[0:00] [Music]
[0:00] welcome to the hubman lab guest Series
[0:02] where I and an expert guest discuss
[0:04] science and science-based tools for
[0:06] everyday
[0:07] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a
[0:10] professor of neurobiology and
[0:11] Opthalmology at Stanford school of
[0:13] medicine today marks the second episode
[0:16] in our sixth episode series all about
[0:18] sleep with our expert guest Dr Matthew
[0:20] Walker during today's episode we discuss
[0:22] the dos and the do Nots of sleep
[0:25] focusing for instance on how to use
[0:27] light and absence of light as well as
[0:29] temperature both of your sleep
[0:30] environment specifically the room you're
[0:32] in your body temperature and much more
[0:34] in order to regulate the timing and
[0:36] quality of your sleep and we discuss how
[0:39] things like alcohol caffeine and
[0:40] cannabis impact sleep and the various
[0:43] stages of sleep and we discuss the
[0:45] various tools that exist now and that
[0:47] are rapidly becoming available to
[0:49] improve your sleep this episode is
[0:51] essential for anyone trying to optimize
[0:53] their sleep and when I say optimize your
[0:54] sleep I mean trying to optimize the
[0:57] formula that was addressed in the first
[0:58] episode of the series which is the qqr
[1:01] formula the quality quantity regularity
[1:04] and timing of your sleep four variables
[1:06] that combine to determine whether or not
[1:08] your sleep is optimized for you and
[1:10] thereby providing the most restoration
[1:12] and Improvement to your mental health
[1:14] physical health and performance before
[1:16] we begin I'd like to emphasize that this
[1:18] podcast is separate from my teaching and
[1:19] research roles at Stanford it is however
[1:22] part of my desire and effort to bring
[1:23] zero cost of consumer information about
[1:25] science and science related tools to the
[1:27] general public in keeping with that
[1:29] theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of
[1:31] today's podcast our first sponsor is
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[1:40] that sleep is the foundation of mental
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[1:44] when we're getting enough quality sleep
[1:46] everything in life goes so much better
[1:47] and when we are not getting enough
[1:48] quality sleep everything in life is that
[1:51] much more challenging now one of the key
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[2:42] huberman to save up to $350 off and two
[2:45] free pillows today's episode is also
[2:47] brought To Us by whoop whoop is a
[2:49] fitness wearable device that tracks your
[2:51] daily activity and sleep but also goes
[2:53] beyond that by providing real-time
[2:55] feedback on how to adjust your training
[2:57] and sleep schedule to perform better I
[2:59] I've been working with whoop on their
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[3:10] for monitoring other features of my
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[3:13] feedback about metrics within my brain
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[3:18] train or not train and basically point
[3:20] to the things that I'm doing correctly
[3:21] and incorrectly in my daily life that I
[3:23] can adjust using protocols some of which
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[3:49] huberman today's episode is also brought
[3:51] To Us by waking up waking up is a
[3:54] meditation app that has hundreds of
[3:56] different meditations as well as scripts
[3:58] for Yoga Nidra and non-sleep deep rest
[4:00] or nsdr protocols by now there's an
[4:03] abundance of data showing that even
[4:06] short daily meditations can greatly
[4:08] improve our mood reduce anxiety improve
[4:10] our ability to focus and can improve our
[4:13] memory and while there are many
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[4:22] waking up app makes it extremely easy to
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[4:33] of different types of meditations of
[4:35] different duration as well as things
[4:37] like yoga NRA which place the brain and
[4:39] body into a sort of pseudo sleep that
[4:41] allows you to emerge feeling incredibly
[4:43] mentally refreshed in fact the science
[4:45] around Yoga Nidra is really impressive
[4:47] showing that after a Yoga Nidra session
[4:49] levels of dopamine in certain areas of
[4:51] the brain are enhanced by up to 60%
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[4:59] I really like about the waking up app is
[5:01] that it provides a 30-day introduction
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[5:07] meditation practice that's fantastic or
[5:10] if you're somebody who's already a
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[5:19] to waking up.com huberman and access a
[5:23] free 30-day trial again that's waking
[5:25] up.com huberman and now for my
[5:28] conversation with Dr Matthew Walker
[5:31] Professor Matt Walker welcome back we're
[5:33] all so happy to have you here and in
[5:35] episode one you beautifully described
[5:39] the biology of sleep why sleep is
[5:41] important what happens when we don't get
[5:43] enough sleep and you incentivized
[5:45] getting adequate amounts of great sleep
[5:48] and you defined what great sleep is and
[5:50] you provided some excellent practical
[5:53] protocols and tools for getting great
[5:55] sleep
[5:57] however today you're going to tell us I
[6:00] believe about the protocols for really
[6:04] optimizing one's sleep both conventional
[6:08] tools and protocols and some let's say
[6:11] unconventional not heretical but
[6:13] unconventional tools for optimizing
[6:16] one's sleep so let's start with the
[6:18] basics what are the basics of what I
[6:21] think I've heard you refer to previously
[6:23] as sleep hygiene yeah I think we many of
[6:27] us can resonate with the idea of dental
[6:30] hygiene but turns out there's something
[6:33] called Sleep hygiene and there are
[6:36] probably I would say five edicts of
[6:40] sleep
[6:41] hygiene I offer them as as
[6:46] tools and not necessarily rules because
[6:50] I don't think people respond to rules
[6:53] people respond to reasons and not rules
[6:56] so if it's okay I'll probably just
[6:57] unpack each one of them rather than just
[6:59] sort of bark them at you and hope people
[7:03] assume that it's the right uh answer
[7:05] I'll explain the answer so people
[7:07] understand why it's
[7:08] important so as I said there are
[7:10] probably five things that you can start
[7:12] doing tonight to try to improve your
[7:15] sleep the first we've spoken a little
[7:17] bit about in that first episode it's
[7:20] part of the four macros of good sleep
[7:23] first piece of advice
[7:25] regularity go to bed at the same time
[7:27] and wake up at the same time
[7:30] no matter whether it's the weekday or
[7:31] the
[7:32] weekend regularity is king and the
[7:36] reason is because when you feed your
[7:38] brain the signals of timed regularity
[7:42] for your sleep it will anchor your sleep
[7:46] and improve the quantity and the quality
[7:49] of that sleep because part of that
[7:51] signal of regularity going into your
[7:54] brain in terms of that repeated Behavior
[7:56] night after night sleep in other words
[7:59] helps train that Central 24-hour Cadian
[8:04] clock that we also spoke about in the
[8:06] first episode so that's the first piece
[8:08] of advice try to keep it as regular as
[8:11] you possibly
[8:12] can the second piece of advice is
[8:17] darkness in my view we are a dark
[8:20] deprived Society in this modern era and
[8:23] we need Darkness at night as well you've
[8:26] spoken about to release a hormone called
[8:30] melatonin and melatonin will help time
[8:33] the regular onset of your sleep so that
[8:38] sounds great but what boots on the
[8:40] ground Matt what does that mean I would
[8:43] suggest the following in the last hour
[8:46] before bed try to dim down 50% if not
[8:50] more of your lights in your home and you
[8:54] will be quite surprised at how sleepy
[8:56] and soporific that will make you feel
[9:00] I will do this in a regimented way I
[9:03] have uh little reminder that pops up and
[9:07] tells me now is the time to dim the
[9:09] lights based on your bedtime and I'll go
[9:12] around and I'll shut lights down in my
[9:14] bedroom I will actually have a small
[9:16] light bulb and it is way down to
[9:19] probably as little as maybe five luxs
[9:23] and look is just a a metric of the light
[9:27] um it's way down there and it's also
[9:29] very deep orange sort of red and we can
[9:32] come on to why that's the case so that's
[9:35] the first thing even before you're
[9:36] thinking about sleep start to decrease
[9:39] the
[9:40] light for example if you
[9:43] were there at let's say for a standard
[9:46] sleep schedule at 1000 p.m. and normally
[9:49] you are getting into bed at 10:30 p.m.
[9:51] but you feel pretty wide awake if there
[9:54] was an electrical blackout and you lost
[9:57] your phone magnetic to phone goes down
[10:00] lights go down Total Blackout my
[10:03] suspicion is that fairly soon you'd say
[10:06] gosh how you feel quite sleepy whereas
[10:09] if the lights were blazing you've got
[10:11] your phone television's on lots of
[10:14] stimulation you're probably going to
[10:16] think 10:30 no I could I could probably
[10:18] push through for at least another hour
[10:20] so try to dissipate that light and then
[10:24] if you need to wear an eye mask blackout
[10:26] curtains always good as well but we need
[10:29] that Darkness at night because when you
[10:32] give the brain the signal of Darkness it
[10:35] releases effectively a brake pedal that
[10:37] brake pedal has normally been applied by
[10:40] way of light on the release of that
[10:43] spigot of meel melatonin and when you
[10:46] take the brake pedal off it
[10:48] starts starts pumping out into the
[10:51] brain you can also then of course
[10:54] probably reverse engineer this trick in
[10:57] the morning and this is another
[10:59] component of why you've been I think so
[11:03] such a wonderful advocate for light in
[11:05] the morning it does many things but one
[11:07] of the things that it does is reapply
[11:10] that break on melatonin and therefore
[11:13] you lose the signal to your brain of
[11:16] Darkness that's what melatonin in some
[11:18] ways is doing we often call it the
[11:21] hormone of Darkness or the vampire
[11:23] hormone not necessarily because it makes
[11:25] you look longingly at people's necklines
[11:27] and want to to to bite it which is great
[11:30] if you're into that but it's really
[11:32] simply about it's releasing melatonin
[11:35] which tells the brain my goodness it's
[11:37] nighttime but if you've got bright light
[11:40] on you come from your office you're
[11:42] driving home so you've got artificial
[11:44] light during the day which is probably
[11:46] not strong enough to stimulate you and
[11:49] bring you awake you come home and you've
[11:51] got again bright light but it's still
[11:55] strong enough now to prevent the release
[11:58] of melatonin you start to shift in your
[12:00] timing and you may have problems with
[12:02] your sleep so that's the second piece of
[12:04] advice I would love to ask you about
[12:06] that Morning Light two and the alertness
[12:09] benefits I'm as a sleep researcher more
[12:12] focused on the evening component of
[12:14] light and decreasing it but you've done
[12:16] a great job I don't know if there's
[12:17] anything yeah there are a couple of
[12:19] quick points that um are based on some
[12:21] what I consider really nice studies uh
[12:24] there's beautiful work in human showing
[12:26] that bright light exposure in the
[12:28] morning especially from sunlight but um
[12:30] if one doesn't have access to sunlight
[12:32] for whatever reason there are
[12:33] commercially available so-called sad
[12:35] lamps Seasonal effective disorder lamps
[12:37] they range anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000
[12:40] Lux very bright but um but certainly uh
[12:43] morning sunlight viewing and lamps of
[12:46] the sort I just described have been
[12:48] shown to increase the amplitude of the
[12:50] morning cortisol Spike by as much as
[12:53] 50% 5 so people hear cortisol and they
[12:57] freak out they think that's not good I
[12:58] want cortisol low but you actually want
[13:00] your cortisol highest in the morning and
[13:03] lower in the afternoon and evening um
[13:06] and there's a lot of reasons for that
[13:08] elevated mood focus and alertness in the
[13:10] morning and throughout the day and uh
[13:12] ease of getting to sleep at night lower
[13:13] anxiety lower depressive symptoms and so
[13:15] on so that bright light also serves to
[13:18] um control the amplitude of cortisol uh
[13:21] it in the direction you want in the
[13:22] early part of the day the other thing
[13:24] that's just more of a uh underlying
[13:26] dynamics of the Circadian visual system
[13:29] which is a system that I worked on for
[13:31] years um these wonderful um cells in the
[13:34] eyes that are not for image forming but
[13:36] rather for detecting sunlight and bright
[13:38] light for sake of setting circadian
[13:39] rhythm is that the sensitivity of that
[13:42] system early in the day is actually
[13:44] quite low so you need a lot of bright
[13:46] light early in the day to effectively
[13:49] wake up your system and shut down the
[13:50] sleepiness signals such as melatonin but
[13:54] later in the day it's a rather
[13:55] diabolical system it takes very little
[13:59] light even from artificial sources to
[14:02] disrupt your circadian rhythm and quash
[14:04] melatonin as little as 15 seconds of
[14:07] bright light in the evening I think CH
[14:10] Chuck Zer laboratory at Harvard Medical
[14:12] School showed can quash melatonin in the
[14:15] evening now I don't want people to freak
[14:16] out and think that if they go into a
[14:17] hotel bathroom which oftentimes those
[14:19] are very bright in the middle of the
[14:20] night flip on the light that they're
[14:22] going to um completely uh screw up their
[14:25] circadian rhythms but if I'm honest
[14:28] they'd be much better off using um their
[14:30] phone as a flashlight to navigate people
[14:33] always say well wait but the flashlight
[14:34] on the phone is very bright but let's
[14:35] just get logical here a light shown into
[14:38] your eyes if such as a a flashlight is
[14:40] very different than looking at a
[14:41] flashlight Beam on the ground yeah Far
[14:43] and Away difference so the point is that
[14:46] if you don't get enough bright sunlight
[14:47] or light in your eyes early in the day
[14:50] and then you're indoors under artificial
[14:52] lighting you might think well this is
[14:53] really bright lighting this is the kind
[14:55] of lighting that could disrupt my
[14:56] circadian rhythm at night and therefore
[14:58] it's sufficient to wake up my system no
[15:00] early in the day and throughout the day
[15:02] you need a lot of bright light as much
[15:03] as safely possible to avoid Sunburn and
[15:05] things of that sort which you don't want
[15:08] but then as the evening comes around
[15:09] after Sundown you need very little
[15:12] artificial light in order to disrupt
[15:15] your circadian rhythm and then just very
[15:17] quickly light from candles fireplaces is
[15:21] okay this is kind of interesting it
[15:22] seems bright it's but the but the
[15:24] measurements uh indicate that that's not
[15:26] going to shift your circadian rhythm
[15:27] much candles are great but of course
[15:29] don't burn your house down so the the
[15:31] orange and red tones in the evening way
[15:33] dim down that's the way to go early in
[15:36] the day bright bright bright light as
[15:38] bright as you safely can tolerate and
[15:41] what I like about firstly your mention
[15:43] of cortisol do you described how
[15:45] cortisol is rising in the morning and
[15:47] that's a great thing and it is a good
[15:49] thing and in the evening it's starting
[15:51] to drop and if you look right around
[15:53] your prototypical bedtime and we're
[15:55] going to speak later in this episode as
[15:58] to what your real natural bedtime is
[16:01] versus the one that you may be taking
[16:04] right now it's very interesting cortisol
[16:07] will almost hit its lowest point
[16:10] something that we call its Nader it's
[16:12] the lowest point in that trough of its
[16:14] decline right around the time when you
[16:16] should be sleeping however there's a
[16:19] great study that looked at people with
[16:22] insomnia and in uh subsequent episodes
[16:25] we'll we'll discuss this too but one of
[16:28] the ways that we think about or
[16:29] conceptualize insomnia is in two
[16:32] different flavors sleep onset insomnia I
[16:35] can't fall asleep and sleep maintenance
[16:37] insomnia I wake up I can't get back to
[16:40] sleep and what they looked at was
[16:43] essentially cortisol levels they had um
[16:46] a catheter in the arm and they were
[16:48] sampling it from the bloodstream and
[16:50] they were able to do that every 30
[16:52] minutes so it's a little bit like
[16:53] timelapse photography and you're getting
[16:56] a data point every 30 minutes across the
[16:58] 24 hour period looking at cortisol
[17:01] across now a full 24-hour period and
[17:04] sure enough when you look at healthy
[17:06] controls who can sleep well and insomnia
[17:08] patients they look almost identical
[17:11] across the day but then when it comes to
[17:15] falling asleep right around that bedtime
[17:17] period the healthy controls are going
[17:20] all the way down the insomnia patients
[17:23] go down and down and down and then they
[17:24] have a rise back up right around that
[17:26] sleep onset period and then they start
[17:29] to drop back down again just as the
[17:31] control group but then they also often
[17:34] will have a spike in the middle of the
[17:37] night which then comes down and then
[17:39] both of them are staying low throughout
[17:41] the early morning period and then it
[17:43] starts to rise back up so it's not as
[17:46] though net net overall there is a higher
[17:48] level of cortisol in people with
[17:50] insomnia it seems to be right at those
[17:52] trigger zones that map very nicely to
[17:55] sleep onet problems sleep maintenance
[17:58] problems very interesting as somebody
[18:00] who wakes up in the middle of the night
[18:01] and sometimes has trouble getting back
[18:03] to sleep that that resonates I I have no
[18:05] trouble falling asleep whatsoever yeah
[18:08] knock on wood superstitious about this
[18:11] at this point but I use tools like
[18:12] non-sleep deep breast Yoga Nidra long
[18:15] exhale breathing but you know and I
[18:18] think these wakeup uh episodes seem to
[18:21] happen more when I'm processing a lot of
[18:23] stuff from my daily life that's right
[18:26] you know it's um the unconscious brain
[18:28] um
[18:29] often times it's working through things
[18:31] and and will wake us up yeah I often
[18:33] think
[18:34] that sleep maintenance insomnia that
[18:37] you've just described is the Revenge of
[18:41] daytime emotions
[18:43] unresolved that's a great way to put it
[18:45] yeah so that would be so we've spoken
[18:47] about regularity we've spoken about
