Barbell Shrugged - The Rhythm of Rest: Unlocking Sleep Potential Naturally w/ Dr. Chris Perry, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #778

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

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

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Chris Perry is back. Guess what team? Today is Christmas Eve, and that means that we need to say thank you. Hope everybody has a Merry Christmas. I appreciate everybody that tunes into the show. I actually get to talk to so many of you guys on the phone or on Zoom or have reached out. And every time I am able to actually connect with the audience of people that are tuning in every Wednesday and Friday with us, I am forever grateful. This is the sixth, seventh year, something like that, of Barbell Shrugged.

I don't think we've missed a single date. The show's been around for 11 or 12 years now. So we're 750-ish of these in in and life is good. I can't believe that we get to sit around and talk to leading experts around the world on health, fitness, performance, and I appreciate you guys tuning in. Hope everybody has a Merry Christmas. Dr. Perry is going to do the thing that he talks about, the best sleep circadian rhythms. And as always, if you find this information fun and interesting and you would like to work with us, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com for all things lab, lifestyle, performance, and we can set up a call and get things rolling with you. And you can

access all of that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, have a Merry Christmas, happy holidays. We'll see you guys in the new year. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Sponger, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Best, Dr. Chris Perry. Welcome back to Shrugged, man. We got a good flow going with you. It's nice having you in-house. You got to come and hang out with us all the time. I love being here, man.

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. Sunlight's going to not change. I just think there's no changing back and forth but we're not farmers anymore it gets dark at like 7 30 or something like that instead of like

nine o'clock and will it still see you gotta wake up early if you want the sunlight then yeah kentucky's bad too it comes 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 it's just amazing no mountains or 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 maybe you actually have more specifics on this than i do where there's like some tangible difference out at a population level that when daylight savings hit it disrupts people's sleep again at a at a population level where it's enough to cause some amount of health problems in some percentage of the people. Yes.

Yes. 100%. I'm prepared to talk about that today. Oh, talk about it right now. I want to hear it. I didn't even know. Everything he's ever talked about. I am on board with getting rid of daylight savings time.

It's not so much because when we take the clocks back and we get an extra hour of 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 hypothalamic pituitary axis. 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 underlook.

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, your barrel reflex sensitivity puts you at much higher risk of having myocardial infarction because of all those other things that are happening. You're seeing elevated cortisol. You're seeing it affect your resting, 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 the amount 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 at like 9 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 central time or mountain time yeah uh-huh yep you're playing devil's advocate 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 you're you're a goner aren't you like already you're already on the fence man you're about to you're about to fall off the cliff. And that presents a good point, right, of how resistant you are to stress 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 aura 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

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 lights 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 counter 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 healthy 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, 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 a long time for you to fall asleep, therefore not setting you up properly for a good night's rest, leading to sleep deprivation, which is then going to cause a negative response on your heart rate variability the next day. And then you'll see all the various symptoms that come from that. Same thing when it comes to circadian misalignment. Cognitive performance goes down. we see issues with insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation we see it impacts your cardiovascular system and so when whenever someone i always get that question from clients and whenever i do is just like well we got to look at this in the grand scheme of things he's like you could have a poor resting poor hrv but at the same time what is your

resting heart rate 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 43 beats 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, and that's how I know, OK, then there's more to the story here than just the variability between 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, it's difficult. Exactly. The Morpheus, 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 talked 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 aura.

Hold on. How much do you think the variance would be between my most rested state waking up in the morning without an alarm to sitting on a Zoom call with Doug? How much variance? Too stressful. Depends what 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 at who this person is, because I see her data all the time. But for some reason, I've also seen this too, not not all women, but the majority of them tend to have a lower hrv i don't know why this is maybe maybe that's just the sample size i'm looking at um 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 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 have, let's say I have a couple glasses of red wine, all right, and I try to compare and contrast what my heart rate variability ends up being, I know that that's going to negatively influence my sleep, hands down. I'm very sensitive to 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 from person to person. I want to ask one more question about the resting heart rate. The resting heart rate first thing in the morning versus resting heart consistency throughout the night.

