2026-07-09
35 分钟Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent
and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today, we are talking about obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD.
First of all, as the name suggests, OCD includes thoughts, or obsessions, and compulsions, which are actions.
The obsessions and the compulsions are often linked.
In fact, most of the time, the obsessions
and the compulsions are linked such that the compulsion, the behavior, is designed to relieve the obsession.
However, one of the hallmark themes of obsessive compulsive disorder is that the obsessions are intrusive.
People don't want to have them.
They don't enjoy having them.
They just seem to pop into people's minds and they seem to pop into their mind recurrently.
And the compulsions, unlike other sorts of behaviors, provide brief relief to the obsession,
but then very quickly reinforce or strengthen the obsession.
OCD is extremely common.
In fact, current estimates are that anywhere
from 2.5% to as high as three or even 4% of people suffer from true OCD.
That is an astonishingly high number.
Another thing to point out is that OCD is currently listed as number seven in terms of the most debilitating illnesses,
not just mental illnesses or disorders, but all types of illnesses, including things like asthma and cancer, et cetera.