back to indexMaximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #28
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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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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, we are going to talk about science-based protocols
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for sleep, mood, learning, nutrition,
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exercise of various kinds, strength and endurance,
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And we are going to talk about some protocols
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that relate to creativity.
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We're going to talk about behavioral protocols,
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supplement-based protocols,
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all science backed by quality peer review literature.
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The reason that we're holding this episode now
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is that in the recent previous episodes,
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we've covered some pretty intense and in-depth topics.
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We've talked about vision and how we see
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and how to get better at seeing and how to maintain vision.
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We've talked about hearing and balance.
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We've talked about chemical sensing,
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and we had a guest episode
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that covered a lot of information
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about new and emerging technologies in neuroscience
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as well as mental health.
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That was the interview episode with Dr. Karl Deisseroth.
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So given that we've covered so much detailed information
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in the previous 27 episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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I decided that we would hold office hours.
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Office hours in the university setting
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are when students come to the professor's office
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or you meet outdoors on campus or in the classroom
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to review the material and questions from lecture
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Now, unfortunately, we don't have the opportunity
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to meet face-to-face in real life,
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but nonetheless, you've been sending your questions,
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putting them in the comments section on YouTube, et cetera,
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and I've prepared a number of answers to the questions
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that have shown up most frequently.
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Now, in order to provide context and structure
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to the way that we will address these questions,
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I've arranged the science and science-based protocols
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that relate to various aspects of life,
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such as mood, exercise, sleep, waking, anxiety,
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creativity, et cetera, into the context of a day.
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Selecting the unit of a day
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in order to deliver this science information and protocols
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is not a haphazard decision on my part.
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It's actually the case that every cell in our body,
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every organ in our body and our brain is modulated
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or changes across the 24-hour day
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in a very regular and predictable rhythm,
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and it's no coincidence that the earth spins once
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on its axis every 24 hours.
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These two things are coordinated by virtue of genes
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and different proteins and things that are expressed
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in every cell of your body,
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and so selecting the unit of the day
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is not just a practical one,
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but it's one that's related to our deeper biology.
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You may have heard in my interview episode
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with Dr. Karl Deisseroth that he himself,
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in order to juggle a tremendous workload,
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a full-time clinical practice, a lab of 40-plus people,
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a family of five children, et cetera,
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breaks up his life into units of days,
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and so today we are going to further dissect the day
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as a unit that one can manage and manage extremely well
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and, in fact, can optimize.
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So we're basically going to talk about
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how to leverage science-based protocols,
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and when I say science, I mean quality,
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peer-reviewed science published in excellent journals.
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We're going to talk about how to take that science,
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convert it into specific protocols
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that break up along the course of a single day
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and direct certain types of behaviors
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in order to optimize the various features of life.
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I will couch this in the context of what I do
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across a daily 24-hour rhythm.
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That doesn't mean that you have to follow this schedule
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at all or even in part.
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It's just by way of example.
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Any number of the different things that I describe
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could be applied to any number
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of different schedules or frameworks,
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but if there's one truth that applies to all of us
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is that we all have to exist within the context
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of this 24-hour rhythm that we all possess,
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so that's what we'll focus on.
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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize
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that this podcast is separate
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from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
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and science-related tools to the general public.
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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 Roca.
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Roca makes eyeglasses and sunglasses
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that I believe are the very highest quality possible.
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Developed by two All-American swimmers from Stanford,
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Roca sunglasses and eyeglasses were developed
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with their intention to create sunglasses and eyeglasses
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that could be worn anywhere,
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so while exercising or while working, at home,
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The reason I like Roca glasses so much
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is that, first of all, they're extremely lightweight.
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The optical clarity of the lenses is excellent,
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and so I often just forget that I even have them on.
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When I'm outside and I'm wearing sunglasses,
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they have this really terrific feature,
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which is that I can move in and out of shadows
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or the cloud cover can change,
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and I can see perfectly well the entire time.
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You know, many eyeglasses and sunglasses that I've tried,
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depending on what we call the ambient lighting conditions,
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the local lighting conditions outside,
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I have to take them off or put them back on.
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It's really annoying for me,
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but with Roca glasses, somehow,
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I'm assuming because they really understand
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the science of the visual system,
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the eyeglasses and sunglasses work seamlessly
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with whatever environment you're in,
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so that's absolutely terrific.
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Another thing about Roca eyeglasses and sunglasses
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is that their aesthetic is really terrific.
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I don't think I'm alone in saying
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that many performance glasses, as they're called,
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end up making people look like a cyborg,
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but the sunglasses are of the sort
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that you can wear while running or biking
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or driving or out to dinner.
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I don't typically wear sunglasses while out to dinner,
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but you get the idea.
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You can wear them anywhere, and they look very natural.
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They have a huge number of different styles to select from.
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If you'd like to try Roca glasses,
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you can go to Roca, that's R-O-K-A,.com,
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and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order.
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That's Roca, R-O-K-A,.com,
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and enter the code Huberman at checkout.
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Today's podcast is also brought to us by Inside Tracker.
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Inside Tracker is a personalized nutrition platform
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that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
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to help you better understand your body
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and help you reach your health goals.
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I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done
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for the simple reason that many of the factors
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that impact your immediate and long-term health
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can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.
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With Inside Tracker, it alleviates a specific problem
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and that problem is you get information back
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about the levels of various things,
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metabolic factors, hormones, et cetera,
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but you don't know what to do with that information.
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With Inside Tracker, they have this terrific dashboard
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that allows you to both see your levels of hormones,
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but also it suggests specific things
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In addition, they make the whole process
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They'll even come to your home to take the sample.
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If you'd like to try Inside Tracker,
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you can go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman,
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Just use the code Huberman at checkout.
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That's insidetracker.com slash Huberman
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to get 25% off any of Inside Tracker's plans.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.
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Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows
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that are ideally matched to your sleep needs.
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I started sleeping on a Helix mattress
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about eight months ago,
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and I can honestly say it's the best sleep
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that I've ever had in my entire life,
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and that's because the mattress was actually designed for me
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and you can have a mattress designed for you.
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If you go to helixsleep.com,
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they have this free, very brief two-minute quiz
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that asks you a number of questions,
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like do you sleep on your side or your back?
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Do you tend to run warm while you sleep
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or do you tend to get cold in the middle of the night?
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Maybe you don't know the answers to those questions,
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and that's fine too.
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After taking that quiz,
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I matched to the so-called dusk mattress, D-U-S-K,
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not too soft, and as I mentioned, I absolutely love it.
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If you're interested in upgrading your mattress,
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If you don't like it, they'll come pick it up
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and they'll take it away, but I think you'll love it.
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I certainly love mine.
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Again, if you're interested,
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you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman
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for up to $200 off and two free pillows.
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So let's talk about how to apply
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quality peer-reviewed science to your day
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and how to optimize everything from sleep to learning,
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creativity, meal timing, et cetera.
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As I mentioned earlier,
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I'm going to do this in the context of my day
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and what I typically do.
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However, the specific protocols
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for any number of different things, sleep relaxation,
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meal timing, exercise, et cetera,
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any one or all of those could be rearranged
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to suit your specific needs.
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I'm going to tell you what I do from morning until waking
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and even what I do while I sleep
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in order to optimize my sleep.
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So let's start with getting up in the morning.
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Now, for me, I tend to wake up sometime around 6 a.m.,
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6.30, sometimes as late as 7 a.m.
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I don't typically sleep much later than 7 a.m.
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The first thing I do after I wake up
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is I take the pen that's on my nightstand
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and the pad of paper on my nightstand
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and I write down the time in which I woke up.
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Now, I do sleep with my phone in my room.
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I realize this is considered a sin
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and has certain hazards associated with it,
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but I put my phone on airplane mode
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about an hour before I go to sleep.
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And then I set my alarm typically for 6.30 a.m.,
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and some days the alarm wakes me up,
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other days I wake up before the alarm,
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and yes, some days the alarm goes off
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and I hit snooze a few times,
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and then usually by 7 a.m. I am up and out of bed.
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The reason for writing down what time I wake up
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is because I want to know that average wake-up time.
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That average wake-up time
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informs what's called my temperature minimum.
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It tells me when my body temperature was lowest.
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The temperature minimum is the time in each 24-hour cycle
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that your body temperature is lowest.
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I don't sleep with a thermometer in my mouth or elsewhere,
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and I don't think you should either.
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Instead, I know that the lowest temperature
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that my body will be at across the 24-hour cycle
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tends to be two hours before my typical wake-up time,
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and I want to know that number.
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It's called our temperature minimum.
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So if you're somebody that typically wakes up at 8 a.m.,
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then your temperature minimum is sometime around 6 a.m.
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Remember, the temperature minimum
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is a time in the 24-hour cycle.
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I don't care what my actual temperature is.
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I care when my lowest temperature is,
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and I know that that lowest temperature
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is approximately two hours before my average wake-up time.
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So I highly recommend that you write down when you wake up
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or track that in some way that works for you
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and use that as a reference point
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to determine your temperature minimum.
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We will return to the temperature minimum
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and how you can leverage the temperature minimum
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for several things, shifting your clock,
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shifting your circadian sleep schedule and wake schedule,
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also for shifting your eating schedule, et cetera.
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We will return to that, but even if you don't travel,
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even if you don't care about things like jet lag,
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even if you sleep fabulously all year round,
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never have a poor night's sleep.
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Knowing your temperature minimum,
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that time when your temperature is at its lowest point,
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is a valuable thing to know.
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The second thing I do after I wake up
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is to get into forward ambulation,
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which is just nerd-speak for taking a walk.
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I have a dog, and as many of you know, he's a bulldog,
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and he doesn't really like to walk,
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especially not in the morning,
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but for humans and for animals,
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there's a phenomenon whereby
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when we generate our own forward motion,
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forward ambulation, visual images pass by us on our eyes,
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so-called optic flow.
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And for those of you that are low vision or no vision,
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the same phenomenon occurs in the auditory system.
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Sounds pass by us in so-called auditory flow.
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Getting into a mode of forward ambulation
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and especially experiencing visual flow
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has a powerful effect on the nervous system.
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The effect it has is essentially to quiet
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or reduce the amount of neural activity
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in this brain structure called the amygdala.
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Amygdala means almond,
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and many of you have probably heard about the amygdala
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for its role in anxiety and fear and threat detection,
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and indeed, the amygdala is part of the network in the brain
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that generates feelings of fear and threat and anxiety.
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It does a bunch of other things too,
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but that's one of its primary functions.
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There are now at least half a dozen quality papers
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published in quality peer review journals
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that show that forward ambulation,
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walking or biking or running,
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and generating optic flow in particular
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has this incredible property of lowering activity
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in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety.
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There are two papers that I'd like to highlight
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in particular that relate to this phenomenon.
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The first one was published in the journal Neuron,
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and the title of this paper
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is Whole Brain Functional Ultrasound Imaging.
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That just means they have a cool technique
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to evaluate the activity of structures in the brain
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across the entire brain,
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reveals brain modules for visual motor integration.
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What they found in this study,
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and I should mention the first author is Massey.
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This comes from Boton-Roska's group.
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This was work done in mice,
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but I will talk about other species in a moment.
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What they found was essentially
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that when these mice walk forward
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and their eyes move from side to side,
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which is a natural consequence of moving forward,
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so-called optic flow is flowing past their eyes,
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many brain areas are activated,
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increase in their level of firing,
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but the amygdala in particular reduced its levels of firing.
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That's a very interesting finding, but it is in mice.
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However, another paper,
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Eye Movement Intervention Enhances Extinction
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via Amygdala Deactivation
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was published in the Journal of Neuroscience,
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a strong journal, and shows that, again,
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these eye movements, these lateral eye movements
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from side to side reduce activity levels
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in this fear slash threat slash anxiety center in the brain,
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Now, those are eye movements.
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They didn't specifically look at forward ambulation,
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and yet other papers have looked at forward ambulation,
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and we know that forward ambulation, walking forward,
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generates the sorts of eye movements that cause optic flow
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and reductions in amygdala activation.
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So for me, this process of taking a walk each morning
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isn't about exercise.
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It's not about burning calories.
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It's not about any of that.
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It's really about getting into optic flow
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and reducing the levels of amygdala activation.
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Now, I don't have anxiety,
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at least I don't have chronic anxiety
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or generalized anxiety.
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I tend to have a lot of energy,
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but at these points in the morning,
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I'm not very energetic.
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Sometimes I'm sort of shuffling more than I'm walking,
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in fact, and Costello is almost always shuffling,
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and I'm almost always trying to drag him
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first thing in the morning,
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but that walk is a particularly important protocol each day
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because it really serves to push my neurology
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in the direction that I'd like it to go,
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which is alert but not anxious,
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and it's kind of a fine line sometimes,
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especially as events surface throughout the day,
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emails come in, text messages come in,
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get bombarded with a number of things.
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I want to be alert and responsive.
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I want to be able to focus,
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but I don't want to feel anxious or reactive to these things.
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So the forward ambulation and this optic flow
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is the way that I ensure, based on quality peer review data,
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that my amygdala activation is slightly suppressed.
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Now, at the same time, I also want the alertness.
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I want alert and focused.
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I don't just want to be sleepy or super relaxed.
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I want to have a high degree of focus and alertness
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because I'm soon going to move into a bout of work.
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I need to lean into the day.
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So in order to do that,
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I make sure that the walking is done outdoors.
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That might be sort of a duh,
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but many people get up and start moving around their house,
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their apartment, and they don't go anywhere,
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and just walking around inside,
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it will generate some optic flow,
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but nothing like the sort of optic flow
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that you can generate in larger environments,
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like outdoors environments.
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If you can't get outdoors,
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doing it indoors is perfectly fine,
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but it's not going to have the same magnitude
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of positive effect.
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Now, in order to get the alertness,
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I do it outdoors because I also want sunlight in my eyes.
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I know many of you have heard me talk about this ad nauseum
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on various podcasts and this podcast,
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but getting sunlight in your eyes first thing
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in the morning is absolutely vital
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to mental and physical health.
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It is perhaps the most important thing
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that any and all of us can and should do
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in order to promote metabolic wellbeing,
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promote the positive functioning of your hormone system,
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get your mental health steering in the right direction.
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There are a number of reasons for this,
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but before I get into those reasons,
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let me just emphasize what the protocol is.
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The protocol is get outdoors,
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ideally with no sunglasses if you can do that safely,
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even if there's cloud cover.
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More photons, light information are coming through that
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cloud cover than would be coming
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from a very bright indoor bulb.
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So getting outdoors is absolutely key.
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How long should you do this?
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It's going to depend on the brightness of the environment.
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It's going to depend on a number of different factors.
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Two minutes would be a minimum.
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10 minutes would be even better.
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And if you can, 30 minutes would be fantastic.
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Now it's a very bright day or you live in a place
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where there's bright sunlight, clear day on a snow field,
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you would only need something like 60 seconds,
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but most people aren't living in those sorts of conditions.
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So getting outside for a 10 minute walk or a 15 minute walk
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will basically ensure that you're getting
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adequate stimulation of these neurons in the eye
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that are called the melanopsin
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intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.
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I know that's a mouthful.
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These are neurons that don't care about shapes of objects
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or the motion of objects.
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These are neurons that convey to the brain
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that it's daytime and it's time to be alert.
