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Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes to find the most effective science-backed tools for mental, physical health, and productivity. I'm Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing dietary supplements, or more precisely, a rational guide to their use. During today's episode, I'm going to give you a series of specific questions that you can answer to decide if you should take so- called supplements. As I begin today's conversation, I want to emphasize something very important that applies not only to supplements, but to all aspects of mental, physical health, and performance.
Namely: I hold the position that behavioral tools-that is, the specific actions we perform or avoid-are the foundation of mental, physical health, and productivity. So things like morning sunlight and exercise are behavioral tools. They do not require taking anything internally. After that, I would say the next level is nutrition. No amount of supplements, over-the-counter or prescription, can make up for poor nutrition, at least not for long. Then, on top of that, I would place what are commonly called additives. Although today I am trying to expand this concept to include not only what compensates for nutritional deficiencies or supplements food, but also, as I said, over-the-counter compounds for various purposes, many of which are not found in
food products. So, I would put the supplements right after the meal. Next come prescription medications, which, of course, are prescribed by a certified physician. However, there are many cases where people can either reduce the dosage of prescription medications or replace them with quality behavioral tools, nutrition, and supplements. But there are also many situations where prescription medications are the only way to achieve desired mental, physical health, and productivity goals. So I would place them as the fourth level in this framework, focused on mental, physical health, and productivity. Before we delve into today's episode, I want to emphasize a very important point: I am not a doctor. That is, I am not a clinician. So I'm not
prescribing anything and I'm not going to do it today. I am a professor. I review the research literature. I describe tools drawn from. So I talk about a lot of things, but I don't prescribe anything. And I believe it is vital that whenever you are thinking about adding or removing any behavioral, nutritional, prescription-based protocols for any purpose, that you consult with a verified, board- certified physician. This is absolutely necessary. The most important aspect of today's episode won't be that you discover one specific supplement, category of supplements, or blend of supplements that will transform your mental health, physical condition, and performance. No,
the goal of today's episode is to help you understand where you have needs that can be met through supplementation better than any other approach, and most importantly, how to think about supplementation. That is, how to think about the different categories of supplements that exist and how they interact with your diet and behavior so you can maximize your health in the near and long term. And indeed, it may be the case that the ideal dosage of a particular supplement for you is 0 mg. For example, if I ask you, do you sleep deeply and sufficiently every night? Do you feel rested during the day? Maybe you need a short nap and that's it, or maybe not. And you answer, "Yes, I feel great. I sleep great. I wake up feeling great.
I only need a short nap or no nap at all during the day to feel rested throughout the day." Well, then there really is nothing to talk about between us regarding sleep supplements. However, if you are not sleeping well, a big debate opens up about what the causes might be. Is it related to nutrition, or to the time you exercise or consume caffeine? In other words, no discussion about supplements can take place in a vacuum. On the contrary, discussions about additives should be seen in a broader context. So, today you will learn how to place the discussion and reasoning about supplements in a broader context and think about how specific supplements, i.e. specific
ingredients and combinations of ingredients, can actually be used to support and enhance your overall health and lead you to specific health and performance outcomes. So, what is the ideal supplementation protocol? Well, there are basic supplements. These are supplements designed to build a foundation or provide insurance along with your nutrient intake to ensure you are getting everything you need to provide a baseline level of mental health, physical health, and the ability for optimal performance. This is the only category of supplements for which, in my opinion, it is appropriate and even beneficial to have multiple ingredients in one preparation. So, this raises a very specific question that you should ask yourself. Do you want to take a vitamin and
