Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: The Rhythm of Rest: Unlocking Sleep Potential Naturally w/ Dr. Chris Perry, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Dr. Christopher A. Perry, an Assistant Professor at Eastern Kentucky University, 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 Links: Dr. Christopher Perry on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrack family this week on Barbell Shrug. Physiology Friday's back. Today, Dr. Chris Perry's talking about the rhythm of rest and how you can align your body, build a circadian rhythm so that you sleep beautifully. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That's where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis,

and you can access that report over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrews partner, Doug Larson, and coach Travis Bass. Dr. Chris Perry, welcome back to Shrug, man. We've got a good flow going with you.

It's nice having you in-house. You've got to come and hang out with us all the time. Now, I saw on X, Twitter, we might be getting rid of daylight savings time. Yeah, I did see that too. Which one are you choosing? Which one's healthier? Am I taking today's time?

I don't like today's time. I don't like where we're at now. I like the summer. Long nights. I love the sun being out. I want to play outside forever. I don't want to have to... I don't think you can do away with that, though.

Like, sunlight's going to not change. I just think there's no changing back and forth. We're not farmers anymore. It gets dark at like 7.30 or something like that instead of like 9 o'clock. And will it still see? You've got to wake up early if you want the sunlight then. Yeah, Kentucky's bad too. It takes forever to come up over here.

That's why I love being in Arizona for so long because it was up at like 5.30. Oh, yeah. It's just amazing. No mountains are rolling hills. That sun pierces through to your soul, too. It's so warming. I remember hearing about some, there was some type of data. Maybe you actually have more specifics on this than I do,

where there's like some tangible difference at a population level that when daylight savings hit, it disrupts people's sleep, again, at a population level where it's enough to cause some amount of health problems and some percentage of the people. Yes, yes, 100%. I'm prepared to talk about that today. Oh, talking about it right now.

I want to hear it. I didn't even know everything he's ever talked about like that. I am on board with getting rid of daylight savings time. And it's not so much because when we take the clocks back

and we get an extra hour sleep, that's great for most people who are sleep deprived anyway. But when it's the other way around in the springtime, when we go forward, that's what causes the issues. So what ends up happening is circadian misalignment is a poor thing.

Any one to two hours is all you need. One to two hours is enough to cause a hyperactivation of your central nervous system, specifically your hypothalamical tertiary access. So all the individuals that you see at Rapid who struggle with HRV or autonomic nervous system-related issues, they're all at risk for something like this happening. Because first thing in the morning, you actually have a morning blood pressure surge that a lot of people overlook. And so if you're already at risk of cardiovascular disease or if you're someone who's at high risk of high blood pressure,

all these things, just from setting those clocks forward and you losing an hour of sleep, not only do you have sleep deprivation now playing it against you, but now you're misaligning your circadian clock. And so with that extra activation of your autonomic nervous system, puts more stress on your system, impairs your blood pressure sensitivity, so it influences your barrel reflex sensitivity, puts you up much higher risk of having myocardia infarction because of all those other things that are happening, you're seeing elevated cortisol, you're seeing it affect your rest of your resting heart rate and your heart rate variability.

So all that puts just extra stress on your cardiovascular system, you're a lot more likely to have a heart attack. That's why when you look at the data, when daylight savings time happens at that time of the year, yes, you see a significant increase in a lot of heart attacks that occur in the United States. Doesn't Arizona already not change? That's correct.

Yeah, they do not have daylight savings. Which one are they on? Are they on the longer nights or like the sun goes down to like nine o'clock in the summer? So right now, they are on. So they are one hour ahead of California right now. But then when we go back in the spring, then they'll be lined back up with California again. Gotcha.

But then it also depends on where you are in Arizona, because it depends. They go to like central time or mountain time. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep. You're playing devil's app here. If daylight savings time is the thing that gives you a heart attack,

aren't you just like a ticking time bomb anyway? You're a goner. Is that the only issue? aren't you like already, you're already on the fence, man. You're about the people, you're about to fall off the cliff. And that presents a good point, right, of how resistant you are to stress at that moment at that certain time. That's why HRV is such an incredible measure for that. And that's being able to see how resilient are you right now towards any acute level of stress. And so this is why we see such a big problem,

especially in our community of individuals we're trying to work with and why it's so important for us that even though HRV is low and it's not the best measure when we use the or a data, but it still gives us clear indications. Hey, you might not be most resilient right now towards stress going forward, even if you feel great. And that's the conversation I have constantly with clients. It's like, I feel great. I'm not stressed. It's like, you might not subjectively perceive you as being stressed right now, but your physiology does. And that is something that we really need to pay attention to. And your physiology is what kills you. So not what you think. So last thing about the daylight savings time is that it's irrelevant at this

point because the reason we had that anyway was for farmers and now we have lights and we have electricity and we just don't need you know to to it's not as important that we get up with the sun and go even though well it really is for our health but the whole reason of starting the first place is gone now like we have lights right those aren't the same light that's not the sunlight that's way different you mentioned HRV it's almost impossible to have a conversation these days without bringing up HRV. It always has seemed, it has always seemed counterintuitive to me that having more variability for, for something that involves your heart would be better than consistency.

Consistency to sound, sorry, it just sounds like the stable thing. Like, as far as like the natural assumption that if you are healthy, then you are stable and consistent seems like on its face to be like the one that would be more health. and the one to be more erratic and more variable would, to me, naturally seem to be the one that would be less healthy, but it's not like that with heart rate variability. Like, why, why is more variability a good thing? And so that's, that's an interesting question, right? And you have to look at the context of the person.

