# Human Sleep Expert: Don't Pee In The Middle Of The Night & Why Night Time Sex Isn't A Good Idea!

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 9 Feb 2026, 2 h 24 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01KGT2RCE87AQV5KP04QYATYQ9.mp3

Are you always tired? Sleep Expert Dr. Michael Breus breaks down the 4 chronotypes to master your sleep, how to fix insomnia, the truth about sleep apnea, and why the 8-hour myth is wrong! Dr. Michael Breus is a clinical psychologist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, served as a WebMD sleep expert, and is also the bestselling author of books such as, ‘Sleep Drink Breathe’. He explains: ▪️The 4 chronotypes that dictate your ideal daily schedule ▪️Why waking up at 3am is a biological temperature spike ▪️The "3-2-1 Rule" for the perfect evening wind-down ▪️How alcohol blocks the brain’s glymphatic toxin clearance ▪️The exact pillow checklist to fix neck pain and snoring Chapters • 00:00:00 Intro • 00:04:14 What Your Dreams Say About Your Mind and Personality • 00:08:57 The "Caffeine Nap" That Supercharges You for 4 Hours • 00:12:50 Why You Need to Know Your Sleep Chronotype Now • 00:14:11 The Ideal Time to Have Sex—Backed by Science • 00:16:27 When to Drink Coffee for Maximum Focus and Energy • 00:21:03 Are You a Bear? Why Some Chronotypes Thrive Late Morning • 00:25:50 Does Aging Make Us Grumpier? The Sleep Connection • 00:26:46 Are Early School Start Times Hurting Our Kids’ Performance? • 00:31:03 The #1 Parenting Tip to Prevent Sleep Issues in Children • 00:33:43 How to Drink Alcohol Without Wrecking Your Sleep • 00:36:33 The Best Time to Drink—According to Your Chronotype • 00:37:48 What Happens When You Eat Right Before Bed • 00:39:20 Proven Relaxation Exercises That Help You Fall Asleep • 00:43:32 What the Ideal Sleep Environment Actually Looks Like • 00:47:14 How the Military Falls Asleep in 2 Minutes Flat • 00:52:39 These Smart Earphones Sync With Your Brainwaves to Improve Sleep • 00:57:06 Why Sleep Might Be in Crisis by 2026 • 01:00:26 Ads • 01:02:16 1 in 7 Have Sleep Apnea—and Most Don’t Know It • 01:04:31 6 Hidden Signs You Might Have Sleep Apnea • 01:06:05 Should Couples Sleep Together or Apart? The Surprising Data • 01:07:28 Why Sleep Apnea Symptoms Differ Between Men and Women • 01:11:09 The Scary Health Dangers of Chronic Sleep Deprivation • 01:13:43 The Most Common Myths About Insomnia—Debunked • 01:18:45 How Sleep Problems Fuel Depression (And Vice Versa) • 01:20:40 The Big Lies You’ve Heard About Melatonin • 01:25:56 Kids Are Overdosing on Melatonin—Here’s What Parents Need to Know • 01:27:36 How to Beat Jet Lag Like a Pro Traveler • 01:31:35 The Hidden Dangers of Taking Melatonin Every Night • 01:34:13 This Is the Most Researched Sleep Supplement Ever • 01:36:14 Can Ashwagandha Really Calm Nighttime Overthinking? • 01:37:06 The Turkey and Milk Combo That Actually Promotes Sleep • 01:39:43 This Simple Banana Hack Could Help You Fall Asleep • 01:42:20 Why Vitamin D Is Crucial for Your Body’s Internal Clock • 01:43:27 Ads • 01:45:42 How to Build a Sleep Routine That Actually Works • 01:46:54 Should You Be Using a Wearable to Track Sleep? • 01:50:03 What Dreams Are Trying to Tell You (And Why It Matters) • 01:53:40 How to Reprogram Recurring Nightmares and Sleep Better • 02:00:06 The First Night Effect Is Real—Here’s Why You Should Care • 02:01:55 Why Fighting Before Bed Could Be Destroying Your Sleep • 02:06:18 The Most Surprising Time of Day to Fall in Love • 02:07:38 How to Find the Perfect Pillow in Just 4 Steps • 02:16:29 How to Prep Your Bedroom for Deep, Restorative Sleep • 02:20:12 What One Thing Would You Change About Healthcare? Enjoyed the episode? Share this link and earn points for every referral - redeem them for exclusive prizes: https://doac-perks.com Follow Dr Michael: Instagram - https://linkly.link/2ZqV9 YouTube - https://linkly.link/2ZqVD Website - https://linkly.link/2ZuLL Dr Michael's Chronotype Quiz: https://my.sleepdoctor.com/sleep-quiz You can purchase Dr Michael’s book, ‘Sleep Drink Breathe’, here: https://linkly.link/2ZqVM You can find out more about the resources mentioned, here: Sleep-Drink-Breathe 3-Week Plan…

## Transcript

[0:00] What are the most popular questions people come to you with as a sleep doctor?
[0:04] There's three biggies. Number one is what do I do if I fall asleep okay and I wake up in the middle of
[0:09] the night and I can't fall back asleep and you can help people with that. Absolutely. The second
[0:12] question is what pillow should I buy and I'm going to walk you through which pillows make sense
[0:16] for which people and then another one that people ask me all the time is what's the best time
[0:21] to have sex. That's a strange thing for some of the of your profession to be. Yeah well let me
[0:26] explain why. So I've been an actively practicing sleep specialist for 26 years. I take care of
[0:30] people's sleep problems like apnea, insomnia and I'm really interested in the things that you
[0:35] might be doing right now that are messing up your sleep that are easy to fix. So for example most
[0:39] people don't know but they have a genetic sleep code inside them called their cronotype which
[0:43] decides when your brain releases things like melatonin, cortisol or adrenaline and dopamine.
[0:48] And so I can show you based on your cronotype when it's bedtime but also the perfect time of day to
[0:54] do almost any activity including the perfect time to have coffee and alcohol. Crazy. There's even
[0:59] data to show that your ability to understand complicated concepts improves when you're more in
[1:05] line with your cronotype. Now there are three known cronotypes but what I'm famous for is discovering
[1:10] a fourth one which I think might be you. So we're going to talk a lot about that. We're also going
[1:15] to talk about dreams because dreams can tell you things about yourself that you may not want to
[1:20] know. And then there's how to fix jet lag whether you should sleep with a TV on the truth about
[1:24] melatonin supplementation in my favorite way to get magnesium. But before we get into all of that
[1:28] shall we go and look at the best possible sleep position? Yeah let's check it out.
[1:34] Guys I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. 69% of you that listen to the show
[1:38] frequently haven't yet hit the follow button and that follow button is very smart because it means
[1:42] you won't miss the best episodes. The algorithm if you follow a show will deliver you the best
[1:48] episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this
[1:52] show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know and the simple
[1:57] way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. Thank you so so so much. Dr Bruce, yes.
[2:08] What does it you do? Why does it matter so much now? And what perspective do you take on what you
[2:15] do? That is a typical versus other people I might have spoken to about this subject. I'm a sleep
[2:21] doctor. I take care of people's sleep problems like apnea, narcolepsy, insomnia, things like that.
[2:27] I've dedicated a good portion of my career not just to understanding how to treat those disorders
[2:33] which are sleep disorders but what I also I call disordered sleep. I'm really interested in
[2:38] behavioral habits. What's going on? What are the things that you might be doing right now that are
[2:43] kind of messing up your sleep that are easy to fix and be able to maybe change how things are
[2:48] going forward? I didn't start out thinking I was going to become a sleep doctor if I'm going to
[2:52] be honest with you. That was not on the path. I was actually going in a completely different
[2:57] direction. One of the things I really discovered was when you change someone's sleep,
[3:03] dude, you change their life. It is fundamental to who they are. It's important for me to be a
[3:09] sleep educator in a way-shape inform that's practical so that people can actually get something from
[3:13] what I'm talking about and apply it right then and there. There's probably a couple of million
[3:17] people that have clicked on to this conversation to listen. Who is this conversation for? I think it's
[3:23] for anybody out there who's either curious about sleep or wants to try to improve their sleep or
[3:28] maybe suspicious that they could have a problem with their sleep. I think any one of those three
[3:32] types of people would find tremendous value here. What are we going to be able to do for those
[3:36] people today specifically? I'm going to give people several different plans, if you will,
[3:42] maybe even a five-step plan of things that they can absolutely learn how to do. They're also
[3:46] going to learn about a genetic sleep code that they have inside them called their chronotype.
[3:50] A lot of people don't even know that they have a chronotype or maybe they've heard of the idea,
[3:55] but they haven't ever heard of the term. We're going to learn a lot about that. We're also going
[3:58] to talk about dreams a little bit. I'm excited to have the opportunity to do that. I've spent the
[4:03] last year and a half learning more about how to use dreams in my clinical work as a psychologist,
[4:08] which is very interesting stuff, so I'm excited to share some of that. I think people are going to
[4:13] learn a whole bunch. And dreams? Oh, yeah. They absolutely matter. I call dreams emotional
[4:18] metabolism. When you're dreaming, what is the function? What is the purpose? What are you doing?
[4:25] You're actually working through your emotional states that you had during the daytime. This is
[4:30] why we have nightmares. In a nightmare, it's a scary scene and also it gets so emotional. You wake
[4:36] up. That is officially called a nightmare, that awakening, but you stop processing. When you go
[4:41] back to sleep, you go back to the dream and you get to that scary point, you wake up again,
[4:45] and you get caught in this loop. Dreams matter because they can be incredibly disruptive. Also,
[4:51] they can tell you things about yourself that you may not want to know or may not have in the front
[4:58] of your mind at all times. Sometimes people have very interesting dreams, like dreams of being
[5:02] chased or dreams of their teeth falling out or all these different things, and they can mean a whole
[5:06] host of different things. But I want to be super clear, there's no guidebook that says, hey,
[5:11] if you're dreaming a betcher in water, you hate your mother. It doesn't really work that way.
[5:16] Dreams mean something to the dreamer. And so the goal is to understand the context within that.
[5:22] So who is the dreamer? What is the dream? And then how do those two work together?
[5:26] And what is the experience that you're drawing from academically, but also professionally? Give me
[5:32] a view of how many people you've worked with. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the range of things people
[5:37] come to you with. Yeah, so I've been in actively practicing sleep specialists for 26 years.
[5:41] So I work in offices with medical doctors, because I'm not a medical doctor. I have a PhD,
[5:46] and I work with them on their patients, a lot of insomnia patients, but also the apnea,
[5:50] the restless legs, the narcolepsies of the world, because I have kind of a unique distinction in that
[5:55] I'm one of 160 people in the world who took the medical boards without going to medical school
[6:00] and passed. So I can work within that framework and really understand a lot of what's going on.
[6:05] I don't prescribe medication, but if I'm honest with you, most people don't need sleep medication.
[6:10] As far as I'm concerned, I can get them to sleep usually without any medication at all.
[6:14] And you're a psychologist as well. I am. I'm a clinical psychologist. And how does those two worlds
[6:18] make one plus one equal three? Sure. So when you talk about sleep,
[6:22] psychology is all over the place. I would argue 75% of the reason people don't sleep is anxiety
[6:28] or fear. That really falls well within the range of psychology for sure. And it's different kinds
[6:33] of fears. It's fears that you know about that are right in your face, like something that's going
[6:37] on in your daytime, but it could be other fears. It could be fears of your relationship. It could
[6:41] be financial fears. It could be a whole host of different things. So I think there's a lot of
[6:45] psychology that gets to be played in all of this kind of thing. I've got two more questions
[6:48] before we really get into the details and specifics and start really helping the audience with
[6:52] whatever they're dealing with. The first is we have lots of props here. Yes. Give me a top-line
[6:59] view of the types of things you're going to show me and why you've brought all of these wonderful
[7:02] props. Absolutely. So I get asked a lot of questions as you might imagine. And one of the big
[7:07] questions that I can ask is what bed and pillow should I buy? So sitting next to you is a large stack
[7:12] of pillows, all different types actually. And I want to be able to show some of your viewers how you
[7:18] look at pillows and which pillows make sense for which people. Believe it or not, there's like a fitting
[7:22] process. We're going to go through that. This device right here is a sleep test, believe it or not.
[7:27] So it used to be, we'd have to send you to the hospital. Yeah, you can unwind it. It'd send you
[7:32] to the hospital. We'd put 27 electrodes all over your body, respiratory belts across your chest.
[7:37] We'd have cameras zoomed in on you. And then by the way, you're supposed to be able to go to sleep,
[7:41] right? And we're supposed to be able to monitor you. Now, historically, we were able to do that
[7:45] pretty well. But once COVID hit, nobody wanted to sleep in the same bed that somebody else had been
[7:49] sleeping in the day before. So now we have what are called HSTs or home sleep tests. Wow. Yeah,
[7:55] we'll talk about how to use it and what it can tell you. My last question before we get into the
[7:59] details is what are the most popular questions that people come to you with as a sleep doctor? Yeah.
[8:05] So I'd say there's probably three biggies, right? Number one is, hey Dr. Bruce, I fall asleep just fine,
[8:12] but I wake up somewhere between one and three o'clock in the morning and it either takes me
[8:16] 20 minutes or three hours to fall back asleep. What the heck is going on there? And you can help
[8:21] people with that. Absolutely. I'm going to give everybody exactly what I do in clinic. Like,
[8:26] I'm going to explain to everybody exactly what I say to my patients and how to go about getting
[8:30] through that particular problem because it's it's so flagrant. Everybody needs to know how to
[8:34] how to work with that. The second question would be what bed should I buy or what pillow should I
[8:39] buy? I think we're going to address that over here. And then another one that people ask me all
[8:44] the time is, you know, is there some kind of timing? Is there something like I feel like my body is
[8:51] off? They say this all the time. They're like, if I just lived in a different time zone, I feel like
[8:56] everything would work out well. So the very basics of sleep. What do I need to know about what
[9:02] sleep is? The role it solves for us to even understand the context of the things we're going to
[9:06] talk about today. There's only a few things that are truly important to understand about sleep.
[9:10] One is how to sleep work in the brain. It turns out that there's two separate systems in the brain.
[9:15] One is you call your sleep drive. The other is called your sleep rhythm. And they both work in
[9:20] an interesting way. They're both a little bit like hunger, right? So sleep drive is like hunger
[9:24] because I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I eat something that hunger begins to
[9:27] dissipate. Same holds true with sleep. The longer you stay awake, the more the more sleepy that
[9:31] you get. When you look at it from a biology standpoint, it's kind of interesting. So when a cell
[9:35] eats a piece of glucose, something comes out the back end. One of those things is called a denison.
[9:40] It works its way through your system and goes to a very specific receptor area. As a denison accumulates,
[9:45] you get sleepier and sleepier and sleepier. Now, why am I going into so much detail? Turns out,
[9:50] when you look at a denison and you look at caffeine, they're off by one molecule. So here's a little
[9:57] tip or trick early in the pod for everyone. I call it the napalate. So what you do is you take a cup
[10:03] of drip, black coffee, just throw in a couple of ice cubes, right, merely to cool it down.
[10:08] Drink it as fast as you can and immediately take a 25-minute nap. The adenosine that's built up
[10:14] in your brain will burn through while you're napping. Caffeine, since it's so close and molecular
[10:18] structure can fit into that receptor site, it blocks any new adenosine. You're good for four hours,
[10:25] guaranteed. I use it with every CEO that I work with. So let's say you only got three hours of sleep
[10:30] the other night and you've got a big presentation to do or an award ceremony or something like that.
[10:34] You can do a napalate for about 25 minutes or so and you will feel much better. That's sleep drive.
[10:41] Let me just do. Sure. I want to make sure I really understand this. Can you explain this to me again
[10:46] as if I'm a 16-year-old? Why having a coffee and then taking a nap would make me feel energetic?
[10:53] Because one would think that having a coffee and taking an apple would be almost impossible.
[10:58] So number one, the caffeine doesn't kick in before the end of the nap. A lot of people think when I
[11:04] drink coffee, boom, it just kind of spins up and I get a lot of energy from it. That's really not
[11:10] actually how caffeine works. Yes, to go down, it has to get absorbed, it has to be digested.
[11:13] And so while all that's going on, which takes approximately 25 to 30 minutes, you're actually
[11:18] taking a nap to lower the amount of adenosine that has built up in your brain. Let's say it's
[11:23] two o'clock in the afternoon and you only slept for four hours and you are dragging. All that
[11:28] adenosine that's built up, when you take that 25-minute nap, you'll burn through a lot of it
[11:32] and then caffeine fits in and blocks any additional adenosine from coming in. So that way,
[11:39] you're actually adding caffeine to the situation and boom, your energy goes strong.
[11:43] Okay, so adenosine makes me tired. Exactly. And it's docked in my brain. Exactly.
[11:49] So I have four hours sleep, which means there's lots of adenosine and sleep clears the adenosine.
[11:54] Correct. And then caffeine comes in because it fits so perfectly into that receptor site and off
[11:59] you go, that's sleep drive. Sleep rhythm has to do with your circadian rhythm. And so lots of
[12:06] information about that, but basically your circadian rhythm is also a lot like hunger. You ever
[12:10] notice you're hungry around breakfast time or lunch time or on dinner time. That's your circadian
[12:15] rhythm for hunger. For sleep, most people, at least here in North America, I have a tendency to
[12:19] fall asleep somewhere between like 10, 30 and 11 o'clock, 11, 30 at night. So that's kind of the
[12:24] circadian rhythm there. So when your circadian rhythm is high and your drive is high, you sleep.
[12:29] But if either one of them is off, that's when you have a sleep disorder or disorder sleep.
[12:33] My circadian rhythm is high. When your circadian rhythm is on point, high is probably not the right
[12:38] word on point. So meaning you are abiding by your circadian rhythm. Now another question you might
[12:44] say to me is, well, how do I know what my circadian rhythm is? And we're going to talk a lot about
[12:47] chronotypes because that's what your circadian rhythm is. Okay, so let's do chronotypes then. You've
[12:51] got some cards in front of you. I do. I kind of like these cards. So when we talk about chronotypes,
[12:56] a lot of people may have heard of the idea, but not actually heard the term chronotype before. So
[13:03] if anybody out there has ever been called an early bird or a night owl, those are chronotypes.