When it comes to – said that the 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 so that that was hard 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 your circadian 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, 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 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. If you've been sleeping terrible for six months, don't expect one week to fix it. You're going to have to work on this consistently over time in order to get things to go back the other way i know how do we how do we get that across to athletes or our clients in a way where they can understand it and like yeah we're there's one particular right now that we're dealing with it

like he they just want okay i did this thing tonight why am i not better my damn man you spent three years messing things up like you one night's gonna gonna cut it like you you know you gotta get a few months behind you to notice an impact you know so right and so i was actually just at the nsca clinic with our own Dr. Mike Lane as well, since him and I kind of leave 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. OK, well, let's appeal to their emotions. What's important to athletes? How they perform, 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. Actually, I love talking to cross-country runners because they're the ones that usually think they can get away with more and they're actually worse there is a big difference between aerobic athletes

and anaerobic athletes and your requirements for sleep and and restitution now don't get me wrong doesn't matter 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 marathoners 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 yeah that's who my guy is yeah 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, and when cortisol goes down, that also influences insulin to do it. It needs

to do as well, which is good. There's a, there's a, uh, there's a relationship between insulin and melatonin. When we receive darkness in our eyes, darkness sends a signal 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, upreg regulate 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 our runners, because it requires such,

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 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 from sleep deprivation,

and the prevalence of stress fractures 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, so for example, if I sleep deprived 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 gases out. That's the effect that sleep deprivation 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 influence

gluconeogenesis. So the restitution of glucose in 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 can be very, very hot, 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, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that poor guy um 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 gonna sleep they're gonna do all kinds of crazy things this kid could not get away with anything like he had a sleep perfect he perfect any variation at all would wreck him 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 want to kill it and he's state champion cross country went to chapel hill to be a runner but that guy you're so right sleep throw if his sleep is off wrecked wrecked so yo you were talking about hormones a minute ago you're saying uh the natural um rhythm of things that when you're going to sleep melatonin goes up growth hormone goes up insulin supposed to go down what does the research show especially at a hormone level for like smashing a bunch of carbohydrates right before you go to bed if insulin is supposed to go down you just like eat a bowl of cereal and try to go to bed uh i'd imagine that that affects your sleep quality

in a negative way. If it's, 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 at it from the lens of how much 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 one or two 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, very small, and it's easily digestible carbohydrates with, say, a protein shake, and it digests pretty fast, it doesn't have a negative influence on your sleep.

In fact, there's various research that actually shows if you have something really, really light, like a banana and like a cup of milk or two or even a protein shake, it 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's 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 on 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 pound it with too much fat.

So the typical ice cream dessert right before bed, not a good idea. Bad idea. Keep it low and easily digestible carbohydrates and try not to pound it with too much fat. So the typical ice cream dessert right before bed. I'm not a good idea. You're going to have to. You broke Andrew's heart. Daylight. Daylight savings time. We're going to have to get rid of Saturday as a whole. If you want that to happen.

Now you can get away with it with those new Ninja Creamy ice creams. Like my Kelly and I do that. That's fine. Those are good. Because. Yeah. Because you make those with like, what is it? Fair life and protein powder that that's fine 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. Wait, where? Oh, they're so good, Mash. It's like protein milk, but it's like perfectly macroed, tastes delicious. They're probably overpriced, but it happens. At the grocery store, I mean. Anywhere these days, yeah. You get the 42-gram one for like a dollar more, man.

It is. Jeez. Stick with vanilla. I don't know. If you have to, if you're like actually worried about your health, stick with vanilla. It seems safe. Chocolate, a little shady. Vanilla or strawberry. Anything strawberry mass produced.

Why? You're drinking a pink liquid. 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 let me ask let me ask the good doctor so like um 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-theanine. And I noticed an actual difference. I noticed I was able to get to sleep faster and I stayed asleep.

And for a 51-year-old dude, getting up at night can be a thing. But I definitely know, and on 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. He's just like, 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 right as far as keeping your sleep times regular, getting bright light during the day, darkness at night, killing out in the evenings, then doesn't matter what kind of supplement 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 glycinate. I think it's probably the best one you can take right now as far as the form of magnesium. But theanine actually does have calming properties. When you get L-theanine and you combine that into, let's say, you have a theanine supplement with your coffee, it can actually reduce the jittery-like symptoms that can occur. And so this is why I oftentimes like taking theanine even if I take like a really, really hard mocha that has like a red eye with a ton of espresso in it.

