Dhru Purohit Show - How To Master Your Sleep & Be More Alert When Awake with Shawn Stevenson

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and Cozy Earth. Sleep is one of our most basic human needs, and we’re constantly learning more about how it impacts human health. We’re also learning more about ways to improve it.  Light exposure is a big one. From how often and when we experience natural sunlight to the screens and other forms of artificial light we’re exposed to now more than ever, our interaction with light has a dramatic effect on our sleep quality.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to his friend Shawn Stevenson about the intersections of light exposure, temperature regulation, caffeine consumption, nutrition, and sleep.  Shawn Stevenson is the author of the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter and his latest book, Eat Smarter, and the creator of The Model Health Show, one of the top health podcasts in the world! He is the founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide.  In this episode, we dive into:  -The most common misconceptions people have about sleep quality (2:25) -Night mode on electronics and blue-light-blocking glasses for negating light exposure (12:00) -How sleep quality influences sexual function (19:07) -The importance of blocking out ambient light to enhance sleep quality (20:18)  -How to tackle differences in sleep routines between partners sharing a bed (31:48) -Things that are messing up our sleep quality (36:35) -Hacks for improving temperature regulation at night (42:07) -The importance of light exposure first thing in the morning (50:45) -How caffeine and alcohol impact sleep quality (1:24:10) -Supplements that can support deep, restful sleep (1:54:32) Also mentioned in this episode: -Sleep Smarter -The Model Health Show For more on Shawn Stevenson, follow him on Instagram @shawnmodel, Facebook @themodelhealthshow, Twitter @shawnmodel, YouTube @shawnstevenson, and through his website, themodelhealthshow.com. This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and Cozy Earth. ​​Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. It contains 7 different forms of magnesium, which all have different functions in the body. There isn't anything else like it on the market. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off, so just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru with code DHRU10. Cozy Earth are the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, and nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived right now. All of the ramifications that come from that, the metabolic ramifications, the immunosuppressive aspects of it, the list goes on and on. It's not good. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is my dear friend, Sean Stevenson.

Sean Stevenson is the author of the international bestselling book, Sleep Smarter, and the creator of the Model Health Show, one of the top health podcast in the world. On today's episode, Sean is here to revisit the topic of sleep with us. For the last six years, his international bestselling book has been out, and he's been hearing from people all around the globe about the top things to help them sleep better. And more importantly, we kick off today's interview by addressing the number one, two, three, probably four, five, and six. number one interruptors of sleep.

What are the lifestyle habits that you have? Not just at night, but during the day that create the circumstances are the perfect storm of circumstances that lead to bad sleep. We're going to dress them and we're going to talk about how to fix them. Today's episode is all about sleep. If your sleep is even a little messed up, even if you think you know a lot about sleep, you're still going to enjoy today's interview. Now, a little bit about my friend, Sean Stevenson. He's a graduate of the University of Missouri in St. Louis.

And at this university, Sean studied business, biology, and nutritional science. He went on to found Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide. Sean has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, New York Times, Muscle and Fitness, ESPN, and many other major media outlets. I'm excited and honored to call him a friend, and I think you're going to get a lot out of today's episode. Stay tuned. Sean Stevenson, welcome back to the podcast.

A pleasure to have you here in the new studio. We're talking all about sleep today and the things that consistently mess people's sleep up, that even though there's been so much content, books, podcasts on the topic of sleep, you look around, people are still suffering. So what are a couple things? right off the top that you think that people don't get when it comes to the quality of their sleep. Yeah, that's a perfect question because there's a bigger picture. You know, we think it's these little things that we can micromanage.

But if we step back and look at how all this stuff really works, we start to understand this circadian mechanism, right? We're lined up with the solar day, literally synced up with the entire solar system through our super-chaismatic nucleus. is, right? So it's this little aspect that's in our hypothalamus. It's kind of like a circadian pacemaker. And it's determining when all of our biological methods and mechanisms are happening. Right. So based on the time of day it is, when we're in sync with this 24-hour solar day, is determining what our digestion is doing, like how robust our digestion is. It tends to be

stronger in the day than in the evening. It's determining when certain hormones are getting produced, when our testosterone is getting produced, when our HGHs getting produced, certain neurotransmitters, dopamine, serotonin, all of this is synced up on this clock. Our blood pressure is going to change based on the time of day. The list goes on and on and on. There isn't a way to really escape this system. But we try. And that's kind of the issue today is that we're kind of hiding out in a way because we can manufacture an artificial daytime at night today, you know, with the advent of lights. and all the crazy things we could do with lights. But also we can hide out from the sun during the day, that natural light input and throw off

that synchronicity that way as well. And so one of the ways that we're really wrecking our sleep today is that artificial light in the evening. And there's been a lot that's come forward since my book came out back in 2016. That was the major published version of it. Sleep smarter. Sleep smarter. International bestseller.

I think it's 21 languages it's translated in. each one a foreign distributor, foreign book deal. It's a, man, it really helped to change the game. And I'm grateful for that. So these conversations are being had now and very easy access, easy on-ramp. But I think people are still missing some of the science behind it because you said it. The CDC just did another report. And they noted that our epidemics of sleep deprivation is now, it's somewhere in the ballpark of about 115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived. right now. So in all of the ramifications that come from that, the metabolic ramifications, the immunosuppressive aspects of it, the list goes on and on. It's not good. Hunger, cravings from not sleeping well. That's one of the things you talked about on the podcast

the last time you came on to talk about sleep. Yeah. So it's a master controller of so much of our reality. And so looking at what is one of the things that is really tearing up our sleep quality, it's having exposure to abnormal light in the evening. And specifically, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard, they did a really fascinating study. And what they wanted to find out was, is reading on an iPad going to disrupt your sleep quality versus reading a regular book, right?

Which they still exist. Drew has some here in the studio, by the way, it's amazing new studio. And so what they did was they took test subjects, and they had them to read a book for four hours on an iPad each evening for five evenings in a row. Then they had them do the same thing with a traditional paperback book or a hardcover book. They recorded all the data and it was nuts. The folks who, during the phase of the study when they were reading on an iPad, this was enough to dramatically suppress their melatonin secretion.

they had far less time and efficiency in their REM sleep specifically. So that's rapid eye movement sleep. One of the big things that happens during that phase of sleep is something called memory consolidation. So even what people are listening to right now is getting converted into your short-term memory during sleep, right? And so that was getting suppressed. Also, they found that they had a harder time falling asleep. And as a result, they were waking up, feeling more groggy and having less energy during the day the next day. by being on that iPad at night versus the conventional book.

So what's going on here? Well, this is one of these advents that is very new in our society. This doesn't mean that we can't utilize our technology to great benefit for ourselves, but we have to be aware that this is brand new. In the scale of human evolution, this is something that is so new. We have no idea of the long-term ramifications of this because we simply didn't have exposure to light of this magnitude in the evening. At most, we had fire, all right?

And we're just talking literally just a few decades ago. That was it. And so today, we have these spectrums of light, and what tends to happen is blue light is getting the bad name, right? So blue light is the big villain. Well, some other researchers come out recently, and there was even some data in Time magazine about this that is actually yellow.

The yellow spectrum of light can be problematic. But that particular study was done on lab animals, so on mice, which they're nocturnal. So that hue that's more associated with a different type of daytime or maybe transitioning from dust till dawn or whatever, we got to take some of this stuff with a grain of salt. Bottom line is artificial light of any type is going to throw off your circadian timing system, period. So that's one of the ways that we're really wrecking our sleep is our habitual patterns of in the evening, we're on. And some people are like, they're not just on one device, Drew. I don't know. You probably have done this before, too.

They're like having a device menagerie twas. They've got the cell phone. They've got the TV. They've got the laptop, right? So we've got all these devices. And what's happening is we're really, again, throwing off this system. So understanding this is one of the things we're doing that's tearing up our sleep. What I want to provide also is what are some of the little hacks or quick fixes that we can do to help the remedy?

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Just head over to cozy earth.com and use the code Drew. That's C-O-Z-Y, cozy earth, E-A-R-T-H-H dot com with the code D-H-R-U, pronounced Drew. And if you're on the fence, by the way, keep in mind that cozy earth's sheets come with a 10-year warranty. Now let's get back to today's episode. So a lot of people have a question now, and Apple's done a good job of bringing awareness to people that, hey, okay, maybe we have night shift mode. But with everything that you've explained, and for those that are not familiar, and I think Samsung recently set this up on

their phones, and the phone hue will go more yellow in the evening and sometimes even provide prompts if you set up the schedule. But with everything that you shared, do you think that's enough? Because some people are like, hey, listen, I got night shift mode. So I can still use my iPad. I can still use my iPhone right up until when I go to sleep. What are your thoughts on that? That's obviously abnormal. It's not something that we're hardwired to associate with in the evening, period. Now, there are degrees. There's good, better, best scenarios here. For instance, in the evening, I've got my blue light blocking glasses. I helped to popularize them, you know. So these companies have been working with me and reaching out to me for years who have this, you know,

kind of rudimentary technology, which is it's kind of like, it's like a protection in a filter. And so with that said, we don't have too much clinical evidence as to their efficacy when we're talking about these blue light blocking glasses, apps on our computers. However, it's just logical. It's a logical input, but we don't have that much data on how effective they really are. So we need to know that. We got to keep that in our back pocket. But anecdotally, which we cannot ignore the anecdotal data, folks that tend to be on the computer or whatever the case might be in the evening having some blue light blocking glasses, they do notice that they fall to sleep faster, they have better sleep quality.

We can even create this neuroassociation. I know some people, like as soon as they put those glasses, like the sun goes down, glasses come on, they start getting sleepy. It's like a Pavlovian situation. Yep, yep. And it happens to so many people. So there's definitely some efficacy there. But good, better, best.

What's the best method here? Giving ourselves a little bit more screen free time, period. Just get off the tech. Give yourself, if you're right now going right up until bedtime, which is, like you said, a lot of people are doing, just give yourself 30 minutes, like a 30 minute space to not be staring into a device, which again is very abnormal. Now here's the biggest leverage point to this argument. When we're staring into that small space, for example, maybe we're using our phone

right up until we go to sleep. By us focusing into this small space, what we're doing is eliciting a part of our sympathetic nervous system, right? Because if we were to stare at something through our evolution for a long time, we're being hunted or we're hunting, all right? And we need to be on point. We need to have those hormones produced that is going to enable us to move quickly if it comes down to it. So these things, and I wonder if people just kind of think back whenever they're on their phone for a while. Let's just say, you know, they're at work.

I mean, you know, they're entrepreneur, they're at home. They're typing away and they're like, I'll just check my phone real quick, right? And then that just check turns into 30 minutes on Instagram, right? They get pulled into that internet black hole, which is a whole other part of the conversation we could talk about. And so now they're scrolling for 30 minutes. I want you to investigate.

Think back in your mind, how do you feel after being on your phone for 30 minutes or an hour or an hour and a half? Like, as time is going by and you get off your phone, do you feel great? Are you just like, wow, that was amazing. I felt awesome. Or are you just like, man, I don't quite feel right. I feel a little bit off. And for most people, they're going to notice, like, you don't feel that great after

being on your phone for that amount of time. There's so much neurochemistry and so many abnormal hormonal interactions taking place that it's just kind of creating this chemical soup that our body's trying to adjust to. And so bottom line is, yes, we can have our blue light blocking app on our phone, glasses on, but we're still staring into that small space. And it's eliciting a part of our psychology, a part of our biology that's more associated with this fight or flight part of our nervous system. If that makes sense. So again, that's another check in the box of like, let's start with 30 minutes. I'm not saying two hours, three hours, just 30 minutes. But the problem, as you well know, is that we're addicted. And so if you decide, I'm going to give myself this 30 minute curfew and you're used to, you know, maybe for a couple years you've been on your phone until you go to sleep and then you lay it right down on your pillow next to you. You got your little, you know, electronic teddy bear there. But, you know, if we're going to be honest about this, we're very, very addicted to our devices. Absolutely. We're constantly, if they're close, like we have this tendency to just check, just touch them.

