103__transcript.txt

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
where we discuss science
and science-based tools for everyday life.
[upbeat music]
I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a professor of
neurobiology and ophthalmology
at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today, we're going to talk
about science-based protocols
for sleep, mood, learning,
nutrition, exercise of various kinds,
strength and endurance, and hypertrophy,
and we are going to talk
about some protocols
that relate to creativity.
We're going to talk about
behavioral protocols,
supplement based protocols,
all science backed by quality,
peer-reviewed literature.
The reason that we're
holding this episode now is
that in the recent previous episodes,
we've covered some pretty
intense and in-depth topics.
We've talked about vision and how we see
and how to get better at seeing
and how to maintain vision.
We've talked about hearing and balance.
We've talked about chemical sensing.
And we had a guest episode
that covered a lot of
information about new
and emerging technologies in neuroscience,
as well as mental health.
That was the interview episode
with Dr. Karl Deisseroth.
So given that we've covered
so much detailed information
in the previous 27 episodes
of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
I decided that we would hold office hours.
Office hours in the university setting are
when students come to
the professor's office
or you meet outdoors on
campus or in the classroom
to review the material and questions
from lecture in more detail.
Now, unfortunately, we
don't have the opportunity
to meet face to face in
real life, but nonetheless,
you've been sending your questions,
putting them in the comment
section on YouTube, et cetera,
and I prepared a number of answers
to the questions that have
shown up most frequently.
Now, in order to provide context
and structure to the way
that we will address these questions,
I've arranged the science
and science-based protocols
that relate to various aspects of life-
such as mood, exercise, sleep, waking,
anxiety, creativity, et cetera-
into the context of a day.
Selecting the unit of a day in order
to deliver this science information
and protocols is not a
haphazard decision on my part.
It's actually the case that
every cell in our body,
every organ in our body,
and our brain is modulating or changes
across the 24 hour a day
in a very regular and predictable rhythm.
And it's no coincidence
that the Earth spins once
on its axis every 24 hours.
These two things are
coordinated by virtue of genes
and different proteins and things
that are expressed in
every cell of your body.
And so selecting the unit of the day
is not just a practical one,
but it's one that's related
to our deeper biology.
You may have heard in my interview episode
with Dr. Karl Deisseroth that he himself,
in order to juggle a tremendous workload,
a full-time clinical practice,
a lab of 40 plus people,
a family of five children, et cetera,
breaks up his life into units of days.
And so today we are going
to further dissect the day
as a unit that one can manage
and manage extremely well,
and, in fact, can optimize.
So we're basically going to talk about
how to leverage science-based protocols.
And when I say science, I mean,
quality, peer-reviewed science published
in excellent journals.
We're going to talk about
how to take that science,
convert it into specific
protocols that break up
along the course of a single day
and direct certain types of behaviors
in order to optimize the
various features of life.
I will couch this in
the context of what I do
across a daily 24-hour rhythm.
That doesn't mean that you
have to follow this schedule
at all or even in part.
It's just by way of example.
Any number of the different things
that I describe could
be applied to any number
of different schedules or frameworks.
But if there's one truth
that applies to all of us,
is that we all have to exist
within the context of this 24 hour rhythm
that we all possess.
So that's what we'll focus on.
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 to 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 ROKA.
ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses
that I believe are the very
highest quality possible.
Developed by two All-American
swimmers from Stanford,
ROKA sunglasses and
eyeglasses were developed
with their intention to create sunglasses
and eyeglasses that
could be worn anywhere.
So while exercising or while working,
at home, while driving.
The reason I like ROKA glasses
so much is that first of all,
they're extremely lightweight.
The optical clarity of
the lenses is excellent,
and so I often just forget
that I have even have them on.
When I'm outside and
I'm wearing sunglasses,
they have this really terrific feature
which is that I can move
in and out of shadows
or the cloud cover can change
and I can see perfectly
well the entire time.
You know, many eyeglasses and
sunglasses that I've tried,
depending on what we call the
"ambient lighting conditions,"
the local lighting conditions outside,
I have to take them off
or put them back on.
It's really annoying for me.
But with ROKA glasses, somehow,
I'm assuming because they
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So that's absolutely terrific.
Another thing about ROKA
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You know, I don't think
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but the sunglasses are of
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or driving or out to dinner.
I don't typically wear
sunglasses while out to dinner,
but you get the idea.
You can wear them anywhere
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They have a huge number of
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If you'd like to try ROKA glasses,
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Today's podcast is also
brought to us by InsideTracker.
InsideTracker is a
personalized nutrition platform
that analyzes data from your blood
and DNA to help you better
understand your body
and help you reach your health goals.
I've long been a believer in
getting regular blood work done
for the simple reason
that many of the factors
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With InsideTracker, it
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Today's episode is also
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Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows
that are ideally matched your sleep needs.
I started sleeping on a Helix mattress
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and I can honestly say it's the best sleep
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If you go to helixsleep.com,
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After taking that quiz,
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I matched to the
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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, et cetera.
As I mentioned earlier,
I'm going to do this in
the context of my day
and what I typically do.
However, the specific protocols
for any number of different things,
sleep, relaxation, meal
timing, exercise, et cetera,
any one or all of those
could be rearranged
to suit your specific needs.
I'm going to tell you what I
do from morning until waking
and even what I do while I sleep in order
to optimize my sleep.
So let's start with
getting up in the morning.
Now, for me, I tend to wake
up sometime around 6:00 AM,
6:30, sometimes as late as 7:00 AM.
I don't typically sleep
much later than 7:00 AM.
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 realized this is considered a sin
and has certain hazards
associated with it,
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 AM.
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 7:00
AM, I am up and out of bed.
The reason for writing
down what time I wake up is
because I want to know
that average wake up time.
That average wake up time informs
what's called my "temperature minimum."
It tells me when my body
temperature was lowest.
The temperature minimum is the time
in each 24-hour cycle that your
body temperature is lowest.
I don't sleep with a thermometer
in my mouth or elsewhere,
and I don't think you should either.
Instead, I know that
the lowest temperature
that my body will be at
across the 24-hour cycle tends
to be two hours before
my typical wake up time.
And I want to know that number.
It's called our "temperature minimum."
So if you're somebody that
typically wakes up at 8:00 AM,
then your temperature minimum
is sometime around 6:00 AM.
Remember, the temperature
minimum is a time
in the 24-hour cycle.
I don't care what my
actual temperature is;
I care when my lowest temperature is.
And I know that that lowest temperature
is approximately two hours
before my average wake-up time.
So I highly recommend that you write down
when you wake up or track that in some way
that works for you and use
that as a reference point
to determine your temperature minimum.
We will return to the temperature minimum
and how you can leverage
the temperature minimum
for several things:
shifting your clock,
shifting your circadian sleep
schedule and wake schedule.
Also for shifting your
eating schedule, et cetera,
We will return to that.
But even if you don't travel,
even if you don't care
about things like jet lag,
even if you sleep
fabulously all year round,
never have a poor night's sleep,
knowing your temperature minimum,
that time when your temperature
is at its lowest point,
is a valuable thing to know.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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's one of its primary functions.
There are now at least half a
dozen quality papers published
in quality, peer-reviewed
journals that show
that forward ambulation,
walking or biking or running,
in generating optic flow in particular
has this incredible property
of lowering activity
in the amygdala and thereby
reducing levels of anxiety.
There are two papers that I'd like
to highlight in particular
that relate to this phenomenon.
The first one was published
in the journal Neuron
and the title of this paper
is "Whole-Brain Functional
Ultrasound Imaging,"
that just means they have a cool technique
to evaluate the activity
of structures in the brain
across the entire brain,
reveals brain modules for
visual motor integration.
What they found in this study,
and I should mention the
first author is Mace,
this comes from Botond Roska's group,
this was work done in mice,
but I'll talk about other
species in a moment.
What they found was essentially that
when these mice walk forward
and their eyes move from side to side,
which is a natural
consequence of moving forward,
so-called "optic flow" is
flowing past their eyes,
many brain areas are activated,
increase in their level of firing,
but the amygdala in particular
reduced its levels of firing.
That's a very interesting
finding, but it is in mice.
However, another paper,
"Eye-Movement Intervention
Enhances Extinction
via Amygdala Deactivation,"
was published in The
Journal of Neuroscience,
a strong journal, and shows that, again,
these eye movements, these
lateral eye movements
from side to side reduce activity levels
in this fear/threat/anxiety center
in the brain, the amygdala.
Now, those are eye movements.
They didn't specifically
look at forward ambulation.
And yet other papers have
looked at forward ambulation
and we know that forward
ambulation, walking forward,
generates the sorts of eye movements
that cause optic flow and
reductions in amygdala activation.
So for me, this process of taking
a walk each morning isn't about exercise.
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,
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.
And Costello is 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 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 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.
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.
I want alert and focused.
I don't just want to be sleepy
or super, super relaxed.
I want to have a high degree
of focus and alertness
because I'm soon going to
move into a about of work.
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.
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.
If you can't get outdoors,
doing it indoors is perfectly fine,
but it's not going to
have the same magnitude
of positive effect.
Now, in order to get the alertness,
I do it outdoors because I
also want sunlight in my eyes.
I know many of you have heard
me talk about this ad nauseam
on various podcasts, in 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
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.
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.
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,
10 minutes would be even better,
and if you can, 30 minutes
would be fantastic.
Now, it's a very bright day or, you know,
you live in a place where
there's bright sunlight,
clear day on a snowfield,
you would only need
something like 60 seconds.
But most people aren't living
in those sorts of conditions.
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.
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
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.
Early in the day,
we experience a natural and healthy bump
in a hormone called "cortisol."
Cortisol comes from the amygdala.
That cortisol, as I mentioned,
is healthy and normal
and promotes wakefulness.
It actually promotes a
healthy immune system.
So I know you've heard that stress
and cortisol disrupt the immune system,
but not the short little pulse of cortisol
that you get each morning.
It's very important that that pulse
of cortisol arrive early in the day.
I want to emphasize this again.
It's very important that that pulse
of cortisol arrive early in the day
And that pulse of cortisol
is going to happen
once every 24 hours no matter what.
It's going to happen
and you get to time it.
How do you time it?
Primarily by when you view bright sunlight
or bright light of another kind,
and we'll talk about that in a moment.
So you want that cortisol pushed early.
If you wake up before the sun comes out,
it's fine to turn on artificial lights,
but then you would want to get outside
as soon as you can to get this, excuse me,
natural light stimulation of your eyes.
And it does have to be to your eyes.
Just to really drill down
into the details for a moment,
you don't want to stare
directly at the sun
or any light that's so
bright that it feels painful.
If you feel like you have
to close your eyes or blink, please do.
You don't want to damage your retinas.
The point here is to get
the sunlight indirectly.
It's going to essentially
be scattered everywhere
through the cloud cover,
but you know from looking at
us at a flashlight directly
into that flashlight
versus looking at the beam
that flashlight generates on the ground
that if you're standing in the shade,
you're going to. get less of that sunlight
than you are if you're
out in an open field.
So this is why the time outside,
it's going to need to vary depending
on your particular environment.
But do your best to do this every day.
If you miss a day, no big deal,
but try not to miss more than one day.
Otherwise your mental
and physical health will start to suffer.
And doing this each day costs nothing.
It's just time
You can combine it with the
forward ambulation with the walk
and the optic flow that
I talked about before.
And that's what I do each morning
to generate a sense of
alertness in my body
and brain to generate a
sense of calm, yet alert.
And that's also what I do with
Costello, with my bulldog.
People have asked me,
do the same mechanisms apply to animals?
Well, the reality is
many of these mechanisms
were actually discovered in animals,
and then were tested in humans
and verified that they
also exist in humans.
Not always.
Sometimes it was the reverse,
where they were tested first in humans,
and then brought to animals.
But indeed, your dog, your horse,
you know, I don't know what
other animals are out there,
they need this.
Now, if you have a hamster
or a nocturnal animal,
the reason why they like to
run on their wheels at night is
because they're nocturnal.
They don't like being in the light.
Light actually causes
them to freeze, right?
Actually, if you are into
aquaria, you like fish,
they always say, "Don't
overfeed your fish.
You'll kill the fish."
That's true, but guess
what the fastest way
to kill a fish is?
To keep the lights on 24 hours a day
They also need circadian
rhythms, these 24-hour rhythms.
So we'll do an entire month at
some point about pet health,
but meanwhile, get that morning sunlight.
