Barbell Shrugged - How to Optimize Sleep for Strength and Elite Performance w/ Allison Brager, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #488

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

Dr. Allison J. Brager is a neuroscientist for the Army. She has worked at the storied Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, DC. She and her team have leveraged sleep science discoveries  to provide fatigue management solutions to the frontlines.     She sits on fatigue management working groups for the Office of the Army Surgeon General, the United States government, and NATO. She is also under candidate selection for the Army Astronaut Program in order to do research on the International Space Station. This past March, she was deployed to New York City to co-lead the COVID-19 clinical testing laboratory of the field support hospital established at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.    Allison Brager is also a CrossFit "OG," dating back to 2011. She was on a 2013 and 2015 CrossFit Games team out of Terminus Strength & Conditioning (formerly CrossFitTerminus) and competed as an individual in the 2012 and 2014 Southeast CrossFitRegionals.    At present, she is an athlete of the Army Warrior Fitness Team and serves as the battalion’s Director  of human performance and outreach education. Her popular science book, "Meathead: Unraveling the Athletic Brain," which she started writing after the 2013 CrossFit Games and had it published right before the 2015 CrossFit Games, bridges her own athletic anecdotes with the latest neuroscience and "biohacks" of elite performance.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   How to optimizing sleep? What supplements are best for optimizing sleep. How much sleep do you really need every night. What are the stages of sleep. Does marijuana help with recovery? How do I improve sleep quality with kids and busy schedule? Should you take naps? The front lines of Covid-19 in New York City.   Allison Brager on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Struck family, this week on Barbell Struck, we are going to learn everything you need to know about sleep. From supplements to naps and how you can get stronger and find elite performance just in better recovery from a little known thing called sleep. But before we get rolling, I want to thank our friends over at Bioptimizer. If you have suffered from digestive issues like gas, bloating, cramping, even when you're eating healthy, nutritious foods, then you could probably benefit from high quality enzyme. If you've never tried enzymes, or even if you've tried them and haven't worked, I want you to give this one a chance. As you know, I'm a mega fan of Bioptimizers. They

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ones specifically, you're probably doing more cooking at your house, and more cooking at the house typically leans towards more vegetables, more carbohydrates, a little bit less on the greens. Even if you try really hard, it's hard to get all the greens that you need. And to have like a complete vitamin and mineral profile, it's just just really challenging and that's why we have chosen for the last three years to work with Organifi because they have the most delicious tasting green superfood supplements I take the green in the morning the red in the afternoon and the gold at night I sleep beautifully today's episode's about, and I want you to do that as well. So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged, save 20%, and you are going to be happy,

healthy, and take a delicious, delicious green supplement. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Friends, we're going to get into the show. Allison Brager, she's a savage. I'm so happy we get to hang out with her. We'll see you at the break. Welcome to Waterball Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. He's over there. Coach Travis West. This is my Brady Bunch. Allison Brager, U.S. Army Warrior Fitness Team Sleep Expert.

How did we get here? I want to know everything that there possibly is to know about sleep. I feel like... In one in one hour yeah everything in one hour your whole phd everything on top of that you're awesome you just got back from new york city on the front lines dealing with covid 19 i kind of want to hear about that i want to hear about the army warrior fitness team you guys are like changing the game in all of the military branches. You're way ahead of everybody right now. It's pretty cool.

Can we talk a lot about sleep, though? I want to know, how did you get into sleep? When did this start to kick as your big thing? Sure. I've been an athlete my entire life. I was a two-sport athlete in high school. Always did track and field, cross-country, mostly because my track coach made me. And then I was a dancer and a gymnast for the first 18 years of my life.

So because I was spending about six hours a day training, I really recognized that sleep was my secret weapon to making sure that I was the top athlete in school, but also like the top scholar too. So I was valedictorian of my high school and I got good grades. But honestly, I attribute a lot of that to getting good sleep at night. And I also think too, it helped to have parents who really valued sleep as well. You know, now that I think back from like my parents schedules, they had nine to five jobs, but they really went to bed, you know, before 11, woke up around 738 in the morning. So just from an early age, just really made sleep a priority. And, you know, somebody once told me you should always plan

your career around your lifestyle, and not your lifestyle around your career. And so when it came to, like, doing research, because I always knew I wanted to be a scientist, I just stuck with things that I was passionate about. So it made sense it would be sleep and exercise. Why did you know you were going to be a scientist? I would say it's just from all those years early on when you just spend outside. Remember, we grew up in the age before technology. Right. Literally.

Last ones. Yeah, pretty much. My mom would literally lock my brother and I outside like on Saturday morning so she cleaned the house. And, you know, I would just go into the creek in the park behind the house and uh I don't know it was just it was a nature girl I was like a dorky nature girl and I also grew up with boys too so I think that really helped because you know it was always like rough and tumble outside uh doing boy things. So here I am.

At some point, this turns into sleep science, though. Was there like a catalyst, or was that mainly just because of athletics that you realized it was so important? I also kept a dream diary, too. Whoa! Yeah. Stop it! Yeah, I had a dream diary. I want to know.

From like sixth grade all the way through high school. And I used to write in that every night. And I even had like Freud's interpretation of dreams. And I would literally spend like five to ten minutes every single night in high school like looking up the meaning and, you know, the symbolism of whatever I dreamed about. So this is, you know, probably why I didn't have many friends in high school. And no, I didn't really date anyone

because I was too focused on figuring out my dreams and decoding my dream diary. All right. How much truth is there to that, to like, you know, to dreams meaning something? Is there anything to that? Yeah. So there is in the field of psychiatry. So there's sort of this ongoing debate when it comes to conditions such as like anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even some of the more

severe psychoses like schizophrenia, that having like really amplified intense dreams can sort of be a predictive factor of when you'll develop one of these psychiatric conditions, but then also the severity of the condition. And then a lot of times too, people who do have depression and anxiety and even schizophrenia, like they're just constantly will have these like super intense dreams. And actually a lot of the antipsychotic medication that is around, it does target the system that is responsible for dreaming. But sometimes it like suppresses the state of dreaming so much that it actually makes their condition worse instead of better. So there's, I say all this to basically, you know, say that like in the field of psychiatry, dreaming and REM sleep, that's the stage of sleep where you dream might be a protective mechanism in people who are at risk for psychiatric disease.

Wow. I mean, what system is responsible for dreams? So the brain, believe it or not, sleep is super freaking complex. And that's why I have a job today, among which, you know, hundreds of other people around the country and the world who study this in academic labs. So there's, there's really three areas of the brain that control dreaming and sleep. So the first area is the brainstem. Believe it or not, the signal actually originates from the brainstem. And we know this because the first animal that we ever studied sleep in back in the late 1800s, early 1900s was the cat, which makes sense. Like if you're going

to pick any animal that's not a human that you want to study sleep in, it made sense that the first animal scientists studied were cats because they sleep all the freaking time. Right. So anyway, the signal, it originates in the brainstem, and then it travels and propagates up to, it's called the occipital cortex. So that's the area in the back of the brain that's responsible for vision. Vision, yeah. So that would make sense because, you know, dreams are very vivid,

and, you know, you have visual recall and all of that. So the signal goes there. And then it also goes to the front of the brain as well as deep inside like the more archaic sort of like basic instinctive structures of the brain. It also goes there as well this is awesome regarding dreaming is there any correlation between dreaming and recovery from like a physical fitness perspective like if you if you dream a lot does that does that mean that you were like in a deeper sleep and so your the sleep quality was better or is there any association yes so it's actually not dreaming or REM sleep per se

that is responsible for the physical recovery. But in order to get to REM sleep, you first have to enter those stages of deep, responsible for deep physical recovery. So when it comes to like a night of sleep, you have this 90 minute cycle. And you in this cycle, you go through a stage of light sleep into a stage of deep, it's called deep non REM sleep. And that's where you have the like the super intense physical recovery. And then after you go through this deep non REM sleep, that's when you transition into REM sleep. And then after REM sleep, you actually wake up, whether you consciously or subconsciously recognize it, and then you start that cycle all over again. So is it the more REM sleep you get, the better your recovery overall?

Yep. And then along with that, is there anything we can do to get ourselves into REM sleep more quickly, aside from sleep depriving ourselves? Yeah, so honestly – Take a night off. Yeah, just don't sleep at night. Tomorrow night, you'll go right into it. Yep. But like supplements, et cetera.

Yeah, yeah. So actually – so I'll talk non-supplements first because we have thoughts in the sleep field about which supplements can augment REM sleep. But, of course, there aren't many clinical studies because a lot of that stuff isn't regulated by the FDA. Okay, so non-supplement-wise, the easiest thing is basically to make sure you're going to bed at a reasonable hour. So before 1030, 11 at night. And the reason for that is our amount of REM sleep is actually controlled by drops in our core body temperature. So because of human evolution, as soon as our core body temperature drops, our propensity to be in REM sleep is really

high. And so that being said, that drop in core body temperature is actually biologically programmed by our genes and our proteins. And most of us experience this drop in core body temperature between three and 4am every single night. So you could see the benefit of going to bed early. That way, when 3 or 4 a.m. comes along, you are at the highest propensity to have REM sleep. And you're also going to benefit from the deep non-REM sleep that's responsible for physical recovery before that. So that's, I think, the easiest way. Now, when it comes to supplements, I am a huge proponent of magnesium.

