Non-Sleep Deep Rest: A Neurobiologist’s Take

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How to get many benefits of sleep, while awake!

Today we’re talking about Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor in the department of neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine.

He’s also a popular podcaster, and as his Wikipedia page notes:

❝In episodes lasting several hours, Huberman talks about the state of research in a specific topic, both within and outside his specialty❞

Today, we won’t be taking hours, and we will be taking notes from within his field of specialty (neurobiology). Specifically, in this case:

Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR)

What is it? To quote from his own dedicated site on the topic:

What is NSDR (Yoga Nidra)? Non-Sleep Deep Rest, also known as NSDR, is a method of deep relaxation developed by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine.

It’s a process that combines controlled breathing and detailed body scanning to bring you into a state of heightened awareness and profound relaxation. The main purpose of NSDR is to reduce stress, enhance focus, and improve overall well-being.❞

While it seems a bit bold of Dr. Huberman to claim that he developed yoga nidra, it is nevertheless reassuring to get a neurobiologist’s view on this:

How it works, by science

Dr. Huberman says that by monitoring EEG readings during NSDR, we can see how the brain slows down. Measurably!

  • It goes from an active beta range of 13–30 Hz (normal waking) to a conscious meditation state of an alpha range of 8–13 Hz.
  • However, with practice, it can drop further, into a theta range of 4–8 Hz.
  • Ultimately, sustained SSDR practice can get us to 0.5–3 Hz.

This means that the brain is functioning in the delta range, something that typically only occurs during our deepest sleep.

You may be wondering: why is delta lower than theta? That’s not how I remember the Greek alphabet being ordered!

Indeed, while the Greek alphabet goes alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta (and so on), the brainwave frequency bands are:

  • Gamma = concentrated focus, >30 Hz
  • Beta = normal waking, 13–30 Hz
  • Alpha = relaxed state, 8–13 Hz
  • Theta = light sleep, 4–8 Hz
  • Delta = deep sleep, 1–4 Hz

Source: Sleep Foundationwith a nice infographic there too

NSDR uses somatic cues to engage our parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn enables us to reach those states. The steps are simple:

  1. Pick a time and place when you won’t be disturbed
  2. Lie on your back and make yourself comfortable
  3. Close your eyes as soon as you wish, and now that you’ve closed them, imagine closing them again. And again.
  4. Slowly bring your attention to each part of your body in turn, from head to toe. As your attention goes to each part, allow it to relax more.
  5. If you wish, you can repeat this process for another wave, or even a third.
  6. Find yourself well-rested!

Note: this engagement of the parasympathetic nervous system and slowing down of brain activity accesses restorative states not normally available while waking, but 10 minutes of NSDR will not replace 7–9 hours of sleep; nor will it give you the vital benefits of REM sleep specifically.

So: it’s an adjunct, not a replacement

Want to try it, but not sure where/how to start?

When you’re ready, let Dr. Huberman himself guide you through it in this shortish (10:49) soundtrack:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to try it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later

Take care!

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  • Why Lung Cancer Is On The Rise In Women Who’ve Never Smoked

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    It’s easy to assume that if you’ve never smoked, lung cancer is just not a risk for you, unless you got very unlucky with an asbestos-laden environment or such.

    And yes, smoking is indeed the most overwhelmingly strong risk factor:

    ❝It is estimated that cigarette smoking explains almost 90% of lung cancer risk in men and 70 to 80% in women

    Which is a lot (and we’ll address that discrepancy by sex shortly), but meanwhile first let’s mention:

    ❝Compared with non-smokers, smokers have as much as a 30-fold increased risk of developing cancer.

    31% and 26% of all cancer deaths in men and women, respectively, result from lung cancer in the United States.

    Overall 5-year survival is only 15%, and 1-year survival is approximately 42%.

    In total, lung cancer is responsible for more deaths than prostate, colon, pancreas, and breast cancers combined

    Source: Smoking and Lung Cancer

    Sobering statistics for any smoker, certainly.

    But, “smoking is bad for the health” is not the breaking news of the century, so we’ll look now at the other risk factors.

    Before we do though, let’s just drop this previous main feature of ours for anyone who does smoke or perhaps who has a loved one who smokes:

    Which Addiction-Quitting Methods Work Best? ← it’s not specific just to smoking, but it does cover such also

    So, Why the extra risk for women, even if we don’t smoke?

