Essentials: Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools

0:00Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science -based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. I decided that we would hold office hours. Office hours in the university setting are when students come to the professor's office, or you meet outdoors on campus, or in the classroom, to review the material and questions from lecture in more detail. Now, unfortunately, we don't have the opportunity to meet face to face in real life, but nonetheless, you've been sending your questions, putting them in the comments section on YouTube, etc.

0:44And I've prepared a number of answers to the questions that have shown up most frequently. Now, in order to provide context and structure to the way that we will address these questions, I've arranged the science and science -based protocols that relate to various aspects of life, such as mood, exercise, sleep, waking, anxiety, creativity, etc. into the context of a day. Selecting the unit of a day in order to deliver this science information and protocols is not a haphazard decision on my part. It's actually the case that every cell in our body, every organ in our body, and our brain is modulated or changes across the 24 -hour day in a very regular and predictable rhythm.

1:30And so selecting the unit of the day is not just a practical one, but it's one that's related to our deeper biology. So let's talk about how to apply quality peer -reviewed science to your day, and how to optimize everything from sleep to learning, creativity, meal timing, etc. I'm going to do this in the context of my day and what I typically do. I tend to wake up sometime around 6am, 630s. The first thing I do after I wake up is I take the pen that's on my nightstand and the pad of paper on my nightstand, and I write down the time in which I woke up. The reason for writing down what time I wake up is because I want to know what's called my temperature minimum.

2:11I don't care what my actual temperature is. I care when my lowest temperature is, and I know that that lowest temperature is approximately two hours before my average wake up time. The second thing I do after I wake up is to get into forward ambulation, which is just nerd -speak for taking a walk. There's a phenomenon whereby when we generate our own forward motion, forward ambulation, visual images pass by us on our eyes. It's called optic flow. Experiencing visual flow has a powerful effect on the nervous system. The effect it has is essentially to quiet or reduce the amount of neural activity in this brain structure called the amygdala.

2:57And many of you have probably heard about the amygdala for its role in anxiety and fear and threat detection. And indeed, the amygdala is part of the network in the brain that generates feelings of fear and threat and anxiety. It does a bunch of other things too, but that's one of its primary functions. Forward ambulation, walking or biking or running, and generating optic flow in particular has this incredible property of lowering activity in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety. That walk is a particularly important protocol each day because it really serves to push my neurology in the direction that I'd like it to go, which is alert but not anxious.

3:37I want to have a high degree of focus and alertness because I'm soon going to move into about a work. I need to lean into the day. So in order to do that, I make sure that the walking is done outdoors. I do it outdoors because I also want sunlight in my eyes. Getting sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning is absolutely vital to mental and physical health. Even if there's cloud cover, more photons, light information are coming through that cloud cover than would be coming from a very bright indoor bulb. So getting outside for a 10 minute walk or a 15 minute walk will basically ensure that you're getting adequate stimulation of these neurons in the eye that are called the melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglinsels.

4:19These are neurons that convey to the brain that it's daytime and it's time to be alert and it sets in motion a huge number of biological cascades within every cell and organ of your body from your liver to your gut to your heart to your brain. Early in the day, we experience a natural and healthy bump in a hormone called cortisol and promotes wakefulness. It actually promotes a healthy immune system. It's very important that that pulse of cortisol arrive early in the day. That pulse of cortisol is going to happen once every 24 hours, no matter what. It's going to happen and you get to time it.

4:57How do you time it? Primarily by when you view bright sunlight, you can combine it with the forward ambulation with the walk and the optic flow that I talked about before. And that's what I do each morning to generate a sense of alertness in my body and brain to generate a sense of calm yet alert. So we now we have a first protocol, which is to write down the time of day that you wake up. The second protocol is to get take a walk first thing in the morning. And the third protocol is woven in with that walk, at least for me, which is to get that sunlight exposure. I'm a big believer based on quality peer review data that hydration is essential for mental performance.

5:37As many of you know, neurons require ionic flow. What that means is neurons need sodium. They need magnesium and they need potassium in order to function. We do tend to get dehydrated at night. I try and make sure that I'm hydrated early in the day before I begin any work. So I make myself drink this water with a little bit of sea salt. How much sea salt if you really want to get detailed? I suppose it's about half a teaspoon. It's not much. At that point, I start craving caffeine, but I don't drink that caffeine yet. I purposely delay my caffeine intake to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up.