And where, where is it? Is it, is it the fact that it's 23 milliseconds in between each beat for the majority of their heart rate, or is it, is it only a little bit of their heart rate? And so this is why we take a look at, okay, is someone 23 milliseconds or are they 118 milliseconds in between each heartbeat? But then you also need to take a look at the context of, well, what is the actual resting heart rate at that time? And how long does it take before it actually comes down is an indication that we also need

to look at. If you're taking forever for your resting heart rate to fall in the evening, then that's indicative of you're doing things that you shouldn't be. And it's taking it a long time for you to fall asleep, therefore not setting you up properly for good night's rest, leading. into sleep deprivation, which is then going to cause a negative response on your heart vaporability the next day. And then you'll see all the various symptoms that come from that from.

Then same thing when it comes to the case in misalignment. Cognitive performance goes down. We see issues with insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation. We see it impacts your cardiovascular system. And so whenever I always get that question from the clients. And whenever I do is just like, well, we've got to look at this in the grand scheme of things. You could have a poor resting, poor HRV. but at the same time, what is your resting heart rate?

Is your resting heart rate consistent throughout the night? Because that's something I look at as well on the heart rate data. If I see that someone's resting heart rate is 43Bs per minute and it stays nice and easy throughout the nighttime, okay, cool. Then most likely you are getting some restitution, especially if you're waking up the next morning and you're subjectively feeling great. But if I see this and I see the lines go crazy up and down and the resting heart rate is constantly up and down, then that's how I know, okay, then there's more to the story. here than just the variability between the the heartbeats themselves. So I always say we have to look at the context of the whole picture. We're Picasso right now.

Let's look at the picture as a whole, bring all the other cardiovascular elements into it to look at it so I can say, okay, are you actually at risk of having a poor issue? Because that's another issue we look at too, right, is the difference between taking someone's heart rate variability at night versus first thing in the morning. And unless you have a Garmin or you have a strap-related device, It's difficult, exactly, the morphias. It's difficult to be able to actually get a representation of what's the snapshot picture of how ready you are right now before the day?

Because when you take a look at the differences, the aura data shows you how well someone is recovering over the nighttime, whereas if I get an acute shot of your heart rate variability when you first wake up in the morning, that's showing me how ready you are for the day itself. And I talk to our own Dr. Mike T. Nelson about this over and over again. I know all of our listeners know who he is. He talks to me about this, too. He wishes that aura would put in a daytime HRV and the first thing in the morning

because that actually might be a much better and clearer picture of how well prepared is this person ready for the day. Yeah, but like looking at the nighttime or. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artae program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned

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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. Artae 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 Arteelab.com. That's A-R-E-E-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. Hold on. How much do you think the variance would be between my most rested state waking up in the morning, like without an alarm, to sitting on a Zoom call with Doug? How much varies.

Too stressful. Depends which time you're talking about. So that also depends from person to person, right? So I can give you the best example of someone that I know personally. whose HRV is always low versus mine who is not. You can take a guess of who this person is because I see her data all the time. But, and for some reason, I've also seen this too.

Not all women, but the majority of them tend to have a lower HRV. I don't know why this is. Maybe that's just the sample size I'm looking at. But on average, and I remember Galpin talking about this too, because his significant other was also like this in the example he gave, where their HRV just naturally is lower. So around like 45 to 60 milliseconds. Whereas mine is, she hates me for this, average is 116.

And so what you have to look at is based off of whatever stress is placed upon you, how does it affect your HRV? You have to track that to see what the effect is on you because there is individual variability. So I can give the clear example of myself. Whenever I let's say I have a couple glasses of red wine, all right? And I try to compare and contrast with my heart rate variability ends up being. I know that that's going to negatively influence my sleep, hands down. I'm very sensitive of alcohol, especially later on at nighttime, if I have it in the evenings.

It'll drop my HRV by approximately 20 to 30 points. But for me, specifically when I wake up, that might not feel all that bad. You know, 90 milliseconds is not that bad. I actually still feel pretty okay. But if I drop down all the way to 60 milliseconds because I have a fever or I'm sick, holy, wow. Okay, that was significant. That means for me, greater than a 40 millisecond drop is significant in how my symptoms are going to be expressed that. day. Whereas, let's say I have someone who has a lower HRV, somewhere around 30 milliseconds on

average. And let's say they do the exact same thing. But their drop was only five milliseconds. So let's say average of 30 down to 25. And for that person, actually, she felt okay the next day. Okay. So for her, it's a five millisecond change that really doesn't matter. But what if she's sick and has a fever? And it goes all the way down to 15. That's okay, then I know for that person, a 15 millisecond drop is significant for that person. So you have to take a snapshot of that person and see what happens when their HRV goes up or down and track them that way. And so I've had to do this with every single rapid client as well. I have to monitor, okay, what are the symptoms and what are the changes in the heart rate variability?

And that's how I know, okay, these are the habits that I've identified. You need to be aware of because they negatively influence your heart rate variability in this way by this magnitude. It's different person to person. I want to ask one more question about the resting heart rate. You know, the resting heart rate, first thing in the morning. versus resting heart consistency throughout the night. When it comes to, you said that the first thing in the morning

gives you a better idea if you're ready for the day. But what about overall health, which is more important for like longevity or like, you know, yeah, overall living long time? So that was heart, so right, so that was heart rate variability. But in general, you would want your heart rate variability to be more in balance or towards the parasympathetic side, right? because that is a higher indication that your central nervous system is not hyperactivated, is not constantly in fight or flight over dominance.