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And it sets in motion a huge number of biological cascades
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within every cell and organ of your body,
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from your liver to your gut, to your heart, to your brain.
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It really sets things down the right path.
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Early in the day, we experience a natural and healthy bump
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in a hormone called cortisol.
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Cortisol comes from the amygdala.
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That cortisol, as I mentioned, is healthy and normal
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and promotes wakefulness.
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It actually promotes a healthy immune system.
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So I know you've heard that stress and cortisol
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disrupt the immune system,
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but not the short little pulse of cortisol
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that you get each morning.
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It's very important that that pulse of cortisol
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arrive early in the day.
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I want to emphasize this again.
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It's very important that that pulse of cortisol
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arrive early in the day.
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And that pulse of cortisol is going to happen
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once every 24 hours, no matter what.
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It's going to happen and you get to time it.
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How do you time it?
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Primarily by when you view bright sunlight
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or bright light of another kind.
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And we'll talk about that in a moment.
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So you want that cortisol pushed early.
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If you wake up before the sun comes out,
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it's fine to turn on artificial lights,
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but then you would want to get outside as soon as you can
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to get this natural light stimulation of your eyes.
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And it does have to be to your eyes.
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Just to really drill down into the details for a moment,
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you don't want to stare directly at the sun
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or any light that's so bright that it feels painful.
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If you feel like you have to close your eyes or blink,
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please do, you don't want to damage your retinas.
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The point here is to get the sunlight indirectly.
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It's going to essentially be scattered everywhere
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through the cloud cover,
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but you know from looking at a flashlight
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directly into that flashlight
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versus looking at the beam that flashlight generates
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on the ground, that if you're standing in the shade,
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you're going to get less of that sunlight than you are
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if you're out in an open field.
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So this is why the time outside,
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it's going to need to vary
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depending on your particular environment.
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But do your best to do this every day.
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If you miss a day, no big deal,
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but try not to miss more than one day.
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Otherwise your mental and physical health
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will start to suffer.
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And doing this each day costs nothing, it's just time.
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You can combine it with the forward ambulation with the walk
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and the optic flow that I talked about before.
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And that's what I do each morning
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to generate a sense of alertness in my body
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and brain to generate a sense of calm yet alert.
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And that's also what I do with Costello, with my bulldog.
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People have asked me,
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do these same mechanisms apply to animals?
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Well, the reality is many of these mechanisms
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were actually discovered in animals
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and then were tested in humans
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and verified that they also exist in humans.
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Not always, sometimes it was the reverse
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where they were tested first in humans
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and then brought to animals,
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but indeed your dog, your horse,
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I don't know what other animals are out there,
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Now, if you have a hamster or a nocturnal animal,
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the reason why they like to run on their wheels at night
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is because they're nocturnal,
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they don't like being in the light.
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Light actually causes them to freeze, right?
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Actually, if you are into aquaria, you like fish,
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they always say, don't overfeed your fish,
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you'll kill the fish, that's true.
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But guess what the fastest way to kill a fish is?
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To keep the lights on 24 hours a day.
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They also need circadian rhythms, these 24 hour rhythms.
link |
So we'll do an entire month at some point about pet health,
link |
but meanwhile, get that morning sunlight.
link |
So now we have our first protocol,
link |
which is to write down the time of day that you wake up.
link |
The second protocol is to take a walk
link |
first thing in the morning.
link |
And the third protocol is woven in with that walk,
link |
at least for me, which is to get that sunlight exposure.
link |
Now, if you can't get sunlight exposure,
link |
you absolutely can't.
link |
I don't necessarily recommend
link |
buying one of these dawn alarm lights.
link |
And I'm sorry to say this,
link |
but they're just vastly overpriced
link |
relative to what they are.
link |
They're basically a bright LED.
link |
I instead use, I have a pad that's a 930 lux light pad.
link |
I think it was designed for drawing.
link |
Those are available at a fraction of the cost
link |
that a morning light simulator would provide.
link |
And yet it's really bright enough, at least for me.
link |
I tend to put it on my desk while I work each morning.
link |
So here's a principle that you can leverage.
link |
If you want to be alert, view bright lights
link |
and make those lights above you or in front of you.
link |
If you want to go to sleep soon
link |
or you don't want to be awake for whatever reason,
link |
try and eliminate your exposure to light.
link |
And this is, again, is not about exposure
link |
of the skin to light.
link |
This is about exposure of your eyes,
link |
of your neural retinas to light.
link |
For those of you that are concerned about blue light,
link |
I want to emphasize that blue light
link |
is precisely the wavelength of light
link |
that is optimal for stimulating these neurons
link |
in your eye, which set your circadian rhythms properly.
link |
So you don't want to shield yourself
link |
from blue light early in the day or throughout the day
link |
or anytime you want to be awake.
link |
In fact, that could have a number
link |
of detrimental consequences.
link |
Fortunately, all those consequences
link |
are going to be reversible after a short period of time
link |
of making sure that you don't wear your blue blockers
link |
during the day, please.
link |
The time to wear blue blockers, if you do,
link |
is at night and in the evening
link |
when you're headed towards sleep.
link |
My colleague, Samir Hattar, who is head
link |
of the Chronobiology Unit
link |
at the National Institutes of Mental Health,
link |
has spoken about this before on my Instagram.
link |
We held an Instagram Live and I said,
link |
Samir, what do you think about blue blockers?
link |
And he said, I don't think that's a good idea at all
link |
unless it's really late at night
link |
and you're in a bright environment
link |
and you're trying to limit the amount of bright light
link |
that impacts the eyes.
link |
Eliminating specific wavelengths of light,
link |
in Samir's opinion, and also in my opinion,
link |
is not a natural thing for the visual system
link |
and the brain to experience.
link |
Some people get headaches while they work on the computer
link |
all day or staring at screens,
link |
and so they get blue blockers thinking
link |
that's going to protect them from their headaches.
link |
However, any protection that you get from headaches
link |
from blue blockers is going to be minimal
link |
in comparison to what's really going on there,
link |
which is that people are viewing devices
link |
and screens up close for too many hours
link |
throughout the 24-hour cycle.
link |
A better remedy would be to step away from that computer
link |
from time to time and to make sure
link |
that you can look far off into the distance,
link |
ideally a distance longer than 20 feet,
link |
like view a horizon, go out on a balcony,
link |
things of that sort, take a walk around,
link |
get into optic flow.
link |
So if you're into blue blockers,
link |
make sure you're only wearing them
link |
in the late evening and at night.
link |
I personally don't wear blue blockers at all.
link |
I prefer to just control my light viewing behavior
link |
I do the other form of circadian control,
link |
which is to dim the lights.
link |
And I do that because dimming the lights
link |
and setting them lower in the environment
link |
sets up the brain and body for sleep much better
link |
than simply just wearing some blue blockers, excuse me.
link |
And please know if you do wear blue blockers
link |
that if the light in your environment is bright enough,
link |
it doesn't matter if you're blocking out the blues.
link |
These cells in the eye will respond
link |
to other wavelengths of light.
link |
So I have no vendetta against the blue blockers
link |
and I fully expect the blue blockingistas to come after me
link |
with, I guess, blue blockers.
link |
But as you do that, please understand
link |
that the biology points in the direction
link |
of get a lot of bright light throughout the day,
link |
including blue light, and at night,
link |
just limit the total amount of overall light
link |
that you're exposed to, including from screens.
link |
So then Costello and I get back from our walk.
link |
Sometimes that walk was 10 minutes,
link |
sometimes it was 60 minutes,
link |
depending on how slowly Costello was walking that day.
link |
Indeed, many mornings,
link |
I'm the guy carrying his bulldog back up the hill.
link |
My neighbors know me so well, they know Costello so well,
link |
that they've since stopped pulling over
link |
and asking if the dog is okay.
link |
Sometimes they'll ask if I'm okay.
link |
Nonetheless, we get back, I give him his food,
link |
I give him his water, and I give me my water.
link |
I'm a big believer based on quality peer review data
link |
that hydration is essential for mental performance.
link |
Now, I confess, I don't really like drinking big glasses
link |
or big jugs of water first thing in the morning.
link |
but my thirst doesn't tend to kick in first thing.
link |
You may be different.
link |
Either way, I force myself essentially to drink at least 16
link |
and most days, 32 ounces of water.
link |
I also put a little bit of sea salt in the water.
link |
As many of you know, neurons require ionic flow.
link |
What that means is neurons need sodium,
link |
they need magnesium,
link |
and they need potassium in order to function.
link |
We do tend to get dehydrated at night,
link |
even if the day is not very hot,
link |
I try and top off or I try and make sure
link |
that I'm hydrated early in the day before I begin any work.
link |
So I make myself drink this water
link |
with a little bit of sea salt.
link |
How much sea salt, if you really want to get detailed,
link |
I suppose it's about half a teaspoon, it's not much.
link |
And I drink that more or less room temperature.
link |
I find that drinking really cold water
link |
first thing in the day kind of like cramps up my insides,
link |
so I don't do that.
link |
At that point, I start thinking about
link |
and fantasizing about and craving caffeine,
link |
but I don't drink that caffeine yet.
link |
I purposely delay my caffeine intake
link |
to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up.
link |
Of course, I know when I wake up because I wrote it down,
link |
although it's pretty easy to commit to memory.
link |
The reason I delay caffeine is because one of the factors
link |
that induces a sense of sleepiness
link |
is the buildup of adenosine,
link |
or as some people call it adenosine in our system.
link |
The buildup of adenosine accumulates
link |
the longer we are awake.
link |
So when I wake up in the morning,
link |
when you wake up in the morning,
link |
your adenosine levels are likely to be very low.
link |
However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker.
link |
It's actually a competitive antagonist for you aficionados.
link |
It sort of parks in the receptor
link |
that adenosine normally would park at
link |
and prevents adenosine from acting on that receptor.
link |
That's why you feel more alert
link |
because it's essentially blocking the effect
link |
of this sleepiness factor that we all create
link |
The reason for delaying caffeine intake
link |
90 minutes to two hours after waking
link |
is I want to make sure that I don't have a late afternoon
link |
or even early afternoon crash from caffeine.
link |
One of the best ways to ensure a caffeine crash
link |
is to drink a bunch of caffeine,
link |
block all those adenosine receptors,
link |
and then by early or late afternoon,
link |
when that caffeine starts to wear off
link |
and gets dislodged from the receptors,
link |
a lower level of adenosine
link |
is able to create a greater level of sleepiness.
link |
It took me years to figure this out.
link |
I used to wake up and I'd think,
link |
oh, I don't want to drink caffeine too close to bedtime,
link |
so I'm going to start drinking my caffeine really early.
link |
I let my cortisol naturally come up in the morning.
link |
I avoid drinking caffeine
link |
until about 90 minutes or two hours after waking.
link |
And when I do that,
link |
I find that I don't experience the afternoon crash.
link |
At least I don't experience that crash
link |
unless I do something foolish
link |
like ingest far too much food at lunch
link |
or I stay up all night the night before.
link |
But provided I don't do anything foolish like that,
link |
delaying caffeine at 90 minutes to two hours
link |
optimizes this relationship between adenosine
link |
and wakefulness and sleepiness
link |
in a way that really provides a nice consistent arc
link |
of energy throughout the day
link |
and brings energy down as I'm headed toward sleep
link |
and falling asleep.
link |
My primary objective early in the day
link |
is to get into a mode of being focused yet alert
link |
so that I can get work done.
link |
I found that the best way for me to achieve that state
link |
is through fasting.
link |
So I don't eat anything until about 11 a.m. or 12 noon.
link |
I'm not absolutely religious about it.
link |
There are days when I'll have a few Brazil nuts
link |
or a spoonful or three of almond butter, for instance,
link |
but most days I'm not doing that.
link |
I'm just not eating anything.
link |
I'm drinking some caffeine.
link |
Caffeine source for me is yerba mate, guayusa tea.
link |
Those are my preferred sources.
link |
I tend to avoid coffee these days.
link |
Occasionally I'll have a cup,
link |
but most often I stick to the teas.
link |
I drink water as much as I feel I need to and want to.
link |
And I also drink my athletic greens,
link |
which is compatible at least for me with fasting.
link |
Let's talk about why fasting works to create
link |
this heightened state of alertness yet calm brain state.
link |
Fasting increases levels of adrenaline,
link |
also called epinephrine in the brain and body.
link |
And when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline
link |
are increased, we learn better, we can focus better.
link |
There's terrific data supporting that.
link |
You don't want epinephrine, aka adrenaline, too high.
link |
That feels like stress and panic.
link |
You get jittery, you can't focus.
link |
But in its optimal range,
link |
adrenaline really provides a heightened sense of focus
link |
and the ability to encode,
link |
meaning bring in and retain, remember information.
link |
And so since my job is mainly a cerebral one
link |
where I'm writing grants and working on papers, et cetera,
link |
I fast in the early part of the day.
link |
I mentioned ingesting things like guayusa or yerba mate,
link |
or in my case, athletic greens.
link |
Many people ask, in fact,
link |
there's a whole community and discussion boards, et cetera,
link |
and YouTube comments on the internet
link |
about what breaks a fast and what doesn't.
link |
The fact of the matter is
link |
that's going to be highly individual
link |
because it's going to depend
link |
on how sensitive your blood sugar is.
link |
And more accurately, it's going to depend
link |
on things like your insulin sensitivity.
link |
if you're somebody who gets up in the morning,
link |
hydrates and goes out for a six mile run,
link |
you could probably eat a jar of almond butter
link |
and still be what's called fat fasted.
link |
Your insulin levels will still be very low
link |
because even though that is a large volume of almond butter,
link |
even to me and Costello,
link |
that large number of calories come from a source
link |
that doesn't increase blood sugar very much
link |
and insulin very much.
link |
Now, I'm not suggesting you do that,
link |
but what I just described is a vastly different situation
link |
than somebody that ate their last meal at 2 a.m.
link |
and that meal was essentially a feast.
link |
And for that person,
link |
fasting until 10 or 11 a.m.,
link |
their blood sugar might still actually be pretty high
link |
or even low-ish such that they might eat one almond
link |
and it would bump them out of fasting.
link |
So you get the idea.
link |
It's going to depend on your recent eating history,
link |
your blood sugar history,
link |
your glycogen stores, et cetera.
link |
So if anyone tells you that breaks a fast or that doesn't,
link |
that's kind of silly.
link |
Would one grain of sugar break your fast?
link |
Would an entire tablespoon of sugar break your fast?
link |
You'll get a big blip in blood sugar and insulin from that.
link |
However, how long that lasts,
link |
how long it breaks your fast will depend
link |
on how glycogen depleted you are
link |
and a number of other factors.
link |
So for me, I just keep it fairly simple.
link |
I ingest water, caffeine from yerba mate and guayusa,
link |
and I drink my athletic greens with some lemon juice in it.
link |
That constitutes my fasting.
link |
And there are days when I do all those things.
link |
There are days when I do none of those things.
link |
Although most days,
link |
I would say about 355 days out of the year,
link |
I'm ingesting water, caffeine, and athletic greens
link |
during this period of fasting early in the day.
link |
And that's the period of time when I do my work.
link |
One interesting fact about yerba mate and guayusa teas
link |
is that they increase release of something called GLP-1.
