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A | 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, I have the pleasure of introducing Doctor Matthew Walker as our guest on the Huberman Lab podcast. Doc... |
B | Wonderful to connect. I mean, it's been too long, but I suspect it would have been a shorter time before we'd met, lest the pandemic. Thank you. |
A | Thank you. Yeah, I'm delighted that we're finally sitting down face to face. I've been tracking your work both in the Internet sphere, and I read your book and loved it. And also from the perspective of science, you actually came to Stanford a couple of years ago and gave a lecture for brain mind. |
B | Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. |
A | And there, of course, you talked about sleep and its utility and its challenges and how to conquer it, so to speak. Let's start off very basic. What is sleep? |
B | Sleep is probably the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body health. So that's a functional answer. In terms of what is sleep in terms of its benefits, sleep as a process, though, is an incredibly complex physiological ballet. And if you were to recognize or see what happens to your brain a... |
A | Let's definitely go down that route. So you mentioned how active the brain is during certain phases of sleep. When I was coming up in science, REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, was referred to as paradoxical sleep. Is that still a good way to think about it? Paradoxical, because the brain is so active and yet we are... |
B | Yeah, it really is a paradox. And where that came from was simply the brainwave recordings that if all I'm measuring about you is your brainwave activity, it's very difficult for me, sitting outside of the sleep laboratory room to figure out, are you awake or are you in REM sleep? Because those two patterns of brain ac... |
A | Are they always horizontal? |
B | Mostly they are horizontal. And that's one of the ways that we can differentiate them from other waking eye movement activity, because it's not always. It can be sometimes horizontal, but can also have diagonal and also vertical in that plane. But then the muscle activity is the real dead giveaway. Just before you ente... |
A | Amazing. |
B | Why would mother nature do such a thing? And it's in some ways very simple. The brain paralyzes the body so that the mind can dream safely, because think about how quickly we would have all been popped out of the gene pool. You know, if I think I'm, you know, one of the best skydivers who can just simply fly. And I've ... |
A | Is this why men have erections during REM sleep and women have vaginal lubrication during sleep? |
B | That's one of the reasons. Part of the other reason, though, there is because of the autonomic activity. So there is a part of our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system, and it controls many of the automatic behaviors, and some of those are aspects of our reproductive facilities during REM sleep. What we l... |
A | Cetera, but you're totally paralyzed. |
B | But you are still paralyzed. There are only two voluntary muscle groups that are spurred from the paralysis bizarre. One, your extra ocular muscles, because if they were paralyzed, you wouldn't be able to have rapid eye movements. And the other that we later discovered was the inner ear muscle. And we've got no good un... |
A | Drainage of the anterior eye are made to require movement. |
B | Exactly. |
A | People with glaucoma have deficits in drainage through the anterior chamber. But there I'm speculating. I'm also speculating when I ask this. I would imagine that there are states in waking that also resemble slow wave sleep. Or rather that there are states that slow wave sleep also resembles waking states. You've beau... |
B | It's a genius way of thinking about it. Turn to the tables. I love it. We almost never see anything like the true ultra slow waves of deep non REM sleep. So we spoke about these two stages, non rem and Rem. Non REM is further subdivided into four separate stages, stages one through four increasing in their depth of sle... |
A | So maybe take me through the arc of a night just so that. |
B | Yeah, yeah. |
A | So I put my head down. Well, for you. What time do you normally go to sleep? |
B | So I'm usually sort of around about a 10:30 p.m. guy. And usually I'll naturally wake up sort of a little bit before seven, sometimes before 645 or seven. I have an alarm set for 07:04. |
A | A.M. you heard it here, folks. Matt Walker does use an alarm clock. |
B | I really, really, I'm usually. |
A | He doesn't recommend it, but he does use it. |
