---
title: 'Dr. Matt Walker: Protocols to Improve Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Guest Series'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=hvPGfcAgk9Y'
video_id: 'hvPGfcAgk9Y'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 9774
---

# Dr. Matt Walker: Protocols to Improve Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Guest Series

> Source: [Dr. Matt Walker: Protocols to Improve Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Guest Series](https://youtube.com/watch?v=hvPGfcAgk9Y)

## Summary

In this episode of the Huberman Lab Guest Series, Dr. Andrew Huberman and sleep expert Dr. Matthew Walker dive deep into the 'dos and do nots' of sleep optimization. They discuss the five pillars of sleep hygiene—regularity, darkness, temperature, getting out of bed when awake, and managing alcohol/caffeine—before exploring unconventional and advanced techniques to enhance sleep quality and duration.

### Key Points

- **Five Pillars of Sleep Hygiene** [6:21] — Dr. Walker outlines five key areas for sleep hygiene: regularity (consistent bed/wake times), darkness (dim lights 1 hour before bed), temperature (cool room ~67°F/18.5°C), 'walk it out' (leave bed if awake >20-25 min), and mindful use of alcohol and caffeine.
- **Evening Light & Melatonin** [10:30] — Darkness at night triggers melatonin release, acting like a 'brake pedal' for sleepiness. Dr. Walker recommends dimming lights 50% in the last hour before bed and using dim, deep orange/red light sources. Morning bright light (sunlight or SAD lamp) increases the morning cortisol spike by up to 50%, improving alertness and mood.
- **Temperature & Sleep Onset** [18:50] — Core body temperature must drop ~1°C (2-3°F) to fall asleep and stay asleep. The ideal ambient room temperature is around 67°F (18.5°C). Warm socks or a hot water bottle can help by vasodilating blood vessels in the hands and feet, dumping core heat.
- **Alcohol's Deceptive Effects on Sleep** [23:40] — Alcohol is a sedative, not a sleep aid. It fragments sleep (even if not remembered), blocks REM sleep, and produces an artificial electrical signature during deep sleep. Even afternoon alcohol can compromise sleep quality.
- **Caffeine's Half-Life & Impact** [52:20] — Caffeine has a half-life of 5-6 hours and a quarter-life of 10-12 hours. A late afternoon coffee at 2 PM for an 11 PM bedtime is like drinking a quarter cup of coffee at 11 PM. Caffeine can reduce deep sleep by 15-20%, and genetics (CYP1A2 gene) affect individual metabolism rates.
- **THC vs. CBD on Sleep Architecture** [1:03:10] — THC helps with sleep onset but builds tolerance, blocks REM sleep, and causes a withdrawal insomnia syndrome. CBD (at doses ~50 mg or above) may promote sleep indirectly by reducing anxiety (anxiolytic) and by lowering core body temperature (hypothermic effect), though the industry is under-regulated.
- **Unconventional Protocol #1: Do Nothing After a Bad Night** [1:19:30] — After a poor night's sleep, avoid napping, going to bed earlier, sleeping in, or increasing caffeine. These actions disrupt the circadian clock and adenosine buildup. Instead, hold out as close to your normal bedtime as possible to reset sleep drive.
- **Unconventional Protocol #2: Sleep Restriction Therapy (Bedtime Rescheduling)** [1:23:40] — Key component of CBT-I. If you spend too much time in bed, it creates inefficient sleep. By restricting bedtime window (e.g., initially 5 hours) while keeping wake time consistent, you build pressure to sleep efficiently. This retrains the brain to associate bed with sleep, then gradually the window is expanded.
- **Kinesthetic Stimulation: The Rocking Bed** [1:34:00] — Studies (Geneva) show that slow lateral rocking of the bed (~0.25 Hz, once every 4 seconds) during the night can increase deep sleep, sleep spindles, and improve memory by ~10%. The effect depends on the lateral vestibular system (proven in mice lacking it).
- **Future of REM Sleep Enhancement** [1:41:00] — REM sleep can be boosted by achieving a 'Goldilocks' thermal neutral zone (not too hot, not too cold) during the second half of the night. Newer drugs called DORAs (dual orexin receptor antagonists) block the wake-promoting system and can indirectly boost REM sleep by increasing acetylcholine.

### Conclusion

Optimizing sleep involves first mastering the five pillars of sleep hygiene and avoiding common disruptors like alcohol and late caffeine. Advanced techniques like sleep restriction therapy, thermal manipulation (cool room, warm bath), and emerging technologies (electrical/acoustic/kinesthetic stimulation) offer additional ways to enhance sleep quality and duration.

## Transcript

[Music]
welcome to the hubman lab guest Series
where I and an expert guest discuss
science and science-based tools for
everyday
life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a
professor of neurobiology and
Opthalmology at Stanford school of
medicine today marks the second episode
in our sixth episode series all about
sleep with our expert guest Dr Matthew
Walker during today's episode we discuss
the dos and the do Nots of sleep
focusing for instance on how to use
light and absence of light as well as
temperature both of your sleep
environment specifically the room you're
in your body temperature and much more
in order to regulate the timing and
quality of your sleep and we discuss how
things like alcohol caffeine and
cannabis impact sleep and the various
stages of sleep and we discuss the
various tools that exist now and that
are rapidly becoming available to
improve your sleep this episode is
essential for anyone trying to optimize
their sleep and when I say optimize your
sleep I mean trying to optimize the
formula that was addressed in the first
episode of the series which is the qqr
formula the quality quantity regularity
and timing of your sleep four variables
that combine to determine whether or not
your sleep is optimized for you and
thereby providing the most restoration
and Improvement to your mental health
physical health and performance before
we begin I'd like to emphasize that this
podcast is separate from my teaching and
research roles at Stanford it is however
part of my desire and effort to bring
zero cost of consumer information about
science and science related tools to the
general public in keeping with that
theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of
today's podcast our first sponsor is
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free pillows today's episode is also
brought To Us by whoop whoop is a
fitness wearable device that tracks your
daily activity and sleep but also goes
beyond that by providing real-time
feedback on how to adjust your training
and sleep schedule to perform better I
I've been working with whoop on their
scientific advisory Council to try and
help Advance wop's mission of unlocking
Human Performance as a whoop user I've
experienced the health benefits of their
technology firsthand for sleep tracking
for monitoring other features of my
physiology and for giving me a lot of
feedback about metrics within my brain
and body that tell me how hard I should
train or not train and basically point
to the things that I'm doing correctly
and incorrectly in my daily life that I
can adjust using protocols some of which
are actually within the whoop app given
that many of us have goals such as
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that's join. woop.com
huberman today's episode is also brought
To Us by waking up waking up is a
meditation app that has hundreds of
different meditations as well as scripts
for Yoga Nidra and non-sleep deep rest
or nsdr protocols by now there's an
abundance of data showing that even
short daily meditations can greatly
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our ability to focus and can improve our
memory and while there are many
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waking up app makes it extremely easy to
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efficient for you it includes a variety
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like yoga NRA which place the brain and
body into a sort of pseudo sleep that
allows you to emerge feeling incredibly
mentally refreshed in fact the science
around Yoga Nidra is really impressive
showing that after a Yoga Nidra session
levels of dopamine in certain areas of
the brain are enhanced by up to 60%
which places the brain and body into a
state of enhanced Readiness for mental
work and for physical work another thing
I really like about the waking up app is
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needer sessions for you as well if you'd
like to try the waking up app you can go
to waking up.com huberman and access a
free 30-day trial again that's waking
up.com huberman and now for my
conversation with Dr Matthew Walker
Professor Matt Walker welcome back we're
all so happy to have you here and in
episode one you beautifully described
the biology of sleep why sleep is
important what happens when we don't get
enough sleep and you incentivized
getting adequate amounts of great sleep
and you defined what great sleep is and
you provided some excellent practical
protocols and tools for getting great
sleep
however today you're going to tell us I
believe about the protocols for really
optimizing one's sleep both conventional
tools and protocols and some let's say
unconventional not heretical but
unconventional tools for optimizing
one's sleep so let's start with the
basics what are the basics of what I
think I've heard you refer to previously
as sleep hygiene yeah I think we many of
us can resonate with the idea of dental
hygiene but turns out there's something
called Sleep hygiene and there are
probably I would say five edicts of
sleep
hygiene I offer them as as
tools and not necessarily rules because
I don't think people respond to rules
people respond to reasons and not rules
so if it's okay I'll probably just
unpack each one of them rather than just
sort of bark them at you and hope people
assume that it's the right uh answer
I'll explain the answer so people
understand why it's
important so as I said there are
probably five things that you can start
doing tonight to try to improve your
sleep the first we've spoken a little
bit about in that first episode it's
part of the four macros of good sleep
first piece of advice
regularity go to bed at the same time
and wake up at the same time
no matter whether it's the weekday or
the
weekend regularity is king and the
reason is because when you feed your
brain the signals of timed regularity
for your sleep it will anchor your sleep
and improve the quantity and the quality
of that sleep because part of that
signal of regularity going into your
brain in terms of that repeated Behavior
night after night sleep in other words
helps train that Central 24-hour Cadian
clock that we also spoke about in the
first episode so that's the first piece
of advice try to keep it as regular as
you possibly
can the second piece of advice is
darkness in my view we are a dark
deprived Society in this modern era and
we need Darkness at night as well you've
spoken about to release a hormone called
melatonin and melatonin will help time
the regular onset of your sleep so that
sounds great but what boots on the
ground Matt what does that mean I would
suggest the following in the last hour
before bed try to dim down 50% if not
more of your lights in your home and you
will be quite surprised at how sleepy
and soporific that will make you feel
I will do this in a regimented way I
have uh little reminder that pops up and
tells me now is the time to dim the
lights based on your bedtime and I'll go
around and I'll shut lights down in my
bedroom I will actually have a small
light bulb and it is way down to
probably as little as maybe five luxs
and look is just a a metric of the light
um it's way down there and it's also
very deep orange sort of red and we can
come on to why that's the case so that's
the first thing even before you're
thinking about sleep start to decrease
the
light for example if you
were there at let's say for a standard
sleep schedule at 1000 p.m. and normally
you are getting into bed at 10:30 p.m.
