back to indexFind Your Temperature Minimum to Defeat Jetlag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness | Huberman Lab Podcast #4
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire to bring zero cost
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to consumer information about science
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and science-related tools to the general public.
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Along those lines, I want to thank today's sponsors
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The first sponsor is Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is a product that I've been using
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since 2012, long before I launched this podcast.
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So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic supplement.
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It's a greens drink that you mix with water.
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I add lemon juice to mine because I like the way it tastes.
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And it gets you all the vitamins and minerals you need
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as well as probiotics, and probiotics are important to me
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because there are a lot of data now showing
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that gut health is important for the gut-brain axis,
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things like mood, immunity, et cetera.
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If you want to try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, they'll send you a year supply
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of liquid vitamin D3 and K2.
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Vitamin D3, as many of you probably already know,
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has been shown to be important for various aspects
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of immune system function,
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as well as other biological pathways,
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metabolic function, et cetera.
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So once again, if you want to try Athletic Greens,
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you go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman,
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and they will send you a year supply of the D3, K2.
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This podcast is also brought to us by Headspace.
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Headspace is a meditation app that makes meditation easy.
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I've been meditating on and off since I was in my teens
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with more off than on,
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mainly because meditation can be hard to stick to.
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Some people are very good
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at maintaining a meditation practice, others not so much.
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I'm in the latter category.
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However, I find that when I have something
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to guide my meditation, such as Headspace,
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it makes it much easier for me to be consistent
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about my meditation practice.
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There is now tons of data out there
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in quality peer-reviewed journals
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showing that meditative states can facilitate cognition,
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recovery of mental function,
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recovery of physical ability, et cetera.
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So there are a lot of reasons to take up a meditation
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practice, Headspace and the Headspace app makes it easy
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to learn and maintain a meditation practice.
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If you want to try Headspace,
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you can go to headspace.com slash special offer.
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And if you do that, they will let you try Headspace
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for an entire month for free.
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So zero risk there.
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That's headspace.com slash special offer
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to try Headspace, the meditation app,
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for one month for free.
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Today's podcast episode is about sleep
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We are going to discuss jet lag, shift work,
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babies, kids, and the elderly.
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And we are going to discuss protocols
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that are backed by science.
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That means quality peer-reviewed papers published
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in excellent journals that can support particular tools
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that you can use to combat things like jet lag,
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offset some of the negative effects of shift work
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and make life easier for the new parent
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as well as for the newborn child, the adolescent,
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anyone that wants to sleep better,
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feel better when they're awake, et cetera.
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If you've listened to the previous three episodes
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of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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we've been exploring these themes of wakefulness
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and sleepiness, how to fall asleep, how to stay asleep.
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And we've been discussing parameters like light,
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exercise, temperature, et cetera.
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If you've had a chance to listen to those episodes, great.
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Today's discussion will be even more digestible for you.
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If you haven't, that's okay.
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I will provide a little bit of background here or there
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so that it's not necessary that you have listened
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to those previous episodes.
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But if you get a chance to listen to them, please do it.
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I think it will help you digest the information better.
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Let's just take a step back for a moment
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and remind everybody what we're talking about.
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We're talking about an endogenous,
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meaning within us, rhythm that we call the circadian rhythm.
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The circadian rhythm is a 24-hour rhythm
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in all sorts of functions.
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The most prominent one is a rhythm
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in our feelings of wakefulness and sleepiness.
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So believe it or not,
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the experiment has been done throughout history,
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not often, but it's been done
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where people will go down into a cave
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and will exist in constant darkness for some period of time.
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There are also cases where people have been
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in constant light for some period of time.
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But because people can close their eyes,
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it's actually easier to do the experiment
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where you're in constant darkness
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to address the question of what is the endogenous,
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meaning the internal rhythm that we all have.
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And it turns out we all have this rhythm of about 24 hours,
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although it's not exactly 24 hours,
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meaning every 24 hours,
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your body temperature goes from low to high
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and back down to low again.
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And it takes 24 hours for that to repeat.
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Not 18, not six, 24, plus or minus a couple hours.
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You also have a rhythm in sleepiness and wakefulness
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that correlates with that.
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We tend to be sleepy as our temperature is falling,
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getting lower, and we tend to be more awake or waking
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when our temperature is increasing.
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This is a biological fact.
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It is right down to our DNA.
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We actually have genes in every single one of our cells
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that ensure that every cell is on this 24-hour-ish rhythm,
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close to 24 hours.
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We have a clock over the roof of our mouth,
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a group of neurons called the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
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That clock generates a 24-hour rhythm,
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and that clock is entrained,
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meaning it is matched to the external light-dark cycle,
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which is, no surprise, 24 hours.
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Spinning the Earth takes 24 hours.
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So our cells, our organs, our wakefulness, our temperature,
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but also our metabolism, our immune system, our mood,
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all of that is tethered to the outside light-dark cycle.
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And if we are living our life in a perfect way
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where we wake up in the morning and we view sunlight
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as it crosses the horizon,
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and then by evening we catch a little sunlight,
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and then at night we're in complete darkness,
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we will be more or less perfectly matched
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to the external or ambient light-dark cycle.
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Very few of us do that because of these things
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that we call artificial lights
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and this other thing that we call life demands.
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So today we're going to talk about
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when we get pulled away from that rhythm.
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Now, you may immediately be thinking,
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well, I've heard there are night owls
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and there are morning larks.
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They're sometimes called and they're genetic polymorphisms.
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That's just a fancy name for genetic variations
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that make some people want to wake up early
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and other people want to stay up late
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and teens want to sleep in more.
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Sure, that's all true.
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That's all true regardless of what names we give those.
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However, there's no escaping the fact
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that human beings are a diurnal species.
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We were designed, literally,
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our cells and the circuits of our body
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were constructed to be awake during the daytime
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and asleep at night.
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How do I know that?
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Well, I wasn't consulted at the design phase,
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but I'm certain of that because many studies have shown
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that when we deviate too far from a diurnal schedule
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and we try and become nocturnal, we can pull it off,
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but serious health effects,
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both mental and physical, start to arise.
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I'm not going to spend much of today
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talking about all the negative effects of jet lag.
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I'll talk a little bit about it
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or the negative effects of shift work
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or trying to scare you by telling you
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about the quite valid data around depression,
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amnesia, dementia, all the terrible things that happen
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when you're not sleeping well.
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Rather, I'd like to focus on what you can do
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and arm you with tools.
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So let's talk about that perfect schedule for a moment
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and then let's talk about jet lag
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and what jet lag really represents
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and how to push back on jet lag, shift your clock faster
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and escape some of the severe bad things
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that can happen with jet lag,
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including just feeling miserable
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when you're traveling for work or vacation.
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So what is the perfect day?
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What does that look like
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from a circadian sleep wakefulness standpoint?
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Well, I'm about to summarize what I've said
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in the three previous podcast episodes
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as well as now countless Instagram posts.
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You basically want to get as much light, ideally sunlight,
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but as much light into your eyes
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during the period of each 24 hour cycle
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when you want to be awake, when you want to be alert.
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And you want to get as little light into your eyes
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at the times of that 24 hour cycle
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when you want to be asleep or drowsy and falling asleep.
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How much is enough?
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Well, you don't want to go so high with the light exposure
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that you damage your eyes
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because as many of you heard me say before,
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the eyes are actually two pieces of your brain,
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your central nervous system
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that were extruded out of your skull.
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And as pieces of the central nervous system,
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AKA your brain, they will not regenerate.
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At least right now, the technologies don't exist
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to regenerate those neurons in humans.
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You do not want to damage them.
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So what is too bright?
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Well, when it's painful to look at.
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When you have to blink or close your eyes
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in order to bear it.
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So please don't look at very bright lights
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so painful that they're likely going to damage your eyes.
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However, if you get up in the morning
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and it's still dark out and you want to be awake,
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you would be wise to turn on artificial lights,
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in particular overhead lights
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for reasons I've discussed previously,
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but those overhead lights will optimally trigger the neurons,
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these melanopsin cells in the retina
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that will activate your circadian clock.
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When the sun comes out, even if there's cloud cover,
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the sun does come out every day,
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regardless of where you live,
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unless you live in a cave.
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People have said to me,
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well, I live in an area where I can't really see the sun.
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Well, the sun is there.
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It might be hiding behind clouds,
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unless it's very, very dark where you live,
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like Scandinavia and the depths of winter,
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which case you might want some artificial light.
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Get some sunlight in your eyes when you can.
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Here's the deal with sunlight and artificial light
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that I have not discussed previously.
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A lot of photon energy, a high amount of lux,
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L-U-X, comes through even cloud cover.
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A good number to shoot for, as a rule of thumb,
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is to try and get exposure to at least 100,000 lux
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before 9 a.m., 10 a.m. maybe,
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but before 9 a.m.,
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assuming you're waking up sometime between 5 and 8 a.m.
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Okay, so get 100,000 lux.
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Now you do not, I want to repeat,
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you do not want to stare at a 200,000 lux
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or a 100,000 lux light.
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It's very, very bright.
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The mechanism of circadian clock setting,
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and this is very important,
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the mechanism of circadian clock setting
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involves these neurons in your eye
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that send electrical signals
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to this clock above the roof of your mouth,
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and that system sums, meaning it adds photons.
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It's a very slow system.
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So let's say that I wake up
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and I look at my computer screen briefly or my phone screen.
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That's probably 500 to 1,000 lux.
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If I were to look at that for a full minute,
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I would get that photon energy
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transferred into electrical energy of neurons,
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and it would be communicated to my circadian clock.
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However, the signal that it's morning
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will not have registered with the circadian clock
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unless I looked at that for 100 minutes or more.
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Now the problem is if you wake up at eight o'clock,
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you're not going to get enough light from artificial light
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before you reach what's called the circadian dead zone.
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So you have this opportunity before 9 a.m., maybe 10 a.m.,
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to capture enough photons,
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and you have to do it with your eyes.
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I've discussed why that's important
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in previous episodes of the podcast,
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but you have to do it with your eyes.
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There is no extraocular photoreception.
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This is not about vitamin D in your skin.
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This is about setting your circadian clock,
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which is paramount for mental and physical health.
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So here we're talking about trying to get that
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at least 100,000 photons, but not all at once,
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but you got to get them before 9 a.m. ish, maybe 10 a.m.
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So what do you do?
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If you want to get nerdy about this, quantitative,
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you could download a free app like Light Meter
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and take a look around your house with Light Meter,
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and you'll notice that even bright overhead lights
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are only emitting about 4,000 or 5,000 lux.
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It's going to take a long while of looking at those lights
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with eyes open in order to set your circadian clock
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and tell your brain and body that it's morning.
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Going outside, even on a cloudy day,
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could be 7,000, 10,000 lux.
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It's really remarkable how bright it is,
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meaning how much photon energy is coming through.
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So try and get 100,000 lux before that 9 a.m.
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Now, if you can't do that because you live
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in an area of the world where it's just not bright enough,
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some people have sent me pictures from Northern England,
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it's just not bright enough in winter,
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then sure, you can resort to using artificial lights
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in order to get enough photons.
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And I'm putting out this 100,000 lux number as a target
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to get each day before 9 a.m.
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You can, in theory, get it all from artificial lights,
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but there are some special qualities about sunlight
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that make sunlight the better stimulus.
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First of all, it's free if it's available outside.
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There is a number of different, there are, excuse me,
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a number of different technologies,
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kind of like this one, like a light pad,
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that this one says it's 930 lux.
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I'm covering this up
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because I'm not trying to promote any specific products.
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I actually bought this just with my own money on Amazon.
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They're not a sponsor.
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And it lets you toggle the brightness,
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I think, by holding this on, holding down this button,
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you can make it dimmer or brighter.
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This is about 1,000 lux.
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It seems really bright, but a cloudy day outside
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will have five times more photon energy coming through.
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So some people set these lights or ring lights
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that they use for selfies and that kind of thing
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near their coffee or workstation first thing in the morning,
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but you really want to get sunlight, okay?
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So those things are kind of nice because they'll travel
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and we're going to talk about jet lag,
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but I can't emphasize this enough.
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That light has to be captured and summed
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before you enter the circadian dead zone,
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which is the middle of the day.
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This is, again, trying to achieve kind of perfect schedule.
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Then I've recommended, based on scientific literature,
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that you look at sunlight sometime
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around the time when the sun is setting.
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And the reason for that, of course,
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is because it adjusts down the sensitivity of your eyes,
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because here's the diabolical thing.
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While we need a lot of photon energy early in the day
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to wake up our system and set our circadian clock
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and prepare us for a good night's sleep
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14 to 16 hours later,
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it takes very little photon energy
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to reset and shift our clock after 8 p.m.
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And that's why you want to, as much as you safely can,
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avoid bright light and even not so bright light
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between the hours of 10 or 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.
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A number of people have asked me some questions about this.
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In the last episode, I went into red lights.
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I would have discussed blue blockers, all that kind of stuff
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so I'm not going to repeat all that.
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But here's the thing.
