Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today, we're talking all about sleep and how to optimize your sleep. This is a topic we've covered previously on this podcast in the episode called master
your sleep. However, since the Airing of that episode there's been some terrific new signs
to come out. I've
also
So received thousands, yes, literally thousands of questions related to the specific, protocols covered in that episode, as well as in the episode on jet lag and shift work. And while today's episode is not specifically about jet lag and shift work, we are going to cover tools that will allow you to shift your schedule if you need to
for work or travel
and we will also cover tools that will allow you to fall back asleep if you happen to wake up in the middle of the
night or if you get a poor night's sleep, how to
actually recover from that poor night, sleep more
quickly.
Yes, indeed, even replace sleep that you've lost.
So today's episode is going to be filled with practical tools. We will touch on some of the underlying science, but it's really designed to be a practical tool kit for optimizing your sleep depending on your specific sleep needs various times. Throughout today's episode, I will refer to studies that form the backbone of the tools that I'll be describing, but whereas most of the podcast episodes here tend to be deep scientific mechanism and then tools scientific mechanism than tools today, I mainly
Going to
focus on the Practical tools, that anyone indeed,
all people, I believe should use in order to optimize their
sleep. Why should everybody
want to optimize their sleep? And put considerable effort into optimizing their sleep. Well, but simply
sleep is the foundation of mental
health, physical health, and performance of all kinds, cognitive Performance, Physical performance, Etc.
It also
controls things like our immune system wound healing, our skin health and our appearance whether or not we can think clearly or not.
They're not, we will live as long as we possibly can or not whether or not we suffer from dramatic age-related cognitive decline or not. In other words,
whether or not we keep our memory as we age, I could go on and
on about all the terrible things that
can happen to somebody. If they don't sleep well,
thanks to the great work of Professor. Matt Walker at University of California Berkeley and the wonderful book that he wrote why we sleep. I think the world is largely on board. Now that sleep is
critical to our health, our Mental Health,
Their physical health and our performance
but what's not often discussed is how great life is. That
is how much more focused and energetic and how positive
are mood gets. When we are sleeping for the appropriate amount of time at the appropriate depth and when we were doing that regularly basically everything in life gets better when we're sleeping. Well. So today I'm going to teach you the tools that will
allow you to optimize your sleep that is get
to sleep and stay asleep. Fall back asleep if you wake up in the middle of the night and adjust your sleep given.
Various life demands, you may be
experiencing I'm pleased to announce that the huberman Lab podcast has. Now partnered with Momentis supplements, we partnered with momentous for several important reasons. First of all, they ship internationally
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momentous.com,
hubermann. Before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, a part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science
related tools to the general public
in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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pack. Let's talk about sleep and tools to optimize your sleep.
I want you to conceptualize yourself
as contained within a room that has only very few windows or very few entry
points. Do I mean by this? Well,
your brain and your nervous
system
control whether or not you move or don't
move they control whether or not you're digesting food or you're not digesting food.
They control whether not, you're stressed or not stress,
happy or sad, Etc. All of that stuff. That controls all. That stuff is housed.
Inside your skin and skull
Etc, that might seem pretty obvious.
But what that means is that for your brain and
body to feel alert and
focused ready to
move and exercise or do some
work or if your brain and body are going to lie down and go to sleep. Well, that brain and body needs cues. It needs inputs to determine when
to do those different things and those cues and
inputs arrive.
Through a defined set of what I'll call stimuli. But you can also think of these as levers or tools, the main levers in tools that are going to allow you to control when you are awake and when you are
asleep and to get better sleep. Every single night, our light literally photons light energy could be from sunlight, could be from artificial light. We will discuss those particulars in a moment
as well as darkness
that is the absence of light. So
we've got
Light and dark. Those are two very powerful tools
to encourage your nervous system to be in one state or another meaning awake or asleep. Temperature is another tool or lever.
Turns out that when your body is cooling
down, you have a greater tendency to fall and stay asleep. In fact, every night, when you actually sleep, your body is dropping by 123 degrees and
that drop in temperature
is required. It's like a gate that your
body has to
Go through in order
for you to get into sleep. And in fact, the converse is also true if your body heats up by 123 degrees or so you will wake up. So you've got light dark
temperature food. And when we say food, we mean what
we eat when we eat and the amount that we eat, okay? So light dark temperature food,
exercise, and of course, exercise comes in different forms. We
can do cardiovascular
That can be low intensity long-distance
exercise, it can be high intensity so-called high intensity
interval training. It could be weight training. Can be yoga can be swimming any number of different activities, but
exercise in general causes
an increase in body
temperature and tends to make
us more alert. Not just during the
exercise but in the immediate hours after that exercise exercise does, some other things that relate to our sleep as well. And we'll talk about those today and how you can leverage them.
Another potent lever.
/ for adjusting your sleepiness and wakefulness is caffeine,
of course, comes as no surprise
to people
but why and how caffeine Works might come as a surprise. Very
briefly, we have a molecule in our body called adenosine and the longer we have been
awake. The more adenosine builds up in our brain and body. And adenosine is part of the reason why we get sleepy caffeine effectively operates as a adenosine antagonist.
Works by basically occupying the receptor for adenosine. So it's
a little bit of a convoluted mechanism, but basically all you need to know is that
caffeine prevents the actions of adenosine. That's one of the reasons why caffeine makes us feel alert. But how much caffeine we drink? And when we drink caffeine turns out to be vitally important for adjusting our wakefulness and for optimizing our sleep. So we'll talk about that as
well. The other category of lever tools which are immensely powerful for
optimizing sleep are supplements there now exists as
As many as
eight different supplements that can powerfully
modulate sleep in healthy ways, and that have huge margins for safety.
We're going to talk about what those supplements are in previous episodes of this podcast. And as a guest on other podcast, I've talked
about three particular supplements,
magnesium three, and eight apigenin and theanine, which together can really
enhance the speed at, which one falls asleep and people's ability to stay asleep and to really get into those deep stages of sleep. There particularly restorative.
Today, we're going to talk a little bit more about each of those three and how they can best be used in combination. But we are also going to touch on some other
supplements that I have not talked about much before. If, at all things, like, Glycine and Gaba as well as inositol,
many people are going to find an acetal interesting and of particular use to them, especially if they're following a low carbohydrate diet or if they are fasting before sleep, or just
trying to avoid eating too close to bedtime and yet they're having a hard time falling.
Being asleep,
and also tall also, turns out
to be, especially useful for people
who have a tendency to wake up in
the middle of the night and have a hard time, falling back asleep. It
also has some interesting and
potent effects on anxiety throughout the day. So we're going to talk about inositol as a tool
as well. And then last in our list of General, categories of levers and tools for optimizing sleep, our digital tools, we say digital tools, I don't necessarily mean devices. What I mean are things like non sleep, depressed scripts, these are zero cost.
That you listen to
that, take your body through some deep relaxation and that can help people, both, fall asleep, stay asleep. Fall back asleep, and get better at sleeping. And
also going to talk about digital tools related to self hypnosis. This is distinctly different from stage hypnosis. So I know some of you here hypnosis and you think, oh, you know, people
you know, clucking like chickens and doing things that are
outside their control, that's not at all. What I'm referring to here. I'm talking about clinically and research supported
tools that have been shown
to enhance people's ability to fall and stay asleep and that can get you
far better at
sleeping. So
again to recap the list of levers and
tools, we've got light and dark that includes the intensity of light, the timing of light Etc.
We've got temperature, we have food,
we have exercised
caffeine supplements and digital tools, not just limited to devices. But
zero cost tools that you can access on YouTube and elsewhere in various apps, that can really help you optimize your
sleep. So today we're
Talk about all of these. I really want to provide
you as many tools as possible. Give you the logic behind each of those tools and when and how best to
apply them, so that you can develop the Sleep, toolkit that's
ideal for your sleep needs.
As we head into our description of tools for optimizing sleep. Let's consider what the perfect 24-hour
cycle would look like.
Let's start this 24-hour cycle with when you wake up in the morning.
So for some of you that will be 5 a.m. for others of you that will be 10 a.m. most
people I believe
Believe wake up sometime
between 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
But regardless of when you wake up in the morning, one of the first things that happens is that your body temperature
is increasing and that's
just going to happen naturally. Some of it is going to be the consequence of your moving around a bit, but really the increase in body temperature is one of the main triggers
for why you woke up in the first
place.
That increase in body temperature. In turn causes an increase in the release of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is often discussed as a stress hormone but it's not just associated with stress. It also enhances your immune system provided cortisol is elevated the right times and the right time for cortisol to be elevated is when you
first wake up in the morning,
that increase in cortisol, is also going to increase metabolism.
It's also going to increase your
ability to focus.
To lie and for you to move your
body. So again, cortisol is often can demonized and considered this
bad thing. And indeed, you don't want cortisol to be
chronically or consistently elevated throughout the day or night, but
you do want cortisol to reach. Its
peak early in the day, right? About the time, you wake up
one way that you can ensure that that cortisol Peak occurs early in the day, right? About the time that you wake up is to view
bright light, ideally, from sunlight within the
first
30 to 60 minutes after waking.
That's right. View bright sunlight
within the first 30 to 60 minutes
after waking.
I'll get into all the caveats about what happens if you wake up before the sun is out. What if you live in the UK where there is no sun or people claim? There is no sun hate to tell you this folks, but there is sun in the
UK.
We'll talk about all that but everybody whether or not you live in a cloudy
place or a sunny place whether or not there's cloud cover or not, that day,
should really strive to
get bright light, in your eyes. Ideally from sunlight within the first 30 to 60
minutes after waking. The reason for that is very simple.
You want to trigger that cortisol, increase to
occur very early in your day and you don't want that cortisol Peak to happen later, which is what will happen if you wait to get.
Outside and see sunlight.
