2026-03-26
38 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 going to discuss salt.
Also referred to as sodium.
Salt has many, many important functions in the brain and body.
For instance, it regulates fluid balance, how much fluid you desire and how much fluid you excrete.
Salt also regulates your appetite for other nutrients, things like sugar, things like carbohydrates.
We all harbor small sets of neurons.
We call these sets of neurons nuclei, meaning little clusters of neurons that sense
the levels of salt in our brain and body.
There are a couple of brain regions that do this.
And these brain regions are very, very special.
Special because they lack.
Biological fences around them that other brain areas have.
And those fences, or I should say that fence goes by a particular name.
And that name is the blood brain barrier or BBB.
Most substances that are circulating around in your body do not have access to the brain.
In particular, large molecules can't just pass into the brain.
The brain is a privileged organ in this sense.