Kind: captions
Language: en
sleep is undeniably essential to our
health and longevity more than half of
adults worldwide report that they are
getting less sleep than they need on
average per night making sleep problems
a global epidemic in this episode i have
three sleep experts join me to talk
about how we can approach this program
shawn stevenson author of sleep smarter
give yourself a screen curfew just 30
minutes matthew walker author of the new
york times bestseller why we sleep
cognitive behavioral therapy for
insomnia that must be the first line
recommended treatment and dan pardee ceo
of human os dot me and dan's plan.com
sleep ends up being is a very great
window into your soul you know even to
the into the workings of the brain pay
attention to get the inside scoop on
sleep and it's necessity in today's
world number one is to remember that
your night sleep begins
the morning before and one of the most
important things that you can do is get
direct sun exposure into your eyes and
on your skin first thing in the morning
now i know a lot of people live in
northern latitudes and you're stepping
outside and it's basically just a gray
day but even that helps it's better than
nothing you want to get out you want
that sunlight to hit your eyes you want
that sunlight to hit your skin because
it helps to set your circadian rhythms
it's one of the most important things
you can do for actually getting a good
night's sleep but it starts the morning
before and by the way as a pro tip when
you're traveling this is one of the
critical things that you want to do to
adjust to the new time zone the second
you wake up get out go outside and get
that sun exposure and i try to look up
into the sky not at the sun as that will
burn your eyes out but i try to look up
into this guide and make sure that i'm
getting the maximum amount of sunlight
into my eyes i'm not wearing sunglasses
i'm not wearing blue blockers like i'm
wearing now
which is part of the night routine
but in the morning when i'm trying to
get all that sunlight in to set my
circadian rhythms then i'm making sure
that i get that exposure
make sure that you're using your body
throughout the day it's incredibly
important to actually be physically
active to burn that energy off to make
sure that you earn your night's sleep in
a modern lifestyle so often we're
spending so much time sedentary that we
don't actually tax our body in any
meaningful way which means that by the
time we're trying to lay down to go to
bed we don't have the impulse to sleep
and so doing things that are physically
taxing throughout the day is an
extraordinarily useful way of being
ready to actually go to bed
as you go through the day i find that
there are certain things you need to be
very careful about in terms of what you
in take so eating and drinking so a big
one for me is the last meal that i eat
and what time that happens at now i get
up very early which we'll cover as we
get later in my day around what time i
go to bed but i typically get up very
early somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m
so my day already is skewed that way but
my last meal i eat usually around 115 to
1 45 pm and that is the last meal i will
eat for the day i won't have anything
after that literally nothing i don't
even have water
after 2 pm
now the reason that i don't eat after 1
45-ish is because i want to do
intermittent fasting and it's much
easier for me to get through the rest of
the evening without intaking any more
food than it is to spend the whole
morning hungry until say 12 or 1 o'clock
which i know a lot of people do it's
dealer's choice whatever works better
for you but having an extended fast is
very very helpful
now also
another reason that i end it early is
that i think you will notice a massive
difference in how you sleep if you have
your last meal at least at least bare
minimum
three hours before bedtime so if you go
to bed at 9 00 pm like it's a religion
like i do then your last meal is going
to be at 6 00 pm anyway so you're gonna
want to get that out of the way and i
wouldn't start chewing at six i would
try to be done chewing at six so that
you actually have a full three hours
rest between when you had that last bite
and when you go to bed your digestion
stops in the middle of the night so it
can create discomfort if your digestion
stops sort of mid process and you're
sitting with something sitting either
still in your stomach or in your
upper intestines so that can be very
uncomfortable so that disrupts people's
sleep and makes it hard for them to get
to sleep and remember that you have
trillions of microbes inside of you and
when they're being asked to sit in all
the things that they're
digesting it can create issues so i find
that i sleep way better by not just
eating three hours before bedtime but
taking that all the way back to where
i'm done chewing at about 1 15. 145
excuse me
so that's worked out really really well
for me and if you're worried that you're
going to get hungry remember you're
taking in a normal amount of calories
you're just having your last meal later
and what i have heard said before and i
think is really clever and brilliant is
that as i get hungry i have sleep for
dinner
and i love that i love that idea of
right when i'm about like yeah i could
eat now i brush my teeth which for
whatever reason the taste taste of
toothpaste
kills hunger so
just as i'm thinking i want to eat i
brush my teeth and then boom i go to bed
i fell asleep with no problems and i'm
able to stay asleep now the reason that
i stop drinking at 2 p.m is i find that
if i have any substantial amount of
water because i'll still have a sip of
water here and there but sips and the
reason is that i'll wake up in the
middle of the night to pee if i
and by the way if i'm eating too close
to bedtime same thing because there's so
much water in the food that you eat
but i don't want to wake up in the
middle of the night if i can at all
avoid it so the times where i eat later
drink late i find myself waking up in
the middle of the night to pee and then
my brain kicks back in and i start
problem solving and it makes it
impossible for me to fall back asleep
and i was losing two sometimes three
