Dr. Matthew Walker: The Science & Practice of Perfecting Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Podcast #31

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss

science

and

science

-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford Medical School. Today I am pleased to introduce Dr. Matthew Walker as our guest on the Huberman Lab

podcast

. Dr. Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. His laboratory studies

sleep

there. They study why we

sleep

, what happens during sleep, such as dreams and why we dream, learning during sleep, as well as the consequences of insufficient or poor quality sleep in waking states.

Dr. Walker is also the author of the internationally best-selling book "Why We Sleep." Our discussion today is absolutely fascinating for anyone interested in sleep, learning, or human performance of any kind. Dr. Walker teaches us how to improve our sleep. He also discusses napping, whether or not we should nap, whether or not we can make up for lost sleep, and if so, what's the best way to do it. We discuss behavioral protocols and interactions with light, temperature, supplementation, diet, exercise, sex, all the variables that can impact this incredible state of mind and body we call sleep. During my scientific career, I read many articles about sleep and attended many sleep seminars, but my conversation today with Dr.

Walker revealed more to me about sleep, the science of sleep, and how to improve sleep than all those articles and seminars. set. I'm also happy to share that Dr. Walker has started a

podcast

. That podcast titled "The Matt Walker Podcast" releases its first episode this month and will teach all about sleep and how to improve it. So be sure to check out Matt Walker's podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Before we begin, I would like to mention that this podcast is independent of my teaching and research duties at Stanford. However, it is part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is ROKA. ROKA manufactures the highest quality sunglasses and eyeglasses. The company was founded by two all-American swimmers from Stanford and everything about the design of their goggles takes performance into account. I have spent my career studying the visual system and how it works and I can tell you that ROKA glasses take the science of the visual system into account, whether or not you wear them on a very bright day or walk in a shaded or cloud-covered area, you can still see everything with perfect clarity.

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If you want to try ROKA glasses, you can go to ROKA i.e. roka.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% on

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first order. That's ROKA roka.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout. InsideTracker also brings us today's podcast. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from

your

blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and then achieve your health goals. I have long believed in the need for regular blood testing for the simple reason that many of the factors that affect your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed through a quality blood test.

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If you want to try InsideTracker, you can visit insidetracker.com/Huberman and if you do, you will get 25% off any of InsideTracker's plans; simply use code Huberman at checkout. Belcampo also brings us today's episode. Belcampo is a regenerative farm in Northern California that raises organic, grass-fed and certified humanely finished meats. I don't eat a lot of meat, I eat meat about once a day, but when I do, I make sure it's high quality and raised humanely and sustainably. Conventionally raised animals are confined to feedlots and eat a diet of inflammatory grains, but Belcampo animals graze on open pastures and seasonal pastures, resulting in meat higher in nutrients and healthy fats.

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I'm a big fan of their keto meatballs. I also really liked their boneless ribs, I eat them practically once a day. Again, that's Huberman for the code. And visit belcampo.com/

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to get 20% off your order. And now my conversation with Dr. Matt Walker. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person. - Wonderful to connect. I mean, it's been too long, but I suspect it would have been less time before we met to avoid the pandemic, thanks for coming. - No, thank you, yes, I am delighted that we are finally sitting face to face. I have been following your work both in the Internet sphere, I read your book and I loved it.

And also from a science perspective, you came to Stanford a couple of years ago and gave a talk for BrainMind. - Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. - And there, of course, you talked about sleep and its usefulness and its challenges and how to conquer it, so to speak. Let's start with the most basic, what is sleep? - Sleep is probably the most effective thing you can do to restore the health of your brain and body. So that's a functional answer in terms of what sleep is in terms of its benefits. However, sleep as a process is an incredibly complex physiological ballet.

And if you recognized or saw what happens to your brain and your body during the night, during sleep, you would be impressed. And the paradox is that most of us, and I would think the same thing, you know, if I weren't a sleep scientist, we go to bed, we pass out for seven to nine hours, and then we kind of wake up. . in the morning and in general we feel better. And in some ways that negates the physiological and biological beauty of sleep. So, up in your brain, when you go through these different stages of sleep, the changes in brain wave activity are much more dramatic than what we see when we're awake.

And we can talk about deep sleep and what happens there, REM sleep is a fascinating time, which is another stage of sleep, often called dream sleep, which is rapid eye movement sleep, that stage of sleep where some Parts of your brain are up to par. 30%, more active than when you are awake. Again, we are violating the idea that our mind is inactive. And our body is simply inactive and resting. So I would love to double click on any of them and also on the body changes. But it is an intense evolutionary adaptive system and benefit. That being said, however, I would almost argue against an evolved system when we think about the question of sleep and what sleep is.

Our assumption has always been that we evolved to sleep. And I've actually questioned it and I have no way to go into a time capsule and go back and prove it, but what would happen if we started sleeping and out of sleep wakefulness emerged? Why do we assume it is the other way around? And I think there's probably very compelling evidence that sleep may have been the protostate, the basic, fundamental state of life. And when we woke up, so to speak, we always had to go back to sleep. You know, in some ways, at that time, sleep was the price we paid for being awake.

And that's another way of describing what sleep is. But then again, I think it sort of denies that the active state of sleep is also a passive state of sleep. And finally, can you tell what sleep is in different species? And in us humans, and also in all species of mammals and birds, sleep is broadly divided into these two main types. And we have a non-rapid eye movement dream, on the one hand, and then we have a rapid eye movement dream, on the other. And we can talk about how they develop throughout the night and their architecture because not only is it intellectually interesting from the perspective of what sleep is, but it also has a practical impact on our daily lives.

And I would love to follow that path too. But you navigate, you tell me I can. - No, no, let's definitely go that way. So you mentioned how active the brain is during certain phases of sleep. When I started in science, REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, was known as paradoxical sleep, is that still a good way to think about it? It's paradoxical because the brain is very active and yet we are essentially paralyzed, right? - Yes, it really is a paradox. And where that came from was simply from brain wave recordings, that if all I'm measuring about you is your brain wave activity, it's very difficult for me, sitting outside the sleep lab room, to determine if you're awake. or you are asleep.

REM sleep? Because those two patterns of brain activity are so close to each other, you can't discriminate between them. However, the paradox is that when you're awake, I come in and you're kind of sitting up, you're clearly conscious and awake. But still, when you enter REM sleep, you are completely paralyzed. And that's one of the things that I think is part of the paradox. But the paradox actually boils down to two dramatically different states of consciousness. However, brain activity is dramatically more similar than different. And the way I can determine which of the two you are in is by measuring two other signals, the activity of your eyes and the activity of your muscles.

So when we're awake, we'll occasionally have these blinks and look for heads. But during REM sleep, these really strange horizontal eye movements occur. And that's where the name rapid eye movements comes from. - Are they always horizontal? - Most of them are horizontal. - It's interesting. - And that's one of the ways we can differentiate them from other waking eye movement activities, because it's not always that sometimes it can be horizontal, but it can also have diagonal and also vertical in that plane. But then muscle activity is the real reveal, just before entering REM sleep, the brainstem, which is where the dynamics of non-REM and REM periods essentially develop and then are expressed up in the cortex and down in The body, when it enters REM sleep and just a few seconds before that happens, the brain stem sends a signal along the spinal cord.

And it communicates with the so-called alpha motor neurons of the spinal cord that control voluntary skeletal muscles. And it is a sign of paralysis. And when you enter the dream, you are locked in a physical imprisonment of your own body. - Amazing. - You know, why would Mother Nature do such a thing? And in some ways it is very simple. The brain paralyzes the body so that the mind can dream safely. Because think about how quickly they would have taken us all out of the gene pool. You know, I do think that I'm, you know, one of the best skydivers who can just fly, and sometimes I've had those dreams too, you know, and I climb out the window of my apartment, and jump out. - You're done. - You're done, you know?

Sothat's one of the types that are part of the paradox of REM sleep, both its similarity in brain activity, even though the behavioral state is so different, and this strange blocking of the brain type from the body itself. Now, of course, fortunately the involuntary muscles are not paralyzed. So you keep breathing, your heart keeps beating. - Is this why men have erections during REM sleep and women have vaginal lubrication during sleep? - That is one of the reasons and part of the other reason, although there is due to autonomous activity. So there's a nervous part of our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system, which controls a lot of the automatic behaviors.

And some of those are aspects of our reproductive facilities. During REM sleep, what we found out later is that you go through these strange autonomic storms, which sound dramatic, but they actually are when you measure them. That you will go through periods where your heart rate slows down and drops and your blood pressure drops and then, completely randomly, your heart rate speeds up dramatically, and what we call the fight or flight branch of the autonomic nervous system or nervous sympathetic, misnamed because it is anything but sympathetic, it is very irritating, which suddenly turns on and then turns off again.

And it's not on a regular basis. And that's when you have those autonomic storms, you become very activated from a physiological perspective and you can have these erections and vaginal discharge, etcetera. - But are you totally paralyzed? - But you are still paralyzed. There are only two voluntary muscle groups that come out of paralysis, which is strange. One, your extra ocular muscles, because if they were paralyzed, you wouldn't be able to have rapid eye movements. And the other one that we discovered later was the inner ear muscle. And we don't really understand why those two muscle groups come out of paralysis.

It may have something to do with the cranial nerves, but I don't think it's that, I think maybe it's something more related to the senses. Some people have argued that the reason the eyeballs are affected by paralysis is because if the eyeballs are left inactive for long periods of time, problems such as oxygen problems in the aqueous or vitreous humor may occur. . And that's why the eyeballs have to continue draining. - The drainage systems of the anterior part of the eye are designed to require movement. - Exactly. - People with glaucoma have deficits in drainage through the anterior chamber, but I am speculating there.

I'm also speculating, when I ask this, I imagine that there are waking states that also resemble slow wave sleep, or rather that there are states in which slow wave sleep also resemble waking states. He has beautifully illustrated how REM sleep can mimic some of the more active brain states we achieve upon waking. What type of wakeful state that you might have experienced or experience on a daily basis might resemble slow wave sleep, non-REM sleep, if applicable? - It's a great way of thinking that turns the tables. I love it. We almost never see anything like the true ultra-slow waves of deep non-REM sleep.

So we talk about these two non-REM and REM stages. Non-REM is subdivided into four separate stages, stages one through four, which increase the depth of sleep. So stages three and four are what we typically call deep non-REM sleep. Stages one and two are light and non-REM. -Then maybe take me through the arc of one night just for that. So I lowered my head, well, for you, what time do you normally go to sleep? - I'm usually there around 10:30 p.m. And I usually naturally wake up a little before 7:00, sometimes before 6:45 or 7:00, I have an alarm set for 7:04 a.m. - You heard it, folks, Matt Walker uses an alarm clock. - Rarely, rarely am I anything like that. - He does not recommend it, but he does use it. - Yes, normally. - You are human after all. - Oh, I'm so human.

And I've been having trouble sleeping and I'd love to talk about that too. But it's just, you know, in case, you know, because I like to maintain regularity too. You have to keep those two things in balance. And 7:04 just because, you know, why not be idiosyncratic? I don't know why we always fix things on these hot numbers. So yeah, when you. - So you go to sleep around 10:30, so I use you as an example, because I imagine that several people go to sleep at different times. But 10:30 is when I go to sleep, 11 is for me. But if you go to sleep at 10:30, then for the first three hours of sleep, what does the architecture of that sleep look like compared to the last three hours of sleep before morning? - Yeah, I have to keep in mind that that kind of, you know, 10:30 to 7:00 that's just based on my chronotype and my preference is different for different people.

I'm not suggesting that's the sweet spot for humanity's dream. It's just my natural sweet spot. - But I imagine that most people probably go to sleep between 10 pm and midnight. - It's between 9 and midnight. - And you will most likely wake up between 5 am and 7 am or between 5:30 and 7:30. - Yes, yes, at least if you look at first world nations, that is a typical sleep profile. So when I first fall asleep, I'll enter the light stages of non-REM sleep, stages one and two of non-REM sleep. And then I will begin to descend into the deeper stages of non-REM sleep.

So after about 20 minutes, I'm starting to descend into stage three non-REM and then stage four non-REM sleep. And when I start to fall asleep, when I've moved away from the murky waters of wakefulness that normally accompany me and I'm in the shallow waters of stages one and two of sleep, my heart rate starts to drop a little. . And then my brain wave pattern activity starts to slow down. Normally when I'm awake it goes up and down, maybe 20, 30, 40, 50 times a second. As I go into light, non-REM sleep, it will slow down to maybe 15, 20 and then really start to slow down to about 10 or eight cycles per second, eight wave cycles per second.

Then, as I begin to move into stages three and four, non-REM sleep, several notable things happen. Suddenly my heart rate really starts to drop. Oh, and I'll go back to the temperature, I'm going to write down the temperature because I always forget these things. I am now solidly in the foothills of middle age. So when I start to get into those deeper stages of non-REM sleep, suddenly hundreds of thousands of cells in my cortex decide to fire together and then they all go silent at the same time. And it's this remarkable physiological coordination of tastes that we simply don't see during any other brain state. - That's really interesting, aside from recordings of animal brains and a little bit of humans, I don't think I've ever seen the entire cortex or even entire regions of the cortex light up like that. - Yes, it's impressive.

It's almost like this beautiful kind of mantra chanting, or this kind of, you know, it's a slow inhalation and then a meditative exhalation, inhale, exhale. And these waves are simply huge in size. - And the body is able to move at this time, there is no paralysis. - There is no paralysis, but for the most part muscle tone has also decreased significantly. - Interesting. - At that point. And then you'll do it, or I'll stay there for about 20 or 30 more minutes. So now I'm maybe 60 or 70 minutes into my first sleep cycle. And then I'll start getting up again, getting back into stage two of non-REM sleep.

And then after about 80 minutes, I'll come out and have a brief period of REM sleep, and then I'll go back down, go back down to non-REM and go back up to REM. And it does it reliably, repeatedly, and I will, and I do it every 90 minutes. At least that is the average for most adults, but it is different in different species. What changes in your question is the ratio of non-REM to REM within that 90 minute cycle as you progress through the night. And what I mean by that is, in the first half of the night, most of those 90-minute cycles are made up of a lot of deep non-REM sleep, that's when I have stages three and four of deep non-REM sleep.

Once I move into the second half of the night, that sway now changes. And instead, most of those 90-minute cycles are made up of this lighter form of non-REM sleep, stage two non-REM sleep, and a lot more and increasingly rapid eye movement sleep. And the implication I was talking about pragmatically is, let's say I have to do it, and I usually never do early morning flights or red eyes, just because I'm a mess if that happens, I'm not suggesting to other people. should not. - I suggest that people not do that. Every time I get red-eye or do it two or three days later, I get a sort of general sick feeling, my brain isn't working as well, I think the red-eye should be removed.

For the pilots I also want to say, and for him. - And we can talk about that, there is data. - And in the case of the emergency room, I mean, long shifts have been shown to cause physician-induced errors that lead to many deaths. I mean, there are many reasons why staying awake too long or at the wrong time, if you're not adjusted, is just terrible. - You have the data and all those cases, you know, particularly the doctors there was also some recent data that looks at suicide. And suicide rates among doctors in training are, you know, way, way above the norm.

And I don't suspect that, you know, the schedules are helping them. I suspect that sleep is a missing part of that explanatory equation, but. - I teach medical students and they are phenomenal, but yes, they are in extremely difficult conditions. - We shouldn't put them in those conditions. - No, it is not optimizing performance, I have one. - But I'm sorry, I'm sorry. - No, no, this is important. This is an important digression. I have a question, are you saying that throughout the night, a greater percentage of these 90 minute cycles will be occupied by REM sleep as you progress through the night?

I'm aware that, based on the work that you've done and your public education and other efforts, we have what are called circadian forces and we have other forces that influence when we sleep and when we want to sleep and so on. Without going into details, I have a simple question, the experiment is as follows. Say, God forbid, you are prevented from going to sleep at your normal time and remain awake for the four or five hours you would normally be in predominantly slow-wave sleep. -If we say you can finally go to bed at 3 a.m., a time when normally your sleep would be occupied primarily by rapid eye movement, will you experience a higher percentage of rapid eye movement sleep due to so-called circadian forces, meaning that That is what happens? appropriate for that time?