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If you see afternoon light,
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you're going to adjust down the sensitivity of your eyes
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so that you have a little bit more wiggle room,
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a little bit more leeway to view lights from screens
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and overhead lights even late at night
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without disrupting your circadian clock.
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But it is a kind of a double-edged sword
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where you need a lot of light early in the day
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and you need to avoid bright lights later in the day.
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I've mentioned studies on here.
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A number of you have asked about getting the references.
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We are in the process of trying to get a webpage going
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There's some copyright issues that we have to deal with.
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But wherever possible, I'll try and reference these studies.
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And when people ask, I'll generally put them
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in the response to their comments on YouTube or Instagram.
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There have been two studies done
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from the University of Colorado,
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both published in Current Biology.
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You can easily find these online
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by just Googling the words Current Biology, Camping,
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and Reset Circadian Clocks that have shown
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that two days of waking up with the sun
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and avoiding light at night,
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they actually took graduate students camping,
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really cool experiment to be a part of,
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reset the melatonin and cortisol rhythms
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for these people that had otherwise drifted quite far
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from their natural rhythms.
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There are other things that you can do to shift your clock
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and to reinforce your clock,
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like exercising more or less the same time,
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eating more or less the same time, et cetera.
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That's not what today's episode is about.
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So I just described perfect schedule,
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get at least 100,000 lux of light exposure to the eyes,
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not all at once, but summing across the morning.
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Again, you know when it's too much
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because it's painful to look at.
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So that's obviously something to avoid.
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But then once the middle of the day,
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let's say you're waking up at 10 or 11,
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you go outside, the sun's overhead, forget it.
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You're not going to shift your clock.
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It doesn't work that way.
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In the evening, you see the evening light
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and you want to get that light
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to adjust down your retinal sensitivity
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to afford you a bit of a buffer
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so that late at night,
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if you happen to look at screens
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or go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,
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it's not going to shift your clock
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because it takes probably only about 1000 to 1500 lux
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of light energy to shift your clock
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in the middle of the night.
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So let's talk about shifting clocks
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because for the jet lag person,
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this ability to shift the clock
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with light temperature, exercise and food
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is vitally important for getting onto the new local schedule
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and there's so much out there about jet lag.
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Today, I'm going to dial it down
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to one very specific parameter
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that all of you can figure out
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without any technology or devices
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and can apply for when you travel for work or pleasure
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or anytime you're jet lagged
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and I want to absolutely emphasize
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that you don't have to travel to get jet lagged.
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Many of you are jet lagged.
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You're jet lagged because you're looking at your phone
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in the middle of the night,
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you're jet lagged because you're waking up
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at different times a day,
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you're jet lagged because your exercise
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is on a chaotic regime some days at this time,
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some days at that time
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and if that works for you, great.
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I want to be really clear
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that a number of people always say,
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well, I know so-and-so that only needed four hours of sleep
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and or they're just fine,
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they travel to Europe and it's just fine.
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There's a lot of individual variability
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and we're going to talk about the origins
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of some of that variability.
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I mean, I know people that can eat anything
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and somehow seem to maintain great lipid profiles
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and body weight and fitness ability
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and I know some people that they eat one cracker
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and they sort of dissolve into a puddle of kind of tears
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because they think that that's going to throw them off
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and then maybe it does, I don't know.
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There's a tremendous amount of variability out there.
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So this is really about optimal and what's possible
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and you have to ask,
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I can just say from personal experience,
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I suffer terribly from jet lag
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traveling in certain directions but not others.
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Some people don't have trouble with jet lag.
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Many people will travel to a new location,
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they feel great for the first day and night
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and then they crash and they have trouble sleeping
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or they travel back and they have a terrible time
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getting back onto a normal schedule
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and some of this varies with age
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and some of it varies with genetics
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and there is no simple pill or anything that you can take
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to just get rid of jet lag, it doesn't work that way.
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If it worked that way, I would tell you
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but there are some simple things that you can do.
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I'm going to arm you with the knowledge of what jet lag is
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and how it works and contrary to what many people out there
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say and believe, I know that understanding mechanism
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affords you more flexibility.
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Why understand mechanism as just opposed to me
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just writing up a PDF and giving you a list of things to do?
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Well, what happens when you can't do those things
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in exactly the way they're written down?
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When you understand mechanism,
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you understand how to control the machine
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that is your biological system, your nervous system.
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So a little bit of understanding about mechanism
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goes a really long way.
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So that's where we're headed.
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Let's talk about what jet lag is.
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Okay, well, I promised that I wouldn't get too dark
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with all the terrible things that can happen with jet lag
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but I'm about to get dark.
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There are quality peer reviewed papers
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showing that jet lag will shorten your life.
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It will kill you earlier.
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I guess it means you'll die earlier.
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It doesn't actually kill you necessarily
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although there are many cases where tourists
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end up stepping in front of buses,
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especially in countries where the cars and buses
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drive on the opposite side of the street
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that they're used to,
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who are jet lagged and lose their life that way.
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Jet lag is a serious thing.
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Sure, we had a family story about this.
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When I was growing up,
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I had a family member travel overseas for work
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and take a sleeping pill.
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I won't name the sleeping pill,
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though at the end I'm going to talk about sleeping pills
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and had a case of total amnesia for a week.
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That's not entirely uncommon.
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If you've ever been really jet lagged and fallen asleep,
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doesn't even have to be in the middle of the day,
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woken up, you might not know where you are.
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And that's because time and space are really linked
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and the brain wasn't designed to be transported
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four, five, six hours into a new time zone.
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Our brain and the biological mechanisms
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that govern circadian timing
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were designed to be shifted by a couple hours,
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not necessarily six or nine or 12 hours.
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So you can really mess yourself up.
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I've had that experience.
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I usually experience it as fluctuations in mood.
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I flew 12 hours out of phase
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to Abu Dhabi once to give a talk at NYU Abu Dhabi.
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And it was a mess.
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I actually was getting vertigo.
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I wasn't hallucinating, but I was really out of it.
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And my mood was just all over the place.
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It was very bizarre.
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Jet lag, even if you don't experience it
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as mood shifts or amnesia, it can shorten your life.
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Now, here's what's interesting.
link |
Traveling westward on the globe is always easier
link |
than traveling eastward, okay?
link |
It's interesting because the effects of jet lag on longevity
link |
have shown that traveling east
link |
takes more years off your life than traveling west.
link |
Now, of course, traveling 30 minutes into a new time zone
link |
or three hours, just one time zone over,
link |
or two times zone over, rather,
link |
is far less detrimental to your biology and psychology
link |
than a eight-hour shift or a nine-hour shift.
link |
Now, here's what's interesting.
link |
When we think about the effects of jet lag on longevity
link |
or this idea that it can shorten our lives,
link |
we have to ask ourselves, why?
link |
And it turns out there's a pretty simple explanation
link |
We've talked before about the autonomic nervous system,
link |
this set of neurons in our spinal cord and body and brain
link |
that regulate our wakefulness and our sleepiness.
link |
Turns out that human beings, and probably most species,
link |
are better able to activate and stay alert
link |
than they are to shut down their nervous system
link |
and go to sleep on demand.
link |
So if you really have to push
link |
and you really have to stay awake, you can do it.
link |
You can stay up later.
link |
But falling asleep earlier is harder.
link |
And that's why traveling east
link |
has a number of different features associated with it
link |
that, because you're traveling east,
link |
you're trying to go to bed earlier.
link |
As a Californian, if I go to New York City,
link |
I've got to get to bed three hours early
link |
and wake up three hours early,
link |
much harder than coming back to California
link |
and just staying up a few more hours.
link |
And this probably has roots in evolutionary adaptation
link |
where, under conditions where we need to suddenly
link |
gather up and go or forage for food or fight
link |
or do any number of different things
link |
that we can push ourselves
link |
through the release of adrenaline and epinephrine
link |
whereas being able to slow down and deliberately fall asleep
link |
is actually much harder to do.
link |
So there's an asymmetry to our autonomic nervous system
link |
that plays out in the asymmetry of jet lag.
link |
So if you want to read up on this,
link |
because people have asked me about papers,
link |
There's a paper published by Davidson and colleagues, 2006,
link |
in Current Biology that talks about the differences
link |
in lifespan for frequent eastward versus westward
link |
versus no travel and longevity and et cetera,
link |
a number of different biological markers of longevity.
link |
So going east is harder because going to sleep earlier
link |
is harder if you're trying to do that on demand.
link |
Many people have turned to melatonin
link |
as a way to try and induce sleepiness.
link |
I'm going to talk about melatonin at the end.
link |
I've mentioned on previous podcasts,
link |
a number of you have asked for the evidence
link |
that melatonin is potentially detrimental
link |
to some hormone systems.
link |
Melatonin is a hormone, and I'll discuss that at the end,
link |
in particular, the role of melatonin
link |
in suppressing a hormone pathway
link |
that involves luteinizing hormone,
link |
testosterone in men and estrogen in females,
link |
as well as a really interesting peptide
link |
called kisspeptin, that's a cool name.
link |
All right, well, let's think about travel and what happens.
link |
Let's say you're not going eastward or westward,
link |
but you're going north or south.
link |
So if you go from, for instance,
link |
Washington, D.C. to Santiago, Chile,
link |
or you go from Tel Aviv, Israel to Cape Town, South Africa,
link |
you're just going north and south, right?
link |
And not, you know, either direction.
link |
You're not really moving into a different time zone.
link |
You're not shifting.
link |
So you will experience travel fatigue.
link |
And it turns out that jet lag has two elements,
link |
travel fatigue and time zone jet lag.
link |
Time zone jet lag is simply the inability
link |
of local sunlight and local darkness
link |
to match to your internal rhythm, this endogenous rhythm
link |
So before we get too complicated
link |
and too down in the weeds about this,
link |
I want to just throw out a couple of important things.
link |
First of all, I mentioned this earlier,
link |
but some people suffer from jet lag a lot.
link |
Other people, not so much.
link |
Most people experience worse jet lag as they get older.
link |
There are reasons for that because early in life,
link |
patterns of melatonin release are very stable and flat
link |
and very high actually in children.
link |
It's one of the reasons why they don't undergo puberty.
link |
Then it becomes cyclic during puberty,
link |
meaning it comes on once every 24 hours
link |
and turns off once every 24 hours.
link |
It's cycles, cyclic.
link |
And then as we get older, the cycles get more disrupted
link |
and we become more vulnerable to even small changes
link |
in schedule, et cetera, meal times, right?
link |
So jet lag gets worse as we age.
link |
In addition, there are other things that happen with age
link |
that people start doing less exercise,
link |
their digestion can get worse, et cetera.
link |
So some of the effects of age might not be direct effects
link |
of getting older, but some of the things
link |
that are correlated with being older,
link |
like people who are willing to have a regular exercise
link |
regime can use that exercise regime
link |
to shift their circadian clock.
link |
And I have a good friend, his father's in his 80s.
link |
He's still pushing out 25, 30 pushups each morning.
link |
He's on the Peloton or whatever it is,
link |
doing a lot of cycling.
link |
So some 80 year olds are doing that, many are not.
link |
And many 30 year olds are not.
link |
But if you have a regular exercise program,
link |
that's going to make it easier to shift your circadian clock
link |
for sake of jet lag.
link |
And it's actually a knob you can turn
link |
and you can leverage for shifting your clock.
link |
Before we go any further,
link |
I want to make changing your internal rhythm really easy,
link |
or at least as easy and as simple
link |
as one could possibly make it, I believe.
link |
What I want to talk about is perhaps one
link |
of the most important things to know about your body
link |
and brain, which is called your temperature minimum.
link |
Most of you know your approximate weight.
link |
Some of you even know your blood pressure.
link |
Some of you might even know your body mass index.
link |
Some of you might know other things about your biology
link |
that have fancy names,
link |
but everyone should know their temperature minimum.
link |
Your temperature minimum doesn't require a thermometer
link |
to measure, although you could measure it.
link |
Your temperature minimum is the point
link |
in every 24 hour cycle when your temperature is lowest.
link |
Now, how do you measure that without a thermometer?
link |
It tends to fall 90 minutes to two hours before
link |
your average waking time.
link |
So I want to repeat that.
link |
Your temperature minimum tends to fall 90 minutes
link |
to two hours before your average waking time.
link |
So let's say you're not traveling
link |
and your typical wake up time is 5.30 AM.
link |
Your temperature minimum is very likely 3.30 AM or 4.00 AM.
link |
If you want, if any of you want to,
link |
you can measure your temperature minimum.
link |
You can get a thermometer
link |
and you can measure your temperature every couple hours
link |
for 24 hours and you can find your temperature minimum.
link |
What you're going to find is that you have a low point,
link |
the temperature minimum,
link |
and then your temperature will start to rise.
link |
You'll wake up about two hours later.
link |
Then your temperature will continue to rise
link |
into the afternoon.
link |
It will peak, maybe a little trough.
link |
Sometimes that happens.
link |
And then it'll start declining slowly
link |
as you approach nighttime.
