Essentials: Using Science to Optimize Sleep, Learning & Metabolism
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Welcome to huberman lab essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science space tools for mental health, physical health and performance. I'm Andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neurobiology opposite logy at stanford school of medicine. Today is episode through the podcast, and IT is office hours. Office hours, as many of you know, where students come to the office of the professor, sit down and ask questions requesting clarification about things that we're confusing or to simply go down the road of expLoring a topic with more depth than detail.

Somebody asked, what is the role of moonlight and fire and presume they mean fireplace or candler things in that sort in setting circadian rythm? Is IT okay to view moonlight at night? Or will that wake me up? Will a fire in my fireplace or using candle light be too much light? Great question. Turns out that moon light, candle light and even a fireplace, if you have one of these roaring fires going in the fireplace, do not reset your circadian clock at night and trick your brain into thinking that it's morning, even though if you've ever SAT close to a fireplace or even a candle, that light seems very bright. And there are two reasons for that that are very important.

The first one is that these neurons in your eye that had discuss in the previous episode, these melon ops and gangly and cells, also called intrinsically photo sensitive gangling cells, those cells adjust their sensitivity across the day, and those cells respond best to the blue, yellow contrast present in the rising and setting sun, so called low solar angle sun, also discussing the previous episode. But those cells adjust their sensitivity such that they will not activate the the triggers in the brain that convey daytime signals when they view moonlight, even a full moon, or really bright moon, or fire. Because we talked about just how crucial IT is to avoid bright lights between the hours about ten pm and four A M, except when you need to view things for sake of safety or or worker and so forth.

I also received a lot of questions about red light. In principal, red light will not stimulate the melon ops in retinal neurons that wake up the brain and circuit I an clock and signal daytime. However, most of the red lights, in particular the red lights that come on the sheet of these products that people are supose to view the um in order to access the number of know the effects, those are way too bright and would definitely wake up your body and brain.

So if you're thinking about red light for sake of avoiding the negative effects of light later in the day and at night, then you want that red light to be very, very dimmed, certainly much dimmer than is on most of those commercial products. Now do you need red lights? Know, although red lights are rather convenient because you can see pretty well with them on.

But if they're dim, they won't wake up the circulating clock. They won't have this dopamine disrupting thing that we talked about in the previous podcast. Okay, a huge number of people asked me about light through window.

Setting your car in clock with sunlight coming through a window is going to take fifty to one hundred times longer. You can download the free APP light meter. You can have a bright day outside, or some sunlight hold up that APP. Take a picture, it'll tell you how many locks are in that environment. Now close the window, and if you want close the screen or don't open the screen, you can do all sort of experiments.

You'll see that I will, at least half the amount of locks and IT doesn't scare linearly meaning lets say I get uh ten thousand locks outside, five thousand looking out through an open window and then I close the window and it's twenty five hundred locks. IT does not mean that you just need to view that sunlight for twice as long if its half as many lucks okay does not like twenty a hundred looks means you need to look for ten minutes and um five thousand looks means you look for five minutes IT doesn't scale that way just because the biology doesn't work that way. Best thing to do is to get outside, if you can, if you can.

Next best thing to do is to keep that window open. IT is perfectly. Find a way prescription lens is in contacts. Why is IT okay where prescription lens is in context when those are glass also, but looking through a window diminishes the effect? Well, we should think about this.

The lens is that you wear in front of your eyes by prescription or on your eyes, are designed to focus the light on to your neural retina. So let's think about why i'm making some of these recommendations because I think IT can really empower you with the ability to change your behavior in terms of light viewing and other things depending on time of year, depending on other lifestyle factors. The important point understand is that early in the day, your central circadian clocks and all these mechanisms are looking for a lot of light.

okay? I want talk about seasonal changes in all these things as they relate to mood and metabolism. So as all of you know, the earth spends once every twenty four hours on its access.

So part of that day we're bathe in sunlight depending on where we are. The other half of the day, or part of the day we're in darkness. Youth also travels around the sun.

Three hundred and sixty five days is the time that IT takes one year to travel around that sun. The earth is tilted. It's not perfectly upright, so the earth is tilted on its access.