Or will your system need to start at the beginning of the stroke that I refer to as suspension? And if that's not clear to anyone, basically what I'm asking is, if you are forced to skip the slow wave portion of the night, will your system skip to rapid eye movement sleep? Or do you have to start from the beginning and sleep with slow waves first? In other words, does one dream state drive entry to the next dream state? - Great question, so there is a certain degree of reciprocity between dream states. I should note that when we elevate one of them, we often, but not always, see a change in the other.

There are some pharmacologies that have shown independence in this regard. And we've also played with things like temperature, and sometimes you can, you know, nudge one and not seem to bother or disturb the other. But to your, I think, lovely point, the answer is that it's a mix, but it's mainly the latter. Which means that most of the time you will enter REM sleep phases and have a significant deficiency in your deep sleep. So just because I start my sleep cycle at 3 a.m. m., instead of 10:30 p.m. m., it doesn't mean that my brain just says, well, I have a program, and I'm just going to run the program, and The way the program runs is that we always start with a first couple of hours of deep sleep.

So let's just start act number one, scene one, doesn't do that. Now, for starters, I'll sleep a little deeply and part of that is simply how sleep works. Depending on how long I've been awake, the longer I'm awake, there is significantly more pressure to achieve deep sleep. But we actually used exactly what you just described as an experimental technique to selectively deprive people of one of those stages of sleep or the other. So we'll do the first half of the nighttime deprivation and then let you sleep the second half. That means you will be mostly deprived of deep sleep and still have the majority of REM sleep.

And then we changed it, so that you only have the first four hours, which means that for the most part you will havedeep non-REM sleep, but you will have almost no REM sleep. So in both groups, they both slept four hours. So the difference between them in terms of an experimental result is not sleep time because they both slept the same amount. It is the contribution of these different stages. Now, we actually have more elegant methods to selectively enter and detect different stages of sleep. But that's the way we used to do it, old school just used this time difference. - And who suffers more?

Those who lack the early phase of nocturnal sleep and those who lack the late phase of nocturnal sleep? In other words, if I have to sleep only four hours for whatever reason, is it better to sleep the first half of the night or the second half of the night? - It depends on what the outcome measure is. - That goes directly to the differences between slow wave sleep and REM sleep. - Good. - I was probably misinformed. But my understanding is a very crude understanding, I should say it before. - I highly doubt that I would oppose someone like you. - Which is very kind of you.

The first part of the night, slow-wave sleep is restorative for the muscles and for motor learning, since the content of sleep tends to be less emotional. The second half of the night, being more emotional dreams and a kind of disengagement from the emotional burden of our previous day and other experiences. In other words, if I deprived myself, excuse me, of REM, I would be hyperemotional, perhaps not as in line with the type of experiences in my life. Whereas if I deprive myself of slow wave sleep, I would feel greater physical discomfort. Is that correct? Or is it too simple?

And if it's too simple, tell me where I'm wrong? - No, I think a lot of that is correct. And it's kind of an advantage. So, for example, during deep non-REM sleep, that's where this happens. It is almost a form of natural blood pressure medicine. And when I take that away from them, the next day, we'll typically see autonomic dysfunction, we'll typically see abnormalities in heart rate and blood pressure. We also know that during deep non-REM sleep, there is some control of specific hormones. For example, we know that insulin regulation is a type of metabolism, meaning what it will look like from a regulated blood sugar perspective versus a dysregulated prediabetic profile.

That's where deep sleep seems to matter if we selectively deprive it of what we can see. - Growth hormone. - Actually, growth hormone is different. This is a beautiful demonstration that growth hormone seems to depend more on REM sleep. And that's why we can address the effects of alcohol and there's really impressive and scary data about alcohol and its sleep disruption. But we also know about testosterone, peak levels of testosterone occur during REM sleep. - So the second half of the night, essentially. - Which is the second half of the night. So it really just means that your physical and mental dysfunction profile will be different in both conditions.

Which one would you prefer? I would prefer neither of them. And it really depends on what you're trying to optimize for. So it's so complicated, sleep is so pluripotent, you know, it's so physiologically systemic, that it's almost impossible not to suffer from one of those two things, just deep sleep deprivation, or just REM sleep deprivation, and not show a profile that you'd really rather avoid it. And that is the reason, from an evolutionary point of view, why we have preserved those stages of sleep. I mean, sleeping is so idiotic, you know, from an evolutionary perspective. - Or maybe waking up is idiotic. - Or waking up is, you know, well, yeah. - Based on your previous idea. - Who have you been talking to?

I think that comment is very specific to me. Yeah, I'm usually always an idiot when I work. But I think this idea that sleeping, you know, is so profoundly detrimental to us, if you were to take it literally, you know, you're not finding a mate, you're not reproducing, you're not foraging. to eat, you don't care about being young and, worst of all, you are vulnerable to predation; For any of those reasons, you probably should have selected the dream against. But it was not the dream that heroically made its way through each step of the evolutionary path.

And therefore every stage of sleep has also survived, as far as we know. What that means is that they are non-negotiable. If Mother Nature had found a way to, you know, cut us off a little bit from that dream, there would have been huge evolutionary benefits, I'm sure, but it seems like she hasn't done it. And I'm usually in favor of the wisdom of it after 3.6 million years. - Yes, it's incredible. I want to present to you another Gedanken experiment, another thought experiment. So, in this arc of the night slow wave sleep predominates early in the night, and then REM sleep.

There is a situation that many people, including me, experience regularly. They go to sleep, they sleep well, after three or four hours they wake up. They wake up, for whatever reason, maybe there was a noise, maybe the temperature is not right, we will probably talk about sleep hygiene, etc. They get up, go to the bathroom, they may turn on the lights, they may not, they will go back to bed hoping not to pick up the phone and start navigating and awakening the brain through various light mechanisms. and cognitive stimulation, etc. They go back to sleep, let's say after about 10 or 15 minutes, they can fall asleep again.

And then they sleep until their most usual wake-up time. How detrimental is that awakening episode or event in terms of longevity, learning, etc.? I would love to sleep through the night every night, but most nights I don't. And yet, I feel pretty good all day long, some days better than others. So if you were to evaluate that episode of wakefulness and compare it to sleeping through the night, what would you think about it? - So I think if you wake up quite frequently, like you're describing, I would probably sort out your estate because I guess within the next year, you'll be done.

Because no, I'm kidding. Absolutely joking. It's perfectly natural and normal, especially as we get older, you know, kids tend to have more continuous sleep. Now, it's not that they don't wake up for short periods of time, and in fact, we all do. When we come out of the other end of our sleep cycle at the end of our REM sleep period of the 90 minute cycle, almost all of us wake up and do a postural movement, we roll over because we have been paralyzed for so long and the body also feels it. You will like to change your weight or position. - Do we ever look around us?

Do we ever open our eyes and look around us? - You, sometimes people open their eyes, but usually it's only for a short period of time and they usually never memorize those awakenings. Your situation and mine too, normally now at this stage of life, I don't sleep all night. I usually take a bathroom break and then come back. That's perfectly normal. We tend to forget that in sleep science we think about sleep efficiency, that is, the total amount of time one is in bed, how much of that percentage of time is spent sleeping? And we typically consider numbers above 85%, or higher, as healthy sleep efficiency.

So if you think that I go to bed and spend, you know, let's say, eight and a quarter hours, eight and a half hours in bed, with a normal, healthy sleep efficiency, I might still only be sleeping a total of seven and a half hours, or seven and three quarters hours. Which means I'll be awake in total, not for very long, but I'll be awake for more than 30 minutes, some net time. Sometimes that can be after 10 minutes, you know, of flirting after going to the bathroom, and I slowly fall back asleep. Other times, it will only be for a couple of minutes.

And most of them you don't commit to. So I think we should stop, we shouldn't worry too much about the periods of time we are awake, simply because we don't sleep during the night. I'd love to do that too. And I remember when that used to happen, and it still happens from time to time. - Every once in a while, it feels great when it happens. - And it's kind of lovely. - It's a surprise, right? Like, my God, I slept all night. - Now it's a surprise, yes, it's a surprise. But for the most part, I think we can be more relaxed about it, but we have to be a little more vigilant if you go for long periods of time without being able to get back to sleep.

And we usually define it by saying, if it's been 20, 25 minutes, typically, that's the time where we would really say, "okay, let's explore this," what's going on? Let's see what's happening. The other thing is if it happens very frequently, so even if you're not awake for 25 minute periods, but you find yourself waking up and being aware that you've been awake for maybe six or seven. or eight times during the night and your sleep is very what we call fragmented. The big science of sleep over the last five or 10 years has been yes, quantity is important, but quality is equally important.

And you can't have one without the other in terms of a good beneficial outcome the next day. You can't just sleep four hours, but a brilliant quality of sleep and be intact. You can't sleep eight hours either, but you can have a very poor quality of sleep and be unharmed the next day. That's why I want to put an asterisk, this idea of ​​not worrying too much about waking up and spending some time awake, is perfectly normal and natural. But if it happens very frequently during the night, or those periods of time, or long periods of time, more than 25 minutes, then let's look at it. - Well, I can assure you that you helped many people feel better with this awakening episode that I and many other people experienced. - I hope so because I think it's very important that we, you know, I think I've been desperately guilty of maybe, you know, at first being too puritanical about, you know, sleeping and I've done a retrospective, and I've tried to explore Why was it like that, you know, it was almost a dream or else, period, period, period.

And at the time I started writing the book, back in 2016, sleep was still a neglected stepsister in today's health conversation. And I could see all that. That has certainly changed. - And it is changing, you know, and not because it is my effort, but thanks to all my colleagues. - I would say, well, it's great that you give the attribution to the other people involved. And of course, it's a big field. But I think it has done a great service in pointing out to people the importance of this state, not only in avoiding problematic outcomes, but also in optimizing their waking state.

I actually see sleep as a period where we feel good, but we're not aware of what it feels like when we're necessarily in it. It has enormous benefits when you do it right, so to speak, and it has enormous deficits when we don't. And I think that was an important thing for you to do to point people to this issue. And I would say mission accomplished, that people are aware of the need to sleep. I think knowing that waking up in the middle of the night is normal, as long as it's not too frequent, is great and will also help people who may have been overly worried about it.

I want to take this as an opportunity to raise something about the so-called Uberman schedule which should not be confused with the Huberman schedule. Fortunately, no one has confused them yet. A few years ago there was a discussion about the so-called Uberman schedule, that is, Superman's schedule. That's Huberman without H, which I have nothing to do with. If you read Nietzsche, this will have a subtext. But regardless, the Uberman schedule, as I understand it, is one in which the person chooses to sleep in 90 minutes, in periods spread throughout the day and night, in an attempt to gain more productivity or reduce their overall need for sleep. dream.

An article was recently published exploring whether this is good or bad for us. Maybe you'll just give us the take-home message about it. - Yes, these Uberman like schedules and there are many different forms of that, they tried to essentially make a pie chart of the 24 hour period, in short periods of sleep with some shorter or no periods, well, a little longer, awake, then short periods. of sleep and then of wakefulness. You know, you're making it, I think it's a joke, it's almost like you're sleeping like a baby, you know, because that's how babies sleep. - In 90 minute naps. - That they'll have, you know, these short naps, then they'll be awake, then they'll be asleep, and then they'll be awake.

And much to the parents' chagrin all night long, it's basically the same thing: They're awake, they're asleep, they're awake, they're asleep. And that's more of the schedule that these types of protocols have suggested. And there was a really excellent comprehensive review that found not only that they weren't necessarily helpful, but they were actually quite harmful. And in almost every performance metric, whether it's task performance, whether it's physiological outcome measures, even the quality of sleep that they were getting, when they were trying to get it, they were all in one direction.falling. . And it's not surprising if you look at the way our physiology is programmed, if you look at the way your circadian rhythm is programmed, none of that screams to us that we should sleep that way. - Well, I chuckle because we always hear sleeping like a baby.

This is how babies sleep. And I would say don't sleep like a baby, sleep like an adult, be an adult and get a solid eight hours. -It's Billy Crystal's line, he was, you know, an insomniac who had suffered for a long time, he says I sleep like a baby, I wake up every 20 minutes. You know, and I think this is another one of those demonstrations that when you fight biology, you usually lose. And the way you know you've lost is through illness, disease, and decay. And I believe that if you sleep, in accordance with the natural biological edict that we have all been given, life tends to be of higher quality and longer duration. - Yes I agree.

In that sense, as a vision scientist, I'm very excited about the work on these non-image-forming cells in the eye, the so-called melanopsin cells, which inform the brain about the circadian time of day. And I'm a big advocate of people getting some sunlight, ideally sunlight, but other forms of bright light in their eyes early in the day and when they want to be awake. Essentially, during the phase of your 24-hour circadian cycle when the temperature rises, and then you begin to get less light into your eyes as our temperature drops later in the day and at night.

Are there any adjustments to that general theme that you would like to add? Or is it somehow? - No, I think that's exactly what we recommend now. Which is to try to expose yourself to at least 30 to 40 minutes to some type of natural light. Now, there may be parts of the world where, you know, it is. - You're from a pretty cloudy part of the world. - I'm from Liverpool, England, and the northwest of England is not known for its beach resorts or good weather. I rememberI kind of came home from a trip when I was first in California and I thought, why is the sky so low?

You know, we constantly joke that in the UK we normally have nine months of bad weather and then three months of winter. And that's the entire year in terms of weather. But to get to the point, you're absolutely right: try to get that daylight. Now it can be, you know, working by a window and getting that natural sunlight. But the fact that natural sunlight, even on a cloudy day in England, is usually much more powerful than anything you get from indoor lighting, despite thinking that from a perceptual perspective, maybe it's much stronger. Closer than you would think. - Yes, I have been.

Sorry to interrupt. I've been a big advocate that there is an app called Light Meter, which is a free app, I have nothing to do with it, and that will allow you to get a pretty decent measurement of how much light energy is coming at you. And if you compare it to a cloudy morning, where you don't think it's very bright on a dreary day, you'll notice that there will be 1,000, 2,000, even you know, 5,000 Lux, Lux simply being a measure of brightness, of course. And then you can point the same light meter at an indoor light that seems very bright and very intense and it will say 500 Lux and you will realize that the intensity as we measure it, perceptually, is not really what the system is receiving.

That's why exterior light is key. How is this natural stimulation achieved? Or should I just say light stimulation early in the day, what is your typical stimulation? What does Matt Walker do to obtain this light stimulation? - I'm not a model, but usually I will be; If I exercise, I usually exercise most days. And I searched and found a gym that has large windows facing east. This is going to sound so ridiculous, you know? Matt Walker chooses a gym based on that. - I love it - From solar impact so you can't know how to correct your circadian. - There are many criteria for selecting gyms, this one is actually based on physiology and biology etc. - And selfishness for my own dream. - No, it's great.

So you get your exercise and your light stimulation simultaneously? - That's right, yes, yes. - And so you're accumulating cues to wake up early in the day. - Exactly, so both exercise and daylight are wonderful cues for circadian rhythm alignment and also for resetting the circadian rhythm each day. So I'll use both exercises, meaning I'm neither the strong morning nor evening type. And my preference for working out is probably in the middle of the day, probably around 1:00 p.m. m., sorry, not at 1 a.m. m. But I usually work out probably around seven, about 45 to 8 a.m., which is when I usually start my workout.

And there I will start with the cardio spinning bike in front of a window. And luckily, here in California, for the most part, we usually get sunlight. But I don't care because just like you said, even when it's a cloudy day, Lux comes through the light, the intensity is splendid. So I would prefer to favor my exercise just because, also for efficiency, I also want to work during the day. I'll try to match my exercise more with my circadian light exposure than I probably would if I were going to do that. Do I really want to exercise, or do I just want to, you know, make sure it's a good workout?

I'd rather work out, you know, at a different time. But I like that for the daylight. And we can talk about the right time to exercise at some point, because there is a lot of discussion about when is the right time to exercise during sleep. And there we can also dispel some myths. So I think you were spot on with the suggestion: get some daylight in the morning, try to get that exposure, usually at least 30 to 40 minutes. A great paper was recently published in the field of occupational health, where workers were transferred. Offices that only faced the walls and, you know, were not exposed to natural light.

