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Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman shares 'really weird' trick to fall asleep in five minutes

There's an easy way to trick your brain into calming down.

via Jamesbrianbounds/Wikimedia Commons and Canva/Photos

Andrew Huberman and a woman sleeping.

There is nothing worse than lying in your bed, with your mind racing, and you can’t fall asleep. The longer you lie in bed, the more anxious you get about falling asleep, which makes it even harder to catch some ZZZs. You've tried clearing your mind, but can’t. You’ve tried counting sheep but reached 100. What do you do now?

On a recent Real Time with Bill Maher, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman made an off-the-cuff remark about a sleep hack that he swears by, and it's based on brain research. Huberman is a Stanford University neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology. He's also the host of the popular podcast Huberman Lab, which focuses on health and science.

How to fall asleep fast

“In fact, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you're having trouble falling back asleep, try just doing some long, extended exhales. And get this, this sounds really weird, but it has a basis in physiology. Keep your eyes closed and just move your eyes from side to side behind your eyelids like this, back and forth,” Huberman told Maher as he moved his eyes from side to side as if he was surveying a vast landscape. “Do some long exhales. I can't promise, but I'm willing to wager like maybe one pinky, that within five minutes or so, you'll be back to sleep.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Andrew Huberman’s hack is based on neuroscience

Huberman explained the exercise in greater detail on Mark Bell's Power Project podcast. In his appearance, he discussed the interesting connection between our eyes and their connection to the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain that controls our emotional response. “Eye movements of that sort actually do suppress the amygdala [to] make people feel calmer, less fearful,” Huberman said. He adds that when we are on a walk, we move our eyes from side to side, to analyze the terrain ahead of us, and the amygdala calms down.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

“But for most people who are sighted, moving your eyes from side to side for 10 to 30 seconds is going to calm you down," Huberman said. "And this makes really good sense because, from an evolutionary perspective, an adaptive perspective, we've always been confronted with interpersonal threats and animal to human threats. Forward movement is the way that you suppress the fear response."

Americans aren’t getting enough sleep

Huberman’s video is important because many Americans need to get more sleep. A 2022 Gallup poll found that only 32% of Americans said they got “excellent” or “very good” sleep; 35% described their sleep as “good”; and 33% said their sleep was “fair” or “poor.”

Sleep is essential to maintaining good health. Getting at least seven hours of sleep a night is great for your memory, focus, emotional regulation, appetite, muscle recovery, and tissue repair. It also reduces the risk of chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes. It’s great that Huberman shares his hack, which few people would have come up with without a background in neuroscience, to improve their sleep. It’s also another exciting way to show just how interconnected the body is, from eyes to brain and beyond. Sweet dreams.

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8 student confessions that make me think differently about money — and merit.

Hard work does not equal financial security.

In March 2015, a group of Columbia University students created a Facebook page named Columbia University Class Confessions.

The group behind the Facebook page is known as First-Generation Low-Income Partnership, otherwise known as FLIP.

Their goal? To provide lower-income students at Columbia a space to voice their realities.

Their realities are pretty darn harrowing.

Before Columbia, Stanford had already launched a class confessions program a few years back:


After Columbia and Stanford launched their Facebook class confession pages in early 2015, other colleges followed suit.

Brown

Williams

There's a lot we can take away from these stories. They're intense; they're saddening. But here's one thing we should definitely note.

Hard work does not equal financial security. Social mobility isn't as easy as some might think.

When the Fight for 15 protests happened across the nation in favor of raising the minimum wage, one of the most common counterarguments was: "Why don't they just go get a college degree?"

Well, look at these college students working hard — to feed themselves, to get a roof over their heads, to get the medical assistance they need for depression or other health conditions, to support their struggling families back home. They went to go get that college degree that is supposed to help people out of poverty. They even worked hard enough to apply and get accepted into incredibly prestigious colleges, colleges that one would think would be the golden ticket to success.

And still, they're struggling. "Hard work" doesn't always give lower-income folks what they need to survive and fit into a world that's not made for them.

And the sad reality is that many lower-income people will still be struggling after graduation thanks to a weak economy — and a lot of debt.

From the Institute of College Access and Success: 69% of the Class of 2013 graduated college with an average of $28,400 in student debt.

Lower-income students clearly have more difficulty navigating things that others might take for granted — simply because they never had access to the resources some have always had — and don't know how to use them.

Check out more stories being read by students in this video below:

We all deserve the right to survive without struggle. These students show that hard work doesn't cancel out the obstacles that many lower-income folks face when trying to move up the socio-economic ladder.

Maybe their stories will help stop the unfair judgement of lower-income people and help others be more aware and understanding at the same time.

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