# Sleep Expert WARNS: Going to Bed Late Is Quietly Shortening Your Life

An episode of [Project 100 with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1767053714), 22 Oct 2026, 1 h 10 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/05ac4e52-79fb-46b8-849c-b305000bd6d0/c31450fe-dc42-4cc0-9168-b4eb00525649/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ef13e652-7a19-41fd-9d0f-b305000bd6dc

All content and media by Project 100 is created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. **** Sleep is the cheapest longevity tool on the planet — and most of us are doing it wrong. Dr jemma King, sleep researcher and author of *Sleep Smarter, Think Sharper, Feel Better*, breaks down the science of what actually happens when you close your eyes: from the human growth hormone spike that only hits in your first two sleep cycles, to why your late-night coffee is still in your bloodstream at 2 AM. This is one of those conversations that will change how you think about every single night. Practical, science-backed, and no fluff. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Dr.
[0:00] Speaker 2: Gemma King, it's not welcome back. I don't think you've
[0:02] Speaker 2: been on Prodigy 100. We were on Straight Talk, I think,
[0:04] Speaker 2: last time. Yeah, but welcome back to the studios anyway.
[0:07] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[0:07] Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. We're going to talk about your book,
[0:09] Speaker 2: Sleep Smarter, Think Sharper, Feel Better, Sleep First. I like
[0:13] Speaker 2: the idea. And sleep is a big deal. It's like
[0:17] Speaker 2: the unsung hero to me of longevity.
[0:19] Speaker 1: 100%. It's the cheapest, most effective longevity pill you can
[0:24] Speaker 1: get for free, democratically available, and you Mother Nature gave
[0:29] Speaker 1: it to us.
[0:30] Speaker 2: You don't have to go back to your GP to
[0:32] Speaker 2: get a prescription. You don't have to go to the
[0:34] Speaker 2: chemist to get it.
[0:35] Speaker 1: No side effects?
[0:36] Speaker 2: No side... Well, there's side effects if... There's no side
[0:38] Speaker 2: effects if you have enough. There's side effects if you
[0:40] Speaker 2: don't have enough.
[0:41] Speaker 1: There's side effects if you have too much as well.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Oh, really?
[0:43] Speaker 1: Yeah. Anything over nine hours is considered unhealthy. You don't
[0:47] Speaker 1: live as long because it could be masking underlying metabolic
[0:51] Speaker 1: or cardiovascular issues or psychological issues.
[0:55] Speaker 2: Wow.
[0:55] Speaker 1: That's interesting. There's new data come out. So... There's a
[0:58] Speaker 1: sweet spot, 7.5. So under six, above nine, no good.
[1:03] Speaker 2: Can we just get straight into sleep, if you don't mind?
[1:06] Speaker 2: So just on that, what you just talked about then,
[1:10] Speaker 2: seven and a half hours is a sweet spot. What
[1:14] Speaker 2: do they mean by that? Is that for the whole
[1:16] Speaker 2: population of the world or is that for everyone between
[1:20] Speaker 2: 20 and 50? What are the sort of conditions associated
[1:25] Speaker 2: with that?
[1:26] Speaker 1: It's a really good question because your sleep needs do
[1:28] Speaker 1: change over your lifespan. But if you would just put
[1:32] Speaker 1: everybody in a bucket and say, okay, if you were
[1:35] Speaker 1: to throw an arrow at the best sleep for everybody
[1:38] Speaker 1: it would be seven and a half this is from
[1:40] Speaker 1: large population data sets and of course there are um
[1:45] Speaker 1: you know variations at either end of.
[1:47] Speaker 2: The standard deviations beyond the let's call it the mean.
[1:51] Speaker 1: The mean yeah and um and so there are people
[1:54] Speaker 1: who have won the genetic lotto And these very lucky
[1:58] Speaker 1: people have got the DEC2 gene that only need to sleep.
[2:00] Speaker 2: The what gene, sorry?
[2:01] Speaker 1: The DEC2 gene.
[2:03] Speaker 2: DEC2.
[2:04] Speaker 1: DEC2 gene. And if you have this gene, I think
[2:08] Speaker 1: it's an amazing gene because you don't need to sleep.
[2:10] Speaker 1: There's an over-representation of these people in politics, entrepreneurs, special forces,
[2:17] Speaker 1: you know, anywhere in generals or business because they can
[2:21] Speaker 1: stay up all night reading. But they don't have any
[2:24] Speaker 1: physiological or psychological decrements from sleeping less than six hours.
[2:28] Speaker 1: So they only need four, five, six hours.
[2:31] Speaker 2: These people do exist.
[2:32] Speaker 1: The prime minister of Japan, we believe.
[2:35] Speaker 2: Current prime minister.
[2:36] Speaker 1: Yes, she only sleeps four hours. Winston Churchill.
[2:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, but he used to sleep during the day though.
[2:41] Speaker 1: He's a napper. He's a napper, yeah. But yeah, I mean,
[2:44] Speaker 1: there are lots of people who claim to have it
[2:47] Speaker 1: and it's about 1% of the population.
[2:51] Speaker 2: So there is a gene that exists that has been
[2:54] Speaker 2: identified that means that, does it mean you can survive
[2:59] Speaker 2: on less sleep than the norm, than the mean? Or
[3:05] Speaker 2: does it mean you can't sleep more than that and
[3:08] Speaker 2: you're always going to be more alert and aware during
[3:10] Speaker 2: the other hours?
[3:11] Speaker 1: That's very hard to sleep. And they say it's quite lonely. Because,
[3:16] Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of hours in the day
[3:18] Speaker 1: when you sit there by yourself through the night. But
[3:22] Speaker 1: if you are sort of intellectually orientated, you can just
[3:27] Speaker 1: do amazing things, read amazing things.
[3:28] Speaker 2: Be much more productive.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[3:29] Speaker 2: Because you've got more time.
[3:31] Speaker 1: Yes, yes. And you don't feel tired. And it's usually–
[3:35] Speaker 1: so it's genetic. So usually you'll see someone in your
[3:37] Speaker 1: family who also exhibits these behaviors. But for the rest
[3:41] Speaker 1: of us– Um, yeah, it's, it's 7.5. And, you know,
[3:46] Speaker 1: earlier on in your childhood, you need lots of hours,
[3:49] Speaker 1: more hours, you know, teenagers need, you know, 10 hours.
[3:53] Speaker 1: And as you get older, you get more fragmented sleep.
[3:56] Speaker 2: What does that mean?
[3:57] Speaker 1: Well, you know, you don't have the normal sleep stages.
[4:00] Speaker 1: So a sleep cycle is 90 minutes and you have.
[4:03] Speaker 2: So I don't understand that either. So.
[4:05] Speaker 1: Yes. So, um, people think, some people think you just
[4:09] Speaker 1: go to sleep and you're knocked out and then you
[4:10] Speaker 1: wake up eight hours later. But Sleep is a complex
[4:15] Speaker 1: arrangement of different sleep stages that do different things that
[4:18] Speaker 1: are equally important to each other. And if you don't
[4:21] Speaker 1: have one, it's very hard for you to, like, you
[4:25] Speaker 1: miss it and you have to go on to the
[4:26] Speaker 1: next stage.
[4:27] Speaker 2: But they're in 90-minute chunks.
[4:30] Speaker 1: Yeah. So you start off. When you are sort of
[4:33] Speaker 1: relaxed and you're in sort of alpha brain, where you
[4:36] Speaker 1: sort of feel sleepy, then you drop into stage one.
[4:39] Speaker 1: So that's non-REM sleep. So there's REM, which is like
[4:43] Speaker 1: where your eyes go move, or not. And so there's N1,
[4:47] Speaker 1: and then you go down N2, N3 into deep, slow-wave sleep.
[4:51] Speaker 1: So this is essentially your body's wellness retreat. This is
[4:55] Speaker 1: really important for physiological replenishment.
[4:59] Speaker 2: Your brain's at the spa. Yeah.
[5:01] Speaker 1: Yep, this is when the dishwasher gets turned on. Really
[5:04] Speaker 1: important for longevity, this part of your sleep. It's where
[5:08] Speaker 1: all of the repair and it's where about 70 to 80%
[5:12] Speaker 1: of your human growth hormone gets produced. Now, I think
[5:17] Speaker 1: this is, I found revolutionary to understand this, is that
[5:21] Speaker 1: not all sleep is equal. So This happens, this big
[5:26] Speaker 1: spike of human growth hormone happens in the first two
[5:30] Speaker 1: sleep cycles, so first two hours before midnight, essentially. Now,
[5:34] Speaker 1: if you push your sleep back and you say, I
[5:36] Speaker 1: go to bed, say, midnight or one o'clock, I still
[5:39] Speaker 1: get eight hours of sleep, but I'm just pushing it back,
[5:42] Speaker 1: research is showing that that is not good because you
[5:45] Speaker 1: miss out on that big magnitude or that bolus of
[5:49] Speaker 1: growth hormone. You may make up for it in tiny
[5:53] Speaker 1: squirts throughout the day. In over 24 hours, you might
[5:55] Speaker 1: get the same amount, but it's not in the same magnitude.
[6:00] Speaker 1: And researchers think this is incredibly important for regeneration and
[6:05] Speaker 1: essentially for longevity. Wow. So when you look at people,
[6:09] Speaker 1: you know, all cause mortality rates, people who have inconsistent
[6:15] Speaker 1: sleep times.
[6:16] Speaker 2: In other words, one night, nine o'clock, next night, 2 a.m.
[6:19] Speaker 1: They're more likely to die. So what we're seeing is
[6:22] Speaker 1: sleep consistency, and particularly the earlier sleep, is highly correlated
[6:26] Speaker 1: with longevity. And sleeping late, like later in the night,
[6:30] Speaker 1: and having inconsistent sleep-wake times is also correlated with depression, anxiety,
[6:37] Speaker 1: and just shorter lifespans. And these are big population data sets.
[6:41] Speaker 2: Well, what are the different types of circadian rhythms? In
[6:45] Speaker 2: other words, like take me for example.
[6:49] Speaker 1: Are you thinking chronotypes? Are you thinking chronotypes? Everyone's got
[6:53] Speaker 1: a circadian rhythm.
[6:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I had to discover what mine was so
[6:57] Speaker 2: that I could get a proper amount of sleep and
[6:59] Speaker 2: I never really thought about it until the last couple
[7:01] Speaker 2: of years and I had to work out my circadian rhythm,
[7:05] Speaker 2: what my circadian rhythm is. In other words, what time
[7:08] Speaker 2: my body is releasing enough melatonin into my system and
[7:13] Speaker 2: what time it's going to, up in the morning. It
[7:15] Speaker 2: wants to release cortisol because it wants me to wake
[7:16] Speaker 2: up and all that sort of stuff. So it took
[7:19] Speaker 2: me a long time to work it out. But it's
[7:20] Speaker 2: sort of for me is if I go to bed,
[7:24] Speaker 2: I need to be, my body likes to be asleep
[7:26] Speaker 2: at 9.30.
[7:27] Speaker 1: Yes.
[7:27] Speaker 2: And it likes to wake up at 5, 4.30, 5, 5.30. Yeah,
[7:32] Speaker 2: I'm an early bird, so to speak.
[7:33] Speaker 1: That's really why you can do all these podcasts one
[7:35] Speaker 1: in a row and you can remember everything.
[7:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, but by the end of the day, I'm cooked.
[7:41] Speaker 2: So And I know I am, but in the old days,
[7:45] Speaker 2: not that long ago, I used to sort of resist
[7:47] Speaker 2: that and think, oh, you're weak, just get on with it.
[7:51] Speaker 2: But I now respect my circadian rhythm. So when you say,
[7:56] Speaker 2: but someone told me that some people's circadian rhythm is
[8:00] Speaker 2: post 12 o'clock at night to 12 a.m. Is it
[8:03] Speaker 2: true or not true? Because, you know, when you just
[8:06] Speaker 2: mentioned that process and the spike of growth hormone, It
[8:12] Speaker 2: would sort of suggest to me that everybody's circadian rhythm
[8:16] Speaker 2: sort of is before 12 a.m.
[8:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of conjecture around this chronotype truth.
[8:22] Speaker 2: Right.
