Best Supplements for Relieving Stress | Dr. Andrew Huberman

0:02 There are compounds that are not

0:04 prescription compounds that can modulate

0:07 the stress system.

0:08 And sometimes because of the way that life is, we just don't

0:11 have the opportunity to control life and

0:14 to control our response to stress.

0:16 And at least for myself, I can only talk

0:18 about my own experience.

0:19 I found it useful in times of chronic stress to

0:22 start modulating some of the

0:23 neurochemistry related to the stress

0:25 response in order to help.

0:27 Now, if a doctor prescribes you pregnant or

0:30 prescribes you some other hormone or

0:33 something, that's important.

0:34 But what I'm talking about now are

0:36 non-prescription things, you should

0:38 check out examine.com, this free

0:40 website, which will allow you to put in

0:42 any supplement and evaluate that

0:44 supplement with.

0:45 They provide links in

0:46 the so-called human effect matrix to

0:48 PubMed.

0:49 It tells you the exact subjects

0:50 they were done in.

0:51 It was a postmenopausal women, was it kids, was

0:53 it normal adults, was it people with

0:55 autism, etc.

0:57 Check out that site for any

0:58 and all supplements you're considering

1:00 or taking.

1:00 I highly recommend it.

1:02 I have no relationship to them.

1:03 I just think it's a wonderful site that's curated all

1:06 this important information.

1:07 But the some of these compounds are effective enough

1:11 they can kind of take the edge off and

1:13 I'll use them periodically uh myself.

1:16 And so I just thought I'd mention them

1:17 since there are a number of you that are

1:18 interested in them.

1:18 The three I want to

1:19 focus on and one that I think you need

1:21 to be cautious about that I've mentioned

1:23 before include ashwagandha funny name

1:27 but that's what it's called.

1:30 Atheonine or theanine it's often called and

1:32 melatonin.

1:33 Let's talk about melatonin

1:34 first.

1:34 Melatonin I talked about during

1:36 the month on sleep.

1:37 Melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal in

1:40 direct relationship to how much darkness

1:42 you are in.

1:43 Not emotional darkness but

1:45 light suppresses melatonin.

1:46 Melatonin helps you fall asleep.

1:47 if it doesn't help you stay asleep.

1:49 I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin

1:54 because it's supplemented typically at

1:56 very high levels, you know, 1 to 3

1:59 milligrams or even more.

2:00 That is an outrageously high dose.

2:02 It's super super physiological compared to what you

2:05 normally would make.

2:06 It also has a

2:07 number of potentially negative effects

2:09 on the reproductive axis and and

2:12 hormones there.

2:13 Some people can take it

2:14 without problems.

2:14 If you like it and

2:15 that's your thing, fine.

2:16 I just want to

2:17 cue to the fact that there can be

2:18 issues.

2:18 You should check onexam.com,

2:20 talk to your doctor, especially in kids

2:22 because melatonin suppresses the puberty

2:24 response in a number of species.

2:26 Enough about the negative things of melatonin

2:27 except that people who take too much

2:30 melatonin chronically often time when they're taking it to

2:34 sleep or for whatever reason.

2:36 Yes, it can reduce anxiety and stress, but it

2:39 also can reduce the output of the

2:40 adrenals to the point where it can

2:42 become problematic.

2:43 Now, a note about

2:45 adrenal burnout.

2:46 There is actually no

2:48 such thing as adrenal burnout under

2:50 normal conditions.

2:51 The adrenals have enough adrenaline to support 200 years

2:55 of stress for better or for worse.

2:58 The concept of adrenal burnout has origins

3:01 in the work of Nobel Prize winner

3:03 Hanselier who actually discovered what

3:06 he called the general adaptation

3:07 syndrome.

3:08 He discovered a lot of things

3:09 about stress.

3:10 He did some phenomenal

3:11 work that turned out to be true that we

3:13 have stressors.

3:14 There's something called distress.

3:16 He talked about ustress which

3:17 is positive stress.

3:18 Ustress has never really caught on in the in the kind of

3:21 more general discussion.

3:22 But he had this

3:24 theory that if stress went on long

3:26 enough that you would eventually reach a

3:27 phase called exhaustion.

