Sleep Toolkit: Tools for Optimizing Sleep & Sleep-Wake Timing

00:00:00.320 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

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

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.160 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.160 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.040 | Today, we're talking all about sleep

00:00:17.040 | and how to optimize your sleep.

00:00:19.320 | This is a topic we've covered previously on this podcast

00:00:22.240 | in the episode called Master Your Sleep.

00:00:24.700 | However, since the airing of that episode,

00:00:27.040 | there's been some terrific new science to come out.

00:00:29.520 | I've also received thousands,

00:00:31.120 | yes, literally thousands of questions

00:00:33.320 | related to the specific protocols covered in that episode,

00:00:36.480 | as well as in the episode on jet lag and shift work.

00:00:39.900 | And while today's episode is not specifically

00:00:41.800 | about jet lag and shift work,

00:00:43.420 | we are going to cover tools that will allow you

00:00:45.400 | to shift your schedule if you need to for work or travel.

00:00:49.160 | And we will also cover tools

00:00:51.320 | that will allow you to fall back asleep

00:00:53.160 | if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night,

00:00:55.200 | or if you get a poor night's sleep,

00:00:56.600 | how to actually recover from that poor night's sleep

00:00:58.540 | more quickly, and yes indeed,

00:01:00.620 | even replace sleep that you've lost.

00:01:03.080 | So today's episode is going to be filled

00:01:05.400 | with practical tools.

00:01:06.520 | We will touch on some of the underlying science,

00:01:08.800 | but it's really designed to be a practical toolkit

00:01:11.440 | for optimizing your sleep

00:01:13.020 | depending on your specific sleep needs.

00:01:15.120 | Various times throughout today's episode,

00:01:17.080 | I will refer to studies that form the backbone

00:01:19.600 | of the tools that I'll be describing,

00:01:21.440 | but whereas most of the podcast episodes here

00:01:24.480 | tend to be deep scientific mechanism,

00:01:26.720 | and then tools, scientific mechanism,

00:01:28.480 | and tools today, I'm mainly going to focus

00:01:30.620 | on the practical tools that anyone, indeed,

00:01:33.620 | all people I believe should use

00:01:35.180 | in order to optimize their sleep.

00:01:36.880 | Why should everybody want to optimize their sleep

00:01:39.260 | and put considerable effort into optimizing their sleep?

00:01:42.480 | Well, put simply, sleep is the foundation of mental health,

00:01:46.400 | physical health, and performance of all kinds,

00:01:48.460 | cognitive performance, physical performance, et cetera.

00:01:50.960 | It also controls things like our immune system,

00:01:53.700 | wound healing, our skin health, and our appearance.

00:01:57.320 | Whether or not we can think clearly or not,

00:01:59.800 | whether or not we will live

00:02:01.240 | as long as we possibly can or not,

00:02:03.900 | whether or not we suffer from dramatic age-related

00:02:07.060 | cognitive decline or not,

00:02:08.880 | in other words, whether or not we keep our memory as we age,

00:02:11.920 | I could go on and on about all the terrible things

00:02:14.140 | that can happen to somebody if they don't sleep well.

00:02:17.520 | Thanks to the great work of Professor Matt Walker

00:02:20.600 | at University of California, Berkeley,

00:02:22.100 | and the wonderful book that he wrote, "Why We Sleep,"

00:02:24.720 | I think the world is largely on board now

00:02:27.000 | that sleep is critical to our health,

00:02:29.280 | our mental health, our physical health, and our performance.

00:02:31.980 | But what's not often discussed is how great life is,

00:02:35.800 | that is, how much more focused and energetic

00:02:38.040 | and how positive our mood gets

00:02:39.840 | when we are sleeping for the appropriate amount of time

00:02:42.720 | at the appropriate depth

00:02:44.360 | and when we are doing that regularly.

00:02:46.280 | Basically, everything in life gets better

00:02:47.960 | when we're sleeping well.

00:02:48.780 | So today, I'm going to teach you the tools

00:02:50.720 | that will allow you to optimize your sleep,

00:02:53.280 | that is, get to sleep and stay asleep,

00:02:55.720 | fall back asleep if you wake up in the middle of the night,

00:02:58.360 | and adjust your sleep given the various life demands

00:03:00.880 | you may be experiencing.

00:03:02.160 | I'm pleased to announce that the Huberman Lab Podcast

00:03:04.040 | is now partnered with Momentus Supplements.

00:03:06.360 | We partnered with Momentus for several important reasons.

00:03:08.600 | First of all, they ship internationally

00:03:10.300 | because we know that many of you are located

00:03:12.200 | outside of the United States, that's valuable.

00:03:15.080 | Second of all, and perhaps most important,

00:03:17.080 | the quality of their supplements is second to none,

00:03:19.640 | both in terms of purity and precision

00:03:21.300 | of the amounts of the ingredients.

00:03:23.240 | Third, we've really emphasized supplements

00:03:25.880 | that are single ingredient supplements

00:03:28.080 | and that are supplied in dosages

00:03:30.140 | that allow you to build a supplementation protocol

00:03:33.120 | that's optimized for cost,

00:03:34.960 | that's optimized for effectiveness,

00:03:36.820 | and that you can add things and remove things

00:03:38.960 | from your protocol in a way

00:03:40.300 | that's really systematic and scientific.

00:03:42.000 | This is really hard to do

00:03:43.340 | if you're taking blends of different supplements

00:03:45.200 | or if the dosages are such that you can't titrate,

00:03:47.960 | or that is adjust the dosages of a given supplement.

00:03:51.340 | So by using single ingredient supplements,

00:03:53.980 | you can really build out the supplement kit

00:03:55.660 | that's ideal for you and your specific needs.

00:03:58.760 | If you'd like to see the supplements

00:03:59.940 | that we partner with Momentus on,

00:04:01.280 | you can go to livemomentus.com/huberman.

00:04:04.380 | There you'll see those supplements,

00:04:05.500 | and just keep in mind that we are constantly expanding

00:04:07.960 | the library of supplements available through Momentus

00:04:10.660 | on a regular basis.

00:04:11.600 | Again, that's livemomentus.com/huberman.

00:04:14.280 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:04:16.960 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:04:19.700 | It is however, part of my desire and effort

00:04:21.760 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:04:24.200 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:04:26.800 | In keeping with that theme,

00:04:27.840 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:04:30.640 | Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.

00:04:32.960 | InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

00:04:35.400 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

00:04:38.040 | to help you better meet your health goals.

00:04:40.420 | I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done

00:04:42.840 | for the simple reason that many of the factors

00:04:45.240 | that impact your immediate and long-term health

00:04:47.300 | can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.

00:04:49.640 | And nowadays with the advent of modern DNA tests,

00:04:52.180 | you can also get insight into, for instance,

00:04:54.000 | what your biological age is

00:04:55.480 | and compare that to your chronological age.

00:04:57.380 | And of course, your biological age

00:04:59.120 | is really the age that counts.

00:05:01.400 | The problem with a lot of blood tests

00:05:02.480 | and DNA tests out there however,

00:05:04.240 | is that you get information back

00:05:05.820 | about the levels of metabolic factors,

00:05:07.400 | lipids, hormones, et cetera,

00:05:08.960 | but you don't know what to do with that information.

00:05:10.800 | InsideTracker makes that all very easy to navigate.

00:05:13.320 | They have a personalized platform.

00:05:15.160 | So this is a web portal where you can go,

00:05:17.560 | you'll see the numbers from your blood tests and DNA tests,

00:05:20.040 | and then it will tell you, for instance,

00:05:21.440 | how you could adjust various aspects of your nutrition

00:05:23.800 | or your exercise or supplementation

00:05:25.760 | in order to bring those numbers

00:05:27.240 | into the ranges that are best for you.

00:05:29.460 | If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

00:05:30.840 | you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman

00:05:33.660 | to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans.

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00:05:40.160 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

00:05:42.660 | Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers

00:05:44.240 | with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capabilities.

00:05:47.400 | It turns out that your body temperature

00:05:49.800 | and your ability to fall and stay asleep

00:05:51.760 | are very closely related.

00:05:53.840 | If your body does not drop by one to three degrees,

00:05:56.640 | you are simply not going to get into deep sleep

00:05:58.640 | or stay in deep sleep.

00:06:00.220 | And waking up, it also turns out,

00:06:02.520 | is related to body temperature.

00:06:03.840 | Every time you wake up in the morning,

00:06:05.500 | your body is warming up in order to wake you up.

00:06:08.040 | And this has an enormous number of hormonal and metabolic

00:06:10.600 | and other cascades that are vitally important,

00:06:12.480 | not just to what happens while you sleep,

00:06:14.320 | but your health and your energy

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00:06:17.640 | Eight Sleep is an incredible device.

00:06:19.640 | It's one that I've been using for six months or so,

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00:06:26.360 | The way it works is that you can cool or heat your mattress

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00:06:46.680 | If you've been sleeping pretty well,

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00:06:51.600 | even further toward the middle of your sleep bout,

00:06:54.240 | well, you'll stay in deep sleep much longer.

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00:07:12.940 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.

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00:07:21.000 | but none of the things you don't, in particular, sugar.

00:07:23.820 | Electrolytes are vitally important

00:07:25.420 | to the way that your neurons, your nerve cells work,

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00:07:30.600 | But your nervous system and your neurons

00:07:32.040 | particularly depend on electrolytes

00:07:34.320 | because you need the electrolytes,

00:07:36.200 | sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the proper ratios

00:07:39.120 | in order for those nerve cells

00:07:40.400 | to fire what are called action potentials,

00:07:42.280 | which are the electrical signals

00:07:43.920 | that allow your neurons to work

00:07:45.180 | and to allow you to do everything

00:07:46.440 | from remembering information

00:07:47.880 | to moving your muscles deliberately.

00:07:50.500 | When you exercise, or even if you don't,

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00:08:24.040 | Let's talk about sleep and tools to optimize your sleep.

00:08:27.580 | I want you to conceptualize yourself

00:08:31.360 | as contained within a room that has only very few windows

00:08:36.360 | or very few entry points.

00:08:39.320 | What do I mean by this?

00:08:40.160 | Well, your brain and your nervous system

00:08:43.540 | control whether or not you move or don't move.

00:08:45.920 | They control whether or not you're digesting food

00:08:47.820 | or you're not digesting food.

00:08:49.880 | They control whether or not you're stressed or not stressed,

00:08:51.680 | happy or sad, et cetera.

00:08:53.540 | All of that stuff that controls all that stuff

00:08:57.040 | is housed inside your skin and skull, et cetera.

00:09:00.760 | And that might seem pretty obvious,

00:09:02.520 | but what that means is that for your brain and body

00:09:06.500 | to feel alert and focused, ready to move and exercise

00:09:11.300 | or do some work, or if your brain and body

00:09:14.460 | are going to lie down and go to sleep,

00:09:17.320 | well, that brain and body needs cues.

00:09:20.980 | It needs inputs to determine

00:09:22.940 | when to do those different things.

00:09:25.780 | And those cues and inputs arrive through a defined set

00:09:29.880 | of what I'll call stimuli,

00:09:31.060 | but you can also think of these as levers or tools.

00:09:34.200 | The main levers and tools that are going to allow you

00:09:37.260 | to control when you are awake and when you are asleep

00:09:40.600 | and to get better sleep every single night

00:09:43.520 | are light, literally photons, light energy,

00:09:48.040 | could be from sunlight, could be from artificial light.

00:09:49.960 | We will discuss those particulars in a moment,

00:09:52.920 | as well as darkness.

00:09:55.120 | That is the absence of light.

00:09:57.840 | So we've got light and dark.

00:09:59.360 | Those are two very powerful tools

00:10:02.220 | to encourage your nervous system to be in one state

00:10:04.620 | or another, meaning awake or asleep.

00:10:06.420 | Temperature is another tool or lever.

00:10:11.040 | Turns out that when your body is cooling down,

00:10:14.260 | you have a greater tendency to fall and stay asleep.

00:10:18.100 | In fact, every night when you actually sleep,

00:10:21.140 | your body is dropping by one to three degrees,

00:10:23.500 | and that drop in temperature is required.

00:10:26.560 | It's like a gate that your body has to go through

00:10:29.100 | in order for you to get into sleep.

00:10:31.740 | And in fact, the converse is also true.

00:10:33.700 | If your body heats up by one to three degrees or so,

00:10:37.060 | you will wake up.

00:10:38.480 | So you've got light, dark, temperature, food,

00:10:43.480 | and when we say food, we mean what we eat,

00:10:47.640 | when we eat, and the amount that we eat.

00:10:51.120 | Okay, so light, dark, temperature, food, exercise,

00:10:54.380 | and of course, exercise comes in different forms.

00:10:56.700 | We can do cardiovascular exercise.

00:10:58.340 | That can be low intensity, long distance exercise.

00:11:01.860 | It can be high intensity,

00:11:03.440 | so-called high intensity interval training.

00:11:05.460 | It could be weight training, it could be yoga,

00:11:07.580 | it could be swimming, any number of different activities,

00:11:09.860 | but exercise in general causes an increase

00:11:13.320 | in body temperature and tends to make us more alert,

00:11:17.280 | not just during the exercise,

00:11:18.820 | but in the immediate hours after that exercise.

00:11:21.860 | Exercise does some other things

00:11:23.140 | that relate to our sleep as well,

00:11:24.380 | and we'll talk about those today

00:11:25.700 | and how you can leverage them.

00:11:27.100 | Another potent lever for adjusting your sleepiness

00:11:30.860 | and wakefulness is caffeine.

00:11:33.940 | This of course comes as no surprise to people,

00:11:36.380 | but why and how caffeine works

00:11:39.300 | might come as a surprise.

00:11:40.780 | Very briefly, we have a molecule in our body

00:11:44.400 | called adenosine, and the longer we have been awake,

00:11:47.500 | the more adenosine builds up in our brain and body,

00:11:49.800 | and adenosine is part of the reason why we get sleepy.

00:11:52.740 | Caffeine effectively operates as a adenosine antagonist.

00:11:57.740 | It works by basically occupying the receptor for adenosine,

00:12:01.540 | so it's a little bit of a convoluted mechanism,

00:12:03.840 | but basically all you need to know

00:12:05.560 | is that caffeine prevents the actions of adenosine.

00:12:08.660 | That's one of the reasons why caffeine makes us feel alert,

00:12:11.500 | but how much caffeine we drink and when we drink caffeine

00:12:14.000 | turns out to be vitally important

00:12:15.380 | for adjusting our wakefulness and for optimizing our sleep,

00:12:18.800 | so we'll talk about that as well.

00:12:20.100 | The other category of lever tools,

00:12:21.820 | which are immensely powerful for optimizing sleep,

00:12:25.000 | are supplements.

00:12:26.800 | There now exist as many as eight different supplements

00:12:29.920 | that can powerfully modulate sleep in healthy ways

00:12:33.360 | and that have huge margins for safety.

00:12:35.920 | We're going to talk about what those supplements are.

00:12:38.340 | In previous episodes of this podcast

00:12:40.160 | and as a guest on other podcasts,

00:12:42.460 | I've talked about three particular supplements,

00:12:44.420 | magnesium threonate, apigenin, and theanine,

00:12:48.540 | which together can really enhance the speed

00:12:51.020 | at which one falls asleep

00:12:52.300 | and people's ability to stay asleep

00:12:54.620 | and to really get into those deep stages of sleep

00:12:56.700 | that are particularly restorative.

00:12:58.200 | Today, we're going to talk a little bit more

00:12:59.820 | about each of those three

00:13:00.860 | and how they can best be used in combination,

00:13:03.220 | but we are also going to touch on some other supplements

00:13:05.860 | that I have not talked about much before, if at all,

00:13:09.140 | things like glycine and GABA, as well as inositol.

00:13:13.180 | Many people are going to find inositol interesting

00:13:15.660 | and of particular use to them,

00:13:18.140 | especially if they're following a low carbohydrate diet

00:13:20.900 | or if they are fasting before sleep

00:13:23.620 | or just trying to avoid eating too close to bedtime

00:13:26.440 | and yet they're having a hard time falling asleep.

00:13:29.180 | Inositol also turns out to be especially useful

00:13:31.560 | for people who have a tendency to wake up

00:13:33.720 | in the middle of the night

00:13:34.560 | and have a hard time falling back asleep.

00:13:36.380 | It also has some interesting and potent effects

00:13:38.840 | on anxiety throughout the day.

00:13:40.220 | So we're going to talk about inositol as a tool as well.

00:13:43.580 | And then last in our list of general categories

00:13:45.720 | of levers and tools for optimizing sleep are digital tools.

00:13:50.140 | So we say digital tools, I don't necessarily mean devices.

00:13:52.700 | What I mean are things like non-sleep deep rest scripts.

00:13:56.220 | These are zero cost scripts that you listen to

00:13:59.220 | that take your body through some deep relaxation

00:14:01.340 | and that can help people both fall asleep, stay asleep,

00:14:05.000 | fall back asleep, and get better at sleeping.

00:14:08.100 | And also going to talk about digital tools

00:14:10.380 | related to self-hypnosis.

00:14:11.820 | This is distinctly different from stage hypnosis.

00:14:14.220 | So I know some of you hear hypnosis and you think,

00:14:16.080 | oh, you know, people, you know, clucking like chickens

00:14:18.940 | and doing things that are outside their control.

00:14:21.020 | That's not at all what I'm referring to here.

00:14:22.660 | I'm talking about clinically and research supported tools

00:14:26.680 | that have been shown to enhance people's ability

00:14:29.560 | to fall and stay asleep

00:14:30.780 | and that can get you far better at sleeping.

00:14:34.160 | So again, to recap the list of levers and tools,

00:14:36.940 | we've got light and dark,

00:14:39.100 | and that includes the intensity of light,

00:14:40.500 | the timing of light, et cetera.

00:14:41.700 | We've got temperature, we have food,

00:14:44.020 | we have exercise, caffeine, supplements, and digital tools,

00:14:49.020 | not just limited to devices,

00:14:50.700 | but zero cost tools that you can access on YouTube

00:14:54.220 | and elsewhere in various apps

00:14:55.820 | that can really help you optimize your sleep.