The reason for this
is that you have a set of neurons nerve cells in your
eye. They're called intrinsically photosensitive
melanopsin cells, but you do not need to know that name. Those
neurons respond best to
Bright Light and
especially right after waking early. In the day, they are best able to signal to a set of neurons that reside over the roof of your
mouth called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is a cluster of neurons, that then sends a
huge number of other signals electrical and chemical
out to your entire
A body that triggers that cortisol increase provides a wake up
signal for your brain and body and sets in motion a
timer for you to fall asleep later that night. So
again, we're not trying to go into too much mechanism today, we are trying to really hammer on tools and I'll substantiate those tools just a bit with some mechanism. But here's what you do or at least. Here's what I do. I wake up in the morning and I want to reach for my phone, but I know that. Even if I were to crank up the brightness on that phone screen, it's not bright enough to trigger that
cortisol.
And for me to be at my most alert and focused throughout the day and to optimize my sleep at night. So what I do is I get out of bed and I go outside and if it's a
bright clear
day and the Sun
is low in the sky or the sun is
starting to get overhead. What we call low solar angle and I know I'm getting outside at the right time.
If there's cloud cover and I can't see the sun. I also know I'm doing a good thing
because it turns out, especially on
cloudy days you want to get outside and get as much light energy or photons in your eyes. But let's say it's a very clear day and I can see where the sun is. I do not need to stare directly into the sun. If it's very low
in the sky, I might do that because it's not going to be very
painful to my eyes. However,
if the Sun is a little bit brighter and a little bit higher in the
sky, sometimes it can be painful to look at. So the way to get this
Sunlight viewing early in the day is
to look toward the sun. If it's too bright to look at directly, well, then don't do
that. You just look toward it but not directly at it. It's absolutely fine to Blink. In fact I encourage you to Blink whenever you feel the impulse to
Blink. Never look at any light sunlight or
otherwise that so bright that it's painful to look at because you can damage your eyes
but for this morning sunlight viewing, it's best to
not wear sunglasses. That's right. To not wear sunglasses, at least.
For this morning sunlight viewing,
it is absolutely fine to wear eye glasses or
contact lenses. So-called corrective lenses. In fact, those will
serve you. Well, in this practice where this tool because they will
focus the light onto your neural retina and onto those melanopsin intrinsically, photosensitive ganglion cells.
If your eye glasses or contact lenses
have UV protection. That's okay.
There's so many different wavelengths of light coming from the Sun and they are bright enough that they will trigger the mechanisms
that you want. Triggered at this
A time of day. So try and get outside ideally, within the first five minutes of waking, or maybe
it's 15 minutes. But certainly within the
first hour after waking, I want
to share with you three critical
things about this tool of morning, sunlight viewing.
First of all, this is not some woo, biology thing. This is grounded in the core of our physiology. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of quality
peer reviewed papers, showing that light viewing early in the day is
the most powerful stimulus.
For wakefulness, throughout the day, and it has a powerful positive impact on your ability
to fall and stay asleep at night.
So this is really the foundational
power tool for ensuring a great night sleep, and for feeling more awake during the day. Second of all
If you wake up before the sun is out you can and probably should flip on artificial lights in your internal home environment or apartment or wherever you happen to live. If your goal is to be awake, if you wake up at 4:00 in the morning, you need to be awake. Well, then turn on artificial lights once the sun is out. However, once the sun has risen, then you still want
to get outside and view
sunlight, some of you will wake up before the sun comes out. And if you're
Asking whether or not turning on artificial lights, can replace
sunlight at those hours.
Unfortunately, the answer
is no unless you have a very
special light will talk about what kind of
light the
bright artificial lights in your home environment are
not. I repeat are not
going to be sufficiently bright to turn on the cortisol mechanism and the other wake up
mechanisms that you need early in the day, the
Diabolical twist. However, is that those lights in your home or apartment or even on your phone.
Are bright enough to disrupt your sleep if you look at them too late at night or in the middle of the
night. So there's this asymmetry in our retinol, RI biology and in our brains, biology
whereby early in the day right around
waking. You need a lot of light, a lot of photons, a lot of light energy and artificial lights. Generally, just won't accomplish what you need them to accomplish. But at night
even a little bit of artificial light can really mess up
your so called circadian. Your 24 hour clocks and all these mechanisms.
That we're talking about. So
if you wake up before the sun is out and it's
still dark. Please
turn on as many bright artificial lights. As you possibly can or need, but then get
outside. Once the sun is out
on cloudy days. You especially need to get
outside. I repeat
on cloudy days,
overcast days. You especially need to get outside and get some like you just need to get more of it. Now, how much light, and how much light viewing do you need?
This is going to vary depending on person and place, literally where you live on earth whether or not
There's a lot of tree cover whether or not you're somebody who has sensitive eyes or less sensitive eyes. It's really impossible for
me to give an absolute prescriptive but we can give some general guidelines in
General on a clear Day. Meaning no cloud cover or minimal cloud cover. You want to get this sunlight
exposure to your eyes for about five minutes or so
could be three minutes one day, it could be seven minutes the next day
about 5 minutes
on a day where there's cloud cover. So the sun is just peeking through the clouds or it's
Dense cloud cover you want to get about 10 minutes of
sunlight, exposure, to your eyes, early in the day
and on days that are really densely overcast, or maybe even a rainy, you're going to want to get as much as 20 or 30
minutes of sunlight exposure.
Another key thing is do not forget about, just don't try and get this sunlight exposure through a windshield of a
car or a window whether or not tinted or otherwise, it takes
far too long,
it's simply not going to trigger the
Avant mechanisms, you would be standing there all day trying to get enough light into your eyes from the morning sunlight and by then, the
sun will have already moved from low solar angle to overhead and it
simply won't work for all sorts of mechanisms related to your circadian rhythm
functions. So just don't try and do it Through a Windshield sunglasses
or a window. It's just not going to work. Get outside.
If the weather is really bad or for whatever reason, safety reasons you cannot get outside. Well then I suppose try and get near a window that would be the
last Last Resort, but you
Really want to get outside to get the sunlight exposure. Now
if you live in a part of the world where it's extremely dark and overcast or the weather won't let you outside or
you live in a
cave or some other small box that does not allow any natural light into it, for whatever reason. Well then you're going to need a
replacement for that sunlight.
And there are sunlight simulators or daylight simulators that you can purchase. Those are quite expensive in general. And therefore, I suggest cheaper
Options that work just as well because they get just as bright things like, ring lights that are sold. In order for people
to take selfies in this kind of thing. A drawing LED tablet will work pretty well
actually have one of those and I put it on my desk all morning even though I
still get outside and look at sunlight first thing in the morning, again, also, especially I should say, on cloudy days.
We do not have any affiliation to any ring lights or LED lights, or these panels. So, we will provide a link to a
Of different options if you want to explore the various options. I don't know what people's different budgets are. I don't know where people live. I just know that many of our listeners live in locations throughout the world, where, for instance, during the winter, it gets very, very dark. So they can't get
sufficient sunlight, but
get that Morning Light, ideally from sunlight, and take into account all the specific points that I've given you here. And I should say, enjoy this practice. It's really nice to get outside first thing in the morning and get the sunlight. In fact, when you start doing this, you'll notice that
Your body will start to feel more
energized, and it will
feel more energized more quickly. You'll actually start this to notice this
mechanism kicking in each day, especially if you're paying attention to your physiology.
So enjoy this practice of getting outside. Yes, you can take your morning, beverage
outside. Yes. You can take your dog with you. In fact,
animals intuitively know, to get this morning, sunlight,
they actually seek it out at the right times of days. We human beings need to be
told by podcasters and other people about the science that supports these kinds of practices.
Pets, apparently, do not, but get outside alone, or with somebody with your kids with your, dog. However, you go about this practice, make sure you do
this practice at least, 80% of the days of your life. That's
right. If you miss a day. For instance, your bedridden for a day, try and get next
to a window. Let's say you are traveling or for
whatever reason. You are not able to get outside first thing in the morning. Well, then try to get twice as much sunlight in your eyes or I should say, extend the duration of
Sunlight viewing in the
morning for twice as long. The following day, this is a slow
integrative mechanism that
underlies this whole thing of wakefulness during the day and sleep at night due to sunlight viewing. And if you miss
a day, you can make up for it, the next day, but you have to get twice as much light
or twice as much duration of light, if you
really want to get technical and you really want to measure how much light is in your environment. You can download a free app, something like light meter. And that will allow your phone to
act as a bit of a
light meter. It give you a pretty
Very
accurate measurement of how many Lux, which is a measure of brightness are in your environment in the morning and in general, that's just going to be a good tool for
evaluating your environments. Here's what I suggest you do.
Wake up in the morning, take light meter point. It the brightest light in your home and take a measurement, and what you'll probably find is,
it's about 1000 Lux. Now
go outside. And if there's some sunlight out and there's cloud cover point it at the sky. And press that button you actually hold
it down and we'll give you a dynamically updated.
It Luxe measurement and what you'll find is, like 5,000 10,000, sometimes even 90,000 looks even though you don't experience it as so much brighter. And that's because an indoor artificial light is very concentrated, over
a small spatial
area. Whereas the sunlight is very
diffuse, but it's that
diffuse very bright sunlight, that Photon energy, that you really want that's going to set all the rhythms of your brain and body in
the proper way. Not just that cortisol Peak, but it's going to trigger proper metabolism. It's going to set a timer for you to be able to fall asleep about.
Hours later and on, and on, and on,
and I should mention within the on, and on, and on, it's also going to suppress any melatonin a hormone that makes you sleepy. That happens to be swimming around in your bloodstream. At the time you wake up it does a number of other things too, including interact with the adenosine system and kind of wash out some of the adenosine that might still be residual. If you didn't sleep enough, fundamentally speaking. Get that morning, sunlight viewing,
I promise you will be grateful that you did. It
makes everybody feel better feel.
More alert and it will greatly
assist with your ability to fall and stay asleep later that
night before we continue. With today's discussion, we're going to take a brief pause to acknowledge our sponsor athletic
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First hour or so after
waking.
And we can go to our list of other levers and tools, right? We have light
and dark. We already talked about light and sunlight. In particular, we've got temperature
food, exercise, caffeine
supplements and digital tools.
