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What are the most popular questions people come to you with as a sleep doctor? >> There's three biggies. Number one is,
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"What do I do if I fall asleep, okay, and I wake up in the middle of the night
00:00:09
and I can't fall back asleep?" >> And you can help people with that.
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>> Absolutely. The second question is, "What pillow should I buy?" And I'm
00:00:15
going to walk you through which pillows make sense for which people. And then another one that people ask me all the
00:00:20
time is, "What's the best time to have sex?" >> That's a strange thing for somebody of
00:00:24
your profession to be >> about. Well, let me explain why. So, I've been an actively practicing sleep
00:00:29
specialist for 26 years. I take care of people's sleep problems like apnea, insomnia, and I'm really interested in
00:00:34
the things that you might be doing right now that are messing up your sleep that
00:00:37
are easy to fix. So, for example, most people don't know that they have a genetic sleep code inside them called
00:00:42
their chronoype, which decides when your brain releases things like melatonin, cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine. And
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so I can show you based on your chronotype when it's bedtime, but also the perfect time of day to do almost any
00:00:54
activity, including the perfect time to have coffee and alcohol. Crazy. There's
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even data to show that your ability to understand complicated concepts improves when you're more in line with your
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chronoype. Now, there are three known chronotypes, but what I'm famous for is
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discovering a fourth one, which I think might be you. So, we're going to talk a
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lot about that. We're also going to talk about dreams because dreams can tell you
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things about yourself that you may not want to know. And then there's how to
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fix jet lag, whether you should sleep with a TV on, the truth about melatonin supplementation, and my favorite way to
00:01:26
get magnesium. >> Before we get into all of that, shall we go and look at the best possible sleep
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position? >> Yeah, let's check it out. >> Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you.
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We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show and roughly 69% of you that listen and love
00:01:43
this show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've
00:01:48
ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that subscribe button. And it means so
00:01:54
much to myself, but also to my team cuz when we hit these milestones, we go away
00:01:56
as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple, free, easy thing you
00:02:00
can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So that's
00:02:04
a favor I would ask you. And um if you do hit the subscribe button, I won't let
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you down. And we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production
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better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. Means the world. And uh
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yeah, let's do this. >> Dr. Bruce, yes. What is it you do? Why does it matter so much now? And what
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perspective do you take on what you do that is atypical versus other people I might have spoken to about this subject?
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>> I'm a sleep doctor. Um I take care of people's sleep problems like apnea,
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narcolepsy, insomnia, things like that. I've dedicated a good portion of my career not just to understanding how to
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treat those disorders which are sleep disorders, but what I also I call disordered sleep. I'm really interested
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in behavioral habits. What's going on? what are the things that you might be
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doing right now that are kind of messing up your sleep that are easy to fix um and be able to maybe change how things
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are going forward? You know, I I didn't start out thinking I was going to become
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a sleep doctor if I'm going to be honest with you. Like that that was not on the
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on the path. Um I was actually going in a completely different direction. And one of the things I really discovered
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was when you change someone's sleep, dude, you change their life. Like it is
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fundamental to who they are. And it's important for me to be a sleep educator
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in a way, shape, and form that's practical so that people can actually get something from what I'm talking
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about and apply it right then and there. >> And there's probably a couple of million
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people that have clicked onto this conversation to listen. >> Yeah. >> Who is this conversation for?
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>> I think it's for anybody out there who's either curious about sleep or wants to
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try to improve their sleep or maybe suspicious that they could have a problem with their sleep. I think any
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one of those three types of people would find tremendous value here. And what are
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we going to be able to do for those people today specifically? >> So, I'm going to give people um several
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different like plans, if you will, uh maybe even a five-step plan of things that they can absolutely learn how to
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do. They're also going to learn about a genetic sleep code that they have inside
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them called their chronoype. A lot of people don't even know that they have a
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chronoype or maybe they've heard of the of the idea, but they haven't ever heard
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of the term. We're going to learn a lot about that. We're also going to talk
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about dreams a little bit. Um I'm excited to have the opportunity to do that. I've spent the last year and a
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half learning more about how to use dreams in my clinical work as a psychologist, which is very interesting
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stuff. So, I'm excited to share some of that. So, I think people are going to
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learn a whole bunch. >> And dreams matter. >> Oh, yeah. They absolutely matter. I'm I
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call dreams emotional metabolism, right? And so, when you're dreaming, what is
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you what is the function? What is the purpose? What are you doing? You're actually working through your emotional
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states that you had during the daytime. Um this is why we have nightmares, right? And so in a nightmare, it's a
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scary scene and all a sudden it gets so emotional, you wake up. That is officially called a nightmare. That
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awakening, but you stop processing. And when you go back to sleep, you go back to the dream and you get to that scary
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point, you wake up again and you get caught in this loop, right? And so dreams matter because they can be
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incredibly disruptive. Also, they can tell you things about yourself that you may not want to know or may not have in
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the front of your mind at all times. Right? Sometimes people have very interesting dreams like dreams of being
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chased or dreams of their teeth falling out or all these different things and they can mean a whole host of different
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things. But I want to be super clear. There's no guide book that says, "Hey,
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you know, if you're if you're dreaming of that you're in water, you hate your
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mother." Like, it doesn't really work that way. Dreams mean something to the
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dreamer. And so the goal is to understand the context within that. So who is the dreamer? What is the dream?
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And then how do those two work together? And what is the experience that you're
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drawing from academically but also professionally? Give me a view of how many people you've worked with and
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the range of things people come to you with. >> Yeah. So I've been an actively
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practicing sleep specialist for 26 years. So I work in offices with medical doctors cuz I'm not a medical doctor. I
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have a PhD and I work with them on their patients. lot of insomnia patients but also the apneas, the restless legs, the
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narcolepsies of the world because I have kind of a unique distinction in that I'm
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one of 168 people in the world who took the medical boards without going to medical school and passed. So I can work
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within that framework and really understand a lot of what's going on. I don't prescribe medication, but if I'm
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honest with you, most people don't need sleep medication as far as I'm concerned. I can get them to sleep
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usually without any medication at all. >> And you're a psychologist as well?
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>> I am. I'm a clinical psychologist. And how does those two worlds make 1 plus 1
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equal three? >> Sure. So when you talk about sleep, psychology is all over the place. I
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would argue 75% of the reason people don't sleep is anxiety or fear. That really falls well within the range of
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psychology for sure. Um, and it's different kinds of fears. It's fears that you know about that are right in
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your face, like something that's going on in your daytime, but it could be other fears. It could be fears of your
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relationship. It could be financial fears. It could be a whole host of different things. So, I think there's a
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lot of psychology that gets to be played in all of this kind of thing. >> I got two more questions before we
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really get into the details and specifics and start really helping the audience with whatever they're dealing
00:07:07
with. >> The first is we have lots of props here. >> Yes. >> Give me a a topline view of the types of
00:07:14
things you're going to show me and why you've brought all of these wonderful
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props. >> Absolutely. So, I get asked a lot of questions as you might imagine and um
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one of the big questions that I get asked is what bed and pillow should I buy? So, sitting next to you is a large
00:07:27
stack of pillows, all different types, actually. And I want to be able to show some of your viewers how you look at
00:07:32
pillows and which pillows make sense for which people. Believe it or not, there's
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like a fitting process. We're going to go through that. This device right here
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is a sleep test, believe it or not. So, it used to be we'd have to send you to
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the hospital. Yeah, you can unwind it. Uh, you have to send you to the hospital. We'd put 27 electrodes all
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over your body, respiratory belts across your chest. We'd have cameras zoomed in
00:07:52
on you. And then, by the way, you're supposed to be able to go to sleep, right? And we're supposed to be able to
00:07:56
monitor you. Now, historically, we were able to do that pretty well. But once COVID hit, nobody wanted to sleep in the
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same bed that somebody else had been sleeping in the day before. So, now we have what are called HSTS or home sleep
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tests. >> Wow. >> Yeah. We'll talk about how to use it and and what it can tell you.
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>> My last question before we get into the details is what are the most popular
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questions that people come to you with as a sleep doctor? >> Yeah. So, I'd say there's probably three
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biggies, right? Number one is, "Hey, Dr. Bruce, I fall asleep just fine, but I
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wake up somewhere between 1 and 3:00 in the morning, and it either takes me 20 minutes or 3 hours to fall back asleep.
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What the heck is going on there?" >> And you can help people with that.
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>> Absolutely. I'm going to give everybody a exactly what I do in clinic. Like, I'm
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going to explain to everybody exactly what I say to my patients and how to go about getting through that particular
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problem because it's it's so flagrant. Everybody needs to know how to how to
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work with that. The second question would be um what bed should I buy or what pillow should I buy? I think we're
00:08:54
going to address that over here. Um and then another one that people ask me all the time is, you know,
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is there some kind of timing? Is there some like I feel like my body is off. They say this all the time. They're
00:09:07
like, if I just lived in a different time zone, I feel like everything would work out well. So the very basics of
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sleep. >> Uhhuh. >> What do I need to know about what sleep is, the role it solves for us to even
00:09:19
understand the context of the things we're going to talk about today? >> Yep. There's only a few things that are
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truly important to understand about sleep. One is how does sleep work in the brain. It turns out that there's two
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separate systems in the brain. One is called your sleep drive. The other is called your sleep rhythm. And they both
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work uh in an interesting way. They're both a little bit like hunger, right? So
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sleep drive is like hunger because right I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I
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eat something. that hunger begins to dissipate. Same holds true with sleep. The longer you stay awake, the more the
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more sleepy that you get. When you look at it from a biology standpoint, it's
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kind of interesting. So, when a cell eats a piece of glucose, something comes out the back end. One of those things is
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called a denisonin. It works its way through your system and goes to a very specific receptor area, as a denisonin
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accumulates, you get sleepier and sleepier and sleepier. Now, why am I going into so much detail? Turns out
00:10:04
when you look at a denisonin and you look at caffeine, they're off by one molecule. So, here's a little tip or
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trick early in the pod for everyone. I call it the nappa latte. So, what you do is you take a cup of drip black coffee,
00:10:20
just throw in a couple of ice cubes, right? Merely to cool it down, drink it as fast as you can, and immediately take
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a 25minute nap. The adenosin that's built up in your brain will burn through
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while you're napping. Caffeine, since it's so close in molecular structure,
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can fit into that receptor site. It blocks any new adenosin. You're good for
00:10:38
four hours, guaranteed. I use it with every CEO that I work with. So, let's say you only got three hours of sleep
00:10:44
the other night and you've got a big presentation to do or an awards ceremony
00:10:48
or something like that. You can do a nappa latte for about 25 minutes or so and you will feel much better. That's
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sleep drive. >> Let me just >> Sure. >> I want to make sure I really understand
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this. Can you explain this to me again as if I'm a 16-year-old? by having a coffee and then taking a nap would make
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me feel energetic because one would think that having a coffee and taking a nap are like
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>> would be almost impossible, right? So, number one, the caffeine doesn't kick in
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before the end of the nap. So, a lot of people think when I drink coffee, boom, it just kind of spins up and all a
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sudden I'm able to, you know, I get a lot of energy from it. That's really not
00:11:24
actually how caffeine works. It has to go down, has to get absorbed, has to be digested. And so while all that's going
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on, which takes approximately 25 to 30 minutes, you're actually taking a nap to
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lower the amount of adenosin that has built up in your brain. Let's say it's 2
00:11:38
o'clock in the afternoon and you only slept for 4 hours and you are dragging,
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right? All that adenosine that's built up when you take that 25minute nap, you'll burn through a lot of it and then
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caffeine fits in and blocks any additional adenosin from coming in. So that way you're actually adding caffeine
00:11:55
to the situation and boom, your energy goes straight. Okay. So adenosine is makes me tired when it's docked in my
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brain. >> Exactly. >> So I have 4 hours sleep which means there's lots of adenosine and sleep get
00:12:08
clears the adenosine. >> Correct. And then caffeine comes in because it fits so perfectly into that
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receptor site >> and off you go. That's sleep drive. Sleep rhythm has to do with your
00:12:17
circadian rhythm. Right. And so lots of lots of information about that. But basically your circadian rhythm is also
00:12:24
a lot like hunger. Right? You ever notice you're hungry around breakfast time, around lunchtime, around dinner
00:12:28
time, right? That's your circadian rhythm for hunger. For sleep, most people, at least here in North America,
00:12:33
have a tendency to fall asleep somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00, 11:30 at night.
00:12:38
So, that's kind of the circadian rhythm there. So, when your circadian rhythm is
00:12:41
high and your drive is high, you sleep. But if either one of them is off, that's
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when you have a sleep disorder or disordered sleep. >> My circadian rhythm is high.
00:12:50
>> When your circadian rhythm is on point, high is probably not the right word. On
00:12:54
point. So meaning you are abiding by your circadian rhythm. Now another question you might say to me is well how
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do I know what my circadian rhythm is? And we're going to talk a lot about chronotypes cuz that's what your
00:13:03
circadian rhythm is. >> Okay. So let's do chronotypes then. You've got some cards in front of you.
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>> I do. I kind of like these cards. So when we talk about chronotypes, a lot of
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people may have heard of the idea but not actually heard the term chronoype before. So if anybody out there has ever
00:13:19
been called an early bird or a night owl, those are chronoypes. So, we've got
00:13:23
early birds. These are people who, by the way, this is genetic. You don't you
00:13:27
don't actually get to choose this. There's a special area on your genome
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called the PER3 area. And when you have something called a single nucleotide polymorphism or a snip. If it's flipped
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one way, you're an early bird. If it's flipped another way, you're a night owl.
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If it's not flipped, you're in the middle. Okay? So, so far, I haven't told
00:13:46
anybody anything new. Like, this is this is all stuff that we've already learned.
00:13:49
The new part is this irregularity that seems to happen for people during for their sleep schedule. Specifically, an
00:13:56
irregularity in their melatonin and cortisol production. So, all of this is predicated on when does your body make
00:14:03
melatonin. So, if you're an early bird, your body makes melatonin earlier in the
00:14:08
night starting at around 8:00 in the evening. Makes you want to go to bed around 9:30. You have a question.
00:14:12
>> So, melatonin is a hormone >> it is >> that >> you produce inside of your body that
00:14:17
actually helps you sleep. It guides, it tells your body when it's bedtime, which
00:14:22
is a little bit different than the adenosine, which makes you feel sleepy. >> I guess people listening now would be
00:14:27
asking themselves, why does it matter to know my chronotype? Like, as it relates
00:14:30
to my productivity, the way I live my life, my relationships, whatever matters to me, why does it matter?
00:14:35
>> Because I can show you based on your chronoype the perfect time of day to do
00:14:38
almost any activity. So if you f if you know when your body is doing certain things, when it has melatonin or when it
00:14:45
has cortisol or adrenaline or all these other things, if you know the schedule, you can actually just change your
00:14:50
activity to when your body is naturally producing the hormone and then you do the hormone better.
00:14:55
>> Okay, >> so let's talk about the easy one, which is sex, right? So a lot of people want
00:15:00
to know, "Hey, Michael, what's the best time to have sex?" By the way, I think
00:15:03
that might be the third question that I get asked most um often other than uh the insomnia one and the mattress one I
00:15:09
think is what's the best time for sex might be the the other question that I
00:15:12
get asked more than anything. >> Must be tricky if you the time you want to have sex and the time your partner
00:15:15
wants to have sex are off. >> Well, think about it like this. What if your partner's an early bird and you're
00:15:20
a night owl? >> Yeah, I think that's me. >> Don't worry, we're we're going to be
00:15:24
able to fix you. So, first of all, there's a couple of different answers to this question. So, number one is you
00:15:30
want to have a time. So, first of all, most people are intimate between 10:30 and 11:30 at night. That's just a survey
00:15:35
that we did. So, it makes kind of a lot of sense. But here's what's interesting
00:15:38
is your hormone profile doesn't look too good at 11:30 at night for having sex.
00:15:43
In order to have successful sex, you want to have estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, adrenaline, and cortisol
00:15:48
all to be high and melatonin to be low. What do you think your hormone profile looks like at 10:30 at night?
00:15:54
>> It's literally the opposite, right? Melatonin is high and all those other
00:15:57
things are low. That's hint number one as to when would probably be the best
00:16:01
time to have sex. Hint number two, if you happen to be having sex with somebody who was born biologically male,
00:16:07
what do most men wake up with in the morning? An erection. If that's not mother nature telling you when to use
00:16:12
that thing, I don't know what is. Right? So, when you start to look at it, and we
00:16:16
actually did the surveys, we discovered that people actually have greater connection and greater performance in
00:16:23
their sex when they have sex in the morning time. Now, do you have to brush your teeth and throw in a little
00:16:28
mouthwash first? Yes, of course you do. Like, let's be fair to your partner here. But you end up learning quite a
00:16:34
bit. Again, your body is telling you this is actually the perfect time to do something like this. Did you know
00:16:39
there's like a perfect time to have coffee? >> I didn't. >> Yeah, there's absolutely a perfect time
00:16:44
based on your chronoype, too. One of the first things that I ask people all the time, I'll ask you, um, is the first
00:16:50
liquid that crosses over your lips in the morning caffeinated? >> Yes. So, let's talk about why that's
00:16:55
probably not the best idea. So, most people don't know, sorry, most people don't know, but uh sleep in and of
00:17:00
itself is a dehydrative event. You lose almost a full liter of water just from the humidity in your breath by by
00:17:08
breathing all night long. Caffeine is a diuretic, which mean it makes you have to go pee. So, when you're already lost
00:17:15
a liter, now you add a couple of cups of caffeine, which makes you have to pee, you're going to turn into a raisin
00:17:21
before this whole thing is through. Okay? So, we need to get some water inside of you. And so, one of the big
00:17:25
recommendations that I give all of my patients is don't have caffeine for the
00:17:29
first 90 minutes you're awake. Now, you're going to sit here and say, "9
00:17:35
minutes? That's a Michael? That's a long time not to have any caffeine." Like,
00:17:39
how am I going to do that? Like, I've got my morning routine. I can smell the
00:17:42
coffee in the morning. It smells so good. Everything's going. How's how's
00:17:45
this going to work? Let me explain the biology. In order to exit a state of unconsciousness, you need two hormones,
00:17:50
and you need a lot of them. You need adrenaline and cortisol and they both wake you up. When you have a brain
00:17:55
that's full of adrenaline and cortisol and you add caffeine to it, it's like
00:17:59
it's like adding weak tea to somebody who's taking cocaine. Okay? It's not a
00:18:04
very powerful stimulant compared to the hormones that are in your brain that are
00:18:08
a powerful stimulant. But if you just wait 90 minutes, cortisol and adrenaline naturally drop. If you have your
00:18:14
caffeine, then it actually boosts the cortisol and gives you a bigger bang for your buck. M
00:18:20
>> so you hydrate before you caffeinate and about the amount somewhere between 15
00:18:25
and 20 ounces of water if you can get that down in the first hour and a half that you're awake.
00:18:30
>> What's that in English terms? >> Oh, I don't know what that we'll have to
00:18:33
look it up. >> Is it one cup? Is it two cups? >> Oh, I would say it's probably 3 to four
00:18:37
cups of water. >> Okay. Well, that's a lot. >> Well, don't forget you've lost a lot of
00:18:41
water while you're sleeping and you might have lost it the previous day because let's say you worked out or
00:18:46
things like that. >> So, let's get into these chronotypes then. >> Yeah. So, let's start off with the lion.
