Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.920 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.520 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.200 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.320 | Today, we are going to talk about science-based protocols

00:00:18.460 | for sleep, mood, learning, nutrition,

00:00:23.460 | exercise of various kinds, strength and endurance,

00:00:26.640 | and hypertrophy.

00:00:28.020 | And we are going to talk about some protocols

00:00:30.080 | that relate to creativity.

00:00:32.300 | We're going to talk about behavioral protocols,

00:00:34.260 | supplement-based protocols,

00:00:36.040 | all science backed by quality peer review literature.

00:00:39.400 | The reason that we're holding this episode now

00:00:41.120 | is that in the recent previous episodes,

00:00:43.360 | we've covered some pretty intense and in-depth topics.

00:00:46.360 | We've talked about vision and how we see

00:00:48.840 | and how to get better at seeing and how to maintain vision.

00:00:51.420 | We've talked about hearing and balance.

00:00:53.660 | We've talked about chemical sensing,

00:00:55.680 | and we had a guest episode

00:00:56.840 | that covered a lot of information

00:00:58.340 | about new and emerging technologies in neuroscience,

00:01:01.100 | as well as mental health.

00:01:02.620 | That was the interview episode with Dr. Karl Deisseroth.

00:01:06.220 | So given that we've covered so much detailed information

00:01:09.280 | in the previous 27 episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:01:13.360 | I decided that we would hold office hours.

00:01:16.200 | Office hours in the university setting

00:01:18.020 | are when students come to the professor's office

00:01:20.840 | or you meet outdoors on campus or in the classroom

00:01:24.440 | to review the material and questions from lecture

00:01:27.480 | in more detail.

00:01:29.360 | Now, unfortunately, we don't have the opportunity

00:01:31.320 | to meet face-to-face in real life,

00:01:34.200 | but nonetheless, you've been sending your questions,

00:01:37.280 | putting them in the comments section on YouTube, et cetera,

00:01:40.840 | and I've prepared a number of answers

00:01:42.600 | to the questions that have shown up most frequently.

00:01:45.580 | Now, in order to provide context and structure

00:01:48.960 | to the way that we will address these questions,

00:01:52.240 | I've arranged the science and science-based protocols

00:01:56.040 | that relate to various aspects of life,

00:01:58.640 | such as mood, exercise, sleep, waking,

00:02:01.560 | anxiety, creativity, et cetera,

00:02:03.600 | into the context of a day.

00:02:06.600 | Selecting the unit of a day

00:02:08.800 | in order to deliver this science information and protocols

00:02:12.240 | is not a haphazard decision on my part.

00:02:15.440 | It's actually the case that every cell in our body,

00:02:17.580 | every organ in our body and our brain is modulated

00:02:21.120 | or changes across the 24-hour day

00:02:23.680 | in a very regular and predictable rhythm,

00:02:27.040 | and it's no coincidence that the earth spins once

00:02:29.320 | on its axis every 24 hours.

00:02:31.600 | These two things are coordinated by virtue of genes

00:02:35.480 | and different proteins and things that are expressed

00:02:37.680 | in every cell of your body,

00:02:39.720 | and so selecting the unit of the day

00:02:41.720 | is not just a practical one,

00:02:43.160 | but it's one that's related to our deeper biology.

00:02:46.360 | You may have heard in my interview episode

00:02:49.960 | with Dr. Karl Deisseroth that he himself,

00:02:53.660 | in order to juggle a tremendous workload,

00:02:57.180 | a full-time clinical practice, a lab of 40-plus people,

00:03:00.400 | a family of five children, et cetera,

00:03:02.400 | breaks up his life into units of days,

00:03:06.480 | and so today we are going to further dissect the day

00:03:10.040 | as a unit that one can manage and manage extremely well

00:03:14.360 | and, in fact, can optimize.

00:03:16.340 | So we're basically going to talk about

00:03:18.240 | how to leverage science-based protocols,

00:03:21.120 | and when I say science, I mean quality,

00:03:23.340 | peer-reviewed science published in excellent journals.

00:03:26.520 | We're going to talk about how to take that science,

00:03:28.520 | convert it into specific protocols

00:03:30.740 | that break up along the course of a single day

00:03:33.520 | and direct certain types of behaviors

00:03:36.140 | in order to optimize the various features of life.

00:03:39.300 | I will couch this in the context of what I do

00:03:42.720 | across a daily 24-hour rhythm.

00:03:44.920 | That doesn't mean that you have to follow this schedule

00:03:47.240 | at all or even in part.

00:03:49.280 | It's just by way of example.

00:03:50.640 | Any number of the different things that I described

00:03:52.600 | could be applied to any number of different schedules

00:03:55.040 | or frameworks, but if there's one truth

00:03:57.680 | that applies to all of us is that we all have to exist

00:04:00.320 | within the context of this 24-hour rhythm

00:04:02.960 | that we all possess, so that's what we'll focus on.

00:04:06.120 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:04:08.700 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:04:11.520 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:04:13.760 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:04:16.560 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:04:19.520 | In keeping with that theme,

00:04:20.640 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:04:23.520 | Our first sponsor is Roca.

00:04:25.540 | Roca makes eyeglasses and sunglasses

00:04:28.040 | that I believe are the very highest quality possible.

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00:04:33.760 | Roca sunglasses and eyeglasses were developed

00:04:36.420 | with their intention to create sunglasses and eyeglasses

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00:04:46.720 | is that, first of all, they're extremely lightweight.

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00:04:57.780 | they have this really terrific feature,

00:04:59.040 | which is that I can move in and out of shadows

00:05:00.880 | or the cloud cover can change,

00:05:02.480 | and I can see perfectly well the entire time.

00:05:04.960 | You know, many eyeglasses and sunglasses that I've tried,

00:05:07.200 | depending on what we call the ambient lighting conditions,

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00:05:13.440 | It's really annoying for me, but with Roca glasses,

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00:05:42.780 | or out to dinner.

00:05:44.280 | I don't typically wear sunglasses while out to dinner,

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00:08:51.340 | So let's talk about how to apply

00:08:52.620 | quality peer-reviewed science to your day

00:08:55.180 | and how to optimize everything from sleep to learning,

00:08:58.500 | creativity, meal timing, et cetera.

00:09:01.600 | As I mentioned earlier,

00:09:03.660 | I'm going to do this in the context of my day

00:09:06.060 | and what I typically do.

00:09:07.880 | However, the specific protocols

00:09:10.180 | for any number of different things, sleep relaxation,

00:09:13.460 | meal timing, exercise, et cetera,

00:09:15.280 | any one or all of those could be rearranged

00:09:18.540 | to suit your specific needs.

00:09:20.940 | I'm going to tell you what I do from morning until waking

00:09:24.100 | and even what I do while I sleep

00:09:26.060 | in order to optimize my sleep.

00:09:28.260 | So let's start with getting up in the morning.

00:09:31.500 | Now, for me, I tend to wake up sometime around 6 a.m.,

00:09:34.660 | 6.30, sometimes as late as 7 a.m.

00:09:37.200 | I don't typically sleep much later than 7 a.m.

00:09:40.500 | The first thing I do after I wake up

00:09:42.740 | is I take the pen that's on my nightstand

00:09:45.240 | and the pad of paper on my nightstand

00:09:47.140 | and I write down the time in which I woke up.

00:09:50.220 | Now, I do sleep with my phone in my room.

00:09:52.700 | I realize this is considered a sin

00:09:54.860 | and has certain hazards associated with it,

00:09:57.900 | but I put my phone on airplane mode

00:09:59.660 | about an hour before I go to sleep.

00:10:02.020 | And then I set my alarm typically for 6.30 a.m.

00:10:05.380 | And some days the alarm wakes me up,

00:10:07.300 | other days I wake up before the alarm.

00:10:09.740 | And yes, some days the alarm goes off

00:10:11.520 | and I hit snooze a few times.

00:10:13.100 | And then usually by 7 a.m. I am up and out of bed.

00:10:16.940 | The reason for writing down what time I wake up

00:10:20.100 | is because I want to know that average wake up time.

00:10:23.240 | That average wake up time

00:10:25.980 | informs what's called my temperature minimum.

00:10:28.860 | It tells me when my body temperature was lowest.

00:10:31.900 | The temperature minimum is the time in each 24-hour cycle

00:10:36.900 | that your body temperature is lowest.

00:10:40.300 | I don't sleep with a thermometer in my mouth or elsewhere,

00:10:43.260 | and I don't think you should either.

00:10:45.260 | Instead, I know that the lowest temperature

00:10:48.660 | that my body will be at across the 24-hour cycle

00:10:52.860 | tends to be two hours before my typical wake up time.

00:10:57.060 | And I want to know that number.

00:10:58.820 | It's called our temperature minimum.

00:11:01.220 | So if you're somebody that typically wakes up at 8 a.m.,

00:11:04.580 | then your temperature minimum is sometime around 6 a.m.

00:11:07.260 | Remember, the temperature minimum

00:11:08.660 | is a time in the 24-hour cycle.

00:11:11.700 | I don't care what my actual temperature is.

00:11:14.640 | I care when my lowest temperature is.

00:11:17.220 | And I know that that lowest temperature

00:11:19.900 | is approximately two hours before my average wake up time.

00:11:24.000 | So I highly recommend that you write down when you wake up

00:11:29.860 | or track that in some way that works for you

00:11:32.940 | and use that as a reference point

00:11:35.080 | to determine your temperature minimum.

00:11:37.460 | We will return to the temperature minimum

00:11:39.780 | and how you can leverage the temperature minimum

00:11:42.200 | for several things, shifting your clock,

00:11:45.180 | shifting your circadian sleep schedule and wake schedule,

00:11:48.060 | also for shifting your eating schedule, et cetera.

00:11:51.120 | We will return to that.

00:11:52.400 | But even if you don't travel,

00:11:54.320 | even if you don't care about things like jet lag,

00:11:56.900 | even if you sleep fabulously all year round,

00:11:59.820 | never have a poor night's sleep.

00:12:01.540 | Knowing your temperature minimum,

00:12:02.960 | that time when your temperature is at its lowest point,

00:12:05.340 | is a valuable thing to know.

00:12:07.980 | The second thing I do after I wake up

00:12:10.000 | is to get into forward ambulation,

00:12:12.520 | which is just nerd speak for taking a walk.

00:12:15.600 | I have a dog, and as many of you know, he's a bulldog,

00:12:19.580 | and he doesn't really like to walk,

00:12:21.420 | especially not in the morning.

00:12:23.080 | But for humans and for animals,

00:12:26.420 | there's a phenomenon whereby

00:12:28.180 | when we generate our own forward motion, forward ambulation,

00:12:32.400 | visual images pass by us on our eyes, so-called optic flow.

00:12:39.140 | And for those of you that are low vision or no vision,

00:12:41.760 | the same phenomenon occurs in the auditory system.

00:12:44.280 | Sounds pass by us in so-called auditory flow.

00:12:48.240 | Getting into a mode of forward ambulation

00:12:54.240 | and especially experiencing visual flow

00:12:58.200 | has a powerful effect on the nervous system.

00:13:01.880 | The effect it has is essentially to quiet

00:13:04.920 | or reduce the amount of neural activity

00:13:07.260 | in this brain structure called the amygdala.

00:13:10.180 | Amygdala means almond,

00:13:11.660 | and many of you have probably heard about the amygdala

00:13:14.440 | for its role in anxiety and fear and threat detection.

00:13:18.000 | And indeed, the amygdala is part of the network in the brain

00:13:21.840 | that generates feelings of fear and threat and anxiety.

00:13:24.960 | It does a bunch of other things too,

00:13:26.240 | but that's one of its primary functions.

00:13:28.360 | There are now at least half a dozen quality papers

00:13:31.500 | published in quality peer review journals

00:13:33.740 | that show that forward ambulation,

00:13:36.040 | walking or biking or running,

00:13:38.240 | and generating optic flow in particular

00:13:41.080 | has this incredible property of lowering activity

00:13:44.200 | in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety.

00:13:47.720 | There are two papers that I'd like to highlight

00:13:49.640 | in particular that relate to this phenomenon.

00:13:52.480 | The first one was published in the journal Neuron,

00:13:54.620 | and the title of this paper

00:13:55.580 | is "Whole-Brain Functional Ultrasound Imaging."

00:13:57.760 | That just means they have a cool technique

00:13:59.360 | to evaluate the activity of structures in the brain

00:14:02.660 | across the entire brain,

00:14:04.240 | reveals brain modules for visual motor integration.

00:14:07.320 | What they found in this study,

00:14:09.980 | and I should mention the first author is Massey.

00:14:11.680 | This comes from Boton-Roska's group.

00:14:14.300 | This was work done in mice,

00:14:16.180 | but I will talk about other species in a moment.

00:14:18.400 | What they found was essentially

00:14:19.800 | that when these mice walk forward

00:14:23.020 | and their eyes move from side to side,

00:14:24.640 | which is a natural consequence of moving forward,

00:14:26.880 | so-called optic flow is flowing past their eyes,

00:14:30.880 | many brain areas are activated,

00:14:32.800 | increase in their level of firing,

00:14:34.640 | but the amygdala in particular reduced its levels of firing.

00:14:37.760 | That's a very interesting finding, but it is in mice.

00:14:41.200 | However, another paper,

00:14:44.440 | "Eye Movement Intervention Enhances Extinction

00:14:46.680 | via Amygdala Deactivation,"

00:14:49.080 | was published in the Journal of Neuroscience,

00:14:51.820 | a strong journal, and shows that, again,

00:14:55.260 | these eye movements, these lateral eye movements

00:14:57.320 | from side to side reduce activity levels

00:15:00.780 | in this fear/threat/anxiety center in the brain,

00:15:04.760 | the amygdala.

00:15:05.600 | Now, those are eye movements.

00:15:08.720 | They didn't specifically look at forward ambulation,

00:15:11.680 | and yet other papers have looked at forward ambulation,

00:15:13.960 | and we know that forward ambulation, walking forward,

00:15:16.840 | generates the sorts of eye movements that cause optic flow

00:15:21.480 | and reductions in amygdala activation.

00:15:24.160 | So for me, this process of taking a walk each morning

00:15:26.920 | isn't about exercise.

00:15:28.580 | It's not about burning calories.

00:15:30.040 | It's not about any of that.

00:15:31.540 | It's really about getting into optic flow

00:15:34.440 | and reducing the levels of amygdala activation.

00:15:38.120 | Now, I don't have anxiety.

00:15:40.920 | At least I don't have chronic anxiety

00:15:42.580 | or generalized anxiety.

00:15:44.100 | I tend to have a lot of energy,

00:15:45.560 | but at these points in the morning, I'm not very energetic.

00:15:48.580 | Sometimes I'm sort of shuffling more than I'm walking,

00:15:51.040 | in fact, and Costello is almost always shuffling,

00:15:53.340 | and I'm almost always trying to drag him

00:15:54.960 | first thing in the morning,

00:15:56.520 | but that walk is a particularly important protocol each day

00:16:00.020 | because it really serves to push my neurology

00:16:03.720 | in the direction that I'd like it to go,

00:16:05.340 | which is alert but not anxious,

00:16:08.320 | and it's kind of a fine line sometimes,

00:16:09.840 | especially as events surface throughout the day,

00:16:12.320 | emails come in, text messages come in,

00:16:14.680 | get bombarded with a number of things.

00:16:16.260 | I want to be alert and responsive.

00:16:18.900 | I want to be able to focus,

00:16:20.000 | but I don't want to feel anxious or reactive to these things.

00:16:24.640 | So the forward ambulation and this optic flow

00:16:28.260 | is the way that I ensure, based on quality peer review data,

00:16:32.280 | that my amygdala activation is slightly suppressed.

00:16:35.440 | Now, at the same time, I also want the alertness.

00:16:38.540 | I want alert and focused.

00:16:40.160 | I don't just want to be sleepy or super relaxed.

00:16:44.020 | I want to have a high degree of focus and alertness

00:16:46.620 | because I'm soon going to move into a bout of work.

00:16:50.120 | I need to lean into the day.

00:16:51.980 | So in order to do that,

00:16:53.460 | I make sure that the walking is done outdoors.

00:16:57.960 | That might be sort of a duh,

00:16:59.440 | but many people get up and start moving around their house,

00:17:01.440 | their apartment, and they don't go anywhere,

00:17:03.360 | and just walking around inside,

00:17:05.640 | it will generate some optic flow,

00:17:07.320 | but nothing like the sort of optic flow

00:17:09.080 | that you can generate in larger environments,

00:17:11.660 | like outdoors environments.

00:17:13.240 | If you can't get outdoors,

00:17:14.320 | doing it indoors is perfectly fine,

00:17:16.720 | but it's not going to have the same magnitude

00:17:19.120 | of positive effect.

00:17:20.840 | Now, in order to get the alertness,

00:17:22.600 | I do it outdoors because I also want sunlight in my eyes.

00:17:25.840 | I know many of you have heard me talk about this ad nauseum

00:17:28.880 | on various podcasts and this podcast,

00:17:31.300 | but getting sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning

00:17:35.640 | is absolutely vital to mental and physical health.

00:17:38.960 | It is perhaps the most important thing

00:17:40.940 | that any and all of us can and should do

00:17:43.360 | in order to promote metabolic wellbeing,

00:17:46.480 | promote the positive functioning of your hormone system,

00:17:49.500 | get your mental health steering in the right direction.

00:17:52.840 | There are a number of reasons for this,

00:17:54.120 | but before I get into those reasons,

00:17:56.780 | let me just emphasize what the protocol is.

00:17:59.560 | The protocol is get outdoors,

00:18:02.200 | ideally with no sunglasses if you can do that safely,

00:18:04.940 | even if there's cloud cover.

00:18:06.760 | More photons, light information are coming through that

00:18:08.960 | cloud cover than would be coming

00:18:10.280 | from a very bright indoor bulb.

00:18:12.720 | So getting outdoors is absolutely key.

00:18:14.540 | How long should you do this?

00:18:15.920 | It's going to depend on the brightness of the environment.

00:18:17.920 | It's going to depend on a number of different factors.

00:18:20.520 | Two minutes would be a minimum.

00:18:22.600 | 10 minutes would be even better.

00:18:24.560 | And if you can, 30 minutes would be fantastic.

00:18:28.440 | Now it's a very bright day or you live in a place

00:18:31.400 | where there's bright sunlight, clear day on a snow field,

00:18:33.960 | you would only need something like 60 seconds,

00:18:36.220 | but most people aren't living in those sorts of conditions.

00:18:39.360 | So getting outside for a 10 minute walk

00:18:41.280 | or a 15 minute walk will basically ensure

00:18:44.600 | that you're getting adequate stimulation

00:18:46.200 | of these neurons in the eye that are called

00:18:47.800 | the melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.

00:18:50.680 | I know that's a mouthful.

00:18:51.820 | These are neurons that don't care about shapes of objects

00:18:54.080 | or the motion of objects.

00:18:55.440 | These are neurons that convey to the brain

00:18:58.120 | that it's daytime and it's time to be alert.

00:19:00.600 | And it sets in motion a huge number of biological cascades

00:19:04.600 | within every cell and organ of your body,

00:19:07.100 | from your liver to your gut, to your heart, to your brain.

00:19:09.660 | It really sets things down the right path.

00:19:11.820 | Early in the day, we experience a natural and healthy bump

00:19:17.600 | in a hormone called cortisol.

00:19:19.360 | Cortisol comes from the amygdala.

00:19:21.740 | That cortisol, as I mentioned, is healthy and normal

00:19:24.140 | and promotes wakefulness.

00:19:25.920 | It actually promotes a healthy immune system.

00:19:28.760 | So I know you've heard that stress and cortisol

00:19:30.720 | disrupt the immune system,

00:19:31.720 | but not the short little pulse of cortisol

00:19:34.280 | that you get each morning.

00:19:35.560 | It's very important that that pulse of cortisol

00:19:38.320 | arrive early in the day.

00:19:40.140 | I want to emphasize this again.

00:19:42.440 | It's very important that that pulse of cortisol

00:19:44.680 | arrive early in the day.

00:19:46.360 | And that pulse of cortisol is going to happen

00:19:48.400 | once every 24 hours, no matter what.

00:19:51.520 | It's going to happen and you get to time it.

00:19:53.440 | How do you time it?

00:19:54.600 | Primarily by when you view bright sunlight

00:19:57.920 | or bright light of another kind.

00:20:00.280 | And we'll talk about that in a moment.

00:20:01.960 | So you want that cortisol pushed early.