And so a recent study actually found that if it's even in your visuals. Periphery. Yeah, in your periphery, in your line of sight, it's going to throw off your attention, right? It's pulling away your attention because your brain knows that there's a lot of potential reward there. There's a connection with your opioid system, right? Dopamine is driving that behavior to seek that reward. And with the internet, it's so interesting, especially social media, when you seek, because dopamine drives us to seek things, to seek reward, to discover.

It's an important part of human expression and evolution. But if we don't find something, you know, eventually we'll just kind of tap out or we'll go crazy. And so the internet is constantly rewarding us, especially social media, because you seek, I want to see the next thing. Oh, I found something. Seek, fine. Seek, fine. Constantly. And it's just in training that opioid feedback, right? And so with that said, what do we do to supplant this? We have to fill that gap with something of greater or equal value to the phone, which is very tough to do because it's so hyper-stimulating. Now, it's going to be different from person to person. This could be simply, you know, listening to a great podcast.

You don't have to stare into a screen to listen to a podcast or an audiobook that you really enjoy. That might be something you can do to wind down in the evening, right? Pop on a podcast that you like. You know, maybe put on your headphones or play it, you know, on your speaker. This could be a time for you to read a conventional book. You know, they still do exist. You don't have to read on the iPad. This is another thing that you could do.

Also, this could be a great time to just maybe talk to your best friend, you know. Maybe, you know, jump on a call. talk to your best friend. You don't have to stare into a phone to do that. Talk with somebody in your household if you're living with family members, right? Especially a significant other. I know again. Which I have a question about after done. For sure, for sure. And so this is something that has been dwindling away today, this time, you know, this one-on-one relationship. And that could also lead to something that can improve your sleep quality, which is sex. And there's a tremendous amount of science on how our sleep quality influences our sexual function and how our sexual

function influences our sleep quality. They're deeply, deeply interconnected from the aspects of testosterone, from the aspects of oxytocin, right? So just being close to somebody that you have a connection with, you're going to be producing a lot more oxytocin. And oxytocin is one of those factors that helps to actually, some of the data is indicating that it helps to kind of buffer the effects of cortisol, right? And cortisol is not bad. It's just if it's produced at the wrong time and in the wrong amount, it can be problematic, right? So it helps to supplant that. And so, you know, we can supplant that. Hopefully that's more entertaining the phone, right? So that's another option there. Maybe it's just hanging out, playing, you know, board game. Maybe it's

writing and journaling, whatever. You've got to experiment. Find something that helps you to not feel like you have the internet jitters and you just got to I got to grab my phone right so that's the thing um but just to finish off this point that's the association with the electronic device the tech what about the ambient light because the ambient light is what's controlling and influencing that super chisomatic nucleus that I talked about before so a couple of things you could do very simple they're super popular now I remember when I wrote sleep smarter I would experience this when I would go to like a nice hotel, they would have blackout curtains.

Right. And for me personally, of the 21 clinically proven strategies in the book, that was the thing that I noticed when I got myself some blackout curtains at my house, that improved my sleep quality very quickly. So blocking out the artificial ambient light as well, because it's not just your eyes. Your retina is picking up that data.

That's most of the data is looking at that association from picking up ambient light through your retina and sending that data to your brain. Your skin also has photoreceptors that picks up light, that picks up information. And one of the ways I point people to just to understand a logical, like, your skin will literally change color when the sun's rays touch your skin. For millions of miles away, the sun is that remarkable that it's little rays touch your skin and changes your skin color.

All right. Your skin has photoreceptors as well. And researchers at Cornell University took a test subject and they put them into an otherwise dark room, took a light and it was the size of a quarter and placed it behind their knee. And that was enough to disrupt their sleep cycle, right? Just to this light input was throwing off their body. You know, maybe again, all of their organs and their cells are just kind of like, what is this light? What is the sun coming up? I'm trying to figure it out, trying to sort it out.

Right. And so getting yourself some blackout curtains. This should be captain obvious at this point, but not sleeping with the television on. All right. I can't tell you how many times I fell asleep, of course, as a kid watching, I don't know, whatever I was watching. Probably stuff you wasn't watching, Drew, like, you know, Cinnamax late in the evening, you know what I mean? Cinebacks after dark or whatever the case might be. Actually, I didn't really get to watch that.

We didn't have those premium channels, brother. Me neither, but sometimes, like, every couple of months, they just put them on. Okay, got it. put them on for you to like get that dabble like this, you want this, right? So they give you like a free week of HBO or something. Man, we was broke too, man. So anyways, so not sleeping with the television on. If you don't have to have lights in your room that you're manufacturing yourself, like from an alarm clock, which most people are not even using alarm clocks these days.

But maybe you just cover it up, maybe throw a towel over it or, you know, maybe if there's a demmer switch on there, just getting a alarm clock. out the ambient light in your bedroom itself. Make it as dark and cozy as possible. If you do have an issue, you know, some folks have been through stuff and that total darkness is a bit, you know, can evoke some fear. You know, maybe we're looking at what are the hues that we evolve with, something closer to fire. And I'm not saying to have a candle burning all night either, but maybe like a salt lamp, you know, and turn the dimmer down. So there's lots of options here. but the bottom line is to, you know, block out the ambient light outside and in your, in your bedroom and give yourself that screen curfew. You know, one thing I noticed when my wife and I first

moved in when we were not married and she would have this surge of energy that would come in the evening and her sleep was off and off. I have a few questions about that, which had about in a second. So I started dimming the lights in our place. I started dimming the lights and especially overhead light. I found overhead light very stimulating for her. And I try to get at least, you know, the red lights that we had be a little bit more eye level, kind of recreating that sort of evolutionary history of where we kind of came from. And then she'd go in the bathroom, you know, to brush her teeth and shower before bed. And the bathroom light, you know, we didn't have a night lamp in there or anything like that or a red light. And the bathroom light,

which was overhead, she'd take a shower, and she'd come out with a surge of energy again, and she'd have a hard time falling asleep. And when we swapped out, I just said, hey, you know, sweetie, let's try something. Let's not use the overhead white, yellow, blue light in the bathroom. Instead, I'm going to stick up this little nightlight. Let's just do an experiment for a couple of weeks, see what happens.

And immediately she'd come out of the shower, feeling a lot more relaxed, feeling not as stimulated. We were also putting away the devices too. But something as simple as that was so, helpful for us and it just plays into exactly what you were talking about. Yeah, that's a great example. And by the way, shout out to salt lamps. I go with a salt lamp in my bathroom that we use in the evening, you know. So this goes in my second question, which is, do you and your wife have, who have met, she's lovely, amazing. We all just had dinner together recently. Do you guys have different

routines and do those routines ever butt heads against each other? Oh, man, my wife is She's mischief in human form, man, for me, you know, like she is so like, she's so adventurous and, you know, just she doesn't care about time. She doesn't care about that stuff, you know. She's just kind of like, this is my husband's thing. But she's seen the firsthand results in her life as far as, you know, how she feels, her performance, her body composition, all those things when she's minding her sleep quality, for sure.

So, but we had to get to a place where she's paying attention to those things. And part of the process sometimes is just, you know, just letting go. Because we shared the story. I think when we went out, we met at the gym. All right? We met at the gym. I was working at the university gym that we both went to. Do you want to tell this story on the podcast?

Not that it's bad or anything, just looking out for my brother. I'm going to end up in time out a little later on this episode. And nobody's going to tell her, all right? But this, I'll give it the short, tiny version. I'll leave out some of the details. But we met at the gym. And, you know, she was there. At the time, I was just focused on service.

Like a switch had happened in my mind where I was very self-centered for the earlier years, you know, up until around, you know, 22 when I began to get myself physically healthier because I grew up in an environment that was very volatile and dangerous. And, you know, so I developed these kind of self-coping mechanisms to keep myself shielded off. And so even in relationship contexts, you know, I had a lot of relationships, but they were like here today, gone today because, you know, I just wasn't willing to open myself up. And this thing happened where I started to get physically healthier and people at my university

started to ask me for help. And so I started to start teaching them some of the stuff that I was doing while, you know, finishing my degree. And, you know, when I started to dedicate myself, like, I literally was thinking constantly, like, how can I help this person to achieve fill in the blank goal? And so that was my dominant thought process most of the days. and if you're constantly focused on service, it doesn't really match up well if you're being a terrible person in relationships and, you know, disregarding other people's feelings. It just didn't

fit anymore. And so when she was coming to the gym, I wasn't even thinking about, you know, relationships or anything like that. I was just like, wow, this girl's dedicated. Like she's getting out here, going at it, you know, running on the treadmill. She was even coming when her friend wasn't coming. And so all I did was notice that. Never thought about like talking to her, anything like that. And one day at the gym, I just finished my own workout, or I just finished up with a client. And I was about to do my workout. And I was over by the universal gym, you know, the one that's got the cables and the rows and lap pool, all this stuff. And she was on the most awkward piece of equipment in the gym, you know, the abductor machine where your legs are flayed open.

Anyways, and I didn't even really notice that until she dropped her headphones. And she's in this very compromise in situation. All right. And so I just walked over and picked her headphones up and handed them to her. And she said, thank you. And I noticed she had a little bit of an accent. And because I work at a university, I work with people from all over the world for a couple of years, about a year at that point. Let me say that, about a year, year and a half. And so I noticed little things in people's in their communication, their language and how they speak. And so I guess that impressed her. She was like, oh, how did you, how did you know? She's from Kenya, right? Where you're from? Yeah. Shout out to Kenya. And so, you know, so we just, from there, we started

talking. And I would imagine, I don't really remember the details, but I imagine she would have got off that very awkward machine and talked to me a bit. But here's the rub. And this is why I'm telling the story. Come to find out she was not about that gym life, all right? Because in my mind, I'm like, oh, we're going to work out together. It's going to be great. She's about this fitness thing. She was just coming to the gym to get in shape to go to Miami with their friends for a holiday weekend. You know, I think it's Memorial Day or something. Nothing wrong with that. Then after that, she didn't come back again.

We were together, we're just say even a year later. I'm just, sometimes we're like, hey, baby, you want to go to the gym? She's just like, nope, no, no, thank you. You know, and to the point where I would be irritated, like, do, why don't you want to take care of yourself? Like, workout or whatever. Not that she wasn't, like, eating well and those kind of things. But in her mind, she's like, I'm done. She even said it when we were at dinner.

