Transcript for: Science-Backed Strategies for Enhanced Focus
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science
and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of
neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing
focus and concentration and tools for improving your
focus and concentration. This is a topic that
I've covered previously on the Huberman Lab Podcast,
but in different contexts. For instance, we had a very
popular episode on ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which of course relates
to the topic of focus and how to improve focus. We've also talked a lot about
dopamine motivation and drive. In fact, that's the title of your previous also quite popular
episode of this podcast, but never before have we had a
single episode solely devoted to the tools to improve
focus and concentration. The rationale for recording this episode is to provide people one
location where they can go and quickly access the specific tools for increasing focus and concentration that are known to be
the most powerful tools and the most up to date tools. In fact, today's episode is
going to include description of several peer reviewed studies and the tools that emerge from those scientific
peer reviewed studies that point to new, and fortunately, even briefer protocols than I've described before. So what I'm basically
describing here is tools that in a very short amount of time will allow you to significantly increase your focus and concentration abilities. Those tools will include behavioral tools, nutrition based tools,
supplement based tools, brain machine interface based tools, and for those of you that
are working with a physician, prescription drug tools. Today's episode ought to benefit anybody, young or old or anything in between whether or not you have ADHD or not. Today's episode is going to give you tools that you can apply in your daily life, most all of them are completely zero cost and those tools will allow you to tap into the neurochemistry and the neurocircuits
within your brain and body that peer-reviewed
science has reliably shown can significantly improve your focus and concentration abilities. Just to give you a little teaser of the kinds of tools that
I'm going to provide you on today's episode, a previous guest on the
Huberman Lab Podcast was Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Suzuki is a professor of
psychology and neuroscience at New York University, or NYU
as it's commonly referred to. She's also the Dean of
Arts and Sciences at NYU. Her laboratory made a
very important discovery, which was that a very brief, just 12, actually 13 if you really count the intro, but 13 minute daily meditation performed for a period
of about eight weeks significantly increased people's focus and
concentration abilities. And the great news is you
didn't need all eight weeks, it was just that's how long
that you ran the study. So during today's episode, I will describe that protocol in detail. I'll also provide you an even briefer alternative to that
protocol that you can use, if for instance, you find yourself with only three minutes or four minutes or five minutes a day to meditate. The great news is there's
quality peer reviewed science to support that form of meditation for improving focus and concentration. And that falls under the
bin of these zero cost tools that you can really use to
tap into the neurochemistry and neurocircuits that really allow you to take control of your
cognitive abilities and improve them over time. I'll also provide you important details about that protocol and other protocols. For instance, contrary to popular belief, it is not, I repeat it is not a good idea to do a focused based meditation within the four hours before bedtime. Many people, including some of the
subjects in that study performed by the Suzuki lab, found that when they did a
focusing meditation protocol, even if it was very calming, it led to difficulties in
falling and staying asleep. So that runs counter to
a lot of what we've heard about meditation being great for sleep. It turns out meditation
might be great for sleep, it certainly is great for
improving focus capacity, but I highly recommend that
if you're going to apply a focus meditation tool in order to improve your
focus and concentration, that you make sure that that's performed not within four hours prior to bedtime. So that's just a brief example of the sorts of tools and protocols and details about the tools and protocols that I'll provide on today's episode. I should mention that
we have provided links in the show note captions so that you can quickly go to
the studies that we describe as well as some of the behavioral tools and other tools that we'll cover, things like the use of binaural beats, supplements, et cetera. Our goal here again is to provide you the
maximum number of tools for focus and concentration
that you can pick from and choose from and apply in your life and try to eliminate as
much of the legwork required to seek out and apply those tools. I'm pleased to announce that
the Huberman Lab Podcast is now partnered with
Momentous supplements. We partnered with Momentous
for several important reasons. First of all, they ship internationally, because we know that many of you are located outside of the
United States, that's valuable. Second of all, and perhaps most important, the quality of their
supplements is second to none, both in terms of purity and precision of the amounts of the ingredients. Third, we've really emphasized supplements that are single ingredient supplements and that are supplied in dosages that allow you to build a
supplementation protocol that's optimized for cost, that's optimized for effectiveness, and that you can add things and remove things from your protocol in a way that's really
systematic and scientific. This is really hard to do if you're taking blends
of different supplements or if the dosages are such
that you can't titrate, or that is adjust the dosages,
of a given supplement. So by using single ingredient supplements, you can really build
out the supplement kit that's ideal for you
and your specific needs. If you'd like to see the supplements that we partner with Momentous on, you can go to livemomentous.com/huberman. There you'll see those supplements. And just keep in mind that we are constantly expanding
the library of supplements available through Momentous
on a regular basis. Again, that's livemomentous.com/huberman. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching
and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part
of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the
sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics. And to be quite honest, I don't like the word nootropics because the translation of
nootropics is smart drugs. And as a neuroscientist, I can tell you there is no neural circuit
in the brain for being smart. Rather, there are neural circuits that are responsible for focus, neural circuits for creativity, neural circuits, for task
switching and so on and so on. Fortunately, Thesis understands this and has developed custom nootropics that are tailored to your specific goals and your specific needs. They use only the highest
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now through September 11th. Okay, let's talk about
focus and concentration and how you can improve
your focus and concentration using science based protocols. Now because today's episode
is mainly focused on tools and not so much the underlying mechanisms, I'm mainly going to focus
on what to do and when and how to do it. But I just want to take
about three minutes and briefly describe a model, that is a visual image that
you can put in your mind, that will help you incorporate
the tools that I'll provide and that generally will
help you understand at a mechanistic level how
focus and concentration work. So what I want you to imagine is an arrow. And an arrow of course, has an arrowhead and it has the shaft of that arrow. And in the context of the neuroscience of focus and concentration, the neurochemical system that really represents
the shaft of that arrow, right, the straight line is epinephrine, also called adrenaline. And today, I'll refer to adrenaline and
epinephrine interchangeably. Turns out that epinephrine/adrenaline are released within your
brain from a little location, a little cluster of neurons
called locus coeruleus, but you do not need to remember that name, and from your body from
the adrenal glands. And the release of epinephrine
from those two locations overall increases energy,
it increases alertness. It does not alone increase focus, okay? So the reason I've assigned epinephrine, adrenaline as the shaft of the arrow is that if focus is the arrow, there is no focus without epinephrine. So things, whether or not they're
behavioral or psychological or supplements or drugs
that increase epinephrine allow focus to occur, they
are necessary for focus, but they are not sufficient for focus, that is they are required but they are not enough to create focus. So we're going to need
epinephrine in the equation. Without epinephrine, there
is no focus or concentration. Now the arrowhead on this
metaphorical arrowhead that represents focus and concentration is going to be represented or related to the
mechanisms of acetylcholine, a different neurochemical that also exists in the brain and body. In fact, in the body, it's responsible for the contraction and
movement of your muscles. But today, we're talking
about acetylcholine not in that context, but rather in the context of
its release within the brain. Acetylcholine is released from a couple of different
locations in the brain and the best way to think about
it is it's like a spotlight. It highlights specific
neurons, nerve cells that should be active, or
more active I should say, than the other neurons in the environment. So the reason I've assigned
the arrowhead to acetylcholine and acetylcholine to the arrowhead is that if you have an arrow
with a very big arrowhead that's really broad, really broad, imagine a mile wide arrowhead, that's not very focused
on any one location, it's not really pointing
to any one location, is it? But with a narrow, really
tightly focused arrowhead, well, that's focused on one location. So we have alertness, epinephrine, and then we have the actual direction in which our concentration
and focus is placed, and that's, at least in this mental model
I'm creating, acetylcholine. And then in order to have ongoing focus, we need another neurochemical. And it turns out that that
third neurochemical is dopamine, a molecule often associated
with pleasure and reward, but it's really the
molecule of motivation. So here, I want you to
imagine in your mind, an arrow with an arrowhead, think acetylcholine in the arrowhead, a shaft or a line behind that arrowhead, which is epinephrine
also called adrenaline. And then behind it, a sort of an engine that keeps
that focus moving forward, right because we don't just
want to be focused for a moment, we want to be able to focus
for 10 minutes or for an hour or maybe even for two hours. Turns out there's an
optimal duration to focus, I'll teach you that in just a little bit, but these three neurochemicals together, acetylcholine, epinephrine
and dopamine really allow you to get focused, to focus very precisely, and in fact, increasingly
precisely over time to really narrow and narrow
and narrow your focus progressively within a
single about of focus and to continue to do that and to be able to do that
repeatedly whenever you want. So here, I'm purely talking in metaphor and in models and mental models of arrows, but in a moment or two, I'll start transitioning
to discussing tools in which I'll talk about increasing dopamine and acetylcholine or increasing epinephrine and dopamine in various combinations
with various approaches. And what I'd like you to conceptualize is how those are contributing to creating a very narrowly pointed arrow that has the capacity to continue moving forward over and over so that you can focus as
sharply and as long as you like. And of course, for those of you that want to get really down in the weeds of how dopamine works, we have an entire episode about dopamine motivation and drive that really gets into
neurotransmitter release and dopamine baselines and thresholds and all of that sort of thing. We also have episodes on focus, much longer episodes,
I should say on focus that incorporate a lot of
the biology of acetylcholine. It turns out acetylcholine
is also involved in neuroplasticity, et cetera, and epinephrine of
course, relates to stress and our capacity to deal
with and buffer stress and on and on. Those episodes are all available to you in their long form at hubermanlab.com, you can find them very easily. They are all timestamped so you can navigate to
the particular topics most of interest to you. I mention this all not as a diversion from what we want to cover today, but I know that some of you are hungry for a lot more mechanism, but today's episode is really
mainly focused on the tools, I will of course touch on mechanism, but if you really want to do
the deep dive on mechanism, go to hubermanlab.com and you'll have more
than you ever could want about those mechanisms. Let's jump into the tools
for concentration and focus. If you want to think
about tools of any kind to modify your biology
or physiology in any way, whether or not it's for cognitive function or you want to get better at exercising, or you want to build muscle, or you want to improve your hormones, you need to think and understand tools in the context of
modulation and mediation. What do I mean by that? Well, it's quite simple really. Mediation is how specific
types of chemicals and cells and circuits and organs
control very specific things in your brain and body whereas modulation is the ability of chemicals
and cells and circuits to adjust how different things change, how different things work
in your brain and body, but to do it more broadly. What do I mean by this? Let me give an example. For instance, I'm going to tell you now that one of the most important things to build and maintain your
focus and concentration is to optimize your sleeping behavior, that is to get enough quality sleep I would say 80% of the
nights of your life. Not everyone can get optimal sleep 100% of the nights of their life, nobody, truly nobody achieves that. However, sleep has been shown to relate to cognitive
