Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools

0:00:05 Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent
0:00:11 and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:00:16 My name is Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford
0:00:18 School of Medicine.
0:00:20 Let’s talk about neuroplasticity.
0:00:25 More specifically, let’s talk about how we can optimize our brains.
0:00:30 Ophthalmoplasticity is this incredible feature of our nervous system that allows it to change
0:00:35 itself even in ways that we consciously decide.
0:00:36 That’s an incredible property.
0:00:39 Our liver can’t decide to just change itself.
0:00:45 Our spleen can’t decide to just change itself through conscious thought or through feedback
0:00:47 from another person.
0:00:52 The cells in those tissues can make changes, sure, but it’s our nervous system that harbors
0:01:00 this incredible ability to direct its own changes in ways that we believe or we are told will
0:01:02 serve us better.
0:01:07 Today’s podcast is really directed toward answering your most common questions and the
0:01:13 bigger theme of how does one go about optimizing their brain or even think about optimizing
0:01:14 the brain?
0:01:17 What is this thing that we’re calling optimizing the brain?
0:01:21 In doing so, I’m also going to share some of my typical routines and tools.
0:01:28 I share them because many of you have asked for very concrete examples of what I do and
0:01:34 when, and so I want to open up the discussion today by emphasizing something that’s fundamentally
0:01:39 important, which is that plasticity is not the goal.
0:01:46 The goal is to figure out how to access plasticity and then to direct that plasticity toward
0:01:50 particular goals or changes that you would like to achieve.
0:01:55 Let’s start by talking about the different systems within the nervous system that are
0:01:57 available for plasticity.
0:02:02 In doing so, I’ll frame them in the context of what I do on a daily basis, on a weekly
0:02:06 basis, and on a yearly basis.
0:02:10 First of all, there are several forms of plasticity.
0:02:15 The best way to think about it is in terms of short term, medium term, and long term
0:02:17 plasticity.
0:02:23 Short term plasticity is any kind of shift that you want to achieve in the moment or
0:02:27 in the day, but that you don’t necessarily want to hold on to forever and say, “Well,
0:02:28 what kinds of things are those?”
0:02:33 Well, for instance, short term plasticity might be you wake up earlier than you would
0:02:39 like to catch a flight, you’re not feeling particularly alert, and you want to use a
0:02:44 protocol or you decide to use a protocol, which could be coffee or it could be a certain
0:02:47 form of breathing or it could be some other tool, to become more alert at a time of day
0:02:49 when normally you aren’t that alert.
0:02:55 But your expectation is that when you return home, you will discard with that the need
0:02:58 to do that at 5.30 a.m. because you’ll be asleep at 5.30 a.m.
0:03:02 So there’s short term plasticity, behavioral plasticity.
0:03:03 Then there’s medium term plasticity.
0:03:08 For instance, if you go on vacation to Costa Rica and you don’t know your way around Costa
0:03:11 Rica, you want to learn the different town and the routes there, but you don’t have any
0:03:14 intention of going back, it’s just medium term.
0:03:17 You want to just program it in for sake of your time there and then you want to discard
0:03:18 it.
0:03:21 Most of the time when we think about or talk about optimizing the brain, we’re talking
0:03:23 about long term plasticity.
0:03:27 We’re talking about the kinds of changes that people want to make so that their brain reflexively
0:03:29 works differently.
0:03:33 Long term plasticity is almost always the big goal.
0:03:35 It’s I want to know how to speak that language.
0:03:37 I want to be able to do that skill.
0:03:38 I want to be able to feel this way.
0:03:44 I’m going to frame all this in the context of the daily life, the weekly life and the
0:03:46 yearly life.
0:03:55 That’s because neural plasticity and optimizing your brain rides on a deeper foundation of
0:04:01 this thing that governs plasticity and in fact governs all our life called autonomic
0:04:05 arousal, which is that we’re asleep for part of the 24 hour cycle and we are awake almost
0:04:06 always.
0:04:10 That’s what I’ll say it again, the trigger for plasticity and learning occurs during
0:04:15 high focus, high alertness states, not while you’re asleep and the focus and alertness
0:04:20 are both key because of the neurochemicals associated with those states.
0:04:25 But the actual rewiring and the reconfiguration of the brain connections happens during non-sleep
0:04:29 deep rest and deep sleep.
