AMA #2: Improve Sleep, Reduce Sugar Cravings, Optimal Protein Intake, Stretching Frequency & More
Chapters
0:0 Introduction0:54 Are there any science-backed protocols to increase deep sleep?
28:11 Huberman Lab Premium
00:00:00.000 | [upbeat music]
00:00:00.840 | 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,
00:00:10.040 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
00:00:12.840 | at Stanford School of Medicine.
00:00:14.600 | Today is an Ask Me Anything or AMA episode,
00:00:18.200 | which is part of our premium subscriber content.
00:00:20.880 | Our premium channel was launched in order to raise support
00:00:23.360 | for the standard Huberman Lab Podcast channel,
00:00:25.640 | which still comes out once a week, every Monday,
00:00:28.200 | and of course is zero cost to consumer.
00:00:30.460 | The premium channel is also designed to support
00:00:32.960 | exciting research being done at major universities
00:00:35.200 | like Stanford and elsewhere,
00:00:36.940 | research that's done on humans that should lead to protocols
00:00:40.080 | for mental health, physical health, and performance
00:00:42.440 | in the near future.
00:00:44.000 | If you'd like to check out
00:00:45.080 | the premium channel subscription model,
00:00:46.500 | you can go to HubermanLab.com/premium,
00:00:49.160 | and there you can subscribe for $10 a month or $100 a year.
00:00:52.320 | We also have a lifetime subscriber option.
00:00:54.540 | For those of you that are already Huberman Lab Podcast
00:00:56.560 | premium subscribers, and you're watching and/or hearing this,
00:00:59.840 | please go to HubermanLab.com/premium
00:01:02.600 | and download the premium podcast feed.
00:01:05.120 | And for those of you that are not already
00:01:06.800 | Huberman Lab premium podcast subscribers,
00:01:09.140 | you will be able to hear the first 15 minutes or so
00:01:11.760 | of this episode, and hopefully that will allow you
00:01:13.500 | to discern whether or not you would like
00:01:15.040 | to become a premium subscriber.
00:01:16.780 | Without further ado, let's get to answering your questions.
00:01:19.760 | And as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible,
00:01:22.720 | as thorough as possible, and yet as concise as possible.
00:01:27.280 | The first question is about how to improve sleep,
00:01:29.840 | in particular, how to improve deep sleep
00:01:32.420 | that is sometimes called slow wave sleep.
00:01:34.620 | This was a question that was asked by Jack Pritchard,
00:01:36.680 | and they got a lot of upvotes.
00:01:39.160 | Now, we've done multiple full length episodes
00:01:41.840 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast on sleep
00:01:43.720 | and tools to improve sleep,
00:01:45.240 | including the master your sleep episode
00:01:48.120 | and perfect your sleep episode,
00:01:50.180 | as well as a toolkit that is available
00:01:52.320 | at completely zero cost at HubermanLab.com.
00:01:54.480 | It's a downloadable PDF that lists out the behavioral tools
00:01:57.680 | and other tools that you can implement
00:01:59.200 | to improve your sleep.
00:02:00.760 | Now, Jack's question is specifically
00:02:02.480 | about how to improve deep sleep.
00:02:04.720 | He asks, I have a sleep analyzer,
00:02:07.000 | and I typically observe that I get a lot of REM sleep,
00:02:09.800 | that is rapid eye movement sleep.
00:02:11.800 | For him, he says it's 30% of his total sleep
00:02:14.280 | is rapid eye movement sleep.
00:02:16.620 | But he asks, my deep sleep is often low, around 10%.
00:02:21.640 | And I would like to know if there are any science-backed
00:02:23.800 | protocols I can use to specifically increase my deep sleep.
00:02:27.620 | Okay, so for those of you that may not know,
00:02:29.240 | what is deep sleep?
00:02:30.860 | Now, deep sleep is sometimes referred to as slow wave sleep.
00:02:33.520 | That is, slow wave sleep and deep sleep
00:02:35.720 | are sometimes used interchangeably
00:02:37.800 | to describe the same thing.
00:02:39.160 | They aren't necessarily the same thing,
00:02:40.920 | but they fall under the same mechanistic umbrella.
00:02:44.420 | What is that mechanistic umbrella?
00:02:46.280 | Well, when you go to sleep at night,
00:02:48.880 | you cycle through a number of different stages of sleep.
00:02:52.520 | And in the early part of the night,
00:02:54.520 | I would say in the first half of your night or so,
00:02:57.880 | most of your sleep is going to be slow wave deep sleep.
00:03:01.720 | But then as you transition into the second half
00:03:04.080 | of your night, more of your sleep
00:03:05.540 | will be rapid eye movement sleep.
00:03:07.800 | And that's the typical pattern that is observed
00:03:10.520 | when you're not disrupting your sleep architecture
00:03:12.920 | with things like caffeine and alcohol.
00:03:14.640 | We'll talk about caffeine and alcohol in a few minutes.
00:03:17.220 | Deep sleep, AKA slow wave sleep,
00:03:19.360 | at least for sake of this conversation,
00:03:21.920 | is vitally important in particular
00:03:24.560 | for repair of bodily tissues.
00:03:26.880 | During deep sleep, you secrete growth hormone.
00:03:29.480 | And in fact, you secrete growth hormone every night
00:03:32.200 | when you go to sleep.
00:03:33.400 | But most of that growth hormone release
00:03:35.140 | is restricted to the first half of your sleep night.
