn't none. We actually will use many of these substances ses. You can globally call them new tropics, which is you know any substance that specifically enhance brain function is a roughly way to think about IT. We'll use them prior to more chAllenging bouts of training.

Um this is something that people all say on the spring day only um or the most important training session or a session when you're trying to work on pitch command or we are trying to enhances a work on your shot and as a bast ball player or you really trying to improve A A certain swing as a golfer or something like that. But we do not use them every day. We do not use them in every persons.

So yeah, we will use those. They are not stimulus, but they can be performance enhancing. And another kind of way to think about this is if you're in the case of color restriction, so whether you you're trying to lose weight or we're actually trying to control weight for weight purposes in terms of a sports, we have to be in a certain White class or something like that.

Well, we may not be able to give you food. In fact, we may not be able to give you stimulus because of the sleep thing or because we already like max on a stimulus. Now we can go this around.

And so you least like mentally, you're a little bit there and you're more likely to be alert and focused and you can train harder despite the fact we do actually change fuel. Now that's a little bit of a short game in terms of that's not your permanent solution. You eventually need to bring calories up, but whatever other train you're training or whatever going to do, but I can work in a nice short pinch.

I'm very interested to learn from you about fatigue ducks, and i'm hoping that radio la rosa will come up in the conversation.

Yeah, great. Let's to start right there. Then there is actually a lot of research on this despite most people not having heard of IT.

Um I think I mentioned in a previous episode i've used in a lot over many, many years um you have to be a little bit careful of IT. There's well, first of all, no and we should have said this at the onset, no supplement is a panacea right now. Things going to work for everything, really, all is no, no difference.

IT can have a number of effects. If you look across the literature, you're going to find generally somewhere between a small benefit to little benefit, but not often is IT detrimental with a few exceptions. I know of a handful of papers that would be too specifically where IT may actually reduce muscular and dirt.

Okay, fine, if you think about what's happening is one of the benefits that has been seen so far with radio om is is is helpful at managing cortisol. But cortisol suppression is not a necessarily good thing. We talked about how, if you do in a cute about a stress course, all will go go way up.

And that is a sign of of a cute stress. However, a sign of long term excessive stress is corse al suppression. And so this is a thing to be really careful of is if you're feeling down or author logic or tired, and you think you are dreams are mess up and then you start taking courses of modulators, you could be making the problem worse because now your court is all is actually suppressed.

And now you're taking these things to blunted or keep IT low and and you ue to feel etherage c and lack of desire and lebel and focus this sort of all these things. So court is all is not a bad thing. We want this to be going up and down uh in the amount that we want.

So we're thinking about like for example, waking up um you would want generally something like a fifty percent reduction in the first hour in terms quarter sl concentrations. However, if you are tremeau rested already um going down is is only going to be a problem. So rody oit is is has A A A good evidence base to support IT for that you will see actually a number of of studies that have looked at IT in a whole host of areas um for benefit.

So something good to do um the difficult part with radios to be quite onest is getting IT from my high quality brand and source. It's difficult to get as a single source, which is a very, very important thing to do with supplements, is try to get them source alone rodia IT typically comes in combination with any other rebels or other stuff dream of support and psychic ETC um and also then getting them the third party certified, which for most folks is not necessary. But for any athletes and to go through drug testing systems, you should not take any supplement at all that does not have some sort of third party certification.

So those are the chAllenges. That being said, if you've ever run into somebody who's taken rolla and like I didn't do anything for me, it's possible that know nothing worse for everyone and also could be just very poor quality sourcing. Um so if you look at um the there have been a number of papers on um its perception of fatigue and we use or to mention that they felt pretty immediate effects of taking a few times.

Yeah, i'm fairly sensitive supplements, but i've started taking roo A B or workout and found that I could push much harder, much longer through the workout. Normally, out IT were typically before taking IT. That is in sessions where I did not take that, I would be able to work out very hard for twenty minutes.

And so so the next ten minutes I could get some work output, and then there are remaining period of time. IT was kind of a tapering off. Now granted, these are very intense training sessions.

These are not the insurance training sessions. These are the way training sessions at one one time per a body part type sessions. What I ve noticed this is I can complete the entire sixty minutes with with minimal fatigue.

Now, I mean, obviously I hit fatigue within sats. And of course, you you remain human despite taking IT, but I found to be very useful. And i've been using IT whenever I use alpha gpc per prior to workouts now, and i've been impressed by by IT overall.

I do want to highlight something that you said because I think it's so, so vitally important, which is that using single ingredient formulations for most things is critical to figure out out what works through, what doesn't, what dosages you need. Being able to take things are two on, one off um two days on, one day off. For instance, being able to increase the dosage in the morning and then maybe reduced dosage and combining with something else in the afternoon, single ingredients and formulations are pretty much the only way to do.

That is perhaps only one supplement that I take at all. And that's athletic Greens. Has there been a regular part cast sponsor for a long time? That is a cocktail of many, many things, and those are all adapted gts as well as some probiotics and vitality and things like that.

So i'm not opposed to blends where the blends include a lot of new trends that are synergies isc, but for all pill capsule based supplements where i'm looking for a very targeted effect and is not just about some foundational nutrition. I really believe strongly that single ingredient and formulations are the way that you can build a rational approach to implementation and also make investments if if something is that making you feel Better and also make adjustments if something really working for you. So for instance, some people might take IT off a gpc three hundred million grams and not feel anything, go to six hundred milligrams, not feel anything, maybe just feel kind of a they don't like IT.

Other people like myself, took three hundred milligrams of the alpha gpc. The first time was like, wow, this really puts me in the zone, but I want to be really careful. Half, and I use that.

I did mention I got to six hundred milligrams occasionally, but that really puts me, on the outer threshold of kind of overall levels, focus and amped up, such that if I drink too much cafe and I can tilt me over the edge. So I encourage people to become scientists of themselves. And the only way to do that is to trying to limit the number of variables. And the final point is that I think that single ingredient ent formulations are by far the best in terms of changing things over time. You know, this could be women during their mental cycle, might find that during certain phases of the cycle they're more sensitive to certain things than not others. Um and for men and women in may be that you know certain times of year even and uh certain supplements might go Better closer to sleep some earlier in the day and on and on and on, there's just no real way, in my opinion, to have a supplementation protocol that involves lots and lots of blends, one or two blends, okay, but lots of blends I think that um actually think that .

potentially dangerous territory. I mean, ample a new man analysis came out just in the last few months looking at IT and they ve found in general, you see again, I slide to moderate improvement and everything from a power output to fatigue sisters and oxide effects to endure performance. So it's like, okay, great.

Maybe there's a little bit here. Now let's say you went to do IT and the only way you could access rodeo IT is in combination with that and um some lines main and they know some other these adaptations and was we'll wait minute. I just wanted to take this to get a Better workout but now IT also came with the stimulant, or this course l suppressed, or course l activators.

Well, now also you can take IT at night or you can take in the morning because head coffee, your your options are way limited. So I think the biggest part of all that if you if something doesn't feel good, you have absolutely no idea. You don't know he is really all you don't know if is the boss well in IT is there?

You don't know if he was any the other things that were smashed in there or I could be something as simple as the um the the acid that use like some other combination of thing. And now here you are thinking that some supplement that actually works for you dozen and you throw that out of your repeat w uh for the rest of your life which is you know not the bigger crime but it's not needed and you're not really going to know. So yeah, I fully stamp.

You can look back at my course lectures for the last decade and you will see like stamp number one on the supplemental section is make sure you're taking single ingredient supplements at all costs. The last part about that too is you're more likely to ensure the amount that is on the label is correct. So if you're taking radio and IT says, you know one hundred milligrams in there and if that only thing that's in there, you you more likely than not to actually get something close.

Now they're never perfect because if it's in a combination of twenty other things, you actually don't have any idea if that's in there. Um in fact, there have been many papers on miltonic and B D and a number of other supplements in which when you actually pull them off the shelf, these are these standard studies where they go twenty twenty five different supplements case to and will actually measure the man of military or actually in them. And despite the fact that the label says five milligrams, they can be up to a five hundred to a thousand fold actual concentration in that supplement.

And then you wonder why some people react great military, and some people that absolutely destroys you. And this is also why, like actually, we'll see this constantly, what people will have, like five hundred times the upper limit of melatonin the morning after, when the half life is supposed to be more like ninety minutes. This should be totally gone, but were seeing extremely I am not even talking like double. I'm talking ten, twenty, thirty x the upper limit range from military ona the next morning and that is like what are you taking is like I got this melatonin at x store or x website you know like holy cow um so I am not opposed to military and therefore ally um but you have to be careful with that one in particular. So any supplement has that to be true.