performance, physical performance, hormone output, and so many other things, including immune system function. What we can reliably say
is that sleep modulates just about every process
in your brain and body. So you have to get great sleep. There is simply no tool
that's going to allow you to overcome chronic sleep deprivation and allow you to remain focused, no pill, no device, no supplement,
no protocol whatsoever. There are tools to overcome one night or maybe two nights of sleep deprivation and we'll talk about those, but at a fundamental level, we need to do the things that modulate our focus and
attention in powerful ways and sleep really is that thing. So we've done two episodes,
one called "Master Your Sleep" and the other episode
is "Perfect Your Sleep." The "Perfect Your Sleep" is a little bit more like this episode, more focused on protocols. "Master Your Sleep" includes
protocols and mechanism. Again, you can find
those at hubermanlab.com. We also have a sleep toolkit, a distilled list of things to do in order to optimize your sleep. I highly recommend that you download that. You can go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Neural Network
Newsletter, it is listed there. If you want you can sign
up for the newsletter, but you don't have to, you can simply download
the PDF of that toolkit for zero cost. Why do I say sleep modulates
focus and attention? Well, I'll give an analogy. If right now someone pulled
a fire alarm in this building or if we had a fire in this building, my attention would drift, it would not be on recording this podcast, it would be on something else. But would I say that the fire
alarm mediates attention? I mean fire alarms are not
really involved in attention. No, rather they modulate my attention. The noise in the room
modulates my attention. That's quite a bit different than a tool that I'll provide later and I'll just give you
a little hint of now, in fact, I'll give it to you now, which is that 40 HZ binaural beats have been shown in a number
of peer reviewed studies to increase focus and concentration. And if you'd like to
access 40 HZ binaural beats in order to improve your
focus and concentration, you can do that, you can
actually get it at zero cost. You can go into the app store, for instance, the Apple App Store, this is also available for Android phone, there's an app called BrainWave, and you can go there,
you can dial in 40 HZ and it'll play these binaural beats. It's been shown in multiple
quality peer reviewed studies that playing a pattern of
sound waves to one ear, do, do, do, do, do, and the other ear, which is
slightly offset in frequency, meaning not quite the same frequencies, so more like do, do, do, do, that that combination of frequencies played to the different ears, actually get integrated
within deep brain centers and can increase focus and concentration in part by increasing levels of the neurochemical
dopamine and acetylcholine, which we talked about a little bit earlier in this arrow model of focus. So we'll provide a link to that app, I don't have any relationship
to that app I should mention, but it's an excellent one, it's one that I've used for many years. There are also additional
functions within the app, such as for sleep and for other things, but the 40 HZ, 4-0-h-z
is the way it reads out, 40 HZ stimulation has been shown to improve
focus and concentration. Here is my recommendation
and the way that I use it. I would not use 40 HZ binaural beats every time I'm doing a about of work. What I tend to do is use it for about five
minutes prior to that work and then turn it off and then do the work and I'll talk about other
tools to use during that work, whether or not it's reading or math or even just emailing or
something where I require a bunch of focus for a while. However, there are times
in which I'm in an area or I'm in a state of mind where I'm feeling very distractable and then I'll keep the
40 HZ binaural beats on the entire time I'm doing that about of cognitive work. I'll also sometimes use
the 40 HZ binaural beats prior to a workout, in particular weight workouts, where I really want to be able to focus on and contract specific muscles. So it's a very useful tool, again, supported by quality
peer reviewed science, zero cost, available out there not
just in the BrainWave app but in multiple apps. I think many of you will benefit from it. Some of you might not
experience it immediately as a total dropping into a tunnel of focus in the same way that you might with say the sorts of neurochemicals that we'll talk about later, like Alpha-GPC and some
of these other things that change neurochemicals directly, but nonetheless 40 HZ binaural beats are a very powerful tool, again, zero cost non-pharmacologic tool that tap into your own endogenous, meaning within you or
exists within you physiology in order to increase acetylcholine and some other neurochemicals and they have been shown
to work quite well. Okay so assuming that
you are sleeping well 80% of the nights of your life or at least working on the
various protocols and tools to sleep well and sufficiently long 80% of the nights of your life, and you are interested in additional tools that are sound based in order to improve your ability
to concentrate and focus, there are quality peer reviewed
studies supporting the idea that white noise or pink noise, and believe it or not, there is something called pink noise, it has to do with the
specific frequencies of sound that are in the noise, well white noise and pink noise have been shown to not
improve concentration per se, but to improve people's ability to transition into concentrated states. So I don't tend to use
white noise and pink noise while I work, but I know a
number of people that do. I know people that also use
what's called brown noise. The folks I know from the engineering and
computer science side get really into these details of white noise, pink noise, brown noise. You can find white noise,
pink noise or brown noise and listen to it through
headphones or in the room. There is indeed some data to support the fact that white noise, and to some extent, pink
noise and brown noise can support the release of
particular neurochemicals, but more data showing that
they can amplify the activity of neurons in the so-called
prefrontal cortex, this front area, sort of the
bumper behind your forehead, that is directly related to your ability to direct your own focus and remain focused on certain things. So you have the option of either using binaural beats before, but not during your work,
that is 40 HZ binaural beats, or 40 HZ binaural beats
throughout your attempt to focus. You also have the option of
not using binaural beats, but using white noise,
pink noise or brown noise. Again, there are a lot of zero cost apps, you can find also white noise,
pink noise and brown noise on YouTube. Again, these are tools that really have been shown
over and over in humans to allow people to focus with more depth and to decrease the
transition time into focus. This is a really key point. A lot of people are challenged with getting into a mode of focus. None of us, however, should be expected to just sit down and drop
directly into a state of focus. I think that's completely an
unfair request of ourselves. I mean, for instance, you wouldn't expect yourself
to go out on the track or go out for a run and not warm up. You might jog for a few minutes or even walk before you would jog and then jog before you would run, right, I would hope you would do that. And if you're doing resistance training, I doubt that you go over and
load up the bar or the machine with the maximum amount of
weight that you can move and then just drop right into that, you always do a warmup. And I think it's very
important to understand mental work, focus and concentration as requiring that warmup. What is that warmup? Well, you know what that warmup is. That warmup is the ramping up or the increase of
epinephrine, adrenaline, acetylcholine, and dopamine. Right, the way that neurochemicals work is we don't just get to
flip switches in our brain because we decide to, that's a fantasy. That's sort of the "Limitless" movie or movies and ideas that suddenly you're going
to flip a switch on your arm and all of a sudden you're
going to be in a laser focus, that is just not the way that
your nervous system works. There's a gradual dropping into any state, whether or not that state is sleep, right, you go from shallow
sleep to deep sleep and then out eventually. Focus too, you go from shallow focus to increasingly deep focus. That is, in our metaphor of
the arrow, it's very broad, it's pointed at a lot of things. And over time as we drop into focus, that arrow is narrowing and
narrowing and narrowing. In fact, probably better
to think about it narrowing and then sometimes oscillating
and getting wider again. We might hear something down the hallway or more typically our phone
will buzz or we'll think, oh, I wonder what so and so is doing or I had to contact them about something. Your focus is dynamic, it is not what we call a step function. It's not like you go
from unfocused to focused and then you drop into your maximal focus. By understanding that it's dynamic, by understanding that you
are going to be continually going in and out of progressively but
varying levels of focus, you will greatly release
the pressure on yourself to feel focused all the
time when you want to be. This is very key. People who are very good
at focusing understand this and understand that they
can't expect themselves to just immediately focus and then snap into or out of focus. Okay so be patient with yourself and also understand that
focus is an ability, that you can improve your ability to focus by engaging the neural
circuits responsible for focus repeatedly over time through
so-called neuroplasticity, the ability of your nervous system to change in response to experience. And that has a couple
of different components, but put very simply, what we repeat gets etched
into our nervous system and becomes easier over time. And the more emotionally important or vital something feels to us, the more likely it is to
trigger neuroplasticity. We're going to talk a little bit more about how to increase neural
circuits for focus later, but right now, what you have in hand is the key importance of sleep and I again will direct
you to hubermanlab.com and the Neural Network Newsletter to really work on optimizing your sleep. We've also got two
auditory sound based tools for improving focus, there's 40 HZ binaural
beats used before or during bouts of focus and concentration. And if you don't like
those, or even if you do, you might alternate them with or occasionally use white noise,
pink noise or brown noise, also readily available at zero cost. A question I often get is how
long should I try to focus? Well, the research literature
point to the key importance of so-called ultradian cycles. You've all probably
heard of circadian cycles or circadian biology,
circa, the day, circadian, is about 24 hour cycle. Well, our brain and body
operate within that day or within each and every day I should say with 90 minute ultradian cycles. So my suggestion would be anytime you're going to
sit down and try and focus or you're going to try
and do a focused about of physical exercise or skill
learning or musical learning, or maybe you're even just
having a conversation, maybe you're a therapist or you're attending therapy or a class, how long should it be? And the ideal duration
is about 90 minutes, not exactly 90 minutes, but we can reliably
say 90 minutes or less, okay, it doesn't have to
be the full 90 minutes. But trying to push yourself
to be able to drop into two hours of focus or
three hours of focus, while possible is not really in line with what we know about
the underlying biology. Everything from our sleep states or the different stages of
sleep and our waking states is divided into these 90 minute cycles or so-called ultradian cycles. So what I like to do is
set a timer for 90 minutes. I acknowledge and accept the fact that under most conditions unless I'm really pressed for a deadline and I'm optimally caffeinated, et cetera, the first five to 10
minutes of that 90 minutes are a transition time, it's
like the warm up for focus, but I do include it in that 90 minutes. And then I really try and drop into doing focused mental work
or learning of some sort, again, this could be physical
as well, motor skill learning or anything, we're running or
lifting weights, et cetera, and really try and drop into that across the full 90 minutes, again accepting the fact, okay it's not just an idea, the fact that occasionally
our focus will flicker, it will jump out of focus, and then a big part of being able to focus is to go back to focusing. The way I'd like you to
conceptualize this perhaps is that arrowhead suddenly
getting very, very broad, that you're focusing on many things or that arrow shifts to a
different location in the room. The key is to be able to shift it back and to narrow it once again
and that's an active process, so much so that it requires
a lot of metabolic energy, your brain is the chief
consumer of metabolic energy. The calories that you consume, the so-called basal metabolic rate, most of that isn't related to movement or heartbeat or breathing, it's related to brain function. Your brain is a glutton with
respect to caloric need. So understand that at
the end of 90 minutes or maybe even after 45 minutes, you might feel rather
tired or even exhausted. And it's very important
that after a about of focus that you take at least 10 minutes and ideally as long as 30 minutes and go through what I
call deliberate defocus. You really want to focus
on somewhat menial tasks or things that really don't require a ton of your concentration. This is starting to become a little bit of a movement out there in the kind of pop psychology
and optimization world, this idea of not looking at your phone as you walk down the hall to the bathroom, certainly not looking at
your phone in the bathroom. And I should mention, by the way, this is a particular annoyance of mine, have you noticed that wait times for restrooms in public places has increased substantially
in the last 10 years? The reason for that is
not digestive, okay, it's not the gut microbiome, I mean it might be the gut microbiome, but chances are it's because people are on
their phones in the bathroom. So you're doing yourself
and everybody else a favor by staying off your phone in the restroom, staying off your phone
