How to Boost Your Growth Hormone with Sleep | Dr. Gina Poe & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | There's a number of different hormones associated with the different stages of sleep.
00:00:07.280 | We know that melatonin is a hormone of nighttime that makes us sleepy.
00:00:13.040 | What about growth hormone release?
00:00:14.440 | When does that occur during sleep?
00:00:15.920 | So growth hormone release happens all day long and all night long.
00:00:19.480 | But the deep slow-wave sleep that you get, the very first sleep cycle is when you get
00:00:25.800 | a big bolus of growth hormone release.
00:00:28.520 | And in men and women equally.
00:00:31.360 | And if you miss that first deep slow-wave sleep period, you also miss that big bolus
00:00:37.000 | of growth hormone release.
00:00:38.880 | And you might get ultimately across the day just as much overall growth hormone release.
00:00:44.440 | But endocrinologists will tell you that big boluses do different things than a little
00:00:49.080 | bit eked out over time.
00:00:50.720 | So that is when we know there's also a big push to synthesize proteins.
00:00:59.160 | So that's when the protein synthesis part that builds memories, for example, in our
00:01:04.480 | brain happens in that first cycle of sleep.
00:01:08.320 | So you don't want to miss that, especially if you've learned something really big and
00:01:12.000 | needs more synaptic space to encode it.
00:01:15.580 | How would somebody miss that first 90 minutes?
00:01:17.800 | Sleep-depriving themselves.
00:01:18.800 | Yeah.
00:01:19.800 | So let's say I normally go to sleep at 10 p.m.
00:01:24.800 | And then from 10 to 11.30 would be this first phase of sleep.
00:01:27.960 | And that's when the big bolus of growth hormone would be released.
00:01:31.720 | Does that mean that if I go to sleep instead at 11.30 or midnight, that I miss that first
00:01:36.360 | phase of sleep?
00:01:37.360 | Yeah.
00:01:38.360 | Why is it not the case that I get that first phase of sleep just simply starting later?
00:01:42.080 | It is a beautiful clock that we have in our body that knows when things should happen.
00:01:47.120 | And every cell in our body has a clock.
00:01:49.800 | And all of those clocks are normally synchronized.
00:01:53.120 | And the circadian clocks are synchronized.
00:01:56.160 | And so our cells are ready to respond to that growth hormone release at a particular time.
00:02:03.440 | And if we miss it-- and it's a time in relation to melatonin also.
00:02:07.800 | So if you miss it, yeah, you might get some growth hormone release.
00:02:11.600 | But it's occurring at a time when your clock has already moved to the next phase.
00:02:16.120 | And so it's just a clock thing.
00:02:18.800 | Yeah.
00:02:19.800 | I don't think we can overstate the importance of what you just described.
00:02:22.840 | And to be honest, despite knowing a bit about the sleep research and circadian biology,
00:02:27.200 | this is the very first time that I've ever heard this, that if you normally go to sleep
00:02:32.840 | at a particular time and growth hormone is released in that first phase of sleep, that
00:02:36.560 | you can't simply initiate your sleep bout later and expect to capture that first phase
00:02:41.200 | of sleep.
00:02:42.200 | Yeah.
00:02:43.200 | So this is incredible and, I think, important and, as many listeners are probably realizing,
00:02:48.680 | also highly actionable.
00:02:49.800 | So what this means is that we should have fairly consistent bedtimes in addition to
00:02:53.240 | fairly consistent wake times.
00:02:54.800 | Is that right?
00:02:55.800 | Yes.
00:02:56.800 | Exactly.
00:02:57.800 | And in fact, one of the best markers of good neurological health when we get older is consistent
00:03:02.840 | bedtimes.
00:03:04.400 | Wow.
00:03:05.920 | OK.
00:03:07.200 | I don't want to backtrack, but I did write down something that I think is important for
00:03:11.640 | me to resolve or for you to resolve.
00:03:14.660 | So I'm going to ask this.
