ATHLLC9770534581

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.200 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:05.240 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:08.120 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins,

00:00:09.360 | and today let's talk about one of the most important things

00:00:12.440 | we can all optimize, sleep.

00:00:14.680 | So, whether you're someone who struggles with sleep

00:00:17.120 | or you just wanna strive for perfection,

00:00:19.440 | this episode will go deep on the entire spectrum,

00:00:22.520 | everything from environment, technology, food, drink,

00:00:25.080 | exercise, and a lot more.

00:00:26.980 | I am confident it will leave you with a few changes to make

00:00:29.720 | that will help you start waking up

00:00:31.260 | even more ready to take on your day.

00:00:33.520 | When I decided to do this episode,

00:00:34.980 | I wasn't sure who to bring on as a guest,

00:00:36.980 | but huge thank you to three-time All The Hacks guest,

00:00:39.580 | Lee Rowan, who texted me immediately

00:00:41.940 | after listening to a talk about sleep

00:00:44.020 | from our guest today, Molly Eastman,

00:00:45.920 | saying I had to invite her on the show.

00:00:48.220 | Molly is the creator of Sleep as a Skill

00:00:50.500 | and also hosts one of the top sleep podcasts in the world.

00:00:54.100 | She has a wealth of information

00:00:55.620 | and I'm so excited to be talking to her,

00:00:57.660 | so let's jump in right after this.

00:00:59.820 | I was walking through Costco recently looking for samples,

00:01:04.360 | as we all do at Costco,

00:01:06.020 | and the last sample station was for an electrolyte drink.

00:01:08.740 | But when I looked at the ingredients,

00:01:10.200 | there were 11 grams of sugar in each serving,

00:01:13.200 | which is so crazy.

00:01:14.960 | But here's the thing,

00:01:15.960 | staying hydrated and replenishing electrolytes

00:01:18.140 | is so important.

00:01:19.400 | Electrolyte deficiency or imbalance can cause headaches,

00:01:22.000 | cramps, fatigue, brain fog, and weakness.

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00:02:28.040 | (upbeat music)

00:02:30.460 | - Molly, thank you so much for being here.

00:02:32.580 | - Oh, thank you so much for having me.

00:02:34.500 | - So excited.

00:02:35.340 | Sleep is so fundamental

00:02:36.860 | and it's such an important part of our lives.

00:02:38.820 | I constantly talk to people

00:02:40.500 | who aren't giving it as much attention as it deserves.

00:02:43.260 | I just wanna know why is sleep so important?

00:02:45.420 | - Okay, so we really struggle to find a single domain

00:02:50.380 | of life that is not negatively impacted

00:02:53.680 | when our sleep is not working as well as it could.

00:02:56.640 | And what does that mean?

00:02:57.800 | So when you think about different domains of life,

00:03:01.380 | when you think about cognition,

00:03:03.180 | when you think about cardiovascular health,

00:03:05.020 | when you think about immune health,

00:03:06.360 | when you think about emotional regulation,

00:03:08.840 | mental health, et cetera,

00:03:10.140 | the ripple effects are so vast

00:03:13.140 | from a negative side of things

00:03:15.200 | when we're not getting the sleep that we require,

00:03:18.340 | whether in duration, regularity,

00:03:20.900 | the quality of that sleep.

00:03:22.680 | But then on the flip side

00:03:23.840 | from a more potentially positive spin,

00:03:26.240 | we struggle to find areas of life

00:03:28.000 | that are not positively impacted from a ripple effect

00:03:31.000 | when we do improve this area of our life.

00:03:33.880 | So it really has the possibility

00:03:36.480 | to absolutely reach tentacles

00:03:39.260 | into your whole experience of your life.

00:03:41.560 | And that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about it.

00:03:43.960 | - All right, so I think maybe to set a baseline,

00:03:46.640 | 'cause I'm sure we're gonna talk about

00:03:47.940 | a lots of parts of sleep.

00:03:49.100 | Let's talk about like fundamentals.

00:03:50.680 | What are the different stages?

00:03:52.120 | What's important about them?

00:03:53.300 | Let's kind of set some understanding

00:03:55.180 | of sleep in general for people.

00:03:57.060 | - So when we think about sleep,

00:03:58.660 | some of the general rules of thumb

00:04:00.340 | that probably a lot of people have heard

00:04:01.620 | is that for a healthy adult,

00:04:03.940 | you're aiming for somewhere around seven to nine hours.

00:04:06.980 | So that would be in the duration category.

00:04:09.100 | And that's what a lot of people are thinking about.

00:04:11.220 | So how much sleep am I logging?

00:04:13.420 | But it's about so much more than that.

00:04:15.780 | So you can be someone that hits whatever,

00:04:18.900 | seven and a half hours every single night,

00:04:20.520 | but it might be all over the place as far as regularity.

00:04:23.720 | It might be fragmented.

00:04:25.360 | So you might be taking a very long time

00:04:27.640 | to log that seven and a half hours.

00:04:29.840 | So that can be problematic.

00:04:31.500 | So we wanna get more granular

00:04:33.440 | on what our kind of goals are with our sleep.

00:04:36.960 | Also knowing that each individual

00:04:39.040 | is gonna have some bio-individuality

00:04:41.320 | on how much sleep they should be getting.

00:04:43.640 | But there are certain components

00:04:44.960 | that we would like to have as far as consistency,

00:04:47.480 | regularity, less of that sleep fragmentation, et cetera.

00:04:50.920 | When we think about sleep stage classifications,

00:04:54.200 | now this is where a lot of people

00:04:55.560 | start to go a little funky,

00:04:57.920 | meaning that I have a lot of people coming my way

00:05:00.640 | and they're freaking out

00:05:02.080 | because they're tracking on Aura, Whoop, Apple,

00:05:06.920 | Garmin, et cetera.

00:05:08.520 | And they're saying, I'm not getting any deep sleep.

00:05:11.080 | I'm not getting any REM, et cetera.

00:05:13.600 | So first off, when we think about those sleep stages,

00:05:17.480 | the problem is that this is the least accurate data

00:05:21.600 | on our wearables.

00:05:23.240 | So all the information that's coming out,

00:05:25.520 | this is the least accurate.

00:05:26.600 | And it's using its own algorithm within each wearable

00:05:29.880 | to make its best guess on, are you in deep sleep?

00:05:33.480 | Are you in REM?

00:05:34.400 | Are you in light sleep?

00:05:35.440 | It's kind of how it's been boiled down

00:05:37.680 | to some of the generalized ways

00:05:39.540 | that we're thinking of our sleep.

00:05:41.640 | And the problem is, because it's that best guess,

00:05:46.000 | if the algorithm is changed,

00:05:47.720 | your results with your sleep staging

00:05:49.680 | is going to be markedly shifted.

00:05:51.980 | So I work primarily with Aura Ring

00:05:54.200 | from a consumer grade tracker perspective.

00:05:56.720 | And just in 2023, a big algorithm change,

00:06:00.600 | and there was entirely different results

00:06:03.160 | for many, many people on their deep sleep,

00:06:05.800 | their REM, et cetera.

00:06:07.560 | And if you were making decisions

00:06:09.920 | on those numbers beforehand,

00:06:12.000 | you were really taken for a surprise

00:06:15.080 | when you got these totally new set of numbers.

00:06:17.600 | So my big message for people, if they are tracking,

00:06:20.280 | is one, to not get too crazed about the REM deep sleep

00:06:25.280 | and your light sleep.

00:06:27.160 | Instead, you can look from a trends perspective,

00:06:30.440 | do not try to cross reference within wearables

00:06:33.720 | since they are using such different algorithms.

00:06:36.360 | But within each wearable,

00:06:38.160 | you can start to notice particular trends

00:06:40.360 | and see are there patterns that you can help support

00:06:43.840 | based on those trends.

00:06:45.080 | And now, if we pan out even further,

00:06:47.360 | some of the generalized things

00:06:48.760 | that I think have a practical application

00:06:50.800 | is just simply to know that on your first half of the night,

00:06:54.120 | what most of us are looking for

00:06:56.000 | is a deeper, higher ratio of deep sleep on the first half

00:07:00.360 | and a higher ratio of REM on the second half.

00:07:03.440 | And what is important about that

00:07:05.960 | is even from a timing perspective,

00:07:08.080 | is that if you manipulate the time

00:07:11.080 | by which you're going to sleep

00:07:12.800 | and say you just decide to go to bed later

00:07:15.000 | on your Fridays, Saturdays,

00:07:16.560 | and maybe into Sundays or what have you,

00:07:18.840 | then you're lobbing off some of your possibility

00:07:22.200 | and potential to get deep sleep.

00:07:24.440 | That's that first part of your sleep

00:07:26.240 | 'cause the body likes to try to stay on time.

00:07:29.520 | So you're hitting some of your potential

00:07:31.600 | to get deep sleep on the first half.

00:07:33.600 | And then on the flip side,

00:07:35.320 | if you're someone that's waking up earlier

00:07:37.400 | on certain parts of your week or what have you,

00:07:39.560 | then you're cutting into some of your potential

00:07:41.720 | to get that REM.

00:07:43.240 | And probably most people have heard

00:07:45.000 | of some of the importance of both of these.

00:07:47.240 | Deep sleep, really, really crucial

00:07:49.320 | for some of our brain health,

00:07:50.840 | our reparative mechanisms, growth hormone, and more.

00:07:54.760 | And then of course, for REM,

00:07:56.440 | you can almost think of it as like your inner therapist.

00:07:58.760 | So, so much from our cognition, our memory,

00:08:01.480 | our emotional regulation, fortitude, other things

00:08:04.720 | can all get impacted then if you are cutting

00:08:07.440 | into your morning timing.

00:08:09.200 | So this is what's so interesting about sleep

00:08:12.200 | is that there's a real strategy

00:08:14.280 | by which we can navigate what are we prioritizing?

00:08:18.400 | And the least sexy thing about all this

00:08:20.400 | is one of the best ways to prioritize this

00:08:22.760 | and help facilitate it is consistency,

00:08:25.400 | which virtually no one wants to hear.

00:08:27.360 | But it's one of the most powerful things

00:08:30.080 | that can make such a difference with those ratios.

00:08:32.920 | - For someone who's not tracking with a device,

00:08:35.800 | is there a way to estimate how your quality of your sleep is

00:08:39.320 | or what you're getting?

00:08:40.200 | Is it about how you feel in the morning

00:08:41.840 | or how many times you wake up or something like that?

00:08:44.400 | - Yes, absolutely.

00:08:45.760 | So if you're not tracking, for many, many years,

00:08:48.200 | if you were struggling with your sleep,

00:08:49.760 | you wanted to get a sense of like, how am I sleeping?

00:08:51.880 | People would do sleep diary or sleep log.

00:08:55.280 | And so that's something you can do in a low-tech way,

00:08:57.640 | just pen and paper.

00:08:59.520 | And you can start tracking for a period of time.

00:09:01.800 | What time are you going to sleep?

00:09:03.400 | So you're getting into bed.

00:09:04.720 | And how long is it about taking you to fall asleep?

00:09:08.280 | Then from that point, what time are you waking up?

00:09:10.800 | But in between that time,

00:09:12.920 | there's often for many people, a lot that might go on.

00:09:15.840 | So they might wake up at three, four in the morning.

00:09:19.160 | And if so, how long are you waking up?

00:09:22.120 | If you're really struggling with insomnia,

00:09:24.440 | kind of difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep,

00:09:26.960 | what are some of the thoughts that are coming up

00:09:29.000 | throughout that period of time

00:09:30.960 | so that we can just get a read

00:09:32.760 | on both your results with your sleep,

00:09:34.880 | but also your relationship to your sleep?

00:09:36.880 | Are you getting really thrown by some of these results?

00:09:39.760 | But then of course, to your point,

00:09:41.560 | so once we're tracking for a period of time,

00:09:43.960 | it's like, what other information can we glean?

00:09:46.160 | Well, we can glean, what is our average bedtime?

00:09:48.960 | What is our average wake-up time?

00:09:50.720 | What are our average number of kind of sleep fragmentations

00:09:53.200 | or wake-ups throughout the course of the night?

00:09:54.800 | How long are we awake during that period?

00:09:57.480 | But then also, of course, the subjectivity,

00:09:59.760 | because even if you are tracking or aren't tracking,

00:10:02.000 | what's your subjective experience?

00:10:04.600 | So are you waking up really feeling very fatigued?

00:10:07.240 | Now, there is something known

00:10:08.400 | as sleep inertia in the morning.

00:10:10.320 | You're back online, if you will,

00:10:11.760 | 'cause you've been in this altered state for hours,

00:10:15.120 | and now you're coming back

00:10:16.720 | at a different level of cognition.

00:10:18.880 | So you might have a little bit of a sleepy haze to you.

00:10:21.720 | That's often normal, but is it really augmented

00:10:25.280 | or really a struggle for you to wake up,

00:10:28.080 | go about your day-to-day activities?

00:10:29.920 | Are you finding that then you're consistently sleepy

00:10:32.480 | throughout the course of the day?

00:10:33.640 | This can then get into questions

00:10:35.200 | of even beyond just sleep deprivation or poor sleep,

00:10:38.240 | then possible sleep disorders,

00:10:39.960 | which Mount Sinai just quantified it

00:10:42.280 | as that it appears that there's over 100 sleep disorders

00:10:45.680 | or sleep-wake disorders.

