Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: Sleep’s Role in Cellular and Metabolic Health w/ Dr. Chris Perry, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Dr. Christopher A. Perry, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo, began his fitness journey at Penn State University, where he developed a robust background in Strength & Conditioning leading to 17 years in the industry to date. His academic path, leading through a PhD at Arizona State University, deepened his expertise in Exercise Science & Sports, Sleep & Circadian Rhythms, and Nutrition. Chris's current research focuses on sleep, movement analysis, and CO2 tolerance, particularly in tactical populations and collegiate athletes. His work aims to enhance performance, wellness, and longevity health outcomes, demonstrating his commitment to advancing the field of exercise and sports science. Beyond his academic pursuits, Chris is an executive performance coach, weight loss consultant, fitness entrepreneurship mentor, podcast host, and enjoys engaging in coffee culture and movie discussions. Work with RAPID Health Optimization Dr. Christopher Perry on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug Family this week on Barbell Shrug Physiology Friday is back and Dr. Chris Perry is on the podcast today talking about sleep's role in cellular and metabolic health and Chris is like a PhD in sleep. He knows how to get you the deep sleep when you close your eyes, how to make you healthier. It's what the guy does. As always friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. You can access that free report

over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner. Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mash. Coach Travis Mash is over there smiling to his wife being cute at the beginning of the show.

I was, just then. Oh, come on. Professor Perry. Dr. Chris Perry in the house today, man. I was just then. Oh, come on. Professor Perry, Dr. Chris Perry in the house today, man. You came all the way from rapid health optimization. I don't know how we found you. I don't know. I don't know how we got you on the show today.

I see you in their game. It's a lot of schedule shows when we just hit you on Slack and go, hey, let's do this. It's a it's a pleasure. I appreciate you guys having me. You know, I was listening to you guys long before I was even a part of rapid health optimization. And I had an old bunch of friends who used to talk about barbell shrugged. I'm like, who is barbell shrugged?

And lo and behold, end up working for them. There you go. So today's episode of barbell shrugged, we're going to be talking a lot about sleep that is really your wheelhouse. Um, and I'd love to, love to kind of dig straight into it. Yeah, man. I need eight hours of sleep because guess what? I don't really get that many.

Would you do more? I might need more. I might need nine could use 10. Probably. You also shouldn't get too much. That's also something I've recently learned from. Really? Is it too much?

Yes, there's such a thing. Mortality, right? Like you sleep too much. That's also something I've recently learned from. Really? Was it too much? Oh, dude. It's bad for mortality, right? Like you sleep too much, it's also a negative. There's a U-shaped curve there. Dude, did this be any more like this is what if, uh, if this was like CNN delivering that news, they'd be like, no, no, no fake news. You have to sleep too little now or too much. Yeah. But it's gonna die is the end, right? Like people do more absolutes. Yeah. Just not any.

This binary it's too much or too little. And if you don't hit the exact number, you probably die at the end of the game. Is that what happens? And people freak out. If I wanted anything to go. Well then let's go. What is the optimal number of minutes I should sleep

and get this down to seconds, maybe by the end of the show? So first, I got to preface this. And you know, when I first got into sleep research at Arizona State, you know, I have a big strength and conditioning background. I didn't want anything to do with this level of sleep, nor did I ever get enough sleep. And then lo and behold, you know, dive into that rabbit hole with my mentor at the Phoenix VA hospital, working with individuals at PTSD just truly opened my eyes to wow, sleep is one of the most important things, especially in tactical populations, which I specialize in. And the more and more I learned about it from my mentor,

Dr. Sean Youngstead, he's still at Arizona State, he does tons of research in circadian rhythms and long sleep duration, really showed me how important it is. And I'll always remember one of my favorite quotes from Matthew Walker, if you guys have heard his podcast and read his book, Why We Sleep. There's not one aspect of your health that is not positively impacted when you get a good night's rest.

And there's not one aspect of your health that's not negatively impacted when you don't get a good night's rest. And so when it comes to exactly what you just asked, what is the sleep recommendations? Any but anyone above the age of 18, right? At least seven to nine hours a night. But when you look at the majority of the lifestyles of individuals

we work with on a daily basis, who comes close to that? Or as or the bigger question now is, well, what's the risk of mortality when it comes to that? And part of my research through my dissertation was looking at long sleep duration. You know, short sleep duration is so sexy in the literature, right? You're like, oh, sleep deprivation, it meets the highlight highlights of the reels and it's all over Instagram and social media. And it's like, okay, we know for sure that if you're getting less than five and a half hours of sleep per night, you're probably not going to feel good when you go to work that next morning.

And so when you look at all the epidemiological research and you look at the U-shaped association, it's absolutely true. Anything less than five and a half, your mortality risk of all causes goes through the roof. Same thing if you're getting way too much sleep as well. And long sleep duration doesn't get enough love. And when you look at the literature behind this, it's mainly older adults who are usually at risk of this, but it increases sleep fragmentation,

which results in less sleep efficiency, more daytime sleepiness. It has comparable effects to that of bed rest that you'll see with individuals who spend too much time being sedentary, lying in bed. But you also see increased inflammation. And so you'll see increased cause mortality across the other side of the spectrum

with all the same ways that you would with short sleep duration. And so usually anything that's constituted as long sleep duration is anything more than nine, which I don't know anyone who's doing that right now. That sounds like vacation. How do they tease out the other lifestyle factors there? Like if you spend 12 hours in bed every day,

chances are the rest of your life is not like a normal life. Like you don't have like a real career and a wife and three kids and you train every day, et cetera. Like something else is going on. Like you are depressed. Like something else is happening there. And we know that a hundred percent that there is not one psychiatric disorder that is not linked to some sort of sleep-related issue or sleep-related disorder as well. Wow. And so, and you see this across the board.

