Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - High Performance Life Hacks - 059

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

In this episode, sleep expert Shawn Stevenson shares what you can do to recharge your body and mind through sleep. He explains how a good night’s sleep enables entrepreneurs to perform at their absolute best. Watch or listen now to discover how important self-care is to your success—and how far the best entrepreneurs go to protect their personal well-being. “Entrepreneurship and peak performance are about keeping your body at its highest performance...you have to start working from the inside-out” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 3:20 - How to make money from the speaking engagements you take. 7:31 - Why self-care separates the achievers from the pretenders in business. 12:32 - How movement and nutrition elevate your brain to higher levels of performance. 15:53 - How hydration and filtered water can keep you away from serious health issues. 30:41 - Shawn’s top hacks for getting the perfect night’s sleep. “A great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning.” - Shawn Stevenson

If you're 70% of yourself, your clients don't want that. They want the best of you. Your family doesn't want that. They want the best of you. Because people like, you know, I just need to show up. It's not that. Don't show up. I fucking hate that.

Hey, friends. Pedro's Kulian here. Welcome to another episode of the Empire Podcast show Inside Look. Today we've got a very special guest. My dear friend, Sean Stevenson, International Best Selling author, and the host of the Model Health Show, one of the top. top, actually the number one health show on podcasts. And of course, he's been on the Dr. Oz podcast and Dr. Oz show.

The guy is amazing at figuring out how to not only use sleep as an edge in life, but to get these hacks to get you to perform better. So, Sean, welcome to the Empire Show, man. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah. So you're in Southern California. Why don't you tell our listeners and viewers why you're in Southern California right now? Well, it's a two-parter, and this is top secret stuff I'm just revealing here on you.

Sure. Okay. All right. Reveal what you can. But I'm looking at places for moving in about a year. My oldest son who's over here in the studio with us. He's out here doing some football camps. And so we're looking at schools for him as well.

And I've got a young son who's six. So I basically started over. So I've got a 17-year-old, six-year-old, and an older daughter. And so we're looking at places to move out here and, you know, to do. Just, you know, the community out here is amazing, man. To be closer to you, closer to a lot of our friends, and, you know, to make some more power moves and really help to reach more people. Yeah. Yeah, well, I can tell you on behalf of all of our friends that we know mutually who are out here on the West Coast, we're super pumped to have you.

My wife and I keep talking about the fact that we can't wait to want to double dates with you guys. And so now that I kind of have an idea of how close you're going to be to me under an hour away, that's exciting times for me. Yeah. So allow me to be selfish and say I've gained another close friend nearby. So, dude, what you do with something so unique. Your book, International Best Seller, Sleep Smarter, came out a little over two years ago. Okay. Yep. And if I remember correctly, it started off as a digital book.

It did. It was self-published first. Okay. And then it got the attention of, you know, 15 of the biggest publishers in the world. That is nuts. And so really, the people who don't know your backstory, which there's probably just a small handful, but you really started off with a digital self-published book. book and you were selling this as a kind of an education course online. Yeah, so I have two things.

I have an online program. It's called the Fat Loss Code. So I started that off was a digital e-book and then it turned into a membership site and, you know, multiple six-figure business from that. And then I really wanted to get more serious about my speaking career. And so I went to an event, which I highly recommend go to live events. Like, you have the best event and you know this, you know. Your event is just bar none, one of the best out there.

But I went to a live event, and it was for speakers, you know, but not about training to speak. I'm pretty versed in that and just have a lot of hours on the stage, but more so how to monetize it correctly. Because a lot of stuff was like here or there. And one of the biggest things that he said at that event was that you need to have a book. You have to have a book to help to transition you onto these various platforms. And in that event, as I was sitting there, the idea for Sleep Smarter came into my mind. because it was something that was really working wonders for the patients in my practice as a clinical nutritionist folks so I was working out with in the gym and it just really was this kind of force multiplier people weren't talking about and so I dedicated creating a whole book around it and I had a busy schedule I was working at a clinic at the time and I still had some clients I was working with in the gym I had a family and so what I would do is I would go into my office early and spend two to three hours each morning working on that book for about 30 40 days and I got the first version of that book done. I just like got super intense.

Holy smokes. And that was the digital version. That was the digital version. All right. So let me recap this for our audience because we have we have two sets of audience here. We have the audience who's green, young and just starting out and ambitious. And sometimes they get they get hit by the what ifs. Like well, what if I have a family? What if I have a job? What if I'm busy, right? And what I'm hearing you say is that even with a family, even with already an existing career or, right, business, you knew that, hey, my next evolution is to get up on stages and these experts say that I need a book.

And how did you carve out the time? Did you sleep earlier so that you can wake up earlier and carve out the time? So what it was really was just priorities, you know? So what I would do is kind of backload the patients I was working with. And I also decided I was going to work with less people and charge a little bit more, which is just kind of captain obvious, you know, and just really understanding my value at that time. And so I would backload, start seeing patients maybe, you know, 11 a.m. until maybe five.

