AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

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I'm Andrew Huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. I'm also wearing my ROKA red lens glasses, which block both blue light and green light, both of which are so-called short-wavelength light. That's because we are recording this AMA at night, and the lights in here are very bright. And bright lights at night will quash your melatonin, which is the hormone of sleepiness. Bright lights at night also increase cortisol levels, and by blocking those short wavelengths of light, you offset the reductions in melatonin and the increases in cortisol that would otherwise occur.

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The first question for today's AMA is, quote, "Is there a distinct health advantage to using bone broth or collagen protein versus whey protein?" I get this question pretty often, and I touched on this in the episode that I did with Dr. Layne Norton. But I think the key thing to remember here is that while protein is one of the three macronutrients-- proteins, carbohydrates, and fats-- not all proteins are created equal.

Now, what differentiates different protein sources has a lot to do with how easily those proteins are assimilated into our body and their amino acid content. Now, in general, how bioavailable a protein is as well as its quality or protein score relates to a number of things, not the least of which is the amount of leucine, which is a particular essential amino acid that we need to get from food.

So why is leucine important? Well, leucine is an essential amino acid. You need to get it from food. And some protein sources, such as whey protein, for instance, but also beef, chicken, eggs, et cetera, have high levels of leucine as compared to other types of protein, for instance, collagen protein and some, not all, bone broths. And I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment.

So if we just step back from this question and ask it in two parts-- remember, the question was, is there a distinct health advantage to using bone broth or collagen protein versus whey protein? One can be very confident in the answer to that, which is whey protein contains relatively high amounts of the amino acid leucine and therefore is going to be the superior form of protein if your goal is to grow muscle and/or get stronger, to repair muscle, either muscle damage caused by exercise, or simply to engage protein synthesis.

Remember, even if you haven't been exercising intensely or doing any resistance training-- and by the way, you should be doing resistance training and cardiovascular training. But independent of exercise, dietary protein, in particular dietary proteins that contain high amounts of leucine or, I should say, relatively high amounts of leucine, like whey protein, will help induce so-called "muscle protein synthesis," which is generally good for us, again. And it's occurring even if we're not exercising.

If we are exercising, especially if we're exercising very hard and, in particular, if we're doing a lot of resistance training or, frankly, any amount of resistance training that's taken near or to failure-- so it doesn't even have to be heavy weight, but if you're stressing the muscles hard, then having a quality-protein source that's bioavailable, that is, you can assimilate it, and that has relatively high leucine content is going to be advantageous.

So through that lens, I can confidently answer the question by saying that a quality whey protein would be a better choice for a protein as compared to bone broth or a collagen protein, which have relatively low amounts of leucine. And if you look at their essential amino acid profile just across the board, not just focusing on leucine, and compare that to whey protein, we would easily say that whey protein is the superior form of protein, again, both based on its bioavailability and its amino acid composition.

Now, does that mean that bone broth and collagen protein are not valuable at all? No, I didn't say that. So when our bone broth and collagen proteins valuable? So this has also come up in several Huberman Lab podcast episodes, namely the episode that I did with Dr. Layne Norton, also the episode that I did about skin health.

Because there are some data, not a ton, but there are some data showing that people who regularly ingest collagen protein can observe some improvements in skin elasticity and appearance. Now, are these dramatic effects? Not so much. But are these significant effects? That is, are they statistically significant as compared to a control condition of either no collagen protein or a different protein source?

And there one can find manuscripts that show, yes, indeed, ingesting collagen protein-- and by the way, bone broth has high amounts of collagen. So we're treating bone broth and collagen protein in combination here, or we are considering them in combination. And one would say that the amino acids that are contained in bone broth and collagen protein actually have been shown to support skin elasticity and appearance when ingested at levels of 15 grams per day over a period of about two weeks or more.

So through the lens of which protein source might be best for improving skin health and appearance, the answer in this case would be that the bone broth and collagen protein is going to be superior to whey protein. However, keep in mind that bone broth and collagen protein contain calories. They contain protein and calories. Sometimes they contain calories also from fat, rarely from carbohydrate, but you need to check the packaging and see what else is in there.

So that raises the question, should you be taking bone broth/collagen protein? I would say either/or, maybe both. But either/or and whey protein-- or rather, let's ask the question more scientifically. Will taking whey protein support skin health and appearance in a way that either mimics or can replace the positive effects that one gets from bone broth and collagen protein?

And the answer there would be no, at least not in any direct way. There's no evidence-- or at least there are no studies that I'm aware of-- of people taking whey protein as a way to improve skin health and appearance. Now, that said, recovering from exercise, inducing muscle protein synthesis-- these are things that are generally good for your body, so they are going to support overall health, immune health, your general sense of vigor.

