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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab guest series, where I and an expert guest discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today marks the second episode in our six episode series all about sleep ... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I think we, many of us can resonate with the idea of dental hygiene. Turns out there's something called sleep hygiene. And there are probably, I would say, five edicts of sleep hygiene. I offer them as tools and not necessarily rules because I don't think people respond to rules. People respond to reas... |
Speaker A: Yeah, there are a couple of quick points that are based on some what I consider really nice studies. There's beautiful work in humans showing that bright light exposure in the morning, especially from sunlight. But if one doesn't have access to sunlight for whatever reason, there are commercially available s... |
Speaker B: And what I like about, firstly, your mention of cortisol. You described how cortisol is rising in the morning, and that's a great thing, and it is a good thing. And in the evening, it's starting to drop. And if you look right around your prototypical bedtime, and we're going to speak later in this episode as... |
Speaker A: Very interesting. As somebody who wakes up in the middle of the night and sometimes has trouble getting back to sleep, that resonates. I have no trouble falling asleep whatsoever. Yeah, knock on wood. Superstitious about this at this point, but I use tools like non sleep, deep rest, yoga, nidra, long exhale ... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I often think that sleep maintenance insomnia that you've just described is the revenge of daytime emotions unresolved. |
Speaker A: That's a great way to put it, yeah. |
Speaker B: So that would be. So, we've spoken about regularity, we've spoken about darkness, and we've spoken about the inverse of that in the morning, which is light, a little bit of cortisol. So the third out of the five is going to be temperature. And the advice here is keep it cool, as we mentioned a little bit in ... |
Speaker A: So much of what you just said resonates. I confess that in my lifetime, I've had periods of pretty spectacular sleep. I characterize myself as somebody that could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. But I've also experienced the extreme challenges of sleep and that relates to different things, life circumstances,... |
Speaker B: I love that notion of. And people will often say, I just get up, I go to the couch or the sofa, and that's where I'll wake up in the morning. Also, they'll say, when I travel and I go to a hotel room, I just can sleep fine. Now, for some people, it's the inverse, but for those people, it's the contextual dif... |
Speaker A: Yeah, this is all very useful discussion because I think that of course there will be those folks out there that just like what are they talking about? I sleep so well at night. Consider yourself blessed. Many, many people struggle with challenges with sleep. I think it's fair to say that sooner or later, mo... |
Speaker B: Look at the statistics. That's highly likely in your lifetime, you are more than likely to go through either a period of challenging sleep or in fact a bout of insomnia. |
Speaker A: I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, ag one. Ag one is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens and is designed to meet all of your foundational nutritional needs. By now im sure youve all heard me say that ive been taking ag one since 2012 and indeed that is tru... |
Speaker B: And it's not because I have anything against it. |
Speaker A: Yeah, many people do enjoy it, and we're not calling judgment on them. I mean, certainly much of the world enjoys alcohol. Could we talk a little bit more about, aside from demolishing REM sleep, do we know that alcohol causes these disruptions in sleep directly, meaning by changing the pattern of release of... |
Speaker B: Great question. So, in terms of the mechanism, it seems actually not to be the alcohol, but some of the metabolic byproducts of alcohol. We think that perhaps the main culprit may be some of the aldehydes that are the metabolic separate consequences of alcohol metabolism. You make a good point, though, in te... |
Speaker A: Great. What about food and sleep? How close to sleep is it okay to have a meal if you want to optimize your sleep? I like to eat my final meal somewhere around 06:30 p.m. and I go to sleep somewhere around 08:39 p.m. in an ideal world, sometimes I go to sleep a bit later, sometimes I eat a little bit later. ... |
