Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 571 - Better Sleep For You & Your Kids ft. Dr. Chris Winter

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

An amazing podcast with Dr. Chris Winter covering many topics on sleep including sleep apnea, snoring, how to get better sleep and some of the effects of not getting enough sleep for you and your kids. See the links below to purchase Chris' books on Amazon! The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It: https://amzn.to/3xE0wHE The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder--and How to Help https://amzn.to/3yHXrb2 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use code "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

we're in are we in though we are fully in we're getting it in this is what this is what is uh referred to as getting it in right i think so i mean it feels good can't pull it out it's pretty warm here you guys have been moisture but this will do oh my god it's a dry day for me oh you guys are terrible today i love it we're always coconut oil oh yeah very the giant tub of coconut oil we learned a lot from mike ryan haven't we yeah oh mike ryan have you guys seen mike ryan's uh tiktok uh videos that he does like uh where it says when you're 55 year 55-year-old dad, have you seen those? Uh-uh. Yeah.

They're awesome. Yeah. I don't even know whose account they're on because I don't think it's his unless maybe he started one recently. But I saw that video a couple of months ago when I'm still trying to learn TikTok. And then I'm like, oh, shit, that's Mike Ryan. But I don't know who's account it was and then of course like all the comments were you know whatever they were what they were but like it got a lot of attention i thought it was really cool there's some fit dude handling like 100 pound

dumbbells on like the incline and uh the uh you know that weird tiktok robot i think talks and it says something like uh when your 55 year old dad uh shows you up in the gym or something and so mike just walks over to the guy and takes the 100 pound dumbbells from him and starts curling him wow that's so now okay yeah a lot of the comments were uh talking about his bad form well of course curling 100 pound dumbbells. You fucking idiots. If there's anything that I love about TikTok, guys, it's how vocal people are and how

I guess it's a good thing and a bad thing because people were getting angry, Mark, when you posted the thing about the incline bench or incline dumbbells. They're like, but Arnie did incline. They're just getting so angry. I guess I'll ignore everything that Arnold ever did and just listen to this small guy talking about Doug Bregoli.

It's like, hey, assholes, if I look like that at 61, I'll be stoked. Guys, something we're doing is working because Flex Wheeler commented on one of the posts that we had. I mean, fuck, that's Flex Wheeler. That's so amazing yeah kai green too there it is i was like what the fuck is like kai green's like hey guys this is interesting like what what's happening right now kai green and flex wheeler are like nah we're like yeah but we have all this compelling evidence it's really cool this is really neat

this is how people are going to build big pecs they're like uh no sorry yeah just post a picture of their physiques nice try kids yeah um flex did bring up something really interesting before we go diving into uh talking to our sleep doc today um he did bring up um the amount of like pec involvement in, you know, like an incline versus a flat. And he did mention that a lot of pec tears happen from a flat bench, which is that's really interesting. However, I don't think anyone's really doing decline. But I would imagine if you tear your pec on something that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great exercise, but it might show that there's a lot of pectoral activity during that movement. And you don't really hear about pec tears as much on the incline press. So I don't know. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything, but I just found it to be interesting. Something good a lot of people were bringing up is just like activating

the clavicular head when you're doing an incline pressing, which you might not be getting as much on when you're doing decline pressing, which is an argument for why people like are saying still do incline pressing. It's just it's just interesting because it's like we're not saying you should get rid of incline press, but a majority of you guys don't decline. And there might be some legitimate reasons to add that into your routine along with your incline press. But people are like saying, like, oh, I don't want to do it i'm mad yeah well a part of it is um like someone like greg du said he actually labeled the decline press as one of the worst exercises you can do for your chest so it's yeah you know it's just and I mean, how many people listen to Greg? You say, I mean, the guy has over a million followers on YouTube. So a lot of people.

And then somebody like, you know, you know, Doug comes in and is like, nope, it's the opposite of what this guy's telling you. People get, people get fired up. It's fun. I did some decline dumbbells and I forgot about the logistics of trying to get set up on a decline bench and how weird it is. Yeah. And so that was a little bit strange. But I noticed as I was pressing more towards, like, my abdomen area, like, rather than pushing, like, over towards my face, as I pushed more towards my abdomen, I felt my pecs flex even harder, which was amazing. So I don't even know, like if I just don't think people have explored the decline bench that much.

I think it's a real, real afterthought. And if anybody doesn't, it's light and it's with dumbbells and it's maybe at the end of a workout or something like that. Yeah, this is this is why, like this, all this stuff really excites the hell out of me with all the guests that we've had on and all the just off kilter things that we've been trying. Then Patrick coming in, us getting some progress off of that. Doug coming in, like we had, we've had Mike is or tell Brad Schoenfeld,

all these different guests. And we're just trying all these cool things and things end up working. We're like, we're, we're, we're staying kind of ahead of some things that people are doing. And it's kind of cool. Yeah.

And it's an interesting thing. I think is that like specifically on the show we don't we're not really talking a lot about massage therapy um we're not really talking a lot about these like recovery methods like none of us really do hot cold contrasts and not that those things aren't effective um but i think we're more of the belief that you need to train properly. That way you don't have to go back and try to fix everything that you destroyed. And we need sleep,

right? We need, and that's where we're going to get to today. We talk about sleep quite a bit. We need some good mindfulness on just how we treat ourselves and just with our habits in general. And then the last thing, last piece of it is your nutrition, which kind of, in my opinion, kind of can assist bringing everything all together. And the diet is going to be harder without the sleep.

The sleep is going to be harder without the diet. I mean, everything's just, they, they really do connect a lot and, um, having your food right is, is a huge component of it. And for a lot of people, the convenience of their food is one of the things that really holds them back. They want convenience and they want it to be, um, they want it to taste good. Right. So it's like, what do we do to have convenience and have food taste good? Well, I know what I do. I've warmed some eat right.

Like, like seriously, like yesterday they don't have, they don't have this one or I haven't had in a while. And I found it in my freezer in my garage, but the teriyaki salmon, I don't know if you guys have had that one in a bit, but like every,

literally every single day I'll have at least one or two of the eat rights and some piemontese but it's like everything is just ready to go especially since i'm pretty busy i'll leave here i'll come back i'll do jujitsu sometimes i'm just too freaking tired to cook and it's good to be able to warm that up eat it immediately and get back to what i'm doing plus they have all the macros on it so you can legit have chicken fish steak shrimp anything that fits whatever you're trying to do. It's perfect. Yeah. Having a lot of different meals on there.

Yeah. Having the macros on the label for somebody that's tracking or somebody that's just wanting to get a little bit more educated on what they actually are eating. It's so beneficial to look down and be like, oh, 12 ounces of chicken is going to be this many calories and whatnot. But yesterday, as somebody who felt like I had to have carbs with every meal, I'm finding it a lot easier with Eat Right to just throw in the Southwest turkey. That's what I ate yesterday at the gym. I got home as I'm cooking lamb, which we'll talk about maybe in another episode. Cooking the lamb, I heated up a 12-ounce thing of chicken. Falling apart here.

I know, sorry. Heated up chicken as the lamb is cooking. I ate that so that way I could just load up more on protein. It was fantastic. It was so good. So we love it. We want you guys to experience it as well. Head over to eatrightfoods.com. That's E-T-R-I-T-E foods.com. Check out enter promo code

powerproject25 for 25% off your first order. And then after that, use promo code powerproject to save 10% off every order after that. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes, highly recommend it. Shout out to my boy, John Cena. I saw suicide squad yesterday and it was fun. You know, it's, it's one of those movies that, you know, don't have some crazy expectations of it being some movie that's going to change your life or anything. But it was fun. It was funny.

It got to be like over the top silly. And what I loved is I'm just sitting there watching it going, there's absolutely no way that John didn't have a lot of input on what his character is doing, what his character is saying. There's like a scene where they all like it. This isn't giving up way too much. But there's a scene in the movie where they all like this isn't giving up way too much but there's a scene in the in the movie where they all like wake up the next day like in the woods and he's just in his underwear i'm like he totally was like yeah like this is what

because he just before you know it the guy's got his clothes off almost all the time um just he's just likes to be silly and weird and surprise people and do weird, funny shit. So that was cool. And then to see his acting, like his acting is just, it's great to see that he's able to portray his humor properly on camera, which I'd imagine has got to be

really, really hard to do. But yeah, I was really excited for it and also excited that he's getting a spin-off show um from from this which i think is going to be huge let's go yeah and that got me so that got me so pumped because i was like you know what i'm like that motherfucker has been in movies pretty much from the around the time that I was getting married. So that's 21 years he's been on screen in movies or TV.

Obviously, like the pro wrestling career and stuff, everybody knows about that. But he's been having small roles here and there, doing this, doing that. And he's always enjoyed it. He's always liked it. But I love seeing that from people. Already such a high-level performer, right? And now he's going to it but i i love i love seeing that from people already such a high level performer right and now he's gonna be taken to the next level so i'm really excited i i'm i think it's hbo uh i don't know the name of the show but it's a spin-off of his character uh that

gets a whole show so i'm i'm really pumped for him that's sick i can't wait to see it uh but did you guys see black john cena yeah yeah yeah isn't that crazy that man looks like literally like a black john cena it was insane that's so good also congrats to john for being so fucking jacked he looked so good in the movie it was awesome lats are popping biceps are popping. He looked fucking great. Yeah, he was hilarious. When they're in that pre-mission meeting, and it's like Operation Starfish, and he's just like,

Starfish is also another term for butthole. Is that what we're talking about? Dude, that movie was so good. He's like, does that have any relevance? Yeah. They're like, we don't believe so. Definitely by far the best shit, I already ruined it,

but the best DC Universe movie that they've ever made. It's leaps and bounds. It's so good. I don't want to overhype it, but it's that good. Sick, we got Chris in the house. I'm going to try to watch that this weekend you should

are you guys currently tracking you guys currently tracking your sleep a bit here and there yeah yeah i am i got the uh the garmin keeping track of stuff yeah so awesome it just it kind of does tell me that that i suck at it but you whatever. That's why we need some help today. What's going on, gentlemen? How are you? Good. How are you? We're doing great. Thanks for your patience, man. I'm glad we got to get this set up. So, it looks like we got a new book

right there, The Rested Child. That was actually something I did want to discuss, but now that I'm seeing the book popping right there, let's dive into that because that's a tough thing. Andrew has a baby that's only a couple months old. And what can you tell us about trying to get our youngsters to sleep, man? That is a really tough battle. a really tough battle. It is. And we see we see adults and kids in our clinic. So it's definitely something we want to arm parents about and sort of plant in their brains that once you get your little one sleeping through the night, you're not done in terms of dealing with sleep issues. And so, you know, what sort of sets this book apart is we actually wrote it

from the perspective of how can you help your children sleep from the time they're born until they head off to the college years kind of thing? Because there's not a lot really written about kids once they start sleeping through the night and taking a good nap during the day. And if you can really help with kids get a proper sleep habits and things taken care of when they're young, they really grew up to be much better sleepers. And with kids getting ready to go back to school for the first time in almost two years, now all of a sudden they're back to waking up early. It's going to be a real, I mean, it's wonderful that we're emerging out of this pandemic for sure, but it's going to be very difficult for a lot of kids who've been waking up at like 11 o'clock and getting on a Zoom call or not waking up anytime soon at all during the summer to get back into that very unnatural rhythm for young people to get up early and be done with school at three o'clock. You know, the average kid intellectually and physically peaks around four in the afternoon. I mean, school around here is out by that time.