So you want to buy them from as many places that you can that are high quality and if they are third party tested, even if you're not a performance athlete, I want to stress to see, even if you not a performance athlete, the third party certified and test the supplements are you're less likely to just give wildly high concentrations, although concentrations of active ingredients and so relatively other ones who you might get for cheaper. But you could be totally reckon yourself by getting you know fifty milligrams and military and every night and not realizing IT. So then of course, the next morning you drowned yourself and caffeine and then you can see .

what does now ah people could look for the party certification on the packaging and um some websites will lie you to zoom in on the bottle before him. And it's largely listed on on certain vender websites. A brief point about supplement cost and blends and I promises will be a brief point.

Different ingredients, meaning different types of supplements, have widely varying costs in order to you to get them to manufacture. So you find is blends will include the least amount of the most expensive um ingredient, right? Um not always the case.

There are some there certain exceptions to this that I mentioned some blends that I like a few minutes ago that are four foundational nutrition adapt gins in probiotics s athletic Greens, of course, just been one of several examples out there. But when IT comes to, say, a sleep blend or a preparing out blend, there are some decent products out there. But a lot of them tend to put in more of the least expensive ingredients and less of the ones that you're actively seeking.

And so those tend to be uh, cafe intends to be a kind of a buffer against the other things, meaning if we work out that putting caffeine and there isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if he has five other things in there, often times what manufacturers will cheat on is the actual amount of the things that are costly. Um so again, single ingredient and formulations for eighty percent of your supplements think is really um the way to go. And the other thing I knows going to come up as we're talking about all these supplements, this is the issue of dependency.

I often get this question and when I solicit for questions, uh, on social media in anticipation of this episode, number of people said, okay, so if you have take A A sleep formulation, do I need to take IT every night if I don't take IT, when I have an incredibly hard time sleeping, if I take a pretty every time my train will will I need IT? It's a great question um some people will take supplement holidays as they may be called for a couple of days each week. Back to back.

Some people take them straight through. I myself take us a sleep cocktail that we've described. This is maxim and things.

This is not one ingredient. These are multiple ingredients. In fact, precisely because some people who have sleep walking and vivid am issues can take the union before bed. In any case, i've had times when I either forgot my supplements that's rare or I just didn't have what I needed or just simply took a break for a night and I was not a problem. Um but in terms of three work out, I do think that people become dependent on being in that really ramped up state.

But I don't think we view all this as a true dependency like addiction, right? I mean, I to find addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. So, you know, I suppose people could get addicted to pre work out.

But IT seems a little unlikely. More likely there would be a dependency such that, if you didn't have your preview out, might feel like I do not motivated to train. So what are your thoughts on taking little holidays from supplements and varying frequency of supplement? And taking particular as IT relates to stimulants and fatigue reducer?

The end goal, any time I coach somebody, is to get them into a physiological state in which they require no or close to no supplementation. That's the target we should really be in a position to our lifestyle, our sunlight exposure, our stress management, our physical activity, our sleep in our hydration and our whole food nutrition provide us almost everything we need.

Now look again, there are some foundational items that we can give people um we put together little bundle actually for this basic things you can go look at, but that's the goal, right? So the target is to be let your physiology run the guy. Your physiology is way smarter then we are even if I take a bunch of bio markers from me, you if physical gy still knows Better than those few markers, can tell me.

So that's always we're ending up. I actually personally don't like people being in a position that they have to take a supplement for anything. So I don't like IT. If you have to take a supplement to have a good night to sleep, I don't like IT.

If you have to have a supplement to train, we will use any these stimulus very, very carefully with any the athletes we work with and certainly been on athletes because least the athletes we have an end date, we have a fight schedule, we have a season and we have a game. You're going to pitch whatever. When you don't have that, it's sort of like you in this end, this cycle of, oh, you're going to do that all day, every day.

We don't really need to be in as. But so what I the way that I describe my philosophe is I will use those short term tactics to simple to manage if I have to. So if somebody comes to me and like you're feeling awful and we've got to to to home, okay, great.

Maybe we will give you something for sleeping mediately to get you sleeping that allows us to then come back and work on the causing problem, right? So this is what is, why are you having a hard time sleeping anyways? If you have to take a nine cocktail supplement to sleep, then all we're doing is is blinding.

The reason why are you in that position to begin with, right? So we see this all the time. Whether IT is sleep problems, whether it's court, is all just asked me. The question is, well, why is that low now we may give you something again to manage IT immediately.

But the task, the mystery i'm going to try to unveil is why? Why is IT there to begin with? Um this could be something like this is natural for you and your lack of energy is something else or could be actually is not a natural level for you but something is suppressing at any number of, uh, you've got some infection going on.

There's some allergic reaction of something in your environment. There's a mode mercury like that one comes up a lot. You'll see mercury and folks, and that's causing a lot of problems, any number of heavy metals or toxins, any host of, I think, psychological distress, bad daily habit.

You don't never see the sun like you don't ever squat, you don't never drink. We have talked about many things because so i'm always going to hunt for that and I hate using this phrase is highly mind for a good reason, but root cause, all right. So we're trying to find that is like are we making sure that we're not causing this problem? And i'm not going to want to give you supplement to cover up something if you're not even trying to solve the problem of what's being there.

That being said, and I that concerned about people taking a multivitamin. Author, no, not really. And I concerned about people taking creatine. No, like go ahead. Those ones are generally pretty fine to to just take.

But anything else, I want a reason, uh, I really don't like giving people anything in a super physiological concentration or a super food concentration, right? So again, an amount you ouldn't find in a Normal food dosage, unless we have really a specific reason, some of these things are more problematic. Others are less problematic.

So when to to answer the question of dependency, you have a combination of actual physical gc dependency. Caffeine like that actually creates a physiological dependence versus a emotional or psychological dependency or just A I like drinking, like that's my habit. That's my routine.

There's a fancy scientific phrase for that. But IT doesn't matter. So yeah, we want to get off that.

And again, my person of philosophers, I don't want you dependent upon anything. I want to create extremely resilient people, and I want to create physiological resilience. We actually have a fancy little algorithm used to to measure that in people. And so we can actually calculate that number.

And the goal of us is to push that number higher so that we don't have to have anything so many situations pop up in your real life that you're not gonna your supplement tor, you're not going to have your routine and you're not gonna your journal or whatever. But also for the long term, I don't want to create a situation in which this is a short term success that you have to now do that the rest of your life. Now let's just kit out of the way.

Let's fix the problem if if there is something simply management that's real while we're actually searching for Better foundational habits. On the last thing I want to say about this is if you're only covering symptom, you're really missing signal, right, which is if you're constantly tired throughout the day and all you're doing is giving yourself A A number of of the gpc and caffeine. Is that even all those good little show OK, are you really just using that to allow your poor sleep hygiene to happen? If I took those away, I bet you you would actually start addressing your sleep if that's the cause, right, right? Your stress or poor addiction, like you would go hunting for the problem.

And so like you, you want to walk a fine line here, you're going to like, k luck is an athletic Greens supplement. That big is now probably not. But wait, amin and I actually now covering up the pain point that is maybe needed. It's a signal to actually get my ass in gear to go make one these changes um whatever you need to be. So I know I got like a little bit matter on you a little bit off, but that's honest how I approach.

I think it's really important that a friend of mine who's a physician has a great saying, which is Better living through chemistry still requires Better living.

That's good.

And that's so good, you know. And IT pretax, also two things like and A D H D drugs and things that what most all of those things were developed as tools to allow people to move from a maladaptive state OK. The adaptive is hard to define, but think about in any domain of life, you can either be back on your heels, flat footage or forward center of mass.

And there are times when people are so compromised, nor chemically, that they need to use pharmacology in order to get into a flat, flat position, really back on their heel, flat formatter forward, the center mass. But the idea always, that those things were developed as things to allow people engage in the sorts of behaviors that can produce the same sorts of neurochemical shifts, and the people are doing well. What sorts of behaviors can not do these newer chemical shelves? I'll just as you out myself for a moment here and say I am a big po pony.

I believe you are as well. I may, in doing behavioral tools first, whenever ver possible, really establishing good habits, the dues and don't you've talked a lot about in this series and in this episode then excEllent nutrition, which involves dues and donations, volume, food choice, timing, all the factors and then also supplementation and also there sometimes a case for prescription drugs, certainly, and often brain machine interface or body machine interface measuring stuff using devices, but that the foundation of behaviors and good nutrition are really, truly foundational. And it's hard and anything to skip steps, but supplements and prescription drugs are one place where people often skip steps and then they they don't actually learn how to cultivate the best of behavioral practices, including the dots, as you mention.