[8:22] Speaker 1: Or is it a myth? So when you look at
[8:26] Speaker 1: people's preference for sleep, there is honestly around a one
[8:30] Speaker 1: or two genetic difference between preferences. So like you said,
[8:34] Speaker 1: your early preference, some people have slightly later preference, but
[8:37] Speaker 1: But what we're seeing in society are four, five, six-hour
[8:41] Speaker 1: deviations from our people. So we'll see some people who
[8:45] Speaker 1: are literally going to sleep at 2 a.m. and sleeping
[8:48] Speaker 1: till midday. That is not genetic preference. That is you
[8:53] Speaker 1: staying up playing computer games, having coffee, nicotine, doing all
[8:57] Speaker 1: the things you shouldn't do. And so why we do
[9:02] Speaker 1: have preferences is there is conjecture about this as well,
[9:05] Speaker 1: but it's They say that there's a sentinel theory that
[9:10] Speaker 1: for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, at any one time, there were
[9:13] Speaker 1: people who would stay up, 30% of the clan would
[9:16] Speaker 1: stay up at certain times throughout the night to keep watch.
[9:19] Speaker 1: And so there are preferences genetically. But when you look
[9:23] Speaker 1: at humans now, if you put someone in a cave
[9:25] Speaker 1: or in a sleep study, everybody's sleep cycle kind of
[9:28] Speaker 1: synchronized to like an earlier going to bed. If they
[9:31] Speaker 1: don't know what time it is, people will naturally fall
[9:34] Speaker 1: into this going to bed earlier with about a one
[9:39] Speaker 1: or two hour deviation. These going to bed really, really
[9:42] Speaker 1: late people, it's probably just bad habits.
[9:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting because I've often wondered about that because
[9:49] Speaker 2: you get to know people who say, I just can't
[9:51] Speaker 2: get to sleep. How do you possibly go to sleep 9.30?
[9:53] Speaker 2: I get it, but maybe 10.30, 11 o'clock. But because
[9:58] Speaker 2: I think to myself, how could you possibly go to
[9:59] Speaker 2: bed at 12.30? I know, right? I mean, how do
[10:02] Speaker 2: you stay awake? Unless you're one of these people with
[10:04] Speaker 2: this weird gene thing.
[10:06] Speaker 1: Very rare, though.
[10:07] Speaker 2: But that's rare. You know, Winston Churchill, perhaps. But I
[10:12] Speaker 2: just wonder to myself how they can possibly do it.
[10:14] Speaker 2: And have they just... train themselves to do that.
[10:18] Speaker 1: They probably forget what good health feels like and stimulus.
[10:22] Speaker 1: They probably use a lot of caffeine or stimulus in
[10:27] Speaker 1: their eyeballs. But you've got to look at like, so
[10:30] Speaker 1: humans stood up on the savannas of East Africa like
[10:33] Speaker 1: 250,000 years ago, around about. And so that's when we
[10:37] Speaker 1: became humans as we know them, homo sapiens. And so
[10:42] Speaker 1: we were very, very, our behaviors were very tightly connected
[10:45] Speaker 1: to the sun rising and the sun setting. And so
[10:48] Speaker 1: we've got all this neural architecture and all these bodily
[10:50] Speaker 1: systems that are deeply tied to that sleep-wake cycle and
[10:55] Speaker 1: that light exposure cycle. And so we've got this little
[10:58] Speaker 1: grain of rice in our skulls called the suprachiosmic nucleus
[11:03] Speaker 1: that determines to signal whether we go up or down.
[11:06] Speaker 2: That's your body clock.
[11:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, your body clock. It's your orchestratum. Now, our
[11:12] Speaker 1: modern life is not enough time for all of these
[11:16] Speaker 1: neural architecture and systems to change to light, staying up late,
[11:20] Speaker 1: having the world in your phone, being able to look
[11:23] Speaker 1: at anything at any time. Human modern society is the
[11:28] Speaker 1: equivalent of a four-second blip. Now, this is not enough
[11:31] Speaker 1: time for all these things to change. To evolve.
[11:34] Speaker 2: We haven't had enough time, given what the various intruders
[11:39] Speaker 2: are in our life. We haven't had enough time to
[11:43] Speaker 2: evolve to that.
[11:43] Speaker 1: Yet we are hunter-gatherer skulls living in a modern environment.
[11:46] Speaker 2: Still.
[11:47] Speaker 1: And we're trying to push our behaviors into this crazy world.
[11:50] Speaker 2: In such a quick... Attention economy. Especially now.
[11:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't work, right? And so people will go,
[11:58] Speaker 1: I feel demotivated. I feel depressed. I can't lose weight.
[12:03] Speaker 1: I'm getting diabetes. I'm getting heart disease. I'm fighting with
[12:06] Speaker 1: my kids. I'm not doing well at work. It must
[12:08] Speaker 1: be you. It must be that. It must be all
[12:10] Speaker 1: these other things. But actually... you haven't synchronized with the
[12:15] Speaker 1: way that humans should be. You haven't cleaned your brain,
[12:17] Speaker 1: which is really important. And when you don't clean your brain,
[12:20] Speaker 1: you're walking around with a dirty brain and you literally
[12:22] Speaker 1: feel like crap. And then you post-rationalize and say, externalize,
[12:26] Speaker 1: it must be you, it must be that. But you
[12:28] Speaker 1: just haven't cleaned your brain and you haven't regenerated. You haven't,
[12:32] Speaker 1: during deep, slow wave sleep, there's this alchemy that happens
[12:35] Speaker 1: and your brain energy that gets used up, gets reconstituted
[12:39] Speaker 1: back into energy. And that is a really important thing
[12:42] Speaker 1: that happens in those first two sleep cycles. There's so
[12:47] Speaker 1: much stuff that if you miss that, you're just not
[12:50] Speaker 1: efficiently doing all the things that your body is planned
[12:53] Speaker 1: to do at that time. It's like you can't biohack
[12:56] Speaker 1: or think your way out of sleep any more than
[12:59] Speaker 1: you can biohack your way out of needing oxygen. It's
[13:03] Speaker 1: a fundamental pillar of mental well-being.
[13:07] Speaker 2: And our biology. Yeah. So, mate, can I just go
[13:11] Speaker 2: then back to, let's say, you know, the stages.
[13:16] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[13:16] Speaker 2: Not the stages.
[13:17] Speaker 1: Because we haven't gotten to the other bit.
[13:18] Speaker 2: Yeah. Let's talk about, well, one of the things I
[13:22] Speaker 2: learned was that you talked about energy and our brain is,
[13:28] Speaker 2: in terms of percentages, sort of uses more energy than
[13:33] Speaker 2: most of the rest of our body or any other
[13:36] Speaker 2: organ in our body by a fair way. Um, and, um,
[13:40] Speaker 2: especially your brain. Oh, I just pretty much all our brains.
[13:43] Speaker 2: We're thinking all the time and, and, and we're also,
[13:45] Speaker 2: our brain's telling us to do things. Everything we do
[13:47] Speaker 2: is starting here. That's a, that's the boss. And, um,
[13:51] Speaker 2: and the, the, our brains, neurons are pretty hungry for,
[13:54] Speaker 2: for energy. And, um, and you know, we, um, the
[13:57] Speaker 2: energy sort of, we need a thing called ATP for
[13:59] Speaker 2: our energy and denosintrophosphate. And, um, One of the things
[14:03] Speaker 2: that I found quite fascinating was that maybe people who
[14:07] Speaker 2: have difficulty going to sleep because they drink coffee, for example.
[14:10] Speaker 1: Or alcohol.
[14:11] Speaker 2: Or alcohol. But in our brains, our brain cells, our
[14:16] Speaker 2: neurons have all these different types of receptors, like heaps
[14:18] Speaker 2: of different ones, right? And one of the ones that
[14:20] Speaker 2: they have there is a receptor that works out that
[14:25] Speaker 2: you've actually used up Or you converted ATP, adenosine triphosphate,
[14:29] Speaker 2: into just adenosine. In other words, you keep dropping phosphate
[14:32] Speaker 2: molecules off because you keep.
[14:34] Speaker 1: That's the actual energy.
[14:34] Speaker 2: That's the thing that burns the energy. That gives you energy.
[14:37] Speaker 2: And that's gone.
[14:37] Speaker 1: Adenosine is a cellular exhaust that's left over.
[14:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's right. And then your brain's receptors go,
[14:43] Speaker 2: hang on, you've got a lot of adenosine in here, Mark.
[14:45] Speaker 2: You don't have much ATP. You've just got adenosine monophosphate. Adenosine.
[14:49] Speaker 2: Just adenosine. But when you drink a coffee... What it
[14:53] Speaker 2: does is it goes up into your brain. Somehow it
[14:55] Speaker 2: gets into your bloodstream and gets the caffeine or whatever
[14:58] Speaker 2: it is, gets to your bloodstream and goes along to
[14:59] Speaker 2: those receptors and blocks them. And then it keeps you awake.
[15:02] Speaker 1: So people think, oh, I've got to have my coffee
[15:05] Speaker 1: to give me energy. That's not true. Coffee blocks the
[15:09] Speaker 1: sleepy signal.
[15:10] Speaker 2: Correct. The natural signal. Yeah.
[15:13] Speaker 1: It's Mother Nature's sleeping potion, adenosine. But did you also
[15:16] Speaker 1: know that adenosine gives you an impending sense of doom? No.
[15:20] Speaker 2: No.
[15:21] Speaker 1: Yeah. So adenosine has been used for a heart medication
[15:26] Speaker 1: for tachycardia. And when doctors administer adenosine, they have to
[15:30] Speaker 1: hold the patient's hand and say, don't worry, you're not
[15:32] Speaker 1: going to die. It's just the adenosine because you get
[15:34] Speaker 1: this overwhelming feeling of dread. And the only way to
[15:41] Speaker 1: get rid of adenosine is in that deep, slow way
[15:43] Speaker 1: of sleep. So if you're not hitting that because of
[15:44] Speaker 1: a multitude of reasons and you wake up in the morning,
[15:47] Speaker 1: you feel like crap, you're like, It must be you.
[15:49] Speaker 1: It must be a wife, dog, cat, job, whatever, where
[15:51] Speaker 1: I live. And you haven't processed, put that A-adenosine back
[15:56] Speaker 1: into adenosine triphosphate.
[15:57] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[15:58] Speaker 1: That's the alchemy.
[15:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.
[16:00] Speaker 1: And you feel terrible.
[16:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, because you haven't given your system a chance to
[16:06] Speaker 2: gather up all the adenosine and reconvert it back to ATP,
[16:08] Speaker 2: which is your energy molecule.
[16:10] Speaker 1: And did you know that what alcohol does? It blocks
[16:12] Speaker 1: the enzyme that reconstitutes the adenosine.
[16:15] Speaker 2: Back to ATP.
[16:16] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
[16:17] Speaker 2: Wow.
[16:17] Speaker 1: So that's why also, you know, alcohol's so bad for you.
[16:21] Speaker 2: So just on those two things, if someone's listening to
[16:25] Speaker 2: this and they're thinking to themselves, well, I can't get
[16:27] Speaker 2: to sleep at night. Well, the question you've got to
[16:31] Speaker 2: ask yourself is, when did I have my last coffee?
[16:33] Speaker 1: So I'll give you one. If you have your last
[16:35] Speaker 1: coffee at 4 p.m., so you've got 200 milligrams. So
[16:38] Speaker 1: depending on how strong your coffee is, be one to
[16:39] Speaker 1: two cups. At 2 a.m., you've still got 50 grams
[16:44] Speaker 1: of caffeine running around in your bloodstream. And so people,
[16:48] Speaker 1: have you ever heard someone say, oh, I can have
[16:50] Speaker 1: five cups of coffee and it doesn't bother me? I
[16:52] Speaker 1: sleep like a baby. And I'm like, oh, what, you
[16:55] Speaker 1: wake up every two hours and cry and your bum patted?
[17:00] Speaker 2: But I know people say that.
[17:01] Speaker 1: It's not true. Because now we know.
[17:03] Speaker 2: They go to dinner and have a coffee after dinner.
[17:05] Speaker 2: I think, what the hell?
[17:06] Speaker 1: Yes. So I know, right? Now I'm like, I judge hard.
[17:09] Speaker 1: But now we know that people's perception, there's a perception gap.
