0:00

I am very excited to introduce today's

0:02

guest, who is none other than the

0:04

host of the wildly popular Huberman Lab

0:06

podcast, Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr.

0:09

Huberman is a distinguished neuroscientist and

0:11

tenured professor at Stanford School of

0:13

Medicine holding positions in both the

0:15

Department of Neurobiology and by courtesy

0:17

Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. His

0:20

extensive research has advanced our

0:22

understanding of brain development, functionality,

0:24

and neuroplasticity, the remarkable ability

0:26

of the nervous system to

0:28

adapt, learn new skills, and

0:30

improve cognitive functions. Dr.

0:32

Huberman's influential work has been featured

0:35

in leading scientific journals including Nature,

0:38

Science, and Cell. Anyone that is

0:40

familiar with Andrew's work knows that one of

0:42

the things that shines through is his incredibly

0:44

diverse repertoire of scientific knowledge. I

0:47

think it's safe to say that Andrew has

0:49

made a massive contribution to helping many people

0:51

understand science in a way that can improve

0:53

their lives. In light of

0:55

that, while this episode could have explored many

0:58

topics, one of the things

1:00

that I had hoped to emphasize and

1:02

I believe this episode captures is Dr.

1:04

Huberman's truly immense knowledge of the workings

1:06

of the brain's dopamine system. This

1:09

podcast is a tour de force

1:11

on understanding how the dopamine system

1:13

works so that you can use

1:15

it not only to understand how

1:17

your brain works, but also how

1:19

to improve motivation, focus, attention, mood,

1:21

cognition, and more so that you

1:23

can use that information to better

1:25

yourself personally and professionally. This

1:28

episode is so incredibly valuable from

1:30

that standpoint. However, we

1:32

don't stop there. We cover so

1:35

much. In this episode we

1:37

discuss why thinking about dopamine as a

1:39

wave pool can help us best understand

1:41

how to stay motivated and focused throughout

1:43

the day. Why spiking

1:45

dopamine without some intrinsic aspect of

1:48

effort is dangerous and why you

1:50

shouldn't rely on stimulants when you're

1:52

feeling unmotivated. Why

1:54

Andrew cautions against frequent dopamine

1:56

stacking with stimulants and nicotine. Thinking

2:00

of dopamine only as a

2:02

reward signal is misleading and

2:04

why recognizing the overlap between

2:06

neurochemical responses to exercise and

2:08

mental effort can help us

2:10

harness the same dopamine-driven systems

2:12

to improve both focus and

2:14

motivation. Why attaching

2:16

reward to effort itself is the

2:18

holy grail of learning. Why

2:21

parents should reward verb states instead

2:23

of adjectives, praising the child's effort

2:25

rather than their outcomes. How

2:28

to boost motivation with visualization of

2:30

negative outcomes and how to overcome

2:33

procrastination by doing something uncomfortable. Andrew's

2:36

practical tips for boosting motivation. How

2:39

non-sleep deep rest, also

2:41

known as NSDR, replenishes

2:43

dopamine levels. Why Andrew

2:46

recommends thinking of the discomfort of deliberate

2:48

cold exposure as a type of wall

2:50

or physical impediment to anticipate, overcome, and

2:52

surmount. The cold exposure

2:55

parameters for increasing dopamine. The

2:57

importance of viewing early solar angle

2:59

sunlight for setting the circadian rhythm

3:01

and whether indoor light panels can

3:03

replace viewing morning sunlight. How

3:06

bright light at night can impact our

3:08

sleep and how viewing outdoor evening low

3:10

solar angle light can help counteract these

3:13

effects. How to combat

3:15

extended laptop and phone use with long

3:17

distance viewing. Why Andrew

3:19

recommends limiting alcohol consumption to zero to

3:21

two drinks per week. Whether

3:23

or not smartphones and social media are increasing

3:26

the prevalence of ADHD and how

3:28

to cultivate a healthy relationship with social

3:30

media. Andrew's diet and

3:32

supplement routines and weekly workout regimen

3:34

and why Andrew limits most of his workouts

3:36

to 80 or 85 percent intensity

3:39

and so much more. But

3:41

before we dive into today's episode, I want

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foundmyfitness.com. Once

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again, that's

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foundmyfitness.com/premium. Now

6:10

onto this fantastic podcast

6:12

with Dr. Andrew Huberman.

6:15

Andrew, this has been a

6:17

long time in the making. Super pumped to have you

6:19

on the podcast and have this discussion with you. It's

6:21

been a couple of years since we've talked. So

6:26

really excited to get into it. You've covered a

6:28

lot of really interesting

6:30

brain related things in your

6:33

podcast, but some

6:35

of the things that have jumped out to

6:37

me as very interesting is just understanding the

6:40

way our dopamine system works. So

6:42

I was wondering if we could just start by

6:47

talking about what dopamine is. A

6:49

lot of people think it's just

6:51

a neurotransmitter and why

6:53

it's so important for our everyday life.

6:57

Okay, happy to do that, but I'd be remiss

6:59

if I didn't express a debt of gratitude. I

7:02

love your podcast. I've been a fan for a very long, long

7:04

time. So for me, it's a dream come true to be here

7:06

as a guest on your podcast. I know you've been a guest

7:08

on mine and hopefully we'll be again in the not

7:11

too distant future. And also

7:13

I want to point out what should be

7:15

obvious to everybody, but in case it's not

7:17

that anytime people say with respect to public

7:19

science communication in the realm of podcasting, people

7:22

will say, who was the first man in? And I say, actually

7:24

it was a woman. Her name is Rhonda Patrick. You

7:27

are the first advanced agreed scientist to

7:29

step into the public facing education arena

7:31

and to do it in podcast format

7:34

at scale with your own podcast on Tim

7:36

Ferriss's podcast, Joe Rogan's podcast. And of course

7:38

you continue to do that. So I just want to say thank

7:41

you for being first one in

7:43

and yeah. And

7:46

just really remind people that that's the history

7:48

of this whole thing. So thanks for

7:50

paving the way. We all owe you. And

7:53

so thank you much gratitude. Thank you very

7:55

much. Dopamine.

7:59

Super interesting. neuromodulator, neuromodulator,

8:02

not neurotransmitter. I'm

8:04

not being overly nitpicky there. The

8:06

word modulator is key because

8:08

if you want to understand dopamine, it's

8:11

important to understand that it

8:13

basically adjusts the activity of

8:15

a lot of different circuits, meaning

8:18

it's less involved in

8:20

most cases in very local communication

8:22

between neurons. It can be, than

8:25

it is changing, say, how

8:28

much the reward and motivation circuits are ramped

8:30

up versus the circuitries in

8:32

the brain that are involved in

8:35

feelings of satisfaction. So

8:37

you can think of dopamine, because

8:39

it's a neuromodulator, as kind of

8:41

generating playlists, if you

8:43

will, of certain genres of neural

8:46

circuit function. And

8:48

that's distinctly different than a neurotransmitter

8:50

like glutamate or GABA, which

8:52

can also do the things I just

8:55

described, but are most often associated with

8:57

local communication between neurons. To use a

8:59

different analogy, if we

9:01

were to drop

9:04

a million microphones into a stadium filled

9:06

with people, each microphone

9:09

listening to the specific conversation between

9:11

two or three people, then

9:14

we could say the speech between those people

9:16

and what's going on there

9:19

is more like what neurotransmitters are responsible

9:21

for local communication. Whereas if

9:23

we were to have, let's say 10 or

9:26

15 microphones grabbing from a bunch

9:29

of different conversations and even shaping

9:31

those conversations by virtue of

9:34

pinging those conversations with certain keywords

9:36

like excited, motivation, et cetera,

9:39

well, that's more akin to what dopamine is

9:41

doing. It's working at a broader scale to

9:43

change the way that the circuitries in our

9:45

brain work. So when I

9:47

say neuromodulator, that's why. When

9:50

it comes to understanding what dopamine

9:52

does, specifically, it's important that

9:55

we note that it does different things in

9:57

different parts of the brain and body. So

9:59

there isn't one singular function. Dopamine is in

10:01

fact expressed in the eye.

10:03

It's involved in adaptation to light. So

10:05

that's a function that most people don't

10:07

associate with dopamine, but it performs that

10:09

role there. It modulates the activity of

10:11

retinal neurons so that under different luminance

10:13

conditions, brightness or darkness, the

10:16

eye can still make sense of the visual world.

10:18

As you go into the brain further, what

10:21

you find is that dopamine is expressed in

10:23

neurons that are exquisitely tied

10:25

to our ability to move. Most

10:28

notably in a brain area called

10:30

the ventral tegmentum, which just means the floor of

10:32

the midbrain, which is called

10:35

the substantia nigra, because the neurons there

10:37

are dark. And those

10:39

neurons are critically important for generating smooth

10:42

movements. Those are the neurons that degenerate

10:44

in Parkinson's, and that's why you see

10:46

a elevated resting tremor and

10:48

difficulty initiating movement in people with Parkinson's.

10:50

In fact, most of the treatments for

10:52

Parkinson's center around trying to replace that

10:55

dopamine or those dopamine neurons. And

10:57

then as you move into the

10:59

classic reward system of the

11:01

ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, these are all

11:04

just names of brain areas that are associated

11:06

with reward, motivation and pursuit.

11:08

And most people associate dopamine with a

11:11

sense of reward. We hear about dopamine

11:13

hits, the idea that, okay, I'm thirsty,

11:15

I take a sip of my tea,

11:18

and I get a dopamine hit. That's

11:20

the idea. Now in

11:22

reality, dopamine is more closely

11:24

tied to motivational states. The

11:26

pursuit of rewards. And

11:29

those rewards could be in the form of

11:31

something that you get or a punishing thing

11:33

that you remove. This is important. Either removal

11:35

of a painful stimulus or say

11:38

agitation or moving from a

11:40

state of being too cold to being comfortable

11:42

or too hot to being comfortably cool also

11:44

will release dopamine. So dopamine isn't really tethered

11:47

to any one thing. It's a currency that

11:50

is involved in generating movement, that's

11:53

not coincidental, and is involved in

11:55

motivation and pursuit of particular rewards.

11:57

And those rewards are contextual. in

12:00

an environment where it's exceedingly cold, finding

12:02

warmth is the reward. An

12:04

environment where it's exceedingly hot, you're hiking in the

12:06

Joshua Tree Desert, you've run out of water and

12:09

it's really, really warm. Getting into that cool

12:11

shower is going to feel fantastically good. And

12:13

dopamine is no doubt released

12:16

under both conditions, but dopamine

12:18

is released en route to goals

12:21

when we think or to

12:23

rewards, when we believe that

12:26

we are on the right path to those goals.

12:28

And this is critical. And this is why we

12:30

say it's involved in motivation. There's

12:33

a classic experiment that I

12:35

think summarizes the specific role of dopamine

12:37

and disambiguates it from the reward properties

12:40

of dopamine, because it does have reward

12:42

properties best. And the experiment

12:44

is essentially the following. You

12:46

take two groups of rats.

12:49

One group of rats has an

12:51

intact dopamine system. The neurons are alive and

12:53

thriving in this reward system and other

12:55

areas of the brain. And

12:58

you give them access to a

13:00

lever press or some other small

13:02

amount of work that then generates a food reward, like a

13:04

fruit loop or something. Rats and mice love these kinds of

13:07

things, as we know, as do

13:09

humans for all the wrong reasons, but

13:12

real ones nonetheless. Those

13:14

animals will work, they'll

13:17

lever press, they'll even work through a maze, they'll do

13:19

a number of different things. Some will even cross a

13:21

shock plate to get to food if they're hungry enough.

13:24

And the intact dopamine system helps

13:28

them do that. It's motivation-based reward

13:30

pursuit. A

13:32

second group of rats has a

13:35

specific category of dopamine neurons ablated,

13:37

neurochemically ablated. And

13:39

that particular category of neurons are the

13:41

neurons that are responsible for what

13:44

we classically think of as reward, this ventral

13:47

tegmental nucleus accumbens pathway that we can talk

13:49

about. And those

13:52

animals will not

13:54

motivate to get the reward. However, if

13:56

the reward is accessible to them, they'll

13:59

eat those fruits. it loops all day. In other words, it

14:02

appears that dopamine is required

14:04

not for the sense of pleasure

14:06

or reward, not

14:08

for the reinforcing properties of food

14:11

or other reinforcers, warmth

14:13

when it's cold, cool when it's too hot, et

14:16

cetera, but rather the

14:18

desire and especially

14:20

the ability to convert desire

14:23

into a physical movement or

14:26

in some cases a cognitive movement. We could talk

14:28

about what that would look like, cognitive effort to

14:32

reach a particular goal. So what that experiment

14:34

illustrates, and by the way, this has been

14:36

observed in a naturalistic type experiment

14:39

where people with Parkinson's have fewer dopamine

14:41

neurons, not just in Substantia Nigro, but

14:44

elsewhere, as evidence

14:46

that dopamine is most critically

14:48

involved in motivation and pursuit

14:50

of goals, not pleasure

14:53

itself. So

14:56

you've talked a lot about this

14:58

dopamine wave pool and

15:00

understanding how our dopamine levels are flexuring

15:03

throughout the day. So this dopamine dynamics,

15:05

can you talk a little bit about

15:07

that, like the peaks and the troughs

15:09

and our baseline levels and how that

15:12

does influence our motivation for

15:14

pursuing goals or in

15:17

some cases, maybe rewards in

15:19

general and how that just affects our

15:22

performance? Absolutely, so before

15:25

I do, I'll just mention that the dopamine

15:27

wave pool analogy is one that I

15:29

borrowed from Dr. Kyle Gillette, who is

15:31

a medical doctor who's been

15:34

on my podcast and focuses mainly

15:36

on things related to obesity and

15:38

hormone stuff. He

15:40

was the one that initially coined that phrase. I like

15:42

it very much because it embodies

15:44

a number of key features of

15:47

the dopamine circuitry at large, not

15:49

just one circuit, but how dopamine

15:51

works generally, psychologically and physiologically. It's

15:54

the following, first of all, dopamine

15:56

is a depletable, but

15:59

replenishable. In

16:01

other words, unless the dopamine neurons are destroyed,

16:03

like in a case like Parkinson's, or

16:07

rare exposure to

16:09

neurochemical that are involved in

16:12

certain pesticides, and that's not a dig

16:14

on certain pesticides per se, but there's

16:16

a history there of people taking certain

16:18

compounds in and destruction of dopamine

16:21

neurons. Those particular

16:24

cases aside, most

16:27

of us have dopamine neurons

16:29

that can readily release dopamine and do so

16:31

at what I would call a tonic level.