link |
There are things that will disrupt
link |
that temperature pattern.
link |
Saunas, cold baths, intense exercise, et cetera.
link |
Meals tend to have a thermogenic effect
link |
that increases temperature slightly, little blips,
link |
but the overall cycle,
link |
24 hour cycle of temperature has this pattern.
link |
And last time I talked about the seminal work
link |
of Joe Takahashi and others who have shown
link |
that temperature actually is the signal
link |
by which this clock above the roof of your mouth
link |
in trains or collectively pushes all the cells
link |
and tissues of our body to be on the same schedule.
link |
Temperature is the effector.
link |
And once you hear that, there should be an immediate,
link |
oh, of course, because how else would you get
link |
all these different diverse cell types
link |
to follow one pattern, right?
link |
A pancreatic cell does something very different
link |
than a spleen cell or a neuron, right?
link |
They're all doing different things at different rates.
link |
So the temperature signal can go out
link |
and then each one of those can interpret
link |
the temperature signal as one unified
link |
and consistent theme of their environment.
link |
So temperatures vary from person to person.
link |
Some people are 98.6.
link |
Some people run a little colder, et cetera,
link |
but you have a low point and you have a high point.
link |
Know your temperature minimum.
link |
How are you going to figure out this temperature minimum?
link |
The temperature minimum can be determined
link |
by taking the last three to five wake up times.
link |
So let's say you wake up 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 3 a.m.,
link |
all right, happens, take those, add them together,
link |
average them by adding them up
link |
and dividing by the number of days.
link |
That'll give you the average.
link |
If you're one of these people that wakes up at 3 a.m.
link |
and then goes back to sleep and sleeps till 10,
link |
your wake up time was 10 a.m.
link |
If you use an alarm clock,
link |
your wake up time is still when you get up, okay?
link |
I know alarm clocks have been kind of demonized,
link |
but in my world, being late and missing appointments
link |
is also demonized, so I use an alarm clock.
link |
Many people will wake up at exactly the same time each day.
link |
There tends to be some variation for people.
link |
Some people, it's going to vary
link |
depending on life circumstances,
link |
but average that for three to seven days or so.
link |
Take that wake up time.
link |
You can then get an average
link |
or sort of typical temperature minimum.
link |
Okay, so now you know how to get your temperature minimum.
link |
Your temperature minimum is your absolute reference point
link |
for shifting your circadian clock,
link |
whether or not it's for jet lag or shift work
link |
or some other purpose.
link |
If you expose your eyes to bright light
link |
in the four hours, maybe five or six,
link |
but in the four hours after your temperature minimum,
link |
your circadian clock will shift
link |
so that you will tend to get up earlier
link |
and go to sleep earlier in the subsequent days, okay?
link |
It's what's called a phase advance,
link |
if you'd like to read up on this further.
link |
You advance your clock, okay?
link |
However, if you view bright light
link |
in the four to six hours before your temperature minimum,
link |
you will tend to phase delay your clock.
link |
You will tend to wake up later and go to sleep later, okay?
link |
I'm going to repeat this because there's so much confusion
link |
out there and people talk about circadian time
link |
Find your temperature minimum.
link |
I tend to wake up at about 6 a.m., sometimes 6.30,
link |
It depends a lot on what I was doing the night before
link |
as I'm guessing it does for you.
link |
But that means that my temperature minimum
link |
is probably somewhere right around 4.30 a.m.,
link |
which means that if I wake up at 4.30 a.m.
link |
and I were to view bright light at 4.35 a.m.,
link |
I'm going to advance my clock.
link |
I'm going to want to go to bed earlier the subsequent night
link |
and wake up earlier the subsequent morning.
link |
And as I shift my wake-up time,
link |
my temperature minimum shifts too, right?
link |
Because each time we shift our wake-up time,
link |
our temperature minimum shifts,
link |
assuming that wake-up time shifts more than, you know,
link |
30 minutes or an hour, okay?
link |
If I were to view bright light in the four to six hours
link |
before 4.30 a.m., guess what?
link |
The next night I'm going to want to stay up later
link |
and I'm going to want to wake up later
link |
the subsequent morning.
link |
Your temperature minimum is a reference point,
link |
not a temperature reading.
link |
Again, if you want to measure your temperature minimum
link |
and figure out what it is, 98 point whatever,
link |
or 96 point whatever, that's fine.
link |
You can do that, but that information won't help you.
link |
What you need to know is what time
link |
your body temperature is lowest
link |
and understand that in the four hours or so
link |
just after that time,
link |
viewing light will advance your clock
link |
to make you want to get up earlier.
link |
And the four hours before your temperature minimum,
link |
viewing light will make you want to stay up later.
link |
Now, some people might be saying,
link |
well, I wake up early and I want to stay up late
link |
and I'm sleepy all day and I'm a mess, or I feel fine.
link |
Look, let's talk about feeling fine.
link |
It turns out the definition of insomnia
link |
is when you're experiencing excessive sleepiness
link |
Sleepiness and fatigue are different, okay?
link |
So in the world of sleep medicine,
link |
fatigue is a physical exhaustion.
link |
Sleepiness is falling asleep,
link |
like falling asleep at your desk
link |
or falling asleep during lectures,
link |
or there seems to be something special about my lectures
link |
that makes people want to fall asleep.
link |
So if this cures your insomnia, fantastic.
link |
However, in all seriousness,
link |
sleepiness during the daytime,
link |
unless it's around your temperature peak
link |
and only lasts about 90 minutes or so,
link |
is a sign of insomnia.
link |
It's a sign of lack of sleep.
link |
I want to be very, very clear
link |
that if you know your temperature minimum,
link |
you can shift your clock using light.
link |
You can also shift your clock
link |
by engaging in exercise in the four hours
link |
after your temperature minimum
link |
to wake up earlier on subsequent nights
link |
or exercise before then to delay your clock, okay?
link |
So now you can start to see and understand
link |
the logic of this system.
link |
And we'll talk about why this works
link |
and the underlying biology,
link |
but understanding that temperature is the effector
link |
and understanding that you have this low point
link |
that reflects your most sleepy point, essentially,
link |
right before waking up, and then temperature rises,
link |
you can now start to shift that temperature
link |
according to your travel needs.
link |
Here's one way in which you might do that.
link |
Let's say I am going to travel to Europe,
link |
which is nine hours ahead, typically, from California.
link |
I would want to determine my temperature minimum,
link |
which for me is about 4.30 a.m., maybe 5 a.m.,
link |
and I would want to start getting up at about 5.30 a.m.
link |
and getting some bright light exposure,
link |
presumably from artificial sources,
link |
because the sunlight isn't going to be out at that time,
link |
maybe even exercising as well,
link |
maybe even eating a meal at that time
link |
if that's in your practice.
link |
You would want to start doing that
link |
two or three days before travel,
link |
because once you land in, or I land in Europe,
link |
chances are just viewing the sunrise or sunset in Europe
link |
is not going to allow me to shift my circadian clock.
link |
Some people say, get sunlight in your eyes when you land,
link |
but that's not going to work,
link |
because one of two things is likely to happen.
link |
With a nine-hour shift like that,
link |
either I'm going to view sunlight
link |
at a time that corresponds to the circadian dead zone,
link |
the time in which my circadian clock can't be shifted,
link |
or I'm going to end up viewing sunlight at a time
link |
that corresponds to the four to six-hour window
link |
before my temperature minimum.
link |
So it's going to shift me
link |
in exactly the opposite direction that I want to go.
link |
So it can be very, very challenging
link |
for people to adjust to jet lag.
link |
So you need to ask, am I traveling east
link |
or am I traveling west?
link |
Am I trying to advance my clock or delay my clock?
link |
Remember, viewing light, exercise, and eating
link |
in the four to six hours before your temperature minimum
link |
will delay your clock.
link |
Eating, viewing sunlight, and exercising,
link |
you don't have to do all three,
link |
but some combination of those in the four to six hours
link |
after your temperature minimum will advance your clock.
link |
And this is a powerful mechanism
link |
by which you can shift your clock anywhere
link |
from one to three hours per day, which is remarkable.
link |
That means your temperature minimum is going to shift out
link |
as much as three hours, which can make it such
link |
that you can travel all the way to Europe.
link |
And as long as you've prepared for a day or so
link |
by doing what I described back home,
link |
and then doing it when you arrive,
link |
you can potentially accomplish the entire shift
link |
within anywhere from 24 to 36 hours.
link |
And this is really important to emphasize
link |
that once you arrive in your new location,
link |
and here I'm talking about traveling eastward,
link |
California to Europe, once you arrive in your new location,
link |
you have to keep track of what your temperature minimum
link |
was back home and how it's being shifted during your trip.
link |
Now, it's much easier to do than you think.
link |
One of the unfortunate consequences of the smartphone
link |
is that you can't do something goofy
link |
like wearing two watches,
link |
one watch that corresponds to the time back home
link |
and another one that corresponds to the local time.
link |
Typically it updates automatically based on wifi, et cetera.
link |
But if you can keep track of the time back home,
link |
then you can easily shift your clock going forward.
link |
I'm hoping this makes sense.
link |
I really want to emphasize that you don't have to be precise
link |
down to the minute.
link |
Some of you may be asking, well, what about, you know,
link |
you've got this temperature minimum,
link |
and if I view light one minute before it,
link |
then I'm going to delay my clock,
link |
and one minute after it, I'm going to advance my clock.
link |
It doesn't quite work like that, okay?
link |
But it's very important to understand
link |
that light is the primary way
link |
in which we can shift our clock.
link |
And now you should also be able to understand things
link |
like the circadian dead zone from about 9.30, 10 a.m.
link |
all the way until six hours
link |
before your temperature minimum.
link |
You're not going to shift your clock.
link |
Nothing that you do in that time
link |
in terms of light viewing behavior, feeding, et cetera,
link |
is going to shift your clock.
link |
And so a lot of people are landing in Europe,
link |
getting sunlight in their eyes,
link |
and throwing their clock out of whack,
link |
or not shifting their clock at all.
link |
This brings me to the other thing that's highly recommended,
link |
and I've mentioned this before,
link |
but you want to eat on the local meal schedule.
link |
If it's in your practice to fast, fast, that's fine.
link |
But when you eat, you want to eat
link |
within the local schedule for alertness.
link |
Okay, that means if you arrive
link |
and everyone's eating breakfast
link |
and you can't stomach the idea of breakfast
link |
in your new location because your appetite isn't there,
link |
that means the clock in your liver,
link |
you have a clock in your liver, biological clock,
link |
has not caught up to the new time zone.
link |
You can force yourself to eat if you like,
link |
or you can skip that meal,
link |
but what you don't want to do
link |
is stay on your home meal schedule,
link |
waking up in the middle of the night and eating.
link |
That is really going to throw things off
link |
because a lot of the clocks in the periphery,
link |
like from the liver, the peripheral body,
link |
will send information back to the brain,
link |
and then the brain is getting really conflicted signals.
link |
So the temperature minimum is really your anchor point
link |
for shifting your clock best.
link |
I don't know why this information
link |
really hasn't made it into the popular sphere quite so much.
link |
There's all sorts of stuff
link |
about taking things like melatonin, using binaural beats,
link |
a lot of kind of like more sophisticated, complicated,
link |
and potentially problematic ways of trying to shift the clock.
link |
Let's talk about melatonin,
link |
but first I just want to pause
link |
and shift gears a little bit
link |
because I talked about traveling eastward,
link |
but we haven't talked about traveling westward.
link |
So I want to do that now.
link |
Let's say you're traveling from New York to California
link |
or from Europe to California.
link |
The challenge there tends to be
link |
how can you stay up late enough?
link |
Now, some people are able to do this
link |
because as I mentioned earlier,
link |
the autonomic nervous system is asymmetrically wired
link |
such that it's easier to stay up late later
link |
than we would naturally want to
link |
than it is to go to sleep earlier.
link |
So let's say you land and it's 4 p.m. and you're just dying.
link |
You're in California, you came from Europe, it's 4 p.m.
link |
and you really, really want to go to sleep.
link |
That's where the use of things like caffeine, exercise,
link |
and sunlight can shift you, right?
link |
If it's after your temperature peak,
link |
then viewing sunlight around 6 p.m. or 8 p.m.
link |
or artificial light, if there's in sunlight,
link |
will help shift you later, right?
link |
It's going to delay your clock
link |
and you're going to be able to stay up later.
link |
The worst thing you can do is take a nap
link |
that was intended to last 20 minutes or an hour.
link |
I do this routinely and then wake up four hours later
link |
or you wake up and it's midnight
link |
and you can't fall back asleep.
link |
You really want to avoid doing that.
link |
So provided it's not excessive amounts,
link |
stimulants like caffeine and coffee or tea
link |
can really help you push past that afternoon barrier
link |
and get you to sleep more like on the local schedule
link |
and eating on the local schedule as well.
link |
A number of people have asked
link |
about the use of melatonin to induce sleepiness.
link |
All right, well, let's think about what melatonin is.