And again, a lot of people don't understand how magnesium works because it's not FDA regulated. But we do know that people who take magnesium tend to report better recovery in the morning. And one of the other things they'll report too, you always have to warn people about this, especially soldiers, is you will have the craziest freaking dreams you've ever had in your life when you start taking magnesium. If I had all the money in the world and I could study one thing in science it would be to supplement people who are naive to taking magnesium have them sleep in an fmri machine which basically would you know light up different brain areas that are active during sleep and see what happens because your dreams are just wild. And I don't know if any of you ever take magnesium, but you just have crazy freaking dreams.

I will now. Yeah. I do. I have crazy dreams consistently. I take magnesium. I sometimes will have them, but it's not super consistent. Remember the first time I ever took ZMA, which has magnesium in it? Yeah.

Then I did, but it doesn't seem to, for me, have been like a persistent, um, systematic thing. You take magnesium, you definitely have crazy dreams. It's, it's a little more hit and miss than that for me. You need to take more, take more. Take the whole bottle. you know i don't take zma but with magnesium the dose that's usually in the zma is 250 milligrams so usually that's like the dose we start people at is 250 milligrams and then we move up to 350, you could take 500 milligrams, but I wouldn't go anything past 500 because then you're just like completely developing tolerance

and like oversaturating your system, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's right. Yoheira, I have a personal question for you. Since COVID started, we've had to restructure and rearrange our lives in many different ways. And one of the things that I chose to do, I have three kids. I have three boys in three years. So I have a two, three, and five-year-old. And during the day, it's just impossible to get anything done if they're here sitting at my desk.

And so right now, it just turned six in the morning here. I get up at four o'clock in the morning and i work until um you know seven or seven thirty each day and maybe i can do a little bit later in the afternoon so i'm getting i'm not getting off like a full night's sleep because i don't put my kids they're not all the way asleep till nine and by the time i like eat some food and hang out with my wife etc so it's like i get like you know maybe five and a half or six hours of sleep and then i every day i try to take a nap for, for 30 minutes, an hour, hour and a half, maybe two hours if I'm like really, really, really tired. Um, is there any downside to having a shorter, um, bout of sleep at night and then, and then having a nap to quote unquote, make up for

it during the day? What are the pros and cons? I love seeing your face while he's asking that you're like, just stop talking. I will. I'm going to tell you everything. She's kind of, she's kind of cringing also, like as I'm saying, and I'm like,

I'm like, I fucked up. Retreat. Let's just say you're not doing the ideal schedule. So. I'm so tired. you're not doing the ideal schedule. So as we know from like literally three, four decades of research, anytime you get less than seven hours of sleep a night, you have this huge like drop in physical and mental performance. And the reason is because, you know, we're day active creatures, and we've evolved to sleep at night. And so our system, like, will not budge at all.

And that's why people who are night shift workers have such terrible sleep habits, but also why, like, they say now that shift work can cut off to 10 to 15 years of your life. They have higher rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, all those first world problems, because they're altering their sleep schedule so much well beyond their biology. So when it comes to napping, napping is wonderful. However, we've also done research. I've done research to show that if you sleep more than 30 minutes at a time when you're napping, you're also screwing up your sleep system. So we actually work with a ton of… Awesome, Dad. This is such good news.

You're hitting me from all the angles. So we work with a ton of first responders, especially fire departments around the country. And you know, they do those crazy schedules where they're awake for 24, 48 hours at a time. And even with them, we tell them like, yeah, you can nap, but don't nap for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time because you're going to screw up your, your like opportunity to have nighttime sleep i'd heard in the past that that getting like one ultradian cycle or whatever like a 90 minute

block and you can comment on if that's accurate or not is yeah is kind of where you want to be as far as a nap that way you're kind of entering some some type of deeper sleep but then when you're waking up around that 90 minute mark you're kind of out of a deeper sleep is there any validity to that how does all that work no there's no validity to that i'm sorry so the reason the reason i say 20 or 30 minutes you can't see the other two on the audio they're totally laughing at me right now they're like no no no i, I am happy. Doug's just taking darts right now. I'm happy you're asking these questions to a subject matter expert because there are a ton of charlatans out there. Trust me. I have met most of them. I don't call them out on Instagram, but I will call them out on podcasts.

So you only need 20 or 30 minutes because just like at night when we have this drop in core body temperature that increases our propensity to be in these deeper restorative stages of sleep, the same thing happens in the afternoon. So most of us, it doesn't matter if we've gotten adequate sleep or not in the afternoon, we just feel sleepy. And most of us try to combat that sleepiness with caffeine. And the reason that happens is because it's a biological program telling our body that, hey, we should lie down for a bit before we resume our day. So in my situation, would it be better to nap 20 to 30 minutes a couple times to try to

get just a little more rest? Uh, if I was going to choose not to alter my, my nighttime schedule. Yes. Cause my wife would love to hear that. I want to take three naps a day instead of one. She would just love to hear that. Yeah, tell Marcy. Yeah, exactly. I want to go back to the magnesium. I would say magnesium is kind of like the second thing people think about when they're taking a supplement. Melatonin is usually the very first thing that pops into people's brains, but you didn't mention that at all. Is the world of melatonin just as not real as long naps? So there's a cornucopia of sleep medications you should take based on what you're doing. And so I sort of lump, and other sleep scientists would tell you this too, magnesium or melatonin into what you should take if you're traveling across country or if you're trying say you're

on like this very consistent uh bedtime rise time schedule and you want to shift the schedule by an hour or two either in the right or left direction that's when you would take melatonin because melatonin is actively released by the pineal gland in our brain and it's induced by dim light. And so that is really what is helping us and what is responsible for falling asleep and then staying asleep. So it makes sense. You talk about drug tolerance. If you take melatonin every single day, you're going to develop tolerance to it. I have noticed. Yeah. So you really only want to save that for when you absolutely need it it's the same thing for like okay so obviously um i have access to prescribed sleep

medications and for the most part we we are huge proponent we are not huge proponents of ambien lunesta like all those z drug hypnotics. Because, I mean, you've heard this story before with, what's his name? Navy SEAL Dr. Kirk Parsley. Kirk Parsley. Yeah. So, but they have their time and place. If, you know, you absolutely need to get like this amount of sleep, like say during the day, like you're doing the night mission and your body wants to wake up and be active during the day. Like you might need that Ambien or Lunessa to just knock you out and feel like you got like

sleep, even if it's not real sleep. Uh, it's the same thing with jet lag. So whenever I travel and I want to sleep on the plane, I actually have a very low dose of what's called Xalopon, which is sort of like a very fast-acting form of Ambien and Lunesta. It only stays in your system for about two or three hours. I'll take it then. So all these sleep medications, they have a time and place, but you shouldn't be taking them every night. So if Travis Mash has a weightlifting meet in China, Thailand,

wherever he's going to take the strongest people in the world to go lift weights. That's a good time. Melatonin's the one. And on the plane, he should be sneaking him a little Ambien on the way. I want to do ambient so i would do it's called zalapon or um sonata is the trade name so it has a it's really short half life it's like an hour and a half two hours the reason you don't want to do ambient or lunessa is because it's half life meaning like when it reaches peak concentration in your system it's like eight or nine hours. So you're going to be in this like subconscious,

like unconscious state for like 12 or 13 hours. And that's pretty much the reason why we stopped giving it to soldiers. Like there's an actual federal mandate now that prevents soldiers from getting an Ambien as soon as they get on the plane to head to Afghanistan or Iraq, because we, like my research team, we've done those studies to show like when they get off the

plane and their boots on ground, like they're pretty much drunk because that's what that drug does. It impairs you so much that, you know, they're getting off the plane operating and they it's pretty much like having the blood alcohol equivalent of being legally drunk yes so if you are taking something that powerful though you're not and you mentioned that you're like you're not actually getting the benefits of sleep what's happening if you're if you're totally knocked out, you're in the deepest sleep ever, but your body's not recovering? Is that? So these are the studies that Kirk Parsley has done and then other neurologists as well. So what these Z drugs or hypnotic drugs do is they release a crap ton of the inhibitory neurochemical in the brain called GABA. And GABA has the ability to change

the brain activity waveforms. And so it basically puts your brain in a state that mimics unconsciousness. So it's not restorative sleep, becauseative sleep you have all these dynamic changes in brain activity going from like faster activity to slower activity back to fast activity with Ambien and Lunessa you just have low activity across the board if that makes sense and if you compare the brain activity of somebody who's popped up on Ambien to somebody who, you know, is unconscious or maybe in a subconscious state, it looks no different. Yeah. Is it similar if you fall asleep really drunk? Yeah.