00:03:39.400 | The other feature of deep sleep
00:03:40.680 | is that the dreams that occur during deep sleep
00:03:43.560 | tend to be of a less emotional nature
00:03:46.480 | than the sorts of dreams that one experiences
00:03:48.580 | in rapid eye movement sleep.
00:03:50.540 | So just to give a broad top contour
00:03:52.940 | of what deep sleep, AKA slow wave sleep, is really about,
00:03:56.460 | it tends to occur in the first half of the night.
00:03:59.720 | It also occurs in the second half of the night,
00:04:01.300 | but in the first half of the night,
00:04:02.380 | most of your sleep is going to be occupied
00:04:04.500 | by deep sleep, AKA slow wave sleep.
00:04:07.080 | It is the time when your bodily tissues are repaired
00:04:09.860 | in part by release of growth hormone,
00:04:11.760 | which is involved in metabolism,
00:04:13.020 | but also protein synthesis, muscle repair,
00:04:16.880 | repair of all cell types and tissues.
00:04:19.580 | And during deep sleep,
00:04:21.080 | your dreams tend to be somewhat mundane,
00:04:22.840 | sometimes a little bizarre,
00:04:24.840 | but typically not very emotionally loaded.
00:04:27.200 | That can change if you're dealing
00:04:28.360 | with a lot of emotionally laden circumstances
00:04:31.520 | in your waking life.
00:04:32.740 | But in general, the sleep and dreams that occur
00:04:34.900 | in the first part of the night is deep,
00:04:37.500 | and it's not terribly emotionally ridden.
00:04:40.740 | Your body also goes through specific patterns of metabolism.
00:04:44.740 | This relates to recent findings just this last year
00:04:48.040 | in which researchers monitored the output of people's breath
00:04:52.420 | and the various metabolic factors present in the breath,
00:04:55.820 | as well as through blood draws.
00:04:57.560 | So basically doing all this
00:04:58.700 | while people are asleep in a laboratory.
00:05:00.580 | And they observed that during the first half of the night,
00:05:02.640 | while people are in deep sleep,
00:05:04.540 | their body is actually metabolizing energy very differently
00:05:07.960 | than it does in the second half of the night.
00:05:10.660 | I'll come back to this in a little while,
00:05:12.540 | but this turns out to be very important
00:05:13.920 | for establishing your metabolism
00:05:16.120 | and the way you regulate insulin
00:05:17.660 | and blood glucose during the daytime.
00:05:20.060 | So all of this is to say that getting sufficient deep sleep,
00:05:23.620 | slow wave sleep, is vitally important.
00:05:26.060 | And Jack's asking how he can increase the amount
00:05:28.300 | of deep sleep that he's getting
00:05:29.420 | because by his sleep tracking method,
00:05:32.020 | he's observing far less deep sleep
00:05:34.740 | than rapid eye movement sleep.
00:05:37.300 | Now that raises the question of how much deep sleep
00:05:39.460 | one should be getting overall.
00:05:41.500 | In general, the goal should be to balance
00:05:44.180 | the total amount of slow wave sleep
00:05:45.860 | and rapid eye movement sleep across the night.
00:05:48.260 | However, I would not want people to obsess
00:05:51.100 | over getting exactly 30% rapid eye movement sleep
00:05:54.220 | and exactly 30% slow wave sleep.
00:05:56.340 | Your body is much more resilient than that.
00:05:58.140 | But the closer those two numbers are to one another,
00:06:00.820 | the better overall architecture of your sleep.
00:06:03.300 | And he doesn't list out exactly
00:06:05.060 | how he's measuring his sleep.
00:06:06.860 | So I do want to put an asterisk on both the question
00:06:10.140 | and the answer I provide by stating
00:06:12.060 | that a lot of sleep trackers,
00:06:13.440 | whether or not they are whoop trackers or auras,
00:06:15.980 | or whether or not you're using a mattress-based
00:06:18.180 | or mattress cover-based sleep tracker
00:06:19.860 | like eight sleep or other,
00:06:21.740 | is using heart rate and heart rate variability
00:06:24.460 | and body movement to estimate or to kind of predict
00:06:29.460 | whether or not you're in slow wave sleep
00:06:32.340 | or rapid eye movement sleep.
00:06:33.420 | And that's because during rapid eye movement sleep,
00:06:34.980 | you tend to be in what's called atonia.
00:06:37.160 | You tend to be paralyzed.
00:06:38.400 | You can't move.
00:06:39.780 | And during slow wave sleep, that's not the case.
00:06:42.700 | But no matter what the sleep tracking method is,
00:06:45.800 | if it's a standard commercial sleep tracking method,
00:06:49.420 | whoop, aura, eight sleep, et cetera,
00:06:51.600 | it is an estimate or a best guess
00:06:54.420 | at what stage of sleep you're in.
00:06:56.700 | Whereas when you go into a sleep laboratory
00:06:58.660 | like the sleep laboratory at Stanford,
00:07:00.180 | at University of Pennsylvania,
00:07:01.380 | or other of the great sleep laboratories that are out there,
00:07:04.540 | they're going to use other methods, including EEG and EMG.
00:07:09.180 | These are just acronyms
00:07:10.220 | that refer to ways to record brain waves.
00:07:12.440 | They actually are going to try and observe
00:07:14.460 | for rapid eye movements beneath the eyelids, et cetera.
00:07:18.080 | So sleep trackers give you a best guess
00:07:20.920 | as to what stage of sleep you're in.
00:07:22.740 | They are not perfectly accurate.
00:07:24.220 | At least none of the commercially available sleep trackers
00:07:27.820 | are perfectly accurate.
00:07:28.860 | So we do want to highlight that.