00:18:51
So, lions are my early birds. Um, you know you've got a lion in your midst when you get an email at 6:00 a.m.,
00:18:58
right? That's somebody who's been up for a while and who's got their brain kind
00:19:01
of cooking. Um, lions like to make a list and go from step one to step two to step three every single day. They get a
00:19:07
lot of confidence and they get a lot of pleasure following uh this list. But, if
00:19:12
I'm honest with you, being a lion isn't all it's cracked up to be because dinner
00:19:15
and a movie is out for a line. They've been up since like 4:30, 5 o'clock in
00:19:19
the morning, right? They don't want to go see a concert late at night. They want to go to bed at like 8:30, nine
00:19:24
o'clock. So, when you're looking at lions or what I early birds, what I call
00:19:28
lions, they've got some very interesting characteristics. They make up between 10
00:19:32
and 15% of the population from a biological characteristic standpoint, their melatonin stops early and their
00:19:38
cortisol starts early. So, their melatonin stops at about 4:30, 5:00 in the morning, and that's when cortisol
00:19:44
starts. And that's the reason why they wake up so early. >> What sort of window do the lions wake up
00:19:49
in? >> So, it's interesting because I've got some lions who are kind of extreme, like
00:19:52
they're getting up at 4:30 in the morning, which is not really probably the best idea. But generally speaking,
00:19:58
my lions get up right around 5 5:15 up until about 6:00 6:30, but they are definitely my early risers. They have a
00:20:06
small breakfast. They don't like to eat a lot of food early in the in the morning time because a lot of these
00:20:10
people like to go work out fairly quickly after they've uh after they've
00:20:13
woken up. um which is very different than some of my other chronotypes. My night owls don't like to work out in the
00:20:18
morning. They don't like to do anything in the morning. So, my lions like to
00:20:21
work out early in the morning. A light breakfast. And also, their best work window is usually somewhere between like
00:20:27
9:30 and 11:30. Like, that's when all the good stuff gets done. Like when they
00:20:31
have if they have to get details or if they have to do brainstorming or things like that, that's really kind of where a
00:20:37
lot of the magic happens for them. By about two o'clock in the afternoon, there's not a lot of stuff left inside
00:20:42
the lion to be able to do do a lot of good things. That's when I have lions do
00:20:46
more physical activities that don't require a lot of cognition. So maybe you
00:20:50
go for an afternoon walk or maybe you have uh you know you're you're meeting
00:20:53
with your folks that may not be really detail oriented but more processoriented in the afternoon
00:20:58
>> admin and stuff. >> Yeah, absolutely. I actually had one uh fellow chronotype his entire company and
00:21:05
then move meetings based on who was going to be in the meeting. Like it like he had all the early birds and he had
00:21:11
meeting at 8:00 in the morning and then all the night owls he had a meeting at 4:00 in the afternoon. He said it was
00:21:16
amazing. He said it worked out really really well. >> Wow. What's the next one?
00:21:19
>> So the next one is the bear. So bears are representative of people that are in
00:21:24
between early birds and night owls, right? So bears are the best. Honestly, dude, I wish I was a bear because the
00:21:31
whole schedule of life works on a bear schedule. 9 to5 is perfect for a bear. And they make up between 50 and 55% of
00:21:38
the population. So, literally one out of two people is a bear. >> And when's their peak work time?
00:21:44
>> So, their peak work time has a tendency to be sort of in the noon to 2:00 range.
00:21:48
Um, they're a little bit later than what you would see the line. Some of them, I
00:21:51
think, can actually be better at 11. It's kind of interesting. And we've had
00:21:55
almost 3 million people take the quiz and we've discovered that inside of bears, there appear to be early bears
00:22:00
and later bears. So there are people who fall into that category but like to get
00:22:04
up a little bit early. So for them their productivity window is probably 10:30, 11. But for the later bears, it's more
00:22:10
like 11:30, 12, and then it's about a 2hour window after that. >> For the people listening, um on screen
00:22:16
at the moment is a grid showing you the different chronotypes, the weight times,
00:22:20
the peak work window, and the sort of afternoon slump time. What's the next chronotype?
00:22:25
>> So, the next chronotype is me, the wolf. >> I think I'm a wolf.
00:22:29
>> You might be a wolf. >> I love lions. I get it. I get a wolf. >> Well, you might be. Hey, look, join me.
00:22:34
It'd be great. So, wolves represent the night owls, right? And so, wolves are my
00:22:40
artists, my actors, my creatives. If you know a creative, when do they get their
00:22:44
biggest idea? It's not 2 o'clock in the afternoon, it's 2 o'clock in the
00:22:47
morning. Wolves are my highest risktakers. I know that that probably you fall into that category as well.
00:22:53
Wolves are the folks that show up at the party at 11 o'clock at night, but they
00:22:56
stay till 2 o'clock in the morning and they help you clean up and they hate mornings more than anything.
00:23:03
>> So, should we talk about dolphins? >> What's the next one? Yeah,
00:23:05
>> dolphins. This is the category that you fell into. So, let's talk about who are
00:23:09
the dolphins and and what does this actually represent? So, dolphins are usually highly intelligent. They're
00:23:15
usually people who are fast-talking, well- read. These are people who are a lot like a lion in terms of they like to
00:23:21
get up. They crave longer bouts of sleep, but unfortunately their body just doesn't have a long sleep drive and so
00:23:27
they get really frustrated a lot of times. Um, also I think they have just a teeny bit of anxiety behind them. So a
00:23:34
lot of them, for example, the details really matter to a dolphin, right? Versus other people where details might
00:23:40
not matter nearly as much. I think a lot of my dolphins have got just a little bit of obsessivecompulsive disorder. So
00:23:46
they're kind of focused in on the on the different things. Like if I ask a dolphin to do a project, generally
00:23:51
speaking, they're never finished with it until I say, "Can you just give me the
00:23:55
project back now because they're always working on a little detail here or working on a detail there." Um, but
00:24:00
dolphins are my favorite. They're the people that I actually wrote the book for. Um, they're the ones that I I enjoy
00:24:04
working with the most. Um, because they're actually the easiest to work with because we can once I explain to
00:24:10
them how their hormones can be up and down and sideways, it can it starts to make a lot more sense for them. And for
00:24:15
anyone trying to figure out which one of these they are, where do they go to do the test and how long does it take?
00:24:20
>> Yeah, you can go to my website. It's called chronoquiz.com. Uh, and uh, it takes about 3 4 minutes.
00:24:26
It's not very long at all. It's going to ask you a bunch of questions about your
00:24:29
sleep, about timing, things like that. >> Okay, I'll put that in the description.
00:24:33
So, after you finish listening, you can all go take it and let me know your thoughts in the comments section as
00:24:36
well. So, once you figure out what your chronosype is, come back to the episode and and let me know below,
00:24:40
>> please. >> And does my sleep change with age, Michael? It does. Absolutely.
00:24:45
>> So, do my do my chronotypes change with age? >> They do, actually. So, believe it or
00:24:49
not, you've gone through all the chronotypes already. When you're an itty
00:24:53
bitty baby, you're a lion. You go to bed really early. You wake up really early,
00:24:56
right? Then you're a toddler, right? And in in like grammar school, you're a
00:25:00
bear. You're going to bed around 7:30. You're waking up around 7:30. Then
00:25:03
adolescence hits, right? What do you want to do? Stay up until midnight and sleep until 2, right? You become a wolf.
00:25:10
Then at about 23 24 your chronotype has a tendency to set into one of those three or four things and then you stay
00:25:17
there for an extended period of time like 25 30 years until you hit my age. So I'm going to be 58 soon and right
00:25:24
when you hit in the mid-50s what we see is melatonin production can either slow down or get earlier. So as an example if
00:25:32
your parents are still alive and you said hey mom dad I want to go for dinner. What time would they want to go
00:25:36
for dinner? >> Early. >> Right? four o'clock in the afternoon, 4:30 in the afternoon, you're like,
00:25:40
"What is wrong with you, mom? What's going on?" That's her chronoype is going
00:25:44
backwards and your sleep changes over the course of time. To be clear, at once you hit like age probably 50, 45 or 50,
00:25:52
we start to see a slowdown in production of melatonin. We also see an increase in
00:25:56
what are called EEG arousals. So things that break up your sleep and make it so it's not so continuous. That can be
00:26:02
problematic as well. So there's a lot of things that can happen as you age. >> So do I start sleeping less as I get
00:26:06
older? You start sleeping poorer quality. I'm not convinced that it's always less.
00:26:10
>> And is that going to make me grumpy? >> Yes, it is. >> Really?
00:26:13
>> Absolutely. Poor quality sleep is, I would argue, is much worse than poor
00:26:17
quantity sleep. I I would rather I've got somebody who got 5 hours of really
00:26:21
great sleep versus seven hours of really light crappy sleep every time. >> Does that mean that as I get older, I'm
00:26:27
going to be more grumpy? >> It depends on the quality of your sleep. So, what I can teach you is how to not
00:26:34
get poor quality sleep as you age. Perfect example, a lot of folks who are a little bit on the older side are used
00:26:39
to drinking coffee late in the day. Well, if you change that habit, then you don't have as many sleep problems.
00:26:44
>> And I shouldn't I shouldn't be having coffee late in the day at all.
00:26:46
>> Probably you want to stop by about 2 p.m., right? So, if you stop around 2
00:26:50
p.m., the halfife of caffeine is between 6 and 8 hours. So, 8 hours later is roughly 10, which is roughly when people
00:26:56
are kind of wanting to go to sleep. So, I would say that that would probably be the the time to do it. I think about my
00:27:01
siblings and us all being woken up for school and I think about my performance in school
00:27:06
>> and of all my siblings, there's four of us. >> I was the one that always struggled with
00:27:11
being woken up in the morning in part because I'd gone to bed later. >> But then I was also the one that
00:27:15
struggled with school the most. >> Yeah. That characteristic of a wolf characteristic of this night person. If
00:27:22
I'm honest with you, dude, like most kids should not be waking up at the time
00:27:25
they're waking up to go to school, right? I mean so many kids are waking up at real like you know 5:30 6:00 in the
00:27:31
morning they have an hourong bus ride then they get there and if you're an adolescent I don't think anything could
00:27:37
be worse >> right >> so we have to really start to try to be a little bit more thoughtful and look at
00:27:42
like what are some of the activities that kids are doing how can we get them to maybe take naps during the day if
00:27:47
they need them um athletic performance can depend on sleep academic performance can depend on sleep it's it's
00:27:52
unbelievable all the different things yes >> has there ever been any research done
00:27:56
>> there has on different chronotypes academic performance. >> There has been actually they haven't
00:28:00
they labeled it directly as chronotypes but they've looked at it based on age
00:28:04
range and we know that for example here in the United States there's a big push
00:28:08
for to change school start times so that way high schoolers aren't starting at
00:28:13
7:00 in the morning because high schools shouldn't be starting at 7 o'clock in
00:28:16
the morning. Preschoolers should be starting at 7 o'clock in the morning because their body naturally wakes up at
00:28:20
that time. So, we've actually seen there was a great study um that was done at
00:28:24
the University of Minnesota that discovered that um when they just had people come in 1 hour later from their
00:28:31
first period, they improved by one full letter grade, meaning they went from being C students to being B students or
00:28:37
from B students to A students merely by changing the timing of their first class. So that should give you pretty
00:28:45
good insight as to sort of these big area like and and all children are vulnerable to this. Like this is not
00:28:51
like I'm not telling you anything that's new. This is these are studies that have
00:28:54
been going on for quite a while. And there's actually a whole movement trying
00:28:57
to get school start times to to slow down now. >> Looking at some of the research here, it
00:29:02
says research consistently shows that morning types, which is the >> lion,
00:29:07
>> the lion, earn higher grades not due to higher IQ, but because exams are
00:29:11
scheduled during their peak alertness windows. You got it. >> That's crazy.
00:29:14
>> Sometimes wolves turn out to be much smarter, but because they're they can't
00:29:18
perform at those early times, nobody knows. Remember, wolves are my creatives. Like, where do you think some
00:29:23
of these create great creative innovations and ideas come from in the tech world, right? Like, these are the
00:29:28
wolves that are out there that are up late at night coding and trying to figure out what's going on.
00:29:34
>> It's pretty cool when you think about it. And I just there's this thing called
00:29:37
the synchronous synchrony effect from a study in 2020 where nearly 800 students found a clear synchrony effect. Students
00:29:45
performed significantly better when their class schedule matched their chronotype.
00:29:49
>> Exactly. >> Those morning people dominated in morning classes and and the owls um or
00:29:54
the wolves often caught up and outperformed the morning people when tested in the afternoon or evening.
00:30:00
>> Exactly. >> It's pretty fascinating. Now think about it like this. Could you imagine a school
00:30:04
system where if we identified children's chronotypes during their particular age
00:30:08
range and then we changed the testing so that they got tested when they're at
00:30:11
their peak hours? >> Yeah. >> They'd actually do better. >> People don't know this, but I never do p
00:30:16
podcasts in the morning. >> I don't blame you ever. >> You shouldn't. Yeah.
00:30:20
>> It's it's not your time. Yeah. >> Right. Like you have a very specific
00:30:24
subscribed time that I think works well for you. So I think you should abide by that.
00:30:28
>> Duration of sleep. There's lots of conversation around how long you're
00:30:31
supposed to sleep for. What what's the truth? Yeah. >> 8 hours is a myth. Let's be fair. Like
00:30:36
we came up with that from like the 30s. There was a great study at Stanford that
00:30:40
came up with 8 hours and 13 minutes plus or minus. And that's kind of where we
00:30:43
came up with that as an idea. The truth of the matter is somewhere between 7 and
00:30:47
9 hours really is kind of the amount that people should be looking for. But some people don't have that luxury. Some
00:30:53
people don't have that much time that they can put towards sleep and so they
00:30:57
get a little bit less sleep. But for the lower level limit, I don't like anybody
00:31:02
getting less than 6 hours. When somebody gets less than 6 hours sleep, their driving is off. And so you can't operate
00:31:08
machinery. So if you're driving to work or god forbid, carpooling your kids to
00:31:11
school and you're only you only got, you know, less than 6 hours of sleep on on
00:31:15
board, it's probably not going to go well. >> We we do have to stop here and talk
00:31:19
about parents because listen, you're either a parent now, you might be someday. Absolutely.
00:31:23
>> Maybe you won't be. But for those I've just got a huge amount of respect for
00:31:26
parents because you know I've gone I'm not a parent yet. I hope I will become
00:31:30
one. But when I see what my brother who has three kids under the age of what seven now um
00:31:37
>> how much sleep has he lost? >> A lot and and and his wife as well. But
00:31:42
um you must get parents coming to you all the time being like what the hell do I do? Like I've got the I've got to wake
00:31:46
up when the kids wake up and but I'm it's destroying my my relationship, my
00:31:50
marriage, my sex, whatever it might be. >> Yeah. So parenting children and sleep
00:31:55
are difficult to coexist, but they're not impossible. It really has to do with
00:31:59
discipline and kind of thinking through some ideas for yourself. When my So I have a 23-year-old son and a 22-year-old
00:32:06
daughter, so I'm a little bit out of the the realm of having to deal with them
00:32:09
every day. Um, but I was, like I said before, I was in charge of mornings uh at our house waking them up. And it's a
00:32:16
lot, right? And so the very first thing that I try to explain to parents, especially if they have a child who has
00:32:21
an irregular sleep pattern and is really causing chaos for the rest, like one child who won't go to sleep and it's
00:32:27
keeping every the whole house up. First thing you want to do, educate the kid, right? A lot of kids don't know what
00:32:32
they're doing is causing a lot of problems. They they're just kids. They're just hanging out having fun. You
00:32:36
know, they're they've got energy. They want to be awake. So that you want to
00:32:39
educate them and say, "Hey, now is a particular time to wind down. This is where your body recovers. this is how
00:32:44
you get to do sports the next day or theater the next day or ac whatever your computers whatever your thing is you can
00:32:50
tie it to sleep and performance pretty easily and so getting them to understand that becomes very very critical number
00:32:58
two is have some guidelines right have bedtimes have wake up times and follow them as quick as closely as you can for
00:33:05
parents oftentimes what I try to tell them to do is like look after your child goes to bed if you've got a child that
00:33:11
has problems for sleeping take turns. Do what I call the on call method. So, as a doctor, sometimes, you
00:33:18
know, you get a call in the middle of the night because you you're covering patients at the hospital for your buddy
00:33:22
or something like that. You're on call. So, when you've got two people who are
00:33:26
managing one child, one person handles Monday night, Wednesday night, Friday night, the other one handles Tuesday,
00:33:31
Thursday, Saturday. You flip a coin for Sunday. So, if the kid wakes up at 2 o'clock in the morning, both parents
00:33:36
aren't awake. One parent has that responsibility. the other one can keep their eyes closed and go to sleep.
00:33:43
Interesting study was done looking at men and women in bed when a child cries. So women take care of the child whereas
00:33:50
men lie there and fake sleeping in order to be able to stay asleep, right? That's
00:33:56
problematic. Um in a lot of >> they know in the study that they were fake sleeping
00:33:59
>> because they asked the men afterwards what were you doing and they all said
00:34:02
they woke up and they were faking it. It's pretty crazy when you think about
00:34:05
it. But this is a big this is a big deal for parents, right? A lot of parents turn to me and they're like, "This is
00:34:10
killing our marriage." Like, "We haven't had sex in, you know, three years
00:34:13
because we've got a child who maybe the child has special needs or maybe the
00:34:17
child doesn't have special needs, but has other things going on or maybe it's
00:34:20
just normal development and and you know, they're worried about it." And so,
00:34:23
what I like to sit down with parents and do is number one, let's figure out when
00:34:27
your kid needs to sleep and let's set some guidelines and rules. But number two, let's do the same for you.
00:34:32
>> Right? A lot of parents when they're super stressed out, one of the first
00:34:34
things they do, grab a glass of wine, right? Wine's about the worst thing you
00:34:38
could possibly do for sleep to be fair. Now, I'm going to teach people how you
00:34:42
can still have a glass or two of alcohol and not completely destroy your sleep. But I want to be very clear about
00:34:47
something. If you're using alcohol as a stress relief tool at night before bed,
00:34:52
it's messing up your sleep probably pretty bad. >> You might be asleep, but the quality of
00:34:56
your sleep is >> is [ __ ] It's awful, right? And interestingly enough, during the one
00:35:01
stage of sleep that alcohol knocks out, which is stage three and four sleep, what's the most interesting is that dur
00:35:06
during that particular stage of sleep, there's something called the glimpmphatic system that comes in and
00:35:10
scoops out these proteins that have a tendency to accumulate in your brain. And when proteins accumulate in your
00:35:16
brain, they wrap around the nerves and that's called Alzheimer's disease.
00:35:19
>> So stage four sleep is imperative to avoid Alzheimer's disease. And when you
00:35:24
drink alcohol, you destroy stage four sleep. H. >> So, it would be great if nobody drank
00:35:30
alcohol, but I'm not so stupid as to think that. Plus, I like bourbon. I like
00:35:34
whiskey. I enjoy a glass of champagne every once in a while. So, how can you successfully still drink alcohol and
00:35:40
still get a decent night's sleep? I'm going to give you a quick one, right?
00:35:43
Let's say you're having dinner at 6:30, have your first glass of wine, then have
00:35:47
a glass of water, right? Then your second glass of wine starts at, let's say, almost 7:00, right? Then you have
00:35:53
your second glass of water. Then you stop everything by 7:30. You wait 3 hours, which would be 10:30, and then
00:35:59
you can go to bed. >> Why the water? Why the weight? >> So, the water helps wash it through the
00:36:04
system. Also fills your stomach up so you don't have too much. So, you you've
00:36:07
got more fluid in there so that way you don't drink extra wine. Um, and it makes
00:36:11
you have to pee, which flushes the system out as well. The 3 hours. >> And it hydrates you.
