Andrew Huberman

[0] Welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] Experts on expert.

[2] I'm Dr. Dan Huberman, and I'm joined by Dr. Gales.

[3] Oh, my gosh.

[4] Hi.

[5] I wish.

[6] Should I tell people this?

[7] It's what?

[8] Always.

[9] That I changed your name and my phone to Dan Rather.

[10] Oh, that's fun.

[11] Is that not something I was supposed to say?

[12] Because I did it so that in case my phone got stolen, they wouldn't have your number.

[13] I need to change Kristen's name too.

[14] What are you going to call her?

[15] Andrew Mam Rather Oh ma 'am Mathers Yeah Oh And is it Rather or Rathers Oh now I'm Dan Rather Let me see Yeah Dan Rathers Yeah No S Yeah I guess it's the Michigan And me Sure You know people in Michigan Love to put S's on stuff Do you know this about us?

[16] They like to pluralize Ford's they'll go I work for Fords I got to go to Kmart's Oh yeah Everything's I don't get it Anywho So you're Dan Rather in my time Oh yes And then we have an awesome doctor on today.

[17] This is a real deep dive into testosterone therapy, weirdly enough.

[18] That wasn't the ostensible goal of it, but basically Dr. Andrew Huberman is now my personal physician, even though he's not a medical doctor.

[19] Even though he has made it very clear he's not a medical doctor.

[20] No, and in fact, Andrew is a neuroscientist and a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

[21] His laboratory studies neural regeneration and neuroplasticity and brain states such as stress, focus, fear, and optimal performance.

[22] He has an awesome podcast that I've listened to a bunch of episodes of Truly.

[23] It's so good.

[24] It's called the Huberman Lab, H -U -B -E -R -M -A -N lab.

[25] So listen to the Huberman Lab podcast and enjoy Dr. Andrew Huberman.

[26] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair expert early and ad free right now.

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[28] or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[29] Dogs, I can imagine you'd be interested in dogs because I, when looking at dogs, one of the great mysteries to me is, as I remember the definition of a species, is one that can have a reproductive offspring with one another, right?

[30] So, like, you can get a horse and a donkey to fuck to make a jackass or some version of that, But the jackass is sterile.

[31] Okay.

[32] So it's not its own species.

[33] I messed up the animals, but whatever two animals you combine to get a mule or whatever the hell it is, you can get one pregnant, but then the offspring's not fertile.

[34] They can't reproduce.

[35] Anyways, the whole point of that is to say, I'm regularly looking at dogs at a dog park, and I'm like, look at this.

[36] They're all the same species.

[37] That little tiny two -pound dog could fuck the Great Dane and get it pregnant, and they could have, that seems crazy.

[38] Well, and this is how all these new custom breeds are made.

[39] So even if someone's not a dog person, the reason why dogs are interesting and animals are interesting to me is because, first of all, within dogs, it's the largest variation in body size for a mammal.

[40] Maybe there's some other ones like whales or whatever.

[41] I'm sure someone out there, some officianto will come after me for that.

[42] But enormous variation in body size.

[43] The variation in body size is largely due to differences in expression of one or two genes.

[44] So the Chihuahua and the Great Day next to one of the same species, wild differences in body size and brain size too, incidentally.

[45] What you find is that a gene that encodes for something called IGF1, insulin growth factor 1.

[46] Well, that's what we fuck within cows.

[47] Is it going to be enormous?

[48] Well, people will use growth hormone and insulin growth factor 1 for performance enhancement.

[49] Do I need to get on this?

[50] No. I'm scared for this.

[51] And here's the thing, the one thing about IGF1 and GH, I'm not going to judge.

[52] And we could talk human performance and chemical augmentation.

[53] But it will make all organs grow and it will make all cell clusters grow.

[54] So if you happen to have a little tumor, God forbid, on your pancreas, you give yourself IGF1, you are accelerating growth of that tumor also.

[55] So it's growth of everything hormone.

[56] Yeah, it's the same liability as HGH.

[57] Yeah.

[58] And in general, the larger animals of a species tend to live longer.

[59] Well, so for whales longer, but if you look at, for instance, I had a bulldog mastiff.

[60] He died at 11 years old.

[61] That's a long life for a bulldog mastiff.

[62] Smaller dogs live longer.

[63] And it's because of this dosing of IGF1.

[64] I was going to say this is where it gets incongruent with the rest of the animal kingdom, right, which is in general.

[65] Sam Harris had this great guy on about scaling and scaling in every kind of way, like scaling from fractal pieces of a tree branch and cities, how they're organized, how the bodies organized.

[66] And one of the of the things was that animals, as they get bigger, generally, they live longer.

[67] Something metabolic happens with size.

[68] The actual animals getting more efficient.

[69] Is that accurate?

[70] So within a species, the larger animals have shorter lives.

[71] Within a species, but species, intra -species, elephants or blue whales.

[72] Honeybee, human.

[73] Yeah, exactly.

[74] And there are a lot of interesting dimensions to this.

[75] And I know you've had them on your podcast before, and he's a good friend of mine, and David Sinclair, and I love to riff on this.

[76] But one of the things that's interesting that extends out of the animal, well, we're animals, but out of the animal kingdom also to humans, is this very interesting relationship between longevity and vitality.

[77] Let's define those two.

[78] Yeah, so vitality is feeling great, reproductive potential, and so on.

[79] We could step back from this and just think of all the tools and tricks that people are now trying to exploit and trying to understand the biology of in order to live longer.

[80] they generally involve some sort of deprivation.

[81] Fasting, for instance, to promote autophagy and the cells clearing up other cells, this kind of thing.

[82] Choloric restriction.

[83] Tickling, molecularly tickling pathways that mimic caloric restriction.

[84] Those have all been shown to extend life in different animals and maybe even humans.

[85] That's a large basis of David's work.

[86] Animals that overeat have shorter lives.

[87] Animals that under eat tend to have longer lives, but that doesn't necessarily mean that vitality is better.

[88] So, of course, if you're underweight slightly, as opposed to overweight slightly, you're going to feel better, most likely clarity of thought, et cetera.

[89] There's a number of reasons for that.

[90] However, if you think about the fastest rate of aging that any human undergoes at any point in their lifespan, it has a name.

[91] It's called puberty.

[92] Oh, there we go, baby.

[93] So puberty is this surge in energy and hormones, and it's the turning on of reproductive potential, right?

[94] So it would be menstruation in females, and it would be the production of sperm and males.

[95] and so it's interesting that a lot of the treatments and fads and things that people are exploring in order to live longer are also geared towards trying to explore more vitality so people for instance will do hormone replacement therapy I am doing it oh you're I'm open about me you're on TRT yeah yeah I guess I'm the only actor who's ever been honest about this but anyways continue I made a big ripple I wasn't expecting when I said I was on it I listened to your testosterone episode which was fascinating yeah if you want to talk about about hormones in development and hormones in adulthood.

[96] There's a really interesting conversation for both men and for women.

[97] The data are really interesting.

[98] And it's great that you're open about it, by the way, because I think very few people are open about it.

[99] Yeah.

[100] And it's an important topic.

[101] I mean, hormones are so powerful in, well, let's take puberty, for instance.

[102] During puberty, there's this signal from the brain that's then sent to this gland called the pituitary gland.

[103] It sits near the roof of your mouth.

[104] Where Andre the Giant had a tumor and had acromegaly?

[105] Yeah, that's a point.

[106] that is really relevant because the ridge on the forehead, extremely large hands.

[107] Actually, we are told, and I have medical textbooks, extremely large extremities of all kinds.

[108] Penis, you're saying.

[109] Genitalia, feet, hands, all of that, and organs.

[110] And those people generally die early.

[111] So they are the great Danes of the human world.

[112] So having too much growth hormone, not good for longevity.

[113] So vitality comes from, look, every species has one specific goal.

[114] which is to make more of itself.

[115] Right.

[116] This is also why we are protective of the young of our species, or we should be, right?

[117] Every species, I mean, maternal aggression is a powerful force in the animal world.

[118] In your testosterone episode.

[119] That's right.

[120] We talked a little bit about that.

[121] So the idea that only males of a given species are incredibly aggressive is just false.

[122] I mean, females of a given species, especially if they are protecting their young, will kill you or die first trying.

[123] So the whole question of whether or not aggression in females is due to testosterone as it is in males is a really interesting debate.

[124] So I'm going to close the hatch on this vitality thing first because there's so much here and it's great.

[125] I'm so excited talking to you.

[126] I just want to bounce from every single topic.

[127] Likewise.

[128] It's really a pleasure to be here.

[129] So we have to think about what people are doing to feel better versus live longer.

[130] And those are not necessarily opposing goals, right?

[131] but for instance, fasting in the short term can give people a kind of clarity of mind.

[132] That's because they have more adrenaline when you fast.

[133] Oh, okay.

[134] Because adrenaline's main purpose, it's also called epinephrine, but adrenaline's main purpose is to mobilize you.

[135] This is why when you're stressed you shake, it's trying to move your body.

[136] Can I just add to that?

[137] Because I've been consuming all your shit the last couple days.

[138] It's so fundamental.

[139] Your body's mostly just geared to get up and leave.

[140] In the most simplest sense, most of your instincts sort of be like, your sputty senses went off, something's going on, and I need to get out of here.

[141] That's probably priority number one, like move.

[142] Yeah, there are three responses to stress or threat.

[143] My lab's focused a lot on this in the last couple of years.

[144] You can stay stationary, which is actually a very active response.

[145] We always think of the freeze responses, like passive, like playing possum.

[146] Or submitting, yeah.

[147] Freezing is very challenging.

[148] Think about if, God forbid, outside, we heard a gunshot, and then it's getting closer and closer, chances are, unless you, you are trained to do so, you won't run toward that individual.

[149] Chances are you will freeze, but not a paralysis freeze.

[150] You will force yourself to stay quiet and still.

[151] And then there's, of course, the retreat mode.

[152] So you can move backward to threat.

[153] You can stay stationary, which is an active thing.

[154] It's not a passive thing.

[155] This isn't fawning or rolling over and playing dead.

[156] Or you can move toward the threat.

[157] And this is also true.

[158] You're both public -facing individuals, so you don't suffer from this, but a lot of people have fear of public speaking, for instance.

[159] Yeah.

[160] And a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to freeze up.

[161] In general, it's an inability to freeze that is challenging for people in stress.

[162] So a lot of what we do in my lab and teaching people how to move through stress, especially people with generalized anxiety, is give them the option to either calm themselves to be able to move forward or inform them and teach them tools that allow them to take that heightened level of adrenaline, that predisposition to move.

[163] And I'm quaking my hand now, just to show as an example, and get that into a forward action.

[164] And that allows them to move through life, which can be public speaking.

[165] It can be going to the doctor to get their blood pressure checked.

[166] It can be social interactions.

[167] It can be, you know, some people fear flying.

[168] I mean, pick your panic.

[169] You know, they're out there.

[170] So that's the goal of stress is to move us.

[171] And staying still when stressed is extremely difficult.

[172] That's an active process.

[173] So this longevity, vitality thing is interesting because basically all the things that make you feel really good, like increasing testosterone or increasing estrogen or increasing growth hormone or IGF1, those things will make you feel more vital than give you energy.

[174] And we can talk about exactly what testosterone is doing in males and females to give you that energy.

[175] Yeah.

[176] But will it shorten your life?

[177] Well, that depends, right?

[178] Because you are giving yourself a sort of second mini puberty.

[179] Well, you have to ask yourself a couple of questions.

[180] And the equivalent questions could be asked by women for hormone replacement in women.

[181] Does that typically happen after like menopause, people reach out for that?

[182] Yeah, so TRT, testosterone replacement therapy is becoming more popular now, in particular because there was this myth that it would cause prostate cancer.

[183] Yeah.

[184] It can exacerbate pre -existing prostate cancers.

[185] Right.

[186] But young males generally don't get prostate cancer.

[187] So the idea that it causes prostate cancer is now being shown to be false.

[188] And of course, it's going to differ by individual.

[189] Can I just make an analogy?

[190] Maybe it's right or maybe it's wrong.

[191] But it's kind of like, if you had type 1 diabetes, sugar's not giving you diabetes.

[192] But having type 1 diabetes, one should watch their sugar level because you don't have enough insulin.

[193] That's right.

[194] Yeah.

[195] Yeah.

[196] So if you have prostate cancer, it's feeding on testosterone.

[197] You do not want.

[198] Yeah.

[199] Okay.

[200] That's right.

[201] And so anyone who's going to explore this should do this with a really good MD.

[202] Don't count.

[203] Lots of panels.

[204] Yeah.

[205] I just want to be out loud and say, like, you got to get panels.

[206] You got to monitor all this stuff.

[207] You have to make all these equations in your.

[208] I'm so glad you brought up this topic because regularly I'm just basically going like I don't know let's say it does take off four years in my life I don't know let's put a number on let's say it's five years and let's say that we're talking between 85 and 89 85 and 90 and my choice maybe on the table is to feel energetic and excited for the next 44 years or feel kind of placid and checked out for 49 years that's a relevant equation to make I know it's just the sticker shock is like you got to live as long as you can I know that that's the theoretical goal but what version of living is I think it's relevant.

[209] Yeah, it's an extremely important equation to dress.

[210] And you hit the nail on the head.

[211] I personally don't want to live past 95.

[212] I've met a few 96 -year -olds.

[213] Well, I just think that chances are a lot of my friends and people won't be around.

[214] I think there's also a danger in thinking about living too long.

[215] I also look at, well, I have to be careful here.

[216] David and Sinclair and I are friends.

[217] People in the longevity community, to me, it's a deprivation model where deprivation in longevity versus vital.

[218] and living now.

[219] And obviously, there's going to be a happy medium.

[220] And to me, 95 seems like a pretty good happy medium.

[221] It's really nice.

[222] Go strong to 94 and then fade out in that last year and just do a lot of journaling.

[223] David, who of people don't remember, was our anti -aging episode.

[224] Yeah.

[225] But he's saying that you can still be thriving past that time, right?

[226] Oh, definitely.

[227] His is the holy growl, which is basically you would erode the epigenome to the degree where you'd be functioning as a 20, two -year -old without augmenting any of your hormones, that the body would just then take it.

[228] Kind of, right?

[229] Is that a too simple?

[230] Yeah, and I don't want to speak for him.

[231] I mean, I think that you're trying to fix the reader of the genome, and that's their strategy.

[232] And there are other people that are doing this.

[233] I mean, Bezos and company just announced a big company called Altos a few days ago, which is grabbed up a Nobel Prize winner from UCSF, Yamanaka, who discovered the menu of factors that can return any cell, even a skin cell, into any cell you want, the so -called Yamanaka factors.

[234] So Yamanaka is now at Altos, and there are a couple others as well.

[235] It's incredibly interesting field.

[236] I guess just from my standpoint, I feel like while they work that out, I'm interested in having a life that you feel really terrific, mentally and physically.

[237] You're able to do good work in the world.

[238] And look, if I end up going to be 150 feeling that way terrific.

[239] But my mindset is I'm here now.

[240] I'm going to make the most of this now.

[241] And I'm not going to wait around for any life extension tool to lay.

[242] end here.

[243] And so hormone augmentation, again, I'm not suggesting people do this.

[244] I always say if we're going to get into kind of protocol -based stuff, my firm, firm belief is you have to get your behaviors right first.

[245] And nowadays there are a lot of really young guys and some young women, too, who are all immediately thinking about TRT or hormone replacement of different kinds.

[246] And no matter who you are, no matter what your goals are, you have to get your sleep right.

[247] So that's been a big focus of mine in my labs.

[248] Learn how to get really good at sleeping because that's the best neotropic, the best smart drug, the best thing for your hormones, for your immune system.

[249] I mean, just don't sleep well for a few days and you can see what a wreck you are.

[250] Yeah.

[251] Are you going to teach us here?

[252] I will.

[253] Okay, great.

[254] Yeah, I'll teach you.

[255] I mean, we're not going to sleep.

[256] Let's not rule it out.

[257] We've never done it.

[258] Actually, you never know.

[259] I always joke.

[260] If I keep talking, I'll cure insomnia.

[261] But hormone augmentation does have its place.

[262] But good nutrition, good sleep, quality, social connections, learning to limit your stress.

[263] Those have a powerful effect on your hormones and reproductive cycle.

[264] Any woman who's lost her periods in a time of stress or a time of under -eating, it's actually one of the characteristic features of anorexia nervosa.

[265] It's actually a clinical box that is checked off, loss of menstruation, understands this relationship between the psyche, food intake, sleep, and reproductive competency.

[266] Yeah.

[267] Wait before we move on, can I just add my tea?

[268] Because I've really thought about this.

[269] It's such a deeper philosophy, which is we had this great Dr. Alex Catahawkas.

[270] And I asked her, like, people who have have had extreme sexual trauma in their childhood.

[271] That's just now what their kink is.

[272] Like, how do we differentiate what's pathological and what is like, yeah, unfortunate this happened to you, but now you have this certain set of interests in, are you allowed to indulge in those?

[273] And she said it's very, very simple.

[274] If you don't have shame and you don't have secrets, you don't have a problem.

[275] That is literally pretty much the two key ingredients to whether you can decide if this is good or bad.

[276] Are you secretive about it?

[277] And does it give you shame?

[278] So I thought, I can't be on this.

[279] thing and it be a secret.

[280] Or I must not feel as convicted as I think I do about it.

[281] But then the next voice in my head was like, there are going to be some parents that are like, how could you, you're a role model and you can't say to do, and first and foremost, I'd say like, I don't tell anyone to do anything.

[282] Like I can tell you my story.

[283] You can choose or not to incorporate.

[284] But in my defense of myself, which I spent a lot of my time defending myself to fake arguments that never happen.

[285] There are a lot of myths around testosterone.

[286] First of all, what's a hormone?

[287] I think that's worthwhile mention.

[288] A hormone is a chemical released in one area of the body that goes and has actions on lots of other areas of the body.

[289] So it works kind of like a mass text or a podcast to your body.

[290] Whereas neurotransmitters work more locally.

[291] And I think it's important to think about that because testosterone does lots of different things in both the male and female body.

[292] It has a relationship to sperm production.

[293] It has a relationship to libido and sexual behavior.

[294] But it also has a relationship to effort.

[295] I would say the fundamental role of testosterone in the brain is it makes effort feel good.

[296] It promotes meeting of challenges.

[297] However, it promotes meeting of challenges of all kinds, not just fighting physically.

[298] In fact, and this has actually been discussed among academics that work on this, if you take a bunch of people, for instance, donating money at an auction, that's a competitive environment.