mineral complex? Well, the answer to this will be purely individual, but you really only need to consider two things. First, is the price within the range you can afford and are willing to pay? And then you need to ask yourself, are you able to regularly consume enough variety of foods to cover your vitamin and mineral needs from diet alone? I would say that for people who are extremely physically and/or mentally active, as well as those who may not be following an intermittent fasting schedule-i.e. eating little or restricting their food intake to certain hours-a vitamin and mineral supplement likely makes sense. However, it is very important to take this vitamin- mineral complex with meals, as otherwise it may cause stomach upset. So-called
basic supplements, of course, include vitamins and minerals, but over the past decade or more, this list has expanded to also include supplements containing vitamins, minerals, and ingredients like digestive enzymes. That's why when people come to me and ask, "If I'm only going to take one supplement, what should I choose?" Instead of giving them one specific answer, I actually ask them three questions. How well do you sleep at night? The second question I ask is, how do you eat? And the third thing I ask about-which is extremely important -is what is your budget? Once these three questions are answered, and if a person can afford to spend around $100 or more on supplements per month, my recommendation is that they focus not on specific
supplements for sleep, focus, or hormonal support, but on improving their core diet, adaptogens, probiotics, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. Because of the simple fact: if they do this, they will improve the functioning of all biological and organ systems, which will lead to stronger mental and physical health, as well as increased efficiency, including sleep. But, to wrap up the conversation about basic supplements, I believe that a comprehensive supplement with a large number of ingredients will be the best way to provide basic support for the body, and I believe that is where any supplement regimen should begin. This will allow you to feel better overall, sleep better, focus better, and support all of your brain
and body systems so you can perform at your best, while paying proper attention to nutrition, of course. Because you can't ignore nutrition or give up behavioral tools, many of which we've discussed many times on this podcast, like sun exposure, exercise, etc. Again, a better life through chemistry still requires a better lifestyle. This does not mean that chemistry does not help. This means that chemical additives should only be a supplement. They should support the behavioral and nutritional factors in your life that you are already paying attention to and trying to optimize. Now I would like to move on to single-ingredient supplements designed to achieve specific goals. And the three categories that I'm going to look at are sleep, hormone support, and
cognitive ability and focus. Cognitive abilities and focus are the third and final category. When considering sleep supplements, we need to ask ourselves a number of important questions. First of all, you should ask yourself how well, how deeply, and for how many hours you sleep each night. If you are one of those who doesn't get enough sleep, it's worth asking yourself two questions. First of all, do you consume caffeine after 2pm? If the answer is yes, you should limit or eliminate caffeine after 2 p.m. Second: Most people should avoid eating 2 hours before bedtime. But of course, you shouldn't be so hungry that you can't fall asleep. So, these are nutritional and behavioral tools that everyone should take into consideration. If,
for example, you are someone who falls asleep normally but wakes up in the middle of the night at 2 or 3 a.m., or at any other time, and has trouble getting back to sleep, there are two categories of supplements to consider. The first is myo- inositol, which is usually taken in a dose of 900 mg. Other people wake up in the middle of the night because their dreams are very intense. It is better for such people to avoid certain supplements. So, in a moment, I'll talk about the benefits of a supplement like theanine for falling asleep. But theanine, which is typically taken in doses of 100 mg to 400 mg, can be a great remedy for many people.
However, for people who have extremely vivid dreams, these dreams can lead to instant awakening and sometimes a little anxiety when they wake up in the middle of the night. So, those who wake up in the middle of the night feeling a certain mental and physical shock from their intense dreams may be better off avoiding taking theanine supplements. And for those who don't wake up in the middle of the night and don't have very vivid dreams, but have difficulty falling asleep, there are two supplements that have been proven effective in reducing the time it takes to fall asleep and helping you fall asleep more easily. This is magnesium threonate, which can be replaced with magnesium bisglycinate.