hours a night of productivity because i
wasn't sleeping i was trying to fall
back asleep i wasn't doing anything
useful other than tossing and turning
and ruminating over everything that had
happened during the day that i need to
do that i could have done better
it was nightmarish so not only are you
fatigued sub-optimal cognitively but
it's just really a lame way to spend
time
because there's an interesting part of
your brain that shuts off in the middle
of the night that makes fears seem way
bigger than they will as soon as you're
up and are actually attacking your day
it all feels very manageable but in the
middle of the night it feels terrifying
it feels overwhelming feels like you
know just absolute stress inducing and
so that makes it even less likely that
you're going to be able to fall asleep
so anything that i can do to mitigate
waking up in the middle of the night
and starting that death loop
i'm going to do so that's one of the
reasons that i stopped eating and is
definitely the reason that i stop
drinking at 2 p.m every day
okay the next thing that i do for
sleep hygiene as it's called is as the
evening wears on i make sure that i'm
not getting a substantial amount of blue
light and
bright light into my eyes so i'm going
to dim my computer screen i'm going to
put my computer screen on screen on
night mode so you can go into your
phone you can go into your computer and
set them just automatically at a certain
time i think i set mine for
6 p.m if i remember right and it just
automatically flips over to an orange or
light
i dim the screen so i'm not getting
super bright light happens again both on
my phone and my computer and then on top
of that just to make sure i put on blue
blocking glasses to make sure that i'm
not getting too much of my eyes and
there are some days if i'm going to be
at the computer for a really extended
amount of time i'll wear blue blockers
even during the day just so i'm not
getting an overwhelming amount of the
artificial blue light from my screen
so that's how i curb that and then
another thing that i do around my
computer is i try not to do any work
that i think will be stress inducing for
the final hour before my bedtime so i'm
still gonna work right up until i go to
bed my rule in life is monday through
friday if i'm awake i'm either working
or working out
now i love my work so this isn't a
torture chamber i'm sure some people are
imagining that and thinking it's
horrible but for me it's completely
joyful
and
i do though have to acknowledge that
there are some things that i work on
that stress me out and so i don't check
test text messages after 8 pm i'm not
looking at emails after 8 pm um i'm
doing things that are work but enjoyable
now i'm not religious about it there are
definitely times where
i feel that something really just has to
be done in a timely fashion and so i
will break that
rule light
occasionally but i try not to because i
do find that i sleep much better if for
the last hour before bed i'm doing fun
things i'm doing things that
give me energy that make me feel light
that are part of that passion that feel
good and i can feel a difference in
my
stress and anxiety levels there's a
lightness to it that i don't know i
don't have a better word for it but as
i'm going to bed i just feel relaxed i
feel
joyful i have a sense of purpose and
it's like i can let everything go for
the day and when i climb into bed i
remind myself that i only have one job
now that i'm going to bed and that job
is to sleep
and that mantra the only job i have now
is to sleep has helped me a lot
especially when i wake up in the middle
of the night
so when i lay down then i have a host of
different mechanical things that i do
one of them
is to make sure that i have my own
blankets i use a two blanket system so i
myself have two blankets that way if at
any point during the night i'm getting
cold i can pull the other blanket up so
i start it down where it's basically
just covering my shins and below and
then if i'm getting cold i can pull that
up to my waist if i'm a little cold but
not too cold or i can pull all the way
up if i'm really cold and that allows me
to better control my temperature and
then this is the one that people think
is weird but i've been doing it forever
so it seems so normal to me i do not
ever under any circumstance share
blankets with my wife
now the reason is when they move it
becomes your movement or you're playing
tug of war for the blanket or worse the
other person might actually pull the
blanket off you or
you might pull the blanket off them and
give them a bad night's sleep so that
was a lesson i learned very early on
because for whatever weird reason i like
to sleep with the blankets up over my
head i like to be completely cocooned
feels so nice there is no light which by
the way is another thing
make sure your room is dark
make sure your room is dark so no light
no light leaks no phones no night lights
nothing as dark as you can get it cover
up if things have like little led power
lights cover those up do whatever you
can to get the room actually dark
for me i have another layer which is i
sleep under the blankets now if you like
my wife lisa the last thing you're ever
going to do is cover your head with a
blanket she absolutely hates it and
feels like you know she's just
claustrophobic and has to get it off of
her but for me it just feels
like i'm in a womb and it's so wonderful
so i love it so i have slept with the
blankets over my head for decades at
this point which is another reason why i
need to have my own blankets so get my
own blankets i can meter them based on
the temperature in the room which brings
me to another point
one of the
best
signifiers to your body that it's time
to go to bed that's going to kick you
into sleep mode
is making sure that your room is cool so
we keep our room somewhere around 67 to
68 degrees it should be cool enough that
when you go to
take your clothes off and get in your
pajamas you kind of don't want to
because it's that cold so that's the
right temperature so whatever that
temperature is for you you want to get
it there get under the covers you're
nice and warm it's not like you're
sleeping cold but you want the room to
