AMA #1: Leveraging Ultradian Cycles, How to Protect Your Brain, Seed Oils Examined and More
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm ander huberman and i'm a professor neuber logy and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine today isn't ask me anything or A M A episode. Which is part of our premium subscriber content.

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Let's get to answering your questions. And as always, I will strive to be as clear as possible, as little as possible and as throw as possible, while still answering as many questions per ama episode as I can without these sessions becoming unreasonably long. I should also point out that if you asked a question and IT was not answered this ama, IT may very well be answered in the next ama.

So the first question, which had a lot of other boats, meaning many people wanted the answer to this question, came from Jackson lipford. And the question was about so called all tradition rythm. For those of you that are not familiar with all trading an rythm, all trade an rythm are any rythm that are shorter than twenty four hours.

And typically when people ask about or talk about australian rythm, they are referring to ninety minute rythm. Have talked about these on the podcast before, and jackman's question was, how do you use all trading rythm in your daily work? There's more to the question.

But first off, I do use all trade rhythms. That is, I leverage the fact that these do exist in all of us as a way to engage in focus bouts of mental work once or twice, or sometimes three times per day. However, I use them in a way that's grounded in the research on australian rhythms for learning and memory, in a way that might not be obvious, just from their name, that there are ninety minute rythm.

So I get into the details of how to use all trading rythm to best capture neuroplasticity. That is, the brain's ability to change your response to experience, and in a way that should allow you to get one or two, or maybe been three focus bolts of learning per day, which can greatly accelerate learning of code tive, material, languages, mathematics, history for silo school or work, or maybe just a hobby or personal interest of some sort, and for skill learning in the physical domain as well. Jackson then went on to ask, you've mentioned before that you try to include at least one nine minute focus block per day as part of your work and overall mission.

And indeed, that is true. I try to get at least one of these focus on trade in rythm blocks per day. That is a period of about ninety minutes where i'm focused on learning something or doing something that's cognitive ly hard, although typically I aim for two of these sessions per day.

He then goes on to ask, what is the maximum number of blocks you can perform sustainably? The answer to that is probably four, and I say probably because some people have schedules, lifestyles in which four ninety minute blocks of focus learning is possible per day. But that's highly unusual for most people.

It's going to be one or two, maybe three, four. I would place in the really extraordinary end of things, maybe if you're cramping for exams or you've managed to go on a writing retreat or a learning a retreat of some sort where you can devote essentially all of your non sleeping, non eating time to learning. But most people simply can organize their life that way.

So the short answer is, for me, it's one or two per day is the target, and three would be the maximum. You then went on to ask, do you take vacations or extended breaks from these ultra rythm sessions? And the short answer is no.

Typically, I try to do this every day, and yes, even on the weekends. But on the weekend, the ultra, an rythm focus learning about might just be reading a book for about ninety minutes or so, which might not be as cognate timely, difficult as IT is for other sorts of work that I performed during the week. I occasionally miss a day entirely, for whatever reason, travel obligations related to family seta.

But in general, and trying to do this every day, I do think that the circuits for focus are because the nonbiological way to put IT would be kept warm, but essentially that accessing the circuits for focus is made easier by accessing them regularly. And that's because the circuits for focus are indeed themselves amenable to neural plasticity. In other words, the more you force yourself to focus, the easier focusing gets.

I'll now answer the last part of the question, and then I will go through and emphasize some tools that anyone can use in order to leverage all trading rhymes toward learning belts, either cognitive learning or physical skill learning, or accommodation of the two. The last part of the question Jackson asked was, if you knew you needed to drastically increase the amount of focus you do daily, how would you schedule that focus and recover from IT? That's an excEllent aspect to this question.

And I will now give you the details of how I would use and schedule already ging rythm. I'll offer you a tool. I've never talked about this tool and he was in lab podcast.

And I will spell a common myth about all trading rythm that points to a believe or not, an easier way to leverage them for maximum benefit. okay. So as I mentioned before, all trading rythm are these ninety minute cycles that we go through from the time that we are born until the time we die.

Indeed, even during sleep, we are experiencing and more less governed by these all trading rythm. This question, and this answer is not so much about sleep, but just know that when you go to sleep at night, until you wake up in the morning every ninety minutes or so, your patterns of sleep, that is the percentage of ratio, rather of slow wave. Sleep to light, sleep to rapid, I move and sleep changes in a way such that each nine minute cycle gates, the next cycle of flips the on switch for the next ninety minute cycle than that nine minute cycle ends, flipped the on to which for the next one, and so on and so forth.

