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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce

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Speaker 1: Head to Jaysheddy dot me forward slash Tour and get

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Speaker 1: yours today right now.

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Speaker 2: We estimate that approximately eighty percent of people who have

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Speaker 2: sleep amnia are undiagnosed.

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Speaker 1: That's crazy. Please welcome Maria.

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Speaker 2: What is good sleep and should we just use the

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Speaker 2: metric of quanta? The range is somewhere between seven to

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Speaker 2: nine hours. Once you start to get less, the shorter

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Speaker 2: your sleep, the shorter your life. When sleep is abundant,

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Speaker 2: all of a sudden, your appetite hormones are rebalanced, so

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Speaker 2: you naturally stop eating as much as you wanted to

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Speaker 2: the weight starts to come off you, and you're simply

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Speaker 2: sleeping the weight off yourself.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like you're saying that sleep is that number

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Speaker 1: one domino that then naturally helps all of the others.

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Speaker 2: If you are not sleeping in harmony with your natural

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Speaker 2: biological sort of rhythm, then your sleep quantity and quality

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Speaker 2: is worse. Regularity maybe as if not more important than quantity.

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Speaker 2: And I would say to anyone listening, if you're going

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Speaker 2: to do anything with this podcast, just do this one thing.

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Speaker 1: The number one health and wellness podcast, jayd. Hey, everyone,

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Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, the place you to become

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Speaker 1: the happier, healthier, and more healed three of the most

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Speaker 1: important priorities in our lives. Today's guest is someone that

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Speaker 1: I've been wanting to speak to for a long long

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Speaker 1: time about a subject that I believe is critical to

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Speaker 1: our health, happiness, and healing. Today I get to speak

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Speaker 1: to Matthew Walker, a sleep expert, scientist, author, podcast host,

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Speaker 1: and professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. Translated in forty

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Speaker 1: different languages, his best selling book Why We Sleep explores

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Speaker 1: the goal to reunite humanity with sleep Matthew's work has

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Speaker 1: shaped public understanding of how a simple thing likes sleep,

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Speaker 1: impacts memory, aging and disease prevention. Please welcome to On Purpose,

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Speaker 1: Matthew Walker. Matt it's great to have you.

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Speaker 2: Here, Jay, that absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you

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Speaker 2: so much for having me and giving me the opportunity

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Speaker 2: to speak the voice of sleep.

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Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Matthew. Let's dive straight

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Speaker 1: in because there's so much to decipher with you, and

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Speaker 1: I want to start by asking you how much sleep

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Speaker 1: do we actually need?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question, and there is definitely a range,

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Speaker 2: you know, I think there is, and perhaps even populated

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Speaker 2: by idiots like me that there was this magical eight

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Speaker 2: hour number that was you know, necessary and get anything

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Speaker 2: less and there's doom and gloom. The range is somewhere

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Speaker 2: between seven to nine hours for the average adult. And

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Speaker 2: what we certainly know is that once you start to

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Speaker 2: get less than seven hours of sleep, we can measure

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Speaker 2: impermit in both your brain performance as well as your

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Speaker 2: body metrics. So there is a range. But in some

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Speaker 2: ways it's also a question of what is good sleep

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Speaker 2: and should we just use the metric of quantity and

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Speaker 2: we absolutely should because using that sweet spot of seven

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Speaker 2: to nine hours, it looks as though the shorter your sleep,

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Speaker 2: the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all cause mortality,

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Speaker 2: so duration total man is necessary. But if you actually

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Speaker 2: look at the science, what is good sleep can be

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Speaker 2: really answered by a four part equation that in my mind,

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Speaker 2: there are really sort of four macros of good sleep

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Speaker 2: three macros of food, fat, protein, carbohydrate for sleep four

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Speaker 2: macros and you can remember it by the acronym QQRT,

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Speaker 2: and it stands for quantity, quality, regularity, and timing. So quantity,

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Speaker 2: you're absolutely right, somewhere between seven and nine is that fit.

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Speaker 2: Quality is about the continuity of your sleep. Is your

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Speaker 2: sleep fragmented and littered with all of these awakenings and

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Speaker 2: you're awake for a lot of the night, that's not

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Speaker 2: good quality of sleep. So you could be in bed

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Speaker 2: for nine and a half hours and still get seven

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Speaker 2: hours of sleep, but you're spending two and a half

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Speaker 2: hours of time awake. That's not good quality of sleep.

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Speaker 2: Then we can speak about regularity going to bed at

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Speaker 2: the same time, waking up at the same time. It

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Speaker 2: sounds very benign. Well, do I really have to worry

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Speaker 2: about regularity. There's a great study and they looked at

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Speaker 2: regularity and quantity. Both of them predicted all cause mortality.

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Speaker 2: So if you're very regular and you get that seven

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Speaker 2: to nine hours of sleep, you have the lowest mortality risk.

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Speaker 2: But then because they had these two measures in the

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Speaker 2: same individuals, they put them in the same statistical analysis

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Speaker 2: and did the sort of Coke Pepsi challenge between the two.

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Speaker 2: What they found is that regularity beat out quantity in

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Speaker 2: terms of predicting your mortality, meaning regularity maybe as if

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Speaker 2: not more important than quantity. Now you've got to get both.

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Speaker 2: But so QQR quantity quality regularity timing. Timing sounds like regularity,

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Speaker 2: and you think, well, what's the difference. Timing is about

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Speaker 2: your Krono type? Are you a morning type, evening type,

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Speaker 2: or a neutral. And it turns out, by the way,

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Speaker 2: that if you're a night out, it's not your fault.

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Speaker 2: It is genetically a large genetically determined There are at

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Speaker 2: least twenty two different genes that dictate whether you want

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Speaker 2: to be a morning person or an evening person. So

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Speaker 2: you don't get the choice. It's gifted to you at birth.

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Speaker 2: And what we find is that if you are not

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Speaker 2: sleeping in harmony with your natural biological sort of rhythm,

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Speaker 2: then your sleep quantity and quality is worse. So let's

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Speaker 2: just say we take someone who goes to bed at

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Speaker 2: ten pm and wakes up at six am. Well, if

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Speaker 2: you're a slight morning type, that's actually quite ideal for you.

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Speaker 2: But if you're an evening type who likes to go

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Speaker 2: to bed at two am and maybe wake up at

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Speaker 2: ten am, then it's the same eight hour window that

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Speaker 2: they're getting. But if the night our two am to

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Speaker 2: ten am is forced to sleep from ten pm to

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Speaker 2: six am still eight hours, the quality of their sleep

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Speaker 2: that they get will no word be as sufficient as

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Speaker 2: the morning type. So some people will come to our

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Speaker 2: sleep center and say, I have terrible sleep onset insomnia.

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Speaker 2: I get into bed and I'm awake for the first

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Speaker 2: two hours, and then I fall asleep, and we do

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Speaker 2: a CRONA type assessment, which is morning type evening type.

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Speaker 2: And by the way, people can do this online very quickly.

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Speaker 2: Right now. You can just type into Google m e

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Speaker 2: Q test me EQ. It stands for Morning this Evening

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Speaker 2: this questionnaire and it fits very well with your genetics.

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Speaker 2: Takes about three minutes when we do this type of

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Speaker 2: assessment with them, what we realize is that they don't

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Speaker 2: have insomnia. They're a night owl, but they're trying to

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Speaker 2: sleep like a morning type. And so when you sleep

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Speaker 2: sort of against your natural biological predilection, your sleep is

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Speaker 2: not going to be as good as it could be

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Speaker 2: if you move yourself closer to your natural, innate biological tendency.

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Speaker 2: Does that make sense? So those to me would be yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: can you shift your sleep?

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Speaker 1: If people want to have Someone said Matt, that made

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Speaker 1: so much sense. I've been a night on my whole life,

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Speaker 1: but I just feel like I should be trying to

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Speaker 1: sleep early and wake up earlier. It would be better

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Speaker 1: for my partner, would be better for my lifestyle, would

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Speaker 1: better for my kids. Whatever it is. Can you shift

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Speaker 1: your type?

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Speaker 2: It's a really good question. I get asked that a

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Speaker 2: lot because in some ways, what I'm talking about is

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Speaker 2: the ideal world, and drum roll, none of us live

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Speaker 2: in the ideal world. We live in this thing called

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Speaker 2: the real world. So you know, stop your fancy sleep

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Speaker 2: science and tell me just you know, can that change?

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Speaker 2: There was a study done in by a group in

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Speaker 2: Australia and they took I think it was about eleven

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Speaker 2: different things that you had to do as a night

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Speaker 2: owl to see if they could drag you back so

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Speaker 2: you felt more capable of going to sleep earlier. And

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Speaker 2: it was things like, as soon as you wake up,

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Speaker 2: eat a large breakfast, gon't get daylight first thing, exercise

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Speaker 2: before midday, do not nap, take an earlier lunch, don't

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Speaker 2: nap again in the afternoon. In the afternoon, start to

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Speaker 2: get as much darkness as you can, meaning put shades

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Speaker 2: on if you're going to go outside in the evening,

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Speaker 2: make sure that you eat at least three hours before

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Speaker 2: you expect to go to bed, and then try to

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Speaker 2: push your sort of alarm clock the next morning by

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Speaker 2: about one to two hours. And they collected all of

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Speaker 2: these different sort of regiments and sure enough they were

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Speaker 2: able to drag people back by a little bit over

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Speaker 2: one hour, which sounds great, but the problem is these

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Speaker 2: were extreme night owls who would prefer to go to

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Speaker 2: sleep at maybe let's say one thirty am. That means

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Speaker 2: they're still having to go to bed biologically at twelve

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Speaker 2: thirty am. It's not the nine to thirty PM or

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Speaker 2: the ten PM that you would prefer. And imagine trying

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Speaker 2: to capitulate and adhere to that regiment for the rest

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Speaker 2: of your life. So there is some wiggle room. It

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Speaker 2: seems that you can sort of manipulate. But in truth,

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Speaker 2: I think what we have to try and do as

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Speaker 2: best we can is to say, how can I align

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Speaker 2: myself better with my biology. When you fight biology, you

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Speaker 2: normally lose, and the way you know you've lost is

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Speaker 2: disease and sickness. And that's what we see with night

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Speaker 2: owls who are sort of trying to sleep against their tendency.

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Speaker 2: That said, though, is there a way that you can

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Speaker 2: I mean, hack isn't the right word, but there are

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Speaker 2: ways that you can try to help yourself. So think

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Speaker 2: about what you do in the morning that takes time.

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Speaker 2: So is it that you sort of, you know, make

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Speaker 2: the coffee, you put the coffee and the coffee pot,

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Speaker 2: You get your clothes ready for work, you pack your

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Speaker 2: bag for the gym after work. All of these things

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Speaker 2: you can do ahead of time the night before. To

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Speaker 2: take that fifteen minutes of added time the next morning

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Speaker 2: and say, allow yourself to sleep a little bit later,

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Speaker 2: see at least getting closer to your natural tendency. Then

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Speaker 2: go to the front end of sleep and say, what

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Speaker 2: is it that I do in the last fifteen minutes

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Speaker 2: before I go to bed? Well, I usually sort of

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Speaker 2: maybe I take a shower, maybe I change for bed,

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Speaker 2: Maybe you know, I brush my teeth, maybe some people

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Speaker 2: take their makeup off, whatever it is, Set an alarm

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Speaker 2: two hours before bed, do all of those things, and

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Speaker 2: then right before you go to bed, when that alarm

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Speaker 2: goes off, the to bed alarm, all you do is

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Speaker 2: get up and you go straight to bed. So you've

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Speaker 2: saved yourself fifteen minutes on the front end, So you

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Speaker 2: can go to bed fifteen minutes sort of later, and

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Speaker 2: you can wake up fifteen minutes later, but you're not

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Speaker 2: necessarily having to go to work any later. So does

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Speaker 2: that make some sense? So you can try to short

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Speaker 2: sort of thin slice some of that a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. If you're someone who's waking up tired regularly,

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Speaker 1: Like right now, someone's listening and they're just like Jane Matt,

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Speaker 1: I wake up every day and I'm just tired. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I'm trying to get the right amount of sleep,

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Speaker 1: but I'm still figuring it out. Where do I start?

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Speaker 1: What would you encourage them to look.

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Speaker 2: At so I think the first thing, let's go back

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Speaker 2: to the four principles. Are you getting a concert seven

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Speaker 2: to nine hours of time at least in bed? Next,

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Speaker 2: are you trying to assess your sleep and say, am

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Speaker 2: I waking up a lot throughout the night? I would

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Speaker 2: say that's one of the first places I would go to.

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Speaker 2: If yeah, if the If you're not feeling restored and

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Speaker 2: refreshed by your sleep the next day and you're getting

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Speaker 2: four hours of sleep at night, then it's obvious it's

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Speaker 2: just not the right quantity. But if you're being good

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Speaker 2: and you're spending sufficient time in bed but still feeling

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Speaker 2: unrefreshed and restored, we have to ask are you waking

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Speaker 2: up a lot throughout the night? If you are, let's

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Speaker 2: figure out why is it that you are, for example,

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Speaker 2: snoring a lot throughout the night, and you have undiagnosed

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Speaker 2: sleep app near and you can just download an app

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Speaker 2: on your phone. I have no association with them. It's

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Speaker 2: called snare lab, So snare Lab and you download it.

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Speaker 2: It records your breathing. You place the phone next to

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Speaker 2: you on your bed. Then in the morning it shows

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Speaker 2: you a Richter shock sort of scale throughout the night.

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Speaker 2: And it quantifies your snoring into quiet, moderate, loud, and epic.

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Speaker 2: And the frightening thing is you can then tap anywhere

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Speaker 2: throughout the night and you can hear yourself snoring in

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Speaker 2: a way that we don't. So the next thing is,

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Speaker 2: let's make sure that you don't have an undiagnosed sleep disorder.

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Speaker 2: Then I would say, is it a case that you're

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Speaker 2: maybe over consuming on caffeine during the day. Some people

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Speaker 2: will feel completely comfortable having an espresso with dinner and

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Speaker 2: they say, I fall asleep and I stay asleep. So

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Speaker 2: I'm one of those. And it is genetically determined who

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Speaker 2: can metabolize caffeine quickly and it has no effect. We've

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Speaker 2: done studies and unfortunately, even if you do fall asleep

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Speaker 2: and stay asleep, that caffeine can prevent you from going

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Speaker 2: into the deepest stages of what we call deep non

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Speaker 2: rapidi movement sleep. That's where you get a lot of

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Speaker 2: restoration sensation from. So maybe we need to ask how

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Speaker 2: much caffeine are you taking, the dose and the timing

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Speaker 2: make the poison. Try to cut yourself off after about

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Speaker 2: three cups and try to stay away from caffeine at

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Speaker 2: least ten to twelve hours before you expect to go

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Speaker 2: to bed. The final thing I would probably say is

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Speaker 2: are you also using anything in the evening to help

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Speaker 2: you fall asleep? And the principal thing I'm talking about

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Speaker 2: here is alcohol. It's probably the most misunderstood sleep aid

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Speaker 2: that there is out there. It's actually not a sleep aid,

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Speaker 2: and it will fragment your sleep and block you from

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Speaker 2: getting rapid eye movement sleep. So what we would do

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Speaker 2: is we would march you through a set of environment

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Speaker 2: or behavioral things. What are you doing in terms of

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Speaker 2: your bed timing, are you spending a lot of time awake?

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Speaker 2: And also the things that you're taking into your body alcohol, caffeine, etc.

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Speaker 2: The final thing I would say is stress and anxiety

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Speaker 2: if there is one outside of skeletal pain. The principal

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Speaker 2: reason that we as a society seem not to be

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Speaker 2: sleeping is this role that acts of anxiety. Because, and

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Speaker 2: you've spoken so eloquently about this, in this modern era,

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Speaker 2: we are con instantly on reception. Very rarely do we

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Speaker 2: do reflection. And the only time now in the modern

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Speaker 2: world when we do reflection is when our head hits

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Speaker 2: the pillow, and that's the last time that we need

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Speaker 2: to do reflection, because at that point the rolodex of

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Speaker 2: anxiety starts worrying. At that point you start to ruminate.

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Speaker 2: When we ruminate, we catastrophize, and then everything feels twice

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Speaker 2: as bad in the dark of night than it does

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Speaker 2: in the light of day. And at that point we're

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Speaker 2: dead in the water for the next two hours. So

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Speaker 2: the final thing I would say is, let's speak about

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Speaker 2: your mental state. So does that give you a sense

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Speaker 2: of sight? The pinwheel diagnostics that we would go.

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Speaker 1: Through, we love it. I love it. I love the acronym.