And prior to that, like, that was my time to really get focused on the book. I think we, what tends to happen, we waste a lot of time on a project like writing a book, just kind of tinkering around and figuring things out. I think it's important to do research first. So I would prepare the day before with my research on what I was going to write about so I can just get in there and write. Gotcha. And I spent a lot of time bouncing around trying to figure out what I'm going to do. going to talk about if that makes sense that's a really important hack so our friends

watching and listening to this really if you plan on speaking from the stage and to monetize that opportunity a book is going to help you get there faster but what you're saying is and I remember doing this as I talked to a lot of our mutual friends to do the research first and then write the next day because you could literally go into a day of research just to avoid the writing so we're just only get only get half an hour of writing in especially if it's technical information too you know So in my book involves a lot of studies, just kind of digging through a lot of research.

And so just creating a system, that's what it really is. And the fact that whatever story we tell ourselves that we can't get this done, it's just literally a story. And if you take some time to create the structure and execute on that structure, it's literally that simple. Sure, sure. One of my quotes is the fact that you make time for the things that you consider a priority.

And of course, you considered this a priority. And you made the time, even with the family, even with an existing business, even with the busy schedule. And so anyone can do this. It just has to become the priority, as you said. So, you know, as a clinical nutritionist, it blows me away how much you know about getting that extra level of edge or performance out of the human brain or the human brain function. You know, it's no secret here. My mom has been diagnosed with dementia. And I think like the week that she was diagnosed with dementia, I called you and you're like, dude, lines main. I think

said fish oil and we recently got around CBD oils as well and we see a tremendous help especially the fish oil we've like gone like super dosing of the fish oil very high quality omega-3s but it was advice that I got from you like it's so cool to be able to turn to an expert and go hey here's what's going on with my mom she's got dementia well let me speak on behalf of our audience let me get selfish for a moment go me as an entrepreneur I'm busy sometimes sleep has to take a backseat, what are the things that we can do as entrepreneurs to get that slight edge to crush our competition, to make more money, to make a bigger impact, to perform at a higher level?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the first thing is just having that realization that if you're not truly taking time to do that self-care, you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage today. Because the people we know, they're really on it with their health and their fitness, because they know it gives them this edge. And, you know, folks like Ed Milette, our friend Andy Fricela, and Andy is a great example of what not to do in the beginning. Like, he's in the fitness industry, and he lost track of his health because he got so immersed in it. And he just felt, number one, it was a congruency issue. And number two, there was another level that he can get to when he felt

better, you know, just kind of, it's captain obvious, but not really. So we really need to get that because we won't do that as entrepreneurs if we think that we can get their job, done, right? We can still make that money, you know, get the end result. But at the end of the day, you're only playing, like, if you're 70% of yourself, your clients don't want that. They want the best of you. Your family doesn't want that. They want the best of you. Because people like, you know, I just need to show up. It's not that. Don't show up. I fucking hate that to hear people say that. Don't just show up. Show up and bring your best to the game, you know. So that's number one is just getting that realization. And from there, real simple, simple, basic stuff,

Let's start with movement and how important this is. So Appalachian State University did a really fascinating study, and they looked at what time of day can you exercise to actually improve your sleep quality? And they found out, so what they did was they took exercises and they had them to train it three different times exclusively. 7 a.m. exclusively for one phase, 1 p.m., and then 7 p.m. at night. And they compiled all the data,

they found at the end of the study that morning exercises tend to spend more time in the deepest, most anabolic stage of sleep. So you're getting more bang for your buck. At no point have I ever said to sleep more or to, you know, sleep seven or eight hours or whatever, you know, the cookie-cutter thing. It's really about optimizing the sleep you are getting. So explain for our audience when you said are in a more anabolic sleep. I know the benefits to anabolic sleep.

Explain to our audience. So this is, well, sleep is really the most anabolic stage of human can be in. Anabolic. Anabolism means the building up of, right? growth development. Catabolic is the opposite. It's the breaking down of. And you need both. You need the catabolic process to create the ability to grow and get better, right? But we spend way too much time in this catabolic state. And being that this stage of sleep, so this is non-rimmed deep delta wave sleep. So when we talk about the different layers of sleep, it really

has to do with what's going on with your brain. Right. So right now we're in a beta state. This is kind of general waking state. Maybe a little gamma, all right? It's kind of high performance state we can throw in there. God, I love this. And so, You go from beta to alpha, and this is kind of more you start to, quote, get in the zone. Theta, this is somewhat like a hypnotic trance in a way. Like kids spend a lot of time in theta, like younger kids before the age of seven, and they're very impressionable. Right. Kids believe everything. Is that when we recruit the imagination most?