00:10:47.480 | So there are a lot of things that could be undiagnosed

00:10:50.960 | that you wanna be aware of too.

00:10:52.280 | Could you be dealing with that level of fatigue

00:10:55.200 | throughout the course of your day

00:10:56.600 | that could point to things

00:10:58.160 | like respiratory-based sleep disorders,

00:11:00.640 | like sleep apnea, upper airway resistance syndrome,

00:11:03.400 | or otherwise, and those can really impact

00:11:06.160 | the quality of your sleep.

00:11:07.760 | Another big red flag that I see a lot for people

00:11:11.440 | in relation to your point around

00:11:13.360 | what else might we be able to tell if we're not tracking

00:11:16.000 | is are you falling asleep

00:11:17.840 | the minute your head hits the pillow?

00:11:19.560 | And I get this all the time.

00:11:20.920 | People are like, "Oh yeah, I'm sleep.

00:11:23.240 | "I'm good with that.

00:11:24.080 | "I can sleep anytime, anywhere.

00:11:26.280 | "Doesn't matter.

00:11:27.440 | "I am out.

00:11:28.280 | "I don't have any problems with that."

00:11:29.640 | But actually, that would be a red flag for us

00:11:31.720 | that something might be a problem

00:11:33.400 | because that can denote or be a sign of sleep deprivation

00:11:37.240 | or an undiagnosed sleep disorder

00:11:39.360 | because we do want a little bit

00:11:40.600 | of a sleep latency period of time,

00:11:43.120 | so kind of healthy sleep latency, if you will,

00:11:46.120 | and it will be bio-individual,

00:11:47.720 | but somewhere in the 10 to 15-minute range

00:11:50.600 | quite usually is kind of a healthy amount of time

00:11:53.720 | to go from an awake state down regulate

00:11:56.640 | into this totally different sleep state.

00:11:59.160 | So if you're seeing that for yourself,

00:12:00.760 | you're falling asleep really immediately.

00:12:03.120 | If you're then having a lot of those sleep fragmentations,

00:12:06.240 | if you're waking up really tired,

00:12:07.800 | also in the realm of sleep disorders,

00:12:11.000 | are you waking up with dry mouth?

00:12:13.120 | Are you waking up with headaches?

00:12:14.960 | Things that might point to some of the things

00:12:17.520 | that you were doing throughout the course of the night,

00:12:19.400 | teeth grinding, bruxism,

00:12:21.440 | some of these sleep disorders that can really impact

00:12:24.480 | some of your sleep quality.

00:12:25.840 | So there's a lot to navigate.

00:12:28.360 | - Okay, so stages, a lot of the red flags,

00:12:30.640 | stuff without data.

00:12:31.720 | Where do sleep cycles play in here?

00:12:34.000 | I feel like there was a time in my life

00:12:35.720 | where it was like, well, you need periods of 90 minutes.

00:12:39.560 | Is this a thing?

00:12:40.400 | Is that something we should discuss in advance?

00:12:42.880 | - I get a lot of people that will come my way

00:12:45.920 | and they'll be strategizing about the sleep cycles,

00:12:49.800 | and it is very interesting

00:12:51.280 | because it's very true.

00:12:52.160 | We will be navigating through these sleep cycles

00:12:55.240 | in a little different for each person.

00:12:56.840 | So it could be around these 90 minute timeframes

00:12:58.840 | is the popular amount of time that seems to be an average,

00:13:01.560 | but it might be plus or minus for each individual.

00:13:03.720 | And the aim is to get through a number of these sleep cycles

00:13:05.960 | throughout the course of the night.

00:13:07.240 | And yet I find that a lot of people are fixating

00:13:10.920 | on some of the sleep cycles and strategies around that

00:13:14.920 | and missing some of the force for the trees

00:13:17.120 | on some of these other things

00:13:18.600 | that we can absolutely do to let the automaticity

00:13:21.760 | of that kind of come together on its own.

00:13:24.160 | If we have these egregious sleep disorders

00:13:26.760 | that we're missing,

00:13:27.720 | that of course is gonna impact the workability

00:13:30.720 | of those sleep cycles of how you're oscillating

00:13:33.040 | through those throughout the course of the night.

00:13:34.760 | But even beyond that,

00:13:36.440 | one of the things that I'm often seeing just on the ground

00:13:39.240 | is so many behaviors that they're engaging

00:13:42.160 | in environmental elements, et cetera,

00:13:44.600 | that are impacting their ability

00:13:47.480 | to navigate some of those sleep cycles effectively.

00:13:50.680 | And then the last piece about the sleep cycles

00:13:52.920 | would be a number of people talk about

00:13:54.840 | wanting to be woken up

00:13:56.200 | in kind of that ideal part of their sleep cycle.

00:13:59.560 | There's merit to that.

00:14:01.360 | And one of the things that I find

00:14:02.720 | is the more we bring in some of these workable elements

00:14:06.600 | with our sleep,

00:14:07.720 | we really get dialed in on some of these components

00:14:10.680 | that often falls into place on its own quite frequently.

00:14:14.480 | So that you don't have to have

00:14:15.520 | the intervention of technology.

00:14:17.280 | If people aren't familiar with this,

00:14:18.280 | some people are looking to find pieces of tech

00:14:20.600 | that can wake them up at certain parts of their sleep cycle

00:14:23.880 | is the aim.

00:14:25.400 | And you can absolutely experiment with things like that.

00:14:28.280 | But I would also point to getting us aware

00:14:32.040 | of how many things that we can do while we're awake

00:14:35.800 | that can facilitate that those all work effectively.

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00:16:53.560 | and running around town.

00:16:55.120 | Honestly, I think Viory is an investment in your happiness,

00:16:58.000 | and for All The Hacks listeners,

00:16:59.440 | they're offering 20% off your first purchase,

00:17:02.080 | as well as free shipping and returns on US orders over $75.

00:17:06.760 | So you should definitely check them out

00:17:08.600 | at allthehacks.com/viory.

00:17:11.560 | Again, go to allthehacks.com/v-u-o-r-i

00:17:16.560 | and get yourself some of the most comfortable

00:17:18.760 | and versatile clothing on the planet.

00:17:21.240 | And before we go too much further,

00:17:23.160 | why is sleep so important?

00:17:24.720 | Can we talk for a moment about what's going on in the body,

00:17:26.840 | why we need it, why it's so valuable?

00:17:28.960 | We've been sleeping as human beings

00:17:30.640 | for centuries and centuries.

00:17:32.320 | It is the one area of life

00:17:34.240 | that we have not been able to hack our way out of.

00:17:37.200 | I know this is a podcast around all the hacks,

00:17:39.000 | and yet we have not been able to figure out a way

00:17:42.520 | to cut out this very vulnerable part of our day

00:17:45.600 | when we are just asleep for a stretch of time

00:17:48.360 | for seven to nine hours for most people.

00:17:50.480 | So why do we keep doing that?

00:17:52.000 | Why is that so important?

00:17:53.560 | Well, one, we know that this is crucial

00:17:56.400 | for our immune function, cardiovascular health,

00:17:59.960 | for our emotional regulations.

00:18:02.000 | We know that it's also just so important for our waistline.

00:18:05.520 | That our whole experience of life is going to be colored

00:18:09.520 | if we don't prioritize this area.

00:18:11.640 | And yet many of us don't even know what it can feel like

00:18:14.200 | or look like to wake up consistently feeling well-rested

00:18:19.200 | and the crossover effects of what that can look like.

00:18:22.400 | I'm excited to dig into all of these things.

00:18:24.280 | I have a couple of random questions when it comes to sleep.

00:18:27.560 | One is how different is this on individual basis?

00:18:31.560 | And I ask this because we've talked about seven to nine hours

00:18:35.080 | and I have this one friend who can sleep almost nothing

00:18:38.520 | all the time and then sleep for like 13 hours

00:18:40.640 | on the weekend.

00:18:41.480 | Are there just some people wired differently

00:18:43.200 | that need different amounts of sleep

00:18:44.720 | that can catch up differently?

00:18:46.120 | Or is my friend just burning himself out?

00:18:48.840 | - It's a great question.

00:18:49.680 | I get that one a lot.

00:18:50.720 | So first off, it appears that we can have

00:18:54.160 | these particular coping mechanisms.

00:18:56.080 | So your friend is a person that I see a lot

00:18:59.480 | where they come in, we look at their stats

00:19:01.560 | and they might have four hours, five hours,

00:19:04.680 | six hours, then 13 hours.

00:19:07.120 | And the problem with that is that that can save the day

00:19:10.880 | for a while and stretch of time,

00:19:13.080 | but eventually we'll see hits on a number of areas

00:19:16.640 | across the board.

00:19:17.480 | So for men, we know that testosterone levels

00:19:20.480 | are massively hit when we do that on a stretch of time.

00:19:24.040 | We had an expert, Dr. Allison Brager,

00:19:26.840 | who had come on as a representative of the US Army

00:19:29.000 | that found that there's a point of no return

00:19:31.600 | after doing this for multiple, multiple times

00:19:35.200 | because you're not able to bring about

00:19:37.560 | that hormone stability after this long, long stretch

00:19:41.000 | of doing these things.

00:19:41.840 | That's like one example, right?

00:19:43.200 | For the most people, what we find is that

00:19:45.840 | there's a reason we have sort of this U-shaped curve

00:19:49.200 | of the suggestion for length of time

00:19:52.000 | that we suggest for people to sleep

00:19:54.120 | because we see impacts of all-cause mortality rates

00:19:57.800 | really going up when you're getting much below

00:20:00.280 | six hours of sleep, but it also goes on the other side

00:20:03.760 | when you're getting too much sleep consistently.

00:20:06.440 | So that's concerning as well.

00:20:08.160 | So they're kind of getting hit at both sides of this.

00:20:10.640 | So we're getting the insufficient sleep

00:20:12.720 | for stretches of time, and then we're just logging

00:20:15.800 | these really long periods.

00:20:17.600 | So this is problematic for both sleep duration.

00:20:19.960 | We know that that's not getting you the quality of sleep

00:20:22.400 | that we want to get.

00:20:23.760 | Also from that bio-individual perspective

00:20:25.720 | that you asked about, so we know that most people,

00:20:29.240 | it's incredibly small percentage

00:20:31.280 | that might have this very strange, small kind of chance

00:20:35.080 | that they're short sleepers,

00:20:36.680 | but it's almost negligible, the percentage rate.

00:20:40.080 | So most people need to still fall into this realm

00:20:44.520 | of this seven to nine hours.

00:20:46.280 | However, it goes a little bit less as we age.

00:20:48.760 | This is why sleep is dynamic.

00:20:50.360 | So as we get a little bit older,

00:20:51.920 | we do find that people might go closer to, say,

00:20:54.320 | that six to seven hours might still be a range

00:20:57.440 | that kind of appears and still be within a healthy domain.

00:21:01.160 | But aside from that, when people start saying,

00:21:04.400 | "I'm fine, this is workable for me,"

00:21:06.840 | when we bring about more stability and consistency

00:21:10.480 | with their sleep, I can almost guarantee

00:21:13.280 | that what we see both on the ground and then in studies

00:21:17.240 | is that there's a change in the quality of that sleep

00:21:20.440 | for the better, and that will ripple into other metrics.

00:21:24.200 | So things like the improvements in often blood pressure,

00:21:28.200 | their cardiovascular health, if we're looking at heart rate,

00:21:31.240 | HRV, heart rate variability, and otherwise.

00:21:34.240 | If we're talking about women, this could impact things

00:21:36.640 | like their cycle workability and others.

00:21:39.520 | Okay, so I have so many questions,

00:21:42.000 | and I wanna go into optimizing and all this,

00:21:44.440 | but how important is it that this quantity of sleep

00:21:49.200 | happens at one point in time?

00:21:51.160 | And it's interesting, 'cause we have two young kids,

00:21:53.000 | and I'm like, "Oh, well, they get sleep at night and naps."

00:21:55.640 | And I remember some point in my life

00:21:58.080 | reading about this crazy concept

00:21:59.880 | of extreme polyphasic sleep,

00:22:01.920 | where you could sleep for 20 minutes,

00:22:03.320 | like six or eight times a day, and that would be fine.

00:22:05.920 | We don't have to go that far down that rabbit hole,

00:22:08.160 | but do you need to sleep all at once,

00:22:10.520 | or can you break it up throughout the day?

00:22:12.320 | Oh, yeah.

00:22:13.160 | So people often will reference some of these findings

00:22:16.360 | that in centuries past, it appeared

00:22:19.480 | that we might've had two parts to our sleep

00:22:22.120 | was one popular way of looking at sleep,

00:22:24.960 | and this kind of brings a sigh of relief

00:22:27.000 | for some people that are waking up

00:22:28.640 | throughout the course of the night.

00:22:29.600 | Like, "Oh, okay, maybe this is just one part of my sleep,

00:22:32.600 | "and now I have a little period of being awake

00:22:34.480 | "in a second part."

00:22:35.560 | And then there's also the group that you're speaking to

00:22:38.080 | of the multiple naps throughout the course of the day.

00:22:40.760 | Now, how do we think about this?

00:22:42.280 | Well, we can also look at modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes.

00:22:45.560 | So we can look at tribes like the Hudson tribe

00:22:47.800 | has been looked at from a sleep perspective,

00:22:50.480 | and we don't find that to be indicative

00:22:53.880 | of how they're conducting themselves as one example,

00:22:56.680 | but also how we like to think about maximizing

00:22:59.560 | and optimizing for sleep today.

