Welcome to the huberman live podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology
at Stanford school of medicine.
Today we are discussing focus and concentration and tools for improving your
focus and concentration.
This is a topic that I've covered previously on the huberman Lab podcast, but in different contexts, for instance we had a very popular episode on ADHD attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder.
Which, of course relates to the topic of focus and how to improve
focus. We've also talked a lot about dopamine motivation and drive. In fact that's the title of your previous also quite popular episode of this
podcast. But never before have we had a single episode solely devoted to the tools to improve
focus and concentration.
The rationale for recording this episode is to provide people one location where they can go and quickly access the specific tools for increasing focus and concentration that are known to be the most powerful tools and the most up-to-date.
Eight Tools. In fact today's episode is going to include description of several peer reviewed studies and the tools that emerge from those scientific peer-reviewed studies that point to new and fortunately even briefer protocols than I've described before. So what I'm basically describing here is tools that in a very short amount of time will allow you to significantly increase your focus and
concentration abilities. Those tools will include
behavioral tools nutrition, based, tools, supplement, based tools brain machine interface based tools and for those of
Of you that are working with physician prescription drug tools. Today's episode ought to benefit anybody young or old, or anything in between whether or not you have ADHD or not. Today's episode is going to give you tools that you can apply in your daily life. Most all of them are completely zero cost and those tools will allow you to tap into the neurochemistry and the neural circuits within your brain and body that peer-reviewed science has reliably shown. Can significantly
improve your focus and concentration abilities.
Just to give you a little teaser of the kinds of
Rules that. I'm going to provide you on today's episode. A previous guest on the huberman. Lab podcast was dr. Wendy Suzuki, dr.
Suzuki is a professor of
Psychology and Neuroscience at New York University
or NYU as it's commonly referred to.
She's also the dean of arts and sciences at NYU. Her laboratory made a very important discovery, which was that a very brief just 12 actually 13. If you really count the, the intro, but 13-minute daily meditation performed for a period of about eight weeks significantly.
Reese, people's focus and concentration abilities. And the great news is you didn't need all eight weeks. It was just that's how long that you're in the study. So during today's episode, I will describe that protocol in detail. I'll also provide you an even briefer alternative to that protocol. That you can use. If for instance, you find yourself with only three minutes or four minutes or
five minutes a day to meditate.
The great news is there's quality peer reviewed science to support that form of meditation for improving, focus, and concentration and that falls under the bin of these. A zero cost tool.
That you can really use to tap into the neurochemistry and neural circuits. That really allow you to take control of your cognitive
abilities, and improve them over
time. I'll also provide you important details about that protocol and other protocols. For instance, contrary to popular belief. It is not I repeat it is not a good idea to do a focused based meditation within the four hours before bedtime many people, including some of the subjects in that study
performed by the Suzuki lab
found that when they did a focusing meditation,
Call. Even if it was very calming, it led to difficulties in falling and staying asleep. So that runs counter to a lot of what we heard about meditation being great for sleep. It turns out meditation might be great for sleep. It certainly is great for improving Focus capacity but I highly recommend that if you're going to apply a focus meditation tool in order to improve your focus and concentration that you make sure that that's performed not within
four hours prior to bedtime. So that's just a brief example of the sorts of tools and protocols
and details about the tools and protocols, that I'll provide on today's episode.
I should mention that we have provided links in the show notes caption so that you can quickly go to the studies that we described as well as some of the behavioral tools
and other tools that will cover things like the use of binaural beats supplements Etc.
Our goal here again is to provide you the maximum number of tools for focus and concentration that you can pick from and choose from and apply in your life and trying to eliminate as much of the leg work
required to seek out and apply those
tools. I'm pleased to announce that the human Lab podcast, is now partnered with Momentis supplements.
So we partnered with momentous for several important reasons, first of all, they ship internationally because we know that many of you are
located outside of the United States. That's valuable second of all. I'm
perhaps most important, the quality of their supplements
is second to none. Both in terms of
Purity and precision of the amounts of the ingredients. Third, we really emphasize supplements that are single
ingredient supplements and that are
supplied in dosages. That allow you to build a supplementation
protocol. That's optimized for cost that's
optimized for
Effectiveness and that you can add things and remove things from your protocol in a way that's really systematic and scientific. This is really hard to do if you're taking blends of different supplements or if the dosages are such that you can titrate or that is adjust the dosages of a given supplement. So by using single ingredient supplements, you can really build out the supplement kit
that's ideal for you and your specific needs.
If you'd like to see the supplements that we partner with Momentis on. You can go to live momentous.com huberman there. You'll see those supplements and just keep
in mind that we are constantly expanding the library of supplements available through momentous on a regular basis. Again that's live,
momentous.com, hubermann. Before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is however, part of my
desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public
in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is thesis thesis makes custom nootropics and to be quite honest, I don't like the word
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smart drugs. And as a
neuroscientist, I can tell you, there is no neural circuit in the brain for being
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September 11th. Okay, let's talk about focus and
concentration and how you
can improve your focus and concentration using science based protocols.
Now, because today's episode is mainly focused on tools and not so much the underlying mechanisms. I'm mainly going to focus on what to do and when and
how to do it. But I just want to take about
three minutes and briefly describe a model that is a visual image. That
Can put in your mind that will help you incorporate the tools that I'll provide and that generally will help you understand at a mechanistic level, how focus and concentration work. So what I want you to imagine is
an arrow. An arrow of course has an arrowhead and it has the shaft of that arrow
and in the context of the Neuroscience of focus and
concentration,
the neurochemical system that really represents the shaft of that Arrow, right? The straight line is
epinephrine also,
Uh, called adrenaline. And today I'll
refer to Adrenaline and epinephrine interchangeably, turns out that epinephrine /
adrenaline are released within your brain. From a little location, a little cluster of neurons called Locus coeruleus but you do not need to remember that name
and from your body from the adrenal glands and the release of epinephrine from those two locations. Overall increases energy. It increases alertness it does not
alone, increase Focus. Okay, so
the reason I've assigned
Epinephrine adrenaline, as the shaft of the arrow, is that if
focus is the arrow, there is no
focus without epinephrine. So
things whether or not their behavioral or psychological or supplements or drugs that increase epinephrine, allow Focus to occur. They are necessary for
Focus but they are not sufficient for Focus. That is they are required, but they are not enough to create Focus. So we're
going to need epinephrine in the equation without epinephrine.
There is no
Focus or concentration.
Now the
arrowhead on this metaphorical. Arrowhead that represents focus and
concentration is going to be represented or related to the mechanisms of acetylcholine, a different neurochemical that also exist in the brain and body. In fact in the body, it's responsible for the contraction and movement of your muscles. But today we're talking about acetylcholine not in that context. But rather in the context of its released within the brain, acetylcholine is released from a couple of different locations in the
brain. And the best way to think about it is, it's like a
spotlight.
It highlights specific neurons nerve cells. That should be active or more active. I should say than the other
neurons in the environment. So, the
reason I've assigned the
arrowhead to acetylcholine and acetylcholine to
the arrowhead, is that if you have an arrow with a very big Arrow Head, that's really broad really blend. Imagine a mile wide Arrowhead. That's not very focused on any one location. It's not really
pointing to any one location. Is it?
But
With a narrow really
tightly focused. Arrowhead
well that's focused on one location. So we have alertness epinephrine and then we have the actual direction in which our concentration and
focus is placed and that's at least in this mental model. I'm creating acetyl choline
and then in order to have ongoing Focus, we need another neurochemical and it turns out that that third neurochemical is dopamine a molecule often associated with pleasure and reward.
But it's really the molecule of motivation. So here, I want you to imagine in your mind and arrow with an arrowhead. Think acetylcholine in the arrowhead, I shaft are aligned behind that
Arrowhead, which is epinephrine also called adrenaline. And
then behind it, a sort of an engine that keeps that Focus moving forward, right? Because we don't just want to be focused for a moment, we want to be able to focus for
10 minutes or for an hour or maybe even for two hours.
Turns out. There's an optimal duration
to focus. I'll teach you that in just a little bit, but these
three neurochemicals
Either acetylcholine epinephrine and dopamine, really allow you to get focused to focus. Very precisely and in fact increasingly precisely over time to really narrow and narrow and narrow, your focus progressively within a single bout of focus and to continue to do that and to be able to do
that repeatedly whenever you want. So
here, I'm purely talking
in metaphor and in models, and mental models of
arrows. But in a moment or two, I'll start transitioning to discussing Tools in which I'll talk about increasing dopamine acetylcholine.
Lean or increasing epinephrine and dopamine in various combinations with various approaches. And what I'd like you to conceptualize is how those are contributing to creating a very narrowly pointed arrow. That has the capacity to continue moving forward over and over so that you can focus as
sharply and as long as you like.
And of course for those of you that want to get really down in the weeds of how dopamine works, we have an entire episode about dopamine
motivation and drive that really gets into neurotransmitter release and dopamine baselines. And
Holds and all of that sort of thing. We also have episodes on Focus much
longer episodes. I should say on Focus, that
incorporate. A lot of the biology of acetylcholine. Turns out, acetylcholine is also
involved in neuroplasticity Etc and epinephrine.
Of course, relates to stress in our capacity to deal with and buffer stress
and on. And on
those episodes are all available to you in there. Long
form at huberman, lab.com can find the very easily. They are all time stamps, you can navigate to the particular topics, most of interest to you.
I mentioned this all not as a diversion
In from what we want to cover today. But I know that some of you are hungry for a lot more mechanism, but today's episode is really mainly focused on the tools, I will, of course, touch on mechanism. But if you really want to do the Deep, dive on mechanism, go to
huberman lab.com and you'll have
more than you ever could
want about those
mechanisms. Let's jump into the tools for concentration and focus. If you want to think about tools of any kind
to modify your biology or physiology in any way whether or not it's for cognitive function or you want to get better exercising.
Or you want to build muscle, or you want to improve your hormones,
you need to think and understand tools
in the context of
modulation and
mediation. What do I mean by that? Well, it's quite simple. Really
mediation is how specific types of chemicals and cells, and circuits and organs control,
very specific things in your brain and body.
Whereas modulation is the ability of chemicals and cells, and circuits to adjust how different things change, how different things were.
Can your brain and body but to do it more broadly. What do I mean by this? Let me give an example, for instance, I'm going to tell you now, that one of the most important things to build and maintain your focus. And concentration is to optimize
your sleeping behavior, that is to get enough quality sleep. I would say 80% of the nights of your life, not everyone can get optimal sleep. 100% of the Knights of their life.
Nobody truly nobody achieves
that however
sleep
Has been shown to relate to cognitive Performance, Physical performance, hormone output, and so many other things including immune system function. What we can reliably say is that sleep. Modulates just about every
process in your brain and
body. So you have to get great sleep. There is simply no tool that's going to allow you to overcome chronic sleep, deprivation and allow you to remain
focused. No pill, no device, no supplement, no protocol whatsoever, there
are tools
To overcome one night or maybe two nights of sleep, deprivation will talk about those.
