---
title: 'The Science & Practice of Perfecting Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Essentials'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=JaRGJVrJBQ8'
video_id: 'JaRGJVrJBQ8'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 2137
---

# The Science & Practice of Perfecting Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Essentials

> Source: [The Science & Practice of Perfecting Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Essentials](https://youtube.com/watch?v=JaRGJVrJBQ8)

## Summary



## Transcript

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,
where we revisit past episodes for the
most potent and actionable science-based
tools for mental health, physical
health, and performance.
And now, my discussion with Dr. Matt
Walker. Let's start off very basic. What
is sleep? Sleep is probably the single
most effective thing you can do to reset
your brain and body health. Sleep as a
process though is an incredibly complex
physiological ballet. Sleep is broadly
separated into these two main types. And
we've got non-rapid eye movement sleep
on the one hand and then we've got rapid
eye movement sleep on the other. When
you go into REM sleep, you are
completely paralyzed. You are locked
into a physical incarceration of your
own body. Amazing. The brain paralyzes
the body so that the mind can dream
safely because think about how quickly
we would have all been popped out of the
gene pool. You know, if I think I'm, you
know, one of the best sky divers who can
just simply fly and I get up on my
apartment window and I leap out, you're
done. You're done. Now, of course, the
involuntary muscles thankfully aren't um
paralyzed. So, you keep breathing, your
heart keeps beating. You go through
these bizarre what we call autonomic
storms. There are only two voluntary
muscle groups that are spurred from the
paralysis. Bizarre. One, your extra
ocular muscles. Because if they were
paralyzed, you wouldn't be able to have
rapid eye movements. And the other that
we later discovered was the inner ear
muscle. Some people have argued that the
reason the eyeballs are spurred from the
paralysis is because if your eyeballs
are left for long periods of time
inactive, you may get things such as
oxygen sort of issues in the um aquous
or vitrius humor and so the eyeballs
have to keep the drain systems of the
anterior eye are made require movement
that exactly people with glaucoma have
deficits in in drainage through the
anterior chamber. So maybe take me
through the arc of a night. When I first
fall asleep, I'll go into the light
stages of nonREM sleep, stages one and
two of nonREM, and then I'll start to
descend down into the deeper stages of
nonREM sleep. So, after about maybe 20
minutes, I'm starting to head down into
stage three nonREM and then into stage 4
nonREM sleep. And as I'm starting to
fall asleep, as I've cast off from the,
uh, usually with me murky waters of
wakefulness, um, and I'm in the shallows
of sleep stages 1 and two, my heart rate
starts to drop a little bit and then my
brain wave pattern activity starts to
slow down. Normally, when I'm awake,
it's going up and down maybe 20, 30, 40,
50 times a second. Um, as I'm going into
light non-REM sleep, it will slow down
to maybe 15, 20, and then really starts
to slow down down to about sort of 10 or
eight cycles per second. Eight cycle or
waves per second.
Then, as I'm starting to move into um
stages three and four nonREM sleep,
several remarkable things happen. All of
a sudden, my heart rate really does
start to drop. Hundreds of thousands of
cells in my cortex all decide to fire
together and then they all go silent
together and it's this remarkable
physiological coordination of the likes
that we just don't see at during any
other brain state. I will then stay
there for about another 20 or 30
minutes. So now I'm maybe 60 or 70
minutes into my first sleep cycle. And
then I'll start to rise back up back up
into stage two non-REM sleep. And then
after about 80 or so minutes, I'll pop
up and I'll have a short REM sleep
period. And then back down I go again
down into non-REM, up into REM. And you
do that reliably repeatedly. And I will
be doing that every 90 minutes at least.
That's the average for most adults. In
the first half of the night, the
majority of those 90-minute cycles are
comprised of lots of deep non-REM sleep.
