back to indexAndrew Huberman: Sleep, Dreams, Creativity, Fasting, and Neuroplasticity | Lex Fridman Podcast #164
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The following is a conversation with Andrew Huberman, his second
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time in the podcast. He's a neuroscientist at Stanford, a
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world class researcher and educator. And now he has a new
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podcast on YouTube, and all the usual places called Huberman
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Lab, that I can't recommend highly enough. Quick mention of our
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sponsors, masterclass online courses for systematic mushroom
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coffee, magic spoon low carb cereal, and better help online
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therapy, click the sponsor links to get a discount. By the way,
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masterclass is testing to see if they want to support this
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podcast long term. So if you're on the fence, now is the time to
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sign up. And I'm pretty sure Andrew will have a neuroscience
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masterclass on there soon enough, though his podcast is
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basically a weekly masterclass in itself. As a side note, let me
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say that Andrew is a friend and a new collaborator. We're working
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on a paper together about a topic we're both really passionate
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about. At the intersection of neuroscience and machine
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learning. But that's probably many months away from being
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published. Still, I'm really excited about this work. He's
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one of the smartest and kindest people I have the pleasure of
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talking to on this podcast. So I hope we'll talk many more
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times in the future. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on
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YouTube, review it and have a podcast, follow on Spotify,
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support on Patreon or connect with me on Twitter at Lex
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Friedman. And now here's my conversation with Andrew Huberman. Why
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do humans need sleep? Let's go with a big first question.
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Okay, well, the answer I'll start with is the one that I always
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default to when there's a why question. I wasn't consulted at
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the design phase. So, so, so I wriggle my way out of giving a
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absolute answer, right? But there's one mechanism that's very
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clear. That's super important, which is that the longer we are
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awake, the more adenosine accumulates in our brain. And
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adenosine binds to adenosine receptors. No surprise there.
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And it creates the feeling of sleepiness, independent of time
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of day or night. So there are two mechanisms. One is we get
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sleepy. As adenosine accumulates, the longer we've been awake,
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the more adenosine is accumulated in our system. But how sleepy we
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get for a given amount of adenosine depends on where we
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are in this so called circadian cycle. And the circadian cycle
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is just this very, very well conserved oscillation. It's a
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temperature oscillation, where you go from a low point,
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typically, if you're awake during the day and you're asleep at
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night, your lowest temperature point will be like 3am, 4am,
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and then your temperature will start to creep up as you wake
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up in the morning, and then it'll peak in the late afternoon,
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and then it'll start to drop again toward the evening, and
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then you get sleep again. That oscillation in temperature
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takes 24 hours, plus or minus an hour. And I don't even though
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I wasn't consulted at the design phase, I do not think it's a
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coincidence that it's aligned to the 24 hour spin of the earth on
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its axis, and the fact that we tend to be bathed in sunlight for
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a portion of that spin, and in darkness for the other portion
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of that spin. So there are two mechanisms, the adenosine
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accumulation and the circadian time point that we happen to be
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at. And those converge to create a sense of sleepiness,
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awakefulness. The simple way to reveal these two mechanisms to
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uncouple them is stay up for 24 hours, and you will find that
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even though you've been, let's say you stay up midnight, two
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AM, three AM, provided you're on a regular schedule, like that I
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follow, not like the kind that you follow, you get, I will get
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very sleepy around three, four AM. But then around five or six
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or seven AM, which is my normal wake up time, I'll start to
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feel more alert, even though adenosine has been accumulating
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further. So adenosine is higher for me the longer I stay up,
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and yet I feel more alert than I did a few hours ago. And
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that's because these are two interacting forces. So adenosine
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makes you sleepy. And then just how sleepy or how awake you
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feel also depends on where you are in this temperature
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oscillation that takes 24 hours.
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Okay, so that's fascinating. So there's a bunch of
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oscillations going on. And then it kind of through the
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evolutionary process have evolved to all be aligned
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somewhat, and they interplay. So you said your body
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temperature goes up and down. Those chemicals in your brain
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that oscillate. And then there's the actual oscillation of
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the, the sun in the in the sky. So all of that together has
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some impact on each other. And somehow that all results in us
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wanting to go to sleep every night.
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Right. So, and we can get right into the meat of this. I
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guess we just dove right in. But the, so that the temperature
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oscillation is the effector of the circadian clock. So every cell
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in our body has a 24 hour rhythm that's dictated by genes
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like clock per BMAL. This is one of the great successes of
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biology. They give a Nobel Prize to the repert and I don't
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know if repert got it, forgive me. But sorry, if you got it,
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Steve, congratulations. If you didn't, I'm sorry, I wasn't on
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the committee. Nonetheless, did beautiful work Steve repert
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and others. But Mike Roshbosh and like other people worked out
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these mechanisms and flies and bacteria and mammals, there are
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these genes that create 24 hour oscillations in gene expression,
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et cetera, in every cell of our body. But what aligns those is
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a signal from the master circadian clock, which sits
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right above the roof of the mouth called the super charismatic
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nucleus. And that clock synchronizes all the clocks of
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the body to this general temperature rhythm by way of
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controlling systemic temperature, which makes perfect
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sense. If you want to create a general oscillation in all the
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tissues and organs of the body, use temperature. And so that
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work on temperature, if you want to explore it further was Joe
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Takahashi, who was at Northwestern now at UT Southwestern
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in Dallas. And it is absolutely clear that humans do better on
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a diurnal schedule, sorry, Lex, than a nocturnal schedule,
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because you could say, well, provided I sleep and push a
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denticing back downhill, which is what happens when we sleep,
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a denticing that is then reduced, and provided I am on more
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or less a 24 hour schedule, why should it matter that I'm awake
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when the sun's out? And, and I'm asleep when the sun is down.
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But it turns out that if you look at health metrics, people
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that are strictly nocturnal, do far worse on immune function or
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metabolic function, et cetera, than people who are diurnal who
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are awake during the daytime. And animals that are nocturnal,
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it's the opposite. And animals that are so called corpuscular,
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which tend to be active at dawn and at dusk. This is a beautiful
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system. I won't go down that rabbit hole. But these are
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animals whose visual systems operate best. They tend to be
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predators like mountain lions. They have optimized their
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waking times for the times when the animals they eat can't see
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well in those light conditions. But given the rod cone ratios in
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their eyes, that the mountain line is picking off. It's like,
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when you see special forces, and they are looking through night
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vision goggles, and they have a clear advantage, right? They're
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seeing in the dark. That's basically what it's like to be
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a mountain lion, as opposed to a bunny rabbit.
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Would you say that a lot of these cycles evolved in the predator
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prey relationships of the different throughout the food
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chain? So it's basically all somehow has to do with survival in
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this complicated web of predators and prey?
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Almost certainly. There had to have been a time in which humans
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being awake and active at night, as opposed to during the day,
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led to higher levels of lethality, and probably particular in
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kids. Can you imagine kids running around in the dark and
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getting where there are a lot of animals that can see really
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well under those conditions, and humans can't. And this would
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be all pre electricity. Even if you're carrying a torch, I mean,
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the range of illumination on a torch is nothing compared to
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what a nighttime predator like a large cat or something can do.
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They basically, they can see everything they need to in order
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to eat us and not the other way around.
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So one fascinating thing you said is that blew my mind and
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we went right past it, which is that temperature is a really
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powerful, like, if you were to think about the ways that
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different parts of the body, different systems in the body
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would communicate with each other, temperature would be a
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really good one. And that just, I mean, maybe it's obvious, but
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it kind of blew my mind just now that, yeah, these systems are
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all distributed, right? And they have to kind of, they're not
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actually sending signals, but they're coordinating, they need
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some sort of universal thing to look at in order to coordinate.
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And temperature is a nice one to, to, to build around. And that
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way, you could control the behavior of all these different
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systems by controlling the temperature, right? If it's
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attractive to think of a mechanism where this master
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circadian clocks, it creates a peptide or something that goes
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and locks to receptors in all the cells and gets it just right.
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But that leaves far too much room for variability, binding
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affinities, cells in a lot of parts of our body are at
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different stages of maturation, they're turning over liver
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cells and so forth. And for instance, we have a clock in
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our gut and in our liver, such that if we were just take out
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your liver and put it on a table, and just look at the
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expression of these genes, it would be in a 24 hour
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oscillation on its own, it's independent. But something has
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to entrain them and keep them all synchronized. And so it's not
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obvious that it would be temperature. Takahashi's great
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gift to biology was to show that all the stuff coming out of
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this master circadian clock, at the end of the day, that's a
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weird statement, no pun intended, at the end of the day and
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the night, at the, at the end of the story, it all boils down to
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making sure that the temperature of tissues
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oscillates in the same fashion.
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That's blowing my mind and thinking like what other
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mechanism could possibly exist to create that kind of
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Well, in your, your Russian, it's cold in Russia for a lot of
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the year, the hibernation signal in certain animals is a
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remarkable signal. There are peptides secreted from this
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very same clock, that in animals like ground squirrels or
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bears, they go into a kind of a torpor where everything
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reproduction, metabolism, everything is reduced while
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they're in their cave, they don't actually stay asleep all of
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winter, that's a myth. And they actually do these very
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dramatic and periodic arousals from hibernation where they
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just shake and shake and shake, it looks like a seizure, and
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then they go back under into the torpor. That's from a peptide
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that's released. But that's different because that's about
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shutting down the whole system. It's clear that having these
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very regular oscillations every 24 hours is essential for
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everything from metabolism to reproduction.
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Is there an optimal temperature for sleep that I should
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mention? I think your latest episode, you and people should
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go check out helixsleep.com slash huberman to support Andrew.
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Thanks for the plug.
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I mean, the amazing thing about that stuff they created and
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oh, and yes, you have a new podcast that's amazing. And
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this past month, he did a whole series on sleep, which is
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definitely check out. There's some podcasts that come out that
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just make me want to be a better human being by just the
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quality. Three blue one brown, Grant Sanderson is like that for
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me, just like, wow, this is education is best. So Andrew
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symbolizes that captures that brilliantly. So go support the
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sponsor so he doesn't stop doing the thing. So they I think
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they have a cooling pad too. So I ate sleep mattress sponsors
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me. They've been they sent me a mattress and it's been I've
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never listened. I used to sleep on the floor sleep or you fall
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sleep or I fall I don't give a shit. It doesn't doesn't really
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matter. But so like I would have never bought a nice mattress
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because it's like why I'm fine. This is a floor is fine. But it
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was a game changer to be able to control temperature. Like for
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me, it's cooling to cool. I don't know what the hell it is.
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Well, you want the brain and nervous system and rest of the
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body needs to drop by about anywhere from two to three
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degrees in order to get into your deepest sleep and
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transition to sleep. That's really going to help. You don't
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want to be cold that you're bothered and can't fall asleep.
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But that's why some people like it really cold in the room and
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under a warm blanket or with socks on for some people that can
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that can be good because this temperature oscillation is such
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that as your temperature is dropping, that correlates with
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the generally with the most sleepy phase of your circadian
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cycle. So cool is better for falling and staying asleep and
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sleeping deeply. And then I guess like that's what AIDS
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sleep showed there like an app is it warms back up to wake you
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up. The idea that I haven't actually used it like this is
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stupid. People say it works, but I just keep it the same
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temperature throughout the night. But warming it up, I guess
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wakes you up, which is which is fascinating. Yeah, because
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you're the wake up signal is it's interesting to think about
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it's not just correlated with an increase in body temperature.
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The increase in body temperature is triggering the
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release of cortisol from your adrenals and that's the wake
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up signal. Do you think it's absolute temperatures we're
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talking about is just even relative? Just even just the
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decrease? Well, everyone's going to have slightly different
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basal temperature. The idea that everybody should be 98.6. I
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mean, that's a myth. And there's a theories that body
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temperature overall has been dropping in the last 50 years
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or so. I doubt that's true for somebody who is athletic like
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you and is, you know, young and healthy. But basically the
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the coldest period of that 24 hour cycle is when you are
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going to be sleepiest. There's actually a period within that
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24 hour cycle. It's a it's a time point called your
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temperature minimum. And your temperature minimum tends to
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be about two hours before your typical wake up time. I'm not
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talking about the wake up time in the middle of the night
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where you go use the bathroom or where you set an alarm to go
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catch a flight. I mean, if you were to just allow yourself to
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sleep without a clock for a few days, measure when you
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typically wake up two hours before then is your temperature
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minimum. And that temperature minimum turns out to be a
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very important landmark in your circadian cycle because it
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turns out that if you get bright light in your eyes in the
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hours immediately before your temperature minimum. So two to
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four hours or any time within the two or four hour window
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before that temperature minimum, you are going to what's
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called delay your circadian clock the next day that whole
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oscillation is going to move forward. It'll make you want to
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go to sleep later and wake up later. Whereas if you get
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bright lighting your eyes in the hours after that temperature
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minimum. So let's say for me, typical wake up time is six
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a.m. my temperature minimum somewhere around four a.m. If
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I get bright light in my eyes, five a.m. six a.m. seven a.m.
