Is Andrew Huberman Ruining Your Morning Coffee?

00:22:32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCJr49GU9yY

Resumen

TLDRThe video explores Dr. Andrew Huberman's advice on delaying coffee consumption in the morning to avoid an afternoon energy crash. Huberman, a Stanford professor and host of the 'Huberman Lab' podcast, advises waiting 90-120 minutes post-waking before consuming caffeine, based on the biological mechanism involving adenosine receptors. The experiment in the video tested this by having participants unknowingly consume caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee within 30 minutes of waking over 30 days. They measured afternoon fatigue using a subjective questionnaire and a psychomotor vigilance test. Contrary to Huberman's advice, the study found no significant difference in afternoon fatigue regardless of morning caffeine consumption. It also discovered that delaying coffee led to overall reduced caffeine consumption but didn't significantly correlate with sleep disruption. The video emphasizes the need for caution when trusting single-mechanism explanations for complex biological outcomes and suggests that while empirical data can be compelling, scientific rigor requires broader testing and analysis.

Para llevar

  • 🥼 Dr. Andrew Huberman's advice on delaying morning caffeine is tested.
  • ☕ Participants consumed coffee without knowing if it contained caffeine.
  • 🛌 No significant difference in afternoon fatigue was found.
  • 📉 Delaying caffeine led to overall less consumption.
  • 🧪 Experiment lasted 30 days with subjective and objective measurements.
  • 📊 Study suggests skepticism towards single-mechanism solutions.
  • 🧠 Biological outcomes are complex, involving multiple factors.
  • 🔍 No correlation between caffeine intake and sleep was found.
  • 👥 Small sample size, conducted by a team of five.
  • 🧐 Encourages further exploration and caution in interpreting data.

Cronología

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    The video introduces an experiment inspired by Dr. Andrew Huberman's coffee-related advice, which suggests delaying caffeine intake for 90 to 120 minutes after waking to avoid afternoon crashes. Although the advice is presented as fact, the video creator questions the scientific proof behind it and points out the possibility of biased self-reported outcomes due to motivated behavior changes. Therefore, an experiment is set up to test the validity of this advice.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:00

    The experiment's methodology involves consuming either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee without knowing which one it is within 30 minutes of waking, while logging daily caffeine intake and afternoon performance through subjective questionnaires and psychomotor vigilance tests. The creator assigns a team to participate, acknowledging the small participant size but anticipates at least one person showing correlation if the mechanism is valid. Wearables will track additional metrics like sleep to provide more data.

  • 00:10:00 - 00:15:00

    The 30-day experiment results reveal no statistically significant difference in fatigue or reaction times based on morning caffeine consumption, contradicting Huberman's suggestion. The data suggests that skipping coffee in the morning might lead to generally lower caffeine consumption throughout the day, possibly influencing afternoon crashes. The video discusses potential statistical limitations while challenging Huberman's explanation of caffeine's interaction with adenosine.

  • 00:15:00 - 00:22:32

    The video concludes by questioning the validity of simple scientific mechanisms to predict complex biological outcomes and suggests skepticism towards straightforward biohacks. The experiment showed that skipping morning caffeine does not significantly affect daily fatigue or crash patterns in the small sample. It highlights that while mechanisms can guide understanding, they often oversimplify complex processes and outcomes, encouraging viewers to critically analyze claims, especially from online sources.

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Preguntas frecuentes

  • Who is Dr. Andrew Huberman?

    Dr. Andrew Huberman is a Stanford professor and a prominent science communicator known for his podcast 'Huberman Lab.'

  • What is Dr. Huberman's coffee-related advice?

    His advice is to delay caffeine intake by 90-120 minutes after waking up to avoid an afternoon caffeine crash.

  • What was the objective of the experiment in the video?

    The experiment aimed to test if delaying morning coffee, as advised by Dr. Huberman, reduces afternoon fatigue.

  • How was the experiment set up?

    Participants consumed coffee with or without caffeine unknowingly within 30 minutes of waking, and reaction times and fatigue were measured later in the day.

  • What tools were used to measure fatigue in the experiment?

    A psychomotor vigilance test and a subjective fatigue questionnaire were used to measure fatigue.

  • What were the findings of the experiment?

    The experiment found no significant difference in afternoon fatigue whether caffeine was consumed in the first two hours or not.

  • Was there any impact of caffeine on sleep in the experiment?

    The experiment found no significant correlation between caffeine consumption and sleep quality.

  • Did the experiment account for caffeine consumption patterns?

    Yes, it was noted that participants who skipped morning caffeine generally consumed less coffee overall.

  • What other factors were considered in the experiment?