link |
GLP-1 is related to glucagon.
link |
Glucagon is a hormone that you can sort of think about
link |
as opposite to insulin and blood sugar.
link |
It's more complex than that,
link |
but GLP-1 has a couple of positive properties.
link |
One is it increases lipolysis
link |
and mobilization of body fat stores, so burning of fat.
link |
In fact, there are now a number of clinical trials
link |
that are achieving good success,
link |
and there are drugs out there only available by prescription
link |
and are being used to treat quite successfully
link |
certain types of diabetes and obesity.
link |
Now, I'm not diabetic,
link |
nor am I trying to shed a ton of body fat,
link |
but I figure as long as I'm fasting,
link |
and as long as I like yerba mate and guayusa,
link |
which I do, they're delicious,
link |
I'll tell you which type I use in a moment,
link |
I might as well increase my GLP-1
link |
because it's probably not as good as getting out
link |
and doing some cardio work,
link |
but nonetheless, if I'm fasted,
link |
increasing GLP-1 in my system,
link |
I'm going to be alert from the caffeine,
link |
the adrenaline, et cetera,
link |
and I'm going to be burning body fat while I'm doing my work.
link |
So for me, it's just an efficient biochemically rational,
link |
or I should say grounded in quality biochemistry
link |
Yerba mate comes in a lot of different forms.
link |
There are a lot of different brands out there, et cetera.
link |
I don't have any relationship whatsoever
link |
in a business sense to any of these brands.
link |
Some of them are very smoky.
link |
I, just because of something in my genetic makeup,
link |
or I don't know, maybe it was some sort of Y chromosome
link |
associated lesion early in life,
link |
but I don't like smoky flavors,
link |
so I'm not a Gouda cheese guy.
link |
I don't like smoky stuff.
link |
You may love it, but I tend to avoid smoky tasting mates.
link |
Instead, there's a particular brand
link |
that I just found on the internet called Anna Park.
link |
I don't know Anna.
link |
I don't know if she has a park,
link |
and I certainly don't know what Anna Park is,
link |
but for me, that's the best tasting Yerba mate.
link |
Again, I don't have any relationship to them,
link |
but it's affordable in the context of Yerba mate,
link |
and it's the one that I use,
link |
and I should mention along the lines of affordability
link |
and GLP-1 is there's a nice feature of Yerba mate,
link |
which is if you put it in a filter or a metal strainer
link |
and you pour hot water over it and then drink it,
link |
The Yerba mate leaves can be used over and over again.
link |
It seems that the GLP-1 stimulating aspects of mate
link |
actually are enhanced with subsequent pour overs,
link |
so there's something interesting about these teas
link |
that my tea aficionado friends tell me
link |
allows the tea to release more of some
link |
of the beneficial compounds by reusing the tea leaves.
link |
Now, eventually, it'll grow mold
link |
and other sorts of disgusting things.
link |
You don't really want to run that experiment.
link |
I would say you can use it for a day or two
link |
before it starts to go bad,
link |
but that's a feature that will extend the life
link |
of whatever Yerba mate you happen to use
link |
if you decide to use it, and that's certainly what I do.
link |
Next, I want to talk about what I'm doing
link |
while I'm drinking all this Yerba mate,
link |
because I'm not just sitting there
link |
thinking about all the GLP-1 circulating in my system.
link |
A couple of things for optimizing workspace
link |
that are grounded in neuroscience and physiology.
link |
I've talked before about the fact
link |
that when our eyes are directed upward,
link |
literally when our eyelids are open, no surprise there,
link |
and when our eyes are directed upward,
link |
it creates a state of heightened alertness,
link |
and this has a relationship to the brainstem neurons
link |
that create alertness and their control
link |
over the muscles of the eye
link |
and, believe it or not, the eyelids.
link |
Now, it's not the case that if you are absolutely exhausted
link |
and you need to feel more alert,
link |
that looking upward is going to make you feel wide awake,
link |
although it will help support your levels of alertness.
link |
The point here is that you can optimize your workstation
link |
in a physical way that leverages this aspect
link |
of the visual system and your level of alertness.
link |
Since most of us want to be awake while we're working,
link |
try and position your screen or your tablet,
link |
whatever device you happen to be working on,
link |
at least at eye level and ideally slightly higher.
link |
If you think about it, most people are not doing this.
link |
Most people are looking down at their computer or tablet
link |
or are angling their eyes at their screen
link |
at about 30 degrees.
link |
That is not going to support heightened states of alertness
link |
and optimal attention.
link |
In fact, the opposite relationship between eye position
link |
and alertness is also true.
link |
When we look down, when our eyelids are slightly closed,
link |
it tends to decrease our levels of alertness
link |
and increase our levels of sleepiness.
link |
I really want to emphasize this,
link |
that there's a bi-directional or reciprocal relationship
link |
between the brainstem areas that control alertness
link |
and the eyes, meaning how alert you are
link |
controls how open or close your eyes are,
link |
no surprise there, but also that how open
link |
and upward directed your eyes are
link |
will increase your levels of alertness.
link |
And if your eyes are pointed downward
link |
and your eyelids are hooded, like they're slowly closing,
link |
like Costello's always are, you'll feel more sleepy,
link |
especially if you're somebody who tends to have
link |
that mid-morning sleepiness or mid-morning crash.
link |
So what I do is I have a standing desk,
link |
but I also prop the computer up
link |
such that it's at least at eye level.
link |
And I haven't figured out yet how to develop a workstation
link |
where the computer is above me.
link |
I think the only way to really do that
link |
is actually to tilt one's body back,
link |
but actually that's not a good idea either.
link |
They have done studies recording from areas of the brain
link |
associated with alertness, areas like locus coeruleus
link |
and the so-called reticular activating system.
link |
They found is that depending on how reclined you are
link |
or upright you are, you will decrease with reclining
link |
and increase with sitting forward your levels of alertness.
link |
So body posture and whether or not you're upright
link |
or reclining will impact your levels of alertness
link |
in the predictable ways.
link |
And where you position your eyes,
link |
whether or not your eyes are upright, so to speak,
link |
looking up or directly forward,
link |
or looking down will dictate whether or not
link |
you are feeling more alert or more sleepy respectively.
link |
So try and arrange a workstation or a position
link |
of your body and your chair or your standing desk,
link |
whatever it is, that allows you to work
link |
with a heightened state of alertness.
link |
This is really, really key for me
link |
because I found that when I would sit down,
link |
not only would my hip flexors start to get sore,
link |
I'd feel tight in the back, et cetera,
link |
but if I was staring down at my screen all day
link |
or even for short periods of the day,
link |
I would start to feel sleepy
link |
and I couldn't figure out what was going on.
link |
I also thought maybe I needed glasses.
link |
I do wear readers at night, but it was really a problem.
link |
And simply by getting the screen directly in front of me
link |
at eye level, it's been completely transformative.
link |
So we're now at the description of my day
link |
and these protocols in which I would do
link |
a 90-minute bout of work.
link |
Now, why 90 minutes?
link |
Well, the brain is going through these 90-minute
link |
so-called ultradian cycles
link |
throughout the entire day and night.
link |
Every 90 minutes, we shift over from being very alert
link |
to being less alert and then back to alert again.
link |
Here's how it works.
link |
At the start of one of these 90-minute ultradian cycles,
link |
my brain is not quite engaged
link |
in whatever it is I'm trying to do.
link |
Oftentimes, I have things jumping into my mind.
link |
I've got distractions, et cetera.
link |
I'll talk about how to deal with those distractions
link |
in a moment, but I set a timer for 90 minutes
link |
and I try and get a strong bout of work done
link |
inside of that 90 minutes with the full understanding
link |
that the entire 90 minutes is not going to be uniform
link |
in terms of my ability of focus.
link |
There will be kind of peaks and valleys within that,
link |
but that 90 minutes is about what the brain can handle
link |
in terms of a dedicated effort for high degree of focus.
link |
Some people can push out a little bit further.
link |
Some people can't handle more than 10 minutes,
link |
but that's what I'm striving toward.
link |
You'd be amazed how much you can get done in 90 minutes
link |
if you are focused.
link |
So how do you increase that focus
link |
and how do you use the timer feature?
link |
Well, you can combine those.
link |
I use a program called Freedom.
link |
It shuts me out of the internet completely.
link |
So that means no checking the markets,
link |
no checking social media, no checking the news,
link |
no checking email, none of that.
link |
I get a dedicated bout of work done.
link |
I confess, I don't allow myself to go to the restroom
link |
in that period of time.
link |
Here's an interesting little tip
link |
that's grounded in physiology.
link |
You have a direct neural connection from your bladder
link |
to your brainstem areas that increase alertness.
link |
This is why when you have to go to the bathroom,
link |
when you have to urinate, it is extremely agitating, right?
link |
It can be very, very agitating.
link |
I'm not encouraging you to get so agitated
link |
by filling your bladder so much
link |
and resisting going to the bathroom
link |
that you are uncomfortable and can't focus.
link |
But I generally will just drink liquids
link |
and work away and work away
link |
and I won't walk away to go use the bathroom
link |
unless I absolutely have to.
link |
Sort of odd that we're talking about this,
link |
but this is one way in which I've learned
link |
to funnel my attention into whatever it is I'm doing.
link |
Because as you all know,
link |
the moment you sit down to do some serious work
link |
and you flip off the internet,
link |
all of a sudden it's as if the phone has a voice.
link |
It starts calling you.
link |
It's almost as if the restroom has a voice.
link |
But we all are familiar with the fact
link |
that if we are focused on something
link |
that all that just kind of melts away.
link |
So the goal is to get into what I call the tunnel,
link |
to really get into a tunnel of quality work.
link |
The brain loves that state,
link |
but it's very hard for many of us to access.
link |
My phone is absolutely off.
link |
It's not on airplane mode.
link |
It's absolutely off during this time.
link |
If I've been struggling with that
link |
and I confess there are times when for whatever reason,
link |
something going on in life,
link |
it's been harder to put away the phone.
link |
I will sometimes put it in my car.
link |
I used to joke that I used to throw it up on the roof
link |
or something like that.
link |
Look, I've done and I suggest people do whatever they need
link |
to in order to self-regulate that activity.
link |
And if you're somebody that feels
link |
that you absolutely need to be on your phone
link |
and on the computer for this work bout
link |
or the work that you do,
link |
well, that's a different matter altogether.
link |
This is just simply how I work.
link |
So I will do 90 minutes
link |
and I do set a timer and I turn on the program.
link |
Freedom locks me out of the internet.
link |
If someone rings on the doorbell,
link |
I will often shout not coming to the doorbell,
link |
I mean, unless there's a real emergency,
link |
I'm not going to step away from that work.
link |
I learned how to do this when I was a graduate student
link |
under different conditions where I used to slice brains
link |
on what's called a microtome.
link |
So I used to spend time just cutting very thin slices.
link |
It's like a deli slicer,
link |
but for a brain of various types of brains
link |
and I've sectioned through a lot of brains.
link |
And we had a rule,
link |
which is that when the blade hits the brain,
link |
you don't stop pulling, even though it's very, very slow,
link |
even if a nuclear bomb goes off,
link |
even if a fire alarm goes off.
link |
Now, I don't want anyone burning to a crisp
link |
because they didn't step away from their workflow.
link |
That would be foolish.
link |
But that's the mentality that I've embedded in myself
link |
that there's nothing more important
link |
than what I'm doing in that 90 minute block.
link |
And that's what works for me.
link |
You can try various other things.
link |
That's what works for me.
link |
In addition, I use low-level white noise.
link |
This is something that is supported
link |
by quality peer-reviewed data.
link |
We covered this on the episode on hearing and balance,
link |
but it turns out that white noise,
link |
which is essentially all frequencies of sound,
link |
or all frequencies of sound that we can perceive,
link |
mixed up kind of randomly, there's no structure to it,
link |
turned on at a low volume,
link |
not with headphones most of the time,
link |
puts the brain into a state
link |
that's optimal for learning and workflow.
link |
And I covered two papers during that episode,
link |
one that showed that indeed,
link |
brain area is involved in attention,
link |
brain area is involved in focus and cognition and memory.
link |
Those are engaged to a greater degree
link |
when there is low levels of white noise
link |
playing in the background.
link |
The other paper that's really interesting did brain imaging
link |
and showed that areas of the brain
link |
that are associated with dopamine release
link |
are increased by low levels of white noise.
link |
Dopamine release is associated not just with pleasure,
link |
but with motivation and craving.
link |
So everything about this 90-minute block
link |
from the low levels of white noise
link |
to the position of my computer, how I'm standing,
link |
where my eyes are positioned,
link |
is geared towards putting me in this tunnel of work.
link |
And I have to say that while it can be a challenge
link |
to try and achieve this state and this tunnel of work,
link |
some days you start to get kind of addicted to it.
link |
It feels really good.
link |
It's like a workout for the mind.
link |
And it is something that as you exit that 90 minutes,
link |
you really feel like you've accomplished a lot
link |
because often you have,
link |
and it just feels deeply satisfying.
link |
And I'm convinced that that's because of the release
link |
of neuromodulators like dopamine and the norepinephrine
link |
that's circulating in your system.
link |
And I want to be clear
link |
that I'm not perfect about this 90 minutes.
link |
Occasionally I get drawn away.
link |
Occasionally something will happen
link |
or I'll go use the restroom
link |
or Costello will have a need
link |
or somebody will have a need that I will have to respond to.
link |
But I really try and achieve this
link |
most if not every day that I'm alive
link |
because for me, that work session is kind of holy.
link |
It's where I set up a relationship,
link |
not just between me and the work that I'm doing,
link |
but between me and my ability to control
link |
my own state of mind using these various supports
link |
of the white noise, et cetera.
link |
But really those supports are peripheral
link |
to the fact that I'm creating this space.
link |
I'm funneling my brain into a state
link |
rather than allowing whatever events and contexts
link |
on social media and elsewhere
link |
might be occurring in the world
link |
that would yank me out of what for me is my purpose
link |
and my mission in life,
link |
which is to do the sorts of work that I do.
link |
There's a powerful way in which you can place the timing
link |
of this 90 minute work bout in an optimal way.
link |
You have access to a very important piece of data
link |
that dictates when this bout should start more or less
link |
and when it should end.
link |
That piece of data is your temperature minimum.
link |
If you're somebody who wakes up on average at 7 a.m.,
link |
well then your temperature minimum is 5 a.m.
link |
And you can be reasonably sure,
link |
I won't underscore reasonably,
link |
but you can be reasonably sure that your best work
link |
is going to be done anywhere from four to six hours
link |
after your temperature minimum.
link |
So for me, I tend to wake up around 6.30 a.m.
link |
That means my temperature minimum is at 4.30 a.m.
link |
You can add five hours to that.
link |
So that means that a 90 minute work bout
link |
could fall at 9.30 a.m. and it would be fairly optimized.
link |
Or I could do it at 10.30 a.m.
link |
Or I could do it at 8.30 a.m., somewhere in there.
link |
We can't say that it's exactly six hours
link |
after your temperature minimum.
link |
You will find it, however,
link |
there is a precise and best time for you
link |
to do this 90 minute work bout.
link |
Whether or not it's five or six hours
link |
after your temperature minimum
link |
is going to vary from person to person.
link |
How do I know this?
