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AMA #2: Improve Sleep, Reduce Sugar Cravings, Optimal Protein Intake, Stretching Frequency & More
AMA #2: Improve Sleep, Reduce Sugar Cravings, Optimal Protein Intake, Stretching Frequency & More

AMA #2: Improve Sleep, Reduce Sugar Cravings, Optimal Protein Intake, Stretching Frequency & More

Huberman LabGo to Podcast Page

Andrew Huberman
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14 Clips
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Dec 8, 2022
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Episode Transcript
0:00
Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today is an ask me, anything or am a episode,
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which is part of our premium subscriber content. Our premium channel was launched in order to raise support for the standard huberman Lab
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1:00
Go to human lab.com. / P me, mm and download the premium podcast feed. And
1:05
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1:09
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1:16
Without further Ado, let's get to answering your questions. And as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible as
1:23
thorough as possible and yet, as concise as
1:26
possible, the first question is about how to improve sleep in.
1:30
Tickler how to improve deep sleep that is sometimes called slow-wave sleep. This was a question that was asked by Jack Pritchard and they got a lot of
1:38
upvotes. Now, we've done
1:40
multiple full-length episodes of the human Lab podcast on sleep and tools to improve sleep, including the master, your sleep episode and perfect your sleep episode as well as a toolkit that is available completely zero cost at huberman lab.com. It's a downloadable PDF that lists out the behavioral tools and other tools that you can Implement to improve your
2:00
Sleep. Now, Jack's question is specifically about how to improve deep
2:03
sleep. He asks, I
2:06
have a sleep analyzer and I typically observed that I get a lot of REM sleep.
2:09
It that is rapid eye movement sleep for him. He says, it's 30 percent of his Total Sleep is rapid eye movement sleep. But he
2:17
asks, my deep sleep is often low around 10% and I would like to know if there are any signs back, protocols, I can use to specifically increase my deep sleep. Okay, so for those of you that may not know what is
2:30
Deep sleep. Now deep sleep is sometimes referred to as slow-wave sleep. That is slow wave sleep in deep. Sleep are sometimes used interchangeably to describe the same thing. They aren't necessarily the same thing, but they fall under the same mechanistic umbrella. What is that mechanistic umbrella? Well,
2:46
when you go to sleep at night, you
2:49
cycle through a number of different stages of sleep and in the early part of the
2:53
night, would say, in the
2:55
first half of your night or so, most of your sleep is going to be
3:00
Low wave deep sleep, but then, as you transition into
3:03
the second half of your night, more of your sleep will be rapid eye movement
3:07
sleep. Now that's the typical pattern. That is observed, when you're not disrupting your sleep architecture with things like caffeine
3:14
and alcohol will talk about caffeine and alcohol in a few minutes. Deep, sleep, AKA slow wave sleep. At least for sake of this conversation
3:22
is vitally important in particular for repair of bodily, tissues. During deep sleep, you secrete growth hormone and
3:29
in fact,
3:30
That you secrete growth
3:31
hormone every night when you go to sleep. But most of that growth hormone release is restricted
3:36
to the first half of your sleep night.
3:39
The other feature of deep sleep is that the dreams that occur during deep sleep, tend to be of a less
3:45
emotional nature than the sorts of dreams. That one experiences in rapid eye movement sleep. So, just to give a broad top Contour of what deep sleep AKA slow. Wave sleep is really about
3:56
it. Tends to occur in the first half of the night. It also
4:00
Occurs in the second half of the night. But in the first half of the night, most of your sleep is going
4:03
to be occupied by Deep Sleep. AKA slow wave
4:06
sleep. It is the time when your bodily tissues are repaired in part by release of growth hormone which
4:12
is involved in metabolism. But also protein synthesis muscle repair repair of all cell types and tissues
4:19
and during deep sleep, your dreams tend to be
4:21
somewhat mundane sometimes a little bizarre
4:24
but typically
4:25
not very emotionally loaded that can change if you're dealing with a lot of emotionally.