00:23:01.480 | It now has been drilled into that longer stretch of sleep.

00:23:06.480 | It's still okay to have some wake-ups,

00:23:08.720 | 'cause I know some people can get really concerned

00:23:10.560 | and nervous about stretches of time

00:23:12.080 | where they will have some wake-ups.

00:23:13.640 | The difference is we're trying to understand

00:23:15.240 | how long are those wake-ups?

00:23:17.360 | What is your response

00:23:18.400 | from a psychological perspective during that?

00:23:20.960 | And then of course, parents during stretch of times

00:23:23.360 | when we are, whether we choose to or not,

00:23:26.000 | being awakened throughout the course of the night

00:23:28.280 | and understanding, can we make up for that?

00:23:31.280 | Well, one thing that we see is that largely,

00:23:34.600 | we like to have still this very clear diurnal system.

00:23:38.360 | So meaning that as human beings, we're diurnal creatures,

00:23:41.360 | meaning to be active by day and largely at rest at night.

00:23:45.760 | And what we find is that as we deviate outside of that,

00:23:48.760 | shift workers being an example of that,

00:23:50.760 | they're being more active at night.

00:23:53.000 | And we find that they have rates going up

00:23:56.240 | of things like cancer, heart disease, mental health issues,

00:24:00.640 | and sleep-wake disorders

00:24:02.000 | simply by just doing things at night.

00:24:04.800 | So it points to how important it is to maintain this.

00:24:08.400 | So when we start juggling all of these things

00:24:11.120 | and we're sleeping for long stretches

00:24:12.920 | throughout the course of our night,

00:24:14.320 | we know that often from a circadian perspective,

00:24:16.880 | which is one of the areas I'm particularly interested in,

00:24:19.200 | is that that seems to spill

00:24:22.240 | into some of your results with your sleep.

00:24:24.480 | So the big takeaway here is how can we sleep

00:24:28.960 | as much of the portion of our evenings?

00:24:32.280 | And if you are needing to supplement that,

00:24:35.040 | which sometimes can happen, of course,

00:24:36.360 | as parents or we're traveling or we're sick

00:24:38.960 | or something is coming up,

00:24:40.360 | then you can supplement to a certain extent with naps

00:24:43.920 | unless you're dealing with insomnia.

00:24:46.440 | But for the rest of us,

00:24:47.720 | if you're just looking to make up for some of that sleep,

00:24:50.360 | those naps can make sense,

00:24:52.640 | but we're looking to usually keep them

00:24:55.120 | somewhere in the domain of around,

00:24:57.760 | often the power nap area.

00:24:59.400 | So like the 20 to 25 minutes,

00:25:01.560 | but usually no longer than a sleep cycle,

00:25:04.080 | like you pointed to, so around that 90 minutes.

00:25:07.080 | - But you can rejuvenate in a nap.

00:25:09.080 | So if you're someone who just, for whatever reason,

00:25:11.720 | isn't able to get a full night's sleep,

00:25:13.760 | is there an optimal time of day for that nap?

00:25:16.720 | - Yes, totally, great question.

00:25:18.480 | So earlier on in the day is what we're liking

00:25:21.400 | to position the timing for those naps.

00:25:24.000 | So for most people, that would look like

00:25:26.440 | somewhere around before 3 p.m. or so.

00:25:29.120 | Of course, if you have a different sleep-wake schedule,

00:25:31.440 | adjust that accordingly,

00:25:32.600 | but kind of in your early afternoon

00:25:35.160 | so that you're not tapping into

00:25:37.200 | some of those adenosine reserves,

00:25:39.040 | that kind of sleepiness chemical, if you will,

00:25:41.680 | that's building up throughout the whole course of the day.

00:25:44.120 | You can think of this as when you're first waking up,

00:25:46.480 | you have some of the least reserves of this adenosine,

00:25:48.840 | this kind of sleepiness component,

00:25:50.800 | and then it's accumulating

00:25:52.480 | throughout the whole rest of the day.

00:25:54.360 | And we want it to be just toppling over

00:25:57.360 | at the brim when you get to sleep.

00:25:59.680 | But there's a couple of things

00:26:01.120 | that can impact the adenosine load.

00:26:03.680 | One of them can be naps.

00:26:04.960 | So that could kind of dump out some of your reserves

00:26:07.800 | of adenosine for the day.

00:26:09.360 | Another one, very common one, can be things like caffeine.

00:26:13.080 | It won't dump it out in the same way,

00:26:15.080 | but it will make your brain think

00:26:16.720 | that it's kind of not present,

00:26:18.120 | like trick you into thinking that that adenosine,

00:26:20.320 | that sleepiness component, isn't building up.

00:26:22.800 | So these are ways that you can both have it all.

00:26:26.760 | So how to be refreshed, get kind of that second wind.

00:26:29.960 | And that can also spill into things

00:26:31.760 | like someone like Andrew Huberman is kind of popularizing

00:26:34.920 | this non-sleep deep rest protocols.

00:26:37.240 | So kind of this trance-like state, if you will,

00:26:40.080 | where you're, whether it's yoga nidra,

00:26:42.480 | a hypnosis-like state.

00:26:44.240 | So you might not even be fully asleep,

00:26:46.880 | but still your body is getting some of the benefits

00:26:49.320 | of being in that restorative state.

00:26:51.640 | So that can be another way to recoup a little bit of energy

00:26:55.240 | throughout the course of the day.

00:26:56.680 | - And I watched that video, the Huberman thing,

00:26:59.720 | and I was like, oh,

00:27:01.000 | because I wanted to ask this question

00:27:02.160 | about whether there's a way to get some of the benefits

00:27:05.320 | of sleep while not sleeping.

00:27:06.920 | But if what you're doing is, you know,

00:27:09.840 | kind of lying down and doing breathing exercises,

00:27:12.040 | like I felt like, oh, might as well be sleeping.

00:27:13.840 | Like maybe if you can't sleep,

00:27:15.480 | but if you were lying down, relaxing,

00:27:17.360 | listening to music or reading a book

00:27:19.120 | or doing anything a little bit more active

00:27:22.320 | than just meditating, for example, or breathing exercises,

00:27:26.080 | can you get any of that benefit

00:27:27.560 | or does it really need to be sleep?

00:27:29.400 | - So this is a huge one I find that can be really helpful

00:27:32.600 | for people that are dealing with sleep anxiety.

00:27:35.560 | So sleep anxiety can kind of go in the domain.

00:27:38.240 | This is something that I dealt with

00:27:39.400 | when I was going through my sleep kind of breakdown

00:27:42.160 | years back was this fixation on sleep

00:27:45.800 | and then this feeling that, oh, okay,

00:27:47.720 | so if I'm not getting my sleep

00:27:49.640 | throughout the course of the night, I'm just screwed.

00:27:52.440 | You know, like I'm just not getting these results,

00:27:54.560 | but it turns out that one thing we can kind of keep

00:27:57.760 | in the back of our mind is that there is still some benefit

00:28:01.240 | from being in kind of a restorative state,

00:28:03.280 | even just in a, you know, laying supine position,

00:28:05.920 | your heart rate's coming down,

00:28:07.880 | closing your eyes can also help change

00:28:11.200 | some of your brain activity

00:28:13.240 | and allows for some of this restorative processes

00:28:16.680 | to happen of the body.

00:28:17.760 | Now, is it the same as sleep?

00:28:19.360 | Not quite, but it still can give you

00:28:21.880 | a little bit of a respite in knowing

00:28:24.040 | that you're doing something generous for the body.

00:28:26.920 | Now, this can apply both in the middle of the night

00:28:28.800 | if you're struggling to sleep,

00:28:31.000 | just knowing that you're still getting some restoration

00:28:33.920 | by being in kind of that peaceful, relaxed state,

00:28:36.120 | bringing the heart rate down.

00:28:37.560 | So the body can still go to work on some of that repair

00:28:40.960 | and yet that applies during the course of the day as well.

00:28:44.080 | Now, I see this really in a cool way gamified

00:28:47.240 | with wearables lately.

00:28:48.960 | Two that are doing this well, I think,

00:28:50.920 | is both Whoop and Oura Ring.

00:28:53.440 | So they're actually showing you your daytime stress load

00:28:57.200 | and then almost helping to reward, if you will,

00:29:00.400 | stretches of time when you're getting

00:29:01.880 | a little bit of restoration.

00:29:04.440 | It will show you clearly and kind of give you

00:29:06.960 | rundown or a quota for how much of that restorative time

00:29:10.320 | you're getting throughout the course of the day.

00:29:12.080 | And so it can kind of help to gamify this protocol,

00:29:15.680 | if you will, instead of just like a nice to have.

00:29:17.800 | Now, suddenly you're offsetting high amounts of stress

00:29:20.360 | throughout the course of the day

00:29:21.560 | with a little breather kind of recovery time.

00:29:24.360 | - Okay, well, that's helpful because sometimes

00:29:25.800 | I just like to lie down for a few minutes

00:29:27.400 | and just close my eyes,

00:29:28.320 | but I don't really want to commit to a nap.

00:29:30.160 | - 100%.

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00:30:49.600 | (air whooshing)

00:30:50.760 | Do you all remember episode 122

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00:32:01.720 | I just wanna thank you quick for listening to

00:32:05.720 | and supporting the show.

00:32:07.200 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:32:10.040 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals

00:32:12.760 | and discounts from our partners,

00:32:14.520 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:32:18.080 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:32:21.280 | When we think about optimizing sleep,

00:32:23.080 | who benefits from optimizing sleep?

00:32:24.360 | Is this something for everyone?

00:32:25.400 | Are there some people who maybe you have it good already

00:32:28.440 | or what things should people be asking themselves

00:32:30.720 | before they wanna decide

00:32:32.280 | if this is a journey they wanna go down?

00:32:34.520 | - Absolutely.

00:32:35.360 | Well, first off, I would like to offer for people

00:32:39.560 | that I truly do believe that sleep is a skill

00:32:42.240 | and like all great skills,

00:32:43.400 | no matter if you think and you have it

00:32:45.400 | that you have this handled,

00:32:47.160 | that you can venture into mastery

00:32:49.800 | and that there is always this opportunity

00:32:51.720 | for us to improve upon this area.

00:32:54.120 | And even then when you might think you have it handled,

00:32:56.240 | something happens.

00:32:57.280 | You get divorced, you have a death in the family

00:33:00.280 | and we'll find it bleed into your sleep results.

00:33:03.240 | So I would offer for everyone

00:33:05.600 | to explore taking this area of life on

00:33:08.480 | as the foundation by which you are really setting up

00:33:12.040 | your wellness journey before nutrition, exercise,

00:33:16.760 | mental health strategies, of course,

00:33:18.600 | those are all so important and they're bi-directional.

00:33:21.000 | I would offer that there could be some benefits

00:33:23.160 | by taking on a lens of prioritizing your sleep first

00:33:26.560 | and that will aid in your ability to fulfill

00:33:29.040 | on all those other things.

00:33:29.960 | Get yourself to the gym, make the smart decisions

00:33:32.240 | and when you're standing in front of the cupboard

00:33:33.880 | or what have you.

00:33:34.720 | So from that place, what are some indications

00:33:36.960 | that you might be struggling with your sleep

00:33:39.040 | and that you might wanna really take this area on?

00:33:42.120 | One can be, we've talked a lot about sleep duration

00:33:44.400 | and some of the numbers you might be logging

00:33:45.800 | and you might say I'm getting all those

00:33:47.120 | but I still feel tired, sluggish,

00:33:51.160 | not at my best throughout the course of the day.

00:33:53.480 | That could be a sign for us to look at some of the sleep

00:33:56.640 | that you're logging.

00:33:57.480 | Is it as rich as it could be?

00:33:59.320 | Are you having a lot of labels around your sleep?

00:34:01.680 | I would say things like I'm a short sleeper,

00:34:03.400 | I'm a bad sleeper, I'm a night owl, it's in my genes,

00:34:06.400 | I'll sleep when I'm dead.

00:34:07.400 | So it goes into narratives.

00:34:08.720 | So you might have certain ways

00:34:10.640 | by which you're relating to your sleep,

00:34:12.040 | like it's just fixed and that's how it's gonna be

00:34:14.840 | versus that we would just have a set of results right now

00:34:18.560 | and that there's an opportunity

00:34:19.680 | for more of a growth perspective to improve upon this.

00:34:22.960 | If you're tracking, your sleep efficiency numbers

00:34:25.600 | might not be as high as we would like them to be.

00:34:28.760 | Now, we don't want them to be too high

00:34:30.040 | because then that can mean you're falling asleep

00:34:31.760 | right as the minute your head hits the pillow

00:34:33.560 | but often in kind of this high 80s, low 90s range

00:34:38.000 | might be an area

00:34:38.840 | that we might wanna look to optimizing for.

00:34:41.560 | If you're relying on a lot of things to improve your sleep.

00:34:45.480 | So if you have a lot of supplements,

00:34:48.000 | this whole particular stack that you need

00:34:50.480 | in just in order to kind of fall asleep or stay asleep,

00:34:53.640 | that could be indicative of the fact

00:34:55.720 | that now we're kind of bringing about,

00:34:58.320 | we have these external things

00:34:59.960 | that we now require to get great sleep.

00:35:02.280 | And that's not to say

00:35:03.120 | that we won't do all kinds of cool things

00:35:04.920 | with optimizing your environment

00:35:06.680 | and bringing all kinds of things to improve your sleep

00:35:08.880 | from a environmental and setting you up powerfully.

