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Speaker 2: We estimate that approximately eighty percent of people who have
Speaker 2: sleep amnia are undiagnosed.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Please welcome Maria.
Speaker 2: What is good sleep and should we just use the
Speaker 2: metric of quanta? The range is somewhere between seven to
Speaker 2: nine hours. Once you start to get less, the shorter
Speaker 2: your sleep, the shorter your life. When sleep is abundant,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, your appetite hormones are rebalanced, so
Speaker 2: you naturally stop eating as much as you wanted to
Speaker 2: the weight starts to come off you, and you're simply
Speaker 2: sleeping the weight off yourself.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're saying that sleep is that number
Speaker 1: one domino that then naturally helps all of the others.
Speaker 2: If you are not sleeping in harmony with your natural
Speaker 2: biological sort of rhythm, then your sleep quantity and quality
Speaker 2: is worse. Regularity maybe as if not more important than quantity.
Speaker 2: And I would say to anyone listening, if you're going
Speaker 2: to do anything with this podcast, just do this one thing.
Speaker 1: The number one health and wellness podcast, jayd. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, the place you to become
Speaker 1: the happier, healthier, and more healed three of the most
Speaker 1: important priorities in our lives. Today's guest is someone that
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to speak to for a long long
Speaker 1: time about a subject that I believe is critical to
Speaker 1: our health, happiness, and healing. Today I get to speak
Speaker 1: to Matthew Walker, a sleep expert, scientist, author, podcast host,
Speaker 1: and professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. Translated in forty
Speaker 1: different languages, his best selling book Why We Sleep explores
Speaker 1: the goal to reunite humanity with sleep Matthew's work has
Speaker 1: shaped public understanding of how a simple thing likes sleep,
Speaker 1: impacts memory, aging and disease prevention. Please welcome to On Purpose,
Speaker 1: Matthew Walker. Matt it's great to have you.
Speaker 2: Here, Jay, that absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for having me and giving me the opportunity
Speaker 2: to speak the voice of sleep.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Matthew. Let's dive straight
Speaker 1: in because there's so much to decipher with you, and
Speaker 1: I want to start by asking you how much sleep
Speaker 1: do we actually need?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question, and there is definitely a range,
Speaker 2: you know, I think there is, and perhaps even populated
Speaker 2: by idiots like me that there was this magical eight
Speaker 2: hour number that was you know, necessary and get anything
Speaker 2: less and there's doom and gloom. The range is somewhere
Speaker 2: between seven to nine hours for the average adult. And
Speaker 2: what we certainly know is that once you start to
Speaker 2: get less than seven hours of sleep, we can measure
Speaker 2: impermit in both your brain performance as well as your
Speaker 2: body metrics. So there is a range. But in some
Speaker 2: ways it's also a question of what is good sleep
Speaker 2: and should we just use the metric of quantity and
Speaker 2: we absolutely should because using that sweet spot of seven
Speaker 2: to nine hours, it looks as though the shorter your sleep,
Speaker 2: the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all cause mortality,
Speaker 2: so duration total man is necessary. But if you actually
Speaker 2: look at the science, what is good sleep can be
Speaker 2: really answered by a four part equation that in my mind,
Speaker 2: there are really sort of four macros of good sleep
Speaker 2: three macros of food, fat, protein, carbohydrate for sleep four
Speaker 2: macros and you can remember it by the acronym QQRT,
Speaker 2: and it stands for quantity, quality, regularity, and timing. So quantity,
Speaker 2: you're absolutely right, somewhere between seven and nine is that fit.
Speaker 2: Quality is about the continuity of your sleep. Is your
Speaker 2: sleep fragmented and littered with all of these awakenings and
Speaker 2: you're awake for a lot of the night, that's not
Speaker 2: good quality of sleep. So you could be in bed
Speaker 2: for nine and a half hours and still get seven
Speaker 2: hours of sleep, but you're spending two and a half
Speaker 2: hours of time awake. That's not good quality of sleep.
Speaker 2: Then we can speak about regularity going to bed at
Speaker 2: the same time, waking up at the same time. It
Speaker 2: sounds very benign. Well, do I really have to worry
Speaker 2: about regularity. There's a great study and they looked at
Speaker 2: regularity and quantity. Both of them predicted all cause mortality.
Speaker 2: So if you're very regular and you get that seven
Speaker 2: to nine hours of sleep, you have the lowest mortality risk.
Speaker 2: But then because they had these two measures in the
Speaker 2: same individuals, they put them in the same statistical analysis
Speaker 2: and did the sort of Coke Pepsi challenge between the two.
Speaker 2: What they found is that regularity beat out quantity in
Speaker 2: terms of predicting your mortality, meaning regularity maybe as if
Speaker 2: not more important than quantity. Now you've got to get both.
Speaker 2: But so QQR quantity quality regularity timing. Timing sounds like regularity,
Speaker 2: and you think, well, what's the difference. Timing is about
Speaker 2: your Krono type? Are you a morning type, evening type,
Speaker 2: or a neutral. And it turns out, by the way,
Speaker 2: that if you're a night out, it's not your fault.
Speaker 2: It is genetically a large genetically determined There are at
Speaker 2: least twenty two different genes that dictate whether you want
Speaker 2: to be a morning person or an evening person. So
Speaker 2: you don't get the choice. It's gifted to you at birth.
Speaker 2: And what we find is that if you are not
Speaker 2: sleeping in harmony with your natural biological sort of rhythm,
Speaker 2: then your sleep quantity and quality is worse. So let's
Speaker 2: just say we take someone who goes to bed at
Speaker 2: ten pm and wakes up at six am. Well, if
Speaker 2: you're a slight morning type, that's actually quite ideal for you.
Speaker 2: But if you're an evening type who likes to go
Speaker 2: to bed at two am and maybe wake up at
Speaker 2: ten am, then it's the same eight hour window that
Speaker 2: they're getting. But if the night our two am to
Speaker 2: ten am is forced to sleep from ten pm to
Speaker 2: six am still eight hours, the quality of their sleep
Speaker 2: that they get will no word be as sufficient as
Speaker 2: the morning type. So some people will come to our
Speaker 2: sleep center and say, I have terrible sleep onset insomnia.
Speaker 2: I get into bed and I'm awake for the first
Speaker 2: two hours, and then I fall asleep, and we do
Speaker 2: a CRONA type assessment, which is morning type evening type.
Speaker 2: And by the way, people can do this online very quickly.
Speaker 2: Right now. You can just type into Google m e
Speaker 2: Q test me EQ. It stands for Morning this Evening
Speaker 2: this questionnaire and it fits very well with your genetics.
Speaker 2: Takes about three minutes when we do this type of
Speaker 2: assessment with them, what we realize is that they don't
Speaker 2: have insomnia. They're a night owl, but they're trying to
Speaker 2: sleep like a morning type. And so when you sleep
Speaker 2: sort of against your natural biological predilection, your sleep is
Speaker 2: not going to be as good as it could be
Speaker 2: if you move yourself closer to your natural, innate biological tendency.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense? So those to me would be yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: can you shift your sleep?
Speaker 1: If people want to have Someone said Matt, that made
Speaker 1: so much sense. I've been a night on my whole life,
Speaker 1: but I just feel like I should be trying to
Speaker 1: sleep early and wake up earlier. It would be better
Speaker 1: for my partner, would be better for my lifestyle, would
Speaker 1: better for my kids. Whatever it is. Can you shift
Speaker 1: your type?
Speaker 2: It's a really good question. I get asked that a
Speaker 2: lot because in some ways, what I'm talking about is
Speaker 2: the ideal world, and drum roll, none of us live
Speaker 2: in the ideal world. We live in this thing called
Speaker 2: the real world. So you know, stop your fancy sleep
Speaker 2: science and tell me just you know, can that change?
Speaker 2: There was a study done in by a group in
Speaker 2: Australia and they took I think it was about eleven
Speaker 2: different things that you had to do as a night
Speaker 2: owl to see if they could drag you back so
Speaker 2: you felt more capable of going to sleep earlier. And
Speaker 2: it was things like, as soon as you wake up,
Speaker 2: eat a large breakfast, gon't get daylight first thing, exercise
Speaker 2: before midday, do not nap, take an earlier lunch, don't
Speaker 2: nap again in the afternoon. In the afternoon, start to
Speaker 2: get as much darkness as you can, meaning put shades
Speaker 2: on if you're going to go outside in the evening,
Speaker 2: make sure that you eat at least three hours before
Speaker 2: you expect to go to bed, and then try to
Speaker 2: push your sort of alarm clock the next morning by
Speaker 2: about one to two hours. And they collected all of
Speaker 2: these different sort of regiments and sure enough they were
Speaker 2: able to drag people back by a little bit over
Speaker 2: one hour, which sounds great, but the problem is these
Speaker 2: were extreme night owls who would prefer to go to
Speaker 2: sleep at maybe let's say one thirty am. That means
Speaker 2: they're still having to go to bed biologically at twelve
Speaker 2: thirty am. It's not the nine to thirty PM or
Speaker 2: the ten PM that you would prefer. And imagine trying
Speaker 2: to capitulate and adhere to that regiment for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life. So there is some wiggle room. It
Speaker 2: seems that you can sort of manipulate. But in truth,
Speaker 2: I think what we have to try and do as
Speaker 2: best we can is to say, how can I align
Speaker 2: myself better with my biology. When you fight biology, you
Speaker 2: normally lose, and the way you know you've lost is
Speaker 2: disease and sickness. And that's what we see with night
Speaker 2: owls who are sort of trying to sleep against their tendency.
Speaker 2: That said, though, is there a way that you can
Speaker 2: I mean, hack isn't the right word, but there are
Speaker 2: ways that you can try to help yourself. So think
Speaker 2: about what you do in the morning that takes time.
Speaker 2: So is it that you sort of, you know, make
Speaker 2: the coffee, you put the coffee and the coffee pot,
Speaker 2: You get your clothes ready for work, you pack your
Speaker 2: bag for the gym after work. All of these things
Speaker 2: you can do ahead of time the night before. To
Speaker 2: take that fifteen minutes of added time the next morning
Speaker 2: and say, allow yourself to sleep a little bit later,
Speaker 2: see at least getting closer to your natural tendency. Then
Speaker 2: go to the front end of sleep and say, what
Speaker 2: is it that I do in the last fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: before I go to bed? Well, I usually sort of
Speaker 2: maybe I take a shower, maybe I change for bed,
Speaker 2: Maybe you know, I brush my teeth, maybe some people
Speaker 2: take their makeup off, whatever it is, Set an alarm
Speaker 2: two hours before bed, do all of those things, and
Speaker 2: then right before you go to bed, when that alarm
Speaker 2: goes off, the to bed alarm, all you do is
Speaker 2: get up and you go straight to bed. So you've
Speaker 2: saved yourself fifteen minutes on the front end, So you
Speaker 2: can go to bed fifteen minutes sort of later, and
Speaker 2: you can wake up fifteen minutes later, but you're not
Speaker 2: necessarily having to go to work any later. So does
Speaker 2: that make some sense? So you can try to short
Speaker 2: sort of thin slice some of that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. If you're someone who's waking up tired regularly,
Speaker 1: Like right now, someone's listening and they're just like Jane Matt,
Speaker 1: I wake up every day and I'm just tired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to get the right amount of sleep,
Speaker 1: but I'm still figuring it out. Where do I start?
Speaker 1: What would you encourage them to look.
Speaker 2: At so I think the first thing, let's go back
Speaker 2: to the four principles. Are you getting a concert seven
Speaker 2: to nine hours of time at least in bed? Next,
Speaker 2: are you trying to assess your sleep and say, am
Speaker 2: I waking up a lot throughout the night? I would
Speaker 2: say that's one of the first places I would go to.
Speaker 2: If yeah, if the If you're not feeling restored and
Speaker 2: refreshed by your sleep the next day and you're getting
Speaker 2: four hours of sleep at night, then it's obvious it's
Speaker 2: just not the right quantity. But if you're being good
Speaker 2: and you're spending sufficient time in bed but still feeling
Speaker 2: unrefreshed and restored, we have to ask are you waking
Speaker 2: up a lot throughout the night? If you are, let's
Speaker 2: figure out why is it that you are, for example,
Speaker 2: snoring a lot throughout the night, and you have undiagnosed
Speaker 2: sleep app near and you can just download an app
Speaker 2: on your phone. I have no association with them. It's
Speaker 2: called snare lab, So snare Lab and you download it.
