Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #111 How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep: The Very Best Tips on Sleep

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Sleep is one of the most undervalued components of our health – if we can improve the quality of our sleep, we can improve the quality of our lives. Getting more sleep improves every aspect of our lives – it makes us less prone to injury when we exercise, boosts our productivity and enhances our ability to lose weight. Yet so many of us struggle to get a good night’s sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. In this episode, I have decided to try something a little bit different and draw on the wealth of knowledge that is contained in all my previous episodes to put together some of the most actionable tips to help improve the quality of your sleep. You will also hear about the effect of artificial light, caffeine and alcohol on the quality of our sleep. This episode is jam packed with simple tips that you can put into practice straight away and I hope that by the end of the episode, if you don’t already, you will be convinced to make sleep a priority in your life. Find links to the full podcast episodes featured here via drchatterjee.com/111 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a wealth of amazing sleep research coming out which tells us that sleep is the most powerful performance enhancer known to humankind and so it's almost like we need to pay attention to sleep a little bit more if we are to eat at our best to manage our weight and to move effectively. Hi my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. So, how are you all doing? This is episode 111 of my podcast. I'm actually doing really well at the moment and I'm super excited about today's show, which is something a little bit different and is all about sleep. So my team and I have decided to put together a special compilation

episode with some of the highlights from previous episodes of the podcast, all based around the very popular topic of sleep. Now, many of you have been asking me for some shorter compilation episodes, but what has really prompted this week's show is two key reasons. Firstly, in lockdown, many of you have told me that you don't have your usual car journey into work or your long train commute, times when you would usually escape with your earbuds and listen in peace to my weekly long-form conversations. I know you are still getting through the chats, sometimes over two runs or two walks, but for some of you, I feel that shorter content may be easier to fit into your current schedule. Secondly, you may know that it is my incredible wife who produces every single

episode and with the current UK lockdown situation, with all schools being shut, our children are at home the entire time and we are both super mindful of spending as much quality time with them as we can around our respective work commitments. So we thought a compilation episode with some highlights from previous content might help reduce the workload. In fact, it has actually taken quite a lot of time to produce, but we are super happy with the results and really think that you are going to enjoy.

You are about to be taken on a journey of time travel through my podcast. and I have five brilliant former guests lined up for you sharing some of their very best practical tips on sleep. Now sleep is one of the most undervalued pillars of health. Many people struggle with their sleep particularly at the moment and I can tell you in almost 20 years of seeing patients, the vast majority of sleep problems can be improved, if not completely fixed, by making small tweaks to your lifestyle. If you are a long-time listener of my show, you will no doubt recognise some of these previous guests. And if you are a new listener, I suspect that these short clips

may prompt you to revisit some of the original episodes. Now, before we get started, I really do want to give an important shout out to the sponsors who really are essential in order for me to put out episodes like this one. There is so much talk of sterilizing and sanitizing at the moment, but at times like these, we also need to be thinking of ways to strengthen our body's amazing natural defenses. And in the mouth, this is the oral microbiome. Zendium is the very first toothpaste brand that I have come across that aims to support the health of the oral microbiome. Now we're normally used to toothpastes promising to kill the bacteria in our mouths but Zendium is actually a little bit different. It protects your mouth in a kind of way. It contains natural

enzymes and proteins that aim to increase the numbers of good bacteria which protect your mouth naturally and reduce bad bacteria to protect it against dental problems. Zendium is the toothpaste that myself and my entire family use and have been using for quite some time now and we really really like it. The very best way to try out Zendium for yourself is to go onto Amazon and order. That is the online store Amazon where you can go and order your Zendium toothpaste today. Vivo Barefoot, the minimalist footwear company, are also sponsoring today's show. And you may well know because I've mentioned it so many times that I absolutely love Vivo Barefoot shoes. I've been wearing them for many years as of my entire family long before they started supporting this podcast. They make really comfortable, minimalist shoes

that you can live your entire life in. I wear Vivos for absolutely everything. Walking, running, playing. Basically, whenever I have shoes on, I've got Vivo Barefoot shoes on. I've been recommending them to patients for years and I've had so much positive feedback in terms of how they've helped people with back pain, hip pain, knee pain, and so much more. If you have never tried them before, honestly, I really would recommend that you give them a go. Many people at the moment are taking advantage of the current regulations and making sure they go out at least once per day for a long walk. Why not try Vivos the next time you do that? For listeners of my show, they continue to offer a brilliant

discount. If you go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code for all of my podcast listeners in the UK, USA, and Australia. Importantly, they offer a 100-day trial for new customers. So if you're not happy, you can send them back for a full refund. You can get your 20% off code by going to vivobeth.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. And first up, we have a true sleep expert, Dr. Guy Meadows, a trained physiologist with a PhD in sleep disorders from Imperial College London and co-founder of The Sleep School.