00:35:11.600 | But if you feel like you yourself cannot get great sleep,

00:35:15.800 | that can be a sign for us.

00:35:17.840 | And then also, if you have the sense

00:35:19.840 | that you used to sleep great and then something happened,

00:35:23.120 | I had kids, which understandably there may a stretch of time

00:35:27.480 | where your sleep absolutely will be disrupted.

00:35:29.400 | So I don't wanna stress anyone else with that.

00:35:31.880 | But we see there can be these narratives that get developed

00:35:36.080 | and then we start to lower the bar

00:35:38.040 | on what's possible for us,

00:35:39.680 | where we might be able to actually make a big difference

00:35:41.760 | with some of these results.

00:35:43.320 | So that can be important,

00:35:44.520 | but also just getting curious

00:35:46.720 | about different stages of life.

00:35:48.400 | Your sleep is gonna look very different

00:35:50.280 | from teenage years to 20s to 30s, 40s, 50s beyond.

00:35:54.920 | And we want to keep checking in and testing,

00:35:58.680 | seeing are there hormonal changes at play?

00:36:01.920 | Is there environmental, do you move into a new house

00:36:04.440 | and now you're not getting the same level of sleep?

00:36:06.480 | Is there something going on in that space?

00:36:08.680 | Et cetera, et cetera.

00:36:09.640 | So there's a lot of signs and those are some.

00:36:12.160 | - I know you have a whole list of 10 on the website.

00:36:14.280 | We'll link to that in the show notes.

00:36:15.880 | What are kind of the factors?

00:36:17.040 | Let's start with the environment and routine stuff.

00:36:20.320 | - Okay.

00:36:21.160 | First, I would like for people to think about the fact

00:36:23.680 | that our circadian rhythm becomes paramount in this.

00:36:27.160 | What is your circadian rhythm?

00:36:28.360 | It's around this 24 hour rhythm

00:36:30.720 | that as human beings, we're all operating within.

00:36:33.280 | I mentioned that we're diurnal creatures.

00:36:34.920 | So of those 24 hours, half of the day,

00:36:37.360 | we want to be ideally prioritizing

00:36:39.840 | getting out in the light, movement, activity.

00:36:42.640 | You're doing things when the light is out,

00:36:45.200 | but then when the sun sets and when darkness comes,

00:36:49.040 | we want to be prioritizing sort of a day mode

00:36:51.400 | versus night mode.

00:36:52.680 | And when that night mode comes about,

00:36:54.400 | we wanna really shift our environment accordingly.

00:36:57.200 | Why?

00:36:58.040 | Because there's something known as zeitgeibers

00:37:00.160 | or time givers.

00:37:01.600 | And these are just kind of sayings

00:37:03.800 | of what are some of the things

00:37:05.560 | that massively impact our circadian health.

00:37:08.600 | And the most important,

00:37:10.640 | if you get nothing else out of what I'm saying,

00:37:12.240 | I know we're talking about a lot of things,

00:37:13.480 | but if you get nothing else out of what I'm saying,

00:37:15.640 | it's minding your light dark cycles

00:37:19.160 | is our most paramount to strengthening our circadian rhythm.

00:37:22.680 | I go to these like sleep conferences

00:37:24.760 | and believe it or not, they're sleep conferences.

00:37:26.680 | And some of the biggest takeaways

00:37:28.840 | can be boiling down to having ultra bright days

00:37:32.760 | and dark nights.

00:37:34.280 | And that can sound so simplistic,

00:37:36.560 | but most of us are not doing this

00:37:38.840 | to the point that there was just this year

00:37:41.560 | a call from a scientific consensus

00:37:44.120 | saying I'm pulling from almost 250 circadian scientists

00:37:48.000 | referencing almost 2,700 peer reviewed scientific papers

00:37:52.280 | pointing to the need to add warning labels on light bulbs

00:37:56.120 | when used at night.

00:37:57.920 | So why?

00:37:59.560 | Because they found that the use of simply

00:38:02.560 | just boring old light bulbs that we're using

00:38:04.880 | on a routine basis are increasing rates of cancer,

00:38:08.720 | diabetes, heart disease, mental health issues,

00:38:12.240 | as well as of course our sleep awake challenges

00:38:15.240 | that we might be seeing.

00:38:16.600 | So something so simple as swapping out our light bulbs

00:38:20.520 | to go from our traditional LEDs,

00:38:22.800 | which now 'cause incandescence became illegal this year,

00:38:25.960 | which were more closely aligned with the rhythms of nature,

00:38:28.800 | those are now illegal, you can't purchase those.

00:38:30.800 | So now you're left with fluorescents and LEDs.

00:38:34.240 | So of those, they tend to be very blue rich

00:38:38.000 | and blue is gonna disrupt your melatonin production

00:38:40.440 | to levels that most people don't realize the impact.

00:38:43.320 | So at the bare minimum,

00:38:45.000 | you're changing your light bulbs in your environment

00:38:47.640 | to mimic the rhythms of nature.

00:38:50.280 | So one thing that we used to be around was fire

00:38:52.840 | and fire was kind of that first biohack

00:38:54.800 | and that was very red rich.

00:38:56.840 | So we want our light bulbs to be more of that red amber color

00:39:01.360 | or candle lights, Himalayan salt lamps,

00:39:04.280 | any of this very dim lighting.

00:39:05.960 | So you wanna first start there, but it doesn't end there.

00:39:09.200 | You have to in the mornings to help inoculate yourself

00:39:12.040 | from any of those negative impacts

00:39:14.040 | of even any of this faux light.

00:39:16.080 | You really need to get that bright light exposure by day

00:39:20.080 | and much more than you're gonna be getting indoors.

00:39:22.760 | Then the second piece would be going into things

00:39:24.880 | like temperature timing, meal timing, exercise timing,

00:39:29.720 | thought timing, and drug timing.

00:39:32.560 | So all of this timing phenomenon

00:39:34.720 | of where you're putting things in your day

00:39:37.320 | will impact your circadian strength

00:39:39.520 | and by effect your sleep-wake kind of signaling.

00:39:43.680 | Okay, so let's run through these.

00:39:44.880 | So for light, the takeaway is get rid of the blue lights

00:39:49.200 | in your room and maybe replace them with warmer lights.

00:39:52.960 | Make sure that it's not just says,

00:39:55.000 | 'cause some of them will say like, "Oh, warm tone LEDs."

00:39:58.440 | But traditionally what we often see

00:40:00.880 | is that those are still insufficient.

00:40:02.280 | They're still have blue in many of them.

00:40:05.240 | So just making sure they should really look pretty amber,

00:40:08.080 | hued or red, and now more of them will actually point

00:40:11.440 | to that they've been tested

00:40:12.480 | so that they'll still be sleep-friendly.

00:40:14.320 | And I assume if you're not getting outside right away,

00:40:16.400 | at least open up the windows, but even better go outside.

00:40:19.160 | Even better go outside because there are studies

00:40:21.440 | that show that it can take anywhere from 50

00:40:23.160 | to 100 times longer to reset your master clock

00:40:26.320 | when getting light from behind windows.

00:40:28.240 | Like if we're watching the video,

00:40:29.400 | I've got all these windows behind me.

00:40:31.480 | Even though I've got so much light coming in here,

00:40:33.120 | it's still insufficient to reset my master clock

00:40:36.600 | in the morning if I was just to rest on my laurels

00:40:39.120 | and only get light from behind here.

00:40:41.200 | So you really need to go outside.

00:40:43.080 | Why?

00:40:43.920 | Because the light is gonna hit your eyes.

00:40:46.480 | You don't want sunglasses on during this period

00:40:48.760 | in the morning, hats, any of those things

00:40:50.880 | that could obstruct that sunlight.

00:40:52.400 | You want it to go directly into your eyes,

00:40:54.140 | which is connected to that suprachiasmatic nucleus.

00:40:57.640 | And that suprachiasmatic nucleus is kind of

00:41:00.320 | that master clock that then's communicating

00:41:02.840 | to all of these peripheral clocks in virtually every cell

00:41:05.920 | and organ in our body.

00:41:07.020 | So trillions of clocks that are looking to help stay

00:41:11.040 | on time and facilitate the workability

00:41:14.240 | of your sleep-wake cycle, among many other things.

00:41:17.080 | So when you first get up, our philosophy is get up and out.

00:41:20.720 | So you wanna get up out of bed, but outside.

00:41:24.400 | So the dog walkers and all the things

00:41:26.200 | are really winning the day here.

00:41:27.480 | The people that have reasons to bring their animals

00:41:30.880 | or pets outside or what have you.

00:41:32.740 | So whatever's going on in your life,

00:41:34.440 | if you can set yourself up to get out there,

00:41:36.860 | that will make such a huge difference

00:41:38.380 | for then resetting this master clock.

00:41:40.200 | And then it creates almost this invisible countdown

00:41:43.100 | to when you're gonna get sleepy in the evening,

00:41:45.760 | 16 hours or so later into the night

00:41:48.680 | of when you'll be developing more melatonin in the evening.

00:41:51.500 | So they're connected.

00:41:52.880 | - So this morning, I just looked, San Francisco, sunrise,

00:41:55.800 | 6.49, I was up before 6.49.

00:41:59.080 | If I get up at six, is there a benefit to going outside

00:42:01.840 | when it's not bright yet?

00:42:03.320 | Or should I really be waiting until the sun is out

00:42:05.740 | and it's a bright day to go outside?

00:42:07.800 | - Yeah, so it's a very good question.

00:42:09.680 | Because for a lot of people,

00:42:10.920 | then there's a reality of life.

00:42:12.360 | They've got circumstances, they've got kids,

00:42:14.040 | they've got jobs, they've got whatever.

00:42:15.560 | So what do you do when you're waking up

00:42:17.560 | before the sun is rising?

00:42:19.020 | Well, there's kind of a couple camps

00:42:20.780 | that have been emerging on this.

00:42:22.680 | One from sort of a scientific circadian perspective,

00:42:26.240 | a lot of the recommendation will be,

00:42:28.000 | all right, well, if that's the case,

00:42:29.480 | then you can use faux interventions.

00:42:32.000 | So you can use like sad lamps and things that,

00:42:34.880 | so seasonal affective disorder lamps,

00:42:36.400 | really bright lights, bright blue lights.

00:42:38.620 | So the time when we would be potentially

00:42:40.800 | cultivating more blue light would be in the morning.

00:42:43.480 | And so that would be the suggestion from that camp

00:42:46.080 | is getting as much of that blue light in your eyes

00:42:48.140 | as possible in the morning.

00:42:49.640 | Now, ancestral health proponents will instead point to

00:42:54.640 | in the morning versus getting all that bright light

00:42:57.980 | and kind of the activity that that would be.

00:42:59.960 | If you can still align with the rhythms of nature

00:43:02.080 | and use a red light during that time,

00:43:04.440 | that would be the suggestion of this emerging kind of camp

00:43:07.440 | is to then wait till you are getting outside

00:43:10.440 | to get that natural light and truly syncing up

00:43:12.960 | with those rhythms of nature.

00:43:14.360 | My suggestion on that is if you are able

00:43:17.080 | to align with these rhythms, that's always preferable.

00:43:19.960 | We did that for thousands of years.

00:43:22.440 | Edison only came up with the light bulb

00:43:24.600 | about 144 years ago.

00:43:26.520 | So we have this kind of recency bias

00:43:28.360 | where we think that this is just always how it's been.

00:43:30.640 | But in the span of human history,

00:43:33.040 | this is a very new phenomenon

00:43:34.480 | that we can even do these sort of things.

00:43:36.340 | So if you are leaning towards and have the ability

00:43:39.880 | to create your schedule in such a way,

00:43:42.080 | that could be great.

00:43:42.920 | So you could perfectly kind of align with those rhythms.

00:43:45.640 | But if you cannot, which I have plenty of clients who can't,

00:43:48.560 | then you could lean into technology

00:43:50.840 | to kind of help wake you up

00:43:52.800 | at the times that you are needing to get up.

00:43:55.080 | With the right lights in the room and that kind of stuff.

00:43:57.600 | Exactly.

00:43:58.440 | And there's even like glasses that are being created

00:44:00.640 | that will have blue lights that will shoot right into yours.

00:44:02.880 | So you could be, you know, making breakfast,

00:44:04.500 | doing whatever you need,

00:44:05.340 | and then you can be kind of Star Trek-esque.

00:44:08.220 | Okay, so that's lighting.

00:44:11.640 | What about what's in the room?

00:44:13.680 | You know, your mattress, your pillows,

00:44:15.800 | all that kind of stuff.

00:44:16.720 | Okay, so one of my biggest suggestions,

00:44:19.200 | 'cause after light-dark is temperature

00:44:22.040 | being really important for your circadian health.

00:44:25.240 | So for temperature,

00:44:26.200 | what a lot of people are missing the mark on

00:44:27.800 | is that they might know,

00:44:29.320 | yeah, we want to sleep in kind of cool environment,

00:44:31.480 | but they might not know to what degree

00:44:33.520 | and some of the things that are available.

00:44:35.400 | So one, some of the suggestion out of the Sleep Foundation

00:44:38.240 | is in the realm of around 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit

00:44:41.760 | for ambient sleep temperature,

00:44:43.620 | which many people I speak with are not in that range.

00:44:47.520 | So even just beginning there,

00:44:49.160 | and of course we don't want this to be

00:44:50.800 | massively uncomfortable for you.

