Video lC3Hxx28QY8

[00:00] So let's talk about how to apply quality peer-reviewed science to your day and how to optimize everything from sleep to learning, creativity, meal timing, etc. I'm going to do this in the context of my day and what I typically do.

[00:13] So let's start with getting up in the morning. Now, for me, I tend to wake up sometime around 6 a.m., 6.30, sometimes as late as 7 a.m. I don't typically sleep much later than 7 a.m.

[00:25] The first thing I do after I wake up is I take the pen that's on my nightstand and the pad of paper on my nightstand, and I write down the time in which I woke up. Now, I do sleep with my phone in my room. I realize this is considered a sin and has certain hazards associated with it.

[00:42] But I put my phone on airplane mode about an hour before I go to sleep, and then I set my alarm typically for 6.30 a.m. And some days the alarm wakes me up. Other days I wake up before the alarm. And yes, some days the alarm goes off and I hit snooze a few times, and then usually by 7 a.m. I am up and out of bed.

[00:59] The second thing I do after I wake up is to get into forward ambulation, which is just nerd speak for taking a walk. I have a dog, and as many of you know, he's a bulldog, and he doesn't really like to walk, especially not in the morning.

[01:12] But for humans and for animals, there's a phenomenon whereby when we generate our own forward motion, forward ambulation, visual images pass by us on our eyes, so-called optic flow.

[01:26] And for those of you that are low vision or no vision, the same phenomenon occurs in the auditory system. Sounds pass by us in so-called auditory flow. Getting into a mode of forward ambulation and especially experiencing visual flow has a powerful effect on the nervous system.

[01:43] The effect it has is essentially to quiet or reduce the amount of neural activity in this brain structure called the amygdala. Amygdala means almond and many of you have probably heard about the amygdala for its role in anxiety and fear and threat detection.

[01:59] And indeed, the amygdala is part of the network in the brain that generates feelings of fear and threat and anxiety. It does a bunch of other things too but that one of its primary functions There are now at least half a dozen quality papers published in quality peer review journals that show that forward ambulation walking or biking or running and generating optic

[02:19] flow in particular, has this incredible property of lowering activity in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety. So for me, this process of taking a walk each morning isn't about exercise,

[02:31] it's not about burning calories, it's not about any of that, it's really about getting into optic flow and reducing the levels of amygdala activation. Now, I don't have anxiety. At least, I don't have chronic anxiety or generalized anxiety. I tend to have a lot of energy,

[02:47] but at these points in the morning, I'm not very energetic. Sometimes, I'm sort of shuffling more than I'm walking. In fact, in Kuslo, I'm almost always shuffling, and I'm almost always trying to drag him first thing in the morning. But that walk is a particularly important protocol each

[03:01] day because it really serves to push my neurology in the direction that I'd like it to go, which is alert but not anxious. And it's kind of a fine line sometimes, especially as events surface throughout the day, emails

[03:14] come in, text messages come in, get bombarded with a number of things. I want to be alert and responsive. I want to be able to focus, but I don't want to feel anxious or reactive to these things.

[03:26] So the forward ambulation and this optic flow is the way that I ensure, based on quality peer-reviewed data, that my amygdala activation is slightly suppressed. Now, at the same time, I also want the alertness.

[03:39] I want alert and focus. I don't just want to be sleepy or super relaxed. I want to have a high degree of focus and alertness because I'm soon going to move into a bout of work.

[03:51] I need to lean into the day. So in order to do that, I make sure that the walking is done outdoors. That might be sort of a duh, but many people get up and start moving around their house, their apartment, and they don't go anywhere.

[04:03] And just walking around inside, it will generate some optic flow, but nothing like the sort of optic flow that you can generate in larger environments like out-of-doors environments. In order to get the alertness, I do it outdoors because I also want sunlight in my eyes.

[04:17] I know many of you have heard me talk about this ad nauseum on various podcasts and this podcast but getting sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning is absolutely vital to mental and physical health It is perhaps the most important thing that any and all of us can and should do in order

[04:34] to promote metabolic well-being, promote the positive functioning of your hormone system, get your mental health steering in the right direction. There are a number of reasons for this, but before I get into those reasons, let me just emphasize what the protocol is.

[04:47] The protocol is get outdoors, ideally with no sunglasses if you can do that safely, even if there's cloud cover. More photons, light information, are coming through that cloud cover than would be coming from a very bright indoor bulb.

[05:00] So getting outdoors is absolutely key. How long should you do this? It's going to depend on the brightness of the environment. It's going to depend on a number of different factors. Two minutes would be a minimum. Ten minutes would be even better. And if you can, 30 minutes would be fantastic.

[05:14] So getting outside for a 10-minute walk or a 15-minute walk will basically ensure that you're getting adequate stimulation of these neurons in the eye that are called the melanopsin, intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.

[05:26] I know that's a mouthful. These are neurons that don't care about shapes of objects or the motion of objects. These are neurons that convey to the brain that it's daytime and it's time to be alert. and it sets in motion a huge number of biological cascades

[05:40] within every cell and organ of your body, from your liver to your gut to your heart to your brain. It really sets things down the right path. So then Costello and I get back from our walk. Sometimes that walk was 10 minutes, sometimes it was 60 minutes,

[05:54] depending on how slowly Costello was walking that day. Indeed, we get back, I give him his food, I give him his water, and I give me my water. I'm a big believer based on quality peer-reviewed data, that hydration is essential for mental performance.

[06:09] Now, I confess I don't really like drinking big glasses or big jugs of water first thing in the morning. I don't know why, but my thirst doesn't tend to kick in first thing. Either way, I force myself essentially to drink at least 16 and most days 32 ounces of water.

[06:24] I also put a little bit of sea salt in the water. As many of you know, neurons require ionic flow. What that means is neurons need sodium they need magnesium and they need potassium in order to function We do tend to get dehydrated at night Even if the day is not very hot I try and top off or I try and make sure that

[06:43] I'm hydrated early in the day before I begin any work. So I make myself drink this water with a little bit of sea salt. How much sea salt, if you really want to get detailed, I suppose it's about half a teaspoon. It's not much. At that point, I start thinking about and fantasizing about and

[06:58] craving caffeine, but I don't drink that caffeine yet. I purposely delay my caffeine intake to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up. Of course, I know when I wake up because I wrote it down,

[07:11] although it's pretty easy to commit to memory. The reason I delay caffeine is because one of the factors that induces a sense of sleepiness is the buildup of adenosine. The buildup of adenosine

[07:23] accumulates the longer we are awake. So when I wake up in the morning, when you wake up in the morning, your adenosine levels are likely to be very low. The reason for delaying caffeine intake 90 minutes to 2 hours after waking

[07:36] is I want to make sure that I don't have a late afternoon or even early afternoon crash from caffeine. Delaying caffeine at 90 minutes to 2 hours optimizes this relationship between adenosine and wakefulness and sleepiness

[07:50] in a way that really provides a nice, consistent arc of energy throughout the day and brings energy down as I'm headed toward sleep and falling asleep.

[08:02] My primary objective early in the day is to get into a mode of being focused yet alert so that I can get work done. I found that the best way for me to achieve that state is through fasting. So I don't eat anything until about 11 a.m. or 12 noon.

[08:16] fasting increases levels of adrenaline, also called epinephrine, in the brain and body. And when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline are increased, we learn better, we can focus better.

[08:28] There's terrific data supporting that. Adrenaline really provides a heightened sense of focus and the ability to encode, meaning bring in and retain, remember information.

[08:46] you