And then they did a period of time during that study where they were actually in front of a window and working. And they measured their sleep and their sleep time and their sleep efficiency increased quite dramatically. I'm forgetting the numbers now, but I think the increase in total sleep time is well over 30 minutes. And the improvement in sleep efficiency was five to 10%. You know, and if you're hitting 80%, you know, average sleep efficiency, that worries us a little bit. But add 10% to that and you're now in a big league of healthy sleepers. And all you did was spend some time working in front of the windows. - That's great and people probably want to consider spending a little less time in sunglasses as long as they can do it safely, you know, driving etc.

He is not alone in his exercise behavior and facing East. So the one and only Tim Ferriss recently told me that his morning routine these days involves jumping rope facing east to stimulate his eyes with sunlight. And as Matt and I know, it has to be in the eyes, right? These portals are the only way to transmit the time of day and wakefulness to the rest of the brain and body. Related to wakefulness, I have several questions about caffeine. The dreaded and beloved caffeine, I love caffeine, but I like it in relatively restricted periods of time.

So I'm a big fan of waking up, and even though I wake up very groggy, I allow my natural wake cues to take hold, which means I wake up very slowly, but I don't drink caffeine right away. I kind of delay my caffeine intake a little bit, usually between 90 minutes and two hours. And that idea came to me through my understanding of how caffeine and the adenosine receptor interact. I have a feeling you'll pronounce adenosine differently than I do. - No, no, I'll do it with that, I'll go with adenosine. - I've tried going with your skeletal instead of skeletal and synapse and synapse. - Hours and schedule. - Here we go.

But to make it really simple for people, how does caffeine work to make us feel more alert? And does the timing of when we ingest caffeine play a big role in whether or not it works for or against us? So maybe let's just start with how does caffeine work? Why do I feel a physical and mental lift when I drink mate or coffee, which are my preferred sources of caffeine? - Yes, I am going to suggest, contrary to what most people would think, drink coffee. - Oh friend, is mate good too? - Yes Yes Yes. - Whatever way you enjoy. - We'll see why I suggest that, but when it comes to coffee, I would say that the dose and the moment create the poison.

So, let's start with how caffeine works. Caffeine belongs to a class of drugs we call psychoactive stimulants. So it works through a variety of mechanisms, one is a dopamine mechanism that we often think of as a reward or chemical, but dopamine is also very much an alerting neurochemical. And caffeine appears to play some role in increasing dopamine. But we think its main mode of action, in terms of making me more alert and keeping me awake throughout the day, is the effects of adenosine. And to explain what adenosine is since the moment you and I woke up this morning, this chemical adenosine has been building up in our brain.

And the longer we are awake, the more adenosine accumulates. Can I ask if it is a mask, does it accumulate in the glia neurons or in the blood vessels? Where does it also accumulate in my body? Where does this adenosine come from? And where does it accumulate? - Yes, so the adenosine we are talking about that creates sleep pressure is a central phenomenon of the brain. And it comes from the neurons themselves that burn energy. And as they burn energy, one of the consequences is this chemical, adenosine. And so, while we're awake during the day and our brain is very metabolically active, it accumulates and builds this adenosine.

Now, the more adenosine we have, the sleepier we will feel. So it's really what we call it sleep pressure. Now, it's not a mechanical pressure, don't worry, your head won't explode, it's a chemical pressure. And it is this weight of drowsiness that we feel gradually growing as the night progresses. - Can I interrupt you again to ask if we know what the circuit mechanism for that is? I mean, I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but for the amateurs and for me, we have brain mechanisms like the locus coeruleus that release things that our brain areas locus coeruleus is just an area of ​​the brain, of course, that release things. that proactively create wakefulness.

So, are those neurons shutting down as a result of having too much adenosine? Or are there areas of the brain that promote drowsiness that are activating? Because of this, can you imagine if both things work in parallel, would one or the other achieve the same goal? - Yes and they are both things. And so there are two main receptors for adenosine: the A1 receptor and the A2 receptor. And they have different ways of activating brain cells or inactivating or decreasing the probability of firing. And adenosine works in this beautiful, elegant way, where it will inhibit and shut down the areas of the brain that promote wakefulness while simultaneously increasing and turning up the volume in the wake-promoting and sleep-promoting range. - Biology is so beautiful. - Oh, it's fantastic. - There is a tug of war, I mean, and we could have a larger discussion at some point about that, everything that sees dark edges sees light edges.

Our ability to smell or feel pressure on this, it's all a tug of war in biology. - Oh, it's great, yes, yes. - This is another example where, as I stay awake longer, adenosine is released in the brain. And my wake areas are being actively deactivated by that adenosine and my sleep areas of the brain, so to speak, are being promoted to be more active, is that correct? - That's right and it is a very progressive process. It's not like a step function, where and sometimes that happens occasionally, but usually it's because you've been driving and we get caffeine in the system, and then all of a sudden you just hit a wall and you just, you know, get wraps around and you go from zero to drowsy level in a short period of time. - What explains the fatigue after a hard conversation?

The desire to sleep or the desire to sleep during a tough conversation? - That's interesting. I think it's usually based solely on personality type interactions. And for the most part. - Not that I've experienced that before. - No people do it with you, but with me, they. - Oh no, no, I have experienced the desire for some conversations, I am halfway through them and I feel like I want to take a nap. - Yes ok. - And I'd love to see, you know, people's sleep history. We've seen that time and time again, but then it could be, you know, with people like me, people just lose the will to live within five minutes of talking to me, so. - It's not true, you hear thatSleep is important. - Not related. - That's great. - And that's a compliment, that's great.

But the way that caffeine comes into this equation, as they say, is usually kind of a linear process. Or maybe it's closer to an exponential in terms of your subjective feeling of sleepiness. And we haven't really been able to measure that in humans, because normally, it's hard to, you know, get something into the brain and be, you know, sucking in, extracting things every two minutes, like you might. do in animal studies. And he keeps asking people every two minutes: how sleepy are you? How sleepy are you? And track to see if there's a linear increase in, you know, adenosine, which then creates an exponential increase in subjective sleepiness or what the dynamic is, but I'm getting a little nerdy.

Caffeine comes into play here, because caffeine gets into your system and attaches to those nice sights of adenosine, the adenosine receptors. But what it doesn't do is hold on to them and activate them. Because if I were doing that, then, you know, in many ways it would cause more kind of drowsiness. It does the opposite. The way caffeine works is that it comes in, competes with pretty sharp elbows and adenosine competitively forces them out of the way, hijacks that receptor by latching onto it, but then essentially blocks it. It does not inactivate the receptor, it does not activate it, it functionally inactivates it in the sense that it leaves it out of the adenosine game.

So it's like someone you know walks into a room and you're about to sit in the chair, and the caffeine comes in and just knocks the chair over. And you say, well, now I have nowhere to sit. And the caffeine still wipes out the adenosine and the adenosine, even though it's in the same concentration in your brain, your brain doesn't know that you've been awake for, you know, 10 hours, 16 hours at that time when you've had a cup of coffee. Because all that adenosine that's still there can't tell the brain that you've been awake for 16 hours because. - But adenosine is still in cerebral circulation. - Correct. - So the real question is what happens when caffeine is released from the adenosine receptor? - Unfortunate things happen.

And that's what we call the caffeine crash. Caffeine has a half-life and is metabolized and. - Do you remember what the half-life is? - Yes, the half-life is between five and six hours. And therefore the quarter life is between 10 and 12 hours. It is variable, different people have different durations of action, but for an average adult five to six hours. We understand that that variation is due to a liver enzyme, or a set of liver enzymes in the class we call cytochrome P450 enzymes. And I think the last time I dug into the data, which is pretty recent, there are two genetic variants that will dictate the enzymatic rate at which the liver breaks down caffeine.

And that's why there are some people who are very sensitive to caffeine and others who say, you know, it just doesn't affect me much at all. - These are the people who drink a double espresso after a 9 pm dinner and can sleep well. - Well, and we will continue. - Well, at least subjectively they think they are sleeping. - Subjectively, yes, and we should also talk about that supposed danger. So the caffeine is in the system and after a period of time, it will be inactive in the system. So let's say you know, I've been awake for 12 hours.

And it's 8pm and I'm feeling a little tired, but I want to keep going and keep working for a couple more hours, so I have a cup of coffee. I suddenly felt tired, but I no longer feel like I've been awake for 12 hours. Because with caffeine in the system, maybe only half of that adenosine communicates through the receptor to my brain. 100% of the adenosine is still there, only half can communicate with my brain. So now I'm like, oh, I haven't been awake for 12 hours, I've only been awake for six hours, I feel great. Then, after a few hours, and the caffeine starts to leave my system, not only do I have the same levels of adenosine that I had before I had that cup of coffee several hours ago, it's that extra, all of the adenosine that's gone. accumulating over the time the caffeine has been in my system. - A kind of adenosine avalanche. - It's a tsunami wave, yes, and that's the caffeine crash. - And it's interesting because the caffeine crash at two in the afternoon when you have work to do is something terrible.

But what about the person? Maybe this person is me, in my 20s, saying: I'm going to drink caffeine all day. And then I want the crash. Because at nine or ten at night, if I stop drinking caffeine, say at six in the afternoon, and I collapse, then I fall asleep, in a night of deep sleep. Is that dream really as deep as I think? Because given the half-life of caffeine that you mentioned a few moments ago, I have to imagine that having some of that caffeine circulating in my system could alter the depth of sleep, or in some ways the architecture of sleep, in a way that even if I managed to Eight, or who knows even 10 hours of sleep, may not be as restorative as I would like it to be. - Yes, and that's the danger, something like that, you know, those people that you described who say, and I, many of them also talk to me and say, look, I can have two espressos with dinner and I sleep well and I I fall asleep.

Because typically those are the two phenotypes that we tend to see with too much caffeine. I just can't fall asleep as easily as I would like, or I fall asleep but can't stay asleep. And caffeine can do both quite potently. - How late in the day do you think someone is assuming? Translate this folks, if you go to bed earlier or later, you should change your times accordingly. But given that someone usually goes to bed around 10:00, 10:30 and falls asleep around 11:00, 11:30. When would you recommend they stop drinking caffeine? And these are not strict prescriptions, but I think people benefit from having some pretty clear guidelines about what might work for them.

Would you say to stop consuming caffeine and at what time of day? - Generally, I would say that taking your usual bedtime and counting backwards from 10 to eight hours is probably getting a little bit close. But if we take about 10 or eight hours of time, that's the time when you should really stop, you know, the suggestion is to consume caffeine. And the reason is that for those people who keep drinking until you know, you're right, well into the night, they can fall asleep fine, maybe they stay asleep, but the depth of their deep sleep is not that deep. not anymore.

And then there are two consequences. The first is that for me, and it can be up to 30%, and for me to reduce your deep sleep by 30%, I would have to age you by 10 to 12 years, or you can just do it every night for yourself with a couple of espressos. The second is that you then wake up the next morning and think, well, I didn't have any problems falling asleep and I didn't have any problems staying asleep, but I don't feel particularly refreshed by sleep. So now I prefer three or four cups of coffee the next morning, instead of just two or three cups of coffee.

And so this cycle of dependency continues, that then you need your stimulants to wake you up in the morning, and then sometimes people use alcohol at night to get them down because they have too much caffeine and alcohol, and we can talk about that. , also has very harmful impacts on sleep. So you're right that it's not just about the amount of sleep, or even difficulty falling or staying asleep, but it can also be deep sleep. But again I think I don't want to scare people. And I mentioned this before, I think one of the real problems I made or mistakes I made, because I didn't know, I had never had much public exposure before the book.

And I was very saddened by the illness and suffering I saw as a result of lack of sleep in our society. And the fact that it wasn't really being discussed much. I kind of came out, you know, a little stubborn, more than a little stubborn. And I think I was, you know, maybe too much throttle and too little, you know, brake, so to speak. And I don't think that's the right way to address a health message within the public sphere. And I've become much softer in the way I think about these things. I have ideas about what the ideal world for sleep is like.

But I also realize that none of us live in this so-called ideal world. - We certainly don't. - So, you know, I want to be very aware of that, and I think I've done a very bad job of being too direct, particularly with people who have difficulty sleeping, you know, from the beginning, when I would. offer these types of messages about sleep. I want to be, you know, I want to be theoretical when it comes to science, I want to be faithful to science. But I also don't want to go out and scare people, especially people who have trouble sleeping, because it'll probably just make things worse.

So I've wonderfully learned to be a slightly better public communicator. I'm nowhere near the position you are in, you're very elegant and it's very intuitive for you. I'm still on training wheels, but I'm getting a little better. But I only want to say that when I talk about caffeine, because it sounds like I'm very open about it. But I'll get back to why I say drink coffee. But I just want to make that point clear. - Yes, well, I appreciate you saying that. And I'm sure our listeners will too. I will still stand by my claim, which is that what you have done for the notion that sleep is vital for all aspects of health and for performance, mental and physical and wakefulness, the message and the packaging it was in content and is.

Clearly, net positive people needed to be informed about this. - Thank you. -The "I'll sleep when I'm dead" mentality is one I had, it's one other people have. People in a lot of vital communities, not just your students, but also people that this message that you provided and continue to provide has had a positive impact on the first responder community, the medical community, there are still steps that need to be taken. the military community and, of course, the civilian community. So I think these adjustments about yeah, caffeine is fine, just restricted to the first part of the day, if possible, most days, I mean, I think it's the law of averages.

It's like the display behavior of light. I think it's essential to see sunlight or natural light, some other form of bright light early in the day, but if you miss a day, it's not like your entire system is going to dissolve into a puddle of tears. That will happen on the second or third day, no, I kid you, you have a couple of days. Biology works on averages except with respect to accidents or injuries. A car accident is a car accident, right? You can't have three of those before brain damage occurs if the accident is serious enough.

But with sleep behavior, these homeostatic type behaviors, or with food, a chocolate ice cream, is it going to kill, you know? No. Every night? Yes. It will drive you crazy and kill you before your time. We know this. That's why I think it's often difficult to reach a middle ground. So I think you've done a phenomenal job. But I appreciate you raising these points. And I think it's clear that we all need to do certain things better, including being kind to ourselves from time to time when we stray from these ideal circumstances. In this sense, I want to talk about alcohol because I believe that caffeine and alcohol represent two opposite ends of the spectrum.

Clearly there are other stimulants. There are your Adderalls and your energy drinks that people use. But alcohol and caffeine are the most commonly consumed stimulants and sedatives, depressants as they are sometimes called. So what happens when someone drinks a glass? We always listen to a glass or two of wine in the evening or a cocktail after dinner or before dinner, how does that affect your sleep? And then we'll make sure to step back in terms of what are the reasonable ranges of behavior when it comes to avoiding alcohol or, if it's age appropriate, etc., enjoying alcohol? - Yes, so alcohol, if we think about classes of drugs, they are in a class of drugs that we call sedatives.

And I think one of the first problems that people often confuse is that alcohol is often used as a sleep aid for people who have difficulty falling asleep when remedies like over-the-counter, etc., or herbal remedies herbals simply have not worked for them. And alcohol, unfortunately, does not help you fall asleep. The first reason most people use it is to try to help them fall asleep. - So, and this process of this event that we call falling asleep, I have to imagine that it is a process. - It is a process. - Like everything in biology, and that process implies in some way, as we talk about pushing and pulling before turning off thinking, planning, etc., and activating some type of relaxation mechanism.

I have to imagine that these two things are knobs turning in opposite directions that give us this result we call falling asleep. It seems that alcohol helpssome people to disconnect their thoughts or their plans. Alright? - Yes it is. And so I think that, you know, if we look at the pattern of brain activity, if I put you inside an MRI scanner, where we look at your brain activity and we watch you fall asleep, some parts of your brain will become less active. . Other parts will become more active. And this is the push pull model. It is inhibition excitation.

But alcohol is quite different in that sense. Alcohol is because it is a sedative, what it really does is essentially try to deactivate the cortex. It is sedating your cortex and sedation is not sleep. But when we have a couple of drinks at night, when we have a couple of drinks to sleep, we confuse sedation with sleep and say, well, always when I have a couple of whiskeys or a couple of cocktails, it always helps me fall asleep. dream. faster. In truth, what's happening is that you're passing out faster, but you're not necessarily falling asleep naturally faster.