while walking down the hall. Try and give yourself some time
to deliberately decompress, to let your mental states idle, to not be focused on any one thing. That period of idling is essential for your ability to focus, much in the same way that rest between sets
of resistance training or rest between exercise is vital to being able
to focus and perform during the actual sets or
during the actual bouts of running or cycling or whatever your particular
form of exercise might be. So deliberate decompression is key. And I know this is hard because
we're all being drawn in by the incredible rich array of sensory information available on our phones and other devices, but I can't emphasize this enough, our ability to focus is not just related to what happens during
the entry and movement through those focused bouts
but after those focused bouts. We really need to deliberately decompress. And of course, the ultimate decompress, the time in which we are not directing our thinking interaction is during sleep. And so it's no wonder, or I should say it holds
together logically, that that deep, long lasting duration of not controlling where our mind is at is in fact the ultimate
form of restoration, even if we have very intense dreams. So take that period after each
90 minute or less focus about, right, remember those focus bouts don't have to be full 90 minutes, let's say you do 45 minutes of work, you're just done with it, set it down and go do
something for maybe five, 10, maybe even 30 minutes that
is functional for your day, right, not just walking around in circles or staring up at the sky although if you can do that, do that, but most of us have other things to do, but do things that are rather automatic or reflexive for you, and try not to do any focused reading, try not to bring your vision
into a tight location, such as your phone and try
and deliberately decompress, because that will allow you to drop into intense spouts of focus again repeatedly and
repeatedly throughout the day. I'm often asked how many ultradian cycles one can perform throughout the day? That depends on how well you've slept, how well you are nourished, which we'll talk about in a moment, and how well trained up
your focus capacity is. And here's the paradox, if you are very trained at focusing, if you're very good at
dropping into focus, you're actually going to need more deliberate decompression and defocus and I recommend only doing about two, maybe three deep work sessions per day. So not one 90 minute session
than expecting yourself to do to another one and
another one, another one, but rather one deep
work 90 minute session, and maybe another in the afternoon. A lot of people get
surprised by this and say, "Wait, how many people can afford to just work three hours a day?" I'm not saying just
work three hours a day. I'm really talking about
the hard mental work. And again, somewhat paradoxically, the more you can concentrate, the more deeply you can concentrate, the fewer deep work concentration bouts you can actually perform each day. This makes sense, however, if you think about it in the context of say resistance training. If you are stronger and
stronger in the gym, or you're an endurance athlete and you can run ultra-marathons,
100 miles or so, you are essentially cutting a deeper cut into your recovery capacity than somebody who's not
very skilled at those things or can't perform as much intense work. So the intensity of the
work scales directly with how long you need
to rest after that work. I at this stage of my life am pretty good at dropping into and maintaining focused
bouts of concentration provided the landscape
of my life is right, you know, I don't have some
burning stressful thing that's essential or an
emergency that I'm tending to and that I put my phone
away or turn it off, I can do three 90 minute
focus bouts per day, but that's about it. And then in between those focus bouts, I'm doing other things
that require less focus. Some of you may be able to perform four. What I highly recommend is that you try doing at least one, that is one 90 minute or less about of focused
concentrated work per day, and yes, that means the weekends too. And on the weekends, I like to read a book with my phone nowhere in
sight, not on a device, that's what I do or I'll listen
to an audiobook sometimes while taking a walk, but really concentrating on
what I'm trying to learn, what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing. So again, a daily 90 minute
about is one to start with and I would say after
about four weeks of that, if you're able to stay concentrated and work through the agitation, then I would consider increasing
the number of focus bouts. Again, this is not to say that you should go to your teacher or your PhD advisor or your
parent or your friends and say, "Listen, I can't really
concentrate or think about anything for more than 90 minutes per day." That's not what I'm saying. These are deep focus bouts. These are bouts of work, or I should say mental
work or physical work where you're really forcing
yourself to focus and refocus, to sharpen the head of that arrowhead, to redirect it to what you're
trying to concentrate on, and it is indeed hard work. I would even think about it more or less like a workout of any kind. Before we continue with
today's discussion, we're going to take a brief pause to acknowledge our
sponsor Athletic Greens, also called AG1. I started taking Athletic
Greens way back in 2012 so I'm delighted that
they've been a sponsor of this podcast. Athletic Greens contains
vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens, so it's got a lot of things in there and that's actually the
reason I started taking it and the reason I still take
it once or twice a day. It essentially covers all
of my nutritional bases and the probiotics in
particular are important to me because of the critical importance of what's called the gut brain axis, that is neurons and other
cell types in the gut, in the digestive tract that
communicate with the brain and the brain back to the digestive tract in order to control things
like mood, immune function, hormone function, and on and on. Whenever somebody has asked me, what's the one supplement
they should take, I always answer Athletic Greens. I gave that answer long
before I ever had this podcast and it's the answer I still give now for all the reasons that I
detailed just a moment ago. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy
to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, plus a year supply of vitamin D3+K2, which are also very important for a huge number of bodily
factors and brain factors that impact your immediate
and long-term health. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim that special offer. I'd like to call your attention to a new and extremely useful tool for learning and applying
science based protocols for mental health, physical
health and performance. It's called Virtusan,
v-i-r-t-u-s-a-n, and it's an app. And inside the app, you'll
find what are called journeys. Each journey is aimed at a specific goal, such as improving your
sleep or tracking your sleep or improving your ability
to focus and concentrate or improving your nutrition
or specific exercise programs. The Virtusan app makes
a lot of the protocols that you've seen here on the Huberman Lab Podcast and elsewhere very easy to understand
and access and practice. And in fact, it tracks your progress with each of these protocols. I and several other researchers have been directly involved in developing the specific
journeys and protocols that you'll find within the Virtusan app. In fact, a lot of it involves
direct video tutorials from me and others that you'll recognize from social media and from podcasts. Everything that you'll find
within the Virtusan app is geared towards giving
you the latest science in simple, straightforward protocols to allow you to improve your
mental health, physical health and performance. If you want check it out, you can go to the App
Store under Virtusan, again, that's spelled v-i-r-t-u-s-a-n, or you can go to virtusan.com/huberman. Again, that's virtusan.com/huberman. I mentioned the topic of
nutrition a little bit ago, and of course, nutrition
is a complicated topic. In fact, one of the quickest ways to get yourself into a battle online is to say something
definitive about nutrition. I just want to clearly state
my stance about nutrition. I fully support and applaud those of you that are
vegans for whatever reason, those of you that are pure
carnivore for whatever reason, and those of you that are
omnivores for whatever reason. I happen to be an omnivore. My goal is always to eat high quality, minimally or non-processed foods and to eat things in moderation. So I do eat some meat from sustainable sources
or from organic sources, I eat some starches and I eat
vegetables and I eat fruits, I try not to eat sugars and I don't really like
highly processed foods at this point in my life. That's me, that's what I do, but I'm certainly not dictating
what people should eat. I know certain people are ketogenic, and I can say that for
people who achieve ketosis and can get into ketosis, yes indeed, there is a mental
state associated with ketosis that will allow your brain to function and to think really clearly that many people find very attractive and keep them going
back over and over again to a ketogenic diet. I'm somebody who for instance
has not been in ketosis many times in my life, at least not deliberately so, but I actually will ingest
liquid ketones from time to time because of the further
cognitive enhancement and physical enhancement that I experience on top of nutrition that does
include some carbohydrates. So there are a lot of different
ways to approach all this, whether or not you're a vegan, omnivore, vegetarian, carnivore, et
cetera, the point is this, your ability to focus, and in fact, your ability of neurons to encode specific information
in your environment, that is to represent what's
out there in the world, is actually related to
your blood glucose level. Now here I'm setting aside the discussion of ketosis and ketogenic
diets for the moment, but there's a beautiful study that was published in Neuron not long ago that showed that the tuning, that is the precision with
which neurons in the brain will represent things in our environment is actually much greater when there is sufficient
glucose in the brain. Translated into English, this
means that when we are fasted or when our blood glucose is very low, we aren't able to perceive
and think about things as clearly. Now there's a twist to this, however. Many people who practice
intermittent fasting, and I should say I practice a sort of pseudo
intermittent fasting, I generally eat my meals between the hours of 11:00 AM and 8:00 PM although sometimes there's
some wiggle around that, occasionally have an early breakfast, I'm not super rigid about it, but I know there are a number of people who are doing longer fasts or they're eating in a six hour window. We did an entire episode about fasting, you can again find that
at hubermanlab.com, we'll likely have Satchin Panda, who's an expert in intermittent
fasting, on the podcast. Intermittent fasting has a lot of different potential benefits. For some people, it's a convenient way to
restrict their calories. For other people, it's a
convenient way to avoid eating, that is it's easier to not eat
than to eat a small portion so they opt for intermittent
fasting and so on and so forth. But one of the things
that you hear very often is that some people like being fasted because they like the clarity
of mind that it provides. Here's the situation. Neurons, unless you're
in a ketogenic diet, really thrive on glucose,
they love glucose. And as I mentioned before, your ability to think and perceive things is actually enhanced by having sufficient
glucose in your bloodstream. So why would it be that
some people experience a heightened state of mental
clarity when they are fasted? I've certainly experienced that before. Well, I should say that provided you're well hydrated enough and you have enough
electrolytes in your system, what tends to happen is
that when you ingest food, there's a shift in your nervous system towards so-called parasympathetic mode, that is the more relaxed, you've probably heard
it as rest and digest, although it does other things, the more relaxed mode that can
indeed make us very sleepy. If we have too many carbohydrates, it actually can make us quite sleepy. However, if we have any food, if we have enough of it, that is if our gut is full, it diverts blood to our gut and we become sleepy and
we can't focus as well. So a lot of people really like fasting and the state of being fasted
for focus and concentration because they don't have as much of that parasympathetic activation, they're just not as sleepy. And in fact, under those conditions, half as much caffeine will
give you just as much lift as twice as much caffeine will give you on a full belly of pasta and that's just the way
that caffeine interacts with blood glucose. So what I'd like you to imagine is if you had a measure
of focus from zero to 10, these are arbitrary units, 10 being maximally focused and zero being not focused at all, imagine a U-shaped function, right, where if you're very fasted, you're going to have high degree
of focus and concentration, but then if you ingest some
food and your belly is full, your focus and concentration is reduced. But having enough blood glucose and maybe even elevated blood glucose will increase cognitive function. So there are two ends of the spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, blood glucose is relatively
low and you're fasted and you can think and behave
in a very concentrated way and on the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of blood
glucose, or I should say, sufficient blood glucose, you never want your blood
glucose to be too high, and that allows your neurons
to encode and perceive and basically allow you
to think really clearly. So you sort of have to
pick your condition. What do you want for your bouts
of focus and concentration? I actually do both. So what I do is, as I mentioned before, I eat my meal sometime around 11:00 AM, my first meal typically unless I'm very hungry when I wake up. And so I will do my workout
and one about of focused work. I always think of this as my