link |
Melatonin is this hormone that's released
link |
from the pineal gland, which is this gland.
link |
A couple of notes about the pineal
link |
because I've been getting a lot of questions about this.
link |
I'm probably going to draw some fire for this,
link |
but I'd be happy to have a thoughtful, considerate debate
link |
with some peer reviewed papers in front of us.
link |
The pineal does make this hallucinogenic molecule
link |
they call DMT, but in such minuscule amounts
link |
that it is not responsible for the hallucinations you see
link |
in sleep and dreaming.
link |
It's also not responsible for the hallucinations
link |
you might see through other approaches to DMT.
link |
It's just not, that's not where the DMT comes from.
link |
It's infinitesimally small amounts.
link |
There are a lot of kind of wacky claims out there
link |
about calcification of the pineal and fluoride
link |
and this kind of thing.
link |
Look, the pineal sits in an area of the brain
link |
near the fourth ventricle where the skull
link |
is not terribly far away,
link |
although there's some overlapping neural tissue.
link |
And with age, there's some aggregation
link |
of some of the meninges and other things around there
link |
that stick to the skull.
link |
Young brains don't look like old brains,
link |
but there's no calcification of the pineal, all right?
link |
So you can forget about calcification
link |
of the pineal is a problem.
link |
I don't know where that whole thing got started,
link |
but that's not an issue.
link |
Your pineal will churn out melatonin my whole life.
link |
Melatonin induces sleepiness.
link |
Melatonin during development is also responsible
link |
for timing the secretion of certain hormones
link |
that are vitally important for puberty.
link |
Does melatonin control the onset of puberty?
link |
Not directly, but indirectly.
link |
Melatonin inhibits something
link |
called the gonadotropin-releasing hormone,
link |
which is a hormone that's released from your hypothalamus,
link |
also roughly above the roof of your mouth and your brain.
link |
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone is really interesting
link |
because it stimulates the release of another hormone
link |
called luteinizing hormone,
link |
which in females causes estrogen
link |
to be released within the ovaries,
link |
it's involved in reproductive cycles,
link |
and in males stimulates testosterone
link |
from the sertoli cells of the testes.
link |
Melatonin is inhibitory to GnRH,
link |
gonadotropin-releasing hormone,
link |
and therefore is inhibitory to LH, luteinizing hormone,
link |
and therefore is inhibitory to testosterone and estrogen.
link |
There's just no two ways about it.
link |
There is an immense amount of data
link |
on the fact that high levels of melatonin
link |
in seasonally breeding animals
link |
takes the ovaries from nice and robust ovaries
link |
that are capable of deploying eggs and this kind of thing,
link |
and literally shrinking them
link |
and making these animals infertile.
link |
These are very high levels of melatonin
link |
in seasonal breeders in winter.
link |
Melatonin in males of seasonal breeders
link |
takes the testes and shrinks them.
link |
Long ago when I was at UC Berkeley as a master's student,
link |
I was working on neuroendocrinology,
link |
and we were working on this hamster species
link |
of seasonal breeders,
link |
and basically when days are long, which inhibits melatonin,
link |
these little Siberian hamsters, as they're called,
link |
have testes about the size of sort of typical table grapes,
link |
although that's a weird way to put it.
link |
When days get shorter and the melatonin signal gets longer,
link |
because light inhibits melatonin,
link |
days get shorter, melatonin gets longer,
link |
those same hamsters would have testes
link |
that would involute to the size of about a grain of rice.
link |
Now, this does not happen in humans in short days,
link |
but nonetheless, the melatonin signal
link |
really does have a ton of effects on the hormone system.
link |
Now, does that mean that if you've been taking melatonin,
link |
you've really screwed up your hormones?
link |
Does it mean if a kid has been taking melatonin,
link |
that's really screwing up their puberty?
link |
Not necessarily, and here's why.
link |
Melatonin operates on a concentration level,
link |
so in a child that's very, very small,
link |
that has high levels of melatonin,
link |
it actually can inhibit GnRH, LH, testosterone, or estrogen,
link |
depending on the sex of the child.
link |
But as that child grows through other mechanisms,
link |
like growth hormone release, et cetera,
link |
that same amount of melatonin released from the pineal
link |
is now diluted over a much larger body,
link |
so the concentration actually goes way, way down, okay?
link |
But here's the problem with supplementing melatonin.
link |
As I mentioned in the previous episode,
link |
concentrations of melatonin in many commercial supplements
link |
have been shown to be anywhere from 85% to 400%
link |
of what's listed on the bottle.
link |
So when you take melatonin, or a child takes melatonin,
link |
oftentimes they are taking
link |
supra physiological levels of melatonin,
link |
which at least by my read and the literature,
link |
says that it could have dramatic effects
link |
on timing and course of things like puberty.
link |
So it's not so much that the journals have come out saying,
link |
oh, taking that melatonin inhibits puberty,
link |
it's that no single study has been done
link |
with the supra physiological levels of melatonin
link |
that are present in a lot of these supplements
link |
in developing children.
link |
So melatonin is used widely for inducing sleepiness
link |
when you want to fall asleep
link |
in the new location that you've arrived, right?
link |
You can't fall asleep,
link |
you take melatonin, it helps you fall asleep.
link |
It does not help you stay asleep.
link |
In addition to that, melatonin has been kind of touted
link |
as the best way to shift your circadian clock.
link |
I'm happy to go on record saying,
link |
look, if you need melatonin and you can work with a doctor
link |
or somebody who really understands circadian
link |
and sleep biology, go for it if that's your thing.
link |
But I, as always on this podcast and elsewhere,
link |
I have a bias toward behavioral things
link |
that you can titrate and control,
link |
like exposure to light, exercise, temperature, et cetera,
link |
that have much bigger margins for safety
link |
and certainly don't have these other endocrine effects
link |
that we've been thinking about and talking about.
link |
So if you want to take melatonin in the afternoon
link |
in order to fall asleep or in the evening, be my guest,
link |
Again, you're responsible for your health, not me.
link |
But for many people,
link |
melatonin is not going to be the best solution.
link |
The best solution is going to be to use light
link |
and temperature and exercise
link |
on either side of the temperature minimum
link |
to shift your clock both before your trip
link |
and when you land in your new location
link |
and your clock starts to shift.
link |
Okay, so now you know my opinions about melatonin.
link |
Feel free to filter them through your own opinions
link |
and experiences with melatonin.
link |
And now you also understand what your temperature minimum is
link |
and how it represents an important landmark,
link |
either side of which you can use light temperature
link |
and exercise to shift your clock.
link |
Just to remind you a little bit about temperature,
link |
if you want to shift your clock,
link |
typically you would do that by,
link |
you could take a hot shower
link |
and then that will have a cooling effect
link |
after the hot shower.
link |
And if you were to get into a cold shower or an ice bath,
link |
if you have access to one,
link |
afterward there's going to be a thermogenic effect
link |
of your body increasing temperature.
link |
And if you just think about your natural rhythm
link |
back home when everything's stable,
link |
you have a nadir, a low point in,
link |
which is your temperature minimum,
link |
and then you have a peak and you think about
link |
when you're doing this hot or cold shower in that rhythm,
link |
now you should be able to understand
link |
how you're shifting your rhythm.
link |
That temperature rhythm is the one that's going to move.
link |
Give you an example.
link |
If I were to wake up in the morning
link |
and let's say I wake up at 6 a.m.,
link |
my temperature I know is rising,
link |
I've passed my temperature minimum.
link |
If I were to get into a hot shower
link |
that would then lower my body temperature when I got out,
link |
that is not normally what's happening
link |
first thing in the morning.
link |
And therefore, my clock would very likely
link |
get phase delayed, right?
link |
It's going to delay the increase in temperature.
link |
Whereas if I got into a cold shower,
link |
something I don't personally like to do,
link |
but I've done from time to time,
link |
or an ice bath, that's going to then
link |
have a rebound increase in body temperature
link |
and is going to phase advance my clock.
link |
That peak in the afternoon is going to come
link |
about an hour earlier.
link |
I'm going to want to go to bed earlier later that night.
link |
So you can start to play these games with timing
link |
and hot and cold, with meals,
link |
whether or not you eat or you don't eat,
link |
and with light exposure,
link |
whether or not you view light or you don't view light.
link |
So now you can start to see why understanding
link |
the core mechanics of a system
link |
can really give you the most flexibility
link |
because I could spend the next 25 years of my life
link |
answering every question about every nuanced pattern
link |
of travel, well, we're going to Sydney,
link |
then we're going there, what should I do?
link |
But that's on you.
link |
You need to figure out your temperature minimum
link |
and your temperature peak, if you like,
link |
and then use these parameters to, it gives you flexibility.
link |
And that really underscores the most important thing
link |
is that when you understand mechanism,
link |
it's not about being neurotically attached
link |
to a specific protocol, it's the opposite.
link |
It gives you power to not be neurotically attached
link |
to a specific protocol.
link |
It can give you great confidence and flexibility
link |
in being able to shift your body rhythms however you want.
link |
And when things get out of whack,
link |
you can tuck them right back into place.
link |
One thing that's common
link |
is that people need to do a quick trip.
link |
It's not always that you're going to go to,
link |
you know, on vacation for two weeks
link |
or, you know, work someplace else for weeks on end.
link |
If your trip is 48 hours or less, stay on your home schedule.
link |
This can be tough and it may require scheduling meetings
link |
according to your home schedule.
link |
But if you can somehow manage that,
link |
the best thing to do would be to stay on your home schedule.
link |
Your clock is not going to shift more than a couple hours,
link |
even if you do everything correctly in one day, okay?
link |
So if I were to travel, say to Europe,
link |
I've actually done this.
link |
I did a 24 hour trip to Basel, Switzerland,
link |
gave a talk and came back.
link |
People thought I was crazy,
link |
but I had a little bit of travel fatigue
link |
because remember there's fatigue
link |
from the actual travel experience.
link |
The novelty of it, the air is never great on the planes.
link |
This was even true before there were mask requirements
link |
and things like that.
link |
So there's the travel fatigue,
link |
but you don't throw your clock off.
link |
If you stay 48 hours, then you start to shift a little bit.
link |
72, that's when you start running into trouble.
link |
The transit time is also important,
link |
but I would say if it's three days or less,
link |
stay on your home schedule as much as you can.
link |
And because sunlight isn't under your control,
link |
unless there's something about you I don't know,
link |
that's when traveling with some sort of bright light,
link |
like the light pad that I have down there
link |
that I showed earlier.
link |
For those of you listening just on audio,
link |
it's just, it looks like an eight and a half by 11 pad.
link |
It's actually not designed for wake up.
link |
It's actually designed, it's a drawing pad
link |
and you can, and it emits about a thousand lux of light.
link |
And so if you want to travel with something like that,
link |
you can use that in your hotel room
link |
to wake up when you like.
link |
Some people will use nightshades,
link |
not the nightshades that you eat
link |
or that some people say you're not supposed to eat,
link |
I don't know anything about that,
link |
but the eye covers to keep light out.
link |
Those can be very useful on planes and in hotels and so on.
link |
So you can use light and dark
link |
and you can travel with your light and dark devices
link |
so that you can stay on your home schedule
link |
and get most of your light
link |
when it would be your normal wake up time back home.
link |
And what's kind of nice
link |
is if you know when your circadian dead zone is back home,
link |
which is generally for most people
link |
around 10 AM to about 3 PM.
link |
So basically the rising phase of your temperature,
link |
then you can also feel free to be outside
link |
without having to wear sunglasses
link |
or you don't have to worry about light exposure.
link |
But if you know that window
link |
before your temperature minimum,
link |
that four to six hour window,
link |
that's the time when if you're viewing a lot of light
link |
in your new location,
link |
you are going to shift your clock pretty considerably.
link |
And then you can come back home and have a terrible time.
link |
At the end of graduate school,
link |
I went to Australia, the remarkable country,
link |
incredible people, incredible wildlife,
link |
I came back and it was the first time in my life
link |
where I couldn't sleep on a regular schedule.
link |
I was sleeping in like hour long increments
link |
throughout the day.
link |
It was a nightmare.
link |
And it took me weeks to get back on target.
link |
And the way I was able to do that
link |
was exercising consistently at the same time every 24 hours,
link |
turning my home into essentially a cave at night,
link |
even covering up the windows,
link |
and then getting as much bright light in my eyes
link |
as I possibly could during the day,
link |
no sunglasses, et cetera.
link |
So it can take some real work
link |
if your clock gets thrown out of whack.
link |
There's a phenomenon called ICU psychosis,
link |
where people that are in the intensive care unit
link |
in hospitals actually lose their mind.
link |
They become psychotic, hallucinations, et cetera.
link |
And it's because of altered circadian cycles.
link |
We know this because they're exposed to these lights
link |
and these sounds, people coming in and checking on them.
link |
They leave the hospital,
link |
or in some cases there've been experiments
link |
where people are placed near a window
link |
where they get some natural light,
link |
and these psychotic symptoms disappear,
link |
presuming there weren't psychotic symptoms beforehand,
link |
before they entered the hospital.