But at a fundamental level, we need to do the things that modulate. Our focus and attention
in powerful ways and sleep really, is that thing. So we've
done two episodes, one called master your sleep, and the other episode is perfect, your sleep, the perfect. Your sleep is a little bit more like this episode more focused. On. Protocols Master sleep, includes protocols and mechanism. Again, you can find those at your Berman lab.com, we also have a sleep toolkit, it distilled list of things to do in order.
To optimize your sleep. I highly recommend that you download that. You can go to huberman lab.com. Go to the neural network newsletter. It is listed there if you want. You can sign up for the newsletter but you don't
have to you can simply download the PDF of that toolkit for zero cost.
Why do I say sleep?
Modulates focus and attention. Well, I'll give an analogy
if right now, someone pulled a fire alarm in this building or if we had a fire in this building, my attention would drift. It would not be
on recording. This podcast will be on something else.
But what I say that the fire
Alarm mediates attention. I mean fire alarms are not really involved in the tension. No, rather. They modulate my attention, the noise in the room. Modulates, my attention that's quite a bit different than a tool that I'll provide later and I'll just give you a little hint of now. In fact, I'll give it to you now, which is that 40 Hertz binaural beats have been shown in a number of
peer-reviewed studies to increase, focus and concentration.
And if you'd like to access 40, Hertz binaural beats
in order to improve your focus and concentration, you can do that, you can actually get it at
zero.
Cost you can go into the App Store.
Rinse, the Apple App Store. This is
also available for Android phone. There's an app called brain wave and you can go there. You can dial in 40 Hertz and they will play these binaural beats. It's been shown in multiple quality peer reviewed studies that playing a pattern of sound waves to one ear
doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, and the other ear, which is slightly offset in frequency. Meaning not quite the same frequency somewhere. Like, do do
that that combination of frequencies played to the different ears. Actually, get integrated within deep brain centers and can
Increase focus and concentration in part by increasing levels of the neurochemical dopamine and
acetylcholine which we talked about a little bit earlier in this Arrow model of focus.
So we'll provide a link to that app. I don't have any
relationship to that app, I should mention, but it's an excellent one. It's one that I've
used for many years. There are also additional functions within the app
such as for sleep and for other things, but the
40 Hertz 40hz is the way it reads out, 40, Hertz stimulation has been shown to improve.
Improve focus and concentration. Here is my recommendation on the way that I use it. I would
not use 40 Hertz binaural beats every time I'm doing about of work.
What I tend to do is use it for about 5 minutes, prior to that work, and then turn it off and then do the work. And I'll talk about
other tools to use during that work whether or not it's reading or math, or even just emailing or something where I require a bunch of focus for a while.
However, there are times in which I'm in an area, or I'm in a state of mind where I'm feeling very
distractible and then I'll keep the 40.
Binaural beats on the entire time, I'm doing that bout of cognitive
work. I also sometimes use the 40 Hertz binaural beats prior to a workout in particular weight workouts, where I
really want to be able to focus on and contract specific
muscles. So, it's a very useful tool again supported by quality, peer reviewed science, zero cost, available out there, not just in the brain wave a, but in multiple apps, I think many of you will benefit from it. Some of you might not experience it immediately as a total dropping into a tunnel of focus in the
same way that you might.
With say the
sorts of neurochemicals that we'll talk about later,
like Alpha GPC and some of these other things that change neurochemicals
directly but nonetheless 40 Hertz binaural beats are a very powerful tool again, zero cost nonpharmacologic tool, they tap into your own endogenous meaning within you where exists within you physiology. In order to increase acetylcholine and some other neurochemicals
and they have been shown to work quite well.
Okay, so assuming that you are sleeping well 80% in the nights of your life or at least working.
On the various protocols and tools to
sleep well and sufficiently long 80% of the nights of your life
and you are interested in additional tools that are sound based in order to improve your ability to concentrate and focus. There are quality peer reviewed studies supporting the idea that white noise or
pink noise, and believe it or not, there is something called pink noise. It has to do with the specific
frequencies of sound that are in the noise. Well, white noise and pink noise have
I shown to not improve concentration per se but to improve people's ability to transition into
concentrated States.
So I don't tend to use white noise and pink noise while I work. But I know a number
of people that do I know people that also use what's called
Brown noise. Folks, I know from the engineering and computer science side get really into these details of white noise. Pink noise, Brown noise. You can find white noise, pink, noise, or brown noise, and listen to it. Through headphones or in the room, there is indeed some data.
Support the fact that white noise and to some extent. Pink noise, and brown noise can support the release of particular neurochemicals, but more data showing that they can amplify the activity of neurons in the so-called prefrontal cortex. This front area, this, or the bumper behind your forehead. That is directly related to your ability to direct your own focus and remain focus on certain things. So
you have the option of either using binaural beats
before, but not
during your work that is 40 Hertz binaural beats or
40 Hertz binaural beats throughout your
attempt to focus.
You also have the option of not using binaural beats, but using white noise, pink noise, or brown noise. Again, there are a lot of zero
cost apps. You can find also White Noise, pink noise, and brown noise
on YouTube. Again, these are tools that really have been shown over and over in humans, to allow people to focus with more depth and to decrease the
transition time into Focus. This is a really key point. A lot of people are challenged with getting into a mode of
I guess, none of us. However should be expected to just sit down and drop directly into a state of focus. I think that's completely an
unfair request of ourselves. I mean, for instance, you wouldn't expect yourself to go out on the track or go out for a
run and not warm up. You might jog for a few minutes or even walk before you a jog in the jog before you would run, right? I would hope you would do that.
And if you're doing resistance training, I doubt that you go over and load up the bar or the machine with the maximum amount of weight that you can move. And then just drop right in that, you always do a warm-up. And I think it's very important to understand mental work.
Work focus and concentration as requiring that warm-up. What is that warm up?
Well, you know what that warm up is that warm up? Is
the ramping up or the
increase of epinephrine adrenaline, acetylcholine and dopamine,
right? The way that neurochemicals work is you don't just get to flip switches in our brain, because we decide to that's a fantasy that sort of of the
Limitless movie or, you know,
movies and ideas. That suddenly you're going to flip a switch on your arm and all the sudden you're going to be in a laser focus. That is just not
Way that your nervous system works, there's a gradual dropping into any state
whether or not that state is sleep, right? You go from shallow sleep, deep sleep and then out of eventually
Focus to you go from shallow Focus
to increasingly deep focus that is in our metaphor of the arrow. It's very broad. It's pointed a lot of things in overtime as we drop into Focus. That arrow is narrowing, and narrowing
and narrowing. In fact, probably better to think about it and narrowing, and then sometimes oscillating and getting wider again.
And, you know, we might hear something down the hallway or more typically, our phone will buzzer, will think. Oh, I wonder what so-and-so is
doing our hand to contact them about something. Your
focus is
dynamic. It is not what we call a step function. It's not like you go from unfocused to focus, and then you drop into your maximum focus.
By understanding this, Dynamic, by understanding that you are going to be continually going in and out of progressively. But varying levels of focus, you will greatly release. The pressure on
yourself to
Feel focused all the time when you want to be. This is very key.
People who are very good at focusing, understand this and understand that they can't expect
themselves to just immediately focus and then snap into or out of focus. Okay? So be patient with yourself and also understand that focus is an ability that you can
improve your ability to focus by engaging. The neural circuits
responsible for Focus repeatedly over time through. So called neuroplasticity the ability of your nervous system to change in response to experience and that has a
couple of
Different components but put very simply what we repeat gets etched into our nervous system. It becomes easier over time
and the more
emotionally important or vital something feels to
us. The more likely it is to trigger neuroplasticity. We're going to talk a
little bit more about how to increase in neural circuits for Focus later. But right now what you have in hand is the key importance of sleep and I again will direct you to huberman lab.com and the neural network. Newsletter to really work on optimizing your sleep. We've also got two auditory
Sound based tools for improving Focus. There's 40 Hertz binaural beats used before or during bowel to focus and concentration. And if you don't like those or even if you do, you might alternate them with or occasionally use White Noise, pink noise, or brown noise. Also readily available at zero cost. A question. I often get is, how long should I try to focus? Well, the research. Literature point to the key importance of so-called ultradian Cycles. You've all probably heard of circadian Cycles or circadian biology. Circa
the day circadian is
Out 24-hour cycle. Well,
our brain and body operate within that
day or within each. And every day, I should say with 90-minute ultradian
Cycles. So my suggestion would be any time you're going to sit down and try and
focus. You're going to try and do a focused bout of physical
exercise, or skill learning or musical learning or maybe you're even just having a conversation, maybe you're a therapist or your attending therapy or a class, how long should it be? And the ideal duration is about 90 minutes. Not exactly 90 minutes but we can reliably say 90 minutes.
Or less. Okay, it doesn't have to be the full 90
minutes, but trying to push yourself to be able to drop into two hours of focus or three hours of focus while possible is not really in line
with what we know about the underlying biology, everything from our
sleep States or the different stages of sleep and are waking. States is
divided into these 90-minute Cycles or so-called ultradian Cycles. So what I like to do is set a timer for 90 minutes. I acknowledge and accept the fact that under most conditions, unless I'm really pressed for a deadline
Line. And I'm optimally
caffeinated etcetera. The first five to ten minutes of that 90 minutes are a transition time like the
warm-up for Focus, but I do include it in that 90 minutes. And
then I really try and drop into doing focused, mental work or learning of some sort. Again, this could be physical as well.
Motor skill learning or I think we're running or lifting weights,
Etc and really try and drop into that across the full 90 minutes again, accepting the fact. Okay, it's not just an idea, the fact that occasionally, our Focus will flicker. It will jump
To
focus. And then a big part of being able to focus is to go back to focusing. The way I'd like you to conceptualize this perhaps
is that Arrowhead suddenly getting very very broad that. You're focusing on many things or that Arrow shifts to a different location in the room. The key is to be able to
shift it back and to narrow it once again and that's an active process
so much. So that it requires a lot of metabolic energy. Your brain is
the chief
consumer of metabolic energy, the calories that you consume is so called basal metabolic rate. Most of that isn't related to
movement or heartbeat or breathing it's related to brain function. Your brain is a glutton with respect to caloric need.
So understand that at the end of 90 minutes or maybe even after 45 minutes, you might feel rather tired or even exhausted. And it's very important that after
about a focus that you take at least 10 minutes and
ideally as long as 30 minutes and go through what I call deliberate
defocus, you really
want to focus on some what menial tasks or things that really don't
require a ton of your concentration. This is
starting to become a little bit of
Movement out there in the kind of pop
psychology and optimization world. This idea of not looking at your phone as you
walk down the hall to the bathroom,
certainly not looking your phone in the bathroom and I should mention, by the way, this is a particular annoyance of Mind. Have you noticed that,
wait times for restrooms and public places, has increased substantially in the last ten years. The reason for that is not digestive, okay, it's not the gut microbiome, it might be the gut microbiome, but
chances are it's because people are on their phones in the bathroom. So you're
doing yourself and everybody.