16:33

It's kind of what we could just refer

16:36

to as a baseline level of dopamine neurons

16:38

firing in the background, just

16:40

firing off action potentials, electrical signals,

16:42

releasing dopamine into the various

16:45

circuits that they're trying to modulate. Then

16:47

there are what we can call

16:49

for sake of this conversation, dopamine

16:52

peaks and dopamine troughs, which are

16:55

increases in dopamine release that ride on

16:57

top of that baseline and that influence

16:59

that baseline. Let's go

17:01

back to the wave pool. In the wave pool analogy,

17:04

you start with a

17:06

certain amount of water in this wave pool, and

17:08

then you start generating waves of different amplitudes. If

17:11

the waves are of a particular size, well,

17:14

then they rise and subside, rise and

17:16

subside, and you don't actually deplete the

17:18

total amount of water in this pool.

17:22

The baseline level doesn't change despite the fact that

17:24

you have these peaks and troughs. If

17:26

you get enough movement in that pool, you get

17:28

big waves, some starts to

17:31

splash out and the total amount

17:33

drops. In other words, the baseline level of

17:35

dopamine has dropped, or in this

17:37

analogy, it's dropped. So I like

17:39

the wave pool analogy because even though it

17:41

doesn't embody all of the dynamics of dopamine,

17:44

it embodies many of them that we can relate

17:46

to. For instance, if we take

17:48

the extremes of things that

17:50

cause massive amounts of dopamine

17:53

release, these are

17:55

typically illicit drugs, things like methamphetamine,

17:57

a thousand fold increase in dopamine

17:59

release. you know, cocaine, the combination

18:02

of different

18:06

highly reinforcing dopamine related

18:08

activities or drugs. So methamphetamine

18:11

plus sex, right? This is

18:13

common in certain addictions, right?

18:16

People will take stimulants like methamphetamine. They

18:18

will also engage in sexual activity. Now

18:21

you're getting way up past a thousand.

18:23

It's not always additive, but it often

18:25

can be additive or even synergistic. What

18:28

happens under those conditions? Well, neurons

18:30

in the, let's just call it the

18:32

motivation and reward pathway are releasing massive

18:34

amounts of dopamine, sometimes

18:36

to the extent that the readily

18:38

releasable pool of vesicles, or sometimes

18:40

called vesicles in the US, of

18:42

the little spheres filled

18:45

with neuromodulator, dopamine, actually get

18:47

depleted. And the neurons need

18:49

to manufacture more, and that takes time

18:51

before more can be created. There can

18:54

also be neurotoxicity where the neurons actually

18:56

are killed off, although that's in more

18:58

extreme cases. So what we're talking about

19:00

here are drugs of abuse, like methamphetamine,

19:03

cocaine, combination of dopamine releasing activities,

19:07

sometimes drugs, sometimes sex, sometimes

19:09

video games in excess, plus

19:11

maybe compounds like Adderall,

19:13

Vyvanse, et cetera, which clearly

19:15

increased dopamine release. And then

19:18

what happens is some hours

19:20

later, or days later, depending on

19:22

the frequency of the activity, the reservoir,

19:25

the pool, is essentially lowered its overall

19:27

level. So now in order to generate

19:30

waves of equivalent size, or even smaller

19:32

size, you need a lot more, let's

19:34

say movement. What is that movement? Well,

19:36

typically that's the pursuit of more reinforcing

19:39

stimuli, but guess what, with dopamine depleted,

19:41

that becomes harder to generate. And

19:43

so hopefully I've created a picture here. This

19:45

is obviously a kind of cartoon picture of

19:48

dopamine dynamics. It's not quantitative in any way.

19:50

But what it essentially says is big dopamine

19:52

peaks lead to lots of

19:54

dopamine release. And then what we know

19:56

is that the dopamine levels that follow

19:59

those... those peaks drop below baseline. And

20:01

if the peaks are high enough, they

20:04

will deplete that baseline. But remember we

20:06

said that the dopamine pool is

20:08

depletable, but replenishable. How is

20:10

it replenishable? With time and

20:13

with either lower or no

20:15

dopamine peaks. So

20:18

if we step back from real life and

20:21

we look at it and we can say, okay, if I pick

20:23

up my phone and I'm scrolling on Instagram, highly

20:25

reinforcing behavior. Videos

20:28

and images are so powerful to us. I mean,

20:30

a few years ago, there was a hack

20:33

that I think Tim Ferriss put out on his podcast.

20:35

If you shift your phone to black and white mode,

20:37

grayscale, I mean, all that stuff becomes far less

20:39

reinforcing. You kind of don't want to look at the thing. You

20:41

shift it back to full color and it's

20:44

like, whoa, it's just so much more compelling. So

20:46

you're scrolling, you're seeing things in. Yeah, if you

20:48

see something that you really, really like, maybe an

20:50

animal video that you really like, in my case,

20:52

then sure, there's very likely to be some

20:55

dopamine release. Is it going to deplete the

20:57

baseline of dopamine? Unlikely, but if you

20:59

engage in that activity for many, many hours,

21:01

you could imagine that it might. We don't

21:04

have exact data on this. Certainly,

21:06

if you're combining any kind of stimulants that

21:08

tap into the dopamine system, this is going

21:10

to happen. Certainly, if you're engaging

21:13

in drugs of abuse or just a

21:15

lot of, you know, exciting high

21:17

amplitude activity, it makes other

21:19

things seem more boring because

21:21

actually relative to what was going on

21:23

neurochemically, it is more boring. The brain

21:26

doesn't have a sense of exciting and

21:28

boring. It doesn't have a sense of

21:30

motivated, a motivated in the subjective sense.

21:32

It has a correlation between

21:35

the activity, these dopamine circuits and

21:37

other circuits, but certainly these dopamine

21:39

circuits and some subjective feeling

21:41

of either desire to engage, aka

21:44

movement or lack

21:46

of desire to engage, such as,

21:48

you know, just kind of apathy and just feeling

21:50

like, hey, there's nothing here for me, but here

21:53

I am continuing to engage in this activity over

21:55

and over. And we know that with most

21:58

all drugs of abuse, But

22:00

certainly with anything that releases dopamine, there's

22:02

nothing quite like the first time. And

22:05

that these circuits actually learn, they can become

22:07

reinforced in the sense that they build up

22:09

strength between particular synapses and things of that

22:11

sort. So that we continue to in a

22:14

seemingly logical way, go back to the original behaviors,

22:16

trying again and again, hitting that lever, hitting that

22:18

lever, trying to get back to that similar state.

22:21

And just like a slot machine, every once in

22:23

a while, we get what we're looking for, and

22:25

the whole thing is further reinforced. Now that's all

22:27

painting a very sinister and kind of dark image

22:30

of the dopamine system. And I want to be clear that

22:32

this wave pool analogy doesn't have any

22:34

valence to it, positive or negative. It's just one

22:37

analogy for how the system works. In a

22:40

different frame, if you understand that you have

22:42

some baseline level of motivation, desire to move

22:44

cognitively, physically, and

22:46

you understand a bit about how these dopamine peaks

22:48

and troughs work, well, then you can work with

22:51

it. I believe you actually can leverage it so

22:53

that things like procrastination become less likely, so that

22:55

you can engage in social media in a meaningful

22:57

and positive way, but then know, okay, I'm going

22:59

to put it away now, and I'm going to

23:02

take some of that elevated arousal

23:04

that I feel and put it towards some other enriching

23:07

activities. There's nothing good or

23:09

bad about dopamine, and we shouldn't fear

23:11

it. It's really about understanding the underlying

23:13

dynamics, and that if we've taken ourselves to

23:16

a place where we are just depleted, where

23:18

that baseline, the level of water in that wave

23:20

pool is way down, because we've had these huge

23:22

waves, huge waves, huge waves, well, then we need

23:25

to be patient. We just need to wait and

23:28

expect that at some point, pleasure and motivation will

23:30

return, but that we need to wait a period

23:32

of time as opposed to what most people do,

23:35

which is to go pursue things to get them

23:37

out of that somewhat subdued state. So

23:40

I have a few questions. First of all, a big thanks

23:42

to Dr. Gillette for that amazing analogy. I love it too.

23:45

It really makes it a lot

23:47

easier to understand how

23:49

this dopamine system's working in a general

23:51

sense, at least. Maintaining

23:54

the steady baseline levels, it sounded like

23:58

it's not so easy to deplete. the

24:00

baseline unless you're really going after something

24:03

that's either a substance that could really

24:05

sort of increase your dopamine in combination

24:07

maybe with other enjoyable things as well.

24:11

It is the effort that you're

24:14

putting in so like you are preparing for

24:16

a long term, like let's say you're preparing

24:18

for a wedding or something

24:20

big or a party and

24:23

you put in all this effort and planning for

24:25

a month and then you have the

24:27

party and it's fun, it's great, everyone has a great

24:29

time, it's a fun party and the party's

24:31

over and then you feel

24:33

kind of depressed. Can you deplete your

24:37

baseline levels just from like putting

24:39

in like having an

24:41

event like that or is

24:44

that effort that I put in kind of going to shield

24:46

me from the drop

24:48

in those baseline levels? Yeah, well, the

24:51

simple answer is the latter, that dopamine

24:55

that follows effort is generally good

24:57

for us. One would

24:59

hope that effort is in service to our own goodness

25:01

and the goodness of others, but that's generally true.

25:04

Large amplitude peaks in

25:06

dopamine that don't require

25:08

effort are dangerous. Drugs

25:12

of abuse do this, one pill,

25:14

one shot and you've got a

25:16

thousand fold increase in dopamine release,

25:18

that's scary because

25:20

that's not the way the system

25:23

was designed to work under normal

25:25

conditions. These are drugs that

25:27

sure might mimic certain compounds in nature,

25:30

but let's face it, these circuits that

25:32

we're talking about evolved

25:34

for the pursuit of particular

25:36

rewarding activities, mainly

25:38

centered around food and

25:41

reproduction and keeping

25:43

us safe, avoiding extremes of temperature,

25:45

et cetera. I think

25:47

the critical thing is that,

25:50

well, in the example you gave, a

25:52

lot of effort put toward planning a

25:54

wedding and then hopefully a wonderful wedding,

25:57

that is all goodness, that is all goodness in the

25:59

sense. that there's going to be

26:02

dopamine released as one is making plans, see

26:04

the invitations, you like the invitations, maybe there's

26:06

a dispute, you resolve the dispute, which by

26:08

the way, remember the removal of a negative

26:11

stimulus, also dopamine, great, we're back on track,

26:13

we're doing all this and then wedding goes

26:15

fantastically well, maybe one glitch, okay, great, and

26:17

you have the photos and the memories, all

26:20

of that is great. If the

26:22

next day or in the days following, people

26:24

feel a bit of a low, a bit of a postpartum

26:27

type low, that could

26:29

be related to a

26:31

drop in the dopamine level, more

26:35

likely it's fatigue, it's also anticipation

26:37

itself, breeds this own kind of

26:40

let down once something follows. I mean,

26:42

this is the nature of true clinical

26:44

postpartum depression where post childbirth, this is

26:46

a real clinical syndrome as we know,

26:48

that sometimes people deal with unfortunately,

26:50

it needs to be taken really seriously. But

26:54

in the kind of more popular use

26:56

of the word postpartum depression, where post

26:58

wedding, post graduation, it's the

27:01

shift in arousal state from

27:03

anticipation and higher arousal, what's

27:05

next, I'm excited about what's next, what's going to happen

27:07

to, I don't know what's going

27:10

to happen, what now, it's the what now kind

27:12

of circuitry. So I think

27:14

that when it comes to understanding one's own dopamine

27:16

system, there are a couple of things to pay

27:18

attention to. First of all, we

27:20

all wake up in the morning, depending on how

27:23

we slept, but let's assume our typical good night

27:25

sleep for us, I need seven hours, some other

27:27

people need eight hours, others

27:29

nine, what is

27:31

your level of positive anticipation about

27:34

things to come, even if those are deadlines or things that

27:36

you might not want to do so much, how much get

27:38

up and go do you have? I move a bit slowly

27:41

in the morning, but once you're fully alert, how much get

27:43

up and go do you have? One

27:45

of the classic signs of depression is early morning

27:47

waking, that's one, the other is

27:49

a lack of positive

27:51

anticipation about future events, it's a

27:54

classic depression symptom. The

27:56

dopamine system might be involved in either

27:58

or both cases. But what is

28:00

the sort of classic representation

28:02

of a positive, highly motivated person?

28:05

It's somebody who is eager

28:07

to move. Like the ability and the desire to

28:09

move into action. I always, I borrowed this from

28:11

a friend who was a former SEAL team guy.