That's one of the first things to keep in mind. The second thing with alcohol is that it fragments your sleep. And we talk about the quality of your sleep being as important as the quantity. And alcohol through a variety of mechanisms, some of which are the activation of that autonomic nervous system, that fight or flight branch of the nervous system. In fact, alcohol will make you wake up many more times during the night. Then your sleep is much less continuous. Now, some of those awakenings will be conscious recall the next day, they will simply remember the awakening, many of them will not be.

And yet, your sleep will be plagued by these types of interrupted awakenings during the night. And again, when you wake up the next morning, you don't feel restored by your sleep, you know, fragmented sleep or alcohol-induced non-continuous sleep, it's usually not good quality sleep, but you feel great when you wake up. next day. day. The third part of alcohol in terms of an equation is that it is quite potent at blocking REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. And REM sleep is essential for a variety of cognitive functions. Some aspects of learning and memory appear to be critical for aspects of emotional and mental health. - You have described it before as a kind of self-generated therapy that occurs while we sleep. - Yes, it's night therapy, you know, it's emotional first aid. - Certainly people who don't get enough sleep are very easy to derail emotionally.

Not that you'd want to do that to people, but we all break down emotionally. I always think it's almost as if the sensitivity of our skin can increase. - Yes absolutely. - When we lack sleep. Our emotional sensitivity is such that when we are sleep deprived, so it takes a much finer grit of sandpaper to create that kind of friction, things bother us. - Threshold to shoot. - Even online comments bother us when we are sleep deprived. and never when we are well rested. - I would love to say that I never look at them, except that I look. - Well actually, here I am. - Maybe each of them. - Here I will editorialize because the notion of not looking at comments is not reasonable to ask of any academic, because academics are all trained to look at our teaching evaluations.

And just like with online comments to ignore 20% of them, no, I'm kidding. We analyze them all in any case. So in terms of translating this into behavior, I don't particularly enjoy alcohol, I guess I might be lucky in that sense. But I have also never experienced the pleasure of drinking alcohol. Sometimes I like the taste of a drink, but I never like the feel. So I'm not very familiar with this, but a lot of people are, and I understand it. So, let's say someone enjoys a glass of wine or two with dinner and has dinner at 7 p.m.

Is that likely to disrupt your sleep? Let's make this a series of gradations. - And the answer is yes. I think they once limited themselves to having a glass of wine in the evening with dinner, and I would be disingenuous if I didn't just say that it has an effect. And we can measure that in terms of. - Less REM sleep. - Less REM sleep and one of the fascinating studies, I don't remember what dose, I think they got them close to an illegal blood alcohol standard level, so maybe they were a little drunk. And yes, they see all the changes that we just described: they lose consciousness more quickly, they have fragmented sleep, and they have a significant reduction in REM sleep.

But what was also interesting because REM sleep, as we talked about before, is a time when some hormonal systems are essentially recharged and refreshed. Growth hormone is one of them; There was a drop of more than 50% five zero in their growth hormone release during sleeping with alcohol at night. - And growth hormone is vital for metabolism and tissue repair. - Yes, it's not just for children. - Keep body fat low. - This is essential in adults. - It's essential, in that sense, I just want to highlight the fact that this information that you are sharing that growth hormone is released is strongly linked to the presence of healthy amounts of REM sleep is interesting to me, because I always thought that Growth hormone was released in the first part of the night. - Well, it is released in both, but at different stages, but what we also know is that when REM sleep is interrupted, there are those growth hormone consequences.

So it's not an exclusive system like with testosterone, we can see changes during non-REM sleep, but if you ask when are the peak rates of testosterone release, it's right before entering REM sleep and then during REM sleep. . - And of course, testosterone is important, both for men and women. - For men and women, yes. - Correct, for libido and tissue repair and well-being. No one, regardless of their chromosomal, hormonal or any other background, wants their normal testosterone levels to be drastically reduced, that is simply bad and amounts to a terrible set of physical and psychological symptoms. - Yes, and the risk of mortality associated with low testosterone levels is not trivial. - Prostate cancer. - Exactly, exactly, you know.

So, going back to the point about REM sleep that you mentioned regarding emotional instability, we see that that's one of the things, one of the most reliable signs of insufficient sleep doesn't have to be lack of sleep. What we have discovered over the last 20 years here at The Sleep Center is that we cannot find any major psychiatric disorder in which sleep is normal. So I think the first thing he told us is that there is a very intimate association between emotional mental health and sleep health. But when it also comes to REM sleep, I think what's fascinating is that it's not just about your emotional health, it's not just about your hormonal health; we have also been looking at other aspects of cognition.

But then there was a report, I think it might have been about two years ago, from Harvard, I think it was Beth Clements' group. They found it and replicated it in two different large populations. If you look at the contribution of different stages of sleep to your lifespan, REM sleep was the strongest predictor of your longevity. And it was a linear relationship. Wasn't that kind of a U-shaped or J-shaped curve that we often see during total sleep and mortality risk? It really was linear. That the less REM sleep you had, the greater and greater your chance of death would be.

And then they did it. - Was that death due to natural causes or an accident? Because I imagine that if you don't get enough REM sleep, you're more likely to drive off the highway or fall off a cliff. - I think everything was fatal. - You simply make bad decisions about anything in love relationships, which can also endanger your life. - Yeah, I've tried to lean on that and claim that with those bad relationship situations, oh, I just didn't get enough sleep last night in REM. - Blame it on the dream. - Honey, you know. - The difference between REM sleep. -And, but she is much wiser than she thought.

But they did this big machine learning analysis and it's possible that she's getting these numbers backwards. But I think for every 5% reduction in REM sleep, there was an associated 13% increase in mortality risk. And I might have, I'll have to go back and check. But for me, and in the machine learning algorithm, what they finally spit out was that of all the stages of sleep, REM sleep is the most predictive of life longevity. That's why I often hear people say: How can I sleep more soundly? Or sometimes they say how can I sleep more during my dreams?

And my answer is a question. Why do you want to get more of that? And they'll say, well, isn't that the good thing? And I will say, well, actually at all stages you sleep well. - They are all good things. Well, it's like the exercise thing and it took decades for people to understand that moving around 150, probably 180 minutes a week doing resistance work, zone two cardio type work, correlates with living longer, feeling better , less diabetes, etc. There's really no way around it. I mean, you can take metformin until the cows come home, you can take NMN, all of which I think has its place in certain contexts.

I'm a big fan of the work surrounding all of those protocols. - If the same. - But without getting the right amount of movement, meaning sufficient amounts, no matter how many 12-minute exercise regimens you follow per week, you need that threshold level. And it seems that the same is true for REM sleep and the total amount of sleep. You just have to pay the piper somehow. - Yeah, the return on investment I mean, to flip the coin, the return on investment is astronomical, you know, I think about the dream, it's the moving tide, you know, the one that lifts all those ships of health . - And the most fundamental layer of physical and mental health.

Whenever people ask me, even if I'm not a doctor, they ask me, you know, what should I take or what should I do? The first question is always, how do you sleep? - Nice I love it. - How well do you sleep each night and how long do you sleep? And I always recommend your book, I always recommend your podcast, you know, podcasts that you've been a guest on, etcetera. Who knows, maybe you'll even launch your own podcast sometime soon and stick with it because I think people need to hear from you more often. One thing is that I don't want to return too much to the notion of public health discourse.

But I do want to say that one problem with books in general is that they can be revised, but it's pretty much a one-time thing until the next book comes out. - Yes Yes. One thing I like about the podcast format is that updates can be provided periodically. Corrections and updates as new data comes out. And that's a wonderful aspect of this format. And hopefully, I think the format that you will adopt the world needs to hear from you more often, about sleep and its various contours, not less. So I have a question about alcohol consumption.

Not that we want to promote daytime alcohol consumption, but let's say that a glass or two of wine or cocktail is consumed with lunch, something that is not traditionally done today, or in a happy hour-type cocktail at the end of the afternoon. And then you go to sleep seven or eight hours later, do you think that will improve or somehow mitigate the effects of alcohol? Or if you have a drink, are you basically screwed for the next 24 hours? - No, I think there will be a dependence on the time window. Now, I don't know anyone who has done essentially what you and I would like, which is the dose-dependent time separation curve, where okay, you drink at 10 am, then or at 11, 12 one, two, three, four, five until you know, 10 p.m. and estimate, what is the radius of the explosion?

And is it linear? Or is it non-linear? Is it such that only when you drink in the last four hours? You just hit this exponential and it's bad, bad, bad? Or is there some other curve that we could imagine that there will be many possibilities? But certainly what we know is that the less alcohol and the less and more specifically the metabolic byproducts, aldehydes and ketones, are the kind of nefarious players. - And not ketones, which people are excited about, the other ketones, chemists know what we mean. - But this is not about ketogenesis, please don't think that. - This is not ketogenesis, there are ketone bodies that are released after ingesting alcohol and they are not the positive type that a ketogenic diet could promote. - Well, I think in terms of that alcohol profile, we certainly know, you know, as you get into the evening hours, again, the timing and the dose creates the poison.

But I think it's also important, again, from a public message standpoint, and thank you, I think at some point I'm leaning toward the podcast kind of field of consideration, but I don't want to be puritanical here, you know, I'm just a scientist and I'm not here to tell anyone how to live. All I'm trying to do is empower people with some of the scientific literature onthe dream. And then you can make the informed decisions you want. Now it turns out that, unlike you, I'm not a big drinker. It's just because I've never liked the taste. And I'm surprised they haven't taken away my British passport because I don't like lager or beer.

But I also want to say that life has to be lived to a certain extent, it's about checks and balances. So, you know, if I go out and have ice cream, I don't really like those either, but, you know, sure, I know my blood glucose isn't going to be high. Ideal for another 12 hours perhaps. That is simply the price you pay for having some kind of relaxed and fun life. I don't want to look back on life and think, God, you know, I lived to be 111 and it was completely miserable, you know? - Good. - So, but it's about some kind of balance.

And my job is not to tell people a recipe for life, but simply to offer scientific information. - No, I think you're doing an excellent job with that. People always say we have all these neural circuits and if it works correctly, we all have a circuit that allows us to skip information or however we want, right, if the circuits between your brain and your thumbs are working, you can slide. You can then move on to the next content as you like. I would like to ask about marijuana and CBD. This is a discussion that I think five years ago would have ventured into the realm of illegal, but now in many places not all medical marijuana is approved or legal.

And certainly its use is widespread. I certainly don't recommend people do it. I have my own thoughts on CBD marijuana. I've been lucky, I guess I don't particularly like marijuana or CBD. I don't even know if I've ever tried CBD. First of all, does marijuana alter the depth of sleep, the architecture of sleep? And if so, as with alcohol and caffeine when you ingest it or when it's in your bloodstream, relative to when you go to sleep, does that play a role? So does marijuana disrupt sleep? - If it does. And there's a pretty good amount of data on how we can break down cannabis into two of its key ingredients.

We have THC tetrahydrocannabinol and we have CBD, and CBD is less psychotic than what we consider non-psychoactive components. In other words, when you take CBD, you don't get high. If you take THC, you can get high. That's the psychoactive part of the equation. - Are both considered sedatives in the technical sense? - No, they are not. Neither of us have that class at the moment. THC appears to speed up the time you fall asleep. But again, if you look at the electrical brain wave signature that indicates you're falling asleep with and without THC, it's not going to be an ideal choice.

So you could argue that it's not natural, but a lot of people use THC for that fact, because they have a hard time falling asleep. And it can hasten the onset of at least unconsciousness, I guess is the best way to describe it. But there are problems with THC. And they are double. The first is that it also, but through different mechanisms, seems to block REM sleep. And that's why many people tell me when they consume, look, you know, I was definitely dreaming. Or I don't remember, you know many of my dreams. And then when they stopped using THC, let's say I was having, you know, really, really crazy dreams and the reason is because there's a rebound mechanism.

REM sleep is very smart. And alcohol is the same in this sense, it is the same homeostatic mechanism. Some people will tell me, look, if I have a bit of a wild Friday night with some alcohol, you know, maybe I'll sleep well into the next morning. And I'll just have these really intense dreams. So, and I thought I wasn't having any REM sleep, well, the way it works is that it's in the middle of the night, actually, when alcohol blocks REM sleep. And your brain is smart: It understands how much REM sleep you should have had and how much REM sleep you haven't had because alcohol has been in your system.

And finally, in those early hours of the morning, when you arrive at six, seven, 8:00 a.m. m., suddenly, your brain not only goes back to having the same amount of REM as it would have had, it does so and also tries to recover all the REM sleep it lost. Do you get all your REM sleep back? No, it's not like that. You never regain all REM sleep, but you try. And then you have these really intense periods of REM sleep. Hence you have really intense strange dreams. And that's what happens with THC too: you build up this REM sleep pressure, this REM sleep debt, will you ever pay it off?

It doesn't look like you're going to get back everything you lost, but will you get any of it back? Yes, the brain will start to eat more because it has been deprived of REM sleep for so long. But one of the biggest THC issues we're worried about is withdrawal dependence. So when you start using THC for sleep, there can be a tolerance to dependence. Then you start needing more to get the same sleep benefit. And when you stop using it, you usually suffer from very severe rebound insomnia. And in fact, it is so potent that it is typically part of the clinical THC withdrawal profile of cannabis. - And there is withdrawal due to anxiety.

You know, I'm not asking anyone to change their behavior, just like you said, we try to inform people about what the science says and let them make decisions for themselves. People who are regular marijuana smokers, if many insist that they are not addicted, and maybe in fact they do not follow the classic addiction profile, I don't know. I guess some do, some don't. But if you ask them right, what if I cut out all marijuana use for, I don't know, two weeks? That thought scares many of them. And many of them will experience intense anxiety without marijuana, which may not speak of addiction, but of some type of dependence.

And again, I know a lot of pot smokers, some of whom have very high-paying jobs and they get by. - Here in Berkeley I don't know any of those. - Yeah, none of those, right. What about CBD? I mean, we hear so much about CBD, that I've been a little concerned by the fact that analysis of many CBD supplements has confirmed that, as with melatonin, the levels reported on the labels, in no case The shape, shape or form match the levels that different supplements actually contain. Sometimes the levels are much higher than the labels indicate. Other times, it is much less.

What effect does taking CBD have on sleep architecture and quality? - At this point, I don't think we have enough data to make any kind of meaningful sense of it. However, I think the picture that is emerging is probably this. First of all, CBD does not appear to be as harmful as THC. So we can start by saying does it create, you know, potential problems, not necessarily of the nature that we see with THC. But the devil is a bit in the details of the data we have and it gets to the valid point of purity.

At low doses, CBD may appear to promote awakening. So at lower doses, let's look at sort of five or 10 milligrams and, trying to remember some of the studies that come to mind, it can actually improve wakefulness and cause problems with sleep. Only once you reach the higher dose range, there seems to have been some, you know, increases in drowsiness, or sedation-type increases. And I typically think that's more than 25 milligrams, to the best of my recollection of the data. And then when we look at animal models, we typically see the same kind of profile as well. So the question is and now again, you just don't know about purity.

It's very difficult, although I think, once again, that I am not a user, not necessarily because you know, I have something against it. It's just that that's not necessarily my cup of tea. There are some companies that are now doing independent third party lab testing. I don't know how funny that is, so I don't get it. - I think some supplement companies are quite honest and accurate about the amounts of various substances found in their products and others are not. And I think there is a huge variety. I think the FDA is starting to explore CBD.

I certainly saw some grant ads exploring the role of CBD. Most of the work on CBD is done by the general public, adjusting it and seeing how it feels. I gave it to my dog ​​who had some sleep disorders related to dementia and it actually created intense wakefulness that completely ruined his sleep. - Okay, it seems that it just wasn't like that. -He is a bulldog. So if he's going to have access to sleep, he'll take it. - Well. -He really ruined it, he took it away, he made it better. But you know, that's a canine, so. - Right, and it could also have been dose related. - Or folders or other things that are in there, of course. - Right, yes and we, but right now, if we did and I'm not making the statement, I don't think anyone would be able to make the statement now.