00:36:15
>> It does. Okay. >> Absolutely. Because remember, wine pulls uh both magnesium and uh most water out
00:36:21
of your system because it makes you have to go pee. >> Helps with the hangover. So, there's a
00:36:25
couple of different things that I would say. Number one, this definitely helps with the hangover because you've got
00:36:29
water going in. For a lot of my patients, what I tell them is the very last thing that you could do is have a
00:36:35
little bit of coconut water. So, coconut water is loaded with zinc, magnesium, and vitamin B. And those are some of the
00:36:40
things that get pulled out of your system uh when you're drinking. By the way, did you know that there are happy
00:36:46
hours specific to your chronoype? >> Didn't know that. No. >> Yeah. So, it's kind of interesting. So
00:36:50
here's what's cool about it is your body produces something called alcohol
00:36:53
dehydrogenase which is how you metabolize alcohol but it does it at a particular time and the time is
00:36:58
different for each chronotype. >> So your body is most efficient at drinking between basically the hours of
00:37:06
4 and 8 happy hour as a lot of people know it. >> And how do you think about what time you
00:37:11
eat at night time? >> Such a great question. So 3 hours before bed, you want to stop fluids including
00:37:18
alcohol um and food. You want to just stop it all 3 hours before bed. So it takes your body about that level of time
00:37:25
to number one digest, clear all the food, and then have all the mechanisms that are working towards digestion now
00:37:32
be able to be refocused onto the recovery process of sleep. However, I I will tell you that there's this uh I've
00:37:39
seen a couple people and there are people out there that are claiming that if they stop eating at 11:00 in the
00:37:44
morning that it helps their sleep dramatically at night. And it turns out it has to do with your heart rate. So,
00:37:50
one of the big metrics that is very important that all of our viewers and listeners want to know is you need a
00:37:55
heart rate of 60 or below in order to enter into a state of unconsciousness. And when you've got food in your
00:38:00
stomach, >> your heart rate is up. >> That's right. >> So, right. So if the longer you can
00:38:05
wait, the lower your heart rate is, the easier it gets into sleep. And so when we're talking about So a great example,
00:38:12
let's get back to parents for a second, right? You feed your kids at an earlier
00:38:16
time and then what do you do? Oh, then you go back and have dinner with your spouse, right? Maybe that's not the best
00:38:21
idea because you're having dinner so late. Maybe you should have dinner with
00:38:24
your kids, right? And and enjoy that time with them and eat earlier because that gives you more space later on to be
00:38:30
able to relax and go to bed. I said that tracks because I remember I've told this
00:38:34
story once or twice before. I remember when I was doing some podcasts over here in LA, we had Seth Rogan on.
00:38:39
>> Sure. >> And the day before in the hotel before I lived here, I had a cookie from the mini
00:38:44
bar. I'm going to admit it. I had the cookie and >> they're so good.
00:38:47
>> It was And then I went to bed pretty quickly. >> Oh god, >> we were just terrible. And I was looking
00:38:52
at my whoop the next day ad >> and it my heart rate >> was like 75 or 80 for the first 2 to 3
00:39:02
hours after I got into bed. >> Isn't that crazy? >> And I woke up feeling like hell.
00:39:06
>> Yep. >> Terrible day the next day. I was terrible during the conversation
00:39:11
>> and I looked at my go, "Oh my god, it was that cookie. It put my heart rate
00:39:14
high." >> So also on top of that is sugar. >> Yeah. I mean, [ __ ] me. Yeah.
00:39:18
>> Right. So sugar turn so sugar actually slows production of melatonin. Remember
00:39:22
melatonin is kind of the key that starts the Yeah. The key that starts the engine
00:39:25
for sleep. >> So is there anything else that I can do to make sure my heart rate is low as I
00:39:30
get into bed? >> Absolutely. Meditate. >> Okay. >> Breath work. All kinds of brings my
00:39:35
heart rate down. >> Yeah. Absolutely. So what a lot of people don't realize is just because
00:39:40
we're breathing doesn't mean we're actually breathing in a way, shape, and
00:39:43
form that can be helpful for us for sleep. So, in my most recent book, Sleep, Drink, Breathe, I talk a lot
00:39:48
about breath work and what is it and how does it work for you. But I'd love to
00:39:52
teach you my favorite form of breath work and meditation. Um, that I think you'll you'll get a lot out of. So,
00:39:58
>> and I do this before bed. >> Exactly. >> Okay. >> And you can, by the way, you can do it
00:40:02
in the middle of the night if you wake up as well. Right. So, let's talk about
00:40:06
how to get how to fall asleep and do some relaxation exercises for that. And then I'm gonna give you some different
00:40:11
ones for in the middle of the night. So, let's talk beginning of the night. So,
00:40:15
number one, you need runway to land the plane. Okay? So many people think they're just waiting for their head to
00:40:21
be bobbing in front of the TV and then they go brush their teeth and they get in bed and then all of a sudden they're
00:40:24
wide awake and they don't know what's going on, right? So, you need time for
00:40:28
your system to shut down. It's not an onoff switch. It's more like slowly
00:40:32
pulling your foot off the gas and slowly putting your foot on the brake. There's
00:40:36
a process. It should take you about 12 to 15 minutes to actually fall asleep. Okay? So number one, what I ask people
00:40:42
to do is take the last hour before bed and chop it up into three 20 minute segments, right? So let's say you're
00:40:47
going to bed at 11, starting at 10:00. And by the way, set an alarm on your phone to to tell you that it's 10:00
00:40:52
because it's really easy to slide by your bedtime and then all of a sudden it's like all bets are off. So set the
00:40:58
alarm 20 minutes for [ __ ] you just got to do. So, in our house, it used to be getting backpacks together for school
00:41:04
for our kids, finding sports equipment, maybe laying out my stuff for work the next day or getting last emails sent,
00:41:10
something like that. 20 minutes for hygiene, right? Brush your teeth, wash your face, maybe take a shower,
00:41:16
something along those lines. And then 20 minutes for some form of meditation, relaxation, prayer. I don't care what
00:41:23
you do, but it has to be something that's calming to get you there. Okay? So, my one of my favorite techniques to
00:41:30
do is meditation. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a terrible meditator. I have never been able to do
00:41:36
it. I've actually gotten kicked out of meditation retreats because I'm the guy
00:41:39
that's like, "What's going on?" Like, am I doing it right? You know, I'm kind of
00:41:42
that that person. And so, I was I was told about this tool called a Muse headband. We have one right here. So,
00:41:49
this is my personal Muse. I actually brought it from home. And um you'll notice on the inside there are sensors
00:41:54
here. And there are sensors along the earpiece here. And so what happens is is you wear it on your head, right? And
00:42:01
it's measuring your brain waves. And so when we're Yeah. Check it out. And so
00:42:04
when we're when we're doing it and we're measuring brain waves. Yep. Exactly. And
00:42:08
that goes on the back part. Yeah. There you go. So what's cool about this is
00:42:11
it's attached to an app. And then while it's measuring your brain waves, you're
00:42:15
listening to a particular music. It could be a guided meditation. It could be any of those things. And while you're
00:42:21
doing this, the volume gets lower. And then you know you're getting closer to a
00:42:26
meditative state. >> The volume comes down when >> on the app when your brain wave starts
00:42:30
to relax. >> Oh, okay. >> So, you're immediately getting feedback.
00:42:33
We can try it if you want. Um, but it's pretty interesting. And then when you
00:42:37
get to the alpha state, little birds start chirping. >> The alpha state. >> Yeah. The alpha state is when your eyes
00:42:42
are closed and you're at the most relaxed state of your brain waves. It's
00:42:46
called the alpha state. And that's really what people are trying to get to for meditation.
00:42:49
>> And are you affiliated with this company in any way? >> I am not.
00:42:51
>> And how much does it cost? I think it's around $275 I think is the headband.
00:42:57
>> Okay. Interesting. >> It's pretty fascinating. Um I I've been
00:43:00
pretty impressed with them. >> So that's meditation. >> You talked about breath work as well
00:43:04
before. >> Yeah. Let's talk about it. So one of the other things that I do is I do something
00:43:08
Well, this isn't breath work. This is called progressive muscle relaxation. So
00:43:12
this is where you tense and relax muscles starting from your feet and going all the way up your body. And as
00:43:18
you tense and relax the muscles, you feel that relaxation from releasing that tension and it helps you fall asleep.
00:43:24
Um, actually, you know what I can do is I can send you a an audio file that has me walking through progressive muscle
00:43:30
relaxation that we can make available for everybody if you want. We for free. It's no big deal.
00:43:34
>> Amazing. I'll put that in the description below as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. People will really dig it. I
00:43:37
think they'll really enjoy it. So, that's another thing that we do. But now, let's talk about the middle of the
00:43:42
night, right? So, by the way, do you have this as an issue? Have this has this happened to you before? It it
00:43:47
happens sometimes and it's typically when like my sleep is somewhat disordered or disruptive or when there's
00:43:52
really something on my mind. >> Yes. So that that precipitatory anxiety like before a flight like if I have an
00:43:59
8:00 in the morning flight like I sleep like [ __ ] the night before because I'm
00:44:02
constantly worried about that. Right. But a lot of times what people do normally is they just wake up in the
00:44:07
middle of the night and they can't return to sleep and they're really not
00:44:09
sure why. So number one there's biology involved. So your core body temperature
00:44:13
rises rises rises and when it hits a peak it drops. That drop is then a signal to your brain to release
00:44:19
melatonin. Right? Again, the key that starts the engine for sleep. However, your core body temperature continues to
00:44:24
drop, drop, drop. By the way, this is the reason why we tell people you want to sleep in the cool, not the warm
00:44:29
environment. Because again, your core body temperature is dropping. If it's too hot, your core body temperature
00:44:33
can't go down and you can't get to sleep, >> which tracks with evolution.
00:44:36
>> Exactly. So, here's where it gets interesting is it keeps going, going,
00:44:40
going, and then at some point in time, your body has to heat up. And if it doesn't heat up, you go hypothermic.
00:44:45
Guess what time that is? Between 1 and 3 o'clock in the morning. >> Oh, your body starts heating up at 1 1
00:44:50
and 3. >> Every single person's body on Earth does this. Everybody on Earth wakes up
00:44:56
between 1 and 3:00 in the morning. However, most people burp, roll over, get comfortable, and fall back asleep in
00:45:02
30 seconds. However, there's a select group of people who end up being my patients who don't have that. And there
00:45:09
here in lies the problem. So, here are the steps you want to take in the middle of the night to be able to solve this
00:45:14
issue. So number one, don't go pee. I know, I know, I know people like, "What?
00:45:20
What are you talking about, Michael?" So here's what ends up happening is when
00:45:23
people wake up in the middle of the night, they say to themselves, "Well, I'm up. I might as well go pee." Right?
00:45:28
Here's the problem. Remember I told you the big metric was in order to enter
00:45:31
into a state of unconsciousness, you need a heart rate of 60 or below. Right? What do you think happens to your heart
00:45:36
rate when you go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position? You walk across the room, your
00:45:40
heart rate goes straight up. So what we want to do is keep your heart rate down.
00:45:44
So, if you don't really have to go to the bathroom, don't go to the bathroom.
00:45:47
75% of people sleep on their sides and they kind of squunch up, which means they're putting pressure on their
00:45:52
bladder. So, my guess is is that most of those people, if all you did was when you woke up is lie and get on your back
00:45:58
for about 25 seconds and see if you still need to pee. If you don't need to pee, stay in bed and keep your heart
00:46:05
rate down. If you need to pee, please go pee. Right? If you're going to go to the
00:46:09
bathroom, have a strategically placed nightlight along the way so you don't have to flip on the light in the water
00:46:13
closet because if you do that, you just told your brain it's morning and it stops producing melatonin. But let's say
00:46:18
you don't have to pee. The second thing, don't look at your phone. Now, this
00:46:23
turns out to be very difficult for 99% of the people out there because the first thing they do is they grab their
00:46:28
phone and they head to the bathroom, right? and they're either checking emails, looking at Facebook or Twitter
00:46:33
or whatever social media they're on, >> or we're just trying to figure out what
00:46:36
time it is >> or and that's where the problem is is as soon as you see the time, you instantly
00:46:42
do the mental math and now you're pissed off, right? It's 3:30 in the morning. I
00:46:46
got to get up at 6:00. Sleep, sleep, sleep. And you try to force your brain to sleep. Dude, in the history of time,
00:46:53
nobody has been able to force their brain to sleep, okay? Because your heart rate's going in the wrong way, right? It
00:46:58
needs to be coming down. So, if you can, don't look at the clock. All right, so
00:47:01
you haven't peed, you haven't looked at the clock, but you're still awake and
00:47:04
nothing's going on. Here's where the breathing technique comes in. It's
00:47:07
called 478 breathing. I did not develop this technique. It was developed by Dr. Andrew Wild, Harvard trained natural
00:47:14
doctor, super smart dude. Um, and uh, he did it for the military to teach them how to lower their heart rate during
00:47:21
stressful situations. We use it because it helps lower our heart rate past 60. And it's super simple. I'm going to get
00:47:26
you to try it. So, go ahead and sit up straight. Okay. And so all you're going
00:47:30
to do is breathe in for a count of four. You're going to hold for a count of
00:47:33
seven. And you're going to breathe out for a count of eight. And I'm going to
00:47:36
walk you through it. I want you to have your eyes closed. And what I also want you to do, you're going to go in through
00:47:41
the nose, out through the mouth. And then what I also want you to do is picture the number in your head. So when
00:47:46
I say breathe in two, three, four, you should picture the two, the three, the four in your mind's eye. Okay?
00:47:53
>> With my eyes closed. >> With your eyes closed. You ready? >> Yep. Breathe in. 2 3 4. Hold. 2 3 4 5 6
00:48:04
7. Push. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Good. You want to get through about 20 cycles of that. It's incredibly relaxing. I actually did
00:48:17
it before I came out here to do the pod because it helps lower my heart rate and
00:48:21
gets me centered. H. It's pretty remarkable. Now, there's some problems with the technique. Number
00:48:28
one, sometimes it's hard to hold for seven, and sometimes it's really hard to
00:48:31
push for eight. So, I tell people you can do this four, five, six, 4, 6, 7, or 478. So, just work your way up to it,
00:48:40
right? If if it's too hard to hold your breath for 7 seconds or it's too too
00:48:43
hard to push your breath for eight, you can do a little bit less just while you're getting used to it. And then the
00:48:48
other big thing is it's hard to figure out where the 20 cycles is because you
00:48:51
need to get to 20 cycles of this. So, what I have people do is take their hands and make light fists while they're
00:48:56
doing this. And when they do one cycle, they put out a finger. Another cycle, put out a finger. And before you know
00:49:01
it, you got 10. And when you bring it back, you've done 20 cycles. >> It's funny. I just did two and I start
00:49:05
yawning. >> I know. I just saw that. I'm telling you, dude, this thing works, right? And
00:49:09
so, I have people do this technique. Here's the best part is it avoids monkey
00:49:14
mind, right? So, what is monkey mind? Monkey mind is I'm thinking about stuff
00:49:19
that I have no business thinking about in the middle of the night for absolutely no reason. Like what's on the
00:49:24
grocery list or what did I say to my spouse or did that podcast go okay or any of the things that might be floating
00:49:30
through your head? You cannot count and worry at the same time. >> And why does it work? What's going on in
00:49:39
my physiology? Uh-huh. You're distracting the brain from the thing that's stressing you out and it's
00:49:44
lowering your heart rate and then the natural sleep process comes in after it. So, all these are are distraction
00:49:49
techniques to be clear. Now, there's there's several of them out there. One
00:49:53
of the other ones I use for some of my patients is I tell them, "Hey, count
00:49:56
backwards from 300 by threes. It's mathematically so complicated you can't
00:50:01
think of anything else and it's so damn boring. You're out like a light." On
00:50:05
that point of distractions, a lot of people go to bed listening to podcasts or movies. Jack was just saying that,
00:50:11
you know, he he needs to listen to something to fall asleep. I'm the same. I listen to like serial killer stuff,
00:50:15
>> which is, you know, >> that's interesting. >> Don't don't judge me.
00:50:18
>> Wait till we get to the dreams part of the podcast. I can't wait to hear what
00:50:21
you dream about. I >> I don't I think I always try and figure out why it is. And I My sister's the
00:50:25
same, my sister Amanda, and she >> she listens to serial killer stuff to fall asleep. I think it's because this
00:50:32
is just hypothesis. My mom would always ask me to put on forensic files, which was this like serial murder documentary
00:50:39
thing when we were younger cuz she couldn't use the remote. So my mom would say she'd pass me the remote, say, "Put
00:50:44
on forensic files." And I'd like put on the number for her, right? >> And so that was always playing in our
00:50:49
house at night time. And we all had TVs in our bedroom that just mirrored what was ever what was playing downstairs,
00:50:54
course. >> So when I got into bed, >> I'd watch fall asleep. >> This explains a lot about you.
00:50:59
>> I know, right? You say that to people, they think you're yours. Yeah.
00:51:03
>> So, let me tell you what it's like in my house. And actually, you and I have a
00:51:06
commonality. So, in my house, we have a big screen TV. It's on all night long.
00:51:12
>> Where? In which room? >> In my bedroom. >> Okay. >> Okay. When I met my wife, she said to
00:51:16
me, "Michael, if you ever happen to spend the night, I want to let you know
00:51:19
that I sleep with the television on." I said, "Don't worry about that, Lauren.
00:51:22
I'm gonna be a sleep doctor. I'm gonna fix that." We we met when I was uh 30,
00:51:26
so uh known her for quite a while. And uh you ever tried to change something in your bed partner? Yeah, good luck.
00:51:32
>> Yeah, good luck. So I took the TV out. She said, "If you ever want to come back
00:51:35
in here again, I suggest you put the I put the TV back in." And then I studied
00:51:39
her to learn what was going on. And it turns out that she's listening to it out
00:51:44
of what I call the corner of her ear. Her eyes aren't even open. And half the
00:51:47
time it's a episode of Seinfeld or something like that. My wife actually likes murder mysteries and so it's
00:51:52
usually forensic files or something along those lines that's going on. But for her, it's a perfect distraction
00:51:59
technique. Now, there's a second thing that's important uh in our bedroom that
00:52:03
happens uh is we have two dogs. They sleep in the bed with us. I'm the freaking sleep doctor, dude. Like, it's
00:52:09
insane. But the point here is sleep is flexible. Okay? Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for your
00:52:16
bed partner. And and vice versa is also true, right? Like just because some people can't sleep with the TV on
00:52:21
doesn't mean that it's going to mess up your sleep forever to have the television on cuz it's not. And by the
00:52:27
way, 99% of TVs have timers built into them. Like if you don't know what it is,
00:52:31
ask your kid. I had to ask my son. He showed me how to use it. We turned it off. It wasn't a problem, right? So
00:52:36
creating a sleep environment that is conducive to sleep for you and your bed partner can have a lot of variation to
00:52:43
it. And I don't think people there's no hard and fast rule that says, "Hey,
00:52:47
nobody should ever sleep with the TV on." I mean, there are people out there
00:52:50
who say that, but quite frankly, everybody sleeps with the TV on. >> Well, a lot of people do. I I I wouldn't
00:52:55
put the TV on in our bedroom. I mean, we've done it once or twice or whatever,
00:53:00
cuz we're watching something and we slip off to sleep and I wake up and I realize
00:53:03
it's on and I turn it off. >> But I I also really think it's an important point to say that people will
00:53:09
listen to podcasts like this. They'll listen to the like biohackers of the world and then they'll get so militant
00:53:14
about how they fall asleep that it will cause friction because one partner is different.
00:53:17
>> Don't do that. And I had this problem in my relationship which was >> my girlfriend sleeps in silence and is
00:53:22
has like just such a glorious routine to everything she does. >> And I am >> completely the opposite
00:53:28
>> and the opposite like I need to like I want to listen to a murder. I could be
00:53:31
on my phone. It's like when I look at my Whoop scores >> works for me.