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Speaker 1: I love how simple and formulaic it is for us

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Speaker 1: to be able to actually measure what's going wrong, and

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Speaker 1: I can. I'm fortunate and very grateful and knock onward,

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Speaker 1: sleep very very well and generally always have. But whenever

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Speaker 1: I have had disturbances in my sl I can easily

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Speaker 1: pinpoint it to something you've said. And that shows me

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Speaker 1: how great the model is. Because as someone who is

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Speaker 1: lucky and fortunate enough to have great sleep, when I

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Speaker 1: have been disrupted, it's always been related either to caffeine,

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Speaker 1: to stress and anxiety. I can easily draw the parallels

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Speaker 1: because it's such a rare occurrence, and so I can

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Speaker 1: see why and when I want to dive into each

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Speaker 1: of those, let's start with sleep apnea, because I think

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Speaker 1: that's something a lot of us don't actually know enough about,

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Speaker 1: and so I love the fact that people can use

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Speaker 1: the apps or lab as you mentioned, how many people

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Speaker 1: actually struggling with sleep apnea don't even know about it?

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Speaker 1: And what is actually happening if you have sleep apnea?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, two great questions. So right now, we estimate that

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Speaker 2: approximately eighty percent of people who have sleep apnia are undiagnosed.

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Speaker 1: That's crazy, which, if you look.

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Speaker 2: At the numbers, is going to be a non trivial

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Speaker 2: proportion of the population. And the reason it's so dangerous

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Speaker 2: is because when you have sleep apna, essentially what's happening

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Speaker 2: is that your airway is either partially becoming obstructed or

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Speaker 2: like a straw, it's collapsing flat entirely. Now, if it

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Speaker 2: starts to become obstructed, so let's say you're sleeping on

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Speaker 2: your back and the airway flaps in that airway are

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Speaker 2: starting to give weight to gravity, then you'll start to

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Speaker 2: get a partial blocking, a partial what we call occlusion

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Speaker 2: of the airway. And that's what you hear. When you

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Speaker 2: hear the sound, that's the sort of the flapping of

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Speaker 2: the partial occlusion. And then when you stop breathing entirely,

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Speaker 2: at that point, the airway has completely collapsed, the straw

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Speaker 2: has gone flat, and after about fifteen or twenty seconds,

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Speaker 2: your brain stem registers the alarming buildup of carbon dioxide

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Speaker 2: in your blood because at that point you are slowly asphyxiating,

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Speaker 2: and it sends a wake up trigger up to your cortex,

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Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden you hear and you gasp,

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Speaker 2: and you're awake. So imagine now we have a way

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Speaker 2: that we measure these sort of occlusions and these partial collapses,

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Speaker 2: and it's called the a HI score. And don't worry

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Speaker 2: about this stands a fort the apnea hypot nea index.

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Speaker 2: Suffice it to say that we look to see how

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Speaker 2: many events like this are you having per hour of sleep,

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Speaker 2: And if you were to have very mild sleep at

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Speaker 2: near you may be having five, ten, fifteen of these events.

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Speaker 2: That's considered mild. Some people could have eighty of them perhaps,

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Speaker 2: But let's just say you have mild sleep at near

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Speaker 2: ten of these events an hour, and you're in bed

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Speaker 2: for eight hours. So imagine the following scenario with undiagnosed

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Speaker 2: mild sleep apna. What if I were to say tonight,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to come into your bedroom, Jay, and every

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Speaker 2: hour I'm going to throckle you, strangle you to the

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Speaker 2: point where you actually stop breathing. And I'm going to

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Speaker 2: do that ten times every hour for every one of

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Speaker 2: the eight hours. So I'm going to do that eighty

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Speaker 2: times throughout the night. Do you think you're going to

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Speaker 2: feel restored and refresh by a sleep the next poem?

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Speaker 2: And the answer is no. But that's what Now that's hyperbolic,

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Speaker 2: of course, but in some ways that's what we're facing

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Speaker 2: even with the mildest version of undiagnosed sleep apnea. That's

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Speaker 2: why sleep apnea untreated is associated with a very significant

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Speaker 2: increase in all cause mortality as well as increases immortality

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Speaker 2: related to diabetes, to cardiovascular disease, as well as certain

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Speaker 2: forms of cancer. So I think for me, it's the

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Speaker 2: case of it's not only going to erode the quantity

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Speaker 2: of your life, meaning your lifespan, it will certainly shorten

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Speaker 2: your health span. That's what most of us are worried about,

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Speaker 2: not really our lifespan, it's our health span. None of

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Speaker 2: us want to live with disease or sickness. I certainly

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Speaker 2: don't want to. And I remember there was a patient

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Speaker 2: that we work with with sleep apnea, and after they

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Speaker 2: were treated, they were saying, well, before that, I just

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Speaker 2: thought this was me at fifty seven years old. I

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Speaker 2: just thought I would deteriorated with age. And I realized

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Speaker 2: there was some one in there that wasn't the way

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Speaker 2: I felt. And when you treated me with sleep apnea,

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Speaker 2: it was almost as though someone cognitively had wiped a

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Speaker 2: fogged glass clear and finally I could see again. And

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Speaker 2: so that's why I think so many people can benefit

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Speaker 2: by way of just simply doing taking this app seeing

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Speaker 2: whether you snore. Also, you can do something called the

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Speaker 2: stop bang questionnaire so stop all in caps, dash B

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Speaker 2: A NG, and you can do it also online, and

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Speaker 2: it's a very quick questionnaire, probably about two minutes, and

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Speaker 2: it will evaluate your risk likelihood of having sleep apnar

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Speaker 2: one of those two. If you fear that you have

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Speaker 2: sleep apnea, or if you know that your partner has

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Speaker 2: sleep apnre please go and get it seen to. It's

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Speaker 2: a laughing about you know. We think, well, they sound

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Speaker 2: like a chainsaw, they wake the neighbors up. It's almost

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Speaker 2: this thing of sort of humor. Trust me, when it

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Speaker 2: comes to your health and your wellness, it is anything

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Speaker 2: but a funny story when it comes to undiagnosed sleep

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Speaker 2: at MEA.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for giving sense practical tips

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Speaker 1: as to how we can check as well. And I

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Speaker 1: hope everyone is listening and watching. Please go do that

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Speaker 1: because the fact that eighty percent of people may not

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Speaker 1: have a clue and that could be the secret behind

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Speaker 1: better sleep is crazy to me that we haven't uncovered

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Speaker 1: it for eighty percent of people.

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Speaker 2: That's huge, and so many downstream consequences happen when they

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Speaker 2: get treated that they are typically overweight, they usually have

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Speaker 2: high levels of blood sugar, of blood glucose, they typically

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Speaker 2: have hypertension, high blood pressure. And what's nice is that

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Speaker 2: when you were to say, okay, we've got to have

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Speaker 2: you reducing your food intake, we need to stop you

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Speaker 2: from eating sugar, we need to get you to the gym,

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Speaker 2: all of those things of herculean in their challenge. And

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Speaker 2: people often in that state of being overweight, hypertensive, high glycemic,

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Speaker 2: they just find it so hard to change. But if

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Speaker 2: you treat them with sleep apnea. When sleep is abundant

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Speaker 2: in good quantity and quality, which it will be when

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Speaker 2: you treat them, all of a sudden, your appetite hormones

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00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:17,240
Speaker 2: are rebalanced, so you naturally stop eating as much as

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Speaker 2: you want it to. The weight starts to come off you,

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Speaker 2: and you're simply sleeping the weight off yourself. It's a

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Speaker 2: largely painless equation. You don't crave those sugary sort of

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Speaker 2: high sugar sort of immediate hit foods, so your blood

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Speaker 2: sugar comes back into control, and you're more motivated to

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Speaker 2: be physically active, meaning that your cardiovascular health. So I

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Speaker 2: sometimes think of sleep. You know, if you've seen one

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Speaker 2: of those fancy music studios where they've got all of

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Speaker 2: the dials on the mixing deck and you can move

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Speaker 2: any one of them. But sleep, to me, is that

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Speaker 2: one dial all the way at the far left that

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Speaker 2: if you move it, all of those other dials just

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Speaker 2: kind of move up. It's the tide that floats all

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Speaker 2: of our other health. And so if you get that

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Speaker 2: one straight, so many things, as a manifolds like an

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Speaker 2: archimedes lever, will consequently change downstream for the better. You

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Speaker 2: don't even have to do anything. You just have to

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Speaker 2: start sleeping better.

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Speaker 1: Let's take a short break to hear from our sponsors,

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Speaker 1: and let's get back to our episode. It sounds like

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Speaker 1: you're saying that sleep is that number one domino that

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Speaker 1: then naturally helps all of the others. Yeah, and I've

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Speaker 1: had everything that you just said. I for the past

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Speaker 1: six weeks have been in LA which is rare in

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Speaker 1: terms of I havn't traveled, I haven't jumped on a plane.

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Speaker 1: I've been in one place. And because of that, I've

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Speaker 1: been able to really dial in on everything from sleep,

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Speaker 1: working out, eating right because I've had no reason to

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Speaker 1: have an error because I've been at home. And you know,

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Speaker 1: when you travel, you maybe whatever right, you eat something

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Speaker 1: that wasn't a hotel and whatever it maybe. I've been

433
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,680
Speaker 1: here for six weeks, been on a phenomenal schedule. Last

434
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:01,600
Speaker 1: week I was only gone for like four hours away,

435
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 1: took a three hour flight to a three hour flight back.

436
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: I was gone for like four to six hours in total,

437
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: and I landed back at four am, which is rare

438
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:11,879
Speaker 1: for me. I don't do that. I usually sleep by

439
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:14,200
Speaker 1: nine point thirty pm. I'm a morning person for sure,

440
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 1: and I got back at four am. I tried to

441
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 1: get some sleep. I probably got up at eight am

442
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:21,520
Speaker 1: because that's all I could sleep at that time. I

443
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:23,760
Speaker 1: got in a workout, but I had to tell my

444
00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 1: trainer to lower my level of workout because I was

445
00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: more tired than I've felt for a long time, and

446
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:32,879
Speaker 1: I actually felt weaker. So I've been feeling really strong

447
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,399
Speaker 1: across the last six weeks, but I felt weaker. I

448
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:37,040
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think I can lift that much today.

449
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling up to it. On top of that,

450
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:43,480
Speaker 1: all my sugar cravings went through the roof that day. Interesting, Yeah,

451
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 1: And I know, and you notice it so significantly when

452
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: you're at the other end where you're like, oh wait,

453
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: I haven't needed refined sugar for like weeks on end now,

454
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 1: but this one day, all I'm craving is fats and

455
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: sugars and that's that's all I'm after. And I did

456
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:00,439
Speaker 1: give in, and I was okay about it. But but

457
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:03,439
Speaker 1: it's so interesting to feel it that abruptly and that

458
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:07,160
Speaker 1: extremely Yeah, and you're so right. I wanted the sugars,

459
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: I wanted the facts I wanted. I couldn't I couldn't

460
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 1: work out as well. All of it makes a difference.

461
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 2: And in some ways what's great now is the science

462
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:19,680
Speaker 2: is compelling in terms of the mechanism, such that, firstly,

463
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:24,080
Speaker 2: there are two appetite regulating hormones that called leptin and grellin. Now,

464
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:28,159
Speaker 2: Leptin is an appetite hormone that when it's released, it says, Okay,

465
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:31,160
Speaker 2: you're satisfied with your food, you don't want to eat more,

466
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 2: you're satiated. Grellin is the opposite. It says you're not satisfied,

467
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:39,959
Speaker 2: you're still hungry, you need to eat more. And what

468
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 2: we find is that when we start to sort of

469
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:45,120
Speaker 2: thin slice people's sleep, and it doesn't take very much,

470
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 2: you can sort of get maybe six hours of sleep

471
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:50,680
Speaker 2: for five nights, or five hours of sleep for four nights,

472
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the hormone leptin, which says you're satisfied,

473
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 2: you're good, you don't need to eat anymore, that starts

474
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 2: to decrease at one point. Well, it usually takes about

475
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 2: four nights of somewhere between four to five hours of

476
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 2: sleep reduction to already see those changes and see appetite

477
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 2: behavior changes as a consequence. So it doesn't take very

478
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 2: much and then if that wasn't bad enough, grellin the

479
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,399
Speaker 2: hormone that says, oh no, no, you're still hungry, please please

480
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 2: eat more, that goes up. So in some ways it's

481
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 2: double jeopardy that you're getting punished twice for the same

482
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 2: crime of insufficient sleep, once by switching off the signal

483
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 2: of I'm full, I don't need to eat, and once

484
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 2: again by I'm hungry and I need to eat more.

485
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 2: Then what we have also found is that we have

486
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 2: inside of us what we call endocannabinoids. So people have

487
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 2: heard of sort of cannabis the way that most people

488
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 2: have heard about it is an exogenous sort of you know,

489
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 2: intake of cannabis. But we have naturally occurring cannabinoids in

490
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:59,160
Speaker 2: our system called endocannabinoids. Now, many people will, let's say,

491
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:02,120
Speaker 2: know someone, of course, I'm not gonna judge anyone. We'll

492
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,400
Speaker 2: know someone who've said, when when I smoke weed, I

493
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 2: get the munchies, I get hungry. That seems to be

494
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 2: one of the consequences of these cannabinoids. Now, endocannabinoids inside

495
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 2: of us also do the same thing. They can make

496
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 2: us more hungry. When you are underslept, you're naturally occurring cannabinoids,

497
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 2: these endocannabinoids, they also increase, and that drives you to

498
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 2: eat even more in addition to the changes in leptin

499
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 2: and grellin. And then finally, we did a study with

500
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 2: brain imaging where we scan people's brains with and without

501
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 2: good sleep, looking at different food items from highly desirable

502
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 2: to highly healthy. When you are underslept, the rational control

503
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 2: regions of your brain in the frontal cortex they get

504
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 2: shut down, and these more hardonic, deep emotional brain centers

505
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:53,679
Speaker 2: that respond to rewarding pleasurable foods, they started to become

506
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:57,399
Speaker 2: much more reactive, and it set you on this path

507
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:02,159
Speaker 2: of almost obesogenic eating. You crave those sort of you know,

508
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:06,720
Speaker 2: the sugars, the chocolates, the stodgy carbohydrates, and you don't

509
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:09,560
Speaker 2: go towards the leafy greens and the healthy nuts. You

510
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:11,919
Speaker 2: go after the pizza and sort of the salty snacks.

511
00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:14,479
Speaker 2: So all of which is to say, you get this

512
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,719
Speaker 2: sort of conspiring both within the body and also at

513
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 2: the level of the brain that explains exactly what you

514
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 2: were just describing as a sort of a phenomenon. And

515
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 2: that's why I think this You've always got to be

516
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:29,359
Speaker 2: careful with epidemiological studies where you say, okay, shorter sleep

517
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 2: equals higher body mass index, higher chances of obesity. There

518
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 2: could be many things. But when you experimentally manipulate sleep

519
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 2: and you can unpack the mechanism, then we can entertain

520
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 2: causality for sure.

521
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: So what's you said earlier we should be in three

522
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: hours before we go to bed. What's the ideal meal

523
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: type three hours before we go to bed, A so

524
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: that we don't get hungry just before we go to bed. Yeah,

525
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: and B because I also understand that the digestive process

526
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 1: can actually make sleeping much harder.

527
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so what should we be.

528
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 1: Trying to digest in those three hours that keeps us

529
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: full and doesn't disrupt our sleep.

530
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good question. And so they're the

531
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 2: sort of the three hours. What we were trying to

532
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 2: do is take those night owls and try to drag

533
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 2: them back in time. But if you're not a night

534
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 2: owl trying to sort of manipulate your sort of sleep timing,

535
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 2: we can then just ask for anyone who's just you know,

536
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 2: in their standard sleep regiment, when should you cut yourself off?

