Habits and Hustle - Episode 90: Dr. Breus – The Sleep Doctor, Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Advisory Board Member of The Dr. Oz Show

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Dr. Breus is The Sleep Doctor, a Clinical Psychologist, and a Clinical Advisory Board Member of The Dr. Oz Show. We all know sleep is important. We all also know it’s one of the most overlooked aspects of health, fitness, mental fortitude, etc. In this episode, Dr. Breus holds a mirror to our excuses and provides a genetic, scientific, and easy to follow step by step process for actually tackling our sleep. He discusses the improved cognitive abilities, health, and wellness you’d expect, but also those you might not expect: improved reception to flu shots, reconnecting and bettering your romantic and more intimate relationships, when to best hack your boss’s genetic sleep schedule to pick the best time to ask for a raise! Unbelievably, it goes on and on. Whether you’re drawn in by the idea of “hacking” your sleep or not, you know you’re probably not sleeping the best you can. Why not listen to the professional? Youtube Link to This Episode Dr. Breus’ Instagram Dr. Berus’ Website  Learn more at ucan.co and save 20% on your order with code HUSTLE ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to your number. Consent to receive marketing text not automated marketing text to your number. Consent to receive marketing text not required. Message and data rates may apply. You want to lose weight and get in shape, but every time you try, it only lasts a couple weeks. Well, look, it's not your fault because it's super f*** hard. I'm Carl, the founder of Body.

That's Body with an eye, and here's a secret. Most fitness and diet programs don't work long-term because they aren't designed to fit into your life-long term. That's why I created the world's first health esteem app, and I want you to text me to try it free for 14 days. Body shows you how to enjoy your life while you get healthy and lose weight. Sound too good to be true?

Don't say that to our millions of happy members. The next 500 people to text me the word health to 30 30 30 can try body for free for two weeks or get 50% off a paid membership. Text health to 30 30 30. It's gonna work but first you need to be one of the next 500 people to text health to 30 30 30. Welcome to the Habits and Hustle Podcast. A podcast that uncovers the rituals, unspoken habits and mindsets of extraordinary people. A podcast powered by habit nest. Now here's your host, Jennifer Cohen. All right, okay, so we have this in house.

It was back doing in person. You're my first, well, my first guest. You should be honored. I am honored. We have Dr. Michael Bruce. He is otherwise aka known as the sleep doctor. Thank you. Who comes with always a plethora of amazing information

on how we could have better night sleeps and how sleep really affects everything about us. And like I said, we're alive. We're not, this is, I'm like, it's kind of awkward already because I feel like this is, I'm not used to, I'm so used to looking at someone on Zoom that this kind of is a, it's a very pleasant feeling. Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So thank you for being on Habits and Hustle. And thank you for being my first in-person guest again. It is absolutely my pleasure to be here.

You know I love being on Habits and Hustle. I've been on it once before and you are my hustle queen. So I am absolutely down for being here and having some fun. Well, thank you. First of all, that episode, that the first episode you did, you're one of my first episodes ever. There you go.

And it did so well. People are really fascinating with sleep. Yeah. And. It's one of those weird things though. It's like, it's kind of a mystery to everybody. Yeah. People always like, if I go to a cocktail party

and they find out I'm a sleep specialist, my wife rolls her eyes and walks to the bar. Because she's like, this is gonna be forever with the questions, right? And this is a question, question, question. But I think that's because so many people have never talked to somebody about sleep that really knows a lot about sleep.

I mean, let's be fair. If you went to see a sleep doctor, it's probably because you had a possible diagnosis like apnea or narcolepsy or something like that. But for people who have the everyday questions, people who want to train, and learn how to sleep better, to train better, or sleep better, to live better,

there really aren't a whole lot of places to go to learn about that stuff. So that's why I'm stoked to be on Habits and Hustle, because we can teach people that information right here. Oh wow, like God, so you're so great, you're so great at those sound bites. Awesome, that's what I love about you.

So let me say this. So I also feel that over the last few years, people are more obsessed with it, high performers, like people who are always trying to hack, you know, biohack or health hack. And now, especially with the pandemic happening, we are, people are so much more stressed out than they've ever been. And so sleep is really more of an issue. And it's be fair, like just to unpack that for a second, you're 100% correct. Yeah. I've got, I feel very purposeful right now

because so many people are so desperate for good sleep. And let's be fair, this is arguably one of the most stressful times any of us have ever been through. I mean, I don't know about any of you guys, but like, it's a different kind of stress. I'm not just worried about traffic in LA or giving a big presentation.

I'm worried about the health of my family. Right. That's a whole different kind of stress. And even if you're not actively thinking about it as you're falling asleep, it's still ways heavy on your brain. Absolutely. The number one complaint that I hear in my office

is I can't turn off my brain at night. And I got to tell you something. I think that's quadrupled since COVID. Yeah. Absolutely. And people are saying things to me like, you know, I'm concerned about my health. And then also, by the way, I'm stuck at home. Now, to be fair, it's not like I don't love the people that are in my house, but I don't think anybody was really planning off spending this much time in one environment, even if it's with people that you love, it can still be quite stressful.

And so I've got some ideas and some thoughts that I'd love to share with your audience about specifically sleeping better during a pandemic in COVID, but also some generalized recommendations for the performers out there for the people who really want to like, I want to sleep well, to train well, I've got some good information there as well. But I thought we, if it's okay with you, start with a little bit with COVID, give some people some basic ideas. And then we start to move into all that exercise stuff. Absolutely. And yeah, and we can take, and you can obviously touch upon how,

how beneficial sleep is for your immune health, especially with COVID. So yeah, please, take the, take the, take the mic. Go. Absolutely. So we know that sleep directly affects immune function. So for people who may or may not remember, go back to high school biology. Right. There were these things that you learned about called killer T cells.

These are specific white blood cells that actually help us fight infection and virus. Kind of something we would want to have a lot of right now. Yeah. Well, here's what's interesting is sleep directly affects the production of these killer tea cells. In fact, during stages three and four, which is our physically restorative sleep, our beauty sleep, if you will, the sleep that makes us feel energetic and wake up in the morning, that's what actually helps produce these killer tea cells.

Well, unfortunately, if we're having a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep, we might not be getting those sleep stages, which then of course lowers the effectiveness and the number of T cells. So it's difficult to fight infection. There's another really interesting piece that not many people are talking about, but I want your audience to be well aware of. Great study that was done in San Francisco,

University of San Francisco, where they discovered that the effectiveness of the flu shot was directly related to how much sleep the person got the night before they got the shot. Oh, I didn't know that. Right. So here's what's fascinating. So they took people who were well-slept, gave them the flu shot, and then exposed them to the flu. Then they took people who were not well-slept, gave them the flu shot, and exposed them to the flu. People who weren't sleeping well, I think it was like an eight or nine times rate of getting the flu. So when

and if we do come up with some type of anoculation, something that people can take to avoid this, you damn well better have slept well before you take it where it's not going to be effective. Oh my gosh, that's a great piece of that. Yeah, I just think that I've never even, nobody ever thinks about it. Nobody would ever think about that. Exactly. Immune function is directly tied with sleep. So, okay, Michael, we get it. Sleep is important. Okay, well, how do we do it? I mean, it's crazy out there.