B | Yeah, usually you're human after all. Oh, I am so, so human. And I've had my sleep issues, and I'd love to speak about that, too, but it's only just in the event that. Cause I like to keep regularity too. You've got to keep those two things in balance and 07:04 just because. Why not be idiosyncratic? I don't know why w... |
A | So you go to sleep around 1030. So using you as an example, because I imagine a number of people go to sleep at different times. But 1030 is about when I go to sleep. Eleven is for me. So you go to sleep at 1030. So for that first, let's say 3 hours of sleep. What does the architecture of that sleep look like as compar... |
B | Yeah. So I should note that that sort of 1030 to seven, that's just based on my chronotype and my preferential, it's different for different people. I'm not suggesting that that's the perfect sweet spot for humanity's sleep, it's just my. |
A | But I imagine most people probably go to sleep somewhere between ten and pm and midnight. |
B | And most probably like nine and midnight. |
A | 05:00 a.m. and 07:00 a.m. or 530 and 730. |
B | Yeah, at least in, if you look at sort of first world nations, that's a typical sleep profile. So when I first fall asleep, I'll go into the light stages of non REM sleep, stages one and two of non, remember, and then I'll start to descend down into the deeper stages of non REM sleep. So after about maybe 20 minutes, I... |
A | That's really interesting. Having recorded from the brains of animals and a little bit from humans, I don't think I've ever seen the entire cortex, or even entire regions of cortex light up like that. |
B | Yeah, it's stunning. It's almost like this beautiful sort of mantra chant or this sort of, you know, it's a slow inhale and then a meditative exhale. Inhale, exhale. And these waves are just enormous in their size. |
A | And the body is capable of movement at this time. There is no paralysis. |
B | There is no paralysis, but for the most part, muscle tone has also dropped significantly. |
A | Interesting. |
B | At that point. And then you will, or I will then stay there for about another 20 or 30 minutes. So now I'm maybe 60 or 70 minutes into my first sleep cycle, and then I'll start to rise back up, back up into stage two, non rem sleep. And then after about 80 or so minutes, I'll pop up and I'll have a short rem sleep peri... |
A | I'm suggesting people not do that. Every time I've taken a red eye or I've done that, two or three days later, I get some sort of general feeling of malaise. My brain doesn't work as well. I think red eyes should be abolished for the pilots, too, and we can think about those. And for the emergency room. I mean, long sh... |
B | The data in all of those cases, you know, and particularly physicians, too, there was some recent data looking at suicidality and the rates of suicide in training, physicians are, you know, far, far above the norm, and I don't suspect that, you know, their schedules are helping them. I suspect that sleep is a missing p... |
A | I teach medical students, and they're phenomenal, but, yeah, they're under extremely challenged conditions. |
B | We shouldn't put them under. |
A | No, it's not optimizing performance. I have one. |
B | Sorry, Iris. |
A | No, no, no. This is important. It's an important digression. I have one question, which is you're saying that across the night, a greater percentage of these 90 minutes cycles are going to be occupied by REM sleep as you progress through the night. I'm aware that based on work that you've done and from your public educ... |
B | Great question. So there is some degree of reciprocity between the sleep states. I should note that when we drive one of those up, we often, but not always, see a change in the other. There are some pharmacologies that have shown an independence to that, and we've also played around with things like temperature, and so... |
A | And who suffers more? Those that lack the early phase or those that lack the later phase of the night sleep? In other words, if I have to sleep only 4 hours, for whatever reason, am I better off getting the early part of the night's sleep or the second half of the night's sleep? |
B | Depends on what the outcome measure is. |
A | So that gets right to the differences between slow wave sleep. And remember, I was probably misinformed by my understanding, a very crude understanding, I should say, before I very much doubt. |
B | No contra with someone like you, which. |
A | Is that very nice of you. But the first part of the night, the slow wave sleep, is restorative to the musculature, to motor learning, and that the dream content tends to be less emotional, the second half of the night being more emotional dreams and sort of the unpairing of the emotional load of our previous day and ot... |