[13:08] So we've got early birds. These are people who, by the way, this is genetic. You don't, you don't
[13:13] actually get to choose this. There's a special area on your genome called the PER3 area. And when
[13:19] you have something called the single nucleotide polymorphism or a snip, if it's flipped one way,
[13:24] you're an early bird. If it's flipped another way, you're a night owl. If it's not flipped, you're
[13:28] in the middle. Okay, so so far I haven't told anybody anything new like this is this is all
[13:33] stuff that we've already learned. The new part is this irregularity that seems to happen for people
[13:39] during, for their sleep schedule, specifically, and irregularity in their melatonin and cortisol
[13:44] production. So all of this is predicated on when does your body make melatonin. So if you're in
[13:50] early bird, your body makes melatonin earlier in the night, starting at around eight o'clock in the
[13:55] evening, it makes you want to go to bed around nine thirty. Melatonin is a whole mind. It is that
[14:01] how produced inside of your body that actually helps you sleep. It guides. It tells your body
[14:06] when it's bedtime, which is a little bit different than the adenosine, which makes you feel sleepy.
[14:11] I guess people listening now would be asking themselves, why does it matter to know my chronotype?
[14:15] Like as it relates to my productivity, the way I live my life, my relationships, whatever
[14:18] matters to me, why does it matter? Because I can show you based on your chronotype, the perfect time
[14:23] of day to do almost any activity. So if you know when your body is doing certain things when it has
[14:29] melatonin or when it has cortisol or adrenaline or all these other things, if you know the schedule,
[14:35] you can actually just change your activity to when your body is naturally producing the hormone,
[14:39] and then you do the hormone better. So let's talk about the easy one, which is sex. So a lot of
[14:45] people want to know, hey Michael, what's the best time to have sex? By the way, I think that might be
[14:49] the third question that I guess most often other than the insomnia one and the mattress one, I think
[14:54] is what's the best time for sex might be the other question that I get asked more than anything.
[14:58] God be tricky. If the time you want to have sex and the time your partner wants to have sex off,
[15:02] well think about it like this, what if your partner is an early bird and you're a night owl?
[15:06] Yeah, I think that's me. Don't worry, we're going to be able to fix you. So first of all,
[15:11] there's a couple of different answers to this question. So number one is you want to have a time,
[15:16] so first of all, most people are intimate between 1030 and 1130 at night. That's just a survey that we
[15:21] did. So it makes kind of a lot of sense. But here's what's interesting is your hormone profile
[15:25] doesn't look too good at 1130 at night for having sex. In order to have successful sex,
[15:30] you want to have estrogen testosterone, progesterone adrenaline and cortisol all to be high
[15:35] and melatonin to be low. What do you think your hormone profile looks like at 1030 at night?
[15:39] It's literally the opposite, right? Melatonin is high and all those other things are low.
[15:44] That's hint number one as to when would probably be the best time to have sex.
[15:48] Hint number two, if you happen to be having sex with somebody who was born biologically male,
[15:52] what are most men wake up within the morning? An erection. If that's not mother nature,
[15:56] telling you when to use that thing, I don't know what is, right? So when you start to look at it
[16:01] and we actually did the surveys, we discovered that people actually have greater connection and
[16:06] greater performance in their sex when they have sex in the morning time. Now, do you have to brush
[16:12] your teeth and throw in a little mouthwash first? Yes, of course you do. Let's be fair to your partner
[16:16] here. But you end up learning quite a bit. Again, your body is telling you this is actually the
[16:22] perfect time to do something like this. Did you know there's like a perfect time to have coffee?
[16:27] I didn't. Yeah, there's absolutely a perfect time based on your chronotype too.
[16:31] One of the first things that I ask people all the time, I'll ask you, is the first liquid that crosses
[16:36] over your lips in the morning caffeinated? Yes. So let's talk about why that's probably not
[16:41] the best idea. So most people don't know, sorry, most people don't know, but sleeping in
[16:46] and of itself is a dehydrated event. You lose almost a full liter of water just from the humidity
[16:52] in your breath by breathing all night long. Caffeine is diuretic, which means it makes you have to go
[16:58] pee. So when you're already lost a liter, now you add a couple of cups of caffeine, which makes
[17:04] you have to pee, you're going to turn into a raisin before this whole thing is through, okay? So we
[17:08] need to get some water inside of you. And so one of the big recommendations that I give all of my
[17:13] patients is don't have caffeine for the first 90 minutes. You're awake. Now you're going to sit
[17:19] here and say 90 minutes. That's a Michael. That's a long time not to have any caffeine. Like, how am I
[17:25] going to do that? Like I've got my morning routine? I can smell the coffee in the morning. It smells so
[17:28] good. Everything's going. How is this going to work? Let me explain the biology. In order to exit a
[17:33] state of unconsciousness, you need two hormones and then you need a lot of them. You need adrenaline
[17:37] and cortisol and they both wake you up. When you have a brain that's full of adrenaline and cortisol
[17:42] and you add caffeine to it, it's like adding weak tea to somebody who's taking cocaine, okay?
[17:48] It's not a very powerful stimulant compared to the hormones that are in your brain that are a
[17:53] powerful stimulant. But if you just wait 90 minutes, cortisol and adrenaline naturally drop. If you
[17:59] have your caffeine, then it actually boosts the cortisol and gives you a bigger bang for your buck.
[18:06] So you hydrate before you caffeinate and about the amount somewhere between 15 and 20 ounces
[18:11] of water. If you can get that down in the first hour and a half that you're awake. What's that in
[18:16] English terms? Oh, I don't know. We'll have to look at that. Is it one cup? Is it two cups?
[18:20] I would say it's probably three to four cups of water. Okay. Well, it's a lot. Well, don't forget,
[18:25] you've lost a lot of water while you're sleeping and you might have lost the previous day because
[18:30] let's say you worked out or things like that. So let's get into these courney types then.
[18:34] Yeah. So let's start off with the lion. So lions are my early birds. You know you've got a lion
[18:40] in your midst when you get an email at 6am, right? That's somebody who's been up for a while and who's
[18:46] got their brain kind of cooking. Lions like to make a list and go from step one to step two to step
[18:51] three every single day. They get a lot of confidence and they get a lot of pleasure following this list.
[18:57] But if I'm honest with you, being a lion isn't all it's correct up to be because dinner and a
[19:01] movie is out for a lot. They've been up since like 4.35 o'clock in the morning, right? They don't want
[19:05] to go see a concert late at night. They want to go to bed at like 8.39 o'clock. So when you're looking
[19:11] at lions or what I early birds, what I call lions, they've got some very interesting characteristics.
[19:16] They make up between 10 and 15% of the population from a biological characteristic standpoint.
[19:22] Their melatonin stops early and their cortisol starts early. So their melatonin stops at about 4.35
[19:28] o'clock in the morning and that's when cortisol starts and that's the reason why they wake up so
[19:32] early. What sort of window do the lions wake up in? So it's interesting because I've got some lions
[19:37] who are kind of extreme like they're getting up at 4.30 in the morning, which is not really
[19:41] probably the best idea. But generally speaking, my lions get up right around 5.5, 5.15 up until about
[19:47] 6.630. They are definitely my early risers. They have a small breakfast. They don't like to eat a lot
[19:53] of food early in the morning time because a lot of these people like to go work out fairly quickly
[19:57] after they've woken up, which is very different than some of my other chronotypes. My night owls
[20:03] don't like to work out in the morning. They don't like to do anything in the morning. So my lions like
[20:07] to work out early in the morning, a light breakfast and also their best work window is usually
[20:12] somewhere between 9.30 and 11.30. That's when all the good stuff gets done. When they have to get
[20:18] details or they have to do brainstorming or things like that, that's really kind of where a lot
[20:22] of the magic happens for them. By about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, there's not a lot of stuff left
[20:28] inside the lion to be able to do a lot of good things. That's when I have lions do more physical
[20:32] activities that don't require a lot of cognition. So maybe you go for an afternoon walk or maybe you
[20:37] have your meeting with your folks that may not be really detail oriented but more process oriented
[20:43] in the afternoon. Admin and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I actually had one fellow chronotype his entire
[20:49] company and then move meetings based on who was going to be in the meeting. He had all the early birds
[20:56] and he had meeting at 8 o'clock in the morning and then all the night owls. He had a meeting of 4
[20:59] o'clock in the afternoon. He said it was amazing. He said it worked out really, really well. Wow.
[21:04] What's the next one? So the next one is the bear. So bears are representative of people that are
[21:09] in between early birds and night owls, right? So bears are the best. Honestly, dude, I wish I was a bear
[21:16] because the whole schedule of life works on a bear schedule. Nine to five is perfect for a bear
[21:21] and they make up between 50 and 55% of the population. So literally one out of two people is a bear
[21:27] and when's that peak work time? So their peak work time has a tendency to be sort of in the
[21:32] noon to two o'clock at range. They're a little bit later than what you would see in the line.
[21:36] Some of them I think can actually be better at 11. It's kind of interesting. We've had almost
[21:40] three million people take the quiz and we've discovered that inside of bears, there appear to be
[21:45] early bears and later bears. So there are people who fall into that category but like to get up a
[21:50] little bit early. So for them, their productivity window is probably 10, 30, 11. But for the later bears,
[21:55] it's more like 11, 30, 12 and then it's about a two hour window after that. For people listening,
[22:00] on screen at the moment is a grid showing you the different chronotypes, the wake times,
[22:05] the peak work window and the sort of afternoon slump time. What's the next chronotype?
[22:10] So the next chronotype is me, the wolf. I think I'm a wolf. You might be a wolf. I love
[22:16] lions. I get it. I get it. Well, you might be, hey, look, join me. It'd be great. So wolves
[22:21] represent the night owls, right? And so wolves are my artists, my actors, my creatives. If you know
[22:28] a creative, when do they get their biggest idea? It's not two o'clock in the afternoon. It's two
[22:32] o'clock in the morning. Wolves are my highest risk takers. I know that that probably you fall into
[22:37] that category as well. Wolves are the folks that show up at the party at 11 o'clock at night but
[22:42] they stay till two o'clock in the morning and they help you clean up and they hate mornings more than
[22:46] anything. So should we talk about dolphins? What's the next one? Yeah. Dolphins. This is the category
[22:52] that you fell into. So let's talk about who are the dolphins and what does this actually represent?
[22:57] So dolphins are usually highly intelligent. They're usually people who are fast-talking, well-read.
[23:03] These are people who are a lot like a lion in terms of they like to get up. They crave longer
[23:08] bouts of sleep, but unfortunately their body just doesn't have a long sleep drive. And so they get
[23:13] really frustrated a lot of times. Also, I think they have just a teeny bit of anxiety behind them.
[23:19] So a lot of them, for example, the details really matter to a dolphin, right? Versus other people
[23:25] where details might not matter nearly as much. I think a lot of my dolphins have got just a little
[23:29] bit of obsessive compulsive disorder. So they're kind of focused in on the different things. Like,
[23:35] if I ask a dolphin to do a project, generally speaking, they're never finished with it until I say,
[23:39] can you just give me the project back now? Is there always working on a little detail here or working
[23:44] on a detail there? But dolphins are my favorite. They're the people that I actually wrote the book for.
[23:48] They're the ones that I enjoy working with the most because they're actually the easiest to work
[23:53] with because once I explain to them how their hormones can be up and down in sideways, it starts
[23:59] to make a lot more sense for them. And for anyone trying to figure out which one of these they are,
[24:03] where do they go to do the test? How long does it take? Yeah, you can go to my website. It's called
[24:08] cronoquiz.com. And it takes about three, four minutes. It's not very long at all. It's going to
[24:13] ask you a bunch of questions about your sleep, about timing, things like that. Okay, I'll put that in
[24:18] the description. So after you finish listening, you can all go take it and let me know your thoughts
[24:21] in the comments section as well. So once you figure out what your chronotype has come back to the
[24:24] episode and let me know below. Please. And does my sleep change with age, Michael? It does.
[24:29] Absolutely. So do my chronotypes change with age? They do, actually. So believe it or not,
[24:35] you've gone through all the chronotypes already. When you're a nitty-bitty baby, you're a lion.
[24:40] You go to bed really early. You wake up really early, right? Then you're a toddler,
[24:43] right? And in like grammar school, you're a bear. You're going to bed around 730, you're waking up
[24:47] around 730. Then adolescence hits, right? What do you want to do? Stay up until midnight and sleep
[24:53] until two, right? You become a wolf. Then at about 23, 24, your chronotype has tendency to set
[25:00] into one of those three or four things. And then you stay there for an extended period of time,
[25:04] like 25, 30 years until you hit my age. So I'm going to be 58 soon. And right when you hit in the
[25:10] mid-50s, what we see is melatonin production can either slow down or get earlier. So as an example,
[25:17] if your parents are still alive and you said, hey, mom, dad, I want to go for dinner. What time would
[25:21] they want to go for dinner? Right. Four o'clock in the afternoon, 430 in the afternoon. You're like,
[25:26] what is wrong with you, mom? What's going on? Her chronotype is going backwards and your sleep
[25:31] changes over the course of time. To be clear, at once you hit like age probably 50, 45 or 50,
[25:37] we start to see a slowdown in production of melatonin. We also see an increase in what are called
[25:42] EEG arousals. So things that break up your sleep and make it so it's not so continuous,
[25:46] that can be problematic as well. So there's a lot of things that can happen as you age. So do I
[25:50] start sleeping less as I get older? You start sleeping of poorer quality. I'm not convinced that
[25:55] it's always less. And is that going to make me grumpy? Yes, it is. Really? Absolutely. Poor quality
[26:00] sleep is I would argue as much worse than poor quantity sleep. I would rather I've got somebody who
[26:05] got five hours of really great sleep versus seven hours of really light crappy sleep every time.
[26:11] Does that mean that as I get older, I'm going to be more grumpy? It depends on the quality of your
[26:16] sleep. So what I can teach you is how to not get poor quality sleep as you age. Perfect example.
[26:22] A lot of folks who were a little bit on the older side are used to drinking coffee late in the day.
[26:26] Well, if you change that habit, then you don't have as many sleep problems. And I shouldn't
[26:30] be having coffee late in the day at all. Probably you want to stop by about 2 p.m., right? So if you stop
[26:35] around 2 p.m., the half-life of caffeine is between six and eight hours. So eight hours later is
[26:40] roughly 10, which is roughly when people are kind of wanting to go to sleep. So I would say that
[26:44] that would probably be the time to do it. I think about my siblings and us all being
[26:48] woken up for school. And I think about my performance in school. And of all my siblings, there's
[26:54] four of us. I was the one that always struggled with being woken up in the morning. In part,
[26:58] because I'd gone to bed later. But then I was also the one that struggled with school the most.
[27:02] Yeah, that characteristic of a wolf, characteristic of this night person. If I'm honest with you,
[27:08] dude, like most kids should not be waking up at the time they're waking up to go to school.
[27:12] Right? I mean, so many kids are waking up at like 5.36 o'clock in the morning. They have an hour
[27:18] long bus ride. Then they get there. And if you're an adolescent, I don't think anything could be worse.
[27:23] Right? So we have to really start to try to be a little bit more thoughtful and look at like
[27:28] what are some of the activities the kids are doing? How can we get them to maybe take
[27:31] naps during the day if they need them? Athletic performance can depend on sleep. Academic
[27:36] performance can depend on sleep. It's unbelievable all the different things.
[27:39] Has that ever been any research done? There has. On different chronotypes, academic performance.
[27:44] There has been actually. They haven't labeled it directly as chronotypes. But they've
[27:48] looked at it based on age range. And we know that for example, here in the United States,
[27:53] there's a big push to change school start times. So that way, high schoolers don't starting
[27:58] at 7 o'clock in the morning because high schools shouldn't be starting at 7 o'clock in the morning.
[28:02] Pre-schoolers should be starting at 7 o'clock in the morning because their body naturally wakes up
[28:05] at that time. So we've actually seen there was a great study that was done at the University of
[28:10] Minnesota that discovered that when they just had people come in one hour later from their first
[28:16] period, they've improved by one full letter grade. Meaning they went from being C students to
[28:22] being B students or from B students to A students, merely by changing the timing of their first class.
[28:29] So that should give you pretty good insight as to these big areas and all children are vulnerable
[28:35] to this. I'm not telling you anything that's new. These are studies that have been going on
[28:40] for quite a while. And there's actually a whole movement trying to get school start times to slow
[28:45] down now. Looking at some of the research here, it says research consistently shows that morning
[28:50] types, which is the lion and higher grades, not due to higher IQ, but because exams are scheduled
[28:56] during that peak alertness window. You got it. That's crazy. Sometimes wolves turn out to be much
[29:01] smarter, but because they can't perform at those early times, nobody knows. Remember, wolves are
[29:07] my creatives. Where do you think some of these great creative innovations and ideas come from
[29:12] in the tech world, right? These are the wolves that are out there that are up late at night coding
[29:17] and trying to figure out what's going on. It's pretty cool when you think about it.
[29:22] And just this is thing called the synchronous synchronous effect from a study in 2020 where nearly
[29:27] 800 students found a clear synchronous effect. Students perform significantly better when their class
[29:33] schedule matched their chronotype. Exactly. Those morning people dominated the morning classes and
[29:38] the owls or the wolves often caught up and outperformed the morning people when tested in the
[29:44] afternoon or evening. Exactly. It's pretty fascinating. Now, think about it like this. Could you
[29:49] imagine a school system where if we identified children's chronotypes during their particular age
[29:54] range, and then we changed the testing so that they got tested when they're at their peak hours,
[29:58] they'd actually do better. People don't know this, but I never do podcasts in the morning morning.
[30:03] I don't blame you. You shouldn't. It's not your time. You have a very specific,
[30:09] subscribe time that I think works well for you, so I think you should abide by that.
[30:13] Curation of sleep. There's lots of conversation around how long you're supposed to sleep for.
[30:17] What's the truth here? Eight hours is a myth. Let's be fair. We came up with that from the 30s.
[30:23] There was a great study at Stanford that came up with eight hours and 13 minutes plus or minus,
[30:28] and that's where we came up with that as an idea. The truth the matter is somewhere between seven
[30:32] and nine hours really is the amount that people should be looking for, but some people don't have
[30:38] that luxury. Some people don't have that much time that they can put towards sleep, and so they get
[30:43] a little bit less sleep. But for the lower level limit, I don't like anybody getting less than six
[30:48] hours. When somebody gets less than six hours sleep, their driving is off, and so you can't operate
[30:53] machinery. So if you're driving to work or God forbid, carpooling your kids to school, and you're
[30:57] only got less than six hours of sleep on board, it's probably not going to go well.
[31:02] We do have to stop here and talk about parents, because listen, you're either a parent now,
[31:07] you might be someday. Absolutely. Maybe you won't be, but for those, I've just got a huge amount of
[31:11] respect for parents, because, you know, I've gone, I'm not a parent yet. I hope I will become one.