There's all sorts of downstream things that happen when you stress your muscles and then recover them or even if you just eat a protein like whey protein. And keep in mind, there are other proteins that have high leucine content that lend themselves, as whey protein does, to muscle protein synthesis. So that's going to create an overall milieu, an environment of health. It certainly isn't the only path to health, but it's going to create a general milieu of health in the right context, provided you're ingesting it at the right amounts and in the right times.

And by the way, when I say that, I know people are thinking, well, how much is the right amount? I am of the belief that most people who are seeking muscle protein synthesis, recovery from exercise, and general health would do well to ingest approximately-- I'm not super neurotic about these things-- approximately 1 gram of quality protein per pound of lean body weight or desired body weight.

Or if you want to be a little looser about it, some people will just say 1 gram of quality protein per pound of body weight each day. So that's going to vary from person to person. So how much whey protein? Well, it depends on how much other protein you're ingesting.

So let's simplify things here. If in trying to get that 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight or so you have a limited budget, as most people do, I would personally suggest that you get a significant portion of whatever that protein requirement is-- maybe it's 150 grams. Maybe it's 200 grams. Maybe it's 100 grams, depending on your size. I would suggest getting 60% to 70% of that from whole food sources. So it could be quality lean meats, chicken, eggs, fish.

If you're a vegetarian, yes, there are combinations of things like beans and rice that will allow you to achieve the proper combinations of essential amino acids. There are some sources of nonanimal proteins that will meet all those amino acid needs. You can look these up. They're easy to find online now.

There's also casein protein, milk protein. I would suggest getting most of your protein for muscle protein synthesis and for recovery from exercise from whole food sources. And then the remaining 30% or so-- and I suppose this could be as high as 50% if you're having trouble eating enough during the day-- could come from a protein powder, so to speak, or a protein bar.

And whey protein is an excellent source of protein in that instance. And those whey proteins are available out there with minimal amounts or zero amounts of carbohydrate in them. Some of them have sweeteners like Stevia. Some don't. They vary in cost a bit. They vary in flavor a bit, in mixability a bit, so you have to find what works for you.

These are now pretty easy to find out there. You just have to pick the one that's right for you and for your budget. That's to meet your 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight threshold. And again, you don't have to be super neurotic about reaching that threshold every single day. I'm about 100 kilograms or about 220 pounds. I'm probably a little bit lighter now, maybe 210 pounds. I probably get anywhere from 175 to 210 grams of protein per day. I know that from having tracked it recently.

But I'm not neurotic about making sure that every day I get 210 grams or 200 grams. I'll let it vary a little bit. And sometimes it gets a bit lower, and sometimes it gets a little bit higher. And at least that works for me. I'm also not in a mode of life where I'm trying to put on a lot of muscle or something like that, so if you are, maybe you need to pay a bit more attention to the details. So that's to get your protein ration per day.

And of course, you also need to make sure you're getting sufficient-- I believe you should get sufficient vegetables, fruits, and if it's in your nutrition plan, starches, things like rice and oatmeal and things like that, if that's what you do. I realize today people are doing a variety of different things.

Now, the bone broth and collagen protein, yes, will factor into your total protein count, that protein ration of 1 gram per pound of body weight per day. But keep in mind that if you evaluate bone broth or especially powdered collagen proteins through the lens of what is high-quality, bioavailable, high-luceine content protein, collagen protein or, rather, powdered collagen protein doesn't scale up that well.

And so I would say if you are interested in improving your skin health and appearance, sure, go ahead and add 15 grams of collagen protein in powdered form per day or have some bone broth. I happen to really like bone broth. It also has a fair amount of protein. And I believe-- I need to double-check this, but I believe that some of them actually have fair amounts of leucine, just not as high as whey protein. So I want to be clear about that because the question was about a comparison between bone broth, collagen protein, and whey protein.

One last thing about skin health as it relates to whey protein-- on the episode I did about skin health, I read a number of papers, and then we addressed these papers again when I had Dr. Teo Soleymani on the podcast. He's actually a derm-onc, or a dermatologist-oncologist, specializes in skin cancers but also the cosmetic aspects of skin care, what makes skin have nice levels of elasticity, reducing things like rosacea, psoriasis, and acne.

And in that discussion and in the papers that I covered in the solo episode, it was clear that one of the things that has been shown to contribute to acne in some people, OK, not all but in some people, is having a high leucine content in the diet. So this runs countercurrent to everything I've said before, but I would be remiss if I didn't say this.

Whey protein has been evaluated for its tendency to increase acne in some people, and it seems to be related to leucine, which, again, is quite present in whey protein, and leucine's ability to increase certain components of the cell growth pathway involving mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin. There's a whole discussion to have about mTOR that we don't have time to get into right now.

I don't think you should be afraid of whey protein because you think it will induce acne. What seems to be the case here is that the high leucine content, and probably other things in whey protein that are effective in increasing insulin lead to increases in mTOR, which, in turn, lead to changes in the skin that sometimes show up as increased acne.