Like that can actually help the jittery response. But theanine is usually also combined with gaba so gaba you know your gaba proteic acids can actually help you be able to relax as well since gaba is naturally secreted at nighttime to help you relax as well like i just said 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. 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're already getting it from all your dark, creepy, leafy cruciferous vegetables and everything else, you might not feel as deficient. I wonder if I'm just deficient. Potentially. Are you eating your greens? Not as well as I should.

I mean, I have a wife who cooks, so yeah, some, but still not as much as I probably should. If I'm not going to eat something, that's probably going to be the first thing I might not. There was some evidence I read, too, with glycine that maybe serotonin increases

serotonin in the brains thought nah fake slightly slightly like that that's where i would come in and say if 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 have a little bit of carbohydrates as long as you can stomach it don't eat a ton 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-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. Okay. I've never heard you 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, I 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 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'd make a difference. Jump 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 uh indicator is and uh there is there was very little um like jet lag going what i'm west to east um when i came back a little bit more jet lag, didn't feel as great. But my HRV went from low 100s 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 still ice cream on Saturday. But I have been wrestling with the idea for a since that trip and over the next. Yeah. The answer is working on it, working on it, not even working on it. It's working on eliminating the possession of it. Right.

In a responsible way. And then not getting more is the answer. Sure. then not getting more is the answer. But I have that, that, that single thing changed my mind on how much it impacts your sleep. So I must give you lots of credit because 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 uh holy crap it was a it was a 30 probably on average like a 30 point increase in hrb and i'm never in in maybe not never but like very rarely in triple digits and i immediately jumped into the hundreds um and did you feel the

difference yeah and 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 it's like a 30 40 percent jump yeah and um and then to see so i i attributed a lot of that jump to like this is uh vacation and 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 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. Give it a high five here for being a great scientist.

So CBD, like that's okay though? So, so that's the thing, right? So cause CBD and THC 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 and sleep continuity related issues. So if you there's been some evidence to show that CBD can potentially help is used a lot in individuals with 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 as bad? 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. Yeah. as on so many aspects of your health i would say alcohol probably takes that cake um battle but yeah there's still a billion times worse yeah wow you even wanted two drinks a week has a negative influence on you so then you know i was listening yeah yeah so i was actually in grad school and you were dealing with all that health stuff but you would still have like yeah yeah like a whiskey or something like that while you were dealing with all that health stuff, but you would still have like, yeah,

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, um, that number specifically, if I have like an IPA in my life, it is,

it, you, the numbers drop an unbelievable amount. That's crazy. And an IPA is always probably double the amount of alcohol as 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 that 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 i was listening to something the other day where a scientist we all know was talking about this uh dr mike is to tell himself uh someone asked him is it okay to have alcohol every now and then? 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 downregulation, feeling a little bit more relaxed and having that social connectedness, that that's actually the social benefits and the actual health benefits of that go far along than what most people would 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 myself. Seven drinks a week. Yeah. So for all of it, since this is coming out 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 when it starts to become an. Now, I would tell my wife, it's actually healthy.

So that's awesome. I put a full stamp of approval on that one, dude 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 totally it goes a long way toward my just total body uh relaxation 100 if i'm hanging out with you guys yeah yeah, it's like there's some, there's so much happening more than just some chemical going in my mouth. It's like the whole thing. Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. Chris, can you, can you reconcile a couple of thoughts for me? So earlier you were 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 a couple of thoughts here. So I hear people say, do you get in a sauna or some other device that heats 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 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 it 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 downregulate. 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. Cause that could also stress out the system, right? If you get cold enough and you go into a cold plunge at nine 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 experimenting. 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 super well to 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 stress 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 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 when they get to 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.