0:04:32 So you trigger the change and in sleep you get the change.
0:04:37 So some of the things that we’ll talk about today about optimizing the brain are centered
0:04:41 around not sleep but around the autonomic arousal system.
0:04:46 We have this system of neurons in our brain and body that’s just incredible that wake
0:04:49 us up and make us alert.
0:04:54 And when we’re not accessing that system well, we cannot access plasticity, we cannot optimize
0:04:55 our brain.
0:05:01 Likewise, if we cannot sleep well and we can’t rest well, we will not access plasticity and
0:05:05 rewire our brain because that’s when the actual configuration between the connections
0:05:06 occurs.
0:05:10 I’d like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
0:05:16 AG1 is a vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
0:05:19 As somebody who’s been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health
0:05:24 and fitness for equally as long, I’m constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental
0:05:26 health, physical health, and performance.
0:05:31 I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a
0:05:35 podcast was, and I’ve been taking it every day since.
0:05:39 I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health, I simply feel much better when
0:05:40 I take it.
0:05:45 AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations and they’re constantly
0:05:48 improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
0:05:51 In fact, AG1 just launched their latest formula upgrade.
0:05:55 This new formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the
0:06:00 gut microbiome, and now includes several clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support
0:06:05 both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and
0:06:06 to reduce bloating.
0:06:10 Whenever I’m asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be?
0:06:12 I always say AG1.
0:06:18 If you’d like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer.
0:06:23 For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year
0:06:26 supply of vitamin D3K2.
0:06:31 Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year supply
0:06:34 of vitamin D3K2.
0:06:42 So to set this in context, I wake up each day, and I’ll be totally honest, I usually
0:06:44 don’t feel like bouncing right out of bed.
0:06:51 I wake up generally more tired and groggy than I would like because I tend to go to sleep
0:06:52 too late.
0:07:00 What it means is that I’m not really matching my hardwired needs of going to bed probably
0:07:04 at 8.30 or 9.00 and waking up at 4.00 a.m.
0:07:09 So neural plasticity will allow me to optimize my wakefulness, but I have to do something
0:07:11 in order to access that.
0:07:15 And some of you may already be anticipating what I’m about to say, which is, “Oh, no,
0:07:18 he’s going to tell us to get sunlight in our eyes in the first 30 minutes of the day.
0:07:22 I am going to tell you to do that, but I’m going to also tell you two things that I have
0:07:28 not discussed before, which relate to the plasticity between the melanopsin cells, these
0:07:33 sunlight detecting, bright light detecting cells in our eye, and the circadian clock.”
0:07:37 I’ve never said this before in this podcast, but it turns out that the connections between
0:07:42 these melanopsin cells and the circadian clock are plastic throughout the lifespan.
0:07:45 So there’s an opportunity for short-term plasticity.
0:07:47 So that’s why I view sunlight first thing in the day.
0:07:48 It helps me wake up.
0:07:53 The other thing that I do is that there’s a circuit that exists between the circadian
0:07:57 clock and our adrenals that I’ve talked about before that triggers the release of cortisol
0:08:01 first thing in the morning that wakes us up, especially when we view light.
0:08:04 So if you’re groggy in the morning, that’s why viewing light is helpful.
0:08:10 The other thing that I do is I delay my intake of caffeine for the first two hours that I’m
0:08:11 awake.
0:08:15 Earlier, we talked about the adenosine system and how the accumulation of adenosine makes
0:08:21 us sleepy and caffeine suppresses adenosine, it makes us feel alert.
0:08:26 And so by delaying caffeine until about two hours after waking, I’m able to capture and
0:08:31 reinforce to potentiate the neural circuit that exists between the circadian clock and
0:08:37 the cortisol release in the adrenals, as well as leave those adenosine receptors unoccupied
0:08:43 so that I can then use the caffeine to get a natural lift in alertness and focus two hours
0:08:48 later as opposed to using it just to wake myself up out of sleepiness.
0:08:50 I also make sure I hydrate first thing in the morning.
0:08:56 There’s plenty of data now showing that even a slight increase in dehydration, meaning
0:09:01 just when you’re lacking water can make people have headaches, it can provide some additional
0:09:04 photophobia for those of you that are migraine prone.