And so most individuals with psychiatric disorders have insomnia, have great degrees of sleep fragmentation, real low REM sleep. And so, however, as much as we know that short sleep duration and long sleep duration is an issue for sure. You see dysregulated hormonal profiles, you see dysregulated glucose tolerance and glucose regulation, you see hormone levels are off the charts as far as being dysregulated, particularly

cortisol and sexual reproductive hormones. But that's actually no longer what sleep doctors are starting to recommend as the most important thing. And this is something that's going to Be nice and sexy for everyone out there listening to the podcast It's actually sleep regularity that might be more important now than sleep duration Because the circadian rhythm component of the equation far outweighs The effect it has on the body compared the duration. Yes, we know sleep short dilation is terrible for our health But misaligning your clock might be worse. And so there was, oh, sorry, go ahead. Yep. No, no, no.

And so I don't cut you off. You're going to talk for the whole hour. I love him. He's awesome. So I don't learn from you and I'm on a podcast. But so, but in you'll get a lot of kickback from, you know, people we work with as far as well. How can I get eight more hours of sleep per night when Dr. Nelson goes through my aura data and tells me to get more? It's damn near impossible. And so there was a recent paper that was just published in this year, 2024, that looked at sleep regularity as the highest importance now when it comes to your overall health,

because individuals that have higher sleep regularity have, in comparison to individuals who get the right amount of sleep duration, have 48% lower cause arm mortality, 39% lower cancer risk, and 57% lower risk of cardiometabolic mortality, which is insane when you look at the overall effects of that. And that's as simple as staying within a half an hour to an hour of your sleep wake time every single day.

Individuals who stay with at least 80% compliance to that have better health all around. And there are so many mechanisms underneath that, that I'm prepared to share it with you all. So you can you can have very consistent sleep wake times six days a week, you can go out on Saturday, stay out a little later, sleep a little bit in a little bit on Sunday, and you're still kind of in that window. Is that what I heard? You can go out on Saturday, stay out a little later, sleep a little bit on Sunday, and you're still kind of in that window. Is that what I heard? Is that the cheat code? You can go out one day a week?

You got to be careful because how long you're going to stay out, it's within that one hour time frame. So if you go out an extra hour, yeah, maybe. If you're still keeping within that window of going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time. But even staying up late one night a week and sleeping in one night a week is going to push you into what's called social jet lag. All right. Which is the difference between your biological rate term. I like that. Really? And you're like, yeah, termed by Till Roehmann. He's a researcher overseas who published the book.

Damn, I forget the name. I have to look it up. But it's a social jet lag. I would buy that immediately. That way everyone would know why I'm not their friend. I'm already going to have to like listen to this whole podcast. Not going out ever. I can't keep up. It's so good. All right. Keep going. And so, but social jet lag is a terrible thing, right? This is something that you can probably allure to everything that's happening in our society. What do people do every single week?

All right. Monday through Friday, they wake up around 5, 6 a.m. They got to go to work, go to bed, 8, 9 o'clock, and then thirsty Thursday rolls around. That's how I talk to my students. And they all go down to the paddy wagon downtown in Richmond, Kentucky, stay up late, get the deals on the booze, and then they're staying up late and drinking all weekend long. Well staying up late and sleeping in is gonna shift your circadian alignment and what ends up happening is is when you try to wake up again on Monday when you're trying to wake up at 5 a.m. this is why Sunday scaries were

invented yeah and the anxiety you're trying to wake up at 5 a.m. but your body's still chilling at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. All right? And so and what a lot of people don't understand is it takes at least 24 hours or more to just re-entrain your circadian rhythm. All right? There was actually a study that looked at how can we improve this and we can talk about that more later but sometimes it takes up to four days even one to two weeks depending upon how much you shifted your body clock just to get it right again. Is that an age related thing too? Because that's kind of like that hangover thing

where it used to be a day and now it's like a week. Right, so it depends on the degree of how you did it. And whether or not you also are conducive to other health behaviors that could potentially mitigate the risk that comes with it. And so when you look at different chronotypes and how people are usually segmented, younger and older people like to go to bed early,

all right, and wake up early. Whereas individuals who are adolescents and middle-aged adults have a more morning slash evening chronotype to where they can wake up a little bit later and stay up a little bit later, no big deal, all right? But they're also more conducive to behaviors that are not relatable to optimal health

Which is what is gonna push them out of alignment even further put them at higher risk And so what we're starting to now, you know start to recommend individuals And if you read any sleep book or talk to any sleep doctor They're always say this the number one recommendation to helping someone get better sleep is to tell them to go to bed at the same Time every night and wake up at the same time every day, hands down. So is it an optimal time? It's just do the same time. Do the same time every day

and wake up at the same time every day, but I'm glad that you asked that, Travis. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers,

award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation or pre and post pictures. Arte is something completely different. Arate is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person

but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit aratelab.com. That's a-r-e-T-E lab.com. Now back to the show.

Do the same time every day and wake up at the same time every day, but I'm glad that you asked that, Travis, because it also depends on your chronotype, all right? And everyone has a different chronotype. You have the morning larks. You know who they are, the morning people. They're your crazy ass group fitness instructors who wake up at 4 a.m. and do crazy Jane Fonda work and are just 100% on. But then you have the other outliers who are the night shift individuals and having an eveningness chronotype or night shift chronotype actually is associated with a higher degree of negative health outcomes compared to either the other two types.