    Other factors such as sleep quality, overall caffeine consumption, and daily routines were considered.

  • What conclusions were drawn about Huberman's advice?

    The video suggests skepticism toward Huberman's advice, emphasizing the complexity of biological systems beyond single mechanisms.

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Desplazamiento automático:
  • 00:00:00
    - Nearly there,
  • 00:00:01
    but I'm so ready to be done with this experiment.
  • 00:00:04
    I just wanna start my days with black coffee again.
  • 00:00:06
    This video is sponsored by Shopify.
  • 00:00:08
    Today we're gonna talk about
  • 00:00:09
    the coffee-related advice from Dr. Andrew Huberman.
  • 00:00:12
    And more than talk about it,
  • 00:00:14
    we're actually gonna test it.
  • 00:00:15
    Now, if you don't know who Andrew Huberman is,
  • 00:00:17
    I am genuinely quite surprised.
  • 00:00:19
    He is, I think, the most successful and widespread
  • 00:00:22
    science communicator on the internet.
  • 00:00:24
    He's a Stanford professor,
  • 00:00:25
    but it's his podcast, the "Huberman Lab,"
  • 00:00:27
    that is incredibly successful.
  • 00:00:29
    In his words, it discusses science
  • 00:00:31
    and science-based tools for everyday life.
  • 00:00:34
    Now, one particularly viral aspect
  • 00:00:37
    of Dr. Andrew Huberman's sort of advice
  • 00:00:39
    is his morning routine,
  • 00:00:41
    something that people have made a lot of videos about.
  • 00:00:43
    - I tried Andrew Huberman's morning routine."
  • 00:00:46
    - Now, these protocols are so popular
  • 00:00:48
    that if you go to his website,
  • 00:00:50
    well, that's what they're gonna give you
  • 00:00:51
    in exchange for you signing up for his newsletter.
  • 00:00:54
    It's kind of have my daily protocols as a little PDF,
  • 00:00:57
    that's the sort of carrot to sign up.
  • 00:00:58
    So it's a thing that people want.
  • 00:01:00
    And loads people have looked at these,
  • 00:01:01
    tried them, tested them,
  • 00:01:03
    and people ask me about them for one specific reason.
  • 00:01:06
    In there, he makes a very specific recommendation
  • 00:01:10
    regarding your coffee in the morning.
  • 00:01:12
    - I purposely delay my caffeine intake
  • 00:01:16
    to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up.
  • 00:01:19
    One of the factors that induces a sense of sleepiness
  • 00:01:23
    is the buildup of adenosine.
  • 00:01:25
    I wanna make sure that I don't have a late afternoon
  • 00:01:29
    or even early afternoon crash from caffeine.
  • 00:01:33
    One of the best ways to ensure a caffeine crash
  • 00:01:36
    is to drink a bunch of caffeine,
  • 00:01:38
    block all those adenosine receptors,
  • 00:01:40
    and then by early or late afternoon
  • 00:01:42
    when that caffeine starts to wear off
  • 00:01:44
    and gets dislodged from the receptors,
  • 00:01:47
    a lower level of adenosine
  • 00:01:49
    is able to create a greater level of sleepiness.
  • 00:01:53
    - Now, that's very compelling.
  • 00:01:54
    The biology, the biochemistry of it all makes sense to me.
  • 00:01:57
    It's presented with a great deal of confidence
  • 00:01:59
    as if this is fact.
  • 00:02:01
    Makes sense that I should skip my morning coffee,
  • 00:02:03
    I should wait and I will feel better later in the day.
  • 00:02:06
    But there's an important thing to understand
  • 00:02:08
    that I don't think is properly disclosed here.
  • 00:02:11
    This may be science-based tools for everyday life,
  • 00:02:14
    but the science behind this isn't really there.
  • 00:02:17
    This recommendation is kind of an inference.
  • 00:02:19
    It's a recommendation based on some studies,
  • 00:02:23
    but none that have asked and answered this exact question.
  • 00:02:27
    There are no meta-analyses of multiple studies.
  • 00:02:29
    There's no single study that looked at,
  • 00:02:32
    if you skip your morning coffee, if you delay caffeine,
  • 00:02:34
    do you prevent an afternoon crash?
  • 00:02:36
    So while the biology may be correct,
  • 00:02:39
    this question has not been answered conclusively.
  • 00:02:43
    Now, you might say,
  • 00:02:44
    well, there's kind of empirical observed data
  • 00:02:46
    from people who've taken the advice
  • 00:02:48
    and say they don't have afternoon crashes anymore.
  • 00:02:51