I'm thinking about this. I'm stressed. What do I do? So, I've come up with a five-step plan. And then I've added five more steps specific to COVID that I figure we can share that are easy to do. Everybody can do them at home. It's not going to cost you a dime,

and you're going to be able to figure out how to sleep better, all right? Yes. So step number one is to wake up at the same time every single day, including the weekends. Now I know that sucks, okay? I get it. However, what happens is there's two specific systems

in your brain. One is called for sleep drive. The other is your sleep rhythm. That rhythm is called your circadian rhythm. The closer you get to doing something very similar every single day, the more your body knows how to function. Right, so if my body knows when to wake up, then it knows when to be active,

and then it knows when to sleep, because it's consistent. But if your body said, well, I went about 11 o'clock during the week, and now I'm going about at two o'clock in the morning on the weekends, and by the way, I went to bed at 11 o'clock during the week and now I'm going to bed at two o'clock in the morning on the weekends and by the way, I'm waking up at noon as opposed to my normal 6.30, your body doesn't know what to do.

Keep one wake up time, that's the anchor for the whole program. Notice I didn't say bedtime, I said wake up time. If you want to stay up till two o'clock in the morning, you go for it, but I guarantee you, when I tell you to get up at 6.30, you better get your butt out of bed at 6.30. Well, you know what I find though anyway, because you're so used to doing that,

I automatically wake up. That's the perfect time. That's exactly what we want people to do, is we want people to wake up, to be able to be up, and their body to get into that motion. Step number two has to do with caffeine. So arguably the largest offender of sleep is caffeine. And you know, we're talking about what's going on here during the pandemic. We have seen a dramatic increase

in caffeine consumption dramatic. Why would that be? I'll tell you why my theory is what used to be when we'd have a cup of coffee, right? We'd go and we'd be a break room and we socialize a little with anybody, you know, and then you come back to your desk, do your thing, or what have you. Now you go from Zoom call to Zoom call to Zoom call. You want some break to stand up. You look at your coffee cup and you're like, ah, it's half full. I might as well go get,

multiple warm it up. Before you know it, you're drinking a pot of coffee. Right. Most people drink one cup, maybe two. Now people, they make a pot in the morning, and before they know it, it's gone. Why? Because they feel exhausted during the day because they're not moving.

Right. They become more sedentary unless you plan to move, unless you have some kind of structure in your day because, like you said, otherwise, you could be sitting there on zooms for like seven hours at like all day, without even moving your butt for a minute. Right. And so there's a recommendation in there. So number one, don't set all your Zoom calls on the hour. Yeah. Set them on five minutes past and stop them on the hour and take that five minutes and go outside, get some sunlight, get some fresh air,

do some jumping jacks, do some pushups, move your body. It will help with sleep later on. But back to caffeine, caffeine is one of those things that really messes people's sleep up. And so I ask people, step number two is to stop caffeine by 2 p.m., right? Why 2 p.m.?

So it turns out caffeine is a half life between six and eight hours, right? And so if you stop at two, most people go to bed around 10. I got about half of it out of your system around 10. You'll be able to fall asleep a little bit easier. Now I guarantee you, one of your crazy audience members is gonna be like, huh, sleep doctor. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

I can have a cup of coffee for dinner and I can go to sleep three out four hours later and be just fine. So let me tell you why you're wrong. So you might be able to fall asleep, but the quality of the sleep that you're getting with caffeine on board is not going to be good. I really want people who are listening to understand it's not about quantity.

It's about the quality of your sleep. Eight hours is a myth to be clear. We don't need eight hours. I go to bed at right about midnight. I wake up at 6.13 almost every single day without an alarm. I'm the sleep doctor for God's sakes and I get six hours and 13 minutes of sleep. How do I pull something like that off the consistency of my schedule? I wake up literally at 6.13 every morning wherever I am and my body knows what to do. So I don't actually

require that much sleep. When I started I went to bed at midnight. I was waking up at 7.30 Really? Yeah, three months later it was 7.15. Three months later, it was 7.15. Three months later, it was 7 o'clock. Three months later, it was 6.45. But why? What was the reason? Because of the consistency of my sleep, my body knows what to do. It starts to eliminate the sleep that I don't need. Isn't that interesting? I didn't realize that. So there's a condensation or a condensing of your sleep schedule with being rapid and repetitive and finding that consistency in your sleep. This is the secret that I use with all of my CEOs and my athletes

who come to me for high-performance sleep coaching. Is I figure out what is their genetic sleep schedule based on something called their chronotype? We'll talk about that in a second. And then I put them into it and I make them be consistent with it. And their sleep schedule begins to shrink naturally. I don't take anything away from anybody's sleep schedule. Your brain does it all on its own.

If you find the right swim lane and you follow that and follow that and follow that with your sleep schedule, you will knock it out. So where do this whole myth come from that you need seven and a half hours of sleep, eight hours of sleep, you need... Where did that even... So there was a study done at Stanford in the 40s, no, in the 50s, rather. And they locked people in these chambers and they said, we're not going to give you any outside cues, no light,

and we're leaving there for 30 days and see what happens. At the end of 30 days, people slept roughly eight hours and 13 minutes. This is in the 50s. Wow. Yeah. And that's where the recommendation came from. We're in 2020. So we're seven, roughly 70 years later. I would argue sleep has evolved. People who were sleeping in the 50s, if you measured people sleeping in the 50s and you measured people sleep right now, I guarantee you it's different. Why? We've got different influences. We've got different nutrition. We've got different Why? We've got different influences. We've got different nutrition. We've got different movement.

We've got different sun. We've got different air. We've got different climate. All of these things are going to have an effect. So sleep has evolved. Sleep has changed over time. We need to meet the times. Right.

Eight hours was the myth for back then. And maybe back then people did need that much sleep because they didn't move as much because their nutrition was terrible because of all of these things. I dial in my nutrition. I dial in my exercise just like I dial in my sleep and that's why I do the high performance sleep coaching work. Now step number three has to do with alcohol,

which is the big, big offender for people. So let's talk just for a second about alcohol. So what's interesting about alcohol is it's the number one sleep aid in the world. More people drink themselves to sleep than just about anything else. Now, to be fair, I'm not a T-toddler. I like wine, scotch, beer. I think I've had drinks with you before.

Maybe, but I think I'm going to drink her, so maybe I was pretending. Oh, maybe that's what it is. So at the end of the day, when you look at alcohol ingestion, you want to look at the timing of the last sip versus the timing of lights out because that timeframe affects sleep the most. So follow my logic. If you have one glass of wine, I tell people to have one glass of water and wait one hour. It takes the average human one hour to digest one alcoholic beverage. If you have two glasses of wine, drink two glasses of water, wait two hours before lights

out. If you drink right up until you turn off the light, the alcohol directly affects stages three and four sleep, which is again, that physical restoration, that wake up and feel great sleep, the beauty sleep. Half the reason you have a hangover is because alcohol knocks out stage three, four sleep. The other half is because of dehydration. Remember, alcohol is diuretic. So another reason why you don't want to drink alcohol before bed, because sleep is a dehydrated event in and of itself. Right, absolutely. Most people don't even know.