00:07:30.480 | Okay, so now let's answer Jack's question directly,
00:07:32.660 | which is how to increase the total amount of slow wave sleep.
00:07:35.780 | Well, there are a couple of ways.
00:07:37.380 | First of all, are the don'ts,
00:07:38.860 | and then we'll talk about the dos.
00:07:41.180 | Two things that you can do
00:07:42.080 | to really disrupt your slow wave sleep
00:07:44.840 | are to drink alcohol within eight hours prior to bedtime,
00:07:49.300 | or even at all.
00:07:50.240 | Some people will find that even if they have a glass of wine
00:07:52.860 | or a beer with lunch, that the amount of slow wave sleep,
00:07:55.100 | and sometimes even the rapid eye movement sleep
00:07:57.660 | that they get at night is reduced,
00:08:00.060 | and that their overall sleep architecture is disrupted.
00:08:03.260 | This has been shown again and again.
00:08:05.140 | Likewise, avoiding caffeine within eight,
00:08:08.420 | and ideally within 12 hours of bedtime would be preferable.
00:08:13.420 | And if you're not a caffeine drinker,
00:08:14.900 | obviously you don't have to worry about this at all,
00:08:16.420 | but avoiding caffeine intake within that eight
00:08:18.700 | to 12 hours of bedtime will greatly assist
00:08:21.500 | in you getting more slow wave sleep
00:08:24.180 | and higher quality rapid eye movement sleep.
00:08:26.400 | This has been shown again and again.
00:08:28.660 | And as well, avoiding cannabis use and maybe even CBD use
00:08:33.660 | within eight to 12 hours of sleep can be very beneficial
00:08:39.220 | if your goal is to improve the quality of your sleep.
00:08:41.680 | Now, I know a lot of people rely on alcohol,
00:08:44.620 | cannabis, and CBD in order to get into sleep.
00:08:48.180 | However, it's been shown many times in human studies,
00:08:51.460 | and this was discussed in the podcast episode
00:08:53.860 | that we did with the great Matt Walker,
00:08:55.640 | who's a professor of neuroscience and psychology
00:08:58.200 | at University of California, Berkeley,
00:08:59.620 | and a world expert in sleep and sleep science.
00:09:02.740 | Matt and I discussed the research showing
00:09:04.300 | that even though alcohol helps you fall asleep,
00:09:06.140 | even though cannabis can help you fall asleep,
00:09:08.300 | and even though CBD can help people fall asleep,
00:09:10.780 | that it does disrupt and in many ways
00:09:13.580 | reduce the quality of sleep that one gets.
00:09:16.420 | So that's disappointing news.
00:09:17.740 | I know for a number of the people that rely on cannabis,
00:09:19.880 | CBD, or alcohol to fall asleep,
00:09:21.620 | but I would encourage you to check out the episodes
00:09:24.100 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast that we did about alcohol
00:09:27.460 | and about cannabis,
00:09:28.760 | including some of the health benefits of cannabis
00:09:30.580 | in certain situations,
00:09:32.020 | but also some of the detrimental effects
00:09:33.880 | of both alcohol and cannabis in other situations,
00:09:36.660 | in particular for improving slow wave sleep.
00:09:38.740 | So that's actually three major don'ts.
00:09:40.960 | Avoid caffeine, alcohol, and cannabis,
00:09:44.360 | and let's put under the umbrella of cannabis,
00:09:46.880 | THC and CBD in the eight,
00:09:50.460 | and ideally within the 12 hours prior to sleep.
00:09:53.980 | If your goal is to improve the total amount
00:09:56.340 | of slow wave sleep that you're getting
00:09:58.340 | and your overall sleep architecture.
00:10:00.940 | In addition, it's well-known that avoiding food intake
00:10:05.940 | in the two hours prior to sleep
00:10:08.340 | is going to greatly assist
00:10:10.300 | in the amount of growth hormone output that you achieve
00:10:13.620 | during the early stages of the night
00:10:15.160 | and the depth and duration of slow wave sleep.
00:10:19.200 | Now, I want to place an asterisk on that statement
00:10:21.700 | by saying if you go to sleep too hungry,
00:10:24.980 | it can also disrupt your sleep.
00:10:26.620 | So you're going to have to arrange your eating schedule
00:10:28.980 | and your sleeping schedule
00:10:30.060 | such that you're not eating too close to bedtime,
00:10:32.820 | but you're also not going to bed so hungry
00:10:35.620 | that you can't fall asleep
00:10:36.800 | or that you don't get into deep sleep and stay asleep.
00:10:39.260 | I can personally attest to the fact
00:10:40.900 | that if I'm too hungry, I can't fall asleep.
00:10:43.700 | Now, for me, most nights I'm going to eat dinner
00:10:46.180 | sometime between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.,
00:10:48.580 | depending on time of year,
00:10:49.620 | schedules, what's going on, traffic, et cetera.
00:10:51.820 | And I tend to go to sleep
00:10:52.780 | somewhere between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., plus or minus an hour.
00:10:56.440 | Again, depending on time of year
00:10:58.300 | and what else is going on in life.
00:10:59.940 | So I normally have that buffer of two hours or so
00:11:02.900 | before going to sleep.
00:11:04.020 | However, there are some nights
00:11:05.260 | where even if I eat dinner around 7 p.m.,
00:11:07.380 | I'm quite hungry at 9 p.m. and I want to go to sleep.