[31:16] But when I see what my brother, who has three kids under the age of seven, how much sleep is he lost?
[31:24] A lot, and his wife as well, but you must get parents coming to you all the time being like,
[31:30] what the hell do I do? I've got to wake up when the kids wake up, but it's destroying my
[31:35] relationship, my married sex, whatever it might be. So parenting children and sleep are difficult
[31:41] to coexist, but they're not impossible. It really has to do with discipline and kind of thinking
[31:46] through some ideas for yourself. So I have a 23-year-old son and a 22-year-old daughter, so I'm a
[31:52] little bit out of the realm of having to deal with them every day. But I was, like I said before,
[31:57] I was in charge of mornings at our house waking them up, and it's a lot, right? And so the very
[32:03] first thing that I try to explain to parents, especially if they have a child who has an irregular
[32:07] sleep pattern and is really causing chaos for the rest, like one child who won't go to sleep and
[32:12] it's keeping the whole house up, first thing you want to do, educate the kid, right? A lot of kids
[32:17] don't know what they're doing. It's causing a lot of problems. They're just kids. They're just hanging
[32:21] out, having fun. You know, they've got energy. They want to be awake. So that you want to educate
[32:25] them and say, hey, now is a particular time to wind down. This is where your body recovers.
[32:29] This is how you get to do sports the next day or theater the next day or ac- whatever your
[32:34] computers, whatever your thing is, you can tie it to sleep and performance pretty easily. And so
[32:40] getting them to understand that becomes very, very critical. Number two is have some guidelines,
[32:45] right? Have bed times, have wake-up times, and follow them as quickly as closely as you can.
[32:50] For parents, oftentimes, what I try to tell them to do is like, look, after your child goes to bed,
[32:56] if you've got a child that has problems for sleeping, take turns. Do what I call the on-call method.
[33:02] So as a doctor, sometimes, you get a call in the middle of the night because you're covering
[33:06] patients at the hospital for your buddy or something like that, you're on-call. So when you've got
[33:10] two people who are managing one child, one person handles Monday night, Wednesday night, Friday night,
[33:15] the other one handles Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, you flip a coin for Sunday. So if the kid wakes
[33:20] up at two o'clock in the morning, both parents aren't awake. One parent has that responsibility. The
[33:25] other one can keep their eyes closed and go to sleep. Interesting study was done looking at men and
[33:30] women in bed when a child cries. So women take care of the child, whereas men lie there and fake
[33:38] sleeping in order to be able to stay asleep. Right? That's problematic in a lot of different ways.
[33:43] How do they know in the study that they were fake sleeping? Because they asked the men afterwards,
[33:46] what were you doing? And they all said they woke up and they were faking it. It's pretty crazy when
[33:50] you think about it. But this is a big deal for parents. A lot of parents turn to me and they're
[33:55] like, this is killing our marriage. We haven't had sex in three years because we've got a child
[34:00] who maybe the child has special needs or maybe the child doesn't have special needs. But as
[34:04] other things going on or maybe it's just normal development and they're worried about it. And so
[34:09] what I like to sit down with parents and do is number one, let's figure out when your kid needs
[34:13] to sleep and let's set some guidelines and rules. But number two, let's do the same for you.
[34:18] A lot of parents, when they're super stressed out, when the first things they do, grab a glass of wine.
[34:22] Why it's about the worst thing you could possibly do for sleep to be fair. Now, I'm going to teach
[34:27] people how you can still have a glass or two of alcohol and not completely destroy your sleep.
[34:31] But I want to be very clear about something. If you're using alcohol as a stress relief tool
[34:36] at night before bed, it's messing up your sleep, probably pretty bad.
[34:39] You might be asleep, but the quality of your sleep is awful. And interestingly enough,
[34:46] during the one stage of sleep that alcohol knocks out, which is stage three and four sleep,
[34:50] what's the most interesting is that during that particular stage of sleep, there's something
[34:54] called the glymphatic system that comes in and scoops out these proteins that have a tendency
[34:58] to accumulate in your brain. And when proteins accumulate in your brain, they wrap around the
[35:02] nerves and that's called Alzheimer's disease. So stage four sleep is imperative to avoid Alzheimer's
[35:09] disease. And when you drink alcohol, you destroy stage four sleep. So it would be great if nobody
[35:15] drank alcohol, but I'm not so stupid as to think that plus. I like bourbon. I like whiskey.
[35:20] I enjoy a glass of champagne every once in a while. So how can you successfully still drink alcohol
[35:25] and still get a decent night sleep? I'm going to give you a quick one. Let's say you're having
[35:30] dinner at 6.30, have your first glass of wine, then have a glass of water, then your second glass
[35:35] of wine starts at, let's say, almost seven o'clock, then you have your second glass of water,
[35:39] then you stop everything by 7.30, you wait three hours, which will be 10.30, and then you can go to bed.
[35:46] Why the water? Why the way? So the water helps wash it through the system, also fills your stomach up,
[35:51] so you don't have too much. So you've got more fluid in there, so that way you don't drink extra wine.
[35:56] And it makes you have to pee, which flushes the system out as well. The three hours? And it hydrates
[36:00] you? It does. Okay. Absolutely. Because remember, wine pulls both magnesium and most water out of your
[36:07] system because it makes you have to go pee. Helps with the hangover? So there's a couple of
[36:11] different things that I would say. Number one, this definitely helps with the hangover because you've
[36:15] got water going in. For a lot of my patients, what I tell them is the very last thing that you could
[36:20] do is have a little bit of coconut water. So coconut water is loaded with zinc, magnesium and vitamin B,
[36:25] and those are some of the things that get pulled out of your system when you're drinking. By the way,
[36:30] did you know that there are happy hours specific to your chronotype? Didn't I know? Yeah, so it's kind
[36:35] of interesting. So here's what's cool about it is your body produces something called alcohol
[36:38] dehydrogenase, which is how you metabolize alcohol, but it does it at a particular time and the time
[36:44] is different for each chronotype. So your body is most efficient at drinking between basically the
[36:51] hours of four and eight happy hour as a lot of people know it. And how do you think about what time
[36:56] you eat at night time? Such a great question. So three hours before bed, you want to stop fluids,
[37:02] including alcohol and food. You want to just stop at all three hours before bed.
[37:08] Three hours. So it takes your body about that level of time to number one, digest, clear all the
[37:13] food, and then have all the mechanisms that are working towards digestion now be able to be refocused
[37:19] onto the recovery process of sleep. However, I will tell you that there's this I've seen a couple
[37:25] people and there are people out there that are claiming that if they stop eating at 11 o'clock in
[37:29] the morning that it helps their sleep dramatically at night and it turns out it has to do with your
[37:34] heart rate. So one of the big metrics that is very important that all of our viewers and listeners
[37:39] want to know is you need a heart rate of 60 or below in order to enter into a state of unconsciousness
[37:45] and when you've got food in your stomach, your heart rate is up. So right, so if the longer you can
[37:51] wait, the lower your heart rate is, the easier it gets into sleep. And so when we're talking about
[37:56] so a great example, let's get back to parents for a second, right? You feed your kids at an
[38:01] earlier time and then what do you do? Oh, then you go back and have dinner with your spouse, right?
[38:06] Maybe that's not the best idea because you're having dinner so late. Maybe you should have dinner
[38:09] with your kids, right? And enjoy that time with them and eat earlier because that gives you
[38:14] more space later on to be able to relax and go to bed. I said that tracks because I remember,
[38:19] I've told the story once or twice before, I remember when I was doing some podcasts over here in L.A.
[38:23] We had Seth Roganon. Sure. And the day before in the hotel before I lived here, I had a cookie
[38:29] from the minibot, like I'm going to admit it, I had the cookie and they're so good. And then I went to
[38:34] bed pretty quickly. Oh, God. We were just terrible. And I was looking at my whoop the next day.
[38:39] Yeah, I was like, and my heart rate was like 75 or 80 for the first two to three hours after I got
[38:48] into bed. Isn't that crazy? And I woke up feeling like hell. Yeah. Terrible day the next day.
[38:54] That's terrible during the conversation. Yeah. And I looked at my window, oh, my God, it was that
[38:58] cookie. It put my heart rate high. So also on top of that is sugar. Yeah, I mean,
[39:03] I mean, right. So sugar turns, so sugar actually slows production of melatonin. Remember,
[39:08] melatonin is kind of the key that starts the engine, yeah, the key that starts the engine for sleep.
[39:12] So is there anything else that I can do to make sure my heart rate is low as I get into bed?
[39:16] Absolutely. Meditate. Okay, breath work. All kinds of brings my heart rate down. Yeah, absolutely.
[39:22] So a lot of people don't realize is just because we're breathing doesn't mean we're actually
[39:27] breathing in a way, shape, and form that can be helpful for us for sleep. So in my most recent
[39:31] book, Sleep Drink Breathe, I talk a lot about breath work and what is it and how does it work for you?
[39:37] But I'd love to teach you my favorite form of breath work and meditation that I think you'll,
[39:42] you'll get a lot out of. And I do this before bed. Exactly. Okay. And you can, by the way,
[39:47] you can do it in the middle of the night if you wake up as well, right? So let's talk about how to
[39:52] get how to fall asleep and do some relaxation exercises for that. And then I'm going to give you
[39:56] some different ones for in the middle of the night. So let's talk at the beginning of the night. So
[40:00] number one, you need runway to land the plane. Okay, so many people think they're just waiting for
[40:06] their head to be bobbing in front of the TV and then they go brush their teeth and they get in bed
[40:09] and then all of a sudden they're wide awake and they don't know what's going on, right? So you need
[40:13] time for your system to shut down. It's not an on-off switch. It's more like slowly pulling your
[40:18] foot off the gas and slowly putting your foot on the brake. There's a process. It should take you
[40:22] about 12 to 15 minutes to actually fall asleep. Okay. So number one, what I ask people to do is take
[40:28] the last hour before bed and chop it up into three 20-minute segments, right? So let's say you're going
[40:33] to bed at 11, starting at 10 o'clock. And by the way, set an alarm on your phone to tell you that
[40:37] it's 10 o'clock because it's really easy to slide by your bedtime and then all of a sudden it's
[40:42] like all bets are off. So set the alarm, 20 minutes for shit you just got to do. So in our house it
[40:47] used to be getting backpacks together for school for our kids, finding sports equipment, maybe laying
[40:52] out my stuff for work the next day or getting the last email sent, something like that. 20 minutes
[40:57] first hygiene, right? Brush your teeth, wash your face, maybe take a shower or something along those
[41:02] lines. And then 20 minutes for some form of meditation, relaxation, prayer. I don't care what you do,
[41:09] but it has to be something that's calming to get you there. Okay. So one of my favorite techniques
[41:15] to do is meditation. Now I'm going to be honest with you, I'm a terrible meditator. I have never
[41:20] been able to do it. I've actually gotten kicked out of meditation retreats because I'm the guy that's
[41:24] like, what's going on? Like, am I doing it right? You know, I'm kind of that person. And so I was
[41:30] I was told about this tool called a muse headband. We have one right here. So this is my personal
[41:35] muse. I actually brought it from home. And you'll notice on the inside there are sensors here and
[41:40] there are sensors along the earpiece here. And so what happens is you wear it on your head, right?
[41:46] And it's measuring your brain waves. And so when we're yeah, check it out. And so when we're when
[41:51] we're doing it and we're measuring brain waves, yep, exactly. And that goes on the back part. Yeah,
[41:55] there you go. So what's cool about this is it's attached to an app. And then while it's measuring
[41:59] your brain waves, you're listening to a particular music. It could be a guided meditation. It could
[42:04] be any of those things. And while you're doing this, the volume gets lower. And then you know,
[42:10] you're getting closer to a meditative state. The volume comes down when on the app when your
[42:15] brain wave starts to relax. So you're immediately getting feedback. We can try it if you want.
[42:21] But it's pretty interesting. And then when you get to the alpha state, little birds start chirping.
[42:25] The alpha state. Yeah. The alpha state is when your eyes are closed and you're at the most
[42:29] relaxed state of your brain waves. It's called the alpha state. And that's really what people are
[42:33] trying to get to for meditation. I mean, you affiliated with this company and I'm not. And how
[42:37] much does it cost? I think it's around $275. I think it's the headband. Okay, interesting. It's
[42:44] pretty fascinating. I've been pretty impressed with them. So that's meditation. You talked about
[42:49] breath work as well before. Yeah. Let's talk about it. So one of the other things that I do is I
[42:53] do something. Well, this isn't breath work. This is called progressive muscle relaxation.
[42:57] So this is where you tense and relax muscles starting from your feet and going all the way up
[43:02] your body. And as you tense and relax the muscles, you feel that relaxation from releasing that
[43:08] tension. And it helps you fall asleep. Actually, you know what I can do is I can send you an audio
[43:13] file that has me walking through progressive muscle relaxation that we can make available for
[43:17] everybody if you want for free. It's no big deal. I'll put that in the description below as well.
[43:22] Yeah, people will really dig it. I think they'll really enjoy it. So that's another thing that we do.
[43:26] But now let's talk about the middle of the night, right? So by the way, do you have this as an
[43:30] issue? Have this as this happened to you before? It happens sometimes. And it's typically when like
[43:35] my sleep is somewhat disordered or disruptive or when this really something on my mind. Yes. So
[43:40] that that precipitory anxiety like before flight, like if I have an eight o'clock in the morning
[43:45] flight, like I sleep like shit the night before, because I'm constantly worried about that, right?
[43:49] But a lot of times what people do normally is they just wake up in the middle of the night and
[43:53] they can't return to sleep and they're really not sure why. So number one, there's biology involved.
[43:57] So your core body temperature rises, rises, rises. And when it hits a peak, it drops. That drop
[44:02] is then a signal to your brain to release melatonin, right? Again, the key that starts the engine for
[44:07] sleep. However, your core body temperature continues to drop, drop, drop. By the way, this is the
[44:11] reason why we tell people you want to sleep in the cool, not the warm environment. Because again,
[44:16] your core body temperature is dropping. If it's too hot, your core body temperature can't go down
[44:20] and you can't go to sleep, which tracks with evolution. Exactly. So here's where it gets interesting,
[44:24] is it keeps going, going, going. And then at some point in time, your body has to heat up. And if
[44:29] it doesn't heat up, you go hypothermic. Guess what time that is? Between one and three o'clock in
[44:34] the morning. Oh, your body starts heating up at one and three o'clock. Every single person's body
[44:38] on earth does this. Everybody on earth wakes up between one and three o'clock in the morning.
[44:43] However, most people burp, roll over, get comfortable, and fall back asleep in 30 seconds.
[44:49] However, there's a select group of people who end up being my patients who don't have that,
[44:54] and they're herein lies the problem. So here are the steps you want to take in the middle of the
[44:58] night to be able to solve this issue. So number one, don't go pee. I know, I know, I know. People
[45:05] like, what? What are you talking about, Michael? So here's what ends up happening is when people
[45:08] wake up in the middle of the night, they say to themselves, well, I'm up, I might as well go pee.
[45:13] Right? Here's the problem. Remember, I told you the big metric was in order to enter into a state
[45:17] of unconsciousness, you need a heart rate of 60 or below. Right? What do you think happens to your
[45:21] heart rate? And you go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position, walk
[45:24] across the room. Your heart rate goes straight up. So what we want to do is keep your heart rate down.
[45:29] So if you don't really have to go to the bathroom, don't go to the bathroom. 75% of people sleep on
[45:34] their sides and they kind of squunch up, which means they're putting pressure on their bladder.
[45:38] So my guess is that most of those people, if all you did was when you woke up is lie and get on your
[45:43] back for about 25 seconds and see if you still need to pee. If you don't need to pee, stay in bed and
[45:49] keep your heart rate down. If you need to pee, please go pee, right? If you're going to go to the
[45:54] bathroom, have a strategically placed night light along the way. So you don't have to flip on the
[45:58] light in the water closet because if you do that, you just told your brain it's morning and it stops
[46:02] producing melatonin. But let's say you don't have to pee. The second thing, don't look at your phone.
[46:07] Now, this turns out to be very difficult for 99% of the people out there because the first
[46:13] thing they do is they grab their phone and they head to the bathroom, right? And they're either
[46:16] checking emails, looking at Facebook or Twitter or whatever social media they're on.
[46:20] Oh, just trying to figure out what time it is. And that's where the problem is. As soon as you
[46:25] see the time, you instantly do the mental math and now you're pissed off, right? It's 3.30 in the
[46:31] morning. I got to get up at 6. Sleep, sleep, sleep. And you try to force your brain to sleep.
[46:36] Dude, in the history of time, nobody has been able to force their brain to sleep, okay? Because your
[46:41] heart rate's going in the wrong way, right? It needs to be coming down. So if you can, don't look at
[46:46] the clock. All right. So you haven't peed. You haven't looked at the clock, but you're still awake
[46:50] and nothing's going on. Here's where the breathing technique comes in. It's called 478 breathing.
[46:56] I did not develop this technique. It was developed by Dr. Andrew Wilde, Harvard trained natural
[47:00] doctor, super smart dude. And he did it for the military to teach them how to lower their heart
[47:06] rate during stressful situations. We use it because it helps lower our heart rate past 60.
[47:10] And it's super simple. I'm going to get you to try it. So go ahead and sit up straight, okay?
[47:14] And so all you're going to do is breathe in for a count of four. You're going to hold for a count
[47:18] of seven and you're going to breathe out for a count of eight. And I'm going to walk you through it.
[47:23] I want you to have your eyes closed. And then what I also want you to do, you're going to go
[47:26] in through the nose, out through the mouth. And then what I also want you to do is picture the
[47:30] number in your head. So when I say breathe in, two, three, four, you should picture the two,
[47:36] the three, the four in your mind's eye, okay? With my eyes closed. With your eyes closed. You're
[47:41] ready? Yeah. Breathe in to three, four, hold to three, four, five, six, seven, push to three,
[47:52] four, five, six, seven, eight. Good. You don't want to get through about 20 cycles of that.
[48:00] It's incredibly relaxing. I actually did it before I came out here to do the pod because it helps
[48:06] lower my heart rate and gets me centered. It's pretty remarkable. Now there's some problems with
[48:13] the technique. Number one, sometimes it's hard to hold for seven and sometimes it's really hard
[48:17] to push for eight. So I tell people you can do this four, five, six, four, six, seven or four, seven,
[48:23] eight. So just work your way up to it, right? If it's too hard to hold your breath for seven seconds
[48:28] or it's too hard to push your breath for eight, you can do a little bit less just while you're
[48:32] getting used to it. And then the other big thing is it's hard to figure out where the 20 cycles is
[48:37] because you need to get to 20 cycles of this. So what I have people do is take their hands and
[48:40] make light fists while they're doing this. And when they do one cycle, they put out a finger,
[48:44] another cycle, put out a finger. And before you know it, you got 10. And when you bring it back,
[48:48] you've done 20 cycles. It's funny. I just did two and I start uning. I know. I just saw that.