[18:48] darkness and we've spoken about the
[18:50] inverse of that in the morning which is
[18:52] light a little bit of cortisol so the
[18:54] third out of the five is going to be
[18:57] temperature and the advice here is keep
[18:59] it cool as we mentioned a little bit in
[19:02] the first episode and we will go into
[19:04] great detail when we speak not just
[19:05] about these conventional and
[19:07] unconventional tips but we're also going
[19:09] to go into the future of Science and
[19:11] where sleep science is taking us to in
[19:14] fact optimize and even enhance our sleep
[19:18] we will speak a lot about temperature
[19:20] suffice to say that you need to drop
[19:23] your core body temperature and your
[19:25] brain temperature by a little less than
[19:27] 1° cus 2 to 3 Dees fhe to get to sleep
[19:31] and stay
[19:32] asleep the general Target that we have
[19:37] in sleep science if you look across the
[19:39] literature is somewhere around about the
[19:41] 67 Dee Fahrenheit or I'm trying to do
[19:45] the calculation maybe 18.5 is degrees C
[19:48] now I know that that sounds cold and
[19:51] cold it it is but you can also wear
[19:54] thick socks to bed you can have a hot
[19:56] water bottle at the end of the bed
[19:57] that's great too but the ambient must be
[20:00] cold the fourth piece of advice is Walk
[20:05] It Out and here what I mean is do not
[20:09] stay in bed for long periods of time
[20:12] awake and I think we mentioned this
[20:15] perhaps in the first episode too when
[20:18] you are awake in your bed for long
[20:20] stretches of time because your brain is
[20:23] an incredibly associative device it will
[20:27] quickly learn that that this thing
[20:29] called my bed is the place where I'm
[20:32] awake and not
[20:34] asleep and what you need to do is break
[20:37] that Association if you've learned that
[20:40] time and time again because you've
[20:41] stayed in bed and the rule of thumb and
[20:43] it's just a a rule of thumb about 20 25
[20:47] minutes if you can't fall back asleep or
[20:50] you can't fall asleep it's okay just say
[20:53] tonight is not my night it's not a
[20:55] problem it's tomorrow is not completely
[20:58] shot it's fine I'm just going to get up
[21:01] get out of bed if you can if you're
[21:02] lucky enough try to go to a different
[21:04] room and in dim light read a book listen
[21:07] to a podcast whatever it is that relaxes
[21:11] you just do that don't check email don't
[21:13] eat because if you start eating that
[21:15] again trains your brain to start waking
[21:17] up and feeding at that time and only
[21:21] return to bed when you are sleepy and
[21:23] there is no time limit for that I don't
[21:25] want you to come back after half an hour
[21:28] when you are still awake and not feeling
[21:30] sleepy enough why because you're going
[21:32] to get back into bed and be in the same
[21:35] problem again and gradually if you do
[21:37] this and it's hard to do
[21:39] it you will relearn the association that
[21:43] you had I'm sure as a child which is
[21:45] that your bed is this place of
[21:48] sleepiness because often people will be
[21:50] saying I I feel so tired in the evening
[21:53] and then they get into bed and they say
[21:56] but now I can't fall asleep at all and I
[21:58] don't understand it in part it's because
[22:00] of that learned Association so that
[22:02] would be the fourth tip the fifth tip um
[22:06] makes me um even more unpopular as a
[22:10] personality and character which is try
[22:12] to be mindful of your alcohol and
[22:15] caffeine now in a subsequent episode
[22:18] we'll go into great detail as to how
[22:20] caffeine Works its mechanisms why it is
[22:24] sleep disruptive and why in fact I've
[22:26] even perhaps changed my mind
[22:29] on caffeine and and its benefits but it
[22:32] also does have significant detriment to
[22:34] your sleep so the rule of thumb here
[22:37] would be try to cut yourself off from
[22:41] caffeine probably at least 10 or so
[22:44] hours before you expect to go to bed and
[22:47] you can just calculate back calculate
[22:49] that and try to limit it so the dose and
[22:53] the timing make the poison cut yourself
[22:55] off after maybe two or three cups of
[22:58] coffee coffee and then that timing
[23:00] component count yourself back C yourself
[23:03] off decaffeinated coffee not too bad if
[23:05] you find the right thing too if you need
[23:07] that
[23:08] fix alcohol is probably one of the most
[23:13] misunderstood sleep aids in a quotes
[23:17] that there is it is no sleep aid at all
[23:21] now if I didn't understand what I know
[23:24] about alcohol and and sleep I would
[23:26] think that too which is look when I have
[23:29] a night cap just before bed or two even
[23:32] though I don't wear them um I I may
[23:36] actually just fall asleep very easily
[23:39] and feels like I stay asleep very
[23:41] soundly across the night so it's a great
[23:44] sleep aid and it really helps me there
[23:46] are at least I would say three issues
[23:49] with alcohol the first is that alcohol
[23:51] is in a class of drugs that we call the
[23:54] sedatives and sedation is not sleep
[23:59] but when you take on board alcohol in
[24:01] the evening you mistake the former for
[24:03] the latter and you think it helps you
[24:05] fall asleep the second thing is that
[24:09] because it's
[24:11] sedation or actually it's probably
[24:12] related to sedation if I were to show
[24:15] you the electrical signature of your
[24:18] deep sleep when you're just sleeping
[24:21] naturally versus when you have alcohol
[24:23] in your system it's not really the same
[24:25] it's not a naturalistic form of deep s
[24:28] it mimics it it looks not too dissimilar
[24:31] but if I really do my analyses and I
[24:33] almost like that Pink Floyd album where
[24:35] I take the white light of electrical
[24:36] brain activity coming from your head as
[24:39] you're sleeping and split it apart into
[24:41] all of the different components there
[24:42] are some components that are no longer
[24:45] present or some that are abnormally
[24:47] present the second issue with alcohol is
[24:49] that it fragments your sleep so it will
[24:52] litter your sleep with all these
[24:54] punctuated Awakenings throughout the
[24:56] night the danger that is that many of
[24:59] those Awakenings with alcohol you don't
[25:01] remember because they're too
[25:04] brief but then you wake up the next day
[25:06] and you think well I didn't have a
[25:08] problem falling asleep I didn't have a
[25:10] problem staying asleep but I just I feel
[25:13] rough I just don't feel restored by my
[25:15] sleep and you don't add two and two
[25:19] together the final concern with alcohol
[25:21] is that it's quite a potent Blocker of
[25:24] your rapid eye movement sleep or REM
[25:26] sleep and in subsequent episodes we'll
[25:29] go into great detail as to the
[25:32] incredible learning and memory
[25:35] creativity benefits that come by way of
[25:37] REM sleep also it's essential for our
[25:40] emotional regulation and recalibrating
[25:43] our
[25:44] moods so for all of those reasons I
[25:48] would say two things first if you are
[25:51] struggling with sleep not feeling
[25:53] restored by your sleep keep in mind your
[25:56] alcohol intake and also just in general
[25:59] be mindful of that if you are thinking
[26:02] about your sleep and want to preserve it
[26:04] so much of what you just said resonates
[26:06] uh I confess that in my lifetime I've
[26:08] had periods of um pretty spectacular
[26:11] sleep I characterize myself as somebody
[26:15] that could fall asleep anywhere anytime
[26:18] but I've also experienced the extreme
[26:21] challenges of sleep and um and that
[26:24] relates to different things life
[26:25] circumstances Etc in fact recently I've
[26:27] had some challenges with sleep despite
[26:29] using the protocols that I and uh others
[26:33] suggest I hadn't heard some of the
[26:35] things that you're um referring to here
[26:38] and um middle of the night waking has
[26:40] become more of an issue I communicated
[26:42] this to uh former girlfriend of mine who
[26:46] um was uh I was in relationship with
[26:48] when I was a a junior Professor meaning
[26:51] before I got tenure and she said you
[26:54] don't remember you had a Andrew but I do
[26:57] you had a pattern back then of um after
[27:00] I would fall asleep you would continue
[27:02] working on your laptop probably on
[27:04] grants um and then I would fall asleep
[27:08] working and then according to her I
[27:10] would wake up in the middle of the night
[27:11] and work a little bit until I'd get
[27:13] tired again and then fall asleep and
[27:15] then this would repeat so um really
[27:18] stamping down the uh the associative
[27:21] learning element that you talked about
[27:22] before so that was probably the first
[27:24] period of time in my life in which I I
[27:27] created this um
[27:28] rather uh delerious Association of work
[27:32] in the middle of the night in bed right
[27:35] um and then more recently I've had the
[27:38] the uh experience of waking up probably
[27:40] due to these like daytime things that I
[27:42] I'm waking up in the middle of the night
[27:44] thinking about and now because of our
[27:46] discussion during the course of of
[27:48] recording this series I get out of bed
[27:50] after even 101 15 minutes um so that I
[27:53] can start to eliminate that Association
[27:56] and another piece is that I've always
[27:58] felt that when I get out of bed in the
[28:00] middle of the night because I can't
[28:01] sleep and I go to the sofa I often can
[28:03] sleep very well reason being proving
[28:06] right it's a control experiment proving
[28:08] that the location of sleep is uh the and
[28:12] the association of wakefulness at sleep
[28:14] in bed as opposed to on the sofa is is a
[28:16] clear component and this is in an
[28:18] environment that's of equal temperature
[28:20] I mean it's not a perfect experiment
[28:21] right um it's anakata as we say but I I
[28:24] think that the associative piece is oh
[28:27] so strong um for many people and so this
[28:30] is something to to really take seriously
[28:32] I love that notion of and people will
[28:34] often say I just get up I go to the
[28:36] couch or the sofa and that's where I'll
[28:38] wake up in the morning also they'll say
[28:41] when I travel and I go to a hotel room I
[28:44] just can sleep fine now for some people
[28:46] it's the inverse but for those people
[28:48] it's the contextual difference meaning
[28:51] the change of the environment is so
[28:54] unfamiliar that it has not been bound to
[28:57] Association of wakefulness it's related
[29:00] to sleep or at least the opportunity to
[29:02] sleep sometimes even I've heard from
[29:05] some people and there's no studies or
[29:07] data on this even turning yourself
[29:10] around now this is hard if you have a
[29:12] partner in bed but you just switch top
[29:15] to bottom of the bed and you take your
[29:17] pillow and you pull the duvet all the
[29:20] way down and you put the pillow at the
[29:21] opposite end where your feet used to be
[29:23] and you get into bed and even just
[29:25] looking around and sort of having a
[29:27] difference that alone is so subtle but
[29:30] it can make a real difference so again
[29:34] just keep these things in mind I know it
[29:36] sounds strange or this whole sort of get
[29:38] up get out of bed break the
[29:41] associate and we'll come on to something
[29:44] well actually I'll come on to it now
[29:45] because I think it's one of the
[29:46] unconventional tips and you mentioned it
[29:48] a lot of people say to me that all
[29:50] sounds great I the science makes sense I
[29:53] just don't it's dark it's kind of cold I
[29:57] really don't want to get out of bed so
[30:00] give me some
[30:01] Alternatives I think the the single best
[30:05] piece of unconventional sleep advice I
[30:08] can give you is do anything that gets
[30:12] your mind off
[30:14] itself the principal reason that if you
[30:17] look at insomnia as a physiological
[30:19] condition or current working model
[30:21] mechanistically of how insomnia um plays
[30:24] out is that you are in this state of
[30:28] almost low-level anxiety and you are
[30:32] somewhat stressed and when you go to
[30:35] sleep or you try to go to sleep or you
[30:37] wake back up and you try to get back to
[30:38] sleep you just have this Rolodex of
[30:42] anxiety in the modern world we are
[30:44] constantly on reception and very rarely
[30:47] do we do
[30:49] reflection and unfortunately for many of
[30:51] us and I've been guilty of this the only
[30:54] time we do reflection is when our head
[30:57] is placed on the pillow and we turn the
[30:59] light out and that is the last time you
[31:02] want to be doing reflection that's the
[31:04] worst moment and at that point I think
[31:07] everyone can empathize with the idea of
[31:11] you turn the light out you're under
[31:13] stress your mind goes to those few
[31:16] things in the darkness of night thoughts
[31:20] become almost 10 times worse than they
[31:23] do in the brigh of
[31:25] day and at that moment you start to
[31:28] ruminate when you ruminate you begin to
[31:32] catastrophize and when you catastrophize
[31:34] you're dead in the water for the next
[31:36] two hours so what do you do the problem
[31:39] is as I said your mind is on itself and
[31:43] it's going through these repeated Loops
[31:46] anything you can do for example you can
[31:49] do some kind of a meditation and I when
[31:52] I was researching data for my book some
[31:54] years ago I did look into meditation and
[31:57] I wasn't a meditator I was a hard-nosed
[31:59] scientist and didn't really kind of
[32:03] embrace with that notion or even that um
[32:07] that group of people but time and again
[32:10] I read paper after paper and the data
[32:12] was very strong and it was coming from
[32:14] research groups that I respected very
[32:16] much indeed so I thought well okay I
[32:19] should probably give this a try and that
[32:23] was 6 years ago and since then I now
[32:26] meditate for 10 minutes every single
[32:28] night before bed I do a guided
[32:30] meditation because I'm not particularly
[32:32] skilled so I use an app that moves me
[32:35] through that but you can do whatever you
[32:38] how whatever meditation you like that's
[32:41] one example the second example is you
[32:44] can do breathing methods because again
[32:46] you're focused on your breath and what
[32:49] are you not focused on your
[32:52] thoughts and so anything that will allow
[32:57] you to
[32:58] um
[32:59] explore some other Focus maybe it's a
[33:02] body scan where you start at the top of
[33:03] your head or you start at your feet and
[33:05] you work your way up and you just say
[33:07] you know moving through now my neck what
[33:10] Sensations am I feeling now into my
[33:13] shoulders moving down into my chest now
[33:16] I can feel the ends of my fingers am I
[33:19] sensing
[33:21] anything and when you start doing that
[33:23] or any of these types of things the next
[33:26] thing that you remember is your alarm
[33:28] going off in the morning because you got
[33:31] your mind off itself so I would say that
[33:34] that's probably one of the
[33:35] unconventional tips but let me come back
[33:36] to the conventional anything else I've
[33:40] probably missed out or being unclear
[33:41] about the um actually I should probably
[33:43] say one thing in terms of these not
[33:46] they're not tips I don't like the word I
[33:48] know you don't either or hacks or um
[33:51] these are protocols and they're
[33:53] well-informed scientific protocols in
[33:55] all of this discussion today
[33:58] you can get all of these things in place
[34:01] and still have problems with
[34:03] sleep the reason is because you may be
[34:06] suffering from a Sleep Disorder so the
[34:08] analogy would be let's say that I'm your
[34:10] athletic coach and you're a sports
[34:13] Superstar I can perfect everything I can
[34:15] perfect your your diet your supplements
[34:19] we can perfect your Technique we can
[34:21] perfect but if you've got a broken ankle
[34:26] none of those things are going to alter
[34:28] your performance right now you've got to
[34:30] get to a doctor and get that scen to and
[34:33] then we can come back to fine-tuning
[34:35] your performance it's the same with
[34:37] sleep if you've got a sleep disorder
[34:38] such as snoring sleep apnea or insomnia
[34:41] we need to get you to a doctor first and
[34:43] then only after that come back once
[34:45] you're resolved then we can start to
[34:48] optimize that's the only other thing I
[34:50] probably should mention yeah this is all
[34:52] very useful discussion because I think
[34:54] that um of course there will be those
[34:56] folks out there that just like what are
[34:59] they talking about I sleep so well at
[35:01] night you know consider yourself blessed
[35:02] many many people struggle with uh
[35:05] challenges with sleep and I think it's
[35:07] fair to say that sooner or later most
[35:10] everybody experiences some challenges
[35:12] with sleep for whatever reason you look
[35:13] at the statistics that's highly likely
[35:15] in your lifetime you are more than
[35:17] likely to go through either a period of
[35:19] challenging sleep or in fact about of
[35:22] insomnia I'd like to take a brief break
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[36:00] and of course I still make sure to eat
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[36:11] against stress and ensure that the cells
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[36:36] huberman you talked about alcohol I'm
[36:39] not a consumer of alcohol anymore um nor
[36:42] am I and it's not I it's not because I
[36:43] have anything against it yeah many
[36:45] people do enjoy it and um and know uh
[36:48] we're not calling judgment on on them I
[36:51] mean certainly much of the world enjoys
[36:53] uh alcohol could we talk a little bit
[36:54] more about um aside from demolishing
[36:58] REM sleep um you know do we know that
[37:03] alcohol causes these disruptions in
[37:05] sleep directly meaning by changing the
[37:07] um pattern of release of
[37:09] neurotransmitters like Gaba things of
[37:11] that sort or is this an indirect effect
[37:13] you know is this like through the gut
[37:15] microbiome that then impacts sleep um
[37:18] and the reason I ask is maybe we could
[37:20] get to some more
[37:21] specific uh dos and do not protocols so
[37:25] for instance if somebody wants to have a
[37:27] cocktail how close to sleep can they get
[37:30] and uh not diminish their rapid eye
[37:34] movement sleep too much you know because
[37:36] people are still going to want to drink
[37:38] um and with that said if people do have
[37:41] a couple of drinks and then they they go
[37:43] to sleep is there is there anything they
[37:45] can do prior to sleep to uh try and
[37:47] rescue um their some of their quality
[37:50] sleep great question so in terms of the
[37:53] mechanism it seems actually not to be
[37:56] the alcohol but some of the metabolic
[37:59] byproducts of alcohol we think that
[38:02] perhaps the main culprit may be some of
[38:04] the aldah highs that are the metabolic
