00:00

welcome to the hubermann lab podcast

00:02
where we discuss science
00:03
and science-based tools for everyday
00:05
life
00:09
i'm andrew huberman and i'm a professor
00:11
of neurobiology and ophthalmology at
00:13
stanford school of medicine
00:15
today's podcast episode is all about
00:17
sleep
00:18
we're also going to talk about the
00:20
mirror image of sleep which is
00:22
wakefulness
00:23
now these two phases of our life sleep
00:25
and wakefulness
00:27
govern everything about our mental and
00:30
physical health
00:31
and we're not just going to talk about
00:33
what's useful about sleep
00:34
we're also going to talk about how to
00:36
get better at sleeping
00:38
and that will include how to get better
00:39
at falling asleep timing your sleep
00:42
and accessing better sleep quality in
00:44
doing so we're also going to discuss how
00:46
to get
00:47
more focused and alert in wakefulness
00:50
so because sleep and wakefulness are
00:52
related we really can't have a
00:53
conversation about one without the other
00:55
now in keeping with this theme you may
00:58
catch a few
00:59
snores in the background unlike me my
01:01
bulldog costello can fall asleep
01:03
anywhere anytime and he happens to be
01:05
sleeping over there in the corner
01:06
so if you hear snoring that's what
01:09
that's about
01:10
as always i want to just mention that
01:11
this podcast is part of my effort to
01:13
bring zero cost to consumer
01:15
public education about science and
01:17
science related tools
01:19
it is unrelated to my teaching and
01:21
research roles at stanford school of
01:22
medicine
01:23
today's podcast is brought to us by
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01:26
having the proper sleep environment both
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01:33
night's sleep
01:34
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which has made a tremendous difference
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today's podcast is also brought to us by
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headspace
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headspace is a meditation app that
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teaches you how to meditate
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it's fair to say that now there's a ton
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02:35
in peer-reviewed journals supporting the
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fact that mindfulness meditation can
02:39
support
02:40
mental and physical health but many
02:42
people find it hard to meditate
02:44
in fact i'm one of these people i
02:46
started meditating in my teens but then
02:47
i would drop it
02:48
every few weeks or so and then i'd get
02:50
back to it maybe the following week or
02:52
every year i just was not very regular
02:54
about my meditation practice
02:56
then a few years ago i was flying a lot
02:58
for work and i was on jetblue flights
03:01
and they have headspace as part of the
03:03
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03:05
and as i started meditating more
03:07
regularly what i found is my sleep was
03:09
better
03:09
i would arrive feeling more rested it
03:12
just had tremendous effects
03:13
on my work performance and other aspects
03:15
of my life
03:16
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special offer
03:33
so let's talk about sleep sleep is this
03:35
incredible period of our lives
03:37
where we are not conscious we might
03:40
dream
03:41
we might twitch we might even wake up
03:44
but in
03:44
sleep we are only in relation to things
03:47
that are happening within our brain and
03:48
body
03:49
outside sensory experience in most cases
03:52
can't really impact us and yet sleep is
03:55
this tremendously important period of
03:57
life because
03:58
it resets our ability to be focused
04:02
alert and emotionally stable in the
04:04
wakeful period
04:06
so we can't really talk about
04:07
wakefulness focus
04:09
motivation mood well-being without
04:12
thinking about sleep and that's why
04:14
we're devoting this entire month to the
04:16
discussion about sleep
04:18
but we also can't talk about sleep and
04:19
think about sleep without thinking about
04:21
wakefulness because it turns out
04:23
that the period that we call sleep and
04:26
the period we call wakefulness are
04:27
tethered to one another
04:29
what we do in the waking state
04:31
determines when we fall asleep
04:33
how quickly we fall asleep whether or
04:36
not we stay asleep
04:37
and how we feel when we wake up the next
04:39
day and today we're going to talk mostly
04:42
about how to get better at sleeping and
04:45
the reason for
04:46
starting the conversation that way as
04:48
opposed to just diving into a lot of
04:50
biology about sleep
04:52
is because first of all there's a lot of
04:54
information out there already
04:56
about the biology of sleep we're going
04:58
to touch on a little bit of this
04:59
things like stages of sleep and sleep
05:01
spindles
05:02
melatonin and dreaming but i think that
05:06
by now
05:07
most people are aware that getting a
05:10
really good night's sleep on a
05:11
consistent basis
05:12
is critically important but most people
05:15
don't know how to do that
05:16
in fact i'm guessing that very few of
05:19
you out there
05:20
are consistently getting seven to nine
05:22
hours of really terrific sleep waking up
05:25
feeling rested
05:26
like you're ready to attack the day and
05:27
being able to go through the day feeling
05:29
focused and alert
05:30
without dips in energy or focus so if
05:34
you're like most people
05:35
which includes me you have some
05:37
challenges with sleep at least
05:39
every third or fifth night or so and
05:41
maybe even more often
05:42
so we're really going to go tool heavy
05:44
today and talk about tools
05:46
that can help you fall asleep sleep
05:48
better and emerge from sleep feeling
05:50
more rested
05:51
and we're going to do that by grounding
05:53
our discussion of tools
05:55
in peer-reviewed studies mostly from the
05:58
last
05:58
10 years although some even more recent
06:00
than that and we're going to start
06:02
by discussing what is sleep and what
06:05
governs the timing
06:07
of the onset of sleep in other words
06:09
what makes you get sleepy at a
06:10
particular time of day
06:12
so what determines how well we sleep and
06:15
the quality of our wakeful state
06:18
turns out that's governed by two forces
06:20
the first force is a chemical force
06:23
it's called adenosine adenosine is a
06:26
molecule in our nervous system and body
06:28
that builds up the longer we are awake
06:31
so if you've just slept for
06:33
eight or nine or ten really deep restful
06:36
hours
06:37
adenosine is going to be very low in
06:39
your brain and body
06:40
if however you've been awake for 10 15
06:43
or more hours adenosine levels are going
06:46
to be much higher
06:47
adenosine creates a sort of sleep drive
06:50
or a sleep hunger
06:52
and actually hunger is the appropriate
06:53
word here because for most of what we're
06:56
going to discuss today
06:57
we can think of it in an analogous way
06:59
to nutrition
07:01
your nutrition and how well you feel
07:04
after you eat certain foods your overall
07:06
level of
07:07
fitness and your cellular health and
07:09
your heart health
07:10
isn't governed by any one food item that
07:13
you might eat or not eat
07:14
it's governed by a number of different
07:15
factors how often you eat how much you
07:17
eat
07:18
which items you eat etc and what works
07:20
best for you
07:22
in the same way your sleep and your
07:24
wakefulness
07:26
are the product of kind of the average
07:28
of a number of different behaviors
07:30
how long you've been awake is a key one
07:32
because of this molecule
07:33
adenosine so the reason you get sleepy
07:36
when you've been up for a while is
07:37
because adenosine
07:39
is creeping up steadily the longer
07:41
you've been awake
07:42
and a good way to remember this and
07:44
think about adenosine is to think about
07:46
caffeine caffeine for most people
07:50
except a very small percentage of people
07:52
wakes them up
07:53
it makes them feel more alert in fact
07:55
some people are so sensitive to caffeine
07:57
that they feel
07:58
jittery if they drink it even in small
08:00
amounts
08:01
other people can drink large amounts of
08:03
caffeine and not feel
08:04
jittery at all caffeine
08:08
acts as an adenosine antagonist what
08:11
that means
08:12
is that when you ingest caffeine whether
08:14
or not it's coffee or soda or tea
08:16
or in any other form it binds to the
08:19
adenosine receptor it sort of parks
08:21
there just like
08:22
a car would park in a given parking slot
08:24
and therefore adenosine can't park in
08:26
that slot
08:27
now when caffeine parks in the adenosine
08:29
receptor slot
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nothing really happens downstream of
08:34
that receptor the receptor can't engage
08:36
the normal cellular functions of making
08:38
that cell and you feel sleepy so
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the reason caffeine wakes you up is
08:44
because it blocks the sleepiness
08:46
receptor it blocks the sleepy signal and
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this is why when that caffeine wears off
08:52
adenosine will bind to that receptor
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sometimes with even greater what we call
08:56
affinity
08:57
and you feel the crash you feel
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especially tired
09:00
now i'm not here to demonize caffeine i
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love caffeine
09:04
i drink it in the morning and i drink it
09:06
in the afternoon but i'm one of these
09:08
people that either
09:09
because of my tolerance or because of
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some genetic variations that exist among
09:13
people
09:14
in terms of their adenosine receptors i
09:17
can drink caffeine as late as four or
09:19
five pm in the evening and still fall
09:20
asleep just fine
09:22
some people can't have any caffeine at
09:24
all or can't have any caffeine past 11
09:27
a.m or else their sleep is totally
09:28
disrupted
09:29
all of this has to do with the
09:32
relationship between
09:33
adenosine and these adenosine receptors
09:35
genetic variation
09:36
things that are very hard to find out
09:38
except experimentally
09:40
meaning each of you needs to decide and
09:42
figure out for yourselves
09:43
whether or not you can tolerate caffeine
09:45
and at what times of day you can
09:46
tolerate caffeine
09:48
in order to still fall asleep easily and
09:50
get good
09:51
sleep so rather than demonize caffeine
09:54
or say that you know everyone can drink
09:57
caffeine until late
09:58
you need to figure out what's right for
10:00
you caffeine
10:01
has a lot of health benefits it also for
10:04
some people can be
10:06
problematic for health it can raise
10:07
blood pressure etc
10:09
caffeine increases this molecule that's
10:11
a neuromodulator that we call
10:13
dopamine we discuss this in episode one
10:16
which tends to make us feel good
10:17
motivated
10:18
and give us energy because as you may
10:21
have learned in episode one
10:23
dopamine is related to another
10:25
neuromodulator called epinephrine which
10:27
gives us energy in fact epinephrine is
10:29
made from dopamine so let's just take a
10:31
step back
10:32
and think about what we're talking about
10:33
when we're talking about sleep
10:34
sleepiness
10:35
sleepiness is driven by increases in
10:38
adenosine that happen
10:39
naturally caffeine
10:42
prevents the adenosine from having its
10:45
action of making us sleepy by blocking
10:47
that receptor
10:48
so it gives us energy and it increases
10:50
our dopamine levels
10:52
but some people can't tolerate caffeine
10:54
very well
10:55
other people can tolerate it just fine
