If You Wake Up Tired Every Day, Do This First | Andrew Huberman

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0:38So what's the routine, the ultimate morning and evening routine to set your brain and your mind up for optimal performance and not getting brain fog?

0:48Andrew Huberman:Okay. I will describe that by listing out the protocol first, and then I'll give some of the scientific mechanisms second. Because in the past, what I've tended to do is give the mechanism and then give the protocols. I know some people, it's like, you know, enough for these academic guys. Just tell me what to do. But if people want the mechanism, I'd be happy to flesh that out. I should say that what I will mention is not everything I do. um so for instance uh i get up and like most humans i use the restroom and i have a glass of water i do those things so if i if i'm not listing every in every right foot left foot step through the morning but but the things that are geared towards getting the mind into a proper place for me i'll describe it as my routine i generally get up somewhere between 5 30 and 7 in the morning depending on when i went to sleep i'm not super regular about when i go to sleep but generally that's between 10 30 and midnight yeah you know I try and avoid that midnight hour but happens so I get up obviously I use the restroom I drink some water I do think that hydrating is very important yes so I will I'll drink some some water and then the fundamental layer of health is to set your circadian rhythm the simplest way to do that is to go outside for 10 minutes and get some bright light in your eyes I'll just list off some of the things that people always ask, what if you wake up before the sun rises?

2:14Andrew Huberman:Well, simple rule. If you want to be awake, turn on as many bright lights in your house as possible. But then when the sun goes out, it comes out, excuse me, get outside and see some sunlight. You do not have to look directly into the sun, but you do want to get outside out of shade cover. If you can, don't wear sunglasses. If you can do that safely, don't try and do this through a window. Don't try and negotiate with me on this point. What about a window? Well, the filtration of the, of the important wavelengths of light through the window is just too high and so it would take hours for you to set your circadian clock that way you want to do this because once every 24 hours you're going to get a peak in cortisol which is a healthy peak you want that peak to happen early in the day because it sets up alertness for the remainder of the day there are really nice studies done by my colleagues in stanford psychiatry and biology department showing that if that cortisol peak starts to drift too late in the day you start seeing signs of depression it's actually a well-known marker of depression.

3:10Andrew Huberman:So you want that cortisol almost stressed out kind of, ah, the day's beginning, I have a lot to do feeling. That's a healthy thing. You want that happening early in the day. The sunlight will wake you up. And what's really cool is that over time, you'll start to notice the sunlight waking you up more and more. The system becomes tuned up. If you miss a day, it's not the end of the world because it's a, as we call it, a slow integrating system, but don't miss more than one day. And if you live in an area where it's very cloudy outside, Just know that the sunlight, the photons coming through that cloud cover are brighter than your brightest indoor lights.

3:44Andrew Huberman:Now, if you live in a very dark region of the world or it's unsafe or purely impractical to get outside in the morning, then it might make sense to get a sunrise simulator or one of these lights. But they tend to be very expensive. What I recommend people use instead is just a ring light, a pretty blue light. This is a case where you can blast your system. Wow. So get that morning light. That this is, it sets a number of things in motion, such as your melatonin rhythm to happen 16 hours later to help you fall asleep. I would say this is the fundamental step of any good morning. And if you don't do this enough, you are messing yourself up in a number of ways.

4:22Andrew Huberman:Does this mess with digestion also? Yeah. So every cell in your body has a 24-hour clock. All those clocks need to be aligned to the same time. So imagine a clock shop with lots of different clocks, and you don't want them alarming off at different times. this sunlight viewing or bright light viewing early in the day, I would say within 30 to 60 minutes of waking up for about 10 minutes, or if it's very cloudy, maybe 30 minutes or so, that activates a particular type of neuron in the eye called the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell, if people want to look that up, signals to the circadian clock, which is right above the roof of your mouth, but that is the master circadian clock that then releases a bunch of signals into your body.

5:02Andrew Huberman:This all happens very fast. And every cell in your body gets tuned to the exact same time reference point so that your system can work as a nice concert of cells as opposed to at a whack. Your gut has a clock. Your liver has a clock. Your heart cells have a clock. Every skin cell has a clock. And for those that are not incentivized enough by the cortisol stuff and all the other things, actually the replenishment of stem cells in the skin, skin hair and nails is activated by the system. So hair grows more readily, skin turns over and nails grow more quickly because you have stem cells, literally cells that release more cells that become new hair cells or new skin cells and new cells that make up the nails.

5:48Andrew Huberman:So skin, hair and nails also benefit and it has to be light exposure to the eyes. When we talk about all these things like the gut and the skin, et cetera, it's tempting to say, oh, it's sunlight on the skin. No, it's actually only can be signaled through the eyes because the clock lives deep in the brain, that master clock. And you need the signal to get to that master clock. So don't wear sunglasses. If you can avoid wearing sunglasses safely, right? There are people, for instance, who have macular degeneration, who have to avoid bright lights. And they know this because their ophthalmologist tells them.

6:21Andrew Huberman:If you wear corrective lenses, contacts, even if it has UV filtration, that's fine. In fact, if you think about what an eyeglass or a contact lens does is it focuses light onto the eye, actually onto the retina on the back of the eye, whereas looking through a window filters it. It blocks a certain amount of light coming in, even if it's a very clear window. So go outside. If you wear glasses, fine. If you wear contacts, fine. And if you can get out on a porch and be east-facing in the morning when the sun comes up, great. You don't need to see the sun cross the horizon. But ideally, you see the sun when it's at what we call low solar angle.

6:56Andrew Huberman:It's not directly overhead. If you wait two or three hours after waking up to get bright light in your eyes, you are setting yourself up for a complicated sleep-wake cycle that leads to a lot of what we call insomnia.

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8:46Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

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