Again, I'm not saying that taking whey protein will increase your acne. What I am saying is if you have issues with acne, you might try taking out whey protein for a couple of days or weeks and, by doing so, see whether or not whey protein is causing or exacerbating those acne symptoms. I personally have never noticed that issue with whey protein, but others might. And indeed, there are some peer-reviewed manuscripts that point to that.

And as a final point, one thing that became clear in offline discussions with Dr. Teo Soleymani about this whey protein-leucine-acne thing is that for women in particular, whose hormones cycle across the month-- they may find that whey protein and other high-leucine protein sources will exacerbate or create acne at particular phases of their cycle because of the interaction between that mTOR pathway and some of the hormones that fluctuate during different phases of the menstrual cycle.

So we all have to learn to be scientists of ourselves, that is, to try something, see if we like it, see if we don't, ask ourselves why. If you get stomach discomfort from a given brand of whey protein, please don't take that one again. You have to find what works for you and then pay attention to whether or not-- for instance, if you're a woman and you're seeing some increase in acne or other skin symptoms by taking whey protein at a particular phase of your cycle, maybe you stop taking it during that phase and take it only in other phases. Or if you have no issues, go ahead and take it.

For men, whose hormones obviously don't cycle as much throughout the month if at all-- they're going to cycle depending on sleep, et cetera, stress, et cetera, but you get the idea. If you are experiencing troubling levels of acne, take whey protein out altogether. Maybe replace it with a casein protein or other high-quality protein, and see how you react. Again, become a scientist of yourself. You'll be glad you did.

The next question is about creatine supplementation for women and teenagers. I can answer the first part of the question very easily. There is no evidence that creatine should be avoided by women. There is a lot of evidence that creatine supplementation is beneficial for both men and for women for sake of improving muscle strength and size-- we'll talk about size and how that's accomplished with creatine-- as well as for brain health and, in particular, improvements in brain function that occur under conditions of what I would call elevated stress, minor sleep deprivation, altitude, et cetera.

There are a bunch of studies out there about creatine and brain function. Most people think about creatine as a supplement for muscles, and keep in mind that creatine also comes from food. We often forget this in our discussion about anything that is more typically known as a supplement.

Where is creatine found? Creatine is found in red meat. It's found in other meat sources. And if you were to look up online, what are some food sources for creatine, you would find various food sources. But what you would notice is across all those food sources, you would have to ingest far too many calories. It would greatly exceed pretty much anyone's daily caloric requirements in order to get enough creatine to have the sorts of benefits that have been looked at in peer-reviewed studies focused on muscle strength and size as well as the peer-reviewed studies focused on brain function.

So the simple recommendation is that for adult men and women, 5 to 10 grams of creatine taken in the form of creatine monohydrate powder-- creatine is found in various forms. The creatine monohydrate form is the one that's most heavily studied, so we have a lot of data on it, tons of studies.

It also happens to be the most inexpensive, and it happens to be the one that seems to have at least the same effects as all the other forms. What I'm saying is there are no data, at least that I'm aware of, that any one form of creatine is superior to all the others, except I would say creatine monohydrate is probably superior given that there's so much data about creatine monohydrate relative to the others and that it also happens to be the most inexpensive.

So when I say adult men and women should take 5 to 10 grams of creatine, what I'm talking about is the fact that most all of the studies of creatine have been done by scaling the amount of creatine that the subjects in those studies are given according to body weight. So when you hear the pan statement, "Everyone should take 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day," that discards the actual data, which say that you should scale the amount of creatine according to body weight.

Now, you could do that, but you can also make it very simple given the way that creatine is stored and used in the body, which is if you weigh 150 pounds or less, take 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day. If you miss a day, just stay on that 5 grams per day. Try not to miss a day, but if you do, look, it happens. Just continue taking 5 grams a day. You don't have to make up for the missed 5 grams.

However, if you weigh more than 150 pounds-- let's say you're anywhere from 150 pounds up to 200 pounds. Well, then I would suggest taking a bit more, maybe 7 or 8 grams of creatine per day. And if you weigh more than 200 pounds, then I suggest taking 10 grams per day.

You do not need to exceed 10 grams per day. Why? Because creatine gets loaded into your muscles. And it remains there unless you stop taking it, in which case you'll excrete the water that's brought in by that creatine into the muscles, and you will also eventually excrete that creatine. In fact, in the old days of creatine, meaning in the early '90s, when creatine monohydrate was first widely dispersed as a supplement, there was this idea that you needed to do a loading phase and a maintenance phase. I remember this because I did it.

The idea was that you were supposed to take creatine monohydrate several times a day. Generally, it was 3 to 5 grams three to five times a day, 30 minutes before a meal, and you were supposed to mix that creatine monohydrate with a little bit of high-sugar fruit juice, like grape juice. So I did this. A lot of other people did this, and I can tell you it works spectacularly well to bring a lot of water into your muscles.