hard work early in the day and I do that fasted, I'll be consuming water with electrolytes, maybe LMNT or other electrolytes, maybe some caffeine as well
in the form of yerba mate or coffee, that's my first focus
about of 90 minutes or less, that is essentially done
fasted and then I'll eat and then I do notice after I eat, I actually have a diminished
capacity to focus. But then again in the afternoon, I will do another 90
minute about of focus, and I'll talk about
some of the tools I use to make sure that that
about of focus is optimal for getting the most amount
of focused work done, whether or not it's mental
work or physical work, although I tend to do my
physical work early in the day and my mental work both
early and late in the day. So to make this very simple
or as simple as I can for you being fasted is great for
focus and concentration provided you're not thinking
about food the entire time and being fed is terrific
for focus and concentration, it actually can improve neuronal function provided that you didn't
eat too much food. So one way to manage this is if you're going to have a lunch, to make sure that you don't
stuff yourself at lunch, that you're not overeating
and to not get quite so full that you put your nervous system into this parasympathetic mode and make it hard to
focus in the afternoon. I know a lot of people experience a dip or even a crash in energy in the afternoon that make it really hard to focus. For that reason, I'll just remind people of a tool I've talked
about many times before, which is based on the biology of adenosine and caffeine, et cetera, which is to delay your
first caffeine intake to 90 to 120 minutes after waking up. I know that can be painful
for certain people. I violate that rule, when I'm working out very
early in the morning. I'll drink my caffeine before my workout which often occurs within
30 to 60 minutes of waking. But in general, unless I'm
working out very early, I will ingest my caffeine 90
to 120 minutes after I wake up. So again, I want to emphasize that if you hear somebody out there say being fasted is optimal for
focus and concentration. Well, that is true in one context and perhaps ideal for a
certain part of the day. And other people will say,
no, neurons run on glucose, you need glucose in your bloodstream in order to get those neurons to be tuned, that is to respond with
electrical activity in the optimal way when
you're reading something or when you're trying to perform exercise. Well, that's also true. And of course, you can incorporate both. I, in fact as I just described, incorporate both fasted
states and fed states in order to optimize my
concentration and focus. And as a brief note about ketosis, for those of you that actually managed to transition into ketosis and are maintaining a ketogenic state, that, as I mentioned earlier, can enhance brain function,
concentration and focus because of the way in
which ketones can be used as a so-called optimal fuel for neurons. The ketogenic diet was
originally designed, if you will, for epilepsy, it has a whole relationship to epilepsy and controlling epileptic seizures, and it can in fact allow people to achieve focus,
concentrated brain states. So in the future, I'll do
an episode about ketosis and be sure to circle back
on how to optimize ketosis for focus and concentration. Although I have to believe that most of the people listening to this are probably not in ketosis
or following a ketogenic diet so that's why I mainly focused on fasted states and fed states. And just to make sure that I'm thorough, a fasted state to me would be a state in which you
haven't ingested any calories, but may have ingested caffeine or maybe even a small amount
of artificial sweetener or something like that, but really haven't ingested any significant number of calories in the previous four to
eight or maybe even 12 hours. And again, there's
tremendous variation here, depending on how long people have fasted, whether or not we're
talking about the state right after people wake up, et cetera. Again, if you're interested
in intermittent fasting, both for the sake of mental and physical health and performance, check out our episode on
fasting at hubermanlab.com. I also want to touch back on this idea of which foods can increase focus. You know, in the episode
on ADHD that I did, I touched on this quite a bit as it relates to elimination diets. There's a whole industry and a ton of interest for obvious reasons into what sorts of things kids and adults should and shouldn't eat in order to reduce symptoms of ADHD. I think that the sum total of
those data point to the fact that reducing simple sugar intake and certainly highly processed foods, so ice cream, candy, chips, et cetera, those sorts of things, really does seem to
improve symptoms of ADHD in both children and adults. But once you move past
that and you start to say, well, which foods can improve
concentration and focus? Well, foods that for instance
include a lot of tyrosine, which is a precursor to dopamine, and now you know why dopamine
is important in this context, are certainly going to increase
concentration and focus. So things like Parmesan cheese, certain meats, certain nuts, you can look up which foods contain high amounts of tyrosine. There are also some fruits and vegetables that include high amounts of tyrosine, but to be quite direct, it doesn't matter whether or
not you're ingesting foods that are rich in the precursor amino acids to dopamine, acetylcholine, et cetera, if you are consuming large
amounts of those foods. That is one can look and see for instance, that a steak includes
a lot of the precursors to acetylcholine. It has amino acid precursors
to dopamine as well and there are other foods
that will do that as well, but if I were to ingest
say two ribeye steaks, that's a lot of meat and it will direct a
lot of blood to my gut and it will cause me to be sleepy and that will create challenges of me being able to achieve states
of focus and concentration. So the simple way to put
this is if you eat too much or you eat a very large volume of food, you are going to diminish
your focus and concentration. The key is to eat enough that you're nourished for
the certain activities, mental and physical that
you need to perform, but if you're eating large meals, you are going to diminish
your concentration and focus period. I know many people are curious
as to whether or not caffeine can improve focus and
concentration, and indeed it can. There is an immense amount
of data supporting the idea that caffeine, provided its consumed in
the appropriate dosages, can improve mental performance
and physical performance, and it largely does that through improvements in
focus and concentration. The dosage of caffeine of course, is going to depend on how
caffeine adapted you are, how much caffeine tolerance you have. And that is going to vary tremendously depending on whether or not
you ingest that caffeine with or without food,
as I mentioned earlier. But there is a kind of general range in which we can talk about caffeine as being useful for
focus and concentration. And the range is basically from 100 milligrams to 400 milligrams. I want to caution everybody out there, if you're somebody who
suffers from anxiety or panic attacks, and you're not used to ingesting caffeine and you run out and ingest
400 milligrams of caffeine in the form of espresso or yerba mate or an energy drink or in pill form, that is going to be very
uncomfortable for you, you're going to be sweating profusely, your heart rate is going to increase, you're going to be quite panicked in fact or at least anxious. So be cautious with your
use and adopting of caffeine if you're not already caffeine adapted, but most people do quite well to ingest 100 to 200
milligrams of caffeine prior to doing some focused work. And again, I recommend
delaying your caffeine intake to 90 to 120 minutes after waking, unless you're using that caffeine to really jolt your
system before a workout. Caffeine can of course be
ingested in various forms, even pill form, but most people ingest
it in the form of coffee or my particular favorite
way to ingest caffeine is yerba mate. It is important and I should note that you should actively avoid the smoked versions of yerba mate as they contain a lot of carcinogenic, cancer promoting compounds. There's some great yerba
mate brands out there. The most cost effective way to consume it would be to use the loose leaf tea and to pour water over that. There's one particular brand that I like, I don't have any affiliation
to them whatsoever, but I've been using it
for years, it's Anna Park. It's an organic brand that is
sold, I buy mine on Amazon, you can find it elsewhere
on the internet as well. Again, I don't have any
affiliation to them, it's just very cost effective, very clean, it doesn't have the smoked flavor, at least the one that I buy
is not the smoked variety so none of the carcinogenic
compounds are in there at least that I'm aware of
and I like the way it tastes and it provides a very
even lift and stimulant that I think certainly works for me and that a number of people I know that I have suggested to also enjoy. Yerba mate or caffeine also
have other additional benefits, in particular, the caffeine
in yerba mate and coffee and other sources of caffeine are known to increase
the density and efficacy, that is the number and the
function of dopamine receptors, and this has been shown
in humans several times. So by ingesting caffeine pretty regularly, you're actually increasing
the ability of dopamine to have this effect of
increasing motivation and drive. I tend to ingest caffeine
only early in the day, I tend to cut off my caffeine intake somewhere around one or 2:00 PM to ensure that I can get
into a good night's sleep, but I realize that there
are people out there that ingest caffeine as late as two or three in the afternoon and can still sleep fine. I will caution those of you that think that you can drink caffeine in the evening or nighttime
and still fall asleep. All of the research points to the fact that the architecture of your sleep and the depth of your sleep is disrupted. Even if you're able to
fall and stay asleep, the sleep you're getting
is simply not as good as the sleep you would get if you were to shut off
your caffeine intake at least eight hours before bedtime, and ideally more like 10 or
even 12 hours before bedtime. But of course, there are
practical constraints as well. Okay so caffeine is
increasing dopamine's function by changing the number and
efficacy of dopamine receptors, but of course, it also
increases our wakefulness, our alertness, and that is largely through
the neurochemical systems related to adenosine, which is a molecule that
builds up in our brain and body the longer we are awake, it's part of the sleepiness
system if you will, it makes us feel fatigued or tired, and caffeine also operates
on the epinephrine, the adrenaline system. In fact, if we ingest too much caffeine, we'll sometimes get the jitters. Those jitters are really the
sympathetic, as it's called, nervous system's bias toward movement, and our pupils will dilate,
they actually get broader. Now somewhat paradoxically,
when our pupils get bigger, the pupils of our eyes that is, our visual world actually narrows, it becomes more tunnel-like. A lot of people don't realize this. When our pupils are really
small, that means we are relaxed. So if you ever see someone with really tiny or pin size pupils, they're very relaxed. If their pupils are very
big, they're very dilated, well then they are very amped up, they are very, very alert. Caffeine increases alertness
by increasing epinephrine, adrenaline release both in
the brain and within the body. And so that's another
way that it facilitates focus and concentration. Now there are other ways
to increase epinephrine in the brain and body besides
caffeine or other stimulants, and in fact, that has been studied. There's an excellent study that was carried out not that
long ago on how stress itself can increase our ability
to focus and concentrate, that's right how stress itself can increase focus and concentration. You know, most people think of stress as impairing our ability to focus, but that's actually not true. When we are stressed, it
involves the deployment, the release of adrenaline, epinephrine, and that that adrenaline both
changes our visual field, in other words, it narrows our vision to a more tunnel-like focus, that is it makes the arrow in our metaphor of the arrow more sharp, and it improves our concentration. And this makes sense given
what we know about stress. When we're stressed, we tend to be stressed
about a specific thing, we start anticipating
or wondering or thinking about what's going to happen next? What led up to this? How is this going to impact me? How do I feel right now? It really narrows the context of our thinking and our behavior. So one of my favorite studies
that really illustrates how stress can improve
concentration and performance is one that was published
not that long ago and I will provide a link
to this in the show notes. It's a paper published in the "Journal of Experimental
Psychology" in 2020. The title of the paper
is, not surprisingly, "Acute stress improves
concentration performance", first author DeGroote, d-e-g-r-o-o-t-e. And this study involved
taking a number of subjects and stressing them out or not prior to a cognitive
or concentration task. And there are a lot of data in this paper, but I'm just going to hone in
on one specific set of data. And I should mention as I go there, that they measured things like
cortisol, a stress hormone, they measured anxiety, it
was a quite thorough study. And what they found was that
concentration performance improved manyfold, I should say, from, there was a greater than doubling of concentration and
performance in the stress group. And stress in this context was provided using a standard way of inducing stress. What they basically do is they bring subjects into the laboratory and they have to either do
something fairly mundane in the control group or they have to do a
simulated job interview, an arithmetic task, and they're being evaluated
as they're doing this. So this isn't intense psychosocial stress. They're not watching anything disturbing, they're not being traumatized
in any kind of way. This is fairly low levels of stress that raised their levels of epinephrine, and we know this from this study, and their levels of cortisol,
another stress hormone, modestly within their brain and blood. But that even modest increase