10:57
so you need to determine that
10:58
experimentally
11:00
all the data say there's tremendous
11:01
variation and right now the only way
11:03
that i'm aware of for you to decide
11:05
whether or not caffeine is a good or a
11:07
bad thing for you
11:08
and whether or not you should ingest it
11:10
at a given time of day
11:11
or at all is really to figure that out
11:14
on your own in fact there's a small
11:15
subset of people
11:16
that can drink caffeine until very late
11:19
and they have no trouble falling asleep
11:20
because
11:21
they actually have a mutant form of the
11:23
adenosine receptor
11:24
so in keeping with the theme of science
11:26
and related tools
11:28
this is one of those cases where i can't
11:30
give you a one-size-fits-all
11:31
prescription
11:32
except to say you need to experiment
11:34
with caffeine in a way that's safe for
11:36
you
11:37
and explore that and figure out what
11:38
works for you and then stick with that
11:41
okay so adenosine is driving the sleep
11:43
hunger when adenosine is low
11:45
it's like we're well fed we're not very
11:47
hungry and when adenosine is high
11:50
it's like we're fasted for a long time
11:52
and we tend to be very hungry
11:53
so when adenosine is high we really want
11:56
to fall asleep
11:57
if you want i'm not suggesting you do
11:59
this experiment but you can do it
12:00
you can stay up for four more hours then
12:03
you're used to staying up and you'll
12:04
find that you're very very sleepy
12:07
that's because adenosine is building up
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at levels higher and higher
12:10
because you've been awake for those
12:12
extra four hours
12:13
however if you've ever pulled an
12:15
all-nighter you'll notice something
12:16
interesting
12:18
as morning rolls around you'll suddenly
12:20
feel an increase in your energy and
12:22
alertness again
12:23
even though adenosine has been building
12:26
up for
12:26
the entire night why is that
12:30
the reason that is is because there's a
12:31
second force which is governing
12:33
when you sleep and when you're awake and
12:35
that force
12:36
is a so-called circadian force circadian
12:40
means
12:40
about a day or about 24 hours
12:44
and inside all of us is a clock that
12:47
exists in your brain and my brain
12:49
and the brain of every animal that we're
12:51
aware of
12:52
that determines when we want to be
12:55
sleepy and when we want to be awake
12:57
just think about it we don't go through
12:59
the day wanting to fall asleep every 30
13:01
minutes and then
13:02
feeling like we're wide awake our sleep
13:04
and our period of sleepiness tends to be
13:06
condensed
13:07
into one block typically one
13:10
six to ten hour block although there's
13:12
also variation in terms of how much
13:14
people want to sleep and we're going to
13:16
discuss
13:16
how you can diagnose your absolute sleep
13:19
need
13:20
as well as how to recover sleep that
13:21
you've lost
13:23
that block of sleep and when it falls
13:26
within each 24-hour cycle
13:28
is governed by a number of different
13:30
things
13:31
but the most powerful thing that's
13:33
governing when you want to be asleep
13:34
and when you want to be awake is light
13:38
and in particular it's governed by
13:40
sunlight i can't emphasize
13:42
enough how important and how actionable
13:44
this
13:45
relationship is between light and when
13:48
you want to sleep
13:50
it's quite simple on the face of it and
13:53
it's quite simple to resolve but people
13:55
tend to make
13:56
a big mess of this whole circadian
13:57
literature frankly
13:59
so let's just break it down from the
14:01
standpoint of
14:02
what's going on in your brain and body
14:05
as you go through
14:06
one 24-hour day let's start with waking
14:09
so regardless of how well you slept at
14:11
night or whether or not you were up all
14:12
night
14:14
most people tend to wake up sometime
14:16
around
14:17
when the sun rises maybe not right at
14:19
sunrise but within an hour
14:21
or two or maybe three of sunrise now i
14:24
realize there are night shift workers
14:25
and there are people traveling and
14:27
experiencing jet lag
14:28
where this is not going to be the case
14:30
we are going to deal with jet lag
14:31
and shift work at the end of this
14:33
podcast
14:34
but for most people we tend to wake up
14:36
about the time that the sun
14:38
is rising or so and as we do that
14:42
adenosine levels tend to be low if we've
14:44
been asleep
14:45
for reasons that you now understand and
14:48
our system generates an internal signal
14:52
that is in the form of a hormone
14:54
now i've talked a lot about
14:55
neuromodulators and neurotransmitters i
14:57
haven't talked a lot about hormones
14:59
yet on this podcast the definition of a
15:02
hormone
15:03
is it's a substance a chemical that's
15:05
released from
15:06
one organ in your body that goes and
15:08
acts on
15:09
other organs elsewhere in your body
15:11
including your nervous system
15:13
when you wake up in the morning you wake
15:16
up because a particular hormone called
15:18
cortisol
15:19
is released from your adrenal glands
15:21
your adrenal glands sit right above your
15:23
kidneys
15:23
and there's a little pulse of cortisol
15:25
there's also the pulse of some
15:28
and when i say a pulse i just mean it
15:29
the release of a little bit
15:31
there's also a pulse of epinephrine
15:34
which is adrenaline from your adrenals
15:37
and
15:37
also in your brain and you feel awake
15:40
now that pulse of cortisol and
15:42
adrenaline and epinephrine might come
15:44
from your alarm clock
15:45
it might come from you naturally waking
15:47
up but it tends to
15:49
alert your whole system and your body
15:51
that it's time to increase your heart
15:52
rate it's time to start tensing your
15:54
muscles it's time to start moving about
15:56
it's very important that that cortisol
15:59
pulse come
16:00
early in the day or at least early in
16:03
your period of wakefulness
16:04
i say that because some people are
16:06
waking up at 8 pm and are sleeping all
16:08
day
16:09
but it's very important that that pulse
16:10
of cortisol occur early in the day
16:12
and that it happens all at once it sort
16:16
of sets a
16:17
rising tide of cortisol in your system
16:19
now many of you have probably heard
16:21
about cortisol
16:22
in relation to stress and indeed as we
16:24
go through our day
16:25
and our life different stressors
16:27
different events happen in our life
16:30
that make us feel more alert some of the
16:32
more stressful ones might be
16:33
looking at your credit card bill and
16:35
seeing a what seems to be a fraudulent
16:37
charge
16:38
or looking at your phone and suddenly
16:40
seeing a text that something you thought
16:42
was going to happen a particular time is
16:43
not going to happen or you're running
16:44
late
16:45
those will tend to increase
16:47
norepinephrine and epinephrine
16:48
and adrenaline in your system and if
16:51
they're severe enough
16:52
you'll start getting some pulses of
16:53
cortisol released from your adrenals
16:55
throughout the day
16:57
but there's this normal healthy rising
17:00
tide of cortisol that happens early in
17:02
the day
17:02
and i say healthy because it wakes you
17:04
up it makes you feel alert it makes you
17:06
feel
17:06
able to move and wanting to move and to
17:08
go out your day for work for exercise
17:11
for school for social relations
17:13
etc so when you wake up in the morning
17:16
is when that
17:17
cortisol pulse takes off and something
17:20
else important happens
17:21
a timer is set in your body and in your
17:24
nervous system
17:25
that dictates when a different hormone
17:28
called melatonin
17:29
which makes you sleepy will be secreted
17:33
from a particular brain region so let's
17:34
talk about that
17:36
when you wake up in the morning and you
17:37
experience that rise in cortisol
17:40
there's a timer that starts going and
17:43
these are cellular timers and they're
17:45
dictated by the relation between
17:46
different organs in your body
17:48
that says to to your brain and body that
17:51
in about 12 to 14 hours
17:53
a different hormone this hormone we're
17:55
calling melatonin
17:57
will be released from your pineal gland
18:00
so there's two mechanisms here a
18:01
wakefulness signal
18:02
and a sleepiness signal and the
18:04
wakefulness signal triggers the onset of
18:07
the timer
18:08
for the sleepiness signal now that
18:10
sleepiness signal that we call melatonin
18:12
that's released from the pineal
18:14
comes only from the pineal unless you're
18:17
taking exogenous melatonin you're
18:19
supplementing with melatonin
18:21
the only source of melatonin in your
18:22
body is going to be this pineal gland
18:25
so let's talk about the pineal gland for
18:27
a second the pineal gland
18:29
is a gland that sits kind of in the
18:33
little structure near for the
18:34
aficionados out there
18:36
it's kind of near the fourth ventricle
18:38
it's about the size of a p
18:40
descarte the philosopher said that the
18:42
pineal was the seat of the soul
18:45
he said that because it's one of the few
18:47
structures in the human brain
18:49
that there's only one of them you know
18:51
most structures there's one on either
18:52
side of the brain
18:54
so called by hemispheric but the pineal
18:55
there's only one
18:57
i don't know anything about souls really
18:59
um certainly not the science of souls
19:01
but i think it's very unlikely that the
19:03
pineal is the seat of the soul
19:05
but it is a very interesting organ
19:08
because it's the only organ in our body
19:10
that releases melatonin and that
19:13
melatonin makes us sleepy and
19:15
lets us fall asleep now i'm guessing
19:18
that many of you are probably asking
19:21
should i take melatonin my personal bias
19:24
on this
19:25
is except in rare cases no
19:28
for the following reason melatonin has a
19:30
second function
19:32
which is that melatonin also suppresses
19:34
the onset of puberty
19:36
in kids and especially in babies
19:38
melatonin isn't just released in the
19:40
evening 12 to 16 hours after we wake
19:44
melatonin is released chronically or
19:47
tonically
19:47
throughout the day and night and that
19:50
chronic or tonic release of melatonin
19:52
is known to suppress some of the other
19:54
hormones in other regions of the brain
19:55
that trigger the onset of puberty now if
19:58
you or your child has been taking
19:59
melatonin don't freak out
20:01
as always any kind of supplement or
20:04
anything that you're going to take
20:06
or think about taking you really need to
20:08
consult with your doctor
20:09
i've said this many times on this
20:11
podcast and it's in the show notes etc
20:13
but before you remove anything or
20:16
add anything to what you're already
20:18
doing please do consult with a
20:20
health care professional however
20:22
melatonin is known
20:24
to suppress the onset of puberty so much
20:27
so that
20:27
regular cyclic cycled periods of
20:30
melatonin released from the pineal
20:32
really correlate with the onset of
20:34
puberty and early adulthood
20:36
meaning as we start secreting melatonin
20:39
only at night
20:40
that's also when we tend to transition
20:42
out of puberty now there are a lot of
20:44
things that correlate in our nervous
20:45
system
20:46
so it doesn't necessarily mean it
20:47
controls it but in this case we know
20:49
based on lots of data endocrinology and
20:52
so forth
20:52
that melatonin suppresses the onset of
20:55
puberty
20:56
so supplementing melatonin could be
20:58
problematic for that reason
21:00
but if you're if you've already gone
21:01
through puberty it could
21:03
also have some impact on other hormone
21:06
systems in your body so that's why
21:08
i personally don't like to use melatonin
21:10
to fall asleep
21:11
there's another reason which is that
21:13
melatonin will help you fall asleep but
21:14
it won't help you stay asleep and many
21:16
people who take melatonin find that they
