How to Feel Energized & Sleep Better With One Morning Activity

00:00:00.000 | I wake up in the morning and I want to reach for my phone,

00:00:05.000 | but I know that even if I were to crank up the brightness

00:00:09.760 | on that phone screen,

00:00:11.000 | it's not bright enough to trigger that cortisol spike.

00:00:14.280 | And for me to be at my most alert

00:00:17.600 | and focused throughout the day

00:00:18.640 | and to optimize my sleep at night.

00:00:20.180 | So what I do is I get out of bed and I go outside.

00:00:24.040 | And if it's a bright, clear day

00:00:27.360 | and the sun is low in the sky

00:00:29.200 | or the sun is starting to get overhead,

00:00:31.200 | what we call low solar angle,

00:00:32.720 | then I know I'm getting outside at the right time.

00:00:35.760 | If there's cloud cover and I can't see the sun,

00:00:38.800 | I also know I'm doing a good thing

00:00:40.400 | because it turns out, especially on cloudy days,

00:00:42.560 | you want to get outside and get as much light energy

00:00:44.680 | or photons in your eyes.

00:00:46.420 | But let's say it's a very clear day

00:00:48.320 | and I can see where the sun is.

00:00:50.440 | I do not need to stare directly into the sun.

00:00:53.240 | If it's very low in the sky,

00:00:55.420 | I might do that because it's not going to be very painful

00:00:57.920 | to my eyes.

00:00:58.760 | However, if the sun is a little bit brighter

00:01:01.060 | and a little bit higher in the sky,

00:01:02.520 | sometimes it can be painful to look at.

00:01:04.220 | So the way to get this sunlight viewing early in the day

00:01:07.940 | is to look toward the sun.

00:01:10.600 | If it's too bright to look at directly,

00:01:12.940 | well then don't do that.

00:01:13.920 | You just look toward it, but not directly at it.

00:01:16.200 | It's absolutely fine to blink.

00:01:18.360 | In fact, I encourage you to blink

00:01:19.640 | whenever you feel the impulse to blink.

00:01:22.080 | Never look at any light, sunlight or otherwise,

00:01:24.840 | that's so bright that it's painful to look at

00:01:26.500 | 'cause you can damage your eyes.

00:01:28.140 | But for this morning sunlight viewing,

00:01:30.460 | it's best to not wear sunglasses.

00:01:32.500 | That's right, to not wear sunglasses,

00:01:34.900 | at least for this morning sunlight viewing.

00:01:37.620 | It is absolutely fine to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses,

00:01:42.260 | so-called corrective lenses.

00:01:43.380 | In fact, those will serve you well in this practice

00:01:46.460 | or this tool because they will focus the light

00:01:48.340 | onto your neural retina and onto those melanopsin

00:01:50.300 | intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.

00:01:52.380 | If your eyeglasses or contact lenses have UV protection,

00:01:56.780 | that's okay.

00:01:57.940 | There's so many different wavelengths of light

00:01:59.380 | coming from the sun and they are bright enough

00:02:02.060 | that they will trigger the mechanisms

00:02:03.740 | that you want triggered at this early time of day.

00:02:07.540 | So try and get outside,

00:02:09.220 | ideally within the first five minutes of waking,

00:02:11.040 | or maybe it's 15 minutes,

00:02:12.860 | but certainly within the first hour after waking.

00:02:15.420 | I want to share with you three critical things

00:02:17.540 | about this tool of morning sunlight viewing.

00:02:19.900 | First of all, this is not some woo biology thing.

00:02:23.680 | This is grounded in the core of our physiology.

00:02:26.620 | There are literally hundreds,

00:02:27.900 | if not thousands of quality peer reviewed papers

00:02:30.180 | showing that light viewing early in the day

00:02:33.660 | is the most powerful stimulus for wakefulness

00:02:36.040 | throughout the day,

00:02:36.880 | and it has a powerful positive impact on your ability

00:02:40.000 | to fall and stay asleep at night.

00:02:41.580 | So this is really the foundational power tool

00:02:44.540 | for ensuring a great night's sleep

00:02:47.160 | and for feeling more awake during the day.

00:02:49.740 | Second of all, if you wake up before the sun is out,

00:02:55.200 | you can and probably should flip on artificial lights

00:02:58.960 | in your internal home environment or apartment

00:03:01.380 | or wherever you happen to live,

00:03:02.760 | if your goal is to be awake, right?

00:03:04.640 | If you wake up at four in the morning

00:03:05.720 | and you need to be awake,

00:03:06.600 | well then turn on artificial lights.

00:03:09.120 | Once the sun is out, however, once the sun has risen,

00:03:13.220 | then you still want to get outside and view sunlight.