28:13

He always said, you know, in everything in life,

28:15

you can either be back on your heels, flat-footed

28:17

or forward center of mass. How much forward center

28:19

of mass? How much Goggins do you have in

28:21

you or Jocko do you have in you or

28:23

Rhonda do you have in you? At any given

28:25

moment, Rogan too, these, you know, you all seem

28:27

to have so much motivation. And I think that's,

28:30

I know that's why many people are inspired to pay

28:32

attention to the things you say. It's

28:34

also the underlying spirit of pursuit. It's exciting

28:37

to us. Other people have

28:39

more of a kind of lay back

28:41

and observe mannerism.

28:44

And I do believe that they too could

28:46

have perfectly fine levels of dopamine. They're just

28:48

more observant in the way they take in

28:50

life. And I would just

28:52

not say any of the other people I

28:54

just mentioned are not observant, but you know,

28:56

there's this business of cognitive movement or

28:59

this phenomenon of cognitive movement where we

29:02

aren't necessarily in movement in our

29:04

bodies, but we are reading voraciously.

29:06

We are thinking voraciously.

29:08

We are deconstructing ideas and being

29:10

reflective. All of those

29:13

patterns of what I'm calling movement,

29:15

cognitive or physical reflect underlying firing

29:17

off of dopamine neurons. It's

29:20

when we have a goal

29:22

in the short or long-term and we

29:24

are focused on that goal that the

29:27

dopamine system really becomes active

29:29

to generate these big peaks. Okay,

29:31

it's this, oh, I'm going to

29:33

get, you know, the company is going

29:35

to IPO or if

29:38

people post on Instagram and they start getting a lot

29:40

of positive feedback, like one of their clips happens to

29:42

go viral or something in a positive way, it's like,

29:44

whoa, you know, it's this thing like, oh my God,

29:47

it's like raining down on them or from within them

29:49

rather. In the same way that the slot machine and,

29:51

you know, in Vegas, it's, you know, the bells are

29:53

going off and you hear the coins just dropping, there's

29:56

all this excitement about here, here it comes, here comes

29:58

the rewards, here comes the rewards. that

30:01

process, as I mentioned before, is

30:03

not just quote unquote rewarding,

30:06

it reinforces the circuitry

30:08

that led to that behavior in a

30:10

very powerful way. It actually strengthens through

30:12

neuroplasticity. It strengthens the very underlying circuits.

30:15

And the brain is either

30:17

conscious or unconsciously or both, will

30:20

go back and repeat that behavior over and over

30:22

again in order to try and get back there,

30:24

even if we're not aware that we're doing it.

30:26

And so what I find so interesting about

30:29

the dopamine system is that it can create

30:31

its own plasticity, feedback form plasticity. Okay, there

30:33

are a number of different, you know, specific

30:36

seller events that underlie that. But what

30:39

it's essentially trying to do is know where

30:41

the water is, where the mates are,

30:44

where the warm locations are for when

30:46

we're too cool and where the cool

30:48

locations are from when we're too warm.

30:50

It's learning all that, but less than

30:53

recording the specific locations like the hippocampus

30:55

would or place that into the cortex,

30:59

it's trying to remember the algorithms that led to

31:01

specific patterns of mental or physical movement that allowed

31:03

that. So if we step back, I mean, I

31:05

hate to beat up on social media because you

31:07

and I both teach on social media and I

31:09

love social media. It has to be, you know,

31:11

controlled, but I love it. But if

31:13

we engage in social media and we get some positive

31:15

feedback, we've reinforced at an

31:18

unconscious level, all sorts of circuitries

31:21

that lead us to think, oh yeah, you know, I posted

31:23

that this one time. And I remember it was that that was a

31:25

text post. The other one was a slide, that was a video. And

31:28

your brain is trying to learn the patterns that got

31:30

you where you were before and it worked out so

31:32

well. So the dopamine system can learn, the

31:35

dopamine system can adjust its baseline, the

31:38

dopamine system can create these

31:40

peaks. And then we shouldn't forget

31:42

about the anticipation aspect of it

31:44

itself, which is what's called reward

31:46

prediction error. These are classic experiments

31:48

where essentially it

31:51

was discovered that dopamine is being released and root to

31:53

a reward while a monkey or human is working for

31:55

a reward. And that was itself was a cool discovery.

31:58

It was like, wow, dopamine is in just, you

32:00

know. when the monkey gets the juice or when the

32:02

person gets the monetary ward, it's when they think they're

32:04

on the right path or they might get a

32:06

reward. That's when dopamine is released. Then

32:08

they get the reward. If the reward is

32:10

equal to or in excess of what they

32:13

anticipated, boom, they get a bit more dopamine.

32:15

What better way to reinforce a behavior at

32:17

the neural level? But

32:20

if the reward is less exciting or

32:23

less money or less intense

32:25

than one anticipates, what happens?

32:27

Dopamine levels drop and then

32:29

they drop below baseline when

32:33

they are on their

32:35

way to eventually returning to baseline and

32:37

the duration of that drop is

32:40

proportional to how high the peak was. So

32:43

it's like you could imagine, you know,

32:46

planning the wedding, planning the wedding, planning the wedding,

32:49

plenty of dopamine, and then rainy day, thunderstorm, oh

32:51

goodness. Well, hopefully people are adaptable and they adjust

32:53

to that but it's such a bigger letdown if

32:55

you put in all this effort. It's such a

32:58

bigger letdown if you thought it was going to

33:00

be great because well,

33:02

the peak was bigger or

33:04

the sort of slope rather

33:06

was steeper and the

33:09

slope of the decline of dopamine is also

33:11

going to be steeper. So not all of

33:13

this works out to perfect math when it

33:15

comes to, you know, the dynamics of dopamine

33:17

but by and large, dopamine reward prediction error

33:19

says, if you think something's going to be

33:21

great, it better be that great or greater

33:24

to reinforce the behaviors that came first. If you

33:26

think something's going to be great and it's less

33:28

great or not great at all or even

33:30

punishing, well, then it's going to send

33:33

signals to alter the circuitry in

33:36

a way that says, whatever you did to get there,

33:38

don't do it again. It's going to discourage you. You

33:42

talked about people that have this sort of

33:44

intrinsic motivation, right? Where it's like they're motivated

33:46

to do, they have that maybe

33:48

even just initial motivation and then they have

33:50

that intrinsic motivation to sort of carry it

33:53

through that effort. Can you

33:55

talk a little bit about the differences between the

33:57

motivation and effort? I often, like, it's very easy

33:59

to confuse them. but

34:01

some people have a really hard time, even

34:03

if they want to do something, like I want to

34:06

do this thing, but I just can't

34:08

put that cognitive effort in to do it. Like,

34:10

are there any little ways

34:13

that people can, using the understanding of this

34:15

dopamine system, help themselves to kind of push

34:17

through and put that effort in? Yeah,

34:19

great question. And it starts to get a little

34:22

bit complex in ways that make it

34:24

hard for me to tack, you know, specific cellular

34:26

phenomenon too, but I'll do my best. So

34:29

dopamine is one of the

34:31

catecholamines. It's part of a

34:33

group of cousin molecules, dopamine

34:36

being one, epinephrine also

34:39

called adrenaline, and norepinephrine also

34:41

called noradrenaline. These are

34:43

released both in the brain and body from

34:45

the adrenals, from, in the case of norepinephrine,

34:47

from a brain area called the locus coeruleus,

34:49

which releases norepinephrine in kind of a sprinkler-like

34:51

manner into the brain, although it can direct

34:53

the release of norepinephrine as well. And of

34:55

course, all of this stuff is active and

34:57

released from neurons in our body as well.

35:00

It's not a coincidence. It can't be a

35:03

coincidence that these three neurochemicals, which by the

35:05

way, are very similar to one another and

35:07

actually are manufactured from one another biochemically. It's

35:09

very interesting. People can go look up, you know,

35:11

how is epinephrine made? How

35:13

is dopamine made? And you'll see that the

35:15

molecules are actually made essentially from each other,

35:18

you know, they're clued by enzymes and there's various

35:21

changes there, but they

35:24

work together to create motivation

35:28

and to heighten focus in

35:30

the case of norepinephrine. In

35:32

fact, these are the same neurochemicals that

35:34

cause the changes in our pupil size

35:36

under constant illumination to change the optics

35:38

of our eyes so that we narrow

35:41

our visual focus. Like when, if you,

35:43

people have heard, for instance, if

35:46

your pupils get really big, that's

35:48

a state of underlying autonomic arousal that

35:51

leads to a narrower

35:53

visual window and a heightened focus.

35:55

Okay. Whereas, you

35:57

know, a shrinking of the pupils.

36:00

causes something quite different. Norepinephrine,

36:02

epinephrine and dopamine are involved in all of

36:05

that. And that's not a coincidence. At the

36:07

same time, and I'll

36:09

answer your question directly in a moment, but

36:11

you said, some people tend to be highly

36:13

motivated. I'd be curious to run an experiment.

36:15

I haven't run this experiment, but some people have kind

36:17

of a resting bounce to them. It

36:20

looks like they're ready to go. Like they're just like

36:22

excited, they're ready to go. Other people have kind of

36:24

what looks to be like a more lethargic stance, they're

36:26

more still. That can be a bit

36:29

misleading because sometimes they're very active inside. Still

36:31

waters run deep kind of thing. But

36:34

it is interesting that some people are very, you

36:38

know, you say, hey, should we head out? And they go, yeah,

36:40

let's go. And then just sort of pop out of their seat.

36:42

Other people are like, you know, and this is independent of how

36:44

tired or alert we are kind of thing. So I think people

36:47

idle at different RPM. I've

36:50

noticed that certainly different dog breeds do that. They've

36:52

been bred for that. I had a bulldog, low

36:54

RPM, very low RPM. We also

36:56

had a pit bull years ago. The tail was

36:59

always going higher RPM, more likely to engage in

37:01

spontaneous movement. People are like that too. Okay,

37:04

so if people

37:07

lack motivation, does

37:10

that reflect some deficit in the

37:12

dopamine system? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

37:15

What we know is that many

37:17

people have a hard time

37:19

initiating movement. Remember that in the Parkinson's

37:21

patient, it's not just resting tremor that

37:23

they have, you know, lack of smooth

37:25

movements, motor movements. They also

37:28

have a lot of difficulty initiating movement.

37:30

Okay, so this is in the neurons

37:33

that control movement, but it's a

37:35

similar thing in the motivation realm. This is why

37:37

I keep drawing this parallel between physical movement and

37:39

mental movement. We don't really have a better language

37:41

for it, at least not that I'm aware of,

37:44

but mental movement is the motivation to open a

37:46

book and start reading with a high degree of

37:49

focus to take in that information as opposed to,

37:51

you know, kind of opening in like,

37:53

I don't know, I don't want to do this, or, you know, just

37:56

kind of not necessarily apathy,

37:58

but challenges and leaning into mental. The

38:01

two things, meaning movement

38:03

and cognitive movement or

38:07

pursuit are both governed

38:09

by the same neurochemical systems, these

38:11

three catecholamines, mainly dopamine, with the

38:13

norepinephrine and epinephrine being involved in

38:15

generating focus. Other

38:17

systems involved too, of course, but this is still

38:20

true. So for people

38:22

that have a hard

38:24

time getting motivated, if we just make it that

38:26

simple, assuming there's in some

38:29

major underlying neurochemical or life situation

38:31

issue, oftentimes

38:33

it's a lot like exercise. You've probably

38:35

experienced this, that once you get going,

38:37

and once, in fact, if people accept that

38:40

there's going to be a transition phase of

38:42

maybe five to 10 minutes to get the

38:44

relevant circuits going for focus and for motivation,

38:47

things often get much better very quickly.

38:50

Now, this is a real

38:52

problem where we live in a world where

38:54

we can go on YouTube instantly and sort

38:56

of get something right away. Again, you get

38:58

a feedback or activation of these circuits for

39:00

getting information with essentially no effort. It's a

39:02

click, you just have to listen. I remember

39:04

a few years back hearing that it

39:07

wasn't going to be long before people

39:09

would generally have two screens in front of

39:11

them most of the time. And I noticed

39:13

nowadays, I've got two phones and often a computer,

39:15

and then there, I mean, screens everywhere. Most

39:17

people are dealing with at least one screen

39:19

all the time, often multiple

39:21

screens. So easy to get information.

39:24

Now, if you want to sit down and read a book or

39:27

listen to an audio book with a high degree of attention, I

39:30

think if you're somebody that doesn't get engaged

39:32

quickly into things, telling

39:35

yourself the truth, which is that this dopamine

39:37

system and the associated other catecholamines

39:39

take some time to get online for those circuits

39:41

to start firing can be very helpful. People can

39:43

realize, oh, you know, my attention and focus isn't

39:45

going to be great for the first five or

39:47

10 minutes. In fact, it might feel like it's

39:49

a bit of a kind of, like there's some

39:51

friction there. I feel like maybe my brain fog

39:54

or something like that. But after

39:56

a few minutes, people often will drop into a

39:58

groove where then they're in a steady. pursuit

40:00

of information and then sometimes it's actually hard for them

40:02

to transition out of it. In

40:04

the same way exercise, some people you say, hey, let's

40:07

go out for a hike and like, let's do it.

40:09

Other people, you know, you need to get into a

40:11

rhythm. You need to start activating those circuits in order

40:13

to feel like you can be in that forward center

40:15

of mass. I almost always feel this about running for

40:18

the first 10 minutes. I'm like, this sucks. Whatever

40:20

is, it's not that I'm not warmed up. Something's not

40:22

warmed up in my mind. And then it starts to

40:25

feel better and better and then I feel like I

40:27

could run all day. So, you

40:30

know, I'm using loose analogies here, but also

40:33

real life examples to explain that

40:35

the circuits that are responsible for

40:37

motivation, for effort

40:40

in the movement system and in the

40:42

cognitive space are similar, different circuits, but

40:44

they're also similar to the

40:46

extent that sometimes they need warming up. And

40:49

that will likely be more and more

40:51

the case if we are engaging

40:53

in activities in our, the rest of

40:55

our life where we can get what we're looking

40:58

for without any effort at all. We are, and

41:00

I'm not blaming social media or YouTube, love YouTube.