But if it turns out that CBD is potentially beneficial for sleep, how can we mechanically reconcile it? And I think, at least for me, there are at least three candidate mechanisms that I've been exploring and thinking about. The first is that it is thermoregulatory. And what we found in some animal models is that CBD will create a hypothermia profile. In other words, it cools the body to reduce core body temperature. And that's something we know is good for sleep. The second is that it is an anxiolytic, which can reduce anxiety. And that data is actually pretty solid, even with some functional imaging work that has come out recently showing that an epicenter of emotion called the amygdala deep in the brain is calmed by CBD.

So I think it's at least a second non-mutually exclusive. - That's great, that's auspicious. - You know, possibility. I think the third is some recent data that suggested that CBD may alter adenosine signaling. So it doesn't necessarily mean that more adenosine is produced, but what it can do is perhaps modulate the sensitivity of the brain, so that the weight of that same adenosine has more weight in your brain signal and therefore creates this pressure more strong. For sleeping. So I think these are all tentative mechanisms. I think any of them are viable, I think all three are viable together.

But right now I'm thinking, does that help to think about the interplay of THC and CBD? - Yes, a lot and in fact it's a perfect transition from when we talk about caffeine, alcohol, THC and CBD, we frame them anyway, as things done in moderation at appropriate times are probably good for most. people. Certainly not for everyone, there will be differences in sensitivity. But doing it at the wrong times, and certainly in the wrong amounts, will greatly disrupt this vital stage of life we ​​call sleep. It seems like CBD represents a sort of bridge to the topic I'd like to talk about next, which are things that promote healthier sleep or that somehow contribute to improved sleep architecture and quality.

So I'd love to chat for a moment about the type of sleep supplement, the original, I should say not the granddaddy, but the OG of sleep supplements, which is melatonin. The so-called dark hormone that is inhibited by light, etc. Frame melatonin for us in the context of its natural form. And then I would like to talk about melatonin supplementation because in my experience, every time I say the word melatonin, people think of melatonin supplementation, which in itself is an interesting phenomenon that makes people realize its role as something that is taken. , we often forget that this is something we produce endogenously.

I'd love for you to comment specifically, although without necessarily getting into the precise values ​​of nanograms per deciliter, what are the typical amounts of melatonin that we release each night? And then I'd like to compare it to what's in, say, a three- or six-milligram tablet that you can buy at the pharmacy. - Of course yes. - So I'm going to sleep at night, has melatonin already been activated before I close my eyes and lay my head down? - Usually, yes, if your system is working the right way, as it begins to get dark, let's say we look at hunter-gatherer tribes that are untouched by electricity, and that is the quintessential puritan state . when it comes to the influence of electric light.

And normally, as dusk approaches, that's when melatonin starts to increase. And so, when you lose the brake pedal, the light coming through your eyes normally acts as a hard brake pedal that you step on and prevents the release and production of melatonin. As that light brake pedal begins to fade with the evening, we release the brake pedal and melatonin, the melatonin tap opens and melatonin begins to be released. And usually we'll see this rising peak of melatonin at some point, usually an hour, two hours later or around, and it varies for different people around the time of sleep.

But it's already been going on for a few hours before you actually fall asleep. - Interesting, I was always taught and I suppose it is still true that the only source of melatonin in thebrain and body is the pineal gland. Is that still true? - Yes, it seems that the best thing is that we can distinguish the shape of the pineal gland, which means a kind of pea. Actually, I think people often say that it is like a pea, I think if you look at the Latin derivative, in fact, I think it is derived from the pineapple, not the pea, because in fact, if you look at the pineal , it's more of a pineapple.

It has a shape and that is why it is aptly named. - Any human brain that I have ever dissected or I confess that I have dissected a lot because I teach neuroanatomy and have done so for years. I love looking at the pineal, it's the only structure in the brain that isn't on both sides. It's usually pretty easy to find. And it's a pretty good size. It looks like a pea. And he's sitting there. And it is notable that it releases this hormone. Our entire lives are probably inhibited by light. Then our pineal begins to release this into the general circulation.

I have to imagine that we have melatonin receptors in our brain and body. - That's right, so yes, essentially, your brain has a central 24-hour master clock called the super charismatic core that maintains internal time. Now, left alone, it's not an accurate watch, nothing a Swiss watchmaker would be proud of. It runs a little long and slow. - It's like an American watch. By the way, there are a couple of good American watches, the Hamilton ones are very nice, but. - It is very similar to an insect. - We are not famous for our timekeeping or our punctuality, but the Swiss are. - It's not quite Swiss, it's more like Berkeley, which is very relaxed.

Oh, you know what? So in most adults, the average adult, I should say, their biological clock typically runs a little bit longer, it's about 24 hours and 30 minutes, I think was the last estimate. But the reason we don't move forward in time and we don't consistently run, you know, later and later, 30 minutes by 30 minutes by 30 minutes every day, is because the central brain clock is regulated by external things. such as daylight and temperature, as well as food and activity. These are all essentially different fingers that appear and on the 24 hour clock wristwatch they will take out the dial and reset it each day to exactly 24 hours.

And I emphasize that because you know the 24-hour time, but you need to communicate that to the rest of the brain and the body, also the 24-hour time. And one of the ways it does that is by communicating a chemical signal of light and day 24 hours a day using this hormone, melatonin. And when it's at low levels, or nonexistent, it's communicating the message that it's daytime, and for us diurnal species, it's saying it's time to be awake. However, at night, as dusk approaches and melatonin is released and we start to release it, then it sends a signal to the rest of the brain and the body: look, it's getting dark and it's night.

And for us diurnal species, it's time to think about sleep. So melatonin essentially tells the brain and body when it's day and when it's night, and with that when it's time to sleep and when it's time to wake up. And so, that's why melatonin helps with the timing of sleep onset. But it doesn't really help with the generation of the dream itself. And that's why we'll move on to what those supplementation studies have taught us. - Then it tells the rest of my brain and body that it's time to go to sleep. Maybe it will even help with the transition to sleep, but it will not guarantee, for example, the overall structure of sleep or the conductor will be the one who guides the orchestra of sleep, so to speak, throughout the night. - Yes that's it. - It's more like people who essentially take you to your seat, sit you down, and give you your program. - Right, exactly yes, a kind of less sophisticated analogy I have is, you know, melatonin is like the starting official in the 100 meter race at the Olympics. - That's a better analogy, yes. -He calls all the dream runners to the line and begins the great dream race. - Yes, better analogy on delforma's part. - It doesn't help to dissipate, no, no, no, no. - It comes from the researcher of everyone's sleep. - But he does not participate in the race itself.

This is a completely different set of chemicals and brain regions. Which brings us perhaps to the question of supplementation: is it useful for sleep? Will I sleep more? Will I sleep better? And if so, what dose should I take? Unfortunately, evidence in healthy nonelderly adults suggests that melatonin is not particularly useful as a sleep aid. I think there's a recent meta-analysis that showed that when you looked at all the different parameters of sleep, melatonin, and a meta-analysis for those who don't know what it is, it's a kind of scientific method that we use where we put all the individual studies together. and we put them in a big cube and do this kind of sophisticated statistical sleight of hand.

And we try to get a big picture of what all those individual studies tell us. And what that meta-analysis told us is that melatonin will only increase the total amount of sleep by 3.9 minutes, on average. - Minutes? - Minutes. - Not even the percentage. - And it will only increase your sleep efficiency by 2.2%. So it's really. - This is like they say, in certain parts of California, it's a weak sauce, it's a weak sauce effect. - The sauce is not strong, the strength is not strong in it, being a tool that in healthy people who are not of legal age, does not seem to be especially beneficial.

Now you know, results may vary. Each one is different, of course. So we're talking about the average, the so-called average human adult here. - Well, melatonin, in defense of what you say and I should also mention, I have a colleague at Stanford, Jamie Seitzer. - Oh, wonderful, genius. -Chuck Seitzer's lab at Harvard Med, where he also trained an excellent sleep researcher. I asked him about melatonin and he basically said the same thing you just said, which is very little to no evidence that it can improve sleep, and yet it's probably the most common. He consumed so-called sleeping pills. - Hundreds of millions of dollars industry. - Yeah, so maybe it's a massive placebo effect or operating through some other mechanism related to calming anxiety? - Well, yes, that is essentially interesting, you know, there are some studies in which some effects are seen.

Now, when you average all the studies, it just doesn't seem to have an effect. But let's assume that for some people, it does have an effect. Let's not rule it out completely, how could it have that effect? One of the reasons I've become a little more optimistic about melatonin from a sleep perspective and then melatonin in general, maybe you can talk about this too, as a countermeasure when you're not getting enough sleep. There are two different routes there. The first reason I think it might have a benefit for some people's sleep is not because it helps generate sleep;

We know better, but because it also appears to reduce core body temperature. - There it is, temperature again. Nowadays I am increasingly fascinated by temperature, as perhaps it is not just a reflection of the state of the brain, wakefulness and sleep, but is actually a quite powerful lever. - I think it's both things. - And with all the interest in ice baths and hot showers and saunas and stuff, something we'll definitely touch on. Temperature variation is very key. So if melatonin lowers your body temperature by about one degree, something you said earlier can help induce a sleepy state.

Maybe that's what allows people to fall asleep. - I think that's a possibility. I don't think melatonin alone will decrease, you know, one degree, certainly not one degree Celsius. And in order for us to fall asleep and then stay asleep all night, we need to reduce our core body temperature by about one degree Celsius, or two to three degrees Fahrenheit. And that is why it is always easier to fall asleep in a room that is too cold than one that is too hot. I think that's a potential avenue that we're considering thinking more deeply about when it comes to melatonin.

And then the other one is melatonin as an antioxidant. But let me postpone that for now. Because it will only cause us to go astray. That's what we know so far about melatonin in terms of its supplemental benefit or lack thereof. Two final points that I shouldn't forget, one is the only population in which we typically see any benefit, and it is often prescribed in older adults, because like us. - Does older mean 60 years or older? - Yes, 60, 65 years or older, because as we age, normally we can have what is called calcification of the pineal gland.

Which means that that gland that releases melatonin no longer works as well. As a result, they tend to have a flatter overall curve of melatonin release throughout the night. It is not this beautiful and charming peak, and this megaphone message of its darkness, please go to sleep. This is why older adults may have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. It is not the only reason by any means. But it's one of the reasons and that's why melatonin supplementation in those cohorts, older adults and especially older adults with insomnia, people have thought about it as maybe an appropriate use case. - Well, on that note, if we were to compare doses, I don't know, would we know how much melatonin is normally released into the bloodstream per night?

And can we use that as kind of a rule of thumb to compare the typical amount that someone would supplement? Typically, the melatonin supplements I see at the drugstore and elsewhere online range from one milligram to 12, or even 20 milligrams. My guess is that the normal release of melatonin during a night, typical of someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s, would be much less than that, am I right or not? - Yes, it is many magnitudes smaller. And this is one of the problems is that I see that too. I see, typical doses are, you know, five milligrams or 10 milligrams, and of course, you know, if you're a supplement company, you know, put 10 milligrams versus five milligrams, if that's what you really want. doing, which we will also talk about purity.

You know, it's like the super shot size, no one wants to lower the price, they just want you to know, we'll just give you more for the same price. And that's how we will compete. So there's been an increasing arms race in melatonin concentration, and it doesn't really seem significant for sleep in any way. What we've actually found is that the optimal doses for getting sleep benefits in the populations we've looked at are between 0.1 and 0.3 milligrams of melatonin. In other words, typical doses are usually 10 times, 20 times what your body would naturally expect. And this is what we call a supraphysiological dose.

In other words, is it far above what is physiologically normal? You know, and to put that in context, imagine I told you: I want you to eat 20 times as much food today. - I thought you were going to use testosterone as an example. You're going to take 300 times the normal amount of testosterone that we know, that would have tons of harmful effects, that would be terrible. And you can still do this. One thing that worries me about these super physiological levels of melatonin is that many years ago, in fact, here at Berkeley, when I was a graduate student, we injected melatonin into seasonally breeding animals.

And the consequence of that was that their gonads, whether it was their testicles or their ovaries, would shrink hundreds of times or more. In other words, they would go from having good-sized, healthy hamster testicles, what a hamster would consider a healthy size for a hamster, to the size of a grain of rice. From an almond to the size of a grain of rice. I had to see that only once to be very concerned about the super physiological levels of melatonin. And I realized that melatonin does different things in different species. We are not hamsters, we are not seasonal breeders, seasonally restricted breeders, there may be more breeding during certain seasons, I don't know that data.

But still, hormones are powerful. And surely there is an optimal level, and sometimes we see that going slightly above the endogenous levels of certain hormones, not always, can have beneficial effects. And sometimes it can have harmful effects. I'm just concerned about taking high levels of a hormone that has effects on the reproductive axis and that's one of the reasons I get really concerned when I see people get really aggressive about melatonin supplementation by taking 100, 10, 500, sometimes even 10,000. times the amount we would normally release. That's my concern, although it's not nested in any specific human studies. I just don't like to see, I certainly don't want to see other people and I don't want to personally take a hormone that is known to suppress androgens at high levels.

Why should I take that? That's the question I ask myself. - I think that's a very good point. And if you look at some of the existing evidence, you know, the lethality of melatonin, if you want to go to that extreme, for the most part, it's pretty safe. - You mean you can drink a lot before you die? -Right, exactly yes. - But I don't know if that's the criterion. - That should be your criteria, because, you know, you really need to think about your health, not just whether this is going to kill you or not as the decision matrix through which you take a pill.

And it's about this concern around melatonin because there was a study, I think you also mentioned one that they looked at, I think it was at least over 20 different brands of melatonin supplements. And what they found is that based on what it said, on the bottle versus what was in the capsules themselves, it ranged from I think it was 83% less than what it said on the bottle to 478% more than what it said. in the bottle. Now, if that's a 10 milligram pill, you know, and it's 478% more than 10 milligrams, and we're already at 10 milligrams, many tens of times more than a physiological rather than a supraphysiological dose, we need to be a little thoughtful. . - Yes, remember those hamster friends.

Well, I appreciate the deep dive on melatonin because I think people need to understand that it's nuanced, that it's a matter of dosage, timing, etcetera. And then it can have its place, as you mentioned, in older people. And I should mention that I am an avid consumer of supplements that I believe in and have been for a long time. So I am in no way against supplements. Some supplements I refuse to take or avoid taking others, I take them quite avidly and in that sense, personally and I don't know what you think about it. But there are some things that I have personally found beneficial.

I love your thoughts on them. And I would love for you to tell me that everything I'm going to refer to is placebo, that would be fine. So that's what we do, we're scientists, we argue and then we stay friends as it goes away. So magnesium, there are many forms of magnesium. Magnesium citrate is, as we know, an excellent laxative. Magnesium malate seems, at least according to some studies, to relieve some of the delayed-onset muscle soreness, it does not seem to create a type of sedation. Two forms of magnesium that I know of are magnesium biglycinate and magnesium threonate.

We believe, based on the data, that we can more actively cross the blood-brain barrier. So you put it in your gut, but some of it needs to go to your brain to have the sedative effect. What do you think about magnesium supplementation? Do you supplement with magnesium? And what studies would you like to see done if they haven't been done yet? - So I don't take magnesium supplements. But I do think threonate is interesting because of that greater ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and actually have an effect on the central nervous system. And the reason why that interests me is because sleep is done by the brain's brain, and also by the brain, as well as the body.

We just don't have a particularly good set of studies that have focused exclusively on threonate. We have many studies that have looked at magnesium in general for sleep. And in general, the data is not convincing. - Interesting. - And for a while I was confused why, where did this kind of magnesium myth come from? So I started looking at the literature and the best I can do is trace it, at least as far as I can tell, back to the first studies showing that people with magnesium deficiency also had problems sleeping. Of course, they had other problems too, but sleep problems were one of those after-effects that came from having lower magnesium levels.

And when they supplemented with magnesium and tried to restore those levels, some of those sleep problems went away. And then that seems to have gotten lost in a kind of game of whispers in the room and has translated into people who have no problems sleeping, who have healthy sleep, and who are generally healthy, and who have normal, healthy levels of magnesium, if they take more magnesium, they will sleep better. And the data really isn't good. Again, the only study I have seen where magnesium did have some effectiveness was in a study with older adults, I think they were between 60 and 80 years old, they may have been exclusively women, now I think about it and I also had insomnia.