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It's going to advance that oscillation so that I'll want to
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go to bed earlier and wake up earlier the subsequent nights.
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So you might say, wait, but most nights I go to sleep and
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wake up at more or less the same time. Why is that? And
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that's because the same thing is happening on both sides. You
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are both advancing your clock a little bit and assuming that
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you're looking at light in the evening, you're also delaying
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your clock a little bit so you get kind of captured in
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between and then your rhythm more or less oscillates at the
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same period as we say is the spin of the earth. Unless
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you're like you where you're I get text messages from you
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sometimes that odd hours and I if you're on the east coast,
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then I know that you had to have been pulling basically an
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all night. Yeah. That's the interesting point about the
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messiness of sleep. So most people seem to perform the
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best when they have like a regular sleep schedule.
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I perhaps am the same, but I don't know that and I tend to
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believe that you can also perform relatively optimally
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with chaos of sleep of like a weird soup of like power
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naps and all nighters and all of that as long as you're
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like happy doing what you love and maybe you can
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tell me what you think about this. So I tend to for myself
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try to minimize stress in life. So what I found for myself
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with diet with sleep is that if I obsess about it being
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perfect, then I'll actually stress quite a bit when it's
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not like I'll feel shitty when I don't get enough sleep
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because I know I should be getting more sleep as opposed to
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the actual physiological effects of not getting enough sleep.
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I find if I just accept whatever the hell happens happens
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and smile and just take it all in like David Goggins style,
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like if it sucks, it's even better or what is it?
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Jocko's like good or whatever he says. Right. I think
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there's several things that you said that are important,
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but I agree that one can have a dysregulated sleep schedule
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and still be a happy person and productive. Much of my
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life I've pulled all nighters and slept weird schedules.
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I think many people can probably relate to going to sleep,
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waking up four hours later, being up for an hour or two on your
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computer, then going back to sleep and getting amazing
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sleep the next day functioning. I think it's important
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that people have highlighted the importance of sleep
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and getting enough rest. I do think it's gone too far
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and now I'm editorializing a little bit, but I think that
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we've created this anxiety about sleep that if we don't
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sleep enough, we're going to get dementia. If we don't get
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sleep, then the reproductive axis is going to completely crash.
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There's a lot of evidence to the contrary and as well,
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just based on personal experience and based on the fact that
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sure, it may be that a solid eight hours with no interruptions
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in there or nine or 10 could do great benefit, but you can do
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really well if you do what you say, which is you wake up, you
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don't want to start stressing about it, creating this meta
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stress about sleep. Being happy is actually one of the most
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powerful things that you can do, not allowing yourself to go
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down that rabbit hole of stress. For the following reason,
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a lot of our fatigue is not due just to the buildup of a
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denocene or time of day, the circadian thing we were talking
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about earlier. An additional factor is that effort is
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related to the release of epinephrine, of adrenaline in
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our brain and body. At some point, those levels get so high
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that we get stressed mentally, we get stressed physically and
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we want to give up. There are good data published in cell
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showing that that signal, the epinephrine signal, is
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eventually accumulates and there's a quit point. Dopamine,
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the molecule of pursuit and reward and feeling good,
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resets our ability to be in effort. In fact, a lot of people
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don't know this, but dopamine is actually what epinephrine is
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made from. If you look at the biochemical cascade, it starts
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with tyrosine, which is rich in red, found in red meats and
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things of that sort, and tyrosine is eventually
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converted through things like Ldopa into dopamine. Dopamine is
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made into epinephrine. I mean, this sounds kind of new agey,
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but happiness, joy, and pleasure in what you're doing
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creates a chemical milieu that provides more of the chemicals
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that allow for effort. There's nothing new agey about that.
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It's in every biochemistry textbook. It's in every decent
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neuroscience textbook. They just don't talk about the
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happiness part. They just talk about the dopamine part. I
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think that limiting your stress and at least recognizing,
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okay, if you're pulling an all nighter or you're somehow
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on messed up sleep, that there is going to be a point in that
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24 hour cycle where your brain is not trustworthy, where your
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mental state is not worth placing too much weight on
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because you are near that temperature minimum and near
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that temperature minimum, which correlates to that two
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hours, about two hours before you would normally wake up,
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the brain is hobbling along and anything you feel or think at
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that time should not be given too much value. But if you can
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trick yourself into thinking that's the pleasure point, you
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afford yourself a huge advantage. There's a study done by a
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colleague of mine at Stanford that showed that positive
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anticipation about the next day events actually is a powerful
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metric for creating quality sleep even if the sleep is very
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reduced. You'll love this one and a lot of people might be
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critical of this, so I just want to make sure that this is
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work done out of Harvard Medical. It was Bob Stickgold's
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lab and Emily Hoglund did the study that showed looking at
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Ochem, performance on Ochem scores. Okay, so organic chemistry
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Harvard's pretty tough subject, highly motivated, a number of
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very good control groups in this study. What she showed was
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that consistency of total sleep duration was far more
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important for performance on these exams than total sleep
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duration itself. So it's not that just getting more sleep
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allows you to perform better. Consistently getting about the
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same amount of sleep is better for performance at least on
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Ochem than just getting more. That's interesting. So that's
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referring to more that there should be a consistent habit
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versus the total amount. To me, the entirety of the picture of
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sleep is similar to nutrition in that it feels like it's
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there's so many variables involved and it's so person
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specific. So, you know, a lot of studies, I mean, this is the
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way of science, has to look and aggregate the effects on
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sleep. It doesn't focus on high performers, which are
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individuals ultimately. Like the question isn't, so it's a
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very important question is like, what kind of diet fights
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obesity, reduces obesity? It's another question, what kind of
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diet allows David Goggins to be the best version of himself?
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So these high performers in different avenues and the same
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thing with sleep, like people that tell me that I should get
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eight hours of sleep, it's like, it's, I mean, I get it and
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they may be right, but they may be very wrong. There's no
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evidence that eight is better than six, that you could very
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well do better on six than on eight. There are a few other
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things that turn out to be strong parameters for success in
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this domain. For instance, your entire life, waking or
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asleep, is broken up into these 90 minute ultradian cycles.
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If you look at ability to attend or do math problems or do
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anything, you know, drive, performance tends to ramp up
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slowly within a 90 minute cycle peak and then come down at
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the end of that 90 minute cycle. And in sleep, we go
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through these stage one, two, three, four, REM, etc. We
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talked more about that, if you like, those on 90 minute
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ultradian cycles as well. Ending your sleep after a 90
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minute cycle at the near the end of a 90 minute cycle, say at
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the end of six hours, in many cases is better for you than
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sleeping an additional hour, seven hours and waking up in
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the middle of an ultradian cycle. And there are a few
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apps that can measure this based on body movements and
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things like that that have you, your alarm go off at the end
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of an ultradian cycle. And if you wake up in the middle of
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an ultradian cycle, sometimes not always, you can be very
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groggy for a long period of time. I certainly do better on
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six hours than I do on seven. I happen to like an eight hour
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sleep. It feels great, but I haven't slept an entire eight
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hours without waking up in the middle of the night at some
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point in, I don't know, forever. I can't remember. It's
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probably some point in infancy, but and I function well
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during the day. I think that that's a big, that's an
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important parameter is how do you feel during the day? Almost
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everybody experiences some sort of dip in energy in the late
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afternoon or what would correlate to their temperature
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peak. And that's a good time of day to get either a 90
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minute or less nap. Or if you're not a napper or you can't
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nap, feet elevated has been shown to be good for clear
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out of some of this. The glimphatic system is this
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kind of like sewer system of the brain that you can clear
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stuff out. So legs elevated or one thing that I'm a big
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proponent of and that my lab has been studying is what I
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now call NSDR, non sleep deep rest. And this is just lying
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down. There are some scripts that we're going to put out
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there soon as a free resource. There's some hypnosis
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scripts that my colleague David Spiegel has put out there as
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a free resource. But non sleep deep rest is allowing your
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system to drop into states of real calm that allow you to
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get better at falling asleep later. And they can be very
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restorative for cognitive and motor function. There's at
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least one study out of Denmark that shows that the basal
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ganglia, which is an area of the brain that's involved in
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motor planning and action, one of these 20 minute non sleep
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deep rest protocols resets levels of neuromodulators like
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dopamine in the basal ganglia to the same levels that they
link |
were right after a long night's sleep. So I also
link |
respectfully or semi respectfully disagree with the
link |
idea that you can't recover lost sleep. What does that mean?
link |
I mean that there's no IRS for sleep. So what does it mean
link |
to be in debt for sleep? If you're falling asleep during
link |
the day and you're sleepy, like you're falling asleep,
link |
that's a good sign of insomnia means you're not sleeping
link |
enough at night. If you're fatigued during the day,
link |
but you're not falling asleep, so you're just exhausted,
link |
but you're not finding yourself falling asleep in
link |
meetings and in conversation, then chances are you're
link |
fatiguing your system through something else like a long
link |
run in the middle of the night at Boston or whatever it is
link |
that you're up to lately at 3 a.m. Yes. There is a magic to
link |
the nap and maybe you could speak to the because you
link |
mentioned these protocols that don't necessarily, so
link |
they're non sleep, but to me the nap one or two a day can
link |
almost irrespective of how much sleep I get the night
link |
before have a fundamental change in my mood and my
link |
performance for the better for the better for the better.
link |
Yeah, likewise. So I do tend to kind of experiment with
link |
durations. It's it's consistently surprising to me
link |
how like a nap of like 10 minutes, I don't know, maybe you
link |
can speak to the perfect duration of a nap, but I find
link |
that it's like magic that a short nap does as much good
link |
and often better than a longer one for me, for me
link |
subjective. What would be a longer one? Longer than 90
link |
minutes? No, no, like 90 minutes or but longer than
link |
90, like two hours. Yeah, that's dropping you starting to
link |
drop you into REM sleep and even if it's a tiny amount of
link |
REM sleep, people can come out of those naps kind of
link |
disoriented. Right. I mean, remember in sleep space and
link |
time are are totally uncoupled and so they that's an odd
link |
state to reenter the world in if you're not going to stay
link |
there for a while like for a good night's sleep. I think a
link |
20 minute nap is pretty fantastic. Would you say
link |
that's the if you were to recommend to the general and
link |
it's it's very weird to recommend anything to the
link |
general populace because obviously it's very person
link |
specific, but what's a good one where you say to friends
link |
is 20 minutes, 20 or 30 minutes, 20 or 30 minutes
link |
because you're going unless you're sleep deprived,
link |
you're going to stay out of REM sleep, rapid eye movement
link |
sleep. If you're sleep deprived, you'll drop right
link |
into it. If you've ever traveled and you're really
link |
jet lagged, you go to the hotel, you lay down for
link |
one second, all of a sudden you're just like you're
link |
you're in a psychedelic dream, which can be pretty
link |
great too. But I think that 20, 30 minutes and if you
link |
can't sleep, some people have trouble napping, then
link |
learning to relax the body as much as possible like
link |
trying to remove all expression from your face
link |
completely letting your body kind of float. If people
link |
have a hard time relaxing when they're awake, there's
link |
some terrific clinically and research tested hypnosis
link |
protocols that we could provide links to that are
link |
cost free and that teach you how to just completely
link |
release the alertness button and you just start
link |
drifting. Now, the problem is if you don't have an
link |
alarm or something to go off, the other day I did
link |
one and I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but
link |
there's a component of it where you actually are
link |
supposed to let your hand float up because it's a
link |
hypnosis script. So they, it's my colleague, David
link |
Spiegel in the script. He says, let your hand float
link |
up. I woke up an hour later and my hand was still
link |
floating. Wow. Yeah. And I was and I was completely
link |
relaxed. So hypnosis is just a matter of going
link |
deep relaxation, narrowing of context. And it's all
link |
self imposed. A lot of people think that hypnosis is
link |
like the stage thing with the pendant and the
link |
chicken, you know, people fucking like chickens.
link |
But real hypnosis is self hypnosis. You're learning
link |
to, it involves some shifts in the way that you,
link |
the hypnotic induction involves looking up, closing
link |
your eyes, slowly deep breath and then imagine
link |
yourself floating and people vary on a scale of
link |
about one to four for being the most easily
link |
hypnotized. There are a few people who it's very
link |
hard for them to allow themselves to go into
link |
these states. But for most people, they just,
link |
they're gone. And it's nice if you can have access
link |
to those states because when you come out of it,
link |
you feel amazing. You feel like you slept the whole
link |
night. At least most people report that. So
link |
refresh alert. Ready to go. I mean, basically,
link |
you're ready. Yeah, I know you have this
link |
interesting challenge coming up and I'm curious
link |
what you're going to do to reset in the hours.
link |
The frequency of running is every four hours. It's
link |
not going to allow you to get any more than
link |
a couple hours sleep in between. A couple hours. So
link |
we should tell to people, I'd be curious to get
link |
your thoughts and advice on it. I'm on March 5th
link |
running 48 miles with Mr. David Goggins. So four
link |
miles every four hours and people should join us.
link |
He's that mad man that's going to be live on
link |
Instagram starting at 8 p.m. Pacific on March 5th.
