Essentials: Using Salt to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance
3/26/202639 min
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how salt (sodium) affects mental and physical performance, as well as cellular health. I describe how the brain monitors sodium levels to regulate thirst and fluid balance, and why salt needs can vary depending on activity level, stress, blood pressure, and diet. I also explain how to determine the right sodium intake for your individual needs and discuss why some people may benefit from increasing salt and other electrolytes. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Salt (00:00:37) Brain & Monitoring Salt (00:02:33) Thirst, Osmotic Thirst & Salt (00:05:35) Hypovolemic Thirst & Blood Pressure (00:06:59) Sponsor: Function (00:08:39) Fluid Balance, Kidney & Urine Regulation (00:11:53) How Much Salt Do You Need?, Blood Pressure, Dizziness & Postural Syndromes (00:17:29) Replenish Salt for Performance, Tool: Galpin Equation & Exercise (00:19:15) Sponsor: LMNT (00:20:46) Stress & Craving Salt (00:22:29) Electrolytes: Magnesium & Potassium; Low Carbohydrate Diet (00:25:19) Salt & Sweet Taste, Sugar Cravings, Processed Foods (00:29:37) Finding Your Ideal Salt Intake, Tool: Unprocessed Food Diet (00:31:25) Sponsor: AG1 (00:32:50) Neurons, Salt & Action Potentials; Ingesting Too Much Water (00:34:51) Recap & Key Takeaways Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAndrew Huberman· Host0:00
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are going to discuss salt, also referred to as sodium. Salt has many, many important functions in the brain and body. For instance, it regulates fluid balance, how much fluid you desire, and how much fluid you excrete. Salt also regulates your appetite for other nutrients, things like sugar, things like carbohydrates. We all harbor small sets of neurons. We call these sets of neurons nuclei, meaning little clusters of neurons that sense the levels of salt in our brain and body. There are a couple brain regions that do this, and these brain regions are very, very special. Special because they lack biological fences around them that other brain areas have. And the, those fences, or I should say that fence, goes by a particular name, and that name is the blood-brain barrier, or BBB. Most substances that are circulating around in your body do not have access to the brain, and particularly large molecules can't just pass into the brain. The brain is a privileged organ in this sense. However, there are a couple of regions in the brain that have a fence around them, but that fence is weaker. And it turns out that the areas of the brain