How I stopped feeling so tired in the morning

It turns out that our eyes have many powers.

“The vision and our visual system is perhaps the strongest lever by which we can shift our state of mind and body.” — Dr. Andrew Huberman on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast

I’ve been a night owl my whole life. I remember chattering as a little kid at 10 p.m., wide awake and mind buzzing, asking questions like How does a battery work? and kneeling with my mom over the “B” volume of the encyclopedia. In college and during my 20s, late night was my favorite time. I avoided 8 a.m. classes. My first job was in at a newspaper, where I worked 4 p.m. to midnight. That jolt of deadline adrenaline at 11:45 felt right. I went to bed a few hours later and woke whenever I was done sleeping. For my first 30 years or so, my night owl tendency fit my life well.

Then I married a wonderful man who wakes before dawn for work. And I got a day job. And we had a baby.

And everything got harder. I was exhausted in the morning. I hated feeling like my late-night creative hours were slipping away. I tried to get up earlier, go to bed earlier. It wasn’t working. I was still buzzing at 10 p.m. every night. I could write until 1 a.m. easily — my brain still set in a late-night groove.

Sleep was also fragmented. The little one was waking up all the time! At midnight! At 2! At 4! I despaired. Was this going to be the rest of my life, dragging every morning and feeling out of sorts?

Then we moved from Virginia to New York into longer, darker winters. I tried to buck up. I stocked up on thick coats, assorted gloves, L.L. Bean duck boots. I also bought a sun lamp, hoping it would help offset the dim days. I often had rock-bottom vitamin D levels. Maybe the lamp would help on multiple levels.

But the sun lamp was big and clunky, and I was never consistent about using it. My husband gifted me a smaller one last year, but it still didn’t get much use.

Then, one day a few months ago, I was driving and listening to one of my favorite podcasts, the Tim Ferriss Show. His guest was Dr. Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist who has his own podcast, the Huberman Lab. He was talking about the power of the visual system, how our eyes tell our body so much: when to relax, when to be tense, and — this caught my attention — what time it is.

Dr. Huberman said:

“The simple behavior that I do believe everybody should adopt, including many blind people … is to view, ideally, sunlight for two to 10 minutes every morning upon waking. So when you get up in the morning, you really want to get bright light into your eyes because it does two things. First of all, it triggers the timed release of cortisol, a healthy level of cortisol into your system, which acts as a wake-up signal and will promote wakefulness and the ability to focus throughout the day. It also starts a timer for the onset of melatonin, this sleepiness hormone, or the hormone of darkness, as they say. Melatonin is inhibited by light. So by viewing light first thing in the day, you set in motion these two timers — one for wakefulness that starts immediately and one for sleepiness that starts later.”

Dr. Huberman explained that the cortisol pulse happens once every 24 hours, but you can time it to release at the start your day by viewing sunlight early. Otherwise, that pulse comes later. (Listen to the 2-hour episode or read the full transcript.)

“There are actually data, to just kind of emphasize what happens when you don’t do this, there are really nice data from my colleague, David Spiegel’s lab. He actually co-published this with the great Bob Sapolsky a few years ago. David’s our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford. And they showed that if that cortisol pulse shows up later in the day, and especially if it’s around 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., then it’s associated with depression. By shifting that cortisol pulse earlier in the day, you ameliorate some of the symptoms of depression. And because of the dopamine release, you get this overall mood enhancement.”

Huh.

The sun doesn’t come up here until 7 or later in the winter, so there was no natural morning light. But I did have that sun lamp …

I drove home, dug out the sun lamp, and set it up on my nightstand. It’s a tiny thing, about the size of an iPad. The next morning, after my alarm went off at 6 a.m., I turned on the sun lamp for 20 minutes while I wrote in bed, nestled under the covers.

This lamp comes in three brightness levels, and I realized right away that the highest lux level was giving me a bit of a headache and a disorienting feeling. I turned the light down to the lowest level. After 20 minutes, it went off automatically.

I did this every morning. Soon, I was noticing that I was unusually — for me — tired in the evening. Around 9 p.m., I was ready to crawl into bed. What was this strange feeling?

In the morning, I found myself awake in the dark before the alarm went off. It was 5:45 a.m., and I was awake? And I felt good, rested, and ready to go? What?!

I was astonished. Is this how other people have felt their whole lives?

So this is my routine now. Every morning, whenever I wake up — 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. — I turn on the sun lamp for 20 minutes. If I miss a few days, I notice a difference; I’m not so tired at night, and I’m more likely to need the alarm clock.

It’s been stunning.

Why don’t they teach this in school?

This secret of getting light into your eyes first in the morning does rely on sunlight or other high-lux light. Ordinary light bulbs, laptop screens, or phones won’t work.

The sun lamp I have is called the Happy Light and ranges from $30 to $70. I recommend getting a model with a timer and several levels of brightness. The timer is key because it’s all too easy to forget and sit in the light for too long.

If you live where it is sunny in the early morning (lucky you!), you could go outside. Just 2 minutes of sunlight is enough, Dr. Huberman says, to start your internal timer. Movement also helps. Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Work Week and a perpetual optimizer of all things, shares in the episode that he jumps rope first thing in the morning while facing the sun.

Everyone is different, but our bodies are all affected by light. If you add light to your early morning, I’d be curious to hear how it goes. You can email me at brianne@odysseyofthebody.com or comment on this post here.

I hope you have a lovely alert and restful week, and I’ll see you on Wednesday!

To our journeys and healthy days ahead,

Brianne