She was like, I'm done. Why would I go to the gym? And so she's always been, you know, a little bit not really focused on those kind of things. She just wants to enjoy life, you know, be a good person, talk to her friends, you know, have a good time, laugh. And her, there are some slight differences in our genetic makeup as far as our sleep patterns. And so she would definitely be more in that night wolf. camp, all right, than I am for sure. She would have a tendency to come alive in the evening, you know, whereas I'm definitely more of an early riser. I just, I just gets up, man, you know,

but in the evening, I'm ready to wind it down and go to sleep. And so we had to find a happy medium, right? And that took years to cultivate, but what really helped was having our son. You know, my youngest son, Braden, that really helped to get on those rhythms together, like get more on the same page because the baby doesn't care as much, right? So we need to work it together as a team here and create these patterns and have some consistency, right? And so, yeah, we have butt heads in the past, but now even, what is the day? Two days ago, we had some friends over. And the friends know that I'm working on a book. My wife knows too, all right? And I'm just like, I don't care about, you know, whatever we can hang out, but I got to get to bed because I got to get up and work on this book

in the morning. And so my friends asked, like, Sean, just seriously, we, no problem at all, what time should we leave? And so it was 945. And so we're all sitting around, 945 came around. And then my friend was like, okay, it's time to go. And my wife is literally like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we still got one minute, you know? Like, she was not trying to hear about this abrupt, like, everybody's leaving now. Because if it was left to her devices, we would continue, you know, at infanum, you know, until, uh, until somebody pulls the plug. Well, you know, what I love about that story is that, number one, I think everybody butts heads in relationship because often you attract somebody who's a compliment to you and that person

is different than you. You know, you don't want to be in a relationship with yourself, even though a lot of people think that they do, but you don't want to be in a relationship with yourself. It's not going to be the thing that's going to help you grow. And even though people typically have different routines, especially in relationship. My wife is the same way. She kind of comes alive at night. The foundation of like, here's why this is important to me. And also, I'm not going to try to change you. I'm going to show you the things that are beneficial for you. If you want to do them, great. But how can we also learn to sort of respect each other's approaches, which usually for me might be I have like a thing that I'll do with my wife, which is like she

knows a few times a month, if she's out with their friends, like super late, she comes back. I'm like, babe, I need to pull out this red card. And the red card is the emergency card. Like, I got a big day tomorrow. I have to get to bed. We kind of have our evening routine. I've talked about a little bit in podcast before. But if she's a little bit, if she's a lot late, I'm like, you know, sweetie, tonight,

the thing that we normally do, which is we might read together a little bit or watch, like, things that are not super stimulating on like a hyper red light with blue light block glasses on and everything like that. I'm like, we can't do that tonight. So you got to kind of wind yourself down a little bit and I got to fall asleep. And I respect my wife because she understands why that is so essential for me. And it doesn't mean that we don't fight sometimes about it or butt heads about it, but it's all part of the process of working with another human being to see how can I support their goals and dreams. Okay, if sleep is a vehicle for that, how can I support their goals and dreams for that? And then for my wife, too, she's in the early

stage of building her first business. When I was building my first business, I was up late a night too. So how can I knock her for that time being a very useful time for her? Yeah. You just said it. It's all the things. It's so powerful, man. People say these terms. And the problem is today, you know, everybody has the ability to utilize these terms, but not really having a grounds for understanding how they work. So one of those terms is communication. right but what does that really mean that doesn't just mean you're trying to get somebody to understand your thing there's this wonderful quote and i first heard wayne dyer say it and it was from st francis of a cc it was that it was to seek first to understand and then to be understood right so for me to first understand

what is driving and motivating my wife you know my best friend what are her goals what are her aspirations, what make her happy, what makes her feel good, and not just thinking that it's the things that are my things, right? And so paying attention to those things and coming into the conversation with respect and admiration for those things. And then from there, hoping, which again, I can't make her want to understand me. So I'm doing that, providing that space. And at the same time, especially in a loving relationship, the tables are going to turn where she's going to want to understand me. It's not just me coming with my thing like this sleep scientist, Sean Stevenson said you need to fucking go to sleep, right? It's not like that. It's having a space and communication

and patience as well. Patience can that that quality in character is so valuable, especially today where everything is so fast pace, you know, to have that delayed gratification. And that's something, again, that's another strength that I have. I'm very big on that. It's not a big deal to me. me. My wife, instant gratification. Tomorrow doesn't exist so often, you know. And so again, but I can learn things from that. And guess what? I've loosened up. And on the other side, she's gotten a little bit more, I don't want to say militant, but sometimes for some things, she'll be more on it than me. You know, like if we go out and we're on the road, I just spoke at an event in Atlanta. And, you know, we're staying at a hotel and, you know, I'm, I, I'm

I'm tired, just got in the bed, whatever. And she's like, babe, what about that light over there? Like there was a little, just a tiny light coming in from the blackout curtain. And I was like, babe, it's fine, you know. But I used to be like, I'm taping it. I'm putting a chair of like doing all this stuff. Bringing tape. I used to bring this like blackout tape.

Yeah, an electrical tape. Yep. And so I'm like covering stuff up. Now I'm just, I'm a little bit less neurotic. But though, by the way, those are some great tips for traveling is what bring yourself a little bit of tape. I've used them. But there was something else too that you mentioned.

that routine that for some people, it might be one of the things that's wrecking their sleep quality and they don't even realize it. So what, again, sleeping smart is one thing, but oftentimes what are the things we're doing to sleep dumb? Like, what are the things that we're doing that are really messing up our sleep quality? And that was the shower in the evening, like right before bed. So what's seen in the data is that there's a little bit of a rebound effect where having a hot shower, hot bath, if you have space allotted, your body temperature will, of course, increase, but will actually drop down lower than that set point and help to facilitate sleep. Now, the timing here could be an issue because what could be happening is it's driving the body temperature up and then getting right into bed and then maybe tossing and turn a little bit, not being able to, like, relax because that core body temperature has been elevated and the skin surface as well. core body temperature isn't going to be affected that much from a hot bath or hot shower if you're

not in there that long. And so one of the things that's seen in the data, researchers at the Pittsburgh University School of Medicine did some really fascinating research on insomnia acts. So these are folks with clinically proven sleep disruption, sleep abnormalities, really struggling. And they wanted to find out what would happen if they cooled them off before them, you know, while they sleep and before they go to bed. And so what they did was they fitted them with these cooling caps. And it was just running cool water over their head while they, you know, laid down with their evening routine, laid down and went to sleep. Now here's what happened. The insomnia accident, they had a healthy control. So this is a controlled clinical trial. The healthy controls took on average about six,

16 minutes to fall asleep after getting into bed. The insomnia acts who struggled with sleep, suddenly they were falling asleep faster than the controls. They fell asleep on average 13 minutes after getting into bed. And so we got a faster sleep onset, right? And within that, they found that they were now sleeping about 89% of the time that they were in bed, which is right on par with the healthy control group. So essentially their insomnia was gone.

And this was true for 75% of the insomnia acts in the clinical trial. Their sleep issues were resolved just by changing their temperature, by fitting them with these cooling caps. There isn't a drug on the market that's remotely close, not even close, not even the same universe as just cooling these folks off. Right. And if you think about it again, it's just that the head area is, One of those areas, like there's something about the cool, right, as cool as the other side of the pillow. Like it just feels good. Relaxing.

Yeah, it's relaxing. But what's happening, what's seen with insomniacs is that there's difficulty with thermoregulation. So their body being able to manage and control their body temperature in the evening. Now guess where else in your body is controlling that internal thermostat? It's your hypothalamus, the same place as a superkizmatic nucleus. that again is trying to sink you up with a 24-hour solar day. It's literally determining your temperature. That system is getting disrupted from something in their lifestyle.

Something is happening that's causing this outcome. So even with the cooling caps, we're still treating a symptom, but it's working, right? And so what are some of the other things that that could be? It could be exercising too late in the evening. I've seen that clinically. I've seen people coming in, you know, and they're struggling with their sleep quality, sometimes for years.

And they got a BJJ class that ends at like 9 p.m. and then they're trying to be in bed by 10. Right? And they're just like, and they have their stories like, Sean, this is the only time I could train, is the only time. But usually the story is not 100% true. There's usually, if you could take a step back

and maybe even work with somebody, you can start to look at your life through a different set of eyes. We could see like, oh, hey, if you do this, or if you do this, maybe you could, move this here because what's happening when you're wrecking your sleep quality, everything else in life gets harder, right? So that could be one of those things is, you know, not getting, not getting conditions that are cool enough in the evening to facilitate sleep. And on average, depending on which experts you talk to, most experts agree it's around 68 degrees is ideal

Fahrenheit in the, in the bedroom. So, you know, today, especially most people listening to this have access to a thermostat, which is a great blessing and gift. But even in cultures that don't have thermostats and, you know, maybe there again at the mercy may be very hot temperatures even in the evening, across the board, no matter where you are on planet Earth, the temperature is going down in the evening. If it's 120 during the day and maybe 105 during the night, it still went down. So your biology, your body is wanting to drop down. with the environment, but we can superficially keep that body temperature up and we can get ourselves out of sync with the Earth's clock and throw off that ability for our temperature to downregulate,

if that makes sense. Absolutely. Super makes sense. Have you seen anything on the market? You know, there's different devices that people use to cool their mattress or have like a mattress pad. I use one of them. I'm curious, do you guys use anything? Or, are there anything on the market like this study where people are using this like cooling cap to sort of cool the body down or or and do you recommend to people just to use the AC which sometimes can be a little problematic you get a little stuffy at night you know that sort of stuff yeah what are the best methods that you've seen to help people who run a little hot to start to cool down in the evening yep there's quite a few products now you know again just in the last few years

for like mattress pads that you could put over your existing mattress. There are, you know, kind of cooling technologies with pillows, with sheets that are thermoregulating. The list goes on and on. There's so many great things. And some people swear by them, you know. And it could be a game changer. But again, in some instances, we're treating a symptom.

Right. So we want to get to the root cause. Like, why is your temperature running hot in the evening? and that's usually due to stuff that we're doing during the day. That said, this is not a place where we can't supplant that and allow ourselves to use this treatment to get better sleep right now where we sort other things out. So that being said...

Can I add in one more comment there? Sure. So one comment on that is that I know that a lot of couples use the same sort of comforter. My wife likes something heavier. I like something lighter. So I run hot in the evening with a heavier comforter. If I just had a little sheet, I'm fine. I don't need anything more, and I'm fine.

My body temperature is good. So that is one of the reasons why we use one of these mattress pad situations. You know, you can Google them. There's a bunch that are out there. Is because way back in the day, I mean, you probably know more about this than anybody else. People wouldn't often sleep necessarily, like, right up against each other. Couples, they would have either mattresses that would be separate. They could be in separate rooms.

You know, that's kind of a modern phenomenon. and within that, and there's a lot of beautiful reasons to do that, but you typically have the same comforter. And that is a whole temperature regulation situation for people. That's why I think that if I had just the sheet, I'd be fine. But I do like cuddling with my wife. It's nice that we have the same comforter. So I have to use technology to help bring my temperature down a bit. You just said exactly what I was going to talk about. Okay, sorry, I stole your thunder. No, this is perfect because you got another great firsthand experience with, you know, And here's another thing that's really interesting is that on average, men tend to run a little bit warmer than women.

Right. And so in the couple, like, again, like there's this dynamic where you don't want to, you're not trying to date yourself. There are these kind of opposites attract phenomenon. My wife is definitely a cool body. All right. So, and so I've heard this so many times when she gets into bed, these are the exact words. oh you're so warm shit so now she's going to try to siphon my

warmness my just natural I'm good I'm good I'm not too hot not too cold and then she puts these dead body feet on me all right feels like they're straight from the morgue on me and so now I'm like oh I'm making all these noises and she thinks it's hilarious but I understand I'm her little heater I get it but don't you dare touch her when you got cold hands

man oh my god are you kidding me literally she'll literally fight me You know, she'll ball up into a turtle shell. Yeah. And so, man, I'm very aware of that. Even today, you know, I came, I got out of, I usually get out of bed first, and I came over to her when I was walking out of the room. And she had a part of her leg was sticking out of the cover.

And I knew if I touched that leg with my hands, I just washed my hands and my hands were cold from the water was still cold. And I was like, she would be so pissed at me. So let me not do that. So I, like, I think I use the back of my hand or something, like, touch your leg or something. So considerate, man. Anyways, my wife is perfect, just for the record, if anybody tries a snitch, all right? She's perfect.

We'll clip that for social media. And so, you know, even with that phenomenon, so this is why the mattress pad, for example, you can cover just one side of the bed to cool off, right? And another thing here is just in that same vein with that thermal regulation. So for some people even hearing 68 degrees, they were just like, oh, no, that's just, that's not. happening. That's too cold, right? So again, it's finding that happy medium. Because for me, I would probably put that bad boy on like maybe 65. You know, I like it. The cooler the better. I want to have my comforter. I want to have my little like chilly vibe in the room. You know,

my wife, no. So we settled on like 68, 69. And she's seen also here's the crazy thing. If the temperature is anything above that, she tends to sweat in the evening. I don't do that, you know, and generally, I'm not. But her body is still like that thermal regulation is something's happening there and sorting itself out. And so, you know, you got to work together, figure out what's ideal, you know, and be willing to test and try things at the end of the day. Would you say that for your wife, again, because a lot of people are listening or in a

relationship, a lot of people are not, so may need this in the future. was that the biggest game changer for her? Because you hinted earlier that there was a few things that made a significant difference for her. Was it temperature? Was it something else? What would you say were your wife's top two?