link |
How do I know this relationship
link |
between temperature minimum and focused cognition?
link |
Well, temperature minimum defines the trough,
link |
the nadir, as they say, of your temperature
link |
across the 24 hour cycle.
link |
And immediately after that,
link |
your temperature will start to rise.
link |
That temperature rise is actually what triggers
link |
the initial cortisol release that you experience
link |
and wakes you up further.
link |
And then of course that sunlight that you're getting
link |
is going to further enhance that healthy release of cortisol.
link |
That cortisol will then provide fuel, if you will,
link |
for that increase in temperature.
link |
And your body will continue to increase in temperature
link |
throughout the day toward the afternoon.
link |
What you're trying to do in this idea
link |
of optimizing this 90 minute work bout
link |
to a particular time of day
link |
is catch the portion of the steepest slope
link |
of that temperature rise.
link |
Now, again, you're not walking around with a thermocouple
link |
or a thermometer in some orifice of your body.
link |
So you don't have accurate information about temperature,
link |
but you can make very good guesses
link |
about when your body temperature is rising fastest
link |
by virtue of that temperature minimum.
link |
So again, just to be clear, it's a 90 minute work bout.
link |
That's about what the brain can handle
link |
for a very intense work bout.
link |
Do understand again,
link |
that there are going to be portions of that 90 minute
link |
that your brain is flickering in and out of focus,
link |
other portions where you're going to be entirely focused,
link |
that's entirely normal.
link |
But when to place that 90 minute work bout,
link |
when to start it and when to end it
link |
will depend on that temperature minimum.
link |
So if you're somebody who wakes up at 8 a.m. each morning,
link |
your temperature minimum is 6 a.m.,
link |
chances are you're going to want to start this work bout
link |
somewhere around 10 a.m. or 11 a.m.
link |
Now, some people wake up and feel very alert
link |
first thing in the morning.
link |
They can really do their best work
link |
first thing in the morning.
link |
Please, if that's you, continue to do that.
link |
Leverage that time, use that time.
link |
But if you're somebody who struggles to find focus,
link |
definitely let your physiology
link |
and this rise in your body temperature
link |
support your efforts to focus
link |
rather than trying to do your best work at times of day
link |
when your physiology is actually directing your body
link |
and your brain toward defocus
link |
and towards being more lethargic.
link |
It just is setting yourself up for success
link |
when you try and capture
link |
this rising phase of your temperature.
link |
So up until now, we've been emphasizing practices
link |
that allow you to optimize your level of alertness
link |
and your levels of mental focus.
link |
Data going back to the 1990s supports the idea
link |
that physical movement of particular kinds
link |
can support brain health and brain function,
link |
both in the immediate term and in the longterm.
link |
Now, this is at a profound impact
link |
on the field of neuroscience,
link |
but frankly, it's also at a profound impact
link |
on how I structure my day.
link |
So after I've finished a bout of work,
link |
this 90-minute bout of work,
link |
I force myself some days, other days I want to,
link |
but I force myself to do some sort of physical exercise
link |
that is going to be supportive of my brain health
link |
and brain function and organ health
link |
and bodily function in general.
link |
So I just briefly want to touch on
link |
what the structure of that exercise looks like,
link |
how it's structured within the day
link |
and how it's structured across the weeks, in fact,
link |
based on the scientific data
link |
and what the scientific data say is best or optimal
link |
in order to promote longevity of the brain,
link |
ability to focus, as well as cardiovascular health
link |
and all the other things that we know exercise supports.
link |
Now, there are various forms of physical activity,
link |
or what we call exercise,
link |
but those can generally be batched into two categories.
link |
First is strength and hypertrophy work,
link |
so physical movements that are designed
link |
to make you stronger and or make your muscles larger.
link |
There's also endurance work,
link |
physical exercise and movements that are designed
link |
to allow you to do more work over time
link |
or to extend the amount of time that you can do work
link |
of any kind, both physical and mental.
link |
And we did two full podcast episodes
link |
on the details and the science
link |
and the protocols related to these topics.
link |
We did an episode on the science of strength
link |
and hypertrophy, of building strength and muscle building,
link |
and that included a lot of protocols.
link |
And we did an episode on endurance,
link |
how to build any one or all of the four types of endurance,
link |
which are muscular endurance, anaerobic, aerobic,
link |
long-distance endurance, et cetera.
link |
So if you're interested in the specifics
link |
of those protocols, please see those episodes.
link |
However, right now, I just want to emphasize
link |
how the data impact my day and how I structure my day
link |
in a way that I can incorporate physical movement
link |
in a way that supports my brain and health.
link |
Basically, after I finish that cognitive workout,
link |
that 90-minute workout,
link |
I do some form of physical exercise for about an hour.
link |
The data all point to the fact that working out hard
link |
for longer than an hour can actually be detrimental
link |
because of the way that it raises cortisol,
link |
and cortisol can be a good thing
link |
if it's appropriately timed and in the appropriate low levels
link |
but you don't want to have your cortisol levels up
link |
throughout the day or have big spikes
link |
of cortisol repeatedly.
link |
So keeping workouts relatively short
link |
can definitely help with that.
link |
And certainly, if you're training hard,
link |
60 minutes or less should be more than sufficient.
link |
And for many people, including myself,
link |
45 minutes or 50 minutes is probably even more optimal.
link |
The basic design of this physical exercise
link |
is that it be approximately 60 minutes,
link |
so maybe 60 plus or minus 15 minutes
link |
should be well within the margins
link |
of keeping hormonal health proper and not going too long
link |
nor making the workout so short that it's not beneficial.
link |
And essentially, what the data tell us
link |
is that in order to optimize cardiovascular and brain health
link |
and other systems of the body,
link |
we want to exercise at least five days per week.
link |
I know that seems like a lot.
link |
It certainly is a lot for certain people.
link |
Some of you, you compulsive exercisers might gasp
link |
at the idea of taking two days off.
link |
I personally find that taking two full days off per week
link |
is actually both beneficial
link |
to my exercise training performance as well as pleasant.
link |
I like those rest days.
link |
But essentially, the structure of the exercise regimen
link |
that works for sake of supporting health
link |
is going to be one in which there's a three to two ratio,
link |
where for a 12-week period or so, maybe 10 to 12 weeks,
link |
three of those five workouts per week
link |
emphasize strength and hypertrophy,
link |
and the other two emphasize endurance.
link |
Then after 10 or 12 weeks,
link |
one switches over to a 10 or 12-week regimen
link |
of doing a three to two ratio
link |
where you're prioritizing endurance work.
link |
So primarily, the sorts of workouts
link |
that are described in the endurance episode
link |
and those protocols and the other two days,
link |
you're focusing on strength and hypertrophy work
link |
merely to maintain strength and hypertrophy,
link |
to not lose the strength and hypertrophy that you've created.
link |
And there are a lot of data now supporting the fact
link |
that maintaining muscular health and bone health
link |
is supported by resistance training,
link |
weight training of various kinds.
link |
It can also be done with body weight
link |
if you don't have access to equipment.
link |
And of course, that doing cardiovascular endurance work
link |
is very beneficial both to the muscles of the body,
link |
the organs of the body, but also to the brain.
link |
Many of you have probably heard
link |
that doing physical exercise of various kinds
link |
can support the production of new neurons in the brain.
link |
Frankly, those data are specific to research animals.
link |
As far as we know, increases in neuron number
link |
are not supported by exercise in humans.
link |
There's a little bit of data that supports
link |
that maybe a few neurons might get created
link |
by running or weightlifting or things of that sort
link |
in human beings, but there's still a host of other reasons
link |
to have this hour or so per day
link |
where one is doing physical exercise.
link |
And those include increased blood flow to the brain.
link |
Remember, the brain is an organ too.
link |
It's the most metabolically demanding organ in your body,
link |
and it's receiving those metabolic factors.
link |
It's receiving its fuels by way of vasculature,
link |
of blood vessels and capillaries and veins
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
So movement is very crucial
link |
to get your brain to function properly.
link |
Movement of various kinds is very important
link |
to get your brain to function properly.
link |
Resistance training turns out to be as important
link |
as endurance training because of the way
link |
that it stimulates the release of particular hormones
link |
actually from bones, things like osteocalcin,
link |
which can positively impact brain function
link |
and can support the health of existing neurons
link |
as opposed to increasing the number of neurons.
link |
Turns out increasing the number of neurons
link |
may not actually be as beneficial as we think.
link |
It all sounds great, more neurons, more neurons.
link |
Certainly more neurons is better than fewer neurons
link |
and losing neurons, but incorporating new neurons
link |
into existing brain circuitry is actually very challenging
link |
for the brain to do.
link |
I make sure that after that work about,
link |
I get this one hour or so of exercise five days per week
link |
because of the ways that it supports my general health.
link |
And there are now hundreds of studies supporting the fact
link |
that both endurance work and strength training
link |
or hypertrophy training done in combination,
link |
meaning not necessarily in the same workout,
link |
but done across the week is immensely beneficial
link |
for the production of things
link |
like brain-derived nootropic factor,
link |
for limiting inflammatory cytokines like IL-6,
link |
for promoting anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL-10,
link |
provided that exercise is of the proper duration
link |
and that it's not so intense
link |
that you're actually creating damage
link |
to the various systems of the body.
link |
Now, where is the threshold
link |
between optimal sub-threshold and detrimental?
link |
This is a complicated theme
link |
if we don't put some structure around it.
link |
So let's put a little bit of structure around it.
link |
We already said that about 60 minutes,
link |
so 60 minutes plus or minus 15 minutes
link |
is going to be optimal for all these health benefits.
link |
What about the structure of the actual workouts?
link |
Well, we need to address this issue of intensity.
link |
A good rule of thumb based on the literature,
link |
and I discussed this with Dr. Andy Galpin
link |
prior to the strength and hypertrophy
link |
and the endurance episodes,
link |
and the literature that's published
link |
in quality peer-reviewed journals
link |
really points to the fact
link |
that approximately 80% of the resistance training you do
link |
should be resistance training
link |
that doesn't go to what they call failure,
link |
where you can't actually move the resistance anymore.
link |
The other 20% can be of the higher intensity
link |
to failure type training.
link |
Now, with respect to endurance work,
link |
one can build up endurance
link |
without having to log long, long mileage
link |
or extensive mileage in the pool or by running,
link |
and that's because there are these other forms of endurance
link |
that can build up, for instance,
link |
the capillary beds within the muscles.
link |
Building up the capillary beds within the muscles
link |
will allow more oxygen utilization within the muscles,
link |
and thereby will increase your endurance,
link |
both of the muscles,
link |
but also will improve brain metabolism
link |
and the way that the heart functions
link |
of cardiovascular function.
link |
That 80-20 rule of less than failure and work to failure
link |
in the resistance exercise regime
link |
can be transported or translated
link |
to the endurance exercise portion
link |
by focusing on that thing that we're familiar with,
link |
which is the burn.
link |
When we're running hard or cycling hard,
link |
we'll experience a kind of burning of the muscles
link |
that's associated with the lactate system.
link |
During the episode on endurance,
link |
I pointed out that that burn is not lactic acid.
link |
Contrary to common belief, it is not lactic acid.
link |
It's associated with lactate metabolism,
link |
and again, about 80% of the endurance work
link |
should not incorporate that so-called burn,
link |
but if 20% of that work or so,
link |
I should say approximately 20% of that work
link |
does include the so-called burning sensation,
link |
that burning sensation actually triggers the activation
link |
of release of certain compounds and molecules from glia,
link |
this brain cell type that supports neuron health,
link |
and actually the lactate system
link |
is its own form of fuel for the brain,
link |
and so there's increasing interest
link |
in generating the lactate or pushing past
link |
that lactate threshold for small portion,
link |
20% or so of endurance work
link |
in order to support brain health and function.
link |
So what does this all look like as a protocol?
link |
Well, as I mentioned before, this three to two ratio,
link |
so maybe you spend 10 weeks or so or 12 weeks or so
link |
focusing mainly on endurance work,
link |
three workouts per week on endurance work,
link |
80% of those workouts, meaning 80% of the time
link |
you're below that burn threshold,
link |
you are not experiencing a burning sensation,
link |
but that for 20% of it, you are,
link |
that based on the scientific data
link |
should support lactate metabolism, brain health, et cetera,
link |
as well as cardiovascular health and oxygen utilization,
link |
all the forms of endurance that we're aware of,
link |
and then the other two workouts
link |
would involve resistance training,
link |
again, with this 80-20 split,
link |
where 80% of the work is not to failure and 20% is,
link |
and then maybe after 10, 12 weeks, you switch,
link |
where you start emphasizing strength and hypertrophy work
link |
for three of the workouts
link |
and endurance work for two of the workouts.
link |
Now, of course, some of you will be able
link |
to train six days a week,
link |
or you'll compulsively need to train seven days a week.
link |
If you decide to do that,
link |
please be aware that this cortisol threshold
link |
So for me, the three to two ratio works out perfectly
link |
because I like two full days off a week.
link |
When I take those really depends on my schedule
link |
and how I'm feeling.
link |
Sometimes it's two days in a row,
link |
sometimes they're interspersed throughout the week,
link |
but in reviewing the scientific literature
link |
for those two episodes of the podcast
link |
and in talking to people who are really informed
link |
in the world of resistance training and endurance training
link |
and how that relates to brain health and body health,
link |
this seems to be the most rational and grounded protocol.
link |
So that's the one that I follow.
link |
So on any given day, I finish that work block and I train.
link |
I do some sort of resistance or endurance training.
link |
I put those on alternate days or different days, rather.
link |
So we've now talked about the arc that spans
link |
all the way from waking to a morning bout of focused work
link |
to physical training.
link |
I have not mentioned ingesting anything or nutrients.
link |
One of the most common questions I get
link |
are what should I eat for my brain?
link |
Well, ironically enough,
link |
one of the best things you can do for your brain
link |
But of course we all have to eat sooner or later
link |
and eating is wonderful.
link |
I absolutely love eating.
link |
I even enjoy the mere act of chewing.
link |
But the question of what to eat is an important one
link |
as it relates to brain health and brain function.
link |
Before we talk about that,
link |
I want to emphasize that training fasted
link |
actually has some immediate and long-term benefits.
link |
Prior to having my lab at Stanford,
link |
I was down in San Diego at UC San Diego
link |
and had an appointment
link |
at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies.
link |
I had a colleague there by the name of Sachin Panda.
link |
He wrote a wonderful book called The Circadian Code.
link |
He runs a serious biology laboratory
link |
focusing on metabolism, circadian rhythms, and so forth,
link |
as well as the effects of fasting.
link |
Sachin and his book, The Circadian Code,
link |
describe how engaging in physical exercise while fasted
link |
can amplify the effects of that exercise,
link |
not just for sake of increasing the percentage
link |
of things like body fat burned, et cetera,
link |
but for cellular health, liver health,
link |
and the health of other organs.
link |
So where possible,
link |
I do strive to do my workout without eating anything first.
link |
However, some days I'm very, very hungry,
link |
and so I do ingest water, which contains electrolytes.
link |
So that means sodium, magnesium, potassium,
link |
for the simple reason that sodium, magnesium, potassium
link |
are required for neurons to function properly.
link |
It's part of the way they generate electrical activity.
link |
As well, ingesting electrolytes for me can quell hunger.