That's when I get my stage three and
four of deep nonREM sleep. Once I push
through to the second half of the night,
now that seesaw balance changes and
instead the majority of those 90minute
cycles are comprised either of this
lighter form of non-REM sleep, stage 2
non-REM sleep, and much more and
increasingly more rapid eye movement
sleep. And who suffers more, those that
lack the early phase or those that lack
the later phase of the night? Depends on
what the outcome measure is. For
example, during deep non-REM sleep,
that's where we get this. It's almost a
form of natural blood pressure
medication. And so, when I take that
away from you, the next day, we're
usually going to see autonomic
dysfunction. We're usually going to see
abnormalities in heart rate, blood
pressure. We also know that during deep
non-REM sleep that there is a certain
control of specific hormones. For
example, we know that the insulin
regulation of sort of metabolism um
meaning how will you look from a
regulated blood sugar perspective versus
disregulated pre-diabetic look of
profile that's where deep sleep seems to
matter. If we selectively deprive you of
that we can see growth hormone is
different actually. So that's that's a
beautiful demonstration where growth
hormone seems to be more REM sleep
dependent and that's why we can come on
to the effects of alcohol and there was
there's some really impressive
frightening data on on alcohol and its
disruption of um of sleep but then we
also know testosterone you know peak
levels of testosterone happen during REM
sleep. It's the second half of the
night, which is the second half of the
night. So, it really just means that the
your profile of mental and physical
dysfunction will be different under both
of those conditions. Which one would you
prefer? I would prefer neither of them.
And it really depends on what you're
trying to optimize for. So, it's it's
just so comp. You know, sleep is just so
profoundly detrimental to us if you were
to take it at face value. You know,
you're not finding a mate, you're not
reproducing, you're not foraging for
food, you're not caring for your young,
and worst of all, you're vulnerable to
predation. On any one of those grounds,
sleep probably should have been selected
against, but it wasn't. Sleep has fought
its way through heroically, you know,
every step along the evolutionary path.
And therefore, every sleep stage has
also survived as best we can tell. What
that means is that those are
non-negotiable if mother nature had
found a way to even just sort of, you
know, thin slice some of that sleep from
us. There would have been vast, I'm
sure, evolutionary benefits, but it
looks as though she hasn't. And I'm
usually in favor of her wisdom after 3.6
million years. So in this arc of the
night uh slowwave sleep predominates uh
early in the night and then REM sleep
there's a scenario that many people
including myself experience on a regular
basis which is they go to sleep sleeping
just fine 3 4 hours into it they wake up
they wake up for whatever reason maybe
there was a noise maybe the temperature
isn't right we will certainly talk about
sleep hygiene etc they get up they go to
the restroom they might flip on the
lights they might not they go back to
sleep Let's say after about 10 15
minutes they're able to fall back
asleep. How detrimental is that wake up
episode or or um event in terms of
longevity learning etc. It is perfectly
natural and normal particularly as we
progress with age. At the end of our REM
sleep period of the 90minut cycle almost
everybody wakes up and we make a
postural movement. we turn over because
we've been paralyzed for so long and the
body will also like to shift. For the
most part, I think we can be more
relaxed about that. Where we have to be
a bit more attentive though is if you
are spending long periods of time not
being able to get back to sleep and
usually we define that by saying if it's
been 20 25 minutes. The other thing is
if it's happening very frequently. So
even if you're um you know not awake for
25 minute stretches but you're finding
yourself waking up and being consciously
aware that you've woken up for maybe six
seven or eight times throughout the
night and your sleep is very what we
call fragmented.
The great science of sleep in the past 5
or 10 years has has been yes quantity is
important but quality is just as
important and you can't have one without
the other in terms of a good beneficial
next day outcome. You can't just get 4
hours of sleep but brilliant quality of
sleep and be unimpaired. nor can you get
8 hours of sleep but have very poor
quality of sleep and be unimpaired the
next day. I'm a big proponent of people
getting uh some sunlight, ideally
sunlight, but other forms of bright
light in their eyes early in the day and
when they want to be awake. Yep.
Essentially during the phase of their
24-hour circadian cycle when temperature
is rising and then starting to get less
light in their eyes as our temperature
is going down in ter later in the day
and in the evening. I think that's
exactly what we recommend right now,
which is try to get at least 30 to 40
minutes of exposure to some kind of
natural daylight. There was some great
work recently coming out in the
occupational health domain where they
moved workers from offices that were
just facing walls and, you know, didn't
have any exposure to natural daylight.