So if you've got a kid who's a little bit more of a night owl, school is not really set up for that kid to succeed. Yeah. And in regards to that, so like after, after I read Matthew Walker's book, you know, it's kind of laying out a similar thing where like, like, no, like kids, you know, I have a 13 year old and, you know, she just-year-olds, doesn't want to wake up early. After reading that book, I'm like, I'm not going to force anything on her. I'm going to let her get her sleep because this is crucial. Along with that, I'm trying to make sure that she goes to bed at a decent time. It is summertime. I don't want to take everything away from her, but like, like, Hey, like anything past 10 is like way out of the question, but is it at all detrimental to kind of let her just sleep as long as she wants in the morning? it's summertime, but anything past 9 a.m., like we got to get up and get moving? Or is that kind of, like I said, being detrimental and kind of taking away from the whole purpose of letting her get her sleep? Yeah, I think that the most important things are, number one, to have a schedule. So if a child wants to stay up a little bit later and sleep later, that might be more

in line with their natural rhythm. And those things tend to be genetic. So, you know, if you're sort of a night owl or your partner's a night owl, she may be as well, too. So to me, it's all about I don't really mind you having a more delayed schedule. But what is your schedule going to be? What you don't want is it's different every day. Well, sometimes I wake up and stay in my bed until two in the afternoon. Other times I'm up around 11. And the other thing that you have to look out for, and we deal with this with kids and adults, with baseball teams, they have spring training and they play all their games in the morning. Then suddenly on some day in April, they start playing all their games at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time time so if school's coming for your daughter we need to

figure out okay what does that schedule look like and you've hit on a couple interesting things one being okay well it sounds like she's sort of a night oriented individual what is her first block or first period what's her second block second period look like on her schedule if it's ap calculus and ap you know chemistry that might not be the best timing for her to take those classes she might need like study hall gym phys ed and then push those classes later in the evening if you've got a kid who's a real morning oriented kid gets up swims for two hours with his local swim team he might be great with calculus and latin in the morning and kind of push his study off off towards the end of the day so you know this really gets into school start times which i think in a lot of situations are extremely

unhealthy particularly for kids who tend to be more night oriented you know when a kid succeeds in school is he succeeding because he's really smart or is he succeeding because his biological rhythm better matches that of the school? So, I mean, I wrote a whole chapter about, you know, the two biggest threats, I think, to kids' health and sleep are technology and school. And my wife's a school teacher.

Both my parents were school teachers. I love teachers. They work really hard. But the system sometimes is really not set up for them to succeed. You had a bus ride at the beginning of the end of the day. It can be really rough. And some kids have to get up. Their parents dropped them off at a friend or grandparents house. And that's where they catch the bus because the parents have to get to work early. I mean, those kids can be getting up at the crack of dawn. So there's all kinds of things you can do to make these kind of bad situations better. But I think letting your kid get the sleep they need is better. And one of the things that

kind of came out of this pandemic is suddenly that happened for everybody. Everybody is no morning activities, no in-person school, no bus rides. My kids started school around nine or 10 and both of them grew like we marked their little, you know, their heights every now and then. And suddenly they both started growing again very rapidly. Now, it could be completely based upon chance that they were going to grow that way anyway. completely based upon chance that they were going to grow that way anyway. But I'm going to go on record on your show as saying in about five years, doctors and pediatricians are going to look back and say,

wow, look at this bump in growth that kids had during the pandemic because they were getting more sleep. And with more sleep comes more deep sleep. And deep sleep is when we make growth hormone. So with kids, it's all about growing with adults or bodybuilders or people. It's all about, you know, rebuilding and restructuring your body in a positive way. It's all about that recovery. If you don't have growth hormone, you're going to age and get sick very quickly. You know, Chris, this makes me really curious. What other developmental things are kids missing out on

when they're not getting enough sleep? Like, okay, they're missing out on the growth hormone. They're not doing as well in school, especially the kids that have a propensity to sleeping later at night. There has to be some other developmental things that these kids are missing out on if this is a perpetual thing that happens to them as they're getting older. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that you all could really shine a light on that, you know, to me, I'm like a, you know, five foot eight inch doctor, you know, nobody cares what I have to say, especially a kid. So I can get in front of a bunch of kids and say, sleep well, it'll be really important

for you and all these different domains. They don't care. But the thing to me is that when you look at athletic performance and kids who under sleep, that there's a huge gap in performance between the ones who get their sleep and the ones who don't. Now, young people, as you probably know, and as I remember, can really abuse themselves and still do pretty well on the field or the court the next day. In fact, I remember talking to an NBA player one time and he's like, may I stay up all night and play video games? I'm still the best person out on the court.

And he was. But the key is, are you going to continue to be that person? Is your body going to break down quickly? And I think that it would have had he not gotten things together. So to me, athletic performance is a great way to get a kid's attention about sleep. Listen, I can't make you taller. I can't make you really run faster. I mean, maybe you can practice and get that. But one thing you can do right now is eat better and get sleep and really make that a focus every day of your life. It's not going to make if your

tryouts are next week, starting better sleep tonight, I mean, it never hurts to start, but it's really about the long-term play here. But to answer your question, I mean, just name something involved in a kid's athletic, intellectual, physical health, and I can promise you it's related to sleep. that we see tremendous amounts of anxiety. We see tremendous amounts of depression, school performance, attention issues in individuals who are not getting the sleep they need. And the danger there is that the underlying sleep problem gets misdiagnosed as depression. Hey, you know, your kid wants to spend all his time in bed. He has trouble waking up in the morning.

He's tired in school. Sometimes he even falls asleep in school. We're going to start him on some Zoloft and get his depression a lot better under control because he's just depressed and doesn't want to face the world. Maybe or maybe it's just really sleepy and he can't wake up in the morning. So to me, you know, we have to be very careful that the average doctor who's seeing your child has had four hours of sleep training in his or her entire career with 25% of pediatric clinicians having no sleep training. And those are some of the most common things that you're going to take your kid for. My kid has trouble staying awake.

He's fatigued all the time. He has trouble falling asleep at night. I mean, these are this is bread and butter in a pediatrician's office, yet woefully inadequate treatments to these types of things. Take some melatonin gummy bears and good luck. The other thing that gets brushed over is nutrition a lot of times, which is interesting because now we're talking about you got eight hours of sleep a day and then you have 16 hours a day to make decisions on what you're going to eat. And these two things, I mean, they seem like they're massively related to our health. What have you seen personally with nutrition? Have you noticed particular styles of diet help people get better sleep? And if so, what were some of the changes that people made? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, to me, when I look at an individual and their health and what their health related goals are, athletic related goals, I mean, the pillars really are nutrition, sleep, the way you physically train your body or exercise.

And, you know, this is not something I would have thrown in 10 years ago, but I definitely would now. It's sort of mindfulness and just kind of, I mean, even saying it today, there's a part of me that, you know, sounds a little strange or hokey, but it's absolutely true. So in terms of nutrition, I think that it's really important for individuals to eat a very balanced, healthy diet. I think it's better probably to avoid a lot of food later at night. And if you are just being strategic about it, if you're saying, look, I've. You know, I think bodybuilders are great examples or people who deal in that sort of realm of performance where they're saying, I really can't go two hours before I go to bed without eating because I've got certain nutritional goals that I'm trying to hit, which kind of requires that I'm sort of consuming calories, protein in some way all the time. I just think being thoughtful about the things that you're putting in your body are important.

I find that people who are under hydrated do not sleep particularly well. And that's an issue, too, because for a lot of people who wake up and have to go to the bathroom at night, they're intentionally cutting their fluid because they're worried, oh, my God, I might have to wake up and pee. Bullshit. Forget that. The NBA players that I work with probably wake up three times at night to pee. Humans wake up at night.

That's not an abnormal situation. In fact, if you wear some sort of fitness tracker, you'll probably see, wow, I don't remember it, but I woke up 17 times last night. Yeah, you did, because brains wake up at night and you go right back to sleep. So if somebody says, look, I'm aggressively hydrating. And because of that, I'll wake up two or three times to go to the bathroom at night. Now I get up, go to the bathroom, get back in bed, go right back to sleep and feel pretty good during the day. Forget about it. That's not a problem. Definitely not a reason to fluid restrict yourself.

I found this is sort of anecdotal. So I'm stepping outside of a purely scientific lane and telling you what my experiences are i i do find that a lot of people who sort of intermittently fast seem to have positive outcomes when it comes to their sleep as well too i can't really oh somebody's dancing there i can't i can't really explain it but i do think that you know i always tell my kids when you get up to bat or you're doing something, have a single thought in your mind. My thought is I'm going to keep a relaxed upper body or my elbow up. I don't I'm not a baseball coach. I think when you have 12 thoughts in your

head, you start to kind of have this diminishing returns that now your brain is thinking of these 12 things you're supposed to be doing. It's having trouble just releasing and doing the activity. So to me, I think sleep is and nutrition is like that. If your body is digesting really complicated foods all the time, then it does take away from sleep. And so, I mean, the lore has always been, you know, kind of cut your caffeine, alcohol, food off prior to going to bed. I don't think that's a good idea, but I also don't think it's a good idea to go to bed hungry. I don't think that's ever good either.