link |
And this points to a whole other topic
link |
we could do another episode on at some point,
link |
which is many times people will think
link |
that their blood sugar is low,
link |
and actually that's not the case.
link |
And frankly, one wouldn't want their blood sugar to be high.
link |
You don't want your blood sugar too low,
link |
but you also don't want it too high.
link |
Very low blood sugar is terrible,
link |
but low-ish blood sugar tends to give us
link |
a sense of mental clarity and focus
link |
related to this adrenaline phenomenon
link |
that we talked about earlier.
link |
In order to be able to focus on exercise or work
link |
or anything else, you need sufficient electrolytes.
link |
And so many people find that if they simply ingest
link |
some water with salt,
link |
maybe a 99 milligram potassium tablet,
link |
all of a sudden they feel very mentally clear
link |
and able to do physical work and mental work.
link |
So what I do is prior to this morning exercise,
link |
although it's now late morning in this way I'm describing it
link |
and typically it does occur late morning,
link |
I'll have some water with either
link |
so little, maybe half a teaspoon of sea salt
link |
with a 99 milligram potassium tablet,
link |
or these days I'm fond of taking
link |
what's called Element, L-M-N-T, Element.
link |
I learned about this from Lex Friedman's podcast.
link |
I know many of you are familiar with Lex.
link |
He's an excellent podcast, excellent scientist.
link |
I don't have any business relationship to Element.
link |
They're not a sponsor of the podcast,
link |
but Element is a product that essentially
link |
contains electrolytes, sodium, potassium,
link |
as well as magnesium malate,
link |
which has been shown to offset things
link |
like delayed onset muscle soreness.
link |
That form of magnesium doesn't make people drowsy.
link |
It's not an anxiolytic like some other forms of magnesium.
link |
An anxiolytic is just one that reduces anxiety.
link |
So whether or not it's Element
link |
or whether or not you're just putting a little bit
link |
of salt into some water and ingesting that
link |
prior to training, that can be an excellent way
link |
to ensure that you're able to complete
link |
the physical exercise even though
link |
you haven't eaten anything.
link |
And I confess some days I will eat a little bit before
link |
my workout just because I can't seem to resist eating.
link |
I want to mention the use of stimulants
link |
before physical training.
link |
This has certain benefits and certain drawbacks.
link |
The benefits are sometimes it can facilitate motivation
link |
because things like caffeine can increase
link |
the release of dopamine,
link |
can increase the release of epinephrine,
link |
can reduce that adenosine level in the bloodstream.
link |
So some people use caffeine before training
link |
in ways that benefit them.
link |
It can also increase fat oxidation
link |
and kind of fat metabolism and things if that's your goal.
link |
I am not a particular fan of ingesting stimulants
link |
before training because of a whole set of problems
link |
associated with most forms of stimulants
link |
in the form of energy drinks, et cetera.
link |
I am not a fan of energy drinks.
link |
I did a decent portion of a previous episode
link |
on food and mood on energy drinks
link |
and some of the detrimental things they contain.
link |
Rather, I try and train simply by ingesting
link |
the caffeine sources I mentioned before,
link |
guayusa, mate, some electrolytes, some water.
link |
Occasionally I'll have an espresso or a cup of coffee
link |
And on rare occasions, I should emphasize rare occasions,
link |
if I really need help increasing my motivation
link |
or I decide I want to push extremely hard,
link |
I will ingest something like alpha-GPC.
link |
Alpha-GPC supports the release of a neuromodulator
link |
called acetylcholine.
link |
So 300 milligrams of alpha-GPC has been shown
link |
to increase physical performance,
link |
but also cognitive performance.
link |
Some people might not be interested in ingesting anything
link |
to improve their physical performance or anything at all,
link |
but they might be addressing
link |
how they can improve cognitive performance and focus.
link |
And alpha-GPC is a non-stimulant way to approach that.
link |
Again, definitely check with your doctor
link |
before taking anything or stopping to take anything,
link |
but alpha-GPC has been shown in various studies
link |
to improve cognitive performance
link |
and in people who have age-related cognitive decline,
link |
there have been some positive benefits
link |
reported in quality peer-reviewed journals.
link |
If you want to explore those references,
link |
please go to examine.com, please put in alpha-GPC,
link |
go to the Human Effect Matrix,
link |
and there you can find details of those studies,
link |
references to PubMed, et cetera.
link |
So let's talk about food timing first.
link |
As I mentioned, I eat my first meal sometime around noon,
link |
plus or minus an hour for the reasons we've discussed.
link |
The volume of food is also important.
link |
If you eat a large volume of anything,
link |
because it diverts blood to your gut,
link |
you will feel lethargic
link |
and you will have less blood going to your brain.
link |
That seems like a simple and trivial fact,
link |
but if you want to be able to think,
link |
you can't ingest large volumes of anything into your gut.
link |
So the discussion about what foods give you energy
link |
is kind of moot if you eat enormous volumes of that food.
link |
Now, the volumes are going to depend on you and your needs
link |
and your activity levels.
link |
I'm going to discuss what I do in terms of food content,
link |
but I'm not going to discuss food volume.
link |
I sort of know where that mostly full, like 80% full line is
link |
and I usually eat a little bit past that, frankly,
link |
and I'm able to maintain a decent degree of alertness
link |
into the afternoon.
link |
And that's my goal.
link |
And I think that's the goal of most people
link |
to not work out in the morning or do some work
link |
and then just collapse into a slumber
link |
that lasts all afternoon,
link |
but to be able to generate alert, calm, focused states
link |
throughout the day.
link |
So for lunch, I do emphasize slightly lower carbohydrate
link |
or low carbohydrate intake for the simple reason
link |
that adrenaline and dopamine
link |
and their associated neuromodulators
link |
are going to support alertness.
link |
So for me, I fast up until about noon.
link |
Then I eat a lunch that consists of some sort
link |
of protein thing, like some meat or some chicken
link |
or some salmon and some vegetables, et cetera.
link |
And if I've exercised previously,
link |
which I do, as I mentioned, five days a week,
link |
then I will ingest some starches.
link |
I'll ingest some bread or rice or oatmeal
link |
and butter and nuts and things like that.
link |
I will consume the various food groups, as they say,
link |
but I will keep the total amount of carbohydrate
link |
a little bit on the low side,
link |
or if I haven't trained, I won't have any carbohydrate
link |
at all, not because I'm ketogenic,
link |
not because I'm anti-carbohydrate,
link |
not because I'm on a pure carnivore diet, far from it,
link |
but because starches cause the release of serotonin
link |
in the brain and lend themselves to a state of sleepiness.
link |
Now, I should mention that about 25% of individuals
link |
have genes that encode for enzymes that allow them
link |
to eat large amounts of carbohydrate
link |
and not suffer from this lethargy,
link |
this kind of sedation from carbohydrates,
link |
but I don't have that gene.
link |
And so for me, eating a noon-ish meal
link |
that is not enormous, but is decent in size,
link |
but that is mainly protein, healthy fats,
link |
and low-ish carbohydrates or no carbohydrates
link |
is what allows me to achieve heightened states of alertness
link |
throughout the day, which is what I need for my purposes.
link |
So just knowing that meats and nuts support alertness,
link |
provided you don't eat too much of them,
link |
that vegetables are healthy for us
link |
and therefore we should eat them,
link |
and I happen to like them as well,
link |
and that carbohydrates tend to have
link |
a kind of sedative-like quality to them,
link |
that should help you kind of guide your food choices
link |
in an intelligent way that's grounded
link |
in the scientific literature as it relates to alertness.
link |
Now, what about components of foods
link |
that are not about alertness, but are about mood?
link |
We did an entire episode on mood and food,
link |
and it's very clear, based on now dozens of studies,
link |
that ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3 fatty acids
link |
is going to support healthy mood
link |
and even can act as an antidepressant.
link |
More than a dozen studies have shown
link |
that ingesting at least 1,000 milligrams per day
link |
of the EPA form of essential fatty acid
link |
is as effective as prescription antidepressants
link |
in relieving depression.
link |
And if you're somebody
link |
who requires prescription antidepressants,
link |
Prozac, Zoloft, et cetera,
link |
it can allow people to take lower doses
link |
of those medications, which in many cases
link |
is a positive thing or a good thing to do
link |
because of the side-effect profiles
link |
that many of those drugs carry.
link |
So I find these data remarkably compelling.
link |
I mean, here we have a food or a substance from food
link |
that can improve our mood and our sense of wellbeing,
link |
and it does that by way of increasing
link |
certain neuromodulators in the brain,
link |
in particular dopamine,
link |
but also some other related neuromodulators.
link |
So if you're eating fatty salmon regularly,
link |
if you're eating krill regularly,
link |
meaning if you're a whale,
link |
if you're ingesting foods
link |
that tend to have a lot of omega-3s,
link |
you probably don't need to supplement with omega-3.
link |
Most people are not ingesting sufficient levels of omega-3s,
link |
and I'm certainly one of those people.
link |
Despite an effort to eat good foods
link |
and whole foods, et cetera, and unprocessed foods,
link |
I've made the choice to ingest
link |
at least 1,000 milligrams per day of EPA.
link |
I do that in the form of fish oil
link |
and the EPA, DHA combination fish oil,
link |
but the threshold of 1,000 milligrams
link |
is not 1,000 milligrams of fish oil,
link |
it's 1,000 milligrams of EPA.
link |
Now, for those of you that don't want to consume fish oils
link |
and prefer to get your omega-3s from non-animal sources,
link |
there are non-animal sources,
link |
various forms of algae, et cetera.
link |
You can just look that up online
link |
and you should be able to find that.
link |
There are also a number of foods
link |
that include these essential omega-3s.
link |
We did an episode on food and mood
link |
where I go into more detail than you could ever want on that
link |
as well as some additional recommendations.
link |
We also did an episode on thyroid function,
link |
this hormone that's important for metabolism,
link |
and that pointed to the importance
link |
of getting sufficient iodine,
link |
which you should naturally get
link |
from the salts you're ingesting
link |
provided you're ingesting enough salt.
link |
I'm not somebody who eats a lot of kelp or seaweed,
link |
although I don't mind the taste of seaweed,
link |
I don't ingest it regularly,
link |
but ingesting sufficient selenium or selenium
link |
has been shown to be important
link |
for proper thyroid production, thyroid function,
link |
which is why I tend to eat a few Brazil nuts each day,
link |
typically with my lunch or sometimes before my workout,
link |
doesn't really matter.
link |
The point is that the volume, the amount, the content,
link |
and indeed the ratios of protein to fat to carbohydrates
link |
are going to impact how you feel,
link |
and they're going to impact your brain health.
link |
And of course, the timing.
link |
We know that allowing periods of 12 hours or more
link |
each 24-hour cycle where you're not ingesting anything
link |
is beneficial for your brain and body health.
link |
That's what Sachin Panda and his colleagues' work
link |
has shown over and over again in these quality studies.
link |
So when people ask me, what should I eat for my brain?
link |
More often than not, it's really a question
link |
of how you're structuring your day,
link |
when you're eating for the first time,
link |
how long you're allowing yourself to fast
link |
each 24-hour cycle, and also whether or not
link |
you're getting sufficient omega-3s,
link |
whether or not you're getting sufficient selenium
link |
to support things like thyroid function,
link |
which has an impact both on the metabolism of the body,
link |
but also the metabolism in the brain.
link |
And when I say metabolism, I don't just mean burning energy.
link |
I actually mean the rebuilding of things.
link |
So in the episode on growth hormone and thyroid hormone,
link |
we talked about how metabolism means not just the breakdown
link |
of fats and carbohydrates, but also the building up,
link |
the repair of muscle tissue, the repair of bone,
link |
the reinforcing of bone, and the repair
link |
and the buildup of brain tissue.
link |
And so those are the things that I emphasize
link |
because they're so strongly supported
link |
by the scientific data done in mice, studies done in humans.
link |
And basically, there's a lot of biochemical evidence
link |
that supports everything that I just described.
link |
Along the lines of health and wellbeing,
link |
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention hormones.
link |
Hormones have broad effects on the body and brain.
link |
We did an entire month on hormones.
link |
If you want to hear about any of those hormones in detail,
link |
we talked about testosterone
link |
and optimizing testosterone, estrogen, et cetera.
link |
The sex steroid hormones,
link |
which include testosterone and estrogen,
link |
which of course are present in varying ratios,
link |
but in both men and women and in kids,
link |
they are manufactured from cholesterol.
link |
We hear about cholesterol as this terrible thing,
link |
but they are actually made from cholesterol.
link |
And so if you don't get sufficient levels of cholesterol,
link |
that can be problematic for your hormones
link |
and that can be problematic
link |
for your brain and your body health.
link |
So without going into too much detail,
link |
I'll just point to a couple of things that I do
link |
that at least from my blood work
link |
and from my subjective experience
link |
have been very beneficial for me
link |
that some of you might want to consider.
link |
First of all, I'm not shy about my love for butter.
link |
I will eat pats of butter directly.
link |
I believe if people are going to eat cheese
link |
without a cracker, I will eat butter without a cracker.
link |
Butter is high in cholesterol, so I don't eat a ton of it,
link |
but at least for me and for my lipid profiles, it's fine.
link |
Butter has cholesterol,
link |
which is a precursor to the sex steroid hormones,
link |
and men and women need testosterone and estrogen
link |
in order to feel good and to be able to think.
link |
You do not want your estrogen too low
link |
or your testosterone too low.
link |
So I eat butter in order to ensure
link |
that I get sufficient cholesterol.
link |
Butter also has some other things that are beneficial,
link |
various small fatty acids that are interesting
link |
in terms of their effects on metabolism, et cetera.
link |
You can look those up, the benefits of butter,
link |
but again, volume is important and you can't overdo it.
link |
Costello incidentally loves butter as well.
link |
Along the lines of hormones and testosterone,
link |
I get a lot of questions about this, I think,
link |
because a lot of online communities
link |
are sort of obsessed with testosterone.
link |
And I just want to emphasize that, yes,
link |
having sufficient levels of testosterone
link |
is vitally important for brain function
link |
and having sufficient levels of estrogen
link |
will allow your brain to actually function.
link |
It turns out that estrogen is one of the main ways
link |
in which the brain maintains longevity
link |
and maintains its ability to think.
link |
So we should all be seeking optimal testosterone levels
link |
for ourselves, both testosterone and estrogen.
link |
And many of the things that we've discussed up until now,
link |
morning sunlight, exercise, fasting,
link |
those can support testosterone and estrogen
link |
in meaningful and positive ways.
link |
I get a lot of questions about hormone optimization.
link |
We did an entire month on this topic.
link |
We did an entire episode on testosterone
link |
and estrogen optimization.
link |
I just want to briefly highlight two things
link |
that could be relevant.
link |
And then if you want more details,
link |
please go see that episode.
link |
The first is that testosterone
link |
can exert its various functions
link |
only in its unbound form, free testosterone.
link |
We all make a particular binding protein
link |
called sex hormone binding globulin
link |
that essentially binds up testosterone,
link |
prevents it from being free.
link |
This sounds like a terrible thing,
link |
but actually it's a good thing
link |
because it allows testosterone to be transported
link |
to the various tissues, including the brain,
link |
where it can exert its various functions.