4:30
Late in
4:30
circumstances, in your Waking Life but in general the sleep and dreams that occur in the first part of the
4:35
night is deep and it's not terribly emotionally written. Your body
4:41
also goes through specific
4:42
patterns of metabolism this
4:45
relates to recent findings, just this last year, in which researchers
4:49
monitored the output of people's breath. And the various
4:53
metabolic factors present in
4:55
the breath as well
4:56
as through blood draws.
4:57
So basically doing all this while people are asleep in and
5:00
For Tory and they observed that during the first half of the night while people are in deep Sleep. Their body is actually metabolizing energy very differently than it does
5:08
in the second half of the night. I'll come back
5:11
to this in a little while but this turns out to be very important for establishing your metabolism and the way you regulate insulin and blood glucose during the daytime. So all of this is to say that getting sufficient deep
5:23
sleep slow-wave, sleep is vitally important and Jack's asking how he can increase the amount of deep sleep that he's getting because
5:30
By his sleep tracking method. He's
5:32
observing far
5:33
less deep sleep than rapid eye movement sleep. Now, that raises the question of how much deep sleep one should be getting overall in general, the goal should be to balance, the total amount of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement, sleep across the night. However, I would
5:49
not want people to obsess
5:51
over getting exactly 30 percent. Rapid eye movement sleep in exactly 30 percent slow-wave sleep.
5:56
Your body is much more resilient than that, but the closer those two numbers are two one
6:00
Another the better overall architecture of your sleep and he doesn't list out exactly how he's measuring his sleep. So I do want to put an asterisk on both the question and the answer I provide by stating that a lot of sleep trackers whether or not they are, whoop trackers Aurora's or whether or not you're using a mattress based or mattress cover based sleep tracker like eight sleep or other is using heart rate and heart rate variability and body movement to estimate or two.
6:30
Kind of predict whether or not you're in slow-wave sleep or
6:32
rapid eye movement sleep. And that's because during rapid eye movement sleep. You tend to be in what's called a tonyia. You tend to be paralyzed, you can't move and during slow-wave sleep. That's not the case, but no matter
6:43
what the sleep tracking method is, if it's a standard commercial sleep tracking method, whoop or eight sleep etcetera. It is an estimate
6:52
or a best, guess at what stage of sleep, you're in.
6:56
Whereas when you go into a sleep laboratory, like the sleeve laboratory at
6:59
Deferred at University of Pennsylvania or other
7:02
of the great sleep Laboratories that are
7:04
out there. They're going to use other
7:05
methods including EEG and EMG.
7:09
These are just acronyms that refer to ways to record brain waves.
7:12
That actually are going to try and observe for rapid eye movements beneath
7:16
the eyelids Etc. So sleep tracker is give
7:19
you a best guess as to what stage of sleep. Your in, they are not perfectly accurate. Least none of the commercially available, sleep, trackers are perfectly accurate. So we do want to
7:29
Like that. Okay. So now, let's answer. Jack's question directly, which is how to increase the total amount of slow-wave sleep. Well, there are a couple of ways,
7:37
first of all, are the don'ts and then we'll talk about the dues
7:41
to things that you can do to really disrupt. Your slow-wave sleep
7:44
are to drink
7:46
alcohol, within eight hours prior to bedtime or
7:49
even at all. Some people
7:51
will find that even if they have a glass of
7:52
wine or a beer with
7:53
lunch, that the amount of slow-wave sleep,
7:55
and sometimes even the rapid eye movement sleep that they get at night is
7:59
East. And that their overall sleep architecture is disrupted. This has been shown again and again, likewise avoiding
8:06
caffeine within eight. And ideally, within 12 hours of bedtime would be preferable,
8:13
and if you're not a caffeine Drinker, obviously, you don't have to worry about this at all, but
8:16
avoiding caffeine intake within that 8, to 12 hours of
