back to indexOptimize Your Learning & Creativity with Science-based Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #8
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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My name is Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
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at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring you zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.
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InsideTracker analyzes data from your blood and DNA
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to help you better understand your body
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and health and health needs.
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I've been getting my blood tested for many years now
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because it just turns out that many of the things
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that are important to our health and wellbeing
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can only be detected in a blood test or a DNA test.
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InsideTracker makes that really easy.
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They can come to your house to take those samples
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if you like, or you can go to a nearby clinic as well.
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The major problem with most blood tests and DNA tests
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is that it's very hard to make sense
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of the information you get.
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You get a lot of numbers related to metabolic factors,
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endocrine factors, et cetera.
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InsideTracker makes it very easy to decipher
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what those levels in your blood and DNA mean
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and what to do about them.
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They have a very easy to use dashboard
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that if you go to it, it can inform about lifestyle choices
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such as adding or subtracting certain forms of exercise
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or nutrition, other things related to supplementation.
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It's a really powerful and easy to use program.
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If you wanna try InsideTracker,
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you can go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman
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and put Huberman at checkout to get 25% off
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any of their programs.
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That's insidetracker.com slash Huberman
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and put Huberman at checkout.
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The second sponsor of today's podcast is Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral
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I've been using Athletic Greens since 2012
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and so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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I started using Athletic Greens
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and I still use Athletic Greens
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because I find it very complicated and almost dizzying
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to figure out which vitamins and minerals I need to take
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in order to just cover my nutritional basis.
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Taking Athletic Greens makes that very easy.
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It also tastes very good.
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I mix mine with water, a little bit of lemon juice
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and I really like it so I drink it once or twice a day.
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The probiotics that are in Athletic Greens
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are also important to me
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because there are a lot of data now showing
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that the gut microbiome, which is supported by probiotics,
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is important for things like the gut brain access,
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mood, endocrine factors, metabolism,
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many, many biological functions.
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And so by taking Athletic Greens,
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I get the vitamins, the minerals and the probiotics
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all in one easy to consume, great tasting drink.
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If you wanna try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, you'll also get a one-year supply
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of liquid vitamin D3K2.
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There are a lot of data now as well showing
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that vitamin D3 is important for immune function,
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for mood, endocrine factors,
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as well as other systems in the brain and body.
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That's athleticgreens.com slash Huberman.
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And I should also mention, if you do that,
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you won't just get the vitamin D3K2, your supply,
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you'll also get five free travel packs of Athletic Greens.
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Mixing up powders when one is on the road,
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either in the car or in a hotel or on the plane, et cetera,
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can be kind of messy.
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These little travel packs make it really clean and easy.
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So once again, if you go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman
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you'll get a special offer of your Athletic Greens,
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but you'll also get the year supply of vitamin D3K2
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and the five free travel packs.
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The third sponsor of today's podcast is Made For.
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Made For is a behavioral science company
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that makes attaining positive changes
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and growth mindset easy through a simple set of steps
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and a monthly program.
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The company was founded by former Navy Seal,
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Patrick Dossett and Tom's founder, Blake Mycoskie.
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I'm the head of their scientific advisory board.
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And the other members of the advisory board
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include people like the director of the Chronobiology Unit
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at the National Institutes of Mental Health,
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members of Harvard Medical School,
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and many other people who are serious about taking science
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and developing protocols that can be applied
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towards positive habits and growth mindset.
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If you want to check out Made For,
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you can go to getmadefor.com
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and if you purchase any of their products
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and put Huberman at checkout,
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you'll get 20% off their program.
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In addition to that, we do a monthly Zoom call
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where the members of Made For get on
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and Patrick and myself, sometimes Blake as well,
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discuss the Made For program and the personal goals
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and things that people are trying to achieve
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So it's a dialogue back and forth on Zoom call once a month.
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Once again, that's getmadefor.com,
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put in Huberman at checkout,
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and you'll be able to get the 20% off
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as well as access the monthly Zoom calls with us.
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Let's talk about neuroplasticity.
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More specifically, let's talk about
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how we can optimize our brains.
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Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature
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of our nervous system that allows it to change itself
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even in ways that we consciously decide.
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Now that's an incredible property.
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Our liver can't decide to just change itself.
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Our spleen can't decide to just change itself
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through conscious thought
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or through feedback from another person.
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The cells in those tissues can make changes, sure,
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but it's our nervous system
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that harbors this incredible ability
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to direct its own changes in ways that we believe
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or we're told will serve us better.
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Now, today's a really special episode
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because while we are going to talk about science,
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and as always, we will delve into mechanism,
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today's episode is really geared toward answering
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your most common questions
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about how to leverage neuroplasticity.
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The previous episodes were about focus
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and how to achieve focus for sake of plasticity
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as well as the last episode,
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which is what are some of the portals into plasticity
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that relate to movement,
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how behavior can activate plasticity
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as well as how to activate plasticity for behavior itself,
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how to get better at learning certain movements.
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Today's podcast is really directed
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toward answering your most common questions
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and the bigger theme of how does one go about
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optimizing their brain
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or even think about optimizing the brain?
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What is this thing that we're calling optimizing the brain?
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In doing so, I'm also going to share
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some of my typical routines and tools.
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I don't share these because I think that they are
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the only ones that are available out there.
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Certainly they're not,
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nor do I share them because I think that everyone
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should do them just because I do them, certainly not.
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I share them because many of you
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have asked for very concrete examples of what I do and when
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and so I'll share those with you
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and you can decide whether or not those protocols
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are for you or not.
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Everybody's different, but there are some common features
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of how we are all put together
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at the level of the nervous system and body
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that direct us toward particular practices,
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particular routines that can be especially powerful
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for neuroplasticity.
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So I want to open up the discussion today
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by emphasizing something that's fundamentally important,
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which is that plasticity is not the goal.
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Plasticity is never the goal.
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Plasticity is simply a state or a capacity
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for our nervous system to change.
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And so nothing makes me more frustrated perhaps
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than when I hear, oh, you know, this pill, this potion,
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this practice, it gives you plasticity.
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Plasticity is just change.
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The real question is, what are you trying to change?
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And specifically, what end goal are you trying to achieve?
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Specific end goals might be extremely specific,
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like you want to learn how to speak a particular language
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or you want to learn a new motor skill
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or you want to get very good at calculus
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or you'd like to forget the bad emotions related
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to a particular human being or experience.
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Or it can be more general,
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like you'd like to be more creative.
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We'll actually talk about creativity today.
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Or you would like to achieve more focus
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or you'd like to be less stressed.
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So it's very important that you understand that plasticity
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and achieving plasticity is the first step
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in what we call optimizing your brain.
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You don't want your brain to be plastic all the time.
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In fact, one of the major questions,
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one of the major unsolved mysteries of neuroscience
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is how each and every one of us wakes up every day
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and knows who we are.
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Why should that be?
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Well, the brain is plastic.
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It has a capacity to change throughout the lifespan,
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but it's not so plastic that every night when we go to sleep
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or in our waking that the connections get reconfigured
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so much so that we forget who we are
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or how to walk or how to eat.
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It's a good thing that we don't have such robust plasticity
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or ongoing plasticity
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that we have to restructure ourselves each day.
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It's part of what gives our life continuity.
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So remember, plasticity is not and is never the goal.
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The goal is to figure out how to access plasticity
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and then to direct that plasticity toward particular goals
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or changes that you would like to achieve.
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And I should just mention there's no rule that in life
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you have to leverage this incredible thing
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called neuroplasticity.
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No one said you had to do that.
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This podcast and this episode is particularly for people
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who are either happy or unhappy with where they're at
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with a particular aspect of their life
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and they want to shift it in some positive way.
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And many of you listening might say,
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well, wouldn't everyone want to do that?
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Well, actually there are a certain number of people
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that are pretty good where they're at
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and they don't want to change and that's terrific.
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And I tip my hat to them and I think that's wonderful.
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If ever they decide that they want to leverage
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these plasticity mechanisms,
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they can at any stage throughout the lifespan.
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Let's start by talking about the different systems
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within the nervous system that are available for plasticity.
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And in doing so, I'll frame them in the context
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of what I do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis
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and on a yearly basis.
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First of all, there are several forms of plasticity.
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They have names like long-term potentiation,
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long-term depression, which has nothing to do
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with emotional depression, by the way,
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and things like spike timing dependent plasticity.
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Those names are used to describe cellular phenomenon,
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the actual ways that the synapses,
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the connections between neurons change.
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I'll mention those things and I'll give a little more meat
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as to what they are as I mentioned them.
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But that's probably not the best way to think
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about plasticity in terms of optimizing your brain.
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The best way to think about it is in terms of short-term,
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medium-term and long-term plasticity.
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Short-term plasticity is any kind of shift
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that you want to achieve in the moment or in the day,
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but that you don't necessarily wanna hold on to forever.
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And so what kinds of things are those?
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Well, for instance, short-term plasticity might be
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you wake up earlier than you would like to catch a flight.
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You're not feeling particularly alert
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and you want to use a protocol
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or you decide to use a protocol,
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which could be coffee or it could be a certain form
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of breathing or it could be some other tool
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to become more alert at a time of day
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when normally you aren't that alert.
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But your expectation is that when you return home,
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you will discard with the need to do that at 5.30 AM
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because you'll be asleep at 5.30 AM.
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So there's short-term plasticity, behavioral plasticity.
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Then there's medium-term plasticity,
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which are changes that you might wanna make.
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I call this with respect and a little bit of humor,
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or at least my kind of humor.
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I call this the undergraduate pre-med phenomenon.
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For those of you that have worked with pre-meds
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and have tremendous respect
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for medical students and pre-meds,
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there is a kind of a stereotype,
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which I don't necessarily agree with.
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But the stereotype is that they wanna know
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what they need to know for sake of the exam,
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but they don't really wanna know.
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They just want the A.
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And I don't think that's always true.
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I've worked with a number of different pre-meds
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over the years and there are many of them
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that are absolutely passionate about the knowledge itself.
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And they also wanted the A.
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But the pre-med phenomenon,
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as it's discussed among professors and TAs,
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is that you've got these students,
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they just wanna know what they need to know
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so they can get the A, right?
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It's medium-term plasticity.
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They don't actually want it to be embedded
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in their memory too long
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or else they would actually care about the information.
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So that's medium-term information.
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And sometimes that's useful, for instance,
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if you go on vacation to Costa Rica
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and you don't know your way around Costa Rica,
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you wanna learn the different town and the routes there,
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but you don't have any intention of going back.
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It's just medium-term.
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You wanna just program it in for sake of your time there
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and then you wanna discard it.
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Most of the time when we think about
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or talk about optimizing the brain,
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we're talking about long-term plasticity.
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We're talking about the kinds of changes
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that people wanna make
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so that their brain reflexively works differently.
