What Huberman Gets Wrong About Health

I know many of you have been waiting for new physical exam videos. There are 10 more than have been recorded - it's just taking a while to edit them. I expect to be rolling a few more out in the upcoming weeks, starting next Sunday. In the meantime, I've been getting occasional suggestions to talk about Andrew Huberman. Coincidentally, I had seen a couple of tweets of his last week that seemed like a learning opportunity, so here we are. (EDIT: To be clear, as I say in the video, this is only a discussion of these 2 tweets. It is not a discussion or a critique of anything beyond that.)

another thing he gets wrong is thinking that reading the name of a study and reading the whole study are the same thing

Ha, my planned thumbnail and opening sentence are almost identical to yours! Oh no I’ll have to make some edits! 😂 But great points here, I share your distaste with the first tweet, and I would add that it’s a clear demonstration of how medical personalities on social media are as much (if not more) influencers first, medical professionals/scientists second. By all means follow someone you perceive to be healthy and vital on instagram, but let’s not confuse that with the real world where expertise is more than just who opts to go onto testosterone (eg Huberman – as he’s confirmed) to get bigger muscles. And totally agreed about the myth of control, which is a hallmark to so many social media medics, not just when claiming our health problems are wholly under our conscious control, but also offering certainty and control in situations where they don’t exist, and conventional medics cannot provide definitive statements.

Thank you so much for this. As a med student with rheumathoid arthritis, i have faced criticism regarding my skills because i apparently can't keep myself healthy. It also saddens me how much people underestimate social issues' influences on your health. People usually try to make the best choices in the context of their own skills, resources, support systems and limitations.

Thanks for your support for young doctors like me Dr. Strong. I recently got a job at a very complex ER in Santiago de Chile. To this day, i keep reviewing the clinical medicine concepts in your videos just because of your style and clarity. This is university class education and i hope to see more and more hands-on emergency medicine videos from you!

Problem with him is he is talking a lot outside of his area of expertise

The thing I don't like about western modern era medicine is how achievement-focused and competitive everyone is. I think the biggest misconception is in the relationship between motives, knowledge, intelligence and critical thought. But luckily the management of the pandemic made it obvious that MDs are not gods and they make mistakes like the rest of the humans. I respect you Dr. Strong, not only for your educational videos, but also for your understanding and sympathetic personality.

I’m a primary care physician and I loved this message. Thank you

I'm sure he's a great doctor but when your career and thus financial success is tied to how motivating you are, it's easy to overlook the unsexy stuff and reduce health to "just do it" sorta thing. It's the same with people who have a political platform. A right wing podcaster can't share the mildest leftist sentiment because they would be jeopardizing their career. Gotta give the people what they want. I humbly find it all to be very disgusting. Anyways, thank you Dr. Strong. Your videos are always informative.

It's wonderful to finally see a critic of Huberman who has a measured response instead of a sensationalistic one. I suspect that Huberman himself would actually be very receptive to all of your pushback here. I'd love to see the two of you in discussion together.

I totally agree. Just because you look at someone doesn’t mean that they are fit and healthy internally even externally you can hide, as a nurse I have seen everything. Sometimes you just need to ask the simple question are you ok? Can make the external/internal walls come crashing around you. As you may think you are ok but in reality you may not be. Sometimes you have decisions that are out of our own control or we have lost control of along the way.

I do appreciate Huberman’s interest in bringing science information for free, he generally seems like he’s trying to do the right thing as far as keeping things focused on science. It’s better that he gets to the top of the podcast charts than the charlatan Joe Rogan. But it is clear that he often speaks way outside his area of expertise and the droning on of ads about AG1 really turn me off for sure. I do wish we had a medical podcast of this type from someone who actually works as a “real” primary care physician or hospitalist. Huberman isn’t a physician. Peter Attia is the closest we have and is pretty good imo, but he appears to do concierge medicine and what he recommends is not practical in real life for like 99.9% of patients