Elsa favor by
staying off your phone in the restroom, staying off your phone while walking down the hall, try and give yourself some time to deliberately decompress to let your
mental States. Idle to not be focused on any one thing
that period of idling is essential for your ability to focus much in the same way that rest between sets of resistance training or rest between exercise is vital to being able to focus and perform
during the actual sets or during the actual bouts of running or cycling or whatever.
Your particular form of exercise might be.
So, deliberate decompression is key and I know this is hard because we're all being drawn in by the incredible Rich array of sensory information available on our phones and other devices but I can't emphasize this enough. Our ability to focus is not just related to what
happens during the entry and movement through those Focus bouts. But after those Focus bouts we really need to deliberately decompress and of course the ultimate decompressed. The time in which we are not directing our thinking
Interaction is during sleep and so
it's no wonder where I should say. It holds together. Logically that that deep long-lasting duration of not controlling where our mind is. That is, in
fact, the ultimate form of restoration, even if we have very intense dreams, so
take that period after each 90 minute,
or less Focus bout, right? Remember, those Focus palettes don't have to be full 90 minutes. Let's see. You do 45 minutes of work, you
just done with it. Set it down and go do something for maybe 5, 10, maybe even 30 minutes that is functional for your
day. I just
Not just walking around in circles or staring up at the sky, although, if you can do that, do that, but most of us have other things to do. But do things that
are rather automatic or reflexive for you and try not to do any focused reading. Try not to bring your vision into a tight location such as your phone and try and deliberately
decompress because that will allow you to drop into intense bouts of focus. Again, repeatedly repeatedly throughout the day. I'm often asked how many ultradian cycles one can perform throughout the day. That depends on how well. You slept how well you are.
Nourished, which we'll talk about in a
moment and how well-trained up your focus capacity is and here's the Paradox, if you are very trained at focusing, if you're very good at dropping into Focus, you're actually going to need more
deliberate, decompression and defocus and I recommend only doing
about two maybe three
deep work sessions per day. So not
one 90-minute session then expecting yourself to do to another one. Another one, another one but rather
one deep work, 90-minute session and maybe another in the
Noon. A lot of
people get surprised by this and
say, wait, how many people can afford to just work three hours a day? I'm not saying just work three hours a day. I'm really talking about the hard mental work, and again, somewhat paradoxically, the more you can concentrate, the more deeply, you can concentrate. The fewer deep work concentration about. You can actually perform each day.
It's makes sense. However, if you think about in the context of say, resistance training, if you are stronger and stronger in the gym, or you're an endurance athlete, and you can run, you know,
ultramarathons.
Miles or so you are essentially cutting a deeper cut into your recovery capacity, then somebody who's not very skilled at those things or can't perform as much intense work. So, the intensity of the work scales directly with how long you need to rest. After that
work. I at the stage of my life. I'm pretty good at dropping into and maintaining
Focus bouts of concentration.
Provided the landscape in my life is
right, you know, I don't have something burning stressful, thing, that's essential or an emergency that I'm tending to and that I put my phone away or
It off. I can do three 90-minute
Focus bouts per day, but that's about it. And then in between those Focus bouts, I'm doing other things, that require less Focus.
Some of you may be able to perform for what I highly recommend is that you try doing at least one, that is one ninety minute or less bout of focused
concentrated work per day. And yes, that means the weekends to. And on the weekends, I like to read a book with my phone nowhere in sight, not on a device, that's what I do. Or I'll listen to
An audiobook sometimes while taking a walk, but really concentrating on what I'm trying to learn what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing. So
again, a daily 90-minute bout is one to start with. And now it's a after about four weeks
of that, if you're able to stay concentrated, it work through the agitation then I would consider increasing the number of focus palettes.
Again, this is not to say that you should go to your teacher or your PhD advisor, or your parents or your friends and say, listen,
I can't really concentrate or think about anything for more than 90 minutes per day. That's not what I'm saying. These are deep focus palettes. These are about
Of work, or I should say, mental worker, physical work, where
you're really forcing yourself to focus and refocus to
sharpen the head of that Arrowhead, to redirect it to what you're trying to concentrate on and it is indeed hard work. I would even think about it more or less like a work out of any kind.
Before we continue with today's discussion, we're going to take a brief pause to acknowledge our sponsor athletic
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such as improving your sleep, we're tracking your sleep or
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Straight or improving your nutrition or specific exercise. Programs The Virtuous, an app makes a lot of the
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If you want to check it out you can go to the App Store under virtuous
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calm huberman. Again that's a virtuous and.com slash
huberman I mentioned the topic of nutrition a little bit ago and of course nutrition is a complicated Topic. In fact, one of the quickest ways
To get yourself into a battle online is to say something definitive about nutrition. I just want to clearly State my stance about nutrition. I fully support and applaud those of you that are vegans for whatever reason, those of you that are pure carnivore, for whatever
reason, and those of you that are omnivores for whatever
reason, I happen to be an omnivore. My
goal is always to eat, high-quality minimally or non-processed foods and eat things in moderation. So, I do eat some meat, from sustainable sources, or from organic sources. I eat some
starches and I vegetables and I eat fruits. I try not to eat sugars and
I don't really
like highly processed foods at this point in my life. That's
me. That's what I do. But I'm certainly not dictating
what people should eat. I know, certain people are ketogenic and I can say that for people who achieve
ketosis and get into ketosis. Yes, indeed there is a mental state associated with ketosis, that will allow your brain to function. And to think really clearly that many people find very
attractive and keep them going back over and over again, to a ketogenic diet. I'm
somebody who for instance, has not been in ketosis many times in my life at least not deliberately. So but I actually,
Ingest liquid ketones from time to time because of the further cognitive enhancement and physical enhancement that I experienced on top of nutrition. That does include some carbohydrates.
So there are a lot of different ways to approach all this whether or not you're a vegan omnivore vegetarian carnivore. Etc. The point is this your ability to focus and in fact your ability of neurons to encode specific information in your environment, that is to represent. What's out there in the world is actually related to your
blood glucose level. Now
here I'm setting,
Ting aside that discussion of ketosis
and ketogenic diets for the
moment. But there's a beautiful study that was published in Iran, not long ago, that showed that the tuning that is the Precision with which neurons in the brain or represent things in our environment is actually much greater. When there is sufficient glucose in the brain translated into English. This means that when we are fasted or when our blood glucose is very low, we aren't able to
perceive and think about things as clearly
now there's a Twist to this however many people who practice
Fasting. And I should say, I
practice this sort of pseudo, intermittent fasting. I generally my meals between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 8 p.m. although sometimes there's some wiggle around that occasionally have an early breakfast. I'm not super
rigid about it. But I know there are a number of people who are doing longer fast or they're eating in a six-hour window. We did an entire episode about fasting. You
can again find that huberman lab.com will likely have such in Panda, who's an expert in intermittent fasting on the
podcast. Intermittent fasting has a lot of different potential benefits for
Some people, it's a convenient way to restrict their calories for other people. It's a
convenient way to avoid eating that is
it's easier to not eat. Then to eat a small portion. So they opted for intermittent fasting
and so on and so forth. But one of the things that you hear very often is that some people like being fasted because they like the clarity of mind that it provides,
here's the situation
neurons. Unless you're in a ketogenic diet, really thrive on glucose, they love glucose. And as I mentioned before your ability, to think and perceive things is actually enhanced by
having sufficient glucose in your
Let's dream. So why would it be that? Some people experience, a heightened state of mental
Clarity when they are faceted. I've certainly experienced that before.
Well, I should say that provided you're well hydrated enough and you have enough electrolytes in your system. What tends to happen is that when you ingest food, there's a shift in your nervous system towards so-called
parasympathetic mode. That is the more relaxed. You probably heard it as rest and digest, although it does other things a more relaxed
mode that can indeed make us very sleepy. If we have too many
carbohydrates that actually can make us quite sleepy.
However, if we have any
Food. If we have enough of it, that is if our gut is full, it diverts blood to our gut, and we become sleepy and we can't focus as well. So a lot of people really
like fasting in the state of being fasted for focus and concentration
because they don't have as much of that parasympathetic activation. They're just not as sleepy. And in fact under those conditions
half as much caffeine will give you just as much lift as
twice as much, caffeine will give you on a full belly of pasta
and that's just the way that caffeine interacts with blood glucose. So what I'd like you to imagine
is
You had a measure of focus from 0 to 10. These are arbitrary units, 10 being maximally focused and zero being not focused at all. Imagine a U-shaped function, right?
Where if you're very fasted, you're going to have high degree of focus and concentration but then if you ingest some food in your belly is full, your focus and concentration is reduced. But having enough blood glucose
and maybe even elevated,
blood glucose will increase cognitive function. So there are two ends of the spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, blood glucose is
Tivoli low
and your fasted, and you can think and behave in a very concentrated way
and on the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of blood
glucose or I should say, sufficient blood glucose, you never want your blood glucose to be
too high and that allows your neurons to encode
and perceive and basically allow you to think really, clearly, so
you sort of have to pick your condition. What do you want for your
bouts of focus and concentration? I actually
do both. So, what I do is, as I mentioned before, I eat my
meal sometime around, 11:00 a.m. my first meal, typically, unless I'm very hungry.
When I wake up and so I will do
my workout and one bout of focused work. I always think of this as
my hard work early in the day and I do that fasted I'll be consuming water with electrolytes, maybe element or other
electrolytes, maybe some
caffeine as well in the form of yerba mate or
coffee. That's my first
Focus bout of 90 minutes or less. That is essentially done fasted. And then I'll eat.
And then I do. Notice after I eat, I
actually have a diminished capacity to focus, but
then again, in the afternoon, I will do another 90.
Minute bout of focus and I'll talk about some of the tools. I use
to make sure that that bout a focus is optimal for getting the most amount of focused work done whether or not it's mental work or physical work. Although, I tend to do my physical work early in the day and my mental work, both early and late in the day.
So to make this very simple or as simple as I can for you being fasted is great for focus and concentration. Provided you're not thinking about food the entire time and being fed is terrific for
focus and concentration, actually can improve know.
Malfunction provided that you didn't eat too much food. So one way to manage this is if you're going to have a lunch to make sure that you don't stuff yourself at lunch that you're not overeating and to not get
quite so full that you push your nervous system into this parasympathetic mode and make it hard to focus in the afternoon. I know a lot of people
experience a dip or even a crash in energy in the afternoon that make it really hard to focus for that reason. I'll just remind people of a tool. I've talked about many times
before, which is based on the biology of adenosine and caffeine etcetera, which is to
Delay. Your first caffeine intake to 90 to 120
minutes after waking up. I know that can be painful for certain
people. I violate that rule when I'm working out very early in the
morning, I'll drink my caffeine before my workout which often occurs within 30 to 60 Minutes of waking but in general unless I'm working out very early, I will ingest my caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after I wake
up. So again, I want to emphasize that if you hear somebody out there, say being fasted is
optimal for focus and concentration.
