The Optimal Morning Routine - Andrew Huberman

hello and welcome to a special episode of  after skool i'm andrew huberman professor of  

neurobiology and ophthalmology at stanford school  of medicine i'm also the host of the hubermann  

lab podcast a weekly podcast focused on science  and science-based tools for everyday life today  

you're going to learn about practical tools for  optimizing your morning routine so without further  

ado practical tools for optimizing your morning  routine there are certain foundational behaviors  

do's and don'ts that set the stage for you to  be better at everything so a lot of times people  

say how can i lift more focus better remember  things better it's like well let's think about  

the foundation of that and that's always  going to come back to two elements and  

that's sleep and what i call non-sleep  deep rest so sleep is the fundamental  

practice or part of our 24-hour cycle where  if you don't get it on a consistent basis you  

are down regulating your ability to do everything  right metabolism is screwed up immune system is  

screwed up etc etc however it is not the case  if you get a one night's bad sleep or that if  

you're not sleeping perfectly that you can't  perform well but let's talk about sleep and just  

because i think it's important the goal for most  people unless you're pulling vampire shifts on  

on deployment or you're a shift worker and thank  you shift workers we'll talk about shift work  

you should try and get really good sleep eighty  percent of the time eight percent of the nights  

of your life the other twenty percent i hope  you're not getting good sleep for good reasons  

that you enjoy but the point is that there are  a couple things that you can do first of all  

every cell in your body has a circadian rhythm  meaning every cell has a 24-hour circadian clock  

that's regulated by genes think of these your body  is a bunch of millions of clock to need to align  

those clocks to a single time this is why when  you travel overseas your gut goes off or it's  

more easy you more easily you get sick or uh your  thinking isn't quite right the clocks aren't in  

alignment they're not entrained as we say number  one practice for everything sleep especially is  

try and get some natural light in your eyes within  an hour of waking up if you wake up before the sun  

turn on a bunch of bright lights and then  get sunlight in your eyes once it comes out  

if there's dense cloud cover there  are still more photons light energy  

coming through that cloud cover than there are  coming from artificial lights so try and get  

five to ten minutes without sunglasses  outside in the morning once the sun is out  

most days if not all days this has an outsized  effect on a number of things first of all it  

modulates the timing of what's called the cortisol  pulse once every 24 hours you're going to get a  

boost in cortisol big spike in cortisol it's a  healthy boost it sets your temperature rhythm  

in motion sets your level of alertness your  level of focus and your mood you want that  

cortisol pulse to happen as early in the day  as once what's triggering the cortisol pulse  

the cortisol pulse is naturally entrained by these  genetic programs to happen once every 24 hours but  

light will anchor it to the period where you see  bright light got it a late-shifted cortisol pulse  

so imagine the kid that wakes up and spends the  morning in bed or you spend the morning bedding  

you're texting or you're indoors and you're  typing on the computer that's not enough light to  

accomplish what i'm talking about and then you go  outside around noon or one you're in what's called  

the circadian dead zone which is the time in which  light arriving at the eyes can do certain things  

but it can't time this pulse that means that  cortisol pulse is going to come in the afternoon  

which means that your temperature rhythm is going  to be shifted late and that's actually a signature  

of depression and anxiety and difficulty falling  asleep many people are waking up and they're just  

spending time indoors and they're putting on  sunglasses getting in their car and driving or  

there's cloud cover and they think there's no sun  out i don't mean that you actually have to stare  

at the sun never stare at any light so bright  it's going to damage you please don't and blink as  

necessary but the indirect rays from the from sun  trigger these cells in the eyes called melanopsin  

ganglion cells these ganglion cells these are our  neurons they send a signal to your hypothalamus  

then the hypothalamus releases this peptide which  is a wake-up signal for your whole brain and body  

and sets a timer for the onset of melatonin  release 16 hours later melatonin being the  

hormone that makes you sleepy and makes you want  to go to sleep so you can imagine what happens if  

you don't get that light until a few hours later  everything shifted and then you want to go to st  

you don't know why you're wide awake at 11 30 or  12 and everything's messed up the other thing is  

that you can get bright light from electronic  devices early in the day but it's not enough  

you need photons from sunlight now if you live in  scandinavia in the depths of winter if you're up  

in like you know trondheim or ohus or something  like okay fine don't buy an expensive daytime  

simulator get one of these led light boxes for  drawing they're very inexpensive in comparison you  

find them on amazon i don't have a relationship  to any of these brands but they're easy to find  