link |
So you're going to join him in person?
link |
In person. Undisclosed location. Undisclosed location.
link |
And I was trying to clarify, like, okay, so we're
link |
going to, like, there'll be like friendly people
link |
around or something. No, it's just me and him.
link |
Friendly people. I don't know. Like, I just feel
link |
it's very difficult to be with David alone in a room.
link |
I imagine his, I mean, I've done some work with David.
link |
His energy is infectious. That's an intense schedule.
link |
And the periodicity of those four hours, every four
link |
hours, four miles, means that there's no chance
link |
of catching an extended block of sleep.
link |
So it's about three hours that you have
link |
non exercising every time. And of course, it takes
link |
time to try to fall asleep and there's an intensity
link |
to the whole thing. I mean, it's probably impossible
link |
to get anything more than two hours of sleep
link |
if you wanted to. So the optimal thing is probably
link |
from the sound of it. I'd be curious to see what
link |
you think. But like, it's getting a few 90 minute naps.
link |
Yeah. Well, I thought about this a bit before we
link |
met up today. So I think there are two general approaches
link |
that could work. Neither one necessarily better than the other.
link |
One would be just to hammer through the whole thing,
link |
just to get your level of alertness and adrenaline
link |
ramped up so that you don't expect yourself to sleep.
link |
There are certain advantages there. One is a subjective
link |
kind of emotional advantage, which is if you can't sleep,
link |
you're not going to be stressed about that.
link |
Yes. And if you do fall asleep, it's a bonus.
link |
Yeah. Provided you wake up and you don't look up
link |
and you realize David's been out running for half an hour
link |
and you're behind, right? Chances are that's not the way
link |
that's not the way it'll go. You're set an alarm.
link |
So that's one approach. And I grabbed that from a couple of
link |
friends who were in the SEAL teams and they'll say that
link |
during Bud's, there's this infamous Hell Week and there's
link |
this five day, excuse me, definitely five days of no
link |
sleep, although there is a component where they offer a nap
link |
at one particular point. And a lot of people will say that
link |
it's worse to go down for that nap and then be woken up 20
link |
minutes later than to just stay up. So that's one option.
link |
Let's call it the full blitz hammer through option.
link |
And if you happen to fall asleep, you do.
link |
Bonus, yeah. It's a bonus. The other one would be to
link |
really anchor in these ultradian cycles. So coming back
link |
from a run, unless you're thoroughly exhausted, you're
link |
probably going to have a few minutes where you're going
link |
to want to stay awake. It's going to be hard to just
link |
immediately fall asleep and getting as much sleep as you
link |
can in the intervening periods provided that you guys
link |
aren't posting constantly or doing something else.
link |
There's a question of whether or not you want to nourish,
link |
whether or not you want to eat or not in that time.
link |
Anytime we put food in our gut, I don't care if it's meat
link |
or oatmeal or broccoli or cardboard, you're drawing blood
link |
into the gut and so you are going to divert some energy
link |
towards digestion and it's going to make you sleep.
link |
There's a reason why the rest and digest, the parasympathetic
link |
nervous system is called that. So you could decide that you
link |
were only going to sleep in certain blocks, in between
link |
certain blocks. That would be another way to think about
link |
this. Because I did this last year. I ran very slow. Some of
link |
it was walking. I was listening to audiobooks and one of the
link |
biggest mistakes I did is to overeat during that time.
link |
It was, I made the experience very unpleasant. So I have
link |
been considering basically eating almost nothing throughout
link |
the day. Being fasted will increase alertness because
link |
high levels of epinephrine in your system from fasting.
link |
You just think about fasting or being thirsty before you
link |
get exhausted. People always think, if I don't eat, I'm
link |
going to be tired. No, the energy that you derive from food
link |
is going to be used from glycogen and after a long
link |
storage and conversion process. So the food that you eat is
link |
going to consume energy to digest and so a lot of people
link |
feel better fasted and presumably throughout history
link |
people have fasted for long periods of time and had to
link |
stay up for two or three days and God forbid if a family
link |
member is sick, you can stay awake in the hospital without
link |
any trouble. So that alertness system, it's all mental.
link |
Actually, and then there's a third, so you could try and
link |
sleep or take care in between. Yes. Yeah. And then there's a
link |
third approach. Uh oh. Yeah. But I didn't come up with it.
link |
What is it? What David did. So I actually texted him
link |
earlier because I had a feeling that I heard that you
link |
were going to do this challenge. So I asked David.
link |
So these are David Goggins words, not mine. Okay.
link |
One, being organized is super important. Two, you want to
link |
waste as little time as possible. Three, you need to eat,
link |
sleep, and rehab in as little time as possible so you can
link |
sleep as much as possible. Interesting. By the way, this is
link |
the first time I'm reading this. Four, meal prep and
link |
gear prep, etc, are very important. That's consistent
link |
with everything I know about military. They don't leave
link |
too much to chance. Five, again, these are David's words.
link |
All that said, he's fucked on most of that because he'll be
link |
interviewing me before or after. I will also be
link |
interviewing him. Oh, shit. Five, long story short, the
link |
only thing that might help is a very special pill. Oh, this is
link |
interesting. They're called SIU pills. Hard to get, but I
link |
believe he can get them. SIU stands for suck it up. Tell him
link |
to grab his balls. He'll find those pills there. That's
link |
number six. All right. And then the last one, stay hard,
link |
brother. Stay hard, brother. Amen. I, you know, that was one
link |
of the other things that I think makes this challenging is
link |
that it'll be doing a podcast throughout. So, first of all,
link |
I'll do a long one before and after, but also I'll have to
link |
come up with things to talk to him about. So, like, it's a
link |
different thing to do something privately and then
link |
publicly. I know it doesn't seem that way, but like one of
link |
the hardest, the hardest thing I had to do last time was to
link |
turn on the camera and talk to the camera because I, last
link |
time I did it, I recorded every single time I did a leg, I
link |
recorded something I'm grateful for. It's just kind of
link |
unrelated. I'm not a fan of like talking about like how I'm
link |
feeling or how the run is going. I want to do something
link |
totally unrelated to the run and with the run as the
link |
background, you know, sort of something I'm grateful for,
link |
just any kind of interesting discussion. Gratitude. I mean,
link |
I hate the word hack. Like, oh, it's a dopamine hack or it's a
link |
serotonin. I don't like the word hack because A, it's
link |
disrespectful to hackers who do a real thing and B, a hack,
link |
it implies that it's some sort of trick that you're kind of
link |
gaming the system. You know, what works is mechanism, right?
link |
Biological mechanisms were designed to work and they were
link |
selected for to work under variable conditions. And as you
link |
know, and I know, and we have great appreciation for the fact
link |
that the nervous system was designed to be an adaptive
link |
machine so that you don't have to sleep eight hours every
link |
night. Yeah. You can do this thing. And things like
link |
gratitude allow you to tap into chemical resources and that's
link |
not a hack. The fact that being grateful for something
link |
external to the event happens to release serotonin and have a
link |
certain soothing effect or a dopamine and give you more
link |
epinephrine and let you go further. That's not a hack.
link |
That's actually what allowed the human machine to evolve to
link |
the point that it is now. Every time, you know, an inventor
link |
eventually created something that worked and felt great about
link |
it. You can imagine that the first, you know, air flight felt
link |
pretty awesome and motivated those people to go on and do
link |
more that they didn't just go on, you know, yawn and go have
link |
a beer. So, being able to access the genuine internal
link |
states of gratitude and reward works. You can't trick the
link |
system. You can't pretend that you're grateful for something,
link |
but if you can identify or attach yourself to some larger
link |
goal or something that's deeply gratifying to you or place it
link |
in service to a relative that passed away that you care a
link |
lot about, that's not a hack. That's accessing the deepest
link |
components of your nervous system and to steal your kind of
link |
lingo. Yeah, there's real beauty there, right? Yeah, but for an
link |
introvert like myself and I think David, I don't know if he's
link |
an introvert, but like he's not, despite the fact that he has
link |
written a great book and he communicates, he puts himself
link |
out there, he's not really a fan of communication. He's not,
link |
I don't know if he's energized by speaking his mind.
link |
I don't know enough to know. I mean, we've done a little bit of
link |
work together and we're in communication now and again. He's
link |
obviously super impressive. I don't know. It seems like he's a
link |
pretty private guy, so I don't have access to that.
link |
For me, I'll just speak to myself and I think David is the
link |
same, but I'll speak to myself that it was a hugely draining
link |
thing not to experience the gratitude, experiencing the
link |
gratitude just like you're saying is really energizing. It's
link |
a powerful thing. It's a, it's a, it can lift up your mood, but
link |
to turn on the camera and have to use words, which is very
link |
difficult to do, to explain like what you're feeling and do it
link |
in the way that you know a bunch of people will be watching,
link |
is really draining. And one of the things I'm concerned about
link |
that in this whole process, how do I keep my mind sharp
link |
while also keeping the performance, the physical
link |
performance sharp? And that's a little bit scary because
link |
talking to David like actual intellectually sharp, like
link |
thinking, being charismatic and as much as I can be,
link |
and like being so maintaining a sense of humor too,
link |
because I can be, I become with sleep deprivation, with exhaustion.
link |
You start being the Russian bear comes out. You start being
link |
such a, like you, I've become a David Goggins essentially,
link |
like, Oh, it makes you irritable. Sleep deprivation makes us
link |
irritable. Yeah. It's clear so that in the early part of the
link |
night, we get a higher percentage of those old
link |
tradian cycles are occupied by slow wave sleep, sometimes
link |
just called non REM sleep. And those early night sleep bouts
link |
are great for muscular repair and for certain forms of
link |
learning, but REM sleep, the rapid eye movement sleep,
link |
which it starts to accumulate and occupy more of those 90
link |
minute trade in cycles toward the late part of a sleep bout.
link |
So toward typically toward morning, but toward after you've
link |
been asleep a while. That's when you do the emotional
link |
processing. That's when we recover the ability to feel
link |
refreshed and not irritated by things. And if you deprive
link |
people of REM sleep, they become selectively bad at
link |
uncoupling the emotion from things that happened in the previous
link |
days. So the little things start to seem like big
link |
things. I always know I'm REM sleep deprived when I'm
link |
irritable. And when I look at like the word the and it
link |
doesn't look like it's spelled right. And I'm kind of pissed
link |
off about it. Like something's off. And we actually are
link |
becoming slightly psychotic when we're REM sleep deprived.
link |
You're not going to get a lot of REM sleep in this thing,
link |
except as you fatigue more, if you do fall asleep, you're
link |
going to drop more and more into REM so that those 90 minute
link |
cycles, you won't have to go through stage one, stage two,
link |
stage three, and then REM. You're just going to drop
link |
right into REM. So you can count on your system to
link |
compensate for you. But I think that just the knowledge
link |
that you tend to get irritable as the time goes on, just
link |
that third personing of yourself and that awareness,
link |
the observer, that can be very beneficial because
link |
there may be bouts during this event when you just should
link |
probably say nothing. And maybe you just smile and record
link |
or not smile or do whatever it is because you're going to
link |
be conserving energy. If it feels like a grind, that's
link |
epinephrine being released. That's epinephrine that you
link |
could devote to the physical effort. But humor is an
link |
amazing anecdote for this because it resets that it's
link |
that dopamine release that gives us that fresh
link |
perspective. And it's a real chemical thing. It's not a
link |
hack. It's not a trick. It's not a visualization. It's
link |
biology in action. Well, but I think the act of
link |
interviewing, of conversation in these processes, even if
link |
you don't want to do it, the right thing to do, even
link |
when you're feeling irritable, is just to do the third
link |
person view and be able to express with words that
link |
you're feeling irritable. Like express what you're going
link |
through. You know, use words which I hate doing. I
link |
honestly, I think my ultimate thing would be just to
link |
never say a single word to David Gagas and just go
link |
through hell. It doesn't matter what we do, but to do
link |
it quietly, to also express it. That's my ultimate hell.
link |
And I think that's definitely going to be, if I know
link |
David at all, he's going to try and find your buttons.
link |
Like he's going to, I mean, he, even though he knows he
link |
can complete this and I believe that he trusts that
link |
you can complete it too. I believe you can, you will
link |
complete it. You know you will complete it. Right.
link |
There's no question about that, but he's not going to
link |
make it easier for you. He's going to make it harder.
link |
Well, I'm afraid. So I'm like, you know, it's very
link |
difficult for me. So 48 miles is not easy. I have not
link |
been training that much. I'm now ramping up, but it's
link |
not like going to kill me. We'll see what happens.
