I highly recommended podcast episode on the Tim Ferriss Show with Dr. Andrew Huberman.
Huberman is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. He has made numerous important contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function, and neural plasticity. He is a McKnight Foundation and Pew Foundation fellow and recipient of the 2017 Cogan Award for his discoveries in the study of vision. Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford Medicine has been consistently published in top journals including Nature, Science, and Cell.
Below is a Summary of Some of the Highlights
- Our eyes are actually part of our central nervous system. Two pieces of our brain that were deliberately squeezed out during early development. They are the only two pieces of your brain that are outside the cranial vault. They have an enormous impact on the state of the rest of your brain.
- Much in the same way that our ears are responsible for hearing, but also has a balance mechanism, our eyes are responsible for detecting shapes and colors, etc., but also for telling the rest of the brain whether to be more alert or more relaxed.
- If we change our pattern of breathing, we change our inner state. If our state changes, our breathing changes. It is bi-directional. Likewise with vision, when we are excited or stressed, the aperture of our visual window shrinks (soda straw view of the world). When we are relaxed, the aperture of our vision expands.
- This is why when you go to a vista or you view a horizon, it is very relaxing, because you naturally go into panoramic vision. When you are indoors, you’re looking at your phone/computer/deep conversation/etc., your entire visual field shrinks to a much smaller aperture, and that drives an increase in alertness and internal state. Often called stress if it’s a negative experience, or love/obsession/fascination if it is a positive experience.
- When very stressed, we fine-slice time. This is why when people are in e.g. a car accident, they might report that things were in slow motion as your frame rate increases. Whereas when you’re very relaxed, your frame rate slows down. When we are relaxed, we get so-called perspective. Able to say: “This too will pass.”
- Our light-viewing behavior has perhaps the strongest effect on our levels of alertness and our capacity to fall asleep and get a good night’s sleep. Every cell in our body needs information about time of day. We have a collection of neurons over the roof of our mouth: suprachiasmatic nucleus (our central circadian clock). It informs every cell in our body about time of day.
- Ideally view sunlight for 2-10 min every morning upon waking (within 30 minutes of waking up). This triggers the timed release of cortisol, a healthy level of cortisol into your system, which acts as a wake-up signal and will promote wakefulness and the ability to focus throughout the day. It also starts a timer for the onset of melatonin, this sleepiness hormone.
- Dopamine is the feelgood neuromodulator. The molecule of motivation and of positive anticipation. “The molecule of more“.
- There are four things that really time our circadian biology and mood mechanisms properly, and align us for sleep: view light, exercise, eat early in the day, social cues (interacting with people/animals early in the day). These are going to create wake-up signals and your body will start to anticipate them.
- In the morning, during the day and in any time you want to be alert, you want to flip on as many overhead lights as possible. This is because these cells in the eye that trigger activation and alertness of the rest of the brain and nervous system reside in the lower portion of the eye. They view the upper visual field.
- As you approach the evening or nighttime and you want to go to sleep, that is a time to start avoiding bright lights of any color (not just blue light), and if possible place whatever lights are present in your environment lower in your visual field. Desk lamps, (most people do not have floor lighting), dim the lights.
- Light exposure of any wavelength between the hours of about 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. causes a serious disruption in the dopamine system, such that in subsequent days, you have a disruption in a lowering of mood, difficulty in learning. There is a cascade of things that happen. We get punished for light viewing at the wrong times of the circadian cycle, and we get rewarded for light viewing at the correct times of the circadian cycle.
- Two hours prior to your natural wake-up time (waking without an alarm clock) is what is called your (body) “temperature minimum“.
- Going outside in the evening or late afternoon as the sun is approaching low solar angle, because that will also send another signal to the brain that it’s evening: A morning stimulus and an evening stimulus. This only takes a few min each day.
- Melatonin: one of the most powerful effects of melatonin is to suppress puberty. The melatonin system is closely linked up with GABA inhibitory neurons in the hypothalamus. Melatonin has strong effects on the sex steroid hormones, the pathways related to estrogen and testosterone. Also, most of the concentrations of melatonin that are in supplements are 10 to 1 000 times what the endogenous internal levels would naturally be. Thus, consider avoiding supplementation with melatonin.
- Supplement stack for better sleep:
Magnesium threonate and magnesium bi-glycinate are able to be transported across the blood-brain barrier more readily than other forms of magnesium.- 200-400 mg of theanine can create a kind of a hypnotic state, and help you fall asleep (basically falling asleep requires turning off your thoughts).
- Apigenin which is a derivative of camomile, and acts as a chloride channel agonist. It essentially helps shut down the forebrain by hyper-polarizing neurons.
- Thus a powerful sleep aid, taken about 30 min before sleep: 50 mg of apigenin + 200-400 mg of magnesium threonate (or bi glycinate), + 200-400 mg of theanine (falling asleep quickly and stay asleep most, if not the entire night.
- If you are feeling like you are in a wired and tired mode, for more than 2-3 days, you are starting to enter the realm of long-term stress. This is where supplementing ashwagandha can be helpful (taken late in the day).
- Reduce stress and fall asleep more easily and control state of mind late in the evening: yoga nidra (literally means yoga sleep). 20-30 min daily, lying down and doing a sort of body scan. Involves some long exhale breathing, which is very relaxing to the nervous system, and allows the mind to enter one of these pseudo-sleep states. The state of shallow nap or shallow sleep done in waking allows the brain and the person to get better at turning off their thoughts and falling asleep in the evening.
For a full overview supplements for optimal sleep, check out:
The Best Supplements for High Quality Sleep