00:14:57.620 | So today we're going to talk about all of these.

00:14:59.260 | I really want to provide you as many tools as possible,

00:15:01.700 | give you the logic behind each of those tools

00:15:03.460 | and when and how best to apply them

00:15:05.620 | so that you can develop the sleep toolkit

00:15:08.540 | that's ideal for your sleep needs.

00:15:10.660 | As we head into our description

00:15:12.240 | of tools for optimizing sleep,

00:15:14.560 | let's consider what the perfect 24-hour cycle

00:15:18.360 | would look like.

00:15:19.920 | Let's start this 24-hour cycle

00:15:21.580 | with when you wake up in the morning.

00:15:23.340 | So for some of you, that will be 5 a.m.,

00:15:25.340 | for others of you, that will be 10 a.m.

00:15:27.360 | Most people, I believe, wake up sometime

00:15:29.580 | between 6.30 a.m. and 8.30 a.m.

00:15:32.700 | But regardless of when you wake up in the morning,

00:15:35.320 | one of the first things that happens

00:15:36.940 | is that your body temperature is increasing

00:15:39.780 | and that's just going to happen naturally.

00:15:41.800 | Some of it is going to be the consequence

00:15:43.400 | of your moving around a bit,

00:15:45.020 | but really the increase in body temperature

00:15:47.460 | is one of the main triggers

00:15:49.060 | for why you woke up in the first place.

00:15:51.180 | That increase in body temperature, in turn,

00:15:55.020 | causes an increase in the release

00:15:56.820 | of a hormone called cortisol.

00:15:59.000 | Cortisol is often discussed as a stress hormone,

00:16:01.900 | but it's not just associated with stress.

00:16:03.900 | It also enhances your immune system,

00:16:06.500 | provided cortisol is elevated at the right times

00:16:09.780 | and the right time for cortisol to be elevated

00:16:11.700 | is when you first wake up in the morning.

00:16:13.940 | That increase in cortisol

00:16:15.980 | is also going to increase metabolism.

00:16:18.920 | It's also going to increase your ability to focus mentally

00:16:22.500 | and for you to move your body.

00:16:24.760 | So again, cortisol is often demonized

00:16:27.880 | and considered this bad thing.

00:16:29.140 | And indeed, you don't want cortisol to be chronically

00:16:31.960 | or consistently elevated throughout the day or night,

00:16:34.720 | but you do want cortisol to reach its peak early in the day,

00:16:38.380 | right about the time you wake up.

00:16:40.860 | One way that you can ensure

00:16:42.500 | that that cortisol peak occurs early in the day,

00:16:45.020 | right about the time that you wake up,

00:16:47.100 | is to view bright light, ideally from sunlight,

00:16:50.800 | within the first 30 to 60 minutes after waking.

00:16:54.280 | That's right, view bright sunlight

00:16:57.820 | within the first 30 to 60 minutes after waking.

00:17:01.880 | I'll get into all the caveats

00:17:03.260 | about what happens if you wake up before the sun is out,

00:17:05.500 | what if you live in the UK where there is no sun

00:17:07.460 | or people claim there is no sun,

00:17:08.580 | hate to tell you this, folks, but there is sun in the UK.

00:17:12.100 | We'll talk about all that, but everybody,

00:17:15.380 | whether or not you live in a cloudy place or a sunny place,

00:17:18.380 | whether or not there's cloud cover or not that day,

00:17:20.980 | should really strive to get bright light in your eyes,

00:17:24.080 | ideally from sunlight,

00:17:25.500 | within the first 30 to 60 minutes after waking.

00:17:29.140 | The reason for that is very simple.

00:17:31.580 | You want to trigger that cortisol increase

00:17:33.660 | to occur very early in your day.

00:17:37.060 | And you don't want that cortisol peak to happen later,

00:17:39.540 | which is what will happen if you wait

00:17:41.620 | to get outside and see sunlight.

00:17:43.600 | The reason for this is that you have a set of neurons,

00:17:47.980 | nerve cells in your eye,

00:17:49.340 | they're called intrinsically photosensitive melanopsin cells,

00:17:51.700 | but you do not need to know that name.

00:17:53.580 | Those neurons respond best to bright light,

00:17:56.460 | and especially right after waking early in the day,

00:17:59.740 | they are best able to signal to a set of neurons

00:18:02.760 | that reside over the roof of your mouth,

00:18:04.720 | called the suprachiasmatic nucleus,

00:18:06.180 | which is a cluster of neurons

00:18:07.180 | that then sends a huge number of other signals,

00:18:10.040 | electrical and chemical, out to your entire body

00:18:12.540 | that triggers that cortisol increase,

00:18:14.960 | provides a wake-up signal for your brain and body,

00:18:16.980 | and sets in motion a timer

00:18:19.300 | for you to fall asleep later that night.

00:18:21.460 | So again, we're not trying to go

00:18:22.760 | into too much mechanism today.

00:18:23.980 | We are trying to really hammer on tools,

00:18:25.820 | and I'll substantiate those tools

00:18:27.700 | just a bit with some mechanism,

00:18:29.560 | but here's what you do, or at least here's what I do.

00:18:31.900 | I wake up in the morning and I want to reach for my phone,

00:18:35.220 | but I know that even if I were to crank up the brightness

00:18:37.580 | on that phone screen,

00:18:38.860 | it's not bright enough to trigger that cortisol spike,

00:18:42.120 | and for me to be at my most alert and focused

00:18:45.940 | throughout the day and to optimize my sleep at night.

00:18:48.020 | So what I do is I get out of bed and I go outside,

00:18:51.860 | and if it's a bright, clear day,

00:18:55.180 | and the sun is low in the sky,

00:18:57.020 | or the sun is starting to get overhead,

00:18:59.020 | what we call low solar angle,

00:19:00.560 | then I know I'm getting outside at the right time.

00:19:05.140 | If there's cloud cover and I can't see the sun,

00:19:08.180 | I also know I'm doing a good thing because it turns out,

00:19:10.540 | especially on cloudy days,

00:19:11.940 | you want to get outside and get as much light energy

00:19:14.040 | or photons in your eyes.

00:19:15.780 | But let's say it's a very clear day

00:19:17.700 | and I can see where the sun is.

00:19:19.820 | I do not need to stare directly into the sun.

00:19:22.620 | If it's very low in the sky, I might do that

00:19:25.580 | because it's not going to be very painful to my eyes.

00:19:27.880 | However, if the sun is a little bit brighter

00:19:30.420 | and a little bit higher in the sky,

00:19:31.900 | sometimes it can be painful to look at.

00:19:33.580 | So the way to get this sunlight viewing early in the day

00:19:37.300 | is to look toward the sun.

00:19:39.980 | If it's too bright to look at directly,

00:19:42.320 | well, then don't do that.

00:19:43.300 | You just look toward it, but not directly at it.

00:19:45.560 | It's absolutely fine to blink.

00:19:47.720 | In fact, I encourage you to blink

00:19:49.020 | whenever you feel the impulse to blink.

00:19:51.460 | Never look at any light, sunlight or otherwise,

00:19:54.200 | that's so bright that it's painful to look at

00:19:55.880 | 'cause you can damage your eyes.

00:19:57.520 | But for this morning sunlight viewing,

00:19:59.840 | it's best to not wear sunglasses.

00:20:01.880 | That's right, to not wear sunglasses,

00:20:04.260 | at least for this morning sunlight viewing.

00:20:07.000 | It is absolutely fine to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses,

00:20:11.620 | so-called corrective lenses.

00:20:12.760 | In fact, those will serve you well in this practice

00:20:15.840 | or this tool because they will focus the light

00:20:17.700 | onto your neural retina and onto those melanopsin

00:20:19.680 | and intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.

00:20:21.760 | If your eyeglasses or contact lenses have UV protection,

00:20:26.160 | that's okay.

00:20:27.320 | There's so many different wavelengths of light

00:20:28.740 | coming from the sun and they are bright enough

00:20:31.420 | that they will trigger the mechanisms

00:20:33.120 | that you want triggered at this early time of day.

00:20:36.920 | So try and get outside,

00:20:38.600 | ideally within the first five minutes of waking,

00:20:40.420 | or maybe it's 15 minutes,

00:20:42.240 | but certainly within the first hour after waking.

00:20:44.780 | I want to share with you three critical things

00:20:46.940 | about this tool of morning sunlight viewing.

00:20:49.260 | First of all, this is not some woo biology thing.

00:20:53.040 | This is grounded in the core of our physiology.

00:20:55.980 | There are literally hundreds, if not thousands,

00:20:58.120 | of quality peer-reviewed papers

00:20:59.560 | showing that light viewing early in the day

00:21:03.040 | is the most powerful stimulus

00:21:04.740 | for wakefulness throughout the day,

00:21:06.220 | and it has a powerful positive impact

00:21:08.840 | on your ability to fall and stay asleep at night.

00:21:10.960 | So this is really the foundational power tool

00:21:13.920 | for ensuring a great night's sleep

00:21:16.540 | and for feeling more awake during the day.

00:21:19.100 | Second of all, if you wake up before the sun is out,

00:21:23.620 | you can and probably should flip on artificial lights

00:21:28.340 | in your internal home environment or apartment

00:21:30.760 | or wherever you happen to live,

00:21:32.140 | if your goal is to be awake.

00:21:33.900 | If you wake up at four in the morning

00:21:35.100 | and you need to be awake,

00:21:35.980 | well then turn on artificial lights.

00:21:38.500 | Once the sun is out, however, once the sun has risen,

00:21:42.600 | then you still want to get outside and view sunlight.

00:21:45.340 | Some of you will wake up before the sun comes out,

00:21:49.260 | and if you're asking whether or not

00:21:51.520 | turning on artificial lights

00:21:52.700 | can replace sunlight at those hours,

00:21:54.780 | unfortunately, the answer is no.

00:21:57.860 | Unless you have a very special light,

00:21:59.520 | we'll talk about what kind of light,

00:22:01.300 | the bright artificial lights in your home environment

00:22:04.300 | are not, I repeat, are not going to be sufficiently bright

00:22:08.200 | to turn on the cortisol mechanism

00:22:11.180 | and the other wake-up mechanisms

00:22:12.700 | that you need early in the day.

00:22:15.040 | The diabolical twist, however,

00:22:16.640 | is that those lights in your home or apartment

00:22:19.420 | or even on your phone are bright enough

00:22:22.420 | to disrupt your sleep if you look at them too late at night

00:22:25.460 | or in the middle of the night.

00:22:26.700 | So there's this asymmetry in our retinal,

00:22:29.620 | our eye biology, and in our brain's biology,

00:22:32.580 | whereby early in the day, right around waking,

00:22:34.600 | you need a lot of light, a lot of photons,

00:22:37.060 | a lot of light energy,

00:22:38.180 | and artificial lights generally just won't accomplish

00:22:41.400 | what you need them to accomplish.

00:22:42.940 | But at night, even a little bit of artificial light

00:22:45.980 | can really mess up your so-called circadian,

00:22:48.460 | your 24-hour clocks and all these mechanisms

00:22:50.800 | that we're talking about.

00:22:51.900 | So if you wake up before the sun is out

00:22:53.700 | and it's still dark,

00:22:54.980 | please turn on as many bright artificial lights

00:22:57.660 | as you possibly can or need,

00:22:59.780 | but then get outside once the sun is out.

00:23:02.060 | On cloudy days, you especially need to get outside.

00:23:06.440 | I repeat, on cloudy days, overcast days,

00:23:08.700 | you especially need to get outside and get sunlight.

00:23:10.760 | You just need to get more of it.

00:23:12.220 | Now, how much light and how much light viewing do you need?

00:23:15.500 | This is going to vary depending on person and place,

00:23:18.660 | literally where you live on earth,

00:23:20.340 | whether or not there's a lot of tree cover,

00:23:22.420 | whether or not you're somebody who has sensitive eyes

00:23:24.220 | or less sensitive eyes.

00:23:25.460 | It's really impossible for me

00:23:26.700 | to give an absolute prescriptive,

00:23:28.520 | but we can give some general guidelines.

00:23:30.260 | In general, on a clear day,

00:23:32.220 | meaning no cloud cover or minimal cloud cover,

00:23:35.080 | you want to get this sunlight exposure to your eyes

00:23:39.020 | for about five minutes or so.

00:23:41.620 | It could be three minutes one day,

00:23:42.700 | it could be seven minutes the next day, about five minutes.

00:23:46.260 | On a day where there's cloud cover,

00:23:48.600 | so the sun is just peeking through the clouds

00:23:50.420 | or it's more dense cloud cover,

00:23:52.680 | you want to get about 10 minutes of sunlight exposure

00:23:56.240 | to your eyes early in the day.

00:23:57.680 | And on days that are really densely overcast

00:24:00.140 | or maybe even a rainy,

00:24:01.440 | you're going to want to get as much as 20 or 30 minutes

00:24:04.600 | of sunlight exposure.

00:24:06.660 | Another key thing is do not forget about,

00:24:10.260 | just don't try and get this sunlight exposure

00:24:13.020 | through a windshield of a car or a window,

00:24:15.980 | whether or not it's tinted or otherwise.

00:24:17.420 | It takes far too long.

00:24:18.980 | It's simply not going to trigger the relevant mechanisms.

00:24:22.080 | You would be standing there all day

00:24:23.380 | trying to get enough light into your eyes

00:24:25.140 | from the morning sunlight,

00:24:26.060 | and by then the sun will have already moved

00:24:28.260 | from low solar angle to overhead,

00:24:30.280 | and it simply won't work for all sorts of mechanisms

00:24:32.400 | related to your circadian rhythm functions.

00:24:34.520 | So just don't try and do it

00:24:35.600 | through a windshield, sunglasses, or a window.

00:24:40.040 | It's just not going to work.

00:24:40.980 | Get outside.

00:24:42.020 | If the weather is really bad or for whatever reason,

00:24:44.240 | safety reasons, you cannot get outside,

00:24:46.020 | well then I suppose try and get near a window.

00:24:47.820 | That would be the last, last resort,

00:24:49.880 | but you really want to get outside

00:24:51.840 | to get the sunlight exposure.

00:24:53.740 | Now, if you live in a part of the world

00:24:55.840 | where it's extremely dark and overcast,

00:24:57.940 | or the weather won't let you outside,

00:24:59.400 | or you live in a cave or some other small box

00:25:02.700 | that does not allow any natural light into it

00:25:05.060 | for whatever reason,

00:25:06.380 | well then you're going to need a replacement

00:25:09.020 | for that sunlight.

00:25:10.660 | And there are sunlight simulators or daylight simulators

00:25:14.060 | that you can purchase.

00:25:15.080 | Those are quite expensive in general.

00:25:17.940 | And therefore I suggest cheaper options

00:25:21.060 | that work just as well because they get just as bright.

00:25:24.060 | Things like ring lights that are sold

00:25:26.600 | in order for people to take selfies and this kind of thing.

00:25:30.360 | A drawing LED tablet will work pretty well.

00:25:33.320 | I actually have one of those

00:25:34.160 | and I put it on my desk all morning,

00:25:35.540 | even though I still get outside

00:25:37.380 | and look at sunlight first thing in the morning.

00:25:39.580 | Again, also, especially I should say on cloudy days.

00:25:43.620 | We do not have any affiliation to any ring lights

00:25:46.960 | or LED lights or these panels.

00:25:49.020 | So we will provide a link to a couple of different options

00:25:51.660 | if you want to explore the various options.

00:25:53.200 | I don't know what people's different budgets are.

00:25:54.760 | I don't know where people live.

00:25:56.400 | I just know that many of our listeners live

00:25:58.100 | in locations throughout the world where for instance,

00:25:59.900 | during the winter, it gets very, very dark,

00:26:01.480 | so they can't get sufficient sunlight.

00:26:03.260 | But get that morning light, ideally from sunlight,

00:26:07.220 | and take into account all the specific points

00:26:10.060 | that I've given you here.

00:26:11.460 | And I should say, enjoy this practice.

00:26:14.120 | It's really nice to get outside first thing in the morning

00:26:16.540 | and get the sunlight.

00:26:17.380 | In fact, when you start doing this,

00:26:19.700 | you'll notice that your body will start

00:26:22.160 | to feel more energized

00:26:24.060 | and it will feel more energized more quickly.

00:26:26.540 | You'll actually start to notice this mechanism

00:26:29.020 | kicking in each day,

00:26:30.060 | especially if you're paying attention to your physiology.

00:26:32.640 | So enjoy this practice of getting outside.

00:26:34.940 | Yes, you can take your morning beverage outside.

00:26:37.660 | Yes, you can take your dog with you.

00:26:39.580 | In fact, animals intuitively know

00:26:41.560 | to get this morning sunlight.

00:26:42.740 | They actually seek it out at the right times of days.

00:26:44.840 | We human beings need to be told by podcasters

00:26:47.360 | and other people about the science

00:26:48.900 | that supports these kinds of practices.

00:26:50.600 | Our pets apparently do not.

00:26:52.120 | But get outside alone or with somebody,

00:26:54.960 | with your kids, with your dog.

00:26:56.540 | However you go about this practice,

00:26:58.080 | make sure you do this practice

00:26:59.980 | at least 80% of the days of your life.

00:27:03.140 | That's right.

00:27:03.980 | If you miss a day, for instance,

00:27:06.240 | you're bedridden for a day,

00:27:08.080 | try and get next to a window.

00:27:10.100 | Let's say you are traveling or for whatever reason,

00:27:13.460 | you are not able to get outside first thing in the morning.

00:27:16.140 | Well then try to get twice as much sunlight in your eyes,

00:27:18.820 | or I should say extend the duration of sunlight viewing

00:27:21.180 | in the morning for twice as long the following day.

00:27:24.200 | This is a slow integrative mechanism

00:27:27.060 | that underlies this whole thing of wakefulness

00:27:29.140 | during the day and sleep at night due to sunlight viewing.

00:27:31.700 | And if you miss a day,

00:27:32.780 | you can make up for it the next day,

00:27:33.900 | but you have to get twice as much light

00:27:36.220 | or twice as much duration of light.

