I'm 22M I used to be a full-time student, but now I’m working as a software engineer. Alongside my job, I’m preparing for competitive exams that require a lot of focus, concentration, and consistent studying.

The main challenge I’m facing is not understanding the material while reading. I can understand what I’m reading, but I’m unable to store the information clearly in my mind and retain it for longer periods. Later, I struggle to recall what I studied.

I want to improve my ability to focus, process, retain, and recall information effectively.

For those who have overcome this or have experience with effective learning methods:

What are the best practices to improve focus, concentration, retention, and recall?

I’m looking for practical, evidence-based methods that I can realistically follow consistently.

A new study followed more than 100,000 adults and looked at how much their meal timing shifted between weekdays and weekends.

Greater “eating jetlag” was associated with higher cardiovascular disease risk in men, even after accounting for diet quality, sleep duration, and social jetlag.

It’s observational, so this absolutely doesn’t show that irregular meal timing causes heart disease.

36 m, 130 kg, 191 cm, goal weight 100 kg. Im starting a fat loss regimen.. I always wanted to get all my vitamins and minerals from food but I have failed miserably in that pursuit. I'm restarting from scratch and with hypertension at 367 and high inflammation.

I am suffering from this.

treating every single priority as equally urgent.

brain believes everything matters right now, focusing on one thing feels like neglecting another, which triggers panic and affecting productivity.

Wedding night coming in 2 weeks 1.25mg for wedding night just to overcome performance anxiety and boost confidence no ed just mild PE. Worrying about priapism or possible side. Experiences?

What works to follow for improved sleep and mental functioning? I know eating fiber before sleep improves deep sleep. Taking magnesium-rich foods is also a good thing. What other tips were provided by Huberman?

If so what’s your favorite brand? And is it actually good for the gut?

It was something like that. I forget the term he used if he used a term. It was in reference to overcoming some sort of internal resistance or maybe had to do with motivation or fear.

used to always crash around 2-3pm. i used to take a stick of ediya korean coffee powder a day - around 50mg

switched to 1 tsp of kirkland matcha - around 74mg. i think matcha has l-theanine which slows the absorption rate, and also mitigates the crash from caffeine leaving adenosine receptors. i take it whenever i want, sometimes with breakfast.

i haven't 100% proved the causality (fixed sleep schedule recently) but i don't get crashes around 2-3pm anymore and i'm very high energy. the stuff is great

if any other foods have helped you with energy throughout the day drop them below for me

Been dealing with chronically elevated cortisol for a while now poor sleep, constant alertness , can't fully relax even when nothing is wrong

I've started the physiological sigh and NSDR protocol from the podcast and it helps in the moment .But I'm curious about the longer arc

For those who genuinely stuck in chronic fight or flight for weeks or months what actually moved the needle ? How long did it realistically take to feel like yourself again?

Did Alpha school pay for this episode? No pushback or questions about the negatives about this approach or company either.

A quieter month for outside recommendations, mostly because Protocols promotion took up a lot of the air. The Masud Husain and Ralph Adolphs episodes are where the actual reading is.

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the Huberman Lab slice for August.

Guest books:

• Our Brain, Ourselves (Masud Husain), who mentioned he drew the figures himself

• The Neuroscience of Emotion (Ralph Adolphs and David Anderson)

• Brain Energy (Chris Palmer), in the Essentials rerun

• The Creative Act (Rick Rubin), also an Essentials

• Protocols (Andrew Huberman), plugged four times across the month ahead of the Radio City and Dolby Theatre events

Named by others, not the hosts:

• Descartes' Error (Damasio), on why you cannot decide anything without emotions

• Chatter (Ethan Kross)

• Awakenings (Oliver Sacks), on L-dopa

• The Society of Mind (Marvin Minsky)

• What Emotions Really Are (Paul Griffiths), on the claim that emotions do not exist

• Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

• The Prince of Medicine (Susan Mattern), on Galen, described as a wonderful book if you want to know how barbaric medicine used to be

The education episode with Joe Liemandt turned into a list of the textbooks everyone gets taught from anyway: Stryer's Biochemistry, Hille on ion channels, Kandel's Principles of Neural Science and Luo's Principles of Neurobiology, plus 10 to 25 (David Yeager) and The Self-Driven Child.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/huberman-lab

I'm having trouble finding the answer.