[48:52] I'm telling you dude, this thing works, right? And so I have people do this technique. Here's
[48:57] the best part. Is it avoids monkey mind, right? So what is monkey mind? Monkey mind is I'm thinking
[49:04] about stuff that I have no business thinking about in the middle of the night for absolutely no reason.
[49:09] Like what's on the grocery list or what did I say to my spouse or did that podcast go okay or
[49:14] any of the things that might be floating through your head, you cannot count and worry at the same
[49:21] time. And why does it work? What's going on in my physiology? You're distracting the brain from
[49:27] the thing that's stressing you out and it's lowering your heart rate and then the natural sleep
[49:31] process comes in after it. So all these are our distraction techniques to be clear. Now there's
[49:37] several of them out there. One of the other ones I use for some of my patients is I tell them,
[49:41] hey, count backwards from 300 by threes. It's mathematically so complicated. You can't think of
[49:47] anything else and it's so damn boring. You're out like a light. On that point of distractions.
[49:52] A lot of people go to bed listening to podcasts or movies. Jack was just saying that he needs to
[49:57] listen to something fall asleep. I'm the same. I listen to like serial killer stuff which is that's
[50:02] interesting. Don't touch me. Wait till we get to the dreams part of the podcast. I can't wait to
[50:06] hear what you dream about. I don't I think I always try and figure out why it is and my sister's
[50:11] the same. She listens to serial killer stuff to fall asleep. I think it's because this is just
[50:18] hypothesis. My mom would always ask me to put on forensic files which is this like serial killer
[50:24] made a documentary thing. My wife and younger because she couldn't use the remote. So my mom would
[50:28] say she'd pass me the remote so put on forensic files and I'd like put on the number for her.
[50:32] Right. And so that was always playing in a house at that time. And we all had TVs in our bedroom.
[50:37] mirrored what was what was playing downstairs. Of course. So when I got into bed I'd watch
[50:42] forensic files asleep. This explains a lot about you. I know right. You said that's people
[50:46] there. Thank you. So let me tell you what it's like in my house. And actually you and I have a
[50:51] commonality. So in my house we have a big screen TV. It's on all night long. What's room
[50:58] in my bedroom? Okay. Okay. When I met my wife she said to me, Michael if you ever happen to spend
[51:03] the night I want to let you know that I sleep with the television on. I said don't worry about that
[51:07] Lauren. I'm going to be a sleep doctor. I'm going to fix that. We met when I was 30. So
[51:13] known her for quite a while. And you ever tried to change something in your bed? Oh yeah. Good
[51:17] market. Good luck. So I took the TV out. She said if you ever want to come back in here again
[51:21] I suggest you put the I put the TV back in. And then I studied her to learn what was going on. And
[51:27] it turns out that she's listening to it out of what I call the corner of her ear. Her eyes aren't
[51:31] even open. And half the time it's an episode assigned failed or something like that. My wife
[51:36] actually likes murder mysteries. And so it's usually forensic files or something along those lines
[51:41] that's going on. But for her it's a perfect distraction technique. Now there's a second thing
[51:46] that's important in our bedroom that happens is we have two dogs. They sleep in the bed with us.
[51:52] I'm the frickin sleep doctor dude. Like it's insane. But the point here is sleep is flexible.
[51:58] Okay. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for your bed partner. And vice-versa is
[52:03] also true. Right. Like just because some people can't sleep at the TV on doesn't mean that it's
[52:08] going to mess up your sleep forever to have the television on. Because it's not. And by the way
[52:13] 99% of TVs have timers built into them. Like if you don't know what it is ask your kid. I had
[52:17] asked my son. He showed me how to use it. We turned it off. It wasn't a problem. Right. So
[52:21] creating a sleep environment that is conducive to sleep for you and your bed partner can
[52:27] have a lot of variation to it. And I don't think people there's no hard and fast rule that says
[52:32] hey nobody should ever sleep with the TV on. I mean there are people out there who say that but
[52:37] quite frankly everybody sleeps with the TV on. Well a lot of people do I wouldn't put the TV on
[52:43] in our bedroom. I mean we've done it once or twice whatever because we're doing something
[52:46] and we slip off to sleep. Yeah. I wake up and I realize it's on and I turn it off.
[52:50] But I also really think it's an important point to say that people will listen to podcasts like
[52:55] this. They'll listen to the like biohackers of the world. Yes. And then they'll get so
[52:59] militant about how they fall asleep that it will cause friction because one part is different.
[53:02] Don't do that. And I had this problem in my relationship which was my girlfriend sleeps in silence
[53:08] and it has like just a such a glorious routine to everything she does. Right. And I am completely
[53:12] the opposite. And I need to like I want to listen to a murder. Opposites attract me on my phone.
[53:17] It's like when I look at my whoops scores works for me. Yeah. It's like I am getting I get great
[53:23] sleep even if I'm listening to a serial killer documentary. But not if you had a cookie before
[53:28] bed. Not if I had a cookie that's that's gone. But I saw what I do is I put one air put in
[53:32] in my right ear. So whichever is not going to be on the pillow. And it means I can listen to her
[53:37] as she says something. Right. But when it's silence all I hear is the thing that I'm listening to.
[53:42] So I've got a trick for you. And I wake up in the morning and dig the air put out of that
[53:45] where it is. Right. So now I'm going to help you with the digging of the air pod. So first of all
[53:49] they now make these things called pillow speakers. Oh interesting. So it's a it's a it's a
[53:54] Bluetooth speaker that will attach to your phone that you can just slide. And it's just under your
[53:57] pillow. So only you can hear it. So that's number one. You might want to consider that. And they're
[54:01] pretty inexpensive. Number two, they now make specifically earbuds designed to be slept in.
[54:08] Oh nice. So there's a new company out called Next Sense. And they have developed an earbud that
[54:14] actually measures your brain waves while you are sleeping. And when you move into a lighter stage
[54:20] of sleep, it sends in a frequency signal to help you go back to sleep or to stay in that depth of
[54:26] sleep. Brand new company. Next sense. I have nothing to do with them. I mean, it's a friend of mine
[54:31] who owns the company, but I'm not on the board. I would like something to do with them. We'll figure
[54:34] that out. So does it allow you to play your music as well? It does. Or your podcast, whatever.
[54:40] I can listen to diary of a CEO every single night while I fall asleep. And it will make sure
[54:46] that I don't wake up from any dream. And you can still like and subscribe and stuff.
[54:49] Even through the earbuds. I think everybody should like and subscribe. It's a good feature.
[54:54] Agent that helps you subscribe. Okay, so that's that's your wake up in the middle of the night.
[54:59] Don't pee. Don't check your phone. You're doing these breathing exercises. You don't give
[55:03] yourself a hard time. And then what happens? It doesn't work. What do you do? Yeah, right? So there's
[55:08] the new research on something called non-sleep deep rest. We call it yoga nidra. Okay, it's been
[55:13] around for thousands of years. When you lie relaxed in like a corpse pose like this, you're actually
[55:18] doing something that's valuable for your sleep. Now, I want to be clear. It's not the same as sleep,
[55:22] but if you lie there for an hour, it's like 20 minutes worth of sleep. So everybody should know
[55:27] that even lying relaxed and calm is very, very helpful, right? But if you start to get anxious
[55:34] and your heart rate starts to tick up, you need to get yourself out of bed because that's when,
[55:38] because all you're doing then is thinking, hey, this bed is this place where I get anxious and
[55:42] pissed off. This is not a place to sleep. So as long as you stay nice and quiet, the non-sleep deep rest
[55:48] absolutely the thing to do. The other big thing that I do, and by the way, this happens to me on
[55:51] occasion too, like I'm not immune to it just because I'm a sleep doctor, you have to stay positive.
[55:57] And what I what do I mean by that is everybody when they wake up in the middle of the night,
[56:00] your brain is set to negativity. There's no reason you should be up for three o'clock in the morning
[56:05] that something good is going on, right? Nobody's coming in wishing you happy birthday at three o'clock
[56:09] in the morning. Something terrible has happened and your brain has gotten accustomed to that. So when
[56:13] it wakes up, it immediately goes to the negative and you start thinking about bad things. You can't stop
[56:19] your first thought, but you can stop your second thought, right? And so when you wake up and you think
[56:24] negative, what I want you to replace that with is, okay, Michael, for some reason your body has
[56:30] decided to wake up at three o'clock in the morning. It's not the game that I wanted to be playing
[56:34] tonight. However, I think I'm going to be okay. I'm just going to lie here and relax and let the
[56:39] natural sleep process take over. If I feel my heart rate increasing, I'm going to go to another room
[56:44] in the house where I've already got a book and a light set up so I can do a little bit of light
[56:48] reading and then come back to sleep. And I just tell myself that I give myself permission
[56:54] to just chill, just relax. And then you know what happens? The natural sleep process comes over.
[56:59] As soon as your heart rate starts to go down, your body wants to get back to sleep. And so it really
[57:04] has a lot to do with heart rate. I love having these conversations on the driver's ear because I have
[57:09] a huge amount of sympathy and concern for people that don't get sufficient sleep. And I know there's
[57:16] a lot of people that don't and I actually think it's to some degree it's somewhat increasing because
[57:20] the way we live our lives. I was looking at some of the stats around the increase and there's a
[57:24] study done in 2025 and early 2026 that revealed we're in a global sleep crisis. Oh yes we are.
[57:32] Both the CDC and Stanford Medicine report said that one in three adults and nearly 80% of teenagers
[57:39] and I'll chronically sleep deprived. Correct. The 2026 survey by the American Academy of
[57:43] Sleep Medicine found that 93% of Gen Z admits a regularly losing sleep due to social media usage.
[57:50] And 71% of employed respondents globally have said that they sometimes call in sick at least once or
[57:56] twice just to sleep. Just to sleep. Yeah. When I was down in Australia doing some work down there,
[58:02] a lot of Australians they take holiday and they just sleep. Yeah. Just to catch up. Like it's pretty
[58:09] remarkable. We're in a very sleep deprived society and I think there's a couple of different reasons
[58:13] why that is. Number one, have you seen what's going on outside in the world today? It's pretty
[58:18] crazy out there. Well I can understand why people are getting a little anxious. I think one
[58:22] can argue it's been crazy through history but we never knew about it. Right. Well I mean the media
[58:27] getting it to getting us this information so quickly I think is definitely what I would agree
[58:31] with you. It was much crazier during like World War II you know stuff like that. Now we're getting
[58:36] information so quickly and people are getting so ratcheted up about it. I think that had something
[58:40] to do with it. But if I think the bigger culprit is people being overweight. You know when you look
[58:44] here in the United States and you look at the obesity epidemic and you look at people being overweight,
[58:49] it's something close to like 70 something percent of people in America are overweight. When you're
[58:53] overweight that puts you in line for potentially having something called sleep apnea. Now I want to
[58:58] be clear not everybody with sleep apnea is overweight but a large percentage of the people with
[59:02] sleep apnea are bigger people and so when you look at a society that's getting bigger and all the
[59:08] unhealthy food that we've got going on all this highly processed food things of that nature that
[59:13] isn't helping anybody it's adding the pounds and specifically like for men we gain weight through
[59:18] our necks. Like I mean I don't know if you've ever noticed it but like if you ever were heavy and
[59:22] you lose weight the first thing somebody says oh it looks like you lost weight because I can tell from
[59:25] your face right and they're like oh your neck looks you know different now and so we see a lot of
[59:30] what's going on in the world from a weight perspective and a food perspective could be driving some
[59:35] of the sleep problems. Then there's the anxiety perspective that I spoke of earlier that I think
[59:39] comes in and again I agree with you I don't think we have more crazy stuff going on I think we
[59:44] know about more crazy stuff that's going on. But also work is now largely digital and I imagine
[59:49] for my great grandfather he would go to I know the factory or wherever he works yeah his work would
[59:54] finish at six yes your work doesn't finish at six now it finishes when you're awake yeah absolutely
[1:00:00] it finishes when you go to sleep yeah exactly yeah and and that becomes problematic right because a lot
[1:00:05] of times also by the way you need to have dividers in your home like let's say you live in a studio
[1:00:09] apartment and your bed is your couch is your kitchen right you have no designated spot for sleep your
[1:00:15] body needs to know hey this is the spot where I can chill out and finally get some rest and I think a
[1:00:21] lot of times our environments just aren't that way. So many of us are pursuing passive forms of
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[1:02:15] apply which sleep disorder should we start with sleep apnea and insomnia sleep apnea for folks
[1:02:21] out there who may not know what it is is when you are snoring at night almost everybody who has
[1:02:26] sleep apnea snores not everybody but almost everybody and when you're sucking air in you pull
[1:02:31] your tongue to the back of your throat and you cut off your air and you literally stop breathing
[1:02:36] right for a few seconds then also you can you make all this kind of grunt and groaning noises
[1:02:41] and then you wake up this can happen hundreds of times a night and it can be very problematic because
[1:02:48] of course it wakes you up every single time that you have one of these events right and so as an
[1:02:53] example we measure the events per hour so as an example somebody with sleep apnea could have
[1:02:58] between five and 15 times per hour that they stop breathing and that's mild so how are they going
[1:03:05] to get into the deep sleep that clears out they can't that's the problem right and so apnea
[1:03:10] prevents them from getting into a lot of that deep sleep and so the brain doesn't clear out and then
[1:03:14] they got they're kind of screwed so at the end of the day the the goal here is to get as many people
[1:03:20] to number one identify if they have a sleep disorder and then be able to try to figure out
[1:03:25] what to do about it and the percentage of people in the US that have undiagnosed sleep apnea is
[1:03:30] pretty big it's like somewhere between I think like 18 to 20 percent this is crazy I was just
[1:03:35] looking at the stats it says according to 2026 data approximately 936 million people to 1
[1:03:42] billion adults worldwide have obstructive sleep apnea which is what one in seven yep that's about
[1:03:48] making it as common as diabetes one in seven correct listening have sleep apnea yes wow as
[1:03:53] popular as diabetes let that sink in for like half a second everybody knows what diabetes is
[1:03:58] almost nobody knows what sleep disorders are specifically sleep apnea and it says 80 to 90 percent
[1:04:04] of those people remain undiagnosed that is correct so there's people listening right there's
[1:04:08] actually a huge percentage of people listening right now yeah that have sleep apnea and have no
[1:04:13] idea that they haven't exactly right how would they know do the sleep test this thing here yeah
[1:04:18] and what would this show so this which this actually collects what is your oxygen levels that
[1:04:22] throughout the night what is your heart rate throughout the night how many times do you actually
[1:04:26] stop breathing and also the depth of your sleep which stages of sleep you get when you fall asleep
[1:04:31] things like that and what would this see you know because people are going to be something like
[1:04:34] how do I know if I need to do the test so great question so you want to think about the symptoms
[1:04:38] that you might have so do you snore do you wake up gasping for air has anybody told you that
[1:04:44] you're snoring stops for brief periods of time or that they've heard you gasping for air do you
[1:04:49] wake up with a headache in the morning do you find your moods are up and down all of those are
[1:04:54] signs and symptoms of sleep apnea and this test you affiliated with this computer I'm not but
[1:04:59] um we do have that test on my website we sell it to people so that way we can test them and
[1:05:04] how much does it cost 189 dollars okay so it's not exorbitantly expensive and it's also
[1:05:10] is covered by insurance and it connects to an app uh-huh absolutely so you'd put it through your
[1:05:16] sleep so I put that there exactly this yeah exactly and that's it you go to bed wake up then the
[1:05:22] information ports over to your phone and then tells us exactly what's going on now here's where it gets
[1:05:28] even better I know right can you imagine me getting in bed with my film saying they're like come on
[1:05:32] babyless we're recording all kinds of good stuff who knows what she might like is this going to help
[1:05:36] my sex life it's absolutely it will because getting into bed and knowing how well you sleep and knowing
[1:05:42] if you have sleep apnea or not will definitely affect your sex life also by the way I've saved more
[1:05:47] marriages as a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a marital therapist dealing with snoring
[1:05:51] in the middle of the night and things like that so you'd be you'd be surprised but what's nice
[1:05:55] about this is it's one night you don't have to do it multiple nights it's super easy um and again
[1:06:00] I believe in that that's disposable you can actually throw that whole thing away after it's all said
[1:06:04] and done and on that point before we just go a little bit further into sleep apnea should should
[1:06:07] we be sleeping in bed with our partners and I know that's an interesting great question great question
[1:06:12] the strength of your relationship has nothing to do with where you sleep okay so lots of people are
[1:06:18] like I got to sleep with my partner otherwise my relationship's gonna go to shit and everything's
[1:06:22] gonna go terrible and we're never gonna have sex and we're not true okay so a lot of times for
[1:06:28] people that I have so for example I've got people who um have sleep apnea and they use a machine
[1:06:34] to help them sleep called a CPAP machine right and um that noise for some people can be disruptive
[1:06:39] and so they sleep let's say in a different room right so is that is that detrimental to your marriage
[1:06:45] no it's not because here's what you do is you vacation on the weekends in your bedroom right I
[1:06:51] can't count the number of people who sleep separately during the week and then together on the
[1:06:56] weekends and it turns out that they get much better sleep during the week and then guess what
[1:07:01] intimacy shows up much faster on the weekends because they're not so tired used to be you know
[1:07:07] not tonight I have a headache it was really not tonight I'm exhausted when you allow your partner
[1:07:11] to get good sleep during the week there's a reasonably good shot that you're gonna be able to
[1:07:16] be intimate over the weekend if they got good sleep so wearing that to bed might not be the sexiest
[1:07:21] thing in the universe but it's better than having sleep apnea and eventually ending up dead
[1:07:28] all the symptoms of sleep apnea different from men and women they are great question
[1:07:33] so it turns out that men and women are quite different but we've historically been scoring them the
[1:07:38] same so women don't have a tendency to have as much snoring as men do um women have a tendency to
[1:07:44] have more arousals where they wake up constantly women have a tendency to report headaches in the
[1:07:48] morning more so than men do so it's actually different types of symptoms for women versus men when
[1:07:54] it comes to sleep apnea to the point where we're now considering using different testing devices so
[1:08:00] this testing device um would not necessarily measure EEG and in women EEG might be important that's
[1:08:06] what we're learning so as an example our company is finding a device specifically to send to women
[1:08:12] so that way we can more accurately measure sleep apnea in women now there's a lot of questions about
[1:08:17] treatment for sleep apnea and the biggest reason why nobody gets sleep tested is because they're
[1:08:22] afraid that they're gonna end up sleeping with a CPAP machine on their face at night and so let
[1:08:26] me describe to your audience what that is also full disclosure I have sleep apnea I don't look like
[1:08:33] somebody who has sleep apnea I stop breathing in my sleep I think it's 26 times an hour I know right