Because as you'll see with what I'm prepared to talk about today, when you are constantly in fight or flight, when you have this over dominance of your central nervous system, that misaligning or circading rhythms does result in that negatively influences your metabolism because it alters gene expression, for instance, sensitivity. It negatively influences cognitive function, all from a chronic standpoint as well. that if you're not consistent with your habits, then it has long-term effects if you don't adapt it the other way. This is why I love when Andy talks about this as well.

He's like, you can't just do good habits one night and expect to feel great the next day. If you've done this chronically over the course of time, it's going to take time to adapt back. No doubt. That's why it's so important. Yeah. And you have to teach that to clients.

It's a hard one. It's like, if you've been, right, if you've been sleeping terrible for six months, don't expect one week to fix it. You're going to have to walk on this consistently over time in order to get things to go back the other way. I know. How do we get that across to athletes or our clients in a way where they can understand it? And like, yeah, there's one particular right now that we're dealing with it.

Like, they just just want, okay, I did this thing tonight. Why am I not better? I'm like, damn, man. You spent three years messing things up. Like, one night's not going to cut it. Like, you know, you got to get a few. much behind you to notice an impact, you know? Right.

And so I was actually just at the NSA clinic with our own Dr. Mike Lane as well, since him and I kind of leave back in Kentucky. And him and I were presenting at that conference. And my topic was specifically talking to athletic coaches and how to teach their athletes, how to approach that exact subject, okay? Well, let's appeal to their emotions. What's important to athletes? How they perform?

Right. Their ability to succeed and their ability to win. So if you tell them straight up, hey, this is how sleep deprivation or misaligning or skating rhythms is going to negatively impact you and negatively influence your game. And as soon as you tell them all those negative effects, that's usually what can at least start the engines in their brain saying, oh, okay, maybe I should start going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every day. And actually, I love talking across country runners because they're the ones that usually think that they can get away with more. and they're actually worse. There is a big difference to anaerobic athletes

and anaerobic athletes and your requirements for sleep and restitution. Now, don't get me wrong. It doesn't matter what you're wrong. Hold on. Dig into that. I'd love, go on that.

What are the differences? Okay. So because they're... Especially for MASH. You know he's coaching lots of marathonsors. They love to come to me for some reason. Every time I'm like,

man, I'd like to run past, you know, walking to my car. I should call MASH. That's who my guy. biased. So when it comes to any level of physical activity, both melatonin and cortisol are important hormones to monitor, right? When we get light exposure into our eyes that has a positive impact on cortisol, cortisol is supposed to rise during the day, but then it's supposed to go down at night. And so when cortisol goes down, that also influences insulin to do it. It needs to do as

well, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a relationship between insulin and melatonin. When we receive darkness in our eyes, darkness sends it to the body to start saying, okay, raise melatonin and down regulate insulin. This allows growth hormone to do its thing. It allows testosterone to do its thing to allow you to fully recover throughout the night, upregulate mitosis, muscle protein synthesis, and recover. That's where all the building blocks happen when you sleep. But when you are constantly misaligning your circadian rhythms by waking up at a different time of day, going to bed at a different time of day, you negatively influence all these things. Now, take it from a snapshot of the differences between different athletes.

Now, no matter what kind of exercise you do, this has an influence on the hormones that are expressed and released. This has an expression on the amount of neurological activity that occurred and the wear and tear you put upon the body. But think about your advanced aerobic athletes, the ones who run for miles and just put a lot on their cardiovascular engines. The cardiovascular system needs a lot of time for recuperation and restitution, especially are runners because it requires such that it's a high metabolic equivalent for the levels of

activity that they do requires a lot of time to recover and if they're not getting the amount of sleep that they need for that highly detrimental to the not only their performance the next day but also to their ability to be resilient towards injury because what's what's the number one injury we run into with our runners is constant stress fractures yeah and so it happens over and over again there's actually a relationship between the poor restitution and recovery when receipt deprivation and the prevalence of stress factors occurring. And so now, not to say that this isn't true of anaerobic athletes either, but they can usually get by as far as the performance because sleep deprivation doesn't tend to affect

power output as much, but it will impact their ability to continuously output that power. And so for example, if I sleep deprive Travis right now, all right, he'd still be able to get that really, really heavy weight on that lift, but he might only be able to do it once or twice before he gasses out. That's the effect that sleep cultivation would have on him. Whereas someone like my cardiovascular athletes, they would not be able to give their all. They would be quicker to fatigue.

They would gas up very quickly, sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment independently, both negatively influenced gluconeogenesis. So the restitution of glucose and the muscle is going to be challenged. So the amount of energy that they're going to have is not going to be where it needs to be either that next day. It can be very, very, very difficult for them to perform at a higher level. Believe it or not, guys, I did. coach a really good cross-country guy like yeah I mean of all my athletes no I know at least that

I had him while he was in high school and he eventually went on to run at chapel hill in cross-country that poor dude was so beaten up all the time and like he even in high school because you know my high school athletes you know they'll lift hard but they're gonna you know they're not going to sleep they're going to do all kinds of crazy things this kid could not get away with anything like he had his sleep perfect e-previct any variation at all would reckon whereas football player they can get away with it you know wrestlers all my other athletes can get away with things that kid he had to do everything right and like i've never monitored this is before i was really into monitoring so much i had to monitor everything about that kid but i mean he didn't go on

to kill he's state champion cross-country went to chappell hill to be a runner but that guy You're so right. Sleep, if the sleep is off, wrecked, wrecked soon. Yo, you were talking about hormones a minute ago. You're saying the natural rhythm of things when you're going to sleep, melatonin goes up, growth hormone goes up, insulin's supposed to go down. What does the research show, especially at a hormone level, for like smashing a much of carbohydrate just before you go to bed?