00:20:04.300 | If you wake up before the sun comes out,

00:20:07.140 | it's fine to turn on artificial lights,

00:20:09.080 | but then you would want to get outside as soon as you can

00:20:12.000 | to get this natural light stimulation of your eyes.

00:20:15.920 | And it does have to be to your eyes.

00:20:17.680 | Just to really drill down into the details for a moment.

00:20:21.480 | You don't want to stare directly at the sun

00:20:24.080 | or any light that's so bright that it feels painful.

00:20:26.460 | If you feel like you have to close your eyes or blink,

00:20:29.360 | please do, you don't want to damage your retinas.

00:20:32.560 | The point here is to get the sunlight indirectly.

00:20:35.880 | It's going to essentially be scattered everywhere

00:20:38.760 | through the cloud cover.

00:20:40.040 | But you know from looking at a flashlight

00:20:43.400 | directly into that flashlight versus looking at the beam

00:20:45.720 | that flashlight generates on the ground,

00:20:47.960 | that if you're standing in the shade,

00:20:50.240 | you're going to get less of that sunlight than you are

00:20:52.400 | if you're out in an open field.

00:20:54.560 | So this is why the time outside it's going to need to vary

00:20:57.520 | depending on your particular environment.

00:21:00.080 | But do your best to do this every day.

00:21:01.960 | If you miss a day, no big deal,

00:21:03.200 | but try not to miss more than one day.

00:21:06.400 | Otherwise your mental and physical health

00:21:08.580 | will start to suffer.

00:21:10.120 | And doing this each day costs nothing, it's just time.

00:21:13.000 | You can combine it with the forward ambulation with the walk

00:21:15.920 | and the optic flow that I talked about before.

00:21:17.840 | And that's what I do each morning

00:21:19.840 | to generate a sense of alertness in my body

00:21:22.600 | and brain to generate a sense of calm yet alert.

00:21:26.920 | And that's also what I do with Costello, with my bulldog.

00:21:30.080 | People have asked me,

00:21:30.920 | do these same mechanisms apply to animals?

00:21:33.480 | Well, the reality is many of these mechanisms

00:21:36.240 | were actually discovered in animals

00:21:38.200 | and then were tested in humans

00:21:40.320 | and verified that they also exist in humans.

00:21:42.720 | Not always, sometimes it was the reverse

00:21:44.720 | where they were tested first in humans

00:21:46.440 | and then brought to animals.

00:21:48.120 | But indeed your dog, your horse,

00:21:51.220 | I don't know what other animals are out there,

00:21:54.320 | they need this.

00:21:55.520 | Now, if you have a hamster or a nocturnal animal,

00:21:58.560 | the reason why they like to run on their wheels at night

00:22:00.840 | is because they're nocturnal,

00:22:02.360 | they don't like being in the light.

00:22:03.440 | Light actually causes them to freeze, right?

00:22:05.900 | Actually, if you are into aquaria, you like fish,

00:22:09.280 | they always say don't overfeed your fish,

00:22:11.200 | you'll kill the fish, that's true.

00:22:12.440 | But guess what the fastest way to kill a fish is?

00:22:14.800 | To keep the lights on 24 hours a day.

00:22:17.020 | They also need circadian rhythms, these 24 hour rhythms.

00:22:21.280 | So we'll do an entire month at some point about pet health,

00:22:24.700 | but meanwhile, get that morning sunlight.

00:22:27.740 | So now we have our first protocol,

00:22:29.500 | which is to write down the time of day that you wake up.

00:22:31.400 | The second protocol is to take a walk

00:22:34.080 | first thing in the morning.

00:22:35.240 | And the third protocol is woven in with that walk,

00:22:38.400 | at least for me, which is to get that sunlight exposure.

00:22:43.320 | Now, if you can't get sunlight exposure,

00:22:44.920 | you absolutely can't.

00:22:46.800 | I don't necessarily recommend

00:22:48.260 | buying one of these dawn alarm lights.

00:22:50.860 | And I'm sorry to say this,

00:22:53.160 | but they're just vastly overpriced

00:22:55.840 | relative to what they are.

00:22:56.740 | They're basically a bright LED.

00:22:58.700 | I instead use, I have a pad that's a 930 lux light pad.

00:23:03.000 | I think it was designed for drawing.

00:23:05.140 | Those are available at a fraction of the cost

00:23:07.700 | that a morning light simulator would provide,

00:23:11.360 | and yet it's really bright enough, at least for me.

00:23:14.540 | I tend to put it on my desk while I work each morning.

00:23:17.620 | So here's a principle that you can leverage.

00:23:20.920 | If you want to be alert, view bright lights

00:23:23.540 | and make those lights above you or in front of you.

00:23:27.200 | If you want to go to sleep soon

00:23:29.040 | or you don't want to be awake for whatever reason,

00:23:32.080 | try and eliminate your exposure to light.

00:23:33.980 | And this is, again,

00:23:34.920 | is not about exposure of the skin to light.

00:23:37.960 | This is about exposure of your eyes,

00:23:39.840 | of your neural retinas to light.

00:23:42.200 | For those of you that are concerned about blue light,

00:23:44.320 | I want to emphasize that blue light

00:23:46.840 | is precisely the wavelength of light

00:23:48.620 | that is optimal for stimulating these neurons in your eye,

00:23:51.620 | which set your circadian rhythms properly.

00:23:53.960 | So you don't want to shield yourself from blue light

00:23:56.740 | early in the day or throughout the day

00:23:58.560 | or anytime you want to be awake.

00:24:00.760 | In fact, that could have a number

00:24:01.980 | of detrimental consequences.

00:24:03.900 | Fortunately, all those consequences are going to be reversible

00:24:06.720 | after a short period of time of making sure

00:24:08.840 | that you don't wear your blue blockers during the day.

00:24:10.740 | Please, the time to wear blue blockers, if you do,

00:24:13.900 | is at night and in the evening

00:24:16.640 | when you're headed towards sleep.

00:24:18.460 | My colleague, Samir Hattar,

00:24:20.280 | who is head of the chronobiology unit

00:24:22.180 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health,

00:24:24.380 | has spoken about this before on my Instagram.

00:24:27.160 | We held an Instagram Live and I said,

00:24:28.720 | "Samir, what do you think about blue blockers?"

00:24:30.900 | And he said, "I don't think that's a good idea at all

00:24:33.400 | "unless it's really late at night

00:24:34.900 | "and you're in a bright environment

00:24:36.460 | "and you're trying to limit the amount of bright light

00:24:38.620 | "that impacts the eyes."

00:24:40.060 | Eliminating specific wavelengths of light,

00:24:43.680 | in Samir's opinion, and also in my opinion,

00:24:46.500 | is not a natural thing for the visual system

00:24:49.280 | and the brain to experience.

00:24:50.840 | Some people get headaches while they work on the computer

00:24:53.960 | all day or staring at screens,

00:24:55.880 | and so they get blue blockers thinking

00:24:57.900 | that's going to protect them from their headaches.

00:25:00.300 | However, any protection that you get from headaches

00:25:03.540 | from blue blockers is going to be minimal

00:25:05.960 | in comparison to what's really going on there,

00:25:08.440 | which is that people are viewing devices

00:25:10.300 | and screens up close for too many hours

00:25:12.960 | throughout the 24-hour cycle.

00:25:15.880 | A better remedy would be to step away from that computer

00:25:18.880 | from time to time and to make sure

00:25:20.480 | that you can look far off into the distance,

00:25:22.260 | ideally a distance longer than 20 feet,

00:25:24.520 | like view a horizon, go out on a balcony,

00:25:26.560 | things of that sort, take a walk around,

00:25:28.200 | get into optic flow.

00:25:29.500 | So if you're into blue blockers,

00:25:32.220 | make sure you're only wearing them

00:25:33.500 | in the late evening and at night.

00:25:35.520 | I personally don't wear blue blockers at all.

00:25:37.360 | I prefer to just control my light viewing behavior

00:25:39.920 | by doing this.

00:25:41.040 | I do the other form of circadian control,

00:25:43.320 | which is to dim the lights.

00:25:45.200 | And I do that because dimming the lights

00:25:47.800 | and setting them lower in the environment

00:25:50.280 | sets up the brain and body for sleep much better

00:25:52.640 | than simply just wearing some blue blockers, excuse me.

00:25:56.560 | And please know if you do wear blue blockers,

00:25:59.120 | that if the light in your environment is bright enough,

00:26:01.880 | it doesn't matter if you're blocking out the blues.

00:26:04.180 | These cells in the eye will respond

00:26:05.860 | to other wavelengths of light.

00:26:07.880 | So I have no vendetta against the blue blockers.

00:26:10.840 | And I fully expect the blue blockinistas to come after me

00:26:13.760 | with, I guess, blue blockers.

00:26:15.680 | But as you do that, please understand

00:26:18.200 | that the biology points in the direction

00:26:20.000 | of get a lot of bright light throughout the day,

00:26:21.880 | including blue light, and at night,

00:26:23.480 | just limit the total amount of overall light

00:26:25.580 | that you're exposed to, including from screens.

00:26:27.760 | So then Costello and I get back from our walk.

00:26:30.080 | Sometimes that walk was 10 minutes.

00:26:31.520 | Sometimes it was 60 minutes,

00:26:33.080 | depending on how slowly Costello was walking that day.

00:26:36.060 | Indeed, many mornings,

00:26:37.800 | I'm the guy carrying his bulldog back up the hill.

00:26:40.600 | My neighbors know me so well.

00:26:41.820 | They know Costello so well that they've since stopped

00:26:44.680 | pulling over and asking if the dog is okay.

00:26:47.100 | Sometimes they'll ask if I'm okay.

00:26:48.800 | Nonetheless, we get back.

00:26:52.200 | I give him his food.

00:26:53.420 | I give him his water.

00:26:55.220 | And I give me my water.

00:26:57.000 | I'm a big believer based on quality peer review data

00:27:01.600 | that hydration is essential for mental performance.

00:27:05.240 | Now, I confess, I don't really like drinking big glasses

00:27:08.340 | or big jugs of water first thing in the morning.

00:27:10.140 | I don't know why, but my thirst doesn't tend

00:27:11.840 | to kick in first thing.

00:27:13.160 | You may be different.

00:27:14.200 | Either way, I force myself essentially to drink

00:27:18.520 | at least 16 and most days, 32 ounces of water.

00:27:23.240 | I also put a little bit of sea salt in the water.

00:27:25.860 | As many of you know, neurons require ionic flow.

00:27:29.600 | What that means is neurons need sodium,

00:27:32.240 | they need magnesium, and they need potassium

00:27:34.060 | in order to function.

00:27:35.800 | We do tend to get dehydrated at night,

00:27:38.980 | even if the day is not very hot.

00:27:40.800 | I try and top off or I try and make sure

00:27:44.000 | that I'm hydrated early in the day before I begin any work.

00:27:47.520 | So I make myself drink this water

00:27:50.440 | with a little bit of sea salt.

00:27:51.640 | How much sea salt?

00:27:52.480 | If you really want to get detailed,

00:27:53.880 | I suppose it's about half a teaspoon.

00:27:55.660 | It's not much.

00:27:57.200 | That's what I do.

00:27:58.440 | And I drink that more or less room temperature.

00:28:01.140 | I find that drinking really cold water

00:28:02.720 | first thing in the day kind of like cramps up my insides.

00:28:05.360 | So I don't do that.

00:28:07.240 | At that point, I start thinking about

00:28:09.300 | and fantasizing about and craving caffeine,

00:28:11.840 | but I don't drink that caffeine yet.

00:28:14.320 | I purposely delay my caffeine intake

00:28:17.620 | to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up.

00:28:21.380 | Of course, I know when I wake up because I wrote it down,

00:28:23.300 | although it's pretty easy to commit to memory.

00:28:26.360 | The reason I delay caffeine is because one of the factors

00:28:30.240 | that induces a sense of sleepiness

00:28:32.580 | is the buildup of adenosine,

00:28:34.920 | or as some people call it adenosine in our system.

00:28:39.640 | The buildup of adenosine accumulates

00:28:42.780 | the longer we are awake.

00:28:44.660 | So when I wake up in the morning,

00:28:46.200 | when you wake up in the morning,

00:28:47.560 | your adenosine levels are likely to be very low.

00:28:51.440 | However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker.

00:28:55.840 | It's actually a competitive antagonist for you aficionados.

00:28:58.640 | It sort of parks in the receptor

00:29:00.560 | that adenosine normally would park at

00:29:03.120 | and prevents adenosine from acting on that receptor.

00:29:06.320 | That's why you feel more alert

00:29:07.580 | because it's essentially blocking the effect

00:29:10.400 | of this sleepiness factor that we all create

00:29:13.020 | called adenosine.

00:29:13.940 | The reason for delaying caffeine intake

00:29:17.000 | 90 minutes to two hours after waking

00:29:19.160 | is I want to make sure that I don't have a late afternoon

00:29:23.660 | or even early afternoon crash from caffeine.

00:29:26.920 | One of the best ways to ensure a caffeine crash

00:29:30.380 | is to drink a bunch of caffeine,

00:29:32.360 | block all those adenosine receptors,

00:29:34.160 | and then by early or late afternoon,

00:29:36.800 | when that caffeine starts to wear off

00:29:38.720 | and gets dislodged from the receptors,

00:29:40.760 | a lower level of adenosine

00:29:43.280 | is able to create a greater level of sleepiness.

00:29:46.980 | It took me years to figure this out.

00:29:48.560 | I used to wake up and I'd think,

00:29:50.020 | oh, I don't want to drink caffeine too close to bedtime,

00:29:51.960 | so I'm going to start drinking my caffeine really early.

00:29:54.060 | I let my cortisol naturally come up in the morning.

00:29:57.240 | I avoid drinking caffeine

00:29:59.040 | until about 90 minutes or two hours after waking.

00:30:02.800 | And when I do that,

00:30:03.760 | I find that I don't experience the afternoon crash.

00:30:07.720 | At least I don't experience that crash

00:30:09.600 | unless I do something foolish

00:30:11.020 | like ingest far too much food at lunch

00:30:13.160 | or I stay up all night the night before.

00:30:15.640 | But provided I don't do anything foolish like that,

00:30:17.980 | delaying caffeine at 90 minutes to two hours

00:30:20.400 | optimizes this relationship between adenosine

00:30:23.120 | and wakefulness and sleepiness

00:30:24.920 | in a way that really provides a nice consistent arc

00:30:28.680 | of energy throughout the day

00:30:30.160 | and brings energy down as I'm headed toward sleep

00:30:33.200 | and falling asleep.

00:30:34.760 | My primary objective early in the day

00:30:36.960 | is to get into a mode of being focused yet alert

00:30:39.920 | so that I can get work done.

00:30:41.320 | I found that the best way for me to achieve that state

00:30:45.360 | is through fasting.

00:30:46.860 | So I don't eat anything until about 11 a.m. or 12 noon.

00:30:51.480 | I'm not absolutely religious about it.

00:30:53.440 | There are days when I'll have a few Brazil nuts

00:30:55.440 | or a spoonful or three of almond butter, for instance,

00:30:59.360 | but most days I'm not doing that.

00:31:01.400 | I'm just not eating anything.

00:31:03.300 | I'm drinking some caffeine.

00:31:05.260 | Caffeine source for me is yerba mate, guayusa tea.

00:31:08.560 | Those are my preferred sources.

00:31:09.960 | I tend to avoid coffee these days.

00:31:11.680 | Occasionally I'll have a cup,

00:31:12.680 | but most often I stick to the teas.

00:31:15.740 | I drink water as much as I feel I need to and want to,

00:31:19.720 | and I also drink my athletic greens,

00:31:21.560 | which is compatible at least for me with fasting.

00:31:24.960 | Let's talk about why fasting works

00:31:27.720 | to create this heightened state of alertness

00:31:30.120 | yet calm brain state.

00:31:31.580 | Fasting increases levels of adrenaline,

00:31:35.760 | also called epinephrine in the brain and body.

00:31:38.200 | And when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline

00:31:40.720 | are increased, we learn better, we can focus better.

00:31:43.960 | There's terrific data supporting that.

00:31:46.440 | You don't want epinephrine, aka adrenaline, too high.

00:31:51.240 | That feels like stress and panic.

00:31:53.240 | You get jittery, you can't focus.

00:31:55.300 | But in its optimal range,

00:31:57.440 | adrenaline really provides a heightened sense of focus

00:32:00.840 | and the ability to encode,

00:32:02.800 | meaning bring in and retain, remember information.

00:32:06.240 | And so since my job is mainly a cerebral one

00:32:08.960 | where I'm writing grants and working on papers, et cetera,

00:32:11.440 | I fast in the early part of the day.

00:32:13.920 | I mentioned ingesting things like guayusa or yerba mate,

00:32:17.840 | or in my case, athletic greens.

00:32:20.520 | Many people ask, in fact,

00:32:21.800 | there's a whole community and discussion boards, et cetera,

00:32:24.600 | and YouTube comments on the internet

00:32:26.400 | about what breaks a fast and what doesn't.

00:32:29.440 | The fact of the matter is

00:32:30.600 | that's going to be highly individual

00:32:32.400 | because it's going to depend

00:32:34.340 | on how sensitive your blood sugar is.

00:32:37.520 | And more accurately, it's going to depend

00:32:39.480 | on things like your insulin sensitivity.

00:32:41.760 | So for instance,

00:32:43.440 | if you're somebody who gets up in the morning,

00:32:45.560 | hydrates and goes out for a six mile run,

00:32:48.900 | you could probably eat a jar of almond butter

00:32:52.720 | and still be what's called fat fasted.

00:32:55.000 | Your insulin levels will still be very low

00:32:56.900 | because even though that is a large volume of almond butter,

00:32:59.660 | even to me and Costello,

00:33:02.300 | that large number of calories come from a source

00:33:05.360 | that doesn't increase blood sugar very much

00:33:07.520 | and insulin very much.

00:33:09.540 | Now, I'm not suggesting you do that,

00:33:11.460 | but what I just described is a vastly different situation

00:33:14.260 | than somebody that ate their last meal at 2 a.m.

00:33:17.060 | and that meal was essentially a feast.

00:33:19.580 | And for that person,

00:33:21.280 | fasting until 10 or 11 a.m.,

00:33:25.040 | their blood sugar might still actually be pretty high

00:33:27.800 | or even low-ish such that they might eat one almond

00:33:30.680 | and it would bump them out of fasting.

00:33:32.680 | So you get the idea.

00:33:33.520 | It's going to depend on your recent eating history,

00:33:36.520 | your blood sugar history,

00:33:38.080 | your glycogen stores, et cetera.

00:33:40.280 | So if anyone tells you that breaks a fast or that doesn't,

00:33:43.920 | that's kind of silly.

00:33:44.740 | Would one grain of sugar break your fast?

00:33:46.760 | No.

00:33:47.600 | Would an entire tablespoon of sugar break your fast?

00:33:49.720 | Yes.

00:33:50.560 | You'll get a big blip in blood sugar and insulin from that.

00:33:53.540 | However, how long that lasts,

00:33:55.160 | how long it breaks your fast

00:33:56.540 | will depend on how glycogen depleted you are

00:33:59.080 | and a number of other factors.

00:34:00.780 | So for me, I just keep it fairly simple.

00:34:03.200 | I ingest water, caffeine from yerba mate and guayusa,

00:34:07.120 | and I drink my athletic greens with some lemon juice in it.

00:34:09.660 | That constitutes my fasting.

00:34:12.940 | And there are days when I do all those things.

00:34:15.420 | There are days when I do none of those things.

00:34:17.100 | Although most days,

00:34:18.060 | I would say about 355 days out of the year,

00:34:21.840 | I'm ingesting water, caffeine, and athletic greens

00:34:25.780 | during this period of fasting early in the day.

00:34:27.720 | And that's the period of time when I do my work.

00:34:30.440 | One interesting fact about yerba mate and guayusa teas

00:34:33.500 | is that they increase release of something called GLP-1.

00:34:36.860 | GLP-1 is related to glucagon.

00:34:40.000 | Glucagon is a hormone that you can sort of think about

00:34:42.920 | as opposite to insulin and blood sugar.

00:34:45.200 | It's more complex than that,

00:34:46.360 | but GLP-1 has a couple of positive properties.

00:34:50.240 | One is it increases lipolysis

00:34:52.200 | and mobilization of body fat stores, so burning of fat.

00:34:55.780 | In fact, there are now a number of clinical trials

00:34:58.600 | that are achieving good success,

00:34:59.820 | and there are drugs out there,

00:35:01.100 | only available by prescription, which mimic GLP-1

00:35:04.620 | and are being used to treat, quite successfully,

00:35:07.280 | certain types of diabetes and obesity.