00:27:39.420 | If you really want to get technical

00:27:40.860 | and you really want to measure

00:27:41.820 | how much light is in your environment,

00:27:43.180 | you can download a free app, something like Light Meter,

00:27:46.540 | and that will allow your phone

00:27:47.940 | to act as a bit of a light meter

00:27:49.660 | and give you a pretty accurate measurement of how many lux,

00:27:52.920 | which is a measure of brightness,

00:27:54.580 | are in your environment in the morning.

00:27:56.500 | And in general, that's just going to be a good tool

00:27:59.180 | for evaluating your environments.

00:28:02.740 | Here's what I suggest you do.

00:28:04.180 | Wake up in the morning, take Light Meter,

00:28:06.460 | point it at the brightest light in your home

00:28:08.300 | and take a measurement.

00:28:09.180 | And what you'll probably find is it's about 1,000 lux.

00:28:11.380 | Now go outside, and if there's some sunlight out

00:28:14.460 | and there's cloud cover, point it at the sky

00:28:16.940 | and press that button.

00:28:17.780 | You can actually hold it down

00:28:18.660 | and it'll give you a dynamically updated lux measurement.

00:28:22.140 | And what you'll find is like 5,000, 10,000,

00:28:24.460 | sometimes even 90,000 lux,

00:28:26.460 | even though you don't experience it as so much brighter.

00:28:28.620 | And that's because an indoor artificial light

00:28:30.520 | is very concentrated over a small spatial area,

00:28:33.820 | whereas the sunlight is very diffuse.

00:28:35.660 | But it's that diffuse, very bright sunlight,

00:28:37.680 | that photon energy that you really want

00:28:39.360 | that's going to set all the rhythms of your brain and body

00:28:41.480 | in the proper way, not just that cortisol peak,

00:28:44.860 | but it's going to trigger proper metabolism.

00:28:47.140 | It's going to set a timer for you to be able to fall asleep

00:28:50.040 | about 16 hours later and on and on and on.

00:28:52.760 | And I should mention within the on and on and on,

00:28:54.800 | it's also going to suppress any melatonin,

00:28:57.640 | a hormone that makes you sleepy,

00:28:58.720 | that happens to be swimming around in your bloodstream

00:29:00.920 | at the time you wake up.

00:29:02.460 | It does a number of other things too,

00:29:03.940 | including interact with the adenosine system

00:29:06.000 | and kind of wash out some of the adenosine

00:29:07.880 | that might still be residual

00:29:09.200 | if you didn't sleep enough.

00:29:10.600 | Fundamentally speaking, get that morning sunlight viewing.

00:29:15.180 | I promise you will be grateful that you did.

00:29:18.240 | It makes everybody feel better, feel more alert,

00:29:21.180 | and it will greatly assist with your ability

00:29:23.560 | to fall and stay asleep later that night.

00:29:25.820 | Before we continue with today's discussion,

00:29:27.560 | we're going to take a brief pause

00:29:29.160 | to acknowledge our sponsor, Athletic Greens,

00:29:31.680 | also called AG1.

00:29:33.440 | I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012.

00:29:36.740 | So I'm delighted that they've been a sponsor of this podcast.

00:29:40.160 | Athletic Greens contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics,

00:29:42.980 | digestive enzymes, and adaptogens.

00:29:45.700 | So it's got a lot of things in there.

00:29:47.020 | That's actually the reason I started taking it

00:29:48.660 | and the reason I still take it once or twice a day.

00:29:51.320 | It essentially covers all of my nutritional bases

00:29:53.460 | and the probiotics in particular are important to me

00:29:55.700 | because of the critical importance

00:29:57.020 | of what's called the gut brain axis,

00:29:58.620 | that is neurons and other cell types in the gut,

00:30:01.860 | in the digestive tract that communicate with the brain

00:30:04.400 | and the brain back to the digestive tract

00:30:06.660 | in order to control things like mood,

00:30:08.980 | immune function, hormone function, and on and on.

00:30:12.020 | Whenever somebody has asked me

00:30:13.460 | what's the one supplement they should take,

00:30:15.620 | I always answer Athletic Greens.

00:30:17.260 | I gave that answer long before I ever had this podcast

00:30:19.660 | and it's the answer I still give now

00:30:21.420 | for all the reasons that I detailed just a moment ago.

00:30:24.220 | If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

00:30:25.600 | you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman

00:30:28.460 | to claim a special offer.

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00:30:46.780 | Okay, so now we're still focusing

00:30:48.160 | on this early part of the day when you've woken up,

00:30:50.060 | like the first hour or so after waking.

00:30:53.140 | And we can go to our list of other levers and tools, right?

00:30:56.900 | We have light and dark.

00:30:58.240 | We already talked about light and sunlight in particular.

00:31:01.560 | We've got temperature, food, exercise, caffeine,

00:31:03.920 | supplements, and digital tools.

00:31:06.180 | Now, once you've woken up and you want to be awake, okay?

00:31:09.460 | So this is likely to be early in the day

00:31:11.700 | if you're following a more standard schedule.

00:31:14.240 | You will also want to leverage not just light,

00:31:17.420 | but temperature as a tool.

00:31:20.880 | If you are inclined, it would be wise

00:31:24.660 | to try and increase your core body temperature

00:31:27.540 | a bit more quickly than it would otherwise

00:31:30.460 | if you were to just shuffle around outside,

00:31:32.880 | get your sunlight, maybe read a little bit, et cetera.

00:31:34.980 | And there are two main ways you can do that.

00:31:36.740 | The first way is to get into cold water of some sorts.

00:31:40.980 | This could be a cold shower

00:31:42.100 | of anywhere from one to three minutes.

00:31:44.620 | This could be an ice bath.

00:31:45.900 | If that's your thing, it could be a cold tub,

00:31:48.220 | or if you own a cold tub that's specifically designed

00:31:51.700 | for deliberate cold exposure, get under some cold water.

00:31:55.360 | That will certainly wake you up.

00:31:57.660 | And if you've ever jumped into cold water

00:31:59.500 | or had a cold shower, you know it really wakes you up

00:32:01.700 | because you release adrenaline epinephrine

00:32:04.940 | from both your brain and body.

00:32:07.460 | The body from your adrenals and your brain

00:32:09.000 | from a little cluster of neurons called locus coeruleus.

00:32:11.380 | Again, the names don't matter.

00:32:12.860 | One to three minutes of cold water exposure

00:32:14.620 | will wake you up because of that adrenaline release.

00:32:16.900 | And, and I want to highlight the and,

00:32:19.700 | it will serve to increase your core body temperature.

00:32:23.500 | That's right.

00:32:24.640 | Your body and brain interact

00:32:26.020 | as a bit of a thermostat system

00:32:27.600 | where if you put something cold on the surface of your body,

00:32:29.900 | your brain, a little cluster of neurons

00:32:31.720 | in the so-called medial preoptic area act as a thermostat

00:32:35.140 | and say, ah, the external of my body is cold

00:32:38.620 | and therefore I'm going to heat up my core body temperature.

00:32:41.460 | So this is a little bit paradoxical.

00:32:42.720 | People think, oh, if you get into cold water or an ice bath,

00:32:45.200 | your body temperature is going to drop.

00:32:46.520 | And indeed that's true if you stay in for a while,

00:32:48.380 | but if you just get in for about one to three minutes

00:32:50.340 | or under the cold shower for one to three minutes,

00:32:52.480 | your core body temperature will increase.

00:32:55.140 | So then when you get out of that cold water,

00:32:57.420 | your body temperature is increasing at a rate,

00:33:00.100 | at a slope that's steeper than it would otherwise,

00:33:03.180 | and you're going to feel more alert.

00:33:04.340 | It also has the advantage of increasing,

00:33:05.900 | not just adrenaline, but dopamine,

00:33:07.900 | which is a molecule involved in motivation, focus, et cetera.

00:33:10.380 | So this is great for waking up.

00:33:12.180 | So we've got sunlight,

00:33:13.280 | we've got temperature triggered by cold water,

00:33:15.400 | and we have exercise.

00:33:17.780 | One of the best ways to increase your core body temperature

00:33:20.940 | early in the day is to do exercise.

00:33:23.060 | Now, some of you might choose

00:33:24.900 | to do your full-blown workout for the day

00:33:27.820 | first thing when you wake up in the morning.

00:33:29.240 | I always say the best time to exercise,

00:33:30.900 | at least what the research points to,

00:33:32.700 | is immediately when you wake up in the morning

00:33:35.140 | or three hours after waking or 11 hours after waking.

00:33:38.900 | But that's really getting down into optimization

00:33:41.580 | for sake of muscular strength and grip strength.

00:33:43.820 | And it's very hard to give a strict prescriptive.

00:33:47.340 | Here's what I suggest.

00:33:48.400 | If you want to be alert early in the day

00:33:50.440 | and you want to sleep great at night,

00:33:52.700 | get that bright sunlight, get into some cold water.

00:33:55.540 | And if you don't want to get into some cold water,

00:33:57.800 | try and get some movement.

00:33:59.180 | It could be a walk so you can get your sunlight exposure

00:34:01.620 | while you're taking a walk first thing in the morning.

00:34:04.260 | It could be a light jog.

00:34:05.420 | It could be skipping rope.

00:34:07.020 | These days, I skip rope for about 10 minutes or 20 minutes

00:34:09.540 | while looking at the sun.

00:34:10.760 | So I'm trying to layer in these different things

00:34:12.460 | for waking up.

00:34:13.300 | And then I take a cold shower afterwards.

00:34:14.940 | That's what I've been doing as of lately,

00:34:16.060 | but I don't do that all year long necessarily.

00:34:19.140 | Or some of you are going to be working out mid-morning.

00:34:22.220 | I sometimes do that.

00:34:23.740 | But try and get your core body temperature increased

00:34:26.980 | first thing in the morning.

00:34:28.140 | And a great way to do that is with the cold water

00:34:31.140 | and/or with exercise.

00:34:33.340 | And again, it doesn't have to be your full-blown workout

00:34:35.720 | for the day if you're doing workouts consistently,

00:34:37.920 | which I hope everybody is

00:34:38.980 | because everybody really should exercise

00:34:41.180 | at least I believe five or six

00:34:43.500 | or maybe even seven days a week.

00:34:44.580 | For me, it's six days a week, sometimes five.

00:34:46.580 | Rarely is it seven.

00:34:48.100 | So get that exercise or even just a modest amount

00:34:50.980 | of movement, walking, jogging, skipping rope,

00:34:53.740 | some light calisthenics.

00:34:55.340 | That will further increase your core body temperature

00:34:57.300 | and help you feel more awake.

00:34:58.880 | Then we have the category of caffeine.

00:35:00.600 | And again, we're just talking about this early part

00:35:02.300 | of the day.

00:35:03.140 | And you might be saying, "Wait a second.

00:35:03.980 | "I thought this was an episode about tools for sleep."

00:35:06.380 | Well, everything that we're talking about doing

00:35:07.980 | in these first 60 to 90 minutes of the day

00:35:11.280 | really set in motion a wave of biological cascades

00:35:15.620 | that carry through the entire day and into the evening

00:35:18.180 | and into the night and really do serve to optimize sleep.

00:35:20.820 | So just hang in there with me.

00:35:22.620 | And for those of you that are interested in focus

00:35:24.260 | and attention, your ability to learn,

00:35:25.860 | all of these tools and practices are going to greatly

00:35:28.820 | enhance those as well.

00:35:30.660 | So the next category of tool for use early in the day

00:35:33.580 | is caffeine.

00:35:34.420 | Caffeine is a very important compound to think about.

00:35:37.200 | I do realize that some people who are prone to anxiety,

00:35:39.900 | especially panic attacks, anxiety attacks,

00:35:41.720 | might avoid caffeine entirely.

00:35:43.280 | That's absolutely fine.

00:35:45.100 | You do not have to drink caffeine.

00:35:46.780 | So what I'm about to describe are ways to leverage caffeine

00:35:50.220 | use to optimize sleep and wakefulness

00:35:52.920 | if you are comfortable with caffeine, if you like caffeine.

00:35:56.260 | I happen to love caffeine.

00:35:57.380 | I like it in the form of coffee or espresso

00:36:00.020 | or yerba mate tea,

00:36:01.540 | in particular non-smoked varieties of yerba mate teas.

00:36:04.860 | Non-smoked because the smoked varieties seem to carry

00:36:07.460 | some carcinogenic, some cancer causing risk.

00:36:09.700 | There's increasing data on that.

00:36:11.000 | So non-smoked varieties of yerba mate.

00:36:14.640 | So caffeine is something that a lot of people consume early

00:36:17.220 | in the day.

00:36:18.500 | How much depends on your tolerance.

00:36:20.780 | And there's a lot of individual variability here.

00:36:22.900 | Again, caffeine is adenosine antagonist

00:36:25.340 | or effectively works as adenosine antagonist

00:36:27.740 | and limits sleepiness.

00:36:28.900 | I highly recommend that everybody delay their caffeine

00:36:31.700 | intake for 90 to 120 minutes after waking.

00:36:34.740 | However painful it may be to eventually arrive

00:36:37.060 | at that 90 to 120 minutes after waking.

00:36:39.900 | You want, and I encourage you to clear out

00:36:43.060 | whatever residual adenosine is circulating in your system

00:36:46.060 | in that first 90 to 120 minutes of the day,

00:36:48.260 | get that sunlight exposure, get some movement to wake up

00:36:50.900 | and then, and only then start to ingest caffeine.

00:36:55.200 | Because what you'll do if you delay caffeine intake

00:36:58.420 | until 90 to 120 minutes after waking

00:37:01.060 | is you will avoid this so-called afternoon crash.

00:37:04.520 | And you may still get a little bit of dip in energy

00:37:06.820 | in the afternoon, but it's not going to be

00:37:08.220 | that massive crash.

00:37:09.540 | I've talked about the reasons for that crash

00:37:11.940 | on previous episodes, but if you delay your caffeine intake

00:37:15.340 | 90 to 120 minutes after waking,

00:37:17.020 | you are doing yourself a great service

00:37:18.420 | towards wakefulness and to avoid the crash.

00:37:21.340 | And the afternoon crash has another liability to it,

00:37:23.500 | which is typically people will emerge

00:37:24.820 | from that afternoon crash, either grumpy or groggy,

00:37:27.540 | and then they'll lean into drinking more caffeine,

00:37:30.420 | which can then disrupt their sleep.

00:37:32.740 | So wait 90 to 120 minutes after waking in the morning

00:37:35.580 | to drink caffeine.

00:37:36.840 | And if you drink caffeine at any point throughout the day,

00:37:41.120 | really try and avoid any caffeine.

00:37:43.220 | Certainly avoid drinking more than 100 milligrams

00:37:46.220 | of caffeine after 4 p.m.

00:37:48.660 | And probably even better to limit your last caffeine intake

00:37:51.460 | to 3 p.m. or even 2 p.m.

00:37:53.620 | And for many people shifting that caffeine intake

00:37:56.380 | from immediately after waking in the morning

00:37:58.560 | to 90 to 120 minutes gives them a much longer arc

00:38:01.780 | of energy throughout the day.

00:38:02.860 | And they don't feel the need to drink more caffeine

00:38:06.180 | later in the afternoon.

00:38:07.600 | If you do drink caffeine later in the afternoon,

00:38:09.860 | really try and limit the total amount or drink decaf.

00:38:12.700 | Certainly keep the total amount

00:38:14.880 | to less than 100 milligrams if you are interested

00:38:17.100 | in getting into the best possible sleep.

00:38:18.800 | And I say this knowing that many people,

00:38:20.660 | including myself can drink a double espresso

00:38:23.480 | with 200 milligrams of caffeine or more at 5 p.m.

00:38:26.380 | or even 6 p.m. or after dinner and still quote unquote,

00:38:29.820 | fall asleep fine or still sleep fine.

00:38:31.900 | However, there are terrific data.

00:38:34.540 | Matt Walker and I talked about this

00:38:36.660 | and there are more and more papers all the time

00:38:38.860 | that point to the fact that caffeine intake late in the day

00:38:42.920 | after 4 p.m. that is can really disrupt

00:38:45.540 | the architecture of your sleep.

00:38:46.640 | So you might think you're sleeping well,

00:38:48.060 | but you're not sleeping nearly as well as you could

00:38:49.940 | if you avoided caffeine in those afternoon hours.

00:38:53.020 | Now, some of you might be doing your main bout of exercise

00:38:56.020 | first thing in the morning and you want your caffeine

00:38:58.080 | before that bout of exercise.

00:38:59.720 | In that case, I say, go for it.

00:39:02.200 | Drink your caffeine, do your workout right after waking up.

00:39:04.800 | I don't have a problem with that.

00:39:06.660 | You will find however,

00:39:07.660 | that you're going to get an early afternoon dip in energy

00:39:10.380 | and that dip in energy is going to be substantial

00:39:12.860 | because it's going to be a dip in energy

00:39:14.900 | that naturally follows that workout from the morning.

00:39:18.860 | So it's dependent on temperature

00:39:21.280 | and it's going to be related to the elimination

00:39:24.940 | of that adenosine blockade by caffeine.

00:39:27.780 | So you're getting a kind of a one, two punch

00:39:30.900 | on your energy levels by taking a lot of caffeine

00:39:33.560 | and exercising early in the day.

00:39:36.620 | You can sort of expect that you're going to get

00:39:38.900 | a drop in energy in the early afternoon.

00:39:41.160 | That's okay if that's works for you,

00:39:42.920 | but just know that delaying that caffeine 90 to 120 minutes

00:39:46.620 | after waking would be the ideal scenario

00:39:49.200 | most days and most scenarios.

00:39:51.740 | All that said, I absolutely respect the fact

00:39:55.660 | that people have different work schedules,

00:39:57.980 | kids schedules, et cetera.

00:40:00.000 | So if you want to do some or none or all these tools,

00:40:02.760 | that's really up to you.

00:40:03.600 | I'm just providing them to you in the simplest form

00:40:07.160 | that I can possibly provide them.

