Neuroscientist, Stanford professor
Everything Andrew personally uses, recommends, or has created — plus things they don't recommend — sourced from their own show and appearances on other podcasts.
Top picks
Ranked by repeated personal use, excluding sponsorships.
Personal use in 7 episodes
"What I found from psilocybin work was it was exquisite at revealing to me the structure of my thinking and the ways that some of the patterns in my life that were not serving me well — how they were structured. Once you see that, you can't unsee it, and that for me was an incredible experience."
▶ 2:34"You'll find beautiful clinical trial data, in my opinion, on psilocybin for depression and PTSD... psilocybin alone was helpful, but didn't really feel like it resolved certain things for me."
"I had a very good experience of therapeutic combined MDMA and psilocybin work. Therapeutic work. Incredible."
"You'll find beautiful clinical trial data in my opinion on psilocybin for depression and PTSD. I've experimented in a clinical setting with combining them. Psilocybin alone was helpful but didn't really feel like it resolved certain things for me."
"I've done clinical MDMA and psilocybin. I think I'm done with that. Not because I had a negative experience, but I got what I wanted out of it."
"I've done clinical MDMA and psilocybin. I think I'm done with that. Not because I had a negative experience, but I got what I wanted out of it and I found it to be immensely beneficial."
"What I found from psilocybin work was it was exquisite at revealing to me the structure of my thinking and the ways that some of the patterns in my life that were not serving me well — how they were structured. Once you see that, you can't unsee it, and that for me was an incredible experience."
Personal use in 6 episodes
"I've tried it a few times or more. If I happen to wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, if I do a very small injection of pinealon at that point, the one and a half hours of REM that I would get in the final hours of my sleep, now I'm getting 3 hours in the same amount of sleep. It improves my percentage of REM on all the other nights in between those three injections."
▶ 1:07:31"I've experimented with pinealon every third or fourth night, taking about a 10th of an IU. And in those nights I get anywhere from 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours of REM sleep. That's a lot of REM sleep inside of 6 to 7 hours... The only downside for me is that the next day I can feel not foggy, but I feel like it's harder to become fully alert."
"There's pinealon which I'll occasionally take and you get three hours of REM sleep that night and on subsequent nights your REM sleep is enriched."
"I've experimented with pinealon every third or fourth night taking about a tenth of an IU. In those nights I get anywhere from two and a half to three hours of REM sleep — that's a lot of REM sleep inside of six to seven hours. I've cut that back to doing it once a week or once every 10 days and still getting the same effect."
"Pinealon is very interesting because I found that if I took an itty bitty bit every third night, I tried this experiment for about a month. I got massive amounts of REM sleep that night, but also on subsequent nights. I think pinealon is a great tool to use sporadically. I don't use it regularly."
"Pinealon I will use every once in a while. You get three hours of REM if you're me. It doesn't disrupt your slow-wave deep sleep. It is wild. It works that night and it seems to work all the nights after — there's carryover. I think pinealon is a very interesting compound."
Personal use in 5 episodes
"I've gotten great benefit from the mag 3-and-8, apigenin, theanine stack. I don't think you need Pinealon until you've tried everything else, and then maybe try a supplement stack or even just one of those things."
▶ 1:23:38"Before sleep I take magnesium threonate. I'm really bullish on magnesium as well."
"I still use the same sleep stack. So it's magnesium threonate, spelled T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E, theanine, and apigenin... [If only two:] Oh, easy. Mag threonate and apigenin."
"Which is why I take magnesium threonate and/or bisglycinate before sleep, 30 to 60 minutes before sleep. Definitely enhances my transition time to sleep and the depth of sleep. No question, in my experience."
"I personally take 3 or 400 milligrams of magnesium threonate about 30 to 60 minutes before sleep, and it helps me fall asleep."
Personal use in 5 episodes
"I will often take 300 milligrams of alpha GPC prior to workouts or prior to cognitive work bouts. I tend to take it alongside caffeine and phenylethylamine. So I take that in combination either before workouts or cognitive work bouts. It really sharpens my focus, and I'm doing that three, maybe four times per week. I'm careful to do that in the early part of the day so that it does not disrupt my sleep."
▶ 25:12"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 milligrams prior to a workout greatly increase one's ability to focus and concentrate."
"And typically, if I leveraged other forms of pharmacology in order to enhance learning and memory, things like Alpha GPC or phosphatidylserine, I would do that by taking those things before I sat down to learn a particular set of information."
"I'll take alpha-GPC before a workout sometimes or if I need to focus late in the day. Alpha-GPC actually will improve your REM sleep. It's one of the few things I found that can increase energy late in the day and still sleep just fine."