I am soon to be forty; I lived in poverty for most of my life (up until the age of 32) - in Eastern Europe. At times, I lived in extreme poverty missing most of the criteria mentioned by Dr Strong. I never heard of Huberman until this video, but I feel he talks about responsibility, which tends to be conveniently "forgotten" in the West. Especially in The UK, where I live. Healthy food is not expensive; it just requires a bit more time. I am healthy, or at least not aware of being ill. I feel that Dr Strong confuses wealth with education and luck with choice, and I think he does not understand odds in statistical terms and what influence your own discipline has in staying healthy by making the right choice. I wonder how many genetically obese are living in Venezuela right now. On an additional note, I do remember seeing a cardiac nurse speciality website in The UK back in 2021, and on the first page, there was a picture in a conference room with overweight nurses.... all of them. Talking about quitting smoking and not addressing the obesity epidemics shows in my opinion some level of disconnect.

I dont think Huberman would dissagree with anything you said, the problem isnt huberman perspective but the limitations of communicating things via twitter. Hubermans podcast is about digging through literature for actionable protocols, thats going to fall out of realm of "here are things you have no control over". Moreover a lot of his content cintain actionalble items to help you better overcome and integrate the thing's in life you have no control over.

I must admit—and I hope I'm still allowed to watch your videos—I'm a neuro PhD, not an MD, DO, or med student, and (or perhaps, therefore) I've never clicked on a video faster. I have substantial reservations about the enterprise of making health and lifestyle suggestions with apparent certainty, or at least high confidence, based on small numbers of animal studies with non-analogous doses, methods of administration, outcome measurements, and so on. And such recommendations are popular among the certain podcast crowds. That of course doesn't mean any podcaster doesn't have legitimate expertise in various areas.

Dr. Strong, med student here. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but some of this sounds like your personal opinion. I don’t disagree that a portion of someone’s health is determined by factors outside of their control, but the WHO itself claims that 60% of a person’s health is related to lifestyle factors. Of course there’s overlap between lifestyle choices and things outside of their control (social determinants of health), but I don’t know that it’s fair to say that the majority of someone’s health is predetermined based on factors like their parental income. Of course that is probably true for a number of folks in the US, but I’m not so sure that a claim like that would apply to the majority of patients in the US. I’m a pretty open minded guy, but I find it hard to believe that the average US resident’s health is truly predetermined to this degree. I think a claim like this truly discourages patients to take ownership of their health (to the best of their ability with the hand they’ve been dealt) which we need more of in this country

Is Huberman’s 8 pillars more like “ 8 modifiable risk factors that can help promote healthy mental and physical well being?”

Thank you for this video, especially the last bit about smoking. I found that very helpful/encouraging. Your channel is one of the best I've seen.

I am always suspicious of any person claiming to know what can improve my health without knowing me and my specific physiological status. Not only because that makes sense from fundamental principles, but also because if one looks, it's possible to find someone claiming practically anything. Plus, there is a big component of ego involved, where people who have become well viewed on media platforms start to exceed their areas of expertise, and simply like to see and hear themselves talk. Be skeptical; most proposed courses of improving health later are changed or reversed. The literature is rife with non-replicable studies...

I think the mistake people make about the content coming from Huberman and others in the same arena is not recognizing that they are primarily money making platforms that use health as a lever for that endeavor. While I am sure he wishes to do good by presenting his information, that is not the primary goal. The thing that happens to those in the business of providing biohacking information is that they inevitably dilute the useful information they are able to provide. Research simply doesn't proceed at such a pace as to accommodate the frequency of their presentations while also providing useful and well- researched information. So they are pushed into more fringe areas of the science and toward manufacturing controversy/interest (those tweets). This type of content appeals to those who are comforted by the idea that they can control their health by their choices - as you point out - but also those who are struggling to understand problems they are having that have not been satisfactorily addressed by their doctors. And my guess is that if we were to look at the history of his channel, the earlier videos might be more helpful to a general audience that the more recent. I know that over time, I stopped following him.