8:19
bedtime, will greatly assist in you getting
8:22
more slow wave
8:23
sleep, and higher quality, rapid eye movement sleep, this has been shown again and again,
8:28
and
8:29
Well, avoiding cannabis use and maybe even
8:33
CBD. Use within eight to 12 hours of sleep, can be very beneficial if your goal is to improve the quality of your sleep. Now, I know a lot of
8:42
people rely on
8:43
alcohol, cannabis and CBD in order to get into sleep. However, it's been shown many times in human studies and this was discussed in the podcast episode that we did with the great Matt Walker. Who's a professor of neuroscience and psychology at University of California Berkeley in
8:59
In a world expert
9:01
in sleep and sleep science. Matt, and I discuss the research showing that even though alcohol helps you fall
9:05
asleep. Even though cannabis can help you fall asleep and even though CBD can help people fall
9:10
asleep that it does
9:11
disrupt and in many ways reduce the quality of sleep that one gets. So that's disappointing news. I know for a number of the people that rely on cannabis CBD or alcohol to fall asleep but I would encourage you to check out the episodes of The huberman Lab podcast that we did about alcohol
9:27
and about cannabis including some of the health benefits.
9:29
If it's of cannabis in certain situations, but also some of the detrimental effects of both
9:34
alcohol and cannabis in other situations in particular for improving slow-wave
9:38
sleep. So that's actually three major don'ts avoid caffeine alcohol and cannabis and let's put under the umbrella of
9:45
cannabis THC and CBD in the eighth and ideally within the
9:51
12 hours prior
9:52
to sleep. If your goal is to improve the total amount of slow-wave sleep that you're getting, and your overall sleep,
9:59
The texture. In addition,
10:02
it's well-known that avoiding food intake in the two hours prior to sleep is going to greatly assist in the
10:11
amount of growth hormone
10:12
output that you achieve during the early stages of the night and the
10:16
depth and duration of slow-wave sleep. Now, I want to place an Asterix on that statement by saying, if you go to sleep too hungry, it can also disrupt your sleep. So you're
10:26
going to have to arrange your eating schedule, and you're sleeping.
10:29
You're all such that you're not eating too close to bedtime but you're also not going to bed. So hungry
10:35
that you can't fall asleep or that you don't get into deep sleep and stay
10:38
asleep. I can personally attest to the fact that if I'm too hungry, I can't fall asleep. Now, for me most nights, I'm going to eat dinner sometime
10:46
between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Depending on time of year. Schedules, what's going on traffic, Etc. And
10:52
I tend to go to sleep somewhere
10:53
between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. plus or minus an hour again Depending on time of year and what else is going on in life.
11:00
So I normally have that buffer of two hours or so before going to
11:03
sleep, however, there are some nights where even if I eat dinner around 7:00 p.m.
11:07
I'm quite hungry at 9 p.m. and I want to go
11:10
to sleep in that case, eating a small amount of food
11:14
ought not to disrupt your slow-wave sleep too much. But you do want to avoid eating, large meals, right before going to
11:20
sleep, unless? Okay,
11:22
unless completely fasting and not eating something late at night, will prevent you from getting into any sleep at all
11:29
in,
11:29
It's better to make sure that you're getting to sleep,
11:32
then it is to avoid food just so that you get increased growth hormone output and into slow-wave sleep. I hope that's clear. You know, I have had times in my life
11:42
where I'm working, very, very hard and I miss dinner or something comes up. And I know some people can fall asleep quite easily on an empty stomach. I've been
11:50
able to do that in particular, if I'm very exhausted. I also rely on a handful of
11:54
supplements to fall asleep each
11:56
night although I'm not dependent on them there.
11:59
Times when I haven't been able to access those supplements and I can still fall asleep,
12:03
but the point is that you don't want to be so hungry
12:05
that you can't fall asleep.
