Priscilla Xu

Actionable Tips

• Do not view light after 8pm.
• Wear blue blockers after 8pm.
• Anchor your sleep cycle by viewing blue light at the beginning of the day to have stay energized.
• Candle or fire light does not distrubt your biological clock.

Sleep Hunger and Coffee

• Adenosine builds up and you will be hungry for sleep because it builds up the longer you are awake.
• Sleep is essential to both mental and physical health.
• Adenosine parks in the adenosine receptor
• What is feels like to sleep a good quality of 7-9 hours of sleep?
• Caffeine: Devil & Angel
  • Can be problematic or not depending on genetic variations
  • Devil: building up adenosine will just make you even more tired
  • Angel: Caffeine has some health benefits. Not mentions in the podcast.
• Timing Your Sleep Properly
  • After an all nighter, the circadian force will trigger you to be awake again.
    • Circadian mean 24 hours.
• Release Your Hormones (At The Right Times)
  • The circadian pattern
    • People wake up around sunrise or so.
    • Cortisol increases to get you awake all at once in a bulk.
    • 12-14 hours later, Melatonin will get released because cortisol also times when melatonin is released.

Pineal Gland and Melatonin Warning

• Mr. Huberman recommends to not take melatonin
• It suppresses the onset of puberty
• Melatonin do not help you stay asleep, BUT only fall asleep.
• Sunlight inhibits the pineal to release melatonin

How to anchor your circadian clock?

• Retinal ganglion cells are brain neurons
  • They communicate to the suprachiasmatic nucleus central clock
  • Cortisol and melatonin bad rhythm –> there are many bad thing.
  • They like low solar angle. Particular contrast of red and blues.
• The sunrise is the light that the retinal ganglion cells can recognize
  • Window sunlight are 50 times worse than you actually talk outside. So this is the why I need to get outside.
    • Some people might need artificial light stimulator
    • Your retinal ganglion cells are that sensitive during the morning, BUT even more sensitive at night.
  • They don’t know sunrise or sunset or artificial light
  • The light from the phone for the morning is a bit wrong
• A late shift in cortisol at 8 to 9 pm is related to depression and anxiety disorder.
• Blue Light is great in the morning to boost your alertness.
  • Blue blockers are for evening.
  • Try out light meter to measure brightness in flux.
• Blind / Low Vision People
  • They still have melanin opsin ganglions
  • This is a very delayed evolution mechanism
  • Most people might just be viewing enough light for their circadian rhythm.
• Exercising and Food intake times on sleepy times
  • Intergeniculate leaflet regulating the clock by non photic and non light cues.
  • To become an early riser your eating time will also change

The Power of Sunset

• This will also anchor your circadian clock
  • Can protect negative effects of light later in the day for releasing melatonin
• View sunset light to prevent melatonin from not releasing
• The Healthy Holes In Your Skull are your eyes
  • Snakes have holes on their skull to signal the pineal gland .
• I will know when the circadian rhythm get into a normal rhythm.

When you should not view light?

• As much as daylight in the morning
• And as low light from 8-11pm
• And 11pm -4am will decrease the release of dopamine
  • Light to the eyes will signal the the structure called habenula (look like bat ears in the thalamas )
    • It is the disasspointment nucleus
    • That’s why not sleeping makes you unhappy.
  • If you sleep better and control light exposure, learning, focus, and moods will increase

Does Candle Light Break the Circadium Rhythm?

• Light sesitive cells are mostly in bottom half of your retina
• The optic of lenses will lead to an inversion of the light-sensitive cells that will detect light in the upper visual field because they are designed to protect your eyes from the sun.
• Turn my room into a cave at night
• Fire / Candlelight
  • This will not trigger the clock.

When To Eat How To Wake Up Earlier

• Shifting eating time will change your wake up
• Turn on the lights without waking up before 45mins to 1 hour. The eyes will still detect this.
  • The total sleep time will increase and shift forward when you get sleepy
• Viewing light at night will let your clock phase delay your clock
  • If you want to wake up early, do not view light at night.
• If you look at light too early, the clock will phase advance.
• It is very important to maintian a good sleep hygiene.
• There are no one size fit all with this much of genetic variation.
• Make sure to find what works for your brain wiring and receptors.
• Light exposure, eating, exercising times, temperature
  • Biological system will align and things will be healthier.
• Provide them power full consistent anchor
• Most people are not familiar with slepeing well.

Practices for Taking a Good Nap

• Cortisol drops in the late afternoon
• Yoga Nidra is different from meditation.

Yoga nidra is a state in which the body is completely relaxed, and the practitioner becomes systematically and increasingly aware of the inner world by following a set of verbal instructions.

Wikipedia

• Falling asleep is about not being able to calm down.
• People are actually better at staying up for evolutionary survival reasons.
• Below are tools he recommended.
  • 10 Min Yoga Nidra Script (no cost)
  • 35 Min Yoga Nidra Script (no cost)
  • Research Supported Hypnosis Scripts (no cost)
• Nonsleep deep rest and Yoga Nidra
  • It has Better emotional stability and reset dopamine

Drugs & Supplements for Sleep

• A drug is a substance when inject into a person a scientific publication
• The drug won’t change your life
• It is not a magic pill
• Apigenin can create sleepiness.