    The problem with that data
  • 00:02:52
    is that they have made an effort.
  • 00:02:54
    They've invested some time and energy
  • 00:02:56
    into changing an aspect of their lives.
  • 00:02:58
    They are motivated to see an outcome,
  • 00:03:01
    so there's some bias in that data.
  • 00:03:04
    I'm interested in, what is the actual truth?
  • 00:03:07
    Now, I'm gonna bring up
  • 00:03:08
    another internet-based science communicator,
  • 00:03:10
    the king of clipped audio himself, Dr. Layne Norton.
  • 00:03:13
    Now, he is a nutritional PhD
  • 00:03:16
    with a background in biochemistry and powerlifting
  • 00:03:18
    who has a YouTube channel in which he gets very angry
  • 00:03:21
    about the use and abuse of science
  • 00:03:23
    in the world of sports, health, longevity, wellness,
  • 00:03:27
    all those kind of things.
  • 00:03:28
    I'm gonna steal from Layne,
  • 00:03:29
    I'm gonna steal one of his examples, right?
  • 00:03:31
    Which is he made a video
  • 00:03:33
    because someone had suggested
  • 00:03:34
    that drinking coffee raises cortisol,
  • 00:03:38
    and that is true,
  • 00:03:39
    drinking coffee raises
  • 00:03:40
    the stress hormone cortisol a little bit.
  • 00:03:43
    And high levels of cortisol
  • 00:03:45
    are associated to high levels of body fat,
  • 00:03:47
    actually storing more body fat.
  • 00:03:48
    So someone made a video saying,
  • 00:03:50
    skip coffee because it will cause you to spike your cortisol
  • 00:03:55
    and therefore put on body fat.
  • 00:03:57
    And he makes the point that that first part is true,
  • 00:04:01
    coffee spikes cortisol,
  • 00:04:03
    but if you actually look at the randomized control trials,
  • 00:04:07
    that isn't what you see.
  • 00:04:09
    - If we take people
  • 00:04:10
    and we have them take caffeine or drink coffee
  • 00:04:13
    and all other things are equal, do they gain body fat?
  • 00:04:16
    No, they do not.
  • 00:04:17
    In fact, sometimes, the opposite happens.
  • 00:04:20
    - And his argument is,
  • 00:04:21
    what you've got here is a single mechanism.
  • 00:04:23
    - You find a mechanism, a specific hormone,
  • 00:04:26
    and you say, "Ooh, this raises that hormone.
  • 00:04:28
    That means you're gonna get this downstream effect."
  • 00:04:31
    Outcomes are not just a single mechanism.
  • 00:04:33
    Usually whole-body outcomes are the accumulation
  • 00:04:37
    of hundreds, if not thousands of mechanisms
  • 00:04:40
    all occurring at the same time.
  • 00:04:41
    It actually results in outcomes.
  • 00:04:43
    - And so you can't just pull one mechanism
  • 00:04:45
    and expect it to sort of directly produce
  • 00:04:49
    a certain outcome in the world of biology,
  • 00:04:52
    because we are weird and complex meat bags.
  • 00:04:54
    The thing about mechanisms
  • 00:04:55
    is you can just totally cherry-pick them.
  • 00:04:57
    I'll give you an example.
  • 00:04:58
    Adenosine, mentioned earlier on,
  • 00:05:01
    well, genuinely, it increases hair growth
  • 00:05:03
    and hair thickness.
  • 00:05:05
    And so if coffee does cause you
  • 00:05:06
    to have higher levels of adenosine in the blood,
  • 00:05:09
    then drinking coffee should give you
  • 00:05:11
    a fuller, thicker head of hair.
  • 00:05:14
    Clearly ridiculous.
  • 00:05:17
    Or is it?
  • 00:05:18
    So this brings us back to Dr. Andrew Huberman's advice.
  • 00:05:21
    Are we looking at just a single mechanism here,
  • 00:05:24
    and actually the outcome,
  • 00:05:25
    the outcome of having an afternoon crash,
  • 00:05:28
    may have a bunch of potential mechanisms acting on it
  • 00:05:31
    and this particular one that we're testing
  • 00:05:33
    isn't the most important?
  • 00:05:34
    That's the kind of question I'm interested
  • 00:05:36
    in asking and answering.
  • 00:05:38
    And this brings us back to Dr. Huberman's advice
  • 00:05:41
    regarding delaying your coffee consumption.
  • 00:05:43
    Are we just dealing with a single mechanism here
  • 00:05:45
    and actually there are a lot more mechanisms
  • 00:05:48
    and more complexity that plays into the particular outcome
  • 00:05:50
    of having an afternoon crash?
  • 00:05:52
    Here's what we're gonna do to test it.
  • 00:05:54
    Every morning, within 30 minutes of waking,
  • 00:05:57
    I must consume coffee,
  • 00:05:59