00:53:35
>> Yeah. >> It's like I am getting I have I get great sleep even if I'm listening to a
00:53:39
serial killer documentary. >> So >> but not if you eat a cookie before bed.
00:53:42
>> Not if I eat a cookie. That's that's gone. But I so what I do is I put one
00:53:46
AirPod in in my right ear. So whichever ear is not going to be on the pillow >> and it means I can listen to her if she
00:53:52
says something. >> But when it's silence, all I hear is the thing that I'm listening to.
00:53:56
>> So I've got a trick for you. >> And I wake up in the morning and dig the
00:53:59
AirPod out of the bed where it ended up. >> Right. So now I'm going to help you with
00:54:01
the digging of the AirPod. So first of all, they now make these things called pillow speakers.
00:54:06
>> Oh, interesting. >> Right. So it's a it's a it's a Bluetooth
00:54:09
speaker that will attach to your phone that you can just slide and it's just
00:54:11
under your pillow so only you can hear it. So, that's number one. You might want to consider that. And they're
00:54:16
pretty inexpensive. Number two, they now make specifically earbuds designed to be
00:54:22
slept in. >> Oh, nice. >> So, there's a a new company out called
00:54:25
Next Sense. Um, and they have developed an earbud that actually measures your brain waves while you are sleeping. And
00:54:33
when you move into a lighter stage of sleep, it sends in a frequency signal to help you go back to sleep or to stay in
00:54:40
that depth of sleep. Brand new company. Next sense. I have nothing to do with them. I mean, it's a friend of mine who
00:54:45
owns the company, but I'm not on their own. >> I would like something to do with them
00:54:48
>> if we'll figure that out. >> So, does it allow you to play your music
00:54:52
as well or your or your podcast or whatever? >> I can listen to Diary of a CEO every
00:54:57
single night while I fall asleep and it will make sure that I don't wake up from
00:55:01
any dreams. >> And you can still like and subscribe and stuff. >> Even through the earbuds, of course. I
00:55:06
think everybody should like and subscribe. >> That's a good feature like an AI agent
00:55:09
that helps you subscribe. Okay, so that's that's you woke up in the middle
00:55:13
of the night. You don't pee. You don't check your phone. You're doing these
00:55:16
breathing exercises. You don't give yourself a hard time. >> And then what happens? It doesn't work.
00:55:20
What do you do? Yeah. Right. So, there's the new research on something called
00:55:24
non-sleep deep rest. We call it yoga nidra. Okay? It's been around for thousands of years. When you lie relaxed
00:55:30
in like a corpse pose like this, you're actually doing something that's valuable
00:55:33
for your sleep. Now, I want to be clear. It's not the same as sleep, but if you
00:55:36
lie there for an hour, it's like 20 minutes worth of sleep. So everybody should know that even lying relaxed and
00:55:44
calm is very very helpful right but if you start to get anxious and your heart rate starts to tick up you need to get
00:55:51
yourself out of bed because that's when because all you're doing then is
00:55:54
thinking hey this bed is this place where I get anxious and pissed off. This is not a place to sleep. So as long as
00:56:00
you stay nice and quiet the non-sleep deep rest absolutely the thing to do. The other big thing that I do and by the
00:56:05
way this happens to me on occasion too like I'm not immune to it just because
00:56:08
I'm a sleep doctor. You have to stay positive. And what I what do I mean by that is everybody when they wake up in
00:56:14
the middle of the night, your brain is set to negativity. There's no reason you
00:56:18
should be up at 3:00 in the morning that something good is going on, right? Nobody's coming in wishing you happy
00:56:23
birthday at 3:00 in the morning. Something terrible has happened. And your brain has gotten accustomed to
00:56:27
that. So when it wakes up, it immediately goes to the negative and you start thinking about bad things. You
00:56:33
can't stop your first thought, but you can stop your second thought, right? Right? And so when you wake up and you
00:56:38
think negative, what I want you to replace that with is, "Okay, Michael, for some reason, your body has decided
00:56:45
to wake up at 3:00 in the morning, it's not the game that I wanted to be playing
00:56:49
tonight. However, I think I'm going to be okay. I'm just going to lie here and
00:56:53
relax and let the natural sleep process take over. If I feel my heart rate increasing, I'm going to go to another
00:56:58
room in the house where I've already got a book and a light set up so I can do a
00:57:02
little bit of light reading and then come back to sleep." And I just tell myself that I give myself permission to
00:57:09
just chill, just relax. And then you know what happens? The natural sleep process comes over. As soon as your
00:57:15
heart rate starts to go down, your body wants to get back to sleep. And so it really has a lot to do with heart rate.
00:57:20
>> I love having these conversations on the diio because I have a huge amount of
00:57:25
sympathy and concern for people that don't get sufficient sleep. And I know there's a lot of people that don't. And
00:57:32
I actually think it's to some degree it's somewhat increasing because of the
00:57:34
way we live our lives. I was looking at some of the stats around the increase and there's a study done in 2025 and
00:57:42
early 2026 that revealed we're in a global sleep crisis. >> Oh yes, we are.
00:57:47
>> Both the CDC and Stanford Medicine report said that one in three adults and
00:57:51
nearly 80% of teenagers are now chronically sleepdeprived. >> Correct. A 2026 survey by the American
00:57:57
Academy of Sleep Medicine found that 93% of Gen Z admit to regularly losing sleep
00:58:03
due to social media usage. And 71% of employed respondents globally have said >> that they sometimes call in sick at
00:58:10
least once or twice due to poor sleep. >> Just to sleep. Yeah. When I was down in
00:58:15
Australia doing some work down there, a lot of Australians they take holiday and
00:58:19
they just sleep. >> Yeah. >> Just to catch up. Like it's it's pretty
00:58:23
remarkable. We're in a very sleep-d deprived society and I think there's a
00:58:27
couple of different reasons why that is. Number one, >> have you seen what's going on outside in
00:58:31
the world today? It's pretty crazy out there. Well, I can understand why people
00:58:35
are getting a little anxious. >> I think one could argue it's been crazier through history, but we never
00:58:39
knew about it, >> right? Well, I mean, the media getting it to getting us this information so
00:58:43
quickly, I think, is definitely what I would agree with you. It was much crazier during like World War II, you
00:58:48
know, and stuff like that. Now we're getting information so quickly and people are getting so ratcheted up about
00:58:54
it. I think that has something to do with it. But if I I think the bigger culprit is people being overweight. You
00:58:58
know, when you look here in the United States and you look at the obesity epidemic and you look at people being
00:59:03
overweight, it's something close to like 70s something percent of people in America are overweight. When you're
00:59:08
overweight, that puts you in line for potentially having something called sleep apnea. Now, I want to be clear,
00:59:13
not everybody with sleep apnea is overweight, but a a large percentage of the people with sleep apnnea are bigger
00:59:18
people. And so, when you look at a society that's getting bigger and all the unhealthy food that we've got going
00:59:24
on, like all this highly processed food, things of that nature, that isn't helping anybody, it's adding the pounds.
00:59:30
And specifically, like for men, we gain weight through our necks. Like I I don't
00:59:34
know if you've ever noticed it, but like if you ever were heavy and you lose
00:59:37
weight, the first thing somebody says is, "Oh, it looks like you lost weight
00:59:39
cuz I can tell from your face, right?" and they're like, "Oh, your neck looks,
00:59:42
you know, different now." And so, we see a lot of what's going on in the world
00:59:46
from a weight perspective and a food perspective could be driving some of the sleep problems. Then there's the anxiety
00:59:52
perspective that I spoke of earlier that I think comes in. And again, I I agree with you. I don't think we have more
00:59:57
crazy stuff going on. I think we know about more crazy stuff that's going on,
01:00:00
>> but also work is now largely digital. And I imagine for my great-grandfather,
01:00:05
he would go to, I don't know, the factory or wherever he works. His work would finish at 6.
01:00:09
>> Yes. Your work doesn't finish at 6 now. It finishes when you're awake.
01:00:13
>> Yeah. Absolutely. It finishes when you go to sleep. >> Yeah. Exactly.
01:00:16
>> Yeah. And and that becomes problematic, right? Because a lot of times also, by
01:00:20
the way, you need to have dividers in your home. Like let's say you live in a
01:00:24
studio apartment and your bed is your couch is your kitchen, right? You have no designated spot for sleep. Your body
01:00:30
needs to know, hey, this is the spot where I can chill out and finally get some rest. And I think a lot of times
01:00:36
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me?" Maybe the copy wasn't good. The creative wasn't strong. But usually the
01:01:38
problem is they're not having the right conversation because that ad never reached the right person. And if you're
01:01:42
in B2B marketing, that is much of the game. And this is where LinkedIn ads solves that problem for you. Their
01:01:49
targeting is ridiculously specific. You can target by job title, seniority, company size, industry, and even
01:01:55
someone's skill set. And their network includes over a billion professionals.
01:02:00
About 130 million of them are decision makers. So when you use LinkedIn ads, you're putting your brand in front of
01:02:06
the right people. And LinkedIn ads also drive the highest B2B return on ad spend
01:02:10
across all ad networks in my experience. If you want to give them a try, head over to linkedin.com/diary.
01:02:18
And when you spend $250 on your first LinkedIn ads campaign, you'll get an extra $250 credit from me for the next
01:02:25
one. That's linkedin.com/diary. Terms and conditions apply. >> Which sleep disorder should we start
01:02:32
with? >> Sleep apnea and insomnia. Sleep apnea, for folks out there who may not know
01:02:37
what it is, is when you are snoring at night. Almost everybody who has sleep apnea snores. Not everybody, but almost
01:02:42
everybody. And when you're sucking air in, you pull your tongue to the back of
01:02:47
your throat and you cut off your air. And you literally stop breathing, right, for a few seconds. And then all a sudden
01:02:52
you and you make all this kind of grunting, groaning noises. and then you wake up. This can happen hundreds of
01:02:59
times a night and it can be very problematic because of course it wakes you up every single time that you have
01:03:06
one of these events, right? And so as an example, we measure the events per hour.
01:03:10
So as an example, somebody with sleep apnnea could have between five and 15 times per hour that they stop breathing
01:03:18
and that's mild. >> So how are they going to get into the deep sleep that clears out their brain?
01:03:23
>> That's the problem, right? And so apnea prevents them from getting into a lot of
01:03:27
that deep sleep. And so their brain doesn't clear out and then they got they're they're kind of screwed. So at
01:03:32
the end of the day, the the goal here is to get as many people to number one identify if they have a sleep disorder
01:03:38
and then be able to try to figure out what to do about it. And the percentage of people in the US that have
01:03:43
undiagnosed sleep apnea is pretty big. It's like somewhere between I think like
01:03:47
18 to 20%. >> This is crazy. I was just looking at the stats. It says according to 2026 data
01:03:52
approximately 936 million people to 1 billion adults worldwide have obstructive sleep apnnea
01:03:59
which is what one in seven >> yeah that's about right >> making it as common as diabetes. One in
01:04:05
seven people listening have sleep apnnea. >> Yes. >> Wow. >> As popular as diabetes. Let that sink in
01:04:10
for like half a second. Everybody knows what diabetes is. Almost nobody knows what sleep disorders are. Specifically
01:04:16
sleep apnnea. And it says 80 to 90% of those people remain undiagnosed. That is correct.
01:04:22
>> So there's people listening right there's actually a huge percentage of
01:04:24
people listening right now >> that have sleep apnea and have no idea that they have it.
01:04:28
>> Exactly. Right. >> How would they know? >> Do the sleep test.
01:04:31
>> This thing here. >> Yeah. >> And what would this show? >> So this would this actually collects
01:04:35
what is your oxygen levels throughout the night? What is your heart rate throughout the night? How many times do
01:04:40
you actually stop breathing? And also the depth of your sleep, which stages of sleep you get when you fall asleep,
01:04:45
things like that. And what would this So, you know, because people are going to be like, "How do I know if I need to
01:04:49
do the test?" >> So, great question. So, you want to think about the symptoms that you might
01:04:53
have. So, do you snore? Do you wake up gasping for air? Has anybody told you that your snoring stops for brief
01:05:00
periods of time or that they've heard you gasping for air? Do you wake up with
01:05:04
a headache in the morning? Do you find your moods are up and down? All of those are signs and symptoms of sleep apnnea.
01:05:11
>> And this test, are you affiliated with this company at all? I am not. But um we
01:05:14
do have that test on my website. We sell it to people so that way we can test them.
01:05:18
>> And how much does it cost? >> $189. >> Okay. So it's not
01:05:22
>> it's not exorbitantly expensive. And it also is covered by insurance.
01:05:27
>> And it connects to an app. >> Uh-huh. Absolutely. So you'd put it
01:05:30
through your sleeve. >> So I' I'd put that there and like this. >> Yeah. Exactly. And that's it. You go to
01:05:35
bed, wake up, then the information ports over to your phone and then tells us exactly what's going on. Now, here's
01:05:42
where it gets even better. I know, right? >> Can you imagine me getting in bed with
01:05:45
my fiance and being like, "Come on, babe. Let's >> We're recording all kinds of good stuff.
01:05:49
Who knows what she might like? >> Is this going to help my sex life?"
01:05:52
>> It's absolutely it will because getting into bed and knowing how well you sleep
01:05:57
and knowing if you have sleep apnea or not will definitely affect your sex life. Also, by the way, I've saved more
01:06:01
marriages as a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a marital therapist dealing with snoring in the middle of
01:06:06
the night and things like that. So, you'd be you'd be surprised. But what's
01:06:10
nice about this is it's one night. You don't have to do it multiple nights.
01:06:13
It's super easy. Um, and again, believe it or not, that's disposable. You can
01:06:16
actually throw that whole thing away after it's all said and done. >> And on that point, before we just go a
01:06:20
little bit further into sleep apnnea, should should we be sleeping in bed with our partners? And I know that's an
01:06:24
interesting thing. >> Great question. Great question. The strength of your relationship has
01:06:29
nothing to do with where you sleep. Okay? So, lots of people are like, "I got to sleep with my partner otherwise
01:06:35
my relationship's going to go to [ __ ] and everything's going to go terrible
01:06:38
and we're never going to have sex and we're not true." Okay. So, a lot of
01:06:42
times for people that I have, so for example, I've got people who um have sleep apnnea and they use a a machine to
01:06:48
help them sleep called a CPAP machine, right? And um that noise for some people can be disruptive and so they sleep,
01:06:54
let's say, in a different room, right? So, is that is that detrimental to your
01:06:59
marriage? No, it's not. Because here's what you do is you vacation on the
01:07:03
weekends in your bedroom, right? I can't count the number of people who sleep
01:07:07
separately during the week and then together on the weekends. And it turns out that they get much better sleep
01:07:13
during the week. And then guess what? Intimacy shows up much faster on the weekends because they're not so tired.
01:07:20
Used to be, you know, not tonight I have a headache. It was really not tonight I'm exhausted. When you allow your
01:07:26
partner to get good sleep during the week, there's a reasonably good shot that you're going to be able to be
01:07:31
intimate over the weekend if they got good sleep. So, wearing that to bed might not be the sexiest thing in the
01:07:36
universe, but it's better than having sleep apnnea and eventually ending up dead.
01:07:43
>> Are the symptoms of sleep apnnea different for men and women? >> They are. Great question. So, it turns
01:07:48
out that men and women are quite different, but we've historically been scoring them the same. So women don't
01:07:54
have a tendency to have as much snoring as men do. Um women have a tendency to have more arousals where they wake up
01:08:00
constantly. Women have a tendency to report headaches in the morning more so than men do. So it's actually different
01:08:06
types of symptoms for women versus men when it comes to sleep apnea to the point where we're now considering using
01:08:13
different testing devices. So this testing device um would not necessarily measure EEG and in women EEG might be
01:08:20
important. That's what we're learning. So, as an example, our company is
01:08:24
finding a device specifically to send to women so that way we can more accurately
01:08:28
measure sleep apnea in women. Now, there's a lot of questions about treatment for sleep apnea. And the
01:08:34
biggest reason why nobody gets sleep tested is because they're afraid that they're going to end up sleeping with a
01:08:38
CPAP machine on their face at night. And so, let me describe to your audience what that is. Also, full disclosure, I
01:08:45
have sleep apnea. I don't look like somebody who has sleep apnea. I stop breathing in my sleep. I think it's 26
01:08:51
times an hour. I know, right? Kind of crazy. And I wear a CPAT machine and it helps me sleep every single night. Let
01:08:59
me explain what it is. So, when your throat closes here, CPAT machine is a little air compressor with a tube and a
01:09:05
mask that sits on your nose, pushes a just thin stream of just air, and when it hits that blockage, it ever so
01:09:10
slightly opens it up, shoots air straight down to your lungs. Now, you might be saying to yourself, "That
01:09:15
sounds barbaric. That is insane. That's a haird dryer blowing up my nose all
01:09:20
night long. Here's what I can tell you is when you have a severe case of sleep
01:09:25
apnea, this can be a lifesaver. This can be one of the biggest, most important things that you possibly do. Now, a lot
01:09:33
of people say, "Oh, I don't think I could sleep with a mask on my face."
01:09:36
Well, that's not the only treatment. There are other treatments called oral appliances. This is like a a mouthguard
01:09:41
like you see the footballers wear, but it's an upper and a lower. and the lower
01:09:44
slowly brings your jaw forward which opens up your posterior airway space. The same way that air pushes things
01:09:50
aside, the oral appliance structurally moves your jaw slightly forward thereby opening up your airway. So that works
01:09:57
well and there's no mask on your face. There's a third device that you can wear
01:10:01
on your tongue that vibrates that shrinks your tongue by a couple of millimeters which opens up this
01:10:07
posterior airway space and allows you to breathe better. >> Have you tried all of them?
01:10:11
>> I have as a matter of fact. And why did you choose the apnea machine? >> So for me, the apnea machine worked the
01:10:16
best and made the most sense for me right now. But I'll be honest with you, I will probably get the uh mouthguard
01:10:22
for when I travel. There's a lot that can be done out there. And by the way,
01:10:26
there's also surgeries and surgeries are a little bit more permanent fix. Um, but
01:10:30
in many cases, those surgeries can be quite effective. Also, by the way, they're working on a pill
01:10:36
>> for sleep apnnea now. And that's just apnea. We haven't even talked about
01:10:39
insomnia yet. >> I was just reading about the FDA approving a drug. Yeah, it's it's quite
01:10:43
remarkable. And there's actually two I think there's actually three different
01:10:45
companies that are working on different drugs right now for sleep apnea. And I mean to be clear, when that happens, I
01:10:52
think it's pretty much game over for sleep apnea, right? I mean once we can get it in a pill form, which means
01:10:57
compliance increases dramatically, we can help a lot of people with sleep apnea, which I think would be pretty
01:11:03
amazing. >> And women are heavily undiagnosed, right? Because we heavily >> we think of it as I mean I've heard it
01:11:08
being referred to as a sort of an old man's disease. >> Yeah. And oh, absolutely. And here's the
01:11:13
thing. Many women have a tendency to report insomnia types of symptoms over sleep apnea types of symptoms when in
01:11:19
fact they actually have under undiagnosed sleep apnnea, which we can catch. >> We talked a little bit earlier, but um
01:11:25
from many of the conversations I've had on the show about Alzheimer's, >> yes,
01:11:28
>> your chance of um getting Alzheimer's, I imagine, is going to increase, right?