And so luckily, the majority of people are in the middle, but you know those individuals who are night shift workers who just gravitate more towards staying up late. However, because of that, the social norms do not are not conducive to a night shift schedule for most people. And so the more evening chronotype individuals, you see a 2.5-fold increase in diabetes risk due to the issues with glucose regulation that's usually caused by that. You also see a reverse hormonal effect when it comes to cortisol. And so when people are stressed out or you misalign your circadian rhythm, in a normal

adult, cortisol is at its highest in the morning, right? So what is in charge of getting you up and then cortisol drag it goes down during the course of the day It's flipped and individuals who have a circadian misalignment Which is why if you're ever dealing with someone who goes to bed at all altering times throughout the week Well, what might be a contributing factor besides being misaligned of why they have trouble going to sleep at night? The cortisol is jacked up and it's all really really high up late in the evening when it shouldn't be and that's causing issues Either from the influence of certain set gabbers, which are just time givers things that influence your circadian clock Light time that you're eating and even nighttime exercise can potentially do that as well depending on your prototype

And so this is where we have to get a lot more surgical, as it were, for lack of a better word, when we're working with individuals and trying to optimize performance, we have to figure out what is your chronotype. Because if nothing else works when it comes to sleep hygiene, could be the fact that we're doing the wrong approach based off of your particular chronotype,

if you're a morning person, middle person, or if you're a night bark. So lots of interesting potentials here when it comes to performance health and coaching. When you look at the aura ring, that's what we kind of use as the baseline. Mine says 3 a.m. And my goal, whether I'm actually thinking about or not,

is to really have like the middle of my sleep kind of align with that 3 a.m. number which is why they have those that that kind of like scale on there correct like as a as a way for people to kind of look at their own own data and figure that out that's what that looks like on the aura ring correct yes and so and that's also trying to dictate where your temperature minimum is and so because there's a point during the night where your body reaches that temperature minimum and then starts to go up again and then usually you're up and awake 90 minutes to two hours later. And this comes more in handy when you're trying to figure out how to advance or

fix your circadian clock. Because we know if you get in light, meal times and exercise after that point, that helps advance your clock, which is a good thing. It makes you able to get to sleep at an earlier time. Whereas if you have that exact same exposure to any of those three activities before that time, in the six hours before, that will delay your body clock. This is exactly why staying up late on your phone and getting any type of light exposure, even if it's not from a phone, even it's from your bathroom lights, if it's too bright, or even it's from your TV, anything in the house could negatively influence your ability to fall asleep again

and it'll delay your circadian rhythm phase. And make it much harder. Can we talk times? Like how far away from sleep should your last meal be? When should you cut the light? Yep, and so I tell most of the individuals that I work with, you need to make sure that things start getting dim

right after sunset. And so, especially in the summer times, and that's difficult to do, right? And you can entrain to the seasons and your circadian rhythm will adapt. But if you're getting bright exposure of light right before going to bed, you are suppressing melatonin. The brighter light wavelengths,

so bright blue light that comes from your phones and your television sets and your computers, all right, even green lights and bright white lights. So the really, really bright LCD, LED lights that a lot of people have in modern time homes now, destroying sleep if you keep those on late at night. And so I usually tell people at least an hour or two before bed,

you gotta cut the light brightness as best as you possibly can. And so worry usually tell people at least an hour or two before bed, you gotta cut the light brightness as best as you possibly can. And so worry about the color first and then worry about the brightness, all right? Because even a, so slower wavelength lights, this is where they get into the red light therapies and the halogen lights and the candle light, the best thing you can do for sleep.

But if they're bright enough, even then they will negatively influence melatonin. And so you have to be very, very careful But if they're bright enough, even then they will negatively influence melatonin. And so you have to be very, very careful because if you're lying in bed and you're getting ready to go to sleep and you pull up your phone and that thing is bright as all creation, it'll delay the overall release of melatonin, taking another 45 minutes to an hour just to rise back up to natural levels again. And so you can start to experiment with what works best. I don't know many fiancees of mine that's gonna allow me to have red light bulbs

in the house after 7 p.m. But I have been trying it out myself and it does have a significant impact. But if you can't go red light for that reason, dim lights as best as you possibly can. Try to keep them at eye level rather than on top on the ceiling. Yeah.

What about eating? So when it comes to eating, that's fascinating too because everything, every process in the body circulates on its own circadian rhythm, right? Most organs and all your cells function off of 24 to 25 hour rhythm. And we know when they're dysregulated, they kind of start to run free.

So when it comes to eating, most people do have a specific time of the day where they're better able to assimilate nutrients and then add with a certain processes such as the release of insulin and glucose regulation. So Dr. Sachin Panda is really, really big on this area of time restricted eating. If you've ever seen any of his podcasts or read any of his research, and it's very fascinating. When you regulate the times that you eat based off of the circadian rhythms, the body tends to do much better with absorbing nutrients and not having any type of dysregulation with how your body handles it, either hormonal or nutrient-based. And so when you look at, I love,

he gave a talk a while ago when I was a doctoral student at ASU. He came to our PhD student RAND conference and he gave an example like this. And he's like, okay, let's say you have an individual who's right smack dab in the middle, okay? Let's say they start eating at 10 a.m. and then they stop eating at about six or seven, right?

Normal circadian rhythm for most people. That gives you enough time before going to bed around 9 p.m. to allow your body to fully digest and not be worried about nutrient assimilation and you can allow the body's processes for sleep to do what they need to do the right way. But let's say that we go outside of that circadian rhythm and we eat a little too late, right?

Think about cars getting on a highway during the day, right? Cool, all right? All the cars that should be getting about cars getting on a highway during the day, right? Cool, all right? All the cars that should be getting on to get on the highway during the daytime that are labeled for daytime are doing what they need to do. Pretend that these cars represent daytime processes, right? Then nighttime comes, daytime cars come off the highway, and then nighttime cars get on the highway. Cool, right?