Then just one more point along these lies. You know, you talked about taking anything for energy is really disruptive to the system. And IT is because especially caffeine, while IT has its uses and even health benefits, it's really borrowing.

It's against the identify system with interest. And so because caffeine aizen antagonist effectively, while caffeine is present in those receptors or you don't feel as sleepy, you have more energy, your reaction time goes down, memories and hands focus performance of all kinds, yes. But then when that caffeine is dislodged from the reception, then the identity can act even more potently at those receptors.

So it's sort of like being able to borrow against the Normal variations and wakefulness and sleep. And this is why we encourage people if they're not training first thing in the morning to push their caffeine and take out about ninety, two hundred and twenty minutes after waking so they can clear some of that identify in the morning, which tends to happen even a uh after we wake up. Um people can listen to episode on master sleep or perfect sleep, but the caffeine epo de to understand more about that.

The final thing I just want to say here then IT IT prompts a question is, you know thinking about supplement protocols. Um I think a lot of people assume that once they start taking something, they are going to have to take IT all the time. And one idea perhaps is that people have some uh alpha gpc around that they could take and are granted be great if people could try things without having a biotin product.

I think companies, hopefully you're listening to this and will um give people a simple to see if something works for them and then give them an opportunity to try IT to have things around but not necessarily assume you are going to take IT every time, right? Some things you take every day foundational nutrition, uh, supplements, for instance. But then also to take a look at how well you're eating or not eating right at times when i'm eating much Better, I consuming you know low sugar for mental foods, which are great for the got microbiome.

I consume less probiotic, if ever been really compromised for whatever reason, then I will take pills, form probiotic and take those all the time um because I get them from food and from certain in Greens jeans like athletic Greens and so forth. So I think that nutrition and supplementation are are tethered in this way in my mind. And I don't think that most people think of supplementation is something that we can induce a lot of variability in when in how you take them.

But as far as i'm concerned, as long as single ingredient formulations you can be um you can use supplement once a week if you want. You could use them seven days a week. You could use them twice a day, four times a day, every day or you could use them not at all. agreed.

Yeah some of them, uh, will have an effect, Randy, like that. Others will not. And we talked about creating being one of them. It's if you're going to take IT once or so weak.

then there's I mean basic no bit .

that's a very good point, beta Allen, as another fantastic example of something you need to take consistently if you want some sort of benefit. Um IT needs to be built up in muscle. We need to use that to create uh carnesi, which is what actually going to help us with our fatigue management.

That's why we cit like an acid buffer. So in our previous metabolic epsom, we talked about that being a major cause of fatigue. The wonderful part one of reasons why beta alene and work so effectively is IT blocks that build up. So that is a good example of another one that you would want to take.

Uh other things like fish royal, you could certainly skip a day here and there IT wouldn't that big a deal? I also do support your comment if you can take absolutely one of these things and n be just fine um in terms of and will come back maybe debate only in a second in terms to have some other fun stuff. My colleague, greg sick, I want a really cool number of studies, is looking at how exercise actually alters that at microbiome is actually area that we probably have. Three hundred store sample es sitting in my freezer.

in my lab. Goodness, another reason to pause before entering your lab. Yeah.

another reason to not apply to come be one of my graduate as you wanted deal with that. When we actually have a number, we've applied for a couple of grants to look more than this um specifically with females. So hopefully get that finit.

But no no um you can actually see them like pretty traumatic. And I say that word on purpose, changes in the gut microban. There's one a particular study I was thinking that great diet is he looked at that the change is pretty post an ultra marathon and even within a single bottle of exercise.

Um I hammer to some of the markers but I know one of the markers uh was specifically increased by like fourteen thousand percent uh, after a single out of exercise. Now this is the most for marathon. This is like like totally absurd amount of exercise relative to a Normal people would would be. But that number I remember like I was like fourteen thousand and two hundred twenty nine percent or like something some ran and number like that of .

something meaningful .

yeah something meaningful. I can't remember which marker um that was that had changed. Um I don't struct focus in there struct cocos one up like maybe something more like thirty or forty or fifty percent.

So the point is we haven't even had the proper time and we don't to even launch into the gut microbial supplementation, there needs to be ultra specific. Um you wouldn't be best served to just jump in and take random things there. Um that's it's a whole area of emerging science.

We know very, very, very little about IT, but there is a number of action things one do um there so probably something to not mess with uh would would certainly work with a qualified physical if you think you have something going on clinically or you have some actual problem there and don't work with someone is not a specialist Michael dog there. But just randomly assigning a budge of probiotics of probiotics without intention is is maybe the next forefront of human performance research. But we we'll have to maybe come back in a few years and dive in that in detail. Perhaps you could bring somebody on as an expert and that .

to discuss that yet. Got microbial is fascinating. I think of sleep as the most powerful performance enhancing activity. Of course, you still have to do the activity.

有 阿姨 consider foundational， like IT basic raises the tide on mental health, physical health, performance of all kinds. Um there's recent data that during sleep your body goes through all its various forms of meta lisp possible that is a mazing. So it's measured from breath and human subjects at breath and taboo zts and human subjects.

So obviously a if one is thinking about supplementation and wondering, okay, what what's the best supplement to enhances performance. You gave some great rationale why creating would be an excEllent choice provided you eating well and um hydro ating well. And then to my mind, the next thing on the list would be anything that allows you to improve the quality and maybe even in the duration of your sleep.

Although if you wake up and you feel arrested throughout the day and only need a shorter nap in the afternoon, not everyone needs one, but then generally that means you're feeling okay. People sometimes get flipped onto this idea that they have insomnia. Insomnia is excessive.

Day time sleeping is where are falling asleep during the day. That's insomnia could also be narcoleptic sic, but that's insomnia. But supplementation to improve the quality or duration of sleep or both seems to me like the most direct route, even though actually technically it's an indirect round to performance enhancement. And then thinking about things that increase alertness and stimulants and and fatigue ducks using .

that's a good logic yeah, we go to absurd lights to dial sleep in as much as we can. I mean, the honest answer is like truly absurd. This is, uh, conflict interest that my my company, i'm a part of absolute rest is any that company we actually go out to your house and run a full clinical grade steep study in you, your bedroom on you and run that over multiple nights.

So just having to go to sleep clinic and have had done in this weird hospital room or sort of settle with these people looking at you through a miro, it's like toilet creepy. Um that is important because that's the only way to truly determine how you are sleeping. Now that said, the technology of wearable tracking ers is getting Better.

In fact, I would actually predict those things will reach a level of accuracy equivalent to the psg in the next couple of years and probably work in fda approval to be able to diagnose officially sleep disorders. That's my total, my prediction from some inside of formation. I don't know that to be true, but IT is getting a lot Better right now.

Those wherever les are not act enough to meet that threshold. So that we do is we bring up basically all the equipment um to do that. So we'll come in and do that now once we understand exactly how you are sleeping, the next question is to answer why are you sleeping that way? And so this is a full four fold system.

Number one is wrong ing to look at biology, what is going to take a labor in blood. And we're looking at everything from uh neurotransmitter ors concentrations to um vitamin basic between a sea that are important for asleep performance. So we're going to see is that that is that a physiological problem? Is there someone thing happened there is court, is all the H A ratio that we've previously ked about her is something like that off.

If it's not physiology, they were going on the next one, which is environmental. We want a full environmental scan of your bedroom during those nicer sleep that we're there. And that's really important because we can look at everything from dare and pollen and allergen that in the air.

Um a quick tip here is wash your heats at least once a week. One of the common most common places that people um get allergies in the air is actually from accumulation on your sheet. So if you clean those more often, uh, you'll be in a Better spot.

The next one the next one there also is that keep you? I'm sorry that hurt my heart. I don't even buy IP in in truthfulness.

I violate this will keep your pets out of your bedroom and certainly keep them off your bed. Our girls faith killer is my dog and l key is my other one. They don't go on my bed, but they're right next to my bed.

So we violate that one. But full environmental scan h includes all those things. Of course, there's uh we measured light and temperature and humidity and everything else is going on the room.

Um bullet organics are coming out of the matches from now the high LED out of the wall, like all these things that could potentially disruptor sleep. And we want to make sure that none of those things are kicking on. We see this constantly.

People will have things like trying to be cool and they want to be cold at night because that's important. And so they will turn air conditioner on or a fan, but the air conditioner kicking on and off, and I actually can show you out of vary sleep stations. So you wanted be really careful now is going the last metric on that is actually CEO to.

