Your Top Health Questions Answered

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science [music] and science-based tools for everyday life.

[music] I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode is a solo episode of the podcast, meaning no guest. However, there will be a large number of outside voices heard on today's episode, and that's because I solicited for your

questions on social media. that is people had the opportunity to call in and literally record their questions about anything related to science and health. Well, really anything. But today, we're going to focus on science and health. And I would answer them in real time, meaning I'm hearing them for

the first time today as you hear them for the first time today. And we're going to cover, I'm told, because I haven't heard the questions yet, a large number of topics related to signs and health that are relevant to women, to people of all ages, and covering everything from health and fitness to

mental health, supplementation, and on I should mention that if you called in with a question for today's episode, and you don't hear it on today's episode, that does not necessarily mean that it won't be included in a future Q&A episode. Again, we got many, many more questions than we

could possibly include in a single episode. And I also want to say to everyone who called in with a question, thank you. We really appreciate the feedback even if your question isn't included. It does cue us to what people are interested in and absolutely will shape the future of guest episodes, solo

episodes, and again perhaps a future Q&A of this sort. So without further ado, let's get to your questions. Okay, so just to remind you, you're going to hear the question from the audience member played in real time. And again, this is the first time that I'm hearing these questions. Hello, my name's Anthony

Richards and I just want to thank you so much for all the content that you put out. It's helped me profoundly in so many aspects of my life. My specific question right now is on preworkouts. I work out late at night because of work and I generally go to bed an hour and a half or so after I complete my workout.

I'm curious as to what's the most effective pre-workout I could take to maximize my strength training without impairing my sleep. Thank you.

>> Well, first off, Anthony, thank you for the kind words. I love to learn. I love to teach and I especially love to teach information that I hope can be of use to people in their health journey. So, in keeping with that, you asked, "What is the best preworkout for someone who's working out late in the day?" And in

your case, going to sleep about an hour and a half after finishing your workout. And your workouts, as you mentioned, are going to be for strength and presumably for some muscle size as well, which suggests that they're going to be of moderate to high intensity, which means that they're going to pretty

impressively increase cortisol over its baseline late in the day. And everyone hears that and they think, "Oh my gosh, cortisol stress hormone. We don't want to do that." Yes and no. It is true that we want our cortisol high in the morning. You all know the ways to do that. You get your morning sunlight, you