[299] If you've ever been to one of these, right people are looking is he or she going to outbid them and it's competitive so there but they're giving money to usually to a good cause yeah and so that's a very testosterone type behavior it's competitive but it doesn't mean that they're fighting right it's a display of prowess of a different kind or you for instance in silicon valley where my lab happens to reside there were a few years back there was this wonderful thing where all these tech giants started giving away tremendous amounts of money for biomedical research and i don't care about the debates about their platforms.

[300] It was $240 million to immunotherapy given by Sean Parker to four separate universities.

[301] And then it was DeChan Zuckerberg BioHub, $3 billion given.

[302] So bring it on.

[303] Bring it, bring it, bring it.

[304] What a great big dick competition.

[305] Philanthropy makes a tremendously positive difference in the world for science, for education, for good causes.

[306] People like Ray Dalio doing incredible works.

[307] Now, is that testosterone -driven?

[308] and is it competitive for them, or are they emerging from their love and kindness meditation in the morning and going and doing this independent of any ideas of anybody else?

[309] I don't know, and it doesn't really matter.

[310] No. The net effect is positive.

[311] So testosterone activates a willingness to lean into pressure, and that could be final exams, that could be middle age, that could be raising a family.

[312] Yeah.

[313] Well, can I really quick, because you broke it down with your guests and your podcast in a way that I really liked.

[314] In a paradigm, hunting and gathering society, where aggression is the route to status, then that'll be what testosterone drives you towards.

[315] So if reproductive access involves you beating the shit out of another, then you'll do that.

[316] But if you live in a society where the people reproducing the most are the people who are the most benevolent, well, then you will get competitive about that.

[317] So it's important to look at what paradigm the behavior happens into, and it might be more an indictment of the society or the culture or the time, than is the chemical, because in our growing utopian view of the future, it'll be harnessed for other means of getting status, which may be philanthropic endeavors or talking about feelings or whatever the fuck it is.

[318] That's optimistic.

[319] I like that.

[320] Right?

[321] Yeah.

[322] Yeah, I dug that.

[323] Did I say all that right?

[324] Absolutely.

[325] Okay, great.

[326] And testosterone is driving the same willingness to lean into competitive environments in women as well.

[327] Testosterone is such a loaded word.

[328] Everyone thinks, oh, alpha males beating their children.

[329] chess.

[330] And the one exception is maternal aggression is actually driven by an estrogen progesterone mechanism.

[331] But here's where you can flip the whole thing on its head.

[332] During development, testosterone is involved in shaping the brain and nervous system of all individuals.

[333] But the masculinization, and I'll be very clear about what I mean by that phrase, the masculization of the brain, which is associated with the Y chromosome, of course, literally a gene on the Y chromosome, codes for a bunch of things that eliminate the mularian ducks and the ovaries make sure that those don't form and make sure that testes form and this kind of thing.

[334] On the Y chromosome, so individuals are either XX or X, Y, and there can be X, X, Y, or X, Y, that does happen.

[335] There are genes on the Y chromosome that inhibit the formation of things like mularian ducks and ovaries and things like that.

[336] Okay.

[337] So there's testosterone coming from the fetus, but the testosterone is converted into estrogen by an enzyme.

[338] All enzymes typically N -A -S -E.

[339] If I say aromatase, that's an enzyme.

[340] If I say lipase, that's just an enzyme that digest lipids.

[341] If I say proteinase, it's an enzyme that digest your proteins when you eat them, this kind of thing.

[342] Okay.

[343] So there's an enzyme called a romatase enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen, and it is that estrogen from testosterone that actually masculinizes the brain.

[344] And this gets men very uncomfortable.

[345] You're like, wait, you're telling me that a masculine in the mind because of estrogen.

[346] It's like, well, it's testosterone convert into estrogen.

[347] And actually, I've said this and people have come back and said, that's only mice and it's only in lambs and it's only, that's not, actually it's in humans as well.

[348] I've gone deep into this literature now just to make sure that that's true and it is indeed true.

[349] What does that mean?

[350] Okay, like who cares if it's a testosterone or testosterone convert into estrogen?

[351] What it underscores is the fact that all of these hormones are having very complex interactions.

[352] For instance, if one's testosterone therapy dosage is too high, either by way of too big a dose or not spreading out the dosages appropriately, some of that testosterone is converted into estrogen by aromatase.

[353] This is the water retention.

[354] I suffer from this greatly.

[355] Some males will get development of the male breast tissue called gana comastia.

[356] There's a whole cottage industry on the internet of people taking out their own breast tissue at home.

[357] Please don't do that.

[358] This has become like a whole thing.

[359] Oh, my goodness.

[360] Cannabis, marijuana, increases aromatase.

[361] And that's why pot smokers during puberty, a number of the males will have the puffy nipple thing.

[362] Oh, right?

[363] Yeah, that's marijuana.

[364] Occasionally you'll watch a fight on TV, and you'll, like, this guy's got gana comastia.

[365] Does that mean he's using steroids?

[366] Maybe, maybe not, but chances are he's using cannabis.

[367] Sure, sure.

[368] Now, there's a reason why the marijuana plant does this.

[369] It actually is a way of limiting the reproductive potential of rodents that eat the marijuana plant.

[370] This is plant to animal warfare.

[371] This is Michael Pollan's book who we just interviewed talking about what is the evolution of psilocybin.

[372] What is in coca, the insects eat it and cocaine immediately satiate your appetite.

[373] So they don't want to eat more of it.

[374] It's like what a brilliant mechanism.

[375] This intelligence of plants is beautiful.

[376] So these hormones get converted.

[377] There's all sorts of prolactin type stuff.

[378] You can basically break things down into some general categories.

[379] Testosterone at appropriate levels makes effort feel good.

[380] It increases protein synthesis, glucose uptake.

[381] It's a part of the readiness system.

[382] It also has a close relationship to this neuromodulator in the brain, we call dopamine, which makes us crave things, right?

[383] Dopamine's main role is not to create pleasure, but to make us crave things and pursue things.

[384] So those testosterone and dopamine are close cousins.

[385] And again, here I'm referring to males and female.

[386] It doesn't matter what your chromosomal background is.

[387] Now, estrogen is interesting because it's neuroprotective.

[388] So males that crush their estrogen, down, have a couple major problems.

[389] If you lower your estrogen too much, you get connective tissue issues.

[390] So a lot of guys who go on TRT who take aromatase inhibitors like an astrosol.

[391] Yeah, me. We'll get achy joints.

[392] A lot of people feel much better off the anastrosol.

[393] Really?

[394] Yes.

[395] Libito can suffer if you get your estrogen too low.

[396] Yeah, I have this wrong in my head.

[397] I'm glad to hear you saying this.

[398] What I was under the impression was is that isn't the greatest challenge of the human body is its ability to keep itself level?

[399] it tries.

[400] It tries.

[401] But if you keep injecting testosterone, it's got to make it level by raising other things to match.

[402] So my understanding was that basically your body wants a ratio between estrogen and testosterone.

[403] So as you increase your testosterone, it's going to increase your estrogen.

[404] The body strives for homeostasis for balance.

[405] And yet the brain can push us away from homeostasis.

[406] If it were really a perfect homeostasis system, then you wouldn't get stressed for every about a stress.

[407] You'd have a great night's sleep and it just doesn't work that way right the brain can push us through hard times in fact cardiac hypertension people who are chronically under stress because of their life conditions you'd say well why doesn't their heart rate just adjust obviously homeiostasis is off right why would you have hyperinsulinemia why would you have like diabetes from stress or from eating the wrong things well homeostasis is off yeah so the body is not perfect at doing this on its own and that's where the brain comes in and behaviors come in okay now in the realm of hormones puberty get these surges and things are kind of all over the place and different kids some suffer from acne some don't water retention some don't but eventually as you depart from puberty you hit this balance and then indeed first of all testosterone levels vary tremendously between individuals so there are 50 year olds who are sitting around with a perfectly fine testosterone level doesn't mean that everyone at 30 or 40 or 50 needs TRT right and there are other things one can do or take to try and get that in check sleep quality, sleep on a regular basis, exercise, trying to keep body fat limited to whatever 20 % or below or something, these sorts of the eating well, that are a good social connection.

[408] But this conversion of testosterone into estrogen is a real thing.

[409] And as long as we're talking about TRT, I'm not going to ask you what your specific regimen is, but a lot of people have benefited tremendously from doing not what's recommended in the clinics of getting a 200 milligram dose every two weeks, but rather to take small amounts every third or fourth day.

[410] Oh, I could do that.

[411] So I do once a week.

[412] Oh, your life's about to change for the matter.

[413] No shit.

[414] Oh, your life is about to get way better.

[415] Oh, good.

[416] Talk to your doctor, but split that up into three separate smaller injections.

[417] Yeah, because I don't mind at all giving myself a shot in the butt.

[418] It becomes kind of this ritualized thing I like.

[419] Yeah, and it has immediate and longer term effects.

[420] But what happens when you get that big shot of testosterone, bodies converting some of that to estrogen and you actually want it working for you.

[421] Now, estrogen by spreading it out the dose, we can talk more about this offline.

[422] No, I'm going to get your email.

[423] He also has arthritis.

[424] So the joint situation.

[425] That's what got me to try it, by the way.

[426] So I think if you have arthritis, I'm not your medical doctor.

[427] Well, you are now.

[428] I always say, so I'm not an MD, so I do not prescribe anything.

[429] I'm a professor, so I just profess lots of things.

[430] And I don't just say that to protect me. I say that to protect people because medical doctors have an amazing training, depth and breadth of training.

[431] I teach to medical students at Stanford.

[432] And their training is really special.

[433] It's important.

[434] that people talk to a really good MD.

[435] Working with a naturopath is a nice augment to working with an MD, having a great whatever, whatever, but you want a really good, obviously, trustworthy medical doctor to work with if you're going to explore this.

[436] I'm a believer in formal rigorous coursework and being pitted against your peers in order to figure out whether or not you really know what you need to know before you go start treating other people's health.

[437] Yeah, yeah.

[438] And again, I don't have an MD.

[439] I work with them, I'm a scientist, so I explore things and trying to discover treatments that MDs can then deploy.

[440] Yeah.

[441] But MDs are amazing, and MD PhDs are even more amazing because they're really linked to the research.

[442] And I think nowadays there's a lot of skepticism about doctors, and you have good doctors and bad doctors.

[443] You need to find one whose bedside manner you really like.

[444] It is a problem in this country because getting a specialist, you need a referral to get a referral.

[445] There's got to be a thing.

[446] And then even a really well -qualified endocrinologist might say, well, this Huberman guy, what does he know about spreading out TRT dosages?

[447] Well, let's just say that I work with a number of people that have tried it both ways.

[448] Yeah, yeah.

[449] Antactotal stuff counts too.

[450] Yeah.

[451] But if you have this arthritis, you do not want to be reducing your estrogen.

[452] You'd be better off trying to maximize the testosterone in a healthy range while not having to take things like an astrosol or clomophon, which is an estrogen receptor blocker, because your joints are going to suffer when you're blocking estrogen.

[453] Okay.

[454] Estrogen's going to keep your brain health.

[455] healthy for a long time.

[456] It'll keep your memory intact.

[457] It's great for libido.

[458] It's great for resilience of a totally different kind.

[459] And I think the mentality out there now, because men haven't been very comfortable talking about hormones until recently, has been, oh, bro, it's all about testosterone, crush the estrogen, get that saran -wrap skin.

[460] And this is, you know, and it's a moron mentality.

[461] No disrespect to the sport of bodybuilding.

[462] But the reason why a lot of them die young is because of kidney issues, steroid abuse, and the general public is just interested in a completely different utilization of hormones.

[463] It's very unfortunate, yeah, that we have a binary model of testosterone replacement.

[464] It's either you don't do it or you're fucking Jake Cutler.

[465] There's other options, yeah.

[466] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[467] What's up, guys?

[468] This your girl Kiki, and my podcast is best.

[469] with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[470] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[471] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[472] And I don't mean just friends.

[473] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[474] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[475] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[476] We've all been there.

[477] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers and strange rashes.

[478] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[479] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

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[485] And along the lines of female hormones.

[486] We've got to get Monaco on some hormones.

[487] Let's talk.

[488] Oh, I have so many.

[489] I think mine are a men.

[490] No, you're young.

[491] So I think the conversation about hormone replacement for one, women, here are the data.

[492] If you look at these big meta -analyses of hormone replacement after menopause, so estrogen replacement therapy, what you find is that if women take a long period of time after menopause and go on hormone replacement, they start bringing in estrogen because they're not feeling well for a long period of time, the outcomes are bad.

[493] Oh.

[494] Terrible brain fog, issues with all sorts of illnesses and whatnot.

[495] If they start hormone therapy as they exit menopause, however, the outcomes are much better than had they not gone on hormone therapy at all.

[496] Wow.

[497] So the timing is key.

[498] So start earlier.

[499] Start earlier.

[500] So people should talk to their doctors.

[501] If they think they're heading into menopause, they should understand this.

[502] Now, if they've been through menopause for a while, they also need to take this into consideration, maybe tapering into it.

[503] But again, it's highly individual, but the timing does seem to really matter.

[504] But this is tricky, right?

[505] Because how do you know if you're someone who's going to need it?

[506] Or does everyone need it?

[507] Oh, people know.

[508] Because as they go through menopause, they feel lousy.

[509] And then some people recover and some people don't.

[510] And so that would be the time to explore hormone replacement.

[511] Got it.

[512] Maybe you could either substantiate this or shatter this.

[513] I heard from a bodybuilder, and I thought this was really interesting, that the common understanding of roid rage, people associate with someone having too much testosterone or some other chemical.

[514] But he was saying, in fact, they're really experiencing as estrogen rage.

[515] They're actually not used to having that much estrogen.

[516] Okay.

[517] So this is a very interesting question with respect to that community, but also hormones in general, because I'm assuming most of your listeners aren't blasting nandrolone.

[518] I hope not.

[519] Let's hope not.

[520] Okay.

[521] So a couple of things to make this answer accurate and educational.

[522] It can't be exhaustive.

[523] I can't hit all the corners of this.

[524] So there's testosterone, just basic testosterone, which is probably what you're taking, testosterone, cypionate, or in other countries, it's an anthony.

[525] or whatever.

[526] It's a long, long release form, essentially.

[527] Then there's dihydrotestosterone, D .H .T. This is what kills your hair.

[528] So you have D .H .T. receptors on your scalp and on your face.

[529] So the presence of D .H .T. will make hair fall out on the scalp and will make beard growth on the face.

[530] Has opposite effects on face and scale.

[531] Oh, that's strange.

[532] And whether or not you get the pattern of baldness or whether or not you get the, who's that actor?

[533] Well, the Widows Peak type.

[534] Sure, sure, sure.

[535] Yeah.

[536] Big Power All.

[537] plays on the side.

[538] Is it Ed Harris?

[539] Yeah, sure.

[540] Also, jacked, like, seems to be very muscular, Ed Harris.

[541] Yeah, probably was born with testosterone levels in the 99th percent.

[542] You can kind of see the look.

[543] Well, this is interesting.

[544] There's a phenotypic look that was more common in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

[545] You watch a movie like the right stuff, and there's a, the phenotype of men was very different.

[546] Now, they're not a good example of everybody, but there is this shift, right?

[547] Testosterone counts have been dropping, sperm counts have been dropping.

[548] Whether or not they've been dropping to the point where people can't reproduce, that's a different issue.

[549] I mean, obviously, there's still babies being born.

[550] So some people have the receptors on the front of their scalp.

[551] Some people have them everywhere and they'll go bald everywhere.

[552] But Dht is the dominant hormone for aggression and for strength in human primates.

[553] Then you have things like prolactin, which is this hormone that is secreted in pregnant women.

[554] It's involved in milk letdown.

[555] It's secreted in expecting fathers.

[556] and it lays down the dad bod.

[557] Oh, wow.

[558] In all animals, prolactin promotes the retention of body fat to prepare for sleepless nights once the offspring arrive.

[559] Wow.

[560] And prolactin is what's secreted immediately after ejaculation in males.

[561] And it's what sets the refractory period during which they can't have sex again.

[562] Uh -huh.

[563] And dopamine and prolactin are antagonistic to one another.

[564] There's all sorts of fascinating biology there.

[565] So roid rage is interesting because testosterone and dh t if those levels are elevated tend to make people more like they were before meaning you take a jerk you give them testosterone he's going to be more of a jerk sure you'd get a really gracious nice individual male or female give them testosterone they're going to have more energy to be gracious and nice however now there is a twist there which is that in the performance enhancement world and it's not just bodybuilders i'm going to make some enemy here, but there are female athletes who want the strength and hardness.

[566] They want the tortoise shell abs.

[567] They want all that, but they don't want the deep voice and the facial hair.

[568] In that case, you can separate the so -called anabolic effects of hormones from the androgenic effects.

[569] The endogenic effects are the ones that cause one set of body phenotypes and the other support muscle growth and strain.

[570] So they have all these derivatives now.

[571] They've made things like Nandrolone, which is basically DHT, pure DHD.

[572] Oh my goodness.

[573] So which can, can't be converted into estrogen.

[574] So when you see an athlete or actor who suddenly is looking really hard but not huge, but just really hard, all right.

[575] I mean, I'm not an idiot.

[576] I know this field.

[577] Anavar Nandrolone.

[578] And probably some peptides.

[579] People are tickling with a lot of actresses out here are really in a peptides now.

[580] Because it's not as scary as testosterone, but it mimics growth hormone, things like surmoral and tessomorla.

[581] I hear from these people all the time, like, how come my joints hurt?

[582] I'm like, well, because you're taking growth hormone.

[583] I'm not taking growth hormone.

[584] taking surmoralin.

[585] It's like, Sir Moran is growth hormone promoting hormone.

[586] It's called a secretagogue.

[587] So there's all this stuff.

[588] So Royd rage is often when you take a jerk and they are taking a hormone.

[589] There's a version of steroid that I hope nobody does.

[590] It's called trend blown.

[591] And it makes people extremely aggressive.

[592] Yeah.

[593] But when you hear about an athlete who goes on a killing spree or who beats up their spouse or something, chances are they were a jerk beforehand, but they're probably combining testosterone own alcohol, frontal temple damage, because their sport is running into things at high speeds with their head, and a love of firearms or something.

[594] So the reason I say this is, now we're into the dark, yeah, we're into the dark kind of caverns.

[595] My podcast is more like a college lecture, so I've got to listen.

[596] I'm so excited.

[597] It's great.

[598] It's great.

[599] We just did one on eating disorders and body dysmorphias.

[600] And one thing I learned in researching this and talking to a lot of colleagues, because I always consult with colleagues who are expert in these areas first.

[601] You have it on Easy Street.

[602] Can I just say that?

[603] What's that?