01:11:32
Because absolutely you have sleep apnnea. >> Yeah. Well, because when you have sleep
01:11:36
apnnea, it keeps you out of the deeper stages of sleep. the deeper stages of sleep is where that lymphatic system
01:11:40
comes in and scoops out those proteins and that's really probably one of those
01:11:44
big causes for it. So that's one of the things that we always want people to
01:11:46
understand. But there's also something else that I think is important to maybe
01:11:50
talk about which is on the other side not sleep apnnea side but on the insomnia side which is there's a lot of
01:11:56
people who go and they go to the drugstore and they buy an over-the-counter sleep aid. Right now
01:12:01
I'm not talking about supplementation yet. We can get into supplements in a minute if you want to, but I'm talking
01:12:05
about things like the PM medications, right? You know, they so here in America, we have them where there's like
01:12:11
there's like an analesic plus a PM. So there's Tylenol PM, Advil PM, and what
01:12:16
it is is it's a pain reliever, but they add something called dyenhydramine and
01:12:22
it makes you feel sleepy and it makes you fall asleep. Dyenhydramine is actually an antihistamine, right? So
01:12:27
it's used for congestion and things like that. But there's now data to suggest
01:12:31
that daily use of the PM part of this, not the pain relieving part, but the PM part can lead almost directly to
01:12:38
Alzheimer's. >> Oh, wow. >> Right. So, if people can just go to bed
01:12:44
and follow a couple simple rules and go to bed naturally, you'd be shocked at
01:12:47
how much better your world is going to be. The Queensland Brain Institute um at the University of Queensland found that
01:12:54
people with untreated apnea have a 45% higher risk of developing Alzheimer's
01:12:59
disease. >> Like I said, >> which is crazy. >> Soant here's the thing is we've got all
01:13:05
these people who are watching your show right now. They need to start thinking in their head like maybe I have sleep
01:13:12
apnea, maybe I don't, but maybe I should take a look at what are some of the
01:13:15
symptoms and see if that's something that could be going on for me. Because again, testing is available. And to be
01:13:21
clear, it's not like I'm the only guy out there testing people. I mean, there
01:13:24
are sleep doctors all over the world that are testing people. My encouragement to people is, hey, figure
01:13:30
it out. If if you can't figure it out, you know, shoot us an email. We'll find
01:13:33
a sleep center for you to go to. But if you think there's something going on,
01:13:37
it's definitely worth checking out because, by the way, you can stay with undiagnosed sleep apnnea for your entire
01:13:43
life. And it all it does is basically break down everything that's going on inside. And that's not what you want.
01:13:48
Like remember sleep is recovery, right? This is how your body still functions. Like if you want to lead a nice
01:13:54
prosperous life, you want to sleep. >> Insomnia has become a bit of a word that
01:13:59
people throw around >> for sure, >> right? They they kind of self diagnose
01:14:02
themselves. We kind of think of it as this one specific thing. I think people say, "I have insomnia when they just
01:14:06
don't sleep well." >> Right. >> What is insomnia and what's the big myth
01:14:09
around it? >> Yeah. So, number one, there's a couple of different flavors of insomnia.
01:14:14
There's the I can't fall asleep. There's the I can't stay asleep, which we talked
01:14:17
about quite a bit. There's the I wake up too early, and then there's just the I
01:14:21
wake up from unrefreshing sleep. So, we really think that there are four sort of
01:14:25
types of insomnia, right? And um when people I would say some of the biggest myths that a lot of people have
01:14:31
surrounding insomnia is or like the biggest problem that they do is when somebody has a really crappy night then
01:14:37
what they try to do is the next evening go to bed early and try to catch up on some of that sleep that they missed. So
01:14:45
to be clear this is a terrible idea because your circadian rhythm isn't ready to go to bed early. So you lie in
01:14:52
bed and you're exhausted but you can't fall asleep. you're what I call wired
01:14:57
and tired, right? And so what we want people to do is if you do have a bout of insomnia where you have difficulty
01:15:03
falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep, number one, don't overcaffeinate
01:15:07
during the daytime. So many people are like, "Oh, I'm dragging. I got to get a
01:15:11
coffee," you know, and and they and they caffeinate, caffeinate, caffeinate, and
01:15:14
then they caffeinate so late into the day that they have shitty sleep that night, and now we're in the washing
01:15:18
machine cycle going over and over and over. It sounds like you might be relating to this uh a little bit maybe
01:15:23
yourself. And then so we want to avoid that. The other thing we want to avoid is over stimulation at night, right? So
01:15:31
a lot of pimps people get that nervous energy and so they're just doing doing.
01:15:34
Again, you need runway to land the plane. So give yourself some kind of that space. Um and then just make sure
01:15:40
that you've got some level of regularity. I would argue for my insomnia patients, but quite honestly
01:15:46
for anybody who's watching this, the number one sleep tip that I can give people is to wake up at the same time
01:15:53
seven days a week. Not go to bed. I don't actually care when you go to bed that much. I know there's a lot of sleep
01:15:58
specialists out there who are like, you got to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time. I'm not of
01:16:03
that ilk. I don't really care that much about the going to bed time. I really
01:16:06
only care about the wake up time. Let me explain why. When you wake up in the morning, sunlight hits your eye and you
01:16:11
have a special cell in your eye called the melanopsin cell which sends a signal to your brain to turn off the melatonin
01:16:16
faucet in your head. But it sets a timer for exactly 14 hours later. It's called
01:16:21
the melatonin phase response curve. So if you're waking up at 6, melatonin turns off until about 8:00 p.m. Then it
01:16:27
takes about a couple hours for it to get up and in. So then you start to get sleep around 9:30 and you go to bed. But
01:16:32
if you did that and now it's Saturday and you sleep in until 8, melatonin doesn't kick off until 10:00 Saturday
01:16:40
night. So what I'm saying is the time that you wake up directly determines when your internal melatonin kicks into
01:16:48
gear. So if everybody woke up at the exact same time every single day, seven days a week, automatically you would get
01:16:56
tired at the right time and you would start going to sleep. >> And is there two different types of
01:17:00
insomnia? Sometimes I hear primary, secondary insomnia. I think you have that on your YouTube channel.
01:17:04
>> So when you look at primary insomnia versus secondary insomnia, the way we
01:17:07
categorize that, secondary insomnia is usually due to something else that's going on in your life. So
01:17:13
>> psychology, >> so maybe caffeine abuse. >> Okay? >> Right? Um maybe something along those
01:17:18
lines. Whereas primary insomnia is there's nothing else. You the only thing you've got going on is sleep disorder.
01:17:24
Another example of of something where insomnia might be secondary would be pain.
01:17:28
>> Right? So if you have a pain syndrome, if you have fibromyalgia or low back
01:17:31
pain, that could prevent you from sleeping. That would be secondary insomnia, secondary to pain.
01:17:36
>> And I hear that the most common treatment for insomnia is CBT therapy. >> So yes and no.
01:17:42
>> Okay. >> So I would say that the most common therapy for insomnia is alcohol.
01:17:47
>> More people drink themselves to sleep >> than any other single thing out there.
01:17:52
Um and then you start to get into the pharmacy of it all. And there's a lot of
01:17:55
pharmaceutical drugs out there that people utilize for for sleep. And I want to make a point if I can is there's
01:18:02
nothing wrong with needing a pill to sleep. Okay? I want to be very clear about this. There are people out there
01:18:09
who need pills, right? All kinds of different ones. Thank you. There's a whole host of reasons why you and your
01:18:15
doctor may have come to the conclusion that a sleeping tablet is good for you. The problem comes when those sleeping
01:18:22
tablets are overprescribed. So insomnia is in the in the sleep world, we call it
01:18:28
a door handle diagnosis because when the doctor has their hand on the door and they're just about to leave, that's when
01:18:33
the patient says, "Oh, and by the way, I'm not sleeping." >> And then the doctor usually pulls out
01:18:37
the prescription pad and says, you know, ambient or trazadone or something like that, writes it up, says, "Here, come
01:18:42
back in 30 days." Well, you haven't really done anything for this person.
01:18:45
You've handed them a pill. And by the way, now they're probably either psychologically or physiologically
01:18:51
addicted to said pill right now. Once again, if you've got a major mental health issue, I don't think I care. I
01:18:57
think it's okay for you to have your AMVN and be fine. And >> and a lot of people that do have
01:19:00
insomnia have depression. >> Oh, I think it's one of the biggest things that we see. But I would argue
01:19:05
anxiety might be a little bit more than depression. But yes, anxiety and depression, I would argue, make up 75%
01:19:11
of insomnia at any given time. Right? I work with people and I do something called cognitive behavioral therapy for
01:19:16
insomnia which you correctly identified as CBTI, right? And so I work with patients all the time. Um, and that's
01:19:23
exactly what we do is we reschedule them. So that's the behavioral part. And
01:19:27
then the cognitive part is we talk to them about how do you think about sleep? Because a lot of people think about
01:19:32
sleep in disastrous ways. They're like, if I don't get eight hours, my old day
01:19:35
is screwed and everything's going to happen. It rarely happens that way. Like
01:19:39
it's called catastrophizing. You just make it worse and worse and worse. And
01:19:42
so we look at those cognitive distortions and we help fix them in therapy by really kind of what I call
01:19:47
doing the math. And so I say, "Well, have you ever had four hours of sleep?"
01:19:51
"Yes." "Did you do something terrible the next day?" "No." "So where's your
01:19:55
evidence?" Right? And you start to get people to challenge themselves and all
01:19:59
of a sudden they kind of they can kind of get there. There's also another area
01:20:02
of that a lot of people go to somewhere in between the pills and therapy, and that's supplementation. So there's a lot
01:20:10
of people out there who like to use supplements and try to understand how to fix quote their insomnia with
01:20:16
supplementation. So if we can let's talk a little bit about supplements and sort
01:20:20
of what's good and what's bad. >> What is the difference between a
01:20:23
supplement and a pill or is it you talking about the same thing here? So under the context of this conversation,
01:20:29
a supplement is a non FDA regulated thing that you can purchase at any drugstore and a pill is a by
01:20:38
prescription only from a doctor. >> Okay, >> that's how we're going to make the
01:20:42
distinction for this particular conversation. >> Okay, so those pills that are in front
01:20:45
of you there, >> so right in front of me, these are most these are actually all supplements. So
01:20:50
these are different. So these are not pharmaceuticals. These are different things. So, we've got
01:20:54
>> I mean, in different countries, it's different, right? >> Great point. So, let's talk about
01:20:57
melatonin since that's kind of the biggie that a lot of people like to know about. So, number one, melatonin is by
01:21:03
prescription only almost everywhere other than the United States, >> right? So, in England, in Australia, in
01:21:09
Europe, you can't just walk into the drugstore and buy melatonin. And there's
01:21:13
a reason. A lot of people don't realize it, but melatonin is a hormone. There's
01:21:17
a reason you can't go to the CVS and get testosterone and estrogen, right? Because hormones affect the entire
01:21:23
system. They affect all three almost 300 different things in your body. So what you don't want to do is have somebody
01:21:28
just willy-nilly grabbing a hormone and starting to pop it without somebody understanding what's going on with them.
01:21:34
More importantly, melatonin in particular, and the point I wanted to make earlier about depression, melatonin
01:21:41
interacts with all SSRI medication. An SSRI is a serotonin specific reuptake inhibitor, an anti-depressant. So things
01:21:52
like Prozac, Zoloft, um, Selelexa, all of those are medications that will be affected by melatonin ingestion and
01:22:01
nobody knows that it is. In addition, melatonin affects birth control. Yes, you heard it here, birth control. It
01:22:09
affects blood pressure medication and it affects diabetes medication. So, one of
01:22:14
the problems is that people go into the local drugstore and they're like, "Oh,
01:22:17
I'm going to grab some melatonin and I'm going to make my sleep better because
01:22:20
I'm sleeping poorly." So, first of all, that's not what melatonin does.
01:22:24
Melatonin is a sleep regulator, not a sleep initiator. Melatonin doesn't affect sleep drive. Melatonin affects
01:22:31
sleep rhythm. So, remember in the beginning of our conversation, we're talking about the two systems. Melatonin
01:22:35
only affects your brain telling it when it's time to go to bed. It does not make
01:22:40
you sleepy. That's a denisonin. We already talked about adenosin and caffeine and how similar their molecular
01:22:45
structures are. So when you look at something like melatonin, you need to really be thoughtful about using it.
01:22:51
Number two, melatonin is not to be used in children. Okay? So a lot of people are like, "Michael, I've got
01:22:58
pediatricians all over the country telling my telling me to give my children melatonin." I'm going to say it
01:23:03
right here in front of everybody. That is the dumbest idea I have heard in a long time because you just taught your
01:23:10
child that they need a pill to sleep. Normally, no child needs pills to sleep. And by the way, most children make
01:23:18
almost four times the amount of melatonin that their brain even needs. So, giving them extra melatonin doesn't
01:23:24
do you any good. There is, however, one group of children where melatonin does work well, and that's in kids on the
01:23:29
autism spectrum. um we don't know exactly why but um or at least I don't
01:23:34
but there is data to suggest that at five six seven milligrams that that can be very helpful for them. Dosage also is
01:23:41
a problem like if you go to the drugstore you can you almost can't find it in the appropriate dose. The
01:23:46
appropriate dose is anywhere from about half a milligram to one and a half milligrams. Maybe top out at three but
01:23:52
that's about as high as you want to go. But when you go to CVS you find a gummies in 10 and 20 milligrams. And
01:23:58
people tell me all the time, "Oh, I can't take melatonin. It gives me crazy
01:24:01
dreams." Number one side effect of overdosing on melatonin is crazy dreams.
01:24:05
>> On this point of going to a supermarket and picking some melatonin off the
01:24:09
shelf, >> FDA approval and the lack of FDA approval in melatonin means that there's
01:24:16
less clarity on what's actually in there. Right. >> That's exactly right. I was reading
01:24:20
about a study in 2024 um where they looked at different melatonins that were found on the shelf
01:24:26
>> and they found very different things inside the bottle. >> Very very different things. They looked
01:24:31
at an analysis of melatonin gummies marketed for children and found that the actual amount of melatonin ranged from
01:24:37
0% >> right >> to 667% of what was listed on the label. >> Yep. See it all the time. And in the
01:24:44
same study, melatonin gummies, some melatonin gummies contained absolutely no melatonin, while others contained
01:24:50
hazardous contaminants like CBD that were not disclosed on the label. >> Yep.
01:24:55
>> Because melatonin is sold as a supplement in the US and not a drug, the
01:24:58
FDA does not test it for safety or accuracy before it hits the shelf. >> You are 100% correct. And that's a huge
01:25:04
problem. Just think about that for a second. I mean, the market for melatonin is tremendous. It's huge in the
01:25:10
supplement world. Yet, there's no regulation. whatsoever. Nobody knows about these interaction effects which
01:25:16
are big, big, big. And by the way, most people are using it wrong. There's really only three maybe four different
01:25:22
instances when melatonin would be useful. I would use melatonin for jet lag, and we should talk about jet lag.
01:25:29
>> Um I I would use uh melatonin for shift workers, right? So for people who work,
01:25:34
you know, night shift who have to sleep during the daytime, they would be excellent people to use melatonin.
01:25:39
people with a melatonin deficiency. A lot of people don't think about that, but right around age 50 is when if
01:25:44
you're going to have a melatonin deficiency, we start to see that happening for people is it their the
01:25:48
ability to produce melatonin begins to decline. So, I think those three situations absolutely would be on board
01:25:54
for melatonin. Believe it or not, there's some data to show that in ADD and ADHD there's uh some use for
01:26:00
melatonin and then also for a very specific sleeping disorder called REM behavior disorder.
01:26:04
>> We're going melatonin crazy as a society, aren't we? >> Absolutely. We don't need it. It's
01:26:09
completely unnecessary. >> I was looking at the data. In 1999, 0.4% of Americans said they used melatonin.
01:26:17
Today, it's almost 30%. So, 70 million Americans up, dude. That is problematic.
01:26:24
And again, they have no idea what it's doing to them, right? And they're giving
01:26:28
it to their kids. Like, I can't think of anything worse for a young female developing body than to add a
01:26:32
contraceptive when it's not necessary. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me.
01:26:36
The rise in children overdosing on sleep gummies is the fastest growing trend in
01:26:40
poison control data. >> Yeah, I think it's like almost 600% increase or something crazy like that
01:26:47
for kids who have uh gotten uh who've overdosed on melatonin like within there
01:26:51
was a study that came out maybe a year ago, year and a half ago showed like almost 600% of uh increase in uh
01:26:58
overdoses for kids. Like that's pretty messed up when you start to think about
01:27:02
it. And here's the thing, kids know how to sleep, >> right? You just got to stop. You just
01:27:06
got to let them sleep, right? You got to give them some parameters. Here's when
01:27:09
you go to bed. Here's when you wake up. Don't get out of bed. You know, don't
01:27:12
come in and ask for 12 glasses of water. You know, all the all the stuff that goes on there. I mean, it this isn't
01:27:18
hard. >> So, when and how So, I used melatonin once in my life. >> Okay.
01:27:22
>> And I got to be honest, it [ __ ] worked. >> Yeah. Oh, if you use it right, it works,
01:27:26
bro. >> And it was it was actually about a week ago because I'd been struggling with
01:27:31
lots of jet lag. I'd flown from the UK to the LA to UK to LA to Cape Town to
01:27:35
Middle East to wherever and I was getting to bed every night at like 4:00 or 5 a.m. and still waking up at, you
01:27:41
know, having to wake up at about 10:00. >> So, I thought, I need to correct this.
01:27:45
It's been going for two weeks and I need to correct this. >> Absolutely.
01:27:48
>> So, I thought, [ __ ] it, I'm going to cave. I g I took the melatonin and
01:27:52
corrected it. >> Yes, it does. So, let's talk about jet lag. So, it's a bit of a story, but I
01:27:58
got involved with a company that um has got an app, which is very interesting. Okay. Um I don't have any like I'm not
01:28:05
invested in the company, just to be clear, but it's one of my close friends who developed this. So, I'm kind of a
01:28:10
space nerd. >> It's not Time Shifter. >> It is Time Shifter. >> Oh, really?
01:28:15
>> It is. >> I also like an affiliation with Time Shifter >> because I used to Yeah, I will get you
01:28:20
that. So, here's what's fascinating is the way the whole time shifter started
01:28:24
was um so aren't you kind of a space guy? Like, aren't you >> I'm an investor in SpaceX and
01:28:29
>> Okay. So, I'm a space nerd myself, right? So, you know, the the ISS is
01:28:34
moving around at 17,500 miles an hour around the Earth. It's cooking. >> ISS meaning the International Space
01:28:39
Station. It's whipping around, right? >> Can you imagine how many sunrises and
01:28:44
sunsets they get in a given day? >> Oh, no. How many? >> Every two hours. So, they basically get
01:28:49
12. >> Wow. Think about how messed up their circadian rhythms would be from seeing
01:28:53
the sunrise and seeing it go and see it gets really messed up, right? And by the
01:28:56
way, you don't want to make big mistakes in the space station. Like you don't
01:28:59
leave the air lock open, you know, or [ __ ] like that. Like that's when things
01:29:02
get really really bad. So they called down to NASA and they were like, "Hey,
01:29:05
we got a problem up here. Everybody wants to use the lab at the same time like people seeing the sun. Like what's
01:29:10
going on?" So they called a buddy of mine named Steven Lachley over at Harvard. Stephen is arguably the one of
01:29:16
the best circadian researchers in the world. um super smart dude and he was like, "Well, let's send up a lighting
01:29:21
kit and let's create ships on the space station." >> Mhm. >> Right. So that's exactly what they did.
01:29:27
So they sent up a lighting kit. I think it was on the Colombia um shuttle before
01:29:30
it got decommissioned. And they set up lighting and then they set up timing for lighting. And so there was a morning
01:29:35
shift, a midshift, and a night shift for the astronauts. Once they got the algorithm working, they brought it down
01:29:41
terrestrially and they put it into the Mercedes-Benz uh Formula 1 race car team. So they gave it to Lewis Hamilton.