41:02

We're on YouTube. You're on YouTube. But

41:04

we live in a world now where

41:07

our brain has learned we can get things in

41:10

an instant. It doesn't

41:12

require effort. And so there's been a learning of

41:14

that as well. There's this into like, where's the

41:16

reward? Where's the reward? Where's the milestone that I'm

41:18

on the right path? Well, it's not there as

41:20

you crack open the book because

41:22

your circuits have essentially been trained to have

41:24

that just delivered to you in video form.

41:26

I mean, reading words on a page, I

41:30

love reading, but it's to your brain,

41:32

it's far more boring than watching a

41:34

movie. Nothing, you know, pictures

41:36

worth a thousand words and a movie is worth a

41:39

billion pictures, right? It's

41:41

just the brain loves motion. It loves visual

41:43

motion. It loves a visual motion with color.

41:45

It loves faces. It loves those dynamics. And

41:48

so we should not be surprised at all that when we tell

41:50

our kids or we ask ourselves to sit down

41:53

and read something, you know, my goodness, like, what's

41:55

going on with me? Give it a little

41:57

bit of time, five to 10 minutes and understand that it's.

42:00

you're asking something very different of your

42:02

brain under those conditions. Now, if

42:05

you get a text message from somebody and you're

42:07

anticipating that text message, what's the

42:09

diagnosis? Did you win this? Are you going

42:11

to see them and you're excited? Well, then

42:13

you're going to be wrapped with attention. But

42:15

again, text messages are this instant form of

42:17

communication that both

42:20

taps into, no doubt, the dopamine system, the

42:22

anticipation system. But I think what I'm saying

42:24

here is that a lot of the typical

42:27

daily activities that we engage in and that

42:29

we all love are

42:31

actually training our circuits to be less effective

42:33

at working through that initial friction. Less

42:36

effort. I've heard you talk

42:38

about attaching the reward to the effort itself

42:40

and how that can

42:42

help you and your

42:44

system sort of value more the effort,

42:46

right? Rather than the end reward. Do

42:48

you have some examples of like, how

42:51

would you attach a reward to the effort

42:53

itself? Okay, so there's the psychology

42:55

and then there's the physiology. The

42:58

idea of attaching a reward to

43:00

the effort process itself is kind of the holy

43:03

grail of learning anything and being human in my

43:05

opinion. And here we

43:07

can look to the beautiful work by my colleague,

43:09

Carol Dweck on growth mindset. You know, this notion

43:11

of attaching the word yet. You know, that somebody

43:13

isn't good at something and they can tell themselves

43:16

yet, that they can be, that there's a capacity

43:18

for growth and so on. There's

43:20

also the beautiful work of another colleague

43:22

of mine, Dr. Alia Crum at Stanford

43:24

and David Yeager, who's down at University of

43:27

Texas, Austin, which has combined a lot

43:29

of the discoveries about growth mindset with

43:31

the stress can be performance enhancing mindset

43:33

and to great success in my opinion,

43:36

in terms of cultivating better academic

43:38

skills and so on. So we'll get to that in

43:41

a moment. But the idea here is

43:43

that the dopamine system,

43:45

even though it's, you know, it's down in

43:47

the midbrain and it's involved with, and it's

43:49

also, you know, communicating with the striatum and

43:51

it's communicating down to the spinal cord and

43:53

it's involved in all this stuff that's evolutionarily

43:55

pretty old, right? Reward

43:57

exists in reward mechanisms and movement.

44:00

exist in other animals too. But

44:03

the amazing thing about these pathways is

44:05

that they are highly subject to

44:08

context dependent learning. So the prefrontal

44:10

cortex, the neural real estate behind

44:12

our forehead, it's

44:14

a bunch of different areas of the prefrontal cortex,

44:17

but it's essentially a context learning machine. It learns

44:19

what's appropriate in one situation and not another, and

44:21

it learns rules. It can teach and learn rules,

44:23

but it doesn't just teach and learn rules to

44:26

you. The circuits

44:28

involved in motivation and reward can

44:30

learn those rules even

44:32

so much, just even

44:34

so far as to say accurately,

44:37

that if you are in a process of trying

44:39

to learn something and you can't do it, you're

44:41

like, oh, like I can't figure this out, I

44:43

can't figure this out, but you have the knowledge,

44:46

the cognitive knowledge that that

44:48

feeling of what I call limbic friction, you know, I

44:50

made that term up, but this

44:52

feeling of friction, like this is tough, this is

44:54

agitating, I can't do it. If you are aware

44:56

of the reality, which is that that

44:59

reflects the release of neurochemicals involved

45:01

in attention and alertness, and

45:03

it's changed the milieu of your brain to

45:05

allow plasticity to occur, then you can tell

45:07

yourselves in those moments, the challenge

45:09

that I'm experiencing right now is the

45:11

gate to neuroplasticity, which it is. It's a way that

45:14

my brain knows this is different than everyday life because

45:16

I can't do what I'm trying to do, pay attention,

45:18

do something differently, keep drilling. And

45:22

that process, if you tell

45:24

yourself the simple, you know, self-talk

45:26

of I'm on the right

45:28

path, the fact that it's difficult means I'm

45:30

on the right path as opposed to the

45:32

wrong path. What that means is

45:35

that the dopamine system can start to

45:37

recognize those general themes of thinking, general

45:39

themes of internal arousal state in the

45:41

body and brain, so that

45:43

in the future, when you encounter those

45:45

states, you know, this

45:48

is good, this is good for me. In

45:50

other words, we can, it's not just that

45:52

the dopamine is released when we are in

45:54

pursuit of heat, when it's cold, cool, when

45:56

we're too hot, food, sex, et cetera. can

46:00

also learn based on knowledge that we are told

46:02

and that we believe. And there's actually a beautiful

46:04

paper in Neuron published a few years ago that

46:07

actually attaches beliefs to the dopamine system.

46:10

It can get a little scary because

46:12

what it essentially showed was that people

46:17

who get confirmation of their

46:19

preexisting beliefs get dopamine release under those conditions.

46:21

This explains a lot of what we see

46:23

out in the world, both online and elsewhere.

46:26

But the important point here is that what

46:28

we believe about how dopamine works, what

46:30

we believe about effort, those

46:33

things can be merged in a way that indeed

46:36

we can start to attach reward to

46:38

the effort process itself. As

46:40

we are striving, as we are trying to go from

46:42

flat footed to forward center of mass, if you will,

46:44

or from back on our heels to flat footed to

46:46

forward center of mass, as we're doing that, if we

46:48

tell ourselves, okay, this is

46:50

supposed to be painful, hopefully

46:52

in non-traumatic, non-physically or psychologically

46:54

traumatic way, but that I'm

46:56

doing this, this is it,

46:58

this horrible day that was so

47:01

difficult, this is part of growth, this is part of the

47:03

growth, I'm on the growth curve. That

47:05

knowledge can shape and will shape the

47:07

neural circuitry associated with dopamine reward so

47:09

that in the future, when you encounter

47:12

it, it's like, oh yeah, this is how

47:14

this works. And people hear

47:16

this and they go, wait, how do I do that? How many

47:18

times do I have to tell myself I got it right? There

47:21

hasn't been a deep exploration of

47:23

that, but everything we know about the psychology

47:25

of growth mindset, and then I mentioned the

47:27

stress is enhancing mindset, it's worth just noting,

47:30

the stress is performance enhancing mindset is

47:32

one in which it's beautiful experiments

47:35

where people watch a movie about

47:37

how stress diminishes performance, causes challenges

47:39

in immune system function, et cetera, et cetera,

47:41

it's all true. A different

47:44

group watches a video about how

47:46

stress can enhance performance, sharpens focus,

47:48

sharpens memory for specific things, et

47:50

cetera, and it improves performance. So

47:53

what it basically boils down to

47:55

is that what you believe about

47:57

a certain state in your brain and body has...

48:00

very much to do with how your

48:02

dopamine and other neurochemical systems react. And

48:05

that carries forward into other activities. That's why

48:07

I love so much about the

48:09

dopamine system or these other systems

48:12

is that they generalize. Dopamine is the

48:14

currency for all of this. There are

48:16

other currencies in there too. I want

48:18

to be fair to the biology, but

48:20

dopamine is the currency of motivation, reward,

48:23

and pursuit, but mostly reward, but

48:25

mostly motivation and effort. And

48:28

then additionally reward under certain

48:30

conditions. So I guess if

48:32

that was a two word dense, when

48:36

things get hard, tell yourself the

48:40

fact that they're hard means you're on the right

48:42

path. You might not be on the exact right

48:44

path, but think of yourself as cutting a wedge

48:48

through a map to get to a

48:50

certain destination. Sure, as you gain

48:52

more knowledge of right and wrong aspects of

48:55

your pursuit, you can sharpen up

48:57

or narrow up that wedge so that you

48:59

nail the location like a Google maps trajectory.

49:02

But understanding that as

49:04

you are in pursuit, you are tapping into

49:06

the dopamine system. Now, if you

49:09

hit a node, if

49:11

you will, in your pursuit, and it's like, oh, you got

49:13

the wrong thing. It was like, you didn't get the, you

49:15

didn't meet the goal. It didn't go the way you wanted.

49:18

It's also useful to understand that that

49:21

is valuable knowledge. The lack of reward, the disappointment

49:23

you feel will also reinforce not doing many of

49:25

the things that led up to that. We just

49:27

have to be careful that we don't generalize too

49:30

much, right? There were exams that

49:32

I studied for in university that

49:34

I didn't do as well as I would have liked.

49:36

In fact, one course in particular, and I still remember

49:38

the course, I still remember exactly what went wrong, but

49:40

that's exactly the point. We have

49:43

a heightened memory for where effort led

49:45

to the thing we didn't want. And

49:48

we can use that to make sure that

49:50

we remember that information going forward. We

49:53

apply that information going forward. In fact, as

49:55

you know, in a qualifying exam, they keep

49:57

asking the graduate student

49:59

questions. until you say what? Until you say, I

50:01

don't know. And at that point,

50:03

they found your limit. And the answer to

50:05

that question, inevitably, people go look up. And

50:07

it's the one thing from your qualifying exam

50:09

that you never forget. So in

50:12

any case, that's the best sort of

50:14

topical description I can provide. And

50:16

some of it really sounds very much

50:19

like the placebo effect too, right? I mean, the

50:22

placebo effect where you believe something is,

50:25

you know, going to be positive, it's going

50:27

to happen. And I believe

50:29

you also released dopamine, right? Absolutely.

50:31

So I mean, a placebo effect is amazing.

50:34

Right. And scares certain people,

50:37

but I don't think it should. I think

50:39

that we should look at the placebo effect

50:41

as proof positive that the

50:43

circuitries in the brain that are involved in primitive things,

50:47

dopamine release, temperature regulation, hunger,

50:49

etc., are highly prone to

50:51

contextual learning. You know, this

50:53

drink is going to do blank, and it does. This

50:57

gives someone else the same drink. Again, Alia

50:59

Crum's work, give the milkshake study,

51:01

right? Give people milkshake, tell them it's

51:03

high calorie, tell them

51:05

it's very nutrient dense. You get

51:08

more satiety than if you tell them

51:10

it's nutrient sparse. Right. And it's the

51:12

same calorie drink. But you

51:14

can look at the level of ghrelin

51:16

secretion and see that is pure placebo

51:18

slash belief effect. And I think that makes

51:20

sense if you are in the middle, like if you're wanting

51:23

to reward

51:25

effort, then while you're

51:27

in that, when you're doing it, when you're

51:29

in the effort part, where you're like in

51:31

motion, right? Then thinking about

51:33

like, this is working, like this is like, you

51:35

can then there's the dopamine, right? Attached the effort.

51:38

I mean, am I thinking about it? Right?

51:40

Absolutely right. It's, you described it

51:42

far better and more succinctly than, than I ever could.

51:45

It's important to pay attention to what effort feels

51:47

like in the brain and body. And

51:49

to remind ourselves in those moments, I'm on the

51:51

right path. I might not be on the exact

51:53

right path, but I'm headed in

51:56

the right direction. And sure enough, when

51:58

you hit a milestone, whatever the that milestone

52:00

is, you should pay attention to that milestone,

52:02

the reward, the grade, et cetera. I'm a

52:04

big believer of also sometimes not

52:07

paying too much attention to that. I'll never

52:09

forget in graduate school, we got

52:12

our first paper published and I

52:14

thought we would go celebrate. And I asked

52:16

my PI, my lab

52:18

head, I said, you know, are we going to

52:20

celebrate? And she said, I don't know, wasn't the

52:23

celebration doing the experiments? I was like, well, those

52:25

are a lot of fun. Yeah. And

52:27

she said, well, I guess we could get a pizza or something, but

52:29

how about just go do more experiments? And

52:32

so that's what I did. And at the time I

52:34

remember thinking, oh, that's no fun, but she had a

52:36

long commute home and, you know, maybe, maybe who knows,

52:38

she didn't have the time. Looking back, it's like, what

52:40

a great gift because it was like, no, you do

52:42

the, it was the doing of the experiments that was

52:45

the reward. The paper, yeah, that's super cool.

52:47

It's fun. You know, first paper is

52:49

always a thrill, but no, the real

52:51

thrill is in doing the experiments, doing science.

