Andrew Huberman: Peptides, Sleep Tech, and the End of Obesity

[00:01] sympathetic nervous system so much for so often. It can probably shorten your life. There's a whole category of what are called growth hormone secretagogues, erection, fat loss, energy, tan, they're like, "Oh, great." This isn't the kind

[00:13] You got to be real careful with these things. >> Nearly one in seven Americans is taking a GLP-1 drug. 20% have tried them. What do you think the future looks like? >> In theory, you could eradicate obesity.

[00:26] body weight. Melanotan, which makes people tan from the inside, raises energy and libido dramatically, fat loss dramatically. BPC-157, body protection compound. It's not legal, but it's not necessarily enforced. They list them as

[00:41] for research purposes only, not for human use. I mean, who's doing research you're stimulating cell growth, it could start going awry and then you might then get a tumor or something like that. If that's within your margins of risk, then

[00:54] over the last five years. >> Slowly through the '80s, through the everyone wanted to know what they could take to improve their immune system and drug I think is going to become far more popular soon, which is

[01:17] to talk about what's happened over the last five years. Like since you launched your podcast, there's been an extreme increase in consumer interest

[01:29] and focus on their own health. Like as an investor, we used to kind of think people were only willing to spend on what we'd like call sex or vanity drugs, like Propecia, Viagra, and that has totally changed in the last five years,

[01:43] their health. I'm curious what you think the major drivers of that have been and what your role has been in it. So, I think the major driver was there were a few breakthrough supplements

[01:59] that changed the way that people think about health care and decided they needed to be more self-directed in their health care. Return to that in a second. I think the other thing is that the the health and

[02:14] fitness and industry collided with mainstream medicine and just self-care Um when I was growing up the only people that lifted weights were bodybuilders, football players, and um people going

[02:28] off to the military. I was told if you lift weights the muscle will turn to fat if you stop that everyone in gyms is on steroids. I think what happened is slowly through the '80s, through the '90s, and then the

[02:41] early 2000s, the world started accepting, "Oh, there there are modes of fitness that allow me to eat healthily and and take care of myself." And yes, there's some extremes there, but there was that was actually

[02:53] quite compatible with a with a normal healthy life. So, what happened during the pandemic was everyone wanted to know, this was before and after the take to

[03:05] health. And the first thing that sort of broke through was vitamin D. Mhm. Maybe and everyone gets some exposure to sunlight. Doctors weren't saying don't mixed. They were like, "Okay, you know, take Everyone starts having some vitamin

[03:21] Then you know the melatonin craze had already kind of come and gone. Um but that that's a hormone. And then as time went on and people started getting more interested

[03:33] in physical fitness, not just jogging or doing cardio, but as resistance training it inevitably brought with it an interest in protein needs. So, you're going to take supplements that increase your daily protein. You know, we could

[03:47] or less protein. I don't necessarily think everyone needs 1 g per pound of poisoned, like overwhelmed when they eat that much. I think you have to sense for need. Um

[04:01] but in any event, people started realizing, "Oh, this is interesting. If I'm going to work out, then, you know, caffeine before that seems to help." And then gradually now the creatine craze, it's funny, creatine was something that

[04:14] was popular in gyms and that it when I was like 16 years old, 17 years old. And then oh, there are all these cognitive benefits, etc. So, it came in with the fitness. Vitamin D came in with COVID.

[04:27] Vitamin D came in with COVID. Um and then Um and then with COVID, peo- people were very actively debating whether or not you could trust the government to give you

[04:39] what you needed to make you healthy. And I think whether you were pro-vaccine, vaccine skeptical, or anti-vax, what became very clear is everyone realized some bell went off. We are all responsible for our own

[04:54] >> Totally. I think COVID reminded people of their own mortality, go to a doctor for an annual physical does not mean they're healthy or protected or safe. >> Mhm. A lot of the mental health issues

[05:06] that we saw during the lockdowns were disruption in circadian biology. I know drinking, there was a bunch of other issues, but I'll just say there's a really beautiful study with more than more than 80,000

[05:20] subjects out of the UK that shows and this is a recent study that shows that the brighter people's days are and the darker their nights, the healthier they are mentally. And this is especially true for people with

[05:32] OCD, anxiety, um mania, schizophrenia, major depression. I mean, basically every psychiatric challenge is made worse by dimmed days and bright nights. And so, what we saw during COVID

[05:44] was people were just drifting in a circadian sense. It was as if we had put people into a cave and done the cave right? And then there's all the vaccine stuff, which, you know, frankly, isn't

[05:57] it it was so important to me to give people tools to be able to control their circadian biology, um momentary anxiety with things like long exhale breathing, which just simply

[06:12] something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia involves the vagus nerve. Yeah, the vagus is is sending a bunch of sensory information about the body to vagus is descending. It's motor. It controls the heart rate. So, when you

[06:26] exhale deliberately, you slow your heart rate breath work. You just If you want to calm down, you you do a long exhale. And which there's mechanistic science to support them.

