Huberman Lab
GUEST SERIES | Dr. Matt Walker: The Biology of Sleep & Your Unique Sleep Needs
03 Apr 2024
Chapter 1: What is the importance of sleep discussed in this episode?
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's episode marks the first in our six-episode series all about sleep.
Our expert guest for this series is Dr. Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology and the director of the Center for Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the author of the bestselling book, Why We Sleep.
During the course of the six-episode series, for which we release one episode per week starting with this episode one, we cover essentially all aspects of sleep and provide numerous practical tools to improve your sleep.
Chapter 2: What are the different stages of sleep and their significance?
For instance, we discuss the biology of sleep, including the different sleep stages, as well as why sleep is so important for our mental and physical health. We also talk about how sleep regulates things like emotionality and learning and neuroplasticity, that is your brain's ability to change in response to experience.
And we discuss the various things that you can do to improve your sleep, everything from how to time lighting, temperature, exercise, eating, and the various things that can impact sleep both positively and negatively, such as alcohol. cannabis, and various supplements and drugs that have been shown to improve sleep.
Chapter 3: How does sleep affect our hormones and immune system?
We also talk about naps, dreaming and the role of dreams, and lucid dreaming, which is when you dream and you are aware that you are dreaming. In today's episode one, we specifically focus on why sleep is so important and what happens when we do not get enough sleep or enough quality sleep.
We also talk about the various sleep stages, and we also talk about a very specific formula that everyone should know for themselves called QQRT, which is an acronym that stands for quality, quantity, regularity, and timing of sleep.
Four factors, which today you'll learn how to identify specifically for you what your optimal QQRT is, and then to apply that in order to get the best possible night's sleep, which of course equates to the best possible level of focus and alertness throughout your days. Both Dr. Walker and I are very excited to share the material in this six-episode series with all of you.
And as we march into today's episode one, I'm sure it will both provide a ton of excellent practical learning for all of you, as well as spark many questions that are sure to be answered in the subsequent episodes of this series. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Chapter 4: What practical tools can improve sleep quality?
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 8Sleep. 8Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
Many times on this podcast, we discuss how in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually needs to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling maximally refreshed and energized, your body temperature needs to heat up by about one to three degrees.
Eight sleep makes it very easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment so that it's easy to fall and stay asleep and wake up feeling refreshed. I started sleeping on an eight sleep mattress cover several years ago, and it has completely and positively transformed my sleep. So much so that when I travel to hotels or Airbnbs, I really miss my eight sleep.
I've even shipped my eight sleep out to hotels that I've been staying in because it improves my sleep that much. If you'd like to try 8sleep, you can go to 8sleep.com slash Huberman to save $150 off their Pod 3 cover. 8sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Huberman.
Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out online. I've been doing therapy for well over 30 years.
Initially, I had to do therapy against my will, but of course, I continue to do it voluntarily over time because I really believe that doing regular therapy with a quality therapist is one of the best things that we can do for our mental health. Indeed, for many people, it's as beneficial as getting regular physical exercise.
The great thing about BetterHelp is that it makes it very easy to find a therapist that's optimal for your needs. And I think it's fair to say that we can define a great therapist as somebody with whom you have excellent rapport, somebody with whom you can talk about a variety of different issues, and who can provide you not just support, but also insight.
And with BetterHelp, they make it extremely convenient so that it's matched to your schedule and other aspects of your life. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.
Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of the electrolytes, magnesium, potassium, and sodium, and no sugar. As I mentioned before on this podcast, I'm a big fan of salt. Now, I want to be clear.
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Chapter 5: How do ghrelin and leptin affect hunger and sleep quality?
Ghrelin does the opposite. When ghrelin increases, now it's the signal of hunger and you get increasingly unsatisfied despite eating a full meal. If you've got still high levels of ghrelin, you don't feel satisfied with that meal. And many people listening may start to say, I have this feeling where I'm just eating and I just don't feel satisfied on some days.