00:40:08.600 | Now, the other lever or tool that you have available to you

00:40:11.700 | is food, not just what you eat, but when you eat.

00:40:14.620 | And it turns out that if you eat early in the day,

00:40:17.700 | you support a biological clock mechanism

00:40:21.140 | that will make you more alert early in the day.

00:40:24.220 | That said, many people choose to fast

00:40:26.180 | in the early morning hours of the day

00:40:27.860 | or in the first part of the day.

00:40:29.020 | I'm one such person.

00:40:29.900 | I generally don't ingest any food

00:40:32.640 | until about 11 AM or 12 noon.

00:40:35.200 | Sometimes I'll have a protein shake.

00:40:36.740 | Sometimes I'll have some almonds.

00:40:38.100 | Sometimes I'll have breakfast.

00:40:39.240 | If people are meeting for brunch or breakfast,

00:40:40.840 | I will have breakfast for social reasons.

00:40:43.200 | Every once in a while, but most of the time,

00:40:44.620 | I don't eat until about lunchtime.

00:40:47.540 | However, some people are really hungry

00:40:49.040 | when they wake up in the morning.

00:40:50.160 | Just know that if you eat early in the day,

00:40:53.160 | you are further triggering an increase in metabolism

00:40:56.620 | and in temperature that will make you more alert.

00:40:59.980 | So you don't have to eat early in the day,

00:41:02.120 | but you can start to see how these different tools

00:41:04.180 | layer together, sunlight viewing, exercise, cold water,

00:41:07.800 | eating, many of them are converging on the same mechanisms.

00:41:10.860 | In fact, when you drink caffeine,

00:41:11.920 | there's also a small increase in body temperature

00:41:14.120 | due to the adrenaline increase that it stimulates.

00:41:16.540 | So all of these things can be layered on top of one another,

00:41:19.500 | or you can use them individually

00:41:20.960 | or think about them individually.

00:41:22.340 | Now, food is an interesting lever or tool

00:41:25.240 | because it's not just about when you eat,

00:41:26.760 | but it's also about what you eat.

00:41:28.740 | And I've talked a lot about eating for energy

00:41:31.620 | and what that means in terms of caloric energy

00:41:33.600 | versus neural energy, et cetera,

00:41:35.480 | in previous podcast episodes.

00:41:37.080 | We're not going to focus on that now

00:41:38.340 | because frankly, to get into a description

00:41:40.380 | of whether or not somebody should eat fruits or vegetables

00:41:42.460 | or animal proteins or dairy, et cetera, early in the day,

00:41:45.260 | that's very nuanced.

00:41:46.340 | What you eat for your breakfast

00:41:47.660 | or if you choose to not eat breakfast is really up to you.

00:41:50.300 | All that said, if you eat a very large meal,

00:41:53.540 | it doesn't matter if you slept terrifically well

00:41:56.780 | 10 hours the night before,

00:41:58.280 | or if you are about to go to sleep,

00:42:00.140 | or if it's the middle of the afternoon,

00:42:02.020 | if your gut is full of food,

00:42:04.100 | there's just a large volume of food in your gut,

00:42:06.140 | it's going to divert a lot of blood

00:42:09.060 | and other critical resources

00:42:11.440 | away from other organs of your body,

00:42:13.120 | in particular, your brain,

00:42:14.560 | and you're going to be sleepy after eating a big meal.

00:42:16.900 | So this is sort of a duh,

00:42:18.240 | but I think oftentimes in the discussions

00:42:20.720 | about what to eat for energy,

00:42:22.440 | people neglect to consider food volume as a strong parameter

00:42:26.560 | or variable in that discussion.

00:42:28.360 | So if you eat a huge breakfast,

00:42:29.720 | it's likely that you are going to be tired

00:42:31.820 | immediately after eating that breakfast,

00:42:33.460 | unless of course you exercise very hard prior to that

00:42:35.680 | and you metabolize all that food very quickly.

00:42:38.620 | So it's up to you whether or not

00:42:40.240 | to eat first thing in the morning or not,

00:42:42.300 | but if you do eat in the first few hours of the morning,

00:42:45.360 | just understand that you are setting

00:42:47.240 | or you're helping to set a food-entrained,

00:42:50.260 | as it's called, circadian clock.

00:42:52.600 | Light, temperature, timing of food intake,

00:42:56.620 | movement and exercise,

00:42:58.120 | all of these things literally funnel in in a neural sense,

00:43:02.440 | they funnel into this thing

00:43:04.240 | that we call the circadian clock,

00:43:05.560 | and they let that clock, that set of neurons predict

00:43:09.080 | when you are likely to be eating and active

00:43:11.680 | and viewing sunlight the next day

00:43:14.200 | and the next day and the next day.

00:43:15.440 | I say all this because there are some beautiful studies

00:43:18.120 | and I'll highlight one again in the show note captions

00:43:20.460 | that show that if people are having a hard time

00:43:22.760 | waking up in the morning,

00:43:24.160 | one of the things they can do is maximize sunlight viewing,

00:43:27.840 | exercise in the morning, drink caffeine,

00:43:30.160 | although again, I support the idea

00:43:32.720 | that that would best be done about 90 to 120 minutes

00:43:35.760 | after waking, eating some food

00:43:39.020 | in those early morning hours, et cetera, et cetera.

00:43:41.300 | You can layer in multiple levers or tools

00:43:45.040 | in order to be more alert.

00:43:46.680 | And that's what these levers and tools are really there for

00:43:50.580 | in this sense of what we're talking about today,

00:43:52.680 | which is optimizing sleep.

00:43:54.280 | Yes, they will make you more alert.

00:43:55.640 | Yes, they will provide some adrenaline and dopamine,

00:43:57.980 | for instance, the cold water, et cetera, et cetera.

00:44:00.380 | But the reason we're talking about these things

00:44:02.700 | in the context of sleep is that they start to give your body

00:44:06.620 | some predictable autonomic timing.

00:44:09.620 | What is predictable autonomic timing?

00:44:11.620 | Well, your autonomic nervous system

00:44:12.860 | is the components of your brain and body

00:44:15.220 | that cause wakefulness and sleepiness.

00:44:18.180 | And you can start to create some predictability

00:44:21.160 | in that autonomic timing.

00:44:22.620 | You can start to do things that really make it such

00:44:24.980 | that you naturally wake up at six in the morning

00:44:28.200 | or five in the morning.

00:44:29.120 | That's right, if you're somebody who naturally

00:44:31.280 | is a night owl who likes to stay up

00:44:34.120 | until two in the morning and sleep until 10 a.m.

00:44:36.460 | and you now have a job or you have to go to school

00:44:38.620 | or you have a partner that likes to get up early

00:44:40.200 | and go to sleep early, well, you can make that happen

00:44:43.100 | and you can make that happen pretty painlessly

00:44:45.320 | if you take a week or so and go to sleep 30 minutes

00:44:49.260 | or an hour earlier each night, set an alarm

00:44:51.700 | and wake up 30 minutes or an hour earlier each morning

00:44:56.080 | until of course you're waking up

00:44:57.140 | at the time you want to wake up.

00:44:58.120 | And then even in that groggy state, get some exercise,

00:45:02.180 | get some sunlight viewing.

00:45:03.320 | If the sun's not out, turn on those bright artificial lights

00:45:06.140 | have some breakfast, even if you're not hungry.

00:45:08.220 | In fact, for those of you that engage in shift work

00:45:11.140 | because you have to or travel and you're jet lagged,

00:45:14.020 | one of the quickest ways to shift your circadian clock

00:45:17.200 | and get onto the local schedule

00:45:18.500 | is to eat on the local schedule.

00:45:20.620 | So what all these tools do is they really set up a cascade.

00:45:24.700 | Think of it as kind of a wave front

00:45:26.260 | of wakefulness and focus throughout the day.

00:45:28.320 | It'll take you through the middle of the day

00:45:29.660 | and the afternoon stages we'll talk about in a few minutes,

00:45:32.460 | but really they take you to this period

00:45:35.160 | that is about 5 p.m. until your bedtime.

00:45:38.660 | I realize some people are going to bed very early,

00:45:40.500 | like 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., which to me seems very early,

00:45:43.480 | but very few people go to sleep at 5 p.m., right?

00:45:45.860 | Unless you're doing that for shift work or other reasons.

00:45:48.500 | But from 5 p.m. until bedtime is really a critical period

00:45:52.660 | in which you need to leverage particular tools

00:45:55.000 | in order to get and stay asleep optimally

00:45:58.260 | and to be able to sleep through the night.

00:45:59.860 | So really there are three critical periods

00:46:01.700 | throughout each 24 hour cycle.

00:46:03.460 | And during each of those critical periods,

00:46:05.220 | you're going to want to do as many specific things

00:46:08.560 | as you can to optimize your wakefulness and focus

00:46:11.200 | and mood throughout the day and your sleep at night.

00:46:15.100 | The first critical period is the one

00:46:16.260 | that we've been talking about up until now.

00:46:17.880 | Things like morning sunlight, viewing caffeine,

00:46:19.900 | 90 to 120 minutes after waking, exercise, and so on.

00:46:22.920 | We can call that critical period one.

00:46:24.580 | And it really encompasses the time from which you wake up

00:46:27.640 | until about three hours after waking.

00:46:30.160 | Although I should just mention,

00:46:31.440 | 'cause there are always those people that say,

00:46:32.360 | "Wait, I wake up at 4 a.m.

00:46:33.780 | and the sun isn't out until 8 a.m."

00:46:35.740 | Okay, so it might be four hours,

00:46:37.160 | but really it's those early morning hours of your day

00:46:41.100 | once you're awake.

00:46:42.420 | The second critical period is the time throughout the day

00:46:46.060 | and afternoon leading into evening.

00:46:48.360 | So you may ask,

00:46:49.200 | what are the things that you can do throughout the day,

00:46:50.980 | the middle of your day and into the afternoon

00:46:52.720 | and evening hours that are really going to set you up

00:46:54.620 | for the best possible sleep later that night?

00:46:57.220 | Well, there are a few dos and there are a few don'ts.

00:47:00.340 | First of all, be careful about ingesting too much caffeine

00:47:03.700 | throughout the middle of the day.

00:47:04.660 | That's kind of an obvious one for the reasons

00:47:06.260 | that we talked about earlier.

00:47:08.060 | Second of all, if you are a napper,

00:47:10.940 | and I raise my hand now, for those of you listening,

00:47:12.820 | I'm raising my right hand because I love naps.

00:47:15.180 | I've always loved naps.

00:47:16.460 | Nowadays I do NSDR or a reverie sleep hypnosis

00:47:20.720 | almost every day.

00:47:22.260 | And I tend to do that as I mentioned

00:47:23.920 | in the early afternoon hours if I'm feeling kind of sleepy,

00:47:26.900 | because even though I optimize my caffeine intake timing,

00:47:29.400 | et cetera, I tend to get a little sleepy in the afternoon.

00:47:32.300 | Most people get a little sleepy in the afternoon.

00:47:34.140 | Some of that is related to hitting

00:47:35.580 | that peak of body temperature.

00:47:37.080 | And you might think, wait,

00:47:37.920 | I thought high body temperature

00:47:39.640 | is associated with alertness.

00:47:41.420 | And it is, but right as you crest that high body temperature

00:47:44.520 | and your body temperature starts to drop,

00:47:46.220 | there's a tendency to be a little bit sleepy.

00:47:47.960 | So some of you might opt to take a nap in the afternoon.

00:47:51.100 | Should you nap, should you not nap?

00:47:52.940 | That's a question that I get asked a lot

00:47:54.500 | and that I asked Dr. Matthew Walker

00:47:56.060 | when he was a guest on this podcast.

00:47:57.640 | Here was his answer and here's what the data support.

00:48:00.500 | It is fine to nap in the afternoon,

00:48:03.100 | but don't nap so late in the day or for so long

00:48:06.560 | that it disrupts your ability to fall

00:48:08.900 | and stay asleep at night for your major sleep bout.

00:48:11.700 | Okay, so naps are fine,

00:48:13.260 | but don't sleep so long during the day

00:48:15.360 | or too late in the day that it disrupts your ability

00:48:18.120 | to fall and stay asleep.

00:48:20.060 | I should also say you do not have to nap.

00:48:23.340 | It's kind of an interesting phenomenon that happens

00:48:25.320 | on these podcasts and on social media

00:48:26.900 | where we'll talk about naps

00:48:28.020 | and the fact that naps are great

00:48:29.300 | and don't make them longer than 90 minutes,

00:48:31.940 | but then all the non-nappers get really worried like,

00:48:34.420 | wait, am I supposed to nap?

00:48:35.500 | I don't like naps, I wake up groggy.

00:48:37.180 | You do not have to nap.

00:48:38.500 | In fact, if you can make it through your whole day

00:48:40.260 | without napping, great, more power to you.

00:48:42.180 | But if you do nap and you find that naps serve you well,

00:48:45.760 | keep those naps shorter than 90 minutes

00:48:47.540 | for reasons related to ultradian cycles and so forth.

00:48:50.400 | And make sure that you don't nap too late in the day

00:48:53.460 | that you are then staying up too late at night

00:48:55.260 | and having a hard time waking up the next morning.

00:48:57.660 | I will say that for a lot of people who do not like naps

00:49:00.780 | or that find they wake up really grumpy from naps

00:49:04.040 | or groggy from naps,

00:49:06.020 | I encourage you to try the Reverie app,

00:49:09.640 | try an NSDR script, try yoga nidra,

00:49:12.900 | try something of that sort

00:49:14.140 | for anywhere from 10 to 20 to 30 minutes.

00:49:16.980 | I tend to do this every day.

00:49:19.080 | Now I'll just lie down and I love yoga nidra,

00:49:21.460 | I love NSDR scripts, I love using the Reverie app.

00:49:24.300 | In particular, the portion of the Reverie app

00:49:26.980 | that gets you better at sleeping,

00:49:28.580 | it really is beneficial for me

00:49:30.900 | because it serves as very replenishing

00:49:33.680 | while I'm doing that hypnosis,

00:49:35.140 | but it's also gotten me much better at falling

00:49:37.140 | and staying asleep and falling back asleep

00:49:38.780 | in the middle of the night.

00:49:40.060 | So this critical period throughout the day

00:49:42.220 | is one in which most people are doing a lot of stuff.

00:49:44.060 | They're emailing and picking up kids and they're exercising

00:49:46.600 | and they're commuting and doing all sorts of things,

00:49:48.740 | taking phone calls and zooms, et cetera.

00:49:50.720 | But if you can get that period of deep relaxation

00:49:53.340 | through a nap or NSDR, that's going to serve you well.

00:49:56.660 | Try not to drink too much caffeine,

00:49:58.220 | certainly no more than 100 milligrams of caffeine

00:50:01.340 | after 4 p.m. if your goal is to fall asleep

00:50:03.460 | at a reasonably normal time.

00:50:05.320 | And for those of you that exercise in the afternoon,

00:50:08.800 | understand that if you exercise very intensely,

00:50:12.180 | so this might be weight training or running

00:50:13.720 | or some other very intense exercise,

00:50:15.860 | typically that's going to further increase

00:50:17.940 | your body temperature.

00:50:19.360 | Makes sense, right?

00:50:20.200 | Based on everything we know about metabolism

00:50:21.700 | and body temperature.

00:50:22.540 | And it's going to so-called delay your circadian clock.

00:50:26.220 | It's going to make it such that you want to fall asleep

00:50:29.220 | a little bit later, maybe even a lot later.

00:50:31.980 | So if you're exercising in the afternoon or evening,

00:50:34.760 | and that's the only time you can exercise

00:50:36.180 | or that's the time that you prefer to exercise, great,

00:50:38.840 | but be careful about ingesting too much caffeine

00:50:41.460 | in order to get the energy to do that exercise

00:50:43.340 | 'cause that caffeine will disrupt your sleep.

00:50:45.740 | And just know that you are delaying your circadian clock.

00:50:49.660 | You are making it such that you will naturally

00:50:51.880 | want to go to sleep later and wake up later.

00:50:54.780 | Contrast that with if you exercise early in the day,

00:50:57.760 | say immediately after waking up

00:50:59.580 | or in the first zero to four hours after waking.

00:51:03.940 | In most cases, that's not going to shift

00:51:05.880 | your circadian clock much.

00:51:07.560 | And toward the end of the episode,

00:51:09.100 | we'll talk a little bit about forced exercise

00:51:12.020 | prior to wake up times.

00:51:13.480 | That doesn't mean doing exercise in your sleep.

00:51:14.980 | That means deliberately setting an alarm

00:51:16.440 | and getting out of bed much earlier than you naturally would.

00:51:18.900 | That turns out to be a very potent tool

00:51:21.160 | to so-called advance your circadian clock.

00:51:25.780 | So we can talk about that a little bit later in the episode.

00:51:28.260 | But this critical period too in the middle of the day

00:51:31.500 | is when you're going to want to leverage specific tools.

00:51:33.960 | And we've talked about those, limiting caffeine intake,

00:51:37.460 | being mindful of the clock delaying effects of exercise,

00:51:40.960 | the fact that also if you're going to nap,

00:51:43.380 | you don't want to nap too long or too late into the day.

00:51:47.620 | Otherwise it'll disrupt your nighttime sleep.

00:51:49.580 | So this critical period two or second critical period,

00:51:53.420 | I should say, during the middle of the day

00:51:54.940 | is a time in which you should be doing certain things

00:51:56.900 | and avoiding doing certain things.

00:51:58.380 | So that raises the question of whether or not

00:51:59.720 | you should also be getting a lot of light

00:52:01.740 | in particular sunlight throughout the day.

00:52:03.700 | Now, that's something that hasn't been explored too much

00:52:05.360 | in the literature until recently when Dr. Samara Tarr,

00:52:08.340 | who's the director of the chronobiology unit

00:52:10.700 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health

00:52:12.240 | has decided to do a number of experiments,

00:52:13.700 | exploring the effects of light on mood

00:52:15.780 | and other aspects of brain function and body function

00:52:18.560 | when that light is delivered, not just in the morning,

00:52:20.340 | which is great for us, but also throughout the day.