Like if you're feeling like kind of hungry, need something to eat, just choose carefully nuts, salmon jerky, hummus, something that's kind of sleep promoting that will take away that feeling of hunger. Let's touch upon for a moment, let's touch a little bit upon waking up multiple times. I've been waking up multiple times for a long time and I have been somebody that has been paying attention to diet and hydration and those types of things. And I kind of view it as being problematic.

However, I don't really feel like I have symptoms. But on the other side of that is I do know that there is a price to pay, especially as we get older. If we're not getting that deep sleep, we're not getting a sleep. I do track my sleep and my deep sleep can end up being all over the place. It can be 14 minutes and other times it could be an hour or two. So how do we know like if, if we have a real, I have had a sleep study done. I did have some mild sleep apnea and I can explain a little bit more of that in a moment. Waking up in the middle of the night is pretty normal and natural. And as

long as we're getting back to sleep, you don't have to be alarmed, I guess, maybe. I think that's a reasonable way to look at it. don't think there's ever a time where doing a sleep study is inappropriate and to me the biggest way to sort of gauge where you are on that spectrum is asking questions related to sleepiness in other words if you stretched out on a couch this afternoon, how likely would it be for you to fall asleep? If you pick up a copy of my book and you're reading it during the day prior to a podcast, are you somebody who's like, I can't sit down and read a book during the day. I'll just fall asleep. Like I got to walk around and read it. When you all sit down with your significant others or families and

say okay let's let's watch an episode of naked and afraid tonight or whatever you like to watch is everybody making fun of you because you know before they even take their clothes off you're sitting there falling asleep you know like so if you're feeling like yeah i mean i do struggle to stay awake or what i often hear from guys are I've got to be doing. If I'm not doing something, I'm in danger of falling asleep or the way they'll often say is I'm fine. As long as I'm busy, I'm good. Well, you shouldn't have to be busy to stay awake. So when somebody starts to complain about excessive sleepiness, that's where I feel like we need to start paying attention to the

fragmentation of somebody's sleep. Or if you're tracking your sleep with an R-ring or some sort of fitness monitor and you're feeling like my sleep score, however that platform provides it, seems to be noticeably different from my friends or from where I was five years ago, I think it's time to get a little bit of an intervention. And for you guys and more elite athletes, I always think about Arnold Schwarzenegger that, you know, when you're standing next to him, you're probably, oh my God, this guy is so big. And when he looks in the mirror today, he's probably like, I wish I looked like I used to look like, you know, I seem so small now, like perspective is everything. And for elite athletes who are way out in this end of the spectrum,

they know their bodies better. Like my training's been off. I'm not able to do things I was doing six months or a year ago, even though when you're standing in front of your primary care doctor, she might be like, you look fine. Yeah, I know I do, but my workouts aren't right. I'm not hitting the marks that I feel like I need to. I think we should always listen to those things because somebody who has mild sleep apnea may not be in danger of having a stroke. Mild sleep apnea might be affecting that elite level performance band. Where you want to be and where you're at right now can have a big impact on it. So it's one of those things where you're not treating it necessarily to save your life,

but you are doing it to get that sort of performance edge. It's like smoking two cigarettes a week. I don't think there's a huge problem with that. I'd rather you not, but compound that over the next 10 years and that could create a problem. Thanks for curing my sleep issue. You're welcome. Wait, wait, did you actually have it cured or something or is that? No, no, no. He just, uh, his uh his summary there of uh like probably don't sweat it sounds very accurate and i love what you said i'll tell you this is an issue with guys and sleep apnea so just to give you a sense of sleep apnea sleep apnea is when you stop breathing your brain

loves oxygen so it's like choose sleep great and feel good or breathe and don't suffocate to death so your brain's going to choose to breathe so in order to breathe you i like that yeah you wake up and so you wake up catch your breath right back to sleep again wake up catch your breath and you do it all night long so what happens when you have a sleep study is those little breathing disturbances are counted and then you get a number you stop breathing 23 times an hour and we consider zero to five breathing problems per hour to be normal. Six to 20 breathing problems an hour is moderate. Sorry, mild sleep apnea. 21 to 35 moderate. Anything above 36 is severe. Now, the worst I've ever seen in my career is 144. So it's important to keep that in mind when somebody says, oh, you've got sleep apnea.

You stop breathing 11 times an hour. OK, that's very mild. So the next question I always ask that patient is, do you feel? If the answer is, I feel great. I'm here just because my wife wanted me to come. Then I wouldn't sweat it. If it's, I'm devastatingly sleepy during the day and really don't feel like myself, treat it. See what happens. I mean, stranger things have happened. I've treated people with 11 breathing problems per hour. It's changed your life. More often than not, though, it will not. Now, if treated people with 11 breathing problems per hour. It's changed your life. More often than not, though, it will not. Now, if you have 136 breathing problems per hour and you feel great, screw you. You got to treat it.

Got to treat it because it is slowly killing you, even though you feel better. And I can almost promise you treating you think you feel good. Treat it. You'll feel like a million bucks when you get rid of 136 awakenings per hour. So I don't think that we often have that great conversation with patients. It's like, you've got sleep apnea, you got to treat it. We're done talking. And that spectrum of what sleep apnea is, is massive.

You know, I have two questions within this sleep apnea topic. Now, sleep apnea is a big thing within like the bodybuilding community, the powerlifting community. You see these guys with big old traps, big old necks, and they get those issues, right? So, they end up getting a CPAP because a CPAP is something that actually a lot of people suggest. You'll actually be able to sleep through the night, right? Sure. So, I want to know, is that a legitimate long-term fix for a fit athlete who has sleep apnea that they have to be on a CPAP for the rest of their life?

Or is there anything that they can do? And then secondly, I hope we don't forget this, but we had Patrick McEwen on. And he came on and suggested that we use mouth tape when we sleep just so we can breathe through our nose. And I have noticed, first off, I got into the habit of nasal breathing, which has helped me athletically. But in my sleep, when I use that mouth tape, I always wake up sooner, more well rested because my mouth never falls open when I sleep. So what is the like, do you suggest mouth tape to people? How do you suggest they implement it if they do have sleep apnea? And can people get rid of their sleep apnea? Or is that something they're stuck with if they're built a certain way like those bodybuilders and power lifters it's a great question so i'll start with the first part c-pep is legitimate absolutely legitimate

it's as legitimate as glasses for vision problems you're not curing anything but it's a perfectly reasonable fix for the problem so i I wear contacts and glasses. So I've done nothing to cure my vision problems that I've had since third grade, but I don't mind this fix. To me, the real question becomes how excited is a young, fit, handsome bodybuilder to wear a leaf blower on their face every night for the rest of their life you know in those communities sometimes those things are at odds so if a bodybuilder says look yeah i don't mind because it's really making me feel better i mean a lot of football players have the same problem big thick necks and create this airway obstruction because of it, it's fine to do so. If you're saying, look, I want to treat my sleep apnea.

I just don't want to do it with this god-awful thing, which to me is a very reasonable approach to the situation. I would find it strange to meet a patient who's excited about a CPAP. That makes absolutely no sense. I'm not excited about glasses. In fact, I hate them, but whatever. I like being able to see and operate in an independent life. makes absolutely no sense. I'm not excited about glasses. In fact, I hate them, but whatever. Like I like being able to see and operate in an independent life. So if somebody is interested

in treating their sleep apnea outside of a CPAP, I generally recommend try the CPAP first. Does it work? If the answer is no, I don't think the surgery will work either. If the answer is yes, oh gosh, this thing makes me feel great. I just don't want to wear it. Then I think you've got several options. One is surgery. And under that umbrella term of surgery are a lot of things. Tonsillectomy, kind of rechange the palate configuration. You can do things to shrink the base of the tongue, the part of the tongue that you don't see, all in an effort to create more stable airway space.

The other option is an oral appliance, something a dentist can make that you wear like a retainer. And when you wear it, there we go. Yeah. Like a tap. Yeah. You put it in and it pulls your jaw a little bit forward, which creates a more stable, structured airway. And your second question about the taping, sometimes when people tape their mouth, when you don't, your jaw tends to open and kind of fall backwards. You can kind of feel it. And if you've ever noticed, your tongue is tethered to your jaw. So if you can keep your jaw neutral or even forward, you're actually keeping your tongue from kind of falling into the back of your airway.

So there are reasons. We tell people also when they wear a CPAP, which is, you know, kind of going under their nose to keep their mouth closed at night, because if you open your mouth, the pressure from the CPAP, which all it is, is a splint. It's not breathing for you. It's just using air to prop that airway open like a windsock at an airport. But if you open your mouth, now the air from the CPAP goes in your nose, comes right out of your mouth, and you don't get that effectiveness from it. So, you know, CPAPs work. If somebody's like, I mean, if I have sleep apnea, if I was diagnosed tomorrow, I would use a CPAP because whatever, just give me a CPAP, I want to move on with my life. But people are different. You know, if you were a traveling

person or you travel a lot or camp a lot or you're a bodybuilder or you're young, I don't think I would say give me a CPAP if I were in college. So I think that it is a legitimate treatment. It's a great place to see what the treatment's actually going to do for you. And then, you know, to kind of move forward from there, there's lots of other options you can do. There's even a surgery now that implants a little electrode. And when your airway collapses, it gives a little muscle a shock that opens up your airway. So there's some really innovative out there things, you know, breaking jaws and resetting them more forward. I mean, it can get crazy.

So just have a good sleep specialist that you deal with and can trust, you know, as you kind of move forward with those plans. What about training your jaw? Is that something that you communicate about much? I know some people will get like a phalem gum and chew this gum and try to open up their air passage by making the jaw stronger? I'm not aware of that. There are some really interesting studies that came out several years ago about playing the trumpet or like the didgeridoo, that Australian tube,

that kind of thing. For people who did that or professional singers like choral singers, that it was possible to exercise these muscles to the point where it was helping. In fact, somebody kind of created a program around that out in California. I don't remember the name of it. I used to recommend it to patients as, hey, if you don't want to do this and your sleep apnea is relatively mild, there's no real critical risk right now. Give this a shot and see what happens. And, you know, I had some people who felt like it was helpful to some degree.