Speaker 2: It records your breathing. You place the phone next to
Speaker 2: you on your bed. Then in the morning it shows
Speaker 2: you a Richter shock sort of scale throughout the night.
Speaker 2: And it quantifies your snoring into quiet, moderate, loud, and epic.
Speaker 2: And the frightening thing is you can then tap anywhere
Speaker 2: throughout the night and you can hear yourself snoring in
Speaker 2: a way that we don't. So the next thing is,
Speaker 2: let's make sure that you don't have an undiagnosed sleep disorder.
Speaker 2: Then I would say, is it a case that you're
Speaker 2: maybe over consuming on caffeine during the day. Some people
Speaker 2: will feel completely comfortable having an espresso with dinner and
Speaker 2: they say, I fall asleep and I stay asleep. So
Speaker 2: I'm one of those. And it is genetically determined who
Speaker 2: can metabolize caffeine quickly and it has no effect. We've
Speaker 2: done studies and unfortunately, even if you do fall asleep
Speaker 2: and stay asleep, that caffeine can prevent you from going
Speaker 2: into the deepest stages of what we call deep non
Speaker 2: rapidi movement sleep. That's where you get a lot of
Speaker 2: restoration sensation from. So maybe we need to ask how
Speaker 2: much caffeine are you taking, the dose and the timing
Speaker 2: make the poison. Try to cut yourself off after about
Speaker 2: three cups and try to stay away from caffeine at
Speaker 2: least ten to twelve hours before you expect to go
Speaker 2: to bed. The final thing I would probably say is
Speaker 2: are you also using anything in the evening to help
Speaker 2: you fall asleep? And the principal thing I'm talking about
Speaker 2: here is alcohol. It's probably the most misunderstood sleep aid
Speaker 2: that there is out there. It's actually not a sleep aid,
Speaker 2: and it will fragment your sleep and block you from
Speaker 2: getting rapid eye movement sleep. So what we would do
Speaker 2: is we would march you through a set of environment
Speaker 2: or behavioral things. What are you doing in terms of
Speaker 2: your bed timing, are you spending a lot of time awake?
Speaker 2: And also the things that you're taking into your body alcohol, caffeine, etc.
Speaker 2: The final thing I would say is stress and anxiety
Speaker 2: if there is one outside of skeletal pain. The principal
Speaker 2: reason that we as a society seem not to be
Speaker 2: sleeping is this role that acts of anxiety. Because, and
Speaker 2: you've spoken so eloquently about this, in this modern era,
Speaker 2: we are con instantly on reception. Very rarely do we
Speaker 2: do reflection. And the only time now in the modern
Speaker 2: world when we do reflection is when our head hits
Speaker 2: the pillow, and that's the last time that we need
Speaker 2: to do reflection, because at that point the rolodex of
Speaker 2: anxiety starts worrying. At that point you start to ruminate.
Speaker 2: When we ruminate, we catastrophize, and then everything feels twice
Speaker 2: as bad in the dark of night than it does
Speaker 2: in the light of day. And at that point we're
Speaker 2: dead in the water for the next two hours. So
Speaker 2: the final thing I would say is, let's speak about
Speaker 2: your mental state. So does that give you a sense
Speaker 2: of sight? The pinwheel diagnostics that we would go.
Speaker 1: Through, we love it. I love it. I love the acronym.
Speaker 1: I love how simple and formulaic it is for us
Speaker 1: to be able to actually measure what's going wrong, and
Speaker 1: I can. I'm fortunate and very grateful and knock onward,
Speaker 1: sleep very very well and generally always have. But whenever
Speaker 1: I have had disturbances in my sl I can easily
Speaker 1: pinpoint it to something you've said. And that shows me
Speaker 1: how great the model is. Because as someone who is
Speaker 1: lucky and fortunate enough to have great sleep, when I
Speaker 1: have been disrupted, it's always been related either to caffeine,
Speaker 1: to stress and anxiety. I can easily draw the parallels
Speaker 1: because it's such a rare occurrence, and so I can
Speaker 1: see why and when I want to dive into each
Speaker 1: of those, let's start with sleep apnea, because I think
Speaker 1: that's something a lot of us don't actually know enough about,
Speaker 1: and so I love the fact that people can use
Speaker 1: the apps or lab as you mentioned, how many people
Speaker 1: actually struggling with sleep apnea don't even know about it?
Speaker 1: And what is actually happening if you have sleep apnea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, two great questions. So right now, we estimate that
Speaker 2: approximately eighty percent of people who have sleep apnia are undiagnosed.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, which, if you look.
Speaker 2: At the numbers, is going to be a non trivial
Speaker 2: proportion of the population. And the reason it's so dangerous
Speaker 2: is because when you have sleep apna, essentially what's happening
Speaker 2: is that your airway is either partially becoming obstructed or
Speaker 2: like a straw, it's collapsing flat entirely. Now, if it
Speaker 2: starts to become obstructed, so let's say you're sleeping on
Speaker 2: your back and the airway flaps in that airway are
Speaker 2: starting to give weight to gravity, then you'll start to
Speaker 2: get a partial blocking, a partial what we call occlusion
Speaker 2: of the airway. And that's what you hear. When you
Speaker 2: hear the sound, that's the sort of the flapping of
Speaker 2: the partial occlusion. And then when you stop breathing entirely,
Speaker 2: at that point, the airway has completely collapsed, the straw
Speaker 2: has gone flat, and after about fifteen or twenty seconds,
Speaker 2: your brain stem registers the alarming buildup of carbon dioxide
Speaker 2: in your blood because at that point you are slowly asphyxiating,
Speaker 2: and it sends a wake up trigger up to your cortex,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden you hear and you gasp,
Speaker 2: and you're awake. So imagine now we have a way
Speaker 2: that we measure these sort of occlusions and these partial collapses,
Speaker 2: and it's called the a HI score. And don't worry
Speaker 2: about this stands a fort the apnea hypot nea index.
Speaker 2: Suffice it to say that we look to see how
Speaker 2: many events like this are you having per hour of sleep,
Speaker 2: And if you were to have very mild sleep at
Speaker 2: near you may be having five, ten, fifteen of these events.
Speaker 2: That's considered mild. Some people could have eighty of them perhaps,
Speaker 2: But let's just say you have mild sleep at near
Speaker 2: ten of these events an hour, and you're in bed
Speaker 2: for eight hours. So imagine the following scenario with undiagnosed
Speaker 2: mild sleep apna. What if I were to say tonight,
Speaker 2: I'm going to come into your bedroom, Jay, and every
Speaker 2: hour I'm going to throckle you, strangle you to the
Speaker 2: point where you actually stop breathing. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: do that ten times every hour for every one of
Speaker 2: the eight hours. So I'm going to do that eighty
Speaker 2: times throughout the night. Do you think you're going to
Speaker 2: feel restored and refresh by a sleep the next poem?
Speaker 2: And the answer is no. But that's what Now that's hyperbolic,
Speaker 2: of course, but in some ways that's what we're facing
Speaker 2: even with the mildest version of undiagnosed sleep apnea. That's
Speaker 2: why sleep apnea untreated is associated with a very significant
Speaker 2: increase in all cause mortality as well as increases immortality
Speaker 2: related to diabetes, to cardiovascular disease, as well as certain
Speaker 2: forms of cancer. So I think for me, it's the
Speaker 2: case of it's not only going to erode the quantity
Speaker 2: of your life, meaning your lifespan, it will certainly shorten
Speaker 2: your health span. That's what most of us are worried about,
Speaker 2: not really our lifespan, it's our health span. None of
Speaker 2: us want to live with disease or sickness. I certainly
Speaker 2: don't want to. And I remember there was a patient
Speaker 2: that we work with with sleep apnea, and after they
Speaker 2: were treated, they were saying, well, before that, I just
Speaker 2: thought this was me at fifty seven years old. I
Speaker 2: just thought I would deteriorated with age. And I realized
Speaker 2: there was some one in there that wasn't the way
Speaker 2: I felt. And when you treated me with sleep apnea,
Speaker 2: it was almost as though someone cognitively had wiped a
Speaker 2: fogged glass clear and finally I could see again. And
Speaker 2: so that's why I think so many people can benefit
Speaker 2: by way of just simply doing taking this app seeing
Speaker 2: whether you snore. Also, you can do something called the
Speaker 2: stop bang questionnaire so stop all in caps, dash B
Speaker 2: A NG, and you can do it also online, and
Speaker 2: it's a very quick questionnaire, probably about two minutes, and
Speaker 2: it will evaluate your risk likelihood of having sleep apnar
Speaker 2: one of those two. If you fear that you have
Speaker 2: sleep apnea, or if you know that your partner has
Speaker 2: sleep apnre please go and get it seen to. It's
Speaker 2: a laughing about you know. We think, well, they sound
Speaker 2: like a chainsaw, they wake the neighbors up. It's almost
Speaker 2: this thing of sort of humor. Trust me, when it
Speaker 2: comes to your health and your wellness, it is anything
Speaker 2: but a funny story when it comes to undiagnosed sleep
Speaker 2: at MEA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for giving sense practical tips
Speaker 1: as to how we can check as well. And I
Speaker 1: hope everyone is listening and watching. Please go do that
Speaker 1: because the fact that eighty percent of people may not
Speaker 1: have a clue and that could be the secret behind
Speaker 1: better sleep is crazy to me that we haven't uncovered
Speaker 1: it for eighty percent of people.
Speaker 2: That's huge, and so many downstream consequences happen when they
Speaker 2: get treated that they are typically overweight, they usually have
Speaker 2: high levels of blood sugar, of blood glucose, they typically
Speaker 2: have hypertension, high blood pressure. And what's nice is that
Speaker 2: when you were to say, okay, we've got to have
Speaker 2: you reducing your food intake, we need to stop you
Speaker 2: from eating sugar, we need to get you to the gym,
Speaker 2: all of those things of herculean in their challenge. And
Speaker 2: people often in that state of being overweight, hypertensive, high glycemic,
Speaker 2: they just find it so hard to change. But if
Speaker 2: you treat them with sleep apnea. When sleep is abundant
Speaker 2: in good quantity and quality, which it will be when
Speaker 2: you treat them, all of a sudden, your appetite hormones
Speaker 2: are rebalanced, so you naturally stop eating as much as
Speaker 2: you want it to. The weight starts to come off you,
Speaker 2: and you're simply sleeping the weight off yourself. It's a
Speaker 2: largely painless equation. You don't crave those sugary sort of
Speaker 2: high sugar sort of immediate hit foods, so your blood
Speaker 2: sugar comes back into control, and you're more motivated to
Speaker 2: be physically active, meaning that your cardiovascular health. So I
Speaker 2: sometimes think of sleep. You know, if you've seen one
Speaker 2: of those fancy music studios where they've got all of
Speaker 2: the dials on the mixing deck and you can move
Speaker 2: any one of them. But sleep, to me, is that
Speaker 2: one dial all the way at the far left that
Speaker 2: if you move it, all of those other dials just
Speaker 2: kind of move up. It's the tide that floats all
Speaker 2: of our other health. And so if you get that
Speaker 2: one straight, so many things, as a manifolds like an
Speaker 2: archimedes lever, will consequently change downstream for the better. You
Speaker 2: don't even have to do anything. You just have to
Speaker 2: start sleeping better.
Speaker 1: Let's take a short break to hear from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: and let's get back to our episode. It sounds like
Speaker 1: you're saying that sleep is that number one domino that
Speaker 1: then naturally helps all of the others. Yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: had everything that you just said. I for the past
Speaker 1: six weeks have been in LA which is rare in
Speaker 1: terms of I havn't traveled, I haven't jumped on a plane.
Speaker 1: I've been in one place. And because of that, I've
Speaker 1: been able to really dial in on everything from sleep,
Speaker 1: working out, eating right because I've had no reason to
Speaker 1: have an error because I've been at home. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you travel, you maybe whatever right, you eat something
Speaker 1: that wasn't a hotel and whatever it maybe. I've been
Speaker 1: here for six weeks, been on a phenomenal schedule. Last
Speaker 1: week I was only gone for like four hours away,
Speaker 1: took a three hour flight to a three hour flight back.
