Translator: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
Thank you very much.
Does anybody know about a circadian rhythm?
Raise your hand if anybody knows about it.
[Circadian Rhythm and Mental Disorders]
Circadian rhythm simply tells us for any biological system,
we have a rhythm over the day and the night.
Let's say, after this lecture, we go back home and to sleep.
So that's why we call ourselves "diurnal" animals.
Other animals like rats, cats and owls, they're nocturnal,
so we have a rhythm by 24 hours.
So today I want to tell you how important it is
to heal your rhythm in a mental disorder.
How many of noticed that we have another accident today in Colorado?
Students shoot. Yes. Okay.
So this is the one that our politicians try to emphasize how important it is
to control guns and control everything else.
I'm not interested in engaging in a political discussion.
But one important thing I'm going to tell you
is that I'm sure, 100 percent of them, that most of all these extreme cases
by killing people, using violent behavior are likely to have a mental disorder.
Why do they have that problem?
Let me tell you why.
First of all, I'd like to tell you how important it is, the mental disorder.
And I think we're getting more of an epidemic phenomenon -
more and more people getting mental disorders.
By today's statistics we know that close to 26 percent of American adults
suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.
That was back in 2005; today it would be much higher.
Major depressive disorder, you know, depression,
affects almost 15 million American adults.
Anxiety disorder affects another 40 million.
Thirty percent of combat veterans - you've heard about PTSD -
when they come back home, they have PTSD.
This is severe,
now we're facing almost 1.6 million PTSD soldiers coming back home.
This is a major impact to our society.
And 1 out of 55 school-age children suffer from autism.
You've heard about autism?
This is a really bad situation, okay?
And 11 percent of school-age children suffer from ADHD.
I bet everybody's heard about ADHD, right?
Why you cannot focus, and I believe you guys are all very smart,
but many other kids suffer from that, okay?
And I want to tell you why.
Okay, I believe that more than 80 percent of those who have mental disorders,
it's associated with a sleeping disorder.
So now, 10 to 18 percent of adult Americans
have a chronic sleep problem -
so they can have insomnia, they cannot sleep.
They have other sleeping difficulties.
Eighty percent of patients with mental disorders
suffer from chronic sleep disorders.
And sleeping problems are particularly common
in patients with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - ADHD.
So that treating sleeping disorder is very important
and may alleviate mental disorders.
Okay, so that's what I want to share with you right now.
So here are the brain facts that I want to tell you
to look at things from a very physical point of view
instead of just focusing on the mental.
We talk so much about mental,
and today there is a very large psychology conference in Anaheim.
The conclusion of that - 1,000 people attended the meeting -
is that behavioral therapy will not affect our PTSD soldiers.
So let me tell you, there is physics behind that.
So let's look at our brain.
Anybody know how big our brain is?
Now, if you take my brain out,
it's only two percent of my total body mass.
So no matter how much we appreciate our brain,
it's a very tiny organ, okay?
It's only two percent.
But this organ is very expensive,
it consumes almost 20 percent of our total energy budget.
Let's say you take a bowl of pasta -
most pasta is carbs.
So 50 percent of the carbs goes into our brain.
So half of a bowl shoots to the brain directly.
Right? So think about this:
Two percent of our mass consumes 20 percent of our total energy budget.
That's expensive.
Okay? So no matter what you do - you're a philosopher; you're an idiot -
it costs exactly the same energy.
(Laughter)
Which is true.
I feel so good that Dr. Phillips and I, we use the same amount of energy,
even if [inaudible].
(Laughter)
So, think about this:
Our brain is almost equivalent to a 25 watt light bulb.
You think about the light bulb constantly staying there.
So that when you burn that much fuel, you have to generate lots of heat.
And of course, carbon dioxide and water, and that kind of thing, right?
So the question I have is: Where does the heat go?
If you drive, now you know your combustion engine?
In your engineering work you know that you have to have a coolant
to cool it off.
You have a fan;
you have a radiator to cool it off.
If you don't cool off your engine, you know what the consequence is?
Either the engine gets set on fire, right?
Or it stops working from accumulating more heat.
So you have to cool off.
But our brain is not equipped with that.
We don't have coolant.
Our blood is warm.
You know how high the temperature is?
Ninety-eight degrees, or 37 degrees Celsius, right?
Thirty-seven degrees popping out of my heart,
going through the brain, coming out still 37 degrees.
Does anyone carry any heat out?
Your skull is not like your mom's aluminum pots.
You cannot cook the heat in;
you cannot radiate the heat out.
So it's not [a radiator], we don't have a fan.
So you have to find a way to cool off the brain.
Now we believe that sleep is the only way to cool off.
If you don't sleep, you screw yourself up.
(Laughter)
Let me tell you why.
A new study shows that in our diurnal lifestyle,
okay, we human beings have a way to cool off our brain
by almost 44 percent.
And I will say "cool off" the brain - we use the metabolism by 44 percent
during the period from 10 pm to 2 am.
How many of you really sleep that early?
I doubt it, okay?