So I think these are all reasonable things to look at. In addition to, you know, perhaps not drinking alcohol at night, which tends to relax your airway. Sleeping positions, being more upright off of your back can be helpful. upright off of your back can be helpful. You know, a lot of guys find that when they fall asleep watching the Dodger game on their lazy boy and they wake up, they actually feel better than if they actually turned the game off and went to bed because sleeping in the lazy boy, they're sort of more upright in their airways in a favorable position versus when they sleep flat on their back. So an extra pillow or something like that can be helpful as well, too.

on their back. So an extra pillow or something like that can be helpful as well too. So the person that you were describing earlier about having to stay busy or else start dozing off is me. I've tried addressing, well, just initially just snoring because my wife doesn't want to sleep next to a dude that snores all the time. I've tried mouth tape. I've tried the pillow thing. I've tried addressing it a I've tried the pillow thing. I've tried addressing it a bunch of different ways that are not too over the top or not too invasive. And when it comes to a CPAP, I'm open to the idea, but it's something I definitely don't want to do for the rest of my life. And. And, and, and I haven't even, I don't know for sure if I have sleep apnea,

but I have gotten my blood work through our, our, um, a company we work with Merrick. They, um, my, my hematocrit is really,

really high. And, you know, they explained to me like, Hey, that's possibly due to sleep apnea. Um, but what I'm getting at is,

is there a way that I could maybe pursue using a CPAP and then kind of wean myself off so that way I don't have to do it for the rest of my life because it just yeah I do want to travel I like camping I like getting out and you know exploring this planet but I don't want to have to carry a damn CPAP with me everywhere I go. So what's interesting is this. So, you know, talking about an individual who may have hypersomnia or excessive daytime sleepiness, EDS, we call it all the time. And in my first book, The Sleep Solution, which is more geared towards adults, there is a little survey and they're called an Epworth sleepiness scale. And so if you do the Epworth, you're going to get a number and the number is going to be somewhere between zero and 24.

And every sleep doctor in the world probably uses that Epworth in some way or the other. And so what it's basically saying is you're in these different situations, how likely you to fall asleep. You can give yourself a score. You can look it up online. You don't have to buy my book. It's available everywhere. If your score is greater than 10, what that's saying is your brain is looking for more sleep.

You're excessively sleepy. Excuse me one second. So if that's the case, sleep apnea is probably one of the more common reasons why people are excessively sleepy. But it's only one of about 88 diagnosable sleep disorders. So everything you said is true. Yes, you could try a CPAP if you felt like this is great. There are things you can do to make your sleep apnea go away. Weight loss is one of them. You're not really going to be a great candidate for that. When I say weight loss, I mean somebody who's in danger of breaking the chair,

has gastric bypass or a sleeve put on, suddenly has lost 100 pounds in two months, their chances of having sleep apnea be reduced or disappears very high. When you're already kind of lean, it's probably more anatomical. But like I said, oral appliances and surgeries could be an option. What you want to watch out for is, is sleep apnea the reason why you're tired? And for a lot of doctors, they get kind of fixated on the sleep apnea and never step outside of that and say, okay, well, your sleep apnea is really mild and we tried you on a CPAP

and that didn't really seem to be particularly helpful. And yes, you can try a CPAP. Your insurance will lease it for you. So if you try it for a month and feel like this is not for me or it's not working or i want to go in a different direction you can give it back and then get the surgery knowing that you're on the right track okay i tried that c-pap dear god it changed my life but i just hate it so i'm going to do something different i'm gonna have somebody

remove my tonsils or whatever and you talk to an ent about that if you felt like this if the sleep study or something like that were done and assessment was done and you didn't have sleep apnea or you treated your sleep apnea and still felt just as tired as before. Okay. Well, it sounds like you've got apnea. It's taken care of what of the other 87 sleep disorders might you be dealing with? And if the doctor you're seeing is like, I don't know, we just treat sleep apnea around here. You need to find another doctor. And that's really that was really sort of the point of the first book that I wrote, which was figure out what your problem is and the various things that could be going on. And don't get sold this line of it's sleep apnea where it's nothing else. Yes, sleep apnea is very common, but, you know but it is not the only thing that causes people to be

excessively sleepy. But in this country, sometimes you get the impression that's it, sleep apnea or nothing else. And then does snoring automatically equal sleep apnea? No, we call that primary snoring. So snoring is basically, you think about your airway, it's your airway vibrating. So when you're young and 20 years old, about your airway. It's your airway vibrating. So when you're young and 20 years old, it's pretty stuck. You know, it's like the upholstery and like my grandfather used to have this big old Cadillac. And this time passed, that material on the ceiling would start to kind of droop down. You know, you'd like staple it up there, you know, whatever.

So our airways are kind of like that as gravity is pulling on our airways as we talk right now as time passes it just becomes a little bit looser so now as you sleep you know your girlfriend or your wife at the time is like you never used to snore but now you snore a little bit so you get a little bit of vibration in there if the vibration becomes really bad or that laxity in the tissue becomes really bad it can actually close off that's apnea. So there's plenty of people who make a noise when they sleep, but they're not obstructing their breathing. So if your partner's like, yeah, you make some, you snore a little bit when you get on your back, but you always sound like you're breathing just fine. And you feel that way. Great. You probably just snore. But if your girlfriend or your partner saying you snore, but but then you stop and it's like 13 seconds before you start breathing again, that's what you want to look out for.

Yeah, it's funny because I have asked my wife, like, hey, does it sound like I'm not breathing? And she can only recall very few times, like a couple of years ago where it would stop. But for the most part, it's just being like i sound like a bear like i've tried the mouth tape and i'll snore straight through that uh so sometimes the tape will come a little bit dislodged and like it'll make like a high pitch sound on the way out so it's like yeah yeah like it's it's yeah she cracks up the great thing now is that you know a lot of people particularly guys like i don't want go in and have a sleep study and wires taped all my body and spend the night. Sleep apnea can easily be diagnosed today by a home sleep study.

And if you're in there saying, look, I snore, my partner thinks I stopped breathing. I think I have sleep apnea, can I have a sleep study? And somebody's trying to sell you an in-lab sleep study. Again, go find another doctor a home sleep study is like even if you didn't have insurance like 300 bucks most insurances cover them happily these days particularly for a guy who snores because they want to catch this early because it's going to change the likelihood of you having a heart attack a stroke high blood pressure diabetes whatever um so they're usually very, very easy to schedule.

And it's basically, it's a little thing across your chest, clip it to your finger underneath, sleep in your own bed one night, then drop the little device off at the clinic where you got it the next day. You'll have the results in a few hours. It's just so easy. So there's not a lot of reason. And then you don't even have to go in and have the sleep study for the CPAP. You just get a little auto CPAP from a home care company, pop it on during the night and you've gotten everything taken care of and never stepped foot in a sleep center.

You know, I'm also curious about this because when we were talking earlier, when you were talking about kids and how doctors will sometimes say, hey, take some melatonin. Here you go. A lot of people still supplement melatonin on rough nights. And I've heard that melatonin might not be the ideal supplement to try to take for sleep. So can you talk to us a little bit about that? But then also, along with melatonin, what would you say are some practices or good supplementation to take before bed because like personally i'll sometimes eat like if i'm fairly low carbohydrate as far as my diet because they all tend to make me a little bit tired when i have them so i'm kind of thanksgiving yeah i kind of use that before bed

so something like when i if i usually have carbs if i do it'll be in the meal that i have before i go to bed because i'm already going to start feeling tired and then I have better, more restful sleep. So what are some practices that we can do to help us get better sleep and supplements that we should maybe try or avoid? I don't think I've ever had anybody figure that out on their own. out on their own. But I'm a big believer that your meal first thing in the morning should be more focused on protein because protein tends to create more chemicals in our brain that facilitate wakefulness. And like I said, you know, you have Thanksgiving, apple pie, stuffing, you know, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, all the stuff your grandmas and aunts make. And then you sit down and watch the Lions play the Cowboys and immediately fall asleep

in the first quarter right on the couch, which is great because you don't have to do the dishes. So that massive carbohydrate load is very sleep promoting based upon the way it interacts with insulin in our body. And you all probably know this better than I do. It's not necessarily the tryptophan in the turkey. If you want tryptophan in your diet, you need a lot more out of chickpeas, hummus, game meats, turkey, particularly domestic turkeys that we raise really don't have that much tryptophan in them. So that myth of, oh, it's the tryptophan that made you feel sleepy. It's

not at all. It's that massive carbohydrate load that you just exploded in your gut at four o'clock in the afternoon. And now your brain is feeling kind of tired dealing with it. So carbs at night are great. I agree with you. I don't think melatonin is a fantastic supplement. I think it does a lot of negative things. One being it's kind of convincing somebody, you, a child that you need something to fall asleep at night, which you don't. You know, if you want to exercise your melatonin muscle, you know, one of my favorite things when I go work with professional sports teams is like their training center will often have like a deck outside. So if you want to go to your medicine ball or do your whatever, you can walk outside and do it. So to me, if you really want a lot of melatonin in your life, work out outside or in a gym that's got tons of ambient light and do it first thing in the morning,

what that does is tell your brain to stop making melatonin. Melatonin is not a sleep aid. It's a sleep timing aid. It's trying to align all of our sleep needs with day and night. So if you need seven hours and you need eight and you need nine and I need seven and a half, it's trying to create a situation where we're always getting that at night and awake during the day. That's what melatonin is doing. So then if you're getting lots of light exposure during the day, bright gym, getting outside to do some runs or some jumps or whatever you like to do, then after dinner, that's when you really want to start dimming the light. So turning off this bright overhead light and this little backlight right here, we could dim it. light. So turning off this bright overhead light and this little backlight right here, we could dim it. Lots of windows. You want your brain to see that slow loss of light that comes as the

evening comes. So you want to try to create an environment that does that. So if you're somebody who does some sort of exercise or stretching or yoga in the evening, that's fine. Just do it in a place that's not super bright lit. And it looks like one of you might be wearing some blue blocker glasses. You got to be on there and edit your podcast and get everything ready for your next guest or whatever. I'd rather you not be on your computer late into the night. But if you have to, wearing something that keeps that blue green light out of your eyes will keep the melatonin coming, even though it's light, even though you've got this kind of light in your face. So to me you know supplements with like zma a lot of athletes like to use that i i'm a neurologist by training brains

bodies bodies and brains love magnesium so i don't think there's really a problem with that but the word supplement means you're already in a good place you're just trying to make it even better so that's where i and i like the way it even better. So that's where I like the way you use that word, because that's where I just started to distinguish a supplement versus something you're dependent upon. Hey, you just traveled to L.A. and you forgot your ZMA. How do you feel? I don't care. I'm fine. I just like to use that to take my sleep to a little bit of a better level. Oh, God, I forgot the ZMA. Turn the plane around. I got to go back home and get my ZMA because I won't be able to sleep without it. That's horseshit. Don't be that. So, you know, it's fine to look

at, you know, things like ZMA, tart cherry juice. I think there's pretty decent studies about not only with sleep, but also inflammation. You know, you really rip your body up in the gym today. I think that's a wonderful thing to be consuming in the evening to help you sleep and recover better and maybe tamp down a little bit of inflammation that you've got. I'm also a big believer in temperature. You know, a really cold temperature is really better for our sleep. So people who work out and do ice baths or even a warm bath or shower at night. So when you get out of it, as you cool down, that really sort of sets the stage for great sleep.