You basically put on about, depending on how well you react to it-- I'm what you would consider a creatine hyper-responder, so I respond really strongly to creatine. And I would put on anywhere from 8 to 15 pounds. By the way, it's water weight, but it's mostly directed to the muscles. And you get much stronger really fast. You actually put on a lot of size really fast.

And then after a loading phase of about three to five days, the idea was that then you were supposed to take the creatine either with water or with juice or with food just to keep it capped off in your system and do that indefinitely unless you did a washout of creatine. It's actually a pee-out out of creatine and the associated water-- for a duration of three to seven days.

So in the old days, you would load creatine anywhere from 3 to 5 grams four times a day or three times a day or whatever it is for four to five days. You're drinking all this juice and creatine. You get really big. You get really strong for you, noticeable increases in size, and then you just maintain. If you take a week off where you're not doing the maintenance, then you have to reload the creatine again. That was the idea.

We now know that you can load more gradually and that you don't need to do this fruit juice, high-insulin spike or glucose spike approach. I don't know if it works better than the current approach, but the current approach that most everybody uses is to ditch the juice, at least for that purpose, and just to take 5 to 10 grams of creatine continuously for about five to seven days to get the maximal effect on muscle size and strength.

And I should say that most of the studies focused on how creatine impacts cognitive function, and we'll talk a little bit about why it actually impacts cognitive function favorably in a moment. It's also 5 to 10 grams taken over the course of anywhere-- depends on the study-- two to seven days. So I don't think there's any reason to do a so-called "loading phase." Just make sure that if you don't take any creatine for three to five days, that you are fairly continuous about taking it in the period after.

I will say, I occasionally will do a creatine washout, meaning every, I don't know, six to eight months or so, I'll just take a week off from taking creatine, and then I'll start loading it back just by taking 10 grams a day because, as I mentioned, I'm more than 200 pounds, so 10 grams a day. I haven't done the juice form of high-dose loading in a very long time, and I think I will again.

Why do I do the washout? Well, I'm not so worried about creatine monohydrate effects on the kidneys, even though, by the way, if you do a blood test and it's measuring creatinine levels, you will see elevated creatinine levels. Be sure to tell your doctor that you're taking creatine monohydrate so that elevated creatinine level makes sense to them and they don't get alarmed by it. Or maybe they do need to get alarmed by it, in which case you need to have a discussion with your doctor.

In any event, I don't do the washout because I'm worried about creatinine levels. I do the washout because at different phases of my training I actually like to remove some of the water from the muscles of my body and just see how strong I am without any of this creatine loading in water to the muscles thing.

It's just kind of fun for me. It's something I do, and I suppose I have a very nonscientific idea about it, which is that by seeing what my strength is minus the creatine and the water that it brings with it, that somehow I'm getting a kind of a baseline or core measurement of my actual strength. It's just purely for my own interest and psychological reasons.

I should also say it's kind of fun because when you reload creatine back in at that 5 or 10 grams per day, you notice very quick strength increases. And I will just say anecdotally, my own experience is that-- let's say I'm at a given level of strength when I've been on creatine for a while. Then I'll do a washout of about a week. Generally, one loses 5 to 10 pounds of water, sometimes less depending on how much water that creatine brought in.

Remember, I'm a creatine hyper-responder. Some people get less of a response from creatinine in terms of bringing water into the muscles. You do that washout. I'll measure my strength more or less carefully. I write it down, et cetera. And then I'll load creatine back in.

And I have noticed that my subsequent strength level after I've been bringing creatine back in will increase my strength further than it was prior to the washout. However, it's not a perfect experiment because I've got more training time as a consequence of having washed out and then done a reload of creatine.

So we're getting kind of into the details here. The short answer to this is if you're an adult man or woman and you want to experiment with creatine, great. Creatine monohydrate is the best option. Shop for cost. Some people feel a bit of gastric distress when they take creatine monohydrate. You need to experiment with either taking it with food or without food. I like to mix mine in water, or sometimes I'll add a little bit of lemon juice to that water. And I generally will take it about 30 minutes before a meal.

But some people do notice a little bit of gastric distress from creatine monohydrate. That gastric distress tends to subside with subsequent days of taking creatine, surprisingly. Or perhaps you just adjust in some way at the level of the gut. Who knows? Or you could break up the dosages of that 5 grams into five 1-gram dosages to try and offset some of that gastric distress.

I have heard from some people-- usually it's women-- who say, I like the strength increase that comes with creatine. I like the way it impacts my brain, my thinking, but I don't like the extra water that it puts under my skin. Are there forms of creatine that don't force me to hold water under the skin and just put water in the muscles? The short answer is no, at least not that I'm aware of.

Some creatine brands will argue that, and they will sell other forms of creatine. One of them in particular is a very acidic form of creatine. I've tried it before. All that did was give me massive gastric distress. But that's me. You may have had other results. If you get other results, put them in the comment section.