3:29 And that turned out to be wrong.

3:33 Although many of you may feel exhausted

3:34 after chronic stress, there isn't really

3:36 a physiological exhaustion that happens.

3:38 And that eventually got picked up and

3:41 ran with by the general public.

3:42 And they talk about adrenal burnout.

3:44 Too much coffee, adrenal burnout.

3:46 You hear all this stuff.

3:46 There is no such thing as

3:47 adrenal burnout.

3:48 The adrenals don't burn

3:49 out.

3:50 There is something, however, called

3:51 adrenal insufficiency syndrome, which is

3:53 a real physiological problem where some

3:56 people have very impaired adrenals and

3:58 they can't produce adrenaline.

3:59 And melatonin taken at very high levels for

4:02 periods of time that are too long can

4:04 cause suppression of the cortisol and

4:06 epinephrine released from the adrenals

4:07 and can create a kind of pseudo

4:11 adrenal insufficiency syndrome.

4:13 So beware melatonin for that reason.

4:17 Please I'm trying I alone can't get rid of the

4:21 phrase adrenal burnout.

4:23 I'm not trying to um give a hard time to anyone who

4:26 feels burnt out or exhausted, but it is

4:28 for other reasons.

4:29 It is not because the

4:30 adrenals are burnt out, unless you

4:31 happen to have adrenal insufficiency

4:33 syndrome.

4:33 So, I'm not a fan of melatonin

4:35 for a lot of reasons.

4:36 Now, I've mentioned several.

4:37 The other isine.

4:38 I've talked about eltheanine, which provided

4:41 it's safe for you, can be taken 100

4:44 milligrams or 200 milligrams about a 30

4:46 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep.

4:47 It can enhance the transition to sleep and

4:49 depth of sleep.

4:50 For many people, it

4:52 increases GABA, this inhibitory

4:53 neurotransmitter in the brain.

4:54 It tends to turn off our forebrain a little bit

4:57 or or reduce the activity of our kind of

4:59 thinking systems and ruminating systems,

5:01 help people fall asleep.

5:02 That's for sleep.

5:03 But theanonine has also been

5:05 shown for people that are chronically

5:07 anxious or chronically stressed to if

5:09 you look at the studies, I have a large

5:11 collection of studies in front of me

5:12 right now.

5:12 If you want to see those

5:13 links, I know if you want those, go to

5:15 examin.com, put in theineine.

5:17 They linked for instance it is known to

5:18 significantly increase relaxation.

5:20 There are four studies listed there with

5:21 PubMed links.

5:22 It is known to have a

5:24 minor effect on anxiety but eight

5:25 studies have shown that um which I think

5:28 is a a fairly large set of studies some

5:30 of them in great journals.

5:32 Um it also can reduce task completion anxiety.

5:36 So anxiety related to task completion not

5:38 good for the procrastinators perhaps but

5:40 for those of you that are chronically

5:41 stressed.

5:41 It can increase attention a

5:42 little bit.

5:42 It can reduce blood pressure

5:44 a little bit.

5:44 improve sleep quality, etc.

5:47 It definitely has a notable effect

5:48 on stress.

5:49 Two studies in particular,

5:51 um, that it can notably reduce the

5:53 effects of stress.

5:54 So, there's a lot

5:55 there.

5:56 It also has effects on insomnia,

5:58 on some blood lipid profiles, and so go

6:00 to examin.com and check it out.

6:02 But, this is one reason why I supplement

6:04 theineine for sleep.

6:05 But if I'm feeling

6:06 like I've been under a lot of stress and

6:08 I'm not managing my stress very well

6:09 with the short-term and medium-term

6:12 tools that I talked about earlier, I

6:13 might start taking a little bit of

6:14 theine, especially in the late

6:15 afternoon, which is when I tend to start

6:18 to feel like I haven't gotten enough

6:19 done and the day is kind of carrying on.

6:22 And so you can blunt the response to

6:24 stress a little bit, which is why a lot

6:26 of companies are now putting theine into

6:28 energy drinks.

6:29 I am not a big fan of

6:31 most energy drinks.