If insulin's supposed to go down, you just like eat a bowl of cereal and try to go to bed, I'd imagine that affects your sleep quality in a negative way. if it's messing with the natural rhythm of your hormones. So it depends. And you have to look at it from the, you have to look up in the lens of how much of you're eating and what can you tolerate. And so because, yes, eating too late

does have a negative influence on sleep because our core body temperature has to fall by at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit. When you consume food, food has a high thermic effect, right? Especially if you're eating things that are high in fat and high in protein. And therefore, it's going to cause that core body temperature to go up because your body is focusing on digesting that food,

which is a misalignment in the activities that should be going on at nighttime. However, if you are having something that is very, very light and very small and it's easily digestible carbohydrates with, say, a protein shake, and it digests pretty fast doesn't have a negative influence on your sleep. In fact, there's various research that actually shows if you have something really, really like a banana and like a cup of milk or two or even a protein shake, she might help you fall asleep a little bit due to the serotonin release that you get from having carbohydrates. And so it all depends on the person, what you can tolerate,

and what food that you're consuming. So if I'm talking to athletes, more than likely, they're going to be okay if they're having, you know, a banana and a protein shake before bed. That might be a sleep aid for them. Whereas someone who has chronic disease risk, you know, part of our community that we work with at Rapid and they're trying to lose weight and they're pounding a pizza before they go to sleep or a burrito,

that might not be the best thing to have. that will significantly influence sleep that night, especially if they're drinking alcohol on top of that, which they always are. And so that has a significantly negative effect in their ability to fall asleep, which will affect how they wake up and perform that very next day. So individual variation, but once again, lighter the food, the better. I usually tell people, if you're going to have anything at nighttime, try to cut it off at two and a half three hours before you go to bed. If you're an athlete or if you're just having a nighttime snack, keep it low and easily digestible carbohydrates and try not to power. it but too much fat. So the typical ice cream dessert right before bed,

uh, not a good idea. You're gonna have to, you broke Anders heart. Daylight, daylight savings time. We're gonna have to get rid of Saturday as a whole. If you wanted that to happen.

Now you can get away with it with those new ninja creamy ice creams. Like Mike Kelly and I do that. That's fine. It's good. Because, yeah, because you make those with like, what is it? Fair Life and Protein powder.

There's virtually no fat in that. It's all protein. Dude. Fair life and the core power protein shake right now is hands down the best protein shake I've had in maybe my whole meathead career. Oh, they're so good, mash. It's like, it's like protein milk, but it's like perfectly macrode.

Taste delicious. They're probably, but at the at the grocery store, I mean. Yeah, anywhere these days, yeah. You get a 4-2 gram one for like a dollar more, man. it is stick with vanilla i don't know that if you have to if you're like actually worried about your health stick with vanilla it seems safe chocolate little shady vanilla or strawberry anything strawberry mass produced you're drinking a pink like wood it just seems weird like i'm trying to drink this protein shake to be healthy you just put like red 40 in it like

Get out of here. Let me ask, let me ask the good doctor. So, like, I started taking this sleep, like, supplement. And now it's no melatonin, nothing. All it has is magnesium, glycinate. It has, you see, glycine and L-thianine. And I noticed an actual difference. I noticed I was able to get to sleep faster, and I stay to sleep.

And for a 51-year-old dude, it's pretty, you know, getting up at night can be a thing. You said, but I definitely know, and all my Garmin readouts, it appears that I was getting more deep sleep. Is that, do you think placebo or what? I'll say what my PhD mentor would say, and he would answer these questions. All right. Well, what are you doing naturally first before you ever consider a supplement? Like, if your sleep hygiene is all over the place and you're not doing anything right as far as keeping your sleep times regular, getting bright light during the day, darkness at night, chilling out in the evenings, then it doesn't matter what kind of supplements you take.

You're not going to overcome that. But when it comes to supplements itself, the placebo effect, the placebo effect is very, very powerful. If you think it's going to help you, and that psychologically causes you to calm down when you take it, hey, I can't beat that. Like, that's a very powerful phenomenon that occurs. As far as the actual evidence behind supplements and their ability to help you fall asleep, I mean, there's a little bit of evidence that magnesium can help.

You know, there was some stuff that went. back. There was a lot of people that were firing back at other influencers. I won't say names. Magnesium 3 and 8 actually isn't the best when it comes to that because it takes a lot of it to actually cross the blood-brain barrier to help you relax. I actually like magnesium by glistenate. I think it's probably the best one it can take right now as far as the form of magnesium. But thionine actually does have calming properties. When you get al-theonine and you combine that into, let's say you have a theenine supplement with your coffee it can actually reduce the jittery like symptoms that can occur um and so this is why i oftentimes like taking thean even if i take

like a really really hard mocha that has like a red eye with the spresona like that can actually help the jittery response um but theanine is theanine is usually also combined with gbba so gaba you know your gaboprateric acids can actually help you be able to relax as well since gabia is naturally secreted at nighttime to help you relax as well. Is it, like I just said, doesn't magnesium cause that? Isn't there some evidence that would say that magnesium helps you relax, but magnesium is just involved in so many processes.