    Let’s reframe that first statistic we gave, now presenting the same information differently:

    Women who do not smoke are 2–3x more likely to get lung cancer than men who do not smoke.

    So… why?

    There are three main reasons:

    Genetic risks

    Cancer often arises from genetic mutations. In the case of lung cancer, genes such as ALK, ROS1, TP53, KRAS, and EGFR are implicated, and some of those are much more likely to mutate in women than in men.

    In some cases, it’s because if you have XX chromosomes (as most women do), there are genes you have redundant copies of that people with XY chromosomes don’t. Other less common karyotypes, such as XXY, probably carry higher risks, but that’s just a hypothesis we’re making based on “more copies of a gene = more chances for it to mutate”.

    See also: Frequency and Distinctive Spectrum of KRAS Mutations in Never Smokers with Lung Adenocarcinoma

    In other cases, it’s because estrogen interacts with the gene mutations, making lung cancer more likely to develop in women over time:

    See also: Lung cancer in never-smoker female Asians is driven by oncogenic mutations, most often involving EGFR

    Hormonal risks (but not what you might think)

    When something affects women more, it’s easy to blame hormones, but, as researchers have concluded…

    ❝A reduced lung cancer risk was found for OC and HRT ever users. Both oestrogen only and oestrogen+progestin HRT were associated with decreased risk. No dose-response relationship was observed with years of OC/HRT use. The greatest risk reduction was seen for squamous cell carcinoma in OC users and in both adenocarcinoma and small cell carcinoma in HRT users.❞

    OC = oral contraceptive
    HRT = hormone replacement therapy

    Note: we snipped out the statistical calculations for readability and brevity, so if you are interested in those, check out the paper below:

    Source: Hormone use and risk for lung cancer: a pooled analysis from the International Lung Cancer Consortium (ILCCO)

    Meanwhile, another research review of 22 studies with nearly a million participants found:

    ❝Current or ever HRT use is partly correlated with the decreased incidence of lung cancer in women.

    Concerns about the incidence of lung cancer can be reduced when perimenopausal and postmenopausal women use current HRT to reduce menopausal symptoms.❞

    Source: The association between different hormone replacement therapy use and the incidence of lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

    So, the problem seems to at least a lot of the time be not estrogen (notwithstanding what we mentioned previously about mutations—sometimes a thing can have both pros and cons), but rather, untreated menopause being the higher risk factor.

    This is very reminiscent of what we talked about in one of our main features about Alzheimer’s disease:

    Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear ← Women get Alzheimer’s at nearly 2x the rate than men do, and deteriorate more rapidly after onset, too.

    Chronic inflammation

    For reasons that have not been tied to genetics or hormones*, women suffer from autoimmune diseases at much higher rates than men.

    *presumably it is at least one or the other, because there aren’t a lot of other options that seem plausible, but (as with many “this thing mainly affects women” maladies), science hasn’t yet determined the cause.

    Because cancer is in part a disease of immune dysfunction (cells fail to kill cells they should be killing), having an autoimmune disease, or indeed chronic inflammation in general, will result in a higher risk of cancer.

    For general theory, see: Cancer and Autoimmune Diseases: A Tale of Two Immunological Opposites?

    For specifics, see: Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer: Role of the Immune System and Potential for Immunotherapy

    And this one is the most likely explanation of why lung cancer in women who’ve never smoked is on the rise—it’s because chronic inflammation in women is on the rise. While people regardless of gender are getting chronic inflammation at increased rates nowadays (probably due in large part to the rise of ultra-processed food, as well as the higher stress of modern life, but again, we’re hypothesizing), if all other factors are equal, women will still get it more than men.

    However!

    Like the consideration of HRT’s protective effects (and unlike the genetic factors), this is one we can do something about.

    For how, check out: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

    Want to know more?

    For lung health in general, see:

    Seven Things To Do For Good Lung Health!

    Take care!

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  • Cynthia’s Thoughts on Intermittent Fasting

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    The Myth of Breakfast and Snacking

    Here at 10almonds we love addressing misconceptions in the health world.

    When it comes to eating habits and fasting, we’ve written our own pieces on how to break your fast (otherwise known as break-fast, or breakfast), alongside a general breakdown of intermittent fasting, and a much-requested piece on fasting specifically for women.

    Cynthia Thurlow, though, instead of just writing a few articles, has dedicated the majority of her working years to intermittent fasting and, in her TEDx talk (below), makes a strong argument challenging the long-held belief that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

    Cynthia Thurlow’s Two Main Points

    Thurlow argues that it’s not what you eat but when you eat that has a more profound impact on health and aging. And she argues this is crucial regardless of your age.