00:11:11.580 | In that case, eating a small amount of food
00:11:13.780 | ought not to disrupt your slow wave sleep too much,
00:11:17.700 | but you do want to avoid eating large meals
00:11:19.660 | right before going to sleep unless, okay,
00:11:22.220 | unless completely fasting and not eating something
00:11:26.820 | late at night will prevent you
00:11:27.820 | from getting into any sleep at all.
00:11:29.460 | In other words, it's better to make sure
00:11:30.760 | that you're getting to sleep than it is to avoid food
00:11:34.380 | just so that you get increased growth hormone output
00:11:36.860 | and into slow wave sleep.
00:11:38.540 | I hope that's clear.
00:11:40.020 | You know, I have had times in my life
00:11:42.220 | where I'm working very, very hard
00:11:43.380 | and I miss dinner or something comes up
00:11:46.060 | and I know some people can fall asleep
00:11:48.180 | quite easily on an empty stomach.
00:11:49.980 | I've been able to do that.
00:11:50.880 | In particular, if I'm very exhausted,
00:11:52.920 | I also rely on a handful of supplements
00:11:55.140 | to fall asleep each night,
00:11:57.580 | although I'm not dependent on them.
00:11:59.440 | There've been times when I haven't been able
00:12:00.700 | to access those supplements and I can still fall asleep.
00:12:03.140 | But the point is that you don't want to be so hungry
00:12:05.000 | that you can't fall asleep.
00:12:06.820 | And yet in an ideal circumstance,
00:12:09.140 | especially if you're trying to increase
00:12:10.540 | the amount of slow wave sleep,
00:12:11.700 | you would avoid food in the two hours or so
00:12:14.700 | before going to sleep.
00:12:16.180 | If you can avoid food for the three or four hours
00:12:18.460 | prior to sleep and still fall and stay asleep easily,
00:12:21.440 | that's even better for sake of increasing
00:12:23.240 | slow wave sleep and growth hormone output.
00:12:26.080 | Now, there are some additional tools
00:12:28.160 | for improving slow wave sleep.
00:12:29.920 | In particular, the transitions between slow wave sleep
00:12:33.200 | and the other sleep stages.
00:12:34.680 | Because even though, as I mentioned earlier,
00:12:36.800 | the early part of your night is occupied primarily
00:12:39.200 | by slow wave sleep, all night long,
00:12:40.920 | you're transitioning from slow wave sleep
00:12:43.300 | into an intermediate stage of sleep
00:12:44.960 | and then into rapid eye movement sleep and then back again.
00:12:47.140 | It's just that in the early part of the night,
00:12:49.220 | more of that time is going to be occupied
00:12:51.060 | by slow wave sleep.
00:12:52.120 | The two ways to improve slow wave sleep
00:12:54.980 | that are well-documented in the literature,
00:12:56.820 | and here we can point to some really nice papers
00:12:58.680 | that I'll reference in case you want to read further,
00:13:01.460 | is the first one is entitled,
00:13:03.400 | "Exercise improves the quality of slow wave sleep
00:13:05.780 | by increasing slow wave stability."
00:13:08.600 | Slow wave stability has to do with,
00:13:10.760 | as researchers call it, the amount of power present
00:13:13.480 | in the different aspects of slow wave sleep.
00:13:15.400 | So this gets a little bit technical,
00:13:17.040 | but this is an instance in which they brought subjects
00:13:19.640 | into the laboratory, they measured brainwaves by EEG,
00:13:23.680 | they had some other measurements as well,
00:13:25.000 | including subjective measures of sleep,
00:13:27.040 | and they looked at whether or not people
00:13:28.780 | were doing exercise or not prior to sleep.
00:13:32.480 | Now, when I say prior to sleep,
00:13:33.960 | I mean not within six hours prior to bedtime.
00:13:36.760 | In fact, exercising intensely
00:13:40.300 | in the six hours prior to bedtime for many people,
00:13:42.640 | not all, but for many people,
00:13:43.780 | can disrupt the total amount of slow wave sleep
00:13:46.400 | that they get and can also disrupt rapid eye movement sleep.
00:13:49.240 | So the conditions of the study were pretty straightforward.
00:13:52.140 | It was a randomized crossover trial.
00:13:55.400 | Basically, they had people either sleeping
00:13:57.640 | and monitoring their sleep,
00:13:58.680 | or they had people doing an hour of exercise
00:14:01.660 | at 60% of their so-called VO2 max,
00:14:04.880 | you can look this up, for 60 minutes, okay?
00:14:07.920 | 60% of their VO2 max, that was the intensity.
00:14:11.080 | It's breathing pretty hard, but not extremely hard.
00:14:13.560 | If we were going to map that to the so-called zone,
00:14:15.880 | zone two cardio being the kind of cardio
00:14:17.640 | you can do steady state while holding a conversation,
00:14:20.360 | this would be somewhere in the probably zone three
00:14:22.540 | or zone four, although that's not exactly
00:14:26.500 | what 60% of VO2 max is going to map to every time.
00:14:30.320 | Think about relatively challenging cardiovascular output
00:14:35.240 | for 60 minutes, and they had them do that
00:14:38.300 | at least six hours prior to bedtime.
00:14:40.820 | And this is an important end,
00:14:42.640 | they did have the subjects in this study
00:14:45.000 | in all conditions abstain from caffeine and alcohol.
00:14:48.480 | So that's very important.
00:14:49.640 | And what they observed was an enhancement
00:14:52.060 | of slow wave sleep.
00:14:53.500 | So exercise of this sort turns out to be a very potent form
00:14:57.360 | of improving slow wave sleep.