[1:08:39] kind of crazy and I wear a CPAP machine and it helps me sleep every single night let me explain
[1:08:45] what it is so when your throat closes here CPAP machine is a little air compressor with a tube
[1:08:50] and a mask that sits on your nose pushes it just thin stream of just air and when it hits that
[1:08:54] blockage it ever so slightly opens it up shoots air straight down to your lungs now you might be saying
[1:08:59] to yourself that sounds barbaric that is insane it's a hair dryer blowing up my nose all night long
[1:09:07] here's what I can tell you is when you have a severe case of sleep apnea this can be a life
[1:09:13] saver this can be one of the biggest most important things that you possibly do now a lot of people say
[1:09:19] oh I don't think I could sleep with a mask on my face well that's not the only treatment there are
[1:09:23] other treatments called oral appliances this is like a mouth guard like you see the footballers wear
[1:09:28] but it's an upper and a lower and the lower slowly brings you a jaw forward which opens up your
[1:09:32] posterior airway space the same way that air pushes things aside the oral appliance structurally moves
[1:09:38] your jaw slightly forward thereby opening up your airway so that works well and there's no
[1:09:44] mask on your face there's a third device that you can wear on your tongue that vibrates that
[1:09:49] shrinks your tongue by a couple of millimeters which opens up this posterior airway space and allows
[1:09:54] you to breathe better have you tried all of them I have as a matter of fact and why did you choose
[1:09:58] the apnea machine so for me the apnea machine worked the best and made the most sense for me right
[1:10:04] now but I'll be honest with you I will probably get the mouth guard for when I travel there's a lot
[1:10:09] that can be done out there and by the way there's also surgeries and surgeries are a little bit more
[1:10:14] permanent fix but in many cases those surgeries can be quite effective also by the way they're working
[1:10:20] on a pill for sleep apnea now and that's just apnea we haven't talked about insomnia yet
[1:10:25] I was just reading about the FDA approving a drug yeah it's it's quite remarkable and there's actually
[1:10:29] two I think there's actually three different companies that are working on different drugs
[1:10:33] right now for sleep apnea and I mean to be clear when that happens I think it's pretty much
[1:10:38] game over for sleep apnea right I mean once we can get it in a pill form which means compliance
[1:10:43] increases dramatically we can help a lot of people with sleep apnea which I think would be
[1:10:48] pretty amazing and women are heavily undiagnosed right because we heavily we think of it as I mean
[1:10:53] I've heard it rough being referred to as sort of an old man's disease yeah an oh absolutely
[1:10:58] and here's the thing many women have a tendency to report insomnia types of symptoms over sleep apnea
[1:11:04] types of symptoms when in fact they actually have under undiagnosed sleep apnea which we can catch
[1:11:09] we talked a little bit earlier but from many of the conversations I've had on the show about
[1:11:12] Alzheimer's yes your chance of getting Alzheimer's I imagine is going to increase right because
[1:11:18] absolutely you have sleep apnea yeah well because when you have sleep apnea it keeps you out of
[1:11:22] the deeper stages of sleep the deeper stages of sleep is where that lymphatic system comes in and
[1:11:26] scoops out those proteins and that's really probably one of those big causes for it so that's
[1:11:30] one of the things that we always want people to understand but there's also something else that
[1:11:34] I think is important to maybe talk about which is on the other side not sleep apnea side but on the
[1:11:39] insomnia side which is there's a lot of people who go and they go to the drugstore and they buy an
[1:11:44] over the counter sleep aid right now I'm not talking about supplementation yet we can get into supplements
[1:11:49] in a minute if you want to but I'm talking about things like the PM medications right you know they
[1:11:54] so here in America we have them where there's like there's like an analgesic plus a PM so there's
[1:11:59] Tylenol PM Advil PM and what it is is it's it's a pain reliever but they add something called
[1:12:06] Diphon hydramine and it makes you feel sleepy and it makes you fall asleep Diphon hydramine is actually
[1:12:11] an anti histamine right so it's used for congestion and things like that but there's now data to suggest
[1:12:17] that daily use of the PM part of this not the pain relieving part but the PM part can lead almost
[1:12:23] directly to Alzheimer's right so if people can just go to bed and follow a couple simple rules and
[1:12:31] go to bed naturally you'd be shocked at how much better your world is going to be the Queensland
[1:12:36] Brain Institute at the University of Queensland found that people with untreated apnea have a 45%
[1:12:43] higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease like I said which is crazy so three important here's
[1:12:49] the thing is we've got all these people who are watching your show right now they need to start
[1:12:54] thinking in their head like maybe I have sleep apnea maybe I don't but maybe I should take a look
[1:13:00] at what are some of the symptoms and see if that's something that could be going on for me because
[1:13:03] again testing is available and to be clear it's not like I'm the only guy out there's testing people
[1:13:09] I mean there are sleep doctors all over the world that are testing people my encouragement to people
[1:13:14] hey figure it out if you can't figure it out you know shoot us an email we'll find a sleep
[1:13:19] center for you to go to but if you think there's something going on it's definitely worth checking out
[1:13:24] because by the way you can stay with undiagnosed sleep apnea for your entire life and all it does
[1:13:30] is basically break down everything that's going on inside and that's not what you want like remember
[1:13:35] sleep is recovery right this is how your body still functions like if you want to lead a nice
[1:13:40] prosperous life you want to sleep insomnia has become a bit of a word that people throw around
[1:13:45] for sure right they they kind of to self diagnose themselves we kind of think of it as this one
[1:13:49] specific thing I think people say I have insomnia when they just don't sleep well right what is
[1:13:53] insomnia and what's the big myth around it yeah so number one there's a couple of different
[1:13:58] flavors of insomnia there's the I can't fall asleep there's the I can't stay asleep which we
[1:14:02] talked about quite a bit there's the I wake up too early and then there's just the I wake up from
[1:14:07] unrefreshing sleep so we really think that there are four sort of types of insomnia right
[1:14:13] and when people I would say some of the biggest myths that a lot of people have surrounding insomnia
[1:14:18] is or like the biggest problem that they do is when somebody has a really crappy night
[1:14:23] then what they try to do is the next evening go to bed early and try to catch up on some of that
[1:14:29] sleep that they missed so to be clear this is a terrible idea because your circadian rhythm
[1:14:35] isn't ready to go to bed early so you lie in bed and you're exhausted but you can't fall asleep
[1:14:41] you're what I call wired and tired right and so what we want people to do is if you do have
[1:14:46] a bout of insomnia where you have difficulty falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep
[1:14:50] number one don't overcaffeinate during the daytime so many people are like oh I'm dragging I
[1:14:56] got to get a coffee you know and they and they caffeinate caffeinate and then they caffeinate
[1:15:00] so late into the day that they have shitty sleep that night and now we're in the washing machine
[1:15:04] cycle going over and over and over it sounds like you might be relating to this a little bit maybe
[1:15:09] yourself and then so we want to avoid that the other thing we want to avoid is overstimulation at night
[1:15:16] right so a lot of pimps people get that nervous energy and so they're just doing doing doing again
[1:15:21] you need runway to land the plane so give yourself some kind of that space and then just make sure
[1:15:26] that you've got some level of regularity I would argue for my insomnia patients but quite
[1:15:31] honestly for anybody who's watching this the number one sleep tip that I can give people is to
[1:15:37] wake up at the same time seven days a week not go to bed I don't actually care when you go to bed
[1:15:42] that much I know there's a lot of sleep specialists out there who are like you gotta go to bed at the
[1:15:46] same time and wake up at the same time I'm not of that ilk I don't really care that much about
[1:15:50] the going to bed time I really only care about the wake up time let me explain why when you wake
[1:15:55] up in the morning sunlight hits your eye and you have a special cell in your eye called the
[1:15:58] melanopsin cell which sends a signal to your brain to turn off the melatonin faucet in your head
[1:16:03] but it sets a timer for exactly 14 hours later it's called the melatonin phased response curve
[1:16:08] so if you're waking up at six melatonin turns off until about 8 pm then it takes about a couple
[1:16:13] hours for it to get up and in so then you start to get sleeping around nine thirty and you go to bed
[1:16:18] but if you did that and now it's Saturday and you sleep in until eight melatonin doesn't kick off
[1:16:23] until 10 Saturday night so what I'm saying is the time that you wake up directly determines when
[1:16:31] your internal melatonin kicks into gear so if everybody woke up at the exact same time every
[1:16:37] single day seven days a week automatically you would get tired at the right time and you would
[1:16:43] start going to sleep and it's that two different types of insomnia sometimes I hear primary
[1:16:47] secondary insomnia on your YouTube channel so when you look at primary insomnia versus secondary
[1:16:52] insomnia the way we categorize that secondary insomnia is usually due to something else that's
[1:16:57] going on in your life so maybe caffeine abuse right maybe something along those lines whereas primary
[1:17:04] insomnia is there's nothing else you the only thing you've got going on is sleep disorder another
[1:17:10] example of something where insomnia might be secondary would be pain right so if you have a
[1:17:14] pain syndrome if you have fibromyalgia or low back pain that could prevent you from sleeping that
[1:17:18] would be secondary insomnia secondary to pain and I hear that the most common treatment for insomnia
[1:17:24] is CBT therapy so yes and no so I would say that the most common therapy for insomnia is alcohol
[1:17:33] more people drink themselves to sleep than any other single thing out there and then you start
[1:17:38] to get into the pharmacy of it all and there's a lot of pharmaceutical drugs out there that people
[1:17:43] utilize for sleep and I want to make a point if I can is there's nothing wrong with needing a pill
[1:17:50] to sleep okay I want to be very clear about this there are people out there who need pills right
[1:17:57] all kinds of different ones thank you there's a whole host of reasons why you and your doctor
[1:18:01] may have come to the conclusion that a sleeping tablet is good for you the problem comes when
[1:18:07] those sleeping tablets are over prescribed so insomnia is in the in the sleep world we call it a
[1:18:13] door handle diagnosis because when the doctor has their hand on the door and they're just about to
[1:18:18] leave that's when the patient says oh and by the way I'm not sleeping and then the doctor usually
[1:18:22] pulls out the prescription pad and says you know ambient or trasadone or something like that
[1:18:26] writes it says here come back in 30 days well you haven't really done anything for this person you've
[1:18:31] handed them a pill and by the way now they're probably either psychologically or physiologically
[1:18:36] addicted to said pill right now once again if you've got a major mental health issue I don't
[1:18:41] think I care I think it's okay for you to have your ambient and be fine I know a lot of people
[1:18:45] that do have insomnia have depression oh I think it's one of the biggest things that we see
[1:18:50] but I would argue anxiety might be a little bit more than depression but yes anxiety and depression
[1:18:54] I would argue make up 75% of insomnia at any given time right I work with people and I do something
[1:19:00] called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia which you correctly identified as CVTI right and so
[1:19:05] I work with patients all the time and that's exactly what we do is we reschedule them so that's the
[1:19:11] behavioral part and then the cognitive part is we talked to them about how do you think about sleep
[1:19:16] because a lot of people think about sleep in disastrous ways that like if I don't get eight hours
[1:19:20] my old day is screwed and everything's gonna happen it rarely happens that way like it's called
[1:19:24] catastrophizing you just make it worse and worse and worse and so we look at those cognitive distortions
[1:19:29] and we help fix them in therapy by really kind of what I call doing the math and so I say well
[1:19:34] have you ever had four hours of sleep yes did you do something terrible the next day no
[1:19:40] so where's your evidence right and you start to get people to challenge themselves and also
[1:19:44] they kind of they can kind of get there there's also another area of that a lot of people go to
[1:19:49] somewhere in between the pills and therapy and that's supplementation so there's a lot of people
[1:19:55] out there who like to use supplements and try to understand how to fix quote their insomnia
[1:20:01] with supplementation so if we can let's talk a little bit about supplements and sort of what's
[1:20:06] good and what's bad what is the difference between a supplement and a pill or is that you talking
[1:20:11] about the same thing here so under the context of this conversation a supplement is a non FDA
[1:20:17] regulated thing that you can purchase at any drug store and a pill is a bi prescription only
[1:20:25] from a doctor okay that's how we're gonna make the distinction for this particular conversation
[1:20:29] okay so those pills that are in front of you so right in front of me these are most these
[1:20:33] are actually all supplements so these are different so these are not pharmaceuticals these are
[1:20:38] different things so we've got i mean in different countries it's different right great point so
[1:20:42] let's talk about melatonin since that's kind of the biggie that a lot of people like to know about
[1:20:46] so number one melatonin is bi prescription only almost everywhere other than the united states
[1:20:52] yeah right so in england in australia in europe you can't just walk into the drug store and
[1:20:57] buy melatonin and there's a reason a lot of people don't realize it but melatonin is a hormone
[1:21:02] there's a reason you can't go to the cvs and get testosterone in estrogen right because hormones
[1:21:07] affect the entire system they affect all three almost three hundred different things in your body
[1:21:12] so what you don't want to do is have somebody just willy nilly grabbing a hormone and starting to
[1:21:16] pop it without somebody understanding what's going on with them more importantly melatonin in particular
[1:21:22] in the point i wanted to make earlier about depression melatonin interacts with all ssri medication
[1:21:31] an ssri is a serotonin specific reuptake inhibitor and antidepressant so things like prozac
[1:21:39] zoloft selexa all of those are medications that will be affected by melatonin ingestion and
[1:21:47] nobody knows that it is in addition melatonin affects birth control yes you heard it here
[1:21:54] birth control it affects blood pressure medication and it affects diabetes medication
[1:21:58] so one of the problems is that people go into the local drug store and they're like oh i'm
[1:22:03] gonna grab some melatonin and i'm gonna make my sleep better because i'm sleeping poorly so first
[1:22:07] of all that's not what melatonin does melatonin is a sleep regulator not a sleep initiator melatonin
[1:22:14] doesn't affect sleep drive melatonin affects sleep rhythm so remember in the beginning of our
[1:22:18] conversation we're talking about the two systems melatonin only affects your brain telling it when
[1:22:23] it's time to go to bed it does not make you sleepy that's a denison we already talked about
[1:22:28] adenosine and caffeine into how similar their molecular structures are so when you look at
[1:22:32] something like melatonin you need to really be thoughtful about using it number two melatonin is
[1:22:38] not to be used in children okay so a lot of people are like Michael i've got pediatricians all
[1:22:44] over the country telling me to give my children melatonin i'm gonna say it right here in front of
[1:22:50] everybody that is the dumbest idea i have heard in a long time because you just taught your child
[1:22:55] that they need a pill to sleep normally no child needs pills to sleep and by the way most children
[1:23:03] make almost four times the amount of melatonin that their brain even needs so giving them extra
[1:23:08] melatonin doesn't do you any good there is however one group of children where melatonin does
[1:23:13] work well and that's in kids on the autism spectrum we don't know exactly why but or at least i
[1:23:18] don't but there is data to suggest that at five six seven milligrams that that can be very helpful
[1:23:25] for them dosage also is a problem like if you go to the drugstore you can you almost can't find it
[1:23:30] in the appropriate dose the appropriate dose is anywhere from about half a milligram to one and a
[1:23:35] half milligrams maybe top out at three but that's about as high as you want to go but when you go to
[1:23:40] CVS you find a gummies in 10 and 20 milligrams and people tell me all the time oh i can't take melatonin
[1:23:46] it gives me crazy dreams number one side effect of overdosing on melatonin is crazy dreams on this
[1:23:51] point of going to a supermarket and picking some melatonin off the shelf FDA approval and the
[1:23:59] lack of FDA approval in melatonin means that there's less clarity on what's actually in there right
[1:24:04] that's exactly right reading about study in 2024 where they looked at different melatonins that
[1:24:10] were found on the shelf and they found very different things inside the bottle very very different
[1:24:15] things they looked to analysis of melatonin gummies marketed for children and found that the
[1:24:20] actual amount of melatonin ranged from zero percent right to six hundred and sixty seven percent
[1:24:26] of what was listed on the label yep see it all the time and in the same study melatonin gummies
[1:24:31] some melatonin gummies contain absolutely no melatonin yep while others contain hazardous
[1:24:36] contaminants like CBD that were not disclosed on the label yep because melatonin is sold as a
[1:24:42] supplement in the US and not a drug the FDA does not test it for safety or accuracy before it's
[1:24:46] the shelf you are a hundred percent correct and that's a huge problem just think about that for a second
[1:24:51] I mean the market for melatonin is tremendous it's huge in the supplement world yet there's no
[1:24:58] regulation whatsoever nobody knows about these interaction effects which are big big big and by
[1:25:04] the way most people are using it wrong there's really only three maybe four different instances when
[1:25:09] melatonin would be useful I would use melatonin for jet lag and we should talk about jet lag
[1:25:14] I would use melatonin for shift workers right so for people who work you know night shift who
[1:25:20] have to sleep during the daytime they would be excellent people to use melatonin people with a
[1:25:24] melatonin deficiency a lot of people don't think about that but right around age 50 is when if
[1:25:29] you're gonna have a melatonin deficiency we start to see that happening for people is it their
[1:25:34] ability to produce melatonin begins to decline so I think those three situations absolutely would
[1:25:39] be on board for melatonin believe it or not there's some data to show that in ADD and ADHD there's
[1:25:44] some use for melatonin and then also for a very specific sleeping disorder called REM behavior disorder
[1:25:50] we're going melatonin crazy as a society aren't we absolutely we don't need it it's completely
[1:25:55] unnecessary I was looking at the data 1999 0.4% of Americans said they used melatonin today it's
[1:26:03] almost 30% so about 70 million Americans that's crazy that is problematic and again they have no
[1:26:10] idea what it's doing to them right and they're giving it to their kids like I can't think of anything
[1:26:15] worse for a young female developing body than to add a contraceptive when it's not necessary
[1:26:20] like it just doesn't make sense to me the rise in children overdosing on sleep gummies is the fastest
[1:26:25] growing trend in poison control data yeah I think it's like almost 600% increase or something crazy
[1:26:31] like that for kids who have gotten who've overdosed on melatonin like there was a study that came
[1:26:38] out maybe a year ago year and a half ago showed like almost 600% of increase in overdoses for kids
[1:26:45] like that's pretty messed up when you start to think about it and here's the thing kids know how to
[1:26:49] sleep right you just got to stop you just got to let them sleep right you got to give them some
[1:26:54] parameters here's when you go to bed here's when you wake up don't get out of bed you know don't
[1:26:58] come in and ask for 12 glasses of water you know all the all the stuff that goes on there I mean
[1:27:02] this isn't hard so when and how so I used melatonin once in my life okay and I got to be honest
[1:27:08] it fucking worked yeah oh if you use it right it works bro and it was it was actually about a week
[1:27:14] ago because I'd been struggling with lots of jet lag I'd flown in the UK to LA to UK to LA to