Speaker 1: I was gone for like four to six hours in total,
Speaker 1: and I landed back at four am, which is rare
Speaker 1: for me. I don't do that. I usually sleep by
Speaker 1: nine point thirty pm. I'm a morning person for sure,
Speaker 1: and I got back at four am. I tried to
Speaker 1: get some sleep. I probably got up at eight am
Speaker 1: because that's all I could sleep at that time. I
Speaker 1: got in a workout, but I had to tell my
Speaker 1: trainer to lower my level of workout because I was
Speaker 1: more tired than I've felt for a long time, and
Speaker 1: I actually felt weaker. So I've been feeling really strong
Speaker 1: across the last six weeks, but I felt weaker. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think I can lift that much today.
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling up to it. On top of that,
Speaker 1: all my sugar cravings went through the roof that day. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I know, and you notice it so significantly when
Speaker 1: you're at the other end where you're like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: I haven't needed refined sugar for like weeks on end now,
Speaker 1: but this one day, all I'm craving is fats and
Speaker 1: sugars and that's that's all I'm after. And I did
Speaker 1: give in, and I was okay about it. But but
Speaker 1: it's so interesting to feel it that abruptly and that
Speaker 1: extremely Yeah, and you're so right. I wanted the sugars,
Speaker 1: I wanted the facts I wanted. I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 1: work out as well. All of it makes a difference.
Speaker 2: And in some ways what's great now is the science
Speaker 2: is compelling in terms of the mechanism, such that, firstly,
Speaker 2: there are two appetite regulating hormones that called leptin and grellin. Now,
Speaker 2: Leptin is an appetite hormone that when it's released, it says, Okay,
Speaker 2: you're satisfied with your food, you don't want to eat more,
Speaker 2: you're satiated. Grellin is the opposite. It says you're not satisfied,
Speaker 2: you're still hungry, you need to eat more. And what
Speaker 2: we find is that when we start to sort of
Speaker 2: thin slice people's sleep, and it doesn't take very much,
Speaker 2: you can sort of get maybe six hours of sleep
Speaker 2: for five nights, or five hours of sleep for four nights,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the hormone leptin, which says you're satisfied,
Speaker 2: you're good, you don't need to eat anymore, that starts
Speaker 2: to decrease at one point. Well, it usually takes about
Speaker 2: four nights of somewhere between four to five hours of
Speaker 2: sleep reduction to already see those changes and see appetite
Speaker 2: behavior changes as a consequence. So it doesn't take very
Speaker 2: much and then if that wasn't bad enough, grellin the
Speaker 2: hormone that says, oh no, no, you're still hungry, please please
Speaker 2: eat more, that goes up. So in some ways it's
Speaker 2: double jeopardy that you're getting punished twice for the same
Speaker 2: crime of insufficient sleep, once by switching off the signal
Speaker 2: of I'm full, I don't need to eat, and once
Speaker 2: again by I'm hungry and I need to eat more.
Speaker 2: Then what we have also found is that we have
Speaker 2: inside of us what we call endocannabinoids. So people have
Speaker 2: heard of sort of cannabis the way that most people
Speaker 2: have heard about it is an exogenous sort of you know,
Speaker 2: intake of cannabis. But we have naturally occurring cannabinoids in
Speaker 2: our system called endocannabinoids. Now, many people will, let's say,
Speaker 2: know someone, of course, I'm not gonna judge anyone. We'll
Speaker 2: know someone who've said, when when I smoke weed, I
Speaker 2: get the munchies, I get hungry. That seems to be
Speaker 2: one of the consequences of these cannabinoids. Now, endocannabinoids inside
Speaker 2: of us also do the same thing. They can make
Speaker 2: us more hungry. When you are underslept, you're naturally occurring cannabinoids,
Speaker 2: these endocannabinoids, they also increase, and that drives you to
Speaker 2: eat even more in addition to the changes in leptin
Speaker 2: and grellin. And then finally, we did a study with
Speaker 2: brain imaging where we scan people's brains with and without
Speaker 2: good sleep, looking at different food items from highly desirable
Speaker 2: to highly healthy. When you are underslept, the rational control
Speaker 2: regions of your brain in the frontal cortex they get
Speaker 2: shut down, and these more hardonic, deep emotional brain centers
Speaker 2: that respond to rewarding pleasurable foods, they started to become
Speaker 2: much more reactive, and it set you on this path
Speaker 2: of almost obesogenic eating. You crave those sort of you know,
Speaker 2: the sugars, the chocolates, the stodgy carbohydrates, and you don't
Speaker 2: go towards the leafy greens and the healthy nuts. You
Speaker 2: go after the pizza and sort of the salty snacks.
Speaker 2: So all of which is to say, you get this
Speaker 2: sort of conspiring both within the body and also at
Speaker 2: the level of the brain that explains exactly what you
Speaker 2: were just describing as a sort of a phenomenon. And
Speaker 2: that's why I think this You've always got to be
Speaker 2: careful with epidemiological studies where you say, okay, shorter sleep
Speaker 2: equals higher body mass index, higher chances of obesity. There
Speaker 2: could be many things. But when you experimentally manipulate sleep
Speaker 2: and you can unpack the mechanism, then we can entertain
Speaker 2: causality for sure.
Speaker 1: So what's you said earlier we should be in three
Speaker 1: hours before we go to bed. What's the ideal meal
Speaker 1: type three hours before we go to bed, A so
Speaker 1: that we don't get hungry just before we go to bed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and B because I also understand that the digestive process
Speaker 1: can actually make sleeping much harder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so what should we be.
Speaker 1: Trying to digest in those three hours that keeps us
Speaker 1: full and doesn't disrupt our sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good question. And so they're the
Speaker 2: sort of the three hours. What we were trying to
Speaker 2: do is take those night owls and try to drag
Speaker 2: them back in time. But if you're not a night
Speaker 2: owl trying to sort of manipulate your sort of sleep timing,
Speaker 2: we can then just ask for anyone who's just you know,
Speaker 2: in their standard sleep regiment, when should you cut yourself off?
Speaker 2: And it's actually a bit of a myth because there
Speaker 2: is there's this strong sentiment out there on social media
Speaker 2: you need to stop eating maybe three or four hours
Speaker 2: before bed. If you look at the data, and I
Speaker 2: did this sort of analysis of all literature, if you
Speaker 2: eat as close as sixty minutes before bed, it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to hurt your sleep. Now if you sort of
Speaker 2: go forty five minutes or thirty minutes, then yes, it
Speaker 2: does seem to have an impact blast radius on your sleep. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: that's a very different question than saying, what would be
Speaker 2: beneficial to my sleep? I'm phrasing the question as at
Speaker 2: what point does it become harmful for your sleep? And
Speaker 2: the answer is you can eat up to an hour
Speaker 2: before bed and show no harm on your sleep. But
Speaker 2: that's very different than saying, but what if you'd stop
Speaker 2: eating two hours or two and a half hours, would
Speaker 2: that have actually improved your sleep. I think what we're
Speaker 2: seeing in the data is that it's very idiosyncratic that
Speaker 2: you need to test drive it and you will know
Speaker 2: which kind of quote unquote type you are. Some people,
Speaker 2: mostly night owls, have a preference to eat late in
Speaker 2: the day or early in the evening and very little
Speaker 2: in the morning, whereas morning types like to eat sort
Speaker 2: of breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and
Speaker 2: dinner like a pauper. You know, they scale down. I
Speaker 2: think it's dependent on your krona type. That said, though,
Speaker 2: the two ways that food can disrupt us. First, if
Speaker 2: we're eating high sugar content foods at night, it has
Speaker 2: a disruptive ima packed and we know this in part
Speaker 2: because it could be the not just the activating level
Speaker 2: of sort of alertness in the brain that happens with
Speaker 2: a sugar hit. It's also that simple sugars are what
Speaker 2: we call thermogenic, meaning that when we take on board sugar,
Speaker 2: it can just very gently increase our core body temperature
Speaker 2: quite quickly. And it turns out temperature is key for sleep.
Speaker 2: We need to drop our brain and our body temperature
Speaker 2: by about one degree celsius or about two to three
Speaker 2: degrees fahrenheit to fall asleep and stay asleep. And it's
Speaker 2: the reason you will always find it easier to fall
Speaker 2: asleep in a room that's too cold than too hot.
Speaker 2: The room that's too cold. It's taking you in the
Speaker 2: right direction for good sleep at night. So when you
Speaker 2: onboard simple sugars at night, it starts to just moderately
Speaker 2: just gently increase your core body temperature, which can disrupt
Speaker 2: your sleep. So I would say content, try to aim for.
Speaker 2: If you're going to after sort of carbohydrate, make sure
Speaker 2: that they're complex carbohydrates that release their energy in a
Speaker 2: much slower fashion. Also, try to aim for a protein
Speaker 2: based you know, yogurt is fantastic at that point, make
Speaker 2: sure it's not, you know, highly sweetened yogurt, because then
Speaker 2: you're taking on board sugar unfortunately, So yogurt together with
Speaker 2: some kind of slow release carbohydrate is probably a fantastic
Speaker 2: approach to food. The second way though, that you can
Speaker 2: disrupt yourself above and beyond the macros of food, is
Speaker 2: that when you eat too late, particularly spicy food, it
Speaker 2: can cause acid reflux. And that reflux is one of
Speaker 2: the other reasons that eating too close to bed will
Speaker 2: disrupt the quality of your sleep. So try to go
Speaker 2: after more of a slow release sort of protein, maybe
Speaker 2: a casine based protein, and then aim for if you're
Speaker 2: going to go after carbohydrate, just make it a smaller
Speaker 2: portion and make it a complex carbohydrate. That's probably the
Speaker 2: best recommendation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's so important to eat about all the
Speaker 1: versions of it because I do think sometimes when you hear, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can eat up until you know the last hour,
Speaker 1: you'll be fine, it's so different to well, how do
Speaker 1: I get into performing at my best and feeling at
Speaker 1: my best? And when you're already struggling with the quality
Speaker 1: of sleep, every minute kind of factor is going to
Speaker 1: make a difference. And it's just, yeah, I'm really happy
Speaker 1: that you've gone into the detail there of like, you know,
Speaker 1: why is it that we're saying three hours or what
Speaker 1: does that look like? As I was hearing you speak,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about just how hard it's become
Speaker 1: for people to regulate their lives and manage this. I
Speaker 1: know in some cultures it's just so natural to eat
Speaker 1: really late before you go to bed. How much does
Speaker 1: eating a late meal also push back your time of
Speaker 1: wanting to go to sleep? Or is there no correlation there?
Speaker 2: No, there actually is a correlation. It's a very astute observation, actually,
Speaker 2: which is you can have one type of biological chronotype predilection,
Speaker 2: but you can almost violate that biology and override some
Speaker 2: of it by creating sort of certain conditions under which
Speaker 2: it will distort your natural rhythm. One way that this
Speaker 2: rhythm is played out is the release of something called melatonin.
Speaker 2: A melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone and it simply
Speaker 2: tells your brain and your body when it is darkness,
Speaker 2: when it is night, which is to say, melatonin helps
Speaker 2: with the timing of our sleep. And there are ways
Speaker 2: that you can artificially delay your natural melatonin release. A
Speaker 2: good one would be being exposed to too much light
Speaker 2: in the evening, too much artificial light, what I would
Speaker 2: think of as junk light. There was this concept a
Speaker 2: while back of junk DNA. Well, I think there is
Speaker 2: something called junk light, and we get too much of
Speaker 2: it at night because we are a dark deprived society
Speaker 2: in this modern era. But there's other ways that you
Speaker 2: can delay your natural biology. And if let's say that
Speaker 2: all food was taken away, all electric light was gone,
Speaker 2: all internet service was down, and you know, the lights
Speaker 2: were out, you would naturally say to me, well, I'm
Speaker 2: someone who would probably not get sleepy until midnight. And
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, as I said, no food,
Speaker 2: electromagnetic pulse takes out all electricity, everything is gone. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you probably say, gosh, it's ten point
Speaker 2: fifteen pm. How do you feel quite sleepy? And it's
Speaker 2: because modernity, through all of its changes, light, social media,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of entertainment that were constantly exposed to.
Speaker 2: It's dislocated us from our natural sensation of biology. Telling
Speaker 2: as it's time to sleep, most of us think that, well,
Speaker 2: I'm probably, you know, a midnight to eight am type person.