Definitely. That's one of the things that, man, if we can just cultivate, try to remain a little bit more childlike in our imagination, it's tough, man. you know, like the world can beat it out of you, you know. But so theta and then we go to Delta. And all of these are transitionary things. We want to spend an ample amount of time in all of them, because for a lot of us, we might sleep for eight hours and wake up feeling like trash

because we didn't spend enough time in a specific stage. So REM sleep, that's rapid eye movement sleep. This is when we do a lot of dreaming. But something really cool happens. This is why I want entrepreneurs to know this. Something takes place during this phase, a sleep called memory processing. This is where the stuff you're learning right now

gets converted to your short-term memory. Like, it starts to become more part of your brain. And if you're missing that stage, this is alcohol is a great example. Like the movie Hangover, for example, and they don't remember what the hell happened. If you drink before bed, that affects it caused something called a rim rebound effect.

Right. So you might not remember exactly what you did. I know this has never happened with you, but a couple of people, you know, it's happening. But a friend of mine is happening. You know, a friend of mine too. And so that's what we want to do. We want to optimize all those layers. So back to that study with exercise. morning exercises spend more time in the deepest most antibiotic stage of sleep and producing the most human growth hormone

They tended to sleep longer. They had more efficient sleep cycles So spending the right amount of time in each cycle and here's something really interesting that You know, I had to kind of dissect in the study Working out in the morning was found to drop your blood pressure at night by about 25 percent That's substantial and that's a that's like correlating to an activation of this kind of parasympathetic Rest and Digest and turning off that fight or flight so So number one, if you're an entrepreneur, or just period, if you just want to perform at a high level, you have to do some movement in the morning. And this doesn't mean you have to hit the gym necessarily.

But even today, I've had an Airbnb, got my son, we're getting over here from where we are in another part of town. And so just in my Airbnb bedroom, I was in there doing some bodyweight squats, do some push-ups, just getting that heart rate up. Because what that does is, and this is the clinical term, is a cortisol reset. So it gets your cortisol elevated in the morning or a lot of people that tend to be kind of groggy and tired in the morning. Clinically, we call them tired and wired. So this is where their cortisol is too low in the morning and too high at night. It's just like, I can't get to sleep. So this helps to reset that, getting that exercise in.

So that's number one. And obviously the side effect of exercise is you look better. But it's not the goal. It's the energy that you derive from it. So that's number one. Number two, we talked about the brain, you know, just even the case in talking with your mind. about your mom. And for us to understand, like, this is our most valuable organ

as an entrepreneur, is your brain. And so I always like people to take a step back and ask fundamental questions. If my brain is so important, and I'm losing brain cells every day, what do I need to do to rebuild it? What is my brain actually made of? Is the real question to ask? Here's a crazy thing.

Our brain is mostly fat and water, all right? The actual mass, dry mass of your brain is fat, fat and your brain's consistency you've actually touched your real brain it's like almost like soft butter right and it's contained in this really hard shell very very delicate organ made mostly of fat specifically there's a nice percentage of saturated fat that's made of as well but this goes into talking about why omega three is and omega six omega nine is so important so omega six is a more the kind of pro-inflammatory omega acids. We need some, all right?

But the problem in our diet today is we tend to be, the ratio should be somewhere around one to one to one to two, omega-3 to omega-6. And with the American diet, if I'm not mistaken, it's like one to 20, right? Which is why we keep more omega-3s. Exactly, yeah. And so the mega-3 fatty acids that helps with the synaptic connections, it helps with the cell membranes, literally just being able for the cell to maintain its structure. And so what do we do with the mega three?

So eat fish, you know, fatty fish, get it from a good source while caught ideally because farm rays is going to have higher mega six. If you're, you know, maybe your ethics are different and you're not doing the fish, then we move over to like krill oil. You know, we can do the fish oil. There's krill oil, some microscopic shrimp. And then from there we can move into the algae oils, which, you know, it just depends. There's not enough research.

All the research is really done on the fish oil. fish fat so but it is there you know with algae oils marine phytoplankton bottom line make sure you get your mega threes in each day so what I'm hearing you say so far is your movement makes you anabolic in other words the growth of tissue the increase of growth hormone things that will make you perform at a higher level right and of course getting the brain to function if it's mostly you said water and fat then it's a bit of a no-brainer to not only get healthy fish oils in, but hydration.

Like, how important really is hydration, dude? This is, I'm so glad you pointed that out because we can get caught up in the fact that we need more fats, but the hydration is critical. So when you drink water, so in nature, as we're looking at this water, nowhere in nature do you find actual H2O, right? That's the chemical structure of water.

That's really like a supplement or a drug. In nature, water's known as a universal solvent. So it's H2O with other things dissolved into it to give it structure. And so for your cells to actually get hydrated, that water needs to have structure. And it has to fit into these protein channels that are called aquaporins. All right. You know we can get crazy by this stuff. I do know that.