And in that population, some benefits were seen. And I guess because it's also an older community, they were probably magnesium deficient. So they fit into the previous category of just when you're deficient and you get it back, you can help your sleep get back to normal. But if you're not deficient and you're healthy, you're not old and you don't have insomnia, and you're supplementing thinking it's making you sleepy, right now the data doesn't support that. But I don't think we have enough data on threonates to talk about that, because so far it could just be a blood-brain barrier problem with the other forms. - So maybe some additional studies looking specifically at threonate or biglycinate would be helpful. - I would love to have. - Magnesium is involved in so many cellular processes that you can imagine that this effect, if it really exists, is, as we say, in science in the noise, that is, in the fluctuation of the data, but to isolate the real effect it is It is necessary to do some more refined studies.

What are some of the things that are of interest to you, if not things that you pick up by chance? These are not things I personally take mainly because I just haven't experimented with them. valerian root is one, sour cherry and kiwi. Tell me about valerian root, tart cherry and kiwi. This is new for me. I've certainly heard of them. And cherry kiwi pie sounds delicious, but what's going on with cherry kiwi pie with valerian root? Are we talking about eating tart cherries and kiwis and valerian roots? - Yes. - Or are they talking about taking them in pill form? - They are generally supplements, but they also work for both sour cherries and kiwis.

It's the actual fruit, you know, itself. Valerian is often touted as a beneficial sleep aid and many people swear by it as well. But the evidence is actually quite against that. - Oh really? - It's not that it makes sleep worse, but at least seven good studies that I have been able to find, and they are usually of the type of what we call a randomized crossover design with placebo. And I won't bore people with what that means, it's one of the. - Good studies, solid studies. - Yes, it is one of the gold standard methods we have when we look at intervention studies, such as drug studies.

Five of the seven found no benefits of valerian root on sleep. Then, in two of the seven, the data was simply insufficient. I think it was a power issue where they just couldn't draw any solid conclusions. And then I think there was the most recent study, I think it looked at two different doses of valerian and I could have been wrong and they just failed to find any effect again, but the surprising part of that article, as I remember, is that it had this big table with all the different sleep metrics they looked at. And there were over 25 different things they tried to see if valerian had an impact.

And none of them were significant. Which surprises me because we know from statistical probabilities that if you just run 25 random statistical tests, chances are probabilistically, you're only going to get a significant result by chance. And even with chance on their side, they still couldn't find the benefit of valerian. - So valerian root might be worse than nothing, if anything, so to speak. - I mean, again, we can also think about the placebo effect. And I would say that if you feel like it's benefiting you, and with all the caveats that we have with supplements, things like melatonin purity, concentration, etc., maybe it's not harmful or detrimental.

But I'm not a doctor and I'm not telling anyone that we have all these warnings about not recommending such things. - And we will include them, I mean, I always say, you know, we are not doctors, we do not prescribe anything. We are scientists and teachers, that's why we profess things. It is up to people to be responsible for their own health. Not only to protect us but to protect themselves. I want to hear about cherry pie and kiwi. What's the story there? - Strange, isn't it? I was, you know, I'm a pretty hard scientist, and when people you know, a few years ago, started saying, oh, sour cherries, it's the thing or kiwis, I was thinking, oh, my God, he sounds a bit. - You've been in California too long. - Yes, I know, yes, the sun has softened me a little.

But I thought: one of the things we have to do as scientists is to be as open-minded as possible. And I shouldn't be too quick to dismiss it. So I went to literature and started reading everything I could about it. And there were three really good randomized placebo crossover trials with tart cherries. And what they found was that in one study, it reduced the amount of time you spent awake at night by more than an hour. And then in the other two studies, one of them found that it increased the amount of sleep by 34 minutes. The other increased the amount of sleep by 84 minutes.

Which, you know, are these, and the surprising thing is that they were independent studios, I think, which means they were from independent groups, and these were, you know, some of these guys, you know, and girl, I pretty much know. good. , and they really are. - You know and trust their work. - True, I also trust his work a lot. - Were they eating real tart cherries or drinking the juice or in capsule form? - It was juice. So in all three studies, it was juice. Although I believe it is a supplement, you can buy it in capsules and we have no idea if that changes the benefit or not.

What was also interesting, I think, was the last study where they got an increase in sleep of 84 minutes and also a significant decrease in daytime naps. - That's one I could certainly take advantage of. I love my daytime naps, but I would also love to skip them. - Right, and we can talk about naps and the pros and cons of that. Which made me think that if that's the case, the net benefit on overall sleep wouldn't be any different. It's just that it decreases the amount of time some people spent sleeping during the day and returned it at night.

But that wasn't the case, because if you added up the total amount of sleep they got without tart cherries, both naps and nighttime sleep combined, even then, when you took tart cherries, you still got some net benefit, total amount of sleep. So far, when it comes to supplements and those types of studies, they are good studies and the data looks interesting. But as a drug itself, you know, if it were a clinical drug, you know, three studies that are kind of small in nature and have some positive benefit, that's what we would call preliminary data of maybe a type of chin scratch. , so keep this in context. - Yeah, and depending on the safety margins, one might think, well, since it's a tart cherry rather than some pharmaceutical product that you need a prescription for, then, you know, some people's threshold for experimenting with supplements is quite low.

For some people, their threshold is quite high. I feel like, you know, there are two categories, or at least two categories of people, out there. People who hear oh, cherry pie can improve sleep, and we'll run out to try it. And to people who hear well, that seems crazy. Why would I do that? But of course we have to remind people that tart cherry isn't really what we're talking about, presumably if this is a real effect, and it seems like it might be because there's a compound in tart cherries. - That's how it is. - That if we called it, whatever, five alpha six, you know, some molecule, if we refer to it by its technical name, then people would say, oh, that sounds like a very interesting technical way of approaching sleep. but it doesn't sound very natural.

So both groups are a little bit wrong in the sense that people who think that everything that comes from natural foods, plants, etc., things that grow from the earth, all that is safe, that's not true. And people who think that pharmaceuticals are if there is no evidence with the purified molecule, then something is not useful. Well, that's certainly not true. Somewhere in the middle, I think the answer lies, which is to say, I find cherry pie to be at least an interesting potential sleep aid. Intriguing sleep aid potential and highlighter potential. It certainly intrigues me to the point that I might experiment a little, but I'm an experimenter myself.

Before I ask you about kiwi, I had pretty good results taking something called apigenin, which is a derivative of chamomile. But in supplement form, I think I take 50 milligrams about 30 minutes before bed. And I subjectively experience a better night's sleep, so to speak. I do not measure, I confess, I do not measure my dream. I'm not a sleep tracking guy. But, you know, there are some articles that are not what we would call published in Blue Ribbon journals, but they have control groups, and it seems kind of interesting. And when I say apigenin, people are a little intrigued by this molecule.

Chamomile has long been thought to be a sedative, a mild sedative, buta sedative? Do you drink chamomile tea? Do you take apigenin? What do you think about apigenin? - If I do not do it. And I've also looked at some of the data on sleep. At this point, the best I can tell is that this is mostly subjective data rather than strict, objective measures of sleep. And that's why right now, you know, it's not clear, there's no comment, but it's just not clear, I don't rule it out, because I think both you and I attribute to the idea of ​​absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

So keep an open mind, at least that's what I tell myself. I think that if you find a benefit and you can do what I would think if I were personally experimenting, which is the positive and negative parts of the experiment, what I mean by that is, you know, let's say that Now I want to, you know, think of some kind of sleep supplement, I'll take some kind of baseline set of records for a month and just evaluate where I'm at, kind of a free supplement. Then I'll continue for a month or two, whatever I'm thinking of taking, and I don't take supplements.

But let's say I want to and experiment with it. And I feel like, based on my metrics, whether they're objective from my aura ring or subjective from whatever I'm writing in the morning, you know, and they're both important and valid, subjective and objective, we like both. The dream world. And I think, okay, look, it clearly seems to have some kind of effect. The key, however, is to do the negative experiment, which will now run for another month, and see if things get worse. And if I can see that by directionality, then I'm starting to think that maybe I'm believing it a little more.

So that's the way I would normally approach, you know, a supplementation regiment if I had to do it. And that's me, that's how my mind works, but. - No, that's great. I think it is very scientific and organized in a way that allows you and would allow other people to make very informed decisions for themselves. I like that. I like to think in terms of manipulating any aspect of our biology, that behavioral tools are always the first line of entry, then nutrition, everyone has to eat sooner or later, even if you're fasting, then maybe supplements and then the prescription medications. , and then perhaps the brain-machine interface, devices that are used to induce something.

And that can be done in combination. But what worries me is when I hear people say, well, what should I take without thinking about their behavior, their behavior when looking at the light, etc.? But of course these things work in combination. - And I think, you're right, there's a lot of things when it comes to sleep, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that doesn't necessarily require you to, you know, put in exogenous molecules, in other words, things like supplements. your body or, you know, using different types of drugs to help you get there. Now, when it comes to prescription sleeping pills, I think I have once again been too blunt.

We know in clinical

practice

that there may be a time and place for things like sleeping pills, which are a short-term solution for certain forms of insomnia, but are not recommended in the long term. And we also know that there are many other ways that you can get help with your sleep or you can get a healing sleep profile through things like cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, which is a non-drug psychological approach. - And quite effective from what I understand, good data. - Just as effective as sleeping pills, big data more effective in the long term.

There's a recent study published that after working with a therapist, some of the benefits lasted almost a decade, you know, now if you go off sleeping pills, you usually get rebound insomnia, where your sleep is just as bad again if No. worse. And I think the same thing is true, when we think about supplementation, there are so many things that are easy to implement when it comes to sleep, that don't require venturing into those waters. And again, we're not here to tell anyone whether they should venture out or not, that's completely their choice. All I'm saying is that if you want to think about optimizing your sleep, there are several ways to do it that don't necessarily require you to ingest or inject anything, or you know, smoke or anything, or freebase. - And whose safety margins are quite wide.

That's the other one. - Yes, of course, thank you. So, speaking of ripe fruit, I don't know how it's actually hung, but what about kiwi? To me they are delicious anyway. - Yes, the humble kiwi called no should not be confused with the flightless bird of New Zealand, which is the native bird there. We are talking about the kiwi, the fruit, whose trees and bushes are mostly from Southeast Asia. Kiwis had previously been touted as having a potential sleep benefit, which again made me happy. I was curious and threw it away at first. To my knowledge, there is really only one published study in humans that has any value.

But what they did find was that it decreased the speed of time it took you to fall asleep. - This is you eating the whole kiwi. Then it's about eating the whole kiwi. - With the skin, do I eat the skin, do people shudder when they see me, or do I not eat the skin? - Well, I think no, no, no, I think the idea is some of the good things and I will come to that this can be in the skin itself. - Oh wonderful, thank you. You just helped me win a bet. I'll give you your share. - Okay, okay, yes, you can pay me later.

By the way is this skin used? No no no. He just told me to say that's how he wins, no he didn't. So skin seems to be part of this possible sleep equation. And in that study, you fell asleep faster and stayed asleep longer and spent less time awake during the night. And I thought, well, you know, that's a study, what can you really do with that? However, there was another study in an animal model that is a little more interesting. And once again, they found a very similar phenotype where the rats, sorry, they were mice, the mice fell asleep faster.

And they also spent more time sleeping. Sleep duration also increased. Which was also interesting from a mechanistic standpoint and this is not the mechanism that I think binds tart cherries, kiwi and, you know, things like melatonin, because I think there might be a common binding mechanism. What they found in the animal study is that they were able to block the sleep benefits of kiwi using a GABA-blocking agent. Now GABA, which stands for gamma aminobutyric acid, is one of the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitters. It's something like red. - So, a natural sedative, something like that? - Yes, it's the type of red light at the traffic light, you know, others have green lights.

GABA is red light. So by playing with some kind of smart drugs to manipulate the system, they could circumvent the benefits of kiwi by altering the GABA receptor, meaning that perhaps part of the benefit of kiwi on sleep was mediated by brain activity. natural inhibitory neurotransmitter system called the GABA system. - That's exciting. - And I thought that convinced me a little more that maybe there's something here to read. So TBD, again, here's the sign, but you know, tart cherries and kiwis, the data surprised me, because part of me was very worried about being, you know, I don't know a little bit pure and a little bit snobbish thinking, come on, that's definitely not going to work, well the data certainly found that out. - I look forward to the day when supplements are no longer called supplements, because at the end of the day, whether or not something has an effect, whether it is a whole kiwi or a kiwi derivative, will depend on the molecular structure. compound.

And as you mentioned, this potential mechanism through the GABA system, both of us as scientists get excited about the mechanism because when you can trace a mechanism and a pathway, it provides a rationale and a basis for why the kiwi of all things or the cherry acidic of all things. could help increase total sleep time. I would be remiss if I didn't mention or ask about tryptophan and serotonin. I can say anecdotally that when I take tryptophan, the precursor to serotonin, or serotonin itself, I have a horrible night's sleep. I fall asleep very easily. And I experience ridiculously vivid dreams.

Neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant are some kind of hodgepodge. And then I wake up and experience several days of insomnia. That and I've done the positive control and the negative control and all the variations to confirm that, at least for me, supplementing with serotonergic agents is a bad idea. And tryptophan is a common sleep supplement and talked about sleep aid. Normal sleep architecture involves the release of serotonin, but in a highly scheduled and regulated manner. What do you think about serotonin during sleep? If you had to say it in a few words. And so why would supplementing with serotonin or its precursor, tryptophan, be a good or bad idea for someone? - I think one of the potential dangers is that, depending on what happens in the body, that can change the absorption of the natural type of tryptophan and serotonin within the brain itself.

So I'm always thoughtful when you play with that mother nature dynamic, so to speak. The data you described is a bit all over the map. Some people say it knocks them out, others say, like you, it has a terrible impact on my sleep. And when I stop it, it's pretty bad for a couple of days, it seems to have a lingering effect. I think what might be happening here is that we need serotonin, as you described, to be modulated in very specific ways during different stages of sleep. If we look at the activation of the brain epicenters where serotonin is released, and there are a lot of them in the brain stem, what we find, and also the release of serotonin, when we are awake, is usually in high concentrations, like When As we begin to fall asleep, it decreases a little, but not necessarily dramatically, as we enter non-REM sleep.

But then when we enter REM sleep, serotonin turns off. The other one, one of the other neuromodulators, norepinephrine, also stopped. REM sleep is the only time during the 24-hour period when we see norepinephrine and serotonin or norepinephrine completely shut down. When I say serotonin, we're also talking about 5-HTP, sorry, 5-HT, that's just its chemical name here. So whether it's serotonin or 5-HT, it's the same thing. Norepinephrine and norepinephrine must be turned off for REM sleep to occur. The other one, one of the other neuromodulators, that then increases to produce REM sleep is acetylcholine. So these three neuromodulators have this incredible reciprocal dance that they have to generate what's called a natural sleep architecture throughout the night. - It's the tug of war again. - It's a tug of war again, you know, it's you know, it's just and back.

It's, you know, whatever you want to think. So I think that if you try to dramatically increase your serotonin levels at night, and that continues throughout the night, when you try to enter REM sleep, you could be artificially fragmenting REM sleep. Now, I don't know the data, I don't think anyone really does. - No, I was able to find it. - But that's why, you know, if you said, Matt, two years from now, the data helped me understand the potential mechanism or let's design some experiments, where would you go first? I would say let's look at disrupting REM sleep, non-REM sleep, reciprocal regulation, because, you know, you need serotonin to be, you know, high at one time and low at another, so. - I agree with everything you said.

And I personally will never take tryptophan or serotonin again unless there is some clinical reason why I should. I want to ask about other behaviors that promote sleep. But before we do that, let's talk about naps. I love naps. I come from a long history of napping. My dad always took a nap in the afternoon, I take a 20 or 30 minute nap or do a practice that I took the liberty of coining NSDR, non-sleeping deep rest, a kind of passive position with my feet elevated. Sometimes people do you or I do yoga Nidra, I do hypnosis or something like that, but 20 or 30 minutes of that has been very beneficial for me to wake up from that nap or period of minimal wakefulness, we'll call it and follow up with my day pretty well, and I'll fall asleep just fine too.

