There is nothing worse than lying in your bed, with your mind racing, and you can\u2019t 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\u2019ve tried clearing your mind, but can\u2019t. You\u2019ve tried counting sheep but reached 100.\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is nothing worse than lying in your bed, with your mind racing, and you can\u2019t fall asleep<\/a>. The longer you lie in bed,<\/a> the more anxious you get about falling asleep, which makes it even harder to catch some ZZZs. You\u2019ve tried clearing your mind,<\/a> but can\u2019t. You\u2019ve tried counting sheep but reached 100. What do you do now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a recent Real Time with Bill Maher<\/em>, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman <\/a>made an off-the-cuff remark about a sleep hack<\/a> that he swears by, and it\u2019s based on brain research. Huberman is a Stanford University neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology. He\u2019s also the host of the popular podcast Huberman Lab<\/a><\/em>, which focuses on health and science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn fact, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you\u2019re 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,\u201d Huberman told Maher as he moved his eyes from side to side as if he was surveying a vast landscape. \u201cDo some long exhales. I can\u2019t promise, but I\u2019m willing to wager like maybe one pinky, that within five minutes or so, you\u2019ll be back to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Huberman explained the exercise in greater detail on Mark Bell\u2019s Power Project <\/a><\/em>podcast. In his appearance, he discussed the interesting connection between our eyes and their connection to the amygdala<\/u><\/a>, an almond-shaped part of the brain that controls our emotional response. \u201cEye movements of that sort actually do suppress the amygdala [to] make people feel calmer, less fearful,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut for most people who are sighted, moving your eyes from side to side for 10 to 30 seconds is going to calm you down,\u201d Huberman said. \u201cAnd this makes really good sense because, from an evolutionary perspective, an adaptive perspective, we\u2019ve always been confronted with interpersonal threats and animal to human threats. Forward movement is the way that you suppress the fear response.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Huberman\u2019s video is important because many Americans need to get more sleep. A 2022 Gallup poll<\/u><\/a> found that only 32% of Americans said they got \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cvery good\u201d sleep; 35% described their sleep as \u201cgood\u201d; and 33% said their sleep was \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cpoor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sleep is essential to maintaining good health<\/u><\/a>. Getting at least seven hours<\/a> 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\u2019s great that Huberman shares his hack, which few people would have come up with without a background in neuroscience, to improve their sleep. It\u2019s also another exciting way to show just how interconnected the body is, from eyes to brain and beyond. Sweet dreams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is nothing worse than lying in your bed, with your mind racing, and you can\u2019t fall asleep. The longer you lie in bed, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/677950474_1437586665068987_211982850143288363_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7837,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835\/revisions\/7837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How to fall asleep fast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Andrew Huberman\u2019s hack is based on neuroscience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Americans aren\u2019t getting enough sleep<\/h2>\n\n\n\n