The Peter Attia Drive - #45 - AMA #4： sleep, jet lag protocol, autophagy, metformin, and more

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah.

00:00:10.140 The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking,

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00:00:19.840 some of the most successful, top-performing individuals in the world, and this podcast

00:00:23.620 is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality,

00:00:28.360 more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode

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00:00:41.440 Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes

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00:04:08.480 supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. Welcome to AMA number four. I am joined

00:04:14.240 again by Bob Kaplan, my head of research. This will be our first subscriber only AMA. If you're a

00:04:19.400 subscriber, you can watch or listen to this full episode on our website. If you're listening to this

00:04:23.820 on a podcast player, you'll be able to hear a preview on the AMA, and then you'll have to finish

00:04:28.060 listening or watching on the website. As a reminder, we pull these questions from the AMA forum and any

00:04:32.660 subscriber is welcome to participate. In this episode, we talk about the following blue blocking

00:04:37.700 glasses and lighting, cortisol and sleep, my jet lag protocol, a discussion about PMS and the hormones

00:04:44.360 around it, a discussion around autophagy, and then we close with a rapid fire, which gets into some

00:04:49.640 issues like CME for podcasts, how to find a good doctor, interesting biomarkers to monitor if the tech

00:04:56.100 was not an issue, and the idea of a PhD versus an MD if you wanted to study longevity. Welcome to AMA

00:05:03.140 number four. Welcome everyone to Ask Me Anything before I guess we're starting. Peter, what's up with

00:05:13.180 those glasses? Ah, the glasses. These are one of my two favorite sets of glasses that I like to wear when

00:05:20.660 I'm looking at electronics in the evening. This brand, which I am neither sponsored by nor receive

00:05:27.800 any compensation from, but I do fancy, is called Gunner, G-U-N-N-A-R. And I went through a bunch of 1.00

00:05:36.020 these before deciding that these are the ones I liked more than the others. I started out with gaming

00:05:42.100 glasses first, and I just didn't find that I had enough sort of coverage. So for whatever reason, these optics

00:05:48.860 are the ones I like the most, they have a ton of stuff on there and they're not that expensive and

00:05:54.040 they usually have sales. So when they have a sale, I recommend buying like two or three pair and then

00:05:58.780 figure out which one you're going to like the most. There's another brand that I like whose name I'm

00:06:03.360 blanking on now that's not a Gunner, but it's a pretty solid brand. It's about twice as expensive

00:06:09.740 though. With these guys, you're into about 40 bucks. The main issue is if you can remember to do so,

00:06:16.740 putting these on once the sun goes down, as you're looking at electronics, huge difference,

00:06:22.900 especially for computer. So I'm more of a laptop guy than I am a phone guy. And I'm usually working

00:06:29.120 on a computer, I don't know, till at least an hour before bed, unfortunately. And this is key.

00:06:35.560 Whereas on the phone, there is a setting that like renders the phone completely red or completely gray,

00:06:43.200 which is different from just the usual light setting on the phone. And that usually is more

00:06:47.720 than adequate than needing these glasses. And on the laptop too, at least for the Mac,

00:06:51.960 they have the efflux. Yeah. Which will take the light down. And that's pretty good. I do that as

00:06:58.300 well. I kind of view the glasses as an insurance policy. And I definitely notice a difference in my

00:07:04.500 sleep quality, at least objectively and sometimes subjectively based on my remembering to do that.

00:07:11.560 And there are times I just, I don't know, I space, I don't do it. And I'm going to bed having just

00:07:16.320 been blasted by that light. And it sort of sucks. Do we want to explain what's actually going on with 0.99

00:07:21.860 when you're wearing blue blockers? It's probably taken us back a little bit with the glasses, but

00:07:26.640 what is it actually doing? It actually seems like it's one of those hacks for lack of a better term

00:07:32.040 that is effective in terms of light and sleep and circadian rhythms. Yeah. So, I mean,

00:07:38.220 I think to understand sleep, you've got to think of three things. So, sleep is kind of like a

00:07:43.420 balancing act of forces. Now, this is a gross oversimplification. And, you know, in our podcast

00:07:49.040 with Matthew Walker, we're going to go into much more detail on sleep. But I like to think of sleep

00:07:55.520 as a balancing act between cortisol, melatonin, and adenosine. So, we'll talk about each of those

00:08:03.200 for a second. So, adenosine, if that sounds familiar, it's because you remember from high

00:08:07.780 school biology that ATP, which is the currency of energy, is adenosine triphosphate. So, the way to

00:08:14.100 think about adenosine is it's something that gets built up the more energy you've expended. So,

00:08:19.640 if you were to measure adenosine levels in the morning, and then adenosine levels in the evening,

00:08:24.400 they should be higher if you've been doing something. And so, that's the first thing you want

00:08:29.880 happening when you sleep is you want adenosine levels to be high. And in fact, that's actually

00:08:34.440 how caffeine works. Caffeine keeps you awake by lowering adenosine levels. The second thing you

00:08:40.820 want is cortisol. Cortisol has to go down. And I've spoken about this a little bit before, but basically

00:08:47.260 you have a cycle to cortisol. So, if the x-axis is time, and that's the moment you wake up, and that's

00:08:54.120 the moment you go to bed, and that's your cortisol level, you want to wake up at a low level.

00:08:59.880 And you want to go to bed at a low level. And what should be happening is in about the first

00:09:04.840 two hours, you should have a huge surge in cortisol. Oh, for the listeners only, Peter is actually,

00:09:11.960 as luck would have it, there's an easel behind us as we're having this conversation.

00:09:16.100 Oh, yes. And he's drying this out. He's drying the cortisol pattern. And so, you want to have this

00:09:22.340 uptick, gradual down, nice and low at night. And just as you're waking up, it should be just about

00:09:28.780 to kick off. So, that's the second factor. So, you want adenosine to be high, you want cortisol to be

00:09:34.880 low. And then the third thing you want is you want melatonin to rise. And melatonin is secreted by this

00:09:42.120 tiny, tiny little gland called the pineal gland. And it is secreted in the absence of light, specifically

00:09:49.240 blue light. And it's basically a signal to tell the brain that it's dark. So, it's melatonin basically

00:09:56.900 removes the brakes of staying awake. And that's where the glasses fit in. So, if you're really

00:10:02.760 trying to optimize your sleep, you want high adenosine. You can accomplish that by not having

00:10:09.020 caffeine and by being active. You want low cortisol. That's probably a lengthier topic in and of itself.

00:10:16.180 And then you want high levels or rising levels of melatonin.

00:10:20.400 So, we got a bunch of questions around sleep. So, while we're on the topic, maybe we can cover

00:10:25.800 a few more. One of the questions was how to minimize jet lag and sleep disruption while traveling.

00:10:33.180 Hey, everyone. Hope you enjoyed a sneak peek of this AMA. AMAs, along with extensive show notes and

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The Peter Attia Drive - March 18, 2019

#45 - AMA #4： sleep, jet lag protocol, autophagy, metformin, and more

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