[17:13] Speaker 1: what they feel like they sleep and how their physiology,
[17:16] Speaker 1: you know, from data shows how they sleep is that
[17:19] Speaker 1: there's a big gap. And so what they do is
[17:22] Speaker 1: they have micro arousals and they have disrupted sleep, but
[17:25] Speaker 1: they're not aware of it. But now we have, you know,
[17:27] Speaker 1: wearables like Whoop. We can see the data and it
[17:30] Speaker 1: actually shows that they don't have deep replenishing consistent sleep.
[17:36] Speaker 1: And I think what they sleep on average, if you
[17:38] Speaker 1: looked at all, there was a meta analysis of all
[17:40] Speaker 1: the coffee studies. Having coffee, it cuts your sleep time by,
[17:45] Speaker 1: on average, 45 minutes. And that sleep is not.
[17:48] Speaker 2: As- You mean the length of sleep or the- Yeah,
[17:49] Speaker 2: the length of sleep. Yeah.
[17:51] Speaker 1: So there's, on average, people who are drinking coffee after midday,
[17:56] Speaker 1: they sleep on average 45 minutes less than other people
[17:59] Speaker 1: who do stop coffee. So I always say, wake up
[18:02] Speaker 1: in the morning the first time you get photon exposure
[18:04] Speaker 1: into your eyeballs, count 16 hours into the future, then
[18:08] Speaker 1: count six hours back. That should be your last caffeine.
[18:12] Speaker 2: Say it again. That's a good mathematical calculation.
[18:16] Speaker 1: Wait up. First time you get photon light into your eyeballs,
[18:19] Speaker 1: that's when your circadian rhythm starts to kick off and
[18:23] Speaker 1: it tells you when you should get natural sleep pressure
[18:26] Speaker 1: in the evening. And that is around 15, 16 hours.
[18:32] Speaker 1: And so you count then and then you go, okay,
[18:34] Speaker 1: that's when I will need to go to sleep and
[18:37] Speaker 1: have to be ready to go to bed at that
[18:39] Speaker 1: 16-hour mark. So then you minus six hours if you're
[18:43] Speaker 1: a normal person, and that should be your last caffeine ingestion.
[18:47] Speaker 1: And remember, it's in a whole range of things from
[18:50] Speaker 1: those terrible energy drinks, caffeine, tea, chocolate. And so if
[18:56] Speaker 1: you are slightly more susceptible to caffeine, drop it to
[19:01] Speaker 1: seven or eight hours and you will know that. So
[19:03] Speaker 1: if you get a little bit jittery after a coffee,
[19:06] Speaker 1: you're a slow metabolizer. Even if you're pregnant, take the
[19:11] Speaker 1: pill or have liver damage. That also makes you susceptible
[19:14] Speaker 1: to caffeine, and you should drop back the coffee. So
[19:18] Speaker 1: if you have insomnia, never have caffeine after 12, but never,
[19:22] Speaker 1: ever have it after 3 if you're a normal person.
[19:24] Speaker 2: So just on that, so if I wake up at
[19:26] Speaker 2: 6 a.m. in the morning, then 6 plus 4 is 10.
[19:31] Speaker 2: I've got to be considering I've got to get to
[19:33] Speaker 2: sleep at 10 at night.
[19:34] Speaker 1: You've got to be in better sleep at 10.
[19:36] Speaker 2: 10 o'clock.
[19:38] Speaker 1: So your sleep pressure is like an express bus to
[19:40] Speaker 1: deep slow motion. It's got your name on it. That
[19:42] Speaker 1: bus is clean. It's smooth. It gets done quickly. If
[19:45] Speaker 1: you miss that bus, another one will come, but it
[19:48] Speaker 1: will be like dirty and... and rocky and crowded. And
[19:51] Speaker 1: it takes you a while to get to deep sleep.
[19:53] Speaker 1: So get on your deep sleep express bus and you
[19:56] Speaker 1: get very efficient at getting down into that because your
[19:59] Speaker 1: body temperature drops one to two degrees. But if you
[20:03] Speaker 1: are all over the shop, like going to sleep at
[20:05] Speaker 1: different times, your brain's like, well, what's going on? Do
[20:09] Speaker 1: I go up or down? There's a whole lot of
[20:10] Speaker 1: metabolic processes that need to happen. You have to land
[20:14] Speaker 1: like you're landing a hot air balloon. That's how you
[20:17] Speaker 1: should go to sleep. And so this is why you've
[20:19] Speaker 1: got to tell yourselves what you're doing and when you're doing.
[20:23] Speaker 1: So imagine if you were running a cafe and you
[20:25] Speaker 1: said to your staff, we're opening on Tuesday. And then
[20:28] Speaker 1: the staff said, what time shall I come in? And
[20:30] Speaker 1: the cafe owner says, I don't know, when the, you know,
[20:35] Speaker 1: customers arrive i'll let you know and they're like i
[20:36] Speaker 1: can't do that i need to know you know when
[20:39] Speaker 1: i need to go to work this is what you
[20:40] Speaker 1: need to do to yourselves so just going back to
[20:43] Speaker 1: your point so you wake up at six so you
[20:45] Speaker 1: need to be asleep by 10 yep.
[20:46] Speaker 2: Which means it means you maybe need to be in
[20:49] Speaker 2: bed by 9 or 9.
[20:50] Speaker 1: 30 yeah depending on how long it takes your busy
[20:52] Speaker 1: mind yeah minus six.
[20:53] Speaker 2: Hours And then so we go back six hours. That's
[20:55] Speaker 2: on assumption of- You're.
[20:57] Speaker 1: A normal person.
[20:58] Speaker 2: And you're a normal person. And you're a normal person.
[21:01] Speaker 2: And some people metabolize caffeine at a different rate.
[21:04] Speaker 1: Yes.
[21:05] Speaker 2: So this is sort of averaging.
[21:06] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[21:06] Speaker 2: But if you're a person, and some might say, well,
[21:09] Speaker 2: how do I know if I'm metabolized at the same
[21:10] Speaker 2: rate as everyone else on the planet? Well, if you're
[21:12] Speaker 2: a person that has a cup of coffee, but in
[21:14] Speaker 2: the second one, maybe half an hour later, you get jitters,
[21:17] Speaker 2: it's more than likely- You are a slow metabolizer. Yeah,
[21:20] Speaker 2: you're a slow metabolizer. And what I mean, what you
[21:22] Speaker 2: mean by metabolizer, I presume, is that you can convert
[21:25] Speaker 2: caffeine into some other metabolic substance.
[21:30] Speaker 1: You do habituate to it though. You do what? You
[21:32] Speaker 1: kind of habituate a little bit to it.
[21:34] Speaker 2: What's that mean?
[21:34] Speaker 1: Well, so you need more caffeine.
[21:36] Speaker 2: You build tolerance.
[21:36] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[21:37] Speaker 2: You build some tolerance.
[21:38] Speaker 1: Exactly.
[21:38] Speaker 2: Yeah. I now want to explore, you know when you
[21:41] Speaker 2: first go to sleep or you might be sleeping with
[21:43] Speaker 2: somebody else and you notice in the very first beginning
[21:47] Speaker 2: of sleep they're going, There's these weird movements.
[21:51] Speaker 1: Do you know what that is?
[21:52] Speaker 2: No, I don't know what that is. What is that?
[21:54] Speaker 1: I talk about it in the book. It's really interesting.
[21:56] Speaker 2: By the way, this is the book, Sleep First. Well,
[22:00] Speaker 2: I like the idea of it, but Sleep First. So
[22:01] Speaker 2: it's right there. I'm going to put it right in
[22:02] Speaker 2: front of the camera, and we'll talk about it in
[22:04] Speaker 2: a moment. But go on.
[22:05] Speaker 1: They're called hypnotic jerks. So as I said, we are
[22:08] Speaker 1: still tracking with some ancient hunter-gatherer hardware. And so we
[22:13] Speaker 1: came down from the trees originally. And so you can
[22:16] Speaker 1: imagine if you were falling asleep in the branches, it
[22:18] Speaker 1: was quite dangerous. And so when you feel yourself dropping
[22:22] Speaker 1: into that deepest stages of sleep where you will become,
[22:25] Speaker 1: you know, like you have a sleepatonia where your muscles
[22:28] Speaker 1: don't work, your brain wants to really know that you're
[22:31] Speaker 1: in a safe spot. So it makes your arms fling out.
[22:34] Speaker 1: And so if you are in a dangerous location, you
[22:37] Speaker 1: might catch a branch and you might go plummeting to
[22:40] Speaker 1: the ground. You can see the moro reflex in babies
[22:42] Speaker 1: do this as well. When they're falling asleep, you can
[22:44] Speaker 1: see babies will like, They'll throw their arms out so
[22:47] Speaker 1: they can catch fur or long hair of their mothers
[22:49] Speaker 1: and not fall out of the trees.
[22:50] Speaker 2: So this is an evolutionary response.
[22:53] Speaker 1: We don't know for sure, but it's a theory.
[22:55] Speaker 2: That's not a bad one. It sort of makes sense.
[22:59] Speaker 2: Do we know, or do you know, has deep sleep
[23:03] Speaker 2: come before REM sleep? Yes. So how does it work?
[23:06] Speaker 1: Okay, so we go down. So on the way down
[23:09] Speaker 1: to deep sleep, there's a couple of stages where you
[23:11] Speaker 1: have K-complexes, and spindles. And these are sort of little
[23:14] Speaker 1: brain waves that help you, you know, learn motor memories.
[23:18] Speaker 1: And it's like the bouncer. So if you are going
[23:22] Speaker 1: into deep sleep and then you hear a car door
[23:25] Speaker 1: slam or a noise, your body will like, it's like
[23:28] Speaker 1: a bouncer coming to check. Is it safe to go
[23:30] Speaker 1: down or not? And if it is, you know, it'll
[23:33] Speaker 1: protect your brain so you can go down. And as
[23:37] Speaker 1: I said, it helps you remember things like piano, learning guitar.
[23:42] Speaker 1: So you get down to deep sleep. So we know
[23:45] Speaker 1: that about 24, 5% of your sleep architecture should be
[23:52] Speaker 1: deep sleep. And then you come up.
[23:54] Speaker 2: Could you just explain what deep sleep is? It's a deep,
[23:56] Speaker 2: slow way.
[23:56] Speaker 1: So these big, rolling brain waves of... This is when
[24:01] Speaker 1: you clean your brain. This is when you regenerate your ATP.
[24:06] Speaker 1: This is when your human growth hormone happens. It's the
[24:09] Speaker 1: physiological replenishment. It also, when your memories get transferred from
[24:14] Speaker 1: your hippocampus, your memory into your prefrontal cortex. So it's
[24:18] Speaker 1: a memory transfer as well.
[24:19] Speaker 2: If I was laying next to somebody... and they're in
[24:23] Speaker 2: slow-wave sleep or what you're calling deep sleep, would I
[24:28] Speaker 2: be able to see something from them? Is there something
[24:31] Speaker 2: I could observe about them?
[24:32] Speaker 1: Heart rate slows. So your heart beats less when you're
[24:36] Speaker 1: in deep sleep than it does when.
[24:37] Speaker 2: You're in deep sleep. Your rested heart rate is low? Yes.
[24:39] Speaker 1: So this is when your heart rate variability increases. So
[24:41] Speaker 1: this is good. So like you're the calmest. Your breath
[24:46] Speaker 1: slows down. Your body temperature cools. So it goes down faster.
[24:49] Speaker 1: one to two degrees, you're still. And yeah, it's like,
[24:54] Speaker 1: it's what you sort of typically associate with sleep. It's
[24:58] Speaker 1: like not moving very much and very still.
[25:02] Speaker 2: Is it true that we're in a sort of a
[25:05] Speaker 2: nearly catatonic state? Yeah. We're not, like we're paralyzed. Yeah, yeah.
[25:11] Speaker 2: It's like if I was looking at someone, it would
[25:13] Speaker 2: look like there's no movement. They're dead, yes.
[25:17] Speaker 1: This is why it's so important because you could imagine
[25:19] Speaker 1: from a hunter-gatherer perspective that we lay fairly vulnerable in this.