00:44:52.720 | So play with this accordingly.

00:44:54.360 | But I think people are often surprised,

00:44:56.720 | especially when they start tracking

00:44:57.920 | to see when they lower the ambient temperature

00:45:00.040 | that they often get better sleep results,

00:45:01.720 | less sleep fragmentation, less wake-ups.

00:45:04.040 | 'Cause even if it's kind of a little chilly when you go in,

00:45:06.640 | then throughout the course of the night,

00:45:08.600 | you can benefit from that,

00:45:09.760 | especially when we're moving into REM

00:45:11.480 | and we start heating up the body

00:45:12.860 | and that's when often people might wake up

00:45:15.120 | 'cause now they're hot

00:45:16.040 | and when they didn't go to bed hot.

00:45:17.240 | But the other thing that I would definitely suggest

00:45:19.680 | if available to people,

00:45:20.920 | now this is a bit of an investment,

00:45:22.320 | if it's on the table is a cooling mattress topper.

00:45:26.120 | So like Chili, Sleep Me, Eight Sleep, Sleep Number,

00:45:30.800 | different companies that offer the ability

00:45:32.880 | to cool the mattress itself.

00:45:35.000 | Why? Because historically,

00:45:37.160 | we would have slept outside on the ground

00:45:39.800 | as part of our thinking or closer to the ground,

00:45:42.360 | which would have been part of the coolest part

00:45:44.400 | of our environment.

00:45:45.960 | So even though it can sound newfangled and fancy,

00:45:48.760 | we're kind of mimicking how we assume

00:45:51.120 | we likely had slept for thousands of years previously.

00:45:54.920 | So getting that cooling effect versus the cooking

00:45:58.400 | that can happen when we're in full mattresses,

00:46:01.000 | covered with these heavy duvets

00:46:02.680 | and then have our own body temperature,

00:46:04.760 | just in there for seven to nine hours

00:46:07.280 | throughout the whole course of the night.

00:46:08.680 | And many of us are then waking up from that heat effect

00:46:12.560 | and that can be problematic.

00:46:14.080 | - I often go into hotels

00:46:15.160 | and it's like they only have these huge thick mattresses.

00:46:17.320 | I'd rather leave the room cool

00:46:18.520 | and just sleep with one sheet.

00:46:20.080 | But is it better to leave the room really cold

00:46:22.400 | if you still need comforters or ditch all the sheets?

00:46:24.920 | Like what is the optimal number of sheets

00:46:27.200 | and the thickness of them to have

00:46:29.120 | if you can control the room temperature around it?

00:46:31.400 | - Okay, so one,

00:46:32.520 | there's gonna be a bio-individual component to this

00:46:34.800 | 'cause each person's gonna run cooler or hotter,

00:46:36.880 | so it will depend on you.

00:46:38.640 | But I would begin with the most gentle process out of it.

00:46:43.160 | So if you're usually sleeping at 72 degrees,

00:46:46.640 | then I would have you begin at say 67

00:46:49.480 | and see how are we faring with that.

00:46:52.120 | 'Cause we're not trying to freeze you

00:46:54.360 | out of your sleep results

00:46:55.640 | 'cause that can be negatively impactful as well.

00:46:58.200 | So you would start at around that 67,

00:47:00.520 | see how that affects you.

00:47:02.480 | Now this is going to change depending on each individual.

00:47:05.760 | So especially women of menstruating age,

00:47:08.200 | you might find different parts of your cycle,

00:47:10.320 | you're gonna be massively different on a temperature scale

00:47:13.160 | than you would be just two weeks prior

00:47:15.440 | if you're in luteal versus the beginning of your cycle.

00:47:18.480 | I know we'd like to be able to say,

00:47:19.920 | "Oh yeah, well you just put it at 63

00:47:22.000 | and that's how it goes."

00:47:23.720 | But it doesn't quite work like that.

00:47:25.160 | So instead we wanna keep beginning

00:47:27.600 | at what can be comfortable for you

00:47:30.000 | and keep working your way back.

00:47:31.480 | This is where trackers can really be helpful

00:47:33.720 | in the process too to see how do you respond

00:47:36.840 | when you start like that.

00:47:38.200 | - And when it comes to the environment in the bed,

00:47:41.120 | is more or less sheets better?

00:47:43.120 | - So I would say that what we're trying to do

00:47:46.720 | is a banana shape throughout the course of the night.

00:47:49.440 | So basically you're starting in

00:47:51.880 | when you're comfortably warm, right?

00:47:54.400 | And then we're helping to facilitate

00:47:56.200 | that we're cooling throughout the course of the night

00:47:58.320 | and facilitate that our body can be cool.

00:48:00.880 | Some of those lower levels.

00:48:02.080 | And then when you get into REM,

00:48:03.680 | you would be warming up into the early morning hours.

00:48:07.120 | So you might find that if you do have a wake up

00:48:10.040 | that you might kind of take off one of those sheets

00:48:12.320 | throughout the course when you're going into REM.

00:48:14.680 | That's perfectly natural and normal.

00:48:16.920 | It's not a static piece

00:48:18.840 | where you're just staying at the same temperature

00:48:20.680 | throughout the whole course of the night.

00:48:21.800 | So it might adjust for you.

00:48:23.800 | And what you ate, what time did you eat?

00:48:26.360 | Do you have alcohol?

00:48:27.280 | Do you have all these other things

00:48:28.240 | that might've impacted your body temperature?

00:48:30.960 | But traditionally we usually want breathable materials

00:48:35.200 | in your bed.

00:48:36.040 | So you want breathable sheets, breathable duvets.

00:48:39.240 | You want mattresses that are not gonna trap heat

00:48:41.760 | 'cause a lot of them are trapping that heat.

00:48:44.000 | So you want the ability for this to not get stuck

00:48:47.240 | and kind of insulating you.

00:48:49.040 | - Obviously, you mentioned the technology.

00:48:51.800 | I'm a huge fan.

00:48:52.640 | I haven't ate sleep.

00:48:53.480 | It's been fantastic.

00:48:54.680 | They've been a partner of the show.

00:48:55.800 | So I haven't tried every product.

00:48:57.440 | I imagine there are many products you can use.

00:48:59.720 | I just happened to have an experience there

00:49:01.440 | that was good enough to reach out to them

00:49:03.000 | and work with them.

00:49:03.840 | - Amazing.

00:49:04.680 | - And it's very helpful when you're trying

00:49:06.640 | to do exactly what you described.

00:49:08.920 | I would prefer to fall asleep a little warmer,

00:49:11.000 | but I'm okay sleeping a little cooler.

00:49:12.760 | And for me to fall asleep cool,

00:49:15.160 | like it just doesn't work.

00:49:16.040 | I end up throwing too many covers on

00:49:17.840 | and then they're on in the middle of the night

00:49:18.960 | and then I'm hot.

00:49:19.840 | So this has been a good balance for me

00:49:21.600 | to have a thin sheet on top, stay warm, falling asleep.

00:49:24.560 | So I've been a big fan.

00:49:26.520 | - Everybody listening knows that allthehacks.com/atesleep

00:49:29.360 | and you can get a discount on the ate sleep cover.

00:49:31.840 | So totally vouched on the technology.

00:49:34.000 | What about pillows or sleep position?

00:49:36.040 | You know, sleeping on your side, your stomach,

00:49:38.200 | all those kinds of things.

00:49:39.040 | How does that affect sleep?

00:49:40.360 | - Yeah, big deal.

00:49:42.160 | Particularly for the prevalence of mouth breathing,

00:49:45.320 | we're seeing a lot of that

00:49:46.360 | throughout the course of the night.

00:49:47.240 | And what position can kind of facilitate more of that

00:49:50.920 | is often sleeping on your back.

00:49:53.200 | And so we're just trying to make sure

00:49:55.000 | that we're not mouth breathing.

00:49:56.440 | That's one of our biggest concerns with sleep.

00:49:58.560 | And so that can often spill over

00:50:00.240 | into rates of sleep apnea, upper airway resistance syndrome,

00:50:03.640 | which is much more prevalent than most people realize.

00:50:06.440 | So our understanding, we just had an expert on the podcast,

00:50:09.520 | a ENT that pointed to our estimations are globally

00:50:14.000 | about one in four people having sleep apnea.

00:50:16.800 | And of that only about 10% of these insurances

00:50:21.320 | of sleep apnea being actually diagnosed.

00:50:24.480 | So we're dealing with just a lot of people

00:50:27.080 | running around undiagnosed

00:50:28.880 | for some of these respiratory based disorders.

00:50:32.400 | So sleeping on your back can often

00:50:34.560 | be a big flare up for that.

00:50:36.200 | So our often recommendation for sleep

00:50:38.200 | is a side sleeping element,

00:50:40.280 | 'cause we do see that when we're sleeping on our stomach,

00:50:43.240 | then that can sometimes mess with

00:50:44.960 | some of both our breathing,

00:50:46.640 | and then of course, comfort and some of the other issues

00:50:49.320 | that might come up from spine positional piece.

00:50:52.240 | But if you're just like amazing of a breather

00:50:54.840 | and we're not dealing with that,

00:50:55.840 | then you could benefit from some of the elements

00:50:58.800 | of sleeping on your back.

00:50:59.880 | If so, there's of course different types of pillows

00:51:02.680 | that you might bring in for each one of those

00:51:05.880 | side sleeping versus back sleeping.

00:51:08.560 | - Okay, and so what about mouth tape?

00:51:11.000 | 'Cause I feel like I'm not comfortable sleeping on my back.

00:51:13.560 | If the goal is sleep on my back to prevent mouth breathing,

00:51:16.720 | could I just sleep on my stomach or my side

00:51:18.560 | and tape my mouth?

00:51:19.480 | - This topic of mouth breathing in the sleep community

00:51:21.840 | has really flared up.

00:51:23.320 | And there's a lot of concern that so many people now

00:51:26.560 | are starting to mouth tape.

00:51:27.840 | And I can be such a fan of mouth taping,

00:51:30.520 | but I think here are the caveats,

00:51:32.040 | and this is why a lot of the sleep community

00:51:33.520 | is upset about it,

00:51:34.600 | is that many people are just mouth taping

00:51:38.320 | and not taking the steps to get tested

00:51:42.080 | to make sure there's no respiratory based disturbances

00:51:44.800 | at play, because if you are,

00:51:46.920 | you truly are just band-aiding the problem

00:51:49.840 | to the point that it can actually make it worse

00:51:51.880 | in some cases, if you do have sleep apnea,

00:51:55.520 | upper air resistance syndrome, some of the snoring.

00:51:57.840 | But that's not to say that one,

00:51:59.680 | if we clear that out, make sure that's not present

00:52:02.640 | and you're good to go,

00:52:03.920 | then that you couldn't benefit from mouth taping.

00:52:06.200 | And it's also not to say that then if we discover

00:52:09.000 | you did an at-home sleep test, easy breezy,

00:52:11.160 | you find out you have one of these disorders,

00:52:13.520 | which are really prevalent,

00:52:14.880 | then can we use mouth tape to help

00:52:17.840 | with the treatment process, that you're also being treated

00:52:20.880 | for this and using mouth tape,

00:52:22.880 | you can absolutely do that as well.

00:52:24.800 | But I think there's just a concern

00:52:26.280 | 'cause some people are now just blindly taking these steps

00:52:30.240 | without knowing that they might be doing some harm.

00:52:33.200 | - That makes sense.

00:52:34.040 | And you mentioned an at-home sleep test.

00:52:35.800 | We can all buy these trackers

00:52:36.920 | and we're gonna get to technology in a little bit,

00:52:38.440 | but at what point does it make sense

00:52:40.520 | or maybe high level, how much would it even cost

00:52:43.840 | to do some kind of more rigorous study on sleep,

00:52:46.880 | either at your home or in a lab?

00:52:48.760 | - So exciting that we're at a time

00:52:51.280 | where now you can be tested at home

00:52:54.040 | and for some pretty reasonable price points,

00:52:56.920 | even out of pocket.

00:52:58.320 | So in the United States, there's a number of companies

00:53:01.800 | that you can be sent very quickly an at-home sleep test,

00:53:05.080 | often around $200 or so out of pocket to be tested

00:53:09.880 | for some of these breathing-based sleep disorders.

00:53:13.440 | So these respiratory sleep disorders.

00:53:15.480 | Now, if you think that you might have

00:53:17.480 | something more egregious, we wanna be checked

00:53:19.960 | as far as sleep stages are concerned.

00:53:21.880 | 'Cause again, to truly understand sleep stages,

00:53:24.240 | you really do wanna look at the brain

00:53:26.480 | and the brain activity.

00:53:27.480 | And then if you're concerned about things

00:53:28.920 | like restless leg or other things, narcolepsy, et cetera,

00:53:32.360 | there might be a time and a place to go in lab.

00:53:34.720 | But now, if you're looking at that respiratory piece,

00:53:38.240 | you can just get tested by companies

00:53:40.400 | like Lofta, Empower Sleep, other companies are available,

00:53:44.160 | no affiliation, but these can send you a medical device

00:53:47.840 | that you can test at night in the comfort of your own home,

00:53:50.360 | which is a big deal 'cause many people feel like

00:53:52.720 | they can't sleep well in some of these facilities.

00:53:56.040 | And so this can be a nice option in between.

00:53:58.840 | - Are these more for testing sleep-related disorders

00:54:02.240 | or could they be a more accurate version

00:54:06.160 | of using sleep trackers?