I mention all that because during the daytime, the same thing is true, but most people don't know when the ninety minute tradition cycles begin. Because if you think about IT, you could wake up on the basis of an alarm clock or noise in the room, or simply because you naturally wake up in the middle of an ultra nine minute cycle. So does that mean, for instance, that if you wake up sixty minutes into an australian cycle that the next thirty minutes of you're waking, right? Because that sixty minutes needs to continue to ninety to complete australian cycle that the next thirty minutes after waking are related to the ultrahigh, an cycle that you were still in during sleep.

Or does IT start a new, old trading cycle? And the answer is the former, that australian cycle continues even if you wake up in the middle of IT. And so a lot of people who want to leverage al trading cycles for learning to say, what, how do I know when to start? When does IT start when I hit my stop watch? Can I just set a clock and work for ninety minutes? And the short answer is no.

And that might seem unfortunate, but the good news is that you can figure out when your first proper ultra an cycle of the day begins simply by asking yourself, when are you most alert after waking? That is, if you were, say, to wake up at seven am and let's say that the end of an australian cycle, or perhaps you in the medal, an ultra an cycle, doesn't matter what you need to watch for or pay attention to for a day or so, is when you start to experience your greatest state of mental alertness in the morning. And here we can discard with all the issues and variables around caffeine or no caffeine, hydrating or no hydrating.

Exercise is one variable that we will consider in a moment. But here's the deal. These all tradition cycles are actually triggered by fluctuations in the so called gluck, a cortecs system.

The system that regulates court is all release. And some of you have probably heard me say before, cord is all even though it's often discuss as a terrible thing, it's chronic stress. Court is all.

Court is all. A cortisol is essential for health. And every day we get a rising cortisol in the morning that is associated with enhanced immune function, enhances alertness, enhances ability to focus so on and so forth. In fact, the protocol that i'm always beating the drum about that people should get sunlight in their eyes as close to waking as possible that actually enhances or increases the peak level of court, is all that experienced early in the day. And that sets in motion a number of these australian cycles.

So for instance, if you wake up at seven A M, and you find that for the first hour after waking, you tend to be a little bit groggy, or you happen to be groggy on a given day, but then you notice that your attention and alertness starts to peak somewhere around nine thirty A M or ten. You can be pretty sure that that first australian cycle for learning is going to be optimal to start at about nine, thirty or ten A M. How can I say about if it's indeed a ninety minute cycle? Well, this is really where the underlying neu biology and these altria an cycles converge.

To give you a specific protocol, the changes in court is all that a court throughout the day involve. Yes, a big peek early in the day if you're getting your sunlight and caffeine and maybe even some early in the day. But typically, that peak comes early.

And then across the day, the baseline jitters a little bit comes down. But IT IT bounced around a little, but it's not a flat line if we were to measure your gluchow cortisol levels. Each one of those little bumps corresponds to a shift in these alterations, an cycles. So if you find that you are most alert at nine thirty or starting to become alert at nine thirty, and then typically you have a peak of focus and concentration around ten A M, that is really valuable to know.

Because the way that the molecules that control neuropathy, that is, the changes in neurons and other cell types in the brain that allow your nervous system to learn, and literally for new connections to form between neons, which is basically the basis of learning, those fluctuate according to these ultra dian cycles. What does this mean? This means if your peek and alertness and focus and energy could even be experience, physical energy occurs at about nine thirty A M, I would start your first ultra an cycle for learning somewhere around there.

Certainly nine thirty would be ideal, but ten and would be fine as well. And then you have about one hour to get the maximum amount of learning in, even within that all trade and cycle. This is where there's a lot of confusion out there.

People think, oh, trading cycles are in ninety minutes. Therefore, we should be in our peak level of focus without that ninety minutes. In reality, most people take about ten or fifteen minutes to break into a really deep trench of focus.

And periodically throughout the next hour, they'll pop out of that focus and have to deliberately refocus. This is why, if possible, you want to turn off wifi connections and put your phone in the other room or turn IT off. If you do need your phone or wifi, just be aware of how distracting those things can be to getting into a deep trench ch of focus.