link |
For those that have lower than desired levels of testosterone
link |
or too much sex hormone binding globulin,
link |
it turns out that 400 milligrams per day
link |
of something called tongat ali,
link |
which is a form of ginseng,
link |
can actually help increase levels of free testosterone.
link |
Many people experience a positive subjective effect
link |
and some objective effects as well,
link |
meaning increases in free testosterone
link |
when they do blood analysis.
link |
There are some data on that,
link |
not a ton in the peer-reviewed literatures.
link |
And again, always approach these with a sense of caution
link |
and definitely talk to your doctor.
link |
If you want to learn more about that,
link |
you can go to examine.com.
link |
There's a lot of information there listed about that.
link |
The other compound that's relevant both to men and women,
link |
or I should say people that are trying to optimize
link |
testosterone and or estrogen is Fidogia.
link |
Fidogia agrestis is actually an herb that increases
link |
the levels of what's called luteinizing hormone.
link |
Luteinizing hormone is a hormone that's released
link |
from the hypothalamus within the brain
link |
that travels to the gonads,
link |
either the ovaries or the testes,
link |
to stimulate the release of estrogen or testosterone.
link |
And Fidogia agrestis has been shown,
link |
albeit in a limited number of studies,
link |
to increase levels of luteinizing hormone
link |
and thereby levels of testosterone and estrogen
link |
in ways that some people find beneficial.
link |
So I just want to mention those two.
link |
And again, if you want a lot more information
link |
about hormone optimization,
link |
please see the episodes on hormone optimization.
link |
A key aspect to the midday meal,
link |
if you want that meal to benefit you,
link |
is to take a brief walk afterwards.
link |
It turns out that brief walks of five to 30 minutes
link |
after ingesting food can accelerate metabolism
link |
and actually can accelerate and improve nutrient utilization
link |
which is essentially the same as metabolism.
link |
But nonetheless, that's something that I do
link |
after I finish my noon meal.
link |
I do force myself to stand up and go outside
link |
and take a brief walk.
link |
That also gets me again into optic flow.
link |
It also has another benefit,
link |
which is that I am giving my brain
link |
and thereby my body more information
link |
about light and time of day,
link |
which is always better than less information
link |
about light and time of day.
link |
Much of our circadian rhythm and our health rhythms
link |
and all of our cognitive rhythms, et cetera,
link |
are supported by our cells knowing where they are in time.
link |
And light is the primary zeitgeber,
link |
that's German for timekeeper,
link |
is the primary way in which the body learns information
link |
or about what function should be turned on
link |
and what function should be turned off.
link |
So getting that morning light pulse,
link |
but then also leaving the house or apartment or workplace
link |
and getting out for a few minutes after lunch
link |
is beneficial for metabolism,
link |
beneficial for nutrient utilization,
link |
and beneficial for all the organs and tissues of the body
link |
because you're getting that outside light exposure.
link |
Now I'd like to shift our attention
link |
towards science-supported protocols
link |
that increase the effectiveness
link |
and our performance in everything.
link |
And by everything, I mean sleep,
link |
I mean physical performance, I mean mental performance,
link |
I mean less anxiety, all the things, truly all the things.
link |
And that is something called non-sleep deep rest.
link |
Non-sleep deep rest or NSDR
link |
is an acronym that I coined as an umbrella term
link |
to encompass many protocols
link |
that all have been shown in one form or another
link |
to support better brain and body function.
link |
Now these protocols have names that you've heard before,
link |
things like meditation, things like yoga nidra,
link |
and things like hypnosis.
link |
All of these protocols and these activities, however,
link |
share something in common,
link |
which is they involve a deliberate
link |
and directed shift in one's state,
link |
and the shift tends to be toward a state
link |
of deeper relaxation.
link |
We certainly don't have time now
link |
to dissect out the literature on all of these.
link |
There is ample literature,
link |
I should say there is robust and ample literature
link |
supporting the fact that a regular meditation practice
link |
is beneficial, but meditation itself has many forms,
link |
transcendental meditation, loving kindness meditation,
link |
third eye meditation, walking meditation.
link |
Yoga nidra is a practice I've talked about
link |
many times before, which involves simply lying down.
link |
It doesn't involve any movement,
link |
no down dogs or up dogs or anything.
link |
It just involves lying on your back
link |
and doing some specific long exhale breathing.
link |
There are a lot of yoga nidra scripts out there
link |
that are quite good,
link |
but there's one NSDR type protocol
link |
that has been shown by the greatest number
link |
of scientific studies to promote not just states
link |
of deep relaxation, not just states of heightened focus,
link |
but also to accelerate plasticity
link |
and learning within the brain, and that's hypnosis.
link |
And I've become increasingly excited
link |
and interested in hypnosis as a tool,
link |
and not just a tool of any kind,
link |
but a tool that really can be directed
link |
toward particular goals and outcomes.
link |
And I think that's really what sets hypnosis apart
link |
as an NSDR, non-sleep deep breath protocol,
link |
from things like naps or things like yoga nidra
link |
or things like meditation.
link |
And I certainly believe and understand
link |
that meditation naps and yoga nidra
link |
can be directed toward less anxiety, et cetera,
link |
but hypnosis is unique in that it's very directed.
link |
The essence of hypnosis is for the person,
link |
you, to guide your brain toward
link |
a particular outcome or change.
link |
So I'd like to point out a particular resource.
link |
It's a completely zero cost resource, which is reveri.com.
link |
That's R-E-V-E-R-I.com.
link |
Reveri.com obviously is a website
link |
where there are links to an app
link |
that's available in Apple and Android.
link |
This is a hypnosis app,
link |
but this isn't just any hypnosis app.
link |
This is a hypnosis app
link |
that contains multiple hypnosis protocols
link |
that are all backed by very high quality science.
link |
The science was done by my colleague
link |
and our associate chair of psychiatry
link |
at Stanford School of Medicine.
link |
That's David Spiegel is responsible for that work.
link |
I'm not associated with that scientific work.
link |
They've examined what brain areas
link |
get activated during hypnosis,
link |
what the outcomes are for various hypnosis protocols.
link |
And within Reveri, you will find hypnosis protocols
link |
for enhancing your focus, enhancing creativity,
link |
reducing pain, getting better at sleeping, reducing anxiety.
link |
Most of these are about 10 or 15 minutes long.
link |
Some of them are extremely brief, one minute long.
link |
They have a one minute hypnosis that you can do.
link |
Those one minute hypnosis scripts work best
link |
if you've been doing the 10 and 15 minute ones
link |
regularly or semi-regularly.
link |
It's a really wonderful resource
link |
for which there is a lot of peer-reviewed published data.
link |
One study I'd like to emphasize in particular
link |
is Jiang et al, J-I-A-N-G.
link |
That is a reference you can find
link |
on the Reveri.com website under our research.
link |
And the title of this paper is
link |
Brain Activity and Functional Connectivity Associated
link |
with Hypnosis, and it was published
link |
in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
link |
What this paper essentially shows is that specific areas
link |
of our brain that are involved in executive function,
link |
which is associated with our ability to focus,
link |
as well as what's called the default mode network,
link |
which is sort of the way that your brain idles.
link |
Does your brain tend to idle
link |
at a level of high anxiety or calm,
link |
as well as activation of a brain area called the insula.
link |
That's I-N-S-U-L-A.
link |
The insula is extremely interesting.
link |
Hypnosis has been shown to activate the insula,
link |
which can enhance our sense of interoception,
link |
our sense of internal state,
link |
which might sound like a annoying thing.
link |
You don't want to be thinking about your heartbeat
link |
or your breathing.
link |
But what's really interesting about hypnosis
link |
is that it increases areas of the brain
link |
that are responsible for deep relaxation,
link |
focus, and self-awareness,
link |
this interoception, simultaneously.
link |
And that's very unusual compared to other states,
link |
any other states of any kind.
link |
So I've made it a practice, a daily practice, in fact,
link |
that after lunch and after this walk,
link |
I do a brief 10-minute hypnosis script
link |
because of what I found is that in contrast to naps
link |
and in contrast to other forms of NSDR,
link |
it really allows me to enter a state of deep relaxation,
link |
but also to then exit that state
link |
in a very focused and deliberate way
link |
that allows me to lean into my afternoon in an alert way,
link |
in a way that I can function and do mental work
link |
and interact with people, et cetera.
link |
So there's no brain fog, there's no grogginess.
link |
And I want to emphasize that the hypnosis
link |
that I'm referring to here and that Reverie provides
link |
is not stage hypnosis.
link |
This isn't you being programmed to squawk like a chicken
link |
or do anything against your will.
link |
This is you teaching your brain how to access
link |
these focused, relaxed, interoceptive states.
link |
This is also an extremely valuable aspect to hypnosis
link |
because it can increase plasticity,
link |
the brain's ability to change in response to experience.
link |
It's essentially opening up pathways
link |
that allow you to change your brain
link |
in the ways that you want.
link |
And it's very directed toward particular outcomes.
link |
So I am an, as you can probably tell,
link |
I'm very enthusiastic about hypnosis
link |
as an optimal NSDR protocol.
link |
And so I do that every single day.
link |
There are days that I don't manage to do it
link |
for whatever reason, I forget,
link |
or interference from email or et cetera,
link |
but that is essentially how I enter my early afternoon.
link |
I do this post-lunch, post-walk NSDR
link |
in the form of a Reverie hypnosis.
link |
Again, a completely zero-cost resource to you.
link |
There are excellent data.
link |
All those data can be found on the Reverie site.
link |
And you can also learn a lot more about hypnosis
link |
and what sorts of hypnosis protocols
link |
might be optimal for you.
link |
So if you are looking for a science-backed, zero-cost,
link |
very effective tool for getting better at focusing,
link |
better at sleeping,
link |
better at all the things that I believe people want,
link |
I do believe that is the best tool
link |
that one can access at this point in time.
link |
So then after I exit hypnosis,
link |
usually give Costell a little scratch behind the ear,
link |
and then I make sure that I hydrate.
link |
Hydration, again, is vitally important for brain function.
link |
It's vitally important for all bodily functions.
link |
And I often forget to do it.
link |
So I've just sort of linked the drinking of water
link |
to my hypnosis practice.
link |
As soon as I'm done, I hydrate,
link |
and then I tend to focus on another work bout.
link |
So this would be, for me,
link |
sometime around 2.30 or three o'clock in the afternoon,
link |
when normally I would be quite sleepy and passing out.
link |
However, the protocol of shifting my morning caffeine
link |
to 90 minutes, two hours after waking,
link |
as well as the use of this hypnosis protocol
link |
has really allowed me to move through the afternoon
link |
in a way that I don't experience that dip in energy.
link |
Every once in a while,
link |
I'll feel kind of sleepy or kind of out of it,
link |
but I've been really pleasantly surprised
link |
at the extent to which one can avoid that afternoon dip
link |
if you do certain things properly
link |
prior to the arrival of two or three p.m.
link |
Now, if you're a napper and you want to nap, no big deal.
link |
Naps can be wonderfully beneficial.
link |
Here are the rules around napping
link |
according to the sleep science.
link |
Stanford has an excellent sleep clinic.
link |
I consulted with Jamie Zeitzer,
link |
my colleague in the Stanford Sleep Laboratory,
link |
as well as Matt Walker out at Berkeley,
link |
whose name I'm sure most of you are familiar with,
link |
wrote this wonderful book, Why We Sleep.
link |
Naps should be 90 minutes or less,
link |
and 20-minute naps are fine,
link |
but not longer than 90 minutes.
link |
And there are essentially two varieties of people,
link |
people for whom napping interferes
link |
with falling asleep later that night and staying asleep,
link |
and people for whom the nap does not interfere.
link |
You have to decide who you are,
link |
and if you're somebody who can nap
link |
and not have any trouble falling asleep and staying asleep
link |
later that night, well, by all means, nap.
link |
Just make it 90 minutes or less.
link |
Again, these 90-minute cycles are really a vital constraint
link |
that we should all obey.
link |
If it's 91 minutes, don't worry.
link |
You won't dissolve into a puddle of tears,
link |
but if you're starting to sleep
link |
for an hour or more in the afternoon,
link |
that can be problematic.
link |
If you're somebody who can nap for 10, 20 minutes,
link |
that's probably better than getting a full 90-minute cycle
link |
unless you didn't get enough sleep the night before.
link |
But you really have to figure out what's right for you.
link |
There's a lot of variety there,
link |
but that's essentially what the science says.
link |
Now, whether or not you nap or whether or not
link |
you do not nap, a key protocol for sleep health
link |
and wakefulness and metabolism and hormone health
link |
is viewing light in the afternoon.
link |
So here's the reason for doing this.
link |
As we progress into the evening hours,
link |
there's a phenomenon where our retina,
link |
our eyes become very sensitive to light
link |
such that if we view bright lights
link |
or even not so bright lights
link |
between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.,
link |
that is strongly disruptive,
link |
very disruptive for our dopamine production.
link |
It can really screw up our sleep.
link |
And it's actually been shown in data
link |
from David Berson's lab at Brown University,
link |
one of the foremost circadian biology laboratories,
link |
as well as Sameer Tarr's laboratory
link |
at the National Institutes of Mental Health,
link |
that viewing bright light or even not so bright light
link |
between these hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.
link |
or even 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. can disrupt learning and memory,
link |
can disrupt the immune system,
link |
and can disrupt mood in very long-lasting ways.
link |
There are ways to offset that, however,
link |
what I call your Netflix inoculation.
link |
For those of you that like to stay up late on the tablet
link |
or computer or watching Netflix,
link |
getting a little bit of afternoon light in your eyes
link |
somewhat counterintuitively can prevent this disruption
link |
of bright light later in the evening at least somewhat.
link |
What do I mean by that?
link |
Well, if you view light as the sun is starting to go down,
link |
so if you step outside around 4 p.m., 5 p.m.,
link |
again, what time exactly will depend on time of year
link |
and where you are located on our planet,
link |
but as the sun starts to head down,
link |
you don't necessarily have to see the sunset.
link |
It'd be lovely if you could.
link |
Sunsets are beautiful, but if you can get outside
link |
and see the sun as it arcs down
link |
or if you can't see the sun directly,
link |
get some sunlight in your eyes in the afternoon hours,
link |
so maybe 4 p.m.-ish, and do that for 20, 30 minutes,
link |
maybe reading outside or taking a walk.
link |
I walk the dog again.
link |
That's my protocol in order to get that evening light.
link |
What it does is it lowers the sensitivity of your retina
link |
in the late evening hours,
link |
which allows you to buffer yourself
link |
against the negative effects of bright light later at night.
link |
Now, it won't allow you
link |
to blast your eyes with bright light.
link |
You still need to dim the lights in the evening,
link |
but there's a very nice study that was published
link |
in Scientific Reports that illustrates
link |
that if one does this, if you go outside and view sunlight
link |
in the evening hours for anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes,
link |
and I realize that people have a range
link |
of constraints on their schedule,
link |
but from 5 to 30 minutes,
link |
what happens is that your melatonin rhythm
link |
stays appropriate.
link |
Now, we haven't talked too much about melatonin,
link |
but melatonin is a hormone that is inhibited by light.
link |
It's actually prevented by light,
link |
and melatonin is the hormone
link |
that allows you to fall asleep easily.
link |
Now, I'm not talking about supplementing melatonin.