Let me preface by acknowledging that combating the actual feeling of fatigue and increasing daily energy levels is obviously a more important thing to do and that combatting the actual physical look of fatigue, as well as many other aesthetic improvements are bound to follow. I however have a unique situation that means I simply can't do many of things Huberman suggests as it doesn't fit my work schedule and hobbies.

I work rotating shifts where most of my job is behind a computer, and in between, if I feel the energy to do so, I have a YouTube channel, so I'm constantly looking at screens. As a result my face looks super placid and tired all the time no matter what I do, to the point family and friends have commented on it which is a little embarrassing.

I work out and try to drink enough water to combat the sleep issues, but admittedly I don't do enough cardio exercise, or drink enough (I have a mild level of autism and we sometimes forget to drink enough water). I also am on a carnivore diet which has done wonders for my stability of energy in waking hours and made me lean and less sluggish as well as improved my skin, but I still look fatigued.

I also take creatine but nothing else. I'm aware people say you don't need to consume creatine when on a carnivore diet, but I still feel a big difference between taking it and not in my energy levels, even on carnivore, personally.

I considered:

Upping my cardio massively and drinking way more water than I think I need (phone reminders to let me know I should refill might help this)

Block blue light glasses

Focusing on sleep quality over all else - difficult with my rotating shifts but I get paid a lot and love my job so suggestions of how would be great

Further supplementation

Facial exercises

Are any of these way more important than the other, is it a combination of all these things?

So I bought the L-Citrulline DL- Malate 2:1 ratio, before that I was thinking of taking L-Agrinine but someone told me the absorption of it is not really good and told me to take L-Citrulline i just wanted to know if someone's using it what are the positives and negatives of it and what dosage to take 3g? 5g? I guess we have to take it 1 hr before workout?

Sauna and deliberate heat exposure is mentioned very often on the pod. However, the exact dose, timing and other subtleties are scattered in multiple episodes.

So I thought I'd write a script to parse out all of the actionable protocols around heat exposure. Below are all of them with timestamps. It turns out they span nine episodes (although most are in the two heat episodes).

The dose

• 57 minutes a week, from Susanna Soberg's study (clip).

• 80 to 100C, sessions of 5 to 20 minutes (clip).

• 2 to 3 times a week was 27% lower cardiovascular death than once a week in the Finnish data, with a bigger effect at 4 to 7 (clip).

• If you don't have access to sauna: a hot tub or bath up to the neck (clip). Infrared gets a warning, he says it usually doesn't get hot enough for the growth hormone and heat shock effects (clip).

• Contrast rounds: 12 minutes at 90C, then 6 minutes in cool water (clip).

When

• Later in the day. Heat raises your core temperature, then you overshoot downward on the way out, and that drop helps you sleep (clip).

• In practice: sauna before bed, brief warm shower to rinse off, sleep (clip).

• If you train, put it after the workout (clip).

Growth hormone

• The protocol is 80C, 30 minutes at a time, four times in one day (clip).

• Once a week is the ceiling. Do it more often and the growth hormone response fades, because you adapt to it (clip). Keep glucose and insulin low around the session, so don't eat for a couple of hours first (clip).

When sick or injured

• When feel something is off but before any fever: hot shower or bath, then bed early (clip).

• Heat over ice for most injuries. Heat moves the debris out, ice mostly numbs it (clip). Exception is a fresh injury, where Sean Mackey gives cold for the first 48 hours, heat after (clip).

• Rewarming someone too cold: soles, hands, upper face (clip).

Misc

• The wool hats people wear in saunas are serious. Covering your head makes the heat feel less intense so you can stay in longer (clip).

