Do you ever experience brain fog? Would you like to understand how to increase your focus and control your motivation?
I’m sure you can relate to how frustrating it feels when our brain isn’t firing on all cylinders. The good news is there are answers, and we can better understand how our lifestyle choices affect our productivity.
My guest today is Andrew Huberman, it’s his third time in the studio, and I think he’s rapidly becoming our resident neuroscientist! Andrew is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford and primarily studies brain states such as fear, courage, and anxiety. He also examines how we can better move into and out of them through practices like visual cues, breathwork, movement, and supplementation.
In today’s episode, we discuss why we experience brain fog and the best morning routines to get rid of it, the 90-minute focus hack that you need to try, how to manage your dopamine levels to stay motivated, how drugs and alcohol affect your brain and body, and so much more that I’m excited to share with you!
Who Is Andrew Huberman?
If you haven’t listened to Andrew’s previous interviews, you can click through the links to enjoy them as well. Each episode was jam-packed and full of information that we split into two separate episodes. They are: “Hack Your Brain For Unlimited Potential“, “The Science of Success Mindset“, “Unlocking the Power of Your Mind“, and “The Science of Positive Thinking and How to Control Your Mind.”
Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He also runs the Huberman Lab, which studies brain states such as fear, courage, anxiety, and calm. They also discover how we can better move in and out of these states through visual cues, breathwork, movement, and supplementation.
In his career, Andrew has made many significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain plasticity, neural regeneration, and repair. He’s received numerous awards and recognitions for his research and publications, including the McKnight Foundation Neuroscience Scholar Award, the Biomedical Scholar Award from the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Cogan Award for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.
In addition to being a tenured professor, Dr. Andrew is also a brilliant neuroscientist and teacher — he excellently explains complicated concepts so that everyday people can understand and helps us use neuroscience to improve our lives.
Andrew’s goal is to understand how the brain allows us to sense, evaluate, and respond to the world around us. He’s actively working on methods to re-wire and repair eye-to-brain connections for people who suffer from blinding diseases, as well as investigating emotions and how they drive human behavior.
I’m excited to hear more wisdom from Andrew — so let’s jump straight in!
The Source of Brain Fog
Yesterday, I woke up with brain fog, which I hardly ever have. I went to my Spanish lessons, everything felt like it was hurting, and I struggled. I wasn’t in a very good space, and after 20 minutes, I called it a day. I’m curious to know — what causes brain fog?
“The most obvious [source of brain fog] would be a poor night’s sleep. Sleep [is] the most fundamental layer of mental and physical health, and [if] you don’t sleep well for one night, you’re probably okay. For two nights, you start to fall apart. Three, four nights — you’re a degraded version of yourself in every aspect.” – Andrew Huberman
Two days before this brain fog day, I was in Vegas for the Canelo fight. I stayed up late, it was daylight savings, and I was on an early flight back. To add to that, I had surgery to put three titanium rod implants where I have missing teeth plus a bone graft in my mouth. Suddenly my brain fog made perfect sense, but other factors contribute to brain fog even without poor sleep.
“One is your breathing patterns [with a big one being] sleep apnea. [People with sleep apnea are] not getting enough oxygen during sleep, or they are mouth breathing. There is excellent evidence that, as long as you’re not speaking, eating, or exercising hard enough to breathe through your mouth, it’s beneficial to be a nasal breather. If you are deliberately nasal breathing during the day, the tendency is you will nasal breathe at night — which leads to less sleep apnea, less mouth breathing during [sleep], and less brain fog.” – Andrew Huberman
Without enough oxygen, your body’s restorative processes cannot work effectively, which means even if you get six to eight hours of sleep, you wake up in the morning feeling groggy and out of it.
“There could be other reasons that you’re experiencing brain fog. People that drink alcohol the night before [or] maybe ate a large meal before sleep [can also experience brain fog]. [Anything that prevents you from] getting adequate oxygenation of the brain during sleep is key, [but if you suffer from brain fog often on days you don’t drink or eat a late meal] — learn to be a nasal breather.” – Andrew Huberman
If you want to do a deep dive, there’s a wonderful book about this called Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic. The book shares how deliberate nasal breathing during the day leads to better sleep at night.
As a start, focus on closing your mouth while you work, email, or text during the day as a way to improve your nasal breathing. It’s challenging, but on your jogs, treadmill, or any low-level cardio besides swimming, try to go as hard as you can while maintaining nasal breathing. It’s tough for the first few sessions, but you’ll discover a greater capacity to exercise by the second or third week.
The critical thing about brain fog is that you want to get oxygen into the system, ideally mainly through your nose and not through your mouth.
Andrew’s given us a wonderful place to start improving our oxygen intake and becoming a nasal-breather. Now let’s look at how we can improve our morning routine to have better focus throughout the day.
Ultimate Morning Routine for Focus
I’m curious to know what Andrew’s morning routine is, considering he knows exactly what sets the brain and mind up for optimal performance.
“I generally get up somewhere between 5:30 AM and 7:00 AM depending on when I went to sleep. I generally [go to sleep] between 10:30 PM and midnight. [After hydrating,] the fundamental layer of health is to set your circadian rhythm, [and] the simplest way is to go outside for 10 minutes and get bright light in your eyes. If you wake up before the sun rises, turn on as many bright lights in your house as possible, but when the sun comes out, get outside and see some sunlight [and try not to] wear sunglasses.” – Andrew Huberman
Once every 24 hours, our cortisol peaks, but you want that peak to happen early in the day because it sets up alertness for the remainder of the day. If our cortisol peak occurs too late, that can lead to depression, so you want your cortisol “stressed out” at the beginning of the day.
“What’s cool is, over time, you’ll start to notice the sunlight waking you up more and more. If you miss a day, it’s not the end of the world because it’s a slow integrating system, but don’t miss more than one day. If you live in a very cloudy [area], know that sunlight [and] the photons coming through the cloud cover are brighter than your brightest indoor lights.” – Andrew Huberman
Sunlight doesn’t only set your circadian rhythm, it also aligns every cell in your body’s 24-hour clock. Imagine if every alarm clock is set to different times, going off non-stop throughout the day? Viewing sunlight helps ensure all the alarms go off simultaneously and prevents you from feeling drained.
Even waiting two or three hours after waking up to get bright light in your eyes is setting yourself up for a complicated sleep-wake cycle — which can lead to insomnia.
Our lifestyle choices affect our sleep, which directly impacts whether we have brain fog. Andrew walks us through the impact some of these choices have on our brains.
