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He keeps showing up in my yt recommendations. What I've seen makes sense and fits with what I've previously heard. But it's almost too good to be true. Is he really as clever as everyone makes him out to be or just got a good webcast persona and saying what people wnat to hear?
For those folks who've never heard of him (for instance; me) what's he saying that so revelatory and ground-breaking?
There’s a couple of episodes of the Nine Club (skateboarding podcast/YT channel) that he’s on. The earlier one talks about his background growing up skating and how he got into what he does now. I thought he came across ok.
I don’t know, has also appeared on my YouTube home page but I’ve not clicked on one for fear of being served up more of the same shit
He does back up a lot of his stuff with scientific references, but the level of cherry picking is potentially quite high.
A lot of what he says is plausible, but I am unconvinced of his "protocols" as it feels like throwing stuff at a wall with little to tie them together.
I have to be honest this is based on stuff from about a year ago, haven't been interested enough to listen to more recent stuff
He's hawking supplements therefore he's compromised.
Youtube loves to promise solutions to everything doesn't it.
I listened to a good podcast with him where much of what he said about light, sleep and circadian/brain rhythms makes a lot of sense, things I'd found true from long distance riding or racing plus periods of regular travel to Asia and all the jetlag. Whether it's anything new I don't know, seems to be his area of specialisation and he explained it well enough.
I think the value in these videos or podcasts on a topic is in the patterns or repeated themes that come from of a number of the guests, and how good the host is / what the host's motivations are.
He did mention supplements and I zoned out of that bit.
He’s hawking supplements therefore he’s compromised.
Having said that, having read his toolkit for sleep, apart from the recommendation for supplements and the need for a specific app if you're having problems with insomnia, the rest of it is bang on.
DOI I'm a GP with an interest in sleep.
It's so odd, he has some good academic credentials, but some of the science and expensive supplements he's pushing are supported by evidence that doesn't seem to survive the most basic scrutiny, and you'd expect better from a Stanford professor.
The problem for the layperson will always be trying to separate useful fact from shill science when the two are mixed together.
The problem for the layperson will always be trying to separate useful fact from shill science when the two are mixed together.
True, and why I tend to ignore youtube and look for podcasts where the host is as important as the guest.
I suppose if you're inclined to believe you'll find a new, fast, easy quick-fix answer to life's common problems on youtube you're the target market for both youtube and the supplement salesmen.
Having said that some of the best podcast content is shared on youtube too.
The problem for the layperson will always be trying to separate useful fact from shill science when the two are mixed together.
💯 If the topic is outside my own personal expertise (ie I can do the separating myself), as soon as the shilling starts, everything they say and have said has to go in the bin.
I don't think he is a good communicator, he waffles on endlessly and slowly, talking down to his audience, never really differentiating between the general information and the good stuff. He reminds me of a bad infomercial selling a false cure always promising a solution that he never gets to. I suspect that he does actually have the goods to deliver it is just really poorly presented . He also seems to part of the Joe Rogan bro science environment, even if he shouldn't be.
He keeps popping up on my IG feed, and he seems to work with some interesting people. You'd think that he should be pretty robust science, but ICBA to listen to the full 120 minutes of podcast to fix my procrastination, as that seems like a good procrastination tactic.
I am also not an SF techbro trying to reverse engineer my brain chemistry for hyper performance with super supplements and other tactics, so perhaps I am not the target demographic
I've thought pretty much all of the above comments and am still undecided, which is why I asked here.
Which indicates that there is worth to some of his advice, but not to accept everything unconditionally. Thanks for your comments, STW.
If the topic is outside my own personal expertise (ie I can do the separating myself), as soon as the shilling starts, everything they say and have said has to go in the bin.
So do I, but the target audience is usually the people who have trouble distinguishing the two, or who want to believe that expensive urine is a quick fix for their health issues.
It’s so odd, he has some good academic credentials, but some of the science and expensive supplements he’s pushing are supported by evidence that doesn’t seem to survive the most basic scrutiny, and you’d expect better from a Stanford professor.
He's in the US so health and healthcare are commodities
Ah, OK after a little research, As far as I can see, It's no better than Gwyneth, or is a Gwyneth equivalent for men. In so much as somewhere in there, there's probably sensible advice that doesn't make a profit, so it has to layered over with the stuff that does.
He’s hawking supplements therefore he’s compromised.
Bingo.
From Wikipedia:
Andrew David Huberman (born September 26, 1975) is an American podcaster and neuroscientist. He is an associate professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He hosts the Huberman Lab podcast, which he started in 2021. He is a partner of dietary supplement company Momentous.[3]
He's making money promoting diet supplements. His expertise is in neurobiology, not nutrition. As above, he's quite likely cherry-picking evidence to support his money-making enterprise. I would consider his peer-reviewed research articles as probably worth taking notice of, his commercial endorsements as something best ignored.