21:18
wake up
21:19
three to five hours later unable to fall
21:21
back asleep
21:22
part of the reason for that might be
21:25
that melatonin purchased
21:27
you can buy it over the counter in most
21:29
areas of the world even though it's a
21:30
hormone which is a little unusual you
21:32
can't just go into
21:33
a pharmacy at least in the u.s and buy
21:34
testosterone or cortisol or estrogen
21:37
you need a prescription but you can go
21:38
buy melatonin for whatever reason i
21:40
don't know the
21:41
the reasons for the that legality
21:44
but it's been shown many times and now
21:47
i'm um
21:47
borrowing from some items that were in
21:49
matt walker's book while we sleep
21:52
where he stated the there is evidence
21:54
that
21:55
in commercially available melatonin the
21:57
amount of melatonin
21:58
has been tested in for various brands
22:01
and it can range
22:02
anywhere from being 15 percent of what's
22:05
listed on the bottle
22:07
okay so if they list this is a hundred
22:09
milligrams would be a tremendously high
22:10
dose
22:11
it turns out it's only 15 milligrams in
22:14
that particular pillar capsule
22:16
or up to 400 times more than what's
22:19
listed
22:19
on the bottle so it's completely
22:21
unregulated and so for those of you
22:23
taking melatonin
22:24
i will discuss at the end of the podcast
22:26
some other potential alternatives that
22:29
are probably safer and don't have these
22:31
issues
22:32
so should you take melatonin my personal
22:35
bias is
22:36
no but for many people they find that it
22:39
does help
22:40
them and so if you do find it helps you
22:41
then just consider what i'm saying in
22:43
light of
22:44
the other practices that you're doing
22:47
and talk to your healthcare professional
22:48
okay so the rhythm of cortisol and
22:52
melatonin
22:53
is what we call endogenous it's
22:55
happening in us all the time
22:57
without any external input in fact if we
22:59
were
23:00
in complete darkness living in a cave
23:02
with no artificial lights whatsoever
23:04
or we were in complete brightness where
23:07
we never experienced
23:08
any darkness these rhythms of cortisol
23:11
and melatonin would continue you would
23:14
have a bump in cortisol or a pulse in
23:16
cortisol that would drop off with time
23:18
and then melatonin would come up about
23:20
12 to 14 hours
23:22
later but these endogenous
23:25
systems of our body which are both
23:27
hormonal
23:28
and neural were set
23:32
so that external things could govern
23:35
when they happen now this takes us back
23:38
to episode one of the podcast that if
23:40
you
23:40
haven't listened to already you might
23:41
want to listen to where we talked about
23:43
sensation and perception and all that
23:45
i'm not going to review it again here
23:47
but there's one particular sensory event
23:50
one particular influence on your nervous
23:53
system that determines
23:54
when that cortisol is going to start to
23:57
rise
23:58
so if you were in complete darkness it
24:00
would happen once per 24 hour cycle
24:03
but it would be somewhat later in later
24:06
each day
24:08
whereas under normal under normal
24:10
circumstances what happens
24:12
is you wake up and what happens when you
24:14
wake up
24:15
you open your eyes when you open your
24:17
eyes light comes into your eyes
24:20
now the way this system works is that
24:22
you have a particular set of neurons
24:24
in your eye they're called retinal
24:25
ganglion cells you don't have to
24:26
remember that if you don't want to
24:28
but these retinal ganglion cells are
24:30
brain neurons
24:32
again the retina is just the one piece
24:34
of your brain actually two pieces
24:35
because most of you have two retinas
24:37
that resides outside the skull per se
24:41
when light comes into the eye there's a
24:43
particular
24:44
group of retinal ganglion cells or type
24:46
of retinal ganglion cells
24:48
that perceives a particular type of
24:51
light
24:52
and communicates that to this clock that
24:54
resides right above the roof of your
24:55
mouth
24:55
called the suprachiasmatic nucleus okay
24:59
so i know this can get a little
25:00
complicated but these retinal ganglion
25:01
cells
25:03
when you open your eyes light comes in
25:05
and an electrical signal is sent to this
25:07
central clock we call the
25:09
suprachiasmatic nucleus
25:11
and the suprachiasmatic nucleus has
25:13
connections
25:15
with essentially every cell and organ of
25:17
your body
25:18
now it's vitally important that we get
25:21
light communicated to this central clock
25:23
in order to time the cortisol and
25:26
melatonin properly when i say properly
25:29
i can say that with confidence because
25:30
we know based on a lot of evidence that
25:33
if you don't get
25:34
your cortisol and melatonin rhythms
25:36
right
25:37
there are tremendously broad
25:41
and bad effects on cardiovascular health
25:44
dementia metabolic effects
25:46
learning depression dementia in fact
25:49
there's so many negative effects
25:51
associated with getting this
25:52
wrong that i don't want to go into it in
25:54
too much detail in fact i feel like
25:56
we've been bombarded with all this
25:58
information about how we're not sleeping
26:00
well we're not sleeping at the right
26:01
times we're not sleeping enough
26:02
to the point where people now have sleep
26:04
anxiety they they if they can't sleep
26:06
well for a night
26:07
they're feeling overwhelmed by that and
26:09
sort of now they're stressed about not
26:10
being able to sleep which is making it
26:12
harder to sleep etc
26:13
i really want to focus on what we can do
26:16
to anchor these systems properly
26:18
so let's think about what happens when
26:21
we do this correctly and how to do it
26:22
correctly
26:23
when we wake up our eyes open now if
26:25
we're in a dark room
26:28
there isn't enough light to trigger
26:31
the correct timing of this cortisol
26:33
melatonin
26:34
thing these rhythms you might say
26:37
well why won't any light do it well it
26:39
turns out
26:41
that these neurons in our eye that set
26:43
the circadian clock and then allow our
26:44
circadian clock
26:46
to set all the clocks of all the cells
26:47
and organs and tissues of our body
26:49
responds best to a particular quality of
26:53
light an amount of light
26:56
and those are the qualities of light and
26:59
amount of light that come from sunlight
27:02
so these neurons
27:05
what they're really looking for although
27:07
they don't have a mind of their own
27:08
is the sun at what we call low solar
27:11
angle
27:12
the eye and the nervous system don't
27:13
know anything about sunrises or sunsets
27:15
it only
27:16
knows the quality of light that comes in
27:19
when the sun is low in the sky the
27:20
system evolves so that when
27:22
the sun is low in the sky there's a
27:25
particular contrast between
27:26
yellows and blues that triggers the
27:29
activation of these cells
27:31
so if you wake up and you look at your
27:32
phone or your computer or you flip on a
27:34
bunch of artificial lights
27:36
will these cells be activated and the
27:39
answer is sort of they'll be activated
27:41
but not
27:41
in the optimal way what you want to do
27:44
is get
27:45
sunlight in your eyes as close to waking
27:47
as possible now i want to be really
27:49
clear about this because i've talked
27:50
about it on other podcasts
27:52
when i was a guest and i've talked about
27:54
it on my instagram feed and there seem
27:56
to be the same questions coming up again
27:57
and again
27:59
these neurons don't know sunlight per se
28:01
they don't know
28:02
sunrise rise or sunset for that matter
28:05
they don't know artificial light
28:06
from sunlight what they respond best to
28:10
however
28:11
is the quality and amount of light that
28:13
comes in when the sun is low in the sky
28:16
that means that if you can watch the
28:18
sunrise
28:19
great that's perfect for triggering
28:21
activation of these cells
28:23
however if you wake up a few hours after
28:26
the sunrise which
28:27
i tend to most days personally you still
28:30
want to get outside
28:31
and view sunlight you don't need the
28:34
sunlight beaming you directly in the
28:36
eyes there's a lot of photons
28:38
light energy that scattered from
28:39
sunlight at this time
28:41
but the key is to get that light energy
28:45
from sunlight ideally into your eyes now
28:48
i know many of you are already asking
28:50
well i live in scandinavia or i can't
28:52
get sunlight there's buildings around me
28:54
etc
28:54
we will get to all of that but it's
28:56
critically important that you get
28:58
outside to get this
28:59
light i had a discussion with a
29:01
colleague of mine dr jamie zeitzer who's
29:03
in the
29:04
department of psychiatry and behavioral
29:06
sciences at stanford
29:08
a world expert in this and he tells me
29:11
that it's
29:12
50 times less effective
29:15
to view this sunlight through a window
29:19
through a car windshield or through a
29:21
side window of a car
29:23
than it is to just get outside with no
29:24
sunglasses
29:26
and view light early in the day now if
29:28
you can't
29:29
see the sunrise like i said you can see
29:31
this within an hour or two of sunrise
29:33
but it has to be low solar angle once
29:35
the sun is overhead
29:36
the quality of light shifts so that you
29:39
miss this opportunity
29:40
to time the cortisol pulse and that
29:42
turns out to be a bad thing
29:45
to do you really want to time that
29:47
cortisol pulse properly
29:49
because we'll get into this a little bit
29:51
more later
29:52
but a late shifted cortisol pulse
29:55
in particular 9 p.m or 8 p.m increase in
29:58
cortisol
29:59
is one of the consequences and maybe
30:02
one of the causes of a lot of anxiety
30:06
disorders and depression so it's kind of
30:07
a chicken egg thing we don't know
30:08
whether or not it's the
30:09
correlated with it's the cause or the
30:11
effect but it's a signature of
30:13
depression and anxiety disorder
30:15
bringing that cortisol pulse earlier in
30:18
your
30:18
wakeful period earlier in your day has
30:21
positive benefits ranging from blood
30:23
pressure to
30:25
mental health etc i'm not going to list
30:26
them all off because they're just
30:28
so many of them but many many positive
30:30
things happen
30:31
when you are getting the cortisol early
30:33
in the day
30:34
far away from your melatonin pulse okay
30:38
so how long should you be outside well
30:40
this is going to vary tremendously
30:42
because some people live in environments
30:43
where it's very bright so let's say
30:45
it's colorado in the middle of winter
30:48
there's a snow field there's no cloud
30:50
cover and you walk
30:50
outside you there's going to be so much
30:53
photon light energy
30:55
arriving on your retina that probably
30:56
only takes 30 to 60 seconds to trigger
30:59
the central clock
31:00
and set your cortisol and melatonin
31:02
rhythms properly and
31:03
get everything in lined up nicely
31:07
whereas if you're in scandinavia in the
31:09
depths of winter and you wake up at 5am
31:11
and the
31:11
sun is just barely creeping across the
31:13
horizon then goes back down again a few
31:14
hours later
31:16
you probably are not getting enough
31:18
sunlight
31:19
in order to set these rhythms so
31:23
many people find that they need to use
31:25
sunlight simulators
31:27
in the form of particular lights that
31:28
were designed to simulate sunlight
31:30
however i'm not out to attack the
31:33
companies that produce those
31:34
there's another solution to that you can
31:37
simply go outside for longer
31:39
even if there's a lot of dense cloud
31:41
cover you're probably getting
31:44
anywhere from 10 000 to 50 000 lux
31:47
lux was just a measure of light energy
31:50
and that should be sufficient to set the
31:52
circadian clock
31:55
you could say well the lights in my
31:57
house or my phone are really really
31:58
bright
31:59
right everyone's telling us to stay off
32:00
our phones at night because they're