link |
So it's pretty dramatic what light can do
link |
to the psyche and to the body.
link |
So let's talk a little bit
link |
about a different form of jet lag
link |
that requires no planes, no trains, no automobiles,
link |
and that's shift work.
link |
Shift work is becoming increasingly common.
link |
Many of us are shift working,
link |
even though we don't have to.
link |
We're doing work in the middle of the night.
link |
We are working on our computers at odd hours,
link |
sleeping during the day.
link |
A lot of people who are under shelter in place type stuff
link |
are doing more of this.
link |
Kids with the drifting school schedules.
link |
Here's the deal with shift work.
link |
If there's one rule of thumb for shift work,
link |
it's that if at all possible,
link |
you want to stay on the same schedule for at least 14 days,
link |
including weekends.
link |
Now that should immediately cue the non-shift workers
link |
to the importance of not getting too far off track
link |
on the weekend, even if you're not a shift worker.
link |
So sleeping in on Sunday is not a good idea.
link |
The most important thing about shift work
link |
is to stay consistent with your schedule.
link |
Now I had a conversation on an Instagram Live
link |
with Samir Hattar,
link |
who's a neuroscientist
link |
at the National Institutes of Mental Health.
link |
He's actually the head of the chronobiology unit there.
link |
And he was really emphasizing this point
link |
because shift work,
link |
where people are doing the so-called swing shift,
link |
where they're working four days on one shift
link |
and four days on another,
link |
is extremely detrimental to a number of health parameters.
link |
It gets the cortisol release from the adrenals
link |
really out of whack.
link |
And there are these cortisol spikes
link |
at various hours of the day.
link |
It messes up learning.
link |
It really disrupts the dopamine system and wellbeing.
link |
It is a serious, serious problem.
link |
So if you can negotiate with your employer
link |
to stay on the same shift for two weeks at a time,
link |
that's going to be immensely beneficial
link |
and will help you offset a lot of the negative effects
link |
Now, I don't presume that all of you
link |
are going to be able to do that.
link |
Some of you just don't have that level of control.
link |
I want to acknowledge that shift workers are essential.
link |
Of course, first responders, firefighters, police officers,
link |
paramedics, et cetera,
link |
but also pilots, nurses,
link |
people working on the hospital wards,
link |
people picking up trash.
link |
These night shifts are critical
link |
to our functioning as a society,
link |
as I'm sure all of you can appreciate.
link |
If you're going to work a shift
link |
where let's say you start at 4 p.m.
link |
and you end at 2 a.m., excuse me,
link |
then there's some important questions that arise.
link |
For instance, should you see light during your shift?
link |
Well, this is a matter of personal choice,
link |
but ideally you want to view as much light as possible
link |
and as safely possible when you need to be alert.
link |
So that would mean from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.
link |
And then you would want to sleep.
link |
So using light as a correlate of alertness
link |
and using darkness as a correlate of sleepiness,
link |
what this means is see as much light as you safely can
link |
during the phase of your day when you want to be awake.
link |
So it's the same thing I said way back
link |
to the beginning of this podcast episode.
link |
And see as little light as safely possible
link |
and allows you to function during the time
link |
when you want to be asleep.
link |
So if you're finishing out that 2 a.m. shift,
link |
that's when you would want to avoid bright light exposure,
link |
you'd want to go home,
link |
you'd really want to avoid watching TV if possible.
link |
If you need that in order to fall asleep,
link |
that would be a case where something like dimming the screen
link |
plus blue blockers, if that's in your practice,
link |
or you want to do that would be helpful
link |
and then going to sleep.
link |
And then you'll probably wake up late in the afternoon
link |
or early afternoon.
link |
Some of you might say, wait, Huberman,
link |
I thought you don't like blue blockers.
link |
I never said I don't like blue blockers.
link |
I don't like people wearing blue blockers
link |
at the time of day when they want to be alert.
link |
And I don't like people asserting that blue blockers
link |
can prevent circadian shifts
link |
simply because people are wearing them.
link |
The brightness of light is what's important.
link |
It's not about the blue.
link |
So if you want to wear them, wear them,
link |
or just dim the lights or turn the lights off.
link |
So let's say you go to sleep at,
link |
you get home after this 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift,
link |
you maybe eat something, you go to sleep,
link |
and you wake up and it's noon or 1 p.m.
link |
Should you get light in your eyes?
link |
Well, your first assumption,
link |
based on what I've said previously,
link |
might be that you're in the circadian dead zone,
link |
that you can't because it's noon or 1 p.m.
link |
But you're not in the circadian dead zone
link |
because you're somebody who goes to sleep
link |
early in the morning at 2 a.m.
link |
So it's not like the circadian dead zone
link |
is a strict time of day.
link |
It's an internal biological clock.
link |
So what do you need to know?
link |
You need to know your temperature minimum.
link |
You need to know whether or not
link |
your temperature is increasing or decreasing.
link |
And now we can make this whole thing even simpler
link |
and just say, if your temperature is decreasing,
link |
If your temperature is increasing, get light.
link |
It's that simple, okay?
link |
If your temperature is decreasing, avoid light.
link |
If your temperature is increasing, get light.
link |
The shift worker who works from 4 p.m. until 2 a.m.
link |
has a temperature rhythm that's very different than mine
link |
where I wake up around 6 a.m., 5 a.m.,
link |
and I go to sleep around 11 p.m., okay?
link |
We both have a 24 hour-ish circadian cycle
link |
except mine is more aligned to the rise
link |
and setting of the sun and theirs is not, right?
link |
So you have to know your internal temperature rhythm
link |
and know you don't have to walk around with a thermometer
link |
wherever taking your temperature.
link |
Although it'd be great if some of the devices
link |
that are out there, people are counting their steps.
link |
I think it'd be great if people had
link |
a circadian body temperature measurement.
link |
I'm not involved in any of this device development,
link |
but I think it's a real call to arms, pun intended,
link |
to have a wristband that would measure temperature
link |
and would tell you your temperature minimum
link |
when you travel or whatnot.
link |
I don't know, maybe some of these devices already do that,
link |
but if they don't, they should.
link |
It's absolutely absurd to me
link |
why we wouldn't have this simple measurement.
link |
Very easy to get that kind of information.
link |
You don't even need the exact temperature read.
link |
All you need to know is the high and low point.
link |
So let's say you're a shift worker
link |
who really is nocturnal, you're flipped.
link |
Well, you want to stay on that nocturnal schedule.
link |
Now, that can be very hard on families
link |
and social life of all kinds,
link |
but the person who is working, say, from 8 p.m.,
link |
like sundown to sunrise, this raises a question.
link |
Should they be looking at the sunrise
link |
and should they be watching the sunset,
link |
waking up with the sunset, going to sleep with the sunrise?
link |
You think, well, is that light going to throw them off?
link |
It's just actually going to invert
link |
what sunrise and sunset are.
link |
When they're waking up in the morning,
link |
if they get some sunlight in their eyes,
link |
they look at the sun and get some bright light
link |
from devices or overhead lights in their apartment or home,
link |
well, that's going to tend to wake them up
link |
if it's in the evening, right?
link |
So I don't know if I stated that clearly,
link |
but if in the evening the sun is setting
link |
and they're looking at that setting sun,
link |
that is the morning sun for that person
link |
and it will wake them up for their night shift.
link |
So temperature rising.
link |
Then toward morning, what's happening?
link |
Okay, well, they're closing out their work shift.
link |
You're going home.
link |
The sun is rising.
link |
Do you look at the rising sun?
link |
Well, based on what you now know,
link |
your eyes are very sensitive
link |
to resetting of circadian clocks.
link |
What will it do at that time?
link |
If this were a classroom,
link |
I would either cold call on somebody
link |
or I'd wait for the oh, oh, oh, oh person in the audience.
link |
It inevitably exists.
link |
So temperature for that person,
link |
they've been up for a while.
link |
Temperature is falling, not rising.
link |
For me, it would be rising,
link |
but because I'm diurnal, I'm awake during the day.
link |
For that person, the temperature is falling
link |
and so they view light while temperature is falling.
link |
What's it going to do?
link |
It's going to phase delay them.
link |
It's going to make it harder for them
link |
to get to sleep the following night.
link |
So you would say that person should watch the setting sun
link |
to help them wake up
link |
because they're going to work the night shift,
link |
but should probably have sunglasses on
link |
or avoid viewing bright light before they go to sleep.
link |
So it's the same thing.
link |
They're just on an inverted,
link |
as a typical person who's diurnal,
link |
but they're on an inverted schedule.
link |
So I'm really trying hard here
link |
to make this all really clear.
link |
There are kind of two patterns of requests in the world
link |
I'm noticing as I've kind of ventured
link |
into this landscape of social media and podcasts.
link |
There are people who want to know every detail
link |
and want to quantify everything
link |
because they want to get exactly right.
link |
These are like the graduate students and students
link |
that don't want to make a mistake.
link |
And to quote my graduate advisor,
link |
provided the mistakes are not dangerous,
link |
certainly not lethal,
link |
you kind of want to make a few little mistakes
link |
so that you can adjust, right?
link |
You don't want to endanger yourself,
link |
but it's actually, you're not going to get things perfect.
link |
That's called learning.
link |
Learning is when you realize,
link |
ah, I viewed sun this time and then I stayed up
link |
and it really messed me up.
link |
I'll never do that again.
link |
The other category of people seem to want
link |
the one size fits all kind of like,
link |
give me this pill or give me this protocol.
link |
And those things generally work,
link |
but they don't afford people flexibility.
link |
And if there's anything like that,
link |
it's this temperature minimum thing
link |
that I've been just hammering on again
link |
and again and again today,
link |
because it's something that you own
link |
and that you can really use as a key landmark
link |
for shifting your clock.
link |
I suppose there's a third category,
link |
which is people who accept that biological systems
link |
are actually much more forgiving
link |
than the way they're sometimes described.
link |
And I'm going to use this as an opportunity
link |
to editorialize a little bit.
link |
You know, there's so much made of sleep debt.
link |
Look, there isn't an IRS equivalent for sleep.
link |
They're not going to come around
link |
and try and collect all the sleep that you didn't get.
link |
No one really knows what the consequences
link |
are going to be for you and for me
link |
and for the next person for the sleep you didn't get.
link |
You can't really recover the sleep you missed out on,
link |
but you also don't want to get neurotically attached
link |
to a schedule because there's this thing
link |
called sleep anxiety,
link |
and then people have trouble falling asleep
link |
and staying asleep.
link |
So I want to spend a moment on that
link |
and go back to a theme that I've said many times before,
link |
because these tools work,
link |
what I called NSDR, non-sleep deep rest.
link |
So this would be hypnosis.
link |
I give you the link, but I'll say it again,
link |
reveriehealth.com for clinically tested, research tested,
link |
free hypnosis for anxiety, but also for sleep.
link |
Those are very beneficial people.
link |
NSDR protocols, non-sleep deep rest protocols
link |
for things like yoga nidra.
link |
I provide some links to those in the caption
link |
These things really work.
link |
Last night I woke up, I went to bed about 1030.
link |
I woke up at three in the morning.
link |
I knew I wasn't feeling rested.
link |
I did a NSDR protocol.
link |
I fell back asleep.
link |
I woke up at 630, okay?
link |
You need to teach your brain and your nervous system
link |
how to turn off your thoughts and go to sleep.
link |
And ideally you do that without medication,
link |
unless there's a real need,
link |
you do that through these behavioral protocols.
link |
They work because they involve using the body
link |
to shift the mind,
link |
not trying to just turn off your thoughts
link |
in the middle of the night.
link |
Now, there are periods of life
link |
where things are stressful and people are concerned
link |
and you will have some struggle getting and staying asleep.
link |
And that really has to do more with anxiety,
link |
which NSDR protocols also can help with.
link |
As I always say, do them in the middle of the night
link |
if you wake up and you want to go back to sleep,
link |
do in the middle of the day
link |
to teach your nervous system how to calm down
link |
or do them first thing in the morning
link |
if you didn't feel you got enough sleep.
link |
In other words, do them whenever you have an opportunity
link |
to do them because they really can help you learn
link |
how to turn on the parasympathetic slash calming arm
link |
of your autonomic nervous system.
link |
There's no other way that I'm aware of
link |
to teach your system to slow down
link |
and turn off your thoughts and go back to sleep.
link |
But these are powerful protocols
link |
and there's a lot of research now
link |
to support the fact that they can really help.
link |
Meditation would be another example.
link |
Meditation of certain kinds of meditation
link |
involve focus and alertness.
link |
Those are slightly different than meditations
link |
that involve lack of focus
link |
and attention to say internal states.
link |
I'm going to pause there
link |
and then I want to talk about kids and the elderly.
link |
In other words, how do we control sleep
link |
and circadian rhythms and wakefulness in babies,
link |
adolescents, teens, and aged folks?
link |
All right, before we talk about sleep and kids,
link |
I want to tell a little story.