00:14:58.860 | Now, I do not know because the study,
00:15:00.840 | as far as I know, has not been done,
00:15:02.600 | whether or not doing resistance training
00:15:05.060 | or some other type of exercise
00:15:06.960 | would have led to the same effect.
00:15:08.700 | Although I have to imagine that if it's moderately intense
00:15:11.520 | to intense resistance training,
00:15:13.540 | provided it's done far enough away from going to sleep,
00:15:17.240 | prior to six hours before sleep,
00:15:19.680 | that one ought to see the same effects,
00:15:22.200 | although that was not a condition in this study.
00:15:24.360 | But it's a very nice study.
00:15:25.840 | They looked at everything from changes
00:15:27.560 | in core body temperature to caloric expenditure.
00:15:30.600 | They didn't see huge changes
00:15:31.900 | in core body temperature changes,
00:15:34.400 | so that couldn't explain the effect.
00:15:36.280 | It really appears that the major effect
00:15:38.940 | of improving slow wave sleep was due to something
00:15:42.740 | in changing the fine structure of the brain waves
00:15:45.880 | that occur during slow wave sleep.
00:15:47.760 | In fact, and this is an important point,
00:15:50.400 | the subjects in this study did not report subjectively
00:15:54.120 | feeling that much better from their sleep.
00:15:56.680 | So you might say,
00:15:57.520 | "Well, then why would I even want to bother?"
00:15:59.120 | However, it's well known
00:16:01.320 | that getting sufficient slow wave sleep is important,
00:16:03.700 | not just for repair, excuse me,
00:16:05.600 | for repair of bodily tissues,
00:16:07.800 | but also for repair of brain tissues
00:16:10.160 | and repair and wash out of debris in the brain.
00:16:13.880 | And that debris is known to lead to things like dementia.
00:16:18.100 | So getting the best quality slow wave sleep
00:16:20.960 | is extremely important for body and for brain,
00:16:24.240 | and getting an hour of exercise that's moderately intense,
00:16:27.300 | and making sure that you're not doing that exercise
00:16:29.640 | within the six hours prior to bedtime,
00:16:31.960 | and avoiding caffeine and alcohol,
00:16:35.040 | certainly within the six hours prior to bedtime,
00:16:36.980 | but I would say in the eight to 12 hours prior to bedtime
00:16:40.540 | would be even better.
00:16:41.540 | We're not drinking alcohol at all,
00:16:43.860 | or I know there are people out there
00:16:45.320 | that don't drink caffeine at all.
00:16:46.500 | I'm not one of those people,
00:16:47.680 | but restricting that caffeine intake
00:16:49.000 | to the very early part of the day,
00:16:50.980 | that has been shown to improve the quality
00:16:54.860 | and the overall architecture of sleep
00:16:56.600 | and slow wave sleep in particular.
00:16:58.220 | That's really what this study points to.
00:16:59.820 | There's another tool that can improve the amount
00:17:02.320 | and quality of slow wave sleep that you achieve at night.
00:17:05.060 | This is actually a tool that I've started using
00:17:07.480 | over the last six to eight months or so.
00:17:10.320 | As many of you know,
00:17:11.400 | I believe in getting behaviors right
00:17:14.360 | before embracing changes in supplementation
00:17:17.480 | or prescription drugs.
00:17:19.120 | Behavioral tools consist of do's and don'ts,
00:17:21.680 | and the do's and don'ts for sleep are well-documented
00:17:25.440 | in the master sleep episode
00:17:27.280 | and the perfect your sleep episode
00:17:28.520 | and the toolkit for sleep.
00:17:29.480 | They include getting morning sunlight in your eyes
00:17:31.200 | or bright light of other kinds,
00:17:32.240 | avoiding bright light from 10 PM to 4 AM, et cetera, et cetera.
00:17:36.020 | All that information is in the toolkit for sleep
00:17:38.180 | and those other full length episodes
00:17:40.000 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast.
00:17:41.820 | Now, there are supplements that can greatly improve
00:17:45.720 | the depth of your sleep
00:17:48.660 | and that can shorten the latency to fall asleep.
00:17:52.000 | And here, I'm not referring to melatonin.
00:17:53.660 | As many of you perhaps already know,
00:17:55.280 | I'm not a fan of melatonin for a variety of reasons,
00:17:57.940 | mainly the fact that most melatonin supplements out there
00:18:01.320 | don't actually contain the exact amount of melatonin
00:18:03.980 | that's listed on the bottle.
00:18:04.940 | They contain either much, much more or much, much less.
00:18:08.120 | And that melatonin is a potent hormone
00:18:10.620 | that has impacts on not just sleep,
00:18:13.240 | but on other hormone systems as well.
00:18:15.380 | The supplements that I've suggested
00:18:18.560 | and that I personally take in order to improve my sleep
00:18:21.960 | are magnesium threonate, spelled T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E.
00:18:26.960 | And interchangeably with that,
00:18:29.900 | one could use magnesium bisglycinate.
00:18:32.900 | I do consider those interchangeable
00:18:34.260 | because both cross into cells
00:18:36.340 | and across the blood brain barrier in much the same way
00:18:39.020 | that makes them better candidates for improving sleep
00:18:41.780 | than some of the other forms of magnesium.
00:18:43.860 | So magnesium threonate, theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E,
00:18:48.860 | theanine, and something called apigenin,
00:18:51.660 | which is essentially what you find in chamomile
00:18:54.940 | that is the reason why chamomile can make you sleepy.
00:18:58.940 | A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N, apigenin.
