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Using Caffeine to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance
Huberman Lab
You Want That Cortisol Pulse Early in the Day
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- There is a way to clear out the adenosine that's present when you wake up in the morning and to clear it out essentially completely without just blocking its receptors and letting it accumulate or hang around.
- The way to do that is to deliberately spike your cortisol.
- Cortisol is wonderful. Cortisol enhances the efficiency of the immune system. It makes us alert and focus. It stimulates our metabolism. It does a huge number of positive things, provided that it is released in a circadian fashion, that is at the appropriate times every 24 hours, and that it tends to peak very close to waking.
- In fact, one of the reasons you wake up in the morning, assuming that you weren't woken up by some noise or sleeping in an environment that's too warm, etc., is that your cortisol levels start to rise.
- And shortly after waking, your cortisol levels will start to reach their peak.
- When I refer to a cortisol pulse, that's just biology nerd speak for a rise and peak in cortisol.
- You want that cortisol pulse to occur early in the day close to waking, and you want that for a couple of reasons. First of all, if you don't restrict that cortisol pulse to early in the day, it will tend to bleed into the later parts of the day, and actually a lateshifted cortisol peak is one of the hallmark signatures of depression, low-level depression and serious depression, and it can.
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