52:53

And so let's not introduce anything to this

52:56

picture that doesn't map onto that. And

52:58

I don't know to what degree it

53:00

played a role in my pursuit of goals, but

53:03

I really enjoy effort. In fact, I love building

53:06

stuff as much or more

53:08

than I do indulging in the final product. And

53:10

you do an excellent job. I guess as

53:12

a parent, you know, like it, if you're

53:14

trying to attach a reward to effort

53:17

to kind of help facilitate tenacity, willpower,

53:21

like if a child, like you're not going to be able to

53:23

tell a child to do what we were just talking about, but

53:25

like if a child was like learning a new language, then

53:28

you would reward the studying time,

53:30

right? Like, so it's like they're studying, okay,

53:32

every study session they get a quarter or

53:34

whatever, like, so then they're like rewarded for

53:37

studying, not for like the fact

53:39

that they can say the words properly or,

53:41

you know, get the language

53:43

correct or whatever. So. Exactly.

53:45

Reward verbs and

53:48

verb states as opposed to providing

53:51

adjectives. So when we tell

53:53

kids, you're so smart, you're so smart, we

53:56

think we're doing a great job of

53:58

reinforcing their psychology. but actually what

54:01

a lot of data, not all data to

54:03

be fair, but what a lot of data

54:05

show is that leads to a state where

54:07

if that kid or adult gets

54:10

something wrong, then what's the opposite of

54:12

smart? They think they're stupid. Whereas

54:14

if you reward, it's incredible. And

54:16

I'm so impressed by the effort you

54:19

put in, how hard you worked. The

54:21

fact that you really

54:23

double checked everything before turning

54:26

in your paper. The fact

54:28

that you were really, I

54:31

noticed how carefully

54:34

you blanked, right? You went through each

54:36

thing. And you're also reinforcing the

54:38

specific things that they can repeat. Just

54:41

telling a kid that they're smart, then they go through

54:43

all that thinking they're smart. Well, the first time, and

54:45

listen, it's going to happen sooner or later, the first

54:47

time they get evidence to the contrary, they just take

54:49

the opposite of that. So much

54:51

so that I remember also my graduate

54:53

advisor saying, with students you want

54:55

to say, what

54:57

was it, instead of be careful, be

55:00

mindful or something. Like there was this idea that,

55:03

trying to get students to

55:05

pay attention to things in a certain way,

55:08

as opposed to rewarding people

55:11

based on bins, like smart or less smart

55:13

or something like that. So with kids, I

55:15

think rewarding and reinforcing

55:17

verb states that led to the

55:20

sort of categorization is what's going to be most

55:22

effective. At least that's what the data show. Yeah.

55:25

Going back to procrastination, I've heard you talk

55:28

about some interesting

55:30

visualization, you know,

55:32

techniques, where if

55:34

a person's in a state

55:36

of mind where they're there, yes,

55:38

they want to do this goal, whatever

55:41

the fill in the blank project is or goal, then

55:45

they can use a visualization technique. But

55:47

if they were not, they could also

55:49

do something, but they could

55:51

use the pain and discomfort to

55:54

help themselves get into that

55:56

do, like

55:58

actually do it. Can you talk

56:00

a little bit about that? Yeah, Tim Ferriss was right

56:02

with fear setting. So

56:04

there's a really

56:07

fantastic scientist, professor

56:09

at NYU, Emily Balchettis, who

56:12

talked about this and continues

56:14

to research it, which

56:16

is that oftentimes fearing

56:18

the worst or feeling

56:20

negative outcomes, if we don't do something,

56:22

can be very beneficial as a motivator.

56:26

So that's not to say, you know,

56:28

fearing the worst case, it's

56:31

placing some real time on fearing

56:34

the negative thing that

56:37

happens if we don't do something. Okay,

56:39

so that's kind of unique to that

56:41

case, as I understand it. Visualization

56:44

of positive outcomes is great as a

56:46

motivator, but there are data

56:48

that suggests that it might not sustain motivation

56:50

over time. I think it's probably fair to

56:52

say that having both in your toolkit

56:55

is great, you know, visualizing

56:57

success can be

56:59

useful in some contexts, visualizing the

57:02

negative effects of not staying in pursuit of

57:04

a goal also can

57:06

be very motivating. That's essentially what

57:09

the data show. Now, when

57:11

it comes to the underlying circuitry and

57:13

what's going on in the brain, that's a

57:15

little bit harder to know, but

57:19

what we do know is that

57:21

the pain system and so-called negative

57:23

reinforcement and punishment the psychologists really

57:25

parse these carefully. So I want

57:28

to acknowledge that I'm

57:30

not using the exact operational definitions here, that

57:33

the dopamine system, as

57:35

I mentioned earlier, is also very tightly

57:38

woven to avoiding punishment,

57:40

to escaping punishment, to being under

57:42

conditions of discomfort and then no

57:45

longer being under conditions of discomfort. So

57:48

we could hypothesize or we

57:50

don't know, but we could hypothesize that for instance,

57:52

if you imagine, goodness, if I don't

57:54

do this, a bunch of negative

57:57

things are going to happen and that

57:59

itself could. trigger a certain form of

58:01

internal arousal that would put you into motion

58:03

for that. And that whole process would be

58:05

rewarding. So that makes logical sense,

58:07

at least in the kind

58:09

of top contour, it makes logical sense. The

58:11

other thing is that if

58:14

we try and think about ways

58:16

that we can avoid procrastination, we

58:19

can go back to the dopamine wave pool,

58:21

baseline peaks, troughs, and return to baseline kind

58:24

of stuff that we were talking about earlier.

58:26

And there's some interesting ideas out there and

58:28

data, although right now it's still being sculpted

58:30

out in humans, meaning the experiments

58:33

are still underway. It's a little bit tougher to

58:35

do in a scanner to

58:38

get at exact mechanisms. But I think there's enough

58:41

logical basis and mechanism to propose

58:44

the following, which is that if there's

58:46

something you need to do, that you

58:48

know you need to do, but that you're finding yourself very

58:51

unmotivated to do, it

58:53

can be useful to do something

58:55

even more uncomfortable than waiting

58:58

and procrastinating. I didn't say even more uncomfortable

59:00

than the thing, said even more uncomfortable than

59:03

the thing that you happen to be doing

59:05

at the moment, which is just waiting

59:08

and procrastinating. So what

59:10

would that be? Well, we've all seen the

59:12

opposite where we have a deadline and suddenly

59:15

we find ourselves cleaning our home. We

59:17

find ourselves doing these things that are kind of low

59:19

level effort that for whatever reason, if you think about

59:21

it's kind of wild, we weren't motivated enough to do

59:24

a day before, an hour before, but suddenly we're

59:26

motivated. It's almost as if the

59:28

motivation circuits are sort of getting ramped up,

59:31

trying to figure out what to direct it

59:33

toward, but clearly that's easier than focusing and

59:36

directing one's effort toward the deadline,

59:38

toward the cognitive or physical effort of something

59:41

else. So there's this idea that many

59:44

people have put to good use, would go

59:46

do something that's really uncomfortable. Again, don't make

59:48

it psychologically or physically traumatic. But

59:51

if you really don't want to exercise in

59:53

that moment, that'd be a great moment to

59:55

exercise, to engage those circuits. Remember it's a

59:57

generic circuit. There isn't a

59:59

circuit. for motivation for one thing versus

1:00:01

a circuit for motivation for another is all

1:00:03

just the general same circuitry is applied to

1:00:06

different things. So I

1:00:08

happen to hate the cold. I don't like

1:00:10

doing cold. I love the sauna, I hate the cold.

1:00:12

So for me, getting in the cold plunge anytime ever,

1:00:14

unless I'm getting out of a very hot sauna and

1:00:16

I want cold is like the

1:00:19

least exciting thing to me and the

1:00:21

thing I'd like to avoid most. So if I'm finding

1:00:23

myself in a state of procrastination, so

1:00:26

some writing, some whatever posting, researching,

1:00:28

et cetera, I will

1:00:30

often do the cold plunge as

1:00:32

a motivator. Now we need to be fair

1:00:34

to the biology and acknowledge

1:00:36

that when we get into cold, uncomfortably

1:00:39

cold water, the catecholamines are released dopamine,

1:00:41

epinephrine, norepinephrine. We know that there's this

1:00:43

beautiful study in European journal physiology, you

1:00:45

know far more about this, this work

1:00:47

than I do, but I've spent some

1:00:49

time with that paper and there's a

1:00:51

pretty remarkable and significant long

1:00:53

lasting increase in the three

1:00:56

catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.

1:00:58

So we can't know

1:01:01

that it was the discomfort of being

1:01:03

in the cold plunge itself that led

1:01:05

to more motivation. It could be the

1:01:07

discomfort led to the release of these

1:01:09

catecholamines, which led to a different brain

1:01:11

state, which allowed for more pursuit of

1:01:14

whatever this other task that one was

1:01:16

procrastinating on. But I think it's

1:01:18

reasonable to assume that all of that stuff together

1:01:20

had a significant effect. We're

1:01:22

not talking statistically significant. This study

1:01:24

hasn't been done yet about evaluating

1:01:26

procrastination versus cold plunge versus

1:01:28

no cold plunge. That'd be an interesting study. But

1:01:33

the point is the same three

1:01:35

catecholamines involved, the discomfort

1:01:39

of one thing leading to the post

1:01:41

discomfort state of less discomfort, but elevated

1:01:43

catecholamines bringing one into a state of

1:01:46

more motivation. To me, it makes perfect

1:01:48

sense. Like it all holds up logically.

1:01:50

And why cold? Well,

1:01:54

cold is always provided

1:01:56

it's uncomfortable but safe. water

1:02:00

exposure always

1:02:03

deploys these catecholamines is sort of a core

1:02:05

part of our physiology. There are probably other

1:02:08

ways to do it, exercise, et cetera. Exercise

1:02:10

hard, I mean. Exercise hard. Because going on

1:02:12

a zone two run is not like that uncomfortable. No.

1:02:15

I think like. Zone two is a cakewalk. But going

1:02:17

hard, doing a hard hit. Right. Is,

1:02:20

like I don't want to do it. The assault bike. Yeah,

1:02:23

the assault bike. I do a Friday workout for

1:02:25

me, it falls on Friday, where it sounds

1:02:28

so easy, but it always sucks to start

1:02:30

it. 10 seconds hard pedaling on

1:02:32

the assault bike. 20 seconds rest, 10 seconds on,

1:02:34

20 seconds off, and just do that eight times.

1:02:37

Just get my heart rate just way, way up once a

1:02:39

week. I never want to

1:02:41

do it. I never want to

1:02:43

do it. And then afterwards you always feel

1:02:45

terrific for many, many hours. It's wild. Yeah.

1:02:48

It has to be the catecholamines. I definitely want to

1:02:50

go into a little bit more on exercise and cold exposure

1:02:52

and dopamine. So

1:02:57

kind of, I guess if I'm understanding this correctly,

1:02:59

really like there's something about

1:03:01

doing and embracing something that's more

1:03:04

uncomfortable to you than just, I guess, sitting

1:03:06

and waiting. And then you do

1:03:08

it, and let's, okay, let's forget

1:03:11

the fact that cold plunge also releases

1:03:13

dopamine. Right. But let's say you do

1:03:15

it, and then you go back to your task and it's like,

1:03:17

okay, you did this really hard thing. Is there like a contrast

1:03:19

now where it's like? I

1:03:21

think it's actually that,

1:03:24

and I think it's also just

1:03:26

that the ending of the difficult

1:03:28

thing creates an increase. We

1:03:31

know this, the removal of pain creates

1:03:33

an increase in the catecholamines that it's

1:03:36

like the, you know, one, I'm interrupting

1:03:38

myself, but from an evolutionary standpoint, we

1:03:40

go back to what this circuitry really

1:03:42

evolved for. It's like, you just survived

1:03:44

the effort. You just survived

1:03:46

something, which is a tremendous relief, which

1:03:49

is, it's a lift. But

1:03:51

when I say it's a lift, as a

1:03:53

biologist, I have to acknowledge it's a neurochemical

1:03:55

lift. Dopamine, epinephrine, nor epinephrine, no doubt involved.

1:03:57

Now, if you go too hard, too long,

1:04:00

You exercise too hard, too long. Well, then

1:04:02

you get the post exercise dip in energy

1:04:04

and you might feel a motivated. But what

1:04:06

we're really talking about here is generating a

1:04:08

wave front in that dopamine pool that then

1:04:10

you can devote to other things. So

1:04:12

it's interesting talking about the thing that you don't

1:04:14

like. So you talked about cold exposure or like

1:04:16

going really hard in the exercise. How

1:04:20

does exercise generally affect the dopamine

1:04:22

system and does it depend on

1:04:24

how much you enjoy doing it?

1:04:26

Like the nice run on

1:04:28

the beach? Great question. There is

1:04:30

unfortunately not as much data about

1:04:32

this, about the

1:04:34

influence of exercise on dopamine. There's

1:04:36

some, but because

1:04:38

it requires ideally brain imaging

1:04:41

and exercise involves movement, it's been harder to

1:04:43

do those sorts of experiments because people are

1:04:45

in the magnet often with a bite bar

1:04:47

and like it has to stay stable. But

1:04:50

in the case of cold water exposure and

1:04:52

looking at the catecholamines, it was by blood

1:04:54

draw. And I want to be

1:04:56

fair, the levels of dopamine and other chemical

1:04:59

increases by blood draw in the body

1:05:01

don't always correlate directly. In

1:05:03

fact, they never correlate

1:05:05

directly with brain level changes

1:05:07

in these chemicals, but they're loosely

1:05:09

correlated. As one goes up, the other goes

1:05:12

up. As one goes down, the other goes down. But unfortunately

1:05:15

we don't have great real time

1:05:17

imaging of dopamine release or dopamine

1:05:19

levels with like a skull

1:05:21

cap that you could run without a

1:05:24

bunch of equipment next to you. So there aren't as

1:05:26

many studies about this, but there are some using blood

1:05:28

draws because people can run on a treadmill, take

1:05:31

blood and look. And certainly people can be

1:05:33

scanned in the scanner as well. We

1:05:36

know that intense exercise deploys the catecholamines. We

1:05:38

know that. We know cold water does it

1:05:40

as well. And a number of other things

1:05:42

will as well. People playing a monetary reward

1:05:44

game is the typical way this has been done in

1:05:47

the lab while people are in a scanner. There's

1:05:49

also some interesting data. I just want to

1:05:51

mention in two sentences where the

1:05:54

way that the dopamine system is kind of

1:05:57

checking off a milestone.