So depending on where we are in that three hundred and sixty five day journey, and depending on where we are in terms of hemisphere in northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, some days of the year are longer than others. Some are very short, some are very long. The at the quarter, you experience less variation in day life from there for nightline.

And if you're closer to to the polls, you're gonna ence some very long days and you're also going to experience some very short days depending on which pull your at and what time of year IT is. A simple way to put this is depending on time of year, the days are either getting shorter, getting longer. Now every selling your body adjust its biology according to daylife.

Except your brain, body and cells don't actually know anything about daylife. IT only knows night link. And here's how works.

Light inhibits melatonin powerfully. If days are long and getting longer, that means meet tony is reduced. If days are getting shorter, that melotte in signal is getting longer.

So every selling your body actually knows external day length and therefore time of year by way of the duration of the military and signal by understanding that light and extended daylight and hibbing loiterin and military and attends to be associated with a more depressed to reduced functioning of these kind of activity, driving and mood elevating signals, and understanding that you have some control over melatonin by way of light, including some light, but also our official light, that should empower you, I believe, to make the adjustments that if you're feeling low, you might ask, how much? Why am I getting when am I getting that light? Because sleep is also important for restoring mood, right? So you need sleep.

You can't just know, just crush militant a and across the board and expect to feel good because then you're not going to fall asleep and stay asleep millett in, not incidentally, comes from is synthesized from serotonin. Serotonin is an era transmitter that is associated with feelings of well being provided at proper levels, but well being of a particular kind, well being associated with quiescent and calm. And the feeling that we have enough resources in our immediate conditions is the kind of thing that comes from a good meal, or sitting down with friends, or holding a loved one, or conversing with somebody that you really bond with.

Serotonin does not stimulate action. IT tends to stimulate stillness. Very different than the neo modulator dopamine, which is a reward, feel good, nor modulator that stimulate action. And actually depine is the precursor to APP element to a general which actually puts us into action.

There is actually made from doping, right? So you can start to think about light as a signal that is very powerful for modulating, things like sleep and wake for this, but also ceretani levels, military in levels. And I talked about this previously, but I mention once more that light in the middle night reduces dopamine e levels to the point where can start causing problems with learning a memory and mood.

That's one powerful reason to avoid brought light in the all the night. I'd like to take a quick break and think one of our sponsors element element is an electoral light drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't that means the electorate so do magnesium and peasants um in the correct ratio but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.

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I dissolve one packet of element in about sixteen to thirty two ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning, i'll also drink a active element dissolved in water. Drink any kind of physical exercise that i'm doing, especially on hot days when i'm sweating a lot, losing water. And electorates, there are a bunch of different gray taste flavorous development.

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Again, that drink element spell L M N T. So it's a drink element dot com slash huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by eight sleep. Eight sleep make smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now I was spoken before in this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night.

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A, canada, U. K. Select countries in the eu. In australia. Again, that's a sleep dot com slash huberman throughout this podcast. And in previous episodes i've been mentioning nem modulators, things like serotonin and doping, which tend to buy a certain brain circuits and things in our body to happen, in certain brain circuits and things in body to happen.

One of the ones i've mentioned numerous times is epiphone, which is a neuromodulation that tends to put us into action, make us want to move. In fact, when it's released in high amounts in our brain body, IT can lead to what we call stress, where the feeling of being stressed several people asked me, what's the difference between epinal and a jinin? A journey is secreted from the adjunct glands, which sit right above our kidneys.

Evenement is the exact same molecule, except that it's released within the brain. Epinephrine, renal are basically the same thing. And they take to stimulate, agitating, the desire to move. Got a lot of questions about exercise.

What forms of exercise are best for sleeping? Well, when should I exercise is set up? There are basically two forms of exercises that we can talk about, although of course, I realized there are many different forms of exercises, much more numerous to this.

But we can talk about cardiovascular exercise, where the ideas to repeat a movement over and over and over continuously so that be like running, biking, rolling in the cycling this kind of thing or there's resistance exercise where you're moving, lifting, personally putting down also um things of progressively. Have you have your weight that you couldn't do continuously for for thirty minutes? Now you will see some places a robic exercise best done in the morning and way train is best done in the afternoon.