I know. 500. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And so if you are deficient in magnesium and you take it in the evenings, you'll feel it for sure. But if, you know, if you're already getting it from all your dark,

leafy, you know, crucifers, vegetables and everything else, you might not feel as. I wonder if I'm just deficient. Yeah. Potentially? Are you eating your greens? Not as well as I should. I mean, you know, I have a wife of cooks.

So, yeah, some, but still not as much as I probably should. You know, it's going to be the, if I'm not going to eat something, that's probably going to be the first thing I might not. But so there was some evidence I read too with glycine that maybe serotonin increases serotonin, increases serotonin in the brains. Thought? Nah, fake. Slightly.

Slightly. Like that's where I would come in and say, you really want to raise your serotonin yet eat a banana eat a banana really okay or have a cup of rice yep nice have a little bit of carbohydrates as long as you can stomach it don't eat a ton of carbohydrates you don't want to go full thanksgiving yeah just have a little bit have a post post workout shake sweet perry do you want to hear a fun story last time you were on here i disrespected your answer to something and i have to come clean to you in front of all the people here oh i've never heard about Apologize like this.

Marijuana affects your sleep. And I've only been hearing this, you know, for a long time. And every time I hear it, go, yeah, that's just because you don't do it enough. Your body's going to adapt. If you do it more, it'll be better. You'll sleep better. Untrue. Untrue.

I went to Iceland with my family, and I'm not one to smuggle illegal narcotics into foreign countries. The idea of going to jail in Iceland just seems. chilly and i don't want to do that so we left all the things at home um my hrv typically rides in the 70 to 85 zone within 48 hours of uh not having any fun um every single night from there on out i was in the hundreds no way that big a difference it jumped like 30 points and then because I'm n equals one and I must test this as soon as I get home to see what the indicator is

and there is there was very little like jet lag going what I'm west to east when it came back a little bit more jet lag didn't feel as great but my HRV went from

low one hundreds to 40 for like six seven days and I went Oh my gosh. Chris Perry is a genius. I have a life problem. What am I going to do?

The thing that I thought was helping me sleep turns out is significantly harder on your body. So you stopped it completely? Let's maybe not go that far. There's been ice cream than Saturday. But I have I've been wrestling with the idea for a. Since that trip, and over the next, yeah, the answer is, working on it, working on it. It's not even working on it. It's working on eliminating the possession of it in a responsible way.

And then not getting more is the answer. But I have that single thing changed my mind on how much it impacts your sleep. So I must give you lots of credit. had you not said that in the show, I would have continued ignoring all the other scientists. I was like, Dr. Perry, I'll listen to that guy for a second and see what happens over these 10 days. And holy crap, it was a 30, probably on average,

like a 30 point increase in HRV. And I'm never in, maybe not never, but like very rarely in triple digits. And I immediately jumped into the hundreds. And did you feel the difference? Yeah, and like you're on vacation. so it's like a little more relaxing to begin with. There's like many factors,

but that's a very significant jump. Yeah. It's like a 30, 40% jump. Yeah, that's big. And then to see. So I attributed a lot of that jump to like this is vacation. And it probably has some effect. But it was when I came back and it stayed in the 40s,

like 40 to 50 for a week, week and a half until. That's crazy. Holy crazy. crap this is like this is like there's enough data in my brain that i have to actually confront a thing and make a better decision now which is devastating and pretty cool all at the same time it's massive for being uh for being a great scientist so CBD like that's okay though so so that's the thing right so because CBD and TAC are usually within the plant and so but it's CBD is what gives you those anti-inflammatory effects, but it's the THC that causes the sleep disruption,

the sleep continuity related issues. So if you, there's been some evidence to show that CBD can potentially help. It's used a lot in individuals of PTSD. And then when you look at all the veterans research, and so if you remove the psychoactive ingredient, which is the THC, you tend to see more positive, more prominent effects. But yeah, for the majority of individuals, just like how alcohol negatively influences sleep architecture, marijuana, the THC component does the same thing. Wow. Which is worse? Are they about equally?

Which is worse? Yeah. Well, just because of all the negative influences that alcohol has on so many aspects of your health, I would say alcohol probably takes that cake. Alcohol. But, yeah. I would say alcohol is still a billion times worse. You even wanted two drinks a week has a negative influence on you.

Oh, week. You know, I was listening. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I was actually when you were in grad school and you were dealing with all that health stuff, but you would still have like a whiskey or something

like that while you were like doing homework. I was just making it worse. It's terrifying how bad it is. I feel like that number specifically if I have like an IPA in my life it is the numbers drop

an unbelievable amount. That's crazy. And an IPA is always probably double the amount of alcohols. Your normal typical light beer. Yeah. I hate that they're my favorite. I know. I don't I don't drink, if I drink is whiskey. So it's like where, you know, I'm going straight for the good, good. So just don't drink at all, basically is the best.