This is a clip from way back in the podcast history, episode number 11. Make sleep a priority in your life. I couldn't agree more. It is the most powerful performance enhancer. It impacts every biological process. If you are truly sort of passionate about improving your health, then just make sure you get a little bit more sleep. I strongly believe that the majority of sleep issues that I see are in some way driven by our modern lifestyles. Most of us have our phones in our bedrooms and it's disturbing the quality of our sleep, whether that's just whether that's through checking the time, whether it's through actively sort involved in it when you can't sleep, or it's just the knowledge that your entire life is sat there at your fingertips.

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? For the vast majority of us, as a result of the way we're living move better, get more light and do all of these basic things, we would just have much better quality sleep. And, you know, we would notice it the next day. You know, we'd be more attentive. We'd be more focused. We'd be able to recall memory, you know, easier. Whoever you look at, you know, sort of at whatever age points they're in, if you can improve the amount of sleep that they're in if you can improve the amount of sleep that they're getting you can improve the life they're getting. So companies are getting in

touch with you now to come in and actually talk to them about how they can improve the sleep health let's say of their employees are there common things that you find employers are doing or the environment at work is set up in such a way that it's impacting those individuals and those employees and their ability to sleep in the evening? Are there common things that you see across the board? Absolutely. So I think that one of the easiest ways to explain this is to talk about how we've set up our professional programme. So whilst we're the sleep school, so, you know, sort of we focus on the sleep, but what we're crucially aware of is that there are three sort of obvious time points

during the day in which you can excel, but which are all interconnected. And so, for example, you know, how an individual performs during the day, i.e. how they manage their stress, impacts how well they sleep at night. So what we'll seek to do is, you know, i.e. how they manage their stress impacts how well they sleep at night. So what we'll seek to do is give the employees tools to manage daytime stress because of the knock-on effects.

And then the next area, and this is the new kid on the block but super exciting, lots of great research being done, etc. And this is our ability to detach at the end of the day as a result of just work demands, self induced pressure, or just sort of technology these days, many of us just aren't actually disconnecting, we're not detaching. And we now know, that's fundamental, not only to sleep, but actually to recharging the sort of the human brain. It's kind of like getting home at the end of the day and really engaging with your family,

with your friends, with your kids, doing something of real value. It's kind of like taking a work brain and plugging it in. Every sort of high order executive skill begins with attention. And we know that when you are sleep deprived, so for example, if you've been awake for more than 17 hours, it has the equivalent impact on our ability to focus as having a blood alcohol level of 5%, which is the legal limit.

It's incredible that, isn't it? Yeah. I think that's a statistic we need to sort of hammer home to the public more because I think you really get it then. Yeah. Really get it. And it's not like we would, you know, it's, it's, you know, the funny thing that's for me is that if you were to wake up and have a few pints and then go to work, that would be considered to be sort of outrageous. And yet it's perfectly normal to be sleep deprived and turn up to work when actually the impact on our cognitive performance is very similar. There is a wealth

of amazing sleep research coming out, which tells us that sleep is the most powerful performance enhancer known to humankind. And so it's almost like we need to pay attention to sleep a little bit more if we are to eat at our best, to manage our weight and to move effectively. Yes, I talk about food, movement, sleep and relaxation, but I talk about how they all impact each other. You know, you can get on that train wherever you want and it will lead you to the others because they're all connected you know you change one thing you have the opportunity to change everything. Next up one of the world's leading sleep researchers and author of the international bestseller Why We Sleep the one and only Professor Matthew Walker. Matthew passionately believes that sleep is the foundation of health. And this is a clip from episode 70.