[604] In that regard, you have it the easiest job in the world because even when I was listening to your podcast, you're like, our colleague blank, he's got to walk down the fucking hallway to get one of the best experts in the world on any topic because you're at Stanford.

[605] That's true.

[606] That's right.

[607] Your bullpen is like.

[608] Well, so are we.

[609] We were invited to Stanford as guest lectures.

[610] Well, we're going to guest lecture.

[611] Please come visit.

[612] We will.

[613] Come to my lab.

[614] We'll put you in VR in my lab and we'll scare you.

[615] Oh, my God.

[616] How fun.

[617] And actually our VR palette of experiences, I don't want to tell you what they are so you're not prepared.

[618] I already know one is sharks.

[619] Yeah, which was actually shot that in VR with Michael Muller's, a photographer out here.

[620] Oh, I love Mike Mueller.

[621] Yeah, he says hello.

[622] So he shoots a lot of photos out here in Hollywood.

[623] His story is so interesting.

[624] Maybe you guys will talk to him at some point.

[625] He's a good friend.

[626] He actually helped us build our VR suite of experiences because we had people doing computer -generated experiences of sharks and heights and all the stuff.

[627] And he came to our lab and he was like, bro, this stuff's lame.

[628] And I said, what do you with this stuff when you fly.

[629] We need to do you some real experiences.

[630] And so we went out and shot a bunch of cage eggs at white shark diving, heights, a bunch of things.

[631] Well, and he's worked, and I don't think he'd mind me sharing this.

[632] I mean, Michael's been open about the fact that he's done work on his trauma.

[633] He's a recovered addict.

[634] He's done incredible work on himself.

[635] And I think it's really a shining example, as are you, about someone who's open about the places where they've failed and then overcome those failures and is saying, look, you can still lean into life after all that by being forward -center mass kind of person.

[636] Anyway, he's terrific.

[637] So come to the lab and we'll get you in some of the Mueller experiences and figure that out.

[638] But yeah, Stanford's a great place for this.

[639] And so when we were looking at eating disorders, what I was really kind of shocked to learn is that the incidence of things like anorexia has not increased with all these social media and media images at all.

[640] Really?

[641] At all.

[642] Body dysmorphia, different, okay?

[643] Disatisfaction with oneself, maybe, but full -blown anorexia, which is, I learned, anorexia is the most deadly psychological disorder.

[644] Really?

[645] A good proportion of people that get anorexia and don't treat it, die.

[646] Through malnutrition, the heart rate lowers.

[647] I mean, there are tons of internal organ issues.

[648] I mean, it's a terrible disease, and it's been around, at least reported since the 1600s, maybe even earlier.

[649] And you even see it in cultures where food is not abundant, where food is scarce.

[650] And so this idea that, oh, Instagram is what's making all these, it is mostly girls and adolescents at first, and then women as they get older, of course.

[651] Also, males are, you're seeing it more often now, but it's still a 10 to one ratio.

[652] I would imagine in the same way that it would be wrong to think of rape as a sexual crime in that it's a power crime.

[653] Generally, police will say that, like if they're looking for a rapist, they're not looking for a horny dude.

[654] They're looking for someone who wants to control other people.

[655] It's an exercise of control.

[656] And so anorexia is such an exercise of control.

[657] A hundred percent, yeah.

[658] And would it be more accurate to think of it in that terms instead of just like an aesthetic?

[659] Right.

[660] So real true anorexia nervosa is body image distortion.

[661] They see themselves as overweight.

[662] They become hyper sensitive to the caloric content of food.

[663] They're very good at detecting that.

[664] It's got some obsessive components to it.

[665] It then becomes a habit.

[666] And then the reward system, the dopamine system, switches to reward.

[667] rewarding deprivation as opposed to consumption, which is what makes it unusual and deadly.

[668] Well, that goes back to your point about the brain can overpower homostasis.

[669] That's right.

[670] Yeah.

[671] But the original line of thinking with interrexia and bulimia was that bulimia stemmed from early sexual trauma, which sometimes there is early sexual trauma, but there's no connection whatsoever in the direct sense that bulimics have to have had sexual trauma.

[672] And actually, and that myth has actually created a lot of problems because there are people who binge and purge, but I don't have sexual trauma, and 20, 30 years ago, they might have slipped through the clinical system and thinking, oh, well, they just have a problem with impulsivity or something.

[673] Anyone can become bulimic.

[674] And anorexia, we always think of the perfectionist and the overbearing parent.

[675] That's tricky, too, because there is a hereditary component.

[676] It runs in families.

[677] Sure.

[678] It's not a direct one -to -one kind of thing.

[679] If your parent was anorexic, will you be underrexit?

[680] Not necessarily.

[681] There's a nature and nurture there.

[682] But it's also a myth that the anorexic is always a perfectionist.

[683] and that it's all about being ideal in every way.

[684] These are constellations of things, like any psychological or psychiatric disorder.

[685] But the drive to eat is a powerful one.

[686] And when people are overriding that consistently to the point where their weight is unhealthy, that's a serious disorder.

[687] As many people die of anorexia, as people die of vehicle accidents in certain countries like Australia, which is not to say that there aren't very many vehicle accidents in Australia.

[688] So it's a really serious thing.

[689] and it's such a dark topic and it brings up so much for people.

[690] In fact, a lot of people wrote to me and are like, I'm afraid to watch this episode because I'm afraid of my eating disorder to get triggered again.

[691] It's that intense.

[692] And so that's the reason we did the episode is because we have to realize that people are hiding this stuff.

[693] And just like with TRT or hormone replacement therapy and women, this is biology.

[694] Right?

[695] There's no shame in biology.

[696] Everyone's dealing with the stuff and we just need to put it on the table.

[697] You know, earlier you said something about trauma.

[698] Yeah, because you deal particularly with neuroplasticity.

[699] in your lab, and as I've understood it, yeah, trauma can set your brain in a direction biochemically that you would really have to intervene to get it back or if it's even possible.

[700] Like for me, the thing I learned about trauma is like you might end up loving an arousal state.

[701] Right.

[702] And I do.

[703] Yeah, you seem like, you might be the one person I've ever met who blinks less than I do.

[704] Oh.

[705] I've been accused of being, let's just get this off the record.

[706] So first of all, I've been accused of being a sociopath because I don't blink very off.

[707] and people say, oh, you don't blink often and Liz Holmes doesn't blink often and she's on trial for Theranos.

[708] Can we get in trouble?

[709] She is on trial.

[710] I wasn't there.

[711] I don't know.

[712] I didn't take the blood test.

[713] But the fact of the matter is that there is zero relationship between blinking and sociopathy or blinking in line.

[714] I've never even heard that.

[715] That's so funny.

[716] This is like 70s and 80s pop psychology.

[717] Oh, my God.

[718] But I will say that there is a really cool relationship between blinking and arousal states, which is it's going to seem so simple when you hear it.

[719] Oh, can I guess?

[720] Yeah, please.

[721] You don't want to miss a thing.

[722] That's the best answer I've ever heard.

[723] Yes, it's true.

[724] And basically when you are sleepy, what happens?

[725] Your eyelids start to close.

[726] When you're really alert, your eyelids are wide open.

[727] When you're really scared, you're wide -eyed, literally.

[728] Andrew's also like, like, optomology is his field, too.

[729] Really?

[730] Which at first, I was like, this is a weird pairing.

[731] Neuroplasticity and optomology, I'm not saying it, right, opto -something.

[732] It's a weird one.

[733] It's the most impossible word to spell in the English language.

[734] Yeah, when I saw it read, I was like, I don't know how to.

[735] The easy way is just is like on -off, just thing off.

[736] Ophthalmology.

[737] Optomology.

[738] Optomology.

[739] Then you're basically there.

[740] Okay.

[741] Optomology.

[742] But then when you were explaining it, it makes a ton of sense, which is the only part of your brain that's not in your brain is in your eyes.

[743] You have some of your brain in your eyes.

[744] Whoa, that's crazy.

[745] Your eyes are actually two pieces of your brain that are outside your cranial wall.

[746] Fucking A. That's cool, isn't it?

[747] So they're not the window to the soul.

[748] There are two little bits of brain that are hanging out outside the skull.

[749] The windows to your brain.

[750] So that you know what time of day it is.

[751] So you can be able to make good judgments about things.

[752] at a distance.

[753] I mean, smell is the original form by which we detect things at a distance, but it's not very accurate if like a smell is drifting by.

[754] Now, bears are really good at it.

[755] They can get directionality.

[756] Hunters know this.

[757] If you're a hunter, you don't want the winds to shift and the animal to catch a whiff of you.

[758] But animals actually compare smells in the two nostrils.

[759] They smell in stereo.

[760] Stereo.

[761] How cool.

[762] That is so cool.

[763] We're so lame compared to animals when it comes to that stuff.

[764] But yeah, so the eyes have a profound effect on your level of alertness and they reflect that and so if you're not blinking very often it just means that you're very alert and and you nailed it with your answer most people don't know this every time you blink you actually reset your perception of time and so have you ever thought about this like you guys are from movies and film you have like a take right like that was a take that was a scene i'm making this up because i don't know the lingo but in your brain what's that thing that snaps shut?

[765] The clapper.

[766] Like, take or whatever they say.

[767] Do they really say that?

[768] Action.

[769] Soundhead speed.

[770] And when it's done, what do they say?

[771] They, well, someone else cut and then they cut.

[772] Okay.

[773] Well, when you blink, it's the same thing.

[774] Your brain resets.

[775] And there's a whole biology there that I won't go into now.

[776] But no, I got to tell you something really quick.

[777] I'm sorry, Monica.

[778] This is so thrilling.

[779] I just want to hear the rest.

[780] Okay, all right.

[781] No, no, no. No, you're right.

[782] You're right.

[783] This is when I can't help.

[784] I can't stop myself from saying.

[785] I launched a theory on here three years ago.

[786] I have no training in this field.

[787] And then I'm fucking watching your colleague interviewing you at Stanford and is how it works.

[788] So my theory was why does time feel slower in a car accident?

[789] And I related it to filming, which is when you're filming something that will ultimately be slow motion, you're actually filming at a much higher frame rate.

[790] And so when it's played back at the regular frame rate, it's slower because there's all this data.

[791] And so my theory was in those traumatic situations, did all your senses open up to a degree where you are downloading three times the information you would normally so that when you're sifting through it in your memory, it actually wasn't slow when you were experiencing it, probably.

[792] But the only way we can experience it now is through memory, and there's just like three times the data that should be in that four second period, and we can go through it granularly.

[793] Perfect.

[794] This is it, right?

[795] Oh, I love it.

[796] That's the best description of frame rate and stress and arousal I've ever heard of.

[797] So when you're very relaxed, your frame rate is slow, okay?

[798] And this is why, let's say you wake up And you're just exhausted.

[799] And you're like getting text messages and emails.

[800] You got to do this.

[801] It feels overwhelming because the world is moving faster than your internal frame rate.

[802] When we say I'm just moving really slowly today.

[803] Yeah.

[804] It's your frame rate.

[805] Yeah.

[806] Now when you're in line at the airport and you need to catch a flight or something's really critical, the person in front of you that's returning an item, it feels so slow because your frame rate is really fast.

[807] Oh, interesting.

[808] Now, this takes us right into trauma.

[809] So one of the hallmark features of trauma is a kind of a hyper, awareness of all these details, right?

[810] And I don't want to paint this because it could be a sexual trauma, it could be a car accident, it could be any number of different things.

[811] So the theory around trauma, and this is getting into the whole realm of psychoanalysis, but my friends who are analysts, I love psychoanalysis, by the way.

[812] I think it's fascinating.

[813] I don't think it's the only route, and I think it's made some mistakes over the years, like any field, but it's fascinating.

[814] But it was this idea of the repetition compulsion.

[815] So Freud had this brilliant idea that when we experience a trauma, that the fundamental question that gets embedded in the subconscious, which is just lack of awareness, right, is who's responsible?

[816] And that much of working through a trauma is about figuring out who was responsible.

[817] And it's interesting because you talk to people who have trauma and they know that they didn't cause the parent to do this horrible thing or this babysitter to do this horrible.

[818] And yet somehow the feeling of it is as if there's a confusion around that.

[819] And then there was this issue of the repetition, which says that the sexually traumatized individual seeks out a lot of sexual interactions, this is the theory, as a way to try and test over and over again the possibility of making a new choice or a different choice.

[820] And this leads into a community that is actually very interesting and deserves study, which is the community of people who use power relationships and sexual dynamics to try and work through trauma.

[821] I'm not talking about this is all, I always say there are four conditions of any discussion about sex and sexual interactions just not for liability's sake but just to be clear what we're talking about it's got to be age appropriate context appropriate consensual and species appropriate and people always go oh the species appropriate thing like you're trying to be fine no i mean there's all sorts of weirdness out there so although we have figured out who you're allowed to have sex with that's a side note we did the work women can have sex with male dolphins we concluded because there's no victimization the male dolphin wants to have sex with a human female as has been demonstrated on countless videos is that true yes male dolphins try to have sex with human females all the time and there was these famous dolphin instructors and the female scientist said you just had to jerk them off real quick because you couldn't study them until that happens you're not observing anything about a dolphin male dolphin if you're in the tank with it and so she would jerk this dolphin off just so she could then they could get on to the other stuff wow so anyways I do urge you to have a caveat to your four things so So species specific, I would say with the exclusion of a male dolphin.

[822] You don't have to add that part in.

[823] You don't have to do that.

[824] Don't feel like that's necessary.

[825] Male human on any female animal, no good.

[826] No good.

[827] Okay.

[828] So there's an asymmetry there.

[829] What a way to put a scientific fucking wrapper on that.

[830] Well, I'm taking notes.

[831] So I have this practice of when I teach science online, I occasionally use pictures.

[832] And so at the end of every conversation, I usually go home and I usually draw a picture to encapsulate the conversation.

[833] Will you send us a picture of your picture?

[834] Sure.

[835] They're not very good.

[836] It's just a bunch of neurons.

[837] Yeah, but we like bad art. So there's this idea that people who have trauma, there are a number of different ways that people are working through trauma.

[838] And this is an area I spend a lot of time thinking about.

[839] I have a colleague at Stanford, Associate Chair of Psychiatry, David Spiegel.

[840] He's a world expert in hypnosis.

[841] He's done a lot of really important work on clinical hypnosis.

[842] not stage hypnosis.

[843] We have a bunch of collaborations going for sake of stress management, pain management.

[844] That's his lab's work.

[845] But we talk a lot about trauma and some of the treatments.

[846] So maybe we just flip through a few of those treatments because I think people probably be curious.

[847] Can I add one anecdotal thing about the sexual trauma?

[848] In my own personal exploration, I think going to the Freud aspect is I was presented with this notion that you were a child in this person was the predator.

[849] and you're not responsible and you shouldn't feel any shame or guilt about it.

[850] That's the cure -all description to someone.

[851] What it ignores, and this is an AA thing, what it ignores is I had a role in it.

[852] And unless I confront the role I had in it, I'm not going to heal.

[853] So for me, and I've talked to many other sexual abuse survivors who have had this, generally someone has leverage over you.

[854] That's how a predator operates.

[855] They have some leverage over you.

[856] and by someone having leverage over you, you are participating.

[857] So me personally, this person had leverage.

[858] They had something I wanted.

[859] They were promising me in this thing.

[860] And I was ignoring my spidey senses.

[861] I was in a situation.

[862] I did not want to be in, but I wanted this other thing.

[863] And that's where the personal guilt for me lied.

[864] And until I could say, oh, yeah, I didn't listen to my instincts.

[865] And I was doing something.

[866] I knew I didn't want to be doing, but I did it anyways.

[867] And I was seven.

[868] And seven -year -olds want things.

[869] And I can forgive myself, but I got to get to the point where I first admit what I ignored and then forgive myself.

[870] And I feel like that to me was a bit of a breakthrough.

[871] So I just, I don't know that that thing goes deep enough as it's generally presented.

[872] Yeah, my goal is always to be accurate, but there's no way I can be exhaustive.

[873] So adding that is important.

[874] And there are other dimensions to trauma too.

[875] I mean, and there are traumas that are not single incident traumas or single type traumas.

[876] So for instance, EMDR, I move into desensization, reprocessing.

[877] This kind of seems wacky, this idea of moving.

[878] your eyes from side to side while recounting a traumatic story has become pretty popular.

[879] And for years, people would ask me about this.

[880] And I work on vision and I work on stress and trauma.

[881] So my response was, you got to be kidding me. This is clearly just some kooky thing that someone made up.

[882] Then no fewer than five quality papers were published, some of which I confess I reviewed, landed on my desk from groups in neuroscience working on eye movements, not on trauma, that found that these eye movements, and so for those listening, these are eye movements from side to side, not up and down.

[883] They are deliberate and they're with eyes open, done while seated if somebody is in a therapy session and recounting their trauma.

[884] These eye movements actually shut down, transiently shut down an area of the brain we call the amygdala, which is one of the main processing stations for fear.

[885] And I thought, this is incredible.

[886] How does this work?

[887] And how could someone figure this out?

[888] Well, it turns out that when you walk, when we say ambulate, when you walk forward, your eyes naturally generate these movements from side to side.

[889] They're called slip -compensating eye movements.

[890] When you take a picture on your iPhone and you move it, or on your phone, your Android weirdos that you actually use Android.

[891] I guess Samsung's never going to come after me, a sponsor, but you get a blurry image, right?

[892] But you don't get a blurry image when you move your head around and look at things because you have slip -compensating eye movements.

[893] your eyes are constantly generating these little subconsciously, these little movements to stabilize the image on your eye.

[894] Incredible.

[895] Just amazing, right?

[896] Well, those movements of your eyes are associated with walking forward and threat confrontation and walking forward.

[897] And walking forward in general shuts down the fear centers in the brain.

[898] So this woman, brilliant woman, who had no knowledge of the neuroscience named Francine Shapiro, unfortunately she passed away a few years ago, she figured out because she was a clinical psychologist that when she took walks, troubling things felt less troubling.

[899] And this doesn't work if you're looking at your phone, by the way.

[900] She would take walks in the woods or whatever it was, and she would feel better, notice a kind of a calming of her system.

[901] And she wondered, well, is it the physical movement in my body?

[902] Is it the breathing?

[903] She brought the eye movements to her clinic.

[904] So she would sit you down, for instance, and say, well, let's talk about this really disturbing thing.

[905] But for 20 seconds before you do that, move your eyes from side to side.

[906] And the people would feel more willing to share their story and would feel as if somehow they were removing the emotional load of the experience over time.

[907] And it took several sessions.

[908] So EMDR, a lot of people think is wacky, but there is a scientific basis.

[909] There are a lot of crazy theories like, oh, it mimics REM sleep.