"I will routinely take 300 milligrams of Alpha GPC prior to some cognitive work or prior to a workout. I do often combine that with some caffeine."
Personal use in 5 episodes
"I had a shoulder thing a week ago and I'll never have this shoulder thing. I put two injections of BPC. Gone. Gone. Now, could I have put saline in there and it would have been the same? Maybe, but all I know is it's gone. My physician friends who are super standard physicians are calling me like, 'Hey man, my knee, is this BPC-157 stuff going to work?' And they come back a week later like, 'Why isn't anyone selling this, studying it, talking about this?'"
▶ 1:58:35"I'm going to just put two injections of BPC in there. So two injections of maybe 100 or 200 micrograms, tiny amounts, right? Gone. History. Can't find the pain. It's gone. Now, is it placebo? I don't know. Maybe it is."
"I just put two injections of BPC in there — two injections of maybe 100 or 200 micrograms. Tiny amounts. Gone. History. Can't find the pain. It's gone. The animal data are really impressive. And I know a number of people with pets, dogs in particular, who've been injecting their animals with BPC because their dogs are getting older."
"I keep some BPC-157 in the fridge. If I have a strain on a joint... I've tried it. I definitely feel like after a pain or strain, the recovery is faster. The animal data on BPC are really impressive — cartilage regrowth, fibroblast migration, angiogenesis, nerve regrowth. It's a literature I've spent a lot of time with. There's not a single published human trial."
"I've tried it. I definitely feel like after a pain or strain, the recovery is faster, but I can't do the control experiment. I keep some BPC-157 in the fridge. If I have a strain, I'll use it. I'm not interested in using it as a general recovery tool every day."
Personal use in 4 episodes
"I do often combine that with some caffeine, not in capsule or pill form but rather in the form of a cup of coffee or yerba mate."
▶ 1:43:08"I'm going to continue drinking my yerba mate and my coffee."
"Have my yerba mate. It's good. Have my yerba mate. It's good. I want to keep you ripped."
"I drink yerba mate. That's more of a stimulatory effect... I ingest caffeine in the form of yerba mate and coffee."
Personal use in 3 episodes
"These days, I'll use ChatGPT to test myself on material either from a podcast or even some material that I learned long ago. I'll say design a basic test at the level of kind of second year graduate school neuroscience in synaptic transmission. And I can say, you know what, that was too easy. Make it harder. It is really good."
▶ 46:47"I love ChatGPT. I know people are like, 'Oh, this is going to take over the world and destroy things.' But for me, more information, more data is always better."
"I'll go into ChatGPT and I'll just say, 'Generate a short test of a graduate student at Stanford level questions about neuroplasticity,' and I go and I remember — this is the one thing I don't remember. That's how you maintain and build knowledge over time. Self-testing."
Personal use in 3 episodes
"I take 10 grams of creatine monohydrate per day... I certainly feel the effects of that in the gym because of the greater water volume in the muscles, but there are a lot of data on creatine monohydrate for the sake of offsetting some of the cognitive dysfunction associated with sleep deprivation, maybe aging, altitude."
▶ 2:21:01"My read of the literature has led to a practice in which I ingest five grams per day of creatine monohydrate."
"Creatine seems to work best for cognitive enhancement when you're a bit sleep-deprived or stressed. I've been taking creatine since I was 17 or 18. 5 to 10 grams per day. I like it because it puts water in your muscles. It makes you stronger and it feels good to be strong."
Warned against
"I'm going to skip the berberine because berberine gives me brutal headaches and it makes me crave carbohydrates because it drops my blood sugar."
"And if you're somebody who's really keen on blue blockers and you're wearing your blue blockers all day, well, don't wear them outside. And in fact, you're probably doing yourself a disservice by wearing them in the morning and in the daytime."
"Things like tesamorelin and ipamorelin and CJC. I'm not a fan. They've always nuked my REM sleep. They've always spiked my PSA."
"Melanotan, which makes people tan from the inside, raises energy and libido dramatically, fat loss dramatically. I have to say those drugs melanotan is very risky. Some of the skin color changes can be permanent."
"Many of you have probably heard before, I am not a big fan of melatonin supplementation for a number of reasons, but just as a quick aside, the levels of melatonin that are in most supplements are far too high to really be considered physiological."
"Mucuna pruriens is actual L-DOPA. It's 99% L-DOPA, which is a prescription drug that is given for Parkinson's and for other purposes where increasing dopamine is important. I don't recommend mucuna pruriens. I'm not saying that no one should take it, but I don't take it and I don't recommend it because it tends to so potently and acutely increase dopamine that there's a pretty substantial crash afterwards."