32:02
really bright
32:03
but guess what it turns out that early
32:05
in the day
32:06
your retina is not very sensitive which
32:09
means you need a lot of photons
32:12
ideally coming from sunlight to set
32:13
these clock mechanisms so looking at
32:15
your phone or artificial lights is fine
32:17
if you wake up before
32:18
sunrise but it's not going to
32:21
work to set these clock mechanisms and
32:24
this is supported by
32:25
dozens if not hundreds of quality
32:27
peer-reviewed studies
32:29
so you want to use sunlight if you can't
32:31
see sunlight
32:32
because of your environment then you are
32:34
going to have to opt for artificial
32:36
light and in that case you're going to
32:38
want
32:38
an artificial light that either
32:40
simulates sunlight or has a lot of blue
32:42
light
32:43
now without going off course here you
32:45
might be saying wait i've heard blue
32:47
light is bad for me
32:48
actually blue light is great for this
32:51
mechanism during the day
32:53
we can talk about blue light and blue
32:56
blockers
32:56
but you really want a lot of blue and
32:59
yellow light arriving on the retina
33:01
early in the day
33:01
let me be clear about something you
33:04
never ever
33:04
want to look at any light sunlight or
33:06
artificial light
33:08
that is painful to look at if you find
33:10
that your eyes are watering or you're
33:11
having challenges
33:13
um maintaining uh you know looking at
33:14
this thing for a while because it's
33:16
painful
33:16
that light is too bright and you do not
33:18
want to damage your retina so you don't
33:20
want to gaze at the sun
33:21
you know refusing to blink and
33:24
burn your retina that's actually
33:26
possible to do you don't want to do that
33:29
you have a proper blink reflex installed
33:31
in you since birth
33:32
and if you feel like something's too
33:34
bright and you need to blink it means
33:35
you need to blink that it's too much too
33:37
much light
33:38
so please don't beam your eyes with
33:40
really bright light
33:41
but blue light in particular blue light
33:43
and yellow light coming from sunlight is
33:45
ideal
33:45
if you're going to get it from
33:46
artificial light because you can't get
33:48
enough sunlight
33:49
well then artificial lights that are
33:52
rich
33:52
in blue blue wavelengths are going to be
33:56
ideal for setting this mechanism
33:58
a lot of people say oh i should be
33:59
wearing blue blockers throughout the day
34:01
no that's the exact wrong thing you if
34:04
you're going to use blue blockers we can
34:05
talk
34:06
about that that should be reserved for
34:07
late in the evening
34:09
because light suppresses melatonin
34:13
i've been asked many times before about
34:15
this pineal gland
34:16
and there are a lot of ancient practices
34:19
that map to some of the things that i'm
34:20
saying and people always say oh i heard
34:22
that sunlight is great for the pineal
34:24
well perhaps but we have to be careful
34:27
about that phrase
34:28
sunlight inhibits the pineal it prevents
34:31
it from releasing
34:32
melatonin darkness allows the pineal
34:36
to release melatonin so the pineal is
34:39
not the gland or the organ of sunlight
34:41
it is the gland of darkness
34:43
in fact melatonin can be thought of as a
34:46
sleepiness signal that's correlated with
34:47
darkness
34:48
so get up each morning try and get
34:50
outside
34:51
i know that can be challenging for
34:53
people but anywhere from
34:55
two to ten minutes of sunlight exposure
34:58
is going to work well for most people
34:59
and you want to do this on a regular
35:00
basis
35:01
and you don't have to do it exactly at
35:03
sunrise i realize i'm repeating myself
35:05
but somehow despite barking at people
35:07
about this
35:08
for a couple years now i keep getting
35:10
the same questions and somehow
35:12
it hasn't been sinking in which could be
35:15
related to some circadian disorder i'm
35:16
just kidding
35:17
if it's not sinking in it's probably
35:18
that i'm not being effective in
35:20
communicating the information
35:22
but get that bright light early in the
35:24
day from sunlight and if you can't get
35:26
it from sunlight get it from artificial
35:27
light
35:28
what kinds of artificial lights will
35:29
work well there are the sunlight
35:31
sunrise simulators but the ring lights
35:34
that people use
35:35
for um selfies and this sort of thing
35:38
for posting on instagram those generate
35:40
a lot of blue light
35:42
if you want to get experimental about
35:43
this there's a free app i have no
35:45
relationship to the app but it's a great
35:47
app
35:47
called light meter that you can use your
35:49
phone and you can measure the amount of
35:52
photon energy in your environment it's
35:54
kind of a fun experiment to do you can
35:55
go outside in the morning and you'll see
35:56
that there's 10 000
35:57
20 000 lux even though it might seem
36:00
like it's kind of dim or there's tree
36:01
cover or cloud cover
36:02
you go inside and you shine that um
36:05
an artificial light at your phone press
36:07
the button on light meter and you'll
36:09
find that it's only 500 or a thousand
36:11
lux
36:12
and you realize that even though it
36:14
seems really bright
36:15
the artificial light is very condensed
36:17
whereas
36:18
the outside light is scattered in the
36:21
atmosphere and so you can think that
36:23
you're not getting much sunlight but
36:24
you're actually getting much more
36:25
outside so get outside get that sunlight
36:27
early in the day and try and do it on a
36:29
consistent basis if you can't do it
36:30
every day or you sleep through this
36:32
period of the early day
36:33
low solar angle don't worry about it the
36:36
systems in the body these hormone
36:38
systems and neurotransmitter systems
36:39
that make you
36:40
awake at certain periods of the day and
36:42
sleepy at other times
36:44
are operating by averaging when you view
36:48
the brightest
36:49
light now that can immediately tell us
36:52
that what most people are doing
36:54
is terrible they're waking up and
36:55
they're looking at their phone which
36:56
isn't triggering activation of these
36:58
cells in the eye and the central
36:59
circadian clock then a few hours later
37:01
they might get in their car with
37:02
sunglasses and drive
37:04
now a note about sunglasses and
37:06
prescription lenses
37:08
absolutely never ever ever compromise
37:11
safety for the sorts of things i'm
37:13
talking about so if you need to wear
37:14
sunglasses for safety reasons wear them
37:17
absolutely if you wear prescription
37:18
lenses or contacts wear them they won't
37:20
filter out
37:22
the wavelengths of light that are
37:23
necessary for setting these
37:25
central clocks so safety first of course
37:28
if you have a retinal degenerative
37:29
disorder
37:30
retinitis pigmentosa macular
37:31
degeneration or glaucoma or those run in
37:33
your family
37:35
you want to avoid excessively bright
37:37
light all the time you want to be very
37:39
cautious about that you're going to want
37:40
to get
37:41
your light exposure by through seeing
37:44
dimmer light including sunlight but for
37:46
longer periods of time perhaps
37:49
you might immediately ask what about low
37:52
vision or blind people
37:53
how do they set these central clocks
37:55
well turns out that low vision and blind
37:57
people
37:58
most of them provided they still have
37:59
eyes that the eyes weren't removed
38:01
because of a burn or tumor or something
38:02
like that
38:03
still maintain these neurons that set
38:06
the circadian clock which brings me to a
38:08
really important point
38:10
it's not about seeing and perceiving the
38:12
sun
38:13
this is a subconscious mechanism by
38:15
which these neurons
38:17
which are called melanopsin ganglion
38:20
cells
38:20
these neurons set your central clocks
38:24
by getting activated by the particular
38:27
wavelengths of light that are present in
38:28
the atmosphere even coming through cloud
38:30
cover and
38:32
you don't need to see or perceive the
38:34
sun in order to get this mechanism
38:36
to start now it's such a vitally
38:38
important mechanism because it dictates
38:40
how well and what time you will want to
38:44
fall asleep later in the day
38:46
so for those of you that are night owls
38:47
and you insist that you're a night owl
38:49
and you have the genetic polymorphism
38:50
that makes you an idol
38:52
you may very well have that genetic
38:53
polymorphism those genes that make you
38:55
want to stay up late and wake up
38:57
late but chances are about half of you
39:00
that think that your night owls
39:01
are just not getting enough sunlight
39:03
early in the day so viewing light early
39:06
in the day
39:06
ideally sunlight is key for establishing
39:10
healthy sleep-wake rhythms and for
39:12
allowing you to fall asleep
39:14
easily at night now it's not going to
39:17
make sure that all that happens every
39:18
single time but it is the foundation
39:21
of proper sleep and what we call
39:23
circadian health
39:25
it governs metabolism and so many other
39:28
things that are
39:29
supposed to exist on a regular 24-hour
39:31
cycle
39:33
some of you many of you might be asking
39:36
what else can help set this rhythm
39:37
well it turns out that light is what we
39:39
call the primary zeitgeber the
39:42
time giver but other things can help
39:46
establish this rhythm of cortisol
39:48
followed by melatonin 12 to 16 hours
39:50
later as well
39:52
the other things besides light are
39:55
timing of food intake
39:56
timing of exercise as well as
40:00
various drugs or chemicals that one
40:02
might ingest not illegal drugs although
40:04
those will impact circadian mechanisms
40:06
as well
40:08
but the reason we focus so heavily on
40:09
light is that light
40:11
is the main way that this central clock
40:15
the suprachiasmatic nucleus
40:17
was supposed to be set we know that
40:19
because it's the only direct
40:21
input to the clock these neurons in the
40:24
eye that are also part of the brain that
40:25
we call melanopsin ganglion cells
40:27
that not so incidentally were discovered
40:30
by my friend and colleague david berson
40:32
at brown university
40:33
and others samar hattar king wai yao etc
40:37
worked out the mechanisms the molecular
40:38
mechanisms but it was really david
40:40
burson
40:41
that discovered these incredibly
40:44
fascinating
40:45
non you know these are cells that aren't
40:47
important for sight like pattern vision
40:49
but are for setting our clocks david's
40:52
really credited with making that
40:53
discovery
40:55
those cells are the main
40:58
way and the only direct way to set the
41:00
clock
41:01
in fact it's fair to say that light
41:04
viewed by these melanopsin cells
41:07
particular sunlight
41:08
is a thousand to ten thousand times more
41:11
effective
41:12
than say getting up in darkness and just
41:14
exercising
41:15
that doesn't mean that you shouldn't
41:16
exercise early in the day in darkness if
41:18
that's what you like to do it will have
41:20
somewhat an effect on raising your
41:23
wakefulness early in the day and setting
41:25
this
41:26
these rhythms and this is because of
41:28
some other pathways for the aficionados
41:30
out there who want to know more
41:31
neuroscience
41:33
here's how it goes you've got this clock
41:34
above the roof of your mouth that churns
41:36
out this 24-hour rhythm and is
41:37
communicated to all the other organs and
41:39
tissues of your body
41:40
but there's another structure has a cool
41:43
name it's called the intergeniculate
41:44
leaflet
41:45
which sits a few millimeters away in the
41:47
brain and it's involved in regulating
41:50
the clock
41:50
output through what's called non-photic
41:53
non-light
41:54
type influences like exercise and
41:56
feeding etc
41:58
so if you are not feeling awake during
42:01
the day and you're having trouble
42:03
sleeping
42:04
get the sunlight exposure that we just
42:05
talked about
42:07
but in addition to that if you want to