There's some little devices that even cool your beds. I think they're awesome because guys like you marry people who don't like it cold. And all these athletes are like, oh, God, when I'm with my girlfriend, she likes it 74 degrees and I'm like sweating so badly and i gotta take my shirt off and lay a towel down on the bed and they're they're they're so excited when they go on the road because they get complete control of the you know four seasons thermostat and they're like opening it up trying to rig it to go even lower than what the hotel will allow you know so cold temperatures i'm a huge fan of for about 20 different reasons.

Quick question about temperatures, because there are devices that actually cool down your mattress. Love it. There's a company called Eight Sleep that has that. How do you feel about that? So I love it. Eight Sleep, you're right, has an actual mattress that when you purchase comes with this equipment, the poor water in it, and it'll cool your mattress quite cold. I will tell you if you said I have no financial relationship with any of the products I'm talking about outside of my book. So I'm not trying to sell you or your listeners, viewers, anything. But if you said, Chris, what is the

one product that you would recommend that seems to really impact people's sleep the most it's products in that line there's an also another company called cryo spelled with a k um chili chili pad or oler so if you like well crap i just bought a seven thousand dollar bed and it doesn't have this and i can't afford an eight sleep bed. You can buy this device that goes over your existing bed and does the same thing. You pour water into this device. It circulates it through these little silicone, tiny little tubes in the mattress pad. I mean, you can cool your bed down to like 57 degrees or something.

And what's great about it is, is the mattress pad is split. So we've got one. So I keep mine as cold as it will go year round, 365 days a year. I mean, it's tough in the winter. You got to kind of like, it's like getting into a cold pool. You kind of ease into your bed, but I love it. My wife hates that. She thinks I'm great. She'll put her foot over on my side of the bed and like, Oh my God, I can't believe you're sleeping on that. And so her zone is totally different. I can't believe you're sleeping on that. And so her zone is totally different. So you do whatever you want in your zone. We call our bed.

This is terrible. North and South Korea. So I'm in like cold North Korea. She's in happy, warm South Korea. So you do whatever you want to on your side of the demilitarized zone. And even the bedroom temperature, you don't have to heat or cool your entire house or that entire floor to get your bed super cold. And it's cold all night long. So like I said, they have a very liberal return policy, all these companies. So if you get it and hate it, they'll take it

back. I don't think I've ever had anybody tell me that they didn't love it. Why is the temperature important? Does our body temperature need to be regulated somehow when we're going to sleep? Yeah, when you look at a brain, so there's the little wrinkly part of the brain where we think it has all our personality and whatnot. And then the brain stem that connects our brain to our spine is the part of the brain we share with earthworms and all kinds of animals, the more primitive part. When you actually look at temperature regulation in a human, in a lizard, in a snake or whatever, all those things tend to happen in the brainstem. And that's also the part of our brain that interacts with our immune system and sleep, all in that same little tiny area. So, when you look at

the outward expression of our circadian rhythm, and our circadian rhythm is not just sleep, it's everything. Like when are we at our intellectual peak? When do we work out? When is our workout at its best? My guess is if you woke up a bunch of guys and said, okay, it's three o'clock in the morning, let's go hit the gym. That workout might not be quite as good as the 3 p.m. workout that you're used to every day because your body's kind of timing all these things out so when you actually look at like body temperature and if you've got one of those thermometers you can stick on your head because everybody's got one now with covid you know you check everybody before they walk into your house it's fun to like set it next to

you and every 15 minutes or 20 minutes take your temperature and do it throughout the day you'll see this perfect little curve that it kind of emerges. Peaks around four o'clock, troughs about two hours before you wake up. So immune system, temperature and sleep all get regulated in this one area in our hypothalamus. So when our temperature is not right, we tend to sleep more poorly. And when we sleep poorly, we don't regulate temperature that well. And then we all know that when you're not sleeping poorly, when you're sleeping poorly, you're more likely to get sick and things like that, or it takes you longer to get better. So all those things kind of happen in the same part of our brain. So we can use that to our advantage if you've got kids or yourself. So at tonight, before you go to bed, drop the

thermostat a few degrees, you know, after dinner, if you have a smart thermostat, you can actually program it to start lowering the temperature in your house leading up to bed and if you've got that coupled with light dimming it's really powerful you know way to sort of help get your brain primed to sleep and it's totally passive like we do it all the time and our kids have no idea they're just like walking around like is it like date night why are the lights turned on so low around here like what's going on down here what are the adults doing down here listening to Barry White and having romantic lighting everywhere? I'm like, no, no, no.

We're just getting ready for sleep. That's all you need to concern yourself with. Yeah. I know at this day and age, a lot of people have anxiety, and we're hearing a lot of people talking about anxiety and depression and taking medications for those things. But a lot of this is also attached to our sleep. And I know even sometimes people have anxiety about their sleep. Yeah, of course. What have you seen with the people that you have in your sleep clinic?

Have you been able to really assist people with depression and anxiety and maybe even get them off medications just by simply assisting them with better sleep? 100% yes. And that dialogue is, I see here from your chart, you've had depression for the last three years. You may have depression and this sleep disorder, but I want to open your mind up to the suggestion that perhaps as we treat your sleep disorder, you may find that your mood disorder gets better or goes away altogether. That is a

weekly occurrence in our clinic. Now, it doesn't always happen, and that's fine. At least in those individuals, we can say, wow, your sleep looks great. I'm so glad you've got more energy during the day. I'm sorry you still feel really depressed. But at least we know that we've got a bit more indications that this truly is real depression and not some sort of reactive depression to your excessive sleepiness. Same thing with anxiety, same thing with ADHD. And that's one of the things that we talk about in my books is that we're often very quick to label people with these things and you can imagine a kid or an adult who's excessively sleepy because there's something wrong with their sleep and you give them a stimulant like

ritalin or adderall they're going to feel better so when you say oh well there you go you had adhd and now we're giving you ritalin and you feel better. You can pay my receptionist before you leave my clinic. You're welcome. Yeah, you may have improved this situation, but you're kind of tricking yourself into thinking it's ADHD. It's not ADHD. You're just waking this patient up from bad sleep. So, I always tell people, if you have depression, if you have ADHD, if you have anxiety, adult or kid, consider a sleep evaluation, not even a sleep study. Just go talk to a sleep specialist. Worst case scenario is like, nah, your sleep's fine. You're super depressed.

And that's okay because for a lot of people, they're not. And especially if you're treating your depression or your anxiety or whatever psychological issue you've got going on. And you don't feel a lot of momentum. You don't feel like it's going anywhere. Well, I've been on three different drugs and I don't really see it really helping that much. That's where you and your provider want to take a step back and say, do we have this right? Or maybe we're missing something here. And that's a great time to say, do you think it could be my sleep?

Especially if you've got indications from you or your partner that your sleep isn't all that great. And we're making an assumption with this whole entire conversation that you are doing your part to get your sleep. That you're not like, hey, as long as I get to bed by midnight, I'm up at 4.30, I'm fine.

No, you're not. And for a lot of people who are very serious about working out their bodies, athletics or whatnot, and they have to work to make a living, sometimes they put in their exercise at the sacrifice of their sleep. So we're making the assumption that you're getting the right amount of sleep quantity. There may be a quality issue if you're still tired. This is really huge though, because we just had Michaela Peterson on and I'm really glad that you and Mark just mentioned that because like Michaela Peterson, you know, the way that she

fixed her mood disorders, cause she, she, I mean, she had massive depression, um, bipolar type two, all these things. She fixed that through her nutrition. And then she was able to get off all those medications. And it reminds me, I have quite a few friends who mentioned that they have ADHD, et cetera. And I'm not saying these people don't have ADHD, but a lot of times when you look at the lifestyle of an individual and you see maybe they drink a lot of alcohol each day, they don't have great nutrition, they're always out doing stuff late night before they come home. And when they sleep, they don't have good quality sleep. And then they wake up the next day and they do it all over again. It makes you wonder, well, hey, are you actually depressed? Do you actually have ADHD? Do you

actually have these mood disorders? Or is it because you're not taking advantage of the things in your lifestyle that could help you become healthier? And it's a really tough conversation because some people really do have this stuff and they do really need that medication, but some don't. It shouldn't be a tough conversation. I find it's a tough conversation when you've taken that disorder and sort of made it part of your identity. I'm not questioning your identity. I'm just saying, hey, there might be another path forward for you to feel even healthier. And the idea that there aren't people out there who have done that through nutrition, exercise is crazy. In fact, when you look at like take a medication like Prozac, an antidepressant, wonderful drug, life-changing for people.

What does it do? It tends to boost serotonin in your brain. Great. What other things boost serotonin in your brain? Exercise, social interaction, pleasurable hobbies. I mean, there's a bunch of things that make people feel better. better. So to me, the purpose of the Zoloft is let's get you out of this funk into a place where you can reinitiate sex with your partner, reinitiate playing guitar because you used to love to do that, but you gave that up two years ago, get you back in the gym, get you outside in

your herb garden, like all the things that we do. And you can see that in people who are depressed that all those things that stabilize their mood just start to drop. I mean, God knows it was when I was in residency and on call every other night, I was miserable. I'm sure that if I had been assessed at that point, they would have been like, oh, Chris, you kind of seem depressed. Well, yeah, I was. I never got to see my family. I was always locked in a hospital sticking needles in people's necks. Like I was not exercising, not getting enough sleep, eating terribly.

