This Is What Happens When You Rely on Stimulants - Andrew Huberman

I mean I think that people rely um often too heavily on psychological motivators and we overlook this entrainment phenomenon and the ability for our body to entrain to certain times you know I for instance I it's a terrible thing but I like to get up hydrate caffeinate slowly do some mental work and then my ideal training time you know if I ever retire I don't know that I ever will but would be to train midm morning like 10:30 amazing I love it my workouts are always best Etc but my life isn't organized that way so I like to try and exercise within an hour of waking up um but I have to drink caffeine first I don't do my 90-minute delay thing I drink my caffeine first if I'm going to exercise right away and I should say that for people that feel amotivated what do we do generally we consume things like caffeine which as we know disrupts the adenosine system so adenosine being a molecule of sleepiness or fatigue um also upregulates dopamine receptors incidentally it's actually shown in human dopamine receptors pretty interesting there Caff regular caffeine consumption very likely increases the the sensitivity Andor number of dopamine receptors available so whatever dopamine is released can have quote unquote more of an effect in terms of motivation and reward people will take nowadays um and I'm not passing judgment here but there's a lot of use of things like adderal modafanil viant stimulants what do all those stimulants do they release the catacol mees mainly dopamine and epinephrine um they're they are amphetamines okay people go we going to you know speed yep that's what they are um again not passing judgment they can have certain positive effects for certain clinical um issues in some cases again not um promoting or discouraging just stating the the reality but what do people do they take stimulants what did I do right before this podcast I'll come clean I don't hide these things I've been experimenting lately with with 2 milligrams of Nicorette nicotine in the form of gum I don't smoke Vape dip or snuff those are all bad carcinogenic Etc I know people say vaping is not as bad as smoking vaping is bad okay it's as bad as smoking probably not but it's not good for you don't Vape I just got some enemies but that's my read of the data more coming but nicotine Taps into the acetycholine system increases focus it also will tap into the epinephrine and dopamine system it's highly reinforcing so I limit myself to 2 milligrams maybe four times a week total and I'm thinking about stop all together cuz I'm just running this as an experiment on myself and it really really works for me what does it do it makes me more alert more motivated that also scares me it's not um and many people I know that take they're these pouches that come in canisters I've never tried them I don't want to those are generally 4 to 8 milligrams of nicotine per pouch I hear over and over again that people take one they love it take one pouch they then will do two a day three a day and pretty quickly they're consuming a canister or so if not every day every couple of days so it's a very quick route to let's just call it habit is it addictive maybe is it habit forming clearly um and this is becoming All the Rage now um I don't recommend it um nicotine is a vasoconstrictor um which isn't good raises blood pressure Etc there's some evidence that nicotine can be a cognitive enhancer and maybe later in life it might be something that I'll return to um for that reason um but it does have certain health hazards um Clips always get cut of me saying the cognitive part cognitive enhancing part but the point here is that when people feel amotivated they tend to look for something that they can ingest remember no effort get the get the molecules going and there's nothing wrong with that a cup of coffee or espresso or yam mate you know I'll do all three sometimes and you're more alert you're more arousal you need to do something with that energy and then try and lean into work the problem is with far ology it's hard to get the dose just right so that you have the ideal level of focus ideal level of alertness but not so much that you have agitation and your mind is kind of darting all over the place so um my typical thing is I I will use coffee or Y bam mate or both prior to a hard Weight Workout but when it comes to cardio I try and do my cardio without any any caffeine or even and certainly no excessive caffeine maybe a half a cup of coffee maybe yamate or two then just get out and go run in my case or or do the hit workout and let the workout itself be its own source of neurochemicals but um that's just me I know some people are doing the energy drinks combined with nicotine combined with I mean all sorts of stuff and it's wild because then what they find is in the absence of those things they're a motivated well why it was minimal to zero effort followed by high amplitude dopamine release and probably less directly from the the exercise that you're doing right you talked about the stacking of things that are releasing dopamine either you because you enjoy them or they're something that can release dopamina substance is what will cause you to have the really high amplitude Peak and then you can go Bel below Baseline how does caffeine um from coffee affect so you mentioned the dopamine receptors is that so is there like longterm because then you start to like you never feel as good as like if you take a break from caffeine then you have the first cup of coffee right know can't I can't say I relate because I I can't remember the last time I I took a break from caffeine I've done it when I had flu or I was cold you know had colds or flu because I just don't want to drink caffeine under those conditions usually like chamomile tea and I'm just huddling in bed or something um I love caffeine I don't drink that much of it you know but probably total out about 4 500 milligrams a day you know I weigh 25 220 PB so that's not that much and I'm pretty caffeine acclimated and I tend to drink caffeine in the early part of the day and not so much in the evening or certainly not after 300 p.m. so I can sleep well but yeah the stacking is something that you know I don't want to give the impression that if you know you have an energy drink like a pre-workout and you got the music blasting and you're hydrated and you slept great you have a great workout like crush a workout every once in a while but don't be surprised if the next time you're walking into the gym you don't feel quite as motivated and I don't think one should rely on that every single time you know that you need to if you need a stimulant every time you're going to exercise you are um creating a a pattern of behavior and likely some underlying neur neurochemical habits that that are not going to serve you well in the long run you're going to feel less motivation to do the thing that itself can generate feelings of motivation and that's what we've been talking about the use a cold shower would be a great one because of that long I'm just fascinated by this there I've never seen anything else no drug prescription or otherwise no supplement no um workout that I'm aware of but I haven't explored every single one that creates that long Arc of dopamine epinephrine and norepinephrine release that one minute one minute of being uncomfortably cold can create now in that study it was a longer exposure I they used warmer temperatures and it was much longer but I think based on my understanding of things you presented and what I as I understand it the shorter colder exposure no doubt creates similar subjective experience yeah well I was going to ask you about that that because um the there's a lot more papers looking at norrine release with respect to cold exposure and that can be even 20 seconds like at you know 39 degrees or whatever F that quickening of the breath that's a adrenaline is is an incredible molecule but I'm wondering with the dopamine what you think and you know this can be some of your opinion is the minimum like duration and what the temperature should be to get you know a you know increase in the dopamine like Peak above what you're at like like you're talking about yeah so there unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of exploration of this and there needs to be and at one point my colleague at Stanford Craig heler who's done a lot on cold exposure and in particular Palmer cooling for lowering core body temperature before exercise as a way to increase in prolong effort a lot of Stanford athletes do this um other athletes pro athletes do this as well um topic um and I were considering doing some work on this um but we haven't gotten around to it I guess we've both been busy with other things

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Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024