537
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 2: And it's actually a bit of a myth because there

538
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:34,240
Speaker 2: is there's this strong sentiment out there on social media

539
00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 2: you need to stop eating maybe three or four hours

540
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 2: before bed. If you look at the data, and I

541
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 2: did this sort of analysis of all literature, if you

542
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 2: eat as close as sixty minutes before bed, it doesn't

543
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 2: seem to hurt your sleep. Now if you sort of

544
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:51,200
Speaker 2: go forty five minutes or thirty minutes, then yes, it

545
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 2: does seem to have an impact blast radius on your sleep. Nevertheless,

546
00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 2: that's a very different question than saying, what would be

547
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 2: beneficial to my sleep? I'm phrasing the question as at

548
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 2: what point does it become harmful for your sleep? And

549
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 2: the answer is you can eat up to an hour

550
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 2: before bed and show no harm on your sleep. But

551
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 2: that's very different than saying, but what if you'd stop

552
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 2: eating two hours or two and a half hours, would

553
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 2: that have actually improved your sleep. I think what we're

554
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 2: seeing in the data is that it's very idiosyncratic that

555
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 2: you need to test drive it and you will know

556
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 2: which kind of quote unquote type you are. Some people,

557
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 2: mostly night owls, have a preference to eat late in

558
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 2: the day or early in the evening and very little

559
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 2: in the morning, whereas morning types like to eat sort

560
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:43,160
Speaker 2: of breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and

561
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 2: dinner like a pauper. You know, they scale down. I

562
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 2: think it's dependent on your krona type. That said, though,

563
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 2: the two ways that food can disrupt us. First, if

564
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 2: we're eating high sugar content foods at night, it has

565
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 2: a disruptive ima packed and we know this in part

566
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 2: because it could be the not just the activating level

567
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 2: of sort of alertness in the brain that happens with

568
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 2: a sugar hit. It's also that simple sugars are what

569
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 2: we call thermogenic, meaning that when we take on board sugar,

570
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 2: it can just very gently increase our core body temperature

571
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 2: quite quickly. And it turns out temperature is key for sleep.

572
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 2: We need to drop our brain and our body temperature

573
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 2: by about one degree celsius or about two to three

574
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 2: degrees fahrenheit to fall asleep and stay asleep. And it's

575
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 2: the reason you will always find it easier to fall

576
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:41,200
Speaker 2: asleep in a room that's too cold than too hot.

577
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 2: The room that's too cold. It's taking you in the

578
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,239
Speaker 2: right direction for good sleep at night. So when you

579
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:50,959
Speaker 2: onboard simple sugars at night, it starts to just moderately

580
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 2: just gently increase your core body temperature, which can disrupt

581
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 2: your sleep. So I would say content, try to aim for.

582
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 2: If you're going to after sort of carbohydrate, make sure

583
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 2: that they're complex carbohydrates that release their energy in a

584
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 2: much slower fashion. Also, try to aim for a protein

585
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 2: based you know, yogurt is fantastic at that point, make

586
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:16,959
Speaker 2: sure it's not, you know, highly sweetened yogurt, because then

587
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 2: you're taking on board sugar unfortunately, So yogurt together with

588
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 2: some kind of slow release carbohydrate is probably a fantastic

589
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 2: approach to food. The second way though, that you can

590
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 2: disrupt yourself above and beyond the macros of food, is

591
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 2: that when you eat too late, particularly spicy food, it

592
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 2: can cause acid reflux. And that reflux is one of

593
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 2: the other reasons that eating too close to bed will

594
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 2: disrupt the quality of your sleep. So try to go

595
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 2: after more of a slow release sort of protein, maybe

596
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 2: a casine based protein, and then aim for if you're

597
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 2: going to go after carbohydrate, just make it a smaller

598
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 2: portion and make it a complex carbohydrate. That's probably the

599
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 2: best recommendation.

600
00:32:57,800 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's so important to eat about all the

601
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: versions of it because I do think sometimes when you hear, oh, yeah,

602
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 1: you can eat up until you know the last hour,

603
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: you'll be fine, it's so different to well, how do

604
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: I get into performing at my best and feeling at

605
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,960
Speaker 1: my best? And when you're already struggling with the quality

606
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: of sleep, every minute kind of factor is going to

607
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: make a difference. And it's just, yeah, I'm really happy

608
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: that you've gone into the detail there of like, you know,

609
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: why is it that we're saying three hours or what

610
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: does that look like? As I was hearing you speak,

611
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about just how hard it's become

612
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: for people to regulate their lives and manage this. I

613
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: know in some cultures it's just so natural to eat

614
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 1: really late before you go to bed. How much does

615
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: eating a late meal also push back your time of

616
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: wanting to go to sleep? Or is there no correlation there?

617
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 2: No, there actually is a correlation. It's a very astute observation, actually,

618
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 2: which is you can have one type of biological chronotype predilection,

619
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 2: but you can almost violate that biology and override some

620
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 2: of it by creating sort of certain conditions under which

621
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 2: it will distort your natural rhythm. One way that this

622
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:21,520
Speaker 2: rhythm is played out is the release of something called melatonin.

623
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 2: A melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone and it simply

624
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 2: tells your brain and your body when it is darkness,

625
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 2: when it is night, which is to say, melatonin helps

626
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:35,760
Speaker 2: with the timing of our sleep. And there are ways

627
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 2: that you can artificially delay your natural melatonin release. A

628
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 2: good one would be being exposed to too much light

629
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 2: in the evening, too much artificial light, what I would

630
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 2: think of as junk light. There was this concept a

631
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 2: while back of junk DNA. Well, I think there is

632
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 2: something called junk light, and we get too much of

633
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,760
Speaker 2: it at night because we are a dark deprived society

634
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 2: in this modern era. But there's other ways that you

635
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 2: can delay your natural biology. And if let's say that

636
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 2: all food was taken away, all electric light was gone,

637
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 2: all internet service was down, and you know, the lights

638
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 2: were out, you would naturally say to me, well, I'm

639
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 2: someone who would probably not get sleepy until midnight. And

640
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, as I said, no food,

641
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 2: electromagnetic pulse takes out all electricity, everything is gone. All

642
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you probably say, gosh, it's ten point

643
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:29,839
Speaker 2: fifteen pm. How do you feel quite sleepy? And it's

644
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:35,280
Speaker 2: because modernity, through all of its changes, light, social media,

645
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,799
Speaker 2: you know, sort of entertainment that were constantly exposed to.

646
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 2: It's dislocated us from our natural sensation of biology. Telling

647
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 2: as it's time to sleep, most of us think that, well,

648
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 2: I'm probably, you know, a midnight to eight am type person.

649
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 2: When if I took you camping in the sierras for

650
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 2: two weeks and we had all of our sort of

651
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 2: fancy technology measuring sleep wake rhythms, and we would actually

652
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 2: find no, you're much closer to a ten twenty to

653
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 2: six thirty am kind of person. But modern sort of

654
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 2: industrial life has come in the way of that and

655
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 2: it is modified op perception. So out to come back

656
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:21,240
Speaker 2: to your elegant insight. There are ways that we can

657
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:26,239
Speaker 2: almost contort our natural biology, one of which is things

658
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 2: like social media, electric light. But another one is that

659
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 2: you can just manipulate things like food timing, and that

660
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 2: food timing will create an activating alertness sensation in the

661
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,839
Speaker 2: brain and the body and force you perhaps to go

662
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 2: to bed or feel tired and two hours later than

663
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 2: you naturally would otherwise. So you have the way that

664
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 2: we usually measure someone's natural sort of tendencies is we

665
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: bring them into the laboratory and we say say goodbye

666
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 2: to your friends and your family. For the next week,

667
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 2: we take all daylight away, no windows, no nothing, and

668
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 2: we just measure your natural biology when we separate you

669
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:06,799
Speaker 2: from everything that is in the outside world, and that

670
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 2: way we can bring you back to your innate tendencies.

671
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 2: And usually there is quite the mismatch between when we

672
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 2: interview you and say what is your natural rhythm versus

673
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 2: when we measure you what is your biological rhythm? Those

674
00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:21,479
Speaker 2: two things are often quite different.

675
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:24,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. As you were talking, you

676
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 1: mentioned melatonin, and I was thinking about, obviously the rise

677
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: in melotonin gummies melatonin supplements I guess you could take

678
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: before going to bed, and then you also have sleeping pills.

679
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:39,240
Speaker 1: Walk us through what's in sleeping pills versus melatonin gummies

680
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: or the saw and what's your take on both.

681
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very interesting, and obviously, just being a scientist

682
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 2: rather than a medical doctor, what I could offer you

683
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 2: is sort of scientifically descriptive advice rather necessarily medically prescriptive advice.

684
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,800
Speaker 2: But melatonin has had this meteoric rise in the sleep

685
00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 2: supplement world, and now here in America where it's not

686
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 2: regulated by the FDA. You can go into a supermarket

687
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 2: or a grocery store and down there sort of the

688
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:11,240
Speaker 2: health food section, there is this big, sort of purple sector,

689
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:15,880
Speaker 2: and that is the melatonin sector. Melatonin it can be

690
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 2: useful to help regulate your circadian rhythm, and so I

691
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 2: will use it strategically if I'm traveling. If let's say

692
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 2: I go back home to the United Kingdom and I

693
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 2: live just outside of San Francisco, it's eight hours ahead,

694
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 2: so I can use it to try to trick my

695
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:36,600
Speaker 2: brain into thinking, oh, it's nighttime on the first night

696
00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 2: I arrive in the UK, when in fact, my melatonin

697
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 2: peak is not going to arrive for at least another

698
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 2: eight hours because I'm still back on California's time. So,

699
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 2: but for the most part, the way people use melatonin

700
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:52,879
Speaker 2: is night after night after night. And if you look

701
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:56,480
Speaker 2: at the studies, melatonin will only increase the speed with

702
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 2: which you fall asleep by about two point two minutes,

703
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 2: and it will only increase the efficiency of your sleep

704
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:06,960
Speaker 2: by about three point seven percent, which isn't that much

705
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 2: more above and beyond placebo and the reason is because

706
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 2: melatonin doesn't participate in the generation of sleep. Melatonin is

707
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 2: a little bit like the starting official at one hundred

708
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 2: meter race. It brings all of the great sleep races

709
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 2: to the line and begins the Great sleep race, but

710
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 2: it doesn't participate in that sleep race. That's a whole

711
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,400
Speaker 2: different set of brain chemicals which we'll come onto with

712
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 2: sleeping pills. So that's the reason that melatonin isn't a

713
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,319
Speaker 2: particularly effective sleep aid. It's the reason that you will

714
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 2: never see people being prescribed melatonin for insomnia for the

715
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 2: most part, unless they have some kind of circadian rhythm disorder.

716
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 2: So I would say, if you're using melatonin for the

717
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 2: purposes of improving the speed with which you fall asleep

718
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:55,240
Speaker 2: or the generation of sleep, it may be a placebo effect.

719
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:57,319
Speaker 2: And by the way, the placebo effect is the most

720
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 2: reliable effect in all pharmacology. So maybe no, no foul.

721
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 2: The only other caveats I would offer with melotonin first,

722
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 2: because it's not regulated here by the FDA, you don't

723
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 2: know the purity. And there was a great study that's

724
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 2: been replicated and they looked at I think it was

725
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 2: about twenty different vendors of melatonin, and they sampled what

726
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 2: was inside of the pill based on what they said

727
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 2: on the bottle versus what was actually in the pill.

728
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 2: It ranged from about eighty percent less than what it

729
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 2: said to four hundred and sixty percent more than what

730
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:32,319
Speaker 2: it stated on the label. So it's a bit of

731
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 2: a wild west. You don't quite know what you're getting

732
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:37,840
Speaker 2: when you take this need. Yeah, so you've got to,

733
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 2: I would say, be a little bit careful. For the

734
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:42,840
Speaker 2: most part. Melotonin is largely in an at compound anyway,

735
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 2: so we don't need to get sort of, you know,

736
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:47,279
Speaker 2: too phosphorylated about it.

737
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 1: What's your take on the fact that when we're taking

738
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 1: these I guess artificial supplements of melotonin, that it depletes

739
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: our body's ability to make it and regulate it at

740
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 1: the right times that we actually need.

741
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's another critical question, and that's one of

742
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:06,400
Speaker 2: the fears that we have. I think the data we

743
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 2: don't have right now to say one way or the other.

744
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 2: But if you think about, let's say a male who's

745
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 2: undergoing a hormone replacement therapy with exogenous testosterone, what we

746
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:20,240
Speaker 2: know is with certain forms of testosterone replacement therapy, after

747
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:24,399
Speaker 2: some period of time, the testes will stop producing their

748
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 2: own testosterone. And even if you were to stop your

749
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:34,800
Speaker 2: exogenous injection of testosterone, your production of testosterone innately never returns.

750
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 2: And the worry is is that the case with melatonin. Now,

751
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:40,840
Speaker 2: there have been a number of case studies that have

752
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 2: looked at melatonin use, let's say, for up to four

753
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,840
Speaker 2: or even six weeks of constant use, and when they stop,

754
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 2: melatonin production returns. So it looks as though we don't

755
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:54,719
Speaker 2: have to worry. My worry though, with those data, when

756
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 2: someone has sort of offered them to me, is to say,

757
00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 2: but most people in society, they're not using melatonin like that.

758
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 2: They've been using it for years, not six weeks. So

759
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 2: I think I'm still a little bit sort of concerned.

760
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:11,000
Speaker 2: The other thing, or two other things. One is that

761
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 2: the dose that people typically take is what we call

762
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 2: a super physiological dose, meaning it's far higher than anything

763
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 2: your body would naturally release. So people are taking five milligrams,

764
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:26,360
Speaker 2: ten millograms, maybe sometimes even twenty milligrams, whereas what we

765
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 2: would recommend in sleep medicine is somewhere around about one

766
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 2: maybe maximum of three milligrams. So you know, log orders

767
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 2: of magnitude higher. The other thing too to keep in

768
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 2: mind is that melatonin now is being more and more

769
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:44,719
Speaker 2: used in the pediatric setting, so you'll see these melatonin

770
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 2: gummies for kids. And there was some data of gosh

771
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 2: now probably thirty years ago, looking at juvenile mail rats,

772
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 2: meaning that they're going through that sort of adolescent phase,

773
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,520
Speaker 2: and they were getting dosed with high amounts of melatonin,

774
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 2: and that high dose of melatonin in the juvenile male

775
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 2: rats actually stunted their sexual development. So it's stunted testicular growth,

776
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 2: and it caused testicular atrophy, meaning shrinking of the testes.

777
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 2: Imagine if I were to go to let's say a

778
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,920
Speaker 2: teacher and parent meeting one evening at a school and

779
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 2: get up there and say, I would like you this

780
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 2: evening to start dosing your children with a bioactive hormone.

781
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 2: And it is a hormone that I would like you

782
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 2: to dose your children with every night at maybe five

783
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 2: to ten times their natural release. And also it's a

784
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 2: hormone that may actually disrupt their sexual maturation and development.

785
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 2: Who's with me, you know? And at that point, people

786
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 2: would you know, boo you off the safe rightly? So

787
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:49,359
Speaker 2: now again, I'm being a hyperbolic and we don't know

788
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:52,360
Speaker 2: if there is that concern or not. I'm simply saying

789
00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 2: that if we don't know, my sort of suspicion, at

790
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:58,799
Speaker 2: least personally would be I'd probably err on the side

791
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 2: of caution at least stage, particularly because the FDA recently

792
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:09,440
Speaker 2: released data demonstrating that admissions to hospitals for melatonin overdose

793
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 2: have increased by five hundred and three percent in the

794
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:17,560
Speaker 2: past ten years. So there is something going on with melatonin.

795
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 2: I think that we need to be mindful of. Again,

796
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:22,839
Speaker 2: though it's largely an inert compound, so I don't need

797
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 2: to be scam mongering here. Your second part of the

798
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 2: question was sleeping pills. Yeah, and it's a really interesting evolution.