    but I won't know whether or not it's got caffeine in it.
  • 00:06:02
    Now, you're thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa!
  • 00:06:05
    There is no way you could brew and make coffee
  • 00:06:08
    and drink coffee every morning
  • 00:06:10
    without knowing if it's got caffeine in it.
  • 00:06:12
    Decaf brews differently.
  • 00:06:13
    It tastes different.
  • 00:06:15
    You're not gonna be blind in this particular experiment.
  • 00:06:18
    And this was a real challenge,
  • 00:06:19
    because I wanted to still consume coffee as part of this
  • 00:06:22
    rather than take, say, a caffeine pill
  • 00:06:25
    or a placebo in the morning,
  • 00:06:26
    because coffee is more than just caffeine.
  • 00:06:29
    In the end, we decided the best thing to use was Cometeer.
  • 00:06:31
    They produce frozen capsules of extracted coffee liquid.
  • 00:06:36
    As a disclosure, I have worked and do work with Cometeer.
  • 00:06:38
    They're not paying to be a part of this.
  • 00:06:40
    In fact, we paid full price for the capsules
  • 00:06:43
    that we've bought for this experiment.
  • 00:06:45
    But because we can use different roasters,
  • 00:06:47
    different roast levels,
  • 00:06:48
    it adds a nice level of randomness to the whole thing.
  • 00:06:51
    Plus, when I drink the coffee,
  • 00:06:53
    it will be with a good slug of dairy in there as well
  • 00:06:56
    to further mask the taste.
  • 00:06:58
    Each capsule will be labeled with an alphanumerical code
  • 00:07:01
    that I will log each day
  • 00:07:02
    and I won't know what the contents of the capsule are.
  • 00:07:05
    After the first two hours after waking,
  • 00:07:08
    coffee consumption will return to normal.
  • 00:07:10
    Anything that I drink I will log down
  • 00:07:12
    in terms of what time I had it, how much coffee,
  • 00:07:14
    therefore roughly how much caffeine I've had.
  • 00:07:17
    That'll be logged through the whole thing
  • 00:07:18
    and coffee drinking will continue as normal.
  • 00:07:21
    Then, to test for the afternoon crash,
  • 00:07:24
    every day between 3 and 4 PM I will do a PVT,
  • 00:07:28
    which is a psychomotor vigilance test.
  • 00:07:30
    It's basically a reaction test
  • 00:07:32
    where you respond to something on a screen
  • 00:07:35
    and the quicker you tap,
  • 00:07:36
    the faster your responses are.
  • 00:07:38
    It's commonly used.
  • 00:07:39
    NASA make a nice little app because they use it
  • 00:07:41
    on the International Space Station actually
  • 00:07:43
    to sort of test people's levels of cognition
  • 00:07:45
    and how well rested they are,
  • 00:07:47
    those kind of things.
  • 00:07:48
    And then there will also be a 10-question questionnaire
  • 00:07:51
    covering how tired I feel subjectively.
  • 00:07:54
    Am I exhausted or not?
  • 00:07:55
    Am I fatigued? Am I sleepy?
  • 00:07:57
    Do I want to lie down?
  • 00:07:58
    Do I want to close my eyes?
  • 00:07:59
    Is it difficult to hold a conversation with someone?
  • 00:08:02
    And that will be the kind of measurement
  • 00:08:04
    for the afternoon crash.
  • 00:08:07
    And at the end of this,
  • 00:08:08
    we should be able to see if there is a correlation
  • 00:08:11
    between having no caffeine for the first two hours
  • 00:08:15
    and no afternoon crash, or not.
  • 00:08:18
    Now, again you're gonna say,
  • 00:08:19
    well, hang on a minute,
  • 00:08:21
    N equals one experiments: all well and good,
  • 00:08:23
    but they're not that useful.
  • 00:08:24
    If it's just me doing the test, what good is that?
  • 00:08:28
    Good point.
  • 00:08:29
    I have for this one roped in
  • 00:08:30
    the rest of the team here at the YouTube studio,
  • 00:08:32
    so five of us will be taking part.
  • 00:08:34
    Again, that's not a very big sort of sample size,
  • 00:08:37
    but you would expect that if this mechanism were true,
  • 00:08:41
    at least, at least one of us
  • 00:08:43
    should experience a correlation
  • 00:08:45
    between no morning caffeine and no afternoon crash.
  • 00:08:48
    I, however, do have a different theory
  • 00:08:51
    about this whole thing,
  • 00:08:53
    which I will tell you later on,
  • 00:08:54
    and so we wanted to capture a bit more data.
  • 00:08:56
    So all of us will be wearing wearables
  • 00:08:58
    throughout this whole thing
  • 00:08:59