"For a few months I was playing around with nicotine gums. I stopped doing that... it gave me kind of a tic when I wasn't chewing it, and then I felt like I needed to chew it, and it's a little too stimulatory for me."
"I tried Quviviq once, which is one of the DORAs. I got zombie sleep. I woke up in the same position I fell asleep in. I didn't feel rested even though I had slept through the night."
"I've tried Sermorelin. I've tried a few of these other ones. They nuke my REM sleep. They give me a ton of deep sleep. I don't like them."
"And this is something that we've given up largely because of our smartphones. You're constantly bringing in new sensory"
"There's a lot of excitement nowadays about growth hormone secretagogues, things like tesamorelin and ipamorelin and CJC. I'm not a fan. They've always nuked my REM sleep. They've always spiked my PSA."
"Vaping. Turns out it's not good for us, really not good. The chemicals associated with it — probably a bit safer than smoking, but the behavioral data say because you can do it anywhere, people are doing far more of it. They're taking in far more nicotine and having issues — lung issues and issues related to nicotine. Maybe the healthier delivery mechanism of vaping versus smoking is more than offset to the point where it's more dangerous."
Recent episodes
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Clear filtersMentioned in 1 episode
"At a minimum, we can control food intake. Might not be a cure, but you know, some are trying ketogenic diets, for instance."
Mentioned in 3 episodes
"Some are trying to manage blood glucose using metformin or berberine, neither of which I do, I should be clear."
"In the trials that have been done with metformin and GH, typically people are taking one to two IUs five nights per week."
"At least to my understanding, at present, there isn't sufficient data to support taking metformin for increasing lifespan. So that's why I don't take it."
Mentioned in 3 episodes
"My understanding is that the GLP-1 drugs, so Ozempic, Wegovy and on and on, that they increase levels of GLP-1 thousandfold more than we ever experience naturally."
"So, that's one category. I think we need to think about categories of peptides... such as with these GLP agonists, Ozempic, Mounjaro."
"You probably know these as things like Ozempic, Mounjaro, and retatrutide"
Mentioned in 1 episode
"My read of the data on intermittent fasting is that it's one effective way to lose weight, but people can also lose weight by just eating fewer than maintenance calories across three or even more meals."
Mentioned in 4 episodes
"Some are trying to manage blood glucose using metformin or berberine, neither of which I do, I should be clear."
"Perhaps are taking things like metformin or berberine, which is a supplement-based approach to reducing blood glucose, well your sex hormone binding globulin is going to increase dramatically."
"I'm going to skip the berberine because berberine gives me brutal headaches and it makes me crave carbohydrates because it drops my blood sugar."
"I also don't take what some people call the poor man's version of metformin, which is berberine. Berberine gives me brutal headaches."
Mentioned in 1 episode
"But the omega-3 fatty acids seem to have a pretty decent literature... It seems like the omega-3s, the polyphenols, enough protein, it seems like those are critical."
Mentioned in 1 episode
"Most people, thanks to Anna Lembke's book Dopamine Nation and the book The Molecule of More, which is also excellent, in my opinion, now know that dopamine is about craving, wanting, motivation."
Mentioned in 1 episode
"When I was growing up, saccharin was always on the table in restaurants. Sweet'N Low, I think, is one of them."
Mentioned in 6 episodes
"Some people are using nicotine. Yes, it's addictive. It raises blood pressure, but it does put people into that focused but relaxed mode. I always say if you really want the benefits of nicotine, don't use it very often."
"If you want nicotine to be a performance aid, you use it occasionally — meaning 3 to 6 milligrams once or twice per week maximum. But if you take 3 to 6 milligram pouches multiple times per day, it's not going to have a cognitive enhancing effect. It's just rescuing the deficit from nicotine withdrawal."
"If you want nicotine to be a performance aid, you use it occasionally — 3 to 6 milligrams once or twice total, twice per week maximum. But how many people do you know that are not developing a dependency? Raises blood pressure. Highly addictive."
"The most common of those molecules is actually nicotine. Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are abundant throughout the body and brain. Smoking is a terrible thing — I definitely don't recommend that. However, some people will chew Nicorette or other nicotine-type gums. Some people do use them as cognitive enhancers."
"nicotine. So there's a lot of stimulant use right now for focus."
"If you're thinking about using nicotine, folks, if you use nicotine every day, you actually blunt the system. You reset the threshold. This is why it's technically only a cognitive enhancer if used every once in a while."
Mentioned in 2 episodes
"Most people, thanks to Anna Lembke's book Dopamine Nation and the book The Molecule of More, which is also excellent, in my opinion, now know that dopamine is about craving, wanting, motivation."