Well, that is true in one context and perhaps ideal for a certain part of the
day and other people will say no, you know, neurons, run on glucose. You need glucose in your blood stream in order to get those
neurons to be tuned. That is to respond with electrical activity in the optimal way. When you're reading something or when you're trying to perform exercise. Well, that's
also true. And of course you can incorporate both. I
in fact, as I just described incorporate both
fasted States and fed States
in order to optimize my concentration.
Focus.
And as a brief note about ketosis for those of you that actually managed to transition into ketosis
and are maintaining a ketogenic state.
That as I mentioned earlier, can enhance brain function,
concentration and focus
because of the way in
which ketones can be used as a so-called optimal fuel for neurons. The ketogenic diet was originally designed if you will, for epilepsy as a whole relationship to epilepsy in controlling
epileptic seizures and it
It can, in fact, allow people to achieve focused concentrated, brain States. So, in the future, I'll do an episode about ketosis and be sure to
Circle back on how to optimize ketosis for focus and concentration. Although, I have to believe that most of the people listening to this are probably not in ketosis or following a ketogenic diet. So, that's why I mainly focused on fasted States and fed States and just to make sure that I'm thorough a
fasted state to me would be a state in which you have an ingested, any calories, but may have ingested caffeine or maybe even a
small amount of artificial sweetener or
Things like that but really having ingested. Any significant
number of calories in the previous four to eight or maybe even 12 hours. And again there's tremendous variation here depending on how long people have fasted whether or not. We're talking about the state right after people, wake up
etcetera, again if you're interested in intermittent fasting, both for sake of mental and physical health and performance. Check out our episode on fasting at huberman live.com. I also want to touch back on this idea of
which foods can increase Focus, you know, in the episode on ADHD that I did. I touched
on this
Quite a bit as it relates to elimination diets, you know, there's a whole industry and a ton of interest for obvious reasons into what sorts of things kids and adults should and shouldn't eat in order to reduce symptoms of ADHD. I think that the sum total of those data point to the fact that reducing simple sugar intake and certainly highly
processed food, so ice cream, candy chips,
etc. Those sorts of things really does seem to
improve symptoms of ADHD in both children and adults. But once you
move past that and start to say well which
Foods can improve
concentration and focus. Well, foods
that for instance, include a lot of tyrosine,
which is a precursor to dopamine. And now you know, why dopamine is important in this context are
certainly going to increase concentration and focus. So things like
parmesan cheese, certain meet, certain nuts, you can look up which foods contain high amounts of tyrosine. There also some fruits and vegetables that include higher amounts of tyrosine but to
be quite direct. It doesn't matter whether or
not you're ingesting foods that
That are rich in the precursor amino acids to dopamine,
acetylcholine, Etc. If you're consuming large amounts of those foods that is one can look and see for instance, that a steak includes a lot of the precursors to
acetylcholine. It has amino acid precursors to dopamine as well and there are other foods that will do that as
well. But if I were to ingest, say two ribeye steaks, that's a lot of
meat and it will direct a lot of blood to my
gut and it will cause me to be sleepy and
Will create challenges and me being able to achieve states of focus and concentration. So the
simple way to put this is, if you eat too much or you eat a very large volume of food, you are going to diminish, your
focus and concentration, okay? The key is to eat
enough that your
nourished for the certain activities, mental and physical that you need to
perform. But if you're eating large meals, you are going to diminish,
your concentration and focus
period. I know many people are curious as to whether or not
caffeine can improve focus and concentration.
Oh, and indeed it can there
is an immense amount of data supporting the idea that caffeine provided. It's consumed in
the appropriate dosages,
can improve, mental Performance and Physical performance. And it largely does that
through improvements in focus and concentration.
The dosage of caffeine of course is going to depend
on how caffeine adapted you are. How much caffeine tolerance you have and that is going to vary tremendously depending on whether or not you ingest that caffeine with
Without food as I mentioned earlier, but there is a kind of General range in which we can talk about caffeine as being
useful for focus and concentration.
And the range is basically from 100 mg to 400 milligrams. I want to caution everybody out there. If you're somebody who suffers from anxiety or panic attacks
and you're not used to ingesting
caffeine and you run out and ingest, 400 milligrams of caffeine in the form of espresso or yerba mate, or an energy drink or in pill form that is going to be very
uncomfortable for you. You're going to be sweating.
Profusely your heart rate is going to increase, you're going to be quite panicked in fact or at least anxious so be cautious with your
use and adopting of
caffeine, if you're not already caffeine
adapted, but most people do quite well to ingest 100 to 200
milligrams of caffeine prior to doing some focused work. And again, I recommend delaying your caffeine intake to 90 to 120 minutes after waking, unless you are using that caffeine to really jolt your system before a workout
caffeine can
Must be ingested in various forms even pill
form. But most people ingestion in the form of coffee or
my particular favorite way to ingest. Caffeine is yerba mate, it is important. And I should note that you should
actively avoid the smoked
versions of yerba mate as they contain a lot of carcinogenic cancer-promoting compounds. There's some great yerba mate Brands out there that most cost effective way to consume, it would be to use the loose leaf tea, and to pour water over that. There's one particular brand that I like I don't have any affiliation.
To them whatsoever. But I've been using it for years. Its Anna Park, it's an organic brand. That is sold. I buy mine on Amazon. You can find it elsewhere on the internet as well. Again, I don't have any affiliation to them. It's just very cost-effective, very clean. It doesn't have the smoked flavor. At least the one that I buy is not the smoked varieties, and none of the carcinogenic compounds are in there. At least that I'm
aware of. And I like the way it tastes and it provides a
very even lift. And and stimulant that I think certainly works for me and that a number of people, I know have suggested to also enjoy
Yerba mate or caffeine. Also have other
additional benefits in particular,
the caffeine in yerba mate and coffee. And other sources of caffeine are known to increase the density and efficacy, that is the
number and the function of dopamine receptors. And this has been shown in humans several times.
So by ingesting caffeine pretty regularly, you're actually increasing the ability of dopamine to have this
effect of increasing motivation and drive.
I tend to ingest caffeine.
Jean only early in the day, I tend to cut off my caffeine intake
somewhere around 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. to ensure that I can get into a good night's
sleep. But I realize that there are people out there that ingest caffeine is late as two or three in the afternoon and can still sleep, fine. I
will caution. Those of you that think that you can drink caffeine in the evening or night time, and still fall asleep. All of the research points to the fact that the architecture of your sleep, in the depth of your sleep is disrupted. Even if you're able to fall and stay asleep, the sleep, you're getting is simply not as good as the CPU would get if you were to shut off your caffeine intake.
At least, eight hours before bedtime and ideally more, like 10 or even 12 hours before bedtime, but of course, there are practical constraints as well, okay? So
caffeine is increasing dopamine's function by changing the number
and efficacy of dopamine receptors, but of
course, it also increases our wakefulness are alertness and that is largely through the neural chemical systems related to
adenosine, which is a molecule that
builds up in our brain and body the longer. We are awake, it's part of the sleepiness system. If you will
makes us feel
Eat or tired and
caffeine also operates on the epinephrine, the adrenaline system. In fact, if we ingest too much caffeine will sometimes get the Jitters. Those Jitters are
really the sympathetic as it's called nervous systems biased toward movement and our pupils will dilate. They actually get broader.
Now somewhat paradoxically when our pupils get bigger,
the peoples of our eyes that is our visual World actually narrows it becomes more tunnel-like
A lot of people don't realize this when our peoples are really small. That means we are relaxed so if you ever see someone really tiny he's or you'll pin-sized people's, they're very relaxed if their peoples are very big, they're very dilated. Well then they are very amped up there. They are very very alert.
Caffeine increases alertness by increasing epinephrine, adrenaline release, both in the brain and within the body. And so,
that's another way that it facilitates focus and concentration. Now, there are other ways to increase epinephrine in the brain and body. Besides
Caffeine or other stimulants. And in fact that has been studied, there's an excellent study that was carried out, not that long ago on how stress itself can
increase our ability to focus and concentrate. That's right. How stress itself can increase focus and concentration. You know, most people think of
stress, as impairing, our
ability to focus, but that's actually not true. When we are
stressed, it involves the deployment that release of
adrenaline epinephrine, and that adrenaline, both changes are visual
field. In other words, it Narrows
Our vision to a more tunnel-like Focus. That is, it makes
the arrow in our metaphor of the arrow, more
sharp and it improves our concentration. And this makes sense given what we know about stress. When we're stressed we tend to be stressed
about a specific thing. We start anticipating her wandering or thinking about what's going to happen next. What led up to this? How is this going to impact me? How do I feel right now? It really Narrows the context of our thinking and our Behavior.
So one of my favorite studies, that really
illustrates how stress can improve concentration.
And performance is one that was published
not that long ago and I will provide a link to this
in the show notes. It's a
paper published in the Journal of experimental
psychology in 2020.
The title of the paper
is not surprisingly acute stress, improves concentration, performance, first author, Degroot, degr, o OT
e and this study involved taking a number of subjects and stressing them out
or not prior to a cognitive or concentration task. And there are a lot of data in this paper, but I'm just going
To home in on one specific set of data. And I should mention as I go there that they measure things like cortisol, a stress hormone and they measured anxiety is a quite thorough study and what they found was, that concentration performance improved, many-fold
arches, a from those are greater than
doubling of concentration and performance in the
stress group and stress in this
context, was provided using a standard way of inducing stress.
What they basically do is they bring subjects into the laboratory and they have to
Either do something fairly mundane in the control group or
they have to do a simulated job interview and arithmetic tasks and they're being evaluated as they're doing this. So this isn't, you know, intense
psychosocial stress, you know, they're not watching anything disturbing. They're not being traumatized in any kind of way. This is
fairly low levels of stress that rates
their levels of epinephrine. And we know this from this study and other levels of cortisol and other stress hormone modestly within their brain and blood. But that
even modest increase in these stress hormones
and their reported psychological levels of stress, really enhance their focus and concentration.
This may come as
surprising because you like many people think gosh stress, really diminishes cognitive performance, but that's absolutely wrong. Stress, improves cognitive performance. Now, of course, there are other ways to increase stress levels, and to do that, in healthy ways, to improve concentration and performance and one of the best ways to do that because it's so
sure fire and it's generally
safe provided, you do it safely.