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This is what a child does
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when it goes from not knowing how to walk
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to knowing how to walk.
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It doesn't have to think about it
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after it learns how to walk, it becomes reflexive.
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Long-term plasticity is almost always the big goal.
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It's I wanna know how to speak that language.
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I wanna be able to do that skill.
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I wanna be able to feel this way
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without having to put much work into it.
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And there are tools and protocols
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that one can do to achieve that.
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And we are going to talk about those.
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We've talked about a few of them in previous episodes,
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but I will revisit those protocols today.
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I'm gonna frame all this in the context of the daily life,
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the weekly life, and the yearly life.
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And that's because neural plasticity
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and optimizing your brain
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rides on a deeper foundation
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of this thing that governs plasticity
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and in fact governs all our life called autonomic arousal,
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which is that we're asleep for part of the 24 hour cycle
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and we are awake almost always.
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If we push ourselves and stay awake, we're okay.
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We can do that for a night or two,
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but almost always we are asleep for a portion of it
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and we are awake for a portion of it.
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I've said it before, but I'll say it again.
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The trigger for plasticity and learning
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occurs during high focus, high alertness states,
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not while you're asleep.
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And the focus and alertness are both key
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because of the neurochemicals associated with those states.
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But the actual rewiring
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and the reconfiguration of the brain connections
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happens during non-sleep deep rest,
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which we'll talk more about as always, and deep sleep.
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So you trigger the change and in sleep, you get the change.
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So some of the things that we'll talk about today
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about optimizing the brain are centered around not sleep,
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but around the autonomic arousal system.
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We have this system of neurons in our brain and body
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that's just incredible that wake us up and make us alert.
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And when we're not accessing that system well,
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we cannot access plasticity, we cannot optimize our brain.
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Likewise, if we cannot sleep well and we can't rest well,
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we will not access plasticity and rewire our brain
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because that's when the actual configuration
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between the connections occurs.
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So to set this in context, I wake up each day
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and I'll be totally honest,
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I usually don't feel like bouncing right out of bed.
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I usually don't feel completely rested.
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And that's not because I don't get enough sleep.
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It's probably because I'm not terrific
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about timing my sleep so well.
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Now this month isn't about sleep,
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that was the previous month,
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but I really wanna emphasize a few points.
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I wake up generally more tired and groggy than I would like
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because I tend to go to sleep too late.
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It's just something that I do.
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I tend to get up early either because I set an alarm,
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because I have things to do,
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or because I naturally wake up early
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because of the light coming in and so forth.
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Well, what that tells me is that I'm probably somebody
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who's natural circadian rhythm.
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You may have heard of chronotypes.
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These are genetically programmed things,
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but chronotype is shorter than 24 hours.
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It means that the cycle of waking and alertness for me
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is probably shorter than 24 hours,
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which means that getting some light in the late afternoon
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will help me shift and make my cycle a little bit longer.
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It will phase delay me.
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If that doesn't make any sense, see a previous episode.
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But what it really means
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is getting some light in the afternoon
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will allow me to stay up a little bit later.
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But what it means is that I'm not really matching
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my hardwired needs of going to bed
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probably at 8.30 or nine and waking up at 4 a.m.
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I tend to go to sleep around 10.30, 11,
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lately around 11.30 or 12, and then I wake up at six,
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and so of course I'm going to feel groggy.
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So neuroplasticity will allow me to optimize my wakefulness,
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but I have to do something in order to access that.
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And some of you may already be anticipating
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what I'm about to say, which is, oh no,
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he's going to tell us to get sunlight in our eyes
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in the first 30 minutes of the day.
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I am going to tell you to do that,
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but I'm going to also tell you two things
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that I have not discussed before,
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which relate to the plasticity
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between the melanopsin cells, these sunlight detecting,
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bright light detecting cells in our eye,
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and the circadian clock.
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I've never said this before in this podcast,
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but it turns out that the connections
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between these melanopsin cells and the circadian clock
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are plastic throughout the lifespan.
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There's a massive configuration of the connections there
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and a cell type called the astrocytes,
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which are a glial cell, are actively removing
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and reinforcing connections
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between the eye and that clock every day.
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Now, this is incredible because other aspects of your brain
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that, for instance, represent you knowing who you are
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when you wake up in the morning or what your name is,
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assuming that you're old enough
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that you've already learned your name.
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One of the first things kids learn
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is something we rarely ever forget.
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Those connections are changing all the time
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every 24 hour cycle.
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So there's an opportunity for short-term plasticity.
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So that's why I view sunlight first thing in the day,
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it helps me wake up.
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The other thing that I do is that there's a circuit
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that exists between the circadian clock and our adrenals
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that I've talked about before
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that triggers the release of cortisol
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first thing in the morning that wakes us up,
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especially when we view light.
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So if you're groggy in the morning,
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that's why viewing light is helpful.
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But the interesting thing is if you start viewing light
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frequently in the morning,
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then those connections between the melanopsin cells
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and the circadian clock become primed or potentiated,
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we would say, they become stronger
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for the anticipation of light.
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And you naturally start waking up earlier,
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feeling more alert.
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So what this says is, and what I do
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is I get that regular light
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because I know that some mornings
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I'm just not going to feel very alert,
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I'll feel especially tired.
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And I might not be able to access sunlight
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because it's really overcast or I'm traveling
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or some other feature, but the system is plastic
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so it's shifted in the right direction.
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Now it will shift back
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because it's short-term plasticity
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after about two, three days.
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So you wanna try and get the sunlight exposure
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on a regular basis.
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The other thing that I do is I delay my intake of caffeine
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for the first two hours that I'm awake.
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Now, this can be very painful for people,
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but earlier we talked about the adenosine system
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and how the accumulation of adenosine makes us sleepy
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and caffeine suppresses adenosine, it makes us feel alert.
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But we know that if you ingest caffeine
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immediately on waking,
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the signal to the adrenals to release cortisol,
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which is a healthy release of cortisol
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and the suppression of adenosine
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that happens as we come out of sleep
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and in deep sleep, the suppression of adenosine.
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If you ingest caffeine too early,
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there's a mechanism by which the adenosine
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competes for the receptors, et cetera,
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so that you have a mid-morning crash.
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Because if caffeine, the way it works is if caffeine
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is occupying the adenosine receptor,
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then the natural endogenous mechanisms
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for suppressing adenosine
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are not actually gonna have their actions.
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So the brain to adrenal axis is subject to plasticity also.
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And so by delaying caffeine
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until about two hours after waking,
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I'm able to capture and reinforce to potentiate
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the neural circuit that exists between the circadian clock
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and the cortisol release in the adrenals,
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as well as leave those adenosine receptors unoccupied
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so that I can then use the caffeine to get a natural lift
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in alertness and focus two hours later,
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as opposed to using it just to wake myself up
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out of sleepiness.
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So while I'm sure there are some eye rolls out there
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and some yawns about,
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oh no, it's the sunlight in the morning thing again,
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it's a powerful tool for readjusting these circuits,
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so the short-term plasticity.
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And the reason for delaying caffeine
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for the first two hours of the day,
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even if it's painful to do for the first couple of days
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is that then you naturally start to wake up
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more readily in the morning without caffeine
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because the adenosine is suppressed
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and you don't have these competing,
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it's called a competing antagonist
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for the adenosine receptor.
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So I wake up, I get sunlight in my eyes.
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Lately, because I wake up very early,
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I do use a bright light to stimulate alertness.
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It's not actually designed for that purpose.
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It's just a light board that has about 900 lux.
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And then I delay caffeine.
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Some of you have asked,
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and again, I'm not saying that anyone has to do this,
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what exactly do you drink?
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I'm a big believer in black coffee.
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I just happen to like black coffee.
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People have asked me about,
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and I don't wanna name brand names here
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about this type of coffee or that type of coffee
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mixed with these other kinds of things.
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Will that increase focus?
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You know, I'm gonna talk today a lot
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about the use of diet and fasting and timing of foods
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and certain kinds of foods.
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But to be honest, black coffee is just a simple choice
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that's always worked for me.
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I also make sure I hydrate first thing in the morning.
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There's plenty of data now showing
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that even a slight increase in dehydration,
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meaning just when you're lacking water,
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can make people have headaches.
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It can provide some additional photophobia.
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For those of you that are migraine prone,
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bright light can trigger migraines.
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That's no surprise to those of you
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that get headaches and migraines.
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But dehydration can compound the vulnerability
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to migraine and headache.
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So I drink water, I drink black coffee, or I drink mate,
link |
which is just because I have Argentine lineage,
link |
which is just a high caffeine drink
link |
first thing in the morning.
link |
But I delay it until two hours after I wake up.
link |
And that's because I want the circuits
link |
between my eye and my circadian clock and my adrenals
link |
to be functioning in a particular way
link |
so that then later the caffeine is an addition,
link |
it adds more alertness.
link |
Now, this is a discussion about how to optimize your brain.
link |
Many people who wake up quickly
link |
and just naturally feel like bouncing out of bed,
link |
I envy these people,
link |
they will do just fine by going into a learning bout
link |
or taking care of whatever it is
link |
that they need to take care of.
link |
Sometimes that's kind of more mundane tasks
link |
like email and whatnot.
link |
Here's a more or less a rule
link |
about how the brain functions
link |
vis-a-vis focus, learning, and creativity.
link |
And I'm gonna discuss this much more in future episodes.
link |
Generally, states of high alertness,
link |
when we're very, very alert,
link |
are great for strategy implementation.
link |
When we already know how to do something
link |
and it's just simply a matter of plugging
link |
the correct elements into the correct boxes.
link |
Things I've talked before about duration, path, and outcome
link |
as the three things that the deliberate conscious brain
link |
is trying to figure out in order to perform certain tasks,
link |
even cognitive tasks.
link |
This is the sort of thing that we are very good at
link |
when we're well-rested and we're focused
link |
and our autonomic arousal or our alertness rather
link |
as it is at a high level.
link |
If you are somebody who is hitting that alertness
link |
phase of your day very early, right after you wake up,
link |
that's a great time to move right into things
link |
that at least the research says,
link |
you already know have the strategy
link |
and you just wanna implement the strategy.
link |
This is where I fundamentally depart from the idea that,
link |
oh, you have to do the hardest
link |
or most critical tasks throughout the day.
link |
Sometimes the hardest and most critical tasks
link |
are tasks that require creativity.
link |
And as we'll soon talk about,
link |
creativity and tasks related to it,
link |
oftentimes come to us best
link |
or the brain is best at achieving those
link |
when we're in states of calm or even slightly drowsy,
link |
which is something that's interesting and we'll get into.
link |
But for me, for instance,
link |
I get up, I'm not terribly alert first thing.
link |
And so I try and just get my brain
link |
and my thoughts organized.
link |
It's not a time for me to be responding
link |
in a very linear fashion to emails
link |
or carrying out calculations.