[06:41] That was really what we started putting out into the world. So, I think that's we were, you know, in my I was literally in a closet with my microphone, and just like talking out to the world, and things just So, people

[06:54] themselves. They're like, "Oh, I need to go figure out how how to take care of myself." What do you make of kind of Maha's role in this broader health awakening? What do you think the effects

[07:08] will be on our health? Well, I very deliberately not join the Maha panel to maintain the flexibility that I want to say what I believe.

[07:22] believe. Um a good example would be I think that some of the things they're doing are directionally right, trying to improve the food supply, um get people embracing healthy behaviors. Are they

[07:34] These are very much like Huberman Huberman Lab things, right? >> Mhm. At the same time, I, for instance think that the mRNA I, for instance think that the mRNA vaccines for cancer are

[07:49] a transformative incredible life-saving technology. >> And a lot of funding has been cut. Yeah, I think that well, it's interesting. So, um the the funding for um mRNA vaccines for

[08:02] respiratory illnesses has been cut. I was told and I don't know if this is true that the funding for mRNA vaccines for cancers was not cut. But there was some very tricky messaging around that at that time. So much so that, you know,

[08:17] cuz I'd gone on Bill Maher and I said, "It's foolish to cut this funding for the the cancer research." But um I got a call from Washington and said,

[08:29] We cut the money for the other thing." And I said, "Okay." So, it's like it's But the messaging has been deliberately broad on both sides. So, um the challenge has been that because we

[08:42] now, let's just call a duck a duck. We've got right-wing media and we've got left-wing media. And then we've got a few people in the middle like Bill Maher >> I think you went on Bill Maher with a really good episode.

[08:54] >> Yeah, so thank you. Um but for the most part that the way that clicks and ad revenue etc. is is working for these news outlets is is don't say anything positive about the other side even if there's something

[09:09] that they're do that's favorable. And really paint with a broad brush. And both sides are really guilty of that. The left has been um not supportive of the the moves that I think are directionally correct which

[09:24] people more active etc. because that their criticism is um that's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. That's their their criticism. My stance is anything that gets people moving in the direction of their own health,

[09:40] uh doing things that are proactive for their own health, circadian health, reducing anxiety, improving sleep, eating cleaner food, more movement, is Is it the only thing I'd like to see done? No. Um but it certainly is

[09:55] important, and so I'll be supportive of the things I think are are good, and I'm that I I think are are not good, and I'm just going to continue to do that. It enemies, but I'm kind of used to that by now. Um your personality on the

[10:10] internet. I often get get referred to as a as a influencer or a health podcaster. science training, but I but I get it. I understand why I understand why I now after 5 years, I really understand

[10:24] how media works. Yeah. In part because podcast channels have become bigger than a lot of that at least in the health domain than the more traditional houses. I think um

[10:38] don't know how they got to that because I I don't ever recall You also predate No, I'm kidding. The uh the um >> [laughter] >> yeah, thank you. Um the

[10:52] I did make a comment about the food guidelines. I said that I thought it was have liked to see more uh vegetables and fiber, some you know, low-sugar fermented foods. And it's so interesting to see how that would get

[11:05] attacked. It would If I see something like that that I said getting attacked, then I think, "Wow, like they must be so poorly paid or just so desperate to write something for whatever, 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks

[11:19] to make rent that like that to spend that to spend time on that." I I do think that there's been a real um just like a a real drop in standards of what we consider news. Sure. And and that makes me sad, frankly. It's kind of

[11:34] it saddens me because it cheapens the entire health space. And so, it's very easy to point at how, you know, health influencers and biohackers have have actually think that traditional media is is more to blame. Because are we really

[11:48] guidelines are are perfect. They they were cast as oh, meat. Mhm. No, that's not what it was. If you looked, you ac- if you actually

[12:00] read it, the servings of grains and fruits and vegetables were recommending for meat. So, it's it's just silly. It's just silly. It's It's blue shirts kind of um like a playground. Totally. Partisan shift

[12:15] >> Yeah. So, I'm I'm enjoying Now, I'm in this place where I love that I don't belong to any camp. Yeah. Um I feel very free. Um I've been asked to write op-eds for the New York Times

[12:28] "I'd be happy to do it except they didn't I was told." I don't know if it's cut the funding for cancer. So, that makes it a tough op-ed to write. At the same time, I I've been asked to give my input to folks at Maha and certainly

[12:43] NIH. I've worked very hard behind the scenes to try and ensure that funding for site for basic research is not cut. And it looks like I'm not going to take there might be a 2% increase. There's bipartisan support to maintain funding

[12:57] for NIH um research, basic research. So, you know, I you can't put me in a camp. Yeah. And I'm happy about that. Let's talk about peptides. Yeah. Um nearly one in seven Americans is taking a GLP-1 drug. 20% have tried them. These