Bottom line is for your cells to get hydrated, we need to have good quality water. Here's why. Here's what happens. This is the construct of your blood, your cerebral spinal fluid. Obviously, we talked about your brain, your lymphatic system. even the ability to communicate the cells in your body, all of your neurotransmitters are operating and moving along a water highway, a super highway.

And if you become even 10% below your ideal rate of hydration, you can start to damage your DNA. And so your body can start to print out shitty copies of you if you're not hydrated adequately. Now, I'm not putting words in your mouth, but if our body is printing out shitty copies of us and my limited knowledge of how the cells work, After all, I do come back, come from the fitness industry.

Am I hearing that this may increase the chance of cancerous cells then? Man, I just did a show on this, specifically talking about five simple strategies to prevent cancer. Everything backed by a tremendous amount of scientific data. For the most part, that's what I try to do, but also I look for the negative. That's what a lot of folks don't do. You just want to believe what you want to believe. Sure. And I definitely had my time in the sun of doing that with the patients I was working.

working with where it's just like my way or the highway kind of thing but really if you if you really want to do this at a high level try to make yourself wrong like try to find out how you're wrong and if something stacks up then it stacks up so yeah absolutely so we see this greater incidence of cancer risk when folks are dehydrated chronically dehydrated wow yeah it's really crazy so not only are we really neutering or reducing the speed at which our brain functions so if you're a non-trained You want to be firing on all cylinders. I mean, there's that term exists.

Firing on all cylinders. You're literally not firing on all cylinders. Where your competition might be if they're more hydrated. But you also have a higher chance of cancer. Yeah, cancer, heart disease. And a simple solution of water. Yeah, it's the main construct. So you've heard this before.

The human body is mostly water. Everybody says that. But what the hell are you doing about that? And the reality is this. It's not actually, if we want to get technical about it, your body isn't mostly water. It's become other things because water is a universal solvent. You know, it's a construct that helps to make all of these things possible.

And if you're not giving your body the fuel to, so let me tell you what happens when you're dehydrated, which your body and its infinite intelligence will do. So we're drinking this water, it's going to go to your bladder, right? And it's going to get excreted and it's going to have, you know, dissolved minerals that are going to come out, whatever. If you're not getting rehydrated, your body will put that piss back into your circulation in your body. Because it's reusing old fluid. Sure. So when you're giving yourself, it's kind of like this. And that's a survival mechanism, right? Like, hey, he's not feeding me water, so I have to use

the next best thing. And it will start pulling hydration from other places if you're not, if you don't have it in your bladder. And so what do we do? How do you actually put this all into practice? What I want everybody to do is so simple. I've been doing this for a decade and a half, right? This one strategy. And now, Aubrey Marcus, you know, he's added this into his book as well. He mentioned me a few times, but this particular thing he learned for me. And this is taking your inner bath. Each morning, you start your day by taking an inner bath. Like we all, you know, for the most part, unless you're funky, you know, we take an outside bath,

you know, an outer bath, get yourself clean to take on your day. I recommend each day when you get up, first thing you do, because in the morning is one the most dehydrated times we have. We go, you know, six to eight hours in general without drinking water. and your body does a tremendous amount of processes while you're asleep. And there's a lot of metabolic waste build up. And so you're helping to flesh all that stuff out.

And you'll notice that your urine is very concentrated in the morning. Sure. And so the inner bath is this, 20 to 30 ounces of high quality water to start your day. Yeah. And okay, like within the first hour or one foul swoop? So I dinner.

What's ideal? Yeah, I do it within about five or 10 minutes. Okay. So I'll drink half and then do a little stretching and I'll drink the other half. Excuse me as I keep drinking. Yeah. It makes me thirsty. I know you're thirsty out there, people. But also what it does is it can help to stimulate a bowel movement too, you know. So a lot of folks, you know, have issues with constipation or, quote, being regular. And you might find yourself,

there's nothing like home court advantage for your poop. Right. For your poop session. So you can get yourself, you know, get your body regular. So you use a bathroom before you even head out for your day, you know, might find yourself on the subway. Dude, this is such valuable information. People listening and watching this might be thinking, wait a minute, I'll listen to the Empire podcast. They're supposed to teach me how to 10x my business and make more money and have the better lifestyle.

But everything I'm hearing from you is exactly about making more money and having a better lifestyle. You're not giving us any tips and tricks on how to create the next marketing funnel and sales process, but what you are telling us is how to become the most efficient and effective human to be able to deploy

all of the great ideas that we have. Absolutely. I mean, look at this. So far, movement is creating this anabolic process of rebuilding your body at night. Movement allows you to sleep better at night, number one. Number two, the fish oils, the omega-3s, number three, simply water, right? And you said, what, just over 30 ounces of water in the morning? 20 to 30 for that inner bath, start your day.