And then they did a time period during
that study where they actually were in
front of a window and working and they
measured their sleep and their sleep
time and their sleep efficiency
increased quite dramatically. I think
the increase in total sleep time was
well over 30 minutes and the improvement
in sleep efficiency was 5 to 10%. You
know, and if you're batting an 80%, you
know, sleep efficiency average, we're a
bit concerned about that. But add 10% to
that and now you're in, you know, a
great echelon of healthy sleepers that
these portals are the only way to to um
convey to the rest of the brain and body
about the time of day and wakefulness. I
have a number of questions about
caffeine. Does the timing in which we
ingest caffeine play an important role
in whether or not it works for us or
against us? The dose and the timing
makes the poison. Caffeine has a
half-life and it's metabolized. The half
life is somewhere between 5 to 6 hours
and the quarter life therefore is
somewhere between 10 to 12 hours. It's
variable. Different people have
different um durations of its action.
But for the average adult 5 to 6 hours.
So let's say that you know I've been
awake for 12 hours now and it's you know
8:00 p.m. and I'm feeling a bit tired
but I want to push through and I want to
keep working for another couple of
hours. So I have a cup of coffee. All of
a sudden, I was feeling tired, but I
don't feel like I've been awake for 12
hours anymore. Then after a few hours,
and the caffeine is starting to come out
of my system. Not only am I hit with the
same levels of adenosine that I had
before I'd had the cup of coffee several
hours ago, it's that plus all of the
adenosine that's been building up during
the time that the caffeine has been in
my system. So, sort of a an avalanche of
It is a tsunami wave. Yeah. And I have a
caffeine crash. Given um somebody who
typically gets into bed around 10:00
10:30 and falls asleep around uh 11
11:30,
when would you recommend they halt
caffeine intake? And these are not um
strict prescriptives, but I think people
do benefit from having some uh fairly
clear guidelines of what might be might
work for them. Would you say cut off
caffeine by what time of the day? I
would usually say take your typical
bedtime and count back 10 hours or 8
hours of time. That's the time when you
should really stop, you know, using
caffeine is the suggestion. And the
reason is because for those people who
even just keep drinking up until, you
know, the into the evening, you're right
that they can fall asleep fine, maybe
they stay asleep, but the depth of their
deep sleep is not as deep anymore. And
so there are two consequences. The first
is that for me and it can be up to by
30%. And for me to drop your deep sleep
by 30%, I'd have to age you by between
10 to 12 years. Or you can just do it
every night to yourself with a couple of
espressos. The second is that you then
wake up the next morning and you think,
well, I didn't have problems falling
asleep and I didn't have problems
staying asleep, but I don't feel
particularly restored by my sleep. So
now I'm reaching for three or four cups
of coffee the next morning rather than
just two or three cups of coffee. And so
goes this dependency cycle that you then
need your uppers to wake you up in the
morning. And then sometimes people will
use alcohol in the evening to bring them
down because they're overly caffeinated
and alcohol and we can speak about that
too also has very dilitterious impacts
on your sleep as well. Caffeine and
alcohol represent the uh the kind of two
opposite ends of the spectrum. What
happens when somebody has a glass, we
always hear a glass or two of wine in
the evening or a uh a cocktail after
dinner? How does that impact their
sleep? So alcohol, if we're thinking
about classes of drugs, they're in a
class of drugs that we call the
seditives. It's sedating your cortex.
And sedation is not sleep. But when we
have a couple of drinks in the evening,
when we have a couple of night caps, we
mistake sedation for sleep, saying,
"Well, I always when I have a like a
couple of whisies or a couple of
cocktails, it always helps me fall
asleep faster." In truth, what's
happening is that you're losing
consciousness quicker, but you're not
necessarily falling naturalistically
asleep any quicker. So, that's one of
the first sort of things just to keep in
mind. The second thing with alcohol is
that it fragments your sleep. And we
spoke about the quality of your sleep
being just as important as the quantity.
