Podbit · Huberman Lab
For mild-to-moderate concussion: avoid heat, avoid alcohol, control blood sugar. Creatine at loading doses, magnesium 400mg 1–2x/day, and omega-3s have the best evidence. CDP-choline at 1–2g/day and Boswellia extract also have clinical trial support. Return to aerobic activity as soon as tolerated — rest is no longer the standard of care.
Where this was said
At 2:22:20 · chapter starts 2:18:27
Huberman asks for a practical TBI recovery toolkit for the common scenario of a moderate concussion without bleeding. Wood organized his answer around the pathophysiology: concussion creates an acute energy deficit in neurons through mitochondrial dysfunction, and anything that widens the gap between energy demand and supply accelerates cell death. This explains why hyperthermia is dangerous (it increases energy demand), why Wood's own PhD focused on therapeutic hypothermia (cooling reduces energy demand), and why blood sugar spikes should be avoided (cellular stress from glycation). Practical immediate steps: get cool, avoid sugary refined carbohydrates, avoid alcohol (disrupts sleep and impairs recovery), potentially avoid caffeine (stimulates the brain when it needs to conserve energy). For supplementation, Wood cites a pediatric RCT using creatine at 0.4g/kg/day — about 28 grams for a 70kg person, roughly double traditional loading doses — with significant benefits. Creatine's role makes mechanistic sense: it supports the phosphocreatine system that rapidly regenerates ATP in neurons under metabolic stress. Magnesium at 400mg once or twice daily (glycinate form preferred) and omega-3s (with accumulating evidence from collegiate football player studies showing reduced neurofilament light biomarkers) round out the core stack.
Tommy Wood — neuroscientist, brain health expert, and drug-tested Masters strongman — describes competing in natural World's Strongest Man at 41: farmer's walks at 264 lbs per hand, 700-lb yoke walks, and log press at 264 lbs. His own life is an argument for the combination of physical and cognitive challenge across the lifespan.
A pediatric TBI trial used 0.4 grams of creatine per kilogram of body weight per day — roughly double a standard loading dose — and showed significant benefits after concussion.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
Spencer Greenberg was once so socially anxious his heart pounded just approaching a stranger. His therapist gave him homework: go to a bar alone, talk to 5 strangers. Starting with asking for the time, he worked up to asking men for hugs — and his anxiety fell dramatically in 6 months.
A person who flies regularly but obsessively checks weather forecasts before every flight is not doing exposure therapy — they're teaching their brain that flying is only safe with the ritual. Safety behaviors prevent the brain from ever learning that the feared thing is actually fine.
The worry-time technique assigns all worries to one scheduled slot (e.g. 5 PM). Every time a worry surfaces, you write it down and ban yourself from engaging with it until that time. When 5 PM arrives, most worries feel trivial and the act of batch-worrying exposes how little it actually accomplishes.
In a randomized study of 20 habit techniques, 'habit reflection' stood out: recall a past habit you successfully built, write down what helped you succeed, then apply those same strategies to your new habit. It works because it's self-adapting — it uses whatever worked for YOU.
The tiny habits technique — always having a minimal version of your habit you can do when life gets in the way — keeps the mental machinery of habit formation from breaking. Paradoxically, people given a tiny-habit fallback option were MORE successful at the full habit, not less.
Fears and worries act like playground bullies — they want to ambush you. But when you deliberately seek them out and choose the time of engagement, they lose their power. The volitional act of starting the fight on your own terms is one of CBT's most underappreciated insights.
Most downtime defaults are things you regret immediately after — phone scrolling, binge TV. 'Glad you did it' activities meet the same need for rest but leave you feeling like you spent your time well. The switch from a bad screen to a documentary, a book, or a walk costs almost no extra effort but compounds into identity over time.
You rarely control your first reactive thought. But you can train your second thought — the response to the trigger — by asking whether your initial reaction is the most helpful one and replacing it with something equally true but more constructive. Over time, that second thought becomes automatic.
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