Speaker B: It's very interesting. There was somewhat of a dogma out there that we have to stop eating three or 4 hours before bed for optimal sleep. If you look at the data, the data is quite a spread, no pun intended. There are some people for whom that works very well, and if they eat even 2 hours before bed, they ju... |
Speaker A: Yeah, I've experienced when I eat a very low carbohydrate diet, which I've experimented with in the past, maybe even full ketogenic diet for brief periods of time, although I'm an omnivore, so I eat meat and eggs, and I also eat starches, pastas, rice, et cetera. But we know, based on beautiful work from, fo... |
Speaker B: I listened to that. It was a great podcast. |
Speaker A: Yeah. Chris is spectacular and has advocated the exploration of ketogenic diets for the treatment of various psychiatric conditions, not all, but psychiatric conditions. And he agreed with me on this, that when people go on very low starch, very low carbohydrate diets, that sometimes they can experience a bi... |
Speaker B: There is some data on that with the carbohydrate intake in the evening, and of course, that tryptophan and that carbohydrate intake will contain the precursor ingredients to something else that we've spoken about, which is melatonin. And so that may actually help healthily boost that melatonin signal. And th... |
Speaker A: Earlier, you mentioned caffeine, and caffeine is a topic that we get into, into substantial depth in episode three. But there and now, I will emphasize that caffeine is the most commonly used drug worldwide. I think the statistic says that 90 plus percent of adults consume caffeinated beverages every day, wh... |
Speaker B: I'm going to suggest it's a scandinavian country. |
Speaker A: No, but they're up there. It was Switzerland. Now, I don't know if that's still the case, but apparently the Swiss. |
Speaker B: The reason I went, I was thinking it was because I've seen the graph. I was thinking it was Sweden. |
Speaker A: And if I have that wrong, certainly someone will put it in the comments on YouTube. Drink so much caffeine. They have a lot to think about. So. I love caffeine. I drink a black coffee, black espresso, and yerba monte. I love yerba monte. I've been drinking it since I was a little one because of the Argentine... |
Speaker B: So the profile that you described, which is high peak early on, first thing when you wake up and then tapering off nicely down into the sort of early afternoon ideal, that sounds great to me. As for that afternoon coffee, it really depends again on when you are expecting to go to sleep. Now, for someone like... |
Speaker A: Yeah, I'm definitely making the effort to avoid caffeine intake in the afternoon, and I think already starting to see some of the positive benefits of doing that, as evidenced by the days that I consume caffeine in the afternoon and experience the deficits. It's a real thing. I believe you've about the numbe... |
Speaker B: It'S going to over index. Yeah. |
Speaker A: So let's say 200 milligrams, and somebody consumes that after lunch at 01:00 p.m. and their bedtime is, let's make them more conventional than I. Somewhere between ten and 11:00 p.m. okay, so they're about nine to 10 hours out from their bedtime. They're having a nice strong, quote unquote, nice strong cup o... |
Speaker B: So caffeine has something that we call a half life of about five to 6 hours, meaning that after five to 6 hours, about 50% of that caffeine is still circulating in your bloodstream and thus your brain. That means that caffeine has a quarter life of somewhere between ten to 12 hours. Now, this is on average, ... |
Speaker A: No, but I have some friends and somebody actually, who works with the podcast team, and we'll go out to dinner as a team when we're on the road, and he'll order a big coffee right after 09:00 p.m. dinner. And I was like, can you sleep? And it's like, oh, yeah, no problem. |
Speaker B: And that no problem is in part this. I don't have an issue with falling asleep, but if we were to, based on the data map their electrical brain activity, you would be able to see this reduction in the deep non rem sleep. And it can reduce it. If you look at the data, somewhere between 15% to 20% now. But for... |
Speaker A: And the afternoon coffee sounds like maybe only every once in a while and try and make it mostly decaf, or decaf for that matter. If it's really just for the taste. |
Speaker B: Yeah, if it's just for the taste, go decaf. If it's not, I understand that in some ways what I'm talking about is the ideal world. And drum roll. It turns out that most of us don't live in that. We live in this thing called the real world. And so if you are facing a circumstance where if you're under pressur... |
Speaker A: I want to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, 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. Now, I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work don... |
