How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness

High-Level Overview

In this solo episode, Andrew Huberman explains how to use the science of circadian rhythms to beat jet lag, cope with shift work, and improve sleep for new parents, babies, teens and older adults. The anchor of the whole episode is one simple measure he believes everyone should know: your "temperature minimum", the lowest point of your daily body temperature, which typically falls about 90 minutes to two hours before you usually wake up. Light, exercise, temperature and meals on one side of that point shift your clock earlier; on the other side, later.

The tone is practical and teaching-focused, with Huberman deliberately explaining mechanisms so listeners can adapt the rules to any trip or schedule rather than memorizing protocols. He mixes in personal stories (weeks of broken sleep after a trip to Australia, feeling awful after flying to Abu Dhabi), some biology asides about hamsters, frogs and graying hair, and ends with his views on melatonin and a few sleep supplements. The episode moves from the ideal daily light schedule to jet lag, shift work and life stages, then closes with anxiety-reducing rest tools and supplements.

The Discussion Explores:

• What the circadian rhythm is and why humans are built to be awake by day and asleep at night
• The "perfect day" for light: lots of bright light early, evening sunlight, and darkness late at night
• Why jet lag can harm health and why flying east is harder than flying west
• The temperature minimum and how light, exercise, food and temperature before or after it shift your clock
• Specific plans for eastward and westward travel and short trips
• Melatonin: how it affects reproductive hormones and why Huberman prefers behavioral tools
• Shift work rules, especially keeping the same schedule for at least two weeks
• Sleep for babies and new parents, teens and older adults, plus NSDR and supplements

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

The Circadian Rhythm and the Ideal Light Schedule

Huberman explains that we all have an internal rhythm of roughly 24 hours, visible when people live in caves without daylight. Body temperature rises and falls on this cycle, and we tend to feel sleepy as temperature falls and alert as it rises. A clock in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus is set by the outside light-dark cycle, and it coordinates metabolism, immunity and mood. Although people vary between night owls and morning larks, humans are a daytime species, and drifting too far toward a nocturnal life brings mental and physical health problems.

The "perfect day" involves getting as much light as possible into your eyes when you want to be awake, and as little as possible when you want to sleep, without looking at anything so bright it hurts. His rule of thumb is to accumulate about 100,000 lux before about 9 a.m. (maybe 10), because the clock slowly adds up light over time. A phone screen gives only about 500 to 1,000 lux, bright indoor lights about 4,000 to 5,000, and even a cloudy day outdoors 7,000 to 10,000 or more, so going outside is far more effective. He suggests a free light meter app to check. He also recommends viewing evening sunlight, which lowers your eyes' sensitivity so that late-night screens or bathroom lights are less disruptive, and avoiding light between about 10 or 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., since only about 1,000 to 1,500 lux can shift your clock at night. He cites two University of Colorado camping studies showing that a couple of days of waking with the sun and avoiding night light reset people's melatonin and cortisol rhythms.

Jet Lag: Why It Matters and Why East Is Harder

Huberman doesn't mince words: peer-reviewed studies show that frequent jet lag can shorten life, and he notes that disoriented travelers sometimes step in front of traffic. A family member once had a week of amnesia after taking a sleeping pill on a work trip, and his own 12-hour shift to Abu Dhabi left him with mood swings and vertigo. He also stresses you don't need to fly to be jet lagged: looking at your phone at night, waking at different times, and exercising at chaotic hours all do it.

"Traveling westward on the globe is always easier than traveling eastward", he says. Our nervous system is better at staying awake on demand than at falling asleep early, likely an evolutionary adaptation. So flying east, which requires going to sleep earlier, is harder, and studies (he cites Davidson and colleagues, 2006) show eastward travel takes a bigger toll on lifespan. North-south travel causes only travel fatigue, not time-zone jet lag. Jet lag also tends to worsen with age, as melatonin and other rhythms become less stable, and people who exercise regularly can use exercise to help shift their clock.

Your Temperature Minimum: The Key Landmark

Huberman says "everyone should know their temperature minimum". You don't need a thermometer: average your wake-up time over the last three to seven days and subtract about 90 minutes to two hours. If you wake at 6 a.m., your minimum is around 4 to 4:30 a.m. Citing Joe Takahashi's work, he explains that body temperature is the signal the brain's clock uses to keep all the body's cells on the same schedule.

The rule is simple: viewing bright light in the roughly four hours after your temperature minimum advances your clock, making you want to sleep and wake earlier in the following days. Viewing bright light in the four to six hours before it delays your clock, making you want to stay up and sleep later. Exercise and eating work in the same direction, and together these can shift your clock by one to three hours per day. Between roughly mid-morning and a few hours before your temperature minimum lies a "circadian dead zone" in which light, exercise and meals won't shift the clock. Temperature itself can be used too: a cold shower or ice bath causes a rebound rise in body temperature that advances the clock, while a hot shower that cools you afterward in the morning tends to delay it. He also notes that daytime sleepiness, beyond a short dip, is a sign you aren't getting enough sleep.

Putting It to Work When You Travel

For a nine-hour eastward trip, such as California to Europe, Huberman would start two or three days before leaving by getting up shortly after his temperature minimum and getting bright light (artificial if necessary), perhaps exercising or eating then too. On arrival, he warns, simply getting sunlight can backfire: depending on your internal clock, local sunlight may fall in your dead zone or in the window before your temperature minimum, pushing you the wrong way. Keep track of home time (he half-jokes about wearing two watches) so you know where your temperature minimum is shifting, and with good preparation the full shift can take as little as 24 to 36 hours.