The only other thing I'd say about the modern wellness industry is that its often conspiracy-theory adjacent. Its a very short hop for some of them from "rather than use/pollute your body with drugs, do this instead" to "vaccines are evil, and 5G will mess with your aura brainwaves etc etc" and then from there...anything is possible.
To be viewed with caution. If some-one is telling you that in order to get better you need to buy their drugs rather than some-one else drugs, they've probably not got your best interests at heart.
I'd be happy to do an AMA about sleep on here if there was a demand for it?
If some-one is telling you that in order to get better you need to buy their drugs rather than some-one else drugs, they’ve probably not got your best interests at heart.
Unless that recommendation is being presented in the BMJ or NEJM, in which case it is worth a good look.
I’d be happy to do an AMA about sleep on here if there was a demand for it?
Sounds like a good idea! Will you be selling melatonin gummies?
<Reading AMA on sleep at 1.30am on my phone instead of sleeping>
If the topic is outside my own personal expertise (ie I can do the separating myself), as soon as the shilling starts, everything they say and have said has to go in the bin.
My own 'expertise' area is probably like most peoples, very narrow. And I do like listening to smart people talking about wider topics - the thing is a lot of people do make a living in their area of experience or expertise so the expert's commercial or professional interest isn't necessarily a compromise, you could discount a lot of good information if that was a filter. Then again you'll discount a lot of BS too so maybe it's not a bad rule either.. (I guess what you mean is how we pick up on or decide what shilling is)
Using the media type as a filter isn't a bad way to go. ie a person's own youtube content maybe not because it's not challenged or quizzed Vs a podcast or interview with a credible host that tends to cut the BS.
I’d be happy to do an AMA about sleep on here if there was a demand for it?
Very much so. Both in general and how it might relate to endurance performance.
Will you be selling melatonin gummies?
Only my own special Kramer branded ones, the rest are useless. 😉
how it might relate to endurance performance.
That maybe tipping over into sports medicine, which I don't know so much about, but I'd be happy to see.
I’d be happy to do an AMA about sleep on here if there was a demand for it?
Do it! Was fortunate to have some good sessions run whilst I was in service about sleep, and how to recover from shit sleep. I definitely felt and saw a benefit to the unit.
I still try and maintain the routines and hacks to recover when I've had disrupted sleep. Was particularly helpful when in therapy.
There's probably plenty of people on here that don't even realise how bad their sleep hygiene is. I had zero clue.
He's a "Bro science" gobshite and whilst he does speak well on very selective topics regarding nutrition, he has gone/does still go full "Joe Rogan" on other topics - autism being just one.
Don't listen to prophets like these and delete any mention of Joe Rogan/Lex Friedman etc and his acolytes from your memory.
Just eat your veg, get exercise - job done - no need for these pricks.
Just so happens I've been listening to Huberman this morning talking about procrastination.
There's an ad read for Athletic greens, in common with many other podcasts. That's a vitamin / electrolyte supplement, hardly snake oil. Then an ad read for some fancy mattress.
I don't think that makes him a right wing grifter psueudoscientist.
My favourite left leaning podcasts, Blindboy (lefty) You're wrong about (very lefty) Behind the bastards (insufferably woke) all flog stuff too. Seems reasonable to cover costs of production and hosting shirley?
He comes across, to me, as someone doing good for the world despite some anonymous oddbod trashing his wiki page.
Decoding the Guru's podcast does a good deconstruction of his rhetoric, Decoding The Guru's - Andrew Huberman
Extract below
In a kind of meta cross-over with our Decoding Academia series, we're going to decode a journal club discussion between two well-known health optimisers: Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman. So you get to listen to two academics talk about two other academics talk about academic papers... we know...
We've already been introduced to the bulging biceps and morning sun-drenched routines of Huberman elsewhere but this is our first introduction to Peter Attia, MD. Attia is a former ultra-endurance athlete and a physician in the field of longevity and performance, a podcaster (who isn't amirite?!?) and author of "Outlive: The Science And Art Of Longevity".
Attia introduces us to a paper that casts doubt on the supposed general life-extending properties of a diabetes drug called Metformin. This is a drug that is apparently very well known in the biohacker/life extension communities and one that Attia administered to himself for a number of years despite the rather preliminary evidence. This is the first of many indicators that both gentlemen are certainly on the bleeding edge of self-medicating experimentation, doggedly pursuing the elusive goals of huge pectoral muscles, minds that laugh at the concept of cognitive decline, and bodies that will live... well for a lot longer than Matt and Chris!