link |
Of course, for him, he might always get bored because I
link |
think the 48 miles for him is easy. I think I don't
link |
know that. I don't know that ever gets easy. I have a
link |
friend, Casey Courgel, who works with David. He does some
link |
physical rehab type stuff with him and he took Casey on a
link |
50 mile and Casey said, it's like 16 miles into it. He was
link |
just like, he hit his wall, but he found it. They find it
link |
to get, you know, you find that portal. There is one
link |
thing I want to mention. There's some very good
link |
physiology that can perhaps support the actual running
link |
effort part. These are very new data. We have a study
link |
going on with David Spiegel at Stanford looking at how
link |
different patterns of breathing can affect heart rate
link |
variability. Heart rate variability is good. There's
link |
this interesting mechanism that I think most people
link |
might not realize, but that medical students learned
link |
that your breathing and your heart rate and your brain
link |
are in this really remarkable interplay. It goes like
link |
this. When you inhale, this isn't breath work. We're
link |
not going to do breath work, but when you inhale, the
link |
diaphragm moves down. The heart gets a little bigger
link |
because there's a little more space in the thoracic cavity.
link |
As a consequence, blood flows a little bit more slowly
link |
through that larger volume. There's a category of
link |
neurons, the synomatrial node, that sees that, that
link |
recognizes that slower rate through that larger
link |
volume, sends a signal to the brainstem, and the
link |
brainstem sends a signal back to the heart to speed
link |
the heart up. Every time you inhale, you're in
link |
speeding the heart up. When you exhale, the diaphragm
link |
moves up, the heart gets a little smaller, the volume
link |
is smaller, blood flows more quickly through the
link |
heart, signal sent up to the brain, and the brain
link |
sends a signal back to slow the heart down. This is
link |
the basis of heart rate variability. At any point,
link |
if you feel like your heart is racing and you feel
link |
like you're working too hard per unit of effort,
link |
focus on making your exhales longer or more
link |
intense than your inhales. If ever you feel like
link |
you're truly flagging, you do not have the energy
link |
to get up. It's like, okay, it's time to go and
link |
you're exhausted. You want to draw more oxygen into
link |
the system, get your heart rate going faster. Now,
link |
some people want to hear this, probably thinking,
link |
well, this is really obvious, but there's so much
link |
out there about breath work and how to breathe and
link |
all this stuff, but no one talks about how to do it
link |
in real time while you're exerting effort.
link |
So this is something like almost like second by
link |
second, you can adjust things just in real time
link |
based on how you're feeling, but based on the
link |
heart rate, the experience of the heart rate.
link |
That's right. So one thing that could be very
link |
efficient and we're doing some work with
link |
athletes now, these are unpublished data, but
link |
if you, while you're running, if you want to get
link |
into a nice cadence of heart rate variability,
link |
do double inhales while you're running. What
link |
this will do is that when you do the double
link |
inhale has the effect of reopening the
link |
avioli of the lungs. Your lungs are filled with
link |
tons of little sacs when you, they tend to
link |
collapse as you fatigue and carbon dioxide
link |
builds up in the bloodstream and that's when
link |
we start getting stress. If you've ever been
link |
sprinting and you start getting beat and
link |
you're going as hard as you can, what you
link |
really need to do is double inhale and
link |
reinflight these sacs and the lungs and
link |
then offload a lot of carbon dioxide.
link |
So when you're at a steady cadence and
link |
you're feeling good, double inhale, exhale.
link |
Double inhale, exhale is a terrific way to
link |
breathe while you're in ongoing effort.
link |
By the way, any recommendations or
link |
differences in nose or mouth breathing?
link |
So nasal breathing, there's a lot of
link |
excitement now obviously about nasal
link |
breathing because of James Nestor's book,
link |
Breath. There was also, if people are
link |
going to know about that book, that I do
link |
feel like out of respect for my
link |
colleagues. There was a book by Sandra
link |
Kahn and Paul Erlich at Stanford, both
link |
professors at Stanford, with a forward
link |
by Jared Diamond and Robert Sapolsky.
link |
So some heavy hitters in this book and
link |
the book is called Jaws, A Hidden Epidemic.
link |
And it's all about how nasal breathing is
link |
better for us, especially kids, than
link |
being mouth breathers. Under most
link |
conditions, for sake of improving
link |
immunity, it turns out there's a
link |
microbiome in the nose, like all sorts
link |
of good stuff about nasal breathing
link |
preferentially. But when we exercise,
link |
you can do pure nasal breathing, but the
link |
problem is once you get up to kind of
link |
third and fourth and fifth gear effort,
link |
you can't nasal breathe and be at
link |
maximum capacity unless you've been
link |
training it for a very long time. So I
link |
would say double inhale through the
link |
nose, offload through the mouth. So
link |
double inhale, exhale while you're in
link |
steady effort. And then if you really
link |
feel like you need to gas it and you're
link |
pushing, the data show that then just
link |
use whatever's there, right? Just go
link |
into kind of default mode because
link |
bringing too much concentration to
link |
something is also going to spend up an
link |
efferent. The goal is to get into that,
link |
I don't like the word, but the flow
link |
state where you're not thinking too
link |
much, you're just in exertion. So these
link |
are things that can help in the
link |
transitions, but I don't think there's
link |
any secret breathing technique. You
link |
know, anyone who's been in the SEAL teams
link |
will kind of, you know, they'll tell you
link |
like, there's no breathing technique,
link |
right? There's tools that you can
link |
look to from time to time and these
link |
double inhale, exhales can be great for
link |
setting heart rate ability in very
link |
quickly and getting into a steady cadence
link |
while you're exercising. But if there's a
link |
sprint, like if suddenly you guys are
link |
sprinting, ditch the double inhale,
link |
exhale and just sprint. One thing you
link |
mentioned, he's probably going to push
link |
my buttons. It's a good place to ask a
link |
question about anger. So I'll probably
link |
get pissed off at him at some point,
link |
I'm guessing. And do you have
link |
thoughts from a scientific perspective
link |
or also just the personal philosophical
link |
perspective about the role of anger and
link |
all of this in managing alertness,
link |
performance? I think about this a lot
link |
because there's so much out there about
link |
how important it is to do things from a
link |
place of love, you know. I tweet about
link |
it all the time. And I think love is
link |
powerful, right? You know, it is
link |
interesting that autonomic arousal
link |
alertness, let's just make use simple
link |
language, alertness physiologically
link |
looks identical for love and
link |
excitement as it does for anger and
link |
frustration and wanting to defeat your
link |
opponent or whoever that opponent
link |
happens to be. They're identical except
link |
that the love component does tend to be
link |
associated with the release of neuro
link |
chemicals of the serotonin and
link |
dopamine type that do have this
link |
replenishment component. I don't think
link |
one wants to be in constant anger and
link |
friction, but I mean, I'll come clean a
link |
bit. There have been portions of my
link |
career where some of my best work, my
link |
extra two hours, my ability to nail a
link |
really hard deadline or problem has come
link |
from not wanting to get out competed or
link |
for wanting to prove something.
link |
These days, I'm not oriented from
link |
that place toward my work quite as
link |
often, but I think we should be really
link |
honest. Anger is powerful. It provided
link |
it's channeled. It's very, very powerful
link |
and it can give you a ton of fuel and
link |
gas to push when otherwise you tap.
link |
Yeah, Joe Rogan has, aside from being a
link |
fan of his, has been an inspiration to
link |
sort of be, to have a kind of loving
link |
view on the world in the way you
link |
approach the world, to me, so I've
link |
tended to want to approach the world
link |
that way, but in the same way David
link |
Goggins has been an inspiration to like
link |
yeah, be angry at stuff and use it as
link |
fuel. Like he almost conjures up
link |
artificial demons in his mind just so
link |
he can fight them. You know, but at the
link |
same time I tried that because I did a
link |
challenge in the summer of a world for
link |
30 days. I was doing a lot of pushups
link |
and it was over time. It was counter
link |
productive for me. I found that it was
link |
easier to just, like the roller coaster
link |
that the emotional, like being angry at
link |
stuff takes you can also be exhausting.
link |
Oh, absolutely. And it can take you down,
link |
like the the ups of it are good, but the
link |
downs are bad. And what I found is
link |
better to get, to use it as a boost
link |
every once in a while, but mostly to get
link |
lost in the, you're talking about the
link |
breath work, the, like getting lost in
link |
the ritual of it, like the, the beat,
link |
like that, as opposed to going on the
link |
big roller coasters of emotion.
link |
Yeah, this brings us into the realm of
link |
neuroendocrinology. There's a
link |
fascinating relationship between the
link |
hormone system and the nervous system.
link |
And, you know, hormones work in general on
link |
slower time scales. The definition of
link |
hormone is something, is a chemical
link |
released at one location in the body,
link |
goes in and acts at multiple locations
link |
far away and within the body. Pheromone
link |
would be between two bodies. Neuro
link |
chemicals like dopamine and serotonin
link |
tend to work a little more quickly. There
link |
are hormones like adrenaline and
link |
cortisol that can work very fast, but
link |
here I'm referring mainly to
link |
testosterone, prolactin. Prolactin tends
link |
to be in men and women tends to make
link |
people kind of lazy and want to take
link |
care of young. It tends to throw down
link |
body fat so we can stay up late. It's
link |
secreted in response to having children.
link |
These are all in humans and in animals.
link |
There's a very interesting relationship
link |
between testosterone and dopamine
link |
that speaks directly to what we're
link |
talking about now. So dopamine and
link |
testosterone are closely related in the
link |
pituitary system and obviously
link |
testosterone comes from the adrenals and
link |
from the testes. But the major
link |
effect of testosterone is to make
link |
effort feel good. That's what
link |
testosterone does. It has other effects
link |
too, right? Reproductive effects,
link |
androgenizing parts of the body, etc.
link |
But it makes effort feel good. The
link |
testosterone molecule is synthesized
link |
from cholesterol. Cholesterol can
link |
either be made into cortisol, a stress
link |
hormone, or testosterone, but not both.
link |
So you have a limited amount of
link |
cholesterol and it gets
link |
diverted towards stress or this
link |
pathway where effort feels good.
link |
That's the pathway you want to get into.
link |
The anger pathway, if we were to just
link |
kind of play a mind experiment here,
link |
the anger eventually is going to divert
link |
more of that cholesterol molecule to
link |
cortisol and stress and you will be
link |
slowly depleting testosterone. Now going
link |
into this, you'll have plenty of
link |
testosterone. But after a couple days,
link |
there have been very interesting studies
link |
showing that testosterone doesn't
link |
necessarily drop with sleep
link |
deprivation. That's a bit of a myth.
link |
You need it to replenish testosterone.
link |
You need sleep to replenish testosterone
link |
eventually. But the real question is,
link |
are you enjoying what you're doing?
link |
And here, some of the major work on
link |
this was done by Duncan French, who
link |
runs the UFC Training Center. He did his
link |
PhD at Yukon Stores, did a really
link |
beautiful PhD thesis looking at the
link |
relationship between stress hormones
link |
testosterone and dopamine. Really
link |
interesting work. And the takeaway
link |
from all of this is if you can just
link |
convince yourself or ideally if you can
link |
just enjoy yourself, you're going to
link |
maintain or maybe even increase
link |
testosterone stores, which will make
link |
effort feel good. And to me, aside from
link |
neuroplasticity where everything becomes
link |
automatic after this experience, to me
link |
that's the holy grail. When effort feels
link |
good, life just gets way better. And
link |
we're not talking about achieving the
link |
reward. I'm not talking about the end of
link |
this thing. I'm talking about the process
link |
of it feeling really good.
link |
Yeah, there is a magic to, I don't know
link |
if you can comment on this, but I find
link |
myself being able to, if I just say I'm
link |
feeling good, like this old hack of
link |
like smiling while you're running. If I
link |
just tell myself, I'm feeling really
link |
good right now. No matter how I'm
link |
actually feeling, I'll start feeling way
link |
better. And the whole thing, there's a
link |
cascading effect that allows me to
link |
maximize the effort. It's quite
link |
fascinating. It's weird.
link |
Hormones are powerful. The relationship
link |
between thoughts and hormones and these
link |
physiological things is enormous. I had a
link |
colleague that a few years ago, he was
link |
dying of pancreatic cancer. And I was
link |
interviewing him just because he's an
link |
important figure in our community and I
link |
was a friend. And there was one day where
link |
he told me, he said, you know, I don't
link |
want to make it past the new year. I
link |
just, and it was crushing for me to
link |
hear. And I knew that he had been on
link |
some androgen therapy for a whole
link |
set of other things. And I said, you
link |
know, have you taken your androgen
link |
cream? And he was like, no, I haven't
link |
done it. Go get it for me. I have this
link |
on film. He takes it, he puts the
link |
androgen cream on. I'm not suggesting
link |
people take androgens, by the way. 10
link |
minutes later, he says, you know what? I
link |
think I want to live into the new year.
link |
And I'm going to write 12 letters of
link |
recommendation. He went to MIT, by the
link |
way. He said, I'm going to write 12
link |
letters of recommendation. And he did.
link |
And so there's something about these
link |
molecules that in an ancient way, in
link |
all organisms, all mammals as far as we
link |
know, are linked to the will to live.
link |
They're linked to effort and making
link |
effort feel good, which has been
link |
fundamental to the evolution of our
link |
species. I always say, people think that
link |
the opposite of testosterone is estrogen,
link |
but it's not. The opposite of
link |
testosterone is prolactin, which makes us
link |
feel quiescent and not in pursuit of
link |
things, et cetera. Testosterone makes
link |
effort feel good. Estrogen makes
link |
emotions feel okay.