but you feel pretty wide awake if there
was an electrical blackout and you lost
your phone magnetic to phone goes down
lights go down Total Blackout my
suspicion is that fairly soon you'd say
gosh how you feel quite sleepy whereas
if the lights were blazing you've got
your phone television's on lots of
stimulation you're probably going to
think 10:30 no I could I could probably
push through for at least another hour
so try to dissipate that light and then
if you need to wear an eye mask blackout
curtains always good as well but we need
that Darkness at night because when you
give the brain the signal of Darkness it
releases effectively a brake pedal that
brake pedal has normally been applied by
way of light on the release of that
spigot of meel melatonin and when you
take the brake pedal off it
starts starts pumping out into the
brain you can also then of course
probably reverse engineer this trick in
the morning and this is another
component of why you've been I think so
such a wonderful advocate for light in
the morning it does many things but one
of the things that it does is reapply
that break on melatonin and therefore
you lose the signal to your brain of
Darkness that's what melatonin in some
ways is doing we often call it the
hormone of Darkness or the vampire
hormone not necessarily because it makes
you look longingly at people's necklines
and want to to to bite it which is great
if you're into that but it's really
simply about it's releasing melatonin
which tells the brain my goodness it's
nighttime but if you've got bright light
on you come from your office you're
driving home so you've got artificial
light during the day which is probably
not strong enough to stimulate you and
bring you awake you come home and you've
got again bright light but it's still
strong enough now to prevent the release
of melatonin you start to shift in your
timing and you may have problems with
your sleep so that's the second piece of
advice I would love to ask you about
that Morning Light two and the alertness
benefits I'm as a sleep researcher more
focused on the evening component of
light and decreasing it but you've done
a great job I don't know if there's
anything yeah there are a couple of
quick points that um are based on some
what I consider really nice studies uh
there's beautiful work in human showing
that bright light exposure in the
morning especially from sunlight but um
if one doesn't have access to sunlight
for whatever reason there are
commercially available so-called sad
lamps Seasonal effective disorder lamps
they range anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000
Lux very bright but um but certainly uh
morning sunlight viewing and lamps of
the sort I just described have been
shown to increase the amplitude of the
morning cortisol Spike by as much as
50% 5 so people hear cortisol and they
freak out they think that's not good I
want cortisol low but you actually want
your cortisol highest in the morning and
lower in the afternoon and evening um
and there's a lot of reasons for that
elevated mood focus and alertness in the
morning and throughout the day and uh
ease of getting to sleep at night lower
anxiety lower depressive symptoms and so
on so that bright light also serves to
um control the amplitude of cortisol uh
it in the direction you want in the
early part of the day the other thing
that's just more of a uh underlying
dynamics of the Circadian visual system
which is a system that I worked on for
years um these wonderful um cells in the
eyes that are not for image forming but
rather for detecting sunlight and bright
light for sake of setting circadian
rhythm is that the sensitivity of that
system early in the day is actually
quite low so you need a lot of bright
light early in the day to effectively
wake up your system and shut down the
sleepiness signals such as melatonin but
later in the day it's a rather
diabolical system it takes very little
light even from artificial sources to
disrupt your circadian rhythm and quash
melatonin as little as 15 seconds of
bright light in the evening I think CH
Chuck Zer laboratory at Harvard Medical
School showed can quash melatonin in the
evening now I don't want people to freak
out and think that if they go into a
hotel bathroom which oftentimes those
are very bright in the middle of the
night flip on the light that they're
going to um completely uh screw up their
circadian rhythms but if I'm honest
they'd be much better off using um their
phone as a flashlight to navigate people
always say well wait but the flashlight
on the phone is very bright but let's
just get logical here a light shown into
your eyes if such as a a flashlight is
very different than looking at a
flashlight Beam on the ground yeah Far
and Away difference so the point is that
if you don't get enough bright sunlight
or light in your eyes early in the day
and then you're indoors under artificial
lighting you might think well this is
really bright lighting this is the kind
of lighting that could disrupt my
circadian rhythm at night and therefore
it's sufficient to wake up my system no
early in the day and throughout the day
you need a lot of bright light as much
as safely possible to avoid Sunburn and
things of that sort which you don't want
but then as the evening comes around
after Sundown you need very little
artificial light in order to disrupt
your circadian rhythm and then just very
quickly light from candles fireplaces is
okay this is kind of interesting it
seems bright it's but the but the
measurements uh indicate that that's not
going to shift your circadian rhythm
much candles are great but of course
don't burn your house down so the the
orange and red tones in the evening way
dim down that's the way to go early in
the day bright bright bright light as
bright as you safely can tolerate and
what I like about firstly your mention
of cortisol do you described how
cortisol is rising in the morning and
that's a great thing and it is a good
thing and in the evening it's starting
to drop and if you look right around
your prototypical bedtime and we're
going to speak later in this episode as
to what your real natural bedtime is
versus the one that you may be taking
right now it's very interesting cortisol
will almost hit its lowest point
something that we call its Nader it's
the lowest point in that trough of its
decline right around the time when you
should be sleeping however there's a
great study that looked at people with
insomnia and in uh subsequent episodes
we'll we'll discuss this too but one of
the ways that we think about or
conceptualize insomnia is in two
different flavors sleep onset insomnia I
can't fall asleep and sleep maintenance
insomnia I wake up I can't get back to
sleep and what they looked at was
essentially cortisol levels they had um
a catheter in the arm and they were
sampling it from the bloodstream and
they were able to do that every 30
minutes so it's a little bit like
timelapse photography and you're getting
a data point every 30 minutes across the
24 hour period looking at cortisol
across now a full 24-hour period and
sure enough when you look at healthy
controls who can sleep well and insomnia
patients they look almost identical
across the day but then when it comes to
falling asleep right around that bedtime
period the healthy controls are going
all the way down the insomnia patients
go down and down and down and then they
have a rise back up right around that
sleep onset period and then they start
to drop back down again just as the
control group but then they also often
will have a spike in the middle of the
night which then comes down and then
both of them are staying low throughout
the early morning period and then it
starts to rise back up so it's not as
though net net overall there is a higher
level of cortisol in people with
insomnia it seems to be right at those
trigger zones that map very nicely to
sleep onet problems sleep maintenance
problems very interesting as somebody
who wakes up in the middle of the night
and sometimes has trouble getting back
to sleep that that resonates I I have no
trouble falling asleep whatsoever yeah
knock on wood superstitious about this
at this point but I use tools like
non-sleep deep breast Yoga Nidra long
exhale breathing but you know and I
think these wakeup uh episodes seem to
happen more when I'm processing a lot of
stuff from my daily life that's right
you know it's um the unconscious brain
um
often times it's working through things
and and will wake us up yeah I often
think
that sleep maintenance insomnia that
you've just described is the Revenge of
daytime emotions
unresolved that's a great way to put it
yeah so that would be so we've spoken
about regularity we've spoken about
darkness and we've spoken about the
inverse of that in the morning which is
light a little bit of cortisol so the
third out of the five is going to be
temperature and the advice here is keep
it cool as we mentioned a little bit in
the first episode and we will go into
great detail when we speak not just
about these conventional and
unconventional tips but we're also going
to go into the future of Science and
where sleep science is taking us to in
fact optimize and even enhance our sleep
we will speak a lot about temperature
suffice to say that you need to drop
your core body temperature and your
brain temperature by a little less than
1° cus 2 to 3 Dees fhe to get to sleep
and stay
asleep the general Target that we have
in sleep science if you look across the
literature is somewhere around about the
67 Dee Fahrenheit or I'm trying to do
the calculation maybe 18.5 is degrees C
now I know that that sounds cold and
cold it it is but you can also wear
thick socks to bed you can have a hot
water bottle at the end of the bed
that's great too but the ambient must be
cold the fourth piece of advice is Walk
It Out and here what I mean is do not
stay in bed for long periods of time
awake and I think we mentioned this
perhaps in the first episode too when
you are awake in your bed for long
stretches of time because your brain is
an incredibly associative device it will
quickly learn that that this thing
called my bed is the place where I'm
awake and not
asleep and what you need to do is break
that Association if you've learned that
time and time again because you've
stayed in bed and the rule of thumb and
it's just a a rule of thumb about 20 25
minutes if you can't fall back asleep or
you can't fall asleep it's okay just say
tonight is not my night it's not a
problem it's tomorrow is not completely
shot it's fine I'm just going to get up
get out of bed if you can if you're
lucky enough try to go to a different
room and in dim light read a book listen
to a podcast whatever it is that relaxes
you just do that don't check email don't
eat because if you start eating that
again trains your brain to start waking
up and feeding at that time and only
return to bed when you are sleepy and
there is no time limit for that I don't
want you to come back after half an hour
when you are still awake and not feeling
sleepy enough why because you're going
to get back into bed and be in the same
problem again and gradually if you do
this and it's hard to do
it you will relearn the association that
you had I'm sure as a child which is
that your bed is this place of
sleepiness because often people will be
saying I I feel so tired in the evening
and then they get into bed and they say
but now I can't fall asleep at all and I
don't understand it in part it's because
of that learned Association so that
would be the fourth tip the fifth tip um
makes me um even more unpopular as a
personality and character which is try
to be mindful of your alcohol and
caffeine now in a subsequent episode
we'll go into great detail as to how
caffeine Works its mechanisms why it is
sleep disruptive and why in fact I've
even perhaps changed my mind
on caffeine and and its benefits but it
also does have significant detriment to
