The Optimal Morning Routine – Andrew Huberman

The Optimal Morning Routine – Andrew Huberman



Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and tenured Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function and neural plasticity, which is the ability of our nervous system to rewire and learn new behaviors, skills and cognitive functioning.

Huberman is a McKnight Foundation and Pew Foundation Fellow and was awarded the Cogan Award in 2017, given to the scientist making the most significant discoveries in the study of vision. His lab’s most recent work focuses on the influence of vision and respiration on human performance and brain states such as fear and courage. He also works on neural regeneration and directs a clinical trial to promote visual restoration in diseases that cause blindness. Huberman is also actively involved in developing tools now in use by the elite military in the U.S. and Canada, athletes, and technology industries to optimize performance in high stress environments, enhance neural plasticity, mitigate stress, and optimize sleep.

Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford School of Medicine has been published in top journals including Nature, Science, and Cell and has been featured in TIME, BBC, Scientific American, Discover, and other top media outlets.

In 2021, Dr. Huberman launched the Huberman Lab Podcast. The podcast is frequently ranked in the Top 25 of all podcasts globally and is often ranked #1 in the categories of Science, Education, and Health & Fitness.

The core audio from this video is from a podcast Andrew Huberman did with Jocko Willink. Check out the full podcast here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ApNHAPJVU&t=13066s