[25:25] Speaker 1: This is before we slept in huts and houses. It's
[25:28] Speaker 1: a really dangerous part of life, but that is so
[25:31] Speaker 1: important to clean your brain that your body is prepared
[25:34] Speaker 1: to make you be in this vulnerable position to get
[25:38] Speaker 1: that done. So that is how important it is. The
[25:41] Speaker 1: chances that you get eaten by a bear or murdered
[25:45] Speaker 1: in your sleep was pretty high back in the day.
[25:47] Speaker 1: So it's very, very important. And so this is why
[25:52] Speaker 1: we have to get it done. Your body will take
[25:55] Speaker 1: precedence over other things. If you're sleep deprived, your body
[25:58] Speaker 1: will have a deep, slow way rebound. Okay, so once
[26:04] Speaker 1: you've done that, and it should be, you know, like 25%
[26:08] Speaker 1: of your sleep time.
[26:10] Speaker 2: Is that a 90-minute?
[26:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, out of a 90-minute sleep cycle. And then you
[26:13] Speaker 1: go up. And so when you see REM sleep, rapid
[26:17] Speaker 1: eye movement, it looks like you're awake. You've got these
[26:19] Speaker 1: like really sort.
[26:20] Speaker 2: Of … If I look at my heart rate, I mean,
[26:22] Speaker 2: or I look at somebody.
[26:22] Speaker 1: You look at your brain waves.
[26:24] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[26:24] Speaker 1: So your eyes start darting back and forward. And so
[26:27] Speaker 1: everything is also, you're very … sleep atonia, so everything's
[26:32] Speaker 1: paralyzed so you don't act out your dreams. And there's
[26:35] Speaker 1: only a few muscles that still work while you're in
[26:39] Speaker 1: REM sleep. So your eyeballs, your diaphragm, and for some reason,
[26:44] Speaker 1: your penis. We don't know why. Yeah. We don't know why.
[26:47] Speaker 2: So it's when guys get erections. Yeah.
[26:49] Speaker 1: It's also when you've been producing testosterone throughout the night,
[26:53] Speaker 1: and then it kind of peaks in REM sleep. That's
[26:55] Speaker 1: why men will get morning erections. And this is a very,
[26:58] Speaker 1: very strong indicator of of cardiovascular health, neural health, and
[27:03] Speaker 1: hormonal health. Right. And if you're not getting erections, you
[27:06] Speaker 1: need to look into it. Yeah. Or get someone to
[27:09] Speaker 1: look into it.
[27:10] Speaker 2: Do women have an equivalent? So how can, do they measure,
[27:12] Speaker 2: I mean, obviously women don't get erections, but like, can
[27:14] Speaker 2: they measure, is there something they can measure in women
[27:15] Speaker 2: to see that they're getting this REM sleep in their
[27:20] Speaker 2: sleep cycle?
[27:21] Speaker 1: Not equivalent, but, You know, if women don't get REM sleep,
[27:25] Speaker 1: you know, much more high levels of anxiety.
[27:27] Speaker 2: It's harder to measure that in women.
[27:29] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[27:29] Speaker 2: But I guess their heart rate will jump up and
[27:32] Speaker 2: I guess their breathing will sharpen. Yes.
[27:34] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[27:35] Speaker 2: So, like, again, another wearable.
[27:38] Speaker 1: Well, it's memory. And it's dreaming. Yeah. So, some people
[27:42] Speaker 1: don't remember their dreams. But if you, you know, had
[27:44] Speaker 1: dreams and you feel like– so, let's explain what REM does.
[27:50] Speaker 1: I like to use the analogy of a midnight librarian.
[27:53] Speaker 1: So just imagine you've got someone with a desk and
[27:56] Speaker 1: folders come in throughout the day of what happened. And
[28:00] Speaker 1: the midnight librarian will go, oh, that folder goes in
[28:03] Speaker 1: that box or that box or that one you don't need.
[28:06] Speaker 1: You can chuck that out. That was a scary memory
[28:10] Speaker 1: or thought. But you don't need to be really anxious
[28:13] Speaker 1: about this one because we've seen it before because I
[28:15] Speaker 1: know you put it in that box. And so what
[28:17] Speaker 1: happens is sometimes your midnight librarian will get a memory
[28:21] Speaker 1: because you haven't dealt with it. during the day because
[28:23] Speaker 1: you've been on your phone and you've been busy or whatever.
[28:25] Speaker 1: And your librarian says, hang on a minute. I don't
[28:29] Speaker 1: know what to do with this memory and wakes up
[28:31] Speaker 1: the boss. And so you know something, we get the
[28:32] Speaker 1: 2 a.m., 3 a.m. waking. This is when the REM
[28:34] Speaker 1: sleep starts to kick in and your brain's like, I
[28:37] Speaker 1: need to sort out these unfinished emotional threads and you
[28:41] Speaker 1: need to help me. Now, if you don't get REM sleep,
[28:44] Speaker 1: alcohol absolutely crushes it. It kicks it off.
[28:47] Speaker 2: Sleeping pills do too.
[28:48] Speaker 1: Sleeping pills do as well. And so what happens is
[28:52] Speaker 1: your REM, your memory consolidation, memory forgetting and fear processing
[28:57] Speaker 1: doesn't happen efficiently. And you wake up anxious and you
[29:01] Speaker 1: get anxious about more things than you shouldn't because you
[29:04] Speaker 1: haven't had that fear conditioning. So it's a really, really
[29:07] Speaker 1: important part of your sleep architecture. And this is why
[29:11] Speaker 1: people think, oh, I'm anxious. I'll drink just to anesthetize myself.
[29:14] Speaker 1: But they're actually exacerbating the anxiety because you're not dealing
[29:19] Speaker 1: with the memories. And there is some conjecture around whether
[29:22] Speaker 1: or not PTSD could actually be a sleep disorder because
[29:25] Speaker 1: you kind of have scary dreams. You wake up. and
[29:28] Speaker 1: you forget to forget. And really, REM sleep is you
[29:34] Speaker 1: replaying out that emotional memory. So you lose the sting,
[29:41] Speaker 1: but you remember the lesson. So what you're actually trying
[29:45] Speaker 1: to do is desensitize yourself, habituate yourself to that anxiety,
[29:50] Speaker 1: to that emotion. So you remember it, but you don't
[29:54] Speaker 1: get affected by it. And so when people are not
[29:56] Speaker 1: having REM sleep, they never really do this processing. They
[29:59] Speaker 1: remember the anxiety and they remember the thing.
[30:02] Speaker 2: Why might someone not get REM sleep?
[30:04] Speaker 1: So, I mean, there's REM sleep disorders, but it's alcohol,
[30:10] Speaker 1: not enough time, their sleeping environment's insufficient, or maybe they
[30:17] Speaker 1: just have a lot of unsolved emotional memories that just
[30:21] Speaker 1: keeps waking them up. And I just want to jump in.
[30:24] Speaker 1: I've just been talking to the Queensland police. We're looking
[30:26] Speaker 1: at doing a study of, have you heard the Tetris study? No.
[30:30] Speaker 1: Really interesting. So anyone out there, especially in frontline people,
[30:34] Speaker 1: if they've ever seen something quite emotionally evoking or traumatic.
[30:39] Speaker 2: Like an accident.
[30:40] Speaker 1: Like an accident. And if you, so this study showed,
[30:44] Speaker 1: it's been replicated several times. If you play Tetris or
[30:48] Speaker 1: something like Candy Crush in the six hours before you
[30:52] Speaker 1: go to sleep for 20 minutes, it scrambles the visuospatial cortex.
[30:57] Speaker 1: information coming in and your memory doesn't lay it down
[31:00] Speaker 1: in the same way. So what essentially you're doing, you're
[31:03] Speaker 1: scrambling the imagery of that traumatic event. So basically, the
[31:08] Speaker 1: midnight librarian's like, I don't know which box to put
[31:10] Speaker 1: this in and gets distracted. And it really, really helps.
[31:14] Speaker 1: So they followed these people over weeks, months, and they
[31:16] Speaker 1: found that those who did the Tetris were much less
[31:20] Speaker 1: likely to suffer from PTSD. So we're looking at potentially
[31:24] Speaker 1: doing a study to replicate this for up in Queensland. Because,
[31:29] Speaker 1: I mean, it's free and it's, you know, a really
[31:32] Speaker 1: cheap and, you know, easy way to protect people's brains.
[31:36] Speaker 2: With PTSD?
[31:38] Speaker 1: Yeah. Anything traumatic.
[31:39] Speaker 2: Anything traumatic. I did read somewhere, and I've actually noticed
[31:42] Speaker 2: on my own whoop readout. So I'd be really interested
[31:50] Speaker 2: in your commentary on this. So. If I go to
[31:55] Speaker 2: bed at 9.30 or go to sleep at 9.30, I
[31:57] Speaker 2: should say, and then I sleep through to 5 o'clock.
[32:03] Speaker 1: Do you sleep straight and you don't wake up?
[32:04] Speaker 2: I do wake up. I usually have to go to
[32:06] Speaker 2: the bathroom at least usually once a night. That's what
[32:09] Speaker 2: wakes me up. But I can get back to sleep
[32:13] Speaker 2: pretty quickly.
[32:14] Speaker 1: That's good.
[32:14] Speaker 2: Within about three or four minutes if I engage in
[32:18] Speaker 2: a certain practice. So my practice is that I then
[32:20] Speaker 2: will meditate myself back to sleep. good breathing. And, uh,
[32:24] Speaker 2: in the first five rounds of it, it doesn't do
[32:29] Speaker 2: too much, but I'm talking about like proper, proper breathing
[32:33] Speaker 2: process that I incorporate myself that I've taken a long
[32:37] Speaker 2: time to work at how to do it. Um, but
[32:39] Speaker 2: at about round 10, um, then generally speaking, I, I
[32:42] Speaker 2: just find myself, I just go back to sleep and
[32:44] Speaker 2: I stay in a good state.
[32:47] Speaker 1: Um, That's because you're not producing cortisol because you're not
[32:49] Speaker 1: thinking about stressful things.
[32:50] Speaker 2: Correct.
[32:51] Speaker 1: Cortisol's got at least a 30-minute half-life.
[32:53] Speaker 2: Which is why I have to resist that process. What
[32:58] Speaker 2: I used to do is I'd turn the TV back on.
[32:59] Speaker 2: I'd think, okay, I'll sleep, I'll turn the TV back on.
[33:01] Speaker 2: I'd turn the news on and it immediately was the
[33:03] Speaker 2: worst thing ever for me.
[33:03] Speaker 1: News actually has been shown to be the worst thing
[33:06] Speaker 1: you can do before bed. Yeah. It's the most disruptive.
[33:09] Speaker 2: I used to do it all the time, especially when
[33:11] Speaker 2: you get– 24-hour streaming. I could get the UK news.
[33:15] Speaker 2: I could get the European news. I could get the
[33:16] Speaker 2: Palestine news, like, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'd be
[33:19] Speaker 2: watching Al Jazeera from BBC, Al Jazeera back to Sky News. Like,
[33:22] Speaker 2: I'd be going all over the shop. And I would
[33:24] Speaker 2: stay away for two hours. And then eventually I'd just
[33:25] Speaker 2: pass out because I'm so tired. But I've got past
[33:29] Speaker 2: that now, and I do meditate, and it's a process
[33:32] Speaker 2: that works for me. I don't know if it works
[33:33] Speaker 2: for everybody. It definitely works for me. But if I
[33:36] Speaker 2: then wake up at, say, let's say 5 o'clock, 10
[33:38] Speaker 2: to 5 for some reason, But I don't need to
[33:41] Speaker 2: get up. I mean, maybe a train yesterday was my
[33:43] Speaker 2: day off. If I go back to sleep and I
[33:46] Speaker 2: can meditate myself back to sleep, I did this morning actually,
[33:50] Speaker 2: I find that I dream like crazy.
[33:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's REM.
[33:54] Speaker 2: And all of a sudden my REM readout from my
[33:59] Speaker 2: whoop is much better than I had, say, the previous night.
[34:03] Speaker 2: Because for some reason that last hour, the extra hour
[34:07] Speaker 2: I should say, Yeah. Is it right that we have
[34:09] Speaker 2: a lot more REM towards the end of our sleeping cycle?
[34:12] Speaker 1: Yes, that's true.
[34:13] Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
[34:14] Speaker 1: Okay.