    Complementing her views on fasting are her views on snacking; she argues that snacking all day long is outdated advice and can overtax the digestive system, leading to various health issues.

    Practical Tips for Starting Intermittent Fasting

    To begin intermittent fasting, Thurlow suggests starting with a 12-13 hour fasting window and gradually increasing it to 16 hours.

    In terms of food choice, she recommends eating whole, unprocessed foods during eating periods as well as staying well-hydrated with water, coffee, or tea.

    But you won’t see results immediately; Thurlow advises giving the strategy a solid 30 days to see results and consulting a healthcare provider if there are any existing health conditions.

    You can dive deeper and join the 15 million other people who have listened to her thoughts on fasting by watching her TEDx talk below:

    How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!

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  • Good news: midlife health is about more than a waist measurement. Here’s why

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    You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. They might also check your weight. Looking concerned, they recommend some lifestyle changes.

    GPs and health professionals commonly measure waist circumference as a vital sign for health. This is a better indicator than body mass index (BMI) of the amount of intra-abdominal fat. This is the really risky fat around and within the organs that can drive heart disease and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes.

    Men are at greatly increased risk of health issues if their waist circumference is greater than 102 centimetres. Women are considered to be at greater risk with a waist circumference of 88 centimetres or more. More than two-thirds of Australian adults have waist measurements that put them at an increased risk of disease. An even better indicator is waist circumference divided by height or waist-to-height ratio.

    But we know people (especially women) have a propensity to gain weight around their middle during midlife, which can be very hard to control. Are they doomed to ill health? It turns out that, although such measurements are important, they are not the whole story when it comes to your risk of disease and death.

    How much is too much?

    Having a waist circumference to height ratio larger than 0.5 is associated with greater risk of chronic disease as well as premature death and this applies in adults of any age. A healthy waist-to-height ratio is between 0.4 to 0.49. A ratio of 0.6 or more places a person at the highest risk of disease.

    Some experts recommend waist circumference be routinely measured in patients during health appointments. This can kick off a discussion about their risk of chronic diseases and how they might address this.

    Excessive body fat and the associated health problems manifest more strongly during midlife. A range of social, personal and physiological factors come together to make it more difficult to control waist circumference as we age. Metabolism tends to slow down mainly due to decreasing muscle mass because people do less vigorous physical activity, in particular resistance exercise.

    For women, hormone levels begin changing in mid-life and this also stimulates increased fat levels particularly around the abdomen. At the same time, this life phase (often involving job responsibilities, parenting and caring for ageing parents) is when elevated stress can lead to increased cortisol which causes fat gain in the abdominal region.

    Midlife can also bring poorer sleep patterns. These contribute to fat gain with disruption to the hormones that control appetite.

    Finally, your family history and genetics can make you predisposed to gaining more abdominal fat.

    Why the waist?

    This intra-abdominal or visceral fat is much more metabolically active (it has a greater impact on body organs and systems) than the fat under the skin (subcutaneous fat).

    Visceral fat surrounds and infiltrates major organs such as the liver, pancreas and intestines, releasing a variety of chemicals (hormones, inflammatory signals, and fatty acids). These affect inflammation, lipid metabolism, cholesterol levels and insulin resistance, contributing to the development of chronic illnesses.

    Man runs on treadmill
    Exercise can limit visceral fat gains in mid-life. Shutterstock/Zamrznuti tonovi

    The issue is particularly evident during menopause. In addition to the direct effects of hormone changes, declining levels of oestrogen change brain function, mood and motivation. These psychological alterations can result in reduced physical activity and increased eating – often of comfort foods high in sugar and fat.

    But these outcomes are not inevitable. Diet, exercise and managing mental health can limit visceral fat gains in mid-life. And importantly, the waist circumference (and ratio to height) is just one measure of human health. There are so many other aspects of body composition, exercise and diet. These can have much larger influence on a person’s health.

    Muscle matters

    The quantity and quality of skeletal muscle (attached to bones to produce movement) a person has makes a big difference to their heart, lung, metabolic, immune, neurological and mental health as well as their physical function.

    On current evidence, it is equally or more important for health and longevity to have higher muscle mass and better cardiorespiratory (aerobic) fitness than waist circumference within the healthy range.