[910] No. Rab and eye movement sleep is totally different.

[911] Or, oh, it links the two sides of your brain by looking from side to side.

[912] No. The one really crucial thing that I learned about EMDR, it works best for kind of single incident or single type of incident traumas, it's not going to help you repair your whole childhood.

[913] If you had a terrible interaction with somebody or something there, it might be useful.

[914] It's also a useful tool in general if people are experiencing fear, provided the eye movements don't disrupt what they are about to do, like public speaking or have a hard conversation.

[915] You can do this for 30 seconds.

[916] It's completely non -invasive.

[917] Obviously, pull your car over the side.

[918] Don't do it while driving or you might crash.

[919] This is why taking a walk actually, if these eye movements are generated side to side, we feel calmer.

[920] You're actually shutting down these brain centers that trigger fear.

[921] It's really fascinating.

[922] It made me come up immediately with like an armchair explanation evolutionarily, which is considering that we used to brachiate, right, we would swing through the jungle and we would be grabbing vines and grabbing branches.

[923] That is a very terrifying endeavor for some animal without wings.

[924] And the fact that the eyes are moving left and right is like you're gathering all of the potential places you could be.

[925] be grabbing and fear is not going to be helpful in that situation you just got to commit to that form of locomotion i wonder if there's anything in there because such a dangerous activity that they have no fear about well and all activities right i mean if we lived in a cave and we had some food and some water at some point you need to venture out and early on before we had technologies to combat not just animals this whole idea that stress is only about the lion or the saber tooth tiger.

[926] Look, a thousand years ago, your spouse might go to another village and never come back.

[927] People broke up, people cheated, people fought over resources.

[928] I mean, it's not always been about hiding ourselves or fighting animals that are trying to eat us.

[929] There are a lot of threats out there, weather, disease.

[930] More people die from eating the wrong shit than getting eaten by a lion.

[931] Right.

[932] So threat confrontation comes in various forms, different timescales, and forward movement is the hallmark of threat confrontation.

[933] And so I think Francine Shapiro was just brilliant in discovering this.

[934] There's now neuroscience to support it.

[935] But then you say, well, what about other kinds of trauma?

[936] What if EMDR doesn't work?

[937] Because it doesn't work for everybody.

[938] Yeah.

[939] Well, then there are other kind of clusters of treatments.

[940] Right now there's a lot of excitement about MDMA -assisted psychotherapy and psilocybin psychotherapy, mainly from Johns Hopkins group, Matthew Johnson, a good buddy of mine, is leading those studies at Johns Hopkins.

[941] just to be really clear about that because there's so much interest in it.

[942] Yeah.

[943] First of all, those drugs are still illegal.

[944] You don't want to get caught with them.

[945] There are a few cities in the U .S. where psilocybin mushrooms are decriminalized, but you can go to jail for very long periods of time for buying, selling, or possessing.

[946] To try to work through your food scarcity trauma.

[947] Right, exactly.

[948] And then ironically land in a place with food scarcity.

[949] Right.

[950] There are clinical trials that are happening now, and they're looking promising for trauma and for severe depression.

[951] but it's actually important if people want to see those therapies make it into mainstream to not ruin it by letting those trials finish.

[952] I'm not going to pick on any authors or journalists in particular about this, but this is really key times right now.

[953] Those drugs basically open up neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to rewire itself and they do it in a very powerful and acute way.

[954] They do have abuse potential.

[955] Especially MDMA.

[956] MDMA because it basically creates a surge of dopamine and serotonin.

[957] Ketamine, is an approved therapy now.

[958] Ketamine is not for trauma.

[959] It's actually in emergency rooms.

[960] You imagine someone comes in and they just saw their child or spouse impaled on a steering wheel column.

[961] You want to erase the emotional load of that as quickly as possible.

[962] So they will use ketamine.

[963] Ketamine is PCP.

[964] Oh, it is?

[965] Remember PCP?

[966] Yes, Angel Dust.

[967] PCP.

[968] Hold on a second.

[969] I thought it was cat tranquilizer.

[970] They are both what are called dissociative anesthetics.

[971] Okay.

[972] That's why people on PCP who took too much PCP, you'd hear these rumors.

[973] you know, they're punching light poles.

[974] Yeah, cops shooting them a million times.

[975] Exactly, and they keep going forward.

[976] Those drugs block what's called the NMDA receptor, N -Methyl -Di -Spartate receptor for euophicinados.

[977] That is the receptor that is responsible for a lot of neuroplasticity for changing a circuitry.

[978] And so you say, well, wait, here's this trauma treatment that involves taking an anesthetic to make you feel dissociated.

[979] And indeed, that's what it does.

[980] It makes people feel next to their emotion.

[981] Ah.

[982] So they can kind of observe it from the, the outside.

[983] They report feeling like they're climbing out of the cockpit of their own brain.

[984] Oh, wow.

[985] Very strong abuse potential.

[986] Well, I did want to have flag this.

[987] So I've known a couple people in sobriety who went in on this.

[988] Like, oh, ketamine's great for trauma.

[989] If you're an addict, I would say this is not for you.

[990] I just will say that personally.

[991] If I may, I have a colleague who's just amazing.

[992] Her name is Anna Lemke, L -E -M -B -K -E.

[993] She's the one who did the addiction episode of your book.

[994] Yeah, she has a book out now and I'm never going to plug in my own book because I don't have one.

[995] She wrote this book called Dopamine Nation, and it's all about addiction and pain and pleasure balance, and she is cautiously optimistic about some of these therapies.

[996] However, she has seen people get addicted to some of these things.

[997] Addicts going into these things to try and cure their addiction and then ending up with an addiction to these other things.

[998] So I don't judge.

[999] I'm not someone who judges.

[1000] I largely think that people should just be informed and then make good decisions for themselves.

[1001] But these are exciting therapies, and there are people who have intractable, depression, who are suicidal, who do get benefits from ketamine.

[1002] It's as varied as they come.

[1003] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1004] There was a great HBO sports on a lot of different athletes that are suffering, what is assumed to be CTE, who have had incredible results.

[1005] Because of that, right, your brain has to force its way into a new pathway to communicate with itself.

[1006] Yeah.

[1007] Yeah, you know, what's interesting about psilocybin and MDMA and maybe even ketamine is that somehow the brain is able to learn something in those experiences about a new way of feeling or being.

[1008] And this is all very abstract because even Matthew Johnson, who is running these trials at Johns Hopkins, I said, is it important that the person who does the psilocybin journey in your clinic have some particular thought, experience, or emotion?

[1009] And he said the most incredible thing, he said, actually, no, we see benefits toward getting over depression as long as the people learn to kind of let go fully in the session.

[1010] I was like, well, what is letting go?

[1011] I mean, I'm a biologist.

[1012] He's a biologist.

[1013] Like, what is letting go?

[1014] Sure.

[1015] And it may be...

[1016] What's the metric by which we measure letting go?

[1017] Exactly.

[1018] And this is the stuff of new age retreats that people when talking about, just let go, just manifest.

[1019] What are these things?

[1020] And I'm not disparaging of those terms.

[1021] I just want to know what is that mechanistically?

[1022] Matthew tells me, that it has to do with being able to go into these really heightened states of autonomic arousal.

[1023] They're almost like stressful, but maintaining a kind of openness about new understanding, maybe understanding, for instance, let's take the trauma example that you mentioned earlier, so troubling, that someone would be able to say, ah, it makes total sense that I would participate in that, not just given my age, but just given what seven -year -olds are curious.

[1024] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1025] And yet it was horrible.

[1026] and to be able to hold that idea of something is horrible and unfair and never should have happened along with makes perfect sense and somehow create some new learning in the brain where then they exit that journey and are able to move forward with a sense of peace.

[1027] So it's a new portal through which to view their memory and experience and their next stage of life.

[1028] The way I've heard it explained, which is very encouraging and seems logical, which is like the area of your brain, brain that is responsible for constructing your identity is largely rendered useless on a huge dose of psilocybin.

[1029] So the part of your brain that's, I'm this, and I'm that, and I'm this, and that kind of dissipates, and you can maybe recognize how trapped you are in, I'm this, I'm that.

[1030] Right.

[1031] Yeah.

[1032] Well, and I think those words are really powerful.

[1033] The words I am are some of the most powerful words we use.

[1034] And yet, there is no evidence to support the fact that just saying something is going to reshape your brain.

[1035] This is something I think we need to move away from in terms of neuroplasticity.

[1036] In the 2000s, there was this idea that every thought you have and everything you say, your brain and body hear it.

[1037] And I think that's a terrible message to send people because most of what we think is about danger, stress, and anxiety.

[1038] And the idea that we are somehow harming ourselves with those thoughts is really terrible.

[1039] Anna tells a really great and kind of troubling story in her book.

[1040] And I don't want to give away the book, but she talks about when she first had her child and having this imagery of smashing the child's head and thinking, oh my goodness, am I psychotic?

[1041] I have patients who have actually done that.

[1042] That's where her report killed their children.

[1043] Wow.

[1044] And she realized that no, her recognition of that as troubling is the brain's attempt to try and make sure that doesn't happen.

[1045] This is why people go to a ledge and they think, what if I just jumped off?

[1046] Yeah.

[1047] And you think, what's keeping me from jumping off?

[1048] What's keeping me from jumping off is that you're realizing that you're able to think these horrible things.

[1049] And I think the more that we normalize these patterns of thinking, the more that people will start to feel some relief from all this really troubling stuff that pops around.

[1050] Well, it would hopefully decouple the shame aspect, which isn't productive in any way.

[1051] Like regrets, Gray, wanting to change the way you did something, but to carry shame doesn't seem to be too productive.

[1052] Well, in addicts and recovered addicts always impressed me because such a central component of their work and getting sober is about basically being able to air your dirty laundry and not feel like a lesser human, but the opposite as a consequence of sharing it.

[1053] It's great at allowing you to own it all, make amends where possible, and then move beyond it.

[1054] What it's not great at, and this was my experience, is owning the future missteps.

[1055] I see.

[1056] Because it's like so much of that behavior I would explain by my addiction, and then I clear up those things, and now, absent of the addiction, I shouldn't really act like an asshole.

[1057] Well, guess what?

[1058] I still act like an asshole.

[1059] I still make misdemeanor.

[1060] stakes.

[1061] For me, personally, I don't know if there's anyone else's experience in AA.

[1062] I kind of maybe erroneously assumed in sobriety I wouldn't have all those, or I wouldn't be needing to be open to that.

[1063] You know, that deep shame is still a part of my future with or without alcohol.

[1064] Do you still go to meetings?

[1065] Yeah.

[1066] Yeah.

[1067] Yeah.

[1068] Alcohol was your only thing.

[1069] In cocaine.

[1070] Yeah, I'm afraid of anything that gets dopamine too high because I like that feeling.

[1071] And I know it from life, and it's a very addictive feeling.

[1072] Well, one of the things that Ana said in your podcast, which is really interesting, is that part of the problem is exposing ourselves repeatedly with chemicals and drugs that flood the brain with dopamine, the body will lower the baseline in an attempt to regulate back to that homeostasis thing.

[1073] So if you're pegging a 10 all the time, your body's going to try to get you back into a realistic level.

[1074] So your baseline is going to shrink dramatically so that now when you're not on it, you're physically miserable because you're, your baseline is in a miserable state.

[1075] Right.

[1076] And this is true, not just of cocaine and alcohol, what I learned, which is that, yeah, you have this pain, pleasure balance.

[1077] And if you've ever found yourself on Instagram and scrolling and feeling like, why am I doing this?

[1078] It doesn't even feel good anymore.

[1079] It's because you've saturated the dopamine system.

[1080] The pain system is starting to push back.

[1081] It's not physical pain.

[1082] And were you to take a few hours or days away from it, it would feel good again.

[1083] But here's the kind of eerie part.

[1084] It's not going to ever feel as good as it did the first time.

[1085] you flipped in there ever again.

[1086] Wow, that's crazy.

[1087] So you have to guard your dopamine and that's true with shopping.

[1088] It's true with sex.

[1089] It's true with cocaine.

[1090] It's true with anything.

[1091] Some people more than others prefer one thing or another.

[1092] You don't seem like an addict.

[1093] You don't have the attic thing.

[1094] But if you're a covert addict, then that's different.

[1095] I think I have some obsessions and some addict equalities, but nothing that's taken me out.

[1096] She has no wreckage.

[1097] She loves drink.

[1098] She drinks more than she would want to at times.

[1099] I don't see a problem with it as an addict.

[1100] Like, it's totally fine.

[1101] Yet, I'll like, why don't know what I'm talking for you?

[1102] I just will say, like, we've had these conversations that when you're in your own kitchen and your body just tells you, like, have a glass of wine.

[1103] It's not even that you desired it, but now it's a habitual thing.

[1104] It's a habit for sure.

[1105] Well, the brain has two choices.

[1106] It can do what I call DPO type behaviors, which is duration path outcome.

[1107] So, when you want to learn something, you have to think, how long, what do I do and what's the outcome?

[1108] When you learn lines for script and then it becomes more reflexive, then you have reflexes.

[1109] When you learn to walk, it was duration path outcome, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.

[1110] That's very metabolically demanding.

[1111] It's intentionally demanding.

[1112] Then it gets handed off to circuitry where you just walk or you just drink or you just do lots of things.

[1113] And so we have to be grateful that we can transition these behaviors that we learn from duration path to outcome, DPO type behaviors to reflexive.

[1114] Problem is when those reflexive behaviors don't serve us well.

[1115] Now we have to understand how to engage the other kind of plasticity, which isn't learning stuff.

[1116] We always think plasticity, learning, learning, what about unlearning?

[1117] How do you break a habit?

[1118] We now know how you break a habit.

[1119] First of all, knowledge of knowledge is actually powerful there.

[1120] The moment you realize that you are drinking just like you would scratch a mosquito bite without realizing it in your sleep, that's helpful.

[1121] and it could be helpful to the people around you because they realize, oh, you're not saying, oh, my drink is more important than my family.

[1122] You're not consciously making that choice.

[1123] You are in a habit -type behavior.

[1124] That is very powerful knowledge of knowledge.

[1125] You're avoiding a type of pain.

[1126] And it's skipping, you're basically moving just to the behavior.

[1127] It's literally like waking up with a mosquito bite, East Coast, right, summer.

[1128] You're waking up, scratching your mosquito bite.

[1129] You weren't conscious of doing that.

[1130] And then breaking habits involves teaching the individual and this is what they do for treatment of anorexia in some cases and for drug addiction and all sorts of types of habits is to teach the person to become more interoceptively aware.

[1131] We can be extroceptive, pay attention to things in our outside world beyond the confines of our skin or interoception.

[1132] So you teach them interoceptive awareness and they learn to identify the subtle signals that come before execution of the habit.

[1133] There's actually a test of how interoceptively aware you are.

[1134] some people are very good at counting their own heartbeats other people are terrible at it and you can get better at it and you can do this anyone could do this at home you can just you sit down for 30 seconds or so and you have someone take your pulse you don't want them to push too hard because then you can feel it pulsing but you count heartbeats or you could use a heart rate monitor if you want people who are good at counting heartbeats are generally have a lot of interoceptive awareness people with a lot of trauma we would think, oh, they must be so aware of what's going on in their body.

[1135] Oftentimes people with trauma will try and reduce any capacity for interoceptive awareness because they don't want to feel what's going on.

[1136] Yeah, that makes sense.

[1137] We all think, oh, it would be so great to get in touch with your body.

[1138] You know how many times I've been told this?

[1139] You just need to like relax and get in touch with you.

[1140] I'm like, don't spa me. But as you get more in touch with your body, you also start to detect subtle cues.

[1141] Like when you're in an interaction with somebody that doesn't feel right, you notice it earlier and it becomes a stronger signal this is what the seven year old feels but doesn't know to respond to kids are incredibly interoceptively aware as adults we learn to suppress that because you're supposed to sit in a meeting and like no like i'm going to wait to go to the bathroom at the end of this meeting well just yeah an adult's life is largely uncomfortable at times and you just got a fucking deal with it when you're a kid you're like this sucks you call like you see it i hate this car right why is it going up for three hours it's a good point can I do one just dramatic rewind as you mentioned kid and just close one question that's been lingering in the back of my mind I feel like we'd be remiss in the conversation about hormone therapy if we didn't discuss two aspects that are important for people to consider one is do you have children right you've already successfully reproduced as we said in biology congratulations TRT will make it challenging to impossible to reproduce again unless you come off it there are ways to wriggle through that.

[1142] But basically, testosterone is a contraceptive.

[1143] It's birth control because if you're taking testosterone, your testes shut down sperm production because the way that the brain and gonads talk, there's no reason for them to make testosterone on their own.

[1144] So I take the day off.

[1145] We got a shot in the ass.

[1146] And some people will take something called HCG, which is human chorionic gonadotropin to restart the sperm production if they want to have children on TRT.

[1147] HCG comes from pregnant women's urine.

[1148] There used to be a black market for this where people would buy pregnant.

[1149] Now they inject it.

[1150] And in women, taking hormones, taking estrogen is the way that you suppress ovulation.

[1151] So hormones can be used to suppress ovulation and suppress sperm production, right?

[1152] Now, it's not perfect.

[1153] Guys on TRT, that does not mean you can't get someone pregnant.

[1154] In fact, someone I know, I won't out him, had two pregnancies.

[1155] He's a good father.

[1156] I won't say if they were wanted or unwanted pregnancies, but while on TRT and no HCG.

[1157] So it's going to vary.

[1158] Remember, it just takes one sperm and one egg.

[1159] But that's an important point.

[1160] And when you mention children, it flags something.

[1161] in my mind that we didn't mention earlier, which is that these hormone therapies can prevent people from having children later.

[1162] So guys in your 20s, as crazy as it may sound, you know, bro, I don't want kids, just want a dog and go to the chimp.

[1163] You know, exactly.

[1164] I might have been describing myself in my 20s.

[1165] You might have thrown a PhD in there too, but it was like, yeah, a dog truck.

[1166] There are times later when you may regret that decision, and some people coming off won't rescue that.

[1167] And then, in fairness to the female reproductive acts, since we've been talking a lot about tier T earlier, there is this really wild finding about oral contraception in women that's a really robust finding, which is, so men find the scent of women's skin especially attractive when the woman is in her pre -ovulatory phase.

[1168] Okay.

[1169] When she is soon to become fertile, the smell of their sweat and the smell of their skin becomes much more enticing and the appearance of their faces.

[1170] That effect is blocked, by oral contraception in the women.

[1171] Really?

[1172] Right.

[1173] Well, but you're also blocking an unwanted child.

[1174] And I'm not against birth control.

[1175] Pick your poison.