Everything's working hunky-dory the way that it should, bodily processes. But what happens if you do an activity such as eating too late at night outside of that zone, outside of that circadian rhythm? What's going to happen then? Well, you've got the nighttime cars that are already there getting on the highway, but then you've got the daytime cars that all of a sudden try to jack up the highway and then you have a traffic jam. All right? And so to think of that, what's in the physiology in that way, things aren't going to function as they should at that time. And so there was a big study that Sachin put out with his graduate student. If you guys I'm not sure

if you're familiar with the study that looked at what happens when we take nocturnal creatures. So they took they took mice and kept them on a schedule that was restricted. You know, they were only allowed to eat food at nighttime and not allowed to eat food during the daytime. Then they had a second group of mice that were able to do whatever they want ad libitum. They were able to eat during the day,

they were able to eat at night. Fascinating research. What they were able to find is that in the individual mice that were allowed to eat whenever they want, we saw greater degrees of issues with insulin resistance. We saw obesity related outcomes. We saw dysregulation of coordination. We saw tons of issues with the liver.

We saw dysregulation of cognitive function as well. When you took a look at the other ones who were time restricted, everything improved the opposite direction, all right? Higher cognition, stayed lean, all right? No issues, no leptin resistance. They had no issues with satiation, completely fine. Showing Sachin that, oh my goodness,

there's some sort of circadian rhythm component to consumption of nutrients. And so what they ended up doing, they've now started to do this for the last few years adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenocococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenocococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, adenococcal, in individuals who start practicing time-restricted eating practices. In my own practice and coaching, before I came to Rapid, working with individuals,

I have done this with individuals with diabetes, all of them improve HbA1c levels when it comes to practicing a time-restricted eating diet. And it's not like intermittent fasting, which is what people get wrong when it comes to this. It's just simply waiting an hour after you wake and stopping eating two to three hours prior to going to bed. That's it. No calorie restriction. So that is matched for calories in any way or to what degree is just

simply having less time to eat, reducing calories, etc. and then they're losing weight and having positive health outcomes just because they're not as obese as they once were, etc. So they were naturally led to potentially not eating more, which of course was one of the limitations of the study. But because of the fact that we weren't going against the circadian processes, it didn't dysregulate their hormones, ghrelin

and leptin specifically. So they felt more satiated, and ghrelin was more normal. Ghrelin is that hunger hormone. And so what you'll see with individuals who their circadian misalignment occurs, you'll see it go the opposite direction. You'll see leptin is lower, the satiation hormone, and ghrelin is higher. And so this will especially happen with individuals who stay up too late, right? Your late night Netflix watchers and your late night video game Fortnite players, right? They'll be staying up way too late past the time that they need to, which is already a

metabolic compromisation type of position when you're staying up too late and combine that with sedentary activity, which we know has negative health outcomes and ghrelin starts going through the roof. Well, you're going to be more likely to jump in the fridge and grab the most grab the most savory salty high fat product that you can eat because we see that as well. When you stay up later, cognitive function is also in disarray. Executive function goes down.

All right. And the higher your stress level is, the less access you actually have to those executive centers in your prefrontal cortex. This was actually part of my thesis and looking at the bidirectional relationship between sleep, physical activity and cognitive function. And so you're going to be less likely to make wise choices at night and potentially over-consumed calories, which is what more than likely happened in the other mice. So are you saying like, you know, two to three hours before bed, no, no snacks, no, just

don't eat. For most people, I try to tell them not to. But then when you have someone who is conducive to healthy behaviors and is physically active and taking care of themselves, having a little carbohydrates in the evening ain't going to hurt anybody. Having a little protein in the evening ain't going to help anybody. a little protein in the evening ain't gonna help anybody. And this is where you have to, just the art of coaching. What's gonna work specifically for your client or what are their needs? If you've got someone who is low by 600 calories, they haven't hit their macros that

particular day and their goal is to potentially build muscle and gain weight, then having a little protein shake in the evening might not be a bad idea. All right? As long as they can keep up with what their needs are and still get a good night's rest is what's going to be the absolute best in that particular equation. But you got to think most people aren't doing that. Most people who are not physically active, not doing those things, what are they usually having for dinner? Really, really high fat, all right? Potentially processed, all right? And then going to bed right afterwards, their thermic effect of food is way up, their body temperature is way up, right, their body is focusing on getting rid of the food, rather than focusing

on sustaining their resting heart rate, which is going to negatively influence their sleep, they're gonna be tossing and turning all night. Is there any research, kind of like on how that food is used as well? I I've heard, um, and, and I'd love to just kind of like, No, the validity of it. Um, when you eat, if you immediately follow that with some sort of walk, some sort of physical exercise, um, that it's kind of like, you're telling your body, Hey, we just ate. Now we need to go use it in this direction where if you sit down and eat a bunch of. Not me by any means, dried mangoes right before you go to bed because they're delicious.

You're essentially just putting a bunch of sugar in your bloodstream and just not not directing traffic. It just kind of sits there, which I would imagine has some less than optimal outcomes when it comes to like glucose levels. Yeah, I just took a jab at Costco specifically. You're like, those Costco mangoes are too good. They really are too good. And they should not. I don't know how many mangoes they have to dry to get into that bag, but it must be at least 100 per because it's a lot. It's so good. I can't take it. Diabetes in a lot. Oh my God. It's so good, I can't take it. Diabetes in a bag.

Right, I call it fruit. But Anders, 100%, if you go for a walk or you do some exercise after you consume a meal, you will see a reduced postprandial response. You will see improved glucose regulation from that meal, especially if it was in a one-to-one ratio, at least a protein to carbohydrate as well, will also improve that.

Think back to cultural norms. Most people, I come from an Italian, Hispanic background. Most people from those cultures, that's the culture for them to do. That's what they do, that's their behaviors. After they eat a real big ass meal, they'll all go for a walk, they'll all go chat. They'll all, my grandmother did that

after every giant Italian pasta meal We had when I was growing up as a kid and I'd be like where's grandma and all my aunts and my dad would be like Oh there they went on their walk. They'll be back and then we went outside and played wiffle ball All right And we never had any issues and so you'll see that in a lot of cultures like that where and when you do the research On it, you will see yes glucose is far more regulated when you go for a little bit of exercise after your meal. It's a really, really great strategy. Yeah. The couch will kill you. That's terrible. It really does.