Is deliberate, cold exposure. This is something I've talked about on the
podcast before but deliberate, cold exposure can be achieved by getting into a cold shower for
125 minutes. If you're not used to it, you probably want to start with one
minute or you can get into an ice bath or nowadays. There are a number of different commercial
sources of circulating cold water or if you have access to a body of cold water, like a
lake or a pool or a notion. We know that getting into cold water or under cold water greatly increases epinephrine levels and
Dopamine
levels in the brain and blood. There's a beautiful study that was published in the European Journal of
physiology that showed that the increases in
dopamine are massive. You know, it near
doubling or more of dopamine levels that are very
long lasting for hours
and epinephrine and indeed, cortisol levels are also increased and in ways that support not just immune system function
because they do that. But and mood because it does that but they can really improve concentration and focus I
touched on this a little bit and
Episode about memory that there is an age-old practice really dating back to Medieval
Times of putting people into cold water right after they learn something in order to spike to increase their epinephrine as a way to consolidate those memories for sake of today's discussion. If you're interested in ways to improve focus and
concentration, you need to increase your epinephrine. Your adrenaline levels,
cold water, exposure is one of the most efficient ways to do
that.
At this is not a biohack, I don't like the word hack. I know it's commonly used but a
hack is something where you're using one thing for a different purpose than it was originally intended for in here. I'm not referring to the shower. The cold bathroom referring to epinephrine epinephrine is a neurochemical. That will place your vision into more
of a tunnel mode which will allow you to focus on cognitive work or physical work in a more specific way. You're not going to be as distractible
and it's very easy to achieve by getting into a cold
shower or cold body of water for a
Period of time. People always ask
how long to get under or into cold water and how cold
to make it. Here's the thing, it should be
uncomfortably cold but safe to stay in for
125 minutes. Okay. So uncomfortably cold. I really want to get out, but safe to stay and not so cold. It's going to give you a heart attack and not. So, warm that it's comfortable, that it doesn't create that adrenaline release,
cold water exposure, I should say, deliberate cold water or non deliberate, cold water, exposure, reliably
increases epinephrine levels. It
is
Doubly useful as a tool for this and it is in fact, zero cost or even
negative zero cost. How could it be - zero
cost? Well, you can certainly save on your heating, bill by taking a
cold shower, so that's one way.
And for those of you that have access to devices or
locations, where you can get into cold water, you can submerge well, then that can work for those of you that don't maybe take a cold bath, you getting up to your neck, that's going to be most efficient. For those of you that can't do that. You'll get under a cold shower
again.
It should be uncomfortably cold to the
point where you want to get out, but that you can safely stay in for 125 minutes. How long should you do it
before a work about? Well, if you get into really cold water, it's uncomfortably cold and get out after about three minutes. You're probably good to go dry off and get to work. Some of you might think this is a little bit silly as a tool for focus and
concentration but if you look at the
data on
epinephrine and how powerfully it can increase Focus, I
think you'd be very impressed. I mean, it certainly
Can increase one's ability to attend to specific visual stimuli so for reading or math, work, etc. It's going to be very useful. Of course, you don't want to make it so cold that you're shivering and chattering the whole time. And, of course, you could, if you
like combine this, with 40 Hertz binaural beats, there's no reason why you couldn't combine the two protocols, but the
point here is that, a lot of people would love to. And I think ought to Leverage The health-promoting and Powerful
effects of increasing epinephrine, on focusing on centration and running out and getting stressed by a life event.
Or getting into an argument or something like that simply as a way to increase focus, and concentration, doesn't seem that adaptive to me. So, deliberate cold, exposure is a straightforward way to do that. It does involve anyone else I suppose you could do it with somebody else but it doesn't require anyone else. And again,
there are zero low and even
- cost ways to approach that if you'd like
to know how long the positive effects of epinephrine last toward improving focus and concentration. If we look to that study from Degroot at all the acute
stress improves cognitive performance study,
they measured
Concentration before and 30 minutes
after the stress was
induced, and there does appear to be a quite long lasting really up to an hour or
more effect of increasing epinephrine. So how might you apply these sorts of protocols early in the day or later in the day?
Well, one suggestion or one potential
protocol would be if you're going to sit down and do some work, if you're
already feeling alert and focused, no need to reach to this tool. But if you're feeling like your focus and alertness isn't quite where you'd
like it to be, you could
Take a three-minute, very cold shower, or submerge yourself in cold water, for three minutes. You might have a cup of coffee as well, and then sit down and do that work, maybe even throw in the 40 Hertz, binaural beats all of
that would be layering in the different systems that different neural chemicals, such as acetylcholine
epinephrine and dopamine, that are going to lend themselves to a really terrific 90 minute or less work bout.
Now, I'd like to discuss some of the purely behavioral tools that quality peer reviewed science say can improve
focus and concentration.
Currently at the
beginning of today's episode. I talked about the study from dr. Wendy Suzuki's lab where they explored a 13 minute meditation. Don every day for a period of eight weeks, that meditation led to significant improvements in focus and concentration ability
as well as other aspects of cognitive performance. It also improved mood and reduced stress so you
might be wondering, what exactly is this meditation? The meditation is very simple and it's one that anyone can perform what you would want to do is set a timer.
For about 13 minutes. I don't think it has to be exactly 13 minutes but since that's what they included in the study, you
would set a timer for 13 minutes, you would sit or lie down, close your eyes and you would simply focus on your breathing. Most people are going to benefit from only doing that breathing through their nose. But if you have some sort of obstruction or inability to breathe, just through your
nose, you could probably also do it by breathing through your nose and mouth or just your mouth. But
ideally you would do just nasal breathing for a period of 13 minutes.
It's concentrating on
that breathing and
concentrating, meaning, bringing your awareness, your
so-called interoceptive awareness. If you wanted to get really technical about it, your
intercept of awareness to a point, just about an inch inside of your forehead. Now, of course that might sound kind
of gory to some of you've never actually been inside your forehead,
but just about an inch behind your forehead is where you would want to place your concentration while also
concentrating on your breathing. Here's the thing about meditation.
At all studies of meditation show, which is that unless you are a very experienced, meditator your concentration, your focus will drift away from your breathing and away from that
location about an inch, inside your head, inside your brain about just behind your forehead.
That will happen. Maybe every 10 seconds, every 20 seconds, maybe even every 5 seconds. But an important part of such a meditation practice to improve concentration and focus.
Focus is that you are continually
refocusing back to that
specific location and
refocusing back on your
breath. This is something that again is not often discussed people think that if you do a meditation and you're supposed to concentrate on your breath that if your mind drifts that
somehow you failed in that meditation, but actually that's not the case.
A huge component of improving your ability to focus and concentrate by way of neural plasticity, rewiring of the circuits for
focus and concentration is the
Peated return to a state of focus from a state
of non Focus or diminished Focus, okay?
So think about it, like trying to drive down the freeway and staying between the label Lane lines, scuse me and every once in a while because there's a bit of
drift on the vehicle, maybe the wheels aren't aligned correctly or there's something else wrong with the
chassis or the steering device. It starts to drift, right? A little bit, then you hit the rumble strip to go order and then you pull back to the center. That's really what a focused meditation practice is
about as opposed to
Expecting yourself to stay between the mental Lane lines, so to speak. So if you're somebody who's going to do a practice of the sort that I
described in 13, minute meditation practice every day you'd want to sit
or lie down, close your eyes start to concentrate on your breath, Focus, your attention on a location about it inch behind your forehead and then fully expect that at some point, you'll be thinking about something else and that's a cue to focus
back to that location. Just about an inch behind your forehead and back to your
breath.
By doing that repeatedly over and over what you're really training up is the network within your brain
that indeed includes that, prefrontal cortex that you're focusing
on as well as some other structures. The inferior temporal
cortex. Do the hippocampus, a structure associated
with memory and other components of the neural circuit that are involved in. Directing our
mental focus and concentration.
Again, I can't emphasize the importance of this practice. Being one of focusing and refocusing. In fact, I would prefer to call such a practice a
Refocus Focus meditation or a constantly refocusing or maybe
you all can come up with a better name for it. I'm certainly not that good at naming things,
but this sort of meditation practice has been shown in the study by the
Suzuki lab, and other studies,
to really improve people's ability to focus and remain focused so much. So, that in the beautiful book, Altered States, they described a number of different meditation practices. Some a little bit longer than the one that I described one that
That's another one that's 30 minutes. Some people meditate
as long as 60 minutes a day, although that's quite a
long time. In my opinion. The point here isn't how long you focus or somehow trying to achieve Total Focus for the
entire 13 minute or 17 minute or 60 Minute about a meditation while that would be wonderful, and I think many people aspire to do that.
That's a lot of hard mental work. I think, for most people out there, including myself, a relatively short
meditation, practice of about
13 minutes in which you fully,
Expect your focus and concentration to drift but that you are
continually refocusing is going to be the most effective. Yes, indeed the most effective at teaching
yourself to focus and stay concentrate. In
fact, I invite you to interpret every time that you focus off that location about one inch behind your forehead, as an opportunity to refocus and think about the refocusing as the trigger for teaching your neural
circuits, how to focus for extended periods of time
and as a bonus to that sort of meditation,
Itís. The study from when he Suzuki's lab. Also showed that people experience improvements in sleep and improvements in memory. So not just improvements in mood and reduction in stress and improvements in focus and concentration. But all these other
positive benefits from just doing, that 13-minute a meditation practice. It's one that
I've started to adopt
and have felt tremendous benefit from and that I encourage many of you to try as well.
The one cautionary note is the one that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, which is because the refocus as I'll call it meditation.
Does involve a significant amount of effort and engagement of these? Prefrontal cortical circuits, it is disruptive to sleep, if performed too closely to sleep. So if you are going to do that practice, I recommend that you not do it within the
four hours prior to your bedtime
earlier. I mentioned that I would talk about ways to improve focus. If you are sleep deprived, this is something that I'm all too familiar with put a
lot of effort into optimizing my sleep. That's something that with each passing year, I put more and more effort into again, because sleep is so vital for mental.
Physical health and performance of all kinds.
But certainly in my role as a student in my role as a professor and in my role in life, I've had numerous
times in which I simply did not get enough sleep or my sleep was terrible for whatever reason. And yet I still had work demands and social demands, Etc.
One practice that is very effective at, allowing you to focus better than you would.
Otherwise under conditions of sleep deprivation is so called non sleep, deep breast or NSD?
Our this is also referred to sometimes as Yoga Nidra. Yoga, Nidra actually means, yoga sleep.
Yoga Nidra is a practice of lying down for about 10 to 30 sometimes. Even as long as 60 Minutes, you listen to a script. It's an audio script that takes
you through a progressive deep relaxation,
involves a body, scan, some long, exhale breathing. It is very restorative and the sense that one tends
to emerge from Yoga. Nidra, or NSD are feeling greatly refreshed compared to how you felt prior
to it. There is also
So terrific, neuroimaging
data from Laboratories in Denmark, showing that there's a restoration of dopamine levels in the so called basal ganglia after an SDR AKA Yoga Nidra.
Whether or not, you call it Yoga Nidra or an SDR, which is what I
refer to it as non sleep, deep breath. You can find these scripts at zero cost multiple places. You can find, there are certain apps that are NS TR Yoga, Nidra apps.