Both have transport systems that allow them to easily cross the blood-brain barrier, and they cause mild drowsiness. Mild in the sense that it won't prevent you from driving or dealing with emergencies in the middle of the night, but people who take them often find that they fall asleep much faster and their sleep becomes deeper. Incidentally, these supplements are also thought to be beneficial for cognitive support and neuroprotection, although there is less data on this. n, apigenin, which is a derivative of chamomile. I've mentioned this in my previous podcasts. It also acts as an anxiety reducer, which is crucial before bedtime so that people can turn off the flow of thoughts, reduce the tendency to introspect, problem-solve, and worry about the
future, which is a necessary condition for falling asleep. So, what is a rational approach to taking supplements to fall asleep faster and sleep better? Should I take magnesium threonate and apigenin together at once? It depends on the situation. If you're on a budget and just want to fall asleep faster, and you do n't care which of these two ingredients proves to be more effective for you, you could try one thing, like magnesium threonate, for a week and see how it affects your fall asleep time. That is, how quickly you fall asleep. Or you can try apigenin for the first week. Or you can combine them both. Or you can try magnesium threonate for a week, then switch to just apigenin for a week and assess what works best for you. If none of this has helped you, I
recommend trying combining these supplements together. Again, this is how any scientist would design an experiment to understand which variables, i.e. which ingredients, are most effective in achieving the desired result, instead of simply mixing them together. However, many people are so desperate for good sleep that they just say, " Okay, I'll take magnesium threonate." "I will take apigenin." "I will take theanine." "If my dreams become too vivid and I wake up in the middle of the night because of it, I will stop taking theanine." And many people really benefit greatly from this approach. I think a week-long course of taking something, provided there are no
negative effects, is perfectly acceptable, right? If something causes a negative effect, I recommend stopping taking it immediately. But if there are no negative effects, I think it's worth trying taking one ingredient for a week without changing anything else in your protocols, and then seeing what works best and whether the combination is more effective. Once you develop an intuition or a kind of sensitivity to how different ingredients affect you, it becomes a very powerful advantage as you can significantly limit your spending. You will also be able to identify what works least effectively for you and, more importantly, what works best for achieving your goals. Any conversation about sleep supplements, in my opinion, should include a discussion of melatonin. I've
talked about melatonin many times before on my and other podcasts, and I'll say it again: I'm not a fan of melatonin for several reasons. Melatonin is a hormone that helps you fall asleep, but it does not maintain sleep throughout the night. Therefore, people often take melatonin, fall asleep quickly, and then wake up and can't fall back asleep. Another reason is that melatonin supplements almost always contain dosages that far exceed the normal biological or so-called endogenous levels of melatonin that we produce naturally. And yes, it's true that as we age, we produce less melatonin, but it's quite clear that melatonin can affect not only sleep, but also other systems in the brain and body. The next category of supplements I would like to talk about is
So, the discussion of hormonal support and correction must take into account the fact that nutrition, its effects on hormones, and how hormones such as insulin affect other hormones, such as free testosterone, all need to be taken into account. It is also important to remember that behavior affects hormonal status. Morning sunlight increases cortisol levels. It is very important that cortisol levels are elevated at the beginning of the day for concentration and alertness, as well as for immune function, and that they are low at night, which allows levels of growth hormone and testosterone, which are released primarily in the early morning, to be elevated at night and early in the morning. So, you should adjust your behavior and
diet before thinking about taking hormone supplements. Now, with all that said, I would like to give a few examples of supplements that directly affect specific hormonal pathways aimed at achieving specific goals, such as increasing testosterone or free testosterone. I always remind people that testosterone and estrogen are present in both men and women, okay? And both are important for things like libido, muscle growth, etc. Fadogia Agrestis is an herb I mentioned in the podcast, and when taken at a dosage of 600 mg per day, many people (not all) report increased libido, sperm production, testosterone levels, and in some cases estrogen, which is many of the hormones that follow luteinizing hormone. So, will you react to Fadogia Agrestis or not? It's
simply impossible to know until you try. If you are going to choose this path, there are two very important points. First of all, there is quite a large body of literature that Fadogia Agrestis can be toxic to testicular cells, and possibly other cells, when taken in very high doses. Therefore, it is important to follow the dosages of Fadogia Agrestis recommended on the labels of various products and to take breaks in taking it. Some people need to take it in cycles: 8 weeks on, 2 weeks off. Others choose a cycle: 12 weeks of treatment, a month off.