[13:12] numbers continue to rise. You've talked about um retatrutide um a GLP in Lilly's pipeline. What do you think the future looks like as it regards to kind of GLPs? And then let's talk about other peptides after that. Yeah. Um I'm hoping

[13:28] this analogy works. You know, when I was growing up, if you could afford a nice there were a lot of kind of junky cars on the road. along where everyone could have a nice car, at least a nice car. So, you don't

[13:41] really see that like run-down cars in a lot You know, you do some places, but Um I I see the GLP as the same way. It used to be that being really fit at a certain age

[13:54] reflected the fact that you did a lot of exercise. And I think that the GLPs make it such that people can be a healthy weight without having to exercise. We know, however, that people should resistance train in particular to offset

[14:06] the muscle loss. But retatrutide went through phase three at Lilly, people can lose up to a third of their body weight in a pretty short amount of time with some degree of muscle sparing. So, this is also called GLP-3.

[14:18] It also seems to bypass some of the side effects that some of the previous GLPs course. But the real reason retatrutide is interesting to me is that already people have realized that they can get much

[14:33] lower cost and or take lower doses of GLP drugs by going through compounding pharmacies. Lilly is working very hard to make sure that compounding pharmacies do not sell retatrutide.

[14:48] Compounding pharmacies and gray market sources already sell retatrutide. Many people are already taking it. It's not legal, but it's not necessarily suggesting people do, but I think it's going to change society where

[15:02] in theory, you could eradicate obesity. In theory. Um Five years from now, what what percent of Americans do you think are on GLPs? Well, I like to think that there's still

[15:14] some people who because they've exercised good habits up until now don't need them. I I know why I like that, but I suppose if you can get away without having to take a drug and get the same result, that's better.

[15:27] Um I'm guessing that more than half, especially um people who come from families or communities where there's a lot of obesity are are going to be taking them.

[15:40] than are prescribed. Um and I I don't think that you can control the compounding pharmacies in gray market. Mostly because I I could be I'm not aware of of a major adverse event. You know, it's a little bit the

[15:55] same way that steroids were discussed in the '80s and '90s, but people were dying, going into rages, they were coming up with all you know, they're having a lot of problems. I'm not aware of anyone dying from taking BPC 157. So,

[16:09] experimentation. I'm not suggesting people do that, but the margins for error seem to be greater. Yeah. I mean, my understanding is it's not the like the compounded drugs are probably generally safe, but it's the fear of

[16:23] contamination or a meningitis outbreak or whatever it's happened in the past with compounding pharmacies being just less regulated than traditional drug manufacturing. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, too, because as I watch

[16:36] this space this peptide space emerge, which is mainly been been around the GOPs, right? And BPC 157, body protection compound, which may or may models, it's very clear that it can improve cartilage growth, nerve re-

[16:49] re-growth as well as vascular growth, which is a little bit want to vascularize the tumor. No one has the right control experiment injected my shoulder and it I healed so much more quickly." But it goes

[17:04] the two shoulders. And so, but no one wants to be in the control group. And the people are just assuming it's probably would have heard of an adverse event by now, but who knows, maybe some

[17:19] something will pop up. I think that um when it comes to the GLPs in there was a lot of debate for a while. The exercise fitness community were take a drug. You just need to eat right and exercise." I disagree. I think that

[17:33] some people have accumulated so much adipose tissue that it's modified their metabolism and even perhaps even brain circuitry and appetite that it it's really really helps them. Um and obviously behaviors and these drugs are

[17:45] going to be the best combination. Um or just the behaviors if you can get away can't talk about the experience of it. I have tried various peptides. I've tried I don't know if it helped me or not. I didn't have an injury. I didn't notice

[17:58] that I recovered any more quickly uh from exercise. I've tried pinealon as a sleep uh peptide. It gave me 3 hours a night of REM sleep, which was pretty awesome. Um very little human data. So now I just

[18:11] truth. I >> You want more data. something that in animal models has been shown to both improve the function of but maybe also the proliferation of pinealocytes, which produce melatonin or

[18:25] the day and other cells in the in the pineal. because anytime you're stimulating cell growth, you could it could start going something like that. Maybe you can just be kind of speak more broadly about the

[18:39] be kind of speak more broadly about the non-GLP peptide craze. There's been a lot of kind of black market activity around Chinese peptides. I love how that term has come about. There's looks maxing, like people are

[18:53] what is a peptide? What do you recommend? What should people avoid? >> Um short course of peptide is is just a short chain of amino acids make up a protein. Insulin's a peptide. Um all the things we're talking about up until now

[19:06] are peptides. So the phrase peptides has been kind of co-opted um to mean a certain sort of a click of peptides. Just like the word steroids, in people's minds, they think

[19:20] bodybuilders, but, you know, a ster- estrogen is a steroid hormone. People know, so if you take estrogen, you're on steroids. Okay, but we know what people are saying when they say on steroids. So, either androgenic steroids, or

[19:32] estrogenic steroids, there's corticosteroid. Okay. Just in the same way, there are peptides that are to reduce hunger and appetite, the GLPs. Uh, retatrutide being the newest generation one soon to be released

[19:46] um, but already out on the market from gray market sources are these sources that are sold all over the internet that are American or Canadian or whatever, and they list them as uh, for research purposes only, not for

[20:01] But, they're selling them knowing that people are taking them. I mean, who's doing research on these peptides at home, right? This is not you someone else's lab. Like, of course, people are taking these.