12:06
And yet in an ideal circumstance, especially if you're trying to increase the amount of slow-wave sleep, you would avoid food
12:13
in the two hours or so, before going to sleep, if you can avoid food
12:17
for the three or four hours prior
12:18
to sleep, and still fall and stay asleep easily. That's even better for sake of increasing, slow-wave, sleep and growth hormone output.
12:26
Now, there are some additional tools for improving slowly
12:29
Leap in particular, the transitions between
12:32
slow-wave sleep and the other sleep stages
12:34
because even though, as I mentioned earlier, the early part of your night is occupied primarily by slow-wave sleep, all night long. You're transitioning from slow-wave sleep into an intermediate stage of sleep and then
12:45
into rapid eye movement sleep. And then back again, is just
12:47
that in the early part of the night, more of that time
12:50
is going to be occupied by slow-wave
12:51
Sleep. The two ways to improve slow-wave sleep. That are well documented in the literature and here
12:57
we can point to some really nice papers that I'll
12:59
reference in case you want to
13:00
read. Further is the first one is entitled exercise improves the quality of slow-wave sleep by increasing slow-wave stability. Slowest ability has to do with
13:10
as researchers called the
13:11
amount of power present in the different aspects of slow-wave sleep. So this gets a little bit technical, but this is an instance, in which they brought subjects into the laboratory. They measured brain waves by
13:22
EEG. They had some other measurements as well, including subjective measures of
13:26
sleep, and they looked at whether or not people were doing.
13:29
Exercise, or not prior to sleep. Now, when I say prior to sleep, I mean, not within 6
13:35
hours prior to bedtime, in fact, exercising,
13:38
intensely in the six hours. Prior to bedtime for many people. Not all. But for many, people can disrupt, the
13:45
total amount of slow-wave sleep that they get and can also disrupt rapid eye,
13:48
movement sleep. So, the conditions of the study were pretty straightforward. It was a randomized crossover trial. Basically, they had people either sleeping in monitoring their sleep, or they had people do.
13:59
Doing an hour of exercise at 60%
14:03
of their so-called VO2 max. You can look this
14:05
up for 60 minutes, okay? 60 percent of their VO2 max. That was the intensity, it's breathing pretty hard but not extremely hard. If we were going to map that to the so-called Zone Zone to cardio being the kind of
14:17
cardio, you can do steady state while holding a
14:19
conversation. This would be somewhere in the probably Zone 3 or zone for
14:24
although that's not exactly
14:26
what 60% of VO2 max is going to map to every
14:29
I'm think about relatively challenging cardiovascular output for 60 minutes, and they had them do that at least six hours prior to bedtime. And this is an important and they did have the subjects in this study in all conditions abstain from caffeine and
14:47
alcohol. So, that's very important and what they observed
14:51
was an enhancement of slow-wave sleep. So exercise of this sort turns out to be a very potent form of improving slow-wave sleep. Now, I do not
14:59
Not know because the study as far as I know, has not been done whether or not doing resistance training or some other type
15:06
of exercise would have led to the same effect, although I have to imagine that if
15:10
it's moderately intense to intense resistance training provided it's done far enough away from going to sleep, right? Prior to six hours before sleep. That
15:20
one ought to see the same effects although that was not a condition in this study, but it's a
15:24
very nice study. They looked at everything from changes in core body, temperature to caloric.
15:29
Spend a teacher, they didn't see huge changes in core body, temperature changes, so that couldn't explain the effect. It really appears that the major effect of improving slow-wave sleep was due to something and changing the fine structure of the brain waves that
15:46
occur during slow-wave sleep. In fact, and
15:49
this is an important point. The subjects in this study, did not report subjectively feeling that
15:55
much better from their sleep. So you might say, Well, then why would I even want to bother
15:59
/, it's well known that getting sufficient slow-wave. Sleep is important, not just for Roberto, excuse me, for repair of
16:06
bodily tissues, but also for repair of brain tissues and repair and wash out of debris in the brain. And that debris is known to lead to things like dementia. So
16:18
getting the best quality slow-wave. Sleep is
16:21
extremely important for body and for brain and getting an
16:25
hour of exercise that's moderately intense and making sure
16:27
that you're not doing that exercise.