[38:08] um separate consequences of alcohol
[38:11] metabolism you make a good point though
[38:14] in terms of the the the dose response
[38:18] timing curve
[38:20] how late or how early do I have to cut
[38:24] myself off from alcohol people have done
[38:26] those studies and they have found that
[38:27] even an afternoon single glass of wine
[38:31] if you measure sleep in the way that we
[38:33] measure it at my center with High
[38:34] Fidelity you can see compromises and
[38:38] impairments I wish I could tell you
[38:41] otherwise I would say that based on that
[38:44] data the principal protocol advice I
[38:47] would have for you is go to the pub in
[38:49] the morning that way by the time you're
[38:52] about to sleep the alcohol is out your
[38:53] system and you could no no I would never
[38:55] as a as a public scientist I would never
[38:58] Advocate necessarily for wanting I'm
[39:00] just kidding you but um that's that's
[39:03] sort of one of the unfortunate
[39:06] consequences there does seem to be an
[39:08] impact to say that there isn't is just
[39:11] me not being truthful about the data but
[39:15] again if
[39:16] you are think about the tradeoff here if
[39:20] you're going out or you're having
[39:21] friends over and you're going to make an
[39:24] incredible evening of memories and
[39:26] you're going to open a favorite bottle
[39:27] of wine and have a couple of glasses of
[39:29] wine is your sleep going to be
[39:31] compromised yes it is but maybe that's
[39:34] worth the tradeoff for that specific
[39:36] night I would just not wish you to and
[39:39] you've spoken a lot and so is our dear
[39:41] friend Peter and
[39:43] others there just doesn't seem to be any
[39:46] safe amount of alcohol um but I would
[39:50] say think about that trade-off simply
[39:53] however don't make it habit that you're
[39:55] doing it you know multiple nights a week
[39:58] or more that would probably be the
[40:00] advice
[40:02] great what about food and sleep um how
[40:07] close to sleep um is it okay to have a
[40:10] meal if you want to optimize your sleep
[40:14] um I I like to eat my final meal
[40:16] somewhere around
[40:18] 6:30 p.m. but and I go to sleep
[40:21] somewhere around 8:30 900 p.m. in an
[40:24] Ideal World sometimes I go to sleep a
[40:26] bit later uh sometimes I eat a little
[40:28] bit later it's just you know there's
[40:29] some variability with these but um put
[40:32] differently what is the relationship
[40:34] between food intake and Sleep Quality in
[40:37] terms of timing of food intake and then
[40:39] perhaps we can talk a little bit about
[40:41] um food
[40:42] macronutrients it's very interesting
[40:44] there was somewhat of a Dogma out there
[40:48] that we have to stop eating you know
[40:50] three or 4 hours before bed for optimal
[40:53] sleep if you look at the data the data
[40:55] is quite a spread no pun intended there
[40:58] is there are some people for whom that
[41:01] works very well and if they eat even two
[41:04] hours before bed they just get disrupted
[41:08] in terms of their sleep some of that is
[41:11] about people just feeling too full and
[41:14] not feeling comfortable other aspects
[41:17] are that when you become recumbent when
[41:19] you lie down you have a higher risk of
[41:23] gastric reflux coming back up and
[41:25] therefore you get heartburn and that's
[41:27] pretty miserable and people will
[41:28] describe that too by way of closer
[41:31] proximity of food intake relative to
[41:34] when you're falling asleep nevertheless
[41:36] if you look at the
[41:38] data and I I did a recent very deep dive
[41:41] on this personally myself about 12
[41:44] months ago it's not quite as Extreme as
[41:47] the Dogma makes out if you eat 2 hours
[41:51] before bed on average it doesn't seem to
[41:54] necessarily harm your sleep now that's
[41:56] very different than saying what is best
[41:58] to improve or enhance your sleep but the
[42:01] way these studies were designed it was
[42:03] looking at detriments they then went to
[42:06] 90 minutes before sleep onset and even
[42:09] there there didn't seem to be Market
[42:13] impermanence 60 Minutes you started to
[42:16] see maybe some signs but on average the
[42:19] effect size was somewhat weak but then
[42:21] when you get close to sort of 45 minutes
[42:23] or
[42:24] so then things did start to deteriorate
[42:29] I think it depends hugely on your
[42:31] chronotype and also just on your
[42:34] appetite Cadian Rhythm preferences too I
[42:38] am someone who I do not feel very hungry
[42:41] when I first wake up in the morning I
[42:43] don't feel very hungry throughout most
[42:45] of the day and I will onboard most of my
[42:48] calories
[42:50] probably
[42:52] in the hours probably in about a 4H hour
[42:56] period maybe less even 3-hour period and
[43:00] then I will cut myself off about 90
[43:03] minutes before sleep so I classically I
[43:07] would have been considered as you know
[43:10] violating this sleep dogma of of cutting
[43:13] yourself off at least three hours I
[43:14] think it's very personal though just
[43:17] experiment with it you will know the
[43:20] situation um as for macros and specific
[43:24] food
[43:25] components the data is a little bit
[43:27] mixed certainly what we know is that if
[43:30] you're eating a diet that is high in
[43:34] sugar and low in protein your sleep is
[43:40] worse why would that be the case well
[43:43] one of the reasons that we think is that
[43:45] if you onboard sugar it can be somewhat
[43:48] metabolically active and when it becomes
[43:51] metabolically active it can increase
[43:54] your body temperature your core body
[43:55] temperature even just for very subtly
[43:58] but that's enough to disrupt your sleep
[44:00] as we spoke about with
[44:02] temperature but I think in terms
[44:05] of really the you know what would be the
[44:09] ideal macron nutrient and even
[44:13] micronutrient um dietry recommendation
[44:15] that I would have for you I don't think
[44:17] we have enough data yet above and beyond
[44:20] that that statement um yeah yeah I I've
[44:25] experienced um when I eat a very low
[44:28] carbohydrate diet which I've
[44:30] experimented with in the past maybe even
[44:32] even full ketogenic diet for for brief
[44:34] periods of time although I'm an omnivore
[44:36] so I eat meat and eggs and I also eat
[44:38] starches pastas rice Etc um but we know
[44:43] based on beautiful work from for example
[44:45] Chris Palmer from from Harvard Medical
[44:48] School uh who is a guest on this podcast
[44:50] I listen to that it was great podcast
[44:52] yeah Chris is is spectacular and and U
[44:55] has advocated the exploration of
[44:58] ketogenic diets for the treatment of
[45:00] various psychiatric conditions not all
[45:02] but psychiatric conditions and and it
[45:04] seems and he agreed with me on this that
[45:07] when people go on very low starch very
[45:09] low carbohydrate diets that sometimes
[45:11] they can experience a bit of hypomania
[45:13] some people can and challenge this with
[45:16] sleep and um sometimes there are
[45:20] psychiatric reasons why um people stay
[45:24] on those diets anyway and then they have
[45:25] to do other things to encourage their
[45:27] sleep by their pharmacology or
[45:28] supplementation or some combination but
[45:31] I I can say anecdotally for myself if I
[45:34] if I don't eat starches for a extended
[45:37] amount of time a couple of days I find
[45:39] it very hard to get quality sleep as
[45:43] indicated by Sleep trackers um and uh
[45:47] and just uh sleep late latency to fall
[45:49] asleep is longer than it is ETC um so i'
[45:54] I've opted to eat most of my
[45:56] carbohydrates Ates later in the evening
[45:58] um which and violates you know every
[46:01] rule of you know eat your carbs early in
[46:02] the day and and and I think there are
[46:04] some data to support that eating
[46:05] carbohydrates early in the day may
[46:07] actually um have certain benefits for
[46:09] weight maintenance or weight loss so I
[46:10] realized that but those aren't my my
[46:12] goals at the moment weight maintenance
[46:14] yes weight loss no so I think um I
[46:17] certainly feel after eating a dinner
[46:19] that has a bit more starch pasta rice
[46:22] these things of that sort and a little
[46:24] bit lower protein as opposed to the
[46:25] inverse like eating a couple couple of
[46:27] riy steaks and a salad but no starch
[46:30] that um my sleep is substantially better
[46:34] um and I always uh attributed that to
[46:37] the relationship between some of the
[46:39] starches and the
[46:40] tryptophan serotonin pathway yeah there
[46:42] is some data on that with the
[46:44] carbohydrate intake in the evening and
[46:47] of course that that tryptophan and that
[46:50] carbohydrate intake um will contain the
[46:53] precursor ingredients to something else
[46:56] that we've spoken about which is
[46:57] melatonin and so that may actually help
[47:00] healthily boost that melatonin signal
[47:02] and there's a little bit of data on that
[47:04] to supported
[47:05] to we also did a study where we um we
[47:09] were looking at night to night to night
[47:11] sleep and carbohydrate intake the next
[47:13] day and it did seem to support what
[47:16] you're describing in terms of some of
[47:18] the carbohydrate benefits we also found
[47:20] a strange result that was almost the
[47:23] opposite prediction that we made
[47:25] carbohydrate intake in the morning to
[47:28] equally help people wake up and we were
[47:31] a little bit uncertain as to why but
[47:33] we're going to go into more detail the
[47:36] reason that you mentioned
[47:38] the the suggestion of not take on carbs
[47:41] in the evening is in part based on the
[47:44] evidence that your body's ability to
[47:47] dispose of sugar and obviously when
[47:50] you're eating carbohydrate you can have
[47:52] a higher um Spike of sugar now that in
[47:55] part depends on what you're eating with
[47:57] that carbohydrate and also of course the
[48:00] nature of that carbohydrate whether it's
[48:01] simple or whether it's complex whether
[48:03] it's simple sugars versus you know
[48:06] complex more um starchy uh carbohydrate
[48:10] but the idea is that your body even if
[48:13] you were to eat the same amount of
[48:15] carbohydrate in the morning in the
[48:17] afternoon or in the evening same
[48:20] carbohydrate dose and type but your
[48:22] body's ability to dispose of that
[48:25] without having excessive spikes of
[48:27] glucose is worse in the evening better
[48:29] in the morning I.E if you're concerned
[48:32] about your blood sugar um and your
[48:34] metabolic Health maybe that's what you
[48:36] should do I think that that data is
[48:39] unclear on the basis of if you are um
[48:44] glycemic normal meaning that you
[48:46] currently do not have signs of type two
[48:48] two diabetes or you're not pre-diabetic
[48:51] then that may not necessarily be the
[48:52] case and so I think that's why it could
[48:54] be you know beneficial for you and I
[48:56] know that you've um you think deeply
[48:58] about that and and um I've even been
[49:01] tracking blood sugar as well I don't
[49:02] have any signs of that but I'm just
[49:04] fascinated by some of that data and how
[49:06] it interacts with my sleep because I'm a
[49:08] a sleep nerd so I think right now we
[49:10] just don't have plentiful data to
[49:13] recommend a particular sleep quote
[49:15] unquote diet for improved optimization I
[49:19] would say though that we can be a little
[49:22] bit more relaxed about the timing of our
[49:24] food earlier you mentioned C caffeine
[49:27] and caffeine is a topic that we get into
[49:30] into substantial depth in episode three
[49:33] but there and now I uh I will emphasize
[49:37] that caffeine is the most commonly used
[49:40] drug worldwide I think the statistic
[49:43] says that 90 plus perent of adults
[49:46] consume caffeinated
[49:48] beverages every day which is remarkable
[49:51] and a few years back I recall there was
[49:52] an article in The Economist that charted
[49:54] the country's for which the caffeine
[49:57] consumption was highest and way out on
[50:01] the peak Peak peak of was almost uh
[50:05] triple or quadruple what other what the
[50:08] second place country um consumed each
[50:13] day was can you guess the country that
[50:15] consumes the most caffeine could be tea
[50:17] coffee any form I'm going to suggest
[50:19] it's a Scandinavian country no but uh
[50:22] but they're they're up they're up there
[50:24] it was Switzerland now I don't know if
[50:26] that's still the case but apparently the
[50:28] the reason I went I was thinking it was
[50:30] because I've seen the graph I was
[50:31] thinking it was Sweden but Scandinavian
[50:34] and if I have that wrong um certainly
[50:36] someone will put it in the the comments
[50:37] on YouTube I recall the Swiss drink so
[50:41] much caffeine they have uh a lot to
[50:44] think about so I love caffeine I drink
[50:47] black coffee black espresso and Y Bronte
[50:50] um I love Yerba Monte been drinking it
[50:52] since I was a little one um because of
[50:55] the argentines in my family um and I
[50:57] drink it in the early part of the day
[50:59] typically um a couple hours after waking
[51:02] or so I'll have my first um sip of
[51:04] caffeine and then I try to stop drinking
[51:07] caffeine somewhere around noon or 1 p.m.
[51:10] occasionally I'll have a shot or two of
[51:12] a espresso in the early afternoon if
[51:14] there's important work to be done and I
[51:16] need to do that but I I've noticed that
[51:18] even that can alter my sleep in ways
[51:21] that that I don't like but the afternoon
[51:23] coffee for some reason tastes so much
[51:24] better than the morning coffee for me I
[51:26] don't know what it is so it's coffee
[51:28] year bate packed early into the day and
[51:31] a lot of it for me yeah I have a high
[51:33] tolerance for it um but then I let it
[51:37] taper is
[51:39] that an optimal Contour of caffeine
[51:42] intake um would Zero caffeine be better
[51:44] if someone's just really committed to
[51:45] sleep and they don't like caffeine would
[51:47] zero be better than any and what about
[51:50] that afternoon coffee or tea containing
[51:54] caffeine I mean how disruptive is it for
[51:57] sleep so the profile that you describe
[52:00] which is high peak early on and first
[52:03] thing when you wake up and then tapering
[52:04] off nicely down into the sort of early
[52:08] afternoon ideal that sounds great to me
[52:11] as for that afternoon coffee it really
[52:14] depends again on when you are expecting
[52:17] to go to sleep now for someone like you
[52:20] I would say I would love to look at
[52:22] abstaining from that or just switching
[52:24] it out to if you're using you know these
[52:27] pods or however you're Brewing it let's
[52:29] just switch it out and do an experiment
[52:31] for two weeks and we will look to see
[52:35] how much is that afternoon coffee really
[52:38] impacting your sleep and will track your
[52:39] sleep with some degree of High Fidelity
[52:41] with a
[52:43] wearable and let's test that hypothesis
[52:46] because you go to sleep quite early you
[52:48] are an early bird maybe bordering on an
[52:52] extreme um early bird and we'll speak
[52:54] about um or we have spoken about those
[52:58] different flavors of
[53:00] chronotype I would prefer you not to be
[53:05] having that caffeine in the afternoon
[53:08] based on how early you go to sleep and I
[53:11] mention that preference because of what
[53:13] you described regarding your sleep
[53:17] maintenance insomnia one of the issues
[53:19] with caffeine is that not only can it
[53:21] make it more difficult for you to fall
[53:24] asleep which you don't have in part
[53:26] because if you're waking up quite
[53:28] frequently throughout the night and
[53:29] struggling to get back to sleep you're
[53:31] going to be carrying a sleep debt into
[53:34] every night and that debt continues to
[53:36] grow and it's almost like compounding
[53:38] interest on a loan so you will not have
[53:40] a problem falling asleep in fact
[53:43] sometimes the speed with which people
[53:44] fall asleep and some of these uh sleep
[53:46] trackers will almost penalize you for
[53:50] falling asleep too quickly is because in
[53:53] sleep science and clinical sleep
[53:54] medicine if your it should take you
[53:57] somewhere you know healthy sleep onset
[54:00] you know 5 to 15 20 minutes but if you
[54:06] put your head on the pillow and you turn
[54:08] off the light and within a minute or so
[54:10] you're dead to the world and you're gone
[54:13] I'm exactly I'm worried that you're a
[54:15] carrying a sleep dead now not
[54:17] necessarily but I'm I would like to
[54:19] explore it um with you and then I would
[54:22] say even if you can fall asleep
[54:24] fine this factor of waking up in the
[54:27] middle of the night is also related to
[54:30] caffeine why because caffeine not only
[54:33] can make it harder to fall asleep not
[54:35] your problem but it keeps you out of
[54:38] that deep deep sleep and it puts you
[54:40] into a more shallow state of nonrapid ey
[54:44] movement sleep and when you are in this
[54:46] shallow State it's a easier for you to
[54:50] be woken up but be and I think more of
[54:54] the problem it's hard harder for you to
[54:57] fall back asleep because your brain
[54:59] doesn't necessarily want to go back down
[55:01] into that deep sleep and nor has it come
[55:04] up out of that deep sleep so you're not
[55:06] in that wonderful glorious thick
[55:09] triy sort of sleepy State when you wake
[55:12] up you go to the restroom you come back
[55:14] and you just know this is going to be
[55:16] great I'm as as long as I can fumble my
[55:18] way back to my mattress I'm going to be
[55:20] asleep within another two minutes going
[55:22] back to it whereas for you you probably
[55:24] wake up and you feel pretty Wide Awake I
[55:26] would like to see what happens when we
[55:28] negate that afternoon coffee on the
[55:30] frequency and the duration of those
[55:33] middle of the night Awakenings for you
[55:35] yeah I'm definitely making the effort to
[55:37] avoid caffeine intake in the afternoon
[55:39] and I think um already starting to see
[55:42] some of the positive benefits of doing
[55:44] that great as evidenced by the days that
[55:46] I consume caffeine in the afternoon and
[55:48] experience the the deficits it's a real
[55:51] thing and I I believe you've um about
[55:54] the numbers uh on a different podcast
[55:56] previously could talk a little bit about
[55:58] the metabolism of caffeine and um and
[56:01] maybe even some of the variations that
[56:02] exist between people in terms of the
[56:05] metabolic U regulation of caffeine so
[56:07] how long let's say uh drink a standard
[56:10] cup of coffee or a cuple of espresso and
[56:11] it has a gosh I don't know 150
[56:14] milligrams of caffeine is that 200 could
[56:17] 150 200 let's say 200 because certainly
[56:20] uh you know a barista these days is
[56:23] going to draw a a beverage over index
[56:26] yeah so let's say 200 milligrams and and
[56:28] somebody consumes that after lunch at uh
[56:31] 100 p.m. and their bedtime is let's
[56:34] let's make them more conventional than I
[56:36] uh somewhere between 10: and 11: p.m.