0:09:07 Bright light can trigger migraines, that’s no surprise to those of you that get headaches
0:09:14 and migraines, but dehydration can compound the vulnerability to migraine and headache.
0:09:18 So I drink water, I drink black coffee, or I drink mate, which is just because I have
0:09:22 Argentine lineage, which is just a high caffeine drink first thing in the morning.
0:09:25 But I delay it until two hours after I wake up.
0:09:32 And that’s because I want the circuits between my eye and my circadian clock and my adrenals
0:09:36 to be functioning in a particular way so that then later the caffeine is in addition, it
0:09:38 adds more alertness.
0:09:42 Now this is a discussion about how to optimize your brain.
0:09:47 Many people who wake up quickly and just naturally feel like bouncing out of bed, I envy these
0:09:54 people, they will do just fine by going into a learning bout or taking care of whatever
0:09:56 it is that they need to take care of.
0:10:00 Sometimes that’s kind of more mundane tasks like email and whatnot.
0:10:07 Here’s a more or less a rule about how the brain functions vis-a-vis focus, learning,
0:10:08 and creativity.
0:10:16 Generally states of high alertness, when we’re very, very alert, are great for strategy implementation.
0:10:21 The sort of thing that we are very good at when we’re well rested and we’re focused.
0:10:26 And our autonomic arousal or our alertness rather as it is at a high level.
0:10:31 If you are somebody who is hitting that alertness phase of your day very early right after you
0:10:37 wake up, that’s a great time to move right into things that, at least the research says,
0:10:41 you already know how the strategy, you just want to implement the strategy.
0:10:45 But for me, for instance, I get up, I’m not terribly alert first thing.
0:10:49 And so I try and just get my brain and my thoughts organized.
0:10:53 It’s not a time for me to be responding in a very linear fashion to emails or carrying
0:10:55 out calculations.
0:10:56 That comes about two hours later.
0:11:01 I think many people out there will relate, mid-morning is when we tend to, when many
0:11:05 people tend to achieve their peak in alertness and focus.
0:11:10 Now, many times I get the question, and this is what I’m about to say is directly related
0:11:13 to the hundreds of questions I got about this.
0:11:17 Should I use background music in order to learn?
0:11:22 So as a rule of thumb, if you’re feeling too keyed up, then silence and quiet is going
0:11:23 to be helpful.
0:11:30 In fact, if you’re very keyed up, a particular circuit related to the basal ganglia starts
0:11:31 getting triggered more easily.
0:11:33 It’s called the go-no-go circuit.
0:11:38 We have circuits that connect our forebrain to a structure in our brain called the basal
0:11:41 ganglia, which is actually a collection of structures.
0:11:45 And the forebrain, which is involved in rational thought and thinking and planning and action,
0:11:49 is always trying to plan what should I do and then implement that action.
0:11:53 And the basal ganglia are intimately involved in that discussion.
0:11:57 There’s a reciprocal loop of communication between basal ganglia and cortex.
0:12:02 The basal ganglia has one set of connections to the cortex and the cortex back to the basal
0:12:05 ganglia that facilitates go.
0:12:08 It facilitates action.
0:12:13 And the molecule, the neuromodulator dopamine, triggers the activation of go.
0:12:16 It tends to make us want to do more things.
0:12:21 It tends to make us bias toward action by the way that dopamine binds to something called
0:12:25 the D1 receptors, just a particular type of dopamine receptor for those of you who want
0:12:27 to know.
0:12:36 The no-go pathway, the pathway in the basal ganglia and cortex that suppresses action,
0:12:39 involves dopamine binding to this other receptor called the D2 receptor.
0:12:44 Now, D1, D2 receptors, you can’t just consciously decide, “Oh, I only want my D1 receptors
0:12:46 and my D2 receptors to be active.”
0:12:54 You have to think about which sorts of states of mind and body facilitate go and which ones
0:12:57 facilitate no-go.
0:13:04 There are three sort of levels of autonomic arousal, of alertness that bias us more toward
0:13:07 go, no-go, or both.
0:13:08 So here’s how it works.
0:13:10 Let’s say I’m very alert.
0:13:13 Maybe I got a particularly good night’s sleep the night before, I had a little too much
0:13:17 coffee, and I’m going to sit down to some work.