your sleep so the rule of thumb here
would be try to cut yourself off from
caffeine probably at least 10 or so
hours before you expect to go to bed and
you can just calculate back calculate
that and try to limit it so the dose and
the timing make the poison cut yourself
off after maybe two or three cups of
coffee coffee and then that timing
component count yourself back C yourself
off decaffeinated coffee not too bad if
you find the right thing too if you need
that
fix alcohol is probably one of the most
misunderstood sleep aids in a quotes
that there is it is no sleep aid at all
now if I didn't understand what I know
about alcohol and and sleep I would
think that too which is look when I have
a night cap just before bed or two even
though I don't wear them um I I may
actually just fall asleep very easily
and feels like I stay asleep very
soundly across the night so it's a great
sleep aid and it really helps me there
are at least I would say three issues
with alcohol the first is that alcohol
is in a class of drugs that we call the
sedatives and sedation is not sleep
but when you take on board alcohol in
the evening you mistake the former for
the latter and you think it helps you
fall asleep the second thing is that
because it's
sedation or actually it's probably
related to sedation if I were to show
you the electrical signature of your
deep sleep when you're just sleeping
naturally versus when you have alcohol
in your system it's not really the same
it's not a naturalistic form of deep s
it mimics it it looks not too dissimilar
but if I really do my analyses and I
almost like that Pink Floyd album where
I take the white light of electrical
brain activity coming from your head as
you're sleeping and split it apart into
all of the different components there
are some components that are no longer
present or some that are abnormally
present the second issue with alcohol is
that it fragments your sleep so it will
litter your sleep with all these
punctuated Awakenings throughout the
night the danger that is that many of
those Awakenings with alcohol you don't
remember because they're too
brief but then you wake up the next day
and you think well I didn't have a
problem falling asleep I didn't have a
problem staying asleep but I just I feel
rough I just don't feel restored by my
sleep and you don't add two and two
together the final concern with alcohol
is that it's quite a potent Blocker of
your rapid eye movement sleep or REM
sleep and in subsequent episodes we'll
go into great detail as to the
incredible learning and memory
creativity benefits that come by way of
REM sleep also it's essential for our
emotional regulation and recalibrating
our
moods so for all of those reasons I
would say two things first if you are
struggling with sleep not feeling
restored by your sleep keep in mind your
alcohol intake and also just in general
be mindful of that if you are thinking
about your sleep and want to preserve it
so much of what you just said resonates
uh I confess that in my lifetime I've
had periods of um pretty spectacular
sleep I characterize myself as somebody
that could fall asleep anywhere anytime
but I've also experienced the extreme
challenges of sleep and um and that
relates to different things life
circumstances Etc in fact recently I've
had some challenges with sleep despite
using the protocols that I and uh others
suggest I hadn't heard some of the
things that you're um referring to here
and um middle of the night waking has
become more of an issue I communicated
this to uh former girlfriend of mine who
um was uh I was in relationship with
when I was a a junior Professor meaning
before I got tenure and she said you
don't remember you had a Andrew but I do
you had a pattern back then of um after
I would fall asleep you would continue
working on your laptop probably on
grants um and then I would fall asleep
working and then according to her I
would wake up in the middle of the night
and work a little bit until I'd get
tired again and then fall asleep and
then this would repeat so um really
stamping down the uh the associative
learning element that you talked about
before so that was probably the first
period of time in my life in which I I
created this um
rather uh delerious Association of work
in the middle of the night in bed right
um and then more recently I've had the
the uh experience of waking up probably
due to these like daytime things that I
I'm waking up in the middle of the night
thinking about and now because of our
discussion during the course of of
recording this series I get out of bed
after even 101 15 minutes um so that I
can start to eliminate that Association
and another piece is that I've always
felt that when I get out of bed in the
middle of the night because I can't
sleep and I go to the sofa I often can
sleep very well reason being proving
right it's a control experiment proving
that the location of sleep is uh the and
the association of wakefulness at sleep
in bed as opposed to on the sofa is is a
clear component and this is in an
environment that's of equal temperature
I mean it's not a perfect experiment
right um it's anakata as we say but I I
think that the associative piece is oh
so strong um for many people and so this
is something to to really take seriously
I love that notion of and people will
often say I just get up I go to the
couch or the sofa and that's where I'll
wake up in the morning also they'll say
when I travel and I go to a hotel room I
just can sleep fine now for some people
it's the inverse but for those people
it's the contextual difference meaning
the change of the environment is so
unfamiliar that it has not been bound to
Association of wakefulness it's related
to sleep or at least the opportunity to
sleep sometimes even I've heard from
some people and there's no studies or
data on this even turning yourself
around now this is hard if you have a
partner in bed but you just switch top
to bottom of the bed and you take your
pillow and you pull the duvet all the
way down and you put the pillow at the
opposite end where your feet used to be
and you get into bed and even just
looking around and sort of having a
difference that alone is so subtle but
it can make a real difference so again
just keep these things in mind I know it
sounds strange or this whole sort of get
up get out of bed break the
associate and we'll come on to something
well actually I'll come on to it now
because I think it's one of the
unconventional tips and you mentioned it
a lot of people say to me that all
sounds great I the science makes sense I
just don't it's dark it's kind of cold I
really don't want to get out of bed so
give me some
Alternatives I think the the single best
piece of unconventional sleep advice I
can give you is do anything that gets
your mind off
itself the principal reason that if you
look at insomnia as a physiological
condition or current working model
mechanistically of how insomnia um plays
out is that you are in this state of
almost low-level anxiety and you are
somewhat stressed and when you go to
sleep or you try to go to sleep or you
wake back up and you try to get back to
sleep you just have this Rolodex of
anxiety in the modern world we are
constantly on reception and very rarely
do we do
reflection and unfortunately for many of
us and I've been guilty of this the only
time we do reflection is when our head
is placed on the pillow and we turn the
light out and that is the last time you
want to be doing reflection that's the
worst moment and at that point I think
everyone can empathize with the idea of
you turn the light out you're under
stress your mind goes to those few
things in the darkness of night thoughts
become almost 10 times worse than they
do in the brigh of
day and at that moment you start to
ruminate when you ruminate you begin to
catastrophize and when you catastrophize
you're dead in the water for the next
two hours so what do you do the problem
is as I said your mind is on itself and
it's going through these repeated Loops
anything you can do for example you can
do some kind of a meditation and I when
I was researching data for my book some
years ago I did look into meditation and
I wasn't a meditator I was a hard-nosed
scientist and didn't really kind of
embrace with that notion or even that um
that group of people but time and again
I read paper after paper and the data
was very strong and it was coming from
research groups that I respected very
much indeed so I thought well okay I
should probably give this a try and that
was 6 years ago and since then I now
meditate for 10 minutes every single
night before bed I do a guided
meditation because I'm not particularly
skilled so I use an app that moves me
through that but you can do whatever you
how whatever meditation you like that's
one example the second example is you
can do breathing methods because again
you're focused on your breath and what
are you not focused on your
thoughts and so anything that will allow
you to
um
explore some other Focus maybe it's a
body scan where you start at the top of
your head or you start at your feet and
you work your way up and you just say
you know moving through now my neck what
Sensations am I feeling now into my
shoulders moving down into my chest now
I can feel the ends of my fingers am I
sensing
anything and when you start doing that
or any of these types of things the next
thing that you remember is your alarm
going off in the morning because you got
your mind off itself so I would say that
that's probably one of the
unconventional tips but let me come back
to the conventional anything else I've
probably missed out or being unclear
about the um actually I should probably
say one thing in terms of these not
they're not tips I don't like the word I
know you don't either or hacks or um
these are protocols and they're
well-informed scientific protocols in
all of this discussion today
you can get all of these things in place
and still have problems with
sleep the reason is because you may be
suffering from a Sleep Disorder so the
analogy would be let's say that I'm your
athletic coach and you're a sports
Superstar I can perfect everything I can
perfect your your diet your supplements
we can perfect your Technique we can
perfect but if you've got a broken ankle
none of those things are going to alter
your performance right now you've got to
get to a doctor and get that scen to and
then we can come back to fine-tuning
your performance it's the same with
sleep if you've got a sleep disorder
such as snoring sleep apnea or insomnia
we need to get you to a doctor first and
then only after that come back once
you're resolved then we can start to
optimize that's the only other thing I
probably should mention yeah this is all
very useful discussion because I think
that um of course there will be those
folks out there that just like what are
they talking about I sleep so well at
night you know consider yourself blessed
many many people struggle with uh
challenges with sleep and I think it's
fair to say that sooner or later most
everybody experiences some challenges
with sleep for whatever reason you look
at the statistics that's highly likely
in your lifetime you are more than
likely to go through either a period of
challenging sleep or in fact about of
insomnia I'd like to take a brief break
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huberman you talked about alcohol I'm
not a consumer of alcohol anymore um nor
am I and it's not I it's not because I
have anything against it yeah many
people do enjoy it and um and know uh
we're not calling judgment on on them I
mean certainly much of the world enjoys
uh alcohol could we talk a little bit
more about um aside from demolishing
REM sleep um you know do we know that
alcohol causes these disruptions in
sleep directly meaning by changing the
um pattern of release of
neurotransmitters like Gaba things of
that sort or is this an indirect effect