16:29
Within the six hours prior to bedtime and
16:33
avoiding caffeine and alcohol, certainly within the six hours prior to bedtime, but I would
16:37
say in the 8, to 12 hours prior to bedtime would be even better. We're not drinking alcohol at all. Or I know there are people out there that don't drink caffeine at all. I'm not one of those people but restricting that caffeine intake to the very early part of the day that has been shown to improve the quality and the overall architecture of sleep and slow wave sleep in particular that's really what this study points.
16:59
To there's another tool that can improve the
17:01
amount and quality of slow-wave sleep that you achieve at night. This is actually a tool
17:05
that I've started
17:06
using over the last six to eight months or so,
17:10
as many of you know,
17:11
I believe in getting behaviors right before. Embracing changes in supplementation or prescription drugs, behavioral tools consist of do's and don'ts and the do's and don'ts for sleep are well, documented in the master sleep episode and the Perfecter sleep episode and the toolkit for sleeping.
17:29
Good. Getting morning sunlight in your eyes are bright, light of other kinds of waiting bright, light, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. etcetera, Etc. All that information is in the toolkit for sleep and those other full-length episodes of The huberman Lab podcast. Now,
17:42
there are supplements that can greatly improve,
17:45
the depth of your
17:47
sleep and that can shorten the latency
17:50
to fall asleep. And here, I am not referring to melatonin as many of you perhaps already know. I'm not a fan of melatonin, for a variety of reasons. Mainly the fact that
17:59
Most melatonin supplements out there. Don't actually contain the exact amount of melatonin that's listed on the bottle. They contain either much much more or much, much
18:07
less. And that melatonin is a potent hormone that has impacts on, not just
18:12
sleep, but on other hormone systems as well, the
18:16
supplements that I've suggested and
18:18
that I personally take in order to improve my sleep are
18:22
magnesium, three and eight, spelled
18:24
three-30, natpe and interchangeably with
18:29
That one could use magnesium bisque, lice innate. I do consider those interchangeable because both cross into cells, and across the blood-brain barrier in much the same way, that makes them better candidates for improving sleep than some of the other forms of magnesium. So magnesium,
18:44
three and eight theanine, th
18:47
EA ni any theanine, and something called apigenin, which is essentially what you find in chamomile that is the reason why chamomile can make you sleepy.
18:59
EIG. Enin apigenin
19:01
the dosages for those Etc, are
19:04
described in the toolkit for sleep and why some people might want to avoid theanine. I'll just tell you for those of you that have very intense dreams or that might sleep walk or have night terrors, you might want to avoid theanine because it can enhance the kind of emotional and elaborate nature of Dreams other people like that.
19:23
So, I'll take magnesium three and eight theanine and apigenin
19:26
as a so-called sleep stack about
19:27
30 to 60 minutes prior to
19:30
I do not take them during the day.
