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.
This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however,
part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.
Today,
I'd like to talk about endurance and how to build endurance and how to use endurance for the health of your entire body.
Endurance, as the name suggests,
is our ability to engage in continuous bouts of exercise or continuous movement or continuous effort of any kind.
It is clear that cardiovascular exercise,
exercise where you're getting your heart rate up continuously for a period of time,
is vital for tapping into and enhancing various aspects of our biology in the body and in the brain such
that our brain can perform work for longer periods of time,
focused work, learning, etc.
The key thing to understand about energy production in the body is this thing that we call ATP.
ATP is required for anything that requires energy or anything that you do that requires effort.
Our muscles and our neurons use different fuel sources to generate ATP.
The ones that are used first for short bouts of intense activity are things like phosphocreatine.