The Anti-Aging Morning Routine That Actually Works (Most People Skip This)

If there's one system that determines how fast you age, it's not going to be your diet, your supplementation or your exercise. It's your circadian rhythm. Your body runs on a 24-hour internal clock that controls everything. Your energy levels, metabolism, hormone production, sleep quality, even aging itself. And what's the most important moment of that entire cycle? It's the first 30 to 60 minutes when you wake up. The goal is very simple to tell your brain that it's daytime. This single signal helps to anchor your metabolism, your sleep, your energy production and the long-term biology of aging. We need to start with something that's quite crucial to understand, that the body regulates your sleep-wakefulness cycles through the circadian rhythms. The main hormone that signals wakefulness and tells the body that it's daytime is cortisol and this phenomenon is called the cortisol awakening response, CAR. It refers to the rapid rise in cortisol levels that occur within the first 30 to 45 minutes after waking up. It's supposed to increase your alertness, blood pressure, brain activity and glucose availability to prepare you for the day. A flattened cortisol slope, often characterized by lower morning cortisol, combined with higher evening cortisol levels, is strongly associated with insulin resistance, obesity and type 2 diabetes. I know cortisol gets a bad reputation online for being the stress hormone, but having low cortisol levels in the morning is bad. It's a sign that your body is struggling with producing enough cortisol. And it's bad for overall longevity to have low cortisol in the morning because of this disrupted circadian rhythm. There have been several interesting papers over the last few years pointing out that there's a strong link between the circadian rhythms and aging. The way aging comes into play is by blunting the fluctuation in these hormones. Younger individuals maintain robustness and big swings in their circadian rhythms. They produce a lot of cortisol in the morning, which is supposed to wake you up and energizes you for the rest of the day. And they also produce a lot of melatonin in the evening to support sleep. Older individuals, on the other hand, have lower fluctuations in cortisol, melatonin and body temperature, which means that their circadian rhythm is more flatlined. I call this phenomenon chronic jet lag syndrome. Your body doesn't know what time of the day it is because there's no signal from the fluctuations of these hormones. Instead of big swings and fluctuations, your body experiences flatlined hormones, which creates a situation of chronic jet lag. The key to mitigating this is to have high cortisol in the morning so that your body would know that it's daytime. Cortisol's job is to wake you up, give you energy, increase your blood sugar level so that you would have energy to start the day. If you feel tired in the morning, then oftentimes it's because of not producing enough cortisol. When you're young, like less than 60 years of age, then this process happens quite naturally and relatively easily. But over the age of 60, the natural blunting of these hormones, the natural aging process, results in low cortisol and low melatonin in the evening. Here's how to support your morning cortisol awakening response. Bright light exposure upon waking up for at least 10 to 15 minutes. This bright light signals the brain that it's the and increases cortisol production, which anchors your circadian rhythm to the morning. Light is the number one regulator of circadian rhythms. Ideally, it should be from the sun because you're getting unique wavelengths of light from the sun that you don't get from the seasonal defective disorder lamps. But the bright lamps are better than nothing at all. For older people, bright light exposure might not be enough to produce enough cortisol because they've already aged substantially. That's why I think that higher caffeine intake might be useful because caffeine raises cortisol. Your natural cortisol production is so low that you need some extra. It might also be the reason why coffee consumption is associated with lower rates of heart disease, lower rates of Alzheimer's and cancer. The caffeine partly contributes to circadian regulation if you consume it in the morning. You can also exercise in the morning because exercise is another circadian cue. If you exercise earlier in the day, you shift your entire circadian rhythm earlier into the day. If you exercise later in the day, you shift your circadian rhythm later. Nighttime exercise will also disrupt the circadian rhythm, but people with a late chronotype will shift their circadian rhythm earlier if they exercise in the evening, whereas early chronotype people shift their circadian rhythm later. If you want to reset your circadian rhythm and have an earlier chronotype, then you need to bank more of this cortisol awakening response into earlier parts of the day. You want to go outside, get bright light exposure after waking up. You want to do some movement like go for a walk, maybe some light exercise. You want to consume caffeine in the early part of the day. You also want to have breakfast to another circadian cue in the morning and maybe you could even take a cold shower for example. All of these things will raise cortisol and doing them earlier in the day will shift your circadian rhythm earlier into the day as well. If you don't want to shift your circadian rhythm earlier, you maybe want to shift it a bit later, then of course you don't want to do that immediately after waking up. Let's talk a little bit about the morning sunlight exposure and why it's important. By now everyone pretty much knows that morning daylight is quite important for starting the circadian rhythm. Andrew Huberman made sure of that. But the morning sunlight is also best for skin anti-aging. The highest, most beneficial and safest concentration of natural infrared and red light occurs during the