    So, if a person does have an excessive waist circumference, but they are also sedentary and have less muscle mass and aerobic fitness, then the recommendation would be to focus on an appropriate exercise program. The fitness deficits should be addressed as priority rather than worry about fat loss.

    Conversely, a person with low visceral fat levels is not necessarily fit and healthy and may have quite poor aerobic fitness, muscle mass, and strength. The research evidence is that these vital signs of health – how strong a person is, the quality of their diet and how well their heart, circulation and lungs are working – are more predictive of risk of disease and death than how thin or fat a person is.

    For example, a 2017 Dutch study followed overweight and obese people for 15 years and found people who were very physically active had no increased heart disease risk than “normal weight” participants.

    Getting moving is important advice

    Physical activity has many benefits. Exercise can counter a lot of the negative behavioural and physiological changes that are occurring during midlife including for people going through menopause.

    And regular exercise reduces the tendency to use food and drink to help manage what can be a quite difficult time in life.

    Measuring your waist circumference and monitoring your weight remains important. If the measures exceed the values listed above, then it is certainly a good idea to make some changes. Exercise is effective for fat loss and in particular decreasing visceral fat with greater effectiveness when combined with dietary restriction of energy intake. Importantly, any fat loss program – whether through drugs, diet or surgery – is also a muscle loss program unless resistance exercise is part of the program. Talking about your overall health with a doctor is a great place to start.

    Accredited exercise physiologists and accredited practising dietitians are the most appropriate allied health professionals to assess your physical structure, fitness and diet and work with you to get a plan in place to improve your health, fitness and reduce your current and future health risks.

    Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The Stroke Of Insight That Nobody Wants

    This is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She’s a neuroanatomist, who, at the age of 37 (when she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School), had what she refers to as her “stroke of insight”.

    That is to say, she had a massive stroke, and after a major brain surgery to remove a clot the size of a golf ball, she spent the next 8 years re-learning to do everything.

    Whereas previously she’d been busy mapping the brain to determine how cells communicate with each other, now she was busy mapping whether socks or shoes should go on first. Needless to say, she got an insight into neuroplasticity that few people would hope for.

    What does she want us to know?

    Dr. Taylor (now once again a successful scientist, lecturer, and author) advocates for “whole brain living”, which involves not taking parts of our brain for granted.

    About those parts…

    Dr. Taylor wants us to pay attention to all the parts regardless of size, ranging from the two hemispheres, all the way down to the billions of brain cells, and yet even further, to the “trillions of molecular geniuses”—because each brain cell is itself reliant on countless molecules of the many neurochemicals that make up our brain.

    For a quick refresher on some of the key players in that latter category, see our Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet 😎

    When it comes to the hemispheres, there has historically been a popular belief that these re divided into:

    • The right brain: emotional, imaginative, creative, fluid feeling
    • The left brain: intellectual, analytical, calculating, crystal thinking

    …which is not true, anatomically speaking, because there are cells on both sides doing their part of both of these broad categories of brain processes.

    However, Dr. Taylor found, while one hemisphere of her brain was much more damaged than the other, that nevertheless she could recover some functions more quickly than others, which, once she was able to resume her career, inspired her model of four distinct ways of cogitating that can be switched-between and played with or against each other:

    Meet The Four Characters Inside Your Brain

    Why this matters

    As she was re-learning everything, the way forward was not quick or easy, and she also didn’t know where she was going, because for obvious reasons, she couldn’t remember, much less plan.

    Looking backwards after her eventual full recovery, she noted a lot of things that she needed during that recovery, some of which she got and some of which she didn’t.

    Most notably for her, she needed the right kind of support that would allow all four of the above “characters” as she puts it, to thrive and grow. And, when we say “grow” here we mean that literally, because of growing new brain cells to replace the lost ones (as well as the simple ongoing process of slowly replacing brain cells).

    For more on growing new brain cells, by the way, see:

    How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)

    In order to achieve this in all of the required brain areas (i.e., and all of the required brain functions), she also wants us to know… drumroll please

    When to STFU

    Specifically, the ability to silence parts of our brain that while useful in general, aren’t necessarily being useful right now. Since it’s very difficult to actively achieve a negative when it comes to brain-stuff (don’t think of an elephant), this means scheduling time for other parts of our brain to be louder. And that includes:

    • scheduling time to feel (emotionally)
    • scheduling time to feel (gut feelings)
    • scheduling time to feel (kinesthetically)

    …amongst others.