And those days, I suspect, can be days when you are not sleeping well. And I think everyone has had this feeling of saying, I just didn't sleep well last night and I just get ravenous and I just unleash this unholy hunger and appetite. That's in part because these two hormones. So what happens is that when we're not getting sufficient sleep, leptin, the signal that says,
you're satisfied with food stop eating that is impaired by way of lack of sleep if that wasn't bad enough the hormone ghrelin that says no you're not satisfied with your food eat more that's the signal of hunger that increases so it's almost like double jeopardy you're getting punished twice for the same crime of not sleeping once by way of a drop in leptin stop eating and once by way of ghrelin
foot to the floor acceleration, I want to start eating.
Chapter 6: What role does sleep play in appetite regulation?
That's in part why your waistline can start to expand when you're not getting sufficient sleep. But when you do, it's a fantastic way of controlling. I guarantee you, if you start to implement better sleep, your ability to regulate your basal levels of appetite and hunger will decline.
But it's not just that you want to eat less or you at least want to eat an appropriate amount for your body mass. It's also what you want to eat. And what we've discovered is that when you are, again, not getting sufficient sleep, You start to eat more. Yes, you do. But you eat more of specific things.
You crave things like these heavy hitting sort of stodgy carbohydrates like bread and pasta and potatoes and pizza.
Chapter 7: How does sleep deprivation impact mood and emotional regulation?
And also you crave simple sugars. And so those foods we know in excess can be what we call obesogenic foods. They are foods that can lead you to a more rapid amount of weight gain.
Whereas when you are getting sufficient sleep, now you're reaching at the food bar for you're saying, well, actually, I think the salad and those healthy nuts and the fruits and those things look quite appetizing today. Versus when you are underslept, all you want to do is go after the junk food because you've kind of got these munchies.
What's interesting is that a recent discovery came back to that notion of the munchies. When I say I got the munchies, people sometimes think of a drug reference. They'll say, well, I've been smoking weed. I always get the munchies. Why is that?
Chapter 8: What are the four macros of sleep and their significance?
Because when you are bringing in drugs, cannabis into the body and these cannabinoids, these what we call exogenous cannabinoids, they will increase your appetite. They will stimulate your appetite. Cannabinoids are appetite stimulating components, but we all have our own version of cannabinoids that we produce inside of our body that you've spoken about before called endocannabinoids.
When you are under slept, the brain releases more endocannabinoids. And that's in part why you get this strong impulse. And thus go when you start sleeping better, you moderate all of these hormones and these chemicals and your appetite is controlled. When you eat, you feel satisfied with your food. You're not craving more. When you make your food choices, you're making better food choices.
We did a study with brain imaging where we underslept individuals and we had them see food items inside of a brain scanner. And they had to rate, you know, how much do I desire and how much do I want these items? And those items range from very healthy items all the way to unhealthy items.
Things like ice cream and sort of pizza and all of that good stuff and sweets, candy, as you would say over here. And we looked at their ratings. And by the way, to make this a more ecological, because you could say, well, they're gonna know what's the healthy choice. So they're probably just gonna be politically correct and say, oh, I desire the healthy food.
Because the way that we tried to get around that was we said, anything that you said was desirable, when you come outside of the scanner, we've actually got all of these foods and you're gonna have to eat them. So they were making more realistics. And each person went through the experiment twice, one night after a full night of sleep, one night with significantly less sleep.
And sure enough, inside of the scanner, they were rating unhealthier foods as more desirable. So your preference was going in that unhealthy direction.
was interesting was what was going on in the brain we saw that the frontal lobe regions these sort of areas that sit above our eyes that almost act like the ceo of the brain and they help regulate our deep emotional centers those regions of the brain had gone offline by way of a lack of sleep and these emotional centers that are usually associated with more hedonic reward.
And they're also excessively more active in people with obesity who have what we call hedonic eating patterns. Those regions were ramped up by way of a lack of sleep. So it's not just that there are chemical changes in your body that conspire to have you eat more. There are also changes in your brain that prevent you from making the healthy food choices.
But when you're getting sufficient sleep in the control condition, when they were getting that sleep, their brain was beautifully regulating the optimal food choices.
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