Turns out if you're just like a natural human and you eat your fruits and vegetables and a good protein, lift some weights, you don't need all that. Yeah. It brings up a good point, though. You know, I was listening to something the other day where a scientist, we all know, was talking about this, Dr. Mike is to tell himself. someone asked him, is it okay to have alcohol every now on that? And he was actually talking about the impact that that down regulation in the evening in a social setting can actually have on a person. When you have these individuals who are in this high stressed environment, the amount of negative impact that stress has on the body, especially if it's chronic. And it's the holidays and you sit down with your friends and you have, you know, one to two drinks, maybe three.

And you got the positive impact of that down regulation, feeling a little bit more relaxed and having that social connectedness, that that's, you know, one to two drinks. actually the social benefits and the actual help benefits of that go far long than what most people will expect to where that's okay to do every now and then. But the problem becomes when you're doing it every week all the time. And then it leads from three drinks a week, seven drinks a week. Yeah. So for all this is coming around the holidays, so people see that in context, like it's okay to have one every now and then.

But it becomes a problem and it starts to become an event. Now, I would tell my wife, it's actually healthy. So that's awesome. I put full sample approval on that one, dude. Yeah, but Dr. Perry said. Yeah. I only get to do that once or twice a month. I'm like, I am tangibly happier when I get to have a drink or two with some friends.

Like, it goes a long way toward my just total body relaxation. 100%. If I'm hanging out with you guys, yeah, it's like there's so much happening more than just some chemical going in my mouth. it's like the whole thing yeah totally agree yeah you can you reconcile a couple of thoughts for me so yeah earlier you're talking about how when you go to sleep your body cools by by one degree Celsius or whatever it is roughly on average there's there's a couple thoughts here so i hear people say do you get in a sauna or some other device that heat you up right before going to bed then after you get out your body kind of dumps heat and it helps you it helps like accelerate the

cooling process naturally but then you also have things like eight sleep which like I love, like, I have an eight sleep and I love it every day. I put it on like negative nine, like basically almost as cold as it goes. And so I'm laying on a cooled pad that is artificially sucking my body temperature down. Is my body then using the same logic from the sauna, like trying to counteract the fact that I'm laying on something cold and trying to heat me back up then? So here's the issue with the sauna. When you look at the research that shows what can help give you that radiation effect is. what you're talking about. Okay. If I know that because the natural rhythm, here we go,

circadian rhythms, core body temperature needs to fall. All right? In order for it to do that properly, you either let that happen naturally or you can use a hot shower that will help bring the heat from your core to the surface. And then when you get out of the shower, it allows you to radiate the heat out, which causes the typical drop in your core body temperature a little bit more rapidly. Here's the problem with the sauna. The sauna might not do that exactly because what's the temperature difference between a typical hot shower and a dry sauna? Dry sauna tends to be much hotter and usually standing in there for a greater amount of time. What we see the problems with that is that can actually stress out your body because remember, heat stress is a significant

amount of stress, especially if you're doing it for the health properties that we recommend to everyone all the time, that might not be a good idea to do really, really late at night because that could drive up your HPA access, put stress on the system, and now all of a sudden you're wired, you took a core body temperature back up and now it's going to be a little bit more difficult for you to fall asleep unless you take some time to down and regulate. But this is funny because there's individual variation with this as well, and I've experimented with our clients because some people just react very, very kindly to warmth and some people react very, very kindly to cold because you would never do cold either right at night

because that could also stress out the system, right? If you get cold enough and you go into a cold plunge at 9 o'clock at night, that's going to wake you up like three cups of coffee. That might not be the best thing to do prior to going to sleep. But if you're someone who responds really, really well to cold because it relaxes you and you feel better, so I was experiment, I won't say his name, but I was going back and forth trying to figure this out

because him and I were doing our own experiment. And for some reason, he responded soon. super well of taking extremely cold showers at night, and he fell right to sleep. I am also one of these people. I love feeling that cold, and I am knocked out like a light. When you would think that the sleep doctor himself would respond very well to heat. And so once again, in a perfect world based off of science, yeah, you want to do something that isn't going to stretch you out. Hot showers are great, allows your core body temperature to fall down. So when you get on your eight sleep, the coldness of the eight sleep can help your core body temperature stay down and then slowly rise.

in the early hours of the morning to coincide with your natural rhythm that will help you wake up. That's what that's supposed to do. But is there individual a variation with this with how someone psychologically responds to a certain stimulus? Yes. So if you have an athlete or someone who just likes to take a cold shower at night because it helps them psychologically relax if they get in bed, let them do it. Same thing if it's a hot shower. And so always go based off the person.

Just try not to go based off extremes. It sounds like they're there that a hot shower, or a cold shower is fine, but the extremes of a cold plunge or a sauna might not be a good idea, right? Correct. Yes. Yes. Yep.

100%. Because you'll see that too, because you know, everything that's coming out with the cold plungers is telling people, oh my gosh, don't do a cold plunge right after your workout. And so that scares people not to take a cold shower after they lift weights, thinking that that's going to have a negative impulse on the inflammatory response. There's not more cold enough. It's not cold enough for as long to have that negative impact. And so for someone who might respond well

to being able to feel more relaxed after a workout by taking a cold shower, that's completely okay. Got it. What about the circadian rhythm that we were supposed to talk about this whole time? Like, I mean, we're touching up. 45 minutes in. Hey, weren't we going to talk about something today?

I want to hear your thing. The topic of the show is advising Trump on what to do with the daylight savings time. We figured it out. Yeah, I want to know about these circadian rhythms that. Like, is it too late? Right? No, it's not too late, but we did there. So the all, I love Dr. Perry.