00:35:10.740 | Now, I'm not diabetic,

00:35:11.680 | nor am I trying to shed a ton of body fat,

00:35:13.920 | but I figure as long as I'm fasting,

00:35:16.800 | and as long as I like yerba mate and guayusa,

00:35:19.160 | which I do, they're delicious,

00:35:20.760 | I'll tell you which type I use in a moment,

00:35:23.300 | I might as well increase my GLP-1

00:35:25.300 | because it's probably not as good as getting out

00:35:27.400 | and doing some cardio work.

00:35:28.720 | But nonetheless, if I'm fasted,

00:35:30.640 | increasing GLP-1 in my system,

00:35:32.560 | I'm going to be alert from the caffeine,

00:35:34.120 | the adrenaline, et cetera,

00:35:35.800 | and I'm going to be burning body fat while I'm doing my work.

00:35:38.920 | So for me, it's just an efficient biochemically rational,

00:35:42.320 | or I should say grounded in quality biochemistry

00:35:45.240 | sort of approach.

00:35:47.120 | Yerba mate comes in a lot of different forms.

00:35:49.440 | There are a lot of different brands out there, et cetera.

00:35:52.120 | I don't have any relationship whatsoever

00:35:54.840 | in a business sense to any of these brands.

00:35:57.360 | Some of them are very smoky.

00:36:00.740 | I, just because of something in my genetic makeup,

00:36:03.760 | or I don't know, maybe it was some sort

00:36:05.320 | of Y chromosome associated lesion early in life,

00:36:08.480 | but I don't like smoky flavors.

00:36:11.040 | So I'm not a Gouda cheese guy.

00:36:13.200 | I don't like smoky stuff.

00:36:14.420 | You may love it, but I tend to avoid smoky tasting mate's.

00:36:19.160 | Instead, there's a particular brand

00:36:21.020 | that I just found on the internet called Anna Park.

00:36:23.460 | I don't know Anna.

00:36:24.300 | I don't know if she has a park,

00:36:25.320 | and I certainly don't know what Anna Park is,

00:36:27.080 | but for me, that's the best tasting Yerba mate.

00:36:29.200 | Again, I don't have any relationship to them,

00:36:32.320 | but it's affordable in the context of Yerba mate,

00:36:35.920 | and it's the one that I use.

00:36:37.560 | And I should mention along the lines of affordability

00:36:39.700 | and GLP-1 is there's a nice feature of Yerba mate,

00:36:43.800 | which is if you put it in a filter or a metal strainer

00:36:47.160 | and you pour hot water over it and then drink it,

00:36:51.360 | keep the leaves.

00:36:53.200 | The Yerba mate leaves can be used over and over again.

00:36:55.260 | It seems that the GLP-1 stimulating aspects of mate

00:36:59.200 | actually are enhanced with subsequent pour overs.

00:37:02.640 | So there's something interesting about these teas

00:37:04.640 | that my tea aficionado friends tell me allows the tea

00:37:08.600 | to release more of some of the beneficial compounds

00:37:11.900 | by reusing the tea leaves.

00:37:13.640 | Now, eventually it'll grow mold

00:37:14.900 | and other sorts of disgusting things.

00:37:17.040 | You don't really want to run that experiment.

00:37:18.460 | I would say you can use it for a day or two

00:37:21.400 | before it starts to go bad,

00:37:22.720 | but that's a feature that will extend the life

00:37:24.540 | of whatever Yerba mate you happen to use

00:37:27.040 | if you decide to use it, and that's certainly what I do.

00:37:29.840 | Next, I want to talk about what I'm doing

00:37:31.520 | while I'm drinking all this Yerba mate,

00:37:33.080 | 'cause I'm not just sitting there thinking about

00:37:34.600 | all the GLP-1 circulating in my system.

00:37:37.080 | I'm working.

00:37:38.560 | A couple of things for optimizing workspace

00:37:40.920 | that are grounded in neuroscience and physiology.

00:37:44.440 | I've talked before about the fact that

00:37:46.820 | when our eyes are directed upward,

00:37:48.920 | literally when our eyelids are open, no surprise there,

00:37:51.800 | and when our eyes are directed upward,

00:37:54.760 | it creates a state of heightened alertness.

00:37:57.720 | And this has a relationship to the brainstem neurons

00:38:00.920 | that create alertness and their control

00:38:05.360 | over the muscles of the eye and, believe it or not,

00:38:07.320 | the eyelids.

00:38:08.920 | Now, it's not the case that if you are absolutely exhausted

00:38:11.980 | and you need to feel more alert,

00:38:13.560 | that looking upward is going to make you feel wide awake,

00:38:17.040 | although it will help support your levels of alertness.

00:38:19.960 | The point here is that you can optimize your workstation

00:38:24.920 | in a physical way that leverages this aspect

00:38:28.600 | of the visual system and your level of alertness.

00:38:30.720 | Since most of us want to be awake while we're working,

00:38:34.360 | try and position your screen or your tablet,

00:38:37.520 | whatever device you happen to be working on,

00:38:39.960 | at least at eye level and ideally slightly higher.

00:38:44.060 | If you think about it, most people are not doing this.

00:38:46.120 | Most people are looking down at their computer or tablet

00:38:48.740 | or are angling their eyes at their screen

00:38:51.800 | at about 30 degrees.

00:38:53.200 | That is not going to support heightened states of alertness

00:38:56.920 | and optimal attention.

00:38:58.480 | In fact, the opposite relationship between eye position

00:39:02.360 | and alertness is also true.

00:39:03.560 | When we look down, when our eyelids are slightly closed,

00:39:07.100 | it tends to decrease our levels of alertness

00:39:09.160 | and increase our levels of sleepiness.

00:39:11.240 | I really want to emphasize this,

00:39:12.600 | that there's a bi-directional or reciprocal relationship

00:39:15.680 | between the brainstem areas that control alertness

00:39:19.000 | and the eyes, meaning how alert you are controls

00:39:21.280 | how open or closed your eyes are, no surprise there,

00:39:24.080 | but also that how open and upward directed your eyes are

00:39:28.540 | will increase your levels of alertness.

00:39:30.780 | And if your eyes are pointed downward

00:39:32.320 | and your eyelids are hooded, like they're slowly closing,

00:39:36.780 | like Costello's always are, you'll feel more sleepy,

00:39:40.400 | especially if you're somebody who tends to have

00:39:42.560 | that mid-morning sleepiness or mid-morning crash.

00:39:45.760 | So what I do is I have a standing desk,

00:39:47.840 | but I also prop the computer up

00:39:50.080 | such that it's at least at eye level.

00:39:52.760 | And I haven't figured out yet how to develop a workstation

00:39:55.920 | where the computer is above me.

00:39:58.180 | I think the only way to really do that

00:39:59.780 | is actually to tilt one's body back,

00:40:01.900 | but actually that's not a good idea either.

00:40:04.320 | They have done studies recording from areas of the brain

00:40:08.160 | associated with alertness, areas like locus coeruleus

00:40:10.720 | and the so-called reticular activating system.

00:40:12.840 | They found is that depending on how reclined you are

00:40:15.880 | or upright you are, you will decrease with reclining

00:40:19.560 | and increase with sitting forward your levels of alertness.

00:40:23.780 | So body posture and whether or not you're upright

00:40:26.920 | or reclining will impact your levels of alertness

00:40:30.800 | in the predictable ways.

00:40:32.820 | And where you position your eyes,

00:40:34.660 | whether or not your eyes are upright, so to speak,

00:40:37.080 | looking up or directly forward or looking down

00:40:40.260 | will dictate whether or not you are feeling more alert

00:40:43.900 | or more sleepy respectively.

00:40:45.980 | So try and arrange a workstation or a position of your body

00:40:50.160 | and your chair or your standing desk, whatever it is,

00:40:52.660 | that allows you to work with a heightened state

00:40:54.900 | of alertness.

00:40:56.360 | This is really, really key for me

00:40:58.680 | because I found that when I would sit down,

00:41:00.440 | not only would my hip flexors start to get sore,

00:41:03.120 | I'd feel tight in the back, et cetera,

00:41:05.080 | but if I was staring down at my screen all day

00:41:08.640 | or even for short periods of the day,

00:41:10.080 | I would start to feel sleepy

00:41:11.440 | and I couldn't figure out what was going on.

00:41:12.680 | I also thought maybe I needed glasses.

00:41:14.080 | I do wear readers at night, but it was really a problem.

00:41:17.280 | And simply by getting the screen directly in front of me

00:41:20.200 | at eye level, it's been completely transformative.

00:41:23.220 | So we're now at the description of my day

00:41:26.440 | and these protocols in which I would do

00:41:28.280 | a 90-minute bout of work.

00:41:30.940 | Now, why 90 minutes?

00:41:32.140 | Well, the brain is going through these 90 minutes,

00:41:35.040 | so-called ultradian cycles

00:41:36.500 | throughout the entire day and night.

00:41:38.200 | Every 90 minutes, we shift over from being very alert

00:41:42.360 | to being less alert and then back to alert again.

00:41:44.100 | Here's how it works.

00:41:45.640 | At the start of one of these 90-minute ultradian cycles,

00:41:49.320 | my brain is not quite engaged

00:41:52.300 | in whatever it is I'm trying to do.

00:41:53.880 | Oftentimes, I have things jumping into my mind.

00:41:56.900 | I've got distractions, et cetera.

00:41:58.860 | I'll talk about how to deal with those distractions

00:42:00.480 | in a moment, but I set a timer for 90 minutes

00:42:05.260 | and I try and get a strong bout of work done

00:42:08.500 | inside of that 90 minutes with the full understanding

00:42:10.960 | that the entire 90 minutes is not going to be uniform

00:42:13.800 | in terms of my ability of focus.

00:42:15.440 | There will be kind of peaks and valleys within that,

00:42:18.260 | but that 90 minutes is about what the brain can handle

00:42:22.040 | in terms of a dedicated effort for high degree of focus.

00:42:26.320 | Some people can push out a little bit further.

00:42:28.140 | Some people can't handle more than 10 minutes,

00:42:30.280 | but that's what I'm striving toward.

00:42:32.840 | You'd be amazed how much you can get done in 90 minutes

00:42:34.960 | if you are focused.

00:42:35.800 | So how do you increase that focus

00:42:37.240 | and how do you use the timer feature?

00:42:40.060 | Well, you can combine those.

00:42:41.560 | I use a program called Freedom.

00:42:43.280 | It shuts me out of the internet completely.

00:42:46.100 | So that means no checking the markets,

00:42:48.720 | no checking social media, no checking the news,

00:42:54.080 | no checking email, none of that.

00:42:56.340 | I get a dedicated bout of work done.

00:42:59.060 | I confess, I don't allow myself to go to the restroom

00:43:02.300 | in that period of time.

00:43:04.200 | Here's an interesting little tip

00:43:05.480 | that's grounded in physiology.

00:43:07.920 | You have a direct neural connection from your bladder

00:43:11.680 | to your brainstem areas that increase alertness.

00:43:15.300 | This is why when you have to go to the bathroom,

00:43:17.960 | when you have to urinate, it is extremely agitating, right?

00:43:21.640 | It can be very, very agitating.

00:43:23.920 | I'm not encouraging you to get so agitated

00:43:26.980 | by filling your bladder so much

00:43:28.680 | and resisting going to the bathroom

00:43:30.040 | that you are uncomfortable and can't focus.

00:43:32.360 | But I generally will just drink liquids

00:43:35.360 | and work away and work away,

00:43:36.520 | and I won't walk away to go use the bathroom

00:43:38.560 | unless I absolutely have to.

00:43:40.740 | Sort of odd that we're talking about this,

00:43:41.960 | but this is one way in which I've learned

00:43:43.960 | to funnel my attention into whatever it is I'm doing.

00:43:47.400 | Because as you all know,

00:43:48.240 | the moment you sit down to do some serious work

00:43:50.000 | and you flip off the internet,

00:43:51.420 | all of a sudden it's as if the phone has a voice.

00:43:53.680 | It starts calling you.

00:43:54.520 | It's almost as if the restroom has a voice.

00:43:56.980 | But we all are familiar with the fact

00:43:58.900 | that if we are focused on something,

00:44:01.280 | all that just kind of melts away.

00:44:02.800 | So the goal is to get into what I call the tunnel,

00:44:04.940 | to really get into a tunnel of quality work.

00:44:07.600 | The brain loves that state,

00:44:09.620 | but it's very hard for many of us to access.

00:44:12.440 | My phone is absolutely off.

00:44:14.720 | It's not on airplane mode.

00:44:15.880 | It's absolutely off during this time.

00:44:18.640 | If I've been struggling with that,

00:44:20.480 | and I confess, there are times when for whatever reason,

00:44:23.920 | something going on in life,

00:44:25.040 | it's been harder to put away the phone.

00:44:27.080 | I will sometimes put it in my car.

00:44:28.880 | I used to joke that I used to throw it up on the roof

00:44:31.300 | or something like that.

00:44:32.360 | Look, I've done and I suggest people do whatever they need to

00:44:35.400 | in order to self-regulate that activity.

00:44:38.440 | And if you're somebody that feels that you absolutely

00:44:40.660 | need to be on your phone and on the computer

00:44:42.340 | for this work bout or the work that you do,

00:44:45.100 | well, that's a different matter altogether.

00:44:46.440 | This is just simply how I work.

00:44:48.000 | So I will do 90 minutes,

00:44:50.160 | and I do set a timer and I turn on the program freedom,

00:44:52.700 | locks me out of the internet.

00:44:54.640 | If someone rings on the doorbell,

00:44:56.680 | I will often shout not coming to the doorbell,

00:44:59.740 | leave it there.

00:45:00.580 | I mean, unless there's a real emergency,

00:45:02.720 | I'm not going to step away from that work.

00:45:04.800 | I learned how to do this when I was a graduate student

00:45:07.280 | under different conditions where I used to slice brains

00:45:09.600 | on what's called a microtome.

00:45:11.040 | So I used to spend time just cutting very thin slices.

00:45:14.400 | It's like a deli slicer,

00:45:15.440 | but for a brain of various types of brains

00:45:19.200 | and I've sectioned through a lot of brains.

00:45:20.960 | And we had a rule,

00:45:22.040 | which is that when the blade hits the brain,

00:45:26.440 | you don't stop pulling, even though it's very, very slow,

00:45:29.900 | even if a nuclear bomb goes off,

00:45:32.400 | even if a fire alarm goes off.

00:45:33.760 | Now, I don't want anyone burning to a crisp

00:45:35.880 | because they didn't step away from their workflow.

00:45:38.480 | That would be foolish.

00:45:39.320 | But that's the mentality that I've embedded in myself,

00:45:41.920 | that there's nothing more important

00:45:44.640 | than what I'm doing in that 90 minute block.

00:45:46.940 | And that's what works for me.

00:45:47.840 | You can try various other things.

00:45:50.400 | That's what works for me.

00:45:52.040 | In addition, I use low-level white noise.

00:45:55.880 | This is something that is supported

00:45:57.640 | by quality peer-reviewed data.

00:45:59.860 | We covered this on the episode on hearing and balance,

00:46:03.340 | but it turns out that white noise,

00:46:05.560 | which is essentially all frequencies of sound,

00:46:08.120 | or all frequencies of sound that we can perceive,

00:46:11.560 | mixed up kind of randomly, there's no structure to it,

00:46:14.200 | turned on at a low volume,

00:46:16.120 | not with headphones most of the time,

00:46:18.480 | puts the brain into a state

00:46:20.160 | that's optimal for learning and workflow.

00:46:22.700 | And I covered two papers during that episode,

00:46:25.720 | one that showed that indeed,

00:46:27.560 | brain area is involved in attention,

00:46:30.420 | brain area is involved in focus and cognition and memory.

00:46:33.320 | Those are engaged to a greater degree

00:46:36.800 | when there is low levels of white noise

00:46:39.400 | playing in the background.

00:46:40.680 | The other paper that's really interesting did brain imaging

00:46:43.440 | and showed that areas of the brain

00:46:44.700 | that are associated with dopamine release

00:46:47.840 | are increased by low levels of white noise.

00:46:50.600 | Dopamine release is associated not just with pleasure,

00:46:53.640 | but with motivation and craving.

00:46:55.920 | So everything about this 90-minute block

00:46:57.800 | from the low levels of white noise

00:46:59.200 | to the position of my computer, how I'm standing,

00:47:01.880 | where my eyes are positioned,

00:47:02.920 | is geared towards putting me in this tunnel of work.

00:47:05.760 | And I have to say that while it can be a challenge

00:47:07.760 | to try and achieve this state and this tunnel of work,

00:47:10.560 | some days you start to get kind of addicted to it.

00:47:13.480 | It feels really good.

00:47:14.900 | It's like a workout for the mind.

00:47:16.360 | And it is something that as you exit that 90 minutes,

00:47:19.920 | you really feel like you've accomplished a lot

00:47:22.080 | because often you have,

00:47:23.940 | and it just feels deeply satisfying.

00:47:26.020 | And I'm convinced that that's because of the release

00:47:28.340 | of neuromodulators like dopamine

00:47:29.980 | and the norepinephrine that's circulating in your system.

00:47:33.740 | And I want to be clear

00:47:34.760 | that I'm not perfect about this 90 minutes.

00:47:36.820 | Occasionally, I get drawn away.

00:47:38.500 | Occasionally, something will happen

00:47:40.860 | or I'll go use the restroom

00:47:43.120 | or Costello will have a need

00:47:45.180 | or somebody will have a need that I will have to respond to.

00:47:48.220 | But I really try and achieve this

00:47:49.860 | most if not every day that I'm alive

00:47:52.280 | because for me, that work session is kind of holy.

00:47:55.580 | It's where I set up a relationship,

00:47:57.680 | not just between me and the work that I'm doing,

00:48:00.400 | but between me and my ability to control

00:48:03.900 | my own state of mind using these various supports

00:48:06.860 | of the white noise, et cetera.

00:48:08.120 | But really, those supports are peripheral

00:48:10.760 | to the fact that I'm creating this space.

00:48:13.580 | I'm funneling my brain into a state

00:48:16.560 | rather than allowing whatever events

00:48:18.860 | and contexts on social media and elsewhere

00:48:21.340 | might be occurring in the world

00:48:22.460 | that would yank me out of what for me is my purpose

00:48:25.640 | and my mission in life,

00:48:26.520 | which is to do the sorts of work that I do.

00:48:28.420 | There's a powerful way in which you can place the timing

00:48:31.080 | of this 90-minute workout in an optimal way.

00:48:34.400 | You have access to a very important piece of data

00:48:39.260 | that dictates when this bout should start, more or less,

00:48:43.580 | and when it should end.

00:48:44.740 | That piece of data is your temperature minimum.

00:48:48.660 | If you're somebody who wakes up on average at 7 a.m.,

00:48:51.840 | well, then your temperature minimum is 5 a.m.

00:48:54.680 | And you can be reasonably sure,

00:48:57.420 | I won't underscore reasonably,

00:48:58.460 | but you can be reasonably sure that your best work

00:49:01.720 | is going to be done anywhere from four to six hours

00:49:05.580 | after your temperature minimum.

00:49:07.300 | So for me, I tend to wake up around 6.30 a.m.

00:49:09.940 | That means my temperature minimum is at 4.30 a.m.

00:49:12.960 | You can add five hours to that.

00:49:15.060 | So that means that a 90-minute workout could fall at 9.30 a.m.

00:49:19.840 | and it would be fairly optimized.

00:49:22.420 | Or I could do it at 10.30 a.m.

00:49:24.860 | Or I could do it at 8.30 a.m., somewhere in there.

00:49:28.500 | We can't say that it's exactly six hours

00:49:30.700 | after your temperature minimum.

00:49:31.720 | You will find it, however,

00:49:33.220 | there is a precise and best time

00:49:35.940 | for you to do this 90-minute workout.

00:49:38.660 | Whether or not it's five or six hours

00:49:41.020 | after your temperature minimum

00:49:42.060 | is going to vary from person to person.

00:49:44.120 | How do I know this?

00:49:44.960 | How do I know this relationship

00:49:46.120 | between temperature minimum and focused cognition?

00:49:48.900 | Well, temperature minimum defines the trough,

00:49:52.420 | the nadir, as they say, of your temperature

00:49:56.300 | across the 24-hour cycle.

00:49:57.740 | And immediately after that,

00:49:59.520 | your temperature will start to rise.

00:50:01.900 | That temperature rise is actually what triggers

00:50:04.580 | the initial cortisol release that you experience

00:50:07.420 | and wakes you up further.