"Anna Lembke of Dopamine Nation talks about a patient of hers that was basically addicted to water, a compulsive water drinker. They actually died."
Mentioned in 3 episodes
"Getting people who have a spinal injury to walk, which Neuralink and Eddie and others are trying to develop technologies to do, that's heroic."
"This obviously is what Elon wants to do with Neuralink — taking paralyzed people out of a paralyzed state. It's like, what's the intention to move? What does that look like neurally? And then convert that into signals that maybe it's prosthetics, maybe it's actual muscles and nerves can respond to accurately."
"I'm going to Matt McDougall who you know I knew when he was at Stanford now is at Neuralink he's phenomenal. Dan Adams I think that group is terrific."
Mentioned in 4 episodes
"You could also do sleep, creatine in particular when sleep deprived. Is it like Adderall? No."
"Like you had to work so hard to find like creatine. It was like you know, you could find cocaine more easily than you could find like creatine."
"And then gradually now the creatine craze, it's funny. Creatine was something that was popular in gyms and when I was like 16 years old, 17 years old and then oh there all these cognitive benefits, etc."
"it usually starts however with like what supplement should I take? Should I be taking creatine? I'm like you know how's your life? Oh it's a mess. Okay, creatine ain't gonna fix this."
Mentioned in 1 episode
"If the cost of whole body MRI comes down, I can imagine most people would want it. I know people who have told me they've saved patients' lives because they went and got this done and saw a tumor."
Mentioned in 2 episodes
"SSRIs, believe it or not, have helped so many people with true clinical grade OCD. They were overprescribed for depression."
"I'm not a big fan of SSRIs in many cases, but I will say if there's one place where SSRIs have really helped a great number of people not completely dissolve into a puddle of dysfunction, it's proper use of SSRIs for true clinical OCD."
Mentioned in 1 episode
"People are screening embryos for IVF. There are companies like Herasight and Orchid."
Mentioned in 3 episodes
"Transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is used for the treatment of depression and other things. The spatial control there, for stimulation, is not great."
"If anyone has ever had transcranial magnetic stimulation, they can inhibit your ability to move a finger and it's like you can will that finger to move with everything you've got and it doesn't move. Then they take the coil off your head and you can just tap your finger."
"There are some interesting data showing that if TMS is applied to areas of the brain involved in the generation of motor action — the so-called motor areas or supplementary motor areas — while people think about or have intrusive thoughts, the TMS coil can interrupt the motor behaviors, the compulsive behaviors. I don't think it's fair to say that TMS is a magic bullet either."
Mentioned in 3 episodes
"In the case of MDMA, you increase serotonin and dopamine and you have this heightened opportunity for plasticity."
"This is why there's an interest in clinical trials on MDMA, because it's this empathogen that makes people feel love and safe — but that's not the only way."
"MDMA for the treatment of trauma is looking really promising. I had a very good experience of therapeutic combined MDMA and psilocybin work. Incredible. And I can distill it to one simple takeaway."
Mentioned in 3 episodes
"Everyone's really excited about psilocybin. What is psilocybin? It increases serotonin massively... Sometimes it works great, sometimes not."
"Psilocybin is one that's increasingly being used in clinical trials, and many people who are in these clinical trials come through talking about a more connected sense of self to the world. It seems to take the edge off of the hyper-ambitious miserable person, and it also seems to take some people with major depression to a place of 'oh, I actually could change.'"
"Do two high-dose, so it's 25 milligrams of psilocybin... In upwards of 60 percent, maybe 70 percent of these patients that take that are getting substantial and ongoing relief. That's an amazing result."
Mentioned in 5 episodes
"Right now your Whoop, your Oura, your Eight Sleep, they're not measuring REM directly."
"We monitor REM through like an Eight Sleep or a Whoop or some other device through changes in heart rate and breathing."
"Whether it's a Whoop or it's an Oura, it's your Eight Sleep — it's measuring heart rate and body motion mainly. Accelerometers, HRV. The HRV is the reflection of how often that descending branch of the vagus slows your heart rate down."
"Are you saying that the best wearable, like the best thing that Whoop could do would just be to always lie to you and tell you that you are feeling great?"
"A lot of the wristbands and rings for tracking sleep, while they can be quite good and are quite good, WHOOPs and Ouras being the two most popular ones, they can get movement wrong because of movement of limbs."
Mentioned in 1 episode
"We had someone, the principal of Alpha School, come on here. Kids spend two hours a day on their iPad learning from an AI tutor that knows exactly what they need to fill every gap in their knowledge."
178 recommended · 56 sponsored · 12 warned against · 110 episodes