I mean, I just love hearing this stuff about sleep. So my major points behind everything circadian rhythms is that it needs to be given its own credit as its own individual thing to focus on other than sleep. Because it's your circadian rhythms that tell everything in your body what to do and when to do it. And so if you're constantly pushing it out of alignment because of the difference between, your internal bodily schedule and your social schedule, that's going to be a significant cause of why things can't keep going the right direction when it comes to optimizing your health. Because just how sleep negatively influences all aspects of your health, your circadian rhythms do as well because there's a timing for everything. There's a proper time for you to be able to be optimized to

assimilate nutrients. There's a proper time for you to potentially exercise. There's a proper time for you to schedule when you should do your most cognitively demanding activities. And so all because of what is certain things are going on in your body right now. So I can give you the best example for performance. There is a circadian effect on your VO2 max. And so, and it tends to be in the afternoon. You're going to perform a lot better on your VOTOMX test if you schedule it between the hours of 1 and 4 p.m.

than if you do it first thing in the morning. Why? Because as your body core temperature rises across the day, you see the increase in speed of neural transmissions, the increase in speed in enzymatic reactions in the, body. And so as soon as you say that word, enzymatic reactions, that has everything to do with your mitochondria. So if everything within your cells, your mitochondria is working more efficiently, more effectively, you're producing ATP and utilizing oxygen more effectively. So you will see

your VO2 max will be better when you do that type of exercise in that afternoon compared to if you were doing first thing in the morning. Now, the counter to that would be, well, what if you warm up really, really, really well? Yes. Because if you get your body core temperature up, so this goes from my individuals who are very early risers and workout first thing in the morning, it is imperative that they work out, they warm up properly for at least 10 to 15 minutes to get their core body temperature to go up to help with that. But yes, there's a circadian effect on athletic performance. What about strength as well? What about strength? Not so much. Not so much. So for that, that would be subjective, right? So for my weight

lifters, I would say, when do you feel the best to lift? And so they actually. We actually talked about this. Yeah. So if you're a lifter who doesn't like lifting in the morning, don't lift in the morning. You will not get a PR there. But let's say then that you're a lifter who is advanced and then seasons of life changed.

You got married. You started having kids and not all of a sudden, you could only do your lifting in the morning. You can actually acclimate to them being able to work out in the morning and be okay. But you would have to change your practices, change your routines to be able to become more effective and efficient for that. There was actually a quote that I forget the lifter that I took. the quote from, I would have to do a deep dive into my PowerPoint that I used in my talk who talked

about that exact thing to where he didn't like lifting in the afternoons, or in the mornings rather, but because of the changes in life, he had no choice but to change there. So how long as much of an effect on your strength output? How long would it take to an acclamation period? How long would you need? So most people, it takes, how long does it take to get into a routine to where you can be consistent with those habits and stick to it? I would say at least two weeks, you know, just from a perspective of how many clients I've worked with, athletes that I've worked with and how long it takes to actually get into that rhythm of actually feeling good because it takes that amount of time to shift your circadian clock, right? Because if you're used to waking up at 8 o'clock

in the morning and now you have to go to waking up at least 4 a.m., well, your clock only shifts by an hour every 24 hours or so if you do it properly. And so that could take anywhere from five to six days just to get that to where you want it to be so that it's no longer jarring and causes a significant impact or causes stress onto the body. Beautiful. I love this stuff. He's always got so many new things.

Like, every time we talk, I feel like I've learned everything there is. You should have gone to Eastern Kentucky, man. I have I known, for sure would have. With him and Dr. Lane there, for sure. No, my can go for hours. Ah, I love that, dude. He is, I mean, both of you are awesome.

So, all right, circadian rhythm. So like, so we kind of got, yeah, go ahead. I was going to bump in here. So there's circadian rhythm and then there's the ultradian rhythm. Like what are the similarities and differences and does the ultradian rhythm matter as much in the context of sleep here? The ultradian rhythms have to do more with your cognitive performance or at least how I understand it to where you'll see dips and dives in your ability to focus based off of how long you're able to do work like this. So I took this from a couple studies that looked at med school students, for example. And so let's say that you are, because when you look at it from a circadian lens,

we actually look on, and I have the notes to be able to share with you. It's called the two process model. And the two process model shows you how there are two times a day where people tend to be most cognitively active. It tends to be first thing in the morning from about 8 a.m. to noon. And then it happens again around 6 to 8 o'clock because you'll see this slight surge before the body core temperature starts to fall. And so that's why nighttime sporting events is sometimes okay because, you know,

they tend to have this surge and their alertness where they're able to go fire up again. When it comes to the practices of ultradian rhythms, when you look at med school students, this is where the pomador timers came into play, where they developed these techniques to help individual study. Because if you study straight for about an hour or so, you start to fatigue, right? At least most people do. And so it's usually beneficial to then take advantage. of that dip that starts to occur within your ultradian rhythm, rest for a short amount of time,

and then go back to focusing again. Hence how the Pomodora timers were such an effective tool to help individuals study this way. But that's where I would counter that slightly and just say, okay, if you can just take advantage of your particular circadian rhythm schedule, if you know that you are able to do your most commonly demanding work, the most analytical, the stuff that is really, really difficult for, so for when I talk to my students, if it's writing your paper, writing your thesis, or doing a really difficult assignment, do it first thing in the morning because that is usually when you're more fresh and more readily available to handle those hard tasks, especially if they're stressful. And so, and let's say you did