00:54:07.240 | Or if you're someone who's like, I sleep pretty well,

00:54:09.720 | but I'm certainly open to getting from a 90 to a 100,

00:54:13.680 | is the sleep study at home,

00:54:15.840 | is that gonna help in that department

00:54:17.360 | or is it more diagnosing?

00:54:20.200 | - So there are some pieces of tech like the Wesper is one

00:54:24.360 | that you can use literally as like a little patch

00:54:27.640 | and that will give you some information

00:54:29.440 | kind of an in-between.

00:54:30.360 | It's not quite a consumer grade tracker,

00:54:32.320 | it's not quite a at-home sleep test,

00:54:34.760 | but it's giving you more in-depth information

00:54:37.120 | so that can glean some more information

00:54:39.400 | from something like that.

00:54:40.960 | - But the at-home sleep tests that are gonna give you

00:54:44.080 | a kind of medical stamp of approval of saying,

00:54:47.160 | okay, yes, it does appear that you do have sleep apnea,

00:54:50.280 | for example, if that's the case,

00:54:51.960 | you're only gonna test for most of them one or two nights.

00:54:55.080 | And out of that, if we do come back

00:54:57.920 | with some disorders present,

00:54:59.720 | that is gonna totally ripple into your results

00:55:03.040 | with your sleep trackers.

00:55:04.920 | It won't be the whole story,

00:55:06.280 | but it will certainly help support

00:55:08.240 | the improvement of those stats.

00:55:10.640 | - I know one of the most common piece of advice

00:55:12.720 | everyone says is, oh, keep your phone out of your room,

00:55:15.000 | no screen time before bed.

00:55:16.680 | How important is that?

00:55:18.080 | And is there ways to make it better

00:55:20.720 | that aren't a total eradication of all screens?

00:55:24.100 | Because I think in many cases,

00:55:25.640 | that's just not practical, right?

00:55:26.960 | Like our phone is our baby monitor,

00:55:29.160 | like we wanna check on our kid, kid's coughing.

00:55:31.560 | So we're not gonna get rid of screens before bed

00:55:33.800 | or next to the bed.

00:55:35.200 | - Absolutely, I completely hear that.

00:55:37.000 | So one, can we leverage the light piece?

00:55:40.800 | So can we put red glow to those screens?

00:55:44.440 | So what can you do on iPhones?

00:55:46.720 | There's this hidden color filter that's within there.

00:55:49.840 | Even if you Google color filter iPhone sleep,

00:55:52.680 | it will come right up of how to set this up.

00:55:54.600 | So you make it all red.

00:55:55.760 | And so that in and of itself will make a big difference.

00:55:58.600 | If you have an Android, you can put on twilight.

00:56:01.640 | And so that will go all red.

00:56:03.220 | Even that will make it less excitatory,

00:56:05.960 | but then there's element of just auditing

00:56:08.080 | what type of information are you taking in on those screens?

00:56:11.920 | And if it's a TV, then using blue blockers

00:56:14.780 | that are amber or red tinted can also help.

00:56:18.440 | - Okay, it doesn't have to be gone,

00:56:20.280 | but there are ways to improve it.

00:56:21.240 | And obviously I'm sure if it got completely rid of it,

00:56:23.240 | it would be even better.

00:56:24.600 | - Totally, and can we have a bit of a hybrid?

00:56:27.540 | Can we have the change in color

00:56:30.200 | so that it's a little less addictive in nature,

00:56:32.860 | but then can we also set up some workable

00:56:35.620 | kind of boundaries for ourselves?

00:56:37.500 | Some suggestions are in our modern day,

00:56:40.380 | if you have your smartphone out,

00:56:42.140 | then you're bringing it into your bed.

00:56:43.420 | And can you just have kind of a no phone in bed rule

00:56:46.940 | as far as just when you're laying there,

00:56:49.100 | can you even have to stand to use it

00:56:51.300 | just to make it much harder to utilize this

00:56:54.340 | in a more relaxed state

00:56:55.860 | so that there's just some sort of boundaries.

00:56:57.900 | But what could be a boundary for you

00:57:00.180 | that would be helpful to make it

00:57:01.660 | just a little bit more challenging

00:57:03.780 | to use a super addictive device?

00:57:06.380 | - And what about if you just have that

00:57:07.780 | like stroke of creativity,

00:57:09.420 | which sometimes happens to me and I'm like,

00:57:11.860 | I'm trying to go to bed and I have this idea.

00:57:14.260 | And now all of a sudden I'm like,

00:57:15.340 | I could probably crank out this entire blog post tonight,

00:57:18.020 | but it's 10 o'clock.

00:57:18.860 | Do I sit on my computer and crank it out?

00:57:20.500 | How much am I screwing my sleep by doing this

00:57:22.620 | versus it might take me three times as long

00:57:25.420 | without my productivity tomorrow?

00:57:28.520 | - What I would suggest now,

00:57:29.940 | of course there might be some time in life

00:57:31.500 | where just such a stroke of genius,

00:57:33.340 | you wanna move on that.

00:57:34.660 | There might be some instances where that can make sense.

00:57:37.740 | But most of the time,

00:57:38.700 | if this starts to happen kind of chronically,

00:57:40.820 | what we're looking to do is bracket.

00:57:43.780 | So you have this stroke of genius

00:57:46.820 | and then you put it into your calendar

00:57:50.020 | for a time that you know you can keep your word

00:57:53.100 | on fulfilling on working on that thing at that time,

00:57:55.700 | where it would align with these rhythms,

00:57:58.100 | align with your productivity.

00:57:59.820 | So that now instead of working on it at 11 p.m. or whatever,

00:58:03.060 | now you're gonna be working on it tomorrow at 9.30 a.m.

00:58:07.060 | You can let your brain relax

00:58:08.460 | that you're not just giving up on your dreams

00:58:10.900 | or whatever this exciting thing might be,

00:58:13.320 | but you're instead reorganizing it into a time

00:58:16.100 | that makes sense for your sleep-wake cycle.

00:58:18.740 | - Let's go on to food

00:58:19.580 | because I feel like both timing and what we're eating

00:58:22.700 | and let's also include drinking probably has a huge impact.

00:58:25.940 | - Absolutely.

00:58:26.780 | It's one of the more fascinating areas I find

00:58:30.140 | and one of the more challenging areas

00:58:32.060 | for a lot of people to make this lasting change.

00:58:35.260 | What would this change look like?

00:58:36.500 | Well, one, you can understand something known

00:58:39.460 | as circadian rhythm intermittent fasting.

00:58:42.540 | And this is just a fancy series of words

00:58:44.880 | that basically means that we're looking to eat largely

00:58:48.420 | when the sun is out and largely provide a bit

00:58:51.860 | of that digestive break in the evening when it's dark out.

00:58:55.540 | And now this is not to lose your mind over

00:58:57.780 | because of course there are certain periods of time

00:58:59.640 | when you will be eating, when it's dark out.

00:59:02.380 | So just looking to kind of cluster a lot

00:59:05.200 | of your eating time closer to these rhythms of nature.

00:59:08.540 | And this is what we would have done for so many years.

00:59:11.100 | So how can we bring this into our modern society?

00:59:13.500 | A lot of the research on this is coming

00:59:15.660 | out of the Salk Institute, Dr. Sachin Panda.

00:59:18.720 | We did a fascinating podcast episode with him

00:59:21.460 | and highly suggest checking that out

00:59:23.100 | if you wanna learn more.

00:59:24.520 | But what I would say about the takeaways

00:59:26.720 | with that is that his finding after decades of research,

00:59:30.900 | lots of great books, et cetera,

00:59:32.520 | is that bare minimum, the last bite of food you have,

00:59:36.620 | you're having that about three hours before bed.

00:59:40.260 | Now, I'll also say that we also find even just

00:59:44.420 | on the ground from a lot of wearable data,

00:59:46.620 | some benefits for people even going a bit further than that.

00:59:49.260 | So this is more in the anecdotal clinical setting.

00:59:52.160 | But if we look at things like four to five hours

00:59:56.260 | before bed experimentation with that,

00:59:58.980 | your last bite of food, often we see things

01:00:01.520 | like heart rate go down, HRV go up,

01:00:04.460 | changes in body temperature, blood oxygen,

01:00:06.580 | of course, your instances of sleep apnea.

01:00:09.500 | 'Cause we know that if you are having

01:00:11.420 | any respiratory based issues or mouth breathing, et cetera,

01:00:14.580 | some of these things can flare up

01:00:16.380 | if you're eating too close to bed.

01:00:18.460 | Unfortunately, many people that we look at

01:00:21.500 | are now eating most of their day

01:00:23.780 | from when they first wake up to when they're going to bed,

01:00:26.300 | not too much before that.

01:00:27.860 | So this is problematic.

01:00:30.420 | - Any particular foods to avoid

01:00:32.540 | either at different times of the day or altogether?

01:00:35.320 | - Yeah, so there's a reason that we so often have people

01:00:40.000 | wearing continuous glucose monitors

01:00:42.260 | because one of the more common reasons

01:00:44.740 | that people are having wake ups in the middle of the night

01:00:47.380 | is blood sugar instability.

01:00:49.780 | So we're looking to bring in foods

01:00:52.100 | that are gonna help support a healthy glycemic index.

01:00:55.140 | Can we have something that's not gonna massively spike us

01:00:58.140 | throughout the course of the day

01:00:59.300 | and then have a subsequent crash?

01:01:01.580 | Because how we're managing our days

01:01:03.940 | often gets mirrored in our nights in many regards,

01:01:07.040 | but that is not excluded with blood sugar.

01:01:09.740 | Berry is a company that integrates with Aura now

01:01:12.480 | so that you can overlay your sleep data

01:01:14.980 | and then see, oh, look, I crashed at 3 a.m.

01:01:18.300 | and I also had a wake up.

01:01:19.700 | So you can start to correlate some of those things

01:01:21.780 | that are very much connected.

01:01:23.340 | Inflammatory foods that you're having,

01:01:26.100 | so that can impact the airway

01:01:28.020 | and kind of the size of the airway.

01:01:30.100 | We're looking to avoid things like coarse sugars.

01:01:33.020 | So we'll see people go on some of these kind of

01:01:35.380 | sugar cleanses or Whole30

01:01:37.340 | or all these different things that people do.

01:01:39.200 | And it will visually even look different

01:01:42.020 | in their sleep results in those sections of time

01:01:44.780 | when they do change their diet type,

01:01:47.100 | even aside from diet timing.

01:01:49.340 | If you look at management of both

01:01:51.380 | the timing and the type of food,

01:01:53.520 | then you can often get a real change in your sleep.

01:01:56.540 | And to the point that I have seen reliably

01:01:59.420 | people even having things like

01:02:01.060 | changes in up to around 10 beats per minute

01:02:03.500 | in the heart rate just in a relatively quick period of time

01:02:06.220 | just by moving the timing.

01:02:08.200 | So their heart rate going down markedly

01:02:10.820 | just by moving that timing of that type of food.

01:02:13.300 | And then of course, if they change the type of food as well,

01:02:15.900 | that can also be augmented.

01:02:17.820 | - Are there any foods that you would encourage people

01:02:19.980 | to add to their day or their evenings

01:02:22.540 | or anything to encourage sleep?

01:02:24.620 | - Yeah, one, checking in on your choline,

01:02:28.180 | the amount of choline you're having

01:02:29.520 | and how that can play a role in things like your REM.

01:02:32.460 | So quality of REM, the duration of REM.

01:02:35.280 | - What's choline?

01:02:36.120 | - So choline can be both supplemental,

01:02:38.540 | but also in things like eggs and certain meats

01:02:42.180 | and certain things that you can be aware of.

01:02:44.360 | We wanna be getting choline.

01:02:45.660 | And if you're not getting that in your diet,

01:02:47.200 | if that's not, doesn't apply to you,

01:02:48.780 | then we might wanna supplement for some of those things.

01:02:51.060 | Now, of course, this is just one piece of the puzzle.

01:02:53.420 | So I don't want people to feel like

01:02:54.540 | they need to immediately go out and supplement,

01:02:56.700 | but being aware that some of these nutritional items

01:03:00.460 | are so important for our sleep quality.

01:03:04.020 | So the most basic is that we wanna avoid things

01:03:07.840 | that are gonna spike us highly.

01:03:09.420 | So going, if you even Google the glycemic index

01:03:12.660 | and go on the things that are gonna be

01:03:14.380 | the most spike heavy, we wanna be kind of mindful of those

01:03:18.860 | because those are gonna show up in those sleep results.

01:03:21.980 | Also, if we're eating too close to bedtime,

01:03:25.260 | then that temperature spike can often go up

01:03:28.400 | and that can be counterproductive

01:03:30.060 | to helping us guide off to sleep.

01:03:31.900 | 'Cause you wanna remember

01:03:33.060 | that we're looking to set up our evening

01:03:35.100 | so that we're dropping our body temperature

01:03:37.420 | quite markedly in order to facilitate melatonin production

01:03:41.280 | and sleep onset.

01:03:42.980 | But if you're eating late and the types of foods

01:03:45.460 | that are gonna be upping your body temperature,

01:03:47.700 | like those high glycemic load and what have you,

01:03:50.580 | then it can make your body temperature too high

01:03:53.700 | and that can be troublesome to fall asleep.

01:03:56.420 | - What about drinks?

01:03:57.580 | I know caffeine and alcohol

01:03:59.620 | kind of have a huge impact on sleep.