00:50:08.700 | And then, of course, that sunlight that you're getting

00:50:10.680 | is going to further enhance that healthy release of cortisol.

00:50:14.120 | That cortisol will then provide fuel, if you will,

00:50:17.380 | for that increase in temperature.

00:50:18.840 | And your body will continue to increase in temperature

00:50:21.420 | throughout the day toward the afternoon.

00:50:23.940 | What you're trying to do in this idea

00:50:27.220 | of optimizing this 90-minute workout

00:50:29.740 | to a particular time of day

00:50:30.980 | is catch the portion of the steepest slope

00:50:33.700 | of that temperature rise.

00:50:35.300 | Now, again, you're not walking around

00:50:37.180 | with a thermocouple or a thermometer

00:50:41.100 | in some orifice of your body,

00:50:42.920 | so you don't have accurate information about temperature,

00:50:45.620 | but you can make very good guesses

00:50:48.540 | about when your body temperature is rising fastest

00:50:51.980 | by virtue of that temperature minimum.

00:50:53.540 | So again, just to be clear, it's a 90-minute workout.

00:50:56.540 | That's about what the brain can handle

00:50:58.040 | for a very intense workout.

00:50:59.780 | Do understand, again, that there are going to be portions

00:51:03.080 | of that 90-minute that your brain is flickering

00:51:04.920 | in and out of focus,

00:51:05.820 | other portions where you're going to be entirely focused,

00:51:07.700 | that's entirely normal.

00:51:09.020 | But when to place that 90-minute workout,

00:51:11.300 | when to start it and when to end it,

00:51:13.840 | will depend on that temperature minimum.

00:51:15.780 | So if you're somebody who wakes up at 8 a.m. each morning,

00:51:19.300 | your temperature minimum is 6 a.m.,

00:51:21.180 | chances are you're going to want to start this workout

00:51:24.020 | somewhere around 10 a.m. or 11 a.m.

00:51:28.340 | Now, some people wake up and feel very alert

00:51:31.060 | first thing in the morning.

00:51:31.900 | They can really do their best work

00:51:33.340 | first thing in the morning.

00:51:34.760 | Please, if that's you, continue to do that.

00:51:37.500 | Leverage that time, use that time.

00:51:40.020 | But if you're somebody who struggles to find focus,

00:51:43.380 | definitely let your physiology

00:51:45.380 | and this rise in your body temperature

00:51:47.400 | support your efforts to focus

00:51:49.680 | rather than trying to do your best work at times of day

00:51:53.520 | when your physiology is actually directing your body

00:51:57.460 | and your brain toward defocus

00:51:58.980 | and towards being more lethargic.

00:52:00.420 | It just is setting yourself up for success

00:52:03.940 | when you try and capture this rising phase

00:52:06.100 | of your temperature.

00:52:07.100 | So up until now, we've been emphasizing practices

00:52:10.080 | that allow you to optimize your level of alertness

00:52:12.620 | and your levels of mental focus.

00:52:14.540 | Data going back to the 1990s supports the idea

00:52:20.260 | that physical movement of particular kinds

00:52:23.120 | can support brain health and brain function,

00:52:25.420 | both in the immediate term and in the longterm.

00:52:28.580 | Now, this is at a profound impact

00:52:30.620 | on the field of neuroscience,

00:52:32.360 | but frankly, it's also at a profound impact

00:52:34.360 | on how I structure my day.

00:52:36.140 | So after I've finished a bout of work,

00:52:39.300 | this 90-minute bout of work,

00:52:41.780 | I force myself some days, other days I want to,

00:52:43.940 | but I force myself to do some sort of physical exercise

00:52:47.220 | that is going to be supportive of my brain health

00:52:49.780 | and brain function and organ health

00:52:51.820 | and bodily function in general.

00:52:53.900 | So I just briefly want to touch on

00:52:55.340 | what the structure of that exercise looks like,

00:52:58.640 | how it's structured within the day

00:52:59.940 | and how it's structured across the weeks, in fact,

00:53:03.340 | based on the scientific data

00:53:06.160 | and what the scientific data say is best or optimal

00:53:10.040 | in order to promote longevity of the brain,

00:53:12.220 | ability to focus, as well as cardiovascular health

00:53:14.740 | and all the other things that we know exercise supports.

00:53:17.520 | Now, there are various forms of physical activity

00:53:19.980 | or what we call exercise,

00:53:21.740 | but those can generally be batched into two categories.

00:53:25.220 | First is strength and hypertrophy work.

00:53:28.200 | So physical movements that are designed

00:53:30.460 | to make you stronger and/or make your muscles larger.

00:53:33.640 | There's also endurance work,

00:53:37.180 | physical exercise and movements that are designed

00:53:39.580 | to allow you to do more work over time

00:53:42.940 | or to extend the amount of time that you can do work

00:53:45.980 | of any kind, both physical and mental.

00:53:49.340 | And we did two full podcast episodes

00:53:51.780 | on the details and the science

00:53:53.440 | and the protocols related to these topics.

00:53:55.860 | We did an episode on the science

00:53:58.540 | of strength and hypertrophy,

00:54:00.720 | of building strength and muscle building,

00:54:03.060 | and that included a lot of protocols.

00:54:05.100 | And we did an episode on endurance,

00:54:07.400 | how to build any one or all of the four types of endurance,

00:54:11.260 | which are muscular endurance, anaerobic, aerobic,

00:54:13.880 | long-distance endurance, et cetera.

00:54:15.700 | So if you're interested in the specifics of those protocols,

00:54:18.140 | please see those episodes.

00:54:19.500 | However, right now, I just want to emphasize

00:54:22.920 | how the data impact my day and how I structure my day

00:54:27.460 | in a way that I can incorporate physical movement

00:54:30.020 | in a way that supports my brain and health.

00:54:32.340 | Basically, after I finish that cognitive workout,

00:54:35.620 | that 90-minute workout,

00:54:37.300 | I do some form of physical exercise for about an hour.

00:54:41.100 | The data all point to the fact that working out hard

00:54:43.700 | for longer than an hour can actually be detrimental

00:54:46.660 | because of the way that it raises cortisol,

00:54:49.140 | and cortisol can be a good thing

00:54:50.580 | if it's appropriately timed

00:54:51.820 | and in the appropriate low levels,

00:54:53.480 | but you don't want to have your cortisol levels up

00:54:56.180 | throughout the day or have big spikes

00:54:57.980 | of cortisol repeatedly.

00:55:00.080 | So keeping workouts relatively short

00:55:02.000 | can definitely help with that.

00:55:03.680 | And certainly if you're training hard,

00:55:06.340 | 60 minutes or less should be more than sufficient.

00:55:08.980 | And for many people, including myself,

00:55:10.340 | 45 minutes or 50 minutes is probably even more optimal.

00:55:13.520 | The basic design of this physical exercise

00:55:16.900 | is that it be approximately 60 minutes.

00:55:19.500 | So maybe 60 plus or minus 15 minutes

00:55:21.640 | should be well within the margins

00:55:23.420 | of keeping hormonal health proper and not going too long,

00:55:27.140 | nor making the workout so short that it's not beneficial.

00:55:30.580 | And essentially what the data tell us

00:55:32.680 | is that in order to optimize cardiovascular

00:55:34.820 | and brain health and other systems of the body,

00:55:37.220 | we want to exercise at least five days per week.

00:55:40.860 | I know that seems like a lot.

00:55:42.660 | It certainly is a lot for certain people.

00:55:44.660 | Some of you, you compulsive exercisers might gasp

00:55:48.320 | at the idea of taking two days off.

00:55:49.880 | I personally find that taking two full days off per week

00:55:52.860 | is actually both beneficial

00:55:55.140 | to my exercise training performance, as well as pleasant.

00:55:59.660 | I like those rest days.

00:56:00.900 | But essentially the structure of the exercise regimen

00:56:05.060 | that works for sake of supporting health

00:56:06.780 | is going to be one in which there's a three to two ratio,

00:56:09.660 | where for a 12 week period or so, maybe 10 to 12 weeks,

00:56:14.540 | three of those five workouts per week

00:56:16.460 | emphasize strength and hypertrophy,

00:56:18.260 | and the other two emphasize endurance.

00:56:21.000 | Then after 10 or 12 weeks,

00:56:22.600 | one switches over to a 10 or 12 week regimen

00:56:25.120 | of doing a three to two ratio

00:56:27.720 | where you're prioritizing endurance work.

00:56:29.840 | So primarily the sorts of workouts

00:56:31.940 | that are described in the endurance episode

00:56:33.780 | and those protocols and the other two days,

00:56:35.500 | you're focusing on strength and hypertrophy work

00:56:37.780 | merely to maintain strength and hypertrophy,

00:56:40.760 | to not lose the strength and hypertrophy that you've created.

00:56:44.220 | And there are a lot of data now supporting the fact

00:56:46.580 | that maintaining muscular health and bone health

00:56:49.860 | is supported by resistance training,

00:56:51.500 | weight training of various kinds.

00:56:52.980 | It can also be done with body weight

00:56:54.500 | if you don't have access to equipment.

00:56:56.260 | And of course, that doing cardiovascular endurance work

00:56:59.580 | is very beneficial both to the muscles of the body,

00:57:02.500 | the organs of the body, but also to the brain.

00:57:05.300 | Many of you have probably heard

00:57:06.740 | that doing physical exercise of various kinds

00:57:11.020 | can support the production of new neurons in the brain.

00:57:13.700 | Frankly, those data are specific to research animals.

00:57:18.180 | As far as we know, increases in neuron number

00:57:21.900 | are not supported by exercise in humans.

00:57:25.440 | There's a little bit of data that supports

00:57:27.140 | that maybe a few neurons might get created

00:57:29.140 | by running or weightlifting

00:57:30.460 | or things of that sort in human beings,

00:57:32.780 | but there's still a host of other reasons

00:57:34.700 | to have this hour or so per day

00:57:37.200 | where one is doing physical exercise.

00:57:39.980 | And those include increased blood flow to the brain.

00:57:43.320 | Remember, the brain is an organ too.

00:57:44.880 | It's the most metabolically demanding organ in your body,

00:57:47.900 | and it's receiving those metabolic factors.

00:57:51.340 | It's receiving its fuels by way of vasculature,

00:57:54.100 | of blood vessels and capillaries and veins

00:57:55.960 | and things of that sort.

00:57:57.300 | So movement is very crucial

00:58:00.060 | to get your brain to function properly.

00:58:02.020 | Movement of various kinds is very important

00:58:05.100 | to get your brain to function properly.

00:58:07.060 | Resistance training turns out to be as important

00:58:09.660 | as endurance training because of the way

00:58:12.180 | that it stimulates the release of particular hormones

00:58:14.540 | actually from bones, things like osteocalcin,

00:58:17.580 | which can positively impact brain function

00:58:20.060 | and can support the health of existing neurons

00:58:22.560 | as opposed to increasing the number of neurons.

00:58:24.540 | Turns out increasing the number of neurons

00:58:26.220 | may not actually be as beneficial as we think.

00:58:27.980 | It all sounds great.

00:58:29.000 | More neurons, more neurons.

00:58:30.260 | Certainly more neurons is better than fewer neurons

00:58:33.380 | and losing neurons,

00:58:34.740 | but incorporating new neurons into existing brain circuitry

00:58:37.560 | is actually very challenging for the brain to do.

00:58:40.640 | I make sure that after that work about,

00:58:43.000 | I get this one hour or so of exercise five days per week

00:58:47.200 | because of the ways that it supports my general health.

00:58:49.900 | And there are now hundreds of studies supporting the fact

00:58:53.320 | that both endurance work and strength training

00:58:58.000 | or hypertrophy training done in combination,

00:59:01.340 | meaning not necessarily in the same workout,

00:59:03.340 | but done across the week is immensely beneficial

00:59:07.040 | for the production of things

00:59:08.120 | like brain-derived nootropic factor,

00:59:10.220 | for limiting inflammatory cytokines like IL-6,

00:59:14.340 | for promoting anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL-10,

00:59:17.660 | provided that exercise is of the proper duration

00:59:20.860 | and that it's not so intense

00:59:23.120 | that you're actually creating damage

00:59:25.020 | to the various systems of the body.

00:59:26.940 | Now, where is the threshold

00:59:28.540 | between optimal sub-threshold and detrimental?

00:59:33.420 | This is a complicated theme

00:59:36.020 | if we don't put some structure around it.

00:59:37.660 | So let's put a little bit of structure around it.

00:59:39.020 | We already said that about 60 minutes,

00:59:41.060 | so 60 minutes plus or minus 15 minutes

00:59:43.940 | is going to be optimal for all these health benefits.

00:59:47.040 | What about the structure of the actual workouts?

00:59:49.980 | Well, we need to address this issue of intensity.

00:59:53.340 | A good rule of thumb based on the literature,

00:59:56.940 | and I discussed this with Dr. Andy Galpin

00:59:58.740 | prior to the strength and hypertrophy

01:00:00.260 | in the endurance episodes,

01:00:01.660 | and the literature that's published

01:00:03.380 | in quality peer-reviewed journals

01:00:04.700 | really points to the fact that approximately 80%

01:00:08.780 | of the resistance training you do

01:00:10.540 | should be resistance training

01:00:11.820 | that doesn't go to what they call failure,

01:00:13.540 | where you can't actually move the resistance anymore.

01:00:18.000 | The other 20% can be of the higher intensity

01:00:20.700 | to failure type training.

01:00:22.580 | Now, with respect to endurance work,

01:00:24.500 | one can build up endurance

01:00:27.380 | without having to log long, long mileage

01:00:30.480 | or extensive mileage in the pool or by running,

01:00:33.380 | and that's because there are these other forms of endurance

01:00:35.780 | that can build up, for instance,

01:00:37.300 | the capillary beds within the muscles.

01:00:38.900 | Building up the capillary beds within the muscles

01:00:40.820 | will allow more oxygen utilization within the muscles,

01:00:43.940 | and thereby will increase your endurance,

01:00:46.360 | both of the muscles,

01:00:47.200 | but also will improve brain metabolism

01:00:50.060 | and the way that the heart functions

01:00:52.140 | of cardiovascular function.

01:00:53.500 | That 80/20 rule of less than failure and work to failure

01:00:59.500 | in the resistance exercise regime can be transported

01:01:03.360 | or translated to the endurance exercise portion

01:01:06.300 | by focusing on that thing that we're familiar with,

01:01:08.460 | which is the burn.

01:01:09.300 | When we're running hard or cycling hard,

01:01:11.020 | we'll experience a kind of burning of the muscles

01:01:12.820 | that's associated with the lactate system.

01:01:15.980 | During the episode on endurance,

01:01:17.140 | I pointed out that that burn is not lactic acid.

01:01:22.020 | Contrary to common belief, it is not lactic acid.

01:01:25.560 | It's associated with lactate metabolism,

01:01:27.620 | and again, about 80% of the endurance work

01:01:31.080 | should not incorporate that so-called burn,

01:01:34.020 | but if 20% of that work or so,

01:01:36.660 | I should say approximately 20% of that work

01:01:39.140 | does include the so-called burning sensation,

01:01:42.040 | that burning sensation actually triggers the activation

01:01:46.440 | of release of certain compounds and molecules from glia,

01:01:50.820 | this brain cell type that supports neuron health,

01:01:54.140 | and actually the lactate system

01:01:56.080 | is its own form of fuel for the brain,

01:01:58.500 | and so there's increasing interest

01:02:00.220 | in generating the lactate or pushing past

01:02:04.440 | that lactate threshold for small portion,

01:02:06.460 | 20% or so of endurance work

01:02:08.340 | in order to support brain health and function.

01:02:10.540 | So what does this all look like as a protocol?

01:02:14.080 | Well, as I mentioned before, this three to two ratio,

01:02:16.660 | so maybe you spend 10 weeks or so or 12 weeks or so

01:02:20.160 | focusing mainly on endurance work,

01:02:21.620 | three workouts per week on endurance work,

01:02:23.780 | 80% of those workouts, meaning 80% of the time

01:02:27.060 | you're below that burn threshold,

01:02:29.060 | you are not experiencing a burning sensation,

01:02:32.100 | but that for 20% of it, you are,

01:02:34.840 | that based on the scientific data

01:02:37.220 | should support lactate metabolism, brain health, et cetera,

01:02:39.860 | as well as cardiovascular health and oxygen utilization,

01:02:42.380 | all the forms of endurance that we're aware of,

01:02:45.540 | and then the other two workouts

01:02:47.060 | would involve resistance training,

01:02:48.660 | again, with this 80/20 split,

01:02:50.860 | where 80% of the work is not to failure and 20% is,

01:02:54.420 | and then maybe after 10, 12 weeks, you switch,

01:02:56.980 | where you start emphasizing strength and hypertrophy work

01:02:59.820 | for three of the workouts

01:03:00.860 | and endurance work for two of the workouts.

01:03:03.680 | Now, of course, some of you will be able to train

01:03:05.580 | six days a week, or you'll compulsively need to train

01:03:07.960 | seven days a week.

01:03:08.800 | If you decide to do that, please be aware

01:03:11.680 | that this cortisol threshold is a real thing.

01:03:13.740 | So for me, the three to two ratio works out perfectly

01:03:16.820 | 'cause I like two full days off a week.

01:03:18.580 | When I take those really depends on my schedule

01:03:20.540 | and how I'm feeling.

01:03:21.380 | Sometimes it's two days in a row,

01:03:22.440 | sometimes they're interspersed throughout the week,

01:03:24.480 | but in reviewing the scientific literature

01:03:26.640 | for those two episodes of the podcast

01:03:29.580 | and in talking to people who are really informed

01:03:32.580 | in the world of resistance training and endurance training

01:03:36.160 | and how that relates to brain health and body health,

01:03:39.020 | this seems to be the most rational and grounded protocol.

01:03:41.480 | So that's the one that I follow.

01:03:42.980 | So on any given day, I finish that work block and I train.

01:03:47.080 | I do some sort of resistance or endurance training.

01:03:49.400 | I put those on alternate days or different days rather.

01:03:52.940 | So we've now talked about the arc that spans

01:03:55.340 | all the way from waking to a morning bout of focused work

01:04:00.340 | to physical training.

01:04:02.320 | I have not mentioned ingesting anything or nutrients.

01:04:06.840 | One of the most common questions I get

01:04:08.160 | are what should I eat for my brain?

01:04:10.220 | Well, ironically enough, one of the best things

01:04:12.820 | you can do for your brain is to not eat.

01:04:14.780 | But of course we all have to eat sooner or later

01:04:16.980 | and eating is wonderful.

01:04:18.140 | I absolutely love eating.

01:04:19.460 | I even enjoy the mere act of chewing.

01:04:22.100 | But the question of what to eat is an important one

01:04:25.260 | as it relates to brain health and brain function.

01:04:28.460 | Before we talk about that,

01:04:29.980 | I want to emphasize that training fasted

01:04:33.260 | actually has some immediate and long-term benefits.

01:04:37.060 | Prior to having my lab at Stanford,

01:04:39.060 | I was down in San Diego at UC San Diego

01:04:41.660 | and had an appointment

01:04:42.660 | at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies.

01:04:44.980 | I had a colleague there by the name of Sachin Panda.

01:04:47.180 | He wrote a wonderful book called "The Circadian Code."

01:04:49.660 | He runs a serious biology laboratory

01:04:52.140 | focusing on metabolism, circadian rhythms, and so forth,

01:04:55.300 | as well as the effects of fasting.

01:04:57.360 | Sachin and his book, "The Circadian Code,"

01:05:02.080 | describe how engaging in physical exercise while fasted

01:05:06.300 | can amplify the effects of that exercise,

01:05:08.660 | not just for sake of increasing the percentage

01:05:11.100 | of things like body fat burned, et cetera,

01:05:13.320 | but for cellular health, liver health,

01:05:15.840 | and the health of other organs.

01:05:17.820 | So where possible, I do strive to do my workout

01:05:22.800 | without eating anything first.

01:05:24.840 | However, some days I'm very, very hungry,

01:05:27.060 | and so I do ingest water, which contains electrolytes.

01:05:31.860 | So that means sodium, magnesium, potassium,

01:05:34.100 | for the simple reason that sodium, magnesium, potassium

01:05:37.560 | are required for neurons to function properly.

01:05:40.820 | It's part of the way they generate electrical activity.

01:05:44.880 | As well, ingesting electrolytes, for me, can quell hunger.

01:05:49.160 | And this points to a whole other topic

01:05:51.240 | we could do another episode on at some point,

01:05:53.120 | which is many times people will think

01:05:55.040 | that their blood sugar is low,

01:05:56.340 | and actually, that's not the case.