Speaker 2: When if I took you camping in the sierras for
Speaker 2: two weeks and we had all of our sort of
Speaker 2: fancy technology measuring sleep wake rhythms, and we would actually
Speaker 2: find no, you're much closer to a ten twenty to
Speaker 2: six thirty am kind of person. But modern sort of
Speaker 2: industrial life has come in the way of that and
Speaker 2: it is modified op perception. So out to come back
Speaker 2: to your elegant insight. There are ways that we can
Speaker 2: almost contort our natural biology, one of which is things
Speaker 2: like social media, electric light. But another one is that
Speaker 2: you can just manipulate things like food timing, and that
Speaker 2: food timing will create an activating alertness sensation in the
Speaker 2: brain and the body and force you perhaps to go
Speaker 2: to bed or feel tired and two hours later than
Speaker 2: you naturally would otherwise. So you have the way that
Speaker 2: we usually measure someone's natural sort of tendencies is we
Speaker 2: bring them into the laboratory and we say say goodbye
Speaker 2: to your friends and your family. For the next week,
Speaker 2: we take all daylight away, no windows, no nothing, and
Speaker 2: we just measure your natural biology when we separate you
Speaker 2: from everything that is in the outside world, and that
Speaker 2: way we can bring you back to your innate tendencies.
Speaker 2: And usually there is quite the mismatch between when we
Speaker 2: interview you and say what is your natural rhythm versus
Speaker 2: when we measure you what is your biological rhythm? Those
Speaker 2: two things are often quite different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. As you were talking, you
Speaker 1: mentioned melatonin, and I was thinking about, obviously the rise
Speaker 1: in melotonin gummies melatonin supplements I guess you could take
Speaker 1: before going to bed, and then you also have sleeping pills.
Speaker 1: Walk us through what's in sleeping pills versus melatonin gummies
Speaker 1: or the saw and what's your take on both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very interesting, and obviously, just being a scientist
Speaker 2: rather than a medical doctor, what I could offer you
Speaker 2: is sort of scientifically descriptive advice rather necessarily medically prescriptive advice.
Speaker 2: But melatonin has had this meteoric rise in the sleep
Speaker 2: supplement world, and now here in America where it's not
Speaker 2: regulated by the FDA. You can go into a supermarket
Speaker 2: or a grocery store and down there sort of the
Speaker 2: health food section, there is this big, sort of purple sector,
Speaker 2: and that is the melatonin sector. Melatonin it can be
Speaker 2: useful to help regulate your circadian rhythm, and so I
Speaker 2: will use it strategically if I'm traveling. If let's say
Speaker 2: I go back home to the United Kingdom and I
Speaker 2: live just outside of San Francisco, it's eight hours ahead,
Speaker 2: so I can use it to try to trick my
Speaker 2: brain into thinking, oh, it's nighttime on the first night
Speaker 2: I arrive in the UK, when in fact, my melatonin
Speaker 2: peak is not going to arrive for at least another
Speaker 2: eight hours because I'm still back on California's time. So,
Speaker 2: but for the most part, the way people use melatonin
Speaker 2: is night after night after night. And if you look
Speaker 2: at the studies, melatonin will only increase the speed with
Speaker 2: which you fall asleep by about two point two minutes,
Speaker 2: and it will only increase the efficiency of your sleep
Speaker 2: by about three point seven percent, which isn't that much
Speaker 2: more above and beyond placebo and the reason is because
Speaker 2: melatonin doesn't participate in the generation of sleep. Melatonin is
Speaker 2: a little bit like the starting official at one hundred
Speaker 2: meter race. It brings all of the great sleep races
Speaker 2: to the line and begins the Great sleep race, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't participate in that sleep race. That's a whole
Speaker 2: different set of brain chemicals which we'll come onto with
Speaker 2: sleeping pills. So that's the reason that melatonin isn't a
Speaker 2: particularly effective sleep aid. It's the reason that you will
Speaker 2: never see people being prescribed melatonin for insomnia for the
Speaker 2: most part, unless they have some kind of circadian rhythm disorder.
Speaker 2: So I would say, if you're using melatonin for the
Speaker 2: purposes of improving the speed with which you fall asleep
Speaker 2: or the generation of sleep, it may be a placebo effect.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the placebo effect is the most
Speaker 2: reliable effect in all pharmacology. So maybe no, no foul.
Speaker 2: The only other caveats I would offer with melotonin first,
Speaker 2: because it's not regulated here by the FDA, you don't
Speaker 2: know the purity. And there was a great study that's
Speaker 2: been replicated and they looked at I think it was
Speaker 2: about twenty different vendors of melatonin, and they sampled what
Speaker 2: was inside of the pill based on what they said
Speaker 2: on the bottle versus what was actually in the pill.
Speaker 2: It ranged from about eighty percent less than what it
Speaker 2: said to four hundred and sixty percent more than what
Speaker 2: it stated on the label. So it's a bit of
Speaker 2: a wild west. You don't quite know what you're getting
Speaker 2: when you take this need. Yeah, so you've got to,
Speaker 2: I would say, be a little bit careful. For the
Speaker 2: most part. Melotonin is largely in an at compound anyway,
Speaker 2: so we don't need to get sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: too phosphorylated about it.
Speaker 1: What's your take on the fact that when we're taking
Speaker 1: these I guess artificial supplements of melotonin, that it depletes
Speaker 1: our body's ability to make it and regulate it at
Speaker 1: the right times that we actually need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's another critical question, and that's one of
Speaker 2: the fears that we have. I think the data we
Speaker 2: don't have right now to say one way or the other.
Speaker 2: But if you think about, let's say a male who's
Speaker 2: undergoing a hormone replacement therapy with exogenous testosterone, what we
Speaker 2: know is with certain forms of testosterone replacement therapy, after
Speaker 2: some period of time, the testes will stop producing their
Speaker 2: own testosterone. And even if you were to stop your
Speaker 2: exogenous injection of testosterone, your production of testosterone innately never returns.
Speaker 2: And the worry is is that the case with melatonin. Now,
Speaker 2: there have been a number of case studies that have
Speaker 2: looked at melatonin use, let's say, for up to four
Speaker 2: or even six weeks of constant use, and when they stop,
Speaker 2: melatonin production returns. So it looks as though we don't
Speaker 2: have to worry. My worry though, with those data, when
Speaker 2: someone has sort of offered them to me, is to say,
Speaker 2: but most people in society, they're not using melatonin like that.
Speaker 2: They've been using it for years, not six weeks. So
Speaker 2: I think I'm still a little bit sort of concerned.
Speaker 2: The other thing, or two other things. One is that
Speaker 2: the dose that people typically take is what we call
Speaker 2: a super physiological dose, meaning it's far higher than anything
Speaker 2: your body would naturally release. So people are taking five milligrams,
Speaker 2: ten millograms, maybe sometimes even twenty milligrams, whereas what we
Speaker 2: would recommend in sleep medicine is somewhere around about one
Speaker 2: maybe maximum of three milligrams. So you know, log orders
Speaker 2: of magnitude higher. The other thing too to keep in
Speaker 2: mind is that melatonin now is being more and more
Speaker 2: used in the pediatric setting, so you'll see these melatonin
Speaker 2: gummies for kids. And there was some data of gosh
Speaker 2: now probably thirty years ago, looking at juvenile mail rats,
Speaker 2: meaning that they're going through that sort of adolescent phase,
Speaker 2: and they were getting dosed with high amounts of melatonin,
Speaker 2: and that high dose of melatonin in the juvenile male
Speaker 2: rats actually stunted their sexual development. So it's stunted testicular growth,
Speaker 2: and it caused testicular atrophy, meaning shrinking of the testes.
Speaker 2: Imagine if I were to go to let's say a
Speaker 2: teacher and parent meeting one evening at a school and
Speaker 2: get up there and say, I would like you this
Speaker 2: evening to start dosing your children with a bioactive hormone.
Speaker 2: And it is a hormone that I would like you
Speaker 2: to dose your children with every night at maybe five
Speaker 2: to ten times their natural release. And also it's a
Speaker 2: hormone that may actually disrupt their sexual maturation and development.
Speaker 2: Who's with me, you know? And at that point, people
Speaker 2: would you know, boo you off the safe rightly? So
Speaker 2: now again, I'm being a hyperbolic and we don't know
Speaker 2: if there is that concern or not. I'm simply saying
Speaker 2: that if we don't know, my sort of suspicion, at
Speaker 2: least personally would be I'd probably err on the side
Speaker 2: of caution at least stage, particularly because the FDA recently
Speaker 2: released data demonstrating that admissions to hospitals for melatonin overdose
Speaker 2: have increased by five hundred and three percent in the
Speaker 2: past ten years. So there is something going on with melatonin.
Speaker 2: I think that we need to be mindful of. Again,
Speaker 2: though it's largely an inert compound, so I don't need
Speaker 2: to be scam mongering here. Your second part of the
Speaker 2: question was sleeping pills. Yeah, and it's a really interesting evolution.
Speaker 2: I think we're now at the stage of sleeping pills
Speaker 2: three point zero. We sort of web one point h
Speaker 2: two point zero three point zero. It's kind of the
Speaker 2: same with sleeping pills. We started off with the classic benzodiazepines,
Speaker 2: things like valium, and they work to go after an
Speaker 2: inhibitary chemical in the brain, neurotransmitter in the brain called GABBA,
Speaker 2: which stands for gamma amino butyic acid. Don't worry about
Speaker 2: the name. It's simply the red light stop sign for
Speaker 2: brain activity. These things like valuum. They would go after
Speaker 2: this Gabba system in the brain and they would activate
Speaker 2: it and essentially just knock out your cortex. And then
Speaker 2: the second generation of sleeping pills came along, the ambient
Speaker 2: Lanesta sonatas of this world. They also go after that
Speaker 2: Gabba inhibitry and neurotransmitter system in the brain, but they
Speaker 2: just sort of tickle the receptor in the brain a
Speaker 2: little bit differently, but for the most part they are
Speaker 2: doing the same thing. And that's why we call them
Speaker 2: the sedative hypnotics, because they are sedating your cortex. Now,
Speaker 2: if you take an ambient at full dose, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to argue that you're awake, you're clearly not awake,
Speaker 2: but to argue that you're in naturalistic sleep. In some ways,
Speaker 2: it's an equal fallacy, because if I show you the
Speaker 2: electrical signature of your sleep with and without ambient, they're
Speaker 2: not the same. And in some ways, ambient will come
Speaker 2: in and it will take a bite out of the
Speaker 2: deepest of the deep slow waves of deep non rem sleep,
Speaker 2: sort of this big dent that you see that happens,
Speaker 2: and so again it's not necessarily to say that there
Speaker 2: isn't a time and a place for the use of
Speaker 2: those medications. Sleep medicine right now does recognize them as
Speaker 2: being useful potentially in the short term to start to
Speaker 2: begin treatment for insomnia, but they are no longer the
Speaker 2: first line recommended treatment. And one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: in a book that I wrote where I was sort
Speaker 2: of I probably wasn't overly enthusiastic about those WEB two
Speaker 2: point zero sleeping pills the ambience less and snartists, and
Speaker 2: it was for several reasons. First, because sedation is not sleep,
Speaker 2: and when you take those medications you mistake the former
Speaker 2: for the latter, but it's not natural sleep. We also
Speaker 2: know that those sleeping pills have been associated with higher
Speaker 2: risks of mortality in certain forms of cancer. Now those
Speaker 2: are associations, we don't know necessarily that that's causal. But
Speaker 2: then there was another very interesting study where they looked
Speaker 2: at how sleep helps your learning in your memory. And
Speaker 2: one of the incredible things about sleep is that it
Speaker 2: will take recently learned memories and that memory circuit in
Speaker 2: the brain. Sleep will strengthen the synapses so that you
Speaker 2: come back the next day, and that memory is almost
Speaker 2: like hitting the save button on those memories. Wow, you
Speaker 2: cement it into the architecture of the brain. And they
Speaker 2: did a study where they dosed animals after learning amaze
Speaker 2: or different types of learning, and they could measure the
Speaker 2: strength of the memory circuit, and then they gave them
Speaker 2: natural sleep, and sure enough, the next day sleep it
Speaker 2: almost double the strength of the memory. Then they did
Speaker 2: a version where they dosed the animals with a body
Speaker 2: appropriate amount of ambient and those animals slept longer. And
Speaker 2: you would think, well, if sleep is helping the memories
Speaker 2: and strengthening that memory circuit, sleeping longer should lead to
Speaker 2: an even greater strengthening of the memory. Unfortunately, ambient had
Speaker 2: unwired them memory and it actually reduced the strength of
Speaker 2: the memory by fifty five zero. So to me, that's
Speaker 2: just a demonstration that perhaps the quality of sleep is
Speaker 2: not a naturalistic quality of sleep, and it may not
Speaker 2: therefore be transacting the natural functions that sleep typically provides
Speaker 2: light learning and memory. There is a newer class of medications, though,
Speaker 2: are out on the market, and I think the evidence
Speaker 2: right now is still early, but so far, I actually
Speaker 2: think that they look really quite effective. And again I
Speaker 2: think people had taken my stance to be I'm very
Speaker 2: anti pharmacology in general. I'm not. I'm very pro pharmacology
Speaker 2: if the pharmacology is good and not necessarily causing you harm.