Inner bath, I love that term. Taking your inner bath, 20 to 30 ounces of water, so that's a third hack that we can do to operate at a higher performance. And let me ask you this. And this is my own selfish needs. If I'm, like, calling my friend Sean and I'm saying, Sean, okay, do I drink tap water? Do I drink drinking water or spring water? What's the best water I should be drinking if I want to just be at peak performance? Man, this is opening up Pandora's box here, man.

Like, I want to know and I know our audience does. A lot of people aren't aware of this. I know that I wasn't. There was a study that was done. They monitored the water quality in 40 million people across the U.S. their homes. So like what's coming through their faucet? And so they tested the water and they found traces of arsenic. They found traces of lead. They found traces of antidepressant medications, chemotherapy drugs, you know, statins. And it's just the question is like, how in the hell is that

stuff in our water? Well, it's part of a cycle, you know. So what we're doing is recycling a lot of the water that we do use. And we have great treatment facilities for that. But you know, my aunts actually worked at one of the treatment facilities and just the stuff she would see coming through, you know, where people are flushing down a toilet and that kind of thing. It's crazy. And a lot of people don't realize like, yeah, we're recycling some of that water. And so people are like pissing out, you know, they're processing chemotherapy drugs, you know. And it's very, these are these are very small amount. Sure. But they're there. There's a trace amounts, but they're there. But they're still taxing those filtration systems of your body, your kidney, your liver,

your lymphatic system, right? It's, it's pretty sobering out of peak performance. Absolutely. And so just being aware of that, it's just like, man, that's, we might want to find another option. Or what can we do to our waters coming through the faucet to maybe, you know, take care of some of that stuff? So what are those options? Well, number one, you do want to get a water filter, ideally. Now, there's companies like Britta that you might see out there at your local, you know, Walmart or whatever. But it says on the package, it removes the smell and taste of chlorine, but it doesn't remove chlorine. Chlorine is a pretty strong antibiotic as well.

It's not something we want to necessarily be drinking. But we do want it to clean the water, because I rather have that chlorine than whatever the hell, you know, Ebola virus. Oh God, yes. You know, but there are better ways that we're still trying to figure out, I think utilizing O2 or some,

I don't wanna get into a whole soapbox about what I think should be done. So quality filtration system is one. So what ideally is gonna work is probably a reverse osmosis system. It puts the water through a very, very small membrane to the point that, you know, all of these kind of,

very microscopic, you know, substances like lead, arsenic, you know, these kind of residues from medications, they can't make it through that membrane. And so, but what it does is it creates H2O, though. That's the problem. So you need to restructure your RO water. And how do you do that? Just add a little sea salt to it. Or add a little lemon juice. It adds some electrons. It gives the water a little bit of life, some data to the water. So water is a universal solvent. Leonardo da Vinci said that water is a driver of all nature, right? It's a smart guy, and he really understood this. And so water has intelligence.

It has structure like crystal. It can crystallize, right? And it holds data. It holds information. And so that information can be, it kind of can be reprogrammed by adding a little bit of minerals to it, like these little crystals in the form of salt. So that's number one. Number two, easy.

And I know that I've brought their company stocks up so much. I should have invested a long time ago. There's bottled water and glass, like Mountain Valley water. Okay. All right, so it's a plug for them for free. Well, that was my next question, right? Because you travel so much. I travel so much.

I'm guessing anyone who's listening to this podcast is, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, travel is involved. So, okay, I can control the reverse osmosis in my house. Yeah. But then the question is, okay, Sean, now what? So tell me about that glass water. You know, 15 years ago when I traveled, there'd be bottles and bottles on the shelf. You know, these glass bottles, Mountain Valley, there's some other ones now.

Now, a lot of times I go there might be one, you know, they're often out of stock because this information is out there. Because water bottled in plastic, plastic is, you know, it's something, contains something called bisphenol A or BPA. And we know that that is a known xenoestrogen. Which does what? So zeno kind of means outside or exterior estrogen. So it can mimic estrogen activity in the human body.

So it can fit into estrogen receptor sites and turn on programs for estrogen, right? So there are some ties, again, this is still so new for us, we don't have all the data. But with it being able to do that, this could increase something called estrogen dominance. So for men that might affect sex hormone production, their voice, it might affect secondary sex characteristics, the potential of the development of breast tissue for men, which is another big thing happening right now. All right. So again, let me process this and simplify it because you're so intelligent and I get it.

But I want my simple mind to understand this. What I'm hearing you say is even as a man, and again, majority of our audience for the Empire podcast, we're 82% male, but this applies to women as well, an excess amount of estrogen, especially from the outside. Okay, it might grow breast tissue, which we see this happen in bodybuilders when they take so much testosterone, it aromatizes. Right, it aromatizing. Your body converts the excess testosterone into estrogen, then the man boobs, right?