in these stress hormones and their reported
psychological levels of stress really enhanced their
focus and concentration. This may come as surprising
'cause like many people think, gosh, stress really diminishes
cognitive performance, but that's absolutely wrong, stress improves cognitive performance. Now of course there are other
ways to increase stress levels and to do that in healthy ways to improve concentration and performance and one of the best ways to do that because it's so sure fire
and it's generally safe provided you do it safely
is deliberate cold exposure. This is something I've talked
about on the podcast before, but deliberate cold
exposure can be achieved by getting into a cold shower
for one to five minutes. If you're not used to it, you probably want to
start with one minute, or you can get into an ice bath, and nowadays there are
a number of different commercial sources of
circulating cold water or if you have access
to a body of cold water like a lake or a pool or an ocean. We know that getting into
cold water or under cold water greatly increases epinephrine
levels and dopamine levels in the brain and blood. There's a beautiful
study that was published in the European Journal of Physiology that showed that the increases
in dopamine are massive, near doubling or more of dopamine levels that are
very long lasting for hours, and epinephrine, and
indeed cortisol levels are also increased, and in ways that support not just immune system
function because they do that, and mood because it does that, but they can really improve
concentration and focus. I touched on this a little
bit in an episode about memory that there's an age old practice really dating back to medieval times of putting people into cold water right after they learn
something in order to spike, to increase their epinephrine as a way to consolidate those memories. For the sake of today's discussion, if you are interested in ways to improve
focus and concentration, you need to increase your epinephrine, your adrenaline levels. Cold water exposure is one of the most
efficient ways to do that. This is not a biohack. I don't like the word hack, I know it's commonly used, but a hack is something
where you're using one thing for a different purpose than
it was originally intended for and here, I'm not referring to the shower or the cold bath, I'm referring to epinephrine. Epinephrine is a neurochemical that will place your vision
into more of a tunnel mode, which will allow you to focus on cognitive work or physical
work in a more specific way, you're not going to be as distractable, and it's very easy to achieve by getting into a cold shower
or a cold body of water for a brief period of time. People always ask how long to
get under or into cold water and how cold to make it. Here's the thing, it should
be uncomfortably cold, but safe to stay in for
one to five minutes. Okay so uncomfortably cold,
you really want to get out, but safe to stay in, not so cold that it's going
to give you a heart attack and not so warm that it's comfortable that it doesn't create
that adrenaline release. Cold water exposure, I should say deliberate, cold water or non deliberate cold water exposure reliably increases epinephrine levels. It is incredibly useful
as a tool for this, and it is in fact, zero cost
or even negative zero cost. How could it be negative zero cost? Well, you can certainly
save on your heating bill by taking a cold shower so that's one way. And for those of you that
have access to devices or locations where you
can get into cold water, you can submerge, well then that can work. For those of you that don't,
maybe you take a cold bath, you get in up to your neck,
that's going to be most efficient. For those of you that can't do that, you'll get under a cold shower. Again, it should be comfortably cold to the point where you want to get out, but that you can safely stay
in for one to five minutes. How long should you do
it before a workout? Well, if you get into really cold water, it's uncomfortably cold and get out after about three minutes, you're probably good to go,
dry off and get to work. Some of you might think
this is a little bit silly as a tool for focus and concentration, but if you look at the data on epinephrine and how powerfully it can increase focus, I think you'd be very impressed. I mean it certainly can
increase one's ability to attend to specific visual stimuli, so for reading or math work, et cetera, it's going to be very useful. And of course you don't
want to make it so cold that you're shivering and
chattering the whole time. And of course you could, if you like, combine this with 40 HZ binaural beats, there's no reason why you couldn't combine
the two protocols. But the point here is that a
lot of people would love to and I think ought to leverage the health promoting and powerful effects of increasing epinephrine
on focusing concentration and running out and getting
stressed by a life event or getting into an argument
or something like that simply as a way to increase
focus and concentration doesn't seem that adaptive to me. So deliberate cold exposure is a straightforward way to do that, it doesn't involve anyone else, I suppose you could do
it with somebody else, but it doesn't require anyone else. And again, there are zero low and even negative cost
ways to approach that. If you'd like to know how long the positive effects of epinephrine last toward improving focus and concentration, well, if we look to that
study from DeGroote et al, the acute stress improves
cognitive performance study, they measured concentration before and 30 minutes after
the stress was induced and there does appear to
be a quite long lasting, really up to an hour or more effect of increasing epinephrine. So how might you apply
these sorts of protocols early in the day or later in the day? Well, one suggestion or one
potential protocol would be if you're going to sit
down and do some work, if you're already feeling
alert and focused, no need to reach to this tool, but if you're feeling like
your focus and alertness isn't quite where you'd like it to be, you could take a three
minute very cold shower or submerge yourself in cold
water for three minutes, you might have a cup of coffee as well and then sit down and do that work, maybe even throw in the
40 HZ binaural beats. All of that would be layering
in the different systems, the different neurochemicals, such as acetylcholine,
epinephrine and dopamine, that are going to lend themselves to a really terrific 90
minute or less work about. Now I'd like to discuss some
of the purely behavioral tools that quality peer reviewed science say can improve focus and
concentration significantly. At the beginning of today's episode, I talked about the study
from Dr. Wendy Suzuki's lab where they explored a 13 minute meditation done every day for a
period of eight weeks. That meditation led to
significant improvements in focus and concentration ability, as well as other aspects
of cognitive performance. It also improved mood and reduced stress. So you might be wondering what
exactly is this meditation? The meditation is very simple and it's one that anyone can perform. What you would want to do is set a timer for about 13 minutes, I don't think it has to
be exactly 13 minutes, but since that's what they
included in the study, you would set a timer for 13 minutes. You would sit or lie
down, close your eyes, and you would simply
focus on your breathing. Most people are going to benefit from only doing that
breathing through their nose, but if you have some sort of obstruction or inability to breathe
just through your nose, you could probably also do it by breathing through your nose
and mouth or just your mouth. But ideally you would
do just nasal breathing for a period of 13 minutes, concentrating on that breathing, and concentrating, meaning
bringing your awareness, your so-called interoceptive awareness if you wanted to get
really technical about it, your interoceptive awareness to a point just about an
inch inside of your forehead. Now, of course, that might sound kind
of gory to some of you, you've never actually
been inside your forehead, but just about an inch
behind your forehead is where you would want to
place your concentration while also concentrating
on your breathing. Now here's the thing about meditation that all studies of meditation show, which is that unless you are
a very experienced meditator, your concentration, your focus will drift away from your breathing and away from that location
about an inch inside your head, inside your brain, about
just behind your forehead. That will happen maybe every
10 seconds, every 20 seconds, maybe even every five seconds, but an important part of
such a meditation practice to improve concentration and focus is that you are continually refocusing back to that specific location and refocusing back on your breath. This is something that again,
is not often discussed. People think that if you do a meditation and you're supposed to
concentrate on your breath, that if your mind drifts that somehow you failed
in that meditation, but actually that's not the case. A huge component of improving your ability to focus and concentrate
by way of neuroplasticity, rewiring of the circuits
for focus and concentration, is the repeated return to a state of focus from a state of non-focus
or diminished focus. So think about it like trying
to drive down the freeway and staying between the
lane lines, excuse me. And every once in a while, because there's a bit
of drift on the vehicle, maybe the wheels aren't aligned correctly or there's something else
wrong with the chassis or the steering device, it starts to drift right a little bit, then you hit the rumble strip to go rrrr, and then you pull back to the center. That's really what a focused
meditation practice is about as opposed to expecting yourself to stay between the mental
lane lines, so to speak. So if you're somebody who's
going to do a practice of the sort that I described, 13 minute meditation practice every day, you'd want to sit or lie
down, close your eyes, start to concentrate on your breath, focus your attention on a location about an
inch behind your forehead, and then fully expect that at some point, you'll be thinking about something else, and that's a cue to focus
back to that location just about an inch behind your forehead and back to your breath. By doing that repeatedly over and over, what you're really training up is the network within your brain that indeed includes
that prefrontal cortex that you're focusing on as
well as some other structures, the inferior temporal cortex,
indeed the hippocampus, a structure associated with memory, and other components of the neural circuit that are involved in directing our mental focus and concentration. Again, I can't emphasize the importance of this practice being one
of focusing and refocusing. In fact, I would prefer
to call such a practice, a refocus focused meditation,
or a constantly refocusing, or maybe you all can come up
with a better name for it, I'm certainly not that
good at naming things, but this sort of meditation practice has been shown in the study by the Suzuki
lab and other studies to really improve people's ability to focus and remain focused, so much so that in the beautiful
book, "Altered States," they describe a number of
different meditation practices, some a little bit longer than
the one that I described, one that's 17 minutes,
another one that's 30 minutes, some people will meditate
as long as 60 minutes a day, although that's quite a
long time, in my opinion. The point here isn't how long you focus or somehow trying to achieve total focus for the entire 13 minute or 17 minute or 60 minute about of meditation. While that would be wonderful and I think many people aspire to do that, that's a lot of hard mental work. I think for most people out
there, including myself, a relatively short meditation
practice of about 13 minutes in which you fully expect your focus and concentration to drift, but that you are continually refocusing is going to be the most effective, yes, indeed, the most effective at teaching yourself to
focus and stay concentrated. In fact, I invite you to interpret every time that you
focus off that location about one inch behind your forehead, as an opportunity to refocus and think about the
refocusing as the trigger for teaching your neural circuits how to focus for extended periods of time. And as a bonus to that sort
of meditation practice, the study from Wendy Suzuki's lab also showed that people
experience improvements in sleep and improvements in memory, so not just improvements in
mood and reduction in stress and improvements in
focus and concentration, but all these other positive benefits from just doing that 13 minute
a day meditation practice. It's one that I've started to adopt and have felt tremendous benefit from and that I encourage many
of you to try as well. The one cautionary note is the one that I mentioned at
the beginning of the episode, which is because the refocus
as I'll call it, meditation, does involve a significant
amount of effort and engagement of these
prefrontal cortical circuits, it is disruptive to sleep if
performed too closely to sleep. So if you are going to do that practice, I recommend that you not do it within the four hours
prior to your bedtime. Earlier I mentioned that I would talk about
ways to improve focus if you are sleep deprived. This is something that
I'm all too familiar with. I put a lot of effort
into optimizing my sleep, that's something that
with each passing year, I put more and more effort into, again, because sleep is so vital for mental health, physical health and performance of all kinds, but certainly in my role as a student, in my role as a professor
and in my role in life, I've had numerous times in which I simply did not get enough sleep or my sleep was terrible
for whatever reason, and yet I still had work
demands and social demands, et cetera. One practice that is very effective at allowing you to focus better than you would otherwise under conditions of sleep deprivation is so called non-sleep deep rest or NSDR. This is also referred to
sometimes as yoga nidra. Yoga nidra actually means yoga sleep. Yoga nidra is a practice of
lying down for about 10 to 30 sometimes even as long as 60 minutes, you listen to a script,
it's an audio script, that takes you through a
progressive deep relaxation, it involves a body scan, some long exhale breathing. It is very restorative in the