01:05:58.400 | And frankly, one wouldn't want their blood sugar to be high.

01:06:02.380 | You don't want your blood sugar too low,

01:06:04.200 | but you also don't want it too high.

01:06:06.040 | Very low blood sugar is terrible,

01:06:08.200 | but low-ish blood sugar tends to give us

01:06:10.120 | a sense of mental clarity and focus

01:06:12.200 | related to this adrenaline phenomenon

01:06:14.520 | that we talked about earlier.

01:06:16.300 | In order to be able to focus on exercise or work

01:06:18.880 | or anything else, you need sufficient electrolytes.

01:06:21.840 | And so many people find that if they

01:06:23.840 | simply ingest some water with salt,

01:06:26.120 | maybe a 99-milligram potassium tablet,

01:06:28.480 | all of a sudden they feel very mentally clear

01:06:30.760 | and able to do physical work and mental work.

01:06:33.320 | So what I do is prior to this morning exercise,

01:06:37.360 | although it's now late morning in this way I'm describing it

01:06:40.840 | and typically it does occur late morning,

01:06:42.920 | I'll have some water with either,

01:06:45.160 | so maybe half a teaspoon of sea salt

01:06:47.880 | with a 99-milligram potassium tablet,

01:06:50.560 | or these days I'm fond of taking what's called Element,

01:06:53.480 | LMT, Element.

01:06:54.840 | I learned about this from Lex Friedman's podcast.

01:06:56.640 | I know many of you are familiar with Lex.

01:06:58.240 | He's an excellent podcast, excellent scientist.

01:07:01.260 | I don't have any business relationship to Element.

01:07:03.520 | They're not a sponsor of the podcast,

01:07:05.280 | but Element is a product that essentially contains

01:07:08.300 | electrolyte, sodium, potassium,

01:07:10.840 | as well as magnesium malate,

01:07:12.400 | which has been shown to offset things

01:07:14.240 | like delayed onset muscle soreness.

01:07:16.160 | That form of magnesium doesn't make people drowsy.

01:07:19.520 | It's not an anxiolytic like some other forms of magnesium.

01:07:22.480 | An anxiolytic is just one that reduces anxiety.

01:07:25.320 | So whether or not it's Element

01:07:26.320 | or whether or not you're just putting a little bit of salt

01:07:27.960 | into some water and ingesting that prior to training,

01:07:30.960 | that can be an excellent way to ensure

01:07:32.440 | that you're able to complete the physical exercise,

01:07:35.400 | even though you haven't eaten anything.

01:07:37.940 | And I confess some days I will eat a little bit

01:07:39.800 | before my workout just because I can't seem to resist eating.

01:07:43.440 | I want to mention the use of stimulants

01:07:46.520 | before physical training.

01:07:47.800 | This has certain benefits and certain drawbacks.

01:07:52.120 | The benefits are sometimes it can facilitate motivation

01:07:55.540 | because things like caffeine

01:07:57.560 | can increase the release of dopamine,

01:07:59.320 | can increase the release of epinephrine,

01:08:01.200 | can reduce that adenosine level in the bloodstream.

01:08:03.480 | So some people use caffeine before training

01:08:06.120 | in ways that benefit them.

01:08:07.320 | It can also increase fat oxidation and kind of fat metabolism

01:08:11.060 | and things if that's your goal.

01:08:13.360 | I am not a particular fan of ingesting stimulants

01:08:16.020 | before training because of a whole set of problems

01:08:19.120 | associated with most forms of stimulants

01:08:22.680 | in the form of energy drinks, et cetera.

01:08:24.360 | I am not a fan of energy drinks.

01:08:25.760 | I did a decent portion of a previous episode

01:08:29.900 | on food and mood on energy drinks

01:08:31.600 | and some of the detrimental things they contain.

01:08:33.980 | Rather, I try and train simply by ingesting

01:08:37.420 | the caffeine sources I mentioned before,

01:08:39.300 | guayusa, mate, some electrolytes, some water.

01:08:43.540 | Occasionally I'll have an espresso or a cup of coffee

01:08:45.660 | before I train.

01:08:46.740 | And on rare occasions, I should emphasize rare occasions,

01:08:51.460 | if I really need help increasing my motivation

01:08:54.140 | or I decide I want to push extremely hard,

01:08:56.260 | I will ingest something like alpha-GPC.

01:08:58.580 | Alpha-GPC supports the release of a neuromodulator

01:09:01.980 | called acetylcholine, so 300 milligrams of alpha-GPC

01:09:05.020 | has been shown to increase physical performance,

01:09:07.460 | but also cognitive performance.

01:09:09.280 | Some people might not be interested in ingesting anything

01:09:11.840 | to improve their physical performance or anything at all,

01:09:14.080 | but they might be addressing

01:09:15.820 | how they can improve cognitive performance and focus.

01:09:18.380 | And alpha-GPC is a non-stimulant way to approach that.

01:09:21.320 | Again, definitely check with your doctor

01:09:23.000 | before taking anything or stopping to take anything,

01:09:25.580 | but alpha-GPC has been shown in various studies

01:09:28.420 | to improve cognitive performance

01:09:30.020 | and in people who have age-related cognitive decline,

01:09:33.480 | there have been some positive benefits reported

01:09:36.420 | in quality peer-reviewed journals.

01:09:38.740 | If you want to explore those references,

01:09:40.780 | please go to examine.com, please put in alpha-GPC,

01:09:44.140 | go to the Human Effect Matrix,

01:09:45.660 | and there you can find details of those studies,

01:09:48.700 | references to PubMed, et cetera.

01:09:50.620 | So let's talk about food timing first.

01:09:52.980 | As I mentioned, I eat my first meal sometime around noon,

01:09:56.300 | plus or minus an hour for the reasons we've discussed.

01:10:00.160 | The volume of food is also important.

01:10:02.780 | If you eat a large volume of anything,

01:10:06.480 | because it diverts blood to your gut,

01:10:09.280 | you will feel lethargic

01:10:10.800 | and you will have less blood going to your brain.

01:10:13.560 | That seems like a simple and trivial fact,

01:10:15.400 | but if you want to be able to think,

01:10:17.480 | you can't ingest large volumes of anything into your gut.

01:10:20.820 | So the discussion about what foods give you energy

01:10:22.840 | is kind of moot if you eat enormous volumes of that food.

01:10:26.520 | Now, the volumes are going to depend on you

01:10:29.100 | and your needs and your activity levels.

01:10:31.780 | I'm going to discuss what I do in terms of food content,

01:10:36.280 | but I'm not going to discuss food volume.

01:10:38.000 | I sort of know where that mostly full, like 80% full line is

01:10:42.660 | and I usually eat a little bit past that, frankly.

01:10:45.120 | And I'm able to maintain a decent degree of alertness

01:10:48.480 | into the afternoon.

01:10:49.440 | And that's my goal.

01:10:50.280 | And I think that's the goal of most people

01:10:51.800 | to not work out in the morning or do some work

01:10:55.640 | and then just collapse into a slumber

01:10:57.280 | that lasts all afternoon,

01:10:58.340 | but to be able to generate alert, calm, focused states

01:11:02.440 | throughout the day.

01:11:04.020 | So for lunch, I do emphasize slightly lower carbohydrate

01:11:08.300 | or low carbohydrate intake for the simple reason

01:11:11.580 | that adrenaline and dopamine

01:11:14.460 | and their associated neuromodulators

01:11:16.840 | are going to support alertness.

01:11:18.960 | So for me, I fast up until about noon.

01:11:22.740 | Then I eat a lunch that consists of some sort

01:11:25.800 | of protein thing, like some meat or some chicken

01:11:28.600 | or some salmon and some vegetables, et cetera.

01:11:31.720 | And if I've exercised previously,

01:11:34.700 | which I do, as I mentioned, five days a week,

01:11:37.140 | then I will ingest some starches.

01:11:39.040 | I'll ingest some bread, excuse me, or rice

01:11:42.200 | or oatmeal and butter and nuts and things like that.

01:11:45.000 | I will consume the various food groups, as they say,

01:11:49.340 | but I will keep the total amount of carbohydrate

01:11:52.520 | a little bit on the low side.

01:11:54.120 | Or if I haven't trained, I won't have any carbohydrate

01:11:56.640 | at all, not because I'm ketogenic,

01:11:59.680 | not because I'm anti-carbohydrate,

01:12:01.640 | not because I'm on a pure carnivore diet, far from it,

01:12:04.600 | but because starches cause the release of serotonin

01:12:09.600 | in the brain and lend themselves to a state of sleepiness.

01:12:13.000 | Now, I should mention that about 25% of individuals

01:12:16.840 | have genes that encode for enzymes that allow them

01:12:20.020 | to eat large amounts of carbohydrate

01:12:22.160 | and not suffer from this lethargy,

01:12:24.240 | this kind of sedation from carbohydrates,

01:12:26.500 | but I don't have that gene.

01:12:28.780 | And so for me, eating a noon-ish meal

01:12:34.300 | that is not enormous, but is decent in size,

01:12:36.620 | but that is mainly protein, healthy fats,

01:12:39.920 | and low-ish carbohydrates or no carbohydrates

01:12:42.140 | is what allows me to achieve heightened states of alertness

01:12:45.600 | throughout the day, which is what I need for my purposes.

01:12:48.800 | So just knowing that meats and nuts support alertness,

01:12:52.280 | provided you don't eat too much of them,

01:12:53.960 | that vegetables are healthy for us

01:12:55.880 | and therefore we should eat them,

01:12:57.360 | and I happen to like them as well,

01:12:58.880 | and that carbohydrates tend to have

01:13:00.680 | a kind of sedative-like quality to them,

01:13:04.080 | that should help you kind of guide your food choices

01:13:07.280 | in an intelligent way that's grounded

01:13:08.960 | in the scientific literature as it relates to alertness.

01:13:12.860 | Now, what about components of foods

01:13:14.900 | that are not about alertness, but are about mood?

01:13:17.480 | We did an entire episode on mood and food,

01:13:19.720 | and it's very clear based on now dozens of studies

01:13:23.480 | that ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3 fatty acids

01:13:28.480 | is going to support healthy mood

01:13:30.900 | and even can act as an antidepressant.

01:13:33.820 | More than a dozen studies have shown

01:13:35.880 | that ingesting at least 1,000 milligrams per day

01:13:39.200 | of the EPA form of essential fatty acid

01:13:42.700 | is as effective as prescription antidepressants

01:13:46.520 | in relieving depression.

01:13:48.200 | And if you're somebody

01:13:49.100 | who requires prescription antidepressants,

01:13:51.520 | Prozac, Zoloft, et cetera,

01:13:53.400 | it can allow people to take lower doses

01:13:56.960 | of those medications, which in many cases

01:13:58.880 | is a positive thing or a good thing to do

01:14:01.520 | because of the side effect profiles

01:14:03.220 | that many of those drugs carry.

01:14:04.880 | So I find these data remarkably compelling.

01:14:07.520 | I mean, here we have a food or a substance from food

01:14:12.640 | that can improve our mood and our sense of wellbeing,

01:14:15.720 | and it does that by way of increasing

01:14:18.160 | certain neuromodulators in the brain,

01:14:19.620 | in particular dopamine,

01:14:20.760 | but also some other related neuromodulators.

01:14:23.160 | So if you're eating fatty salmon regularly,

01:14:26.440 | if you're eating krill regularly,

01:14:28.840 | meaning if you're a whale,

01:14:31.560 | if you're ingesting foods

01:14:34.400 | that tend to have a lot of omega-3s,

01:14:36.240 | you probably don't need to supplement with omega-3.

01:14:38.980 | Most people are not ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3s,

01:14:42.820 | and I'm certainly one of those people.

01:14:44.880 | Despite an effort to eat good foods

01:14:46.360 | and whole foods, et cetera, and unprocessed foods,

01:14:49.120 | I've made the choice to ingest

01:14:51.480 | at least 1,000 milligrams per day of EPA.

01:14:53.760 | I do that in the form of fish oil

01:14:55.080 | and the EPA/DHA combination fish oil.

01:14:57.640 | But the threshold of 1,000 milligrams

01:15:00.160 | is not 1,000 milligrams of fish oil,

01:15:02.280 | it's 1,000 milligrams of EPA.

01:15:04.680 | Now, for those of you that don't want to consume fish oils

01:15:07.480 | and prefer to get your omega-3s from non-animal sources,

01:15:11.080 | there are non-animal sources,

01:15:13.500 | various forms of algae, et cetera.

01:15:15.000 | You can just look that up online

01:15:16.840 | and you should be able to find that.

01:15:18.020 | There are also a number of foods

01:15:19.480 | that include these essential omega-3s.

01:15:21.640 | We did an episode on food and mood

01:15:23.260 | where I go into more detail than you could ever want on that

01:15:26.520 | as well as some additional recommendations.

01:15:29.440 | We also did an episode on thyroid function,

01:15:31.580 | this hormone that's important for metabolism,

01:15:33.980 | and that pointed to the importance

01:15:36.160 | of getting sufficient iodine,

01:15:37.700 | which you should naturally get

01:15:39.200 | from the salts you're ingesting

01:15:40.520 | provided you're ingesting enough salt.

01:15:42.220 | I'm not somebody who eats a lot of kelp or seaweed,

01:15:47.000 | although I don't mind the taste of seaweed,

01:15:48.380 | I don't ingest it regularly,

01:15:50.000 | but ingesting sufficient selenium or selenium

01:15:53.560 | has been shown to be important

01:15:55.080 | for proper thyroid production, thyroid function,

01:15:57.300 | which is why I tend to eat a few Brazil nuts each day,

01:16:00.160 | typically with my lunch or sometimes before my workout,

01:16:02.720 | doesn't really matter.

01:16:03.820 | The point is that the volume, the amount, the content,

01:16:10.760 | and indeed the ratios of protein to fat to carbohydrates

01:16:14.440 | are going to impact how you feel,

01:16:15.920 | and they're going to impact your brain health.

01:16:18.260 | And of course, the timing.

01:16:19.600 | We know that allowing periods of 12 hours or more

01:16:22.520 | each 24-hour cycle where you're not ingesting anything

01:16:24.980 | is beneficial for your brain and body health.

01:16:26.680 | That's what Sachin Panda and his colleagues' work

01:16:29.640 | has shown over and over again in these quality studies.

01:16:33.020 | So when people ask me, "What should I eat for my brain?"

01:16:36.980 | More often than not, it's really a question

01:16:39.660 | of how you're structuring your day,

01:16:41.140 | when you're eating for the first time,

01:16:42.660 | how long you're allowing yourself to fast

01:16:44.400 | each 24-hour cycle, and also whether or not

01:16:49.020 | you're getting sufficient omega-3s,

01:16:50.420 | whether or not you're getting sufficient selenium

01:16:52.920 | to support things like thyroid function,

01:16:55.420 | which has an impact both on the metabolism of the body,

01:16:58.660 | but also the metabolism in the brain.

01:17:00.420 | And when I say metabolism, I don't just mean burning energy.

01:17:03.300 | I actually mean the rebuilding of things.

01:17:06.440 | So in the episode on growth hormone and thyroid hormone,

01:17:09.380 | we talked about how metabolism means not just the breakdown

01:17:13.680 | of fats and carbohydrates, but also the building up,

01:17:16.060 | the repair of muscle tissue, the repair of bone,

01:17:19.240 | the reinforcing of bone, and the repair

01:17:21.820 | and the buildup of brain tissue.

01:17:24.100 | And so those are the things that I emphasize

01:17:26.220 | because they're so strongly supported

01:17:28.080 | by the scientific data done in mice, studies done in humans.

01:17:33.080 | And basically, there's a lot of biochemical evidence

01:17:37.380 | that supports everything that I just described.

01:17:39.620 | Along the lines of health and wellbeing,

01:17:42.200 | I'd be remiss if I didn't mention hormones.

01:17:45.100 | Hormones have broad effects on the body and brain.

01:17:48.340 | We did an entire month on hormones.

01:17:50.280 | If you want to hear about any of those hormones in detail,

01:17:52.740 | we talked about testosterone

01:17:53.820 | and optimizing testosterone, estrogen, et cetera.

01:17:56.320 | The sex steroid hormones,

01:17:59.060 | which include testosterone and estrogen,

01:18:02.500 | which of course are present in varying ratios,

01:18:05.500 | but in both men and women and in kids,

01:18:09.900 | they are manufactured from cholesterol.

01:18:12.500 | We hear about cholesterol as this terrible thing,

01:18:14.360 | but they are actually made from cholesterol.

01:18:16.160 | And so if you don't get sufficient levels of cholesterol,

01:18:19.820 | that can be problematic for your hormones

01:18:21.480 | and that can be problematic

01:18:22.780 | for your brain and your body health.

01:18:25.500 | So without going into too much detail,

01:18:28.340 | I'll just point to a couple of things that I do

01:18:30.680 | that at least from my blood work

01:18:33.300 | and from my subjective experience

01:18:34.740 | have been very beneficial for me

01:18:36.140 | that some of you might want to consider.

01:18:38.860 | First of all, I'm not shy about my love for butter.

01:18:41.780 | I will eat pats of butter directly.

01:18:43.820 | I believe if people are going to eat cheese

01:18:46.140 | without a cracker, I will eat butter without a cracker.

01:18:48.840 | Butter is high in cholesterol, so I don't eat a ton of it,

01:18:52.060 | but at least for me and for my lipid profiles, it's fine.

01:18:55.200 | Butter has cholesterol,

01:18:57.500 | which is a precursor to the sex steroid hormones,

01:18:59.620 | and men and women need testosterone and estrogen

01:19:03.320 | in order to feel good and to be able to think.

01:19:05.700 | You do not want your estrogen too low

01:19:08.180 | or your testosterone too low.

01:19:09.820 | So I eat butter in order to ensure

01:19:11.840 | that I get sufficient cholesterol.

01:19:13.100 | Butter also has some other things that are beneficial,

01:19:15.920 | various small fatty acids that are interesting

01:19:19.700 | in terms of their effects on metabolism, et cetera.

01:19:22.780 | You can look those up, the benefits of butter.

01:19:24.880 | But again, volume is important and you can't overdo it.

01:19:28.420 | Costello incidentally loves butter as well.

01:19:31.960 | Along the lines of hormones and testosterone,

01:19:35.380 | get a lot of questions about this, I think,

01:19:37.180 | because a lot of online communities

01:19:39.060 | are sort of obsessed with testosterone.

01:19:40.840 | And I just want to emphasize that yes,

01:19:43.540 | having sufficient levels of testosterone

01:19:46.040 | is vitally important for brain function

01:19:48.380 | and having sufficient levels of estrogen

01:19:50.560 | will allow your brain to actually function.

01:19:53.100 | It turns out that estrogen is one of the main ways

01:19:56.340 | in which the brain maintains longevity

01:19:59.420 | and maintains its ability to think.

01:20:01.540 | So we should all be seeking optimal testosterone levels

01:20:04.820 | for ourselves, both testosterone and estrogen.

01:20:08.260 | And many of the things that we've discussed up until now,

01:20:11.440 | morning sunlight, exercise, fasting,

01:20:15.460 | those can support testosterone and estrogen

01:20:18.640 | in meaningful and positive ways.

01:20:21.700 | I get a lot of questions about hormone optimization.

01:20:24.440 | We did an entire month on this topic.

01:20:26.780 | We did an entire episode on testosterone

01:20:29.260 | and estrogen optimization.

01:20:31.400 | I just want to briefly highlight two things

01:20:34.220 | that could be relevant.

01:20:35.580 | And then if you want more details,

01:20:36.780 | please go see that episode.

01:20:37.940 | The first is that testosterone

01:20:40.700 | can exert its various functions

01:20:42.620 | only in its unbound form, free testosterone.

01:20:46.420 | We all make a particular binding protein

01:20:49.460 | called sex hormone binding globulin

01:20:51.860 | that essentially binds up testosterone,

01:20:53.680 | prevents it from being free.

01:20:55.320 | This sounds like a terrible thing,

01:20:56.460 | but actually it's a good thing

01:20:57.300 | because it allows testosterone to be transported

01:20:59.420 | to the various tissues, including the brain,

01:21:01.300 | where it can exert its various functions.

01:21:03.960 | For those that have lower than desired levels of testosterone

01:21:10.420 | or too much sex hormone binding globulin,

01:21:12.900 | it turns out that 400 milligrams per day

01:21:15.120 | of something called tongkat ali,

01:21:16.880 | which is a form of ginseng,

01:21:17.980 | can actually help increase levels of free testosterone.

