Sleep

It’s tough to feel Bulletproof when you’re not getting enough sleep. You’re doing all the right things — no caffeine after 2:00 p.m., shutting down electronics a couple of hours before bed, and blacking out your room. But if you still have trouble nodding off or staying asleep, here’s another...

Do early birds really have an edge on night owls? A new study from Northwestern Medicine and the University of Surrey found that people who stay up late and sleep in are at an increased risk of premature death than people who go to bed early and rise with the...

Need to learn how to stay awake after a sleepless night? Make no mistake, all-nighters do nothing for your health. Less sleep raises blood pressure and adversely affects the levels of your stress hormone, cortisol.  If you want to support your health and perform at your peak on the regular,...

Sleeping in complete darkness doesn’t just improve your sleep quality. New research suggests it may fend off depression as well. A recent study found a strong connection between low-level nighttime light exposure and symptoms of depression in older adults. Nighttime light causes depressive symptoms in elderly Researchers monitored the nighttime light...

A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology demonstrates that people who took five minutes to write a to-do list for the next day before going to bed fell asleep faster. For the 40% of Americans who report trouble falling asleep at least a few times a month, this is...

What an amazing time to be researching your own biology. A study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that your red blood cells have their own separate day and night circadian rhythm. Why does this matter? Your red blood cells don’t have mitochondria, the power plants in your cells...

Improve your sleep, your energy, your digestion, your mood and your brain function with these five easy biohacks. 1. Sleep and see better with F.lux F.lux is a free plugin for your computer, iPad and iPhone that removes melatonin-suppressing blue light from your screen. You need melatonin for deep sleep,...

The first time I ever heard about coffee napping was way back when I launched the original design of the “caffeine: my drug of choice” t-shirt you may now recognize.  We sold it online in the earliest days of the internet. My colleagues and I used to talk about coffee...

If you ever have trouble falling (or staying) asleep, the usual advice to get 8 hours of shut-eye a night might seem like a cruel myth. Yet sadly, many people – 8.6 million Americans at last count – end up chasing this “magic number” with prescription sleeping pills… Even though...

There’s a ton of time-wasting apps out there, but smartphone applications have brought the world of biohacking to a new level. Measuring, calculating, and analyzing your body’s data has never been easier. These applications can help you upgrade your performance every day by giving you the data you need to...

We’ve all been there. It’s been a long, stressful, yet productive day, and you’ve worked yourself to the limit. For the last few hours of work, all you wanted was to go to bed, but you got the job done. Now, you’re finally home, you’ve eaten a great Bulletproof dinner,...

Do you know what type of bird you are? Most people don’t. They work the typical 9 to 5 without considering when they are most productive. As biohackers, that is not okay. We want to work smart and play hard with maximum results. A biohacker’s goal is to pinpoint times when...

How much sleep do you need? Most people think 8 hours of sleep per night is the magic number. But it’s not that simple. Not only do you have to consider the number of hours depending on your needs, but also the quality of your sleep. Plus, other factors affect...

Insomnia is a major problem for many high-performing type-A entrepreneurs. Some insomniacs can’t fall asleep, and some can’t stay asleep. Neither of those is a problem for me anymore (at least that I’m aware of; my Sleep Cycle app will verify if I’m waking up without knowing it). I used...

I’ve been hacking my sleep since I was a child (before I even knew what hacking was) – always trying to get the most out of my time.  But many times when I cut back on sleep, I was tired, needed naps, and relied on coffee to function. First, I...

This is the third article in a series about how to hack your sleep so that you can fall sleep more easily, and recuperate more in less time while staying healthy based on my years of self-experimenting and research. Sleep hacking – getting more efficient sleep in less time –...