I think there is far more individual variation than that. Um I think there are, however, a couple of windows that the exercise science literature and the circular leader points to as windows related to body temperature in which performance injury um in which performance is is optimize, injuries reduced and so on. And those tend to be thirty minutes after waking, three hours after waking and the later afternoon, usually eleven hours after waking, which is when temperature tends to peak.

A note about working out first thing in the morning. Last time we talk about non photic face shifts. If you exercise first thing in the morning, your body will start to develop in the anticipatory circuit.

There's actually plasticity in these circuit, an circuits that will lead you to want to wake up at the particular time that you exercise the previous three or four days. So that can be a powerful tool. But you still want to get light exposure because IT turns out that light and exercise converge to giving even bigger wake up signal to the brain and body.

So I want to think about that. Some people find that they exercises late in the day. They have trouble sleeping. In general, intense exercise does that. We're as the kind of lower intensity exercise doesn't.

Many of your questions were about neural plasticity, which is the brain and nervous systems ability to change in response to experience. There was a question that asked whether not these really deep biological mechanisms around wakefulness time of waking sleep at that a we're subject to neural plasticity. And indeed, they are. Some of that plasticity is short term and some of IT is more long term. There's a really good analogy here, which is if you happen to eat on a very tight schedule where every day, say at A M noon and seven pm, is when you eat your food, not suggested you do this, but let's say you were to do that for a couple days.

After a few days, you would start to anticipate those meal times where no matter where you were in the world, no matter what was going on in your life, about five to ten minutes before those meal times, you would start to feel hungry and even agitated, which is your body's way of trying to get you to ford for food. And that's because of some peptide signals that come from the periphery, from your body, things like hyper creating erection, that signal aled to the hyperbole omers and brain stem to make you active in a certain look for food and feel hungry. So there's got an anticipatory circuit that's a chemical circuit.

But eventually, over time, the neurons, the neural circuits that control hyper create nursin, would get tuned to the neural circuits that are involved in eating and maybe even even smell and taste to create a kind of eating circuit that's unique to your pattern, to your rythm. The same thing is true for this waking and exercise and other schedules, including all trade and schedules, if you wake up in the morning and start getting your sunlight, you start exercising in the morning, are you exercised in the afternoon? Pretty soon your body will start to anticipate that and start to secrete hormones and other signals that prepare your body for the ensuing activity of waking up or going to sleep.

So if you get onto a pattern or hythloday, even if that rythm isn't down to the minute, you'll find that there's plasticity in the circuits and IT becomes easier to wake up early if that's your thing, or exercise in a particular day, if that's your thing. That's the beauty of neural plasticity. A number of people asked, what can I do to increase plasticity? And that really comes in two forms.

There's plasticity that we can access in sleep to improve rates of learning and depth of learning from the previous day or so. And there's this n sdr non sleeps depress that can be done without sleeping to improve rates of learning and death of retention at set us. So let's consider the both, and you can incorporate these protocols, if you like.

Again, these are based on quality per reviewed studies. First, let's talk about learning in sleep. This is based on some work that i'll provide a reference for that was published in the journal science excEllent journal.

Matt Walker also talks about some of these studies done by others in his book, why we sleep. The studies, just to remind you, are structured the following way, and an individual is brought into a laboratory. Look, does a spac memory task.

So there tends to be a screen with a bunch of different objects popping up on the screen in different location. So I might be a bulldog's face. There might be a cat, then IT might be an apple, then IT might be a pen in different locations. And that sounds trivial ly easy.

But with time, you can imagine IT gets pretty tough to come back a day later and remember if something presented in a given location was something you've seen before, and whether not IT was presented that location or a different location, you had enough objects and changed locations enough. This can actually be quite difficult in this study. The subjects either just went through the the experiment, or a particular oder was released into the room while they were learning, or a tone was played in the room while they were learning.

And then during the sleep of those subjects the following night and the following night, this was done repeatedly for several nights. The same older or tone was played while the subjects were sleeping. They did this in different stages of sleeping on rim sleeps. And but I move in sleep and sleep. They did this with just the tone in sleep.