Now, once you've woken up and you want to be awake, okay? So this is likely to be early in the day. If you're
following them, more standard schedule, you will also want to leverage, not just light, but temperature as a
Cool.
If you are inclined, it would be wise to try and increase your core body temperature a bit more quickly than it would. Otherwise if you were to just, you know,
shuffle around outside, get your sunlight, maybe read a little bit etcetera. And there are two main ways you can do that. The first way is to get into cold water of some sort. So, this could be a cold
shower of anywhere. From one to three
minutes. This could be an ice bath. If that's your thing, it could be a
cold tub or if you own a cold tub.
Specifically designed for deliberate cold exposure, get under some cold water, that will certainly wake you up and if you ever jumped into cold water or had a cold shower,
you know, it really wakes you up because you release adrenaline epinephrine from both your brain and body
the body from your adrenals, and your brain from Little cluster of neurons called
Locus. Coeruleus again, the names don't matter.
One two, three minutes of cold water. Exposure will wake you up
because of that adrenaline release. And, and I want to highlight the and it
will
Serve to
increase your core body temperature. That's right. Your
body and brain. Interact is a bit of a thermostat system where if you put something cold on the surface of your
body, your brain, a little cluster of neurons in the so-called medial preoptic area act, as a thermostat and say, ah,
the external of my body is cold and therefore I'm going to
heat up my core body temperature. So there's a little bit
paradoxical, people think oh if you get into cold water and ice
bath, your body temperature is going to drop and indeed
that's true if you stay in for a while. But if you just get in for about one to three minutes or
The cold shower, for one to three minutes, your core body temperature will increase. So then when you get out of that cold water, your body temperature is increasing at a rate at a slope that
steeper than it would, otherwise you're going to feel more alert. It also has the advantage of increasing not just at rental in, but dopamine, which is a
molecule involved in motivation, Focus etcetera. So this is great for waking up. So we've got
sunlight, we got temperature, triggered by cold water, and we
have exercised,
one of the best ways to increase your core body
temperature.
Early in the day is to do exercise.
Now some of you might choose to do
your full-blown workout for the day.
First thing, when you wake up in the morning, I always say the best time to exercise at least what the research points to is immediately when you wake up in the morning
or three hours after waking or 11 hours after waking.
But that's really getting down
into optimization for sake of muscular
strength and grip strength, and it's very hard to give a strict prescriptive. Here's what I suggest if you want to be alert early in the day,
Want to sleep great at night, get that bright sunlight,
get into some cold water, and if you don't want to get into some cold water, try and get some
movement, it could be a walk. So you can get your sunlight exposure while you're taking a walk first thing in the morning. It could be a light jog, it could be skipping rope
these days. I skip rope for about 10 minutes or 20 minutes while looking at the Sun. So, I'm trying to layer in these different things for waking up and then I take a
cold shower
afterwards as we've been doing as of lately. But I don't do that
all year long
necessarily or some of
You are going to be working out
mid-morning, I sometimes do that
but try and get your core body temperature,
increased first thing in the morning and great way to do that is with the
cold water and or
with exercise. And again it doesn't have to be your full-blown workout for the day. If you're doing a workouts consistently which I hope everybody is because everybody really should exercise. At least I believe five or six or maybe even 7 days a week for me at six days a week, sometimes five rarely is it 7:00.
So get that
exercise are even just a
The amount of movement walking jogging, skipping rope, some light calisthenics. That will further increase your core body temperature and help you feel more awake.
Then we have the category of caffeine. And again, we're just talking about this early part of the day and you might be saying, wait a second. I thought this was an episode about tools for sleep. Well, everything that we're talking about doing in these first 60 to 90 minutes of the day, really set in motion, a wave of biological Cascades that carry through the entire day and into the evening and into the night. And
really do serve to optimize
Leap. So just hang in there with me.
And for those of you that are interested in focus and attention, your ability to learn all of these tools and
practices are going to greatly enhance those as well.
So the next category of tool for use early in the day is caffeine, caffeine is a very important compound to think about, I do realize that some
people who are prone to anxiety, especially panic attacks, anxiety attacks, might avoid caffeine entirely that's absolutely fine. You do not have to drink caffeine. So what I'm about to describe our
ways to leverage caffeine use.
To optimize sleep and wakefulness.
If you are comfortable with caffeine, if you like caffeine, I happen to love caffeine. I like it in the form of coffee or
espresso or yerba mate tea in particular non
smoked varieties of yerba mate tea is non smoke because the smoke variety of seem to carry some carcinogenic some cancer-causing risk. There's increasing data on that sewn on smoked varieties of yerba mate. So, caffeine is something that a lot of
people consume early in the day. How much depends on your tolerance
Lawrence and there's a lot of individual variability here. Again, caffeine is adenosine antagonist or effectively
works at adenosine. Aunt, Agnes and limit
sleepiness, I highly recommend that everybody delay their caffeine
intake for 90 to 120 minutes after waking.
However, painful. It may be to eventually arrived at that 90 to 120 minutes after waking you want. And I encourage you to clear out whatever residual adenosine is circulating in your system. In that first 90 to 120 Minutes of the day, get that sunlight exposure, get some movement to
Cup and then, and only then start to ingest caffeine because what you'll do if you delay caffeine intake until 90 to 120 minutes
after waking
is, you will avoid the so-called afternoon crash and you may still get a little bit of
Dipping energy in the afternoon, but it's not going to
be that massive crash. I've talked about the reasons for
that crash on previous episodes, but if you
delay your caffeine intake 90 to 120 minutes. After waking, you are doing yourself a
great service towards wakefulness and
To avoid the crash and the afternoon crash has another liability to it, which is typically, people will emerge from that afternoon crash, either grumpy or groggy and then they'll lean into drinking more
caffeine which can then disrupt their sleep. So,
wait 90 to 120 minutes after waking in the morning to drink caffeine. And if you drink caffeine at any point throughout the day, really try and avoid any caffeine, certainly avoid drinking more than 100 milligrams of caffeine
after 4 p.m. and probably even better
to limit your
Last caffeine intake to 3 p.m. or even 2 p.m. And for
many people shifting that caffeine intake from immediately, after waking in the morning to 90, to 120 Minutes, gives them a much longer Arc of energy throughout the day and they don't feel the
need to drink more caffeine later in the afternoon. If you do
drink caffeine later in the afternoon, really try and limit the total amount or drink decaf. Certainly keep the total amount to less than 100 mg if you are interested in getting
into the best possible sleep and I say this knowing that many
People
including myself can drink a double espresso with 200 milligrams of caffeine, or
more at 5
p.m. or even 6 p.m. or after dinner. And still quote unquote, fall asleep, fine, or still sleep fine. However, there are terrific data, Matt Walker. And I talked about this
and there are more and more papers all the time that point to the fact that caffeine intake late in the day after 4:00 p.m. that is can really disrupt the architecture of your sleep. So you might think you're sleeping well, but you're not sleeping nearly as well as you could. If you
It caffeine in those afternoon hours.
Now, some of you might be doing your main bout of exercise first thing in the
morning and you want your caffeine before that bout of exercise. In that case, I say, go for it.
Drink your caffeine, do your workout right after waking
up? I don't have a problem with that. You will find however, that you're going to get an early afternoon dip in energy in that dip in energy is going to be
substantial, because it's going to be a dip in energy that naturally follows that work out from the morning.
So it's dependent on
on
temperature and it's going to be
related to the elimination of that adenosine blockade by caffeine. So you're getting a of a one-two punch on your energy levels by taking a lot of caffeine and exercising early. In the day, you can sort of expect that you're going to get a drop in energy in the early afternoon.
That's okay if that's works for you, but just know that delaying, that caffeine 90 to
120 minutes after waking would be the ideal scenario most days and
Scenarios.
All that said, I absolutely respect the fact that people have
different work schedules. Kids schedules, Etc. So, if you want to do some or none, or all these tools, that's really up
to you, I've just providing them to you in the simplest form that I can possibly provide them. Now, the other lever or
tool that you have available to you is food, not just what you eat, but when you eat and it turns out that if you eat early in the day,
you
support a biological
Lock mechanism that will make you more alert early in the day that said, many people choose to
fast in the early morning hours of the day, or in the first part of the day, I'm one such person.
I generally don't ingest any food until about 11 a.m. or 12:00 noon. Sometimes I'll have a protein
shake. Sometimes, I'll have some almonds. Sometimes, I'll have
breakfast. If people are meeting for brunch or
breakfast, I will have breakfast for social reasons,
every once in a while, but most of the time, I don't eat until
about lunchtime.
However, some people are really hungry when they wake up in the morning. Just
Know that if you eat early in the day, you are further triggering an increase in metabolism
and in temperature that will make you more alert. So you don't have to eat early in the day, but you
can start to see all these different tools layer together, sunlight viewing
exercise, cold water. Eating
many of them are converging on the same mechanisms. In fact, when you drink caffeine, there's also a small
increase in body temperature due to the adrenaline increase that it stimulates.
So all of these things can be layered on top of one another or you can use them.
Individually or think
about them individually. Now, food is an interesting lever or tool
because it's not just about when you eat, but it's also about what you eat and I've talked a lot about eating for energy and what that means in terms of caloric energy versus neural energy, Etc.
In previous podcast
episodes. We're not going to focus on that now, because frankly to get into a description of whether or not somebody should eat fruits or vegetables, or animal proteins, or dairy Etc early in the day, that's very nuanced. What
you eat for your breakfast? Or if you choose to not eat, breakfast is really up to you.