have a period of time where you were studying, you had a block of time between 8 and noon, then make sure, based off of the Eritian rhythms of the brain, if you're studying for 45 minutes to an hour, work in a 15-minute break or so to allow that at that 90-minute cutoff period to then be able to take that break right before so then you can feel more refreshed coming back into the next cycle again. And so it's usually how I tell people to take advantage of that. Otherwise, you are more likely to burn yourself out as the day goes on and cause that cognitive burnout that occurs, which is why I tell people to also be very, very careful when you have all these other sources of stimulation that occur, because you can accelerate that just by constantly

pinging your phone or looking at emails or, you know, I just got a MacBook, my first one, dear God, I can't believe I did the jump. And that thing has notifications. all the time now I'm like crap and so because just getting notified once will cause that little bit of secretion of nor epinephrine and epinephrine which will cause you go back down the stress rabbit hole and so that will make it worse so be very very careful of the amount of stimuli that you're receiving during those times where you're trying to focus wait so you have a circadian rhythm 24 hour block you have ultrhodian rhythm which is like a 90 minute block is that is that accurate enough of focused of focused activity so that's that's not entirely

my area of expertise to focus on, but that's how I understand it. Well, what that's leading into is, like, how does napping play into this? I've heard people say, like, you want to, like, try to have, like, certain lengths of napping where, like, you cycle in and out of sleep stages. That way you don't, like, wake up and just feel like you get hit by a bus. Like, you actually get, you know, if you take a 15-minute nap, you probably be fine, but if take an hour nap, you're going to wake up and be all groggy. Like, is there anything to the timing of how long to nap?

Yes, don't nap. tell me more who wants to nap for 15 minutes no one must have not for 15 minutes the issue with napping has nothing to do with alterating rhythms or anything like that it has everything to do with your sleep architecture when you put your head your head down to the pillow and you sleep longer than 30 minutes you start to then go into deeper stages of sleep and when you interrupt deeper stages of sleep it's very jarring to the body you wake up more groggy and more tired than you would have been had you stopped prematurely at 30 minutes, especially if you nap after 3 p.m.

Napping after 3 p.m for most people will negatively influence sleep pressure in the buildup of adenosine and have a negative influence on your ability to go to sleep at night. Instead, do NSDR techniques, which give you all the benefits that you would have gotten from a nap and more and does it negatively influence your sleep architecture. So if you do a five-minute, 10-minute, a 15-minute Huberman routine that you find on YouTube, that is actually superior to helping you keep your vigor high throughout the day, especially if you're someone that has constant Zoom meetings

or you're going from constant activity to the next activity, this is actually very, very helpful to do this. It's also helpful for if you've been sleep deprived that day. If you woke up and you retire because you had to stay up super, super late at night, and you see that your cognitive function is off, you got brain fog, you're not feeling as well. NSDR can actually help you regain some of your cognitive faculties and increase your vigor to help you get through the day.

So I always say now NSDR techniques are so much better choice when it comes to trying to help yourself feel better than taking any kind of nap that could potentially either make you feel worse or negatively influence your sleep later on that night. Yeah. Yeah. What is the NSDR routine? Non-sleep, deep rest technique.

So any kind of yoga, nidra, any kind of body scan, there are countless variations on the internet, and you only need five minutes or so. You can do the longer ones. You can do 10 minutes. You can do 15 minutes. That might help a little bit more, but five minutes is all you need. That's what. So this morning, great example. Me and Andrews flew home from Florida this morning.

I slept from about 1.30 to 5.30. I got on a flight at 8 o'clock. I fell asleep instantly. I slept for about an hour and a half on that flight, basically the whole flight. should I not have fallen asleep even if it's that early in the morning or should I just try to try to relax and I know we got to wrap here in a second potentially because you would want to stay as aligned with your natural circadian rhythm as you can so if you if you kept the natural circadian rhythm and you still plan on on doing that the next morning so for example if you

woke up at the same time when you left to go to wherever you went for your trip and you do that again today and you're trying to go to bed at the same time try not to do any other things today Try to be as tired as you possibly can going to sleep to increase your sleep pressure. I remember that for last time. I agree. What about Colton who took an all-nighter 11 p.m.

West Coast to East Coast when he made him work all day long until about 10.30, 11 p.m. last night. Then he had a 5 a.m. flight today. So he had to be up at 2.30. So we got him three hours

and two days. And then he sat on a tar. for three hours at 5 a.m. Oh, no. I would kick y'all's ass. Welcome to Barb L shrug, bud. Yeah. He might need to go for a jog and do the best you can for the next couple of years.

He might get a little pickleball in. He's younger than all of us, though. He might go get some waves. He's got better abs. He does. He's so good looking, yeah. He'll get a girl to rub his back. He'll be totally fine.

Dr. Perry, where can the people find you? They can find me at Dr. C. Perry 0-0-1 on Instagram. They can see me at Rapid Health Report as well. There it is. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com, Dr. Perry, you're the man. And, like, you know, if there's any young people listening, like, it's so cool

that now it's cool to be nerdy. It's like, when I was growing up, like, I didn't tell anybody that I love to learn. You know, I was like, I'm just a football player. It's so cool that now it's sexy to be smart. So you keep doing your thing, man. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Douglas C. Larson. You bet. Second all that. Douglas C. Larson, love having it on the show, buddy. Good to see you. Yeah. Coach Travis Mass. Get ready, bud.

I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to Areteelab.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 aretay lab.com friends we'll see you guys next week