[20:14] Um, they tend to be the gray market sources for research purposes only, not which means they've been cleaned of most things except I would do worry a bit uh,

[20:29] lipopolysaccharide, which can cause inflammation. So, maybe not in one time, as well as other contaminants. Black and when you hear Chinese peptides, our companies online, we don't know that

[20:44] They sort of get get hit the hardest in this, but people refer to Chinese and black market peptides as people who are going online buying retatrutide, retatrutide. In contrast to the gray market sources

[20:59] where they might not be the cleanest, but you we they give you a data sheet that says this was tested if it says red or true tide, if it says BPC-157, that's what's actually in the

[21:12] vial and only that. Okay, so that's an important distinction. Compounding pharmacies have been compounding all sorts of things, selling drugs more um drug companies.

[21:24] reason. We could talk about that. But other peptides that are interesting, excuse me. [clears throat] BPC-157 for tissue repair, reducing inflammation, seems to have very, very high LD50. No one's really

[21:40] injecting enormously high um amounts of this. I've not heard of an adverse event. I don't recommend doing that, however, because you don't might have on your liver or in your brain. Mhm. Um but maybe for short-term

[21:56] use to treat an injury, if that's within your margins of risk, you know, I mean, that's up to you. Um ideally you'd get it from a compounding pharmacy if you can or from one of these gray market uh sources

[22:09] uh sources before you would go to a black market source. Injectable than taking it systemically. Taking the oral forms, it's unclear how much of that BPC 157 gets into your bodily tissues.

[22:23] Pinealyn, as I mentioned, for for sleep has become very popular. There's a whole hormone secretagogues, which are very popular. Uh tesamorelin, ipamorelin, sermorelin, MK-677.

[22:37] These all stimulate the pituitary to release growth hormone, but they themselves are not growth hormone. They will increase the amount of deep you take these 30 minutes before sleep, ideally not

[22:50] having eaten anything in the previous few hours. IGF-1. Some of those things I just mentioned are FDA approved. So it sermorelin, for instance. I I forget the exact

[23:04] indication, but um to increase height for instance, or uh tissue repair after after surgery, some you know, increasing growth hormone can be beneficial. Some people will just take growth hormone, but growth hormone's very expensive. So,

[23:17] somatropin, omnitrope Um so, that's what these peptides uh are very commonly used. Those have been researched. So, assuming the sourcing is clean, we have a lot of human data on the ones I just described as opposed to

[23:31] pinealyn and BPC 157 where you have basically no human data. So, there are human data on things like melanotan, which makes people tan from the inside, raises energy and libido dramatically, fat loss dramatically. Do we put that in

[23:44] the looks maxing category? >> I don't know. I or energy maxing or interesting. I mean, it it mean um there's a lot about so, melanotan um and some similar peptides have been

[23:58] have been FDA approved for um hyposexuality in women. I think the Vyleesi is the drug for women. Men take it, too. I have to say those drugs um melanotan is very risky. Some of the the skin color changes,

[24:12] permanent. So, you have to This isn't the kind of thing you do to like go on >> Um this is This is it might have more permanent effects. >> Right. And and there's a risk for men of priapism, which is but you know, the the

[24:26] might last 8 hours, but that might be the last one you ever really can cause So, people you know, people hear are Like, "Oh, great." You know, and then you think, uh

[24:38] you got to be real careful with these things with They they do get abused. Um but I just mentioned these these things and and and the melanotan whole pathway is super interesting because it raises dopamine. Dopamine and pigmentation are

[24:51] tyrosinase. Not to get technical here, but some animals are um are uh except they have dark eyes like an arctic fox and then the summer sunlight comes, hits this pathway, increases dopamine, pigments the fur,

[25:07] So that there's a relationship between sunlight, dopamine, fecundity, and these interesting, right? The um, so um, people are taking these things and

[25:21] black market, which I don't recommend, gray market, which is risky, or sort of ascending levels of stringency and then you get to pharma cells that

[25:33] you can buy sermorelin from one of the drug companies. You can buy retatrutide drug companies. You can buy retatrutide soon from Lilly. The cost tends to be, you know, three to 10 times higher. The dosage recommendations tend to be

[25:45] higher. People have figured out doing their own kind of rogue experiments that you can get by taking much lower doses of things. So I think one of the more hearing about mainly from people getting it from compounding pharmacy and gray

[25:59] with taking much lower doses. Some people are using it for reducing alcohol craving, for reducing just cognitive noise more generally, which I think is pretty

[26:12] and this is probably a good opportunity to just mention things for focus since we were going to talk about that. You know, if if you ever have in your sure you never have, cuz no one seems to have it anymore.