And alcohol through a variety of
mechanisms uh some of which are
activation of that autonomic nervous
system, that fightor-flight branch of
the nervous system. Alcohol will
actually have you waking up many more
times throughout the night. So your
sleep is far less continuous. Now some
of those awakenings will be of conscious
recollection the next day. you'll just
remember waking up. Many of them won't
be. And so, but yet your sleep will be
littered with these sort of punctured
awakenings throughout the night. And
again, when you wake up the next
morning, you don't feel restored by your
sleep. The third part of alcohol in
terms of an equation is that it's quite
potent at blocking your REM sleep, your
rapid eye movement sleep. And REM sleep
is critical for a variety of cognitive
functions. um some aspects of learning
and memory seems to be critical for
aspects of emotional and mental health.
It's overnight therapy. What we've
discovered over the past 20 years here
at the sleep center is that there is no
major psychiatric disorder that we can
find in which sleep is normal. And so I
think that firstly told us there is a
very intimate association between your
emotional mental health and your sleep
health. I don't want to be puritanical
here. You know, I'm just a scientist and
I'm not here to tell anyone how to live.
All I'm trying to do is empower people
with some of the scientific literature
regarding sleep and then you can make
whatever informed choices that you want.
My job is not to to tell people um a
prescription for life. It's just to
offer some scientific information. I
would like to ask about marijuana. In
many places, not all, medical marijuana
is approved or is legal. Does marijuana
disrupt sleep? THC can
seems to speed up the time with which
you fall asleep, but again, if you look
at the the electrical brain wave
signature of your falling asleep with
and without that THC, it's not going to
be an ideal fit. So, you could argue
it's non-natural. It too, but through
different mechanisms, seems to block REM
sleep. And that's why a lot of people
when they're using will tell me look you
know I I definitely I was dreaming I
don't remember you know many of my
dreams and then when they stop using uh
THC they'll say I was having you know
just crazy crazy dreams and the reason
is because there is a rebound mechanism
REM sleep is very clever and alcohol is
the same way in this sense it's the same
homeostatic mechanism some people will
tell me look if I have a bit of a wild
Friday night with some alcohol you maybe
I'll sleep late into the next morning
and I'll just have these really intense
dreams. So, and I thought I wasn't
having any REM sleep. Well, the way it
works is that it's during in the middle
of the night really um when alcohol
blocks your REM sleep. And your brain is
smart. It understands how much REM sleep
you should have had, how much REM sleep
you have not because the alcohol has
been in the system. And finally, in
those early morning hours when you're
getting through to sort of, you know, 6
7 8 a.m., all of a sudden, your brain
not only goes back to having the same
amount of REM it would have had, it does
that. Plus, it tries to get back all of
the REM sleep that it's lost. Does it
get back all of the REM sleep? No, it
doesn't. It never gets back all of the
REM sleep, but it tries. And so, you
have these really intense periods of REM
sleep. Hence, you have really intense,
bizarre dreams. And that's what happens
also with THC. You build up this
pressure for REM sleep, this debt for
REM sleep. Will you ever pay it back?
Doesn't seem as though you get back
everything that you lost, but will you
get back some of it? Yes. The brain will
start to devour more because it's been
starved of REM sleep for so long. So,
I'd love to chat for a moment about the
kind of grand the original, I should
say, that not the granddaddy, but the OG
of sleep supplementation, which is
melatonin. Yeah. I was always taught,
and I'm assuming it's still true, that
the only source of melatonin in the
brain and body is the pineal gland. Is
that still true? Yeah, it seems to be
from best that we can tell. I have to
imagine we have melatonin receptors in
the brain and body. It's correct.
Essentially, your brain has a central
master 24-hour clock called the supra
chaismatic nucleus that keeps internal
time. Now, it knows 24-hour time, but it
needs to tell the rest of the brain and
the body the 24-hour time as well. And
one of the ways that it does this is by
communicating a chemical signal of
24-hour nus of light and day using this
hormone melatonin. And when it is at low
levels or it's non-existent, it's
communicating the message it's daytime.