01:04:01.620 | What's the concise advice there?

01:04:04.660 | - Okay, so this goes under the umbrella of chronopharmacology,

01:04:09.220 | the timing of your drugs.

01:04:10.660 | So where are you gonna put your drugs?

01:04:12.340 | Caffeine, we would like to keep

01:04:13.900 | on the first half of your day,

01:04:16.020 | knowing that there's bioindividuality.

01:04:17.780 | Some people are slow or fast metabolizers.

01:04:20.380 | So if it takes you a long time to metabolize that,

01:04:23.940 | then you might wanna be aware

01:04:25.060 | and move it a bit earlier in your day.

01:04:27.060 | So what could that look like?

01:04:28.400 | So for some people, we try to put it before around 12 p.m.

01:04:32.100 | This is generalized depending on your sleep-wake schedule.

01:04:34.960 | But if you struggle to metabolize that,

01:04:36.700 | for some people, they might be faster metabolizers

01:04:38.940 | and they can get away with a little bit later,

01:04:41.000 | something like 2 p.m. or so

01:04:44.380 | that you have a bit more wiggle room.

01:04:46.500 | But you wanna kind of check in also subjectively.

01:04:49.460 | This is where the subjects,

01:04:51.140 | you can both test with DNA testing

01:04:53.460 | to see how fast or slow a metabolizer you are,

01:04:56.100 | but then the subjective assessment of,

01:04:58.700 | are you more sensitive to and struggle to fall asleep

01:05:02.020 | when you have that higher amount of caffeine?

01:05:04.500 | So that would be on the caffeine piece.

01:05:05.980 | For the alcohol piece, oh my goodness,

01:05:08.100 | this is the one where, for most people with wearable data,

01:05:12.460 | that's one of the biggest takeaways they get

01:05:14.180 | is just how much they're impacted

01:05:15.700 | by even one drink or two drinks or what have you.

01:05:19.420 | And even if you're not tracking,

01:05:20.740 | then you can likely have a sense

01:05:22.500 | that you're waking up differently

01:05:24.540 | after a night of a drink or two.

01:05:26.380 | I very rarely see people be able to have alcohol

01:05:31.220 | and it not show up in your sleep results.

01:05:33.460 | What that looks like is a typically improved sleep onset.

01:05:37.340 | So it truly does often help people fall asleep

01:05:40.060 | in many studies, but then it falls all apart.

01:05:42.500 | Then often we have a whole slew of sleep fragmentation.

01:05:46.180 | You're hotter throughout that course of the night.

01:05:48.220 | So it can impact the type of sleep that you're getting.

01:05:50.940 | So it can just be a whole mess.

01:05:52.180 | And similar to THC being another one

01:05:55.140 | that also seems to do something akin.

01:05:57.740 | So similar with often helping with falling asleep,

01:06:00.980 | but then the quality gets a little funky,

01:06:03.380 | but a little different on your readouts.

01:06:05.380 | But certainly with alcohol,

01:06:06.660 | the earlier the better.

01:06:07.740 | So if you can do things like happy hour,

01:06:10.180 | if you can do boozy brunches, any of these,

01:06:13.460 | that's truly one of the best ways to make it

01:06:16.020 | so that it's not hitting at your sleep so much.

01:06:18.460 | But the truth is it is one of the lowest hanging fruits

01:06:21.860 | that you can have to take out of your rotation

01:06:25.340 | to improve your sleep.

01:06:26.500 | Even if it's just one drink, it doesn't matter.

01:06:28.780 | Yes, there have been recent studies,

01:06:30.820 | even within 2023 and into 2024,

01:06:33.780 | looking at just one drink having impact on our brain matter

01:06:38.420 | in a particular way that we don't necessarily

01:06:40.940 | wanna cultivate and seems to show up

01:06:42.780 | in some of our sleep results.

01:06:44.180 | Now I will say there's bio-individuality.

01:06:45.860 | So I have some people that it's not showing

01:06:48.260 | as much of a hit with say one drink

01:06:50.700 | if they're doing it kind of early enough.

01:06:52.980 | So certainly one is better than two, for sure.

01:06:55.820 | Okay, so we talked about food.

01:06:57.220 | Where does exercise fit into sleep?

01:06:59.500 | Yeah, so exercise, if we think of our nature of exercise,

01:07:03.380 | one, any exercise for most people,

01:07:06.940 | 'cause we know most people are not exercising

01:07:08.740 | and moving their body enough.

01:07:09.860 | So if we're somewhere in that realm of 3,000 steps or so,

01:07:14.140 | or just really sedentary lifestyle,

01:07:16.380 | we for sure wanna be prioritizing exercise in general,

01:07:19.820 | 'cause we know that this makes such a difference

01:07:21.540 | for our sleep results.

01:07:22.660 | If you wanna improve that sleep quality,

01:07:24.780 | exercise is a place to look.

01:07:26.460 | If you're someone that is into stats

01:07:28.540 | and you wanna improve things like your HRV,

01:07:30.540 | heart rate variability,

01:07:31.620 | exercise is definitely a place to look.

01:07:33.980 | So first beginning there,

01:07:35.060 | so I don't wanna dissuade people from exercising,

01:07:38.100 | but the time can be helpful as well.

01:07:41.460 | Can you get a little bit of movement in the morning,

01:07:43.820 | ideally outside in the sunlight,

01:07:46.260 | so a morning walk or what have you.

01:07:48.420 | But then if you do have this available to yourself,

01:07:51.340 | you're stronger, so you're more physically intensive

01:07:54.940 | types of workouts later into the day

01:07:57.100 | when your body has had the opportunity to warm up a bit

01:07:59.980 | and have less of a risk of injury,

01:08:02.420 | you're kind of more able to be more cognitively intact.

01:08:06.020 | To take on this task of exercising at that time

01:08:09.580 | is a theory around circadian entrainment.

01:08:12.660 | Are there any tips you have for people,

01:08:14.660 | both in the first stage of trying to fall asleep

01:08:17.140 | and the wake-up stage?

01:08:18.420 | Sometimes I'll wake up, stuff's on my mind,

01:08:20.300 | and I'm just like, "I just need to go back to sleep."

01:08:22.420 | Hopefully you're kind of learning some of these things

01:08:24.460 | that we've been speaking about.

01:08:25.380 | So over time, hopefully you have less and less of these,

01:08:27.380 | but in the meantime, you're having some wake-ups.

01:08:29.660 | What do you do?

01:08:30.500 | A couple of things that we would practice is one,

01:08:33.500 | acceptance, I know this can sound so light,

01:08:35.940 | but acceptance of the fact that you're up,

01:08:37.740 | because so many of us will fight and resist

01:08:40.620 | that we are awake at 3.20 a.m. and we don't wanna be.

01:08:44.020 | And the more we start resisting this,

01:08:45.780 | why is this happening?

01:08:46.940 | Is there something wrong with me?

01:08:48.700 | Some sort of line of thought,

01:08:50.380 | this can wake you up more than we're looking to facilitate.

01:08:54.220 | Two, if you are playing into,

01:08:56.340 | you should know about something called CBTI,

01:08:58.500 | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia,

01:09:00.780 | 'cause if you are struggling with staying asleep,

01:09:03.140 | you might benefit from some of those practices.

01:09:05.340 | Check that out, we got lots of podcasts on that.

01:09:07.780 | But some of the rules of thumb there

01:09:10.740 | can be that if you are awake for a stretch of time,

01:09:14.100 | going outside the bedroom

01:09:15.220 | and doing something light and relaxing in dim lighting.

01:09:18.180 | I will say that is one area

01:09:20.580 | that I sometimes have some of my clients not abide by,

01:09:24.580 | that if that fits for you, if that's helping you

01:09:27.300 | and you do that until you're a little sleepy, great.

01:09:30.060 | But it's also important to know

01:09:31.820 | that there is the option of kind of laying

01:09:33.940 | in a relaxed position.

01:09:36.260 | You can do things like breath work.

01:09:38.340 | If you wanna bring in like meditations and other things,

01:09:41.220 | you can do that.

01:09:42.260 | And if you have kind of dim lighting,

01:09:45.460 | so red lights or what have you,

01:09:47.380 | you can bring in things like reading, writing.

01:09:50.500 | So writing out any of those stressors is a big suggestion.

01:09:53.500 | So what that would look like is taking a piece of paper,

01:09:56.300 | have it always by your bed.

01:09:57.780 | I actually have pens that glow red.

01:09:59.900 | So you can use that pen or a way to have dim lighting

01:10:03.860 | and have two columns.

01:10:05.940 | And on the right hand side,

01:10:08.380 | you're putting in all of your problematic issues.

01:10:11.580 | So anything that's coming up,

01:10:13.260 | you just kind of outline all of those things.

01:10:15.780 | And then on the other side,

01:10:17.460 | what you're doing is you're putting all of those solutions

01:10:20.660 | to those concerns.

01:10:22.740 | Even if there is no solution

01:10:23.980 | and you have to practice acceptance,

01:10:25.820 | you are doing that in that time.

01:10:28.260 | We just saw this recent study called the Mind After Midnight

01:10:31.860 | that showed that our thought patterns

01:10:34.660 | actually have a different way of behaving

01:10:37.860 | in the wee hours of the morning.

01:10:40.020 | So we see rates of suicidality, anxiety, depression,

01:10:43.820 | all these other things go up in these wee hours.

01:10:46.580 | So you can be aware that you might not wanna believe

01:10:50.060 | some of the thoughts that are coming up

01:10:51.860 | in the same way that you might do

01:10:53.540 | throughout the rest of your day.

01:10:55.060 | - My tactic has previously been to throw on a meditation,

01:10:58.420 | an audio kind of like guided sleep meditation.

01:11:01.020 | Peloton has a ton of them.

01:11:02.420 | - Sure.

01:11:03.260 | - I don't know if you're familiar.

01:11:04.100 | Someone recently told me about the cognitive shuffle.

01:11:06.700 | - Oh no, what's that one?

01:11:08.380 | - Okay, so I'll encourage everyone to try this.

01:11:10.460 | You too, if you fall asleep

01:11:11.740 | and you wake up in the middle of the night

01:11:12.820 | and you're trying to go to sleep.

01:11:13.900 | So the way if I remember right that it worked

01:11:15.860 | is you pick a letter at random

01:11:18.220 | and you visualize a word that starts with that letter.

01:11:21.540 | And then you take each letter in that word.

01:11:26.140 | So let's say you say B and you say blood.

01:11:28.380 | And then you go B and then you just visualize B words

01:11:32.060 | until you're out.

01:11:32.900 | And then you visualize L words

01:11:34.340 | and two O's doesn't really help.

01:11:36.460 | But anyways, the idea is that you're just visualizing words

01:11:39.620 | and thinking about them.

01:11:40.460 | So if the word was bat, you'd visualize a baseball bat

01:11:43.700 | and like kind of turn it around in your head

01:11:45.300 | and think about it.

01:11:46.180 | And then you'd move on to the next one and it's a bag

01:11:48.980 | and you visualize a bag

01:11:50.260 | and you imagine looking at it from all perspectives

01:11:52.460 | and thinking about it and imagining the word.

01:11:55.460 | The idea is it kind of puts your mind

01:11:57.500 | in this similar to a dream state

01:11:59.620 | and you just fall back asleep.

01:12:00.900 | I've tried it once or twice and it's worked.

01:12:02.420 | They swear by it.

01:12:03.860 | I haven't sworn to it,

01:12:04.860 | but that's one obviously not as good

01:12:06.700 | as just getting good sleep and not waking up.

01:12:08.660 | But I will try to find a link and put it in the show notes.

01:12:11.380 | So for a lot of people, maybe with a partner

01:12:13.300 | that one of their routines was watch a show before bed.

01:12:16.580 | Obviously you could put on some blue light glasses

01:12:19.020 | or something, or maybe watch on a laptop

01:12:20.860 | with a red profile.

01:12:22.100 | But are there some activities that you could maybe do

01:12:24.620 | with a partner before bed

01:12:27.140 | that might be more promotive of good sleep?

01:12:31.020 | - Yes, absolutely.

01:12:32.900 | Our whole goal in the evening is what are we doing

01:12:35.540 | in the hours leading up to help facilitate the brain

01:12:38.660 | coming out of this hyperactivity state

01:12:41.020 | to just calming itself down.

01:12:43.180 | So how can we do that?

01:12:44.540 | So one, we can change the environment.

01:12:46.420 | So whether that's music,

01:12:48.300 | whether that's the type of conversations we're engaging in,

01:12:51.380 | like massage, reflecting on our day,

01:12:54.500 | gratitude exchanges, different things with our partner,

01:12:58.060 | the stretching piece,

01:12:59.340 | different things that can help facilitate,

01:13:01.980 | okay, we're gearing up for sleep.

01:13:04.020 | Some people will bring in things like Theragun.

01:13:06.660 | - And what about like playing cards?

01:13:08.540 | Where does that fall in the spectrum

01:13:10.140 | of like ramping down versus up?

01:13:12.820 | - That is a great question.

01:13:14.420 | What we think of even just from an ancestral perspective

01:13:17.100 | is the evenings were often meant for bonding,

01:13:19.660 | for connection,

01:13:21.100 | 'cause we know that loneliness and sleep are interconnected.

01:13:24.180 | So anything that you can do to kind of bond

01:13:26.140 | with your partner, your tribe, your people,

01:13:28.540 | that seems to make sense

01:13:30.580 | that it can help support our results with our sleep.