01:21:21.160 | Many people experience a positive subjective effect

01:21:23.900 | and some objective effects as well,

01:21:26.180 | meaning increases in free testosterone

01:21:28.160 | when they do blood analysis.

01:21:30.980 | There are some data on that,

01:21:32.140 | not a ton in the peer-reviewed literatures,

01:21:34.060 | and again, always approach these with a sense of caution

01:21:37.800 | and definitely talk to your doctor.

01:21:39.880 | If you want to learn more about that,

01:21:41.100 | you can go to examine.com.

01:21:42.420 | There's a lot of information there listed about that.

01:21:45.060 | The other compound that's relevant both to men and women,

01:21:48.180 | or I should say people that are trying to optimize

01:21:50.020 | testosterone and/or estrogen is Fidogia.

01:21:52.620 | Fidogia agrestis is actually an herb

01:21:56.040 | that increases the levels of what's called

01:21:57.860 | luteinizing hormone.

01:21:58.740 | Luteinizing hormone is a hormone that's released

01:22:00.580 | from the hypothalamus within the brain

01:22:02.900 | that travels to the gonads,

01:22:06.240 | either the ovaries or the testes,

01:22:07.980 | to stimulate the release of estrogen or testosterone.

01:22:12.560 | And Fidogia agrestis has been shown,

01:22:14.940 | albeit in a limited number of studies,

01:22:16.500 | to increase levels of luteinizing hormone

01:22:18.280 | and thereby levels of testosterone and estrogen

01:22:20.260 | in ways that some people find beneficial.

01:22:22.980 | So I just want to mention those two.

01:22:24.160 | And again, if you want a lot more information

01:22:25.920 | about hormone optimization,

01:22:27.720 | please see the episodes on hormone optimization.

01:22:30.720 | A key aspect to the midday meal,

01:22:34.560 | if you want that meal to benefit you,

01:22:36.960 | is to take a brief walk afterwards.

01:22:39.520 | It turns out that brief walks of five to 30 minutes

01:22:42.360 | after ingesting food can accelerate metabolism

01:22:45.320 | and actually can accelerate and improve nutrient utilization,

01:22:49.360 | which is essentially the same as metabolism.

01:22:51.040 | But nonetheless, that's something that I do

01:22:53.840 | after I finish my noon meal.

01:22:55.800 | I do force myself to stand up and go outside

01:22:59.640 | and take a brief walk.

01:23:00.620 | That also gets me again into optic flow.

01:23:02.600 | It also has another benefit,

01:23:03.840 | which is that I am giving my brain and thereby my body

01:23:08.160 | more information about light and time of day,

01:23:10.600 | which is always better than less information

01:23:12.740 | about light and time of day.

01:23:14.200 | Much of our circadian rhythm and our health rhythms

01:23:17.920 | and all of our cognitive rhythms, et cetera,

01:23:20.540 | are supported by our cells knowing where they are in time.

01:23:25.080 | And light is the primary zeitgeber,

01:23:27.460 | that's German for timekeeper,

01:23:29.200 | is the primary way in which the body learns information

01:23:33.960 | or about what function should be turned on

01:23:36.620 | and what function should be turned off.

01:23:38.220 | So getting that morning light pulse,

01:23:39.520 | but then also leaving the house or apartment or workplace

01:23:42.400 | and getting out for a few minutes after lunch

01:23:43.960 | is beneficial for metabolism,

01:23:45.600 | beneficial for nutrient utilization,

01:23:47.720 | and beneficial for all the organs and tissues of the body

01:23:51.480 | because you're getting that outside light exposure.

01:23:54.240 | Now I'd like to shift our attention

01:23:55.500 | towards science-supported protocols

01:23:57.920 | that increase the effectiveness

01:24:00.160 | and our performance in everything.

01:24:02.560 | And by everything, I mean sleep,

01:24:04.320 | I mean physical performance,

01:24:06.400 | I mean mental performance,

01:24:08.160 | I mean less anxiety, all the things, truly all the things.

01:24:12.740 | And that is something called non-sleep deep rest.

01:24:16.980 | Non-sleep deep rest or NSDR is an acronym that I coined

01:24:21.360 | as an umbrella term to encompass many protocols

01:24:25.760 | that all have been shown in one form or another

01:24:29.100 | to support better brain and body function.

01:24:32.320 | Now these protocols have names that you've heard before,

01:24:34.920 | things like meditation, things like yoga nidra,

01:24:38.440 | and things like hypnosis.

01:24:40.060 | All of these protocols and these activities, however,

01:24:44.160 | share something in common,

01:24:45.360 | which is they involve a deliberate

01:24:48.840 | and directed shift in one state,

01:24:51.720 | and the shift tends to be toward

01:24:53.880 | a state of deeper relaxation.

01:24:56.160 | We certainly don't have time now

01:24:58.520 | to dissect out the literature on all of these.

01:25:01.000 | There is ample literature,

01:25:02.800 | I should say there is robust and ample literature

01:25:05.480 | supporting the fact that a regular meditation practice

01:25:08.040 | is beneficial, but meditation itself has many forms,

01:25:10.960 | transcendental meditation, loving kindness meditation,

01:25:14.400 | third eye meditation, walking meditation.

01:25:16.800 | Yoga nidra is a practice I've talked about

01:25:19.100 | many times before, which involves simply lying down.

01:25:21.580 | It doesn't involve any movement,

01:25:22.600 | no down dogs or up dogs or anything.

01:25:24.200 | It just involves lying on your back

01:25:26.080 | and doing some specific long exhale breathing.

01:25:28.440 | There are a lot of yoga nidra scripts out there

01:25:30.040 | that are quite good, but there's one NSDR-type protocol

01:25:35.040 | that has been shown by the greatest number

01:25:39.440 | of scientific studies to promote

01:25:41.200 | not just states of deep relaxation,

01:25:43.620 | not just states of heightened focus,

01:25:46.360 | but also to accelerate plasticity

01:25:49.140 | and learning within the brain, and that's hypnosis.

01:25:52.080 | And I've become increasingly excited

01:25:53.880 | and interested in hypnosis as a tool

01:25:57.200 | and not just a tool of any kind,

01:25:59.680 | but a tool that really can be directed

01:26:01.600 | toward particular goals and outcomes.

01:26:03.760 | And I think that's really what sets hypnosis apart

01:26:06.300 | as an NSDR, non-sleep deep breath protocol,

01:26:08.900 | from things like naps or things like yoga nidra

01:26:12.080 | or things like meditation.

01:26:13.960 | And I certainly believe and understand

01:26:16.400 | that meditation naps and yoga nidra

01:26:18.060 | can be directed toward less anxiety, et cetera,

01:26:21.760 | but hypnosis is unique in that it's very directed.

01:26:26.760 | The essence of hypnosis is for the person, you,

01:26:30.920 | to guide your brain toward a particular outcome or change.

01:26:35.020 | So I'd like to point out a particular resource.

01:26:36.940 | It's a completely zero cost resource, which is reveri.com.

01:26:40.720 | That's R-E-V-E-R-I.com, reveri.com, obviously is a website,

01:26:45.720 | where there are links to an app

01:26:48.160 | that's available in Apple and Android.

01:26:50.280 | This is a hypnosis app,

01:26:51.620 | but this isn't just any hypnosis app.

01:26:53.220 | This is a hypnosis app

01:26:54.720 | that contains multiple hypnosis protocols

01:26:58.160 | that are all backed by very high quality science.

01:27:01.040 | The science was done by my colleague

01:27:03.160 | and our associate chair of psychiatry

01:27:04.720 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

01:27:05.920 | That's David Spiegel is responsible for that work.

01:27:08.460 | I'm not associated with that scientific work.

01:27:11.720 | They've examined what brain areas

01:27:14.440 | get activated during hypnosis,

01:27:16.260 | what the outcomes are for various hypnosis protocols.

01:27:19.540 | And within Reverie, you will find hypnosis protocols

01:27:21.860 | for enhancing your focus, enhancing creativity,

01:27:24.800 | reducing pain, getting better at sleeping, reducing anxiety.

01:27:28.600 | Most of these are about 10 or 15 minutes long.

01:27:31.660 | Some of them are extremely brief, one minute long.

01:27:34.060 | They have a one minute hypnosis that you can do.

01:27:36.580 | Those one minute hypnosis scripts work best

01:27:38.920 | if you've been doing the 10 and 15 minute ones

01:27:41.540 | regularly or semi-regularly.

01:27:43.900 | It's a really wonderful resource

01:27:45.560 | for which there is a lot of peer-reviewed published data.

01:27:48.980 | One study I'd like to emphasize in particular

01:27:52.500 | is Jiang et al, J-I-A-N-G.

01:27:55.360 | That is a reference you can find

01:27:57.520 | on the reverie.com website under our research.

01:28:00.600 | And the title of this paper is Brain Activity

01:28:02.600 | and Functional Connectivity Associated with Hypnosis.

01:28:04.800 | And it was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

01:28:07.920 | What this paper essentially shows

01:28:09.800 | is that specific areas of our brain

01:28:12.800 | that are involved in executive function,

01:28:14.820 | which is associated with our ability to focus,

01:28:16.800 | as well as what's called the default mode network,

01:28:19.400 | which is sort of the way that your brain idles.

01:28:21.300 | Does your brain tend to idle

01:28:23.300 | at a level of high anxiety or calm,

01:28:26.780 | as well as activation of a brain area

01:28:28.560 | called the insula, that's I-N-S-U-L-A.

01:28:31.380 | The insula is extremely interesting.

01:28:33.240 | Hypnosis has been shown to activate the insula,

01:28:35.880 | which can enhance our sense of interoception,

01:28:38.360 | our sense of internal state,

01:28:40.320 | which might sound like a annoying thing.

01:28:42.260 | You don't want to be thinking about your heartbeat

01:28:44.480 | or your breathing.

01:28:45.480 | But what's really interesting about hypnosis

01:28:47.880 | is that it increases areas of the brain

01:28:49.840 | that are responsible for deep relaxation,

01:28:51.780 | focus, and self-awareness,

01:28:54.200 | this interoception, simultaneously.

01:28:56.760 | And that's very unusual compared to other states

01:29:00.160 | and other states of any kind.

01:29:02.200 | So I've made it a practice, a daily practice, in fact,

01:29:05.480 | that after lunch and after this walk,

01:29:07.960 | I do a brief 10-minute hypnosis script,

01:29:10.960 | because what I found is that in contrast to naps

01:29:14.960 | and in contrast to other forms of NSDR,

01:29:17.220 | it really allows me to enter a state of deep relaxation,

01:29:20.480 | but also to then exit that state

01:29:23.240 | in a very focused and deliberate way

01:29:25.000 | that allows me to lean into my afternoon in an alert way,

01:29:28.040 | in a way that I can function and do mental work

01:29:30.960 | and interact with people, et cetera.

01:29:33.400 | So there's no brain fog, there's no grogginess.

01:29:35.880 | And I want to emphasize that the hypnosis

01:29:37.600 | that I'm referring to here and that Reverie provides

01:29:40.860 | is not stage hypnosis.

01:29:43.080 | This isn't you being programmed to squawk like a chicken

01:29:45.640 | or do anything against your will.

01:29:46.800 | This is you teaching your brain how to access

01:29:49.320 | these focused, relaxed, interoceptive states.

01:29:52.500 | This is also an extremely valuable aspect to hypnosis

01:29:56.040 | because it can increase plasticity,

01:29:58.760 | the brain's ability to change in response to experience.

01:30:01.120 | It's essentially opening up pathways

01:30:02.960 | that allow you to change your brain

01:30:04.980 | in the ways that you want.

01:30:06.480 | And it's very directed toward particular outcomes.

01:30:09.880 | So I am an, as you can probably tell,

01:30:12.160 | I'm very enthusiastic about hypnosis

01:30:15.380 | as an optimal NSDR protocol.

01:30:17.480 | And so I do that every single day.

01:30:19.480 | There are days that I don't manage to do it

01:30:21.260 | for whatever reason, I forget,

01:30:22.840 | or interference from email or et cetera,

01:30:25.540 | but that is essentially how I enter my early afternoon.

01:30:28.720 | I do this post-lunch, post-walk NSDR

01:30:33.560 | in the form of a Reverie hypnosis.

01:30:35.540 | Again, a completely zero-cost resource to you.

01:30:39.440 | There are excellent data.

01:30:40.960 | All those data can be found on the Reverie site.

01:30:43.840 | And you can also learn a lot more about hypnosis

01:30:45.920 | and what sorts of hypnosis protocols

01:30:48.040 | might be optimal for you.

01:30:49.620 | So if you are looking for a science-backed, zero-cost,

01:30:52.800 | very effective tool for getting better at focusing,

01:30:56.120 | better at sleeping, better at all the things

01:30:58.260 | that I believe people want,

01:31:00.120 | I do believe that is the best tool

01:31:01.860 | that one can access at this point in time.

01:31:03.980 | So then after I exit hypnosis,

01:31:06.840 | usually give Costell a little scratch behind the ear,

01:31:09.120 | and then I make sure that I hydrate.

01:31:11.040 | Hydration, again, is vitally important for brain function.

01:31:15.800 | It's vitally important for all bodily functions.

01:31:18.120 | And I often forget to do it.

01:31:19.720 | So I've just sort of linked the drinking of water

01:31:23.240 | to my hypnosis practice.

01:31:25.000 | As soon as I'm done, I hydrate.

01:31:26.680 | And then I tend to focus on another work bout.

01:31:30.440 | So this would be, for me, sometime around 2.30

01:31:33.180 | or three o'clock in the afternoon,

01:31:34.620 | when normally I would be quite sleepy and passing out.

01:31:37.500 | However, the protocol of shifting my morning caffeine

01:31:41.080 | to 90 minutes, two hours after waking,

01:31:43.500 | as well as the use of this hypnosis protocol

01:31:46.280 | has really allowed me to move through the afternoon

01:31:49.020 | in a way that I don't experience that dip in energy.

01:31:51.880 | Every once in a while, I'll feel kind of sleepy

01:31:53.920 | or kind of out of it.

01:31:54.740 | But I've been really pleasantly surprised

01:31:59.640 | at the extent to which one can avoid that afternoon dip

01:32:02.000 | if you do certain things properly

01:32:03.800 | prior to the arrival of two or three p.m.

01:32:06.860 | Now, if you're a napper and you want to nap, no big deal.

01:32:09.880 | Naps can be wonderfully beneficial.

01:32:12.720 | Here are the rules around napping

01:32:14.320 | according to the sleep science.

01:32:15.560 | Stanford has an excellent sleep clinic.

01:32:17.120 | I consulted with Jamie Zeitzer,

01:32:19.120 | my colleague in the Stanford Sleep Laboratory,

01:32:22.420 | as well as Matt Walker out at Berkeley,

01:32:24.620 | whose name I'm sure most of you are familiar with,

01:32:26.800 | wrote this wonderful book, "Why We Sleep."

01:32:29.020 | Naps should be 90 minutes or less,

01:32:32.240 | and 20-minute naps are fine,

01:32:34.460 | but not longer than 90 minutes.

01:32:36.120 | And there are essentially two varieties of people,

01:32:38.560 | people for whom napping interferes

01:32:40.720 | with falling asleep later that night and staying asleep,

01:32:44.960 | and people for whom the nap does not interfere.

01:32:47.560 | You have to decide who you are.

01:32:49.160 | And if you're somebody who can nap

01:32:51.660 | and not have any trouble falling asleep and staying asleep

01:32:54.440 | later that night, well, by all means nap.

01:32:56.600 | Just make it 90 minutes or less.

01:32:57.860 | Again, these 90-minute cycles are really a vital constraint

01:33:00.860 | that we should all obey.

01:33:02.480 | If it's 91 minutes, don't worry.

01:33:04.340 | You won't dissolve into a puddle of tears,

01:33:05.940 | but if you're starting to sleep for an hour or more

01:33:07.820 | in the afternoon, that can be problematic.

01:33:10.140 | If you're somebody who can nap for 10, 20 minutes,

01:33:14.220 | that's probably better than getting a full 90-minute cycle

01:33:17.380 | unless you didn't get enough sleep the night before.

01:33:19.940 | But you really have to figure out what's right for you.

01:33:21.800 | There's a lot of variety there,

01:33:22.860 | but that's essentially what the science says.

01:33:25.300 | Now, whether or not you nap or whether or not you do not nap,

01:33:28.880 | a key protocol for sleep health and wakefulness

01:33:31.800 | and metabolism and hormone health

01:33:34.360 | is viewing light in the afternoon.

01:33:37.520 | So here's the reason for doing this.

01:33:39.320 | As we progress into the evening hours,

01:33:43.580 | there's a phenomenon where our retina, our eyes,

01:33:47.140 | become very sensitive to light,

01:33:49.360 | such that if we view bright lights

01:33:52.560 | or even not-so-bright lights

01:33:54.780 | between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.,

01:33:58.600 | that is strongly disruptive, very disruptive,

01:34:02.300 | for our dopamine production.

01:34:04.860 | It can really screw up our sleep.

01:34:06.960 | And it's actually been shown in data

01:34:09.040 | from David Berson's lab at Brown University,

01:34:11.840 | one of the foremost circadian biology laboratories,

01:34:14.560 | as well as Sami Tarr's laboratory

01:34:16.540 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health,

01:34:19.240 | that viewing bright light or even not-so-bright light

01:34:22.880 | between these hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.

01:34:25.620 | or even 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. can disrupt learning and memory,

01:34:29.360 | can disrupt the immune system,

01:34:31.120 | and can disrupt mood in very long-lasting ways.

01:34:34.160 | There are ways to offset that, however,

01:34:38.160 | what I call your Netflix inoculation.

01:34:41.200 | For those of you that like to stay up late on the tablet

01:34:43.360 | or computer or watching Netflix,

01:34:45.720 | getting a little bit of afternoon light in your eyes

01:34:49.080 | somewhat counterintuitively can prevent this disruption

01:34:54.080 | of bright light later in the evening, at least somewhat.

01:34:57.800 | What do I mean by that?

01:34:59.160 | Well, if you view light as the sun is starting to go down,

01:35:03.480 | so if you step outside around 4 p.m., 5 p.m.,

01:35:06.100 | again, what time exactly will depend on time of year

01:35:08.920 | and where you are located on our planet,

01:35:11.440 | but as the sun starts to head down,

01:35:14.160 | you don't necessarily have to see the sunset.

01:35:16.000 | It'd be lovely if you could.

01:35:17.880 | Sunsets are beautiful,

01:35:19.300 | but if you can get outside and see the sun as it arcs down,

01:35:23.240 | or if you can't see the sun directly,

01:35:24.720 | get some sunlight in your eyes in the afternoon hours,

01:35:28.420 | so maybe 4 p.m.-ish, and do that for 20, 30 minutes,

01:35:32.160 | maybe reading outside or taking a walk.

01:35:34.800 | I walk the dog again.

01:35:35.900 | That's my protocol in order to get that evening light.

01:35:38.360 | What it does is it lowers the sensitivity of your retina

01:35:43.260 | in the late evening hours,

01:35:44.800 | which allows you to buffer yourself against

01:35:47.960 | the negative effects of bright light later at night.

01:35:50.740 | Now, it won't allow you to blast your eyes

01:35:53.440 | with bright light.

01:35:54.280 | You still need to dim the lights in the evening,

01:35:56.520 | but there's a very nice study that was published

01:35:58.960 | in "Scientific Reports" that illustrates

01:36:02.180 | that if one does this, if you go outside and view sunlight

01:36:06.220 | in the evening hours for anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes,

01:36:10.320 | and I realize that people have a range of constraints

01:36:14.040 | on their schedule, but from 5 to 30 minutes,

01:36:16.760 | what happens is that your melatonin rhythm

01:36:19.640 | stays appropriate.

01:36:20.980 | Now, we haven't talked too much about melatonin,

01:36:22.640 | but melatonin is a hormone that is inhibited by light.

01:36:27.140 | It's actually prevented by light,

01:36:29.120 | and melatonin is the hormone that allows you

01:36:32.240 | to fall asleep easily.

01:36:33.960 | Now, I'm not talking about supplementing melatonin.

01:36:36.260 | I'm talking about melatonin that you naturally produce

01:36:39.120 | from your pineal.

01:36:40.560 | So the protocol is very simple.

01:36:42.640 | Get outside in the afternoon or evening

01:36:45.040 | for 10 to 30 minutes.

01:36:46.800 | Take your sunglasses off, get some bright light,

01:36:49.420 | get some natural light in your eyes.

01:36:50.840 | If you can't do that, probably better to just stay

01:36:54.760 | with standard artificial lights inside.