    that will track things like sleep quantity and quality
  • 00:09:03
    and sort of how much we're exercising,
  • 00:09:04
    those kind of things.
  • 00:09:05
    So we'll have some additional metrics
  • 00:09:07
    alongside all our caffeine consumption
  • 00:09:08
    to see a little bit more about what's going on.
  • 00:09:12
    And so in 30 days,
  • 00:09:14
    we should hopefully have an answer to this question:
  • 00:09:17
    is Andrew Huberman right?
  • 00:09:20
    Now, all of this has been
  • 00:09:21
    a fairly complex thing to get going
  • 00:09:23
    and it's been a quite intense experiment to set up
  • 00:09:26
    and I'm grateful to the sponsor of this video, Shopify,
  • 00:09:29
    for supporting this particular video,
  • 00:09:31
    making it happen.
  • 00:09:32
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    for pretty much 16 years,
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    going all the way back to 2008
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    when Square Mile Coffee Roasters,
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    we first started selling online.
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    Things were simple then, we were a small business,
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    and over the years we've grown and we've expanded
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    Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this video.
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    So here we are, 30 days later, the study is done,
  • 00:10:53
    and I have to say, I'm glad it's done.
  • 00:10:56
    I didn't particularly enjoy the last 30 days,
  • 00:10:59
    in a funny sort of way,
  • 00:11:00
    and I don't think any of the team
  • 00:11:01
    did enjoy the study that much in the last 30 days,
  • 00:11:03
    but we persevered.
  • 00:11:04
    And the good news is we were compliant, I guess,
  • 00:11:08
    under sort of study technical terms.
  • 00:11:10
    We all did what we were supposed to do
  • 00:11:11
    on the days we were supposed to do it,
  • 00:11:12
    we all logged all of the data.
  • 00:11:15
    And so, you know, I think about
  • 00:11:17
    this little tiny little study
  • 00:11:19
    and ways you can criticize it,
  • 00:11:20
    and I think quite accurately you could say
  • 00:11:22
    the number of participants was pretty small.
  • 00:11:25
    It was just the five of us in the team.
  • 00:11:29
    A larger number would've been better,
  • 00:11:30
    but I still think there's value in what we did.
  • 00:11:33
    Let's get to the answers.
  • 00:11:34
    If we skipped caffeine for the first two hours,
  • 00:11:39
    did we prevent an afternoon crash from happening?
  • 00:11:42
    And so, you know, under our terms,
  • 00:11:44
    we defined an afternoon crash in two ways.
  • 00:11:46
    There was the subjective, the questionnaire,
  • 00:11:48
    how did we feel, which produced a fatigue score;
  • 00:11:51
    and then there was also the PVT, the reaction time test,
  • 00:11:54
    an objective measure of our kind of slump, tiredness,
  • 00:11:58
    whatever you wanna call it.
  • 00:11:59
    Here we go, here's the first one.
  • 00:12:00
    We're gonna look at whether we had caffeine or not
  • 00:12:03
    in the first two hours and our fatigue score,
  • 00:12:05
    that kind of subjective measurement.
  • 00:12:07
    Red is caffeinated at the start of the day.
  • 00:12:09
    The kind of green is decaf at the start of the day,
  • 00:12:11
    so no caffeine.
  • 00:12:13
    And what we can say is there is no observable,
  • 00:12:17
    statistically significant difference
  • 00:12:20
    in our perceived fatigue
  • 00:12:21
    based on whether we had caffeine
  • 00:12:23
    in the first two hours or not.
  • 00:12:26
    It's important because you're gonna look at that and think,
  • 00:12:28
    well, hang on a minute,
  • 00:12:29
    actually, that box kind of goes higher on the decaf one
  • 00:12:33
    and that line in the middle,
  • 00:12:34
    which is the median score,
  • 00:12:35
    is also higher for decaf.
  • 00:12:37
    So it looks like you were actually worse
  • 00:12:41
    if you didn't have caffeine first thing in the morning.
  • 00:12:44
    At the top, you'll also see a p-value.
  • 00:12:46
    I'm not gonna define p-values today, forgive me.
  • 00:12:48
    I'll just say, for what we would consider