link |
And they are in mixed amounts in
link |
people, as I say, of all chromosomal
link |
backgrounds. Yeah. I mean, you also
link |
mentioned fasting potentially through
link |
this two day thing. It'd be cool to get
link |
your thoughts about fasting in general.
link |
Do you think on a personal level and at
link |
a higher sort of level of studies that
link |
you're aware of and physiology and so on,
link |
what do you think about intermittent
link |
fasting of like not eating for 16 hours
link |
and then having an eight hour window or
link |
something I've been doing a lot recently,
link |
which is eating only once a day. So
link |
that's 24 hour fast, I guess, one meal a
link |
day or something I've been thinking
link |
about doing, haven't done yet, of doing
link |
like 72 hours, and some people do like
link |
five day fasts in general. So this will
link |
be, for this particular run, will be a
link |
48 hour fast if I don't eat at all. What
link |
do you think about that for performance,
link |
for mood, for all those kinds of things?
link |
I can speak a little bit to the science
link |
and a little bit of my own experience
link |
and then some anecdotes of people that
link |
have done very hard, very long duration
link |
things and what they've told me. So I
link |
just want to make sure I'm separating
link |
those out so people know my sourcing.
link |
I think now none of this is about the
link |
actual long term nutritional benefits
link |
of one thing or the other. But if you
link |
look at the science on intermittent
link |
fasting, it's pretty remarkable. Before
link |
I was at Stanford, my lab was in San
link |
Diego, one of my colleagues was such in
link |
Panda at the Salk is phenomenal
link |
biologist and researcher, wrote a book
link |
called The Circadian Code. It's very,
link |
very good and kind of popularized
link |
intermittent fasting, although there
link |
were others that had talked about this
link |
before. Ori Hofmeckler talked about the
link |
warrior diet. People probably might not
link |
know who Ori is, but he's sort of the
link |
originator of this business of
link |
intermittent fasting. He didn't want to
link |
day or limited. Anyway, Sachin has
link |
published papers, peer reviewed papers
link |
in very good journals like Cell and
link |
elsewhere showing that limiting the
link |
consumption of calories to eight, four,
link |
six or eight or even 10 hours of every
link |
24 hour cycle and keeping that more or
link |
less correlated with the light when
link |
the sun is out leads to less liver
link |
disease, improved metabolic markers, less
link |
body fat, etc. In the mouse studies, they
link |
even gave the mice the choice to eat
link |
whatever they wanted as much as they
link |
wanted as long as they restricted it to
link |
a certain period within the 24 hour
link |
cycle. They did great. They
link |
maintained a healthy weight or even
link |
lost weight when they took the same
link |
amount of food and they stretched it out
link |
across the 24, the entire 24 hour cycle.
link |
So this is eating every hour or two
link |
hours. The animals got fat and sick.
link |
So it's pretty remarkable data. How much
link |
of that translates to humans isn't
link |
clear, but one thing that's really
link |
clear with humans is adherence. We
link |
could talk a lot about nutrition and
link |
some of the problems with the studies
link |
on nutrition is that what people will
link |
do in a laboratory is often hard to do
link |
in the real world. Low carbohydrate
link |
diets, because they tend to
link |
focus on foods that have high amino
link |
acid content like meats, generally
link |
people are less hungry on those than
link |
they are on calorie matched diets of
link |
fruits and vegetables and carbohydrates
link |
because when the insulin goes up, you
link |
get hungry and you want to eat more. So
link |
this is not a push for carnivore or a
link |
push against one thing or the other.
link |
It's just there are a lot of factors.
link |
But we know for sure that when you're
link |
fasted or when you have low amounts of
link |
carbohydrate in your system, complex
link |
carbohydrate, your alertness is going to
link |
go up. Fast increases
link |
increases alertness and epinephrine
link |
for the sole purpose of getting you to
link |
go out and find food. Can you imagine if
link |
our ancestors got hungry and they were
link |
like, oh I'm too tired to go find food?
link |
We wouldn't be here. You'd be like robots
link |
or something like one of your
link |
alien buddies will be like running
link |
the planet. So I think that if you want
link |
to be alert, fasting or keeping
link |
complex carbohydrates to a minimum is
link |
very valuable. If you want to sleep and
link |
you want to be sleepy, ingesting foods
link |
that have a lot of tryptophan, which is
link |
the precursor to serotonin, so complex
link |
carbohydrates like rice and grains,
link |
turkey, white meats, those things do
link |
create a sense of sleepiness. However,
link |
there is a caveat and this is one
link |
problem with the once a meal, once a day
link |
meal, is that anytime you have a lot of
link |
food in the gut, you're increasing
link |
sleepiness because you're diverting
link |
blood to the gut. It's going to trigger
link |
the vagus to signal to the brain to
link |
shut down your system and utilize those
link |
nutrients, digest and utilize those
link |
nutrients. So I've done the once a day
link |
eating thing. The problem is I eat so
link |
much in that meal that I'm exhausted
link |
and so it doesn't always lend itself
link |
well to the schedule.
link |
But so in a six or eight hour eating
link |
block for me is a little bit better.
link |
I do eat carbohydrates. I'm probably one of the few
link |
people left on the west coast that
link |
actually consumes carbohydrates and
link |
will say that out loud. I don't know
link |
people eat carbs anymore. That's weird.
link |
They don't. Or do you even find carbs these days?
link |
I like oatmeal. I like rice. The other
link |
time is if people are doing very high
link |
intensity weight training, they need to
link |
replenish glycogen. On the alertness
link |
side, I do feel like it's probably
link |
person independent. For me, alertness,
link |
being alert makes my life better in a
link |
lot of ways more than just the
link |
Like for example, one of the things that
link |
discovered with fasting is that when I
link |
was training twice a day in Jiu Jitsu,
link |
for example, I'm competing and so on, I
link |
performed way better at things that you
link |
traditionally would say you need carbs
link |
for, which is explosive movements and all
link |
I don't know if I actually perform better
link |
in terms of like the force of the
link |
explosion, the explosiveness. What I do
link |
know is the alertness resulted in me
link |
doing the technique more precisely.
link |
That's the dopamine and epinephrine
link |
system in action. There are some
link |
other just purely physical aspects to
link |
one diet versus the other that can be
link |
complicated. If you're ingesting
link |
carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates,
link |
you're going to replenish glycogen,
link |
which is great, but they also tend to be
link |
bulky and fibrous. I've never rolled
link |
Jiu Jitsu, but running when you have a
link |
lot of bulky, fibrous food in your
link |
gut or in your intestine, it can be a
link |
barrier. It can be uncomfortable. Some
link |
people do really well on low carbohydrate,
link |
meat rich diets because they're just not
link |
as bloated. They're not carrying as much
link |
water and other stuff. Carbohydrate
link |
carries a lot of water molecules with it.
link |
There are aspects to being able to
link |
train and being really explosive because
link |
you feel light. One anecdote that
link |
really, again, I'm not encouraging any
link |
one particular kind of diet, but I have a
link |
friend who was in the SEAL teams,
link |
happened to know a number of people in
link |
that community. He told me that he did
link |
this very long fast. It was a fast that
link |
I think you get to eat a little bit of
link |
soup or broth and there's like a bar
link |
or something, but it's like a nine day
link |
thing. He's a very strong athlete.
link |
He said that on day six or seven, he was
link |
running up some hills or something while
link |
he was on deployment. He felt
link |
amazing. He had kind of hit this other
link |
level. He was somebody who had boxed in
link |
the Naval Academy. He was somebody who
link |
knows and knew high output and he felt
link |
like he discovered the 13th floor,
link |
that there was another floor to this
link |
performance space that he hadn't
link |
experienced except while he had fasted.
link |
He said that that was a remarkable
link |
clarity of mind, energy. It's a little bit
link |
of what you described. He described a
link |
kind of suppleness and explosiveness.
link |
So there's probably something there on which day.
link |
Once he was in the fifth or sixth day of the
link |
fast. See, this is the thing. I've never
link |
been there on the second, third, fourth,
link |
fifth day, that kind of thing, but when I
link |
just don't eat for 20 hours, many times
link |
through my training, the clarity, it's like
link |
you feel like everyone is moving super
link |
slowly and you're able to like dominate
link |
people you weren't able to before. It's
link |
like you might have slipped into or
link |
switched over rather into full ketosis
link |
and ketogenic diets done properly can be
link |
great for people. The problem is if you do
link |
it wrong, you can really mess it up. I
link |
tried it once and I basically got
link |
psoriasis. I thought my scalp was gonna
link |
fall off. I was like sloughing off all
link |
this and then I stopped and I was
link |
taking the liquid ketones and then
link |
all of a sudden I felt better again.
link |
But I was told that I just did it wrong.
link |
Yes, that's right. So I think there's a
link |
right way and a wrong way and you have to
link |
get it right. Definitely and so I've
link |
experimented quite a bit with keto 2 to
link |
see how my body feels and doing it the
link |
right way and following all the
link |
instructions. There's definitely a huge
link |
difference that like for example one of
link |
the things I discovered everyone know
link |
we said this and but I tried this
link |
recently over the past year as I started
link |
drinking when I don't feel great if I'm
link |
fasting bone broth, chicken bone broth.
link |
And for some reason like magically it
link |
could be, this is the other thing, the
link |
mind I don't know, but it makes me feel
link |
really good. Well it could be the salt.
link |
So I mean neurons, the action potential
link |
neurons as you know is sodium is rushing
link |
into the cell. You need enough extra cell
link |
or sodium in order for your brain and
link |
nervous system to function. And so salt,
link |
I mean unless people have hypertension
link |
salt is great. There was an article in
link |
Science Magazine about a decade ago
link |
about how salt had been demonized and
link |
unless people have hypertension provide
link |
you drink enough water. Salt is great.
link |
You need sodium magnesium and potassium
link |
to function and for your nerve cells to
link |
work. I mean people who over drink
link |
water and don't consume enough electrolyte
link |
die. Now hydration is really important. I
link |
know David's really into hydration.
link |
He's mentioned that a few times. I mean
link |
hydrating properly is key and so you
link |
definitely want to make sure that you're
link |
drinking enough water and getting enough
link |
electrolytes. That I mean we should have
link |
actually talked about that at the
link |
beginning because that's going to keep
link |
your nervous system functioning well.
link |
And a lot of people they'll get shaky or
link |
jittery and when they're fasting and
link |
they'll think they need sugar and if
link |
they just put some salt and some water
link |
they feel fine. And like the other
link |
stuff potassium, magnesium, whatever the
link |
other electrolytes are but yeah. Yeah
link |
those three. So I mean salt yeah.
link |
Magnesium is good before sleep salt.
link |
I mean this is a vast space and we're
link |
kind of talking about the overlap
link |
between neurochemicals, hormones and
link |
nutrition and it's a fascinating space
link |
and it's one that the academic community
link |
has gems up within the textbooks. It
link |
hasn't really made it into the public
link |
sphere yet and I think that's because
link |
people get so caught up in the you know
link |
being are you vegan or are you carnivore
link |
and there's a vast space in between
link |
too that people can explore like I'm
link |
not a competitive athlete so I eat meat
link |
and I also eat vegetables and I eat
link |
fruits and it's just about timing them
link |
but I tend to eat carbohydrates when I
link |
want to be sleepy. I eat them at night
link |
and everyone said that's the worst thing
link |
you can't do that. You sleep great after
link |
eating a big bowl of pasta I'll tell you.
link |
And by the way I should give you a big
link |
thank you for connecting me with Bell
link |
Campo Farms. They sent me some meat
link |
I think because of you and it's delicious.
link |
So I really appreciate that. I mean
link |
it also connected me with this whole
link |
world of people who are doing farming in
link |
this ethical way and like really love
link |
the whole process and like and as from
link |
both like a human level but also
link |
scientific level and the result is
link |
it's like ethical but also delicious
link |
and it makes you think about your diet
link |
in a whole new kind of way. Yeah I've
link |
known I don't have any commercial
link |
relationship to Bell Campo so I can be
link |
very clear. I've known Anya Fernald
link |
who is the founder and CEO of Bell
link |
Campo. I've known her since the ninth
link |
grade. It is true that her parents are
link |
faculty members at Stanford. They're
link |
colleagues of mine but she's just a
link |
serious academic of nutrition but also
link |
of sustainable agriculture of you know
link |
all sorts of things and also the meat
link |
just it's awesome it tastes really good
link |
and no I'm not getting paid to say that
link |
and no they're not a sponsoring my
link |
podcast it's just if you I feel like if
link |
you're gonna eat animals if that's in
link |
your framework and you're gonna eat
link |
animals knowing that the animals were
link |
raised as happy as could be until you
link |
know time of slaughter is at least
link |
important to me. And I actually talked
link |
to her so I will talk to her on this
link |
podcast actually and she invited me
link |
like a week ago out to to visit the
link |
farm in May or June or whatever. Yeah
link |
they have the farm up at the Oregon
link |
board. I haven't been there yet but I've
link |
seen the pictures. It looks awesome and I
link |
was like yes. It looks beautiful let me
link |
know when you're going. Yeah let's go
link |
together. You'll probably run there but
link |
I'll drive there. Yeah but that all that
link |
said I do want to because a lot of
link |
people who are vegan write to me and I
link |
do want to seriously in the same
link |
seriousness that I approached Keto I
link |
do want to go like on a few months
link |
to switch to a vegan diet at some point
link |
to really try it. Yeah I haven't done it
link |
yet because I'm afraid I'm in a function
link |
better. I'm Argentine by my dad's side
link |
and I I don't eat I don't eat meat
link |
super often but well for most people
link |
would it would seem often but but I do
link |
love steak I do so I'm afraid I'm gonna
link |
feel better. There's a social element to
link |
steak you're right because coming from a
link |
Russian background like I can't imagine
link |
going to visit my folks like my parents
link |
for Thanksgiving or something to say
link |
mom and dad I'm you know I don't eat
link |
meat so is it you know. Well I think if
link |
you're gonna eat meat getting it from
link |
sources that are compatible with you
link |
know continuation of the planet is good.