    Note: those three are presented in that order, from least basic to most basic. And why? Because, clever beings that we are, we typically start from a position that’s not remotely basic, such as “overthinking”, for example. So, there’s a wind-down through thinking just the right amount, thinking through simpler concepts, feeling, noticing one’s feelings, noticing noticing one’s feelings, all the way down to what, kinesthetically, are we actually physically feeling.

    ❝It is interesting to note that although our limbic system fucntions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional “buttons” are pushed, we retain the ability to react to incoming stimulation as though we were a two-year-old, even when we are adults.❞

    ~ Dr. Jill Taylor

    Of course, sometimes the above is not useful, which is why the ability to switch between brain modes is a very important and useful skill to develop.

    And how do we do that? By practising. Which is something that it’s necessary to take up consciously, and pursue consistently. When children are at school, there are (hopefully, ideally) curricula set out to ensure they engage and train all parts of their brain. As adults, this does not tend to get the same amount of focus.

    “Children’s brains are still developing”—indeed, and so are adult brains:

    The Brain As A Work-In-Progress

    Dr. Taylor had the uncommon experience of having to, in many ways, neurologically speaking, redo childhood. And having had a second run at it, she developed an appreciation of the process that most of us didn’t necessarily get when doing childhood just the once.

    In other words: take the time to feel stuff; take the time to quiet down your chatty mind, take the time engage your senses, and take it seriously! Really notice, as though for the first time, what the texture of your carpet is like. Really notice, as though for the first time, what it feels like to swallow some water. Really notice, as though for the first time, what it feels like to experience joy—or sadness, or comfort, or anger, or peace. Exercise your imagination. Make some art (it doesn’t have to win awards; it just has to light up your brain!). Make music (again, it’s about wiring your brain in your body, not about outdoing Mozart in composition and/or performance). Make changes! Make your brain work in the ways it’s not in the habit of doing.

    If you need a little help switching off parts of your brain that are being too active, so that you can better exercise other parts of your brain that might otherwise have been neglected, you might want to try:

    The Off-Button For Your Brain

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Aging Backwards – by Miranda Esmonde-White

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    In this book, there’s an upside and a downside to the author’s professional background:

    • Upside: Miranda Esmonde-White is a ballet-dancer-turned-physical-trainer, and it shows
    • Downside: Miranda Esmonde-White is not a scientist, and it shows

    She cites a lot of science, but she either does not understand it or else intentionally misrepresents it. We will assume the former. But as one example, she claims:

    “for every minute you exercise, you lengthen your life by 7 minutes”

    …which cheat code to immortality is absolutely not backed-up by the paper she cites for it. The paper, like most papers, was much more measured in its proclamations; “there was an association” and “with these conditions”, etc.

    Nevertheless, while she misunderstands lots of science along the way, her actual advice is good and sound. Her workout programs really will help people to become younger by various (important, life-changing!) metrics of biological age, mostly pertaining to mobility.

    And yes, this is a workout-based approach; we won’t read much about diet and other lifestyle factors here.

    Bottom line: it has its flaws, but nevertheless delivers on its premise of helping the reader to become biologically younger through exercises, mostly mobility drills.

    Click here to check out Aging Backwards, and age backwards!

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Hero Homemade Hummus

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    If you only have store-bought hummus at home, you’re missing out. The good news is that hummus is very easy to make, and highly customizable—so once you know how to make one, you can make them all, pretty much. And of course, it’s one of the healthiest dips out there!

    You will need

    • 2 x 140z/400g tins chickpeas
    • 4 heaped tbsp tahini
    • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
    • Juice of 1 lemon
    • 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • Optional, but recommended: your preferred toppings/flavorings. Examples to get you started include olives, tomatoes, garlic, red peppers, red onion, chili, cumin, paprika (please do not put everything in one hummus; if unsure about pairings, select just one optional ingredient per hummus for now)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Drain the chickpeas, but keep the chickpea water from them (also called aquafaba; it has many culinary uses beyond the scope of today’s recipe, but for now, just keep it to one side).

    2) Add the chickpeas, ⅔ of the aquafaba, the tahini, the olive oil, the lemon juice, the black pepper, and any optional extra flavoring(s) that you don’t want to remain chunky. Blend until smooth; if it becomes to thick, add a little more aquafaba and blend again until it’s how you want it.

    3) Transfer the hummus to a bowl, and add any extra toppings.

    4) Repeat the above steps for each different kind of hummus you want to make.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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