1:06:00

I talked before about pursuit milestone, pursuit milestone.

1:06:02

The human brain has a capacity to like

1:06:04

create long milestones like a four year degree

1:06:06

or a marriage or, you know, raising a

1:06:08

kid and also moment to moment milestones. There

1:06:11

was an interesting experiment also published, I believe in neuron,

1:06:13

I have to go back and check, but certainly cell

1:06:15

press journal by my recollection, that had

1:06:18

people watching a sports game and

1:06:20

it was a basketball game. And every time

1:06:23

their favorite, the subject's favorite team got

1:06:25

the ball and there was an opportunity for

1:06:27

another basket, another score

1:06:29

to take place. The dopamine

1:06:31

circuitry sort of reset itself, if you

1:06:33

will, toward anticipation of that particular drive

1:06:36

down court. Now

1:06:38

that's a perfect experiment in many ways because basketball

1:06:40

has a very, it's a very constrained environment, right?

1:06:42

You know which team is going for which basket,

1:06:45

you know, when there's a turnover, you know, when

1:06:47

the turnover got reversed, you know, it's not like

1:06:50

most of life where you're in pursuit of things

1:06:52

that is very dynamic, a lot of interwoven

1:06:55

goals throughout the day, et cetera. But

1:06:57

the point being that as

1:06:59

we move through our pursuits,

1:07:02

the dopamine system is constantly updating, okay,

1:07:04

here's, if you will, a

1:07:06

drive down court, right, toward, and

1:07:09

it's paying attention or it has knowledge

1:07:11

of even the shorter milestones, like,

1:07:16

you know, as we move through this podcast, you

1:07:18

know, I'm not tracking where we are, I don't

1:07:20

track time very well, I'm tracking whether or not

1:07:22

I can answer your questions coherently enough, right? That's

1:07:25

how my dopamine system right now is tacked to

1:07:27

this as opposed to people

1:07:29

who are, you know, gambling on a game in

1:07:33

Vegas and who, you know, final score is

1:07:35

really what matters, but you know, talk about

1:07:37

dopamine and reward prediction error. I mean, that's

1:07:39

what Vegas is all about, right? It's basically

1:07:42

the town should be called reward,

1:07:44

dopamine reward prediction error town USA, because that's

1:07:46

what's going on there. So, okay, so that

1:07:49

was a little bit of a divergence into

1:07:51

that one particular study. When it comes to

1:07:53

exercise, there are a number

1:07:56

of ways in which dopamine can be released

1:07:58

in response to effort. Remember the catecholamines. norepinephrine,

1:08:00

epinephrine, and dopamine, close cousins,

1:08:02

biochemically related, all of which

1:08:04

are involved in height and state of arousal,

1:08:07

focus, movement, effort. Okay, it's

1:08:09

just the kind of perfect cocktail that

1:08:11

nature created. If

1:08:14

we engage in vigor, we know

1:08:16

that if you engage in vigorous exercise, exercise

1:08:19

that requires effort, and you complete it in

1:08:21

a way that feels satisfying to you, no

1:08:23

doubt, you're going to get a dopamine increase

1:08:25

from that. Now, is it the long elevated

1:08:28

increase in dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine that one

1:08:30

sees with deliberate cold exposure? That's

1:08:32

going to be pretty nuanced. It's going to

1:08:35

depend on the nature of the exercise. I

1:08:37

don't know, I suspect no. Now,

1:08:40

I will say that I

1:08:43

feel very different after

1:08:45

a good long morning run,

1:08:47

or 30 minutes jogging, versus

1:08:50

a hard weight workout. It's just a, like,

1:08:52

it's a subjectively distinct feeling in

1:08:54

the hours afterwards. What's interesting about

1:08:56

deliberate cold exposure, cold

1:08:59

plunge or what have you, is that people

1:09:02

generally report feeling very good, almost

1:09:04

like a mild euphoria, for many

1:09:06

hours afterwards, elevated focus, many hours

1:09:08

afterwards. And that maps beautifully onto

1:09:10

the, I can see those images

1:09:13

in the paper now, of

1:09:15

the big dopamine increase and the norepinephrine increase, and I

1:09:17

think it's three graphs set above one another vertically

1:09:20

in that paper, where, I mean,

1:09:23

this is long arcs of dopamine

1:09:25

release, way above baseline, distinctly

1:09:27

different from what one sees with, like, cocaine

1:09:30

or amphetamine, which has also been measured in

1:09:32

humans. You know, the big amplitude, big drop

1:09:35

below baseline. In fact, I'm not aware of,

1:09:38

but base of that, in

1:09:40

fact, I'm not aware that what I'm about to

1:09:43

say is always true, but in that paper about

1:09:45

deliberate cold exposure, I did not see,

1:09:47

probably because they didn't look out that far, a drop in

1:09:50

those catecholamines below baseline. It may be that

1:09:53

it just elevates and then tapers down to

1:09:55

baseline again. Remember, the slope of line, the

1:09:57

faster you get up to a peak. the

1:10:00

more of a drop below baseline. This is

1:10:02

why people who smoke crack cocaine faster

1:10:06

into the system than if they bring

1:10:08

cocaine into their system by snorting it

1:10:11

orally. We know this, the

1:10:13

route of administration has a

1:10:15

lot to do with the amplitude of

1:10:17

the dopamine peak and how

1:10:20

far below baseline it drops afterwards. This is

1:10:22

one of the reasons why certain forms of

1:10:24

drugs of abuse are far more reinforcing than

1:10:26

others. It's not just that they create a

1:10:29

bigger dopamine increase, it's how quickly

1:10:31

they get there and then how

1:10:34

quickly and long that trough lasts.

1:10:36

So with exercise, I get a

1:10:38

clear state shift from exercise, I'm sure you

1:10:41

do as well, and it's wonderful,

1:10:43

but it's distinctly different from the kind of

1:10:45

state shift that one gets from deliberate cold

1:10:47

exposure. Again, less data, but

1:10:50

one thing that's kind of fun that I

1:10:52

don't think I've talked much about, if at all

1:10:55

on podcasts, is the entrainment and anticipation

1:10:57

of exercise, this is kind of neat. If

1:10:59

you exercise at more or less the same

1:11:01

time each day for three days, it doesn't

1:11:03

even have to be consecutively. What you'll notice

1:11:05

is going forward, at

1:11:08

least for a short period of time, 15

1:11:10

to 30 minutes before that exercise, you'll notice

1:11:12

kind of an increase in arousal where your

1:11:14

body is entrained to that movement. The

1:11:17

neurochemicals that were released, the state

1:11:19

of arousal, there's some learning there

1:11:21

between the memory systems, the hypothalamus

1:11:23

and the autonomic nervous system, and

1:11:26

the body starts to anticipate being ready.

1:11:28

If you then don't exercise, you can

1:11:30

also apply that elevated readiness to mental

1:11:32

work. People oftentimes will say

1:11:34

they wake up right before their

1:11:36

alarm clock goes off. Wild,

1:11:38

right? You wake up, you look at your clock, say, one

1:11:40

more minute, what's going on? Well, assuming the

1:11:42

clock didn't make some sort of noise, like a click

1:11:44

or something like that, it's

1:11:47

the entrainment to that waking up time. Even

1:11:49

in sleep, your body is clocking time, your

1:11:51

brain is clocking time, and then you wake

1:11:53

up and then the alarm goes off. The

1:11:55

same thing is true if you exercise at

1:11:58

the same time, and this is what- what's

1:12:00

really interesting. If you

1:12:02

exercise at more or less the same time, you can use

1:12:05

that elevated arousal at that time to

1:12:07

exercise or do other things. But then

1:12:09

there's the post exercise increase in whatever

1:12:11

mental state you happen to exit

1:12:14

that exercise from. Again, I say it that way.

1:12:16

I'm not trying to be wishy

1:12:18

washy here because I find that

1:12:21

a eight minute HIIT workout is

1:12:23

distinctly different from a long jog, is

1:12:25

distinctly different from a hard leg day

1:12:27

in the gym when it comes to

1:12:29

how you feel afterwards. Each one has

1:12:31

to be neurochemically distinct and hormonally distinct.

1:12:33

And in the laboratory, unfortunately, most

1:12:35

of the studies have been done like, treadmilling

1:12:37

or swimming. There aren't a lot of studies

1:12:40

looking at the neurochemical changes that are the

1:12:42

consequence of different types of exercise, especially things

1:12:44

like HIIT and resistance

1:12:47

training. I'm sure there are a few, I'm

1:12:49

not aware of them, but they're far fewer

1:12:51

than just cardio because it's harder to get

1:12:53

people to come in and do a hard

1:12:55

hack squats or something like that. I

1:12:57

think the biggest changes that's been done really with high

1:13:00

intensity exercise versus lower intensity or

1:13:02

moderate would be looking at lactate

1:13:04

and how that affects norepinephrine and

1:13:06

other things. But

1:13:09

the entrainment thing is interesting because I'm

1:13:11

wondering if, let's say you have someone

1:13:13

who is not motivated to exercise. And

1:13:16

the best thing you can do is get them a

1:13:19

coach. That's gonna help. But if you can get them

1:13:21

to do the three or four days in a row

1:13:23

at the same time, then on

1:13:25

the fifth or sixth day, are

1:13:27

they gonna now, because they have that, like

1:13:30

you were saying, that motivation, like

1:13:33

that anticipation which is tied

1:13:35

to the dopamine system, then

1:13:38

maybe you're gonna tap into that, like okay,

1:13:40

we're gonna get some of that motivation. So

1:13:42

it would be interesting to come up with a

1:13:45

protocol. How long, how many

1:13:48

days of training the same time of day

1:13:52

can we get someone who is completely

1:13:54

unmotivated to exercise? They haven't experienced

1:13:56

it, right? I would say three to

1:13:58

seven days. Based

1:14:00

on our understanding, excuse me, of

1:14:03

how the autonomic nervous system can

1:14:05

learn and how the dopamine

1:14:07

system plays into that. Three to seven days,

1:14:09

maybe not even consecutively. I mean, I always

1:14:11

say that the most important thing with exercise,

1:14:13

if I were gonna write a chapter on

1:14:15

exercises, number one, don't get hurt. But

1:14:17

that doesn't mean don't do it, but don't get hurt. Because the

1:14:20

best way to get and stay in great shape in your life

1:14:22

is to not get hurt. So

1:14:24

you don't want the new exerciser to

1:14:26

injure themselves. But three to seven days,

1:14:30

they should then on the eighth day or

1:14:32

on the fourth day, left

1:14:34

to their own devices, feel the energy in

1:14:36

their body 15 to 30 minutes

1:14:40

before doing that exercise.

1:14:43

And hopefully they would just do that. I

1:14:45

mean, I think that people relied often

1:14:48

too heavily on psychological motivators. And

1:14:50

we overlook this entrainment phenomenon and the

1:14:52

ability for our body to entrain to

1:14:54

certain times. For

1:14:57

instance, it's a terrible thing,

1:14:59

but I like to get up, hydrate, caffeinate,

1:15:01

slowly do some mental work. And then my

1:15:03

ideal training time, if I ever retire, I

1:15:06

don't know that I ever will, but would

1:15:08

be to train mid-morning like 10 30. Amazing,

1:15:11

I love it. My workouts are always best, et

1:15:13

cetera. But my life isn't organized

1:15:15

that way. So I like to try and

1:15:17

exercise within an hour of waking up. But

1:15:21

I have to drink caffeine first. I don't do my

1:15:23

90 minute delay thing. I drink my caffeine first if

1:15:25

I'm going to exercise right away. And

1:15:27

I should say that for people that

1:15:29

feel a motivated, what do we do

1:15:31

generally? We consume things like

1:15:34

caffeine, which as

1:15:36

we know disrupts the adenosine system.

1:15:38

So adenosine being a molecule of

1:15:40

sleepiness or fatigue. Also

1:15:43

upregulates dopamine receptors incidentally.

1:15:46

It was actually shown in human dopamine receptors,

1:15:48

pretty interesting there. Regular

1:15:50

caffeine consumption very likely increases the

1:15:53

sensitivity and or number of dopamine receptors

1:15:55

available. So whatever dopamine is released can

1:15:57

have quote unquote more of an effect.

1:16:00

in terms of motivation and reward. People

1:16:02

will take nowadays, and I'm not passing

1:16:04

judgment here, but there's a lot of

1:16:06

use of things like Adderall, Modafinil, Vyvanse,

1:16:08

Stimulants. What do all those stimulants do?

1:16:11

They release the catecholamines, mainly dopamine and

1:16:13

epinephrine. They

1:16:15

are amphetamines, okay? People go, oh, am I going

1:16:17

to see no speed? Yep, that's what they are.

