How To Rewire Your Brain To Wake Up Early - Dr Andrew Huberman

- It takes about three days to shift the biological mechanisms to make someone a morning person. Then, it is important to stack the four primary what are called zeitgebers, or timekeepers, to be able to get up earlier. - Speaker A and Speaker B are talking about the design of a backpack. Speaker B thinks the backpack should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing.

Speaker A: How can people become a morning person or learn to get up early more easily and more regularly?

Speaker B: Yeah, three days of pain. The rest is easy. So it takes about three days to shift the biological mechanisms to make you a morning person. Now, if you are a very strongly genetically determined night owl, that's a thing. That's a thing. So there are genetic mutations. They call them polymorphisms. That makes some people night owls. They feel best psychologically and physically going to sleep at about one, two, or 03:00 a.m. and waking up somewhere around 10:11 a.m. or noon. That exists not just during development or teen years, but that exists not just for social reasons. Other people are true morning people. They feel absolutely best going to sleep around 08:00 p.m. or 09:00 p.m. 10:00 p.m. would be late for them, and they feel great waking up at four, five, or 06:00 a.m. okay, most people feel best going to sleep somewhere between ten and midnight and waking up somewhere between 06:00 a.m. and 08:00 a.m. or so, maybe 530 to 08:00 a.m. okay, so those are three bins of the night owl, the morning person, and then the more typical schedule. But it's heavily weighted toward that typical schedule if you look at the general population. So if somebody wants to get up earlier, you need to stack the four primary what are called zeitgebers, or timekeepers, so named because some of the early chronobiologists that discovered this stuff, and the underlying mechanisms were german, as it were. So, the number one zeitgeber, the number one way to shift your circadian clock, which is this cluster of neurons that sits a few centimeters above the roof of your mouth, is to view bright light at a time when you want to be awake, aka the morning. Okay? So that's why I say get outside. Look at the sun toward the sun. Don't have force yourself to stare at it. Don't damage your eyes. Blink as needed. No sunglasses. Eye glasses, corrective lenses, and contacts are absolutely fine, even if they have uv protection. Okay? However, if you combine that with another zeitgeber, the second most powerful zeitgeber is exercise or movement. So if you do some jumping jacks, you skip some rope or even take a walk while facing the sun. Now you're starting to stack different zeitgebers, and I'll explain the mechanisms in a moment if you then also add caffeine. Now, this spits in the face, a little bit of what I said a few minutes ago. But if you were to add caffeine, you can entrain, as it's called, the circadian clock, to be alert at that time a bit more. And I'll be honest, if I'm going to exercise first thing in the morning, I need caffeine. I can't wait that 60 to 90 minutes. If I need to jump right into exercise, I find it's easiest for me to do 30 minutes after waking, 3 hours after waking, or 11 hours after waking. And a lot of people find that the same. But of course, exercise when you can, because it's that important. But if you want to, quote, unquote, optimize your energy levels for exercise, typically, people will notice that has to do with your temperature rhythm. Okay, so we've got sunlight, we've got exercise or movement of any kind. It could be jumping jacks, could be walking. You don't have to do a full workout and then caffeine and in some cases, food. I'm not big on eating first thing in the morning. I don't like to eat until 11:00 a.m. or noon. That's when my first meal arrives for me, just naturally. That's when I get hungry. It's all caffeine and hydration prior to that. But if you were to eat something first thing in the morning, that's part of the way you entrain your circadian clock to wake up, to essentially wake you up earlier. And then the fourth one is a social rhythm. If you're interacting with other people, you are going to entrain your clock to that as well.

Speaker A: No way.