you know is this like through the gut
microbiome that then impacts sleep um
and the reason I ask is maybe we could
get to some more
specific uh dos and do not protocols so
for instance if somebody wants to have a
cocktail how close to sleep can they get
and uh not diminish their rapid eye
movement sleep too much you know because
people are still going to want to drink
um and with that said if people do have
a couple of drinks and then they they go
to sleep is there is there anything they
can do prior to sleep to uh try and
rescue um their some of their quality
sleep great question so in terms of the
mechanism it seems actually not to be
the alcohol but some of the metabolic
byproducts of alcohol we think that
perhaps the main culprit may be some of
the aldah highs that are the metabolic
um separate consequences of alcohol
metabolism you make a good point though
in terms of the the the dose response
timing curve
how late or how early do I have to cut
myself off from alcohol people have done
those studies and they have found that
even an afternoon single glass of wine
if you measure sleep in the way that we
measure it at my center with High
Fidelity you can see compromises and
impairments I wish I could tell you
otherwise I would say that based on that
data the principal protocol advice I
would have for you is go to the pub in
the morning that way by the time you're
about to sleep the alcohol is out your
system and you could no no I would never
as a as a public scientist I would never
Advocate necessarily for wanting I'm
just kidding you but um that's that's
sort of one of the unfortunate
consequences there does seem to be an
impact to say that there isn't is just
me not being truthful about the data but
again if
you are think about the tradeoff here if
you're going out or you're having
friends over and you're going to make an
incredible evening of memories and
you're going to open a favorite bottle
of wine and have a couple of glasses of
wine is your sleep going to be
compromised yes it is but maybe that's
worth the tradeoff for that specific
night I would just not wish you to and
you've spoken a lot and so is our dear
friend Peter and
others there just doesn't seem to be any
safe amount of alcohol um but I would
say think about that trade-off simply
however don't make it habit that you're
doing it you know multiple nights a week
or more that would probably be the
advice
great what about food and sleep um how
close to sleep um is it okay to have a
meal if you want to optimize your sleep
um I I like to eat my final meal
somewhere around
6:30 p.m. but and I go to sleep
somewhere around 8:30 900 p.m. in an
Ideal World sometimes I go to sleep a
bit later uh sometimes I eat a little
bit later it's just you know there's
some variability with these but um put
differently what is the relationship
between food intake and Sleep Quality in
terms of timing of food intake and then
perhaps we can talk a little bit about
um food
macronutrients it's very interesting
there was somewhat of a Dogma out there
that we have to stop eating you know
three or 4 hours before bed for optimal
sleep if you look at the data the data
is quite a spread no pun intended there
is there are some people for whom that
works very well and if they eat even two
hours before bed they just get disrupted
in terms of their sleep some of that is
about people just feeling too full and
not feeling comfortable other aspects
are that when you become recumbent when
you lie down you have a higher risk of
gastric reflux coming back up and
therefore you get heartburn and that's
pretty miserable and people will
describe that too by way of closer
proximity of food intake relative to
when you're falling asleep nevertheless
if you look at the
data and I I did a recent very deep dive
on this personally myself about 12
months ago it's not quite as Extreme as
the Dogma makes out if you eat 2 hours
before bed on average it doesn't seem to
necessarily harm your sleep now that's
very different than saying what is best
to improve or enhance your sleep but the
way these studies were designed it was
looking at detriments they then went to
90 minutes before sleep onset and even
there there didn't seem to be Market
impermanence 60 Minutes you started to
see maybe some signs but on average the
effect size was somewhat weak but then
when you get close to sort of 45 minutes
or
so then things did start to deteriorate
I think it depends hugely on your
chronotype and also just on your
appetite Cadian Rhythm preferences too I
am someone who I do not feel very hungry
when I first wake up in the morning I
don't feel very hungry throughout most
of the day and I will onboard most of my
calories
probably
in the hours probably in about a 4H hour
period maybe less even 3-hour period and
then I will cut myself off about 90
minutes before sleep so I classically I
would have been considered as you know
violating this sleep dogma of of cutting
yourself off at least three hours I
think it's very personal though just
experiment with it you will know the
situation um as for macros and specific
food
components the data is a little bit
mixed certainly what we know is that if
you're eating a diet that is high in
sugar and low in protein your sleep is
worse why would that be the case well
one of the reasons that we think is that
if you onboard sugar it can be somewhat
metabolically active and when it becomes
metabolically active it can increase
your body temperature your core body
temperature even just for very subtly
but that's enough to disrupt your sleep
as we spoke about with
temperature but I think in terms
of really the you know what would be the
ideal macron nutrient and even
micronutrient um dietry recommendation
that I would have for you I don't think
we have enough data yet above and beyond
that that statement um yeah yeah I I've
experienced um when I eat a very low
carbohydrate diet which I've
experimented with in the past maybe even
even full ketogenic diet for for brief
periods of time although I'm an omnivore
so I eat meat and eggs and I also eat
starches pastas rice Etc um but we know
based on beautiful work from for example
Chris Palmer from from Harvard Medical
School uh who is a guest on this podcast
I listen to that it was great podcast
yeah Chris is is spectacular and and U
has advocated the exploration of
ketogenic diets for the treatment of
various psychiatric conditions not all
but psychiatric conditions and and it
seems and he agreed with me on this that
when people go on very low starch very
low carbohydrate diets that sometimes
they can experience a bit of hypomania
some people can and challenge this with
sleep and um sometimes there are
psychiatric reasons why um people stay
on those diets anyway and then they have
to do other things to encourage their
sleep by their pharmacology or
supplementation or some combination but
I I can say anecdotally for myself if I
if I don't eat starches for a extended
amount of time a couple of days I find
it very hard to get quality sleep as
indicated by Sleep trackers um and uh
and just uh sleep late latency to fall
asleep is longer than it is ETC um so i'
I've opted to eat most of my
carbohydrates Ates later in the evening
um which and violates you know every
rule of you know eat your carbs early in
the day and and and I think there are
some data to support that eating
carbohydrates early in the day may
actually um have certain benefits for
weight maintenance or weight loss so I
realized that but those aren't my my
goals at the moment weight maintenance
yes weight loss no so I think um I
certainly feel after eating a dinner
that has a bit more starch pasta rice
these things of that sort and a little
bit lower protein as opposed to the
inverse like eating a couple couple of
riy steaks and a salad but no starch
that um my sleep is substantially better
um and I always uh attributed that to
the relationship between some of the
starches and the
tryptophan serotonin pathway yeah there
is some data on that with the
carbohydrate intake in the evening and
of course that that tryptophan and that
carbohydrate intake um will contain the
precursor ingredients to something else
that we've spoken about which is
melatonin and so that may actually help
healthily boost that melatonin signal
and there's a little bit of data on that
to supported
to we also did a study where we um we
were looking at night to night to night
sleep and carbohydrate intake the next
day and it did seem to support what
you're describing in terms of some of
the carbohydrate benefits we also found
a strange result that was almost the
opposite prediction that we made
carbohydrate intake in the morning to
equally help people wake up and we were
a little bit uncertain as to why but
we're going to go into more detail the
reason that you mentioned
the the suggestion of not take on carbs
in the evening is in part based on the
evidence that your body's ability to
dispose of sugar and obviously when
you're eating carbohydrate you can have
a higher um Spike of sugar now that in
part depends on what you're eating with
that carbohydrate and also of course the
nature of that carbohydrate whether it's
simple or whether it's complex whether
it's simple sugars versus you know
complex more um starchy uh carbohydrate
but the idea is that your body even if
you were to eat the same amount of
carbohydrate in the morning in the
afternoon or in the evening same
carbohydrate dose and type but your
body's ability to dispose of that
without having excessive spikes of
glucose is worse in the evening better
in the morning I.E if you're concerned
about your blood sugar um and your
metabolic Health maybe that's what you
should do I think that that data is
unclear on the basis of if you are um
glycemic normal meaning that you
currently do not have signs of type two
two diabetes or you're not pre-diabetic
then that may not necessarily be the
case and so I think that's why it could
be you know beneficial for you and I
know that you've um you think deeply
about that and and um I've even been
tracking blood sugar as well I don't
have any signs of that but I'm just
fascinated by some of that data and how
it interacts with my sleep because I'm a
a sleep nerd so I think right now we
just don't have plentiful data to
recommend a particular sleep quote
unquote diet for improved optimization I
would say though that we can be a little
bit more relaxed about the timing of our
food earlier you mentioned C caffeine
and caffeine is a topic that we get into
into substantial depth in episode three
but there and now I uh I will emphasize
that caffeine is the most commonly used
drug worldwide I think the statistic
says that 90 plus perent of adults
consume caffeinated
beverages every day which is remarkable
and a few years back I recall there was
an article in The Economist that charted
the country's for which the caffeine
consumption was highest and way out on
the peak Peak peak of was almost uh
triple or quadruple what other what the
second place country um consumed each
day was can you guess the country that
consumes the most caffeine could be tea
coffee any form I'm going to suggest
it's a Scandinavian country no but uh
but they're they're up they're up there
it was Switzerland now I don't know if
that's still the case but apparently the
the reason I went I was thinking it was
because I've seen the graph I was
thinking it was Sweden but Scandinavian
and if I have that wrong um certainly
someone will put it in the the comments
on YouTube I recall the Swiss drink so
much caffeine they have uh a lot to
think about so I love caffeine I drink
black coffee black espresso and Y Bronte
um I love Yerba Monte been drinking it
since I was a little one um because of
the argentines in my family um and I
drink it in the early part of the day
typically um a couple hours after waking
or so I'll have my first um sip of
caffeine and then I try to stop drinking
caffeine somewhere around noon or 1 p.m.