6:32 Most of them have

6:33 torine, which I know some of you wrote

6:35 to me and said, "Oh, torine's great for

6:36 all these reasons." Torine also has

6:38 effects on the microvasculare that at

6:40 least for me were not good.

6:41 It caused bursting of microvasculare in my scara

6:44 in my eyes, which is why I'm not a fan

6:46 of any energy drink that has torine or

6:49 torine generally.

6:50 But that's just me.

6:51 You have to decide for you.

6:52 I'm sure the comment section there'll be a couple um

6:54 toinistas out there that will say, "But

6:56 I love torine." Great.

6:57 Keep the torine companies in business.

6:59 But it's not for

7:00 me.

7:00 And I'd like people to know that it

7:02 may or may not be for them.

7:04 The other supplement that can be very useful is

7:06 ashwagandha.

7:07 Ashwagandha is known to

7:09 lower anxiety and cortisol.

7:11 There is six there are excuse me six studies that

7:15 collectively show reductions in cortisol

7:17 which is cortisol is typically

7:19 associated with waking up in the morning

7:20 which is good.

7:21 That's a healthy brief

7:22 cortisol bump that goes away provided

7:24 you're getting your light at the right

7:25 time of days at right correct times of

7:28 day like morning and and evening.

7:30 But you don't want cortisol chronically

7:32 elevated.

7:32 That's associated with all the

7:33 bad stuff about stress.

7:35 There's a very strong effect of ashwagandha.

7:39 You can find dosages at examine.com.

7:42 They report in across six studies 14.5

7:45 to 27.9 reduction in cortisol in

7:49 otherwise healthy but stressed

7:51 individuals.

7:52 Now I don't know about

7:53 kids.

7:54 You have to look at what the what

7:55 the what it says on various supplements.

7:57 Most things here are being done in

7:58 adults.

7:59 So please check carefully.

8:00 But this is great.

8:01 I mean, the opportunity

8:02 for me anyway to be able to take

8:04 something that can help me reduce my

8:06 cortisol so that I don't get some of the

8:08 long-term effects of stress.

8:10 And I'm not going to take ashwagandha year round.

8:12 I would only do this if I was feeling like

8:13 I wasn't managing my short and

8:15 medium-term stress well.

8:16 So, I don't take it on a regular basis.

8:17 I do take it

8:18 when I'm in these times when things are

8:21 particularly stressful.

8:22 It has there are

8:24 five other studies that show reduced

8:27 stress.

8:27 So that's not cortisol

8:28 measurements, but things like fatigue,

8:30 cognitive impairment, etc.

8:33 Um, it does lower total cholesterol, which may or

8:36 may not be good or bad for you, up to

8:38 10%.

8:39 Um, so some people don't want their

8:41 cholesterol lowered, some people might.

8:43 Um, cholesterol, we'll talk about this

8:45 in a month on hormones, but cholesterol

8:47 is the molecule from which testosterone

8:48 and estrogen and cortisol for that

8:50 matter are synthesized.

8:51 So you don't want to get your cholesterol so low then

8:54 you there all sorts of negative effects

8:55 but you don't want it too high either.

8:57 Um mild effects in good clinical studies

9:00 on reducing depression probably

9:02 associated with the effects on stress

9:04 and some other things as well.

9:06 So ashwagandha is something I use from time

9:08 to time.

9:09 It's kind of interesting.

9:10 Atheonine I rarely will use those during the

9:14 daytime except under conditions where

9:16 I'm feeling chronically stressed.

9:17 So check out the human effect matrix

9:19 onexamin.com.

9:20 Again, a phenomenal website.

9:22 I think uh I've sent them a few

9:23 emails before.

9:24 Uh that's the only

9:25 exchanges I've ever had with them, but I

9:27 just think it's wonderful that they put

9:28 together this resource.

9:29 Otherwise, we'd be stuck mining PubMed.

9:31 They've um collated the the par papers from PubMed

9:35 with links to PubMed.

9:36 So, terrific resource.

9:37 So, social connection and some

9:40 supplementation, of course, diet,

9:41 exercise, sleep for long-term stress.

9:45 [music]