So now we have a first protocol,
which is to write down the
time of day that you wake up,
the second protocol is to
take a walk first thing
in the morning,
and the third protocol is
woven in with that walk,
at least for me, which is to
get that sunlight exposure.
Now, if you can't get sunlight exposure,
you absolutely can't,
I don't necessarily recommend buying one
of these dawn alarm lights.
And I'm sorry to say this,
but they're just vastly
overpriced relative
to what they are.
They're basically a bright LED.
I instead use, I have a pad
that's a 930-lux LightPad.
I think it was designed for drawing.
Those are available at
a fraction of the cost
that a morning light
simulator would provide,
and yet it's really bright
enough, at least for me.
I tend to put it on my desk
while I work each morning.
So here's a principle
that you can leverage.
If you want to be alert,
view bright lights
and make those lights above
you or in front of you.
If you want to go to sleep soon
or you don't want to be
awake for whatever reason,
try and eliminate your exposure to light.
And this, again, is not about
exposure of the skin to light;
this is about exposure of your eyes,
of your neural retinas to light.
For those of you that are
concerned about blue light,
I want to that blue light
is precisely the wavelength
of light that is optimal for
stimulating these neurons
in your eye, which set your
circadian rhythms properly.
So you don't want to shield yourself
from blue light early in the
day or throughout the day
or anytime you want to be awake.
In fact, that could have a number
of detrimental consequences.
Fortunately, all those
consequences are going
to be reversible after a short
period of time of making sure
that you don't wear your blue blockers
during the day, please.
The time to wear blue blockers, if you do,
is at night and in the evening
when you're headed towards sleep.
My colleague Samer Hattar,
who is head of the chronobiology unit
at the National Institute
of Mental Health,
has spoken about this
before on my Instagram.
We held an Instagram Live and I said,
"Samer, what do you think
about blue blockers?"
And he said, "I don't think
that's a good idea at all,
unless it's really late at night
and you're in a bright environment
and you're trying to limit
the amount of bright light
that impacts the eyes."
Eliminating specific wavelengths of light,
in Samer's opinion and also in my opinion,
is not a natural thing
for the visual system
and the brain to experience.
Some people get headaches while they work
on the computer all day
or staring at screens,
and so they get blue blockers
thinking that's going
to protect them from their headaches.
However, any protection
that you get from headaches
from blue blockers is going to be minimal
in comparison to what's
really going on there,
which is that people are viewing devices
and screens up close for too many hours
throughout the 24-hour cycle.
A better remedy would be to step away
from that computer from time to time,
and to make sure that you can look far off
into the distance.
Ideally, a distance longer than 20 feet
like view a horizon, go out on a balcony,
things of that sort.
Take a walk around, get into optic flow
So if you're into blue blockers,
make sure you're only wearing
them in the late evening
and at night.
I personally don't wear
blue blockers at all.
I prefer to just control
my light viewing behavior
by doing this, I do the other
form of circadian control,
which is to dim the lights.
And I do that because dimming the lights
and setting them lower in the
environment sets up the brain
and body for sleep much better
than simply just wearing some
blue light blue blockers,
excuse me.
And please know if you
do wear blue blockers
that if the light in your
environment is bright enough,
it doesn't matter if you're
blocking out the blues.
The cells in the eye will respond
to other wavelengths of light.
So I have no vendetta
against the blue blockers,
and, you know, I fully
expect the blue block-anistas
to come after me with,
I guess, blue blockers,
but as you do that,
please understand that the biology points
in the direction of get
a lot of bright light
throughout the day, including blue light,
and at night, just limit the
total amount of overall light
that you're exposed to,
including from screens.
So then Costello and I
get back from our walk.
Sometimes that walk was 10 minutes,
sometimes it was 60 minutes,
depending on how slowly
Costello is walking that day.
Indeed, many mornings I'm
the guy carrying his bulldog
back up the hill.
My neighbors know me so well,
they know Costello so well
that they've since stopped pulling over
and asking if the dog is okay.
Sometimes they'll ask if I'm okay.
Nonetheless, 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.
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.
You may be different.
Either way, I force myself, essentially,
to drink at least 16 and,
most days, 32 ounces of water.
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 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, That's what I do.
And I drink that more or
less room temperature.
I find that drinking really
cold water first thing
in the day kind of like
cramps up my insides,
so I don't do that.
At that point, I start thinking about
and fantasizing about
and 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 'cause I wrote it down,
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 or, as some people call it,
adenosine in our system.
The buildup of adenosine 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.
However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker.
It's actually a competitive
antagonist for you aficionados.
It sort of parks in the receptor
that adenosine normally would park at
and prevents adenosine from
acting on that receptor.
That's why you feel more alert,
because it's essentially
blocking the effect
of this sleepiness factor
that we all create called the "adenosine."
The reason for delaying
caffeine intake 90 minutes
to two hours after waking
is I want to make sure
that I don't have a late afternoon
or even early afternoon
crash from caffeine.
One of the best ways to
ensure a caffeine crash is
to drink a bunch of caffeine,
block all those adenosine receptors,
and then by early or late afternoon,
when that caffeine starts to wear off
and gets dislodged from the receptors,
a lower level of adenosine is able
to create a greater level of sleepiness.
It took me years to figure this out.
I used to wake up and I'd think,
"Oh, I don't want to drink
caffeine too close to bedtime,
so I'm going to start drinking
my caffeine really early."
I let my cortisol naturally
come up in the morning.
I avoid drinking caffeine
until about 90 minutes
or two hours after waking.
And when I do that,
I find that I don't experience
the afternoon crash.
At least I don't experience that crash
unless I do something foolish,
like ingest far too much food at lunch
or I stay up all night the night before.
But provided I don't do
anything foolish like that,
delaying caffeine to 90 minutes
to two hours optimizes this relationship
between adenosine and
wakefulness and sleepiness
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.
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 11:00 AM or 12:00 noon.
I'm not absolutely religious about it.
There are days when I'll
have a few Brazil nuts
or a spoonful or three of almond butter,
for instance, but most
days I'm not doing that.
I'm just not eating anything.
I'm drinking some caffeine caffeine source
for me is yerba mate, guayusa tea.
Those are my preferred sources
I tend to avoid coffee these days.
Occasionally I'll have a cup,
but most often I stick to the teas.
I drink water as much as I
feel I need to and want to.
And I also drink my athletic greens,
which is compatible at
least for me with fasting.
Let's talk about why fasting works
to create this heightened
state of alertness,
yet calm brain state.
Fasting increases levels of adrenaline,
also called "epinephrin"
in the brain and body.
And when our levels of epinephrin
and adrenaline are
increased, we learn better,
we can focus better.
There's terrific data supporting that.
You don't want epinephrine,
aka adrenaline, too high.
That feels like stress and panic.
You get jittery, you can't focus.
But in its optimal range,
adrenaline really provides
a heightened sense of focus
and the ability to
encode, meaning bring in,
and retain, remember information.
And so since my job is
mainly a cerebral one
where I'm writing grants and
working on papers, et cetera,
I fast in the early part of the day.
I mentioned ingesting things
like guayusa or yerba mate
or, in my case, athletic greens.
Many people ask, in fact
there's a whole community
and discussion boards, et cetera,
and YouTube comments on the internet,
about what breaks a fast and what doesn't.
The fact of the matter is that's going
to be highly individual because it's going
to depend on how sensitive
your blood sugar.
And more accurately,
it's going to depend on things
like your insulin sensitivity.
So for instance,
if you're somebody who
gets up in the morning,
hydrates, and goes out for a six-mile run,
you could probably eat
a jar of almond butter
and still be what's called fat-fasted.
Your insulin levels will still be very low
because even though that is a
large volume of almond butter,
even to me and Costello,
that large number of calories comes
from a source that doesn't
increase blood sugar very much
and insulin very much.
Now, I'm not suggesting you do that,
but what I just described as
a vastly different situation
than somebody that ate
their last meal at 2:00 AM,
and that meal was essentially a feast.
And for that person,
fasting until 10:00 or 11:00 AM,
their blood sugar might
still actually be pretty high
or even lowish such that
they might eat one almond
and it would bump them out of fasting.
So you get the idea.
It's going to depend on
your recent eating history,
your blood sugar history, your
glycogen stores, et cetera.
So if anyone tells you that
breaks a fast or that doesn't,
that's kind of silly.
Would one grain of sugar
break your fast? No.
Would an entire tablespoon of
sugar break your fast? Yes.
You'll get a big blip in blood
sugar and insulin from that.
However, how long that lasts,
how long it breaks your fast will depend
on how glycogen-depleted you are
and a number of other factors.
So for me, I just keep it fairly simple:
I ingest water, caffeine from
your yerba mate and guayusa,
and I drink my athletic greens
with some lemon juice in it.
That constitutes my fasting.
And there are days when
I do all those things.
There are days when I
do none of those things.
Although most days,
I would say about 355
days out of the year,
I'm ingesting water, caffeine,
and athletic greens during this period
of fasting early in the day,
and that's the period of
time when I do my work.
One interesting fact about yerba mate
and guayusa teas is that
they increase release
of something called "GLP-1."
GLP-1 is related to glucagon.
Glucagon is a hormone
that you can sort of think
about as opposite to
insulin and blood sugar.
It's more complex than that,
but GLP-1 has a couple
of positive properties.
One is it increases lipolysis
and mobilization of body fat stores,
so burning of fat.
In fact, there are now a
number of clinical trials
that are achieving good success
and there are drugs out
there only available
by prescription which mimic GLP-1
and are being used to
treat, quite successfully,
certain types of diabetes and obesity.
Now, I'm not diabetic,
nor am I trying to shed a ton of body fat,
but I figure as long as I'm fasting
and as long as I like
yerba mate and guayusa,
which I do, they're delicious,
I'll tell you which
type I use in a moment,
I might as well increase my GLP-1
because it's probably not
as good as getting out
and doing some cardio work.
But nonetheless, if I'm fasted,
increasing GLP-1 in my system,
I'm going to be alert from
the caffeine, the adrenaline,
et cetera, and I'm going
to burning body fat
while I'm doing my work.
So for me, it's just an
efficient, biochemically rational,
or I should say grounded
in quality biochemistry sort of approach.
Yerba mate comes in a
lot of different forms.
There are a lot of different
brands out there, et cetera.
I don't have any relationship whatsoever
in a business sense to
any of these brands.
Some of them are very smoky.
I, just because of something
in my genetic makeup,
or I don't know, maybe it was some sort
of Y chromosome-associated
lesion early in life,
but I don't like smoky flavors.
So I'm not a Gouda cheese guy.
I don't like smoky stuff.
You may love it,
but I tend to avoid smoky-tasting mates.
Instead, there's a particular
brand that I just found
on the internet called Anna Park.
I don't know Anna, I don't
know if she has a park,
and I certainly don't
know what Anna Park is,
but for me, that's the
best-tasting yerba mate.
Again, I don't have any
relationship to them,
but it's affordable in
the context of yerba mate
and it's the one that I use.
And I should mention along
the lines of affordability
and GLP-1 is there's a
nice feature of yerba mate
which is if you put it in a filter
or a metal strainer and
you pour hot water over it,
and then drink it, keep the leaves.
The yerba mate leaves can
be used over and over again.
It seems that the GLP-1
stimulating aspects of yerba mate
actually are enhanced with
subsequent pour overs.
So there's something
interesting about these teas
that my tea aficionado
friends tell me allows the tea
to release more of some of
the beneficial compounds
by reusing the tea leaves.
Now, eventually it'll grow mold
and other sorts of disgusting things.
You don't really want
to run that experiment.
I would say you can
use it for a day or two
before it starts to go bad,
but that's a feature
that will extend the life
of whatever yerba mate you happen to use
if you decide to use it,
and that's certainly what I do.
Next, I want to talk about what I'm doing
while I'm drinking all this yerba mate.
'Cause I'm not just sitting there thinking
about all the GLP-1
circulating in my system.
I'm working.
A couple of things for
optimizing workspace
that are grounded in
neuroscience and physiology.
I've talked before about the fact that
when our eyes are directed upward,
literally when our eyelids are open,
no surprise there, and when
our eyes are directed upward,
it creates a state of
heightened alertness.
And this has a relationship
to the brainstem neurons
that create alertness and their control
over the muscles of the eye and,
believe it or not, the eyelids.