And for us dional species, it says it's
time to be awake. Yet at nighttime when
dusk approaches and the brake comes off
melatonin and we start to release it,
then it signals to the rest of the brain
and the body, look, it's dusk and it's
nighttime. And for us dial species, it's
time to think about sleep. So melatonin
essentially tells the brain and the body
when it's day and when it's night and
with that when it's time to sleep, when
it's time to wake, but it doesn't really
help with the generation of sleep
itself. And this is where we'll come on
to what those studies of supplementation
have taught us. So it tells the rest of
my brain and body it's time to go to
sleep. It it perhaps even aids with the
transition to sleep, but it's not going
to for instance ensure the overall
structure of sleep or um it's not the
conductor that's guiding the sleep
orchestra so to speak throughout the
entire night. You know, melatonin is
like the starting official at the 100
meter race in the Olympics. That's a
better analogy. call calls all of the
the sleep races to the line and it
begins the great sleep race, but it
doesn't participate in the race itself.
That's a whole different set of brain
chemicals and brain and brain regions
which then brings us on to perhaps the
question of supplementation
which is
is it helpful for my sleep? Will I sleep
longer? Will I sleep better? Sadly, the
evidence in healthy adults who are not
older age suggests that melatonin is not
really particularly helpful as a sleep
aid. I think there was a recent meta
analysis and what that meta analysis
told us is that melatonin will only
increase total amount of sleep by 3.9
minutes on average. Minutes, not even
percent. No. And it will only increase
your sleep efficiency by 2.2%.
So the the source is not strong, the
force is not strong in in in this one.
When it comes to a a tool that in
healthy people who are not of older age,
it doesn't seem to be especially
beneficial. Now, you know, results can
vary. Everyone is different, of course.
So, we're talking about the average, the
so-called average human adult here.
Well, melatonin um in defense of what
you're saying and also I should mention
I have a colleague at Stanford Jamie
Zitzer I know Chuck Zer's lab at Harvard
Med also trained a terrific sleep
researcher and I asked him about
melatonin and he essentially said the
same thing that you just said which is
very little if any evidence that it can
improve sleep and yet it's probably the
most um commonly consumed so-called
sleep aid hundreds of million dollars
industry the only population where we
typically see some benefit and it often
is prescribed is in older adults because
as older meaning um 60 and older. Yeah.
60 65 and older because as we get older
you can typically have what's called
calcification of the pineal gland which
means that that gland that's releasing
melatonin doesn't work as well anymore.
That's why older adults can have
problems falling asleep or staying
asleep. It's not the only reason by any
stretch of the imagination, but it's one
of the reasons and it's why melatonin
supplementation in those cohorts, older
adults, especially older adults with
insomnia, people have thought about that
as maybe an appropriate use case. Do we
know how much melatonin is typically
released into the bloodstream per night?
Um, and can we use that as a kind of a
rule of thumb by which to compare the
typical amount that someone would
supplement? I mean, typically the
supplements for melatonin that I see uh
in the pharmacy and elsewhere and online
range anywhere from 1 milligram to 12 or
even 20 milligrams.
My guess is that a normal night's
release of melatonin typical for
somebody in their 20s, 30s, 40s would be
far lower than that. Am I correct or
wrong? Yeah, it's it's a many magnitudes
lower. And this is one of the problems
is that I see that too. So I see, you
know, typical doses are, you know, 5
millig or 10 millig. And of course, you
know, if you're a supplement company,
you know, putting 10 milligs versus 5
milligs if that's what you're actually
doing. You know, it's kind of like the
super gulp size. You know, nobody wants
to lower price. They just want you to,
you know, we'll just give you more for
the same price and that's how we'll
compete. So it's been this escalating
arms race of melatonin concentration and
it really does not look meaningful for
you know for sleep in any way. What
we've actually found is that the optimal
doses for where you do get sleep
benefits in the populations that we've
looked at are somewhere between 0.1 and
0.3
millig of melatonin. In other words, the
typical doses are usually 10 times, 20
times, maybe more than what your body
would naturally expect. And this is what
we call a supra physiological dose. In
other words, it's far above what is
physiologically normal. I like to think
in terms of of manipulating any aspect
of our biology that behavioral tools
always are the first line of entry. Then
nutrition. Everyone has to eat sooner or
later. even if you're fasting, then
perhaps supplementation, then
prescription drugs, and then perhaps
brain machine interface devices that you
use to induce something. And those could
be done in combination. But what
concerns me is when I hear people uh
say, well, what should I take without
thinking about their behavior, their
light viewing behavior, etc. But of
course, these things work in
combination. When it comes to sleep,
there are many lowhanging fruits that
don't necessarily require you to, you
know, put sort of exogenous molecules,
in other words, things like supplements
into your body or, you know, use
different types of drugs to help you get
there. Now, when it comes to
prescription sleep aids, I think I've
been again a little bit too forthright.