To learn more about Andrew Huberman visit: https://hubermanlab.com/
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neurobiology and ophthalmology at stanford school 
of medicine i'm also the host of the hubermann lab podcast a weekly podcast focused on science 
and science-based tools for everyday life today you're going to learn about practical tools for 
optimizing your morning routine so without further ado practical tools for optimizing your morning 
routine there are certain foundational behaviors do's and don'ts that set the stage for you to 
be better at everything so a lot of times people say how can i lift more focus better remember 
things better it's like well let's think about the foundation of that and that's always 
going to come back to two elements and that's sleep and what i call non-sleep 
deep rest so sleep is the fundamental practice or part of our 24-hour cycle where 
if you don't get it on a consistent basis you are down regulating your ability to do everything 
right metabolism is screwed up immune system is screwed up etc etc however it is not the case 
if you get a one night's bad sleep or that if you're not sleeping perfectly that you can't 
perform well but let's talk about sleep and just because i think it's important the goal for most 
people unless you're pulling vampire shifts on on deployment or you're a shift worker and thank 
you shift workers we'll talk about shift work you should try and get really good sleep eighty 
percent of the time eight percent of the nights of your life the other twenty percent i hope 
you're not getting good sleep for good reasons that you enjoy but the point is that there are 
a couple things that you can do first of all every cell in your body has a circadian rhythm 
meaning every cell has a 24-hour circadian clock that's regulated by genes think of these your body 
is a bunch of millions of clock to need to align those clocks to a single time this is why when 
you travel overseas your gut goes off or it's more easy you more easily you get sick or uh your 
thinking isn't quite right the clocks aren't in alignment they're not entrained as we say number 
one practice for everything sleep especially is try and get some natural light in your eyes within 
an hour of waking up if you wake up before the sun turn on a bunch of bright lights and then 
get sunlight in your eyes once it comes out if there's dense cloud cover there 
are still more photons light energy coming through that cloud cover than there are 
coming from artificial lights so try and get five to ten minutes without sunglasses 
outside in the morning once the sun is out most days if not all days this has an outsized 
effect on a number of things first of all it modulates the timing of what's called the cortisol 
pulse once every 24 hours you're going to get a boost in cortisol big spike in cortisol it's a 
healthy boost it sets your temperature rhythm in motion sets your level of alertness your 
level of focus and your mood you want that cortisol pulse to happen as early in the day 
as once what's triggering the cortisol pulse the cortisol pulse is naturally entrained by these 
genetic programs to happen once every 24 hours but light will anchor it to the period where you see 
bright light got it a late-shifted cortisol pulse so imagine the kid that wakes up and spends the 
morning in bed or you spend the morning bedding you're texting or you're indoors and you're 
typing on the computer that's not enough light to accomplish what i'm talking about and then you go 
outside around noon or one you're in what's called the circadian dead zone which is the time in which 
light arriving at the eyes can do certain things but it can't time this pulse that means that 
cortisol pulse is going to come in the afternoon which means that your temperature rhythm is going 
to be shifted late and that's actually a signature of depression and anxiety and difficulty falling 
asleep many people are waking up and they're just spending time indoors and they're putting on 
sunglasses getting in their car and driving or there's cloud cover and they think there's no sun 
out i don't mean that you actually have to stare at the sun never stare at any light so bright 
it's going to damage you please don't and blink as necessary but the indirect rays from the from sun 
trigger these cells in the eyes called melanopsin ganglion cells these ganglion cells these are our 
neurons they send a signal to your hypothalamus then the hypothalamus releases this peptide which 
is a wake-up signal for your whole brain and body and sets a timer for the onset of melatonin 
release 16 hours later melatonin being the hormone that makes you sleepy and makes you want 
to go to sleep so you can imagine what happens if you don't get that light until a few hours later 
everything shifted and then you want to go to st you don't know why you're wide awake at 11 30 or 
12 and everything's messed up the other thing is that you can get bright light from electronic 
devices early in the day but it's not enough you need photons from sunlight now if you live in 
scandinavia in the depths of winter if you're up in like you know trondheim or ohus or something 
like okay fine don't buy an expensive daytime simulator get one of these led light boxes for 
drawing they're very inexpensive in comparison you find them on amazon i don't have a relationship 
to any of these brands but they're easy to find 20 30 bucks put that on your desk and just look 
at that thing for a few minutes in the morning not as good but better than being in the 
darkness then when the sun's out get outside now this is a huge huge effect for the following 
reason the signal that arrives from the eyes to the hypothalamus also triggers the release of the 
neuromodulator dopamine we hear about dopamine as a feel-good molecule dopamine dopamine dopamine 
dopamine hits but dopamine's main role in the brain and body is to drive motivation craving 
and pursuit it is not the molecule of pleasure it is the molecule of drive it is life force 
dopamine is actually the molecule from which adrenaline epinephrine is manufactured and you may 
notice you said we crave sun it also does make you feel good here's why if you think about seasonally 
breeding animals let's think about the arctic fox well the arctic fox in winter is white but in the 
summertime has darker pellets it actually there's a pathway going from sunlight to dopamine 
to melanin production in the skin in fur so animals that transition from light color to dark 
color that's all mediated by dopamine guess what else happens the gonads grow there are animals 
that i've worked on in the laboratory and that also in humans it's now been shown in 
a beautiful study that people who get 20 to 30 minutes of light on their skin this was 
a study done in israel so they wear an appropriate amount of clothing but they're sleeveless no 
hat no sunglasses they were told to go outside 20 or 30 minutes three times a week just in 
the sunshine ideally they were shorts also they measure testosterone and estrogen in men 
and women significant increases in both and all the associated things of increased passion 
blah blah blah that is what they measured in the study why well it turns out that light to the 
eyes but also light to the skin the skin is an endocrine organ it's not just something to tattoo 
and hang earrings from and put clothing on and actually there's a pathway involving a molecule 
called p53 and the keratinocytes are these skin cells that when sunlight when uvb ultraviolet 
blue light penetrates the skin because it can penetrate the skin superficially triggers these 
keratinocytes to stimulate a pathway that releases dopamine in the brain and body so you feel better 
when you're getting light in your eyes and on your skin and you're increasing testosterone 
and epinephrine and dopamine increase that's why you feel good in the summer months people in 
scandinavia know this this kind of spring fever in the winter months you want to go through every 
bit of effort to double or triple the amount of time that you're spending outside in the morning 
so instead of 10 minutes make it 30 minutes we all are familiar with getting sleepy and 
falling asleep that's the parasympathetic nervous system taking over the longer we are 
awake the longer the buildup of something called adenosine in the brain and body and adenosine 
turns on the parasympathetic nervous system suppresses the sympathetic nervous system when 
we sleep adenosine is pushed back down what is caffeine caffeine effectively through 
some chemical steps blocks the effects of adenosine so if you wait so here's a little trick 
if you that's i don't like the word hacks because hacks imply using something for a purpose it 
wasn't designed for here we're talking about hardwired biology but if you wake up in the 
morning and you didn't sleep quite as much as you would have liked that means and you're 