Listeners to my podcast know that I talk about these four key pillars of health that I think have the most impact on the way that we feel, but also that we've got some degree of control over. Food and movements, which people have been talking about for years, but also sleep and relaxation. Now, in your book, right at the start, you make a very powerful case why sleep is the foundational pillar of health. I used to think that sleep may be the third pillar of good health alongside diet and exercise. But the more I sort of did my research and the more I read from other people,

I realized I was probably wrong. That in fact, sleep is the foundation on which those two other things sit. And I'll give you an example in each. Firstly, for diet and exercise, we know that if people are trying to lose weight and they're being judicious about their food intake, they're trying to diet, but they're not getting sufficient sleep. 70% of all the weight that they lose will come from lean muscle mass and not fat. Wow. Because your body becomes very stingy in giving up its fat when you are underslept. So dieting becomes, you know, quite redundant in that regard. You know, you want to keep the muscle, you want to let go of the fat and sleep.

Deprivation will do the opposite to you. So that's the first thing. It's a foundational element on which, you know, nutrition sits. Let me move over to activity. We've spoken about the foundation on which diet sits. Let me move over to activity. We've spoken about the foundation on which diet sits. When you are not sleeping sufficient amounts, firstly, the likelihood that you will actually exercise decreases significantly. Your motivation to be physically active drops away. Even if you are physically active, the intensity of your workout will not be as strong. So it's less effective and less efficient.

Your things like your vertical jump height, your muscle contraction strength, even the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen in your respiratory systems, they get worse when you haven't slept. What's even more frightening, however, is that your risk for injury increases when you are exercising, but not well slept. This is incredible. And they did this great study where they looked at some athletes across a season, and then they tracked their sleep. And then they bucketed those athletes into the different amounts of sleep, nine hours,

eight hours, seven hours, six hours. What they found was a linear relationship between less and less sleep and increasing risk for serious injury during a sports event. So there is yet another demonstration of how even if you're trying to be physically active, but not getting sufficient sleep, it can be harmful. The beauty of that part of the relationship and the same for diet is that it's bi-directional, that if you actually, you know, improve your sleep, you can improve those two things. But convers conversely those two things will improve sleep so if you start to correct your diet you start to sleep better but physical activity is a great way to enhance both the quality and the

quantity of your deep sleep so often when we talk about sleep we don't think about light but our biology is set up to work in harmony with both light and dark access to natural light is really important for regulating our sleep and in episode 77 i spoke to award-winning journalist linda geddes about her fascinating findings and research in this area. When you came home one day with this idea and you thought you'd tell your husband, is it? And your kids about your new idea, what was the response? Okay, well, and this is relevant to this whole thing of, you know, well, I don't want to go to bed early. And it's really boring if I go to bed early, because, you know, a lot of us like, well, I feel alert at night, and I want to go out at night and see my friends and stuff. But

after this experiment, I've kind of changed my view of this. So my idea was what would happen if we go cold turkey on artificial light after dark? That was my original thing. I was just interested in what happens if we get rid of all this artificial light. And so I went and saw these sleep researchers at the University of Surrey and said, I'd like to do this experiment. Will you help me? And they said, yes. But what we'd like you to always also think about is to try and boost your daylight exposure,

which is how I first came across all this research or emerging research about the importance of daylight. So the idea was that from 6pm onwards, there would be no electric light and we would use candles instead. And then in the daytime, I would try, even though it was the middle of winter, I would try and even though I'm bound to a desk in my work, I would do everything I could to get as much bright light exposure as possible. So that was things like doing my to-do list outside rather than at the kitchen table where it's really dark. And when I made my breakfast in the morning, just going

outside with my cup of tea and just, you know, standing in the garden and eating my cup of tea and my bit of toast. And also swapping kind of indoor exercise. I did quite a lot of exercise, but swapping going to the gym in like a windowless exercise studio for doing the same kind of indoor exercise. I did quite a lot of exercise, but swapping going to the gym in like a windowless exercise studio for doing the same kind of exercise outdoors. What was the impact of doing this? I was definitely sleepier earlier in the evenings. I wanted to go to bed like at sort of nine, 10 o'clock rather than 11 or 12 o'clock. I didn't always do that because of social obligations, but I wanted to. We also, um, we, once a week we took readings of my melatonin.