  • 00:12:51
    statistically significant,
  • 00:12:53
    a p-value should be smaller than 0.05.
  • 00:12:59
    0.291 is not smaller,
  • 00:13:00
    and so this was not a statistically significant difference.
  • 00:13:03
    This difference could have occurred just by random chance.
  • 00:13:06
    So what we can say is there's no observable difference.
  • 00:13:09
    It didn't make any difference,
  • 00:13:11
    but did it make a difference to our physical reaction times?
  • 00:13:14
    No, it didn't.
  • 00:13:15
    Almost identical results here.
  • 00:13:17
    Again, you could say,
  • 00:13:18
    but the median line is a little bit higher
  • 00:13:19
    on the decaf box plot.
  • 00:13:21
    Doesn't matter.
  • 00:13:22
    Again, at 0.313, not statistically significant.
  • 00:13:27
    Basically, whether or not we started with caffeine
  • 00:13:30
    had no measurable impact whatsoever
  • 00:13:33
    in any of us over the 30-day period.
  • 00:13:36
    So I would say, is Huberman's protocol correct?
  • 00:13:41
    Well, under his explanation for it,
  • 00:13:45
    no, I don't think so.
  • 00:13:47
    Here's what I don't understand.
  • 00:13:49
    Your levels of adenosine
  • 00:13:50
    are at their very lowest upon waking.
  • 00:13:53
    It accumulates during the day,
  • 00:13:54
    in theory makes you sleepy towards the end of the day,
  • 00:13:57
    and then while you're asleep, adenosine levels come down.
  • 00:13:59
    And so when you begin your day in those first two hours
  • 00:14:02
    is theoretically when your adenosine is at its lowest.
  • 00:14:06
    Why then am I worried about drinking coffee at that point
  • 00:14:09
    when if caffeine is an antagonist
  • 00:14:11
    that stops adenosine working,
  • 00:14:12
    well, there's not much adenosine around anyway,
  • 00:14:14
    so why worry about caffeine impacting me
  • 00:14:17
    when it's not gonna do much?
  • 00:14:18
    It's not gonna interrupt a signal that isn't very strong.
  • 00:14:21
    What I don't get is if I delay my caffeine,
  • 00:14:24
    well, if I'm waiting two or three hours,
  • 00:14:27
    my levels of adenosine will be higher,
  • 00:14:28
    that caffeine will be much more effective
  • 00:14:30
    at interrupting the effectiveness of adenosine.
  • 00:14:34
    Why am I not gonna have a crash,
  • 00:14:35
    well, a little bit later than I would've done,
  • 00:14:37
    so my afternoon crash moves from 3:00, 4:00 PM
  • 00:14:40
    to 5:00, 6:00 PM by delaying my caffeine two hours?
  • 00:14:43
    I don't understand that.
  • 00:14:45
    But I do wanna talk about what might have happened.
  • 00:14:47
    Because I'll tell you something,
  • 00:14:49
    we all had bad afternoons at one point or another,
  • 00:14:52
    not the same day,
  • 00:14:53
    but we would all say over the month,
  • 00:14:56
    we had afternoons where we had an afternoon crash.
  • 00:15:00
    I have a potential theory as to why that might happen,
  • 00:15:05
    and we'll have some fun poking some holes in that too.
  • 00:15:08
    Here's one of the most interesting things
  • 00:15:10
    about the whole study.
  • 00:15:11
    We looked at everyone's daily caffeine consumption.
  • 00:15:14
    This is true for all of us, all five of us.
  • 00:15:17
    If we did not have caffeine in the first two hours,
  • 00:15:21
    we didn't make up for it later on in the day.
  • 00:15:25
    So if you looked at the days
  • 00:15:27
    where we had caffeine first thing in the morning,
  • 00:15:29
    those days overall had higher levels of caffeine
  • 00:15:32
    than days when we started with decaf
  • 00:15:34
    and did not have caffeine for the first two hours.
  • 00:15:36
    This suggests that coffee drinking
  • 00:15:39
    is perhaps more ritualistic than it is medicinal.
  • 00:15:45
    We - I would think, pretty true for all of us,
  • 00:15:47
    we couldn't tell we hadn't had caffeine
  • 00:15:49
    first thing in the morning.
  • 00:15:50
    You know, I thought I'd be able to tell caffeine from decaf,
  • 00:15:53
    but I can't.
  • 00:15:55
    And weren't then two hours later being like,
  • 00:15:58
    "Oh, I really need a hit of caffeine.
  • 00:16:00
    I'm gonna consume more to make up for
  • 00:16:02
    my kind of experience of being uncaffeinated."
  • 00:16:05
    That isn't what happened at all.
  • 00:16:07
    And so there ended up being days
  • 00:16:09
    where we just didn't have any caffeine the whole day.