sense that one tends to emerge from yoga nidra or NSDR
feeling greatly refreshed compared to how you felt prior to it. There is also terrific neuroimaging data from laboratories in Denmark showing that there's a
restoration of dopamine levels in the so-called basal ganglia
after NSDR AKA yoga nidra. Whether or not you call
it yoga nidra or NSDR, which is what I refer to
it as, non-sleep deep rest, you can find these scripts at
zero cost in multiple places. You can find there are
certain apps that are NSDR or yoga nidra apps. There is a NSDR protocol that was put out there by
Madefor which is on YouTube that you can access for free. There is a NSDR or I should
say a number of NSDR protocols through the Virtusan app. There are, again, number
of different places that one can access NSDR protocols. I do NSDR for 10 to 30 minutes
per day every single day, not just on days where I'm sleep deprived. If I happen to be sleep deprived, I would extend that NSDR
to 30 or 60 minutes. And when you do that NSDR will depend on when you
have time for that NSDR. When I haven't slept well, what I'll try and do is find a quiet place where I can do NSDR for
30 or ideally 60 minutes. Sometimes I will fall back
asleep during that NSDR, that's fine if you do that, but most people will stay
awake during the NSDR, and then I'll emerge from
that and go about my day. If in the afternoon, I'm very fatigued
because of lack of sleep, I might do another NSDR
of 10 to 30 or 60 minutes, and then another work about. Again, NSDR is something I do every day. I talked a lot about this in
the episodes related to sleep, because it can help you get better at falling and staying asleep at night in addition to feeling restorative in that immediate timeframe of the day in which you do NSDR, so it's immensely
beneficial at various times and for various purposes. But here within the context of trying to concentrate and focus when you're sleep deprived, NSDR, AKA yoga nidra is an
immensely beneficial practice. There's growing amounts of quality science pointing to the neurochemical
replenishing effects, as I mentioned before, dopamine, but also the potential for NSDR to replace sleep that you've lost. I would never want anyone
to try and use NSDR as a total replacement for sleep, but under conditions in which
you cannot control your sleep, NSDR is going to be the
best way that I am aware of to restore your ability
to focus and concentrate for whatever purpose. And if you emerge from your NSDR and then drink some caffeine, you'll notice an even greater capacity for focus and concentration for all the reasons directly
related to caffeine. So again, NSDR is a general tool for enhancing your ability to sleep and it's a tool that you can use in order to compensate for,
at least to some degree, compensate for lost sleep when you need to focus and concentrate. One thing that really
contrasts NSDR and yoga nidra with the sort of focused meditation that I talked about a few minutes ago, the 13 minute meditation, is that during the 13 minute meditation, you're actively trying
to refocus and focus, whereas during NSDR and yoga nidra, you're actually trying to defocus. So you can think of the
13 minute meditation for refocusing and focusing as directly tapping into and mediating improvements in the circuitry
for focus and concentration whereas you can think
of NSDR and yoga nidra as modulating your brain and body state to allow you to focus
and concentrate better. Now another tool that you can use to directly tap in to the circuits for
focus and concentration and to greatly accelerate
neuroplasticity, the improvements, or I should say the
changes in those circuits that will allow you to
focus and concentrate better is hypnosis. A lot of people hear hypnosis
and they think stage hypnosis, you know, people squawking like chickens and doing things against their will, but actually hypnosis is a atypical but highly accessible brain state that's been studied with a lot of rigor at Stanford University School of Medicine by my colleague, Dr. David Spiegel, he's been a guest on
this podcast previously. Hypnosis is a unique brain state because it's one in which
you are deeply focused and yet deeply relaxed. So to just sort of set up
the array of practices here so you can think about them logically, the focus refocus meditation is based on and focused
on focus, no pun intended. NSDR and yoga nidra are
aimed at deep relaxation. Hypnosis is this atypical,
very powerful brain state in which you combine high levels of focus and deep relaxation. Now it's a little bit of a tough one to just take oneself into, but fortunately, there's a tool based on a lot of quality
peer-reviewed research from the Spiegel lab and other labs and that is the Reveri app, r-e-v-e-r-i. The Reveri app is available for no cost, at least for a period of time and then I think they place
certain elements of it behind a pay wall, but you can try at zero cost, it's available for Apple, soon I think also to be
available for Android, and they have specific hypnosis protocols that you listen to, and these
are very brief protocols, follow the instructions, you're listening to a
particular audio script of David Spiegel himself, and some progressive breathing and actually some eye movements that are directly linked
to the neural circuits that allow for these highly
focused, deeply relaxed states. And there are components
within the Reveri app specifically geared towards improving focus and concentration. So again, there's meditation for focus, there's deliberate
decompression, NSDR, yoga nidra, which take you into deep relaxation, and then hypnosis is this very
special, very directed state of highly focused and highly relaxed, or I should say deeply relaxed, that allow access to the neural circuits for focus and concentration and allow you to tune those
up and to improve those very significantly in a
very brief amount of time. And again, some of those hypnosis scripts are as short as eight minutes, some are as long as 13 minutes. So what we're really talking
about here are zero cost tools that directly tap into
the neural circuits, the components within your brain, that allow for deep relaxation,
allow for deep focus, and improve your ability to
focus and concentrate over time simply by repeating these. How often do you need to
repeat the Reveri hypnosis for focus and concentration
before you see benefits? Well, that will vary
from person to person. I tend to use it once
every third or fourth day and have experienced
tremendous benefits from it. I don't think I'm unique in that sense, they have a lot of data
to support this Reveri app and the protocols within it. How long do you have to do NSDR before you experience those benefits? There, I would say the
first time and every time, because it's so deeply relaxing that you emerge from it
feeling quite restored relative to how you went into it. And as I mentioned earlier
in the study on meditation, it took about eight weeks to see the effects that
they observed in that study, but they didn't observe
shorter time points. So I highly encourage
people to explore meditation geared towards focus and refocus, also NSDR, nonsleep deep
rest, AKA yoga nidra, and the Reveri app, Specifically the hypnosis
within the Reveri app, that's geared towards improving
focus and concentration. All of these have terrific
science to support them, this is not woo science or hacks or just something that
people came up with. This is all grounded in work from some of the best
universities in the world, from excellent groups who've looked at underlying
neural mechanisms and measured things with a lot of rigor, et cetera, et cetera. These tools are available to you, I highly recommend that you use them. And if you're interested in the optimal time of day to do these, we already mentioned that
the focus refocus meditation shouldn't be done too close to sleep, the Reveri hypnosis app can
be done at any time really, in fact, there's a component of falling back of sleep in there, in other words, a hypnosis
specifically geared toward helping people teach
themselves to fall back asleep when they wake up in
the middle of the night. NSDR, I always say, can be done first thing in
the morning, in the afternoon or any time of day, and in fact, I'll sometimes do that in
the middle of the night if I happen to wake up and
need to get back to sleep. So really these tools can be
applied most any time of day, except for that one caveat about the focus refocus meditation not being done too close to sleep. Now there's another
set of behavioral tools that can really help enhance
one's ability to focus and those are visual based tools. In fact, the tools I'm about to describe are actually being employed
in a number of schools in China and elsewhere in
order to teach children to focus better and for
longer periods of time. The key principle here is that
much of our cognitive focus, our ability to think about
something in a very specific way and stay focused on it, to read or to follow
a line of conversation or math or music, et cetera, is going to be directed
by our visual system. Our visual system has two
forms of attention and focus. One is overt focus, which
is very straightforward. If I'm looking at the tip of my pen, for those of who are listening right now, I'm looking at the tip of
my pen, that's overt focus, I'm focusing on it with my eyes, and of course, the rest of
my brain then will follow and start to analyze the
details of what I'm seeing and the contours of the pen, et cetera. It seems sort of obvious
when you first hear it, but our cognitive focus tends to follow our overt visual focus. That's also why they
put blinders on horses. That's also why sometimes
wearing a hoodie or a hat or limiting your visual field in some way can help you enhance your cognitive focus, it can help limit distraction. You're just not seeing as much. It's also why when we ingest caffeine or any kind of stimulant
or we are stressed and our pupils dilate and our vision becomes more tunnel-like, less panoramic, but more tunnel-like, you know they say a soda
straw view of the world or you're looking through a tunnel, your focus, your visual focus is actually driving your cognitive focus. Your cognitive focus is
narrower than it would be if you were seeing the
whole scene that you're in. So when you hear this, it sounds obvious, but for many people,
including many scientists, it's just not obvious that
this would be the case. However, that is the case, your visual focus drives
your cognitive focus. So what is a practice that has been studied
in various laboratories and that's being employed
in various schools? Is to have children or adults
visually focus on one location for a given period of time. How long? Anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes, and believe it or not, three minutes is a long time to maintain visual focus at one location. If you were to try that right now, you'd probably find it
to be a bit of a strain, but if you want to try it, you can. Keep in mind, you yes,
are allowed to blink, but also keep in mind that
meditation refocusing practice that we talked about earlier, that the refocusing is the key component of teaching yourself or your brain, you are your brain, your brain is you, but to teach yourself how to focus better. So if you're going to
incorporate this practice, what you would want to
do is pick a location, it could be on a wall, it could be on your
computer in front of you, although I would encourage it to not be the contents
of your computer screen, you might just want to blank your screen, you might want to put a piece of paper with a crosshatch there,
any sort of visual target, or you can imagine a visual target and then focus your visual
attention on that target and try to breathe normally,
try and stay relaxed, and certainly allow yourself to blink so that your eyes don't try out. This is not a test of how long
you can go without blinking. By focusing on that particular location and by forcing yourself to
refocus on that location anytime your gaze, your vision
drifts from that location, you are encouraging the circuits for focus to get better at focusing
for longer and longer and at refocusing when your focus drifts off of that location. This is incorporating neural circuits, including the prefrontal cortex, things like the frontal eye fields. For those of you curious
about the underlying biology, this practice is
recruiting certain elements of your so-called prefrontal cortex, also the frontal eye fields, which are locations not far
from the prefrontal cortex, that are involved in
deliberately directing your gaze to particular locations in space, not outer space, although you could do this by
focusing on stars I suppose, but in visual space. Now I mentioned before that this is overt visual
focus and attention, you are overtly looking at that location, but one also very powerful practice for improving focus and concentration is to use covert focus. Covert focus is where my gaze, my eyes are focused on one
location, such as my pen, but my focus is actually directed elsewhere in the room
or location that I'm in. My mind and to some extent
my peripheral vision is focused in this case on
the door just to my left in the room that I'm in. That takes a little bit more effort. This is something that
all old world primates, of which we are old world
primates, are able to do. And it probably evolved
as part of the mechanism by which animals could
evaluate their scene, evaluate predators,
evaluate other primates while not necessarily
staring at them directly so they can obtain information, we can obtain information
without having to direct our gaze specifically to one location. Maybe we can obtain information
from multiple locations, indeed, we can. Without getting too far
down the rabbit hole of how vision and cognition relate, because we've done episodes
on that previously, and simply focusing on the
tools that can be incorporated to improve focus and concentration,
here's what I recommend. Set yourself a low bar
at first and set a timer and try to focus on one
location for 30 seconds and that's it for that day. The next day, you might add five seconds, and then the next day,
five seconds after that. If you miss a day, no big deal, simply do the practice for
the same amount of time that you did the last time
that you did the practice, and then gradually try and
increase the amount of time that you can focus on one
visual location overtly by looking directly at that location. If you like, and if you