occasionally I'll have a shot or two of
a espresso in the early afternoon if
there's important work to be done and I
need to do that but I I've noticed that
even that can alter my sleep in ways
that that I don't like but the afternoon
coffee for some reason tastes so much
better than the morning coffee for me I
don't know what it is so it's coffee
year bate packed early into the day and
a lot of it for me yeah I have a high
tolerance for it um but then I let it
taper is
that an optimal Contour of caffeine
intake um would Zero caffeine be better
if someone's just really committed to
sleep and they don't like caffeine would
zero be better than any and what about
that afternoon coffee or tea containing
caffeine I mean how disruptive is it for
sleep so the profile that you describe
which is high peak early on and first
thing when you wake up and then tapering
off nicely down into the sort of early
afternoon ideal that sounds great to me
as for that afternoon coffee it really
depends again on when you are expecting
to go to sleep now for someone like you
I would say I would love to look at
abstaining from that or just switching
it out to if you're using you know these
pods or however you're Brewing it let's
just switch it out and do an experiment
for two weeks and we will look to see
how much is that afternoon coffee really
impacting your sleep and will track your
sleep with some degree of High Fidelity
with a
wearable and let's test that hypothesis
because you go to sleep quite early you
are an early bird maybe bordering on an
extreme um early bird and we'll speak
about um or we have spoken about those
different flavors of
chronotype I would prefer you not to be
having that caffeine in the afternoon
based on how early you go to sleep and I
mention that preference because of what
you described regarding your sleep
maintenance insomnia one of the issues
with caffeine is that not only can it
make it more difficult for you to fall
asleep which you don't have in part
because if you're waking up quite
frequently throughout the night and
struggling to get back to sleep you're
going to be carrying a sleep debt into
every night and that debt continues to
grow and it's almost like compounding
interest on a loan so you will not have
a problem falling asleep in fact
sometimes the speed with which people
fall asleep and some of these uh sleep
trackers will almost penalize you for
falling asleep too quickly is because in
sleep science and clinical sleep
medicine if your it should take you
somewhere you know healthy sleep onset
you know 5 to 15 20 minutes but if you
put your head on the pillow and you turn
off the light and within a minute or so
you're dead to the world and you're gone
I'm exactly I'm worried that you're a
carrying a sleep dead now not
necessarily but I'm I would like to
explore it um with you and then I would
say even if you can fall asleep
fine this factor of waking up in the
middle of the night is also related to
caffeine why because caffeine not only
can make it harder to fall asleep not
your problem but it keeps you out of
that deep deep sleep and it puts you
into a more shallow state of nonrapid ey
movement sleep and when you are in this
shallow State it's a easier for you to
be woken up but be and I think more of
the problem it's hard harder for you to
fall back asleep because your brain
doesn't necessarily want to go back down
into that deep sleep and nor has it come
up out of that deep sleep so you're not
in that wonderful glorious thick
triy sort of sleepy State when you wake
up you go to the restroom you come back
and you just know this is going to be
great I'm as as long as I can fumble my
way back to my mattress I'm going to be
asleep within another two minutes going
back to it whereas for you you probably
wake up and you feel pretty Wide Awake I
would like to see what happens when we
negate that afternoon coffee on the
frequency and the duration of those
middle of the night Awakenings for you
yeah I'm definitely making the effort to
avoid caffeine intake in the afternoon
and I think um already starting to see
some of the positive benefits of doing
that great as evidenced by the days that
I consume caffeine in the afternoon and
experience the the deficits it's a real
thing and I I believe you've um about
the numbers uh on a different podcast
previously could talk a little bit about
the metabolism of caffeine and um and
maybe even some of the variations that
exist between people in terms of the
metabolic U regulation of caffeine so
how long let's say uh drink a standard
cup of coffee or a cuple of espresso and
it has a gosh I don't know 150
milligrams of caffeine is that 200 could
150 200 let's say 200 because certainly
uh you know a barista these days is
going to draw a a beverage over index
yeah so let's say 200 milligrams and and
somebody consumes that after lunch at uh
100 p.m. and their bedtime is let's
let's make them more conventional than I
uh somewhere between 10: and 11: p.m.
yeah okay so they're they're about 10 9
to 10 hours out from their bedtime
they're having a nice strong quote
unquote nice strong cup of coffee after
lunch um what what does that look like
in terms of their biochemistry and and
impact on sleep so caffeine has
something that we call a halflife of
about 5 to 6 hours meaning that after 5
to 6 hours about 50% of that caffeine is
still circulating in your bloodstream
and thus your brain that means that
caffeine has a quarter life of somewhere
between 10 to 12 hours now this is on
average and we'll come back to
variations but think of it this way if
you're taking a cup of coffee like you
described there at midday and then
you're going to bed at let's say 11: or
midnight that would be the equivalent
based on what I've just told you the
quarter life of getting yourself into
bed and just before you took yourself
into bed you Swig a quarter of a cup of
coffee and you H for a good night of
sleep and the chances are that it it may
not happen now again that's a little bit
sort of hyperbolic as a as a statement
but just try to conceptualize it in that
way you would never think about taking
off on you know a last quarter cup of
coffee just before you put your eye mask
on no but I have some friends and um
somebody actually who works with the
podcast team and we'll go out to dinner
as a team when we're on the road and
he'll order like a big coffee right
after a 900 p.m. dinner and I was just
like can you sleep on like oh yeah no
problem and that no problem is in part
this I don't have an issue with falling
asleep but if we were to based on the
data map there electrical brain activity
you would be able to see this reduction
in the deep non-rm sleep and it can
reduce it if you look at the data
somewhere between 15 to 20% now for me
to reduce your deep sleep by 15 to 20% I
would probably have to age you by about
20 to 22 years or you could just do it
every night with a late night coffee
should you should you wish so again I've
and maybe we'll speak about this in in
later episodes I have changed my mind on
caffeine I think morning caffeine use or
coffee I should say being more specific
is fine because I think there are health
benefits and we can go into in
subsequent episodes why coffee and the
coffee be in itself can provide those
benefits so I've become a little bit
more bullish on morning
caffeine but evening caffeine I just
think it's the data is just not
supportive even if you are and there are
variations and you were very um astute
in your question some people I said on
average caffeine has a half life of
about 5 to six hours for some people
it's quicker and for other people it's
slower why is that it's based on a gene
and we know the gene it's a gene that is
part of a set of liver enzymes and the
gene is called the
cyp1 A2 Gene
and there are variations in that Gene
what we call polymorphisms and you can
do these genetic tests that you can buy
these kits and they all probably tell
you which you are are you sensitive or
you're not sensitive you probably
already know and so some people will not
be as sensitive and therefore they can
have a more compressed time frame of a
halflife because it's moving out of
their system in a quicker manner so
again I'm not trying to be skir
mongering I think you can have coffeee
in the morning and you'll be just fine
that late night coffee I would I would
like to see you obviate that if you are
someone who's doing it and the afternoon
coffee sounds like a you know maybe only
every once in a while and try and make
it mostly decaf or decaf for that matter
if it's really just for the taste yeah
if it's just for the taste go decaf if
it's not I understand that in some ways
what I'm talking about is the ideal
world and drum roll it turns out that
most of us don't live in that we live in
this thing called the real world
and so if you are facing a circumstance
where if you're under pressure at work
or if you're high performing athlete and
this is it this is the event this is you
it's all in a think understand that you
you are going to sacrifice some sleep at
night but maybe that sacrifice is well
worth it so again I'm very open-minded
I'm not trying to be um simply you know
too rigid with this I want to take a
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huberman so you've talked about alcohol
and its effects on sleep you've talked
about caffeine its effects on sleep and
we talked about food and its effects on
sleep what about THC and
CBD sometimes referred to more uh
generally as cannabis and you know it's
interesting you know gosh when I was
growing up um you
know cannabis was illegal um nowadays
it's um either legal or tolerated or
decriminalized in many places not all
but I I would would say there's been a
um a a tide shift in terms of um
cannabis meaning that many
people consume cannabis who are um
consuming it legally and consume it for
a lot of reasons that other people
consume alcohol in you know a sedative
effect a slight hypnotic effect I mean
you know the actual definition of what
these drugs do it goes by certain terms
in the psychiatric literature of course
but but in order to quote unquote mellow
out to feel more relx to reduce their
anxiety um it's it's far and away
different than when I was growing up
where I me you would get into a lot of
trouble uh if you were caught um smoking
a joint or um taking a bong rip in the
middle of the day but not and I realize
most people aren't doing that at work I
guess it depends on where you work um
but it you know Edibles tinctures I mean
the the consumption of THC and CBD is is
quite um quite robust in a lot of places
so um with all the issues of legality
and the fact that people who young
people um should not be consuming them
me people 18 and younger not just for
legal reasons but the brain is still
developing um what is the story with THC