799
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 2: I think we're now at the stage of sleeping pills

800
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 2: three point zero. We sort of web one point h

801
00:44:35,719 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 2: two point zero three point zero. It's kind of the

802
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,759
Speaker 2: same with sleeping pills. We started off with the classic benzodiazepines,

803
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 2: things like valium, and they work to go after an

804
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 2: inhibitary chemical in the brain, neurotransmitter in the brain called GABBA,

805
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:54,919
Speaker 2: which stands for gamma amino butyic acid. Don't worry about

806
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 2: the name. It's simply the red light stop sign for

807
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 2: brain activity. These things like valuum. They would go after

808
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:05,719
Speaker 2: this Gabba system in the brain and they would activate

809
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 2: it and essentially just knock out your cortex. And then

810
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,760
Speaker 2: the second generation of sleeping pills came along, the ambient

811
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 2: Lanesta sonatas of this world. They also go after that

812
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 2: Gabba inhibitry and neurotransmitter system in the brain, but they

813
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 2: just sort of tickle the receptor in the brain a

814
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:26,279
Speaker 2: little bit differently, but for the most part they are

815
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 2: doing the same thing. And that's why we call them

816
00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 2: the sedative hypnotics, because they are sedating your cortex. Now,

817
00:45:34,760 --> 00:45:37,359
Speaker 2: if you take an ambient at full dose, I'm not

818
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:40,760
Speaker 2: going to argue that you're awake, you're clearly not awake,

819
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:44,279
Speaker 2: but to argue that you're in naturalistic sleep. In some ways,

820
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 2: it's an equal fallacy, because if I show you the

821
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 2: electrical signature of your sleep with and without ambient, they're

822
00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 2: not the same. And in some ways, ambient will come

823
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:57,799
Speaker 2: in and it will take a bite out of the

824
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 2: deepest of the deep slow waves of deep non rem sleep,

825
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,760
Speaker 2: sort of this big dent that you see that happens,

826
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 2: and so again it's not necessarily to say that there

827
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 2: isn't a time and a place for the use of

828
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:15,319
Speaker 2: those medications. Sleep medicine right now does recognize them as

829
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:20,359
Speaker 2: being useful potentially in the short term to start to

830
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 2: begin treatment for insomnia, but they are no longer the

831
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 2: first line recommended treatment. And one of the reasons that

832
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 2: in a book that I wrote where I was sort

833
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 2: of I probably wasn't overly enthusiastic about those WEB two

834
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 2: point zero sleeping pills the ambience less and snartists, and

835
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:42,800
Speaker 2: it was for several reasons. First, because sedation is not sleep,

836
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 2: and when you take those medications you mistake the former

837
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 2: for the latter, but it's not natural sleep. We also

838
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 2: know that those sleeping pills have been associated with higher

839
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:55,719
Speaker 2: risks of mortality in certain forms of cancer. Now those

840
00:46:55,760 --> 00:47:00,080
Speaker 2: are associations, we don't know necessarily that that's causal. But

841
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 2: then there was another very interesting study where they looked

842
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 2: at how sleep helps your learning in your memory. And

843
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 2: one of the incredible things about sleep is that it

844
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 2: will take recently learned memories and that memory circuit in

845
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 2: the brain. Sleep will strengthen the synapses so that you

846
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,320
Speaker 2: come back the next day, and that memory is almost

847
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 2: like hitting the save button on those memories. Wow, you

848
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 2: cement it into the architecture of the brain. And they

849
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 2: did a study where they dosed animals after learning amaze

850
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 2: or different types of learning, and they could measure the

851
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 2: strength of the memory circuit, and then they gave them

852
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 2: natural sleep, and sure enough, the next day sleep it

853
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 2: almost double the strength of the memory. Then they did

854
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 2: a version where they dosed the animals with a body

855
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 2: appropriate amount of ambient and those animals slept longer. And

856
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 2: you would think, well, if sleep is helping the memories

857
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 2: and strengthening that memory circuit, sleeping longer should lead to

858
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:58,919
Speaker 2: an even greater strengthening of the memory. Unfortunately, ambient had

859
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 2: unwired them memory and it actually reduced the strength of

860
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 2: the memory by fifty five zero. So to me, that's

861
00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:10,920
Speaker 2: just a demonstration that perhaps the quality of sleep is

862
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 2: not a naturalistic quality of sleep, and it may not

863
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 2: therefore be transacting the natural functions that sleep typically provides

864
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 2: light learning and memory. There is a newer class of medications, though,

865
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 2: are out on the market, and I think the evidence

866
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:29,880
Speaker 2: right now is still early, but so far, I actually

867
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:33,239
Speaker 2: think that they look really quite effective. And again I

868
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:36,359
Speaker 2: think people had taken my stance to be I'm very

869
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 2: anti pharmacology in general. I'm not. I'm very pro pharmacology

870
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:46,800
Speaker 2: if the pharmacology is good and not necessarily causing you harm.

871
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 2: And these new class of medications they are called the

872
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 2: Dora's Drugs and it's do r A small s and

873
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:57,879
Speaker 2: it's a class of drugs and there are currently three

874
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 2: FDA approved. The first one was called bell Somra and

875
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,760
Speaker 2: to play on sort of beautiful sleep, and the actual

876
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:10,319
Speaker 2: chemical name is suborexin. These medications do something really much

877
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,920
Speaker 2: more elegant the ambience and the lenestsis said, that's just

878
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 2: a sedative hit to the cortex. These new class of

879
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 2: medications the doors they go after awake promoting chemical called erexin.

880
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 2: You can think of a rexin like the wakefulness volume

881
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 2: button and when it's turned up, we're wide awake. And

882
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 2: these medications they come in and they act like an

883
00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 2: additional set of chemical fingers and they just go after

884
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 2: the volume button of wakefulness of a rexin and they

885
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 2: just dial it down and then they step back and

886
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 2: they allow the antithesis of wakefulness to come in its place,

887
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 2: which is this thing called naturalistic sleep. And so I

888
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 2: think right now I'm probably more bullish on those medications. Again,

889
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:56,399
Speaker 2: a lot of water to pass under the bridge before

890
00:49:56,440 --> 00:49:58,920
Speaker 2: we understand them, but so far I think that there

891
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 2: are much more elegant, nuanced way of manipulating sleep. The

892
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:05,000
Speaker 2: other thing I would be remiss to mention is there

893
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:08,200
Speaker 2: is an alternative to these medications in general, and it's

894
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 2: called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or CBTI for short.

895
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 2: It is just as effective as sleeping pills in the

896
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 2: short term. But what's nice is that when you stop

897
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 2: working with your therapist after maybe six or eight sessions,

898
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 2: not only do you with a sleeping pill like ambium.

899
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:27,759
Speaker 2: When you stop, you typically go back to the bad

900
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 2: sleep that you are having, or you actually have rebound

901
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:35,280
Speaker 2: insomnia where your sleep is even worse. But with a therapist,

902
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 2: they're giving you the tools and techniques. It's sort of

903
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:40,879
Speaker 2: the difference between let's say, you know, giving a woman

904
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 2: or a man of fish versus teaching them how to fish.

905
00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 2: This way, you actually understand how to manipulate your sleep.

906
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 2: They give you the tools and then you can continue

907
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 2: to sleep better for years later, even after you've stopped

908
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 2: utilizing the therapy unlike medications. So I would just say

909
00:50:57,480 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 2: that that's a little bit about both melotonin, the sort

910
00:50:59,920 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 2: of the emergence of these new flavors of sleep medications,

911
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 2: and then an alternative should people wish for that.

912
00:51:05,880 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's so worrying because I think we've got

913
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: so used to treating our brain and our mind like technology,

914
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 1: and this desire to just switch it on and off.

915
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: Power our power down, power on, power off. It's almost

916
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 1: like you don't ever really stop to think what's happening

917
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: in order for that to happen. And I know I

918
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:30,480
Speaker 1: didn't for a long time where I grew up and

919
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: you just pop a more paracetamoor from where we're from,

920
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:35,400
Speaker 1: but I go from you know, in the US, and

921
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: you've got a headache, Just take this, it's gone. You know,

922
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: you can't sleep. Take this. You fall asleep, and you're

923
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: not really recognizing what's happening at a chemical level and

924
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,400
Speaker 1: how many consequences there are and what's what's actually happening

925
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:49,920
Speaker 1: beneath the scenes. And I think it's so easy to

926
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:54,239
Speaker 1: forget because it's giving you the instant thing that you

927
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 1: want in that moment, but the kind of circuitry that

928
00:51:57,280 --> 00:52:01,759
Speaker 1: it's kicking off or closing down as far more long

929
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 1: term consequences that, like you said, we're not even aware of.

930
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 1: It's sad and hard and difficult that wanting to get

931
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: these natural things to happen that we are naturally wired

932
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:17,400
Speaker 1: to do. Right. These chemicals are being naturally produced, and

933
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:19,359
Speaker 1: there are natural things we can do to boost those

934
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:23,680
Speaker 1: chemicals within ourselves that hopefully get us to go to sleep,

935
00:52:23,719 --> 00:52:25,719
Speaker 1: as you talked about, like seeing light first thing in

936
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:29,919
Speaker 1: the morning, like you know, being outdoor more, reducing blue

937
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: light in the evening, reducing exposure to junk light as

938
00:52:33,600 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: you called it, in the evening. I've definitely seen that

939
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 1: one make a big difference. I'm someone who generally loves light.

940
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:42,400
Speaker 1: I really like being in bright places, and my wife's

941
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:44,799
Speaker 1: the opposite. She knows she's very much like wants to

942
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 1: follow the sun, and so when it's dark, she'll be like,

943
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 1: all the lights have to be off in the house.

944
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: And recently when we've been watching our shows, we've been

945
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:55,360
Speaker 1: watching our shows in total darkness apart from the screen obviously,

946
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:58,719
Speaker 1: and it's so natural for both of us to just

947
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 1: feel tired earlier, Yeah, and we'll be like, all right,

948
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: time to go to bed, and we don't have our

949
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:07,080
Speaker 1: screen in our bedroom, and so we'll finish watching whatever

950
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:10,160
Speaker 1: we're watching, and we've sometimes we're both even like you

951
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:13,320
Speaker 1: can tell we're just falling asleep while watching. We figure

952
00:53:13,360 --> 00:53:15,120
Speaker 1: it out, turn it off and go to our bed

953
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: and we're out to sleep. And just simply completely making

954
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: it dark in the evening has had a huge, huge impact.

955
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 2: On Honestly, I love that you bring this up. And

956
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 2: I would say to anyone listening, if you're going to

957
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:32,440
Speaker 2: do anything with this podcast in terms of an actionable event,

958
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:35,799
Speaker 2: just do this one thing for the next week. If

959
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 2: you get the opportunity, just do me this favor. Set

960
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:42,760
Speaker 2: it to bed alarm one hour before you would normally

961
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:45,440
Speaker 2: go to bed, and when that alarm goes off, shut

962
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:49,239
Speaker 2: down fifty percent, if not seventy five percent of all

963
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,959
Speaker 2: of the lights in your home. And then see how

964
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:56,520
Speaker 2: soperific that will make you feel, how sleepy that you

965
00:53:56,680 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 2: will make you feel. It's really quite striking. Then don't

966
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:03,720
Speaker 2: just stop there. Do what I would call the off

967
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 2: on off version of the experiment. So baseline, you're coming in,

968
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:10,319
Speaker 2: you're normally leaving the lights on blazing. Now we go

969
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 2: into the on version of the experiment, the intervention, which

970
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:17,839
Speaker 2: is darkness one hour before bed, and then after that

971
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 2: one week, go back to doing what you used to do.

972
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 2: Keep all of the lights blazing for right up until

973
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:27,440
Speaker 2: you go to bed. And don't just ask the question

974
00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 2: did my sleep get any better when I did the

975
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 2: manipulation of one hour before bed switched the lights off?

976
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 2: Ask the question did my sleep go back to being

977
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:41,399
Speaker 2: actually worse when I returned to keeping the lights on?

978
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:44,680
Speaker 2: And so you show by directionality, And when you show

979
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 2: by directionality, it's usually a much more powerful version of

980
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 2: the experiment. But and if honestly you can say to

981
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 2: me it made no difference to my sensation of feeling

982
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 2: drowsy and sleepy or the quality of my sleep, then

983
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:01,279
Speaker 2: no problem at all. Keep doing what you're doing and

984
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:03,480
Speaker 2: it just didn't work for you, that's fine too.

985
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:06,879
Speaker 1: But first, here's a quick word from the brands that

986
00:55:06,960 --> 00:55:10,719
Speaker 1: support the show. All right, thank you to our sponsors.

987
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:13,800
Speaker 1: Now let's dive back in. I love what the advice

988
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:16,279
Speaker 1: you give for people who are struggling with insomnia, For

989
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:20,240
Speaker 1: someone who's waking up they go to sleep for three hours,

990
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 1: but then they're up. They finally put themselves back to

991
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:25,160
Speaker 1: sleep after an hour and a half and they sleep

992
00:55:25,200 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 1: for maybe another three hours, and then they're back up again.

993
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: For that person, what's the most helpful way for them

994
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 1: to be able to fall back asleep in that moment.

995
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:35,680
Speaker 1: So we've talked about the roots of the issues and

996
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: the core from the acronym, but what about that person

997
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:40,840
Speaker 1: is just like, I just want to know how to

998
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:42,960
Speaker 1: get back to sleep for another three four hours if

999
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: I could, Yeah, what's the quickest way I can do that?

1000
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:47,120
Speaker 2: I would say there are three things to keep in

1001
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 2: mind here. When I often hear that description, people will

1002
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 2: say I always wake up, but it's about three point

1003
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,640
Speaker 2: fifteen in the morning or it's four ten, and it

1004
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 2: just happens so reliably. My first question to them is,

1005
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:01,200
Speaker 2: how do you know it's four o'clock in the morning.

1006
00:56:01,719 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 2: That's your problem. You're looking at the clock and knowing

1007
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:08,320
Speaker 2: that it's three point fifteen or four am in the morning.

1008
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:10,960
Speaker 2: Does you no favors at all? It's not going to

1009
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:14,879
Speaker 2: change the outcome. So the first recommendation is remove all

1010
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 2: clock faces from the bedroom. It's okay to if you

1011
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:20,759
Speaker 2: really must do. Keep your phone next to your bed,

1012
00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 2: but keep it out of sight, even though I would

1013
00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:25,760
Speaker 2: strongly recommend that you keep your phone in the kitchen,

1014
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 2: or even better still, a friend of mine recommended recently

1015
00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 2: just put it in the garage. Put it in your

1016
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:34,400
Speaker 2: car in the garage, and that way. The amount of

1017
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 2: motivation effort to go and get your phone within the

1018
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:40,000
Speaker 2: first ten minutes of the morning is very very high,

1019
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 2: meaning you're probably not going to do it. So let's

1020
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 2: baby steps. Let's just say crawl, walk, run. First thing

1021
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:47,960
Speaker 2: to do. Just make sure you can't see any clock faces,

1022
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:51,080
Speaker 2: and if you wake up, resist the urge. Because as

1023
00:56:51,120 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 2: soon as you start doing that night after night, you're

1024
00:56:53,640 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 2: actually training your brain, reinforcing it to wake up at

1025
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:00,879
Speaker 2: three pin fifteen in the morning. So we've started that.

1026
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:04,120
Speaker 2: The next question is, well, what should you do about it?

1027
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:06,600
Speaker 2: You know, don't tell me the fancy, remove the clock,

1028
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:10,399
Speaker 2: help me at that point at night, either if you've

1029
00:57:10,400 --> 00:57:13,080
Speaker 2: woken up or you just can't fall asleep. It works

1030
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 2: for both of these. The problem here is that you

1031
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 2: have to get your mind off itself because at that

1032
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 2: moment when you're awake, you start thinking, okay, I'm awake.

1033
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 2: This is now going to just obliterate my day. Tomorrow

1034
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:32,000
Speaker 2: I've got that important meeting. I'm now going to be underslept.

1035
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 2: At that point, the anxiety starts to begin. Then you

1036
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 2: start thinking, oh gosh, I remember now I didn't do

1037
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:39,960
Speaker 2: that one thing that I should have done for tomorrow morning,

1038
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:42,120
Speaker 2: and then I've got to do that thing for next week,

1039
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 2: and I also didn't do that thing last week for

1040
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 2: and again at that point, that's going to keep you

1041
00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:50,800
Speaker 2: awake for the next one or two hours. So your

1042
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:54,600
Speaker 2: job to try to get back asleep is to disengage

1043
00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 2: the mind. How do you do that? I would say

1044
00:57:56,600 --> 00:57:59,280
Speaker 2: there probably four or five different tools that you can use.

1045
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:04,560
Speaker 2: Is meditation. It may be or may not be for you,

1046
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 2: but if you look at the data, meditation for sleep

1047
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:11,520
Speaker 2: immensely powerful. If meditation is not your thing, just do

1048
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:14,400
Speaker 2: something simple like breath work and you can just google

1049
00:58:14,560 --> 00:58:18,200
Speaker 2: box breathing and anything like that is great. You could

1050
00:58:18,200 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 2: also just do a simple body scan. Start at the

1051
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:23,720
Speaker 2: top of the head, move down just and again google

1052
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:26,160
Speaker 2: body scan and you can start to train yourself to

1053
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 2: do that. The next thing you could do is listen

1054
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:31,160
Speaker 2: to a sleep story or just listen to a podcast,

1055
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:33,800
Speaker 2: make sure it's on a timed sort of shut off.