You mentioned chronotypes earlier, like who are the morning people and the evening people, very similar to that concept regarding how hungry I am at certain times of the day. I wake up in the morning and I'm never hungry in the morning. I love the weekends, especially because I can just like wake up, sip some coffee for like an hour or two, maybe longer and then eat when I actually have actual hunger driving that behavior rather than like force feeding myself like I do on most weekdays where like I got to just get some breakfast in me so I can get out the door so I can get on with my day.

And then in the evenings, it's the opposite. I'm like famished in the evenings. And as busy as I am with all the things these days, like I'm more concerned about not getting enough calories than getting too many calories. And so like I naturally, if I don't think about trying to intentionally eat as much food as I can throughout the day,

then I tend to lose weight. That's just where I'm at in my physiology at the moment. So in the evenings when I'm actually hungry, and like, you know, especially after I like put my kids to bed and all that, like, I'll just sit in my kitchen and eat until I go to bed. And I have the debate in my head all the time of like, should I really be eating all this food right before I go to bed? I'm not worried about getting fat, but is it disrupting my sleep? I tend to

feel like I sleep pretty well. I rarely have sleep issues, no, no complaints on that. And so I feel like it sleep pretty well. I rarely have sleep issues, no complaints on that end. So I feel like it's probably okay. But is there any legitimate research out there that looks into people that are naturally more hungry in the morning versus naturally more hungry in the evening and how that affects their physiology? While I don't know any study specifically,

I can intuitively think what might be going on as far as A, could be your chronotype, B, also potentially could be the fact that cortisol is highest in the morning and most people aren't hungry as soon as they wake. Could potentially also be done to the behaviors you had the previous night, could also result in that, whether or not you have enough stored glycogen,

whether or not you did a hard workout that previous day. But what it could also potentially be an opportunity for you to look at the fact that maybe this could be a time restricted type of thing here where we wait for cortisol to come down more naturally. Maybe it's best for your particular chronotype and physiology to wait and eat at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. anyhow. And that might be better for you.

And so, and that's why I try to educate my clients and everyone else about this, and especially my students as they're building into this industry is individual differences is a real thing. Everybody is different. Everyone's not always going to react the same. Usually, if you were not hungry all day long, then I would say, Doug, there's a problem there.

Maybe there's some issues with cortisol being way too high. Maybe you have some stress on your physiology. But if you're naturally getting hungry on during the day anyhow, then most likely everything's okay. I would advise you try to not have a huge meal before going to bed. All right. But if you haven't had any issues so far and you sleep soundly throughout the night, then do what you can tolerate and keep it up as long as you are keeping your macronutrients where they need to be for your own goals and your own health. What about temperature and like noises at night? So it that's also interdependent for most people, but most sleep hygiene related protocol

state you want to keep things quiet, right? And you want to keep things as dark as possible. You'll have some people who do really, really well, which is that constant wavelength of sound. So us fan people who really like the sound of a fan. And that's more related to the research of like the binaural beats and the wavelength of sound that allows us to stay calm and be more in that beta state. But some people can live in New York City, keep the window open, and hear guns blazing and tussling all over the place and that's for them comfortable. No chance. The only reason they say that's comfortable is because they don't know that you can live out by mash. Right. Now what about temperature though? Like what temp is optimal? Temperature is a real thing and so on that's because temperature has a significant rhythm,

right? Temperature is at its lowest during the evening, and then it reaches its highest point about that late afternoon. And it's that turnover that is one of the major signals to the body that says, hey, we're shifting over to nighttime now, it's time to go to bed. All right? And it's very, very important to pay attention to that because for, and then this is actually there's some individual differences here too and I'll talk about that but most people you want to keep that bedroom you know 68 degrees at least all right I actually sometimes go as low as 65 and I drive my fiance nuts and so but you

wanted to you want to keep it chilly and then you want it to slowly rise as you come to the morning times to naturally occur with the natural rise of temperature in the morning that helps to wake you up. So if you're trying to get to sleep and you're having issues with sleep, definitely consider temperature as a potential factor that could be resulting in what's going on. Keep the temperature low. Yeah, I do that with my eight sleep, which is really convenient for this where, like, I'm, maybe this is related to chronotype as well. If I compare myself to my wife, she's a morning person. I'm an evening

person when we go to bed. I'm always too hot. I will kick the covers off of me, you know, the same temperature, only kicking the covers off me and she'll be like adding extra blankets to to get warm enough to go to sleep. And I'm like, I'm sweating in my bed. And then the morning it switches where I wake up and I'm just like, I'm like shivering and she's kicking all the blankets off of her. So is that, is body temperature related to chronotype?

Is there any research on that that you know about? Yep, that can be different as well, based off of the person to person changes. And there's also sexual differences we could talk about. And there's also, depending upon the misalignment of someone's circadian rhythm, that also negatively influences certain gender specifics. And so that's honestly a big thing

you guys have to work on together when it comes to being a couple. And this is things I have to tell a lot of people oftentimes because having a completely different sleep pattern from your spouse or your partner can be one of the biggest issues that causes so many sleep related issues. So, and it's where I actually talk to people, they utilize the eight sleep beds for that reason,

because their temperatures are different. And so this also brings into question. So I, when working with particular clients, mainly you would advise to help someone get to sleep, to do something that causes some amount of heat stress, whether it's getting in the bath or doing something like the sauna, because it will drive your body's core temperature up to that highest point. And then as soon as you get out of that environment, body's radiation effect radiates out the heat and your body core temperature plummets, which is a great way to help send that signal to the body to fall asleep. However, there are some people where it's the opposite,

where for some reason that will make them worse and feel more agitated and cold will have a negative impact. And I've actually found that this is actually true for those individuals that have those really, really, really, really, really low HRVs, where we really gotta do something to help get rid of their energy. So our high anxious, high performing people.