But the point is this, these nine minute cycles occur periodically throughout the day, but there is going to be one period early in the day. And here i'm referring to the spirit, starting about nine, thirty or ten, and then likely another one in the mid to late afternoon that are going to be ideal for focus learning. And that focus learning about should ideally have you set your clock, a stop watch or something to measure ninety minutes, but do assume that there is going to be some gitter at the front where you're not going to be able to focus as deeply as you would like.

Then you'll get a about an hour of deep focus, and then you really start to transition out of these all tradition cycles. How do you know when the afternoon all tradition and cycle occurs? Well, just as in the morning IT occurs because there's a brief but significant increase in the global cord cord system in the middle late afternoon.

I wish I could tell you it's going to be two pm or it's going to be um you know it's going to be three pm. That's really going to depend on the individual when you and just caffeine, some of the other demands of your day. But you can learn to recognize when these two periods for optimize learning will occur and hear the key principles watch for a day two, meaning, pay attention to when you have your peak levels of physical and mental energy in the morning, that is between waking and noon, and then again between new in about six or seven pm.

Although i'm sure that there are some late shifted folks that will experience their peak and focus somewhere around six or seven P M, especially if they're waking up around ten or eleven am. As I know some people out there are once you know where those peaks and focus occur on your schedule, set a stop, watch for one old trade and cycle in the early part of the day. In this example, I was saying nine thirty.

But if you can't top on IT until ten, that's fine. Set IT for ninety minutes. Consider that block, holy meaning. Rule out all other distractions.

But assumed that within that ninety minute block, you are only going to be able to focus intensely for about one hour. And just know that the molecules that control neuroplasticity and these things have names. And yes, brain revenue trophic factor B D N office.

So are the most famous of those. But there are others as well, in fact, of very recept tors that control synaptic strength, the connections between neurons, some of the neurotransmitters ors and neuromodulators involved in synaptic plastic. They undergo regulation by these.

All tradition are changes in gluchow cortex ID. And then try and capture a second, all trade an learning block in the afternoon again, just knowing that the first ten or fifteen minutes considered mental warm up and then you get about an hour. It's not exactly sixty minutes, but about an hour to maxim learning.

So if you're trying to learn something really captured during that phase as well now, is there a third opportunity or a fourth opportunity? This relates to Jackson question directly, and the short answer is not really know. Unless you're somebody who requires very little sleep within the twelve or sixteen hours that one tends to be awake during the day or eighteen hours that one tends to be awake, there are really only two of these major peaks in the glue, a cortical system that triggered the onset of these circadian cycles.

Again there there's a ramping up in a ramping down a global court courts throughout the day. But the real key here is to learn when you tend to be most focused based on your regular sleep wake cycle, caffeine intake, exercise at eta. And again, that's going to vary from person to person.

And you really only have two opportunities or two old tradition cycle to capture in order to get the maximum focus, chAllenging work done, A K A learning. So for somebody that wants to learn an immense amount of material, or who has the opportunity to capture another all tradition cycle, the other time where that tends to occur is also early day. So some people, by waking up early and using stimulants like caffeine and hydration or some brief high intensity exercise, can trigger that cortical polls to shift a little bit earlier so that they can capture a morning work block that occurs somewhere, let's say, between six and seven thirty am.

So let's think about our typical person, at least in my example, that waking up around seven am and then I said, has their first all traditional work cycle really flip on because that bumping court is all around nine, thirty or ten A M. If that person would say to set the alarm clock for five thirty am, then get up, get some artificial lighting, the sun isn't out, you will turn on bright of artificial lights, or if the sun happens to be up that time of year, get some sunlight in your eyes. But irrespective of sunlight where to get a little bit of brief high intensity exercise, maybe ten or fifteen minutes of skipping rope or even just jumping jacks or go out for a brief job, what happens then is the court is all pole starts to shift earlier.

And so the next day, in the following day and so on and so forth, provided they're still doing that exercise first thing and ideally getting some light in their eyes as well. Well, then they have an opportunity to capture an increase in court is all that is now shifted from about seven am to about eight thirty am. So they can capture an hour of work there.

And then they will also still be within that rising phase. Of course, in the nine thirty to ten A M block that last until about, you know, eleven thirty or so, they might have lunch, perhaps after lunch they do in on sleepy breast. Maybe they don't, maybe you're napper, maybe you're not.