1056
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 2: But again, all of these things common across all of

1057
00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 2: them is you're getting your mind off itself. If I'm meditating,

1058
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:44,280
Speaker 2: I'm not thinking about my worries. If I'm breathing, I'm

1059
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 2: focusing on the breath. If I'm doing some kind of

1060
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 2: a relaxation, a body scan, again, I'm just moving through

1061
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:52,959
Speaker 2: my body. It's very hard for me to think about

1062
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 2: my anxieties. If I'm listening to a sleep story, I'm

1063
00:58:55,800 --> 00:58:59,280
Speaker 2: engaging in sort of the externality of the story, not

1064
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:02,360
Speaker 2: my own in internal worries. And then the final thing

1065
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:04,880
Speaker 2: that was done is great study done at you see Berkeley,

1066
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,240
Speaker 2: not by my group. They found that taking yourself on

1067
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:12,439
Speaker 2: a mental walk in hyper detail was wonderful. So let's

1068
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 2: say it's a walk that I take with my dog,

1069
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:17,600
Speaker 2: and you've got to remember it in high detail. So

1070
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 2: I think, okay, I open the drawer, which colored leish

1071
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:21,760
Speaker 2: am I going to take? I'll take the blue one,

1072
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 2: clip it in with my right hand. With my left hand,

1073
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 2: I open the door, take a left down the stairs,

1074
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:29,800
Speaker 2: go up. It's at that level of detail, and all

1075
00:59:29,920 --> 00:59:33,120
Speaker 2: of these things are taking your mind off itself because

1076
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:36,200
Speaker 2: at that time of night, sleep is a little bit

1077
00:59:36,280 --> 00:59:39,840
Speaker 2: like trying to remember someone's name. Sleep is not something

1078
00:59:39,920 --> 00:59:43,760
Speaker 2: that you make happen. Sleep is something that happens to you,

1079
00:59:44,600 --> 00:59:47,960
Speaker 2: And like trying to remember someone's name, the harder you try,

1080
00:59:48,480 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 2: the further you push it away, and it's only when

1081
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:54,360
Speaker 2: you stop trying does it return to you absolutely, and

1082
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 2: that's the same way with sleeping. Normally, if you engage

1083
00:59:56,800 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 2: in some of these methods and tools, the next thing

1084
01:00:00,520 --> 01:00:04,000
Speaker 2: that you remember is your alarm going off in the morning. Why,

1085
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:07,640
Speaker 2: because you took your mind off itself. If that doesn't

1086
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 2: work and you are consistently waking up and spending long

1087
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:15,480
Speaker 2: amounts of time in bed awake, then we may have

1088
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:19,360
Speaker 2: to implement one of the methods in cognitive behavioral therapy

1089
01:00:19,360 --> 01:00:23,800
Speaker 2: for insomnia, which is something called bed time restructuring. It

1090
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:27,560
Speaker 2: used to be called sleep restriction therapy, and for reasons,

1091
01:00:27,560 --> 01:00:29,800
Speaker 2: obviously you can think it's not the best name. Where

1092
01:00:30,080 --> 01:00:32,080
Speaker 2: you come to me and say, look, I'm having real

1093
01:00:32,120 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 2: problems getting enough sleep. My say, great, we're going to

1094
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:37,160
Speaker 2: do sleep restriction therapy and you say no, no, wait, wait

1095
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:39,959
Speaker 2: a second, you didn't hear me, I can't get enough sleep,

1096
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:41,920
Speaker 2: and you're saying you're going to restrict my sleep. It's

1097
01:00:41,960 --> 01:00:46,200
Speaker 2: actually not sleep restriction, it's time in bed restriction. So

1098
01:00:46,600 --> 01:00:49,160
Speaker 2: you tell me, Okay, i am in bed for eight

1099
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:52,560
Speaker 2: hours and I'm awake for two hours across the night,

1100
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:56,080
Speaker 2: so I'm only getting six hours of sleep, but I'm

1101
01:00:56,120 --> 01:00:59,040
Speaker 2: in bed for eight hours. To me, as a sleep scientist,

1102
01:00:59,160 --> 01:01:03,360
Speaker 2: I then know we've got to constrain the time with

1103
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:06,440
Speaker 2: which you are giving your brain the opportunity to sleep,

1104
01:01:06,680 --> 01:01:10,120
Speaker 2: because your brain has become inefficient. It's like saying, I

1105
01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 2: go to the gym and I take an hour to

1106
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:14,760
Speaker 2: work out, but if you are to actually observe me,

1107
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:17,800
Speaker 2: I'm actually only working out for about twenty five minutes

1108
01:01:17,840 --> 01:01:20,040
Speaker 2: because you know, at the end, I finish my you know,

1109
01:01:20,080 --> 01:01:22,080
Speaker 2: my last strip. Then I do the eleventh rep, which

1110
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 2: is I pick up my phone and I start checking

1111
01:01:24,080 --> 01:01:26,960
Speaker 2: social media, and then I'm talking to people. Utterly inefficient.

1112
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:30,160
Speaker 2: But then at some point someone says to me, look, today,

1113
01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:33,400
Speaker 2: you've only got a maximum of thirty minutes in the gym,

1114
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:35,080
Speaker 2: and as soon as your thirteen minutes is up, we

1115
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:38,320
Speaker 2: kick you out. The first couple of days I'm still

1116
01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:40,360
Speaker 2: doing what I normally do, and I get through maybe

1117
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of my workout because I'm not doing it efficiently.

1118
01:01:44,000 --> 01:01:46,520
Speaker 2: After a week of doing that, I now realize as

1119
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:48,280
Speaker 2: soon as I go into the gym, I put my

1120
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 2: phone down and I just go at it real hard,

1121
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:53,560
Speaker 2: and I still get my twenty five minutes of workout

1122
01:01:53,680 --> 01:01:56,400
Speaker 2: in the thirty minutes. It's the same with sleep restriction.

1123
01:01:57,040 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 2: You tell me, Okay, I'm in bed for eight hours

1124
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:03,240
Speaker 2: and I only get about sort of six hours of sleep. Well,

1125
01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 2: now I'm going to say I'm going to limit you,

1126
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:08,480
Speaker 2: and I'm going to take one hour of sleep away

1127
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:10,920
Speaker 2: from you. You wake up at the same time, but

1128
01:02:10,960 --> 01:02:13,439
Speaker 2: I want you to go to bed consistently one hour later,

1129
01:02:13,600 --> 01:02:16,520
Speaker 2: maybe even one and a half hours later. You tell

1130
01:02:16,560 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 2: me I go to bed normally at ten pm. I

1131
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:21,040
Speaker 2: say you are now not allowed to get into bed

1132
01:02:21,480 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 2: until eleven thirty pm. Push through. I don't care. And

1133
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:27,200
Speaker 2: then you've got to wake up at the same time.

1134
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:30,919
Speaker 2: And after about three or four days of this, your

1135
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:33,600
Speaker 2: brain starts to build up. Now, the first couple of nights,

1136
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:36,240
Speaker 2: you're still going to be sleeping bad. But then after

1137
01:02:36,280 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 2: a couple of nights. Your brain starts to build up

1138
01:02:38,320 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 2: this starvation, this hunger for sleep. It creates a sleep

1139
01:02:41,640 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 2: dead and then after a while, it's like resetting the

1140
01:02:44,640 --> 01:02:47,800
Speaker 2: Wi Fi button on your router. The brain thinks, gosh,

1141
01:02:47,840 --> 01:02:50,560
Speaker 2: I don't have the luxury of eight and a half

1142
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:53,320
Speaker 2: hours of time in bed. I'm only allowed six and

1143
01:02:53,360 --> 01:02:56,800
Speaker 2: a half now or seven. And now, all of a sudden,

1144
01:02:56,840 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 2: it becomes incredibly efficient. You stop waking up in the

1145
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:01,160
Speaker 2: middle of the night. If you do wake up, you

1146
01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:04,280
Speaker 2: fall back asleep very quickly, and you end up getting

1147
01:03:04,320 --> 01:03:08,040
Speaker 2: maybe six and three quarter hours of sleep within seven

1148
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:10,920
Speaker 2: whereas you used to get six and a half hours

1149
01:03:10,920 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 2: of sleep with eight and a half hours of time

1150
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:16,840
Speaker 2: in bed. So it's a quite convoluted method, but I

1151
01:03:16,840 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 2: would say I would use that as the last approach. Firstly,

1152
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:22,479
Speaker 2: try to get your mind off itself. If it's still

1153
01:03:22,520 --> 01:03:25,880
Speaker 2: not working, think about sleep restriction therapy. You can just

1154
01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:27,640
Speaker 2: google it. It's pretty simple.

1155
01:03:27,880 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 1: Great advice. Thank you so much. I love how tactical

1156
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:33,920
Speaker 1: and practical you are. Oh, it's so helpful. Like if

1157
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:35,920
Speaker 1: there's anyone who's listening to this episode right now, and

1158
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:38,480
Speaker 1: you have a friend or a family member who's struggling

1159
01:03:38,480 --> 01:03:41,800
Speaker 1: with sleep. Please pass this episode on because I've never

1160
01:03:41,880 --> 01:03:45,880
Speaker 1: heard someone make it that granular as you are. Honestly,

1161
01:03:45,960 --> 01:03:50,360
Speaker 1: it's so brilliant and it's so helpful because it's so

1162
01:03:50,440 --> 01:03:54,040
Speaker 1: easy to get philosophical about these ideas, and we all

1163
01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:56,600
Speaker 1: understand how important sleep is and how much we need it.

1164
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 1: And you know, I can hear everyone going, yeah, but

1165
01:03:58,760 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 1: what do I do? Really, You've created a map for people,

1166
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:02,800
Speaker 1: So thank you so.

1167
01:04:02,840 --> 01:04:04,880
Speaker 2: Much for you. Well, I think I really it was

1168
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 2: very guilty of doing this. You know, when I first

1169
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 2: came out a couple of years ago speaking about sleep,

1170
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 2: I was speaking all about the science of sleep and

1171
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:13,560
Speaker 2: the bad things that happened about sleep. And I think

1172
01:04:13,600 --> 01:04:15,800
Speaker 2: someone even said my ted talk, which I think was

1173
01:04:15,840 --> 01:04:18,680
Speaker 2: called they name it sleeps your Superpowers, I mean, should

1174
01:04:18,680 --> 01:04:21,400
Speaker 2: have really been called sleep or else dot dot dot,

1175
01:04:21,560 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 2: you know, and it did people with insomnia no favors.

1176
01:04:25,200 --> 01:04:28,480
Speaker 2: I understand that now. But I think what I've tried

1177
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:30,600
Speaker 2: to do is people have said, Okay, I get it,

1178
01:04:30,680 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 2: sleep is important, but how how do I get it?

1179
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:37,440
Speaker 2: And I completely suffered what we call in neurology is

1180
01:04:37,480 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 2: HEMI neglect one half of what I needed to do

1181
01:04:41,240 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 2: as a sort of a public intellectual regarding sleep was missing,

1182
01:04:45,280 --> 01:04:48,120
Speaker 2: which is I was telling everyone how critical it was

1183
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:50,120
Speaker 2: and the bad things that happen when you don't get it.

1184
01:04:50,720 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 2: But I wasn't being very helpful because I wasn't telling

1185
01:04:52,760 --> 01:04:55,920
Speaker 2: anyone how it works and how you know, where is

1186
01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:58,720
Speaker 2: the user manual for sleep? And that's what I'm now

1187
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 2: trying to do. So thank you for saying trying to

1188
01:05:00,960 --> 01:05:02,880
Speaker 2: do a little bit better. You really had to do

1189
01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:03,479
Speaker 2: less bad.

1190
01:05:03,680 --> 01:05:06,840
Speaker 1: Let's just say, yeah, now it's coming across great. I

1191
01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,400
Speaker 1: want to move on to talk about caffeine and coffee.

1192
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 1: You spoke earlier. You said we should be having our

1193
01:05:12,520 --> 01:05:15,560
Speaker 1: last cup of coffee or caffeine at ten to twelve

1194
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 1: hours before we go to bed. Yeah, And when I

1195
01:05:18,720 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 1: was listening to that, I was like, I think a

1196
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 1: lot of people are not doing that, Like from what

1197
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:26,400
Speaker 1: at least from the conversations I'm having, I think people

1198
01:05:26,480 --> 01:05:30,080
Speaker 1: are having it much closer to bed, or they're having

1199
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:32,920
Speaker 1: so much that it's affecting their bed. If you had

1200
01:05:32,920 --> 01:05:36,080
Speaker 1: to tell people just a couple of things about caffeine

1201
01:05:36,280 --> 01:05:38,720
Speaker 1: or coffee and sleep, what would you want them to know?

1202
01:05:39,080 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 2: I think I would say that. Firstly, caffeine has a

1203
01:05:42,120 --> 01:05:45,160
Speaker 2: half life for the average adult of five to six hours,

1204
01:05:45,720 --> 01:05:48,320
Speaker 2: which means that after about five to six hours, fifty

1205
01:05:48,360 --> 01:05:51,040
Speaker 2: percent of the caffeine is still circulating in your brain.

1206
01:05:51,520 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 2: That means that caffeine has a quarter life of ten

1207
01:05:55,040 --> 01:05:57,360
Speaker 2: to twelve hours. So if you have a cup of

1208
01:05:57,360 --> 01:06:01,280
Speaker 2: coffee at noon, twenty five percent of that a quarter

1209
01:06:01,320 --> 01:06:03,600
Speaker 2: of that cup of coffee is still in your brain

1210
01:06:03,640 --> 01:06:06,680
Speaker 2: at midnight. So I don't think many of us would

1211
01:06:06,720 --> 01:06:09,400
Speaker 2: get into bed and sort of pour a quarter of

1212
01:06:09,400 --> 01:06:11,880
Speaker 2: a cup of coffee and then twig it and then

1213
01:06:12,080 --> 01:06:14,280
Speaker 2: you know, put your head on the pillow. We understand

1214
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:16,640
Speaker 2: that that probably doesn't need to good sleep, but in

1215
01:06:16,680 --> 01:06:19,320
Speaker 2: some ways that's not dissimilar to what you're doing if

1216
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:22,120
Speaker 2: you have a cup of coffee at noon. Keep in mind, however,

1217
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:26,919
Speaker 2: there is variability that some people have a faster capability

1218
01:06:26,960 --> 01:06:29,680
Speaker 2: to metabolize or at least clear caffeine from the system.

1219
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:32,400
Speaker 2: And you can do these genetic tests, and there's an

1220
01:06:32,560 --> 01:06:37,880
Speaker 2: enzyme called the CYP one a two gene, and that

1221
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:39,800
Speaker 2: will dictate the speed of it as sort of a

1222
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:43,960
Speaker 2: liver enzyme, a cytochrome enzyme that will speed or slow down,

1223
01:06:44,240 --> 01:06:46,440
Speaker 2: and you will know if you're caffeine sensitive or not.

1224
01:06:47,440 --> 01:06:52,080
Speaker 2: So firstly, the timing of caffeine can be important. Also

1225
01:06:52,240 --> 01:06:55,560
Speaker 2: the dose, and that's why we've looked at people. Even

1226
01:06:55,560 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 2: if you just have one weekly sort of drip brewed

1227
01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:01,880
Speaker 2: cup of coffee in the evening, I'd say it's just

1228
01:07:02,040 --> 01:07:07,360
Speaker 2: one hundred milligrams of caffeine. It will not necessarily prevent

1229
01:07:07,400 --> 01:07:11,560
Speaker 2: you from falling asleep as efficiently, but it will increase

1230
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:14,520
Speaker 2: the chances with which you wake up, and if you

1231
01:07:14,560 --> 01:07:16,920
Speaker 2: wake up, it will increase the duration with which it

1232
01:07:16,960 --> 01:07:19,560
Speaker 2: takes you to fall back asleep. And if it doesn't

1233
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:22,840
Speaker 2: do that, it can also reduce down the depth of

1234
01:07:22,880 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 2: your deep sleep. And we know, for example, that it's

1235
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:28,880
Speaker 2: during that deep sleep when your brain has a cleansing

1236
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:33,080
Speaker 2: system that washes away things like the Alzheimer's proteins, amyloid

1237
01:07:33,120 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 2: and tau protein. So you really would prefer not to

1238
01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:41,040
Speaker 2: try to degrade the quality of your deep sleep, considering

1239
01:07:41,080 --> 01:07:42,800
Speaker 2: all that it does for your brain and your body.

1240
01:07:43,200 --> 01:07:45,240
Speaker 2: But in some ways that's what many of us are

1241
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 2: inadvertently doing if we have caffeine too late in the day.

1242
01:07:50,120 --> 01:07:52,320
Speaker 2: I would say, though that I've probably changed my tune

1243
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:56,800
Speaker 2: a little bit on coffee. I would say, drink coffee,

1244
01:07:57,200 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 2: but the dose and the timing make the poison. Try to,

1245
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:01,920
Speaker 2: as I said, cut yourself off after about three cups

1246
01:08:01,960 --> 01:08:05,880
Speaker 2: of coffee, and try to cut yourself off at least

1247
01:08:06,080 --> 01:08:09,280
Speaker 2: ten hours, you know, as a rule of thumb before bed.