feel you have the ability, you can try and do this through
covert attention and focus by looking straight forward for instance, and attending to something
in the corner of the room and trying to do that for 30 seconds, you'll find that that's
quite a bit harder, and then extending that by five seconds every time you do the practice. This is something that I
don't think you necessarily have to build up to being
able to do for a full hour in order to extract the benefits. In fact, the best way to
think about this practice is as a means to get into a focused state. If you remember back
about an hour or so ago, I was talking about how focused states are not a drop all the way in
and then exit type phenomenon. We don't just drop into a focused state the same way we don't drop
into the peak performance of a workout, we warm up. So what I recommend is having a 30 second to three minute period at the
beginning of a about to focus where you're going to
do work or physical work and anchoring your vision to one location somewhere in the room or if you want to do it
covertly, you can do that, setting a timer and trying to do that for anywhere from 30
seconds to three minutes. What you're doing when
you exercise that practice is you are ramping up neural activity within the neural circuits that create focus and concentration. Then, I would stop
looking at that location or that covert location and then I would move to the
work that you're trying to do, either mental work or physical work. And if about halfway
through your 90 minute about or at some point in your 90
minute about of work or exercise, you feel that your
concentration is drifting rather than look at your phone and scroll through the
thousands of contexts that exists within social
media or your phone, try just picking a
location again on the wall, focusing back on that location, using that as a ramp up to then direct your focus back towards, if your weight training, sets and reps that you
might be performing, if you're running, you might do this, or
cycling you might do this by focusing on a particular location and really homing in on
that location physically. And this is a practice that a
lot of athletes use in fact, and if you're say doing
musical practice or math, well then, you'd want
to focus on something other than the task that
you're trying to perform. But again, using visual focus as a way to ramp up and
increase your overall ability to focus and concentrate, and then applying that to whatever it is that you're trying to learn or perform. Next, I'd like to talk about compounds that can improve concentration and focus, and these are most often
consumed as supplements, although some of them, I should mention, can also be derived from food. Again, I just want to remind you that there are things,
in this case compounds, that can modulate a biological mechanism, that is can modulate
focus and concentration, and there are compounds that can mediate, can directly contribute to
concentration and focus. One of the key compounds that supports concentration and focus because it generally supports
mood, concentration and focus and brain function in general are the omega-3 essential fatty acids. I've talked about the
omega-3 essential fatty acids in a variety of contexts,
in particular depression, but also ADHD, there are
interesting data on that, and it's really clear that getting somewhere between
one and three grams of EPA, that is one to three grams of EPA essential fatty acid
per day can improve outcomes, that is can improve mood and
can improve cognitive function. And while there's some debate about whether or not it can
improve cardiac function, it's very clear, at least to me, that ingesting one to three grams of EPA essential fatty
acid per day is beneficial. But again, in the context
of focus and concentration, it's in modulating the neural
circuits and brain function that are going to support
focus and concentration. It's not as if taking one to three grams of EPA essential fatty acid per day is going to tap directly into only the circuits for
focus and concentration. That said, and as discussed on the episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast
with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and on the episode on ADHD that I did, and on the episode on
depression that I did, I make it a point to
ingest one to three grams of EPAs per day. You can get those EPAs from other sources besides
supplements, of course, but supplements are going to
be the easiest way to do that. You could do that through liquid form, fish oil, cod liver oil, some people who are vegan opt
for other sources of EPAs, you can find those out there certainly. Some people even use prescription EPAs to get the dosage really high. Dr. Ronda Patrick talked about
this in the episode with me, that's actually something that she does. I don't take the prescription form, I get them through pill form through our supplement
affiliate, which is Momentous, but there are a number of
different quality sources of EPAs out there. And some of those quality
sources also include things like fatty fish, algae,
and things of that sort. So I'll leave it to you as to
whether or not you supplement with omega-3 fatty acids in order to get that one
to three grams per day or whether or not you do it through food, but I would encourage you to
try and reach that threshold because there are a number
of known positive effects for mood and brain function generally. The other thing that can
positively modulate brain function and that actually works as a
fuel for neurons to function and can improve cognitive performance, and particularly within
the brain circuits, such as the prefrontal cortex, that are involved in concentration
and focus is creatine. I know many people are familiar
with creatine monohydrate for its effects on muscle growth and strength and performance, but it's quite clear that the
bulk of scientific studies have examined the role of
creatine in the clinical context and as its role in improving
cognitive performance. So my read of the literature
has led to a practice in which I ingest five grams per day of creatine monohydrate, the sort of standard
form that's available in, this is generally available as a powder, that's certainly how I take it. I'll take the creatine powder, I'll mix it with water or
with my Athletic Greens or some sort of electrolyte drink, whatever liquid happens to be
convenient to ingest that in, the time of day doesn't
really seem to be important. Some people are strong believers in consuming creatine post-workout. While that might be beneficial, I simply take it in the
morning or post-workout, it sort of depends on when
I remember to take it, but that five grams of creatine per day, in my case, really isn't
geared towards muscle growth or strength or performance as much as it's geared toward tapping into the creatine
phosphate system within the brain and specifically the benefits of creatine for prefrontal cortical
networks, again, modulating, not directly mediating, but modulating and generally supporting the brain networks that
are going to allow me to generate focus and concentration. So much like sleep, much
like omega-3 fatty acids, creatine monohydrate five grams a day seems to generally support brain function, which will generally support
concentration and focus. Now in terms of compounds that more specifically mediate
concentration and focus, we have to go back to
that arrow metaphor model that we talked about at the
beginning of the episode, that included epinephrine,
adrenaline, acetylcholine, which acts as this attentional spotlight, in fact, acetylcholine and
elevated levels of acetylcholine have been shown over and over again through beautiful work from
Mike Merzenich's lab at UCSF and the Kilgard Lab down in Houston, and a number of other labs, including Norm Weinberger's
lab at UC Irvine, again and again, to improve or even directly
gate neuroplasticity by increasing focus directly. That's a lot of word soup, but basically what happens is if acetylcholine transmission is increased even
transiently within the brain, there's a greater opportunity for neuroplasticity to take place. And the reason there's
a greater opportunity for neuroplasticity, AKA
learning to take place, is by way of the increased focus that spiking acetylcholine can provide. As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of different
foods which contain choline, you can look those up online, choline acting as an amino acid
precursor to acetylcholine, but of course, there are
compounds, there are supplements that can further and more
acutely increase acetylcholine, and indeed, I use these myself. The most effective one
I've found is Alpha-GPC. Alpha-GPC consumed at dosages of 300 milligrams to 600 milligrams prior to a work about
or prior to a workout greatly increase one's ability
to focus and concentrate, at least that's been my experience, and there are some good data in humans. So how would I use Alpha-GPC? I would use Alpha-GPC by taking
it about 10 to 20 minutes prior to any time I want to focus or concentrate very deeply. I've taken as much as 600
milligrams at one time, although I find that 300
milligrams is enough for me, and I tend to be quite
sensitive to supplements and caffeine in general, so I'll sometimes take
it alongside yerba mate or with yerba mate or with
coffee prior to a workout or prior to a about of work in which I'm focusing on mental work. So it could be reading, writing, could be math, could be data analysis, could be anything where I need a lot of
focus and concentration. Now a number of people have contacted me about a recent study
suggesting that Alpha-GPC when taken chronically over many years could increase one's
vulnerability to stroke. I've looked at those data
and my read of the data is that they're not very conclusive, although anytime you
see something like that, a study that's pointing to the fact that a given compound might increase the propensity for stroke, you obviously want to be concerned. So we have to ask ourselves
how, by what mechanism that is, could Alpha-GPC be increasing
the susceptibility to stroke? And it seems to be related
to increases in TMAO, which is a marker related to
the cardiovascular system. And one known way to
offset increases in TMAO that are associated either with Alpha-GPC or increases due to other things, so ingestion of particular food compounds actually can increase TMAO, is to offset that by taking
600 milligrams of garlic. Now I've been taking Alpha-GPC pretty consistently for a number of years. I do not take it every day. I would say I take it
about four days per week, again, prior to workouts
or bouts of cognitive work. I have not seen my TMAO spike and I've evaluated that
by way of blood tests, but nonetheless, I take
600 milligrams of garlic in capsule form anytime I eat anyway and I do that for general
cardiovascular function and there's some interesting data on immune system function,
et cetera for garlic. So I've been consuming 600
milligram capsules of garlic for some period of time. Some days, I'll ingest just
one 600 milligram capsule, other times, I'll take two, but based on this recent study
and the concerns about TMAO, I make it a point to always ingest a 600
milligram capsule of garlic anytime I take Alpha-GPC, which again for me is
about four days per week. So in our model of attention and focus, you can now clearly see
why taking Alpha-GPC, which increases acetylcholine transmission would be beneficial for
concentration and focus and why taking it with a double espresso or why taking it with yerba mate would further increase
concentration and focus because as I mentioned earlier, caffeine is going to increase epinephrine. It's also going to increase the density of dopamine receptors and the Alpha-GPC is going
to increase acetylcholine, this spotlighting for cognition, this ability to really
amplify the activity of specific neural networks, which is largely what's happening when you're trying to focus and pay attention to
something specifically. So if one wants to increase the amount of dopamine
transmission in the brain and body for sake of increasing
concentration and focus, one of the most efficient ways to do that is by ingestion of the
amino acid L-tyrosine. Again, L-tyrosine can be
derived from food sources, I invite you to look up those various food sources on the web, simply go to a web browser and put in foods that contain a lot of L-tyrosine and you'll get a rich array
of choices to select from. But in my case, I use
L-tyrosine in capsule form. I will take 500 milligrams of L-tyrosine, 300 milligrams of Alpha-GPC
and a cup of coffee. I'm careful to do this early in the day, certainly not after two or 3:00 PM because I don't want
to diminish my ability to fall and stay asleep that night. I'll do this early in
the day before a workout or before a about of
concentrated mental work. Again, I tend to do this
about four days per week, so certainly not every
time I sit down to do work. And I should also mention that I still tend to do
the behavioral tools. I'll tend to use five
minutes of binaural beats or binaural beats
throughout the work session, sometimes do a ice bath
or a cold shower before. I don't want to give the impression that I combine every tool
that I've talked about today for a given workout. I mean, that would be pretty
wild to take a cold shower, pop an L-tyrosine, take an Alpha-GPC, drink two espresso,
listen to binaural beats. That to me seems like
a very inefficient way to go about life. In fact, I make it a
point to try and use tools to increase my ability
to concentrate and focus, but not to combine more
than two or three of them at any one time. And when I say two or three, what I mean is I will use
supplements like Alpha-GPC, L-Tyrosine and caffeine together
before certain work bouts, I might use the visual practice of focusing on a given
location for a minute before I begin that work about, I might combine those. Then another time I
might take a cold shower prior to doing some work. Other days, I confess,
I've slept very well or my enthusiasm about what
I'm about to work on is such that I don't require any of these tools. Again, there's no requirement, there's no pressure to
use any of these tools, behavioral, supplement based or otherwise. It's simply a matter of using the tools that are going to allow you to achieve the states you want to achieve and to improve your ability