You know, chips, a hoist sleeves, like shoving it in my mouth, like a Pez dispenser, like all the wrong things. And even my kids, when they look at pictures of me when I was in residence, you're like, oh, God, dad, you look ill. You look really ill, you know. And so all these things are worthwhile exploring with people. I'm not questioning your disorder. I'm not questioning your doctors. I'm just giving you another alternative that you might want to explore. And if you say, I'm eating better than ever and exercising more than ever, and I'm still depressed, okay, at least you tried. But I'll tell you, I don't meet a lot of people who radically change their diets

for the better and really start exercising, who don't feel at least that the things are improving, may not get you off the medications. But the number of people say really back in the gym, exercising, playing that guitar, doing these things, but no change with my mood. Man, I just I just don't see that. So to me, the treatment of the depression sometimes is the beginning of the journey, not the end. And that's sometimes maybe something that doctors get a little wrong that, okay, you're on the Zoloft, we're done. No, no, no. You're on the Zoloft. Let's get started. Let's see what we can do in these other aspects of your life that you all know perfectly well can really make a difference in people and kids too. Unfortunately, they're all locked up in the rooms on Zoom meetings playing Minecraft.

You said something really, really powerful right there. I just wanted to reiterate it and highlight it. I know Andrew has a question. You said it becomes people's identity. And man, is that just huge. Do your best to not allow it to become your identity rather than saying I'm depressed and associating yourself with being depressed maybe you can have some dialogue that sounds more like this I go through bouts of depression or more recently I've been going through lots of bouts of depression. Yes. That is a way more healthy outlook. And what are some ideas I can do to maybe potentially assist me from not going into as many bouts of depression?

Rather than I'm depressed, I think when we say that, we're kind of putting our hands up and thinking, like, I cannot solve this problem. I'm hoping that God comes down from the sky and talks to me and fixes my issue or something like that. I think. Man, I always got slapped across the face when I was a young medical student because I called a patient diabetic. This is Steve Smith. He's a 38-year-old diabetic. Whoa, they went with the hand of the Italian. Why did you try to hit me just now? That man is not a diabetic. He is an individual with a family and a job and a career and interest. And he happens to have diabetes. And I think he even said, just like you're short.

Something like, kind of mean. Let me tell you something. I never did that again, ever. But you're absolutely right. In fact, one of my favorite things, if you look on Amazon and you look at my first book, you can look at all the different reviews, the sleep solution. You can look at all the reviews. There's a review in there that I think about a lot. It's a one star review like this person hated my book and it's like, you know, just tears it to pieces, doesn't want anything to do with it. But when you look at the name of the person, like your little Amazon name,

his or her name, I don't know, was tired 89. And so when our disorders become our identity, like I've got this terrible sleep disorder, nobody can figure out. And certainly your book couldn't help me, Dr. Winter. Like it was terrible. It belongs in the garbage can. Like now, you know, everybody has to have their thing. And when your thing becomes your medical disorder, that is a very malignant situation to get in. So to your other, to your point, if you're having the conversation, Hey, have you had, have you tried exercise? Have you tried that? Oh, that doesn't work. I've got terrible depression. That would never work for me. What exactly are we saying here? You know, it may not work, but like you said, it's all about opening up dialogues of possibilities. it's all about opening up

dialogues of possibilities. That's all doctors don't have the answers generally. Like we have a very limited scope of understanding, you know, but it's all about openness. Are you willing to try these things to maybe improve your life? And I find that sometimes when you've just resolved yourself to I'm depressed and nobody can help me. That's your identity. I'm the depressed person that no drug or no doctor can help. That's a tough spot. You guys totally crushed it just there. Kind of answers this question a little bit, but I know when I've had my, like Mark said, bouts with depression, one of the things that I would use to escape was I would sleep during the day when everyone was around, and then I'd be awake more towards the end of the night when everyone's packing it in. So if somebody is using that tactic, how do you maybe approach this person or what advice?

Because it is a sensitive topic. It is a sensitive topic. So how can you help, I guess, advise somebody that's going through that to kind of get them to say like or to get them to understand like maybe it is the sleep towards the end of the day. And if you're sleeping during the middle of the day, you're not getting that restful sleep. Let's try to flip flop that. But they're like, no, because that's how I escape feeling this way. Yeah. I mean, to me, it starts with dialogue and trust. And I tell people all the time, if you don't like me, if you don't trust me, that doesn't offend me. I'm not everybody's cup of tea.

Let's find a sleep specialist or a neurologist or a primary care doctor that is somebody that you enjoy and feel comfortable talking with. Because without that dialogue and sort of trust, it's not going to go anywhere. I can't make anybody do anything. In fact, to me, the hardest patient that we deal with is the 17-year-old who's sleeping kind of like you are, awake all night, sleeps all day, doesn't want to talk about it. And the parents have brought him into the clinic. They're interested. They're motivated.

But when you look over at Jeffrey, he's like not even looking at me in the eye. Like this is going to be tough because I'm not going to be able to force him to do anything once he walks out of this clinic. I mean, so there has to be a level of motivation. I see that a lot in young athletes. The coaches or the team has said,

please, Chris, you need to come out and deal with these individuals. My first question is, do they want to be dealt with? So I think that you've got to sort of paint a picture of acknowledging. I'm not acknowledging that you don't have a mood disturbance in any of these situations. These things are very real and very problematic. I've got a limited scope of expertise, but that might be something that you could hang your hat on that could really help you move in a more positive direction. If you feel like you're not in a good, so if somebody says, look, I like my life of sleeping throughout the day and being awake during the night and avoiding my family and not doing a great job at work and not having a lot

of friends or social outlet, then we are kind of problematic. And that's sometimes where electronics and phones and video games are filling that gap in a weird way. They're giving you a sense of accomplishment, a sense of community, when in fact, you're just manipulating lights on a TV screen. There's nothing real happening there. You know, this thing you've built, these interactions that you're having are not genuine reactions.

It feels like it to your brain, but it's not. So to me, and it's also a willingness to understand that I might interact with you. And at the end of our visit, we've decided to do nothing, but that's okay. I'll see you in three months. If you change your mind, you know where to get me. And in three months, we'll have the discussion again. It's taken me two years to get a patient to treat some sleep disorder. I even had a patient who came back one time and was really upset with me. I said, how are you doing? I'm doing great. And you could tell she was just mad. I said, I'm glad you're doing great. Any problems with the Medicaid? No, no, not at all. I said, do you seem mad at me? She goes, I am mad at you because you let me go

another two years of my life, probably knowing that this drug would change my life. I was like, yeah, I guess I did. It's a fair criticism, but I just didn't feel like it was my place to force you. You never seemed ready for it. But I think about her a lot, that how much is it right for a doctor or a clinician to push? Or maybe even a trait. Like, I know that I can take you to this level if you just do it. But when does the pushing become you create a resentment? I don't know. I'm still working on that. I think. So I guess switching up a little bit. And then Seema,

sorry, if you have a question about the depression topic, we can just jump right back into it. But when I, seriously, if I just look at my pillow on my bed, I'll pass out. Like I can fall asleep in a matter of seconds. It's kind of frustrating for my wife because I'm the one that snores. So she's like, if I can just beat him one of these nights, then I'll be asleep before he starts snoring. I always win. I'm just, I'm a winner. But when I look at my sleep, like last night, I got 48 minutes of deep sleep. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I know that that's one of those things that does cause some of the anxiety with people trying to get better sleep is like, oh, I got to get that deep sleep.

I got to get that REM sleep. So like when it comes to REM sleep, I had two hours of REM sleep. Don't know if that's good or bad. In total, six and a half hours of sleep. I feel pretty damn awesome today, but I guess should we strive to get like way more deep sleep, way more REM sleep? And if so, how do we achieve that? Yeah. So I like these sort of sleep and fitness monitors. I think they're a nice way. As long as you understand, they're not perfect longitudinally looking at it

over a long period of time. I think they give us really nice insights. Generally speaking, you know, for individuals, you know, our age, about 20 to 25% of our night in deep sleep, 20 to 25% of our night in REM sleep is generally the target. Understanding that some of these devices are not great at determining that. So, to me, it'd be more of a trend. Over the last year, I used to get more like an hour of deep sleep. And lately, it's been closer to like 20 minutes. I wonder if it's because I drink a six pack every night. Like, oh, maybe that's what's, you know what I mean?

Like, so it does give us a sense of within ourselves, has there been a change? So I think the answer is, yes, we do want to strive for more deep sleep. And the best way we can do that is sleep on a schedule, sleep in an environment that's really comfortable and supportive and a place you like to go to sleep. You don't have coils sticking into your back or a partner snores loudly or your bulldog licks your face all night long. That's not good. I think exercise is essential for sleep.

And the more exercise we create, the more adenosine we put in our brain, the more that tends to lend itself to a deep sleep. And most non-exercisers will tell you, oh, that weekend, Saturday, I raked leaves all day. And, man, I was out cold that night. Right, because you went out there and really exerted yourself, and that created a difference in the sleep quality that you got. We have to watch out for certain medications, alcohol, caffeine, things like that do tend to affect our deep sleep if they're consumed close to the time we go to bed.

And like I said, consistency of schedule. So if you're a 7A to 7P at the factory and two weeks weeks later, 7P to 7A, that is horribly disruptive to sleep cycles and deep sleep. So I don't care if you go to bed at midnight and get up at eight or if you go to bed at nine o'clock and get up at five, just have some sort of predictable plan. And I think those are the best things we can do to kind of encourage deep sleep and then relax, you know, let it go at that point and not like, oh, God, you know, like what's going on at three o'clock in the morning with my sleep. I think anxiety is the killer of good sleep. Makes me curious. How about individuals who are worried that they're sleeping too much? There's one person that I know and she can sleep a lot if she wants to, like she could sleep in upwards of 10 hours and be like, Oh, I need more, like I need more sleep.

And that's like, that's often. So for some people who are like, is there too much sleep? How should they look at that? How should they handle that? I know that there's, there's, there's one interesting thing. There's a theory that I don't know if I heard it from Matthew Walker or somebody else that some individuals who are having bouts of excessive sleep for periods of time, there have been some people that that's happened to. And then they started sleeping for normal amounts of time after a few months. And it was touted that maybe they were catching up. Right. I don't know how legitimate that is. But what do you think about that?