01:29:46
>> Mhm. >> Right. Because when you think about it, think about what he has to do, right?
01:29:50
He's on or off the podium on hundreds of a second, right? And he's in a different
01:29:54
country every 3 weeks, >> right? So this guy's got jet lag like you wouldn't believe. And so once we
01:29:58
were able to get it going there, then we created the time shifter app. And so it's an app you can get it on your
01:30:03
phone. And what you do is you put in your flight number and it automatically pulls up the flight and knows where you
01:30:08
are. This is why I think that jet lag is a math problem. Let me explain. We learned about 20 years ago that when you
01:30:15
take a certain frequency and intensity of light and you shine it in somebody's
01:30:18
eyes, you can move their circadian rhythm by about eight hours if you want to. >> That circadian rhythm again being
01:30:24
>> being that internal biological clock, the time when your body wants to go to
01:30:27
bed and wants to wake up. We can actually move that by about 8 hours with about 10,000 lux, which is the
01:30:34
brightness level of blue light, particular frequency of light. Okay? So when you hit that, if you start in LA
01:30:41
and you're going to Manchester, right, and there's a big time difference and
01:30:46
you know what time it is in LA and you know what time it is in Manchester, it's
01:30:50
a math problem of when do you get the light. >> So that's what time shifter is, is it
01:30:56
determines when do you need that light and then on the times when you don't need light, it has you use caffeine,
01:31:02
right? Or to keep you awake or if it's time to sleep, then you use a little bit
01:31:06
of melatonin. That's when melatonin becomes so valuable. >> It also tells you when to eat.
01:31:11
>> It does. It tells you all of these different things. And it's kind of nice
01:31:13
because it kind of shows up on your phone. It's like, "Hey, do this then. Do
01:31:16
this then." And it works really, really well. But yeah, Time Shifter is one of
01:31:20
my favorites. Uh I've been uh using it literally for 15 years. >> Wow.
01:31:26
>> And it solves jet lag, bro. Like we're going to fix that for you. No, no
01:31:30
question. >> How often should someone be having melatonin? Is there like too often?
01:31:34
Because some people literally have it every day. Yeah, I would argue it's a bad idea. So, if you have a melatonin
01:31:40
deficiency, sure, have it every day. But, um, or if you're a shift worker, probably. But I I use it only for jet
01:31:46
lag myself. Otherwise, I'm not using it on the regular. >> And what's the risk there of having it
01:31:51
every day? Is it? >> Uh, it's a good question. So, when you start to look at melatonin overdose and
01:31:56
you start to look at melatonin on board for long periods of time, there's been
01:32:00
some conflict in the in the research. Um, there's a group of people that say
01:32:04
if you stay on melatonin for extended periods of time, your body stops producing it. There's another group of
01:32:09
people that have looked at research and have said actually that's not the case.
01:32:13
So, right now we have we have studies that lead out to about a year or so on melatonin. And when you stop their
01:32:20
melatonin production after they've been taking it for a year, their body seems
01:32:23
to start back up no problem. It's different than testosterone, right? So with testosterone, we know that when men
01:32:28
start taking testosterone, their body actually stops producing it. With melatonin, that does not appear to be
01:32:33
the case, but we don't have studies that go out past, you know, that yearong. And
01:32:38
so if somebody's been taking melatonin every day for 5 10 years, you know, you
01:32:43
you kind of start to wonder uh what's going to happen. Also, don't forget that
01:32:46
that melatonin is different than the melatonin that's actually produced in your head. I think it was Andrew
01:32:51
Huberman who I was speaking to a couple of weeks ago that was was saying about not giving kids an overdose of
01:32:57
melatonin. And I think afterwards I I was doing some research on it and I read something that said it has an impact on
01:33:03
puberty potentially. >> So in high dosages melatonin is a contraceptive. >> So that would pause puberty.
01:33:10
>> Exactly. Or change it >> and ways we may or may not know. So, I agree with Andrew on that point that
01:33:18
again, melatonin is not something that kids need unless you've got kids on the
01:33:22
spectrum, which is again where I find it to be helpful and I've treated kids with
01:33:25
that before, but generally speaking, I don't put melatonin on anybody under the
01:33:29
age of 18. >> Am I more likely to have nightmares if I'm having lots of melatonin?
01:33:34
>> If you're overdosing, you are. So, the number one side effect of a high dose of
01:33:39
melatonin is super vivid dreams and then eventually nightmares. >> Why? I'm not really sure. If I was
01:33:45
garnering a guess, then what I would say is that part of the reason why that you
01:33:50
have crazy vivid dreams from melatonin is because it probably does put you into REM sleep a little bit quicker than you
01:33:57
normally would and might keep you there a little bit longer. I don't have any
01:34:00
data to support that. So, I want to be clear. Um, this is more of a hypothesis on my end, but that might make intuitive
01:34:06
sense to me. >> Just on a quick search, um, Sure. You're right. It says it keep keeps you in REM
01:34:11
sleep a little bit longer and more intensely. >> There you go. >> This leads to vivid highly vivid dreams
01:34:15
or night terrors which paradoxically makes you wake up feeling more exhausted. >> Right. I can't count the number of
01:34:21
people who tell me >> I need to go back to sleep because I'm so exhausted from my dreams.
01:34:25
>> Oh wow. >> Right. >> So let's finish off on these supplements
01:34:28
then. >> Yeah. Absolutely. So we talked a little bit about melatonin which like I said
01:34:32
select usage. Um a couple of other ones that we've got here um one of them is
01:34:36
Valyan. Right. So when we talk Valyan is probably the most studied it's a root um
01:34:42
it's called the Valyrian root but to be clear it's an anti-anxiety medication
01:34:46
right so what it is is it's it helps lower your level of anxiety um and that
01:34:52
is the reason why it has a tendency to work interestingly when you look at the data it works better when combined with
01:34:57
hops like what you'd find in beer so a lot of times when you're looking for a
01:35:01
preparation you should look for Valyan plus hops as the preparation also we should talk for a talking about
01:35:08
supplements. A lot of people don't understand this, but a lot of people will put a whole bunch of different
01:35:13
supplements together and put it into a capsule. I don't think that's the best
01:35:16
idea. I think you should have single ingredient supplementation. >> Why? >> Well, number one, you get the correct
01:35:22
dose so you know it's actually working for you. There's a lot of companies out
01:35:25
there that are uh that make a powder or something and they put a bunch of stuff in it and they put just enough in there
01:35:31
to be able to say it on the ingredient profile, but not enough for it to actually do any good for the patient.
01:35:36
So, I like using single ingredient pro uh supplement profiles because I know exactly how much of each thing that I'm
01:35:42
going to get in there and I can make sure that it's the correct dosage for the what the person needs. So, I prefer
01:35:47
single ingredient supplementation. >> Okay. So, val Valyan. >> Yep. Valyan root.
01:35:54
>> Not going to mess up my hormones? >> Nope. It's not going to mess up your
01:35:56
hormones. >> Going to help me with overthinking? >> Probably not. What it'll probably do is
01:36:01
slow your thinking down a little bit depending upon how much of it you take. Um, I think if you were looking for a if
01:36:07
you're looking for something that's going to slow down your thinking, then I
01:36:10
would say we don't have the the thing here, but it's called GABA, GABA. Um,
01:36:15
gamma amunobbuteric acid. So, this is a substance that your body makes. It's
01:36:19
kind of the breaks of the brain, and you can buy it um as a supplement. I've had
01:36:24
several people use that, and that seems to help calm people down in the evening times.
01:36:28
>> What about ashwanaganda or whatever it's called? >> Ashwagandha.
01:36:30
>> Ashwagandha. >> Exactly. I just kind of like saying it. So, here's my theory on supplementation
01:36:35
is the first thing I tell people to do is go do blood work. Okay? What deficiencies do you have? Fix your
01:36:42
deficiencies first before we start going to the valyians and the melatonins of it
01:36:47
all. If you're deficient in vitamin D, magnesium, iron, fix those three things
01:36:54
first. Dude, I can't tell you. I pro 15% of the people that show up at my doorstep we do blood work on and all I
01:37:00
do is fix their deficiencies and their sleep magically gets better. >> What are some of the surprising things
01:37:04
though that you discover like blood sugar like diabetes that impacts sleep? No, >> it absolutely does. I also think that a
01:37:10
lot of people who have uncontrolled diabetes, it wakes them up in the middle of the night um because their blood
01:37:14
sugar gets so low and then they're hungry in the middle of the night. Then they up eating in the middle of the
01:37:18
night then they have a sleep eating syndrome which is kind of a pain. >> There's this one here that I've never
01:37:22
heard of before. What's this uh it's called tryptophan. So uh elptophan in in
01:37:27
particular. So tryptophan is the substance that we find in turkey that has a tendency to make people sleepy.
01:37:34
However, when you really look at the data, you'd have to eat a 46 pound turkey in order to get enough tryptophan
01:37:41
to make you sleepy. Even in my best days in college, dude, I couldn't eat a 46
01:37:45
pound turkey. Okay? Same holds true with milk. Um, tryptophan is the thing in warm milk that supposedly makes people
01:37:51
uh, sleepy, but once again, you'd have to drink almost a half a gallon of warm
01:37:55
milk, which is kind of disgusting um, in order to do it. Tryptophan can be helpful for people if you have a
01:38:00
tryptophan deficiency, but it's definitely something that lowers a little bit of anxiety and can make you
01:38:04
feel a little bit sleepy, but it is a naturally occurring amino acid in your system.
01:38:08
>> Calcium. >> So, calcium turns out is interesting because when you mix calcium with
01:38:13
magnesium, it's easier to absorb. So for some people mag we what we've discovered
01:38:18
is if you have a magnesium deficiency and you fix the magnesium deficiency in many cases it can actually help with
01:38:25
overall sleep and calcium is one of the things that can be added to it that helps with absorption. Now unfortunately
01:38:32
the big problem is that there are 13 different kinds of magnesium out there and so people don't know what's been
01:38:39
studied and what hasn't. So, I'm here to let you know there's only a couple of
01:38:43
brands out there that have actually been studied for magnesium. The ones I like is there's one called magnesium 308,
01:38:51
which is made by a company called Magen. Um, they actually have a published research study in the journals. That's
01:38:57
why I mentioned their brand name. I have no association with them. There's also
01:39:00
another company called Upgraded Formulas. They make a magnesium. And kind of funny story is the guy who runs
01:39:07
mag uh upgraded formulas told me he says my magnesium is the best in the world. I
01:39:11
can make anybody fall asleep. And I said, "Hey, you want to put your money where your mouth is? Let's do a clinical
01:39:15
trial." He handed me a check for 75 grand. I went and did a clinical trial and he was right. His magnesium really
01:39:22
made people sleep better. >> What is magnesium doing? >> So, we're not 100% sure. In the
01:39:27
deficient people, it's it's obviously clearing up the deficiency of magnesium.
01:39:32
And then magnesium is used in about I think almost 300 different functions in the body. So it probably lets the body
01:39:38
work more efficiently and probably that helps to overall sleep. But I'm not convinced that we have the whole
01:39:45
mechanism of action worked out. I will tell you that when people take magnesium they tell me that they introspectively
01:39:51
feel calmer and we definitely know that it can definitely help uh cause a relaxation response in the musculature.
01:39:56
So I think that might have something to do with that. >> Why did you bring a banana and a knife
01:39:59
and a teapot? Ah, this is my favorite way to get magnesium. >> A lot of people want to know, "How
01:40:05
should I take my supplements? I'm tired of taking a fistful of pills every morning, Michael. There's these powders.
01:40:10
Like, what what's the best way?" The best way So, number one, supplementation
01:40:15
is when you're not getting all of the things, the vitamins and minerals that
01:40:18
you need from your food. So, the best place to get it from is food. Generally speaking, turns out magnesium is one of
01:40:24
the best ones, but it's problematic because we have to eat our magnesium. Our body doesn't actually produce it.
01:40:30
themselves. And by the way, you could eat a bushel of kale and still not get enough magnesium because here in the
01:40:35
United States, the soil has been overtilled, which means the magnesium isn't in the soil. So, it's not coming
01:40:40
up through the root stocks and allowing people to have it. So, a lot of people require magnesium supplementation.
01:40:46
Believe it or not, between magnesium and vitamin D, I'd say we've probably
01:40:49
covered most of America in terms of having a deficiency. Bananas are loaded with magnesium, but it turns out it's
01:40:56
not the fruit, it's the peel. >> Oh. itself. So, no, I'm not going to
01:41:00
make you eat the peel. Don't worry. So, I developed a recipe that I call banana
01:41:05
tea. All this is is a regular old banana. So, what I what you do is you cut off the stem, right? And cut it in
01:41:11
half and then you drop it in to some boiling water. Okay? So, we've already done this, right? And you can see the
01:41:17
banana has turned brown, right? It's been soaking in the boiling water. So, it's not really tea. It's just basically
01:41:23
hot banana water. But with the banana from the skin, you also get these things called phytostereroids that actually
01:41:30
help you absorb the magnesium better than if you just had it from a supplement. So you have to really like
01:41:35
bananas. My daughter says it's very banana e. Dad, the flavor, I mean. >> Oh, it does smell like bananas.
01:41:45
>> I'm telling you, if you like bananas, >> it's nice. >> I know it's nice. And you can use this
01:41:50
as a like an evening ritual and you can make banana tea and have it in the evening with, you know, a biscuit or
01:41:57
what have you and have a nice and read a book and just be chill. >> How do I know the magnesium is actually
01:42:01
in there? >> Cuz it came through from the from the um steeping in the water.
01:42:05
>> Okay. >> Well, you could test it if we want, but I can assure you it's in there. You need
01:42:07
to leave it in there for about 5 minutes and we've been talking for a while, so
01:42:10
I'm pretty sure it's there. >> And and how long before sleep to get
01:42:12
those effects? >> I would say about 2530 minutes. You don't want to have too much, by the way,
01:42:16
because then you're gonna have to wake up and pee. So try if you can >> to be able to have it about 30 40
01:42:21
minutes before bed. >> So you can put it in anything. A lot of people have different types of teas. So
01:42:25
you could just use that as the water instead. >> Yeah. Oh, without question. Actually,
01:42:28
that would be a really good idea. And you could, if you did it, if you mix it with like a fruit tea, like an herbal
01:42:33
fruit tea, that would be really delicious. >> Are there any other supplements that
01:42:36
you, you know, you do encourage people to take if they're struggling with sleep
01:42:39
that we haven't talked about yet? >> We haven't talked about vitamin D, and
01:42:42
that's a big one. So it turns out that vitamin D is a circadian pacemaker. So
01:42:46
when light comes into your eyeballs, it helps change your whole uh circadian system. And if you're if light is coming
01:42:54
in for a certain amount of time, about 15 minutes, your body will start to produce vitamin D. Vitamin D does a
01:42:59
whole host of important things to your body. But most importantly from a sleep perspective, is it helps regulate
01:43:05
melatonin and when your body produces it. So by taking vitamin D every day or getting 15 minutes of sunshine, either
01:43:12
way, you're going to be in better shape. So, like as an example, my morning routine that I have all my patients do
01:43:17
is I have them when they wake up in the morning, I have them uh go outside if it's if it's, you know, nice out, sit in
01:43:23
a chair and have 15 deep breaths merely to wake up the respiratory system, then 15 ounces of water cuz once again,
01:43:30
remember, you're dehydrated, and then 15 minutes of sunshine. So, they can do all
01:43:34
of this together at the same time. And it's a nice way to wake up in the morning.
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the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big big big goal, it can feel
01:44:54
incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at
01:44:59
the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny
01:45:05
small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly responsible for
01:45:11
much of our success here. So, what we've done so that you at home can accomplish
01:45:15
any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries and we released these
01:45:20
last year and they all sold out. So, I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to
01:45:26
introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So, now we have a better range for you. So, if
01:45:34
you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you
01:45:40
get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours now at the diary.com where you can
01:45:46
get 20% off our Black Friday bundle. And if you want the link, the link is in the
01:45:50
description below. >> So, let's talk about waking up in the morning. >> Sure.
01:45:54
>> Morning routines. >> Yep. >> A lot of people talk about what's the
01:45:57
perfect morning routine? Do you need to have a morning routine? What's your take
01:45:59
on that? So, it depends upon how disciplined you want to be and it depends upon how much time you have. I
01:46:05
can tell you what my morning routine is because it's very specific and I I've
01:46:08
discovered that it works really really well for me. So, I wake up naturally somewhere between 6:10 and about 6:25 or
01:46:15
so. My body just seems to naturally wake up. I do 15 minutes of red light therapy. So, I have a red light uh in my
01:46:21
office that I sit in front of and I do my meditation at the same time in the morning time. So, I have about 15
01:46:26
minutes of meditation. Sometimes what I'll do is um I'll sit on the floor and
01:46:31
the boys will come and sit on my lap and then we'll all meditate together. I know
01:46:35
that sounds a little weird. Then um we use a we do a 15-minute walk. I try not to have any music or any telephone or
01:46:42
anything like that uh up at all up until this point. I put the dogs away and then
01:46:46
I hit the gym. I'm at the gym from about 8 till about 9:30, 10:00. I do a sauna
01:46:52
every day afterwards and then I'm in front of my desk by about 10:30 and that's is when I have my breakfast. And
01:46:58
so I make the same breakfast almost every morning. I do uh ground turkey with uh a third of a pound of ground
01:47:04
turkey, three eggs and broccoli and I I put it all into a skillet and I make it every morning.
01:47:09
>> Do you use any sleep trackers? >> In the past I've used uh a few of them.
01:47:13
I I try them out because a lot of my patients try them out. Um, I think if I was going to be looking at them, I think
01:47:18
the aura ring probably does the best job. I really don't think they've gotten
01:47:23
there quite yet because remember depth of sleep is based on brain waves and it's hard to get brain waves from your
01:47:28
finger, right? And so what they're doing is they're creating a proxy. So they're
01:47:31
looking at heart rate or oxygen or pulse or something along those lines and then
01:47:36
saying, "Okay, when Stephven's at this pulse, we think he's in REM sleep, so
01:47:40
we're going to label every time that REM sleep." when in fact they don't really
01:47:44
know because they're not measuring your brain waves. So I think until we get to
01:47:47
the point where we can measure brain waves from distally, I think we'll have
01:47:51
a little bit better shot at it. However, >> there's some interesting things that are
01:47:55
going on kind of in the sleep tracker world. And some people get a little too into the whole tracking of it all, if
01:48:00
you know what I mean. Like I can't count the number of people that are like, "Oh
01:48:03
my god, Dr. Bruce, you know, this says I only slept 14 minutes last night. Like what do I do?" And I'm like, "Well,
01:48:09
number one, how much did you sleep the night before?" And they say, "Oh, 16
01:48:12
minutes." I'm like, "Okay, well, let's check you tomorrow." They come back
01:48:14
tomorrow, it's even worse, 12 minutes. I'm like, "Oh, you're fine." They're
01:48:18
like, "What?" I'm like, "Look, it's being consistently inaccurate. There's
01:48:22
no way you only got 14 minutes of deep sleep, right? That's just not how the
01:48:25
body works, right? But if you got 14 minutes, 14 minutes, and then one night you look at your score and it's 407
01:48:31
minutes. >> I want to know what happened on that night." >> My friend was a big fan of Whoop. So, he
01:48:36
told me to try a Whoop. I tried a Whoop. the the most I think critical thing it's
01:48:39
done for me is it allowed me to create some understanding of like causation and like associations with my sleep. So one
01:48:49
of the ones that completely changed my life when I first wore my Whoop, which by the way I'm an investor in the
01:48:54
company so I have to disclaimer that >> um was I didn't realize how impactful
01:48:58
sleep alcohol was on my sleep. >> It's massive. >> Like it blew my mind cuz I had had one
01:49:03
glass of wine. >> Yep. And then the bloody whoop thing said you're either really sick um really
01:49:10
stressed or you drank alcohol. And then I watched a video online where they compared all of the devices to the
01:49:16
hospital grade stuff. >> Yep. Poly synography >> and the Whoop 4 was the closest to the
01:49:21
hospital grade. And then I contacted the company and said can I invest etc etc. I've also tried I've also tried like a
01:49:26
sleep and >> I would argue that temperature like if we're talking about what is the easiest
01:49:30
thing to manipulate to change your sleep either good or bad temperature is it um
01:49:35
and people don't realize it but you can change the temperature in your bedroom
01:49:39
even in your bed and you can change the quality of your sleep. You mentioned eight that's a company that has a a
01:49:45
topper type of thing that can change the uh the temperature underneath the covers. There's also taking a look at
01:49:51
the the accutramal that's on. So pillows, sheets, comforters, all of those things. But if you can get your
01:49:57
body to cool down, your body will go down and get into deeper stages of sleep. If you can stay cool versus
01:50:04
bumping up and down all night long, let's say you're a woman in menopause,
01:50:08
right? That becomes highly disruptive. And so by being a by being able to keep a consistent temperature stimulus to the
01:50:15
body, it ends up sleeping a whole lot better. >> Dreams. Let's talk about dreams. People
01:50:19
are so fascinated by dreams, >> aren't they? I love it. >> But but so little is known about dreams.