If they, if the subjects that had the older, but not the tone they had, they did IT with putting the tone if they had the older, while learning so basic, all the controls, all the things you'd want to see done to make sure that IT wasn't some indirect effect of modulator effect. 嗯。 And what they found was that providing the same stimulus, the older, if they smaller, oder or a tone, if the subjects heard a toned while learning, if they just delivered that outer or tone while the subject slapped, rates of learning and retention of information was significantly greater.

This is pretty cool. What this means that you can kill the subconscious brain, the asleep brain, to learn particular things Better and faster. So how might you implement this? Well, you could play with this if you want.

I don't see any real chAllenge of this provided the older and is a safe one and doesn't wake you up in the tone is a safe, uh, safe one and doesn't wake you up. Um you could do this by having a metronome, for instance, while learning something, playing in the background or particular music, and then have that very faintly while you sleep. So you could apply this, if you like, and and try this.

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge sponsor a one, ag one is a vitamin mineral probiotics drinks that includes probiotics and adaptations. I've been drinking A G once since two thousand and twelve, and I started doing at a time when my budget was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money to purchase one supplement, and i'm so glad that I made that supplement ag one.

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Again, go to drink A G one dot com slash huberman to claim this special offer. The other former neuroplasticity not a neuroplasticity that you're amplifying by listening to tones or um smelling oders in sleep, but the neural plastic that you can access with non sleep deep pressed so n sdr non sleep depressed as well as short twenty minute nps which are very close to non sleep deep breath because people rarely drop into deep states of sleep during short naps unless they're very sleep deprived. N sdr has been shown to increase rates of learning when done for twenty minute bouts for a proto match, an approximately the ninety minute bout of learning.

So what am I talking about? Ninety minute cycles are these all tradition cycles that i've talked about previously. And we tend to learn very well by taking a nine minute cycle.

Transitioning into some focus mode early in the cycle is hard to focus. And then deep focus and and learning feels almost like agitation and strain. And then by the end of that ninety minute cycle becomes very hard to maintain focus and learn more information.

There's a study publishing cell reports last year, great journal um excEllent paper showing that twenty minute maps or light sleep of the sort of non sleep deeper as taken immediately after where close to you doesn't have to be immediately after you finish the last sentence of learning or whatever IT is or or bar of music but you know a couple minutes after transitioning to a period of of non sleep deeper breath where you're turning off the analysis of duration path. An outcome has been shown to accelerate learning to a significant degree, both the amount of information and the retention of that information. So that's pretty cool because this is a um cost free, drug free way of accelerating learning without having to get more sleep.

But simply by introducing these twenty minutes about, I would encourage people, if they want to try this, to consider the twenty minutes per every ninety minutes of ultra and learning cycle, which brings us to the next thing about learning and plasticity, which is neutrogena A K A smart drugs. This is a big topic. That sigh was a sigh of concern about how to address new tropics in a throw, enough, but thoughtful all enough way.

There are elements to learning that we've discussed here before that are very concrete, things like the ability to focus and put the blinders on to everything else that's happening in around you and in your head mainly write distractions about things you should be doing, could be doing or might be doing and focus on what you need to do. And then that's required for trigger ing. That is, see to calling neuromodulator.

That will then allow you to highlight the particular synapse is that will then later change in sleep. So no new tropic allows you to bypass the need for sleep in the breast. That's important.

understand? Right now, most new tropics tend to bundle a bunch of things together. Most of them includes some form of stimulant, caffeine, just, just more stimulant to be more focused.

IT doesn't work that way. Most neutral pics also include things that increase, or a design to increase a, to calling things like off A G, P, C. And other things of that sort.

And indeed, there are some evidence that they can increase a seto calling. So we need the focus component. We need the alertness component. The alertness component comes from happeneth, traditionally from caffeine stimulation. The aca calling stimulation traditionally comes from calling donors or alpha.

Gpc thinks that sort and then you would want to have some sort of off switch because anything that's gonna stimulate your alertness that then provides a crash. That crash is not a crash into the deep kind of wrestle slumber that you would want for learning. It's a crash into the kind of, let's just call, IT lopsided sleep, meaning it's deep sleep.

