I extracted 51 distinct CAFFEINE protocols from all 400+ episodes, and ranked them by how often Huberman repeats them. Six of the top ten aren't in his caffeine episode.
I listened to the caffeine episode a while back, the dedicated one from December 2022, and assumed that was the whole picture.
Then I kept running into caffeine advice in episodes that had nothing to do with caffeine. Something about carbs blunting it in an episode on cortisol. A warning about mixing it with MDMA, etc.
So I got curious and wrote a script to pull every caffeine-related recommendation out of all 400+ episodes, with a timestamp on each one. 51 separate protocols. The caffeine episode mentioned only 13 of them.
The part I found more useful than any single tip: once you have all of it, you can rank by how often he actually repeats something. Saying a thing once in an AMA and saying it in dozens of separate episodes are not the same claim.
Here're the top ten by mention counts:
- Delay caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after waking (30 mentions). His most-repeated caffeine take. But it has been tweaked over the years. At first he just states it as two hours (clip). Later it becomes "if, and only if, you have trouble with an afternoon crash" (clip). In the Galpin series he only does it on days he isn't training (clip). Most recently the number itself has moved to "60 to 90 minutes" (clip).
- Stop by mid-afternoon (28 mentions). Eight hours before bed minimum, ideally ten to twelve (clip). The reason it keeps coming up is that caffeine fragments deep sleep even when it doesn't stop you falling asleep.
- Front-load it in the morning (26 mentions). Yes, this overlaps with 1 and 2, but he states it as its own instruction very often. Roughly half of everything he says about caffeine is about when. This one is not in the caffeine episode.
- Yerba mate (26 mentions). His actual default, not coffee. Non-smoked only, because the smoked kind may be carcinogenic (clip). He also reuses the same leaves all day. He says you pull out more of the GLP-1 compounds as you go (clip).
- Coffee or tea during a fast (8 mentions), none of them are from the caffeine episode. Black coffee and unsweetened tea are treated as fasting-compatible, and caffeine in pill form explicitly does not break a fast (clip).
- Not energy drinks (6 mentions). Plain coffee or tea instead. If you're going to drink one anyway, he wants you to know what every ingredient in it does (clip).
- Take it before training (5 mentions). Water plus caffeine is the entire pre-workout he endorses. Skip it if it makes you jittery or scatters your attention (clip).
- Three to four cups a day at most (5 mentions). Benefits look U-shaped and start coming back down past that (clip).
- Topical caffeine, for hair (4 mentions). This is the one that surprised me the most. He says caffeine cream on the scalp goes head to head with minoxidil for keeping the hair you have and growing some back, without minoxidil's blood pressure problems (clip).
- Abstain two to four days before something that matters (4 mentions), then take it 30 minutes before. Same dose hits much harder once sensitivity comes back (clip).
I included 41 other protocols on this page, grouped by the question they answer (e.g. dose, timing).