20 30 bucks put that on your desk and just look  at that thing for a few minutes in the morning  

not as good but better than being in the  darkness then when the sun's out get outside  

now this is a huge huge effect for the following  reason the signal that arrives from the eyes to  

the hypothalamus also triggers the release of the  neuromodulator dopamine we hear about dopamine as  

a feel-good molecule dopamine dopamine dopamine  dopamine hits but dopamine's main role in the  

brain and body is to drive motivation craving  and pursuit it is not the molecule of pleasure  

it is the molecule of drive it is life force  dopamine is actually the molecule from which  

adrenaline epinephrine is manufactured and you may  notice you said we crave sun it also does make you  

feel good here's why if you think about seasonally  breeding animals let's think about the arctic fox  

well the arctic fox in winter is white but in the  summertime has darker pellets it actually there's  

a pathway going from sunlight to dopamine  to melanin production in the skin in fur so  

animals that transition from light color to dark  color that's all mediated by dopamine guess what  

else happens the gonads grow there are animals  that i've worked on in the laboratory and that  

also in humans it's now been shown in  a beautiful study that people who get  

20 to 30 minutes of light on their skin this was  a study done in israel so they wear an appropriate  

amount of clothing but they're sleeveless no  hat no sunglasses they were told to go outside  

20 or 30 minutes three times a week just in  the sunshine ideally they were shorts also  

they measure testosterone and estrogen in men  and women significant increases in both and  

all the associated things of increased passion  blah blah blah that is what they measured in the  

study why well it turns out that light to the  eyes but also light to the skin the skin is an  

endocrine organ it's not just something to tattoo  and hang earrings from and put clothing on and  

actually there's a pathway involving a molecule  called p53 and the keratinocytes are these skin  

cells that when sunlight when uvb ultraviolet  blue light penetrates the skin because it can  

penetrate the skin superficially triggers these  keratinocytes to stimulate a pathway that releases  

dopamine in the brain and body so you feel better  when you're getting light in your eyes and on  

your skin and you're increasing testosterone  and epinephrine and dopamine increase that's  

why you feel good in the summer months people in  scandinavia know this this kind of spring fever  

in the winter months you want to go through every  bit of effort to double or triple the amount of  

time that you're spending outside in the morning  so instead of 10 minutes make it 30 minutes  

we all are familiar with getting sleepy and  falling asleep that's the parasympathetic  

nervous system taking over the longer we are  awake the longer the buildup of something called  

adenosine in the brain and body and adenosine  turns on the parasympathetic nervous system  

suppresses the sympathetic nervous system when  we sleep adenosine is pushed back down what  

is caffeine caffeine effectively through  some chemical steps blocks the effects of  

adenosine so if you wait so here's a little trick  if you that's i don't like the word hacks because  

hacks imply using something for a purpose it  wasn't designed for here we're talking about  

hardwired biology but if you wake up in the  morning and you didn't sleep quite as much  

as you would have liked that means and you're  sleepy that means you still have a buildup of  

adenosine in your system let's say you immediately  reach for caffeine great you suppress the action  

of that adenosine and you will be more alert  and guess what happens then the caffeine wears  

off and the adenosine binds to the receptors with  greater affinity and you have your afternoon crash  

so a practice that's very useful to people is  to delay the intake of caffeine by 60 to 90  

minutes after waking allow the adenosine to be  cleared out because it's not just cleared out  

in sleep it's also cleared out in those kind  of sleepy states of early morning so allow it  

to be cleared out the other thing that clears it  out exercise exercise so when you get up in the  

morning you're kind of sleepy i don't want to do  this i don't want to do this but you hydrate and  

train you clear out the adenosine now i like to  drink caffeine before i train her during training  

i'm weak like that but for people that have an  afternoon crash this can have tremendous benefits  

of and maybe start by pushing it out 15 minutes  per day most everyone that does this says oh my  

goodness i didn't understand why in the afternoon  i'm crashing so hard this will really really help

so let me ask you this i have a sense for you what  time do you wake up typically generally between  

well between 4 15 and 4 30. okay so for  most people it's gonna be a little bit later  

probably but for you that means so you're waking  up if it's because of an alarm it's because of an  

alarm but you're if that's your natural wake-up  time now without an alarm that means that your  

temperature is starting to rise at that time  that's why you wake up that temperature increase  

triggers that cortisol release now and that's why  some people wake up right before their alarm clock  

it's this cortisol pulse okay and two hours before  that so for you approximately 2 30 in the morning  

is what we call your temperature minimum it's when  your temperature is lowest that it's ever going to  

be in the 24 hour cycle so the way it works is  you wake up because of an increase in core body  

temperature that increase in core body temperature  triggers that increase in cortisol and by viewing  

light at that time you entrain you you ensure  that it happens at the same time the next day the  

clocks of your body are matched to this cortisol  pulse so viewing bright light in the morning  

anchors it when we say entrained it it tel through  a circuit that involves cells in the eye and cells  

in the hypothalamus which then talk to the rest of  the cells of the body through a signal a peptide  

