Andrew Huberman· PhD
Or if I take 5-HTP L-tryptophan I fall deeply asleep and then I wake up. But I didn't mention that there might be ways to make sleep more compact. And so this is actually a request to you. I had a really interesting experience when I was a postdoc. I went for the first time to an acupuncturist. I know there're varying thoughts and opinions out there about acupuncture. I can't say that I've benefit so much from the acupuncture. There are now quality peer reviewed studies showing publishing neuron, Cell Press journal, excellent journal, showing that acupuncture can stimulate some anti-inflammatory compounds depending on where the acupuncture is done. These are really good studies, came out last year. I talked about this on Instagram, I may talk about it again. As well as certain acupuncture sites that increase inflammation. So, you know, you can get different types of effects, you can't just say acupuncture is great across the board. And I'm assuming that the acupuncturist know which sites are good for increasing inflammation, which ones are good for decreasing inflammation. However, this acupuncturist that I went to gave me these red pills. He said, these are minerals for sleep, and it was remarkable. I took the red pills. Isn't that a thing now? Take the red pill. I don't know what that means, right, 'cause I'm not tuned in. But these red pills looked like little M&Ms, I took a couple of them on his suggestion and I fell deeply asleep and four hours later woke up feeling incredibly rested, more rested than I had ever felt in my entire life and I never required more than four hours sleep. Unfortunately, acupuncturist moved away, I never figured out what was in those red pills. I didn't get a chance to do the mass spectroscopy, and I still wonder, he said they were minerals. So somebody out there knows what these red pills are and what this compound is. And it was incredible, and I would love to know what those are. So if you know, please don't go taking red pills at random to try and recreate this non-experiment experience of mine. But please do contact me if you find out or if you're an acupuncturist and you know what these mysterious red pills were, because they were pretty awesome. Once again, I've thrown a tremendous amount of information at you. I hope you will figure out your temperature minimum and start working with that to access the sleep and wakeful cycles that you want to access. I hope that you will explore NSDR. You might want to explore supplementation if that's your thing. You have now access to a lot of mechanism about sleep and wakefulness. But in keeping with the theme of this podcast, where we stay on topic for an entire month or even slightly more, we are not done with sleep and wakefulness. I know this is very different than the typical podcast format, where one week it's how to become superhuman and the next week it's how to, you know, develop growth mindset and it's kind of all over the place with episode to episode. We are staying on track because I really believe that as we drill deeper and deeper into these mechanisms, and you start hearing some of the same themes again and again, you're going to start to develop an intuition and an understanding of how these systems work in you and your particular life circumstances. And my goal is really to eventually become obsolete. It's what my graduate advisor used to call the hit by a bus principle. She had a somewhat morbid sense of humor and used to be, well, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, what are you going to do without me blabbing at you here? So I don't want to get hit by a bus, I plan on living a very long time, if I have anything to say about it. But were I to get hit by a bus tomorrow, what would you