But IT lacks certain spindles and other elements of the physiology sleep spindles that that really engaged the learning process and the reconfiguration of synapses. So right now my stands on new tropics is that maybe maybe for occasional use for provided IT safe for you? I'm not recommending IT, but in general, IT tends to use more of a shotgun approach that is probably gonna useful for learning and memory in the long run.

okay. I'd like to continue by talking about the role of temperature in sleep, accessing sleep, staying asleep and wakeful. This temperature is super interesting as IT relates to circadian rythm and wakefulness and sleep.

First, let's take a look at what's happening to our body temperature across each twenty four hour cycle. In general, our temperature tends to be lowest to write around four A M and starts creeping up around six am A A M and peaks sometime between four pm and six pm. There is also an important way in which temperature matches daylight.

In general, as days get longer, IT tends to be hot out, not always, but in general, that's the way IT is. And as days get shorter, IT tends to be colder outside. So temperature and daily are also linked.

Meta ics, they're linked biologically, they are linked, excuse me, and atmospheric, they're linked for the reason that we talked about before about duration of daylight, th and other climate features and so forth. So one of the most powerful things about setting your skating rythm properly is that your temperature will start to fall into a regular rythm. And that temperature has a very strong effect on things like meta lisp.

And when you will feel most willing and interested in exercising, typically the willingness to exercise and engage in any kind of activity, mental or physical, is going to be when that rise in temperature is steepest, when the slope of that line is greatest. That's why thirty minutes after waking is one of those key windows, as well as three hours after waking. And then when temperature actually peaks, which is generally, generally about eleven hours after waking.

So this is why we say that temperature and certaine rythm are linked, but they're actually even more linked than mp. We've talked before about how light enters the eye, triggers activation of these melon ops and cells, which then triggers activation of the super kids matic nucleus. The master cirta an clock.

And then I always say the master can clock forms all the cells and tissues of your body and puts them into a nice, coherent rythm. But what i've never answered was how IT actually puts them into that rythm. And IT does IT two ways.

One is its secrets of peptide. And peptide is just a little protein that floats through the bloodstream and signals to the cells. But the other way is that synchronised, the temperature under which those cells exist.

So temperature is actually the effector of the craton rythm nowaday. They're some interest in cold showers and ice bath. Getting into an ice bath is very interesting because you have a rebound increase in thermo genesis. Now you should know from the previous episode that as the temperature increases, IT will shift your circuit rythm in which direction that shifts are circling rhythm will depend on whether not you're doing IT during the day time. You're late in the day.

If you do IT after eight pm, it's going to make your day longer, right? Because your body and your central clock are used to temperature going up early in the day and throughout the day and peaking in the afternoon. If you then increase that further, or you simply increase IT over its baseline at eight P M after temperature is already following, even if just by a half a degree or a couple degrees, or you do that with exercise, doesn't have to be with the ice path you are extending, you are shifting forward, you are face delaying your clock.

You're convincing your clock, and therefore the rest of your body that the day is still going right. You're giving at the perception, the cellar and psychological perception that the day is getting longer and you will want to naturally stay up later and wake up later. So for those of you that are having trouble getting up, and this is going to almost unlaid hable, but a cold shower, first thing in the morning wake you up, but that's waking you up in the short term because of a different mechanism, which i'll talk about a moment.

But IT also is shifting your clock. It's face advancing your clock in a way that makes you more likely to get up earlier the next day. It's going to make you want to wake up about half hour to an hour earlier the next day, then you Normally would whether if you do IT while your temperature is falling, IT will tend to delay and make your body perceive as if the day is getting longer.

But temperature is, again, is not just one tool to manipulate wake up time in circuiting rhythm and metabolic IT is the effector IT is the way that the central circadian in clock impacts all the cells and tissues of your body. Light is the trigger. The super kids matic nucleus is the masters circling clock that mediates.

All these changes also influences by non photic influence, like exercise and feeding and things that sort. But temperature is the effector. Now you can also shift your skating rythm with eating when you travel and you land in a new location.

And your schedule is inverted twelve hours. One way that we know you can shift your rythm more quickly is to get onto the local meal schedule. Now that probably has to do with two effects.

Warner, changes in temperature and eating induced increases in body temperature. Now you should understand why that would work, as well as eating has a anticipatory secretion of hyper create erection that I talked about IT earlier. I'd like to take a quick break and think one of our sponsors, David.