And then I want to talk a little about daytime things that we're doing that are messing us up in the night. Yeah, yeah. So for her, it wasn't the temperature thing that was most notable. It was more, I think it would just really blow down to routine and consistency for her. And just like,

I consistently could see her just feeling good, having more energy, you know, more productive, all those things, less distracted whenever we would be locked in on a consistent routine. But one other thing I want to mention, this was published in the journal Brain. And so it's so fascinating. Again, these journals dedicated to brain function, to brain health, to neuroscience are looking at the impact of sleep. And so one of the studies that was published in this particular journal, again, they're trying to manipulate temperature.

So they fitted the test subjects with these, what they call thermosuits. And it just lowered their skin temperature just by one degree Celsius. You know, I think it was, the scientists were German or Swedish. And so just lowering the skin temperature, just one degree was enough to improve their sleep after, so to improve their wake after sleep onset. So that means they were waking up less frequently when they fell asleep, improve their overall sleep efficiency, specifically deep sleep. So stage three, four sleep was improved.

All right. So these really remarkable benefits just by reducing their skin temperature, not their core body temperature, just by that one degree. Really fascinating stuff. So that points to, by the way, what about what are you wearing when you go to bed? You know, maybe again, with you running hot, you're just sleeping in the box and draws. That's what I do. All right? Or a natural, right?

But, you know, maybe she's got, you know, she's got some sweatpants on and a t-shirt or whatever, you know. So, like, even with the clothes that you're wearing could be part of the issue. Maybe you're wearing stuff that's making you too hot and overheating you in the evening, right? So keeping all that. And humans, this is the thing about us. Like, we love coziness, man. You know, the modern human, we're all about that coze. All right.

So, like, the warm, fluffy socks, you know, the sweatpants or the tights, right? and, you know, the pajamas, the PJs, like, we have clothes for bed, right? And so, but those could be the issue. And they're also today, again, there's, there are pajamas that have thermoregulating material. Not saying it's going to drop your skin temperature per se, but that can help your body to, you know, their moisture wicking, right? And they're not insulating and generating more heat based on that material. So, yeah, But if we want to jump into the daytime now, because one of the big tenets is a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning. 100%. All right. So now we're swinging the pendulum back to the other side because we started this episode talking about the super-chaismatic nucleus seated in the hypothalamus, the master gland of our brain, and how it's constantly trying to sync up our biological rhythms with a 24-hour solar clock. We mentioned how that clock is getting disrupted by our light exposure in the evening, but what about our lack of light exposure to start the day?

One of the game changers for a lot of people is intentionally getting natural light exposure in the early part of the morning to help them sleep better in the evening. A study this was published in innovations in clinical neuroscience. And the researchers found that the test participants who got early morning sun exposure had a dramatic decrease in their cortisol levels at night. So what they were doing in the morning with sun exposure was helping to kind of optimize their cortisol rhythm because your cortisol rhythm should go up first thing in the morning.

Your cortisol is kind of jumping up, spiking to start the day. That's normal. Just get up and at them. Get after it, go out, handle your business. Through evolution, this would be going gather, going hunt, going, you know, community, connection, all the things. in the evening it's going to gradually drop down. If cortisol is high in the evening, that's a problem.

Because in some ways, cortisol and melatonin are, it's kind of like the antithesis. It's kind of like if cortisol is pushing high, melatonin is going to have a tendency to get pushed down. Right. So we do now when cortisol elevated in the evening. And so that was one aspect with the sun exposure. Here's another one. And more and more science is coming out right. This is like a hot topic right now.

And this is sun exposure on your skin and the serotonergic system. So you're producing serotonin from exposure to sunlight. All right. And so some of the details that we have now is that exposure to sunlight during the day is triggering the production of serotonin. We're still or there's some questions on how it's all happening still. But let me give you the point that we do understand. with it's it's one of those things

is helping to set that biological rhythm because serotonin is a precursor to making melatonin all right and so it's kind of it's like the opening act for your sleep in the evening right so and also that could be part of the reason it's pressing cortisol down in the evening serotonin is associated with being this kind of feel good

neurotransmitter right but it's so much more than that it's a regulator of our sleep potentially in our biological rhythm overall. But melatonin especially is a huge controller of our biological rhythms. So with that said, we get this serotonin production with early morning sun exposure. We're still figuring out the details on this, right? We know that the early morning sun exposure is going to push down our cortisol in the evening, right?

It's another check in the box of like improving our sleep quality. and to top it all off, it's one of those things where the timing of that sun exposure is going to make a world of difference too. So I want to make that clear. Any sun exposure, if you're not getting any, is going to be helpful. All right. But in particular, it's within the first two to three hours. And I really preface two hours of the sun coming up. All right.

And so because, and specifically it's the ambituary. ambient sun exposure in the environment. You don't have to stare at the sun. We're not talking about that. But if you could get ambient light, sun exposure in your environment, preferably if you can get sunlight on your skin in the early part of the day, this is when the sun is less invasive for people that are concerned about, you know, sun damage and all that,

which is another huge conversation where we're more afraid of the sun, which has a small amount of implications, which they're serious. The massive implications is not getting any interaction with the sun, which is literally enabling life on the planet. All right. Like that is the fear. Fear the thing that has helped us to have. We wouldn't have oxygen without the sun.

We wouldn't have, you know, plant matter. We wouldn't have life here, period. Like just, come on. All right. So we have to be a little bit more aware and intentional about this because, again, we're very good at taking media and creating this fearmongering. Not to say you should, if you haven't been in the sun to go out and spend two hours in the sun with super pale skin. I'm not saying that.

Or to use protection. I'm saying that our associations are really skewed to where now we're in such fear of the sun and things have been promoted to keep us indoors. And we're missing out on a critical biological input. Sunlight, we know this now, is influencing directly thousands of our genes and influencing epigenetic program. So determining which genes are getting expressed just by sun exposure and the offshoot from that vitamin D being another big important component. So to put all this together, what we want to do to leverage this is, if at all possible, I know that people have different conditions, but during the time of year that you can, whenever you can, get outside and get some early morning sun exposure. If your skin is darker, if you're looking for like production of vitamin D and all that stuff, you need more time in the sun. son. But get up if you can get yourself just 10 minutes outside. And you can make it, you can stack it.

Like you can go out, this can be your time you go out and have your cup of coffee, go out and have your, do your journaling, read a little bit, have your breakfast outside. You could exercise outside, which is going to help to support that cortisol rhythm as well. Right. And that's another thing. I'm just going to throw this in here really quickly. Appalachian State University. I mentioned this years ago when we talked about this. Appalachia State University did a study to find out what's the best time to exercise to improve your sleep quality. And they had test subjects to exercise at 7 a.m. for one phase, 1 p.m. for another phase and 7 p.m. in the evening for another evening. They found that the morning exercises who were working out at 7 a.m. had more efficient sleep cycles.

They tended to sleep longer. They had, and this was another really interesting thing, a greater drop in their blood pressure in the evening. Right. So again, that's, that's core. correlated with that drop in that sympathetic fight or flight, right, that relaxation process, right, by exercising in the morning. Does this mean you can't exercise after work at four or five? No, you could do that. Fine. But get some morning exercise in it because it's going to help to improve your sleep quality. So, yeah, getting some natural sun exposure to start the day is one of the essential inputs that our genes expect from us to help to improve our sleep quality. And you mentioned the right time of year for you, generally speaking too, because sometimes we are here in, just outside of Santa Monica here in Los Angeles. It's a little overcast, but that's still beneficial. Do you want to say anything about that, like in terms of helping people understand just the, you know, even if you're on the East Coast, even if you're somewhere cloudy, it's still beneficial to be outside. Yes, yes. One of the studies that I was just talking about not too long ago, researchers actually were looking at, and this was, this was,

This was looking at cadavers and looking at the seasonal implications of serotonin in their system and finding that even in places that were more overcast, they still tended to have higher levels of serotonin or their analogs versus people who were not getting sun exposure at all, right? So getting sun exposed, so getting outside, even in an overcast day, the sun is still shining through. Many people know you can still get sunburned when it's overcast. Matter of fact, it might even improve the likelihood that you're getting sunburned because of just how the sun is dancing in association with those clouds. But also, you know,

if you're looking at, because this would get into the conversation of the different types, UVA, UVB, UVC. UVC's like we've got this kind of shield around the earth in a sense in the ozone layer. So that's not, that's like, that's like, that's like, a galaxy level, like outside of the earth. So that's not really a concern. UVB, of all the rays that are reaching the surface of the earth, 95% of them are UVA. UVB is what triggers the production of vitamin D in our system.

But so little of those rays are actually getting to Earth, all right? This is why being adamant about getting sun exposure at certain times and certain times a year, because that's even going to change, right? We've even got this section of the United States that it's going to change from the time of year when you're even getting vitamin D producing UVB even reaching you, right? So there's this kind of belt around the country, right? And so if we're living in the northern latitudes, we're not going to be producing or even getting the time. types of rays that can help us to produce vitamin D. You know, so we got to be mindful of that. This could be a place for supplementation, potentially,

but the human body is very good at storing up some vitamin D. So just getting the sunlight that you can. Now, even this conversation, I didn't know he's going to get into this. With vitamin D, this is going to be a different time of day than that morning sun exposure. So it's just like, I got to get more sunlight. You know, it's like another natural input that we might not be acclimated to. So this is why I'm saying Anytime you can get some natural sunlight

It's going to be better than nothing Right And your benefits are going to be different Depending on the time of day So I want to use that as a jump off point To some of the mindset piece around it You know that idea of like a morning protocol Morning routine

Has been talked about so much In the context of getting sunlight Definitely not when your book first came out Right That was like a game changer for a lot of people understanding it. And since then, more and more people have been highlighting it, talking about it. And yet still, I know that there are probably people listening to this podcast today.

They're like, I know about this. I've heard about this before. And of course, there's no one-size-fits-all. But I'd love you to think about maybe from the hundreds of thousands of people that reach out to you on a regular basis and are testing out these different recommendations that you give on your podcast all the time. Model Health Show, subscribe, link of the show notes. What do you think is just that, right?

Just that particular protocol. What are some of the mindset traps or things that people fall into where even if they know it, they don't actually do it on a consistent basis? What do you think is going on there? Oh, man, this is a very simple principle here. People want, the reason that we would even entertain ideas like that is that we want better. We want to feel better.

We want change. Maybe it's our body composition. We want to see some change happen there. Maybe it's our energy. We want to see some change happen there. Maybe it's our performance at work. Maybe it's our relationships. We want to see some change happen there.

But here's the rub. People want change, but they don't want to change that much. They want a new result, but they don't want in their life right now, want to change that much in order to get it. And this is because human, We're very comfortable with who we are. Now, you might not like who you are or where you are exactly, but we're very comfortable with it.

Everything driving human psychology, the number one driving force of the human psyche is to stay congruent with the ideas and actions that we believe are the associated actions and beliefs and ideas of the person who we are right now. So again, the number one driving force of the human's psyche is the stake congruent with the ideas that we hold about ourselves and the world around us, just to be more clear. That's what's driving our reality, our perception of things.

This is who I am, so I've got to act in this way to preserve who I am. Exactly. And when you deter from that, all kinds of chaos is going to be taking place psychologically because you're deterring from what is comfortable, what is known. And so what tends to happen is if we're talking about creating a morning routine to improve your sleep quality or performance or whatever the case might be and you start having too many ingredients, that's just too much change at one time for the vast majority of people. So again, we want change but we don't want to change that much. And so there's this tenant that's been spoken about for thousands of years to know thyself, right? Know thyself. What type of personality are you? Are you the rip off the band-aid,

just go all in type of person? Are you the person, the baby's stuff? steps person or you the person who quit stuff really quickly. You know, like you got to look at your track record, look at your history and know who you are. None of these is better than the other because each and every one of these personality types has seen great success in the world. There have been examples of people who operate that way who've created amazing things in the world.