Like if you pass out drunk, you're not sleeping. Exactly. You're just passed out and it's not the same thing my 292 page dissertation is about the negative consequences of alcohol and cocaine on the brain uh not now we're getting into the show yeah we're ready you're like everybody's like okay booze whatever coke okay let's go no actually what's really funny like you know like every research you do there's positives and negatives and um i figured out like the positives of my research is i came up with a good drug dosing schedule to prevent high business executives from ever experiencing jet lag if they're traveling across the country a lot. So basically, all they have to do is literally, because my research has shown this in terms of what it does to the brain and

the genes and the proteins that regulate everything, all they have to do is be hopped up on coke and stay drunk the entire time when they're traveling back and forth from the west coast to the east coast and back to the east coast and they'll never experience jet lag. Show over. I bet they love you. You probably get donations all the time.

Keep doing that research. She told me. She told me. She told me. Travis doesn't want to be in the control group for your study. I want the good good. When you are, I have noticed this, and I don't know if it's just because my brain like mentally plays this game but say I'm like sick or I have a cold or or just allergies are kicking in or something's going on and I go to sleep and say I wake up at 2 3

o'clock in the morning and allergies are still just like my face is crushed head swollen stuff knows whatever it is. And I get out of bed. I go to the bathroom. I get back in bed. I'm still just completely stuffed up. And then I'll wake up three hours later and feel great. Is there like a checklist of what's happening in my sleep? Or is that just completely random? Because I always feel like if that happens, it's like my body starts at like organs and then it moves to like muscles and tissues and then it gets to my soft feeling sorry for myself allergies. And it's like, okay, that's at the end. We'll fix that too.

Like is there, what is the order of kind of how your body goes through all of the systems to run the check and diagnostics to figure out what needs fixed the most that is the most of all the podcasts i've been on that is the most like intuitive question i've ever been asked well thank you guys hear that do you guys hear that that is the best question i've ever gotten um okay so to address the allergy issue, so in order to fix allergies, we take antihistamines. So histamine is a neurochemical that is released by the brain during weight. It helps us stay awake. And a lot of times at night, especially in the early morning hours when you're likely to be in REM sleep and uh you know dreaming uh you

have an activation of uh or a deactivation of histamine so your body basically has like a natural anti-histamine system uh that is regulated by REM sleep so that's that's the answer to the allergy question right yeah um or I shouldn't say the answer. My speculation because remember I'm a skeptical scientist. So there's never like truth. There's hypotheses. Yes. But yes, regarding sort of the checklist and the diagnostic system.

So it goes back to what I was saying about the 90 minute sleep cycle, where you start out in light stages of sleep, and then you transition to deeper stages of non REM sleep, and then you transition to REM sleep. Well, we know from years of research that non REM sleep is really critical for the anabolic muscle repair recovery processes. So that is where you have the release. That's the only time of the day you release growth hormone is during deep non REM sleep. Most people don't know that. So growth hormone, testosterone, all those anabolic hormones are released during deep non REM sleep, which is going to feed the muscle, repair the muscle. And even at the level of the brain to like we have the actual clearance of toxins and wastes

in the brain. Then from there, when you transition to REM sleep, that is where you have all these fine tuning of brain connections. So any information that you had to learn the day before and you have to recall the next day, that's where you will have all this picking and pruning and restructuring of brain connections so that, you know, you're a better human mentally the next day. When you get into kind of restructuring thoughts and memories, Can you dig into that? Because that's something that's wildly interesting. I mean, kind of the studies that come out on just memory in general is how bad we are at it. So we have an entire day of information coming in and then that gets sorted throughout a lifetime. And each time we go to sleep, our bodies or our brains job is to kind

of like organize these files into different components and places. And then we have to sleep, our bodies or our brain's job is to kind of like organize these files into different components and places. And then we have to go find a way to go back and find them when we need them. How do we know much about memory and how we organize thoughts? Yeah. So actually, you know, this research sort of dates back to the 80s and 90s. There's this very famous, he actually won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Eric Handel from Columbia University. He's the person who discovered that there's these series of proteins that bind to the nerve cells and then the end of the nerve cells, which release the neurochemicals so that they can communicate with other nerve cells.

So he discovered that whole system of these proteins being formed and binding to increase nerve cell communication. Well, we also know from sleep studies and particularly sleep studies where we're depriving people of sleep, particularly of dreaming and REM sleep, that there are deficits or changes in these proteins that are responsible for, you know, amplifying or not amplifying the nerve signals. Does that make sense? I know that's like a lot of biology. Are you talking about BDNF? Is that what you're talking about? Yes. BDNF, AMPA, NMDA. So the two main proteins are AMPA, so AMPA and NMDA, and they are responsible for releasing, not releasing, but they help regulate, it's called glutamate. It's an excitatory neurochemical of the brain.

And so they work with glutamate in order to regulate that whole pathway of learning and memory. Awesome. Hey, regarding sleep trackers, I'd imagine you have opinions about the efficacy of those and how to use them and all that. And we can get into that in a second. I know we partnered with Whoop for a while. And so I wore Whoop for a full year and really enjoyed it.

And as a part of that, it tracks how much sleep you got. And then it breaks it down into light sleep, REM sleep, and non-REM, if I remember correctly. Is there any advantage to specifically tracking your REM and deep non-REM sleep independent of just tracking total hours? Absolutely. So, you know, that's one of the biggest, I would say, concerns of military research that we do is finding the most valid sleep tracker because

someday we want to just basically slap this tracker on soldiers and look at their recovery sleep or their restorative sleep in real time instead of bringing them to a clinic and doing a formal sleep study. We're basically trying to get these sleep trackers and find a sleep tracker that's just as good as doing the gold standard, which is, you know, coming into a sleep lab, getting hooked up with all the electrodes and trying to go to sleep with all of that on. So yes, when it comes to like the restorative sleep amounts that these trackers are

reporting, the consensus is still out in terms of which one is best. But that is something that, we are working with these industry partners within the military to sort of figure out what is the best. And also, I mean, each has its own time and place. So one of the things I really love about loop is, you know, it's great for behavioral accountability, it as an individual, it holds you accountable and responsible for your sleep. I think people who are on the loop, they tend to make sleep more of a priority. And then also, when it comes to group accountability, you know, the fact that you can join this team and you can see how much your other teammates are sleeping.

And so if one of your teammates happens to have a bad night of sleep, you can ask him or her, hey, what's up? I see you only slept three hours last night. Your recovery is at 10%. What's going on? That's cool. Yeah. I want to know a little bit.

One of my favorite parts about having the WHOOP That's cool. that means. I just really enjoyed having like a hard objective number to kind of hang my ideas on. And not just a single one though, but it would tell you your seven day average and your 30 day average. So that was always the goal was to have my 30 day average above seven and a half hours. Yeah, that's awesome. That was like the minimum I wanted. Yeah. No, that is so awesome because that's really what we're trying to do. And that really is the embodiment of healthy sleep is you basically want to keep your schedule so consistent that you don't even need an alarm clock anymore to wake up. You just wake up. But also you want to keep your body consistent because if and when

you do have sleep deprivation, you could actually go, you know, stay up all night and still be okay the next morning. You know, we've done studies like that in the military for years where we've, you know, had people sleep eight or nine hours a night. and then they're exposed to just, say, 24 hours of full-on sleep deprivation, and yet their brain and their body is still okay because they had that sleep on the front end to protect them during – yeah. What happens when you don't sleep? I have a weird confession. I'm kind of obsessed with people that are in captivity, like real captivity, not quarantine. And they're like forced to stay awake

for like a week at a time. What happens to your brain or longer? What happens to your brain when you just, someone's playing Metallica at the loudest decibel and they're shining strobe lights on you all day long? Like how, what does that do to your life? Besides turning it into hell? Like, I mean it is hell or who knows whatever your definition of hell is. Uh,

I mean, that's mine strobe lights all day long. Uh, short answer is, I mean, you pretty much go crazy uh you know they we don't do those studies anymore because we have our research ethics and and all of that now but uh yeah the the early sleep anymore and the wow that means somebody went through this oh i mean you basically go crazy. Ted Kaczynski. Was he the one? Yes. So one of the first sleep studies was done in 1896 by this professor at, I think, Cornell or University of Iowa. And basically, he kept his colleagues up for like 96 hours.

And that was like the end point of the study, um, is that, you know, his, his colleagues started having these like hallucinations and I mean, that's basically what happens. Uh, in addition to your,

you know, your body breaks down. So you have like muscle, um, uh, muscle degradation, you have protein degradation, like you can't recover.

Um, you know, that is something we could talk about i don't know how much uh you've talked about in the past about testosterone and growth hormones let's do it okay let's do the hormones so you know i i uh am a sleep scientist for a group of people who more often than not have an invincibility complex, like an invincibility complex. So, you know, they think they're, because they're in their early, late 20s, they don't need sleep, they can recover, they're invincible. Turns out it's not true. And we know this from the sleep studies, because over the years,

basically since the 90s, there have been this group of researchers at the University of Chicago, who have taken young healthy males, and they measured their testosterone, growth hormone, anabolic hormone levels before a period of sleep deprivation. So before these males ever entered the study, they had very healthy levels of testosterone, anabolic hormones, growth hormones. And then they were exposed to five days of five hours of sleep, which I mean, there's some weeks where we do that pretty regularly where we have a long work week and we're only getting five or six hours of sleep a night. Well, what these researchers found is by the third day of only sleeping five to six hours a night, the testosterone and growth hormone levels of these males was cut directly in half. So they were only secreting half the amount of testosterone and they continued to have a decline in their testosterone secretion

until they got adequate sleep again after this period of sleep deprivation. So usually when I like present this data, especially to like collegiate athletes, they're like, holy shit, like I should probably get more sleep now. Yeah. Doug, you got to take your ass to bed. Yes, Doug, you got to take your ass to bed. Yes, exactly. Doug needs to take his ass to bed. How is Doug putting on so much muscle right now if he's not sleeping then?