be cool to signal to your body that it's
night time right we've come up through
evolution with all of these signals from
daylight from the
brightness
the color temperature the difference
between fire light which is dim and
orange to daylight which is bright and
blue and so we have all of these subtle
signals including a drop in temperature
so as the temperature comes down it's
yet another signal to your body that
it's time to go to sleep so from setting
our circadian rhythm with getting that
sunlight directly in our eyes on our
skin actually being outside to the
temperature dropping the color
temperature of the light changing
the brightness of the light changing all
of these are signals that keep your
circadian rhythm where you want it to be
so that you can fall asleep what is up
my friend tom bilyu here and i have a
big question to ask you how would you
rate your level of personal discipline
on a scale of one to ten if your answer
is anything less than a 10 i've got
something cool for you and let me tell
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difficult things that are stressful
boring which is what kills most people
or possibly scary or even painful now
here is the thing achieving huge goals
and stretching to reach your potential
requires you to do those challenging
stressful things and to stick with them
even when it gets boring and it will get
boring building your levels of personal
discipline is not easy but let me tell
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you're never going to achieve anything
meaningful unless you develop discipline
right i've just released a class from
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right click the link on the screen
register for this class right now and
let's get to work i will see you inside
this workshop from impact theory
university until then my friends be
legendary peace out
this particular topic
is and me being a nutritionist like i
was all like food matters food first
food is the most important thing
but
in my practice and seeing people coming
in that
you know we've got these folks over here
you know 80 percent of the time are able
to reverse type 2 diabetes heart disease
get off their lisinoprils and all this
different stuff and then we've got this
category of people who just like
literally sometimes would ironically
kind of keep me up at night like what is
wrong like i'm doing all these things
right are they lying to me and
it wasn't until i started to ask people
about their sleep that it just like it
changed everything this was about six
years ago
and so
then and here's the key
i can't just tell people they need to
sleep more
you know this like people don't want to
change
that much like we want change but we
want to be a little bit right and so i
found clinically proven strategies that
are super easy to implement almost
things that can happen on automatic to
help them improve their sleep quality
right and once we did that it's like the
floodgates would open for people you
know we've been struggling for sometimes
you know 15 20 years with their weight
finally the weight comes off you know
and seeing people struggling with heart
disease or high cholesterol you know the
so-called bad cholesterol
and seeing those numbers finally get
regulated once we got their sleep
optimized
and i knew that this was incredibly
important part of the conversation that
was left out and as we'll talk about i
know now that our sleep quality is more
important than our diet and exercise
combined and what it does for our health
and also literally our physical
appearance
fascinating stuff how much more fat you
lose when you get optimal sleep it's
it's insane that's a bold statement so
walk me through what are some of the um
the just
core benefits that i'm going to get
assuming that i'm sleeping suboptimally
like
why is that a problem since that's
probably one of the most celebrated like
things like when you get a little sleep
people like champion you normally i'd
sleep five to six hours a night with no
alarm okay i haven't set an alarm in 15
years so that's just that was my cycle
i go to bed early very consistently my
diet is on point my exercise is on point
and so i'd wake up feeling awesome
and so i thought this is cash money but
because i don't set an alarm that my
sleep cycle will change and right now
i'm getting like seven to nine hours out
of nowhere and super consistently and i
literally have no idea why i'm warmer
now
so i used to be freezing cold at all
times
and then at the same time that my and i
don't know correlated cause of no idea
um i've started being warmer while i
sleep
and then during the day so what are like
the core components of sleep was
something bad happening to me or less
than optimal when i was only getting six
hours even though i felt good
um any correlation between the heat and
the extra sleep there's there's for
there's a lot to unpack there number one
uh what's so interesting is that you you
were doing something exceptionally right
as far as what the research shows with
improving your sleep
which is you're going to bed kind of
consistently a little bit earlier than
other folks might and so what we call
what we call this is this anabolic
window or what we call money time sleep
and this is generally between the hours
of 10 and two because it's more lined up
with their natural melatonin secretion
so if you go to sleep during those times
you actually spend more time in the
deepest most anabolic stages of sleep
and you tend to produce more human
growth hormone than other folks so you
were already winning with that this is
why you have a tendency to feel better
even if you're getting less sleep
because
i this isn't called sleep more right it
sleeps smarter
and there are many people who sleep you
know eight to nine hours and they wake
up feeling like
straight ups you know hot garbage you
know what i'm saying and they're just
wondering why it's because it's the
quality of sleep and when i say quality
of sleep what does that mean let's break
that down so your sleep is regulated by
changes in your in your brain waves it's
really fascinating stuff and we still
don't know
really what sleep is trying to define
sleep is like trying to define
