The Neuroscience Of Manifestation - Andrew Huberman

one of the best books I've read this year is the expectation effect by David Robson so he is a science writer from the UK and he looked at a whole bunch of studies the placebo effect which everybody's familiar with right there is a particular expectation that an outcome is going to come from some sort of medication and lo and behold that outcome manifests he found this across pretty much every area of anything that you care to care about so my two favorite studies from this so so interesting he realized that a gluten intolerance self-report gluten intolerance has increased from three percent to 30 in 10 years so this is the why there's so many gluten-free options on the menu they've got 30 of the population that serve yeah so people need it and he was wondering well what is it human biology hasn't changed that much is it maybe that the foods have changed and people are responding to that or is it maybe some sort of expectation because the type of news stories that are hearing about gluten and about how bad it is for us and inflammation and all this sort of stuff maybe it's that people are expecting it so they brought people into a lab they set them down these people do and do not have self-reported gluten intolerances and they give everybody the same meal they tell everybody in the room that it's got gluten in it it's got no gluten in it after a while people who don't have a gluten intolerance biologically who haven't eaten gluten have diarrhea they have hives they're breaking out in inflammation they're having to run at the bathroom okay well that's kind of interesting they did another another story that you spoke about VO2 max tests that they were looking at apparently there's a particular genetic mutation that allows people to blow off CO2 and upregulate oxygen in a better way they brought people in even numbers of people that didn't did not have this genetic trait split them into two random groups so there was a mix of both do and do not have the trade in each first group was told you've got the right genetic trait you should be really really good at this second group was told sorry you don't have it you shouldn't be too good no surprise perhaps of the group that was told that they did they ended up performing better but when they actually looked at what was happening in the physiology of these people they found that the people who didn't have the genetic mutation but were told that they did had a lower overall lactate threshold they had a lower overall heart rate they were blowing off CO2 more effectively and upregulating oxygen better than the people who did have the genetic mutation but were told that they didn't so he coined this term that said your expectations are even more powerful than your genes I love that I'm gonna read that book I that's a remarkable example um and I think that you know a lot these days is being made of epigenetic effects and things but this is almost in the different direction this is a psychophysiological response I find this kind of thing to be honest among the more fascinating and interesting aspects of Neuroscience if not the most interesting lately um those examples are tremendous so I can't counter those at all with anything more spectacular but that the work of Dr Alia Crum at Stanford she runs the Stanford Mind Body lab and she's done simple experiments but they're really elegant um instructing people one group all about the terrible effects of stress destroys your immune system etc etc other people telling them also true things but all the positive effects of stress it sharpens your ability of function you can remember things better etc etc you see exactly what you are told basically now you can't lie to people you can't tell them things that aren't true it's just about the subset of information that you get dictates the response you get and perhaps the most dramatic was they gave two different groups of people and then they actually each got the opposite condition to a milkshake one group is told this milkshake is very high calorie it contains a lot of fat and sugar Etc another group is told uh the milkshake they're getting is very low calorie it's very nutrient sparse Etc then they measure hunger so how long it takes for them to get hungry again after ingesting it they also look at insulin and they also look at ghrelin this hormone that is secreted um as you get essentially makes you hungry It's associated with Hunger there are other things too but you see exactly what you would expect which is the people that get the nutrient-dense milkshake are satisfied for longer their ghrelin is suppressed and their insulin is higher you see the opposite in the group that had the the so-called low calorie Shake turns out it's the exact same milkshake this is remarkable right because this is not simply the placebo effect I think it's the placebo effect plus the expectation effect plus a real physiological effect because that's what you describe as well and the way that Ali Dr Ali Crum she she goes by the way she describes it is that any event causes a real physiological response but that real physiological response is braided in with our expectation and our understanding of what the response ought to be to create the actual response so it's sort of real plus perceived equals your reality right exactly and so um I love this kind of thing as you can tell I'm I'm eating up the example that uh that you gave I think it's spectacular because what it means is that no we can't lie to ourselves we can't tell ourselves that you know drinking water is going to sustain us just as food would for uh for five days we're not going to be hungry but to some extent if one understands that well you can survive a long time on just water yeah and you don't need to eat then you might experience less hunger that's the way the nervous system works well you can definitely survive longer on just water if you believe that you can survive longer on just water there is no reason not to believe this so I was really really averse to the whole Rhonda Byrne the secret Wu sending out messages to the universe and David uh positions himself very anti that as well in the book um but you can't deny the fact that the positive thinking has a real physiological impact on what you do he was talking about um they did a study with older people uh that were past retirement and they asked them to use what what sort of words do you associate with getting older and they split these people into two different groups and the sort of words that people used perfectly mapped onto how long they were going to live so the people that use the sort of words alone frail fragile injury death they were the ones that lived the shortest the people that said um happiness Freedom Liberty connection uh maturity those sorts of words were the ones that lived the longest so interesting your expectations can literally impact your longevity there's I am yet to read the book in detail but I've talked to a guy named Ethan cross he wrote a book called she's being on the show oh fantastic I think that internal chatter world is a very interesting one that Neuroscience will eventually have something to to say uh about I think the most powerful mindset uh at least to me is one that again I learned from Ali Crum this is a mindset that in her peer-reviewed studies of different populations it's clear exists universally in people in the SEAL Teams but um less so or is perhaps even absent from the general population sadly [Music] the idea that stress grows you that challenge grows you but isn't the only way that you can grow I think is a very powerful mindset so what do you mean by that so they she what they did is she surveyed a bunch of different um people different professions and asked you know what's your view of stress do you think it grows you it diminishes your ability Etc so this isn't giving people information this is asking them for information and the only group that said stress grows you the more challenge the better you get Etc The more stress you experience the more likely you are to to succeed was the this group from the SEAL Teams I don't know if they were new recruits or if they had been in a long time but that was the the group I would add to that that yes if you adopt the mindset that stress grows you you're going to be much better off but also that stress is not the only way to grow in life right there's this idea you know we have this and again there's sort of a gravitational pull of this side like stress grows yes you know forward Center of mass or you know always be in friction limbic friction limbic friction how about a more expansive or nuanced version of that might be stress grows you so if you're under stress you're back on your heels from something you think okay how can I get flat-footed or even forward Center of mass you tell yourself stress grows me stress grows me stress grows me but that doesn't mean stress is the only thing that will grow you right learning to cycle between periods of hard work and deep what I call non-destructive uh deliberate reset right um that's what really works over time I can attest to that you know I people who just really go out and Tie One On In order to to recover you can only get away with that for a few years before your body and mind start to give out right so fine non-destructive ways to reset and also adopt the mindset that stress grows you and adopt the mindset that you know there are other ways to grow that don't involve stress and I think you're set up to have a pretty fantastic life that's my you know simple view of of the way these things work what's happening people if you enjoyed that then press here for the full unedited episode and don't forget to subscribe peace

Channel: Chris Williamson

Views: 390,041

Keywords: Andrew Huberman, Andrew Huberman lex fridman, Andrew Huberman podcast, Tim ferris, chris williamson, hot and cold, hot and cold exposure, hubermanlab, lex fridman, modern wisdom, morning routine, podcast

Id: IewbT1ZdhEA

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022