And so what you remember from our metabolic discussion is when you x hail, you're reading out C O two. Well, if your room is closed in the evening, lation isn't great. The amount CEO two in your room starts to build up.

And we actually very specifically no the threshold based on information collected from the international space station, actually we know the threshold that which seal two crosses and starts ts is is disrupting sleep. So we want to make sure that you're not sitting in this CEO two bath in front of your face and then breathing you back in and and disrupting your sleep. So environment is a echo one.

The third one is actually now psychology. So um one of the members on our team is a harvard M D and psychiatric and put together entire sleep can survey. So we run through all that to see there's anxiety, depression, anything like that psychologically going on.

And then the first fourth one there is if you have some sort actual sleep logy. And so this again will include some I tracking stuff that we can use. So we take all those data. They go back to our team.

We work in combination with with Steve lucky from harm is done, a ton of stuff, if you actually set up a lot of the cracking with them, stuff in the national space, ation as well himself. Every germen, M D, P, H D, sea and all these folks in the room go over your data, identify what's going on and to build action plans of that. Occasionally those action plans include supplementation, but only if necessary.

We're really gonna to come back and work through a system um to improve the sleep, however needed. So I realized that is not a totally accessible for a lot of people. But like if you really need to go to the end of the earth to figure out sleep, that service is available.

Absolute right. Sounds like an amazing tool given that most people won't be able to use IT um or access that although we will provide a linking case, people are interested in IT and do want to try that.

You mention a few things that I think everyone should say they're sleeping environment for and um determine whether not they are hindering their sleep um without realizing in, for instance, the air condition is going on and off or this could be heater going on and off or central heat hitting or cooling unit um this could be a keeping the room dark, uh this could be cleaning your sheet. Certainly that doesn't require that one sign up for absolutely so cleaning one sheet, routinely keeping pats s out of the bedroom. As you admitted, you don't entirely um different opinions about that.

But if you're having sleep issues, the danger from animals may may be part of those issues. And then one that i'll just add, which I think is pretty interesting, is there's some beautiful data out of Michael turn's lab at colombia medical school in new york on negative ionization. And that sounds pretty a wai kind of new A G P.

I'm sure something like an negative ionization. But in the terminal lab is a serious laboratory focus on circadian biology. For many decades now, negative iron concentrations are higher near coastal locations.

So if you've ever gone to the sea, you're gone on vacation and you sleep Better near your a body of water, that's actually a real thing. And there are negative ionization machines, but there are also some things that one can do in order to increase the negative ion concentration in their sleeping environment. That are nearly zero cost, if not zero costs. You can look those up online and we probably we will do in an entire episode about this in the future.

But I think what you describe for absolute rest really highlights of more general set of themes that I think are really important, which is your sleep environment is an environment it's got a lot going on in IT, and it's worth running through the checklist that you described in asking, you know where where things you maybe not optimized, but where are really getting in my own way in terms of sleep. All of this, again being related, the fact that getting excEllently, consistently is a completely transform everything that you do. And not getting excEllent consistently, which is a chAllenge for so so many people, will also transform everything that you do and think and feel, but in the negative .

direction yeah I can also offer a few tips uh on sly based on things we find most consistently for those that can go through h the protocol um one quick little actually APP called time shifter is really cool for anyone that's dealing with consistent travel and get lag.

So you'd go and enter your location, your time where you're going with the location and then it'll actually back calculate or give you full light stimulant, food, hydration and stuff protocol and you just follow along with that. And we've used that for many years actually, especially when traveling, you like a doby for voice and mongolian and brazil for the olympics and sort all over the place. So that's I think that that is still available.

I hope so. It's it's great um nice to um a couple of things we found major if you're dealing with acid reflects so if you're someone who has problems like that, you can just elevate the head of your bed by like six inches. So if you know put little piece of waters on the going to eat um you can also buy very inexpensive pillows um that can elevate that.

Now that's not solving the problem but at least can help you sleep whether it's just that nighter, if it's a consistent problem you can do there if you're snowing like I said, it's not really benign. You should probably take a look at that. Your first step p there is melt tape um if that doesn't work, you can go through.

It's called malfunctions of therapy, which I know if you covered that before, but it's basically tune exercises ah and that can be quite effective specifically for people who have problems with rem sleep. So my functional therapy um it's just it's kind like you do like depending on the protocol, uh, some tung exercises kind of the morning after in the night and that takes a while. To be honest.

You're probably going to need at least six weeks before you start seeing anything, but that actually is is pretty well demonstrated to help us sleep. So you can probably google we could find a link for for exact protocols. I don't want to describe about them. But yeah, you're going to strength in your tones so that that stops falling in the back of your neck and waking you up at night. So that's a really free, easy, free protocol use.

Um if you're struggling with IT could be install you but I could be these things like when you get in to bed, your super tired, you can't fall the sleep or things like that kind of a basic group family use is only two things happen in your bed and if you can make sure those are the only two things you do in your bed, the problems of falling sleep and sam, I intend to go down those two things are you how sex and you sleep and nothing else goes down in your bed and so you can make that environment very special and that can help uh, quite effectively improve your ability to fall asleep and not wake up early. So keeping the environment specific to what is for can be effective. The only other thing I would think of is, and I hate to say this because not super practical, but is just quite clear at this point, sleeping with a partner in your bed, it's just not very good for sleep.

So good look with that one.

I know you can do a couple of things if IT helps, uh you can get two smaller beds and put their mind next to each other um if you can actually have separate sheet, that alone can be helpful um so if you get anyway, if are you king size Better something I again I know some people they like, there's no chance. But if you want to know the cost for you, like the affected .

and your relation to use .

your loved one.

please don't don't this so um the only last thing .

I want to mention here is something that popped up just a few times recently but you're going to see more of uh which is called the author somalia. Uh so that is a term that is people are growing concern over uh, which is wearables and sleep track kers causing sleep issues. So people basically become too obsessed with optimizing maxi zing scores and that alone well actually it's actually you so you learn when to wake up and so you have actually uh and anticipatory response when many hours part of waking up. So if you actually learn to have a little bit of a what's a little molecule of like excitement and reward of doping, that's the one. If you start getting that as you wake up and you get super excited to check your score um or your phone, is this the same thing if you check your phone or twitter, whatever in immediately morning, you'll actually start carving back your wake up time because you start launching IT so you can really sleep becoming tubes. So what i'll say is if you're going to use a sleep cracker and you just like don't care, you want to check IT and you have fun of the great, but if you like, you are really, really, really interested in IT and you pay a lot of attention to IT, don't check your sleeping ore for at least the first sixty minutes after waking up and I know that should help you.

That's a great to all. I think that the and piece of advice, I think generally because I think a lot of people are waking up with the midnight check in their phone two or three times per night and kind of wondering why they're doing that. And i'm guessing it's this .

anticipatory wakeup circuit yeah you absolutely should use either your night mode or do you not disturb or airplane mode or something overnight .

or the room yeah I mean.

if you have to wake up and like some people have um like a family member who's maybe on great healthy and they have to get to your phone around and keys they call or things like that.

So I get to you like I can't leave in out, keep leave IT in there, leave IT in and do not disturb and enter and their phone number, or whoever phone number is, so only they can get through, but keep a black and White so if you do have look at your phone at night, you see black and White and you do not have notification. So make sure there is no notification for no email and no D M. I get all that off off your screen.

And so you look at the there anybody call there is anybody text of importance? Um what time is that like? No emergency going on black and away. Okay, right back to sleep. So that can help a little bit.

One of the supplements that I found that is extremely useful for being able to fall back asleep if i've woken up in the milk night and for some reason can um and is also very effective for enhancing sleep when one is ingesting fewer carbon hydrate. A lot of people run into or four people that are fasting for many hours before sleep.

You know, people are trying to not to eat anything within, know two to four hours is in austral one hundred million grim of milo and hospital. I find again, this is anew data. To be clear, if I wake up in the midnight night and i've taken nine hundred milligrams of an hospital before initially falling asleep, that I fall back to sleep much more usually.

So that's why i've added one hundred milgram of an ost at all to my so called sleeps stack and also tried just taking IT alone and IT works well alone but IT works Better course with a mag three and eight um thine sleeps stack the um that also in terms of tools for sleep the the upper revery that was developed by my colleague, doctor David, people who's a medical doctor at stanford psychiatry steward school. Min, um there is a free trial. There's a nominal cost if you use IT month to month.