um you know when forced gump is like
life is like a box of chocolates sleep
is like pretending to be dead we don't
really know right but we do know the
changes that happen in the brain we
cycle from kind of a normal waking state
with with gamma beta
um we're probably in beta right now we
move to alpha theta delta is where the
deep anabolic dreamless sleep takes
place and we need all of them
and there's a certain percentage we
spend in each that helps to rejuvenate
our mind and bodies
and if you optimize certain things
you'll do it more efficiently one of
those gear shifts
like if you think about your body like
this kind of manual transmission is
melatonin like people hear about
melatonin as a sleep hormone it just
helps your body to efficiently go
through your sleep cycles and if your
melatonin is suppressed by various
things you know i'll share a couple
then you're not going through those
efficiently and you can wake up feeling
like a pinata after the party the next
day even though you're spending all this
time on the mattress
so that's number one
number two there's this interesting
process called thermoregulation there's
a natural drop in your core body
temperature at night
to help facilitate sleep for all of us
if things are running properly but what
was fascinating and i shared a study
about this is that
they tested insomniacs and everyone in
this particular clinical study all had
too high body temperature at night it
would not go down and so what they did
was they fit them with these thermosuits
right that lowers their skin temperature
not even their core temperature just one
degree and virtually eliminated all the
symptoms of insomnia whoa ambien can't
do that all right
and it's as simple as paying attention
to how your body temperature influences
your sleep and so with your body
temperature changing like that it's kind
of feeling more of an insulation
as a result of having more sleep there's
a ton of different things that could be
correlated there so i'm not going to say
that the sleep is a causative factor but
it's really interesting how your body
does change in accordance to sleep
there's a natural rise in your core body
temperature as the day goes
as i'm sorry as the night goes on that
helps to kind of wake you up
um so what i did want to share though
when i said that kind of bold statement
in the beginning
when we're talking about
how sleep influences your body
composition i think everybody needs to
know this
there was a this study really blew my
mind and this was done at the university
of chicago and they took people
and they put them on a calorie
restricted diet kind of typical stuff
again i'm taught in college to see the
impact on weight loss
when they're sleep deprived or getting
enough sleep all right so they put the
people on this particular diet monitor
everything
one phase of study they're getting eight
and a half hours of sleep all right then
they track all their metrics another
phase of the study same exact diet same
exercise they don't change anything else
but now they sleep deprive them and they
take away three hours of sleep so now
they're getting five and a half hours of
sleep versus eight and a half hours of
sleep at the end of the study they found
that when individuals were well rested
they burned 55 more body fat
just by getting more sleep and so the
question is how does this happen
melatonin when i talked about this a
little bit earlier
it's not just that it's involved in
sleep it's also involved in fat loss and
this study that was done in the journal
pineal research
found that
melatonin production helps to increase
your body's mobilization of something
called brown adipose tissue right this
is a type of fat that burns fat all
right the reason that it's brown is that
it has more mitochondria so it's very
energy dense right these mitochondria
just for people who i'm sure people have
heard of this but it's like these energy
power plants in your cells that are
creating the energy currency of your
body like how you experience energy the
energy exchange something called atp
and so when you are producing adequate
melatonin you're producing immobilizing
adequate amounts of brown adipose tissue
which just puts you in a metabolically
advantaged state all right but if you're
not getting the melatonin production
which you've got to meet two
requirements
number one you need a biological night
so that means this could actually be
during the day but it's a consistent
cycle of when it gets produced
but the other requirement needs to be
met that you need darkness your body
produces melatonin exclusively in
darkness and so that's one also how do
you how do they get that body fat change
hgh production which we talked about too
human growth hormone is muscle sparing
and it's a big driver of energy it's
also known as a youth hormone kids have
an insane amount of hgh being produced
this is why they have so much energy we
have a pretty sharp decline in our
production right around 18 to 20. but my
argument is that around 18 to 20 we
generally in our culture like we leave
the house we might go to college that
kind of thing and we no longer have
structure we no longer have rules and
we're not going to produce as much hgh
third thing really quickly
um is and this is all has to do with the
diet and the food choices is leptin all
right and i know people have talked
about leptin before
but leptin is your body's kind of
glorified satiety hormone and so when
you're producing adequate amounts of
leptin
you feel more in control right you feel
more satiated
but when when leptin kind of falls off
the map or you have leptin uh resistance
can take place
then we're gonna have some pretty big
issues with you regulating your cravings
and your appetite and so stanford
university researchers found that just
one night of sleep deprivation radically
suppresses your leptin
and now i hope folks can start to pay
attention whenever you might not get the
best sleep how your cravings change the
next day you're gonna have a tendency to
want to number one eat more number two
to want to eat more kind of the starchy
crunchy salty sugary type things and i
remember
my wife who's actually here when we had
our son and she she's never seen me eat