link |
I'm talking about melatonin
link |
that you naturally produce from your pineal.
link |
So the protocol is very simple.
link |
Get outside in the afternoon or evening
link |
for 10 to 30 minutes.
link |
Take your sunglasses off, get some bright light,
link |
get some natural light in your eyes.
link |
If you can't do that, probably better to just stay
link |
with standard artificial lights inside.
link |
Don't crank them up, but just start to dim them.
link |
Again, this would be a time to avoid blue blockers.
link |
People are popping on blue blockers
link |
at four o'clock in the afternoon
link |
because you're worried that blue light
link |
is going to disrupt your sleep.
link |
Well, you're making your eyes more sensitive
link |
to any light that you might see later in the evening,
link |
blue light or otherwise.
link |
So get that afternoon light.
link |
So what you'll probably notice is that the optimal protocols
link |
for optimizing your brain and body health
link |
and performance and sleep, et cetera,
link |
are actually really simple.
link |
But just because they're simple
link |
does not mean that they are not powerful.
link |
In fact, they are very powerful
link |
because they leverage the most powerful technology
link |
that exists, which is your nervous system.
link |
We always think about technologies as devices,
link |
and indeed there are some wonderful devices out there.
link |
Some people are really into tracking their sleep
link |
and their sleep time.
link |
If you're into that, great.
link |
That's not something that I personally do,
link |
although I keep telling myself that I should do that.
link |
There are devices that can control brain waves
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
But what we are talking about today
link |
are really basic things that we can all do
link |
that can steer our neurology and our biology
link |
in the directions that are going to support workflow,
link |
that are going to support hormones,
link |
that are going to support brain function.
link |
So this afternoon light viewing is yet another example
link |
of leveraging a technology that you were born with
link |
and that you will die with
link |
and that you will have every day in between
link |
in order to tweak the hormones of your system,
link |
in this case, the hormone melatonin,
link |
so that it's released at the appropriate times
link |
and not at the wrong times.
link |
Because we know that when hormones and systems of the body
link |
are well aligned with the 24 hour schedule,
link |
beautiful things happen.
link |
And when they are misaligned, terrible things happen.
link |
Sometimes those terrible things are subtle at first,
link |
but disrupting your circadian rhythms
link |
is really bad for every system in your body.
link |
Getting it right, and as you can tell,
link |
getting it right doesn't take much,
link |
can really serve to quote unquote optimize you.
link |
When I say optimize,
link |
I mean it puts you into a better mood overall,
link |
better state for learning, et cetera.
link |
So get that afternoon light as well.
link |
So at some point in the evening,
link |
I eat that thing that we call dinner.
link |
And while it feels sort of strange to talk about my dinner,
link |
the reason I want to talk about my dinner
link |
and what I eat for dinner is that for me,
link |
dinner of course is about eating.
link |
I'll mention again, I love eating,
link |
but also about optimizing the transition to sleep and sleep.
link |
So obviously I eat foods that I enjoy.
link |
I'm not one of these people that will eat anything
link |
or avoid eating anything simply to benefit from that.
link |
I do enjoy food very, very much.
link |
And so my dinner generally is comprised of things
link |
that are going to support rest and deep sleep.
link |
And that means starchy carbohydrates.
link |
It's absolutely clear that one of the major ways
link |
that we can increase serotonin,
link |
which helps in the transition to sleep,
link |
is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates.
link |
Now, I realize that starchy carbohydrates
link |
are kind of a demonized term nowadays,
link |
and everyone's anti-carbs,
link |
but we really should distinguish between refined sugars
link |
and complex carbohydrates.
link |
And we did an episode about this.
link |
We talked about how refined sugars
link |
disrupt not just metabolism,
link |
but they actually disrupt some of the neurons in the gut
link |
that sense fatty acids and amino acids
link |
from fats and proteins.
link |
But those same neurons can actually respond to sugar
link |
and create a situation where you actually start craving
link |
more sugar because those neurons in your gut
link |
communicate via a nerve pathway for your aficionados
link |
called the vagus nerve,
link |
and a little cluster of neurons called the nodose ganglia,
link |
N-O-D-O-S-E, nodose ganglia,
link |
sort of right next to the corner of your jaw,
link |
and can trigger the activation
link |
and the release of dopamine in your brain,
link |
which basically makes you crave more sugar
link |
independent of how something tastes.
link |
So when I say carbohydrates,
link |
what I really mean is starchy carbohydrates,
link |
non-refined sugars.
link |
And in the episode about food and mood
link |
and metabolism as well,
link |
I referenced a really spectacular lecture
link |
by Dr. Robert Lustig,
link |
who's a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF,
link |
UC San Francisco, absolutely spectacular talk.
link |
You can find it on YouTube easily,
link |
where he talks about the science of refined sugars.
link |
And this isn't in any kind of conspiracy or paranoid way.
link |
This is really the medical and scientific literature.
link |
So my dinner is carbohydrates and some protein.
link |
So maybe some chicken or fish or something like that,
link |
or sometimes just pasta or just rice and vegetables.
link |
And that's because I enjoy those foods,
link |
but also because I want to increase
link |
the amount of serotonin in my brain
link |
so that I can actually fall asleep that night.
link |
Many people who are on low carbohydrate diets
link |
struggle with falling and staying asleep.
link |
And that's because it's hard to achieve
link |
heightened levels of serotonin,
link |
which are necessary to enter sleep.
link |
I should also mention that melatonin and serotonin
link |
fall in the same pathway.
link |
They are related hormones and neuromodulators.
link |
We won't go into their biosynthesis now,
link |
but essentially what we're talking about
link |
is a system that's biasing us towards rest and relaxation,
link |
as opposed to wakefulness.
link |
You might ask, well, can't I just take serotonin?
link |
Can't I just take 5-HTP or a precursor to serotonin
link |
And indeed you can.
link |
However, many people, including myself,
link |
find that when they supplement with serotonin
link |
in the evening or at night,
link |
that can cause problems in the architecture
link |
or the structure of sleep.
link |
It can cause a lot of people, including me,
link |
to fall asleep very fast,
link |
sleep very deeply for three or four hours,
link |
and then wake up and have a terrible time
link |
falling back asleep.
link |
And that effect, at least for me, can last several days.
link |
It's really disruptive.
link |
So I don't like to supplement with anything
link |
that is directly dopamine or a precursor to dopamine
link |
at any time or directly serotonin
link |
or a precursor to serotonin.
link |
Rather, there are other things that can enhance
link |
the transition to sleep safely,
link |
which we will talk about in a few minutes.
link |
But the evening meal consists largely of carbohydrates
link |
for that specific purpose of generating a sense of calm.
link |
And of course, carbohydrates are delicious.
link |
And because I'm doing some physical training,
link |
and presumably you are as well,
link |
I hope you are, because it's so beneficial to one's health,
link |
that's also going to replenish my glycogen stores,
link |
which is one of the primary fuel sources
link |
for moving one's muscles and moving around
link |
and doing exercise, as well as for the brain
link |
and for cognitive function.
link |
So low carbohydrates throughout the 24-hour period
link |
are not something that are attractive to me.
link |
I realize that some people will do much better
link |
on a low carbohydrate or even ketogenic diet,
link |
but for me, and I do believe for most people,
link |
creating a situation of maybe fasting
link |
and then low carb or no carb diets
link |
for states of alertness and focus
link |
at one portion of the day,
link |
and then ingesting starch carbohydrates
link |
for sake of inducing rest and relaxation
link |
is a at least scientifically rationally-based protocol.
link |
It's grounded in real neurochemistry.
link |
It's grounded in things that we can point to and say,
link |
ah, this food substance, this thing can support my brain,
link |
not directly because it's some magic substance
link |
that's going to make all my neurons extremely robust,
link |
but rather it's going to support sleep,
link |
which is perhaps the foundation
link |
of all mental and physical health.
link |
In fact, we can point to sleep as the primary way
link |
in which we can ensure our overall health,
link |
including our brain health.
link |
So let's talk about sleep and how to access sleep,
link |
how to fall asleep easily,
link |
and how to make sure that the sleep we have
link |
is of sufficient duration and quality.
link |
One way to do that is to leverage the drop in temperature
link |
that's necessary to fall and stay asleep.
link |
So as I mentioned earlier, in the early parts of the day
link |
after waking, our body temperature is rising,
link |
and that continues throughout the day.
link |
And then sometime late in the afternoon,
link |
our temperature peaks, and then it starts to drop.
link |
That drop in temperature of one to three degrees
link |
is vitally important for us
link |
to be able to fall asleep easily.
link |
One way that we can decrease our transition time into sleep
link |
is to accelerate that drop in temperature.
link |
And one way to accelerate that drop in temperature
link |
somewhat counterintuitively is to use hot baths,
link |
hot showers, or if you have access to one, a sauna.
link |
Now, this is counterintuitive because you'd say,
link |
well, hot baths, so it's going to heat me up.
link |
But actually, if you are to get into a sauna
link |
or a hot shower or a hot bath and then get out,
link |
your body is going to engage particular mechanisms
link |
for cooling itself off that are going to allow you
link |
to drop your temperature more quickly
link |
and fall asleep more easily.
link |
And this is why many people find that falling asleep
link |
after a nice hot shower or bath or sauna
link |
is really, really easy and really terrific.
link |
It's sort of a natural state
link |
that follows hot baths, saunas, and showers.
link |
So how would you do this?
link |
Well, we did an entire episode on this topic as well,
link |
the use of sauna for sake of growth hormone release.
link |
If you want to check that out and all the details,
link |
you can look at the episode on growth hormone.
link |
You will experience a growth hormone release
link |
from sauna, hot bath, and hot shower,
link |
provided they're done for sufficient duration
link |
and sufficiently high temperature.
link |
For all the details of that, please go to that episode.
link |
It's all laid out there.
link |
It's all timestamped.
link |
It's all captioned in English and Spanish, et cetera.
link |
But basically what we're talking about
link |
is 20 minutes in the sauna,
link |
or if you're one of those folks
link |
who's really chasing growth hormone release,
link |
you could do 20 minutes,
link |
then get out of the sauna for 10 minutes
link |
and just cool off at room temperature
link |
and then get back into the sauna, then get out,
link |
and then shower or dry off and head to bed.
link |
Shorter bouts of sauna will work also.
link |
The longer bouts of sauna cooling, sauna cooling
link |
have been shown to lead to huge increases in growth hormone.
link |
And growth hormone, of course,
link |
is involved both in muscle growth,
link |
but also growth and metabolism of all tissues,
link |
fat metabolism, and repair of various tissues.
link |
So it's not just about growth.
link |
You hear growth hormone, you think hypertrophy,
link |
but the enhancement of metabolism and health and repair
link |
in a number of tissues.
link |
So that's one way you can leverage heat
link |
toward the transition to sleep
link |
by the ways in which exposure to heat
link |
actually cools off your body.
link |
Now let's talk about actually getting to sleep.
link |
And let's talk about behavioral protocols first.
link |
It is absolutely true that keeping the room very dark
link |
Some people, including myself, have thin eyelids,
link |
and it doesn't take much light
link |
to wake up the brain and body.
link |
So keeping a room very dark is essential.
link |
The other thing is keeping the room cool.
link |
You've probably heard this before.
link |
Keep the room cool, get under warm blankets.
link |
But rarely is it discussed
link |
why keeping the room cool is useful.
link |
The reason keeping the room cool is useful
link |
for getting into and staying asleep
link |
is that throughout the night,
link |
there are phases of sleep where you are paralyzed,
link |
so-called REM sleep.
link |
That's a healthy paralysis,
link |
presumably so you can't act out your dreams.
link |
But there are portions of the night where you can move.
link |
And one of the more important movements
link |
that you do in the middle of the night
link |
is put your hand out or your foot out,
link |
or you take your face out from under the covers
link |
as a means to cool yourself,
link |
and you do this while you are asleep.
link |
If you are in a cool room,
link |
you can put yourself under the blankets to stay warm.
link |
And then if you want to cool off,
link |
you can simply remove a limb
link |
or you can toss the covers off entirely.
link |
However, if you are in a room that's too warm,
link |
it's very hard to cool off.
link |
You would need a bucket of ice water
link |
or to get up and turn on the air conditioning
link |
or something of that sort, or turn on the fan.
link |
So it's a simple but non-trivial way
link |
in which we can improve our entrance to sleep
link |
and staying asleep.
link |
So keep the room cool or cold and get under warm blankets.
link |
And if you want to understand more
link |
about why putting a hand out or a foot out
link |
is valuable for cooling,
link |
I did an episode on the role of cooling
link |
in something called heat dumping
link |
or bringing heat into the body through the palms,
link |
the face, and the bottoms of the feet.
link |
You've got these portals, these radiators, if you will,
link |
that allow us to bring heat into the body and to dump heat.
link |
I don't want to go into the details now,
link |
but that episode is entitled
link |
Supercharge Your Exercise with Cold.
link |
This is based on work that was done by Craig Heller's lab
link |
at Stanford University.
link |
Absolutely incredible data showing that the proper use
link |
of palmar cooling, so the palms or the upper half
link |
of the face or the bottoms of the feet,
link |
can vastly, I mean, vastly increase the volume of exercise
link |
that one can do and still recover from that exercise
link |
and derive benefits from it.
link |
But this method of cooling for exercise is grounded
link |
in a basic physiological function of our palms,
link |
the bottoms of our feet and our face,
link |
which is to dump heat or to allow cool
link |
to pass into the body.
link |
So that's why in the middle of the night,
link |
as long as you're not in REM sleep,
link |
if you get too warm, you put your foot out
link |
or you put your arms out,
link |
you're actually allowing cooling of the body
link |
through what are called AVAs, arteriovenous ostomoses,
link |
is the technical name, that are in the palms,
link |
the upper half of the face and the bottoms of the feet.
link |
And that's a very efficient way to cool off your body,
link |
so you do that subconsciously.
link |
Now, there are things that one can take
link |
to enhance the transition to sleep.
link |
I am not a fan of melatonin
link |
for enhancing the transition to sleep
link |
for a couple of reasons.
link |
One, dosages of melatonin are far too high
link |
in most supplements.
link |
Melatonin can have some negative effects
link |
on the sex steroid hormones, testosterone, and estrogen.
link |
That's a serious concern.
link |
Third, melatonin's role during puberty or around puberty
link |
is to suppress the onset of puberty.
link |
So that's concerning.
link |
I don't know that people should be taking this hormone
link |
that has all these other effects.
link |
The other reason is that melatonin
link |
will aid the transition to sleep,
link |
but it won't keep you asleep.
link |
And many people that take melatonin
link |
find that they fall asleep more quickly,
link |
but then they wake up unable to fall back asleep.
link |
Three compounds that could be very beneficial
link |
for aiding the transition to sleep
link |
and for which there are wide safety margins,
link |
although please do check with your physician
link |
before taking anything,
link |
are specific forms of magnesium,
link |
something called apigenin and theanine.
link |
Magnesium comes in many forms.
link |
Magnesium malate has been shown to improve recovery
link |
from sore muscles.
link |
For instance, magnesium citrate
link |
is an excellent laxative, for instance.
link |
Magnesium threonate,
link |
that's T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E, threonate,
link |
and magnesium biglycinate have transporters
link |
that allow them to cross the blood-brain barrier
link |
more readily than other forms of magnesium.
