Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Do This Every Morning to Boost Your Energy and Improve Your Sleep | Dr. Andrew Huberman #328

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

There’s a simple, free habit that you can do every morning to improve your health and reduce fatigue, and it only takes 5-10 minutes per day. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for... your mind, body, and heart.  Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 227 of the podcast with Dr. Andrew Huberman, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine. In this clip he shares a powerful daily habit that you can do to optimise your health, boost your energy and improve your sleep. Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/227 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to
Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 227 of the podcast with Dr. Andrew Huberman, Professor of Neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine. In this clip, Andrew shares a powerful daily habit that you can do to optimize your health, boost your energy, and improve your sleep. When I see a patient, I'm always trying to think about what is that
Starting point is 00:01:48 upstream lever that I can turn. And if I can get that right, then automatically, it's going to take care of a lot of downstream consequences. And when I think about your work, one of the key things that sort of jumps out to me is that the visual system may well be one of these key upstream levers. If we can learn how to manipulate it, if we can learn how to let the right type of light in at the right times of day, that can also have a whole myriad of downstream consequences. Yeah, absolutely. Digestive issues, mental focus issues, depression, anxiety, exacerbation of every major psychiatric disorder from OCD to ADHD to Alzheimer's, which is a neurologic disorder, of course, is closely associated with disruptions
Starting point is 00:02:40 in circadian clock function. So you need to coordinate the cells and systems of the body. How does that happen? Well, the primary way that happens is through the arrival of light to the eyes at the appropriate times of day and the absence of light at other times. The visual system, I think, really sits at the top of the list in terms of practical tools in order to lay down the bedrock of their foundation of mental and physical health and high performance for those that already feel as if they're doing well and want to level up their mental or physical practices. The reason I say that is for the following reason. The nervous system's job is to coordinate the activities of all the organs of the body, including our movement and our thought and our emotions, but really coordinate the immune system, coordinate the endocrine system. It's really the conductor of the whole business that is us. The visual system is unique in that it's the only piece of the central nervous system that
Starting point is 00:03:44 resides outside the cranial vault. So our eyes we think of as seeing devices, but they are actually the primary and in some sense, the only way in which the nervous system has knowledge about external circumstances. And so lining the back of our eyes is a three layered structure called the neural retina. And the neural retina is part of the brain proper. It's a piece of the brain that got extruded out of the cranial vault during development. So you've got two little bits of brain outside your cranial vault. And when light lands on those two little bits of brain,
Starting point is 00:04:16 has a profound effect on levels of energy, the function of the immune system, the timing of sleep, the depth of sleep, the appetite, and a whole other host of biological processes. And it sounds very complex, but actually, the system is quite straightforward. It is organized such that if light arrives at the appropriate times of the 24-hour cycle onto the neural retina, many, many things go terrifically well and set you up to do very well in mental and physical health. And if light lands in those two little bits of brain, the eyes at the wrong times, well, everything doesn't go to disaster right away, but in a day or two, very quickly things start to fall apart at the level of immune system and mood
Starting point is 00:05:06 and functioning so we could talk about the practical tools but I hope that lays the sort of the the organizational logic behind why we say the visual system is so important. Yeah I like what you say that the the visual system really is that kind of top-down driver get that right and lots of things sort of take care of themselves. So compared to when we were sort of evolving, or for the majority of our time on planet Earth, we have been exposed to light in a very particular way, haven't we? We had presumably lots of natural light in the daytime and low levels of light in the evening. Yet for many of us, that's been flipped. So maybe you could talk to how many of us live these days and what are those practical tips that we can use to get the visual system to start working for us and not against us?
Starting point is 00:06:01 So a couple of just basic facts about the way we are organized. Every cell in our body, every cell has a 24 hour oscillator, just meaning it's like a clock that counts down from 24 to zero and then repeats. And though every cell in our body needs to be coordinated to some master clock in order to, so that the cells of our body work as a coherent whole, in order to, so that the cells of our body work as a coherent whole. This system when disrupted is what happens in jet lag. It can happen under a number of conditions. A lot of people are what I call jet lagged at home. The clocks of their cells are out of sync and this causes many problems. So you need to coordinate the cells and systems of the body. So I'll give the practice and the tools first, and then I'll flesh it out with some science. So the foundational practice that I truly believe every person should do ideally every day,
Starting point is 00:06:52 but if not every day, most days is to view bright light, ideally sunlight within 30 minutes to an hour of waking. And ideally it would be even sooner. Now, this is not practical for many people. You live in certain areas of the world where there isn't a lot of sunlight and we'll get to that. But the idea is to get up in the morning and within about 30 minutes to get outside and get sunlight into your eyes. It is fine to wear corrective lenses. sunlight into your eyes. It is fine to wear corrective lenses. So provided you can safely do it, you get outside and you want to view sunlight. Do you need to be in direct sunlight? No. Do you need to stare at the sun? No, please don't stare directly at the sun. I always say, never look at any light, artificial or sunlight that's so bright that it's painful to look at.
Starting point is 00:07:40 You have a blink reflex for a reason, but how much and how long to do that? Well, it's going to vary because of time of year, people have different sensitivities to light, but in general, getting outside for about five to 10 minutes every morning is extremely important. If there's cloud cover, it's still important and it's far better than getting light from artificial sources. When you look at sunlight, especially early in the day, there's a special class of neurons, nerve cells in the back of the eye called intrinsically photosensitive cells. These were discovered by David Burson at Brown University and others. These cells connect to your hypothalamus. They literally send a wire that we call an axon to
