Podbit · The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Vitamins are a form of biohacking — and if you take them without understanding the underlying biochemistry, bad things will happen. The same outcome you were trying to fix can get worse.
Where this was said
At 18:50 · chapter starts 15:15
With the brainstem anatomy established, Dr. Gominak turns to chemistry. What chemical is the brainstem lacking that prevents it from executing normal REM sleep? She zeroes in on acetylcholine — the neurotransmitter of the parasympathetic nervous system. Unlike adrenaline and noradrenaline, which have drug analogues, there are no drugs that replicate acetylcholine. But there is a pathway: vitamin D binds to a receptor inside the nucleus of brainstem cells, activating DNA to express a specific protein — an enzyme called choline acetyltransferase — which in turn synthesises acetylcholine. Lose vitamin D, lose the enzyme, lose the neurotransmitter, lose the ability to enter REM sleep. She contextualises the scale of the problem: sunscreen, computers, and air conditioning all became mainstream in the 1980s. In her class of 300 teenagers before that era, only two were overweight. The diseases now epidemic — ADHD, depression, non-alcoholic fatty liver, rising diabetes — all first appeared or spiked in that same decade. She frames this as a chemical deficiency state created by an indoor civilisation, not a moral failing of individuals.
Sunscreen, computers, and air conditioning all became widespread in the 1980s, triggering the vitamin D deficiency epidemic by keeping people indoors and blocking UV exposure.
Sunscreen, air conditioning, and computers all went mainstream in the 1980s. At the same time, ADHD, depression, non-alcoholic fatty liver, and rising diabetes rates were first reported. Dr. Gominak says these aren't coincidences — they're the same story.
Dr. Gominak estimates billions of people worldwide have abnormal sleep, with sleep study centers in every electrified country publishing abnormal findings.
Spike your cortisol in the first 1–3 hours of your day — with sunlight, hydration, exercise, or caffeine — and you set up elevated mood, focus, and stress resilience for the rest of the day. Miss that spike and you get a flat cortisol curve: brain fog, poor learning, and bad sleep. The bookend is equally important: dim lights, no caffeine, and wind down the final hour.
Bottom-up impulses — just eat the cookie, keep scrolling — are driven by deep brain structures. Top-down prefrontal control is the thing that lets you wait, learn, and grow. Every small act of choosing the harder thing, from picking up trash to doing the workout you dread, greases that top-down circuit — and it transfers to everything else.
A Washington University in St. Louis study found that the attention-improvement effects of Ritalin are effectively equal to a great night's sleep. Stimulants also stunt growth and reduce sleep quality. The new direction is combining lower medication doses with genuinely better sleep — not replacing sleep with pharmacology.
Two big inhales through the nose, then a full exhale to empty — that's the physiological sigh. It fires a specific vagal pathway to slow your heart rate, offload CO2, and tip the autonomic nervous system toward calm instantly. Doing just 10 deliberate exhales throughout the day measurably elevates HRV by nighttime.
Presence isn't a state you fall into — it's something you actively produce by anchoring perception to the immediate environment. Ask 2–3 trivially specific questions about your surroundings (how many cans, what does it smell like) to pull your brain out of past/future mode. Then deliberately choose what to think or say next. That's it.
Acknowledge the thing, feel all of it, uncouple the emotion from the memory, then transmute the experience into something meaningful. Most people stall at step 2 — feeling the feelings — and never reach uncoupling. An entire generation is stuck there, confusing emotional processing for healing. Moving through all four is the actual path out.
Nicotine creates a uniquely alert-and-calm state ideal for learning — but only at low doses used occasionally. If you're using 3–6 mg pouches multiple times a day, you're not getting a cognitive enhancement, you're just rescuing yourself from withdrawal. For a genuine performance effect, use it once or twice per week at most.
Two injections of BPC-157 (100–200 mcg) eliminated shoulder pain Huberman couldn't shift for months. The peptide pinealon gave him 2.5–3 hours of REM sleep inside 6 hours — an effect that persisted into subsequent nights and scaled down to just once per week. Neither is in the book because the human data aren't there yet, but the animal evidence is strong.
Long, slow cardio builds capillary networks and mitochondrial richness; high-intensity intervals push VO2 max. You don't need huge volumes of either. Huberman's protocol: one 45–60 minute long slow session, one near-maximal effort HIIT session (Airdyne 20-on/10-off for 6–8 rounds), and one medium 30-minute effort per week. That's the complete cardio picture.
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