[34:14] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[34:14] Speaker 1: And that's why you've got to go to bed before midnight.
[34:17] Speaker 2: Right.
[34:18] Speaker 1: Because otherwise you miss out on that deep, slow-wave sleep
[34:21] Speaker 1: and that human growth hormone. Because it's like a theater show.
[34:25] Speaker 1: You've got stage one, stage two, and it all just
[34:30] Speaker 1: gets condensed or pushed. And your body will prioritize deep,
[34:34] Speaker 1: slow-wave sleep. So if you do have that extra sleep,
[34:38] Speaker 1: you're engaging in extra emotional processing, which could be a
[34:43] Speaker 1: good thing.
[34:44] Speaker 2: It could be a good thing.
[34:45] Speaker 1: See, what you're doing is you're engaging in thought processes
[34:48] Speaker 1: that do not involve cortisol. And I think I want
[34:51] Speaker 1: everyone to listen to this. Whatever you do, thoughts aren't free.
[34:56] Speaker 1: Thoughts produce chemicals, and these chemicals are kryptonite to sleep.
[35:01] Speaker 1: Cortisol is the greatest antidote to sleep. Like, no, sorry,
[35:05] Speaker 1: is not the antidote, it's the worst thing you do
[35:07] Speaker 1: for sleep. And so when you're lying there, you've got
[35:10] Speaker 1: to be really, really disciplined and be careful because if
[35:15] Speaker 1: you're thinking about stressful things, your body can't differentiate between,
[35:18] Speaker 1: is this actually happening or am I just imagining it?
[35:22] Speaker 1: And so imagination and actual, your visual cortex, your occipital
[35:28] Speaker 1: lobe in your brain will light up when you're imagining.
[35:31] Speaker 1: And your brain's like, is this happening or am I
[35:34] Speaker 1: just thinking about it? And your brain has a better
[35:36] Speaker 1: be safe than sorry policy. And it says, just in
[35:39] Speaker 1: case a bear's coming in or you're about to argue
[35:42] Speaker 1: with someone or fight, I'm going to prepare your body
[35:45] Speaker 1: with some stress hormones because that's probably the most effective
[35:48] Speaker 1: way to stay alive. It's the best survival strategy. And
[35:51] Speaker 1: so I'll just squirt out a bit of adrenaline and cortisol.
[35:54] Speaker 1: And then half an hour later, 40 minutes, you've still
[35:57] Speaker 1: got cortisol in your system.
[35:58] Speaker 2: So what is a half-life? Is there such a thing
[36:01] Speaker 2: as a half-life of cortisol?
[36:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, depending on you, but it's
[36:04] Speaker 1: at least 30 minutes. So if you get a thought
[36:07] Speaker 1: and it makes you like activated, you'll produce adrenaline, which
[36:11] Speaker 1: is quick acting, and then cortisol. And 30 minutes later,
[36:15] Speaker 1: if you drew blood, you've still got cortisol in your system.
[36:19] Speaker 2: Maybe you could just explain to the audience.
[36:20] Speaker 1: What cortisol is?
[36:21] Speaker 2: Well, just see actually the axis. So how it starts.
[36:25] Speaker 1: HPA axis.
[36:26] Speaker 2: Well, just before that though, the sensory. So like there
[36:29] Speaker 2: needs to be a sensory spike or something needs to
[36:31] Speaker 2: spike the hippocampus to hit the HPA. But just explain
[36:37] Speaker 2: what that process is and when the cortisol goes into
[36:40] Speaker 2: your system, what's the loop?
[36:43] Speaker 1: Yeah. So what happens is it could be real, imagined.
[36:47] Speaker 2: So it could be an imaginary. Yes. So this is important.
[36:52] Speaker 2: So it could be, you might hear a noise. Yeah.
[36:54] Speaker 2: You might have heard something outside.
[36:56] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[36:57] Speaker 2: On your balcony.
[36:58] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[36:59] Speaker 2: Which actually happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
[37:01] Speaker 2: The light went out. The light came up on my veranda,
[37:06] Speaker 2: which is right next to my bed where my window,
[37:08] Speaker 2: there's a window right next to my bed. And the light,
[37:11] Speaker 2: I have, you know, these lights come on automatically. Sometimes
[37:14] Speaker 2: it's a possum sets it off here. Yeah. But my dog.
[37:17] Speaker 1: Kicked off.
[37:18] Speaker 2: German Shepherds started barking or growling.
[37:20] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[37:21] Speaker 2: So, immediately, so that's a sensory thing for me. Yes.
[37:28] Speaker 2: That's it. But then, that's an example of that. And
[37:31] Speaker 2: I've obviously got up and everything. But another one could
[37:34] Speaker 2: be your imagination.
[37:35] Speaker 1: Yes. So, you could remember, so last time the dog barked,
[37:39] Speaker 1: there was someone in the backyard. And so, your imagination
[37:43] Speaker 1: just … When it's dark and it's night, it behoves
[37:46] Speaker 1: your brain to think of the worst possible outcome or scenario.
[37:50] Speaker 2: Because- Just to be safe.
[37:51] Speaker 1: If you miss it, you could die.
[37:53] Speaker 2: So it might as well go overboard.
[37:54] Speaker 1: Yeah. So our ancestors, the ones who are a little
[37:56] Speaker 1: bit more hypervigilant, they're the ones who live. So if
[38:00] Speaker 1: your great-great-grandfather would wake at the sound of a twig
[38:04] Speaker 1: or a rustle in the bushes, they were less likely
[38:07] Speaker 1: to get dragged off into a bush. A bear. A bear.
[38:11] Speaker 1: So that hypervigilant DNA gets passed down. If you're a
[38:15] Speaker 1: little bit, I suppose, anxious around that, you had a
[38:18] Speaker 1: better survival strategy. But not so good when we're living
[38:21] Speaker 1: in a safe, warm home with security lights. And so
[38:25] Speaker 1: what happens.
[38:26] Speaker 2: Is- It actually was an intruder, by the way, I
[38:27] Speaker 2: should say. There was.
[38:29] Speaker 1: Oh, really?
[38:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a guy out there.
[38:30] Speaker 1: Did you have a stalker?
[38:31] Speaker 2: No, not a stalker. There was a guy out there
[38:33] Speaker 2: on my balcony who let the dog out after him.
[38:35] Speaker 2: But I'm just trying to give you an example.
[38:37] Speaker 1: Who was it?
[38:38] Speaker 2: I don't know what it was.
[38:39] Speaker 1: He got out.
[38:39] Speaker 2: He already had his escape route worked out. And by
[38:42] Speaker 2: the time the dog got to– it was a German Shepherd.
[38:44] Speaker 2: She nearly got him. But he got over the fence
[38:46] Speaker 2: onto the beach.
[38:47] Speaker 1: Wow.
[38:48] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[38:48] Speaker 1: So it would be quite reasonable that you would produce–
[38:52] Speaker 1: your HPA access would kick off because– It's happened before.
[38:56] Speaker 1: You've got data to suggest that that noise.
[38:58] Speaker 2: If I hear a noise, the light comes on. Yeah,
[39:00] Speaker 2: it is. So now if the wind sets, because there's
[39:02] Speaker 2: trees and stuff, the wind can set the thing off. Yeah.
[39:05] Speaker 2: But imagination is the one I want to just sort
[39:08] Speaker 2: of go into because some people might imagine that the
[39:11] Speaker 2: worst thing is going to happen at work tomorrow.
[39:13] Speaker 1: Yes. So for instance, they put people in a scanner
[39:17] Speaker 1: and they show them a picture of a white bear.
[39:19] Speaker 1: So a visual cortex litter. Then they said, imagine a
[39:23] Speaker 1: white bear. same visual cortex, similar activation happened in the brain.
[39:28] Speaker 1: And so your brain's this prediction machine. It's always working
[39:31] Speaker 1: out what's the most expensive and what's the safest thing
[39:35] Speaker 1: you can do to keep you alive. And it's a
[39:37] Speaker 1: balance because producing stress hormones is expensive. It's metabolically expensive.
[39:42] Speaker 1: and it takes resources. So is that more or less
[39:45] Speaker 1: resources than having to fight unprepared? And so your body
[39:48] Speaker 1: will typically go, just squirt out a bit of cortisol
[39:50] Speaker 1: and adrenaline. And so it kicks off this system. And
[39:54] Speaker 1: so after about 30 something, depending on how much of
[39:58] Speaker 1: the magnitude, who you are, your history, your receptors in
[40:02] Speaker 1: your brain, what sort of intrauterine environment you had when
[40:07] Speaker 1: you were a child, even your epigenetics will determine how
[40:11] Speaker 1: vigilant you are to cortisol. And so eventually if you go, okay, well,
[40:15] Speaker 1: nothing happened, you'll settle down and your HbA access will
[40:20] Speaker 1: turn off. But some people's, it doesn't, right? And it
[40:23] Speaker 1: keeps going. And we also know that adipose tissue in
[40:26] Speaker 1: your stomach, that produces its own cortisol as well.
[40:29] Speaker 2: You're talking about fat tissue.
[40:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, outside of the homeostatic loop. So the way you
[40:35] Speaker 1: respond to that initial cortisol, it really depends on a
[40:39] Speaker 1: multitude of different factors, your blood glucose amount, what you've
[40:44] Speaker 1: done that day, what's happened to you in your past,
[40:48] Speaker 1: what resources you have, how old you are. Do you
[40:51] Speaker 1: have a dog? Are you a big guy, burly guy?
[40:54] Speaker 1: Are you a petite female? All these things play into
[40:57] Speaker 1: how you respond and if you keep that cortisol activating.
[41:01] Speaker 1: So this is why you have to be incredibly disciplined
[41:04] Speaker 1: about your thoughts because thoughts become chemicals and these chemicals
[41:08] Speaker 1: become ruin your sleep.
[41:10] Speaker 2: I just wonder if you could explain, often, I mean,
[41:16] Speaker 2: Gary Brecker comes on and he will say, you know,
[41:18] Speaker 2: first thing you've got to do is, you know, within
[41:20] Speaker 2: one hour of waking, you've got to expose yourself to light.
[41:24] Speaker 2: And I think he means the actual sun and or
[41:28] Speaker 2: as close to the, if it's cloudy, whatever.
[41:31] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you just get 10,000 lux for 10 minutes,
[41:33] Speaker 1: which is pretty easy. So just look on your phone
[41:35] Speaker 1: and there's a free lux app and you hold it up.
[41:38] Speaker 1: So even in Australia.
[41:39] Speaker 2: Explain what it is. Well, 10,000 lux is a measurement
[41:42] Speaker 2: of light.
[41:42] Speaker 1: Of light photons coming in. And in Australia, even in winter,
[41:46] Speaker 1: even if it's cloudy, you can hit 10,000 pretty easily.
[41:49] Speaker 2: After a certain amount of time.
[41:50] Speaker 1: Well, I mean, as I was saying, for 250,000 years,
[41:55] Speaker 1: this is what we did, right? And the fact that
[41:57] Speaker 1: we don't get 10,000 lux of light in the morning
[42:01] Speaker 1: is weird because we're inside houses and we're inside you know,
[42:05] Speaker 1: and we'll go into a train or a bus and
[42:08] Speaker 1: into a humanically sealed office. That is the weird thing.
[42:12] Speaker 1: If you think about humans, we were sleeping outside, we
[42:15] Speaker 1: were sleeping, you know, or in huts that had no windows.
[42:19] Speaker 1: So every single system is tied to this circadian signaling.
[42:25] Speaker 1: And so basically it tells our, you know, conductor inside
[42:29] Speaker 1: our brain that SCN, okay, now it's time to ramp up,
[42:33] Speaker 1: produce your go-go hormones, your cortisol and adrenaline. So it
[42:37] Speaker 1: really helps your, so you get your highest peak of
[42:42] Speaker 1: cortisol around 30 minutes post-waking. That's a good thing. You
[42:45] Speaker 1: need it. If you didn't do that, you would find
[42:48] Speaker 1: it very hard to get out of bed. So all
[42:51] Speaker 1: these people go, oh, I don't want to get rid
[42:52] Speaker 1: of my cortisol. I want to block it because it
[42:54] Speaker 1: blocks my testosterone. That's a bad idea, right? You want cortisol.