Yeah. So just going back to your friend, I think you can sleep too much. And I think the questions you want to ask are, OK, you're sleeping 10 hours. Again, how sleepy are you during the day? I'm still so I can't I cannot sit down to read a book or I still fall asleep all the time. That's a red flag for sure. Are there people who need more than eight hours of sleep? Yes. But those people will tell you, as long as I get my nine

and a half hours, I'm fine and always have been. What you want to watch out for is I'm 36 years old and for 35 years, I've slept seven hours and felt great. Now I need 10 or 11 and still feel exhausted. Like something's happened now. There's been a change. So is, are there genetically people who are designed to sleep longer? Yes. But they've been that way all their life. You know,

if I wake up tomorrow, seven foot two, something's wrong because I've not been seven foot two all my life, even though that's sort of maybe an advantage in some ways. So pay attention to those sudden changes in In terms of sleep inertia is the other thing we talk about. Some people, if they get their seven or eight hours, feel great. But on the weekends, they sleep in until 10 and they're just kind of sleep drunk all day long, dull headache, feel rough. Like even though they got more sleep, they actually feel worse. So just be

careful of that, too, that a lot of people, particularly young people, like to do that. Now, sleep debt is what you're referring to with this other, can we make up for lost sleep? So you're working a difficult job in a PR firm, and they've got you grinding it out. To me, I always think of sleep debt like a bad interest rate credit card. Use it if you need it. But I need you to repay that debt quickly. And there's been a couple studies recently that said that if you're somebody who goes to bed at 11 o'clock, gets up at seven every day,

perfect eight hours of sleep. And you compare that to people who may not get a perfect eight hours of sleep every night, but they're averaging eight hours of sleep over a week. Meaning that don't think about your sleep as I need eight hours every night. What you need is 56 hours every week. So if tonight somebody calls you or you're working on something for work or you just don't sleep that well, as long as you make that up within the next six days by, okay, well, Tuesday night was rough

because my boss called me and was upset and we had to talk until two o'clock in the morning. They had to be up at six for work. So I lost out on a couple hours of sleep there. I'm going to make that up Wednesday when I get home from work. Wednesday, gym, come home, go to bed a little bit early because I'm going to make up for that lost sleep. As long as you're doing it within a week, most individuals think that you're not changing your health outcomes.

You're going to live just as long as that person who gets a perfect eight hours of sleep every night. I think where we run into trouble is where we have difficult months or years like I had when I was in residency, that's lost and gone forever. I cannot make that up. So the real question is, can you repay a sleep debt? I think, yes, there's debate within the sleep community. Most people I think would say, yes, you can. Then the real question becomes, okay, how long do I have to repay it before I get

massive interest charges and late fees and stuff like that? Like that's really the question. And I would say a week, I feel very comfortable saying you can repay it within a week. If you're going to wait till the end of the month to make up for those, you know, sleepless, you know, this, those all-nighters you pulled at the beginning of the month, I think you're going to hurt your body. How about naps? Yeah, I'm a big fan of naps in people who are efficient sleepers. And what I mean by that is I think a nap is perfectly fine for, Hey, Chris, I go to bed 11 o'clock every night, get up at seven, sleep great. Sometimes I feel pretty rough, you know, prior to or after my workout get up at seven, sleep great. Sometimes I feel pretty rough, you know, prior to or after my workout. So I take a 20 minute nap and I feel great.

So I think that's fine. What you want to not be is, oh, two nights ago, I got in bed at 11 o'clock and it's gonna be three hours to fall asleep. I just couldn't shut my mind off. Got up, went to work, came home, took a three hour nap. No, you had the opportunity to sleep, but your brain decided not to use it, which is fine. But you don't let your brain off the hook. It's kind of I got a son of the Naval Academy. You know, it's like, hey, Sarge, I'm going to meet up with you guys at lunchtime. I didn't sleep so well last night. That's not going to fly. No, no, no.

5 a.m. practice field doing pushups and running and doing all that stuff. The morning is not going to change based upon what happened at night. So we want to maintain that structure. But if something outside of your control is taking away your sleep, a delayed flight, talking to your mom who needs to be consoled about something, you're having a fight with a partner, you know, some work-related thing that you would say, I would be sleeping now were it not for this thing. I think it's perfectly fine to use naps to sort of make up that sleep debt. What we want to be careful is I couldn't fall asleep till four o'clock in the morning.

So I slept until noon and took a two hour nap, went to bed the next night, 11 o'clock, couldn't fall asleep. Of course you couldn't because you just woke up three hours ago. So you want to kind of hold the line with the schedule and trying to keep the napping earlier in the day and on a schedule, like you have a time for your nap. My nap time is from one to two o'clock in the afternoon. I try to sleep in that little window for about 20 minutes. One final thing about napping is don't call it napping or sleeping, call it resting, especially if you have kids.

Call it a rest time. Your job is every day from 12 to 12 20 rest go into your office your bedroom close your eyes turn the lights off lie flat set an alarm and in 20 minutes go about your day if you fall asleep great if you don't that's where the mindfulness the relaxation the breathing whatever you like to do is so different and i tell my athletes all the time starting today day one of camp, your job is for 15 to 20 minutes every day rest. I promise you, even if you never fall asleep during that rest period, you will be a different athlete when the playoffs start. If you build in that little 15 minutes, 15 minutes, every day. And it's amazing

to, you know, when I'm just dragging during a a day I'll take a little 15 or 20 minute break close my eyes and I think to myself dear God I'm not falling asleep I was so sleepy an hour ago and here I have the opportunity to sleep and I'm not let go of that expectation of sleep even if you just sit there and you know meditate whatever you like to do think about your celebrity crush or what you want to do this weekend for fun you know when the 20 minutes are over and I go back to work, I feel great. Even though I never really was unconscious or fell asleep.

Like don't undervalue resting. I tell people all the time success or failure in the bed has nothing to do with unconsciousness. I like the way that you're instructing and the way that you're wording a lot of these things. You know, telling somebody to do 15 to 20 minutes and just rest is now taking the anxiety away of whether they're worried about actually falling asleep. Right. And resting is under our control. If I told all four of you guys, lay down on the floor and rest, you could do it. Right. I said, okay, lay down on the floor, go to sleep. You can't. And now you've got that performance anxiety, right? We don't want that when it comes to sleep. Resting is awesome. There's a lot of rituals that people are

practicing. There's a lot of instruction around sleep. And I think some people are like, man, I can't just, I can't do all that. So they brush all of it off and they don't try any of it. Are these things really useful for some folks like to not watch TV an hour or two before bed to have, you know, eaten your food two hours prior to bed? And are these rituals like how effective are they or just really dependent upon the person? I think it's probably dependent upon a person, but I think that you can comfortably say these rituals are helpful and the ritual can be whatever you want it to be. We usually have dinner around seven i watch a little tv then i help my wife give my son his bath we read stories in his bed and then i like to read um i'll check the news and then plug my phone up in the kitchen

and then i like to you know say some prayers and then i talk to my wife a little bit more than we go to sleep like it doesn't really matter spray some prayers. And then I talked to my wife a little bit more than we go to sleep. Like it doesn't really matter. Spray some lavender spray on my pillow or whatever. Like it doesn't really matter what it is as long as it's kind of scheduled and ritualistic. Because what happens is as you're sitting there reading to your son, as you're taking your shower, as you're smelling lavender for the first time, all those are little indicators that sleep is coming. What you don't want is stress, stress, oh my God, stress. We got to get the cars scheduled to drop them off tomorrow because they're getting service

done. Okay, now time to sleep. That's not great. You're in stressful situations and then you just shut the laptop off and you hop into bed. I mean, some people can do it, but I think it's nice to have sort of a wind down period i mean i you know we i shower in the evening we really pay attention to the lighting of our environment we don't watch shows that are particularly stressful or upsetting you know water shortages pandemic crisis i like manifest the

airplane that disappeared and reappeared five years later. Like that's my bag at night, you know, something like, or Love Island. There's just something that's completely not taxing my brain or making me upset in any way. And then, you know, really trying to create, you know, sort of a nice bedroom environment. I use lavender spray, which I think is awesome. Spray it on your pillow when you travel. You spray it and then it kind of tricks your brain thinking you're at home. A little noise machine. I've got the little blue blockers there if I want to read. Those things really help. We do them all the time with kids,

but as adults, we kind of lose them. So make it whatever you want it to be. You can factor in some exercise in there, a little snack if you like to have some nuts and dried cherries at night. exercise in there, a little snack if you like to have some nuts and dried cherries at night. All those little cues are fantastic at telling your brain, okay, sleep in three miles, drive a little bit longer. Okay, sleep coming up in two miles. Like they're all little road signs, letting your brain know it's coming versus Jesus. That was the sign, right? And we just missed the exit, but there were no signs leading up to it. Now you're trying to figure out where the exit is and there's stress and get your car turned around. No, were no signs leading up to it. Now you're trying to figure out where the exit is and there's stress and get your car turned around.

No, we want indications leading up to something. It's, it's, it's great for everything we do. Mark and Andrew and all men. Thank me later for this, but I'm curious,

Chris, um, how about sex? Is, isn't there's like certain things that are released hormones, et cetera, that are sleep inducing, uh, that can help you have great sleep at night. And I've heard that there is a difference between sex and masturbation when it comes to sleep.

Do you know anything about that? Yes. Part two, I don't. I imagine that. So we're talking about sex and sleep. They're released of all different kinds of chemicals, dopamine, norepinephrine, the big one is oxytocin, which which is often released know, with your partner in bed, holding each other, kind of expressing your love in that way versus, you know, I'll be out of the shower in 10 more minutes. Give me a break. I'm very dirty in here. Like, you know, gone. Like, you know, so I imagine that there is a difference there in that release of chemical in those two states. But there is.

And what's another thing that's really interesting to me is that men and women tend to have a little bit of a difference to oxytocin in the sense that women, it often leads to more wakefulness. Men, it seems to require, it creates more sleepiness. So a lot of times that's sort of the indication that at the end of the, you know, the lovemaking that sometimes men want to fall asleep, whereas women want to be awake. It's kind of like, okay, let's, we're connected now. Let's talk versus men are just kind of like out of it, you know? So, so there are, there are benefits to these types of things in terms of relationships and sex and sleep. And

a lot of people say that it's something they like to do before they go to bed. I just think you have to be careful with that in terms of your partner is now your tool for helping you fall asleep. Like if you're feeling like that's the case, that's probably a bit unhealthy and we need to figure out why you feel that way. Man, we were going so well right there. It was so clear and then he just gave us a gave us a wrinkle what are the some of the maybe strangest things that you've seen sleep uh assist with like that you weren't expecting oh my god i can't believe it helped with that yeah that's it well they've been asked that question before um here's the strangest one i've ever seen is uh we we helped an individual guy with sleep apnea.