00:52:22.860 | So should you be looking at sunlight

00:52:24.900 | or bright artificial lights throughout the day?

00:52:27.540 | Now on the face of it, you might just think,

00:52:29.040 | yes, you know, sunlight's great.

00:52:30.480 | Provided we're not getting a sunburn

00:52:32.300 | and we're not staring at the sun and damaging our eyes,

00:52:34.780 | we should get as much sunlight as we possibly can.

00:52:37.100 | In fact, we talked about this in the episode on hormones,

00:52:39.620 | about how getting light onto as much of our skin

00:52:42.760 | as we can throughout the day can really help

00:52:44.880 | in the production of testosterone and estrogen

00:52:46.700 | in both men and women in healthy ways

00:52:48.260 | that improves mood and libido and all sorts of things

00:52:51.320 | that are associated with wellbeing.

00:52:53.760 | However, because light is such a powerful stimulus

00:52:56.300 | for controlling the timing of your sleepfulness

00:52:59.100 | or sleepiness, I should say, and wakefulness,

00:53:02.380 | we might want to be cautious about how much light

00:53:04.240 | we are viewing in the afternoon,

00:53:06.140 | in particular in the early evening hours, right?

00:53:09.080 | Well, it turns out it's not so straightforward.

00:53:12.020 | Viewing, so sunlight to the eyes,

00:53:14.400 | sunlight in the late afternoon and evening hours.

00:53:17.220 | So again, depends on time of year,

00:53:18.800 | depends on location that you happen to be in,

00:53:21.100 | but getting some sunlight in your eyes for, again,

00:53:23.440 | maybe five or 10, maybe 30 minutes,

00:53:26.520 | depending on how much cloud cover there is,

00:53:28.460 | doing that in the afternoon serves

00:53:30.720 | an additional beneficial purpose,

00:53:33.220 | which is you protect or you inoculate your nervous system

00:53:37.840 | against some of the negative effects

00:53:39.940 | of bright artificial light or even dim artificial light

00:53:44.500 | in the nighttime hours between 10 PM and 4 AM,

00:53:47.380 | which is really critical period three.

00:53:49.300 | And we'll talk about what to do and what to not do

00:53:51.780 | during critical period three of every 24 hour cycle.

00:53:54.820 | But to make it very clear what I'm saying here,

00:53:57.380 | get that morning sunlight in your eyes,

00:53:59.380 | but also get some sunlight in your eyes

00:54:01.460 | in the late afternoon and evening hours

00:54:03.700 | when the sun is at so-called low solar angle,

00:54:05.740 | when it starts to descend in the sky.

00:54:07.840 | Again, you don't have to stare directly at the sun,

00:54:09.720 | although if you can catch a nice, beautiful sunset,

00:54:11.580 | go for it.

00:54:12.420 | But as the sun starts to descend,

00:54:15.360 | it triggers those same neurons in your eye

00:54:19.280 | that communicate with your circadian clock,

00:54:21.100 | but it communicates with a different component

00:54:24.140 | or different compartment within the circadian clock.

00:54:26.340 | That circadian clock is not just one thing,

00:54:28.560 | it's multiple things, and you have what are called

00:54:29.940 | morning oscillators and evening oscillators.

00:54:32.080 | And to make a long story short,

00:54:33.820 | the tool that I'm describing of looking at the sun

00:54:37.540 | in the late afternoon and evening,

00:54:39.500 | again, blinking is fine, don't stare at the sun,

00:54:42.700 | but getting that sunlight in your eyes

00:54:43.980 | in the late afternoon and evening signals to that clock

00:54:48.380 | that it's evening time and that sleep is coming.

00:54:51.980 | It also serves as a second anchor or reference point

00:54:56.460 | for your body and your brain to know where it is in time.

00:54:59.860 | Remember back to the beginning of the episode,

00:55:01.500 | when I said your brain and your body

00:55:03.200 | and all your organs are locked inside this skin

00:55:05.440 | and the skull, and they don't know what's going on

00:55:07.420 | in the outside world.

00:55:08.340 | Well, that morning sunlight viewing

00:55:10.000 | and the other things you do during critical period one,

00:55:12.860 | those provide one strong set of signals

00:55:15.420 | that it's wake up time and time to be alert

00:55:17.060 | and time to be focused.

00:55:18.320 | And then in the evening,

00:55:20.180 | by getting sunlight in your eyes again,

00:55:23.180 | and in particular sunlight

00:55:24.860 | that comes from low solar angle sunlight,

00:55:27.820 | well, that provides a second stimulus

00:55:29.840 | or a second reference point that tells your brain and body,

00:55:33.040 | hey, it's evening, the sun is descending.

00:55:35.700 | And you might say, wait,

00:55:36.540 | how does the brain and these neurons know the difference

00:55:38.980 | between morning light and evening light?

00:55:40.540 | It turns out has to do with the particular wavelengths

00:55:43.140 | of light that are present in morning versus evening.

00:55:46.180 | It's an incredible mechanism.

00:55:47.820 | And you are probably familiar with the fact

00:55:50.740 | that when the sun is directly overhead,

00:55:52.740 | it's really bright white and yellow,

00:55:55.520 | and the sky's often blue.

00:55:56.780 | And if there's cloud cover,

00:55:57.720 | it just comes through as a bunch of bright light.

00:55:59.580 | Well, next time you're out in the morning,

00:56:00.980 | take a look at what a sunrise looks like.

00:56:02.660 | There's a lot of yellow-blue contrast.

00:56:04.880 | And those yellow-blues signal important specific sets

00:56:08.200 | of cells in your eye and brain that it's morning.

00:56:10.620 | In the evening, you're also going to see yellow and blue,

00:56:13.100 | but the ratio of yellows and blues has now changed.

00:56:16.460 | And you also see some oranges.

00:56:17.760 | And in a really brilliant sunset, you'll see some reds.

00:56:20.660 | If you haven't noticed this already,

00:56:22.320 | you'll really want to look for this.

00:56:23.440 | It's like kind of fun and cool to look at.

00:56:25.900 | Well, those yellows and blues and oranges

00:56:28.820 | that you see in the evening sunsets,

00:56:30.340 | those signal to your brain and body

00:56:32.200 | that evening is there and that nighttime is coming.

00:56:34.660 | And they're really establishing a second reference point

00:56:37.640 | or wave front of biological signals

00:56:39.960 | that are going to optimize your nighttime hours

00:56:42.440 | and your transition into really terrific sleep.

00:56:45.120 | So now let's talk about what I'm calling

00:56:47.100 | critical period three of each 24-hour cycle.

00:56:50.140 | So this would be the period of time of late evening.

00:56:53.000 | So it might be 6 p.m. for some,

00:56:55.560 | depending on when you go to sleep or 7 p.m.,

00:56:57.620 | extending into the hours in which you decide

00:57:00.840 | to get into bed and go to sleep

00:57:02.280 | and then throughout the night.

00:57:03.880 | There are a number of things that you're going to want to do

00:57:05.760 | and there are a number of things

00:57:07.200 | that you are going to want to avoid doing

00:57:09.360 | in order to optimize your sleep.

00:57:11.220 | First of all, you're going to want to avoid

00:57:13.860 | bright artificial lights of any color.

00:57:18.060 | Yes, of any color.

00:57:20.040 | We haven't talked a lot about blue blockers,

00:57:21.700 | you know, lenses that block blue wavelengths

00:57:23.820 | or short wavelengths of light.

00:57:26.180 | I don't have anything against blue blockers.

00:57:27.840 | In fact, many people find that blue blockers

00:57:30.060 | provide them some relief from headache and some eye strain

00:57:34.040 | if they wear blue blockers throughout the day

00:57:35.540 | and certainly at night, but you don't need them.

00:57:37.880 | And even if you do wear them,

00:57:40.040 | you will find that if lights are very bright,

00:57:42.380 | doesn't matter if it's a blue light,

00:57:43.560 | a yellow light, or a red light,

00:57:45.340 | those bright lights will wake up your brain and body.

00:57:48.660 | They will activate the same mechanisms

00:57:51.080 | that were activated early in the day by sunlight.

00:57:53.480 | However, and here's the really diabolical twist,

00:57:56.520 | I mentioned this earlier,

00:57:57.360 | but the diabolical twist in the way

00:57:59.360 | that your brain and body respond to light

00:58:01.260 | is that early in the day, in the morning hours,

00:58:03.920 | you need a lot of bright light, ideally from sunlight,

00:58:06.080 | to be very alert and to wake up.

00:58:08.560 | But in the evening hours and nighttime hours,

00:58:10.960 | it takes very little light, very few photons,

00:58:14.560 | in order to wake up your brain and body

00:58:17.060 | and to disrupt your circadian clock and disrupt your sleep.

00:58:20.380 | So what that means is that once the sun goes down,

00:58:23.460 | which of course is going to happen at different times of year

00:58:27.580 | in different places on earth,

00:58:28.900 | but once the sun goes down,

00:58:30.600 | you would be wise to try and dim the lights

00:58:32.960 | in your indoor environment most days, right?

00:58:35.480 | I realize some nights you're going to throw a party

00:58:36.900 | and have people over, you might not want to dim the lights.

00:58:38.960 | Some nights you're going to go out,

00:58:40.320 | you might view a lot of bright lights,

00:58:41.560 | but most nights of your life,

00:58:43.540 | you're going to want to dim the lights

00:58:45.120 | in your internal environment.

00:58:48.440 | And ideally the lights that you do use,

00:58:50.600 | you would place low in that physical environment.

00:58:52.820 | So you would try and not use overhead lights,

00:58:55.020 | but rather rely on desk lamps

00:58:56.960 | or lights even placed low to the floor, even on the floor.

00:59:00.020 | If you are going to use light at night, and most people do,

00:59:04.940 | I would encourage you to use as little artificial light

00:59:07.540 | as is required to carry out the activities

00:59:09.980 | you need to require safely.

00:59:11.820 | That could be studying,

00:59:12.660 | in which case you might need a little bit more light

00:59:14.420 | in order to read or study.

00:59:16.040 | If you're watching a television show

00:59:18.140 | or you're watching something on your computer,

00:59:19.920 | dim that screen way, way down as dim as possible

00:59:22.940 | while still of course being able to view

00:59:24.500 | what you need to view.

00:59:25.560 | Even better, I should say,

00:59:27.260 | ideally you would use candlelight and or moonlight.

00:59:30.140 | Now, some nights the moon is really bright

00:59:31.880 | and you actually can use moonlight

00:59:33.660 | to go about your usual activities.

00:59:35.380 | Moonlight might seem very, very bright,

00:59:37.940 | but actually moonlight is fairly low light intensity

00:59:42.740 | and candlelight, which can also seem very bright,

00:59:45.380 | actually is very low light intensity.

00:59:47.840 | If you're sitting across a table

00:59:49.940 | with some candlelight there,

00:59:51.460 | it's a really bright candle,

00:59:52.700 | chances are it's only about three to 10 lux,

00:59:55.940 | which is very, very little light energy

00:59:58.600 | compared to say an artificial desk lamp

01:00:00.780 | or an overhead light,

01:00:01.620 | which is going to be in the area of anywhere

01:00:03.140 | from a hundred to a thousand lux.

01:00:05.640 | So candlelight is fine,

01:00:07.400 | of course be cautious with open flame,

01:00:09.920 | but candlelight is fine, moonlight is fine,

01:00:12.200 | dimming artificial lights is fine

01:00:14.300 | provided they're dimmed way, way down.

01:00:16.240 | And again, try and avoid using overhead artificial lights.

01:00:20.400 | The absolute worst lights

01:00:21.560 | are going to be overhead fluorescent lights

01:00:23.280 | of the sort that you would have in the supermarket

01:00:26.060 | or that you would see at a gas station

01:00:28.480 | or something of that sort.

01:00:29.700 | And I confess there are times in which I'm driving home

01:00:33.580 | and it's late at night and I want to be able to get to sleep

01:00:35.760 | and I'll need to stop at the grocery store

01:00:37.740 | or a gas station or something like that.

01:00:39.080 | I've actually put on sunglasses at night

01:00:40.920 | in order to avoid getting that bright light exposure

01:00:44.440 | at night, although that's a little bit extreme.

01:00:46.780 | I have done that from time to time

01:00:48.380 | because that bright light exposure

01:00:50.040 | will absolutely quash, it will eliminate any melatonin

01:00:54.220 | that happens to be circulating in your brain and body.

01:00:56.360 | Now melatonin, a lot of people think of as a supplement,

01:00:58.580 | but melatonin is naturally released

01:01:00.800 | as the evening comes about and into the nighttime hours,

01:01:03.740 | it's a hormone that makes you feel sleepy

01:01:05.780 | and allows you to fall asleep.

01:01:07.440 | So viewing bright light in the late evening hours

01:01:10.280 | and nighttime hours is really not good

01:01:12.760 | for your sleep quality

01:01:14.500 | and your ability to fall and stay asleep.

01:01:17.000 | So for most people, a simple rule of thumb

01:01:19.180 | is going to be avoid bright artificial lights of all colors

01:01:23.100 | and in particular overhead bright artificial lights

01:01:25.200 | between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

01:01:27.640 | That's right, between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.,

01:01:29.140 | avoid those bright artificial lights as much as possible,

01:01:32.280 | use only as much light as is absolutely necessary

01:01:35.540 | in order to carry out the routines

01:01:37.440 | and activities you need to carry out safely.

01:01:39.860 | I should mention that the reason

01:01:40.960 | that overhead lights are problematic

01:01:42.920 | is the same reason why sunlight is so great early in the day

01:01:46.360 | which is that the cells, that is the neurons

01:01:49.040 | that can wake up your brain and body

01:01:51.500 | through activation of the circadian clock

01:01:53.420 | reside mainly in the bottom half

01:01:55.500 | or two thirds of your neural retina.

01:01:57.200 | And the way the optics of your eyes work

01:01:59.220 | is that the cells on the bottom half of your eye

01:02:01.520 | view the upper visual field.

01:02:02.960 | So this is a beautiful adaptive mechanism

01:02:05.860 | that allows these cells to respond to overhead light

01:02:08.480 | from sunlight in the early part of the day

01:02:12.080 | and throughout the day.

01:02:13.160 | But in the evening, if you have bright artificial lights on

01:02:15.960 | and those bright artificial lights are overhead lights,

01:02:18.280 | it's going to more closely mimic

01:02:20.800 | what sunlight does in the evening time.

01:02:23.400 | And that turns out to be a bad thing

01:02:24.720 | if your goal is to eventually go to sleep.

01:02:26.640 | So again, do like the Scandinavians do,

01:02:29.400 | use lights that are set low in the room at night.

01:02:32.100 | And if you really want to optimize your sleep-wake cycles,

01:02:35.120 | I suppose you could also do the opposite throughout the day.

01:02:37.480 | You could really emphasize the use

01:02:38.800 | of bright artificial lights and sunlight

01:02:41.200 | that comes from above.

01:02:42.040 | And of course, sunlight always comes from above,

01:02:43.880 | but if you're working in a given office environment

01:02:48.600 | and it's 2 p.m. or 3 p.m.

01:02:50.220 | and you want to be as awake as possible,

01:02:52.100 | really crank up the overhead lights.

01:02:53.540 | And then in the evening,

01:02:54.800 | which is this critical period three that we're referring to,

01:02:57.100 | really try and dim those lights or have them off

01:03:00.100 | or just rely on candlelight or moonlight

01:03:01.820 | from the hours of about 10 p.m. until 4 a.m.

01:03:05.280 | Our good friend, Samir Hattar,

01:03:06.560 | who's been on this podcast before,

01:03:08.080 | Samir is director of the Chronobiology Unit

01:03:10.160 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health.

01:03:12.240 | Well, he's absolutely obsessive about this light stuff

01:03:15.180 | and avoiding light at night.

01:03:16.120 | In fact, he lives in what I joke is like a cave at night

01:03:20.480 | from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m.,

01:03:22.360 | which is really his kind of sleep cycle.

01:03:25.380 | He has his house so dark that you'd be lucky

01:03:27.980 | to be able to find a spoon in the kitchen.

01:03:29.940 | In fact, you'd be lucky to find your way down the hallway

01:03:31.740 | if you're me.

01:03:32.580 | But in any case, dim the lights from them way, way down.

01:03:35.600 | It will serve you well.

01:03:36.540 | It will make it much easier for you to get sleepy

01:03:40.120 | and stay sleepy and fall asleep and stay asleep

01:03:42.720 | throughout the night.

01:03:43.560 | Now, not to depart from this critical period three,

01:03:46.440 | but if you recall viewing that afternoon light, right?

01:03:51.440 | The low solar angle light as the sun is heading down

01:03:54.140 | in the sky, so it could be sunset

01:03:55.840 | or what I call circa sunset, around sunset.

01:03:59.500 | Well, doing that is going to slightly

01:04:01.680 | but not completely offset any of the negative effects

01:04:04.500 | of viewing artificial light at night.

01:04:06.800 | So I don't want to give people a pass here,

01:04:08.480 | but let's say you know that you're going to watch

01:04:11.360 | some Netflix at night or you're going to be up late studying

01:04:14.900 | and yet you still want to be able to fall and stay asleep.

01:04:17.580 | Definitely make sure you see that evening light.

01:04:20.080 | There's a great study.

01:04:21.280 | We'll provide a link to the study,

01:04:22.520 | which showed that if people view evening sunset light

01:04:26.840 | or evening sunsets or sunlight right around the time

01:04:29.480 | of sunset, it really serves to inoculate or offset some,

01:04:33.760 | again, some, not all of the negative effects

01:04:35.720 | of artificial light between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

01:04:38.720 | Now that's light, but as you recall,

01:04:40.400 | we also have this tool related to temperature.

01:04:43.180 | And you're probably not going to be surprised

01:04:46.120 | that the way to leverage temperature in the evening

01:04:48.680 | is the exact opposite of the way

01:04:50.140 | that you want to leverage temperature early in the day.

01:04:52.380 | Early in the day, temperature increases

01:04:54.280 | from cold showers or exercise, et cetera, wake you up.

01:04:57.240 | What that means is that taking a cold shower late at night

01:04:59.960 | is probably a bad idea.