to go into those states without any help at all. And this is what I find particularly attractive about supplements. It's not so much that they put you into the ideal state for that work and then you accomplish that work and then you always rely
on those supplements. I prefer to look at supplements of the sort that I just described as a route into a deeper trench
of focus and concentration that I use as a tool to teach myself to focus and concentrate more deeply, such that I don't need those tools every single time I try
and focus and concentrate. I think this is an important point because I think that many
people think of supplements as a crutch or a way of
simply getting into a state for which no other tool
will suffice or replace. But in that context, I want to remind you of the
larger context of pharmacology, which is the vast landscape of prescription pharmacology for ADHD, for attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder. Now I covered that
landscape in intense detail on the episode on ADHD and focus. And just to summarize, there is of course, Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse,
Modafinil, Armodafinil, a number of different compounds, all of which generally
increase dopamine transmission in the brain, so increasing dopamine, and all of which generally
increase epinephrine, adrenaline transmission
in the brain and body. And many of those compounds have been of tremendous benefit to children and even some
adults who suffer from ADHD. So properly prescribed at
the appropriate dosage, those compounds can really help people with clinically diagnosed ADHD. The way they help those people
is a bit surprising, however. You might think, well they
turn on the brain chemicals that allow those people
to concentrate and focus. That's true, but they also have the benefit of teaching those brain
circuits how to engage. And that's one of the reasons
why somewhat paradoxically giving a stimulant like
Ritalin or Adderall to a kid that legitimately needs it, obviously, you don't want to
do this without the oversight and careful evaluation of a psychiatrist, but giving that to a
kid who has severe ADHD, you would think would make
them more rambunctious, less able to focus and
more distractible overall. After all, Ritalin,
Modafinil, Armodafinil, all these things are stimulants. So you take a kid who has attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder and give them these drugs that increase transmission
of dopamine and epinephrine and you think, wow,
it's going to make them even more distractible and hyperactive and indeed, it has the opposite effect. It doesn't necessarily
make them feel calm, but it makes them feel
that they can focus, they really can anchor their attention. And the idea is that it's
teaching those neural circuits or those neural circuits
rather are teaching themselves to engage and to focus and concentrate. And the ideal situation is one in which the total dosage of those
compounds, those drugs, can be reduced over time as those circuits learn to come online through purely behavioral tools. Now oftentimes, there's a
maintenance of those drugs over long periods of time, although there is a
common practice nowadays of trying to diminish the dosage overall. That's in the context of ADHD
and prescription medication and I acknowledge that a lot, indeed 80% or more of college
students say the statistics are using prescription drugs when they are not in fact prescribed those prescription drugs. So basically what I'm saying is there are a lot of people using drugs designed for ADHD and narcolepsy because those drugs will effectively increase
focus and concentration, but I strongly discourage the use of powerful prescription drugs that have not been prescribed to you. First of all, it's illegal. Second of all, it's quite dangerous to hit the accelerator
of those neural circuits with such vigor because it can increase dependency and they can have a number
of other side effects outside the context of
clinically diagnosed and prescribed ADHD medication. But in the context of supplementation, the increase in dopamine,
acetylcholine and epinephrine that one can achieve from say
500 milligrams of L-tyrosine, 300 milligrams of Alpha-GPC
and a cup of coffee is going to be substantially less than one would see for prescription drugs. So you're getting a modest effect that can similarly teach
those brain circuits for focus and concentration
how to engage better. But as a general backdrop to all of this, I always say and I'll
say it again and again probably until the day I die, which hopefully is a long time from now, but regardless, it'll be the same message, I always believe that behavioral
tools should come first, behavioral tools should come first. Then focus on nutrition. In fact, I would say
behavioral and nutrition tools, and of course, get excellent sleep. Then focus on supplementation and then, and only if those are failing to bring your brain and body to the state you need to be in to perform well in school
and work and life, et cetera do I recommend that people
lean on prescription drugs. Now there's a caveat to that, which is in under conditions
like severe eating disorders, obsessive compulsive
disorder, bipolar disorder, depression where people are
truly at risk of suicide or severe mental health effects or behavioral health effects and they're really at,
their lives are at risk and their overall mood
and wellbeing is at risk, it's often the case that
people cannot access the brain states required to shift themselves purely
with behavioral tools, nutrition, et cetera. So again, for the typical person who's not suffering from one of the psychiatric disorders that I mentioned before or
other psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia, et cetera, I strongly encourage you to
look to behavioral tools first, nutrition, then supplementation, then and only if there's a remaining need, to prescription drugs. This contrasts very much with the typical scenario
I hear about these days where college students
or other people will say, oh yeah, I hear that there's this drug, Ritalin or Vyvanse that can
immediately put me into a state of heightened focus and concentration. Now listen, if you have ADHD, by all means, talk to a physician, talk to a great psychiatrist and figure out whether or
not that's right for you. But if you don't, again, behavioral tools,
nutrition, supplementation, and in particular, those behavioral tools are going to be the ones
that are going to allow you to teach your neural circuits how to focus and concentrate better, and I cannot overstate
the importance of that, that the behavioral tools, and to some extent the supplementation combined with behavioral tools really allow you to train
up your neural circuits so that you can focus and concentrate to the depth and the
degree and the duration that's going to best serve
your mental and physical goals. Now there's one other compound that I've used from time to
time and that I continue to use in order to increase
focus and concentration and I will use this in combination with the other supplements
I talked about before and that's phenylethylamine. Phenylethylamine is in the
dopamine synthesis pathway, so it increases dopamine transmission and tends to function a
little bit differently than L-tyrosine. So every once in a while,
I'll swap out L-tyrosine and put in 500 milligrams
of phenylethylamine or sometimes, if I really want
to push a little bit harder on the dopamine system, and I'm going to be doing a
long about of intense work, I will take the 300
milligrams of Alpha-GPC, the 500 milligrams of L-tyrosine, I'll generally take
that with some caffeine, and I should mention, I don't go past about 100 or
200 milligrams of caffeine 'cause I don't really
like feeling too jittery, that's not really my goal, it's the goal to be alert, but not so alert that I really
can't focus on anything, I'm not interested in having
an anxiety attack after all, but I'll sometimes either swap in or I will add that 500
milligrams of phenylethylamine. Phenylethylamine is in the PEA pathway. I've talked about this in a previous podcast on
dopamine motivation and drive, and it's a very short-lived compound. So what I'll tend to do is take it once at the beginning of the workout and sometimes in the
middle of the workout, I'll take another 500 milligram capsule. But what I just described with combining all of those compounds, Alpha-GPC, L-tyrosine,
phenylethylamine and caffeine, that's a fairly rare occurrence
that I'll combine all four and really only under conditions in which I have to do an
intensely challenging about of mental or physical work. I would say the frequency
at which I combine all four of those things is probably about once every two weeks, and typically more like once a month, again being careful to do that
in the early part of the day, certainly before the noon hour, so that I am in no way
going to disrupt my sleep. I realize that many of you
are probably wondering about or hoping that I'll discuss things like lions mane or the racetams or some of the other compounds that are known to powerfully modulate the dopamine, epinephrine
and acetylcholine systems. To be quite direct, there are far too many of these compounds to review in a single episode, and they all generally tap
into the same set of processes. Again, epinephrine, that
shaft of the arrowhead that we're thinking of as focus, acetylcholine, which is
the arrowhead itself, and then dopamine, which is the sort of
propeller behind the arrow that allows it to
continually drive forward through a about of
mental or physical work. There is a wonderful site. I've mentioned it several
times before on this podcast. That is examine.com. That wonderful site that is examine.com has recently been updated,
they've changed their format. It was terrific before, it provided links to relevant studies, it talked about specific compounds, it talked about the magnitude of effect, it talked about the human effect matrix, it really focused on human studies with links to those studies and on and on. The new revamped version of
examine.com is even better, it's really next, next level. I really applaud them for
doing such a terrific job in organizing the information. There are a lot of interesting
pages that you can read there about different compounds. So you can put in any
compound, ginko biloba, phosphatidylserine, Alpha-GPC, and you're going to get a
rich array of information about those compounds. And if you were to put
in a specific goal state, that is focus or concentration
or sleep or hormones, like testosterone, et cetera, you're going to get a rich array of compounds and supplements as well as links to the
studies on those compounds and some details about
those particular studies. It's an absolutely phenomenal site. It's one that I rely on
and that I know thousands, if not millions of other people rely on and I encourage you to check it out. Again, the URL is examine.com. So today we've talked about
a number of different tools and to some extent, some mechanisms involved in concentration and focus, and really the goal
has been to provide you an understanding of the
neurochemical systems and a little bit about the neurocircuits that can allow you to achieve
states of attention and focus. In contrast to previous episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast, where I've covered these topics in tremendous depth as
it relates to mechanism and also focused on tools, today, I largely focused on tools. So we talked about behavioral tools, like a meditation that's
13 minutes long done daily specifically to improve
your ability to focus, and in fact, there are data
to support that it will. We talked about hypnosis, we
talked about visual focus, overt and covert, we talked about various supplements, such as Alpha-GPC,
phenylethylamine, L-tyrosine, supplements that I use to directly modulate the neural circuits for concentration and focus. We also talked about
creatine and the omega-3s. We talked about the importance of sleep, which modulates our ability to function mentally
and physically overall, so optimize that sleep. And we talked about a
number of other protocols that you can incorporate. My hope in giving you all this information in one single location
is that you'll be able to pick and choose which of these protocols you
would like to incorporate into your attempts to improve
your focus and concentration. Again, I don't recommend doing all of these protocols all at once. What I recommend is
picking a handful of them, maybe one or two, maybe three or four, and trying them in different combinations at different times of day
and for different purposes, for mental work, for
physical work, et cetera, and find what is best for you. Once again, the goal
is to teach your brain, that is to increase neuroplasticity
in the neural circuits that allow you not just to focus, but to refocus your attention. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it's also critical
to be able to defocus. I highly encourage people to
take a period of time each day to daydream, to walk down the hall without looking at your phone, to not have to incorporate
more sensory information, to not place increasing
demands on yourself to focus, and see and realize how having a period of deliberate decompression and defocusing can allow your brain
to focus so much better when you do decide to return to a about of focus, concentrated
work or physical work. So I want to thank you for
joining me for this discussion about tools for focus and concentration. If you're learning from
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support this podcast. During today's episode and
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we discuss supplements. while supplements aren't
necessary for everybody, many people derive
tremendous benefit from them for things like sleep and enhancing focus and hormone augmentation and so forth. As mentioned at the
beginning of today's episode, the Huberman Lab Podcast is now partnered with
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ingredient formulations in dosages that will allow you to construct the best, most biologically and cost effective supplementation protocol for your needs. If you're interested in the supplements covered on the Huberman Lab Podcast, you can go to livemomentous,
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and especially the tools for enhancing concentration and focus, and last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science. [upbeat music]