Speaker 2: And these new class of medications they are called the
Speaker 2: Dora's Drugs and it's do r A small s and
Speaker 2: it's a class of drugs and there are currently three
Speaker 2: FDA approved. The first one was called bell Somra and
Speaker 2: to play on sort of beautiful sleep, and the actual
Speaker 2: chemical name is suborexin. These medications do something really much
Speaker 2: more elegant the ambience and the lenestsis said, that's just
Speaker 2: a sedative hit to the cortex. These new class of
Speaker 2: medications the doors they go after awake promoting chemical called erexin.
Speaker 2: You can think of a rexin like the wakefulness volume
Speaker 2: button and when it's turned up, we're wide awake. And
Speaker 2: these medications they come in and they act like an
Speaker 2: additional set of chemical fingers and they just go after
Speaker 2: the volume button of wakefulness of a rexin and they
Speaker 2: just dial it down and then they step back and
Speaker 2: they allow the antithesis of wakefulness to come in its place,
Speaker 2: which is this thing called naturalistic sleep. And so I
Speaker 2: think right now I'm probably more bullish on those medications. Again,
Speaker 2: a lot of water to pass under the bridge before
Speaker 2: we understand them, but so far I think that there
Speaker 2: are much more elegant, nuanced way of manipulating sleep. The
Speaker 2: other thing I would be remiss to mention is there
Speaker 2: is an alternative to these medications in general, and it's
Speaker 2: called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or CBTI for short.
Speaker 2: It is just as effective as sleeping pills in the
Speaker 2: short term. But what's nice is that when you stop
Speaker 2: working with your therapist after maybe six or eight sessions,
Speaker 2: not only do you with a sleeping pill like ambium.
Speaker 2: When you stop, you typically go back to the bad
Speaker 2: sleep that you are having, or you actually have rebound
Speaker 2: insomnia where your sleep is even worse. But with a therapist,
Speaker 2: they're giving you the tools and techniques. It's sort of
Speaker 2: the difference between let's say, you know, giving a woman
Speaker 2: or a man of fish versus teaching them how to fish.
Speaker 2: This way, you actually understand how to manipulate your sleep.
Speaker 2: They give you the tools and then you can continue
Speaker 2: to sleep better for years later, even after you've stopped
Speaker 2: utilizing the therapy unlike medications. So I would just say
Speaker 2: that that's a little bit about both melotonin, the sort
Speaker 2: of the emergence of these new flavors of sleep medications,
Speaker 2: and then an alternative should people wish for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's so worrying because I think we've got
Speaker 1: so used to treating our brain and our mind like technology,
Speaker 1: and this desire to just switch it on and off.
Speaker 1: Power our power down, power on, power off. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you don't ever really stop to think what's happening
Speaker 1: in order for that to happen. And I know I
Speaker 1: didn't for a long time where I grew up and
Speaker 1: you just pop a more paracetamoor from where we're from,
Speaker 1: but I go from you know, in the US, and
Speaker 1: you've got a headache, Just take this, it's gone. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't sleep. Take this. You fall asleep, and you're
Speaker 1: not really recognizing what's happening at a chemical level and
Speaker 1: how many consequences there are and what's what's actually happening
Speaker 1: beneath the scenes. And I think it's so easy to
Speaker 1: forget because it's giving you the instant thing that you
Speaker 1: want in that moment, but the kind of circuitry that
Speaker 1: it's kicking off or closing down as far more long
Speaker 1: term consequences that, like you said, we're not even aware of.
Speaker 1: It's sad and hard and difficult that wanting to get
Speaker 1: these natural things to happen that we are naturally wired
Speaker 1: to do. Right. These chemicals are being naturally produced, and
Speaker 1: there are natural things we can do to boost those
Speaker 1: chemicals within ourselves that hopefully get us to go to sleep,
Speaker 1: as you talked about, like seeing light first thing in
Speaker 1: the morning, like you know, being outdoor more, reducing blue
Speaker 1: light in the evening, reducing exposure to junk light as
Speaker 1: you called it, in the evening. I've definitely seen that
Speaker 1: one make a big difference. I'm someone who generally loves light.
Speaker 1: I really like being in bright places, and my wife's
Speaker 1: the opposite. She knows she's very much like wants to
Speaker 1: follow the sun, and so when it's dark, she'll be like,
Speaker 1: all the lights have to be off in the house.
Speaker 1: And recently when we've been watching our shows, we've been
Speaker 1: watching our shows in total darkness apart from the screen obviously,
Speaker 1: and it's so natural for both of us to just
Speaker 1: feel tired earlier, Yeah, and we'll be like, all right,
Speaker 1: time to go to bed, and we don't have our
Speaker 1: screen in our bedroom, and so we'll finish watching whatever
Speaker 1: we're watching, and we've sometimes we're both even like you
Speaker 1: can tell we're just falling asleep while watching. We figure
Speaker 1: it out, turn it off and go to our bed
Speaker 1: and we're out to sleep. And just simply completely making
Speaker 1: it dark in the evening has had a huge, huge impact.
Speaker 2: On Honestly, I love that you bring this up. And
Speaker 2: I would say to anyone listening, if you're going to
Speaker 2: do anything with this podcast in terms of an actionable event,
Speaker 2: just do this one thing for the next week. If
Speaker 2: you get the opportunity, just do me this favor. Set
Speaker 2: it to bed alarm one hour before you would normally
Speaker 2: go to bed, and when that alarm goes off, shut
Speaker 2: down fifty percent, if not seventy five percent of all
Speaker 2: of the lights in your home. And then see how
Speaker 2: soperific that will make you feel, how sleepy that you
Speaker 2: will make you feel. It's really quite striking. Then don't
Speaker 2: just stop there. Do what I would call the off
Speaker 2: on off version of the experiment. So baseline, you're coming in,
Speaker 2: you're normally leaving the lights on blazing. Now we go
Speaker 2: into the on version of the experiment, the intervention, which
Speaker 2: is darkness one hour before bed, and then after that
Speaker 2: one week, go back to doing what you used to do.
Speaker 2: Keep all of the lights blazing for right up until
Speaker 2: you go to bed. And don't just ask the question
Speaker 2: did my sleep get any better when I did the
Speaker 2: manipulation of one hour before bed switched the lights off?
Speaker 2: Ask the question did my sleep go back to being
Speaker 2: actually worse when I returned to keeping the lights on?
Speaker 2: And so you show by directionality, And when you show
Speaker 2: by directionality, it's usually a much more powerful version of
Speaker 2: the experiment. But and if honestly you can say to
Speaker 2: me it made no difference to my sensation of feeling
Speaker 2: drowsy and sleepy or the quality of my sleep, then
Speaker 2: no problem at all. Keep doing what you're doing and
Speaker 2: it just didn't work for you, that's fine too.
Speaker 1: But first, here's a quick word from the brands that
Speaker 1: support the show. All right, thank you to our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Now let's dive back in. I love what the advice
Speaker 1: you give for people who are struggling with insomnia, For
Speaker 1: someone who's waking up they go to sleep for three hours,
Speaker 1: but then they're up. They finally put themselves back to
Speaker 1: sleep after an hour and a half and they sleep
Speaker 1: for maybe another three hours, and then they're back up again.
Speaker 1: For that person, what's the most helpful way for them
Speaker 1: to be able to fall back asleep in that moment.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about the roots of the issues and
Speaker 1: the core from the acronym, but what about that person
Speaker 1: is just like, I just want to know how to
Speaker 1: get back to sleep for another three four hours if
Speaker 1: I could, Yeah, what's the quickest way I can do that?
Speaker 2: I would say there are three things to keep in
Speaker 2: mind here. When I often hear that description, people will
Speaker 2: say I always wake up, but it's about three point
Speaker 2: fifteen in the morning or it's four ten, and it
Speaker 2: just happens so reliably. My first question to them is,
Speaker 2: how do you know it's four o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2: That's your problem. You're looking at the clock and knowing
Speaker 2: that it's three point fifteen or four am in the morning.
Speaker 2: Does you no favors at all? It's not going to
Speaker 2: change the outcome. So the first recommendation is remove all
Speaker 2: clock faces from the bedroom. It's okay to if you
Speaker 2: really must do. Keep your phone next to your bed,
Speaker 2: but keep it out of sight, even though I would
Speaker 2: strongly recommend that you keep your phone in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: or even better still, a friend of mine recommended recently
Speaker 2: just put it in the garage. Put it in your
Speaker 2: car in the garage, and that way. The amount of
Speaker 2: motivation effort to go and get your phone within the
Speaker 2: first ten minutes of the morning is very very high,
Speaker 2: meaning you're probably not going to do it. So let's
Speaker 2: baby steps. Let's just say crawl, walk, run. First thing
Speaker 2: to do. Just make sure you can't see any clock faces,
Speaker 2: and if you wake up, resist the urge. Because as
Speaker 2: soon as you start doing that night after night, you're
Speaker 2: actually training your brain, reinforcing it to wake up at
Speaker 2: three pin fifteen in the morning. So we've started that.
Speaker 2: The next question is, well, what should you do about it?
Speaker 2: You know, don't tell me the fancy, remove the clock,
Speaker 2: help me at that point at night, either if you've
Speaker 2: woken up or you just can't fall asleep. It works
Speaker 2: for both of these. The problem here is that you
Speaker 2: have to get your mind off itself because at that
Speaker 2: moment when you're awake, you start thinking, okay, I'm awake.
Speaker 2: This is now going to just obliterate my day. Tomorrow
Speaker 2: I've got that important meeting. I'm now going to be underslept.
Speaker 2: At that point, the anxiety starts to begin. Then you
Speaker 2: start thinking, oh gosh, I remember now I didn't do
Speaker 2: that one thing that I should have done for tomorrow morning,
Speaker 2: and then I've got to do that thing for next week,
Speaker 2: and I also didn't do that thing last week for
Speaker 2: and again at that point, that's going to keep you
Speaker 2: awake for the next one or two hours. So your
Speaker 2: job to try to get back asleep is to disengage
Speaker 2: the mind. How do you do that? I would say
Speaker 2: there probably four or five different tools that you can use.
Speaker 2: Is meditation. It may be or may not be for you,
Speaker 2: but if you look at the data, meditation for sleep
Speaker 2: immensely powerful. If meditation is not your thing, just do
Speaker 2: something simple like breath work and you can just google
Speaker 2: box breathing and anything like that is great. You could
Speaker 2: also just do a simple body scan. Start at the
Speaker 2: top of the head, move down just and again google
Speaker 2: body scan and you can start to train yourself to
Speaker 2: do that. The next thing you could do is listen
Speaker 2: to a sleep story or just listen to a podcast,
Speaker 2: make sure it's on a timed sort of shut off.