01:05:01.900 | Rather, taking a nice hot bath or a sauna you might think

01:05:06.680 | would heat up your body.

01:05:07.680 | And indeed that's what happens if you stay

01:05:09.260 | in a very long time, but if you do hot tub or a hot bath

01:05:12.680 | or a sauna in the evening and you don't stay in

01:05:14.580 | for more than 20 or 30 minutes and you get out,

01:05:16.620 | you take maybe a cool-ish shower or a warm shower,

01:05:20.340 | then what happens is there's a compensatory cooling off

01:05:23.380 | of your core body temperature

01:05:24.620 | for the reasons we discussed earlier,

01:05:26.100 | and your body temperature will drop by one to three degrees

01:05:29.100 | and it will make it much easier to get into sleep.

01:05:31.520 | So if you're somebody that enjoys hot baths,

01:05:33.140 | hot showers, or hot tubs,

01:05:35.740 | evening and nighttime is going to be the best time

01:05:37.620 | to do that if your goal is to facilitate sleep.

01:05:40.420 | Similarly, you should try and make your sleeping environment

01:05:43.220 | pretty cool, if not cold.

01:05:45.460 | Now that doesn't mean you need to be cold

01:05:46.820 | while you're asleep.

01:05:47.960 | You can get under as many blankets as you need,

01:05:49.820 | but it's a good idea to make your sleeping environment cool.

01:05:52.740 | In fact, drop the temperature in that sleeping environment

01:05:55.000 | by at least three degrees and you'll be happy that you did.

01:05:58.740 | Now, some people rely on things like eight sleep

01:06:00.820 | that I use that one of these controllable

01:06:02.840 | temperature mattress covers.

01:06:05.060 | Other people would simply do this

01:06:06.500 | by putting a fan in the room or opening a window.

01:06:09.260 | Again, depends on time of year, depends on technology,

01:06:11.340 | depends on budgets, et cetera.

01:06:12.680 | But you're going to want to sleep in a relatively cool

01:06:14.980 | or cold sleeping environment

01:06:16.640 | and then layer on the blankets as needed to stay asleep.

01:06:20.900 | And I say as needed because one of the things

01:06:23.040 | that you're going to do in your sleep,

01:06:25.600 | or if you happen to wake up is if you're too warm,

01:06:28.440 | you're going to put a foot or a hand out

01:06:30.780 | from under those blankets.

01:06:32.240 | And the reason for doing that is very logical.

01:06:34.460 | Once you understand the mechanism, you have special portals.

01:06:37.680 | You essentially have ways of passing heat, excuse me,

01:06:41.240 | in and out of your body,

01:06:43.100 | primarily through the palms of your hands,

01:06:44.880 | the upper half of your face and the bottoms of your feet

01:06:47.240 | through so-called glabrous skin.

01:06:48.540 | This was covered in the episode with Dr. Craig Heller

01:06:50.860 | from the biology department at Stanford.

01:06:52.860 | If you lower the temperature in your sleeping environment,

01:06:55.860 | so lower the temperature in that room

01:06:57.520 | or use a controllable mattress cover that can cool down

01:07:00.480 | like eight sleep or something of that sort,

01:07:02.300 | it's naturally going to make your sleep environment cooler.

01:07:05.660 | And if you're too warm under the blankets,

01:07:07.780 | all you have to do is extend a hand or a foot out

01:07:09.940 | from under those blankets.

01:07:11.020 | Whereas if the sleeping environment that you're in

01:07:12.840 | is too warm, there's very little you can do to cool off

01:07:16.060 | besides push off those blankets.

01:07:17.760 | So for instance, if you're too warm

01:07:19.020 | and you're waking up in the middle of the night,

01:07:20.340 | which is what happens if you get too warm,

01:07:22.140 | you'll push off those blankets.

01:07:23.260 | But if the room is too warm, well, what are you going to do?

01:07:25.540 | You'd probably have to put your hands into some cool water

01:07:27.760 | or take a coolish shower or something

01:07:29.820 | for a couple of seconds.

01:07:30.960 | That's not very practical.

01:07:32.360 | Better to just keep the sleeping environment cool.

01:07:35.200 | I'm not a big fan of people putting socks on

01:07:37.800 | while they sleep, or I should say,

01:07:38.800 | I'm not a fan of putting socks on while I sleep

01:07:40.840 | because that eliminates this glabrous skin portal

01:07:43.340 | on the bottoms of one's feet.

01:07:44.840 | So for those of you that have heard,

01:07:46.120 | wear socks while you sleep,

01:07:47.220 | that works great for people that tend to run too cold

01:07:50.280 | while they sleep and wake up because their feet get cold.

01:07:52.680 | But if you're somebody who wakes up

01:07:53.840 | in the middle of the night,

01:07:54.680 | this is how you're waking up because you're getting too warm.

01:07:57.920 | And the best thing that you could do is to cool

01:08:00.140 | or lower the temperature in the room that you're sleeping

01:08:01.920 | and not wear socks.

01:08:03.060 | Get under as many blankets as you need to fall asleep.

01:08:05.700 | And then across the night,

01:08:06.860 | you'll naturally just move a hand or a foot

01:08:08.620 | or all hands and feet out from under those blankets

01:08:10.760 | to cool off because of the relationship

01:08:13.300 | between temperature and sleep.

01:08:14.400 | That is dropping your core body temperature

01:08:16.600 | one to three degrees gets you into sleep

01:08:18.620 | and helps you stay asleep.

01:08:19.940 | So let's say you do exercise late in the day

01:08:21.860 | and you're finding yourself very alert in the evening

01:08:23.740 | and you need to fall asleep.

01:08:25.360 | Or let's say you've exercised

01:08:26.700 | and you needed four cups of espresso

01:08:29.300 | in order to do that exercise.

01:08:31.000 | Well, there are a few things that you can do

01:08:32.080 | to try and bring your nervous system down

01:08:34.160 | into more state of calmness.

01:08:35.820 | And you can do that also

01:08:36.880 | by lowering your core body temperature.

01:08:39.180 | One of those I already talked about before,

01:08:40.740 | taking a nice hot shower or a hot bath

01:08:43.180 | and then getting out and cooling off

01:08:44.480 | will decrease your body temperature.

01:08:46.300 | Maybe not enough to get you into sleep

01:08:48.540 | if you have a ton of caffeine in your system.

01:08:50.980 | But again, you can use this mechanism

01:08:53.080 | of temperature shifts to wake up

01:08:56.140 | or temperature shifts to fall asleep

01:08:57.640 | in ways that really can help you overcome

01:08:59.720 | some of the irregularities in your sleep-wake cycle

01:09:03.540 | and exercise cycle, et cetera.

01:09:05.460 | Because of course, nobody's perfect.

01:09:07.320 | Some days we end up having a workout in the afternoon

01:09:09.540 | or we'll miss the workout entirely.

01:09:11.340 | Other days we end up having that cup of coffee

01:09:13.240 | in the afternoon with a friend

01:09:14.160 | and then we have a hard time falling asleep.

01:09:15.960 | So you can use these tools,

01:09:17.200 | not just in their optimized form,

01:09:19.320 | being absolutely obsessive and compulsive

01:09:21.440 | about exactly when you do each of those tools.

01:09:23.620 | That would be wonderful, but life happens as they say.

01:09:27.040 | And some days you're going to feel too alert at night

01:09:29.340 | and you want to fall asleep,

01:09:30.420 | or you got to get up especially early the next morning

01:09:33.440 | and you're not somebody who normally goes to bed at 10 PM.

01:09:35.780 | Well, that's when something like a hot bath or a sauna

01:09:37.920 | can really benefit you

01:09:38.760 | because it can adjust your temperature rhythm accordingly.

01:09:41.080 | I would be remiss if I didn't touch on alcohol

01:09:44.040 | and CBD and THC.

01:09:46.100 | I always get questions about these.

01:09:48.000 | And I should say, of course, many places, but not all,

01:09:51.760 | THC is illegal, although there are medical uses

01:09:54.360 | and some places it's decriminalized,

01:09:56.960 | other places it's legal.

01:09:58.820 | Alcohol of course is consumed almost as frequently

01:10:01.960 | as caffeine is consumed.

01:10:03.560 | I personally don't drink alcohol.

01:10:04.860 | I don't have anything against it per se.

01:10:07.120 | I just don't tend to enjoy it.

01:10:09.120 | One of the reasons I don't enjoy it is if I drink alcohol,

01:10:11.580 | I simply fall asleep.

01:10:12.940 | So that doesn't really accomplish any of the things

01:10:15.100 | that I really want to accomplish

01:10:16.600 | because the sleep that one gets after drinking alcohol

01:10:20.120 | is greatly disrupted sleep.

01:10:22.320 | Hate to break it to you, but that's the truth.

01:10:24.800 | And when Dr. Matt Walker came on this podcast,

01:10:27.480 | he said exactly the same thing.

01:10:29.080 | While THC and alcohol do help some people fall asleep

01:10:34.080 | and maybe even stay asleep,

01:10:36.360 | the architecture of that sleep is suboptimal

01:10:39.460 | compared to the sleep they would get

01:10:40.680 | without alcohol or THC in their system.

01:10:43.100 | So I'm not here to tell you what to do or not to do.

01:10:45.600 | I'm certainly not the substance police.

01:10:48.880 | That's not my role.

01:10:50.020 | I'm just reporting to you the biology.

01:10:51.560 | If your sleep is not restoring you

01:10:54.660 | to the extent that you feel it should,

01:10:56.660 | or if you are regularly relying on a drink or two

01:10:59.920 | in order to fall asleep or THC in order to fall asleep,

01:11:04.500 | that is disrupting your total pattern of sleep.

01:11:07.360 | However, I do realize that nowadays

01:11:09.280 | a lot of people are relying on THC and or CBD,

01:11:12.980 | especially edible forms in order to fall and stay asleep.

01:11:16.100 | And, you know, we can just acknowledge the data.

01:11:18.580 | It does seem that there's an anxiety-lowering effect

01:11:21.460 | of some of those compounds that do help people

01:11:24.260 | who have a hard time falling and staying asleep

01:11:26.580 | because of reasons related to anxiety.

01:11:28.860 | Although in a moment,

01:11:29.700 | we'll talk about some supplements and supplement protocols

01:11:33.180 | that can also assist in the ability to fall and stay asleep

01:11:36.140 | and that can adjust anxiety

01:11:37.640 | and that do not seem to disrupt sleep architecture

01:11:40.260 | in negative ways and in fact can enhance the depth

01:11:42.620 | and quality of sleep architecture.

01:11:44.820 | Okay, so you've done everything correctly up until now.

01:11:47.580 | You've got your morning routine from critical period one.

01:11:50.420 | You've got your afternoon routine.

01:11:51.520 | You saw some sunlight in the afternoon.

01:11:53.580 | You avoided caffeine in the eight hours

01:11:55.320 | or 10 hours before bedtime.

01:11:57.080 | You're not drinking alcohol.

01:11:58.460 | You've cooled down the room.

01:12:00.420 | You're doing all these things right.

01:12:01.520 | You dim the lights, et cetera, et cetera.

01:12:04.140 | What else can we do in order to optimize our sleep?

01:12:06.700 | Well, I always say behavioral tools first,

01:12:10.580 | then look to nutrition, then if necessary,

01:12:13.500 | look to supplementation, and then if still necessary,

01:12:16.740 | look to prescription drugs,

01:12:18.820 | obviously prescribed by a board certified physician.

01:12:22.000 | Well, we've talked a lot about the behavioral tools

01:12:24.180 | for critical period three.

01:12:25.660 | We have not talked a lot

01:12:26.900 | about the supplementation based tools.

01:12:28.900 | There are supplements that for most people

01:12:30.980 | will greatly improve their ability to fall and stay asleep.

01:12:35.080 | And the three main supplements in that category

01:12:38.420 | or that kit of sleep supplements,

01:12:40.780 | and I've talked about these before,

01:12:42.060 | are magnesium threonate, so T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E,

01:12:47.060 | apigenin, A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N, apigenin,

01:12:51.940 | and theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E, theanine.

01:12:55.380 | Now, some important things to point out about magthreonate

01:12:58.340 | as it's called apigenin and theanine.

01:13:00.300 | First of all, you don't necessarily need to take all three,

01:13:03.500 | although many people get a synergistic effect

01:13:05.920 | from taking all three.

01:13:07.180 | In fact, you may not even need to take even one.

01:13:10.240 | What I recommend is that if you're already doing

01:13:13.040 | all the behavioral tools regularly

01:13:15.660 | and you're still having trouble falling asleep

01:13:17.900 | and staying asleep, well, then you might try

01:13:21.380 | one of the supplements within this sleep stack.

01:13:24.140 | They do have fairly wide margins for safety,

01:13:26.200 | although I should also say anytime you're going to add

01:13:29.740 | or remove something from your supplement protocol,

01:13:31.860 | your nutritional program,

01:13:33.100 | you definitely want to talk to your physician.

01:13:34.600 | I don't just say that to protect us,

01:13:35.760 | I say that to protect you.

01:13:37.140 | But for most people, the margins of safety on these things

01:13:39.300 | are going to be pretty broad.

01:13:40.600 | A couple of notes about dosages.

01:13:42.980 | For some people, the dosages of any one or several

01:13:45.540 | of the supplements I mentioned will be zero.

01:13:47.820 | That is, you won't need them in order to get

01:13:50.000 | and stay asleep most nights of your life.

01:13:53.220 | That's terrific if you don't need them.

01:13:55.260 | For many people, however, taking 145 milligrams

01:13:58.900 | of magnesium threonate can be very beneficial.

01:14:02.500 | That's the dosage that most people will benefit from.

01:14:06.260 | Some people need to go a little higher.

01:14:07.540 | Some people need to go a little bit lower.

01:14:09.500 | One of the reasons that we've been pointing people

01:14:11.140 | towards single ingredient formulations these days

01:14:14.740 | is because it allows people to adjust the dosage

01:14:17.380 | of one component of a so-called sleep stack

01:14:19.780 | without having to disrupt the dosage of another component

01:14:23.620 | and so on.

01:14:24.460 | It also allows people to try just one element

01:14:26.580 | within the sleep stack without having to purchase

01:14:29.900 | and try the others, which is a problem

01:14:31.660 | if you're buying a blend of a lot of different ingredients.

01:14:33.940 | So 145 milligrams of magnesium threonate,

01:14:36.980 | 50, five zero milligrams of apigenin,

01:14:39.880 | and again, you could just take the apigenin on its own,

01:14:42.540 | and 100 to 400 milligrams of theanine taken, again, alone

01:14:47.540 | or in combination with the other supplements mentioned

01:14:50.780 | in this stack, many people find allows them

01:14:53.220 | to get really drowsy and fall asleep, sleep really deeply,

01:14:56.620 | and they feel much more refreshed the next day

01:14:58.780 | and they don't have a grogginess to them.

01:15:01.100 | Now, a couple of notes about these different supplements.

01:15:04.620 | About 5% of people report that magnesium threonate

01:15:09.220 | really disrupts their gut.

01:15:10.380 | It gives them diarrhea or gastric distress,

01:15:12.620 | in which case, don't take it.

01:15:14.420 | If magnesium threonate disrupts your gut or your digestion

01:15:19.420 | to a point where it's uncomfortable or at all

01:15:21.180 | and you don't like it, don't take any of it.

01:15:23.060 | The proper dosage for you, in other words,

01:15:24.400 | would be zero milligrams.

01:15:26.140 | Now, in a slightly different way,

01:15:28.240 | many people who can tolerate magnesium threonate

01:15:31.260 | or really thrive on magnesium threonate,

01:15:33.760 | and like apigenin, might find that theanine,

01:15:37.040 | even at the lowest dose of 100 milligrams,

01:15:39.160 | 'cause again, the range is 100 to 400 milligrams,

01:15:41.180 | that theanine gives them such vivid dreams

01:15:44.060 | that they actually find it disruptive,

01:15:46.360 | or they wake up in the middle of the night,

01:15:47.900 | or they find that the sleep that they're getting

01:15:49.800 | is kind of anxiety-ridden

01:15:51.340 | because of the intensity of those dreams.

01:15:53.120 | So some people might choose to leave theanine

01:15:55.200 | out of the sleep stack and just take magnesium threonate

01:15:57.960 | or apigenin, and again, some people might leave magnesium

01:16:00.040 | threonate out of the sleep stack.

01:16:01.680 | Again, all of this is really about

01:16:04.760 | finding the supplementation protocol that's ideal for you.

01:16:08.020 | I should mention that whether or not you're taking one

01:16:10.060 | or two or three of the components of the sleep stack,

01:16:13.620 | the ideal time to take those is 30 to 60 minutes

01:16:16.060 | before bedtime, especially if you haven't had anything

01:16:18.500 | to eat for the three hours or so before bedtime.

01:16:21.060 | I confess that oftentimes I'll have a little bit

01:16:23.000 | of a snack late in the evening, some berries or something.

01:16:25.540 | I try not to eat too close to bedtime,

01:16:27.420 | but some evenings just because of work schedule,

01:16:29.300 | I'll get home late, be 9 p.m., and I'll eat a big meal,

01:16:32.340 | and then I'll take the sleep stack and fall asleep.

01:16:34.400 | Every once in a while, that just so happens.

01:16:36.400 | Nobody's perfect. Certainly I'm not.

01:16:39.280 | But that sleep stack can be very beneficial,

01:16:41.880 | and I do think that it's preferable to melatonin.

01:16:44.660 | Here's the reason.

01:16:45.500 | First of all, melatonin is a hormone

01:16:47.260 | that you endogenously make.

01:16:48.600 | You now know a lot about melatonin,

01:16:50.240 | and it's controlled by light,

01:16:52.040 | meaning light inhibits it or eliminates it.

01:16:54.760 | Darkness promotes it.

01:16:56.920 | And melatonin indeed can help us fall asleep,

01:17:01.100 | but the dosages of melatonin that are contained

01:17:03.280 | in most commercial products is far, far, far greater

01:17:07.020 | than what we would make endogenously.