Speaker B: Specifically, it's very interesting if you look firstly at the motivational reasons why people use cannabis, based on the published study, somewhere in the top two sleep. |
Speaker A: To fall and stay asleep. |
Speaker B: To fall asleep and stay asleep. Obviously, usually the principal first reason is just to get high and have the experience and the pleasure of being high, if that's what sort of floats you, floats your train. But certainly it's sleep and what we call a hypnotic, to put you asleep from the greek derivative of ... |
Speaker A: Okay, so just to make sure that I have the basic list of sleep hygiene factors. Correct. I have regularity. Is king. |
Speaker B: Yep. |
Speaker A: Light and dark, meaning that one should optimize, or at least seek to optimize their exposure to light in the morning and throughout the day and then in the evening to make things dim and darken. |
Speaker B: Yes. |
Speaker A: Temperature. And there you have a little. It's not a mantra, but what is it? It's warm up to cool down to fall asleep, and then it's stay cool. Like Fonzie, stay cool to stay asleep and then warm up to wake up. Yep. |
Speaker B: And we will come onto that, I think, in a little while again. |
Speaker A: Then there's walk it out, which is, if I understand correctly, if you're trying to fall asleep or fall back asleep and it's taking you longer than about 2025 minutes, you should just get out of bed and go elsewhere in the house, do something else, maybe even lie down on a different surface in the house to tr... |
Speaker B: Yeah, and I would only say that try to resist if you can. If you really want your bedroom to be the place where you now become consistently asleep, try not to start sleeping in some other location consistently because then all of a sudden, you bond that with good sleep and you unbuckle this notion that we're... |
Speaker A: Okay. And then we discussed alcohol, food, caffeine and THC CBD, aka cannabis. And with respect to alcohol, it's clear that none is best if you're going to have some. You don't want to drink too early in the day, but you don't want to drink too much or too close to bedtime because it can disrupt rapid eye mo... |
Speaker B: Yeah, do the Huberman taper is what I'm going to call it right now, which is not an interpretive dance, it's. |
Speaker A: Simply the caffeine taper and then THC. CBD does nothing good for your sleep architecture, although some people have the impression that it is good for their sleep because it makes it easier for them to fall asleep, but what they are unaware of is that it is disrupting the quality and architecture of the dif... |
Speaker B: That seems to be the case for THC, and I think CBD has promise and research must try harder, including my own. |
Speaker A: And you very kindly emphasize that you're not telling people what to do. They just should know what they're doing so that they can make changes if they so choose. |
Speaker B: That's right. I would always say that I'm not trained to be a medical doctor. Any advice that I give is simply scientifically descriptive advice. It's not medically prescriptive nor lifestyle prescriptive advice. |
Speaker A: I'm smiling because what I always say is I'm a scientist, not a physician, so I don't prescribe anything, but I profess lots of things. Whereas my good friend who's a musician, Tim Armstrong, says, I'm not a cop. |
Speaker B: That's right. |
Speaker A: So do what you want. Okay. What a wonderful list to leap off into the unconventional and more advanced tools for sleep enhancement. So let's go there. |
Speaker B: So I think many people may have heard of some of the conventional, but what about the unconventional? I would probably offer five or six. The first one I would say is that if you are struggling with sleep and you have had a bad night of sleep, the first recommendation is do nothing. And what I mean by that i... |
Speaker A: Can I just pause you for a second? I'm a little wide eyed over here because I did not know any of that. Typically, if I get a poor night's sleep, I'll do whatever I can to recover that sleep. Take a nap. I'll adjust my to bedtime the next evening. So I hope everyone is paying careful attention to what Matt j... |
Speaker B: And I would have thought that too, and maybe even suggested that. And if you listen to the first episode and where we I list in a doomsday manner the things that can happen by way of a short night, you would think that that's what I would then recommend. But it was really imprinted on me by a wonderful sleep... |