They call it bitch tits that grow. So we know that there's these physical functions that could happen, like change. changing of the voice, et cetera, but there's got to be some kind of cognitive repercussion here as well, I'm imagining. Absolutely. Because if I'm a guy and I'm supposed to have so much testosterone and estrogen ratio, my simple mind says to ask Sean, what are the cognitive repercussions of that? So this is something that's really, really well known now.

And by the way, so women have testosterone and estrogen as well. We have both, it's just the ratios are different. For women, testosterone is so important as well because it really does create that drive. It really does create that sense of... of focus and just kind of that get up and get after it kind of thing it's very difficult to just like for myself experimenting with my diets early on you know 10 years ago various diets to be good at what I do you know I experimented a lot I've done a lot of dumb shit and so my testosterone went down with one of the diets that I went on it was just difficult getting out of bed you know and so keep

that in mind so with with focus with drive testosterone super important estrogen dominant And so for women, this can lead to development of fibroid tumors, development of uterine cancers. So this is something like people come to my practice, and this is one of the major things that we worked with, was women dealing with estrogen dominance. And so by pulling out all of these things, you know, plastics, just as we don't know for sure. We know what it does biochemically, but is there research regarding like how much it affects us? We don't know yet. So why wait for the research to come out and say, hey, this is what it does when we can be proactive, which is what peak performers do. We're proactive even ahead of the research and go until then, I'm going to go bottled water then, like glass bottle.

BPA, and there's BPA free plastic, but then there's some other issues with the plastic as well. Oh, really? All right. So I don't want to get my next question. I don't want to get too much into that. So this is something we're still experimenting with, you know, but just the ideal thing is to go get it bottled in glass. But don't be neurotic. I was neurotic.

for a time period where like I traveled cross-country one time and I wouldn't drink any water because it was in plastic and ended up like feeling like shit. Right. So rather like-do you're a disservice if you're dehydration. Yeah, just drink the water. It's okay. And especially again, it's a small amount. But if you make it a habit, you're like taking a supplement each day, getting your little dose of

a xeno-estrogen when you drink your water. So last thing I'm going to say about this. So water being a universal solvent because you might be like, what does it got to do if it's in the plastic bottle? How does it actually get into the water? So plastics don't biodegrade, they photo degrade. So that means just being under light breaks plastic down. And water being a solvent, it becomes whatever it's exposed to. So crazy.

Yeah, so it's basically becoming like a plastic tea. Or what I call it, you know, when I see it out there, I call it estrogen water, you know. And so, but again, I don't want to be neurotic about it. It's okay if you have it from time to time. That's fine. Get your, you know, quench or thirst. But in general, if you can choose, let's get it bottled in glass, do the reverse osmosis, there's springs, you can go to, there's all kinds of springs in California, but there's a

site called find a spring.com and you go get your own spring water, well water. My house is on a well, so I get, you can get well water as well. There's so many different options, man. Gotcha. That's really good to know. All right, so let's touch on this last and the final thing, which is give us the top two or three hacks of getting better quality sleep, like hacks we can do to get higher quality sleep to perform better by giving our body that advantage. You got it. Okay. So since this is driven towards entrepreneurs and business builders, I first want to share a study. So this was, so why does this matter? This was published in the Lancet. So what they did was they took physicians who were entrepreneurs in their own right.

And they had them to complete a task. So they had them come in, complete a task. Then they sleep deprived them, which is called a short sleep debt of just 24 hours, which isn't abnormal in that field. Sure. And so they had them come back again and do the same exact task. again and here's what happened when they're sleep deprived versus when they were well rested. They took them 20% longer to do the same exact thing. All right. So keep that in mind. And also they made 14% more mistakes doing the same exact thing. So a lot of times what we do is we're like, I'm going to work more, sacrifice my sleep,

but don't realize that there's a difference between doing work and being effective. So we don't have to go back and clean up messes that we make because we're sleep deprived. And lastly, UC Berkeley, which is, you know, were going to be closer there, my son and I in a couple days. They did brain imaging scans and looked at what happens in the brain when you're sleep deprived versus when you're well rested. And what they saw just 24-hour sleep debt was the cooling off for far less activity in your prefrontal cortex.

So this is the part of your brain that's responsible for decision-making, for social control, distinguishing between right and wrong, idea generation, a lot of that is happening there. That part of the brain starts to shut down. And correlated with an activation of your, amygdala. This is the more reptilian brain. That's really more about survival of self, you know, so you're going to have a tendency to make some bad decisions. We call it an amygdala hijack. All right. So please keep in mind when you're depriving yourself of sleep, you're not going to be

performing better, right? Period. In the story, you're not the best version of yourself. There are times, of course, we all go through it when we push through, get stuff done. But in general, you want to structure your life so you can get adequate sleep for you and then go out and crush your day. All right. So this could be anywhere generally for the patients I've worked with between six hours and nine hours depending on the person. I was going to ask you that question. So I was going to say, is there a ideal sleeping hours? And I know the answer because I've hung out with you enough and I've read your book. But really what I'm hearing you say six to say six, though, is because that's the adequate amount of time to get four complete sleep cycles for the average person. Sure. And that's really what it is. This is around 90 minutes each sleep cycle to go through all of those phases we talked about. Because it's got to hit all those phases. Now, the question that you gave me was, how do we do that? How do we optimize that sleep we're getting?

