Speaker 1: Gooday, thanks for joining us on the body and soul
Speaker 1: podcast called Healthy Ish. I'm your host of Felicity Harley.
Speaker 1: How did you sleep last night? Were you really hot?
Speaker 1: Perhaps you are hungover? Perhaps he had a late night. Well,
Speaker 1: my guest today is going to help you manage all
Speaker 1: of the above. I'm joined by Nicole Moyan. She's the
Speaker 1: director of science and clinical Research at eight Sleep and
Speaker 1: holds her PhD in physiology from Stanford University. She's also
Speaker 1: worked at various health tech companies like Fitbit and Whoop,
Speaker 1: so she knows a lot about sleep and she's going
Speaker 1: to help us manage our sleep quality and our quantity
Speaker 1: during the festive season. And also she gives some great
Speaker 1: tips on how to set up your room for the
Speaker 1: hot summer nights. Make sure you're listening to our sister podcast,
Speaker 1: Extra healthy Ish, where we talk more about circadian rhythms
Speaker 1: and the key factors affecting sleep. You can grab that
Speaker 1: one wherevergy podcasts. Nicole, Nice to have you joining us
Speaker 1: from the US. How are you?
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm doing well. How are you?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I'm good well, actually, thankfully I had a good
Speaker 1: night sleep last night. How about you did you, yes,
Speaker 1: I did. Actually, as a sleep researcher, do you feel,
Speaker 1: you know, pressure to have a good night sleep or
Speaker 1: how's your how do you feel about approaching your night sleep?
Speaker 2: I feel since working out of sleep Company, I feel
Speaker 2: much more aware of my sleep, and I think also
Speaker 2: we're constantly looking at our own data as well and
Speaker 2: talking about it, so then you're you're it's the first
Speaker 2: thing that you look at in the morning and the
Speaker 2: first thing you reflect on and think about. So it's
Speaker 2: definitely changed my perspective. But I don't know if I
Speaker 2: feel pressure to have a good night sleep. I just
Speaker 2: know that it's essential to performing well the next day.
Speaker 1: Do you have any non negotiable habits when it comes
Speaker 1: to sleep that perhaps you didn't have four and now
Speaker 1: you actually you know in your job you're more focused on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like what I've really noticed in tracking my
Speaker 2: data is that if I'm more of like an early bedtime,
Speaker 2: early riser person, and I would try to stay up
Speaker 2: with other people but then still be up early, and
Speaker 2: it just I finally realized from looking at my data
Speaker 2: that if I don't go to sleep like between nine
Speaker 2: and ten, I usually miss my a good chunk of
Speaker 2: deep sleep, and I don't seem to recover that later
Speaker 2: in the night. Even if I sleep later in the morning,
Speaker 2: I just miss it, and so I have like I
Speaker 2: just it's a bad night of sleep for me. So
Speaker 2: now I've been a lot stricter about like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: need to go to sleep at nine pm, even though
Speaker 2: it feels really early a.
Speaker 1: Lot of times, what time do you get out of bit.
Speaker 2: Between five and six?
Speaker 1: So it's absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's been my like my newer non negotiable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk to us about managing slight during this particular
Speaker 1: time of year, because li's light not I mean, you
Speaker 1: do want to hang out with friends, you might have
Speaker 1: a few drinks, then you're sleeping. What do you how
Speaker 1: do we do? How do we manage?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it's tricky and it depends on the
Speaker 2: person and what their holiday festivities look like. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you're familiar with the term social jet lag
Speaker 2: that's come Yeah, you've heard of it. Okay, it's come
Speaker 2: about in the last couple of years where if you
Speaker 2: know your body is really needs this specific rhythm. We're like,
Speaker 2: we pretend like we're not like little kids, but we
Speaker 2: really do better on a schedule, just like little kids do.
Speaker 2: And if we keep that schedule, our body becomes very
Speaker 2: attuned to it, and all the functions within your body
Speaker 2: work really well, your circuitian rhythm. And the second we
Speaker 2: try to deviate from that, all these things in your
Speaker 2: body change, right and trying to adapt to it. And
Speaker 2: so that's true for sleep. So if you stay up
Speaker 2: one to two hours later, it's almost like you traveled
Speaker 2: time zones to a new place, which is why they
Speaker 2: call it social jet lag, because now you're trying to
Speaker 2: stay up later, but then you're still your body is
Speaker 2: still on a different time zone. So that's one thing
Speaker 2: that can if you can try to instead of staying
Speaker 2: up late, if you're not a late night person, meet
Speaker 2: people for coffee or a run or something during the
Speaker 2: day so you can kind of keep your routine. That's helpful.
Speaker 2: Easier said than done. Alcohol You've probably heard most of them,
Speaker 2: but try to mix a drink of water with a
Speaker 2: drink of a glass of wine or a beer, and
Speaker 2: then having electrolytes can really help you. So drinking electrolytes
Speaker 2: before you go to sleep and then potentially when you
Speaker 2: wake up as well, because alcohol dehydrates you. That can
Speaker 2: really help. And then eating before you drink too can
Speaker 2: be helpful to help absorb that alcohol.
Speaker 1: Can we just go back to the first one. I
Speaker 1: want to ask you a question about that that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So our body basically can get used to a certain
Speaker 1: time frame as to how we sleep or routine and schedule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how quickly does it fall apart? Is it after?