Speaker A: Could I just interrupt again? My audience hates when I interrupt, but I'm doing it on their behalf. I love it because I like to think that there's some value in at least what you say. In response, I saw a really terrific post from Doctor Rhonda Patrick, who we both know and admire for her public health educa... |
Speaker B: I'm so glad you brought it up. It's a fantastic study and Rhonda and I think even tried to discuss it some years ago on a show. But I like it because it does offer some degree of actionable hope and a strategy. Blood sugar, absolutely critical. It is very sensitive to sleep. When you don't get enough, it goe... |
Speaker A: So if you don't sleep that well, do your best to still get some exercise. But just be mindful of the fact that in the winter months, especially if you go too hard in the gym or on a run, you might be a little bit immune compromised. Just be mindful of the fact that you're a more vulnerable being when you're ... |
Speaker B: So I think other suggestions I would have after do nothing would be try to think about limiting your time in bed if you are struggling with sleep. This is something that is used in probably the most well validated psychological intervention for insomnia and it's called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomn... |
Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the texting, they finished the last rep, put it down straight away. |
Speaker B: And if you look, they're only working out for about, let's say 45 minutes and the other is wasted. So what if the next day you came to the gym and I said, look, I'm sorry, and there's some big bouncer guys at the door, you are only allowed to work out for 40 minutes, and then we're going to eject you. And th... |
Speaker A: You said it's difficult for people to go through. It takes a little bit of rigor, a little bit of attention means in some cases getting less sleep than one would like. But as compared to something that sadly, I've experienced a lot in my life of having challenges with sleep and trying to get things back in o... |
Speaker B: Yeah. |
Speaker A: Discipline is essentially the hard deadlines, or as they say in academia, because we write grants all the time, drop deadlines, which, who made up that term? But if you don't make it, that's it. There isn't a, hey, I'll send this in tomorrow, PM Pacific time. That website closes and you better get. |
Speaker B: Things done all of a sudden. It's surprising how much distraction you can pull out the noise and focus on the signal. It's great. Signal to noise ratio. Yeah. |
Speaker A: And I love the idea that one can control their sleep as opposed to sleep controlling them. I think that that's and this notion of sleep confidence, one's confidence in their ability to sleep. These are important terms and they're more than just terms because I think that a field and an area of health practic... |
Speaker B: I would say that in terms of other things, maybe just to go through them a little more quickly, we've spoken some about a wind down routine. Most people underappreciate the importance of a wind down routine. We often think that sleep is like a light bulb, that we dive into bed, we switch off the light bulb, ... |
Speaker A: I'm curious as to why it works so well, and I'm not challenging that it works. I can imagine having just closed my eyes and kind of imagine what that would be like. It's very pleasant. There might be, and here I'm just speculating something about engaging one's procedural memory, because that's procedural me... |
Speaker B: They should. And I think it's certainly possible that when you're incorporating some aspect, some aspects of the scene, and the information is more veridical and maybe sort of episodic declarative memory. But when you're taking yourself from a mental walk, what is the fundamental premise of that? It's a walk... |
Speaker A: Another incentive for keeping the phone out of the room, if one can. I understand there are reasons when one would want the phone in the room if it's potentially signaling an emergency. |
Speaker B: Well, I think it's a very important point and we've done some work in this area, too. What that phone does is create a low level of anxiety. It's what we call anticipatory anxiety. One of the mechanisms separate from that, well, it's related to that. If you look at teen phone use, one of the reasons that the... |
Speaker A: Terrific. Let's talk about some of the advanced tools for sleep enhancement. What sorts of methods could one incorporate? What are some of the data? Is there any way that we can lump these into some framework or categories? Because I know there are a lot of different tools. |
Speaker B: There are, and I suppose this would be, I know our friend Petra Tir has spoken about medicine 3.0. I think this would probably be sleep optimization 3.0. What is coming down the pike, what is in the research, and I think, you know, could make it to market, or has made it to market, but yet we're still right ... |