1:16:20

Again, not passing judgment. They can have

1:16:22

certain positive effects for certain clinical issues

1:16:26

in some cases. Again, not

1:16:28

promoting or discouraging, just stating

1:16:30

the reality. But what do

1:16:32

people do? They take stimulants. What did I do right

1:16:34

before this podcast? I'll come clean. I don't hide these

1:16:37

things. I've been experimenting

1:16:39

lately with two milligrams of

1:16:41

Nicorette, nicotine, in

1:16:43

the form of gum. I don't smoke, vape, dipper,

1:16:45

snuff. Those are all bad, carcinogenic, et cetera. I

1:16:48

know people say vaping's not as bad as smoking.

1:16:50

Vaping's bad, okay? As bad as smoking, probably not,

1:16:52

but it's not good for you. Don't vape. I

1:16:54

just got some enemies, but that's my read

1:16:56

of the data. More coming. Nicotine

1:17:02

taps into the acetylcholine system, increases

1:17:04

focus. It also will tap into

1:17:06

the epinephrine and dopamine system. It's

1:17:08

highly reinforcing, so I limit myself

1:17:10

to two milligrams, maybe

1:17:13

four times a week total. And I'm thinking

1:17:15

about stopping altogether because I'm just running this

1:17:17

as an experiment on myself. And it really,

1:17:19

really works for me. What does it do?

1:17:21

It makes me more alert, more motivated. That

1:17:23

also scares me. And

1:17:26

many people I know that take, they're these pouches

1:17:28

that come in canisters. I've

1:17:30

never tried them. I don't want to. Those are generally

1:17:32

four to eight milligrams of nicotine per pouch.

1:17:35

I hear over and over again that people

1:17:37

take one, they love it,

1:17:39

take one pouch. They then will

1:17:42

do two a day, three a day, and

1:17:44

pretty quickly they're consuming a canister. So if

1:17:47

not every day, every couple of days. So it's a

1:17:49

very quick route to, let's

1:17:51

just call it habit. Is it addictive?

1:17:53

Maybe. Is it habit forming? Clearly. And

1:17:57

this is becoming all the rage. Now,

1:18:00

I don't recommend it. nicotine

1:18:02

is a vasoconstrictor, which

1:18:04

isn't good raises blood pressure, et cetera. There's

1:18:07

some evidence that nicotine can be

1:18:09

a cognitive enhancer and maybe

1:18:11

later in life, it might be something that I'll return

1:18:13

to for that reason, but

1:18:16

it does have certain health hazards. Clips

1:18:19

always get cut of me saying the cognitive

1:18:21

part, the cognitive enhancing part. But the point

1:18:23

here is that when people feel a-motivated, they

1:18:25

tend to look for something that they can

1:18:27

ingest. Remember no effort, get the

1:18:30

molecules going. There's nothing wrong with that.

1:18:32

A cup of coffee, your espresso or

1:18:34

your bomate, I'll do all

1:18:36

three sometimes and you're more alert,

1:18:39

you're more arousal. You

1:18:41

need to do something with that energy and then try

1:18:43

and lean into work. The problem is with pharmacology, it's

1:18:45

hard to get the dose just right so that you

1:18:47

have the ideal level of focus, ideal level of alertness,

1:18:49

but not so much that you have agitation and your

1:18:52

mind is kind of darting all over the place. So

1:18:56

my typical thing is I will

1:18:58

use coffee or your bomate or

1:19:02

both prior to a hard weight

1:19:04

workout. But when it comes

1:19:06

to cardio, I try and do my cardio without any

1:19:10

caffeine or even and certainly no excessive caffeine,

1:19:12

maybe a half a cup of coffee, maybe

1:19:14

a yerba mater too, and then just get

1:19:17

out and go run in my case or

1:19:19

do the HIIT workout and let the workout

1:19:21

itself be its own source of neurochemicals. But

1:19:24

that's just me. I know some people are doing

1:19:26

the energy drinks combined with nicotine, combined

1:19:29

with all sorts of stuff. And it's wild

1:19:31

because then what they find is in the

1:19:33

absence of those things, they're a-motivated.

1:19:35

Well, why? It was minimal

1:19:38

to zero effort followed by

1:19:40

high amplitude dopamine release and

1:19:42

probably less directly from the exercise

1:19:45

that you're doing. Right, you

1:19:47

talked about the stacking of things that

1:19:49

are releasing dopamine either because

1:19:51

you enjoy them or they're something that can release

1:19:53

dopamine a substance is what will cause you to

1:19:56

have the really high amplitude peak. And then you

1:19:58

can go below baseline. How does caffeine... from

1:20:01

coffee effect, so you mentioned the dopamine

1:20:03

receptors. Is that, so

1:20:05

is there like long-term, cause then you

1:20:07

start to like, you never feel as

1:20:10

good as like, if you take a break from caffeine, then

1:20:12

you have that first cup of coffee, right? I

1:20:15

know, I can't say I relate, cause I can't remember

1:20:17

the last time I took a break from caffeine. I've

1:20:19

done it when I had flus or I was cold,

1:20:21

you know, I had colds or flus, cause I just

1:20:23

don't want to drink caffeine under those conditions, usually like

1:20:25

chamomile tea, and I'm just huddling in bed or something.

1:20:30

I love caffeine. I don't drink that

1:20:32

much of it, you know, but probably

1:20:34

total out about four or 500 milligrams a day.

1:20:37

You know, I weigh 215 to 20 pounds, so

1:20:41

that's not that much, and I'm pretty caffeine acclimated,

1:20:43

and I tend to drink caffeine in the early

1:20:45

part of the day, and not so much in

1:20:47

the evening, certainly not after

1:20:49

3 p.m., so I can sleep well. But, you know,

1:20:51

the stacking is something that, you know, I don't want

1:20:53

to give the impression that if, you know, you have

1:20:55

an energy to drink like a pre-workout, and you've got

1:20:58

the music blasting, and you're hydrated, and you slept great,

1:21:00

have a great workout, like crush a workout every once

1:21:02

in a while, but don't be surprised if the next

1:21:04

time you're walking into the gym, you don't feel quite

1:21:06

as motivated. And I don't think one should rely on

1:21:09

that every single time. You know, that

1:21:11

you need to, if you need a stimulant every

1:21:13

time you're going to exercise, you

1:21:15

are creating a pattern

1:21:18

of behavior, and likely some underlying neurochemical habits

1:21:20

that are not going to serve you well

1:21:22

in the long run. You're going to feel

1:21:24

less motivation to do the thing that itself

1:21:26

can generate feelings of motivation, and that's what

1:21:29

we've been talking about. A cold

1:21:31

shower would be a great one. Because of that

1:21:33

long, I'm just fascinated by this. I've

1:21:36

never seen anything else, no drug, prescription

1:21:39

or otherwise, no supplement, no

1:21:43

workout that I'm aware of, but

1:21:46

I haven't explored every single one, that creates

1:21:49

that long arc of dopamine, epinephrine,

1:21:52

and norepinephrine release, that one

1:21:54

minute, one minute, of being uncomfortably cold

1:21:56

can create. Now in that study, it

1:21:58

was a longer. they

1:22:01

used warmer temperatures and it was much longer.

1:22:03

But I think based on my understanding of

1:22:05

things you presented and as I understand

1:22:08

it, the shorter colder exposure no doubt

1:22:10

creates similar subjective experience.

1:22:12

Yeah, well I was gonna ask you about that

1:22:15

because there's

1:22:17

a lot more papers looking at norepinephrine release

1:22:19

with respect to cold exposure and that can

1:22:21

be even 20 seconds, like at

1:22:23

39 degrees Fahrenheit. That's

1:22:26

the, that quickening of the breath,

1:22:28

adrenaline is an incredible

1:22:30

molecule. But I'm wondering with

1:22:32

the dopamine, what you think,

1:22:34

and this can be some of your

1:22:36

opinion, is the

1:22:39

minimum duration and what the

1:22:41

temperature should

1:22:45

be to get an increase

1:22:49

in the dopamine peak above what you're

1:22:51

at, like you're talking about. Yeah,

1:22:53

so unfortunately there hasn't been a lot

1:22:55

of exploration of this and there needs

1:22:57

to be. At one point my colleague

1:22:59

at Stanford, Craig Heller, who's done a

1:23:02

lot on cold exposure and in particular

1:23:04

polymer cooling for lowering core body temperature

1:23:06

before exercise as a way to increase

1:23:08

and prolong effort. A lot of Stanford athletes do

1:23:10

this, other athletes, pro athletes do this

1:23:13

as well. Interesting topic.

1:23:16

And I were considering doing some work on

1:23:18

this, but we

1:23:20

haven't gotten around to it. I guess we've both been busy

1:23:22

with other things. But here's

1:23:24

how I approach deliberate cold

1:23:26

exposure. And people

1:23:29

might scoff and say, well, that's completely

1:23:31

subjective. But what I like

1:23:33

about it, or what I'm about to say, is

1:23:35

that it's highly individual. It doesn't

1:23:37

say 40 degrees for three

1:23:40

minutes, because 40 degrees for

1:23:42

three minutes at 8

1:23:44

a.m. is going to feel very different than 40 degrees at

1:23:46

three minutes at 3 a.m. No

1:23:48

one's doing cold punch at 3 a.m. unless they're in SEAL

1:23:50

team training or something. But if you're

1:23:53

tired, you're stressed, people have

1:23:55

different levels of excitement about

1:23:57

the cold or fear of the cold. and

1:24:00

so on. Here's how I approach it. I

1:24:03

think of everything in life as it relates

1:24:05

to the stress system as

1:24:07

coming at you as like a wall, an

1:24:09

event, right? It's not, you're

1:24:12

not thinking temperature and duration. You're not thinking,

1:24:14

oh, how intense is this difficult

1:24:16

conversation on a scale of one to 10 and

1:24:18

how long is it lasting? That's not how the

1:24:20

stress system works. We tend to be

1:24:22

confronted with stressors that we either know are coming or are

1:24:25

not coming. So the way I approach

1:24:27

cold is I look at the cold plunge

1:24:29

and I think, how resistant am

1:24:31

I psychologically to getting in it? And

1:24:33

usually it's very, I'm not excited to get in.

1:24:35

I'm excited about the feeling I know

1:24:38

will exist when I get out. So I think

1:24:40

of getting in as the first wall. It's like

1:24:42

climbing over a wall. Okay, this is the first

1:24:44

wall. I get over that first wall and then

1:24:46

I get in, I like to lower myself to

1:24:48

my neck. I like to put my hands in.

1:24:51

I try and move my arms away from my body because

1:24:53

I notice when the cold water gets to my armpits, that's

1:24:55

when it really starts to be uncomfortable. And

1:24:58

I pay attention to my

1:25:00

breathing a bit or maybe I'll distract myself. I

1:25:02

find it doesn't really matter. And what I'm waiting

1:25:04

for is the first impulse to get out. So

1:25:07

that's the second wall. And then

1:25:09

I force myself to get over that second wall.

1:25:11

Again, this is assuming that the water isn't so

1:25:13

cold that it's going to be damaging. And then

1:25:15

what I start doing is I start counting walls

1:25:17

and most importantly, I start paying attention to how

1:25:19

far apart in time those walls are. Now,

1:25:22

eventually you just go numb and you're not going to feel any

1:25:24

wall. You'll go hypothermic. So you don't want to do that. But

1:25:26

what I generally try and do is five to 10 walls. And

1:25:29

it's very interesting to notice how the waves

1:25:31

of desire, these what

1:25:33

I'm calling walls too, I want to get out now.

1:25:36

Now I'm going to just go over this next wall

1:25:38

and this next one. What that

1:25:40

seems to do, and I realize I'm not answering your

1:25:42

question directly, but the reason I'm describing this is that

1:25:44

so much has been put to the

1:25:46

time and the temperature, but ultimately where

1:25:49

we are all highly individual in terms

1:25:51

of how we react to stressors in

1:25:53

a given moment. And what I find

1:25:55

is that there's tremendous learning in noticing

1:25:57

stress coming toward us. us

1:26:00

confronting that stress, getting past that stress

1:26:03

and then moving through it. And

1:26:05

then when I get out, I

1:26:08

always feel much better. It's like, okay, there's a

1:26:10

relief there. You get that arc

1:26:13

of dopamine release that's quite long lasting. There's no

1:26:15

question, I mean, you can like feel it in

1:26:17

your body. I'm not trying to be too, you

1:26:19

know, anecdotal about this, but everyone

1:26:22

feels different after cold. Maybe you're just relieved you

1:26:24

got out, but and that's it,

1:26:26

but you feel different. And then what

1:26:28

I'm trying to do is attach

1:26:30

the fact that there was a feeling of

1:26:33

accomplishment in having gone over a certain number

1:26:35

of walls and paying attention. So again, this

1:26:37

is not answering your question. I acknowledge this,

1:26:39

but the

1:26:42

ability to notice how stress hits you and how

1:26:44

you move through stress and then

1:26:46

how your adrenaline system is like, it's

1:26:48

trying to create agitation. So you get the hell

1:26:50

out of the stressor. That's what it's doing. And

1:26:52

your ability to stay calm and to ride through

1:26:55

that in a safe way, that is

1:26:57

a skill that I think is invaluable. Far

1:26:59

more than sitting there and just watching the

1:27:01

clock tick down, getting out, and then enjoying

1:27:03

the feeling of being out. Now to directly

1:27:05

answer your question, what are the

1:27:07

different parameters that lead to different patterns of dopamine

1:27:09

release? We don't know. Would

1:27:11

30 seconds at a very, very cold,

1:27:14

but still safe temperature do it? My guess

1:27:16

is it would. My guess is that the

1:27:18

catecholamines are released in a bolus in

1:27:21

parallel from the locus coeruleus norepinephrine,

1:27:23

from the adrenals, adrenaline, from

1:27:25

the various sources in the brain that can

1:27:27

release dopamine, that they are just released in

1:27:30

parallel. And we

1:27:32

know they have different time courses. Well, that's

1:27:34

even seen in that European journal physiology paper.