B | No, I think much of that is correct, and it's sort of that. Plus I. So, for example, during deep non REM sleep, that's where we get this. It's almost a form of natural blood pressure medication. And so when I take that away from you the next day, we're usually going to see autonomic dysfunction. We're usually going to ... |
A | So the second half of the night. |
B | Which is the second half of the night. So it really just means that your profile of mental and physical dysfunction will be different under both of those conditions. Which one would you prefer? I would prefer neither of them. And it really depends on what you're trying to optimize for. So it's just so complicated. Slee... |
A | Or maybe waking is idiotic, or waking is, you know. Well, yeah, based on your previous idea. |
B | Who have you been talking to? I think that comment is very specific to me. Yeah, I am normally always an idiot when waking. I think this idea that sleep is so profoundly detrimental to us, if you were to take it at face value, you're not finding a mate, you're not reproducing, you're not foraging for food, you're not c... |
A | So, yeah, it's incredible. I want to introduce another gedanken experiment, another thought experiment. So in this arc of the night, slow wave sleep predominates early in the night. And then REM sleep, there's a scenario that many people, including myself, experience on a regular basis, which is they go to sleep sleepi... |
B | Yeah. |
A | How detrimental is that wake up episode or event in terms of longevity, learning, et cetera? I would love to sleep the entire night through every night, but most nights I don't. And yet I feel pretty good throughout the day, some days better than others. So if you were to kind of evaluate that waking episode and compar... |
B | So I think if you're waking up sort of frequently, as you're describing, I would probably get your estate in order because my guess is within the next year, you're gonna be, you're gonna be done for. No, I'm kidding you. Absolutely kidding you. It is perfectly natural and normal, particularly as we progress with age. Y... |
A | To shift, do we ever look around? We ever open our eyes position? |
B | Sometimes people will open their eyes, but usually it's only for a brief period of time, and they usually never commit those awakenings to memory. Right, your situation, and it's my situation as well. I usually, now, at this stage of life, I don't sleep through the night. I'll usually have a bathroom break, then I'll c... |
A | Feels great when it does happen. It's a lovely thing, but surprise, right? |
B | It is not now a surprise, the whole night. Yeah, it is a surprise, but for the most part, I think we can be more relaxed about that. Where we have to be a bit more attentive, though, is if you are spending long periods of time not being able to get back to sleep. And usually we define that by saying, if it's been 2025 ... |
A | Well, I can assure you, just helped a lot of people feel better about this waking up episode that I and many other people experience. |
B | I hope so, because I. Because I think it's really important that we, you know, I think I've been desperately guilty of perhaps, you know, early on being too puritanical about, you know, sleep. And I've retrospected and I've tried to explore why this was the case. You know, it was almost sleep, or else, dot, dot, dot. A... |
A | But because of all of my colleagues, I would say, well, it's great that you give attribution to other people involved, and of course, it's a big field, but I think done a great service by cueing people to the importance of this state, not just for avoiding troublesome outcomes, but also for optimizing their waking stat... |
B | Yeah. So these Uberman like schedules, and there's lots of different forms of that. They tried to essentially pie chart the 24 hours period into short bouts of sleep with some shorter or. No, well, slightly longer periods of wakefulness, then short bouts of sleep, then wakefulness. You know, your. I sort of made it. I ... |
A | Well, I'm chuckling because we always hear, sleep like a baby. This is how babies sleep. And I would say, don't sleep like a baby, sleep like an adult. Get your solid 8 hours. |
B | It's Billy Crystal's line, who is a longstanding suffering insomniac. He says, I sleep like a baby. I'm awake every 20 minutes. And I think this is another one of those demonstrations that when you fight biology, you normally lose. And the way you know you've lost is disease, sickness and impairment. And I think if you... |
A | Yeah, I agree along those lines. As a vision scientist, I've been very excited by the work on these non image forming cells in the eye, the so called melanopsin cells, that inform the brain about circadian time of day. And I'm a big proponent of people getting some sunlight, ideally sunlight, but other forms of bright ... |