I don't believe it. He's invincible. Gaining a lot of mass lately. Something's going right for me. Hey, it's because he takes magnesium at night. That's what's protecting him. There you go. Jumping right into the deep sleep.

Yeah. When you – I guess on the recovery and muscle side of things with the testosterone, like how – I mean detrimental is like six hours. If you were to do that because – and I would love to hear kind of like Travis' opinion, Doug's as well like when when we were in the middle of competing and probably kind of like how you are now um traveling the world and especially in the country yeah we're traveling the world traveling the country now chasing around covid and um your schedule plus your athleticism like

it's not like your fitness died down. You were still probably getting your training and it's really important to you. And kind of like just pushing through that. Is it better to just take rest days and not train or, you know, there's stretches where six hours is feels like a-hour night of sleep. It's better to take more rest days and reduce the intensity of your training, is what I would say. I mean, honestly, that's what I was doing being on the front lines with COVID-19 in New York City.

It's a delicate balance with your immune system. Sleep is critical for your immune system to stay healthy. But also when you start reaching into the areas of overtraining and secreting so much cortisol, you have a compromise in your immune system too. So that was something I really tried to pay close attention to. Literally being in the epicenter of death for two months is I tried to make sure that I was at least getting seven and a half, eight hours of sleep a night, even though we were working like 92 hours a week. But also when it came to training, so I was fortunate in that I knew the owner of CrossFit Hell's Kitchen. And he was like there during the day doing repairs,

you know, in the downtime. So I would just go and I would do a girl's workout. So like, you know, one of those super intense workouts where you're just, you know, completely just knocks you on your ass for like 10 minutes and you're good. Yeah. And that's all I would do for like two months. And now that I'm back to training, I've actually, this is like my first week back and I've been okay. You know, I've been able to maintain the two to three hour volume of training a day.

But yeah, in a situation like COVID-19, you don't want to overstimulate anything of your system. Carlos, I'm on a podcast. Get up. No. Anyway. Yeah, there's plenty of time when it comes into recovery and just the intensity of workouts. Have you noticed? I mean, you play the CrossFit game.

That's like the highest level of intensity that you can really train. Sometimes I think the benefits of CrossFit are so fast because your body constantly feels like you're on the edge of dying. And then it kind of gets used to the fact that it's not going to die. And then the results slowly taper off. If you were to prescribe not to somebody like you that's interested in performance and competing, but prescribing like a longevity level of intensity in workouts, where does that kind of rest in your mind on just intensity is a funky one for a lot of people and they get thrown into the CrossFit thing and they go straight from zero to a hundred. Yeah. But I often wonder if that, you know, maybe walking is a better level of intensity than it really gets the credit for.

So, you know, one of the things I did during like COVID-19 is, okay, yes, my job in the army right now is essentially to be an elite CrossFit athlete. I knew that wasn't going to be possible being on the front lines in New York City, not because I didn't have the time. I just knew it wasn't a good thing for my immune system being exposed to all these infectious diseases. But actually, like, okay, think about the original CrossFit programming, CrossFit HQ. That's actually what I was doing the entire time. Like, for those people who are trying to make that transition to competition, like I don't see any harm in or actually, I see a lot of benefits in doing the you know, the original CrossFit programming because

you do have like mixed modality and ramping up and then backing down of high intensity, low intensity. You know, if you're just getting involved with CrossFit and then obviously moving into the competitor state, you know, this is a hard one for me because, you know, I'm an old school games athlete. I've been doing CrossFit for 10 years. And historically, if you look at the people who go to the CrossFit games, whether it's the new age CrossFitters or the OGs like myself, like we were all college athletes. Like we all had that lifelong buildup of training intensity and volume and competing under pressure.

That I think a lot of people who in their early 20s find CrossFit and, you know, get off the couch and get into the gym don't have. And it's not to say that they can't make it there because we've seen that to be the case. But I think there's a sustainment that they're not able to do because to this day if you look at the people like even myself i've been in the sport for 10 years now and i'm still an elite competitor granted at the master's level like we have been athletes our entire life and you tend to see that across the board. Yeah, CrossFit just filled the hole of, oh, this is the next sport you're going to play for competitive people versus going from the couch straight to the games.

So that's what I have a hard time with. Two things that really bug me about the new generation of CrossFitters is one, people who will give up four years of playing a collegiate sport to make it to the CrossFit games. And, you know, maybe that's like my own personal bias, but like that's four years of memory in your life that you will never get back. Like competing in college sports, I'm sorry, are like the best years of your life because you're being paid.

You're not being paid. You're on the university side. Maybe. Could be. Travel the country, travel the world. Like you spend so much time with your teammates. You become your family. Like you have the rest of your life to be a CrossFitter

and to go to the CrossFit Games. You will never get back those four years of playing collegiate sports. Agreed. And then, yeah, just that just that you know that mindset also what bugs me it's like oh i'm gonna go all in all out right away and then they might make it for a year but then they break their body so much that you know we see this happen all the time they don't want to do crossfit again and even if they try to do crossfit again they're so broken from that year of just beating themselves to death that, you know. Allison, let me ask you, like, the window

of time, let's say like the last two hours before you go to sleep, like how important is it? And like what kind of, you know, process do people use? Like screen time, blackout so honestly your sleep routine should begin 90 minutes before bedtime at a minute and usually during that time what you're doing is you're powering off all your technology and your devices and the reason for that is because it goes back to the hormone melatonin. So the hormone melatonin is released during dim light exposure. And if you're looking at your phone, if you're watching TV, that's emitting blue light, which is going to directly impede the release of melatonin. So that's the first thing you should do. The second thing you should do is just like just mentally wind down. Because if you think about sleep in general, it's going from the

states of high brain activity into the states of lower brain activity. And so if you're doing something that is more, you know, less engaging, so reading, a lot of people do those breath exercises, they do meditation, practice mindfulness, all of that stuff will prepare you for a good night of sleep. And then the last thing is, you know, taking a hot shower is a great thing too, because that vasodilation and no know increase in blood flow that sort of can help you know facilitate sleepiness as well oh that's cool what about that i've been using my sauna before i go to bed lately a lot what is there any advantage there i said i'll be using my sauna before i've been going to sleep you know maybe two days a week

lately is there any advantage to sleep quality doing a sauna? Absolutely. So, yeah, and it goes back to like vasodilation. It's just putting your body in like a super relaxing state, you know, physiologically and then psychologically too. I like it. What about the darkness, the blackout of the room? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that is the biggest thing is making sure your room is dark as possible. Like

you don't even want a nightlight, you want to keep that so dark. And even if you go in the middle, into the bathroom in the middle of the night to pee, don't turn on that light. Because we know actually my own dissertation research shows that, that as soon as you have this like flash or pulse of light in the middle of the night when you should be sleeping like it totally shifts and screws with your um the sleep timing and uh the sleep rhythm oh wow yeah um i have this may be like the most off the wall question you've ever got i hope it is um but i have this weird feeling that yes our light our eyes are these like awesome receptors to light and if you turn the light on it's um it's very obvious like your pupil like closes super fast and it freaks you

out it's really bright and then your brain instantly regular like recognizes it's daylight we should probably wake up or there's something going on for each cell in your body do they have a receptor for light so that i'm not only worried about my eyeballs and their sensitivity to the light to be you know sleeping in a completely dark room but like my skin cells that are exposed to light am i not recovering at optimal uh optimally recovering because there's light not just in my eyes or is it just like skin exposure to light as well taking a quick break to thank our sponsors over at shadow creative studios

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when you start working with them. Ask for my friend Yannick over there. He's the man. Podcast dot shadowstude dot I-O. And I'm super stoked to talk to you today about Fit Together because the entire month of August, we have the biggest giveaway.

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doing your fitness. We are going to track it and we're going to pick users and pay for six months of your gym membership or the cash equivalent if you don't have one. That can be at your home, that can be at a gym, that can be at a park. But we want you checking in using the hashtag checkinchallenge. And the third place winner is even going to win a Fitbit of their choice. And that can be synced up to the app. So go over, download the Fit Together app on all your devices right now. Come hang out with me. Find the Barbell Shrug Group. Just search for Anders Varner and Barbell Shbell shrugged and then starting in august using the hashtag check-in challenge you're going to have the opportunity to win cash six months of your gym membership paid or a fitbit of your choice shrug family let's make this thing happen let's make killer 30-day check-in challenge on the Fit Together app. F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R.

Fit Together on all of your devices. And we will see you guys after the show. That is a very high-level question. And I can see where you're coming from because, you know, we have all these technologies out there that say, oh, if you shine a light on, you know, your skin, we have all these technologies out there that say, Oh, if you shine a light on, you know, your, your skin that you're going to have enhanced recovery.