We lose almost a full liter of water every night just from the humidity in our breath. So picture this, I've had three or four beers to help me fall asleep. I'm now started to pee and become dehydrated. I'm breathing probably snoring because of the vasodilation in my nose and breathing out. So now I'm losing all of this humidity out of my breath. I wake up, I'm super dehydrated. And what do most people do?

Drink coffee, which is also a diuretic. So we see this whole arc of dehydration that occurs. And you know people wonder why they feel like shit in the morning after getting a good night's sleep. They're probably dehydrated. And they probably didn't get a good night's sleep. Wow, that's also caffeine's also that diuretic to even get that's why I also.

That's on the other side of it, right? So stop caffeine by two, stop alcohol, three hours before bed. That way you can still enjoy an adult beverage, have a glass of wine or what have you, but then it doesn't affect your sleep. So it makes it a little bit easier. Now step number four is built for JC.

Okay, I wanna hear it. It's all about exercise, right? I like this one already. I knew you would. It's all about movement. Everybody's gotta move. Okay, sleep is recovery. You have to have something to recover from

in order to recover, right? And so I had one of my celebrity clients texted the other day, they said, I've taken 200 steps and it's two o'clock. I was like, Oh my God, I've probably taken 7,000 steps by two o'clock. But the point she was making is nobody's moving, right? Everybody said and Terry, right? And when you're, when you're said and Terry, there's nothing to recover from there. Right. I'm constantly saying exercise every day. But remember, sleep follows the core body temperature

cycle. So, an exercise raises your core body temperature. If you exercise too close to bedtime and your temperature is high, it's really difficult to follow sleep because your whole core body is trying to do this. So, what I always tell people is step number four is to stop exercise four hours before bed. That is very interesting. I'm a big believer that you should be exercising in the morning as part of your daily routine, right?

You're getting yourself, you're starting your day off on the right foot. Absolutely. You're more on point with your productivity because it gives you more energy. But, and other people would always say to me, well, how about, I like to work out before I go to sleep because it's also, but I didn't realize that because I would figure

if you're extra exhausted maybe from the workout that you would fall asleep anyway. So here's the interesting thing, and this is the perfect time to bring up chronotypes. Yes. So some people can exercise better in the morning, and some people exercise better in the evening based on these things called chronotypes.

Yes. So what are chronotypes, Dr. Bruce? All right, so you've heard me toss around this term, but you actually, everybody out there probably knows what I'm talking about. If anybody's ever been called an early bird or a night owl, those are chronotypes. So my contribution is, I actually came up with four.

So the literature would say that we had early birds, we have what are called hummingbirds, people in the middle, and then we have night owls. My contribution is I added a fourth category Which were people within Somnia now to be fair? I'm not a bird. I'm a mammal So I renamed them all and I decided to create animals that we could all identify with by the way If you're having a marketing meeting for a book and you're trying to determine categories for people Let me just tell you nobody wants to be a porcupine. Nobody wants to be a platypus.

That's why they're called bears. Exactly. I remember this from this book right here, the power of wind right over here. And I want you to talk about this because what I notice also, knowing your chronotype helps you with other things beyond just sleep, which I want to talk about too. Yeah, so let's do it. Sure. So when we look at chronotypes, one of the things we know is there's four types. So early bird gets replaced by lions, middle or hummingbirds gets replaced by bears,

night owls gets replaced by wolves, and then our insomniacs are dolphins. Now I chose those animals very specifically because they actually have the chronotypes that we're talking about. Lions are early kill, wolves are nocturnal creatures. So we wanted people to feel comfortable with the animals that we had espoused. Now, once you understand these different categories, it turns out that it actually has a lot to do with your hormone distribution. So people say to me, well, how does sleep schedule, how is that genetic? So there's a very specific place. These are called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. So there's an aberration or a change in our genetic strain, specifically in the PER3 gene.

That gene, if there's a little twist, you become an early bird. If there's a twist in a different direction, you become a night owl. It's really that simple. I mean, there's a couple other genes that have to jump on board, but that's kind of the main one, just for simplicity's sake. And so it's genetic.

So people tell me all the time, oh, I can make myself an early, but I'm like, good luck, dude. If it's not in your genes, you're gonna really be struggling to do that. So when we get people to follow their genetic chronotypes, that's when the magic happens. So what's interesting is not only do you sleep better, you have sex better, you eat better,

you exercise better because you're following your chronotypes or your hormones. So what we do is we find the times and day when those hormones are naturally high and then we do the activities that work well with those hormones. So this is what I wanted to delve into. This is so fascinating. It's cool stuff. Yeah. So give me some examples. So why the way there's to delve into. This is so fascinating. It's cool stuff. Yeah. So give me some examples.

So why the way there's a test that you can take for free, right? Yeah. And that's on your website. Yeah. So if people go to cronoquiz.com, CHR-O-N-O-Q-U-I-Z.com, takes two minutes. You will learn more about your chronotype than you ever have. We actually had over 2 million people take the quiz now. Yeah.

You kidding me? No, I'm not. It's crazy. And people are really digging it because we're able to figure out all kinds of things. I will tell you the most popular question that I get asked is what's the best time for intimacy. Yeah. I was going to say because people always are doing it at night, right, before they go to bed. But aren't you tired? I mean, I don't know. I'm tired before I go to bed.

It's not not tonight. I have a headache. It's not tonight and do frickin tired, Michael. Yeah. And so here's what's interesting. So let's talk about sex for just a second. Okay. You need five hormones to have successful sex. You need estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, adrenaline and cortisol all need to be elevated.

Okay. And melatonin needs to be low. Right. Right. That would make sense. Right. These are the energy ones. Of course, yes. And these are the sleep ones. 74% we did a survey. 74% of people have sex between 10, 30 and 11, 30 at night. What do you think their

hormone profile looks like? The opposite. Exactly. Melatonin is high and all of those things are low. So that's hint number one. Wow. As to when you should be becoming intimate. hint number two. What are most men wake up with. Intersection. Exactly. Right, if that's not mother nature telling you when to use that thing, I don't know what is. Right, that's so true. Right, it's just herchadian rhythmicity to it. Yeah.

So here it gets even better. We interviewed people when we said, hey, could you guys try to become intimate in the mornings, let's see what happens. Better physicality, like they actually performed physically better. They felt more connected to their partner and they enjoyed the sex more.

That's, but what if you're a night owl? Great question. Yeah. Even better question, what if you're a night owl and your partner is an early bird, right? That's what I was going to say. This can really help with relationship, can I? Oh, yeah.

I personally think match.com and eHarmony should be asking sleep questions I I actually could not agree with you more right like me want to know Absolutely, and by the time you're end up in bed with somebody you're well into the relationship Usually so you can't be like oh wait a second you snore or you like it warm and I like a firm bed like we're not gonna Be compatible So it'd be great to know that information in the front end

So what I really actually really would, right? Like in terms of it, I bet you the divorce rate would be much lower. I'm not joking. Oh snoring. I've saved more marriages as a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a marital therapist just by getting people in the bed together and sleeping together. It's unbelievable. Oh believe me. I know just firsthand. I know friends of mine who have partners who are huge snores and they end up sleeping separately. And then from that, it kind of just goes down the rabbit hole. And it's tough, too. Because one person is being disrupted.