But if you don't know yourself and what you're good at and what your potential, you know, not so good at stuff is, I'm not going to say weaknesses, but if you're not aware of those saying you're not so good stuff or aka your weaknesses are going to keep on chiseling away at you. And so a couple of things. One is for the majority of people just taking on one to two interventions at one time to get started. So a great example. My wife's personality type is to go all in and then whenever she hits a snag, she quickly will stop doing said thing, all right?

And because like, but here's a thing, life is going to happen. So if you're coming into this scenario and you're wanting to do this particular change and you're not aware that's like you, you have this crazy idea that everything is going to work out perfectly. Like every, we're just going to start this new routine. It's going to be great. But then boom, it's an issue with, you know, the kids or the parents or car or something. Something.

Something always happens. Always. So if you don't have that awareness that something's going to happen, not to expect it so you're just like broadcasting a problem, but just to be aware when the thing shows up like, oh yeah, something, yeah, I was expecting you. I was expecting an obstacle along the way or two or three, right? So being aware that something is going to happen. And instead of like, again, she'll do all the things.

So like, okay, I got to do this, I got to do a program, I got to do that, there are other people who have they spend so much time in preparation that they never even get started or they rarely get started right so they always got to make sure everything's right got to get the perfect outfit perfect shoes i got to get i got to get the cooler for the bed i got to get all the stuff no just go to bed like just start with one thing that just get get off the device for 30 minutes right you don't need to buy something to do that you don't need everything to be perfect right but that's kind of like that Barry Schwartz book from back in the day, the paradox of choice, right? We have so many things that do that we do nothing, right? So many choices that we have a hard time

choosing anything. And so for the majority of people again, you take just a couple of implements. So we've talked about a few today. So maybe you just give yourself, hey, I'm going to start with that 30-minute screen curfew. And I'm just going to do that. That's it. I don't have to do the temperature thing and I don't have to have this talk with my significant other and I don't have to and I don't have to. Just take some of the pressure off to be perfect, right? And just understand you're going to get some benefit just from implementing one thing. Get really good at that, then do the next thing, right?

But again, one to two things because people are just like, well, I don't want just one thing. You know, so that's why I say two. So let's say you're doing one or two things and you feel like you've gotten a pretty good handle on it, right? How long before they might think about including the next thing? Obviously, every person's different, but just in your experience, right? There's a couple weeks good enough before they start incorporating the next thing. What are your thoughts on that?

There's a lot of science and debate around habits so much. And, you know, how long does it take to create a habit? What it really boils down to is a neuro association. So your brain and your biology expecting certain things, specifically at certain times, I believe that you can leverage and shift your habits faster if you're putting them on this circadian system, the circadian timing system. And so it starts to anchor in where your body literally expects certain things to happen at certain times. So if you're doing that, so we'll just say the 30-minute screen curfew and working out in the morning for just five minutes, five-minute morning exercise outside and 30-minute screen curfew. So you're doing that and you're doing this at relatively the same time for a couple of weeks.

And it's just like it's starting to become second nature. Like it's just kind of feels it's good. It's not a big deal. Then I would say you can add something else in. But you have to know yourself. All right. But for most people, and I can't stress this enough, if it's happening at the same time, right? If it's not, if it's still kind of sporadic, don't add in another piece.

All right. So for me, because what tends to happen with habits is everybody experiences the, that kind of like new love phase, right? Where it's just like, oh, this is awesome. I'm like drinking water when I get up doing my morning exercise. It's amazing. It's amazing. Why do I waste so long? Everything is going good. But then after about a week, maybe, you know, maybe a little bit longer. Then the struggle phase starts to come into play, maybe even before a week, where you're brain is like, all right, this isn't you. We've been sleeping an extra two hours, you know, because we've been up late. And you've been getting up and getting a bowl of frosted flakes, like for 17 years. And now you want to get up and exercise. Who do you think you want?

And so the struggle starts to happen where you've got to kind of like make yourself do the thing rather than just like, I'm drawn to it, right? That struggle phase is where most people throw in the towel. And also we'll start to look for problems. Not only that the obstacle will happen, but we'll look for problems. We'll look for an excuse to not do the thing, right? But if you can be aware of the struggle phase of discomfort coming up and your brain is literally trying to change its association to your habits, to your life, and to who you are, who you see yourself being, if you could traverse through that just for a little bit longer, now you're going to get into more of the integration phase, right, to where it starts to become second.

nature starts to become a part of you, starts to become a little bit more of your identity. You might even look forward to it. You might even look forward to it. Because once it becomes a part of your identity, it's just what you do, right? So for me, if I go too long without working out, I don't feel right. Just give some examples. What do you feel in your body? Like, what do you notice?

How does your mind shift when you go too long without working out? What's the first indicators that you see? Oh man, there's some key words that come up for me. You know, it depends on the level of gym etiquette out here. But, you know, you start to like, you start to miss the pop. You know, you start to miss that feeling of fullness and strength. You know, like you might even feel like a little bit less superhero vibe going on, you know. But also, but real talk, what would tend to happen is,

I would feel like something's missing, like something, there's something off in my life. Something is missing. And I can't quite put my finger on it unless I do a little bit of self-analysis. Now, this is difficult because this rarely happens, but it has happened. Sure. I've been at this for, I've been in this field specifically for 20 years working in this field. But prior to that, I was lifting weights, you know, in college and, you know, high school and sports and stuff like that. But so that's one thing.

Just the feeling that something is missing, something is off. And also, sleep, my sleep quality is noticeably better when I work out. It's not that my sleep is bad, but I just sleep better. Like I sleep deeper. I fall asleep faster when I work out, right? And I can notice over time, like I feel like I, you know, I'm not sleeping as much. maybe again, I don't necessarily need to because I'm not recovering, but I don't like it. I like this certain amount of sleep that just feels right for me, you know.

And it's because my body's acclimated to having this sleep with this input, right? So that's another thing. And oh, this is a big one too. And this can happen, especially if you're sleep deprived, but my appetite is different. Right. So if I'm not working out like I normally do, my. my cravings go up, surprisingly. All right?

It's the craziest thing, all right? Because you would think if you're working out, your body's going to want you to get more resources in. But man, on the days that I don't work out is when I eat the most. And probably the cravings shift towards other types of foods. Oh, man, yeah. You mentioned something earlier who said, know thyself, right? What are some things you know about you, right?

Broadening beyond sleep for a second that they're just, who you are. And so you've adjusted your general boundaries in the day. Could be with routines, could be with work, could be with people, to create enough buffer so you can be who you are. So are there things that you've put in place in your life, systems, boundaries, et cetera, that allow you to be more of who you are and not let the world distract you from your mission and your goals and dreams in life.

I know that's a broad question, but just anything come up for you on that? Yeah. This was not manufactured, but this does come back to sleep because I value feeling good so much. It's such a high priority in my life. And I know what it's like to not feel good, to feel sleep deprived, to feel like, you know, I'm exhausted or I'm not mentally as sharp as I normally am. I like feeling like myself, right?

and so creating some structure and systems around that. Like my, man, my youngest son, Braden, even there are so many cultural, there are so many cultural taboos in some ways, but also myths around sleep. Like this is one of those things, unless it's messed up, people don't really talk about it. And even when it's messed up, people still don't talk about it.

But we're led to believe that when you have a baby, for example, that you're not going to sleep for the next five years. Like, forget about it. But we're also lacking communication and training and support from, like, we don't live in the same tribal construct that we evolved in. You know, even closer in your culture, like the grandparents are there, right? And sometimes, oftentimes, in the household, right? And so there's support.

There's people working together. There are multiple people taking care of the baby. But there are also patterns you've got to understand even the baby wants to sleep, but the baby wants their needs met, right? And so me coming into this, I'm aware. And so I'm creating these patterns. I know that, okay, I know that, for example, we started to create a little bit of a gap from his last feeding, right?

So instead of letting him get a little snack from mommy, you know, maybe an hour before bed, just let him be a little hungry. All right? So he really goes to town on lay nipple when he finally gets a chance to eat, right? And so, but here's the thing. We can't just have the baby just sitting up here crying and everybody's agitated and upset and he's upset and I'm upset and we're all upset. I'm going to spend some time.

Let me keep him entertained. So this is great father baby time. Like we're hanging out. I know he's like, he's still like kind of looking over. worse that nipple, you know. But I'll engage with them. We have some fun. I get him tired, right? So I'm actually having him play a little bit. And then he has a really big feeding right before bed because those needs, like what is the baby waking up for? Changed food. Just trying to get things sorted out being a new life here in this 24-hour solar day. The body's just trying

to sort it out. Let's help that. Let's help the process. And by the way, none of this stuff, there is hardly even a tenant in science that cannot be challenged at some level, you know. And so I'm thinking about even some of our scientific tenets, even physics, right, laws of physics. Right now we're looking at the strong potential of like different dimensions existing, right? And so are the laws of physics still upheld the same way in this other dimension that might have a certain just something a little bit different as far as their physics. You know what I mean? Like at some point, everything, we're just using our language and our awareness now to communicate.

The problem is we act like we know everything and not staying open. And so in saying this, no baby is just going to follow lockstep with these things that I'm talking about. But what we can learn to do as a culture is stack conditions and to support each other. Because what's happening is we're becoming more and more separate as time has gone on. And so, and it's, we have a society, we have a social structure that's promoting more of that isolation, right? So even your social media, your online engagement with other people, it's still distant.

It's still, you're going into this device to experience human connection, which is, again, very abnormal, not to say that it can't be amazing and fruitful and rewarding and wonderful, but when that's getting, when that's replacing real world human interaction and real world human support where your family member can actually hold the baby, that's a problem. And so, again, we've gotten more and more distant from each other. We've got more and more distance from our community, our neighbors. And so with my son, we have my mom-in-law, man, she really came through, even like making food and all the things.

And she's from Kenya, like the culture, she just come through. There's all this food. We don't have to worry that that mental thing. is off of our shoulders, right? And it's such a blessing. I'm so grateful for that because it's something I wouldn't have thought of. But what I did know after working, you know,

working with people for at that point maybe 10 years, almost 10 years, is finding a neural association for him. So every night we will play the same music or put on the same like meditation music, right? And got to the point where, of course, after putting, quote, putting to bed for a while, you know, a year, two years later, we just go in the room, put the music on, and he goes to sleep, right?

Now, now the problem is today, I'm wondering if he's going to be like 17 out with his friends. He might hear this meditation music and just like, you know, narcolepsy, you know, his fall asleep on the spot. Like, what's up with Brady? But anyways, what is creating these neuro associations, right? Putting him to bed at the same time, if at all possible, right? Just stacking conditions for him, you know, and then who got to, once, we started reading with him, you know, in the book, we had the same routine every night.

And he was sleeping through the night probably right around eight weeks. You know, it was getting like seven hours of sleep, which is amazing because we're so taught that that's not even possible. And again, that's not going to happen across the board for everybody. We have to open the door to know that. It is possible to help your child to get more on a good sleep routine. And also, we can work together to sort it out if that's not happening. having family, having togetherness, and making that more of a mandate.

And so really to answer your question, because of my value of feeling good, I've created systems and structures in my life to make sure that I'm getting good sleep at night and that my household has a value on that. You know, like my youngest son, the routine is there. Even today, he's 10 now. And man, just within a few minutes, I can check in on him. That guy is sleeping. He's knocked out, right?

But with him getting a little bit older, of course, is going to be more things trying to draw him in, vying for his attention. Maybe he's the show, maybe his friends playing online, whatever the case might be. We can create more wiggle room, but we've got to stay true to the principles.