01:13:33.140 | So you just wanna check in periodically like,

01:13:36.300 | are you super competitive

01:13:37.460 | and you're getting really stressed out

01:13:38.740 | at the end of this card game?

01:13:40.980 | Do we need a bit more buffer time?

01:13:43.020 | So would we do this a bit earlier in our evening?

01:13:45.540 | And then maybe we add in some time

01:13:47.180 | to kind of wind down more with reading

01:13:49.340 | or something more low key.

01:13:51.420 | But if it's something

01:13:52.260 | that's just a really joyous activity for you

01:13:55.060 | and doesn't bring about stress,

01:13:56.620 | then that could be a great activity to bring in.

01:13:58.820 | - So does that mean if it's non-stressful

01:14:00.780 | but highly functioning in your brain,

01:14:04.020 | it could be okay, like a crossword puzzle?

01:14:06.820 | - So the big thing is,

01:14:08.740 | is that particularly right up before sleep,

01:14:11.900 | we're just looking to not be too cognitively engaged.

01:14:15.420 | So your evenings are this whole wealth of time

01:14:17.900 | where you can set yourself up for more off time.

01:14:21.340 | So we're not working

01:14:22.740 | and we're moving over into connection or relaxation.

01:14:26.540 | But then I would say there is a bit of this buffer time

01:14:29.420 | before bed where you might not wanna just

01:14:31.900 | have the crossword puzzle in your bed.

01:14:33.900 | Things that could just get you a little too worked up

01:14:36.500 | might take away from our goals.

01:14:38.580 | And so what that could look like is also,

01:14:40.540 | things that excite you.

01:14:41.540 | So even you stress, like EU stress, excitement things,

01:14:45.300 | those can still be activating.

01:14:47.980 | So we just wanna keep taking that inventory.

01:14:50.620 | Maybe for some people, the crossword puzzle

01:14:52.580 | is sort of just this relaxing, low-key,

01:14:54.500 | down-regulatory activity.

01:14:56.060 | For other people, they're stressed out about it.

01:14:58.020 | - The last in the kind of camp that I wanna ask about

01:15:01.260 | is sleeping with a partner.

01:15:03.580 | I feel like I haven't found great data on this,

01:15:06.780 | but how does that affect your sleep?

01:15:09.260 | What should you do if you do have a partner

01:15:11.420 | and one of you is sleeping well, maybe both of you aren't?

01:15:13.900 | What are best tips for people that share a bed?

01:15:16.860 | - So glad you asked that.

01:15:17.860 | This is our number one most popular episode.

01:15:21.540 | And I would definitely suggest that people listen to this

01:15:23.780 | with Dr. Wendy Truxell.

01:15:25.700 | And this is her whole area of focus.

01:15:27.540 | And she has a book called "Sharing the Covers."

01:15:29.980 | And it's looking at sharing the bed

01:15:32.980 | with your significant other, kids, pets, et cetera.

01:15:37.340 | Because we do see that can be really disruptive,

01:15:40.020 | even if we think it's helpful.

01:15:42.980 | So meaning that a lot of people

01:15:44.860 | will look at their sleep results

01:15:46.740 | and their sleep is clearly impacted

01:15:49.780 | when they have this other partner or whoever in bed.

01:15:52.660 | And then we have them sleep by themselves and it's better.

01:15:55.820 | But then you ask them and they say,

01:15:57.260 | "Oh, I always sleep better with my partner."

01:15:59.020 | So point being, I'm not saying that everyone needs

01:16:00.540 | to separate from their sleep environment.

01:16:02.980 | Although what she's pointing to is called a,

01:16:05.940 | she's coining instead of a sleep divorce,

01:16:08.260 | a sleep alliance, nicer way to put it.

01:16:11.220 | So that you are during certain times

01:16:14.020 | when maybe you have different shifts that you're working

01:16:16.580 | or different schedules,

01:16:17.940 | or you're navigating treatment of things

01:16:20.180 | like sleep apnea, snoring, et cetera.

01:16:23.300 | Or kids, dogs, maybe it's a temporary period of time

01:16:28.020 | that it can make sense.

01:16:29.260 | It's not like a failure to be in different rooms

01:16:31.620 | if that's available to you.

01:16:32.740 | But the big takeaway is yes,

01:16:34.980 | your environment can really impact

01:16:36.740 | some of your sleep results, including the pets.

01:16:39.140 | And actually there are high on the rank of things

01:16:41.620 | that can disrupt us over the long term,

01:16:43.500 | even more so than kids often,

01:16:45.140 | because they're usually around for longer in the bed

01:16:47.740 | than kids for just a few years.

01:16:49.980 | So you want to take inventory and kind of audit

01:16:53.460 | what is going on with anyone else that's in your bedroom

01:16:57.540 | and have some real conversations and look at this

01:17:00.900 | in a way that is pulling for a great sleep.

01:17:03.980 | So there's no shame if we do have to separate

01:17:07.060 | during those periods.

01:17:08.420 | If we are having the snoring and sleep apnea,

01:17:11.660 | upper air resistance syndrome,

01:17:13.020 | it's impacting both the person that that's happening to

01:17:16.180 | and the partner.

01:17:17.780 | - For people who aren't having issues,

01:17:19.300 | I know even just like the mattress toppers,

01:17:22.020 | I know they ate sleep.

01:17:22.860 | Like we could choose temperatures differently.

01:17:24.420 | And we started to make little changes,

01:17:25.860 | but we've got an episode.

01:17:27.180 | I'll link to the episode in the show notes

01:17:28.580 | for people who want to go deeper.

01:17:29.780 | - Amazing.

01:17:30.620 | - And when it comes to these trackers,

01:17:32.380 | we've talked a lot about Aura

01:17:33.380 | because that's the one I'm using

01:17:34.660 | and one you use with a lot of clients.

01:17:36.220 | What do you think of the spectrum of trackers?

01:17:38.220 | And if someone's using a Whoop,

01:17:39.820 | are there preferred ones,

01:17:40.900 | ones that are like just not good, don't buy the marketing,

01:17:43.460 | or how do you think about that?

01:17:44.900 | - I think it's a really exciting time

01:17:46.100 | that a lot of these can be so helpful

01:17:47.940 | to at least just get you some data

01:17:49.540 | outside of logging pen and paper

01:17:52.340 | because so much can start to get illuminated.

01:17:54.900 | And things like Garmin, Whoop, BioStrap, Aura, Apple,

01:17:59.900 | some can be brain-based like Muse,

01:18:02.300 | in addition to things like Fitbit and some of the OG ones.

01:18:05.260 | So a lot of these are gonna be helpful, bare minimum.

01:18:08.340 | And for sleep in particular,

01:18:10.460 | there is a reason that for us still to this day,

01:18:12.780 | for years and years,

01:18:13.860 | we've required that people have had the Aura ring

01:18:16.420 | to participate in our programs

01:18:18.340 | just simply because as far as a sleep-specified tracker,

01:18:22.700 | it does really shine in that area.

01:18:25.180 | Now, of course, any consumer-grade tracker

01:18:27.780 | has certain things that have those limitations.

01:18:30.020 | We touched on the sleep stage classifications,

01:18:32.180 | which definitely have their shortcomings,

01:18:34.660 | but there are things that we have a bit more weight in

01:18:38.340 | as far as its accuracy.

01:18:39.460 | Like it's, are you awake or are you asleep?

01:18:42.300 | That tends to fall more and say like the 90% rate

01:18:46.300 | of accuracy as far as, okay,

01:18:48.380 | we could probably guess that it's pretty accurate

01:18:50.700 | for the most part.

01:18:51.540 | There might be some flaws here and there,

01:18:53.740 | but that's one of the reason we go with Aura.

01:18:55.700 | But we also, especially in recent years,

01:18:57.740 | have been starting to uptick our amount of working

01:18:59.900 | with people with the Whoop band.

01:19:01.420 | So they're doing a lot of really cool things for sleep,

01:19:03.860 | even some cool stuff with like AI sleep coaching in there,

01:19:07.660 | which is really, really cool.

01:19:08.780 | So they're pulling your data and then they can say,

01:19:12.100 | oh, well, Chris, okay, well, let's look at your HRV

01:19:14.220 | and you had these trends for the last couple of months

01:19:16.740 | and here are some things you could do

01:19:18.460 | to improve these numbers.

01:19:20.220 | So it's pulling with your actual data

01:19:22.660 | and then bringing from some of the latest in sleep science

01:19:25.780 | to provide practical application.

01:19:28.580 | So I think that's what we're gonna start seeing more of.

01:19:30.580 | And then in recent years, this year in particular,

01:19:33.860 | we're seeing these daytime stress monitors

01:19:36.740 | link up more readily.

01:19:38.140 | So like HRV tracking and how stressed are you by day,

01:19:42.540 | 'cause that can play a role

01:19:43.740 | in some of our sleep results by night.

01:19:46.060 | Wow, okay.

01:19:46.900 | So it sounds like with everything that's going on,

01:19:48.860 | both with technology and AI and data,

01:19:51.380 | we're gonna get a lot of cool stuff in the future.

01:19:53.340 | Yes.

01:19:54.180 | I am really excited.

01:19:55.020 | Maybe we'll have a chat in a year or two

01:19:56.220 | and see where the whole world has evolved.

01:19:58.180 | Totally.

01:19:59.020 | In the meantime, we've gone over so much stuff.

01:20:01.420 | I wanna make sure people know

01:20:02.660 | where they can stay on top of everything you're publishing,

01:20:05.500 | reading, sharing with the world.

01:20:07.580 | Absolutely.

01:20:08.420 | So at sleepisaskill.com, you can do a lot of things.

01:20:12.700 | So there you can take a sleep assessment

01:20:15.180 | to get some real-time feedback on some things

01:20:18.100 | that you can do right away to improve your sleep.

01:20:19.980 | You can also go to free downloadable PDF

01:20:22.580 | on ways that you can optimize your bedroom.

01:20:24.340 | We talked about some of these

01:20:25.420 | and there's 18 high-tech, low-tech things

01:20:27.420 | you can do on there.

01:20:28.700 | And you can also sign up for our newsletter.

01:20:31.220 | It's called Sleep Obsessions.

01:20:32.500 | Goes out every Monday for over five years.

01:20:34.620 | And so we give lots of tips on that as well as our podcast.

01:20:38.140 | But if you're really looking to dive in,

01:20:40.340 | then we have cohort groups

01:20:42.660 | that we require the Oura Ring to participate.

01:20:45.460 | But then through that,

01:20:46.300 | you're coming in with particular stats with your sleep

01:20:49.340 | and you're leaving with a whole different set of stats

01:20:52.020 | at the end of those interventions.

01:20:54.420 | So our commitment is really being able to help

01:20:57.220 | get us back in the driver's seat of our sleep

01:20:59.820 | so that we're not so mystified by it

01:21:02.060 | and hoping that it improves

01:21:04.020 | and instead really getting at the core

01:21:06.740 | of what's going on there.

01:21:07.900 | And then on the lightest side of things,

01:21:09.380 | we also offer audits.

01:21:11.180 | So we'll give wearable audits.

01:21:13.220 | We'll go much more in depth with that individual's data

01:21:16.980 | and then set you up with particular things

01:21:19.020 | that you would be taking on for the next 90 days.

01:21:21.500 | And then we'd auto-trigger some things for you.

01:21:24.180 | So in 90 days, you send us screenshots

01:21:26.180 | of what you've done to improve.

01:21:27.700 | So hopefully we've seen actual measurable change

01:21:30.020 | and we see a lot of really cool stuff for people

01:21:32.420 | when they start getting aware of what's going on

01:21:34.540 | with their stats and what they can do to make a difference.

01:21:36.740 | - That's amazing.

01:21:37.580 | - The thing that I would like to leave

01:21:38.940 | is that my mission on the planet

01:21:41.020 | is to help support people with their sleep.

01:21:43.540 | I really felt like when my sleep wasn't working,

01:21:46.380 | I felt like I was just losing my grasp on reality.

01:21:51.140 | Like I was just so disempowered.

01:21:53.340 | Once I got up under that,

01:21:54.860 | it completely transformed my experience in my own life.

01:21:57.660 | - Thank you so much for being here.

01:21:59.340 | I really appreciate it.

01:22:00.180 | - Thank you.

01:22:01.020 | - Thank you so much for joining me today.

01:22:04.980 | I hope you took away as much as I did from this episode.

01:22:08.140 | Huge thank you to Molly for being here.

01:22:10.340 | And I'm actually gonna have her take a deeper look

01:22:12.300 | at my sleep tracking data to see what we learn.

01:22:14.700 | And I'll follow up if there was anything interesting

01:22:16.700 | worth sharing.

01:22:17.860 | On the topic of sleep technology,

01:22:19.500 | if you're interested in checking out the Aura Ring

01:22:21.740 | or the Eight Sleep Pod cover and wanna support the show,

01:22:24.500 | I do have partner links for both.

01:22:26.620 | You can find them at allthehacks.com/aura,

01:22:29.740 | O-U-R-A, and allthehacks.com/eightsleep.

01:22:34.020 | So thank you in advance for using those links.

01:22:35.940 | If you're interested,

01:22:37.060 | Amy and I use both those products every single night.

01:22:39.820 | We absolutely love them.

01:22:41.940 | All right, that's all for today.

01:22:43.620 | I will see you next week.

01:22:44.900 | And until then, sleep well.

01:22:46.620 | (upbeat music)