The other person is saying, that's your problem, not my problem, because that's what we always hear from snores. And here's the other thing that's always interesting about couples and sleep is there's only room for one bad sleeper in any couple. I've never met a couple where both people are bad sleepers. Right, right, right.

There's always one person that sleeps like a log and one person that's pissed off, that they sleep like a log. Exactly, that's 100% true, right? And then because of that disruption, it causes resentment and it just goes down the rabbit hole. HIST, their partner who's got a skill set that they wish they had. Absolutely, exactly. So that's what we start to look at it. And you can't tweak that, right? You can't tweak your dog type. You cannot change your chronotype, but what we did in the book was we found times for people

at different chronotypes to be able to be intimate. So I have lion bear wolf dolphin on one axis and lion bear wolf dolphin on the other axis, male versus female, and then we have different times to do it. We also have a matrix for lesbian couples and for gay couples because the hormonal patterns are so different. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So the research was in the literature. We just pulled it out and stuck it into the book and people really like it. Yeah. I'll tell you my favorite thing about the book though that has nothing to do with sleep.

Is it's become a communication tool for so many people? I give you an example. So it's like the four love languages in a way, but like this new version of it. It's exactly right. That's exactly right. So I'll give you the example. So you know I have a daughter Carson, she's 17 years old. And for anybody who has a 17 year old daughter, there's just nothing fun about that. And so I would go into her room in the morning and I would say, hey, Carson, wake up. What have you got going on today?

How's it going? And she'd be like, leave me alone. That would be about the extent that I would get out of her. If I walked into her room at seven o'clock at night and I asked the exact same questions, I was there for 90 minutes. Really? Yeah.

A teenage girl wanting to talk to her father for an hour and a half, that's hard to find. But is that, so isn't that, that can't just be chronotype, that has to be like where you are in your life. Like, it's a hundred percent. It's a hundred percent.

It's a hundred percent. It's a hundred percent. It's a hundred percent. So, so, so, so, so up really early. Then they hit the toddler stage, what happens next? They become bears. They wake up at a reasonable time and they go to bed at a reasonable time. Then they become teenagers, what happens? They become wolves. They want to stay up late and sleep late.

Think about when you were a child back in the day. That's what I was able to capitalize on. My daughter is a night owl. She's a wolf. When I go in and I ask her the same questions, I get to have a relationship with her. There's nothing more important in my life than my relationship with my daughter or my son. So when I find a communication tool that allows me access to them, I'm gonna take advantage of it. That's incredible. So you actually your chronotype does morph and evolve as you age in life.

And when you're older, you end up doing, you kind of go back to... Exactly. ...to fall into bed or really waking up. Your prototype changes. Yeah. You become a lion again. As we age, what we see is melatonin production begins to slow, right? And it actually happens a little bit earlier and that's when we become lions again. Oh my gosh, this is so fascinating. It's like this weird evolutionary kind of thing that happens. And it's been there all along. I'm just the guy that put it into a book and said, Hey, if you want to check it out, we actually created entire day for people.

So like if you identify as a lion, I tell you everything to do exactly at the time to do it during the day. And then we just have people try it out. And here's the thing. People write me all the time. They're like, holy crap. I had no idea that this could work so well. I mean, we have everything in here from when to ask your boss for a raise, when to call, when to make a sale, so on the business side of things. Our friend Dave Asprey from Bulletproof, when I first came out with this book, Dave called me up and he said, I chrono typed my entire company. And we changed our meeting schedule based on chrono type. So we had all the lions meeting in the morning

and all the wolves and the creatives meeting at night. He said productivity through the roof. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space. Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on. Like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today.

for the past 100 years. USAAA, get a quote today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care, zero self-doubt you. Grab a with love today. Vitamin water's zero sugar, nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O. Well, that was gonna say this, a couple of things. I actually saw that interview. I saw the bullet proof radio interview did. And I found two things I found fascinating was that if,

why is it that people actually more than just day, but if more companies kind of took to that, they would be, they employed the employee engagement and happiness would be so much higher because you're right. Like if you're somebody who is, it are also school, you know, schools start so early. Like if it actually school started a little bit later, especially for teenagers.

For teenagers, the productivity would be so much higher. There's no question about it. And one of the biggest factors that's so fascinating about chronotypes is it can be influenced by light. So when we talk about light, light becomes medicine. Light becomes a very important aspect to all of the science that goes on here because we can manipulate our chronotypes

with light. Absolutely. Or the avoidance of light. because we can manipulate our chronotypes with light. Absolutely. Or the avoidance of light. You can manipulate it. So I've got light. I didn't know you can manipulate it with light. I know that light is a major issue and factor when it comes to your sleep.

It is. And I mean, to block blue light, I mean, some people are saying they use red light. So can you talk about that? That's a side. That's a side. I've actually heard you say before light is poisoning if it's not the right kind of light. Here's what I say.

Light is medicine. Period. It is a wavelength that has an effect on the human body. It depends upon the type of wavelength and and where it hits in the body, and when it hits on the body to have this effect. The most important aspect of light to me has to do with blue light in particular. So for folks who may or may not know

what actual blue light is, it's a particular frequency within the light spectrum, between 460 and 480 nanometers. It's actually called cyan, which is another word for blue, and we call it blue light. It's actually called cyan, which is another word for blue, and we call it blue light. It's not actually blue, and when you see it, it's actually quite white. What's interesting about this particular frequency of light is we have a particular cell in our eye called melanopsin cells. When that frequency hits the melanopsin cell, it turns off the melatonin faucet in our brain.

Wow. That ain't good at night. No, it's not. It's great in the mornings to wake up, right? So like, when I have bulbs in my office, as a matter of fact, you sent me some amazing bulbs. Thank you very much. You know why I sent those to you? Because I heard that I found these bulbs from the makers of selveinia general lighting. They're natural light bulbs.

Yeah. And they are supposed to help reduce the blue light. Exactly. And so it's right. And it's something that people don't really think of. Ever. But yet everyone is using light bulbs. Right.

I figure, you know what I mean? So like, it's one of those easy hacks, so to speak, that you can just do. It's one of those said it and forget it. Yeah. type of things. Yeah. Yeah. is once you've acquired these bulbs that have either filters in them or your understanding

of the blue light and when to use them, it becomes incredibly important throughout your day. I mean, circadian science and lighting science that goes together is pretty amazing. So thanks for the bulbs. I actually put them into my office and I now have much better daylight in my office because it's in the back part of my house that's very cover. Oh good. I'm so glad that you liked them.

Yeah. So now I've got daylight. Because they have this thing they have, it's called, was it true wave technology, which also helps them mimic the sunlight. Yeah. So again, another thing that with, I thought it's very important to be outside,

every productivity, biohacker, health hacker, doctor, human being, you know, you need to be outside. That's why I take vitamin D. Right. For that extra vitamin D source. And so if I can find a light bulb, I figured, I'm not a sleep doctor, but it's supposed to really help with your circadian rhythm. It absolutely does, and it helps reset that circadian rhythm.