1248
01:08:09,680 --> 01:08:12,919
Speaker 2: The reason I reverted back in some ways to say

1249
01:08:13,240 --> 01:08:16,760
Speaker 2: coffee is not necessarily a bad thing to drink. If

1250
01:08:16,800 --> 01:08:20,600
Speaker 2: you look at the relationship between drinking coffee and the

1251
01:08:20,760 --> 01:08:27,759
Speaker 2: health benefits, they are non negotiably astronomically impressive. Drinking coffee

1252
01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 2: seems to be a very good thing. Now again, it's

1253
01:08:31,240 --> 01:08:34,000
Speaker 2: dose dependent. Once you get past about four cups of coffee,

1254
01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:36,120
Speaker 2: then it goes in the opposite direction. It's not a

1255
01:08:36,160 --> 01:08:39,160
Speaker 2: good thing. And if you look at that list, and

1256
01:08:39,200 --> 01:08:42,040
Speaker 2: it is quite a list of health benefits and disease

1257
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:46,840
Speaker 2: de risking that drinking coffee provides, and you compare that

1258
01:08:46,920 --> 01:08:50,120
Speaker 2: to all of the health benefits that sleep provides, it's

1259
01:08:50,160 --> 01:08:53,680
Speaker 2: a remarkable overlap. So people were saying to me, how

1260
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:57,120
Speaker 2: do you square that circle, because that doesn't make any sense. Well,

1261
01:08:57,160 --> 01:08:59,400
Speaker 2: if you look at the data, the reason that drinking

1262
01:08:59,439 --> 01:09:04,320
Speaker 2: coffee is beneficial is because the coffee bean itself contains

1263
01:09:04,360 --> 01:09:09,559
Speaker 2: a whopping dose of antioxidants, and because in the Western

1264
01:09:09,600 --> 01:09:13,680
Speaker 2: world we're so deficient in our dietary intake of antioxidants,

1265
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:17,960
Speaker 2: this one thing, the coffee bean, has been asked to

1266
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:22,160
Speaker 2: carry the herculean weight of all of our antioxidant needs.

1267
01:09:22,520 --> 01:09:25,400
Speaker 2: And therefore that's why drinking coffee has such a health

1268
01:09:25,439 --> 01:09:29,360
Speaker 2: predictive signal in the literature. Case in point, if you

1269
01:09:29,439 --> 01:09:34,000
Speaker 2: look at decaffeinated coffee has almost the same health benefits.

1270
01:09:34,560 --> 01:09:37,880
Speaker 2: So it's not the caffeine, it's the antioxidants in the

1271
01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:41,639
Speaker 2: coffee bean itself. So again, with all of these things

1272
01:09:41,640 --> 01:09:45,240
Speaker 2: with alcohol and caffeine, I am just a scientist. I

1273
01:09:45,280 --> 01:09:48,439
Speaker 2: have no right to tell anyone how to live their life,

1274
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:51,439
Speaker 2: and I don't want to be the healthiest person in

1275
01:09:51,439 --> 01:09:54,160
Speaker 2: the graveyard either. Life is to be lived for good

1276
01:09:54,240 --> 01:09:56,680
Speaker 2: you know, jouir de vive for goodness sake, live a

1277
01:09:56,720 --> 01:09:59,800
Speaker 2: little bit. All I simply want to do is in

1278
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:03,479
Speaker 2: empower you with the scientific evidence and then you can

1279
01:10:03,520 --> 01:10:05,600
Speaker 2: make an informed choice as to how you want to

1280
01:10:05,640 --> 01:10:07,559
Speaker 2: live your life. But does that help a little bit

1281
01:10:07,560 --> 01:10:09,120
Speaker 2: in terms of navigating caffeine?

1282
01:10:09,160 --> 01:10:12,200
Speaker 1: And yeah, absolutely huge and The other thing you mentioned

1283
01:10:12,240 --> 01:10:16,439
Speaker 1: at this point of the the acronym is alcohol, and

1284
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:20,280
Speaker 1: you were talking about how just the negative effects of

1285
01:10:20,320 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 1: alcohol in terms of that disruption of our sleep. If

1286
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:25,640
Speaker 1: there were a couple of things you wanted people to

1287
01:10:25,680 --> 01:10:28,000
Speaker 1: know about alcohol and sleep, what would they be.

1288
01:10:28,080 --> 01:10:31,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, there, I think I probably haven't changed my tune

1289
01:10:31,760 --> 01:10:35,240
Speaker 2: and I don't see any upside in terms of alcohol

1290
01:10:35,360 --> 01:10:38,720
Speaker 2: for health or certainly for sleep. Alcohol is probably the

1291
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:43,200
Speaker 2: most misunderstood sleep aid that there is out there. Unfortunately,

1292
01:10:43,360 --> 01:10:47,360
Speaker 2: it's not an aid at all. Alcohol will hurt your

1293
01:10:47,400 --> 01:10:50,160
Speaker 2: sleep in at least one of three different ways. The

1294
01:10:50,200 --> 01:10:53,200
Speaker 2: first thing is that alcohol is also in the class

1295
01:10:53,240 --> 01:10:56,599
Speaker 2: of drugs that we call the sedatives. And again, when

1296
01:10:56,640 --> 01:10:59,280
Speaker 2: you have a couple of sort of nightcaps in the evening,

1297
01:10:59,320 --> 01:11:03,040
Speaker 2: you say it helps me fall asleep. Alcohol is simply

1298
01:11:03,240 --> 01:11:08,160
Speaker 2: helping you lose consciousness more quickly. It's not really putting

1299
01:11:08,160 --> 01:11:11,960
Speaker 2: you into natural sleep. The second thing is that alcohol

1300
01:11:12,040 --> 01:11:15,240
Speaker 2: will fragment your sleep in the first half of the night.

1301
01:11:15,760 --> 01:11:18,520
Speaker 2: And the reason that it does that is that alcohol

1302
01:11:18,640 --> 01:11:23,040
Speaker 2: will activate the fight or flight branch of the nervous system. Now,

1303
01:11:23,160 --> 01:11:24,840
Speaker 2: in the first half of the night, that's when we

1304
01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:27,120
Speaker 2: get most of our deep sleep, and when we go

1305
01:11:27,160 --> 01:11:30,160
Speaker 2: into deep sleep, we shift from the fight or flight

1306
01:11:30,200 --> 01:11:32,599
Speaker 2: branch of the nervous system over to what we call

1307
01:11:32,640 --> 01:11:38,120
Speaker 2: the parasympathetic nervous system, which is this quiescent nervous branch. Now,

1308
01:11:38,240 --> 01:11:41,479
Speaker 2: alcohol will crank you back over to the fight or

1309
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:45,840
Speaker 2: flight sympathetic nervous system, which then makes your sleep, the

1310
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:48,519
Speaker 2: depth of your sleep far more shallow, so you don't

1311
01:11:48,520 --> 01:11:51,560
Speaker 2: get as much deep sleep. You wake up more frequently,

1312
01:11:51,840 --> 01:11:55,040
Speaker 2: But those awakenings are so brief that you never commit

1313
01:11:55,080 --> 01:11:58,120
Speaker 2: them to memory, so you never think alcohol is harming

1314
01:11:58,160 --> 01:12:01,280
Speaker 2: my sleep by fragmenting it, sort of littering it with

1315
01:12:01,320 --> 01:12:04,519
Speaker 2: all of these awakenings, so your deep sleep suffers, your

1316
01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:09,280
Speaker 2: sleep is fragmented. Then, finally, alcohol is very potent at

1317
01:12:09,320 --> 01:12:12,240
Speaker 2: blocking your dream sleep or your rapid eye movement. Sleep

1318
01:12:12,560 --> 01:12:15,519
Speaker 2: and dream sleep is critical for things like emotional and

1319
01:12:15,560 --> 01:12:19,640
Speaker 2: mental health. It's essential for creativity. It's also important for

1320
01:12:19,760 --> 01:12:23,120
Speaker 2: hormonal health. It's during rem sleep when we release our

1321
01:12:23,200 --> 01:12:27,160
Speaker 2: peak levels of testosterone in both men and women, and

1322
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:30,479
Speaker 2: alcohol will sort of short change you of that rem sleep.

1323
01:12:30,880 --> 01:12:33,720
Speaker 2: So on all of those counts, you know, I just

1324
01:12:33,840 --> 01:12:36,799
Speaker 2: can't say in good conscience. Even a glass of wine

1325
01:12:37,040 --> 01:12:40,360
Speaker 2: with dinner, you know, is that okay, we can see

1326
01:12:40,360 --> 01:12:43,559
Speaker 2: the blest radius. It is in some ways both a

1327
01:12:43,720 --> 01:12:47,559
Speaker 2: dose and also time dependent process, such that if you have,

1328
01:12:47,720 --> 01:12:50,560
Speaker 2: let's say, a glass of wine with lunch versus a

1329
01:12:50,600 --> 01:12:53,200
Speaker 2: glass of wine with dinner, the glass of wine with

1330
01:12:53,280 --> 01:12:56,320
Speaker 2: lunch will have less of a damaging impact on your

1331
01:12:56,320 --> 01:13:00,680
Speaker 2: sleep at night. So the completely politically incorrect thing that

1332
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 2: I would never say on a podcast would be go

1333
01:13:03,320 --> 01:13:05,760
Speaker 2: to the pub in the morning and the alcohol is

1334
01:13:05,760 --> 01:13:08,200
Speaker 2: out your system in the evening and no harm, no foult.

1335
01:13:08,240 --> 01:13:11,120
Speaker 2: But no, of course I would never suggest something like that.

1336
01:13:11,200 --> 01:13:13,080
Speaker 2: But yeah, what are you doing tomorrow morning?

1337
01:13:13,080 --> 01:13:17,439
Speaker 1: Now, before we dive into the next moment, let's hear

1338
01:13:17,479 --> 01:13:22,080
Speaker 1: from our sponsors and back to our episode. Like you said,

1339
01:13:22,080 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 1: I think it's so easy for human just ideas that

1340
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:31,679
Speaker 1: become prevalent in human society that we just take as

1341
01:13:31,680 --> 01:13:36,200
Speaker 1: being normal, or habits and practices that become normalized over

1342
01:13:36,240 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 1: a certain period of time, and we just start operating

1343
01:13:39,080 --> 01:13:43,320
Speaker 1: like it's normal, it's okay, it's accepted, and not really

1344
01:13:43,400 --> 01:13:46,920
Speaker 1: realizing what's going on. And I'm also of the spirit

1345
01:13:46,960 --> 01:13:50,240
Speaker 1: of we should enjoy life and appreciate life and everything else.

1346
01:13:50,320 --> 01:13:52,559
Speaker 1: But I think to really appreciate life, it means to

1347
01:13:52,680 --> 01:13:55,760
Speaker 1: know what works for you and what doesn't, and what

1348
01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:58,920
Speaker 1: helps you and what doesn't, Yeah, and to really recognize

1349
01:13:58,920 --> 01:14:01,280
Speaker 1: the value of the impact of that, because I think

1350
01:14:01,280 --> 01:14:04,080
Speaker 1: it's really easy to be like, oh, yeah, well, you know,

1351
01:14:04,200 --> 01:14:05,960
Speaker 1: let's just see how things go, and then all of

1352
01:14:06,000 --> 01:14:07,720
Speaker 1: a sudden you hear about a family member or a

1353
01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:10,519
Speaker 1: friend who gets a diagnosis, and then that's when it

1354
01:14:10,600 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 1: kind of really hits you. And I've had that far

1355
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:15,720
Speaker 1: too often, where I've had friends and family members at

1356
01:14:15,800 --> 01:14:20,519
Speaker 1: young ages diagnosed with things and it's consistent with a habit.

1357
01:14:20,760 --> 01:14:23,080
Speaker 1: And by the way, sometimes someone gets something and it's

1358
01:14:23,120 --> 01:14:26,000
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with their habits and it's bad

1359
01:14:26,080 --> 01:14:28,760
Speaker 1: luck and it's you know, everything else. And both of

1360
01:14:28,800 --> 01:14:32,600
Speaker 1: those are positions to be compassionate and empathetic. But I

1361
01:14:32,640 --> 01:14:34,600
Speaker 1: think when it comes to ourselves, I look at it

1362
01:14:34,640 --> 01:14:36,559
Speaker 1: and go, I would like it to not be my

1363
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:40,280
Speaker 1: own fault. If it happens from something beyond me, great, Yeah,

1364
01:14:40,400 --> 01:14:43,840
Speaker 1: But if I can avoid it by taking responsibility and

1365
01:14:44,160 --> 01:14:47,240
Speaker 1: accountability for my health, then that's probably a good play

1366
01:14:47,240 --> 01:14:48,719
Speaker 1: and a good way to live. Yeah.

1367
01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:51,559
Speaker 2: I like the way that you're thinking. They're in the

1368
01:14:51,600 --> 01:14:55,280
Speaker 2: sense that so many of us see sleep as a

1369
01:14:55,439 --> 01:14:58,320
Speaker 2: cost to our lives. Yes, and instead, I think what

1370
01:14:58,360 --> 01:15:00,960
Speaker 2: we have to realize is think of sleep like an

1371
01:15:00,960 --> 01:15:04,960
Speaker 2: investment in tomorrow, not a cost of what I get

1372
01:15:05,160 --> 01:15:08,200
Speaker 2: for today. And you're right when you look at some

1373
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:10,719
Speaker 2: of the mentality of you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

1374
01:15:11,520 --> 01:15:13,360
Speaker 2: I mean, firstly, what we know from the data is

1375
01:15:13,400 --> 01:15:16,120
Speaker 2: that if we adopt that mentality, you will be both

1376
01:15:16,200 --> 01:15:18,920
Speaker 2: dead sooner and the quality of your life will be

1377
01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:23,400
Speaker 2: significantly worse as a consequence. But also if you look

1378
01:15:23,400 --> 01:15:27,760
Speaker 2: at the data between short sleep and cardiovascular disease, if

1379
01:15:27,800 --> 01:15:30,360
Speaker 2: you look at short sleep and certain forms of cancer,

1380
01:15:30,360 --> 01:15:34,559
Speaker 2: not all forms of cancer, short sleep and dementia risk.

1381
01:15:35,400 --> 01:15:38,400
Speaker 2: Imagine if you were to say, in twenty years time,

1382
01:15:38,439 --> 01:15:41,320
Speaker 2: when you're at the hospital and you've just lost a

1383
01:15:41,360 --> 01:15:45,320
Speaker 2: third of your heart function because you've had a massive

1384
01:15:45,360 --> 01:15:49,240
Speaker 2: cronary blockage, if I were to at that point say

1385
01:15:49,680 --> 01:15:52,559
Speaker 2: I could wave a magic wand right now in the

1386
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:56,960
Speaker 2: hospital at your bedside, and if only you could go

1387
01:15:57,040 --> 01:16:01,360
Speaker 2: back twenty years and start investing in your instead of

1388
01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:04,160
Speaker 2: maybe adopting what some not all people, but some have

1389
01:16:04,240 --> 01:16:06,479
Speaker 2: this sort of almost this it's almost like a sleep

1390
01:16:06,520 --> 01:16:09,680
Speaker 2: machismo attitude. I think in certain sectors of the workplace

1391
01:16:10,080 --> 01:16:14,320
Speaker 2: we've got this competitive undersleeping, you know, mentality, the sleep

1392
01:16:14,320 --> 01:16:19,479
Speaker 2: braggadoccio notion. But I know no one who twenty years

1393
01:16:19,520 --> 01:16:22,360
Speaker 2: later in a hospital wouldn't say, if I could go

1394
01:16:22,520 --> 01:16:26,800
Speaker 2: back and remove all of this cardiovascular consequence that you've

1395
01:16:26,840 --> 01:16:29,880
Speaker 2: just had by way of this heart attack, if only

1396
01:16:29,920 --> 01:16:32,599
Speaker 2: you'd gone back and started just to try to invest

1397
01:16:32,680 --> 01:16:35,760
Speaker 2: even just five or six days a week in consistent

1398
01:16:35,800 --> 01:16:38,720
Speaker 2: good sleep, would you do it? Most people at that

1399
01:16:38,840 --> 01:16:42,719
Speaker 2: point would say absolutely, I wish I could take it back.

1400
01:16:43,200 --> 01:16:45,880
Speaker 2: But it's so hard for us to prospect into the

1401
01:16:45,920 --> 01:16:50,160
Speaker 2: future and do back casting. Many of us just can't

1402
01:16:50,200 --> 01:16:52,719
Speaker 2: do forecasting at all very well in terms of our health.