00:19:01.900 | The dosages for those, et cetera,
00:19:04.020 | are described in the toolkit for sleep
00:19:06.260 | and why some people might want to avoid theanine.
00:19:09.300 | I'll just tell you,
00:19:10.140 | for those of you that have very intense dreams
00:19:12.060 | or that might sleepwalk or have night terrors,
00:19:14.540 | you might want to avoid theanine
00:19:15.780 | because it can enhance the kind of emotional
00:19:19.820 | and elaborate nature of dreams.
00:19:22.060 | Other people like that.
00:19:23.060 | So I'll take magnesium threonate, theanine, and apigenin
00:19:26.060 | as a so-called sleep stack about 30 or 60 minutes
00:19:28.800 | prior to sleep.
00:19:30.400 | I do not take them during the day.
00:19:32.360 | There is, however, another supplement
00:19:35.260 | that used in combination with the sleep stack
00:19:37.800 | that I just described or alone
00:19:41.020 | can greatly enhance the quality of your sleep.
00:19:44.820 | And in particular,
00:19:46.420 | people who are following a low carbohydrate diet
00:19:48.860 | who have trouble falling and staying asleep
00:19:50.980 | seem to benefit from it.
00:19:52.220 | And that is so-called inositol.
00:19:54.580 | Now inositol comes in different forms,
00:19:56.340 | but the form that I'm referring to here
00:19:58.540 | in terms of enhancing slow wave sleep is myoinositol.
00:20:02.180 | There are an enormous number of studies on inositol
00:20:05.260 | for sake of mental health
00:20:07.500 | and for sake of enhancing various aspects
00:20:10.140 | of cellular function and for sake of improving sleep.
00:20:15.060 | I'd like to just highlight one paper.
00:20:17.300 | The title of this paper will make it clear what it's about.
00:20:19.460 | The title of the paper is
00:20:20.840 | The Impact of Myoinositol Supplementation
00:20:23.100 | on Sleep Quality in Pregnant Women,
00:20:24.740 | a Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study.
00:20:27.900 | Now, as I just told you,
00:20:29.980 | the study was carried out on pregnant women,
00:20:32.180 | but there have been other studies of inositol
00:20:34.680 | on other populations.
00:20:36.380 | And the major takeaway from these studies
00:20:38.940 | is that inositol can improve the quality of sleep
00:20:43.580 | and can adjust the architecture of sleep
00:20:46.380 | in ways that make it a great candidate
00:20:49.280 | for improving the structure
00:20:52.000 | and maybe also the duration of slow wave sleep in particular.
00:20:56.200 | I find that if I'm following a lower carbohydrate diet,
00:21:00.000 | which I do from time to time,
00:21:01.900 | I sometimes have trouble falling asleep,
00:21:03.840 | or if I eat four to six hours prior to bedtime,
00:21:07.320 | then I tend to be pretty hungry around bedtime.
00:21:09.280 | And sometimes if I'm exercising very hard
00:21:11.740 | or if I'm working a lot,
00:21:12.640 | even if I eat dinner around seven
00:21:14.380 | and I go to sleep around 10 p.m.,
00:21:16.460 | I might be a little bit hungry still at 10 p.m.
00:21:19.800 | In that case, I find that taking 900 milligrams
00:21:22.420 | of myo-inositol in addition to the other sleep stack
00:21:25.980 | that I just described greatly enhances my ability
00:21:28.980 | to fall asleep and to get terrific quality sleep.
00:21:32.020 | I do monitor my sleep.
00:21:34.140 | I do that two ways.
00:21:35.200 | I do that these days with my eight sleep sleep tracker,
00:21:39.640 | and I use a whoop sleep tracker when I sleep.
00:21:42.380 | The combination of those two
00:21:44.100 | taps into different aspects of sleep tracking,
00:21:46.820 | heart rate variability, movement, et cetera.
00:21:48.900 | In a future episode, we'll talk about
00:21:50.420 | what are the best devices for monitoring sleep,
00:21:52.420 | which have certain advantages and others have disadvantages.
00:21:55.860 | But I certainly see it in the objective data,
00:21:58.420 | that is from the sleep tracking data.
00:22:00.500 | And I also observed subjectively
00:22:02.700 | that taking 900 milligrams of inositol prior to sleep,
00:22:05.420 | again, 30 to 60 minutes prior to sleep,
00:22:07.520 | can greatly enhance the ability to fall asleep
00:22:10.880 | and for me to stay asleep throughout the night.
00:22:12.560 | I also noticed another effect,
00:22:13.840 | which is that if I wake up in the middle of the night
00:22:15.500 | to use the restroom, which I often do,
00:22:17.360 | I find it much easier to fall back asleep.
00:22:20.000 | I don't tend to get into kind of looping thought
00:22:22.100 | and things of that sort in the middle of the night.
00:22:23.900 | And that may relate to the fact that
00:22:25.860 | my inositol has been studied in many cases
00:22:29.340 | for its role in controlling anxiety,
00:22:32.160 | that is for reducing anxiety.
00:22:33.660 | And that's one of the reasons,
00:22:35.540 | in fact, one of many reasons
00:22:36.780 | why people take my inositol during the daytime.
00:22:39.480 | There's studies of my inositol for dealing with anxiety,
00:22:42.580 | for sleep as we're discussing now,
00:22:44.700 | and even for improving fertility
00:22:46.420 | and things of that sort, in particular in women.
00:22:48.980 | So again, 900 milligrams of inositol can be a useful tool.
00:22:52.260 | 60 minutes of exercise as described previously
00:22:55.100 | can be a tool.