And one of the beautiful things about that is that because that's built as a foundation for your family, like that's a family value, you also have the contrast. So when things get out of whack, you're like, whoa, like, I know what good sleep is like. It's like growing up,

some people who grew up in healthier households where they had like minimized amount of processed junk and other things like that. And especially in their high school years, they didn't get sick as often. Then you go to college and you pick out on all the same foods that other people are doing. You live through the college experience.

And I had a friend this happened to, they would get sick regularly. And they're like, whoa, like what's going on now that is different in my life that when I was back in high school, living my parents, eating home-cooked meals and everything like that, I didn't get sick as often. So I think that contrast is important

because kids will grow up one day and they'll go off and do other things, but now at least they have a baseline that they can return back to, which is a very powerful thing. This is such a great example. My oldest son, Jordan, is 21. He just got back from Mexico,

his first time traveling with his friend, right? So he gets back, and the first thing that he does, day one, is he's like drinking these greens, drinks. He's fasting and all these things because of course he was going ham out there with the food that he was eating and whatever else going down to Cabo. But another thing that he mentioned was that the first day when he got up to go to the gym, because he also, he's a personal trainer, right? So he's out there being of service and helping folks too. He got up and he went to see a client.

And he was like, dad, man, I just kind of freaked me out that it was so bright outside. this dude has been every waking moment during the daytime in Mexico, he had his glasses on. He had his cool sunglasses. You know, he's missed, you know, no disrespect. He was the cool guy down to Cabo, right? So every picture during the day, he's got these glasses on, these sunglasses. So literally his brain, like, he wasn't getting sun exposure. And so now just a natural, natural sun exposure during the day, sunlight was just like, he's like a vampire all of a sudden.

just in like five days, right? And so, but that and also because he knows what it's like to feel good, he felt it coming on down there as well. His friend was just like, nah, bro, I'm just not going to, because my son offered to go to the gym. And his friend, you know, they're feeling hungover. And so my son was like, no, I got to, I mean, just go to the gym, do something. So he went to the gym, got himself a smoothie down there apparently.

And he's just like, man, I felt like a new person, right? but his friend was dragging. That whole day was just a wash for him, you know. And so he knows these things because of our culture of what it's like to not feel good when you have these inputs. Not to say that you won't do the input, but you know where that baseline is. And you have real world strategies to get back to the way that you want to feel. Powerful.

I want to switch topics. We have a few more things to cover. Caffeine, specifically coffee. For the longest time, you didn't drink coffee. Yeah. And then you started including it in your routine. Tell the people listening how you incorporate caffeine now, again, especially in the form of coffee. And do you ever take breaks from it?

And are there boundaries that you have around it that make sure that it doesn't interfere with your sleeping protocol? Perfect. Perfect. Well, just as a caveat here, yeah, I still have not, quote, gotten a coffee with anyone. Like, I've never, like, going to a place and gotten coffee. All right. So people said, let's get a coffee. We'll get a coffee.

Never happened. All right. The only coffee that I've had is just my special blend at my house. And one person did bring me coffee one time to my studio. Mark Bell. Shout out to Mark Bell. But other than that, yeah, I just, so when we're talking about my babyhood in the world of coffee, like, for real.

And but the reason I started to drink coffee, and I've got like the medicinal mushroom infused coffee, the reason I started to drink coffee was like the, the peer-view data was nuts. Like, it was amazing. I just couldn't believe it. One of them, a recent study found that the caffeine from coffee was found to help to suppress genes that are related to inflammation. So helping to basically deactivate.

See, I've struggled to say turn off or turn on. It's not necessarily like that, but just for communication's sake, helping to downregulate genes related to inflammation, age-related inflammation specifically. All right. And so there was one particular study that utilized caffeine, not coffee, but caffeine, to find out the impacts that it would have on sleep quality. And so what they did was they gave the test subjects caffeine literally right before they put them into bed. And this was a controlled clinical trial.

Sleep ward study so they can track everything objectively, like sleep monitors, and subjectively from the person's own opinion of how they slept. So they gave them caffeine directly before bed for one phase. They gave them caffeine three hours before bed for another phase and they gave them coffee six hours before bed from another phase. Giving them caffeine, which was equivalent to about a large cup of coffee, you know, like 300 milligrams will say of caffeine, three or four. That was enough to cause measurable disturbance to the sleep quality. objectively measured by sleep monitoring technology lost one hour of sleep. So subjectively, they might have thought they got eight hours of sleep.

Objectively, they got seven, all right? They lost an hour of sleep by having caffeine six hours before bed. So even that long out. And here's where it all gets into your personalization. We all are unique. You have a unique caffeine metabolism. compared to me. They're different. Caffeine, on average, has a half-life of, we'll just say, six hours, all right? There's even a spectrum for that, by the way. So it's tough to say,

all right? So caffeine, we'll just say it has a half-life of six hours. That means if you have 300 milligrams of caffeine after six hours, half of it is still active in your system, so 150. Then six hours later, half of that, right? So 75 milligrams and so on and so far. forth. All right. So this half-life phenomenon. And what's happening with caffeine, it has this really, here's the thing to, people can be like, well, caffeine's bad. Just leave it alone. The human body has such a resonance with this substance. Caffeine, it fits into receptor sites for adenosine. All right. So this, it was largely considered kind of this like metabolic byproduct and science for such a long time. But more recently, we understand that as,

we build up adenosine from just normal daily, you know, day-to-day actions, cognitive stuff taking place, you know, biological actions, we're building up this sleep inertia, all right? So building up as this adenosine is going up is building up our need, our feeling for us to go to sleep, all right? And so caffeine can fit into receptor sites for adenosine. So basically, you're still producing adenosine as you're doing your day stuff, your life stuff, but adenosine can't fit into its receptor sites to start to nudge you to sleep. So you can be tired and not know it because of caffeine. So that's really how it works. And it's also, of course,

it's a pretty strong nervous system stimulant, potentially, you know, again, depending on the spectrum and your sensitivity to it. So there's a couple of ways that caffeine makes this kind of feel good or feel like I can, I have more energy, right? So it has this resonance with the human body to even fit into receptor sites for something so remarkable. And humans have been having caffeinated stuff for, I mean, thousands and thousands of years. So with that being said, it's probably not a good idea to, you know, if you're out at dinner, like, and you've seen this so often, I'm sure, they'll come around after dinner like, cappuccino, you know, little cappuccino, you know, if you're trying to get good sleep, you don't want to get the cap, like right then, okay? No can.

That means no lie, by the way. Shout out to the young folks. So, you know, you probably want to avoid that. And also, alcohol, same scenario here as well, you know, it's not, alcohol, funny enough, isn't as invasive to our sleep as caffeine can be in some aspects. Because alcohol does, in fact, make you fall asleep faster. Fact. And many people know that.

They drink alcohol to help them to wine. down and go to sleep. But what's also very clear in the data is that it dramatically wrecks your REM sleep if you're having alcohol close to bedtime. It's called this REM rebound effect. So your REM sleep gets fractured essentially. And during REM sleep is like, again, what I mentioned, it's where memory consolidation happens. And so this is why if you drink too much, if you drink a lot of alcohol, you have this

phenomenon of not remembering what happened, right? Not this ever happened to you, true. No, nobody listening, but maybe you know somebody. Maybe you know a guy. They don't remember what? No. Did I do that? They don't remember, right? It's because of the REM sleeping fractures. It's not just because alcohol just, it is a very, again, it's so crazy that alcohol is kind of put in this different camp. It's a psychoactive substance, very, very strong. super legal in our society and it's just kind of like overlooked that it's a very strong psychoactive substance and more people die from alcohol than just about any drug you can name like you could combine a bunch of drugs together some of the most nefarious more people die from alcohol

not to rain on anybody's parade let me just be clear if you're trying to get your sip on all good and more power to you it's just being aware of these things right and so in that there's that aspect of it, but with caffeine, this is something where you can put it in its pocket where if you're going to have caffeine, you know that it's disrupting your sleep quality potentially, just have a caffeine curfew, like have a cutoff time. Get your couple cups of coffee in before noon, right? Or whatever the case might be, whatever you plan on, whatever plan you have as far as getting to bed at night. So it's not saying that it's off limits, but just respect the fact that it is a very strong nervous system stimulant. And it is blocking this adenicine.

pathway, right? So you could think you have more energy than you really do in a strange way, in a strange way. And also the source that your caffeine is coming from matters a lot because a caffeine that's in a pre-workout supplement is very different from the caffeine coming along with organic coffee. Now, you might say, if we look at the chemical makeup, same thing. But that's the problem with health care and health in general today is that we've been led to believe that a synthetic version of the thing is the same as the thing in its original state. I'll give you a great example. I just found this out that about 90% of the vitamin C supplements out there that you'll find like when you're checking out, these little packets are from GMO corn. 90%. All right. So highly

Do you know how much work you have to do to get some vitamin C out of that weak piece of corn, GMO corn? It takes a lot, right? It's kind of like even a byproduct. They're probably trying to get high fructose corn syrup and they got all this leftover. Like throw it in some packets. Say it's going to help you to fight your colds, right? There's something remarkable about, and we've got studies on this, botanical sources of vitamin C. So one of them is Camu Camus. Do you know about Camus Camus? I do. Yeah.

So Cammo Cammo. Come on, man. We come from the raw food days. Facts. Come on. No disrespect. No disrespect. For those that are listening, a little sidebar, Mr. Sean here and myself were at one point in time, raw vegans. We didn't know each other at that time, but we were hanging out in the same circles. I knew about Drew. I knew about you, man. You know, you were out here making it happen. For real. Well, appreciate it. So yes, Camu Camus was one of the darlings of the raw food space. They would talk about it often.

But tell our audience why it's so powerful. Sure. It was thanks to one of the experts at the USDA, a scientist, food scientist, who did some logging and just started to track this stuff of like highest botanical sources of various nutrients. One of those things he categorized was vitamin C. Camus Camusberry was found to be the highest botanical source of vitamin C by far. Like a teaspoon is like 700% of your RDA of vitamin C, like just a tiny amount. And so one of these studies, this was done on smokers.

All right. So this was a study that was done on smokers. And they wanted to find out, does synthetic vitamin C versus Camu Camus Barry actually hold up any kind of clinical benefit for somebody bringing in a strong oxidating factor, right? And so after giving the test subjects the Camus Camus berry, they found that that did in fact reduce their oxidative stress. The synthetic, basically that was the placebo, did nothing. All right. So it had no protective benefit from what they were measuring. So again, we know that there's something remarkable about, it's not just the vitamin C. What about these cofactors? What about the things in that food?

that make it actually work and make it make that language transfer that translation from external food stuff into human cell that translator is it going to be more effective with real food versus a synthetic isolated thing and clearly food first food is there's something special about it we're still trying to figure this out we don't we just don't know we just don't know there are hundreds of other food elements, even within that one fruit that we still don't understand yet, right? We're just still operating on the stuff that we do know. But big picture things, we know that that does work to help to reduce oxidative stress. So the botanical source is

going to be ideal. So that was a little bit of a sidebar with the vitamin C, but it's a important part of the conversation as well today because we've seen there's one peer-viewed study, intravenous for this particular virus that's been on everybody's mind the past couple of years and seeing a remarkable protective effect with vitamin C. But again, like this is not even necessarily the good stuff. Right. So but lots of people coming forward like say, make sure you get your vitamin C, make sure you get the vitamin D, all this stuff. We've got tons of studies on it now, some of the most prestigious peer-review journals. That source matters in particular. And by the that study on the male smokers that was published in the journal of cardiology and the intravenous

vitamin C study that I mentioned in association with this virus was published in pharma nutrition. So folks can easily look that up. And what it was found to do is to help to reduce the impact of the cytokine storm associated with the virus by upping the person's vitamin C. So for you, you know, you mentioned these whole food forms. are you primarily looking to include them in your diet, anything that you're a fan of, you know, feel free to mention products or anything like that.

Like, do you feel like your diet is the core base, which we know, right? You said food first, but are there things that you're including in, especially because you're saying botanical sources, are the things that you're including in that are that extra insurance policy or things that you might pulse in at different times? Do you feel like, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that?