So in the morning time, so think about it like this, we're kind of walking into winter right now. And what happens in winter? Less sunlight. We're about to walking into winter right now. Yeah. Right. And what happens in winter? Less sunlight. Right. We're about to have a lot less sunlight. So having these bulbs actually can help you wake up in the mornings when you use them. Right. Because if it's dark out and you have these great bulbs that have blue light in them, some do, some don't, you can actually get that blue light, beep, awake, and then have other bulb maybe hit the dimmer switch or other bulbs in the bedroom. Right, right.

You can do it that way. So I'll tell you the secret that I did. Okay. So I didn't tell my kids. And I put the bright lights in the bathroom. And I put the filtered ones in the bedroom. And I didn't tell them. And so they don't even know it, but I'm hacking their sleep with light right now.

And they don't even know it. They have no idea. Parents, this is a good idea. They don't tell your kids. And so here's what I did was when my daughter goes into the bathroom in the morning and she switches on the light, total blue light, perfect sunlight. When she goes into her room and she flips on her light, no blue light, but there's still enough light for her to do her studies, watch her computer, listen to her tunes, whatever she wants to do. Really? Dude, it works great. It is. I, because we're on our computers also so much.

So we're getting more blue light coming out. So I have something for that as well. So I really like blue light blocking glasses. So for folks who are spending a lot of time in front of a screen, lots of Zoom calls, like what you're saying, I really like these. And I'm going to tell you the story of how I developed my own line of blue light blocking glasses because I didn't really like the quality of what I found out there. So both of my kids are gamers

and they love to play their video games. Like every other kid. Right, and I mean they could be up late, late, late. Well, here's the thing. Blue light, blue light, blue light, fight, fight, blue light, you know, who the heck can go to sleep after something like that? Right, right, right. So I went out and I purchased like 10 different pair of blue light blocking glasses. None of them were particularly good. So I said, okay, I'm going to go build my own. So I'm one of those guys. Yeah, I know. And I just got my own line of blue light blocking glasses, specifically for my children. Now we sell them at, I think it's called sleepdoctorglasses.com. So check them out, but there's three things you need to know about blue light glasses,

blocking glasses, whether you get minor or you don't. Number one is it has to block between 460 and 490 nanometers. That's that blue spectrum. That's number one. Number two, they need to be amber in color. Now many people have seen now that they've got the clear lenses that are available. They don't work, and I'll tell you why. There's three factors to blue light.

Frequency, brightness, and angle. That's what affects these melanopsin cells. Well, frequency is that blue light blocking, brightness. You can't block brightness with a clear lens. It just doesn't work. That's why you have the amber lens because it lowers the brightness. The angle is tough, unless you're wearing actually goggles, you're probably not going to be able to fix the angle. But I recommend that you want to have the lenses that block between 460 and 490 nanometers and you want amber lenses.

I would also tell you you probably want glasses that have either been created or approved by a sleep specialist. More from our guest, but first a few words from our sponsor. The solutions to our country's biggest problems are closer than we think. And believe in people by Charles Koch is a guidebook to uncovering them. It's a look into the transformations that happen in society when we transform ourselves.

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So there's so many different ways that we could hack our sleep just with using the right light bulbs, like the ones I sent you that I use from the ones for the makers of Slovenia, those natural bulbs, you can get glasses, and then what other ways could you... So there's a lot of different things that you can think about with life.

I mean, or just in general, like, or just like other sleep hacks to kind of... Well, one of the things I have people do is I have them set an alarm on their phone for about like eight o'clock at night. Let's say they're going to bed at 10. And I have that eight o'clock alarm means dim the lights. If you don't want to go out and spend the money,

just go around and dim the lights. Just get less light exposure at night. It lights only one area. I like to think of the five senses, and I look at all five of those, and then I attack all of those. So we've attacked sight or light. The next would be sound.

Right, so sound, what's the deal with sound? What is sound? Why does sound wake us up? So I did some investigating, and here's what we've discovered. Is sound itself doesn't wake you up. It's the difference between the sound that you hear and the new sound. It's the delta that is so as an example, if it's quiet and you hear

a bang, you wake up. But if there was a lot of banging going on and you heard a bang, you wouldn't wake up. Right, right, right. And so it's about the difference. And so number one, it's not always the best to sleep in complete silence. So interestingly, when you sleep in complete silence, your hearing becomes more acute. And in fact, you hear more stuff, right? So think about it, if you've been in a hotel, and it's weird, but it's super quiet, and you can hear every creek and crunch

and people walking around, right? It's not that great. So, and that's why when people have babies, they sometimes don't want to, like, a lot of parents want everything to be so quiesh they don't wake up and they're wrong. And they're other parents. So like, you know what, no, I want them to get used to having different, like, different sounds because they're not that sensitive.

They bring them out into the party and they're basically sleeping perfectly. Absolutely. You vacuum under the crib. Yes. That's what my mom did. Absolutely. Like, that's, there should be some noise going on. Now people say, should it be white noise,

should it be brown noise, should it be pink noise, there's all kinds of noise, okay? Right, right, right. Try them all, see what you like. Yeah. There's a whole host of different sounds and sound machines out there. Bedside sound machines, my favorite is one called

Zenergy by IHOME. I full disclosure, I had something to do with helping them out. I know, I get it too. I know, I like it. It's actually very good. It's full disclosure. I like it. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty fun.

I just started working with Bose and they've developed these things called Sleep Buds. So this was unique to me and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it to be fair. Okay. So they're ear buds that you sleep with. So what happens is they don't have this big, you know, battery on this side. They're actually flush to the ear and they have a sound library. And you can only play what's in the sound library. And what's in the sound library are all things that help you fall asleep. So there's nature sounds, there's meditations, there's relaxations.

So it's really been quite good because as you know, I have a French bulldog at my house that snores sleeping in my bed. And does and does he sleep with I thought that's like another no-no for sleeping to not sleep with your pets. So what do I so what does Michael's bedroom look like? So my wife has the big screen TV on all night. No, yes, I have a French bulldog who literally crawls up in the middle of the night and he puts his snoring head on my pillow. You the irony is just so thick here. It's unbelievable. It's great.

I talk about it all the time. So how can I be the sleep doctor and sleep with a television on and a dog in the bed? I'll tell you why because neither one of those things is disruptive. If you can follow us, when I married my wife, she said to me, Michael, I sleep with the television on whether you like it or not. Yeah. And guess what? So you guys aren't the same promo, chrono time. We're the same timing, but she likes to watch television to fall asleep.

And I don't. So when I put these sleep buds in, I listen to nature scapes and she's watching the housewives of whatever. Right. Right. And she's fine. And I'm fine. But you see the light. So that's a great question. So is it. So is the light the factor? So what do I do? I have an eye mask. I've slept with an eye mask almost my whole life.

Since I was young, I like eye masks. Isn't that interesting? So what? But it's still like, the first thing everyone said, the fact that don't sleep, but don't go to bed with an iPad or a TV. And then your wife visit one who goes to bed with a humongous leg. Right, so let's talk about it.

So notice I said it's okay for her to watch the TV, but I didn't say anything about a phone and I didn't say anything about a tablet. So those are off limits, and I'll tell you what. Why? Yeah, it's a difference. Proximity? Okay. Close your source of the blue light and engagement.

