Neuroscientist: The Only Supplements You Need – Dr. Huberman

let's talk about supplements andsupplementation and how to develop arational supplementation regimen one ofthe things that's really emerged overthe last 20 years is that supplementsand there I'm referring tonon-prescription compounds designed toaugment nutrition prescription drugs andbehavioral protocolshave emerged as a Mainstay within thehealth and wellness but also the medicalcommunities that are focused ondeveloping mental health physical healthand performance for their patients andtheir athletes and for the everydayperson essentially what I'm saying isthat 20 years ago a discussion aboutsupplements would mainly take placewithin the niche communities of healthfood stores or of particular athletesbut nowadays I think almost everyone isfamiliar with the fact that yes indeedthere are standard vitamin supplementsbut that there are also supplements suchas Vitamin D3 which are designed to makesure that people have a certain amountsof hormones in their bloodstream becausethey might not be getting enoughSunshine although I'll be very clearover and over throughout this episodethat there is no pill replacement forSunshine nor is there a pill replacementor food replacement for that matter forexercise or for social connection or forsleep or for simply getting smarteragain there is no pill that's going toreplace excellent behavioral protocolsin fact there physician friend of minehas a great saying that I thinkeverybody should keep in mindas we wade into this conversation whichis that Better Living Through Chemistrystill requires Better Livingand I think that's a very importantphrase to keep in mind when thinkingabout the optimal supplementation orprescription drug protocol for you sowhat is an ideal supplementationprotocol well I think what we need to dois to take a step back and ask what aredifferent supplements designed to do forinstance there are foundationalsupplements these are supplements thatare designed to establish a foundationor provide Insurance along with yournutritional intake to ensure that you'regetting all the things that you need inorder to have a basic level of mentalhealth physical health and opportunityfor Optimal Performance now this is theone category of supplements for which Ithink it's appropriate and in factadvantageous to have multipleingredients in a given supplement butwhen it comes to foundationalsupplementswhat we're mainly talking about aresupplements that contain vitamins andminerals that are designed to compensatefor any deficiencies you might have fromdiet or from lack of adequate diet howwould such a lack of vitamin and mineralintake arise well for instance if you'resomebody that practices intermittentfasting or other components of fastingor if you're somebody who does not getenough vitamins and minerals fromvegetables and fruits and Grains andmeats well then taking a supplement thatcanact as an insurance policy against anyvitamin mineral deficiencies in manyways can be advantageous although I willtalk about some of the safety concernsin just a few minutes now I want toacknowledge that as soon as we talkabout vitamin mineral supplements theSkeptics immediately raise their handsand say well all that vitamin andmineral supplements do is give you veryexpensive urine and there the Skepticsare referring to the fact the realitythat when you ingest high levels ofwater-soluble vitamins so think vitaminC and some of the other vitamins thatindeed you will excrete them in yoururinehoweverit's also the case that many people arenot getting enough of the water-solublevitamins from their foods and it's alsothe case that many people are and it'salso the case that ingesting higher thanneeded amounts of most water-solublevitamins provided those levels aren'texceedingly Highis or at least we should say can be safeand again this is provided that thelevels that they're ingesting are notexceedingly high so the typical vitaminmineral supplement is indeed going tocover any gaps or deficiencies thatmight arise in the water-solublevitamins from your food intake but thereality is that most people are gettingenough of the water-soluble vitaminsfrom their food if they are payingattention to a couple of thingsand those things are very simple to layout regardless of whether or not you'rea vegan a vegetarian a more traditionalomnivore eating from both animal-basedand plant-based sources grains Etc oreven if you're in the pure carnivore orstrict I guess it's called The Lion dietwhere it's just meat and salt regardlessof what type of nutrition you followyou will get vitamins and minerals butyou'll get more or fewer of themdepending on the nutritional program youfollow and of course depending on howoften and how much you eat that's justsort of obviousmost people who take a vitamin mineralsupplementwill indeed excrete a lot of thewater-soluble vitamins they will retainthe fat soluble vitamins and there againthe Skeptics will raise their hands andsay you do not want to take high levelsof fat soluble vitamins because theywill be stored in your systempotentially to levels that are dangerousagain provided that vitamin mineralsupplements are not taken in excess it'sunlikely that you're going to have sucha buildup of the fat soluble vitamins inyour system that they're going to be aproblem so that raises a very specificquestion that you need to ask do youwant to take a vitamin mineralsupplement well the answer to that willbe highly individual but you really justneed to address two things first of allis the cost within the range that youcan afford and want to pay rightoftentimes these vitamin mineralsupplements can be quite inexpensive butsome of them can be quite expensive andyou can see the full range of ones thatare pennies per day all the way up tomany dollars or tens of dollars per daybecause of what are reported to bevariations in quality and sourcing andso forth I'm not aware of any realdifferences between the quality of thewater-soluble and fat soluble vitaminsfound in the less expensive versus themore expensive vitamin mineralsupplements more typically the costscales with the dosages of thesedifferent vitamins and minerals and ascould probably be expected the moreexpensive to obtain andsourcevitamins