Now, it's not the case that if
you are absolutely exhausted
and you need to feel more alert
that looking upward is going
to make you feel wide awake,
although it will help support
your levels of alertness.
The point here is that you
can optimize your workstation
in a physical way that
leverages this aspect
of the visual system and
your level of alertness.
Since most of us want to be
awake while we're working,
try and position your
screen or your tablet,
whatever device you
happen to be working on,
at least at eye level and
ideally slightly higher.
Now, if you think about it,
most people are not doing this.
Most people are looking down
at their computer or tablet
or are angling their eyes at their screen
at about 30 degrees.
That is not going to support
heightened states of alertness
and optimal attention.
In fact, the opposite relationship
between eye position and
alertness is also true.
When we look down, when our
eyelids are slightly closed,
it tends to decrease
our levels of alertness
and increase our levels of sleepiness.
I really want to emphasize this,
that there's a bi-directional
or reciprocal relationship
between the brainstem areas
that control alertness and the eyes,
meaning how alert you are controls
how open or closed your
eyes are, no surprise there,
but also the how open and
upward directed your eyes are
will increase your levels of alertness
And if your eyes are pointed downward
and your eyelids are hooded,
like they're slowly closing,
like Costello's are always are,
you'll feel more sleepy,
especially if you're somebody
who tends to have that
mid-morning sleepiness
or mid-morning crash.
So what I do is I have a standing desk,
but I also prop the computer up
such that it's at least at eye level.
And I haven't figured out yet
how to develop a workstation
where the computer is above me.
I think the only way to really do
that is actually to tilt one's body back,
but actually that's
not a good idea either.
They have done studies
recording from areas
of the brain associated with alertness.
Areas like locus coeruleus
in the so-called reticular
activating system.
What they found is that depending
on how reclined you
are or upright you are,
you will decrease with reclining
and increase with sitting
forward your levels of alertness.
So body posture and
whether or not your upright
or reclining will impact
your levels of alertness
in the predictable ways.
And where you position your eyes,
whether or not your eyes
are upright, so to speak,
looking up or directly
forward or looking down,
will dictate whether or not
you are feeling more alert
or more sleepy, respectively.
So try and arrange a workstation
or a position of your body in your chair
or your standing desk, whatever it is,
that allows you to work
with a heightened state of alertness.
This is really, really key for me
because I found that
when I would sit down,
not only would my hip
flexors start to get sore,
I feel tight in the back, et cetera,
but if I was staring
down at my screen all day
or even for short periods of the day,
I would start to feel sleepy
and I couldn't figure
out what was going on.
I also thought maybe I needed glasses.
I do wear readers at night,
but it was really a problem.
And simply by getting the screen directly
in front of me at eye level,
it's been completely transformative.
So we're now at the description of my day
in these protocols in which I would do
a 90-minute about of work.
Now, why 90 minutes?
Well, the brain is going
through these 90 minutes
so-called "ultradian cycles"
throughout the entire day and night.
Every 90 minutes, we shift
over from being very alert
to being less alert, and
then back to alert again.
Here's how it works.
At the start of one of these
90 minute ultradian cycles,
my brain is not quite engaged
in whatever it is I'm trying to do.
Oftentimes I have things
jumping into my mind,
I've got distractions, et cetera.
I'll talk about how to deal
with those distractions
in a moment.
But I set a timer for 90 minutes
and I try and get a strong
about of work done inside
of that 90 minutes with
the full understanding
that the entire 90 minutes is not going
to be uniform in terms
of my ability to focus.
There will be kind of peaks
and valleys within that,
but that 90 minutes is about
what the brain can handle
in terms of a dedicated effort
for high degree of focus.
Some people can push out
a little bit further,
some people can't handle
more than 10 minutes,
but that's what I'm striving toward.
You'd be amazed how much you
can get done in 90 minutes
if you are focused.
So how do you increase that focus
and how do you use the timer feature?
Well, you can combine those.
I use a program called Freedom.
It shuts me out of the
internet completely.
So that means no checking the markets,
no checking social media, no checking,
you know, the news, no
checking email, none of that.
I get a dedicated about of work done.
I confess, I don't allow
myself to go to the restroom
in that period of time.
Here's an interesting little tip
that's grounded in physiology.
You have a direct neural
connection from your bladder
to your brainstem areas
that increase alertness.
This is why when you have
to go to the bathroom,
when you have to urinate, it
is extremely agitating, right?
It can be very, very agitating.
I'm not encouraging you to get
so agitated by filling
your bladder so much
and resisting going to the bathroom
that you are uncomfortable
and can't focus,
but I generally will just drink liquids
and work away and work away,
and I won't walk away
to go use the bathroom
unless I absolutely have to.
Sort of odd that we're talking about this,
but this is one way in which I've learned
to funnel my attention into
whatever it is I'm doing.
Because as you all know,
the moment you sit down
to do some serious work
and you flip off the internet,
all of a sudden it's as
if the phone has a voice,
it starts calling you..
It's almost as if the
restroom has a voice.
But we all are familiar with the fact
that if we are focused on something
that all that just kind of melts away.
So the goal is to get into
what I call the tunnel,
to really get into a
tunnel of quality work.
The brain loves that state,
but it's very hard for
many of us to access.
My phone is absolutely off.
It's not on airplane mode.
It's absolutely off during this time.
If I've been struggling with that and,
I confess, you know, there are times when,
for whatever reason,
something going on in life,
it's been harder to put away the phone.
I will sometimes put it in my car.
I used to joke that I used
to throw it up on the roof
or something like that.
Look, I've done and I suggest
people do whatever they need
to in order to
self-regulate that activity.
And if you're somebody that
feels that you absolutely need
to be on your phone and on the
computer for this work about
or the work that you do,
well, that's a different
matter altogether.
This is just simply how I work.
So I will do 90 minutes
and I do set a timer
and I turn on the program,
Freedom locks me out of the internet.
If someone rings the doorbell,
I will often shout,
"Not coming to the
doorbell. Leave it there."
I mean, unless there's a real emergency,
I'm not going to step away from that work.
I learned how to do this
when I was a graduate student
under different conditions
where I used to slice brains
on what's called a microtome.
So I used to spend time,
just cutting very thin slices,
it's like a deli slicer, but for a brain,
of various types of brains.
And I've sectioned
through a lot of brains.
And we had a rule,
which is that when the
blade hits the brain,
you don't stop pulling, even
though it's very, very slow
even if a nuclear bomb goes off,
even if a fire alarm goes off.
Now, I don't want anyone,
you know, burning to a crisp
because they didn't step
away from their workflow.
That would be foolish,
but that's the mentality
that I've embedded in myself,
that there's nothing more important
than what I'm doing in
that 90-minute block.
And that's what works for me.
You can try various other things.
That's what works for me.
In addition, I use low level white noise.
This is something that is supported
by quality, peer-reviewed data.
We covered this on the episode
on hearing and balance,
but it turns out that white noise,
which is essentially all
frequencies of sound,
or all frequencies of
sound that we can perceive,
mixed up kind of randomly,
there's no structure to it,
turned on at a low volume,
not with headphones most of the time,
puts the brain into a state that's optimal
for learning and workflow.
And I covered two papers
during that episode.
One that showed that, indeed,
brain areas involved in attention,
brain areas involved in focus
and cognition and memory,
those are engaged to a greater degree
when there is low levels
of white noise playing
in the background.
The other paper that's really
interesting did brain imaging
and showed the areas of the
brain that are associated
with dopamine release are increased
by low levels of white noise.
Dopamine release is associated
not just with pleasure,
but with motivation and craving.
So everything about this 90-minute block
from the low levels of white noise
to the position of my computer,
how I'm standing, where
my eyes are positioned,
is geared towards putting
me in this tunnel of work.
And I have to say that
while it can be a challenge
to try and achieve this state
in this tunnel of work some days,
you start to get kind of addicted to it.
It feels really good.
It's like a workout for the mind.
And it is something that as
you exit that 90 minutes,
you really feel like
you've accomplished a lot
because often you have,
and it just feels deeply satisfying.
And I'm convinced that that's
because of the release of
neuromodulators like dopamine
and the norepinephrine that's
circulating in your system.
And I want to be clear
that I'm not perfect
about this 90 minutes.
Occasionally I get drawn away.
Occasionally something will happen
or I'll go use the restroom
or Costello will have a need
or somebody will have a need
that I will have to respond to,
but I really try and achieve
this most, if not every day
that I'm alive because for me,
that work session is kind of holy.
It's where I set up a relationship,
not just between me and
the work that I'm doing,
but between me and my ability
to control my own state of mind
using these various supports
of the white noise, et cetera.
But really those supports are peripheral
to the fact that I'm creating this space.
I'm funneling my brain into a state
rather than allowing
whatever events and contexts
on social media and
elsewhere might be occurring
in the world that would
yank me out of what
for me is my purpose
and my mission in life,
which is to do the
sorts of work that I do.
There's a powerful way in
which you can place the timing
of this 90-minute work
about in an optimal way.
You have access to a very
important piece of data
that dictates when this about
should start more or less
and when it should end.
That piece of data is
your temperature minimum.
If you're somebody who wakes
up on average at 7:00 AM,
well, then your temperature
minimum is 5:00 AM.
And you can be reasonably sure,
I want to underscore reasonably,
but you can be reasonably sure
that your best work is
going to be done anywhere
from four to six hours after
your temperature minimum.
So for me, I tend to
wake up around 6:30 AM,
that means my temperature
minimum is at 4:30 AM.
You can add five hours to that.
So that means that a 90
minute work about could fall
at 9:30 AM and it would
be fairly optimized.
Or I could do it at 10:30 AM,
or I could do it at 8:30 AM.
Somewhere in there, all right?
That we can't say that
it's exactly six hours
after your temperature minimum.
You will find it, however.
There is a precise and best time
for you to do this 90-minute work about.
Whether or not it's five or six hours
after your temperature minimum is going
to vary from person to person.
How do I know this?
How do I know this relationship
between temperature minimum
and focus cognition?
Well, temperature minimum
defines the trough,
the nadir, as they say,
of your temperature
across the 24-hour cycle.
And immediately after that,
your temperature will start to rise.
That temperature rise is
actually what triggers
the initial cortisol
release that you experience
and wakes you up further.
And then, of course, that
sunlight that you're getting
is going to further enhance
that healthy release of cortisol.
That cortisol will then
provide fuel, if you will,
for that increase in temperature.
And your body will continue
to increase in temperature
throughout the day toward the afternoon.
What you're trying to do in this idea
of optimizing this 90-minute work about
to a particular time of day
is catch the portion of the steepest slope
of that temperature rise.
Now, again, you're not walking
around with a thermocouple
or a thermometer in some
orifice of your body.
So you don't have accurate
information about temperature,
but you can make very good guesses
about when your body
temperature is rising fastest
by virtue of that temperature minimum.
So again, just to be clear,
it's a 90-minute work about.
That's about what the brain can handle
for a very intense work about.
Do you understand, again,
that they're going to be
portions of that 90 minute
that your brain is flickering
in and out of focus,
other portions, where you're
going to be entirely focused.
That's entirely normal.
But when to place that
90-minute work about,
when to start it, and when
to end it will depend on
that temperature minimum.
So if you're somebody who wakes
up at 8:00 AM each morning,
your temperature minimum is 6:00 AM,
chances are you're going to
want to start this work about
somewhere around 10:00 AM
or 11:00 AM.
Now, some people wake up and
feel very alert first thing
in the morning.
They can really do their
best work first thing
in the morning.
Please, if that's you continue to do that.
Leverage that time. Use that time.
But if you're somebody who
struggles to find focus,
definitely let your physiology
and this rise in your body
temperature support your efforts
to focus rather than
trying to do your best work
at times of day when your physiology
is actually directing your body
and your brain toward de-focus
and towards being more lethargic.
It just is setting yourself up for success
when you try and capture this rising phase
of your temperature.
So up until now,
we've been emphasizing practices
that allow you to optimize
your level of alertness
and your levels of mental focus.
Data going back to the
1990s supports the idea
that physical movement of particular kinds
can support brain health
and brain function both
in the immediate term
and in the long term.
Now, this is has had a profound impact
on the field of neuroscience, but frankly,
it's also had a profound impact on
how I structure my day.
So after I've finished a about of work,
this 90-minute about of work,
I force myself some days,
other days I want to,
but I force myself to do some
sort of physical exercise
that is going to be
supportive of my brain health
and brain function and organ health
and bodily function in general.