If you're on Facebook and you're trying to get your high score on Candy Crush, you're not trying to go to sleep. But if you're leaning back with your eyes closed, watching an old episode of Seinfeld, you're probably gonna fall asleep. What it does is it's a distraction technique and it's not a bad one. And by the way, 99% of televisions have software and a timer is built in. So if you're not an idiot, you can actually set your timer for three hours after you fall asleep and it will go off and you will be fine. And you'll be fine.

Of course you will. Because I mean, I would always fall asleep to a television, to like, you know, whatever show I'm watching, you know. There's nothing wrong with that. I see, I love knowing that, you know what I mean? Because I was always up. I give you permission to fall asleep with the television on. Thank you.

As long as I'm like conscientious about the other ways I can fall asleep better. So that's why those light bulbs are not to get back again, but because then you're reducing the emission of the blue lights throughout the day. So there's less that you're absorbing in your body. For sure. So it makes a big difference. No question. To do it for the 24 hour, oops, for the 24 hour period. Yeah. Versus, okay, I understand this. And then. And now people are using red light and using red light therapy. There's a lot of interesting

stuff going on there. I mean, there's a whole host of things. But getting back to the bedroom, we talked about light, we talked about sound now. But what's the the red light explain that? So there's data now to suggest that red light helps with inflammation. Well, you mean like the near oh, I have that. I know that thing. I stand in front of that thing all the time. So now people are talking about doing that before pet. Oh, yeah, that's that that's part of their whole thing though, right? Is that it helps with inflammation? It helps with like, mood and calmness. I'm using it for my knee a lot actually. Yeah, you said you blew out your knee, so right? So that blew up. Not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not,

not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not Yeah, right? So that's all about temperature. Yeah, right? So what should the temperature be? Remember sleep follows your core body temperature cycle lower. So you always want it to be cooler. Now this is where we get into some difficulties because some like it hot and some like it cold. Yeah, so I always get asked the question, should I sleep with clothing or without clothing? So honestly, sleeping without clothing, your body is better able to thermoreg regulate because you don't have so many layers between you and the cold source. So believe it or not, sleeping naked is better for you. There's even data to show that you burn brown fat when you sleep naked, not white fat, as a metabolic, as part of the metabolic process of sleep, which brown fat is much harder to lose than regular fat and can be actually better for you. There's been one study. Don't ask me to quote the exact study because I don't remember all the other. I was going to say so then there is a correlation between sleeping naked and weight loss. Yes, there is absolutely. No question about it. Now, some people again don't want to sleep naked. They want to, they're warm, warm body creatures they

want to sleep with, warm. So one of the things that we've discovered is that the feet are a big thermo-regulator, right? So you ever notice how if you're hot and you stick your foot out from the covers instantly your whole body cools down and everything's better. So I had to investigate this. Turns out you don't have any hair on the bottom of your feet and it allows you to express heat much easier, you know, down here. And so what I do is when I have, and usually it's the guy who wants to be cooler and the gal that wants to be warmer,

I have her wearing socks, and I have him with no socks with his feet out from under the covers, and oftentimes, I don't have a temperature war anymore, which is kind of interesting. That's another good one, right? I come full of them. Yeah, you have so many really easy strategies.

That's the goal. Yeah, okay, give me some more other ones. Give me some other ones. So I'll give you a couple of other things and let's talk some things specific to COVID since we're in the middle of all. Okay, right. And so one thing I'm saying is it's okay

to follow sleep with the television on, but give yourself a media diet, 90 minutes before bed. You can't watch anything that has to do with politics, COVID, news, nothing. Okay, there's now data to show that being positive before bed leads to faster falling asleep and more positive dreams. Optimism works.

Okay, so watching whatever news station is not particularly optimistic, right? Because it gives you more stress and anxiety. And that does it's not good for sleep. So why don't people just do right before bed to a gratitude list? Like what are you grateful for? Like maybe there's not much.

Maybe you're just happy that you got a roof over your head. But some days we can be really grateful for a lot of things and that can benefit our sleep, which is kind of cool. So the positivity actually is the correlation between that. Well, that would make sense. Like I said, if you have anxiety and stress, you're going to have a worse time falling asleep. Yeah, and you can actually almost program your dreams this way. I want to know how to do that.

It doesn't work all the time, but whatever you're thinking about just before bed, you have a tendency to think about in your dream world. So I have some patients who fantasize about intimacy. I have some people who think about their business in a positive way. There's lots of things that you can think about to try to solve that problem. So that's what, so your idea,

so you're saying that before you go to sleep, think about whatever that thing is that you wanna dream about. Manifest. And then it can happen. More time than that. more often than not. It really does seem to happen. And then you have to be careful, right? So if you manifest, like if you're thinking I want to solve this big problem and it's a super stressful problem,

you could end up with a super stressful dream, right? But you kind of asked for it. You kind of did exactly. It's Jeep 4x4 season. Make your next adventure epic with Jeep Wrangler 4xE. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xE and the 3-row Grand Cherokee L. Hurrie and now for great deals. Now get 3,500 combined bonus cash and Texas residents get 2,000 bonus cash. Plus owners were less seized if competitive vehicles get 500 bonus cash in the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited and Grand Cherokee L Limited. Competitive vehicles exclude all other FCA vehicles.

Contact dealer for details. Take retail delivery by 531-23. Jeep is a registered trademark. I was gonna say, is there a correlation between dreams you can remember? Like, is there like, are you in a deeper sleep if you can remember your dreams or is it more vivid or?

So it all has to do with where in the sleep cycle that you wake up, not necessarily the depth of the dream. So people can remember dreams when they wake up from them. 80% of the time that we're in REM sleep, we're dreaming, but believe it or not, we dream in all stages of sleep. It's just when you wake up, determines how often you will remember that dream. The easiest way to do it is keep a pad by the side of the bed, or like a little voice recorder. And what's interesting is when you wake up, if you really want to learn how to record your dreams, there's two or three things

that you should do. Number one is you don't want to open your eyes. Number two, you don't want to move. Number three, all you want to do is you want to just think about what it was that you were dreaming about. And it will slowly come to you over the course of a few minutes. Then once you start to get that image and that idea in your head, then start to write it down in as much detail as you can. Over the course of three to five days, your description will get longer and longer and longer, and you'll start to really begin to remember the aspects of your dream. Now, my podcast, which is called Sleep Success with Dr. Michael Bruce, I recently interviewed a dream therapist. Now, this is not a dream interpreter, which is BS. This is a dream therapist. Now this is not a dream interpreter, which is BS.

This is a dream therapist. Very different. What's the difference? I had to learn the same. A dream interpreter said, What was his name? I had one on my shirt. It's Leslie Gautt-Riles.

Okay, round person. Ellis, I'm sorry, Leslie Ellis, and she was amazing. So interesting about what she does, an interpreter says, there's symbolism in your dream, and if you dream about water, then it means this. Oh, yes, absolutely. There's no such thing as a dream dictionary.

Nobody's ever figured that out. There's no science behind it. What this woman does, which is very interesting to me, is she says, let's take all of the information that you were dreaming about, and let's talk about it, and therapy. So most people don't realize if a dream's are really a way to process emotion,

that's one of our thoughts behind what is dream theory. It's this time to get through difficult times, stressful times, emotional times. Well, it kind of makes sense if you took all that information brought into your therapist. If you remember it. Right, if you remember it.

