Nutrients For Brain Health & Performance

High-Level Overview

In this solo episode, Andrew Huberman explores food and the brain in two parts. First, he lays out a short list of nutrients with solid evidence for supporting the structure and function of neurons, both in the short term and as we age: omega-3 fatty acids (especially EPA), phosphatidylserine, choline, creatine, anthocyanins from dark berries, and glutamine, with food sources, supplement doses and what he personally takes. Second, he explains why we like the foods we like, describing three channels that shape food preference: taste in the mouth, subconscious signals from nutrient-sensing neurons in the gut, and learned associations and beliefs about what a food does for us. The big idea is that food preference is plastic: because the brain is ultimately seeking metabolic fuel for neurons, you can gradually teach yourself to enjoy healthier foods, while pairing artificial sweeteners with sugary foods can backfire badly on insulin regulation.

The tone is practical and enthusiastic, with plenty of mechanism explained in plain language and self-deprecating asides about his dislike of fish. The episode moves from quick reminders about sleep, exercise and time-restricted eating to a nutrient-by-nutrient list, then into the neuroscience of taste and food reward, ending with concrete tools for reshaping what you crave.

The Discussion Explores:

• Foundations first: time-restricted eating guidelines, sleep, and 150 to 180 minutes of weekly cardio as modulators of brain health.
• Omega-3s and structural fat: why neuronal membranes depend on dietary fat, and the case for 1.5 to 3 grams of EPA daily.
• Phosphatidylserine and choline: modest but real cognitive effects, and choline's role in making acetylcholine for focus.
• Creatine, anthocyanins and glutamine: evidence for cognition, effective doses, and glutamine's possible role against hypoxia from sleep apnea.
• The three channels of food preference: taste, gut neuropod cells signaling to dopamine circuits, and learned associations.
• What the brain really rewards: studies showing that neurons' ability to use fuel, not taste alone, drives food reward.
• Artificial sweeteners: why pairing them with blood glucose-raising foods can disrupt insulin responses.
• Rewiring food preference: pairing healthy foods with your main fuel source and using belief effects to shift what you enjoy.

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Setting the Stage: Timing, Sleep and Cardiovascular Health

Huberman opens with key takeaways from his earlier episode on time-restricted feeding. For weight management, organ health, sleep and cognition, start your eating window at least one hour after waking, end it at least two and ideally three hours before sleep, and keep it at roughly the same time each day. Letting it slide by many hours from day to day disrupts the clock genes that regulate other processes, though small shifts for social reasons seem fine.

He then separates modulators, which affect the brain indirectly, from mediators, which act on neurons directly. Quality sleep is the foundation of mental and physical health, and poor sleep has been linked to dementia or at least to worsening it. Cardiovascular health matters too: he cites the general recommendation of 150 to 180 minutes of cardio per week, because the brain relies on blood to deliver oxygen and glucose, and clogged arteries starve brain regions. With those in place, he turns to what directly supports neurons and glia, the brain's other cells, which play an active role in metabolism and possibly cognition.

Omega-3s: The Structural Fat of Neurons

Huberman argues that fat is the most important food element for brain function, apart from water. Neurons are wrapped in a double-layered membrane, and how ions pass across it governs electrical signaling. That membrane is made of structural fat, not storage fat, and its building blocks come from the essential fatty acids and phospholipids in our diet. Most people get enough omega-6s, he says, but not enough omega-3s. He has previously discussed evidence that one to three grams of EPA daily can improve mood on par with some antidepressants, without their side effects, and can allow lower antidepressant doses. Beyond depression, EPA appears important for maintaining normal cognition.

Food sources include mackerel, salmon, herring, oysters, sardines and anchovies, with caviar perhaps the richest per unit volume, plus plant sources such as chia seeds, walnuts and soybeans. Supplements come as liquid or capsule fish oil, krill oil, or algae-based forms for those who avoid fish. His recommendation is at least 1.5 grams of EPA per day, ideally 2 to 3 grams, from food or supplements. Personally, since he doesn't enjoy fish, he takes one to two tablespoons of lemon-flavored liquid fish oil daily (capsules when traveling) to reach 2 to 3 grams of EPA, not just 2 to 3 grams of fish oil, and cuts back on days he eats fish. Omega-3s also appear to support cardiovascular health, though the ideal dose for that is debated.

Phosphatidylserine and Choline

Phosphatidylserine, a lipid-like compound abundant in meat and fish and present to some extent in cabbage, has been shown in at least three studies to improve cognition and in at least five to reduce cognitive decline, each using 300 mg per day. Huberman describes the effects as modest but real, and the supplement as relatively inexpensive. People who eat enough meat and fish are probably getting enough. He doesn't currently take it himself, though several colleagues he trusts do.