[1176] Yeah.

[1177] But this is really interesting.

[1178] And it brings up a finding that came out recently, which is that getting a lot of sunlight on the face and upper body can promote testosterone release in males and females and is pro -ovulatory and is pro -mating behavior, right?

[1179] Makes people want to have sex.

[1180] Why?

[1181] The skin is actually an endocrine organ.

[1182] skin makes hormones.

[1183] And so in this case, getting sunlight to the eyes and skin and face and chest, et cetera, signals to the brain to trigger the hormones that cause ovulation and sperm production and testosterone production in males and females.

[1184] Now, as soon as I say this, the first question I get for whatever reason is, so we're supposed to be sending our genitalia, which I did not say.

[1185] I didn't think that.

[1186] Okay, I just want to be clear because I get that question about this a lot.

[1187] I don't know why certain people are obsessed by that.

[1188] Yeah.

[1189] There's no evidence for that whatsoever.

[1190] But the cool thing is skin is actually signaling chemicals from individual to individual.

[1191] And I also learned that when you meet somebody, I should have watched for this.

[1192] When we met and shook hands, within 10 to 15 seconds, we all wiped each other's chemicals on ourselves.

[1193] Subconsciously.

[1194] Subconsciously, if you look at people, watch people when they meet.

[1195] They will touch their face typically or their eyes or their nose within a few seconds.

[1196] It's a little different in this time of COVID because people are a little bit more standoffish.

[1197] They're doing the germ -free handshake, the fist bump or something.

[1198] To see if there's a pheromonal connection?

[1199] It's not necessarily for sake of mating.

[1200] It's just that at a very primordial level, our first primordial communication is chemical and scent -based.

[1201] And we are very visual animals.

[1202] There's no question.

[1203] But subconsciously, we're rubbing each other's chemicals on each other all the time.

[1204] Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

[1205] No, but can I mention kids and I went down a rabbit hole?

[1206] Well, can I launch into maybe a quick theory on that?

[1207] again from the anthropology background, which is the heralding accomplishment of Homo sapien sapien is the amount of group members that can keep track of.

[1208] That's like our crowning achievement before we had cutlery.

[1209] It's just we have these multi -member groups, hundreds and hundreds of people that we can somehow keep straight.

[1210] And it's vital we keep straight because their status may impact whether we can reproduce, whether we can eat, whether we have access to all this stuff.

[1211] So in this really hard task of memorizing all these faces, which we've become good at visually, right?

[1212] We're the best at this.

[1213] Maybe we're also trying to imprint some olfactory markers.

[1214] So we go like, we're going to file this person and we're going to track this person.

[1215] I wonder if it works in concert with that.

[1216] I love these explanations because, first of all, evolutionary explanations are wonderful because they take into account not just individuals but groups.

[1217] And I think in biology, we often study groups of individuals, but we don't understand how individuals interact.

[1218] All the brain scans we see, you know, that this area lights up, that area lights up.

[1219] Only now are we starting to see some brain imaging of people actually.

[1220] interacting with.

[1221] Oh, sure.

[1222] It's starting.

[1223] So I love that example.

[1224] We aren't just interested in mating with other individuals.

[1225] We are addressing whether or not they are stressed or not.

[1226] In fact, when you walk down the street, subconsciously, you don't even realize this.

[1227] You're binning people into categories.

[1228] You might think, oh, is it going to be mainly on skin color or height or something?

[1229] No, you are fundamentally going male, female, male, male, female.

[1230] Now nowadays, right, I have a former colleague of mine unfortunately he passed away who's transgendered sometimes there's an ambiguity depending on where somebody is in their transition or sometimes just people naturally you're not sure but the first thing you're always asking is is this person potentially a friend potentially a mate are they an enemy we are constantly addressing that at a subconscious level by these peripheral signals and peripheral meaning just on the outside but when we start to interact with people at close distance there's this subconscious analysis of how stressed they are what's their testosterone status.

[1231] Well, because your safety may be interacting with that state.

[1232] Right.

[1233] I love the studies, for instance, that if you give, in this case it was men and women.

[1234] Traditionally, that is how it was done.

[1235] They haven't looked at same couples too much in these studies, but you give women 100 t -shirts to smell.

[1236] They can pick out their boyfriend's t -shirt with very high reliability.

[1237] I want to go back to the sun thing.

[1238] Me too, me too.

[1239] Because I have self -diagnosed seasonal effective disorder.

[1240] I really think I do.

[1241] And do you think part of that is because if I'm not exposed to the sun and I'm not making as much testosterone, then I have less energy, and then that makes me lethargic and sad?

[1242] Well, you're asking a chicken or an egg question, right?

[1243] Because Monica's a great sun worshipper.

[1244] She always will be seated outside in direct sunlight.

[1245] We'll all be in the shade, and Monica always is in direct sunlight.

[1246] And I'm always like, this is an unpopular thing to even think of in this day and age.

[1247] But you're from India.

[1248] Like your people, they didn't march north.

[1249] They didn't turn white.

[1250] you were designed to live in a certain climate.

[1251] I wonder if you're literally answering the call of something you can't even explain.

[1252] So I love these questions.

[1253] So my lab's worked a lot on how to get great sleep and improve mood and reduce stress and get the timing of all these hormones and things right.

[1254] But this might be kind of tool number one for any and every person listening to this, which is the best thing you can do for your biology is to view sunlight early in the day and again in the evening, so -called low -solar angle sunlight.

[1255] And so here's the practice and then I'll tell you the biology behind it.

[1256] Within 30, but certainly within 60 minutes of waking up, not talking about shift workers, but you get up at a normal time, 5, 6, 7, 8 a .m., whatever.

[1257] Get outside, unless you have macular degeneration, no sunglasses, not through a window because it doesn't work as well.

[1258] You don't have to stare directly at the sun without blinking, bright light in your eyes for 10 to 30 minutes first thing in the morning.

[1259] Okay.

[1260] This is a thrilling experiment I'm going to try.

[1261] Do that again in the evening.

[1262] So when the sun is low in the sky, there's a contrast between yellow and blue that is important for setting a number of systems.

[1263] But what are you doing when you do this?

[1264] Okay, you have neurons in your eye, nerve cells that have nothing to do with pattern vision.

[1265] They're not involved in looking at contours, faces, et cetera.

[1266] But they connect to a little area above the roof of your mouth called the super -chaismatic nucleus.

[1267] That is your brain's clock.

[1268] Say it one more time.

[1269] It's so sexy.

[1270] Super chiasmatic nucleus.

[1271] It's actually there's, it's, you have an optic chiasm, it's above that, supra chiasmatic, just above.

[1272] So every cell in your body has a 24 -hour clock.

[1273] Those need to be coordinated.

[1274] So imagine you go into a watcher clock store, you want all of the clocks to be on the same time.

[1275] Otherwise, they're alarming and belling at all the different times.

[1276] That is terrible.

[1277] When you don't get sunlight in your eyes for more than a day or two in a row, you can miss a day, but if you start missing two or three days, days, you're going to be messed up mentally and physically.

[1278] Yeah.

[1279] You will have gut issues.

[1280] You have brain issues.

[1281] Now, we used to only see this with jet lag.

[1282] When you're jet lag, this is what happens.

[1283] And there's a lot of intricacy of this.

[1284] But get that sunlight early in the day.

[1285] Now, if you live in the UK and it's cloudy, you say, well, it's so cloudy here.

[1286] All right, look, as long as you don't live in a cave, there is light coming through those clouds.

[1287] Yeah.

[1288] You need to be outside longer in that case, 30 to 60 minutes.

[1289] But a couple great things happen when you do this.

[1290] and then I'll talk about the evening light.

[1291] First of all, you have a stress hormone called cortisol.

[1292] Everyone thinks it's terrible, but you need cortisol released once every 24 hours, and it will happen once every 24 hours no matter what.

[1293] You want that pulse to be early in the day, not late.

[1294] In fact, late -shifted cortisol is a marker of depression and chronic anxiety.

[1295] 9 p .m. cortisol is what we look for for depression in the lab.

[1296] Oh, wow.

[1297] And in so they know more than I thought they knew.

[1298] They know everything, right?

[1299] So getting that morning pulse, you will start to notice.

[1300] as you do it because it's a kind of a cumulative effect.

[1301] You'll start feeling more energetic from it.

[1302] That's the cortisol pulse and with it an adrenaline pulse.

[1303] When I say a pulse, I just mean the release into your system in a brain and body.

[1304] It also sets a timer on the release of another hormone called melatonin.

[1305] Melatonin is the hormone that makes you sleepy at night but doesn't keep you asleep.

[1306] And it's a hormone that I'll tell you why in a few minutes you do not want to supplement unless it is not.

[1307] He's trying to get me to take it and I said no. I take a gallon of it.

[1308] Go ahead.

[1309] Okay, this is interesting.

[1310] All right.

[1311] So get 10 to 30 minutes of sunlight.

[1312] You can be outside doing other things.

[1313] You don't have to look directly at the light, but let's think about it.

[1314] If you're in the really dark, shady area or in a terrace under an overhang, it's not the same.

[1315] In the same way that if you shine a flashlight in the ground, it can be really bright, but you shine in your eyes, it's much brighter.

[1316] Never look at any light so bright that it's painful to look at.

[1317] But get that sunlight.

[1318] You will quickly notice that you have more energy through the day and you will notice that you will have a better time falling asleep at night.

[1319] ideally you also view sunlight in the evening for the same reason which is you're trying to tell that your system when it's morning and when it's evening and it will help you fall asleep it will also protect you against bright artificial light exposure at night I fundamentally believe that no one should be wearing blue blockers during the middle of the day because you want to get as much light in your eyes early in the day and throughout the day as possible and blue blockers are preventing the exact wavelength of light blue short wavelengths that are triggering the alertness system.

[1320] But right before the sun goes down?

[1321] It does not, you don't have to see it crossing the horizon.

[1322] Okay.

[1323] But like if you're in studio all day and it's afternoon, try and just get outside for a few minutes.

[1324] You don't have to be neurotic about the exact conditions.

[1325] Okay.

[1326] But get those sunglasses off.

[1327] You can't get this through a window or through a car window because it filters it out.

[1328] If you're wearing eyeglasses or contacts, people always say, why wear eyeglasses or contacts, that's fine because you're actually focusing the light onto your retina with those devices.

[1329] Okay.

[1330] Okay.

[1331] The evening light is important because it adjust the sensitivity of your eyes such that if you view artificial light in the evening, it's not going to mess you up quite as much.

[1332] Now, here's the third thing.

[1333] So get morning light, get evening light.

[1334] Those are two tools.

[1335] If you really want to jump to black belt status into this stuff, then take a walk in the morning in the sunlight and shut down your amygdala a little bit, get that morning anxiety out of the way, this kind of thing.

[1336] It only takes like 10, 30 minutes.

[1337] And it's a profound shift, positive shift.

[1338] Really avoid bright.

[1339] artificial lights of all colors between the hours of 10 p .m. and 4 am.

[1340] Now, shift workers is a totally different story.

[1341] I did a whole podcast on shift work and we would have to dial in your specific schedule, figure out your temperature minimum.

[1342] There's all sorts of stuff that you can check out if you want.

[1343] But most people sleep at night and are awake during the day.

[1344] If you view that evening light right around sunset -ish late afternoon, you give yourself what I call the Netflix inoculation.

[1345] You allow yourself to see a little bit more artificial light in the evening without messing up your system because it adjusts the sensitivity.

[1346] Now, I want to be really clear because I'm sure there's some listeners are like, this guy's just making up stuff.

[1347] Or they usually say, oh, the yogis have been saying this for 3 ,000 years.

[1348] Look, I'm not saying I invented this.

[1349] I would say I wasn't consulted the design phase and neither were any of you.

[1350] So this is just how it works.

[1351] But there was a set of studies done out of University of Colorado, Boulder, where they took humans and did this for two days and it reset their melatonin and cortisol rhythms for a week.

[1352] But you want to do it consistently.

[1353] Viewing bright artificial light in the middle of the night, waking up in the middle night and looking at your phone, I do it, but if you don't dim it way, way down, even if you have blue blockers on, it really disrupts the dopamine system and causes learning deficits and depression and mood issues two or three days later.

[1354] So this is the work by my good friend Samara Hattari's head of the chronobiology unit at the National Institutes of Mental Health.

[1355] It's a brilliant scientist, wonderful guy.

[1356] And that work is just not discussed enough.

[1357] And Sammer always says blue blockers won't protect you from this.

[1358] You just have to really avoid those lights.

[1359] Only use as much light in your home at night as is required for safety.

[1360] And if you need to just keep things really dim, in Scandinavia, they have it right.

[1361] Keep the lights also low in your physical environment because overhead light will trigger these cells in the eye to wake up your clock more so.

[1362] And all the other stuff is true to.

[1363] Avoid caffeine late in the day.

[1364] Keep the room cool, yada, yada.

[1365] Don't bang lines right before bed.

[1366] One thing I love about recovered addicts is that they just tell it how it is.

[1367] That's true.

[1368] We tend to self -medicate with food and alcohol to try and adjust anxiety and sleep.

[1369] And so this is a lot of what it's about.

[1370] These are behavioral tools that are nested deep within our physiology, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.

[1371] All animals do this.

[1372] Look at grazing animals.

[1373] They will face the sun in the evening and in the morning.

[1374] We've overcome this with artificial lights.

[1375] and one of the best ways to make someone crazy, unhealthy, sick, and depressed is to deprive them of these cues.

[1376] In fact, there is something called ICU psychosis.

[1377] Ask any hospital employee, if you go into the hospital and you don't have a window, try and get a window next to you, people who are deprived of these natural light cues go psychotic.

[1378] And it adjusts itself back to normal when they leave the clinic.

[1379] There's a well -known phenomenon.

[1380] And yet most hospitals have all these lights on all the time.

[1381] So if you have the ability, get sunlight, if you have to get it through a window because you're laid up in bed or something, fine.

[1382] But this natural schedule really does change everything for the better.

[1383] And there's a lot of great physiology.

[1384] It impacts fertility.

[1385] It impacts longevity in the right direction.

[1386] It's good stuff.

[1387] There are also things that people can take to sleep better.

[1388] Here's why I don't recommend melatonin.

[1389] Tell me. First of all, most of the dosages you're going to buy are going to be 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 times more than you would ever produce internally.

[1390] Sounds perfect.

[1391] Melatonin has a couple roles, but one of its primary roles is to suppress.

[1392] puberty.

[1393] That's why, yeah, kids don't go through puberty until a certain age because meltonin is chronically high.

[1394] Oh, wow.

[1395] Yep.

[1396] And baby's sleep schedules are kind of all day long every day for that reason.

[1397] Now, you're on TRT, so you don't have to worry about suppressing your so -called hypothylamic pituitary gonadal axis, because you're overriding it with an injection soon to be three days a week, but once a week.

[1398] So you could probably get away with it, But for people that aren't adjusting their testosterone or estrogen, meltonin can have some untoward side effects on that.

[1399] Also, it's a hormone.

[1400] You don't need a prescription.

[1401] It's crazy.

[1402] You can just go and buy it and people are taking it up there.

[1403] There are better things.

[1404] So, first of all, get the behaviors right.

[1405] But one thing that works really well for a lot of people, and again, check with your doctor, but is something called magnesium therionate, T -H -R -E -O -N -A -T -E, or magnesium bisglycinate.

[1406] Those are the forms of magnesium that cross from the gum.

[1407] gut to cross the blood brain barrier to the brain.

[1408] They turn on a system in the brain called the GABA system, which causes a bit of a mild sedative effect and helps people fall asleep and sleep deeper.

[1409] People who are tracking their sleep will find that they will get a lot more deep sleep, taking about 145 milligrams of MAG 3 and 8 or MAG bis glycinate.

[1410] No brand I'm going to recommend, just shop for price.

[1411] And then there are two other things, Thienine, T -H -E -A -N -I -N -E.

[1412] L -theon -E, 100 to 400 milligrams can also be taken.

[1413] Now, if you're a sleep, walker or you have really vivid disturbing dreams stay away for melthenin okay that's me all of these should be taken 30 or 60 minutes before sleep regardless of what they say on the bottle that's when you want to take them and then there's a third one which is great which a lot of people do well on which is called apogenin api g -e -n -in which is actually a derivative camomile which acts as a mild sedative some people stack all three some people only use one some people i just want to emphasize use zero but the margins for safety on these are actually quite large.

[1414] And if you have a heart condition, magnesium is something you'd want to talk to your doctor about.

[1415] But this is, in my mind, once you have the behaviors right, and once you're doing other things correctly, and you can't drink a quadruple espresso at 9 p .m. And then expect this to put you under in the best night of sleep.

[1416] But some people get a little bit of stomach disruption from Mag 3 and 8.

[1417] It's about 5 % of people tell me, oh, that was just hard on my stomach.

[1418] Most people don't.

[1419] So it varies.

[1420] You don't need to take it with food.

[1421] those three things seem to have the best positive effects on deep sleep that I'm aware of.

[1422] And as a last point, waking up at three or four in the morning and having to use the bathroom is totally normal.

[1423] And people shouldn't freak out about that.

[1424] You should go back to sleep if you can or if you can't just try and relax and read or do something.

[1425] And then the last, last point, forgive me, is that most people don't realize this, but the peak of alertness happens about 90 minutes before you're going to sleep.

[1426] If you find yourself like scurrying around the in doing things.

[1427] I'm so excited at night.

[1428] And it's transient.

[1429] So a lot of people think, oh my God, I want to go to sleep and I'm wide awake.

[1430] It's transient.

[1431] This is probably in line with your evolutionary explanations.

[1432] This was probably a way of tacking down the facilities before heading into this very vulnerable state that we call sleep.

[1433] Yeah, you got to build your bed at night if you're a primate generally.

[1434] Right.

[1435] This is funny with Elthian because I'm pretty sure it's an ingredient in macha.

[1436] Yeah.

[1437] That's the thing that makes you calm while you're jacked up in matcha.

[1438] Right.

[1439] It's why it's a little bit.

[1440] This is why the monks use it.

[1441] They should just give you a PhD.

[1442] So, no, I'm not correct.

[1443] You're setting Monica's program back like two years.

[1444] Are you trying to deprive them of credentials?

[1445] So they're sneaking Elthienine into energy drinks and coffee now in order to take away the jitters so that you will drink not just 500 milligrams of caffeine, but 1 ,000 milligrams.

[1446] And I don't recommend taking it during the day.

[1447] This is a before sleep type thing.

[1448] And I want to say we partnered.

[1449] with a supplement company for my podcast, but I'm not even going to mention their name.

[1450] I want to be very clear.

[1451] I don't care where people get these things or if they get them at all.