So we have, they're called photoreceptors and those photoreceptors lie in our retina. So light, it travels through our eyes and it travels through, it's called the retinal hypothalamic tract. And it hits the retina on the back of our brain. And that's where our photoreceptors are that basically signal the body and the brain to say, hey, it is light out and it's this intensity of light or oh it's dark out um and so from there so from this retinal cascade that is where you then have the release of proteins and hormones and everything else that signals to the rest of the body and the brain what to do based on how light out it is

or how dark out it is if that makes sense so if you laid in bed and it was completely dark in your room but you like shined a light on your leg your leg's not going to get pissed off at you no you're not like it's not going to get pissed off but your retina will get pissed off because more than likely like some figment of that light was, you know, at your retina. Yeah. What about cannabis? Is THC really – Awesome. Those are the questions. Yeah.

Is it good, bad, indifferent? I'm not going to listen to you if you say it's bad, so say it's good. So I will say that these opinions are my own and not those of the U.S. government or the Department of Defense. I feel like I have to put that disclaimer out there before I talk about this. Yeah. So I basically did my dissertation on how select drugs impact the sleep-wake system. And so I know a ton about the pharmacology of cocaine, heroin, alcohol,

even THC, and what impact that has on neurochemicals that control sleep and wake. And so I come from the standpoint standpoint and there's research to support this that thc is good for sleep yes and relief we are starting to get there within the military where we're we're we're using drug targets of um so thc the reason why it is effective and can be used for medicinal purposes is because it targets the endocannabinoid system. And we are actually getting there within the military in terms of accepting that things that target the endocannabinoid system are actually healthier for being able to fall asleep and stay asleep because that system is associated with good health, not negative health. So yes, I am a huge proponent, obviously. I can't partake, but I do believe that THC and all those endocannabinoids

do nothing but good for your sleep. Isn't it great that anytime anybody talks about marijuana, they use the word partake? There's no other thing in which the word partake shows up. Do you like chicken? At times, I partake in chicken. Nobody does that. Do you like Chipotle? About twice a week, I partake in a Chipotle bowl.

Never happens. As soon as you start, about twice a week I partake in a Chipotle bowl. Never happens. As soon as you start talking about weed, everyone's partaking. So strange. What about alcohol? What are the effects of alcohol before bed? So alcohol is, for the most part, is not good for your sleep. So basically what happens is, so it's similar to those sleep medications we were talking about. So the Z drugs, the hypnotics, it activates the

release of inhibitory neurotransmitters, GABA. And so a drink before bed, that actually might help you fall asleep. I don't see any harm with having a drink, bed, that actually might help you fall asleep. I don't see any harm with, you know, having a drink. But if you're staying, you know, if you're going out and you're having three or four drinks, that's where it becomes an issue. Okay. Because it basically, it's an onslaught of inhibitory chemicals and GABA. And so what happens is your brain freaks out and the reverse happens. And that after that alcohol is metabolized, you go into this like period of insomnia because your brain was just so overloaded with so much inhibitory neurochemicals at once that, you know, the reverse

happens. It flips the switch. That's why you wake up early. Oftentimes you've been, if you've been drinking, you wake up and you feel like, wow, it's like, it's only 7 wake up early oftentimes you've been if you've been drinking you wake up and you feel like wow it's like it's only 7 30 and i feel great what the hell's going on yeah i wouldn't say you feel great i mean maybe i did in my 20s but not now my 30s yeah maybe maybe a little hungover but like you're like wow i'm like not sleepy i thought i would totally be i went to bed at 3 30 and 7 30 now30 and now I'm up and walking around like I feel good. That hasn't happened to me in a long time, but I remember it happening. So if you drink or you do the ambient or something like that,

you will not get into the deep sleep or the REM at all? Yes, you're going to have alterations in both. A lot of research on alcohol has shown that it does suppress REM sleep or the state of dreaming. Then when it comes to non-REM sleep too, you're just not going to have

the deep stages of non-REM sleep. You'll stay more into the lighter stages, which is where recovery is. Yeah, that's the hormonal release and all that And then and then REM is memory Correct. Yes. Got it. Awesome GABA is present in a variety of sleep supplements too, right? Is there is there any advantage to actually just taking supplemental exogenous GABA? So again, that's very similar to the research on magnesium it hasn't been widely studied

enough uh for the gaba sleep aids out there um i you know just anecdotally i know that people um swear by them um but it's you know that's still something that i wish could be further clinically supported but wait you didn't you say that like alcohol like causes too much of a release of gaba is that the problem or what yeah so you know there's a fine line with everything so gaba itself it's not a bad thing like yeah in fact you need gaba in order to fall asleep and stay asleep it's just more or less the amount um so like the amount of gaba present in sleep supplement supplements you know stuff that is not regulated by the fda more than likely that's going to contain small amounts of gaba because those companies don't want to take a risk and

put too much in like you know ambient lunessa and all those drug companies do uh because they can't study the adverse effects and they're not regulated all right um i have a question about CBD, you mentioned the endocannabinoid system, THC being a good piece of sleep and recovery. Yeah. Is CBD real? Should people – it's kind of touted as like my general opinion, and that's why we have real scientists on here because my general opinion typically is not 100 accurate like a lab um but why would we take the cbd out of the thc it kind of i've never really had like an extreme benefit from cbd yet many people will tell you that if you take it right before you go to bed you're gonna have the most beautiful night's sleep ever.

Is CBD something people should focus on? So CBD, that is the – when you talk about the psychoactive form, so that is an endocannabinoid. So that is what is actually going to target the endocannabinoid system of the brain to help facilitate sleep. So when I talk about, you know, there's like talk now of having these endocannabinoids be used for sleep medication purposes in the military and, you know, other groups where normally that stuff is a stigma uh that is the reason why is because it's directly targeting that system the difference between that and thc of course is thc has the hallucinogenic fun part yes the fun part so if you take the fun part out, it actually does help you calm down and get to sleep.

Exactly. All right, world. You win. You win on this one. I mean, THC, in my humble opinion, just knowing, again, about the neuropharmacology and how it works will also help you fall asleep. Also helps with the meditation before you go to sleep, which is a very important piece of calming down, down-regulating. Yes.

Actually, now that you just said the word meditation, are there studies out there regarding meditation and mindfulness on sleep quality, etc.? Absolutely. That's actually a new, exciting area of research. I love it because I used to not believe in things like that. Meathead. I'm a born and raised meathead. I've learned to downscale and to like tune down, but it's still

really hard for me. I'm getting better, but you know, it's through these studies of meditation and mindfulness where you see the value of it. And it makes sense from like a neurochemical state too, because it's no different than sleep. Like you need sleep in order to downscale and to reset everything so it's the same thing with like wakefulness too like you can't be on all the time you need those moments to capitalize on downscaling during the day so you can make the upscale moments that much better what about my um what about noise at night know, some people will play like ocean sounds. Is that good or bad? So there's actually evidence to support that now.

Again, I used to think that was like snake oil science and bullshit. But we've actually done studies at high-level academic institutions to show that pink noise and white noise can actually sort of coax the brain into the deeper sort of stages of sleep. And it actually goes back to stimulating this very archaic brain structure called the thalamus. So the thalamus is sort of the gateway of all sensory information. And the limbic system right in the limbic system yeah so pink noise and and um has this ability to wait define

pink noise yeah what does that mean yeah i'm lost i'm not a physicist but there's there's different noises out there so there's white noise there's pink noise there's brown noise and it has something to do with like wavelengths and the frequency and like i'm talking about like physics stuff that i don't know but pink there is a study from northwestern to show that pink pink noise and i actually have a pink noise app on my phone now that I use when I travel. Really? It does actually stimulate thalamic activity, and it does it in a way where it helps coach you into deeper stages of sleep.

Awesome. I'll just look up the pink noise. That's perfect. I'm currently listening to pink noise in my headphones. Yeah, me too. This says white noise can sound like static or a hiss and pink noise is smoother and

more soothing across all frequencies. It is a little bit softer than the staticky white noise. My personal, no one else can hear this. I took it off, but I just played. Go to YouTube and you can just type in Pink Noise, and there's like a – the very first thing that pops up in Google is like a 10-hour long soft static sound that you can listen to. So we've talked about the party drugs, cocaine, and that's a good one if you're traveling across the country and you're a big CEO.

Yes. Marijuana. Again, these are my own personal opinions. Yes. Not those of the Department of Defense. And it's actually from my own supported dissertation research. See? And marijuana, thumbs up but you also mentioned

some some heavier drugs uh what does heroin do so heroin let's go i mean it's just bad across the board like yeah as you imagine. We did a little bit of that research actually right after Michael Jackson died. A lot of times in science, you're doing these studies, and then when current events take over, you capitalize on it. Because we were a drug addiction lab who studied drug addiction and also its impact on like sleep and wake systems, we decided to start doing fentanyl studies, which is, you know, the pharmacology of at least with alcohol, you have these different levels of intensity of GABA release. And obviously, if you have the equivalent of three or four drinks, that's when really heavy, what we call GABA agonists, it's just so much at once, and it acts in so many different ways on the architecture of the nerve cell that it just screws everything up. Fentanyl is terrifying.