But in any case, there's really no way to cause all the water that comes in with creatine to be directed only to the muscles. But I've talked to several people who are expert in this, including Dr. Gabrielle. Lyon and others, and the theory is that if somebody doesn't have a ton of muscle mass and they are a creatine hyper-responder, that when they take creatine, yes, they'll direct a lot of water to the muscles, but there'll be spillover of the water retention under the skin because they don't have enough muscle to put all of that extra water and/or creatine.

We don't know exactly how this is working, so I would say that if creatine causes you to hold water under your skin in a way that you don't like, then I suggest taking less than the 5 or 10-gram recommended dosage. Maybe try 1 to 3 grams, and see how that benefits both your muscular strength and your brain health.

And now, on the topic of brain health, I'll just briefly say that it is no surprise that supplementing creatine monohydrate supports certain forms of cognition. Now, is it a massive cognitive enhancer? No. Why would it support cognition at all? Well, the creatine phosphate system generally is one of the more important systems, especially for forebrain function.

Keep in mind that your forebrain is a bunch of different areas involved in a bunch of different things, including flexible thinking, context-dependent decision-making and rule-setting for keeping multiple things online, working memory and so on and so forth. And creatine phosphate is a fuel that-- it's not the only fuel, but it's an important fuel for the function of the forebrain and other brain areas, too, of course. So it's no surprise that creatine supports brain health and function, not just muscle strength and size.

Now, the second part of the question, which I'll answer a bit more briefly, is, is creatine supplementation safe for teenagers or do I recommend it for teenagers? Well, here I'm probably going to upset, offend, or otherwise antagonize some folks out there, but my suggestion would be if you are 16 or younger, stay away from creatine. I know. I'm going to upset some people. But I would say, stay away from it, and I'll tell you my reasons in a moment.

If you're 17, 18 years old, OK, it's a maybe. If you're 19 or older, if you really want to use creatine-- let's say you're 19 or up to about 25 years old-- sure, yeah, go ahead and supplement it. I started taking creatine when I was-- let's see. So that was in college, so I was probably-- that year, I was probably about 20 years old, and I'm 49 years old now. So I've been taking creatine monohydrate more or less continuously with these lapses that I mentioned before, intentional lapses and not-so-intentional lapses, for that entire time between age 20 and 49. And I plan to continue taking creatine monohydrate.

Why would I say that people 16 and younger shouldn't take creatine? Well, obviously I'm not a physician, but I am a developmental neurobiologist, and I don't subscribe to the idea that the developing brain and body shouldn't have anything exogenous, meaning anything from the outside put in.

Obviously, you're eating food. Maybe if your doctor prescribes you a medication and you need that medication, you take that medication. I'm a fan of teenagers and younger kids, frankly, getting enough omega-3 fatty acids. This is very important for brain development and health and just overall wellbeing.

However, creatine monohydrate, because it's really directed towards the muscles and the brain, I have to say, I'm fairly conservative as it relates to the brain part, meaning your brain is developing all the way up to about age 25 and probably beyond, and we just don't know the consequence of ingesting fairly high amounts of creatine monohydrate and how it impacts brain development.

I don't necessarily think it would negatively impact brain development. You could say, well, it might even positively impact brain development, sure. But if you're eating sufficient high-quality proteins from whole food sources, minimally processed sources in those years-- and you should be-- and you're getting sufficient amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and healthy monounsaturated fats-- and probably some saturated fats, too, is going to be important-- fruits, vegetables and some starches, if you're doing all that, you're setting an incredibly positive environment for your brain to develop in.

And I just don't see the point of then ingesting creatine monohydrate on top of that. Now, there may be some studies of creatine monohydrate in teenagers that I'm not aware of as it relates to brain development and function, but that's just my stance. Now, as it relates to muscle, I think it's wonderful that young people do resistance training. I started when I was about 16. I realize nowadays there's this idea that people perhaps should start even younger.

I was told and I did subscribe to the idea that one should avoid really heavy weights, heavy squatting, et cetera in their teen years. I started start disobeying that around 18, 19 because I like training heavy. I much prefer to train in the three to five to six repetition range than any other range, and I still do.

But I'm a big believer in seeing what one can do with quality sleep, nutrition, training, your social life. You never want to cash in your social life or give up social connection just to get your training in, these kinds of things. I encourage people to see what sorts of quality habits, that is, behaviors, and nutrition, et cetera, they can cultivate early in life and then carry those forward and then start exploring supplementation if they want and provided it's done safely and they have the disposable income later.

There's a ton to explore in the realm of supplementation, creatine just being one example of those. So unless we're talking about essential fatty acids, like omega-3 fatty acids, which, by the way, you can get from certain food sources-- you don't have to supplement them.

But unless we're talking about that or getting enough fiber, which you can get from food sources, or getting low-sugar fermented foods to support the gut microbiome, unless we're talking about some very basic things to support overall health, my stance is simply to say, sure, start taking creatine, but start later. Start when you're 18 and older, A, because we don't know what the effects are on the brain and body, what potential deleterious effects creatine monohydrate could have on the developing brain or body. Again, there's no reason to think it would, but you know, in the absence of data, I would on the side of caution.