So what did, so you learn how to record your dream. You bring your dream in and then with this woman and she was phenomenal, it was incredible. And now to be fair, she works with people with nightmares, trauma-related dreams. I mean, there can be some pretty scary stuff that goes on in people's dreams. Right.

So that's been a focus of her work, but people could do it for any kind of dream. You could use any kind of dream to help you understand more about your thought process, your success, your failures, things like that. Is there a chronotype of personality that remembers dreams more? I can never remember anything. I maybe can remember for two seconds and then I literally have no clue what I dropped.

So it's a practice makes progress kind of thing. Do it, do it, do it, and by the fifth or eighth time, all of a sudden it just kind of all pours out. Really? Okay, that's good to know. Okay, give me more hacks about how we can sleep. Well, so one of the other things besides doing a media diet would be progressive muscle relaxation.

So this is one of my favorite techniques out there. Okay, and this is where you tense and relax muscle starting at the top of your head and moving down your body every 30 seconds to a different body part. What it does is it teaches you to identify tension and relaxation, but it's so damn relaxing. Most people fall asleep before they get through their whole body. Hold on. So how do you do that? You just... There's a script you can have if you go on to Apple music and you type in progressive muscle relaxation, you will find what, you know what, I've got one, I'm gonna give it to you,

and then let's put it into the show notes and the people can download, it'll be my voice, I will warn you. Uh oh. But I've been told I have a very melodious voice. You do, you do have a great voice actually, you do, that's true, you should have like a, you should have an radio,

you should be a DJ or a podcast, because I was gonna say, maybe hang out with you, or you can be on a radio, you should be a DJ or a podcast, as I was going to say. Maybe hang out with you. Or you can come on more often. I would love it. Absolutely. You can be my co-host. That would be fun. That would be fun.

Absolutely. So progressive muscle relaxation is a good one. Media diet is a good one. So I've got another two that I want to share with you. So for folks out there, one of my big things is magnesium. So a lot of people don't know it. It's going to ask you about magnesium. People a lot of people don't know it. It's gonna ask you about magnesium. People are deficient in magnesium quite a bit.

There's three things that I look for in every single person that walks through my door. I look for magnesium deficiency, a vitamin D deficiency, and an iron deficiency. Those three things will dramatically affect your sleep and to be fair, almost everybody is deficient in those. Women, more so than men, in the iron side of things, but on vitamin D and magnesium, it seems to be a very popular problem. So even magnesium, I know vitamin D was one

of those things that was very shocking, especially people living in California or Arizona or places like that. Yeah, or wherever, because it also helps with your hormone balance. So it's circadian regulating. And that's what helps with sleep. So I take my vitamin D in the morning times, and it helps give me energy during the day and keeps my circadian rhythms regulated. And then I take magnesium at night. Magnesium is very calming, relaxing,

mineral rather, that can be quite helpful. So I was deficient in both magnesium and vitamin D. Once I get the, once you get your, what we call power levels, or just kind of get you up to no longer being deficient, then we know if you can sleep for not, then we know if you really have a problem because it might just be a magnesium deficiency. It could be, how about melatonin deficiency? I feel a lot of people are taking a lot of these melatonin supplements.

So they're done. And they shouldn't. So melatonin is really only used for circadian changing. Okay. So if you wanted to go from being aligned to being a wolf, we'd use melatonin to do that. By the way, you'd snap right back as soon as the melatonin wore off.

Because remember, it's genetic. Yes. Melatonin really is only useful for jet lag. So when your body is in one place and a plane takes you six hours different, melatonin is really good at making your body change. You are circadian rhythm. 99% of people have plenty of melatonin on board.

Okay, so that's number one. Most people don't need it. And it doesn't do what people think. Melatonin is not ambian. Right, so a lot of people are taking it, melatonin, instead of taking ambian. Right, so remember how I was talking before that there are two different systems. There's a drive and a rhythm. Yeah, Melatonin only affects rhythm. Period. It doesn't make you fall asleep. It makes your brain think it's bedtime. That's what Melatonin does.

Also remember it's a hormone Most people don't know that it's a hormone. So you're taking a hormone. Right. Like you wouldn't go down to the local GNC and say Hey, give me some estrogen. Give me some testosterone because you mess you up And of course they wouldn't give it to you, right? But yet, this melatonin hormone is made it through the FDA system and nobody seems to care. How is that possible? It just slipped in under the radar. It's been like that for a very long time.

A couple other words of caution about melatonin. 95% of it is sold in an over-doseage format. Well, exactly. It's going to stay a half And one and a half milligrams. Wow. Less is more when it comes to melatonin. The way you know you've had a melatonin overdose is if it's not been effective or you have vivid dreams.

The number one complaint that I hear from people is like, I tried melatonin all of it, and it's giving me crazy dreams. Well, I'll tell you why, because you took it at the wrong time and at the wrong dose. Timing turns out to be incredibly important because it's a circadian pacemaker. Oh, wow, yeah. It's not like you just pop it in your mouth before you go to bed.

It takes 90 minutes for plasma concentration levels from melatonin to get up into your brain. 90 minutes? 90 minutes. Because it says on the bottle, take 30 minutes before you. It's wrong. Do you think the people who make melatonin have any idea what they're doing with it

because they don't? Then how could it so is it basically psychosomatic? You think it's what it gonna work? So then so melatonin if you use it appropriately will work if you don't use it appropriately You walk down one of two paths you believe that it works and so it works or it just doesn't work Right, you can get addicted to it too? You can not. Okay. You can not. And what's interesting, people always say, well, if I take in it for 10 years, is that me and my body's going to stop making it?

There have been at least two studies to say, no, that is not the case. Let's also talk about children and melatonin because this is a sore topic for me. Okay. Because pediatricians are telling parents to give their children melatonin. I don't give children hormones. Period. Yeah. Okay. I didn't hear that really. All the time. Parents come in. My child doesn't sleep. Give them a little melatonin. They'll be fine. Here's the thing. Melatonin is a hormone. The 99% of these children have plenty

of melatonin on board. There is one group of kids though that you have to be a little bit different with. So when you look at kids who are on the autism spectrum, there's been a lot of data to show that three to five milligrams. This is five times recommended adult dose is very effective in kids on the spectrum. So my only caveat for anybody taking melatonin that's under the age of 18 is they probably would need to be on the spectrum and they definitely need to be talking with their doctor. That's very interesting. I never heard that actually. You asked for one more time. Yeah. I'm going to give you one more thing actually.

Um, those sleep tracker devices. Yeah. So I read, uh, I've been reading a lot of articles about it and about, I, the irony again is very thick on that because the people who are so caught up on what their sleep tracker says are, they're so, they're such anxiety around if you're sleeping okay. There's a new disorder. There's a new disorder. It's called orthosomnia and it's, you're tracking sleeping okay, then they're not sleeping okay. It's called orthosomnia.

And it's you're tracking your sleep so much, you're not sleeping. That's exactly unbelievable. Leave it to some obsessive compulsive individuals. So it's called ortho-insomnia. Orthosomnia. Okay, and it's a real thing, right? It's a real thing, it's unbelievable.

I don't have a problem tracking sleep. You can see I'm wearing a sleep tracker now. I was gonna say it, yeah. There's a lot of different things that are good about sleep trackers, but let's just be very clear. Okay. Sleep is super complicated.