[56:39] yeah okay so they're they're about 10 9
[56:42] to 10 hours out from their bedtime
[56:44] they're having a nice strong quote
[56:45] unquote nice strong cup of coffee after
[56:48] lunch um what what does that look like
[56:51] in terms of their biochemistry and and
[56:54] impact on sleep so caffeine has
[56:56] something that we call a halflife of
[56:59] about 5 to 6 hours meaning that after 5
[57:02] to 6 hours about 50% of that caffeine is
[57:05] still circulating in your bloodstream
[57:07] and thus your brain that means that
[57:10] caffeine has a quarter life of somewhere
[57:13] between 10 to 12 hours now this is on
[57:16] average and we'll come back to
[57:19] variations but think of it this way if
[57:21] you're taking a cup of coffee like you
[57:24] described there at midday and then
[57:26] you're going to bed at let's say 11: or
[57:30] midnight that would be the equivalent
[57:32] based on what I've just told you the
[57:34] quarter life of getting yourself into
[57:36] bed and just before you took yourself
[57:38] into bed you Swig a quarter of a cup of
[57:40] coffee and you H for a good night of
[57:42] sleep and the chances are that it it may
[57:45] not happen now again that's a little bit
[57:48] sort of hyperbolic as a as a statement
[57:50] but just try to conceptualize it in that
[57:53] way you would never think about taking
[57:55] off on you know a last quarter cup of
[57:59] coffee just before you put your eye mask
[58:02] on no but I have some friends and um
[58:05] somebody actually who works with the
[58:06] podcast team and we'll go out to dinner
[58:08] as a team when we're on the road and
[58:10] he'll order like a big coffee right
[58:12] after a 900 p.m. dinner and I was just
[58:15] like can you sleep on like oh yeah no
[58:17] problem and that no problem is in part
[58:20] this I don't have an issue with falling
[58:22] asleep but if we were to based on the
[58:24] data map there electrical brain activity
[58:28] you would be able to see this reduction
[58:31] in the deep non-rm sleep and it can
[58:35] reduce it if you look at the data
[58:36] somewhere between 15 to 20% now for me
[58:40] to reduce your deep sleep by 15 to 20% I
[58:45] would probably have to age you by about
[58:47] 20 to 22 years or you could just do it
[58:51] every night with a late night coffee
[58:54] should you should you wish so again I've
[58:57] and maybe we'll speak about this in in
[59:00] later episodes I have changed my mind on
[59:02] caffeine I think morning caffeine use or
[59:05] coffee I should say being more specific
[59:08] is fine because I think there are health
[59:09] benefits and we can go into in
[59:11] subsequent episodes why coffee and the
[59:14] coffee be in itself can provide those
[59:16] benefits so I've become a little bit
[59:18] more bullish on morning
[59:21] caffeine but evening caffeine I just
[59:25] think it's the data is just not
[59:27] supportive even if you are and there are
[59:29] variations and you were very um astute
[59:32] in your question some people I said on
[59:35] average caffeine has a half life of
[59:37] about 5 to six hours for some people
[59:40] it's quicker and for other people it's
[59:42] slower why is that it's based on a gene
[59:45] and we know the gene it's a gene that is
[59:48] part of a set of liver enzymes and the
[59:51] gene is called the
[59:53] cyp1 A2 Gene
[59:56] and there are variations in that Gene
[59:59] what we call polymorphisms and you can
[60:01] do these genetic tests that you can buy
[60:03] these kits and they all probably tell
[60:04] you which you are are you sensitive or
[60:06] you're not sensitive you probably
[60:08] already know and so some people will not
[60:12] be as sensitive and therefore they can
[60:14] have a more compressed time frame of a
[60:17] halflife because it's moving out of
[60:19] their system in a quicker manner so
[60:21] again I'm not trying to be skir
[60:23] mongering I think you can have coffeee
[60:24] in the morning and you'll be just fine
[60:27] that late night coffee I would I would
[60:30] like to see you obviate that if you are
[60:32] someone who's doing it and the afternoon
[60:34] coffee sounds like a you know maybe only
[60:37] every once in a while and try and make
[60:39] it mostly decaf or decaf for that matter
[60:41] if it's really just for the taste yeah
[60:43] if it's just for the taste go decaf if
[60:45] it's not I understand that in some ways
[60:47] what I'm talking about is the ideal
[60:49] world and drum roll it turns out that
[60:52] most of us don't live in that we live in
[60:53] this thing called the real world
[60:56] and so if you are facing a circumstance
[60:58] where if you're under pressure at work
[61:00] or if you're high performing athlete and
[61:02] this is it this is the event this is you
[61:04] it's all in a think understand that you
[61:07] you are going to sacrifice some sleep at
[61:09] night but maybe that sacrifice is well
[61:11] worth it so again I'm very open-minded
[61:13] I'm not trying to be um simply you know
[61:17] too rigid with this I want to take a
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[62:23] huberman so you've talked about alcohol
[62:26] and its effects on sleep you've talked
[62:27] about caffeine its effects on sleep and
[62:29] we talked about food and its effects on
[62:31] sleep what about THC and
[62:35] CBD sometimes referred to more uh
[62:38] generally as cannabis and you know it's
[62:40] interesting you know gosh when I was
[62:42] growing up um you
[62:44] know cannabis was illegal um nowadays
[62:48] it's um either legal or tolerated or
[62:52] decriminalized in many places not all
[62:55] but I I would would say there's been a
[62:56] um a a tide shift in terms of um
[63:01] cannabis meaning that many
[63:03] people consume cannabis who are um
[63:07] consuming it legally and consume it for
[63:09] a lot of reasons that other people
[63:12] consume alcohol in you know a sedative
[63:15] effect a slight hypnotic effect I mean
[63:17] you know the actual definition of what
[63:19] these drugs do it goes by certain terms
[63:20] in the psychiatric literature of course
[63:22] but but in order to quote unquote mellow
[63:24] out to feel more relx to reduce their
[63:27] anxiety um it's it's far and away
[63:29] different than when I was growing up
[63:31] where I me you would get into a lot of
[63:32] trouble uh if you were caught um smoking
[63:35] a joint or um taking a bong rip in the
[63:39] middle of the day but not and I realize
[63:41] most people aren't doing that at work I
[63:42] guess it depends on where you work um
[63:45] but it you know Edibles tinctures I mean
[63:48] the the consumption of THC and CBD is is
[63:51] quite um quite robust in a lot of places
[63:54] so um with all the issues of legality
[63:58] and the fact that people who young
[63:59] people um should not be consuming them
[64:02] me people 18 and younger not just for
[64:04] legal reasons but the brain is still
[64:06] developing um what is the story with THC
[64:10] CBD cannabis edibl smoked uh tinctures
[64:15] on sleep
[64:17] specifically it's very interesting if
[64:19] you look firstly at the motivational
[64:21] reasons why people use
[64:24] cannabis based on
[64:25] [Music]
[64:26] the published study somewhere in the top
[64:29] two
[64:31] reasons sleep to fall and stay asleep
[64:34] fall asleep and stay asleep obviously
[64:36] usually the principle first reason is
[64:38] just to get high and have the experience
[64:40] and the pleasure of being high if that's
[64:42] what sort of floats your um floats your
[64:45] train floats your train but certainly
[64:46] it's you know sleep um as and what we
[64:50] call a hypnotic to put you asleep from
[64:52] um the Greek derivative of the God for
[64:54] for sleep that is high among the reasons
[64:58] that people will
[64:59] use we currently don't recommend it and
[65:03] here is why certainly THC helps you fall
[65:06] asleep
[65:07] faster very clear in the data the
[65:11] problem is that first you start to
[65:13] develop a tolerance and to get that same
[65:16] sleep onset benefit you need to get use
[65:20] I should say a higher dose so you start
[65:22] to develop dependency and your dose
[65:24] regimen starts to
[65:26] increase the second issue with THC is
[65:29] that it's very good at blocking your
[65:31] dream sleep your REM sleep in fact many
[65:35] people when they come and they tell me
[65:37] look I was a heavy cannabis user even a
[65:39] light cannabis user for some time and
[65:41] then I stopped using and one of the
[65:43] strangest things happened to me I just
[65:46] started to have the most wild Vivid
[65:49] crazy dreams and I didn't know what was
[65:52] going on and it's a very simple
[65:54] explanation as you've been using your
[65:58] brain has been compromised in the amount
[66:01] of REM sleep it's been getting and
[66:03] you've been building up chronically a
[66:06] REM sleep debt and your brain is smart
[66:10] in the sense that it does try to clock
[66:13] to some degree a counter of how much REM
[66:16] sleep you've lost and many people will
[66:19] say yeah I don't really remember my
[66:20] dreams when I'm using but when they stop
[66:23] the brain finally because it's been
[66:25] cleansed of the thing that's the
[66:26] roadblock to REM sleep not only did they
[66:30] go back to having the normal amount of
[66:32] REM sleep that people would have they
[66:35] have that plus they have what we call a
[66:37] REM sleep rebound which is even more and
[66:40] more intense REM sleep which leads to
[66:43] more intense dreaming so it's a very I
[66:46] suspect there's a lot of people who've
[66:48] had that experience listening if they
[66:49] have been users and they've stopped so
[66:52] that's the second reason we don't
[66:53] Advocate it the third third reason is
[66:56] that when you stop using you also go or
[67:00] go through a very vicious insomnia
[67:04] withdrawal syndrome often many people
[67:06] will do now that depends on you know how
[67:08] much you've been using for how long
[67:10] you've been
[67:11] using if you look at the data and by the
[67:14] way part of the um clinical diagnostic
[67:17] the psychiatric diagnostic um
[67:20] description of cannabis withdrawal is
[67:23] insomnia that's how reliable this
[67:26] insomnia problem is when you come off
[67:30] cannabis and if you look at the data the
[67:33] one of the main reasons that people
[67:35] relapse and start using cannabis again
[67:38] even though they don't want to is
[67:40] because they can't deal with the
[67:42] insomnia that withdrawal has given them
[67:45] so you don't want to get into that
[67:47] vicious
[67:49] cycle should you wish again it's your
[67:52] choice um so THC I think is not to be
[67:57] advised right now CBD is interesting I
[68:01] don't think there's enough data yet for
[68:03] us to have a very strong opinion but I
[68:05] can at least offer mine the data so far
[68:08] is a little bit mixed in what we call
[68:11] the effect size in other words how
[68:13] reliable and how powerful is the benefit
[68:15] of CBD on sleep but it does seem to have
[68:18] some
[68:20] benefit what's interesting is that it
[68:22] doesn't seem to have the detriments that
[68:23] I just described for or
[68:27] THC you've got to be looking at the data
[68:30] a little bit careful with
[68:32] CBD it has what's called a u-shape
[68:35] function to it which is that if you're
[68:37] taking too little and again I really I'm
[68:41] so mindful of not trying to be okay here
[68:44] are the numbers but if you look at them
[68:46] I would say you know kind of cross your
[68:49] eyes squint your eyes maybe less than 25
[68:54] migr you run into the danger of CBD
[68:57] being wake
[68:59] promoting rather than sleep promoting
[69:02] but once you get past if you look is 50
[69:05] milligrams and above then you start to
[69:08] go in the opposite direction where it
[69:10] seems to be sleep
[69:12] promoting and I mention that just
[69:14] because at least here in the United
[69:16] States and in many places in the
[69:18] world that industry is not regulated so
[69:21] it may say 50 milligrams on the bottle
[69:25] you don't really know now some of those
[69:28] companies will have what's called
[69:29] third-party Laboratory Testing where
[69:31] they'll send it out and you can scan a
[69:33] qri code and you can look at an
[69:35] independent laboratory that tested it
[69:36] and show you the p p uh purity of it so
[69:39] that may be one way to
[69:40] go so CBD I think has some favorable
[69:45] evidence right now if that's the case
[69:47] let's just assume that you and I speak
[69:49] in another five years time and there's
[69:51] really good data now for this what could
[69:54] be the mechanisms I think there's at
[69:57] least there's probably at least two
[69:59] maybe three mechanisms the first is an
[70:02] indirect mechanism CBD has been
[70:05] demonstrated very nicely in some
[70:07] fantastic studies to be an
[70:10] anotic which is a fancy term for saying
[70:13] it reduces down your anxiety and earlier
[70:15] you and I discussed that anxiety and
[70:18] stress is one of the things that will
[70:20] keep you awake so indirectly it removes
[70:24] this kind of gate that is preventing you
[70:28] from moving down the Royal Road of sleep
[70:31] and it opens back up the gate because
[70:33] it's remove that gate mechanism which is
[70:36] high anxiety and by way of being an
[70:38] anxiolytic IT soften that anxiety and
[70:41] it's easier for you to fall asleep I
[70:42] think that's probably the principal
[70:44] mechanistic bet I would have right now
[70:47] another indirect
[70:49] mechanism if you look at some of the
[70:50] studies in rats and we do um human work
[70:53] at my sleep center so we don't do animal
[70:56] studies but if you look at the data in
[70:58] the
[70:58] rats CBD can be
[71:02] hypothermic which means that it drops
[71:04] your core body temperature and just as
[71:06] we spoke about in earlier in this
[71:08] episode you need to drop your body
[71:10] temperature to get to sleep so I think
[71:12] that's the second reason I think the
[71:14] third reason is that it could have a
[71:16] direct sleep promoting
[71:19] mechanism I think it's unclear right now
[71:21] exactly how it's interacting with the
[71:23] Sleep Machinery of the brain we've got
[71:24] some hypotheses the danger is again it's
[71:27] just not a well-regulated substance so I
[71:30] am actually just um full disclosure I'm
[71:32] working with a company in the United
[71:35] Kingdom uh in collaboration with um
[71:38] King's College and The Institute of
[71:40] Psychiatry there to see if we can create
[71:44] an analog a clean analog of CBD but I
[71:47] think the potential upside of it not
[71:50] just for sleep but for a number of
[71:52] different psychiatric conditions like
[71:54] anxiety
[71:55] um could be beneficial so I would say
[71:58] that that's right now the the sort of
[72:00] the skinny on THC and and CBD okay so
[72:03] just to make sure that I have the basic
[72:07] list of sleep hygiene factors correct I
[72:11] have regularity is King yep light and
[72:16] dark meaning that one should optimize or
[72:19] at least seek to optimize their exposure
[72:21] to light in the morning and throughout
[72:24] the day and in the evening to make
[72:26] things dim and dark yes temperature and
[72:30] there you have a a little um it's not a
[72:32] montra but what is it it's a warm up to
[72:36] cool down to fall asleep and then it's
[72:39] stay cool like Fonzi stay cool to stay
[72:44] asleep and then warm up to wake up yep
[72:47] and we will come on to that I think in a
[72:49] little while again then there's walk it
[72:50] out which is if I understand correctly
[72:53] if you're trying to fall asleep or fall
[72:55] back asleep and it's taking you longer
[72:57] than about 20 25 minutes you should just
[72:59] get out of bed and go elsewhere in the
[73:01] house do something else maybe even lie
[73:02] down on a different surface in the house
[73:04] to try and see if you can sleep there
[73:06] but don't stay in bed don't create a
[73:07] parir Association of wakefulness and
[73:10] your bed because that can lead to
[73:12] problems in subsequent nights yeah and I
[73:14] would only say that try to resist if you
[73:16] can if you really want your bedroom to
[73:18] be the place where you now become
[73:20] consistently asleep try not to start
[73:22] sleeping in some other location
[73:25] consistently because then all of a
[73:26] sudden you bond that with good sleep and
[73:29] you unbuckle this notion that we're
[73:32] trying to relearn which is know your
[73:34] bedroom is the place of sleep so it's
[73:37] fine to go elsewhere try to stay awake
[73:39] and force yourself to stay awake until
[73:41] you are absolutely sleepy then go back
[73:43] to bed okay and then we discussed
[73:46] alcohol food caffeine and THC CBD AKA
[73:52] cannabis and with respect to alcohol
[73:55] it's clear that none is best if you're
[73:58] going to have
[73:59] some uh you don't want to drink too
[74:01] early in the day but you don't want to
[74:02] drink too much or too close to bedtime
[74:04] because it can disrupt rapid eye
[74:05] movement sleep food uh seems that
[74:08] creating some sort of buffer between the
[74:10] uh your last bite of food and uh your to
[74:13] bedtime by anyway somewhere between you
[74:16] know maybe 2 three hours but for some
[74:18] people it'll be more like 90 minutes and
[74:19] of course that's going to depend on the
[74:21] size of the meal Etc but eating a big
[74:23] meal and then going straight to bed
[74:25] probably not a good
[74:26] idea caffeine has this long halflife so
[74:30] if you're going to indulge which I
[74:32] do do so early in the
[74:35] day beware the afternoon caffeine yeah
[74:39] do the hubman tapa is what I'm going to
[74:41] call it right now which is not
[74:42] interpretive dense it's simply the
[74:44] caffeine tape and then um THC CBD uh
[74:47] does nothing good for your sleep
[74:50] architecture although some people have
[74:52] the uh impression that it is good for
[74:54] their sleep because it makes it easier
[74:55] for them to fall asleep but what they
[74:56] are unaware of is that it is disrupting
[74:59] the quality and architecture of the
[75:01] different stages of sleep in ways that
[75:03] are not serving people well that seems
[75:06] to be the case for THC and I think CBD
[75:09] you
[75:10] know has promise and research must try
[75:13] harder including my own and you um very
[75:18] uh kindly emphasize that you're not
[75:20] telling people what to do they just
[75:21] should know what they're doing so that
[75:23] they can make uh changes uh if they so
[75:25] choose that's right I would always say
[75:28] that um I'm not trying to be a medical
[75:30] doctor any advice that I give is simply
[75:33] scientifically descriptive advice it's
[75:35] not medically prescriptive nor lifestyle
[75:38] prescriptive advice I'm smiling because
[75:40] what I always say is um I'm a scientist
[75:42] not a physician so I don't prescribe
[75:45] anything but I profess lots of things so
[75:47] or as my good friend who's a musician
[75:49] Tim Armstrong says I'm not a cop that's
[75:52] right so so do what you want um
[75:55] okay what a wonderful list to leap off
[75:59] into the unconventional and more
[76:02] advanced tools for Sleep enhancement so
[76:05] um let's go there so I think many people
[76:09] may have heard of some of the
[76:11] conventional but what about the
[76:12] unconventional I would probably offer
[76:15] five or six the first one I would say is
[76:19] that if you are struggling with sleep
[76:20] and you have had a bad night of sleep
[76:24] the first first recommendation is do
[76:27] nothing and what I mean by that is if
[76:30] you've had a bad night of sleep you're
[76:31] awake for 3 hours do not sleep in any
[76:36] later into the morning do not go to bed
[76:40] any
[76:41] earlier do not increase your caffeine
[76:44] intake to try to offset it and do not
[76:47] nap during the day why am I telling you
[76:50] those
[76:50] things if you wake up later that
[76:54] following morning
[76:55] your adenosine clock that we spoking
[76:58] about this building up of sleepiness
[77:00] that happens when we wake up is going to
[77:03] start later in the day so when it comes
[77:06] time for you to fall asleep at what
[77:08] would then be the next night at your
[77:10] normal time you're not going to feel as
[77:13] sleepy why because you woke up that much
[77:16] later and you're setting yourself up for
[77:18] failure again equally don't go to bed
[77:22] any earlier if you have become a
[77:24] customed and your brain has and your
[77:26] Cadian clock has become accustomed to
[77:28] going to bed at a certain time and
[77:29] hopefully you're doing it regularly then
[77:31] getting into bed two or 3 hours early
[77:34] has the danger it's not a certainty but
[77:36] a danger of you then getting into bed
[77:38] and thinking well I'm I know I had a bad
[77:41] night of sleep last night but I still
[77:42] can't fall asleep straight away so now
[77:45] you're spending another 90 minutes in
[77:46] bed at the beginning because you've gone
[77:48] to bed 90 minutes earlier thinking it's
[77:50] a good idea to compensate don't do that
[77:52] either hold out even if you do feel
[77:55] tired my recommendation would be after
[77:58] that bad night of sleep hold out for as
[78:00] long as you can as close to your natural
[78:03] bedtime as possible then go to sleep and
[78:06] you'll give yourself highest chance of
[78:08] success don't over caffeinate that's the
[78:10] obvious one follow the beautiful hubman
[78:13] taper and then obviously try not to
[78:16] compensate with a nap why because that
[78:19] nap as happens when we sleep is going to
[78:22] remove some of that sleepiness that pene
[78:25] and once again you get into bed and
[78:28] you're not as sleepy as you would
[78:29] naturally be so you again go through a
[78:31] bad night cuz you're struggling to sleep
[78:33] or you wake up and you can't get back
[78:36] because you've got less weight of
[78:38] sleepiness on your shoulders due to the
[78:40] nap that happened earlier so I know it's
[78:43] hard but I would say when the alarm goes
[78:45] off after a bad night you just think I
[78:47] do not want to get up it's been such a
[78:49] rough night I know it's a shortterm gain
[78:53] but trust me it's a long-term loss
[78:56] because you're going to then just get
[78:58] into this vicious cycle so that's the