Yeah. Listen, being in this field, and as you mentioned, I've gone through the spectrum, even doing a raw vegan protocol for a couple of years. And I lived in Missouri, you know, cold winters. And I didn't have no cook food. You know, I go 100% on the stuff I do. Keto protocols, I'll do stuff for at least a year at a time. You know, vegetarian protocols, paleo protocols. The list goes on and on in my experimentation.

through those times, especially when I run into energy barriers or performance barriers, cognitive barriers, I'll reach out like, well, I got, let me try and supplement this thing. So maybe doing a vegan protocol and I run into an energy barrier or some kind of benefit, some kind of performance metric that I'm used to. I'm just like, okay, well, let me try B12 because that might be a deficiency, right? or DHA, right, which you're not going to get unless it's coming from an animal product. And so I experimented with, I can't even tell you how many different supplements over the years. Like it's a little, it's a problem.

But I've gone, because I've done so much of that, I really do, I deeply, deeply understand that it literally it's a supplement. It's to supplement an already healthy diet. It cannot fix problems when it's kind of like the food is a big mover. It's like a boulder. And the supplements are like tiny little nerd candies. Like they're tiny little pebbles, right? It just doesn't have the same metabolic weight. Not to say that these supplements can be incredibly helpful, but we got to get the other stuff down there

because you could be doing stuff with the big movers, big food, not that big food. We don't want to talk about them. but with the big movers, the whole food, that is just basically counteracting the supplement that you're spending all that money on, right? So get the food first with supplements. At this point, I've really just kind of zero end on. I just, I listen to my body now a lot more

and I just have a feel for things, you know, and also just understanding what I'm eating, food combinations. but I'll tell you a couple of things that I have on a consistent basis. One of them is DHA specifically. So DHA and EPA, but specifically DHA is so important. And again, this is just on straight up hardcore science because I did a brain scan with Dr. Daniel Aman. He had me on his show and it's called Scan My Brain, right?

So he scanned my brain. And he could see, he was just like, this looks like the brain of somebody. He's been in a lot of fights, which man, was in a lot of fights. Wow. I got kicked out of school, high school for a year, got kicked out of college. Just growing up in a volatile environment, again, solving problems with fighting, you know. And I didn't get hit too many times, though. I don't know why he said that.

But there was this one time. I ran into a walk. That's a whole other thing. But also he's just like, this looks like the brain of somebody who played football and has had some head trauma being in fights. And when I was four years old was my first head trauma, I had this scar on the back of my head. And my mother and the neighbor's caretakers,

I don't remember if it was his mother, but there were two of them there. This kid, he's a bigger kid. I was like in preschool, I was four. He was like six. And we kept getting into little scuffles, little kids, but they made us fight each other. And this is not great parenting, by the way.

And I understand today I can look back on it with understanding. But at the time, I mean, I detested my mother for this. Like I felt my safety, like that's your mom. I felt like my safety was stripped from me because I just remember very specifically feeling like, I don't want to do this. Why is she making me do this? And but she understood the environment we were in. She wanted me to be tough.

She wanted me to be capable. She wanted me to be able to defend myself. you know and I get it some of those things that she was kind of encouraging me it it saved my life a few times because you got hit and you weren't as afraid of it and you kind of like it was a little bit more of a controlled environment is that what you mean like in the sense of like she was telling you to fight this other kid and it was the idea of like look this is going to happen anyway so let me just be around to be a process of toughening him up yeah that's a great way to articulate yeah but within two seconds

of the fight commencing, the kid pushed me into the corner of a brick wall outside on her stoop and just split my head open. Oh my gosh. And, you know, I was rushed to the hospital. I was on the gurney. The lights going over, the whole thing. And I felt so bad.

Like, I felt like I let her down, you know. And I was just like, I'll get him, I'll get them. And sure enough, so I had a bunch, you know, I got stitches in the whole thing. But, you know, I caught him slipping, you know, this little kid and, you know, I got back at him. I'm not proud of that. But that kind of set the tone for like, I'm not going to allow you to hurt me.

Like, I'm not much. The funny thing is, if we weren't doing this, I'd be in my office reading a book or researching. Unless somebody asks me stuff, I'm not the guy that's out like talking and trying to, like, you know, move the crowd unless it's called upon, you know. But so I don't really talk. Like in all those scenarios, you know, like being in the environment, people talk crazy. It's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of shit talking. Not me. But as soon as the threat comes, I would just attack, you know.

And again, that was a phase of my life. But once again, the crazy thing is, again, once I got physically healthier and really worked on changing my own health, it just simply didn't fit anymore for me to see people as a threat constantly. Because that's all I look for in my environment. Who's the threat? Who's a threat? and start to see people as people, you know. And not just that. Like I went from being self-centered to other-centered,

which that's not necessarily good either, you know, as a phase, because you can become so concerned about everybody else and helping others that you lose yourself. Right. But that was a part of my healing and to come to this place of balance to sit here with you today and not seem like the guy that was out there, you know, shutting the club down, you know, throwing hands in that whole thing. And so to bring this all back full circle, you know, getting a chance to see my brain,

it's one thing to be aware of a thing, but to see like, oh, wow, I can, I see the area of my brain that's not getting the blood flow, the activity, and he's got such a huge database. Like, I think they've got over 200,000 brain scans that they've done. He knows the stuff that can move the needle. And so for him, he's just like, you have to get. serious about DHA. And so number one, again, food first. What's going to be the viable food source?

Everybody at this point probably knows this fatty fish. The journal neurology did some data on this. They found that folks eating just one seafood meal per week do, in fact, perform significantly better on cognitive skills tests. Even later in life, just one seafood meal per week. There's something to that. But here's the thing with DHA specifically. And if you're doing a vegan or vegetarian protocol, we're inclusive here.

So I would, when I was doing clinical work, people were coming in, I would have everybody get on like flaxseed and flaxseed oil and hemp seed and hemp seed oil and all these things. And I meant well because I was like, you got to get your mega threes. That is not the same as what the brain, when we're talking about DHA, those are used for structural fats to make your brain cells, right? Structural fats. So this enables signal transduction. This literally means your brain cells can't talk to each other efficiently when you're deficient in this particular substance. So DHA. Its ALA is what's in these plant sources.

And your body can convert. This is the great thing about, and right now we're starting to understand how it happens. But your body can convert some ALA into DHA EPA. But you can lose upwards of depending on the. person, your microbiome, your state of health, your genetics, you could lose 75, 90% in the conversion process. You will never reach the amount of DHA that you need, which again, another study that was actually using FMRIs to look at the brain, they found that people who were getting less than two grams of DHA per day had the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

So their brains were shrinking when they were, so the two grams is the bar. you're not getting anywhere close to that if you eat two cups of chia seeds all right you can get closer to it a bathroom but you're not going to get closer to having the brain that you want right and so just one quick question of that so to get that two grams equivalent of course you know you see a lot of supplements it's pretty easy on the back do the math and that sort of thing but if you're getting it from food first I mean how many servings of fish are we talking about is one serving a day two grams is it more than a serving we don't yeah we don't even need to eat fish every day and also again Then you get into the conversation about pollution and, you know, heavy metals, all those things, which we get so neurotic about that stuff and we miss the bigger point, right?

Mercury is not out here like that on these streets and these oceans, all right? As far as the fish are concerned, bigger fish? Okay, tuna, yeah. Swordfish, yeah. Be mindful. But salmon, you don't need to worry as much, you know. Trout, again, like the smaller. Well, salmon could be big as hell too.

So also you got to think about where are the fish at as well, you know, a river versus the ocean. Freshwater versus salt water. There are all these other factors. But people are just to shun the fish because, oh, I heard Mercury's going to kill me, right? Or being hyper-focused on microplastics, which at this point in time, not that we shouldn't be concerned. I'm probably more concerned about microplastics than Mercury when, you know, food supplies and sources. and it's pretty ubiquitous. So you do the best you can.

Yeah. You know, I think just taking it back to like the book Sleep Smarter, one of like the key section inside of there is that don't let perfection become your enemy. Yes, exactly, exactly. And so, I mean, when it boils down to it, maybe two to three servings, you know, we'll just say six to eight ounce servings of a high quality fatty fish source a week, would do it.

So one clarification on that. So you probably were incorporating. that into your diet, but because you had that extra damage that Daniel Lehman saw on this spec scan, I believe they're called, you needed more on top of that. Yep. Okay. Got that and some other things he recommended as well. Yeah.

So, but also because it's a food source, just from my experience, I'm going to put more, I'm going to give more credibility to that DHA, even if it's lower than what's in this capsule. I'm going to give a little bit more credit in the bioavailability. Just a little bit again, because, again, our association. But with the fish sources, you want to make sure the supplement sources that it's processed. You've really got to do your homework with the company you're buying from. All right. It's super important.

Making sure that it's the protection, the mega threes are very delicate. Super sensitive. Yeah. So, and even when you're cooking, you don't want your fish well done. You don't want the salmon to be, you know, well done. And it can have, you know, you can medium, you know, it's cool, but we don't want to just overcook the fish as well. So with vegetarian and vegan approaches, we can have some chisis and hempsies, that kind of stuff. But here's the thing.

We've got to, we've got to make sure we get that DHA, and by any means necessary, from the plant kingdom. Right. So instead of fish oil, maybe we can go to krill oil, which is a microscopic shrimp. I'm saying shrimp quietly because the shrimp part could throw us off, but it's microscopic, okay? Maybe that fits in your line of ethics, but then from there, at least today, get yourself some algae oil. Please do your brain a favor. But I got to tell people this. I'm not that guy that is just going to be saying something because it sounds good.

We don't have much, if at all, peer-reviewed, randomized controlled trials on algae oil. being effective as a source of DHA. We know that it's in there. We know that the concentration is in there, but most of the studies are done on fish oil and not to say that it can't be done or won't be done, but just right now we don't have it. Crill oil has some studies on it,

and it's fantastic. The astazanthin in there is so remarkable for so many other things, but also protective of the omega-3s that are in there too. So if you're on a vegan or vegetarian protocol, please get an algae oil like yesterday. And, you know, from there, there's, it's not, this isn't the only source of omega-3s.

We also have eggs as well, grass-fed beef. The number one source is actually fish eggs. So salmon, row, caviar, Dr. Lisa Mascone, again, neuroscientists, who's literally doing brain imaging, looking at the brain, she could see, oh, these fish eggs, like eating this source of DHA actually shows up better for the brain than these other sources. Powerful. So DHA is one, another supplement that I do on a semi-consistent basis of Camel Camelberry, little combination Camel, Camelberry, Amla, berry, and acerola cherry.

These are, for me, top three vitamin C sources, botanicals. And that's under the immune category or just like a general, like is there any sort of particular, if you had to carve it out, would you say that's just general immune system? That's what people know vitamin C4 is for the immune system aspect. But vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that does so much more in the body than just assist with our immune system. One of those things that it's responsible for, it plays a role in is our sleep quality. All right? So this study, this was published in the journal Appetite and also Plus 1 had some data as well. Public Library of Science One.

And it demonstrated that insufficient intake of vitamin C increases the likelihood of sleep disturbances and shortens the duration of overall sleep time. All right. So vitamin C isn't just a one trick pony. It does a lot of wonderful things for, yes, our immune system, our skin health, our sleep. So, yeah, that's another reason that I get it in.

At least, I'd say at least around three to four times a week. Beautiful. Important. And helpful recommendations because I feel like one of the things that I always have super appreciated about you, you never feel like you have any pressure. And this is the authenticity of the Model Health Show to make your routine sound any more complicated than it needs to be. Some people, even well-intentioned people, not knowing it, talk about their routine in a way.

