Thank you for joining the Huberman Lab Neural Network—a once-a-month newsletter with science and science-related tools for everyday life. This newsletter aims to provide you with actionable information in a condensed form.

In the guest series with Dr. Matthew Walker, we explain how to determine your sleep needs and improve sleep quality. This newsletter highlights key protocols from these episodes that will improve your ability to fall asleep, stay asleep and enhance the overall quality of your sleep.

Sleep Fundamentals: QQRT

Quantity: the total amount of sleep. The typical adult needs sleep 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. This ensures sufficient time for both deep sleep and REM sleep, so you wake up feeling refreshed and restored. Some people need less, others more, especially babies, teens, and those combating an illness or infection.

Quality: the continuity and structure of sleep. Frequent awakenings (even if you don’t remember) or fragmented sleep represent poor sleep quality.

  • Wearable sleep trackers measure sleep quality through sleep efficiency scores. An efficiency rating of ≥ 85% is a good goal.
  • Note: For some, sleep trackers can lead to anxiety about sleep quality (termed “orthosomnia“), which can paradoxically lead to disrupted sleep. Consider reviewing your sleep scores less often. For example, weekly, not daily, to minimize constant monitoring.
  • For those who don’t use sleep trackers, poor sleep quality often manifests as excessive daytime sleepiness even if they slept sufficient total hours.

Regularity: stick to a consistent sleep schedule. Consistently going to bed and waking up at the same time each day leads to improved overall sleep patterns and quality by anchoring your body’s circadian rhythm, or internal clock.

  • Aim for consistent bedtimes and wake times with a ± 30 minutes margin of error, whether it’s the weekend or a weekday. No one is perfect about this, but that’s a good goal.
    • In addition to your morning alarm clock, consider adding a “bedtime alarm,” which tells you when to go to sleep.
  • Studies have shown that regular sleep patterns reduce all-cause mortality and may reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease more effectively than other metrics, such as sleep duration.

Timing: align your sleep schedule with your natural chronotype (morning person, night owl, versus typical sleep-wake schedule). Chronotype is primarily determined by genetics, and yet your preferred sleep time will vary a bit across your lifespan. You can find your natural chronotype using the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ). Sleeping out of sync with your chronotype will result in poorer quality sleep. But, of course, we have to adhere to life’s demands as well.