1:27:36

You see, they have different time courses, different

1:27:38

amplitudes. They're not released as a little kit

1:27:40

of like, of Blue Angel

1:27:42

planes flying right next to one another on those

1:27:44

graphs. They have very different dynamics over

1:27:46

time, but they

1:27:49

are released in parallel. And then,

1:27:52

would it be that five

1:27:54

minutes at a 50% cold would release X

1:27:56

more dopamine? I

1:28:00

mean, very likely the problem is right now in

1:28:02

2024, we

1:28:04

don't have great ways of measuring these things

1:28:06

in real time. We just don't.

1:28:09

We're just now getting to the point where you

1:28:11

can measure things like insulin and your blood glucose

1:28:13

in real time in really careful ways while people

1:28:15

are moving about. So the short answer is we

1:28:17

don't know, but I do think

1:28:20

that there's great value in paying attention to

1:28:22

how one encounters

1:28:24

stress, moves

1:28:26

through stress. And then when you get

1:28:28

out of the cold plunge, I don't tend to spend too

1:28:30

much effort thinking about how I

1:28:32

feel in that time. I just know that

1:28:34

it's a complete state shift. I also know

1:28:36

based on my reading of my sleep, on

1:28:39

my eight sleeper whoop, that

1:28:42

doing cold plunge in the morning dramatically increases the

1:28:44

amount of rapid eye movement sleep I get at

1:28:47

night. And I don't know the exact reason for

1:28:49

that. Not

1:28:51

incidentally, certain forms of pharmacology,

1:28:54

not drugs of abuse, but

1:28:56

that I've, I don't use regularly, but

1:28:58

that I've used in the past that

1:29:01

increased dopamine and norepinephrine, like

1:29:04

pryrion, will increase my rapid

1:29:06

eye movement sleep dramatically. I currently don't take it.

1:29:08

I took it years ago for a short amount

1:29:10

of depression. I don't take it any longer, but

1:29:12

I decided to take 50 milligrams of pryrion as

1:29:15

a focus aid at one point of doing an

1:29:17

experiment there. It didn't work well for me, but

1:29:19

I noticed that my rapid eye movement at sleep

1:29:21

just at night just spiked like crazy. The

1:29:24

amount of the duration increased by, I think it was about

1:29:26

15%. Then I

1:29:28

stopped taking it and went back to its

1:29:30

previous value. So

1:29:32

there's something about adrenaline release, perhaps

1:29:36

even just early in the day that seems to impact sleep

1:29:38

at night. For people that

1:29:40

don't have a cold plunge, and

1:29:43

that are experiencing maybe a perhaps drop

1:29:45

in their baseline dopamine, what

1:29:48

are some other behaviors

1:29:50

like that can help to

1:29:52

replenish the dopamine pool? I mean, we're talking about

1:29:55

sleep. That would be one. You

1:29:58

were talking about just... Like

1:30:01

how long do you have to wait to

1:30:03

experience that? Yeah, well, cold shower is always great and

1:30:05

it's not just zero cost. It'll save you on your

1:30:07

heating bill. Cold shower sucks

1:30:10

because it's almost like the

1:30:12

fact that part of you can be out of the cold makes

1:30:14

it worse. You don't like it. Like part of you can be

1:30:16

a slightly warmer, whereas with the cold plunge, you're

1:30:19

all in up to the neck, hopefully. Sometimes

1:30:22

people get their hands out and I don't judge. I

1:30:24

think that's fine. People

1:30:27

have different levels of vasoconstriction and pain from

1:30:30

the cold. So you want it to be fair. It does

1:30:32

not a problem to keep your hands out as I understand

1:30:34

it. Cold shower is

1:30:36

great. I think the high

1:30:38

intensity interval training that I know you're a

1:30:40

big fan of, that's a remarkable tool. Not

1:30:43

only is it brief, but it deploys

1:30:45

all these systems, these neurochemical systems that

1:30:47

create alertness. Also because it's brief and

1:30:49

it does that, you're unlikely to fatigue

1:30:52

yourself to the point where cognitive work

1:30:54

is harder. Now this is something

1:30:56

that isn't often discussed, but a

1:31:00

good hard leg workout mid-morning for me is great.

1:31:03

But then I eat a meal and then

1:31:06

by two or three in the afternoon, I

1:31:08

haven't measured my brain oxygenation levels at those

1:31:10

times, but I am not focused. It is

1:31:12

really hard to focus. Whereas it's interesting if

1:31:14

I exercise earlier in the day, I notice

1:31:16

a significant increase in energy all day long.

1:31:18

I don't know why that is, or if

1:31:20

anyone else has experienced that. But certain resistance

1:31:23

training regimens can be

1:31:26

really depleting. Especially if

1:31:28

you're doing sets to failure and I try and limit

1:31:30

my resistance training, I do it three times a week,

1:31:33

ideally. And I try and do 10

1:31:35

minutes or 15 minutes of warmup, usually

1:31:37

a smaller movement or something like

1:31:39

that, some warmup sets, and then

1:31:41

45 to 55 minutes of work. And

1:31:45

that's it. And the reason is

1:31:47

if I leave the gym then, I

1:31:49

have energy to spare, mental and physical energy.

1:31:52

Whereas if I take it to the point where

1:31:54

everything's left on the mat, I'm

1:31:56

just depleted. I actually am depleted

1:31:59

for several. if not

1:32:01

days afterwards. Maybe my recovery quotient

1:32:03

is isn't as good. Maybe I'm not hydrating enough,

1:32:05

but I try and do all the things. So,

1:32:09

and still that's the case. So what I recommend people do,

1:32:12

this is just what's worked for me. If they are

1:32:14

a person that has other demands in life, they're

1:32:16

not an athlete or solely devoted to their physical fitness,

1:32:19

is I try and make 80 to 85% of my workouts

1:32:23

about 80 to 85% intensity. Meaning

1:32:26

I'm not doing forced repetitions. I'm not

1:32:29

pushing past an hour of total work, maybe even more

1:32:32

like 45 to 55 minutes of total work. I

1:32:36

try and do an additional 10% of workouts

1:32:40

at higher intensity, 90% intensity. And

1:32:43

this is all subjective, but this would mean more

1:32:45

sets to failure. This would mean a couple of

1:32:47

advanced things like force reps or drop sets at

1:32:50

the last set of exercise. And then maybe just

1:32:52

5% of workouts, resistance

1:32:54

or cardiovascular workouts are all out everything I

1:32:56

can give. And so that really ends up

1:32:58

being like, I don't know, just

1:33:01

a few per year. For me this last year,

1:33:03

the hardest workout I did maybe ever

1:33:06

was that 72 pound rock carry that

1:33:08

Cam Haynes had me do. Because

1:33:10

there were moments during that thing, I told myself I

1:33:12

wasn't gonna put the rock down. And then when you

1:33:14

say it on camera, you better not put the rock down

1:33:17

and Cam's there. And I just decided, that's

1:33:19

it. This is the one, this is for me is like

1:33:21

an 11 out of 10 effort. You know,

1:33:24

I don't know what more I had

1:33:26

in me. Goggins would probably say, I was only at 40%

1:33:28

of what I could give, but it felt to me like

1:33:30

everything I could possibly give. I

1:33:32

don't do that sort of training very often. And

1:33:35

I find it takes us back to a couple

1:33:37

of important things. One is the best way to

1:33:39

get in and stay in great shape is to

1:33:41

not get hurt. You do those kinds of workouts

1:33:43

too often, you're the person, the guy or

1:33:45

gal with the injury that you're always talking about, right? That

1:33:48

we hear from, you know, my back, my this, my that.

1:33:51

And they're not training or they're in surgery or

1:33:53

they have to deal with pain stuff, which

1:33:55

fortunately I don't. The

1:33:58

other reason is that if you leave, When we use

1:34:00

some gas in the tank, when we say

1:34:02

gas in the tank, I don't think

1:34:04

we're just talking about glycogen and caloric

1:34:06

energy. I think we're talking about the

1:34:08

riding of that neurochemical wave front, and

1:34:10

no doubt endocrine hormonal wave front also,

1:34:13

and using that for other things. I mean, I use the

1:34:15

cold plunge because I like the way

1:34:17

it makes me feel and I can apply it

1:34:19

to work. I can apply it to energy, I can apply it

1:34:21

to mood. Outside of the

1:34:23

cold plunge, I don't live to get in the cold plunge.

1:34:26

I use the cold plunge to live. That

1:34:28

wasn't meant to be a saying, but

1:34:30

same thing with working out. I use the gym,

1:34:32

I enjoy working out. I love running, but I

1:34:35

use it as a stimulus for the brain that

1:34:37

then I can go apply and be more present

1:34:39

for other things. And I think if

1:34:41

people looked at physical exercise that way, I

1:34:44

think A, it would be less daunting. B,

1:34:47

they'd really start to understand and

1:34:50

appreciate how our physiology in

1:34:52

one endeavor tethers

1:34:54

to another endeavor. And you start to learn a

1:34:56

lot about yourself. I mean, this is becoming a

1:34:58

bit more subjective as I described it,

1:35:00

but for me, learning

1:35:03

how one's body works and

1:35:05

how the brain and body interact and

1:35:07

how exercise influences cognitive function and mood.

1:35:09

And I find it so

1:35:11

important because that's how you navigate

1:35:13

the challenges and also the

1:35:15

great stuff of life. Whereas getting really tacked

1:35:18

to just performance in the workout and then

1:35:20

constraining it like that's it, doesn't

1:35:22

do much for me. Put

1:35:25

differently, I have

1:35:27

a little note on my laptop, which says,

1:35:31

completing a short bout of hard work always makes

1:35:33

me feel better. And I have to remind myself

1:35:35

that. Yeah, it's kind of cheesy, it's corny, I

1:35:37

get it. But I wrote it, so

1:35:39

I put it there. And

1:35:41

I know that in the morning, there's this time when

1:35:44

I can drift into doing things that are very passive

1:35:46

consumption. But if I do one thing,

1:35:48

read one chapter of a book, put

1:35:50

together a post that is hard to deliver in

1:35:52

one take or go and read

1:35:55

a paper or do something that's challenging.

1:35:57

It's like this lift in my brain and body that.

1:36:00

I can't describe it's like I did the

1:36:02

cold plunge. I have a long arc

1:36:04

of elevated sense of accomplishment

1:36:06

and wellbeing and motivation. And

1:36:08

I, we haven't done the

1:36:10

brain imaging experiment, but no doubt it's the translation

1:36:12

of these, of the activation of

1:36:15

these very generic all form circuit, or I

1:36:17

should say circuits for all forms of motivation

1:36:19

to other things that I pivot into. So

1:36:22

again, it's subjective. I'm not talking about a peer

1:36:24

reviewed study in that case, but I find it

1:36:26

to be very useful just to learn how to

1:36:28

do something challenging. And along those lines, forgive me

1:36:30

for going long, that I just so excited about,

1:36:32

there's this literature that's emerged recently on

1:36:35

the anterior mid-singulate cortex, which

1:36:37

is a brain area most neuroscientists aren't aware of,

1:36:39

but my colleague at Stanford, Joe Parvizi, who's a

1:36:42

neurosurgeon, was poking around

1:36:44

in this brain area, stimulating it in a patient, and

1:36:47

then subsequently other patients, and found that

1:36:50

if he stimulated in the anterior mid-singulate

1:36:52

cortex, these patients would describe a feeling,

1:36:55

a subjective feeling of like a storm coming or

1:36:57

a challenge, and they felt like they were going

1:36:59

to lean into it. Super interesting. Move

1:37:01

the electrode back a little bit further, they

1:37:04

don't report anything like that. Stimulate

1:37:06

again in anterior mid-singulate cortex. It's like, there's

1:37:08

a challenge coming, but I can take it.

1:37:10

That's amazing, right? This is a state shift

1:37:13

and a cognitive shift into forward

1:37:16

center of mass. There

1:37:18

are other studies showing that this brain

1:37:20

area is maintained in size, in volume,

1:37:22

in people that maintain cognitive

1:37:24

function later into life. It

1:37:26

increases in size and even activity in

1:37:28

people who are successful dieters. It atrophies

1:37:31

in people that fail to reach certain

1:37:33

goals. There's now, not a huge,

1:37:35

but a decent-sized body of work, supporting the

1:37:37

fact that the anterior mid-singulate cortex, which by

1:37:39

the way, is a hub that gets input

1:37:41

from lots of systems, including the dopamine system,

1:37:43

memory, lots and lots of different brain areas,

1:37:45

inputs and outputs to anterior mid-singulate

1:37:48

cortex, but it's a brain

1:37:50

area that is engaged and

1:37:52

that seems to increase in

1:37:54

activity and maybe even size when

1:37:56

we engage in effort that we

1:37:59

don't want. to engage in.

1:38:01

So if you love working out, probably less

1:38:03

activation of this brain structure. If you force

1:38:05

yourself to do something, more activation

1:38:07

of this brain structure, it seems to be related

1:38:09

to its tenacity, willpower,

1:38:12

and possibly, again,

1:38:14

possibly the desire to live.

1:38:16

It might even be part of the circuitry

1:38:18

to continue pushing on in life, you

1:38:21

know, kind of a high level concept, but these,

1:38:23

what they call super-agers have, if

1:38:25

you look at the brain areas that

1:38:28

maintain size into later adulthood as compared

1:38:30

to age-match controls, the anterior mid-singulate cortex

1:38:32

is one of the two

1:38:34

that represents the most significant difference. So

1:38:37

I find this brain area to be really cool, and if ever

1:38:39

there was motivation for taking on some hard

1:38:41

things or a hard thing that you don't want to

1:38:43

do, maybe it's resisting doing

1:38:45

something, maybe it's doing something, I