01:50:24
>> Yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, here's the thing. Dreams have been studied
01:50:30
honestly since the dawn of time. If you look in the Bible, you will see that people are talking about dreams. If you
01:50:36
look at ancient texts, people are wondering about these crazy movies that are going on in my head. Right? When you
01:50:42
start to look at dreams, here's the thing that I will tell you is dreams mean something to the dreamer. They
01:50:49
don't necessarily mean something to somebody who is not the dreamer. And so when I do dream work and so I so to be
01:50:55
clear, just take a step back, I took a year and a half and I became a dream therapist. So what does that mean? What
01:51:01
is that even is that even a thing? So dream therapy, by the way, is not dream interpretation. That is not here's a
01:51:08
symbol, here's what that means. Dream therapy is where you use dreams in the
01:51:13
therapeutic context to help people with things like depression and anxiety. >> Let me give you an example. A nightmare,
01:51:21
right? So when somebody has, let's say somebody was in an active theater of war
01:51:24
and they watched one of their friends, god forbid, something terrible happened to them and that image is now in their
01:51:30
head and now they constantly have this image over and over and over. But what happens is they're going, going, going
01:51:35
going and they wake up. They're going, going, going going going, they wake up.
01:51:37
We talked a little bit about it earlier that dreams are emotional metabolism, right? So dreams are where you work out
01:51:45
all of these different things that are going on in your head and kind of become okay with them so that way next day you
01:51:50
can kind of move forward and keep keep doing your thing. >> Do we need to explain why we dream
01:51:55
because I think that's the big sort of >> Sure. So there's a couple of theories.
01:51:59
One theory is is that this is a great stage for for practice, right? So we dream about things that we're eventually
01:52:06
going to try in the real world and so we get a chance to practice them in our head beforehand to to make sure it
01:52:12
doesn't we don't kind of screw the whole thing up. So there's that whole idea of
01:52:15
being able to kind of work stuff out in my head. Then there's the processing
01:52:19
idea that we talked about before where this is emotional metabolism. So therapy,
01:52:23
>> right? Exactly. It's like you go to therapy every single night. I actually
01:52:26
that's a really good way to think about it. I hadn't thought about it like that,
01:52:28
but I think I'm going to use that. I'm going to take that from you. Um, I like
01:52:31
that dreams are therapy every single night because they really are. You're really moving through a lot of that
01:52:36
emotionality. Some people think dreams are complete nonsense. Some people think that's just some crazy movie in your
01:52:41
head and it's just this after effect of your brain moving into a different mode
01:52:45
and who knows what it could mean. I find that one hard to believe myself >> because humans don't do anything.
01:52:51
>> I don't think so. >> That isn't for some type of survival
01:52:54
benefit >> for sure. >> It's a waste of energy or you know >> Yeah, I agree. And so if we looked at it
01:53:00
from an evolutionary perspective, like what is the evolutionary purpose of dreams, I would argue that it probably
01:53:06
has something to do with emotions and being able to uh move through some emotionally difficult times and or it's
01:53:13
an early warning system. A lot of people dream things and uh it helps them understand something else that's going
01:53:18
on in their life. You ever heard the um thing uh people say, I before I make a big decision, I want to sleep on it.
01:53:24
>> Yeah. >> Right. this is what they're doing is when they sleep on it all these
01:53:27
desperate pieces of information come together and work themselves so that you can come to a solution. So I think the
01:53:33
other thing that reason that we dream is to come to solutions and to create innovation
01:53:38
>> that tracks in my life. I I can be going to bed really thinking about something
01:53:43
quite like you know remunerating about something to the point that it's like
01:53:47
overthinking and it's a problem. It's stressing me out. >> I can get eight hours sleep and wake up
01:53:53
and it's like the clouds have parted, >> right? It's like magic. >> It's like magic.
01:53:57
>> It's great. And I only real realized this in the last couple of years when
01:54:00
you know business my businesses got bigger and there was more problems to to work through that like actually I could
01:54:06
use sleep as a weapon against the problem. Absolutely. >> Versus trying to stay up all night and
01:54:10
solve the problem. I could focus on the sleep to solve the problem. >> Yeah. I do it all the time. And and what
01:54:15
you can actually do it's called priming is you can think about the problem in a
01:54:20
in a way before you go to sleep and then it triggers your brain to think about the problem while you're sleeping. what
01:54:26
you write it down or do you >> There's a lot of different ways you can
01:54:28
go about doing it. So, for example, what I have some people do is write down everything they can remember in their
01:54:33
dream beforehand before they come to therapy. But what you can do is something different. If you want to
01:54:38
change your dream, you write it all down, but that you change the ending. Okay? And you read it several times
01:54:44
before bed and it will actually change your dream. >> So, what am I writing down before bed
01:54:48
then? >> So, let's say you had a scary dream. Okay? You're walking through a haunted
01:54:52
house and something terrible is going to happen when you walk out the back door >> the night before.
01:54:55
>> Yeah. The night before. Then I have you write all of that down and then when you
01:54:59
come into session with me, I say, "Okay, we're going to change the ending because
01:55:02
at the at the very end, you walked out onto the porch and somebody got you right." So instead of that happening,
01:55:07
you're going to walk out to the porch and you're going to pull out a gun and
01:55:09
you're going to shoot the guy. Okay? And so we change that in the dream in the
01:55:13
right in what you wrote down and then we talk about it in therapy. And then right
01:55:17
before bed, you read this to yourself multiple times and it over 7 to 10 days, you change the ending of the dream.
01:55:26
>> And how does that help? >> So it makes it more positive. And when
01:55:30
you change the ending, the reason you're waking up is something is scaring you so
01:55:33
much that you're waking up and you stop processing. And so when you change the
01:55:36
ending and you don't wake up, you continue to process and then you move past the dream. Just like you said when
01:55:41
you wake up and the clouds have cleared. >> A lot of people wake up and the clouds
01:55:44
don't clear because they have nightmares and they keep repeating it over and over
01:55:47
and over again. >> H >> it's quite remarkable. The process is very interesting. So what I do is I
01:55:54
bring them into session put them into a mild hypnotic state uh only by doing some simple breath work. Right? So let
01:56:00
me give you an example of somebody that I worked with and tell you exactly how it went. So I was working with somebody
01:56:05
who had had uh pretty significant trauma. They had been raped. Right? And so they were having nightmares about
01:56:10
this. So serious situation, right? So she had a she had a nightmare of being in a jungle. And so I had her come in
01:56:16
session, wrote it all down. And when we got to the end, we were walking through the jungle. She was actually being
01:56:21
chased through the jungle. So I turn to her and I say, "Okay, well, we're in the
01:56:24
jungle. Tell me more about this jungle." And she says, "What do you mean?" I
01:56:28
said, "Well, in jungles there's lots of tropical plants. There a lot of colorful
01:56:31
flowers." and she'll stop and you can see she's looking around inside her head
01:56:37
at the dreamscape and then she says, "Oh, there are there's some beautiful
01:56:41
flowers over there. I've now advanced the dream, right?" Because she didn't
01:56:44
know there were flowers before. Now she's imagined that they're flowers. I'm
01:56:48
moving the dream forward. So, we go over and we smell the flower. And I said, "Well, you know, usually in jungles
01:56:52
there's there's animals. Are there any animals?" "Yeah, there's a lion." "Oh gosh, is the
01:56:58
lion friendly?" "Yeah, the lion is friendly. Can we go over and talk to the
01:57:02
lion? Yeah, Michael, we can. So, again, in her head, we walk over. So, I say to her, "Uh, does the lion have a name?"
01:57:10
And she said, "I don't know. Let me ask." So, she asked the lion his name.
01:57:13
And she said, "Yeah, his name is Jack." And I said, "What does Jack mean to
01:57:16
you?" And instantly she says, "Jack was my uncle and he saved me from getting
01:57:21
raped by my stepfather." Now, we're getting somewhere. Now, we understand what's chasing her. Now, we
01:57:28
understand where she's headed to. She's trying to head to the person that saved
01:57:32
her. Now she starts to understand where this dream is coming from. And guess what? In three or four more sessions,
01:57:38
she doesn't have the dream anymore >> because you did what? >> Because she now understands where it is.
01:57:44
She's no longer scared in the middle of her dream. She's able to understand it,
01:57:47
wake up, and move forward. >> It's remarkable. It's kind of the coolest thing ever. If
01:57:53
you want to know the truth of the matter, working with people's dreams is just ma amazing stuff. And for people at
01:57:58
home that might not have access to you, >> um is is a is there a simple thing that
01:58:02
they can do to start to sort of get a hold of these dreams? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Number one is you
01:58:06
could actually start a dream journal. >> So it's just a journal. Um and there's a
01:58:10
couple things that you would write down in a given dream journal. So you might write down um what was the theme, right?
01:58:16
So was it was like describe it like was it dark out? Was it light out? Uh was it
01:58:20
scary? Was it happy? You might describe the surroundings of it and you might describe the people that are in it as
01:58:26
well. um and start listing these things and getting as detailed as you possibly can. Once you've kind of gotten through
01:58:33
the point of getting the details down of your dream, then if you want to change them, you can change the ending. It's
01:58:39
not hard. You just change it the way you want it to be. Then you start to read it
01:58:43
over for yourself. Now, I want to be clear, in terrible nightmare situations, this can be a little bit difficult. And
01:58:50
so, you're probably going to want to talk with your therapist about it and maybe work with the therapist while
01:58:54
doing something like this. But it is absolutely possible to collect information from in a dream journal u
01:58:58
and be able to do some interesting stuff with it. I would not recommend taking your dream and stuffing it into chat GPT
01:59:05
and asking chat GPT what it means. Um lots and lots of people are doing that these days. And here's why that's
01:59:11
probably not the best idea. So number one, unless chat GPT really knows and understands you there, it's going to
01:59:19
give some very broadbased sort of encyclopedia. you know, here's a symbol that means this type of thing, which
01:59:25
once again, we have very little evidence that that actually works. So, I would argue that you're better off talking
01:59:30
about your dreams with people who know you. Um, because they can actually help you understand a little bit more about
01:59:35
what's going on. >> There's a few other items on the table here. Um, I mean, this is I don't use
01:59:40
this exact one, but maybe I should, but this has been an absolute game changer for me when I travel, when I'm on
01:59:46
planes. >> I love a good sleep mask. My wife says it looks like I'm living in the 50s.
01:59:52
you know, when I'm wearing it. But I love a good sleep mask. That one in particular is pretty cool because you
01:59:56
can remove the eye cups and you can change the sizing of where you want it. And then these can actually you can
02:00:02
replace these with things that heat or cool. >> Um, but I love that that particular eye
02:00:07
mask. It works. Yeah, it's really works quite well. It's very dark in there. You
02:00:12
definitely can't see up there. >> Crazy, >> right? >> And then I've got one more thing that I
02:00:16
think people will find interesting. I can't explain how how much of a game changer it has been to cover my eyes
02:00:22
when I go to sleep because gosh the amount of nights per week where I don't know there's like a crack in the in the
02:00:28
curtains or I don't know someone gets up early and >> well also for you you're traveling all
02:00:33
the time you're in different you're in planes you're in different environments
02:00:36
also by the way every time you're in a different environment you have something
02:00:39
called the first night effect so we see this with every human on earth when you sleep in a new place for the first night
02:00:45
you never sleep well because it's new sounds new sights you know, new smells,
02:00:49
all that stuff is new. So, what's nice about having this is when I put one of
02:00:52
these on, I don't have to worry about light. I don't have to worry about
02:00:55
anything. >> Does CO2 play a role? >> In what way? >> In changing sleep. I was thinking if
02:01:00
ventilation, the amount of oxygen in the room matters at all because sometimes I
02:01:03
go to hotels and they don't have windows you can open. >> Right. So, air quality is also a
02:01:09
important thing, not just air quantity, right? And so number number one thing if
02:01:14
I was to tell people, hey, here's an easy thing to do to to make your sleep better, just go out and buy an air
02:01:19
purifier for your bedroom. Think about it. It's the room you spend more time in
02:01:22
than any other room in the house. You want that air to be fresh and filtered, right? And not a big, it's not
02:01:28
expensive. 20 25 bucks. One sits in the corner, just runs the air, cycles all day long. That way you know you have
02:01:34
good clean fresh air. Um, also I tell people open the windows once a week. Um, it's good to get fresh air in. Now, the
02:01:41
only problem comes is if you have allergies and the allergens fly in and there's pollen or dust or things like
02:01:47
that, that can be somewhat problematic. But generally speaking, if you don't
02:01:52
have enough oxygen going on, you're definitely not going to sleep well and your body's going to wake up. So, if you
02:01:56
were in, let's say, a oxygen restrictive environment, so let's say that you were
02:02:01
underneath the covers, >> right? And you've got the thing all all the way over your head, you're not going
02:02:05
to sleep particularly well and eventually you're going to get so feel so restricted that you're going to open
02:02:09
up the covers. I want to understand the best possible sleep position. I do have a bed um in the room next door that we
02:02:15
can go to and talk about these pillows. But before we do that, >> sure. >> I would like to talk about
02:02:21
>> relationships, arguing with your partner, sex, all those kinds of things.
02:02:26
What do I need to know >> to protect my sleep, but also to protect my relationship? If we start with
02:02:30
talking about I know you wrote about it in your book, um the power of when you talked about I think it's on page 10
02:02:36
>> 101. You talk about arguing with your partner before bed. >> Yes.
02:02:41
Possibly the worst thing you can possibly do is argue with your partner before bed. Um because it's increasing
02:02:48
heart rate, right? What I tell all my patients to do is if you if you need to have an important discussion with your
02:02:55
spouse or your partner, do it right after dinner, right? So like in that 7:00 range, 7 to 8:00 range. So that way
02:03:03
you have enough space and time to be able to discuss something and not hopefully go to bed angry if you can
02:03:08
avoid it at all possible. It happens. Look, I can't say that I've never gone
02:03:12
to bed angry. I'm sure you can't say that either. Sometimes things are a
02:03:15
bigger deal. But if you can find better times to schedule those things, they work out a lot better. For me, the other
02:03:21
thing that I oftentimes ask a lot of my patients to do is, for example, if there's known issues that are going on,
02:03:27
like let's say somebody's going through marital therapy or there's there's an
02:03:30
issue that they're trying to work on, then maybe that's better off done at
02:03:34
11:00 in the daytime versus starting to kind of address some of those issues in the evening time. I like evening times
02:03:41
to be as stressfree as humanly possible. Now, if you got something you got to talk about, you got to talk about it.
02:03:47
But generally speaking, I would say the le the less emotionality that you have in towards the evening, the better.
02:03:54
Unless it's joy or happiness. >> So many couples, they have these difficult conversations on the pillow.
02:03:58
>> Yeah. >> Including me sometimes. >> Yeah. Well, and it makes sense like when
02:04:01
else do you see that person, right? You haven't seen them all day. You're you're
02:04:04
literally face to face like, "Hey, I got something I got to talk to you about.
02:04:07
This is kind of the best time to do it." >> It ruins your sex life as well, doesn't
02:04:09
it? absolutely ruins your sex life unless you have makeup sex afterwards and then it's great but at the end of
02:04:15
the day it's not a lot of fun to have those conversations at night. That's
02:04:18
again why I choose to if I'm going to have that conversation the best time honestly to do it is right after
02:04:23
breakfast. >> In my relationship we've banned uh difficult conversations at night time.
02:04:27
>> Good. That's probably a smart move. Dude, >> you're tired and it's going to destroy
02:04:31
your sleep, >> right? >> You you can't think straight. You're
02:04:34
probably more emotional >> and you haven't put all the pieces together yet of the issues that are
02:04:38
really going on. I can assure you if you sleep and then have your discussion in the morning, you'll actually think about
02:04:43
the issue better. >> It's so crazy. As I've gotten older, I've realized how much of my mood is
02:04:49
determined by my sleep. Like, it's so And I think it's got worse with age.
02:04:54
>> Oh, absolutely it does. >> Because at 25 you could blow [ __ ] off.
02:04:58
Oh, yeah. Or you could drink a monster or a mood. Yeah. Sleep matters. And I think
02:05:03
that's what you're that's that's the button that you're pushing here. And I
02:05:06
think it's important for your audience to hear that, right? is look, you're 33
02:05:09
years old and you're already seeing things changing in your sleep that have a big effect in your life. I'm 58 years
02:05:15
old, okay? I see the same thing happening. Everybody, sleep is so fundamental to the human condition that
02:05:22
it's one of those things that we've got to really pay attention to. And the
02:05:26
thing is, most people don't pay attention to it because they're like, "Well, my body does it automatically,
02:05:29
Michael. Like, how tough could this be?" I walk into that room in the back of the
02:05:32
house, I turn off the lights, h go to bed, then I wake up, something magical happens, and I should be great, right?
02:05:37
doesn't always work that way. >> I was reading in your work about the best time to fall in love.
02:05:43
>> Yes. >> That's a strange thing for a >> somebody of your profession to be
02:05:47
thinking much about was in this book, was it? >> Yeah, it was. >> Yeah.
02:05:51
>> When you think about it, everything is based on timing, right? So, the timing
02:05:57
when your hormones at a certain point and you meet that person and their hormones at a certain point and then all
02:06:02
of the sudden there's a connection, >> right? That's hard to do when you're
02:06:06
exhausted, right? Try going on a first date when you're completely like when
02:06:12
it's the worst, right? You know, you're not giving a good impression of yourself. You know that you're not
02:06:16
getting a good impression of that person because your mind is not going where it
02:06:20
needs to be. So, there's timing involved and understanding your chronoype and
02:06:25
that person's chronoype really leads you in that positive direction. And I would
02:06:30
argue that it's pretty easy to fall in love at that time. >> Okay. So, in your book,
02:06:34
>> um, Power of When, >> yes. >> On page 9, uh,4, you say, "Dolphin's
02:06:39
best mood is in the afternoon to evening." So, the best time for them to fall in love is 8:00 p.m. Lions
02:06:45
>> 700 a.m., >> right? Cuz remember, they're early morning people. They're exhausted at the
02:06:49
end. >> Damn. So, they should be going on morning dates. >> Yes. >> Bears,
02:06:53
>> 400 p.m. And the wolf, like me, 11:00 p.m. That tracks. >> Yeah, I get it. So, should I be doing
02:07:00
my, you know, okay, I'm in a relationship. I'm about to be married. But, um, I should
02:07:05
>> you got engaged. Congratulations. >> Thank you so much. >> Yeah,
02:07:07
>> but I should be doing my dates later. It kind of tracks. That's kind of when I
02:07:10
did them. >> Well, look at your whole schedule, dude. You don't do a thing before 11.