So I just briefly want to touch
on what the structure of
that exercise looks like,
how it's structured within the day
and how it's structured
across the weeks in fact,
based on the scientific data
and what the scientific data say is best
or optimal in order to promote
longevity of the brain,
ability to focus, as well
as cardiovascular health
and all the other things that
we know exercise supports.
Now, there are various
forms of physical activity
or what we call exercise,
but those can generally be
batched into two categories.
First is strength and hypertrophy work.
So physical movements that are designed
to make you stronger and/or
make your muscles larger.
There's also endurance work.
Physical exercise and
movements that are designed
to allow you to do more work over time
or to extend the amount of
time that you can do work
of any kind, both physical and mental.
And we did two full podcast
episodes on the details
and the science and the protocols
related to these topics.
We did an episode on
the science of strength
and hypertrophy, of building
strength and muscle building.
And that included a lot of protocols.
And we did an episode on endurance.
How to build any one or all of
the four types of endurance,
which are muscular endurance,
anaerobic, aerobic,
long-distance endurance, et cetera.
So if you're interested in the
specifics of those protocols,
please see those episodes.
However, right now I
just want to emphasize
how the data impact my day
and how I structure my day in a way
that I can incorporate physical movement
in a way that supports
my brain and health.
Basically, after I finished
that cognitive work about,
that 90-minute work about,
I do some form of physical
exercise for about an hour.
The data all point to the
fact that working out hard
for longer than an hour
can actually be detrimental
because of the way that
it raises cortisol.
And cortisol can be a good thing
if it's appropriately timed
and in the appropriate low levels,
but you don't want to have
your cortisol levels up
throughout the day or have big spikes
of cortisol repeatedly.
So keeping workouts relatively short
can definitely help with that
And certainly if you're training hard,
60 minutes or less should
be more than sufficient.
And for many people, including myself,
45 minutes or 50 minutes is
probably even more optimal.
The basic design of this
physical exercise is
that it be approximately 60 minutes.
So maybe 60 plus or minus
15 minutes should be well
within the margins of keeping
hormonal health proper
and not going too long
nor making the workout
so short that it's not beneficial.
And essentially what the data tell us is
that in order to optimize cardiovascular
and brain health and
other systems of the body,
we want to exercise at
least five days per week.
I know that seems like a lot.
It certainly is a lot for certain people.
Some of you, you compulsive exercisers,
might gasp at the idea
of taking two days off.
I personally find that taking
two full days off per week
is actually both beneficial
to my exercise training performance,
as well as pleasant.
I like those rest days.
But essentially the structure
of the exercise regimen
that works for sake of
supporting health is going
to be one in which there's a 3:2 ratio.
Where for a 12-week period
or so, maybe 10 to 12 weeks,
three of those five workouts
per week emphasize strength
and hypertrophy and the other
two emphasize endurance.
Then, after 10 or 12 weeks,
one over to a 10- or 12-week
regimen of doing a 3:2 ratio
where you're prioritizing endurance work.
So primarily the sorts of
workouts that are described
in the endurance episode
and those protocols.
And the other two days,
you're focusing on strength
and hypertrophy work merely
to maintain strength and hypertrophy,
to not lose the strength and hypertrophy
that you've created.
And there a lot of data
now supporting the fact
that maintaining muscular health
and bone health is supported
by resistance training,
weight training of various kinds.
It can also be done with body weight
if you don't have access to equipment.
And, of course, that doing
cardiovascular endurance work
is very beneficial both to
the muscles of the body,
the organs of the body,
but also to the brain.
Many of you have probably heard
that doing physical exercise
of various kinds can
support the production
of new neurons in the brain.
Frankly, those data are
specific to research animals.
As far as we know,
increases in neuron
number are not supported
by exercise in humans.
There is a little bit
of data that supports
that maybe a few neurons
might get created by running
or weightlifting or things
of that sort in human beings,
but there's still a host of other reasons
to have this hour or so per day
where one is doing physical exercise.
And those include increased
blood flow to the brain.
Remember, the brain is an organ too.
It's the most metabolically
demanding organ in your body
and it's receiving
those metabolic factors,
it's receiving its fuels
by way of vasculature,
of blood vessels and capillaries and veins
and things of that sort.
So movement is very crucial
to get your brain to function properly.
Movement of various
kinds is very important
to get your brain to function properly.
Resistance training turns
out to be as important
as endurance training because of the way
that it stimulates the release
of particular hormones
actually from bones,
things like osteocalcin,
which can positively impact brain function
and can support the
health of existing neurons
as opposed to increasing
the number of neurons.
It turns out increasing the number
of neurons may not actually
be as beneficial as we think.
It all sounds great. More
neurons, more neurons.
Certainly more neurons is
better than fewer neurons
and losing neurons,
but incorporating new neurons
into existing brain circuitry
is actually very challenging
for the brain to do.
I make sure that after that workout,
I get this one hour or so of
exercise five days per week
because of the ways that it
supports my general health.
And there are now hundreds of
studies supporting the fact
that both endurance work
and strength training
or hypertrophy training
done in combination,
meaning not necessarily
in the same workout,
but done across the week
is immensely beneficial
for the production of things
like brain-derived neurotrophic factor,
for limiting inflammatory
cytokines like IL-6,
for promoting anti-inflammatory
cytokines like IL-10,
provided that exercise
is of the proper duration
and that it's not so intense
that you're actually creating damage
to the various systems of the body.
Now, where is the
threshold between optimal,
sub-threshold and detrimental?
This is a complicated theme
if we don't put some structure around it.
So let's put a little bit
of structure around it.
We already said that about 60 minutes,
so 60 minutes plus or minus 15 minutes,
is going to be optimal for
all these health benefits.
What about the structure
of the actual workouts?
Well, we need to address
this issue of intensity.
A good rule of thumb
based on the literature,
and I discussed this with
Dr. Andy Galpin prior
to this strength and hypertrophy
and endurance episodes,
and the literature that's published in
quality, peer-reviewed
journals really points
to the fact that approximately 80%
of the resistance training you do
should be resistance training
that doesn't go to what they call failure,
where you can't actually
move the resistance anymore.
The other 20% can be
of the higher intensity
to failure type training.
Now, with respect to endurance work,
one can build up endurance
without having to log long,
long mileage or extensive mileage
in the pool or by running.
And that's because there
are these other forms
of endurance that can build up,
for instance, the capillary
beds within the muscles.
Building up the capillary beds
within the muscles will
allow more oxygen utilization
within the muscles,
and thereby will increase your endurance
both of the muscles,
but also will improve brain metabolism
and the way that the heart functions,
so cardiovascular function.
That 80/20 rule of less than failure
and work to failure in the
resistance exercise regime
can be transported or translated
to the endurance exercise portion
by focusing on that thing
that we're familiar with,
which is the burn when we're
running hard or cycling hard,
we'll experience a kind
of burning of the muscles
that's associated with the lactate system.
During the episode on endurance,
I pointed out that that
burn is not lactic acid.
Contrary to common belief,
it is not lactic acid.
It's associated with lactate metabolism.
And again, about 80% of the endurance work
should not incorporate
that so-called "burn,"
but if 20% of that work or so,
I should say approximately
20% of that work,
does include the so-called
"burning sensation,"
that burning sensation actually
triggers the activation
of release of certain compounds
and molecules from glia,
this brain cell type that
supports neuron health.
And actually, the lactate
system is its own form of fuel
for the brain.
And so there's increasing
interest in generating the lactate
or pushing past that lactate
threshold for small portion,
20% or so, of endurance work in order
to support brain health and function.
So what does all this all
look like as a protocol?
Well, as I mentioned
before, this 3:2 ratio.
So maybe you spend 10 weeks or so
or 12 weeks or so focusing
mainly on endurance,
where three workouts per
week on endurance work,
80% of those workouts,
meaning 80% of the time you're
below that burn threshold,
you are not experiencing
a burning sensation,
but that for 20% of it, you are.
That, based on the scientific data,
should support lactate metabolism,
brain health, et cetera,
as well as cardiovascular
health and oxygen utilization.
All the forms of endurance
that we're aware of.
And then the other two workouts
would involve resistance training,
again, with this 80/20 split,
where 80% of the work is
not to failure and 20% is.
And then maybe after 10,
12 weeks, you switch,
where you start emphasizing
strength and hypertrophy work
for three of the workouts
and endurance work for
two of the workouts.
Now, of course, some of you will be able
to train six days a week
or you'll compulsively need
to train seven days a week.
If you decide to do that,
please be aware that
this cortisol threshold
is a real thing.
So for me, the 3:2 ratio
works out perfectly
'cause I like two full days off a week.
When I take those really depends
on my schedule and how I'm feeling.
Sometimes it's two days in a row.
Sometimes they're interspersed
throughout the week.
But in reviewing the scientific literature
for those two episodes of the podcast
and in talking to people
who are really informed
in the world of resistance training
and endurance training
and how that relates to
brain health and body health,
this seems to be the most
rational and grounded protocol,
so that's the one that I follow.
So on any given day,
I finish that work block and I train.
I do some sort of resistance
or endurance training.
I put those on alternate days
or different days, rather.
So we've now talked about the arc
that spans all the way from waking
to a morning about of focused work
to physical training.
I have not mentioned ingesting
anything or nutrients.
One of the most common questions I get
are what should I eat for my brain?
Well, ironically enough,
one of the best things you can do
for your brain is to not eat,
but, of course, we all
have to eat sooner or later
and eating is wonderful.
I absolutely love eating.
I even enjoy the mere act of chewing.
But the question of what
to eat is an important one
as it relates to brain
health and brain function.
Before we talk about that,
I want to emphasize that
training fasted actually
has some immediate and long-term benefits.
Prior to having my lab at Stanford,
I was down in San Diego at UC San Diego
and had an appointment
at the Salk Institute
of Biological Studies.
I had a colleague there by
the name of Satchin Panda.
He wrote a wonderful book
called "The Circadian Code."
He runs a serious biology
laboratory focusing on metabolism,
circadian rhythms, and so forth,
as well as the effects of fasting.
Satchin and his book "The
Circadian Code" describe
how engaging in physical exercise
while fasted can amplify the
effects of that exercise,
not just for sake of increasing
the percentage of things
like body fat burned, et
cetera, but for cellular health,
liver health, and the
health of other organs.
So where possible, I do
strive to do my workout
without eating anything first.
However, some days I'm very, very hungry,
and so I do ingest water,
which contains electrolytes,
so that means sodium,
magnesium, potassium,
for the simple reason
that sodium, magnesium,
potassium are required for
neurons to function properly.
It's part of the way they
generate electrical activity.
As well, Ingesting electrolytes
for me can quell hunger.
And this points to a whole other topic
we could do another
episode on at some point,
which is many times people will think
that their blood sugar is low
and actually that's not the case.
And frankly, one wouldn't want
their blood sugar to be high.
You don't want your blood sugar too low,
but you also don't want it too high.
Very low blood sugar is terrible,
but lowish blood sugar tends
to give us a sense of
mental clarity and focus,
related to this adrenaline phenomenon
that we talked about earlier.
In order to be able to focus on exercise
or work or anything else, you
need sufficient electrolytes.
And so many people find that
if they simply ingest
some water with salt,
maybe a 99-milligram potassium tablet,
all of a sudden they
feel very mentally clear
and able to do physical
work and mental work.
So what I do is, prior
to this morning exercise,
although it's now late morning
in this way I'm describing it
and typically it does occur late morning,
I'll have some water with
either maybe half a teaspoon of sea salt
with a 99-milligram potassium tablet
or these days I'm fond of
taking what's called "LMNT."
L-M-N-T. LMNT.
I learned about this from
Lex Friedman's podcasts.
I know many of you are familiar with Lex,
has a excellent podcast,
excellent scientist.
I don't have any business
relationship to LMNT.
They're not a sponsor of the podcast,
but LMNT is a product
that essentially contains electrolytes:
sodium, potassium, as
well as magnesium malate,
which has been shown to offset things
like delayed onset muscle soreness.
That form of magnesium
doesn't make people drowsy.
It's not an anxiolytic like
some other forms of magnesium.
An anxiolytic is just
one that reduces anxiety.
So whether or not it's LMNT
or whether or not you're
just putting a little bit
of salt into some water
and ingesting that prior
to training, that can be
an excellent way to ensure
that you're able to complete
the physical exercise,
even though you haven't eaten anything.