01:17:08.260 | So it's really supra physiological.

01:17:10.880 | So that's of concern because melatonin

01:17:12.940 | is not just responsible for making us sleepy

01:17:15.900 | and fall asleep.

01:17:16.880 | It also does things like interacts

01:17:19.500 | with other hormone systems, testosterone and estrogen,

01:17:22.100 | even in the puberty system in kids.

01:17:25.160 | Is taking melatonin every once in a while a problem

01:17:27.700 | for adjusting to jet lag, et cetera?

01:17:29.660 | Probably not.

01:17:30.680 | Why are we even saying no?

01:17:31.840 | But taking it chronically over time,

01:17:33.920 | especially kids taking it chronically over time

01:17:36.480 | can potentially be problematic.

01:17:38.000 | So at least in my opinion,

01:17:39.460 | these other supplements are going to be preferable

01:17:41.300 | to melatonin.

01:17:42.680 | Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode,

01:17:44.720 | there are some other things

01:17:46.080 | that I certainly take every once in a while

01:17:48.220 | and that other people might consider taking

01:17:51.100 | in addition to the sleep stack I talked about before,

01:17:53.880 | or in place of that sleep stack,

01:17:55.740 | if that sleep stack doesn't work well for them.

01:17:57.580 | So every third or fourth night,

01:17:59.020 | I will take two grams of glycine

01:18:01.720 | and a hundred milligrams of GABA

01:18:03.700 | in addition to the standard sleep stack

01:18:06.520 | that I talked about before.

01:18:07.500 | So I'm taking magthreonine, apigen and theanine,

01:18:09.680 | and then I will also take two grams of glycine and GABA,

01:18:12.240 | which I find greatly enhances my ability to get into sleep.

01:18:16.080 | But the reason I only add glycine and GABA

01:18:19.400 | every third or fourth night

01:18:21.000 | is that if I take it too often,

01:18:22.520 | I find that the entire sleep stack

01:18:24.080 | doesn't work quite as effectively.

01:18:25.580 | I don't know exactly why this is the case,

01:18:27.220 | but in any event, that's what I do.

01:18:29.900 | And more recently, I've also started using inositol,

01:18:33.600 | in particular, myoinositol every other night.

01:18:36.760 | I'll take 900 milligrams of myoinositol

01:18:39.320 | in addition to magthreonine, apigenine and theanine,

01:18:42.600 | and not on the nights when I take glycine and GABA.

01:18:46.640 | So I'm adding 900 milligrams of inositol

01:18:48.560 | to the standard sleep stack

01:18:50.480 | of magthreonine and apigenine.

01:18:52.920 | And what I find is not only does it greatly enhance

01:18:56.320 | my ability to fall asleep quickly,

01:18:58.120 | but if I wake up in the middle of the night,

01:18:59.800 | which I often do to use the bathroom,

01:19:02.560 | I find it very, very easy to fall back asleep.

01:19:05.480 | Whereas when I don't take inositol every other night or so,

01:19:10.280 | I find that if I wake up in the middle of the night,

01:19:11.760 | it's a bit more of a challenge to fall back asleep.

01:19:14.380 | So inositol has a number of different uses

01:19:16.960 | that have been discussed in terms of mental health

01:19:19.560 | and in terms of adjusting anxiety for its daytime use.

01:19:22.740 | What I'm talking about is taking 900 milligrams

01:19:24.520 | of myoinositol also 30 to 60 minutes before sleep,

01:19:28.160 | along with the standard sleep stack.

01:19:29.440 | And I found that to be immensely beneficial.

01:19:31.680 | I also noticed that it has a pretty long tail

01:19:34.160 | of anxiety suppression throughout the day.

01:19:37.240 | And I'm not somebody who suffers from anxiety,

01:19:39.640 | but I have to say it just has led me to feel a bit calmer

01:19:42.800 | throughout the day.

01:19:43.640 | And I don't really know how to say this except

01:19:45.720 | in subjective terms to feel a bit more buffered against

01:19:48.560 | or resilience against stress events.

01:19:50.440 | And if you look at the literature on inositol

01:19:52.600 | and its interactions with the serotonin system

01:19:54.680 | and other systems,

01:19:56.180 | that all makes sense as to why that would be the case.

01:19:58.320 | So we will provide links to our so-called sleep kit,

01:20:00.400 | which is part of our neural network newsletter.

01:20:02.240 | It's a zero cost newsletter where you can access

01:20:04.000 | this information about supplements

01:20:05.820 | and other behavioral tools for sleep in list form.

01:20:08.620 | But that sleep kit doesn't include some

01:20:10.560 | of the newer information that I've provided this episode,

01:20:12.700 | in particular, the information about inositol

01:20:15.200 | and what I'm finding to be the very beneficial use

01:20:18.240 | of inositol for the ability to fall back asleep

01:20:22.240 | after waking up in the middle of the night,

01:20:23.560 | which is something that a lot of people struggle with.

01:20:25.660 | Now that's supplementation for falling and staying asleep,

01:20:28.340 | but we can return to the behavioral tools

01:20:31.520 | also as powerful levers and tools for falling asleep

01:20:35.320 | and getting back to sleep.

01:20:36.520 | And again, we look to NSDR, non-sleep deep rest

01:20:40.320 | or the Reverie app as a way to do that.

01:20:42.860 | As I mentioned earlier, the Reverie app has been developed

01:20:46.260 | on the basis of really high quality peer reviewed research,

01:20:49.260 | both clinical and nonclinical by my colleague,

01:20:52.140 | David Spiegel, who's our associate chair

01:20:53.700 | of psychiatry at Stanford.

01:20:55.140 | It's a wonderful tool.

01:20:56.580 | It does carry a cost after the initial seven day trial.

01:21:00.380 | I can tell you what the cost on that is

01:21:02.920 | so you can get a sense because I do realize

01:21:06.180 | that anything that carries a cost,

01:21:07.580 | for some people it won't be accessible.

01:21:09.420 | Right now, Reverie, and I should just mention,

01:21:11.900 | they didn't pay us for an ad read.

01:21:13.140 | I'm just telling you what they told me

01:21:14.660 | so that I can accurately report what cost to use Reverie.

01:21:19.380 | They have a monthly subscription

01:21:21.040 | to use the Reverie app at 14.99.

01:21:23.220 | You do get the seven day free trial.

01:21:25.040 | They have a yearly subscription of 99.99

01:21:28.140 | with a seven day free trial,

01:21:29.260 | and they have a lifetime purchase,

01:21:30.680 | one-time purchase of 2.49 with no trial.

01:21:33.540 | Right now is only available for Apple, not for Android,

01:21:36.120 | but they are, yes, going to have it available for Android.

01:21:39.060 | Soon, there's a signup list there.

01:21:41.340 | I should mention that while the cost might seem high,

01:21:45.360 | if you compare that cost to, say, supplements,

01:21:47.940 | or you compare that cost to a poor night's sleep over time,

01:21:50.700 | the cost, at least to me, seems somewhat modest,

01:21:54.380 | certainly within range for a number of people,

01:21:56.340 | but I acknowledge not within range for other people,

01:21:59.020 | which is why I also want to point to zero cost tools,

01:22:02.900 | and the zero cost tool for getting asleep,

01:22:05.260 | staying asleep, and falling back asleep is going to be NSDR,

01:22:09.700 | we'll put a link to a non-sleep deep rest protocol

01:22:11.560 | that's available on YouTube,

01:22:12.580 | so available to anybody, zero cost,

01:22:14.400 | provided you have a internet connection.

01:22:16.840 | Again, dim the screen

01:22:17.780 | if you're going to turn that on late at night.

01:22:19.580 | And there are a number of other Yoganidra scripts

01:22:22.660 | and apps and sources around the internet,

01:22:25.620 | in particular on YouTube,

01:22:26.500 | that are zero cost that you could use

01:22:28.380 | if the Reverie app is outside your price range

01:22:30.660 | or is not preferable to you, et cetera.

01:22:34.060 | When I wake up in the middle of the night,

01:22:35.440 | it's usually to use the restroom.

01:22:36.580 | I'll go use the restroom.

01:22:37.400 | We'll keep the lights as dim as possible.

01:22:38.900 | I'll get back into bed,

01:22:40.260 | and if I find that it's easy to fall asleep, great,

01:22:42.940 | I'm asleep, and if not,

01:22:44.460 | then I will generally plug in the Reverie app.

01:22:46.540 | They have a fall back asleep hypnosis,

01:22:48.900 | and 99 times out of 100, I'm back asleep within minutes,

01:22:53.140 | and I don't wake up until morning.

01:22:54.660 | Now, very briefly, I just want to touch on some tools

01:22:57.100 | that are very commonly used by many people out there,

01:22:59.220 | and believe it or not,

01:23:00.060 | there is peer-reviewed science on things like eye masks.

01:23:03.020 | Do eye masks improve your ability to stay asleep?

01:23:05.940 | And indeed, they do, provided they are not too tight,

01:23:09.180 | and provided that the room is cool enough.

01:23:11.860 | Why?

01:23:12.700 | Well, eye masks cover the upper half of your face,

01:23:14.540 | which is where glabrous skin is localized.

01:23:17.620 | Remember, palms of the hands, bottoms of the feet,

01:23:19.300 | glabrous skin on the face.

01:23:21.020 | So a lot of people who wear eye masks will wake up

01:23:23.700 | because they're too warm if the room is too warm.

01:23:25.620 | So if you're going to use an eye mask to keep light out,

01:23:28.640 | definitely make sure the room and your sleeping environment

01:23:31.140 | and your bed are cool enough

01:23:32.700 | in order for you to stay asleep.

01:23:34.340 | In addition, I get a lot of questions about earplugs.

01:23:36.780 | Here's the deal with earplugs.

01:23:38.060 | Some people find that earplugs are very beneficial

01:23:40.000 | because, of course, they prevent the entrance of sound

01:23:43.780 | into the ear that could wake us up,

01:23:45.720 | but some people find that the sound of their own beating

01:23:48.460 | of their own heart can be disruptive,

01:23:50.800 | and they get a sort of humming in their head

01:23:52.780 | when they have those earplugs in.

01:23:54.540 | I'm one such person, although I have family members

01:23:56.740 | that like using earplugs when they sleep.

01:23:58.460 | So it's really up to you.

01:23:59.660 | You have to see whether or not those earplugs

01:24:01.900 | help or disrupt your sleep.

01:24:03.660 | For me, they're no good.

01:24:05.240 | For some people, they really enjoy them.

01:24:06.940 | I don't use an eye mask unless I'm sleeping

01:24:09.020 | in a really bright environment

01:24:10.180 | or I need to sleep on a plane and things of that sort.

01:24:13.660 | Other tools that I'll just mention

01:24:15.260 | that have peer-reviewed research to support them,

01:24:17.640 | elevating your feet either with a pillow

01:24:19.500 | or by elevating the end of your bed

01:24:21.600 | by about three to five degrees can be really beneficial

01:24:25.060 | for increasing the depth of sleep

01:24:26.380 | because of the so-called glymphatic washout.

01:24:28.460 | This is the movement and circulation of fluids

01:24:30.780 | in your brain at night that lead to more wakefulness

01:24:34.540 | and actually can improve cognitive function

01:24:36.500 | and a number of other things related to brain health.

01:24:39.260 | There's one caveat to that.

01:24:40.720 | For people that suffer from acid reflux,

01:24:43.040 | having your ankles elevated above your chest

01:24:45.980 | or above your heart in the middle of the night

01:24:47.600 | can actually exacerbate that acid reflux.

01:24:49.900 | You want to do the opposite.

01:24:51.040 | You want to actually elevate the head side of your bed

01:24:54.080 | by about three to five degrees.

01:24:55.560 | Now, one of the common causes of sleep disruption

01:24:58.100 | that has tremendously detrimental effects

01:25:00.900 | is so-called sleep apnea.

01:25:02.500 | So this is basically bouts of suffocation

01:25:05.180 | or lack of oxygenation during sleep.

01:25:07.340 | This is particularly the case

01:25:08.900 | for people that are very heavyset,

01:25:10.500 | and that heavyset could be from obesity.

01:25:12.060 | It could also be heavyset from having too much muscle.

01:25:14.540 | A lot of people who are carrying too much muscle

01:25:16.980 | will actually have sleep apnea without realizing it.

01:25:19.100 | Sleep apnea is actually very dangerous.

01:25:21.260 | It's associated with a number of cardiovascular issues.

01:25:23.940 | It's associated with sexual dysfunction.

01:25:25.420 | It's associated with issues with cognition.

01:25:27.780 | Sleep apnea is bad.

01:25:28.740 | A lot of people will have to use the PAP,

01:25:30.780 | which is a device.

01:25:32.620 | It looks like a sort of like a snorkel mask or dive mask.

01:25:36.220 | It's a whole apparatus that people go to sleep with.

01:25:40.140 | However, many people can relieve themselves of sleep apnea

01:25:43.620 | provided it's not too serious and can sleep much better.

01:25:46.500 | In fact, I think all people can sleep much better

01:25:48.340 | if they train themselves to be nose breathers

01:25:50.780 | while they sleep.

01:25:52.260 | There are a lot of reasons to be a nose breather

01:25:53.880 | unless you are breathing very hard due to exercise

01:25:56.940 | or talking or eating.

01:25:58.760 | That was all covered in James Nestor's book, "Breath,"

01:26:01.700 | the new science of a lost art.

01:26:02.900 | It's been covered in a number of different podcasts.

01:26:04.820 | We've talked about it on this podcast as well.

01:26:07.500 | It's a good idea to be a nose breather

01:26:08.900 | unless you need to mouth breathe.

01:26:10.460 | And it's a great idea.

01:26:11.940 | It's a superb idea to be a nose breather in sleep.

01:26:15.960 | And one way to really get good at that

01:26:17.720 | is to take a little bit of medical tape

01:26:19.060 | and to tape your mouth shut before going to sleep.

01:26:21.380 | You heard me right, put some medical tape over your mouth

01:26:23.820 | and force yourself to nose breathe during sleep.

01:26:26.060 | It also prevents snoring in most cases,

01:26:28.820 | really offset sleep apnea.

01:26:31.660 | Sleep apnea, again, being a very serious health concern.

01:26:34.860 | I should also mention as a tool

01:26:36.780 | that if you have a hard time being a nose breather in sleep,

01:26:39.920 | you can try doing your cardiovascular exercise,

01:26:42.480 | at least the lower intensity cardiovascular exercise

01:26:45.260 | through purely nasal breathing.

01:26:47.580 | And one way to do that, again, is to tape your mouth shut

01:26:49.940 | or put a gulp of water in your mouth,

01:26:51.180 | but don't actually swallow that mouthful of water

01:26:54.340 | or to use a mouthpiece or just deliberately

01:26:57.420 | keep your mouth closed

01:26:58.260 | and insist on breathing through your nose.

01:27:00.000 | Most people find that

01:27:00.840 | when they start doing cardiovascular exercise that way,

01:27:02.940 | it's really challenging at first,

01:27:04.940 | but over time they actually can feel quite calm

01:27:07.420 | and still can generate a lot of physical effort

01:27:09.980 | purely using nose breathing.

01:27:12.220 | The reason that doing nose breathing

01:27:13.820 | during cardiovascular exercise

01:27:15.280 | translates to being a nose breather during sleep

01:27:17.620 | is that your sinuses actually can dilate their plastic

01:27:21.020 | and over time, plastic meaning they're malleable, that is,

01:27:25.220 | and they can become wider.

01:27:26.660 | You're not going to get giant nostrils, don't worry about it.

01:27:28.500 | Your airways within your skull,

01:27:31.380 | 'cause that's what the sinuses really are,

01:27:33.060 | these little passages within the skull

01:27:34.860 | and of course within the nasal passages will dilate

01:27:37.860 | and will allow you to breathe more easily through your nose.

01:27:40.260 | But for those of you

01:27:41.380 | that are waking up in the middle of the night,

01:27:42.940 | breathing on your back or your partner is telling you that

01:27:46.180 | or other people are telling you that,

01:27:47.560 | or that person on the plane with your mouth hanging open

01:27:49.700 | and drooling and your mouth breathing,

01:27:51.900 | terrible, terrible, terrible for health reasons

01:27:53.980 | and other reasons.

01:27:54.820 | Put some medical tape over your mouth,

01:27:56.500 | learn to be a nose breather during sleep,

01:27:58.300 | your sleep will improve

01:27:59.540 | and your daytime feelings of wakefulness and focus

01:28:02.420 | will improve, your cardiovascular health will improve

01:28:05.140 | and on and on and on.

01:28:06.200 | So now we've largely covered the tools

01:28:07.900 | that one could use to get and stay asleep.

01:28:10.740 | And we talked about exercise, we talked about temperature,

01:28:12.740 | we talked about supplements,

01:28:14.580 | and we talked about, of course,

01:28:15.500 | keeping the sleeping environment both cool

01:28:17.940 | and as dark as possible.

01:28:20.820 | I do want to mention a couple of broad contour tools

01:28:24.340 | that will impact your ability to sleep really well

01:28:27.460 | on a consistent basis.

01:28:28.600 | And the one that impacts the most number of people

01:28:30.780 | is weekends.

01:28:33.020 | Turns out that most everybody feels the impulse

01:28:35.620 | to sleep in on the weekend,

01:28:36.900 | especially if they've been out late the night before.

01:28:38.980 | However, the data show

01:28:40.740 | that keeping relatively consistent sleep and wake times

01:28:44.260 | is really going to enhance the quality

01:28:46.360 | and depth of your sleep.

01:28:47.860 | So if you stay out late one night,

01:28:49.980 | sure, you might allow yourself to sleep in an extra hour

01:28:52.660 | or so, but you should really try to avoid sleeping in longer

01:28:56.800 | than an hour beyond your normal wake-up time.

01:29:00.260 | That's right.

01:29:01.100 | If you normally get eight hours of sleep

01:29:02.620 | and you wake up at 7 a.m.,

01:29:04.780 | probably okay to wake up at 8 a.m. on the weekend

01:29:08.220 | or after a night out the night before,

01:29:10.820 | but try not to sleep until 11 or noon

01:29:13.140 | thinking that you're going to catch up on your sleep

01:29:15.060 | or that's better than waking up at a consistent time.