CBD cannabis edibl smoked uh tinctures
on sleep
specifically it's very interesting if
you look firstly at the motivational
reasons why people use
cannabis based on
[Music]
the published study somewhere in the top
two
reasons sleep to fall and stay asleep
fall asleep and stay asleep obviously
usually the principle first reason is
just to get high and have the experience
and the pleasure of being high if that's
what sort of floats your um floats your
train floats your train but certainly
it's you know sleep um as and what we
call a hypnotic to put you asleep from
um the Greek derivative of the God for
for sleep that is high among the reasons
that people will
use we currently don't recommend it and
here is why certainly THC helps you fall
asleep
faster very clear in the data the
problem is that first you start to
develop a tolerance and to get that same
sleep onset benefit you need to get use
I should say a higher dose so you start
to develop dependency and your dose
regimen starts to
increase the second issue with THC is
that it's very good at blocking your
dream sleep your REM sleep in fact many
people when they come and they tell me
look I was a heavy cannabis user even a
light cannabis user for some time and
then I stopped using and one of the
strangest things happened to me I just
started to have the most wild Vivid
crazy dreams and I didn't know what was
going on and it's a very simple
explanation as you've been using your
brain has been compromised in the amount
of REM sleep it's been getting and
you've been building up chronically a
REM sleep debt and your brain is smart
in the sense that it does try to clock
to some degree a counter of how much REM
sleep you've lost and many people will
say yeah I don't really remember my
dreams when I'm using but when they stop
the brain finally because it's been
cleansed of the thing that's the
roadblock to REM sleep not only did they
go back to having the normal amount of
REM sleep that people would have they
have that plus they have what we call a
REM sleep rebound which is even more and
more intense REM sleep which leads to
more intense dreaming so it's a very I
suspect there's a lot of people who've
had that experience listening if they
have been users and they've stopped so
that's the second reason we don't
Advocate it the third third reason is
that when you stop using you also go or
go through a very vicious insomnia
withdrawal syndrome often many people
will do now that depends on you know how
much you've been using for how long
you've been
using if you look at the data and by the
way part of the um clinical diagnostic
the psychiatric diagnostic um
description of cannabis withdrawal is
insomnia that's how reliable this
insomnia problem is when you come off
cannabis and if you look at the data the
one of the main reasons that people
relapse and start using cannabis again
even though they don't want to is
because they can't deal with the
insomnia that withdrawal has given them
so you don't want to get into that
vicious
cycle should you wish again it's your
choice um so THC I think is not to be
advised right now CBD is interesting I
don't think there's enough data yet for
us to have a very strong opinion but I
can at least offer mine the data so far
is a little bit mixed in what we call
the effect size in other words how
reliable and how powerful is the benefit
of CBD on sleep but it does seem to have
some
benefit what's interesting is that it
doesn't seem to have the detriments that
I just described for or
THC you've got to be looking at the data
a little bit careful with
CBD it has what's called a u-shape
function to it which is that if you're
taking too little and again I really I'm
so mindful of not trying to be okay here
are the numbers but if you look at them
I would say you know kind of cross your
eyes squint your eyes maybe less than 25
migr you run into the danger of CBD
being wake
promoting rather than sleep promoting
but once you get past if you look is 50
milligrams and above then you start to
go in the opposite direction where it
seems to be sleep
promoting and I mention that just
because at least here in the United
States and in many places in the
world that industry is not regulated so
it may say 50 milligrams on the bottle
you don't really know now some of those
companies will have what's called
third-party Laboratory Testing where
they'll send it out and you can scan a
qri code and you can look at an
independent laboratory that tested it
and show you the p p uh purity of it so
that may be one way to
go so CBD I think has some favorable
evidence right now if that's the case
let's just assume that you and I speak
in another five years time and there's
really good data now for this what could
be the mechanisms I think there's at
least there's probably at least two
maybe three mechanisms the first is an
indirect mechanism CBD has been
demonstrated very nicely in some
fantastic studies to be an
anotic which is a fancy term for saying
it reduces down your anxiety and earlier
you and I discussed that anxiety and
stress is one of the things that will
keep you awake so indirectly it removes
this kind of gate that is preventing you
from moving down the Royal Road of sleep
and it opens back up the gate because
it's remove that gate mechanism which is
high anxiety and by way of being an
anxiolytic IT soften that anxiety and
it's easier for you to fall asleep I
think that's probably the principal
mechanistic bet I would have right now
another indirect
mechanism if you look at some of the
studies in rats and we do um human work
at my sleep center so we don't do animal
studies but if you look at the data in
the
rats CBD can be
hypothermic which means that it drops
your core body temperature and just as
we spoke about in earlier in this
episode you need to drop your body
temperature to get to sleep so I think
that's the second reason I think the
third reason is that it could have a
direct sleep promoting
mechanism I think it's unclear right now
exactly how it's interacting with the
Sleep Machinery of the brain we've got
some hypotheses the danger is again it's
just not a well-regulated substance so I
am actually just um full disclosure I'm
working with a company in the United
Kingdom uh in collaboration with um
King's College and The Institute of
Psychiatry there to see if we can create
an analog a clean analog of CBD but I
think the potential upside of it not
just for sleep but for a number of
different psychiatric conditions like
anxiety
um could be beneficial so I would say
that that's right now the the sort of
the skinny on THC and and CBD okay so
just to make sure that I have the basic
list of sleep hygiene factors correct I
have regularity is King yep light and
dark meaning that one should optimize or
at least seek to optimize their exposure
to light in the morning and throughout
the day and in the evening to make
things dim and dark yes temperature and
there you have a a little um it's not a
montra but what is it it's a warm up to
cool down to fall asleep and then it's
stay cool like Fonzi stay cool to stay
asleep and then warm up to wake up yep
and we will come on to that I think in a
little while again then there's walk it
out which is if I understand correctly
if you're trying to fall asleep or fall
back asleep and it's taking you longer
than about 20 25 minutes you should just
get out of bed and go elsewhere in the
house do something else maybe even lie
down on a different surface in the house
to try and see if you can sleep there
but don't stay in bed don't create a
parir Association of wakefulness and
your bed because that can lead to
problems in subsequent nights yeah and I
would only say that try to resist if you
can if you really want your bedroom to
be the place where you now become
consistently asleep try not to start
sleeping in some other location
consistently because then all of a
sudden you bond that with good sleep and
you unbuckle this notion that we're
trying to relearn which is know your
bedroom is the place of sleep so it's
fine to go elsewhere try to stay awake
and force yourself to stay awake until
you are absolutely sleepy then go back
to bed okay and then we discussed
alcohol food caffeine and THC CBD AKA
cannabis and with respect to alcohol
it's clear that none is best if you're
going to have
some uh you don't want to drink too
early in the day but you don't want to
drink too much or too close to bedtime
because it can disrupt rapid eye
movement sleep food uh seems that
creating some sort of buffer between the
uh your last bite of food and uh your to
bedtime by anyway somewhere between you
know maybe 2 three hours but for some
people it'll be more like 90 minutes and
of course that's going to depend on the
size of the meal Etc but eating a big
meal and then going straight to bed
probably not a good
idea caffeine has this long halflife so
if you're going to indulge which I
do do so early in the
day beware the afternoon caffeine yeah
do the hubman tapa is what I'm going to
call it right now which is not
interpretive dense it's simply the
caffeine tape and then um THC CBD uh
does nothing good for your sleep
architecture although some people have
the uh impression that it is good for
their sleep because it makes it easier
for them to fall asleep but what they
are unaware of is that it is disrupting
the quality and architecture of the
different stages of sleep in ways that
are not serving people well that seems
to be the case for THC and I think CBD
you
know has promise and research must try
harder including my own and you um very
uh kindly emphasize that you're not
telling people what to do they just
should know what they're doing so that
they can make uh changes uh if they so
choose that's right I would always say
that um I'm not trying to be a medical
doctor any advice that I give is simply
scientifically descriptive advice it's
not medically prescriptive nor lifestyle
prescriptive advice I'm smiling because
what I always say is um I'm a scientist
not a physician so I don't prescribe
anything but I profess lots of things so
or as my good friend who's a musician
Tim Armstrong says I'm not a cop that's
right so so do what you want um
okay what a wonderful list to leap off
into the unconventional and more
advanced tools for Sleep enhancement so
um let's go there so I think many people
may have heard of some of the
conventional but what about the
unconventional I would probably offer
five or six the first one I would say is
that if you are struggling with sleep
and you have had a bad night of sleep
the first first recommendation is do
nothing and what I mean by that is if
you've had a bad night of sleep you're
awake for 3 hours do not sleep in any
later into the morning do not go to bed
any
earlier do not increase your caffeine
intake to try to offset it and do not