[26:26] interesting conversations that have taken place on X taken place on X about drugs for focus because all the all the the other hackers like to focus and program

[26:39] um, and work. And so we all heard of modafinil used to treat excessive It may have a slight cognitive enhancing effect, but it's mostly a focusing thing. You can it increases energy when you have poor sleep. Mhm.

[26:53] Um it was designed to treat narcolepsy and other things. Is it better than Adderall? Different than Adderall because Adderall is more of an amphetamine type stimulant. Um very interesting paper

[27:06] that Adderall it wasn't really Adderall specifically but Ritalin and other stimulants seem to improve focus about as well as a good night's sleep. Mhm. But a lot of people aren't getting the

[27:19] good night's sleep they need. Because of it also. >> Right, exactly. And it's not increasing focus per se. It's increasing alertness which allows you to allocate your focus. This is

[27:32] the as far as I know there are no drugs to increase focus per se. Now but the two things are tethered enough, you know, you need alertness to alertness gates focus. Um sleep gates alertness.

[27:44] Unless you take a drug like Adderall or modafinil. There's a very interesting popular soon which is already FDA approved called Sunosi s u n o s i which is approved for excessive daytime sleepiness. Did very well in a trial for

[27:59] And it's a little bit of a dirtier drug in the sense that it doesn't just hit that some of the other drugs I mentioned do. It also hits serotonin a little bit. Seems to have a much gentler arc of of alertness and focus. I confess I've

[28:14] tried it. I'm it was a bit too much and I was like caffeine for now. People will take Wellbutrin the anti the atypical antidepressant >> Mhm. at low dosages to increase

[28:26] epinephrine, dopamine a little bit for focus. I mean people are doing this all the time. Nicotine. So there's a lot of stimulant use right now for focus. So I do think that if there is a peptide that can be taken safely that can reduce

[28:40] the amount of noise in the system and allow people to be uh, more focused and allocate their attention in a more deliberate way without having to take stimulants, I think that would be fantastic. I think

[28:53] use and this is coming from somebody who drinks a lot of caffeine and and frankly increase focus, but you always pay the piper somehow, either in sleep or in cardiac challenges. I mean, you don't want to stimulate the

[29:08] sympathetic nervous system so much for so often. It can probably shorten your What does a proactive approach to health look like maybe five years from now and what technology do you think needs to be built to enable that? Maybe put another

[29:23] way, like you it feels like you've covered every single health topic on your podcast. Still going. >> think you're going to be covering in kind of 26, 27, 28? >> Yeah, we need to do autoimmune, cancer.

[29:36] but yeah, I I mean, maybe this is a good opportunity to kind of weave in reading and writing to biology. So, reading, I mean, people are wearing sleep sensors. This is like commonly done now, right? Um, but you

[29:50] can't write to the sleep system yet. If you I think in five years we're going to believe it? We were like cooling the room to try and fall asleep." I think like it's going to be so crazy cuz there

[30:03] should be a way that you could just put like a a small, um, more efficiently through the palms and the soles of the feet. Um, there's reasons for this. The the vasculature there actually lacks capillaries. You

[30:16] can pass, you're not really cooling the blood, um, directly, but you're essentially, um, dumping more heat. It's cool technology from Stanford. I mean, I go to sleep with a little little thing in your palm or on your your feet and

[30:30] >> Yeah. You're wearing an eye mask that's moving your eyes back and forth and within six minutes or less you'll be asleep. Um, when you wake up in the morning, you'll flip that thing on and it'll give you a burst of 10,000 lux

[30:42] light, and then you'll go outside. These are trivially straightforward technologies to build, but no one's really building them right we're like, oh, we'll just cool the whole room, and we'll, you know, and

[30:54] I'll, you know, look at a 10,000 lux, you know, thing over there while I it's it's just it's so easy to move these things to the body. So, writing to our biology around sleep is going to be a big one.

[31:08] I think are happening now that are soon going to be writing as well. Well, I'd love to see not just real-time um glucose sensing. Love to see real-time cortisol sensing. Morning cortisol peak. Getting that.

