Dr. Matt Walker: Protocols to Improve Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Guest Series

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series, where I and an expert guest 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 marks the second episode in our six-episode series all about sleep, with our expert guest, Dr. Matthew Walker. During today's episode, we discuss the dos and the do-nots of sleep, focusing, for instance, on how to use light and absence of light, as well as temperature, both of your sleep environment, specifically the room you're in, your body temperature, and much more in order to regulate the timing and quality of your sleep. And we discuss how things like alcohol, caffeine, and cannabis impact sleep and the various stages of sleep. And we discuss the various tools that exist now and that are rapidly becoming available to improve your sleep. This episode is essential for anyone trying to optimize their sleep. And when I say optimize your sleep, I mean trying to optimize the formula that was addressed in the first episode of this series, which is the QQRT formula, the quality, quantity, regularity, and timing of your sleep. Four variables that combine to determine whether or not your sleep is optimized for you, and thereby providing the most restoration and improvement to your mental health, physical health, and performance. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. It's abundantly clear that sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. When we're getting enough quality sleep, everything in life goes so much better, and when we are not getting enough quality sleep, everything in life is that much more challenging. And one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to have the appropriate mattress. Everyone, however, has slightly different needs in terms of what would be the optimal mattress for them. Helix understands that people have unique sleep needs, and they've designed a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions like, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Or maybe you don't know the answers to those questions. If you go to the Helix site and take that brief quiz, they'll match you to a mattress that is optimal for you. For me, it turned out to be the Dusk, D-U-S-K, mattress. It's not too hard, not too soft, and I sleep so much better on my Helix mattress than on any other type of mattress I've used before. So if you're interested in upgrading your mattress, go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their brief two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress for you, and you'll get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Whoop. Whoop is a fitness wearable device that tracks your daily activity and sleep, but also goes beyond that by providing real-time feedback on how to adjust your training and sleep schedule to perform better. I've been working with Whoop on their Scientific Advisory Council to try and help advance Whoop's mission of unlocking human performance. As a Whoop user, I've experienced the health benefits of their technology firsthand for sleep tracking, for monitoring other features of my physiology, and for giving me a lot of feedback about metrics within my brain and body that tell me how hard I should train or not train, and basically point to the things that I'm doing correctly and incorrectly in my daily life that I can adjust using protocols, some of which are actually within the Whoop app. Given that many of us have goals such as improving our sleep, building better habits, or just focusing more on our overall health, Whoop is one of the tools that can really help you get personalized data, recommendations, and coaching toward your overall health. If you're interested in trying Whoop, you can go to join.whoop.com/huberman today to get your first month free. Again, that's join.whoop.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that has hundreds of different meditations, as well as scripts for yoga nidra and non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, protocols. By now, there's an abundance of data showing that even short daily meditations can greatly improve our mood, reduce anxiety, improve our ability to focus, and can improve our memory. And while there are many different forms of meditation, most people find it difficult to find and stick to a meditation practice in a way that is most beneficial for them. The Waking Up app makes it extremely easy to learn how to meditate and to carry out your daily meditation practice in a way that's going to be most effective and efficient for you. It includes a variety of different types of meditations of different duration, as well as things like yoga nidra, which place the brain and body into a sort of pseudo-sleep that allows you to emerge feeling incredibly mentally refreshed. In fact, the science around yoga nidra is really impressive, showing that after a yoga nidra session, levels of dopamine in certain areas of the brain are enhanced by up to 60%, which places the brain and body into a state of enhanced readiness for mental work and for physical work. Another thing I really like about the Waking Up app is that it provides a 30-day introduction course, so for those of you that have not meditated before or are getting back to a meditation practice, that's fantastic, or if you're somebody who's already a skilled and regular meditator, Waking Up has more advanced meditations and yoga nidra sessions for you as well. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman. And now for my conversation with Dr. Matthew Walker. Professor Matt Walker, welcome back. We're all so happy to have you here, and in episode one, you beautifully described the biology of sleep, why sleep is important, what happens when we don't get enough sleep, and you incentivized getting adequate amounts of great sleep, and you defined what great sleep is, and you provided some excellent practical protocols and tools for getting great sleep. However-