All that said, if you eat a very large meal, it doesn't matter if you slept terrifically, well, 10 hours a night
before, or if you are about to go to sleep, or if it's the middle of the afternoon, if your
gut is full of food, there's just a large volume of food in your gut. It's going to divert a
lot of blood and
other critical resources away from other organs of your body, in particular, your brain, and you're going to be
sleepy after eating a big meal. So, this is sort of a duh,
but I think oftentimes in the
Discussions about what to eat for energy, people neglect to consider food, volume as a strong parameter
variable in that discussion. So if you eat a huge breakfast is likely that you are going to be tired immediately after eating that breakfast. Unless of course, you exercise very hard prior to that and your metabolize all that food very
quickly. So it's up to you, whether or not to eat first thing in the morning or not. But if you do eat in the first few hours of the morning, just understand that you are setting where you're helping to set a food and
trained as
It's called circadian clock, light
temperature, timing of food, intake, movement, and exercise. All of these things, literally funnel in in a neural sense. They funnel into this thing that we call
the circadian clock. And they let that clock that
set of neurons predict when you
are likely to be eating and active and viewing sunlight the next day and the next day. And the next day, I say, all this
because there are some beautiful studies and I'll highlight one again in the show notes.
Jeans that show that if people are having a hard time waking up in the morning, one of the things they can do is
maximize sunlight viewing exercise in the morning, drink caffeine. Although again I support the idea that that would best be done about 90 to 120 minutes after waking eating some food in
those early morning hours, etc, etc, you can layer in multiple levers or Tools in order to
be more alert and that's what these levers and tools are really there for.
In this sense of what we're talking about today which is optimizing
sleep. Yes, they will make you more alert. Yes. They will provide some adrenaline and dopamine for instance,
the cold water, etc, etc.
But the reason we're talking about these things in the context of sleep is that they start to give
your body some predictable
autonomic timing. What is
predictable Autumn on anomic
timing, while your autonomic nervous system is the components of your brain and body
that cause wakefulness, and sleepiness and you can start to create some
predictability
Ability
in that autonomic
timing, you can start to do things that really make it, such that
you naturally wake up at six in the morning or 5:00 in the
morning. That's right. If you're somebody who naturally is a night owl, who likes to stay up until 2:00 in the morning and sleep until 10 a.m., and you now have a job or you have to go to school or you have a partner that likes to get up early and go to sleep early. Well, you can make that happen and you can make that happen, pretty painlessly if you take a week or so, and go to sleep
30 minutes or an hour earlier.
Type set, an alarm and wake up 30 minutes or an hour earlier each morning until of course, you're waking up at the time, you want to wake up
and then even in that groggy
State, get some exercise, get some sunlight viewing. If the sun's not out, turn on those bright, artificial
lights, have some breakfast even if you're not hungry. In fact, for those of you that engage in
shift work because you have to or travel and you're jet-lagged one of the quickest ways to shift your circadian clock and get on to the local schedule is to eat on the local.
Schedule. So what all these tools do is they really set
up a Cascade
think of it, as kind of a wave front of wakefulness and focus throughout the day. I'll take you through the middle of the day in the
afternoon stage. We'll talk about in a few minutes
but really they take you to this period. That is about 5 p.m. until your bedtime. I realize some people are going to bed very
early like 8:00 p.m. or 9 p.m. which to me, seems very early but very few people. Go to sleep at 5 p.m. right unless you're doing that for shift work or other reasons.
But from 5 p.m. until bedtime.
Is really a critical period in which you need to leverage particular Tools in order to get and stay
asleep optimally and, to be able to sleep through the night.
So really, there are three critical periods throughout each 24-hour
cycle. And
during each of those critical periods, you're going to want to do as many specific things as you can to optimize your wakefulness and focus and move throughout the day
and your sleep at night.
The first critical period is the one that we've been talking about up. Until now
things like morning, sunlight viewing caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after waking exercise. And
so on, we can call that critical period, one, and it really encompasses the time from which you wake up until about
three hours after waking, although I should just mention
because they're always those people say, wait, I wake up at 4 a.m. and the sun isn't out until 8 a.m. okay? So might be four hours but really it's those early morning
hours of your day once you're
awake. The second critical period is the time
Throughout the day and afternoon leading into evening. So you may ask, what are the things that you can do
throughout the day, the middle of your day, and into the afternoon, and evening hours that are really going to set you up for the best possible sleep later that night. Well, there are a few do's and there are a few don'ts. First of all, be
careful about ingesting too much
caffeine throughout the middle of the day. That's kind of an obvious one for the reasons that we talked about earlier, second of all, if you are a napper and I raised my hand. Now, for those of you listening, I'm raising my right hand because I love now.
Apps. I've always loved naps nowadays. I do n SD r or a
reverie sleep, hypnosis
almost every day. And I tend to do that, as I mentioned in the early afternoon hours if I'm feeling kind of sleepy because even though
I optimize my caffeine intake timing, Etc, I tend to get a little sleepy in the afternoon, most people get a little sleepy in the afternoon. Some of that is related to hitting that peak of body temperature and you might think. Wait, I thought high
body temperature is associated with alertness and it is, but
right as you Crest that high body temperature.
Your body temperature starts to drop. There's a tendency to be a little bit sleepy so some of you might opt to take a nap in the
afternoon. Should you nap? Should you not nap? That's a question that I get asked a lot and that I asked dr. Matthew Walker when he was a guest on this podcast,
here was his answer and here's what the
data support it is. Fine to nap in the afternoon
but don't nap. So late in the day or for so long that it disrupts your ability
to fall and stay asleep at night for your major sleep bout. Okay, so now sir,
fine, but don't sleep so long during the
Day or two late in the day that it disrupts your
ability to fall and stay asleep. I should also say you do not have to nap. It's kind of an interesting phenomenon that happens on these podcasts. And on social media where we'll talk about naps and the fact that naps are great and
don't make them longer than 90 minutes. But then all the non Nappers, get really worried like, wait, am I supposed to nap? I don't like naps. I wake up groggy you do not have to nap. In fact, if you can make it through your whole day without napping, great more power to you, but if you do not and you find that naps,
Of you. Well, keep those naps shorter than 90 minutes for reasons related to ultradian cycles and so forth
and make sure that you don't nap too late in the day that you are, then
staying up too late at night and having a hard time waking up the next morning. I will say that for a lot of
people who do not like naps or that find they wake up really grumpy from
naps or groggy from naps.
I encourage you to try the reverie app. Try an NST R script, try Yoga Nidra, try something of that, sort for anywhere from
10 to 20 to 30 minutes.
I tend to do this every day now I'll just lie down and I love Yoga Nidra. I love NST, R scripts, I love using the reverie app. In particular, the portion of the reverie app that gets you better at sleeping. It really is beneficial for me because it serves as very replenishing while I'm doing that hypnosis, but it's also got me much better at falling and staying asleep and falling back asleep in the middle of the
night. So, this critical period throughout the day is one in which most people are doing a lot of stuff. They're emailing.
Picking up kids and they're exercising, and they're commuting and doing all sorts of things, taking phone calls and zooms
Etc. But if you can
get that period of deep
relaxation, through an app or NST R that's going to serve you. Well, try not to drink too much. Caffeine certainly no more than 100 milligrams of caffeine after 4 p.m. if your goal is to fall asleep at a reasonably
normal time and for those of you that exercise in the afternoon understand that if you exercise very intensely. So this might be weight training or running or some other very
Exercise typically that's going to further increase
your body. Temperature, make sense, right? Based on everything we know about metabolism and body
temperature and it's going to so-called delay your circadian clock. It's going to make it such that you want to fall asleep. A little bit later, maybe even a lot later. So if you're exercising in the afternoon or evening and that's the only time
you can exercise or that's the time that you prefer to exercise
great but be careful about ingesting too much caffeine in order to get the energy to do that exercise because that
caffeine will
Your sleep and just know that you are delaying your
circadian clock. You are making it such that you will naturally want to go to sleep later. And wake up later,
contrast that with if you exercise early in the day,
say immediately, after waking up or in the first 0, 24 hours. After waking,
in most cases, that's not going to
shift your circadian clock much and toward the end of the
episode, we'll talk a little bit about forced exercise prior to wake up
times, that doesn't mean doing exercises.
Sleep that means deliberately setting alarm and getting out of bed much earlier than you
naturally. Would that turns out to be a very potent tool to so-called Advanced your circadian clock?
So we can talk about that a little bit later in the episode. But this
critical period to in the middle of the day
is when you're going to want to leverage specific tools and we talked about those limiting caffeine intake, being mindful of the clock. Delaying effects of exercise. The fact that also if you're going to nap, you don't want a nap too long.
Or too late into the day. Otherwise it'll disrupt your nighttime sleep. So this
critical Period 2 or S critical period, I should say. During the middle of the day is a time in which you should be doing certain things and avoiding doing certain things. So, that raises the question of whether or not, you should also be getting a lot of light
in particular sunlight throughout the day.
Now that's something that hasn't been explored too much in the literature until recently when
dr. Samet are who's the director of the chronobiology unit at the National Institutes of mental health, is to
decide to do a number of experiments exploring the effects of
Of light on mood and other aspects of brain function and body function when that light is delivered. Not just in the morning, which
is great for us but also throughout the day. So should you be
looking at sunlight or bright
artificial lights throughout the day
on the face of it? You might
just think yes you know,
sunlights great provided. We're not getting a sunburn. We're not staring at the sun and damaging our our
eyes. We should get as much sunlight as we possibly can. In fact, we talked
about this in the episode on hormones about how getting light onto as much of our skin as we can throughout the day, can really help.
In the production of testosterone and estrogen in both men and women and healthy ways that improves mood and libido, and all sorts of
things that are associated with well-being. However, because light is such a powerful stimulus for
controlling the timing of your sleep fullness or sleepiness, I should say, and wakefulness.
We might want to be cautious about how much
light we are viewing in the afternoon, in particular, in the early evening hours.
Right? Well, turns out, it's not. So straightforward
viewing, so, sunlight to the eyes,
son.
In light in the late afternoon and evening hours. So again, depends on time of year, depends on location that you happen to be in. But getting some sunlight in your eyes for again, maybe five or ten, maybe 30 minutes, depending on
how much cloud cover there is doing that in the
afternoon, serves an additional beneficial purpose, which is
you protect, or
you inoculate your nervous system against some of the negative effects of bright, artificial light
or even dim artificial light.