[79:00] first unconventional tip the can I just
[79:02] pause you for a second I I'm a little
[79:04] wide-eyed over here because
[79:06] um I did not know any of that typically
[79:10] if I get a poor night sleep I'll do
[79:11] whatever I can to recover that sleep um
[79:14] take a nap I'll do you know I'll adjust
[79:16] my to bedtime the next evening um so I
[79:20] hope everyone is paying uh careful
[79:22] attention to what Matt just said I mean
[79:25] the that's a important list because I
[79:27] think one of the very common things is
[79:29] for people to just not get a great
[79:30] night's sleep and I think most people
[79:32] think okay I'll drink a little more
[79:33] caffeine I will um go to bed a little
[79:36] earlier tonight you know maybe catch a
[79:38] nap in the afternoon this kind of thing
[79:40] um and I would have thought that too and
[79:42] maybe even suggested that and if you
[79:45] listen to the first episode and where we
[79:46] you know I list in a doomsday manner the
[79:49] things that can happen by way of a short
[79:50] night you you would think that that's
[79:52] what I would then recommend but it was
[79:54] imprinted On Me by um a wonderful sleep
[79:56] clinician U Michael palis um who sort of
[79:59] described some of these features and
[80:01] exactly the reasons sort of underlying
[80:03] them and I think I've just tried to bake
[80:05] that out into a formula that makes sense
[80:07] again it's not about the rule it's about
[80:10] explaining it because when you explain
[80:12] it at first it sounds contradictory and
[80:15] paradoxical when you understand it it
[80:17] hopefully sounds logical and actionable
[80:20] um so that would be the first suggestion
[80:23] could I just sorry interrupt again my
[80:25] audience hates when I interrupt but I'm
[80:26] doing it on their behalf because because
[80:29] because I I like to think that there's
[80:31] um some value in some of at least what
[80:33] you say in response um I saw a really uh
[80:37] terrific post from Dr Ronda Patrick um
[80:40] who we both know and admire um for her
[80:44] public education work public health
[80:46] education work and she described a study
[80:48] whereby if people are I think it was
[80:50] slightly sleep deprived Maybe by a few
[80:52] hours that some of the uh disruption to
[80:56] morning blood glucose regulation that is
[80:58] known to accompany partial sleep
[81:00] deprivation and certainly complete sleep
[81:02] deprivation but um in this case partial
[81:04] sleep deprivation could be offset by
[81:07] still exercising in the morning that's
[81:09] right um which frankly I have to say if
[81:12] I haven't slept that well then you know
[81:14] normally I'm like H maybe today's the
[81:15] day I don't exercise but now having
[81:17] heard that information I make it a point
[81:20] to still exercise um sometimes with a
[81:23] little bit less intensity yeah um
[81:25] because I don't want to be completely
[81:26] exhausted in the afternoon um and and go
[81:30] to sleep at you know 4 p.m. or something
[81:32] really disrupt my schedule but I thought
[81:33] that was really interesting because it's
[81:35] it's a it's a sort of um partial
[81:37] inoculation of of the blood glucose
[81:40] disruption caused by uh sleep
[81:42] deprivation I I'm so glad you brought it
[81:44] up it's a fantastic study and I um Rond
[81:47] and I um I think even tried to discuss
[81:50] it some years ago on a show but I like
[81:53] it because it does offer some degree of
[81:56] actionable Hope and a
[81:59] strategy blood sugar absolutely critical
[82:03] it is very sensitive to sleep when you
[82:06] don't get enough it goes in bad
[82:08] directions you used a very specific word
[82:11] cleverly so that word was
[82:15] partially at first you hear or read that
[82:18] study and Ronda was never suggesting
[82:19] this too I'm not saying that you think
[82:23] well if it offsets blood sugar and the
[82:26] city was saying exercise can nullify a
[82:30] lack of
[82:30] sleep you conflate that single outcome
[82:34] benefit with the idea that well but
[82:37] maybe it doesn't actually re or does it
[82:41] compensate for the deficits in immune
[82:44] function or
[82:45] cardiovascular disease concerns or my
[82:48] hormonal health or my learning in memory
[82:51] or my emotional and brain health maybe
[82:53] it does but maybe it doesn't so I think
[82:55] I would always just caution people to
[82:58] saying when you hear a study like that
[83:00] it's very natural to think oh that must
[83:02] mean that it translates to everything
[83:04] else in my body and everything else in
[83:06] my brain it may but it also may not
[83:10] be terrific so if you don't sleep that
[83:13] well do your best to still get some
[83:15] exercise but just be mindful of the um
[83:18] the fact that you know in the winter
[83:20] months especially that might if you go
[83:22] too hard in the gym or on a run you
[83:24] might be a little bit immune compromised
[83:27] just be mindful of the fact that you're
[83:28] you're a more vulnerable being when
[83:30] you're sleep deprived and that but that
[83:32] exercise can help adjust things in the
[83:34] right direction and if it's early in the
[83:36] day um presumably that's not going to
[83:38] disrupt your the proper bedtime and if
[83:41] it's later in the day I suppose as long
[83:44] as you don't need caffeine in order to
[83:46] uh to do that exercise and or um if
[83:50] you're familiar with exercising later in
[83:53] the day fine I you know I find if I
[83:55] exercise like I'm not one of these
[83:56] people think can go for a run at you
[83:58] know 7:00 at night and then just shower
[84:01] you're a morning type because I'm a
[84:02] morning type other people can okay we'll
[84:04] get into exercise a bit more in a later
[84:05] episode um we'll be sure to do that but
[84:08] nonetheless I just rais that now um so
[84:11] what are some of the other
[84:13] unconventional protocols for sleep so I
[84:16] think other suggestions I would have
[84:18] after do nothing would be try to think
[84:22] about limiting your time embed if you
[84:24] are struggling with sleep this is
[84:26] something that is used in the probably
[84:30] the most well validated psychological
[84:33] intervention for insomnia and it's
[84:36] called cognitive behavioral therapy for
[84:38] insomnia or cbti for short what happens
[84:42] is that you work with a clinician they
[84:44] interview you they assess all of the
[84:46] reasons that you may not be sleeping and
[84:48] then they create from the toolbox of
[84:50] many different options a bespoke
[84:53] tailored sort of saval R soup
[84:55] prescription for you for your treatment
[84:58] if you look at the studies of that
[85:00] collection of different tools in the
[85:01] cbti Box for intervention of insomnia
[85:05] and you ask of all of those which seems
[85:08] to carry the greatest impact on insomnia
[85:12] which has the greatest sort of
[85:14] Gravitas it seems to be this thing that
[85:16] we call bedtime rescheduling it used to
[85:19] be known as sleep restriction therapy
[85:22] but obviously if you come to to mean you
[85:24] say look I'm not sleeping very well I've
[85:27] got insomnia I say I understand and I've
[85:30] got a treatment for you it's called
[85:31] Sleep restriction therapy and you say no
[85:33] no no you didn't understand it I I'm not
[85:35] getting enough
[85:36] sleep but it's not quite that here's how
[85:39] it works if you are spending so much
[85:43] time in bed too much time in bed you are
[85:46] not forcing your brain to be
[85:49] efficient and by way of constraining
[85:52] your sleep window even to let's say five
[85:55] hours a night to begin with i Brute
[85:59] Force ruthless efficiency from your
[86:02] sleeping brain after several days so
[86:04] another analogy would be let's say
[86:06] you're trying to make a nice thin crust
[86:08] of of pizza base and you put the dough
[86:11] on the table and you start rolling it
[86:13] out if you roll it too thin it starts to
[86:15] get gaps and holes in it why because
[86:19] you've spread it out too far and you've
[86:21] started to create these absences
[86:24] that's the same thing that happens and
[86:26] it's very natural as an insomnia patient
[86:28] you would say I'm just not getting
[86:30] enough sleep so I'm going to start
[86:31] spending more time in bed it's the very
[86:33] worst idea another way would be to say
[86:36] look I go to the gym and I you know
[86:39] spend about an hour and a half working
[86:40] out but if I were to videotape you a lot
[86:42] of people are doing the I think you've
[86:44] I've coed as your phrase but um the 11th
[86:47] rep where people you know do the 10 reps
[86:50] and then all of a sudden there's the
[86:51] selfie or there's the social media oh
[86:53] yeah the texting they finish the lastup
[86:55] put down and then straight away on the
[86:57] TT and if you look they're only working
[87:00] out for about let's say 45 minutes and
[87:03] the other is wasted so what if the next
[87:06] day you came to the gym and I said look
[87:08] I'm sorry and there's some big bouncer
[87:10] guys at the door um you are only allowed
[87:13] to work out for 40 minutes and then
[87:14] we're going to eject you and the first
[87:17] day you go back and you do the same
[87:19] thing and then you've only got through
[87:21] 30% of your workout so you get booted
[87:24] the next day you come back in you do a
[87:25] little bit more and you get booted again
[87:27] after about five or six days you you've
[87:30] built up such a strong desire and hunger
[87:33] to get your workout in you walk in you
[87:35] put your phone on silent you put it over
[87:37] in the corner and you just get to it and
[87:40] that's the same thing that we're trying
[87:41] to do with sleep restriction therapy so
[87:44] you have to be a little bit careful do
[87:46] it under supervision especially if
[87:47] you're driving or you're operating heavy
[87:49] machinery we just want to keep an eye
[87:51] it's not necessarily a big concern but
[87:53] we would say Okay Andrew you're
[87:55] currently spending almost total about
[87:59] you know 8ish or 7 and a half hours in
[88:01] bed tonight I'm going to restrict you
[88:04] down to 5 hours a night and we're going
[88:06] to do this for the next week and the way
[88:08] that we normally do it is I don't change
[88:10] your wakeup time I change your to bed
[88:13] time why it's easier to stay awake
[88:16] longer than it is to wake up earlier so
[88:19] I put it on the front end to the
[88:21] compromise and at first things don't
[88:24] change but after maybe about four or
[88:26] five days of going through this I build
[88:29] up enough of a shortterm debt in your
[88:34] system that your system all of a sudden
[88:37] thinks gosh I just cannot be as lazy
[88:39] anymore I can't do this thing of waking
[88:41] up in the middle of the night and
[88:43] spending an hour and a half awake I
[88:45] don't have the choice anymore there's so
[88:47] much physiological buildup and pressure
[88:50] to do this and gradually what happens is
[88:53] that you sleep longer you don't wake up
[88:56] as much and after maybe about 2 weeks of
[88:58] doing this all of a sudden you go to bed
[89:02] at this later time so for you let's say
[89:04] you normally go to bed at 88: I'm going
[89:05] to have you go to bed at maybe 10:30 11:
[89:08] but we're still going to have you wake
[89:10] up at that sort of 4:30 a.m. Mark that
[89:14] you would normally wake up and all of a
[89:17] sudden you go to bed at 10:30 11 you're
[89:20] out like a light and then again the next
[89:23] thing you remember is your alarm going
[89:25] off saying I'm sorry you've got to wake
[89:27] up and what happens by way of that reset
[89:30] is gradually we will then once you're
[89:32] stable we will start to back it off
[89:35] we'll start to have you go to bed at 10:
[89:37] and if it stays stable then 9:45 then
[89:40] 9:30 and tit trate you back to where you
[89:43] were and if there's any sign that you're
[89:46] starting to not sleep well we zip it
[89:48] back up again the goal here is in some
[89:51] ways almost like hitting the reset
[89:54] button on your Wi-Fi router I'm trying
[89:56] to retrain your brain to better sleep
[89:59] because when you are not sleeping well
[90:03] you've lost your confidence in your
[90:05] ability to sleep and when I do this
[90:08] technique with you gradually your system
[90:11] and you cognitively relearn that you are
[90:14] a good sleeper and you can trust in
[90:16] sleep and now your sleep does not
[90:19] control you you control your sleep the
[90:22] hard part however is that it's not easy
[90:25] to go through and we have to be we have
[90:28] to usually ask two questions with
[90:30] individuals firstly what is your
[90:32] motivation for better sleep um we need
[90:35] to know that you really are motivated
[90:37] and then second you just stay with a hi
[90:39] touch White Glove frequency checking in
[90:41] on individuals and motivating them to
[90:44] keep going because it's very easy to
[90:45] fall off the wagon so that's the the
[90:48] next suggestion sleep restriction
[90:50] therapy or bedtime rescheduling as we
[90:53] would call it you said it's difficult
[90:55] for people to go through you know it
[90:56] takes a little bit of rigor a little bit
[90:58] of attention means in some cases getting
[91:00] less sleep than one would like but as
[91:03] compared to something that you know
[91:05] sadly I've experienced a lot in my life
[91:07] of having challenges with sleep and
[91:10] trying to get things back in order and
[91:11] looking at the the bed and just going oh
[91:13] my God Battle Ground you know Battle
[91:16] Ground you know it's um I think it it
[91:18] makes a lot of sense and I love the
[91:20] analogy to the gym somehow if there's a
[91:23] restriction into 1 hour in and out the
[91:25] door or maybe 70 minutes in and out the
[91:27] door CU you need to put your stuff in
[91:28] the locker or something like that it
[91:30] always at least for me gets done best
[91:33] when you just have those constraints I
[91:34] think there's something about the human
[91:35] brain that we don't do well in um un
[91:39] unrestrained systems that I I really
[91:41] think guard rails are are fantastic I
[91:43] love deadlines for instance yeah
[91:45] discipline is essentially the hard hard
[91:48] deadlines like or as they say in
[91:49] Academia because we you know write
[91:51] grants all the time drop deadlines which
[91:53] who up that ter but like if you don't
[91:55] make it that's it it's like there isn't
[91:57] a hey I'll send this in tomorrow 5:00
[91:58] p.m. Pacific time that website
[92:01] closes and you better Bo do you get
[92:04] things done all of a sudden it's
[92:06] surprising how much distraction you can
[92:09] you know pull out the noise and focus on
[92:11] the signal it's great signal to noise
[92:13] ratio yeah and I I love the idea that
[92:15] you that one can control their sleep as
[92:17] opposed to sleep controlling them I
[92:18] think that that's um and and this notion
[92:20] of sleep
[92:21] confidence um one's conf idence in their
[92:24] ability to sleep these are important
[92:26] terms and they're more than just terms
[92:27] because I think that um a a field and
[92:31] and an area of Health practice and gosh
[92:33] what's more important than sleep it's
[92:35] the foundation of mental health physical
[92:36] health and performance period um really
[92:39] thrives on a common um common
[92:43] nomenclature and and I really appreciate
[92:45] that you're you know peppering these
[92:47] episodes with it with um new
[92:49] nomenclature um that captures a lot of
[92:52] the essence of the protocols and the
[92:54] mechanisms so there that's my editorial
[92:56] please please continue I would say that
[92:59] in terms of other things maybe just to
[93:00] go through them um a little more quickly
[93:03] we've spoken some about a wind down
[93:06] routine most people underappreciate the
[93:08] importance of a wi down routine we often
[93:11] think that sleep is like a light bulb
[93:13] that we dive into bed we switch off the
[93:16] light bulb and sleep should appear just
[93:18] as quickly it's untrue sleep in terms of
[93:22] a process is much more physiologically
[93:24] like trying to land a plane it just
[93:26] takes time to come down onto the
[93:28] terraferma of good sleep at night
[93:32] whatever it is you enjoy as a relaxation
[93:35] method engage in it could be listening
[93:37] to a podcast could be reading a book
[93:39] maybe it's a meditation it's light
[93:41] stretching maybe whatever it is that you
[93:44] do just build it into your regiment you
[93:48] know you would never you know be driving
[93:50] down the road and then pull into your
[93:53] garage
[93:54] at the same 40 mph speed you gradually
[93:58] decelerate and you come to a
[94:00] stop it's the same thing with sleep so
[94:03] you need to find some way to decelerate
[94:05] and we've spoken about methods already
[94:07] as to how to do
[94:09] that the next tip is a little quirky and
[94:12] funny do not count sheep there's a great
[94:16] study from my colleague Dr Alison Harvey
[94:18] at UC berley and she put this to the
[94:20] test didn't make people fall asleep
[94:23] faster it made them take longer to fall
[94:26] asleep however she did find an
[94:29] alternative if you are not into
[94:32] meditation or podcasts or sleep stories
[94:35] or whatever it is that you you wish for
[94:38] try taking yourself on a mental walk and
[94:42] it has to be a walk that you know very
[94:44] well so let's say that you walk your dog
[94:46] every day and you know there's a couple
[94:48] of walks that you take with your dog do
[94:50] it in hyperd detail So Close Your Eyes
[94:53] you go to the front door you clip in the
[94:56] dog to the leash you walk out you go
[94:59] down the steps out to the driveway then
[95:02] you take a right but you always cross
[95:04] over and you look to the left and the
[95:05] right CU that's the place where traffic
[95:06] always comes you cross over and now
[95:08] you're walking up and there's that
[95:10] strange sort of set of garbage that's
[95:13] been outside of that house for a long
[95:15] time and you don't know why it hasn't
[95:16] been cleared and then you move that type
[95:19] of High Fidelity
[95:22] detail allows you to do what we said
[95:25] earlier which is get your mind off
[95:28] itself and when you do that again
[95:31] typically you fall asleep faster and
[95:34] that's what she found it was a great
[95:35] great study I really enjoyed that I'm
[95:38] curious as to why it works so well and
[95:43] I'm not challenging that it works I I
[95:45] can imagine having just closed my eyes
[95:47] and kind of imagine what that would be
[95:48] like it's very pleasant um there might
[95:52] be here I'm just specul ating something
[95:54] about engaging one's procedural memory
[95:56] because that's procedural memory you're
[95:58] trying to remember how you do something
[95:59] as opposed to declarative memory which
[96:01] is about facts you know I remember this
[96:03] and this is going to happen tomorrow I
[96:05] wonder whether or not there's something
[96:08] about using a procedural memory um as
[96:12] opposed to a declarative memory
[96:15] visualization somebody should do that
[96:18] study they should and I think it's
[96:20] certainly possible that when you're
[96:21] incorporating some aspect you know some
[96:23] aspects of the scene and the information
[96:26] is more sort of veridical and maybe EP
[96:28] sort of episodic declarative memory but
[96:31] when you're taking yourself for a mental
[96:33] walk what is the fundamental premise of
[96:35] that it's a walk it's motion it's
[96:37] procedural memory and so maybe it's
[96:39] something to do about with being more
[96:41] attentive to becoming embodied because
[96:44] when you're out walking and you're
[96:46] moving it is a more embodied experience
[96:50] than just sitting there at your desk
[96:52] which is your mostly your head and very
[96:55] little your body so I think it's an
[96:56] intriguing idea and um I think another
[97:00] tip that I now think of which also comes
[97:03] from the work of Dr Allison
[97:05] Harvey when individuals come up to me um
[97:09] after sort of public events or they see
[97:12] me at the airport they'll say look every
[97:15] night for some strange reason at 2:45
[97:19] a.m. I wake up and it happens three or
[97:22] four nights a week
[97:24] my first question to them is how do you
[97:27] know it's
[97:29] 2:45 and they say well I look at the
[97:32] clock or I look at my
[97:33] phone best piece of advice next remove
[97:37] all clock faces from the bedroom no
[97:40] matter how bad your sleep is going to be
[97:43] that night knowing what time it is is
[97:46] only going to make matters worse it is
[97:49] not going to make matters any
[97:51] better and that can create
[97:54] an anxiety trigger that you think it's
[97:56] 245 and then you're tossing and turning
[97:59] you look back at the clock and now it's
[98:01] 3:14 a.m. and you think I've got to be
[98:04] awake at 600 I've got that big meeting
[98:06] and now it's
[98:07] 5:2 don't do that to yourself and I even
[98:11] though I don't typically struggle with
[98:13] sleep I have no clock faces in my
[98:16] bedroom the phone that I use to help do
[98:19] the guided meditation is an old phone
[98:22] and it has
[98:23] only Wi-Fi connectivity and nothing else
[98:26] on it and I will only hit play and then
[98:31] I will never turn it around um I will
[98:34] not look at the clock face just doesn't
[98:35] help me another incentive for keeping
[98:38] the phone out of the room um if if one
[98:42] can I I understand there are reasons
[98:44] when um one would want the phone in the
[98:47] room if you know it's potentially
[98:50] signaling an emergency you know well I
[98:53] think I think it's a very important
[98:54] point and we've done some work in this
[98:56] area too what that phone does is create
[99:00] a a low level of anxiety it's what we
[99:04] call anticipatory
[99:07] anxiety one of the mechanisms separate
[99:10] from that well it's related to that if
[99:12] you look at teen phone use one of the
[99:14] reasons that they don't sleep very well
[99:16] at night is that they're constantly
[99:17] checking their phones because of fomo a
[99:20] fear of missing out what has gone on as
[99:22] I've been asleep and it's stunning the
[99:24] data but for most adults the other
[99:26] reason I don't like advocating for phone