And then the second reason, which is at least equally important, is you can always do it later. You can wait. Why not see what kind of strength and size and, frankly, brain function you can develop before taking creatine monohydrate and then add it in later as a supplement, as a boost? And perhaps that's my stance just because that's what I did. Again, I started taking creatine at 20.

But I will come clean and say that I wasn't aware of creatine monohydrate. It wasn't marketed prior to when I turned 20. And had it been marketed when I was 16 and I was first getting into resistance training, I probably would have taken it to or at least wanted to. But I would have hoped also that someone perhaps sitting behind a microphone on a podcast-- we didn't have podcasts then-- would say, hey, you know what, just wait and see and add supplements in later.

And I will say this-- it's a wonderful feeling, whether or not you're a teen, man, or woman, to develop strength, size, endurance to your liking, so whatever strength, size, endurance and speed and sprinting ability, whatever, jumping ability you can using training, nutrition, sleep, and all that good stuff, which you have to do continuously anyway going forward, and then to add in supplements and, again, be a scientist of yourself and see how they either support or have no effect or degrade the sorts of performance and aesthetic features that you're looking for.

It's a lot of fun to play these games with these different supplements, but I do think you get the best picture of what they do and don't do and whether or not they work for you-- that wasn't meant to rhyme-- if you add them in after you've already cultivated the right behaviors and nutrition, et cetera. And there is a tendency when people start taking supplements early-- it's kind of like the person that decides they're going to start biking, like road biking, and they go out and get the fanciest bike with all the bells and whistles and all that stuff.

You never really get a full sense of what you're capable of doing on lower-tech equipment and then adding in some new feature to your bike or your kit and then seeing what kind of incremental increase that provides or not at all. I guess I'm old school. I like seeing what you can do with a minimum of external tools and then add the external tools as it feels right for you.

The next question is about smelling salts. Last year, I went on the Joe Rogan podcast-- I think that was the fourth time-- and had a great time on there, discussed a lot of things. And at one point, Joe and I were talking about olfaction, and we were talking about, basically, the exchange of and the detection of chemicals in the environment through your nostrils.

And he had some smelling salts there. So he pulled out the smelling salts, and he said, have you ever tried smelling salts? And I said, nope, never tried them. And he goes, oh, you got to try these. And I took a whiff of the smelling salts, and whoa, it hits you immediately. I mean half a second. And you are wide awake.

And it's kind of painful in your sinuses. I wouldn't describe it quite as only pain. It's got some other features too. And boy, does it wake you up. And then it makes you a little bit angry, a little bit irritated. And then the weirdest thing happens-- about 10 minutes later, you want to do it again.

I didn't do it again, but after that episode, I went and looked up, A, whether or not smelling salts are safe, probably should have done that before taking the whiff of smelling salts. But it turns out that, yes, smelling salts can be safe. It also turns out that, yes, smelling salts can damage your so-called olfactory epithelium and your olfactory neurons if you overuse them.

So like most things, the dose makes the poison. However, smelling salts, which basically have kind of a smell of ammonia-- it's not quite ammonia, and by the way, please, please, please, folks, never, ever, ever home-kit this kind of stuff. Smelling ammonia at high concentrations-- I know this because when you work in a laboratory, one of the first things you do is you learn all the ways to remain safe, healthy, and alive in a laboratory.

Smelling high concentration of ammonia or, frankly, any other chemical, getting your nose over it and taking a whiff can not only cause serious damage to your olfactory system, sometimes permanent, but can actually cause very serious brain damage or worse, lung damage, et cetera. This is a real thing. So you wouldn't just douse some chemical on your skin to see if it's acid and it burns. That would be horrible. Never do that.

You should also not inhale any unknown chemical or unknown concentration of a chemical. This is why in a laboratory or elsewhere you're taught to sometimes whisk some of the vapors toward you from a distance. But most importantly, you're supposed to read labels. You're supposed to know what's in there.

So I can't vouch for all the brands of smelling salts that are out there, and I don't doubt that some of those brands include either concentrations of chemicals or chemicals themselves that should not be inhaled. So you need to find a reliable, reputable brand of smelling salts if you're going to go this route. By the way, we're also going to talk about other forms of stimulants that aren't smelling salts because I can already tell just by my mutual telepathy with you that most people are probably saying, OK, I don't want to do smelling salts. Why are we even having this conversation? Here's why.

Let's ask ourselves why smelling salts work in order to elevate our levels of arousal. They make us really alert and a little bit irritated. The reason is you have two olfactory pathways. One is a learned pathway or a pathway where you bring in certain odors. By the way, odors are basically little chemicals that float up your nose and actually bind to receptors on your olfactory neurons, and then those olfactory neurons send little signals down their wires we call axons through something called the cribriform plate, which is like a little Swiss cheese type of bony thing.