sleepy that means you still have a buildup of adenosine in your system let's say you immediately 
reach for caffeine great you suppress the action of that adenosine and you will be more alert 
and guess what happens then the caffeine wears off and the adenosine binds to the receptors with 
greater affinity and you have your afternoon crash so a practice that's very useful to people is 
to delay the intake of caffeine by 60 to 90 minutes after waking allow the adenosine to be 
cleared out because it's not just cleared out in sleep it's also cleared out in those kind 
of sleepy states of early morning so allow it to be cleared out the other thing that clears it 
out exercise exercise so when you get up in the morning you're kind of sleepy i don't want to do 
this i don't want to do this but you hydrate and train you clear out the adenosine now i like to 
drink caffeine before i train her during training i'm weak like that but for people that have an 
afternoon crash this can have tremendous benefits of and maybe start by pushing it out 15 minutes 
per day most everyone that does this says oh my goodness i didn't understand why in the afternoon 
i'm crashing so hard this will really really help so let me ask you this i have a sense for you what 
time do you wake up typically generally between well between 4 15 and 4 30. okay so for 
most people it's gonna be a little bit later probably but for you that means so you're waking 
up if it's because of an alarm it's because of an alarm but you're if that's your natural wake-up 
time now without an alarm that means that your temperature is starting to rise at that time 
that's why you wake up that temperature increase triggers that cortisol release now and that's why 
some people wake up right before their alarm clock it's this cortisol pulse okay and two hours before 
that so for you approximately 2 30 in the morning is what we call your temperature minimum it's when 
your temperature is lowest that it's ever going to be in the 24 hour cycle so the way it works is 
you wake up because of an increase in core body temperature that increase in core body temperature 
triggers that increase in cortisol and by viewing light at that time you entrain you you ensure 
that it happens at the same time the next day the clocks of your body are matched to this cortisol 
pulse so viewing bright light in the morning anchors it when we say entrained it it tel through 
a circuit that involves cells in the eye and cells in the hypothalamus which then talk to the rest of 
the cells of the body through a signal a peptide that's released make sure that the temperature 
starts rising goes up up up up up and sometime around two or three in the afternoon you're going 
to hit your temperature maximum you might feel a little sleepy at that time but that's actually 
the time in which your gut your all your systems are kind of revving at the maximum capacity 
and then it's going to start to drop and start to drop drop drop now that drop in temperature 
eventually will be a full one to 3 degrees below what your temperature maximum and that's when 
you're going to get sleepy and fall asleep this is why it's important to keep 
the room cool at night to fall asleep the goal here is to increase body temperature in 
order to be awake and to decrease body temperature in order to be asleep if we stay with those 
themes a lot of this will just fall into bins exercising will increase body temperature somewhat 
paradoxically getting into a cold shower or cold water everyone says what must make you cold 
right well if you stay in there a long time to become hypothermic right but let's remember 
the thermostat example you have a little area in your brain called the medial pre-optic area and if 
you make the surface of your body cold guess what happens core body temperature goes up so getting 
into so if you're going to do ice baths or cold showers you can do i would say do them sometime 
better than not at all there's a beautiful paper published in the european journal physiology 
in the year 2000 which took people and had them sit they actually had them on lawn chairs in 
water a pool it's a great way to run an experiment i always say people ask about cold showers 
they're not a lot of experiments on cold showers because think about it's very hard to 
control is everyone under the shower the same way et cetera you put someone up in water up 
to their neck it is you know what you're doing so there's it's experimental rigor that drives 
that but they had people get into reasonably cool water 60 degrees fahrenheit so it's not 
that cool but they had them stand for an hour or they've had people get into very cold water 
something like 40 degrees for just 20 seconds now here's what's really interesting that shock 
that you referred to is a adrenaline also called epinephrine and it is released from the adrenals 
obviously but also from a site in the brain called locus ceruleus a little area of the brainstem 
that then sprinklers the rest of the brain with epinephrine and wakes up the rest of the brain so 
that shock occurs in the brain and the body and actually the stuff in the body doesn't cross the 
blood-brain barrier so you're a two-part system when those two systems are aligned it's beautiful 
when those two systems are out of alignment that's not good so you get into cold water that's the 
shock for the first 30 seconds for most people who are untrained your forebrain which is controlling 
decision making is basically suppressed in its activity and other areas are ramped up so just 
know that exact panic just understand that passes then what happens is when you get out of the cold 
whether or not it's a longer period at 60 degrees or a short period i would hate to hear that people 
are only doing 20 seconds but maybe a minute to three minutes at 45 degrees or something there's 
a long arc release of dopamine and epinephrine that's what was shown in the study in humans 
because people always go well it's just in mice no in humans and that long arc of dopamine leads to a 
near doubling or more of dopamine and epinephrine in my colleague anna lembke's book called 
dopamine nation she works on addiction runs our dual diagnosis addiction clinic at stanford 
she talked about a patient of hers that basically helped himself get over cocaine addiction by doing 
cold baths because it was the only thing that would give him the kind of dopamine release that 
even slightly mimicked his cocaine addiction and allowed himself to wean himself off with a 
healthier behavior now i'm not saying it's the equivalent of a drug like cocaine but i am saying 
that it's a better decision than than a drug like cocaine for obvious reasons so that mood-enhancing 
effect that you feel afterwards it's real it's based on a real neurochemical effect 
and that dopamine and epinephrine will combine with the temperature increase from 
cortisol plus light plus exercise all things that increase core body temperature now you've 
got increased core body temperature you created a dopamine release epinephrine you've created a 
summer month inside your body in the in i don't care if you live in minneapolis in the depths of 
winter or someplace even as cold as new hampshire you are you are creating summer in your body by 
doing that now if you live in san diego or los angeles or arizona and it's the summer and you're 
staying indoors and you're on your phone and you're not doing any movement until the afternoon 
which is fine exercise in the afternoon i realize there's some important benefits of that and you're 
laying in bed or you're just walking around the kitchen and putting on sunglasses and driving 
to work guess what you're creating a colorado winter inside of your body despite the fact that 
the sun is out so if you're wondering why you're slightly depressed your metabolism is lower your 
testosterone output is slightly lower than maybe you'd like it to be there could be other reasons 
too of course but again we're talking about modulators i'm not saying getting sun in your eyes 
in the morning is going to make your testosterone perfect what i'm saying is you're you're setting 
an internal milieu through things that increase core body temperature dopamine epinephrine etc and 
that should be done relatively early in the day thank you for joining for this special 
episode of after skool if you'd like to learn more tools for mental health physical 
health and performance check out the huberman lab podcast which is available on all platforms 
youtube apple spotify anywhere podcasts are found also check out huberman lab on both instagram and 
twitter there i cover science and science-based tools some of which overlaps with the content 
of the huberman lab podcast but much of which is distinct from the content of the huberman lab 
podcast we are also hubermanlab.com that's our website and there you can find links to all of 
our social media and all of our podcast episodes you

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