And I confess, some days
I will eat a little bit
before my workout,
just because I can't
seem to resist eating.
I want to mention the use of stimulants
before physical training.
This has certain benefits
and certain drawbacks.
The benefits are sometimes
it can facilitate motivation
because things like caffeine can increase
the release of dopamine,
can increase the release of epinephrin,
can reduce that adenosine
level in the bloodstream.
So some people use
caffeine before training
in ways that benefit them.
It can also increase fat oxidation
and kind of fat metabolism and
things if that's your goal.
I'm not a particular fan
of ingesting stimulants
before training because of a whole set
of problems associated with
most forms of stimulants
in the form of energy drinks, et cetera.
I am not a fan of energy drinks.
I did a decent portion
of a previous episode
on food and mood on energy drinks
and some of the detrimental
things they contain.
Rather, I try and train simply
by ingesting the caffeine
sources I mentioned before,
guayusa, mate, some
electrolytes, some water.
Occasionally I'll have an espresso
or a cup of coffee before I train.
And on rare occasions,
I should emphasize rare occasions,
if I really need help
increasing my motivation
or I decide I want to push extremely hard,
I will ingest something like alpha-GPC.
Alpha-GPC supports the release
of a neuromodulator called acetylcholine.
So 300 milligrams of
alpha-GPC has been shown
to increase physical performance,
but also cognitive performance.
Some people might not be
interested in ingesting anything
to improve their physical
performance or anything at all,
but they might be addressing
how they can improve cognitive
performance and focus.
And alpha-GPC is a non-stimulant
way to approach that.
Again, definitely check with your doctor
before taking anything or
stopping to take anything,
but alpha-GPC has been
shown in various studies
to improve cognitive performance.
And in people who have
age-related cognitive decline,
there have been some
positive benefits reported
in quality, peer-reviewed journals.
If you want to explore those references,
please go to examine.com,
go please put in alpha-GPC,
go to the Human Effect Matrix,
and there you can find
details of those studies,
references to PubMed, et cetera.
So let's talk about food timing first.
As I mentioned, I eat
my first meal sometime
around noon plus or minus an hour
for the reasons we've discussed.
The volume of food is also important.
If you eat a large volume of anything,
because it diverts blood to your gut,
you will feel lethargic
and you will have less
blood going to your brain.
That seems like a simple and trivial fact,
but if you want be able to think,
you can't ingest large volumes
of anything into your gut.
So the discussion about
what foods give you energy
is kind of moot if you eat
enormous volumes of that food.
Now, the volumes are
going to depend on you
and your needs and your activity levels.
I'm going to discuss what I
do in terms of food content,
but I'm not going to discuss food volume.
I sort of know where that mostly full,
like 80% full line is,
and I usually eat a little
bit past that, frankly.
And I'm able to maintain a decent degree
of alertness into the afternoon.
And that's my goal
and I think that's the
goal of most people,
to not work out in the
morning or do some work,
and then just collapse into a slumber
that lasts all afternoon,
but to be able to generate alert, calm,
focus states throughout the day.
So for lunch, I do emphasize
slightly lower carbohydrate
or low carbohydrate intake
for the simple reason
that adrenaline and dopamine
and their associated
neuromodulators are going
to support alertness.
So for me, I fast up until about noon.
Then I eat a lunch that consists
of some sort of protein thing,
like some meat or some
chicken or some salmon
and some vegetables, et cetera.
And if I've exercised previously,
which I do, as I mentioned,
five days a week,
then I will ingest some starches.
I'll in just some red
or, bread, excuse me,
or rice or oatmeal and butter
and nuts and things like that.
I will consume the various
food groups, as they say,
but I will keep the total amount
of carbohydrate a little
bit on the low side,
or if I haven't trained,
I won't have any carbohydrate at all.
Not because I'm ketogenic,
not because I'm inter carbohydrate,
not because I'm on a pure
carnivore diet, far from it,
but because starches cause
the release of serotonin
in the brain and lend themselves
to a state of sleepiness.
Now, I should mention that
about 25% of individuals
have genes that encode for enzymes
that allow them to eat large
amounts of carbohydrate
and not suffer from this lethargy,
this kind of sedation from carbohydrates.
But I don't have that gene, and so for me,
eating a noonish meal
that is not enormous,
but is decent in size, but
that is mainly protein,
healthy fats, and lowish carbohydrates
or no carbohydrates is what allows me
to achieve heightened states of alertness
throughout the day, which is
what I need for my purposes.
So just knowing that meats
and nuts support alertness,
provided you don't eat too much of them,
that vegetables are healthy for us
and therefore we should eat them,
and I happen to like them as well,
and that carbohydrates tend
to have a kind of sedative
like quality to them,
that should help you and
guide your food choices
in an intelligent way that's grounded
in the scientific literature
as it relates to alertness.
Now, what about components of foods
that are not about alertness,
but are about mood?
We did an entire episode on mood and food,
and it's very clear, based
on now dozens of studies,
that ingesting sufficient
levels of omega-3 fatty acids
is going to support healthy mood
and even can act as an antidepressant.
More than a dozen studies have shown
that ingesting at least
1,000 milligrams per day
of the EPA form of essential fatty acid
is as effective as
prescription antidepressants
in relieving depression.
And if you're somebody
who requires prescription antidepressants,
Prozac, Zoloft, et cetera,
it can allow people to take lower doses
of those medications,
which in many cases is a positive thing
or a good thing to do because
of the side effect profiles
that many of those drugs carry.
So I find these data
remarkably compelling.
I mean, here we have a food
or a substance from food
that can improve our mood
and our sense of wellbeing,
and it does that by way
of increasing certain
neuromodulators in the brain,
in particular dopamine,
but also some other
related neuromodulators.
So if you're eating
fatty salmon regularly,
if you're eating krill regularly,
meaning if you're a whale,
if you're ingesting foods that tend
to have a lot of omega-3s,
you probably don't need to
supplement with omega-3.
Most people are not
ingesting sufficient levels
of omega-3, and I'm certainly
one of those people.
Despite an effort to eat
good foods and whole foods,
et cetera, and unprocessed foods,
I've made the choice to ingest
at least 1,000 milligrams per day of EPA.
I do that in the form of fish oil
and the EPA-DHA combination fish oil,
but the threshold of 1,000 milligrams
is not 1,000 milligrams of fish oil;
it's 1,000 milligrams of EPA.
Now, for those of you that
don't want to consume fish oils
and prefer to get your omega-3s
from non-animal sources,
there are non-animal sources,
various forms of algae, et cetera.
You can just look that up online
and you should be able to find that.
There are also a number of foods
that include these essential omega-3s.
We did an episode on food and mood
where I go into more detail
than you could ever want on that,
as well as some additional
recommendations.
We also did an episode
on thyroid function,
this hormone that's
important for metabolism,
and that pointed to the importance
of getting sufficient iodine,
which you should naturally get
from the salts you're ingesting,
provided you're ingesting enough salt.
I'm not somebody who eats a lot of kelp,
but, or seaweed, although I
don't mind the taste of seaweed,
I don't ingest it regularly,
but ingesting sufficient selenium
or selenium has been shown to be important
for proper thyroid production
and thyroid function,
which is why I tend to eat
a few Brazil nuts each day
typically with my lunch or
sometimes before my workout.
It doesn't really matter.
The point is that the volume, the amount,
the content, and indeed the
ratios of protein to fat
to carbohydrates are going
to impact how you feel
and they're going to
impact your brain health.
And, of course, the timing.
We know that allowing periods of 12 hours
or more each 24-hour cycle
where you're not ingesting
anything is beneficial
for your brain and body health.
That's what Satchin Panda
and his colleagues' work has
shown over and over again
in these quality studies.
So when people ask me, you know,
"What should I eat for my brain?"
More often than not,
it's really a question of how
you're structuring your day,
when you're eating for the first time,
how long you're allowing yourself
to fast each 24-hour cycle,
and also whether or not you're
getting sufficient omega-3s,
whether or not you're
getting sufficient selenium
to support things like thyroid function,
which has an impact both on
the metabolism of the body,
but also the metabolism in the brain.
And when I say metabolism,
I don't just mean burning energy;
I actually mean the rebuilding of things.
So in the episode on growth
hormone and thyroid hormone,
we talked about how metabolism means,
not just the breakdown of
fats and carbohydrates,
but also the building up,
the repair of muscle tissue,
the repair of bone,
the reinforcing of bone
and the repair and the
buildup of brain tissue.
And so those are the
things that I emphasize
because they are so strongly supported
by the scientific data
done in mice studies,
done in humans.
And basically there's a
lot of biochemical evidence
that supports everything
that I just described.
Along the lines of health and wellbeing,
I'd be remiss if I
didn't mention hormones.
Hormones have broad effects
on the body and brain.
We did an entire month on hormones
if you want to hear about any
of those hormones in detail.
We talked about testosterone
and optimizing testosterone,
estrogen, et cetera.
The sex steroid hormones,
which include testosterone and estrogen,
which, of course, are
present in varying ratios,
but in both men and women and in kids,
they are manufactured from cholesterol.
We hear about cholesterol
as this terrible thing,
but they are actually
made from cholesterol.
And so if you don't get
sufficient levels of cholesterol,
that can be problematic for your hormones
and that can be problematic for your brain
and your body health.
So without going into too much detail,
I'll just point to a couple of things
that I do that, at
least from my blood work
and from my subjective experience,
have been very beneficial for me
that some of you might want to consider.
First of all, I am not shy
about my love for butter.
I will eat packs of butter directly.
I believe if people
are going to eat cheese
without a cracker, I will
eat butter without a cracker.
Butter is high in cholesterol,
so I don't eat a ton of it,
but at least for me and for
my lipid profiles, it's fine.
Butter has cholesterol,
which is a precursor to
the sex steroid hormones,
and men and women need
testosterone and estrogen
in order to feel good
and to be able to think.
You do not want your estrogen too low
or your testosterone too low.
So I eat butter in order to ensure
that I get sufficient cholesterol.
Butter also has some other
things that are beneficial,
various small fatty acids that are
that are interesting in
terms of their effects
on metabolism, et cetera.
You can look those up, benefits of butter.
But again, volume is important
and you can't overdo it.
Costello incidentally
loves butter as well.
Along the lines of
hormones and testosterone,
I get a lot of questions
about this I think
because a lot of online communities
are sort of obsessed with testosterone,
and I just want to emphasize that, yes,
having sufficient levels of testosterone
is vitally important for brain function
and having sufficient levels
of estrogen will allow your
brain to actually function.
It turns out that estrogen
is one of the main ways
in which the brain maintains longevity
and maintains its ability to think.
So we should all be seeking
optimal testosterone levels
for ourselves, both
testosterone and estrogen.
And many of the things that
we've discussed up until now,
morning sunlight, exercise, fasting,
those can support
testosterone and estrogen
in meaningful and positive ways.
I get a lot of questions
about hormone optimization.
We did an entire month on this topic.
We did an entire episode on testosterone
and estrogen optimization.
I just want to briefly
highlight two things
that could be relevant,
and then if you want more details,
please go see that episode.
The first is that testosterone
can exert its various functions only
in its unbound form, free testosterone.
We all make a particular binding protein
called "sex hormone binding globulin"
that essentially binds up testosterone,
prevents it from being free.
This sounds like a terrible thing,
but actually it's a good thing
because it allows
testosterone be transported
to the various tissues,
including the brain,
where it can exert its various functions.
For those that have lower
than desired levels of testosterone
or too much sex hormone binding globulin,
it turns out that 400 milligrams per day
of something called "tongkat ali,"
which is a form of ginseng,
can actually help increase
levels of free testosterone.
Many people experience a
positive subjective effect
and some objective affects as well,
meaning increases in free testosterone
when they do blood analysis.
There are some data on that,
not a ton in the
peer-reviewed literatures,
and again, always approach
these with a sense of caution
and definitely talked to your doctor.
If you want to learn more about that,
you can go to examine.com.
There's a lot of information
there listed about that.
The other compound that's
relevant both to men and women,
or I should say people that are trying
to optimize testosterone
and/or estrogen, is Fadogia.
Fadogia agrestis is actually an herb
that increases the levels
of what's called "luteinizing hormone."
Luteinizing hormone is a hormone
that's released from the hypothalamus
within the brain that
travels to the gonads,
either the ovaries or the testes,
to stimulate the release of
estrogen or testosterone.
