Rise and Shine! 4 Suggestions on How to Optimize Your Morning Routine
What does neuroscience have to say about waking up early and finetuning one’s circadian rhythm?
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” — Henry David Thoreau
How we start our mornings often sets the tone for how we will be during our days. Even though this might sound a bit cliché, it is true not just metaphorically, but neurophysically as well.
An American neuroscientist Andrew Huberman goes into this topic in depth during his collaboration with a YouTube channel ‘After Skool.’ During his short lecture, he gives the viewers a few important suggestions on how to optimize their mornings to feel more awake, focused, and energetic, while avoiding that irritating afternoon slump that some of us often times get into. The full conversation will be provided at the end of the article, but for now — here’s the synopsis:
1. Get some direct sunlight early in the day
Every cell in our body has a circadian rhythm which is regulated by the genes inside its core. According to Andrew Huberman, it is important that we get enough sleep at least 80% of the time.
If you don’t get consistent sleep on a 24 hours basis, you are downregulating your ability to do everything, says Huberman.
If we imagined our bodies as a community of miniature clocks, our quest would be to align all these clocks to function in perfect unison during appropriate times.
To entrain our bodies to do so, Andrew Huberman suggests getting at least 10 minutes of natural sunlight within the 1st hour of waking up.
“Try to get at least 5 to 10 minutes of sunlight outside in the morning without sunglasses. It modulates the timing of what is called the cortisol pulse. Once every 24 hours, you’re going to get a big spike in cortisol, a healthy boost. It sets your temperature rhythm in motion, your level of alertness, your level of focus, and your mood. You want that cortisol pulse to happen as early in the day as possible (…) Light will anchor this to when you first see bright light.”
Whenever light photons coming from the sun bump into your eye, your hypothalamus sets a timer for melatonin release 16 hours later. This is very important because a late-shifted cortisol pulse will ensure that your temperature will rise late and that your body will not produce melatonin at an appropriate time for you to feel sleepy when its already dark. This in can cause various unwanted consequences such as depression, anxiety, and difficulty falling asleep.
Also, as an added benefit, getting enough sunlight significantly increases one’s levels of dopamine and epinephrine, while simultaneously regulating the excretion of testosterone and estrogen.
That is why spending enough time outdoors during the mornings doesn’t just regulate the timing of our cortisol pulse and melatonin release, but also makes us feel better and more driven.
2. Delay caffeine and get some light exercise to clear adenosine
Even though melatonin is one of the most well known “sleep hormones” there is one more neurochemical that is responsible for our sense of sleepiness or tiredness. This chemical is called adenosene.
“The longer we are awake, the longer the buildup of something called ‘adenosine’ in the brain and body. Adenosine turns on the parasympathetic (rest & digest) nervous system and suppresses the sympathetic (feed & breed) nervous system.
So, what is the relationship between caffeine, exercise, and adenosine?
When you wake up and feel sleepy, that means that there is still some built-up adenosine running in your system. Caffeine effectively blocks the effects of this chemical but does not clear it up. That is why if you drink coffee just after waking up, you might experience an afternoon slump caused by all the uncleared adenosine. That is why Andrew Huberman suggests drinking coffee at least 60 to 90 minutes after waking up. This will let the body to clear up the unwanted chemical and wake you up properly.
Even though our body naturally clears out adenosine during the first few hours of waking up, exercise helps to do this faster. Thus, if your morning routine allows it, don’t just go out for a walk to catch some sunlight — exercise while you are doing so! I personally like to go for a short jog first thing in the morning or to do some type of calisthenics training. Still, it depends on you. Maybe you like to train in the afternoons. In this case, a walk will suffice.
3. Keep your room relatively cool during the night
Regularly, two hours before waking up your body temperature will reach its lowest during the 24 hours cycle. When your body’s temperature begins to rise. the body starts to produce cortisol. This is the process that sends the signal for your body to wake up.
As mentioned earlier, getting some sunlight after waking up entrains your body to wake up at a similar time.
For example, if you wake up at 8 am, at around 6 pm your body will reach its temperature maximum. After that, the temperature begins to fall and in the process, you will start to feel sleepy. That is why it is important to keep your room relatively cool at night so that the warmth would not mess with the sleep-wake cycles.
4. Embrace cold water — your internal thermostat will thank you
Most people think that immersing yourself in cold water will make you feel cold and decrease your body’s temperature. That is true if you stay in the water too long (as a person might become hypothermic), but if you stay in cold water for somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes, it will have the opposite effect. Thus, if you expose the surface of your body to cold, your core body temperature will rise as a consequence.
As the scientist explains, cold exposure creates a long arc release of both dopamine and epinephrine. That long arc of dopamine leads to a near doubling of both the aforementioned neurochemicals. As a consequence, cold exposure can fight depression, stabilizes people’s mood, make them feel more energetic and better focused throughout the day.
As said by Andrew Huberman:
“Increase body temperature to be awake. Decrease body temperature in order to be asleep. If we stay with those themes, a lot of this fall into bins.”
Thus: exercise daily, expose yourself to sunlight and cold water, and you will create a summer inside instead of a freezing winter. This will most definitely help with your focus and mood during the day and sleep throughout the night.
In conclusion:
- Expose yourself to at least 10–15 minutes of sunlight during the first hour of waking up. This will regulate your hormones and entrain your circadian rhythm to circulate the right chemicals at the right time of the day to ensure that you feel alert in the morning and sleepy during the evening.
- Don’t drink coffee during the first 60–90 minutes of waking up. This will help to clear out the stored adenosine and avoid the afternoon crash.
- Exercise in the morning if you have time. It doesn’t have to be anything extra heavy. A short 15–20 minute jog or some push-ups/pull-ups/squats will suffice.
- Keep your room relatively cool so that you could sleep better.
- Expose yourself to cold water (1–3 minutes at 7°C should do the trick) as frequently as you can. This will teach your body how to regulate its core body temperature efficiently.
Thank you for reading!
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