And so I've experimented, I won't say his name, with one of our individuals with this, and doing cold exposure at night in the shower has given him the best night's sleep ever, versus ever doing anything that's heat related in the evenings instead. So that can also play a significant role in identifying that individual variation and what their chronotype could be contributing to in that factor.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I often wonder about that. Like I have a sauna and when I use a sauna in the evenings, I do fall asleep and sleep very well. I also feel like there's like a kind of a solitude, just calming down aspects to it where I have that 30 minutes of quiet time to kind of think through my day and take notes about what I need to do the next day, etc. And then

when I fall asleep, I don't have my mind racing because I kind of already took care of all that. But the rationale of you get really, really hot in the sauna. And then when you go to bed, because your body's hot, your body's trying to dump heat, your body's trying to cool down. And then when your body gets all the way sufficiently cool, you can fall asleep, seems to contradict the eight sleep that I have where I'll put my eight sleep on, really, really cold, and I'll lay there with it cold underneath me, and then I often wonder, is this making my body cold

so I can fall asleep, or is my body trying to counteract the cold by heating itself up, which would be the opposite, it would be detrimental to falling asleep. And so I have these two models that seem to contradict each other. Yeah, yeah, it happens all the time in exercise science. It's a pain in the butt. There was no answer. No answers. We don't know. It's up in the air.

And see, and that's the beautiful question about exercise science too. And that's why we continue to investigate and ask those questions of what could potentially be going on and what is the effect of that individual variation. I know that says they all seem to work great. The sauna seems to help me sleep wonderfully and eight sleeps are fucking awesome.

Like we had no kickback from saying that. Like my eight sleep, I think is amazing. My wife loves it too. You can be cold if you want to be cold. You can be warm if you want to be warm you can be warm if you want to be warm It can be different on both sides of the bed like that things the fucking game changer. I really really like it Yeah, I have a question on kind of like the the tracking side or the metrics that you find to be the most important Like personally I wake up and I turn that little aura thing on and all I really look at is what's my HRV?

What was my resting heart rate? And I know that if the HRV is like closer to a hundred, great job. And if my heart rate is above in the four days, I feel like I just did something awful. Like there was just an amount of stress or something going on that like really screwed me up. Are there things that like, where do you kind of put like the most important metrics on a night to night basis? So I agree with you. HRV and heart rate are the first two I do look at after I have gathered at least two to three weeks of data on a person because there are individual variations

with HRV and temperature and heart rate as well. at least two to three weeks of data on a person because there are individual variations with HRV and temperature and heart rate as well. Even Andy Gopin talks about this, right? He's like, you can, HRV is one of those weird things where you'll have those individuals that, you know, clinically state, all right, if you have a high HRV through the roof, you're very, very parasympathetic. And then if you have a very, very low HRV that that's sympathetic. But you can have someone that has, you know, an HRV of 40, but is absolutely fine. And when it comes to levels of stress, whether or not they know it or not physiologically, and then you've got someone who's got, you know, 100, 120 HRV, and they're absolutely mental and out of their mind. And so you have to look at, all right, what is the consistency of this person? And what are their

subjective outcomes from this? And then that'll allow me to see, all right, when they jump down from that, and then can I detect a difference? Okay, now I can see that a five point or 10 point degradation to their HRV resulted in this. That more than likely is indicating that something's going on. Their behaviors are not conducive to their overall health. Same thing with heart rate. And so, their behaviors are not conducive to their overall health. Same thing with heart rate. And so, but in addition to those things, because I'm big into sleep, I love looking at the time in bed,

how many times they've actually woken up in the middle of the night. And this is why I also wish we had some form of actigraphy measuring. And so, cause actigraphy is something that I- Yeah, speak English here for a second. Go ahead. So actigraphy is what we are going to be

googling that on their way to work and getting car wrecks looking up at antigraphy. And so an actigraph is something that's able to measure movement during sleep at a clinical level. We utilize this for sleep research and clinical research and there's even variations of them that also allow them to detect the light that comes on during the day as well And so the actor graph company makes these they're very expensive But they're able to show us the overall sleep rhythms throughout the night when someone is really waking up I know the aura ring does that too But it's more fine-tuned with an actor graph and you can also sense physical activity levels with this as well

And so we utilize this in my dissertation research And so when you utilize the actor graphs, you can really see, oh wow, they had a great degree of sleep fragmentation. And so the Oura Ring functions on this as well, just not to as a fine tune degree as I would like to see, but it does allow me to ask the right questions as to, towards what's going on with my client.

Did they stay up really, really late? Were they consistency? How was the consistency from day to day? That is a big one that I'm really paying attention to now because especially when certain clients just continually tell me that, hey, I can't seem to get this sleep thing handled. And then I go through their schedule and I'm like, well, dude, you keep going back and forth and back and forth the timing of your bed from Monday to Tuesday. And then Saturday, it's all over the place. And then you drank that one night and that's going to negatively influence your bed from Monday to Tuesday, and then Saturday it's all over the place.

And then you drank that one night and that's gonna negatively influence your sleep. And so I really like to look at the timing each and every night. And I like to see how many times they've been waking up. And then I also take a look at their heart rate too, because if I can see that their heart rate rose all of a sudden right before they were going to bed,

okay, that tells me they're either doing something very, really stressful in the evening, or maybe they had a really, really late meal, and it took a while for their resting heart to stabilize. And so when your aura ring will tell you that too, they'll say, hey, your readiness is kind of low because your resting heart rate took a while to stabilize the night prior, more than likely had to do with the fact

that you were probably doing some sort of behavior that wasn't conducive to sleep hygiene, such as eating a really, really big meal or even doing really, really late night exercise can do that as well. What about late night sex? Well, I'm not going to take the hit on that one. Well, subjectively speaking, that would make-

You gotta have boundaries, you know? You gotta have boundaries, yeah. I would like to do that research. Would you rather live a couple of extra days increase? No, I'm more than 10 years old now. Or is it is it just a fairer? You just shake hands with the with the devil at the end and you just go. Yeah, right.