What are the facts about naps? Do you take a nap? And what do you think about keeping naps short, meaning 20 to 30 minutes, rather than going beyond 90 minutes to two hours? So for you personally, naps, yes, no or meh? - I do not sleep. And I've never been a habitual sleeper. - Is it because you are not sleepy in the afternoon, or because? - I'm usually not sleepy? - Then you are more resistant. - I wouldn't say I'm more resilient, I may be less able to fall asleep, my sleep drive. - But aren't you going to spend the afternoon? - No, no, I don't crawl to the end. - So you don't take a nap because you don't feel the need to? - That's the way it is.

Now, it's not that I'm immune to what we call the postprandial drop in alertness. I definitely feel like it can.There's this kind of lull in the afternoon, where, you know, I'm not as active as I am at 11 o'clock in the morning. And we know the physiology of that, which leads us to wonder if we were designed to nap. So for naps, we've done a lot of different studies and other colleagues have done them as well. Naps can have great benefits, we find benefits for cardiovascular health, blood pressure, for example, we find benefits for cortisol levels, we find benefits for learning and memory, and also emotional regulation. - How long do naps normally last in these studios? - Between 20 minutes and 90 minutes.

Sometimes we like to use a 90 minute window so that the participant can have a full sleep cycle and therefore can have both REM and non-REM sleep within that time period. Then when we wake them up, we usually wait a period of time for them to overcome what we call sleep inertia, which is that kind of window of grogginess where you say, better half look, you know, honey, please don't do it. . You don't talk to me for the first hour after you do it. - Don't do anything now. - After the first hour of waking up, you know, I'm not just, I'm just not the best version of myself.

So we wait that period of time and then do some testing. And we have done some tests before and after, and we observed the change. And that's how we measure what the benefit of naps was and why we sometimes do 90 minutes for them to sleep through all those stages. And then we correlated, how much benefit did you get from the nap and how much of that benefit was explained by the REM sleep you had, the deep sleep you had, and the light sleep you had? That's the only reason we use it as an experimental tool. What we've also discovered is that naps as short as 17 minutes can have quite powerful effects, for example on learning.

None of this is new, NASA pioneered this back in the 1990s. And during missions, they experimented with naps for their astronauts. And what they found was that naps of just 26 minutes improved mission performance by 34% and improved daytime alertness by 50%. And it gave rise to what was then called the NASA nap culture among all NASA ground personnel during that period. That's why it has long been known that naps can have benefits. Naps, however, can be a double-edged sword: Naps have a dark side. And we return to our story of adenosine and sleep pressure. The longer we are awake, the more adenosine we accumulate in sleep pressure.

But what I didn't tell you is that when we sleep, the brain has the opportunity to essentially eliminate that adenosine. And after about 16 hours of wakefulness, and after about eight hours of sleep, eight hours of sleep appears to allow the brain to reduce its adenosine levels to normal. And naturally, we should start waking up, which also aligns with our circadian rhythm. And those are two separate processes. But with about eight hours of good quality sleep, seven to nine hours for the average adult, we are free of all that adenosine. We have essentially evacuated it from the brain and wake up naturally feeling refreshed.

The reason naps can be potentially dangerous is that when you sleep, you're basically opening the valve on the pressure cooker of sleep pressure. And part of that sleepiness is lost with a nap. So, for some people and not all, you are a great example of this. However, for some people, if they have trouble sleeping at night and take naps during the day, their sleep problems become even worse. That's why we usually advise people with insomnia against taking a nap. And the advice is that if you can nap regularly and don't have trouble sleeping at night, then naps will be fine.

But if you have trouble sleeping, stay away from naps. If you're going to take a nap, try to limit your naps, try to cut them out a little bit like kind of like caffeine, maybe you know, eight to 12 hours maybe not that you know too far in advance maybe seven to six hours. be a good rule of thumb. Try not to take a nap essentially in the late afternoon. And if you take a nap and want to stick with it, you don't want to get that groggy hangover that can happen after a full night's sleep for the first hour, try to limit it to about 20 or 25 minutes.

And that way you don't fall into the deeper stages of sleep, which if I wake you up with an alarm, then you feel like you almost feel worse, for the first hour after the nap. - I've definitely experienced that if I fall asleep. Certainly, if the sun sets during my nap and I wake up and the general lighting conditions have changed, I find it very difficult to return to the night. And it can ruin me. So I try to keep those naps fairly short. And I have to say, I'm really glad to hear you mention individual differences and why some people may want to nap and others don't.

I have a colleague, Liqun Luo, who many neurobiologists will be familiar with. - Yes of course. -That he is an absolutely spectacular scientist, a member of the National Academy, the Howard Hughes researcher, simply a phenomenon, and he has a lot of energy. But years ago, I learned that he always takes a nap in the afternoon, so much so that when he travels to give seminars at other universities, he tells his host after lunch who he's supposed to meet with, may I have? his office for 30 minutes of our, sometimes 30-minute discussion or 60-minute discussion, because I like to take a nap.

And he does that and then gives us his, his talks are usually in the afternoon in academic culture. And he describes the effect of the nap on him, these short afternoon naps are so profound for his productivity. That's actually what inspired me to start feeling good about my desire to nap. And I think for me it was a great vindication for those who might feel guilty for wanting a nap. But I take your note seriously about avoiding naps if you have trouble falling and staying asleep, because I think I have family members who also, if they take a nap, are devastated, they can't sleep. - Yeah, I think it's just that we've often been very pro-sleep with a kind of sleep community.

That's why I think it's good to always point out these possible dark sides of any aspect. But you're absolutely right: no one should feel guilty for getting the sleep they need. And I think that has been one of the big problems in society: society has stigmatized sleep with these labels of being lazy or lazy. And we're almost embarrassed, you know, to tell our colleagues that we take a nap. I believe that dreams are a writing of human beings. And I think, therefore, that sleeping is a civil right of all human beings. And no one should make you feel less than proud that you got the sleep you need. - No, I love that.

And I'm an important point. I also believe that one of the best ways to beat the competition in any endeavor is to outlast them. Now that we know that sleep can improve longevity and that lack of sleep can shorten life, that's all the justification I need. Can anyone sleep too much? Is it possible to sleep too much? - It's a very good question. And there's probably two things to say about that, there's a condition we call hypersomnia. But that's a mix of things, it's when people have a very high need for sleep or they are very sleepy during the day.

And they usually fall asleep. And this can occur in a variety of different clinical contexts. One of the places we have often seen hypersomnia thought to manifest is in depression. But if you look at some of those studies, it turns out that it seems more like those people are simply reporting that they spend more time in bed, but they don't necessarily sleep more. And that fits very well with one of the profiles we know of depression, which is anhedonia, you don't enjoy things that are normally pleasurable. So you just don't want to go out into the world, you don't want to interact because you're depressed.

Then what do you do? Are you staying in bed? - Closed blinds, watching television, talking on the phone. - True, and it seems like you know that. - I feel miserable. - When people say, what time did you go to bed? And what time did you get out of bed? The mistake made in that question is okay, how long did you sleep when you should have said, what time did you fall asleep? And what time did you wake up? And the answer could be very different. That's hypersomnia from a clinical context. Can you sleep too much?

One of the data points that argues that yes, that is possible is when we look at all-cause mortality. Certainly, what you find is that when you use the sweet spot of seven to nine hours, when you start to consume less than seven hours, there is a relationship, which suggests that the less sleep you get, the shorter your life will be. In that sense, poor sleep predicts mortality from all causes. But again, it's not a linear relationship like we've seen with REM sleep. Once nine hours have passed, the mortality curve stops falling. And then once 10 or 11 more hours pass, it reconnects, it's almost like a J shape, tilted a little bit and upside down.

So there's this weird hook, what's going on here? Currently, sleep science has at least two non-mutually exclusive explanations for this. The first is that if you look at some of those populations, the idea is that whatever was causing them illness and taking their lives was too much to bear in their sleep. However, we know that when we get sick, one of the things that we immediately do in this whole mechanism and cytokine-mediated inflammatory mechanisms, when we get sick, we want to sleep more. We just want to curl up in bed and you know, sleep until we drop.

So the argument is that it's not that sleep was killing people prematurely, but that these people were asking for the help of sleep, they were asking for this thing called the Swiss army knife of health, that is, sleep. But whatever they faced was too powerful for the dream to overcome. So it artificially appears that sleeping more leads to a higher risk of death, when sleep actually responded to the risk of mortality and lost the battle. That's an argument. The second is that we know that sleep quality and poor sleep efficiency are a strong predictor of mortality from all causes.

And when we look at people who often report sleeping longer, 10 or 11 hours, they typically report having very poor quality sleep. So because their sleep quality is bad, they just try to sleep longer to try to get some of that back. Again, we are dealing with poor quality sleeping masks here, as oversleeping leads to this artificial mortality-like hook. That's the second explanation. A third one that is more of a Gedanken, which is like a thought experiment and I have this mentality, I don't know how many other people share this. In fact, I think it might be due to sleeping too much.

Physiologically, I think it is possible. But the reason I think that's the case is because it's no different than food, water, or oxygen. Can you overeat? If you can. Can you eat little? Of course. - Or light. Light at the beginning of the day, throughout the day, wonderful. Light late in the day and at night, harmful. - Bidirectional, you know, for water, can you become too hydrated? Hypernatremia can cause, you know, it happened in the 1990s and 2000s, with the ecstasy fad, where governments said that when you become dehydrated you are dancing. night, please drink water.

And they drank too much water, their blood electrolytes went all over the place, and they suffered cardiac arrest or strokes. - Yes, people were dying. - And they were dying because of excess hydration. Can you get too much oxygen, hypoxemia? And it can cause free radical damage, which can be profoundly damaging and kill brain cells. Can you sleep too much? You know, what is the fifth element of the equation of life, you know, along with food, water, oxygen, you know, etc. I must say I can't even count. I'm clearly sleeping well. Yes, I think that could be that possibility.

Are most people in danger of sleeping too much? Or the opposite, if we look at the data. So, but I don't rule out that idea. I think it's possible. - That is a very complete and nuanced answer, but very clear. So it's really interesting to think that a lot of the data out there about being in bed too long is just trying to compensate for actual sleep fragmentation. So what I'm saying is that there are many paths to this, both positive and things to avoid. But the idea is to get a similar amount most nights, probably seven to nine hours, somewhere in there, of high-quality sleep.

I hope this notion of quality sleep becomes a phrase that more people think about, learn about, and cultivate as a practice. I want to ask about a set of behaviors that I'm at least aware that at least one company is starting to track on their sleep monitoring device,and that's the orgasm, and the sexual orgasm and the masturbation topics that are, you know, They're kind of sensitive. But from a biology perspective, none of us would be here if it weren't for the sperm meeting the egg somehow, whether in a dish or in vivo. But what is the data as you know it or maybe your lab is even doing this kind of work and exploration on the role that sex, orgasm and masturbation play in falling asleep, staying asleep and sleep quality? ?

Certainly those behaviors and those physiological events have been part of our evolutionary history. What's the story there? What can we say about this in terms of science and dare I say practice? - Yeah, I mean, it's almost that caricature of, you know, in the movies where, you know, a couple makes love and then all of a sudden you just hear snoring or, you know, that happens with the idea that it's something neurogenic that promotes sleep. - Well, the post-orgasmic increase in prolactin. - Well, that's very interesting. - It is believed to be a natural sedative that presumably has a function. - And oxytocin also has that benefit where you see, you know, a dissipation of the fight or flight branch of the nervous system, which has to happen for you to fall asleep.

That's why we often see, you know, here at The Sleep Center, we see a phenomenon called wired and tired where people say, look, I'm so desperately tired, I'm just so tired, but I can't. fall asleep, because I'm too connected. So your sleep drive, you're desperately tired, it's there, but because you're wired, because you have too much sympathetic activation, also too much cortisol, you can't fall asleep. It's an impressive obstacle to anything like getting a good night's sleep. And it's one of the main mechanisms that we now believe is stress and physiological arousal, which is the underlying cause of many forms of insomnia.

But getting back to sex, the data is pretty compelling: they both subjectively evaluated the quality of sleep or the objective amount of sleep, the sex that resulted in orgasm, and I think it's this last part that should normally happen. - I imagine. - That, you know, between two mutually exclusive individuals, where both are, you know, beneficial in terms of receiving an orgasm. - Yes, I would say that in any discussion about sex we mean consensual, age-appropriate, species-appropriate, context-appropriate. - Wow, I would never have even gone to the right species. - I put species there because it's the Internet, and people will come up with all kinds of ideas.

So I think age-appropriate, age-appropriate, consensual, context-appropriate, and species-appropriate covers all the bases, but if I missed any, please post them in the comments section and we'll be sure to take note. - Yes, no, I think it is very well said and it is important to say it. So the data that appears when we look at couples who have orgasms. However, we have also discovered benefits of masturbation and it is not often talked about. But, if you do some surveys, it turns out that people often use masturbation as a sleep tool, if they have difficulty falling asleep.

And I know, this almost sounds like a strange conversation, or it's a taboo conversation, but I think we need to be very open about all of this. - I started in science, one of the things I worked on early in my career, not the first topic, was the topic of the early influences of hormones, estrogen and testosterone on the sexual development of the brain and body . And when you're weaned in a lab like that, regardless of the era, you look at sex and their behaviors, their hormones and their physiologies as a scientist, and to be clear what we're doing here, we're exploring these behaviors from that perspective.

I mean, one thing's for sure, we're all here because a sperm met an egg, whether in a dish or in vivo, as we said before, and at least in 2021, there's no way around that fact. And what preceded that is typically this act that we call sex and sometimes, if you're lucky, I like to think that the orgasm is associated with that sexual activity. Masturbation is a dimension of that and I think it can and should be discussed, if there is data that relates it to sleep. - Yes, and both routes seem to generate benefits for sleep.

Now, I'm not saying it's just about the orgasm. I think, as we talked about oxytocin, there's a certain degree of peer bonding that if you have a partner and you experience, you know, an intimate, loving relationship that involves that, then you can have hormonal benefits which are sleep. promote, that doesn't necessarily come across if you're just engaging in, you know, the singular, solitary act of masturbation. So what we certainly know and I'm not one to take any advice when it comes to relationships or sex. - That's a different episode of the podcast. - Yes Yes of course.

And that's not a podcast series I'll be launching anytime soon; It will mainly deal with sleep. I'll be playing more though, I'll be launching a podcast about sleep and sex. But that's the data we have so far. However, we also know that it works both ways. And the same thing usually happens with sleep. You know, sleep and exercise, sleep and diet. How you eat can affect how you sleep, how you sleep can affect how you eat. The same with exercise. And it turns out that the same thing happens with sexual behavior too. So here we are talking about whether sex can help with sleep.

Can sleeping help with your relationship and your sex? And the answer is yes, you can. First of all, we know, and we've talked about this a little bit, that reproductive hormones are deeply regulated by sleep. - Both estrogen and testosterone, I understand. - Estrogen, testosterone, like I said. - Because we hear very often about testosterone. But women who, or I should say anyone who is interested in having higher levels of estrogen or normal, healthy levels of estrogen, I guess the data shows for estrogen what the data also shows, similarly for testosterone. That is, if you have too little or poor quality sleep, both sex steroid hormones, known as testosterone and estrogen, which are present in both men and women and in all their variations, will decrease below normal healthy levels. correct? - Yes, Estrogen, Testosterone, FSH in women, a key hormone in regulating conception, of course, all of these sex hormones appear to be significantly altered when sleep becomes scarce or of poor quality.

We also know that in women, sleep disruption often causes an interruption in the menstrual cycle. We know this, especially from evidence from women who work shifts, when they work night shifts, they have difficulty sleeping during the day and often their menstruation is interrupted or even affected. But we also know that it works this way, not only with sex hormones, but also with sex itself. For example, we found that for every hour of sleep, the extra sleep a woman gets from her interest in being sexually intimate with her partner increases by 14%, which is not, you know, a non-trivial amount. . - Substantial. - And then the final part of I think this equation when it comes to sleep and sex is the relationship itself.