Stay within the recommended dosage ranges. You can take less, but you definitely shouldn't take more. And I think it's smart to cycle about every 8 weeks, taking a 2 week break, and then, at your discretion, returning to taking it if you feel it's benefiting you, or taking it for 12 weeks and then taking a full month break before repeating again. The fact that there is a recommended dose of Fadogia Agrestis, say 600 mg per day, does not mean at all that you can take twice as much and expect double the positive effect. This is not the best approach, especially with a substance like Fadogia Agrestis, which can be toxic in high doses. But it's also important to consider taking a lower dose and see how it affects your hormones. This approach
requires a little more patience. I know most people think: I want results and I want them now. I believe it is important to think about exercise, nutrition, or supplements in the long term, consider what will be effective for you in the short and long term, and gradually introduce any supplement regimen. Fadogia Agrestis is a good example of a supplement known for its powerful effects, but it should be approached with some respect, as the dosage range in which it works should be narrow enough to avoid problems. There are other supplements, including Tongkat Ali, which is known to increase free testosterone levels by sex hormone binding globulin. Tongkat Ali may be beneficial for both men and women at dosages of 200 to 600 mg per day. As far as I
know, Tongkat Ali does not require cycling, meaning you do not have to take breaks in taking it. It is worth noting that the effects of Tongkat Ali may not appear immediately, so it is better to have a blood test 8-12 weeks after starting to take it, rather than earlier. And it seems to have some cumulative effect on libido. This indicates the likelihood that it affects neural pathways rather than hormonal ones. Hormonal pathways may work slowly, but in general, it is neural pathways that explain gradual changes in any physical or mental aspect, which then remain stable over a long period of time. As a final note on hormone-boosting supplements, I want to
briefly mention an issue related to women's health, namely the menstrual cycle. During the menstrual cycle, the levels of various hormones are constantly changing. Follicle-stimulating hormone is very high during what's called the follicular phase, right? And then comes the luteal phase. I want to emphasize that women should expect that certain supplements, not all, but some, due to their effects on different hormones, may act differently or even oppositely during different phases of the menstrual cycle. For this reason, I find it especially important to strictly control the dosage and individual ingredients in your supplement regimen. So, this again
highlights the critical importance of monitoring individual ingredients, dosage, and the ability to discontinue individual or multiple components depending on your overall health. And obviously, the menstrual cycle is a profound change in the hormonal background, and therefore, in the entire biological and psychological environment that exists in the body. The next category of supplements I would like to look at are supplements to improve cognitive abilities and focus. Whenever we talk about supplements to improve cognitive abilities and concentration, a large category of these supplements falls under the group of stimulants, and most often it is caffeine, although there are other sources of stimulants. I won't touch on
them for now. Let's just talk about caffeine. If you want to increase alertness and concentration, caffeine is a powerful way to do so. It works. Another category of stimulants that may work to improve alertness and concentration are substances that increase adrenaline levels in other ways, affecting what are called the adrenergic and adrenaline systems. These include yohimbine and various forms of yohimbine, such as alpha-yohimbine. There are now many forms of these substances. I would recommend going to examine.com to explore the different forms of yohimbine. There are certain forms of yohimbine that act as effective stimulants. One of
them is called alpha-yohimbine. Sometimes it is called rauvolscine, it is spelled r a u w o l s c i n e. yohimbine, it's often used as a stimulant also to promote fat loss and increase alertness. I must say that this is a very powerful and somewhat risky supplement. Some people experience severe anxiety while using it. This may also be due to the fact that they tend to take it on an empty stomach or in combination with low-calorie diets. It's a kind of balancing act that might not work very well for some people. For other people, it can be a very effective stimulant. supplement-based approaches to improving cognitive function and concentration, caffeine, in the form of coffee or tea, or in the form of tablets or capsules, but in lower doses
than you would find in coffee and tea, is, in my opinion, a perfectly reasonable way to explore stimulant approaches to improving cognitive function and concentration. I'm not mentioning all this because I think you didn't already know that caffeine can improve alertness and concentration. Most people already know this, and I acknowledge it, but rather as a point of comparison for another approach to enhancing cognitive function and concentration, which is to activate certain neurotransmitter pathways that are not based on stimulants. So, for example, alpha-GPC, which is essentially a choline donor, acts on pathways related to the neuromodulator acetylcholine and can improve concentration. So, at a dosage of 300 to 600 mg, people experience an
increased level of concentration for mental or physical work. -GPC has a half-life of 4 to 6 hours, so it is relatively short-lived, although you would probably not want to take it right before bed. I don't recommend this. This is not a stimulant. It tends to improve focus by enhancing acetylcholine and directly acetylcholine pathways. Although it causes a slight increase in alertness. So some people perceive it subjectively as a general stimulation, but it's different from stimulants like caffeine. For example, 300-600 mg of alpha-GPC taken alone allows people to focus better but does not cause feelings of jitteriness or overexcitement.
