Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Speaking of anxiety, I'm trying to be mindful of your time, and I know you have to go soon. I just want to try to dive into one last topic.

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Sure. No, I'm enjoying this. Alcohol. Okay.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I mean, it's a topic that you really, I think, have changed the public perspective on, in terms of public health and the effects of alcohol, particularly on the brain. I don't think there's any controversy about heavy alcohol use and how it's negative for every organ that we have. It's just very bad.

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: There's been a lot of, I would say, conflicting ideas, conflicting research, and disagreement about what would be considered moderate alcohol, which many people do, one glass of wine a night or something with dinner. Even less than that would be light alcohol consumption, so maybe two or three, less than three drinks, three or less.

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Per week.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Per week, yes.

First of all, I want to talk about anxiety – that triggered me – but I want to ask you about someone that's doing, let's say, moderate drinking. So they're doing the glass of wine a night. What's that doing to parts of their brain in terms of the structure and the function?

Dr. Andrew Huberman: Yeah. So, first of all, do as you wish, but know what you're doing. That's my stance. I am not anti-alcohol. I'm not an alcoholic. I don't particularly like alcohol. So I can drink or not drink. I don't tend to drink. I might have a sip of alcohol. Well, it's been a long time since I've had a sip of alcohol. But there are certain white tequilas I've enjoyed and occasionally like one of those or a vodka and soda or something. So just to be clear, I'm not anti-alcohol. My read of the data are, as you pointed out, that, yes, alcohol is a poison, but many things are a poison, and the dose determines the poison. It seems that our threshold for what we call moderate or low amounts of drinking is shifting nowadays.

I don't know if that had something to do with the alcohol episode that we did, but here's what I do know. The data say that zero to two drinks per week, you're probably fine, provided you're not an alcoholic and you're of age, okay, and you're not pregnant or dealing with some other something that would make it a case where you wouldn't want to drink at all. Zero to two drinks per week. Now, what happens past two drinks per week depends on a lot of other contextual factors. Okay, first of all, how well or poorly you metabolize alcohol, how much alcohol dehydrogenase you tend to express. Why do I say that? Well, a lot of the so called negative effects of alcohol are due to disruptions in sleep and gut microbiome. So those are indirect. Right?

Alcohol is changing, for the worse, the gut microbiome due to disruption in sleep patterns, we know this. People that track their sleep, they have one drink and they're like, holy cow, my sleep is so much worse. Not just sleep score, but amount of REM sleep, amount of deep sleep, et cetera. Is that the direct or indirect cause of any kind of disruption in brain structure or in neuronal health? We don't know. But what these larger-scale studies show is that if you look at the amount of gray matter thinning, which occurs with age regardless, gray matter being the neurons in the brain, white matter being the fiber tracts, the axons and myelin in the brain, is how they're imaged. So they show up as gray or white. The amount of gray matter thinning starts to increase as you get out past two drinks per week.

Now, is it significant enough that people should be concerned about cognitive decline as a consequence of three-drinks-per-week-induced gray-matter thinning? Probably not. So then should we set the threshold at three drinks per week or four drinks per week? I don't know. And I'm not here to say that one way or the other. What I'm saying is, my read of the data, and I know there are people that disagree with me, is that zero is better than any. And that, I think I'm told, has brought great relief to a number of people that didn't want to drink, but that actually were drinking red wine specifically to try and get some quote unquote health benefits. It also brought great relief to a number of people because they tell me that did not like drinking.

They didn't like the way drinking made them feel either while they were under the influence of it, or maybe taste or just general malaise the next day or due to disruption in sleep, I don't really know the reasons. But for people who don't like drinking or who don't want to drink, I think there's ample evidence that zero is great, that you don't need to drink. Okay, it might seem like a kind of silly statement, but I think a good number of people kind of doing it because they thought there were health benefits. Now, to be fair, most people were drinking, and if they were talking about the health benefits because they like the way alcohol makes them feel.

And to me, it's clear that if you care very much about your brain, that more than two drinks per week on a consistent basis, probably not a good idea. Now, are there exceptions to that? Sure. Are there people who, you know, everyone says, well, I had a grandparent and they lived to be 98 and they're super sharp and they drank, you know, a shot of vodka every night. Great. Like, great. I just say, well, how much better would they have been had they not? But I also understand you need to live life. And for many people, alcohol is one route by which they enjoy life more because of its relaxing effects. And that's important to note that anxiety is bad. Anxiety that disrupts sleep is bad.

So many people will drink to provide a segue from the workday to the evening, and they find it helps them calm down and sleep better. But we know it disrupts your sleep. Would it be better to not drink at all? Probably. But I want to be respectful of that scenario as well. If we look at four drinks per week, five drinks per week, let's say a drink a night, seven drinks per week, I just don't see where the debate is. To me, you look at the gray matter thinning, you look at some of the other metrics on gut microbiome, you look at the disruption in sleep, and again, people should do as they wish, but know what they're doing. And it's just oh so clear that it's not good for people and that they're doing at least some degree of harm. Now, there's also the business of offsetting harm.

I would say, listen, if you're the kind of person who wants to have a drink every night, be my guest, if that serves you well. But you might be wise to also do some things that offset some of the, for instance, gut microbiome disruption. Perhaps pay a bit more attention to consuming one to four servings of low sugar fermented foods per day to really feed the gut microbiome. Maybe be extra thoughtful about a consistent sleep schedule. Maybe be extra thoughtful about a number of other things to offset whatever negative effects are sure to be introduced by that kind of regimen. So zero is best, two is probably fine. Three, four, five, six, seven is where you're, are you going to shorten your life by a significant amount? Well, provided you don't drive while you're drunk?

Probably not. Are you going to be disrupting your health? Probably, mainly indirect effects through disrupted sleep or gut microbiome trying to offset those effects. But then once you get past, you know, a drink per night, which many, many people are consuming, then I think there's general agreement, higher incidence of cancers, especially in women, higher incidence of cancers generally, and a number of other things related to immune system disruption. So, and on and on. And, you know, just as a final statement, I don't have anything against alcohol. Alcohol is, you know, I understand it's part of the fabric of most every culture, and that says something. But to my mind, alcohol, if you don't like it or you care about your health more than you care about alcohol, I say, you know, don't drink. It's pure and simple.