Speaker 2: But again, all of these things common across all of
Speaker 2: them is you're getting your mind off itself. If I'm meditating,
Speaker 2: I'm not thinking about my worries. If I'm breathing, I'm
Speaker 2: focusing on the breath. If I'm doing some kind of
Speaker 2: a relaxation, a body scan, again, I'm just moving through
Speaker 2: my body. It's very hard for me to think about
Speaker 2: my anxieties. If I'm listening to a sleep story, I'm
Speaker 2: engaging in sort of the externality of the story, not
Speaker 2: my own in internal worries. And then the final thing
Speaker 2: that was done is great study done at you see Berkeley,
Speaker 2: not by my group. They found that taking yourself on
Speaker 2: a mental walk in hyper detail was wonderful. So let's
Speaker 2: say it's a walk that I take with my dog,
Speaker 2: and you've got to remember it in high detail. So
Speaker 2: I think, okay, I open the drawer, which colored leish
Speaker 2: am I going to take? I'll take the blue one,
Speaker 2: clip it in with my right hand. With my left hand,
Speaker 2: I open the door, take a left down the stairs,
Speaker 2: go up. It's at that level of detail, and all
Speaker 2: of these things are taking your mind off itself because
Speaker 2: at that time of night, sleep is a little bit
Speaker 2: like trying to remember someone's name. Sleep is not something
Speaker 2: that you make happen. Sleep is something that happens to you,
Speaker 2: And like trying to remember someone's name, the harder you try,
Speaker 2: the further you push it away, and it's only when
Speaker 2: you stop trying does it return to you absolutely, and
Speaker 2: that's the same way with sleeping. Normally, if you engage
Speaker 2: in some of these methods and tools, the next thing
Speaker 2: that you remember is your alarm going off in the morning. Why,
Speaker 2: because you took your mind off itself. If that doesn't
Speaker 2: work and you are consistently waking up and spending long
Speaker 2: amounts of time in bed awake, then we may have
Speaker 2: to implement one of the methods in cognitive behavioral therapy
Speaker 2: for insomnia, which is something called bed time restructuring. It
Speaker 2: used to be called sleep restriction therapy, and for reasons,
Speaker 2: obviously you can think it's not the best name. Where
Speaker 2: you come to me and say, look, I'm having real
Speaker 2: problems getting enough sleep. My say, great, we're going to
Speaker 2: do sleep restriction therapy and you say no, no, wait, wait
Speaker 2: a second, you didn't hear me, I can't get enough sleep,
Speaker 2: and you're saying you're going to restrict my sleep. It's
Speaker 2: actually not sleep restriction, it's time in bed restriction. So
Speaker 2: you tell me, Okay, i am in bed for eight
Speaker 2: hours and I'm awake for two hours across the night,
Speaker 2: so I'm only getting six hours of sleep, but I'm
Speaker 2: in bed for eight hours. To me, as a sleep scientist,
Speaker 2: I then know we've got to constrain the time with
Speaker 2: which you are giving your brain the opportunity to sleep,
Speaker 2: because your brain has become inefficient. It's like saying, I
Speaker 2: go to the gym and I take an hour to
Speaker 2: work out, but if you are to actually observe me,
Speaker 2: I'm actually only working out for about twenty five minutes
Speaker 2: because you know, at the end, I finish my you know,
Speaker 2: my last strip. Then I do the eleventh rep, which
Speaker 2: is I pick up my phone and I start checking
Speaker 2: social media, and then I'm talking to people. Utterly inefficient.
Speaker 2: But then at some point someone says to me, look, today,
Speaker 2: you've only got a maximum of thirty minutes in the gym,
Speaker 2: and as soon as your thirteen minutes is up, we
Speaker 2: kick you out. The first couple of days I'm still
Speaker 2: doing what I normally do, and I get through maybe
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of my workout because I'm not doing it efficiently.
Speaker 2: After a week of doing that, I now realize as
Speaker 2: soon as I go into the gym, I put my
Speaker 2: phone down and I just go at it real hard,
Speaker 2: and I still get my twenty five minutes of workout
Speaker 2: in the thirty minutes. It's the same with sleep restriction.
Speaker 2: You tell me, Okay, I'm in bed for eight hours
Speaker 2: and I only get about sort of six hours of sleep. Well,
Speaker 2: now I'm going to say I'm going to limit you,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to take one hour of sleep away
Speaker 2: from you. You wake up at the same time, but
Speaker 2: I want you to go to bed consistently one hour later,
Speaker 2: maybe even one and a half hours later. You tell
Speaker 2: me I go to bed normally at ten pm. I
Speaker 2: say you are now not allowed to get into bed
Speaker 2: until eleven thirty pm. Push through. I don't care. And
Speaker 2: then you've got to wake up at the same time.
Speaker 2: And after about three or four days of this, your
Speaker 2: brain starts to build up. Now, the first couple of nights,
Speaker 2: you're still going to be sleeping bad. But then after
Speaker 2: a couple of nights. Your brain starts to build up
Speaker 2: this starvation, this hunger for sleep. It creates a sleep
Speaker 2: dead and then after a while, it's like resetting the
Speaker 2: Wi Fi button on your router. The brain thinks, gosh,
Speaker 2: I don't have the luxury of eight and a half
Speaker 2: hours of time in bed. I'm only allowed six and
Speaker 2: a half now or seven. And now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it becomes incredibly efficient. You stop waking up in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night. If you do wake up, you
Speaker 2: fall back asleep very quickly, and you end up getting
Speaker 2: maybe six and three quarter hours of sleep within seven
Speaker 2: whereas you used to get six and a half hours
Speaker 2: of sleep with eight and a half hours of time
Speaker 2: in bed. So it's a quite convoluted method, but I
Speaker 2: would say I would use that as the last approach. Firstly,
Speaker 2: try to get your mind off itself. If it's still
Speaker 2: not working, think about sleep restriction therapy. You can just
Speaker 2: google it. It's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Great advice. Thank you so much. I love how tactical
Speaker 1: and practical you are. Oh, it's so helpful. Like if
Speaker 1: there's anyone who's listening to this episode right now, and
Speaker 1: you have a friend or a family member who's struggling
Speaker 1: with sleep. Please pass this episode on because I've never
Speaker 1: heard someone make it that granular as you are. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's so brilliant and it's so helpful because it's so
Speaker 1: easy to get philosophical about these ideas, and we all
Speaker 1: understand how important sleep is and how much we need it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I can hear everyone going, yeah, but
Speaker 1: what do I do? Really, You've created a map for people,
Speaker 1: So thank you so.
Speaker 2: Much for you. Well, I think I really it was
Speaker 2: very guilty of doing this. You know, when I first
Speaker 2: came out a couple of years ago speaking about sleep,
Speaker 2: I was speaking all about the science of sleep and
Speaker 2: the bad things that happened about sleep. And I think
Speaker 2: someone even said my ted talk, which I think was
Speaker 2: called they name it sleeps your Superpowers, I mean, should
Speaker 2: have really been called sleep or else dot dot dot,
Speaker 2: you know, and it did people with insomnia no favors.
Speaker 2: I understand that now. But I think what I've tried
Speaker 2: to do is people have said, Okay, I get it,
Speaker 2: sleep is important, but how how do I get it?
Speaker 2: And I completely suffered what we call in neurology is
Speaker 2: HEMI neglect one half of what I needed to do
Speaker 2: as a sort of a public intellectual regarding sleep was missing,
Speaker 2: which is I was telling everyone how critical it was
Speaker 2: and the bad things that happen when you don't get it.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't being very helpful because I wasn't telling
Speaker 2: anyone how it works and how you know, where is
Speaker 2: the user manual for sleep? And that's what I'm now
Speaker 2: trying to do. So thank you for saying trying to
Speaker 2: do a little bit better. You really had to do
Speaker 2: less bad.
Speaker 1: Let's just say, yeah, now it's coming across great. I
Speaker 1: want to move on to talk about caffeine and coffee.
Speaker 1: You spoke earlier. You said we should be having our
Speaker 1: last cup of coffee or caffeine at ten to twelve
Speaker 1: hours before we go to bed. Yeah, And when I
Speaker 1: was listening to that, I was like, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are not doing that, Like from what
Speaker 1: at least from the conversations I'm having, I think people
Speaker 1: are having it much closer to bed, or they're having
Speaker 1: so much that it's affecting their bed. If you had
Speaker 1: to tell people just a couple of things about caffeine
Speaker 1: or coffee and sleep, what would you want them to know?
Speaker 2: I think I would say that. Firstly, caffeine has a
Speaker 2: half life for the average adult of five to six hours,
Speaker 2: which means that after about five to six hours, fifty
Speaker 2: percent of the caffeine is still circulating in your brain.
Speaker 2: That means that caffeine has a quarter life of ten
Speaker 2: to twelve hours. So if you have a cup of
Speaker 2: coffee at noon, twenty five percent of that a quarter
Speaker 2: of that cup of coffee is still in your brain
Speaker 2: at midnight. So I don't think many of us would
Speaker 2: get into bed and sort of pour a quarter of
Speaker 2: a cup of coffee and then twig it and then
Speaker 2: you know, put your head on the pillow. We understand
Speaker 2: that that probably doesn't need to good sleep, but in
Speaker 2: some ways that's not dissimilar to what you're doing if
Speaker 2: you have a cup of coffee at noon. Keep in mind, however,
Speaker 2: there is variability that some people have a faster capability
Speaker 2: to metabolize or at least clear caffeine from the system.
Speaker 2: And you can do these genetic tests, and there's an
Speaker 2: enzyme called the CYP one a two gene, and that
Speaker 2: will dictate the speed of it as sort of a
Speaker 2: liver enzyme, a cytochrome enzyme that will speed or slow down,
Speaker 2: and you will know if you're caffeine sensitive or not.
Speaker 2: So firstly, the timing of caffeine can be important. Also
Speaker 2: the dose, and that's why we've looked at people. Even
Speaker 2: if you just have one weekly sort of drip brewed
Speaker 2: cup of coffee in the evening, I'd say it's just
Speaker 2: one hundred milligrams of caffeine. It will not necessarily prevent
Speaker 2: you from falling asleep as efficiently, but it will increase
Speaker 2: the chances with which you wake up, and if you
Speaker 2: wake up, it will increase the duration with which it
Speaker 2: takes you to fall back asleep. And if it doesn't
Speaker 2: do that, it can also reduce down the depth of
Speaker 2: your deep sleep. And we know, for example, that it's
Speaker 2: during that deep sleep when your brain has a cleansing
Speaker 2: system that washes away things like the Alzheimer's proteins, amyloid
Speaker 2: and tau protein. So you really would prefer not to
Speaker 2: try to degrade the quality of your deep sleep, considering
Speaker 2: all that it does for your brain and your body.
Speaker 2: But in some ways that's what many of us are
Speaker 2: inadvertently doing if we have caffeine too late in the day.
Speaker 2: I would say, though that I've probably changed my tune
Speaker 2: a little bit on coffee. I would say, drink coffee,
Speaker 2: but the dose and the timing make the poison. Try to,
Speaker 2: as I said, cut yourself off after about three cups
Speaker 2: of coffee, and try to cut yourself off at least
Speaker 2: ten hours, you know, as a rule of thumb before bed.
Speaker 2: The reason I reverted back in some ways to say
Speaker 2: coffee is not necessarily a bad thing to drink. If
Speaker 2: you look at the relationship between drinking coffee and the
Speaker 2: health benefits, they are non negotiably astronomically impressive. Drinking coffee
Speaker 2: seems to be a very good thing. Now again, it's
Speaker 2: dose dependent. Once you get past about four cups of coffee,
Speaker 2: then it goes in the opposite direction. It's not a
Speaker 2: good thing. And if you look at that list, and
Speaker 2: it is quite a list of health benefits and disease
Speaker 2: de risking that drinking coffee provides, and you compare that
Speaker 2: to all of the health benefits that sleep provides, it's
Speaker 2: a remarkable overlap. So people were saying to me, how
Speaker 2: do you square that circle, because that doesn't make any sense. Well,
Speaker 2: if you look at the data, the reason that drinking
Speaker 2: coffee is beneficial is because the coffee bean itself contains
Speaker 2: a whopping dose of antioxidants, and because in the Western
Speaker 2: world we're so deficient in our dietary intake of antioxidants,
Speaker 2: this one thing, the coffee bean, has been asked to
Speaker 2: carry the herculean weight of all of our antioxidant needs.
Speaker 2: And therefore that's why drinking coffee has such a health
Speaker 2: predictive signal in the literature. Case in point, if you
Speaker 2: look at decaffeinated coffee has almost the same health benefits.