Similarly, 500-1000 mg or an intermediate dose of something like L- tyrosine, which is an amino acid precursor to dopamine, another neuromodulator, taken alone or in combination-again, I'm a big fan of taking the drugs separately, but if you've tried them separately and found that they work well and then decided to combine them, people usually find that the cholinergic stimulation from alpha- GPC and the dopaminergic stimulation from L- tyrosine, or just taking L- tyrosine alone or alpha-GPC alone, leads to increased levels of focus without the overall feeling of stimulant alertness that comes with caffeine. And indeed, or perhaps it's better to say, of course, there are products and people that combine all three of these components together: caffeine, alpha-
GPC, and L-tyrosine. And while I'm not saying this is good or bad, I would advise that whenever you start looking into the cognitive and focus effects of any supplement, ask yourself which ones are stimulants. Such as caffeine and alpha- yohimbine. And which ones have a greater impact on neuromodulatory systems, such as alpha- GPC and L-tyrosine. And it's worth conceptually distinguishing between them, because things like alpha -yohimbine and caffeine mostly act as alertness enhancers, but they don't improve focus. And things like alpha-GPC and L- tyrosine are more likely to help sharpen focus rather than increase alertness. And that's why, of course, people often combine them and take them together
. So I think this is a very important distinction that most people don't know about. I'm not here to tell you that a stimulant-based approach or a neuromodulator-based approach is better or worse. They are simply different from each other. Although I will say that I think it's important to research them separately before you start combining them into one formula. Again, individual ingredients are the best way to figure out what works for you. I usually take 300 mg of alpha-GPC before mental work or before training. I often combine this with caffeine, not in capsules or pills, but in the form of a cup of coffee
or mate. It turned out that for me, for example, L-tyrosine very powerfully increases the level of concentration, but after it I feel a strong decline in strength. So I try to avoid L- tyrosine, although some people tolerate it very well and even like it. To increase dopamine levels, I rely on another substance, phenylethylamine, which has a slightly shorter duration of action. Again, I arrived at these protocols through trial and error, but mostly tested each ingredient individually before mixing them into a pre- workout or pre- workout "shake." I suggest you research them as well, as it will help you find the best protocols, which
only you can determine. I truly believe that there is a category of supplements that can significantly increase the likelihood of overcoming depression and even improve mood directly or indirectly. There is evidence in the scientific literature of what I am about to tell you: they improve metabolism, cardiovascular function, and the ability to concentrate. And here I mean the so-called essential omega-3 fatty acids, specifically the omega-3 form of these acids. There is now a lot of data showing that taking 1-3 g of EPA, particularly in the form of fish oil capsules or liquid, can be beneficial for many aspects of brain and body health, as well as improving concentration and cognitive abilities
. The point is, if someone is on a limited budget for supplements and can't afford the basic complex we talked about earlier, like Athletic Greens or similar, but is able to purchase a quality omega-3 fish oil and take it in amounts greater than 1 g of EPA per day. Again, this is really important. If you look at product labels, you'll often see 1,500 or 1,600 milligrams of essential fatty acids, but the key is EPA to make sure you're exceeding the 1 gram EPA threshold per day. If I were asked what single ingredient supplement plays the biggest role in improving mental, physical health, and performance, I would say it's a high-quality omega-3 fatty acid, usually taken in the form of fish oil.