6:15The reason I delay caffeine is because one of the factors that induces a sense of sleepiness is the buildup of a denocene. The buildup of a denocene accumulates the longer we are awake. When you wake up in the morning, your denocene levels are likely to be very low. However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker. It's actually a competitive antagonist for you, aficionados. It's sort of parks in the receptor that adenosine normally would park at and prevents adenosine from acting on that receptor. That's why you feel more alert. The reason for delaying caffeine intake 90 minutes to two hours after waking is I want to make sure that I don't have a late afternoon or even early afternoon crash from caffeine.

7:02One of the best ways to ensure a caffeine crash is to drink a bunch of caffeine, block all those adenosine receptors, and then by earlier late afternoon, when that caffeine starts to wear off and gets dislodged from the receptors. A lower level of adenosine is able to create a greater level of sleepiness. Delaying caffeine in 90 minutes to two hours optimizes this relationship between adenosine and wakefulness and sleepiness in a way that really provides a nice consistent arc of energy throughout the day and brings energy down as I'm headed toward sleep and falling asleep. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, 8 Sleep.

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8:51If you're not familiar, NSDR involves listening to an audio script that walks you through a deep body relaxation combined with some very simple breathing exercises. And that combination has been shown in peer reviewed studies to restore your mental and physical vigor. And this is great because while we would all like to get to bed on time and get up after a perfect night sleep, often times we get to bed a little late or later. Sometimes we have to get up early and charge into the day because we have our obligations. NSDR can help offset some of the negative effects of slight sleep deprivation and NSDR gets you better at falling back asleep should you wake up in the middle of the night.

9:25It's an extremely powerful tool that anyone can benefit from the first time and every time. If you'd like to try 8 Sleep, go to 8Sleep .com slash Huberman to get up to $350 off the new pod 5. 8 Sleep ships to many countries worldwide including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8Sleep .com slash Huberman to save up to $350. My primary objective early in the day is to get into a mode of being focused yet alert so that I can get work done. I've found that the best way for me to achieve that state is through fasting. So I don't eat anything until about 11 a .m. or 12 noon. Fasting increases levels of adrenaline, also called epinephrine in the brain and body.

10:08And when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline are increased, we learn better, we can focus better. You don't want epinephrine, aka adrenaline too high. That feels like stress and panic, you get jittery, you can't focus. But in its optimal range, adrenaline really provides a heightened sense of focus and the ability to encode, meaning bring in and retain, remember information. Next I want to talk about what I'm doing while I'm working. A couple of things for optimizing workspace that are grounded in neuroscience and physiology. I've talked before about the fact that when our eyes are directed upward, it creates a state of heightened alertness.

10:51And this has a relationship to the brainstem neurons that create alertness and their control over the muscles of the eye and believe it or not the eye lids. The point here is that you can optimize your workstation in a physical way that leverages this aspect to the visual system and your level of alertness. Try and position your screen or your tablet, whatever device you happen to be working on, at least at eye level and ideally slightly higher. Most people are looking down at their computer or tablet or are angling their eyes at their screen at about 30 degrees. When we look down, when our eyelids are slightly closed, it tends to decrease our levels of alertness and increase our levels of sleepiness.

11:37We're now at the description of my day and these protocols in which I would do a 90 minute bout of work. Now why 90 minutes? Well, the brain is going through these 90 minutes so -called ultradian cycles throughout the entire day and night. Every 90 minutes we shift over from being very alert to being less alert and then back to alert again. Here's how it works. At the start of one of these 90 minute ultradian cycles, my brain is not quite engaged in whatever. It is I'm trying to do, but I set a timer for 90 minutes and I try and get a strong bout of work done inside of that 90 minutes with the full understanding that the entire 90 minutes is not going to be uniform in terms of my ability of focus.

12:21So the goal is to get into what I call the tunnel to really get into a tunnel of quality work. The brain loves that state, but it's very hard for many of us to access. My phone is absolutely off. It's not on airplane mode. It's absolutely off during this time. In addition, I use low -level white noise, white noise, which is essentially all frequencies of sound. We're all frequencies of sound that we can perceive. Mixed up kind of randomly, there's no structure to it. Turned on at a low volume, puts the brain into a state that's optimal for learning and workflow. Everything about this 90 minute block from the low levels and white noise to the position of my computer, how I'm standing, where my eyes are positioned, is geared towards putting me in this tunnel of work.

13:05I have to say that while it can be a challenge to try and achieve this state and this tunnel of work, some days you start to get kind of addicted to it. It feels really good. It's like a workout for the mind. It is something that as you exit that 90 minutes, you really feel like you've accomplished a lot because often you have. It just feels deeply satisfying. I'm convinced that that's because of the release of neuromodulators like dopamine and the norepinephrine that's circulating in your system. I want to be clear that I'm not perfect about this 90 minutes. Occasionally I get drawn away. I really try to achieve this most if not every day that I'm alive because for me, that work session is kind of holy.