Speaker 2: So it's not the caffeine, it's the antioxidants in the
Speaker 2: coffee bean itself. So again, with all of these things
Speaker 2: with alcohol and caffeine, I am just a scientist. I
Speaker 2: have no right to tell anyone how to live their life,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to be the healthiest person in
Speaker 2: the graveyard either. Life is to be lived for good
Speaker 2: you know, jouir de vive for goodness sake, live a
Speaker 2: little bit. All I simply want to do is in
Speaker 2: empower you with the scientific evidence and then you can
Speaker 2: make an informed choice as to how you want to
Speaker 2: live your life. But does that help a little bit
Speaker 2: in terms of navigating caffeine?
Speaker 1: And yeah, absolutely huge and The other thing you mentioned
Speaker 1: at this point of the the acronym is alcohol, and
Speaker 1: you were talking about how just the negative effects of
Speaker 1: alcohol in terms of that disruption of our sleep. If
Speaker 1: there were a couple of things you wanted people to
Speaker 1: know about alcohol and sleep, what would they be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there, I think I probably haven't changed my tune
Speaker 2: and I don't see any upside in terms of alcohol
Speaker 2: for health or certainly for sleep. Alcohol is probably the
Speaker 2: most misunderstood sleep aid that there is out there. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: it's not an aid at all. Alcohol will hurt your
Speaker 2: sleep in at least one of three different ways. The
Speaker 2: first thing is that alcohol is also in the class
Speaker 2: of drugs that we call the sedatives. And again, when
Speaker 2: you have a couple of sort of nightcaps in the evening,
Speaker 2: you say it helps me fall asleep. Alcohol is simply
Speaker 2: helping you lose consciousness more quickly. It's not really putting
Speaker 2: you into natural sleep. The second thing is that alcohol
Speaker 2: will fragment your sleep in the first half of the night.
Speaker 2: And the reason that it does that is that alcohol
Speaker 2: will activate the fight or flight branch of the nervous system. Now,
Speaker 2: in the first half of the night, that's when we
Speaker 2: get most of our deep sleep, and when we go
Speaker 2: into deep sleep, we shift from the fight or flight
Speaker 2: branch of the nervous system over to what we call
Speaker 2: the parasympathetic nervous system, which is this quiescent nervous branch. Now,
Speaker 2: alcohol will crank you back over to the fight or
Speaker 2: flight sympathetic nervous system, which then makes your sleep, the
Speaker 2: depth of your sleep far more shallow, so you don't
Speaker 2: get as much deep sleep. You wake up more frequently,
Speaker 2: But those awakenings are so brief that you never commit
Speaker 2: them to memory, so you never think alcohol is harming
Speaker 2: my sleep by fragmenting it, sort of littering it with
Speaker 2: all of these awakenings, so your deep sleep suffers, your
Speaker 2: sleep is fragmented. Then, finally, alcohol is very potent at
Speaker 2: blocking your dream sleep or your rapid eye movement. Sleep
Speaker 2: and dream sleep is critical for things like emotional and
Speaker 2: mental health. It's essential for creativity. It's also important for
Speaker 2: hormonal health. It's during rem sleep when we release our
Speaker 2: peak levels of testosterone in both men and women, and
Speaker 2: alcohol will sort of short change you of that rem sleep.
Speaker 2: So on all of those counts, you know, I just
Speaker 2: can't say in good conscience. Even a glass of wine
Speaker 2: with dinner, you know, is that okay, we can see
Speaker 2: the blest radius. It is in some ways both a
Speaker 2: dose and also time dependent process, such that if you have,
Speaker 2: let's say, a glass of wine with lunch versus a
Speaker 2: glass of wine with dinner, the glass of wine with
Speaker 2: lunch will have less of a damaging impact on your
Speaker 2: sleep at night. So the completely politically incorrect thing that
Speaker 2: I would never say on a podcast would be go
Speaker 2: to the pub in the morning and the alcohol is
Speaker 2: out your system in the evening and no harm, no foult.
Speaker 2: But no, of course I would never suggest something like that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, what are you doing tomorrow morning?
Speaker 1: Now, before we dive into the next moment, let's hear
Speaker 1: from our sponsors and back to our episode. Like you said,
Speaker 1: I think it's so easy for human just ideas that
Speaker 1: become prevalent in human society that we just take as
Speaker 1: being normal, or habits and practices that become normalized over
Speaker 1: a certain period of time, and we just start operating
Speaker 1: like it's normal, it's okay, it's accepted, and not really
Speaker 1: realizing what's going on. And I'm also of the spirit
Speaker 1: of we should enjoy life and appreciate life and everything else.
Speaker 1: But I think to really appreciate life, it means to
Speaker 1: know what works for you and what doesn't, and what
Speaker 1: helps you and what doesn't, Yeah, and to really recognize
Speaker 1: the value of the impact of that, because I think
Speaker 1: it's really easy to be like, oh, yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: let's just see how things go, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you hear about a family member or a
Speaker 1: friend who gets a diagnosis, and then that's when it
Speaker 1: kind of really hits you. And I've had that far
Speaker 1: too often, where I've had friends and family members at
Speaker 1: young ages diagnosed with things and it's consistent with a habit.
Speaker 1: And by the way, sometimes someone gets something and it's
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with their habits and it's bad
Speaker 1: luck and it's you know, everything else. And both of
Speaker 1: those are positions to be compassionate and empathetic. But I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to ourselves, I look at it
Speaker 1: and go, I would like it to not be my
Speaker 1: own fault. If it happens from something beyond me, great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But if I can avoid it by taking responsibility and
Speaker 1: accountability for my health, then that's probably a good play
Speaker 1: and a good way to live. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like the way that you're thinking. They're in the
Speaker 2: sense that so many of us see sleep as a
Speaker 2: cost to our lives. Yes, and instead, I think what
Speaker 2: we have to realize is think of sleep like an
Speaker 2: investment in tomorrow, not a cost of what I get
Speaker 2: for today. And you're right when you look at some
Speaker 2: of the mentality of you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Speaker 2: I mean, firstly, what we know from the data is
Speaker 2: that if we adopt that mentality, you will be both
Speaker 2: dead sooner and the quality of your life will be
Speaker 2: significantly worse as a consequence. But also if you look
Speaker 2: at the data between short sleep and cardiovascular disease, if
Speaker 2: you look at short sleep and certain forms of cancer,
Speaker 2: not all forms of cancer, short sleep and dementia risk.
Speaker 2: Imagine if you were to say, in twenty years time,
Speaker 2: when you're at the hospital and you've just lost a
Speaker 2: third of your heart function because you've had a massive
Speaker 2: cronary blockage, if I were to at that point say
Speaker 2: I could wave a magic wand right now in the
Speaker 2: hospital at your bedside, and if only you could go
Speaker 2: back twenty years and start investing in your instead of
Speaker 2: maybe adopting what some not all people, but some have
Speaker 2: this sort of almost this it's almost like a sleep
Speaker 2: machismo attitude. I think in certain sectors of the workplace
Speaker 2: we've got this competitive undersleeping, you know, mentality, the sleep
Speaker 2: braggadoccio notion. But I know no one who twenty years
Speaker 2: later in a hospital wouldn't say, if I could go
Speaker 2: back and remove all of this cardiovascular consequence that you've
Speaker 2: just had by way of this heart attack, if only
Speaker 2: you'd gone back and started just to try to invest
Speaker 2: even just five or six days a week in consistent
Speaker 2: good sleep, would you do it? Most people at that
Speaker 2: point would say absolutely, I wish I could take it back.
Speaker 2: But it's so hard for us to prospect into the
Speaker 2: future and do back casting. Many of us just can't
Speaker 2: do forecasting at all very well in terms of our health.
Speaker 2: So what do we do? We burn the candle at
Speaker 2: both ends. Also, I think it's not anyone's fault regarding
Speaker 2: this global sleep loss epidemic, and this it is a
Speaker 2: consistent sort of sleep neglect, because firstly, I think society
Speaker 2: is conspiring against us to get sufficient sleep, because sleep
Speaker 2: has this image problem. We think of people who get
Speaker 2: sufficient sleep as slothful, as lazy, that sleep. Whoever the
Speaker 2: pr agent for sleep has been, we probably should have
Speaker 2: fired them long ago, because I'm going to try and
Speaker 2: bush back at least. But also from a perspective of
Speaker 2: someone who doesn't know anything about sleep, I would just think, well,
Speaker 2: my body's at rest, my mind is dormant. How much
Speaker 2: danger is there really in losing one hour of sleep
Speaker 2: or even two hours of sleep? Surely there's not much danger.
Speaker 2: It can even actually change your very nucleic alphabet. So
Speaker 2: I'll tell you about a fascinating study that impressed upon
Speaker 2: me the importance. They took perfectly healthy individuals and they
Speaker 2: limited them to six hours of sleeper night for one week.
Speaker 2: By the way, six hours of sleep a night for
Speaker 2: one week is actually what many people are getting in society.
Speaker 2: At least a third of the population seemed to be
Speaker 2: getting six hours or less during the week. So it
Speaker 2: was a very sort of ecologically relevant experiment. And then
Speaker 2: they measured the change in their gene activity profile relative
Speaker 2: to when those same individuals were getting a full eight
Speaker 2: hour night of sleep, and there were two key findings. First,
Speaker 2: a sizeable and significant seven hundred and eleven genes were
Speaker 2: distorted in their activity, caused by that six hours a
Speaker 2: night of sleep. If that wasn't impressible enough, the second
Speaker 2: was that about half of those genes were increased in
Speaker 2: their activity, the other half were decreased. Now, the genes
Speaker 2: that were increased in their activity were genes that were
Speaker 2: associated with biological stress and cardiovascular disease, genes that were
Speaker 2: associated with the promotion of tumors, and genes that were
Speaker 2: associated with long term chronic inflammation within the body, whereas
Speaker 2: though genes that were actually switched off or turned down
Speaker 2: were genes associated with your immune system. And so to me,
Speaker 2: what that demonstrated was that there's no aspect of our
Speaker 2: wellness that can retreat at the sign of sleep deprivation
Speaker 2: and get away unscathed. That it's almost like a broken
Speaker 2: water pipe in your home. That sleep loss will leak
Speaker 2: down into every knock and cranny of your physiology and
Speaker 2: even tamper with the very DNA alphabet that spells out
Speaker 2: your daily health narrative. And so why if you didn't
Speaker 2: know that evidence, why would you think that sleep is
Speaker 2: so necessarily important. If I, just as a late public person,
Speaker 2: would be thinking, well, my mind's dorm up, my body
Speaker 2: gets a bit of a rest. Well. I can rest
Speaker 2: when I'm watching Netflix. My body gets plenty enough for
Speaker 2: rest there, so I don't need my sleep. But if
Speaker 2: you think about it, sleep is the most idiotic of
Speaker 2: all evolutionary creations. You know, finding a mate, You're not reproducing,
Speaker 2: you're not caring for you're young, you're not foraging for food,
Speaker 2: and worse, you're vulnerable to predation. Sleep should have been
Speaker 2: strongly selected against during the course of evolution if it
Speaker 2: wasn't important. It is absolutely important. It serves a constellation
Speaker 2: of different vital functions for brain and body. But if
Speaker 2: I didn't know about them, of course I'd neglect my sleep.
Speaker 2: So I'm simply saying that to both impress the importance
Speaker 2: of sleep, but also try to be compassionately sensitive to why.
Speaker 2: I understand people neglected not because they're trying to show
Speaker 2: how brave and teflong coated they are. It's just because
Speaker 2: no one understands sleep. So that's why I've tried to
Speaker 2: sort of make it in part A mission for life
Speaker 2: is sleep has been than the neglected stepsister. In the
Speaker 2: health conversation of today, we speak a lot about diet
Speaker 2: and exercise, and that's great, and because of people like you.
Speaker 2: I think we're speaking so much more about emotional and
Speaker 2: mental health, which to me is the fourth pillar of
Speaker 2: life and health. Sleep is one of those pillars too, though,
Speaker 2: and so hope this helps a little bit.
Speaker 1: No, it's brilliant, Matt. I think you are the best
Speaker 1: pr agent be Sep could ever ask for. I think
Speaker 1: your method of communication, the empathy and compassion that comes
Speaker 1: with it, the lack of judgment, and at the same
Speaker 1: time waking us up to the reality, which I think
Speaker 1: is an important part of the narrative, comes across extremely clearly.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful, and I hope you'll come back
Speaker 1: on many many times. I had to depose this question
Speaker 1: to extend it. There's so much we didn't even get
Speaker 1: to today. But we end every on Purpose episode with
Speaker 1: a final five and these have to be answered in
Speaker 1: one word or one sentence maximum. But I know I'm
Speaker 1: going to break that rule with you already. So the
Speaker 1: first question is what is the best sleep advice you've
Speaker 1: ever heard, received or given regularity?