[1452] What I'm just trying to offer some science -based alternatives to melatonin and sleeping pills and two cocktails.

[1453] Yeah.

[1454] But behaviors first.

[1455] Right.

[1456] But the Elthian and the macha, we all got really into macha this last year.

[1457] And I do feel like my dreams are weirder, and maybe it's because of that.

[1458] Yeah, when does it break down?

[1459] Because I read the pollen book on caffeine and I was so depressed, because it takes like 12 hours to break down caffeine.

[1460] Some people, Mattala, is it more quickly?

[1461] I hope so, because I was like, how the fuck are you going to have a, like, you've got to shut it down.

[1462] My buddy Matt Walker that wrote Why We Sleep.

[1463] Oh, yeah, yeah, I read that.

[1464] And really great guy.

[1465] He's amazing sleep scientist.

[1466] He's really paranoid about caffeine and how much it can throw off your sleep.

[1467] I'm not a drinker, but I do love caffeine.

[1468] So I don't drink alcohol, but I love caffeine.

[1469] And I cut out caffeine around 2 or 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, and my sleep's great.

[1470] Watch how beautiful this is, the tapestry that's about to be woven.

[1471] So it started with a conversation about longevity versus vitality.

[1472] Who knows if we finish that one?

[1473] But it doesn't matter.

[1474] This falls weirdly into that same format for me, which is I have quit caffeine before.

[1475] I was off of it for three months.

[1476] I've quit nicotine for months and months at a time.

[1477] I don't enjoy being alive as much without those things.

[1478] I'm kind of working backwards sometimes from like, well, who do I want to be?

[1479] And what price do I have to pay to be that?

[1480] And sleep's an issue.

[1481] so you have trouble falling asleep i have trouble falling asleep not nearly as much in this you would hate this and then would take too long the solution was actually my narrative which is so crazy what really really impacted how bad my insomnia was was i made a new year's resolution to stop telling people i'm insomnia and to stop saying i have a hard time sleeping just as an experiment and fucking lo and behold in six months i was sleeping so much better well that's interesting i should say that TRT can also give you enough energy sometimes it makes sleep more difficult So the clinical definition of insomnia is that I should ask you a question.

[1482] Okay.

[1483] The question is when you weren't sleeping as much or as well as you like, would you feel sleepy during the day or you just weren't getting as much sleep as you wanted?

[1484] Were you passing out during meetings?

[1485] Never.

[1486] But I'm also augmenting heavily with caffeine.

[1487] Do you take nicotine in supplement form?

[1488] This is a nicotine toothpick.

[1489] You and Michael Muller.

[1490] So Muller, sorry, Mueller, I'm about to out you, dips, nicker at all.

[1491] very long, but I have a colleague Nobel Prize winning colleague at Columbia Med who choose, you might have him matched, a lot of nicotine.

[1492] And I asked him, I said, why do you chew nicorette?

[1493] And he said, well, cigarette smoking is bad because it was going to kill me from lung cancer, but I can just think better.

[1494] And his theory, and he's a very smart guy, despite the Nobel Prize, his theory is that it actually is protective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

[1495] There's been some long studies that have proven that is one of the unforeseen outcomes of nicotine use.

[1496] He has delayed onset of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

[1497] It's the delivery mechanism.

[1498] That's the issue generally.

[1499] And also it raises your blood pressure.

[1500] So if you have high blood pressure, it's not for you.

[1501] But I have kind of chronically low blood pressures.

[1502] That's not an issue for me. So I'm kind of going, I want it all.

[1503] And so how do I get it all?

[1504] And then what's an acceptable consequence or price for that?

[1505] So I want to interview people.

[1506] I want to be engaged.

[1507] I want to be caffeinated.

[1508] I want to be fucking revved up.

[1509] And then I want to go to sleep at night.

[1510] And because I'm an addict, I can't take Ambien.

[1511] I also think Ambien's bad for you, but that's a side note.

[1512] I can't take Ambien.

[1513] I can't take any of the things that would knock me out.

[1514] So what's on the menu?

[1515] I got melatonin.

[1516] I have...

[1517] Mag 3 and 8thia.

[1518] Now this.

[1519] Yeah, I'm really excited to try that.

[1520] And these behavioral changes.

[1521] Morning, light, evening light.

[1522] Yeah.

[1523] There's one more that is a true game changer across the board.

[1524] And I'm glad we talked about sleep and hormones because those are fundamental layers of our well -being.

[1525] Yeah, yeah.

[1526] Get those right.

[1527] Everything is much better.

[1528] It's not going to make everything perfect.

[1529] Well, they'll also make the other decisions easier to make, right?

[1530] It's kind of like a self -perpetuating process.

[1531] Sleep is the fundamental layer.

[1532] Yeah, if you give yourself the chance of waking up in the morning fully rested, everything else is going to be easier, probably.

[1533] And when people say, oh, my kid has this or this, or there's ADHD, or there's depression, OCD, I always just say, how's your sleep?

[1534] Let's just start with your sleep.

[1535] Yeah, yeah.

[1536] You get your sleep right 80 % of the time, and your life is, I think, two or three or even four times better.

[1537] in every dimension because of the way that supports hormones and immune system and mental function and the rest.

[1538] So the other thing is, you mentioned behaviors, there's a category of behaviors that we call NSDR, non -sleep deep rest, that are very powerful at teaching you to teach your system through neuroplasticity how to calm down.

[1539] And there are a number of different things that qualify as NSDR.

[1540] One is called yoga nidra, which actually involves no movement.

[1541] You lie down.

[1542] It literally means yoga sleep.

[1543] So these are scripts that you can find on YouTube.

[1544] They're totally free.

[1545] It's 20 or 30 minutes.

[1546] You do this anytime you wake up not feeling completely rested.

[1547] It's an alternative to meditation.

[1548] It's just of a passive listening.

[1549] You can find those easily on YouTube.

[1550] Some of the best ones are from Comini Desai.

[1551] And again, I've never met her and I have no relationship to their company or anything.

[1552] These are free resources.

[1553] But perhaps an even better one is another free resource that's really grounded in a lot of clinical data and research data.

[1554] There's an app for both Android and for iPhone called Reverie, R -E -V -E -E -R -E -R -I, Reverie .com.

[1555] You can download the app.

[1556] It's free.

[1557] This is an app that was developed by my colleague David Spiegel at Stanford, Department of His Associate Chair of Psychiatries and MD -P -HD, he's got all the accoutrements.

[1558] And based on studies in humans, there's a hypnosis, it's a self -hypnosis script for getting you better at falling and staying asleep.

[1559] It's about 10 minutes a day.

[1560] You do it any time of day, but you could use it to get back to sleep if you wanted.

[1561] There's one for chronic pain.

[1562] There's one for stress anxiety and various forms of trauma.

[1563] There's one to improve focus.

[1564] These are only about 10 minutes.

[1565] You don't have to do them every day.

[1566] But again, it's totally zero cost.

[1567] The research was paid for by your tax dollars.

[1568] And if you're out of the U .S., then you just truly get it free.

[1569] And these are wonderful resources that people can use to teach themselves how to teach their nervous system to downshift.

[1570] Yeah.

[1571] Because guys like you and you, right, who are pushing hard and want to be really in good.

[1572] engaged, blinking once every three and a half minutes.

[1573] I've been taking a tally here.

[1574] No, I'm kidding.

[1575] We've been doing an experiment the whole time.

[1576] I always say you can either be back on your heels, flat -footed, or forward -center of mass. And you love the feeling of being forward -centered of mass. Right.

[1577] And that's life.

[1578] These dopamine systems weren't put there for us to regulate and feel guilty about.

[1579] They were put there for us to lean forward into life, to be best dad, best podcaster, best everything, you know, to really fully engage.

[1580] But we have to know how to get back onto, flat -footed ground again because that's where we recover.

[1581] Being back on our heels would be trauma, stress, anxiety, and depression.

[1582] So that model of kind of back on your heels, flat -footed is restoration.

[1583] You're on idle, kind of calm or forward center of mass. These NSDR approaches and reverie, they have major effects.

[1584] These are big clinically statistically significant effects.

[1585] I'm going to put that right now.

[1586] That's a cool app.

[1587] And it involves a talking back and forth to the app, but I should mention that if you don't like that, you can disable that feature.

[1588] and just David's voice is also very soothing.

[1589] Spell it one more time, R -E -V -E -R -E -R -E -R -E -R -I -R -V -E -R -I -R -R -I -R -R -E -R -R -E -R -R -E -R -R -E -R -E -R -E -R -E -R -E -R -E -L -O -S -E.

[1590] And I was like, well, I'm always coming in and out of sleep because I don't sleep well.

[1591] So I do need to get a hand.

[1592] handle on it.

[1593] I should probably stop drinking too.

[1594] I know it's bad for it.

[1595] So the drinkers and the pot smokers will be familiar with waking up and feeling paralyzed for a second.

[1596] Has that ever happened to you?

[1597] This is her major complaint about sleeping.

[1598] I'm not going to ask you if you're a pot smoker because that's a personal thing.

[1599] Okay, neither am I. She is a mushrooms abuser.

[1600] No, I only take it at one.

[1601] Shataki mushroom.

[1602] Yeah, I do love those.

[1603] Those are beautiful.

[1604] Morning light, evening light, avoid bright light in the middle of the night.

[1605] Nobody's perfect, but most of the time.

[1606] do a non -sleep deep rest protocol every other day or so, especially if you didn't get a good night sleep the night before and you're dragging, take the 20 minutes to do a yoga nidra or one of these hypnosis scripts.

[1607] If you need to supplement, think twice about melatonin, I'm sure the melatonin manufacturers are going to come after me. I'm one of them.

[1608] We're in this conversation and we have a vitamin line.

[1609] Oh, sorry.

[1610] Hello, Bella.

[1611] No, it's totally fine.

[1612] I do you need to undercut that thing?

[1613] No. No, I'm open to scrutiny.

[1614] You're allowed to have you.

[1615] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1616] Yeah, but we have melatonin.

[1617] we give our kids melatonin at night.

[1618] It's such a game changer.

[1619] If it works for you, yeah.

[1620] And again, you're prioritizing a lot of things.

[1621] Yeah.

[1622] To your point.

[1623] So I don't love that I take a bunch of shit when I go to bed, but I'm also fanatical about getting sleep.

[1624] So it's like, well, whatever it takes for me to get eight hours of sleep, I got to kind of be willing to do, assuming it doesn't.

[1625] With your permission, I'm going to send you this mag three and eight thean epigenin cocktail, and then you could do a side by side.

[1626] I would love to.

[1627] Although knowing you with your addict background, and you probably just put them all together.

[1628] I took five times as much and slept till Thursday.

[1629] I read every single bottle is like recommended two to four.

[1630] And my first thought is like, okay, we'll start at four and we'll see where we need to go from there.

[1631] Yeah, it's just how my brain works.

[1632] There are these categories of people that say, I need to see the peer -reviewed studies and X number of people.

[1633] And then there are other people, they see a pill, they take it, and they say, what did I take?

[1634] The only thing I really do is look at things through the lens of biology and a little bit through psychology.

[1635] There are many other lenses with which to think about any of the things we've talked about today.

[1636] And in particular, physiology, and I'll get back to why that, for me, is the right approach.

[1637] There are a lot of mysteries about how the brain works, but there are a lot of things known about the physiology of the brain and body, temperature regulation, how light improves mood, hormones, skin as an endocrine organ.

[1638] That's not neuroscience, even though it involves neurons.

[1639] That's physiology.

[1640] It's at the core of how we're built.

[1641] So there are five and maybe six ways to approach any challenge.

[1642] and this was always true.

[1643] First are behavioral approaches.

[1644] Do this or don't do that.

[1645] View sunlight, don't do that.

[1646] Eat this, don't eat that.

[1647] That's a form of decision -making that humans have been engaged in since the beginning of time.

[1648] The second is nutrition, right?

[1649] What we ingest, what we choose not to ingest.

[1650] The third would be supplementation.

[1651] So we're talking about compounds.

[1652] Long ago, it was collected from leaves that were ground up by a pestle or something.

[1653] Now it's this supplementation.

[1654] supplement or whatever.

[1655] And then there's prescription drugs, which also have their place and purpose, which includes both direct prescription, like riddle in for ADHD or off -market usage of things for other things.

[1656] Like people take modafinil who don't need it as a kind of a newtropic for focus.

[1657] It's amphetamine and it'll do that.

[1658] It's a narcolepsy medicine.

[1659] Exactly.

[1660] It's prescribed for narcolepsy, but people take it recreationally or they find a way.

[1661] And then there's this other category, which is brain machine interface, which a neurosurgeon at Stanford, who came up through my lab, Matt McDougal is the neurosurgeon at Neuralink at Elon's company.

[1662] So talk a lot about this.

[1663] Neuro technologies and technologies of all kinds have two functions.

[1664] One is what we call reading from the body and brain and the other is writing to it.

[1665] Reading is measuring your sleep, measuring your heart rate, measuring heart rate variability.

[1666] The other is changing your heart rate, changing your brain, changing your sleep.

[1667] Okay.

[1668] That's the kit.

[1669] Okay.

[1670] We always think of technology as involving some device or something.

[1671] Blue blocker glasses are a technology.

[1672] Ironically, they're a technology, as you pointed out, designed to protect us against another technology that we've developed.

[1673] So here we are now looping technologies.

[1674] So I'm going to need a mini cell phone between your eyes and the blue blockers at some point.

[1675] Well, remember Google Glass?

[1676] They were going to put it all in your...

[1677] Right?

[1678] It's kind of interesting during the Olympics, one of the most shocking things to me was that there were all these ads for these psychoactive drugs and drugs for health, brain and body health.

[1679] and then there were ads for drugs to take with other drugs to deal with the side effects of those other drugs.

[1680] So this is layering in chemistry and you don't have to be a former addict to realize what's going on here, right?

[1681] This is chemistry to deal with chemistry.

[1682] It's like, oh, you're up all day because you're taking modafinil.

[1683] Well, here's how you get down at night if you're on modafinil.

[1684] Do I think there's some major conspiracy of the drug companies?

[1685] No, the major conspiracy is of our core biology, which is that our biology is designed to move us towards pleasure, move us away from pain, and that can include our own specific goal -directed behaviors.

[1686] You have your set of goals.

[1687] You have yours.

[1688] I have mine.

[1689] And we will look to any technology we can to try and meet those goals.

[1690] This is the addict on the street.

[1691] This is the hedge fund person.

[1692] This is the student in school.

[1693] It doesn't matter.

[1694] So what I think we need to do is to embrace the fact that we are a tool -building technology -building species.

[1695] That's why we are the curators of the earth and the house cats aren't running the show.

[1696] It's not new in essence.

[1697] It's not new.

[1698] What I would like, people to do and to think about is to ratchet up through that list of five, maybe six things, which is to understand that the most powerful technology, it's not the only one, but the most powerful technology is the one that evolved for the specific purpose that you're trying to meet a particular goal.

[1699] For example, quality sleep and limiting depression and keeping mood in the right place, there's a technology.

[1700] That technology involves cells in your retina.

[1701] They have a name melanopsin cells that connect the super -chaismatic nucleus.

[1702] that sets your circadian clock by way of all these other mechanisms.

[1703] Is there a pill or potion you could take or a device you could plug your head into like a Tesla car getting recharge?

[1704] Not yet.

[1705] Not one that will pull together all those other mechanisms.

[1706] So the foundational technologies are these aspects of our physiology, and we have to obey those.

[1707] There will never come a time when we can depart from those core technologies of our body.

[1708] Now, does this mean that all the wisdom of healing is in the body?

[1709] but I've been spending a lot of time at Topanga.

[1710] No, it means that the fundamental layers exist there.

[1711] So light in the morning, light in the evening.

[1712] Then it's, we say, well, what about nutrition?

[1713] We could argue for three hours.

[1714] Some people like to fast.

[1715] Some people don't like to fast.

[1716] Some people do well on a plant -based diet.

[1717] Some people are omnivores.

[1718] Some people do best on pure meat diets.

[1719] I'm not going to get into that debate.

[1720] It's a hairball, barbed wire debate.

[1721] I have no interest.

[1722] And frankly, most of the people engaged in that debate, they're not very informed about the fact that there is a lot of individual variation.

[1723] it's just not even scientific at all anymore.

[1724] It's like, I got my study, I got my study.

[1725] But food and finding what's right for oneself is going to be that next layer.

[1726] And everyone has to do that.

[1727] And then come the supplements and the prescription drugs if those are right for you.

[1728] And then brain machine interface is here.

[1729] It is coming.

[1730] One of the most powerful things I think that everyone should consider if ideally this will be affordable soon is a quality blood test of hormone and metabolic markers and inflammatory markers once a year or so.

[1731] the cost is coming down.

[1732] Because how are you going to know if you have elevated C -reactive protein?

[1733] It's an indicator of macular degeneration, heart disease, and all sorts of terrible stuff.

[1734] And you can't look at someone and see if they have high CRP.

[1735] So we should all be doing that.

[1736] That's coming.

[1737] So basically what I think that's always been true and it will always be true is that only we as individuals can take control of our health and well -being.

[1738] And it always will start with behaviors first, the do's and the don'ts.

[1739] There's no way of getting around that.

[1740] There are constantly going to be new technologies in the prescription drug end and in the brain machine interface end.

[1741] But those will never replace the other technologies.

[1742] So that's my stance.

[1743] And I am heavily biased here because I've seen the incredible positive shifts that can be made.

[1744] But I've seen those in kids, adults, of all different backgrounds.

[1745] And so I think teaching kids these behaviors going outside together in the morning and getting that sunlight's great for them.

[1746] Kids up late on their phones in the middle of the night and sleeping in until the sun is directly overhead.

[1747] They are jet -lacked.

[1748] It's like throwing yourself in Bayesian, ming tomorrow and then you wonder why kid has anxiety yeah so this is my stance we have to get back to these fundamental layers well one thing that while you were talking i was considering that i hadn't before is i think part of that guilt layer i was talking about is a result of knowing i'm not nailing everything so that's what's frustrating it's like i guess if you were nailing the behavior and you were nailing the diet and you were nailing all that and then you could say to yourself wow I still can't sleep, I don't think ethically you'd really be bothered by it because you would know, well, I've done everything I can on my end.

[1749] Let's look elsewhere.

[1750] And that's probably the great juggling act is who feels like they're fucking crushing?

[1751] You know, 80 20.

[1752] I mean, I think eating right 80 % of the time.

[1753] Yeah.

[1754] Sleeping right.

[1755] And I will say, and this is really my lab's stance, it's very hard to control the mind with the mind.

[1756] And so when your mind isn't where you want it to be, look to the body to shift the brain and the mind where you want it to go.

