New study suggests 6 ways to have a more productive morning

Do you want the perfect recipe to wake up refreshed and have a productive morning?

An exciting new Nature Communications study published last week from my old research lab headed by Matthew Walker, PhD at the 美国加州大学伯克利分校 can give you just that! ??

The 6 key takeaways:

You wanna skip all the details? Scroll straight to the bottom :)

The experiment in a nutshell:

In this study, the focus was on factors driving morning alertness levels in healthy individuals. In total 833 twins and genetically unrelated individuals were recruited, both in the US and the UK. During the two weeks of the study, participants consumed multiple standardized breakfast meals (all muffins) of similar caloric value but differing in nutritional composition while wearing an activity tracker and a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). Participants also recorded their food intake throughout the study, together with their subjective alertness levels (on a 0-100 visual analog scale) at several time points.

Results

Factors that drive differences within individuals from one day to the next:

1) Sleep:

• Specifically, total sleep duration, which makes sense: sleeping longer (relative to one’s own typical sleep amount) reduces accumulated sleep debt resulting in higher morning alertness.

• Interestingly also later sleep (start and end time) was associated with higher alertness ratings, although it's less clear why. A few potential explanations: It could be because earlier-than-usual awakenings lead to more sleep inertia (i.e. more grogginess upon awakening), and later-than-usual awakenings catch generally higher alertness ratings later in the morning. It could also be due to more total REM sleep or waking up out of REM sleep, leading to more cortical activation and a higher body and brain temperature, which have been associated with less sleep inertia.

2) Activity levels:

• More activity the prior day was associated with higher alertness levels (specifically: the intensity of movement in the 10 most active hours of the previous day). Although more physical activity might have led to a longer sleep duration, in this case, the impact of physical activity remained significant when factoring in sleep duration. Unfortunately, sleep stages weren't measured, so it's not clear whether more physical activity boosted for instance deep sleep specifically, which then might have led to an increase in alertness levels the next morning.
• Less movement at night: this is pretty obvious, as participants who moved a lot during the night were likely not getting great sleep, although sleep efficiency itself wasn't a strong predictor.

3) The type of breakfast:

• A high-carb breakfast (relative to a reference meal consisting of a medium amount of fat & carbs) led to higher alertness levels.
• A high-protein breakfast actually lowered alertness.
• The strongest negative effect though was for a breakfast made up of pure glucose liquid (the so-called oral glucose tolerance test the participants had 1 morning), which led to the biggest drop in alertness a.k.a. a "sugar crash".
• Takeaway: you want lots of carbs, but you need some protein and fat (in this case the high-carb muffin was 16% fat and 7% protein).

4) The body's glucose response to the breakfast: the metabolic downstream consequence of the specific meal:

• A lower post-breakfast glycemic load (i.e., area under the curve of blood glucose in the 2 hours following the breakfast) predicted higher subsequent alertness.

Therefore, it is both the macronutrient profile of food and the way in which the body processes that food — here on the basis of glycemic blood glucose levels: both independently predict morning alertness

Some findings the researchers skipped over, that do seem quite relevant to me:

• Timing of breakfast: Having your breakfast later (having a longer time in between waking up and eating) predicted higher morning alertness (perhaps because people eating later, were basically fasting longer, leading to a lower glycemic load).
• Day of the week: It NOT being a weekend (it's unclear why people reported lower alertness levels on the weekend). I can personally totally relate though, it's hard to get anything done on a Saturday or Sunday morning, even without kids!)
• Daylight Savings Time (DST): this factor also had a big impact on alertness, but the authors didn't reference it, nor did they describe exactly how this measure was coded or relevant (e.g., was the 2-week experiment right around the switch in DST?)
• Caffeine: Unfortunately, only 2% of breakfasts were accompanied by caffeine (at least recorded, I bet more people did have coffee with their breakfast or shortly after), and nowhere did I see subsequent caffeine intake during the day recorded or analyzed (which is very surprising as it's so relevant to alertness).

Okay, so the above factors explain the differences WITHIN individuals from one day to the next.

Differences BETWEEN individuals

Interestingly, these were actually larger than within individuals (btw these are now alertness ratings averaged across the entire day): basically, people clearly fluctuated around their own set-point of daily alertness from one day to the next.

This personal set-point of daily alertness was found NOT to be genetically determined, as one might expect. Although, alertness levels in the first hours after waking up were somewhat more influenced by genetics than alertness during the rest of the day.

The set-point of daily alertness (average across the entire day) was instead linked to:

(1) Mood: higher levels of daily happiness were predictive of higher inherent levels of alertness

(2) Age: older age was predictive of higher inherent levels of alertness

(3) Sleep: an individual’s subjective quality of sleep (not the objectively measured sleep duration or efficiency)

(4) Eating frequency:?the higher the self-reported frequency of eating (1–2 times vs. 3–4 times vs. 5+ occasions), the lower the levels of trait alertness (perhaps due to more "trait" fasting leading to a generally lower glycemic load, which then boosts alertness?)

One big question I have remaining about the differences BETWEEN individuals:

• Morning versus evening types: Do any of the results differ for morning versus evening types? Based on other research you would definitely expect evening types to be less alert in the morning and get up to steam much later in the day (that shouldn't impact the setpoint but still curious how that played out here). Perhaps the big age effect here is partially due to people becoming stronger morning types as they age and therefore rating themselves as more alert throughout the day? The authors mention they looked into how much people switched their rhythm from a weekday to the weekend ("social jetlag") but never report it anywhere in the results.

6 Key takeaways

OK so I'm left with many questions about this study and find it a shame objective cognitive performance wasn't measured, only subjective alertness.

But I see some very clear takeaways that you can really control yourself:

1. Get your sleep! Specifically, make sure you don't build up a sleep debt and on a morning you really need to focus, don't set an alarm or set it later than your usual wake-up time if you can.

1. Be active: Have a productive Monday morning by spending as much time moving on Sunday as possible. Try to do this every day of course, but perhaps start with Sunday as it's likely more within your control.
2. Breakfast: try to aim for a ratio of 77% carbs, 16% fat and 7% protein, focus on carbs with a lower glycemic index, so no sugar, honey, or syrup in there, but more whole foods (e.g., oatmeal with nuts, protein powder and whole fruits), have it later in the morning, not immediately after waking up. We know from other studies that the order in which we eat these macronutrients also determines the impact on our subsequent glucose levels. Starting with fiber (vegetables) first, then proteins & fats, followed by carbs can lead to a lower glycemic load, which should then boost your alertness levels in the subsequent hours.
3. Frequency of meals: Eat fewer times a day, instead of 4 or 5 different times a day that you eat
4. Be happy about growing older! It seems to lead to higher alertness levels (at least subjectively ;-))
5. Think about what really makes you happy. Experiencing more daily happiness is associated with higher alertness levels.

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