Choline matters because it feeds the production of acetylcholine, a neuromodulator that acts like a highlighter pen for particular brain areas. Neurons in the nucleus basalis in the basal forebrain release acetylcholine to boost activity in specific regions, which underlies much of our ability to focus, while hindbrain acetylcholine neurons support general alertness. Not surprisingly, many Alzheimer's drugs work by increasing available acetylcholine. The richest dietary source is egg yolks; he recalls watching chick embryos grow by consuming the yolk as fuel and building blocks for the nervous system. Potatoes, nuts, seeds, grains, fruit and some fish also contain choline. He suggests most people aim for 500 mg to 1 gram of choline per day. Huberman takes 300 mg of alpha-GPC, a compound in the acetylcholine pathway, two to three times a week, early in the day because it has a mild stimulant effect. Studies on cognitive decline used 600 to 1,200 mg daily, which he considers high for someone without decline. He also reminds listeners that hydration and electrolytes (sodium, potassium and magnesium) are essential, since these ions cross neuronal membranes to create electrical signals.

Creatine, Anthocyanins and Glutamine

Creatine, from meat or supplements, is known for drawing water into muscle, but it can also serve as a fuel source in the brain and may enhance frontal cortical circuits connected to mood and motivation, which is why it has shown some promise in mild depression. He points to a 2021 review by Roschel and colleagues showing creatine supplementation enhances cognition in certain contexts, especially in people who eat no meat, with some evidence for meat eaters too. The threshold appears to be at least five grams of creatine monohydrate daily. Responses vary: some people retain water, and because creatine may raise dihydrotestosterone (DHT), people sensitive to DHT might experience hair loss. Huberman has taken five grams daily for years as a baseline insurance policy, while admitting he has never done the control experiment of stopping.

Blueberries and other dark, thin-skinned berries such as blackberries and black currants contain anthocyanins, linked to less DNA damage, modest memory improvements, lower insulin and reduced LDL oxidation. In one study, people 65 and older who took 428 to 598 mg of anthocyanins daily from blueberry extract for 12 weeks improved in verbal learning and memory. He cites a 2019 review by Afzal on anthocyanins and cognitive decline. Across studies, supplement doses of about 5.5 to 11 grams of blueberry extract seem optimal, with the higher end more beneficial, while about 60 to 120 grams of fresh blueberries daily appears sufficient. He calls himself a "drive-by blueberry eater" who scoops them up whenever they're in a bowl.

Glutamine, found in cottage cheese, meat, fish, dairy, eggs, beans, cabbage, spinach and parsley, is sometimes taken at 1 to 10 grams per day. There is some, though scant, evidence for immune support, and emerging evidence that glutamine-sensing neurons in the gut signal satiety and can reduce sugar cravings. For cognition, glutamine appears to offset cognitive problems caused by low oxygen, such as at high altitude, likely by reducing inflammation. That matters because obstructive sleep apnea is linked to cognitive decline; he cites a 2018 longitudinal study by Sharma showing sleep apnea severity affects amyloid burden in cognitively normal elderly people, and a review by Quaresma on glutamine for mood and cognition in hypoxia. He has taken small amounts of glutamine since college.

Huberman stresses that all of these nutrients can come from food, that supplements simply help reach higher levels, and that listeners should check with a doctor before changing their regimen.

Three Channels That Decide What We Crave

Huberman describes our food decisions as a "yum, yuck or meh" analysis driven by three channels. The first is taste in the mouth: texture and the five basic tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, the savory taste that braising is designed to bring out). Taste receptors convert chemicals into electrical signals that travel via the gustatory nerve to the brainstem's nucleus of the solitary tract and up to the insular cortex, which handles interoception, our sense of what's happening inside the body. Those signals are just electrical patterns, like notes on a piano. Work from Charles Zuker's lab at Columbia found separate, non-overlapping cortical neurons for sweet and bitter. Silencing the sweet neurons eliminated the preference for sugar water, and activating them made subjects prefer bitter or plain water. In other words, what we like is represented centrally in the brain, not simply on the tongue.

The second channel is subconscious signaling from the gut. Neuropod cells, characterized by Diego Bohórquez at Duke, extend processes into the gut lining and sense amino acids, sugars and fatty acids, sending signals through the nodose ganglion to trigger dopamine release in the brain and motivate us to seek more of that food. This is the mechanism behind the "hidden sugars" that Robert Lustig has highlighted in processed foods, added in ways you can't taste but that drive cravings. The same system can reward nutritious foods like omega-3-rich fish, but taste still matters, which is why few people daydream about mackerel. A healthy gut microbiome helps these neurons steer us well, and the best way he knows to support it is not probiotic capsules but two to four servings a day of low-sugar fermented foods such as sauerkraut and natto, based on a Cell study by his Stanford colleagues Justin Sonnenburg and Christopher Gardner.