[1757] So if you're stressed, taking a walk sounds like the most trivial solution, and yet it will adjust your amygdala through these eye movements.

[1758] If you're not sleeping well, get morning sunlight.

[1759] This is different than trying to talk yourself or journal yourself or therapy yourself into a solution.

[1760] Now, I want to be fair, and I've spent basically a lifetime.

[1761] I've figured out a way to do psychoanalysis regularly.

[1762] I believe in things like analysis, cognitive behavioral therapy, and these other therapies.

[1763] But it's very hard, especially if people don't have the resources, to simply use language as a way to dissect what's going on biologically.

[1764] So I think you have to get your biology in that fundamental layer right.

[1765] And then you will be in a better place to work through trauma, be in a better place to meet addiction.

[1766] That's why people feel overwhelmed.

[1767] There's just so many aspects to it.

[1768] There's a lot to tackle.

[1769] Well, listen, Andrew, I hope everyone listens to your podcast, which is called the Huberman Lab.

[1770] Yeah, just Huberman Lab podcast.

[1771] Yeah, Huberman Lab podcast.

[1772] I've listened to a bunch of them.

[1773] Oh, I have to say one last thing.

[1774] We always talk about the simulation.

[1775] It's quite clear.

[1776] We're in one.

[1777] So you were a part of it.

[1778] Last week, like last Monday, Eric texted me two podcast episodes.

[1779] He's like, you got to listen to this guy.

[1780] He's really awesome.

[1781] Oh, I'm sorry.

[1782] I'm going to ruin something for you.

[1783] What?

[1784] We reached out.

[1785] because Eric told me, you should have this guy on your show.

[1786] And I reached out to Adam, and Adam reached out to him.

[1787] So I'm going to embarrass myself because I should know, who's Eric?

[1788] Eric's just a friend of ours.

[1789] There's no reason for you to.

[1790] No, he's a friend of ours.

[1791] Is this the guy that like runs Hollywood or something like that?

[1792] Well, look, I was completely out of the loop on that.

[1793] But he sent me two episodes of your podcast last week and I listened to them.

[1794] And then I listened to them.

[1795] And then I looked at my schedule two days ago, see who we were interviewing.

[1796] And I saw your name.

[1797] I was like, oh, it looks familiar.

[1798] But I started reading.

[1799] I'm like, oh, my God, this is the fucking.

[1800] podcast.

[1801] I just was turned down.

[1802] Yeah.

[1803] Yeah.

[1804] It's not as simulationy as you want.

[1805] Still cool.

[1806] Yeah.

[1807] You still ended up here.

[1808] Well, they can't all be simulations.

[1809] No. Andrew, so great meeting you, man. It was so much fun.

[1810] I think we could do five hours.

[1811] Yeah, we'll have to have you back.

[1812] Yeah, yeah.

[1813] You got to come back.

[1814] Thanks so much.

[1815] It was so much fun.

[1816] Thank you.

[1817] Thank you.

[1818] It's a ton of fun for me. And I learned a lot from both of you.

[1819] So thank you.

[1820] Wonderful.

[1821] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1822] Cool boots.

[1823] You got combat boots on today?

[1824] I do.

[1825] And these boots are tricky because I've worn them a lot, never had any problems.

[1826] The last time I wore them, I got huge blisters.

[1827] Oh, I can imagine.

[1828] They're leather heel to mid -calf.

[1829] I know, but I didn't have any problems forever.

[1830] I don't know what happened.

[1831] And then today I'm fine, too.

[1832] Were you wearing different socks?

[1833] Were you wearing me undies on your socks?

[1834] No, in that case, then, it would have been perfect.

[1835] Yeah.

[1836] So do you think maybe you had like a thin sock on and it got, through.

[1837] But I'm wearing a thin sock today.

[1838] But it's fine.

[1839] But you haven't done much walking.

[1840] You walked from your apartment to your car.

[1841] You're right.

[1842] Your car to here.

[1843] Yeah, the day I was wearing it, I was doing a ton of walking.

[1844] So that's probably like.

[1845] Where did you walk?

[1846] Oh, man. I walked everywhere.

[1847] I was building a birthday present.

[1848] Mm -hmm.

[1849] The girls do group presents in our pod.

[1850] So if it's someone's birthday, we'll all go in together.

[1851] And it's really fun.

[1852] And it was Amy's birthday.

[1853] And we decided to do an underwear.

[1854] theme.

[1855] So enough underwear.

[1856] And you guys went crazy.

[1857] Yes, enough underwear so that she could literally throw out her entire underwear.

[1858] Oh, what could be more liberating?

[1859] Exactly, because you have to do that.

[1860] You have to.

[1861] Or else you're wearing underwear from high school and you just shouldn't be wearing underwear from high school.

[1862] You just shouldn't.

[1863] Unless they're nostalgic, like the game winning touchdown in those underwear and you want to put them on for an interview, but only in that case.

[1864] They're pretty close to your private parts.

[1865] Very.

[1866] Yeah.

[1867] Some would say the closest.

[1868] Extremely.

[1869] So anyway, we did that.

[1870] It was really fun.

[1871] But I, you know, sometimes I get it in my head with gifts.

[1872] Like I get kind of obsessive about it.

[1873] I need it to be exactly what I want it to be.

[1874] Yes.

[1875] So I thought, oh, it'd be so cute if we put it in a little drawer, like an actual underwear drawer.

[1876] So then I had to go to the container store.

[1877] I had to get that.

[1878] God bless you.

[1879] But it was at the grove.

[1880] And I didn't want to part.

[1881] park at the grove, so I had parked far away and then wands.

[1882] Wow.

[1883] I would have had that thought and then just not executed it.

[1884] I would not have had the follow -through.

[1885] But across my mind, like, oh, I'd be so cute if this came into, like, a dresser drawer.

[1886] Yeah.

[1887] That's a lot of steps.

[1888] Sure.

[1889] That's why you're a better person.

[1890] No, it's just because I like giving gifts.

[1891] Can I ask a follow -up question?

[1892] Mm -hmm.

[1893] Now, if you were to throw out your entire underwear drawer...

[1894] Mm -hmm.

[1895] I've done it.

[1896] Because you're a celebrity.

[1897] Oh, my God.

[1898] If people wanted to buy...

[1899] each pair for $100, would you sell them?

[1900] And if not, why?

[1901] No. Okay.

[1902] That feels pervy.

[1903] It was most certainly is.

[1904] And I don't.

[1905] You don't want to participate in any way?

[1906] No, I don't.

[1907] Because, I mean, I think a person who would buy it scares me a little.

[1908] Okay.

[1909] Like you think it would be step one towards breaking into your house?

[1910] Like stocker maybe.

[1911] Okay.

[1912] Yeah, like I don't want them to feel that close to me if they're the type of person who wants to feel that close to me. You know what I mean?

[1913] It's a very legitimate fear, and it does just point out my blind spot of this is my male privilege.

[1914] Like, if women wanted to buy my used me undies, you know, I'm just, I guess I'm just flattered.

[1915] I'm not nervous for my safety, which is a freedom I have.

[1916] It is.

[1917] That's not to say there isn't a woman in America that couldn't overpower me. There definitely is.

[1918] I mean, I don't think there's any human being in the world that could overpower me so it's you know so it's like gender equal equal yes I'm equally offensive to both people right yeah I'm trying to think if we have any updates we had an amazing live show what fun we had in Salt Lake City man I'm just gauging from the reaction but it seemed like that armchair and dangerous works really well on stage I think Rob yeah I thought it was great yeah me too it's hard to really know I guess I guess I could read more comments I guess maybe we'll know when we post pictures of that episode of people like, hey, that I want my money back.

[1919] Well, I went to the airport the next morning at 4 a .m. Yeah.

[1920] And there was a woman there who had attended me and said that she was at the show and that it was great.

[1921] And I said, and what are you doing here?

[1922] And she said she was visiting her sister who was pregnant.

[1923] And then I was like, oh, the armchairs are so nice.

[1924] They see our show and then they wake up at 4.

[1925] Oh, my gosh.

[1926] I know, like, you had to, because you were going to a wedding reenactment, and you had to be there on time.

[1927] But anything short of that, why would anyone get up at four to go to the airport?

[1928] It was not a wedding reenactment.

[1929] And now I can actually clarify.

[1930] Well, most literally was.

[1931] No, it wasn't.

[1932] They did not do a ceremony.

[1933] Oh, darn it.

[1934] Yeah.

[1935] Okay.

[1936] So they got married last year.

[1937] Well, there was a rehearsal dinner, though, right?

[1938] It was a, they kept calling it a non -rehearsal rehearsal dinner.

[1939] So they're in a, you know.

[1940] Yeah, okay, great.

[1941] They understand.

[1942] They're like, we can't tend.

[1943] So it was just a nice big dinner.

[1944] Big party.

[1945] On Friday and then on Saturday, no ceremony, just everyone there.

[1946] And she did wear her dress, like they came out as a couple.

[1947] It was lovely.

[1948] It was lovely.

[1949] A lot of outdoor opportunities because my friend who got married, she is in the medical field.

[1950] She's a physical therapist.

[1951] One of your many PT friends.

[1952] That's right.

[1953] I have too many, but she is one.

[1954] And she is very anxious about COVID for obvious reasons.

[1955] Yeah.

[1956] And so they were really careful about, like, making sure everyone was vaccinated.

[1957] Only two people, they were not vaccinated, and they showed negative tests.

[1958] Oh, wow.

[1959] And there was a lot of outdoor seating for people.

[1960] So it was lovely.

[1961] I think we should fast forward right to the highlight of the trip.

[1962] We didn't have a super spreader event.

[1963] Oh, no, I was going to say hairplay and massage with Gina.

[1964] Oh, yes.

[1965] So my friend who I do hairplay and massage is with.

[1966] Oh, I love this.

[1967] I got to see her.

[1968] I got to spend the night with her.

[1969] And Robbie.

[1970] And Robbie, her wonderful husband.

[1971] These are old friends of mine, long -time childhood friends.

[1972] They're in their 60s.

[1973] Yeah.

[1974] They're my old friends.

[1975] And of course, we did hairplane massages.

[1976] And I was so embarrassed because the first night we were in my room chatting.

[1977] And Gina was like, okay, so I'm going to go.

[1978] She just had a baby.

[1979] So she was like, I'm going to go pump.

[1980] And then, will you get your hairbrush out for hairbris?

[1981] play?

[1982] And I was like, my God, I had forgotten.

[1983] You didn't bring a brush?

[1984] No, I did, but I had just forgotten, like, that was something that was going to happen on this trip.

[1985] Like, I had a wave of excitement that I haven't had in so long.

[1986] Yeah.

[1987] I know you were so focused on the waking up early that you forgot that hairplay was on the other end of that.

[1988] That's right.

[1989] You did not like that I was complaining about that.

[1990] I can tell.

[1991] I felt bad for you that you were, like, letting a future inconvenience affect your present day.

[1992] Yeah, I wished for you that you, your brain didn't work that way.

[1993] Right.

[1994] As I wish for me, my brain wasn't obsessive in the ways it is.

[1995] Yeah.

[1996] You're offended by that.

[1997] I'm not offended.

[1998] Like, that's a great thought, but I guess I feel like when you're upset about something upcoming or you're dreading something or you're complaining, like, I don't, I think I'm just like, yeah, that sucks.

[1999] I mean, my analogy, you've heard me say it a million times, which is if you knew that you were going to have three days of sunshine, and then on the fourth day it was going to rain, and you spent every day out in the sunshine going like, oh, it's going to fucking rain Thursday.

[2000] You really want to go, like, just enjoy the sunshine.

[2001] It's not raining.

[2002] You know, like, the rain's coming.

[2003] But do you think you do that?

[2004] I don't know, to some degree.

[2005] Do I?

[2006] You can tell me. Do you have an example of the time you can think?

[2007] think about me doing that?

[2008] I guess I just feel like you're not a person who doesn't complain, which is fine, because I think that's life.

[2009] Like, there are things to complain about.

[2010] There are things that make people anxious or are hard or whatever.

[2011] Like, I think I'm fine with that type of behavior or thinking or whatever.

[2012] Yeah, I aspire to not at all fear things that are not happening until they happen.

[2013] That is my personal aspiration.

[2014] And, of course, I extend that to you.

[2015] Yeah.

[2016] But, yes, I would wish for you that you didn't think about the time you had to wake up until the morning you woke up.

[2017] Because that's the only time in your life you're going to experience it is unpleasant.

[2018] But if you think about it, those moments where you're thinking about it are unpleasant because you can feel it.

[2019] I know what it's like.

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] And so I wish that for you.

[2022] I understand.

[2023] I think you feel judged when I say that.

[2024] I don't feel judged.

[2025] I feel like it's not, it's just not my personality.

[2026] And so, like, I guess.

[2027] And you're fine with that.

[2028] Yeah, I'm fine with that.

[2029] I also know that the flip side to that coin is I am always thinking ahead.

[2030] And that's very good for a lot of my life.

[2031] That's good in work.

[2032] Sure.

[2033] You know, so, you're going to get that.

[2034] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2035] I guess that's my thought on it.

[2036] It's kind of a ding, ding, ding, ding with Andrew because.

[2037] But really quick, before we move on, would your preference be like I hear that you're upset about having to wake up in three days?

[2038] And I just think, like, good.

[2039] No, my preference is that you're like, yeah, that sucks.

[2040] Oh, commiserate.

[2041] Commiserate with you.

[2042] It does suck.

[2043] You have to wake up at 4 a .m. It doesn't suck until the day you have to wake up at 4 a .m. That part's true.

[2044] It doesn't suck right now.

[2045] It doesn't suck that you and I are going to fly for 10 hours tomorrow.

[2046] Right now it doesn't suck.

[2047] Now I can sit here and start thinking about that 10 -hour flight and I can ruin some of my present moment.

[2048] with thoughts of it, but I aim to not.

[2049] It's a goal of mine.

[2050] Yeah, I get, yeah, you're right.

[2051] And as someone who wants you to have happiness, I would want it to be a goal of yours.

[2052] That's, like, natural for me. I want you to be happy.

[2053] And it's just like if I tried a sandwich that made me feel wonderful, and I would pass that on to you.

[2054] Yeah.

[2055] Yeah.

[2056] You know, I remember that just reminded me, I have a friend who I met in college, and she's wonderful.

[2057] I love her.

[2058] And she's really religious.

[2059] And one time her and Anthony and I were talking, we were talking about religion.

[2060] And I was saying, like, I totally get it.

[2061] Like, that works for you.

[2062] That's awesome.

[2063] That helps you.

[2064] But, you know, I think why can't that be enough?

[2065] Why can't that just be good for you?

[2066] Yeah, why you got to spread it?

[2067] Yeah.

[2068] And she said, well, it's like Harry Potter.

[2069] If you hadn't read Harry Potter, I would be like, like, Monica, you have to read Harry Potter.

[2070] It's the best thing ever.

[2071] You'll love it.

[2072] It's done this.

[2073] It's about this.

[2074] And I was like, yeah, I get that.

[2075] I do.

[2076] Yeah.

[2077] So that makes sense.

[2078] If something's working for you, it's like, yeah.

[2079] Why wouldn't I share it?

[2080] And I'll just add one thing.

[2081] That situation, which I know well, I've had people tell me like they want me to experience the rapture of believing in Christ.

[2082] And I get it.

[2083] Yeah.

[2084] But implicit in that request is that I'm going to have to buy into something I don't believe in.

[2085] I'm going to have to betray my own beliefs to try this thing you want me to try.

[2086] Harry Potter, I'm not going to, I have got no beliefs about reading if I had a moral position that I don't read.

[2087] But what would be the objection?

[2088] I don't have to compromise who I am at all to read Harry Potter.

[2089] It's not like I'm saying, you know, adopt some way of thinking you currently don't believe in that I believe in so that you'll feel good.

[2090] I'm thinking to my audience.

[2091] I'm just making an analogy that I do understand the desire to share practices that work for you.

[2092] Well, especially if you care about somebody and, you know, that's all.

[2093] Yeah.

[2094] Anyway, moving off that topic a little bit.

[2095] Yeah, so I was in North Carolina for this wedding, and it was.

[2096] I couldn't stop asking you how close to Asheville you were.

[2097] That was my big preoccupation.

[2098] And I still don't know.

[2099] You never did find out.

[2100] I can't tell you.

[2101] Were you in the Blue Ridge Mountains, though?

[2102] There's like this place.

[2103] Do you know Pilot Mountain or something like that?

[2104] Pilo or Pilot or something?

[2105] No, but I'd feel at home there, Pilot Mountain.

[2106] I think it was sort of.

[2107] Something like that.

[2108] It's a place.

[2109] It's a place, right?

[2110] Where's it at?

[2111] Near Cedar Hill, like North Central, North Carolina.

[2112] North Central.

[2113] How far is it from Asheville?

[2114] South, a little bit south and west.

[2115] It's fine from Asheville.

[2116] five -minute instructions two hours and 38 minutes 162 miles so you're a bit away you're quite a bit away yeah and it's so um it's so similar to georgia so it's like as soon as we were there i like immediately got kind of like oh yeah it just felt really homie but then it is so funny i felt so quickly like my old like i'm not good enough all of these things that i feel in that environment, I felt again.

[2117] Oh, wow, yeah.

[2118] It's so strange to, like, those cues can do that.

[2119] They're so interwoven with all those feelings you would have.

[2120] Yeah, I guess I have, because I left Michigan right when I became an adult.

[2121] Yeah.

[2122] All my memories are of youth.

[2123] And then all my trips home in the summer were, like, party time because I was out of school and I went there just to see friends and party.

[2124] So I have this weird association.

[2125] When I get home, it's like, time to have a fucking black, like, it's time to rip shit up.

[2126] Oh, that's interesting.

[2127] And go wild.

[2128] Yeah.

[2129] And I just feel that compulsion right when I land of like, let's fucking go swimming at 3 a .m. with 10 people and let's have a bomb fire and let's, you know.

[2130] It's kind of crazy what a location can do.

[2131] It's cool.

[2132] Shoot, I wrote to say this in the intro.

[2133] Oh.

[2134] But we didn't.

[2135] Like a medical warning?

[2136] Well, we start in the middle of a conversation, which is about the dog painting.

[2137] Oh.

[2138] I mean, the dog print.

[2139] Yeah, yeah, it's not even a painting.

[2140] It's not even a lithograph.

[2141] It's just a fucking Xerox copy of a painting.

[2142] Of a dog.

[2143] Do you think they set that original painting on a Xerox copy machine and just started printing out?

[2144] Is that how they do it?

[2145] Maybe.

[2146] I mean, I'm sure it's not on a, you know, like a personal Xerox machine, but...