link |
Many of you will be relieved
link |
that I'm not going to try and tell another joke
link |
this episode, which is the relationship
link |
between light, skin, and pelage color,
link |
dopamine, and reproduction, mating.
link |
So many seasonally breeding animals,
link |
Siberian hamsters, which I mentioned earlier,
link |
rabbits, fox, other animals change their color
link |
In the winter, they tend to be a lighter color,
link |
sometimes a pure white, sometimes with flecks of black
link |
or brown, and in the summer,
link |
their pelage changes to a color of brown or red,
link |
some other vastly different color.
link |
That shift is controlled by light and by melatonin.
link |
This has an interesting correlate in humans.
link |
So humans obviously have different skin tones
link |
just genetically because of the amount of melanin
link |
in one's skin, depending on genetic background.
link |
But of course, sunlight will increase the amount
link |
of melanin in the skin regardless, right?
link |
This is suntan, sunburn, et cetera, bronzing, whatever.
link |
The whole system is wired so that shifts in skin color
link |
and shifts in these cells within the eye and melatonin
link |
are actually very closely linked.
link |
So here's the story.
link |
Many years ago, meaning about 10 years ago, 15 years ago,
link |
let's see, it was 20 years ago, forgive me,
link |
a guy named Iggy Provencio who was running his own lab
link |
at Uniformed Armed Services,
link |
this is a standard biological laboratory,
link |
discovered that there was an opsin in the eye,
link |
in the cells of the eye that connect
link |
to the rest of the brain called melanopsin.
link |
Melanopsin, as many of you now know,
link |
is the opsin, it's like a pigment, it absorbs light.
link |
It is the opsin that converts light into electrical signals
link |
and then set the circadian clock.
link |
Iggy discovered melanopsin because it was similar in form
link |
to what was in frog melanophores.
link |
It was actually in the skin of frogs
link |
that allowed those frogs to go from pale white
link |
when it was dark for most of the 24-hour cycle
link |
to pigmented, green or brown for a frog.
link |
So there's this relationship between the cells in our eye
link |
and the pigment cells of our skin.
link |
And we also know that in long days, there's more breeding.
link |
How does that work?
link |
Well, that's actually from dopamine
link |
triggering increases in testosterone mainly in males
link |
and estrogen mainly in females,
link |
although of course there's testosterone estrogen
link |
So we have this kind of pathway where it's light,
link |
increases in melanin, dopamine and reproduction
link |
on the one hand and lack of light,
link |
melatonin decreases in the darkness of skin,
link |
less melanin in the skin,
link |
or in the case of an animal with fur, white fur
link |
and no reproduction on the other hand.
link |
And humans don't actually shift their breeding patterns
link |
tremendously from long days and short days,
link |
although there are some data that there's some shifts.
link |
We also don't radically change our skin color
link |
depending on how much sunlight exposure we have.
link |
But the simple way to put this is when days are long,
link |
there's a lot more dopamine and we feel really good
link |
and there's a lot more breeding and breeding like behavior.
link |
When days are short, there's a lot less dopamine
link |
and a lot less breeding behavior
link |
because these pathways are very highly conserved.
link |
Now, what's interesting is that as we've moved
link |
into a modern society where much of our waking days,
link |
we are looking at screens, which is fine
link |
because we're getting a lot of light that way,
link |
although not as much as sunlight,
link |
but also at night, we're getting a lot of light
link |
from screens, what's happened is all these pathways,
link |
melanin in the skin, turnover of skin cells, dopamine,
link |
all of this stuff has become completely disrupted.
link |
Now, that's not to say that we should go back to a time
link |
in which we didn't use artificial lights,
link |
but I think the important thing to realize
link |
is that feeling good with getting a lot of light,
link |
the relationship to dopamine and melanin in the skin
link |
and the good feelings of getting light also on our skin,
link |
provided you're not getting burned
link |
or you're not getting excessive UV exposure,
link |
those are not just coincidences,
link |
those are hardwired biological mechanisms
link |
that exist in everybody,
link |
regardless of how light or dark your skin is to begin with.
link |
There's another point which is important,
link |
which is that the dopamine system,
link |
which is this feel-good molecule,
link |
is very closely related to the testosterone and estrogen
link |
in reproductive cycles.
link |
Remember, melatonin inhibits gonadotropin-releasing hormone,
link |
luteinizing hormone and the production of these hormones
link |
and melatonin is the effector,
link |
it is the hormone of darkness.
link |
So I just threw a lot of biology at you
link |
and I'm not saying you're like a Siberian hamster,
link |
at least not in ways that I'm aware of,
link |
I'm not saying that your pelage color is going to change.
link |
Actually, the reason people go gray
link |
is because when you're really stressed, did you know this?
link |
When you're really stressed,
link |
there's an increase in the nerve fibers
link |
that release adrenaline to the hair follicle
link |
and that activates peroxide groups in the hair follicle
link |
that cause the hair to actually go gray or white.
link |
So actually, stress does make your hair gray or white,
link |
aging does it too.
link |
That was a brief aside,
link |
but for those of you that are interested
link |
in the relationship between light and skin tone
link |
and all that kind of stuff,
link |
I thought you might find it interesting
link |
that these cells in your eye are a lot like
link |
these skin cells in frogs or in animals
link |
that shift their entire color
link |
and sometimes it will metamorphosize.
link |
You know, there are some species that literally change shape
link |
in the reproductive organs.
link |
In fact, if that wasn't weird enough,
link |
when I was in graduate school at Berkeley,
link |
there was another graduate student studying a species
link |
of hermaphroditic mole, right?
link |
Those little things that dig.
link |
Hermaphroditic mole that would change from having ovaries
link |
to testes and back again depending on day life.
link |
Super cool, super different
link |
and wild biological mechanism.
link |
If you're wondering how those animals reproduce,
link |
they actually adjust the numbers of males and females
link |
depending on the density of males and females.
link |
So if there are too many males,
link |
some of the males turn their testes into ovaries
link |
and if there are too many females,
link |
they turn their ovaries into testes.
link |
They actually are true hermaphroditic animals
link |
as opposed to pseudo hermaphroditic animals.
link |
Okay, let's get back on track.
link |
Let's talk about the animal that most of you care about
link |
which is the human animal.
link |
New parents and babies.
link |
All right, as I mentioned earlier, melatonin is not cyclic.
link |
It's not cycling in babies, it's more phasic.
link |
It's being released at a kind of a constant level
link |
and babies tend to be smaller than adults, they are
link |
and so those concentrations of melatonin are very high.
link |
As a baby grows, those concentrations per unit volume
link |
are going to go down.
link |
Babies are not born with a typical sleep-wake cycle
link |
and now all the parents saying,
link |
tell me something I didn't know.
link |
They also have, and I really want to emphasize this,
link |
they also have much more sensitive optics of the eye.
link |
So a number of people have asked me,
link |
should I be exposing my baby to sunlight?
link |
You don't want to avoid sunlight
link |
but their eyes are very sensitive,
link |
the optics of their eyes aren't quite developed.
link |
So much so that when you look at a newborn baby
link |
and they look a little glassy on
link |
and they're kind of looking through you
link |
or even a young child, a lot of people think
link |
that they're seeing you the way that you're seeing them.
link |
Hate to break it to you
link |
but if you ever can just Google a visual image
link |
of a like a one month old, the optics of their eyes
link |
are so poor that you're a cloudy image.
link |
They're not seeing your fine detail.
link |
As the optics get better,
link |
then they will see you with more and more clarity.
link |
But a lot of that is clearing of the lens
link |
and some of the other aqueous features of the newborn eye.
link |
They don't see very well
link |
but they also don't have such great ways
link |
of adjusting to bright light.
link |
And so babies have a natural aversion to bright light.
link |
So you really want to avoid
link |
trying to use sunlight or really bright light
link |
in the same way that you would for an adult
link |
on a young baby or child.
link |
As children get older however,
link |
melatonin does start to become slightly more cyclic,
link |
slightly more cycled.
link |
And their body temperature rhythms
link |
also start to fall into a more regular,
link |
not quite 24 hour rhythm.
link |
They're more of these all trading rhythms.
link |
So in episode, I think it was one or two of the podcast
link |
or maybe both, we talked about these 90 minute
link |
so-called ultradian rhythms where every 90 minutes
link |
babies are going through a cycle of body temperature
link |
and some other hormonal features.
link |
I mean, so much is changing in their system.
link |
So what to do if a child isn't sleeping?
link |
You can use phases of darkness and phases of light
link |
but they're going to have to be shortened
link |
in order to try and encourage sleep
link |
when you want the child to sleep.
link |
It's not that they're just not going to fall
link |
into an adult light regime of a temperature minimum
link |
and a temperature maximum.
link |
Their temperature minimums and maximums
link |
are fluctuating much more quickly
link |
and it varies tremendously.
link |
Actually, there's an interesting literature
link |
of whether or not they have siblings,
link |
whether or not they're twins,
link |
whether or not they're in a nursery environment,
link |
whether or not they're alone,
link |
well, hopefully the baby's not alone
link |
but you know what I mean?
link |
That they're sleeping alone in a room
link |
while you're in the other room.
link |
There are a couple of things that seem to help
link |
which is getting the overall environment
link |
into a 24 hour schedule.
link |
So having the room slightly colder,
link |
obviously you want babies to be nice and cozy,
link |
slightly colder when you would like them to be asleep,
link |
slightly warmer for the times
link |
you would like them to be awake.
link |
Babies tend to run pretty hot anyway
link |
and obviously you want to be very careful
link |
about avoiding all extremes of temperature, cold or hot.
link |
So if they're going through these 90 minute cycles,
link |
you're going to have to adjust
link |
those 90 minute cycles as well.
link |
So then people say, well, that's not going to help me at all
link |
because how do I deal with the fact
link |
that I need to be up every 90 minutes at night?
link |
There are a couple tools that can be helpful.
link |
The first one is going to be to try and understand
link |
the relationship between calm and deep sleep.
link |
So the autonomic nervous system
link |
can put us into states of panic
link |
where that's kind of seesaw of autonomic alertness
link |
goes all the way to panic
link |
or it can be alertness or it can be alert and calm, right?
link |
So there's a range there, it's a continuum.
link |
Can also be that you're in deep sleep,
link |
so the other end of the seesaw is way up
link |
or you're in light sleep or you're kind of sleepy
link |
or you're just feeling kind of relaxed.
link |
Perhaps the most important thing
link |
if you're having to map to a baby's schedule
link |
in order to make sure that they're getting changings
link |
and nursing, et cetera, at the appropriate times
link |
is to try and maintain,
link |
if you can't sleep or you can't sleep continuously,
link |
to try and maintain your autonomic nervous system
link |
in a place where you're not
link |
going into heightened states of alertness
link |
when you would ideally be sleeping.
link |
Now, I realize that this could be translated
link |
to try and stay calm while you're sleep deprived
link |
which is very hard for people to do
link |
the non-sleep deep breath protocol surface again
link |
and can potentially be very beneficial
link |
for people to be able to recover not necessarily sleep
link |
but for them to maintain a certain amount
link |
of autonomic regulation.
link |
So what would this look like?
link |
This would look like a baby goes down,
link |
maybe it's only going to go down for 45 minutes.
link |
If you can capture sleep,
link |
there are some data showing what's called polyphasic sleep.
link |
If you can sleep in 45 minute increments or batches,
link |
even if it's spread throughout the day
link |
with periods of wakefulness in between,
link |
as miserable as that sound,
link |
there are actually some adults
link |
that have deliberately employed that
link |
who don't have children for sake of work productivity
link |
and it does tend to reduce the total overall amount
link |
of sleep that you need.
link |
It is a very hard schedule for most people to maintain
link |
but if you have a baby,
link |
the baby may be throwing you
link |
into that kind of schedule anyway.
link |
So if you can get 45 minutes sleep while they sleep, great.
link |
If you can get another 45 minutes after waking
link |
and then they go back down to sleep, great.
link |
So as many phases of sleep as you can get
link |
but if you can't sleep,
link |
the data on non-sleep deep rest type protocols
link |
does show that at least from a neurochemical level,
link |
I want to be clear what that means,
link |
reset of things like dopamine levels in the basal ganglia,
link |
measured by things like positron emission tomography,
link |
et cetera, those things tend to reset themselves pretty well
link |
if you can access these deep rest states.
link |
So that means not being alert
link |
throughout the entire time that the baby is sleeping,
link |
trying to sort of mirror the baby's sleep cycle,
link |
which can be brutal for certain people
link |
and especially if you're trying to prepare meals
link |
and do all these things.
link |
So I do recognize that there are a lot of constraints
link |
on parenting, not just mapping
link |
on your baby's sleep schedule.
link |
As children approach ages one, two, three, four,
link |
that's when certainly the optics of the eyes have improved
link |
but you don't want to damage the eyes, of course,
link |
with very bright light.
link |
They are much more sensitive
link |
even until they're kind of 10, 11 years old.