Now, we also accumulate almost 30 percent ATP molecules.
ATP is the molecular level of energy reservoir.
Every pulse of your nerve activity will need ATP to pump it.
Without ATP, you cannot work it.
So that four hours of sleep will give you that much.
If you miss that window - let's say you go to bed by 12 -
you miss half of it.
If you go to bed by 1:00, it's almost totally gone.
Then you have to pay the rest of the 20 hours
to yourself for the sleep debt.
Okay? It's not worth it to stay [up] late.
You can go to bed early and get up early and you still have a lot of time, okay?
So that if you disturb sleep,
then it will significantly affect the brain's stability
because it's too hot.
And we have to follow the physics:
If it's too hot, then the system will not work.
So the consequence is that if you stay awake for three days,
you probably will be dead.
I know a couple of years ago - I know you guys all like online computer -
and a couple of kids in Korea,
they basically died of playing video games.
You know why?
Because their brains overheated themselves.
Mental disorders start from there.
Now, let me tell you why this is so important.
Here is the diagram - you need to only know part of that.
I hope I have a laser.
So how do we control this?
This is very new knowledge - this is just available in [recent] years.
When you see the left side, we have an eyeball, right?
The whole circadian rhythm starts from there.
Just keep in mind this is very important, okay?
Here you have a structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus -
this is right behind your eyeballs.
This is a very important key - we [say we have] a biological clock.
You know where the clock is?
It's the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
So now we realize there are two clock genes in there.
These genes - if you leave yourself alone in a dark room
without any social cues, environmental cues,
these two genes will oscillate as a 25-hour clock.
It's not 24 hours.
So the beauty of this is that we can reset our internal clock
every day to follow everybody's natural rhythm.
We found that the only thing that can change that is the sunlight.
Now we've even learned that sunlight
is between 450-500 nanometers in wavelength.
If you don't have sunlight, then your clock will not tick right.
So that while people are in sleep, then you'll wake up.
While people wake up, you fall asleep.
And I believe anxiety, depression, they're all related to this.
When everybody is focusing on their work and you fall asleep,
that's why you're depressed.
The other way around is also true, okay?
So how to sleep?
The key is to make yourself wake up fully.
How do you wake up fully?
Take sunlight.
When do you take sunlight?
In the morning.
How many of you really stay outside in the morning
before your school starts?
I doubt that anybody does this.
Okay, this is very critical.
Because these blue lights - the 500 nanometer blue light -
you can only see this in the morning.
If you miss this in the afternoon or early evening,
the sun turns to yellow, orange and even red,
it doesn't have the same effect.
So keep yourself smart, keep yourself healthy,
stay outdoors every morning.
I know, this is not your problem, this is a societal problem, okay?
So that when you get those lights into the brain,
they will go through a very long cascade reaction,
and by midnight, this area, called the pineal gland,
it will start to excrete a lot of melatonin.
So melatonin is the real cause why we fall asleep.
Now, when I talk about the circadian rhythm,
the circadian rhythm is not just about sleep.
This is a whole package of things that oscillates accordingly.
You have the hormones, body temperature, blood pressure,
a whole lot of things, even your genetic mutations,
are all related to these things.
So that if you miss your normal circadian rhythm,
then your body temperature will be different,
your blood pressure will be different,
so many different things will happen.
We have new data from 55 years of research from the New York Police Department.
We found that
comparing night shift police with day shift police -
and there's 50 years of research -
they found that if you do night shift - they call graveyard shift -
then you have double-digit higher potential to have cancer,
cardiovascular disease, even mental disorders.
So don't disturb your sleep.
Make sure you get up as early as you can to catch morning sunlight.
So, the normal circadian rhythm,
you can do this by increasing your daylight exposure in the morning;
sleep early - from tonight I feel guilty keeping you here.
(Laughter)
The thing today if you already have a problem doing that,
now we have a little technology that can help you
restore your natural biological rhythm.
And Bill just mentioned briefly, we have a locomotor rhythm,
you have a heartbeat, you have a lungbeat, and all kinds of things -
and all these rhythms have a very unique harmonic relationship.
So that to store your very large circadian rhythm as a beat,
we also have to focus on your internal beat.
Now we have a technology that Dr. Phillips and I created -
invented many years ago - we use magnetic pulsing
to help you re-synchronize your brainwaves, we call it EEG.
And we can also help you with the heartbeat.
So there's all these things - this technology is brand new,
it's a non-invasive procedure.
We use this technology to help so many different disorders.
And the common result is that everybody sleeps better.
When you sleep better -
if I take the treatment away, you may fall back to the same problem.
So we tell you, when you get a treatment,
you need to learn how to keep your normal circadian rhythm.
Remember how to do that?
Get up early, stay outside as much as you can
for at least one hour a day.
Don't play games too late.
By 10:00 you should go to bed.
I noticed somebody's already asleep.
Okay, this is what we're doing now.
And these are the different types of rhythm we're focusing on.
If any of you are interested in science, please contact us.
I'll be very glad to explain that more for you.
Thank you very much,
I think that's it.
(Applause)