And Fadogia agrestis has been shown,
albeit in a limited number of studies,
to increase levels of luteinizing hormone
and thereby levels of
testosterone and estrogen
in ways that some people find beneficial.
So I just want to mention those two.
And again, if you want
a lot more information
about hormone optimization,
please see the episodes
on hormone optimization.
A key aspect to the mid-day meal,
if you want that meal to benefit you,
is to take a brief walk afterwards.
It turns out that brief
walks of five to 30 minutes
after ingesting food can
accelerate metabolism
and actually can accelerate
and improve nutrient utilization,
which is essentially
the same as metabolism.
But nonetheless, that's
something that I do
after I finish my noon meal.
I do force myself to
stand up and go outside
and take a brief walk.
That also gets me, again, into optic flow.
It also has another benefit,
which is that I am giving my brain
and thereby my body more information
about light and time of day,
which is always better
than less information
about light and time of day.
Much of our circadian rhythm
and our health rhythms
and all of our cognitive
rhythms, et cetera,
are supported by our cells
knowing where they are in time,
and light is the primary zeitgeber,
that's German for "timekeeper,"
is the primary way in which
the body learns information
or about what function should be turned on
and what functions should be turned off.
So getting that morning light pulse,
but then also leaving the house
or apartment or workplace and getting out
for a few minutes after lunch
is beneficial for metabolism,
beneficial for nutrient utilization,
and beneficial for all the
organs and tissues of the body
because you're getting that
outside light exposure.
Now I'd like to shift our attention
towards science supported-protocols
that increase the effectiveness
and our performance in everything.
And by everything I mean sleep,
I mean physical performance,
I mean mental performance,
I mean less anxiety, all the things.
Truly all the things.
And that is something called
"non-sleep deep rest."
Non-sleep deep rest or NSDR
is an acronym that I coined
as an umbrella term to
encompass many protocols
that all have been shown,
in one form or another,
to support better brain and body function.
Now, these protocols have
names that you've heard before.
Things like meditation,
things like yoga nidra,
and things like hypnosis.
All of these protocols and
these activities, however,
share something in common,
which is they involve a deliberate
and directed shift in one's state,
and the shift tends to be
toward a state of deeper relaxation.
We certainly don't have time now
to dissect out the
literature on all of these.
There is ample literature,
I should say there is
robust and ample literature,
supporting the fact that
a regular meditation
practice is beneficial.
But meditation itself has many forms:
transcendental meditation,
loving kindness meditation,
third eye meditation, walking meditation.
Yoga nidra is a practice I've talked
about many times before,
which involves simply lying down.
It doesn't involve any movement.
No down dogs or up dogs or anything.
It just involves lying on your back
and doing some specific
long exhale breathing.
There are a lot of yoga
nidra scripts out there
that are quite good.
But there's one NSDR type protocol
that has been shown by the greatest number
of scientific studies to promote
not just states of deep relaxation,
not just states of heightened focus,
but also to accelerate plasticity
and learning within the
brain, and that's hypnosis.
And I've become increasingly excited
and interested in hypnosis as a tool,
and not just a tool of any kind,
but a tool that really can be directed
toward particular goals and outcomes.
And I think that's really
what sets hypnosis apart
as an NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, protocol
from things like naps or
things like yoga nidra
or things like meditation.
And I certainly believe and understand
that meditation naps and
yoga nidra can be directed
toward less anxiety, et cetera,
but hypnosis is unique in
that it's very directed.
The essence of hypnosis
is for the person, you,
to guide your brain toward a
particular outcome or change.
So I'd like to point out
a particular resource.
It's a completely zero-cost resource,
which is reveri.com.
That's R-E-V-E-R-I.com.
reveri.com obviously is a website
where there are links to
an app that's available
in Apple and Android.
This is a hypnosis app,
but this isn't just any hypnosis app.
This is a hypnosis app
that contains multiple hypnosis protocols
that are all backed by
very high-quality science.
The science was done by my colleague
and our associate chair of psychiatry
at Stanford School of Medicine,
that David Spiegel is
responsible for that work.
I'm not associated with
that scientific work.
They've examined what brain areas
get activated during hypnosis,
what the outcomes are for
various hypnosis protocols.
And within Reveri,
you will find hypnosis protocols
for enhancing your focus,
enhancing creativity, reducing pain,
getting better at
sleeping, reducing anxiety.
Most of these are about
10 or 15 minutes long.
Some of them are extremely brief.
One minute long.
They have a one-minute
hypnosis that you can do.
Those one minute hypnosis
scripts work best
if you've been doing the 10
and 15 minute ones
regularly or semi-regularly.
It's a really wonderful resource
for which there is a lot of
peer-reviewed published data.
One study I'd like to emphasize
in particular is Jiang et al.
J-I-A-N-G.
That is a reference you can find
on the reveri.com website
under Our Research.
And the title of this
paper is "Brain Activity
and Functional Connectivity
Associated with Hypnosis,"
and it was published in the
journal Cerebral Cortex.
What this paper essentially
shows is that specific areas
of our brain that are involved
in executive function,
which is associated with
our ability to focus,
as well as what's called
the "default mode network,"
which is sort of the way
that your brain idles,
does your brain tend to idle
at a level of high anxiety or calm,
as well as activation of
a brain area called the "insula."
That's I-N-S-U-L-A.
The insula is extremely interesting.
Hypnosis has been shown
to activate the insula,
which can enhance our
sense of interoception,
our sense of internal state,
which might sound like a annoying thing.
You don't want to be
thinking about your heartbeat
or your breathing.
But what's really
interesting about hypnosis is
that it increases areas of the brain
that are responsible for
deep relaxation, focus,
and self-awareness, this
interoception, simultaneously.
And that's very unusual
compared to other states,
any other states of any kind.
So I've made it a practice,
a daily practice in fact,
that after lunch and after this walk,
I do a brief 10-minute hypnosis script
because what I've found is
that in contrast to naps
and in contrast to other forms of NSDR,
it really allows me to enter
a state of deep relaxation,
but also to then exit that state
in a very focused and deliberate way
that allows me to lean into
my afternoon in an alert way,
in a way that I can
function and do mental work
and interact with people, et cetera.
So there's no brain fog,
there's no grogginess.
And I want to emphasize that the hypnosis
that I'm referring to here
and that Reveri provides
is not stage hypnosis.
This isn't you being programmed
to squawk like a chicken
or do anything against your will.
This is you teaching your brain
how to access these focused,
relaxed, interoceptive states.
This is also an extremely
valuable aspect to hypnosis
because it can increase plasticity,
the brain's ability to change
in response to experience.
It's essentially opening
up pathways that allow you
to change your brain in
the ways that you want.
And it's very directed
toward particular outcomes
So I am an, as you can probably tell,
I'm very enthusiastic about hypnosis
as an optimal NSDR protocol,
and so I do that every single day.
There are days that I
don't manage to do it
for whatever reason.
I forget or interference
from email or et cetera.
But that is essentially how
I enter my early afternoon.
I do this post-lunch, post-walk NSDR
in the form of a Reveri hypnosis.
Again, a completely
zero-cost resource to you.
There are excellent data.
All those data can be
found on the Reveri site,
and you can also learn a
lot more about hypnosis
and what sorts of hypnosis protocols
might be optimal for you.
So if you are looking for a
science-backed, zero-cost,
very effective tool for
getting better at focusing,
better at sleeping,
better at all the things
that I believe people want,
I do believe that is the best tool
that one can access at this point in time.
So then after I exit hypnosis,
I usually give Costello a
little scratch behind the ear,
and then I make sure that I hydrate.
Hydration, again, is vitally
important for brain function.
It's vitally important
for all bodily functions.
And I often forget to do it,
so I've just sort of linked
the drinking of water
to my hypnosis practice.
As soon as I'm done, I hydrate.
And then I tend to focus
on another work about.
So this would be, for
me, sometime around 2:30
or 3:00 in the afternoon
when normally I would be
quite sleepy and passing out.
However, the protocol of
shifting my morning caffeine
to 90 minutes to two hours after waking,
as well as the use of
this hypnosis protocol
has really allowed me to
move through the afternoon
in a way that I don't
experience that dip in.
Energy every once in a while
I'll feel kind of sleepy
or kind of out of it,
but I've been really pleasantly surprised
at the extent to which one
can avoid that afternoon dip.
If you do certain things properly prior
to the arrival of 2:00 or 3:00 PM.
Now, if you're a napper and
you want to nap, no big deal.
Naps can be wonderfully beneficial.
Here are the rules around napping
according to the sleep science.
Stanford has an excellent sleep clinic.
I consulted with Jamie Zeitzer,
my colleague in the
Stanford Sleep Laboratory,
as well as Matt Walker out at Berkeley
whose name I'm sure most
of you are familiar with.
He wrote this wonderful
book, "Why We Sleep."
Naps should be 90 minutes or less,
and 20-minute naps are fine,
but not longer than 90 minutes.
And there are essentially
two varieties of people:
people for whom napping interferes
with falling asleep later
that night and staying asleep
and people for whom the
nap does not interfere.
You have to decide who you are.
And if you're somebody who can nap
and not have any trouble falling asleep
and staying asleep later that night,
well, by all means, nap.
Just make it 90 minutes or less.
Again, these 90-minute cycles
are really a vital constraint
that we should all obey.
If it's 91 minutes, don't worry.
You won't dissolve into a puddle of tears.
But if you're starting
to sleep for an hour
or more in the afternoon,
that can be problematic.
If you're somebody who can
nap for 10, 20 minutes,
that's probably better than
getting a full 90-minute cycle,
unless you didn't get enough
sleep the night before.
But you really have to figure
out what's right for you.
There's a lot of variety there.
But that's essentially
what the science says.
Now, whether or not you nap or whether
or not you do not nap,
a key protocol for sleep
health and wakefulness
and metabolism and hormone
health is viewing light
in the afternoon.
So here's the reason for doing this.
As we progress into the evening hours,
there's a phenomenon where
our retina, our eyes,
become very sensitive to light,
such that if we view bright lights
or even not so bright lights
between the hours of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM,
that is strongly disruptive,
very disruptive for our
dopamine production.
It can really screw up our sleep,
and it's actually been shown in data
from David Berson's lab
at Brown University,
one of the foremost circadian
biology laboratories,
as well as Samer Hattar's laboratory
at the National Institute of Mental Health
that viewing bright light,
or even not so bright light,
between these hours of
11:00 PM and 4:00 AM
or even 10:00 PM and 4:00
AM can disrupt learning
and memory, can disrupt the immune system
and can disrupt mood in
very long-lasting ways.
There are ways to offset that, however.
What I call your "Netflix inoculation."
For those of you that like
to stay up late on the tablet
or computer or watching Netflix,
getting a little bit of
afternoon light in your eyes,
somewhat counter-intuitively,
can prevent this disruption
of bright light later in the
evening, at least somewhat.
What do I mean by that?
Well, if you view light as the
sun is starting to go down,
so if you step outside
around 4:00 PM, 5:00 PM,
again, what time exactly
will depend on time of year
and where you are located on our planet,
but as the sun starts to head down,
you don't necessarily
have to see the sunset,
it'd be lovely if you could,
sunsets are beautiful,
but if you can get outside and
see the sun as it arcs down,
or if you can't see the sun directly,
get some sunlight in your
eyes in the afternoon hours,
so maybe 4:00 PMish, and
do that for 20, 30 minutes,
maybe reading outside or taking a walk,
I walk the dog again, that's my protocol,
in order to get that evening light,
what it does is it lowers the sensitivity
of your retina in the late evening hours,
which allows you to buffer yourself
against the negative effects
of bright light later at night.
Now, it won't allow you to blast your eyes
with bright light;
you still need to dim the
lights in the evening.
But there's a very nice
study that was published
in scientific reports that illustrates
that if one does this,
if you go outside and view
sunlight in the evening hours
for anywhere from five to 30 minutes,
and I realized that people have a range
of constraints on their schedule,
but from five to 30
minutes, what happens is
that your melatonin
rhythm stays appropriate.
Now, we haven't talked
too much about melatonin,
but melatonin is a hormone
that is inhibited by light.
It's actually prevented by light.
And melatonin is the hormone
that allows you to fall asleep easily.
Now, I'm not talking about
supplementing melatonin;
I'm talking about melatonin
that you naturally
produce from your pineal.
So the protocol is very simple:
get outside in the afternoon or evening
for 10 to 30 minutes,
take your sunglasses off,
get some bright light, get some
natural light in your eyes.