Starting point is 00:08:21 your hypothalamus, which resides over the roof of your mouth. And there resides what we call the master circadian clock. The master circadian clock also has a name, the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And the suprachiasmatic nucleus acts as a conductor for all the cells of your body, from your liver to your brain cells, every cell. And it starts sending out signals to coordinate those clocks. Think about a clock shop where all the clocks are out of sync. The suprachiasmatic nucleus sets them all to the same correct time so that they all chime at the appropriate time. Otherwise, it would be chaos. Light early in the day is the primary signal by which that clock setting mechanism occurs. Now, if it's very dark out, you may have to rely on artificial lights. I'll mention some low-cost options. If you wake up before the sun
Starting point is 00:09:07 comes out, turn on as many bright artificial lights as you can. But then once the sun is out, then go outside. People ask, can and should you do this through a window or a car windshield? And the answer is no, because of the filtration of particular wavelengths of light by windows and windshields, it will take about 50 times longer. You'll be spending all day waiting for this clock mechanism to kick on. A couple other things about positive things that happen when you do this practice. First of all, every 24 hours, your body will release a hormone called cortisol. We often hear about cortisol as a stress hormone, and then it's terrible for us. But cortisol, as you know, is vital to life. And it actually provides a lot of the alertness and focus that is wonderful for
Starting point is 00:09:49 so many things. That pulse, as we call that increase in cortisol is going to happen at least once every 24 hours, regardless of when you view light, but by viewing light early in the day, that pulse arrives early in the day and gives you energy and focus for a 10 to 12, maybe even 14 hour period. If you do not view light early in the day for a couple of days in a row, what happens is that cortisol pulse starts to drift later and later into the afternoon. And a late shifted cortisol peak, I should call it peak or pulse, is closely associated with many forms of chronic depression. People's mood starts to get worse. They start having evening anxiety. They start having trouble sleeping. So get as much bright light in your eyes as you can early in the day as is safely possible.
Starting point is 00:10:36 If it's a really bright day or you're on a snow field, it'd probably only take a minute or two to set this clock. If for instance, it's a today, actually, it's pretty overcast. It's looking pretty UK here right now. Um, I spent some time over there and it's, you know, I'll get outside and view light. Um, maybe I'll spend 30 minutes there. Maybe I'll take my work outside. It's raining a bit. So it's, it's tough, but you, you try and do it most days. If you miss a day, no big deal. But the next day, you should try and get twice as much time outside. Now, why would that be? It turns out that this clock mechanism is what we call a slow integrator. It's actually counting photons over time, light energy.
Starting point is 00:11:16 So this part of our visual system is very different than the visual system components that we use to see edges and faces and recognize motion, et cetera. It is a clock setting mechanism for our entire brain and body. So get that morning and early light. If you don't have access to sunlight for whatever reason, I know there are a lot of daytime simulators that are for sale out there, so-called sad lamps, seasonal affective disorder lamps. They're quite expensive, but one low cost alternative is to get a ring light of the sort that the Instagram or YouTube YouTubers use to make themselves look good. It's like a blue ring light. It's very, you can find them very low cost and you just put that
Starting point is 00:11:56 at your breakfast table or while you work in the morning. That is bright and will get the system going. And some people like that on all day, even on a day where it seems kind of overcast, you're getting far more photon energy than you would from bright indoor lights. So that's the main thing. And many people report feeling much better immediately. But in addition to that, as you do this more and more, you'll start to recognize the physiological response. it's not a placebo response there are two things that happen that that cortisol pulse starts to get entrained as we call it synchronized to this behavior into this light viewing
Starting point is 00:12:34 and the other thing that happens is that when you do this morning light viewing it sets about a 16 hour countdown to the release of another hormone called melatonin which is released from the pineal gland and is the hormone that's responsible for transitioning us into sleep not keeping us asleep to the release of another hormone called melatonin, which is released from the pineal gland, and is the hormone that's responsible for transitioning us into sleep. Not keeping us asleep, but transitioning us into sleep. So it actually helps establish a better transition and quality of sleep later that night. Many people who have sleep issues find that just this simple morning light viewing practice assists their sleep issues tremendously. just this simple morning light viewing practice assists their sleep issues tremendously. I would say a close second is to absolutely dim the lights in the evening and late hours.
Starting point is 00:13:20 The hormone melatonin, as I mentioned before, is powerfully inhibited by light. When you view light, even if you go into the bathroom in the middle of the night and you turn on really bright lights, that quashes the levels of melatonin that are released from the pineal. And many people get a little paranoid about light when they hear that. I wouldn't worry about it. I would just dim lights as dim as you need in order to safely move about your evening activities. And basically the time to avoid light would be between about 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. So avoid bright lights between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. As a last point, if you somehow have to run to the store or to a hospital or you turn on the lights in the middle of the night, don't freak out. Remember, these are slow integrating systems. It's just that if you're consistently looking at screens late at night or you're consistently turning on bright lights in the middle of the night, you're really messing up your system.
Starting point is 00:14:07 So these are averages. It's a lot like nutrition or exercise. Try and get it right, or mostly right, about 80% of the time. And don't panic if you happen to violate these tools every once in a while. You'll be just fine. Yeah, I love that. Very, very thorough. Very, every once in a while. You'll be just fine. Yeah, I love that. Very, very thorough. Very, very comprehensive. I just want to echo, Andrew, in my own clinical experience, I have seen natural light exposure, just like you, be game-changing for people. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

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