link |
That comes about two hours later.
link |
And I think many people out there will relate,
link |
mid morning is when we tend to,
link |
when many people tend to achieve their peak
link |
in alertness and focus.
link |
Now, many times I get the question and this is,
link |
what I'm about to say is directly related
link |
to the hundreds of questions I got about this.
link |
Should I use background music in order to learn?
link |
Should I have construction next door?
link |
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
link |
Is it better to be in complete silence, et cetera?
link |
Now this will vary.
link |
Some people can tolerate their own noise
link |
within their head much better than others.
link |
Other people find that having some background noise
link |
helps cancel that out.
link |
But there's a simple rule of thumb that one can use
link |
because at least my experience is that sometimes
link |
background music, background noise is very helpful
link |
for allowing me to focus.
link |
And other times it's very distracting.
link |
So what actually governs that?
link |
Well, we have to ask ourselves,
link |
what is at the source of the lack of focus?
link |
If our lack of focus is because our autonomic arousal,
link |
our alertness is very, very high.
link |
We had a little too much coffee or if there is such a thing,
link |
slept a little too long or we're really stressed
link |
or really activated and we can't seem to focus.
link |
In that case, eliminating background noise
link |
and really just trying to get silence
link |
so that we can quiet some of that autonomic arousal
link |
is going to be best for learning and for implementation
link |
of things we already know how to do
link |
for any kind of focus linear task,
link |
which basically learning is a focus linear task
link |
is that you're just not necessarily performing it well
link |
Last time we talked about making errors.
link |
So as a rule of thumb, if you're feeling too keyed up,
link |
then silence and quiet is going to be helpful.
link |
In fact, if you're very keyed up,
link |
a particular circuit related to the basal ganglia
link |
starts getting triggered more easily.
link |
And this circuit I'm going to talk about in depth,
link |
but it's called the go, no go circuit.
link |
We have circuits that connect our forebrain
link |
to our structure in our brain called the basal ganglia,
link |
which is actually a collection of structures.
link |
And the forebrain, which is involved in rational thought
link |
and thinking and planning and action
link |
is always trying to plan what should I do
link |
and then implement that action.
link |
And the basal ganglia are intimately involved
link |
in that discussion.
link |
There's a reciprocal loop of communication
link |
between basal ganglia and cortex.
link |
The basal ganglia has one set of connections to the cortex
link |
and the cortex back to the basal ganglia
link |
that facilitates go, it facilitates action.
link |
And the molecule, the neuromodulator dopamine
link |
triggers the activation of go.
link |
It tends to make us want to do more things.
link |
It tends to make us bias toward action
link |
by the way that dopamine binds
link |
to something called the D1 receptors,
link |
just a particular type of dopamine receptor
link |
for those of you that want to know.
link |
The no go pathway, the pathway in the basal ganglia
link |
and cortex that suppresses action
link |
involves dopamine binding to this other receptor
link |
called the D2 receptor.
link |
Now D1, D2 receptors, you can't just consciously decide,
link |
oh, I only want my D1 receptors
link |
and my D2 receptors to be active.
link |
You have to think about which sorts of states of mind
link |
and body facilitate go and which ones facilitate no go.
link |
Now this is critically important
link |
because doing focused work, accessing plasticity
link |
and learning involve doing certain things
link |
and not doing others.
link |
So here's how it works
link |
and here's how I apply it on a daily basis.
link |
Because I tend to be most alert first thing mid morning
link |
or so and then I generally will have my caffeine mid morning
link |
my peak of alertness in the early part of the day
link |
is occurring for me sometime between 9.30 and 11 a.m.
link |
That's just me, other people might experience that
link |
immediately after rolling out of bed,
link |
they might be wide awake and ready to go.
link |
Which case they should be cautious
link |
about throwing caffeine into the mix
link |
because then it's gonna make them very, very alert.
link |
There are three sort of levels of autonomic arousal
link |
of alertness that bias us more toward go, no go or both.
link |
And this relates to a question that I've gotten now
link |
hundreds of times from you
link |
in the comment section for this podcast,
link |
which is, is it better for me to listen to music
link |
in the background while I work and learn
link |
or should I have complete silence?
link |
And the answer is it depends
link |
but it doesn't depend randomly on who you are
link |
or even necessarily time of day.
link |
It depends on your overall level of autonomic arousal
link |
and it depends because autonomic arousal,
link |
level of alertness biases the extent to which
link |
we are more prone to goes, to action or to no goes,
link |
to suppress action.
link |
And dopamine is this molecule that's swimming around
link |
and it's going to bias one or the other responses.
link |
So here's how it works.
link |
Let's say I'm very alert.
link |
Maybe I got a particularly good night's sleep
link |
the night before, I had a little too much coffee
link |
and I'm gonna sit down to some work.
link |
The thing to know and what I always tell myself
link |
is when I'm very alert, I am very prone to go to action
link |
but I'm also prone to not no go, right?
link |
I'm not gonna be very good at suppressing action.
link |
So those are two different things,
link |
being biased toward action
link |
and being biased towards suppressing action
link |
are two different things, okay?
link |
So those are push-pull, toward action, suppress action.
link |
So when you're very alert,
link |
the tendency is for everything to be a stimulus.
link |
This is why when people say, well,
link |
should I just take a drug like that will increase
link |
my level of epinephrine and alertness,
link |
will that help me learn better?
link |
No, because it will make you do things
link |
but it will also make you less good
link |
at suppressing actions that you need to suppress.
link |
So if I'm very alert, particularly alert for me
link |
and I recognize what that state is of course
link |
cause everyone will be different, I know what it is for me.
link |
Then I want silence for learning.
link |
I want it shut down my internet, which I do.
link |
I sometimes use a program that I believe is a free program
link |
called Freedom where it actually locks you out
link |
of the internet for a particular time.
link |
They're not a sponsor of the podcast,
link |
I just happen to use it.
link |
There's another version of Freedom
link |
where you go to the wireless thing and you turn it off,
link |
you disconnect from the wireless, that's the other one.
link |
Although many people have a hard time not reactivating it.
link |
So I'm trying to shut down the go pathway
link |
towards distraction.
link |
And the other thing that I'll do
link |
is I'll generally turn off my phone,
link |
put the phone outside in the car
link |
or in really extreme cases, I'll throw it up on the roof
link |
which is hard for me to retrieve.
link |
So that I can't get to it.
link |
So if I'm very alert,
link |
I'm aware that I will have a bias toward action.
link |
It will be hard for me to suppress non-action
link |
but that it's very non-specific
link |
because the next kind of level down of alertness
link |
or autonomic arousal is clear, calm and focused
link |
where we have that kind of sweet spot
link |
between our willingness to pursue action.
link |
We're in a mode of go and it's not always physical action
link |
but it can be pursuing hard bouts of learning
link |
but that our ability to suppress is also very good.
link |
And this is because,
link |
and I don't want to get into too many details
link |
because of the way that dopamine competes
link |
for these dopamine one receptors in the go pathway
link |
and dopamine two receptors in the no-go pathway.
link |
They're always in this kind of push pull.
link |
And so there is a sweet spot
link |
and that sweet spot isn't flow
link |
where it is in some sort of state
link |
where all of a sudden things come naturally to us.
link |
The state that we're trying to achieve
link |
that's optimal for learning is one in which
link |
we have the energy and focus to pursue
link |
but we also have the energy and focus to suppress action.
link |
So the basal ganglia are kind of working
link |
in a perfect kind of sing songy manner
link |
through this parallel pathway.
link |
Now, as we get tired or as we round out
link |
an ultradian cycle of about 90 minutes,
link |
what happens is our fatigue,
link |
even if it's not a physical fatigue
link |
that makes us want to go to sleep
link |
but our mental fatigue starts to accumulate
link |
because these pathways of go, no-go
link |
are actually very metabolically consuming.
link |
So what I recognize is that as I start to falter,
link |
I have a harder time engaging and going.
link |
I also know, or going toward the goal rather.
link |
I also know that my reflex toward actions
link |
that are unrelated to the learning
link |
are also going to start increasing
link |
because I'm not going to be able to suppress action
link |
and activate the no-go pathway.
link |
So if this all sounds like a mouthful,
link |
let's make it very simple for you.
link |
When you are very alert,
link |
the best situation for learning is going to be silence.
link |
It's going to be complete quiet.
link |
If you are low arousal and you're tired
link |
and you're kind of sleepy,
link |
a lot of people find that having some background chatter
link |
and some background noise
link |
can help elevate their level of autonomic arousal.
link |
And that's because our auditory system
link |
and our visual system are linked
link |
and are part of really what's called the salience network,
link |
which is that we're always scanning
link |
our environment for things.
link |
And when we have a lot of things in our environment to scan,
link |
generally our level of alertness goes up.
link |
This is why environments that are very stark
link |
or have very little or very few objects in them
link |
tend to make us feel kind of calm
link |
because our salience network kind of shuts off.
link |
A lot of people don't like that.
link |
They'll go to a meditation retreat
link |
or they'll go into an environment
link |
where there's very little clutter, especially city people.
link |
And all of a sudden they start feeling
link |
really, really anxious.
link |
And that's because their internal level
link |
of autonomic arousal is really high
link |
and it's not being occupied
link |
by all this stuff to pay attention to.
link |
And so their salience network starts to turn inward.
link |
They move from exteroception to interoception.
link |
They're not looking outside themselves.
link |
They're looking inside themselves
link |
and there's a lot of noise in there.
link |
So as a rule of thumb,
link |
if you tend to be kind of on the high level of alertness
link |
and kind of anxiety,
link |
and I'm not talking about clinical levels of anxiety,
link |
but you tend to be pretty high energy,
link |
well then you are definitely going to benefit more
link |
in a learning bout from learning to go
link |
as well as activate the no-go pathway.
link |
And that requires a lot of energy.
link |
And when you have a lot of distractions in your environment,
link |
there's a high probability
link |
that you're going to be distracted from the learning.
link |
Now, some people are just naturally more calm.
link |
They're like my bulldog Costello, who's exceedingly calm.
link |
They're pretty mellow.
link |
They're kind of clear, calm, and focused all of the time.
link |
And those people actually are going to be less flappable.
link |
They're not going to be yanked around by background noise
link |
or they're not going to be bothered from their learning
link |
or from their studying by a clanging of a pot
link |
from somebody in the kitchen.
link |
So each one of us generally tends to ride up and down
link |
this autonomic ladder, so to speak,
link |
at different times of the day.
link |
For most people, three hours after waking,
link |
those three hours, not three hours on the mark,
link |
but that three hour bin,
link |
tends to be the period in which
link |
they're most alert throughout the day.
link |
Except I'll tell you later about a unique time
link |
right before sleep in which you're also very, very alert,
link |
So that morning three hours is quite vital.
link |
Now, many of you might ask about exercise
link |
and when to exercise.