B | No, I think that's exactly what we recommend right now, which is try to get at least 30 to 40 minutes of exposure to some kind of natural daylight. Now, there may be parts of the. |
A | World where you're from, a rather cloudy part of the world. |
B | I am from Liverpool, England, and the northwest of England is not known for its beach resorts and fine weather. I remember I went back home for a trip when I'd first been out in California, and I thought, why is the sky so low? It's just constantly out. We joke that in the UK we usually have nine months of bad weather ... |
A | Yeah, I've been. Sorry to interrupt. I've been a big proponent of. There's an app called Light Meter which will. It's a free app, I have nothing to do with it. That will allow you to get a pretty decent measurement of the amount of light energy coming toward you. And if you hold it up to a cloudy morning where you don'... |
B | I am no poster child, but usually, if I'm working out, I usually work out most days. And I shopped around and I found a gym that has huge amounts of window exposure facing to the east. This is going to sound so ridiculous. You know, Matt Walker chooses a gym on the basis of the solar input so he can, you know, there ar... |
A | A lot of criteria for selecting gyms. This one is actually grounded in physiology and biology and so. |
B | And selfishness about my own sleep. |
A | That's great. So you get your exercise and your light stimulation. |
B | That's right. Yep. |
A | Yep. And so you're stacking cues for wakefulness early in the day. |
B | Exactly. So both exercise and daylight are wonderful cues for circadian rhythm alignment and also circadian rhythm reset each day. And so I will use both exercise. I mean, I'm neither a strong morning type or a strong evening type. And my preference to exercise is probably sometime in the middle of the day, probably so... |
A | That's great. And probably folks might want to consider spending a little less time with sunglasses, provided they can do that safely, you know, driving, et cetera. You're not alone with your exercise behavior and facing east. So the one and only Tim Ferriss told me recently that his morning routine nowadays consists o... |
B | Okay. |
A | And that idea came to me on the basis of my understanding of how caffeine and the adenosine receptor interact. I have a feeling you're gonna pronounce adenosine differently than I do. |
B | No, no, no, I'll go with adenosine. |
A | I'll try to go with your skeletal instead of skeletal and synapse and synapse schedule and schedule. There we go. But to make it really simple for folks, how does caffeine work to make us feel more alert? And does the timing in which we ingest caffeine play an important role in whether or not it works for us or against... |
B | Yeah. So I'm going to suggest, counter to what most people would think, drink coffee. |
A | Or mate is mate. Okay. Also. |
B | Yeah, yeah. |
A | Or whatever form you enjoy, we'll come. |
B | On to sort of why I suggest that. But when it comes to coffee, I would say the dose and the timing makes the poison. So let's start with how caffeine works. Caffeine is in a class of drugs that we call a psychoactive stimulants. So it works through a variety of mechanisms. One is a dopamine mechanism. Dopamine we often... |
A | Is it, may I ask, is it accumulating in neurons, in glia, or in the blood vessels? Where. And is it also accumulating in my body? Where is this adenosine coming from? And where is it accumulating? |
B | Yeah. So the adenosine here that we're talking about that is creating the sleep pressure, is a central brain phenomenon, and it comes from the neurons themselves. Combusting energy and as they're combusting energy, one of the offshoots of that is this chemical adenosine. And so as we're awake throughout the day and our... |
A | May I just interrupt you again to just ask, do we know what the circuit mechanism is for that? I mean, not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but for the aficionados and for myself, we have brain mechanisms like locus coeruleus, that release things, our brain areas, locuserulus just being a brain area, of course, that... |
B | Yeah, and it's both. And so there are two main receptors for adenosine, the a one receptor and the a two receptor, and they have different modes of activating brain cells or inactivating or decreasing the likelihood of firing. And adenosine works in this beautiful, elegant way where it will inhibit and shut down the wa... |
A | It's always a push pull. I mean, and we could have a larger discussion at some point about that. Everything, seeing dark edges, seeing light edges, our ability to smell or to sense pressure on the. Everything's a pushback. |
B | Oh, it's great. Yeah. Yep. |
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