nap during the day why am I telling you
those
things if you wake up later that
following morning
your adenosine clock that we spoking
about this building up of sleepiness
that happens when we wake up is going to
start later in the day so when it comes
time for you to fall asleep at what
would then be the next night at your
normal time you're not going to feel as
sleepy why because you woke up that much
later and you're setting yourself up for
failure again equally don't go to bed
any earlier if you have become a
customed and your brain has and your
Cadian clock has become accustomed to
going to bed at a certain time and
hopefully you're doing it regularly then
getting into bed two or 3 hours early
has the danger it's not a certainty but
a danger of you then getting into bed
and thinking well I'm I know I had a bad
night of sleep last night but I still
can't fall asleep straight away so now
you're spending another 90 minutes in
bed at the beginning because you've gone
to bed 90 minutes earlier thinking it's
a good idea to compensate don't do that
either hold out even if you do feel
tired my recommendation would be after
that bad night of sleep hold out for as
long as you can as close to your natural
bedtime as possible then go to sleep and
you'll give yourself highest chance of
success don't over caffeinate that's the
obvious one follow the beautiful hubman
taper and then obviously try not to
compensate with a nap why because that
nap as happens when we sleep is going to
remove some of that sleepiness that pene
and once again you get into bed and
you're not as sleepy as you would
naturally be so you again go through a
bad night cuz you're struggling to sleep
or you wake up and you can't get back
because you've got less weight of
sleepiness on your shoulders due to the
nap that happened earlier so I know it's
hard but I would say when the alarm goes
off after a bad night you just think I
do not want to get up it's been such a
rough night I know it's a shortterm gain
but trust me it's a long-term loss
because you're going to then just get
into this vicious cycle so that's the
first unconventional tip the can I just
pause you for a second I I'm a little
wide-eyed over here because
um I did not know any of that typically
if I get a poor night sleep I'll do
whatever I can to recover that sleep um
take a nap I'll do you know I'll adjust
my to bedtime the next evening um so I
hope everyone is paying uh careful
attention to what Matt just said I mean
the that's a important list because I
think one of the very common things is
for people to just not get a great
night's sleep and I think most people
think okay I'll drink a little more
caffeine I will um go to bed a little
earlier tonight you know maybe catch a
nap in the afternoon this kind of thing
um and I would have thought that too and
maybe even suggested that and if you
listen to the first episode and where we
you know I list in a doomsday manner the
things that can happen by way of a short
night you you would think that that's
what I would then recommend but it was
imprinted On Me by um a wonderful sleep
clinician U Michael palis um who sort of
described some of these features and
exactly the reasons sort of underlying
them and I think I've just tried to bake
that out into a formula that makes sense
again it's not about the rule it's about
explaining it because when you explain
it at first it sounds contradictory and
paradoxical when you understand it it
hopefully sounds logical and actionable
um so that would be the first suggestion
could I just sorry interrupt again my
audience hates when I interrupt but I'm
doing it on their behalf because because
because I I like to think that there's
um some value in some of at least what
you say in response um I saw a really uh
terrific post from Dr Ronda Patrick um
who we both know and admire um for her
public education work public health
education work and she described a study
whereby if people are I think it was
slightly sleep deprived Maybe by a few
hours that some of the uh disruption to
morning blood glucose regulation that is
known to accompany partial sleep
deprivation and certainly complete sleep
deprivation but um in this case partial
sleep deprivation could be offset by
still exercising in the morning that's
right um which frankly I have to say if
I haven't slept that well then you know
normally I'm like H maybe today's the
day I don't exercise but now having
heard that information I make it a point
to still exercise um sometimes with a
little bit less intensity yeah um
because I don't want to be completely
exhausted in the afternoon um and and go
to sleep at you know 4 p.m. or something
really disrupt my schedule but I thought
that was really interesting because it's
it's a it's a sort of um partial
inoculation of of the blood glucose
disruption caused by uh sleep
deprivation I I'm so glad you brought it
up it's a fantastic study and I um Rond
and I um I think even tried to discuss
it some years ago on a show but I like
it because it does offer some degree of
actionable Hope and a
strategy blood sugar absolutely critical
it is very sensitive to sleep when you
don't get enough it goes in bad
directions you used a very specific word
cleverly so that word was
partially at first you hear or read that
study and Ronda was never suggesting
this too I'm not saying that you think
well if it offsets blood sugar and the
city was saying exercise can nullify a
lack of
sleep you conflate that single outcome
benefit with the idea that well but
maybe it doesn't actually re or does it
compensate for the deficits in immune
function or
cardiovascular disease concerns or my
hormonal health or my learning in memory
or my emotional and brain health maybe
it does but maybe it doesn't so I think
I would always just caution people to
saying when you hear a study like that
it's very natural to think oh that must
mean that it translates to everything
else in my body and everything else in
my brain it may but it also may not
be terrific so if you don't sleep that
well do your best to still get some
exercise but just be mindful of the um
the fact that you know in the winter
months especially that might if you go
too hard in the gym or on a run you
might be a little bit immune compromised
just be mindful of the fact that you're
you're a more vulnerable being when
you're sleep deprived and that but that
exercise can help adjust things in the
right direction and if it's early in the
day um presumably that's not going to
disrupt your the proper bedtime and if
it's later in the day I suppose as long
as you don't need caffeine in order to
uh to do that exercise and or um if
you're familiar with exercising later in
the day fine I you know I find if I
exercise like I'm not one of these
people think can go for a run at you
know 7:00 at night and then just shower
you're a morning type because I'm a
morning type other people can okay we'll
get into exercise a bit more in a later
episode um we'll be sure to do that but
nonetheless I just rais that now um so
what are some of the other
unconventional protocols for sleep so I
think other suggestions I would have
after do nothing would be try to think
about limiting your time embed if you
are struggling with sleep this is
something that is used in the probably
the most well validated psychological
intervention for insomnia and it's
called cognitive behavioral therapy for
insomnia or cbti for short what happens
is that you work with a clinician they
interview you they assess all of the
reasons that you may not be sleeping and
then they create from the toolbox of
many different options a bespoke
tailored sort of saval R soup
prescription for you for your treatment
if you look at the studies of that
collection of different tools in the
cbti Box for intervention of insomnia
and you ask of all of those which seems
to carry the greatest impact on insomnia
which has the greatest sort of
Gravitas it seems to be this thing that
we call bedtime rescheduling it used to
be known as sleep restriction therapy
but obviously if you come to to mean you
say look I'm not sleeping very well I've
got insomnia I say I understand and I've
got a treatment for you it's called
Sleep restriction therapy and you say no
no no you didn't understand it I I'm not
getting enough
sleep but it's not quite that here's how
it works if you are spending so much
time in bed too much time in bed you are
not forcing your brain to be
efficient and by way of constraining
your sleep window even to let's say five
hours a night to begin with i Brute
Force ruthless efficiency from your
sleeping brain after several days so
another analogy would be let's say
you're trying to make a nice thin crust
of of pizza base and you put the dough
on the table and you start rolling it
out if you roll it too thin it starts to
get gaps and holes in it why because
you've spread it out too far and you've
started to create these absences
that's the same thing that happens and
it's very natural as an insomnia patient
you would say I'm just not getting
enough sleep so I'm going to start
spending more time in bed it's the very
worst idea another way would be to say
look I go to the gym and I you know
spend about an hour and a half working
out but if I were to videotape you a lot
of people are doing the I think you've
I've coed as your phrase but um the 11th
rep where people you know do the 10 reps
and then all of a sudden there's the
selfie or there's the social media oh
yeah the texting they finish the lastup
put down and then straight away on the
TT and if you look they're only working
out for about let's say 45 minutes and
the other is wasted so what if the next
day you came to the gym and I said look
I'm sorry and there's some big bouncer
guys at the door um you are only allowed
to work out for 40 minutes and then
we're going to eject you and the first
day you go back and you do the same
thing and then you've only got through
30% of your workout so you get booted
the next day you come back in you do a
little bit more and you get booted again
after about five or six days you you've
built up such a strong desire and hunger
to get your workout in you walk in you
put your phone on silent you put it over
in the corner and you just get to it and
that's the same thing that we're trying
to do with sleep restriction therapy so
you have to be a little bit careful do
it under supervision especially if
you're driving or you're operating heavy
machinery we just want to keep an eye
it's not necessarily a big concern but
we would say Okay Andrew you're
currently spending almost total about
you know 8ish or 7 and a half hours in
bed tonight I'm going to restrict you
down to 5 hours a night and we're going
to do this for the next week and the way
that we normally do it is I don't change
your wakeup time I change your to bed
time why it's easier to stay awake