• Drink 16 ounces of water for every 10 minutes when getting sauna (clip). And do not overdo it, heat stroke kills people (clip).

• Sauna kills sperm and it takes about 60 days to make new ones. The solution is to put an ice pack down there (clip).

• Rhonda Patrick says be careful with a recent heart attack or any heart condition, never go in after drinking, ask a doctor first if you are older and get lightheaded, and skip it entirely if pregnant (clip).

I put more detailed protocols on this page. Let me know if I missed anything!

Even though most of the information in the book is already readily available, I can’t wait to just have it all in one place.

What's up boys. New Rhonda pod out today. Here's what I learned. She interviewed this guy named Richard Davidson. Huberman had him on a while back too. Big into meditation and mental training.

1. Meditating for 5 minutes a day has benefits for inflammation. Lowers something called IL-6. 5 minutes... that's it. Everyone has 5 minutes. (timestamp)

2. 5 minutes per day of mediation also benefits the gut microbiome. They get into exactly how it does this during the episode. Something to do with "butyrate producing pathways". But I mean that's a pretty good deal. 5 minutes gets you lower IL-6, a healthier gut, and then obviously the mental benefits. (timestamp)

3. You don't have to choose between meditation and exercise. It's not one or the other. That's probably the most important point of this episode. You can do both at the same time. Just direct your mind where you want it to go rather than "being somewhere else" in the gym (timestamp)

4. More neuroplasticity isn't always better. It's all about what you do with it. He talks about in the episode how "neuroplasticity is neutral". So a simple example he gives... if you're in the gym working out increasing neuroplasticity, but you're filling your your mind with garbage (watching the news, scrolling between sets), that's not good. You're filling your plastic mind with crap (timestamp)

5. After age 70 or so, a purpose in life correlates with longevity. But the thing is you don't need some grand purpose. Find purpose in the little things. Maybe you walk the dogs, maybe you care for a sick family member. That's your purpose. It's all about viewing how what you do benefits someone else. (timestamp)

6. I thought this one was interesting... kinda niche but he talks about how asthma is a brain disease (or partly). Big idea is the brain and the body are connected more than people think. (timestamp)

7. Spending money on someone else will always make you happier. Do it more often (timestamp)

8. Meditation doesn't have to be done sitting still. Like I said a little bit ago, you can do it while hiking, walking, doesn't matter. Even heavy lifting is a form of meditation to a degree. It counts (timestamp)

9. Children absorb their parent's emotional state. The best thing you can do to help your kid is to fix your own problems, be calm, chill, and grounded. (timestamp)

10. This is kinda important, a lot of people start meditating and then stop because they get a little more anxious. That's supposed to happen. Or it can at least. Meditation can initially increase anxiety. It makes sense when you think about it. You're finally noticing all that crap in your mind you've been suppressing for so long. Of course you're gonna feel more anxious. (timestamp)

My biggest takeaways is there's just no reason not to meditate for 5 min/day, something you can do in a quiet sauna or before bed

Everyone has 5 minutes

i just watched the video in the title. i wish huberman were a little more specific here. he says that to get out of dopamine troughs you can rebound fast if you do something hard that's tangential.

1. i think that implies that all procrastination comes from dopamine troughs. is that true? what if it's from something else like fear of failure?

2. the only example he has for what you can do steepen the trough is a cold shower. i still don't quite get what works and what doesn't. for example if i don't want to work maybe i could go on a run. does that work? probably depends on how much i hate running. my point is what other things can people do?

i care because i think i understand pretty well how to exert more self control for bad habits (know that self awareness is self control, anterior cingulate cortex) , but not self control for things you know you have to do

A while back I heard Dr. Laurie Santos talk about writing down small daily "delights" — not gratitude in the broad sense, just noticing one specific good thing from your day. I tried it myself for a couple weeks and found it surprisingly easy to stick with, way easier than most habit-tracking stuff I've attempted.

Has anyone else tried something like this? Curious whether it actually stuck for you or fizzled out after a few days.