  • 00:16:13
    One of those days I definitely knew about that.
  • 00:16:16
    Can't say for sure,
  • 00:16:17
    but I'm fairly confident I haven't had caffeine today
  • 00:16:19
    because I don't feel good.
  • 00:16:22
    But I had two other completely caffeine-free days
  • 00:16:24
    and I had no idea about it whatsoever,
  • 00:16:26
    which is sort of heartening.
  • 00:16:28
    I don't feel like an addict.
  • 00:16:30
    That feels like a very positive thing.
  • 00:16:31
    But it would mean that if you institute the protocol
  • 00:16:35
    of skipping coffee for the first two hours,
  • 00:16:38
    there's a pretty high chance you'll just drink less coffee.
  • 00:16:42
    You will consume in the days ahead just less caffeine.
  • 00:16:47
    It's for some people why intermittent fasting works.
  • 00:16:49
    By skipping a meal,
  • 00:16:51
    they just eat less by having less time to eat.
  • 00:16:53
    Here's my alternative hypothesis:
  • 00:16:55
    if you skip the first coffee of the day,
  • 00:16:58
    you drink less caffeine, you sleep better,
  • 00:17:01
    and therefore you have less afternoon crashes
  • 00:17:03
    because you're better rested.
  • 00:17:06
    That's it.
  • 00:17:06
    Let's look at what the data says.
  • 00:17:08
    The first signs are are very encouraging.
  • 00:17:11
    We looked at the impact of sleep
  • 00:17:13
    on your fatigue score the next day.
  • 00:17:16
    Pretty simple.
  • 00:17:17
    If you have a bad night's sleep,
  • 00:17:18
    are you more likely to have an afternoon crash?
  • 00:17:22
    And the answer is yes.
  • 00:17:24
    There was pretty good statistical significance
  • 00:17:26
    that showed the better your sleep,
  • 00:17:29
    the lower your fatigue score the next day.
  • 00:17:31
    There was a correlation there
  • 00:17:32
    that I would say is decently strong.
  • 00:17:35
    That's good.
  • 00:17:36
    That's not surprising.
  • 00:17:37
    Is anyone surprised by that?
  • 00:17:38
    I don't think any of us are surprised by that,
  • 00:17:40
    but it's nice to see it borne out in the data.
  • 00:17:43
    As a small caveat, the sleep data here
  • 00:17:45
    is a calculated score based on kind of time asleep required
  • 00:17:50
    and then time asleep achieved as a percentage.
  • 00:17:53
    So if you needed eight hours sleep
  • 00:17:55
    and you slept for eight hours,
  • 00:17:56
    you would have 100% sleep score
  • 00:17:59
    under this particular wearable.
  • 00:18:00
    Let's ask a different question.
  • 00:18:02
    If I consume more caffeine on say day one,
  • 00:18:05
    will my day two fatigue score be higher?
  • 00:18:08
    That's what we'd expect to see
  • 00:18:09
    if caffeine's messing everything up, right?
  • 00:18:10
    Like you might not sleep as well
  • 00:18:12
    and so your fatigue might be lower.
  • 00:18:14
    And yes, again, that's what we see here.
  • 00:18:16
    Pretty good, you know,
  • 00:18:18
    decently strong correlation in the data
  • 00:18:20
    of statistical significance again, p-value of 0.025.
  • 00:18:25
    What we saw, the more caffeine you consumed,
  • 00:18:27
    the next day, a little bit higher your fatigue score.
  • 00:18:32
    Now, interestingly, that's the fatigue score,
  • 00:18:34
    the subjective measurement.
  • 00:18:36
    If you look at the PVT results,
  • 00:18:39
    no, there's no significance there.
  • 00:18:41
    Now, I'm glad we did the psychomotor vigilance test, PVT,
  • 00:18:45
    because it was interesting,
  • 00:18:47
    but from my own kind of subjective experience of it,
  • 00:18:50
    you can definitely just try a bit harder
  • 00:18:53
    and kind of juice your numbers.
  • 00:18:54
    Like, attention really seemed to be this thing for me
  • 00:18:58
    that correlated with lower scores,
  • 00:18:59
    and so choosing to be more attentive, to try harder,
  • 00:19:03
    kind of had an impact.
  • 00:19:04
    And that is sort of documented in the literature,
  • 00:19:06
    which is a mark against PVTs,
  • 00:19:10
    but still interesting.
  • 00:19:11
    So here what we saw was actually
  • 00:19:13
    no real correlation between the two.
  • 00:19:15
    If you had more caffeine,
  • 00:19:15
    it didn't really impact your PVT score the next day.
  • 00:19:19
    Now, this is really important.
  • 00:19:21
    I could stop showing you any more data
  • 00:19:23