A hundred percent. Because you'll see that too. Cause you know, everything that's coming out with the cold plunges 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 impact on the inflammatory response it's not cold enough for as long to have that negative

impact and so 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 like 45 minutes in hey weren't we going to talk about something today i want i want to i want to hear your show was advising trump on what to do with the daylight savings time we figured it out yeah yeah i want to know about these circadian rhythms that like is it too late no it's not too late but so the all i love dr perry i mean i just love hearing this stuff about sleep but so my 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 in 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 VO2 max 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 neurotransmissions, 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. Okay. Because if you get your body core temperature up, so this goes for my individuals who are very early risers and work out 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? Strength, not so much. Not so much. So for that, that would be subjective, right? So for my weightlifters, I would say, when do you feel the best to lift? Not so much. Seasons of life changed. You got married. You started having kids. And now all of a sudden, you can only do your lifting in the morning. You can actually acclimate to then 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. We 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 not as much of an effect on your strength output. How long would it take to acclimate? An acclimation 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 have to go to waking up at 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 for sure would have with him and Dr. Lane there for sure

mine can go for hours I love that dude he is I mean both of you are awesome so alright circadian rhythm so like so we kind of got, yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, I'm going to bump in here. So there's circadian rhythm and then there's the all trading rhythm. Like what are the similarities and differences?

And does the all trading rhythm matter as much in the context of sleep? The old trading and the old trading and 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 of 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 8am to noon. And then it happens again, around six to eight o'clock, because you'll see this slight surge before the body temperature starts to fall. And so that's why you know, nighttime sporting events is that's why, you know, nighttime sporting events is sometimes okay, because, you know, they tend to have this surge in 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 Pomodoro timers came into play, where they developed these techniques to help individuals 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 Pomodoro timers were such an effective tool to help individuals study this way. And so, 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. 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 eight and noon, then make sure based

off of the Eritrean 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 Mac book, my first one, dear God,

I can't believe I did the job. 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 norepinephrine 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. So you have a circadian rhythm, 24 hour block. You have ultrarian rhythm, which is like a 90 minute block.

Is that is that accurate? Well, 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 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 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'll probably be fine but take an hour nap you're gonna 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 who wants to nap for 15 minutes no one must

have not for 15 minutes the issue with napping has nothing to do with alternating rhythms or anything like that. It has everything to do with your sleep architecture. When you put 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 as 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 and 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 doesn't 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 were tired 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. Yo, right before we wrap, 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. That's it. 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 why. So this morning, great example. Me and Anders flew home from Florida this morning. I slept from about 1.30 to 5.30. I got on a flight at eight 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 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 did 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 from 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 three hours and then he sat on a tarmac for three hours at 5 a.m welcome to barbell shrug bud yeah he might need to he might need to go for a jog and do the best he 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 still got better abs he does he'll get a girl to rub his back he'll be totally fine Dr. Perry where can the people find you? 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 DrCPerry001 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. If there's any young people listening, it's so cool that now it's cool to be nerdy. It's like when I was growing up, I didn't tell anybody that I love to learn. 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 E. Larson. You bet. Second all that. Douglas E. Larson, love having you on the show, buddy. Good to see you.

Good to see you. Travis Mash, get ready, bud. I got to give a special shout out. Emily Drew Mash. We are in the middle of moving right now and all the Christmas things are going into one place. Dude, I have bought your wife's pajamas for my family for four years in a row or something like that.

And we appreciate it your your wife has family pictures of multiple years of christmas outfits of like the whole family doing this we just got the new ones this year what is it our tiny roots yeah tiny revival in the red it's our tiny revival. They had to change the roots. Somebody else might have had it. Yeah. They're rad. Awesome. We just got the new one. I was like,

do we do this every year? And I was like, yeah. We love you guys. I know, man. And the portrait she's made for you guys is so cool to see. Yeah, whole family. Unleashroommatch.com I'm Anders Warner cool to see. Yeah, whole family. EmilyDrewMash.com I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. Wait, what was it? What was her?

EmilyDrewMash.com Code. I'm just kidding. I don't have a code. I hope you're taking a commission on her paintings. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are BarbellShrugged to Barbell underscore shrugged to make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com for all things lab lifestyle and performance testing analysis.

And you can come and work with us at Rapid Health Optimization. You can access all that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.