and minerals tend to be inlower quantities in the less expensiveversions of vitamin mineral supplementsthis is kind of obvious so you need toask yourself can you afford itfinancially and then you need to askyourself are you able to regularlyingest enough foods with enough varietyto cover your vitamin mineralneeds just from food and for some peoplethe answer is going to be an immediateyes they are careful to get enough ofthe foods that allow them to obtaintheir vitamin and mineral quota and forother individuals the answer will be noI would say for people that areextremely physically and or mentallyactive and for people that perhaps arefollowing a intermittent fastingschedule so they are not ingesting a lotof food in general or restricting theirfood intake to specific times of daywell then a vitamin mineral supplementlikely makes sense for them however it'sgoing to be very important to ingestthat vitamin mineral supplement withfood and ideally early in the day sothat can set up a little bit of achallenge for the intermittent fasterswho are restricting their feeding windowto late in the day why do I say thiswell many of the water-soluble vitaminsin particular the B vitamins need to beingested with food because otherwisethey can cause some stomach upset andagain there's a range there some peoplelike myself can take B vitamins on anempty stomach and feel fine other peoplefeel really lousy when they take Bvitamins there are a few other thingsthat we'll talk about later namely zincand coenzyme Q10 that really should alsobe taken with food but the best time totake a vitamin mineral supplement iswith food and I believe that if you'regoing to take a vitamin mineralsupplementthat you want to take it with food andyou don't want to take dosages ofvitamins and minerals from supplementsthat are exceedingly high for a coupleof reasons one is the buildup of fatsoluble vitamins that we talked aboutbefore the other reason is that whenpeople tend to take very high levels ofvitamins and minerals from supplementsthey tend to spend less time and focuson making sure that they're optimizingtheir nutrition or at least trying toget their nutrition right what do I meanby getting their nutrition right well Ithink regardless of whether or not yourketo omnivore carnivorevegan or any other nutritional planthe key thing is to get most that isabout 75 to 80 of your Foods or morefrom non-processed or minimallyprocessed sources I think there isagreement across the board that mostpeople should avoid highly processedfoods highly processed foods are goingto be foods with very long ingredientlists that have very long shelf lives sothis often includes snack foods it doesinclude snack foods like chips Etcpastries that could sit on the Shelf along timebut it also includes things like cannedsoups and number of different otherfoods that have many many ingredientspreservatives most people would do wellto avoid those kinds of foods and focusmost of their intake on things that arenon-processed so these would be thingslike fruits and vegetables you'll noticethat the non-processed foods will tendto have very short shelf life or requirerefrigeration in some cases such as meateggs Etcor minimally processed foods such as youknow rice and oatmeals and pastas beansand things of that sort beans oftentimescan be completely unprocessed as well ofcourse these are two general categoriesunprocessed and minimally process thatshould make up about 80 or more of yourfood intake if your goal is health andobtaining adequate amounts of vitaminsand minerals the so-called foundationalsupplements include of course vitaminand mineral supplementsbut has expanded over the last decade ormore to also include supplements thathave vitamins and minerals but alsothings like digestive enzymes and againhere we have an example where indeed youcan get digestive enzymes from foods forinstance eating a bit of papaya or evena little bit of Pineapple canassist in the digestion of certainaspects of macronutrients because theseare naturally occurring enzymes thathelp digest things like carbohydratesfats and proteinsand there are other food-based sourcesof enzymes you're welcome to look thoseup online if you just put food-basedsources of enzymes and you'll find thosebut nowadays A lot of the foundationalsupplements will includepapain or they will include differentlipases or anytime you hear the word Aceby the way it means an enzyme an enzymeis designed to break down or to catalyzesome sort of reactionbiology and nutrition in particular soyou can find foundational supplementsthat include vitamins and minerals anddigestive enzymes and nowadays more andmore the quality foundationalsupplements are also including thingslike adaptogens and here the nameadaptogens is sort of vague and itindeed has no specific operationaldefinition this is something reallyimportant to understand aboutsupplementation is that companies andindeed podcasts can talk aboutadaptogens without actually definingwhat an adaptogen is in an operationalway when we say operational what we meanis a definition that everyone in a givenArena or space research for instance canagree on so that when we talk about theadaptogenic effects of a given compoundwe're all talking about the same thingswell foundational supplements nowadaysinclude vitamins minerals digestiveenzymes and the so-called adaptogens andthe adaptogens broadly speaking arethought to improve the body and brain'sability ability to buffer againstvarious stressors so these could bethings like herbs like ashwagandha thatare designed to reduce cortisol levelsin that sense ashwagandha is anadaptogen but ashwagandha has othereffects related to hormone augmentationin both the testosterone and estrogenand maybe even the thyroid Pathways sofoundational supplements has reallyexpanded to include a lot of differentcategories of nutrients andmicronutrients vitamins and mineralsdigestive enzymes designed to achieve abroad spectrum of effects again this isthe one category of supplementationwhere I think it makes senseto exploremulti-ingredient formulationsif you enjoy our content please supportour Channel by subscribing and hittingthe like buttonshare your experience with supplementsand vitamins in the comments sectionbelowthanks for watching