And here's some great work from UC Berkeley by Professor Serena Chen. And what she discovered was that restless nights lead to much more brutal fights in the relationship. And they did this. - And vice versa. - Various different and elegant shapes, and vice versa too. - I mean, it's not like I've ever had relationship conflicts. - You know, these are data that I have read, I have never experienced that at all. So, they reliably found that the dream predicted a higher likelihood of relationship conflict. Second, if you got into that conflict, the chances of resolving it were significantly lower when the parties had not slept well.

Part of the reason is that when you don't sleep well, your empathy decreases. So it's not like that, you're taking a more abrasive stance with your partner, rather than a more agreeable stance with your partner. So, in almost every dimension of a human love relationship, sleep can have a dramatic impact. - I think these are really important things to point out, one of the most common questions I get, because there seems to be a community of people on the internet who are obsessed with this. I don't know who they are, because this whole Internet thing is yelling in a tunnel and receiving comments in written form.

It's a very strange conversation, so to speak. Is it whether sexual behavior itself reduces or increases testosterone? And I got into the data, which actually spans many decades, both animal and human studies. And it seems to just underline this, as we talk about this topic, that it seems that sexual activity, sex between two people, seems to increase testosterone in both of them. There's this question about orgasm or ejaculation without orgasm, no ejaculation, and in fact there seems to be some effects of restricting ejaculation in men as a way to further increase testosterone. So sex without ejaculation increases testosterone even more.

But the data is not clean. Presumably because setting up these types of studies and obtaining the truth in self-reports is probably difficult to obtain from subjects. But everything points in the direction that, as long as the relationship is healthy, consensual, age-appropriate, context-appropriate, and species-appropriate, sex between two individuals appears to increase the sex steroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen. , towards healthy ranges. And what I'm hearing now in this sort of Gestalt of the discussion we just had is that that can also promote drowsiness, states of rest, and quality sleep. And I think this is an important conversation that just hasn't been had enough.

I mean, sooner or later, both in the United States and elsewhere, we are going to have to recognize that we are biological organisms of some kind and that we have choices in life, about all of these things, from supplementation to sex, or without sex, etc., but which have profound effects on our core biology. I mean, it's fascinating to me that the areas of the hypothalamus, the preoptic area, the super optic areas, those areas whose names may not mean anything to anyone besides Matt and I sitting here, but those areas are next to each other in the hypothalamus and control, sleep and sex.

The orgasm trigger, the appetite for food, the appetite for water, for electrolytes. I mean, the hypothalamus is kind of a festival of neurons with different booths for different primitive behaviors. - It's a very, very small structure in the brain, but it's the orchestrator of a lot of our behaviors disproportionately in terms of size versus effect. - Yes, I don't think you can go to this hypothalamic festival without at least seeing all the stands, whether you decide to visit them or not. - I love that master analogy. - So I'm glad we broached that conversation. And I hope people think we've approached it with the right level of sensitivity.

It's important and we're going to hear more about it one way or another. No doubt, people are thinking about this, although not about adopting these types of behaviors or avoiding them. So the more we can understand about the biology, the better. And thanks for bringing up that topic. Because, for the record, Matt, he tabled it for discussion. - We were chatting outside and I think we said something about some kind of sex, and I said we could go there. There are many interesting facts. - Of course, I only want to touch on two remaining topics. One is: Are there any unconventional tips or aspects about sleep that we've overlooked?

Yeah we've covered everything great, but you know, we listen to keep the room cool. We hear because of this temperature phenomenon, light aspects, alcohol considerations, CBD marijuana, cognitive behavior, tart cherry and perhaps kiwi. - Please don't put me on the spot about tart cherries and kiwis, I was just offering what I know about the data. - And these are considerations and whether people lump these things together or not, I won't even list them now, because there are too many jokes one could make. - And I have no affiliation with any of these products. - Well, I'm going to take out shares in a kiwi company.

Just kidding. But the question I have is about unconventional or less well-known things, or maybe you do things or think about things just in a purely exploratory way, as a scientist of that, you know, the kind of things that, yeah, what if? It turns out that and I hear I have a blank space for you to fill in? - I think, you know, beyond the standard, you know, it's fair that I've delivered many times on sleep hygiene. You know, regularity, temperature, darkness, alcohol, caffeine, and we've talked about all of them. What are some less conventional tips, I guess?

The first, unconventional along the lines of naps. If you've had a bad night's sleep, let's say you're starting to have insomnia and you've had a bad night's sleep, the advice and I learned it from my wonderful colleague, Michael Perlis, is not to donothing. What I mean by this is don't wake up later, don't sleep in to try to make up for it, don't take naps during the day, don't consume extra caffeine to wake you up. to try to endure the day and don't go to bed earlier thinking that you are going to make up for it.

And I can explain all those things. But if you wake up later, you won't be sleepy until late into the night, so you'll go to bed at your normal time and don't sleep, you'll think well, just get out of a bad night's sleep. And now I still can't even sleep and it's my normal schedule. It's because you slept in later than you otherwise would and narrow the window of adenosine buildup before your normal bedtime. So don't go, don't wake up later. Don't consume more caffeine for obvious reasons, because that will only make you jittery and keep you awake the next night or decrease your chance of having a good night's rest of sleep.

Third, I mentioned don't take naps, because again, that's just going to require, you know, naps, especially in the late afternoon. I almost compare them to a snack before a main meal, it just kills your appetite. that main meal of the dream, so don't do it. And finally, don't go to bed earlier, resist and resist and go to bed at your usual time. What I want to try to do is keep them from thinking that I had such a bad night last night and I normally go to bed at 10:30, I'm only going to go to bed at nine, because last night was so bad.

But that's not your natural bedtime, and it's not aligned with your natural chronotype because presumably you know something about that, our morning time, our afternoon time, you're trying to sleep in harmony, which is usually the way that you achieve better quality sleep. . But you go to bed at nine and my body is not prepared to sleep at nine. But I'm worried because I slept badly last night, so I get into bed and now I'm tossing and turning for the first hour and a half because it's not my natural sleep window, but I thought so. a good idea.

And if I didn't know anything about sleep, I'd think the same thing too. So I'm not lifting my finger. But then, if I have a bad night's sleep and I'm not immune, just because I know a little about sleep doesn't mean I don't have my bad nights, I do. It doesn't mean I haven't had insomnia attacks in my life, I have. But after a bad night's sleep, I do nothing. I don't do any of those four things. I think the second tip I would offer in terms of unconventional is to have a relaxation routine. Many of us think of sleep as if it were like a light switch, we just jump into bed, and when we turn off the light sleep should come the same way.

Only the binary you know is enabled or disabled. Sleep is a physiological process, it is much more like landing an airplane, it takes time to gradually descend to solid ground for what we call a good solid night's sleep. Find out what works for you and it could be light stretching. I usually meditate for about 10 or 15 minutes before going to bed. Some people like to read, they try not to watch TV in bed, which is usually discouraged. - Something that doesn't emit too much light into your eyes. - Too much light, too activating, you know, you can listen to relaxing podcasts, although we can also talk about technology in the bedroom.

But have some kind of routine to relax. You know, it's almost like you know, you wouldn't run into your garage and come to a screeching halt at 60 miles per hour, you normally go down, shift gears, and slow down when you pull into the garage, that's the same thing with sleep. also. That's the second thing: having some kind of routine to relax and find what works for you. Maybe it's taking a hot bath or a warm shower and then sticking with it. We just do this with kids all the time, we figure out what their bedroom is, sorry, their sleeping schedule and then we stick to it faithfully because humans are the same too.

The third thing is a myth, don't count the sheep. There's a study done here at UC Berkeley, I didn't do it today, I wish I had, it's by my colleague, Professor Allison Harvey. And they discovered that counting sheep actually made it harder to fall asleep. It made things worse. As a countermeasure, what they did find was that it took a kind of mental walk, so think about a nice walk in nature or a walk on the beach, or even a walk through an urban environment. . - I'm just visualizing that. - And visualizing that, that seemed to be beneficial.

The other thing about that idea of ​​taking your focus off of your mind itself, getting your mind off of itself is good advice. In catharsis, you can try writing down all the worries you have and not do it right before going to bed, but usually an hour or two before going to bed. Some people call it a worry journal. And for me, it's a little like closing all the emotional tabs on my browser. Because if I turn off the computer and all those tabs are still open, I'll come back in the morning and the computer will be red hot and the fans running because it didn't go to sleep, because it couldn't because there were too many tabs active and open.

I think the same thing happens with sleep too, so try to think about doing it. So vomit all your concerns onto the page. - I like it, because waking up at 3 in the morning is often associated with me writing the list of things that I forgot to do and that I need to do. And once I finally wake up from the second half of the night, those things seem a lot more manageable and reasonable, but it sure would be nice to get them out of the way before bed. - Well, there's also something that I don't think people have talked about much.

And I would like to investigate it, which is the difficulty and anxiety at night in the dark, it is not the same difficulty and anxiety in the light of day. And when we have those thoughts at night, they are accompanied by a magnitude of rumination and catastrophizing that is disproportionate to what you would describe when you are awake. And I don't know what is happening with the brain, thinking and emotion at that moment. I have a lot of theories as to why, and that's why I like the idea of ​​locking and closing all those different components. , just place them on the page.

And it feels, and at first I thought this sounds like who this is, it sounds very Berkeley, it's kind of Kumbaya, we all hold hands and, you know, we all come at the end of the day. But then data started coming out from really good studies by good people. And they found that keeping one of those diaries reduced the time it took you to fall asleep by 50%, five, zero. - Incredible, that's substantial. - That's on par with any pharmaceutical agent. - I am convinced that for a long time I have thought that the worries, concerns and ideas that I have have at three or four in the morning.

I have learned not to put stocks in them. For some reason I'm glad you eventually decided to look at this in your lab because I feel like something has been melted or altered. I suspect it is in the regulation of the autonomic nervous system, which makes sense why a worry at three or four in the morning should evoke more of a feeling of panic than a feeling of worry. And certainly, that's my experience, although no, I'm lucky enough to not suffer from full-blown panic attacks. But everything seems worse at three or four in the morning, whenever you're awake. - And we have to look at that because, you know, if you look at suicide rates, around the 24-hour clock, the rates are disproportionately higher in those middle hours of the night.

So now, I don't know if that's causal or not, but one thing you know is that it could just be that that's the time when we feel mostly alone and we're alone. And that's the reason. So it has nothing to do with sleep or the night, I don't know. So that's the third thing, I think the fourth bit of advice that I would give that is unconventional, is to remove all the clock faces from your bedroom. - Including your phone. - Including your phone, and resist checking it. Now I know and can also talk about the phone: the technology genie is out of the bottle.

And it won't be showing up again anytime soon. So we have to think of a scientist and a sleep scientist, you know, in terms of what we do with phones in the bedroom. - Years ago I was a counselor at a summer camp where I worked with at-risk children and here a phrase comes to mind, it is to be a channel, not a dam. Because when you try to repress certain types of behavior, physically repress certain types of behavior and not morally, that also slides over the edge and you get a cascade. So it has to be a channel.

You have to work and negotiate with the phone and devices, not eliminate them. - That's right, and you know, think about that carefully too, but the clock faces, take them all off, because if you're having, you know, a difficult night, knowing that it's 3:22 in the morning or 4: 48 in the morning. in the morning, it doesn't help you in the slightest. And it will only make things worse instead of better. Try deleting all watch faces. And I think that's one of those other tips that some people have found helpful. But those would be a little unconventional, I guess more than the standard fare here are the five tips for sleep hygiene tonight, so. - Those are great sleep tips, and I'm going to incorporate several, if not all, of them.

Matt, this has been an incredible deep dive into sleep and its positive and negative regulators. - I hope it hasn't been too long. - No, this has been great. - Please cut it, shorten it to, you know, the five minutes of meaningful things that I offered you. - Of course not, it is full of valuable conclusions. It has been tremendously fun for me to discuss this incredible aspect of our lives we call sleep with a fellow scientist and a fellow public educator. I want to say several things. First of all, we should say where people can find you, although nowadays it shouldn't be that difficult.

You are a very present person on the Internet. - Unfortunately. - For better or worse. I think it's wonderful that you're out there. Look, it's a public health service what you're doing. No one is demanding that you or any other scientist come out and share this information. My sense that you know him a little and that you follow his work very closely, both his scientific work in detail and his educational work facing the public, is that he wants the best for people. And it's interesting as a scientist or clinician to know that there are certain answers, that we don't have all the answers, but that there is a better way, there are better ways, and that people can benefit countless times. of ways.

So, because of that, because I know it's very genuine in you, you want the best for people and you're offering tremendous advice and consideration and people can take it or leave it, that's how I see it. I also want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to sit here with me and have this discussion. - Not at all, not at all, it is a privilege, it is a delight, you know, you and I, I think we are similar in many ways. And I take you as a shining example of how you can effectively connect with the audience.

And I know we've had our conversations before we sat down to talk together about how to think about communicating with the public and the pros and cons of that. And I love your opinions. I've been absorbing it all. And then I think the third thing I'd like to say is, thank you for being such an incredible sleep ambassador, the series that you've launched on sleep, the way you talk about sleep. sleep, the way you moderate and defend sleep. It is notable. So thank you for being, you know, a brother in arms in that sense. - But we are and thank you for those words. 99% of what I talked about there was the work of you and your colleagues in the field of sleep.

A fitting shout out, but thanks, where can people learn more about what you're currently doing? And what comes next? Are you on Twitter. - I'm on twitter. I usually tweet. - Like the diplomat from the dream. - So, no, he's just a sleeping diplomat - Sleeping diplomat on Twitter. - Sleep diplomat on Twitter, website sleepdiplomat.com, if you want to learn more about the science we do here, it's humansleepscience.com. It is the Center for the Science of Human Sleep. You can get a copy of the book, if you want. It's called "Why Do We Sleep?" If you're curious about sleep, that's one way to go and it's my point of view. - Will there be another possibility one day in the future? - I think there may be, yes. - Great, very, many, many millions of people will be very happy to hear that. - I think it's starting to take hold.

And then, as we discussed, I'm more than toying with the idea of ​​a short-form podcast instead of a long-form podcast, not a long-form, because I don't have the mental capacity or the ability to interview, just the ability that someone like you. So it'll probably just be a short monologue. So if there's any interest, I'll probably do that too. Those are the ways people can find me. But overall, if you're interested in sleep, listen to Andrew. That's what I can tell people. - Okay, well, now we're swinging back and forth in the action vector, so to speak, but I hopestart a podcast, no matter how short or long these episodes are, because I think it's a great place to spread information to the world.

And not only do we want to hear more from Matt Walker, I speak for a lot of people, we need it, the work they are doing is influential, but most importantly it is important work. It has the impact that is needed, especially in this day and age when science and medicine, public health and world problems, etc., are really converging. So I know I speak for a large number of people when I simply say thank you for doing the work you do and for being you. - Thank you. - And thank you for being a good friend. - Likewise and by the way, I'm just going to point out that it was nice that we both got the memo from Johnny Cash about how to dress today.

It sounds like we both got the same memo, which won't mean anything to the people listening, but if you're watching the video, you'll probably understand what I mean. Andrés, thank you for taking this time. Thank you so much. - Thank you very much Matt. Thank you for joining me in my conversation with Dr. Matt Walker. Also check out his podcast, the Matt Walker Podcast. You can find a link to that podcast in the show notes. If you are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to us on YouTube. On YouTube, you can also leave us comments and suggestions for future episodes and guests in the comments section.

Also, subscribe to us on Apple and Spotify, and on Apple you can leave us a review of up to five stars. You can also support us by checking out our Patreon account. That's patreon.com/andrew

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and there you can support us at any level you want. Also check out our sponsors mentioned at the beginning of this episode. Links to those sponsors can be found in the show notes. During this episode, and in many previous episodes, we talk about supplements. A problem in the supplement industry is that many supplements do not contain what is listed on the bottle.

Therefore, we have partnered with Thorne, that is, T H O R N E, Thorne supplements, because Thorne supplements have the highest levels of rigor in terms of purity of ingredients, and the accuracy to what is listed on the bottle is actually what those supplement bottles contain. If you want to see the supplements I take for sleep and other things, you can go to thorne.com/u/huberman and there you will see all the supplements I take and you can get 20% off any of them. of those supplements, as well as any other supplements Thorne manufactures. That's Thorne, thorne.com/u/huberman.

And last but not least, thank you for his interest in science.