[1:27:20] Cape Town to Middle East to wherever and I was getting to bed every night at like 4 5 a.m. and
[1:27:26] still waking up but you know having to wake up about 10 so I thought I need to correct this yes
[1:27:31] for going for two weeks and I need to correct this absolutely I'm gonna cave I get I took the
[1:27:35] melatonin and corrected it yes it does so let's talk about jet lag so it's a bit of a story
[1:27:43] but I got involved with a company that has got an app which is very interesting okay I don't have
[1:27:49] any like I'm not invested in the company just to be clear but it's one of my close friends who
[1:27:53] developed this so I'm kind of a space nerd it's not time shifter it is time shift oh really
[1:27:58] yeah I will get you that so here's what's fascinating is the way the whole time shift are started
[1:28:09] was um so aren't you kind of a space guy like I'm an investor in SpaceX and okay so I'm a space
[1:28:16] nerd myself right so you know the the ISS is moving around at 17,500 miles an hour around the
[1:28:21] earth it's cooking ISS meaning the international space station yeah it's whipping around right can
[1:28:27] you imagine how many sunrises and sunsets they get in a given day um how many every two hours
[1:28:33] so they basically get 12 wow think about how messed up their circadian rhythms would be from seeing
[1:28:38] the sunrise and seeing it go and see it gets really messed up right and by the way you don't want to
[1:28:42] make big mistakes in the space station like you don't leave the air lock open you know or shit like
[1:28:46] that like that's when things get really really bad so they called down to NASA and they were like hey
[1:28:51] we got a problem up here everybody wants to use the lab at the same time like people see in the
[1:28:55] sun like what's going on so they call the buddy of mine named Stephen Lockley over at Harvard
[1:29:00] Stephen is arguably the one of the best circadian researchers in the world um super smart dude
[1:29:04] and he was like well let's send up a lighting kit and let's create shifts on the space station
[1:29:11] right so that's exactly what they did so they set up a lighting kit I think it was on the Columbia
[1:29:15] shuttle before it got decommission and they set up lighting and then they set up timing for lighting
[1:29:20] and so there was a morning shift a mid shift and a night shift for the astronauts once they got
[1:29:25] the algorithm working they brought it down terrestrial and they put it into the Mercedes Benz
[1:29:30] formula one race car team so they gave to Lewis Hamilton right because when you think about it
[1:29:34] think about what he has to do right he's honor off the podium on hundreds of a second right and he's
[1:29:39] in a different country every three weeks right so this guy's got jet lag like you wouldn't believe
[1:29:43] and so once we were able to get it going there then we created the time shifter app and so it's an
[1:29:47] app you can get it on your phone and what you do is you put in your flight number and it automatically
[1:29:52] pulls up the flight and knows where you are this is why I think that jet lag is a math problem
[1:29:57] let me explain we learned about 20 years ago that when you say a certain frequency and intensity
[1:30:02] of light and you shine it in somebody's eyes you can move their circadian rhythm by about eight
[1:30:07] hours if you want to desecadian rhythm again being being that internal biological clock the times when
[1:30:12] your body wants to go to bed and wants to wake up we can actually move that by it's about eight
[1:30:17] hours with about 10,000 lux which is the brightness level of a blue light particular frequency of light
[1:30:23] okay so when you hit that if you start in LA and you're going to Manchester right and there's a big
[1:30:31] time difference and you know what time it is in LA and you know what time it is in Manchester
[1:30:35] it's a math problem of when do you get the light so that's what time shifter is is it determines
[1:30:42] when you need that light and then on the times when you don't need light it has you use caffeine
[1:30:47] right or to keep you awake or if it's time to sleep then you use a little bit of melatonin
[1:30:52] that's when melatonin becomes so valuable it also tells you when to eat it does it tells you all
[1:30:58] of these different things and it's kind of nice because it kind of shows up on your phone it's like
[1:31:00] hey do this then do this then and it works really really well but yeah time shifter is one of my
[1:31:06] favorites I've been using it literally for 15 years wow and it solves jet lag bro like we're
[1:31:14] gonna fix that for you no no question how often should someone be having melatonin is that like too
[1:31:19] often because some people literally have it every day yeah I would argue it's a bad idea so if you
[1:31:24] have a melatonin deficiency sure have it every day but or if you're a shift worker probably
[1:31:30] but I use it only for jet lag myself otherwise I'm not using it on the regular and what's the risk
[1:31:36] there of having it every day is it it's a good question so when you start to look at melatonin
[1:31:41] overdose and you start to look at melatonin on board for long periods of time there's been
[1:31:45] some conflict in the in the research there's a group of people that say if you stay on melatonin
[1:31:50] for extended periods of time your body stops producing it there's another group of people
[1:31:55] that have looked at research and have said actually that's not the case so right now we have we
[1:32:00] have studies that lead out to about a year or so on melatonin and when you stop their melatonin
[1:32:06] production after they've been taking it for a year their body seems to start back up no problem
[1:32:10] it's different than testosterone right so with testosterone we know that when men start taking
[1:32:14] testosterone their body actually stops producing it with melatonin that does not appear to be the case
[1:32:20] but we don't have studies that go out past you know that year long and so if somebody's been
[1:32:25] taking melatonin every day for five 10 years you know you kind of start to wonder what's going to
[1:32:31] happen also don't forget that that melatonin is different than the melatonin that's actually
[1:32:34] produced in your head I think it was Andrew Huleman who was speaking to a couple of weeks ago that
[1:32:39] was was saying about not giving kids an overdose and melatonin and I think afterwards I was doing
[1:32:44] some research on it and I read something that said it has an impact on puberty potentially
[1:32:50] so in high dosages melatonin is a contraceptive so that would pause puberty exactly
[1:32:57] or change it and ways we may or may not know so I agree with Andrew on that point that again melatonin
[1:33:05] is not something that kids need unless you've got kids on the spectrum which is again where I find
[1:33:09] it to be helpful and I've treated kids with that before but generally speaking I don't put melatonin
[1:33:14] on anybody under the age of 18 am I more likely to have nightmares if I'm having lots of melatonin
[1:33:20] if you're overdosing you are so the number one side effect of a high dose of melatonin
[1:33:25] is super vivid dreams and then eventually nightmares why I'm not really sure if I was
[1:33:30] garnering a guess then what I would say is that part of the reason why that you have crazy
[1:33:36] vivid dreams from melatonin is because it probably does put you into REM sleep a little bit quicker
[1:33:42] than you normally would and might keep you there a little bit longer I don't have any data to
[1:33:46] support that so I want to be clear this is more of a hypothesis on my own but that might make
[1:33:51] intuitive sense to me just on a quick search um sure you're right it says it keeps you in REM sleep
[1:33:57] a little bit longer and more intensely there you go this leads to vivid highly vivid dreams all
[1:34:01] night terrors which paradoxically makes you wake up feeling more exhausted right I can't count the
[1:34:06] number of people who tell me I need to go back to sleep because I'm so exhausted from my dreams oh wow
[1:34:11] right so let's finish off on these supplements yeah absolutely so we talked a little bit about
[1:34:16] melatonin which like I said select usage um a couple of other ones that we've got here um one of
[1:34:22] them is valarian right so when we talk it valarian is probably the most studied it's a root um it's
[1:34:28] called the valarian root but to be clear it's an anti-anxiety medication right so what it is is it's
[1:34:34] it helps lower your level of anxiety um and that is the reason why it has a tendency to work
[1:34:39] interestingly when you look at the data it works better when combined with hops like what you'd
[1:34:43] find in beer so a lot of times when you're looking for a preparation you should look for valarian plus
[1:34:49] hops as the preparation also we should talk for a second about supplements a lot of people don't
[1:34:55] understand this but a lot of people will put a whole bunch of different supplements together and
[1:34:59] put it into a capsule I don't think that's the best idea I think you should have single ingredient
[1:35:04] supplementation why well number one you get the correct dose so you know it's actually working
[1:35:09] for you there's a lot of companies out there that are uh that make a powder or something and they
[1:35:14] put a bunch of stuff in it and they put just enough in there to be able to say it on the ingredient
[1:35:18] profile but not enough for it to actually do any good for the patient so I like using single
[1:35:23] ingredient uh supplement profiles because I know exactly how much of each thing that I'm going to
[1:35:28] get in there and I can make sure that it's the correct dosage for the what the person needs so I
[1:35:32] prefer single ingredient supplementation okay so valarian valerian yep valarian route
[1:35:39] not gonna mess up my hormones no it's not gonna mess up your hormones you're gonna help me with
[1:35:43] overthinking probably not what it'll probably do is slow your thinking down a little bit depending
[1:35:49] on how much of it you take um I think if you were looking for if you're looking for something that's
[1:35:54] gonna slow down your thinking then I would say we don't have the the thing here but it's called
[1:35:58] GABA gamma immunobuteric acid so this is a substance that your body makes it's kind of the
[1:36:05] breaks of the brain and you can buy it um it is a supplement I've had some for people use that
[1:36:11] and that seems to help calm people down in the evening times what about ashore negander what
[1:36:14] if it's cool ashwaganda exactly I just kind of like saying it so here's my theory on supplementation
[1:36:20] is the first thing I tell people to do is go do blood work okay what deficiencies do you have fix
[1:36:27] your deficiencies first before we start going to the valarians and the melatonins of it all
[1:36:33] if you're deficient in vitamin D magnesium iron fix those three things first dude I can't tell you
[1:36:41] I put 15% of the people that show up in my doorstep we do blood work on and all I do is fix
[1:36:46] their deficiencies and their sleep magically gets better what are some of the surprising things
[1:36:49] that you discover like like like diabetes that impacts sleep it absolutely does I also think
[1:36:55] that a lot of people who have uncontrolled diabetes it wakes them up in the middle of the night
[1:36:59] because their blood sugar gets so low and then they're hungry in the middle of the night then they
[1:37:02] are eating in the middle of the night then they have a sleep eating syndrome which is kind of a pain
[1:37:06] this is one here that I've never heard of before what's this one it's called trip to fan so
[1:37:11] L trip to fan and in particular so trip to fan is the substance that we find in turkey that has
[1:37:18] a tendency to make people sleepy however when you really look at the data you'd have to eat a 46
[1:37:24] pound turkey in order to get enough trip to fan to make you sleepy even in my best days in college
[1:37:29] dude I couldn't eat a 46 pound turkey okay same holds true with milk trip to fan is the thing in
[1:37:34] warm milk that supposedly makes people sleepy but once again you'd have to drink almost a half a
[1:37:39] gallon of warm milk which is kind of disgusting in order to do it trip to fan can be helpful for
[1:37:44] people if you have a trip to fan deficiency but it's definitely something that lowers a little bit
[1:37:49] of anxiety can make you feel a little bit sleepy but it is a naturally occurring amino acid in your
[1:37:53] system calcium so calcium turns out is interesting because when you mix calcium with magnesium it's
[1:37:59] easier to absorb so for some people mag we've discovered is if you have a magnesium deficiency
[1:38:06] and you fix the magnesium deficiency in many cases it can actually help with overall sleep and
[1:38:12] calcium is one of the things that can be added to it that helps with absorption now unfortunately the
[1:38:17] big problem is that there are 13 different kinds of magnesium out there and so people don't know
[1:38:24] what's been studied and what hasn't so I'm here to let you know there's only a couple of
[1:38:28] brands out there that have actually been studied for magnesium the ones I like is there's one
[1:38:34] called magnesium 308 which is made by a company called magazine they actually have a published
[1:38:41] research study in the journals that's why I mentioned their brand name I have no association with
[1:38:45] them there's also another company called upgraded formulas they make a magnesium and it's
[1:38:51] kind of funny story is the guy who runs mag upgraded formulas told me he says my magnesium is the
[1:38:56] best in the world I can make anybody fall asleep and I said hey you want to put your money
[1:38:59] where your mouth is let's do a clinical trial he handed me a check for 75 grand I went and did
[1:39:04] a clinical trial and he was right his magnesium really made people sleep better what is magnesium doing
[1:39:10] so we're not 100% sure in the deficient people it's it's obviously clearing up the deficiency
[1:39:16] of magnesium and then magnesium is used in about I think almost 300 different functions in the body
[1:39:22] so it probably lets the body work more efficiently and probably that helps to overall sleep
[1:39:28] but I'm not convinced that we have the whole mechanism of action worked out I will tell you that
[1:39:32] when people take magnesium they tell me that they introspectively feel calmer and we definitely
[1:39:38] know that it can definitely help cause a relaxation response in the musculature so I think that might
[1:39:42] have something to do with it why did you bring up an owner and a knife in a teapot this is my
[1:39:47] favorite way to get magnesium a lot of people want to know how should I take my supplements I'm
[1:39:52] tired of taking a fistful of pills every morning Michael there's these powders like what's the best
[1:39:57] way the best way so number one supplementation is when you're not getting all of the things the
[1:40:02] vitamins and minerals that you need from your food so the best place to get it from is food generally
[1:40:08] turns out magnesium is one of the best ones but it's problematic because we have to eat our
[1:40:13] magnesium our body doesn't actually produce it ourselves and by the way you could eat a bushel
[1:40:17] a kale and still not get enough magnesium because here in the United States the soil has been over
[1:40:23] tilled which means the magnesium isn't in the soil so it's not coming up through the root
[1:40:27] stalks and allowing people to have it so a lot of people require magnesium supplementation
[1:40:32] believe it or not between magnesium and vitamin D I'd say we'd probably covered most of America
[1:40:36] in terms of having a deficiency bananas are loaded with magnesium but it turns out it's not the
[1:40:42] fruit it's the peel oh itself so no I'm not going to make you eat the peel don't worry so I developed
[1:40:49] the recipe that I call banana tea all it is is a regular old banana so what I what you do is you
[1:40:54] cut off the stem right and cut it in half and then you drop it in to some boiling water okay so we've
[1:41:00] already done this right and you can see the banana has turned brown right it's been soaking in
[1:41:06] the boiling water so it's not really tea it's just basically hot banana water but with the banana
[1:41:12] from the skin you also get these things called phytosteroids that actually help you absorb the magnesium
[1:41:18] better than if you just had it from a supplement so you have to really like bananas my daughter
[1:41:22] because says it's very banana E dad the flavor I mean
[1:41:29] oh it does smell like I'm telling you if you like bananas it's nice I know it's nice and you can
[1:41:35] use this as a like an evening ritual and you can make banana tea and have it in the evening with
[1:41:41] you know a biscuit or what have you and have a night and read a book and just be chill how do I
[1:41:45] know the magnesium's actually in there because it came through from the from the steeping in the water
[1:41:50] okay we could test it if we want but I can assure you it's in there you need to leave it in
[1:41:53] there for about five minutes and we've been talking for a while so I'm pretty sure it's there
[1:41:56] and and how long before sleep to get those effects I would say about 25 30 minutes you don't want
[1:42:00] to have too much by the way because then you can have to wake up and pee so try if you can
[1:42:05] to be able to have it about 30 40 minutes before bed so you can put it in anything so a lot of
[1:42:09] people have different types of tea so you could just use that as the water instead yeah oh without
[1:42:13] question actually that would be a really good idea and you get if you did it if you mix it with
[1:42:16] like a fruit tea like an herbal fruit tea that would be really delicious other any other
[1:42:21] supplements that you you know you do encourage people to take if they're struggling to sleep that
[1:42:24] we haven't talked about yet we haven't talked about vitamin D and that's a big one so it turns
[1:42:29] out that vitamin D is a circadian pacemaker so when light comes into your eyeballs it helps
[1:42:35] change your whole circadian system and if you're if light is coming in for a certain amount of time
[1:42:40] about 15 minutes your body will start to produce vitamin D vitamin D does a whole host of important
[1:42:46] things to your body but most importantly from a sleep perspective is it helps regulate melatonin
[1:42:51] and when your body produces it so by taking vitamin D every day or getting 15 minutes of sunshine either
[1:42:57] way you're going to be in better shape so I guess an example my morning routine that I have all my
[1:43:02] patients do is I have them when they wake up in the morning I have them uh go outside if it's
[1:43:07] if it's you know nice out sit in a chair and have 15 deep breaths merely to wake up the respiratory
[1:43:13] system then 15 ounces of water because once again remember you're dehydrated and then 15 minutes
[1:43:18] of sunshine so they can do all of this together at the same time and it's a nice way to wake up in
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[1:44:29] audience are strivers whether it's in business or health we all have big goals that we want to
[1:44:34] accomplish and one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big big big goal it can
[1:44:40] feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot
[1:44:45] of Mount Everest and looking upwards the way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down
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[1:45:34] and if you want the link the link is in the description below so let's talk about waking up in the
[1:45:39] morning sure morning routines yep a lot of people talk about what's the perfect morning routine
[1:45:43] do you need to have a morning routine what's your take on that so it depends upon how disciplined
[1:45:48] you want to be and it depends upon how much time you have I can tell you what my morning routine is
[1:45:51] because it's very specific and I've discovered that it works really really well for me so I wake up
[1:45:57] naturally somewhere between 610 and about 625 or so my body just seems to naturally wake up I do 15
[1:46:03] minutes of red light therapy so I have a red light in my office that I sit in front of and I do
[1:46:08] my meditation at the same time in the morning time so I have about 15 minutes of meditation sometimes
[1:46:13] what I'll do is I'll sit on the floor and the boys will come and sit on my lap and then we'll all
[1:46:20] meditate together I know that sounds a little weird then we do a 15 minute walk I try not to have
[1:46:25] any music or any telephone or anything like that up at all up into this point I put the dogs
[1:46:31] away and then I hit the gym I'm at the gym from about 8 till about 9 30 10 o'clock I do a sauna
[1:46:37] every day afterwards and then I'm in front of my desk by about 10 30 and that's where just when I
[1:46:42] have my breakfast and so I make the same breakfast almost every morning I do a ground turkey with a
[1:46:48] third of a pound of ground turkey three eggs and broccoli and I put it all into a skillet and I
[1:46:53] make it every morning do you use any sleep truckers in the past I've used a few of them I tried
[1:46:59] them out because a lot of my patients tried them out I think if I was going to be looking at them I
[1:47:04] think the aura ring probably does the best job I really don't think they've gotten there quite yet
[1:47:09] because remember depth of sleep is based on brainwaves and it's hard to get brainwaves from your
[1:47:14] finger right and so what they're doing is they're creating a proxy so they're looking at heart rate
[1:47:18] or oxygen or pulse or something along those lines and then saying okay when Steven's at this pulse
[1:47:24] we think he's in REM sleep so we're going to label every time that REM sleep when in fact they
[1:47:29] don't really know because they're not measuring your brainwaves so I think until we get to the point