link |
I mean there are some some real problems
link |
with the factory farm meat you know you
link |
drive up and down the five and you pass
link |
that point where are there all those
link |
cows. I mean as somebody who loves
link |
animals it's it's clear that it's you
link |
know you want to limit the amount of
link |
suffering of those animals. Whenever I
link |
hear about you know we have we know
link |
people that hunt and that go and get
link |
their own meat I really admire that I
link |
admire that people do that. We don't we
link |
don't tend to do that in the hills
link |
around Stanford you know they're mountain
link |
lines back there but that's about it
link |
and I'm I'm certainly I admire the
link |
vegan mindset of being of just making
link |
that decision you're just not going to
link |
consume other beings but you know I
link |
haven't gone that way. Performance wise
link |
I'm just curious because I was surprised
link |
I was certain that eating five six seven
link |
meals a day is the right thing to do for
link |
all if you want to be perform your best
link |
when I was like 20 or whatever and I
link |
would eat oatmeal like I thought it's
link |
obvious I have to have a really a lot of
link |
carbs in the breakfast. I had a lot of
link |
preconceived notions and then when I
link |
started eating like once a day this was
link |
at the peak of my competing in jiu jitsu
link |
it was like everything I know about
link |
nutrition is wrong. You realize that
link |
like you have to become a scientist
link |
first of all you have to read literature
link |
you have to learn you experiment but you
link |
also have to become a scientist of your
link |
body and in the same way I have a lot
link |
of preconceived notions of what
link |
performance is like under vegan diet and
link |
I want to do it right like seriously
link |
not not necessarily for the ethical
link |
reasons but to see if it's
link |
performance wise like can I I remember
link |
there's like a fruitarian diet where you
link |
eat fruit only. These extremes are like
link |
they're pretty they're interesting
link |
because people have this need the
link |
extremes are informative though right
link |
I mean well controlled experiments you
link |
eliminate as many variables as you can
link |
except the one you're interested in so
link |
people are running these experiments I
link |
it's hard to imagine getting I know
link |
people say you can get enough amino
link |
acids from plant based sources and I
link |
believe that I think it probably takes
link |
a little more work.
link |
One thing that's really clear is that
link |
the benefit of these omega 3 omega 6
link |
ratios like fish oils and things like
link |
that there are some data that show that
link |
the getting at least a thousand
link |
milligrams of the EPA which is in high
link |
in fish oils but other things too even
link |
some meats and other plants it
link |
in double you know in matched
link |
placebo double blind controlled studies
link |
placebo controlled double blind studies
link |
have shown that those can offset
link |
antidepressive symptoms as much as some
link |
of the selective serotonin reuptake
link |
inhibitors like prolac and prozac and
link |
zoloft so that's pretty impressive and
link |
in Scandinavia people know especially
link |
in winter to to consume a lot of those
link |
omega 3s because they're good for you
link |
they're good for the brain.
link |
That's the other question nutrition wise
link |
what kind of stuff have you come across
link |
that's useful like I basically only
link |
take fish oil like you said electrolytes
link |
electrolytes with water the David
link |
Goggins diet fish oil plus fish oil and
link |
then again the sponsor they made it so
link |
easier the sponsor your podcast and
link |
mineathleticgreens.com slash
link |
Hueberman support it.
link |
I don't I don't know like it's great
link |
stuff for sure but also just takes away
link |
the headache of like I don't have to
link |
think about yeah you're gonna get a
link |
bunch of vitamins and minerals
link |
you know does that sounds like a plug
link |
but I have genuinely been buying it
link |
I'm like you know no discount no
link |
affiliation anything since 2012
link |
I think I heard about it on the Tim Ferriss
link |
podcast was like oh I'm gonna try that
link |
stuff and I liked it I mean when I was
link |
starting my lab I was working insane
link |
hours I still work very long hours and
link |
getting sick limits productivity and I
link |
also wanted to train and I wasn't doing
link |
much training back then now I try and
link |
get you know three four sessions in a
link |
week I'm not doing nothing like what
link |
you and David are doing or what you
link |
know Joe does or like you guys are way
link |
more regimented than consistent than I
link |
but I think that being healthy and
link |
feeling good is one of the great
link |
benefits to a career is having energy
link |
and just being not sick.
link |
Can we take a step back to uh sleep a
link |
little bit and so people should
link |
definitely look through your podcast
link |
the first five episodes were on sleep
link |
or no I guess the first opening episode
link |
wasn't uh first one was sort of how the
link |
brain works generally is to give people
link |
some background and then we did four
link |
episodes on sleep including some stuff
link |
about food temperature exercise jet lag
link |
shift work for the jet lag folks and
link |
shift work yeah second masterclass on
link |
sleep and then you're going on to a
link |
next topic in the next few episodes
link |
which is incredible well
link |
neuroplasticity we'll talk about it but
link |
on sleep one of the cool things about
link |
the human mind when it sleeps is dreaming
link |
what do you think we understand about
link |
the contents of dreams like what do
link |
dreams mean all the stuff we see when
link |
is there something that we understand
link |
about uh the contents of dreams
link |
some of it is very concrete so um
link |
Matt Wilson who MIT showed in rodents
link |
and it's been shown in nonhuman primates
link |
and now it's been shown in humans that
link |
there is replay of spatial information
link |
during sleep so initially what Matt
link |
showed was that as these little rodents
link |
navigate through a maze there are these
link |
cells in the hippocampus called place
link |
cells that fire when the animal encounters
link |
a turn or a corridor and that same
link |
exact same sequence as replay during
link |
sleep and it turns out
link |
this is true in uh London taxi cab drivers
link |
before phones and GPS were what they are
link |
the London taxi cab drivers were famous
link |
for knowing the routes through the city
link |
through these mental maps and their
link |
analysis of their place self firing
link |
during sleep and during wakefulness and
link |
so we are essentially taking spatial
link |
information about the location of things
link |
and replaying it during sleep however
link |
it's not replayed so that you remember it
link |
it's replayed so that if there's a
link |
reason to remember it the links to the
link |
emotional system to the components of
link |
the limbic system and hypothalamus that
link |
are relevant like you've gotten to a
link |
car crash at a particular location or
link |
you lost a bunch of money because you
link |
were a cab driver uber driver we'd say
link |
and you were stuck at one particular
link |
avenue all day and frustrated
link |
you're getting yelled at by your spouse
link |
that information gets encoded so that
link |
you never forget that at that particular
link |
time of day and that particular time of
link |
and this thing happens so context starts
link |
getting linked to experience so there's
link |
spatial information
link |
that's absolutely replayed during sleep
link |
and we experience this sometimes as dreams
link |
the dreams that happen early in the night
link |
when slow wave sleep or non REM sleep
link |
tends to be sleep of very kind of
link |
general themes and kind of
link |
location it's a little it can feel a
link |
little bit eerie and kind of strange
link |
in not so incidentally the early phase
link |
of the night is when growth hormone is
link |
in the 80s and 90s there was a drug that
link |
was very popular it's very legal now
link |
you could actually buy it at gnc or a
link |
store then i never took it but it was a
link |
popular party drug and some people
link |
some famous celebrities died while on
link |
ghb they were also on a bunch of other
link |
things so it's not clear what killed
link |
them but ghb was very big in certain
link |
because it promoted a massive release
link |
of growth hormone and gave people these
link |
very hypnotic states so people go to
link |
clubs and they were in these very
link |
hypnotic states it was part of a whole
link |
that's early night and those dreams
link |
tend to not have a lot of emotional
link |
that phase of dreaming is associated
link |
the occasional jolting yourself out of
link |
sleep because it's somewhat lighter
link |
this the dreams that occur during REM
link |
during rapid eye movement sleep that
link |
dominate towards morning
link |
are very different they tend to have
link |
very little epinephrine is available in
link |
the brain at that time
link |
epinephrine again being this molecule
link |
stress fear and excitement
link |
you are paralyzed during these REM
link |
you're you cannot move there's intense
link |
at the level of what you're feeling and
link |
there's so called theory of mind
link |
theory of mind is an idea that was put
link |
simon barron cohen sasha barron cohen's
link |
i think on the podcast i mistakenly said
link |
that he was at uh oxford it's like the
link |
cardinal sin he's at cambridge forgive
link |
me i'm not british but
link |
so the dreams in REM have are heavily
link |
emotionally laden and it's very clear
link |
and REM sleep if you deprive yourself of
link |
you become irritable and you start
link |
generally negative emotions to almost
link |
REM the dreams that occur in REM sleep
link |
are when we divorce emotion from our
link |
and it's when we extract general rules
link |
uh mit seems to come up a lot today but
link |
it's it's highly relevant susumaton
link |
amina galavulin but um obviously
link |
fantastic neuroscientists as well
link |
has shown that the replay of neurons in
link |
the hippocampus and elsewhere in the
link |
is kind of an approximation of the
link |
and a lot of fear unlearning
link |
of uncoupling emotion from hard or
link |
traumatic events that happened previously
link |
in REM sleep so you don't want to deprive
link |
yourself of REM sleep for too long
link |
and those dreams tend to be very intense
link |
now epinephrine is low
link |
so that you can't suddenly act out your
link |
what's interesting is sometimes people
link |
will wake up suddenly
link |
while in a REM dream
link |
and their heart will be beating
link |
really really fast
link |
that's a surge of epinephrine that occurs
link |
as you exit REM sleep
link |
so you are having this intense emotional
link |
experience without the fear
link |
you are essentially going through therapy
link |
self induced therapy
link |
it's like trauma therapy
link |
where you're trying to divorce the emotion
link |
from the experience
link |
and some people also have the other
link |
which is paralysis
link |
experience this a lot more than non pot
link |
there's an invasion of
link |
of paralysis into the waking state
link |
I'm not a pot smoker
link |
but I have experienced this
link |
and when you wake up and you're paralyzed
link |
but then you jolt yourself
link |
the REM sleep is important for
link |
kind of the self induced therapy
link |
and forgetting the bad stuff
link |
it's good for uncoupling the emotions
link |
from bad experiences
link |
there are two therapies
link |
eye movement desensitization reprocessing
link |
eye movement thing that shuts down the amygdala
link |
which is a dissociative analgesic
link |
it's actually very similar to PCP
link |
ketamine is now being used as
link |
as a trauma therapy when someone comes into
link |
the ER for instance
link |
and they were in a terrible car accident
link |
these are horrible things to describe
link |
they saw a relative impaled on the driving
link |
steering column or something
link |
and they will give this drug
link |
to try and shut off the emotion system
link |
because they're not going to forget
link |
you don't forget the bad stuff
link |
but it is possible to uncouple
link |
from the emotional system
link |
and there's all sorts of ethical issues
link |
about whether or not that's good or bad to do
link |
is a failure to uncouple the emotion
link |
from these intense experiences
link |
so the goal of this kind of therapy
link |
for that to be permanent
link |
so they can recount the event
link |
and they can describe it without it
link |
triggering the same somatic experience
link |
of terror and dread
link |
those feelings can be debilitating obviously
link |
a similar process is happening
link |
REM sleep is about experiencing
link |
or replaying intense emotions
link |
without experience
link |
the physical component of the emotion
link |
either the acting out
link |
or the accelerated heart rate and agitation
link |
likewise with things like ketamine therapies
link |
you're uncoupling the physical sensation
link |
from the mental events
link |
and why is it so special
link |
maybe we can comment on that
link |
rabbit eye movement sleep
link |
yeah discovered in the 50s
link |
at the University of Chicago
link |
intense brain activity
link |
high levels of metabolic activity
link |
dreams in which people report
link |
a lot of the theory of mind
link |
we were talking about
link |
was actually something that he developed
link |
for the diagnosis of autism
link |
most kids of age five six seven
link |
put them in front of a TV screen
link |
and you have them watch a video
link |
where a kid is playing with a ball or a doll
link |
and then the kid puts it into a drawer
link |
shuts the drawer and walks away
link |
and another kid comes in
link |
and you ask the child
link |
who's observing this little movie
link |
what does this second child think
link |
and a typical kid would say
link |
and they don't know where the ball or doll is
link |
they want the doll
link |
the doll's in the drawer
link |
the toy is in the drawer
link |
they tend to fixate
link |
they can't get into the mind of that
link |
they don't have a theory of mind
link |
have a heavy theory of mind component
link |
people are after me trying to get me
link |
you can assign motive to other people
link |
there's an expectation
link |
that doesn't tend to happen
link |
in slow wave sleep dreams
link |
now all this of course is by waking people up
link |
and asking them what they were dreaming about
link |
which from a standpoint of a AI guy
link |
or a machine learning guy
link |
or a neuroscientist kind of like
link |
but it's the best we've got
link |
while people view a movie
link |
brain imaging while people are sleeping
link |