link |
I think I may have mentioned this
link |
on a previous podcast episode,
link |
but the research shows that at least for performance,
link |
afternoon exercise might be better
link |
in terms of avoiding injury, et cetera.
link |
But in terms of rising body temperatures,
link |
and matching body temperature to mental alertness, et cetera,
link |
it's pretty clear that exercising early in the day,
link |
not only biases us towards waking up earlier,
link |
but that it also triggers the release of things
link |
like epinephrine and other neuromodulators
link |
that lend itself to a situation
link |
where we have heightened levels of arousal
link |
and mental acuity in the late morning
link |
and even into the afternoon.
link |
This can be very good
link |
because if you want to restrict most of your focus learning
link |
to the early part of the day,
link |
exercising early in the day does set a neurochemical context
link |
It tends to trigger activation of the go pathway.
link |
And so for those of you like myself,
link |
who have a hard time kind of engaging
link |
and getting into action early in the day,
link |
early morning exercise within an hour of waking
link |
and certainly no later than three hours after waking
link |
will give you quote unquote more energy throughout the day.
link |
It will make you feel more biased for action.
link |
You won't feel as lethargic.
link |
So in kind of reviewing what I've said up until now,
link |
I do the morning light thing,
link |
I delay my caffeine two hours after waking,
link |
and then I generally try and get exercise in the first hour
link |
or ideally within the first three hours of waking up
link |
and then I'll move into a focused learning bout.
link |
Now, some of you wrote to me and said,
link |
if I exercise early in the day,
link |
then I feel a crash afterwards.
link |
If that exercise is very, very intense,
link |
so you're depleting all your glycogen,
link |
so you're doing heavy deadlifts, et cetera,
link |
chances are after you eat, you will start to feel a crash.
link |
So this relates to timing of nutrition.
link |
And in just as a general rule of thumb,
link |
fasted states and low carbohydrate states,
link |
I'm not talking about a keto diet
link |
round the clock or all week,
link |
but fasted states and low carbohydrate states
link |
lend themselves to alertness.
link |
And that's because carbohydrates are rich in tryptophan
link |
and they tend to lend themselves to sleepiness.
link |
Of course, ingesting large amounts of any kind of food,
link |
any substance that fills your gut will divert blood
link |
to your gut, so if you eat a lot of food,
link |
regardless of whether or not
link |
it's a lot of carbohydrate or not,
link |
you're going to generally feel more sleepy.
link |
Now, many people, including everyone,
link |
use food to modulate their levels of autonomic arousal.
link |
And typically eating shifts us more towards a state of calm
link |
and fasting shifts us more toward a state of alertness.
link |
And these are hardwired circuits
link |
that relate to the need and desire to find food,
link |
which requires action, or the so-called
link |
rest and digest system, which diverts our resources
link |
and our energy towards digestion and makes us feel calm.
link |
So I personally rely on water, mate, and black coffee
link |
first thing in the day in order to exercise
link |
and get into the first round of work.
link |
If I find that I'm too alert,
link |
and then I generally will tend to eat
link |
and kind of bring down my level of alertness
link |
and we'll continue working.
link |
Now, this isn't a strict thing,
link |
and since people ask me what I do,
link |
and I'm not dictating that people follow it exactly,
link |
of course, or even generally,
link |
but I'll just tell you what I do.
link |
It is possible if you're drinking black coffee
link |
and you're, or mate, and you're ingesting a lot of water,
link |
that you're going to dehydrate yourself somewhat
link |
because of excretion of sodium.
link |
Provided you don't have hypertension,
link |
salt is a really good thing.
link |
A lot of people think that they are low on blood sugar
link |
because they're shaky and they can't think
link |
or they have a headache when actually they're low on sodium.
link |
And especially if you're drinking a lot of caffeine.
link |
So I'm a big believer in salt.
link |
So I drink salt water first thing in the morning
link |
because I drink black coffee,
link |
and that keeps my levels of alertness really good.
link |
I always thought that I had messed up blood sugar.
link |
I had shaky hands and I didn't know what was going on.
link |
I'd drink a little bit of coffee and feel too amped up.
link |
It turns out that it was a sodium issue.
link |
And if I just drank water with a little bit of sea salt
link |
and or even just a general table, typical table salt,
link |
then I'd felt rock solid in terms of my blood sugar.
link |
Now, again, I'm not a physician.
link |
I'm a professor, so I don't prescribe anything,
link |
but I profess lots of things.
link |
So I don't want people who have diabetes
link |
or blood sugar issues to go off the rails.
link |
You're responsible for your health, not me.
link |
But it's an interesting parameter to think about
link |
and experiment with provided that your doctor says it's okay
link |
because I think a lot of people
link |
probably ingest too much sodium,
link |
but a lot of people might be sodium deficient
link |
in particular, the people that are fasting.
link |
I typically eat my first meal right around midday,
link |
whether or not I've exercised or not.
link |
And the food content there is actually quite important to me.
link |
I don't know why this is.
link |
I don't have a scientific mechanism for this,
link |
but if I eat hot food for lunch, I get sleepy after lunch.
link |
So I generally don't eat hot food for lunch.
link |
I might have a little bit of soup or something like that.
link |
But in general, I rely on a low carbohydrate meal.
link |
I'll eat meat or salad or some variation of that
link |
and nuts and fats and things like that
link |
because of the choline content for focus,
link |
because the protein's good in my belief,
link |
and because I believe in eating fruits and vegetables,
link |
If I've exercised very hard early in the day,
link |
I do ingest starches like oatmeal or rice
link |
and fruit and things like that.
link |
Now, why am I telling you all this?
link |
Because hundreds, if not a thousand people ask me,
link |
is fasting good for focus?
link |
And indeed, fasting will increase alertness.
link |
But if you're so hungry or preoccupied with food
link |
that you can't focus,
link |
well, then it's not going to be good for learning.
link |
It's only going to be good for agitation.
link |
Now, I'm just going to continue to march through my day.
link |
And this is, of course, what I experienced.
link |
Some people are quite different.
link |
But what I find is around two or 3 p.m.,
link |
I start getting a little groggy, a little bit sleepy.
link |
I will tend to shift my work
link |
from work that requires a lot of duration path outcome,
link |
really careful analysis and activation of the no-go pathway,
link |
meaning I'm trying to suppress the impulse
link |
to look at my phone or answer email or do other things.
link |
This is why I haven't emailed you back
link |
until three in the afternoon, by the way,
link |
or responded to your text messages,
link |
whoever you are out there.
link |
Around early afternoon,
link |
I find I can do kind of typical, more mundane tasks
link |
because those tasks require less cognitive load,
link |
and they can be done more or less in and out of sequence.
link |
I can answer a couple of email here,
link |
maybe answer that email there.
link |
I don't have to do it in pure linear fashion.
link |
Any kind of linear work or learning work
link |
is going to take a lot of focus.
link |
And then typically around 4 p.m. or so, I do two things.
link |
Sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later,
link |
but I do two things.
link |
One is I make sure I hydrate
link |
because if you're exercising and you're eating,
link |
you need to digest that food, et cetera.
link |
I make sure I hydrate so I drink water.
link |
I try and refrain from drinking coffee in the afternoon.
link |
This is a new thing for me.
link |
I sometimes do it, but I try and refrain from that.
link |
And then I always do a non-sleep deep rest protocol
link |
sometime in the afternoon.
link |
This is sometimes a 10-minute yoga nidra type protocol
link |
or a 30-minute yoga nidra type protocol.
link |
These are protocols that I have no relationship to,
link |
no business relationship to whatsoever.
link |
I've been doing them for years now.
link |
They involve listening to a script.
link |
We'll provide the links again,
link |
although we've provided them before.
link |
Or I'll do a hypnosis protocol from Reverie Health,
link |
which is my colleague David Spiegel's website
link |
that has these free hypnosis apps
link |
or scripts that you can listen to.
link |
And those take me into a state of really deep rest,
link |
sometimes so much so that I fall asleep.
link |
And I always set an alarm
link |
so that I don't sleep for longer than 90 minutes.
link |
But typically this goes for about 30 minutes.
link |
And I do that because for me, by about 4.30 in the afternoon
link |
I'm capable of doing basically nothing.
link |
I am just a complete Costello.
link |
I can't think, I can't do, I can't respond to email.
link |
I've just completely trough my ability to function.
link |
I personally find it a mistake to at that point
link |
down a double espresso and charge really hard.
link |
It just doesn't work for me.
link |
I end up really disrupting my sleep schedule.
link |
I end up disrupting a lot of different things.
link |
So for me, I do the non-sleep deep rest protocol.
link |
It really helps me later when I need to fall asleep.
link |
It helps with all sorts of things, as I mentioned before.
link |
But I usually emerge from that a little groggy
link |
or feeling like I have another whole day, second wind.
link |
Like I could just work, work, work, work, work.
link |
And then I'll do a second bout of learning.
link |
I'll do some sort of work
link |
that either involves linear analysis of something.
link |
So maybe numerical work or I'm trying to learn something.
link |
I generally try and really use those bouts
link |
of 90 minute focused energy after the non-sleep deep rest.
link |
And as I mentioned in previous episodes,
link |
there's a lot of evidence
link |
that these non-sleep deep rest protocols
link |
can enhance and accelerate plasticity.
link |
The most, I think, recent and striking one
link |
is the study that we referenced last time
link |
in the caption notes.
link |
It was the Cell Press article, Cell Reports, great journal,
link |
was showing that these 20 minute kind of shallow naps
link |
in non-sleep deep rest
link |
can facilitate sensory motor learning.
link |
So then I'll go into another learning bout
link |
that's caffeine free.
link |
This learning bout is very different than the morning one.
link |
This is a work bout or learning bout
link |
that's more in the clear common focus regime
link |
because I've come out of this non-sleep deep rest.
link |
I'm not ingesting caffeine
link |
because I want to make sure
link |
that I can sleep later that night really well.
link |
And this tends to be more when I do creative type work.
link |
Now, creativity is a topic
link |
that we're going to spend the entire month on
link |
But creativity is a very interesting state of mind
link |
in which we're taking existing elements,
link |
things that we already know
link |
and rearranging them in ways that are novel.
link |
And I'd say, well, duh, that's what creativity is.
link |
But creativity has two parts.
link |
It has a creative discovery mode
link |
where you're kind of shuffling things around
link |
in a very relaxed way and kind of being playful
link |
or exploring different configurations.
link |
And then creativity also has
link |
an absolutely linear implementation mode
link |
in which you take the idea or the design you've come up with
link |
and you create something very robust and concrete.
link |
And so creativity is really a two-part thing.
link |
And the first part
link |
of actively exploring different configurations,
link |
sometimes in a playful way,
link |
sometimes in a way that's almost random
link |
and just kind of exploring,
link |
that state is definitely facilitated
link |
by being relaxed and almost sleepy.