00:03:15.960 | Some of you will wake up before the sun comes out,

00:03:19.880 | and if you're asking whether or not

00:03:22.140 | turning on artificial lights can replace sunlight

00:03:24.600 | at those hours, unfortunately, the answer is no.

00:03:28.480 | Unless you have a very special light,

00:03:30.160 | we'll talk about what kind of light,

00:03:31.920 | the bright artificial lights in your home environment

00:03:34.960 | are not, I repeat,

00:03:36.520 | are not going to be sufficiently bright

00:03:38.840 | to turn on the cortisol mechanism

00:03:41.800 | and the other wake-up mechanisms

00:03:43.340 | that you need early in the day.

00:03:45.680 | The diabolical twist, however,

00:03:47.280 | is that those lights in your home or apartment

00:03:50.040 | or even on your phone are bright enough

00:03:53.060 | to disrupt your sleep if you look at them too late at night

00:03:56.080 | or in the middle of the night.

00:03:57.320 | So there's this asymmetry in our retinal, our eye biology,

00:04:01.520 | and in our brain's biology,

00:04:03.200 | whereby early in the day, right around waking,

00:04:05.220 | you need a lot of light, a lot of photons,

00:04:07.680 | a lot of light energy,

00:04:08.840 | and artificial lights generally just won't accomplish

00:04:12.020 | what you need them to accomplish.

00:04:13.560 | But at night, even a little bit of artificial light

00:04:16.600 | can really mess up your so-called circadian,

00:04:19.080 | your 24-hour clocks

00:04:20.440 | and all these mechanisms that we're talking about.

00:04:22.520 | So if you wake up before the sun is out

00:04:24.340 | and it's still dark,

00:04:25.620 | please turn on as many bright artificial lights

00:04:28.280 | as you possibly can or need,

00:04:30.400 | but then get outside once the sun is out.

00:04:33.520 | On cloudy days, you especially need to get outside.

00:04:37.060 | I repeat, on cloudy days, overcast days,

00:04:39.320 | you especially need to get outside and get sunlight.

00:04:41.400 | You just need to get more of it.

00:04:42.840 | Now, how much light and how much light viewing do you need?

00:04:46.120 | This is going to vary depending on person and place,

00:04:49.320 | literally where you live on earth,

00:04:50.960 | whether or not there's a lot of tree cover,

00:04:53.040 | whether or not you're somebody who has sensitive eyes

00:04:54.840 | or less sensitive eyes.

00:04:56.080 | It's really impossible for me

00:04:57.320 | to give an absolute prescriptive,

00:04:59.160 | but we can give some general guidelines.

00:05:00.880 | In general, on a clear day,

00:05:02.840 | meaning no cloud cover or minimal cloud cover,

00:05:05.680 | you want to get this sunlight exposure to your eyes

00:05:09.640 | for about five minutes or so.

00:05:12.240 | Could be three minutes one day, could be seven minutes

00:05:14.120 | the next day, about five minutes.

00:05:16.880 | On a day where there's cloud cover,

00:05:19.220 | so the sun is just peeking through the clouds

00:05:21.040 | or it's more dense cloud cover,

00:05:23.320 | you want to get about 10 minutes of sunlight exposure

00:05:26.880 | to your eyes early in the day.

00:05:28.320 | And on days that are really densely overcast

00:05:30.760 | or maybe even a rainy,

00:05:32.080 | you're going to want to get as much as 20 or 30 minutes

00:05:35.240 | of sunlight exposure.

00:05:37.280 | Another key thing is do not forget about,

00:05:40.880 | just don't try and get this sunlight exposure

00:05:43.640 | through a windshield of a car or a window,

00:05:46.600 | whether or not it's tinted or otherwise.

00:05:48.040 | It takes far too long.

00:05:49.620 | It's simply not going to trigger the relevant mechanisms.

00:05:52.700 | You would be standing there all day,

00:05:54.000 | trying to get enough light into your eyes

00:05:55.780 | from the morning sunlight.

00:05:56.680 | And by then the sun will have already moved

00:05:58.900 | from low solar angle to overhead.

00:06:00.920 | And it simply won't work for all sorts of mechanisms

00:06:03.020 | related to your circadian rhythm functions.

00:06:05.140 | So just don't try and do it through a windshield,

00:06:07.340 | sunglasses, or a window.

00:06:10.660 | It's just not going to work.

00:06:11.620 | Get outside.

00:06:12.640 | If the weather is really bad or for whatever reason,

00:06:14.860 | safety reasons, you cannot get outside.

00:06:16.620 | Well, then I suppose, try and get near a window.

00:06:18.460 | That would be the last, last resort,

00:06:20.500 | but you really want to get outside

00:06:22.460 | to get the sunlight exposure.

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How to Feel Energized & Sleep Better With One Morning Activity | Dr. Andrew Huberman

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