Yeah. Dude, when we had the baby, all the things are going on down there and we're being super cute up here and taking pictures and stuff and the doctor peeks her head up like 10 seconds after the baby pops out she's like so would you like some fentanyl and we were like what are you serious we just had a baby and you're just going to give us the heaviest, scariest drug in the entire world. She was like, yeah,

yeah. Everybody wants it. I was like, uh, I think we'll pass. Please. No fentanyl. Eight seconds after the most amazing moment of life.

Like that was, it was so terrifying. That makes me so angry because when it talks to emotional memories, and think about some salient emotional memories. Everyone remembers where they were on 9-11 and time, place, etc. And same with, I don't have kids, but I can imagine. That is going to be such an emotional memory why would you want to taint that and like alter it you know i just i

couldn't believe it it was like one thing that we actually talk about a lot that the doctor was like so ready to give us the heaviest possible drugs it was so strange it was like yeah and then it really felt like she was making like 50 bucks every time she handed one out because it was just like probably i would have started it like tylenol or something and when that came out we were just like whoa like i'm unprepared is this the future of parenting i just need this now I mean, and that's the thing we know from these drug addiction studies, that these heavy drugs too, it's like they really are the gateway to addiction because it is such an onslaught of inhibitory release on the brain in a way that is so negative that,

especially in somebody who's at risk for drug addiction, that can be the tipping point, even if it's the tiniest dose to this lifelong problem. I have an athlete whose mother had liver cancer and had part of it taken out. And then she was given Vicodin and now is a heroin addict because it just spiraled. She was like the best mom ever they didn't get any trouble like the best human had that happen survived cancer now she's a heroin addict it's like yeah no it's uh and you know that's like the one thing like working in a drug addiction lab

and uh looking at these like micro changes at the brain in terms of what these drugs do is it's like it is so scary how this one like pharmaceutical and chemical can just permanently alter the brain yes and even like like the most upstanding person who has everything else going yeah like it's just that's what's so scary about these drugs of abuse yeah and most not it's not like everybody in the world is running around doing drugs. They don't fully understand how powerful it can be. Yeah. It's like, there's no escape plan because it's the first time they've ever done it. They just went straight.

Right. But again, you know, there's different, there's different drug classes for a reason. So let's talk about nootropics. So these like cognitive cancers. So like caffeine and alpha-GPC, which is a – it's called a cholinergic agonist. Those are things that cognitively enhance your brain. They act as antioxidants. They act as like help prevent against neurodegeneration, especially those at risk for dementia or Alzheimer's. Like there's different classes

of drugs for a reason. And even, you know, some of the hallucinogenic drugs, there is evidence now from, you know, Johns hopkins they've stood up that center to show that it can help deal with emotional trauma and things like that because it's activating the healthy systems of the brain like serotonin um and it's doing so in a way where it's like stabilizing that the neurochemical response instead of just this onslaught of... What are they testing up there? Are they going as far as like LSD? Is it basically just psilocybin and things that grow on the ground?

I think it's still things that grow on the ground. Yeah. What's the alpha GPC? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, alpha GPC. So I know on it, that's the alpha brain. So alpha-GPC is a cholinergic agonist,

which basically means that it's going to stimulate brain activity. So when you talk about the frontal cortex of the brain, a lot of that is mediated by the neurochemical acetylcholine. So you have a lot of like cholinergic activity going on. And so that's what alpha GPC is targeting. What other smart drugs or kind of brain building drugs we'll call them? Do you recommend? So caffeine is a beautiful drug too.

So, you know, that's a lot of the work we've done in the military has targeted caffeine because, you know, especially, you know, caffeine that comes from the ground. So not energy drinks. Energy drinks to me are in like the same category as heroin and fentanyl and all those bad drugs because it's such an onslaught of caffeine and bad shit for the brain. We've done studies to show

that it increases your risk for PTSD, anxiety, and depression. We have done those studies in the military to show. I'm sorry. We give Travis Mash a hard time because he loves the rock star. It broke my heart. It broke my heart. You broke my heart. Do you know what you're doing?

You are literally killing your brain cells. It's called neurotoxicity. You are prematurely killing your brain cells. I want to know. I want to know all the details. That's what it's doing. I know, but how? How does that happen?

Is it just too much caffeine or is there something else in the cocktail of compounds in energy drinks? So it's the cocktail mixed with too much caffeine and that it – What's too much? Anything past 200 milligrams. Speak to me in Starbucks terms. Is that a large? Is that a small? So that's like a large but like chugging it in like three

or four minutes ah yeah i'm good a lot of energy drinks have like 350 per can yeah exactly and they're cold so you can drink them so fast and then it has all those other like additive chemicals that it just – it puts – anyway. But caffeine is good. I'm listening to you. It comes from coffee. Tell me – hold on. Can we talk about the brain decay that goes along with Rockstar Energy? I'm actually really interested in like what are the compounds that really get in there?

So it's too much caffeine. Why is too much caffeine in that short of a time span so negative to your brain? So, you know, you have these excitatory neurochemicals called glutamate. And caffeine in the form of energy drinks basically causes this onslaught of glutamate release in the brain. And when there's too much glutamate in the brain, it causes what we call neurotoxicity. It's basically poison for the brain, and the pre-programmed cells that exist freak out and literally just start killing themselves off.

No. Because they had too much, like, we it, glutamatergic stimulation. Travis, imagine how smart you're going to be. Yeah, I'm just going to have to overcome this. I really wonder if that's why the cold coffee thing actually started, but it's because people could just chug coffee faster when it's not piping hot. That's why I like it, so I can just chug it and just get jacked.

What about pre-workouts because pre-workouts everyone's got a scary pre-workout story yeah i know so pre-workouts aren't good either i know i'm like the bearer of bad news no this is great no okay hold on first off nobody in their right mind that's ever taken a pre-workout thinks they're doing something positive for themselves like when you start getting creepy crawlies going through your veins you're like yeah this is super healthy no yeah you're trying to go bash your barb your forehead into a barbell there's no way you think you're like extending your life when that stuff starts crawling through your veins yeah so it's the same

thing as energy drinks so the pre-workouts it's not just the So it's the same thing as energy drinks. So the pre-workouts, it's not just the caffeine, it's the additives inside of it. But it's also, again, when it comes to caffeine, we've done research to show that anything past 200 milligrams doesn't do anything else. Like basically you piss it out or you just build up this caffeine tolerance to the point where you're just gonna just completely ruin your you know sensitivity to caffeine um but okay when it comes to space it's like shit that happened to me i'm gonna need to go like get unstrung out from this yo what about what about essential fatty acids? Like, like building blocks of the brain itself, like the supplementing,

you know, DHA or arachidonic acid, et cetera, have any validity? All good. So there's a, there's a lot of research now to support that you know, outside of the FDA mandates that has been a new area of study. And even things like intermittent fasting, too, because you know, when you intermittently fast, you are releasing those like healthy doses of fats and your brain's thriving more on fats under those conditions. And they've done studies now,

at least in mice to show that like intermittent fasting and the whole, you know, process of activating these healthy fatty acids through it can actually prolong life by about 15%. Again, these are like mouse. Where's Lane at? Yeah.

I would love that. You know, Lane Norton. Yeah. I would love to hear it. I would like to, I wish you were here hearing that. So what about the like serotonin precursors like, like a 5-HTP? So 5-HTP is a very similar to, um, so 5-HTP is essentially serotonin. And much like the GABA supplements that exist, supplementing with 5-HTP has also been shown to facilitate sleep as well.

Again, there's not a whole lot of clinical evidence to support it because it's not FDA regulated, but anecdotally, in the few studies that exist, it does help as well. Sweet. All right. Is there any potential downside to using that frequently? What kind of like melatonin was just supposed to be like in special circumstances, you know, once in a while, that type of thing? Is it similar to 5-HTP or is it just like, it's good to take every day or don't take it all why did you ask no no so when it comes to like at least the products that i know that exist out there and you look at the concentrations of gaba and 5-htp um in them they're so like small that it's not going to affect your sensitivity or you're going to build up tolerance too much.

Bombs away. And the reason why melatonin, for me, the reason why melatonin is one of those use case basis things is because that really is the hormone responsible for sleep timing. And so if you, you know, if you want to manipulate your sleep timing, you're going to have to like not have any tolerance whatsoever. And so that's why I like the safe melatonin for use case basis. So that when I want to change my sleep timing when I am traveling that I'm going to get the most out of it. What about tryptophan? So tryptophan falls in the same category as 5-HTP so those are those serotonin metabolites same thing beneficial for sleep. Sweet would there be any benefit to to taking extra pure tryptophan if you're already you know

eating a gram protein per pound of body weight you're just you're getting plenty of amino acids in general so from my understanding of how a lot of those nutraceuticals work it's not so much the amount of tryptophan it's the type and quality of tryptophan so the tryptophan that's present in natural food is different from the uh nutraceutical grade um tryptophan because think of like how it's produced and processed and and all of that what about you know what is that turkey makes you sleepy and that's tryptophan as well yes yes that's tryptophan as well. Yes, yes, that's tryptophan. But like how tryptophan is expressed, because remember it's an amino acid protein and proteins are unique in like folding structures.