00:03:16.240 | People that sleep nine hours or more, perhaps that reflecting an issue, some underlying
00:03:21.520 | issue, perhaps, is being a teenager or an adolescent and undergoing a stage of development
00:03:28.440 | where there's a lot of bodily and brain growth, an exception to that, because I don't recall
00:03:32.680 | sleeping a ton when I was a teenager.
00:03:35.000 | I had a ton of energy, but I know a few teenagers and they sleep a lot.
00:03:40.880 | Yeah.
00:03:41.880 | Like they'll just sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep.
00:03:43.280 | Should we let them sleep and sleep and sleep?
00:03:44.840 | OK.
00:03:45.840 | Let them sleep.
00:03:46.840 | OK.
00:03:47.840 | So that's the one exception.
00:03:48.840 | What about us?
00:03:49.840 | Just like babies.
00:03:50.840 | OK.
00:03:51.840 | When you're developing something in your brain or the rest of your body, you really
00:03:53.520 | need sleep to help organize that.
00:03:56.040 | I mean, sleep is doing really hard work in organizing our brains and making it develop
00:04:00.960 | right.
00:04:01.960 | And if we deprive ourselves of sleep, we will actually also just like I said, we have a
00:04:07.040 | daily clock, we also have a developmental clock, and we can miss a developmental window
00:04:12.720 | if we don't let ourselves sleep extra like we need to.
00:04:16.920 | What other things inhibit growth hormone release or other components of this first stage of
00:04:21.200 | sleep?
00:04:22.200 | In other words, if I go to sleep religiously every night at 10 p.m., are there things that
00:04:26.680 | I perhaps do in the preceding hours of the preceding day, like ingest caffeine or alcohol
00:04:32.560 | that can make that first stage of sleep less effective even if I'm going to sleep at the
00:04:36.360 | same time?
00:04:37.360 | Alcohol definitely will do that because alcohol is a REM sleep suppressant, and it even suppresses
00:04:42.160 | some of that stage two transition to REM with those sleep spindles.
00:04:45.400 | And those sleep spindles, we didn't talk about their function yet, but they're really important
00:04:49.360 | for moving memories to our cortex.
00:04:52.760 | It's a unique time when our hippocampus, the sort of like the RAM of our brains, writes
00:04:59.400 | it to a hard disk, which is the cortex.
00:05:02.480 | And it's a unique time when they're connected.
00:05:05.200 | So if you don't want to miss that, you don't want to miss REM sleep, which is also a part
00:05:09.280 | of the consolidation process and schema changing process.
00:05:14.600 | And alcohol in there, you know, before we go to sleep will do that.
00:05:18.360 | Until we've metabolized alcohol and put it out of our bodies, it will affect our sleep
00:05:23.400 | badly.
00:05:24.400 | It's probably fair to say no ingestion of alcohol within the four to six hours preceding
00:05:31.440 | sleep given the half-life, or it all would be better, but I know some people refuse to
00:05:36.960 | go that way.
00:05:37.960 | And maybe a little bit is okay.
00:05:39.600 | I don't know what the dose response is, but there are studies out there you can look at.
00:05:46.000 | Great.
00:05:47.000 | So we're still in the first stage of sleep, and I apologize for slowing us down, but it
00:05:50.040 | sounds like it's an incredibly important first phase of sleep.
00:05:54.720 | What about the second and third 90-minute blocks of sleep?
00:05:57.680 | Is there anything that makes those unique?
00:06:00.960 | What is their signature besides the fact that they come second and third in the night?
00:06:05.240 | There's more and more REM sleep the later, the night we get.
00:06:09.240 | There's also a change in hormones, you know, the growth hormone and melatonin levels are
00:06:15.520 | starting to decline, but other hormones are picking up.
00:06:19.020 | So it is a really different stage that you also don't want to shortchange yourself on.
00:06:24.840 | And I think that's the stage many studies are showing that those are the times in sleep
00:06:29.720 | when the most creativity can happen.
00:06:32.480 | That's when our dreams can incorporate and put together old and new things together into
00:06:37.520 | a new way, and our schema are built during that time.
00:06:42.680 | So yeah, we can change our minds best during those phases of sleep.
00:06:48.260 | [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:06:51.620 | (upbeat music)
00:06:54.200 | (upbeat music)