Speaker A: That is impressive. |
Speaker B: Now, I should note that there was more recently a replication attempt of that paper, and they did a very good job. They really did it to the letter, and they weren't able to replicate the effects as powerfully. However, subsequent studies have now taken a more nuanced approach. And it's the one that we've ta... |
Speaker A: Thermal manipulations, temperature. I mean, there's such a tight relationship between temperature and sleep and wakefulness, for that matter. What sort of technologies, tools, protocols exist that use thermal manipulation as a way to augment sleep. |
Speaker B: I love this topic because there are hi fi, lo fi and no fi technologies that you can use. The story of sleep and temperature, as you mentioned before and reiterated in terms of the three part stanza, that terset that I would describe is, again, you need to warm up to cool down to fall asleep. You need to sta... |
Speaker A: Is that right? |
Speaker B: And it's the reason that older adults will always be saying, I'm just so cold. And my hands and my feet, especially, are always cold. Now, that's a problem for sleep, because if you cannot vasodilate at the level of your hands and your feet, you can't get the blood out from the core. You can't drop your core... |
Speaker A: You'll be all right. |
Speaker B: What they did then was to say, well, okay, let's look at this. Is there something that we could do that's cheaper and more accessible to the general public? And if you look, there's a literature that preceded that manipulation, and it's so reliable that we now have a term for it in sleep science. It's called... |
Speaker A: I'm going to take a hot bath tonight. I sometimes do the sauna in the evening before sleep. I'm a big fan of cold in the morning, cold shower, cold plunge in the morning. |
Speaker B: Reverse engineering the equation. You're trapping the heat into the core of your body. You're waking yourself up, right. |
Speaker A: And in the evening I've used sauna. The one issue with sauna is I really crank the heat of the sauna. And then sometimes if you do that right before bed, you take a warmish shower right afterwards, you get into bed. Oftentimes I'll wake up thirsty and then. Cause it dehydrates you. And then if I drink a lot ... |
Speaker B: I don't have a sauna at home or nor an access to. I mean, there are saunas in and around where I live, but what I want to do is have it proximal to my bedtime and my bedtime. Cause I'm a neutral type, you know, sort of around eleven ish. Nowhere is open and willing to allow me to sit in the. So how long do y... |
Speaker A: Usually I'm a little bonkers about this. Well, if it's in the evening and I just want to relax, I would say maybe 2030 minutes. And I tend to go really warm, warmer than I want to hear. |
Speaker B: What is Peter do, Petri? T our friend? |
Speaker A: I've done sonic cold plunge with Peter. He usually does it in the evening. Goes sonic, old sonic. Old sonic cold. Okay, warm shower. And I don't know how many nights a week he's doing that. But in terms of the temperature of the sauna, generally somewhere between 175 and 210 degrees, depending on how heat ad... |
Speaker B: Yep, I've certainly done that. And when I'm traveling with jet lag, I will. Absolutely. That's part of my sort of jet lag protocol. I'll make sure I do, because I don't really struggle too much with sleep, at least at present. But when I go through jetlag and I go back home to London, of. |
Speaker A: Course it's tough, the worst. |
Speaker B: Criticalize the living daylights out of that and do as much as I can. So I think that's probably the end of the thermal story. Although we are now trying to see if we can take lo fi approach as well. We're going to do some footwarming. We're trying to develop some footwarming technology that can be built int... |
Speaker A: I do use and love my eight sleep. Here's what I'd love somebody to engineer, and we've got a lot of people who listen to the podcast who think about product development. It would be wonderful to have a portable pair of socks so that you can use them when you travel or when you go sleep anywhere at home or el... |
Speaker B: Okay, so we've done electrical, we've done thermal. |
Speaker A: What about auditory? |
Speaker B: Auditory. So acoustic stimulation in a very similar way to electrical stimulation where you're trying to target that deep sleep and see if you, a better analogy is probably a metronome and you're trying to see if you can force the metronome further over and back and forth with these types of technologies. So... |
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