0:13:23 The thing to know, and what I always tell myself is when I’m very alert, I am very prone
0:13:30 to go to action, but I’m also prone to not no-go.
0:13:33 I’m not going to be very good at suppressing action.
0:13:34 So those are two different things.
0:13:38 Being biased toward action and being biased toward suppressing action are two different
0:13:40 things.
0:13:43 So those are push-pull, toward action, suppress action.
0:13:48 So if I’m very alert, I’m aware that I will have a bias toward action.
0:13:54 It’ll be hard for me to suppress non-action, but it’s very non-specific.
0:13:59 When you are very alert, the best situation for learning is going to be silence.
0:14:01 It’s going to be complete quiet.
0:14:06 If you are low arousal and you’re tired and you’re kind of sleepy, a lot of people find
0:14:11 that having some background chatter and some background noise can help elevate their level
0:14:12 of autonomic arousal.
0:14:18 For most people, three hours after waking, those three hours tends to be the period in
0:14:20 which they’re most alert throughout the day.
0:14:23 So that morning three hours is quite vital.
0:14:27 I’d like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, David.
0:14:30 David makes a protein bar unlike any other.
0:14:35 It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar.
0:14:40 That’s right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein.
0:14:42 These bars from David also taste amazing.
0:14:46 My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again I also like the chocolate
0:14:48 fudge flavored one and I also like the cake flavored one.
0:14:50 Basically, I like all the flavors.
0:14:52 They’re incredibly delicious.
0:14:55 For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods.
0:14:59 However, when I’m in a rush or I’m away from home or I’m just looking for a quick
0:15:03 afternoon snack, I often find that I’m looking for a high quality protein source.
0:15:07 With David, I’m able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes
0:15:12 it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each
0:15:13 day.
0:15:16 And it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories.
0:15:20 I typically eat a David bar in the early afternoon or even mid afternoon if I want to bridge
0:15:22 that gap between lunch and dinner.
0:15:25 I like that it’s a little bit sweet so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it’s also
0:15:30 giving me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories.
0:15:34 If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com/huberman.
0:15:40 Again, the link is davidprotein.com/huberman.
0:15:44 Now many of you might ask about exercise and when to exercise.
0:15:50 In terms of rising body temperatures and matching body temperature to mental alertness, etc.,
0:15:55 it’s pretty clear that exercising early in the day not only biases us towards waking
0:16:00 up earlier, but that it also triggers the release of things like epinephrine and other
0:16:08 neuromodulators that lend itself to a situation where we have heightened levels of arousal
0:16:12 and mental acuity in the late morning and even into the afternoon.
0:16:16 This can be very good because if you want to restrict most of your focused learning to
0:16:21 the early part of the day, exercising early in the day does set a neurochemical context
0:16:23 or milieu for go.
0:16:26 It tends to trigger activation of the go pathway.
0:16:30 And so for those of you like myself who have a hard time kind of engaging and getting into
0:16:34 action early in the day, early morning exercise within an hour of waking and certainly no
0:16:40 later than three hours after waking will give you quote unquote more energy throughout
0:16:41 the day.
0:16:45 So in kind of reviewing what I’ve set up until now, I do the morning light thing.
0:16:48 I delay my caffeine two hours after waking.
0:16:54 And then I generally try and get exercise in the first hour or ideally within the first
0:16:58 three hours of waking up and then I’ll move into a focused learning bout.
0:17:03 If I find that I’m too alert and then I generally will tend to eat and kind of bring down my
0:17:06 level of alertness and will continue working.
0:17:13 I typically eat my first meal right around midday, whether or not I’ve exercised or not.
0:17:16 In general, I rely on a low carbohydrate meal.
0:17:21 I’ll eat meat or salad or some variation that and nuts and fats and things like that because
0:17:22 of the choline content for focus.
0:17:26 I’m just going to continue to march through my day.
0:17:28 And this is of course what I experienced.
0:17:30 Some people are quite different.
0:17:35 But what I find is around two or 3pm, I start getting a little groggy, a little bit sleepy.
0:17:41 I will tend to shift my work from work that requires a lot of duration path outcome, really
0:17:47 careful analysis and activation of the no go pathway around early afternoon.
0:17:55 I find I can do kind of typical more mundane tasks because those tasks require less cognitive
0:17:59 load and they can be done more or less in and out of sequence.