supports the idea that
link |
that's basically what's going on
link |
so REM sleep is amazing
link |
and you're not going to get much of it
link |
so is it not possible to get into it real quick
link |
only if you're very very sleep deprived
link |
but because you're going to be at
link |
high muscular output
link |
that's going to bias you towards
link |
more slow wave sleep overall
link |
and brain are smart
link |
that your main goal is to recover
link |
so you can keep going
link |
so you can keep firing
link |
neuromuscular contractions
link |
and you can keep running
link |
I mean it's amazing to think like
link |
why do we ever stop
link |
the unlike weight training
link |
where I can't do a 500 pound deadlift
link |
I could train for it
link |
but I certainly can't do a 600 pound
link |
what causes us to stop
link |
an endurance event
link |
is usually not a physical barrier
link |
it's almost always a purely mental barrier
link |
and that's a very interesting problem
link |
I mean that neuroscientists don't tend to
link |
think about those sorts of problems
link |
because it sounds so
link |
non neuroscientific
link |
but that's fundamentally related to the question of
link |
why what is the the desire to push
link |
and to and to carry on
link |
is there a neuroscientific answer
link |
for that question you think
link |
I think the closest thing is this
link |
from Janelia Farms
link |
the Howard Hughes Campus
link |
showing that if you put
link |
animals into a simulated environment
link |
where you can measure their effort
link |
the forces on while they're running
link |
and you can look at the
link |
and you can control the visual environment
link |
and you can create a scenario
link |
where the animal thinks that it's
link |
it thinks it knows it's running
link |
and it's actually running
link |
but you change the frequency
link |
of the stripes going by
link |
in their visual world
link |
such that they think
link |
they're not getting anywhere
link |
and eventually they quit
link |
and the thing that determines
link |
whether or not they quit
link |
is a threshold level of epinephrine
link |
if you drop that level back down
link |
or you or you give the animals
link |
dopamine essentially
link |
if you take dopamine down
link |
they're like this isn't worth it
link |
this isn't worth my time and energy
link |
but this is where the difference
link |
and non human animals
link |
because it does feel like humans
link |
have an extra level of cognitive
link |
that might be relevant here
link |
well you can pull from
link |
different time references
link |
so you're in that moment
link |
you're going to need a kit
link |
of things to pull from
link |
this is in honor of someone else
link |
and you will find a gas reserve
link |
whether or not mice are like
link |
I remember my brother
link |
back in the other cage
link |
when I was a little mouse
link |
but it's very likely
link |
that they don't do that
link |
that they're so present
link |
they're in the experience of
link |
there and then and now
link |
that they aren't able to extract
link |
and they're not able to project
link |
like how great it's going to feel
link |
when I get to the end
link |
of this really lame VR corridor
link |
I don't think they think about that
link |
and and think about like
link |
how will that have
link |
what kind of effect will it have
link |
on the rest of my life
link |
and the future difficult times
link |
like if you allow yourself to quit
link |
in this particular moment
link |
you'll become a quitter
link |
more and more in life
link |
and then you're going to not get
link |
the opposite sex mammals
link |
that's pretty severe
link |
you took the whole way
link |
to evolution and back again
link |
I mean but that's really it
link |
I mean our ability
link |
in the past present
link |
I do believe that we can be in
link |
the present in the past
link |
or the present in the future
link |
or only in the present
link |
or only in the future
link |
but I don't think that we can really
link |
think about past present and future
link |
and this has a similarity to
link |
like we can split our visual attention
link |
we really can duo task
link |
even though we can't multitask
link |
so or we can bring those two spotlights
link |
of attention to the same location
link |
but it's very hard to split our
link |
attention in really well
link |
into three domains
link |
into three domains
link |
I think that that's very very
link |
and our time referencing scheme
link |
just one or two time references
link |
so Lisa Feldman Barrett
link |
I'm not sure if you've done work together
link |
but at least you can
link |
I found out about her
link |
your podcast with her
link |
and then I brought her onto Instagram
link |
doing an Instagram live
link |
and it was fascinating
link |
and she's a very spirited
link |
and very very smart woman
link |
she's not a scholar of hallucinogens
link |
hallucinogens or dreams
link |
but she had this intuition that
link |
there may be a connection
link |
between the kind of dissociation
link |
that happens in dreaming
link |
and that that happens in
link |
I because of my previous conversation
link |
Matthew Johnson from
link |
John Hopkins reached out
link |
he commented I think
link |
on something that we commented on
link |
I don't even remember exactly what
link |
but that there's not many studies
link |
it's not being psychedelics
link |
and not being rigorously studied
link |
in an academic setting
link |
like with a full rigor of science
link |
that's exactly what we're doing
link |
and they were extremely well funded now
link |
and it was a been a long battle
link |
to get it accepted
link |
as a serious scientific pursuit
link |
and I'd like to ask you a little bit
link |
but do you have a sense
link |
about connection between dreams
link |
or these different explorations
link |
that are outside of the standard
link |
that's the wake mindset?
link |
Yeah I loved your discussion with Matthew
link |
I knew of the Hopkins group
link |
and the stuff they were doing
link |
much about it at all
link |
and I learned a ton from that podcast
link |
I reached out to him
link |
love what you're doing
link |
I think it's incredible
link |
your podcast has been a great source of
link |
conversation for me
link |
I think what they're doing at Hopkins
link |
he has a collaborator there
link |
actually they had a very popular paper
link |
I just throw out there for fun
link |
who is a postdoc at Stanford
link |
she's Turkish I believe
link |
her last name escapes me at the moment
link |
but that's just a function of my brain
link |
she had a paper showing
link |
that she put Octopi on MDMA
link |
this was published in
link |
showing it was a great journal
link |
showing that the Octopi
link |
then wanted to spend more time
link |
and they started cuddling
link |
so they're colleagues out there
link |
but the Hopkins project
link |
is super interesting
link |
because I think they were initially supported
link |
mainly through private philanthropy
link |
you're starting to see some more interest
link |
at the level of NIH
link |
about psychedelics
link |
it's a complicated space
link |
because the psychedelics are always
link |
through the lens of the 60s
link |
and people losing their mind
link |
you don't want to Ken Keezy out of the game
link |
Ken Keezy was amazing
link |
right part of the whole beat generation thing
link |
and he was actually at the VA
link |
that's where he eventually in Menlo Park
link |
he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
link |
or maybe that was about him
link |
the comments will tell me how wrong I am
link |
I think I'm tossing these words in the general
link |
in the right general direction
link |
they did a lot of LST
link |
all lost their jobs
link |
they lost their jobs at big institutions
link |
like Harvard and Stanford and elsewhere
link |
they made themselves the experiments
link |
Hopkins as far as I know
link |
is when the first place is not the first place where
link |
whatever Matt may or may not be doing in his own life
link |
it's really about the patients and whether or not
link |
the patients in these
link |
institutional review board approved studies
link |
whether or not they're getting better
link |
in situations like depression
link |
it's clear that there's a very close relationship
link |
between hallucinogenic states and dreaming
link |
of the sort that were described for REM dreaming
link |
a terrific set of books
link |
and body of scientific literature
link |
from a guy named Alan Hobson
link |
and he wrote books like dream drug store
link |
one of the first neuroscience books I ever read
link |
was about hallucinations
link |
and how psychedelics and dreaming are very similar
link |
that was way back when I was in high school
link |
I was just curious
link |
and he really understood the relationship between
link |
LSD and REM dreams
link |
and how similar they are
link |
I think psychedelics
link |
and Matt knows way more about this
link |
than I do of course
link |
have some very interesting properties
link |
they are certainly not for everybody
link |
right and kids it's a problem
link |
I think the major issues right now
link |
around the psychedelic conversation
link |
it's clear that they can unveil
link |
certain elements of neuroplasticity
link |
they make the brain amenable to change
link |
changing up space time relationships
link |
changing up the emotional load of an event
link |
and being able to reframe that
link |
it's clear that happens
link |
but there's two major issues
link |
people talk about plasticity
link |
as if plasticity is the goal
link |
but plasticity is a state
link |
within which you can direct neurology
link |
and the question is
link |
what changes are you trying to get to
link |
so people are just taking psychedelics
link |
to unveil plasticity
link |
without thinking about
link |
what circuits they want to modify and how
link |
I think that's a problem
link |
I think there's great potential however
link |
for people opening up these
link |
states of plasticity
link |
with psychedelics or otherwise
link |
and directing the plastic changes
link |
toward a particular endpoint
link |
and there's an absolutely spectacular paper
link |
published as a full article in Nature
link |
just a couple months ago
link |
there are psychedelics that are now
link |
so chemists have gotten into the game now
link |
and modifying to take away the hallucinogenic component
link |
where you still get the neuroplasticity components
link |
and for a lot of people it'd be like
link |
that's not giving you the wild experience
link |
but I do think that that holds great potential
link |
for people that wouldn't otherwise
link |
orient towards some of these drugs
link |
so I think it's really marvelous
link |
and what's about to happen
link |
and I think there is one drug
link |
in that kit of drugs
link |
that's very unusual
link |
like psilocybin, LSD
link |
those promote heavy heavy serotonin release
link |
and lateralized connections ramp up etc
link |
Matt talked about all that
link |
but MDMA, ecstasy, is a very unusual situation
link |
where dopamine is very very high
link |
because of the way the drug is designed
link |
dopamine release it goes through the roof
link |
so people feel great
link |
and they want to move
link |
and they have a lot of energy
link |
but serotonin levels are also high
link |
and that's a very unnatural state
link |
may and I want to highlight may
link |
have particularly high potential
link |
for the treatment of certain forms of depression
link |
is an interesting question
link |
because never before in
link |
as far as we know in human history
link |
has there been a possibility
link |
of opening up dopaminergic
link |
and serotonergic states at the same time
link |
dopamine being the molecule pursuit
link |
and reward and more and more
link |
and serotonin being one of bliss
link |
and being content right where you're at
link |
so it's almost like those two things
link |
wrap back on themselves
link |
and create this very unusual state
link |
and I think the bigger conversation
link |
is what to do with a state like that
link |
is it about self love
link |
is it about developing love for another person
link |
is it about forgetting hate
link |
like these are powerful molecules
link |
and I think if the academic community
link |
and the clinical community
link |
is going to move forward with them in any serious way
link |
I think there needs to be a conversation
link |
about what they're being used for
link |
right and coupled with that
link |
I think similar to what you're saying
link |
like Matt has talked about
link |
as others have talked about
link |
some of the biggest benefits of like progress
link |
whether it's like quitting smoking
link |
and all this kind of stuff
link |
is in the days after
link |
it's the integration of the experience
link |
so maybe you open up the brain
link |
to the neuroplasticity
link |
but then there's like work to be done
link |
you're like you shake up something
link |
in the biology of the brain
link |
but you have to do then
link |
now a friend of mine who's a physician
link |
who's quite open to this idea
link |
that psychedelics could play a real role
link |
says better living through chemistry
link |
still requires better living
link |
and I think it's a beautiful statement
link |
I wish I had said it
link |
but he gets the credit
link |
but the plasticity window opens
link |
and then as you said
link |
what are you going to do in the two weeks
link |
three weeks four weeks afterward
link |
because that's the real opportunity
link |
but those psychedelic experiences
link |
are really a case of an amplified experience
link |
inside of an amplified experience
link |
so much so that everything seems relevant
link |
and it's fascinating
link |
I mean my hope is that
link |
the AI and machine learning
link |
and the brain machine interface
link |
and all that will eventually be merged
link |
with the psychedelic treatments
link |
so that an individual can go in
link |
take whatever amount
link |
of whatever safe for them
link |
working with a clinician
link |
and really direct the plasticity
link |
while maybe stimulating
link |
the orbital frontal
link |
media orbital frontal cortex
link |
or increasing the observer
link |
or decreasing the observer in the brain
link |
or decreasing the amygdala
link |
I mean it's doable
link |
it's doable with transcranial magnetic stimulation
link |
and it's for shutting down activity
link |
and it's doable with ultrasound
link |
ultrasound now allows very focal activation
link |
of particular brain regions
link |
through the skull noninvasively
link |
so it's approaching the same kind of
link |
therapy from different angles
link |
one of AI is the computational size
link |
like the robotics injecting
link |
like maybe you can even think about it
link |
as like electricity
link |
the electrical approach
link |
versus then like the chemical approach
link |
and then the psychology is subjective
link |
so it's going to take some real understanding
link |
of what that person's lexicon is
link |