And so a chemical grade tryptophan is going to be different from a natural, you know, tryptophan. Perfect, got it. And your body will recognize that difference and it could have a different physiological impact um if you were to put together like the perfect cocktail for sleep uh what are what's and then i would love to also do one for like healthy awake uh what's kind of like uh the perfect? How does it start maybe like an hour

and a half from say turning screens off to supplementation? What would be like the perfect flow to getting the best night's sleep? So I'll give you my schedule because it's, you know, what I practice every night. I do practice what I preach. I get good quality sleep. And I think that's why even now at 36, like I've been able to maintain my, you know, athletic stature in addition to being like a leading expert in neuroscience is so my sleep cocktail is 90 minutes before bed, no more phone,

like no more technology. I'm reading, listening to podcasts, just doing very low activity things that don't require technology. And then about 40 minutes before I go to bed, the lights in my house are like super dim. So I'm trying to stimulate melatonin release. I have candles all throughout my house. I have very low lights. I take a shower pretty much in the dark or I have low candlelight. I go into my bedroom.

I have low candlelight and I'll sit in bed. It's super romantic every night you go to sleep, huh? Every night I go to sleep. My wife would love this cocktail. Oh, I'm sure she would. Back rubs? Hey, back rubs. You know, simulate vasodilation.

Yeah. Actually, now that we're on that note, is there any benefits to quality? We're going to come back to the final cocktail. Yes. Here, you can finish your cocktail thing before you answer this, but is there any benefit to having sex before you go to bed as far as sleep quality? I was so going there, too. Anecdotally, I would say yes.

Anecdotally? We've got four yeses on here. That sounds like a full yes, science. I mean, think about it. Like, you know, the post--coital, like, sleepiness. Yeah, it's the best. It's the best. Don't talk, don't talk, don't talk.

Even if it's like with another person or you're just, you know, like taking care of yourself, it is literally the best. Actually. All right, all right. Especially in the afternoon. i feel like the best afternoon naps happen post-afternoon sex i mean yeah that could be honestly that's like if there's a study you need and would like to test that call your boys we'll get the whole family involved we'll bring them in it'll be great i mean honestly that honestly, that could be a part of the sleep cocktail. It helps you fall asleep at night.

Yeah. It does. Okay, so when it comes to supplements, I am a big fan of magnesium. And I've been experimenting with creatine recently. So creatine, a lot of people take that as part of their like pre-workout or post-workout. But I have this theory that creatine can actually induce restorative sleep. And it's something I've been trying to test it, but I just haven't gotten the regulatory approval yet because again, it's not an FDA clear supplement.

But the reason why it makes sense to me is creatine is going to activate those energy substrates that are built up during sleep anyway. So you know, sleep is important at a cellular level, because that is when we replenish our energy stores, that's when we replenish ATP. And in the process of making ATP, you require creatine. So if you're getting this exogenous like supplementation with creatine, you're going to further facilitate that energy substrate replenishment process, which is going to happen with, you know, deep restorative sleep. There we go. But again, that's just like something I've been working with

because it's hard to do creatine studies just because of it not being FDA. It's crazy. More studies have been done on creatine than ketchup. It seems like it would be easier, but well. What about, so you got the 90 minutes, no screen, 40 minutes, light stem, and then vasodilation, creatine. Do you take anything to help you sleep?

So that's part of – I don't take anything to help me sleep. Well, I should say, so magnesium, I – Oh, man. That is sleep-promoting, especially as, because, you know, as athletes, we over-train so much that we tend to have leg twitches and like borderline restless leg syndrome at night. And magnesium is such a good conductor for the central nervous system that it helps mitigate things such as leg twitching and restless leg syndrome.

Sweet. Awesome. leg twitching and restless leg syndrome. Sweet. Yeah. Can you tell us about COVID-19, your experiences on the front line over there? Are we allowed to call it the front line? Do you actually deal with people on different front lines? No, it's the real front line. So I was the laboratory officer at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. So we basically were a field support hospital.

You know, that's what the military, the Army does best, is, like, in a time of crisis, we have these, like, fully functional hospitals that are able to, like, be rapidly mobilized and set up. So this field support hospital was basically inside the convention center. So the same convention center where you go to pick up your race packet for the New York City Marathon, which I did a few years ago, like that's where we were operating out of. So I was the one who was doing like the basic clinical lab testing that you would have done in any hospital. So we had a team basically, you know,

just think of it as like a hospital being set up inside of a convention center. So anytime a patient needed just basic chemistry needs like liver panel, blood panel, all of that, that's what we were doing. In addition to doing the actual COVID-19 tests. So the military, we have this super unique capability for testing that we've developed over the years with industry partners, not just immediately for COVID-19, but for other things too, like years ago during the anthrax crisis and just other like biologicals.

We have these like super rapid, super easy tests that can be done, that basically could be done by anyone. So it doesn't, you know, it's meant to be like idiot proof where like you could have private Snuffy who doesn't have a college education or even like barely has a high school education

go out on the front line, take this test, follow the directions. It's like a cookbook recipe and do the tests right there. Yeah. Awesome. What, uh, how intense did it actually get down? Like in New York, I, if you were to walk outside my front door the entire time, and I think this is kind of one of the crazier problems surrounding the entire pandemic. It's like if you walked into my neighborhood, you got a bunch of families playing with their kids.

And you're like, you'd have no idea. But I imagine your eyeballs were seeing a very different story. Oh, my God. Yes. So I've gone to New York City probably every three or four months since college. And in college college we were competing there all the time against columbia a lot of my best friends including my best friend from high school lives in new york city and same in college so i've been to new york i go to new

york at least three or four times a year and i have since i was 18 so we were uh right in hell's kitchen which is west of times square and it was it was literally like i was on a hollywood movie set without any actors or supporting roles for like two months it was completely dead like i have these pictures from time square i will send them to you those are weird friday night on the time square at 8 p.m and there was freaking no one yeah it was insane and like even um so i had to drive there from kentucky and so i had my jeep there and like just driving down broadway and literally like i felt again like i was in a movie set like i was you know we would drive down broadway and see all the flashing lights of uh times square around us and no traffic whatsoever.

Like it was so crazy. That's insane. Because sometimes we had to do supply runs like downtown near the World Trade Center. Yeah. And it would take us, I'm not kidding you, like 12 minutes to get from Hell's Kitchen Midtown down to the World Trade Center Financial District because there's no traffic. Oh, my God. It's still, I don't know how it is now,

but we drove through up 95 past New York City and you can see where the typical line starts at the Lincoln Tunnel and there was just nobody in line. Like you could just go right through the Lincoln Tunnel. That's usually like an hour to two-hour long wait to get through there. There was just nobody in line. It was really strange. That's like what's now instead of in the middle of the real big crisis.

Yeah. So I felt like my entire time there during the day, New York City was like what you see at 4 a.m. when people are starting to go to sleep. It was like that all day, every day for two months on end. It was unreal. That's wild. Yeah. New York City is a scary place. I'd stay up way too late there. I don't sleep enough. Except like, you know, we were talking about earlier on the show. What I did find intriguing though is that like even covet 19 couldn't keep away the prostitution business like it was so funny to me that like even in the midst of this infectious

disease you still had prostitution like on a saturday night the only people that were out i know but you gotta go out and get your fix. No, but here's the thing, though. Better sleep. I'm thinking, like, as a biologist and, like, somebody who has, like, better knowledge of immunology than most people, it's like, maybe they're the people whose antibodies we have to harvest in order to study, like, the progression and the time course of this infectious disease. Seriously. and the time course of this infectious disease because like they might have some level of immunity and including the homeless people like think of like i know they had a high rate of infection um but they might be the people just through like their own you know how they've learned to survive on the streets like the answer to address these questions of how COVID-19 infects the body and how it, how it's like virulence progresses.

I thought about that a lot being from San Diego where it's just, is very prevalent. There's a lot of homeless people, especially in my little town of Pacific beach. It's everywhere. And I would like, nobody wants to be dirty, but maybe being a little bit dirty is better than being completely clean.

And how you are able to battle. It's true. I mean, that's how the immune system works. It's like you have to have like an, it's like this with anything in nature and biology. It has a fancy term. It's called preconditioning. So like exposing yourself to like sublethal doses

of a toxic stimulus is actually a good thing for the body. That's how the art of elite training works. It's like we expose ourselves to these sublethal doses of like increases in blood pressure and uh yeah you know like lactic acid release and all of this so then it fine-tunes our system in a way where it makes it better so we reach yeah yeah exactly it reaches this new baseline something in biology we call allostasis where you're taking like the normal physiological processes and through micro doses of stress you're making it better that's that's how the immune system works awesome maybe gyms are essential maybe they need maybe you need

to be that was my that was my biggest argument swapping sweat my biggest argument. Swap and sweat with people. Yeah, no, I am with you. I think, again, this is my own personal opinion, but it's deeply rooted in my expertise in biology, is I don't think gyms should have been closed. I think, obviously, they should have downsized the number of people, but I think it could have been done in an evidence-based way because we also know the easiest way to keep your immune system healthy is through exercise.

That's right. That was my point. Gyms hold people accountable. Like, yes, we have all these amazing home environments or home workouts available at our disposal, but you don't have the group accountability. Yeah. Yeah.