0:18:02 I can answer a couple of email here, maybe answer that email there.
0:18:07 And then typically around 4pm or so, I do two things.
0:18:13 One is I make sure I hydrate and then I always do a non sleep deep rest protocol sometime
0:18:14 in the afternoon.
0:18:19 Sometimes a 10 minute yoga nidra type protocol or a 30 minute yoga nidra type protocol.
0:18:25 And I do that because for me by about 4.30 in the afternoon, I’m capable of doing basically
0:18:26 nothing.
0:18:33 I personally find it a mistake to that point down a double espresso and charge really hard.
0:18:34 It just doesn’t work for me.
0:18:36 I end up really disrupting my sleep schedule.
0:18:38 I end up disrupting a lot of different things.
0:18:41 So for me, I do the non sleep deep rest protocol.
0:18:47 I usually emerge from that feeling like I have another whole day, second wind, like
0:18:49 I could just work, work, work, work, work.
0:18:52 And then I’ll do a second bout of learning.
0:18:58 I’ll do some sort of work that either involves linear analysis of something.
0:19:02 So maybe numerical work or I’m trying to learn something.
0:19:05 This learning bout is very different than the morning one.
0:19:09 This is a work bout or learning bout that’s more in the clear common focus regime because
0:19:12 I’ve come out of this non sleep deep rest.
0:19:15 I’m not ingesting caffeine because I want to make sure that I can sleep later that night
0:19:17 really well.
0:19:21 And this tends to be more when I do creative type work.
0:19:26 Creativity is a very interesting state of mind in which we’re taking existing elements,
0:19:32 things that we already know and rearranging them in ways that are novel.
0:19:34 Creativity has two parts.
0:19:39 It has a creative discovery mode where you’re kind of shuffling things around in a very
0:19:44 relaxed way and kind of being playful or exploring different configurations.
0:19:50 And then creativity also has an absolutely linear implementation mode in which you take
0:19:56 the idea or the design you’ve come up with and you create something very robust and concrete.
0:19:59 And so creativity is really a two part thing.
0:20:05 And the first part of actively exploring different configurations, sometimes in a playful way,
0:20:14 sometimes in a way that’s almost random and just kind of exploring, that state is definitely
0:20:18 facilitated by being relaxed and almost sleepy.
0:20:23 When you find yourself in that kind of clear common focused mode, creative works tend to
0:20:25 come about very well in those regimes.
0:20:31 Now I know that a lot of people out there rely on substances to access creative states.
0:20:36 I’m not a marijuana user, it’s just not the drug for me for a variety of reasons.
0:20:41 I’m not a drinker, it’s not the substance for me for a variety of reasons.
0:20:47 The problem with using substances to access creativity is that generally the substances
0:20:53 that relax people will allow them to get into that creative brainstorming mode, but not
0:20:57 so good at the linear implementation mode.
0:21:02 So that afternoon block is when I try and access the freer kind of looser mindset that’s
0:21:06 associated with the fatigue that comes later in the afternoon.
0:21:11 For some of you, that state that favors creativity and creative learning might be better in the
0:21:12 morning.
0:21:13 I don’t know, you’re going to have to decide.
0:21:15 For some of you, you’re going to be late shifted.
0:21:17 Some of you are going to be morning shifted.
0:21:20 But where we have alertness, generally we are good at linear implementation.
0:21:24 We’re good at activating the no go pathway and suppressing action.
0:21:29 And we’re good at pursuing particular goals and strategy implementation.
0:21:34 And where we tend to be more relaxed and we tend to be almost in a kind of sleepy mode.
0:21:38 So for me, coming out of one of these non-sleep deep breath modes or sleep, that’s when we
0:21:44 tend to be better at novel configurations of existing elements, which is creativity.
0:21:51 And this brings about a question that I get all the time, which is what about psychedelics?
0:21:58 On psychedelics, people report being able to smell colors or to hear trees, et cetera.
0:22:00 And that’s because there’s a lot of sensory blending.
0:22:06 However, that’s led to the misconception that sensory blending itself is a creative process.
0:22:09 There’s nothing creative about sensory blending.
0:22:15 The essence of a creative process is new ways of configuring things that lend themselves
0:22:22 to a bigger or greater or deeper or novel understanding on the part of the observer.