[2147] Probably.

[2148] That's how probably they scan it, right?

[2149] Yeah.

[2150] High quality, though.

[2151] I wonder how they did it before that.

[2152] There were prints before Xerox.

[2153] Do you know the name of that term where a product name becomes synonymous with the actual thing?

[2154] Oh, it is called something.

[2155] There's a cool name for it.

[2156] Like Kleenex, Xerox.

[2157] That's right.

[2158] Meandies.

[2159] Target.

[2160] Kmartz.

[2161] It meandies is kind of because we talk about underwear.

[2162] We just call it meandies.

[2163] Do you know what I'm wrestling with right now?

[2164] What?

[2165] You just said meandies.

[2166] This will take Rob by surprise.

[2167] I know.

[2168] Shit your pants at this off.

[2169] football game?

[2170] Yep.

[2171] Oh, you knew about him?

[2172] He didn't.

[2173] Well, he did.

[2174] I did.

[2175] Oh, you did?

[2176] One of the girls mentioned it.

[2177] Oh, okay.

[2178] Well, what's interesting is my mundis were in your parking lot when you left.

[2179] I didn't know that.

[2180] I took a picture of them and sent him.

[2181] In Rob's parking lot?

[2182] Of his baseball game.

[2183] Oh, okay, so just tell people what happened.

[2184] This is the worst.

[2185] And I really debated whether this one could come out of the closet because now, this is number three this year.

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] Oh, fuck.

[2188] Now people are just going to think I'm a monster, and they'd be right to.

[2189] I don't know what's going on.

[2190] Well, I kind of know what's going on.

[2191] We found out on that trip.

[2192] I've been having this way protein that was giving me Honest Ria a lot, and then I stopped taking it.

[2193] Anyways, driving with the girls from Los Felis to Culver City to see Robbie and my sister's softball game, I've got to pee, most of the way there.

[2194] I'm looking at the Google Maps, and I realize I'm a block from the baseball field.

[2195] So I got to find an alley.

[2196] So I find an alley, and it's Sunday.

[2197] So everything's closed.

[2198] I don't feel bad about that.

[2199] On one side of the alley is the back of a bunch of storefronts, and on the other side of the alley is the back of people's yards.

[2200] So I pull the car in, the girls are in the back seat.

[2201] I step out of the car.

[2202] I'm peeing, and it occurs to me, there's probably cameras everywhere.

[2203] So I go to roll up my window because that will block the view of my penis if there's a camera.

[2204] And I'm peeing, peen, pee, and I get that sensation where it's like I either have to stop peeing entirely and contain this fart that's coming.

[2205] Do girls get this feeling?

[2206] You know exactly what I'm talking about, Rob.

[2207] Right?

[2208] You start peeing and then you immediately feel a fart coming.

[2209] But if you feel that that fart is questionable, what are you going to do?

[2210] You got to stop the peeing altogether.

[2211] So the flow is too extreme.

[2212] I've had to pee for too long.

[2213] I can't shut the pee off.

[2214] I decide to just let a little bit of the fart out.

[2215] Second, I do that, I realize I'm in trouble, which immediately, makes me like Pavlovian panic, I just pull my pants down because I don't want anything on me. Yeah.

[2216] So now I'm standing with my pants around my knees in a brightly lit, it's noon alley, and now I'm like, what do we do?

[2217] And so now I start digging through my car and I find some Starbucks napkins.

[2218] Yeah.

[2219] And I start cleaning myself up.

[2220] I'm in the middle of cleaning myself up and I hear, hey, what are you doing?

[2221] Yeah.

[2222] And I turn and I'm only about 15 feet.

[2223] from this woman.

[2224] She's probably 65, and I just, I don't want her to see me. Yeah.

[2225] I'm grateful she's that old.

[2226] I'm hoping she doesn't know who I am.

[2227] And I'm in a full panic, and I just get in the car.

[2228] And my pants are around my knees.

[2229] And I get in the car, and I just quickly speed away.

[2230] And now I have a block to take my shoes off, my shorts, get the Miondi's out.

[2231] Everything's, thank God, there's been no seepage.

[2232] So my shorts are still good.

[2233] So now I put my shorts on raw dog style.

[2234] Yep.

[2235] And then what do I do with these undies?

[2236] What do you do?

[2237] I threw them under my car like an asshole.

[2238] I littered and I'm really sorry.

[2239] In fact, when I sent you the picture, I said I'm really against littering, but sometimes there's no choice.

[2240] Well, was there a trash can there?

[2241] I can't walk like through a public place as someone who's on TV holding poopy underwear.

[2242] Okay, but I guess, you know, what's interesting is like where you draw the line, right?

[2243] Like you draw the line walking through the parking lot with poopy undies.

[2244] But you don't draw the line about like pulling your pants down in public.

[2245] I know, but that was, first of all, panic.

[2246] It wasn't my plan to do that.

[2247] Sure, sure, sure.

[2248] I was like in.

[2249] But with the undies, I had time to plan what I was going to do, is -ish.

[2250] I had to get them out of the car, ASAP.

[2251] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2252] And I didn't want to walk with undies in my hand to a trash can and put them in when there's a couple hundred people there.

[2253] And someone might.

[2254] I get that.

[2255] You know, I guess I'm blaming a lot of this on my.

[2256] on me being on TV.

[2257] And maybe that's an excuse.

[2258] Well, it's real.

[2259] It adds a layer.

[2260] It adds a real layer.

[2261] It's in the mix when I'm making these panic decisions.

[2262] I got to address this.

[2263] You got to.

[2264] Yeah.

[2265] I got to stop tooting if it's even questionable.

[2266] I guess as I'm getting older, it feels like I know less and less.

[2267] Well.

[2268] I wish Andrew was here to give me a medical diagnosis.

[2269] You've got a rough couple months of pooping in your pants.

[2270] And I think it's.

[2271] over three times, and that's it.

[2272] Things come in threes.

[2273] They do.

[2274] They really do.

[2275] I think you're okay.

[2276] Okay.

[2277] It doesn't bode well for my character that I threw the underwear under the car and left them there.

[2278] That's bad.

[2279] Like, that could be in the paper.

[2280] Here's the real irony.

[2281] I'm panicking this woman seeing me or that people might see me and now I'm on here talking about it.

[2282] Explain that.

[2283] Pick a lane, shepherd.

[2284] Are you nervous people are going to see you pooped your pants?

[2285] Are you going to tell everyone?

[2286] Right.

[2287] I think you're just, which makes this is human, you're trying to beat her to outing you, you know, which I think is smart, actually.

[2288] I think it's more like in that moment I'm so humiliated, embarrassed.

[2289] Yeah.

[2290] And then after a couple days and I tell some trusted sources and they don't hate me, I just stop caring.

[2291] I'm like, oh, no one really cares.

[2292] That's when I get in my head because I'm like, you guys all know me. You know, I'm not a terrible litterer.

[2293] Right.

[2294] You know, I always put my shopping cart back when I go to the grocery store.

[2295] I try to be conscientious.

[2296] But the other people don't know that.

[2297] Okay, you know at the airport, when you're going through security, you put like your laptop in the bin.

[2298] I always put it back.

[2299] Always stack it.

[2300] Me too.

[2301] Yeah.

[2302] But most people do not stack it.

[2303] They don't.

[2304] And I'm my worst self when I see this stuff.

[2305] I'm so judgmental of people who don't.

[2306] Stack it.

[2307] Minimally leave the world as you found it.

[2308] I'm not even asking for you to be anything beyond that.

[2309] Just, you know, leave the world as you found it.

[2310] minimally.

[2311] It'd be great if you could make it a little better, too.

[2312] Yeah.

[2313] But don't make it worse than you found it.

[2314] Yeah.

[2315] And I made that parking lot worse than I found it that day.

[2316] Well, I'm sorry that happened.

[2317] That was stressful, and you were going to watch Carly and Rob play baseball.

[2318] Yeah.

[2319] And how did they do?

[2320] They're fucking great.

[2321] They're all great.

[2322] Wow.

[2323] Okay.

[2324] Lobbywob's an athlete.

[2325] I know that.

[2326] He looks really cute in baseball, get up too.

[2327] Oh.

[2328] Was Calvin there?

[2329] Yeah.

[2330] He was.

[2331] Well, that's nice.

[2332] Well, he's the only dude there that probably had pooped his pants recently.

[2333] That's right.

[2334] Yeah, you can connect.

[2335] Well, that's off your chest.

[2336] Mm -hmm.

[2337] I apologize to that woman, too.

[2338] My hunch is she must see stuff like that all the time because why was she so on the, you know, she was on it, the gal who caught me. Yeah.

[2339] That to me actually is the part.

[2340] I mean, I don't like littering, but I don't, you know, that was a panicky situation.

[2341] You had to do what you had to do.

[2342] That's it.

[2343] Right.

[2344] But, um.

[2345] Peeing in the alley you didn't like?

[2346] Well, because I don't.

[2347] want like what if someone's kids saw you well there was nobody there but what if they peeked out of their house and saw it like i'm just like that could have happened and let's just play that out is it problematic if someone sees like if a little kid sees someone peeing in an alley is that their penis well i wasn't facing i was facing my car door no one could see my penis oh okay yeah yeah there's no one could see anything oh yeah i opened the door and left it wide open then i stood in the v Right.

[2348] Facing.

[2349] That's much better.

[2350] The hood.

[2351] So there's no way anybody can see anything other than some fluid on the ground.

[2352] Yeah.

[2353] Yeah.

[2354] Yeah.

[2355] That's much better.

[2356] I was like kind of picturing you out in the open kind of peeing and then pooping.

[2357] And I'm like, oh boy.

[2358] Now what?

[2359] Like this is kind of behavior that you see.

[2360] An addict would be involved in.

[2361] But okay, but that's not what it was.

[2362] I'm glad we talked this out.

[2363] Me too.

[2364] maybe other people thought what you thought.

[2365] No, no, I was very discreet.

[2366] You were concealed.

[2367] Until I shit myself and had to jerk my pants down.

[2368] Now, yeah.

[2369] Oh, yeah.

[2370] Now then your butt cheeks.

[2371] Yeah.

[2372] But that's better than your penis.

[2373] I mean, not for me, but sure.

[2374] Going back, what I'm trying to say is we were talking about the dog painting.

[2375] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[2376] Sorry, sorry.

[2377] No, I'm just saying, so that weird, abrupt start.

[2378] Yeah.

[2379] Just, that's what we were talking about.

[2380] Oh, okay.

[2381] Okay.

[2382] Horse and donkey to make a jackass.

[2383] So then I typed in what makes a donkey.

[2384] Or is it a mule?

[2385] So yeah.

[2386] Then donkey versus mule, what's the difference?

[2387] Oh.

[2388] Donkeys are descended from the African wild ass.

[2389] Oh, wild ass.

[2390] Can this be right?

[2391] They were likely first bred around 5 ,000 years ago in Egypt or Mesopotamia.

[2392] A mule, on the other hand, is a hybrid animal.

[2393] There we go.

[2394] Mule fowls?

[2395] Who we call it a fowl?

[2396] Oh, yeah, those are baby mules.

[2397] Yeah.

[2398] Are the offspring of female horses and male donkeys?

[2399] Mm -hmm.

[2400] A jack, hence the word jackass.

[2401] Mm -hmm.

[2402] So a mule is what you were talking about.

[2403] And they're sterile, I believe.

[2404] They are sterile because they can't make sperm or eggs.

[2405] There we go.

[2406] There we go.

[2407] Well, this interests you.

[2408] So a similar phenomena is that an African male elephant can get an Asian female elephant.

[2409] elephant pregnant and they can have a baby.

[2410] But an Asian male elephant cannot get an African female pregnant.

[2411] Is that real?

[2412] Yeah, isn't that bizarre?

[2413] Why?

[2414] I don't know, but because of that, they've determined that if they are going to try to bring back the woolly mammoth, what they'll try to do is impregnate an Asian female elephant with woolly mammoth sperm or Macedon sperm.

[2415] Wow.

[2416] Because it is history of them being receptive to the African male sperm.

[2417] That's really odd.

[2418] Another thing is their balls are on their back.

[2419] That's cool.

[2420] I love elephants.

[2421] Although it makes you wonder when people are riding them, if they get too far back, will they be sitting on their testicles and is that sensitive to the elephant?

[2422] Also, if you were being attacked by an elephant, should you try to kick it in the top of the back?

[2423] And is it arousing for the elephant when someone's riding to...

[2424] Oh, bumping around on their balls, yeah.

[2425] Okay, he said that anorexia was a deadliest psychiatric disorder, and it is.

[2426] Oh, wow.

[2427] That is correct.

[2428] One in five, anorexia deaths is a result of suicide.

[2429] Oh.

[2430] Up to 20 % of all eating disorder cases result in death.

[2431] Oh, my God, really?

[2432] Yeah.

[2433] Wait, one in five people with an eating disorder will die of that.

[2434] That's got to be way worse numbers than drug use, even.

[2435] I mean...

[2436] I don't think cocaine kills one in five people that use it.

[2437] I know it doesn't.

[2438] Yeah.

[2439] Well, increasingly, it's going to do us...

[2440] I'm going to make a public plea right now.

[2441] We've got to get fentanyl out of everything.

[2442] Yeah, I would love that.

[2443] We got to.

[2444] I know it sounds weird to protect drug addicts, but we got to.

[2445] Yeah.

[2446] No, it's not protecting drug addicts.

[2447] It's protecting humans.

[2448] They're people.

[2449] Yeah.

[2450] I just think of these young kids, like, so many young kids are going to experiment with all kinds of things.

[2451] That's part of, that's a pretty normal part of life.

[2452] Yeah.

[2453] Okay.

[2454] So I was looking at smelling in stereo.

[2455] Mm -hmm.

[2456] Because we talked about that.

[2457] Oh, right.

[2458] They could tell where the smell's coming from.

[2459] Yeah.

[2460] They say elephants can smell water underground.

[2461] Underground?

[2462] Yeah.

[2463] Yeah, this says black bears have demonstrated they can accurately pinpoint food smelled over a mile away.

[2464] And elephants use olfaction or the sense of smell to distinguish between two ethnic groups who live near them in East Africa.

[2465] Whoa.

[2466] Yeah, wow.

[2467] But smelling in stereo with one nostril picking up one scent while the other is busy smelling something else.

[2468] Why is it called smelling and is that what's...

[2469] I don't understand that.

[2470] Okay, I'll tell you.

[2471] Yeah.

[2472] So, you know, if you have any three points on a plane, you can tell exactly where it's at.

[2473] Okay.

[2474] So basically you have one point, which is whatever's making the sound.

[2475] Uh -huh.

[2476] And then it hits your ears at different times.

[2477] Okay.

[2478] Right?

[2479] So those become the other two data points.

[2480] And your brain can figure out if it hit this ear first, it's coming from the right side.

[2481] in space.

[2482] Right.

[2483] And it can triangulate.

[2484] Right.

[2485] Because it has these other two inputs of data.

[2486] So any three inputs of data, you could, if you're a computer, triangulate where anything is.

[2487] That's how GPS works.

[2488] So their nostrils, they can tell if the scent hits their right nostril a millisecond before they're left.

[2489] They know it's coming from the right.

[2490] And then even, but it's 360, so they can even then further analyze the rate at which it's entering these two different data.

[2491] of points.

[2492] Oh, but do we have a little bit of that?

[2493] Because, like, I feel like if I smell like pizza or something, no, I don't know where it's coming from.

[2494] Yeah, I don't, we can't, it's just like, I smell pizza.

[2495] Whereas, obviously, when you hear someone behind you to the left, you know, they're to the left.

[2496] So interesting.

[2497] Yeah, and then your eyes, of course, even though an animal can have two eyes, it doesn't necessarily mean they have stereoscopic vision.

[2498] So, like, deer, their eyes are mounted on the sides of their head.

[2499] And, and they're not.

[2500] And Right?

[2501] So they have a bigger peripheral vision view of predators.

[2502] Yeah.

[2503] And their eyes actually don't overlap at all.

[2504] So there's no VIN diagram.

[2505] Oh, interesting.

[2506] And they need to overlap for you to determine distance.

[2507] Your depth perceptions based.

[2508] That's why they're always getting hit by cars.

[2509] Sure.

[2510] And then they run zigzag because they got to either look out the left eye or the right eye.

[2511] They can't look out both eyes and pick a forward path.

[2512] They've got to commit.

[2513] That seems evolutionarily bad.

[2514] But they always see prey coming.

[2515] Like you and I, we could get snuck up.

[2516] on so easy because our field of vision.

[2517] Oh, I do.

[2518] So many pop -outs.

[2519] I'm scared all the time.

[2520] You are, yeah.

[2521] I would imagine we're around like 120 -degree view of this 300 -60, and they're like two something because they're around the sides and everything.

[2522] Wow.

[2523] That's interesting.

[2524] Okay, so you've been looking at the sun.

[2525] You've been doing the experiment.

[2526] I wish I had been doing it, is.

[2527] Unfortunately, I'm not stringing together like five in a row, which is frustrating because I think that's where the promises are going to come true.

[2528] Yeah.

[2529] But you've been doing, I've seen you do it.

[2530] Yeah, and it's on my mind all the time now.

[2531] And what's neat is I like to take a motorcycle ride every evening with the girls.

[2532] And so now I have kind of a second incentive to do it because when we're doing that, we're quite often riding right into the sun and I'm getting dragged.

[2533] And it's always that time of day.

[2534] Yeah, that's nice.

[2535] What's really funny is I have been thinking, I always am in such a nice mood after those motorcycle rides.

[2536] And I, of course, I'm just attributing it to spending time with the girls.

[2537] And I'm sure that's 90 % of it.

[2538] But maybe this whole sun thing is part of it as well.

[2539] Maybe.

[2540] I've just been more into getting sun on my face in general.

[2541] I love sun.

[2542] You do.

[2543] You've always known.

[2544] I've always loved it.

[2545] That's it.

[2546] That's that?

[2547] That's that.

[2548] Well, I loved him, and we have texted since.

[2549] Good.

[2550] And he's got you on a regimen.

[2551] Well, I can't really say yet about the sun thing.

[2552] But I can say that I have been dividing my dose of testosterone.

[2553] Yeah.

[2554] And I think I look less puffy or you tell me, I don't know.

[2555] I mean, I never notice you being puffy at all.

[2556] Yeah.

[2557] And I haven't taken an astrodial or whatever the, Astrosol or something.

[2558] The blocker of estrogen.

[2559] I'm off that.

[2560] Great.

[2561] Yeah, so I don't know.

[2562] Okay, Andrew.

[2563] Thank you, Andrew.

[2564] Let's give it a shot.

[2565] All right, love you.

[2566] Love you.

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