[42:58] Speaker 1: It's a good thing. And so really, it's a signal
[43:01] Speaker 1: for the whole daylight system to start getting activated. And
[43:07] Speaker 1: what we see is that, as I said, around 16 hours,
[43:11] Speaker 1: your melatonin, so your cortisol and adrenaline will be down
[43:15] Speaker 1: and your melatonin starts to go up. And what we
[43:17] Speaker 1: see is those people who are exposed to sunlight during
[43:21] Speaker 1: the day, they're less susceptible to artificial light at night.
[43:26] Speaker 1: So artificial light at night pushes back your melatonin production,
[43:30] Speaker 1: which is a bad thing. So you don't get sleepy
[43:32] Speaker 1: and it's harder for you to go to sleep. Now,
[43:35] Speaker 1: children are twice as vulnerable to artificial light at night
[43:40] Speaker 1: as a 40-year-old. Women are more susceptible. People with blue
[43:43] Speaker 1: eyes are more susceptible to artificial light. Oh, really?
[43:48] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[43:48] Speaker 1: So if you are not getting sunlight during the day,
[43:53] Speaker 1: you are more susceptible to the effects of artificial light
[43:56] Speaker 1: at night. So they did a study where they got
[43:59] Speaker 1: people who worked in offices and half of them got
[44:02] Speaker 1: morning sunlight, half of them didn't. Then they tracked them
[44:06] Speaker 1: in the evening. They tracked how much melatonin they produced,
[44:10] Speaker 1: the sleep hormone, when exposed to light. Those that got
[44:14] Speaker 1: sunlight during the day, their melatonin production was more normal
[44:18] Speaker 1: than the people who didn't see sunlight during the day
[44:21] Speaker 1: their melatonin production plummeted.
[44:24] Speaker 2: Was less.
[44:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, which is bad, right? Because you needed that melatonin
[44:28] Speaker 1: to go to sleep.
[44:28] Speaker 2: That's the sleep hormone.
[44:30] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[44:30] Speaker 2: That's the signal. Yeah.
[44:31] Speaker 1: So when people say, why do I have to get
[44:33] Speaker 1: light in the morning? A, it sets your timer. It
[44:39] Speaker 1: increases your energy so you can cope through the day.
[44:42] Speaker 1: It sets when you get natural sleepy pressure. And it
[44:46] Speaker 1: also is protective of artificial light at night.
[44:49] Speaker 2: That process is in the morning is about how you
[44:52] Speaker 2: sleep well at night. Yeah.
[44:53] Speaker 1: So a good night's sleep starts the minute you wake up.
[44:55] Speaker 2: That sounds ridiculous, but that's the reason they say all
[44:58] Speaker 2: this stuff.
[44:59] Speaker 1: Yeah. There's so many things that happen throughout the day
[45:01] Speaker 1: that can either hinder or promote good sleep. And I
[45:05] Speaker 1: think a lot of people don't realize. They think, oh,
[45:07] Speaker 1: they just jump into bed. They lie there and go,
[45:09] Speaker 1: why am I not going to sleep? And they get
[45:11] Speaker 1: angry with themselves. Like you can't do that to yourself.
[45:13] Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of things that need to happen.
[45:16] Speaker 1: What you eat, what you think about.
[45:18] Speaker 2: Can we talk about the eat bit? because that's fascinating.
[45:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
[45:20] Speaker 2: So they say that, um, you know, if you want
[45:23] Speaker 2: to go to sleep at 10 o'clock, then you should,
[45:25] Speaker 2: you know, give yourself at least three to four hours of, um,
[45:29] Speaker 2: having digested your last meal. Let's take alcohol out of
[45:33] Speaker 2: it completely, but your last meal, um, so which means
[45:36] Speaker 2: if I want to go to sleep at 9.30, because
[45:37] Speaker 2: I discovered 9.30 is around about my time, then I
[45:40] Speaker 2: should be, I have stopped eating by about 6 p.m.,
[45:43] Speaker 2: which sort of completely changed my eating habits, um, other
[45:46] Speaker 2: than if I go out, but, um, what is that about?
[45:49] Speaker 2: Why do they want us to do this, stop eating
[45:53] Speaker 2: within three to four hours before we go to sleep?
[45:55] Speaker 1: Again, going back to the hunter-gatherers, they would eat, sit
[45:59] Speaker 1: around the fire. They weren't having snacks or having late
[46:02] Speaker 1: night meals. It just didn't happen. So your body's supposed
[46:05] Speaker 1: to be doing other things at that time. And so
[46:07] Speaker 1: if you're eating particularly heavy meat, meat's quite thermogenic. It
[46:12] Speaker 1: takes around five times longer to digest than, say, a
[46:15] Speaker 1: vegetarian meal. So If you have a big chunk of
[46:19] Speaker 1: steak before dinner, it competes with deep, slow-wave sleep. So
[46:23] Speaker 1: your body will prioritize getting rid of that, essentially, a
[46:27] Speaker 1: decomposing chunk of flesh out of your system over deep,
[46:30] Speaker 1: slow-wave sleep. So it pushes that out. And so if
[46:35] Speaker 1: you do want, you would see it on your work.
[46:37] Speaker 1: If you want good sleep, have protein for lunch and
[46:39] Speaker 1: have vegetarian at evening, and then your body, it does
[46:43] Speaker 1: it quicker and it's not thermogenic. It doesn't increase your
[46:46] Speaker 1: resting heart rate. And you get on with the things
[46:49] Speaker 1: you should be doing when you're asleep.
[46:50] Speaker 2: Thermogenic, just for the audience's sake, is creating heat.
[46:53] Speaker 1: Yes.
[46:54] Speaker 2: Which your body doesn't really want.
[46:55] Speaker 1: The meat sweats. People talk about that.
[46:57] Speaker 2: Yeah. But your body wants to be cool when you
[47:00] Speaker 2: go to sleep. Yes.
[47:02] Speaker 1: So around 15 to 21 degrees Celsius. Around 18 is
[47:05] Speaker 1: probably perfect. Yeah. And so there's a whole lot of things.
[47:09] Speaker 1: So Mediterranean diet, which is leafy greens, small amount of meat.
[47:13] Speaker 1: not that many carbs, olives, olive oil, fruit and vegetables,
[47:17] Speaker 1: and some legumes has been shown to be the most
[47:19] Speaker 1: consistently sleep promoting diet on the planet. So there are
[47:25] Speaker 1: so many things that you're doing throughout the day eating,
[47:28] Speaker 1: which will affect your sleep. So anything, you know, high
[47:32] Speaker 1: processed food. So when you think about, so anything in
[47:36] Speaker 1: a packet, anything with artificial coloring, anything with preservatives, Our
[47:43] Speaker 1: hunter-gatherer ancestors would never have seen anything the likes of
[47:47] Speaker 1: that food. And so their immune system would consider it
[47:50] Speaker 1: as a dangerous ingestion. It would consider it something that's,
[47:54] Speaker 1: I haven't seen these chemicals. They could be dangerous. So
[47:57] Speaker 1: your body will raise an assault. It will raise an
[48:01] Speaker 1: inflammatory reaction to high processed foods. And so it's not
[48:06] Speaker 1: enough to If you're eating high processed foods, it's not
[48:09] Speaker 1: enough for your immune system to like full out go
[48:12] Speaker 1: get sick. But it's kind of like if you had
[48:14] Speaker 1: a fire alarm just going beep, beep, beep, it's kind
[48:17] Speaker 1: of a little bit irritated and your immune system never
[48:21] Speaker 1: really quite settles. So high processed food just puts you
[48:25] Speaker 1: on a bit of an inflammatory process and that really
[48:30] Speaker 1: affects your sleep. It's very expensive. And your body's just
[48:35] Speaker 1: having to deal with this like tick in your immune system.
[48:38] Speaker 2: So you would say eat light well before three or
[48:43] Speaker 2: four hours before you go to sleep.
[48:44] Speaker 1: My PhD student did her PhD on circadian alignment. She's
[48:49] Speaker 1: actually at WHOOP. And she found that eating your last
[48:53] Speaker 1: meal when the sun goes down, all of your metrics improve.
[48:55] Speaker 1: In fact, she said 3 p.m. was the best. But
[48:58] Speaker 1: like who's going to have dinner at 3 p.m.? I do.
[49:01] Speaker 2: Three or four, yeah, yeah.
[49:02] Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
[49:03] Speaker 2: Okay.
[49:03] Speaker 1: Well, because you go to bed, so.
[49:04] Speaker 2: I have my last meal at 4 p.m.
[49:06] Speaker 1: That's great.
[49:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I try not to eat after 6 p.m.
[49:08] Speaker 2: That's my rule. Yeah. But I try, I generally speaking,
[49:12] Speaker 2: I like at least four times a week, I'll eat
[49:14] Speaker 2: my last meal at 4 p.m. Yeah. And the other
[49:16] Speaker 2: days I sleep the best.
[49:17] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you can see it in the data.
[49:18] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[49:18] Speaker 1: Yeah. And so what you're eating. is really important. Anything
[49:21] Speaker 1: with MSG. So MSG, monosodium glutamate, is a neurotransmitter. So
[49:25] Speaker 1: what you see if you have this, it's in all
[49:28] Speaker 1: sorts of foods like takeaway, packaged food. It's a bit
[49:32] Speaker 1: flavor enhancer.
[49:33] Speaker 2: Yeah. And you have mad dreams.
[49:34] Speaker 1: You have crazy dreams.
[49:36] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[49:36] Speaker 1: And you have nightmares and you wake up kind of.
[49:38] Speaker 1: brain fried and and thirsty yeah so when i was
[49:42] Speaker 1: working with athletes i'll be like never eat packaged food
[49:45] Speaker 1: or sauces gravy soy sauces anything before a big event
[49:49] Speaker 1: because you you're it's at the expense of your deep
[49:52] Speaker 1: slow asleep so there's so many things that we don't
[49:55] Speaker 1: realize are actually impacting your food and if you want
[49:58] Speaker 1: to you know have a good night's sleep have foods
[50:00] Speaker 1: that have got tryptophan in it.
[50:02] Speaker 2: Yes can we just talk about turkey so yeah because
[50:04] Speaker 2: i mean i know it is a meat but um
[50:07] Speaker 2: And you mentioned tryptophan because you just sort of got
[50:09] Speaker 2: me before I was about to ask. But there is
[50:11] Speaker 2: an old wives' tale, husband's tale as well, I guess,
[50:15] Speaker 2: and that if you eat turkey before you go to sleep,
[50:20] Speaker 2: there's something in turkey that actually helps you go to sleep.
[50:23] Speaker 1: Tryptophan, yeah. Not too much because it's meat, but yes, definitely.
[50:26] Speaker 1: And don't have turkey slice because it's got metabisulfates and
[50:32] Speaker 1: it's got preservatives in it.
[50:33] Speaker 2: What do you mean when you say sliced? You mean
[50:37] Speaker 2: like ham? Yeah, but don't go and get the- Turkey slice. Yeah,
[50:39] Speaker 2: turkey slices.
[50:40] Speaker 1: That's processed meat and it's treated meat. That's very highly
[50:45] Speaker 1: correlated with colon cancer.
[50:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, cancer. But if you've got, say, turkey mince.
[50:50] Speaker 1: Yes.
[50:50] Speaker 2: Organic turkey mince.
[50:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, really good, yeah.
[50:53] Speaker 2: Turkey tacos. And mix it with, say, some legumes. Yes.
[50:57] Speaker 2: In Greek, we have a meal that's made with turkey
[51:02] Speaker 2: meat and sometimes rooster meat, but turkey meat and various
[51:09] Speaker 2: types of beans. It's called kima. And there's a bit
[51:14] Speaker 2: of various other herbs and things put in there. But
[51:18] Speaker 2: it's actually, I mean, I make it myself. But I
[51:19] Speaker 2: find it's very good for me to help sleep. If
[51:21] Speaker 2: I have that at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. in
[51:24] Speaker 2: the afternoon, not a lot, just a little bit, I
[51:27] Speaker 2: sleep very well.
[51:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, see, even the legumes, I mean.
[51:29] Speaker 2: And I'm talking measured. I'm not just saying I feel this.
[51:33] Speaker 2: I can actually look at the data and I can
[51:35] Speaker 2: see it.