The nighttime hours between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., which is really
critical period 3 and we'll
talk about what to do and what to not do, during critical period three of every 24 hour cycle,
but to make it very clear what I'm saying here, get that morning sunlight in your eyes but also get some sunlight in your eyes in the late afternoon and evening hours. When the sun is at so-called low
solar angle, when it starts to descend in the sky again, you
don't have to stare directly at the
sun. Without you can catch a nice. Beautiful
sunset. Go for it. But as the Sun starts to descend
It triggers those same neurons in your eye that communicate with your circadian clock but it communicates with a different component or different compartment within the circadian
clock that circadian. Clock is not
just one thing, it's multiple things and you have what are
called morning oscillators and evening oscillators and to make a long story
short, the tool
that I'm describing of looking at the sun in the late afternoon and evening again, blinking is fine, don't stare at the Sun but getting that sunlight in your eyes in the late afternoon,
An evening signals to that
clock that it's evening time and that sleep is coming. It
also serves as a second anchor or reference point for your body and your brain to know where it is in time. Remember back to the beginning of the episode. When I said your brain and your body and all your organs are
locked inside this skin and the skull and they don't know what's going on in the outside world.
Well, that morning sunlight viewing in the other things you do during critical period. One those provide one strong
I'm set of signals that it's wake up time and time to be alert and time
to be focused. And then in the
evening by getting sunlight in your
eyes again and in particular sunlight that comes from low solar angles sunlight.
Well, that provides a second
stimulus or a second reference point, that tells your brain and body. Hey, it's evening, the sun is descending. You might say, wait, how does the
brain and these neurons know the difference between Morning, Light and evening light? It turns out has to do with the
particular wavelengths of light that are
In morning versus evening, it's an incredible mechanism and
you are probably familiar with the fact that when the sun is directly
overhead, it's really bright, white and yellow, and the skies often blue, and if there's cloud cover just comes through as a bunch of bright light. Well, next time, you're out in
the morning, take a look at what a sunrise looks like, there's a lot of yellow
blue, contrast those
yellow Blues, signal, important specific sets of
cells in your eye. And brain that it's morning in the
evening. You're also going to see yellow and blue, but the ratio of
Of yellows and blues is now changed. And you also see some oranges. And in a really brilliant Sunset, you'll see some Reds. If you haven't noticed this already, you'll really want to look for this. It's like kind of fun and cool to look at. Well, those yellows and blues and oranges that you see in the evening, sun sets, those signal to your brain and
body that evening is there. And that night time is coming and they're really establishing
a second reference point or wave
front of biological signals that are going to optimize your nighttime hours in your transition into really terrific.
So now, let's talk about what I'm calling critical period, three
of each 24-hour
cycle. So this would be the period of time of late evening. So it might be 6 p.m. for some depending on when you go to sleep or 7 p.m. extending into the hours in which you decide to get into bed and go to sleep. And then throughout the night, there are a number of things that you're going to want to do. And there are a number of things that you are going to want to avoid
doing in order to optimize your sleep. First of
all, you're going to want to avoid bright.
Artificial lights of any
color. Yes of any color. We haven't talked
a lot about blue blockers. You know, lenses that block blue wavelengths or short wavelengths of light. I don't have anything against Blue blockers. In fact, many people find that blue blockers, provide them some relief
from headache and some eye strain
if they wear blue blockers throughout the day and certainly at night but you don't need them and even if you do wear them you will find that if lights are very bright, doesn't matter. If it's a blue light, a yellow light or a red
Light, those bright lights, will wake up your brain and body. They will activate the same mechanisms that were activated early in the day by
sunlight. However,
and here's the really diabolical twist, I mentioned this earlier, but the Diabolical twist in the way that your brain and body respond to light. Is that early in the day in the morning hours, you need a lot of bright light, ideally, from
sunlight to be, very alert and to wake up.
But in the evening hours and nighttime hours, it takes very little light, very few photons.
In order to wake up your brain and body and to
disrupt your circadian clock and disrupt your sleep.
So what that means is that once the sun goes down,
Which of course, is going to happen at
different times of year in different places on Earth, but once the sun goes down, you would be wise to try and dim the lights in your indoor
environment most
days, right? I realize some nights, you're going to throw a party and have people over. You might not want to dim the
light some nights you're going to go out. You might view a lot of bright lights but most nights of your life.
You're going to want to dim the lights in
your internal environment
and ideally the lights that you do use you
would play slow in that physical environment. So you would try and not use.
Overhead lights but rather rely on desk lamps or lights even play Slow to the floor even on the floor. If you are going to use light at night and most people do,
I would encourage you to use as little artificial light, as is required to carry out the activities. You need to require
safely that could be studying, in which case you might need a little bit
more light in order to read
or study. If you're
watching a television show, or you're watching something on your computer, dim that screen way, way down as dim, as possible, while still, of
course, being able to
View, what you need to
view, even
better should say. Ideally, you would use
candle light and or moonlight. Now, Some Nights, the Moon is really bright, and you actually can use Moonlight,
to go about your usual activities.
Moonlight might seem very, very bright, but actually Moonlight is fairly low, light
intensity. And candle light, which can also seem
very bright actually is very low light, intensity. If you are sitting across the table with some Candlelight there, it's a really bright candle. Chances are, it's only about
E2 10 lakhs which is very very little light energy compared to say an artificial desk lamp or an overhead light, which is going to be in the area of anywhere from 100 to 1000 looks
so candle. Light is fine, of course, be cautious with Open Flame But Candlelight is fine. Moonlight is fine, dimming artificial lights is fine.
Provided their dimmed way, way down
and again try and avoid using overhead,
artificial lights. The absolute worst lights are going to be overhead, fluorescent lights of the sort that you would.
Have in the supermarket or that you would see at a gas station or something of that sort. And I
confess there, hard times in which I'm you know, driving home and it's late at night and I want to be able to get to sleep and I'll need to stop at the grocery store or a gas station or something like that. I've actually put on
sunglasses at night in order to avoid getting that bright light exposure at night. Although that's a little bit extreme. I have done that from time to time because that bright light exposure will absolutely quash.
It will eliminate any melatonin.
Happens to be circulating in your brain and body. Now
melatonin, a lot of people think of as a supplement but melatonin is naturally released as the evening comes about and into the nighttime hours, it's hormone that makes you feel sleepy. And allows you to fall asleep. So viewing bright light in the late evening hours. And nighttime hours
is really not good for your sleep quality and your ability to fall and stay asleep. So, for most people, a simple rule
of thumb is going to be avoid bright, artificial lights of all colors.
And in particular overhead,
Bright artificial lights between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. that's right
between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. avoid those bright artificial
lights as much as possible. Use only as much light as is absolutely necessary in order to carry out the routines and activities, you need to carry out safely, I should mention
that. The reason overhead lights are problematic is the same reason why sunlight is so great early in the day which is that the cells that is the neurons that can wake
up the your brain and body through activation of the circadian,
clock reside.
In the bottom half or two-thirds of your neural retina and the way the Optics of your eyes work is that the cells on the bottom half of your eye view, the upper visual field. So this is a beautiful adaptive mechanism that allows these
cells to respond to overhead light from sunlight.
In the early part of the day and throughout the day. But in the evening, if you have bright artificial lights on in those bright, artificial lights are overhead lights. It's going to more closely
mimic what sunlight does in the evening time and that turns out to be a bad thing. If your goal is to eventually go to sleep. So again do like the skin and avians do use lights that are set low in the room at night and if you really want to optimize your sleep-wake Cycles, I suppose you can also do the opposite throughout the day you could really emphasized the use of bright artificial lights and
Sunlight that comes from above, and course, sunlight always comes from above. But if you're working in a given, you know, office environment and you know, it's 2 p.m. or 3 p.m., and you want to be as awake as possible. Really
crank up, the overhead lights and then in the evening is, which is this critical period three, that were referring to really try and dim
those lights or have them off or just rely on Candlelight or Moonlight from the hours of about 10 p.m. until 4 a.m.
our good friend, Samurai guitar, who's been on this podcast before? Sammer is director of the
chronobiology, unit, the national
Institutes of mental health. Well, he's absolutely obsessive about this light stuff, in avoiding light at night. In fact, he lives in what I do joke is like a cave at night from 9 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. which is really his kind of sleep cycle. He has his house. So, dark that you'd be lucky to be able to find a spoon in the kitchen. In fact, you'd be lucky to find your way down the hallway if you're me,
but in any case, dim, the lights from them way, way down it will serve you. Well, it will
make it much easier for you to get sleepy and Stacy.
Being
fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night. Now, not to
depart from this critical, period 3, but if you recall viewing that afternoon
light, right?
The low. So low angle light as the sun is heading down in the sky so it could be
sunset or what I call Circa Sunset around Sunset.
Well, doing that is going to slightly but not completely
offset any of the negative effects of viewing artificial light at night. So I
don't want to give people a pass here but let's say you know that you're going to
To
watch some Netflix at night or you're going to be up
late studying and yet you still want to be able to fall and stay asleep. Definitely make sure
you see that evening light. There's a great
study, will provide a link to the study, which showed that if people view evening Sunset, light or Evening, Sun, sets or sunlight right? Around the time of sunset, it really serves to inoculate or
offset. Some again, some not all of the negative effects of artificial light between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. now that's light. But as you recall, we also
This tool related to temperature and you'll probably not going to be surprised that the way to leverage temperature in the
evening is the exact opposite of the way that you want to
leverage temperature
early in the day early, in the day, temperature, increases from cold showers or exercise, Etc. Wake you up. What that means is that taking a cold shower late, tonight is probably a bad idea.