[1:47:33] where we can measure brainwaves from distally I think we'll have a little bit better shot at it
[1:47:38] however there's some interesting things that are going on kind of in the sleep tracker world and
[1:47:42] some people get a little too into the whole tracking of it all if you know what I mean
[1:47:47] I can't count the number of people that I'm like oh my god dr. Bruce you know this says I only
[1:47:51] slept 14 minutes last night like what do I do and I'm like well number one how much do you sleep
[1:47:56] the night before and they say oh 16 minutes I'm like okay well let's check you tomorrow they come
[1:48:00] back tomorrow it's even worse 12 minutes I'm like oh you're fine like what I'm like look it's being
[1:48:06] consistently inaccurate there's no way you only got 14 minutes of deep sleep right that's just
[1:48:10] not how the body works right but if you got 14 minutes 14 minutes and then one night you look at
[1:48:15] your score and it's 407 minutes I want to know what happened on that night my friend was a big
[1:48:20] fan of whoop so he told me to try a whoop I tried a whoop that the most I think critical thing
[1:48:25] it's done for me is it allowed me to create some understanding of like causation and
[1:48:32] associations associations with my sleep so one of the ones that completely changed my life when I
[1:48:37] first wore my whoop which by the way I'm an investor in the company so I have to disclaimer that
[1:48:41] was I didn't realize how impactful sleep alcohol was on my sleep it's massive it blew my mind
[1:48:47] because I had had one glass of wine yep and then the bloody whoop thing said sht you're either
[1:48:53] really sick really stressed or you drank alcohol yep and then I watched a video online where they
[1:48:58] compared all of the devices to the hospital grade staff yep police and biography and the whoop
[1:49:05] for was the closest to the hospital grade and then I contacted the company instead of going
[1:49:09] investing so to try I'm also trying like a sleep and I would argue the temperature like if we're
[1:49:14] talking about what is the easiest thing to manipulate to change your sleep either good or bad
[1:49:18] temperature is it and people don't realize it but you can change the temperature in your bedroom
[1:49:24] even in your bed and you can change the quality of your sleep you mentioned eight sleep that's
[1:49:29] a company that has a a top or type of thing that can change the the temperature underneath the
[1:49:34] covers there's also taking a look at the the kutraman that's on so pillows sheets comfortors all
[1:49:40] of those things but if you can get your body to cool down your body will go down and get into
[1:49:46] deeper stages of sleep you can stay cool versus bumping up and down all night long let's say you're
[1:49:52] a woman in menopause right that becomes highly disruptive and so by being able to keep a consistent
[1:49:58] temperature stimulus to the body it ends up sleeping a whole lot better dreams let's talk about
[1:50:04] dreams people are so fascinated by dreams aren't they I love it but but so little is known about
[1:50:09] dreams yeah well yes and no I mean here's the thing dreams have been studied honestly since the
[1:50:16] dawn of time if you look in the bible you will see that people are talking about dreams if you
[1:50:21] look at ancient texts people are wondering about these crazy movies that are going on in my head
[1:50:27] right when you start to look at dreams here's the thing that I will tell you is dreams mean something
[1:50:33] to the dreamer they don't necessarily mean something to somebody who is not the dreamer and so when
[1:50:38] I do dream work and so I so to be clear just take a step back I took a year and a half and I became
[1:50:43] a dream therapist so what does that mean but is that even is that even a thing so dream therapy by
[1:50:50] the way is not dream interpretation that is not here's a symbol here's what that means dream
[1:50:56] therapies where you use dreams in the therapeutic context to help people with things like depression
[1:51:03] and anxiety let me give you an example a nightmare right so when somebody has let's say somebody
[1:51:08] was in an active theater of war and they watched one of their friends god forbid something terrible
[1:51:13] happened to them and that image is now in their head and now they constantly have this image over
[1:51:18] and over and over but what happens is they're going going going and they wake up they're going going
[1:51:22] going they wake up we talked a little bit about it earlier that dreams are emotional metabolism
[1:51:28] right so dreams are where you work out all of these different things that are going on in your head
[1:51:33] and kind of become okay with them so that way next day you can kind of move forward and keep
[1:51:37] keep doing your thing do we need to explain why we dream because I think that's the big sort of
[1:51:42] sure so there's a couple of theories one theory is is that this is a great stage for for practice
[1:51:49] right so we dream about things that were eventually going to try in the real world and so we get a
[1:51:53] chance to practice them in our head beforehand to to make sure it doesn't we don't kind of screw the
[1:51:58] whole thing up so there's that whole idea of being able to kind of work stuff out in my head
[1:52:03] there and there's the processing idea that we talked about before where this is emotional metabolism
[1:52:08] so right exactly it's like you go to therapy every single night I actually it's a really good
[1:52:12] way to think about it I hadn't thought about it like that but I think I'm going to use that I'm
[1:52:15] going to take that from you um I like that dreams are therapy every single night because they
[1:52:19] really are you're really moving through a lot of that emotionality some people think dreams are
[1:52:23] complete nonsense some people think that's just some crazy movie in your head and it's just
[1:52:27] this after effect of your brain moving into a different mode and who knows what it could mean
[1:52:32] I find that one hard to believe myself because humans don't do anything I don't think so that
[1:52:38] isn't for some type of survival benefit for sure it's a waste of energy or yeah I agree and so
[1:52:44] if we looked at it from an evolutionary perspective like what is the evolutionary purpose of dreams
[1:52:50] I would argue that it probably has something to do with emotions and being able to move through
[1:52:56] some emotionally difficult times and or it's an early warning system a lot of people dream things
[1:53:01] and it helps them understand something else that's going on in their life you ever heard the thing
[1:53:06] people say I before I make this big decision I want to sleep on it yeah right this is what they're
[1:53:11] doing is when they sleep on it all these desperate pieces of information come together and work
[1:53:16] themselves so that you can come to a solution so I think the other thing that reason that we dream
[1:53:21] is to come to solutions and to create innovation that tracks in my life I can be going to bed really
[1:53:28] thinking about something quite like you know I'm remunerating about something to the point that it's
[1:53:32] like overthinking and right it's a problem it's stressing me out I can get eight hours sleep and wake
[1:53:38] up and it's like the clouds have parted right it's like magic it's like magic it's great and
[1:53:43] I really I realized this in the last couple of years when you know business my business has got
[1:53:47] bigger and there was more problems just to work that like actually I could use sleep as a weapon
[1:53:53] against the problem absolutely let's just try to stay up all night and solve the problem I could
[1:53:57] focus on the sleep to solve the problem yeah I do it all the time and what you can actually do it's
[1:54:02] called priming is you can think about the problem in a in a way before you go to sleep and then it
[1:54:08] triggers your brain to think about the problem while you're sleeping what you write it down or what
[1:54:12] you there's a lot of different ways you can go about doing it so for example when I have some
[1:54:15] people do is write down everything they can remember in their dream beforehand before they come
[1:54:20] to therapy but what you can do is something different if you want to change your dream you write it
[1:54:25] all down but that you change the ending okay and you read it several times before bed and it will
[1:54:31] actually change your dream so what am I writing down before bed then so let's say you had a scary
[1:54:35] dream okay you're walking through a haunted house and something terrible is gonna happen when you
[1:54:39] walk out the back door the night before yeah the night before then I have you write all of that down
[1:54:44] and then when you come into session with me I say okay we're gonna change the ending because at the
[1:54:48] at the very end you walked out onto the porch and somebody got you right so instead of that happening
[1:54:53] you're gonna walk out of the porch and you're gonna pull out a gun and you're gonna shoot the guy
[1:54:56] okay and so we changed that in the dream in the right and what you wrote down and then we
[1:55:01] talk about it in therapy and then right before bed you read this to yourself multiple times
[1:55:07] and it over seven to ten days you change the ending of the dream and how does that help
[1:55:14] so it makes it more positive and when you change the ending up the reason you're waking up is
[1:55:17] something is scaring you so much that you're waking up and you stop processing and so when you
[1:55:21] change the ending and you don't wake up you continue to process and then you move past the dream
[1:55:25] just like you said when you wake up and the clouds have cleared a lot of people wake up and the
[1:55:29] clouds don't clear because they have nightmares and they keep repeating it over and over and over again
[1:55:36] it's quite remarkable the process is very interesting so what I do is I bring them into session
[1:55:40] put them into a mild hypnotic state only by doing some simple breath work right so let me give you
[1:55:46] an example of somebody that I worked with and tell you exactly how it went so I was working with
[1:55:50] somebody who had had a pretty significant trauma they had been raped right and so they were having
[1:55:54] nightmares about this so serious situation right so she had a she had a nightmare of being in a
[1:55:59] jungle and so I had her come in session wrote it all down and when we got to the end we were
[1:56:05] walking through the jungle which she was actually being chased through the jungle so I turned to her
[1:56:09] and I said okay well we're in the jungle tell me more about this jungle and she said what do you
[1:56:13] mean I said well in jungles there's lots of tropical plants are there a lot of colorful flowers
[1:56:17] and she'll stop and you can see she's looking around inside her head at the dream scape
[1:56:24] and then she says oh there are there's some beautiful flowers over there I've now advanced the dream
[1:56:29] right because she didn't know there were flowers before now she's imagined that their flowers
[1:56:33] I'm moving the dream forward so we go over and we smell the flower and I said well you know usually
[1:56:36] in jungles there's there's animals there any animals tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick yeah there's
[1:56:42] a lion oh gosh is the lion friendly yeah the lion is friendly can we go over and talk to the lion
[1:56:48] yeah Michael we can so again in her head we walk over so I say to her does the lion have a name
[1:56:56] and she said I don't know let me ask so she asked the lion his name and she said yeah his name is jack
[1:57:00] and I said what does jack mean to you and instantly she says jack was my uncle and he saved me from
[1:57:06] getting raped by my stepfather now we're getting somewhere now we understand what's chasing her
[1:57:13] now we understand where she's headed to she's trying to head to the person that saved her
[1:57:18] now she starts to understand where this dream is coming from and guess what in three or four
[1:57:23] more sessions she doesn't have the dream anymore because you did want because she now understands
[1:57:29] where it is she's no longer scared in the middle of her dream she's able to understand it wake up
[1:57:33] and move forward it's remarkable it's kind of the coolest thing ever if you want another truth
[1:57:39] matter working with people's dreams is just amazing stuff and for people at home that might
[1:57:44] have access to you is is there a simple thing that they can do to start to sort of get a hold
[1:57:50] of these dreams yeah yeah number one is you could actually start a dream journal so it's just a
[1:57:54] journal and there's a couple things that you would write down in a given dream journal so you might
[1:57:59] write down what was the theme right so was it was like describe it like was it dark out was it
[1:58:04] light out was it scary was it happy you might describe the surroundings of it and you might
[1:58:10] describe the people better in it as well and start listing these things and getting as detailed as
[1:58:16] you possibly can once you've kind of gotten through the point of getting the details down if you're
[1:58:20] dream then if you want to change them you can change the ending it's not hard you just change it
[1:58:26] the way you want it to be then you start to read it over for yourself now I want to be clear
[1:58:32] in terrible nightmare situations this can be a little bit difficult and so you're probably going
[1:58:36] to want to talk with your therapist about it and maybe work with the therapist while doing
[1:58:39] something like this but it is absolutely possible to collect information from in a dream journal
[1:58:44] and be able to do some interesting stuff with it I would not recommend taking your dream and
[1:58:49] stuffing it into chat GPT and asking chat GPT what it means lots and lots of people are doing
[1:58:55] that these days and here's why that's probably not the best idea so number one in less chat GPT
[1:59:01] really knows and understands you there it's going to give some very broad based sort of encyclopedia
[1:59:08] you know here's a symbol that means this type of thing which once again we have very little evidence
[1:59:12] that that actually works so I would argue that you're better off talking about your dreams with
[1:59:17] people who know you because they can actually help you understand a little bit more about what's
[1:59:22] going on there's a few other items on the table here yeah I mean this is I don't use this exact
[1:59:26] one but maybe I should but this has been an absolute game changer for me so when I travel when I'm on
[1:59:31] planes I love a sleep mask my wife says it looks like I'm living in the 50s you know what I'm
[1:59:38] wearing it but I love a good sleep mask that one in particular is pretty cool because you can
[1:59:42] remove the eye cups and you can change the sizing of where you want it and then these can actually
[1:59:47] you can replace these with things that heat or cool but I love that that particular eye mask it
[1:59:52] works yeah it's really works quite well it's very dark in there you definitely can't see it there
[1:59:58] that's crazy right and then I've got one more thing that I think people will find interesting
[2:00:04] I can't explain how how much of a game changer has been to cover my eyes when I go to sleep because
[2:00:09] gosh the amount of nights per week where I don't know there's like a crack in the curtains or
[2:00:14] I don't know if someone gets up early and well also for you you're traveling all the time
[2:00:18] I'm sorry I'm different you're in planes you're in different environments also by the way
[2:00:22] every time you're in a different environment you have something called the first night effect
[2:00:26] so we see this with every human on earth when you sleep in a new place for the first night
[2:00:30] you never sleep well because it's new sounds new sights new new smells all that stuff is new
[2:00:35] so what's nice about having this is when I put one of these on I don't have to worry about light
[2:00:40] I don't have to worry about anything to see a two player role in what way in changing sleep
[2:00:45] I was thinking if ventilation the amount of oxygen in the room matters at all because sometimes I
[2:00:48] get a hotel else and they don't have windows you can open right so air quality is also
[2:00:54] an important thing not just air quantity right and so number number one thing if I were to tell
[2:01:00] people hey here's an easy thing to do to to make your sleep better just go out and buy an air
[2:01:04] purifier for your bedroom think about it it's the room you spend more time in and than any other
[2:01:08] room in the house you want that air to be fresh and filtered right and not a big it's not expensive
[2:01:14] 20 25 bucks one sits in the corner just runs the air cycles all day long that way you know you have
[2:01:20] good clean fresh air um also I tell people open the windows once a week um it's good to get fresh
[2:01:26] air in now the only problem comes is if you have allergies and the allergens fly in and there's
[2:01:31] pollen or dust or things like that that can be somewhat problematic but generally speaking
[2:01:36] if you don't have enough oxygen going on you're definitely not going to sleep well and your
[2:01:40] body's going to wake up so if you were in let's say a oxygen restrictive environment so let's say
[2:01:46] that you were underneath the covers right and you've got the thing all all the way over your head
[2:01:50] you're not going to sleep particularly well and eventually you're going to get so feel so
[2:01:53] restricted that you're going to open up the covers I want to understand the best possible sleep
[2:01:58] position I do have a bed in the room next door that we go to and talk about these pillows but
[2:02:02] before we do that sure I would like to talk about relationships arguing with your partner sex
[2:02:10] sure all those kinds of things what do I need to know to protect my sleep but also to protect
[2:02:15] my relationship if we start with talking about I know you you wrote about it in your book um the
[2:02:18] power of when you talked about I think it's on page 101 you talk about arguing with your partner
[2:02:24] before yes possibly the worst thing you can possibly do is argue with your partner before bed
[2:02:32] because it's increasing heart rate right what I tell all my patients to do is if you if you need
[2:02:38] to have an important discussion with your spouse or your partner do it right after dinner right so
[2:02:44] like in that seven o'clock eight range seven to eight o'clock range so that way you have enough
[2:02:49] space and time to be able to discuss something and not hopefully go to bed angry if you can avoid it
[2:02:54] at all possible it happens look I can't say that I've never gone to bed angry I'm sure you can't
[2:02:58] say that either sometimes things are a bigger deal but if you can find better times to schedule
[2:03:04] those things a workout a lot better for me the other thing that I often times ask a lot of my
[2:03:08] patients to do is for example if there's known issues that are going on like let's say somebody's
[2:03:13] going through marital therapy or there's there's an issue that they're trying to work on then maybe
[2:03:18] that's better off done at 11 o'clock in the daytime versus starting to kind of address some of those
[2:03:24] issues in the evening time and I like evening times to be as stress-free as humanly possible
[2:03:29] now if you got something you got to talk about you got to talk about it but generally speaking
[2:03:33] I would say the lit the less emotionality that you have and towards the evening the better unless
[2:03:40] it's joy or happiness so many couples they have these difficult conversations on the pillow
[2:03:44] yeah including me sometimes yeah well and it makes sense like when else do you see that person
[2:03:48] right you haven't seen them all day you're you're literally face to face like hey I got something
[2:03:51] I got to talk to you about this is kind of the best time to do it rinse your sex life as well
[2:03:55] doesn't it absolutely ruins your sex life unless you have makeup sex afterwards and then it's great
[2:03:59] but at the end of the day it's not a lot of fun to have those conversations at night that's again
[2:04:04] why I choose to if I'm gonna have the conversation the best time honestly to do it is right after
[2:04:08] breakfast in my relationship we've banned difficult conversations at nighttime good that's probably
[2:04:14] a smart move dude you're tired and it's gonna destroy your sleep right you can't think straight
[2:04:19] you're probably more emotional and you haven't put all the pieces together yet of the issues that
[2:04:23] are really going on I can assure you if you sleep and then have your discussion in the morning
[2:04:27] you'll actually think about the issue better it's so crazy as I've gotten older I've realized
[2:04:33] how much of my mood is determined by my sleep like it's remarkable and I think it's got worse with
[2:04:39] age oh absolutely it does because at 25 you can blow shit off oh yeah or you could drink a monster
[2:04:45] or I feel like a good mood yeah sleep matters and I think that's what you're that's that's the
[2:04:50] button that you're pushing here and I think it's important for your audience to hear that right is
[2:04:54] look you're 33 years old and you're already seeing things changing in your sleep that have a big
[2:04:59] effect in your life I'm 58 years old okay I see the same thing happening every but sleep is so
[2:05:05] fundamental to the human condition that it's one of those things that we've got to really pay
[2:05:10] attention to and the thing is most people don't pay attention to it because they're like well my
[2:05:14] body does it automatically Michael like how tough could this be I walk into that room in the back
[2:05:17] of the house I turn off the lights I go to bed then I wake up something magical happens and I
[2:05:21] should be great right doesn't always work that way I was reading in your work about the best