    and I could say, based on this,
  • 00:19:25
    it seems that my hypothesis is true.
  • 00:19:28
    Skipping caffeine in the morning
  • 00:19:31
    reduces your caffeine consumption
  • 00:19:32
    and therefore you won't crash as much.
  • 00:19:35
    But, to round this out,
  • 00:19:37
    we looked at total caffeine consumed
  • 00:19:40
    and sleep resulting from that day's caffeine consumption,
  • 00:19:45
    and we found no correlation
  • 00:19:48
    between how much caffeine you had
  • 00:19:50
    and your sleep score that night.
  • 00:19:54
    Surprising, because we all know that caffeine
  • 00:19:56
    and higher levels of caffeine interrupt sleep,
  • 00:19:59
    but I feel like the message of this whole video
  • 00:20:03
    is be skeptical of simple mechanisms
  • 00:20:06
    impacting complex kind of outcomes.
  • 00:20:09
    The quantity of your sleep
  • 00:20:09
    can be impacted by so many other things.
  • 00:20:12
    How hot is your room?
  • 00:20:13
    How noisy is it where you are?
  • 00:20:14
    How light is it?
  • 00:20:16
    What time did you eat?
  • 00:20:17
    What did you eat?
  • 00:20:18
    Have you had alcohol?
  • 00:20:19
    There's loads of different mechanisms
  • 00:20:21
    playing into the quantity and quality of your sleep.
  • 00:20:24
    Be wary anytime anyone, especially on the internet,
  • 00:20:29
    gives you a nice simple mechanism
  • 00:20:32
    as a thing to use and abuse to improve your outcomes.
  • 00:20:35
    In this case, it's skip caffeine for the first two hours
  • 00:20:38
    to prevent adenosine buildup or whatever it's gonna be.
  • 00:20:41
    There's the neat little mechanism.
  • 00:20:43
    I can't even say, you know,
  • 00:20:45
    if you reduce your caffeine then you'll see more sleep.
  • 00:20:48
    Because again, while those two things can interact
  • 00:20:51
    and can be shown to interact,
  • 00:20:52
    that may not be true
  • 00:20:54
    based on the other things going on in your life.
  • 00:20:57
    Be wary of single mechanisms.
  • 00:20:59
    They are a big red flag.
  • 00:21:00
    They're very appealing.
  • 00:21:02
    I am compelled by them as much as the next person.
  • 00:21:05
    The idea that a single supplement
  • 00:21:07
    or a single exercise routine
  • 00:21:08
    or a single little biohack can make my life better,
  • 00:21:12
    it's desirable, I want it to be true.
  • 00:21:15
    But we are weird, complex, fleshy bags of meat
  • 00:21:19
    who don't particularly understand how we work still.
  • 00:21:22
    We've learned a lot, we've done loads of experiments.
  • 00:21:25
    We're still very much learning.
  • 00:21:26
    Now, you can say this was not conclusive,
  • 00:21:31
    but I think it was, and I hope it is, instructive.
  • 00:21:34
    For us, we designed the best experiment we could.
  • 00:21:38
    Dr. Huberman, if you're watching,
  • 00:21:40
    do let us know if you wanna see the raws on this.
  • 00:21:42
    We'll happily share the data with you on that.
  • 00:21:45
    Not gonna share it publicly
  • 00:21:46
    because the team's privacy is part of this,
  • 00:21:50
    but if you wanna see and pick holes in it,
  • 00:21:52
    you're very welcome to do so.
  • 00:21:54
    But yeah, there you go.
  • 00:21:56
    That's our experiment
  • 00:21:58
    with Dr. Andrew Huberman's coffee drinking protocols.
  • 00:22:01
    I'd love to hear your comments down below.
  • 00:22:04
    Did you enjoy this?
  • 00:22:05
    Is there a thing that we should have analyzed?
  • 00:22:07
    I can think of a few more things.
  • 00:22:08
    We do have stuff like caffeine timing,
  • 00:22:10
    and so maybe serum caffeine levels at time of sleep onset.
  • 00:22:14
    Maybe there's a correlation there
  • 00:22:16
    between that and sleep quality.
  • 00:22:18
    Who knows?
  • 00:22:18
    But I feel like we've done some good science here today.
  • 00:22:21
    But again, let me know your thoughts.
  • 00:22:23
    What do you wanna know?
  • 00:22:24
    What haven't we answered?
  • 00:22:25
    I'd love to hear from you down below.
  • 00:22:27
    But for now,
  • 00:22:28
    I wanna say thank you so much for watching
  • 00:22:30
    and I hope you have a great day.
Etiquetas
  • Andrew Huberman
  • coffee consumption
  • caffeine
  • afternoon crash
  • science communication
  • experiment
  • psychomotor vigilance test
  • fatigue
  • adenosine receptors
  • caffeine intake