If you can't do that,
probably better to just stay
with standard artificial lights inside.
Don't crank them up, but
just start to dim them.
Again, this would be a time
to avoid blue blockers.
People are popping on blue
blockers at four o'clock
in the afternoon 'cause you're worried
that blue light is going
to disrupt your sleep.
Well, you're making
your eyes more sensitive
to any light that you might
see later in the evening,
blue light or otherwise.
So get that afternoon light.
So what you'll probably notice
is that the optimal protocols
for optimizing your brain and body health
and performance and sleep, et cetera,
are actually really simple.
But just because they're
simple does not mean
that they are not powerful;
in fact, they are very powerful
because they leverage the
most powerful technology
that exists, which is your nervous system.
You know, we always think
about technologies as devices,
and indeed there are some
wonderful devices out there.
Some people are really
into tracking their sleep
and their sleep time.
If you're into that, great.
That's not something that I personally do,
although I keep telling
myself that I should do that.
There are devices that
can control brainwaves
and things of that sort.
But what we are talking about
today are really basic things
that we can all do that
can steer our neurology
and our biology in the directions
that are going to support workflow,
that are going to support hormones,
that are going to support brain function.
So this afternoon light
viewing is yet another example
of leveraging a technology
that you were born with
and that you will die with
and that you will have
every day in between
in order to tweak the
hormones of your system,
in this case, the hormone melatonin,
so that it's released
at the appropriate times
and not at the wrong times.
Because we know that when hormones
and systems of the body are well aligned
with the 24-hour schedule,
beautiful things happen.
And when they are misaligned,
terrible things happen.
Sometimes those terrible
things are subtle at first,
but disrupting your circadian
rhythms is really bad
for every system in your body.
Getting it right, and as you can tell,
getting it right doesn't take much,
can really serve to "optimize" you.
When I say "optimize,"
I mean it puts you into
a better mood overall,
better state for learning, et cetera.
So get that afternoon light as well.
So at some point in the evening,
I eat that thing that we call dinner.
And while it feels sort of
strange to talk about my dinner,
the reason I want to talk about my dinner
and what I eat for dinner is that for me,
dinner, of course, is about eating-
I'll mention again I love eating-
but also about optimizing the transition
to sleep and sleep.
So obviously I eat foods that I enjoy.
I'm not one of these people
that will eat anything
or avoid eating anything
simply to benefit from that.
I do enjoy food very, very much.
And so my dinner generally
is comprised of things
that are going to support
rest and deep sleep.
And that means starchy carbohydrates.
It's absolutely clear
that one of the major ways
that we can increase serotonin,
which helps in the transition to sleep,
is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates.
Now, I realized that starchy
carbohydrates are kind
of a demonized term nowadays
and everyone's anti-carbs,
but, you know, we really
should distinguish
between refined sugars
and complex carbohydrates.
And we did an episode about this.
We talked about how
refined sugars disrupt,
not just metabolism,
but they actually disrupt
some of the neurons in the gut
that sense fatty acids and amino acids
from fats and proteins.
But those same neurons can
actually respond to sugar
and create a situation
where you actually
start craving more sugar
because those neurons
in your gut communicate
via a nerve pathway for
you aficionados called
"the vagus nerve" and a little cluster
of neurons called the "nodose ganglia."
N-O-D-O-S-E.
Nodose ganglias are right
next to the corner of your jaw
and can trigger the activation
and the release of dopamine in your brain,
which basically makes
you crave more sugar,
independent of how something tastes.
So when I say carbohydrates,
what I really mean is
starchy carbohydrates,
non-refined sugars.
And in the episode about food and mood
and metabolism as well,
I referenced a really spectacular lecture
by Dr. Robert Lustig who's
a pediatric endocrinologist
at UCSF, UC San Francisco,
absolutely spectacular talk,
you can find it on YouTube easily,
where he talks about the
science of refined sugars.
And this isn't in any kind of
conspiracy or paranoid way.
This is really the medical
and scientific literature.
So my dinner is carbohydrates
and some protein.
So maybe some chicken or
fish or something like that,
maybe some eggs, or sometimes just pasta
or just rice and vegetables.
And that's because I enjoy those foods,
but also because I want to
increase the amount of serotonin
in my brain so that I can
actually fall asleep that night.
Many people who are on
low-carbohydrate diets struggle
with falling and staying asleep,
and that's because it's hard
to achieve heightened levels
of serotonin which are
necessary to enter sleep.
I should also mention that melatonin
and serotonin fall in the same pathway.
They are related hormones
and neuromodulators.
We won't go into their biosynthesis now,
but essentially what we're
talking about is a system
that's biasing us towards
rest and relaxation
as opposed to wakefulness.
You might ask, "Well, can't
I just take serotonin?
Can't I just take 5-HTP
or a precursor to
serotonin or tryptophan?"
And indeed you can, however,
many people including myself,
find that when they
supplement with serotonin
in the evening or at night,
that can cause problems
in the architecture
or the structure of sleep.
It can cause a lot of
people, including me,
to fall asleep very fast,
sleep very deeply for three or four hours,
and then wake up
and have a terrible time
falling back asleep.
And that effect, at least for
me, can last several days.
It's really disruptive.
So I don't like to
supplement with anything
that is directly dopamine
or a precursor to dopamine
at any time or directly serotonin
or a precursor to serotonin.
Rather, there are other things
that can enhance the
transition to sleep safely,
which we will talk about in a few minutes.
But the evening meal consists
largely of carbohydrates
for that specific purpose of
generating a sense of calm.
And, of course,
carbohydrates are delicious.
And because I'm doing
some physical training
and presumably you are as
well, or I hope you are,
'cause it's so beneficial to one's health,
that's also going to
replenish my glycogen stores,
which is one of the primary fuel sources
for moving one's muscles
and moving around and doing exercise,
as well as for the brain
and for cognitive function.
So low carbohydrates
throughout the 24-hour period
are not something that
are attractive to me.
I realized that some
people will do much better
on a low-carbohydrate
or even ketogenic diet,
but for me, and I do
believe for most people,
creating a situation of maybe fasting,
and then low-carb or no-carb diets
for states of alertness and focus
at one portion of the day,
and then ingesting starchy carbohydrates
for sake of inducing
rest and relaxation is a
at least scientifically,
rationally-based protocol.
It's grounded in real neurochemistry.
It's grounded in things that
we can point to and say,
"Ah, this food substance, this
thing can support my brain,
not directly because
it's some magic substance
that's going to make all
my neurons, you know,
extremely robust, but rather
it's going to support sleep,"
which is perhaps the
foundation of all mental
and physical health.
In fact, we can point to
sleep as the primary way
in which we can ensure our overall health,
including our brain health.
So let's talk about sleep
and how to access sleep,
how to fall asleep easily,
and how to make sure
that the sleep we have is
of sufficient duration and quality.
One way to do that is to
leverage the drop in temperature
that's necessary to fall and stay asleep.
So I mentioned earlier in the early parts
of the day after waking,
our body temperature is rising,
and that continues throughout the day.
And then sometime late in the afternoon,
our temperature peaks,
and then it starts to drop.
That drop in temperature
of one to three degrees
is vitally important for us to be able
to fall asleep easily.
One way that we can
decrease our transition time
into sleep is to accelerate
that drop in temperature.
And one way to accelerate that drop
in temperature somewhat
counter-intuitively is
to use hot baths, hot showers,
or if you have access to one, a sauna.
Now, this is counterintuitive
because you'd say,
"Well, hot bath, so it's
going to heat me up."
But actually, if you
are to get into a sauna
or a hot shower or hot
bath, and then get out,
your body is going to
engage particular mechanisms
for cooling itself off that are going
to allow you to drop your
temperature more quickly
and fall asleep more easily.
And this is why many people find
that falling asleep after
a nice hot shower, bath,
or sauna is really, really
easy and really terrific.
It's sort of a natural state
that follows hot baths,
saunas, and showers.
So how would you do this?
Well, we did an entire
episode on this topic as well.
The use of sauna for sake
of growth hormone release.
If you want to check that
out in all the details,
you can look at the
episode on growth hormone.
You will experience a growth
hormone release from sauna,
hot bath, and hot shower,
provided they're done
for sufficient duration
and sufficiently high temperature.
For all the details of that,
please go to that episode.
It's all laid out there,
it's all timestamped,
it's all captioned in English
and Spanish, et cetera.
But basically what we're talking
about is 20 minutes in the sauna,
or if you're one of those folks
who's really chasing
growth hormone release,
you could do 20 minutes,
then get out of the sauna for 10 minutes,
and just cool off at room temperature,
and then get back into
the sauna, then get out,
and then shower, dry off, and head to bed.
Shorter bouts of sauna will work also.
The longer bouts of sauna, cooling, sauna,
cooling have been shown
to lead to huge increases
in growth hormone.
And growth hormone, of course,
is involved both in muscle growth,
but also growth and
metabolism of all tissues,
fat metabolism, and
repair of various tissues.
So it's not just about growth.
You hear growth hormone,
you think hypertrophy,
but the enhancement of
metabolism and health
and repair in a number of tissues.
So that's one way you can leverage heat
toward the transition to sleep by the ways
in which exposure to heat
actually cools off your body.
Now let's talk about
actually getting to sleep.
And let's talk about
behavioral protocols first.
It is absolutely true that keeping
the room very dark is beneficial.
Some people, including myself,
have thin eyelids and it
doesn't take much light
to wake up the brain and body.
So keeping a room very dark is essential.
The other thing is keeping the room cool.
You've probably heard this before.
Keep the room cool, get
under warm blankets,
but rarely is it discussed why keeping
the room cool is useful.
The reason keeping the room cool is useful
for getting into and
staying asleep is that
throughout the night,
there are phases of sleep
where you are paralyzed,
so-called REM sleep,
that's a healthy paralysis,
presumably so you can't
act out your dreams,
but there are portions of
the night where you can move.
And one of the more important movements
that you do in the middle of
the night is put your hand
out or your foot out or
you take your face out
from under the covers as
a means to cool yourself,
and you do this while you are asleep.
If you are in a cool room,
you can put yourself under
the blankets to stay warm,
and then if you want to cool off,
you can simply remove a limb
or you can toss the covers off entirely.
However, if you are in
a room that's too warm,
it's very hard to cool off.
You would need a bucket of ice water
or to get up and turn
on the air conditioning
or something of that
sort or turn on the fan.
So it's a simple but non-trivial way
in which we can improve our entrance
to sleep and staying asleep.
So keep the room cool or cold
and get under warm blankets.
And if you want to understand more
about why putting a hand out
or a foot out is valuable for cooling,
I did an episode on the role of cooling
in something called "heat dumping"
or bringing he into the body
through the palms, the face,
and the bottoms of the feet.
You've got these portals,
these radiators, if you will,
that allow us to bring heat
into the body and to dump heat.
I don't want to go into the details now,
but that episode is entitled
"Supercharge Your Exercise With Cold,"
is based on work that was done
by Craig Heller's lab
at Stanford University.
Absolutely incredible data showing
that the proper use of palmar cooling,
so the palms or the upper half of the face
or the bottoms of the feet,
can vastly, I mean vastly
increase the volume
of exercise that one can do
and still recover from that exercise
and derive benefits from it.
But this method of cooling
for exercise is grounded
in a basic physiological
function of our palms,
the bottoms of our feet, and our face,
which is to dump heat
or to allow cool to pass into the body.
So that's why in the middle of the night,
as long as you're not in REM
sleep, if you get too warm,
you put your foot out or
you put your arms out.
You're actually allowing
cooling of the body
through what are called "AVAs,"
arteriovenous anastomosis
is the technical name,
that are in the palms, the
upper half of the face,
and the bottoms of the feet.
And that's a very efficient
way to cool off your body,
so you do that subconsciously.
Now, there are things that one can take
to enhance the transition to sleep.
I am not a fan of melatonin
for enhancing the transition
to sleep for a couple of reasons.
One, dosages of melatonin are far too high
in most supplements.
Melatonin can have some negative effects
on the sex steroid hormones
testosterone and estrogen.
That's a serious concern.
Third, melatonin's role during puberty
or around puberty is to
suppress the onset of puberty.
So that's concerning.
I don't know that people
should be taking this hormone
that has all these other effects.
The other reason is that
melatonin will aid the transition
to sleep, but it won't keep you asleep.
And many people that take melatonin find
that they fall asleep more quickly,
but then they wake up
unable to fall back asleep.