13:45There's a powerful way in which you can place the timing of this 90 minute work -out in an optimal way. You have access to a very important piece of data that dictates when this bout should start more or less and when it should end. That piece of data is your temperature minimum. If you're somebody who wakes up on average at 7 a .m., well then your temperature minimum is 5 a .m. You can be reasonably sure that your best work is going to be done anywhere from 4 to 6 hours after your temperature minimum. How do I know this? How do I know this relationship between temperature minimum and focus cognition?

14:24Well, temperature minimum defines the trough, the nadir as they say, of your temperature across the 24 hour cycle. And immediately after that, your temperature will start to rise. That temperature rises actually what triggers the initial cortisol release that you experience and wakes you up further. And then of course that sunlight that you're getting is going to further enhance that healthy release of cortisol. That cortisol will then provide fuel, if you will, for that increase in temperature and your body will continue to increase in temperature throughout the day toward the afternoon. What you're trying to do in this idea of optimizing this 90 minute work -out to a particular time of day is catch the portion of the steepest slope of that temperature rise.

15:10So if you're somebody who wakes up at 8 a .m. each morning, your temperature minimum is 6 a .m. Chances are you're going to want to start this work -out somewhere around 10 a .m. or 11 a .m. Now, some people wake up and feel very alert first thing in the morning. They can really do their best work first thing in the morning. Please, if that's you, continue to do that. And leverage that time. Use that time. But if you're somebody who struggles to find focus, definitely let your physiology and this rise in your body temperature support your efforts to focus. Rather than trying to do your best work at times of day when your physiology is actually directing your body and your brain toward defocus and towards being more lethargic.

15:55It just is setting yourself up for success when you try and capture this rising phase of your temperature. Data going back to the 1990s supports the idea that physical movement of particular kinds can support brain health and brain function, both in the immediate term and in the long term. So, after I've finished a bout of work, this 90 minute bout of work, I force myself to do some sort of physical exercise that is going to be supportive of my brain health and brain function and organ health and bodily function in general. Now, there are various forms of physical activity, or what we call exercise.

16:33But those can generally be batched into two categories. First is strength and hypertrophy work. So physical movements that are designed to make you stronger and or make your muscles larger. There's also endurance work. Physical exercise and movements that are designed to allow you to do more work over time or to extend the amount of time that you can do work of any kind, both physical and mental. The data all points to the fact that working out hard for longer than an hour can actually be detrimental because of the way that it raises cortisol. And cortisol can be a good thing if it's appropriately timed and in the appropriate low levels.

17:12But you don't want to have your cortisol levels up throughout the day or have big spikes of cortisol repeatedly. So keeping workouts relatively short can definitely help with that endurance work and strength training or hypertrophy training done in combination, meaning not necessarily in the same workout, but done across the week is immensely beneficial for the production of things like brain derived, nautrophic factor for limiting inflammatory cytokines like IL -6 for promoting anti -inflammatory cytokines like IL -10 provided that exercises of the proper duration of the day. And that it's not so intense that you're actually creating damage to the various systems of the body.

17:55What about the structure of the actual workouts? Well, approximately 80 % of the resistance training you do should be resistance training that doesn't go to what they call failure where you can't actually move the resistance anymore. The other 20 % can be of the higher intensity to failure type training that 80, 20 rule of less than failure and work to failure in the resistance exercise regime can be transported or translated to the endurance exercise portion by focusing on that thing that we're familiar with, which is the burn when we're running harder, cycling hard, we'll experience a kind of burning of the muscles that's associated with the lactate system.

18:34And actually that lactate system is its own form of fuel for the brain. And so there's increasing interest in generating the lactate or pushing past that lactate threshold for small portion, 20 % or so of endurance work in order to support brain health and function. So on any given day, I finished that work block and I train. I do some sort of resistance or endurance training. I put those on alternate days or different days rather. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily for more than 13 years. However, I've now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month.

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20:47So we've now talked about the arc that spans all the way from waking to a morning bout of focused work to physical training. I have not mentioned ingesting anything or nutrients. One of the most common questions I get or what should I eat for my brain? Well, ironically enough, one of the best things you can do for me is to get a good job. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do for your brain is do not eat, but of course, we all have to eat sooner or later. So let's talk about food timing first. As I mentioned, I eat my first meal sometime around noon plus or minus an hour. The volume of food is also important.