link |
That is not a state that I personally can access
link |
very well early in the day.
link |
I've tried to access it coming out of sleep
link |
because one would say,
link |
well, you're still sleepy early in the day.
link |
And it just doesn't work.
link |
Most of what I write down,
link |
most of what I do is complete garbage.
link |
And so what I found is there's this block in the afternoon
link |
of about 90 minutes where I can do creative type writing
link |
or creative type imagination of scientific ideas
link |
or experiments we might want to do.
link |
Science might not seem like a creative endeavor
link |
to many of you, but it is,
link |
has a lot of imagining what if this,
link |
or we could combine that and thinking of novel concepts
link |
or ways of arranging things.
link |
So when you find yourself
link |
in that kind of clear, calm, and focused mode,
link |
creative works tend to come about very well
link |
Now, I know that a lot of people out there
link |
rely on substances to access creative states.
link |
I'm not a marijuana user.
link |
It's just not the drug for me for a variety of reasons.
link |
I'm not a drinker.
link |
It's not the substance for me for a variety of reasons.
link |
You know, I'm not a cop.
link |
I'm not out here to tell people
link |
what they should do or shouldn't do.
link |
The problem with using substances to access creativity
link |
is that generally the ones that,
link |
the substances that relax people
link |
will allow them to get into that creative brainstorming mode
link |
but not so good at the linear implementation mode.
link |
You know, the other day I was remarking with a friend
link |
that there are some ads, some advertisements
link |
that I've seen over the years that are just incredible.
link |
I'll just tell you what they are
link |
so that it's not cryptic or anything.
link |
I'm revealing my taste here.
link |
There's a particular perfume ad that Spike Jones made
link |
that is just amazing.
link |
It's just, I'll put a link to it
link |
because it's just so cool.
link |
And it's just so, and it has an,
link |
I don't want to give away the end,
link |
but it has a feature of it
link |
that is particularly interesting to me as a neuroscientist.
link |
And it's just so cool.
link |
And I, because I grew up in the skateboarding thing,
link |
I knew a little bit about Spike's movies and skateboarding.
link |
And he's of course made a lot of very impressive,
link |
popular movies as well, full length features.
link |
I don't know him personally, so this isn't a plug,
link |
not that he needs my endorsement for anything at all.
link |
But the amazing thing about this advertisement
link |
is it's a kind of, it's a collection of things
link |
that you would never really think would be combined.
link |
And it involves different speeds of motion
link |
and all sorts of effects.
link |
I mean, it's like a real classic,
link |
like Spike Jones kind of delivery.
link |
But what's incredible is when you think about
link |
not just the fact that someone had to imagine that,
link |
but to actually implement the steps
link |
in order to create that.
link |
When you see this, you'll realize that was a ton of work.
link |
You can't just put that together randomly.
link |
And so a lot of people, not Spike clearly,
link |
but a lot of people who have an incredible mind
link |
for ideas and novel arrangements of things,
link |
they are great at accessing that state,
link |
but not so good at accessing the implementation state.
link |
And then it's also true that a lot of people
link |
and some who tend to fall on what we would call
link |
the kind of like more Asperger's
link |
or autism end of the spectrum
link |
are very good at linear implementation.
link |
Now I'm not talking about all forms of autism, of course,
link |
I'm sensitive to the fact that there are many forms
link |
But some people are very good at linear implementation.
link |
And that's a separate state from a creative states.
link |
So that afternoon block is when I try
link |
and access the freer kind of looser mindset
link |
that's associated with the fatigue
link |
that comes later in the afternoon.
link |
And for some of you, that state that favors creativity
link |
and creative learning might be better in the morning.
link |
I don't know, you're going to have to decide.
link |
For some of you, you're going to be late shifted.
link |
Some of you are going to be morning shifted.
link |
But where we have alertness,
link |
generally we are good at linear implementation.
link |
We're good at activating the no-go pathway
link |
and suppressing action.
link |
And we are good at pursuing particular goals
link |
and strategy implementation.
link |
And where we tend to be more relaxed
link |
and we tend to be almost in a kind of sleepy mode.
link |
So for me coming out of one of these non-sleep,
link |
deep rest modes or sleep,
link |
that's when we tend to be better at novel configurations
link |
of existing elements, which is creativity.
link |
And this brings about a question that I get all the time,
link |
which is what about psychedelics?
link |
So I am going to talk to some experts on psychedelics.
link |
I hope to bring some of them in.
link |
Actually speaking of people coming in
link |
or creatures coming in,
link |
a creature that's definitely not on psychedelics
link |
who doesn't need any is Costello and he just arrived.
link |
He seems to be in a sleepy state most all the time.
link |
Hey buddy, how you doing?
link |
He's working on his 15th sleep deep rest episode of the day,
link |
which is generally followed
link |
by a 10 to 12 hour deep rest episodes,
link |
almost exclusively comprised of Rem.
link |
And I know this because his eyes are open
link |
because they're so droopy.
link |
He can't close them all away
link |
and his eyes are going like this
link |
and he's going down for the count.
link |
So yeah, nice and big yawn.
link |
Okay, so psychedelics.
link |
First of all, I want to be very clear.
link |
I am neither a proponent nor am I somebody
link |
who rejects the potential role of psychedelics.
link |
I do however, think that psychedelics
link |
can be particularly hazardous
link |
for people who have preexisting psychological issues
link |
and are not working with a board certified psychiatrist
link |
or physician, as well as for essentially all kids.
link |
I think that the young brain is basically
link |
in its own psychedelic state and just naturally
link |
and all kidding aside,
link |
I think that the young brain is so subject
link |
to neuroplasticity that drugs,
link |
which like psychedelics, which are very powerful
link |
can be detrimental to the developing brain.
link |
That's just my stance.
link |
If anyone disagrees with me,
link |
I'd be happy to chat with you about it
link |
in a polite and discourse.
link |
I'll be happy to listen as well as tell you more
link |
why I believe that based on the data.
link |
I'm mentioning psychedelics because many of you asked,
link |
here's the deal with psychedelics.
link |
At least here's how they work.
link |
In a nutshell, psychedelics were thought
link |
to unleash sensory processing and to make it less filtered.
link |
We have a lot of different inputs from our eyes,
link |
from our ears, from our nose, from our taste, et cetera,
link |
that you're coming in all the time in parallel.
link |
And we have mechanisms that suppress some of those
link |
and allow us to only focus on things
link |
that are happening visually.
link |
Generally, we don't have synesthesia
link |
unless some of us happen to have synesthesia.
link |
We don't blend what we see with what we hear
link |
in a way that is confusing to us.
link |
We know what's making sounds
link |
and we know what is a visual stimulus.
link |
On psychedelics, people report being able to smell colors
link |
or to hear trees, et cetera.
link |
And that's because there's a lot of sensory blending.
link |
However, that's led to the misconception
link |
that sensory blending itself is a creative process.
link |
There's nothing creative about sensory blending.
link |
The essence of a creative process
link |
is that some novel configuration of elements,
link |
whether or not it's notes on a piano
link |
or whether or not it's words on a page,
link |
whether or not it's numbers or whether or not it's movement,
link |
that some way in which those are configured in some new way,
link |
that the algorithm, the way in which they are configured
link |
makes sense to the observer.
link |
And this is a key thing.
link |
It seems to me that when people report
link |
their psychedelic experiences,
link |
it makes a lot more sense to the person who experiences it
link |
than to the observer.
link |
And so creative works, by definition,
link |
are new ways of configuring things that lend themselves
link |
to a bigger or greater or deeper or novel understanding
link |
on the part of the observer.
link |
And just sensory blending is not going to accomplish that.
link |
Now it is true, and there's a great review
link |
in the journal Cell, excellent journal,
link |
about how psychedelics work.
link |
And it turns out they don't just work
link |
by allowing for more sensory blending.
link |
They do, because of the way that they activate
link |
certain serotonin receptors, et cetera,
link |
they do lend themselves to more lateral connectivity
link |
between different brain areas, more novel associations.
link |
So in principle, in principle, I should say,
link |
not necessarily in practice, but in principle,
link |
they do allow different areas of the brain,
link |
maybe even the two sides of the brain,
link |
to communicate more broadly than they would normally.
link |
So that has certain elements that speak to creativity,
link |
but it can't simply be the case
link |
that psychedelics are the portal to creativity,
link |
because creativity, as I mentioned before,
link |
involves not just novel associations
link |
and a breaking of kind of space-time rules.
link |
It also involves reconfiguring things
link |
such that the new space-time rule that one comes up with
link |
is interesting, stimulating, and kind of, in many cases,
link |
delightful to the observer.
link |
And that's why many claims
link |
that psychedelics open plasticity
link |
or they increase creativity,
link |
that's not sufficient for me personally.
link |
I'm curious about,
link |
does it not just open the creative thinking process,
link |
this novel configuration process,
link |
but does it also lend itself
link |
to the implementation of creative works?
link |
And the answer is no.
link |
In most cases, it has nothing to do
link |
with creative implementation.
link |
Now, I think that there may come a time,
link |
and certainly there are clinical trials
link |
that are happening now,
link |
where psychedelics are leveraged
link |
toward particular clinical goals.
link |
And I want to tip my hat to the work at Johns Hopkins
link |
that's happening now,
link |
which really lends itself to the idea,
link |
the early preliminary data and some of the papers
link |
that are coming out of there are really fantastic,
link |
showing that there may be some excellent roles
link |
for certain psychedelics in certain clinical contexts.
link |
These are clinical studies done with a psychiatrist present
link |
that is authorized to do that,
link |
that can help people through depression, trauma, et cetera.
link |
And we're going to spend a lot of time talking about that,
link |
including with some of those folks running those studies.
link |
So we can look forward to that.
link |
So all of this is to say that,
link |
no, I don't take psychedelics to access creative states.
link |
That's not where I think the major role,
link |
the important role of psychedelics might show up
link |
if it's going to for humanity.
link |
I think that it may have these important roles
link |
in the clinical context,
link |
provided it's done legally and safely.
link |
I think that the creative process being a two-stage process
link |
means that I am personally best served
link |
by having this period of non-linear exploration of concepts,
link |
whatever it is I happen to be working on in the afternoon,
link |
but then I'll actually shelve that work.
link |
I'll just set it aside and then I'll revisit it the next day
link |
or even the next day to see whether or not
link |
that the work itself is ready
link |
for deliberate linear implementation,
link |
which I would want to do during one of these
link |
highly focused states.
link |
So the long and short way of saying this is that
link |
when we're very alert, do linear type of operations.
link |
When we tend to be more sleepy and more relaxed,
link |
that's when creative works can first be conceived,
link |
but their implementation requires high levels of alertness.
link |
Now that gets us more to the kind of late afternoon evening.
link |
Now I am, as I've mentioned before,
link |
I'm a proponent of getting sunlight in the evening as well.