Yes. So like almost every tracker company was tracking steps before they were tracking sleep. Right. My daughter can come up with that. It's a calculus problem, okay? It's the length of your leg, it's your gate, and it's how far you go.

I can calculate your steps very, very quickly. Yeah. How do you calculate sleep? It, you do your prototype? I don't know, to bring it your steps very, very quickly. How do you calculate sleep? You did your prototype, I don't know, to bring it down. That's the problem. How fast you fall asleep, is it how quickly you get to dream sleep, is it how quickly you get to stage three sleep, is it your number of awakenings, the length of the awakenings? I could literally go on for days.

I think I would think how you track it, to be honest, is how long you're in your REM sleep, you're your deep sleep. And some people track it that way. So here's the problem. Is this tracking company and another tracking company measure it differently? Oh, wow. Nobody's measuring the same stuff. So we don't even have definitions of everybody that's the same definition.

So what I tell people is if you're going to use a tracker, whether it's an aura ring or a sleep score or a whoop band or whatever it is, don't look at the absolute data, look at the relative data. What do I mean? If you read one morning that your your tracker says that you got 14 minutes of REM sleep, go back and see, did you get 14 minutes the night before and 14 minutes the night before, then your tracker is inaccurate, but it's consistent. Oh, yes. But if you did 14, 14, 14, and then also in 411,

I want to know what happened that night. When there's an aberration, when there's a difference in the data, that's when you want to look and see what, how did that affect my sleep? Don't worry about the minutes. Again, sleep is not a minutes game, it's a quality game. Yeah, exactly. Everyone needs to remember that. So don't, when you're tracking, it's a quality game. Right. Yeah, exactly. Everyone needs to remember that.

So don't, when you're tracking, don't get caught in the minutes, get caught in the concept and understand how sleep works, then you can use those tools for your advantage. But I think also what you said at the beginning of this podcast or more towards the beginning was that if the more consistent you are with your lifestyle and your routine, your brain will automatically tell you into wake up or when you're not to, you know, where you basically train your brain, train your body and circadian rhythm,

where you wake up when your body actually needs to. So you don't even need these trackers usually, then why are you wearing one? So the reason I wear trackers, is people always ask me about tracking their sleep. And so I want to be able to know and understand how the tool works to be able to educate them. But to be really honest with you, I don't look at my sleep.

You know how I tell how I slept well? When I wake up and I feel good, that's how I know I slept well. Sleep is a perception. When you wake up in the morning, how you feel is a very good metric of how well you slept. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And if you do it consistently, your body knows what to do and you will consistently start to sleep well.

I love that. That's the key. I'm going to think of, did I, what else did I want to ask you? I guess you know, I should ask you just one question because you did talk about this, but you said it earlier, we didn't get to it because we went on another topic. But when is the best time to ask your boss for a race? Is it depending on what his chronotype would be like? So if he's a lion.

So there's a couple of ways to figure this out. Not to kind of do, do you rail everything? No, this is a great question. I was actually going to wrap it up, but I'm like, you know what? I want to go over that because I think that's a really important one, right? Yeah, it's, well, it's interesting.

And if you think about it, it makes sense. So we did survey data to figure out what's the happiest day of the week. I'll give you one guess what the happy day is. Exactly. You nailed it. Fantastic. And what we also learned is that people seem to get happier and happier the later the day gets.

Yeah, they're getting closer to leaving and going home for the weekend. So number one, the best day to ask your boss for a raise is on Fridays. The best time to ask your boss is later in the day. Now, the second, the third question you have to ask is what is your boss's chronotype? Now, how do you tell what your boss's chronotype is? I'm gonna teach everybody out there

how to tell what your boss is chronotype is. If you get emails at three o'clock, four o'clock, five o'clock in the morning, your boss is a lion. Yes, that's right. I can guarantee you of this. If your boss makes it in the morning roughly around the same time everybody else does,

they're a bear, okay? If your boss doesn't make it in early, but likes to stay late and seems to really energize towards the later part, then your boss is a wolf. And if your boss is just a pain in the ass because they're so sleep deprived, there's a high likelihood, they're a dolphin. Once you understand what that is, then you know when they're going to be happier and happier during the day. When are they going to have the most energy? When are they going to be the most influential and when they're going to be the most charismatic?

So we know that if you're a lion, you're going to be losing energy by two o'clock in the afternoon. So if your boss is a lion, don't go to your boss at two o'clock in the afternoon when they're running out of energy and talking to them about a race. If they're a lion, hit them when they walk through the door with a fresh cup of coffee or a green drink or something, say, hey, I'd love to go for a walk with you and talk a little bit about my future. Well, a lion's going to love that because they're like, hey, this is somebody's up early, they're here with me. Let's talk. Yeah. But if they're a bear, they don't want to talk to you in the first walk through the door. I want to deal with their email and do this. So maybe lunchtime, right? Go to go to go to them around 11 o'clock. Say, hey,

you want to go grab a snack or a bite? I'd love to talk with you more about my career here. They're going to be on board. They're going to be focused. Again, Friday, happy day, middle of the day, timing of the day. Now, if your boss is a wolf, go to happy hour. Yeah. Right? Hey, let's go get a drink, right? Because wolves like to do that. Where high risk takers, we like to party, we like to be in social situations. Right. So put them in that. Put your boss in the situation that's most comfortable to them because you're gonna Ask them for something that they may or may not want to give you. No, I love that Okay, and then the other thing that we didn't talk about and I was gonna stay it and we got again a little bit derailed was I think I am too. What if you're like a cusp like you're between two that would happen a lot

So there are hybrids we discovered so So with having two million people take the quiz, we've discovered quite a bit. So it turns out that there are early bears and there are late bears. So there are people who fall into that bear category in the middle, but actually they prefer to wake up early or they prefer to stay up to late. So we've actually started to learn

that we're getting more and more categories. And to be fair, I have a new book that's gonna be coming out a year from December. Crosse. And we're looking at, and you're gonna love this especially because we're taking the chronotypes and we're putting body types overlaid. Oh my gosh, I really love that book.

And it's gonna be all about movement and sleep and energy. Okay, well you tell. So I can't wait to come back and talk to you about it then. I was gonna say you have to come back in a year from now, but in the meantime, you could, anyone. Can I, can we hang out before that? Cause I kinda like hanging out with you.

Abs, of course, I told you, you can, you can be my co-host. I love it. Right now, his newest book, it's called The Power of When, and his name is Dr. Michael Bruce. He is the sleep doctor and always has so much valuable information that just covers the spectrum. I'm not just sleep,

but how based if they have sleep can not just practical way you can get better sleep, but how it can kind of help you in so many other areas of your life. So this has been amazing. Thank you so much for coming back on. I appreciate it. Come on, habits and hustle. Where else would I be? I don't know, exactly. Thank you so much. And where can people find more about you if they want to learn more? I'm super easy to find. You can find me at www.thesleepdoctor.com. And if you want to learn about your chronotype, go to chronoquiz.com. And I have a podcast, Sleep Success with Dr. Michael

Bruce. Absolutely. That's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Bye. Sweet dreams! This episode is brought to you by the YAP Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire YAP Media, and host of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life.

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