LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman at the Moore Theatre in Seattle

Andrew Huberman (0:00)

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 School of Medicine. Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting two live events, one in Seattle, Washington, and one in Portland, Oregon, both entitled The Brain Body Contract, where I discussed science and science-related tools for mental health, physical health and performance. My favorite part of each evening, however, was the question and answer period that followed the lecture. I love the question and answer period because it gives me an opportunity to hear directly from the audience as to what they want to know most. And indeed, to get into a bit of dialogue, so we really clarify what are the underlying mechanisms of particular tools, how best to use the tools for things like focus and sleep. We also touched on some things related to mental health and physical health. It was a delight for me, and I like to think that the audience learned a lot. I know that many of you weren't able to attend those events, but we wanted to make the information available to you. So what follows this is a recording of the question and answer period from the lecture in Seattle, Washington. I hope you'll find it to be both interesting and informative. I'd also like to thank our sponsors of these live events. The first is Momentous Supplements, which is our partner with the Huberman Lab podcast, providing supplements that are of the very highest quality, that ship international, and that are arranged in dosages and single ingredient formulations that make it possible for you to develop the optimal supplement strategy for you. And I'd also like to thank our other sponsor, which is Inside Tracker, which provides blood tests and DNA tests, so you can monitor your immediate and long-term health progress. I'd also like to announce that there are two new live events scheduled. The first one is going to take place Sunday, October 16th at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. The other live event will take place Wednesday, November 9th at the Beacon Theater in New York City. Tickets to both of those events are now available online at hubermanlab.com/tour. That's hubermanlab.com/tour. I do hope that you learn from and enjoy the recording of the question and answer period that follows this. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

What is your most used protocol? I'm assuming that you mean the protocol that I use the most. I genuinely do the morning sunlight viewing this evening. I went and looked at the sunset every single evening, and I absolutely do 10 to 30 minutes of some non-sleep deep rest protocol every single day. Every single day. The reason I called it non-sleep deep rest is because while I love the classic traditions of things like yoga nidra, my fear was that if I called things yoga nidra that people would get spooked. But I also have to say that I rather loathe the fact that scientists use so many fancy terms that it also vaults information from the very people that fund the work. So I have a kind of an ax to grind with the scientific community too. So non-sleep deep rest was my attempt to put my arms around a number of different things like yoga nidra, which I have great reverence for and other tools like that. I do that usually in the early afternoon or if I wake up first thing in the morning and I haven't slept enough or not that well, I'll do 30 minutes of yoga nidra and I feel terrific after that. I'll just mention a brief anecdote. I learned about yoga nidra while researching a book that I never wrote that may or may not ever be published. I went and spent a week in a trauma center, an addiction treatment center in Florida and saw some amazing work of some amazing people and some amazing transformations and it was a big part of their daily routine for these people to do yoga nidra and non-sleep deep rest and I thought they're really onto something here. So almost religiously for me every day 10 to 30 minutes. Not that it matters but the CEO of Google is really into NSDR. I don't know him but he's written about that a number of times. In Seattle, sunrise varies from 430 a.m. to 9 a.m. depending on season. Are you recommending to vary your wake up outside time with the seasons somewhat? You don't need to see the sun cross the horizon. That would be great but not everyone can wake up with the sun. You want to get so called low solar angle sunlight. Why? Because of that yellow blue contrast that we talked about before. Many people wake up before the sun is out. If that case, if you want to be awake, turn on as many bright lights as you can. Up here, I don't know, does anyone here, you don't have to admit this if you don't want to, but maybe not or raise your hand if you're comfortable with me, that in the winter you feel less well or typically in the transition. Yeah, it's huge up here. It's really, it's amazing. And then when you're on campus or that's where I've spent time and you see Rainier and it's like the blossoms are out and you feel almost high because that's dopamine. You know, animals that have white pelage in the winter and then it turns dark in the summer and spring months, that pathway, the melanin pathway is from tyrosine which is the precursor to dopamine and also to melanin production in the fur. So the whole system is linked. It's not rigged, it's linked. So what do I suggest? I suggest in the winter months getting 30 minutes of sun light viewing, I know it's a lot but it's much better than feeling lousy all day. And then the real key in the winter is to try and catch some sunlight before it goes down. If you're indoors and it goes down and then you go outside and it's dark, your brain and body don't really know where they are in time and then you flip on Ozark and you're watching Ozark and then you really don't know where you are in time. I have one more episode, don't tell me what happened, that show is, when I was at post-doc, I used to recommend the wire to my competitors. True. I go to sleep fired up, ready and excited to do whatever it takes. When I wake up, that drive is depleted. Why and what can I do? Interesting. I have not heard that one before, but if I were to venture a guess, we didn't spend much time tonight talking about the autonomic nervous system, this kind of seesaw that takes us from very alert, potentially panicked, but to very, very deep sleep, even, you know, God forbid, we go into a coma, it's because the parasympathetic nervous system is overactive relative to the sympathetic nervous system, seesaw, autonomic function. You may be sleeping very, very deeply, and when you are in deep, deep rest, the last thing you want to do is get into that forward center of mass thinking, planning, predicting, right? In, you know, again, in yoga nidra, again, non-sleep deep rest, there's this common theme in the script of going from thinking and doing and predicting to being and feeling, they say. And I'm not making fun of them. As the moment I hear that, I go, just going to be and feel. What are you doing? You're actually just moving into sensation, but no planning, right? There's nothing mysterious about it. Sensation, but no planning. Now in sleep, a very deeply parasympathetic sleep state, what's happening? You actually, that visual aperture is actually so big, right? You're not in panoramic vision, your eyes are actually closed. Space and time are from past, present and future are invited into your thinking. You're in a deep, deep state of relaxation. It may be, Dustin, that when you're waking up, you're having a hard time transitioning out of that because you're sleeping so deeply. You may be waking up mid-sleep cycle. Many people find it useful to set an alarm so that they wake up at the end of a 90-minute so-called Ultradian cycle. There are some sleep apps that do this on the phone. I can't recall their names. But so rather than sleeping seven hours, you might be better off sleeping six or seven and a half hours, right? Waking up at the end of one of these 90-minute cycles. Try that. That would be consistent with what we know about the biology. But I think it's common to, if you sleep very deeply, to wake up and not necessarily want to spring out of bed. I've heard of these people that just want to spring out of bed and attack the day. Jocko Willink, 4.3 in the morning, is Cassio Phone. I'm seeing his watch when it's like eight for me. I'm like, wow, again, these people are amazing. I must be doing something wrong. But I don't wake up that way like Tigger. I want water, I want sunlight. ninety minutes later, I want caffeine.