Rather take a nice hot bath or a sauna
You might think would heat
up your body and indeed that's what happens if you
stay in a very long time. But if you do hot tub or a hot bath or a saint in the
evening and you don't stay in for more than 20 or 30 minutes and you get out, you take maybe a cool ish shower or warm shower. Then what happens is there's a compensatory cooling off of your
core body, temperature for the reasons we discussed earlier and your body temperature will drop by 123 degrees and it will make it much easier to get into sleep. So, if you're somebody that enjoys
hot baths, hot
showers or
hot tubs,
Evening and nighttime is going to be the best time to do that. If your goal is to facilitate sleep,
similarly, you should try and make your sleeping environment. Pretty cool if not cold. Now, that doesn't mean you need to be cold while you're asleep. You can get under his many blankets as you need, but it's a good idea to make your sleeping environment.
Cool. In fact, drop the temperature in that sleeping environment by at least three degrees and you'll be happy that you
did some people rely on things like eight sleep, that I use that one of
these controllable temperature mattress, covers other people,
Would simply do this by putting a fan in the room or opening a window
again, depends on time of year. Depends on technology. Depends on budgets, Etc. But you're going to want to sleep in a relatively cool or cold sleeping environment and then layer on the
blankets as
needed to stay asleep. And I say as
needed because one of the things that you're going to do in your sleep or
if you happen to wake up is if
you're too warm, you're going to put a foot or a hand out from under those blankets. And the reason for doing that is very logical, once you understand, the
You have special portals. You essentially have ways of passing heat, excuse
me, in and out of your body, primarily through the palms of your hands, the upper half of your face and the bottoms of your feet through so-called glabrous skin. This was covered in the episode with
dr. Craig Heller from the biology department at Stanford.
If you lower the temperature in your sleeping environment to lower the temperature in that room, where
use a controllable mattress, cover that can cool down like eight sleep or something of that sort. It's naturally going to make your sleeping environment
cooler.
And if you're too warm under the blankets, all you have to do is extend a hand or a foot out from under those blankets. Whereas, if the sleeping environment that you're in is too warm, there's very little you can do to cool off besides push off those blankets. So for instance, if you're too warm and you're waking
up in the middle of the night, which is what happens if you get too warm,
you'll push off those blankets, but if the room is too warm. Well, what are you going to do?
You'd probably have to put your hands into some cool water. Take a coolish shower or something. For a couple of seconds. That's not very practical better to just keep the sleeping environment. Cool.
I'm not
A big fan of people putting socks on while they sleep or I should say, I'm not a fan of putting socks on while I sleep because that eliminates this
glabrous skin portal on the bottoms of one's feet.
So for those of you that have heard, you know, wear socks while you sleep, that works great for people that tend
to run too cold while they sleep and wake up because their feet, get cold,
but if you're somebody who wakes up in the middle of the night, chances are you're waking up because you're getting too warm. And the best thing that you could do is to cool or lower the temperature in the room that you're sleeping and
not wear socks, get under as many blankets as you need to fall.
And then across the night, you'll naturally just
move a hand or a foot or all hands and feet out from under those blankets to cool off because of the relationship between temperature and sleep, that is dropping your core body temperature 123 degrees, gets you into sleep, and helps you stay asleep. So, let's say you do exercise late in the day and you're
finding yourself very
Alert in the evening. And you need to fall asleep
or let's say you've exercised and you needed four cups of espresso in order to do that exercise. Well, there are a few things that you can do to try and bring your nervous system down into more state
of calm.
- and you can do that also, by lowering your core body
temperature. One of those I already talked about before taking a nice hot shower,
or a hot bath, and then getting out and cooling off will decrease your body temperature may be not enough to get you into sleep, if you have a ton of caffeine in your system, but again, you
can use this mechanism of temperature shifts to wake up or temperature shifts to fall asleep in ways that really can help you overcome some of the, you know, irregularities in your
sleep-wake cycle and exercise cycle etcetera.
Of course, nobody's perfect. Some days we end up having to work out in the afternoon or we'll miss the work
out. Entirely other
days. We end up having that cup of coffee in the
afternoon with a friend and we have a hard time falling asleep. So you can use these tools not just in their optimized form you know, being absolutely obsessive and compulsive about exactly. When you do each of those
tools that would be wonderful. But life happens is they say and some days you're going to feel to alert
at 19. You want to fall asleep or you got to get it, especially early, the next morning and you're not somebody who normally goes to bed at 10 p.m.
M. Well that's when it's
something like a hot bath or a sauna can really benefit you because he can
adjust your temperature Rhythm accordingly, I would
be remiss if I didn't touch on alcohol and CBD and THC. I always get questions
about these and I should
say, of course, many places but not all
THC is illegal, although there are medical uses and some places, it's decriminalized other places, it's legal, alcohol, of course, is consumed. Almost as frequently as caffeine is consumed, I
personally don't drink alcohol.
I don't have
Against it per se. I just don't tend to enjoy it. One
of the reasons I don't enjoy it, is if I
drink alcohol, I simply fall asleep. So that doesn't really accomplish any of the things that I really want to
accomplish because the sleep that one
gets after drinking alcohol is greatly disrupted sleep. Hate to break it to you, but that's the truth and when dr. Matt Walker came on this podcast. He said exactly the same thing while THC and alcohol do help some people fall
asleep and
they even stay asleep. The architecture of that sleep is suboptimal compared to the sleep. They would get
without alcohol or THC in their system. So, I'm not here to tell you what to do or not to do. I'm certainly not the substance police. That's not my role. I'm just reporting to you the biology. If your sleep is not restoring you to the extent that you feel it should
or if you are regularly
relying on a drink or two in order to fall asleep
or THC in order to fall asleep,
that is disrupting.
Your total pattern of
sleep. However, I do realize that nowadays, A lot of people are
relying on THC, and or CBD,
especially edible forms in order to fall and stay asleep. And, you know, we can just acknowledge the data. It does seem that there's a anxiety lowering
effect of some, of those compounds that do help people who have a hard time, falling and staying asleep because of reasons related to anxiety. Although, in a moment, we'll talk about some
supplement and supplement protocols. That can also assist
in the ability to fall
and stay asleep. And then kinda just anxiety and that do not seem to disrupt, sleep architecture and negative ways. And in fact can enhance the depth and quality of sleep architecture.
Okay? So you've done everything correctly up until now. You got your morning routine from critical period. One your afternoon routine. You saw some sunlight in the afternoon. You avoid caffeine in the eight hours or 10 hours before bedtime. You're not drinking alcohol you. Cool down the room. You're doing all these things, right. You dim the lights etc, etc. What else can we do in order?
To optimize our sleep. Well I always say behavioral tools, first then look to nutrition. Then if necessary look to supplementation and then if still necessary look to
prescription drugs, obviously prescribed by a board certified physician.
Well, we talked a lot about the
behavioral tools for critical period 3. We have
not talked a lot about the
supplementation, based tools.
There are supplements that for most people will greatly improve their ability
to fall and stay asleep and the
the
three main supplements in that category or that kit of sleep supplements and I've talked about these before our magnesium 3 and 8 so
three-30 natpe apigenin AP igen igen apigenin and theanine th EA and I any theanine
now some important things to point
out about mag 3 and 8 as it's called apigenin and theanine first of all you
don't necessarily need to take all three although many people get a synergistic at
Factoring taking all three. In fact
you may not even need to take even one what I recommend is that if you're already doing all the behavioral
tools
regularly and you're still having trouble
falling asleep and staying asleep. Well then
you might try
one of the supplements within this sleep stack. They do have fairly wide margins for safety although I should also say anytime you're going to
add or remove something from your supplement protocol, your nutritional program. You definitely want to talk to your physician. I don't just say that it
Let us I say that to protect you but for most people the margins of safety on these things are going to be pretty broad. A couple of notes about dosages for some people, the dosages of any one or several of the supplements. I mentioned will be 0 that is you won't need them
in order to get and stay asleep most nights of your life.
That's terrific. If you don't need them. For many people, however, taking 145, mg of magnesium 3, and 8 can be very beneficial, that's the dosage that most people will.
It from some people need to go a little higher. Some people need to go a little bit lower. One of the reasons that we've been pointing people towards single-ingredient formulations these days is because it allows people to adjust the dosage of one component of a so-called sleep stack without having
to disrupt the dosage of another component and so on.
It also allows people to try
just one element within the Sleep stack without having to purchase and try the others which is a problem if you're buying a blend of a lot of different
ingredients. So 145 mg of magnesium.
Magnesium three and eight fifty 50 milligrams of apigenin and again, you could just take the apigenin on its own and 100 to 400 milligrams of theanine Taken again alone or in combination with the other supplements mention this stack, many people find allows them to get really drowsy and fall
asleep sleep really deeply and they
feel much more
refreshed the next day and they don't have a grogginess because I'm now a couple of notes about these different supplements
about 5%.
Scent of people report, that magnesium three and eight really disrupts their gut. It gives them
diarrhea or gastric distress, in which case, don't take it. If
magnesium three and eight
disrupts your gut or your digestion point, where it's uncomfortable or at all and you don't like it, don't take any of it. The proper dosage for you. In other words would be 0 mg.
Now, in a slightly different way, many people who can tolerate magnesium, 3 & 8 are really thrive on magnesium 3, and 8 and like apigenin might.
Find that theanine even at the lowest dose of 100 mg because again, the range is 100 to 400 milligrams that theanine gives them such vivid dreams that they
actually find it disruptive, or they wake up in the middle of the night. Or they find that the Sleep. They're getting is kind of anxiety-ridden because of the intensity of those dreams. So some people might choose to leave theanine out of the Sleep stack and just take magnesium three and a trap again and again some people might leave magnesium 3 and 8 out of the Sleep
sack.
Again, all of this is really about finding the
supplementation protocol that's ideal for you.
I should mention that whether or not you're taking one or two or three of the components of the Sleep stack, the ideal time to take those is 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime especially if
you haven't had anything to eat for three hours. Or so before bedtime, I confess that often times I'll have a little bit of a snack late in the evening some berries or something. I
try not to eat too close to bedtime but some evenings just because of work schedule. I'll get home late, be 9:00 p.m.
and I'll eat a big meal and
I'll take the Sleep stack and fall asleep. Every once in a while that just so happens. Nobody's perfect. Certainly I'm not
but that sleep stack can be very beneficial and I do think that it's preferable
to melatonin. Here's the reason
first of all, melatonin is a
hormone that you endogenously make you now know a lot about melatonin and its control by light, meaning light inhibits it or eliminates it Darkness promotes
it.