00:22:56.080 | And certainly avoiding caffeine and alcohol
00:22:59.900 | is an excellent tool for enhancing
00:23:02.280 | the total amount of slow wave sleep.
00:23:04.460 | Jack had a second part to his question.
00:23:06.780 | He asked, is having a high level of rapid eye movement sleep
00:23:10.000 | and a lower level of deep sleep
00:23:11.560 | likely to cause any health issues?
00:23:13.660 | And to be honest, it's not really clear
00:23:16.860 | that it would cause any specific health issues.
00:23:19.320 | Although if we think about what the specific roles
00:23:21.440 | of slow wave sleep versus rapid eye movement sleep are,
00:23:24.860 | again, rapid eye movement sleep
00:23:26.700 | being laden with highly emotional dreams,
00:23:29.620 | it's thought to act as a sort of a trauma release
00:23:32.260 | where people are paralyzed in body,
00:23:34.440 | and that's a healthy paralysis,
00:23:35.900 | this so-called sleep atonia,
00:23:37.740 | but undergoing some pretty emotional stuff
00:23:40.500 | within their dreams.
00:23:42.020 | And there is a lack of ability for the body
00:23:44.420 | to secrete adrenaline during rapid eye movement sleep.
00:23:46.740 | That's thought to be important for emotional repair,
00:23:49.620 | if you will, during the night.
00:23:52.420 | Certainly studies where people have been deprived
00:23:54.520 | of rapid eye movement sleep have shown
00:23:56.600 | that their ability to manage emotionally
00:23:58.820 | during the daytime is reduced.
00:24:00.060 | So certainly if you have reduced rapid eye movement sleep
00:24:02.700 | for multiple nights, that's going to be the case.
00:24:05.700 | The only caveat to that is that there are certain forms
00:24:07.740 | of treating depression that involve specifically depriving
00:24:10.860 | people of rapid eye movement sleep.
00:24:12.540 | That's a whole other story that was covered
00:24:15.340 | in the podcast episode with Dr. Nolan Williams.
00:24:17.860 | So if you want to learn more as to why that's the case,
00:24:20.060 | check out that episode.
00:24:21.580 | But because slow wave sleep,
00:24:23.860 | which occurs again during the early part of the night,
00:24:25.840 | is when growth hormone is released,
00:24:28.060 | and when there's this periodic washout of debris
00:24:32.440 | within the brain, and to some extent,
00:24:34.680 | within certain tissues of the body,
00:24:36.460 | you could imagine that reduced slow wave sleep
00:24:38.580 | would lead to reduced ability to recover from exercise,
00:24:42.160 | from injury, maybe even relate to the immune system.
00:24:45.420 | However, I am personally not aware of any studies
00:24:48.860 | that specifically looked at the ratio of slow wave sleep
00:24:51.700 | to rapid eye movement sleep,
00:24:53.420 | and that focused in particular on reduced slow wave sleep
00:24:57.300 | for bodily repair.
00:24:58.200 | Those studies might be out there.
00:24:59.280 | I was not able to find them.
00:25:00.380 | If you are able to find them,
00:25:01.260 | please put them in the comment section,
00:25:04.440 | and I would love to check out those studies.
00:25:06.560 | So I don't think that one needs to be overly concerned
00:25:09.800 | if you're not getting a balance of slow wave sleep
00:25:13.560 | to rapid eye movement sleep, that's perfect.
00:25:15.800 | However, and as I mentioned earlier,
00:25:18.940 | it would be good to strive to try and balance
00:25:21.760 | the amount of slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep
00:25:25.160 | across the entire night.
00:25:26.720 | If you think about it, that will also tell you
00:25:28.320 | whether or not you're getting sufficient total sleep.
00:25:31.000 | And I don't want to open up another set of questions here
00:25:33.600 | as I'm about to close out an answer to this question,
00:25:36.280 | but I do often get asked the question
00:25:37.960 | whether or not four hours is enough,
00:25:39.820 | or six hours is enough, or eight hours is enough.
00:25:42.720 | Well, it's impossible to know exactly
00:25:44.640 | how much sleep each individual person needs.
00:25:47.100 | And of course, each individual person
00:25:49.200 | will need a different amount of total sleep
00:25:50.640 | depending on the amount of stress and physical strain
00:25:53.680 | and various other things they're dealing with
00:25:55.580 | in their daily waking life.
00:25:58.280 | However, it's generally the case that kids and people
00:26:02.100 | that are undergoing puberty and certainly in early infancy
00:26:04.560 | need more sleep than adults do.
00:26:06.160 | So as you age, you do in fact need less sleep.
00:26:09.160 | One good metric of whether or not
00:26:10.940 | you are getting enough sleep is whether or not
00:26:12.480 | you're sleepy during the daytime or not.
00:26:14.200 | If you're falling asleep a lot during the daytime,
00:26:15.960 | you're probably not getting enough sleep at night.
00:26:17.600 | That's sort of a duh, but it's an important duh
00:26:20.600 | to pay attention to.
00:26:21.840 | And for those of us like myself
00:26:23.520 | that need a 20 or 30 minute nap in the afternoon, great.
00:26:27.200 | That doesn't necessarily mean
00:26:28.060 | you're not getting enough sleep at night, okay?
00:26:29.780 | So if you get sleepy enough
00:26:30.920 | to want to nap in the afternoon,
00:26:33.160 | that's not an indication necessarily
00:26:35.180 | that you are not getting enough sleep at night.
00:26:37.680 | However, if you're only sleeping
00:26:39.860 | four or five hours per night,
00:26:41.900 | it's very hard to imagine that you're getting a balance
00:26:44.760 | of slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.