But the data are really strong that people that use that, I think it's eight to eleven minutes sly pip nosis once a week and IT doesn't have to be in the middle night when you wake up, really helps improve people's um ability. Fall asleep quickly, stay a sleep, fall back asleep if they wake up in all the night, in some cases curing insomnia, in other cases really just helping people with their general sleep issues. And I mention this because, uh obviously the technology is not a supplement but I know that some people are supplement of verse also if you look at but at the cost comparison between taking the sleep that only um and the revery APP, it's pennies on the dollar really um so again, i'm proponent of both for myself but I realized that people are wearing budgets and again, I should say as always, behavioral tools first and I I think of the revery APP as as a more less of behavioral .

tool yeah it's a it's really just a tool any these brothers d protocols, he knows the protocols. There's just a tool for you to in touch back in with your own physiology rather than a substance that's coming in. So I evenly support those. We have used a number of those um in in protocols. There's some other tricks that we can pull in those areas.

Um I always said this, but the relevant is depending on what's keeping you up um sometimes we recommend just getting up and getting that done, like if it's really like if it's a project or a thing or whatever um like sometimes rather than lying, they're all night not sleeping. You can get up, get IT done and then if you stay awake, fine at least the anxious gone or sometimes you going to go back to sleep because you like especially the task only literally would take like ten or fifteen minutes um IT may ruin your sleep, but you you're gonna run state so you you can try that tool. Um you don't want to pull that car very often and you have to be very careful to what you consider to be something worthy doing that um but that is like between me and you and nobody else here that's a tool I have used personality more than a few times or just like. I get an idea and I don't lose IT or like the solution for something you've been doing on for a long time pops in your head and just like in your not going to forget IT, just get up, get to done and get on through day. In several .

previous episodes, you emphasize how exercise induces very various sad aptamer depending on the type, specificity, volume, intensity, sea of the exercise, and that during exercise, the degree of adaptation, that one trigger is often associated with things that Normally we don't associate with, exercise related health. Things like huge increases in blood pressure during exercise, huge increases in inflammatory markers, muscle damage.

And these things all sound terrible. But as you beautifully explained, all of that trigger adaptations that then bring those markers below the baseline with which they were previous to the exercise. So that's the adaptation in the recovery within the ramal supplementation nutrition. I'm aware of a number of things, some urban, some lipid based other compounds that are used for various things but that are known to have a tent, anti inflammatory effect, things like omega three fatty assets after uganda for its effect on court is all, although that's a bit indirectly, the inflation mentally pathway kirkman and things of that sort.

Given that we want inflation tion in order to chargers the adaptation response to exercise and given that we want to reduce inflation tion in the recovery period, can we put together a logical framework as to when is best to take anything anti in flam ory, whether its supplement based or prescription or over the counter drug, and went to strictly avoid taking any anti flatte supplement to our behavioral tall? You mention ice can reduce inflammation. That's why you don't want to do IT too close to exercise.

Anyway, I think you get the gist of the question. What about specific supplements related to inflation tion and anti I inflammatory ory responses? What are the best ones? When should we them? When should we avoid taking .

the way that I think about IT is understanding what we call the fitness fatigue model. So what I mean, but that is whenever you do some sort of insult, the whole idea is you to come back and get an adaptation. Our recovery is not adaptation recovers.

Recovery adaptations is what happens after you recovered, right? This was a very important distinction there. Finish partial model says basically you've done something and you've got an adaptation and you've enhanced fitness.

And by fitness in this case, I mean that as a non specific term. So you ve got stronger. You ve improving your turns like whatever thing you're trying to train for. At the same time though, you're fatigue elevated.

So what happens is if fitness increases at the same or similar rate as fatigue, your performance actually isn't any Better until you may think, oh, my program is working, I need to then train harder or I need to take more and i'm flamed or whatever the things are when reality, all you really need to do is reduce fatigue. And if you do that, your performance will increase and all the training adaptations will be actualized. So the way that we do that as a couple of things.

First, informal is actually a taper. So the the first step, I think of if someone is trying very, very hard and you're not seeing any results and we want think about supplements before I get there, I want to think about taper in dee loaded if you're actually training hard and sleep and everything else is taken care of. So just without going to foreign taper, some general general primers there.

Um you want to think about about a fifty percent reduction in training volume over the course of about a week for every eight weeks of training, super, super rough, right? So if you've been training hard for three months for something, you might want a taper for two weeks. Something like that right is sort of a rough estimate that taper you actually don't need to reduce intensity, because intense is not the dry, very fatigue.

IT tends to be volume. So as long as your volume is is reduced by fifty percent, you can maintain intensity. You can maintain. In fact, I generly would recommend maintaining frequency.

So if you used to work out four days a week, keep up four days a week, you can go down a little bit and frequency. But if you go on too much and frequency, you actually tend to feel super authority c, so I wouldn't do that. If you do those things correctly, you can typically see somewhere between a three, eight percent room and or performance within a matter of days.

So it's important to do that. Um we actually ran to study on cross country runners years ago testing on a meta ic heart muscle biopsies, blood, a whole bunch things. And we did a preimplantation weeks of taper.

And we actually this is cool because we did this in competitive season. So these were colleagues across country runs, and we got them to come to our lab three weeks before their conference champions ran them all through bunch of testing by up them. They went through their three week taper and we buy up, see them again and they went and ran um their conference champion PS and up.

Well, what happened was the end of hit about a fifty percent reduction because what they did is they took out will be call the junk volume. So they kept their race temps, high intensity stuff in there. Um they kept the recovery stuff.

And in that medium pace they just basically reduced. Now they were terrified. As any endurance runner or endurance out later participant would understand, when you take volume away, they tend to get very nervous and so they didn't like that.

But as a result that what we saw as their real two max, despite the fact that they covered half the mileage, their real two max did not go down and three weeks are reduced taper. Your fitness is is extremely stable. And in fact, once we actually looked at their data, the enzymes and their muscle responsible for oxide metabolic were maintained.

And so you don't have to worry about losing again fitness. So they are talking about overall performance or even um actually in capacity, minor control function, eeoc that was all preserved. Obviously, we saw performance go up but was actually really interesting as we saw I think IT was around a ten percent increase in type too, which your fast witch muscle fiber size.

So we say ten percent increase in faster or fiber size at the end of three weeks of tapering. Now what you may think is like, wow, I guess tapering is anabela c but that's probably not what happened. What realistically probably happened was their volume of training was actually causing their fibers to be reduced in size.

And then once we remove the fatigue, they just recovered back to Normal. So that's a good example of what i'm talking about. Once you remove the fatigue, you can actually see enhanced in performance, not because you're necessarily getting Better about because you're removing the simili suppressing you.

That being said, the way that you want to think about recovery like this is, although recovery, special injury recovery like, seems chaotic, biology is very organized, and there's a very specific three step process that you gonna go through for a recovery. And then there are different supplements that can help you in each of those three areas. So area one is basically information.

So this is when the side of chemistry m comes rolling out. Uh I started the injuries there, in this case even of its muscle damage um and activate immune system to kick on and that whole repair process happens. Um what you're trying to do effectively, in fact, this is why you probably ever wonder like why is inflation tion a thing?

What you're trying to do is bring in fluid enhances the size and increase blood flow ends. They didn't get nutrient for repair and immune ells and that in the system and get the waste out. So short term inflation tion, even in the case of muscle sourness, is the example we we talked about the previous subsoil.

But any inflation tion IT is part of the necessary process. That's why you would not want to take an anti flaming in that state, and so why you also would not want to do things like an ice pot. Um so in that immediate inflaming response time window, this is you know seconds to hours after training, you would want to stay away from things like that.

Um a good option. Here are things like omega trees um good evidence, something somewhere in neighbor od of like two to five grams total, typically like a wonder one. Um E P A D D H A ratio is fine, similar.

This is another example of when good doesn't mean more is Better um cause for example there is actually evidence showing up to fifteen grams will harm. They mean response and so you don't just want to be like mama superfortress in harder. I'm just going to go to ten grams more and more more you're actually causing yourself more of a problem.

So anti oxidant employment tories are fine again. Make a series in that dosage um are a decent thing. You can also do something like five hundred milligrams of curcumin three times a day.

That's going to be enough uh to keep you in a decent spot. There are some other things that you could look up um maybe some potential benefit for ginger um and as well I and some things like that for information. But under unless one like vary specific crm stances where we have like an injury, we're probably not going to those you know areas.

I just wanted highlight one thing that came up in a previous episode. Some not all people, but some, including myself, are very sensitive. Curcumin IT has a very poor effect in reducing dht da hundred testosterone and leads all sorts of a clamping of testosterone associated positive things.