link |
This is a critical thing that I have not mentioned before.
link |
Here's how it works.
link |
Many people now have heard me say
link |
getting light early in the day is important,
link |
but that will advance one's clock.
link |
It'll make you want to get up earlier the next day.
link |
By getting light in the evening,
link |
it accomplishes two things for me.
link |
First of all, it makes sure that I don't get up too early,
link |
that I'm not waking up at three or four in the morning
link |
because it's going to shift my clock.
link |
It's going to delay it a little bit.
link |
And so this is really important.
link |
If you want to keep your schedule on a normal routine
link |
on a regular 24-hour cycle
link |
and not have your circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness
link |
drifting all over the place,
link |
and you want some predictability
link |
to how your mind is going to work
link |
in order to optimize learning and performance,
link |
well, then you need to get morning light and evening light.
link |
The morning light is going to advance my clock,
link |
make my system want to get up earlier,
link |
and the evening light is going to delay my clock
link |
a little bit so that on average,
link |
it kind of bookends my circadian mechanisms,
link |
and I'll basically want to go to sleep
link |
at more or less the same time each night
link |
and wake up more or less at the same time each morning.
link |
That's how it works.
link |
And that's a hardwired mechanism.
link |
That's not some subjective thing that I tell myself.
link |
That's a hardwired mechanism.
link |
So that gets us to the evening.
link |
And generally in the evening,
link |
I'll get that light by going outside,
link |
or sometimes I'll do it
link |
by turning up artificial lights brightly,
link |
and then I'll start to dim them for the evening
link |
because as I've mentioned many times before,
link |
and I'm not going to belabor the point,
link |
you want to minimize your light exposure,
link |
especially overhead bright light exposure,
link |
regardless of whether or not it's blue light or not,
link |
in the evening from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.
link |
Some of you asked,
link |
wait, I thought it was 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.
link |
Well, it is, but 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. is even better.
link |
It's just that when I originally said 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.,
link |
that's impossible for most people to adhere to.
link |
So for me, it screens off, it's dim lights,
link |
and that's what favors falling asleep
link |
in a good night's sleep for me.
link |
Since we were talking about food earlier,
link |
I'll just revisit a little bit of what I said before.
link |
My evening meal tends to be more carbohydrate rich,
link |
if I have proteins, it'll be like eggs, fish,
link |
or chicken or something of that sort, or no protein,
link |
and I eat high carbohydrates.
link |
So I'm not one of these people that's keto
link |
or high meat only or anything like that.
link |
Remember, fasting in low carbohydrate states
link |
facilitate alertness.
link |
Carbohydrate rich foods facilitate calmness and sleepiness.
link |
They stimulate the release of tryptophan
link |
and the transition to sleep.
link |
So that's why I do them late in the day.
link |
Also, if you've exercised early in the day,
link |
especially if it's weight-bearing exercise,
link |
or everything's weight-bearing exercise,
link |
I suppose, unless you're an astronaut,
link |
but, and you're in space.
link |
But if you're early in the day exercising with weights
link |
or you're doing a long run or something, sooner or later,
link |
you need to replenish glycogen.
link |
And I realized that the ketonistas out there are gonna say,
link |
well, gluconeogenesis will allow you
link |
to replenish glycogen, et cetera.
link |
I'm just gonna call out the lie right now
link |
because I feel like doing it,
link |
and because I think it just hasn't been stated,
link |
which is that not everybody, but a lot of the people
link |
that are proponents of high meat keto diets, fine.
link |
That's fine if that's what they wanna do.
link |
And as you recall, I do relatively ketogenic diet
link |
during the day for alertness or fasting,
link |
but a lot of those people can replenish glycogen really well
link |
without ingesting carbohydrates, so-called gluconeogenesis
link |
and enhanced protein synthesis,
link |
because they are hormone-enhanced.
link |
And it's just, I've been around a while.
link |
I know what this looks like.
link |
They're either thyroid-enhanced or hormone-enhanced,
link |
and I don't pass any judgment.
link |
But when you look at people who look amazing on keto
link |
and are able to have a lot of energy
link |
and replenish their glycogen on keto,
link |
they are, in many cases, not all,
link |
but in many cases, they're hormone-enhanced.
link |
They're taking exogenous hormones
link |
that allow them to synthesize and repair muscle
link |
in ways that people who aren't taking
link |
those exogenous hormones can't.
link |
This is not just true of the men, by the way.
link |
This is also true of the women.
link |
And this is a whole discussion unto itself,
link |
probably not directly related to this month of the podcast.
link |
So I don't mind that people do this,
link |
but one problem is when people are following
link |
ketogenic diets all the way through to sleep
link |
and they have trouble with sleep,
link |
or they're doing long bouts of fasting
link |
and they're having trouble falling asleep,
link |
It's because their autonomic arousal
link |
is tilted towards epinephrine release,
link |
norepinephrine release, and dopamine release.
link |
So they have a lot of energy,
link |
but they have a hard time calming down
link |
and getting into deep sleep.
link |
I tend to achieve that state using carbohydrates,
link |
and it also replenishes glycogen.
link |
So again, I'm not trying to draw any fire,
link |
but if I do, I'd be happy to have a conversation
link |
Again, no judgment, but I think that most people out there
link |
are not aware of some of the other variables.
link |
Remember, good science is about isolating variables.
link |
And so oftentimes what we're seeing in social media
link |
is we're getting presented single variables
link |
and we're not seeing the full context
link |
of the other variables that are being manipulated.
link |
So I eat pasta and rice and vegetables
link |
and things like that in the evening.
link |
Also, I just find,
link |
maybe I'm becoming one of the last people that does that,
link |
although I hope not,
link |
I hope there are others out there like me,
link |
but I just, from all the literature,
link |
speaks to the fact that carbohydrates not only do that,
link |
but they also help maintain healthy thyroid function,
link |
So that's my bias, that's what I do.
link |
I do avoid caffeine and whatnot in the evening.
link |
I do take supplements and I'll be happy at some point
link |
to put out the complete list of supplements
link |
that I take out there.
link |
But in general, these are the core things that I do
link |
and they relate to a lot of the questions
link |
that you've been asking over time.
link |
The next piece of scientific data that I'm going to describe
link |
is a very important piece of scientific data
link |
for sake of understanding how to optimize your brain
link |
It also can help and avoid a lot of anxiety issues.
link |
And these relate to data from Charles Zeisler, doctor,
link |
he's an MD, Chuck Zeisler's lab at Harvard Medical School.
link |
He's run a sleep lab out of Harvard Medical School
link |
for a long time now, does very impressive work.
link |
What he's shown is that the peak output
link |
of the circadian clock for wakefulness,
link |
in other words, the peak of our wakefulness
link |
and the suppression of the sleep signal
link |
actually happens very late in the day.
link |
So we have this trough of activity
link |
and body temperature is lowest right before waking.
link |
Then as we wake up, our body temperature goes up
link |
and into the afternoon, it continues to go up, up, up, up,
link |
and then it tends to fall in the evening
link |
and towards bedtime.
link |
But there's a brief blip of release of peptides
link |
and other substances from the sleep centers in the brain
link |
and the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
link |
The sleep center is this pre-optic area
link |
that if you wanna look that up,
link |
this pre-optic area not far from the circadian clock
link |
that signals the peak of alertness and wakefulness
link |
about an hour before bedtime.
link |
And you say, well, that's really weird,
link |
but a lot of people get into bed,
link |
they're ready to go to sleep and they're wide awake.
link |
And they think this is an unnatural thing
link |
or there's something wrong with them.
link |
And actually it's not.
link |
This it's believed, I don't know,
link |
again, I wasn't consulted at the design phase,
link |
but this is, it's believed,
link |
is a signal that is helpful to human beings
link |
to start gathering up resources
link |
and securing themselves for a night's sleep
link |
during which we historically were very vulnerable
link |
to attack from other humans and from animals and so forth.
link |
And so that desire to run around and clean the kitchen
link |
or organize things,
link |
or just a general feeling of internal anxiety
link |
late in the evening,
link |
that's a natural blip that naturally passes
link |
after about 45 to 60 minutes.
link |
Now that's often the time when people start stressing
link |
about the fact that they have something to do the next day
link |
and they worry about not being able to sleep
link |
and it can cascade into a whole set of things.
link |
So another thing that I do throughout my day
link |
is I know that early day I'm gonna be alert,
link |
afternoon I'm gonna be kind of sleepy.
link |
And then as the evening comes around,
link |
in addition to doing all the other things I'm doing,
link |
I anticipate a peak in alertness and activity
link |
and I don't worry about it.
link |
I use that perhaps to get organized for the next day.
link |
But basically I just go through,
link |
if I'm gonna do anything, it's gonna be very mundane tasks
link |
like cleaning or things that require almost zero effort.
link |
And that probably speaks to my cleaning abilities too.
link |
But the fact of the matter is
link |
we don't just go drift off into sleep.
link |
There's this blip of alertness right before sleep
link |
that I hope just cognitively knowing about
link |
will be helpful to people.
link |
And that raises yet another theme
link |
that I think is going to be very important,
link |
which is physiological mechanisms
link |
like these changes in alertness or using breathing tools,
link |
something we'll talk about in future episodes,
link |
to shift our levels of autonomic arousal.
link |
Those are concrete biological phenomenon.
link |
Fasting will increase alertness that way.
link |
So is caffeine, not everybody's susceptible to caffeine
link |
to the same degree or others,
link |
but it's a physiological mechanisms.
link |
We know the receptors, we know the ligands as they're called
link |
which bind to the receptors.
link |
We know the mechanisms,
link |
they involve cortisol and epinephrine.
link |
Those are the sorts of things that I personally try
link |
and leverage toward my learning and optimization of my brain
link |
Doing physical activity early in the day, for instance,
link |
tends to give us a longer duration wake up signal
link |
and tends to accelerate waking up early in the day.
link |
That's why working out late in the day
link |
can sometimes cause people to have trouble falling asleep.
link |
It will also phase delay you make it
link |
so that you want to wake up later the next day.
link |
It's not just because you're tired,
link |
it's because you shifted your clock
link |
with activity and temperature.
link |
Many people ask me about subjective tools for plasticity.
link |
What about visualization?
link |
Can we just imagine doing a particular activity?
link |
Will that help us get better at that activity?
link |
There are some evidence that visualization can do that.
link |
It's true, but here's the important distinction
link |
and here's why I personally
link |
don't do much deliberate visualization.
link |
First of all, I get my best ability
link |
or achieve my best ability to visualize things
link |
when I'm in kind of a sleepy state.
link |
I don't know why, but that's when I'm able
link |
to direct my brain towards internal visualization
link |
with my eyes closed.
link |
And generally I fall asleep and I can't remember anything
link |
that I was thinking about before.