this food i was sitting there like
waiting for the baby to come i was
eating uh chocolate covered raisins i'm
just like and i didn't even realize i
was doing it you know it was like three
o'clock in the morning you know
and so that's another thing and uh last
one i'll share and there's so many that
create that change in your body
composition
but this one is incredibly important
it's cortisol
cortisol has been drug through the mud
recently you know it's getting blamed
for everything but it's not really a bad
guy it's just misunderstood all right
cortisol is incredibly important
for example
cortisol is important for your thyroid
to work right and that's kind of like
the metabolism regulator of your body
but here's the thing
just one night of sleep deprivation
radically increases your cortisol and
suppresses melatonin actually as well
but this rise in cortisol has a really
powerful ability to start to break down
your muscle tissue with your muscles
your body's kind of fat burning
machinery
and so it can convert your muscle tissue
into glucose it's a process called
gluconeogenesis
as a kind of fight-or-flight response
because your physiology doesn't know why
you're not sleeping you know it must be
some danger about you know and so
understanding those major hormones and
there's many others you start to see the
picture that gets painted with just how
much your sleep quality impacts your
physical appearance it's really crazy
i've always known you need sleep but i
didn't know why and so getting into
or transitioning i should say because i
always knew you needed sleep because if
i didn't get it i felt terrible but that
was sort of the the end of it and i even
let myself just stop it though we don't
really know why you sleep but not diving
into the real breakdown which is really
fascinating so what are things then that
people can do to actually optimize their
sleep yeah this is what it's really all
about
you know i like to start with the
low-hanging fruit first
and something really really fascinating
is just simply
changing or embracing
the time of day that you exercise can
improve your sleep quality
and so appalachian state university did
a really cool study and they wanted to
see what time of day exercising at
various times of day how does it impact
your sleep quality and so they had the
study participants to exercise
exclusively at 7 a.m
and another phase exclusively at 1 pm in
the afternoon another phase exclusively
at 7 pm in the evening
they compiled all the data and at the
end of the study they found that morning
exercisers
spend more time in the deepest most
anabolic stages of sleep so they're
producing more human growth hormone they
have more efficient sleep cycles what
we've been talking about
they also tend to sleep longer and this
is the one that kind of can get glanced
past
on average they had about a 25 percent
greater drop in blood pressure at night
so what's what's up with that that's
correlated with a deactivation of your
sympathetic fight-or-flight nervous
system right so you're actually able to
shift gears get to that parasympathetic
rest and digest
calming down by getting some exercise in
in the morning
and so how do we employ this though
that's the question because some people
just like you know i can't exercise in
the morning and there's also people who
exercise in the morning who might have
terrible sleep
and it's because this is not like the
magic bullet this is a thing to stack in
your condition if you're doing this and
then messing up the one i'm gonna talk
about next
you're probably not gonna have the best
sleep so
here's how to employ this just five
minutes
and i tested this each morning i do this
five minutes of exercise you know it
might be just jumping on a rebounder you
know a little mini trampoline for five
minutes go for a quick power walk uh do
some tabata which is just four minutes
and a little mobility work
and i guess most people don't know what
tabata is high intensity interval
training basically is 20 seconds of
exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest
repeated over and over again for four
minutes
and
in his clinical studies this was found
to outperform
you know traditional cardio like the
kind of moderate intensity 45 minutes of
exercise in four minutes wow the change
in your cardiovascular benefits body
composition
and also changing your mitochondria as
well this is why it works it does
something called a cortisol reset all
right we talked about cortisol
but again it's a good thing if it's in
the right time and the right amount
clinically i would call these people
tired and wire that would come in i'm
looking at the hormone panels and the
cortisol would be really low in the
morning and high at night
thus they have sleep problems
so you naturally if your heart if your
cortisol is on a natural hormone rhythm
it would be elevated at its peak in the
morning right around 6 a.m to 8 a.m and
then gradually decline as the day goes
does that have to do with what time you
wake up
sort of i mean the cortisol will kind of
tend to nudge you out of sleep but also
will tend to notice that as the day as
it your sleep goes on it becomes lighter
and lighter anyways right this is when
you tend to remember your dreams like at
the at the end of the sleep
and so
getting this little boost like helping
your body to propel and get your
cortisol up via exercise helps to reset
that rhythm and get you back on track so
that's why it works
so that's number one low hanging fruit
just get in five minutes of exercise
start in the morning no matter what just
five minutes is all you need it's gonna
help to
create this snowball effect of good
things for you you know five minutes if
this is the time you do go to the gym
and do your full workout so be it all
good but everybody who's not already
doing that just get that five minutes in
the second one
and this one is more of the tough love
and the most difficult but this is the
most important one in our culture today
and this has to do with our tech all
right so harvard researchers have
confirmed that blue light exposure from
our favorite devices you know ipads
iphones
androids tablets televisions they do in
fact suppress your melatonin
substantially because it your body