01:36:57.440 | Don't crank them up, but just start to dim them.

01:37:00.800 | Again, this would be a time to avoid blue blockers.

01:37:03.740 | People are popping on blue blockers at four o'clock

01:37:05.640 | in the afternoon because you're worried

01:37:06.800 | that blue light is going to disrupt your sleep.

01:37:08.520 | Well, you're making your eyes more sensitive

01:37:11.140 | to any light that you might see later in the evening,

01:37:13.500 | blue light or otherwise.

01:37:15.120 | So get that afternoon light.

01:37:16.940 | So what you'll probably notice is that the optimal protocols

01:37:20.440 | for optimizing your brain and body health and performance

01:37:23.860 | and sleep, et cetera, are actually really simple.

01:37:27.280 | But just because they're simple does not mean

01:37:29.520 | that they are not powerful.

01:37:30.900 | In fact, they are very powerful

01:37:32.160 | because they leverage the most powerful technology

01:37:35.380 | that exists, which is your nervous system.

01:37:37.500 | You know, we always think about technologies as devices,

01:37:40.340 | and indeed there are some wonderful devices out there.

01:37:42.640 | Some people are really into tracking their sleep

01:37:44.640 | and their sleep time.

01:37:45.560 | If you're into that, great.

01:37:46.440 | That's not something that I personally do,

01:37:48.220 | although I keep telling myself that I should do that.

01:37:51.560 | There are devices that can control brain waves

01:37:54.480 | and things of that sort.

01:37:55.320 | But what we are talking about today are really basic things

01:37:58.920 | that we can all do that can steer our neurology

01:38:02.140 | and our biology in the directions

01:38:04.360 | that are going to support workflow,

01:38:06.720 | that are going to support hormones,

01:38:08.040 | that are going to support brain function.

01:38:10.480 | So this afternoon light viewing is yet another example

01:38:13.640 | of leveraging a technology that you were born with

01:38:16.760 | and that you will die with

01:38:17.760 | and that you will have every day in between

01:38:20.380 | in order to tweak the hormones of your system,

01:38:24.300 | in this case, the hormone melatonin,

01:38:26.080 | so that it's released at the appropriate times

01:38:28.000 | and not at the wrong times.

01:38:29.560 | Because we know that when hormones and systems of the body

01:38:32.520 | are well aligned with the 24-hour schedule,

01:38:36.000 | beautiful things happen.

01:38:37.200 | And when they are misaligned, terrible things happen.

01:38:39.800 | Sometimes those terrible things are subtle at first,

01:38:42.640 | but disrupting your circadian rhythms is really bad

01:38:45.940 | for every system in your body.

01:38:48.120 | Getting it right, and as you can tell,

01:38:50.100 | getting it right doesn't take much,

01:38:52.140 | can really serve to quote unquote optimize you.

01:38:55.040 | When I say optimize,

01:38:55.960 | I mean, it puts you into a better mood overall,

01:38:58.160 | better state for learning, et cetera.

01:39:00.880 | So get that afternoon light as well.

01:39:03.060 | So at some point in the evening,

01:39:05.140 | I eat that thing that we call dinner.

01:39:07.440 | And while it feels sort of strange to talk about my dinner,

01:39:11.340 | the reason I want to talk about my dinner

01:39:13.260 | and what I eat for dinner is that for me,

01:39:15.740 | dinner, of course, is about eating.

01:39:18.140 | I'll mention again, I love eating,

01:39:19.720 | but also about optimizing the transition to sleep and sleep.

01:39:24.540 | So obviously I eat foods that I enjoy.

01:39:27.100 | I'm not one of these people that will eat anything

01:39:29.380 | or avoid eating anything simply to benefit from that.

01:39:34.380 | I do enjoy food very, very much.

01:39:36.620 | And so my dinner generally is comprised of things

01:39:40.140 | that are going to support rest and deep sleep.

01:39:43.180 | And that means starchy carbohydrates.

01:39:46.220 | It's absolutely clear that one of the major ways

01:39:49.140 | that we can increase serotonin,

01:39:50.980 | which helps in the transition to sleep,

01:39:52.980 | is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates.

01:39:56.140 | Now I realize that starchy carbohydrates

01:39:58.060 | are kind of a demonized term nowadays,

01:40:00.300 | and everyone's anti-carbs,

01:40:01.460 | but we really should distinguish between refined sugars

01:40:05.860 | and complex carbohydrates.

01:40:07.220 | And we did an episode about this.

01:40:08.580 | We talked about how refined sugars

01:40:10.100 | disrupt not just metabolism,

01:40:12.660 | but they actually disrupt some of the neurons in the gut

01:40:15.620 | that sense fatty acids and amino acids

01:40:17.820 | from fats and proteins.

01:40:19.220 | But those same neurons can actually respond to sugar

01:40:22.260 | and create a situation where

01:40:24.580 | you actually start craving more sugar

01:40:26.100 | because those neurons in your gut

01:40:28.500 | communicate via a nerve pathway for your aficionados

01:40:31.860 | called the vagus nerve,

01:40:33.740 | and a little cluster of neurons

01:40:34.760 | called the nodose ganglia, N-O-D-O-S-E.

01:40:37.700 | Nodose ganglia, so right next to the corner of your jaw,

01:40:41.540 | and can trigger the activation

01:40:43.020 | and the release of dopamine in your brain,

01:40:44.520 | which basically makes you crave more sugar

01:40:47.400 | independent of how something tastes.

01:40:49.260 | So when I say carbohydrates,

01:40:50.420 | what I really mean is starchy carbohydrates,

01:40:53.340 | non-refined sugars.

01:40:54.760 | And in the episode about food and mood,

01:40:59.100 | and metabolism as well,

01:41:00.700 | I referenced a really spectacular lecture

01:41:02.980 | by Dr. Robert Lustig,

01:41:04.240 | who's a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF,

01:41:06.540 | UC San Francisco, absolutely spectacular talk.

01:41:09.960 | You can find it on YouTube easily,

01:41:11.640 | where he talks about the science of refined sugars.

01:41:14.900 | And this isn't in any kind of conspiracy or paranoid way.

01:41:18.080 | This is really the medical and scientific literature.

01:41:21.160 | So my dinner is carbohydrates and some protein.

01:41:24.620 | So maybe some chicken or fish or something like that.

01:41:26.540 | Maybe some eggs or sometimes just pasta

01:41:28.900 | or just rice and vegetables.

01:41:30.800 | And that's because I enjoy those foods,

01:41:33.220 | but also because I want to increase the amount of serotonin

01:41:37.480 | in my brain so that I can actually fall asleep that night.

01:41:39.920 | Many people who are on low carbohydrate diets

01:41:41.980 | struggle with falling and staying asleep.

01:41:44.380 | And that's because it's hard to achieve

01:41:46.380 | heightened levels of serotonin,

01:41:48.360 | which are necessary to enter sleep.

01:41:51.120 | I should also mention that melatonin and serotonin

01:41:53.720 | fall in the same pathway.

01:41:55.280 | They are related hormones and neuromodulators.

01:41:58.760 | We won't go into their biosynthesis now,

01:42:00.960 | but essentially what we're talking about

01:42:02.720 | is a system that's biasing us towards rest and relaxation

01:42:06.200 | as opposed to wakefulness.

01:42:08.220 | You might ask, well, can't I just take serotonin?

01:42:10.400 | Can't I just take 5-HTP or a precursor to serotonin

01:42:13.240 | or tryptophan?

01:42:14.080 | And indeed you can.

01:42:15.640 | However, many people, including myself,

01:42:17.480 | find that when they supplement with serotonin

01:42:19.360 | in the evening or at night,

01:42:21.680 | that can cause problems in the architecture

01:42:24.160 | or the structure of sleep.

01:42:26.240 | It can cause a lot of people,

01:42:27.360 | including me, to fall asleep very fast,

01:42:29.640 | sleep very deeply for three or four hours,

01:42:31.340 | and then wake up and have a terrible time

01:42:33.680 | falling back asleep.

01:42:34.800 | And that effect, at least for me, can last several days.

01:42:38.540 | It's really disruptive.

01:42:39.620 | So I don't like to supplement with anything

01:42:41.840 | that is directly dopamine or a precursor to dopamine

01:42:45.560 | at any time or directly serotonin

01:42:48.060 | or a precursor to serotonin.

01:42:49.440 | Rather, there are other things

01:42:50.440 | that can enhance the transition to sleep safely,

01:42:53.020 | which we will talk about in a few minutes.

01:42:54.680 | But the evening meal consists largely of carbohydrates

01:42:57.560 | for that specific purpose of generating a sense of calm.

01:43:02.560 | And of course, carbohydrates are delicious.

01:43:04.380 | And because I'm doing some physical training,

01:43:07.000 | and presumably you are as well,

01:43:08.440 | I hope you are 'cause it's so beneficial to one's health,

01:43:12.000 | that's also going to replenish my glycogen stores,

01:43:14.760 | which is one of the primary fuel sources

01:43:17.060 | for moving one's muscles and moving around

01:43:19.120 | and doing exercise, as well as for the brain

01:43:21.220 | and for cognitive function.

01:43:22.600 | So low carbohydrates throughout the 24-hour period

01:43:26.320 | are not something that are attractive to me.

01:43:28.400 | I realize that some people will do much better

01:43:30.760 | on a low carbohydrate or even ketogenic diet,

01:43:32.920 | but for me, and I do believe for most people,

01:43:37.440 | creating a situation of maybe fasting

01:43:40.120 | and then low carb or no carb diets

01:43:42.520 | for states of alertness and focus

01:43:45.160 | at one portion of the day,

01:43:46.640 | and then ingesting starch carbohydrates

01:43:49.600 | for sake of inducing rest and relaxation

01:43:52.420 | is a at least scientifically rationally based protocol.

01:43:57.320 | It's grounded in real neurochemistry.

01:44:00.000 | It's grounded in things that we can point to and say,

01:44:03.160 | ah, this food substance, this thing can support my brain,

01:44:08.120 | not directly because it's some magic substance

01:44:10.320 | that's going to make all my neurons extremely robust,

01:44:13.740 | but rather it's going to support sleep,

01:44:16.080 | which is perhaps the foundation

01:44:18.440 | of all mental and physical health.

01:44:19.840 | In fact, we can point to sleep as the primary way

01:44:23.480 | in which we can ensure our overall health,

01:44:25.400 | including our brain health.

01:44:27.080 | So let's talk about sleep and how to access sleep,

01:44:30.340 | how to fall asleep easily,

01:44:31.800 | and how to make sure that the sleep we have

01:44:33.560 | is of sufficient duration and quality.

01:44:36.740 | One way to do that is to leverage the drop in temperature

01:44:39.900 | that's necessary to fall and stay asleep.

01:44:43.000 | So as I mentioned earlier, in the early parts of the day

01:44:46.760 | after waking, our body temperature is rising,

01:44:49.960 | and that continues throughout the day.

01:44:51.160 | And then sometime late in the afternoon,

01:44:52.900 | our temperature peaks, and then it starts to drop.

01:44:56.720 | That drop in temperature of one to three degrees

01:45:00.100 | is vitally important for us

01:45:01.520 | to be able to fall asleep easily.

01:45:03.320 | One way that we can decrease our transition time into sleep

01:45:07.680 | is to accelerate that drop in temperature.

01:45:10.560 | And one way to accelerate that drop in temperature

01:45:13.520 | somewhat counter-intuitively is to use hot baths,

01:45:17.800 | hot showers, or if you have access to one, a sauna.

01:45:21.160 | Now, this is counter-intuitive because you'd say,

01:45:23.000 | well, hot baths, so it's going to heat me up.

01:45:25.360 | But actually, if you are to get into a sauna

01:45:28.040 | or a hot shower or a hot bath and then get out,

01:45:30.700 | your body is going to engage particular mechanisms

01:45:33.680 | for cooling itself off that are going to allow you

01:45:37.080 | to drop your temperature more quickly

01:45:38.760 | and fall asleep more easily.

01:45:40.640 | And this is why many people find that falling asleep

01:45:42.720 | after a nice hot shower, bath, or sauna

01:45:45.080 | is really, really easy and really terrific.

01:45:49.080 | It's sort of a natural state

01:45:50.640 | that follows hot baths, saunas, and showers.

01:45:53.700 | So how would you do this?

01:45:54.740 | Well, we did an entire episode on this topic as well,

01:45:58.020 | the use of sauna for sake of growth hormone release.

01:46:00.160 | If you want to check that out and all the details,

01:46:02.100 | you can look at the episode on growth hormone.

01:46:05.940 | You will experience a growth hormone release

01:46:08.080 | from sauna, hot bath, and hot shower,

01:46:10.240 | provided they are done for sufficient duration

01:46:12.560 | and sufficiently high temperature.

01:46:14.840 | For all the details of that, please go to that episode.

01:46:17.240 | It's all laid out there.

01:46:18.140 | It's all timestamped.

01:46:19.040 | It's all captioned in English and Spanish, et cetera.

01:46:21.840 | But basically what we're talking about

01:46:23.320 | is 20 minutes in the sauna,

01:46:25.360 | or if you're one of those folks

01:46:27.120 | who's really chasing growth hormone release,

01:46:29.040 | you could do 20 minutes,

01:46:30.280 | then get out of the sauna for 10 minutes

01:46:31.960 | and just cool off at room temperature

01:46:33.680 | and then get back into the sauna,

01:46:35.000 | then get out and then shower or dry off and head to bed.

01:46:39.360 | Shorter bouts of sauna will work also.

01:46:43.660 | The longer bouts of sauna cooling, sauna cooling

01:46:46.180 | have been shown to lead to huge increases in growth hormone,

01:46:48.760 | and growth hormone, of course,

01:46:49.760 | is involved both in muscle growth,

01:46:51.720 | but also growth and metabolism of all tissues,

01:46:54.020 | fat metabolism, and repair of various tissues.

01:46:57.640 | So it's not just about growth.

01:46:58.880 | You hear growth hormone, you think hypertrophy,

01:47:00.800 | but the enhancement of metabolism and health and repair

01:47:03.440 | in a number of tissues.

01:47:05.040 | So that's one way you can leverage heat

01:47:07.640 | toward the transition to sleep

01:47:09.640 | by the ways in which exposure to heat

01:47:11.800 | actually cools off your body.

01:47:14.040 | Now let's talk about actually getting to sleep,

01:47:16.000 | and let's talk about behavioral protocols first.

01:47:18.840 | It is absolutely true

01:47:19.880 | that keeping the room very dark is beneficial.

01:47:22.640 | Some people, including myself, have thin eyelids,

01:47:25.040 | and it doesn't take much light

01:47:26.640 | to wake up the brain and body.

01:47:28.800 | So keeping a room very dark is essential.

01:47:31.240 | The other thing is keeping the room cool.

01:47:33.240 | You've probably heard this before.

01:47:34.440 | Keep the room cool, get under warm blankets.

01:47:37.680 | But rarely is it discussed

01:47:38.920 | why keeping the room cool is useful.

01:47:41.720 | The reason keeping the room cool is useful

01:47:44.520 | for getting into and staying asleep

01:47:46.680 | is that throughout the night,

01:47:48.920 | there are phases of sleep where you are paralyzed,

01:47:51.200 | so-called REM sleep, that's a healthy paralysis,

01:47:53.800 | presumably so you can't act out your dreams,

01:47:55.960 | but there are portions of the night where you can move.

01:47:57.840 | And one of the more important movements

01:47:59.200 | that you do in the middle of the night

01:48:01.000 | is put your hand out or your foot out,

01:48:04.080 | or you take your face out from under the covers

01:48:06.680 | as a means to cool yourself,

01:48:08.560 | and you do this while you are asleep.

01:48:10.440 | If you are in a cool room,

01:48:13.040 | you can put yourself under the blankets to stay warm,

01:48:15.840 | and then if you want to cool off,

01:48:17.840 | you can simply remove a limb

01:48:19.640 | or you can toss the covers off entirely.

01:48:21.640 | However, if you are in a room that's too warm,

01:48:25.820 | it's very hard to cool off.

01:48:28.000 | You would need a bucket of ice water

01:48:29.800 | or to get up and turn on the air conditioning

01:48:32.160 | or something of that sort, or turn on the fan.

01:48:34.280 | So it's a simple but non-trivial way

01:48:37.040 | in which we can improve our entrance to sleep

01:48:40.400 | and staying asleep.

01:48:41.760 | So keep the room cool or cold and get under warm blankets.

01:48:45.920 | And if you want to understand more

01:48:48.120 | about why putting a hand out or a foot out

01:48:50.800 | is valuable for cooling,

01:48:52.520 | I did an episode on the role of cooling

01:48:55.920 | in something called heat dumping or bringing heat

01:49:00.620 | into the body through the palms, the face,

01:49:02.960 | and the bottoms of the feet.

01:49:03.800 | You've got these portals, these radiators, if you will,

01:49:08.240 | that allow us to bring heat into the body and to dump heat.

01:49:11.400 | I don't want to go into the details now,

01:49:12.660 | but that episode is entitled

01:49:14.120 | Supercharge Your Exercise with Cold.

01:49:16.480 | This is based on work that was done by Craig Heller's lab

01:49:18.840 | at Stanford University.

01:49:20.540 | Absolutely incredible data

01:49:22.560 | showing that the proper use of palmer cooling,

01:49:25.360 | so the palms or the upper half of the face

01:49:27.040 | or the bottoms of the feet can vastly,

01:49:30.000 | I mean, vastly increase the volume of exercise

01:49:33.480 | that one can do and still recover from that exercise

01:49:36.520 | and derive benefits from it.

01:49:38.120 | But this method of cooling for exercise

01:49:40.440 | is grounded in a basic physiological function

01:49:43.160 | of our palms, the bottoms of our feet and our face,

01:49:45.640 | which is to dump heat or to allow cool

01:49:48.860 | to pass into the body.

01:49:50.200 | So that's why in the middle of the night,

01:49:52.200 | as long as you're not in REM sleep,

01:49:54.440 | if you get too warm, you put your foot out

01:49:57.160 | or you put your arms out,

01:49:58.520 | you're actually allowing cooling of the body

01:50:01.340 | through what are called AVAs,

01:50:03.920 | arteriovenous astymoses is the technical name,

01:50:08.360 | that are in the palms, the upper half of the face

01:50:10.640 | and the bottoms of the feet.

01:50:11.760 | And that's a very efficient way to cool off your body,

01:50:14.080 | so you do that subconsciously.

01:50:15.960 | Now, there are things that one can take

01:50:19.840 | to enhance the transition to sleep.

01:50:21.320 | I am not a fan of melatonin

01:50:23.520 | for enhancing the transition to sleep

01:50:25.300 | for a couple of reasons.

01:50:26.140 | One, dosages of melatonin are far too high

01:50:28.440 | in most supplements.

01:50:30.160 | Melatonin can have some negative effects

01:50:32.140 | on the sex steroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen.

01:50:34.960 | That's a serious concern.

01:50:37.140 | Third, melatonin's role during puberty or around puberty

01:50:40.120 | is to suppress the onset of puberty.

01:50:42.100 | So that's concerning.

01:50:44.200 | I don't know that people should be taking this hormone

01:50:45.840 | that has all these other effects.

01:50:48.160 | The other reason is that melatonin

01:50:49.920 | will aid the transition to sleep,

01:50:51.260 | but it won't keep you asleep.

01:50:52.280 | And many people that take melatonin

01:50:53.560 | find that they fall asleep more quickly,

01:50:55.400 | but then they wake up unable to fall back asleep.

01:50:58.600 | Three compounds that could be very beneficial

01:51:00.640 | for aiding the transition to sleep

01:51:02.540 | and for which there are wide safety margins,

01:51:05.520 | although please do check with your physician

01:51:07.100 | before taking anything, are specific forms of magnesium,

01:51:11.080 | something called apigenin and theanine.

01:51:14.120 | Magnesium comes in many forms.

01:51:15.740 | Magnesium malate has been shown to improve

01:51:19.480 | recovery from sore muscles.

01:51:21.320 | For instance, magnesium citrate

01:51:23.200 | is an excellent laxative, for instance.

01:51:25.900 | Magnesium threonate, that's T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E,

01:51:29.440 | threonate and magnesium biglycinate

01:51:32.600 | have transporters that allow them

01:51:34.720 | to cross the blood-brain barrier more readily

01:51:36.760 | than other forms of magnesium.

01:51:38.280 | And there within the brain,

01:51:40.080 | they promote the release of a neurotransmitter called GABA,

01:51:42.920 | which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter,

01:51:44.660 | which shuts off the forebrain to some extent.