And then it's right into your brain. And those axons terminate in the regions of so-called olfactory bulb, and those neurons in the olfactory bulb then send the information on to your cortex, specific parts of your cortex that then learn or develop paired associations, like, oh, cookies smell good, and those cookies remind me of my grandmother's home. And now you have all these memories of your grandmother and your home, and yes, olfaction is very closely tied to memories, both smells that we find appetitive, that we like, and that we find aversive, that we don't like, very powerfully tied to memory.

There's a separate, what we call labeled-line pathway specifically for odors that are very aversive, things that are hardwired to make us turn away from them, putrid things, vomit, caustic things, like ammonia, things that smell bad to everybody first time and every time. They make you turn away. That's a hardwired labeled line. It goes through a distinct pathway through the olfactory system into a distinct set of locations in the brain and has a fairly direct line to the amygdala, this area of the brain associated with threat detection.

Smelling salts essentially tap into the aversive labeled line of olfactory circuitry, making us go, ugh. Nobody takes a whiff of smelling salts and goes for another unless there's something going on in there that's not so healthy or they're very conditioned to do it, like they're overcoming that aversion.

That turning away from that intense caustic smell can be compared to something like the blink reflex. It's a hardwired reflex that, yes, you can learn to overcome consciously, but this is a hardwired labeled line to move away from them. So smelling salts are activating a fear and danger signal. They literally activate the amygdala downstream of these very caustic smells.

Should you use them? Well, I don't, but provided it's a safe smelling salt at the right concentrations creations and they work for you-- well, I do know a number of people-- mainly these tend to be people who are interested in power lifting or in martial arts that will use smelling salts. And yes, smelling salts are used in the clinical setting to revive people who have passed out, typically, or who, for whatever other reason, you need to revive from a state of unconsciousness or semiconsciousness.

But please, please, please do not play games or jokes, practical jokes, et cetera, with smelling salts. You can cause some real damage. And again, don't whiff chemicals if you don't know what those chemicals are or if there's any chance that they could damage your olfactory epithelium. Keep in mind that olfactory neurons are unique among CNS neurons because they can regenerate after destroyed. In fact, they can replenish after they are destroyed, which is very unusual for CNS neurons.

However, a lot of people, in particular people that get viral infections, will lose their sense of smell as a consequence of having lost their olfactory neurons, and they don't get replaced. A hard hit to the head-- because those wires, those axons go through the cribriform plate, these little holes in the cribriform plate, they can shear those axons, sometimes will render people so-called "anosmic" or "anosmic," which means "without smell." And sometimes it recovers, and sometimes it doesn't.

The sense of smell is something that you really don't appreciate until you lose it, and then your taste starts to really diminish. So I had a viral infection a few years ago. My sense of smell was really disrupted, and my sense of taste was severely disrupted as a consequence of the loss of the sense of smell.

There are a couple of things that can restore sense of smell. One is smelling different powerful odors, and they should be powerful and different, so lemon, chocolate, and really encouraging-- getting it right up there and sniffing really deep, huffing in really deep to try and train up those neurons to recognize those smells again.

And keep in mind that the survival and replenishment of olfactory neurons is activity-dependent, which means that doing these intentional smelling of lemon, chocolate, and other things when you've lost your sense of smell and you're trying to regain it makes perfect sense. You're trying to induce activity in those neurons and in the circuits that then signal the replenishment of those neurons.

Now, that smelling salts-- we could spin off into a long, long discussion about olfaction and talk more about olfaction and olfactory neuron recovery, et cetera. By the way, if you ever lose your sense of smell from a viral infection, there are some data-- they're not great data. But given the importance of smell, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that in addition to doing what I just described, taking different odors and smelling them consciously and really doing that for a few times each day for multiple days until your smell sense starts to come back, there are some data that 600 milligrams of ALA, alpha-lipoic acid, can help accelerate the return of smell after a viral infection.

Keep in mind ALA can reduce blood sugar levels, so if you're diabetic or you have blood sugar issues, you should know that-- it should be taken with food, et cetera-- again, not a super robust effect. But if you've lost your smell and you're desperate to do anything you can, you can do the 600 milligrams a day of ALA and see if it supports the return of your smell.

The question was also about other stimulants. So this could be a whole episode, talking about caffeine, nicotine, and other stimulants. Let's just break a few of these down. Caffeine-- safe or not safe? Yes, plenty safe, provided it doesn't induce anxiety for you. Don't drink it too late in the day because it can disrupt your sleep.

How late in the day? Well, for me, the cutoff is 2:00 PM. For some people, it has to be earlier. Some people will say they can drink caffeine at 6:00 PM and sleep fine. Your sleep is not fine. The architecture is disrupted. Listen, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just going to tell you what's happening, and you can make the decision.