42:09
become an early riser for instance
42:11
and you want to feel more awake during
42:12
the early part of the day
42:14
by getting that light exposure and
42:17
exercising early in the day
42:18
you will after two or three days you
42:21
will naturally start to wake up earlier
42:22
in the day
42:23
and that's because these clock
42:24
mechanisms have shifted it's like
42:26
setting the clock
42:27
earlier as opposed to delaying the clock
42:30
and
42:30
that takes us to a somewhat complicated
42:33
but
42:33
very important aspect to all this which
42:35
is what sets the clock and keeps it
42:38
anchored
42:39
the main thing is that bright light
42:40
early in the day
42:42
the other thing is sunset when the sun
42:45
is
42:45
also at low solar angle low close to the
42:48
horizon
42:50
by viewing sunlight at that time of day
42:52
in the evening
42:53
or afternoon depending on what time of
42:54
year it is and where you are in the
42:55
world
42:57
these melanopsin cells these neurons in
42:59
your eyes signal the the central
43:00
circadian clock that it's the end of the
43:02
day
43:03
and there's a really nice study that was
43:05
published last year and i will put links
43:07
to these references
43:08
on a website not too long from now there
43:11
was a really nice study that showed
43:14
that viewing sunlight around the time of
43:17
sunset doesn't have to be just crossing
43:20
the horizon
43:21
but circa sunset within an hour or so of
43:24
sunset
43:26
prevents some of the bad effects of
43:29
light
43:29
in preventing melatonin release later
43:32
that same night
43:33
so let me repeat this viewing light
43:35
early in the day is key viewing light
43:37
later in the day when the sun is setting
43:39
or around that time
43:41
can help protect these mechanisms your
43:44
brain and body
43:45
against the negative effects of light
43:47
later in the day
43:48
so let me talk about how you would do
43:50
that you'd go view the sunset
43:52
or you would go outside in the late
43:54
afternoon or evening
43:55
again if you safely can do that with
43:57
sunglasses off you will
43:59
if you need to wear sunglasses fine but
44:00
it will take probably a hundred to a
44:02
thousand times
44:03
longer with dark sunglasses than if you
44:05
take them off
44:07
again if you want to do this through a
44:08
window at work that's fine but it'll
44:10
take 50 times longer
44:11
so the best thing to do is just to get
44:13
outside for a few minutes anywhere from
44:15
two to ten minutes
44:16
also in the afternoon having those two
44:18
signals arriving to your central clock
44:20
that your body your internal world knows
44:23
when it's morning and nose when it's
44:24
evening
44:25
is tremendously powerful maybe think
44:28
about it this way
44:29
every cell in your body needs glucose
44:31
and energy
44:32
it needs whether or not gets that from
44:34
meat or it gets it from ketones or it
44:36
gets it from carbohydrates
44:37
or fruit or vegetables doesn't matter it
44:39
is eventually converted into
44:41
a certain form of energy that all your
44:42
cells use but
44:44
you don't take glucose you don't take a
44:46
bread or a steak
44:47
or a nice orange and shove it in your
44:49
ear you put in your mouth it goes into
44:51
your stomach
44:52
it's digested and then that it that
44:54
resource is distributed to all the cells
44:56
of your body
44:57
every cell in your body needs oxygen and
45:00
you don't put a hose
45:01
you know through your nostril or through
45:03
your ear or through some other orifice
45:05
in your body
45:06
you inhale air and it's then distributed
45:09
via the lungs to the cells
45:11
uh in your bloodstream and that's
45:12
distributed to all the organs of your
45:13
body
45:15
every cell and organ in your body needs
45:17
light information
45:19
and the way to get that light
45:20
information to all those cells because
45:22
you have a
45:23
thick skull and dark you know
45:26
inside of you is dark inside your skin
45:28
there's no sunlight getting in there
45:30
is by viewing sunlight with your eyes at
45:32
the two times a day that i'm referring
45:34
to
45:35
okay that's the only route there was a
45:37
study published in science an excellent
45:39
journal
45:40
well over 10 years ago that showed that
45:44
light shown on the back of the knee
45:46
could set these
45:47
the circadian rhythms that study was
45:49
retracted and unfortunately most people
45:51
don't know that it was retracted
45:53
there were some experimental flaws that
45:54
people were actually viewing light
45:56
through their eyes that study was
45:57
repeated turns out there is
45:59
no extraocular photoreception in humans
46:03
whatever somebody tells you that light
46:04
to the skin or light to the wherever
46:07
is beneficial for your health we can
46:09
talk about that
46:10
but there is no way that light
46:12
information is setting your clocks
46:14
you need to these cells in your eyes to
46:16
perceive
46:17
or to see light at the particular times
46:20
of day that i'm referring to
46:22
some animals like snakes and other
46:24
reptiles actually have a hole
46:26
in the top of their skull to get light
46:28
information directly to their pineal
46:30
where to suppress melatonin we don't
46:33
have that hole i mean most of you don't
46:34
have holes in your skull
46:37
these holes in your skull that we call
46:39
the sockets for the eyes
46:41
are actually there primarily to allow
46:44
light information
46:45
to this central clock and then vision
46:47
and pattern vision and color vision came
46:48
much later in evolution we know this on
46:51
the basis of genetic studies we could
46:52
discuss in a future podcast so get that
46:55
light information
46:56
to the cells of your brain and body by
46:59
viewing sunlight at the two times a day
47:01
that i refer to
47:03
there's always a lot of questions about
47:05
how long how much how do i know if i've
47:07
had enough you'll know
47:08
because your rhythm will start to fall
47:10
into some degree of normalcy
47:12
you'll start to wake up at more or less
47:14
the same time each day you'll fall
47:15
asleep more easily at night generally it
47:17
takes about two or three days for these
47:19
systems to align
47:20
so if you've not been doing these
47:22
behaviors it's going to take a few days
47:24
but they can have tremendous benefits
47:26
and sometimes rather quickly on a number
47:28
of different
47:28
mental and physical aspects of your
47:30
health
47:32
now let's talk about the bad effects of
47:34
light because
47:36
light is not supposed to arrive in our
47:38
system
47:40
at any time and nowadays because of
47:42
screens and artificial light
47:44
we have access to light at times of day
47:47
and night
47:48
that normally we wouldn't now earlier i
47:51
said
47:52
that you need a lot of light in
47:53
particular sunlight to set these clock
47:54
mechanisms
47:56
that's true but there's a kind of
47:57
diabolical feature to the way all this
47:59
works which is
48:00
the longer you've been awake
48:03
the more sensitive your retina and these
48:06
cells are to light
48:07
so that if you've been awake for 10 12
48:10
14 hours it becomes
48:12
very easy for even a small amount of
48:14
light coming from
48:15
a screen or from an overhead light
48:19
to trigger the activation of the clock
48:21
and make you feel like you want to stay
48:23
up later make it harder to fall asleep
48:24
and disrupt your sleep pattern
48:26
okay so the simple way to think about
48:29
this is you want as much light as as
48:31
safely possible
48:32
early in the day morning and throughout
48:33
the day including blue light
48:35
so take those blue blockers off during
48:37
the day unless you have a real issue
48:38
with screen light sensitivity
48:40
and you want as little light coming into
48:43
your eyes artificial or sunlight
48:45
after say 8 pm and certainly you do not
48:48
want to get bright light exposure to
48:50
your eyes between 11 pm and 4 am and
48:52
here's why
48:53
david berson who i mentioned before and
48:56
another friend and colleague samuel
48:57
hatar
48:58
who's director of the chronobiology unit
48:59
at the national institutes of mental
49:01
health
49:02
published a paper in cell which is a
49:04
journal
49:05
another excellent journal very high
49:07
stringency showing
49:08
that light that arrives to the
49:12
eyes between 11 pm and 4 am
49:14
approximately
49:16
suppresses the release of dopamine
49:20
this neuromodulator that makes us feel
49:21
good is sort of an endogenous
49:24
anti-depressant
49:25
and can inhibit learning and create all
49:27
sorts of other
49:28
detrimental effects it does this through
49:31
a mechanism for those of you who want to
49:32
know the neural pathways
49:34
that involves light to the eyes that's
49:36
then signaled to a structure called the
49:37
habenula
49:38
they let the habenyl looks like two
49:39
little bat ears sitting right in the
49:41
middle of you
49:41
structure your brain called the thalamus
49:43
don't worry about these names if you're
49:44
not interested in this stuff if you are
49:46
these are just avenues to explore when
49:48
that habenula gets activated it's
49:50
actually called the disappointment
49:52
nucleus because it actually makes us
49:55
feel less
49:56
happy and more disappointed and can lead
49:58
to certain forms of depression
50:00
in the wakeful state now if you wake up
50:02
in the middle of the night and you need
50:03
to use the bathroom or you're on an
50:04
all-night flight and you're
50:06
uh you know your need to read or
50:08
whatever it is
50:09
fine it's you know every once in a while
50:12
it's not gonna be a problem to get
50:13
bright light exposure to your eyes
50:15
in the middle of the night but if you
50:17
think about our lifestyle nowadays and
50:19
being up late looking at phones
50:21
even if you dim that screen you're
50:22
triggering this activation
50:24
because your retinal sensitivity and the
50:26
sensitivity of these neurons has gone up
50:28
late in the day
50:29
now i'm not here to dictate what you
50:30
should or shouldn't do but for those of
50:32
you that are experiencing
50:33
challenges with mood those of you that
50:35
have anxiety learning problems issues
50:37
focusing
50:38
the questions i usually get are how can
50:40
i focus better well we will get to that
50:42
but one of the best ways you can support
50:45
your mechanisms for good mood
50:47
mental health learning focus metabolism
50:50
etc
50:50
is to take control of this light
50:53
exposure behavior
50:54
at night and not get much or any bright
50:58
light exposure in the middle of the
50:59
night
50:59
red light won't trigger this pathway but
51:02
very few people have
51:03
the kind of infrared lights that are set
51:05
up or floor lights
51:07
that brings me to an important point
51:08
which is about the location of light
51:10
this hasn't been discussed much out
51:12
there i don't think
51:13
these cells in our eye these neurons
51:16
that signal the central clock
51:18
reside mostly not exclusively but mostly
51:20
in the bottom half of our retina
51:23
and because we have a lens in front of
51:24
our retina and because of the optics of
51:26
lenses
51:27
that means that these cells are actually
51:29
viewing our upper
51:31
visual field there's an inversion of the
51:33
visual image etc you can look that up if
51:35
you want to learn more about
51:36
retinal optics it's fascinating but not
51:38
the topic for today
51:40
these cells are in the bottom half of
51:41
your retina mostly and so they're
51:43
viewing
51:44
the overhead visual space around you
51:48
this is probably not coincidental that
51:51
these cells were essentially designed to
51:54
detect
51:54
sunlight which is overhead of course
51:58
so if you want to avoid
52:01
improper activation of these neurons
52:05
it's better to place lights that you use
52:08
in the evening
52:08
low in your physical environment so on
52:11
desktops or even the floor if that's
52:13