01:51:47.560 | It doesn't shut off completely,

01:51:48.600 | but it essentially shuts down thinking, rumination,

01:51:51.200 | planning, and what we call executive function.

01:51:53.820 | So for many people taking 300 to 400 milligrams

01:51:58.020 | of magnesium biglycinate or magnesium threonate,

01:52:01.000 | and there I'm referring to the elemental magnesium

01:52:03.520 | for you aficionados, many people find

01:52:06.280 | that doing that 30 to 60 minutes before sleep

01:52:08.860 | can aid them in falling asleep,

01:52:11.200 | can really help them fall asleep faster and stay asleep.

01:52:14.080 | Some people, however, achieve some gastrointestinal

01:52:17.680 | discomfort from magnesium and therefore should avoid it.

01:52:21.600 | Magnesium threonate and magnesium biglycinate

01:52:24.240 | for many people work, however,

01:52:27.160 | and when coupled with apigenin and theanine,

01:52:30.400 | provide a sort of synergy or a sleep cocktail

01:52:33.840 | that seems to be very effective

01:52:36.380 | in aiding the transition to sleep.

01:52:38.680 | So apigenin is the substance that's found in chamomile,

01:52:42.640 | and 50 milligrams of apigenin taken 30 minutes before sleep

01:52:46.440 | can act as another way to shut off the forebrain

01:52:50.120 | and reduce rumination, reduce anxiety,

01:52:52.300 | and allow people to fall and stay asleep.

01:52:55.340 | I did a podcast with Dr. Daria Rose.

01:52:58.280 | She's got an excellent podcast

01:53:00.040 | that I highly recommend you check out,

01:53:01.380 | covers a number of different health,

01:53:02.560 | scientific, and other subjects,

01:53:04.880 | and she's a PhD in neuroscience,

01:53:06.540 | terrific scientist, et cetera.

01:53:08.320 | She's a big fan of apigenin, as am I.

01:53:11.200 | And then the third compound is theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E.

01:53:15.920 | Theanine is a compound that can also increase GABA,

01:53:20.920 | but also increases activation

01:53:23.200 | of something called chloride channels.

01:53:24.940 | Chloride channels are another way

01:53:26.320 | in which neurons turn themselves off or turn each other off,

01:53:30.440 | not turn each other off in the way

01:53:31.980 | that we're typically heard, like that turns me off,

01:53:33.560 | but turn them off and then shut them down,

01:53:34.800 | lower their levels of activity.

01:53:36.860 | So magnesium threonate or by glycinate,

01:53:38.840 | apigenin and theanine in combination can be very effective

01:53:43.440 | for aiding the transition to sleep.

01:53:45.060 | And I realized that not everyone wants to take supplements.

01:53:47.720 | I certainly am not pushing any of these.

01:53:49.600 | I would hope that everybody be able to fall asleep easily

01:53:52.640 | and stay asleep for the duration of time that they want

01:53:55.220 | without any supplemental help.

01:53:57.060 | But I do think it's important to point out some things

01:53:59.400 | that lie somewhere between doing nothing

01:54:01.300 | and taking prescription drugs,

01:54:02.840 | because many of the prescription drugs

01:54:04.180 | associated with sleep, and you all know what those are,

01:54:08.480 | carry other side effects.

01:54:10.340 | They can create bad dreams, often very disturbing dreams.

01:54:15.120 | They can be addictive or at least habit forming.

01:54:17.660 | They can create grogginess in the morning.

01:54:19.640 | Some are safer than others.

01:54:20.780 | There's a variety of them out there,

01:54:22.480 | but for those that want to explore supplements

01:54:25.480 | and how they can impact sleep,

01:54:26.640 | this combination of about 300, 400 milligrams

01:54:29.160 | of magnesium threonate or by glycinate,

01:54:31.840 | 50 milligrams of apigenin,

01:54:33.480 | and 100 to 200 milligrams of theanine alone

01:54:36.280 | or in combination have been beneficial to many people.

01:54:39.660 | And there are excellent studies to support those statements.

01:54:42.560 | Again, I suggest you go to examine.com

01:54:44.920 | and look up the human effect matrix

01:54:46.960 | for each of those compounds and you can explore them.

01:54:49.440 | One of the more interesting aspects to magnesium threonate

01:54:52.860 | and by glycinate is that it seems to have

01:54:55.080 | some neuroprotective effects as well.

01:54:57.040 | There aren't many studies on it,

01:54:58.200 | but the few studies that are there point to the fact

01:55:00.280 | that magnesium threonate and magnesium by glycinate

01:55:02.660 | can also support neuron health and neuron longevity,

01:55:05.800 | which is just an added bonus in my opinion.

01:55:07.960 | Now, what if you wake up in the middle of the night?

01:55:10.280 | This is a very common occurrence

01:55:12.480 | and there are two general themes

01:55:14.840 | around waking up in the middle of the night

01:55:16.720 | that one can use tools to counteract.

01:55:20.380 | The first theme is if you're somebody

01:55:22.440 | who is tired in the evenings

01:55:24.600 | and you're kind of pushing yourself to stay awake,

01:55:27.340 | so you're going to the party

01:55:28.940 | or you're pushing yourself to study your work

01:55:31.460 | when in fact you'd like to get into bed at 8, 30, or 9,

01:55:33.880 | and then you're falling asleep around 10, 30, 11

01:55:36.160 | and waking up at 2, 30, or 3 in the morning

01:55:38.040 | and you can't fall back asleep,

01:55:39.860 | chances are that your melatonin pulse

01:55:42.640 | was initiated early in the night.

01:55:45.080 | So that melatonin pulse started probably around 8, 30, or 9,

01:55:50.080 | but you're staying up, you're battling that melatonin.

01:55:53.080 | And then sometime around 2, 30, or 3 in the morning,

01:55:57.160 | that melatonin is no longer present,

01:55:59.240 | it's sufficiently high levels in your bloodstream

01:56:01.120 | and you're waking up,

01:56:02.200 | you're getting your morning cortisol pulse

01:56:03.920 | shifted into those wee hours of the morning.

01:56:07.300 | You may not like this advice,

01:56:09.920 | but one of the things that you can do to offset that

01:56:11.560 | is to simply go to bed earlier.

01:56:13.860 | By going to bed earlier,

01:56:15.240 | you're going to get the longer duration of sleep.

01:56:17.440 | But I realize that there are social reasons

01:56:19.120 | and work-related reasons why going to bed at 8, 30, or 9

01:56:22.160 | is not necessarily beneficial to your life.

01:56:25.600 | So in that case, you might be one of the rare individuals

01:56:29.500 | for whom getting a little bit more bright light

01:56:31.680 | in the evening could be a good thing.

01:56:33.600 | So this would be around the hours of 7 or 8 p.m.,

01:56:36.960 | and in that way, causing that pulse in melatonin

01:56:40.780 | to be delayed because again, light inhibits melatonin.

01:56:45.780 | Now, the other thing is,

01:56:47.240 | many people wake up in the middle of the night

01:56:49.060 | because of anxiety or because they have to use the restroom.

01:56:52.500 | It's perfectly fine to flip on the lights,

01:56:54.200 | but keep the lights dim.

01:56:56.380 | But if you flip on those lights,

01:56:57.760 | try and flip them off as soon as possible

01:57:00.200 | and try and get back into bed.

01:57:01.960 | And if you have trouble falling asleep again

01:57:03.960 | and you absolutely need to sleep,

01:57:05.440 | that's where these NSDR,

01:57:07.060 | these non-sleep deep rest protocols

01:57:08.720 | can really be beneficial.

01:57:10.080 | Even though the NS, the non-sleep part,

01:57:13.300 | might make you think that they will prevent you

01:57:15.940 | from falling asleep, rather than trying to fight your mind,

01:57:19.960 | trying to fight anxiety,

01:57:21.800 | which is always a terrible thing to do.

01:57:23.360 | I always say it's very hard to control the mind

01:57:25.000 | with the mind.

01:57:25.820 | Look to the body, and that's what NSDR scripts do.

01:57:28.480 | Things like yoga nidra, even the sleep hypnosis

01:57:32.380 | done in the middle of the night,

01:57:33.420 | if you wake up and want to fall back asleep,

01:57:35.160 | oftentimes will help you fall back asleep immediately.

01:57:39.160 | And if they don't,

01:57:40.200 | they will at least put your brain and body

01:57:42.000 | into a state of deep relaxation

01:57:43.920 | that more closely mimics the sleep state

01:57:46.180 | that you ought to be in than the awake ruminating,

01:57:48.920 | stressing about the fact that you're not sleeping state.

01:57:51.480 | So if you wake up in the middle of the night,

01:57:53.240 | really try and get back to sleep.

01:57:55.000 | And if you can't do that by doing, for instance,

01:57:57.920 | long exhale breathing, which can work,

01:58:00.320 | use some other tool of the body to shift the mind.

01:58:04.020 | And the tools that I'm recommending

01:58:05.720 | are of the non-sleep deep rest variety.

01:58:08.440 | So now we've essentially traveled around the clock,

01:58:11.480 | so to speak, from the time where one wakes up

01:58:14.400 | until the time they start working,

01:58:16.980 | until the time they exercise, eat lunch,

01:58:20.400 | do an NSDR, head to sleep, get to sleep,

01:58:23.760 | maybe wake up, get back to sleep, et cetera.

01:58:27.120 | I want to emphasize that although people's schedules vary,

01:58:30.400 | most people are doing more than one or two workouts per day.

01:58:34.520 | And indeed, I'm doing more than one

01:58:36.600 | or two workouts per day.

01:58:38.160 | I really emphasize that morning 90-minute work block

01:58:41.120 | because I think most people would agree

01:58:44.140 | that there's a portion of each day

01:58:46.440 | in which we need to do the hardest thing

01:58:48.620 | or the most important thing,

01:58:50.380 | or the thing that demands the most of our cognitive self.

01:58:54.780 | I position that early in the day,

01:58:56.360 | and I position everything around that

01:58:58.640 | in order to ensure that it happens

01:59:00.680 | and that it happens with the highest degree of efficiency.

01:59:03.600 | And yes, I make sure that it happens every day.

01:59:05.960 | And that brings about two other important points.

01:59:08.820 | First of all, we do have this thing called weekends,

01:59:12.380 | and I tend to take one day off per week, not both,

01:59:16.060 | much to the dismay of people in my life and Costello.

01:59:19.960 | But nonetheless, there is something called weekend drift,

01:59:24.000 | which is that we can be very regimented

01:59:26.520 | on a Monday or a Tuesday,

01:59:28.000 | and then even if we're good about maintaining a schedule,

01:59:31.120 | Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, et cetera,

01:59:32.980 | most of us, I would hope,

01:59:35.420 | would alter their schedule somewhat on the weekends

01:59:37.800 | in order to recover and get some additional rest.

01:59:40.880 | And I want to emphasize, I absolutely do that.

01:59:43.480 | I take one day per week where I go full Costello,

01:59:46.520 | where I essentially do nothing in a structured way.

01:59:49.120 | At least if I have my way, I'm not making any plans.

01:59:52.160 | I'm completely free to explore what I want to do

01:59:55.200 | and when I want to do it.

01:59:56.500 | That's not the way life works out.

01:59:57.800 | Oftentimes there are social engagements and other things

02:00:00.440 | that get in the way or that I enjoy,

02:00:02.680 | and that breaks up the day.

02:00:04.360 | But I do take rest.

02:00:06.260 | I don't think that one has to follow the same schedule

02:00:08.880 | every single day.

02:00:09.840 | However, I do think there are a few things

02:00:11.600 | that people should do every single day if possible.

02:00:15.240 | And those are get morning sunlight,

02:00:18.280 | because if you don't, your circadian rhythms

02:00:20.120 | and your health, et cetera, and your mood

02:00:21.520 | are going to start to drift

02:00:23.440 | and to try and get sleep on a regular basis.

02:00:26.840 | And of course, some of the greatest of things in life

02:00:29.480 | happen after 10 p.m.,

02:00:31.320 | and some of those even involve sleepless nights

02:00:33.940 | of various kinds.

02:00:36.000 | I certainly don't want to discourage people

02:00:37.720 | from having a social life or from having a robust party life

02:00:41.560 | if that's your thing, or for enjoying life,

02:00:44.720 | because that's certainly one of the main things

02:00:47.360 | that we should all be pursuing is to enjoy life.

02:00:50.920 | The only point I want to make about sleep

02:00:52.840 | is that if you happen to stay up late,

02:00:56.360 | it's still best to get up at your regular wake-up time.

02:00:59.180 | It's a very simple solution to a problem

02:01:01.280 | that a lot of people have,

02:01:02.520 | which is they stay up till two or three in the morning,

02:01:04.320 | and then they tend to sleep late,

02:01:05.720 | and then it tends to disrupt their rhythm.

02:01:07.780 | Try on most days and most nights

02:01:11.040 | to wake up at more or less the same time

02:01:13.120 | and try to go to sleep at more or less the same time.

02:01:15.920 | In fact, I was talking to Matt Walker about this recently,

02:01:18.860 | and he was also surprised to see these new data,

02:01:21.300 | and I was surprised to see these new data

02:01:22.840 | that emphasized that if you get a poor night's sleep,

02:01:25.860 | or if you're up late the previous night for good reasons,

02:01:29.080 | many people feel like they just want to go to bed

02:01:30.960 | early the next night,

02:01:32.020 | but it turns out that's not the best thing to do

02:01:34.480 | for your immediate and long-term health.

02:01:36.540 | Try and stay up to the point

02:01:37.860 | where you would normally stay up and then get to sleep.

02:01:40.380 | If you go to bed a couple hours earlier,

02:01:41.940 | it's probably not going to kill you,

02:01:43.380 | but try to not go to bed, for instance, at 6 p.m.

02:01:46.900 | because you were up the entire night before.

02:01:48.560 | That can really be disruptive.

02:01:50.840 | The other thing I want to emphasize is that

02:01:52.660 | even though that morning 90-minute work block is so vital,

02:01:57.440 | of course, there's a second work block,

02:01:59.440 | and in fact, I described one in the afternoon

02:02:01.380 | after the NSDR.

02:02:02.620 | For me, that's reverie hypnosis.

02:02:04.820 | There's a 90-minute work block in which I drop in again

02:02:08.780 | in a no internet connection, no phone kind of way

02:02:12.740 | to complete some work that's important to me.

02:02:15.660 | So combined, that's just three hours of focused work,

02:02:18.180 | which may not seem like a lot,

02:02:20.180 | but if you were to dissect your day

02:02:22.140 | and kind of look at the arc and structure of your day,

02:02:24.760 | I'd be willing to bet that if we added up

02:02:28.660 | the total period of time in which you were in

02:02:31.400 | what Cal Newport would call deep work,

02:02:33.760 | really focused, dedicated work,

02:02:35.580 | that it would probably amount to about three or four hours.

02:02:39.040 | If you can squeeze in another 90-minute work block,

02:02:42.060 | or if you can get four 90-minute work blocks,

02:02:44.720 | well, then more power to you,

02:02:45.820 | but I think most people find that one or two

02:02:48.300 | of these really deep focused 90-minute work blocks

02:02:51.360 | are about what one's schedule and even mind can handle.

02:02:55.380 | And of course, throughout the day,

02:02:56.940 | there are other things happening

02:02:58.440 | outside of those 90-minute work blocks.

02:03:00.820 | I'm checking my text messages, I'm checking my email,

02:03:03.360 | I'm responding to various demands,

02:03:05.060 | I'm working and tending to life.

02:03:08.000 | So while I've carved some boundaries

02:03:11.060 | or delineated some boundaries around those work blocks,

02:03:13.580 | and I'm certain that if you do too,

02:03:15.500 | you will benefit from them,

02:03:16.800 | they are certainly not the only periods of time each day

02:03:19.640 | in which I or I believe other people

02:03:21.640 | should be trying to learn or trying to focus.

02:03:24.220 | And I want to emphasize that even though my job

02:03:26.380 | is to discover knowledge and distribute knowledge

02:03:29.620 | because I'm a scientist,

02:03:30.680 | I realized that 90-minute work blocks

02:03:32.980 | of the sort that I'm describing

02:03:35.280 | may not apply specifically to the kinds of work you do

02:03:37.920 | if you're an artist or a sculptor or you build furniture

02:03:40.780 | or whatever it is that you happen to do,

02:03:42.220 | you teach children or they teach you,

02:03:44.140 | whatever it happens to be.

02:03:45.900 | Of course, please adapt and modify what I've described today

02:03:50.340 | in ways that best serve you and your schedule.

02:03:52.780 | What I've tried to do is provide you a picture

02:03:55.580 | of the 24-hour schedule that I follow

02:03:58.660 | and why I do certain things at particular times

02:04:01.720 | and why I do those particular things.

02:04:03.660 | And I've really tried to emphasize the scientific rationale

02:04:06.500 | behind those things, the peer-reviewed data.

02:04:09.300 | In some cases, I pointed out the specific papers.

02:04:11.420 | In other cases, I've referred to large bodies of work

02:04:14.240 | that support these practices.

02:04:16.060 | When I say large bodies of work,

02:04:17.940 | I'm a big fan of looking to the scientific literature

02:04:21.060 | and asking where is the center of mass

02:04:23.920 | for a particular topic?

02:04:25.720 | For instance, where is there 50 or 100 or 1,000 papers

02:04:30.720 | that, for instance, support morning light viewing

02:04:34.180 | in order to optimize melatonin secretion later in the day,

02:04:38.900 | cortisol secretion early in the day,

02:04:40.960 | mood, metabolism, et cetera.

02:04:43.140 | If one were to put into PubMed light, metabolism, and mood,

02:04:47.640 | you would literally get tens of thousands,

02:04:50.540 | maybe even hundreds of thousands of studies.

02:04:52.360 | So when I say the center of mass,

02:04:53.720 | what I've really tried to do is examine the literature

02:04:56.960 | and figure out where there's a sort of a directive protocol

02:05:00.940 | that emerges from all these various studies that used,

02:05:04.180 | in some cases, animals, in many cases, humans,

02:05:06.800 | and explore different what we call dependent variables.

02:05:09.840 | Some studies were looking at effects on blood sugar,

02:05:11.920 | other on mood.

02:05:13.340 | So I hope that makes clear why the rationale

02:05:16.540 | behind what I provided today.

02:05:18.280 | If you're learning from this podcast and enjoying it,

02:05:20.660 | please support us by subscribing to the YouTube channel.

02:05:23.780 | There at YouTube, you can also provide comments

02:05:26.020 | and feedback.

02:05:27.020 | We use that feedback to inform future episodes.

02:05:30.420 | In addition, please subscribe on Apple and Spotify.

02:05:33.740 | And on Apple, you have the opportunity to leave us

02:05:35.860 | up to a five-star review,

02:05:37.460 | as well as to leave us written comments.

02:05:39.760 | If you're not already following us on Instagram, please do.

02:05:43.420 | There, I provide short tutorials on neuroscience

02:05:46.220 | and neuroscience-based tools on a frequent basis.

02:05:48.880 | Please also feel free to join our neural network.

02:05:51.620 | The neural network is a free resource newsletter

02:05:54.180 | that I provide each month that has protocols

02:05:56.860 | and resources all zero cost.

02:05:58.920 | You can find it at hubermanlab.com.

02:06:01.820 | During today's episode, I describe various supplements

02:06:04.820 | that one might want to consider taking.

02:06:06.980 | We've partnered with Thorne, that's T-H-O-R-N-E.com,

02:06:10.780 | because Thorne supplements are known to be

02:06:12.760 | of the very highest stringency and quality.

02:06:15.720 | When I say stringency and quality,

02:06:17.160 | that means the quality of the individual ingredients,

02:06:20.080 | as well as the amounts of those ingredients match precisely

02:06:23.340 | with what's listed on the packaging.

02:06:25.280 | If you'd like to see the supplements that I personally take,

02:06:27.860 | you can go to thorne.com/u/huberman,

02:06:32.600 | and there you'll see all the supplements that I take,

02:06:34.820 | and you can get 20% off any of those supplements

02:06:37.720 | or any of the other supplements that Thorne makes.

02:06:40.660 | Another great way to support us is

02:06:42.180 | by checking out our sponsors.

02:06:44.080 | We only work with sponsors whose products we absolutely love

02:06:47.460 | and if you want to support us,

02:06:48.780 | please check out their websites.

02:06:50.100 | The links to those websites are in the episode caption.

02:06:53.200 | And last but not least,

02:06:54.580 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:06:56.380 | [upbeat music]

02:06:58.960 | (upbeat music)

Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #28

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