Three compounds that
can be very beneficial
for aiding the transition to sleep
and for which there are
wide safety margins,
although please do check
with your physician
before taking anything, are
specific forms of magnesium,
something called
"apigenin" and "theanine."
Magnesium comes in many forms.
Magnesium malate has been shown
to improve recovery from
sore muscles, for instance.
Magnesium citrate is an
excellent laxative, for instance,
Magnesium threonate,
that's T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E,
threonate, and magnesium
bisglycinate have transporters
that allow them to cross
the blood-brain barrier more readily
than other forms of magnesium.
And there within the brain,
they promote the release of a
neurotransmitter called GABA,
which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter
which shuts off the
forebrain to some extent.
It doesn't shut it off completely,
but it essentially shuts
down thinking, rumination,
planning, and in what we
call "executive function."
So for many people,
taking 300 to 400 milligrams
of magnesium bisglycinate
or magnesium threonate,
and there I'm referring
to the elemental magnesium
for you aficionados,
many people find that
doing that 30 to 60 minutes
before sleep can aid
them in falling asleep,
can really help them fall
asleep faster and stay asleep.
Some people, however,
achieve some gastrointestinal discomfort
from magnesium and
therefore should avoid it.
Magnesium threonate and
magnesium bisglycinate
for many people work, however,
and when coupled with
apigenin and theanine,
provide a sort of synergy
or a sleep cocktail
that seems to be very effective
in aiding the transition to sleep.
So apigenin is the substance
that's found in chamomile.
And 50 milligrams of
apigenin taken 30 minutes
before sleep can act as another way
to shut off the forebrain
and reduce rumination,
reduce anxiety, and allow
people to fall and stay asleep.
I did a podcast with Dr. Darya Rose.
She's got an excellent podcast
that I highly recommend you check out.
Covers a number of different
health, scientific,
and other subjects.
And she's a PhD in neuroscience,
terrific scientist, et cetera.
She's a big fan of apigenin, as am I.
And then the third compound
is theanine, T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E.
Theanine is a compound that
can also increase GABA,
but also increases activation
of something called "chloride channels."
Chloride channels are another way
in which neurons turn themselves
off or turn each other off.
Not turn each other off in the way
that we typically hear
like that turns me off,
but turn them off and then shut them down.
Lower their levels of activity.
So magnesium threonate or bisglycinate,
apigenin, and theanine in
combination can be very effective
for aiding the transition to sleep.
And I realized that not everyone
wants to take supplements.
I certainly am not pushing any of these.
I would hope that everybody
be able to fall asleep easily
and stay asleep for the duration of time
that they want without
any supplemental help,
but I do think it's important
to point out some things
that lie somewhere between doing nothing
and taking prescription drugs,
because many of the
prescription drugs associated
with sleep, and you all
know what those are,
carry other side effects.
They can create bad dreams,
often very disturbing dreams.
They can be addictive or
at least habit forming.
They can create grogginess in the morning.
Some are safer than others.
There's a variety of them out there.
But for those that want
to explore supplements
and how they can impact sleep,
this combination of about 300,
400 milligrams of magnesium
threonate or bisglycinate,
50 milligrams of apigenin,
and 100 to 200 milligrams
of theanine alone
or in combination have been
beneficial to many people.
And there are excellent studies
to support those statements.
Again, I suggest you go to examine.com
and look up the Human Effect Matrix
for each of those compounds,
and you can explore them.
One of the more interesting
aspects to magnesium threonate
and bisglycinate is that it seems
to have some neuroprotective
effects as well.
There aren't many studies on it,
but the few studies that are there point
to the fact that magnesium threonate
and magnesium bisglycinate can
also support neuron health
and neuron longevity,
which is just an added
bonus, in my opinion.
Now, what if you wake up
in the middle of the night?
This is a very common occurrence.
And there are two general
themes around waking up
in the middle of the night
that one can use tools to counteract.
The first theme is if you're somebody
who is tired in the evenings
and you're kind of pushing
yourself to stay awake,
so you're going to the party
or you're pushing yourself
to study or work when in fact you'd like
to get into bed at 8:30 or 9:00,
and then you're falling
asleep around 10:30, 11:00,
and waking up at 2:30
or 3:00 in the morning
and you can't fall back asleep,
chances are that your melatonin pulse
was initiated early in the night.
So that melatonin pulse started probably
around 8:30 or 9:00,
but you're staying up,
you're battling that melatonin.
And then sometime around
2:30 or 3:00 in the morning,
that melatonin is no longer present
at sufficiently high
levels in your bloodstream
and you're waking up,
you're getting your morning
cortisol pulse shifted
into those wee hours of the morning.
You may not like this advice,
but one of the things
that you can do to offset
that is to simply go to bed earlier.
By going to bed earlier,
you're going to get the
longer duration of sleep.
But I realized that
there are social reasons
and work-related reasons why going
to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 is
not necessarily beneficial
to your life.
So in that case,
you might be one of the rare individuals
for whom getting a little
bit more bright light
in the evening could be a good thing.
So this would be around the
hours of 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
And in that way, causing
that pulse in melatonin
to be delayed because, again,
light inhibits melatonin.
Now, the other thing
is many people wake up
in the middle of the
night because of anxiety
or because they have to use the restroom.
It's perfectly fine to flip on the lights,
but keep the lights dim.
But if you flip on those lights,
try and flip them off as soon as possible
and try and get back into bed.
And if you have trouble
falling asleep again
and you absolutely need to sleep,
that's where these NSDR,
these non-sleep deep rest protocols,
can really be beneficial,
even though the NS, the non-sleep part,
might make you think that
they will prevent you
from falling asleep.
Rather than trying to fight your mind,
trying to fight anxiety,
which is always a terrible thing to do,
I always say it's very hard
to control the mind with
the mind, look to the body.
And that's what NSDR scripts do.
Things like yoga nidra,
even the sleep hypnosis done
in the middle of the night
if you wake up and want
to fall back asleep
oftentimes will help you
fall back asleep immediately.
And if they don't,
they will at least put your brain and body
into a state of deep relaxation
that more closely mimics the sleep state
that you ought to be in
than the awake, ruminating,
stressing about the fact that
you're not sleeping state.
So if you wake up in
the middle of the night,
really try and get back to sleep.
And if you can't do that
by doing, for instance,
long exhale breathing, which can work,
use some other tool of the
body to shift the mind.
And the tools that I'm recommending are
of the non-sleep deep rest variety.
So now we've essentially
traveled around the clock,
so to speak, from the
time where one wakes up
until the time they start working,
until the time they exercise, eat lunch,
do an NSDR, head to sleep,
get to sleep, maybe wake up,
get back to sleep, et cetera.
I want to emphasize that,
although people's schedules vary,
most people are doing more than one
or two work bouts per day.
And indeed, I'm doing more than one
or two work bouts per day.
I really emphasize that
morning, 90-minute work block
because I think most people would agree
that there's a portion of each day
in which we need to do the hardest thing
or the most important thing
or the thing that demands the
most of our cognitive self.
I position that early in the day
and I position everything around that
in order to ensure that it happens
and that it happens with the
highest degree of efficiency,
and yes, I make sure that
it happens every day.
And that brings about two
other important points.
First of all, we do have
this thing called weekends,
and I tend to take one day
off per week, not both,
much to the dismay of people
in my life and Costello.
But nonetheless, there is
something called weekend drift,
which is that we can be very regimented
on a Monday or a Tuesday,
and then even if we're good
about maintaining a schedule
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
et cetera, most of us, I would hope,
would alter their schedule
somewhat on the weekends
in order to recover and
get some additional rest.
And I want to emphasize
I absolutely do that.
I take one day per week
where I go full Costello,
where I essentially do
nothing in a structured way.
At least if I have my way,
I'm not making any plans,
I'm completely free to
explore what I want to do
and when I want to do it.
That's not the way life works out.
Oftentimes there are social engagements
and other things that get in the way
or that I enjoy and
that breaks up the day,
but I do take rest.
I don't think that one has
to follow the same
schedule every single day;
however, I do think there are a few things
that people should do every
single day, if possible,
and those are get morning sunlight,
because if you don't
your circadian rhythms
and your health, et cetera,
and your mood are going to start to drift,
and to try and get sleep
on a regular basis.
And, of course, some of
the greatest of things
in life happen after 10:00 PM
and some of those even
involve sleepless nights
of various kinds.
I certainly don't want
to discourage people
from having a social life
or from having a robust party life,
if that's your thing, or for enjoying life
because that's certainly
one of the main things
that we should all be
pursuing, is to enjoy life.
The only point I want
to make about sleep is
that if you happen to stay up late,
it's still best to get up at
your regular wake-up time.
It's a very simple solution to a problem
that a lot of people have,
which is they stay up till
2:00 or 3:00 in the morning,
and then they tend to sleep late,
and then it tends to disrupt their rhythm.
Try on most days and most nights
to wake up at more or less the same time
and try to go to sleep at
more or less the same time.
In fact, I was talking to Matt
Walker about this recently,
and he was also surprised
to see these new data
and I was surprised to see these new data
that emphasize that if you
get a poor night's sleep
or if you're up late the
previous night for good reasons,
many people feel like they just
want to go to bed early the next night,
but it turns out that's
not the best thing to do
for your immediate and long-term health.
Try and stay up to the point
where you would normally stay up,
and then get to sleep.
If you go to bed a couple hours earlier,
it's probably not going to kill you,
but try to not go to bed,
for instance, at 6:00 PM,
because you were up the
entire night before.
That can really be disruptive.
The other thing I want to emphasize is
that even though that morning,
90-minute work block is
so vital, of course,
there's a second work block.
And in fact, I described one
in the afternoon after the NSDR.
For me, that's Reveri hypnosis.
There's a 90-minute work block
in which I drop in again in
a no internet connection,
no phone kind of way to complete some work
that's important to me.
So combined, that's just
three hours of focused work,
which may not seem like a lot,
but if you were to dissect your day
and kind of look at the arc
and structure of your day,
I'd be willing to bet that
if we added up the total period of time
in which you were in what Cal
Newport would call deep work,
really focused, dedicated work,
that it would probably amount
to about three or four hours.
If you can squeeze in
another 90-minute work block
or if you can get four
90-minute work blocks,
well, then more power to you,
but I think most people find that one
or two of these really deep
focus, 90-minute work blocks are
about what one's schedule
and even mind can handle.
And, of course, throughout the day,
there are other things happening.
Outside of those 90-minute work blocks,
I'm checking my text messages,
I'm checking my email,
I'm responding to various demands.
I'm working and tending to life.
So while I've carved some boundaries
or delineated some boundaries
around those work blocks,
and I'm certain that if you do too,
you will benefit from them,
they are certainly not the
only periods of time each day
in which I or I believe
other people should be trying
to learn or trying to focus.
And I want to emphasize
that even though my job is
to discover knowledge
and distribute knowledge
because I'm a scientist,
I realized that 90-minute
work blocks of the sort
that I'm describing may
not apply specifically
to the kinds of work you do.
If you're an artist or a sculptor
or you build furniture,
whatever it is that you happen to,
you teach children or they teach you,
whatever it happens to be,
of course, please adapt and
modify what I've described today
in ways that best serve
you and your schedule.
What I've tried to do
is provide you a picture
of the 24- hour schedule that I follow
and why I do certain
things at particular times
and why I do those particular things.
And I've really tried to
emphasize the scientific rationale
behind those things,
the peer-reviewed data.
In some cases, I pointed
out the specific papers.
In other cases, I've referred
to large bodies of work
that support these practices.
When I say "large bodies of work,"
I'm a big fan of looking to
the scientific literature
and asking, "Where is the center of mass
for a particular topic?"
For instance, where is there
50 or 100 or 1,000 papers
that, for instance, support
morning light viewing
in order to optimize melatonin
secretion in the day,
cortisol secretion early in the day,
mood, metabolism, et cetera?
If one were to put into
PubMed "light, metabolism,
and mood," you would literally
get tens of thousands,
maybe even hundreds of
thousands of studies.
So when I say the center of mass,
what I've really tried to
do is examine the literature
and figure out where there's
sort of a directive protocol
that emerges from all
these various studies
that used, you know,
in some cases, animals,
in many cases, humans
and explored different,
what we call, "dependent variables."
Some studies were looking
at effects on blood sugar,
other on mood.
So I hope that makes
clear why the rationale
behind what I provided today.
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