Get more efficient sleep cycles. One of the tips I shared was exercise in the morning, at least five minutes. Another tip, and again, one of the big takeaways I want people to have from today is a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning. So it's what you do during the day is going to help you when you lay your head down at night. And so it's easy here in California for this next tip. But what I want you to do is get adequate sunlight. All right. So what this does is, and this was innovations in clinical neuroscience, did a study, and they found that when folks get adequate sunlight in the morning, they produce less cortisol at night.

Whoa. Okay, so cortisol is like the joker to melatonin's Batman. All right? They're in conflict with each other. If cortisol's high, melatonin is getting suppressed. And this is kind of your glorified sleep-regulating hormone is melatonin. And so if we can get our cortisol down at night by getting some sun exposure during the day, why not do it? it. It's setting the tempo. That's number one. Number two is that sun exposure on your skin

and also in your eyes helps to produce serotonin, which is this kind of feel-good neurotransmitter. Sure. But here's the cool thing about it. Serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. All right. So it's the building block of making that good sleep hormone happens during the day. This is how our ancestors evolved. Like we got sunlight and then at night we were in darkness. So that's number one. Some folks might be like well I don't live in a part of the the country or the world where I can get that kind of exposure in the winter so what do I do I would recommend first just being in a room where natural light is coming in and I shared in my book Sleep Smarter study on office workers and seeing how just

how having windows with natural light coming in the folks who weren't getting that adequate so they were basically in an office dungeon yeah they ended up sleeping on average one hour less a night more symptoms of depression more more illness just by not having windows in their office. All right. So just getting that in your area. And also one of the things you can do is there's devices now, like there's earbuds that send like this particular type of light for sensors in your brain to help regulate this circadian timing system. For seasonal effective disorder, there's, and this is used clinically, doctors prescribe these light boxes, you know,

for people to get that particular UV, UVB, UVA. So that's number one. Number one is exercise. Number two, sun exposure, last tip. And this is the hardest one, man. You know, I like the low-hanging fruit. That's why I did the exercise, five minutes. And this is something a lot of folks hearing this, you've probably heard this by now. I've been talking about this for half a decade. All right. And now it's like permeated culture. I've been talked about it on Dr. Oz, talked about it, in, you know, Men's Health magazine, you name it, all these major media. So this is out there, but are you doing it? All right? So Harvard researchers confirmed that blue light exposure from our favorite devices does in fact suppress

melatonin at night all right so television smartphones laptops and this is only at night there was no effect seen during the day so when you're on your devices at night it's sending data to your brain that it's daytime and so it throws off your circadian clock all right and so what they found was number one suppresses melatonin so what they found was basically every hour you're on your device it suppresses melatonin for 30 minutes. So you might go to bed just by being physiologically exhausted, but you're not producing adequate melatonin to get you through those sleep cycles the right way. You need those phases,

yep. And so that's the big thing. Every hour, 30 minutes. And they also found that it elevates cortisol because it's telling your brain that it's daytime. Sure. And so what do we do? The number one thing is give yourself a screen curfew if you can. I recommend just 30 minutes. Now is that 30 minutes before bed? Yeah, 30 minutes before bed. Is this include TV or just our devices? all of our tech. Got it. Ideally. Television included.

Some people right now, this is why I said it's the hard one. Because some people last thing they do is like, see their phone and they put it down, you know, and give it a kiss. Good night. But for high performers, what we want to do is create this ritual of, and a lot of folks are close to this stuff anyways, it's a good time to listen to a podcast. You don't need to stare at it to listen. Audio books, read a physical book.

They still exist. They do exist. Hang out with your kids. Hang out with your significant other. Hopefully, you know, if you're in a relationship, you have a significant other, it's a great time to, like, be together, talk. You know, I know it sounds crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Make the sweet love. Make the sweet love. And, you know, and that also, a whole chapter on how that helps sleep quality as well. They call it sleeping together. And so you have to fill that time with something of greater or equal value. Don't just say I'm not going to be on my phone because the sleep expert said so. And then sit there because you're going to get the internet jitters.

Like, you're going to be like, I'll just check. one post, you know, and next thing you know you're down that black hole. So that's number one, give yourself a curfew. Number two, use some hacks. And this is what I do. Even last night, I was up with my son were on the road. We were watching something random. The name of the movie, I think it was like Game Over Dude or some crazy movie that my wife would never watch with me, you know, and we were up a little bit later, but I had on my blue light blocking glasses that I brought along with me. Sure. And so I've been rocking these for years and years. And the blue light glasses are the ones that have that yellow lens to them, right?