And melatonin indeed can help us fall asleep, but the dosages of melatonin that are contained in. Most commercial products is
far, far, far greater than what we would make endogenous lie. So it's really Supra physiological.
So that's of concern because melatonin is not just
responsible for making a sleepy and fall asleep.
It also does
things like interacts with other hormone systems testosterone and estrogen even in the puberty system and
kids.
Is taking melatonin every once in a while a problem for adjusting to jet lag. Etc. Probably
not even say no
but taking it chronically over time. Especially kids taking a
chronically over time can potentially be
problematic. So at least in my opinion, these other supplements are going to be
preferable to melatonin. Now
as I mentioned the beginning of today's episode, there are some other things that I certainly take every once in a
while and that other people might consider taking in
addition to the Sleep, sack I talked about
before or in place.
That sleep stack if that sleep sack doesn't work well for them.
So every third or fourth night, I will take 2 grams of glycine and 100 mg of Gaba. In addition to
the standard sleep stack that I talked about before. So I'm taking mag 3 and a apigenin theanine and then I'll also take two grams of glycine and Gaba which I find greatly enhances my ability to get into
sleep. But the reason I only add Glycine and Gaba every third or fourth night is that if I take it too often, I find that the entire sleep sack
doesn't work.
White as effectively. I don't know exactly why this is the case, but in any event, that's what I do and more recently, I've also started using inositol in particular myo-inositol
every other night. I'll take 900 milligrams
of myo-inositol, in addition to mag three and eight apigenin, and theanine, and not on the nights when I take Glycine and Gaba. So
I'm adding 900 milligrams of
inositol to the standard sleep stack of Mac, three and eight theanine and apigenin.
And what I find is not only
It greatly enhance
my ability to fall asleep quickly, but if I wake up in the middle of the night, which I
often do to use the
bathroom, I find it very,
very easy to fall back asleep.
Whereas when I don't take an office
at all every other night or so
I find that if I wake up in the middle of the night, it's a
bit more of a challenge to fall back
asleep. So inositol has a number of different uses that have been discussed in terms of mental health
and in terms of adjusting anxiety, for it's daytime. Use. What I'm talking about is taking 900 milligrams of
Myo-inositol also 30 to 60 minutes before, sleep along with the standard sleep sack and I found that to be immensely beneficial. I
also notice, it has a pretty long tail
of anxiety suppression throughout the day and
I'm not somebody who suffers from anxiety, but I have to say,
just has led me to feel a bit calmer throughout the day. And I don't really know how to say this except in subjective terms. It feel a bit more buffered against her resilience against stress events. And if you look at the literature on and also tall, and it's interactions with the serotonin system and
Systems it at all makes sense as to why that would be the case.
So we will provide links to our so-called sleep kit, which is part of our neural network newsletter, the zero-cost newsletter, where you can access
this information about supplements and other behavioral tools for sleep in list
form. But that sleep kid doesn't include some of the newer
information that I provided this episode in particular, the information about inositol and what I'm finding be, the very beneficial use of inositol for the ability to fall back asleep after waking up in the middle of the night. Which is something that a lot of
people struggle
with. Now that's supplementation for falling and staying asleep, but we can return to the behavioral tools also as powerful levers and tools
for falling asleep and getting back to sleep. And again, we look
to NSD are non sleep deep rest or the reverie app as a way to do that. As I mentioned earlier, the reverie app has been developed on the basis of really high-quality peer-reviewed research. Both clinical and non-clinical by my colleague, David Spiegel, who is our associate chair of Psychiatry at Stanford,
It's a Wonderful tool. It does carry
cost after the initial seven date trial, I can tell you what the cost on that is. So you can get a sense because I
do realize that anything that carries a
cost for some people it won't be accessible
right now. Reverie and I should just mention they didn't pay us for an ad read. I'm just telling you what they told me so that I can
accurately report, what, what
it cost to use reverie, they have a monthly subscription to use the reverie app. At 1499, you do get the 7 day,
free trial.
I'll have a yearly subscription of
99 99 99 99
with a 7-Day free trial and they have a lifetime purchase one-time. Purchase of 249 with no trial
it right now is only available for Apple, not for Android but they are yes. Going to have it available for Android soon. There's a sign-up list there. I should mention that while the
cost might seem high. If you compare that
cost to save supplements or you compare that cost to a poor night's sleep over time, the cost to at least to me
seems somewhat modest,
I'm certainly willing.
Range for a number of people but I acknowledge not within range for other people which is why I
also want to point two zero cost tools and the zero cost tool for getting asleep. Staying
asleep and falling back asleep
is going to be n. SD R will put a link to a non sleep deep breath protocol that's available on YouTube
so available to anybody, zero cost provider you have a
internet connection again dim the screen if you're going to turn that on late at night and there are a number of other Yoga Nidra
scripts and apps
and sources.
Surround the internet in particular on YouTube that are
zero cost that you could use, if the reverie app is outside your price range or is not preferable to you at cetera. When
I wake up in the middle of the night, it's
usually to use the restroom. I'll go use the restroom will keep the lights as dim as possible. I'll get back into bed, and if I find that it's easy to fall
asleep, great, I'm asleep. And if not, then I will generally plug in the reverie
app. They have a fall, back asleep, hypnosis and 99 times out of 100, I'm back asleep, within minutes and I don't wake up until morning.
Very briefly. I just want to touch on some tools that are very commonly used by many people out there and believe it or not there is peer-reviewed science on things like I'm asked, do I
masks improve your ability to stay asleep? And indeed they do provided they are not too tight and provided that the room is cool
enough. Why? Well, I'm asked cover the upper half of your
face which is where glabrous skin is localized. Remember Palms of the hands
bottoms of eat glabrous skin on the face. So a lot of people who wear I mass will wake up because they're too warm.
If the room is too warm. So if you're going to use an eye mask to keep light out, definitely make sure the room and your sleeping environment and your bed are
cool enough in order for you to stay
asleep. In addition, I get a lot of questions about earplugs. Here's the deal with earplugs some people find that your plugs are very beneficial because, of
course, they prevent the entrance of sound into the ear that could wake
us up. But some people find that the sound of their own beating of Their Own Heart can be disruptive, and they get a sort of humming in their head when they
have those earplugs in, I'm
Such person, although I family members
that like using earplugs when they sleep. So it's really up to you. You have to
see whether or not those earplugs help or disrupt. Your sleep for me, they're no good for some people. They really enjoy them. I don't use an eye
mask, unless I'm sleeping in a really bright environment, or I need to sleep on a plane and things of that sort.
Other tools that I'll just mention that have peer-reviewed research to support them. Elevating your feet, either with a pillow or by elevating the end of your bed by about 325
degrees can be really beneficial
Oil, for increasing the depth of sleep because of the so-called glymphatic washout. This is the movement of, and circulation of fluids in your brain at night, that lead to more wakefulness and actually can improve
cognitive function and a number of other things related to brain health. There's one caveat to that for people that suffer from acid reflux. Having your ankles elevated above your chest or above your
heart, in the middle of the night, can actually exacerbate that acid reflux, you want to do the opposite. You want to actually elevate your the head side of your bed by about three to.
Degrees. Now, one of the common causes of sleep disruption that has tremendously detrimental effects is so called Sleep Apnea. So this is basically bouts of
Suffocation or lack of oxygenation during sleep. This is particularly the case for people that are very
heavyset and that heavyset could be from obesity. It can also be heavyset from having too much muscle. A lot of people who are carrying too much muscle, will actually have sleep apnea without realizing it sleep. And happy is actually very
dangerous. It's associated with a number of cardiovascular
issues its associated with sexual
Actual dysfunction its associated with issues with
cognition sleep. Apnea is bad. A lot of people will
have to use the pap, which is a of the device. It looks like a sort of us like a snorkel mask or dive mask. It's a whole
apparatus that people go to sleep with, however, many people can relieve themselves of sleep apnea provide, it's not too serious and can sleep much better. In fact, I think all people can sleep much better if they train themselves to be nose breathers while they sleep, there are a lot of reasons to be a nose breather unless
Our breathing very hard due to exercise, or talking or eating,
that was all covered in James, nesters book
breath the new science of a lost art. It's been covered in a number of different
podcast. We've talked about on this podcast as well. It's a good idea to be a nose breather, unless
you need to mouth breathe. And it's a great idea to superb idea,
to be a nose breather in sleep. And one way to really get good at that, is to take a little
bit of medical tape and tape your mouth shut before going to sleep. You heard me right? Put some medical tape
over your mouth and force yourself.
Off to nose, breathe during sleep. It also prevents snoring in most cases really offset sleep, apnea, sleep apnea. Again, being a very serious health concern, I should also mention as a tool that if you have a hard time being a nose breather in sleep, you can try doing your cardiovascular exercise, at least the lower intensity cardiovascular exercise,
through purely nasal breathing and one way to do that again, is to tape your mouth shut or
put a gulp of water in your mouth, but don't actually swallow that mouthful of water
or
Use a mouthpiece or just deliberately, keep your mouth closed in and cysts on breathing
through your nose. Most people find that when they start doing cardiovascular exercise, that way, it's really challenging at first, but over time they
actually can feel quite calm and still can generate a lot of physical effort. Purely using nose breathing. The reason that doing nose breathing dragon cardiovascular exercise translates to being a nose. Breather during sleep is that your sign is actually can dilate their plastic and overtime plastic meaning their their shit, they're malleable.
That is and they can become wider. You're not going to get giant nostrils. Don't worry about it. Your Airway is within your your skull because that's what the sinuses really are. These little passages within the skull. And of course, within the nasal passages are will dilate and will allow you to breathe more easily through your nose.