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The link is David protein dot com slash huberman. Many people asked questions about food and neurotransmitters and how those relate to sleep wakefulness and mood, which is essentially twenty five hours of content for me to cover. But i'm going to trying to steal out the most common questions.

We've talked a lot about neuromodulators like top of minnesotan calling in north and efron. He may notice in those discussions that the precursors to say certa in is trip to fan. Trip to fan actually comes from the diet.

IT comes from the foods that we eat. Tyring is the precise to dope. IT comes from the foods that we eat and then want to be adjust them.

The those compounds are circulate to a variety of different cells and tissues. But IT is true that are food. And the partaken lor food is we can influence things like nea modulator levels to some extent.

Nuts in meat, in particular red meat, tend to be rich in things like tyring, right? That tells you right there that because tyring is the precursor doped and dopamine is the precursor an f an and ean afra, that those foods tend to end themselves toward the production of dopamine and epa on and the sorts of things that are associated with wakefulness. Now of course, the volume of food that we eat also impacts are wakefulness.

And we need a lot of anything, whether not its rebuy stakes, rice or cardboard. Please don't need cardboard. Your stomach of its very distended will draw a lot of blood into your gut, and you will divert blood from other tissues and you'll become sleepy.

So it's not just about food content, is also about food volume, right? Fasting states generally are associated with more alertness up an f and so forth, and fed states are generally associated with more quiescence and relaxation serotonin and and that kind of things that lend themselves more towards sleep and less towards alertness. And fed states are generally associated with more quiescence and relaxation, serotonin and and kind of things that lend themselves more towards sleep and less ward alertness.

There are a couple effects of food that are independent. Where is a couple effects of eating? Because the food will do IT when IT sitting across the but of eating that are powerful for modulating satan rythm wakeful ness sea.

And that's because every time we eat, we get eating, induce thermo genesis regardless of what we eat. And now you know from the discussion about temperature that if you're eating early in the day, you're tending to shift your rythm earlier so that you want to wake up earlier the next day. If you're eating very late in the day, even if you can fall asleep after that, there's a tendency for you to want to sleep later the next day.

So as we finish up, I just want to offer you the opportunity to do an experiment IT might be interesting. Just a suggestion to write down for each day when you went outside to get sunlight and when you did that relative to wakings. And then you might just take note of when you exercised and you might note when you might have felt chilled or cold, if you do, or you might felt particularly hot, or if you woke up in the midnight when you felt particularly hot.

And then the last thing you might want to do is just write down, if in when you did a non sleep depressed protocol, n sdr protocol, anything that your using to deliberately teach your nervous system how to go from more letters to more calmness in the waking state. By doing this, you can start to reveal some really interesting patterns. It's really about taking the patterns of behaviors of waking and light viewing and eating and exercise and super imposing that on what you're learning in this podcast and elsewhere, of course, and what you already know and trying to see where certain problem or problems or pain points might be arising.

Maybe you start to find that using cold exposure early in the day is great for you, but using IT late, if it's too late in the day, that's not great. Or if you're into the sona, even like some people, including myself, if I take a hot showers in in a hot top of sona late at night, well, then I get a compensate decrease in body tempered, and I sleep great, provided I hydrate well enough, because that can be kind of a dehydrates ating to sit and hot conditions. But if I do the song early in the day, unless I exercise immediately afterward, then I tend to get the temperature drop, which makes sense because we get the sona, you get via isolation, you throw off a lot of heat and then you generally get a compound or drop in temperature.

If you do that early in the day, that's right about the time that that temperatures trying to entrain the circling clocks of your body. So I just encourage you to start becoming scientists of your own physiology, of your own brain and body, and seeing how the various tools that you may may not be using are affecting your patterns of sleep, your patterns of attention and wakefulness. It's vitally important that if you do this, that you know that it's not about trying to get into an an extremely rigid schedule.

It's really about trying to identify variables that are most powerful for you and that push you in the direction that you want to go and changing the variables that are pushing your body and your mind in the director that you don't want to go. Self experimenting is something that should be done slowly, carefully. You don't want to be reckless about this.

And this is where I would say, manipulating one or two variables at a time is really going to be best, as opposed to changing know a dozen things. All that wants to really identify what is is that most powerful for you. And above all, thank you for your interest in science.