Now melatonin is a hormone that you release. It's under the control of the circadian clock and you release it in the evening at night. And it's basically a kind of biological signal to your whole body that it's time to shift change into night mode. And one thing it does is it impacts on the sleep centers. So it does tend to, you know, you release melatonin and your brain kind of goes, ah, nighttime, it's time to feel sleepy. Here's some sleep signals. And what we found was that I started secreting melatonin between one and a half and two hours earlier than when I lived normally. So that explains why i was feeling sleepier earlier

because my body was was saying it's night time two hours earlier i mean for people listening i just want to emphasize how you know how striking a point you just made we're talking about a very important hormone in our body yes it's associated with sleep there are other studies associated suggesting it's an antioxidant that it may have some anti-cancer properties potentially and you know we can maybe explore that later in our conversation but this is an important hormone that is under this circadian clock that simply by switching off artificial light in the evening you are shifting maybe two hours beforehand you're changing an important hormone's secretion by two hours. Yes.

That is significant. If a drug was doing that, we'd be talking about it. There would be a list of side effects on it. Yet we're sort of, many of us are doing that every evening on our devices without the awareness of the implications. Next up, we have Nick Littlehales, who is an elite sports sleep coach and author of the book, Sleep, The Myth of Eight Hours. Now, Nick has been key in improving sporting performance by redefining sleep over two decades in sports. And he's worked with high profile teams like

Manchester United and Team Sky. And he provides a different perspective on sleep. This is a short clip from episode 14. For the first time ever, Alex Ferguson decided that he wanted to train in the pre-season period, both in the morning and the afternoon, which was a first. So what happened was, what do we do with the players in between the two training sessions and rather than having lying around on sofas and playing games and whatever

we actually decided to i suggested that they we took a room inside the training room we cleared it out we put in lounging products and we encouraged all the players to actually go in there. And what you would all know about is take a nap, take a sleep recovery period. Now, that's the first recovery room probably ever. And that was certainly the first recovery room in sport. And just imagine, we're talking 1997-98. So just imagine back then with young lads, biggest club on the planet at that time, treble winning team. And we're talking to them about sleeping in between training sessions. Principally, whatever Alex wanted to do, then the staff and everybody just went we'll do it and so what a unique set of circumstances uh to actually me be next to that club with that manager with that set

of circumstances and he was very open to let's find out about it. That was a unique thing. So when we actually, when I said we should create a room to help them sleep in between training sessions, this is midday, right? He just went, right, okay, I like what you're saying to me, so we'll make it happen. So when I said to the players, you need to do this, they didn't turn around and say, I won't do that. They just went, okay, let's have a go. Show us what to do, Nick, and we'll try it. And what did they do? They did it. And what they did, it wasn't too scientific, I have to say. But what they noticed, that certain people, certain players, as they were taking that recovery period, and whether they fall into sleep or not, there seemed to be benefits. So even if one of the players didn't actually fall asleep, they were in mental and physical recovery just lying there.

What benefits? Well, when they looked at data in the afternoon, maybe a sprint between A and B over 30 metres, they could see that if they didn't go and nap, maybe it was a little slower in the afternoon than it was in the morning. And it was tiny little things like that. And also, the people who did it seemed to be more alert and aware and happy in the afternoon. Whereas the ones who didn't were sort of carrying the effects of the morning.

People listening to this may be thinking, well, yeah, it's all right for Premier League footballers league footballers but how does that apply to me well let's just think about what you just said for a minute for those people who took that nap or that recovery period let's say so they weren't always falling asleep yeah they're having that physical and mental recovery their performance was improved obviously in a footballer you know the speed of sprinting is very important parameter to measure yeah right but you know the speed of sprinting is very important parameters to measure yeah right but you know people listening might be working in an office or might be working you know in other environments you know your performance their attention their concentration would also be improved by recovery periods let's say yeah um and it you know this has lots of

crossover benefits i think for the general public. Oh, yeah. What are some of those? What have you gleaned in 20 years, let's say, at least, of being involved in elite sport and advising on sleep? You know, what can the layman on the street learn from that? Today, just put in your browser circadian rhythms, and you'll see some images of a 24-hour period of when testosterone, blood pressure, light and dark, everything else,

which is happening every day, and we all talk about harmony with patterns and rhythms. If you just get a little bit of a better understanding of the human relationship with light and dark, you'll start to figure it out. Change your mindset to sleeping in cycles rather than hours and realize that we've always slept in a polyphasic way rather than monophasic. So it's perfectly natural for you to do shorter periods more often and wake up in the middle of the night and feel happy. So the first thing you do is just identify your most consistent wake time. So mine is 6.30.