Yellowish oranges, there's even red. But those spectrums are like these warmer colors, and they help to kind of break apart that blue and white light from hitting your receptors the same way. Again, there's not too much data out there on it. There's a lot of anecdotal data of how much people feel better and sleep better. So I want to keep that in mind. There's some cool ones. When I started doing this, I had some big-ass hardware store glass.

It's like $5 on Amazon or whatever. But Sean, that's the point I want to prove here is the highest of performers don't wait for all the data to come out because that might be 8, 10, 12 years from now to find out that shit, I've been consuming blue light and it's been damaging me or BPAs from plastic.

Like anecdotal data now that generally points that this may not be favorable, the top performers, the peak performers in the world go, fuck it, I'm going to be disciplined enough to power down 30 minutes an hour before all blue light. I'm going to stay away from BPAs because why wait for that? Yeah, information. And big companies are catching on. Apple is this a multi-billion dollar company and they've built into all their iPhones, their tablets or their iPads.

They've got the night shift on there that pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light. Why would they do that? Multibillion dollar company, why would they do that? They know that the research is coming out that people can start to blame like this device caused my insomnia. This device caused me to have diabetes because I'm not sleeping, right? The connection there. So they're being proactive with it, you know, and it's another thing. Set it and forget it. It's on your phone.

It's a tool that you can use on your iPhones. For folks that have Android's, there's a tool called Twilight. You know, you can get that app, it's a free app. For your desktop, laptop, you can get an app called Flux. F-D-L-U-X. It does the same job. It just pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light from your screen. and you can set it and forget it.

I've been using it for over five years as well. So lots of different little hacks that you can use. Huge. Bottom line, give yourself a sleep curfew, get some sunlight exposure, get you some exercise in the morning, real simple stuff, basic stuff, but you need to have it in a system. Maybe you can take your ass outside and drink your water. Or go outside and do your five minutes of exercise

while going for a quick walk around your block. So, Sean, I got to tell you, with the amount of knowledge and wisdom that you have, that can give anybody, let alone entrepreneurs who want to perform at their highest level and advantage. First of all, I'm going to put you on the spot and say, can we have you on again in the future to give us more hacks? You got it, man.

Done. Number two, how do people hear about you, find out about you? Because what you just gave us is a tiny, tiny tip of the iceberg. If people want to learn more from you, where do they go? Awesome. So where they're listening to this amazing podcast, they can find my show as well. It's called The Model Health Show. And I'm very proud and grateful, just blown away to be able to say this.

We've been the number one health podcast in the entire United States many, many times, and we're just striving to get better and better. And we do masterclass. So on the subject of water, like, it's a masterclass episode on that. But we also have fun, too, you know, and I also bring on the very, my goal, I bring on only the best people in the world in their respective fields. So if we're talking about neuroscience, I'm bringing on the best people, you know, if we're talking about diabetes, if we're talking about, you know, just best.

basic fat loss information. Who are the people that actually have the real results? And so I'll highlight them and also do masterclasses myself. I love that. Friends, if you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube, I've got to share this message with you. Entrepreneurship and peak performance becoming this high-level empire builder is not just great marketing and sales ability and leadership. It is about keeping your body at its highest performance. And for that to happen, you've got to start working from the inside out. Like some of the best takeaways that I got from you today, Sean, was the outside bath, right? Like, that makes sense. Or I'm sorry, the inside bath. That makes sense. The outside bath I've been doing, just so you know, I'm not a funky person,

but the inside bath, hydrating yourself. Now, I have to admit, I drink 16 ounces of cold water in the morning. I immediately am going to up that to 30. I'm just going to go to the highest end of the example that you gave. And of course, I've been on top of everything ever since I've read your book where fish oils and sleep is concerned. I've got a very strict evening routine. My morning routine, is based around everything that Craig Ballantyne and you have put out. Craig Ballantyne being our dear friend and my co-host on the Empire podcast. So to operate at your peak performance, guys, focus on the mental health, the physical health, the consumption of healthier foods and waters and air and sunlight.

And of course, be sure to check out the Model Health Show. It's one of the most impactful shows where your health and cognitive thinking are concerned so you can operate at peak performance. Sean, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, brother. Anytime. Yes, sir. Take care, guys. Thank you so much for joining us for another amazing episode of the Empire podcast. Now, the greatest compliment that you can give to us is liking, loving, and sharing this episode with all of your friends. So please go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating

and then share it online and social media with everyone that you know, and make sure to tag us, because we love hearing from Empire listeners. And if you own a business that's doing half a million dollars or more in annual revenues, and you know it's got massive potential, and you like myself and Craig Ballantine to help you scale it by 5x, 10x, and 20x in the shortest amount of time possible, then you might be a great candidate for the Empire Mastermind Program that we have. To learn more about the Empire Mastermind Program, go to bedroskulian.com forward slash empire.