← Huberman Lab

LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre

Jun 7, 2024 53m 8s 30 insights
Recently I had the pleasure of hosting a live event in Brisbane, Australia. This event was part of a lecture series called The Brain Body Contract. My favorite part of the evening was the question and answer period, where I had the opportunity to answer questions from the attendees of each event. Included here is the Q&A from our event at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. Sign up to get notified about future events: https://www.hubermanlab.com/events
Actionable Insights

1. Optimize Sleep with QQRT

Optimize your sleep by focusing on Quality (continuous sleep, avoiding caffeine/alcohol), Quantity (individual needs vary), Regularity (consistent bedtime 5+ nights/week), and Timing (aligning with your chronotype, typically 10 pm-midnight to 6-8 am).

2. Control Sleep Environment Temperature

Control the temperature of your sleeping environment to allow your body temperature to drop by 1-3 degrees for deep sleep and increase by 1-3 degrees for alert waking.

3. Practice Non-Sleep Deep Rest

Utilize Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR), also known as yoga nidra, for 10-30 minutes to limit stress, improve sleep quality, restore mental and physical vigor, and aid in falling back asleep.

4. Daily Bright Sunlight

Aim to get bright sunlight exposure every day, even through cloud cover, as it is crucial for regulating your circadian rhythms.

5. Dim Lights for Sleep

Dim lights or use a red light bulb in the evening to avoid activating blue and bright fluorescent lights, which can stimulate the nervous system and disrupt the taper into sleep.

6. Recover from Burnout

To recover from burnout, combine rest with the exploration and wholehearted engagement in activities or relationships that evoke internal excitement, delight, or a sense of meaning, as these states can lift your nervous system.

7. Warm-Up for Focus

Give yourself 5-10 minutes of warm-up time before expecting to drop into a state of deep focus, similar to warming up before physical exercise, rather than assuming attention issues.

8. Develop Intuitive Eating

Prioritize unprocessed or minimally processed foods to help your brain associate taste with nutrient content, allowing you to develop a more specific intuition or appetite for what your body truly needs.

9. Prioritize Foundational Health First

Before considering testosterone replacement or augmentation therapy, ensure your foundational behaviors like sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress control, and training are optimized, then explore supplements, and only then consider TRT/TAT at a minimal effective dose.

10. Tailor ADHD Treatment

For ADHD management, consider a personalized approach combining behavioral, nutritional, supplement-based, and prescription tools, as a multi-faceted strategy is often most effective.

11. Practice Visual Focus

To improve cognitive focus, practice maintaining visual focus on a distant target, as this intimate relationship between visual and cognitive focus can be trained.

12. Teach Kids Stress Tools

Teach children practical tools, such as physiological sighs, to help them modulate their stress in real-time.

13. Create Boundaries for Safety

A primary role in parenting and relationships is to establish clear boundaries, which are essential for making children feel safe and secure.

14. Validate Children’s Feelings

Make children feel ‘real’ and seen by believing and acknowledging their expressed feelings, which helps them feel safe and understood.

15. Nurture Unique Child Interests

Allow children to explore and pursue their unique, healthy interests and desires, rather than forcing them into activities they dislike, to support their individual development.

16. Recover from Sleep Deprivation

Do not despair over past sleep deprivation, as the brain has a remarkable capacity to recover and compensate for previous damage.

17. Offset Unhealthy Habits

If you choose to engage in something that is bad for you, proactively do a bunch of other things to offset its negative effects.

18. Incorporate Exercise Snacks

Take 60 seconds for near all-out bursts of activity, like running stairs or jumping jacks, to raise your heart rate and improve physiology, which can enhance overall performance.

19. Eat for Alertness or Sleep

Adjust your eating habits based on whether you want to be more alert or more asleep, as food intake can influence these states.

20. Inhale for Alertness

If you want to increase your alertness, focus on making your inhales more vigorous and of longer duration.

21. Exhale for Calm

To become more calm, increase the duration of your exhales, as this slows the heart rate and calms the nervous system.

22. Find Health Common Themes

Step back from various health and wellness modalities to identify common themes, links, and points of convergence, rather than focusing solely on their differences.

23. Explore & Share Behavioral Tools

Actively explore various behavioral tools for mental and physical health, and if you find them effective, share them with others to enhance collective well-being and longevity.

24. Avoid Cancer-Causing Nicotine

Do not consume nicotine in forms like smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing, as these modes of consumption cause cancer.

25. Wim Hof Breathing Water Safety

Never combine cyclic hyperventilation or Wim Hof breathing with breath holds, especially near water, as it can dangerously alter the shallow water blackout threshold and lead to drowning.

26. Caution with Growth Peptides

Be extremely cautious with peptides that increase growth hormone, as they can stimulate the growth of all tissues, including any undetected tumors.

27. TRT & Fertility Planning

If you are a male considering testosterone replacement or augmentation therapy and wish to conceive children, you must take human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) to offset the dramatic reduction in sperm count.

28. Cautious Nicotine for Cognition

While nicotine can enhance focus and learning, it raises blood pressure and causes vasoconstriction, making it best to avoid unless the cognitive boost is truly needed and the health risks are acceptable, with a strong warning against dependency.

29. Cover Foundational Nutrition

Drink AG1 once or twice a day to ensure foundational nutritional needs are met, supporting gut, immune, and brain health, especially when whole food intake is difficult.

30. Children’s Morning Sunlight

Encourage children to get morning sunlight exposure to establish healthy circadian rhythms, as staying indoors and on devices, then emerging at noon, can disrupt their natural sleep-wake cycles.