02:07:14
>> That's true. >> Right. I think you're exactly like I am. >> Shall we go and look at the best
02:07:19
possible sleep position? >> Yeah, let's check it out. And we talk about pillows, too.
02:07:22
>> Okay. So, I'll bring all the pillows with me. >> Okay, great.
02:07:24
>> Okay. Okay. So, we're going to go into the next room where there's a bed and
02:07:26
you're going to tell me what can you tell me when we look at the bed. How can
02:07:29
you help? >> So, there's a couple of different things. So, number one, I'm going to
02:07:31
look at your starting sleep position and I'm going to give you some feedback
02:07:34
about that. Then, we're going to fit you for the right kind of pillow for you.
02:07:38
And then there's some cool technology in there that I want to show you as well
02:07:41
that can help keep you cool all night long. >> And do we need to take this with us?
02:07:44
>> Yes, take that one. And then, how many pillows are there? >> I think there's five.
02:07:48
>> There's five different pillows. Okay, great. Let's >> They all do different things.
02:07:51
>> Okay. >> Okay. Okay, so we're now downstairs in a bedroom we have in the house. I have
02:07:57
lots of pillows here, quite a few. >> And there's a bunch of questions I have
02:08:00
for you. The first is >> pillows. Do they matter? Is there a perfect one? Is it different for every
02:08:04
individual >> sleeping position? Is there a perfect sleeping position? There is.
02:08:09
>> And the third one is about temperature. >> You got it. Let's go.
02:08:13
>> So I just grab whatever pillow is in the bed wherever I travel. >> Terrible idea.
02:08:17
>> Really >> terrible idea. So, first of all, a lot of people need to understand that a
02:08:21
pillow is a bed for your head, right? And so, the goal here is to keep your nose in line with your sternum, which is
02:08:27
sort of the center part of your chest, right? And but you don't want it facing
02:08:31
down and you don't want it facing up. You want it to be completely in the center like that. And so, if you have a
02:08:35
pillow that tilts your head to the one way or tilts your head to the other, it causes a pain signal from the strain of
02:08:41
the musculature that goes to your brain. You don't get into deep sleep. So, you
02:08:45
really want to make sure that you've got a good pillow. Otherwise, you end up
02:08:48
with a crick in your neck. You don't get good deep sleep. It becomes problematic.
02:08:52
>> Okay. All >> right. So, the big question is how do you pick a pillow? Right. So, first
02:08:56
question you want to ask yourself is squishy or firm? Right. So, let's take a
02:09:00
look at our tower of pillows here. >> So, for you, let's let's take a look.
02:09:06
So, this is a pretty firm one. This is a basically a foam based hunk of foam pillow, right? Versus this one, which is
02:09:12
sort of the normal kind of pillow, much more squishy. So, which are you? A squishy or a firm?
02:09:17
>> That one. >> Okay, perfect. So, you're more on the squishy, which means you like to
02:09:21
manipulate the pillow. You don't want it to have a huge form factor where your
02:09:24
like head is on a block of cheese, right? Got it. So, perfect. So, let's move this foam pillow out of the way.
02:09:30
>> The second thing you want to look at from the pillow is when the fabric comes
02:09:34
together here, it forms what's called a knife's edge. So, it's where the two
02:09:39
pieces of fabric meet. Now, why is that important? Because when you have your head on a pillow like this and the
02:09:45
knife's edge is down here, you're not getting as much support underneath your
02:09:48
neck here, right? So, in order to fix that, we have something called a gusset. So, a gusset is this piece of fabric
02:09:56
that comes along here. So, you notice these two pieces of fabric don't meet.
02:09:59
There's a thickness here. So, when you were to sleep on it, it actually catches
02:10:04
you all the way down. So, let's say you would be like this, you it gives you
02:10:07
support all the way down. Now, you don't like the foam of it all, but you do like
02:10:11
the the gusset, right? >> Here's one that's got the gusset without
02:10:16
the foam. So, it's squishy and has the gusset. So, if you were going to use this,
02:10:20
>> that's good. >> So, now we've been able to fit you for the pillow. Now, the next question we
02:10:24
have, uh, well, the last one is there are some special types of pillows. Actually, this one has got a cutout. So,
02:10:31
you notice how that's got like a moon here. It fits perfectly here. here. And
02:10:35
notice, right, this is this is my personal pillow. >> Oh, okay. I can So, >> you have to shift.
02:10:40
>> I know. Sorry. Um, and so you can see it really comes all the way down to your
02:10:44
neck and it gives you support all the way from the base of your neck all the way up through. And that's one of the
02:10:48
reasons that I like it cuz I can cut it out and put it right there on me. >> For the average person, if if they had
02:10:53
to pick one pillow without you knowing anything about them, which pillow would you pick of these six?
02:10:58
>> So, of all of these six, well, if I had my choice, I'd pick this one because
02:11:01
this is my favorite. By the way, there's also another feature of this that I
02:11:04
think is important to that people should notice is it's got a zipper, which means
02:11:09
I can change the stuffing and I can pull it out or put it in. So, I can change the height of my pillow.
02:11:16
>> And what stuffing is that? >> This is actually a shredded latex. >> Okay.
02:11:20
>> Which I really like to sleep on. >> So, what's this pillow called?
02:11:23
>> So, this is by a company called Coupe. Um, and um I like it because of the
02:11:27
change in the in the shape as well as the stuffing and the zipper on the side. It really makes it kind of what I would
02:11:34
argue to be probably the best pillow out. >> And what's the worst pillow?
02:11:36
>> The worst pillow that we've got here, this one. So, almost no support, right?
02:11:41
It's super squishy, >> right? We don't we don't we have the knife's edge here. There's not much to
02:11:46
it. Also, by the way, it feels like this is made with polyester, which is a heat
02:11:49
trapper. Now, let's lie you down on the bed, get you in your starting sleep position, and I'm going to show you
02:11:54
exactly where the pillow should go and what pillow should be for you. So, if you can lie down for me. Now, what is
02:12:00
your starting sleep position? Are you a back sleeper? You a side sleeper? You a stomach sleeper?
02:12:04
>> I start on my stomach and I roll to my right. >> Got it. Okay, perfect. Go ahead and get
02:12:11
on your stomach for >> By the way, how weird is that? >> Roughly 75% of sleepers are side
02:12:15
sleepers, either right or left. So, you're definitely not don't fall into
02:12:19
that category. Another 20 or so percent are back sleepers. You're in the like 5%
02:12:24
category of stomach sleepers. The reason it's the worst position is when you're
02:12:28
lying on your stomach, right, and the pillow is here. You're pushing on your
02:12:32
back here and it causes what's called a spllay, which is extra pressure on your
02:12:36
lower back. And that can give you low back pain over time. >> I only do it for the first like 10
02:12:41
minutes >> and then you rotate. >> And then I rotate onto my side. >> Which side? Right or left?
02:12:44
>> My right. This side. >> Perfect. So in all actuality, you actually want to be on your left side
02:12:49
because when you lie on your right side, you're actually all of your organs push
02:12:53
down onto your stomach and it can leak some of those gastric juices and you end up with something called
02:12:57
gastroosophageal reflux disease. So the way I teach people is right is wrong. So
02:13:03
you don't sleep on your right side, you sleep on your left side if you can. If
02:13:06
you can, but let's fit you anyway. Let's go ahead and get you down on your what
02:13:10
would be your right side and let's see how you do. Lie down. >> How I normally lie down.
02:13:14
>> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. This is how I lie down when I first get in bed for the first time. I
02:13:16
can't wait to see. >> I'm like this. I move the pillow out the way
02:13:19
>> and I just learn lay like this for a while. >> Okay. And you have no pillow.
02:13:22
>> No pillow. >> Perfect. And then when you rotate to get to your side.
02:13:27
>> Yeah. >> Show me that. >> I sleep like this on my on my right
02:13:31
side. >> Like roughly like this. >> So, what you'll notice is your shoulder
02:13:34
is now up into this part here. So, it's still being supported. Your head is fine. And what you'll notice is his head
02:13:40
is in line with his sternum, right? His nose is in line there. It's not falling
02:13:45
too far. It's not overextended. >> That's my sternum. >> Your sternum is the direct center of
02:13:49
your chest. It's the m like your breast plate is what you would call it, right?
02:13:52
Right. Sort of in the center of So, you want your nose to be in line with that, which it basically is. And when I look
02:13:57
at your head, your head is not tilted to one side or another. So, I know there's
02:14:01
no more neck strain. So, that would be the perfect pillow for you. But that happens to be my pillow. So, I'm not
02:14:06
going to give it to you, but I might get you one if you're nice to me. >> Thank you. What about these other
02:14:11
pillow? So, the bad one was which one? The bad one was this one. So now go ahead and put yourself on that one.
02:14:18
>> Yeah, I'm going too far down. >> Right. And you're not even trying. Like
02:14:22
you don't even have to push your head that far. And and you can see and your
02:14:25
and look where do you put your arm? Your arm's not supported. Like it's becomes
02:14:28
like people don't realize it but pillows matter. What I try to tell people is I
02:14:33
used to be a runner and when you're a runner like equipment matters like your
02:14:37
shoes matter, your music matters, your your dry fit wear matters. The same holds true with sleep. If you don't have
02:14:43
good pillow, good mattress, good sheets, you don't have the right equipment,
02:14:47
you're not going to get good sleep. >> That is a terrible pillow. >> I'm telling you,
02:14:50
>> really, really bad pillow. Okay, so sleeping on my left side is the correct
02:14:54
side >> with a good pillow. >> With a good pillow. >> But now, let's talk about temperature.
02:14:58
>> Y. >> So, while you're lying here, you may have noticed that there's different
02:15:02
temperature on either side of the bed. >> So, if you feel here >> Oh, it's warm.
02:15:08
>> It is. That's correct. So when you're lying there, your body will naturally become
02:15:14
more warm. So remember how we were talking that sleep follows the core body temperature cycle, right? And so as your
02:15:20
core body temperature drops, you want your environment to drop with it because if it doesn't and the environment is too
02:15:27
hot, you can't fall asleep. So this is a product. It's called an Orion sleep
02:15:32
system, and it's a topper that's you're lying on top of. Has a thin tube that
02:15:37
goes through it. You can't feel the tube. should feel cool over there and warm over here.
02:15:41
>> It's cold here, it's warm here. >> Exactly. And we and you can rotate it
02:15:44
however you want. But what's so fascinating about this is you can actually set it so that it follows your
02:15:50
circadian rhythm and it actually can help you stay asleep. The only thing that you as a consumer can manipulate in
02:15:56
your sleep. Like you can't write a pharmaceutical right prescription. You can't get a CPAT machine. But what you
02:16:01
can do is control the temperature. So you might say to yourself, when would I want to control the temperature for my
02:16:06
sleep? Well, if you were female and you were 45 years old and you were going through menopause, you really want to
02:16:12
control the temperature because hot flashes might wake you up in the middle of the night. Those types of things
02:16:16
become very, very important. >> And how much does this cost? >> So, this runs about a little over 2,000
02:16:22
US. Um, the nearest competitor is significantly more expensive, almost a third more expensive.
02:16:27
>> And are you affiliated with them in any way? >> I am affiliated with these guys. I am
02:16:30
their chief sleep officer. >> Oh, nice. Didn't know that was the job title.
02:16:34
>> I know. I didn't know. I made up the job title myself. Thank you very much.
02:16:37
>> Okay. Is there anything else I should know about the broader room that is
02:16:41
pertinent? >> So when I talk about broader room aspects, I think of the five senses. So
02:16:45
sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, right? So sight is light, right? So clearly you want the lights down as
02:16:52
we're starting to get towards bed. Maybe having a dimmer switch or something like
02:16:56
that is a great thing to slowly start to do that or kept the overhead lights and
02:17:00
just have the bedside table lamps about 30 minutes before bed. Again, setting the tone. The next one would be sound.
02:17:07
So, it's always better to be quiet, but at the end of the day, sometimes you can
02:17:11
have that and sometimes you can't. It's really about the emotionality that you
02:17:15
attach to the sound itself. If you get annoyed by something, it's just going to
02:17:19
get worse and worse. But if you can think in your head, hey, this isn't so annoying anymore, it becomes less
02:17:25
problematic. But to be clear, certain volume sounds and certain decibel levels are going to wake you up. And so, you
02:17:30
really, it's hard to sleep next to a big highway, right? So, you want to have as
02:17:34
much sound buffering as you possibly can. So, we did sight, we did sound. Let's do touch. Touch is temperature,
02:17:41
right? We talked about that. You want the bedroom to be cool. If you can get the get the um air conditioning on, but
02:17:47
let's say you've got the air conditioning on, but it's super hot summer and you're not fortunate enough
02:17:52
to have an Orion sitting underneath your sheets. What do you do? Go out and buy a
02:17:56
plastic bottle of water, two of them. Stick them in the freezer. Then put them into socks and then put them on your
02:18:03
sides. Okay, so frozen water bottle inside a pair of inside a sock that sits on your side. It's like a mini air
02:18:09
conditioner underneath the covers. It works like a charm. I use this when I travel because a lot of times, you know,
02:18:15
the room you can't necessarily change the thermostat or things like that and
02:18:19
it's a great way to be able to do that kind of stuff. Then the final one is smell. So, people always ask me, "Does
02:18:24
aroma therapy really work?" Believe it or not, there are at least two scientifically rigorous studies that
02:18:30
show that aroma therapy can actually be helpful for you. But I want to be clear,
02:18:34
candles are not the way to do aroma therapy. Fire and sleep do not mix. Okay? >> But a diffuser I'm fine with. Or a
02:18:42
little sache or a pillow mist. All of those can be quite helpful. And you just put them, you spray it on your pillow,
02:18:48
or you have it right next to your pillow. And as you breathe in the aroma, two aromomas have been shown to be
02:18:53
helpful for sleep. One is lavender. Surprise, surprise. The other is called elang elang. Um, that's one that's
02:18:59
actually got some data on it. And I actually think I saw a study on vanilla. >> And should I be sleeping naked?
02:19:04
>> Such a good question. So, here's what I'll tell you is you thermorreulate
02:19:08
better with less clothing on. So, less barriers allow your body to do exactly what it should do. So, I would argue you
02:19:14
definitely could sleep naked. And I I think there's an argument for sleeping
02:19:18
naked will allow you to sleep better and thermorreulate better. However, be careful because if you have animals in
02:19:25
the bed and you're sleeping naked, what looks like a chew toy to them might be
02:19:29
important for you. >> You're speaking from experience. >> I'm just letting you know there's
02:19:33
problems out there. I'm not saying that I had one of those problems myself. >> Okay. I I think we've covered it, right?
02:19:40
>> Last one. Yeah. >> Socks. >> Oh, socks. Everybody wants to know,
02:19:44
should I wear socks to bed? So, here's what's interesting is you dissipate heat
02:19:49
faster wearing uh with uh unsocked foot because there's no hair on the bottom of
02:19:54
your feet. You ever notice when you're hot at night and you stick your foot out
02:19:56
from under the covers, you instantly cool down and everything's okay. So, what I do for some of my patients who
02:20:02
have thermmorreulation issues, I have them start with socks but no clothes and then they can remove their socks
02:20:07
afterwards as they start to get too warm. >> Okay, let's go back upstairs and finish
02:20:10
this conversation. important question to ask you. >> So, I want to go back upstairs. Thank
02:20:14
you so much for that. Super, super useful. >> Sure. >> Dr. Michael Bruce, we have a closing
02:20:20
tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving
02:20:24
it for. >> Oh, I didn't know this. This is awesome. >> And the question that's been left for
02:20:28
you is, if you could have the power to change one thing in the US healthare system, what would it be and why?
02:20:37
>> What I would like to see happen, well, there's two things. One is a wish and
02:20:41
one is I think a possible reality. So the possible reality is I'd like to see
02:20:46
everybody in the United States get tested for sleep apnnea. It's so underdiagnosed. There's so many people
02:20:52
that are suffering from it. You saw the statistics. I mean it's it's an epidemic. So if I could have one thing
02:20:58
that happens in the US health care system, it would be that somehow or another somebody the powers that be say,
02:21:04
"Hey, you know what? We need to test everybody for sleep disorders, specifically sleep apnea." I think that
02:21:09
would be a great big wish that I would have. The second wish, which I don't know would would ever happen, but I'm
02:21:14
going to take my second wish anyway, even though you didn't offer it, is I want everybody to get a great night's
02:21:20
sleep, but I wanted to all be on the same night. I want everybody in the world to get a
02:21:26
really good night's sleep on the Can you imagine what would happen the next day?
02:21:30
What if what if what if people actually found peace in the waring nations because they actually got a good night's
02:21:37
sleep? What do you think innovations would happen with if we get some of the smartest people in the world to just get
02:21:44
a good night's sleep? Like what about charities? What about philanthropy? Like
02:21:48
every single thing that you do, you do better with a good night's sleep. Wouldn't it be cool if everybody got one
02:21:55
just for one night and see what happens? >> Nine months later, there'd be a lot of
02:21:58
kids. There would be a lot of kids born for sure. >> That's so beautiful. Michael, thank you
02:22:03
so much for the work that you do. It's so incredibly important because as the
02:22:06
numbers and the stats have shown, people are struggling increasingly in the world
02:22:09
that we live. But through lifestyle factors and the way that we work and all these other factors we talked about with
02:22:14
this more than anything and for so many people, it's the cause of so much frustration. It is the thing furthest
02:22:19
upstream from a lot of the problems that they struggle with in relationships, in
02:22:23
their work, in their sex life, and everything in between. So having great educators out in the world that help to
02:22:29
demystify this black box is so critical and you're one of the very very best
02:22:33
I've ever met and in part because you're so unbelievably engaging. You're a great
02:22:35
storyteller. You've you've been in the field doing this with patients of wide
02:22:40
varieties but also you bring that psychology element which is of quite rare to people that talk about
02:22:45
>> the clinical side of sleep. You have several great resources if people want
02:22:49
to continue to um learn more. I would highly recommend um people if you've gotten to this point in the
02:22:54
conversation, I would highly recommend going over to your YouTube channel now and watching some of your top videos
02:23:00
because I found them to be fascinating and I learned so much more. We we weren't able to go through everything
02:23:04
today, but if there's specific things like waking up in the middle of the night, um your videos about that have
02:23:10
six or seven million views over on your channel and they're very very focused on
02:23:13
that subject. So, if there's specific things that you felt weren't covered in
02:23:16
this conversation, right now go over to Michael's channel. Um, it'll be linked
02:23:20
below and um, watch more there. But also, if you're a reader and you love to
02:23:25
read and that's your thing, which I know is great for sleep, two great books here
02:23:28
in front of me. The power of when, discover your chronotype, and the best time to eat, lunch, ask for a raise,
02:23:34
have sex, write a novel, take your meds, and more. And also this book here, Sleep, Drink, Breathe, which talks
02:23:41
broadly about the simple daily habits for profound long-term health. Michael, thank you.
02:23:46
>> Thank you. This has been so much fun. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but
02:23:50
it was lovely. I really enjoyed it. Everybody here is fantastic, and uh I just want to wish everybody sweet
02:23:56
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