[99:30] use when your alarm goes off in the
[99:33] morning what is the first thing that you
[99:35] do as you're in bed you swipe right or
[99:38] you unlock your phone and you instantly
[99:41] start checking social media emails text
[99:44] messages and this tsunami of Stress and
[99:48] Anxiety just floods over you it hits you
[99:51] like this wall of anxiet
[99:54] and I bring this up because it again
[99:57] trains your brain for expectation of
[100:01] that anticipatory anxiety has a
[100:04] consequence on your sleep and everyone
[100:06] knows this let's say that you've booked
[100:09] an early morning flight and you've got
[100:12] to wake up at 5:00 a.m. when normally
[100:14] you wake up at 7
[100:16] a.m. two things will usually happen
[100:19] first you know that you're just not
[100:21] going to sleep as deeply that night
[100:23] because you're on edge and this is for
[100:24] an interview or it's for critical like
[100:27] this is a non-negotiable trip that has
[100:29] to happen you've got to wake up the
[100:31] second thing is that when you
[100:34] are expecting that that wave of sort of
[100:40] a need to wake up and maybe it's just
[100:42] I'm expecting the phone again you will
[100:46] wake up just a few minutes before your
[100:48] alarm it's stunning how many people will
[100:50] say I had this big flight the next day
[100:53] and you almost know I'm going to wake up
[100:55] 2 minutes before my alarm goes off why
[100:58] because your brain has stayed in this
[101:00] shallow state of anticipatory anxiety
[101:03] and you don't get as much deep sleep and
[101:05] we've now demonstrated that we others
[101:07] when you have that low level anxiety the
[101:10] depth of your deep sleep is not as deep
[101:12] you don't get the good so again not to
[101:15] be trying to dictate what people do just
[101:17] be aware that when you do create that
[101:20] behavior and that regiment it becomes
[101:23] almost like a knee Jack sort of trained
[101:26] habitual response terrific let's talk
[101:29] about some of the advanced tools for
[101:31] Sleep enhancement you know what sorts of
[101:34] methods could one incorporate um you
[101:36] know what are some of the data and um
[101:39] and is there any way that we can sort of
[101:40] lump these into uh sort of a some
[101:43] framework or categories because I know
[101:45] there are a lot of different tools there
[101:47] are and I suppose this would be you know
[101:50] I know our friend pet has spoken about
[101:52] medicine 3.0 I think this would probably
[101:54] be sleep optimization 3.0 what is coming
[101:57] down the pike what is in the research
[102:00] and I think you know could make it to
[102:04] Market or has made it to Market but yet
[102:08] we're still right on the cusp we've seen
[102:12] Wei again in the Royal Wii have been
[102:14] able to augment human sleep in at least
[102:18] four different ways there are methods
[102:22] for electrical brain stimulation there
[102:25] are methods for acoustic stimulation of
[102:29] sleep so electrical stimulation of sleep
[102:31] acoustic stimulation of
[102:33] sleep thermal manipulation of sleep and
[102:36] then finally kinesthetic manipulation of
[102:39] sleep meaning movement based
[102:42] stimulation and I maybe I can just of go
[102:44] into each one of those the electrical
[102:47] stimulation is probably the most well
[102:50] rendered of all of those four
[102:54] in part because we started there and we
[102:57] and here it's not the Royal Wii we have
[102:59] done a lot of work on on this and um I
[103:01] can tell you a little bit about a
[103:03] company emerging from that but when
[103:05] you're trying to manipulate the human
[103:08] brain the principal currency in which
[103:10] the brain communicates is electricity
[103:13] now there are lots of things that help
[103:14] it do that such as chemicals but the
[103:17] principal language and um verbiage of
[103:20] the brain is electricity so if you're
[103:22] going to manipulate the brain why don't
[103:24] you speak in its currency of
[103:26] electricity so we and others have
[103:29] developed a method based on something
[103:31] called direct current brain
[103:35] stimulation and specifically something
[103:37] called transcranial direct current
[103:40] stimulation and I'll unpack that trans
[103:42] meaning movement so if you've heard of
[103:44] Transport it's about moving things from
[103:46] one port to another um transatlantic
[103:48] moving you know across the Atlantic so
[103:52] here the start of it is moving you're
[103:54] moving something from one place to the
[103:56] next trans cranial means through your
[103:59] skull so we're moving something through
[104:00] your skull transcranial direct current
[104:04] is the type of voltage or the type of
[104:07] electrical impulse that we're putting in
[104:09] it could be alternating current or it
[104:11] could be direct current and early
[104:14] methods and those we use have been
[104:16] direct current so transcranial direct
[104:18] current and then stimulation we're
[104:19] trying to stimulate the brain
[104:21] specifically the cortex
[104:24] and the way that we do this is that we
[104:26] apply electrode pads to your head and we
[104:28] insert a small amount of voltage into
[104:31] your brain now it's so small that you
[104:34] typically don't feel it but it has a
[104:36] measurable impact on that electrical
[104:38] brain
[104:39] activity so very early on scientists and
[104:42] we weren't the first to do do this by
[104:43] any means there was a great paper now
[104:46] famous paper in my field by um wonderful
[104:48] scientist yam born in Germany and they
[104:51] took a group of subjects and they
[104:53] applied these electrod pads and
[104:55] specifically to the front of the brain
[104:58] and I'll explain why we target the front
[105:00] of the brain with sleep electrical
[105:01] enhancement or the electrocutica as it
[105:04] were they applied these electr pads to
[105:06] two groups of participants and then they
[105:09] let them go into sleep and as you'll
[105:12] remember we described that in the first
[105:14] 2 or 3 hours of sleep is when you get
[105:16] most of your deep sleep and they were
[105:18] targeting those deep slow brain waves
[105:21] that we spoke about those big slow
[105:23] powerful waves that define deep sleep
[105:26] and what they did in one of those groups
[105:28] the other group was the placebo group
[105:30] they still had the electrodes applied
[105:32] they still went to sleep in the
[105:34] stimulation group they waited until
[105:36] those individuals went into deep sleep
[105:39] and I told you in the first episode that
[105:41] those deep sleep brain waves were going
[105:43] up and down very very slowly maybe just
[105:46] once or twice a second so they started
[105:49] to stimulate the brain inputting the
[105:53] stimulation pulses at a very slow Rhythm
[105:56] trying to match the rhythm of the brain
[105:58] in fact they were less than one Hertz
[106:00] less than one cycle per second in terms
[106:02] of a pulse it's almost as though we're
[106:06] trying to act like a a choir to a
[106:09] flagging lead
[106:11] vocalist and as these brain waves are
[106:14] going up and down you're trying to sing
[106:16] in time with those deep sleep brain
[106:17] waves and in doing so you're trying to
[106:19] boost and amplify the size of those deep
[106:21] sleep brain waves now to begin with they
[106:23] just waited until they went into deep
[106:25] sleep and they started to stimulate at
[106:27] that frequency and I'll come back to why
[106:29] that's important in a second but sure
[106:31] enough what they demonstrated they were
[106:33] able to boost the electrical quality of
[106:35] that deep sleep by about
[106:37] 60% and they were also able to almost
[106:40] double the amount of memory benefit that
[106:43] sleep provided wow which is very
[106:45] impressive that is impressive now I
[106:47] should note that there was more recently
[106:50] a replication attempt of that paper and
[106:52] they did very good job they really did
[106:54] it to the letter and they weren't able
[106:56] to replicate the effects as powerfully
[107:00] however subsequent Studies have now
[107:03] taken a more nuanced approach and it's
[107:05] the one that we've taken too and it's
[107:07] called closed loop
[107:10] stimulation Clos Loop here simply means
[107:13] that I'm not going to just wait until
[107:15] you go into deep sleep and then just
[107:17] take a chance and start stimulating your
[107:19] brain not knowing of the synchrony of my
[107:23] pulses into your brain relative to the
[107:26] brain waves that you're experiencing
[107:28] closed loop does do that so what I'm
[107:30] doing is I'm measuring the electrical
[107:32] brain waves that occurring and because
[107:35] they're nice and slow they're very
[107:37] predictable and I can program my
[107:39] algorithm and my brain stimulation
[107:41] machine to say I'm going to wait and
[107:43] wait and as soon as you are on this peak
[107:47] of your slow wave it turns out to be the
[107:49] negative trough but I'll forgo that we
[107:52] then try to strike at that point of
[107:55] midnight when you're going through the
[107:57] biggest sort of powerful sort of dip in
[108:00] the the brain wave and we're trying to
[108:02] sort of enhance it and same with the
[108:04] peak so this is where we take a we get a
[108:08] stimulus from the brain your electrical
[108:10] brain activity and then we create a
[108:12] timed response so it's a stimulus
[108:15] response it's a call and response Loop
[108:17] and by way of doing that it's a much
[108:19] smarter specific method than a more
[108:23] generalized I'm just going to stimulate
[108:24] and hope I catch those waves at the
[108:26] Peaks the reason is important because
[108:30] different people have different speeds
[108:32] of their slow brain waves they're all
[108:34] slow but your speed of brain wave may be
[108:37] a little bit different to mine and if
[108:39] I'm off with my stimulation by let's say
[108:42] just half a second or a quarter of a
[108:44] second time and time again I may be
[108:46] leaving some benefit on the table but
[108:49] closed loop stimulation creates this
[108:52] personalized electrical prescription of
[108:55] stimulation and when you do that you get
[108:58] very reliable benefits you can boost
[109:01] those deep slope brain waves you get the
[109:03] memory benefits but also what we found
[109:05] is you not only boost those deep sleep
[109:07] brain waves you boost another electrical
[109:09] signature that I spoke about in the
[109:11] first episode called sleep spindles and
[109:14] it seems to be the combination of those
[109:16] two things by way of electrical
[109:17] stimulation that provides the benefits
[109:20] now I should know I haven't mentioned
[109:23] this before you can buy these devices on
[109:25] the internet DIY style do not do that if
[109:29] you go on to the internet too you can
[109:31] also find some horror stories people
[109:33] have misappropriated the voltage they've
[109:36] got skin burs they've lost their
[109:37] eyesight for several weeks do not do
[109:39] this at home I promise you use you know
[109:42] wait until these products come out and
[109:44] that's one of the reasons why we've
[109:46] scaled it into a company and we're we're
[109:47] trying to do this we've got a long way
[109:50] to go yet huge number of trials that we
[109:52] have to do before you know I feel ready
[109:55] to to Really lay it on the on the table
[109:58] and
[109:59] say you should absolutely buy this it's
[110:03] it's well worth it but we're getting
[110:05] very very close I would say great what
[110:07] about thermal manipulations temperature
[110:11] I mean there's such a tight relationship
[110:12] between temperature and sleep and and
[110:16] wakefulness for that matter uh what sort
[110:19] of Technologies tools protocols exist to
[110:22] uh that use thermal manipulation as a
[110:25] way to augment sleep I love this topic
[110:29] because there are high-fi low-fi and noi
[110:32] technologies that you can
[110:35] use the story of sleep and temperature
[110:38] as you mentioned before and
[110:40] reiterated in terms of the three-part
[110:43] stanza that tur set that I would
[110:45] describe is again you need to warm up to
[110:49] cool down to fall asleep you need to
[110:50] stay cool to stay asleep you need to to
[110:52] warm up to wake up what that refers to
[110:55] technically in sleep science are what we
[110:57] call the thermal trigger zones so
[110:59] warming up to cool down to fall asleep
[111:02] is what we call the Sleep onset thermal
[111:04] trigger Zone cooling down or staying
[111:08] cool to stay asleep is about the deep
[111:10] sleep trigger Zone and then warming up
[111:13] to wake up is the activating alertness
[111:16] trigger
[111:18] Zone studies if you looked at them to
[111:20] begin with before they manipulated that
[111:22] found something fascinating if I take
[111:25] you Andrew huberman and I bring you into
[111:27] my lab and I remove your phone all your
[111:30] laptop and you say goodbye to your
[111:32] friends and family and you I bring you
[111:35] into the center and there are no cues as
[111:37] to what time of day no windows no
[111:39] nothing and I'm just going to say look
[111:43] I'll keep asking you
[111:45] but at the moment that you feel most
[111:49] sleepy just let me know
[111:52] it turns out that before that we' done
[111:54] the um delightful um intervention of
[111:58] inserting a rectal probe into you
[112:00] because that's the best way that we can
[112:02] measure your core body temperature so
[112:04] we're measuring your core body
[112:05] temperature and sure enough despite you
[112:07] knowing nothing about what time it is
[112:10] the moment that you will tell me I am
[112:13] ready to go to bed and I am sleepy is
[112:15] the moment when you are on the greatest
[112:18] decelerating trajectory of your core
[112:20] body temperature it is high highly
[112:22] predictive of how sleepy you will feel
[112:25] the way that your body does this is by
[112:28] pushing blood out to the surface regions
[112:31] of your skin notably your hands and your
[112:34] feet because these are these highly
[112:36] vascular regions and you had a great
[112:38] podcast from one of my heroes and good
[112:40] friend Craig hel who's done some amazing
[112:43] work on this at Stanford so naturally as
[112:47] we lie down blood races to our hands and
[112:50] our feet and also our head and we start
[112:53] to release that heat trapped in the core
[112:56] of our body and by releasing that heat
[112:59] at the surface our core body temperature
[113:01] drops hence the outer surfaces of you
[113:05] hands feet and face have to warm up for
[113:08] your core to cool down for you to fall
[113:12] asleep and in fact there was a great
[113:14] nature paper some years ago they just
[113:16] measured the temperature of someone's
[113:18] feet and they looked at how quickly they
[113:20] fell asleep and when they fell asleep
[113:23] sure enough the warmer your feet the
[113:26] faster you fell asleep why because the
[113:29] Warmness reflects the blood dilation and
[113:32] the pumping out of the blood to the
[113:34] periphery and then they did it in rats
[113:36] where they started to warm the pores of
[113:38] the rats and the Rats fell asleep more
[113:40] quickly and I love this notion of again
[113:43] I we don't do an but kind of love the
[113:45] notion of wrapping a beautiful little
[113:47] rat up in Cotton wall and I'm I'm
[113:49] warming its feet with this pad and it's
[113:51] just Bliss out out and then poof he's
[113:53] gone his after she I respect their
[113:56] privacy um so that was the early
[113:59] evidence that then led to a series of
[114:01] manipulation studies the most notable is
[114:04] brilliant it comes from a colleague uh
[114:07] in the Netherlands usan summeran and his
[114:09] group they created essentially what was
[114:13] a a wet think about a wet suit but that
[114:16] wet suit is covered with all of these
[114:19] thin tubes almost like veins that go all
[114:22] over the suit to all territories of your
[114:26] body and then what they would be able to
[114:29] do is peruse water warm water or hot
[114:32] water exquisitly to different parts of
[114:35] the brain or the body cool amazing yeah
[114:39] no pun intended thank so what they did
[114:41] was then they started to manipulate
[114:43] these peripheral regions sort of and
[114:47] sure enough when they did this they were
[114:50] able to have indiv uals fall asleep 25%
[114:55] faster and these were healthy
[114:57] individuals who are normally sleeping
[114:59] within a very natural quick period of
[115:02] time but they were able to Lop off 25%
[115:06] of that time simply by warming these
[115:09] certain parts of the brain to lift the
[115:11] blood away from the core of the body and
[115:14] by doing that they
[115:15] accelerated the temperature core
[115:18] deceleration and therefore increased or
[115:21] accelerated the the speed with which
[115:23] sleep arrived to those individuals sleep
[115:26] appeared with much greater alacrity than
[115:29] it would have done otherwise even though
[115:30] it was quick
[115:32] anyway so then not being satisfied with
[115:35] that they moved on to the deep sleep
[115:38] trigger Zone and this isn't you need to
[115:41] stay cool to stay asleep and here now
[115:44] they started to just continue to cool
[115:46] the core the central aspects of the
[115:50] body what they were able to do is
[115:52] increased the amount of deep sleep by
[115:56] somewhere between 25 to look at some of
[115:59] the data almost 40 minutes they were
[116:01] able to boost the amount of deep sleep
[116:03] with the thermal manipulation and when
[116:06] they were measuring the electrical brain
[116:08] waves and they decompose those brain
[116:10] waves even the power and the electrical
[116:13] quality of those slow waves was
[116:15] increased very impressive too next not
[116:18] being satisfied with that they turned to
[116:20] older adults for the reasons that we've
[116:21] just described what they found was that
[116:24] in those older adults when they were not
[116:26] manipulated with this thermal
[116:28] temperature in the second half of the
[116:30] night there was a 50% probability that
[116:32] they were going to be awake for some
[116:34] part of the second half of the night
[116:36] when they did the thermal manipulation
[116:38] they dropped that number down to
[116:40] 5% so they reduced a 50% probability of
[116:44] waking up down to 5% in older adults and
[116:47] again they improved the quality of their
[116:50] deep sleep Think About by by the way why
[116:53] that was so effective for older adults I
[116:55] guarantee you you've probably seen
[116:57] you've been in a warm climate or you've
[116:59] been down on the beach you know here
[117:01] sort of um in Los Angeles and people are
[117:04] out in shorts and t-shirts or crop tops
[117:07] then occasionally there will be someone
[117:09] and I love seeing these sites where you
[117:11] know a child is sort of Wheeling along
[117:14] their elderly parents it's a beautiful
[117:16] sort of scene of caring but the older
[117:19] adult they're not dressed in the same
[117:21] way that every one else is dressed on
[117:23] the beach they are wrapped up some of
[117:25] them have a Woolen hat on why older
[117:28] adults cannot Thermo regulate anywhere
[117:31] near as well as young adults is that
[117:34] right and it's the reason that older
[117:36] adults will always be saying I'm I'm
[117:37] just so cold and my hands and my feet
[117:39] especially are always cold now that's a
[117:42] problem for sleep because if you cannot
[117:45] Vaso dilate at the level of your hands
[117:47] and your feet you can't get the blood
[117:50] out from the core you can't drop your
[117:52] core body temperature as much and we
[117:54] started to understand from those types
[117:56] of data that part of the Aging sleep
[117:59] related problem equation is not just
[118:02] that the brain deteriorates in sleep
[118:04] related regions which we've been doing
[118:07] most of our work on it's also part of a
[118:10] body equation and a thermo regulatory
[118:13] equation there was also a great study
[118:15] unrelated from Australia they looked at
[118:17] insomnia patients and they put their
[118:20] hands or their feet in warm water and by
[118:22] doing that it's a manipulation you can
[118:24] see how quickly their hands and their
[118:25] feet what we call Vaso dilate filled
[118:27] with
[118:28] blood healthy people Faso dieted very
[118:31] quickly in response to that warm water
[118:33] meaning that their hands and their feet
[118:35] sort of you know had this red or at
[118:37] least for my feet they would be this red
[118:39] tone to them however in the insomnia
[118:43] patients they did not Vaso dilate
[118:45] anywhere near as well so once again it
[118:47] suggests that when you have problems
[118:48] with Sleep part of the equation may be
[118:51] that you have imper Thermo regulatory
[118:54] ability and we do see this in insomnia
[118:56] patients so that's that was I think a
[119:00] brilliant causal manipulation the
[119:03] problem is that most of us don't have
[119:05] access to a sort of come to bed eyes
[119:09] thermal suit so what can we do as a
[119:13] con please don't cut that I get myself
[119:16] into terrible trouble rightly so I
[119:18] should be I should be punished you'll be
[119:19] right what they did then was to say well
[119:22] okay let's look at this is there
[119:25] something that we could do that's
[119:27] cheaper and more accessible to the
[119:28] general public and if you look there's a
[119:31] literature that preceded that
[119:33] manipulation and it's so reliable that
[119:36] we now have a term for it in sleep
[119:37] science it's called the warm bath effect
[119:40] and many people will say look I love to
[119:43] have a a warm bath or a hot shower
[119:46] before bed and I think when I get out
[119:49] I'm nice and toasty and it's because I'm
[119:51] nice and warm that I fall asleep and I
[119:53] stay asleep it's the exact opposite when
[119:56] you get out of the warm bath or the
[119:58] shower you have once again vasod dilated
[120:01] at the surface of your skin you get out
[120:04] of the bath you get this huge thermal
[120:06] dump of heat away from the core what
[120:08] happens you fall asleep and you stay