that's released make sure that the temperature  starts rising goes up up up up up and sometime  

around two or three in the afternoon you're going  to hit your temperature maximum you might feel a  

little sleepy at that time but that's actually  the time in which your gut your all your systems  

are kind of revving at the maximum capacity  and then it's going to start to drop and start  

to drop drop drop now that drop in temperature  eventually will be a full one to 3 degrees below  

what your temperature maximum and that's when  you're going to get sleepy and fall asleep  

this is why it's important to keep  the room cool at night to fall asleep

the goal here is to increase body temperature in  order to be awake and to decrease body temperature  

in order to be asleep if we stay with those  themes a lot of this will just fall into bins  

exercising will increase body temperature somewhat  paradoxically getting into a cold shower or cold  

water everyone says what must make you cold  right well if you stay in there a long time  

to become hypothermic right but let's remember  the thermostat example you have a little area in  

your brain called the medial pre-optic area and if  you make the surface of your body cold guess what  

happens core body temperature goes up so getting  into so if you're going to do ice baths or cold  

showers you can do i would say do them sometime  better than not at all there's a beautiful paper  

published in the european journal physiology  in the year 2000 which took people and had them  

sit they actually had them on lawn chairs in  water a pool it's a great way to run an experiment  

i always say people ask about cold showers  they're not a lot of experiments on cold  

showers because think about it's very hard to  control is everyone under the shower the same  

way et cetera you put someone up in water up  to their neck it is you know what you're doing  

so there's it's experimental rigor that drives  that but they had people get into reasonably  

cool water 60 degrees fahrenheit so it's not  that cool but they had them stand for an hour  

or they've had people get into very cold water  something like 40 degrees for just 20 seconds  

now here's what's really interesting that shock  that you referred to is a adrenaline also called  

epinephrine and it is released from the adrenals  obviously but also from a site in the brain called  

locus ceruleus a little area of the brainstem  that then sprinklers the rest of the brain with  

epinephrine and wakes up the rest of the brain so  that shock occurs in the brain and the body and  

actually the stuff in the body doesn't cross the  blood-brain barrier so you're a two-part system  

when those two systems are aligned it's beautiful  when those two systems are out of alignment that's  

not good so you get into cold water that's the  shock for the first 30 seconds for most people who  

are untrained your forebrain which is controlling  decision making is basically suppressed in its  

activity and other areas are ramped up so just  know that exact panic just understand that passes  

then what happens is when you get out of the cold  whether or not it's a longer period at 60 degrees  

or a short period i would hate to hear that people  are only doing 20 seconds but maybe a minute to  

three minutes at 45 degrees or something there's  a long arc release of dopamine and epinephrine  

that's what was shown in the study in humans  because people always go well it's just in mice no  

in humans and that long arc of dopamine leads to a  near doubling or more of dopamine and epinephrine  

in my colleague anna lembke's book called  dopamine nation she works on addiction runs  

our dual diagnosis addiction clinic at stanford  she talked about a patient of hers that basically  

helped himself get over cocaine addiction by doing  cold baths because it was the only thing that  

would give him the kind of dopamine release that  even slightly mimicked his cocaine addiction and  

allowed himself to wean himself off with a  healthier behavior now i'm not saying it's the  

equivalent of a drug like cocaine but i am saying  that it's a better decision than than a drug like  

cocaine for obvious reasons so that mood-enhancing  effect that you feel afterwards it's real  

it's based on a real neurochemical effect  and that dopamine and epinephrine will  

combine with the temperature increase from  cortisol plus light plus exercise all things  

that increase core body temperature now you've  got increased core body temperature you created  

a dopamine release epinephrine you've created a  summer month inside your body in the in i don't  

care if you live in minneapolis in the depths of  winter or someplace even as cold as new hampshire  

you are you are creating summer in your body by  doing that now if you live in san diego or los  

angeles or arizona and it's the summer and you're  staying indoors and you're on your phone and  

you're not doing any movement until the afternoon  which is fine exercise in the afternoon i realize  

there's some important benefits of that and you're  laying in bed or you're just walking around the  

kitchen and putting on sunglasses and driving  to work guess what you're creating a colorado  

winter inside of your body despite the fact that  the sun is out so if you're wondering why you're  

slightly depressed your metabolism is lower your  testosterone output is slightly lower than maybe  

you'd like it to be there could be other reasons  too of course but again we're talking about  

modulators i'm not saying getting sun in your eyes  in the morning is going to make your testosterone  

perfect what i'm saying is you're you're setting  an internal milieu through things that increase  

core body temperature dopamine epinephrine etc and  that should be done relatively early in the day  

thank you for joining for this special  episode of after skool if you'd like to  

learn more tools for mental health physical  health and performance check out the huberman  

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