So um I have experiences that myself. I've had people right to me and say I don't understand. I started taking a supplement cucumber to be a great and time flimby IT flatline my libido IT took away my drive and can wondering what's going on there.

Those people are very likely to be very D H. T. Sensitive curcumin. A potent time play can also put in to reduce the H. T. But some people tolerate IT quite well and are hearing this and everything. That's ridiculous. Well, it's certainly substantiated by about chemical pathways that kirkman tapped into in the known roles of dht on libido, aggression, power output is and mood.

So just be wary that um a there is no way to predict this one simply has to figure out empirically meaning you have to try and see if you like IT or don't um the good news is, is those um negative effects on the hg seem to reverse pretty quickly after um ceasing to take uh current. So just a mention of something that came up in a previous episode. But in case people didn't hear that, that segment um just wants to highlight those those .

facts further evidence to I strongly discourage, strongly discouraged ge taking anything in the anti inflammatory, anti oxx y realm unless you actually have a reason to do so. Um if you're waking up and you maybe i'm inflamed. That's probably not a good approach.

Let's have a reason to do so. Step two is actually what we call proliferation. And that's kind of like the clean up crew.

That's when you're going to be going in there and cleaning out dead cells and debris and misled proteins and things like that at this stage. A fantastic c evidence space supplement um is glue ming glue min twenty grams a day. We typically honestly split up in the two dosage ten gram's morning, ten grams night.

It's a conditional minister, which means you can make IT uh your body can make enough a bit at times and other times you may want to support IT. Generally those conditional times are things like burn victims um high stress situations or injury things like that. So um there isn't also like a ton of downside to go to mean because I can go through transact mintion which means your body can take IT and say like we don't need anything here for our most recovery.

Let's make IT into A H something else and use IT um for whatever else is doing. So it's kind of another one of these like low risk, uh, products is answer why you see IT in a lot of recovery products. If you ever wondering like what the heck is that in there? I don't need to me ask is you're thinking it's like for protein sentence is it's really not it's because IT is uh, beneficial to this proliferation process.

I've been taking glue to mean for years. Um I tend to take IT in higher dosages several times throughout the day of, however, feeling particularly run down. I know their decent not great but decent da on the role of glue me for lucky gut today for offing leaky gut that's getting a little bit into the realm of uh like not super well substantiated but in the in the peer review literate but a lot of anecdo ata and and certainly some peer reviewed work but not a time. And then there is also growing interest in the idea that glue mean. And because I can trigger activation of the neurons in the gut that signal to the dopamine in pathway in the brain, that IT can be used to offset sugar cravings, this is kind of an interesting new and emerging theme which makes sense given the biology of the neurons in the gut that respond to specific community assets, including including me, an essential fatty assets and sugar and because they respond to any and all three of those um anyone or combination of those, I should say um to trigger this dope in response, some people have taken to uh a tea spoon so of glue, glue me in some water or rather drink couple teams throughout the day as a way to reduce their sugar cravings. Because what essentially doing is it's tricking the pathway into activation of those neurons, an alternate or legal recept interaction.

right? Also, another interesting point there are very I am trying think right now to my head, I can't think of a time, and i've used blue mean a lot. I can think of a time where i've ever heard nobody come back with any side effect reports.

I think if you take enough of IT, you can get some gasters distress. But of course, you take enough of them, countered thousands, mixing water, you're going to get a gasters distress response. And what i've knows this about gasters distressed with things like uh glue to mean and even protein powder for that matter. I use a high quality uh way protein powder routinely um is that if you build up to IT over the course of a few days, then you can get away with using my chair dosages without any issue.

Yeah yeah but alene is the same thing. By the way, we sort of talked about that earlier. If you've ever tried that, you like all my gosh, like I feel like i've just ruled around a grass and my .

skin is itching and and say, yeah.

that you can just take a little bit of lower dosage and be fine, look for the most part, and then you will build up a tolerance to that pretty quickly, so you can up that dosage along the way. So what we will often times do there are start at a dosage that's pretty minimal, like two grams. And then every week or so, you can go up on the gram until you get to whatever final point you want to be, five, six grams day, whatever.

So that's another way we can sort of mitigate that problem. So the first step in this recovery process um after inflation tion proliferation ation were now into remodeling. And this is when you're actually, you know what, on growing back bigger and stronger.

Um this is where the majority of the repairs is actually taking place. And at this point, we're basically playing a micronesian rend, a micro new trend game, right? By that, I mean, we ve talked about basic maker. New dreams are one thing to pay attention to.

Often times if people are hurt, whether they they had an injury or they've had just their super sort and they are concerned about eating excess calories, they tend to want to eat less food during this process because you're like, i'm not working out so much, so i'm eat less calories. One of things that you have to pay tension do is injury can crease space of meta rate by up to ten percent. So what you want to do in general is just take your calories up about ten percent least.

That's what I recommend. Um if that is an extended period of time, then yes, you may put on a slight amount of body fight or something, but if that also means you come back some percentage faster, then it's worthy exchange. Um so we recommend that in terms of your carbon hydrate or fat split.

I'm not super worried about IT. My general recommendation is just don't make any major changes relative to what you were doing, keep yourself pretty much in the same spot in terms of protein. This is the big one you want to make sure you were absolutely at one grandpa pound of body weight because we need those .

of minal access to come in and start helping um with recovery .

one gram um of protein propound body you can be very little downside more um remember protein and carbo hydrates both stimulate instant and remember instant is anabela and so we're trying to drive this process of recovery. That's what you want both so you wouldn't want to skip on carbon hydrates in his face, nor would you want to skip on protein because you need the activation, the drive in the tissue as well as the structure.

Going back to one of our earlier conversations, and at this point in the week, I honestly can't remember at all what episode do we cover this in but I gave an analogy about um use making a camp fire and using fat and carbon height rates. Is the wood in the log and the protein worthy the the medal structure. So you need that supply if you're trying to be if you've cleared out in the previous step um damaged proteins and you need to make new ones to recover that process.

You have to have the raw supply in material. So you went want to avoid the one of those things. There's actually some indirect inflation tion managment that comes from fat asses, but you actually sort of alluded to earlier.

Um I don't think you need to necessary go crazy. You do not need to change your fat intake that much, just don't drop IT know depending on where you're at. So if you're a little bit of a higher car, lower fat person, great.

If you're moderate, great. If you're the in direct, if you're higher fat, lower car person, awesome. Just don't make an extreme change and don't and try to not beyond the extremes of either one of those ratios, but the only specific number to pay attention again is that protein number.

And if you go a little but high or even a lot high, it's totally fine. Just don't go low. So that's the the micrometres um portion of remodeling in terms of micro neutrons, to be honest, you you just keep your base is covered.

Uh this is one a basic multivitamin ah IT is effective. What you're really trying to look at here are vitamin ain sink. They actually have independent mechanisms that are helpful here, but those are typically covered in most multi vital.

So we generally just give people a multi vita magnesium has actually have some some benefits hears something like six milligrams per kilogram of body wait is the dosage you're looking for there. Um magism sitt is probably has the most evidence in terms of this respect, but IT doesn't mean actually have no reason. I think you can use ice and eight or if you're using other form for sleep um that probably fine.

I don't know that for sure, but I I can't think the reason why the other forms of anaiteum would all the sudden not work. So you could probably choose whichever form me like obit. Centrate has probably the most research in this aspect. The only other things you would probably consider here three things i'm calcine and might be on your list, particularly if you're trying to if you're concerned with some sort of bone injury and we ort of gone past like recovering actually like the injury, see to see that in recovery products occasionally. And that's why and in the last two ones, of course, our vitamin d, and that's pretty well research.

And then the last one is actually, uh, something that can help you if you're at this stage and you still are dealing with a lot of sonus uh or not and that is tart Cherry juice that's actually effective for both domes, muscle injury, muscle sonus and actually has another benefit of potentially eating with sleep. So not about one to turn to as well. There's a number of companies that make these things um yeah and there's actually more ongoing researches that I know on those areas, but a promising literature .

say not often, but everyone's in a while on this podcast, I will solution social media for questions from the audience where I should say the audience to be, and then ask some of those questions on the fly during the podcast. I did this with doctor likes freedmen. I'm gone to do with you. Your goal is to answer each of these questions, certainly all of them thousands of within the last couple of hours to answer each of these questions in three or four sentences. I certainly won't be counting the number of sentences that you speak.

So just know that if you want to go over a little bit, that's fine, but feel free to refer to your instagram side at a future time where you might go worn in depth or to refer to a study or um if you like, you can also say pass if you don't think that you can answer the question. Sistani enough for this format and here the goal is not to put you on the spot. The goal is simply to allow the audience to ask some questions directly.