[120:10] asleep more soundly now there are other
[120:12] reasons that that has a benefit it's
[120:14] relaxing you decompress you're staying
[120:16] away from technology Etc but that is one
[120:19] of the the thermal benefits and in fact
[120:22] there were Studies by a legend in my
[120:24] field who passed away just a few years
[120:25] ago um Jim horn at lury University in
[120:28] the UK and they did some of these
[120:30] pioneering studies they were able to
[120:32] improve the amount of deep sleep by
[120:34] almost 40 minutes in some individuals
[120:38] what was the protocol there as I recall
[120:41] I think they were in the bath for
[120:43] somewhere around or the bath duration
[120:45] time was somewhere around 30 minutes but
[120:47] they were doing sort of segments where
[120:49] it was maybe it was 40 minutes 10
[120:51] minutes in and then you could sort of
[120:53] get out I think the temperature because
[120:55] it was UK was around about 40°
[121:00] celsus somewhere in that region I may be
[121:03] getting those numbers wrong because I
[121:04] know we like to protocolized some of
[121:06] this but they were able to show some
[121:09] really Pleasant benefits to to Deep
[121:12] Sleep it also helped people fall asleep
[121:14] helped them fall asleep by about 25
[121:16] minutes faster in those people who are
[121:18] really having a hard time with sleep I'm
[121:20] going to take a hot bath tonight I
[121:22] sometimes do the sauna in the evening
[121:24] before sleep I'm a big fan of cold in
[121:26] the morning cold shower cold Plunge in
[121:28] the morning reverse engineering the the
[121:30] equation you're trapping the heat into
[121:31] the core of your body you're waking
[121:33] yourself up right and then the and in
[121:34] the evening I've used sauna the one
[121:37] issue with sauna is I really crank the
[121:39] heat of the sauna and then sometimes if
[121:41] you do that right before bed you take a
[121:43] you know warmish shower right afterwards
[121:44] you get into bed oftentimes I'll wake up
[121:46] thirsty and then um because it
[121:48] dehydrates you and then if I drink a lot
[121:50] of water to hydrate after in the sauna
[121:52] then I'm waking up too much in the
[121:53] middle of the night so I think sauna is
[121:55] great but um right before bed I try I
[121:58] would love to I don't have a a sauna at
[122:01] home or nor an access to I mean there
[122:03] are saunas in and around where I live
[122:07] but what I want to do is have it
[122:09] proximal to my bedtime and my bedtime
[122:12] because I'm a neutral type you know sort
[122:14] of around 11-ish nowhere is open and
[122:17] willing to allow me to sit in the S how
[122:19] long do you you sit in there usually I
[122:21] I'm a little Bonker about this I well if
[122:22] it's in the evening and I just want to
[122:24] relax I would say maybe 20 30 minutes
[122:26] and I I tend to go really warm warmer
[122:28] than I want to stay here P to do pet our
[122:31] friend I've done Sonic cold plunge with
[122:33] pet he usually does it in the evening
[122:35] goes Sonic cold Sonic cold Sonic cold
[122:37] okay uh warm shower um and I don't know
[122:41] how many nights a week he's doing that
[122:43] but terms of the temperature of the
[122:44] sauna you know generally somewhere
[122:46] between 175 and
[122:49] 210° depending on how heat adapted you
[122:51] are but I think a hot bath is great or a
[122:54] nice hot shower yeah I've certainly done
[122:56] that and when I'm traveling with jet lag
[122:59] I will absolutely that's part of my sort
[123:02] of jet lag protocol I'll make sure I do
[123:05] I'll because I don't really struggle too
[123:07] much with sleep at least at present but
[123:10] when I go through jet lag and I go back
[123:12] home to to London of course it's tough
[123:14] the worst The Living Daylights out of
[123:17] that and do as much as I can so I think
[123:19] that's probably the end of the the
[123:22] thermal story although we are now trying
[123:25] to see if we can take lowf fire
[123:27] approaches where we're going to do some
[123:29] footw we're trying to develop some footw
[123:31] technology that can be built
[123:34] into
[123:35] um maybe a mattress and some mattress
[123:38] companies uh there are some great ones
[123:40] uh I know obviously Mato at 8 sleep and
[123:43] they are they are doing amazing things I
[123:46] think his company again I have no
[123:48] affiliation but I we connect very well
[123:50] and he's brilliant so they're doing
[123:52] something like that I do uh use and love
[123:55] my eight sleep here's what I'd love
[123:56] somebody to engineer and we got a lot of
[123:59] people who listen to the podcast you
[124:00] think about product
[124:01] development it would be wonderful to
[124:03] have a portable pair of socks so that
[124:07] you can use them when you travel or when
[124:08] you go you know sleep anywhere at home
[124:10] or elsewhere that would warm your feet
[124:12] up at the beginning of the night so this
[124:14] is a place for us to recap warm up to
[124:16] cool down to fall asleep right stay cool
[124:20] stay cool to stay asleep and then warm
[124:23] up in the morning to wake up and so that
[124:27] is pretty straightforward to build into
[124:28] a pair of socks somebody can do this
[124:30] somebody do this okay uh so that's so
[124:33] we've done electrical we've done thermal
[124:36] what
[124:37] about auditory auditory so acoustic
[124:43] stimulation in a very similar way
[124:46] to electrical stimulation where you're
[124:49] trying to Target that deep sleep and see
[124:53] if you a better analogy is probably a
[124:56] metronome and you're trying to see if
[124:58] you can kind of force the metronome
[125:00] further over back and forth with these
[125:03] types of Technologies so auditory
[125:06] stimulation came on the map again I
[125:07] think probably yam born's group in
[125:09] Germany was some of the first to do this
[125:11] they initially started with this same
[125:14] generalized approach where they would
[125:15] take acoustic tones and they would first
[125:18] assess what is your level of awake
[125:21] weening threshold so you would be asleep
[125:24] and they would just have these tones
[125:25] very light tones like a sort of ping
[125:28] ping and they would gradually increase
[125:30] the volume up and they would look to see
[125:32] what is the point where that volume of
[125:34] the tone wakes you up and then they
[125:36] understood your specific threshold
[125:38] what's called an Awakening threshold and
[125:41] they would set the volume to a sub
[125:43] Awakening threshold great so you've got
[125:45] that locked in place and now you start
[125:49] and they did this within the first 990
[125:51] minutes of people falling asleep they
[125:53] started to play these sub Awakening
[125:56] level volume levels of tones but they
[125:59] were playing them at this very slow
[126:02] frequency as if again they're trying to
[126:05] syn and match the slow dancing Rhythm of
[126:10] the slow brain waves and sure enough in
[126:13] that first study and it was
[126:14] indiscriminate meaning they just set the
[126:17] tones PL like a metronome set the tone
[126:20] set the and sorry set the volume and
[126:23] then set the Cadence of the volume the
[126:25] speed the frequency of those tones to
[126:29] just a little bit less than one Hertz a
[126:30] little bit less than one cycle per
[126:32] second and then off you drifted to sleep
[126:34] and they played it for the first 90
[126:35] minutes CU that's the rich phase of deep
[126:37] sleep and they were able to increase the
[126:40] amount of Deep Sleep significantly the
[126:44] problem in that first study was that
[126:46] they also did a memory test because in
[126:48] all of these studies including my own
[126:50] even if I boost your sleep tonight
[126:53] Andrew hubman my next if that's the
[126:55] result that you show me I have four
[126:57] words for you as a scientist yes and so
[127:01] what is it functional because if I boost
[127:05] your sleep but it doesn't change
[127:07] anything to you the organism the next
[127:09] day I'm going to suggest that that
[127:11] enhancement is Epi phenomenal not
[127:14] functional so it has to improve some um
[127:18] some reasonable metric in wakefulness
[127:20] that like improves improved memory um
[127:22] improved uh task switching ability so
[127:25] it's outcome measures strength correct
[127:28] something yeah so even if I for example
[127:31] you know lower your blood pressure with
[127:32] a new drug if I'm not changing your
[127:35] cardiovascular disease risk then the
[127:37] question is why am I just continuing on
[127:40] with the drug if it's not really
[127:41] changing much same thing here and what
[127:43] they found was that when they did the
[127:45] memory test the next morning by
[127:47] enhancing that deep sleep there actually
[127:48] wasn't a memory benefit so perhaps what
[127:52] was happening is that this was just
[127:54] non-specific so again they then returned
[127:57] and now others have returned to the
[127:58] closed loop mechanism where now I've got
[128:01] electrodes on your head and I'm
[128:03] measuring your slow wave brain waves and
[128:05] literally I am next door in the room and
[128:08] I'm watching those slow brainwaves go up
[128:09] and down and then I've got a computer
[128:11] algorithm that is watching those
[128:13] watching in quotes watching that too and
[128:16] it's predicting when the next wave is
[128:17] going to come and when it does auditory
[128:20] tone clicks Awakening you don't wake up
[128:23] and sure enough when you sort of tone
[128:26] into the brain at that time you boost
[128:30] the the size of that brain wave and once
[128:33] again they boosted the size of those
[128:34] deep sleep brain waves they also improve
[128:36] those more quick burst of activity the
[128:39] sleep spindles and now sure enough they
[128:42] were able to improve memory however if
[128:44] you look at that paper and here's why I
[128:46] think the first method may not have
[128:48] worked very well and why I don't suggest
[128:51] people start trying to set this up
[128:54] themselves when they kept stimulating
[128:57] the
[128:58] brain slow wave after slow wave after
[129:01] about three or four strikes of the
[129:05] metronome to boost those slow waves the
[129:08] benefits stopped and if they kept going
[129:12] you started to inhibit the amount of
[129:15] naturally occurring deep sleep brain
[129:16] waves why would it do this deep sleep
[129:19] brain waves I told you in the first
[129:21] episode are a Act of incredible neural
[129:24] coordination it's Mass coordination now
[129:27] one of the extreme versions of mass
[129:30] coordinated propagated activity that is
[129:32] maladaptive that is pathological is
[129:35] called an epileptic seizure and your
[129:38] brain has in place for the most part
[129:40] stop gaps to prevent that type of spread
[129:45] of vast amounts of coordinated
[129:47] spontaneous electrical oscillations
[129:50] because the brain is such a conductive
[129:52] device that once you get it going you've
[129:54] got to be careful because it may start
[129:56] to conduct out of control so we think
[129:58] that these checks and balances that were
[130:00] in place even though you can
[130:02] artificially stimulate it for a while
[130:04] after a while the brain
[130:06] says you've got to back off for a while
[130:09] because this is getting a little bit out
[130:10] of control you do a breath pause and
[130:12] then you restart again and you get the
[130:14] benefit and then you breath pause so
[130:16] You' got to do it a little bit
[130:17] intimately now you've got to read the
[130:19] what we call the supplemental materials
[130:21] of that paper you've got to go it's like
[130:23] the fine print on a legal document if
[130:25] you dig into it you can see that that
[130:27] was the case but um it it wasn't
[130:29] necessarily evident so those were really
[130:32] the data
[130:33] on acoustic stimulation and now with
[130:36] this closed loop acoustic stimulation
[130:38] that we've got going on it seems to
[130:41] provide these nice
[130:42] benefits some people then will probably
[130:45] be asking what about these noise
[130:48] machines what about white noise Etc
[130:51] I've taken a look at this and so far I
[130:54] think for White Noise machines the data
[130:56] is
[130:57] equivocal there was a recent study
[131:00] review article I think it looked at
[131:02] about 37 different studies I could have
[131:05] this wrong and what they found was that
[131:08] there was no reliable robust directional
[131:11] effect of white noise machines on sleep
[131:15] some studies demonstrated that it helped
[131:17] sleep some studies didn't change sleep
[131:19] some studies suggested it may make sleep
[131:21] a little bit worse just nothing reliable
[131:23] but maybe it's masking external sound
[131:26] correct so I think if and the one of the
[131:28] positive studies in that scenario was a
[131:30] study that was done in New York City and
[131:33] it was in a region where there was a lot
[131:38] of um external sound pollution and noise
[131:42] as you could well imagine it's New York
[131:44] City and sure enough that's where they
[131:47] got some really nice benefits of the
[131:49] white noise machine so I think it is
[131:51] you're right context dependent there was
[131:53] a an interesting recent study that came
[131:56] out from uh eaman Learners group at uh
[132:00] the University of Texas San Antonio and
[132:03] they didn't use White Noise they used
[132:06] pink noise now what's the difference
[132:09] pink noise has a little less what we
[132:13] call power or intensity in the higher
[132:16] frequency ranges of the sound spectrum
[132:19] and it's more enriched in the slower
[132:23] domain of that power Spectrum which you
[132:26] could argue is a bit more fitting with
[132:28] sleep and I think this study may have
[132:30] been a nap study or I may be wrong but
[132:33] anyway what they found was that they
[132:34] increased Total Sleep Time by I think it
[132:38] was close to 30 minutes with the pink
[132:40] noise they did not change the amount of
[132:43] deep sleep but they did inhance the
[132:45] amount of stage two non-rm sleep which
[132:48] we have spoken about before and we will
[132:50] in subsequent episod episodes that is
[132:52] beneficial for things like learning in
[132:53] memory including motor skills and they
[132:56] increased the amount of REM sleep to a
[132:58] much more modest degree but those
[133:00] changes were significant so I'm not
[133:04] trying to rule out noise machines right
[133:08] now and I have no affiliation with any
[133:10] company or anything in that space um I
[133:13] don't want to throw the baby out with
[133:14] the bath water I just simply think that
[133:16] right now we don't have enough evidence
[133:18] but as you and I know as scientists
[133:21] absence of evidence is not evidence of
[133:23] absence just because it doesn't exist
[133:25] doesn't mean that I don't think that
[133:27] it's still a potential root these types
[133:29] of machines what about
[133:33] kinesthetic stipular uh tools protocols
[133:38] um you know body position is something
[133:40] that has an interesting relationship to
[133:42] propensity to fall asleep based on brain
[133:44] cooling that we talked about in another
[133:46] episode but what about manipulation of
[133:50] the body's mov movement um uh yeah what
[133:53] is there anything in that domain it
[133:55] sounds wacky at first yeah it does but
[133:59] but I said it so you I still want to
[134:02] know come on social media just be be
[134:05] nice be friendly um I would say that if
[134:09] you look back in again the annals of
[134:12] human
[134:13] history from the very early Inception
[134:16] you will see mentions of a child being
[134:19] rocked in a Manger or rocked in a crib
[134:22] often parents will have will take their
[134:25] young infant and you will quote unquote
[134:27] Rock them to sleep and we as adults will
[134:33] sometimes get in a hammock and if you're
[134:35] rocked what happens you will fall as
[134:37] it's that prototypical image of someone
[134:40] with their hat over their face and in a
[134:42] hammock and they've sort of fallen
[134:44] asleep so it was very clear that
[134:47] something was going on in this space and
[134:50] then a group from the University of
[134:52] Geneva um led by another fantastic sleep
[134:55] scientist Sophie Schwarz did an epic
[134:59] study that again it's one of those
[135:01] studies that I
[135:03] probably once more wished I'd
[135:06] done here's what they did they took a
[135:09] bed frame and then they suspended it on
[135:12] chains from the ceiling now stick with
[135:14] me I'm not going in that you know
[135:16] there's no hot candle wax being applied
[135:18] here don't worry I'll I'll keep it PG
[135:20] again and then the next thing that they
[135:22] did was connect a rotating arm to that
[135:25] bed at the side of the bed and that arm
[135:29] would start to simply just push the bed
[135:32] laterally from left to right left to
[135:35] right and they started just swinging the
[135:36] bed in a very controlled manner but here
[135:39] and I should ask Sophie exactly why they
[135:41] made this choice they were rotating the
[135:44] bed not at this sort of around one Hertz
[135:48] which is what we've done with electrical
[135:49] stimulation or acoustic stimulation
[135:51] they were doing it
[135:52] at25 Herz which is much slower still
[135:56] almost imper is rocking you know once
[136:01] every four seconds it's a very
[136:06] slow
[136:08] lull and sure enough what they found in
[136:12] the first series of studies they did a
[136:13] nap study a 90-minute nap study when you
[136:16] did this rocking Motion versus when the
[136:18] bed was still they increased the speed
[136:21] with which people fell asleep they
[136:23] boosted the amount of deep sleep and
[136:25] they boosted the amount of those sleep
[136:28] spindle oscillations that we described
[136:31] not satisfied they then said well what
[136:32] happens across a night of sleep they did
[136:35] it then across a night of sleep they
[136:37] replicated the same findings and now
[136:39] they got a memory benefit now the memory
[136:41] benefit you could argue is modest it was
[136:44] 10% of a memory improvement benefit when
[136:47] you woke up from sleep relative to the
[136:50] already able benefit that sleep
[136:52] naturally gives when you're not rocking
[136:53] the bed but you think well 10% if I were
[136:58] let's say a student and I got you know a
[137:02] b and someone the professor said Look by
[137:05] the way there is something that you can
[137:06] do and we can increase your grade by 10%
[137:09] and you can get to an A or an A plus
[137:11] depending on the grading system would
[137:13] you take it would you take 10% benefit
[137:16] absolutely you would s grade point
[137:18] average in increase so it's it it isn't
[137:22] trivial necessarily well I also I'm I'm
[137:25] positively surprised how important this
[137:28] um but so what uh condition is for you
[137:31] sleep researchers you know that that an
[137:34] enhancement in say deep sleep or rapid
[137:36] eye Moon movement sleep needs to
[137:37] translate to some Daytime benefit um in
[137:40] order to really get you guys excited but
[137:44] but here's why I I think that's great
[137:45] it's always great to have a high
[137:47] threshold for excitement um but one of
[137:49] the things that that one could argue is
[137:53] that you know there are only so many
[137:55] tests that you can have in a Laboratory
[137:57] um of daytime functioning I think I am
[138:00] on board the the fact that sleep is the
[138:04] Bedrock of mental health physical health
[138:06] and performance so an improvement in in
[138:09] you know sign a statistically
[138:11] significant Improvement in deep sleep or
[138:13] REM sleep to me just seems like that's
[138:16] got to be good for something we might
[138:18] not know what that something is to test
[138:20] in the laborat
[138:21] but it could be that the threshold for
[138:22] improvement of say gut microbiome
[138:24] production of neurotransmitters is you
[138:27] know .1% Improvement in deep so we don't
[138:29] know I made that up so don't quote that
[138:31] statistic anyone but I so admire the the
[138:34] the um kind of extreme thresholds of
[138:36] what you what gets you guys excited well
[138:38] no your point is a very good one because
[138:40] you could argue based on what I just
[138:42] went back and said regarding the
[138:45] exercise study with Ronda Patrick I've
[138:48] just reversed my own threshold logic I
[138:51] said to you well okay exercise was able
[138:53] to overcome some of the deficits that
[138:57] occur by way of sleep deprivation for
[138:58] your blood sugar but don't assume that
[139:01] that necessarily means it overcomes the
[139:04] detriments the other detriments that
[139:05] you'll have for your hormonal Health
[139:08] your you know Thermo regulatory capacity
[139:10] your cardiovascular disease your brain
[139:12] function so I've just said look simply
[139:16] you know one thing doesn't mean that
[139:18] you've assessed all things and now now
[139:20] I'm saying okay if you don't show that
[139:23] it improved that one thing then it's not
[139:26] functional but Matt by your own logic
[139:29] you've said that but you didn't assess
[139:31] many of the other things so even if it
[139:33] didn't improve memory as you said it's
[139:35] the Bedrock of all things
[139:38] Health you need to assess all of them
[139:41] before you make your conclusion of the
[139:44] yes and so what failed test so you're
[139:46] absolutely right to point that out um so
[139:51] what was interesting after that data
[139:53] came out in humans which is usually the
[139:55] opposite way around they started to look
[139:57] in in animal models and you mentioned
[139:59] the vestibular system this ability for
[140:02] us to understand motion and movement and
[140:05] there's lots of mechanisms for that they
[140:07] looked at mice and they started doing
[140:11] this rocking again and sure enough the
[140:14] mice fell asleep faster but then they
[140:17] found a strain of mice that did not have
[140:21] the lateral vestibular sensation
[140:25] mechanism and they rocked them just the
[140:27] same way zero change in their sleep
[140:31] because you could imagine well it's
[140:33] important to understand the mechanism