There is ansd, our protocol.
That was put out there by made, for which is on YouTube.
You can access for free, there is a an SDR or I should say a number of NS, ER, protocols Through
The Virtuous, a nap there. Again number of different places that one can
access an SDR protocols. I
do NSD are for 10 to 30 minutes per day.
Every single day not just on days when I'm sleep deprived. If I happen to be sleep-deprived, I would extend that NS TR to 30 or 60
minutes. And when you do that, NST R will depend on when you have time for that. And Str when I haven't slept. Well, what I'll try and do is find
a quiet place where I can do NS
TR for 30 or ideally, 60 Minutes, sometimes I will fall back asleep during that NST R, that's fine. If you do that, but most
people will stay awake during the NSD are
and then I'll emerge from that and go about my day. If in the
afternoon, I'm
very fatigued because of lack of sleep. I might do another NST R of 10 to 30, or 60 minutes and then another work bout. Again,
an SDR, something I do every day, I talk a lot about
this in the episodes related to sleep because they can help you get better.
Falling and staying asleep at night, in addition to feeling restorative in that immediate time, frame of the day, in which you do in it and Str. So it's immensely beneficial at various times and for various purposes, but
here within the context of trying to concentrate and focus, when you're sleep deprived
and SDR AKA Yoga, Nidra is an immensely beneficial practice. There's growing amounts of quality science pointing to the neurochemical replenishing effects, as I mentioned before,
dopamine, but also
The
potential for NSD are to replace sleep, that you've lost. I
would never want anyone to try and use NST r
as a total replacement for sleep, but under conditions in which you cannot control your sleep, and SDR is going to be the best way that I am
aware of to restore, your ability to focus
and concentrate for whatever purpose. And if you emerge from your NST, R and then drink some
caffeine, you'll notice an even
greater capacity for focus and concentration for all the reasons directly related to
caffeine. So again, SDR is a general tool
For enhancing your ability to sleep
and it's a tool that you can use in order to compensate for at least, to some degree
compensate. For lost sleep, when you need to focus and concentrate. One thing that really contrast
NSD are in Yoga Nidra with the sort of focus
meditation that I talked about a few minutes ago. The 13 minute meditation is that
during the 30 minute meditation, you're actively trying to refocus and focus, whereas, during an SDR in Yoga Nidra. You're actually
trying to defocus
so you can think of the 13 minute meditation for refocus.
And focusing as directly tapping into and mediating improvements in the
circuitry for focus and concentration. Whereas, you can think of NSD are and Yoga Nidra
as modulating your brain and body state to allow you
to focus and concentrate better.
Now, another tool that you can
use to directly tap into the circuits for focus and concentration and to
greatly accelerate
neuroplasticity, the improvements or I should say the changes in those circuits that will allow you to focus and concentrate better.
Is hypnosis a lot of people here hypnosis and they think stage
hypnosis, you know. People squawking like chickens and doing things against their will
but actually hypnosis is a, a typical but highly accessible brain State. That's been studied with a lot of rigor
at Stanford University. School of Medicine, by my colleague. Dr. David Spiegel. He's been a guest on this podcast. Previously hypnosis is a
unique brain State because it's one in which you are deeply focused and yet deeply relaxed. So to just sort of set up the array of
practices here so you can
Ink about them.
Logically the focus. Refocus meditation
is based on and focused on Focus. No pun intended
and SDR in Yoga. Nidra are aimed
at deep relaxation.
Hypnosis is this a typical very powerful brain state in which you combine high, levels of focus
and deep relaxation.
Now, it's a little bit of a tough one to just take oneself into. But fortunately, there's a tool based on a lot of quality peer reviewed research from the
Spiegel lab and other labs and that is the reverie a
Paris.
Ve RI the reverie app is available for
no cost at least for a period of time. And then I think they play certain elements of it behind a pay wall
but you can try at zero cost it's available for Apple soon. I think also to be available
for Android and they
have specific hypnosis protocols that you listen to. And these are very brief, protocols, follow the instructions, you're listening to a particular audio script of David Spiegel himself and some Progressive breathing. And actually some eye movements that are
directly linked to the neural circuits
that allow for these highly focused deeply relaxed
States and there are components within the reverie app specifically geared towards improving, focus and concentration. So again, there's meditation for Focus. There's deliberate decompression and SDR Yoga Nidra,
which take you into deep relaxation. And then hypnosis
is this very special, very directed state of Highly focused and highly
relaxed. Or I should say deeply relaxed.
That allow access to the neural circuits for focusing.
Concentration and allow you to tune those up into improve those, very
significantly in a very brief amount of
time. And again, some of those hypnosis scripts are as short as 8 minutes, summer, as long as 13 minutes. So what we're really talking about here are zero cost tools that
directly tap into the neural circuits. The components within your
brain that allow for deep
relaxation. Allow for deep focus and improve your
ability to focus and concentrate over time. Simply by repeating these. How often do you need to repeat the
Reverie, hypnosis for focus and concentration before you see
benefits. Well, that will vary from person to
person. I tend to use it once every third or fourth day and of experience tremendous benefits from it.
I don't think I'm unique in that sense. They have a lot of data to support this reverie app and that protocols within it. How
long do you have to do NST R before you experience those benefits there? I would say the first time and every
time because it's so deeply relaxing that you emerge from, it feeling quite restored relative to how you went into it. And
as I mentioned earlier,
The study on meditation, it took about eight weeks to
see the effects that they observed in those that study, but they didn't observe shorter time points.
So I highly encourage people to explore meditation, geared towards focus and refocus also
NSD are non sleep. Deep breath, take a Yoga Nidra
and the reverie app, specifically the hypnosis within the
reverie app that's geared towards improving, focus and concentration. All of these have terrific science to support them. This is not woo,
science or hacks, or just something that people came up with this is all grounded in work.
From some of the best universities in the world, from excellent groups who have looked at underlying neural mechanisms and measured things with a lot of rigor, etc, etc. These tools
are available to you. I highly recommend that you use
them. And if you're interested in the optimal time of day to do these, we already mentioned that the focus refocus meditation, shouldn't be done too close to sleep, the reverie hypnosis app can be done at any time, really? In
fact, there's a component of falling back asleep in there. In other words, a hypnosis specifically geared towards
Helping people teach themselves to fall back asleep when they wake up in the
middle of the night and SDR. Always say can be done first thing in the morning in the afternoon or any time of day and
in fact I'll sometimes do that in the middle of the night. If I happen to wake up and need to get back to sleep. So really these tools can be applied most any time of day except for that one, caveat about the focus. Refocus meditation, not being done to close to sleep.
Now, there's another set of Behavioral tools that
can really help enhance. One's ability to focus and those are visual based tools.
Fact, the tools I'm about to
Scribe are actually being employed in a number of schools in China and elsewhere. In order to teach children to focus
better and for longer periods of time. And the key principle here is that much of our cognitive focus, our ability to think about something in a very specific way and stay focused on it to read or to follow a line of conversation and or math or
music Etc. Is going to be directed by our
visual system. Our visual system has two
forms of
Attention and focus one is overt Focus which
is very straightforward. If I'm looking at the tip of my pen. For those of you listening right now, I'm looking at the tip of my pen, that's
overt Focus. I'm focusing on it with my eyes and of course, the rest of my brain. Then we'll
follow and start to analyze the details of what I'm seeing. The Contours of the pain, Etc, it seems sort of
obvious when you first hear it, but our cognitive Focus tends
to follow our alert visual Focus. That's also why they put
blinders on horses. That's also why sometimes wearing a hoodie or a hat or
Eating your visual field in some way, can help you enhance your cognitive
focus. It can help limit distraction. You're just not seeing as much. It's also why when we ingest
caffeine or any kind of stimulant
or we are stressed and our pupils dilate and our vision becomes more tunnel like less panoramic but more tunnel. Like you know they say a soda straw view of the world of you're looking through a tunnel. Your focus. Your visual focus is actually driving your cognitive Focus. Your cognitive focus is narrower than it would be if you were seeing the whole scene that you're in.
So when you hear
That's it sounds obvious, but for many people, including many scientists, it's just not obvious
that this would be the case. However, that is the case. Your visual Focus drives your cognitive Focus.
So what is a practice that
has been studied and various Laboratories and that's being employed in various schools, is to have children or adults visually focus on one
location for a given period
of Time. How long anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes and believe or not? Three minutes is a long time to maintain visual Focus.
At one location you. If you were to try that right now, you'd probably find it to be a bit of a strain, but if you want to try it, you can keep in mind, you. Yes. Are allowed to Blink.
But also keep in mind that meditation refocusing practice, that we talked about earlier that the refocusing is the key component of teaching yourself or your
brain. You are your brain, your brain is you but to teach yourself how to focus better. So, if you're going
to incorporate this practice, what you would want to do, is pick a location.
Beyond a wall could be on your computer in front of you, although I would encourage it to not be the contents of your computer screen. You might just want to blank your screen. Might want to put a piece of paper with a crosshatch there, any sort of visual Target or you could imagine a visual
Target and then Focus your visual attention on that Target and try to breathe. Normally try and
stay relaxed and certainly allow yourself to Blink. So your eyes don't dry out. This is not a test of how long you can go without blinking by focusing on that
particular location and by forcing yourself to
refocus on that location. Anytime your
Gaze your vision. Drifts from that location. You are encouraging the circuits for Focus to get better at focusing for longer and longer and it refocusing. When your focus drifts off of that location,
this is incorporating neural circuits including the prefrontal cortex things like the frontal eye field. For those of you curious about the underlying biology, this practice is recruiting certain elements of your so-called prefrontal cortex. Also the frontal eye fields, which are
locations not far from the prefrontal cortex that are involved in.
Redirecting your gaze to particular locations in space, not outer space, although you could do this by focusing on Stars, I suppose, but in visual
space. Now I mentioned before that this is overt
visual focus and attention. You are overtly looking at that location. But one also very powerful practice for improving focus and concentration is to use
covert Focus. Covert focus is where my
gaze. My eyes are focused on one location. Such
As my pain but my focus is actually
directed elsewhere in the
room or location that I'm in my
mind and to some extent, my peripheral vision is focused in this case
on the door just to my left in the room that I'm
in that takes a little bit more effort. This is something that all Old World
primates of which we are Old.
World primates are able to do and it probably evolved as part of the mechanism by which animals could evaluate the their seen evaluate Predators evaluate other
While not necessarily staring at them directly, so they can obtain information. We can obtain information without having to direct our gaze specifically to one location. Maybe we can obtain information from multiple locations. Indeed, we can
without getting too far down the rabbit hole of how vision and
cognition relate, because we've done episodes on that previously
and simply focusing on the
tools that can be incorporated to improve, focus and concentration. Here's what I recommend.
Set
yourself a low bar at first, and set a timer and try to focus on one location for 30
seconds and that's it for that day. The next day you might add five seconds and then the next day, five seconds after that if
you miss a date, no big deal. Simply do the practice for the same amount of time that you did the last time that you did the practice and then gradually try and
increase the amount of time that you can focus on one visual location overly by looking directly at that location.