And with supplementation, sometimes it can feel like a competition, like how many supplements or people are taking or their breath of knowledge or maybe they were taking it at some point in time, but they're not taking it right now. And again, my question is just for you and what are you doing because that's helpful for people to know. So thank you for providing insight on that. I want to connect it back to extend to sleep a little bit more so

because you were talking about Camu Camus and the sort of acerola cherry. We talked about a few beneficial supplements on top of a proper foundational things that we were saying, Most are free to super low-cost tools that people can incorporate for their sleep. But give us a skinny again or the reminder about supplementation for improving our sleep. What works and maybe even a couple of things that might be overrated that you see out there?

Listen, you can get the best mattress. You can get the cooling pad. You can get your sun exposure in the morning, your exercise time, right? You can do all of these external things. If you're not bringing in the base nutrients, so I'm talking about the key nutrients that build your sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters, it's all made from food.

All the stuff happening within our bodies is literally made from food. And if you're not bringing... That's so simple, but people forget that. Yes. If you're not bringing in the building blocks, like again, you're still going to struggle to have the magic happen.

And so with that said, one of the biggest biochemical movers prerequisites for building these sleep-related pathways, hormones, neurotransmitters, processes is magnesium. It's crazy how many different impacts that magnesium has on our sleep quality and just so many other aspects of our lives. You know, it's now stated that around 600 biochemical processes are reliant upon magnesium. Let me give a big one. When I was in my university class and I was taught about ATP, right? The energy currency of the body that everybody talks about. It's on the tip of everybody's tongue. ATP is not biologically active until it's binded with magnesium. It's M.G. ATP, these two

things have to be together for it to be biologically active. I was not taught that. I paid for that education. They did not tell me that. How important this particular electrolyte is. It's in the category of electrolytes. So these are minerals that have an electric potential, right? So a conductive capacity. And this is how all of our cells are talking to each other is this kind of electrical conduction. You know, our bodies are really just phenomenal. If you look at a heart monitor, that you've seen the electrical output of your heart, all right? But we just, we're so disconnected from these things. And then we hear the word electrolyte in our culture today. We think of Gatorade. You know what I'm saying? Like it's just, there's this break in our awareness.

So this was a placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial. This was published in 2012. And it found that improving magnesium levels appears to, number one, improve sleep efficiency. So we go through our sleep cycles more efficiently. Improve melatonin function. So it's not just that you're making it, but is it actually doing the job that it needs to do? Reduced cortisol levels and reduced wake-after-sleep onset. magnesium. So food first, dietary sources, pumpkin seeds, avocados, anything green is going to be a

decent source of magnesium. So spinach and charred, but also these, what's in these categories of these superfoods, spirulina, right? So, but supplementation for a lot of folks is going to do them some good, but you just got to be mindful. There's so many different types of magnesium as well. This is where we get to this such a complex thing that nobody has. the right answer to right now, but it's good that we're experimenting, we're trying to figure it out. Because again, in my nutritional science class that I paid for at my university, when the teacher was telling us, oh, you need to make sure that you get your essential vitamins and minerals. What the hell does that mean? There isn't just one vitamin C. Bucko? I'm just saying bucko to him in

my mind back when I was 17, 18 in college. But, you know, there's different types of vitamin C. different types. People know about B vitamins, for example, you know, B12, B6, there's different types of B vitamins. But even within B12, there's multiple forms of B12, all right? I don't know that. There's multiple forms of vitamin D, right? There's multiple forms of magnesium. Okay. There's magnesium sulfate. There's magnesium citrate. There's so many different types of magnesium. So now some supplement formulations are like giving you a spectrum of different types. right so you know there might be like five or six different forms of magnesium in one supplement or a company's framing it like you know this is the one this is the one that you need like it might

be a magnesium citrate right which could it does help with that relaxation response but i'm not advocating for this by the way because some people know about magnesium they're like that's not the one but there are products that are just that right and i'm not going to well you say say nays but it might be magnesium calm right palms in the name that citrate is going to pull more water to your bowels. And so it's going to cause if you have even a little bit more than your bowel tolerance, which could be the same amount that's recommended to two teaspoons that's serving. Maybe you give two heaping teaspoons on accident. And next thing you know, you're chitting all day. All right? You got to keep running off

to the bathroom, right? And you might be losing electrolytes because now you have diarrhea, Right. So you got to keep these things in context. So can I say the best supplement for magnesium? I can't. I can't say it. But shout out to the people that have dialed it in or they're a part of a good company that's figuring this stuff out. We still don't know. And here's the reason why. The type of magnesium that you might need is going to be different from you versus someone else as well. We've got to keep that in mind. This is why food is so wonderful because you're getting a spectrum of these different forms. of magnesium. It's not just one form of magnesium in that chocolate. They're different forms. And it informs yourselves in a different way than a synthetic version can. And I'm also a big fan of topical magnesium too. I just put some on last night. So because through the skin, your skin absorbs magnesium pretty well, but especially if it's if it's a great product that's done right. And also you can only absorb as much as your body needs. You know, it's not going to hit a bowel tolerance.

You're not going to be rubbing on your skin. You just have to run to the toilet. Which, by the way, I think natural calm actually changed their source of magnesium from citrate to something else, probably because so many people were having that issue. I haven't had it in years. I haven't had it in years.

So I'm not to try to drag them. I think it's a great product. Back in the day when I used to have it, it was also very helpful, like if somebody was doing a cleanse. Totally. Get yourself some of that magnesium calm. Somebody who's a little constipated. Get them some calm.

Yeah. But now it doesn't work anymore. I was going to recommend it to somebody and it didn't have citrate anymore. I was like, all right, got to find something else. Oh, man. Hit that poop button. So, yeah, magnesium is definitely as far as the sleep building hormones, neurotransmitters, pathways, magnesium is needed to even kind of even your muscle function, right?

The relaxation response of your muscles, your body being able to relax. It can't, you can't really turn stuff off effectively without magnesium. being present to run all these different processes. It's crazy how much is responsible for. But guess what? It's very likely the number one mineral deficiency in our society today. I believe the latest statistics are somewhere around 56% of the American population is chronically deficient in magnesium.

Wow. All right. So it's a big deficiency. Why is that? Number one, we're not eating real food anymore. And number two is magnesium is responsible for so much. It's getting zapped from our system. It's a stress modulating.

electrolyte is a stress modulating mineral, and we live in incredibly stressful, abnormal conditions today. So your body is just getting zapped from our system. And probably too, we have no affiliation with this company at all. We're just fans of Mountain Valley water, and they've been around forever. They have natural magnesium contamination on there, which a lot of spring water does. If you look at the back of the bottle,

it says naturally occurring at the source, there's a certain amount of magnesium. And human beings who had and typically would set up villages around the world around springs would get their water from there. And we probably got a lot of natural contamination of magnesium in a good way. Concentration. Concentration. Yeah, just through there.

You said contamination. Well, meaning in a good way, not in a bad way. I actually didn't mean contamination. You got natural contamination. We often use contamination as a bad word. I love it. But it's actually a positive thing. It has natural contamination.

It has natural concentration. Me and you should get contaminated right after this episode, you know what I mean, in a good way. I love it, man. Let's change these things around. But you mentioned it, magnesium is in here on the label magnesium, calcium, potassium, potassium. Those are three of the most important electrolytes. Totally, which was naturally found in a lot of sources of spring water that's out there. So that probably plays into it.

You know, we have all this water that is great, you know, has to be cleaned up and goes through the different systems and stuff. but doesn't have the same sources of minerals that we were used to. Nonetheless, we live in the modern world, and that's why we have podcasts like mine, like yours, to do the best that we can with the circumstances that we have. And when it comes to sleep, sleep is one of those things that if it's off or if it was on for you for a time period.

And then because of a stressful few years, maybe stressful stuff that's going on right now that you don't have control over directly, not that you can't influence things and be the best citizen you can be, you could have a messed up sleep protocol again. So if anything, today's episode is that reminder that it is so fundamental

to being the best version of you that please for not just you, but for the world that could benefit from you being your best, give it the attention that it deserves. Any of the final thoughts that you want to toss in? I mean, man, that's perfectly said. So perfect. You know, I really admire you so much, man.

And I appreciate you, you know, making this accessible and doing things in such a high level with such grace. You know, it's so important today, you know. And just thank you so much for creating this platforming and making it accessible for people to learn this stuff. Because what we're all trying to do, nobody's waking up like, you know what, I want to feel terrible today. I want to look my eyes. absolute worst, you know. We all want to, we all want to look good, we want to feel good. Most importantly, my advocation today is for us to strive towards being better humans. I think that that's one of the big issues today is that, you know, we're so externally focused and so worried about everybody

else and we're not focused on being the best us possible. And so much of our divisiveness today is really rooted in our very clear lack of health as a society, you know, our mental health, is, I mean, it's insane the levels of mental health issues that we have today. You know, obviously over the last two years, but things were already elevating to astronomical levels. But then you add that to the, it's basically, you know, putting gasoline on the fire. Where we saw prescriptions for antidepressants shoot up over 20%, you know, anti-anxiety. I think it was over 30% medications. But then here's the problem.

We don't tend to let go of the crutches, the biological crutches that we take on. So what's going to happen, what's already, what we're seeing in the data is the weight that we've picked up the last two years. There's this concept of recidivism. Once you pick it up, it's very difficult to let go of. The CDC looks specifically our children during the first year of the pandemic. and they saw that rates of children who were just moderately obese, their annual weight of weight gain, their annual rate of weight gain doubled from around 6.2 pounds per year to 12 pounds a year, all right?

And we might think, okay, they'll get back on track once this situation's over. No, especially during childhood, once we venture into the state of obesity, it becomes exceedingly more difficult to get to a healthy weight in a state of health as we get older. So the mental health issues, again, especially our children, you know, again, the CDC, who everybody's been pointing to, but nobody's actually looking at their data because they oftentimes contradict themselves with policy based on the data that is readily available on their website. They did an analysis of children, adolescents, and they found that nearly half of all adolescents and teens who they, who they analyzed, had suicide ideation

or thoughts of feeling persistently sad and hopeless. Wow. Right. So nearly half of these kids, all right, the suicide ideation was specifically in like one out of four of the kids, but persistently feeling hopeless, depressed, nearly half of the kids. All right. Now, the question is, what are we going to do about it? It's very difficult for us to address these issues when we don't feel well as adults.

We all know what it's like. One of the things that I heard in my household growing up so often, my mom would say, I'm tired, Sean. I'm tired, you know, when she would try to scrape a few dollars for me to run to McDonald's rather than her making dinner. She was tired. She was busting her ass, you know, working overnight at a convenience store at a point to try to pay the bills. you know, she'd sell her blood to try to pay our bills, you know. She did all these things try to make ends meet. But what results when we're not well is that it becomes more difficult for us to be there

and to be an observant good parent and for us to stack conditions in the favor of our loved ones for better outcomes. So, I mean, to wrap it all up, man, I feel that the solution for many of our problems today, economic, social, is to get healthier citizens, is to advocate for our physical and mental health because with healthier people, we can have healthier conversations more easily. It's not that I can't have compassion for you and perspective take if I'm not physiologically well. It's just harder. It requires more energy.

It requires, I've got to dig deeper into my reservoir to try to have the audacity to listen to you. and to think that you're even a decent human being if I'm already so exposed, you know, I'm a live wire and I'm exposed because I don't have that nutritional coating around these exposed cells, this exposed wire to make me feel more peaceful and present and patient, you know. And so, you know, that's the mission at the end of the day is let's do whatever it takes to get our citizens healthier. And you're a huge part of that, man. I'm just grateful for you. I'm grateful for you right back, brother. Appreciate you, the show.

Link is in the show notes to the Model Health Show, as well as Sleep Smarter. We've talked about a bunch of times. All the content is still super relevant. And if you look out there, just like we started off the episode, there's a ton of people. Even if you know this in and out,

do your friend, your coworker, family member of favor, buy a copy for them as an approachable book, and it will get them taking the baby steps in the right direction to help improve their sleep today. That's one of the best things you can do if you care about somebody. Sean, such a pleasure to have you back on the show in the new studio.

Super appreciate you, man. Appreciate you. It's my honor. Thank you, man.