21:22If you eat a large volume of anything because it diverts blood to your gut, you will feel lethargic and you will have less blood going to your brain. That seems like a simple and trivial fact, but if you want to be able to think, you can't ingest large volumes of anything in the right way. So for lunch, I do emphasize slightly lower carbohydrate or low carbohydrate intake for the simple reason that adrenaline and dopamine and their associated neuromodulators are going to support alertness. So for me, I fast up until about noon. Then I eat a lunch that consists of some sort of protein thing like a some meat or some chicken or some salmon and some vegetables, etc.

22:06And if I've exercised previously, which I do, as I mentioned, five days a week, then I will ingest some starches, I'll ingest some bread or bread, excuse me, or rice or oatmeal and butter and nuts and things like that. But I will keep the total amount of carbohydrate a little bit on the low side, or if I haven't trained, I won't have any carbohydrate at all. Not because I'm ketogenic, but because starches cause the release of serotonin in the brain and lend themselves to a state of sleepiness. Now, what about components of foods that are not about alertness but are about mood? We did an entire episode on mood and food and it's very clear based on now dozens of studies that ingesting sufficient levels of omega -3 fatty acids is going to support healthy mood and even connect as an antidepressant ingesting at least 1000 milligrams per day of the EPA form of essential fatty acid is as effective as prescription antidepressants in relieving depression.

23:11And if you're somebody who requires prescription antidepressants, prozaczole, etc. It can allow people to take lower doses of those medications. A key aspect to the midday meal, if you want that meal to benefit you, is to take a brief walk afterwards. It turns out that brief walks of five to 30 minutes after ingesting food can accelerate metabolism and actually can accelerate and improve nutrient utilization, which is essentially the same as metabolism. But nonetheless, that's something that I do after I finish my noon meal. I do force myself to stand up and go outside and take a brief walk. That also gets me again into optic flow.

23:53It also has another benefit, which is that I am giving my brain and thereby my body more information about light and time of day, which is always better than less information about light and time of day. A key protocol for sleep health and wakefulness and metabolism and hormone health is viewing light in the afternoon. So here's the reason for doing this. As we progress into the evening hours, there's a phenomenon where our retina, our eyes become very sensitive to light such that if we view bright lights, or even not so bright lights between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am, that is strongly disruptive, very disruptive for our dopamine production.

24:41It can really screw up our sleep. But if you can get outside and see the sun as it arcs down, or if you can't see the sun directly, get some sunlight in your eyes in the afternoon hours, or maybe 4 pm -ish, what it does is it lowers the sensitivity of your retina in the late evening hours, which allows you to buffer yourself against the sun. So that's the negative effects of bright light later at night. Now we haven't talked too much about melatonin, but melatonin is a hormone that is inhibited by light. Melatonin is the hormone that allows you to fall asleep easily. Now I'm not talking about supplementing melatonin.

25:19I'm talking about melatonin that you naturally produce from your pineal. So the protocol is very simple. Get outside in the afternoon or evening for 10 to 30 minutes. Take your sun glasses off, so get that afternoon light. So what you'll probably notice is that the optimal protocols for optimizing your brain and body health and performance and sleep, etc, are actually really simple. But just because they're simple does not mean that they are not powerful. In fact, they are very powerful because they leverage the most powerful technology that exists, which is your nervous system. What we are talking about today are really basic things that we can all do that can steer our neurology and our biology in the directions that are going to support workflow that are going to support hormones that are going to support brain function.

26:07So at some point in the evening, I eat that thing that we call dinner. And while it feels sort of strange to talk about my dinner, the reason I want to talk about my dinner and what I eat for dinner is that for me dinner, of course, is about eating, but also about optimizing the transition to sleep. So my dinner generally is comprised of things that are going to support rest and deep sleep. And that means starchy carbohydrates. It's absolutely clear that one of the major ways that we can increase serotonin, which helps in the transition to sleep, is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates. So my dinner is carbohydrates and some protein.

26:49So maybe some chicken or fish or something like that, maybe some eggs, or sometimes just pasta or just rice and vegetables. And that's because I enjoy those foods, but also because I want to increase the amount of serotonin in my brain so that I can actually fall asleep that night. Many people who are on low carbohydrate diets struggle with falling and staying asleep. And that's because it's hard to achieve heightened levels of serotonin, which are necessary to enter sleep. I should also mention that melatonin and serotonin fall in the same pathway. They are related hormones and neuromodulators.