If you like and if you feel you have the ability, you can try and do this through covert attention and focus by
looking straight forward. For instance, in attending to Something in the corner
of the room and trying to do that. For 30 seconds, you'll find that that's quite a bit harder and then extending that by five seconds. Every time you do the practice,
this is something that I don't think you necessarily have to build up to being able to do for a full hour in order
to extract the benefits. In fact,
the best way to think about this practice is as a means to get into a focused state if you remember
back about an hour or so.
Go. I was talking about
how Focus states are not a drop all the way in and then exit
type phenomenon. We don't just drop into a
focused State. The same way we don't
drop into the Peak Performance of a workout we warm
up. So what I recommend is having a 30 second to three minute period at the
beginning of about a focus where you're going to do work or physical, work,
and anchoring your vision to one location somewhere in the room or if you want to do it.
Covertly can do that setting a timer and trying to do that for anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes what you're doing when you exercise that practice is you
are ramping up neural activity within the neural
circuits that create focus and concentration.
Then I would stop
looking at that location or that covert location and then I would move to the work that you're trying to do either mental work or physical
work. And if about halfway through your 90-minute bout, or at some point in your
90-minute bout of work, or exercise, you feel that
Concentration is drifting rather than look at your phone and scroll through the thousands of context that exist within social media, your phone try. Just picking a location again on the wall. Focusing back on that location. Using that as a ramp up to then, direct your focus back
towards. If your weight training sets and Reps that you might be performing. If you're running, you might do this or cycling. You might do this by focusing on a particular location and really
honing in on that location
physically. And this is a practice that a lot of athletes use. In fact,
And if you're say doing musical, practice
or math, well then you'd want to focus on something
other than the task that you're trying to perform. But again, using visual
Focus, as a way to ramp up and increase
your overall ability to focus and concentrate and then applying that to whatever it is, that you're trying to learn or perform next. I'd like to talk about compounds that can improve concentration and focus and these are most often consumed as
supplements. Although some of them, I should
mention can also be derived from
food. Again, I just want to remind
you.
That there are things in this case, compounds that can modulate a biological mechanism that is, can modulate, focus and concentration. And there are compounds that can mediate can directly contribute to concentration and focus. One of the key compounds
that supports concentration and focus because it generally
supports mood concentration and focus and brain function in
general, are the omega-3
essential fatty acids, I've talked about the omega-3 essential fatty acids
In a variety of contexts in particular, depression, but also ADHD. There are interesting
data on that and it's really clear that getting somewhere between 1 and 3
grams of EPA that is 123 grams of
EPA, essential fatty acid per day can improve outcomes, that is can improve mood and can improve cognitive function. And while there's some debate about whether or not improve cardiac function, it's very clear at least to me
that ingesting 123 grams of epa's
So, fatty acids per day is beneficial but again in the context of focus and
concentration, it's in modulating the neural circuits and brain
function that are going to support focus and concentration. It's not as if taking 123 grams of EPA, essential fatty acids per day is going to tap directly into only the circuits for focus and concentration. That said, and as discussed on the episode of The huberman Lab podcast with dr. Rhonda Patrick, and on the episode on
a
eh d that I did and on the episode on depression that I did. I make it a point to
ingest 123 grams of epa's per day. You can get those epa's from other sources besides supplements, of course. But supplements are going to be the easiest way to do that. You could do that through
liquid form fish oil, cod liver oil, some people who are
vegan opt for other sources of epa's, you can find those out there. Certainly some people even use prescription epa's to get the dosage really high.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick talked about this in the episode with me. That's actually something that she does.
I don't take the prescription for my, get them
through pill, form through our supplement affiliate, which is momentous, but there are a number of different quality sources of epa's out there and some of those quality sources. Also include things like fatty fish, algae and things of that
sort. So I'll leave it to you as to whether or not you supplement
with omega-3. Fatty acids in order to get that 123 grams per day or whether or not you do it through food, but I would encourage you to try and reach that threshold.
Because there are a number of known positive effects for mood and brain function. Generally,
the other thing that
can positively modulate brain function and that actually works as a fuel
for neurons to function and can improve cognitive performance. And particularly, within the brain circuits such as the,
prefrontal cortex that are involved in
concentration and focus is creatine. I know many
people are familiar with creatine monohydrate for its effects on
muscle growth, and strength and performance, but it's quite clear that the bulk of scientific studies
Have examined the role of creatine in the clinical context and as
its role in improving cognitive performance. So
my reading of the literature has led to a
practice in which I ingest 5 grams per day of creatine, monohydrate sort of standard form that's available in. This is generally available as a powder. That's certainly how I take it. I take the creatine powder. I'll mix it with water or with my athletic greens, or some sort of, electrolyte drink, whatever liquid happens to be convenient to ingest that. In the time of day, doesn't really seem to be important. Some people are strong Believers
in
Creatine post-workout while that might be beneficial, I simply take it in the morning or post-workout. It sort of depends on when I remember to take it, but that
5 grams of creatine per day. In my case, really isn't geared towards muscle growth or strength, or performance as much as geared toward tapping into the creatine phosphate system within the brain. And specifically the benefits of creatine for prefrontal cortical
networks again modulating not
directly medium, but modulating and generally
Eating the brain networks that are
going to allow me to generate focus. And concentration so much like sleep. Much like a mega Three fatty acids, creatine monohydrate, 5 grams a day, seems to generally support brain function, which will generally support concentration and
focus. Now in terms of compounds that more specifically
mediate concentration and focus. We have to go back to that Arrow. Metaphor model that we talked about, at the beginning of the episode that
included epinephrine,
adrenaline acetylcholine,
Which acts as this attentional Spotlight. In fact,
acetylcholine and elevated levels of acetylcholine have been shown over and over again. Through beautiful work for Mike, MERS Annex Lab at UCSF and
the kill guard lab down in Houston
and a number of other labs
including Norm weinberger's Lab at UC Irvine. Again
it again to improve or even directly gate
neural plasticity by increasing Focus directly that's
a lot of words suit but basically what happens is if
Transmission is increased even transiently within the brain. There's a greater opportunity for neural
plasticity to take place and the reason there's a greater opportunity for
neural plasticity. AKA learning to take place is by way of the increased Focus that spiking
acetylcholine can provide.
As I mentioned earlier, there are number of different foods which contain choline you can look those up online choline acting as an amino acid precursor to acetylcholine, but, of course, there are compounds that are supplements. That can
further, and more acutely
Reese, acetylcholine. And indeed, I use these
myself the most effective one I've found is Alpha
GPC Alpha,
GPC consumed at dosages of 300 milligrams, to 600 mg prior to a work bout, or prior to a workout greatly. Increase one's ability to
focus and concentrate. At least, that's been my
experience. And there are some good
data in humans. So how would I use Alpha GPC? I would use Alpha GPC. I taking it about 10 to 20 minutes, prior to
any time, I want to focus.
Concentrate. Very deeply I've
taken as much as 600 milligrams at
one time, although I find that 300 milligrams is enough for me and I tend to be quite sensitive to supplements and caffeine in general. So I'll sometimes take it alongside your mate or with yerba mate and, or with coffee prior to a workout or prior to a bout of work in which I'm focusing on mental work. So it could be Reading Writing be math, could be data analysis. Could be anything where I need a lot of focus and concentration.
Now a number of people have contacted me.
A about a recent study suggesting that Alpha GPC when taking chronically over many years, could increase
one's vulnerability to
stroke, I've looked at those data and my read of the data is that they're not very conclusive. Although any time you see
something like that you know it's study that's pointing to the fact that a given compound might increase the propensity for stroke you obviously want to be concerned. So we have to ask ourselves how by what mechanism that is could Alpha GPC be.
Seeing the susceptibility to stroke and it seems to be related to increases in tmao, which is a marker related to the cardiovascular system.
And one
known way to offset
increases in tmao that are associated either with Alpha GPC or increases due to other things. So, ingestion of particular food compounds. Actually can increase. Tmao is
to offset that by taking 600 milligrams of
garlic. Now,
I've been taking Alpha GPC, pretty
consistently for a number of years. I do not take it every day. I would say take it about four days per week again,
prior to workout or bouts of cognitive work. I have not seen my tmao Spike and I've evaluated that by way of blood test.
But nonetheless, I take 600 milligrams of garlic in capsule form
any time I eat anyway and I do that for General cardiovascular function and there's some interesting data on immune system function,
etcetera for garlic. So I've been consuming 600 mg
capsules of
Some period of time, some days all in jest just one 600 mg capsule other
times. I'll take two but based on this recent study and the concerns about tmao, I make it a point to always ingest a 600 mg
capsule of
garlic. Anytime I
take Alpha GPC which again for me is about four days per week.
So in our model of attention and focus, you can now clearly see why taking
Alpha GPC. Which increases acetylcholine transmission would be beneficial for concentration and focus and why taking it
With a double espresso or why taking it with yerba mate. Would
further increase concentration and focus because as I
mentioned earlier, caffeine is going to increase epinephrine. It's also going to increase the density of
dopamine receptors in the alpha. GPC is going to increase a
seagull calling this spotlighting for cognition. This ability to really
amplify the activity of
specific neural networks which is largely what's happening when you're trying to focus and pay attention to something specifically. So if
one wants to
Increase the amount of dopamine Transmission in the
brain and body for sake of increasing, concentration, and
focus. One of the most efficient ways to do that is by ingestion of the amino acid
l-tyrosine. Again, l-tyrosine can be derived from food sources. I invite you to look up those various food sources on the web, simply go to web browser and put in foods that contain a lot of l-tyrosine, you'll get a rich array of choices to select from,
but in my case I use l-tyrosine in
capsule form. I will take 500 mg of l-tyrosine
Mg of alpha G pz and a cup of coffee.
I'm careful to do this early in the day. Certainly not after 2 or 3
p.m. because I don't want to diminish, my ability to fall and stay asleep that night do
this early in the day before work out, or before
a bout of concentrated mental work. Again, I tend to do this about four days per week, so certainly not every time I sit down to do
work, and I should also mention that I still tend to do the behavioral
tools. I'll tend to use five minutes of binaural beats or binaural beats.
Out the work session. Sometimes do an ice bath or a cold shower before.
I don't want to give the impression that I combine every tool that I've talked about today
for a given worked out, and that would be pretty wild to take a cold
shower Poppin, l-tyrosine take an alpha GPC, drink to Espresso. Listen to binaural beats that to me seems like a very inefficient way
to go about life.
In fact, I make it a point to try
and use tools to increase my ability to concentrate and focus but
not too.