if you want to go that way as opposed to
52:16
overhead lights so
52:18
overhead fluorescent lights would be the
52:19
worst that would be the worst case
52:21
scenario
52:23
lights that are overhead that are a
52:24
little bit softer of the sort of yellow
52:26
or reddish tints would be slightly
52:28
better but dim lights that are set low
52:30
in the room
52:31
are going to be best because they aren't
52:33
going to activate
52:35
these neurons and therefore shift your
52:37
circadian clock
52:39
so that's a goal some people like sammer
52:42
hattar that i mentioned earlier he turns
52:43
his home basically into a cave in the
52:45
evenings
52:46
candle light actually does not trigger
52:49
activation of these cells so
52:50
candle light and fireplaces and
52:53
campfires
52:54
are are fine dim lights very dim lights
52:57
are fine
52:58
and light's low in the physical
52:59
environment of course the problem with
53:00
candlelight
53:01
and fireplaces is the fire hazard but
53:04
you're smart people you know what to do
53:05
about that
53:07
don't burn down whatever structure
53:09
you're in including
53:11
forests please so
53:14
keep the lights low in your environment
53:16
what if you
53:17
wake up in the middle of the night and
53:18
you find yourself watching tv
53:21
or on the computer and well in that case
53:24
you might want to wear blue blockers and
53:25
you certainly would want to dim
53:26
the screen but ideally you're not doing
53:29
that it's remarkable
53:31
the positive effects of getting that bit
53:33
of sunlight early in the day maybe even
53:35
also around sunset and avoiding
53:37
bright lights and especially overhead
53:39
bright lights
53:40
between about 11 pm and 4 am now i'm not
53:43
talking about shift work
53:44
i'm realizing that we're probably going
53:46
to have to have an entire discussion
53:47
devoted just to shift workers because
53:49
there's some good information there
53:50
about how they can protect themselves
53:52
against some of the very bad health
53:54
effects of shift work
53:56
of getting light in the middle of the
53:57
night but we rely on shift workers and
53:59
they're super important
54:00
to culture and society and the economy
54:03
so
54:03
i want to acknowledge them and let you
54:05
know that we will do a discussion
54:07
about shift work and jet lag
54:10
but let's talk about what light can do
54:14
in terms of shifting us
54:15
in healthy ways so the way to think
54:19
about this whole system again is you've
54:20
got adenosine building up depending on
54:22
how long you've been awake and it's
54:24
making you sleepy and then you've got
54:25
their circadian mechanisms that are
54:26
timing your wakefulness
54:28
and timing when you want to be asleep
54:29
mainly through cortisol and melatonin
54:32
but there are a bunch of other things
54:33
that are downstream of cortisol
54:34
melatonin like
54:36
we tend to be hungrier during our
54:38
wakeful period
54:40
than late at night some people like to
54:41
eat it late at night but if you're
54:43
finding that you
54:44
can't become a day person or a morning
54:46
person shifting your
54:47
light exposure exercise and food intake
54:50
to the daytime will help
54:52
some people like to stop eating around
54:55
six or eight pm because of
54:57
metabolic reasons or they're trying to
54:59
maintain their weight or lose weight
55:01
that's actually not supported so well by
55:04
the literature the literature around
55:06
nutrition essentially says that
55:08
it's best to restrict your feeding to a
55:10
certain period of each 24-hour cycle to
55:12
not be eating around the clock
55:14
and whether or not that's four hours or
55:15
eight hours or 16 hours
55:17
is a fur is a much lengthier discussion
55:19
than we have time for now i would refer
55:20
you to
55:21
sachin panda's book the circadian code
55:24
which talks all about that he's an
55:25
expert a former colleague of mine from
55:27
the salk institute in san diego you can
55:29
explore intermittent and circadian
55:32
fasting so to speak um through sachin's
55:35
literature we'll talk about that we
55:36
might even get sachin in here if we're
55:37
if we're lucky at some point in the
55:38
future
55:39
but you can actually use light to wake
55:41
up earlier
55:43
jamie zeitzer and colleagues had did a
55:45
beautiful study showing that
55:47
if you turn on the lights before
55:50
waking up so around 45 minutes to an
55:53
hour before waking up
55:54
even if your eyelids are closed provided
55:56
you're not under the the covers
55:59
after doing that for a few days that
56:02
increases your total sleep time
56:04
and shifts forward the time at which you
56:06
feel sleepy it makes you want to go to
56:08
bed
56:08
earlier each night now in a kind of
56:11
uh diabolical way they did this with
56:13
teenagers who are notorious for wanting
56:16
to wake up late and stay up late and
56:17
what they found was
56:18
bright light flashes just turning on the
56:20
lights in their environment overhead
56:21
lights because they're trying to
56:22
activate the system
56:23
and that's why they're using overhead
56:24
lights even through the eyelids
56:27
before these kids woke up then made
56:30
those kids naturally want to go to bed
56:32
earlier and they ended up sleeping
56:33
longer so that's something you could try
56:35
you could put your lights on a timer to
56:36
go on
56:38
early in the day before you wake up you
56:41
could
56:41
open your blinds so that sunlight is
56:43
coming through now again if you you know
56:45
curl up under the covers then it's not
56:47
going to reach
56:48
these neurons but it's remarkable the
56:50
light can actually penetrate the eyelids
56:52
activate these neurons and go to the
56:53
central clock
56:55
that study illustrates a really
56:56
important principle of how you're built
56:58
which is
56:59
you have the capacity for what are
57:01
called phase advances
57:03
and phase delays and i don't want to
57:05
complicate this too much
57:07
so the simplest way to think about phase
57:09
advances
57:10
and phase delays is that if you
57:13
see light late in the day and in
57:15
particular in the middle of the night
57:17
your brain and body for reasons that now
57:20
you understand
57:22
will think that that's morning light
57:24
even though it's not sunlight because
57:25
you have this heightened sensitivity and
57:27
it will phase delay will delay your
57:29
clock it will essentially make you want
57:30
to get up later and go to sleep later
57:33
so if you get light exposure too late in
57:35
the evening or in the middle of the
57:37
night
57:37
it's going to make it hard to want to
57:39
wake up the next morning early and to go
57:41
to bed early
57:44
the opposite is also true if you
57:47
wake up early say you know
57:51
6 a.m or 7 a.m and get light exposure or
57:54
even earlier 4 a.m
57:55
and get light exposure it will phase
57:58
advance your clock
57:59
okay it's going to make your clock think
58:01
it's earlier and you'll want to wake up
58:03
earlier
58:04
so the simple way to think about this is
58:06
if you're having trouble waking up early
58:08
and feeling
58:09
alert early in the day you're going to
58:12
want to try and get bright light
58:13
exposure
58:14
even before waking up because it will
58:16
advance your clock it will
58:18
sort of like turning the clock forward
58:20
whereas if you are
58:21
having trouble waking up early you
58:22
definitely don't want to get
58:24
too much light exposure or any light
58:26
exposure to your eyes
58:27
late in the evening and in the middle of
58:29
the night because it's just going to
58:30
delay your clock more and more
58:33
so rather than get into the specifics of
58:35
everybody's situation because there are
58:37
many of you out there with different
58:38
situations and
58:39
lifestyle requirements etc the way to
58:42
think about this
58:43
is that you have these internal
58:45
mechanisms of adenosine and circadian
58:47
clocks and they're
58:48
always operating and what you're trying
58:50
to do is provide them
58:51
anchors you're trying to provide them
58:53
consistent powerful anchors
58:55
so that your cortisol your melatonin
58:59
and then everything that's that cascades
59:01
down from that like your metabolism and
59:03
your
59:04
ability to learn and your sense of
59:05
alertness your dopamine your serotonin
59:08
all that stuff is timed regularly
59:11
one of the reasons why there's so much
59:14
uh
59:14
you know challenge out there with focus
59:17
and anxiety and depression
59:20
there are a lot of reasons for that but
59:21
one of the reasons is that
59:23
people's internal mechanisms aren't
59:25
anchored to anything regular
59:27
now this doesn't require being
59:29
neurotically attached to getting up at a
59:31
very specific time going outside viewing
59:33
the sunlight same time every day
59:35
these systems again will average but if
59:36
you can provide them consistent
59:38
light anchors early in the day and in
59:41
the evening and avoiding light at night
59:43
you will be amazed at the tremendous
59:45
number of positive effects that can come
59:47
from that
59:47
at the level of metabolic factors
59:50
hormones and just general feelings of
59:52
well-being
59:53
in fact most of us are familiar with
59:56
what it is to not
59:57
sleep well and all the terrible effects
59:59
that has maybe one night you're fine
60:01
two nights even for the new parents out
60:03
there i
60:04
i sympathize with you but most people
60:07
are not familiar with what it is to
60:09
sleep
60:10
really really well on a consistent basis
60:13
and when you start
60:14
doing that by controlling your sleep
60:16
environment right get the proper sleep
60:17
surface
60:18
get the proper pillow get the
60:20
temperature in the room right get your
60:22
light exposure right
60:23
start timing your exercise at normal
60:25
periods or times throughout the
60:27
day and week it's amazing how many other
60:30
biological systems just naturally fall
60:32
in line
60:33
and this is why whenever people ask me
60:35
what should i take which is one of the
60:37
most common questions i get what
60:38
supplement should i take what drugs
60:39
should i be taking what things should i
60:41
be taking
60:42
the first question i always ask them
60:45
is how's your sleep and ninety percent
60:48
of the time they tell me they either
60:49
have trouble falling asleep or staying
60:51
asleep or they don't feel rested
60:52
throughout the day
60:54
a brief note about naps naps provided
60:57
that they're less than one ultradian
60:58
cycle
60:59
provide their 20 minutes or 30 minutes
61:01
or even an hour can be very beneficial
61:03
for a lot of people
61:04
you don't have to take them but many
61:06
people naturally feel a dip in energy
61:08
and focus late in the afternoon in fact
61:10
if we were going to look at wakefulness
61:12
what we would find is that you get that
61:14
morning light exposure hopefully your
61:15
cortisol goes up people start feeling
61:17
awake and then around two or three or
61:18
four in the afternoon
61:19
there's a spike in in everything from
61:22
alertness
61:23
to ability to learn some metabolic
61:25
factors drop and then it just naturally
61:27
comes back up
61:28
and then it tapers off as the night goes
61:30
on so
61:32
for some of you naps are great i love
61:34
taking naps
61:35
some people they wake up from naps
61:36
feeling really groggy
61:38
that's probably because they're not
61:39
sleeping as well as they should at night
61:42
or as long as they should at night and
61:43
so they're dropping
61:44
into rem sleep or deeper forms of sleep
61:47
in the daytime and then they wake up and
61:49
they feel kind of disoriented
61:51
other people feel great after a nap so
61:52
that's another case where just like with
61:54
caffeine you sort of have to evaluate
61:56
for yourself as we discuss this you're
61:58
probably realizing this is a lot like
62:00
nutrition where nowadays it's just crazy
62:02
i mean if you go on
62:03
social media it's like you've got people