early morning just after sunrise and also in the late afternoon just before sunset. Red light exposure has been seen to increase mitochondrial function, support eye health and increase skin collagen synthesis that reverses skin aging. It's exactly what you need if you're exposed to a lot of blue light all day. Red light stimulation also has been seen to lower blood sugar response after eating by 27.7%. So getting some sunlight exposure after eating can be good for digestion and glucose control. Infrared light has been seen to penetrate the body and have systemic effects such as improved vision and lower inflammation. Infrared light also penetrates the skull and helps with brain function and melatonin production at night. The infrared light also plays a role in skin collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid synthesis which all help with skin anti-aging. The benefit of early morning sunlight exposure is that the UV index is also quite low. UV light is essential for vitamin desynthesis and it's responsible for skin tanning as well as production of melanin that makes your skin pigmented and protects the skin against UV induced damage. UV light even produces nitric oxide that lowers blood pressure and supports blood flow. But here's the catch. Excess UV light also accelerates skin aging and wrinkles. That's why moderation matters. So getting morning sunlight after the sunrise is the best time to get sun exposure. It's because it has the highest concentration of red and infrared light and it has the lowest concentration of UV light. So it's the most beneficial for skin anti-aging purposes. I want to take a quick break to tell you about the Bonchart Infrared Sona Blankets. My go-to way of getting 20-minute sona sessions on the go without needing to spend an hour to warm up a regular sona. Taking a sona is in my opinion one of the best things for your overall health and heart function. Studies show that taking a sona regularly is associated with 63% lower risk of sudden cardiac death, 63% reduced heart disease mortality, 46% lower risk of hypertension and 40% reduced all-cause mortality. This is mediated by an increase in body temperature and increased heart rate that mimic a cardiovascular workout while at the same time improving arterial stiffness, endothelial function, blood flow, immune system function, blood pressure and metabolic health. It doesn't matter if it's a traditional wooden sona, an infrared sona, an infrared sona blanket or anything else that elevates your body temperature above what's normal. Bonchart Infrared Sona Blankets have the advantage of shining far infrared light that can penetrate deeper into your tissues than regular sonas can. It warms up in two minutes to the optimal temperature of 70 degrees Celsius and it's low in EMF. You can get a 15% discount by heading over to bonchart.com forward slash seamlunt and use the code SEAM for 15% discount. Another important thing to talk about is NAD Recyclic which is one of the main ways your body produces NAD which is a coenzyme for energy metabolism. I've been telling this for years that the circadian rhythm regulation controls your NAD Recycling and it's the most important part to how much NAD you produce on a daily basis. In fact, recent studies on mice show that this NAD Recycling might be a key component to protecting against Alzheimer's. A 2025 study in the journal Cell used an experimental compound to restore severe memory and cognitive deficits to completely normal healthy levels in mice with Alzheimer's. They used P7C3A20 which is a neuroprotective small molecule that restores brain NAD. The way this P7C3A20 therapy increased NAD was by enhancing the activity of NAMPT, the rate-limiting step in NAD Recycling. The therapy used on the Alzheimer's mice isn't an NAD precursor like NMN or NR. It's an NAMPT activator which recycles NAD, making it more sustainable. NAMPT is SIRK1 dependent and SIRK1 is a sirtuin that regulates circadian rhythms and energy homeostasis, which means that NAMPT is dependent on circadian rhythm regulation. So as you can see, this morning sunlight exposure isn't just for, you know, fun. It's a central anchor to your entire day's circadian rhythm because it controls your NAD Recycling, it controls your metabolism, your energy production, and your skin and aging. The morning sunlight exposure starts the circadian rhythm, increases the cortisol levels, supports NAD Recycling. Even if it's cloudy outside, the light is still about 10 times brighter than indoor LED lights. Even if it's cloudy, you should go outside for 5 to 10 minutes to get that circadian rhythm response. If the sun is out, that's the best for morning infrared light and red light. But even if it's not, the light coming through the clouds is better than nothing. So I believe it's all starting to come together for you. The moment you wake up in the morning is a key moment of the entire day. It starts your circadian rhythm and regulates all other circadian processes throughout the rest of the day. Here's a rundown of the entire morning routine. Get light in your eyes immediately within 10 to 30 minutes of waking. Natural daylight should be the first light that enters your eyes, not the blue artificial light of your smartphone. Number two, prioritize real sunlight, not just artificial bright light lamps. Number three, move your body early. Go for a walk, do some mobility, or just shake around. Four, use caffeine strategically, especially if you're older. Five, stack your activation signals early in the day. You wanna increase your cortisol awakening response to have a proper energy surge in the morning. Number six, keep your evenings low stimulation. You don't wanna have high cortisol before bed. And number seven, be consistent, because consistency and regularity is the most important thing to your circadian rhythms. If you wanna learn about what I myself do in the mornings, then check out my evidence-based morning routine featuring Greg Potter, who has a PhD in sleep and circadian rhythms.