[31:22] importance of for everyone, women, men, premenopausal, postmenopausal, pregnant, not pregnant, kids, you want a big morning cortisol pulse, and then you afternoon and stay low. You get that, and you win 90% of the

[31:38] cortisol measures. >> who are working on these things. Like right now for our listeners, there are continuous glucose monitors, and they put kind of a little piece of like dental floss under your skin that

[31:50] monitors glucose in real-time normally for diabetics. But people are working on kind of multi-biomarker sensors that could tell cortisol or a variety of things. Yeah, I think that, you know, real-time cortisol would be

[32:03] throughout the day, and the real question is, can you bring your cortisol cortisol aren't a problem if they come back down. shifted to the right a bit, it's actually worse cancer outcomes, reduced

[32:17] longevity. There are a lot of reasons to want that cortisol spike really big, and then have it trough into the afternoon. Um so, that's one that I'd love to see. Um and then once you see that,

[32:29] you know, if at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. your cortisol's riding high, you know, you'd dial it down, and you could do that through conventional methods like long maybe eating some starchy carbohydrates.

[32:43] People forget that cortisol's main job is to deploy energy in the body. This is why it gives you a glucose bump. And there's a reason why starchy foods we call comfort foods is that it provides the sort of energy that allows cortisol

[32:56] people who follow very low starch diets often times feel really stressed or at the edge of stress. I can't sleep well unless I've had Interesting. Now, if I haven't done any exercise or anything, I don't really

[33:09] training, you're busy, you're using your mind, you're moving about, then you 11:00 at night and you're fried and you fall asleep and then you're up at 3:00 I'm willing to bet that had you had maybe a bowl of rice with dinner, you

[33:22] People don't talk about this, especially in the context of ketogenic diets, which sure, you'll have more energy, but you can really mess up your sleep. You heard >> Do it. Please do it. Please. In fact, if

[33:36] any time, should be within a couple hours after resistance training or, you maybe even a couple hours before sleep. It People who reduce their carbohydrate intake too much are you're not going to

[33:49] sleep well. You're just not. Um not nearly as well as you could if you had some moderate carb intake. Um obviously, you want to try not to eat too close to bedtime >> Yeah. and so forth. So, I think that the

[34:01] the I do think that the whole peptide thing is, you know, the the horse is out of the stable. I think in 5 years, you and I are going to have a little cocktail. It's going to be one injection

[34:13] little bit of pineal in it night combined with something else. It's going to be in the morning, something, whatever it is that you need to um not you specifically, of course, but whatever I need to, you know, ramp up my

[34:26] um make sure that I'm getting enough micronutrients that um maybe I'm going to put a little clotho in there to I think all of that stuff is is going to be commonplace. The same way that people

[34:40] are not afraid of vitamin D or they're taking some creatine or magnesium. People are taking magnesium is kind of the next wave of of accepted enough for most, not all people, but safe

[34:52] I think um most everyone is going to be doing that. And I think the cost is going to be low enough that that statement most everyone is a real statement. I love the read versus write breakdown. I think on the

[35:06] read side it feels very clear where the world is going. Like Chat GPT is already an incredible doctor, probably better than an average doctor an American can get access to. It knows nothing about you today, but we have these health

[35:19] information exchanges coming online, you know, functions we're building, something that pulls in, you know, all of your health records from EHRs, all of your wearable data, all of your function blood test results, your imaging, and

[35:32] feeds it into this model in real time where it's going to diagnose issues with you before you even feel symptoms. And we saw like the 1.0 version of that in COVID when people's wearables kind of realized they had COVID before they even

[35:47] felt sick. Um and then when we have these continuous glucose monitors that can monitor a whole lot more. Like the diagnostics and read side feels like very kind of clear where the world is moving. The write is super interesting,

[36:01] the right side, and that's where I think there are a million more ways this world could go. Yeah, I mean I I mean I borrow this read write thing from you know, my many years we wanted to chart the cell types of the nervous system. What are

[36:14] the hardware. Then it was let's record neurons, individual neurons, groups of neurons, extracellular, intracellular, calcium imaging, voltage dyes. Okay, now those cells, increase the activity of those cells in the context of a

[36:28] perceptual experiment or a behavioral experiment in humans, ideally, right? Uh mean, everything rat, cat, monkey, bat. But it was you know, it was you know, mice and it was non-human primates and now and now humans. And so,

[36:42] writing to our physiology, it's like let's figure out what the normal normal patterns of activity are and let's have simple ways to implement what's needed. Push that cortisol bump a little bit. Right now, it's so crude, it's almost

[36:56] funny. It's like, "Oh, well, ashwagandha reduce this herb in the morning, that makes no sense. You want your cortisol elevated in the in the evening and yeah, it'll calm them down a bit, but if they take it for too

[37:09] off-target effects. So, I always say you don't want to take high doses for for room, great. Everyone should cool the room. I cooled the room in my hotel the eight sleep. Yes, they're a sponsor, but I think it's of my podcast, but I

[37:22] think it's a phenomenal technology. So much that I miss it when I travel. we're going to be cooling the body to just cool your core, right? I should my feet and the socks that'll cool my core so I sleep and wake me up by you

[37:37] amount of REM sleep you get, not taking anything, warm your body in the last warm your sleeping environment in the last hour before you wake. REM levels go up. So, you want to cool, then really cold, then warm.