62:04
who are pushing carnivore you got other
62:06
people
62:07
pushing vegan other people are pushing
62:09
you know
62:10
paleo every variation of every diet and
62:12
there's a lot of data to support
62:14
any and all of those and the arguments
62:16
go on and on and there's probably a lot
62:18
of genetic variation and lifestyle
62:19
variation
62:20
that's going to dictate whether or not
62:22
something is good for you whether or not
62:23
you like it whether or not you'll stick
62:24
to it
62:25
the same thing is true for circadian
62:29
and sleep and wakefulness behaviors
62:32
except the light viewing behavior that i
62:34
talked about before there's no way
62:35
around that that's hardwired into our
62:37
system the same way
62:38
we could factually say that everybody
62:41
needs
62:42
some nutrition at some level from some
62:45
source everybody needs
62:46
light information arriving in their
62:48
system in some way
62:50
at regular intervals so that's really
62:52
what this is about
62:53
okay so naps are going to be good for
62:55
some people not for others i have a
62:56
colleague
62:57
a very accomplished neuroscientist who
62:59
likes to take naps
63:01
just after lunch i personally like to
63:03
take a nap around 3 or 4 p.m
63:06
but there's a practice that i've adopted
63:08
in the last five years that i've found
63:10
to be immensely beneficial
63:12
that is sort of like napping but isn't
63:14
napping it's a
63:16
thing that they call yoga nidra yoga
63:18
ninja actually means yoga sleep
63:20
and it's a sort of meditation that you
63:22
listen to there are a number of scripts
63:24
i've talked about this on podcast before
63:26
but i'm going to post a link to the two
63:27
that i like
63:28
most that allows you
63:32
to consciously bring your entire body
63:35
and mind into a state of deep relaxation
63:37
and sometimes you fall asleep and
63:39
sometimes you don't
63:41
this is done for 10 to 30 or even 60
63:44
minutes
63:44
at a time the other thing that works
63:46
really well is meditation
63:49
so i'm talking about naps but i'm also
63:51
talking about yoga nidro which is sort
63:53
of a form of meditation and then more
63:54
standard forms of meditation
63:57
all three of those do something powerful
64:00
which is that they bring our mind
64:02
into a state of less so-called
64:03
sympathetic nervous system activation
64:05
go back and listen to episode one if
64:07
that doesn't make any sense which is
64:08
what governs your alertness
64:10
and instead it activates cells and
64:12
circuits in your body
64:14
that promote the parasympathetic nervous
64:16
system or the calming system
64:18
a lot of people are not good at falling
64:20
asleep because they're not good at
64:22
calming down so some people have no
64:24
trouble falling asleep
64:26
but many people have a hard time falling
64:28
asleep or at least every once in a while
64:30
experience
64:30
challenges falling asleep i don't have
64:32
problems falling asleep
64:33
most nights but i've noticed that if i'm
64:36
working very hard or if the world is
64:37
particularly stressful
64:38
my mind gets into a bit of a kind of ocd
64:40
loop where i tend to ruminate on things
64:42
and
64:42
i'm not even thinking about anything in
64:44
particular it's just challenging for me
64:45
to disengage and fall asleep
64:48
meditation and yoga ninja scripts have
64:50
been immensely helpful for me
64:52
in terms of accelerating the transition
64:54
to sleep
64:55
so they involve taking a few minutes 10
64:58
to 30 minutes or so just like you would
65:00
for a nap
65:01
and just listening to a script almost
65:03
passively and
65:04
it has you do some particular patterns
65:06
of breathing and some other
65:08
kind of body scan like things that can
65:10
really help people
65:12
learn to relax not just in that moment
65:14
but get better at relaxing and turning
65:16
off
65:16
thinking in order to fall asleep when
65:18
they want to do that at night
65:20
there's another thing that's similar to
65:22
this which is certain forms of hypnosis
65:23
for sleep
65:24
for that i'll just refer you to the
65:26
website of a colleague and collaborator
65:28
of mine
65:28
david spiegel who's our associate chair
65:32
of psychiatry and behavioral sciences
65:34
at stanford he's developed a website
65:37
which is reverie
65:39
r-e-v-e-r-i-e health dot com so
65:42
reveriehealth.com
65:43
that has a lot of science-supported
65:46
clinically supported
65:47
hypnosis scripts that essentially take
65:50
the brain into states of deep relaxation
65:52
for sake of rewiring the brain and
65:54
neuroplasticity but one of those scripts
65:56
that's there and is available free
65:58
is for sleep and we'll talk more about
66:00
hypnosis at a later time because it has
66:02
a ton of other effects
66:04
that aren't just limited to sleep so
66:07
a period of time each day that you
66:09
devote to getting better at falling and
66:11
staying asleep
66:12
is actually a really good practice to
66:13
adopt the other thing about these
66:15
practices like meditation
66:17
yoga nidra and hypnosis is people always
66:20
say to me
66:21
well when should i do them and i would
66:22
say well the best time of day to do it
66:24
is
66:24
when you first wake up in the morning
66:25
provided you've got in your sunlight
66:27
already
66:28
anytime you wake up in the middle of the
66:29
night or any time of day in other words
66:31
they're always good for you because it's
66:33
a training mechanism by which you
66:34
self-train your nervous system
66:36
to go from a state of heightened
66:38
alertness that you don't want
66:40
to heighten relaxation that you do want
66:43
and so it's really teaching you to hit
66:45
the break and that brings us to an even
66:47
more important point perhaps which is
66:49
we've all experienced that we can stay
66:52
up if we want to
66:53
right if we want to stay up late on new
66:56
year's or we want to push an all-nighter
66:58
some people can do that more easily than
66:59
others but we're all capable of doing
67:02
that
67:03
but it's very hard to make ourselves
67:04
fall asleep and so there's a sort of
67:06
asymmetry to the way our autonomic
67:08
nervous system which governs this
67:10
alertness calmness thing the sympathetic
67:12
and parasympathetic nervous system
67:14
there's an asymmetry there where we are
67:16
more easily able to engage
67:18
wakefulness and drive wakefulness we can
67:20
force ourselves to stay awake
67:22
then we are able to force ourselves to
67:25
fall asleep
67:26
and one of the things that i say over
67:28
and over again and i'm going to continue
67:29
to say over and over again
67:31
is it's very hard to control the mind
67:33
with the mind
67:34
when you have trouble falling asleep you
67:36
need to look to some mechanism that
67:37
involves the body
67:39
and all the things i described
67:40
meditation hypnosis yoga nidra
67:43
all involve exhale emphasize breathing
67:46
certain ways of lying down and
67:48
controlling the body we're going to get
67:50
into breathing
67:50
in real depth at another time but all of
67:53
those involve using the body
67:55
to control the mind rather than trying
67:57
to you know
67:58
wrestle your mind into a certain pattern
68:01
of relaxation
68:02
so earlier in episode one
68:05
i talked about the mobius strip this
68:08
continuous loop that is the brain-body
68:10
relationship
68:11
or the mind-body relationship and when
68:13
we're having trouble controlling the
68:14
mind i encourage people to look towards
68:16
the body
68:17
look toward sunlight avoid sunlight if
68:20
in bright light if that happens to be
68:21
late at night so there's a theme that's
68:23
starting to emerge which is in order to
68:25
control this thing that we call the
68:26
nervous system
68:27
we have to look back to some of the
68:29
things we discussed earlier like
68:30
sensation perception etc
68:32
but we have to ask what can we control
68:34
well i'm talking about controlling light
68:36
exposure controlling
68:38
your breathing and body i'm not going
68:40
into details right now but you can see
68:42
the yoga ninja script or the
68:43
reveriehealth.com or headspace would be
68:46
a great place to
68:47
adopt the meditation practice any of
68:49
those are really teaching you to use
68:51
your body to control your mind
68:53
and to allow you to explore the
68:54
mind-body relationship in a way
68:56
that gives you more control over your
68:59
mind and the mind-body relationship
69:01
okay so we talked about light
69:04
we talked about activity and timing of
69:06
light talked about the usefulness of
69:08
naps and these things that i'm calling
69:10
non-sleep
69:11
deep rest which include meditation yoga
69:14
nidra
69:14
and hypnosis non-sleep deep rest
69:18
or what i hereafter we will refer to as
69:21
nsdr not to be confused with emdr i
69:24
don't think i've ever heard
69:25
nsdr so i'm i'm planting a flag
69:28
for nsdr non-sleep deep rest
69:31
as a way to reset one's ability to be
69:35
awake after you emerge from an sdr so to
69:38
get some more wakefulness and ability to
69:40
attend some emotional stability
69:42
reset as well as make it better
69:45
and easier to fall asleep when you want
69:47
to go to sleep at night
69:49
now non-sleep deep rest does have some
69:51
research to support it
69:52
there's a beautiful study done out of a
69:55
university
69:56
in denmark i will later provide a link
69:58
to that study
69:59
that showed that this meditation and
70:02
yoga nidra type meditation
70:05
allows dopamine and other
70:07
neuromodulators in an area of the brain
70:08
called the striatum that's involved in
70:10
motor planning and motor execution
70:12
to reset itself in other words this nsdr
70:16
can reset our ability to engage in the
70:19
world in a way that's very deliberate
70:21
and not to throw in another acronym but
70:22
nsdr resets your ability to engage in
70:25
dpos duration path and outcome
70:27
so now you're probably rolling your eyes
70:29
like oh my goodness the number of
70:30
acronyms but
70:31
just bear with me because nsdr is
70:35
so powerful because first of all it
70:37
doesn't require
70:39
that you rig yourself to any device it
70:41
doesn't require
70:42
that you take much time out of your day
70:44
it doesn't require that you ingest
70:45
anything
70:46
except air and it can have
70:49
so many positive effects right down to
70:51
the neuromodulator level
70:53
so i think in years to come my lab is
70:55
exploring this in
70:56
collaboration with david spiegel's lab
70:58
but other labs are looking at this as
70:59
well i think nsdr
71:01
is going to start to play a more
71:02
prominent role in
71:04
what we call wellness and health both
71:06
mental health and physical health so i
71:07
encourage you to explore those practices
71:09
okay so what about things that we can
71:12
and maybe
71:12
should or should not take in order to
71:14
control and
71:16
access better sleep and better
71:17
wakefulness we've talked about
71:19
things you can do or not do we've talked
71:23
about nutrition and the timing of
71:24
nutrition
71:26
now let's talk about compounds those
71:27
could be prescription drugs those could
71:29
be
71:29
supplements there are a number of
71:31
different things that will affect your
71:33
circadian timing and behavior in fact
71:37
almost everything that you could take
71:41
will affect your circadian timing and
71:42
behavior that's right
71:44
so years ago when i was in graduate
71:47
school i had a professor unfortunately
71:48
he passed away now but his name was ted
71:50
jones the late edward jones
71:51
who was a world-class neuroanatomist he
71:53
wrote the book
71:54
on the thalamus in fact it's called the
71:56
thalamus and an expert
71:58
on patterns of activation in the brain
72:00
during sleep and i'll never forget that
72:02
during one of these lectures
72:03
someone asked ted the question you know
72:06
what is the effect of some drug
72:08
on these waves of activity in the
72:10