link |
And there within the brain,
link |
they promote the release of a neurotransmitter called GABA,
link |
which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter
link |
which shuts off the forebrain to some extent.
link |
It doesn't shut off completely,
link |
but it essentially shuts down thinking, rumination,
link |
planning, and what we call executive function.
link |
So for many people taking 300 to 400 milligrams
link |
of magnesium biglycinate or magnesium threonate,
link |
and there I'm referring to the elemental magnesium,
link |
for you aficionados,
link |
many people find that doing that 30 to 60 minutes
link |
before sleep can aid them in falling asleep,
link |
can really help them fall asleep faster and stay asleep.
link |
Some people, however,
link |
achieve some gastrointestinal discomfort from magnesium
link |
and therefore should avoid it.
link |
Magnesium threonate and magnesium biglycinate
link |
for many people work, however,
link |
and when coupled with apigenin and theanine
link |
provide a sort of synergy or a sleep cocktail
link |
that seems to be very effective
link |
in aiding the transition to sleep.
link |
So apigenin is the substance that's found in chamomile,
link |
and 50 milligrams of apigenin taken 30 minutes before sleep
link |
can act as another way to shut off the forebrain
link |
and reduce rumination, reduce anxiety,
link |
and allow people to fall and stay asleep.
link |
I did a podcast with Dr. Daria Rose.
link |
She's got an excellent podcast
link |
that I highly recommend you check out,
link |
covers a number of different health,
link |
scientific, and other subjects,
link |
and she's a PhD in neuroscience,
link |
terrific scientist, et cetera.
link |
She's a big fan of apigenin, as am I.
link |
And then the third compound is theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E.
link |
Theanine is a compound that can also increase GABA,
link |
but also increases activation
link |
of something called chloride channels.
link |
Chloride channels are another way
link |
in which neurons turn themselves off
link |
or turn each other off, not turn each other off
link |
in the way that we're typically heard,
link |
like that turns me off, but turn them off
link |
and then shut them down, lower their levels of activity.
link |
So magnesium threonate or by glycinate,
link |
apigenin and theanine in combination
link |
can be very effective for aiding the transition to sleep.
link |
And I realize that not everyone wants to take supplements.
link |
I certainly am not pushing any of these.
link |
I would hope that everybody be able to fall asleep easily
link |
and stay asleep for the duration of time that they want
link |
without any supplemental help.
link |
But I do think it's important to point out some things
link |
that lie somewhere between doing nothing
link |
and taking prescription drugs,
link |
because many of the prescription drugs
link |
associated with sleep, and you all know what those are,
link |
carry other side effects.
link |
They can create bad dreams, often very disturbing dreams.
link |
They can be addictive or at least habit forming.
link |
They can create grogginess in the morning.
link |
Some are safer than others.
link |
There's a variety of them out there.
link |
But for those that want to explore supplements
link |
and how they can impact sleep,
link |
this combination of about 300, 400 milligrams
link |
of magnesium threonate or by glycinate,
link |
50 milligrams of apigenin,
link |
and 100 to 200 milligrams of theanine alone
link |
or in combination have been beneficial to many people.
link |
And there are excellent studies to support those statements.
link |
Again, I suggest you go to examine.com
link |
and look up the human effect matrix
link |
for each of those compounds and you can explore them.
link |
One of the more interesting aspects to magnesium threonate
link |
and by glycinate is that it seems to have
link |
some neuroprotective effects as well.
link |
There aren't many studies on it,
link |
but the few studies that are there point to the fact
link |
that magnesium threonate and magnesium by glycinate
link |
can also support neuron health and neuron longevity,
link |
which is just an added bonus in my opinion.
link |
Now, what if you wake up in the middle of the night?
link |
This is a very common occurrence
link |
and there are two general themes
link |
around waking up in the middle of the night
link |
that one can use tools to counteract.
link |
The first theme is if you're somebody
link |
who is tired in the evenings
link |
and you're kind of pushing yourself to stay awake,
link |
so you're going to the party
link |
or you're pushing yourself to study your work,
link |
when in fact you'd like to get into bed at eight,
link |
and then you're falling asleep around 10, 30, 11
link |
and waking up at 2.30 or three in the morning
link |
and you can't fall back asleep,
link |
chances are that your melatonin pulse
link |
was initiated early in the night.
link |
So that melatonin pulse started probably around 8.30 or nine
link |
but you're staying up, you're battling that melatonin.
link |
And then sometime around 2.30 or three in the morning,
link |
that melatonin is no longer present,
link |
it's sufficiently high levels in your bloodstream
link |
and you're waking up,
link |
you're getting your morning cortisol pulse
link |
shifted into those wee hours of the morning.
link |
You may not like this advice,
link |
but one of the things that you can do to offset that
link |
is to simply go to bed earlier.
link |
By going to bed earlier,
link |
you're going to get the longer duration of sleep.
link |
But I realize that there are social reasons
link |
and work-related reasons why going to bed at 8.30 or nine
link |
is not necessarily beneficial to your life.
link |
you might be one of the rare individuals
link |
for whom getting a little bit more bright light
link |
in the evening could be a good thing.
link |
So this would be around the hours of seven or 8 p.m.
link |
And in that way, causing that pulse in melatonin
link |
to be delayed because again, light inhibits melatonin.
link |
Now, the other thing is
link |
many people wake up in the middle of the night
link |
because of anxiety or because they have to use the restroom.
link |
It's perfectly fine to flip on the lights
link |
but keep the lights dim.
link |
But if you flip on those lights,
link |
try and flip them off as soon as possible
link |
and try and get back into bed.
link |
And if you have trouble falling asleep again
link |
and you absolutely need to sleep,
link |
that's where these NSDR,
link |
these non-sleep deep rest protocols
link |
can really be beneficial.
link |
Even though the NS, the non-sleep part
link |
might make you think that
link |
they will prevent you from falling asleep,
link |
rather than trying to fight your mind,
link |
trying to fight anxiety,
link |
which is always a terrible thing to do.
link |
I always say it's very hard to control the mind
link |
Look to the body and that's what NSDR scripts do.
link |
Things like yoga nidra, even the sleep hypnosis
link |
done in the middle of the night
link |
if you wake up and want to fall back asleep,
link |
oftentimes will help you fall back asleep immediately.
link |
And if they don't,
link |
they will at least put your brain and body
link |
into a state of deep relaxation
link |
that more closely mimics the sleep state
link |
that you ought to be in,
link |
than the awake ruminating,
link |
stressing about the fact that you're not sleeping state.
link |
So if you wake up in the middle of the night,
link |
really try and get back to sleep.
link |
And if you can't do that by doing, for instance,
link |
long exhale breathing, which can work,
link |
use some other tool of the body to shift the mind.
link |
And the tools that I'm recommending
link |
are of the non-sleep deep rest variety.
link |
So now we've essentially traveled around the clock,
link |
so to speak, from the time where one wakes up
link |
until the time they start working,
link |
until the time they exercise, eat lunch,
link |
do an NSDR, head to sleep, get to sleep,
link |
maybe wake up, get back to sleep, et cetera.
link |
I want to emphasize that although people's schedules vary,
link |
most people are doing more than one or two workouts per day.
link |
And indeed, I'm doing more than one
link |
or two workouts per day.
link |
I really emphasize that morning 90-minute work block
link |
because I think most people would agree
link |
that there's a portion of each day
link |
in which we need to do the hardest thing
link |
or the most important thing,
link |
or the thing that demands the most of our cognitive self.
link |
I position that early in the day,
link |
and I position everything around that
link |
in order to ensure that it happens
link |
and that it happens with the highest degree of efficiency.
link |
And yes, I make sure that it happens every day.
link |
And that brings about two other important points.
link |
First of all, we do have this thing called weekends,
link |
and I tend to take one day off per week, not both,
link |
much to the dismay of people in my life and Costello.
link |
But nonetheless, there is something called weekend drift,
link |
which is that we can be very regimented
link |
on a Monday or a Tuesday,
link |
and then even if we're good about maintaining a schedule,
link |
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, et cetera,
link |
most of us, I would hope,
link |
would alter their schedule somewhat on the weekends
link |
in order to recover and get some additional rest.
link |
And I want to emphasize, I absolutely do that.
link |
I take one day per week where I go full Costello,
link |
where I essentially do nothing in a structured way.
link |
At least if I have my way, I'm not making any plans.
link |
I'm completely free to explore what I want to do
link |
and when I want to do it.
link |
That's not the way life works out.
link |
Oftentimes there are social engagements and other things
link |
that get in the way or that I enjoy,
link |
and that breaks up the day.
link |
But I do take rest.
link |
I don't think that one has to follow the same schedule
link |
However, I do think there are a few things
link |
that people should do every single day, if possible.
link |
And those are get morning sunlight,
link |
because if you don't, your circadian rhythms
link |
and your health, et cetera, and your mood
link |
are going to start to drift
link |
and to try and get sleep on a regular basis.
link |
And of course, some of the greatest of things in life
link |
happen after 10 p.m.,
link |
and some of those even involve sleepless nights
link |
I certainly don't want to discourage people
link |
from having a social life or from having a robust party life
link |
if that's your thing, or for enjoying life,
link |
because that's certainly one of the main things
link |
that we should all be pursuing is to enjoy life.
link |
The only point I want to make about sleep
link |
is that if you happen to stay up late,
link |
it's still best to get up at your regular wake-up time.
link |
It's a very simple solution to a problem
link |
that a lot of people have,
link |
which is they stay up till two or three in the morning,
link |
and then they tend to sleep late,
link |
and then it tends to disrupt their rhythm.
link |
Try on most days and most nights
link |
to wake up at more or less the same time
link |
and try to go to sleep at more or less the same time.
link |
In fact, I was talking to Matt Walker about this recently,
link |
and he was also surprised to see these new data,
link |
and I was surprised to see these new data
link |
that emphasized that if you get a poor night's sleep,
link |
or if you're up late the previous night for good reasons,
link |
many people feel like they just want to go to bed
link |
early the next night,
link |
but it turns out that's not the best thing to do
link |
for your immediate and long-term health.
link |
Try and stay up to the point
link |
where you would normally stay up and then get to sleep.
link |
If you go to bed a couple hours earlier,
link |
it's probably not going to kill you,
link |
but try to not go to bed, for instance, at 6 p.m.
link |
because you were up the entire night before.
link |
That can really be disruptive.
link |
The other thing I want to emphasize is that
link |
even though that morning 90-minute work block is so vital,
link |
of course, there's a second work block,
link |
and in fact, I described one in the afternoon
link |
For me, that's reverie hypnosis.
link |
There's a 90-minute work block in which I drop in again
link |
in a no internet connection, no phone kind of way
link |
to complete some work that's important to me.
link |
So combined, that's just three hours of focused work,
link |
which may not seem like a lot,
link |
but if you were to dissect your day
link |
and kind of look at the arc and structure of your day,
link |
I'd be willing to bet that if we added up
link |
the total period of time in which you were in
link |
what Cal Newport would call deep work,
link |
really focused, dedicated work,
link |
that it would probably amount to about three or four hours.
link |
If you can squeeze in another 90-minute work block,
link |
or if you can get four 90-minute work blocks,
link |
well, then more power to you,
link |
but I think most people find that one or two
link |
of these really deep focused 90-minute work blocks
link |
are about what one's schedule and even mind can handle.
link |
And of course, throughout the day,
link |
there are other things happening
link |
outside of those 90-minute work blocks.
link |
I'm checking my text messages, I'm checking my email,
link |
I'm responding to various demands,
link |
I'm working and tending to life.
link |
So while I've carved some boundaries
link |
or delineated some boundaries around those work blocks,
link |
and I'm certain that if you do too,
link |
you will benefit from them,
link |
they are certainly not the only periods of time each day
link |
in which I, or I believe other people
link |
should be trying to learn or trying to focus.
link |
And I want to emphasize that even though my job
link |
is to discover knowledge and distribute knowledge,
link |
because I'm a scientist,
link |
I realized that 90-minute work blocks
link |
of the sort that I'm describing
link |
may not apply specifically to the kinds of work you do
link |
if you're an artist or a sculptor,
link |
where you build furniture,
link |
or whatever it is that you happen to,
link |
you teach children or they teach you,
link |
whatever it happens to be.
link |
Of course, please adapt and modify what I've described today
link |
in ways that best serve you and your schedule.
link |
What I've tried to do is provide you a picture
link |
of the 24-hour schedule that I follow
link |
and why I do certain things at particular times
link |
and why I do those particular things.
link |
And I've really tried to emphasize
link |
the scientific rationale behind those things,
link |
the peer-reviewed data.
link |
In some cases, I pointed out the specific papers,
link |
in other cases, I've referred to large bodies of work
link |
that support these practices.
link |
When I say large bodies of work,
link |
I'm a big fan of looking to the scientific literature
link |
and asking where is the center of mass
link |
for a particular topic?
link |
For instance, where is there 50 or 100 or 1,000 papers
link |
that, for instance, support morning light viewing
link |
in order to optimize melatonin secretion later in the day,
link |
cortisol secretion early in the day,
link |
mood, metabolism, et cetera.
link |
If one were to put into PubMed light, metabolism, and mood,
link |
you would literally get tens of thousands,
link |
maybe even hundreds of thousands of studies.
link |
So when I say the center of mass,
link |
what I've really tried to do is examine the literature
link |
and figure out where there's a sort of a directive protocol
link |
that emerges from all these various studies
link |
that used, in some cases, animals, in many cases, humans,
link |
and explore different, what we call dependent variables.
link |
Some studies were looking at effects on blood sugar,
link |
So I hope that makes clear why the rationale
link |
behind what I provided today.
link |
If you're learning from this podcast and enjoying it,
link |
please support us by subscribing to the YouTube channel.
link |
There at YouTube, you can also provide comments
link |
We use that feedback to inform future episodes.
link |
In addition, please subscribe on Apple and Spotify.
link |
And on Apple, you have the opportunity
link |
to leave us up to a five-star review,
link |
as well as to leave us written comments.
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If you're not already following us on Instagram, please do.
link |
There, I provide short tutorials on neuroscience
link |
and neuroscience-based tools on a frequent basis.
link |
Please also feel free to join our neural network.
link |
The neural network is a free resource newsletter
link |
that I provide each month that has protocols and resources,
link |
You can find it at hubermanlab.com.
link |
During today's episode, I describe various supplements
link |
that one might want to consider taking.
link |
We've partnered with Thorne, that's T-H-O-R-N-E.com,
link |
because Thorne supplements are known to be
link |
of the very highest stringency and quality.
link |
When I say stringency and quality,
link |
that means the quality of the individual ingredients,
link |
as well as the amounts of those ingredients match precisely
link |
with what's listed on the packaging.
link |
If you'd like to see the supplements that I personally take,
link |
you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman,
link |
and there you'll see all the supplements that I take,
link |
and you can get 20% off any of those supplements
link |
or any of the other supplements that Thorne makes.
link |
Another great way to support us
link |
is by checking out our sponsors.
link |
We only work with sponsors whose products
link |
we absolutely love, and if you want to support us,
link |
please check out their websites.
link |
The links to those websites are in the episode caption.
link |
And last but not least,
link |
thank you for your interest in science.
link |
I'll see you in another home run.