And I I confess i'm looking at these for the first time. So i'll try to be quick with my with my reading some of these we may have touched on in the previous episode de or in this episode even in which case you can just kind of q to the reminder, this is not directly related to supplementation, but IT is related to nutrition. And I don't think we touched on this directly. Can we do intermit and fasting OK timers certain feeding with kito and still gain muscle mess?

T, V, D, that I am am quite clear, such study does not exist, so I don't know. I think i've looked IT to a before that we did run in armand faster sixteen eight hyper fee study. There is no kito ARM. Um the result to that study at the time this comes out will probably be ready if they are not sure. So I can't comment I have with the data, but regarding whether if you do that with kito or not, I can't comment scientifically.

Do you ever prescribe the use of gaba supplements?

Well, I can't prescribe anything to make sure we're clear.

But you're professor, you can profess.

I can profess. H, we generally don't spend too much time of gaa, really.

Is that okay? The way train faster than not break the fast in need for three or four hours after training. So in other words, train faster. I do this, but then also not eat immediately following training and wait another three hours after training.

Once we have our results reminder and fasting study back will we will have a Better answer here. My general recommendation as the stands now though is as long as your total protein intake is sufficient um you should be in a decent spot.

Great a lot of questions about fasting and training just to to know that can you train high performance fasted and how long before um you need to refuel the body yeah you .

can certainly do that. I know of actually many athletes are some athletes will do that though. The vast majority will not. As IT gets higher and higher and intensity and ordination IT gets more chAllenging. But I really does come down and do what you did the dave before as well.

So if you ate sufficient calories day before, didn't train and your click stores are topped off, you have a fighting chance. Now the duration part of that equation is really kind of dependent upon you. Um so are you really talking thirty forty five minutes, sixty minutes, you're probably fine. And whether you're out past that to several hours, you may not be.

And then the only other comment I would make is there is, keep in mind, whatever you think about fasting and any other say against the textbook coron court start style, you really, really need to be careful of thinking the difference between can I do IT and is the optimal. So I have absolute, in no reason to think fast like that would improve performance. I only work for the most part of people who are trying to perform the highest possible.

So I can't think of scenario which I will go to fasting to try and house performance. So whether not you can maintain some level of performance probably will IT provide me benefit. I struggle to find scenario in which that would actually make you performed Better.

How do different forms of carbon hydrates impact performance? And and right below IT, another question about a carbon hydrate, which is does carbon HDR cycling work? So these are two are questions from people that I think don't know one another, but a lot of carboys tions about carbon hybrids and performance, which we've touched on. Anything else that you want to add to .

that conversation? I don't think I really maybe you might want to think about carbon loading slash carb cycling. So carbon hundred loading does help.

However, a misconception there is is just me know a big bulla poster the night before um that can help top of stories but really optimal carbon re loading prior to a long duration and dance performance is probably best over the course of three or four days. So you want to gradually increase carbid der and take for multiple days rather than just have one in big bowl. Posta branch chain and .

minor assets and essential metal as its supplementation A A or as I would say, man a man.

usually if your total protein intake is fine, then you don't really have a need for them um if you're for whatever any number of valid reasons. So the protein is not then going to essential to me know as I would be my first step, rather than A, B, C, A. Now admitted, we actually do use essentially, you know, this is somewhat regularly because it's is also sort like that.

There's no real harm other than if you are Price conscious and you sort like i'm waste IT, that's fine. The people I work with generally again that's not a few dollar is word to maximize recoveries is not that way. So we will sometimes use that premier post training.

In some circumstances, a total protein would be my is a high quality way, something like that um if you can use way for whatever reason, there are plenty of high quality vegan proteins you could use. If you wants to top all that off though and add some essential messes, IT wouldn't hurt anything and may potentially help slightly. So you choose based on an algorithm.

I was hoping somebody would ask this. We touch on IT a little bit. It's a little bit of a loaded question the way they've phrased IT. So at risk of leading the witness, does the mythical anibal's c window really exist? And i'm just laughing is the way they post the question.

They're already telling us what their stances um making IT more effective as to create hypertext y to eat within a certain time for me IT, after working out, i'm going to assume that this person genuinely wants to know whether or not the anibal c window really exist or not um because they refer to as mythical and assume that they are um suspicious. But what's the deal? Is the animals lic window a real thing?

The post exercise anodic window is extremely real. So what this is, uh you can see more detail in a number of videos on my youtube page. I believe IT is the idea that you need to must uh consume some sort of neutral fiction, usually protein, uh, in some time domain, thirty or sixty minutes post exercise in order to maximize growth.

So is that window real? yes. Are you hyper sensitized to nutrients in that time frame? yes. Is IT very important that you rehydrate replenished mollia gen and rebuild tissue quickly after to exercise to maximized recovery?

Absolutely is not real though in the sense that you you have to have IT within thirty minutes um in the case of protein oas we talk to about a second ago, your total protein intake throughout the day is more important um timing no four things like carbohydrates, especially if you're training multiple times a day. Um IT is very well. So IT is a very real thing is just you may or may not actually care about IT. IT may not be important for your context.

Garlic seems like an appropriate question. What, if any, functional roles does gallic have in performance?

Garlic actually really cool. There's a number of things you can dive into that are outside of my three to four senses considering a met like two and a half priority um you're not going to find strong human data on garlic extract. However, there is a little bit a suggesting you can actually in hands recovery from injury or potential tissue damage so you gotta canna be carefully, because in order to understand what happening, you have to differences between the knit and adaptive recovery. And when we say things like a unity realized friends, that's not one thing that is like a very local term for a number of things.

Again, it's a verb. It's a right system. Immunity is a bunch of processes or processes.

And if you're about to correct my speech or correct is right back, not you, andy. Yeah, listeners. Process is tomato. Tomato is a verb. Immunity is a verb.

This is my problem with immune boosters. Same issue, right? You're like all what are you boosting specifically? Because in fact, if you're boosting the wrong part of unity during the wrong phase of recovery with garlic, you may be actually hurting uh, in the process because you are theoretically could be trying to dom regulator portions that you can get up regulator next portion as the faster way to say, if you will.

So um we actually you may see more data come out that says the garden attracts now over raided. I don't know, I actually don't even know. Yeah ah we just don't have enough human data on IT. But yeah there's something up there if you want a little car enough.

I'm been asked this question for myself because i'm curious to know the answer. Selfish tart Cherry extract pretty .

effective actually uh for two things uh potentially hey eating and sleep in sleep as well as a muscle sas, that's the book of the research, is in muscle sas and seems to be a modern factor.

Think for people that might be interested in dosages of things like that. Cherry extra guard like eta, obviously doctor and gelb's, instagram and twitter, a great places ask questions like that and define answers to questions like that as well as examine not calm as a terrific website. Um they actually recently overhaul their entire website. So they have this human effect matrix that shows the um the effects and the strength of different effects in human studies of many, many different compounds relined everything to former health and men and women, sports performance, cognitive performance. IT doesn't cover everything, but IT certainly covers a lot with links to studies.

There's a lot that's available at completely zero cost by joining examine that com um you can access some additional features and this is, by the way, not a paid endorsement from examined outcome and simply a long time user of examine not com myself um and so I just want to people to IT and again, many of the resources there are available completely free of costs. It's a wonderful site. Um so for dosages of garlic tark, Cherry extract and things that sort, whether not you're getting from food, you're getting IT from extra powders rather um all of that information is is pretty nicely laid out there. So unless you have something to add to that, I was just going to cue people to that resource.

No, I ve ve been using that since the first day that website was launched. I I was made aware that he was coming. Unfortunate know those guys for a while.

So I used that. I used IT all my classes. I used IT. I don't even know, probably weekly at this point. A another need nice feature that actually on there is they have A A series of like they would do some topical reviews basically. So uh a big paper out on muscle damage or .

blood pressure to hands ment or hormones story cycle and and yeah pcs I think they did one .

on and all kinds of selves you can search by topic like you energy or recovery or whatever, or even searched by black human sea extractor like whatever number of things you want to do. And we'll also tell you if there's any interactions to pay attention to. So it's really, really nice.

So be careful ly predicting a and b whatever. So yeah, it's wonderful, wonderful. Yes.

they've done a marvel job. So thank you. Examined our com. Keep up, keep up the amazing work. Well, we've come close to the end of this episode.

And when that means that we are close to the end of the series where you have so graciously joined us for six full episodes of the huberman in the podcast to educate us on all things fitness. Episode one, you reviewed and educated us on assessing our love of fitness. fact.