thalamus or something
72:11
and his answer was incredible he was a
72:13
pretty gruff guy
72:15
and so his answer was delivered in the
72:17
form of a kind of aggressive direct
72:19
statement he said
72:20
a drug is a substance that when injected
72:23
into a person
72:24
produces a scientific publication and
72:26
what he was saying
72:28
is actually quite true which is that
72:30
most
72:31
every compound will have some effect on
72:34
some aspect of biology
72:36
this is why it's hard to sort through
72:37
everything that's on pubmed if you put
72:39
any molecule or compound or drug into
72:42
pubmed and then you put
72:44
sleep next to it or alertness next to it
72:46
you're likely to find a paper where
72:48
there's an effect
72:49
but that's not necessarily telling you
72:53
that that drug is useful or helpful for
72:55
that
72:55
what it's telling you is that anytime
72:57
you change
72:59
what you take or you stop taking
73:01
something
73:02
say you're taking sleeping pills ambien
73:04
or whatever it is and you stop taking
73:05
them your
73:06
sleep behavior will change let's say you
73:09
take an aspirin you don't normally take
73:10
aspirin
73:11
you will shift your circadian rhythm now
73:13
you might not shift it perceptibly you
73:15
might not
73:15
create problems for yourself but anytime
73:17
you ingest a compound
73:19
at high potency you're going to cha
73:21
provide some shift to your circadian
73:23
rhythm
73:24
now that said there are a couple things
73:25
that are directly in line with the
73:27
biology related to falling and staying
73:29
asleep and directly in line with the
73:30
biology of wakefulness
73:32
there's a whole category of things like
73:35
stimulants
73:36
cocaine amphetamine and prescription
73:38
stimulants
73:39
that are the prescription ones were
73:41
designed for the treatment of narcolepsy
73:43
so things like modafinil or armadaphenyl
73:46
that are designed to create wakefulness
73:48
they are all essentially
73:50
chemical variants of things that
73:53
increase
73:54
epinephrine and dopamine now of course
73:56
i'm of the the standpoint that things
73:58
like cocaine amphetamine are just across
74:00
the board bad
74:00
they have so many addictive and terrible
74:03
effects in
74:04
the proper setting prescribed by the
74:07
proper professional things like
74:08
modafinil for narcolepsy
74:10
um might be appropriate i know that a
74:12
lot of people out there take adderall
74:15
even though they haven't been prescribed
74:16
adderall in order to increase
74:18
wakefulness
74:20
that is essentially uh you know well
74:22
it's illegal for one but it's also
74:24
it's abusing the system in the sense
74:26
that you're pushing back on the
74:27
adenosine system slightly differently
74:29
than you do caffeine
74:30
it will make you feel more alert there
74:32
tends to be a heavy rebound and they do
74:33
have an addictive potential
74:35
there are also some other effects of
74:36
those that can be quite bad so we're
74:37
going to explore
74:39
stimulants in a whole month related to
74:41
drugs
74:42
but there are some supplements and some
74:44
things that are safer
74:46
certainly safer and that
74:49
in cases where you're doing all the
74:51
right behaviors you're
74:52
exercising and eating correctly and
74:54
you're still having trouble with sleep
74:56
that can be beneficial for falling and
74:59
staying asleep now i want to be very
75:00
clear i'm not pushing supplements i'm
75:02
just
75:03
pointing you towards some things that
75:04
have been shown in
75:06
peer-reviewed studies to have some
75:07
benefit
75:09
the first one is magnesium there are
75:12
many forms of magnesium but certain
75:13
forms of magnesium
75:14
can have positive effects on sleepiness
75:17
and the ability to stay asleep
75:18
mainly by way of increasing
75:21
neurotransmitters like
75:22
gaba which help turn off the
75:26
dpo the kind of thinking about the
75:27
future duration path outcome analysis
75:29
and make one sort of um one's mind kind
75:33
of drift
75:33
in space and time and make it easier to
75:35
fall asleep there are a lot of forms of
75:37
magnesium
75:38
out there but one in particular is
75:39
magnesium 3 and 8
75:42
t-h-r-e-o-n-a-t-e which
75:44
you have to check to see if this right
75:46
is right for you check with your doctor
75:48
but magnesium-3 and 8 is associated with
75:50
transporters in the body
75:52
that bring more of it into cells that
75:54
allow people to
75:56
feel this kind of drowsiness and help
75:57
them fall asleep so i personally i can
75:59
only talk about what i personally do
76:00
i personally take three or four hundred
76:03
milligrams of magnesium three and eight
76:04
about 30 to 60 minutes before
76:06
sleep and it helps me fall asleep the
76:08
other thing is theanine
76:15
t-h-e-a-a-t-h-e-a-n-i-n-e
76:16
theanine 100 to 200 milligrams of
76:19
theanine for me
76:20
also helps me turn off my mind and fall
76:22
asleep i take it 30 or 60 minutes
76:24
throughout the day
76:24
interestingly theanine is now being
76:26
introduced to a lot of energy drinks
76:29
in order to take away the jitters that
76:31
are associated with
76:32
drinking too much caffeine or with some
76:34
other things that are in the energy
76:35
drinks
76:36
energy drinks are can be problematic um
76:39
they can contain a lot of l-taurine i'll
76:41
just tell you an anecdote when i was a
76:43
postdoc i was drinking a lot of a
76:44
particular energy drink
76:45
has a lot of taurine in it and actually
76:48
the
76:49
the whites of my eyes the sclera as it's
76:52
called in my eyes turned beet red
76:54
and i went to a friend who's an
76:55
ophthalmologist um
76:57
i said look i'm not a marijuana smoker i
76:59
haven't been hit on the head i don't
77:00
know what's going on
77:02
and he looked and he said i think you've
77:03
got some microvascular damage
77:06
and we walked through what i was taking
77:07
and doing and he said oh it's probably
77:09
the taurine excessive levels of taurine
77:11
can create some microvascular damage
77:13
so if you're having the microvascular
77:14
damage in your eye you'll probably have
77:16
microvascular damage deeper
77:18
in your skull so i stop that's the
77:19
reason why i don't take energy drinks
77:21
so just a consideration again i'm not
77:24
here to tell you what to do or not do
77:25
but
77:26
just want to arm you with information
77:29
the the thing about theanine and
77:32
magnesium is taken together they do
77:34
for some people they can make them so
77:36
sleepy and sleep so deeply
77:38
that they actually have trouble waking
77:39
up in the morning so you have to play
77:40
with these things and titrate them if
77:42
you decide to use them again if you
77:43
decide to go this route i would not
77:45
start by taking supplements
77:46
i would start by getting your light
77:48
viewing behavior correct
77:50
and then think about your nutrition and
77:51
then think about your activity and then
77:53
think about
77:54
whether or not you want a supplement we
77:55
already talked about melatonin earlier
77:57
there's another supplement that could be
77:59
quite useful which is apogenin
78:02
a-p-i-g-e-n-i-n
78:03
which is a derivative of chamomile 50
78:05
milligrams of apogenin
78:08
also can augment or support this kind of
78:11
creation of a sleepiness to help fall
78:13
asleep and stay asleep
78:15
a note about sleepwalkers and people
78:16
with very vivid dreams
78:19
feeling can often make your dreams very
78:21
vivid sleepwalkers should be careful
78:23
about taking theanine
78:24
everyone should be careful about taking
78:25
anything and don't take anything without
78:27
consulting your
78:28
board certified md or healthcare
78:30
professional first okay
78:32
your health is your responsibility i am
78:34
not going to take responsibility for
78:36
what you decide to do experimentally in
78:38
any case
78:38
but especially as it relates to
78:40
supplementation and drugs
78:43
as a important point apogenin is a
78:46
fairly potent estrogen inhibitor
78:48
so women who want to keep their estrogen
78:50
levels high
78:52
or at whatever levels they happen to be
78:53
at should probably avoid apogenin
78:55
altogether
78:56
and men take that into consideration as
78:59
well
78:59
uh men need estrogen also you don't want
79:01
to completely eliminate your estrogen
79:03
that can create all sorts of bad effects
79:05
on
79:06
libido and cognition etc so apogenin and
79:09
some people is going to be a pretty
79:10
strong estrogen inhibitor so
79:12
keep that in mind there are other things
79:15
you can take to help you sleep better
79:16
um those are the legal ones that at
79:19
least i'm aware of have pretty broad
79:20
safety margins but again
79:22
you need to explore your safety margins
79:24
with any compound
79:26
i think a great website that i can refer
79:28
you to is examine.com
79:30
examine the word just as it sounds dot
79:32
com is a website i have no relation to
79:34
them
79:34
but there you can find links to
79:37
peer-reviewed studies for any compound
79:39
or supplement as well as some important
79:41
warnings related to the things i
79:42
discussed as well as any other
79:44
thing that you might decide to
79:45
supplement with or ingest
79:47
to help improve your sleep okay
79:51
that was a lot of information about how
79:53
to get better at
79:54
sleeping falling asleep wakefulness etc
79:59
an important feature of this podcast as
80:01
you know is that we dive deep into
80:02
topics for
80:03
several episodes at a time at least a
80:05
month at a time
80:07
so by stopping here i recognize that
80:10
there are probably many more questions
80:12
that you still have and the great thing
80:14
about that is that we have another
80:16
episode coming up soon i'm going to hold
80:18
office hours where i'm going to answer
80:21
your specific questions about
80:22
episodes one and two so if you have
80:25
questions about this episode
80:26
you have questions about episode one
80:28
write them down put them in the comments
80:30
i'll also do a post on instagram where
80:32
you can put them in the comments there
80:34
but put them in the comments to this
80:35
episode
80:37
as well please recommend the podcast if
80:40
you like it
80:41
please subscribe to it here on youtube
80:44
please
80:45
subscribe to it on apple we're now on
80:46
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80:48
recommend it to a friend the community
80:50
that we're creating here
80:51
around these topics of sleep and
80:53
wakefulness and other neuroscience and
80:54
health related
80:55
themes is best supported by your
80:58
involvement and your questions and so
81:00
i'm going to be reading all of your
81:01
questions distilling those into the most
81:03
commonly asked questions
81:05
and liked questions so if you see
81:07
something below that you are
81:08
particularly interested in you don't
81:09
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81:11
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81:12
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81:13
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81:15
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81:17
please go to youtube subscribe and put
81:20
your question there or check out the
81:21
huberman lab instagram
81:22
and you can put your questions there so
81:24
that next episode i can answer those
81:26
questions and then we can move forward
81:28
even more deeply into these critical
81:30
topics around
81:31
sleep and wakefulness so that you can be
81:33
armed with all the information and
81:34
resources that you need last but not
81:37
least
81:38
a number of you have very graciously
81:39
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81:41
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81:43
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81:48
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81:55
thank you so much for your time and
81:56
attention and above all
81:57
thank you for your interest in science