19:33
There is however, another
19:34
supplement that used in combination with the Sleep stack that I just described
19:38
or alone can greatly,
19:41
enhance the quality of your
19:43
sleep. And in particular people, who are following a low carbohydrate diet who have trouble falling and staying asleep seem
19:51
to benefit from it and that is so called inositol now in. Austell comes in
19:55
different forms. But the form that I'm referring to here in
19:58
terms of enhancing slow-wave sleep,
20:00
If is myo-inositol,
20:02
there are an enormous number of
20:03
studies on it nauset all for sake of mental health and for sake of enhancing various aspects of cellular function and force a coven proving
20:14
sleep. I'd like to just highlight one paper title, this paper will make it clear. What it's
20:18
about the title of the paper is
20:20
the impact of myo-inositol supplementation on Sleep Quality in
20:24
pregnant, women randomized. Double-blind placebo-controlled, study. Now, as I just told you
20:30
A study was carried out on pregnant women but there have been other studies of
20:33
inositol on other populations. And the
20:37
major takeaway from these studies is that inositol can improve the quality of sleep and can adjust the architecture of sleep in ways that make it a great candidate for improving the
20:51
structure. And maybe also the duration of slow-wave sleep in particular,
20:56
I find that if I'm following a
20:58
lower carbohydrate
21:00
Which I do from
21:00
time to time, sometimes have trouble falling asleep or if I
21:04
eat four to six hours prior to
21:06
bedtime, and I tend to be pretty hungry around bedtime and sometimes if I'm exercising, very hard, or if I'm working a lot, even if I
21:13
eat dinner around 7:00 and I go to sleep around 10 p.m. I might be a little bit hungry, still at 10 p.m.
21:19
In that case, I find that taking 900 milligrams of myo-inositol. In
21:23
addition to the other sleep stack that I just described greatly enhances my ability to fall asleep,
21:30
And to get terrific quality sleep. I do monitor my sleep, I do that two ways. I do that. These days with my eight sleep sleep tracker, and I use a whoop sleep tracker when I sleep the
21:42
combination of those two Taps into different aspects of sleep, tracking,
21:46
heart rate, variability movement, Etc. In a future episode, we'll talk about what are the best devices for monitoring sleep, which have certain advantages and others have disadvantages.
21:55
But I certainly see it in the objective data that is from the sleep tracking.
22:00
And data. And I also observed subjectively that taking 900
22:03
milligrams of inositol prior to sleep again, 30 to 60 minutes, prior, to sleep, can greatly enhance the ability to fall asleep and for me to stay asleep throughout the night. I also noticed another effect, which is that if I wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, which I often do, I find it much easier to fall back asleep. I don't tend to get into and of looping thought and things of that sort in the middle of the night.
22:24
And that may relate to the fact that myo-inositol has
22:26
been studied in many cases for its
22:30
In controlling anxiety, that is for reducing anxiety. And that's one of the reasons. In fact, one of many reasons why people take myo-inositol during the daytime, their size of my own office at all for dealing with anxiety for sleep, as we're discussing now and even for improving fertility and things of that sort in particular in women. So,
22:49
again, 900 milligrams of
22:50
inositol can be a useful tool, 60
22:52
minutes of exercise as described previously can be a tool and certainly avoiding caffeine and
22:58
alcohol.
23:00
Is an excellent tool for enhancing the total amount of slow-wave
23:03
sleep. Jack had a second part to his question. He asked is having a high level of
23:09
rapid eye movement, sleep and a lower level of Deep Sleep, likely to cause any health issues. And to be
23:14
honest, it's not really clear that it would cause any
23:17
specific health issues. Although if we think about what the specific roles of slow-wave sleep versus rapid eye movement, sleep are again rapid eye movement sleep being Laden with highly emotional dreams. It's thought,
23:30
To act as a sort of trauma release where people are paralyzed in body and that's a healthy paralysis. This so-called sleep atonia,
23:37
but undergoing, some pretty emotional stuff it within their dreams, and there is a lack of ability for the body to
23:44
secrete. Adrenaline during rapid eye movement sleep, that's thought to be important for emotional repair. If you will, during the night certainly studies where people have been deprived of rapid eye movement, sleep, have shown that their ability to manage emotionally during the daytime as
24:00
Ooh, sassy certainly. If you have reduced rapid eye movement, sleep for multiple nights, that's going to be the case. The only caveat to that is that there are certain forms of treating depression that involves specifically depriving people of rapid eye movement, sleep. That's a whole other story that was covered in the podcast episode with dr. Nolan Williams, if you want to learn more as to why that's the case check out that episode.