Doesn't really matter. And then in the afternoon, and I would suspect IT would now be in the earlier afternoon, sometime around two or two thirty would be typical, although again, that that exact time will very person a person, then they would want to schedule another ninety minute workbooks. So that's how you can capture three.

Now you can start to see also why capturing four or tradition workbooks would be succeedin ly rare. It's just not typical that people are awake for that much of the day. You have to sleep at some point.

And I should mention that if you are going to force yourself to wake up earlier on a consistent basis, you probably should be trying to get to sleep a little bit earlier as well because it's not just the quality, but the duration of quality sleep that really matters for learning. And I should also remind everybody that the actual rewiring of neurons does not occur r during any focus workbook. Ck IT actually occurs during deep sleep the following night.

In the following night, entering non sleep deep breast is why non sleep deep breast can accelerate learning because it's in states of rest of the actual connections between neurons strengthened were weaken or new neurons are added in a way that allows for what we call learning. okay? So one or two already ding blocks per day is typical.

Three would be really exceptional, and four would be look for them, meaning look to see when you are feeling most focused and alert, typically in the prior before waking and noon, and typically in the area between noon in bedtime, giving your standard intake of caffeine and exercise in other life events. Please also remember that even though it's an all trading ninety minute workbook, ck, the neuroplasticity is going to be best triggered within a sixty minute portion of that. And there is no way to know exactly when that sixty minutes begins and ends until you actually begin the work block.

So this is really designed to be empirical. You need to actually go do this. What you'll notice again is that it's hard to focus at first.

Then you will drop into a state focus. You may get distracted. That's perfectly Normal. You refocus, get back into triggering learning. That's really what you're doing. You're triggering learning and then theyll be some taper and then you will be out of the ultra an work.

Now it's also key to understand that myself and other people should not expect that they are only working during these ninety minute workbooks is just that a lot of the sorts of demands of our day, including you cooking and shopping, groceries and email and text message and social media, lot of those things don't require intense focus of the sort that I believe Jackson is asking about maximizing and that i'm referring to when I talk about these all traditional work blocks. And then as a final point, i've been talking you about these all trading workbooks and focus at at a in a context that brings to my ideas about cognitive work. So learning a language, learning math, uh, writing or creating, doing something relayed to music that but these nine minute all trading works locks also directly relate to physical skill learning as well and to physical exercise as well.

So if you are somebody who's really interested in improving your fitness, and your fitness requires a lot of focus attention. So for instance, when I go out for a long run on sunday days, which is part of my fitness routine, I deliberately not thinking about much. I'm just trying to cruise along.

I might focus a little bit on my pace and stride. Maybe an audio become listening to or a podcast, but typically i'm just kind of cruizing along its its low cognitive demand work. These all trading work blocks can really be maximized for pure cognitive work, so can book type work at sea music at ata, or they can also be leverage toward skill learning.

So if you are trying to learn how to dance or or how to perform a particular athletic move, or you're trying to get Better at some skill that requires a lot of focus and alignment of muscular movement and cognitive demands at sea, well then these are also going to be ideal for trigger neural plassy to get Better in the motor skill based domain, as it's called. I'd set up, if you like, to learn more about all traditional shifts in neuroplasticity and all traditional workout. I will certainly more on this in the standard huberman lab podcast.

The keywords to look up if you want to explore this further online is not something that a lot of people know about, is called iterative meta plasticity. It's a vast literature and one that I be happy to teach you in a standard podcast episode. But in the interest of getting to more questions from you all, hopefully the answer are going.

You now has been complete enough, yet clear enough and yet sink enough that you can start to leverage these really powerful aspects of iteration, milda, plasticity and all trading rythm for learning. And i'd just like to point out that these opportunities for focus learning that occur in these ninety minute altra an cycles are really terrific opportunities. They are offered to you at least twice every day, and you can really learn to detect when they occur and when they're likely to occur.

You can certainly learn at other times in the twenty four hour cycle, but for anyone who's tried to stay up late at night crumbing for an exam, or somebody who tried to learn during the sleepy est time of the afternoon, we can be very familiar with the fact that there are times of day in which we are best at learning. And as i've just described, there are ways to capture those moments, and they are valuable moments. So even though it's just about three hours per day or really only two hours per day because of the sixty ninety minute thing that I talk about a few minutes ago, learn to know when these occur and really treat them as valuable, maybe even holy, in the sense that they are really the times that are offered up to you each day by your own biology in ways that will allow you to get Better pretty much at anything.

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