For those of us who prefer to be awake, but want the health and performance benefits of deep rest, comitting a month to sleep optimiztion interventions is time well spent.

Sleep optimization is the endevour of getting more quality recovery from the same number of hours spent in bed.  That’s right.  You can potentially have it all.  If you are like me that means you are unwilling to trade your early morning workout time OR your post-dinner family time for more hours of sleep.  Or maybe you’re a shift worker.  Or maybe you have an incredible nightlife.  Or maybe you’ve noticed that you live in a crazy time where stress and fear are pumped into you through your phone 24 hours per day?  Whatever the reason, if you are in a position where you value improving sleep quality but still prefer your life out of the bed, then this article is for you.

The following are the results of my 6 week all-in, full committment execution of  Andrew Huberman’s sleep toolkit protocol.  I added a couple elements of my own as well.  I began with a base of his entire Toolkit then I added intermittent fasting, some meditation breathing techniques, probiotic foods and the “daytime supplements” listed in the next section.

Take the time to check out Andrew Huberman’s podcast.  Each episode is full of actionable intel on the available science of health, happiness and performance optimization.  If for instance you don’t care about sleep optimization right now but you want to know how to use meditation to enhance creativity.  There’s an episode on that.  Increase flexibility?  Yep.  Hormone optimization?  Check.  The ideal use of caffeine for performance?  Roger that.

It is my experience that individual physiology varies significantly and tailoring your protocol is a process of beginning with the basics then customizing by prioritizing what you respond best to.  The data provided by researchers like Huberman provides a framework from which to experiment, observe and refine.  The following is my experiene with that exact process with Humerman’s Sleep Toolkit.  This has been a powerful process for me.  I hope you jump in and experience it for yourself and when you do, feel free to reach out with your outcomes, comments, insightes and questions.  You can message me in the text field under “What is your chief complaint” 

 

My Sleep Optimization Protocol breaks down into two segments:

1)  Lifestyle interventions

and

2)  Sleep Stack supplementation.

Part one is critical.  A foundation of lifestyle interventions is necessary to achieve maximum (and perhaps any) benefit from supplementation.

When lifestyle is in the way, using supplementation is like hitting the gas with one foot still firmly on the brake.

My results:  I ran the following interventions to a T for a 6 week stretch from 12/27/22 through 2/10/23.  My subjective results were super high energy that lasted throughout the day.  No more post lunch fatigue, no coffee needed during our long dark Northwest days.  I honestly felt pretty incredible.  Objectively, I lost 5 pounds and leaned out quite a bit.  I tracked my sleep quality with a Whoop watch and dramatically improved my sleep quality from my December baseline compared to the January and February performance.  (See Photos)

Lifestyle

MORNING INTERVENTIONS

• Early morning direct sunlight exposure or bright light exposure from sounces such as a Ring Light.
  • 5-8 minutes of this as soon as you can upon waking.
  • You want the light exposure directy on your eyeballs for the effect we’re after but it should not be uncomfortable.
  • Some people work light exercise into this i.e. skipping rope while looking near the morning sun.
• Early morning cold plunge
  • Ironically short duration cold exposure induces your body to raise your internal thermostat settings and core temp.  That is an important tool for ending the sleep sate and transitioning to the wakefull sate.
  • 3-4 minutes chin deep
    • I don’t usually time these anymore as I noticed that 11 very slow breath cycles have me in for about 3 and a half minutes.
  • I use a 4′ steel horse trough that stays in the low 40’s  in the early mornings in the PNW this time of year.
  • Try not to hold completely still.  Moving a bit will keep the water from forming a warm little barrier around you.
  • When the time is up, get out and dunk the face and head.  Just for a breath.  3x.
  • Try not to go to a hot shower after.  If you can, just pull on some warm clothes and let your body warm itself back up
• Early morning exercise
  • For me that is 6am jiu jitsu.  Anything to get the heart rate up will work.
• Delayed Caffeine intake
  • Waiting 90-120 minutes before having coffee optimizes the impact of the stimulant
    • The body takes some time to wake all the way up.  This is why we love to speed up the wakeful state with a stimulant.
    • Taking a stimulant while your body is still waking up is like using a nitris oxide booster while your e-brake is still engaged and you’re driving up hill.  That’s no way to Tokyo drift.
    • In my case I kept my ritual of immediatly making an espresso upon waking up but I put it in a thermos to have at 7:30am after jiu jitsu.  This part had a huge impact on my daily energy levels.  With this new timing I no longer felt the need for any more caffeine throughout the day.  I even managed a couple days with zero coffee and still somehow experience super high energy days.  That’s a tremendous change for me.  In the dark Winter months here I typically run on caffeine:
      • 2 espresso shots and sometimes even a super-potent preworkout supplement before bjj.  I wake up at 4:50am to train and this is my 20 year long “burn the boats” ritual.  Yes it is dark, it is cold, and nobody would notice if I took the day off and went back to bed, but after espresso and preworkout there is no turning back.  This makes for a fun, high energy training session, but by the time I leave class at 7:30am, I’m completely gassed and often stopping for a potent double italiano on the way into the clinic.  Some days, a second crash would hit me in that post lunch hour and I’d have a third double espresso in the early afternoon so as to not rudely and repeatedly yawn in the face of a patient.  Upwards of 6 shots of espresso and the occassional high caffeine preworkout as well.  That is a lot of stimulants just to feel good and get by.  Rolling into the evening with this much caffeine in the system also put some urgency behind a glass of wine or a beer with dinner to help wind back down. . . you can see how that nasty little cycle can build on itself over time.

AFTERNOON INTERVENTIONS

• Intermittent Fasting
  • First food intake 11am or later
    • Break the fasting state with probioitic foods at 11am
      • A bowl of low sugar probiotic yogurt with some stuff mixed in or a cup of Kiefer and a glass of kombucha.  Probiotic foods have potential to be more impactful on an empty stomach so I give them some time and space to work by waiting an hour or two before I eat my first big meal of the day.
• Daytime Supplements  (These are my personal supplements and are not part of Huberman’s Toolkit)
  • Lion’s Mane, Creatine, Milk thistle, vit D/K, B12
  • Usually taken at 11am breakfast (see probiotic foods above)
• No caffeine, THC or Alcohol in the afternoon
  • Specifically the research states none within 8 hours of going to bed.
  • I’m not much of a morning drinker anyway so I went with none.
• Final fluid intake of the day by 4pm
  • Important if you are annoyed by getting up in the night to go to the bathroom

EVENING INTERVENTIONS

• Hot bath before bed
  • Within an hour of bed time
  • No longer than 20 minutes duration
  • Ironically this results in cooling the body’s core temperature.  An important sleep inducing mechanism.
• Avoid bright artificial lighting before bed
  • Pretty obvious, but doomscrolling on the phone before bed isn’t an ideal way to wind down.

Sleep Stack supplementation 30-60 minutes before bed:

• Magnesium Threonate 145mg
• Inositol 2g every 3 days per week
• Theanine 100-400mg (decrease dosage if vivid dreams wake at night)

Enjoy the jarring adventure of this challenge and again feel free to reach out with your outcomes, comments, insightes and questions.

 

Yours in Resilience,

 

Dr. Pond