It means that I will wake any time between quarter to six, six o'clock, 20 past six. I'm always switching my alarm off unless I do something crazy. And I like 6.30. It means I can pretty much do everything I've ever been asked to do. I don't become a sleep coach until 8 o'clock. The next 90 minutes, my post-sleep routine, which is really important in today's world. And all I do is chop the 24 hours up into 90 minutes. So I get 6.30. I've got 8 a.m. that way.

But I also go back. So I've got 5. You get these timings back in 90 minute cycles and if I go to sleep at 11 o'clock that's five 90 minute cycles into 6 30 that's 7.5 hours but I can also sleep between 12 30 and 6 30 2 a.m and 6 30 do you always have the same wake-up time yes and that's something really interesting you put in your book can you just expand on that a little bit for people listening? I think the best thing about the day is going to sleep for humans is very random because we have so many things that we like to do in the evenings now because we've got electric light and technology. But the one thing is starting the day.

So what I've always liked about this is that the sun comes around the planet and if we were sleeping outside, we would get these two hormone shifts, serotonin and melatonin. So literally we get woken up by the start of the day. We become active, bowel and bladder, fuel and hydrate and all of those things in that first part with the brain, with the circadian rhythms we have absolutely no control over, is a good start to your process. The first 90 minutes is critical, which we could talk about for ages. But all I'm thinking is, right, good start to the day.

I've woken up. I need to give myself plenty of time. So it's an unrushed approach because I'm in a very demanding world now. I think every 90 minutes i don't have a buzzer on my wrist but i just think tiny little breaks distractions every 90 minutes can add up to my recovery i think of you know between one and three everybody says to me they can't nap and they haven't got time to it do you know how much time we waste every day so once you make it important that a little 20 minute cycle at lunchtime can actually improve and stop me wasting valuable time with this process then you start doing it so suddenly

you start to have this relationship with polyphasic sleeping and you get this lovely thing where somebody will go uh well instead of i get home from work i've traveled i've done this i've got to do that and i've got to do that i've got to cook some food i've got to get to the gym i've got to do this i've got to pack my bag oh my god there's only so many hours left before i've got to get up again and it's panic so we just go well do that in a nice relaxed way. Have a couple of cycles at night. Put the alarm on, wake up at, you know, 2 o'clock, which is part, you know, 11 till 2. Really? Yeah.

And then iron the shirt, make a nice lunch, listen to music, make a few notes, and then go back and do 3.30 into 6.30. What? I can do that? Once somebody understands that waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning and feeling quite awake is completely natural they become positive they stop worrying it takes the pressure off absolutely

takes the pressure because that anxiety and worry is a problem in itself really hope you're enjoying the new format so far just taking a very quick break to give a shout out to the sponsors without whom honestly there would be no show. Now, Athletic Greens have always been a big supporter of my show, and I really, really like this company. They have one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I have ever come across, and I know many of you who have taken advantage of their introductory offer have fed back to me how much taking it each day has improved your energy, your cognition, but also your sleep. That is something we don't often think about with sleep, but good nutrition also helps good sleep. Athletic Greens contains vitamins, minerals,

prebiotics, and digestive enzymes, and I love their small travel packs which often accompany me whenever I'm on the road or on the move. If you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. If you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will have access to a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of athletic greens which is worth around 70 pounds with your first order you can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more so often when it comes to sleep the elephant in the room is alcohol. It's something that people don't always think about.

And many of my patients mistakenly think that alcohol is a sleep aid. So what is really going on here? Well, in the next section, you'll hear once again from Matthew Walker as he gives us the hard science. But then we will move to a revealing clip from episode 85 where I share my own thoughts with Andy Ramage, a performance coach, author and co-founder of One Year No Beer. Many people use alcohol as a sleep aid

and it is anything but an assistant to sleep. Alcohol is a class of drugs that we call the sedatives and sedation is not sleep. Unfortunately, it's very different. So what you're doing when you have a nightcap or you use alcohol to try and get to sleep, and many people do understandably so, they mistake one for the other. You're just knocking your cortex out. You're not in natural sleep. The two other problems with alcohol and sleep, firstly, alcohol will fragment your sleep. So if I were to record someone's sleep in the laboratory after they've had a couple of drinks,

their sleep is littered with all of these awakenings throughout the night. Now, you tend not to remember waking up, but the next day you feel, again, unrefreshed. You don't feel sort of bright and alert or restored by your sleep, but you don't remember waking up. So you don't link it to the alcohol. But alcohol is bad at fragmenting your sleep, produces poor quality. The final thing alcohol is good at doing is blocking your dream sleep or your REM sleep.