link |
And we'll talk about vision in children in a moment
link |
but trying to get longer and longer batches of sleep
link |
through, hopefully not through the use
link |
of administering melatonin to the kids
link |
because that's what I talked about before,
link |
why that could potentially be detrimental.
link |
Talk about that with your doctor.
link |
But more so trying to get longer blocks of sleep
link |
that map onto these ultradian cycles.
link |
So it would be better off to get a three hour,
link |
like two 90 minute cycles,
link |
than a four hour batch of sleep
link |
because waking up in the middle of those ultradian cycles
link |
can just be brutal for parent and kid.
link |
So if one can't get a full six or 10
link |
or some kids should even be sleeping 12 hours
link |
when they're growing quickly,
link |
trying to get batches of sleep,
link |
even if they're fractured throughout the 24 hour cycle
link |
that are matched more to these 90 minute cycles,
link |
meaning maybe one ultradian cycle of 90 minutes
link |
or two back to back or three back to back to back,
link |
that's going to be better than waking up
link |
in the middle of an ultradian cycle.
link |
It's just going to set any number of other things
link |
in a better direction than were you to try to say,
link |
just enforce or force a full eight or 10 hours of sleep.
link |
That's at least what the literature shows.
link |
Some kids sleep great through the night
link |
starting at a very young age, others don't.
link |
I typically hear from people
link |
who are struggling tremendously.
link |
They're losing their mind understandably
link |
because they're not sleeping, their kid's not sleeping
link |
or their kid is sleeping for such brief periods.
link |
So in other words, trying to access deep calm
link |
if you can't sleep,
link |
trying to access sleep if you can sleep
link |
even if it's fractured.
link |
And then you say, well, what about all the sunlight viewing
link |
and the exercise stuff when sleep is really, really
link |
dismantled in meaning it's happening
link |
in various times of day or night.
link |
That's especially, at those times,
link |
it's going to be especially important for the parent
link |
to get morning and evening sunlight
link |
because your circadian clock is going into a tailspin
link |
and it basically wants to anchor to something.
link |
So you want to give it two anchors,
link |
morning and evening light, okay?
link |
So this is rather different
link |
than what I described for shift work.
link |
This is when things are really chaotic
link |
and you're just not able to sleep.
link |
Similar circumstances can arise
link |
if you're taking care of a very sick loved one,
link |
you're up all night,
link |
try and stay calm using NSDR protocols.
link |
I know it's harder to do than to say,
link |
but those protocols are there, they're free,
link |
there's research to support them.
link |
Try and get sleep whenever you can,
link |
but also try to get morning sunlight
link |
and evening sunlight in your eyes if you can
link |
and if you can't get that, use artificial light, okay?
link |
What about later life?
link |
So kids now, adolescents, teens,
link |
it is true that teens have a tendency to wake up later
link |
and go to sleep later.
link |
In part, just because they're sleeping a lot more,
link |
they're churning out gonadotropin-releasing hormone
link |
and luteinizing hormone, their whole bodies are changing.
link |
I don't know whether or not people realize this,
link |
but the fastest rate of aging
link |
that any of us will ever undergo is puberty.
link |
That is the fastest rate of aging.
link |
And so there's a huge number of biological processes
link |
that are happening during puberty.
link |
Probably devote a whole episode to puberty
link |
as a fascinating aspect to the life course,
link |
but it is an accelerated period of aging.
link |
And the circadian clock mechanisms sometimes are very intact
link |
and sometimes they're a little dismantled
link |
and going through some change,
link |
but prioritize the duration of sleep
link |
for adolescents and teens.
link |
Now, if that means they're sleeping until 2 p.m.
link |
and then waking up and then they're up all night,
link |
the up all night part can become a problem,
link |
especially with all the devices texting in their rooms
link |
or playing video games.
link |
Morning and evening sunlight would be ideal,
link |
but some kids are just going to sleep
link |
through the morning sunlight.
link |
However, if you were to measure their temperature,
link |
what you would find is that their temperature minimum
link |
would come later in the morning.
link |
It's not going to be 8 a.m.,
link |
it's going to be maybe even 10 a.m.
link |
if they're sleeping until 11 or 12,
link |
or it might be 8 a.m. if they're sleeping until 10.
link |
Remember, temperature minimum is two hours
link |
before your average waking time, typically.
link |
So in teens, it maximizes the total amount of sleep.
link |
Try and get regular sunlight either in the morning
link |
or in the evening or both,
link |
but if they're sleeping through the morning sunrise,
link |
that's probably not as much of an issue.
link |
Waking them up and depriving them of sleep is probably worse
link |
because their T-min, their temperature minimum,
link |
is actually falling later.
link |
So their circadian dead zone is later, et cetera.
link |
So I think with adolescents and teens,
link |
it makes sense to kind of give them a little bit more rope
link |
in terms of allowing them some leeway
link |
to adjust their own schedule.
link |
Some schools are even starting classes later
link |
on the basis of some very good biology
link |
to support this late-shifted rhythm
link |
and this extended sleep phase.
link |
There are data from Dr. Jamie Zeitzer,
link |
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
link |
and others at Stanford showing that turning on the lights
link |
in the room of a teen before they wake up
link |
helps them get more sleep the subsequent night.
link |
It also tricks them into going to sleep
link |
a little bit earlier,
link |
but it gives them about 45 minutes more of deep sleep,
link |
and that's been shown statistically.
link |
Total sleep time increases as well.
link |
If they're hiding under the covers, that's not going to work,
link |
but their eyes don't have to be open.
link |
I know a few parents now that are coming in
link |
with a flashlight and flashing their kids over their eyelids
link |
before they wake up in hopes of getting this to work.
link |
Some have told me this is working.
link |
That's not part of a standard study,
link |
but it does seem to work because, now you should know why,
link |
because if light's getting through the eyelids
link |
and it's, say, 8 a.m. and the kid is still asleep
link |
and they're going to wake up at 10,
link |
you're giving them light just after
link |
or around their temperature minimum,
link |
which is going to make them want to go to sleep earlier,
link |
and in the case of teens,
link |
for some reason we don't quite understand,
link |
sleep longer, about 45 minutes longer,
link |
spend more time in deep sleep.
link |
Adults can do this too.
link |
If you can persuade someone or put your lights on timer
link |
for lights to go on before you wake up,
link |
that's really going to help you wake up earlier, okay?
link |
So if you're starting to hear some themes
link |
are really resounding over and over again,
link |
that should be reassuring to you, right?
link |
These are core mechanisms.
link |
Fortunately, there aren't a thousand different mechanisms.
link |
Now, in the elderly, there's a real tendency
link |
to want to go to sleep very early and wake up very early,
link |
and people should talk to their physician.
link |
There is some evidence that melatonin levels
link |
and patterns of melatonin secretion
link |
can become a little chaotic in elderly folks.
link |
What do I mean by elderly?
link |
Well, it's going to differ.
link |
Rates of aging differ, right?
link |
You see some 65-year-olds that are struggling to move
link |
and seem much older than some 65-year-olds
link |
that are still hustling around and have tons of energy.
link |
There's a lot of variation.
link |
Some of it's genetic, some of it's lifestyle factors.
link |
Certainly lifestyle factors can play an important role
link |
in rates of aging.
link |
I think that the most prominent results
link |
from sleep and circadian rhythms in the elderly
link |
are they need to get as much natural light
link |
even if it's through windows.
link |
I realize that some elderly folks can't get outside
link |
It's not safe for them to do it.
link |
They can't move around as easily.
link |
Exercise can come in various forms
link |
for people that can't get outside
link |
and get a ton of sunlight by jogging or cycling.
link |
They're not able to do that.
link |
Light through a window in that case, open window ideally,
link |
but for temperature reasons, et cetera,
link |
sometimes the window has to be closed.
link |
Getting people near that window
link |
and away from artificial light early in the day
link |
and away from artificial lights during the night phase
link |
can have a tremendous effect.
link |
And in the elderly,
link |
that's when melatonin might be a viable option.
link |
And this should be discussed with a physician, of course,
link |
but you're way past the puberty time point.
link |
In most cases, people who are in their 70s and 80s and 90s
link |
are not churning out a lot of GnRH
link |
and luteinizing hormone to begin with.
link |
And that's where struggles with falling asleep
link |
and staying asleep,
link |
all the same parameters and things we've described before
link |
still apply, light, exercise, temperature, et cetera,
link |
but that's where melatonin might be of greatest benefit.
link |
And again, I'm not pushing melatonin here,
link |
but I think for elderly folks who are having trouble
link |
falling and staying asleep, that might be worthwhile.
link |
There are, and I should just also mention
link |
that regular schedule for folks that are elderly
link |
and as much natural light as safely possible,
link |
those are going to be the key levers
link |
for adjusting sleep in circadian schedules.
link |
I've mentioned before in previous podcasts,
link |
other supplements besides melatonin.
link |
And some of those supplements are quite good for sleep.
link |
I'm not a supplement pusher.
link |
I am somebody who takes supplements.
link |
I believe in them.
link |
Some have worked for me, some have not worked as well,
link |
but I certainly believe in getting the behaviors right,
link |
whether or not it's NSDR protocols,
link |
viewing natural light, exercise,
link |
it's hot baths or cold showers or what have you,
link |
behavioral protocols first.
link |
There are some supplements
link |
that I've mentioned in previous podcasts,
link |
but I've seemed to get a lot of questions about.
link |
So I just want to take a couple of minutes
link |
and just talk about some of the supplements
link |
that can be beneficial for helping turning off thinking,
link |
accessing deeper sleep,
link |
and even being able to compact your sleep schedule
link |
into a shorter period of hours,
link |
meaning getting by well with less sleep.
link |
People take a lot of sleeping pills.
link |
I'm not going to tell people not to take sleeping pills.
link |
They can be very problematic, habit forming,
link |
high side effect incidents in many cases.
link |
Some people can handle them just fine.
link |
Again, I'm not a physician.
link |
I don't prescribe anything or a professor.
link |
So I profess a lot of things, some of which are my opinion.
link |
Although if you look at the scientific literature,
link |
there's some impressive data
link |
around some non-prescription drug type supplements
link |
that have fairly high safety margins
link |
that you might consider,
link |
but you should talk to your doctor always
link |
before adding or taking anything
link |
out of your health regimes, right?
link |
Your health is not my responsibility.
link |
It's your responsibility.
link |
So be a stringent filter.
link |
Along those lines, one of the most powerful
link |
and useful tools that I've mentioned here on many times,
link |
and I plan to mention many, many more times,
link |
is the website examine.com,
link |
which I have no affiliation with,
link |
but is a wonderful site
link |
that links you to quality peer-reviewed studies
link |
related to just about any supplement,
link |
including some safety warnings.
link |
We'll also tell you what subjects,
link |
whether or not it was rats, cats, elderly folks, or kids,
link |
that a given study was done on,
link |
which is important, can be kind of hard to pull from sites
link |
where people are just advertising supplements, right?
link |
They usually don't tell you what the study was
link |
and who were these rats?
link |
Who were these kids?
link |
There are three supplements that, at least for me,
link |
have had a tremendously positive effect on my sleep
link |
that some of you might consider.
link |
I would say if you're doing everything properly,
link |
behaviorally, and you're still having issues,
link |
then supplements might be a good thing for you.
link |
Or if you are traveling
link |
and you want a little bit of extra help
link |
in buffering your sleep wakefulness protocols.
link |
Some people like to go just to the supplements.
link |
They're like, what should I take?
link |
I have people in my life that are like,
link |
just tell me what to take.
link |
You know, more of here's what you might want to do
link |
and then think about what you might want to take or not take.
link |
But personal preference and it's free country,
link |
so you can do what you like.
link |
So magnesium has been shown to increase the depth of sleep
link |
and has been shown to decrease the amount of time
link |
that it takes to access sleep, to fall asleep.
link |
It comes in various forms.
link |
I've talked a bunch of times about magnesium threonate,
link |
T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E, threonate,
link |
which seems to be the more bioavailable form of magnesium.
link |
And magnesium threonate, it seems,
link |
is shuttled preferentially to the brain,
link |
which is where you want it.
link |
And there are certain transporters,
link |
it actually engages the GABA pathway,
link |
which tends to turn off certain areas of the forebrain,
link |
allows you to fall asleep.
link |
There is a study, if you would like to explore it,
link |
since people serious about supplementation
link |
might want to explore the study,
link |
which is Aetes et al., A-T-E-S,
link |
dose dependent absorption profile
link |
of different magnesium compounds.
link |
Looks to me like a quality peer reviewed paper.
link |
I can put the link in the caption.
link |
And it explores all the different forms of magnesium.
link |
It does seem like magnesium glycinate
link |
can be similar to magnesium threonate
link |
in terms of which tissues it shuttled to.
link |
Magnesium malate, M-A-L-A-T-E,
link |
is preferentially shuttled to the muscle, it appears,
link |
as opposed to the brain.
link |
So it's going to be more of a muscle repair type thing
link |
or restoring magnesium stores in the periphery
link |
as opposed to the brain.