Again, you have to decide based on your budget, etc. I want to touch on this huge category of supplements, which includes food or food-mimicking supplements. These are, for example, whey proteins, or milk proteins, or egg proteins, or vegetable proteins. This is a discussion that deserves an hour in itself. If you want to understand which types of protein and protein sources are the most bioavailable, best for protein synthesis, recovery from workouts, muscle building, etc., I would like to direct you to a segment of the episode with Dr. Lane Norton where he talks about total daily protein needs. This is about 1 gram per pound of body weight per day for most
people, although there is some variation depending on activity and so on. And the quality of the sources of these proteins is extremely important. This, of course, leads to a discussion about the quality and type of protein contained in a supplement such as whey protein or casein, which is a milk protein-based supplement. This discussion is segmented and timestamped in the episode I recorded with him. You can find it at hubermanlab.com. He provided some interesting data on potato protein as a great plant-based substitute for those who don't want to use whey protein, but whey proteins can be very useful for reaching and exceeding your protein threshold for many reasons, not just for muscle building, although that's important too, but for
other purposes as well. And this is just one category of food or food-imitating supplements. There are a huge number of such supplements, too many to go into detail, but I want to acknowledge that they exist. The main thing to understand is that while these foods can be great replacements for meals that you might not otherwise be able to consume, and while they are often very convenient because you can drink your calories instead of eating them, I think most would agree that getting a significant portion of your nutrition from whole foods is beneficial for many reasons. In particular, this is fiber, the volume of food that gives a feeling of satiety, and, of course, the fact that many vitamins, minerals and other substances found in food, as
well as essential fatty acids in animal proteins, will be absent from most, if not all, such meal replacement powders. There are several topics that we have already touched on during today's podcast, and I want to reiterate them now because they are extremely important to developing a rational The most important of them is that, unless we are talking about basic body support, i.e. vitamins, minerals, digestive enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens, we should focus on monocomponent preparations. Basic supplements that include all of the above in one composition are acceptable. I simply don't see any other practical or sensible way to get each of these components separately other than using monocomponent preparations. However,
when you start thinking about and practically exploring things like supplements to improve sleep, hormonal health, or cognitive function, it is the single-ingredient products that will give you the most advantage and control. They will help you determine the minimum effective doses, as well as eliminate what doesn't work for you or may be harmful in any way. And it's not just about cost- effectiveness, but also about creating small sets or " cocktails" of supplements that you can manage, that you don't depend on, but that you believe can really improve the aspects of health that are important to you. So that's what today's episode is about, even though we discussed specific supplements and their functions in various areas of mental
and physical health and performance. Today's episode was dedicated to providing you with resources and a framework for how to approach supplementing, how to overcome challenges and issues, how to get the most out of your diet without breaking the bank, and, if you're on a budget, how to quickly identify the most effective supplements and get the most out of them. And finally, a point that resonates with several of the topics we've discussed today, but which I don't think I've ever clearly articulated: while the word " supplements" itself sounds like something that's just to supplement or compensate for deficiencies in nutrition or other areas of life, many of them are actually quite powerful compounds. These are effective over-the-counter molecules that
can truly significantly improve your ability to think more clearly, sleep better, and support hormonal function. But, as always, they are just one element in an ecosystem of other factors, such as your behavior, which includes good and bad habits, your diet, and perhaps even prescription medications that you are already taking or hope to take less or stop taking altogether. Again, this should happen after discussing it with your doctors, if you plan to do it at all. But the point is that what we call supplements are actually powerful tools in a broader system aimed at enabling each of us to tailor methods for our own mental,
physical health, and productivity. So, thank you again for joining today's discussion about supplements and, more importantly, how to develop a rational and highly effective supplementation protocol for you. Last but not least: thank you for your interest in science.