And we know to come back to our conversation, REM sleep is critical for emotional first aid. REM sleep provides overnight therapy. It's a form of emotional convalescence, and alcohol will block that REM sleep quite viciously. Many people are under the mistaken belief that alcohol is a sleep aid. But as I've said before, as Matthew Walker said before, sedation is not the same as sleep. Alcohol is a sedative, right? The brainwaves are not doing the same thing when you have slept post-alcohol than when you slept without alcohol. You know, your REM sleep gets tanked when you've been drinking beforehand. And so, yes, you might be in bed with your eyes closed for seven or eight hours, potentially,

but that doesn't mean you've slept. It doesn't mean your body is restored. And we all know, well, anyone who's drunk before knows the feeling when they have drunk that it's just a light sleep that often, you know, they wake up multiple times throughout the night, right? Yeah, exactly. And these are the things that people don't really associate with alcohol there's an assumption that it helps with sleep as you said it doesn't it's the worst thing you can do and we know about the detrimental effects of poor sleep in terms of productivity and motivation and mental

health it masks symptoms like anxiety and depression but it exasperates them the following day with that anxiety or that cloud that hangs around, as I said, for one or two days. And I think that's what's going on culturally on a mass scale. Even those people, middle lane drinkers, that are drinking once or twice a week, they don't realize that that cloud, that sort of slight underperformance is hanging around for days and days at a time. slight underperformance is hanging around for days and days at a time. And when you think about that and you compound it out, you're losing maybe a quarter or half of your life to self-inflicted underperformance. Why would you do that? It just sort of doesn't make any sense when you start to, you know, you zoom out a bit and look back in. You know, I don't know if people would call this boring. I love going to bed early. I love going to bed by nine. Exactly. Genuinely love it. I mean, my best rhythm in my life, when I get to bed at 9pm and I wake up at five,

I am my best self, 100%. It just flows for me. I know for me, I feel when I've had a good morning routine, I've got ahead of the day. Yeah. I feel calm for the rest of the day because I know I've nourished myself

and that I can nourish everyone else who I come into contact with. But that would not happen if even I had a half glass of wine the night before. For me, that would tank my sleep. I'd be groggy when I woke up and I just wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't want to meditate. I wouldn't want to do my breath work that I do every morning. I wouldn't want to do my movement practice because I wouldn't feel like my best self. So from one form of liquid enjoyment to another, caffeine. Many of us enjoy caffeine each day, but it is super important to be aware of the effects caffeine could be having on your sleep. So next, we have a little bit more from Professor Matthew Walker. Everyone knows that caffeine can help alert you and sort of keep you awake. That's the thing

that's most known. Caffeine, if you look at some data, is probably the second most traded commodity on the surface of the planet after oil, which I think says everything about our sleep deprived state. The other thing about caffeine, however, that most people don't realize is the time that it is in your system. So most drugs have what we call a half-life, the amount of time it takes for half of that drug to be essentially excreted out your system. Caffeine has a half-life of about six or seven hours, and it's a little dependent on what type of gene that you have to sort of metabolize the caffeine, but on average, it's about that. But what's interesting is that caffeine has a quarter-life of about 12 hours. What this means is that if you have a cup of coffee at noon, a quarter of that caffeine is

still circulating around your brain at midnight. So to put that in context, it would be the equivalent of getting into bed. And just before you turn the light out, you swig a quarter of a cup of Starbucks and you hope for a good night of sleep. You know, you would never do that because, you know, but that's exactly, unfortunately, what people do, you know um completely innocently by drinking caffeine you know still too late in the afternoon yeah it's it's a huge problem it's it's a i think it's a big problem in society if you i mean another way to quantify this is if you just look and i've checked out the data from the financial times the number of starbucks coffee houses that have arisen over the past 30 years it's just like an

exponential increase and i think that is an expression of how we're self-medicating our state of sleep deprivation in developed nations. You call it a drug. I agree with you. It is a psychoactive substance that we use liberally. We let our children have it. We often don't think about the implications of that. And so many patients of mine tell me that, Dr. Chachi, I know, you know, if caffeine can be a problem for some people, I'm not one of those. Caffeine is fine for me. But more often than not, when they either reduce their intake or cut it out completely, the sleep quality goes up. And, you know, Sachin Panda, Professor Panda, who panda who you know i know you know very well you both sort of follow each other's research he was on the podcast a few weeks ago and you know he