0:22:25 And just sensory blending is not going to accomplish that.
0:22:30 Now, I think that there may come a time, and certainly there are clinical trials that are
0:22:34 happening now, where psychedelics are leveraged toward particular clinical goals.
0:22:40 These are clinical studies done with a psychiatrist present that is authorized to do that, that
0:22:42 can help people through depression, trauma, et cetera.
0:22:48 So all of this is to say that, no, I don’t take psychedelics to access creative states.
0:22:53 That’s not where I think the major role, the important role of psychedelics might show
0:22:55 up if it’s going to for humanity.
0:23:00 I think that it may have these important roles in the clinical context, provided it’s done
0:23:01 legally and safely.
0:23:08 I think that the creative process being a two-stage process means that I am personally
0:23:14 best served by having this period of nonlinear exploration of concepts, whatever it is I happen
0:23:19 to be working on in the afternoon, but then I’ll actually shelve that work.
0:23:24 I’ll just set it aside, and then I’ll revisit it the next day or even the next day to see
0:23:30 whether or not the work itself is ready for deliberate linear implementation, which I
0:23:33 would want to do during one of these highly focused states.
0:23:38 So the long and short way of saying this is that when we’re very alert, do linear type
0:23:43 of operations, when we tend to be more sleepy and more relaxed, that’s when creative works
0:23:50 can first be conceived, but their implementation requires high levels of alertness.
0:23:54 I’d like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element.
0:23:58 Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don’t.
0:24:02 That means the electrolytes, sodium magnesium and potassium, in the correct ratios, but
0:24:03 no sugar.
0:24:07 We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function.
0:24:12 In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance
0:24:13 to a considerable degree.
0:24:16 It’s also important that you’re not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts
0:24:19 of electrolytes in the right ratios.
0:24:22 Drinking a packet of element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you’re
0:24:26 getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes.
0:24:30 To make sure that I’m getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of element in
0:24:34 about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically
0:24:35 first thing in the morning.
0:24:39 I’ll also drink a packet of element dissolved in water, drink any kind of physical exercise
0:24:44 that I’m doing, especially on hot days when I’m sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
0:24:47 There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of element.
0:24:50 I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus, basically I like all of
0:24:51 them.
0:24:55 If you’d like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim an
0:24:59 element sample pack with the purchase of any element drink mix.
0:25:05 Again, that’s drink element spelled L-M-N-T, so it’s drinkelement.com/huberman to claim
0:25:07 a free sample pack.
0:25:11 That gets us more to the late afternoon evening.
0:25:17 I am, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a proponent of getting sunlight in the evening as well.
0:25:21 By getting light in the evening, it accomplishes two things for me.
0:25:24 First of all, it makes sure that I don’t get up too early, that I’m not waking up at three
0:25:28 or four in the morning because it’s going to shift my clock, it’s going to delay it
0:25:29 a little bit.
0:25:31 This is really important.
0:25:38 If you want to keep your schedule on a normal routine on a regular 24-hour cycle and not
0:25:41 have your circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness drifting all over the place and you want some
0:25:46 predictability to how your mind is going to work in order to optimize learning and performance,
0:25:48 well then you need to get morning light and evening light.
0:25:52 The morning light is going to advance my clock, make my system want to get up earlier, and
0:25:56 the evening light is going to delay my clock a little bit so that on average it kind of
0:26:01 bookends my circadian mechanisms and I’ll basically want to go to sleep at more or less
0:26:05 the same time each night and wake up more or less at the same time each morning.
0:26:09 That’s how it works and that’s a hard-wired mechanism.
0:26:14 That’s not some subjective thing that I tell myself, that’s a hard-wired mechanism.
0:26:18 That gets us to the evening and generally in the evening I’ll get that light by going
0:26:22 outside and then I’ll start to dim them for the evening because as I’ve mentioned many
0:26:25 times before and I’m not going to belabor the point, you want to minimize your light
0:26:30 exposure, especially overhead bright light exposure in the evening from about 10 p.m.
0:26:31 to 4 a.m.
0:26:37 So for me it screens off its dim lights and that’s what favors falling asleep in a good
0:26:39 night’s sleep for me.
0:26:43 Since we were talking about food earlier I’ll just revisit a little bit of what I said before.