[140:34] here is it that when you're rocking
[140:37] there is it's not just about vestibular
[140:39] stimulation maybe that
[140:41] rocking sort of modestly changes
[140:44] friction which changes temperature you
[140:47] could come up with all sorts of wacky
[140:48] reasons this was a very clear C caal
[140:50] manipulation of the lateral vestibular
[140:53] system and if that is not in place you
[140:55] fail to get the benefit so it clearly
[140:57] has something to do with the vestibular
[141:00] system can I Venture a guess as to why
[141:02] that is yeah I interrupted but in case
[141:05] that happen to be right by some chance I
[141:07] previously talked about the um the need
[141:11] to lose uh a sense of one's posture in
[141:15] relationship to gravity in order to fall
[141:17] asleep right you have to go into this uh
[141:20] lack of proceptive awareness in order to
[141:22] fall asleep propri reception being the
[141:24] knowledge of where one's limbs are
[141:25] relative to the body and body relative
[141:27] to other surfaces and gravity yeah and
[141:29] um this is something that can be
[141:31] accomplished in these uh you know
[141:32] flotation tanks and things like that um
[141:35] and other ways go to outer space but um
[141:39] the cheaper version the cheaper version
[141:42] um
[141:43] so could it be that the rocking at that
[141:46] very slow frequency um is tapping into
[141:49] the vestibular system in a way that that
[141:51] propri receptive feedback about body
[141:53] position is somehow um uh starts to
[141:57] vanish and because I'm intrigued by this
[142:00] idea that you have to lose perception of
[142:03] your body's positioning and and propr
[142:05] receptive awareness in order to fall
[142:07] asleep uh and maybe your a description
[142:10] earlier of a protocol of going on a
[142:12] mental walk um in order to fall asleep I
[142:15] I just feel like these things are
[142:16] starting to converge on on on some
[142:18] themes here central Comm pathway that
[142:20] could be the absence of I think it's
[142:23] entirely possible in some ways right now
[142:26] we think that these two things are
[142:28] associated that as you're falling asleep
[142:30] gradually you will lose propri receptive
[142:33] sensation okay
[142:35] but simply the fact that two things are
[142:38] associated doesn't necessarily mean
[142:40] they're causal but your suggestion here
[142:43] is a very elegant way of testing that
[142:45] hypothesis which is that perhaps if you
[142:48] could show that the symmetric of
[142:51] proprioception becomes compromised when
[142:53] you start doing
[142:55] lateral sort of kinesthetic or movement
[142:59] stimulation that's a very powerful
[143:01] demonstration that it's not just so here
[143:04] with the study in the mice they lacked
[143:07] the lateral vestibular sensation and you
[143:10] lost the Sleep benefit but maybe there's
[143:12] one step down which is that when you
[143:14] lose that vestibular stimulation you
[143:17] lose the benefit on the thing that
[143:19] really is augment ing the Sleep which is
[143:21] the change in Pro reception so this is
[143:24] the first step in a chain of command and
[143:27] you've missed the final common
[143:29] transactor of that ingredient called
[143:31] better
[143:32] sleep and those I would say are probably
[143:34] the the four current bastions of sleep
[143:39] augmentation hopefully that describes to
[143:41] listeners the range of where sort of
[143:44] sleep 3.0 sleep enhancement 3.0 is going
[143:48] and also describes the way in which
[143:50] which we can come down the strata from
[143:52] high friction low friction to no
[143:53] friction um and also in terms of cost
[143:57] where you can have high cost minimal
[143:58] cost low cost I mean hot bath or shower
[144:01] is Pennies on the dollars so especially
[144:03] if you take a cold shower in the morning
[144:05] and save on your heating bill so you can
[144:06] take a little bit longer hot shower in
[144:08] the evening and then you net to zero
[144:11] difference um it's just my way of saying
[144:13] take a cold shower in the morning feels
[144:15] great when you get
[144:17] out what about some ways to enh rapid
[144:21] eye movement sleep beyond what you've
[144:23] covered up until now so I think there
[144:27] are probably two emerging data sets that
[144:30] I've been intrigued by one of which
[144:32] we've been doing some work on and it
[144:34] comes back to Thermal what I fail to
[144:36] mention is not just that you need to
[144:38] warm up to wake up which you do but you
[144:41] also need to warm up to REM sleep but
[144:44] not too much if you take an organism or
[144:48] a human being and you strip them of bed
[144:50] sheets and strip them of clothes so
[144:52] they're basically almost on
[144:55] natural if you warm the body up to what
[144:58] we call the Thermon neutral point so it
[145:02] tends to be and this sounds extreme and
[145:04] it you don't have to do this because
[145:06] you're under sheets and that makes a
[145:08] world of difference but if you warm the
[145:11] room to about 30° C which gets close to
[145:16] at the surface ambient level for your
[145:19] skin something that can bring your core
[145:22] body temperature up back up to operating
[145:24] because I told you when you go when
[145:26] you're in that deep sleep trigger Zone
[145:28] the middle Zone your core body
[145:30] temperature drops and it drops
[145:31] significantly and to wake up you have to
[145:34] warm up but on the journey to warming up
[145:37] you also have to get to Thermon
[145:40] neutrality for you to have REM sleep if
[145:43] I keep you too cold I can reduce the
[145:47] amount of REM sleep if I get you too hot
[145:50] but I can imper the amount of REM sleep
[145:53] so it's a Goldilocks phenomenon not too
[145:55] little not too much just the right
[145:57] amount if I keep you there in terms of
[146:00] your thermal um net neutrality I can
[146:03] boost your RAM sleep now that's
[146:11] fishlyn they run at different hot
[146:13] temperatures they've got different
[146:14] partner situations so you need a Clos
[146:17] loop system again but it's something
[146:19] that very interested in because almost
[146:23] all of the methods that I've described
[146:24] and you are smart to pick this up all
[146:26] target deep non-rm sleep but we spoke
[146:29] about in the first episode every stage
[146:31] of sleep is important and in subsequent
[146:33] episodes I'll tell you exactly why REM
[146:35] sleep is so critical so how can we boost
[146:38] that that's one way that we're starting
[146:40] to explore it but nothing I think solid
[146:43] yet the other is some of the drugs the
[146:46] newer sleep medications that have come
[146:48] onto the market and um again I think I
[146:51] mentioned I I did take the task and I
[146:54] feel perhaps rightfully so about the
[146:56] classic sleep medications that if you
[146:58] look at the scientific data if you can
[147:00] avoid them it's probably best to do so
[147:03] things like ambient Etc we call them the
[147:06] Z drugs because they all start their
[147:08] sort of generic names are sort of start
[147:10] with a zed you know
[147:13] um ambian for example um has uh has a
[147:18] zed at the start of it for its generic
[147:19] name but but I don't want to get into
[147:21] naming any
[147:23] necessarily yeah but um for
[147:26] ambient what's interesting about those
[147:29] medications again they're in a class of
[147:31] drugs that we call the sedative
[147:32] hypnotics so again sedation not sleep
[147:35] and also there's been some great work
[147:37] again by der and dyin colleagues if I
[147:39] were to show you the that that
[147:40] electrical signature of your deep sleep
[147:43] it does look as though those drugs kind
[147:44] of increased the amount of electrical
[147:47] activity in that slower deep sleep range
[147:49] except once you go all the way to the
[147:51] far left to the slowest of those slow
[147:53] brain movies which turns out to be the
[147:57] the types of waves that are most
[147:59] beneficial for most health related brain
[148:01] and body functions you get this huge
[148:05] dent in your electrical brain wave
[148:07] activity it's almost as though those
[148:09] drugs take a bite out of that realm of
[148:13] of electrical activity and of course
[148:15] there are issues with daytime sleepiness
[148:18] and some safety related issues that has
[148:20] been Health associations not necessarily
[148:22] causal and so I was you know I I offered
[148:26] one scientific Viewpoint of those
[148:28] medications in the book and um and so be
[148:31] it it's not as though i' I'm anti-m
[148:33] medication as I said and some of the new
[148:36] medications are very interesting brings
[148:37] me back to REM sleep there's a new class
[148:39] of sleep medications called the Doras
[148:42] and it stands for it's d o r a small s
[148:48] and it stands for Jew
[148:50] orexin receptor
[148:54] antagonists oh my goodness mouthful that
[148:56] just sounds like word salad to anyone
[148:58] who's not a
[149:00] neuroscientist orexin which is part of
[149:03] that um set of words is a chemical in
[149:06] the brain and ereen became prominent
[149:09] with the study of noopsy and what we we
[149:12] as the Royal Wii people like Emanuel
[149:14] Mano and others um at Stanford what they
[149:17] discovered was that noptic patients have
[149:19] a found deficit in this this chemical
[149:23] orexin and receptors also called
[149:26] hypocretin and it has a function both it
[149:28] turns out for wakefulness and a function
[149:31] for feeding and eating related behaviors
[149:33] hypocretin was probably more related to
[149:35] it when it was because it was discovered
[149:37] right around the same time um two
[149:39] different groups yes exactly beautiful
[149:42] two different groups named it
[149:44] differently but noopsy as some people
[149:48] may know is it's a condition to sleep
[149:50] disorder and one of the symptoms is
[149:52] called excessive daytime sleepiness
[149:54] where you have inappropriate invasions
[149:56] of sleep during the day when you want to
[149:59] be awake why well it turns out that this
[150:02] chemical ereen acts like a finger on the
[150:05] light switch of all of the apparatus in
[150:08] your brain that switches on to force you
[150:11] awake it reaches down into the it's
[150:13] released from a central part of your
[150:15] brain called the hypothalamus and it
[150:16] releases down into the brain stem to
[150:18] activate what we call the ascending
[150:21] arousal system or the reticular
[150:23] ascending arousal system of the brain
[150:25] and when that lights up it's like the
[150:26] light switch which says on for waking
[150:29] brain activity and so what was happening
[150:32] was that this ereen up higher up was not
[150:37] forcing the finger of wakefulness on
[150:40] during the day so almost instead of a
[150:42] switch which is what you
[150:44] want it was more like a dimmer switch
[150:47] and you know when you get to that dimmer
[150:48] switch point right in the middle where
[150:50] it's flickering it's on it's off it's on
[150:51] it's off that's almost the state in
[150:54] which the narcoleptic brain was because
[150:55] they had a deficiency of orexin so that
[150:58] was the ereen story in nopy so why is it
[151:02] relevant for insomnia well people
[151:04] realized the problem with Epsy is that
[151:07] they're asleep during the day when they
[151:09] want to be awake but the opposite
[151:11] problem is true of insomnia patients
[151:14] they want to be asleep at night but
[151:17] they're awake so why don't we
[151:19] selectively de develop a drug that goes
[151:21] after this finger that flips the light
[151:24] switch on for wakefulness but now let's
[151:26] block it at night so we flick the switch
[151:30] back in the off position we turn out the
[151:32] lights of the brain and we remove the
[151:35] problem of insomnia which is excessive
[151:39] wakefulness at night which is one of its
[151:41] problems but and therefore when you
[151:44] remove that indirectly what comes in its
[151:47] place is this thing called more
[151:49] naturalist sleep and that's why it's
[151:51] being more favored now as the principal
[151:53] drug um it's still not necessarily well
[151:56] known by physicians or it's not very
[151:58] well prescribed it's not very well
[151:59] covered here in the United States
[152:00] unfortunately with insurance so it's a
[152:02] very expensive option right now Health
[152:05] Providers will choose not to do that
[152:07] unfortunately so what's interesting
[152:10] about that drug though is that it's
[152:12] mixed in terms of the studies but quite
[152:14] reliably it does seem to improve sleep
[152:17] very much so but it seems to unlike
[152:19] those classic sleeping pills which
[152:21] artificially look like they're
[152:22] increasing deep sleep even though
[152:24] they're they're not doing sedation these
[152:27] drugs can improve most all aspects of
[152:29] sleep but including REM sleep which
[152:31] those classic sleeping pills did not why
[152:34] is it doing that we still don't know but
[152:36] one of the things that the these Dora
[152:39] drugs do that block the erex in that
[152:41] take off the the the on position of the
[152:44] light switch and flip them off when you
[152:47] switch it off it can actually then then
[152:50] allow the activation or the stimulation
[152:53] of something called melanin concentrated
[152:56] hor hormone or MCH in the brain and that
[153:00] when it is um triggered on can stimulate
[153:04] another chemical called acety choline in
[153:07] the brain which is a
[153:09] neurotransmitter if there is one
[153:10] neurotransmitter in the brain that seems
[153:12] to be responsible almost exclusively for
[153:15] this thing called REM sleep or
[153:16] dominantly I should say for REM sleep it
[153:18] is atile Coline this was discovered way
[153:21] back in the 1970s by my former um uh one
[153:25] of my former mentors Alan Hobson at
[153:27] Harvard and what this drug may be doing
[153:30] is indirectly boosting the amounts of
[153:33] acetal choline in the brain particularly
[153:35] in a region of the brain called the
[153:36] basil forbrain which is a REM sleep
[153:38] regulating region and that's the reason
[153:40] that you get boosts in REM sleep and
[153:42] people also report dreaming a little bit
[153:44] more too on those medications so thermal
[153:47] manipulation getting you to net neutral
[153:50] thermal zones helps increase REM sleep
[153:53] but also there are some medications that
[153:55] were not necessarily designed for REM
[153:57] sleep enhancements selectively but there
[153:59] is evidence that they do that so if you
[154:01] ask me where are we at with REM it's
[154:04] it's certainly more bereft of methods
[154:07] than deep non-rem sleep but we are
[154:10] starting to find some now given what you
[154:12] just told us about the role of ACL
[154:14] choline in Rapid eyee movement sleep
[154:17] what about taking um precur cursors to
[154:20] acetylcholine I mean certainly a good
[154:22] number of them exist yeah um you know
[154:24] even like over-the-counter supplements
[154:26] like Alpha
[154:27] GPC um and then of course there are uh
[154:30] choline donors and things like that that
[154:33] can increase uh col energic transmission
[154:35] um is that get into issues of um you
[154:39] know if one does that globally is it
[154:42] possible that you increase arousal and
[154:43] have trouble falling asleep because some
[154:45] of those coleric agents be activating so
[154:49] one of the problems the second
[154:52] is you may stop because you're going to
[154:55] have to take them before bed you may
[154:58] Brute Force REM sleep to arrive earlier
[155:00] and you may therefore come at the cost
[155:03] of of deep non-rem sleep and so you'd
[155:06] have to get uh some kind of timed
[155:08] release capsule which you can do you can
[155:10] coat these capsule you can get a timed
[155:12] release and you would want to take it
[155:14] before bed and then maybe after about
[155:17] four or five hours you would want to
[155:19] kick it into gear because now you're in
[155:21] so it's a littleit gets bit tricky yeah
[155:24] this is one of the reasons why I
[155:25] personally this is just my experience
[155:27] I'm not a fan of of supplements that tap
[155:29] into the serotonergic system for sake of
[155:31] sleep because um certainly serotonin
[155:34] plays an important role in sleep but
[155:35] anytime I've taken something you know
[155:37] 5htp or something like that to try and
[155:40] improve sleep I find that um I fall
[155:42] asleep and then I wake up very deep deep
[155:44] sleep and then I wake up um very alert
[155:47] and I have trouble with the later phases
[155:48] of sleep and I think that is because yes
[155:52] serotonin is involved in sleep but it's
[155:53] involved in sleep at a very specific
[155:55] point in this as you refer to it this
[155:57] like Symphony or ballet of different
[155:59] sleep stages and how they evolve and um
[156:01] interdigitate with one another across
[156:03] the night so um while I do think there
[156:06] are things that one can use
[156:07] pharmacologically or supplement based to
[156:09] improve sleep generally I I like to
[156:11] think of those as the kind of thing that
[156:12] kind of pushes a away front of the whole
[156:14] sleep process yeah as opposed to trying
[156:16] to tap into one specific
[156:17] neurotransmitter within the sleep
[156:20] ballet exactly yeah I I like that way of
[156:23] thinking and you you do have to be
[156:24] careful because in biology it's often
[156:28] rare that there are any free lunches in
[156:31] truth you know Nature has optimized our
[156:33] system so exquisitly that when you start
[156:37] to try and gain the system for one thing
[156:40] be very mindful that it may come at the
[156:42] cost of something else and that's why
[156:45] whenever we're doing these types of sort
[156:47] of developments of Technologies for
[156:49] sleep we are very cautious not just to
[156:52] say did we improve the thing that we're
[156:53] targeting but first call of business in
[156:56] medicine is not will this drug help you
[156:59] but firstly is there any downside in
[157:02] terms of will this drug hurt you and
[157:04] then you have to understand the cost
[157:05] ratio benefit between those two things
[157:08] yeah just one more anecdote uh that is
[157:11] in agreement with what you said nowadays
[157:12] there's an increased excitement around
[157:15] peptides the use of peptides there is um
[157:17] and I I currently don't use any but I
[157:20] did a short run with you know occasional
[157:23] use of cellin which is a secretagogue
[157:25] which is a growth hormone right SEC it
[157:28] promotes the secretion of growth hormone
[157:30] not growth hormone itself I took it not
[157:32] many times and I was tracking my sleep
[157:34] and what I noticed is it um put me into
[157:36] a little bit of a hypnotic State dreams
[157:38] were very intense but um deep deep sleep
[157:42] but according to my sleep tracker I only
[157:44] ran this for maybe three nights um
[157:47] according to my sleep tracker it
[157:48] completely eliminate all my rapid eye
[157:51] movement sleep at least as measured by
[157:53] the sleep tracker but the amount of of
[157:56] Deep Sleep of slow wave sleep just like
[157:58] massively expanded so that that can't be
[158:01] good that that can't be good I mean know
[158:03] you don't want to mess with that
[158:05] cocktail ratio that we described in the
[158:07] first
[158:08] episode presume that it's it's emerged
[158:11] as the correct you know Da Vinci Code of
[158:14] sleep stage recipes and there may be a
[158:18] time and a place where you want to over
[158:21] index on one of those things for
[158:24] whatever reason but to do it
[158:27] consistently and permanently I would
[158:29] again say if if you think within the
[158:33] space of a
[158:34] lifetime
[158:36] that you know something that you know
[158:40] 2.6 million years of evolution has not
[158:45] understood chances are you're probably
[158:47] wrong I agree um um and certainly later
[158:51] in this series we will touch into some
[158:53] of the over-the-counter supplements and
[158:55] other things that one can do in order to
[158:57] augment sleep that do seem to have some
[158:58] benefit because there are uh such things
[159:01] um but in the
[159:02] meantime thank you for providing this
[159:05] incredible Arc of description of basic
[159:10] sleep hygiene and regularity light dark
[159:12] temperature getting out of bed when you
[159:14] can't sleep alcohol food caffeine
[159:17] cannabis unconventional
[159:19] protocols and let's call them Advanced
[159:23] protocols electrical protocol brain
[159:25] stimulation in other words um thermal
[159:28] manipulation auditory stimulation
[159:31] kinesthetic and then these rapid eye
[159:33] movement enhancing um drugs and on and
[159:37] on um Matt uh I can't thank you enough
[159:41] this has been a just
[159:43] uh replete with actionable tools and
[159:47] considerations and I love that you took
[159:48] us to the the The Cutting Edge of of
[159:51] what's Happening Now I think uh it's
[159:53] wonderful to talk about the history of a
[159:55] field and what was discovered it's
[159:56] wonderful to talk about the present but
[159:58] it's wonderful that you've um put our
[160:00] eyes uh a bit into the future of what
[160:03] the technology for Sleep uh enhancement
[160:06] and monitoring holds so once again thank
[160:09] you um you're so welcome if folks
[160:12] haven't already seen um or listen to
[160:14] episode one highly recommend they do and
[160:17] of course we will be back soon with
[160:20] episode three which is going to get into
[160:23] all the science and acual
[160:26] protocols related to napping and
[160:29] caffeine and some other exciting things
[160:32] that I know impact people's daily lives
[160:34] and that they can get moving on should
[160:36] they choose right away and by moving on
[160:39] I mean to
[160:40] sleep thank you again Delight cannot
[160:43] wait for the next recording thank you
[160:45] for joining me for today's episode with
[160:47] Dr Matthew Walker to learn more about Dr
[160:49] Walker's research and to learn more
[160:51] about his book and his social media
[160:53] handles please see the links in our show
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[162:52] [Music]