link |
Magnesium citrate has another name
link |
that I won't mention in jest
link |
because magnesium citrate's main effect,
link |
at least on me and the people I know,
link |
seems to be a laxative effect
link |
as opposed to a cognitive effect.
link |
There's also some evidence
link |
that magnesium threonate can be neuroprotective.
link |
Those data come from quality labs,
link |
mostly rodent studies, not human studies,
link |
but it's kind of interesting.
link |
And again, the safety margins for these things
link |
tend to be pretty high,
link |
but anytime you're going to take something new,
link |
you should approach it with caution,
link |
especially since magnesium could be involved
link |
in a heart rhythm and things of that sort.
link |
The other supplement that has been very beneficial for me
link |
So this is T-H-E-A-N-I-N-E, theanine,
link |
Theanine activates certain GABA pathways
link |
which are involved in turning off top-down processing
link |
and thinking, making it easier to fall asleep.
link |
And theanine, 100 milligrams to 300 milligrams,
link |
has a calming effect.
link |
Theanine is now showing up
link |
in a number of different energy drinks
link |
and even some coffees as a way to try
link |
and get people to ingest more of a given type of coffee
link |
because the idea is it would take away the jitters
link |
and the anxiety, allowing people to drink more coffee.
link |
I'm talking about taking magnesium and theanine
link |
30 to 60 minutes before bedtime,
link |
not during the day to quell anxiety,
link |
but rather 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime
link |
with or without food for me has made a difference.
link |
And the combination of those two things has really helped.
link |
Theanine for sleepwalkers can be a problem.
link |
It does increase the intensity of your dreams.
link |
It gives you very vivid dreams.
link |
So for sleepwalkers or people that get night terrors,
link |
stay away from theanine is my advice.
link |
Magnesium, theanine might be something to explore
link |
for those of you that don't have those issues
link |
with the emphasis on might.
link |
And then I've talked about a compound.
link |
And last time I talked about the mechanisms of apigenin,
link |
which is a derivative of chamomile, A-P-I-G-E-N,
link |
which acts as a little bit of a hypnotic
link |
by activating chloride channels,
link |
hyperpolarized neurons, increases GABA in the brain,
link |
basically makes you feel a little sleepy.
link |
And chamomile, for those of you that read your,
link |
what was it, Peter Rabbit snuck into Mr. McGregor's garden,
link |
ate the chamomile, fell asleep, Mr. McGregor came back.
link |
Okay, anyone flashing back to elementary school?
link |
Okay, there's a story about chamomile
link |
having these kind of sedative-like effects.
link |
Apigenin is highly concentrated.
link |
Chamomile also has anti-estrogenic effects.
link |
So if you want to keep your estrogen up,
link |
you might want to be cautious about apigenin.
link |
That's where things like examine.com become really useful
link |
because you can go to examine, you put in apigenin,
link |
and it'll tell you all the things that it does,
link |
and all the things that it does
link |
can sometimes include things that you had no idea,
link |
like reducing conversion of certain androgens to estrogens,
link |
which you might like or you might want to avoid.
link |
That's up to you and where you want your estrogen levels,
link |
depending on who you are
link |
and what your life circumstances and goals are.
link |
A few other things that can help the transition to sleep
link |
are things like 5-HTP, L-Tryptophan.
link |
I've talked about why I'm not a fan of those.
link |
For me, they tend to throw me into deep sleep,
link |
and then I wake up and I can't fall back asleep.
link |
So I don't like to tinker with my serotonin system.
link |
I don't like to tinker with my dopamine system
link |
for entirely other reasons,
link |
but none of which are particularly concerning.
link |
It's just that I find that if I increase my dopamine
link |
by taking L-tyrosine in pill form,
link |
then I crash really hard the next day.
link |
Or if I take 5-HTP or L-Tryptophan,
link |
I fall deeply asleep and then I wake up.
link |
But I did mention that there might be ways
link |
to make sleep more compact.
link |
And so this is actually a request to you.
link |
I had a really interesting experience when I was a postdoc.
link |
I went for the first time to an acupuncturist.
link |
I know there are varying thoughts and opinions out there
link |
about acupuncture.
link |
I can't say that I benefited so much from the acupuncture.
link |
There are now quality peer-reviewed studies
link |
published in Neuron, cell press journal, excellent journal,
link |
showing that acupuncture can stimulate
link |
some anti-inflammatory compounds,
link |
depending on where the acupuncture is done.
link |
There's a really good studies came out last year.
link |
I talked about this on Instagram.
link |
I may talk about it again.
link |
As well as certain acupuncture sites
link |
that increase inflammation.
link |
So you can get different types of effects.
link |
You can't just say acupuncture is great across the board.
link |
And I'm assuming that the acupuncturists know
link |
which sites are good for increasing inflammation,
link |
which ones are good for decreasing inflammation.
link |
However, this acupuncturist that I went to
link |
gave me these red pills.
link |
He said, these are minerals for sleep.
link |
And it was remarkable.
link |
I took the red pills.
link |
Isn't that the thing now?
link |
Take the red pill.
link |
I don't know what that means because I'm not tuned in.
link |
But these red pills look like little M&Ms.
link |
I took a couple of them on his suggestion.
link |
And I fell deeply asleep and four hours later
link |
woke up feeling incredibly rested,
link |
more rested than I had ever felt in my entire life.
link |
And I never required more than four hours sleep.
link |
Unfortunately, acupuncturist moved away.
link |
I never figured out what was in those red pills.
link |
I didn't get a chance to do the mass spectroscopy.
link |
And I still wonder, he said they were minerals.
link |
So somebody out there knows what these red pills are
link |
and what this compound is.
link |
And it was incredible.
link |
And I would love to know what those are.
link |
So if you know, please don't go taking red pills at random
link |
to try and recreate this non-experiment experience of mine.
link |
But please do contact me if you find out
link |
or if you're an acupuncturist and you know
link |
what these mysterious red pills were
link |
because they were pretty awesome.
link |
Once again, I've thrown a tremendous amount
link |
of information at you.
link |
I hope you will figure out your temperature minimum
link |
and start working with that to access the sleep
link |
and wakeful cycles that you want to access.
link |
I hope that you'll explore NSDR.
link |
You might want to explore supplementation
link |
if that's your thing.
link |
You have now access to a lot of mechanism
link |
about sleep and wakefulness.
link |
But in keeping with the theme of this podcast
link |
where we stay on topic for an entire month
link |
or even slightly more,
link |
we are not done with sleep and wakefulness.
link |
I know this is very different
link |
than the typical podcast format
link |
where one week it's how to become superhuman
link |
and the next week it's how to develop growth mindset.
link |
It's kind of all over the place with episode to episode.
link |
We are staying on track because I really believe
link |
that as we drill deeper and deeper into these mechanisms
link |
and you start hearing some of the same themes again
link |
and again, you're going to start to develop an intuition
link |
and an understanding of how these systems work in you
link |
and your particular life circumstances.
link |
And my goal is really to eventually become obsolete.
link |
It's what my graduate advisor used to call
link |
the hit by a bus principle.
link |
She had a somewhat morbid sense of humor
link |
and used to be, well, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow,
link |
what are you going to do without me blabbing at you here?
link |
So I don't want to get hit by a bus.
link |
I plan on living a very long time
link |
if I have anything to say about it,
link |
but were I to get hit by a bus tomorrow,
link |
what would you do for your sleep and wakefulness?
link |
You could put a comment on YouTube, which I hope you'll do,
link |
but if I were hit by a bus and killed,
link |
then I wouldn't be able to answer your question.
link |
So know your temperature minimum.
link |
Understand light in the early part of the day is valuable.
link |
Light when you want to be awake,
link |
provided it's not so bright, it's damaging.
link |
It's great for you whether or not it comes from screens
link |
or sunlight, but sunlight's better.
link |
Avoid light in the four to six hours
link |
before your temperature minimum
link |
or else you're going to delay your clock
link |
unless you're traveling and that's what you want to do.
link |
Okay, use temperature,
link |
increased temperature to shift your clock,
link |
decreased temperature to delay your clock.
link |
Okay, map out your temperature and understand it.
link |
You don't have to know degree by degree across the day.
link |
Know your minimum, know your maximum temperature
link |
in your 24 hour cycle
link |
and you will feel great power through that
link |
because then you'll know also about these ultradian cycles,
link |
these 90 minute cycles within which you can do focused work.
link |
Don't expect the focus to come early,
link |
expect the focus to come in the middle
link |
and then kind of taper off.
link |
Talked a little bit about kids,
link |
a little bit about elderly, about parenting.
link |
We are going to continue.
link |
There's going to be more, but now shift workers, travelers,
link |
people that are jet-lacking themselves at home,
link |
you now have levers in place.
link |
Information can be powerful,
link |
but you have to implement it in ways,
link |
obviously safe ways and reasonable ways,
link |
but implementing this knowledge
link |
in the ways that you trust are safe and reasonable for you
link |
is going to be the way that you can develop
link |
a bit of a laboratory about yourself.
link |
I loathe the term biohacking, sorry biohackers.
link |
I don't believe in hacking anything.
link |
I believe in understanding mechanism
link |
and applying the principles of mechanism
link |
for which there are large bodies
link |
of quality peer reviewed data
link |
and even a whole center of mass
link |
around certain biological principles
link |
like the effects of light and temperature minimums
link |
that will allow you to shift your biology
link |
in the ways that you want it to go,
link |
that will allow you to shift your psychology
link |
in the ways you want it to go.
link |
Next podcast episode,
link |
we are going to talk more about a few things.
link |
First of all, we're going to answer more of your questions
link |
because during office hours,
link |
I didn't get to all your questions
link |
from the previous episode.
link |
So I do read the comments and we're paying attention
link |
and figuring out the most common questions.
link |
We are going to get to some of the harder topics.
link |
Someone came at me, it's always fun when somebody does this,
link |
and they say, well, these are just the kind of
link |
basal low-level questions.
link |
What about the big stuff?
link |
What about dreaming and lucid dreaming and consciousness?
link |
Look, I'll talk about that stuff.
link |
And I'm planning to do that,
link |
some of which in the next episode
link |
and the following episode maybe even.
link |
But I want to give you data.
link |
I want to give you things that are supported by data.
link |
So I will try to speculate as little as possible
link |
because this is a podcast about science
link |
and science-based tools for everyday life.
link |
This is not about me speculating.
link |
Many people have speculated
link |
about the role of sleep, dreaming, and consciousness.
link |
Fascinating topics and a rather circular argument, frankly.
link |
It's been going on for centuries.
link |
Someday we'll get there.
link |
Right now, we're concentrating
link |
on these deep biological mechanisms
link |
that make you who you are
link |
and allow you to feel certain ways, good or bad,
link |
allow you to function physically in certain ways,
link |
good or bad, and give you more of a sense of control.
link |
That's my goal here.
link |
Many people have quite graciously asked
link |
how they can help support the podcast.
link |
First of all, thank you.
link |
We appreciate the question.
link |
You can support the podcast
link |
by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube,
link |
as well as subscribing on Apple or Spotify.
link |
And you can also leave us comments
link |
and feedback on YouTube and at Apple.
link |
That really helps.
link |
We would hope the feedback would be positive,
link |
but nonetheless, leave us feedback, ask questions.
link |
We will use those questions
link |
to create future content for the podcast.
link |
As well, if you can recommend the podcast
link |
to friends and family and other people
link |
that you think might find the information of use,
link |
And check out our sponsors
link |
that we mentioned at the beginning.
link |
That's a really great way to help support us
link |
and our ability to bring you this information.
link |
Along those lines, a lot of people have asked me
link |
about supplements and supplement companies.
link |
So up until now, I've been reluctant
link |
to recommend specific supplement brands.
link |
The supplement industry is kind of a Wild West
link |
of different brands, different levels of quality
link |
It can be very complicated.
link |
And what's on the bottle is not always what you're getting.
link |
The quality of what you're getting varies
link |
from company to company,
link |
and even from substance to substance, batch to batch.
link |
So I'm pleased to say that I'm partnering with Thorne.
link |
Thorne, spelled T-H-O-R-N-E,
link |
is a supplement company that works with the Mayo Clinic
link |
and with pretty much all the major sports team organizations
link |
and that I know to have the highest levels of stringency
link |
in terms of what's in the bottle matches
link |
what's listed on the bottle
link |
and in terms of the quality
link |
of what they put in those supplements.
link |
So while I mentioned earlier
link |
that supplements aren't for everybody,
link |
if you're interested in trying some of these supplements,
link |
you might want to check out Thorne.
link |
If you want to do that, you can go to thorne.com
link |
slash the letter U slash Huberman.
link |
So it's T-H-O-R-N-E dot com,
link |
C-O-M slash the letter U slash Huberman.
link |
And if you do that, they'll give you 20% off
link |
any of the supplements
link |
that you happen to purchase from Thorne.
link |
Thanks so much for your time and attention.
link |
I really appreciate it.
link |
See you next time on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
link |
And as always, thanks for your interest in science.