I learned so many ways of assessing fitness that I had not thought about and also assessing my recovery capacity. For instance, one thing that i'm definitely going to implement from that episode is a routine broad jump test and and in home high jump jump in in touch test. If people don't know what i'm referred to, its all containing in that episode, it's time stamped.

These are very straight forward, zero cost ways to assess one's level of fitness. There are few others that require a bare minimum of technology like taking your pulse rate in very specific ways as specific times. Also some timing of mile runs and some other things relate to strengthen hypertrophy and on and on.

Really, it's a it's a buffet of options that can select from. And I already know the four five that I started implementing this week. I've recognized how i'm pretty good in a couple of areas.

I'm doing maybe maybe Better than pretty well in one area, but that i'm doing this is poorly in a few areas that I just wasn't aware of. And so i've already started um taking on ways to adjust that over time. And ockley posted so that first episode is absolutely incredible, just provides so much action knowledge in the rational behind IT. The second episode you educated us about strength, speed and hypertrophy training. And there, to an immense amount of incredible knowledge, we got way down into the details you explain sets reps, the rationale sets reps, rest cadence, number of workouts per week.

I'm definitely going to take a way I need to do some speed base training and some power base training Normally, I think, in terms of string, the hypocrisy and a relief to learn that a lot of the speed and power base training is low intensity, enough that I can be done fairly often and incorporated into my program, which is already touches on strength and hypertrophy and indeed some endurance work as well. So amazing tips you provided there. I'm certainly going to implement the three to five programme.

You described three to five exercises done for three to five repetitions, three to five minutes between sets. Uh, you're doing the three of five times per week and so on and where all the details, again time stamped in the strengthened approach uh, episode shown up. So just incredible.

We even use that to set up Peter with you this week.

That's right. I did pr this week. thanks. Thanks to your input and following that program and um i'm really grateful for that IT IT does feel good to break through a barrier um and I intend to break through more barriers but not just a strength in hypertext.

Y because episode three, you taught us all about endurance, the four different forms of endurance, how to train for each of those different forms, the value of doing even very brief, twenty second springs or bouts of jumping jacks, ks, throughout the day, which to some people might just sound like a, you know, like a little hacker, give me. But no, these are actually tapping into fuel systems in modes of neural muscular interactions that greatly aid other forms of endurance like london ation and dance. I would love to return to my um high school mile time.

I won't reveal with that is because this is not really about me but I planned to start doing, if not mile repeats, then doing a mile, mile runs and testing there. Once a week, you laid out a beautiful program for how to do that. And then in the next episode, you wild us again with a description of the science and the tools. And this right down to the details, but all laid out very cleanly and clearly as to how to design an optimal fitness program.

What are the things that really represent an optimal program? What questions as one have to answer before designing a program? What are some of the barriers in the way this concept of defenders things that revenue from reaching your goals? And one of the key tings I have IT right here in front of me that I took away from that episode was this quadrant um approach of really thinking about and figuring out how much one intends to devote to work career calling let's make that one relationships another bin fitness in the other bin and recovery in the other bin and um here we will tip perhaps our good friend kenly cane um for um mentioning that overall um scheme for doing this has been immensely useful.

And I i've actually charted IT out and thought about and drawn out which different things fall in each of these categories. You might think it's obvious, okay, relationships, but that includes a lot of different things and there's cross over between these bins um in terms of how you can combine enhancing relationships with fitness, work, recovery and so on. So that episode is just again a treasure trove of knowledge.

And then in the next episode, you you educate us on recovery in all its forms in the very short term in within the workout, immediately after the workout, and from workout to workout ways to really accelerate recovery, assess recovery. And as you pointed out, people like me, who always assume that we don't recover very well in that some sort of character trade or nervous system thing are genetic. To really think about how my training is impacting my level of recovery.

And in doing so is revealed to me that I have far more capacity than I thought I had. And already this week, i've managed to train more often, doing more work, and I feel Better than ever. And that's also despite the fact that we've spent a fair out of time in these chairs across from one another kind of, say, IT.

It's been it's been a pleasure. And then in today's episode, you explained nutrition and supplementation as IT relates to performance and of course, that touches into recovery, but also optimal mental states for training. How do approach once training and how to extract the most from training through quality nutrition? So what to eat and when which carbon hydrates protein amounts?

Windows of opportunity on windows you absolutely don't want to miss. And then some that are a bit more flexible. And then we went deep into the weeds of magnesium, garlic touch, Terry extract, alphago gpc.

We touched on neural transmitter related systems, hormone related systems. We went deep into a discussion about sleep because, of course, sleep as the foundation for recovering performance of all kinds, emotional, mental and physical recovering performance. And in taking us through this enormous art of a journey through fitness, I think it's fair to say that you have given us your knowledge containing in your head.

I was telling someone just the other day that one of the things that I always lamented in science is that I would encounter these incredible professors and scientists and in other domains of life too. And you just wish there were some way to download their brain because they so much knowledge inside them. And um i'm looking for a USB or USB c port on you and I don't see one yet.

But what you've effectively done for us across these six episodes is to download the actionable knowledge. And you know it's wonderful. The information provided is clear. It's super interesting. It's highly, highly actionable and in many cases, it's counter intuitive and surprising.

But once one understands the logic behind IT, as you've provided for us also, then IT all makes sense in a way that IT extremely satisfying and extremely motivating. So it's certainly motivating me to change the way that I trained in a number of ways, and I promise that I will report back to our audience into you as to what my results are. But really, as we both agreed, this is not about me, this is not about you.

This is really about the people listening. And so for those of you listening, I H hope you can appreciate what an incredible gift IT is to have somebody of doctor any galpin experience and um drive and scholarly background who also works with athletes and everyday people just to splay out all this knowledge for us systematically over six episodes doctor and open. Thank you ever so much.

I appreciate that far too kind of words to me there if you've been following on through the entire journey, as you call IT, you know, I like first principles thinking and I like lists. So i'm going to gives you with one more lists. And I got five things on this final list.

Get your pen and pad out, please. Number one, I want to really emphasize science itself is a verb, which means it's ongoing in changing. I I did my best over the course of these many, many, many hours to um provide my interpretation of the science uh to provide my practical knowledge and things that I use um but that's fallible uh science changes.

There are many, many things in my career that I was very sure the that the evidence was clear on and then I changed. So as you move forward, do not think of any the recommendations I gave you, whether they were about supplement dosages and timing, rap ranges or breathing tactics, anything in between, just use them as guidelines. So number one, science is a verb.

Number two, I really want to think the audience, this has been an extremely long hall as some of you somehow i'm sure, which i'm not sure how, but some, you will probably made IT to the entire journey. Listen to all six. You should probably get some sort of free human man lab shirt or something, or a black or I don't know, how about a in black a government black how about a internet high five um and even if you do just dropped in for for the episodes, appreciate you taking the time.

There's a lot of things you could be doing with your time and to make to spend those resources, on my words, is a touching number three, I want to actually thank you. Of course, Andrew and at the whole team in the crew appear for three things everyone um I think it's incredibly important that you have gone out of your way to give other people credit for their work. You go out away and your large platforms of social media attack people to give scientists credit for their work.

And most people do not do that and that's something you don't have to do. And I think that is a culture no, I don't know what you do. You come from science.

That's just what you do. You gave people great for their work, but you go out of your way to do that. And so I want to thank you for that.

The next one is many people who have. Outlets and platforms will try to fill those with people who are going to grow their platforms. Doesn't mean these people wrong or bad. But I think what's extremely special about what you've created here is, again, you've gone out of your way to bring on the direct source of information. Um I can't even imagine how many of your podcast guess I ve never been on a podcast before or been in a very short number of them.

And you've made an extremely large platform doing nothing but talking about super deep, dark science directly from the sciences themselves um and to create a community like that it's um i'm so happy that sciences is made up here and you shown the world people are stupid. People want detail and people want science and you've given us them um in the last one, of course. So I get through this is a thank you for you have done for me in my career. I understand there could have been any number of people in this year and to put me on your your platform once was of be gracious but to do IT for six hundred hours if we did in the series um I can take enough for that opportunity so I hope I lived up to IT and I had a tremendous time and and thank you for being such a gratious host.

You more than succeeded expectations. You are absolutely the person to be in this chair talking about these topics with me and for the world. And once again, I just wanna say thank you as a colleague, as a public educator, as an exercise scientist and as a friend.

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We do not share with anybody. And as I mention before, it's completely zero cost by going to huberman lab dot com. You can also go into the menu tab and go to newsletter and see some example newsletters from months past. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion about fitness, exercising performance without andy galen. And as always, thank you for your interesting science.