0:26:48 My evening meal tends to be more carbohydrate rich so I’m not one of these people that’s
0:26:52 keto or high meat only or anything like that.
0:26:57 Remember, fasting in low carbohydrate states facilitate alertness, carbohydrate rich foods
0:27:00 facilitate calmness and sleepiness.
0:27:03 They stimulate the release of tryptophan and the transition to sleep.
0:27:08 I tend to achieve that state using carbohydrates and it also replenishes glycogen.
0:27:12 The next piece of scientific data that I’m going to describe is a very important piece
0:27:17 of scientific data for sake of understanding how to optimize your brain and access sleep.
0:27:20 It also can help avoid a lot of anxiety issues.
0:27:26 The peak output of the circadian clock for wakefulness, in other words the peak of our
0:27:33 wakefulness and the suppression of the sleep signal actually happens very late in the day.
0:27:40 So we have this trough of activity and body temperature is lowest right before waking
0:27:43 then as we wake up our body temperature goes up and into the afternoon it continues to
0:27:48 go up, up, up, up and then it tends to fall in the evening and towards bedtime.
0:27:56 But there’s a brief blip of release of peptides and other substances from the sleep centers
0:28:02 in the brain that signals the peak of alertness and wakefulness about an hour before bedtime.
0:28:06 Now that’s often the time when people start stressing about the fact that they have something
0:28:09 to do the next day and they worry about not being able to sleep and it can cascade into
0:28:10 a whole set of things.
0:28:17 I anticipate a peak in alertness and activity and I don’t worry about it.
0:28:21 I use that perhaps to get organized for the next day but basically I just go through if
0:28:24 I’m going to do anything it’s going to be very mundane tasks like cleaning or things
0:28:29 that require almost zero effort and that probably speaks to my cleaning abilities too.
0:28:34 I tend to go to sleep somewhere around 10, 30, 11 and if all goes well I stay asleep
0:28:36 for four or five hours.
0:28:38 Typically it’s three or four and then I wake up.
0:28:44 What it probably reflects is that the real time meaning the time that I should go to
0:28:46 sleep is probably closer to eight o’clock.
0:28:49 The word midnight was literally supposed to mean midnight.
0:28:54 We were meant to go to sleep and wake up with the setting and rising of the sun.
0:28:57 So I think that’s the natural pattern and we’ve just deviated from it with artificial
0:28:58 lights.
0:29:03 So waking up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something screwed up about
0:29:04 you.
0:29:07 What it likely means is that you were supposed to go to bed much earlier and because of this
0:29:12 asymmetry in the autonomic nervous system where it’s much easier for us to push and
0:29:16 to delay our sleep time than it is to accelerate our wake up time.
0:29:20 In other words it’s easier to stay up and hang out at the party even if you don’t want
0:29:25 to be there than it is to wake up when you’re exhausted and you’re fast asleep.
0:29:29 Most people are pushing through into the late hours of the evening and night and going to
0:29:32 bed much later than they naturally would want to.
0:29:34 And so I personally don’t want to go to bed at 8 p.m.
0:29:39 A lot of good things happen between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
0:29:44 And so I want to enjoy those and I push through the evening hours.
0:29:46 But as a consequence I’m running out of melatonin.
0:29:50 My melatonin release is basically subsided by about 3 or 4 a.m.
0:29:53 And so it makes sense that I would wake up.
0:29:56 If I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m anxious for whatever reason and my mind
0:29:58 is looping I have a couple rules.
0:30:03 One is I don’t trust anything I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night.
0:30:04 Any of it.
0:30:10 I think either for me terribly creative or worth linear implementation at that time.
0:30:14 But one thing that has been very helpful is to sometimes do one of these non-sleep deep
0:30:18 rest protocols as a way to go back into sleep.
0:30:23 Those for me have been very useful at helping me turn off kind of looping thinking in the
0:30:25 middle of the night and fall back asleep.
0:30:31 In reviewing my schedule for you just as a context for how to implement certain types
0:30:34 of tools for optimizing learning.
0:30:37 Realize that it gives the impression that there’s a 90 minute bout of learning and work
0:30:42 in the morning and then a 90 minute bout of creative type work in the afternoon and that’s
0:30:43 it.
0:30:46 There are a lot of hours in between of course and I just want to be very clear.