I'm sorry terrible
link |
I'm like the worst
link |
that's the one thing I know
link |
from the feedback on my podcast
link |
my jokes are terrible
link |
but I never claimed to be funny
link |
but somebody who they really trust
link |
and understands when somebody says
link |
for a very stoic person
link |
like I'm imagining
link |
you interviewed the great Dan Gable
link |
I don't know anything about Dan
link |
but can you imagine like you asked Dan
link |
like how you feel about something
link |
while on one of these drugs
link |
his languaging might
link |
if he says that was troubling
link |
it might mean that it was very troubling
link |
or not troubling at all
link |
languages a poor guide
link |
because if I say I'm upset
link |
well that's very subjective
link |
can you build a tool for that
link |
can you build an AI tool for that
link |
that's what the eyes could reveal
link |
so language is not just words
link |
it's everything together
link |
and that's one of the
link |
fascinating things about the eyes
link |
and the window to the soul
link |
I mean they express so much
link |
the face the eyes the body
link |
I mean Lisa talks about that
link |
the communication of emotions
link |
it's a super complex
link |
perhaps there's a bit of a
link |
side fun tangent but
link |
Matt Matthew Johnson brings up DMT
link |
and the experience of DMT is a
link |
from a scientific perspective
link |
just a mystery in itself
link |
over its intensity
link |
what happens to the brain
link |
special kind of experience
link |
the end elves seem to come up off
link |
I've never tried DMT
link |
what allows for hallucinogenic states
link |
I mean DMT is a really interesting molecule
link |
there there are a lot of people
link |
the way they've described it
link |
as a kind of a freight train
link |
through space and time
link |
very different than the way
link |
people describe LSD type experiences
link |
or psilocybin where
link |
time and space are very fluid
link |
but it tends to be a kind of a
link |
so it's clear that DMT is tapping
link |
into a brain state
link |
that's distinctly different
link |
than the other psychedelics
link |
and you mentioned jujitsu
link |
and these other communities
link |
interesting because
link |
jujitsu is a nonverbal activity
link |
and people get together
link |
and talk about this
link |
nonverbal activity
link |
and they show great love for it
link |
in the same way that surfers
link |
I've known some surfers in my time
link |
and they will get up at the crack of dawn
link |
and drive really really far
link |
to sit in the water
link |
and wait for this wave to come
link |
I have to imagine it's pretty fantastic
link |
some of whom are in the scientific community
link |
are starting to feel comfortable enough
link |
to talk about some of these
link |
other loves and other endeavors
link |
they do reveal a certain component
link |
about our underlying neurology
link |
the concept of wordlessness
link |
activities in which
link |
language is just not sufficient to capture
link |
as important as sleep
link |
you know I think that's one of the dangers
link |
is not that you're going to get into some online battle
link |
or that you're always staring at the phone
link |
so as we read things
link |
we're hearing the script in our head
link |
and I think getting into states
link |
where we are in a state of wordlessness
link |
and just can feel amazing
link |
also can help us tap into
link |
and allow our neurology to access creative states
link |
and sleep is one such wordlessness
link |
one of the most interesting things to me
link |
are states that one can approach
link |
in waking non sleep
link |
maybe it's jiu jitsu
link |
maybe it's for some people surfing
link |
maybe it's dancing
link |
I don't know staring at a wall
link |
language components of the brain are completely shut down
link |
and it has to be the case
link |
that drugs are no drugs
link |
that the brain is entering
link |
and starting to use algorithms
link |
that are distinctly different than when we're trying to
link |
compose things in any kind of coherent way
link |
for someone else to understand
link |
there's no interest in anyone else
link |
understanding what you're experiencing in that moment
link |
and that's beautiful
link |
I think it's not just beautiful
link |
because it feels good
link |
I think it's beautiful because it's important
link |
and it's clearly fundamental to our neurology
link |
there's a connection between dreams
link |
and DMT and like second doubt
link |
you can understand one
link |
by studying the other
link |
so for example dreams
link |
are also very difficult to study right
link |
but they're more accessible
link |
it's safe for the study
link |
and we're told we need to get more of it
link |
whereas with psychedelics
link |
there's this big question mark
link |
is it going to make everyone crazy
link |
is it going to be legal
link |
it's kind of interesting how
link |
if one looks on Instagram
link |
one could almost think that these drugs are already legal
link |
based on the way that people commute
link |
but they're not yet
link |
there's still a lot of them are scheduling
link |
there's a lot of questions
link |
and but nevertheless
link |
my my hope is that
link |
science opens up to these
link |
drugs a little bit more
link |
I have this intuition that
link |
and like a lot of people share
link |
that they would be able to
link |
unlock deeper understanding
link |
same as studying dreams
link |
well creativity is in the nonlinearities
link |
but productivity is in the
link |
implementation of linearities
link |
is absolutely clear
link |
this is why I think we were talking earlier about
link |
why a formal rigorous training in something
link |
where other people are looking at you
link |
and telling you no not good enough
link |
go back and do it again
link |
there's real value to that
link |
because otherwise it's just ideas
link |
one thing that Matt mentioned
link |
as the study that they're working on
link |
I think most of the psychedelic studies
link |
how to treat different conditions
link |
and one of the things they're working on now
link |
is to try to do a study where
link |
for people that don't have a
link |
condition to try and treat
link |
how psychedelics can help you create
link |
if you take creatives
link |
and you give them more psychedelics
link |
they're not going to be able to get out of there right
link |
well but this is the
link |
I maybe can speak to that
link |
psychedelics are not
link |
or dreams or tools in general
link |
how to be better creatives
link |
that's an interesting
link |
I don't often see studies of this nature of like
link |
how to take high performance
link |
and get them to perform even
link |
so it's not average people
link |
it's like masters of their craft
link |
I mean his examples was
link |
taking an Elon Musk
link |
which is in the engineering space
link |
and maybe musicians
link |
and all that kind of stuff
link |
I mean that's weird
link |
I usually the science
link |
the scientific exploration there
link |
by the musicians themselves
link |
as has been documented
link |
all non linearities
link |
but the people still have to know
link |
how to play their instruments
link |
there's some early
link |
early skill building
link |
manage someone like Elon
link |
I mean he's already a virtual so right
link |
because he and in so many different domains
link |
I've never met him
link |
it's not just that he's ambitious
link |
a different way of looking at the same
link |
problems that everyone else is looking at
link |
and people are probably
link |
banging their head against the refrigerators
link |
and like think differently
link |
things it doesn't work that way
link |
there's a certain anxiety in
link |
I'm not talking about for Elon
link |
but I don't have no idea
link |
but I think for somebody who's
link |
the anxiety comes from letting go of those
link |
for the person that's very creative
link |
the anxiety comes from
link |
trying to impose linearities
link |
really creative artists or musician
link |
they seem like they can't get their life together
link |
because they can't
link |
you know we look at people who are kind of
link |
pseudo ass burgers or ass burgers
link |
or some forms of autism
link |
and they are so hyper linear
link |
but you take away those linearities
link |
and they freak out
link |
and that's kind of the
link |
essence of some of those syndromes
link |
the ability to toggle back and forth between
link |
those states is what's remarkable
link |
because we're here
link |
and we're having this discussion
link |
I mean Steve Jobs is a good example
link |
probably the best example
link |
somebody who actually talked about his own
link |
about the merging of art and science
link |
art and engineering
link |
humanities and science
link |
very few people can do that
link |
you seem to have a capacity to do that
link |
and you are AI guy
link |
there's nothing linear about poetry
link |
as far as I can tell
link |
just like we've been talking about
link |
if there's any ways to push that
link |
I don't like leaning
link |
this is why I'm bothered
link |
there's not more science and psychedelics
link |
mushrooms a few times
link |
the reason I don't do more
link |
the reason I haven't done DMT
link |
is because it's illegal
link |
and it's like not well studied
link |
I'm in those things
link |
and I'm not usually at the cutting edge
link |
but I'm very curious
link |
there could be tools
link |
to be discovered there
link |
not for recreation
link |
whether you're linear
link |
thinking to go nonlinear
link |
or it's nonlinear to go linear
link |
like to to shake things up
link |
you mentioned Dan Gable
link |
the idea of Dan Gable on psychedelics
link |
is fascinating to me
link |
that I would show up for
link |
that would not show up for
link |
but like so much of these psychedelic experiences
link |
you don't want to resist
link |
but that's supposed
link |
supposedly where the growth is
link |
oneself over to the process
link |
for people who are
link |
like master controllers
link |
he's one of the greatest coaches of all time
link |
it's fascinating to see what that battle looks like
link |
and then of letting go
link |
to see where these studies takes us
link |
what's clearly happening
link |
you know I've asked
link |
there I have a couple of colleagues at Stanford
link |
who are doing animal studies
link |
there's a lot of discussion
link |
in the neuroscience community
link |
about what the perception of a laboratory is
link |
don't work on psychedelics
link |
I have to tip my hat
link |
to the folks at Hopkins
link |
he's a computational neuroscientist
link |
I don't think he was the first person to say he says
link |
you know how to spot the pioneers
link |
they're the ones with the arrows in their backs
link |
it's an unkind world
link |
that's trying to do
link |
really cutting edge stuff
link |
who studies medical hypnosis
link |
dozens of studies now
link |
hypnosis can be beneficial
link |
for pain management
link |
anxiety management
link |
at the point where
link |
there's so much data
link |
but people hear hypnosis
link |
and they think of stage hypnosis
link |
which is like the furthest thing
link |
from what he's doing
link |
I think the hard science
link |
walk into the problem
link |
is always going to be best
link |
to get the community on board
link |
it's up to people like Matt
link |
you know take it to the next level
link |
Keesey out of the game
link |
because Keesey basically
link |
was taken too much
link |
and he started dressing
link |
crazy of banana hats
link |
and like you see him
link |
he had the magic bus
link |
so you know the day
link |
so like the day I start
link |
that's the day I lose my job
link |
where you're gonna
link |
I'm not into buses
link |
you're gonna get a phone call
link |
and I hope you do the same for me
link |
dude what are you doing
link |
well what's interesting
link |
earlier we're talking about
link |
the challenge with David
link |
that you're about to do
link |
that is a psychedelic experience
link |
because you're biasing your mind
link |
towards a pretty extreme
link |
neurochemical state
link |
and you don't know
link |
what you're gonna find there
link |
and that's kind of the excitement
link |
what the experience
link |
I want to know like
link |
you're gonna get something
link |
the question is how
link |
I mean it's the same as
link |
with a psychedelic experience
link |
giving yourself over completely
link |
the whole mental journey
link |
that David goes through
link |
his own challenges
link |
is that whole journey
link |
he finds purposely
link |
the limits of the mind
link |
whatever the resistance
link |
runs up against it
link |
of going beyond it
link |
well stress has these
link |
the limbic friction
link |
and needing to get
link |
that's one form of stress
link |
and then there's the
link |
feeling too amped up
link |
and needing to calm down
link |
discussion around stress
link |
but it's all limbic friction
link |
when I say limbic friction
link |
wanting to pull you down
link |
or wanting to put you
link |
top down processing
link |
forebrained to say
link |
I'm not going to go to sleep
link |
and I'm not going to freak out
link |
and those top down
link |
control mechanisms are
link |
I mean when those get honed
link |
capacity for everything
link |
this month on the podcast
link |
you're talking about
link |
in a bunch already
link |
is there something you're
link |
looking forward to
link |
something maybe you're
link |
that jumps to mind
link |
about neuroplasticity
link |
property of the brain
link |
it's clear there's
link |
one facet of neuroplasticity
link |
that is very well supported
link |
by the research data
link |
that hardly anyone
link |
and that's the release
link |
from these neurons
link |
in the forebrained
link |
called nucleus basalis
link |
this is mainly the work
link |
who used to be at UCSF
link |
and some of his scientific
link |
offspring Greg Reckon's own
link |
and Michael Kilgard
link |
what they showed was
link |
increases in acetylcholine
link |
associated with focus
link |
meaning at the same time
link |
reorganizes the neocortex
link |
so that there's a permanent
link |
map representation
link |
I absolutely believe
link |
that this can be channeled
link |
toward accelerated skill
link |
and my friend and colleague
link |
chair of neurosurgery
link |
but also a fine scientist
link |
not just a clinician
link |
studies looking at
link |
rapid acquisition of language
link |
using these principles
link |
he trained with Mersenek
link |
it's clear we have these
link |
gates on plasticity
link |
in the forebrained
link |
and they are gated by
link |
nicotinic acetylcholine
link |
and why that hasn't made it
link |
emotional learning
link |
I think part of the reason
link |
is that scientists
link |
publish their paper
link |
plasticity mechanisms
link |
he had a commercial company
link |
and so then people
link |
kind of backed away
link |
from it a little bit
link |
Mersenek was ahead of his time
link |
and I think the timing is
link |
for people to understand