Caffeine, of course, comes in many forms. My preferred form is zero-sugar yerba mate, either cold brew yerba mate or loose-leaf yerba mate. I also like coffee espresso. Sometimes I'll use an energy drink. You pick your favorite form.

In safe dosages of anywhere from 100 milligrams to 400 milligrams per day, maybe a bit more-- I tend to drink a lot of caffeine. I'm very caffeine-tolerant, so I'll drink much more than that. But you have to figure out what works for you, what doesn't induce anxiety. You don't want to induce anxiety with caffeine.

Other stimulants-- OK, there are things like nicotine. By the way, never smoke, vape, dip, or snuff nicotine because those delivery sources have their own set of problems, including being carcinogenic as well as disrupting lung structure and function in the case of vaping. Yes, I said it. Vaping is not good for you. Maybe it's slightly better for you than smoking, but it is still terrible for your lungs. We're now starting to see the data.

I'll probably earn some enemies there, but that's the truth. You'll tell me, I'm sure, but I won't be able to hear you because you won't be able to tell me because your lungs will be so deficient. Just kidding. I wish you only well.

Nicotine in gum form, pouch form, toothpicks, et cetera now is kind of ubiquitous. A lot of people are taking nicotine. Nicotine increases blood pressure, increases vasoconstriction, which, in turn, can be problematic for your brain, can be problematic for your skin. Keep in mind the vasoconstriction, I was told by several dermatologists, can lead to the appearance of more rapidly aging skin. This is important to know.

The oral health experts tell me that it can cause accelerated tooth decay in part through the vasoconstriction and the reductions in saliva. However, there is evidence that nicotine can be a cognitive enhancer, so as long as you're not delivering it through a carcinogenic or otherwise damaging route, such as gum or pouch, it will help you focus more. It will increase your alertness.

And nicotine is unique among stimulants in that it increases your levels of alertness and focus, but it relaxes you at the same time. Now, there's a whole discussion, and we've had that discussion in the episode all about nicotine. But that would be the second one in the batch.

And then there are a bunch of other stimulants in the nonprescription category, things like combining L-tyrosine and alpha-GPC. That's a pretty strong stimulant even though it's not a classic stimulant. It will increase dopamine levels. It will increase acetylcholine levels. It will increase your levels of focus. And it does tend to have a stimulant-type effect of making you more alert.

I've talked about this in previous episodes. I'll provide a link to the timestamp for those in the show note captions here. Done occasionally, I think it can be fine. Any of these things, like nicotine or alpha-GPC or L-tyrosine, done every time you sit down to study or every time you need to do a workout-- I'm not a fan of that. I like to use these for particularly intense workouts or when you want an extra boost, this kind of thing.

And I don't tend to take those supplements or nicotine prior to every workout or every bout of work. However, I do drink caffeine every day unless I'm ill or there's some other reason why I can't drink caffeine, which would probably make me feel ill because, yes, I love caffeine, and I'm dependent on caffeine pretty much. If I don't have it, I don't get headaches, but I certainly don't feel my overall levels of alertness and focus, so big fan of caffeine, occasional use of nicotine gums, very small amounts.

But the vasoconstriction and increase in blood pressure is an issue that you need to be aware of. My blood pressure tends to be low, so I don't worry about that so much. And I will say, nicotine is incredibly habit-forming and even addictive, incredibly habit-forming, so you want to be very careful to make sure that your level of consumption isn't increasing linearly forever and/or to be just cautious about starting it at all because there's also a financial cost to it.

There, no doubt, is a health cost to it in the form of increased blood pressure and the skin stuff and the oral health stuff. Now, is that offset by the improvements in cognitive function? Perhaps. It's a benefit-risk ratio thing that you've got to figure out for you.

And then there are a bunch of other stimulants that fall under the prescription stimulant category, and I'm not going to cover those now. But we have an episode with a true expert in ADHD and stimulants generally, and we talk about all of them, Wellbutrin, Adderall, Vyvanse, and every other type, Modafinil, which is nontraditional stimulant, cognitive enhancer, armodafinil, all of those in incredible amounts of detail with actionable takeaways, should you need those, and how to think about those and how to integrate them with other things as it relates to supplementation and nutrition, et cetera.

That episode should be out very shortly, and we'll provide all the answers you could possibly need in terms of stimulants and their effects for exercise and cognition and so on. And I will also say that in the episodes that I've done on dopamine and any of the episodes where "focus" is in the title-- so "ADHD," "dopamine," or "focus"-- inevitably, we covered things like alpha-GPC, L-tyrosine, both over-the-counter and prescription stimulants, and other things for increasing levels of attention and focus, which is really what people are generally seeking when they talk about stimulants.

Thank you for being a Premium subscriber to the Huberman Lab podcast. I'd like to remind you that if I haven't already answered your question, that I will be doing these AMAs every month or so. I will continue to sift through the questions that are on the Premium website, and I would encourage you to put additional questions there and to upvote questions that you'd like to learn the answers to. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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