link |
Some people, and these are work that was done many years ago
link |
by Roger Shepherd and by others, Roger was at Stanford,
link |
but in other labs have done this too, of course,
link |
of rotating objects physically in their mind
link |
as a way of improving or looking at the speed
link |
of spatial calculations and so forth.
link |
Some people are very good at visualization.
link |
They can close their eyes and they can just see objects
link |
and rotate them deliberately, et cetera.
link |
A lot of people like me, when we start doing that,
link |
our mind drifts too easily.
link |
But I like to think I'm a reasonably focused person
link |
in the waking state.
link |
So visualization has, it's interesting
link |
because I think people are very attracted to the idea
link |
that they can just think about something
link |
and then get better at it that way.
link |
And it's probably true if you can be very linear
link |
in the way that you visualize things.
link |
So I wanna repeat that.
link |
I think visualization does have certain power
link |
if you can remain very linear and deliberate and focused
link |
in the visualization.
link |
But many people like myself who are challenged
link |
with maintaining that linear focus with eyes closed
link |
and in visualization,
link |
they don't get much out of visualization.
link |
And I think the data on performance really supports that.
link |
Now, there are examples where, for instance,
link |
people will injure one limb
link |
and then they will exercise the intact limb
link |
or the non-injured limb rather,
link |
and they will visualize the opposite limb.
link |
Sometimes there's even the use of mirror boxes
link |
so that let's say my left limb is injured,
link |
I'm maintaining activity with my right limb,
link |
but I'm using a mirror box
link |
so it looks like my left limb is working well.
link |
Yes, there's some top-down or feedback mechanisms
link |
that support the idea that the injured limb
link |
can rehabilitate more quickly, et cetera.
link |
But those are fairly elaborate schemes.
link |
These aren't the kinds,
link |
I don't have mirror boxes around my house.
link |
I think these are specialized circumstances.
link |
They're a little bit like the examples
link |
that we see in the news
link |
where oh, so-and-so has a stroke
link |
and then spontaneously speaks a new language.
link |
I don't know what the answer to that is.
link |
It shows that the brain has associative networks
link |
that are typically suppressed and those can be unleashed,
link |
but you certainly don't want to go out
link |
and give yourself a stroke deliberately
link |
to try and unmask some skill
link |
because there's no concrete way to go about that
link |
in a way that you could really know
link |
that you were going to offset
link |
the detrimental effects of the stroke.
link |
In fact, I think it'd be a terrible idea.
link |
So I think what I'm trying to describe is how a typical,
link |
I don't know if I'm typical or normal.
link |
I mean, I've been told otherwise.
link |
It's certainly not normal.
link |
But in terms of the way that I structure my day,
link |
I think that's normal.
link |
That's pretty normal.
link |
I tend to wake up right around, I don't know,
link |
somewhere between 5.30 and 7 a.m.,
link |
depending on what I've been doing the night before.
link |
I tend to go to sleep somewhere around 10.30, 11.
link |
I tend to have one bout in the morning
link |
where I can do really focused, hard work
link |
and I can really activate the go pathway
link |
while also activating the no-go pathway
link |
so that I can really stay focused,
link |
but I rely on some tools.
link |
I have a period in the afternoon where I get sleepy
link |
and kind of out of it like I think most people.
link |
And I tend to come out of that
link |
with recognizing the opportunity
link |
of that slightly sleepy state for creative work
link |
and for thinking about things in novel ways.
link |
I get light a couple times a day.
link |
I eat low carb during the day and I eat,
link |
I don't say high, but higher carb, I eat starches
link |
in the evening, so in a way I can sleep.
link |
And then I really anticipate
link |
that late afternoon peak and alertness,
link |
excuse me, late night peak and alertness
link |
that many people confuse for insomnia or challenges
link |
when actually they're really quite normal
link |
in their circadian cycle.
link |
And then I fall asleep and if all goes well,
link |
I stay asleep for four or five hours,
link |
typically it's three or four, and then I wake up.
link |
I think I'm like most people,
link |
I wake up during the middle of the night.
link |
Now, one thing that I don't think has been discussed a lot,
link |
but that one of my colleagues at the Stanford Sleep Lab
link |
tells me is that every hour and a half or so,
link |
Some of you even look around, believe it or not,
link |
and go right back to sleep and you don't recognize it.
link |
Waking up periodically during sleep is the norm.
link |
It is not abnormal.
link |
I don't know why this has been discussed more prominently.
link |
I tend to wake up and if there's a bright light
link |
coming through the blinds or if there's some noise upstairs,
link |
if Costello's snoring particularly loud, I might get up,
link |
I might go use the restroom, I might pick up a book
link |
and read under low light or something
link |
and then I generally fall back asleep
link |
and wake up, typical time for me again,
link |
5.30 to 7 a.m. in the morning.
link |
This waking up in the middle of the night thing,
link |
as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast episode today
link |
is not necessarily abnormal.
link |
What it probably reflects is that the real time,
link |
meaning the time that I should go to sleep
link |
is probably closer to eight o'clock.
link |
The word midnight was literally supposed to mean midnight.
link |
We, many, meaning all of us,
link |
were meant to go to sleep and wake up with the rise,
link |
you know, with the setting and rising of the sun
link |
and we know this because this beautiful study
link |
from University of Colorado where they took people
link |
out into the wilderness to reset their circadian clocks
link |
by way of, you know, measured by way of melatonin
link |
and cortisol and they had them,
link |
they were completely out of whack
link |
from interacting with screens
link |
and staying up too late, et cetera
link |
and they basically had them view the sunrise
link |
and view the sunset each evening
link |
and almost all of them, not all of the students,
link |
but all of them got onto a schedule
link |
where they naturally wanted to go to sleep at sunset
link |
and wake up around sunrise or just before sunrise,
link |
even when they were brought back
link |
into a normal artificial light setting.
link |
So I think that's the natural pattern
link |
and we've just deviated from it with artificial lights.
link |
So waking up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. doesn't necessarily mean
link |
that there's something screwed up about you
link |
or that, you know, you have anxiety or something,
link |
although you might.
link |
What it likely means is that you were supposed
link |
to go to bed much earlier and because of this asymmetry
link |
in the autonomic nervous system where it's much easier
link |
for us to push and to delay our sleep time
link |
than it is to accelerate our wake-up time.
link |
In other words, it's easier to stay up
link |
and hang out at the party,
link |
even if you don't wanna be there than it is to wake up
link |
when you're exhausted and you're fast asleep.
link |
Most people are pushing through
link |
into the late hours of the evening and night
link |
and going to bed much later
link |
than they naturally would want to.
link |
And so I personally don't want to go to bed at 8 p.m.
link |
A lot of good things happen between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
link |
And so I wanna enjoy those
link |
and I push through the evening hours,
link |
but as a consequence, I'm running out of melatonin.
link |
My melatonin release is basically subsided
link |
by about 3 or 4 a.m. and so it makes sense
link |
that I would wake up.
link |
I don't take melatonin for reasons discussed
link |
in previous episodes.
link |
I do rely on things like magnesium glycinate
link |
or magnesium threonate, things like theanine.
link |
I'm not saying any of you need to take those.
link |
That's just what I happen to take
link |
in order to facilitate my sleep
link |
and it's been of great benefit to me.
link |
If I wake up in the middle of the night
link |
and I'm anxious for whatever reason and my mind is looping,
link |
I have a couple rules.
link |
One is I don't trust anything I think about
link |
when I wake up in the middle of the night, any of it.
link |
Unless I've had a magnificent dream
link |
and I wanna write it down,
link |
I'll do that every once in a while.
link |
Typically when I go back and read it,
link |
it's not at all magnificent.
link |
I can't ever remember coming up
link |
with anything really fantastic in one of my dreams
link |
that stuck with me or that I implemented.
link |
I don't really trust the kind of thinking that happens
link |
in those wee hours of the circadian cycle for me.
link |
There's just nothing either for me terribly creative
link |
or worth linear implementation at that time.
link |
But one thing that has been very helpful
link |
is to sometimes do one of these
link |
non-sleep deep rest protocols
link |
as a way to go back into sleep.
link |
So a hypnosis app by,
link |
or some of the scripts by Michael Sealy
link |
that I've mentioned before,
link |
or the Reverie Health or a Yoga Nidra protocol.
link |
Those for me have been very useful
link |
at helping me turn off kind of looping thinking
link |
in the middle of the night and fall back asleep.
link |
In reviewing my schedule for you,
link |
just as a context for how to implement
link |
certain types of tools for optimizing learning,
link |
realize that it gives the impression
link |
that there's a 90 minute bout of learning and work
link |
in the morning and then a 90 minute bout
link |
of creative type work in the afternoon and that's it.
link |
There are a lot of hours in between of course
link |
and I just wanna be very clear.
link |
Those hours for me are occupied by pretty,
link |
not mundane tasks, but things that are kind of random.
link |
Those are things like email or attending to Zoom meetings
link |
or meeting with colleagues and students
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
I sometimes will read just for sake of my own enrichment.
link |
I mentioned those two 90 minute bouts
link |
because those are the two 90 minute bouts
link |
where I'm trying to expand on the mental capacities
link |
that I already have.
link |
They're really where I'm trying to stretch and grow
link |
what I'm able to do on a regular basis reflexively.
link |
So I wanna emphasize that the whole day
link |
doesn't just consist of those two 90 minute bouts.
link |
That's not the way my schedule works
link |
and that's not the way my lifestyle is arranged,
link |
which is fortunate
link |
because I enjoy all those other things as well.
link |
And so for many of you out there who are in school
link |
or who have a family demands or other demands,
link |
the key is to slot in those brain optimization segments
link |
of about 90 minutes, one or two, or maybe more per day,
link |
you're trying to slot those in wherever you can
link |
amidst your other obligations
link |
and things that you need to do.
link |
But you wanna do that in an intelligent way
link |
that's anchored to your biology
link |
and then you wanna do a number of things
link |
which I've talked about today
link |
in order to optimize those sessions
link |
to get the most out of them.
link |
So as we round up, I acknowledge that once again,
link |
I've covered a huge range of topics
link |
related to how to optimize learning and brain change
link |
and essentially mental performance.
link |
And I've set that in the context
link |
of some biological mechanism like the basal ganglia,
link |
go-no-go pathways, the circadian autonomic system,
link |
and some of the relationship between food and fasting
link |
and particular types of food in alertness or sleepiness,
link |
how linear focus and strategy implementation
link |
is best served by high alert states, although not too alert,
link |
and how creative states,
link |
at least the first phase of creativity,
link |
which is the creative arrangement,
link |
kind of brainstorming stage,
link |
is supported by states of kind of relaxation
link |
or even slightly sleepy,
link |
but the creative implementation
link |
is a very linear and focused and deliberate process,
link |
much like the highly focused state that I described.
link |
I described how I do these things,
link |
just to give you a context.