24:21
But because slow-wave
24:23
sleep which occurs again during
24:25
the early part of the night is when growth hormone is released and when there's this
24:30
Wash out
24:31
of debris within the brain and to some extent within certain tissues of the
24:35
body. You could imagine that reduce slow-wave, sleep would lead to reduced ability to recover from exercise from injury, maybe even relate to the immune system.
24:45
However, I am personally not aware of any studies that specifically looked at the ratio of slow-wave sleep
24:51
to rapid eye movement, sleep.
24:53
And that focused in particular, on reduced slow-wave. Sleep, for bodily repair. Those studies might be out there. I was not able
25:00
To find them. If you are
25:00
able to find them, please put them in the comments section and I would love to check out those studies.
25:06
So I don't think that one needs to be overly concerned, if
25:09
you're not getting a balance of slow-wave sleep to rapid eye movement sleep, that's perfect.
25:15
However, and as I mentioned earlier,
25:19
it would be good to strive to try and balance the amount of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement. Sleep across the entire night. If you
25:27
think about it, that will also tell you whether or not you're getting sufficient,
25:30
Little sleep and I don't want to open up another set of questions here
25:33
as I'm about to close out. An answer to this question, but I
25:36
do often get asked the question whether or not
25:38
four hours is enough for six hours is enough for eight hours is enough.
25:42
Well, it's impossible to know exactly how much
25:45
sleep each individual person needs. And of
25:47
course, each individual person will need a different amount of Total Sleep depending on the amount of stress and physical strain and various
25:54
other things they're dealing with in their daily Waking
25:57
Life. However, it's
25:59
Generally, the case that kids and people that are undergoing puberty and certainly in early infancy need more sleep than adults
26:05
do. So, as you age, you do in fact, need less sleep one. Good metric of whether or not you are getting enough sleep as whether or not, you're sleepy during the daytime or not. If you're falling asleep, a lot during the day time, you're probably not getting enough sleep at night. That's sort of a duh, but it's an important to pay attention to
26:21
and for those of us like myself that need a 20 or 30 minute nap in the
26:25
afternoon. Great. That doesn't necessarily mean you're not getting enough sleep at night, okay?
26:30
You get sleepy enough to want to nap in the afternoon.
26:33
That's not an indication necessarily that you are not getting enough sleep at night.
26:37
However, if you're only sleeping four or five hours per night, it's very hard to imagine
26:43
that you're getting a balance of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement. Sleep, once you get into the range of sleeping six to eight hours, in certainly 8 to
26:52
10 hours per night. The probability that you're getting a balance of slow-wave sleep
26:56
and rapid eye movement, sleep greatly increases.
26:59
So
26:59
If I were to throw out a number, I would say for most people,
27:03
that is for 95% of people out there getting at least 6 hours of sleep per night, at least and
27:10
ideally more like seven or eight is going to be the goal.
27:13
However, I've noticed for instance for myself unless I'm exercising extremely intensely, or I'm going through a lot of emotional or physical stress in my daily
27:21
life, getting six and a half to
27:23
seven hours of sleep per night. Allows me to feel really good
27:26
and refresh throughout the day
27:27
and that's especially the case if I get that.
27:30
20 or 30 minute nap in the afternoon or use NSD are non sleep, deep rest.
27:35
So I hope that answers your question Jack and
27:38
there, of course, I'm extending the answer to all others who upvoted that question, or who might be interested in improving their slow wave. Sleep. There are some dues that are some don'ts that I just described.
27:49
I suggest trying various things one by one to see what works best
27:54
for you. So you don't necessarily need to LEAP to doing the 60 minutes of exercise plus the inositol
27:59
All Etc. However, I do encourage everyone to
28:02
avoid alcohol and caffeine within the 8 to 12 hours, prior to sleep in again, if you're not using either of those, that would be even better. At least in terms of sleep architecture.
28:11
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