[2:05:27] time to fall in love yes that's a strange thing for right somebody of your profession to be
[2:05:33] yeah yeah it was yeah when you think about it everything is based on timing right so the timing
[2:05:42] when you're hormones at a certain point and you meet that person in their hormones at a certain
[2:05:46] point and then all of the sudden there's a connection right that's hard to do when you're exhausted
[2:05:53] right try going on a first date when you're complete like when it's the worst right you know you're
[2:05:59] not giving a good impression of yourself you know that you're not getting a good impression of
[2:06:02] that person because your mind is not going where it needs to be so there's timing involved and
[2:06:08] understanding your chronotype and that person's chronotype really leads you in that positive
[2:06:14] direction and I would argue that it's pretty easy to fall in love at that time okay so in your book
[2:06:20] um power of when yes page 94 you say dolphins best mood isn't the afternoon to evening so
[2:06:27] at the best time for them to fall in love is 8 p.m. yeah lions 7 a.m. right because remember they're
[2:06:32] early morning people they're exhausted at the end damn so they should be going on morning dates
[2:06:37] yes bears 4 p.m. yeah in the wolf like me yes 11 p.m. that tracks yeah I get it so should I be doing
[2:06:46] my you know I'm okay I'm in a relationship I'm that's be married yes I should do your
[2:06:51] got engaged I do thank you so much yeah but I should be doing my dates later it kind of tracks
[2:06:55] that's kind of when I did them well look at your whole schedule dude you don't do a thing before 11
[2:06:59] that's true right I think you're exactly like I am shall we go and look at the best possible
[2:07:04] sleep position yeah let's check it out and we're talking about pillows too okay so I'll
[2:07:08] bring all the pillows with me okay great okay so we're gonna go into the next room where there's a bed
[2:07:12] and you're gonna tell me what can you tell me when we look at the bed how can you how so there's
[2:07:15] a couple of different things so number one I'm gonna look at your starting sleep position and I'm
[2:07:19] gonna give you some feedback about that then we're gonna fit you for the right kind of pillow for you
[2:07:23] and then there's some cool technology in there that I want to show you as well that can help keep
[2:07:27] you cool all night long and do we need to take this with us yes take the all right and then how many
[2:07:31] pillows are there I think there's five there's five different pillows okay great let's do different
[2:07:36] things okay okay so we're now downstairs in a bedroom we have in the house yeah I have lots of
[2:07:43] pillows here quite a few and there's a bunch of questions I have for you the first is pillows do they
[2:07:47] matter is there a perfect one is it different for every individual sleeping position is there a
[2:07:53] perfect sleeping position there is and the third one is about temperature you got it let's go
[2:07:58] so I just grab whatever pillow isn't the bed wherever I travel terrible idea really terrible idea
[2:08:04] so first of all a lot of people need to understand that a pillow is a bed for your head right and so
[2:08:09] the goal here is to keep your nose in line with your sternum which is sort of the center part of your
[2:08:14] chest right and but you don't want it facing down and you don't want it facing up you want it to
[2:08:18] be completely in the center like that and so if you have a pillow that tilts your head to the one
[2:08:23] way or tilts your head to the other it causes a pain signal from the strain of the musculature that
[2:08:28] goes to your brain you don't get into deep sleep so you really want to make sure that you've got a
[2:08:32] good pillow otherwise you're gonna put the creek in your neck you don't get good deep sleep it
[2:08:36] becomes problematic okay right so the big question is how do you pick a pillow right so first
[2:08:41] question you want to ask yourself is squishy or firm right so let's take a look at our tower of
[2:08:47] pillows here so for you let's let's take a look so this is a pretty firm when this is a
[2:08:53] basically a foam based hunk of foam pillow right versus this one which is sort of the normal
[2:08:59] kind of pillow much more squishy so which are you are squishy or a firm that one okay perfect
[2:09:04] so you're more on the squishy which means you like to manipulate the pillow you don't want it to have
[2:09:08] a huge form factor where you're like head is on a block of cheese right you got it so perfect so
[2:09:12] let's move this foam pillow out of the way the second thing you want to look at from the pillow is
[2:09:18] when the fabric comes together here it forms what's called a knife's edge so it's where the
[2:09:24] two pieces of fabric meet now why is that important because when you have your head on a pillow like
[2:09:29] this and the knife's edge is down here you're not getting as much support underneath your neck here
[2:09:35] right so in order to fix that we have something called a gusset so a gusset is this piece of fabric
[2:09:42] that comes along here so you notice these two pieces of fabric don't meet there's a thickness here
[2:09:46] so when you were to sleep on it it actually catches you all the way down so let's say you would be
[2:09:51] like this you it gives you support all the way down now you don't like the foam of it all but you
[2:09:56] do like the the gusset right here's one that's got the gusset without the foam so it's squishy
[2:10:03] and has the gusset so if you were going to use this so now we've been able to fit you for the pillow
[2:10:09] now the next question we have well the last one is there's some special types of pillows actually
[2:10:14] this one has got a cut out so you notice how that's got like a moon here it fits perfectly here
[2:10:21] and notice right this is this is my personal pillow okay and so you have to shift I know
[2:10:26] sorry and so you can see it really comes all the way down to your neck and it gives you support
[2:10:30] all the way from the base of your neck all the way up through and that's one of the reasons that I
[2:10:34] like it because I can cut it out and put it right there on me for the average person if they
[2:10:38] had to pick one pillow without you knowing anything about them right which pillow would you pick
[2:10:43] so of all of these six well if I have my choice I'd pick this one because this is my favorite by
[2:10:48] the way there's also another feature of this that I think is important that that people should
[2:10:51] notice is it's got a zipper which means I can change the stuffing and I can pull it out or put
[2:10:59] it in so I can change the height of my pillow and what stuffing is that this is actually a shredded
[2:11:04] latex okay which I really like to sleep on so what's this pillow called so this is by a company
[2:11:09] called coupe and I like it because of the change in the in the shape as well as the stuffing
[2:11:16] and the zipper on the side it really makes it kind of what I would argue to be probably the best pillow
[2:11:20] I want the worst pillow the worst pillow that we've got here this one so almost no support right it's
[2:11:27] super squishy yeah right we don't we don't we have the knife said here there's not much to it
[2:11:32] also by the way it feels like this is made with polyester which is a heat trapper now let's lie
[2:11:37] you down on the bed get you in your starting sleep position and I'm going to show you exactly
[2:11:40] where the pillow should go and what pillow should be for you so if you can lie down for me
[2:11:44] now what is your starting sleep position are you a back sleeper you a side sleeper you a stomach
[2:11:49] sleeper I start on my stomach and I roll to my right got it okay perfect go ahead and get on your
[2:11:56] stomach finally how we it is that roughly 75% of sleepers are side sleepers either right or left
[2:12:02] so you're definitely not don't fall into that category another 20 or so percent are back sleepers
[2:12:08] you're in the like 5% category of stomach sleepers the reason it's the worst position is when you're
[2:12:14] lying on your stomach right and the pillow is here you're pushing on your back here and it causes
[2:12:19] what's called a splay which is extra pressure on your lower back and that can give you low back pain
[2:12:23] over time I only do it for the first like 10 minutes and then you rotate and then I rotate on
[2:12:28] to my side which side right or left my right this side perfect so in all actuality you actually
[2:12:33] want to be on your left side because when you lie on your right side you're actually all of your
[2:12:37] organs push down onto your stomach and it can leak some of those gastric juices and you end up
[2:12:42] with something called gastrosophageal reflux disease so the way I teach people is right is wrong
[2:12:48] so you don't sleep on your right side you sleep on your left side if you can if you can but let's
[2:12:52] fit you anyway let's go ahead and get you down on your what would be your right side and let's see
[2:12:57] how you do lie down how I normally lie down yeah okay this is how I lie down when I first get
[2:13:01] in bed for the first time I can't wait to see it I'm like this I'm gonna kind of out the way
[2:13:04] right and I just lay like this for you okay and you have no pillow no pillow perfect and then
[2:13:10] when you rotate to get to your side yeah show me that I sleep like this on my on my right side
[2:13:17] like roughly like this so what you'll notice is your shoulder is now up into this part here so
[2:13:22] it's still being supported yeah your head is fine and what you'll notice is his head is in line
[2:13:26] with his sternum right his nose is in line there it's not falling too far it's not overextended
[2:13:32] what's my sternum your sternum is the direct center of your chest it's the like your breast plate
[2:13:36] is what you would call it right okay right stored in the center so you want your nose to be in line
[2:13:40] with that which it basically is and when I look at your head your head is not tilted to one side
[2:13:45] or another so I know there's no more neck strain so that would be the perfect pillow for you but
[2:13:50] that happens to be my pillow so I'm not gonna give it to you but I might get you one if you're
[2:13:54] nice to me thank you what about these other which say the bad one was which one the bad one was
[2:14:00] this one so now go ahead and put yourself on that one yeah I'm going to fall down right and you're
[2:14:06] not even trying like you don't even have to push your head that far and and you can see and you're
[2:14:10] and look where do you put your arm your arms not supported like it's becomes like people don't
[2:14:14] realize it but pillows matter what I try to tell people is I used to be a runner and when you're
[2:14:20] a runner like equipment matters like your shoes matter your music matters your your dry fit wear
[2:14:25] matters the same holds true with sleep if you don't have good pillow good mattress good sheets
[2:14:31] you don't have the right equipment you're not going to get good sleep that is a terrible pillow
[2:14:34] I'm telling you really really bad pillow okay so sleeping on my left side is the correct side with
[2:14:40] a good pillow with a good pillow but now let's talk about temperature yeah so while you're
[2:14:45] lying here you may have noticed that there's different temperature on either side of the bed so if
[2:14:51] you feel here what's cool it is that's correct so when you're lying there your body will naturally
[2:14:59] become more warm so remember how we were talking that sleep follows the core body temperature cycle
[2:15:05] right and so as your core body temperature drops you want your environment to drop with it
[2:15:10] because if it doesn't and the environment is too hot you can't fall asleep so this is a product
[2:15:15] it's called an Orion sleep system and it's a topper that's you're lying on top of has a thin
[2:15:21] tube that goes through it you can't feel the tube should feel cool over there and warm over here
[2:15:27] it's cold here it's warm here exactly and we and you can rotate it however you want
[2:15:31] but what's so fascinating about this is you can actually set it so that it follows your circadian
[2:15:36] rhythm and it actually can help you stay asleep the only thing that you as a consumer can manipulate
[2:15:42] in your sleep like you can't write a pharmaceutical by prescription you can't get a CPAP machine but
[2:15:47] what you can do is control the temperature so you might say to yourself when would I want to
[2:15:50] control the temperature for my sleep well if you were female and you were 45 years old and you're
[2:15:55] going through menopause you really want to control the temperature because hot flashes might wake
[2:16:00] you up in the middle of the night those types of things become very very important and how much
[2:16:04] does this cost so this runs about a little over 2000 us the nearest competitor is a significantly
[2:16:11] more expensive almost a third more are you affiliated with them in any way I am affiliated with
[2:16:15] these guys I am their chief sleep officer oh nice I know I did not I made up the job title myself
[2:16:21] thank you very much okay is that anything else I should know about the broader room that is
[2:16:27] so when I talk about broader room aspects I think of the five senses so site sound touch taste
[2:16:33] and smell right so site is light right so clearly you want the lights down as we're starting to get
[2:16:38] towards bed maybe having a dimmer switch or something like that is a great thing to slowly start
[2:16:43] to do that or get the overhead lights and just have the bedside table lamps about 30 minutes before
[2:16:49] beds again setting the tone the next one would be sound so it's always better to be quiet but at the
[2:16:55] end of the day sometimes you can have that and sometimes you can't it's really about the
[2:16:59] emotionality that you attach to the sound itself if you get annoyed by something it's just going to
[2:17:05] get worse and worse but if you can think in your head hey this isn't so annoying anymore it becomes
[2:17:10] less problematic but to be clear certain volume sounds and certain decibel levels are gonna wake you
[2:17:15] up and so you really it's hard to sleep next to a big highway right so you want to have as much
[2:17:20] sound buffering as you possibly can so we did site we did sound let's do touch touches temperature
[2:17:26] right we talked about that you want the bedroom to be cool if you can get the get the air
[2:17:31] conditioning on but let's say you've got the air conditioning on but it's super hot summer and
[2:17:36] you're not fortunate enough to have an Orion sitting underneath your sheets what do you do go out
[2:17:41] and buy a plastic bottle of water two of them stick them in the freezer then put them into socks
[2:17:47] and then put them on your sides okay so frozen water bottle inside a pair inside a sock that sits
[2:17:53] on your side it's like a mini air conditioner underneath the covers it works like a charm I use
[2:17:58] this when I travel because a lot of times you know the room you can't necessarily change the thermostat
[2:18:03] or things like that and it's a great way to be able to do that kind of stuff and the final one is
[2:18:08] smell so people always ask me does a Roman therapy really work believe it or not they're at least
[2:18:13] two scientifically rigorous studies that show that a Roman therapy can actually be helpful for
[2:18:17] you but I want to be clear candles are not the way to do a Roman therapy fire and sleep do not mix
[2:18:24] okay but a diffuser I'm fine with or a little sachet or a pillow mist all of those can be quite
[2:18:31] helpful and you just put them you spray it on your pillow or you have it right next to your pillow
[2:18:35] and as you breathe in the aroma two aromas have been shown to be helpful for sleep one is lavender
[2:18:40] surprise surprise the others called elang elang that's one that's actually got some data on it
[2:18:45] I actually think I saw a study on vanilla and should I be sleeping naked such a good question so
[2:18:50] here's what I'll tell you is you thermoregulate better with less clothing on so less barriers allow
[2:18:57] your body to do exactly what it should do so I would argue you definitely could sleep naked and I
[2:19:01] think there's an argument for sleeping naked will allow you to sleep better and thermoregulate
[2:19:06] however be careful because if you have animals in the bed and you're sleeping naked what
[2:19:13] looks like a chew toy to them might be important for you you speaking from experience I'm just
[2:19:17] letting you know there's problems out there I'm not saying that I had one of those problems myself
[2:19:23] okay I think we've covered it right last one yeah socks oh socks everybody wants to know
[2:19:30] should I wear socks to bed so here's what's interesting is you dissipate heat faster
[2:19:35] when uh with uh unsocked foot because there's no hair on the bottom of your feet you ever notice
[2:19:40] when you're hot at night and you stick your foot out from under the covers you instantly cool
[2:19:44] down and everything's okay so what what I do for some of my patients who have thermoregulation
[2:19:48] issues I have them start with socks but no clothes and then they can remove their socks afterwards
[2:19:53] as they start to get too warm okay let's go back upstairs and finish this conversation
[2:19:57] important question to I'll ask you okay so I want to go back upstairs thank you so much for that
[2:20:00] super super useful sure doctor Michael Bruce we have a closing tradition on this podcast where
[2:20:07] the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it full oh I
[2:20:11] didn't know this this is awesome and the question that's been left for you is if you could have
[2:20:15] the power to change one thing in the US healthcare system what would it be and why
[2:20:22] what I would like to see happen well there's two things one is a wish and one is I think a possible
[2:20:28] reality so the possible reality is I'd like to see everybody in the United States get tested
[2:20:34] for sleep apnea it's so underdiagnosed there's so many people that are suffering from it you saw
[2:20:40] the statistics I mean it's it's an epidemic so if I could have one thing that happens in the US
[2:20:45] healthcare system it would be that somehow or another somebody the powers that be say hey you
[2:20:49] know what we need to test everybody for sleep disorders specifically sleep apnea I think that
[2:20:54] would be a great big wish that I would have the second wish which I don't know would would ever
[2:20:59] happen but I'm gonna take my second wish anyway even though you didn't offer it is I want everybody
[2:21:04] to get a great night sleep but I wanted to all be on the same night I want everybody in the world
[2:21:11] to get a really good night sleep on that can you imagine what would happen the next day
[2:21:16] what if what if what if people actually found peace in the warring nations because they
[2:21:21] actually got a good night's sleep what do you think innovations would happen with if we get some
[2:21:27] of the smartest people in the world to just get a good night's sleep like what about charities
[2:21:32] what about the philanthropy like every single thing that you do you do better with a good night's
[2:21:38] sleep wouldn't it be cool if everybody got one just for one night and see what happens nine months
[2:21:43] later there'd be a lot of kids there would be a lot of kids born for sure that's so beautiful Michael
[2:21:48] thank you so much for the work that you do it so incredibly important because as the numbers
[2:21:51] and the stats have shown people are strugglingly increasingly in the world that we live but through
[2:21:55] lifestyle factors in the way that we work and all these other factors we talked about with this
[2:21:59] more than anything and for so many people it's the cause of so much frustration it is the thing
[2:22:04] further stop stream from a lot of the problems that they struggle with in relationships in their
[2:22:08] work in their sex life and everything in between so having great educators out in the world that
[2:22:14] helped to demystify this black box is so critical and you're one of the very very best I've ever met
[2:22:19] and in part because you're so unbelievably engaging you're a great storyteller you've been in the
[2:22:23] field doing this with patients of wide varieties but also you bring that psychology element which is
[2:22:28] of quite rare to people that talk about the clinical side of sleep you have several great resources
[2:22:34] if people want to continue to learn more I would highly recommend people if you've gotten to
[2:22:39] this point in the conversation I would highly recommend going over to your YouTube channel now
[2:22:44] and watching some of your top videos because I found them to be fascinating and I learnt so much
[2:22:48] more we weren't able to go through everything today but if there's specific things like waking up in
[2:22:52] the middle of the night your videos about that have six or seven million views over on your channel
[2:22:57] and they're very very focused on that subject so if there's specific things that you felt weren't
[2:23:01] covered in this conversation right now go over to Michael's channel it'll be linked below
[2:23:06] and watch more there but also if you're a reader and you love to read and that's your thing
[2:23:12] which I know is great for sleep two great books here in front of me the power of when discover your
[2:23:16] chronotype and the best time to eat lunch ask for a raise have sex right and I will take your meds
[2:23:21] and more and also this book here sleep drink breath which talks broadly about the simple daily habits
[2:23:28] for profound long term health Michael thank you thank you this has been so much fun I wasn't exactly
[2:23:34] sure what to expect but it was lovely I really enjoyed it everybody here is fantastic and uh
[2:23:40] just want to wish everybody sweet dreams

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