And see, but that's when you're splitting hairs at that point. You're just like, OK, well, let's look at how I feel psychologically. All right. If you're doing certain activities that make you feel good psychologically, that's more than half the game that's going to make you feel better and have a good rest. And so, you know, and we talk about this all the time. If you do everything right, take my acro, buddy. You'll be a night. I feel like I sleep better afterwards.

So I feel like it's a wash. Me too. Yeah. You have that rise of prolactin and put you to sleep. That's why guys fall asleep immediately. And our fiancés are wives are like, Hey, where'd you go? Help it. It's male biology. Can't we talk? Give me 10 minutes.

Give me 10 minutes here. Makes you think I want to talk. But anyways, all right. But that's a real thing, right? You can take care of yourself physically to the max. But if you're not taking care of what's up here in the mind, psychologically, it's not going to matter. And so doing the things that make you potentially feel better, as long as they're healthy behaviors, can be an absolute plus. And I would never

tell my client to abstain from anything that might make them feel psychologically better. I would listen. Yeah. That would be a great time to find a new doctor. What about wearables? Exactly. Quickly. What about wearables? Exactly. Quickly, what about wearables? Is O-ring the best? I mean, if you're going to get a wearable or what? So actually, and that's funny that you asked that question.

Before I left Arizona State, I had colleagues who were actually researching the validation of these things. And they actually found that compared to polysomnography, these are actually pretty damn good compared to any other wearable that you have. Then that comes down to the Apple watch, which I'm not wearing currently, your Garmin and even the Whoop. The Aura ring tends to be on the top

when it comes to health. Really? It's awesome. I have a question kind of about the drugs that we put in our body as a society on a regular basis. Definitely not talking about himself, just society. I have no, uh, no bias towards any of these that I will bring up. Let's just call that.

Um, I've actually like, I'm like no drinking guy in the neighborhood. Um, because it is so bad for your sleep. So bad. because it is so bad for your sleep. So bad. I agree. Every time I will have, if I have like two drinks at dinner and that alcohol does not clear my system

by the time I go to bed, I will look down at my oral ring and it looks like I didn't sleep at all. Like it is, your HRV will just drop down into the teens. Your heart rate will go into the 50s, 60s. Um, and if that's where you're normally staying, it's probably up in the seventies, eighties almost if, um, like there's like a 20, 20 beats per minute swing sometimes, um, but there's still booze in the system. Um, I've also noticed that, um, if I have like a cigar or something with friends and I'll just be laying in bed

and my brain will just not like there's there's no calming down. That's really like the extent of my my marijuana seems to be not a problem at all. Are there is that like no, it's terrible. Maybe you're sleeping. I don't know. I'm pretty tired when my head hits the bed. N equals one here. But are there like categorically things to stay away from or is it just all the things

staying away because your body is going to have to process those stressors in a way that you're putting in and there is no good way to casually have a drink. There isn't. You make that sacrifice when you consume that product. And so, and this is how I teach my students about alcohol. First of all, and you know, I like that. I'm sure they're listening to you, by the way. That's why they went to college. I do. Okay guys, sleep is gonna be bad. And they're like yeah I don't have class until noon. What does it matter? My chronotype, the middle of my sleep is 6 a.m. So I like having a drink now and again. You know I'm definitely in that camp. I'm not an anti-alcohol person but alcohol is terrible. Absolutely terrible

for every aspect of the human body. I'm actually in the CDC, World Health Organization. Oh yeah, men, one to two drinks a day, women, one drink a day. I'm starting to be more in the camp with Dr. Huberman and saying, one a week if you're lucky, with the negative influence it has not only on your liver and levels of muscle protein synthesis, but also what it does to you cognitively.

When you drink alcohol before you go to bed, my best allegory, my best representation visually about this is think about putting your key into the ignition of a car and you're trying to turn the engine on, but the engine won't turn over. That's what's happening when you're drinking alcohol. It significantly fragments your sleep. So you have lower deep sleep, lower REM sleep. And while you think you are getting a good night's rest, and this is what a lot of people used to say, oh, I sleep like a baby when I have six beers. The issue is that's basically making you unconscious. It's knocking out

your prefrontal cortex and therefore you're not getting restorative sleep when you are drinking. Same thing with sleeping drugs and sleep prescriptions. When you look at all the research on individuals who use sleeping drugs to get to sleep, their mortality rate goes through the roof. And so one of my, that was something my mentor was like big on as well, is trying to get people off sleeping meds as best as you possibly can. Try to holistically correct your sleep without drugs, because sleeping, all sleeping drugs do is knock you out.

They don't actually allow you to get through the sleep stages that you need to naturally. And so- Would you consider melatonin to be a part of the sleep drugs? So, when it comes to melatonin, you gotta be careful with this as well, all right? Think of melatonin as just getting the guy

to walk up to the starting line of a race with a starting pistol. It's not actually something that's going to help you get to sleep. It's going to modulate your circadian rhythm in the opposite way that light exposure does. And so this is why utilizing melatonin supplements oftentimes when people claim to feel better is a placebo. Melatonin is better used when you know you're going to travel and you know you're trying to advance your phase in one particular direction.