We know in clinical practice that there
may be a time and a place for things
like sleeping pills. They are a
shortterm solution to certain forms of
insomnia, but they are not recommended
for the long term. And we also know that
there are lots of other ways that you
can get a sleep um help or you can get a
sleep curative profile from things like
cognitive behavioral therapy for
insomnia, which is a non-drug approach,
psychological, and quite effective from
what I understand. Just as effective as
sleeping pills, great data, more
effective in the long term. There was a
recent study published that after
working with that therapist, some of the
benefits lasted almost a decade. You
know, now if you stop sleeping pills,
usually you have rebound insomnia where
your sleep goes back to being just as
bad, if not worse. And I think the same
is true when we think about
supplementation. There are so many
things that are easy to implement when
it comes to sleep that don't require
venturing out into those waters. And
again, we're not here to tell anyone
about whether they should venture or
not. That's completely your choice. All
I'm saying is that if you want to think
about optimizing your sleep, there are a
number of ways that you can do it that
don't necessarily require you to swallow
anything or inject anything or, you
know, smoke anything or and for which
the margins of safety are quite quite
wide. Right? Let's talk about naps. I
love naps. I come from a long history of
nappers. What are the data on naps? And
what are your thoughts about keeping
naps short, meaning 20 to 30 minutes
versus getting out past 90 minutes, 2
hours? Yay, nay or meh? Naps can have
some really great benefits. We found
benefits for cardiovascular health,
blood pressure, for example. We found
benefits for levels of cortisol. We
found benefits for learning and memory
and also emotional regulation. How long
are the naps typically in those studies?
anywhere between 20 minutes to 90
minutes. Sometimes we like to use a
90-minute window so that the participant
can have a full cycle of sleep and
therefore they get both non-REM and REM
sleep within that time period. And then
we correlate how much benefit did you
get from the nap and how much of that
benefit was explained by what REM sleep
you got, what deep sleep you got, what
light sleep you got. What we've also
found is that naps of as little as 17
minutes can have some quite potent
effects on, for example, learning. None
of this is novel. NASA pioneered this
back in the 1990s. And during the
missions, they were experimenting with
NAPS for their astronauts. And what they
found was that naps of little as 26
minutes improved um uh mission
performance by 34% and improved daytime
alertness by 50%.
And it birthed what was then called the
NASA NAP culture throughout all
terrestrial NASA staff during that time
period. So it's long been known that
naps can have a benefit. NAPS, however,
can have a double-edged sword. There is
a dark side to naps. When you nap, you
are essentially opening the valve on the
pressure cooker of sleep pressure and
some of that sleepiness is lost by way
of the nap. Some people, however, if
they are struggling with sleep at night
and they nap during the day, it makes
their sleep problems even worse. So, for
people with insomnia, we typically
advise against napping. And the advice
is if you can nap regularly and you
don't struggle with sleep at night then
naps are just fine. But if you do
struggle with sleep stay away from naps.
If you are going to nap try to limit
your naps try to cut them off a bit like
sort of caffeine. Maybe you know 8 to
sort of 12 hours maybe not that you know
far off. Maybe sort of 7 to 6 hours is a
good rule of thumb. Try not to nap
essentially late in the afternoon. And
if you do take a nap and you want to
maintain your you don't want to have
that groggginess hangover that can
happen after a full night of sleep for
the first hour, try to limit it to about
20 25 minutes. And that way you don't go
down into the very deepest stages of
sleep which I if I wrench you out of
with an alarm, you almost feel worse. No
one should feel guilty about getting the
sleep that they need. And I think that's
been one of the big problems in society.