But for those of you that are waking up in the middle of the night, breathing on your
back,
or your partner, is telling you, that other people are telling you that read that person on the plane with your mouth hanging, open and drooling in your mouth breathing, terrible, terrible, terrible for health reasons, and other reasons.
Put some medical take over your mouth, learn to be a nose. Breather during sleep, your sleep will improve and your daytime feelings of wakefulness and focus will
improve your cardiovascular. Health will improve and on and on and on.
So now we've largely covered the tools that one could use to
get and stay asleep. And we talked about exercise, we talked about temperature, we talked about supplements and we talked about, of course, keeping the sleeping environment both cool and as dark as possible.
I do want to mention a couple of broad Contour tools that
Will impact your ability to sleep really well on a consistent
basis. And the one that impacts the most number of people is weekends, turns out that most everybody feels the impulse to sleep in on the weekend especially if it's been out late the night
before. However, the data show
that keeping relatively consistent sleep and wake times is really going to
enhance the quality and depth of your sleep. So if you stay out late one
night, sure. You might allow yourself to sleep in an extra hour or so, but you should really try to avoid
Sleeping in longer than an hour, beyond your normal wake up time. That's right. If you normally get eight hours of sleep and you wake up at 7 a.m. probably, okay to wake up at 8 a.m. on the
weekend or after a night out the night before. But try not to sleep until 11:00 or noon thinking that you're going to catch up on your sleep or that's better than waking up at a consistent time. It would be better to wake up at a consistent time plus or minus an hour and get a nap in the afternoon provided that nap. Again isn't too long.
And the other tool that relates to nights that you stayed out too late or that you feel
like you want to sleep in a bit more in the morning is if you're going to wake up at
your consistent time. So for example,
normally go to bed at 10 and you wake up at six, what say that's your schedule
and use end up staying up late. One night until
midnight or one for whatever reason and the next morning you wake up at 7:00 and you're still
groggy in that case you absolutely want to wait to ingest.
Caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after
waking, you really do because there are good data to support the fact that
caffeine can disrupt sleep. Yes, that's obvious caffeine, especially disrupt sleep. If you take it too late in the day, that's very obvious as to why that would be the case,
but caffeine
especially disrupts, what's called compensatory sleep.
So if you start changing your waking time in your to sleep time and you start using additional caffeine to offset the sleepiness that
You're experiencing because of those late nights out. Well, that's when you really start to disrupt, not
just your nighttime sleep, but your daytime
compensatory sleep. So those naps you also are disrupting the total architecture of sleep in the early morning hours. There's a lot of great science that's been put to this, or that's emerge from this, I should say. So, try and keep those sleep. Wait, times relatively constant plus or minus an hour and try
as much as you can to delay that caffeine intake 90 to 120 minutes after waking
every day, but especially on days.
You wake up and you feel, you haven't gotten enough sleep in that case, I highly recommend you just use NSD are or the reverie
app or some other form
of deep relaxation to try and compensate for the lack of sleep.
Knowing of course that there's no
complete compensation for lack of sleep. They're just things that we can do to partially offset lack of sleep. Now, a couple of
final points and additional tools that I think are going to be useful to everybody. In particular people who have young children
or following a
shift work.
Schedule
or who are experiencing jet lag.
Keep in mind jet. Lag
can be due to travel, which is
obvious, but jet lag can also be due to getting woken up in the middle of the night, right? Your body doesn't know the difference between flying to a new time zone and getting woken up in the middle of the night. The tool that I'd like to offer you as an understanding of something called temperature minimum. And I'm going to make this as simple
as possible. And I'm confident that everyone can understand this. Even if you don't have any Science Background,
here's the question. You need to ask yourself
What is your typical wake up
time? Okay what's your typical wake up time? If for you your typical
wake up time is 7:00 a.m. plus or minus half an hour.
So and that could be 7 a.m. because you set an alarm clock or it could be 7 a.m. because you naturally wake up at 7 a.m. doesn't matter. If
your typical wake-up time, most days is 7 a.m. well, then your temperature
minimum is 5 a.m. That's right, your
temperature, minimum is not a temperature. It's a time within your 24-hour cycle, approximately, two hours.
As before your typical wake up
time, your body is at its lowest temperature that it will ever be in the 24-hour cycle. That's why it's called your temperature, minimum.
Here's what you need to know about your temperature, minimum
if you view bright, light exercise
or drink caffeine, or all of the above in the, to 24 hours before your temperature minimum that will delay. Your clock. What that means when I say delay, your clock is it will make you want to go to sleep late.
Sure. And wake up
later the next night.
Okay, so let's run this exercise for you. The person waking up at 7 a.m. on a regular basis.
I can predict with almost certainty that your body is going to be at
its lowest temperature
at 5 a.m. So what that means is that if
you get up at 3:00 a.m. we're at 4
a.m. and you flip on bright lights in your house or in your bathroom, or you have a cup of coffee or you do any kind of exercise or you get up and head to the airport? The
Thumbs in your brain and body that control timing of sleep and timing of waking will shift. They will delay. It's as if you put your
clock on, hold for a little while and then let it start again. Yeah, that's the simplest way. I can describe it and you
will tend to want to go to sleep
later and wake up later the following night. Now, the opposite is
true. If you view
bright, light
drink caffeine or exercise or
socialize, I should say in the hours immediately after your temperature minimum, so,
So for
you in this example, the
person who's waking up at 7 a.m. you're temperature minimum
is 5 a.m. if you view bright light exercise maybe have a snack maybe not or socialize move about at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. or 7:00
a.m. that will tend to phase Advance your clock. It will tend to basically make you want to
go to bed earlier and wake up earlier the
following night. Now, I use this example of a person
who wakes up typically at 7 a.m. whose temperature minimum is 5 a.m. But of course you need to adjust
That for yourself. If you're somebody wakes up at 9 a.m. or 5 a.m. at
cetera, why do I offer this as a tool? Well this is an immensely powerful tool. If for instance, you're headed to a time zone where you need to go to bed earlier. And wake up earlier, once you arrive in that time zone, what it means is in the day or two before you leave, you can force yourself to exercise drink caffeine. Maybe even to eat a meal early in the morning or maybe you still fast early in the morning. That's really up to you, but you force yourself to do the ACT.
The activities that are going to phase Advance
your clock. Whereas if you're traveling to a time zone where you are going to need to go to sleep much later, and you're going to need to
wake up much later, even a little bit later, you can do those things
in the hours prior to your temperature. Minimum
now, for those of you that work shift work, this can be, especially useful, but I want to say a couple of things about shift
work
There are a lot of details about shift, work in
jet lag, in an episode that I did specifically about jet lag, and shift work. So, for the
Deep dive go there, but suffice to say this, for now, if you are going to do shift, work, try to stay on the same shift for two weeks at a time, it's very detrimental to brain and
body. It can even be
horrific lie
challenging for your brain and body in a number of ways. If you are
switching on the so-called swing shift, you know, you're working three days. The night shift, three days the day shift, three days the night shift, three days, try and stay on the same schedule.
As much as possible. And
I should say, for everybody, people who are jet-lagged
and engaged
in shift, work or not. But just for everybody, if you need to be awake in the middle of your sleep cycle. And it's not just a quick
departure to the bathroom and back to bed,
but you really need to be awake. You know, you're feeding a baby or you're you're taking care of a loved one or you need to do something that's critical or you need to work if
possible, use red light. Okay. Now
for shift workers who really are trying to stay
awake all night and sleep all day.
day, this is not going to be ideal,
but for people that, for instant need to stay up, really late one night or wake up, especially early, like, 3 a.m. to prepare for an exam that you're just not ready for or to head to the airport, Etc. Using red light has been shown to allow people to be awake
enough that and obviously see what they need to see in order to perform their activities
safely, but it does not seem to disrupt the cortisol.
Rhythm that is the healthy. Normal cortisol Rhythm. Now, I
realize this is kind of an advanced tool and many
people won't have access to this. There are
Number of different sources for red lights.
Now, companies like Juve or cozy light. These are different brands.
I don't have any affiliation to any of these Brands. I should say there are number of different, red light, bulb sources out there, and Commercial
sources that you can explore if you
want. But understanding this temperature minimum is really powerful because it allows you to adjust your schedule, depending on travel, depending on changing work, schedules are school schedules. And if you're not a morning person, you
can use the tools related to temperature minimum to really become a morning person.
So over time and it actually is
pretty easy. And I talked about this in a previous episode, I'll just mention that there have been shown to be important positive effects on cognition on even grip strength and physical performance for people that are early morning, risers and that's
especially true for night owls. That deliberately shift themselves to become early risers,
okay? So that's a lot of information and a lot of tools and I suppose the one set of tools that I really didn't drill into to deeply the ones related to jet lag and shift work. And
Again, please check out the episode on jet lag and shift work if that's relevant to you, but I think for most people who are going to sleep at night
and are trying their best to sleep, well, at night and are trying to do their best to wake up in the morning, at whatever hour and stay alert and focused throughout the day, maybe with a brief nap.
The tools that I talked about today related to light
temperature food, exercise, caffeine, supplements and digital tools.
I'm hoping will prove to be very useful for you. They certainly are all supported
by excellent peer-reviewed research and I should just emphasize again that most of the tools we talked about are completely
zero cost. So while
the supplements and some of the digital tools do carry some cost to them. I really want to encourage everybody to get your behaviors right? Get all of the things related to your timing of exercise and type of exercise
in the best
possible order. And time of day, we talked about this critical period early in the day. And then another critical period in the middle of the day and the late afternoon and then this third critical period in the middle of the night.
Different tools for the different three critical periods. I promise that if you start to implement some or ideally all of these tools, the quality of your sleep will increase tremendously
and of course, in doing. So the quality of your daytime alertness and your ability to focus will improve tremendously. Again, sleep is the absolute Foundation of your mental health, your physical health, and your performance in all Endeavors. So if there's one area of your life to really focus on
and try, and
Optimize, if your goal is to be happier and more productive and just
have a better life overall, I can confidently say that sleep is really the thing to optimize,
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Least, thank you for your interest in science.