01:29:17.420 | It would be better to wake up at a consistent time

01:29:19.460 | plus or minus an hour and get a nap in the afternoon

01:29:22.060 | provided that nap, again, isn't too long.

01:29:25.140 | And the other tool that relates to nights

01:29:27.640 | that you stayed out too late

01:29:28.860 | or that you feel like you want to sleep in a bit more

01:29:31.760 | in the morning is if you are going to wake up

01:29:35.220 | at your consistent time.

01:29:36.140 | So for example, normally you go to bed at 10

01:29:39.200 | and you wake up at six.

01:29:40.240 | Let's say that's your schedule

01:29:42.140 | and you end up staying up late one night until midnight

01:29:44.900 | or one for whatever reason.

01:29:47.220 | And the next morning you wake up at seven

01:29:49.300 | and you're still groggy.

01:29:50.640 | In that case, you absolutely want to wait

01:29:54.160 | to ingest caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after waking.

01:29:57.500 | You really do because there are good data

01:29:59.780 | to support the fact that caffeine can disrupt sleep.

01:30:02.940 | Yes, that's obvious.

01:30:05.020 | Caffeine especially disrupts sleep

01:30:06.980 | if you take it too late in the day.

01:30:08.920 | That's very obvious as to why that would be the case.

01:30:11.500 | But caffeine especially disrupts

01:30:14.460 | what's called compensatory sleep.

01:30:16.640 | So if you start changing your waking time

01:30:19.560 | and your to sleep time

01:30:20.600 | and you start using additional caffeine

01:30:23.180 | to offset the sleepiness that you're experiencing

01:30:25.320 | because of those late nights out,

01:30:26.840 | well, that's when you really start to disrupt

01:30:28.920 | not just your nighttime sleep

01:30:30.360 | but your daytime compensatory sleep.

01:30:31.920 | So those naps, you also are disrupting

01:30:34.220 | the total architecture of sleep in the early morning hours.

01:30:37.420 | There's a lot of great science that's been put to this

01:30:40.200 | or that's emerged from this, I should say.

01:30:42.200 | So try and keep those sleep wake times relatively constant

01:30:45.400 | plus or minus an hour.

01:30:46.460 | And try as much as you can to delay that caffeine intake

01:30:50.440 | 90 to 120 minutes after waking every day

01:30:52.980 | but especially on days where you wake up

01:30:55.260 | and you feel you haven't gotten enough sleep.

01:30:56.620 | In that case, I highly recommend you just use NSDR

01:30:59.380 | or the Reverie app or some other form of deep relaxation

01:31:03.520 | to try and compensate for the lack of sleep.

01:31:05.720 | Knowing, of course, that there's no complete compensation

01:31:10.580 | for lack of sleep.

01:31:11.420 | There are just things that we can do

01:31:12.620 | to partially offset lack of sleep.

01:31:14.820 | Now, a couple of final points and additional tools

01:31:17.280 | that I think are going to be useful to everybody.

01:31:19.780 | In particular, people who have young children

01:31:22.720 | or following a shift work schedule

01:31:25.460 | or who are experiencing jet lag.

01:31:28.580 | Keep in mind, jet lag can be due to travel, which is obvious

01:31:31.920 | but jet lag can also be due to getting woken up

01:31:34.700 | in the middle of the night, right?

01:31:35.660 | Your body doesn't know the difference

01:31:36.700 | between flying to a new time zone

01:31:38.860 | and getting woken up in the middle of the night.

01:31:41.000 | The tool that I'd like to offer you is an understanding

01:31:43.360 | of something called temperature minimum.

01:31:45.220 | And I'm going to make this as simple as possible

01:31:46.960 | and I'm confident that everyone can understand this

01:31:49.080 | even if you don't have any science background.

01:31:51.980 | Here's the question you need to ask yourself.

01:31:54.440 | What is your typical wake-up time?

01:31:57.940 | Okay, what's your typical wake-up time?

01:31:59.300 | If for you, your typical wake-up time is 7 a.m.,

01:32:01.940 | plus or minus half an hour.

01:32:03.440 | So, and that could be 7 a.m. because you set an alarm clock

01:32:06.440 | or it could be 7 a.m. because you naturally wake up

01:32:08.580 | at 7 a.m., doesn't matter.

01:32:10.040 | If your typical wake-up time most days is 7 a.m.,

01:32:13.720 | well then your temperature minimum is 5 a.m.

01:32:16.600 | That's right, your temperature minimum is not a temperature,

01:32:18.960 | it's a time within your 24-hour cycle.

01:32:21.880 | Approximately two hours before your typical wake-up time,

01:32:26.140 | your body is at its lowest temperature

01:32:28.560 | that it will ever be in the 24-hour cycle.

01:32:31.060 | That's why it's called your temperature minimum.

01:32:33.440 | Here's what you need to know about your temperature minimum.

01:32:35.660 | If you view bright light, exercise, or drink caffeine,

01:32:40.640 | or all of the above in the two to four hours

01:32:44.560 | before your temperature minimum,

01:32:47.400 | that will delay your clock.

01:32:49.540 | What that means when I say delay your clock

01:32:51.380 | is it will make you want to go to sleep later

01:32:54.120 | and wake up later the next night.

01:32:56.600 | Okay, so let's run this exercise for you,

01:32:58.780 | the person waking up at 7 a.m. on a regular basis.

01:33:02.020 | I can predict with almost certainty

01:33:04.460 | that your body is going to be

01:33:05.760 | at its lowest temperature at 5 a.m.

01:33:08.720 | So what that means is that if you get up at 3 a.m.

01:33:12.640 | or at 4 a.m. and you flip on bright lights in your house

01:33:16.640 | or in your bathroom, or you have a cup of coffee,

01:33:18.980 | or you do any kind of exercise,

01:33:20.300 | or you get up and head to the airport,

01:33:22.740 | the mechanisms in your brain and body

01:33:25.240 | that control timing of sleep and timing of waking

01:33:27.640 | will shift, they will delay.

01:33:29.360 | It's as if you put your clock on hold for a little while

01:33:32.500 | and then let it start again.

01:33:34.160 | Yeah, that's the simplest way I can describe it.

01:33:35.720 | And you will tend to want to go to sleep later

01:33:38.680 | and wake up later the following night.

01:33:41.520 | Now, the opposite is true if you view bright light,

01:33:46.040 | drink caffeine, or exercise, or socialize, I should say,

01:33:50.040 | in the hours immediately after your temperature minimum.

01:33:53.740 | So for you in this example,

01:33:55.640 | the person who's waking up at 7 a.m.,

01:33:57.440 | your temperature minimum is 5 a.m.,

01:33:59.280 | if you view bright light, exercise,

01:34:01.120 | maybe have a snack, maybe not,

01:34:02.800 | or socialize, move about at 5.30 or 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.,

01:34:07.800 | that will tend to phase advance your clock.

01:34:12.320 | It will tend to basically make you want to go to bed earlier

01:34:15.960 | and wake up earlier the following night.

01:34:18.160 | Now, I use this example of a person

01:34:19.600 | who wakes up typically at 7 a.m.,

01:34:21.400 | whose temperature minimum is 5 a.m.,

01:34:22.960 | but of course you need to adjust that for yourself

01:34:25.720 | if you're somebody who wakes up at 9 a.m.

01:34:27.160 | or at 5 a.m., et cetera.

01:34:28.720 | Why do I offer this as a tool?

01:34:30.060 | Well, this is an immensely powerful tool

01:34:32.560 | if, for instance, you're headed to a time zone

01:34:34.760 | where you need to go to bed earlier

01:34:36.040 | and wake up earlier once you arrive in that time zone.

01:34:38.720 | What it means is in the day or two before you leave,

01:34:41.520 | you can force yourself to exercise, drink caffeine,

01:34:46.520 | maybe even to eat a meal early in the morning,

01:34:49.000 | or maybe you still fast early in the morning,

01:34:50.600 | and that's really up to you,

01:34:51.760 | but you force yourself to do the activities

01:34:54.520 | that are going to phase advance your clock.

01:34:57.380 | Whereas if you're traveling to a time zone

01:34:59.280 | where you are going to need to go to sleep much later

01:35:02.040 | and you're going to need to wake up much later,

01:35:05.040 | or even a little bit later,

01:35:06.320 | you can do those things in the hours

01:35:08.440 | prior to your temperature minimum.

01:35:10.740 | Now, for those of you that work shift work,

01:35:12.520 | this can be especially useful,

01:35:14.340 | but I want to say a couple of things about shift work.

01:35:17.540 | There are a lot of details about shift work and jet lag

01:35:19.640 | in an episode that I did specifically

01:35:21.360 | about jet lag and shift work.

01:35:22.840 | So for the deep dive, go there,

01:35:24.160 | but suffice to say this for now.

01:35:26.520 | If you are going to do shift work,

01:35:29.160 | try to stay on the same shift for two weeks at a time.

01:35:32.040 | It's very detrimental to brain and body.

01:35:34.340 | It can even be horrifically challenging

01:35:37.740 | for your brain and body in a number of ways.

01:35:39.500 | If you are switching on the so-called swing shift,

01:35:42.400 | you know, you're working three days, the night shift,

01:35:43.880 | three days, the day shift,

01:35:44.720 | three days, the night shift, three days,

01:35:46.000 | try and stay on the same schedule as much as possible.

01:35:49.020 | And I should say for everybody,

01:35:50.920 | people who are jet lagged and engaged in shift work or not,

01:35:54.840 | but just for everybody,

01:35:55.880 | if you need to be awake in the middle of your sleep cycle,

01:35:59.720 | and it's not just a quick departure to the bathroom

01:36:02.380 | and back to bed, but you really need to be awake.

01:36:04.560 | You know, you're feeding a baby

01:36:05.760 | or you're taking care of a loved one,

01:36:08.160 | or you need to do something that's critical,

01:36:09.580 | or you need to work, if possible, use red light.

01:36:12.800 | Okay, now for shift workers who really are trying

01:36:15.400 | to stay awake all night and sleep all day,

01:36:17.480 | this is not going to be ideal.

01:36:18.840 | But for people that, for instance,

01:36:20.560 | need to stay up really late one night

01:36:22.020 | or wake up especially early,

01:36:23.320 | like 3 a.m. to prepare for an exam

01:36:25.080 | that you're just not ready for,

01:36:26.520 | or to head to the airport, et cetera,

01:36:29.360 | using red light has been shown to allow people

01:36:32.080 | to be awake enough and obviously see what they need to see

01:36:34.760 | in order to perform their activity safely.

01:36:37.080 | But it does not seem to disrupt the cortisol rhythm

01:36:40.680 | that is the healthy, normal cortisol rhythm.

01:36:43.320 | I realize this is kind of an advanced tool

01:36:45.360 | and many people won't have access to this.

01:36:46.920 | There are a number of different sources for red lights now.

01:36:50.040 | Companies like Juve or Cozy Light,

01:36:53.020 | these are different brands.

01:36:54.100 | I don't have any affiliation to any of these brands,

01:36:55.920 | I should say.

01:36:56.760 | There are a number of different red light bulb sources

01:37:00.100 | out there and commercial sources

01:37:01.240 | that you can explore if you want.

01:37:02.700 | But understanding this temperature minimum

01:37:04.720 | is really powerful because it allows you

01:37:07.020 | to adjust your schedule depending on travel,

01:37:08.800 | depending on changing work schedules or school schedules.

01:37:11.540 | And if you're not a morning person,

01:37:12.860 | you can use the tools related to temperature minimum

01:37:15.620 | to really become a morning person over time.

01:37:18.580 | And it actually is pretty easy.

01:37:20.100 | And I talked about this in a previous episode,

01:37:22.360 | I'll just mention that there have been shown

01:37:24.300 | to be important positive effects on cognition,

01:37:27.220 | on even grip strength and physical performance

01:37:29.680 | for people that are early morning risers.

01:37:32.900 | And that's especially true for night owls

01:37:35.440 | that deliberately shift themselves to become early risers.

01:37:38.680 | Okay, so that's a lot of information and a lot of tools.

01:37:41.140 | And I suppose the one set of tools

01:37:42.620 | that I really didn't drill into too deeply,

01:37:45.260 | the ones related to jet lag and shift work.

01:37:47.080 | And again, please check out the episode

01:37:49.220 | on jet lag and shift work if that's relevant to you.

01:37:52.160 | But I think for most people who are going to sleep at night

01:37:55.940 | and are trying their best to sleep well at night

01:37:58.500 | and are trying their best to wake up in the morning

01:38:00.660 | at whatever hour and stay alert and focused

01:38:02.780 | throughout the day, maybe with a brief nap.

01:38:04.840 | The tools that I talked about today related

01:38:06.500 | to light temperature, food, exercise, caffeine, supplements,

01:38:10.420 | and digital tools, I'm hoping will prove

01:38:13.380 | to be very useful for you.

01:38:15.420 | They certainly are all supported

01:38:17.220 | by excellent peer-reviewed research.

01:38:19.500 | And I should just emphasize again

01:38:21.060 | that most of the tools we talked about

01:38:22.580 | are completely zero cost.

01:38:24.520 | So while the supplements and some of the digital tools

01:38:26.940 | do carry some cost to them,

01:38:29.060 | I really want to encourage everybody

01:38:30.400 | to get your behaviors right.

01:38:32.240 | Get all of the things related to your timing of exercise

01:38:35.280 | and type of exercise in the best possible order

01:38:39.320 | and time of day.

01:38:40.160 | We talked about this critical period early in the day

01:38:42.440 | and then another critical period in the middle of the day

01:38:44.460 | and the late afternoon.

01:38:45.380 | And then this third critical period

01:38:46.620 | in the middle of the night.

01:38:47.540 | Different tools for the different three critical periods.

01:38:50.680 | I promise that if you start to implement some

01:38:53.220 | or ideally all of these tools,

01:38:55.460 | the quality of your sleep will increase tremendously.

01:38:58.380 | And of course, in doing so,

01:39:00.400 | the quality of your daytime alertness

01:39:02.140 | and your ability to focus will improve tremendously.

01:39:04.580 | Again, sleep is the absolute foundation

01:39:08.460 | of your mental health, your physical health,

01:39:10.340 | and your performance in all endeavors.

01:39:12.280 | So if there's one area of your life to really focus on

01:39:16.380 | and try and optimize,

01:39:17.700 | if your goal is to be happier and more productive

01:39:20.100 | and just to have a better life overall,

01:39:22.940 | I can confidently say that sleep

01:39:25.520 | is really the thing to optimize.

01:39:27.500 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

01:39:29.620 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

01:39:31.360 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

01:39:33.540 | We also now have a Clips channel, it's Huberman Lab Clips.

01:39:36.160 | Please subscribe to our Clips channel

01:39:37.620 | for short outtakes from podcast episodes.

01:39:39.840 | Please also subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple.

01:39:42.980 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

01:39:44.540 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

01:39:46.760 | If you have questions about the content of these podcasts

01:39:49.460 | or you have suggestions about topics you'd like us to cover

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01:39:54.440 | please put all that in the comments section on YouTube.

01:39:57.140 | We do read all those comments.

01:39:59.500 | In addition, please check out the sponsors mentioned

01:40:01.460 | at the beginning of today's podcast.

01:40:02.880 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

01:40:05.540 | During today's podcast and on many previous episodes

01:40:07.780 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast, we talked about supplements.

01:40:10.060 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

01:40:12.200 | many people derive tremendous benefit from them

01:40:14.120 | for things like sleep and focus

01:40:15.780 | and hormone support and so forth.

01:40:17.480 | For reasons mentioned at the beginning of the episode,

01:40:19.380 | we are now partnered with Momentous Supplements.

01:40:21.660 | If you go to livemomentous.com/huberman,

01:40:24.340 | you'll see many of the supplements described on today's

01:40:26.560 | and other episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast.

01:40:28.860 | Again, all as single ingredient formulations.

01:40:31.260 | They ship internationally.

01:40:32.800 | Their quality is exceedingly high.

01:40:34.820 | And by largely focusing on single ingredient

01:40:38.700 | and various dosages of different supplements,

01:40:41.580 | you can create the optimized supplement protocol for you.

01:40:44.680 | If you're not already following us on social media,

01:40:47.380 | we are Huberman Lab on Instagram and also Huberman Lab

01:40:50.400 | on Twitter.

01:40:51.240 | There, I cover science and science-related tools,

01:40:53.700 | some of which overlaps with the content

01:40:55.360 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast and other of which,

01:40:57.840 | I should say much of which is distinct

01:40:59.240 | from the information covered on this podcast.

01:41:01.480 | If you're interested in obtaining protocols or summaries

01:41:04.400 | from these podcasts, you can get those completely free

01:41:07.160 | of cost by going to hubermanlab.com.

01:41:09.140 | Go to the menu at hubermanlab.com.

01:41:11.260 | Go to the Neural Network Newsletter.

01:41:12.900 | You simply provide us your email

01:41:14.980 | and you'll get the Neural Network Newsletter

01:41:16.540 | for free each month.

01:41:17.860 | You can also find previous newsletters there

01:41:20.340 | at hubermanlab.com.

01:41:22.220 | For instance, toolkit for sleep or deliberate cold exposure

01:41:25.300 | and so on and so forth.

01:41:26.480 | Again, we don't share your email with anybody.

01:41:28.860 | So our privacy policy is made very clear there

01:41:31.340 | and it's completely zero cost.

01:41:32.980 | So thank you for joining me today for our discussion

01:41:35.140 | about tools for optimizing sleep and in doing so,

01:41:38.740 | tools for optimizing not just sleep,

01:41:41.380 | but your daytime feelings of alertness and focus

01:41:44.360 | and your overall health.

01:41:45.780 | And last, but certainly not least,

01:41:47.900 | thank you for your interest in science.

01:41:49.660 | [upbeat music]

01:41:52.240 | (upbeat music)

Sleep Toolkit: Tools for Optimizing Sleep & Sleep-Wake Timing | Huberman Lab Podcast #84

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