What's going on with the fitness team? You guys are pretty much shut down right now. That's messed up. Just training. Yeah. So we're, we're getting ready for, you know,

whenever the green light happens again, you know, it was, it was really hard at first, especially, you know, because that's our mission, essentially, is to connect with America's public. And that was, for me, that's the most gratifying part of this whole assignment is going into high schools and, you know, going into underserved communities and at-risk youth and teaching them the value of, you know, the opportunities available through the military and getting that message out

there through sports and athletics. Like, I think that is, like, such a beautiful message. Do you know Chandler Smith, by chance? Yes, he's my teammate. Yeah, that's what I thought. I mean, one of the people uh crystal mccullough is his friend and she works with me and she's uh one of she's one of the top coaches you know for nationally my team and um yeah so yeah no it's uh like it's great about

like my teammates you know they are family to me and a lot of us knew each other through CrossFit before this team because if you think about it like pretty much all of us on the team have competed in CrossFit regionals or the CrossFit games at some point in our life and that was the that was the intent of setting up this team is to showcase us as elite athletes and to compete under the army name as elite athletes. But then also when we go into school systems, the kids can identify with us because we are elite athletes and we're more likely to get their attention because, you know, when have an nfl player talking in front of a room of kids versus like this kid who played yeah yeah exactly like they're going to pay more attention like

nobody connects to the american public like sports and that's why i think for me that's the weirdest part about covid19 in this era of infectious disease it's like the lack of sports which brings together communities yeah Yeah, exactly. It's really interesting. I think a lot of that stuff is showing up now. People just don't have shit to do, nothing to bring them together. Yeah, exactly. So we're doing it in really negative ways instead of the structured ways.

Well, except for the clapping for healthcare workers at night. I will say I do what I do because i love science and i love the pursuit of knowledge and i you know i love that like the more i learn i less i know approach but like the clap every single night when we were walking to and from our hotel to the convention center like that that did like bring tears to my eyes and yeah. It was so amazing as it evolved over time and more people got involved, how creative they were. In the beginning, there was just claps. And then at one point, it was foghorns.

And you had little kids with pots and pans banging. And then there were signs made. It was such a like. So awesome. It was so awesome. I'd be like. Yeah. We were. We were like yeah we were we were like it was we were we were

getting a little accepted in our like but yeah that's great that is so awesome um this is fantastic thank you so much for coming to hang out with us oh my gosh we've been trying to do this in person for since the games two years ago and trying to connect and um yeah this is a beautiful thing that we get to do them online now and that uh this is this is kind of a possibility i mean it is a possibility that always has been but we don't have to wait until we're supposed to be in sacramento last weekend together i know i know and? And West Coast Classic, too. I was so bummed. I was prime physical condition for the best I can do as a master athlete for the West Coast Classic, and then when it was canceled, I was like, oh.

We should talk about Loud and Live off air. Yes. Find out if that's going to be a business. What happens when you buy five CrossFit events, the biggest five in the world, and then they don't have them? Well, we didn't get back our registration yet for the West Coast Classic. Still pending. Still pending.

I hope it all works. One of my athletes, their powerlifting nationals got canceled usapl and and they told them they were not going to give them their money back i'm like say what like yeah i'm not i'm not sure that that's legal they're saying well they spent so much money on prep i mean that's just the risk you take man but like yeah it's the risk you take yeah if someone pays you something and you don't deliver the service, you got to give them money back. So I'm curious what's going to happen there.

Like, so yeah. Uh, where can people find you? So I am on Instagram. Uh, that's more or less my official, like,

uh, warrior fitness team page, but also like my own personal page where I have a lot of good science, evidence based stuff on there. Doc, Jock, ZZZ. So, D-O-C, J-O-C-K,

ZZZ. You also know I have a popular science book I wrote after the first time I went to the CrossFit Games with a team called Meathead Unraveling the Athletic Brain. Whoa, I didn't know that. Oh, you didn't? Yeah, so I published it five years ago,

and it more or less debunks the myth of the dumb jock. So it talks about all the amazing changes in the brain that happen with exercise and neuroplasticity. And then it also, I spend lot of time um sort of dissecting the brain of an elite athlete and what makes it so unique and different from somebody who just trains to train wait where do you get that book because i just read the book spark that i loved it and so we said it have you read that book spark i have not so this is more of a like a deep dive into the biology and that's what i'm after now um so you can buy it on amazon just type in my name

allison brager meathead and it will come up sweet i mean that one did too it talked about neuroplasticity talked about bdnf talked about yeah so i talked about bdnf hippocampus like all that cerebellum yeah sweet uh and then i also have um again because of my background in like drug pharmacology and sleep like i have a chapter devoted to like a sleep formula for athletes uh focused on competition and with jet lag and then the reason like the last chapter is about like performance enhancing and drugs like both legal and illegal drugs so i go into the basic biology and pharmacology as to why like steroids work and um i talk a lot about caffeine and these nootropics and why they can be performance enhancing uh in a legal manner let's go i'm about to buy it as i speak yeah i'm looking

at it right now hardcover too you're a legit author yeah it's a hardcover softcover and ebook you have all three options you have all three options i haven't done an audiobook can you please do the audiobook we've got microphones you can talk on them we'll get them to you honestly like yeah maybe i should figure out how to set that up so i like the audiobooks where the author reads them and then they talk to you about what they were thinking in the writing uh like more in depth than just reading the book yeah no actually that's a good idea because like really I had this idea to write this book back in 2012 and it's mostly because so you know I did go to an Ivy League and there's sort of this stigma

with the athletes at the Ivy League that we weren't deserving to be there because a lot of us we didn't have the like average cutoffs for like academics um in terms of like standardized test scores that's pretty much my sister went to princeton i know yeah she totally got that right-handed scholarship yeah the softball one where you just throw the ball really hard they're like we'll cut you a couple gpa points no big deal. She probably, though, had good grades. Very good. I mean, I was a valedictorian. I'm not good at standardized tests, but I was a valedictorian in a large high school. Yeah, I had my shit together, too.

But still, there's this stigma there about the athletes being dumb and not deserving. And it precipitated all throughout my time at Brown. But then after college, I started looking at like the Brown athletes and they were doing huge things and science, medicine, business industry. And then my,

you know, peers who weren't athletes, they were doing okay. They weren't doing like great. They're just doing okay. And so I had this idea and then we went to the CrossFit games and I was like oh shit I need to capitalize on this 15 minutes of fame and uh you know just got my act together and I'd spend weekends and just nights just working on this book and it took about two and a half years

to put together because I was doing my fellowship at the time. But I eventually got it out in 2015, right before we went to the games again. So that was good. It's like I started it right after we went to the games in 2013, and it came out and was published right before we went to the games again in 2015. Is the guy that is doing all the brain research on concussions, is he from Brown as well?

He is from Boston University. So he from Brown as well? Uh, he is from Boston university. So still in new England. Yeah. I thought he went to Brown and did his undergrad or something there. I'm wrong. You know what? It is possible. There's a,

there's a lot of players now in that, um, area of research, but it's more than it's likely because like, what's, what was awesome about going to brown is we you know they had like one of the premier world uh neuroscience programs in the world yeah so yeah um it looks like you started this podcast in a gym and now you're in like a

concert hall where are you oh okay i see drums in the background okay let's talk about their staging stuff i see yeah so we are part of the recruiting outreach company which consists of using uh music uh functional fitness and e-gaming to connect with america's public public. We have a professional rock band called As You Were. Sick. This is where they practice. They just shred. They are amazing musicians

for the Army. That's awesome. This is insane. The Army. Dude, it's legit though. I've done a research study with these kids their reaction time i'm not kidding you is better than professional athletes so we took them out to kobe bryan's mamba academy and they did these cognitive tests that weren't gaming-based that the Mamba Academy has also done on NBA players and NFL players.

And our kids – our soldiers destroyed the professional athletes on all these tests. That's awesome. I was shocked that their reaction time was that good. Very cool. All right. E-games it is. Grab a smash.

Oh, go ahead. sorry well tell them where to find you nationally.com and go to instagram actually performance doug larson you bet allison stoked to have you today i've wanted to have you on the show for many years so i'm glad we finally got to do it today yeah seriously thank you so much hey can we i got i have your book laying around here somewhere i've read the intro but I have not read the rest of it. Now I've got to cycle back to that. You've got to get on audiobook for Doug. He's cranking out audiobooks.

Got to do the audiobook. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. Can we make a sleep supplement together? We could. I would love that. Especially if cocaine's involved. Cocaine and weed no we'll make a real one we're gonna make a real one

yeah drink with alcohol cocaine way too much caffeine hell yeah i mean that's for travis it'll be time released time release it time released caffeine at 199 milligrams so you don't go over, but all day. Just super perfect. Yes. And you inject it. Bam. So just right there. Beautiful.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrug. Make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store for all the programs, eBooks, and nutrition. We will see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. We will see you guys next week. Make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store. Use the coupon code shrug for all podcast listeners to save 10% on programs, eBooks, nutrition courses, and mobility products so you can live a stronger, happier, healthier, cooler, swoler, jacked-er. I don't even think those are words. Some of them are.

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