[51:35] Speaker 1: It's true science. Yes, it's 100% true that that would definitely...
[51:40] Speaker 1: The legumes as well. So your gut biome makes something
[51:44] Speaker 1: called short-chain fatty acids, butyrate, which is really good for sleep,
[51:48] Speaker 1: really good for gut health. So you're doing the tryptophan
[51:51] Speaker 1: in the turkey and you'd be having resistant starch as well,
[51:55] Speaker 1: which is really good. So very good meal, turkey and legumes,
[51:59] Speaker 1: but also leafy greens as well before you go to
[52:01] Speaker 1: bed has been shown to be very strongly correlated with
[52:05] Speaker 1: good sleep. Other things that have tryptophan in it are
[52:09] Speaker 1: tart cherry juice, walnut seeds.
[52:11] Speaker 2: I've tried the tart cherry juice, but it has sugar
[52:13] Speaker 2: in it too.
[52:14] Speaker 1: Get the non-sugar one.
[52:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I've tried it, but it's- Very sweet. Yeah.
[52:20] Speaker 2: If you can get a good one, we don't really have,
[52:22] Speaker 2: no one really makes it here in Australia.
[52:23] Speaker 1: And you've got to be careful with the endocrine disrupting glyphosates,
[52:27] Speaker 1: which berries are terrible.
[52:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, and you don't know whether they've been sprayed, basically.
[52:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, and if it's coming from the U.S., I mean,
[52:35] Speaker 1: the Environmental Protection Agencies are not really ….
[52:37] Speaker 2: Well, that's mostly where these tart cherry drinks come from,
[52:41] Speaker 2: the U.S., because we don't… I don't know if anyone's
[52:42] Speaker 2: producing it here in Australia, but I've tried it. I've
[52:45] Speaker 2: tried that one.
[52:45] Speaker 1: There's one from New Zealand, but yeah, the glyphosate also
[52:49] Speaker 1: is something that is irritating and has been shown to
[52:52] Speaker 1: be terrible for sleep.
[52:52] Speaker 2: And kiwi fruit?
[52:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't eat the skins. No, but they- Peel
[52:56] Speaker 1: the skins because they're sprayed as well. But yeah, kiwi
[52:59] Speaker 1: fruit is strong.
[53:00] Speaker 2: The inside bit is good for sleep processes.
[53:04] Speaker 1: Yep. So anything, like you can Google tryptophan, T-R-Y-P-H-A-N-O-P-H-A-N. Yep. Correct.
[53:13] Speaker 1: And if you are a snacker, sugary snackers sleep on
[53:17] Speaker 1: average 26 minutes less than non-sugary snackers. So Get away
[53:21] Speaker 1: from the sugar.
[53:21] Speaker 2: The chocolate's not good for you. No. Even though they
[53:23] Speaker 2: go to the hotels, the fancy hotels, they have a
[53:25] Speaker 2: little chocolate by the side of the bed.
[53:26] Speaker 1: No.
[53:26] Speaker 2: I mean, it's tempting, but it's actually not good for you.
[53:29] Speaker 1: No. Yeah.
[53:30] Speaker 2: Can I ask you a quick question before I just
[53:32] Speaker 2: quickly want to touch on the book for a moment?
[53:34] Speaker 2: But just before we wind up, as we get older,
[53:40] Speaker 2: maybe just explain the changes in our sleep pattern and
[53:44] Speaker 2: what happens to us. Yeah.
[53:49] Speaker 1: When you're younger, it's around 24% to 25% of your
[53:53] Speaker 1: sleep architecture is REM sleep and slow-wave sleep.
[53:56] Speaker 2: Together?
[53:57] Speaker 1: So it's 50% of your sleep architecture should be deep
[54:01] Speaker 1: and REM.
[54:02] Speaker 2: When you're younger.
[54:03] Speaker 1: Yep. And depending on what you've done that day, if
[54:05] Speaker 1: you've had sort of a physiologically more arduous day, you
[54:10] Speaker 1: might see slightly, or if you've been sick, slightly more
[54:13] Speaker 1: deep slow-wave sleep. But if you've had a more cognitively
[54:16] Speaker 1: arduous day or more emotionally evoking day, you might see
[54:19] Speaker 1: more REM.
[54:20] Speaker 2: But it'll be 50% altogether, so to speak. That's, let's
[54:23] Speaker 2: call it the statistical average, so to speak.
[54:25] Speaker 1: So when you see, when you get into your 60s,
[54:27] Speaker 1: your REM sleep drops, sorry, your deep slow wave sleep
[54:30] Speaker 1: drops to around 10%, which is just when you need
[54:33] Speaker 1: to be doing your glymphatic cleaning processes more than ever.
[54:37] Speaker 1: And this is when we see a lot of people
[54:38] Speaker 1: are taking a lot of medications. So beta blockers block melatonin.
[54:43] Speaker 1: We see that people are taking sleep tablets, really strongly
[54:47] Speaker 1: correlated with dementia. That's because some sleeping tablets will stop.
[54:52] Speaker 1: We have these little pulsatile secretions of noradrenaline. So what
[54:56] Speaker 1: happens in deep, slow-wave sleep, they go, and it's like
[54:59] Speaker 1: a bilge pump And the cerebral spinal fluid will squirt
[55:04] Speaker 1: through and clean up all the beta amyloids and the towels,
[55:07] Speaker 1: the sticky plaques. And if you take sleeping tablets, which
[55:11] Speaker 1: a lot of elderly people do, that will stop that
[55:14] Speaker 1: neurogenital pulse that helps bilge pump all the gunk out. So... Really,
[55:21] Speaker 1: you should be doing things like taking magnesium glycinate. You
[55:24] Speaker 1: should be really watching your diet. You should be really
[55:28] Speaker 1: protecting your deep, slow-wave sleep because this is when you
[55:33] Speaker 1: see people's age differentiate. There are healthy ages and there
[55:38] Speaker 1: are people who just plummet.
[55:39] Speaker 2: So what we should be looking at in our restorative sleep,
[55:42] Speaker 2: that's the combination of over 60. So as a percentage,
[55:47] Speaker 2: let's say we sleep for eight hours.
[55:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, you still want to try and get as much.
[55:51] Speaker 1: You should be going to bed earlier. And what we
[55:54] Speaker 1: see is a lot more fragmented sleep, restless legs, having
[55:58] Speaker 1: to go to the toilet, prostate issues. But so if
[56:00] Speaker 1: you are having gaps in your sleep, you really should
[56:04] Speaker 1: be trying to substitute it and trying to nap during
[56:07] Speaker 1: the day. Napping's really good. Or trying to, what you
[56:11] Speaker 1: can do, you can talk to your doctor about when
[56:13] Speaker 1: you're taking your tablets. And maybe try and do some
[56:16] Speaker 1: little experiments and shift them to different labs.
[56:18] Speaker 2: Statins can have that problem, by the way. Yeah. Some statins,
[56:21] Speaker 2: and statins are much more effective if you take them
[56:22] Speaker 2: at night, but like statins actually can affect some people's sleep.
[56:26] Speaker 2: You know what's interesting about that? You're just saying something
[56:28] Speaker 2: that's really interesting. Talking about sleeping tablets or the fact
[56:33] Speaker 2: that they actually sedate you so nothing happens, a bit
[56:36] Speaker 2: like alcohol. There are a new... medication or anything called
[56:44] Speaker 2: duorexin receptor antagonist, DORAS, which I've tried. And I've used–
[56:52] Speaker 2: I just tried to see what the effect of it
[56:53] Speaker 2: is because I don't have trouble going to sleep, but
[56:55] Speaker 2: I used them. And I checked my whoop. Now, I
[56:59] Speaker 2: tried with– I tried normosin with the whoop. Nothing. No
[57:03] Speaker 2: deep sleep. No sideways sleep.
[57:04] Speaker 1: What?
[57:05] Speaker 2: Nothing. I slept. I slept. I was, sorry, I was,
[57:08] Speaker 2: I was passed out, but I, there was nothing recorded.
[57:10] Speaker 1: Okay. Wow.
[57:11] Speaker 2: Yeah. So, and definitely no, um, um, REM. Then I
[57:16] Speaker 2: tried the, the Dora's, um, and then I had quite
[57:21] Speaker 2: good REM and a little less on the slow wave sleep,
[57:25] Speaker 2: but nonetheless, I had like 40% of my total sleep,
[57:28] Speaker 2: which is not bad when you think about it. So
[57:31] Speaker 2: I think people, when they get over 60, who fear
[57:33] Speaker 2: that they can't sleep properly because of this fragmentation we
[57:36] Speaker 2: get or we wake up and we start thinking about
[57:37] Speaker 2: shit that we shouldn't be thinking about. For some people,
[57:41] Speaker 2: it's probably not a bad idea to think about these
[57:43] Speaker 2: types of medications. You obviously talk to your GP about
[57:45] Speaker 2: it and you've got to get a prescription for this
[57:47] Speaker 2: stuff anyway. But there are solutions around, is my point,
[57:51] Speaker 2: because I've actually tried them.
[57:53] Speaker 1: A hundred percent. And I think diet's the first place
[57:56] Speaker 1: to look as well. Because your ability to get nutrients
[58:03] Speaker 1: from your food gets somewhat suboptimal as you get older
[58:05] Speaker 1: because your gut biome changes or whatever. So whatever you're
[58:08] Speaker 1: putting into your mouth should be nutrient dense. You should
[58:11] Speaker 1: be supplementing with magnesium, vitamin Ds. vitamin Bs. Be careful.
[58:17] Speaker 1: You don't want to have really expensive urine. But talk
[58:20] Speaker 1: to your doctor because your ability to absorb and get
[58:25] Speaker 1: nutrients out of it is much less.
[58:27] Speaker 2: Particularly vitamin Bs because we don't produce as much acid
[58:30] Speaker 2: as we get older. You need a whole lot of
[58:33] Speaker 2: acid in your gut to make a lot of the
[58:35] Speaker 2: vitamin Bs, calcium and other things too. So that's very interesting.
[58:38] Speaker 1: Because you're not walking out in the sunlight as much.
[58:41] Speaker 2: You're not around, yeah.
[58:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're not getting as much D as well.
[58:43] Speaker 2: And why do we get, as we get older, get
[58:46] Speaker 2: cranky around, I don't know, 6, 7 o'clock at night?
[58:50] Speaker 2: You actually become intolerant. I just want to go to sleep.
[58:52] Speaker 1: Well, you think about what you do in a day.
[58:54] Speaker 1: It's probably a lot.
[58:55] Speaker 2: It's intense, yeah.
[58:56] Speaker 1: You do a lot of cognitive drain, like a very
[58:59] Speaker 1: intense day where probably people your age are not doing
[59:03] Speaker 1: that to the same degree.
[59:05] Speaker 2: I was trying to work out this cranky old man thing.
[59:08] Speaker 2: Is that a thing?
[59:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, intense. drops as well.
[59:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, probably.
[59:11] Speaker 1: So that's a big thing. Like your tolerance for irritants
[59:15] Speaker 1: become less because testosterone is really protective as well.
[59:19] Speaker 2: For sleep?
[59:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, and oxytocin. So in those times like that, have
[59:24] Speaker 1: you got to get your dog? Pat your dog.
[59:27] Speaker 2: They say that you should have your dog.
[59:28] Speaker 1: Is a really good antidote to cortisol. It's one of
[59:32] Speaker 1: the best things. So it's anti-anxiety, anti-depressive, increases your pain tolerance,
[59:37] Speaker 1: increases your frustration tolerance, makes you more generous. So if
[59:41] Speaker 1: you can't, like, you know, when you get the I
[59:42] Speaker 1: hate people kind of moment, you actively say, I need
[59:45] Speaker 1: to get an oxytocin.
[59:46] Speaker 2: Another way you can get it is to get a hug.
[59:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
[59:49] Speaker 2: I mean, like oxytocin is one of the byproducts of sex. Yeah.
[59:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, sex, breastfeeding, cuddles, kissing.
[59:55] Speaker 2: Well, breastfeeding is a bit hard from my point of view,
[59:57] Speaker 2: but yeah.
[59:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, watching baby goats in nappies online.
[1:00:02] Speaker 2: Yeah. But this oxytocin is a very important chemical.
