In this episode 31 protocols
▶ 2:06 Avoid Bright Light at Night Behaviors “because we talked about just how crucial it is to avoid bright lights between the hours of about 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM, except when you need to view things for sake of safety or work and so forth.” ▷ 2:44 Dim Red Light at Night Behaviors “So if you're thinking about red light for sake of avoiding the negative effects of light later in the day and at night, then you want that red light to be very, very dim, certainly much dimmer than it is on most of those commercial products.” ▷ 2:57 Red Light Tools “Now, do you need red lights? No, although red lights are rather convenient because you can see pretty well with them on.” ▷ 3:22 Light Meter App Tools “You can download the free app Light Meter. You can have a bright day outside or some sunlight.” ▷ 4:10 Get Outside for Morning Sunlight Behaviors “Best thing to do is to get outside if you can. If you can't, next best thing to do is to keep that window open.” ▷ 7:24 Use Light Strategically for Mood Without Disrupting Sleep Behaviors “Because sleep is also important for restoring mood. So you need sleep. You can't just crush melatonin across the board and expect to feel good because then you're not going to fall asleep and stay asleep.” ▷ 10:58 Exercise at Consistent Circadian Windows Behaviors “And those tend to be 30 minutes after waking, three hours after waking, and the later afternoon, usually 11 hours after waking, which is when temperature tends to peak.” ▷ 11:11 Exercise First Thing in the Morning Behaviors “If you exercise first thing in the morning, your body will start to develop an anticipatory circuit. There's actually plasticity in these circadian circuits that will lead you to want to wake up at the particular time that you exercised the previous three or four days.” ▷ 11:41 Avoid Intense Late-Day Exercise if It Disrupts Sleep Behaviors “Some people find if they exercise late in the day, they have trouble sleeping. In general, intense exercise does that, whereas the kind of lower intensity exercise doesn't.” ▷ 16:36 Cue Learning During Sleep with the Same Sensory Stimulus Behaviors “And what they found was that providing the same stimulus, the odor if they smelled an odor or a tone if the subjects heard a tone while learning, if they just delivered that odor or tone while the subjects slept, rates of learning and retention of information was significantly greater.” ▷ 17:25 Music for Learning and Sleep Cueing Tools “You could do this by having a metronome, for instance, while learning something, playing in the background or particular music and then have that very faintly while you sleep.” ▷ 17:25 Metronome for Learning and Sleep Cueing Tools “You could do this by having a metronome, for instance, while learning something, playing in the background or particular music and then have that very faintly while you sleep.” ▷ 17:41 20-Minute Naps Behaviors “So NSDR, Non-Sleep Deep Rest, as well as short 20 minute naps, which are very close to non-sleep deep rest because people rarely drop into deep states of sleep during short naps unless they're very sleep deprived-- NSDR has been shown to increase rates of learning when done for 20 minute bouts to match an approximately 90-minute bout of learning.” ▷ 18:43 NSDR Behaviors “Excellent paper showing that 20-minute naps or light sleep of the non-sleep deep rest taken immediately after or close to it-- doesn't have to be immediately after you finish the last sentence of learning or whatever it is or bar of music. But a couple of minutes after transitioning to a period of non-sleep deep rest where you're turning off, the analysis of duration path and outcome has been shown to accelerate learning to a significant degree, both the amount of information and the retention of that information.” ▷ 20:27 Caffeine Supplements “Most of them include some form of stimulant, caffeine. You can't just ingest more stimulant to be more focused.” ▷ 20:35 Alpha-GPC Supplements “Most nootropics also include things that increase or are designed to increase acetylcholine, things like Alpha-GPC and other things of that sort. And indeed, there's some evidence that they can increase acetylcholine.” ▷ 21:39 Use Nootropics Only Occasionally Behaviors “So right now, my stance on nootropics is that maybe-- maybe for occasional use, provided it's safe for you-- I'm not recommending it.” ▷ 24:29 Ice Bath Tools “Nowadays, there's some interest in cold showers and ice baths. Getting into an ice bath is very interesting because you have a rebound increase in thermogenesis.” ▷ 25:36 Deliberate Cold Exposure Behaviors “But a cold shower first thing in the morning will wake you up. But that's waking you up in the short term because of a different mechanism, which I'll talk about in a moment. But it also is shifting your clock.” ▷ 26:39 Use Consistent Meal Timing Behaviors “When you travel and you land in a new location and your schedule is inverted 12 hours, one way that we know you can shift your rhythm more quickly is to get on to the local meal schedule.” ▷ 27:57 Tyrosine-Rich Foods Diet “Nuts and meats, in particular red meats, tend to be rich in things like tyrosine. That tells you right there that because tyrosine is the precursor of dopamine and dopamine is the precursor of norepinephrine and epinephrine, that those foods tend to lend themselves toward the production of dopamine and epinephrine and the sorts of things that are associated with wakefulness.” ▷ 28:24 Avoid Large Meals if You Want to Stay Alert Behaviors “If we eat a lot of anything, whether or not it's ribeye steaks, rice, or cardboard-- please don't eat cardboard-- your stomach, if it's very distended, will draw a lot of blood into your gut. And you will divert blood from other tissues. And you'll become sleepy.” ▷ 28:46 Fasting Behaviors “Fasting states generally are associated with more alertness, epinephrine, and so forth.” ▷ 29:37 Eat Early in the Day Behaviors “And now you know from the discussion about temperature that if you're eating early in the day, you're tending to shift your rhythm earlier so that you'll want to wake up earlier the next day.” ▷ 29:44 Avoid Eating Very Late in the Day Behaviors “If you're eating very late in the day, even if you can fall asleep after that, there's a tendency for you to want to sleep later the next day.” ▷ 30:20 Track Circadian Variables Behaviors “And then the last thing you might want to do is just write down if and when you did a Non-Sleep Deep Rest protocol, NSDR protocol, anything that you're using to deliberately teach your nervous system how to go from more alertness to more calmness in the waking state.” ▷ 31:09 Sauna Tools “Or if you're into the sauna or even-- some people, including myself, if I take a hot shower or sit in a hot tub or a sauna late at night, well, then I get a compensatory decrease in body temperature. And I sleep great, provided I hydrate well enough because that can be kind of a dehydrating thing to sit in hot conditions.” ▷ 31:09 Hot Tub Tools “Or if you're into the sauna or even-- some people, including myself, if I take a hot shower or sit in a hot tub or a sauna late at night, well, then I get a compensatory decrease in body temperature. And I sleep great, provided I hydrate well enough because that can be kind of a dehydrating thing to sit in hot conditions.” ▷ 31:09 Use Hot Exposure at Night for Sleep Behaviors “Or if you're into the sauna or even-- some people, including myself, if I take a hot shower or sit in a hot tub or a sauna late at night, well, then I get a compensatory decrease in body temperature. And I sleep great, provided I hydrate well enough because that can be kind of a dehydrating thing to sit in hot conditions.” ▷ 31:25 Exercise Immediately After Early-Day Sauna Behaviors “But if I do the sauna early in the day, unless I exercise immediately afterward, then I tend to get the temperature drop, which makes sense because we can get in the sauna.” ▷ 32:29 Self-Experiment Slowly and Carefully Behaviors “And this is where I would say manipulating one or two variables at a time is really going to be best as opposed to changing a dozen things all at once to really identify what it is that's most powerful for you.”