[37:51] We shouldn't be relying on external hardware so much. And I don't And so, that's why I think the sleep mask thing, etc. I also think the real holy grail in all this is the ability to dial in cognitive

[38:03] I don't think I know I'm going to Matt McDougall who, Stanford, now is at Neuralink, he's phenomenal. Dan Adams, I think that group is terrific. I think our friend Eddie Chang, uh chair of neurosurgery at

[38:18] reading and writing to the nervous 10 years I'd love to for them to prove me wrong, but I do not think that your hippocampus is going to be pulling in twice as much memory at you know twice

[38:31] not going to happen. We don't even understand how the hippocampus does that under normal conditions well enough yet. But I can imagine putting on a pair of glasses to sit down and do some work and your visual field goes

[38:46] and there's some sort of level of stimulation external stimulation that brings your ramps up your level of focus. You set a timer and experience the kind of focus that you only had a few times when you had all

[39:00] conditions right and you'll work for that 40 minutes. And then you'll click those things off and you'll you'll go do something else. >> that. I try to create that for myself. >> That's coming. That's coming and I I

[39:12] sleep mask that moves the eyes to make you fall asleep, but they're most of the is going to be maybe through the vagus through some superficial stimulation for calming effects or or other things. Actually vagal stimulation mainly causes

[39:27] alertness, but um maybe a you know some non-invasive now I'm not really seeing it, but it's coming. But the amount of things that you can do to modify brain state through this region

[39:41] just the eyes, ears and uh and the superficial nerves that run around there is just phenomenal. So I if I were going to personally invest in any companies that's the body area and the sorts of things that I'd be really focused on.

[39:55] Question on AI. You rose to prominence distilling kind of complex health information and studies into something that people can understand easily. This well. How do you think about that? How do you use AI in your day-to-day life?

[40:11] Well, I use Claude to quiz myself. Claude is really good at quiz myself. Claude is really good at generating tests for me on knowledge. Um most. Um

[40:25] I love the idea that an AI version of me could potentially deliver podcasts who Um sort of half kidding there. Here's what I know for sure is that there are

[40:40] the 10 most important things to do to get great sleep. The 10 most important uh ensure brain health given what we know that it's very easy to generate a But given that, why why don't people

[40:54] because there's something about the human brain where the probability that we take on a protocol or change our behavior is highly dependent on A, of course, the effectiveness of that behavior as we

[41:07] information. >> Mhm. When you understand mechanism, I think it gives a higher probability that somebody is going to implement the advice. And it may even change the way the

[41:22] protocol works. Now, you could say that's all placebo or belief effect, but maybe not, right? And some of it is also the flexibility that's provided when you that if you can't get sunlight in the morning today, you just double up

[41:34] tomorrow because it's a summation system. It's not It's a window that yes, becomes problematic, but once you understand how it's summing photons, etc. And AI could probably deliver that

[41:46] can build it well enough. Um but maybe I'm just telling myself that cuz I don't like the idea of being replaced by AI, but I don't know. I

[41:59] where the AI version of me was doing it. So I don't I don't have a problem poaching myself. Longevity escape velocity fantasy?

[42:11] >> [sighs and gasps] >> I think the way that people are defining longevity now, it's it's got a lot of pretzel twists in it to try and say, live forever. I my you know, I'm going to my upload my content." Like if we're

[42:25] talking about this this physical body that we're currently inhabit minus any robotic architecture inserted, I think it's pretty clear that the genetic upper limit is about 120.

[42:37] And for most of us, it's probably closer to about 105. So, taking great care of ourselves, um aiming for 100, I think aim for 100 um aiming for 100, I think aim for 100 is my motto. Just aim for 100 healthy.

[42:51] I think that's doable. I I'm very excited I guess it's a little bit of a edgy topic, but I'm very excited by Tony Wyss-Coray's work from Stanford. Um and he had a company that's now sold Alkahest,

[43:04] um which talked about factors in young blood and in exercised blood that can rejuvenate the brain and body. So, some of these factors that circulate after exercise are really beneficial. And yes, there are factors in younger

[43:16] gets people worried about vampires and stuff, but it we're talking about ethical uh things here it provided ethically, course. What I think is really interesting is that there are some some

[43:29] rejuvenating. I I also think "Andrew, why don't we collect your blood after exercising for the next, you know, 6 months? And let's just bank your blood

[43:43] so that if you ever have an injury, you can get some really healthy of your own I would do that. It's a kind of primitive from the standpoint of, you available, but we know that infusion

[43:56] blood infusions are beneficial. There's been a clinical trial for this. Yeah. We blood infusions of exercised blood are even more beneficial. We also know that after a brain injury or a bodily injury that things that are not just