was saying routinely every year he will he will have a bit of a detox from caffeine he'll go off caffeine he says when i do that yeah i have a headache for a few days but my sleep always improves i've got more energy and my productivity dramatically increases. And I think that says it all really. It does. And I, you know, a number of points that you made that I'd love to circle back around to. Firstly, caffeine is the only psychoactive stimulant that we do give to our children readily, which, you know, is I think a concern. And I'm not trying to be sort of, you know, finger pointing or finger wagging. Again, I think it's just that parents probably don't understand the impact of caffeine in that regard. I think the second point

comes on to your comment of some people say, look, I'm one of those people who can drink a cup of coffee in the evening, have an espresso after dinner, and I fall asleep fine and I stay asleep. Now, even if that's true, there was an alarming study that was done where they gave people just one single cup of coffee, a dose of 200 milligrams of caffeine, standard cup of coffee. And then they measured the quality of their deep sleep by tracking these big, powerful brainwaves, these glorious, beautiful, deep brainwaves that bathe all of our brain during deep sleep at night. And it helps also restore the body. And what they found was that just one dose of caffeine in the evening

decreased the amount of deep sleep by 20%. Now, you would have to normally age by about 15 years to produce that type of a deficit in your deep sleep, or you can do it every single night by having a cup of coffee. And what's interesting is that those people will wake up the next morning. They won't remember waking up because they may not have woken up, but the quality of their deep sleep was so poor that they will still then feel unrestored and unrefreshed by their sleep. I need more caffeine.

And so here is the irony that now they're starting to reach for two cups of coffee rather I need more caffeine. immune to that evening cup of coffee, how it will still impact your sleep, even though consciously, you know nothing about it. As you became more and more aware of all this sleep research, what was the biggest thing in your own lifestyle that you changed on the back of your research? I think it was probably caffeine. I think just seeing the data and then doing those types of studies ourselves, and particularly the finding that we discussed were, even if you're asleep, the quality of that sleep is just not as deep. That really got me concerned. And that's when I really started to pay attention to my caffeine content. Are you teeter-to-nower caffeine?

So right now, yeah, I am. I drink decaffeinated tea and I drink decaffeinated coffee. I sometimes, you know, I've ebbed and flowed between sort of having coffee in the morning because I do feel it's alerting benefits. But, you know, we didn't necessarily evolve to be medicated with caffeine. And I think anyone who's, you know, drinking caffeine at 11 a.m., which on the basis of your circadian rhythm, if you listen to the wonderful podcast with Sachin Panda that you did, your peak of your circadian rhythm is right around sort of the 11 o'clock period.

That's when it should be almost impossible for you to fall asleep. But yet I sometimes look around on an airplane when I'm leaving and people, half the plane is asleep at 11 o'clock. And if you're self-medicating your sleep deprivation at 11 a.m. with caffeine, it usually means that you're perhaps just not getting enough sleep. And that's probably been one of the greatest, I think, influential factors. That and the impact on my productivity, I that was the the most underrated and it actually forced me to start doing a lot of research on sleep loss and productivity that maybe on a second podcast we can talk about yeah but you know my ability to maintain focus and produce high quality output work is dramatically dependent on the sleep that I've been having at night. You know, I often say this when I'm teaching doctors, you know,

why are we not bringing up sleep quality with pretty much every single patient that walks in through our door? From everything I can tell, sleep is perhaps one of the most democratic, freely available, efficacious forms of health insurance that you could ever wish for. So we started off this episode with Dr Guy Meadows and we're going to head back to him to wrap things up with some advice and tips we can all put into practice. Guy, one of the reasons I do this podcast is to empower as many people as possible to become the architects of their own health. And I always like, where possible, to leave the listener with something that they can reflect on or think about. Hopefully something simple and actionable that they might be able to put into their own life, introduce into their own life immediately great have you got some

top tips for the listeners sure so what i'll try to do there is is mix them up for the general population and for the sort of the insomniacs as well so so i think the first one is is this possibly the most basic but it's really needed and that's make sleep a priority in your life you know agree more it is the most powerful performance enhancer, you know, it impacts every biological process. If you are truly sort of, you know, passionate about improving your health, then just make sure you get a little bit more sleep, you know, sort of set a go to bed alarm, you know, sort of to help you, you know, and we're not talking much, you know, just 15, 30 minutes and we can notice an impact.