Speaker 2: Digital detox, going to bed at the same time, waking
Speaker 2: up at the same time. Do that so many other
Speaker 2: things like quantitine quality will fall into place, and then
Speaker 2: the second is as much as you can in the
Speaker 2: last hour before bed, try to stay off your phone
Speaker 2: and in the morning give yourself ten minutes. Why because
Speaker 2: what we do is we train ourselves. What's the first
Speaker 2: thing that most people do when they wake up, They
Speaker 2: open their phone, and there's this way the tsunami of
Speaker 2: anxiety comes flooding in every day. You are training yourself
Speaker 2: when you go to bed at night to expect that
Speaker 2: huge wave of anxiety when you wake up. It's what
Speaker 2: we call anticipatory anxiety. And most people will have had this.
Speaker 2: You have an early morning flight and you know you've
Speaker 2: got to wake up for it. It's essential. And you
Speaker 2: also know that your sleep that night will be so
Speaker 2: shallow and so sort of diminutive.
Speaker 1: Early.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a diet version of that. But every
Speaker 2: single day, by way of swiping open on your phone
Speaker 2: next to you, just give yourself ten minutes in the morning.
Speaker 2: I promise your sleep will be better. So regularity digital detos.
Speaker 1: I love it. What's the worst sleep advice you've ever
Speaker 1: heard received or given?
Speaker 2: That you can make up sleep at the weekend. You
Speaker 2: can't accumulate a debt and then hope to fully pay it.
Speaker 2: Off at the weekend, and there's some great evidence looking
Speaker 2: at all sorts of brain and body metrics that for
Speaker 2: the most part, some of them you can kind of
Speaker 2: sleep back at the weekend. But for the most part,
Speaker 2: when you look at your cardiovascular system, your metabolic system,
Speaker 2: your immune system, your hormonal system, if you look at
Speaker 2: your brain processes, your cognition, your emotional stability or instability,
Speaker 2: all of these things do not fully recover by weight
Speaker 2: of weekend sleep. So you can't do this binge purge process.
Speaker 2: So I would say that the myth of makeup sleep
Speaker 2: is unfortunately just that that it's not like the bank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you just have to get into a good
Speaker 1: rhythm and a good pattern and invest in it.
Speaker 2: It's just I mean, if it was like that, trust me,
Speaker 2: you know, mother nature would have figured out a way
Speaker 2: to have us short sleeping all the time, because it's
Speaker 2: sleep is so deleterious to any organism, and if there
Speaker 2: was a way to short change, we would have been
Speaker 2: short changing long ago, and it would be baked into
Speaker 2: our sort of sleep DNA biology. The fact that it's
Speaker 2: not that human beings are the only species that will
Speaker 2: deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent good reason
Speaker 2: is testament to the fact that you just can't make
Speaker 2: it up like that, the system doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1: Question number three, how does what does bad sleep do
Speaker 1: to your mental health?
Speaker 2: Firstly, you become much more emotionally erratic. You become pendulum like,
Speaker 2: why is that? Yeah, part of the reason is because
Speaker 2: there is a part of your prefrontal cortex right down
Speaker 2: in the middle. So my prefrontal cortex sits right above
Speaker 2: my eyes. It's the most evolved part of our sort
Speaker 2: of hominid brain. It's what makes us human beings. That
Speaker 2: middle part of the brain acts like almost a brake
Speaker 2: pedal on our emotional accelerator regions deep in the brain.
Speaker 2: And when we are underslept, that part of the brain
Speaker 2: gets shut down. So now we become all emotional gas
Speaker 2: pedal and too little regulatory control break as it were,
Speaker 2: and that's why we become so reactive. We become you know,
Speaker 2: it's that I just snapped dot dot dot fill in
Speaker 2: the blank when I am underslept. So firstly, our regulation
Speaker 2: of our emotions becomes impaired as a consequence. Secondly, the
Speaker 2: anxiety centers of the brain can become thirty to forty
Speaker 2: percent more reactive when we're not getting sufficient sleep. You
Speaker 2: can flip that narrative then and say, well, if that's
Speaker 2: the bad that happens when I take sleep away, what
Speaker 2: is it about sleep when I do get it that
Speaker 2: is beneficial? And what we've discovered is that it's rem
Speaker 2: sleep or dream sleep that provides a form of almost
Speaker 2: overnight therapy. Dream sleep is emotional first aid, and it's
Speaker 2: during dream sleep that your brain takes those painful, difficult
Speaker 2: experiences and acts almost like a nocturnal soothing bomb, and
Speaker 2: it just takes the sharp edges off those painful, difficult
Speaker 2: experiences so that we come back the next day and
Speaker 2: we feel better about them. It's that idea of it's
Speaker 2: not time that heals all wounds, it's time during sleep,
Speaker 2: and specifically dream sleep, that provides emotional convalescence. And there's
Speaker 2: a wonderful gosh. I wish i'd come up with this
Speaker 2: quote by an American entrepreneur, E. Joseph Cosman, and he
Speaker 2: once said that the best bridge between despur and hope
Speaker 2: is a good night of sleep. That's exactly what dream
Speaker 2: sleep provides.
Speaker 1: If you love your family, the best thing you can
Speaker 1: do is get a good night's sleep.
Speaker 2: When you have had a good night of sleep, I
Speaker 2: think we all sense this. You wake up and you
Speaker 2: are dressed in a different set of psychological clothes. It's
Speaker 2: almost as though sleep provides this sort of emotional winds,
Speaker 2: green wipeer benefit and we can see clearly and to me,
Speaker 2: that's I think one of the most powerful aspects. Sleep
Speaker 2: gives me back the rose in the tint of my
Speaker 2: worldview glasses every single morning.
Speaker 1: I mean, I experienced that all the time. I know
Speaker 1: what I can be like if I haven't had a
Speaker 1: good night.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'll sometimes say that to my much better half,
Speaker 2: you know, when I come up, I'll say to her, look,
Speaker 2: you know, darling, I am I'm so sorry I didn't
Speaker 2: sleep well last night. I am not the best version
Speaker 2: of myself. For whatever I do today, whatever idiocy that
Speaker 2: I you know, enunciate or behaving, ye, please forgive me
Speaker 2: and I will make sure that I will do all
Speaker 2: the dishes for the next two months.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sleep effects our emotional relationships, intimacy, everything, question number four,
Speaker 1: I have something in my mind. I was gonna ask you,
Speaker 1: what have you seen as being a surprising connection that's
Speaker 1: connected to sleep, something that sleep impacts that surprise you
Speaker 1: do something a bit that we might not have heard of.
Speaker 2: We've done some cities looking at what I would think
Speaker 2: of as more complex pro social behavior, and what we
Speaker 2: found is that a lack of sleep will immediately make
Speaker 2: someone become more asocial, meaning that they withdraw socially. They
Speaker 2: do not wish to have the contact with other people
Speaker 2: that they typically do. They become therefore more isolated. They
Speaker 2: feel more lonely as a consequence, and we know that
Speaker 2: there is this epidemic of loneliness happening, we didn't realize
Speaker 2: how much a lack of sleep was contributing to that.
Speaker 2: Worse still, when you interact with someone who is sleep
Speaker 2: deprived and you are well rested having had that interaction
Speaker 2: with the sleep deprived person, when we ask that person,
Speaker 2: do you feel any more or less lonely in this moment,
Speaker 2: they rate themselves as now feeling more lonely themselves having
Speaker 2: interacted with a sleep deprived individual. In other words, the
Speaker 2: loneliness that a lack of sleep creates is contagious and
Speaker 2: it is transmitted from one person to the next. The
Speaker 2: second thing that we looked at was perhaps one of
Speaker 2: the most fundamental components of US Homo sapiens, which is
Speaker 2: that we help each other. It's what we call pro
Speaker 2: social behavior. And I cannot imagine any modern civilization that
Speaker 2: has emerged without pro social helping between individuals. It's a
Speaker 2: fundamental ingredient. We help each other. And what we found
Speaker 2: is that when you are underslept, you withdraw your natural
Speaker 2: tendency to help other human beings. We observed it at
Speaker 2: the level of me helping other people, we observed it
Speaker 2: at the level of entire groups helping each other. And
Speaker 2: we also found it across entire nations. And you think
Speaker 2: how you figure that one out. There is a global
Speaker 2: experiment that's performed on one point six billion people across
Speaker 2: seventy countries twice a year, and it's called daylight Saving Time.
Speaker 2: And what we did we looked at the National donation
Speaker 2: database across the United States, which is in some ways
Speaker 2: a measure of selfless giving. I give to charity, I
Speaker 2: give to other people. And what we found is that
Speaker 2: in the days after the spring daylight savings time, when
Speaker 2: we lose one hour of sleep, there was this huge
Speaker 2: dent in proactive giving by way of donations to charities,
Speaker 2: we become more stingy, we've become more self centered. So
Speaker 2: I would say that it's this new wave of sleep
Speaker 2: science that goes beyond the DNA nucleus that we spoke about.
Speaker 2: It goes beyond cells, it goes beyond physiological systems, It
Speaker 2: goes beyond entire brain networks, It goes beyond the organism themselves.
Speaker 2: It now translates to a lack of sleep impacting our
Speaker 2: inter relationships and impacting the very fabric of society itself.
Speaker 2: That to me has been stunning and quite surprised.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a surprise. I was not expecting that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fifth and final question we asked this to every guest
Speaker 1: who's ever been on the show. Matt if you could
Speaker 1: create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 1: what would.
Speaker 2: It be self forgiveness?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Because I think that there is so much ill grace
Speaker 2: that is enacted by ourselves on others, because we are
Speaker 2: not good with ourselves, that it makes me sad at
Speaker 2: some times. And I think so much of what we
Speaker 2: react to others is really about a mirror being held
Speaker 2: up to ourselves and the pain of that that if
Speaker 2: we just let go and gave ourselves, self compassion and
Speaker 2: self forgiveness, society would be I think demonstratably, which is
Speaker 2: to say, demonstrably better as a result in truth, though
Speaker 2: that's probably me just holding a mirror up to myself
Speaker 2: to your.
Speaker 1: Question, peerful Matt, thank you so much for your incredible work,
Speaker 1: incredible sharing of insights today, and I really hope you
Speaker 1: will come back for another episode because I have another
Speaker 1: million questions to answer. Thank you so much. I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful for your time and energy. I hope everyone has
Speaker 1: been listening and watching back at home, at work, whether
Speaker 1: you're on a hike, whether you're with your dog, whether
Speaker 1: you're on driving right now, wherever you are, I hope
Speaker 1: that you will find it possible to try some just one,
Speaker 1: even if you just try one of Matt's suggestions today.
Speaker 1: I really truly believe your life will change, and as
Speaker 1: Matt said, it will impact all other areas of our lives.
Speaker 1: Please prioritize your sleep and watch how your life changes.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Matt, Thank you, and can I
Speaker 2: just say thank you to you for what you do
Speaker 2: for society. You have dedicated you yourself to the wellness
Speaker 2: and the health of the rest of humanity. But what
Speaker 2: I see as a big differentiator is that you have
Speaker 2: a very genuine passion for doing this. You mean it
Speaker 2: when you say it, thank you, And I think that's why,
Speaker 2: in part you've had just this incredible impact on society.
Speaker 2: Authenticity is a very rare thing, and as human beings,
Speaker 2: were actually very good at identifying it and also identifying
Speaker 2: its absence. And one of the reasons that I just
Speaker 2: have such admiration for what you do is not just
Speaker 2: that what you're doing is an incredible service, but the
Speaker 2: authentic way that you're doing it, because you genuinely mean it,
Speaker 2: is something that I think is a remarkable beauty to behold.
Speaker 2: So for all that you do for society, thank you
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Matt. That's extremely gracious and kind, genuinely
Speaker 1: that touch my heart. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with
Speaker 1: doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your life by
Speaker 1: changing your brain.
Speaker 3: If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with
Speaker 3: a healthy brain.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over
Speaker 3: a thousand convicted felons and over one hundred murderers and
Speaker 3: their brains are very damaged.