Speaker 1: You know, if you have one light night on a
Speaker 1: Thursday and one late night on a Friday, is that
Speaker 1: is the weekend gone basically? Or And how long does
Speaker 1: it take to recover?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's there's some research showing that even just
Speaker 2: one hour of sleep debt. So if you're off by
Speaker 2: one hour, let's say you stay up an hour later
Speaker 2: and you wake up at your normal time, so you
Speaker 2: lose an hour of sleep that night, it can take
Speaker 2: up to four days to recover that one hour of
Speaker 2: sleep debt, So it can it can add up pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, to answer your question, it just depends on
Speaker 2: the person and whether you can recover that leak with
Speaker 2: a nab or something else. But generally it compounds pretty fast.
Speaker 1: What about sleep ins? Are they useful? Can they be
Speaker 1: more detrimental. You know, if you do have a late
Speaker 1: night and you want to sleep, you better just you know,
Speaker 1: you automatically wake up at say six thirty, if that's
Speaker 1: what time you would, and you know often you're well myself,
Speaker 1: well like okay, just try and go back to sleep,
Speaker 1: and then I do, and then I wake up at
Speaker 1: eight thirty? Is can that be more detrimental? You better
Speaker 1: get am I better getting up at six thirty and
Speaker 1: just getting on with my day even though I might
Speaker 1: feel like crap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think no, if you're going to feel like crap,
Speaker 2: I think sleep in and getting that extra sleep is good, right,
Speaker 2: But in general, trying to keep your body on that
Speaker 2: same rhythm, it is going to be really helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Rhythm is based now down here in Australia, not
Speaker 1: where you are in Chicago. It's pretty damn hot right now,
Speaker 1: and I think that can be well, that can break
Speaker 1: heavic on you sleep at night. Talk to us about
Speaker 1: optimal sleeping temperatures and how we can things we can
Speaker 1: do to sleep better in the heat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is a great question, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of research showing that sleeping in the heat is
Speaker 2: actually much worse for you than sleeping in the cold.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of that is because after
Speaker 2: a certain point, you can't like remove more clothing or bedding,
Speaker 2: you're kind of stuck, Whereas when it's cold you can
Speaker 2: keep adding more layers or more blankets. And so generally
Speaker 2: that there's a wide range of comfortable temperatures from seventeen
Speaker 2: C all the way to twenty eight C. Twenty eight
Speaker 2: C is like if you have no clothing and bedding,
Speaker 2: that is deemed to be the comfortable temperature if you're
Speaker 2: sleeping naked, and there's studies doing that there. So fourteen
Speaker 2: to nineteen C is pretty comfortable if you are where
Speaker 2: like normal bedding clothing, having light layers is going to
Speaker 2: be helpful for you to regulate temperature throughout the night.
Speaker 2: And there's actually research since you're in Sydney, coming out
Speaker 2: of University of Sydney from Olliej's lab. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with him, but he's really working on
Speaker 2: climate change and heat related topics, and he's shown that
Speaker 2: having a pedestal or ceiling fan in the room can actually,
Speaker 2: like on medium setting, can really help you stay cool
Speaker 2: and you can keep you from using the AC until
Speaker 2: you reach about twenty six twenty seven C. So instead
Speaker 2: of using the AC earlier in the night, you can
Speaker 2: turn on a fan that will help you stay cool
Speaker 2: as well. And then of course there's how heat camass
Speaker 2: capacity mattresses or like what we have a temperature regulating
Speaker 2: mattress which can also help you stay cool throughout the night.
Speaker 1: Is sleepy and I say bad? Is it? Can it
Speaker 1: affect your sleep?
Speaker 2: No, it's fine. I haven't seen anything. I mean, I
Speaker 2: haven't seen anything that would impact your sleep negatively unless
Speaker 2: it's really really cold. But even then, sleeping in the
Speaker 2: cold hasn't hasn't been shown to be detrimental, unless it's
Speaker 2: like causing you to wake up more often because it's
Speaker 2: too cold.
Speaker 1: Now you've got a pretty exciting job. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: in the research. You're in the forefront of, well, the
Speaker 1: development of slate research a part of it. Actually, that's
Speaker 1: really great, great study out of Sydney UNI. What else
Speaker 1: is out there? What is there anything exciting you research
Speaker 1: into slate that you're specifically across or reading about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are. I mean we've been pioneering modifying
Speaker 2: the temperature of your bed based on the sleep stage
Speaker 2: that you're in. And this came initially out of some
Speaker 2: labs at Northwestern that showed that having cooler temperatures earlier
Speaker 2: in the night can improve your deep sleep. So they
Speaker 2: boost your deep sleep, and naturally, your core body temperature
Speaker 2: is going down in the beginning of the night and
Speaker 2: then it starts to get warmer before you wake up,
Speaker 2: and as it drops down, that's when you get most
Speaker 2: of your deep sleep. So we've essentially modified now we
Speaker 2: did talked to what temperature you are, what sleep stage
Speaker 2: you're in real time, and then modify the temperature of
Speaker 2: your bed to help promote more time in each sleep stage.
Speaker 2: So that's really what we've been working on pioneering at
Speaker 2: the forefront of sleep.
Speaker 1: Nice. It was lovely having you on Healthyah Nicole, Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Well friends. Looks like it takes a few days to
Speaker 1: catch up on that late night sleep or that hangover.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it takes me a few days hangover front. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you did enjoy this chat, you can rate and
Speaker 1: review this episode, subscribe to this podcast anything else, hit
Speaker 1: Body and Soul dot com dot follows on socials. You
Speaker 1: can DM me at Felicity Halle check in our print edition,
Speaker 1: which is out in your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow,
Speaker 1: stay healthy.