Speaker B: Yes. So there's a social component to it, circadian entrainment. Now, the pathways for these are from the eye, in the case of viewing light, to the circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the case of caffeine, it's more general. In the case of exercise, there's literally, literally a brainstem to circadian clock connection, a big superhighway of neuronal connections that then so called entrains your circadian clock. Remember, your circadian clock generates an intrinsic 24 hours rhythm such that if we put you into constant dark or constant light, you would still sleep for a given bout and then be alert for a given bout with a little bit of a nap. It just is what would call free run. It would drift a little later each day. This is what happens when you go to Vegas. This is what happens when you're in an environment without a lot of cues about the day, the sunlight rising and setting cycle, sunlight, exercise, caffeine, and eating and social interactions bring your circadian clock into alignment with all of those zeitgebers. So when I said it takes three days, if tomorrow you want to start beginning the process of becoming an early riser, you'd set your alarm for 05:00 a.m. no matter what time you went to sleep the night before. You're going to get up and you're going to do the four things that I described. Maybe leave out food if you don't want to eat, maybe leave out caffeine. If you want to delay by 90 minutes, it's going to hurt. And then by the early afternoon, you'll be dragging a bit and you just have to be careful to not overindulge in caffeine, which will then cause you to fall asleep later. Then you want to go to sleep at your now, naturally, slightly earlier sleep time. The next day, you'll notice it'll be a little bit easier to do the morning routine I just described. And by the third day, you ought to be waking up with or before the alarm by a few minutes or moments because your circadian clock has phase shifted. Okay, it's phase advanced. As we say. Your circadian clock intrinsic to you generates a 24.2 or a 24.3 hours rhythm. It's not perfectly 24 hours and that we believe we don't know. But the just so story is that it's such that you're able to then shift that clock in in one or the other direction. You can phase advanced. You wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier. You can phase delay. How do you phase delay? Well, you're probably doing this already. Everyone nowadays pretty much qualifies as a shift worker by the strict and not so strict criteria of shift work, which is are you doing any kind of cognitive activity after 09:00 p.m. are you viewing any kind of bright lights after 09:30 p.m. most people would say yes. So the diabolical thing about the circadian timing system is that it requires a lot of bright light, ideally from sunlight, but a lot of bright light early in the day to make you a morning and daytime person. But it requires just a little bit of bright light, even from an artificial source, after the hours of about 09:30 p.m. till 04:00 a.m. to quash your melatonin and make it difficult to sleep, or if you sleep, to make that sleep not as effective there's a simple remedy, however, which is, and this is a beautiful study published in Science Reports in 2022. If you view sunlight in the afternoon, even for five minutes or so, could be late afternoon, could be sunset. Take off your sunglasses, look in the direction of the sun. So now, looking west, you adjust the sensitivity of your retina, the neurons in the back of your eye, such that bright light later at night doesn't have quite as much effect to suppress melatonin. It reduces the melatonin suppressive effects by about 50%, or offsets those. So I think of this afternoon viewing as well. First of all, it's nice to look at a sunset if you're indoors in an environment like this, even if there are bright lights on, get outside for a few minutes before the sun sets. This is especially important in winter, even if you can't see the sun as an object, get some sunlight in your eyes, and that will at least partially offset the effects of bright light in your eyes at night, partially. And I refer to this more or less as your Netflix inoculation, so that that night you can be on your phone or watching Netflix. And it's not going to disrupt your sleep as much, but it will still disrupt your sleep somewhat. But let's. You know, unless, like, Rick Rubin's very diligent about wearing the red lens glasses. I've started doing that as well. Um, but if you don't do that, I'm guessing he also sees the sunset in the evening. Um, he's very attached, for good scientific reasons, uh, to the sunlight thing. But these are little things that take just moments, right? They're essentially zero cost that can really improve your sleep. But that's how you become a morning person. If you want to become a night person, you do the opposite. You view bright light between the hours of 04:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. and then you will phase delay or phase shift in a delayed way, your circadian clock making you want to wake up later the next morning.

Speaker A: I wonder if dogs count as social interaction.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And they have all of the same mechanisms we just described.

Speaker A: So I just think, how can we stack that everything first thing in the morning, morning walk if you're in a place that's not Iceland or somewhere that's super high north dog social interaction, moving around and then caffeine if you do, or if you don't, if you don't want it, but if you have a.

Speaker B: Dog that likes to run, you're even better off because it'll force you to.

Speaker A: Run, you're going to have to chase.

Speaker B: If you have an english bulldog like I did, you'd be lucky if he get out of bed by ten. Their eyes are droopy, they don't, and they don't like to move. But it is the case that dogs will naturally orient toward the sun. And people always ask, do dogs have the same mechanisms? Absolutely. Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, the one that project to the clock and carry all of this thing about circadian entrainment to sunlight, are present, as far as we know, in every extant mammalian species, every mammalian species that's alive today. And this is a system that evolved from bacteria that's very similar to the opsins, the light absorbing molecules that are in the insect eye. It's a very primordial system. It's organized very differently anatomically in the retina. And to me, it's actually one of the more beautiful systems in all of us. In fact, the one thing that no one can seem to defeat, you're never going to biohack away, is circadian biology, this 24 hours fluctuation in energy and focus. Some people require less sleep, but we're all more or less a slave to these mechanisms. You know, it's a good thing that we are, because it forces us to rest. Neuroplasticity occurs during sleep. They push down adenosine. You know, it takes us through these natural ebbs and cycles of cognition. I'm obsessed by the idea that in sleep, you know, the conscious mind obviously is not in control. The unconscious mind can geyser up thoughts. The brain is organizing things more in terms of symbols. Time and space are very, very organized very differently in dreams. And there's a lot of information to be gleaned from dreams. It's just that we don't yet understand what the symbols mean. The kind of classic freudian Jungiande interpretations are certainly not going to be complete. But, you know, I'm so grateful that we get this thing called sleep. And I think, thanks to the great Matt Walker, we now understand that the whole thing about sleep when I'm dead is a really dumb mindset. And, you know, my team at the Huberman lab podcast, we sometimes joke that we win by sleeping. You know, when we're in the peak of things, we all encourage each other to, like, get rest. You know, get rest. Like, we really prioritize sleep.

Speaker A: Traveling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I have been using Nomatix backpack and carry on pro for over a year now. This thing is the best backpack on the planet. I did an entire month on tour on just hand luggage alone. Its like the swiss army knife of travel packs. Theyve got pockets for your laptop, your clothes, your snacks. It is so well organized that even your toothbrush feels important and the amount of thought that theyve put into every pouch and zipper is incredible. It's beautifully designed, it's not over engineered and it will literally last you a lifetime with their lifetime guarantee. So this is the final backpack that you will ever buy. Plus they also offer international shipping, free shipping on orders over $49 in the United States. And if you don't like it for any reason, you can return or exchange it within 30 days. So you can buy it completely risk free. Fill it with all of your possessions and if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back. Right now you can get a 20% discount by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomatic.com modernwisdom using the code MW 20 at checkout. That's nomatic.com modernwisdom and MW 20 at checkout. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that clip, you will love the full length episode with Dr. Huberman right there.