Sleep, sunlight, and your brain

Hi,

I recently listened to this podcast with Kevin Rose. It gave me a bunch of new insights, some of which I’ve already applied repeatedly.

Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, shares fascinating tidbits of knowledge about tweaking our stress response and biorhythms. He limits himself for the most part to things that have been confirmed by multiple independent studies (and when that’s not the case, I don’t include those tips here).

These are my takeaways:

• If you struggle with your day/night rhythm, often staying up too late and then having trouble getting up, then try starting your day off with loads of light. Preferably direct natural light outside—that’s many times stronger than natural light that comes in through a window. 
  Exposure to lots of bright light soon after waking—even through cloud cover—triggers the release of a healthy amount of cortisol, which then sets the timer that “quiets melatonin until 14 to 16 hours later,” Huberman explains. His concrete advice? View bright light early in the day, for at least 2 to 10 minutes, outdoors.

• Interesting addition: receptors in your eyes require lots of light for the desired effect, but late at night, only a few photons are needed to disrupt your clock. That’s something most of us are all too aware of, but I didn’t know this detail: The cells in our eyes that influence our circadian rhythm are located in the bottom part of our retinas. Makes sense when you consider they’re meant to observe the sun above.
  Huberman suggests dimming screens and the lights in your home in the evening, turning overhead lights off and opting for lower tabletop lamps or floor lamps instead. 

• Getting lots of light in the morning and not much in the evening makes sense. But what’s perhaps less intuitive is the advice to soak up some daylight as the sun goes down. Taking in dusky light in the evenings apparently has a demonstrated positive effect on your biological rhythm. So take that walk around the block before dark.

• If your biorhythm is out of whack and you consistently wake up too late, then get some light into your bedroom in the 2 hours before you get up. This works because light hits receptors in your eyes, even when your eyes are closed. It doesn’t have to be so bright it wakes you up, but the effect is astounding: you’ll get tired earlier that very first evening. Of course it’s up to you to take that signal seriously and get to bed.

• Something completely different—breathing under stress. Huberman describes something we do naturally in our sleep, or when we cry: We double-inhale, then exhale once. He demonstrates it, and it sounds a little like breathing in through your nose until “full”, then taking another big sniff of air. A gulp of oxygen still fits somehow. Then exhale slowly. Huberman says you’re effectively using more of your lung capacity, which signals your body to be calm. The great thing is it’s a tool you can turn to in the middle of a stressful situation—before that presentation, during a high stakes phone call, or any other time you feel your heart jump into your throat. Very cool.

• And last: a way to relax and fall asleep, using a method called Non-Sleep Deep Rest, or NSDR. This is no flighty trend, but a scientifically proven method of calming yourself. You can find any number of scripts on YouTube to try. There’s sure to be one that works for you. 

Do you have any tips that work well for you when it comes to acute stress or your day/night rhythm? I’d love to hear them. Always up for an experiment!

Have a good week,

Rick

produced by the language girl