[1:00:06] Speaker 1: It is really important. And I think this is why
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: COVID was so hard for people because it is one
[1:00:12] Speaker 1: of the most valuable and precious hormones that Mother Nature
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: has given us. It rewards us for pro-social behaviors because
[1:00:19] Speaker 1: that's the best survival strategy is for us to be
[1:00:22] Speaker 1: together And stress shared is stress halved. And so it
[1:00:26] Speaker 1: really does really drop your stress levels.
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: Because one of the reasons I wanted to raise that, well,
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: you raised it, but I just wanted to highlight a
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: little bit, was that we often hear, you know, like
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: there's these formulas that we keep getting trotted out to
[1:00:42] Speaker 2: us about, you know, like exercise of a certain level,
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: sleep of a certain level, nutrition of a certain type.
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: community if i we sort of pretty much hit on
[1:00:53] Speaker 2: the other three but the community part of it is
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: is is that part of the is the part of
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: the reason why community is so important or your socialization
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: in your life is so important whether it means having
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: a partner or having a community or very big part
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: of is that about the oxytocin piece.
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: Yes it is and there's also other reasons and um
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: You can have community, but what you've got to be
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: is valuable to that community. You've got to be a
[1:01:20] Speaker 1: contributor to that community. And I think this is what
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: really bothers me with the whole wellness bro longevity movement
[1:01:27] Speaker 1: is people are becoming completely self-obsessed people. with their data,
[1:01:32] Speaker 1: their workouts, their stack, whatever. And being interoceptive, thinking about
[1:01:39] Speaker 1: yourself all the time is not good for you. Thinking
[1:01:42] Speaker 1: about how you can help others is actually one of
[1:01:44] Speaker 1: the greatest ways to increase longevity. You look at all
[1:01:47] Speaker 1: these centenarians, they always were very community orientated.
[1:01:51] Speaker 2: And generous.
[1:01:52] Speaker 1: And generous. And it does go to the oxytocin piece
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: because Nothing gives you an oxytocin hit more than, or sex,
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: but helping another, feeling rewarded because you've changed someone's life.
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: And so what you've got to do is you've got
[1:02:08] Speaker 1: to be of value as much as you can. And
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: what it does, it tricks your brain. into thinking that
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: you have more resources. So what produces cortisol is an
[1:02:17] Speaker 1: unknown future. Like I need to produce cortisol to give
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: my body the resources to fight or flee because I
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: don't know what's coming. It could be bad and I
[1:02:24] Speaker 1: need to be ready. But what you do is if
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: you help someone, even when you're feeling crap, you are
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: tricking your brain into thinking that you've got extra resources
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: than you actually do. And then your brain will not
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: have as much cortisol. Your cortisol will drop because you're like, oh,
[1:02:40] Speaker 1: you've actually got resources. Therefore, you don't need to get ready.
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: And it actually produces oxytocin, which is a cortisol antidote.
[1:02:49] Speaker 1: So pro-social, community-orientated behavior biochemically is one of the greatest
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: longevity hacks you can do because it drops your cortisol
[1:02:58] Speaker 1: and gives you oxytocin.
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: Great explanation of that because too often it's glibly told
[1:03:04] Speaker 2: to us that for the longevity stack, you just mentioned
[1:03:09] Speaker 2: quite a lot, but for the longevity stack is that
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: You need to have a good community and you need
[1:03:14] Speaker 2: to be socially connected and it's great. Research has shown
[1:03:19] Speaker 2: that people who are married or have a partner … Men,
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: not women. It's not women, isn't it? No.
[1:03:26] Speaker 1: Well, if you look at when, say, a partner dies,
[1:03:29] Speaker 1: women do much better when they don't have their partner up. Really? Really.
[1:03:33] Speaker 2: I sort of understand that because we can be a
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: bit of a pain in the neck.
[1:03:36] Speaker 1: It's very needy, needy babies.
[1:03:37] Speaker 2: We are.
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: Grumpy old needy babies.
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: So just quickly talk about your book, Gemma. So your
[1:03:44] Speaker 2: book's only recent. What was the reason you wrote it?
[1:03:47] Speaker 1: Well, as a stress researcher, I actually thought sleep was
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: really boring and would do it. There's so many other
[1:03:52] Speaker 1: things to do. But then I started looking at the
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: data and I was like, oh my God, there was
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: not one person who I met who had a mental
[1:03:59] Speaker 1: health disruption who didn't also have a sleep disorder. And
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: every single person who I met who had a sleep
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: disorder eventually succumbed into some form of mental health disruption.
[1:04:10] Speaker 1: And so I'm like, there's something in this. And I
[1:04:13] Speaker 1: started to realize that probably our epidemic of anxiety and
[1:04:19] Speaker 1: depression across all ages really could be a sleep deprivation epidemic.
[1:04:28] Speaker 1: And when you look at what we live in in
[1:04:30] Speaker 1: our society, we live in this attention economy where streamers
[1:04:34] Speaker 1: and the social media companies actually say that sleep is
[1:04:37] Speaker 1: one of their biggest market competitors, which is crazy, right?
[1:04:41] Speaker 1: So then I was like, I really need to look
[1:04:44] Speaker 1: into this. And so I was at South by Southwest
[1:04:47] Speaker 1: on a panel with one of the athletes.
[1:04:49] Speaker 2: The Australian one? The American one.
[1:04:50] Speaker 1: The Australian one. And I was talking about sleep and
[1:04:53] Speaker 1: I had one of the athletes who I work with
[1:04:55] Speaker 1: And then a woman from Wiley ran up and said, oh,
[1:04:58] Speaker 1: my God, you've got to write a book. I'm like, well,
[1:05:00] Speaker 1: I'm stress research. She said, no, you know so much
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: about sleep. And I have done research with sleep, particularly
[1:05:06] Speaker 1: with the whoops. And so she said, you've got to
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: write this book. And so then I started this journey
[1:05:11] Speaker 1: of writing a book, which is, have you written a book?
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, four.
[1:05:16] Speaker 1: So you know what it's like, right? It's painful.
[1:05:18] Speaker 2: I wrote my last one during COVID. It's actually right
[1:05:21] Speaker 2: behind you. But it took like a year.
[1:05:25] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:05:26] Speaker 2: It's a hectic journey.
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: It's kind of like having a baby, though. Mine took
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: nine months. And then afterwards, like, oh, my God, I'm
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: going to do that again. And then I was like,
[1:05:35] Speaker 1: forget about it. I'm like, so the next one will
[1:05:36] Speaker 1: be on anxiety. But yeah, so basically what I see,
[1:05:42] Speaker 1: like particularly with this whole wellness movement, is you do
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: this and do this and this. And people feel very
[1:05:47] Speaker 1: disenfranchised there. They're so strung out just getting through the day.
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: And then someone comes along and says, you've got to
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: do this and that. And they go, I can't do
[1:05:56] Speaker 1: any of that. I've got kids. I'm caring for old elderly.
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: I've got a really stressful job. I don't have enough money.
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: My mortgage is killing me. And so they feel totally disenfranchised.
[1:06:05] Speaker 1: And they're like, bugger it. I'm not doing any of it.
[1:06:06] Speaker 2: And it's also unfair.
[1:06:07] Speaker 1: Yes, because I think that good sleep is a very
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: socioeconomic indicator. If you have the wherewithal to have good sleep,
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: you've got a good bed, you've got a nice suburb,
[1:06:17] Speaker 1: you've got all the things that it takes to have
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: a good sleep. And so I think it is a
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: social SES indicator. And so what I wanted to do
[1:06:25] Speaker 1: was write a book for people who don't have enough time,
[1:06:28] Speaker 1: don't have the resources. And so throughout this book is
[1:06:31] Speaker 1: a how to create your own sleep personalized formula. So
[1:06:36] Speaker 1: you're ticking off all those things that you would not
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: know necessarily would affect your sleep. How can you create
[1:06:42] Speaker 1: mini experiments? How can you do something within the realms
[1:06:45] Speaker 1: of the construct finds of your life that is applicable
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: for you? And not just some wellness person saying, you
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: should do this. If you don't, you're suffering. You're failing.
[1:06:57] Speaker 2: I looked at some of the chapters, the chapter headings,
[1:07:00] Speaker 2: I should say. And some of the stuff we talked
[1:07:03] Speaker 2: about today is in here. Um, it's, it's very, it's
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: very intuitive the way it's sort of set out. Yeah.
[1:07:10] Speaker 1: It's got something for everyone.
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: The science of naps and all napple terms. I love it.
[1:07:13] Speaker 2: Sleep aids, melatonin and others, understanding jet lag. That's a
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: good one. Uh, sleep disorders when the system breaks down,
[1:07:20] Speaker 2: sex and sleep, uh, sleep through our lifespan. Um, there's
[1:07:24] Speaker 2: great topics and, uh, I mean, it looks like you've
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: got some, um, It says here, sleep by numbers, wearables
[1:07:31] Speaker 2: and other devices. I love that type of stuff. Because
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: if I tell you, if you can't measure, you can't
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: manage it.
[1:07:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
[1:07:36] Speaker 2: And I think that seems to be your last chapter,
[1:07:38] Speaker 2: chapter 19.
[1:07:39] Speaker 1: My partner, I was the first whoop wearer in Australia.
[1:07:41] Speaker 1: So I've been using a whoop since 2017 to do
[1:07:44] Speaker 1: all my research. So I'm a very strong proponent. There
[1:07:47] Speaker 1: is also orthosomnia, people who get anxious and neurotic about
[1:07:51] Speaker 1: their sleep data. Have you met people like that?
[1:07:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was a bit that way, but I managed
[1:07:56] Speaker 2: to get over it.
[1:07:57] Speaker 1: Know yourself, right? If you're creating cortisol because you're worried
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: about your sleep data, don't do it. I had some
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: Olympic athletes who they couldn't see their data because it
[1:08:05] Speaker 1: would freak them out. But I think unless you know
[1:08:08] Speaker 1: if you're getting to deep, slow-wave sleep, cleaning your brain,
[1:08:10] Speaker 1: doing all those things, if you're getting REM sleep, you
[1:08:12] Speaker 1: don't know what's really driving.
[1:08:15] Speaker 2: You need to know why.
[1:08:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, you need the numbers.
[1:08:17] Speaker 2: It's not enough people say, you need to sleep. And
[1:08:21] Speaker 2: or you need this many hours sleep. But I don't
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: know if I'm getting that many hours sleep. I don't
[1:08:25] Speaker 2: know if I'm doing that properly.
[1:08:26] Speaker 1: Stabbing in the dark, literally.
[1:08:27] Speaker 2: And we're probably coming out from a certain direction. We're
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: both probably more data-driven type people. But I take the view,
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: personally anyway, I cannot manage something unless I can measure it. Yep.
[1:08:38] Speaker 2: And I need to measure it.
[1:08:40] Speaker 1: Even if you do it for six months and you
[1:08:41] Speaker 1: do run many experiments on yourself, because what you need
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: to know is that all sleep protocols help with everyone.
[1:08:48] Speaker 1: And so I always take the lever analogy. So you've
[1:08:52] Speaker 1: got sleep, diet, exercise. You've got social engagement, intellectual curiosity.
[1:09:00] Speaker 1: and you can't always have all of these on green
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: at any one time. So if you know that you're
[1:09:05] Speaker 1: going to be traveling, you're not going to be eating
[1:09:06] Speaker 1: that well, at least make sure that you call your
[1:09:09] Speaker 1: mom and you get good sleep. So you have that
[1:09:11] Speaker 1: lever up. And so having a wearable really helps you
[1:09:14] Speaker 1: kind of have that matrix of all the different levers
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: and know okay, if I really need to replenish my body,
[1:09:21] Speaker 1: which is the best modality for me at that moment?
[1:09:24] Speaker 1: What's going to save me the most amount of money
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: and time and have the most greatest effect? So I
[1:09:28] Speaker 1: think you're just running little experiments on yourself with real
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: data and then you know your body. You don't have
[1:09:36] Speaker 1: to do it forever.
[1:09:36] Speaker 2: I think what you're saying is know yourself. That's the
[1:09:39] Speaker 2: most important thing.
[1:09:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
[1:09:40] Speaker 2: Dr. Gemma King, thanks so much. Thank you.
[1:09:42] Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. You're welcome.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.