Eat on the local meal schedule, or fast if that's your practice, but don't keep eating on home time, which sends conflicting signals from the liver's clock to the brain. Flying west, the challenge is staying up: use caffeine, exercise and evening light to delay your clock, and avoid a nap that turns into four hours. For trips of 48 hours or less, and ideally up to three days, stay on your home schedule, using a portable light pad (his gives about 1,000 lux) and an eye mask. After graduate school, a trip to Australia left him sleeping in hour-long chunks for weeks; he fixed it by exercising at the same time daily, making his home cave-dark at night and getting lots of daytime light. He also mentions "ICU psychosis", where disrupted light cycles in hospitals can cause hallucinations that ease when patients are placed near a window.

Melatonin and the Hormone System

Huberman is skeptical of routinely using melatonin. It can help you fall asleep but doesn't help you stay asleep. Melatonin inhibits gonadotropin-releasing hormone, and therefore luteinizing hormone, testosterone and estrogen. In seasonally breeding animals such as Siberian hamsters, long winter melatonin signals shrink the testes from grape-size to rice-size. That doesn't happen in humans, but he worries that supplements have been found to contain 85% to 400% of the labeled dose, so children may be getting supraphysiological amounts during development, which no study has tested. He prefers light, exercise and temperature, which are easier to adjust and safer, while saying adults can decide with a doctor, and that melatonin may be most reasonable for older adults who struggle with sleep.

He also takes on some online myths: the pineal gland produces only tiny amounts of DMT, not enough to explain dreams, and he says pineal calcification isn't the problem it's made out to be.

Shift Work

His top rule for shift workers: stay on the same schedule for at least 14 days, including weekends. Swing shifts that flip every few days badly disrupt cortisol, learning and the dopamine system, a point he says Samer Hattar, head of the chronobiology unit at the National Institute of Mental Health, emphasized. He acknowledges many people can't control this and thanks the first responders, nurses, pilots and others who work nights.

The same logic applies: get as much light as you safely can when you need to be alert, and as little as possible when you want to sleep. Because the dead zone depends on your internal clock, not the time on the wall, he boils it down: "If your temperature is decreasing, avoid light. If your temperature is increasing, get light". For a fully nocturnal worker, the setting sun is effectively morning sun and can help them wake, while the rising sun on the way home should be avoided with sunglasses because it would delay their clock. He clarifies that he doesn't oppose blue blockers at night; it's the brightness of light that matters most, and dimming or turning off lights works too. He also wishes wearables would track daily temperature minimums.

Babies, New Parents, Teens and Older Adults

Babies aren't born with a regular sleep-wake cycle: their melatonin is high and steady, they run on roughly 90-minute cycles, and their eyes are sensitive and don't handle bright light well, so parents shouldn't use sunlight on them the way adults do. Keeping the room slightly cooler when you want them to sleep and slightly warmer when awake can help. For exhausted parents, he suggests sleeping in 45- or 90-minute blocks when possible, staying calm rather than fully alert during the baby's sleep, using non-sleep deep rest (NSDR), and getting morning and evening sunlight to anchor a clock that's "going into a tailspin". The same advice applies to caring for a sick loved one. As children grow, sleep in whole 90-minute cycles beats waking mid-cycle.

Puberty, he notes, is "the fastest rate of aging" we ever undergo, and teens naturally sleep later, so he suggests prioritizing total sleep and giving them some leeway. He cites work by Jamie Zeitzer at Stanford showing that turning on lights in a teen's room before they wake, even through closed eyelids, helps them fall asleep earlier and get about 45 minutes more deep sleep. Older adults tend to sleep and wake early; he recommends a regular schedule, as much natural light as safely possible (near an open window if they can't go outside), avoiding artificial light at night, and discussing melatonin with a doctor.

Rest Tools, Sleep Anxiety and Supplements

Huberman pushes back on anxiety about "sleep debt", saying "there isn't an IRS equivalent for sleep", and that worrying about perfect sleep can itself cause insomnia. He recommends non-sleep deep rest protocols such as yoga nidra and clinically tested hypnosis from Reveri to teach the nervous system to calm down; he used one after waking at 3 a.m. the previous night and fell back asleep until 6:30. As a biology aside, he explains that the melanopsin pigment that sets our clock was discovered by Iggy Provencio in frog skin cells, that long days raise dopamine, and that stress can turn hair gray through adrenaline-releasing nerves at the hair follicle.

For people who have their behaviors in place, he describes three supplements that help him, taken 30 to 60 minutes before bed after checking with a doctor and resources like Examine.com: magnesium threonate (or glycinate), which reaches the brain and may speed and deepen sleep, while malate goes more to muscle and citrate mainly acts as a laxative; theanine at 100 to 300 mg, which calms but can cause vivid dreams, so sleepwalkers and people with night terrors should avoid it; and apigenin, derived from chamomile, which has anti-estrogenic effects to be aware of. He avoids 5-HTP and tryptophan, which make him sleep deeply and then wake, and closes with an anecdote about mysterious "red pills" from an acupuncturist that once gave him four hours of remarkably refreshing sleep.

Conclusion

Huberman's core message is that you can control your sleep and wake rhythms by understanding one landmark, your temperature minimum, and using light, exercise, meals and temperature on the right side of it. Get lots of bright light early and in the evening, avoid light late at night, prepare for eastward trips a few days ahead, stay on home time for short trips, eat on local time, keep shift schedules stable for two weeks, and adapt the same principles for babies, teens and older adults. He prefers these behavioral tools to melatonin, suggests NSDR for calming the mind, and offers a few supplements as optional extras. As he puts it, "I don't believe in hacking anything", but in understanding mechanisms well enough to run safe experiments on yourself.

This is a summary of "How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness" from Huberman Lab, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.