We get to hear about week-long starvation regimes, medications that take the edge of pizza and doughnut binges, dealing with month-long nausea from self-dosing experimental treatments, and frequent prick-blood tests all for the sake of optimising, optimising, optimising...
Huberman's paper (a preprint, actually) falls more into the "big, if true" category - although he seems fairly confident himself. Does *believing* you are getting a treatment generate the relevant physiological and neurological effects in the body that could mean we can bypass the need for certain pharmacological substances entirely, including some vaccines?!? Based on the results of a small-N, fMRI study that reports mixed results, Huberman muses... maybe! Or how about those other small-N studies, with p-values hovering suspiciously close to 0.05 that report other counterintuitive findings? We will leave it to Huberman to explain.
But the bad stuff aside, Huberman and Attia (especially Attia) actually do a pretty decent job talking about how to approach research papers and some of the pros and cons of different approaches. Chris and Matt thus have ample opportunities to give credit where credit's due and demonstrate that they are the fair-minded souls everyone knows them to be!
In any case, it's an interesting peak into an alternative health optimiser world. It seems to be a rather "serious" hobby a bit like body modification or tattoos. But who are we to judge? Matt likes cultivating succulent plants and Chris is into eating sushi in lush forests. So biohacking, self-experimentation for longevity? Well, at least it's an ethos.
Also featuring, an introduction that covers Irish history, the most humble guru in the gurusphere, and our very own theory of guru cringeosity!
As a side note, AG1 seems to sponsor half of the Youtubers so that is not worrying thing per se. Those segments can be easily skipped, it is the actual Youtube ads which are more annoying. But then again, most of us here are used to linear TV and not falling for advertising there.
It will be interesting to look back at this time after say 5 years, what will be legacy of the all these influencers and health hackers.
The thing is they talk to leading scientists and researchers which is great
Their [online video podcasters] business model however is to get us to keep viewing. And it's in our nature to want to keep consuming, when really we just need the key takeaways. But there's no profit or viable business in just giving us the key takeaways (and most of us as hinted above listen to 'procrastinate' or to 'feel better about ourselves' than to actually just take the advice)
If you asked for the headlines from all the top experts people like Huberman interview, they'd be more than happy to just say:
"I am the expert in my field: Diabetes, cancer, etc (And they are. They have fantastic guests)
I could (and am going to on this podcast) talk to you for hours, but really all you need to know and DO is: (delete as appropriate)
- Exercise more (80% Z2 at least 6 hours a week, 20% Z5 at least 1.5 hours a week)
- Strength train
- Eat a very healthy diet with no processed food whatsoever
- Intermittent fast or ideally fast
- Hot and cold exposure
- Make sleep health the most important thing in your life
- Get sunlight at the start and end of the day
- Protect your skin from sun damage but definitely get sun exposure
- Improve your mental health especially concerning stress"
You now know the top headlines from the worlds foremost health experts, without having to listen to podcasts ever again. Try listening to one with a worlds' foremost expert: They all conclude the same thing! You're welcome.
He’s a “Bro science” gobshite and whilst he does speak well on very selective topics regarding nutrition, he has gone/does still go full “Joe Rogan” on other topics – autism being just one.
He has a PhD in Neuroscience, along with a few other degrees, so he's slightly more qualified than "bro science"
No one starts a youtube channel shilling supplements because their scientific career is going well. That being said, Huberman is a credentialed person who will be miles ahead of most of his ilk just on basic scientific literacy and knowing how to read, write, and interpret a scientific paper.
The pursuit of this sort of optimised life with endless calibrations and weak pharmaceutical interventions strikes me as foolish, even if it did work. Chasing after improvements with bogus supplements and nootropics is a complete waste of time.
*Kramer
I’d be happy to do an AMA about sleep on here if there was a demand for it?
Yes please!
We need see your biceps first to decide whether you are legitimate scientist. Less than 50cm and you are not validated by bros.
Erm, right or left? 😉
Just eat your veg, get exercise – job done
This sort of bollocks annoys me just as much as "bro science"
I was watching him bang on about how cannabis affects your short-term memory and is demotivating then I lost the thread and switched off.
No one starts a youtube channel shilling supplements because their scientific career is going well
If it's your own supplements company and you could make it work, you would - do you know how much the Swansons (vitamins company) in the USA are worth?
Vitamins and supplements are big business, and have worked very hard to be regulated as foods rather than as medicines which would be far more appropriate.
I take vitamin D in winter. If I had brown skin I'd take it all year round.
I don't take anything else.
If it’s your own supplements company and you could make it work, you would
Sure it's the business model that Alex Jones and Info Wars works on...I'm content to make assumptions about people who copy it.