00:26:47.500 | Once you get into the range of sleeping six to eight hours
00:26:50.780 | and certainly eight to 10 hours per night,
00:26:53.700 | the probability that you're getting a balance
00:26:55.840 | of slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep
00:26:57.780 | greatly increases.
00:26:59.500 | So if I were to throw out a number,
00:27:02.020 | I would say for most people, that is for 95% of people
00:27:05.400 | out there getting at least six hours of sleep per night
00:27:09.160 | at least and ideally more like seven or eight
00:27:12.020 | is going to be the goal.
00:27:13.040 | However, I've noticed for instance for myself,
00:27:15.360 | unless I'm exercising extremely intensely
00:27:18.340 | or I'm going through a lot of emotional
00:27:20.360 | or physical stress in my daily life,
00:27:22.140 | getting six and a half to seven hours of sleep per night
00:27:24.400 | allows me to feel really good and refreshed
00:27:26.620 | throughout the day.
00:27:27.780 | And that's especially the case
00:27:29.440 | if I get that 20 or 30 minute nap in the afternoon
00:27:32.600 | or use an SDR, non-sleep deep rest.
00:27:35.360 | So I hope that answers your question, Jack.
00:27:37.240 | And there, of course, I'm extending the answer
00:27:39.860 | to all others who upvoted that question
00:27:43.240 | or who might be interested in improving
00:27:45.000 | their slow wave sleep.
00:27:46.400 | There are some dos, there are some don'ts
00:27:47.720 | that I just described.
00:27:48.900 | I suggest trying various things one by one
00:27:53.320 | to see what works best for you.
00:27:55.000 | So you don't necessarily need to leap
00:27:56.460 | to doing the 60 minutes of exercise
00:27:58.920 | plus the inositol, et cetera.
00:28:00.360 | However, I do encourage everyone to avoid alcohol
00:28:03.720 | and caffeine within the eight to 12 hours prior to sleep.
00:28:06.260 | And again, if you're not using either of those,
00:28:08.440 | that would be even better
00:28:09.400 | at least in terms of sleep architecture.
00:28:11.720 | Thank you for joining
00:28:12.560 | for the beginning of this Ask Me Anything episode
00:28:15.240 | to hear the full episode and to hear future episodes
00:28:18.600 | of these Ask Me Anything sessions,
00:28:20.240 | plus to receive transcripts of them
00:28:22.480 | and transcripts of the Huberman Lab Podcast
00:28:24.720 | standard channel and premium tools
00:28:27.320 | not released anywhere else,
00:28:28.720 | please go to Hubermanlab.com/premium.
00:28:31.840 | Just to remind you why we launched
00:28:33.060 | the Huberman Lab Podcast premium channel,
00:28:35.280 | it's really twofold.
00:28:36.140 | First of all, it's to raise support
00:28:38.040 | for the standard Huberman Lab Podcast channel,
00:28:40.540 | which of course will still be continued
00:28:42.800 | to be released every Monday in full length.
00:28:45.260 | We are not going to change the format
00:28:46.660 | or anything about the standard Huberman Lab Podcast
00:28:50.240 | and to fund research,
00:28:51.680 | in particular research done on human beings.
00:28:53.720 | So not animal models, but on human beings,
00:28:55.800 | which I think we all agree is a species
00:28:57.600 | that we are most interested in.
00:28:59.800 | And we are going to specifically fund research
00:29:02.800 | that is aimed toward developing further protocols
00:29:05.420 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.
00:29:07.460 | And those protocols will be distributed
00:29:09.360 | through all channels, not just the premium channel,
00:29:11.760 | but through all channels, Huberman Lab Podcast
00:29:13.480 | and other media channels.
00:29:14.760 | So the idea here is to give you information
00:29:17.360 | to your burning questions in depth
00:29:19.560 | and allow you the opportunity to support
00:29:21.720 | the kind of research that provides those kinds of answers
00:29:24.480 | in the first place.
00:29:25.480 | Now, an especially exciting feature of the premium channel
00:29:27.820 | is that the tiny foundation has generously offered
00:29:30.760 | to do a dollar for dollar match
00:29:32.400 | on all funds raised for research
00:29:34.320 | through the premium channel.
00:29:36.040 | So this is a terrific way that they're going to amplify
00:29:38.660 | whatever funds come in through the premium channel
00:29:40.620 | to further support research
00:29:42.120 | for science and science related tools
00:29:43.720 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.
00:29:45.980 | If you'd like to sign up
00:29:46.820 | for the Huberman Lab premium channel,
00:29:48.600 | again, there's a cost of $10 per month,
00:29:50.660 | or you can pay $100 upfront for the entire year.
00:29:53.420 | That will give you access to all the AMAs.
00:29:55.760 | You can ask questions and get answers to your questions,
00:29:58.660 | and you'll, of course, get answers to all the questions
00:30:01.220 | that other people ask as well.
00:30:02.620 | There will also be some premium content,
00:30:04.560 | such as transcripts of the AMAs
00:30:06.360 | and various transcripts and protocols
00:30:08.280 | of Huberman Lab Podcast episodes not found elsewhere.
00:30:11.500 | And again, you'll be supporting research
00:30:13.820 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.
00:30:16.180 | You can sign up for the premium channel
00:30:17.580 | by going to HubermanLab.com/premium.
00:30:20.260 | Again, that's HubermanLab.com/premium.
00:30:23.140 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
00:30:26.020 | (upbeat music)
00:30:28.600 | (upbeat music)