link |
A lot of you asked for what I do
link |
in order to set it within a context,
link |
but by no means are these rigid times
link |
and ways of doing things,
link |
but I think it's fair to say
link |
that what I do has a circadian logic.
link |
It also has grounding in biological mechanisms.
link |
They're very concrete that we know the cells and mechanisms
link |
and neurotransmitters,
link |
and then some of them are a little bit headed out
link |
into the what we would call kind of emerging,
link |
or I don't want to say cutting edge,
link |
but maybe front edge of what neuroscience
link |
is starting to understand about creativity and so forth.
link |
Those are areas that are just now coming to some clarity,
link |
and there's certainly still a lot more work to do.
link |
A lot of different ways to arrange one's routine,
link |
but hopefully the tools and practices that I described
link |
will be useful to you.
link |
I want to mention that a lot of people ask me
link |
about specific tools and practices.
link |
They ask me about Wim Hof breathing, about ice baths.
link |
I've talked a little bit about ice baths before,
link |
I think, and cold exposure,
link |
about binaural beats and things of those sort.
link |
I think the way to look at any tool
link |
to modulate or measure the nervous system
link |
is ask whether or not it's going to move you up or down
link |
the state of autonomic arousal,
link |
whether or not it's going to make you more alert
link |
or more calm, more focused or less focused.
link |
That's kind of the two axes here
link |
that we need to think about.
link |
Sometimes you want to be more alert than you are,
link |
and indeed, things like cold showers, ice baths,
link |
super oxygenation, Wim Hof-type breathing
link |
will bring your level of alertness up.
link |
There's some cautionary notes associated with each of those.
link |
You need to read and understand those cautionary notes
link |
for yourself, everybody's different.
link |
And some of those carry certain dangers
link |
under certain conditions.
link |
Others have huge margins for safety.
link |
An ice bath generally wakes you up.
link |
A warmer hot bath generally calms you down, right?
link |
Binaural beats, there aren't a lot of data
link |
in quality peer-reviewed journals.
link |
I did put in the effort to go search it out.
link |
Binaural beats are listening to frequencies of sound
link |
that slightly differ or offset for the two ears.
link |
It has been shown, can shift the brain
link |
into particular states.
link |
You'll notice today I didn't really talk about alpha
link |
or theta or gamma rhythms.
link |
I personally, in reviewing the literature,
link |
I don't think it's fair to say that alpha states
link |
are great for X and theta states are great for Y.
link |
And besides, most of us aren't walking around our homes
link |
and our workplaces geared up to EEG machines
link |
or with wires down below our skull,
link |
so we don't know when we're in those states anyway.
link |
I think the subjective reading of whether or not one
link |
is alert or calm and whether or not that alertness
link |
or calmness matches the goal or the thing
link |
that we're trying to achieve in terms of learning,
link |
including sleep, is the most valuable internal tool
link |
and recognition that we can all have.
link |
In other words, if I want to be very alert
link |
and I need to be very alert and I'm exhausted,
link |
there might be tools that I should use to wake up.
link |
It might also speak to the fact that I might not have slept
link |
as well as I could have or should have the night before.
link |
So it's really about a match between where we are
link |
on that autonomic arousal scale
link |
and what we're trying to achieve.
link |
And indeed, there are going to be a lot of tools,
link |
including supplements and other prescription drugs
link |
and things that can help move us along
link |
that autonomic continuum up toward more alertness
link |
or toward more calmness.
link |
But ultimately, it's about tailoring that alertness
link |
and calmness to the specific types of learning
link |
and activities that you are going to do and perform.
link |
And it's reciprocal, meaning some of those activities
link |
like exercise early in the day will increase your level
link |
of autonomic arousal and alertness.
link |
Certain foods will tend to wake you up.
link |
Certain foods will tend to make you more sleepy.
link |
And the volume of food and the timing of food
link |
So it's a huge parameter space.
link |
It's a huge set of variables that impacts whether or not
link |
we're feeling well, performing well,
link |
learning great or not learning great.
link |
And the key thing is to become an observer
link |
of your own system and what works for you.
link |
And to recognize that there are two bins of tools
link |
for optimizing learning and brain performance.
link |
One are tools that are really anchored
link |
in biological mechanism.
link |
And we are certain of what those are.
link |
I've talked about some of those.
link |
The other, the more subjective tools.
link |
For some of you, visualization might work terrifically well.
link |
For some of you, one song might really wake you up
link |
because of the associations you have with it.
link |
And for me, it might repel me from the room
link |
because I don't like it or it might put me to sleep.
link |
But of course, volume is kind of a universal.
link |
Loud music tends to wake people up.
link |
Soft music doesn't tend to wake them up quite as much.
link |
So part of today is really getting you to think about
link |
in a scientific way, in a structured way,
link |
about the non-negotiable elements,
link |
which are that you're going to have a period
link |
of every 24 hour cycle when you tend to be more awake
link |
and a period when you tend to be more asleep
link |
and how to leverage those
link |
so you're not fighting an uphill battle
link |
to wake up when you actually would want to be
link |
and should be sleepy and not trying to go to sleep
link |
when you are naturally going to be most awake.
link |
So a lot of it is really anchors back
link |
to those core mechanisms of biology.
link |
And then you start layering on the different protocols
link |
of food and supplementation, et cetera.
link |
And I think it's important to recognize
link |
that some people are just more go, go, go, go, go,
link |
and no go, and some people are just calmer
link |
and have a harder time getting into action and an activity.
link |
It's just the way that we're wired.
link |
Some of us have autonomic nervous systems
link |
that are more geared towards parasympathetic calm states.
link |
One of the reasons I love bulldogs, not just my bulldog,
link |
is that they are very calm animals.
link |
In fact, they make no spontaneous movements
link |
unless there's something to respond to.
link |
And I find that incredibly relaxing.
link |
Other animals like pit bulls,
link |
who I also really like and enjoy and other species,
link |
their tail's always wagging
link |
and that they're always in a position
link |
to make a movement at any second
link |
because they tend to ride
link |
at pretty high levels of autonomic arousal.
link |
They pop up really quickly
link |
when you say it's time to go for a walk.
link |
Costello does it one limb at a time
link |
and sometimes he just goes back to sleep.
link |
And so there are people like that too.
link |
And so you have to know where you are
link |
and what particular goals you're trying to pursue.
link |
As a final closure to this,
link |
I want to emphasize that today, as always,
link |
I've strived to be accurate.
link |
I'm sure if I made mistakes, some of you will point it out
link |
and I appreciate that and I'll post a correction
link |
if we agree that I indeed misspoke or missighted something.
link |
But by no means was I exhaustive.
link |
I mean, I might've exhausted some of you,
link |
but the information wasn't exhaustive.
link |
Meaning there's no way that I could cover
link |
all the ways in which we optimize
link |
or can optimize learning and performance.
link |
I think we've touched on a number of them
link |
that I hope that you'll find value in
link |
and that you'll explore in your own lives.
link |
We are continuing with this theme
link |
because that's what we do for this podcast.
link |
We stay on one theme for an entire month.
link |
For the next episode,
link |
we're going to explore two very essential aspects
link |
of neuroplasticity that actually relate
link |
to learning, which are pain,
link |
pain management and neural regeneration.
link |
And for those of you that don't have injuries
link |
or don't suffer from chronic pain,
link |
the discussion is still going to be a very important one
link |
because it's not just going to be about pain
link |
that you're trying to get rid of.
link |
It's also going to be about how certain sensory experiences
link |
within the pain network can become amplified
link |
as well as how we can use top-down modulation.
link |
We can use our mind to suppress the pain response.
link |
We're also going to talk about
link |
some of the hardwired mechanisms that are bottom-up
link |
that exist in our periphery, in our body to control pain.
link |
And we're also going to discuss
link |
a number of interesting interactions
link |
between the pain system and the learning system.
link |
So again, if you're not interested in pain per se,
link |
it still is going to be a very valid conversation
link |
for sake of understanding how to optimize brain performance.
link |
And neural regeneration goes hand in hand
link |
with that discussion.
link |
So I hope you'll join us for that.
link |
I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't mention
link |
that Costello has been snoring extremely loudly today.
link |
You know, a good long walk this morning,
link |
which means up the driveway, down the driveway.
link |
So if you've been hearing him in the background
link |
and it's been distracting, now you know why.
link |
It probably relates to where you were
link |
on your level of autonomic arousal.
link |
And I'll leave it to you to answer
link |
that question for yourself.
link |
Many of you continue to graciously ask
link |
how you can help support the podcast.
link |
We really appreciate the question.
link |
The best way is to subscribe wherever it is
link |
you happen to be listening or watching.
link |
So for those of you that it's YouTube,
link |
please subscribe to the YouTube channel.
link |
If it's Apple, subscribe to the podcast on Apple,
link |
or if it's Spotify, subscribe there.
link |
Maybe you subscribe to all three.
link |
If you have comments and feedback for us,
link |
suggestions for future podcast episodes or topics to cover,
link |
please place those in the comment section on YouTube.
link |
Apple also provides a section
link |
where you can give us a rating.
link |
We would love it if you gave us a five-star rating
link |
or whatever it is that you feel that we deserve.
link |
And in general, if you could tell people about the podcast,
link |
we hope that you would tell them
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because you think the information
link |
would be of use to them, of course.
link |
Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your coworkers,
link |
because as we expand the podcast,
link |
the support for the podcast just grows along with it.
link |
So that's a terrific way to support us.
link |
As always, check out our sponsors,
link |
which were mentioned at the beginning.
link |
And in addition to that, we've now set up a Patreon account.
link |
Some of you asked specifically
link |
how you can help support the podcast,
link |
but you weren't interested in our sponsors
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or you were already engaged with our sponsors.
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So we have a Patreon account.
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You can find it at patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
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Finally, in previous episodes today and in future episodes,
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I mentioned supplements.
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Supplements are one way, certainly not the only way,
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but they're one way in which we can modulate
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our nervous system for sake of better sleep,
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learning, alertness, and several other things as well.
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If you're interested in supplements,
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we've partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
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because Thorne supplements have very high stringency
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in terms of what's in the bottle,
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the amounts of the substances
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that are in each capsule or pill, et cetera.
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And they have partnered with other groups
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such as the Mayo Clinic, all the major sports teams.
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So there's very high rigor associated with Thorne,
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which is why we've decided to partner with them.
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If you'd like to check out Thorne supplements
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and see the supplements that I take,
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you can go to Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
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dot com slash U slash Huberman,
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and you'll see a list of some of the supplements
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As well, you'll get 20% off any of the supplements
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listed there as well as anywhere else on the Thorne website.
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So that's Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
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dot com slash U slash Huberman
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for 20% off any Thorne supplements.
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Last but not least, on behalf of me and Costello,
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I want to thank you for your time and attention today.
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And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
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And as always, thank you for your time and attention today.