Combine more than two or three of them at any one time. And when I say two or three, what I mean is I will use
supplements like Alpha GPC l-tyrosine and caffeine together
before certain work bouts,
I might use the visual practice of focusing on a given location for a minute. Before I begin that work
bout, I might combine those then. Another time I might take a cold shower prior to doing some work other days, I confess
I've slept very well or my enthusiasm about what I'm about to work
on is such that I don't require any of these tools again. There's no
No requirement. There's no pressure to
use any of these tools behavioral supplement based or otherwise it's simply a matter of using the tools that are going to allow you to achieve the state's, you want to achieve and to improve your ability to go into those states without any help at all.
And this is what I find particularly attractive about
supplements. It's not so much that they put you into the ideal state for that work and then you accomplish that work and then you always rely on those supplements. I prefer to look at supplements of the
Sort that I just described as a route
into a deeper trench of focus and
concentration that I use as a tool to teach myself, to focus and concentrate, more deeply such that I don't need those tools every single time I try and focus and concentrate.
I think this is an important point because I think that many people think of supplements as a
crutch or a
way of Simply getting into a state for which no other
tool will suffice or replace, but in that context,
want to remind you of the larger context of
pharmacology which is the vast landscape of prescription pharmacology for ADHD for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Now I covered that landscape in intense detail on the episode on ADHD and focus and
just to summarize there is of course Adderall Ritalin, Vyvanse modafinil are modafinil a number of different compounds. All of which generally increase dopamine Transmission in the brain. So increasing dopamine
Een and all of which generally increase
epinephrine, adrenaline Transmission in the brain and body. And
many of those compounds have been of tremendous benefit to children and even some
adults who suffer from ADHD. So properly prescribed at the appropriate dosage, those compounds
can really help people with
clinically diagnosed ADHD.
The way they help those people is a bit surprising. However, you might think, well, they turn on the brain.
Chemicals, that allow those people to concentrate in
I guess that's true but they also have the benefit of teaching
those brain circuits
how to engage and that's one of the reasons why somewhat
paradoxically giving a stimulant
like ritalin or Adderall
to a kid that legitimately needs it.
Obviously you don't want to do this without the oversight and careful evaluation of a psychiatrist.
But giving that to a kid who has severe ADHD, you would think would make them read more
rambunctious.
Less able to focus in more distractible overall after all Ritalin
modafinil are modafinil. All these things are stimulant.
So you take a kid who has attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, and
give them these drugs that increase transmission of dopamine and
epinephrine and think. Wow. It's going to make them even more distractible and hyperactive. And indeed, it has the opposite effect. It doesn't necessarily make them feel calm, but it makes them feel that they can focus, they really can anchor their attention. And the idea is that it's teaching those neural circuits.
For those neural circuits, rather a teaching themselves to engage in to focus and concentrate. And the ideal situation is one in which the total dosage of those compounds, those drugs can be reduced over time. As those circuits learn to come online through purely
behavioral tools. Now oftentimes there's a maintenance of those drugs over long periods of time although there is
a common practice nowadays of trying to diminish. The dosage overall
that's in the context of ADHD and prescription medication and I
acknowledge that a lot indeed 80% or more.
Or of college students say the statistics are
using prescription drugs
when they are not. In fact prescribe those prescription drugs. So basically what I'm saying is there are a lot of people using drugs designed for ADHD and narcolepsy
because those drugs will effectively increase focus and concentration,
but I strongly discourage the use of powerful prescription drugs that have not been to prescribe. You first of all it's illegal, second of all,
it's quite dangerous to hit the accelerator.
Those neural circuits with
such Vigor because it can increased dependency and they can have a number of other side effects, outside the context of clinically diagnosed and prescribed ADHD medication. But in the context of
supplementation, the increase in dopamine, acetylcholine and epinephrine that one can
achieve from say 500. Mg of l-tyrosine 300 mg of alpha GPC and a cup of
coffee is going to be substantially less.
Than one would see for prescription drug. So you're getting a modest
effect that
can similarly,
teach those brain circuits for focusing concentration, how to engage better. But as a general backdrop to all of this, I always say and I'll say it again and again, probably until the day I die, which hopefully is a long time from now. But regardless, it will be the same message.
I always believed that behavioral tool should come
first behavioral, tool should come first, then, focus on nutrition. In fact, I was a
behavioral and nutrition tools.
And of course, get excellent sleep.
Then focus on
supplementation and then
and only, if those are failing to bring your brain and body to the state, you need to be in
to perform well in school and work and life Etc.
Do I recommend that people lean on
prescription drugs. Now there's a caveat to that which is in under conditions like severe Eating Disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder
depression, where people are
Truly at
risk of suicide or severe mental health affects our behavioral health effects, and they're really at their lives. Are at risk and their overall mood and well-being is
at risk. It's often the case that people cannot access the brain States
required to shift themselves, purely with behavioral tools nutrition, Etc. So again,
for the typical person who's not suffering from one of
the psychiatric disorders that I mentioned before or other psychiatric disorders schizophrenia Etc.
I strongly encourage you to look to behavioral tools,
First Nutrition, then supplementation then and only if there is a remaining need to prescription drugs.
This contrasts very much with the typical scenario. We hear about these days. We're college students or
other people will say, oh yeah, I hear that there's this drug, you know, riddle in her Vyvanse, that can immediately put me into a state of heightened focus and concentration. Now listen, if you have ADHD by all means, talk to a physician talk to her.
A great psychiatrist and figure out whether or not. That's right for you, but if you don't again behavioral tools
nutrition supplementation and in particular, those behavioral tools are going to be the ones that are going to allow you to
teach your neural circuits how to focus and concentrate better. And I cannot overstate the importance of that at the
behavioral tools. And to some extent, the supplementation combined with behavioral tools, really allow you to train up your neural
circuits, so that you can focus and concentrate to the depth and the
Re and the duration that's going to best serve, your mental and physical goals.
Now, there's one other compound that I've used from time to time and that I continue to use
in order to increase focus and concentration. And I will use this in combination with the other supplements I talked about before, and that's phenylethylamine.
Phenylethylamine is in the dopamine
synthesis pathway. So it increases dopamine transmission and tends to
function a little bit differently than l-tyrosine. So, every once in a while, I'll swap out
l-tyrosine and put in
Mg
of phenol, ethylamine or sometimes. If I really want to
push a little bit harder on the dopamine system. And I'm going to be doing a long bout of intense work. I will take the 300 mg of alpha GPC. The 500 mg of l-tyrosine, I'll generally take that with some caffeine and I should mention, I don't go past about 100 or 200 milligrams of caffeine because I don't really like feeling too jittery. That's not really my goal. It's the goal to be alert, but not so alert. That I don't really can't focus on anything. I'm not interested in having
Anxiety attack after all.
But I'll sometimes either swap in or I
will add that 500 mg of unilateral. A mean, if you don't like, the way mean, is in the PE a pathway. I've talked about this in a previous podcast on dopamine, motivation and
drive, and it's a very short-lived compound. So, what I'll tend to do is take it once at the beginning of the workout
and sometimes in the middle of the work battle, take another 500 mg capsule. But what I just described with
combining all of those compounds
Alpha GPC,
L-tyrosine phenylethylamine and caffeine.
That's a fairly rare occurrence that. I'll combine all four and really only under conditions
in which I have to do an intensely challenging bout of mental or physical work. I would say the frequency at which I combine all
four of those things is
probably about once every two weeks and typically more like once a month,
again, being careful
to do that in the early part of the day. Certainly, before the noon hour, so that I am in no way, going to
disrupt my sleep, I realize that many of you are probably
He wondering about or hoping that I'll discuss things
like, lion's mane, or the racetam Zoar. Some of the other compounds that are known to powerfully modulate. The dopamine epinephrine and acetylcholine systems to
be quite direct. There are far too many of these compounds to review in a single episode and they all generally tap into the same set of
processes again, epinephrine, that shaft of the Arrow Head that we're thinking of as Focus
acetylcholine, which is the arrowhead itself.
And then dopamine, which is
Is the
sort of propeller behind the arrow that allows it to continually
drive forward through about of mental or physical
work. There is a wonderful sight of mentioned it several times before on this
podcast, that is examined.com that wonderful site that is
examined.com has recently been updated, they've changed their format. It was terrific before it provided links to relevant studies. It talked about
specific compounds. It talked about the magnitude of effect to talked about the human
effect Matrix are really focused on
Studies, with links to those studies and on, and on the new revamped version of examine.com is even better. It's really
next. Next level, I really applaud them for doing such a terrific job in organizing the information that a lot of interesting pages that you can read there about different compounds. So you can put in any compound, ginkgo biloba. Phosphatidyl serine Alpha GPC, and you're going to
get a rich array of
information about those compounds
and if you were to put in a specific goal,
state that is focus or
ation or sleep or hormones, like testosterone cetera, you're going to get
a rich array
of compounds supplements as well as links to the studies on those compounds. And some details about those particular studies is an absolutely phenomenal site. It's one that I rely on in that, I know, thousands, if not millions of other people rely on, and I encourage you to check it out again. The URL is examine.com.
So today, we've talked about a number of different tools and to some extent, some mechanisms involved in concentration and focus.
I guess and really the goal has been to provide you
an understanding of the neurochemical systems and a little bit about the neural circuits
that can allow you to achieve states of attention and focus in
contrast to previous episodes of the
human Lab podcast. Where
I've covered these topics
in tremendous depth as it relates to mechanism and also focused on tools. Today, I largely focused on tools, we talked about behavioral tools like a meditation. That's
13 minutes, long done, daily specifically,
to improve
Your ability to focus and in fact, our data to support that it will talked about hypnosis. We talked about visual Focus overt and covert we talked about various supplements such as Alpha GPC
phenol a flaming l-tyrosine
supplements that I use to directly modulate, the neural circuits for concentration and focus. Most talked about
creatine, the Omega-3s talked about the importance of sleep, which modulates our ability to function mentally and
physically overall. So, optimize that sleep and we talked
about a number of other
Protocols that you can incorporate
My Hope and giving you all this information in one single location is that you will be able to pick and choose which of these protocols. You would like
to incorporate into your attempts to improve your focus and concentration. Again, I don't recommend
doing all of these protocols all at once.
What I recommend is picking a handful of them,
maybe one or two, maybe three or four and trying them in different combinations at different times of day and for
different purposes, for mental work for physical work, etc. And find what is best for.
For you. Once again the goal is to teach your brain. That is to
increase. Neuroplasticity in the neural circuits that
allow you not just to focus, but to refocus your attention
and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that. It's also critical to be able
to defocus. I highly encourage people to take a period of time, each day to day dream to walk down the hall, without looking at your phone to not have to
incorporate more sensory information to not Place, increasing demands on yourself.
Focus and see, and realize, how, having a period of deliberate decompression and defocusing can allow
your brain to focus. So much better. When you do decide to return to about a focused, concentrated work or physical work. So I want
to thank you for joining me for this
discussion about tools for focus and concentration. If you're
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Gus supplements while supplements are necessary
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sleep and enhancing
focus and hormone augmentation and so forth as mentioned at the beginning of today's episode the huberman
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And
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