essentially thinks the sun's out is that
the problem so we have photoreceptors
that are always trying to gauge what
time it is
right because our bodies are wired up to
be in sync with nature
but only recently like literally just
the past few decades have we been able
to manipulate and basically create a
second day time right so your body's
just it doesn't really know how to
figure it out and so the blue and white
spectrum specifically are the ones that
are more similar to daylight and so what
it's doing is and so here's what the
researchers found basically
every hour you're on your device at
night suppresses melatonin for about 30
minutes right so if you're
on your you know you watch a movie a
three hour movie for example
your melatonin is going to be suppressed
even if you go to bed right after you're
not producing adequate melatonin for
about an hour and a half
and so again you can be unconscious from
sheer physical exhaustion but you're not
going to go through your sleep cycles
efficiently
and so just be mindful of that what i
encourage people to do is to give
yourself a screen curfew just 30 minutes
all right i don't want to make this
complicated just 30 minutes
but here's the rub
we're addicted to our devices like
straight up we just need to be honest i
am we all are you know basically it's
because of
this dopamine loop right dopamine is so
powerful so interesting
dopamine is one of the things i truly
feel has helped to create our
civilization as it is because it drives
us to seek right dopamine drives us
to to seek and and to grow and to find
to discover the internet is perfect for
manipulating this because every time you
look for something you find something
especially social media you seek fine
seek fine you produce the dopamine it
drives you to look but why do you keep
going is every time you find something
you get a little bit of a hit from your
opioid system like it's like this slow
drip i have morphine and so it starts to
like feel really good and to the point
where you might be doing your work and
like you've got a deadline and you're
just you know like i'll check instagram
real quick before you know it's like 30
minutes later you fall into the internet
black hole just like it just pulls you
in so be aware of that i'm not saying
again
our connection with tech is just going
to grow so i'm not bashing that it's
just be aware of it and that when you
try to abide by this principle which
will really really help your sleep
quality to give yourself a screen curfew
you can't just sit there and twiddle
your thumbs
because you'll get what i call the
internet jitters right you'll start
getting like um a little bit of a
withdrawal effect like
let me just check one this one one post
what we have to do is this you have to
replace it with something of greater or
equal value it's really that simple
hopefully it's what i encourage people
to do this is an opportunity to connect
right connect with your significant
other your kids the people like physical
like have a real conversation with
somebody right i know it sounds crazy
but it really works it's really really
good
and also this is a great opportunity if
you you know if you're in a relationship
or not whatever you're into you could
you know
utilize and i have got a chapter on this
as well intimate time because there's a
big connection between sex and sleep and
there's also a big connection between
sleep and sex and how it impacts your
sex life
and so when we have an orgasm for
example we produce a chemical i'm sorry
cocktail of chemicals including oxytocin
norepinephrine prolactin and oxytocin
for example has been found clinically to
basically combat the effects of cortisol
and hopefully sex is more interesting
than instagram but you know i don't know
it depends on how you're doing it and so
that's what i want people to do a screen
curfew and or use these hacks utilize
some blue light block blockers and so
for your desktops laptops things like
that you can get an app called flux
that pulls out the most troublesome
sleep sucking spectrum of light from
your screen it basically cools your
screen off
and it's a simple app you set it and
forget it's totally free just go to dr
google type in f.l.u.x
and a couple clicks and it's on your
device i've been using it for maybe five
or six years i love it
and uh for your
uh telephone you know your cell phone
we've got on the iphones built in now is
night shift uh with androids the best
one out there
uh from my research is one called
twilight you know so there's options for
everybody then what about the ambient
light at night or if you're watching the
movie again i don't want to get don't
get too neurotic about it but if this is
a problem for you and you're not
sleeping as well as you could be or your
results your body composition not
changing you're not getting that blood
pressure down you're not having that
focus you need through the day
then you might want to address this but
another little hack is to get some blue
light blocking glasses the first ones i
had was straight up like i just built
the birdhouse but now there's some
really cool stylish ones that you can
rock as a matter of fact you'll create a
neural association when you put the
glasses on and you'll start to get
sleepy you know it's nuts and that is
another thing right there
is to create an evening ritual right
your brain is always looking for
patterns a lot of successful people
especially listening to the things that
you're putting out there have a success
ritual in the morning
but
a great morning starts the night before
you know a truly great morning
and so
a couple of quick things people can do
is the thermal regulation piece turn
down your thermostat all right now this
one's again this is going to hit a
pressure point for some people but
according to research between 62 and 68
degrees fahrenheit is ideal
for sleep
and so
for some people it's going to sound a
little bit frosty but lowering the
thermostat a little bit can
have incredible benefit
uh for your sleep but this doesn't mean
you can't use your covers and put on
some warm socks that kind of thing so
cooling off this thermostat
making sure that your bedroom ideally i
call it a sleep sanctuary and so that