[44:09] pro-inflammatory circulate in the blood that are bad for all organs. So, I think a very low bar but useful technology would be to bank a bunch of my own blood after exercise and I'm like I'm

[44:23] be at 70. I would love my own blood at 70. Just get an infusion once a week. Totally. You know, I I I do that before I get some like glutathione NAD infusion which is you probably fine but I don't know

[44:37] that it provides that much. Last question, you have a pet octopus. I do. That is unusual. Tell us about him or her. Van Go. Um Van Go. Van Go. Yeah,

[44:49] it's a starry night octopus hence Van Go. And then it got even more eerie because Van Go lost one tentacle in the in the fan so it was like a um So, when my lab was in San Diego before I moved to Stanford, I worked on a

[45:03] different cephalopod called cuttlefish. They're like little underwater monkeys. known for being great camouflagers. There's also this twist in their sociobiology where the males will um camouflage as females, infiltrate, and

[45:17] then mate with the females. Um so, very interesting because they can see in panorama and they're very placid. eyes translocate to the front and they generate depth perception stereopsis to

[45:33] whether or not they had two visual systems and I'm very interested in depth perception and and prey capture and how that relates to bodily states. talking about earlier. Um

[45:46] When your eyes are focused on a single point, your levels of of arousal and energy attention go up. When your eyes are sort of di- when your gaze is of the room and the ceiling and the floor, that tends to make put us into a

[45:59] calmer state. Some animals only exist in one or the other. We are unique that we can switch back and forth. Some other animals can, but I was studying that in cuttlefish. When I moved to my current home, I converted an

[46:11] art gallery into a living space. I put a gym, I put a place to work downstairs phone down there. That's where I prepare for podcasts. I do some drawing. I'm doing some illustrations these days for my book and a few other things.

[46:25] And then, it's like, oh, I've always loved aquaria. I'm going to put a freshwater discus tank. And I put a huge freshwater discus tank. I was like, you So, I got an octopus. I got a starry

[46:37] here's what I'm trying to do with the octopus. This has everything to do with AI. I'm trying to get the octopus to report to me what it's thinking. Because I do think

[46:50] oh, they're like aliens. They're so intelligent. But uh we get the camouflage. They're very interactive. Um but an underwater iPad and the appropriate

[47:04] an underwater iPad and the appropriate use of of touchscreen and AI, I'm hoping will allow this or another octopus to communicate something about what it's Okay, so how would you do this, right? So, you can't apply a typical large

[47:20] based on the coloration patterns on the camouflage patterns. So, it turns out AI can actually learn a lot by correlating the behaviors of an octopus with its has always been that you have to do that in real time as the animal's swimming

[47:36] around and hunting and doing various things. So, the challenge now is to get it to interact with stimuli that will give enough information so that this model, I don't know what we call it. I We don't have Someone more clever than I

[47:49] LLM. I don't know. Something else. Something related to camouflage camouflage patterns relate to certain behaviors, which um certain nuance in the behaviors, and then it could start teaching itself. Um

[48:05] and then the idea would be that the a- AI would present something to Van Go or another octopus. I've got more on the way that um would start to influence behavior. There

[48:19] between octopi, but where maybe I could speak, it would it would uh translate >> [laughter] >> What do you call it? And then we could doing this, okay? So there's this idea

[48:33] intelligence. Normally we measure that through behavior or through some you know highly specialized aspect of their nervous system or body like barn owls or feats. Or you what you find and I don't like it

[48:48] taught an octopus how to use a piano. I saw that. That's not interesting. Actually all that tells you that tells you more about how hard humans are willing to work to train a different organism to do something

[49:02] compared to what humans can do. Tells you everything about humans obsession with teaching other animals to be more human. I'm interested in what the understands about the world and can communicate that to me

[49:16] I can learn to play a piano. Why would I want to teach an octopus to play a piano? That's still >> I think you need a whole podcast >> Yeah, well maybe this is what happens when we run out of topics to put on the

[49:29] on the HLP. But and I'm probably not thinking about this as cleanly as I I could or should, but it was I have to say just in kind of you know wrapping this you know monologue, it y- you get to the point doing public

[49:43] you can kind of feel the saturation point. And we need more technologies and really am excited for what's coming. But, the at some point the conversations become um

[49:58] that we need more, right? And then you think about this whole vast landscape of animal intelligence, and people have placed this thing on the on the cephalopods, like they're really

[50:10] smart. They know I mean, they might be idiots for all we know, just a dazzling us with colors. I don't think they're idiots. I think that they are accessing um a certain perceptual landscape, and they're thinking hard about what's there

[50:23] based on things I've observed and others have observed, but we really need to figure out a way to let them tell us what they're thinking. Amazing. Peter the a16z show. Thanks for having me here.