1403
01:16:52,920 --> 01:16:54,639
Speaker 2: So what do we do? We burn the candle at

1404
01:16:54,640 --> 01:16:59,160
Speaker 2: both ends. Also, I think it's not anyone's fault regarding

1405
01:16:59,200 --> 01:17:03,519
Speaker 2: this global sleep loss epidemic, and this it is a

1406
01:17:03,680 --> 01:17:07,440
Speaker 2: consistent sort of sleep neglect, because firstly, I think society

1407
01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:11,599
Speaker 2: is conspiring against us to get sufficient sleep, because sleep

1408
01:17:11,680 --> 01:17:14,760
Speaker 2: has this image problem. We think of people who get

1409
01:17:14,760 --> 01:17:19,000
Speaker 2: sufficient sleep as slothful, as lazy, that sleep. Whoever the

1410
01:17:19,040 --> 01:17:21,080
Speaker 2: pr agent for sleep has been, we probably should have

1411
01:17:21,080 --> 01:17:24,200
Speaker 2: fired them long ago, because I'm going to try and

1412
01:17:24,280 --> 01:17:28,160
Speaker 2: bush back at least. But also from a perspective of

1413
01:17:28,160 --> 01:17:30,639
Speaker 2: someone who doesn't know anything about sleep, I would just think, well,

1414
01:17:30,960 --> 01:17:35,599
Speaker 2: my body's at rest, my mind is dormant. How much

1415
01:17:35,720 --> 01:17:38,799
Speaker 2: danger is there really in losing one hour of sleep

1416
01:17:39,280 --> 01:17:42,679
Speaker 2: or even two hours of sleep? Surely there's not much danger.

1417
01:17:43,560 --> 01:17:47,680
Speaker 2: It can even actually change your very nucleic alphabet. So

1418
01:17:47,680 --> 01:17:50,439
Speaker 2: I'll tell you about a fascinating study that impressed upon

1419
01:17:50,560 --> 01:17:54,200
Speaker 2: me the importance. They took perfectly healthy individuals and they

1420
01:17:54,280 --> 01:17:57,400
Speaker 2: limited them to six hours of sleeper night for one week.

1421
01:17:57,880 --> 01:17:59,559
Speaker 2: By the way, six hours of sleep a night for

1422
01:17:59,600 --> 01:18:03,200
Speaker 2: one week is actually what many people are getting in society.

1423
01:18:03,720 --> 01:18:05,760
Speaker 2: At least a third of the population seemed to be

1424
01:18:05,800 --> 01:18:08,439
Speaker 2: getting six hours or less during the week. So it

1425
01:18:08,439 --> 01:18:12,240
Speaker 2: was a very sort of ecologically relevant experiment. And then

1426
01:18:12,320 --> 01:18:16,400
Speaker 2: they measured the change in their gene activity profile relative

1427
01:18:16,400 --> 01:18:19,800
Speaker 2: to when those same individuals were getting a full eight

1428
01:18:19,840 --> 01:18:23,080
Speaker 2: hour night of sleep, and there were two key findings. First,

1429
01:18:23,200 --> 01:18:28,040
Speaker 2: a sizeable and significant seven hundred and eleven genes were

1430
01:18:28,120 --> 01:18:32,200
Speaker 2: distorted in their activity, caused by that six hours a

1431
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:35,759
Speaker 2: night of sleep. If that wasn't impressible enough, the second

1432
01:18:35,880 --> 01:18:38,439
Speaker 2: was that about half of those genes were increased in

1433
01:18:38,479 --> 01:18:42,519
Speaker 2: their activity, the other half were decreased. Now, the genes

1434
01:18:42,560 --> 01:18:46,200
Speaker 2: that were increased in their activity were genes that were

1435
01:18:46,200 --> 01:18:51,320
Speaker 2: associated with biological stress and cardiovascular disease, genes that were

1436
01:18:51,360 --> 01:18:54,840
Speaker 2: associated with the promotion of tumors, and genes that were

1437
01:18:54,840 --> 01:18:59,759
Speaker 2: associated with long term chronic inflammation within the body, whereas

1438
01:18:59,760 --> 01:19:02,840
Speaker 2: though genes that were actually switched off or turned down

1439
01:19:03,280 --> 01:19:07,519
Speaker 2: were genes associated with your immune system. And so to me,

1440
01:19:07,720 --> 01:19:11,160
Speaker 2: what that demonstrated was that there's no aspect of our

1441
01:19:11,280 --> 01:19:15,360
Speaker 2: wellness that can retreat at the sign of sleep deprivation

1442
01:19:15,560 --> 01:19:18,960
Speaker 2: and get away unscathed. That it's almost like a broken

1443
01:19:19,000 --> 01:19:22,000
Speaker 2: water pipe in your home. That sleep loss will leak

1444
01:19:22,080 --> 01:19:25,320
Speaker 2: down into every knock and cranny of your physiology and

1445
01:19:25,479 --> 01:19:30,559
Speaker 2: even tamper with the very DNA alphabet that spells out

1446
01:19:30,640 --> 01:19:34,880
Speaker 2: your daily health narrative. And so why if you didn't

1447
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:38,360
Speaker 2: know that evidence, why would you think that sleep is

1448
01:19:38,439 --> 01:19:42,639
Speaker 2: so necessarily important. If I, just as a late public person,

1449
01:19:42,680 --> 01:19:44,920
Speaker 2: would be thinking, well, my mind's dorm up, my body

1450
01:19:44,920 --> 01:19:46,920
Speaker 2: gets a bit of a rest. Well. I can rest

1451
01:19:46,960 --> 01:19:49,519
Speaker 2: when I'm watching Netflix. My body gets plenty enough for

1452
01:19:49,560 --> 01:19:52,400
Speaker 2: rest there, so I don't need my sleep. But if

1453
01:19:52,439 --> 01:19:55,200
Speaker 2: you think about it, sleep is the most idiotic of

1454
01:19:55,240 --> 01:19:59,280
Speaker 2: all evolutionary creations. You know, finding a mate, You're not reproducing,

1455
01:19:59,320 --> 01:20:01,759
Speaker 2: you're not caring for you're young, you're not foraging for food,

1456
01:20:01,800 --> 01:20:05,240
Speaker 2: and worse, you're vulnerable to predation. Sleep should have been

1457
01:20:05,280 --> 01:20:08,360
Speaker 2: strongly selected against during the course of evolution if it

1458
01:20:08,479 --> 01:20:13,560
Speaker 2: wasn't important. It is absolutely important. It serves a constellation

1459
01:20:14,120 --> 01:20:17,320
Speaker 2: of different vital functions for brain and body. But if

1460
01:20:17,320 --> 01:20:20,280
Speaker 2: I didn't know about them, of course I'd neglect my sleep.

1461
01:20:20,320 --> 01:20:23,559
Speaker 2: So I'm simply saying that to both impress the importance

1462
01:20:23,600 --> 01:20:27,599
Speaker 2: of sleep, but also try to be compassionately sensitive to why.

1463
01:20:28,120 --> 01:20:32,400
Speaker 2: I understand people neglected not because they're trying to show

1464
01:20:32,439 --> 01:20:36,240
Speaker 2: how brave and teflong coated they are. It's just because

1465
01:20:36,560 --> 01:20:39,400
Speaker 2: no one understands sleep. So that's why I've tried to

1466
01:20:39,400 --> 01:20:41,360
Speaker 2: sort of make it in part A mission for life

1467
01:20:41,439 --> 01:20:45,120
Speaker 2: is sleep has been than the neglected stepsister. In the

1468
01:20:45,120 --> 01:20:47,679
Speaker 2: health conversation of today, we speak a lot about diet

1469
01:20:47,680 --> 01:20:50,360
Speaker 2: and exercise, and that's great, and because of people like you.

1470
01:20:50,439 --> 01:20:52,880
Speaker 2: I think we're speaking so much more about emotional and

1471
01:20:53,000 --> 01:20:55,720
Speaker 2: mental health, which to me is the fourth pillar of

1472
01:20:56,000 --> 01:20:59,040
Speaker 2: life and health. Sleep is one of those pillars too, though,

1473
01:20:59,040 --> 01:21:01,280
Speaker 2: and so hope this helps a little bit.

1474
01:21:01,439 --> 01:21:03,559
Speaker 1: No, it's brilliant, Matt. I think you are the best

1475
01:21:03,600 --> 01:21:06,679
Speaker 1: pr agent be Sep could ever ask for. I think

1476
01:21:06,760 --> 01:21:11,240
Speaker 1: your method of communication, the empathy and compassion that comes

1477
01:21:11,240 --> 01:21:14,040
Speaker 1: with it, the lack of judgment, and at the same

1478
01:21:14,080 --> 01:21:16,559
Speaker 1: time waking us up to the reality, which I think

1479
01:21:17,040 --> 01:21:20,799
Speaker 1: is an important part of the narrative, comes across extremely clearly.

1480
01:21:21,520 --> 01:21:23,439
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful, and I hope you'll come back

1481
01:21:23,479 --> 01:21:27,320
Speaker 1: on many many times. I had to depose this question

1482
01:21:27,479 --> 01:21:29,680
Speaker 1: to extend it. There's so much we didn't even get

1483
01:21:29,720 --> 01:21:32,600
Speaker 1: to today. But we end every on Purpose episode with

1484
01:21:32,600 --> 01:21:35,120
Speaker 1: a final five and these have to be answered in

1485
01:21:35,160 --> 01:21:38,280
Speaker 1: one word or one sentence maximum. But I know I'm

1486
01:21:38,320 --> 01:21:41,800
Speaker 1: going to break that rule with you already. So the

1487
01:21:41,840 --> 01:21:45,760
Speaker 1: first question is what is the best sleep advice you've

1488
01:21:45,760 --> 01:21:48,520
Speaker 1: ever heard, received or given regularity?

1489
01:21:48,640 --> 01:21:51,519
Speaker 2: Digital detox, going to bed at the same time, waking

1490
01:21:51,640 --> 01:21:54,800
Speaker 2: up at the same time. Do that so many other

1491
01:21:54,840 --> 01:21:58,960
Speaker 2: things like quantitine quality will fall into place, and then

1492
01:21:59,000 --> 01:22:02,479
Speaker 2: the second is as much as you can in the

1493
01:22:02,560 --> 01:22:05,679
Speaker 2: last hour before bed, try to stay off your phone

1494
01:22:06,120 --> 01:22:10,240
Speaker 2: and in the morning give yourself ten minutes. Why because

1495
01:22:10,560 --> 01:22:13,000
Speaker 2: what we do is we train ourselves. What's the first

1496
01:22:13,000 --> 01:22:15,200
Speaker 2: thing that most people do when they wake up, They

1497
01:22:15,240 --> 01:22:18,840
Speaker 2: open their phone, and there's this way the tsunami of

1498
01:22:18,840 --> 01:22:22,479
Speaker 2: anxiety comes flooding in every day. You are training yourself

1499
01:22:22,520 --> 01:22:25,840
Speaker 2: when you go to bed at night to expect that

1500
01:22:26,160 --> 01:22:29,680
Speaker 2: huge wave of anxiety when you wake up. It's what

1501
01:22:29,720 --> 01:22:33,760
Speaker 2: we call anticipatory anxiety. And most people will have had this.

1502
01:22:34,240 --> 01:22:36,720
Speaker 2: You have an early morning flight and you know you've

1503
01:22:36,720 --> 01:22:39,240
Speaker 2: got to wake up for it. It's essential. And you

1504
01:22:39,400 --> 01:22:41,760
Speaker 2: also know that your sleep that night will be so

1505
01:22:42,000 --> 01:22:45,000
Speaker 2: shallow and so sort of diminutive.

1506
01:22:45,160 --> 01:22:45,720
Speaker 1: Early.

1507
01:22:45,800 --> 01:22:48,960
Speaker 2: Well, this is a diet version of that. But every

1508
01:22:49,040 --> 01:22:51,960
Speaker 2: single day, by way of swiping open on your phone

1509
01:22:51,960 --> 01:22:54,639
Speaker 2: next to you, just give yourself ten minutes in the morning.

1510
01:22:54,720 --> 01:22:59,240
Speaker 2: I promise your sleep will be better. So regularity digital detos.

1511
01:22:58,840 --> 01:23:02,720
Speaker 1: I love it. What's the worst sleep advice you've ever

1512
01:23:02,720 --> 01:23:03,920
Speaker 1: heard received or given?

1513
01:23:04,280 --> 01:23:07,240
Speaker 2: That you can make up sleep at the weekend. You

1514
01:23:07,320 --> 01:23:11,200
Speaker 2: can't accumulate a debt and then hope to fully pay it.

1515
01:23:11,240 --> 01:23:14,160
Speaker 2: Off at the weekend, and there's some great evidence looking

1516
01:23:14,200 --> 01:23:17,240
Speaker 2: at all sorts of brain and body metrics that for

1517
01:23:17,280 --> 01:23:19,559
Speaker 2: the most part, some of them you can kind of

1518
01:23:19,600 --> 01:23:21,840
Speaker 2: sleep back at the weekend. But for the most part,

1519
01:23:21,880 --> 01:23:25,200
Speaker 2: when you look at your cardiovascular system, your metabolic system,

1520
01:23:25,240 --> 01:23:28,000
Speaker 2: your immune system, your hormonal system, if you look at

1521
01:23:28,000 --> 01:23:33,559
Speaker 2: your brain processes, your cognition, your emotional stability or instability,

1522
01:23:33,600 --> 01:23:36,800
Speaker 2: all of these things do not fully recover by weight

1523
01:23:36,920 --> 01:23:41,160
Speaker 2: of weekend sleep. So you can't do this binge purge process.

1524
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:44,719
Speaker 2: So I would say that the myth of makeup sleep

1525
01:23:45,360 --> 01:23:49,240
Speaker 2: is unfortunately just that that it's not like the bank.

1526
01:23:49,439 --> 01:23:50,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you just have to get into a good

1527
01:23:51,040 --> 01:23:53,519
Speaker 1: rhythm and a good pattern and invest in it.

1528
01:23:53,520 --> 01:23:56,479
Speaker 2: It's just I mean, if it was like that, trust me,

1529
01:23:56,720 --> 01:23:58,639
Speaker 2: you know, mother nature would have figured out a way

1530
01:23:58,640 --> 01:24:01,400
Speaker 2: to have us short sleeping all the time, because it's

1531
01:24:01,520 --> 01:24:05,439
Speaker 2: sleep is so deleterious to any organism, and if there

1532
01:24:05,520 --> 01:24:07,960
Speaker 2: was a way to short change, we would have been

1533
01:24:08,040 --> 01:24:10,840
Speaker 2: short changing long ago, and it would be baked into

1534
01:24:10,880 --> 01:24:14,479
Speaker 2: our sort of sleep DNA biology. The fact that it's

1535
01:24:14,520 --> 01:24:16,840
Speaker 2: not that human beings are the only species that will

1536
01:24:16,880 --> 01:24:19,719
Speaker 2: deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent good reason

1537
01:24:20,360 --> 01:24:22,920
Speaker 2: is testament to the fact that you just can't make

1538
01:24:22,960 --> 01:24:24,760
Speaker 2: it up like that, the system doesn't work like that.

1539
01:24:25,040 --> 01:24:29,160
Speaker 1: Question number three, how does what does bad sleep do

1540
01:24:29,360 --> 01:24:30,360
Speaker 1: to your mental health?

1541
01:24:30,720 --> 01:24:35,600
Speaker 2: Firstly, you become much more emotionally erratic. You become pendulum like,

1542
01:24:36,240 --> 01:24:38,759
Speaker 2: why is that? Yeah, part of the reason is because

1543
01:24:38,800 --> 01:24:41,760
Speaker 2: there is a part of your prefrontal cortex right down

1544
01:24:41,800 --> 01:24:45,000
Speaker 2: in the middle. So my prefrontal cortex sits right above

1545
01:24:45,040 --> 01:24:47,679
Speaker 2: my eyes. It's the most evolved part of our sort

1546
01:24:47,720 --> 01:24:51,680
Speaker 2: of hominid brain. It's what makes us human beings. That

1547
01:24:51,840 --> 01:24:55,360
Speaker 2: middle part of the brain acts like almost a brake

1548
01:24:55,479 --> 01:24:59,559
Speaker 2: pedal on our emotional accelerator regions deep in the brain.