And so when it comes to actually improving your sleep, you've got to make sure that your light exposure is on point and your behaviors are on point. No amount of melatonin pills can help that. And then when it comes to marijuana, well, although CBD has been found to be OK and help with inflammation and potentially help individuals with sleep, especially in populations I work with,

with PTSD, THC, however, is bad no bueno when it comes to. I think you just said more fun than CBD, right? That's what you said. Every time I hear people talk about CBD, I go, what, why would you take all the fun out of this? This makes no sense. Exactly. I thought he was still listening. I thought he was, I thought he was just going to mute you and put his fingers in his ears and go, la la la la la la. That's like decaffeinated coffee. Like what's the point? Oh it makes me pee a lot. That's great. Yeah. Where's the fun? Wait so joking aside go down the THC route like what how does it negatively impact sleep? What are the outcomes? THC does the same thing. THC does the same thing. It makes it more difficult to get through your sleep stages

and because of its effect on long-term memory as well, also has degratory effects. And so I never recommend to people, don't drink and sleep, don't smoke and sleep, don't drink coffee and sleep, because that's another thing too. You've heard of these individuals who say that they can have a pot of coffee before going to sleep.

And so you'll have these high metabolizers of coffee that will react just fine and fall asleep. However, if you were to take their brain scan and compare it to that of a 70 to 80-year-old, you would see as high amount of sleep fragmentation as you would in the individual who drank coffee as that 70 or 80-year-old. And so although these people think

that they can fall asleep just fine, nowhere near getting as much restoration as 80 year olds. And so although these people think that they can fall asleep just fine, nowhere near getting as much restoration as they could be. Do you know what the distinctions are here between drinking at 7 p.m. versus having a drink over lunch versus same with cannabis or any other drugs, like beer or if you're a wake and bake person versus like you smoke right before you go to bed? Does it?

Hold on a second. So I will be- What a last time you heard that, Matt. I will be 100% honest. your wake and bake person versus like you smoke right before you go to bed. Does it does it. So I will be you heard that. I'll be 100 percent honest. I don't know. My buddy, Alex, I hear it a lot. He does it a lot. I don't know. I don't know the decay rate of THC.

I would have to look into that to see what that is. But when it comes to alcohol, however long it takes your body to fully process it out. And so most of the time I'd recommend, if you know you're going to want a better night's sleep, but you know that you're gonna go have a drink and watch the game or do something, try to keep it at least two to three hours

prior to going to bed. Give your body time to process the alcohol, get your resting heart rate under control before you go to sleep and you'll usually be okay. But that's also dependent upon how much alcohol you've had. Because if you had, if you're day drinking all day and you've had six to eight drinks, good night, Betty. You're not gonna get much sleep that night.

All right? Right. I think it also takes significantly longer. Like we get like the half life of whatever alcohol or THC or what I think that the actual clearing of that stuff takes significantly longer than we really anticipate. I did like a 48 hour fast for I'm 40. It's fine. I'll call it colonoscopy.

I had to do it. So you have to fast and you got to clean your whole system out. So literally there was like nothing in my body. And that night I came home and had like 10 milligram edible. Yo, at like noon the next day, I was like, what is going on with me? It's because my body, like it takes that long,

but I'm usually, I have a bunch of food in me or I have coffee or something along those lines. But that was the first time that I ever just kind of like on a very empty, like the most empty stomach that you can have, like, had THC and it was like, Holy crap, this stuff sticks around for a very long time that I had no clue. Edibles are crazy. Yeah. You don't know what you're going to get. Don't do it. No. But that's the same thing I talk about with caffeine.

You know, people are like, but isn't the half life of caffeine six hours? It's like, yes. But you re-say that word, half life. Yeah. It's still sticking around your bloodstream for an additional six hours. And even if you had your last drink or coffee or energy drink at noon, it's still going to be circulating in your bloodstream around 11 o'clock at night or to midnight. And so that's, you have to be very, very careful, especially if you're drinking a lot of it more than just one or two cups a day. Oh, wow. So like you should really be done with like energy

drinks. I'm just gonna work out in the morning then. All right. Yep. And so yeah, you gotta be careful pre-workouts because people will never anticipate the effect of their pre-workout. You'll have those individuals who take it in the afternoons because that's the only time they have to work out and they'll pump 300 milligrams of caffeine. And don't do that. That's why I honestly try to stop drinking caffeine by 10 a.m. at the latest. This is a great podcast. Yeah, dude. Yes. the latest knowing this is a great podcast. Yeah, dude. Yes. Boom. Where can people find you, sir? They can find me at Dr. C. Perry zero zero one on Instagram.

All right. They can find me everywhere. I have my own podcast, Kicking at the Eway podcast that I do here for the university. And I do nothing but try to give out good content and inspire others to have permanent lifestyle changes. You're the man. What's up, Mash? Mashaleed.com. You can read my articles on Jimwear. Just Jimwear blog. Hey, Mash, was that two scoops of pre-workout you took mid-podcast here as we're talking about sleep? It was. It was one scoop. It was one scoop. One scoop?

As my coffee. Yeah. Coffee was the pre-work scoop. It was one scoop. One scoop? That was my coffee. Coffee? What's the pre-workout? I love it. No, no, that is my coffee. Yeah, no coffee. I don't really like coffee that much. That's C4. Got you. But it's the sport. It's the sport, C4. It's not ultimate, so I'm getting better.

It's early enough. It's the morning. It's like decaf. Right. Doug Larson. So I'm getting better. Yeah, it's early enough. It's a morning. Yeah, like decaf, right Like Larson Right on I'm on Instagram. Doug is see Larson Chris. Dr. Chris Perry, dude I love having on the rapid team you fucking smash Chris one of our coaches We didn't already say that and does very very well with our with our clients So dude, I knew you'd do a great job on the show, especially talking about sleep Which is like the the center of the bullseye in your wheelhouse.

So really enjoyed it, dude. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Have fun. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. And make sure you get over to rtalab.com. That is the signature program.

Inside rapid health optimization, where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at rta lab.com friends. We'll see you guys next week.