AMA #16: Sleep, Vertigo, TBI, OCD, Tips for Travelers, Gut-Brain Axis & More

Andrew Huberman recorded this Ask Me Anything episode for premium subscribers while on tour in Australia. He says he and the podcast team had been there for well over a week: first in Melbourne, then two live shows in Sydney, with Brisbane next. He says he would try to answer as many questions as he could over the next hour, "as thoroughly, clearly, and succinctly as possible."

Before the questions, he explains where premium contributions go. He says the channel has already supported four laboratories, at Stanford, Columbia University, the Salk Institute and elsewhere, on human studies that he says are already leading to therapeutic breakthroughs he plans to share later. For 2024, he says the team secured "no fewer than three dollar for dollar match donors." The extra money is for more human-only research, with "no animal studies." Topics include new mental health treatments, headache and migraine, immunology and cancer, mindsets and immune function, nutrition, and exercise physiology. He bases his claim that the contributions "really do make a difference" on knowing firsthand how hard it is to fund breakthrough work.

The first question asks how he keeps up his key health habits in Australia while working hard. He starts by rejecting what he calls a misconception: that the people who follow the podcast's protocols, including him, are so regimented that they stop enjoying other parts of life. He describes the protocols as science-based, actionable, and zero or low cost "in almost all situations," noting there are a few exceptions. He says they are meant to "mesh with the rest of life," which includes staying social and keeping typical sleep schedules.

His first priority on arrival was morning sunlight. He says he made a point of getting outside even on the few rainy, overcast days. In the evening he used red light bulbs, not red light panels. He travels with a small screw-in red bulb unit and plugs it in with an adapter, then switches off the regular lights where he is staying. He says this "brings the overall levels of cortisol down low very quickly" and makes falling asleep easy. He calls it a low-cost tool: any red light, "even red party lights," would do, and it is "probably even cost-saving."

He has also kept up regular exercise, such as a morning jog to the ocean followed by a swim. For people without an ocean nearby, he suggests getting outside and moving early in the day to help shift their rhythm. His "quadfecta" for shifting the circadian rhythm in a new place, or for becoming an early riser, is morning sunlight, movement, social engagement, and, for him, caffeine. He notes that some people would eat breakfast instead, but he prefers to eat later.

He explains the mechanism this way. Combining these behaviors amplifies the morning rise in cortisol and the morning release of catecholamines (dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine). He says these act together to boost daytime mood, focus and alertness and to ease the transition to nighttime sleep, with dim or red light in the evening helping further. Switching to local mealtimes also helps shift the rhythm. For him that means skipping breakfast, since he prefers lunch, sometimes an afternoon snack, and dinner.

For stress during the busy tour, he does a daily non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) or yoga nidra protocol. He calls it a zero-cost practice for reducing stress and restoring dopamine and mental and physical vigor, and says he has covered the supporting studies on earlier episodes. He mentions an existing free NSDR script on YouTube, plus new 10-, 20- and 30-minute scripts recorded with a Sydney sunrise view. He expects these on the Huberman Lab clips channel, "probably in the next couple of weeks." The team is also considering a Spotify album of science-based NSDR and meditations of different lengths, and he asks interested listeners to say so in the comments.

A listener writes that his sleep advice has helped a lot, but they still wake at night and get only five or six hours. Huberman says whether that is enough depends on the person and the context, and that the context can change over the year with life circumstances. His working criterion is daytime function:

Insomnia is excessive daytime sleepiness due to lack of sleep at night.