The third channel, learned association and belief, is where the leverage lies.

The Brain Rewards Fuel, Not Just Flavor

Research by Ivan de Araujo at Mount Sinai and Dana Small at Yale, in both mice and humans, shows that we prefer sweet, calorie-rich drinks such as milkshakes, and that dopamine rises accordingly. Infusing sugar directly into the gut with no taste at all still makes subjects seek more of whatever accompanied it. So we are wired to pursue not only sweetness but rises in blood glucose. Going further, when researchers used 2-deoxyglucose to block neurons from metabolizing glucose, the rewarding properties of the food disappeared even though blood sugar rose. Huberman's conclusion is that what we seek when we eat is not taste, dopamine or even blood sugar, but whatever allows our neurons to be metabolically active. The system is partly hardwired (children naturally like sweet and dislike very bitter tastes) but also soft-wired, like the brain's language areas, which are always in the same place yet learn whatever language we grow up with.

The Problem With Pairing Artificial Sweeteners and Sugar

This framework explains new findings about non-caloric sweeteners, which he says applies to artificial and plant-based sweeteners alike. On their own, artificial sweeteners are at first only mildly preferred and don't raise dopamine, but with repeated use dopamine eventually rises, which may explain why some people feel hooked on diet soda. The real problem arises when a sweetener is consumed with food that raises blood glucose. The brain then learns to associate the sweet taste with a metabolic response, and later, drinking the sweetened beverage alone triggers a large insulin release even though no calories arrive. In a study of children, this effect pushed them toward pre-diabetes, and researchers had to halt the study.

Huberman is careful not to call artificial sweeteners bad for you. His practical rule is that if you consume them, do so away from foods that raise blood glucose. He cites a March 2020 Cell Metabolism paper from Dana Small's lab (first author Dalenberg) titled Short-Term Consumption of Sucralose with, but Not without, Carbohydrate Impairs Neural and Metabolic Sensitivity to Sugar in Humans, and notes an earlier Nature paper suggesting some sweeteners may disrupt the gut microbiome, a separate issue that may vary by sweetener.

Rewiring What You Enjoy Eating

Because food preference is learned, it can be reshaped. In the brain, dopamine activates the nucleus accumbens in the mesolimbic reward pathway, which Huberman likens to a nitro boost that turns up how much you want something. The hypothalamus, including the arcuate nucleus, acts as accelerator and brake on eating, and the insula integrates how you feel inside, with input from the prefrontal cortex about what you know is good for you. His lab has shown that parts of the insula respond to heightened anxiety and changes in breathing and heart rate.

The protocol is to take a food you want to eat more of because it's healthy, one you find neutral or mildly unappealing rather than repulsive, and eat it in the same meal as foods that provide your brain's main fuel, whether that means glucose or, for people in ketosis, ketones. You don't need to hide it inside the other food. Based on the human sucralose conditioning data, within about seven and certainly fourteen days the food should start tasting at least better, if not good. Belief also matters. Alia Crum's Stanford research found that people given the identical milkshake had different insulin and satisfaction responses depending on whether they were told it was a rich, high-calorie shake or a low-calorie one, which Huberman stresses is a belief effect rather than a placebo effect. Telling yourself a food is good for you and your brain can, over time, influence how it tastes and how your body uses it.

He suggests this also explains the "food wars between carnivore, plant-based and other camps: whatever we eat regularly and that fuels brain metabolism becomes rewarding in itself, so every group feels its diet is best. Continually eating ever sweeter, hyper-palatable foods trains the dopamine system to reward only those foods, while eating less sweet foods can recalibrate what feels rewarding. Encouragingly, work by Small, de Araujo and others suggests these reward circuits remain rewireable even in people with type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders. For a deeper dive, he recommends the 2019 Annual Review of Psychology paper Rethinking Food Reward" by de Araujo, Mark Schatzker and Dana Small.

Conclusion

Huberman's message is that the brain is literally built and fueled by what we eat, and that our cravings are more trainable than we think. After securing sleep, cardiovascular fitness and a consistent eating window, prioritize omega-3s (at least 1.5 grams of EPA daily), along with phosphatidylserine, choline, creatine, anthocyanin-rich berries and glutamine, ideally from food and supplemented where helpful. Understand that food preference comes from taste, gut-to-brain signals and learned beliefs, and that the brain ultimately rewards foods that fuel neuronal metabolism. Use that knowledge deliberately: keep artificial sweeteners away from glucose-raising meals, eat two to four servings of fermented foods daily, and pair the healthy foods you want to like with your usual fuel sources for a week or two, reminding yourself why they're good for you. Over time, what you choose to eat can become what you genuinely want to eat.

This is a summary of "Nutrients For Brain Health & Performance" from Huberman Lab, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.