when you walk into your bedroom at night
if your brain has a neural association
when i go into my bedroom i'm watching
television or i'm working
those channels are going to fire because
of the myelin getting laid down over the
years of you doing that behavior or even
months it can get laid down and so you
might have the intention of going to bed
but if your tv is in there
your brain is going to be firing
expecting to watch television and parts
of your brain will be waking up in a way
and so
i encourage people to get the tech out
of your room have your sleep have your
bedroom be a sleep sanctuary you know or
some place that's just for the the
double s which is sleep and sex here's
also a really interesting reason why
there's an italian study done they found
that couples who have a television in
their bedroom have 50 less sex really
yeah yeah that's interesting and you
know this is a little bit more
middle-aged little past middle-aged the
people in the study but and i know some
people like that's not true i have sex
all the time you probably do it in a
snowstorm like it doesn't matter where
you are like you're a human rabbit it
doesn't matter but for other people it's
like
a distraction right it's a distraction
and it can also you know um create all
of those kind of chemical soup issues
that we've been talking about with
elevating cortisol and those kind of
things so
i ideally get your television out of the
room uh the other tech
and last thing with the sleep
environment i'll share when i talked
about melatonin you need those two
conditions biological night
and you also need a dark environment
and so if you're in an environment where
you're maybe in a
suburban or city environment where
there's like neighbors porch lights
coming in
there's leds outside cars coming up and
down the street
as crazy as this sounds that
that small amount of light where we're
now dubbing light pollution
can have a significant impact on your
sleep quality and here's here's why we
know this cornell university i think did
the best study on this and they took a
test subject and had them sleep in an
otherwise dark room and they took a a
light a fiber optic cable and a light
the size of a quarter and put it behind
their knee and that was enough to
disrupt their sleep cycle
because your skin also has
photoreceptors that is sending
information to your brain your nervous
system your internal organs to try to
tell your body what time it is is trying
to figure it out
you know so we want to get rid of that
artificial light exposure
now does this mean moonlight and stars
no humans have evolved with those things
and their lux like i actually put a lux
chart in the book it's so small compared
to even the weakest fluorescent bulbs
and so get yourself some blackout
curtains if that
external light is an issue internal
light you know your alarm clocks and you
know light you know lamps you know some
people still are sleeping with their
lights on and things like that
be mindful of that and also what you can
do is just change the bulb color you
know if you still have issues with the
dark which some adults do and that's
okay
um
you can change the bulb cover color and
i actually had some nasa scientists or
people that work with them to send me
some different bulbs because
folks in space they don't have that
biological clock
and so they would experience all these
different health challenges and they had
to try to figure it out they knew that
it was an issue with their sleep and so
they start to give them different bulbs
for different times of
day in a way you know even though
they're in outer space so it's really
cool what you can do with these little
hacks but bottom line is you want to
have a dark cycle so you can produce
melatonin and you know those are just a
few those are just a few of the
different things people can do if sleep
is so good for me and dreams are amazing
and they help with creativity and they
take the sharp edges off my emotions why
the hell do i have nightmares
yeah so what we know is that nightmares
aren't necessarily pathological
and we we know that in some conditions
and ptsd is a is a very good example of
this that they can sort of step over
that threshold from being normative to
non-normative i mean they can be very
concerning and and disruptive to people
and it's also very traumatic too to
relive those and and wake up from them
we do think it's part of the same
process of sort of emotional regulation
but it's the brain trying to understand
and better comprehend what this thing
called waking life and all of its
emotional peaks and troughs are all
about
so
the bottom line here is that as long as
they're not causing you distress and
harm then you don't have to worry about
them
if they are doing that though there are
new clinical therapies for
what we call nightmare disorders
and it involves usually just what you
were describing before
which is speaking with a therapist
writing down
the nightmare and then replaying it
while you are awake sort of you know
speaking about it writing it back down
working with the therapist and
essentially trying to sort of just say
look okay in that context it's safe
let's better understand that
and repeatedly doing that type of work
where you're sort of
reactivating the nightmare and then
trying to change the context to
something that's safe or that's less
fearful or that's less negative
gradually over time that type of work
can dissipate the frequency and the
severity of those nightmares so
nightmares by themselves not necessarily
a bad thing if they are causing you
problems you can go and speak to your
doctor and there are some therapies for
that that you can sort of just google
around
nightmare therapy etc
those will help
yeah and
that like the way in which your brain
chooses to interpret
its sort of dream reassessment of the
real world will have huge implications
in your life it could be ptsd it could
be a bazillion things i have a feeling
i've never had this thought before but i
have a feeling that
the more we learn about how individual
brains re-contextualize things and how
much the conscious mind and subconscious
mind sort of come into cahoots to decide
how they're going to line things up
