AMA #16: Sleep, Vertigo, TBI, OCD, Tips for Travelers, Gut-Brain Axis & More

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
Hello, everybody, and welcome. I want to thank all of you premium Huberman Lab Podcast subscribers for joining. This is an exciting one, even though the backdrop here looks very much like the studio back in the United States. I am doing this AMA live from Sydney, Australia, where I and the Huberman Lab Podcast team have been for well over a week. We were in Melbourne, and we just did two live shows here in Sydney, and we're headed off to Brisbane tomorrow. And it's been absolutely delightful. We had so much fun talking science, learning from people. It's a wonderful place. I want to get right into your questions and do my best to answer as many of them as possible, as thoroughly, clearly and succinctly as possible over the next hour. So I'm going to dive into those in just a moment. Just one last important thing before I do that, which is that I want to thank everyone for being a premium subscriber and let you know that we, based on your contributions to the premium channel, have already, as you know, supported four laboratories at Stanford, Columbia University, Salk Institute and elsewhere for important projects on humans that are already leading to important therapeutic breakthroughs that we will soon share with you on the Huberman Lab podcast. But that this year, 2024, we were fortunate enough to secure no fewer than three dollar for dollar match donors who have generously agreed to match our contributions from the premium channel to additional projects. Those are going to head out to a number of different universities and researchers working again on human studies, so no animal studies, human studies on important projects, everything from novel treatments for mental health issues, headache and migraine, some interesting stuff on immunology and cancer, mindsets and immune system function, and much, much more. Also nutrition, physiology, exercise, physiology, et cetera. So your contributions to the premium channel really do make a difference. I can say this because I'm familiar with the challenges of raising funding for doing truly breakthrough work and getting things quickly out to the general public. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And now without further ado, let's get to your questions. The first question was, is how are you managing to achieve your key health pillars while in Australia and any other place you've enjoyed doing so, all while working so hard? Well, thanks for the question. I'll answer this question in the context of what I think we all can and should and really will do. Because if you're a premium channel subscriber, certainly you're taking your health seriously. So first off, I think there's a bit of a misconception about the protocols on the Huberman Lab podcast being that we are all, including myself, super, super regimented about them to the point where we don't enjoy other things in life. And that's simply not true. So I view the protocols of the Huberman Lab podcast as science-based, actionable, low cost, zero cost, minimal cost in almost all situations. There are a few exceptions to that, but it really designed to mesh with the rest of life and enhance mental health and physical health, which of course means remaining social, staying on typical sleep schedules, et cetera. So the big ones for me when arriving here were of course to get morning sunlight as often as possible. It saw a beautiful sunrise this morning over Sydney, but even on the overcast days, we've had a few rainy overcast days to really make it a point to get outside and to get that morning sunlight. Also, our crew did travel in with a red light, not a red light panel, although I do have a couple of red light panels, those little portable ones that I use from time to time. The red lights I'm referring to in reference to answering this question are the red lights, which are just red light bulb that we, I actually travel with a little red light bulb unit. It's just like a small screw-in unit. You plug it in here with an adapter, of course. And then in the evening, we've switched off the lights in the place where we're staying and it just brings the overall levels of cortisol down low very quickly. And it makes it very easy to get to sleep each night. It makes a big, big difference. And this is a very low cost tool. You could essentially purchase any red light, even red party lights and put those up and then switch off the regular overhead lights. It makes a big difference. That's probably even cost saving. We've also stayed fairly regimented about exercise. So this morning, took a great jog down to the ocean, jumped in the ocean. If you don't have access to an ocean on vacation, just getting outside and getting some movement early in the day can help shift your rhythm. Really the quad effect of shifting your circadian rhythm in a new place or becoming an early riser, if you want to do that, is morning sunlight movement, social engagement, and in my case, caffeine. Although some people would opt for eating breakfast. I just happened to prefer to eat a little bit later in the day. So when you combine those things, you are really amplifying that morning cortisol increase that I've talked about on the podcast, morning catecholamine release, so dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. And those act in synergy to create more early day and daytime mood focus and alertness and enhance the transition to nighttime sleep. But of course, that dimming of the lights and maybe even red light in the evening really, really can help. And so those are the biggies. And then, of course, if you want to shift your circadian rhythm really quickly to be on a local schedule, it helps to hop on the local meal schedule. But for me, that always means skipping breakfast. I'm not a big breakfast eater. I like lunch and afternoon snacks sometimes and dinner. So when you do all of those things, it makes it very easy to stay with the health pillars. And of course, stress control is important. We're doing lives. There's a lot of work to do. So there's a daily for me non-sleep deep rest or yoga nidra protocol. By the way, you may be familiar with non-sleep deep rest and yoga nidra. A terrific zero-cost practice for reducing stress, replacing or replenishing dopamine and mental and physical vigor. I've talked about this in the studies that support this on the podcast. There's a Huberman NSDR script on YouTube. That's again, zero cost. But while down here, we recorded a 10 minute, 20 minute and 30 minute NSDR script with a view of a beautiful Sydney sunrise. Those should be posted to our Huberman Lab clips channel in the not too distant future, probably in the next couple of weeks. And then you can have different duration NSDR scripts that you can use again, completely zero cost anytime you like. We've recorded also some additional meditations and we're considering putting out a Spotify album, if you will, of an NSDR and meditations that are science-based of different durations. So if you like that idea, maybe just give a shout into the internet and hopefully we'll hear it or put a comment on one of the latest episode of the Huberman Lab podcast on YouTube. And if that sounds like a good idea to you, we will do more of that. These are again, zero costs, zero to access tools for enhancing mental health and physical health. So combining all of those is really what we've done. Next question was, is I have followed your sleep advice and I have seen a huge improvement. Great. Happy to hear that. Wonderful. But I still wake up at night and only get five or six hours. Is that enough? Can you please give more advice if possible? Well, first of all, thanks for tuning in to the sleep advice. So the question of whether or not five or six hours is enough really depends on person context. And by context, I mean, it can even change across the course of the year by life circumstances. The criteria for insomnia are very clear. Insomnia is excessive daytime sleepiness due to lack of sleep at night.