0:30:51 Those hours for me are occupied by pretty not mundane tasks but things that are kind
0:30:53 of random.
0:30:58 Those are things like email or attending to Zoom meetings or meeting with colleagues and
0:31:00 students and things of that sort.
0:31:04 I mentioned those two 90 minute bouts because those are the two 90 minute bouts where I’m
0:31:08 trying to expand on the mental capacities that I already have.
0:31:12 They’re really where I’m trying to stretch and grow what I’m able to do on a regular
0:31:14 basis reflexively.
0:31:18 And so for many of you out there who are in school or have family demands or other demands,
0:31:24 the key is to slot in those brain optimization segments of about 90 minutes, one or two or
0:31:25 maybe more per day.
0:31:30 You’re trying to slot those in wherever you can amidst your other obligations and things
0:31:36 that you need to do but you want to do that in an intelligent way that’s anchored to your
0:31:39 biology and then you want to do a number of things which I’ve talked about today in order
0:31:42 to optimize those sessions to get the most out of them.
0:31:49 I think the way to look at any tool to modulate or measure the nervous system is ask whether
0:31:54 or not it’s going to move you up or down the state of autonomic arousal, whether or not
0:31:58 it’s going to make you more alert or more calm, more focused or less focused.
0:32:01 That’s kind of the two axes here that we need to think about.
0:32:08 I think the subjective reading of whether or not one is alert or calm and whether or not
0:32:13 that alertness or calmness matches the goal or the thing that we’re trying to achieve
0:32:20 in terms of learning, including sleep, is the most valuable internal tool and recognition
0:32:21 that we can all have.
0:32:25 But ultimately, it’s about tailoring that alertness and calmness to the specific types
0:32:31 of learning and activities that you are going to do and perform and it’s reciprocal, meaning
0:32:36 some of those activities like exercise early in the day will increase your level of autonomic
0:32:38 arousal and alertness.
0:32:41 Certain foods will tend to wake you up.
0:32:44 Certain foods will tend to make you more sleepy and the volume of food and the timing
0:32:46 of food is a factor also.
0:32:48 So it’s a huge parameter space.
0:32:49 It’s a huge set of variables.
0:32:53 The impacts, whether or not we’re feeling well, performing well, learning great or not
0:32:54 learning great.
0:33:00 And the key thing is to become an observer of your own system and what works for you
0:33:07 and to recognize that there are two bins of tools for optimizing learning and brain performance.
0:33:11 One are tools that are really anchored in biological mechanism and we are certain of
0:33:12 what those are.
0:33:13 I’ve talked about some of those.
0:33:14 The other are the more subjective tools.
0:33:18 For some of you, visualization might work terrifically well.
0:33:22 For some of you, one song might really wake you up because of the associations you have
0:33:23 with it.
0:33:27 And for me, I might just, you know, it might repel me from the room because I don’t like
0:33:29 it or it might put me to sleep.
0:33:32 But of course, volume is kind of a universal.
0:33:34 Loud music tends to wake people up.
0:33:37 Soft music doesn’t tend to wake them up quite as much.
0:33:42 So part of today is really getting you to think about in a scientific way, in a structured
0:33:48 way about the non-negotiable elements, which are that you’re going to have a period of
0:33:52 every 24-hour cycle when you tend to be more awake and a period when you tend to be more
0:33:56 asleep and how to leverage those so you’re not fighting an uphill battle to wake up when
0:34:03 you actually would want to be and should be sleepy and not trying to go to sleep when
0:34:06 you are naturally, you know, going to be most awake.
0:34:10 So a lot of it is really anchors back to those core mechanisms of biology.
0:34:14 And then you start layering on the different protocols of food and supplementation, etc.
0:34:19 And I think it’s important to recognize that some people are just more go, go, go, go, go,
0:34:21 and no go.
0:34:26 And some people are just calmer and have a harder time getting into action and activity.
0:34:28 It’s just the way that we’re wired.
0:34:31 Some of us have autonomic nervous systems that are more geared towards parasympathetic
0:34:32 calm states.
0:34:35 And so that there are people like that too.
0:34:39 And so you have to know where you are and what particular goals you’re trying to pursue.
0:34:42 As always, thank you for your interest in science.
0:34:46 [Music]