because when i was in my early 20s and i
was convinced i was stupid i was
interpreting the world one way that was
just had me paralyzed by fear and then
as i began to realize sort of the nature
of the brain and oh just because i'm
stupid now doesn't mean i can't learn
about this
you know that carol dweck's notion of
yet right i'm not good yet and so that
since then consciously i have changed
the way that i frame things
but i would bet a bazillion dollars that
i'm also doing that subconsciously as my
brain sort of
processes the day
i think that's what you know dreaming if
it's one of its functions is that
recontextualizing of those experiences
you know dreaming i think is a is a way
for us to understand the world in which
we live
and we can do it whilst we're awake you
know i'm not suggesting that we don't
form connections and we don't see
links between different pieces of
information but the way that we do it in
dreaming is very different you know i
often liken it to when we're awake
you're sort of inputting this
information into the brain and it's
almost like a google search page one
where you insert your search term you
hit return and you get the most obvious
immediate hits the direct connections
that's what waking is all about
dreaming
is you inserting the search term hitting
the return button and being taken
straight to page 20
you know and you inserted you know
impact theory university
and all of a sudden on page 20 it's
about a field hockey game in utah and
you think hang on a second what on earth
is but then you read it and you think
ah i can it's a distant wacky connection
and it's not obvious to me that i would
have made that but it's a potentially
powerful one because when you start to
fuse things together that shouldn't
normally go together but they cause
these marked advances evolutionary
fitness it sounds like the biological
basis of creativity
and that's one of the things that we're
learning about with dream sleep as well
contextualization emotional resolution
creativity
yeah so you know as we start talking
about dreaming and nightmares and all of
the different ways that the brain is
sort of interacting
uh
trying to make sense of the conscious
world one thing i heard you talk about
is cognitive behavioral therapy for
insomnia which i found very interesting
and i know so little about it but
knowing what i know about cognitive
behavioral therapy in terms of pattern
interrupting and things like that are
you is this like us sending a sort of
subconscious signal to our brain like
how does that work
not quite so i what we know obviously
has been the rise of sleep difficulties
in society and that has been matched by
unfortunately a rise in pharmacology and
particularly sleeping pills and i say
unfortunately not because i'm
anti-medication and i know a lot of
people who work at these pharmaceutical
companies and they're good people great
scientists wanting to do good things
but unfortunately sleeping pills are
largely blunt instruments and they don't
produce naturalistic sleep
they're in a class of drugs that we call
the sedative hypnotics
and when we take sleeping pills we
mistake sedation for sleep but it's not
natural sleep
and in fact um sleeping pills have been
associated with a significantly higher
risk of death as well as cancer
so much so that in 2016 the american
college of physicians made a landmark
recommended um intervention they said
that sleeping pills must no longer be
the first line treatment for
uh insomnia instead the american college
of physicians said it has to be
cognitive behavioral therapy for
insomnia that must be the first line
recommended treatment for those sleep
problems
and so cognitive behavioral therapy in
general really tries to target two
things
cognitive and behavioral
and so the cognitive aspects for
insomnia are aspects where we try to
correct your beliefs or your misbeliefs
around sleep and some of your ideas
around sleep some of those things that
can be either inappropriate incorrect or
just triggering anxiety or worry
so we try to modify those cognitions
those beliefs but then we also look at
what you're doing in your life the
different behaviors that you're doing or
things that you're not doing and try to
correct the behaviors as well for
example how's your caffeine intake how's
your alcohol intake uh what time are you
going to bed what time are you waking up
what's your chronotype are you a morning
type evening type are you sleeping in
harmony with your chronotype or against
your chronotype
um are you getting daylight in the
morning are you getting too much
daylight
light at night artificial light at night
do you exercise
and so we change behaviors and we change
thought patterns and together
cognitive behavioral therapy for
insomnia is just as effective as
sleeping pills in the short term but
what's great is that when you start
working with that clinician um or your
online program and i should say that i
um i
work with a company i'm an advisor to a
company called chuni
it's s-h-u-n-i
dot io if people want to go and explore
it and you can get cognitive behavioral
therapy online there
but you work with your therapist and
after about
five or six sessions
you can continue that benefit of
improved sleep for up to five years the
studies have demonstrated now whereas
with sleeping pills when you stop their
use then not only do you go back to the
bad sleep that you behave you are having
you typically go back to even worse
sleep it's called rebound insomnia and
now you have to go back onto the use so
you become dependent there is an
addiction dependency cycle
so that's really what cbti is and that's
really the best approach for sleeping uh
problems right now
all right so i have two sleeping
problems one is that there are times
where i will get um either really
stressed or i'll get really excited and
i have a very easy time falling asleep
but then i'll wake up after three or
four hours
and i find it very difficult to fall
back asleep and then the second part
just so i don't forget is sleep inertia
in the morning
but what can i do to um optimize for
staying asleep
yes so there it's a case of trying to
deal with that sort of downgrade the
activation of the nervous system the
reason that people t