So that would be the first one. The second one is, again, echoing a lot of what you say, sort of live a lifestyle which helps to facilitate better sleep. So, you know, I'll sneakily sort of include a few in here. So just, you know, manage your caffeine intake. So, you know, sort of having two or three cups knocking on the head by midday or something like that you know get outside expose yourself to natural light ideally sort of uh bright light 10 a.m in the morning 10 minutes of that light and that will help to not only give you that sort of a boost to wake you up in the morning but also help to synchronize your body clock and help you sleep better in the night as

well sure and then you know we've been talking a lot. Be just be mindful, you know, sort of allow yourself some time to to notice, take perspective on the content that's showing up in your mind, the thoughts, emotions, sort of physical sensations, etc. And perhaps, you know, not believe everything that your mind says, says to you, allow it to pass and become more of a more of a noticer and witnesser. And then for the chronic insomniacs, it's let go of the struggle. It's that endless struggle to try and get rid of their sleep, which causes them to experience more sleeplessness.

Many of my clients will go, I can't live my life until I get rid of my insomnia. Well, the result is they just never get round to living their lives. So actually, I know it's hard, but start living your life with your insomnia. OK, that doesn't mean you need to run a marathon. You may have plans, but just going for a walk around the block, it means that you're moving towards that thing of value, that sort of health value. But whilst experiencing insomnia, and the more you begin to do that, rewards uh that thing of value that sort of health value but whilst you know experiencing

insomnia and the more you begin to do that what happens is that you start to resent insomnia less and the less you resent it uh that the less struggle there is the more you sleep the more you sleep the more you live that concludes today's very special episode of feel better live more i really really hope you enjoyed it hopefully there were a few new tips in there that you might want to introduce into your own life for me echoing what guy said at the end there make sleep a priority honestly for some people that is all you have to do. Really understand and embrace the fact that sleep is really, really important. Pick your ideal time to go to bed. I would add, make sure an hour or so beforehand you shift out of day mode and into night mode.

You might want an alarm to remind you. You may want to put the laptop and your phone away but honestly do something relaxing do not watch the news if you can have a relaxing bath it really can make a big difference and also don't forget about the morning what you do in the morning will impact your ability to sleep at night getting natural light as soon as you wake up if you can get out in the garden have a cup of of tea, have a cup of coffee, do a bit of movement out there, or even a bit of meditation or mindfulness first thing in the morning has been shown to help improve sleep at night. Please try not to forget that sleep impacts every single aspect of your health, your mood, your memory, your cognition, your anxiety

and even your weight. It is that important and for most people it really is something that is possible to get on top of. Sometimes one small tweak will be enough, other times you may have to do several things at once. You might need for example to have natural light exposure first thing in the morning and to only consume caffeine before noon and have no screens for one hour before bed no matter what you have to do getting a good night's sleep i feel is your birthright and should be your natural default state often we simply need to get out of our own way with lifestyle habits that we have picked up over the years of course i will add if you are a new mum or have young children please try not to worry too much i know it can be challenging to get as much sleep as you would ideally want do what you

can but know that this time will pass if you want want more tips on sleep, there are plenty of them along with explanations in my first two books, The Four Pillar Plan and The Stress Solution, which are available in paperback, ebook, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. Please do let me know what you thought of today's show on social media. Do you want more shows like this?

Do you like the shorter format? If you can spare two minutes, I really would love to know. And also, if you like some of the individual clips that you heard on the podcast today and you want to go back and check out the full conversations, you can see links to all five of the original episodes on the show notes page, which is drchastity.com

forward slash 111. Now many of you ask me how you can support my weekly podcast. Honestly one of the best ways is to support the sponsors. Without them there really would be no show. I've now got a page on my website with all the special links provided by the sponsors to have access to their promotional offers. You can see all the offers there from companies like Vivo Bare Threats and Athletic Greens at drchastity.com forward slash sponsors. Please, as always, do give the show a review if you do get a spare 20 to 30 seconds or so and as always do share with your friends and family i always do appreciate your support a big thank you to vunata chastity and sarah swanston for producing this week's podcast and to richard hughes for

audio engineering that is it for today i hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time.