Society has stigmatized sleep with these
labels of being slothful or lazy and
we're almost embarrassed, you know, to
tell colleagues that we we take a nap. I
think sleep is a right of human beings
and I therefore think that sleep is a
civil right of all human beings and no
one should make you feel unproud of
getting the sleep that you need. Are
there any unconventional sleep tips? The
what if kind of things that Yeah. What
if it turns out that, and I hear I just
I I've got a blank there for you to fill
in. The first one, which is
unconventional along the lines of naps,
if you've had a bad night of sleep, do
nothing.
What I mean by that is don't wake up any
later. Don't sleep in the following day
to try and make up for it. Don't nap
during the day. Don't consume extra
caffeine to wake you up, to try to get
you through the day. And don't go to bed
any earlier to think that you're going
to compensate. If you wake up later,
you're not going to be sleepy until
later in the evening. So, you're going
to go to bed at your normal time and you
won't be sleeping. You'll think, "Well,
I just came off a bad night of sleep and
now I I still am I can't even get to
sleep and it's my normal time." It's
because you slept in later than you
would otherwise. And you reduce the
window of adenosine accumulation before
your normal bedtime. So, don't go don't
wake up any later. Don't use more
caffeine for the reasons that that are
obvious because that's only going to
crank you and keep you awake the
following night or decrease the
probability of a good following night of
recovery sleep. And then finally, don't
go to bed any earlier. Resist and resist
and go to bed at your normal time. What
I want to try and do is prevent you from
thinking, "Well, I had such a bad night
last night and I normally go to bed at
10:30. I'm just going to get into bed at
9:00. My body is not ready to to sleep
at nine o'clock, but I'm worried because
I had a bad night of sleep last night.
So, I get into bed and now I'm tossing
and turning for the first hour and a
half because it's not my natural sleep
window, but I just thought it was a good
idea. I think the second tip um I would
offer in terms of unconventional is have
a winddown routine. Many of us think of
sleep as if it's like a light switch
that we just jump into bed and when we
turn the light out, sleep should arrive
in that same way. Sleep is a
physiological process. It's much more
like landing a plane. It takes time to
gradually descend down onto the terra
firmer of what we call good solid sleep
at night. Find out whatever works for
you. And it could be light stretching. I
usually meditate um for about 10 or 15
minutes uh before bed. some people like
reading. Try not to watch television in
bed. That's usually advised. Too much
light to your eyes. Too much light, too
activating, you know, you wouldn't race
into your garage and come to a a a
screeching halt from 60 m an hour. You
typically down shift your gears and you
slow down as you come into the garage.
There's the same thing with with sleep,
too. The other thing about um sort of
that idea of shifting focus away from
your mind itself, get your mind off
itself is a good piece of advice.
Kathis, you can try to write down all of
the concerns that you have. And do this
not right before bed, but usually an
hour or two before bed. Some people call
call it a worry journal. And to me, it's
a little bit like closing down all of
the emotional tabs on my browser.
Because if I shut the computer down and
all of those tabs are still open, I'm
going to come back in the morning, the
computer's red hot, the fan's going
because it didn't go to sleep because it
couldn't because there were too many
tabs active and open. I at first thought
this just sounds like who it sounds very
Berkeley. It's kind of come by our we
all hold hands and you know, walk home
at the end of the day. But then this the
data started coming out really good
studies from good people and they found
that keeping one of those journals
decrease the time it takes you to fall
asleep by 50%. 50ing you know it's well
on par with any pharmaceutical agent. I
think the fourth sort of little tip I
would give that's unconventional is
remove all clock faces from your bedroom
including your phone. Including your
phone because if you are having, you
know, a tough night, knowing that it's
3:22 in the morning or it's 4:48 in the
morning does not help you in the
slightest and it's only going to make
matters worse than better. Matt, this
has been an amazing uh deep dive on
sleeve. It is choa block full of
valuable takeaways. It's been a uh
tremendously fun for me to uh dissect
out this incredible aspect of our lives
that that we call sleep with a fellow
scientist and a fellow public educator.
And um we don't just uh want to hear
more from Matt Walker. I speak for many
people. Um we need to the work you're
doing is both um influential but more
importantly it is important work. it it
has the impact that needed especially in
this day and age where science and
medicine, public health and the the
issues of the world etc are really
converging. So I know I speak on behalf
of a tremendous number of people and I
just say thank you for doing the work
you do and for being you.
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