1549
01:25:00,000 --> 01:25:02,800
Speaker 2: And when we are underslept, that part of the brain

1550
01:25:03,240 --> 01:25:07,639
Speaker 2: gets shut down. So now we become all emotional gas

1551
01:25:07,640 --> 01:25:12,040
Speaker 2: pedal and too little regulatory control break as it were,

1552
01:25:12,240 --> 01:25:15,479
Speaker 2: and that's why we become so reactive. We become you know,

1553
01:25:15,560 --> 01:25:19,400
Speaker 2: it's that I just snapped dot dot dot fill in

1554
01:25:19,439 --> 01:25:24,160
Speaker 2: the blank when I am underslept. So firstly, our regulation

1555
01:25:24,280 --> 01:25:28,200
Speaker 2: of our emotions becomes impaired as a consequence. Secondly, the

1556
01:25:28,320 --> 01:25:32,080
Speaker 2: anxiety centers of the brain can become thirty to forty

1557
01:25:32,120 --> 01:25:36,840
Speaker 2: percent more reactive when we're not getting sufficient sleep. You

1558
01:25:36,880 --> 01:25:39,439
Speaker 2: can flip that narrative then and say, well, if that's

1559
01:25:39,479 --> 01:25:42,280
Speaker 2: the bad that happens when I take sleep away, what

1560
01:25:42,439 --> 01:25:44,960
Speaker 2: is it about sleep when I do get it that

1561
01:25:45,120 --> 01:25:48,000
Speaker 2: is beneficial? And what we've discovered is that it's rem

1562
01:25:48,120 --> 01:25:51,759
Speaker 2: sleep or dream sleep that provides a form of almost

1563
01:25:51,840 --> 01:25:57,200
Speaker 2: overnight therapy. Dream sleep is emotional first aid, and it's

1564
01:25:57,280 --> 01:26:01,120
Speaker 2: during dream sleep that your brain takes those painful, difficult

1565
01:26:01,240 --> 01:26:05,800
Speaker 2: experiences and acts almost like a nocturnal soothing bomb, and

1566
01:26:05,840 --> 01:26:09,479
Speaker 2: it just takes the sharp edges off those painful, difficult

1567
01:26:09,560 --> 01:26:12,960
Speaker 2: experiences so that we come back the next day and

1568
01:26:13,000 --> 01:26:16,400
Speaker 2: we feel better about them. It's that idea of it's

1569
01:26:16,439 --> 01:26:20,559
Speaker 2: not time that heals all wounds, it's time during sleep,

1570
01:26:20,600 --> 01:26:25,680
Speaker 2: and specifically dream sleep, that provides emotional convalescence. And there's

1571
01:26:25,720 --> 01:26:27,840
Speaker 2: a wonderful gosh. I wish i'd come up with this

1572
01:26:27,920 --> 01:26:32,320
Speaker 2: quote by an American entrepreneur, E. Joseph Cosman, and he

1573
01:26:32,360 --> 01:26:36,240
Speaker 2: once said that the best bridge between despur and hope

1574
01:26:36,880 --> 01:26:39,920
Speaker 2: is a good night of sleep. That's exactly what dream

1575
01:26:39,960 --> 01:26:40,920
Speaker 2: sleep provides.

1576
01:26:41,160 --> 01:26:44,479
Speaker 1: If you love your family, the best thing you can

1577
01:26:44,520 --> 01:26:46,280
Speaker 1: do is get a good night's sleep.

1578
01:26:46,479 --> 01:26:48,360
Speaker 2: When you have had a good night of sleep, I

1579
01:26:48,360 --> 01:26:51,720
Speaker 2: think we all sense this. You wake up and you

1580
01:26:51,760 --> 01:26:56,400
Speaker 2: are dressed in a different set of psychological clothes. It's

1581
01:26:56,439 --> 01:26:59,880
Speaker 2: almost as though sleep provides this sort of emotional winds,

1582
01:27:00,080 --> 01:27:04,400
Speaker 2: green wipeer benefit and we can see clearly and to me,

1583
01:27:04,680 --> 01:27:08,559
Speaker 2: that's I think one of the most powerful aspects. Sleep

1584
01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:11,400
Speaker 2: gives me back the rose in the tint of my

1585
01:27:11,600 --> 01:27:14,200
Speaker 2: worldview glasses every single morning.

1586
01:27:14,400 --> 01:27:16,800
Speaker 1: I mean, I experienced that all the time. I know

1587
01:27:16,840 --> 01:27:18,680
Speaker 1: what I can be like if I haven't had a

1588
01:27:18,720 --> 01:27:19,080
Speaker 1: good night.

1589
01:27:19,360 --> 01:27:22,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'll sometimes say that to my much better half,

1590
01:27:22,400 --> 01:27:24,120
Speaker 2: you know, when I come up, I'll say to her, look,

1591
01:27:24,160 --> 01:27:27,679
Speaker 2: you know, darling, I am I'm so sorry I didn't

1592
01:27:27,720 --> 01:27:30,599
Speaker 2: sleep well last night. I am not the best version

1593
01:27:30,680 --> 01:27:34,800
Speaker 2: of myself. For whatever I do today, whatever idiocy that

1594
01:27:34,920 --> 01:27:38,680
Speaker 2: I you know, enunciate or behaving, ye, please forgive me

1595
01:27:38,760 --> 01:27:41,040
Speaker 2: and I will make sure that I will do all

1596
01:27:41,040 --> 01:27:42,360
Speaker 2: the dishes for the next two months.

1597
01:27:43,200 --> 01:27:49,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sleep effects our emotional relationships, intimacy, everything, question number four,

1598
01:27:50,479 --> 01:27:52,280
Speaker 1: I have something in my mind. I was gonna ask you,

1599
01:27:52,320 --> 01:27:56,599
Speaker 1: what have you seen as being a surprising connection that's

1600
01:27:56,800 --> 01:28:00,200
Speaker 1: connected to sleep, something that sleep impacts that surprise you

1601
01:28:00,280 --> 01:28:02,479
Speaker 1: do something a bit that we might not have heard of.

1602
01:28:02,760 --> 01:28:06,519
Speaker 2: We've done some cities looking at what I would think

1603
01:28:06,560 --> 01:28:10,840
Speaker 2: of as more complex pro social behavior, and what we

1604
01:28:10,960 --> 01:28:14,880
Speaker 2: found is that a lack of sleep will immediately make

1605
01:28:15,040 --> 01:28:21,519
Speaker 2: someone become more asocial, meaning that they withdraw socially. They

1606
01:28:21,680 --> 01:28:24,599
Speaker 2: do not wish to have the contact with other people

1607
01:28:24,640 --> 01:28:28,840
Speaker 2: that they typically do. They become therefore more isolated. They

1608
01:28:29,000 --> 01:28:32,400
Speaker 2: feel more lonely as a consequence, and we know that

1609
01:28:32,439 --> 01:28:35,759
Speaker 2: there is this epidemic of loneliness happening, we didn't realize

1610
01:28:35,800 --> 01:28:38,120
Speaker 2: how much a lack of sleep was contributing to that.

1611
01:28:39,000 --> 01:28:43,679
Speaker 2: Worse still, when you interact with someone who is sleep

1612
01:28:43,720 --> 01:28:48,080
Speaker 2: deprived and you are well rested having had that interaction

1613
01:28:48,160 --> 01:28:50,599
Speaker 2: with the sleep deprived person, when we ask that person,

1614
01:28:51,000 --> 01:28:53,679
Speaker 2: do you feel any more or less lonely in this moment,

1615
01:28:54,320 --> 01:28:58,599
Speaker 2: they rate themselves as now feeling more lonely themselves having

1616
01:28:58,720 --> 01:29:02,519
Speaker 2: interacted with a sleep deprived individual. In other words, the

1617
01:29:02,520 --> 01:29:07,000
Speaker 2: loneliness that a lack of sleep creates is contagious and

1618
01:29:07,040 --> 01:29:11,080
Speaker 2: it is transmitted from one person to the next. The

1619
01:29:11,200 --> 01:29:13,760
Speaker 2: second thing that we looked at was perhaps one of

1620
01:29:13,800 --> 01:29:19,040
Speaker 2: the most fundamental components of US Homo sapiens, which is

1621
01:29:19,080 --> 01:29:22,400
Speaker 2: that we help each other. It's what we call pro

1622
01:29:22,520 --> 01:29:28,400
Speaker 2: social behavior. And I cannot imagine any modern civilization that

1623
01:29:28,479 --> 01:29:34,640
Speaker 2: has emerged without pro social helping between individuals. It's a

1624
01:29:34,640 --> 01:29:38,080
Speaker 2: fundamental ingredient. We help each other. And what we found

1625
01:29:38,240 --> 01:29:42,520
Speaker 2: is that when you are underslept, you withdraw your natural

1626
01:29:42,640 --> 01:29:47,559
Speaker 2: tendency to help other human beings. We observed it at

1627
01:29:47,560 --> 01:29:51,599
Speaker 2: the level of me helping other people, we observed it

1628
01:29:51,680 --> 01:29:55,680
Speaker 2: at the level of entire groups helping each other. And

1629
01:29:55,720 --> 01:29:59,519
Speaker 2: we also found it across entire nations. And you think

1630
01:29:59,680 --> 01:30:02,960
Speaker 2: how you figure that one out. There is a global

1631
01:30:03,000 --> 01:30:06,200
Speaker 2: experiment that's performed on one point six billion people across

1632
01:30:06,240 --> 01:30:09,760
Speaker 2: seventy countries twice a year, and it's called daylight Saving Time.

1633
01:30:10,800 --> 01:30:13,400
Speaker 2: And what we did we looked at the National donation

1634
01:30:13,680 --> 01:30:17,639
Speaker 2: database across the United States, which is in some ways

1635
01:30:17,680 --> 01:30:23,120
Speaker 2: a measure of selfless giving. I give to charity, I

1636
01:30:23,160 --> 01:30:26,240
Speaker 2: give to other people. And what we found is that

1637
01:30:26,360 --> 01:30:30,000
Speaker 2: in the days after the spring daylight savings time, when

1638
01:30:30,040 --> 01:30:32,439
Speaker 2: we lose one hour of sleep, there was this huge

1639
01:30:32,560 --> 01:30:37,520
Speaker 2: dent in proactive giving by way of donations to charities,

1640
01:30:38,040 --> 01:30:41,800
Speaker 2: we become more stingy, we've become more self centered. So

1641
01:30:41,960 --> 01:30:44,840
Speaker 2: I would say that it's this new wave of sleep

1642
01:30:44,840 --> 01:30:49,040
Speaker 2: science that goes beyond the DNA nucleus that we spoke about.

1643
01:30:49,040 --> 01:30:52,400
Speaker 2: It goes beyond cells, it goes beyond physiological systems, It

1644
01:30:52,439 --> 01:30:57,320
Speaker 2: goes beyond entire brain networks, It goes beyond the organism themselves.

1645
01:30:57,479 --> 01:31:00,920
Speaker 2: It now translates to a lack of sleep impacting our

1646
01:31:01,200 --> 01:31:07,000
Speaker 2: inter relationships and impacting the very fabric of society itself.

1647
01:31:07,479 --> 01:31:10,280
Speaker 2: That to me has been stunning and quite surprised.

1648
01:31:10,600 --> 01:31:13,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a surprise. I was not expecting that. Yeah.

1649
01:31:13,760 --> 01:31:15,920
Speaker 1: Fifth and final question we asked this to every guest

1650
01:31:15,960 --> 01:31:18,360
Speaker 1: who's ever been on the show. Matt if you could

1651
01:31:18,400 --> 01:31:21,320
Speaker 1: create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,

1652
01:31:21,600 --> 01:31:22,200
Speaker 1: what would.

1653
01:31:21,960 --> 01:31:24,160
Speaker 2: It be self forgiveness?

1654
01:31:24,200 --> 01:31:24,439
Speaker 1: Why?

1655
01:31:25,040 --> 01:31:30,080
Speaker 2: Because I think that there is so much ill grace

1656
01:31:30,880 --> 01:31:35,200
Speaker 2: that is enacted by ourselves on others, because we are

1657
01:31:35,320 --> 01:31:39,680
Speaker 2: not good with ourselves, that it makes me sad at

1658
01:31:39,720 --> 01:31:43,200
Speaker 2: some times. And I think so much of what we

1659
01:31:43,479 --> 01:31:47,120
Speaker 2: react to others is really about a mirror being held

1660
01:31:47,200 --> 01:31:50,320
Speaker 2: up to ourselves and the pain of that that if

1661
01:31:50,360 --> 01:31:54,639
Speaker 2: we just let go and gave ourselves, self compassion and

1662
01:31:54,720 --> 01:32:00,320
Speaker 2: self forgiveness, society would be I think demonstratably, which is

1663
01:32:00,360 --> 01:32:05,280
Speaker 2: to say, demonstrably better as a result in truth, though

1664
01:32:05,479 --> 01:32:08,200
Speaker 2: that's probably me just holding a mirror up to myself

1665
01:32:08,320 --> 01:32:08,719
Speaker 2: to your.

1666
01:32:08,680 --> 01:32:13,280
Speaker 1: Question, peerful Matt, thank you so much for your incredible work,

1667
01:32:14,400 --> 01:32:17,880
Speaker 1: incredible sharing of insights today, and I really hope you

1668
01:32:17,920 --> 01:32:19,880
Speaker 1: will come back for another episode because I have another

1669
01:32:19,920 --> 01:32:22,960
Speaker 1: million questions to answer. Thank you so much. I'm so

1670
01:32:22,960 --> 01:32:25,400
Speaker 1: grateful for your time and energy. I hope everyone has

1671
01:32:25,439 --> 01:32:28,400
Speaker 1: been listening and watching back at home, at work, whether

1672
01:32:28,439 --> 01:32:30,400
Speaker 1: you're on a hike, whether you're with your dog, whether

1673
01:32:30,439 --> 01:32:33,000
Speaker 1: you're on driving right now, wherever you are, I hope

1674
01:32:33,040 --> 01:32:38,960
Speaker 1: that you will find it possible to try some just one,

1675
01:32:39,040 --> 01:32:42,360
Speaker 1: even if you just try one of Matt's suggestions today.

1676
01:32:43,160 --> 01:32:45,680
Speaker 1: I really truly believe your life will change, and as

1677
01:32:45,680 --> 01:32:48,799
Speaker 1: Matt said, it will impact all other areas of our lives.

1678
01:32:49,160 --> 01:32:52,960
Speaker 1: Please prioritize your sleep and watch how your life changes.

1679
01:32:53,520 --> 01:32:55,040
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Matt, Thank you, and can I

1680
01:32:55,080 --> 01:32:56,920
Speaker 2: just say thank you to you for what you do

1681
01:32:57,040 --> 01:33:01,720
Speaker 2: for society. You have dedicated you yourself to the wellness

1682
01:33:01,760 --> 01:33:05,439
Speaker 2: and the health of the rest of humanity. But what

1683
01:33:05,479 --> 01:33:08,639
Speaker 2: I see as a big differentiator is that you have

1684
01:33:08,760 --> 01:33:13,360
Speaker 2: a very genuine passion for doing this. You mean it

1685
01:33:14,280 --> 01:33:17,559
Speaker 2: when you say it, thank you, And I think that's why,

1686
01:33:17,600 --> 01:33:21,040
Speaker 2: in part you've had just this incredible impact on society.

1687
01:33:21,479 --> 01:33:25,679
Speaker 2: Authenticity is a very rare thing, and as human beings,

1688
01:33:25,920 --> 01:33:29,440
Speaker 2: were actually very good at identifying it and also identifying

1689
01:33:29,439 --> 01:33:31,920
Speaker 2: its absence. And one of the reasons that I just

1690
01:33:31,960 --> 01:33:34,880
Speaker 2: have such admiration for what you do is not just

1691
01:33:34,920 --> 01:33:38,240
Speaker 2: that what you're doing is an incredible service, but the

1692
01:33:38,360 --> 01:33:43,000
Speaker 2: authentic way that you're doing it, because you genuinely mean it,

1693
01:33:43,040 --> 01:33:46,240
Speaker 2: is something that I think is a remarkable beauty to behold.

1694
01:33:46,439 --> 01:33:49,080
Speaker 2: So for all that you do for society, thank you

1695
01:33:49,320 --> 01:33:49,800
Speaker 2: so much.

1696
01:33:49,880 --> 01:33:53,000
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Matt. That's extremely gracious and kind, genuinely

1697
01:33:53,040 --> 01:33:54,679
Speaker 1: that touch my heart. Thank you so much.

1698
01:33:54,760 --> 01:33:55,080
Speaker 2: Thank you.

1699
01:33:55,760 --> 01:33:58,760
Speaker 1: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with

1700
01:33:58,840 --> 01:34:02,080
Speaker 1: doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your life by

1701
01:34:02,160 --> 01:34:03,000
Speaker 1: changing your brain.

1702
01:34:03,479 --> 01:34:08,439
Speaker 3: If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with

1703
01:34:08,520 --> 01:34:09,320
Speaker 3: a healthy brain.

1704
01:34:09,520 --> 01:34:09,720
Speaker 2: You know.

1705
01:34:09,760 --> 01:34:13,760
Speaker 3: I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over

1706
01:34:13,840 --> 01:34:18,320
Speaker 3: a thousand convicted felons and over one hundred murderers and

1707
01:34:18,360 --> 01:34:20,160
Speaker 3: their brains are very damaged.