longer than it is to wake up earlier so
I put it on the front end to the
compromise and at first things don't
change but after maybe about four or
five days of going through this I build
up enough of a shortterm debt in your
system that your system all of a sudden
thinks gosh I just cannot be as lazy
anymore I can't do this thing of waking
up in the middle of the night and
spending an hour and a half awake I
don't have the choice anymore there's so
much physiological buildup and pressure
to do this and gradually what happens is
that you sleep longer you don't wake up
as much and after maybe about 2 weeks of
doing this all of a sudden you go to bed
at this later time so for you let's say
you normally go to bed at 88: I'm going
to have you go to bed at maybe 10:30 11:
but we're still going to have you wake
up at that sort of 4:30 a.m. Mark that
you would normally wake up and all of a
sudden you go to bed at 10:30 11 you're
out like a light and then again the next
thing you remember is your alarm going
off saying I'm sorry you've got to wake
up and what happens by way of that reset
is gradually we will then once you're
stable we will start to back it off
we'll start to have you go to bed at 10:
and if it stays stable then 9:45 then
9:30 and tit trate you back to where you
were and if there's any sign that you're
starting to not sleep well we zip it
back up again the goal here is in some
ways almost like hitting the reset
button on your Wi-Fi router I'm trying
to retrain your brain to better sleep
because when you are not sleeping well
you've lost your confidence in your
ability to sleep and when I do this
technique with you gradually your system
and you cognitively relearn that you are
a good sleeper and you can trust in
sleep and now your sleep does not
control you you control your sleep the
hard part however is that it's not easy
to go through and we have to be we have
to usually ask two questions with
individuals firstly what is your
motivation for better sleep um we need
to know that you really are motivated
and then second you just stay with a hi
touch White Glove frequency checking in
on individuals and motivating them to
keep going because it's very easy to
fall off the wagon so that's the the
next suggestion sleep restriction
therapy or bedtime rescheduling as we
would call it you said it's difficult
for people to go through you know it
takes a little bit of rigor a little bit
of attention means in some cases getting
less sleep than one would like but as
compared to something that you know
sadly I've experienced a lot in my life
of having challenges with sleep and
trying to get things back in order and
looking at the the bed and just going oh
my God Battle Ground you know Battle
Ground you know it's um I think it it
makes a lot of sense and I love the
analogy to the gym somehow if there's a
restriction into 1 hour in and out the
door or maybe 70 minutes in and out the
door CU you need to put your stuff in
the locker or something like that it
always at least for me gets done best
when you just have those constraints I
think there's something about the human
brain that we don't do well in um un
unrestrained systems that I I really
think guard rails are are fantastic I
love deadlines for instance yeah
discipline is essentially the hard hard
deadlines like or as they say in
Academia because we you know write
grants all the time drop deadlines which
who up that ter but like if you don't
make it that's it it's like there isn't
a hey I'll send this in tomorrow 5:00
p.m. Pacific time that website
closes and you better Bo do you get
things done all of a sudden it's
surprising how much distraction you can
you know pull out the noise and focus on
the signal it's great signal to noise
ratio yeah and I I love the idea that
you that one can control their sleep as
opposed to sleep controlling them I
think that that's um and and this notion
of sleep
confidence um one's conf idence in their
ability to sleep these are important
terms and they're more than just terms
because I think that um a a field and
and an area of Health practice and gosh
what's more important than sleep it's
the foundation of mental health physical
health and performance period um really
thrives on a common um common
nomenclature and and I really appreciate
that you're you know peppering these
episodes with it with um new
nomenclature um that captures a lot of
the essence of the protocols and the
mechanisms so there that's my editorial
please please continue I would say that
in terms of other things maybe just to
go through them um a little more quickly
we've spoken some about a wind down
routine most people underappreciate the
importance of a wi down routine we often
think that sleep is like a light bulb
that we dive into bed we switch off the
light bulb and sleep should appear just
as quickly it's untrue sleep in terms of
a process is much more physiologically
like trying to land a plane it just
takes time to come down onto the
terraferma of good sleep at night
whatever it is you enjoy as a relaxation
method engage in it could be listening
to a podcast could be reading a book
maybe it's a meditation it's light
stretching maybe whatever it is that you
do just build it into your regiment you
know you would never you know be driving
down the road and then pull into your
garage
at the same 40 mph speed you gradually
decelerate and you come to a
stop it's the same thing with sleep so
you need to find some way to decelerate
and we've spoken about methods already
as to how to do
that the next tip is a little quirky and
funny do not count sheep there's a great
study from my colleague Dr Alison Harvey
at UC berley and she put this to the
test didn't make people fall asleep
faster it made them take longer to fall
asleep however she did find an
alternative if you are not into
meditation or podcasts or sleep stories
or whatever it is that you you wish for
try taking yourself on a mental walk and
it has to be a walk that you know very
well so let's say that you walk your dog
every day and you know there's a couple
of walks that you take with your dog do
it in hyperd detail So Close Your Eyes
you go to the front door you clip in the
dog to the leash you walk out you go
down the steps out to the driveway then
you take a right but you always cross
over and you look to the left and the
right CU that's the place where traffic
always comes you cross over and now
you're walking up and there's that
strange sort of set of garbage that's
been outside of that house for a long
time and you don't know why it hasn't
been cleared and then you move that type
of High Fidelity
detail allows you to do what we said
earlier which is get your mind off
itself and when you do that again
typically you fall asleep faster and
that's what she found it was a great
great study I really enjoyed that I'm
curious as to why it works so well and
I'm not challenging that it works I I
can imagine having just closed my eyes
and kind of imagine what that would be
like it's very pleasant um there might
be here I'm just specul ating something
about engaging one's procedural memory
because that's procedural memory you're
trying to remember how you do something
as opposed to declarative memory which
is about facts you know I remember this
and this is going to happen tomorrow I
wonder whether or not there's something
about using a procedural memory um as
opposed to a declarative memory
visualization somebody should do that
study they should and I think it's
certainly possible that when you're
incorporating some aspect you know some
aspects of the scene and the information
is more sort of veridical and maybe EP
sort of episodic declarative memory but
when you're taking yourself for a mental
walk what is the fundamental premise of
that it's a walk it's motion it's
procedural memory and so maybe it's
something to do about with being more
attentive to becoming embodied because
when you're out walking and you're
moving it is a more embodied experience
than just sitting there at your desk
which is your mostly your head and very
little your body so I think it's an
intriguing idea and um I think another
tip that I now think of which also comes
from the work of Dr Allison
Harvey when individuals come up to me um
after sort of public events or they see
me at the airport they'll say look every
night for some strange reason at 2:45
a.m. I wake up and it happens three or
four nights a week
my first question to them is how do you
know it's
2:45 and they say well I look at the
clock or I look at my
phone best piece of advice next remove
all clock faces from the bedroom no
matter how bad your sleep is going to be
that night knowing what time it is is
only going to make matters worse it is
not going to make matters any
better and that can create
an anxiety trigger that you think it's
245 and then you're tossing and turning
you look back at the clock and now it's
3:14 a.m. and you think I've got to be
awake at 600 I've got that big meeting
and now it's
5:2 don't do that to yourself and I even
though I don't typically struggle with
sleep I have no clock faces in my
bedroom the phone that I use to help do
the guided meditation is an old phone
and it has
only Wi-Fi connectivity and nothing else
on it and I will only hit play and then
I will never turn it around um I will
not look at the clock face just doesn't
help me another incentive for keeping
the phone out of the room um if if one
can I I understand there are reasons
when um one would want the phone in the
room if you know it's potentially
signaling an emergency you know well I
think I think it's a very important
point and we've done some work in this
area too what that phone does is create
a a low level of anxiety it's what we
call anticipatory
anxiety one of the mechanisms separate
from that well it's related to that if
you look at teen phone use one of the
reasons that they don't sleep very well
at night is that they're constantly
checking their phones because of fomo a
fear of missing out what has gone on as
I've been asleep and it's stunning the
data but for most adults the other
reason I don't like advocating for phone
use when your alarm goes off in the
morning what is the first thing that you
do as you're in bed you swipe right or
you unlock your phone and you instantly
start checking social media emails text
messages and this tsunami of Stress and
Anxiety just floods over you it hits you
like this wall of anxiet
and I bring this up because it again
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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[161:30] supplements while supplements aren't
[161:31] necessary for everybody many people
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[161:35] things like improving sleep for hormone
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