He got on CPAP treatment and he came back and said, my vision is better. And he said, I work in this mail sorting place. When I walk in, I can see this whole big warehouse and the colors are more vivid and I can see more details in the back of the warehouse. And he's not the only person who's ever said that. So to me, you know, this idea that better sleep is helping with our visual acuity is really interesting to me. You know, weight loss, mood, thinking, performance. performance. I mean, I, it's, it's hard to kind of think of something where somebody would say I got better sleep and it didn't help with these types of things. Digestion problems. That was another one where somebody thought they had food intolerances and as they slept better,

they just seemed to be eating and digesting better. So yeah, that's a good, I would say visual acuity would be, would be mine. And gross is another one that's interesting, but that's usually more with kids that when you fix their sleep problem, they have these massive growth spurts because of that growth hormone release that may have been suppressed by the poor sleep quality. Why do you think some people don't address or don't kind of look into things to do for their sleep when they, when they kind of know that it's an issue? Do they, do you think some people may be, they just think they suck at sleeping and that there always be that way? I think a lot of people do think of sleep as a trait,

you know, that it's, you've got blue eyes, you're short and you're a bad sleeper. Nothing you can do about that because your grandpa was a bad sleeper too. So I think that that trait is one thing. I think it's a conversation that doctors don't want to have. Okay, we got your blood pressure under control and your diabetes is okay and you really need to lose weight. I've got to get you to stop smoking. And that's our six minutes that I have

to spend with you because I have to see my next patient because if I don't, I won't be able to keep the lights on this clinic. So for a doctor to say, so how's your sleep? That's another 20 minutes easy added on to the visit. They may not have the time for, even if they have the motivation to want to help you, which they probably don't in some ways or the expertise. So I think a lot of people just avoid it. They don't, they don't talk about it because they don't want the answer. So I think that a lot of times these things are dismissed by clinicians and doctors. But I think that, you know, podcasts like yours and books like Matt Walker's and things of that nature are sort of opening people's eyes to this idea of way back in the day, you were a football player and you just, you know, drank alcohol and ate pork loins before you played and didn't really think much about it. But then some researchers down in Florida said, you know, if you pay attention to your hydration, your electrolytes, you can perform better, particularly in our fourth quarter. And so the University of Florida is doing it to beat the hell out of Wake Forest or Georgia Tech,

wherever they're playing that one game. And they're like, oh, my gosh, hydration is really important. And now everybody does it. I think we're in that kind of developmental stage with sleep where we've gone from we don't think about it to we think a lot about it and we wear rings and watches. And so now people are starting to come around to the, oh, I can have wonderful outcomes if I just pay attention to it. it's information and it's not taking advantage of people and really giving people an sense of empowerment that they can change something that maybe all their life they just thought they were just kind of a bad sleeper we talk about that in this book that your sleep identity starts when you're a kid you know oh jeffrey's a bad sleeper but his brother steve's always been a good sleeper what does that even mean and what is that based on and how can we help to fix those types of

things because maybe maybe he's not a bad sleeper he just needs a little bit less sleep than his brother but that to a parent looks like a bad sleeper because his brother goes right to sleep at night and he struggles a little bit in fact we see that all the time you somebody just mentioned wife struggles to fall asleep but you fall asleep asleep fast. And so she's thinking, oh, I just wish I could be more like him. Well, maybe he's got the problem because he falls asleep so fast and you don't. It's kind of like, I want to be a good eater like that guy over there eating food out of a trash can. No, no, no, no. That doesn't mean he's a good eater. That means he's starved for food to the point where he'll eat food out of a trash can.

And so sometimes the person who always falls asleep watching TV at their kid's soccer game at work is so starved for sleep that that's the reason why he's a great sleeper. It's like my dad always says, I don't have sleep apnea. I could fall asleep on gravel. Yes, you do. That's why you have sleep apnea is because you can fall. I'm sure you can fall asleep on gravel. So we want to be careful with the things that we look up to, that guy who falls asleep really quickly and the things that we vilify. Oh, it takes their 45 minutes every night to fall asleep. There may be a disconnect about what's good and what's bad sometimes. And Rested Child, you mentioned earlier about technology impacting our kids. Do you give some recommendations to parents on kind of how we can get away from some of the technology and what are some things that we should have our kids examining?

Yeah, I do. You know how difficult that is. That is, I mean, to me, technology is a huge battle with my own children and it becomes progressively harder every year as that technology integrates into things like school. I'm going to take this laptop and throw it out the window. OK, well, if you do that, I'm going to fail my classes because the way we communicate with our teachers, all my homework, all my assigned readings, I even turn in and do my tests on the computer. There is no copy of the catcher in the Rye anymore, Dad. So get with the program. It's 2021. School is the computer and the pandemic has greatly exaggerated that.

So when my kid's sitting there typing an essay, is he really? Or is he playing Fortnite? And when he hears me come up the stairs, oh, back to the essay. You know, so it's really difficult. So it really requires conversations with kids i think technology at night needs to be plugged up somewhere other than a bedroom i think that's pretty low hanging fruit and then if you have kids who have to be on technology just buy them a pair of blue blocker glass and say look i know you've got an essay due tomorrow and i know it's late i'd

like for you to go to sleep i recognize that you't. Can you at least put these on as you sit there and type your essay about Catcher in the Rye so that at least when it's time to be done with the essay and you close your laptop, you're more in a position to want to sleep. So, man, technology is tough. It is a big negative when it comes to everybody's sleep. I think we really want to unplug as much as we can. So I have a fairly blank canvas. My son is six months old. What are some good, healthy habits that I can start right away for him to have better sleeping habits? Yeah, I think routine is important when he wakes up from his sleep in the morning at the same time, as well as his naps. I'm a proponent of a scheduled nap.

So if the nap is from one to two and he falls asleep at 1.45 and sleeps until two, that you wake him up at two. Even though it took him 45 minutes to settle and fall asleep. And you do it with a smile. Okay, it's two o'clock and you open up the windows and you get the jog stroller out

or whatever's appropriate and you move forward with your day. There's no penalty. It's just that you had your chance to eat or you had your chance to sleep, and you didn't. That's great. But now we move on with our day, and your next nap will be at 4 o'clock, and you can make your decision whether you want to at that point too.

What I think we don't want is that laxity of schedule. Oh, he just fell asleep at 1.45, so I'm going to let him sleep until 3 today. That's really confusing to a kid, and it's hard for you trying to get podcasts and things done when you have no idea when or if your child is going to sleep. So you want to try to create that schedule. And then when the nap is over or the sleep time is over, food, social interaction, light, temperature, exercise are really important. So open up the blinds, change the diaper, get outside and walk the dog or go check the mail.

So there's that big state change that's happening every day at seven o'clock when he wakes up every day at two o'clock when the first nap ends from dark to light, fasted to fed, cool to warm wake-up time, like if the wake-up time was 7 and they woke up at 5.45, I'd go in there, but I'd keep it dark. I'd try not to feed them as long as they were okay with that. And we really wouldn't do much. I had these really boring toys, and they would be like, Daddy, play. I'd be kind of not really into the playing. I wasn't being mean about it, but just kind of like, I'm a little tired. So this is the level of play I do it. And then as soon as that wake up time happened, 7 a.m. lights on. Now we're super playing, crashing cars and we're nursing or feeding like you want that change to happen regardless of what they do. And very quickly, their brains will start to pick up on that.

So to me, it's schedule and just watch out for the technology in their lives. It's ridiculous to think we can totally keep it out. But, you know, have your designated door of the explorer time or we like to watch, you know, Mr. Olympia. He's really into watching old Mr. Olympia competitions. Great. That's fun. But just have a designated time for that. And when it's done, it's done. And I'm a big fan of reading, getting kids with books early on and allowing them to

have those in the room. Hey, if you can't sleep, just turn on your light and look at your books. You've got plenty of them here. Draw daddy a picture or whatever. So kind of creating a plan as the kids get older for what happens if you don't fall asleep right away or can't sleep. That's okay. Here's lots of things that you can do that don't involve getting in bed with mommy and daddy or turning on some sort of screen to kind of occupy yourself. Yeah. You know, curious about this before. I'm curious about this because a lot of people, you know, sometimes people have a beer to wind down at night or they don't have alcohol. And if you can talk about the effects of alcohol and sleep, that'd be probably pretty beneficial. But a lot of people nowadays are also using, you know, marijuana and those substances because it helps them relax and also fall asleep.

Has there been anything new? Because from so far from what like we know, there's really been no determining answer. I'm like, yes, you this is beneficial for this reason. People are just speculating. Do you know anything new or is it are there still things just speculating in that area? Yeah. So I think it's pretty definitive that alcohol before bed is not particularly helpful to sleep. I think you can say that pretty definitively.

So I'm not anti-alcohol. I don't drink a lot. But if somebody says, look, I really like a red wine with my steak at night, then have it because you're drinking the red wine because you feel like it completes the meal or have the red wine because you think that studies show that maybe from a heart perspective and maybe from a cognitive perspective, it's good to have a little bit of alcohol in your life. Again, I have no problem with that. What I worry about is individuals are saying, I'm using the alcohol to make my sleep better because that's not happening. So the joke we always have with our athletes is have all the alcohol you want, just have it with breakfast.

And like, don't do that. I'm kidding. But the point is separate the alcohol away from the time you're sleeping just because of the effects that it has on deep sleep and REM sleep. Things like CBD, marijuana, you're right. There's never been a lot of definitive things that say it's great for or not. To me, it's more of let's take a step back and why are we using it? Well, I have trouble settling my mind and shutting down at night. So I find that I fall asleep easier if I anesthetize myself with marijuana or whatever it is, Benadryl, Ambien, you know, Trazodone, whatever, you know, the red wine. So to me, it's more about let's, let's, can we step back and figure out a way to address what's preventing you from sleeping rather than just trying to sedate it away? Like, okay, we can't figure out Michael Jackson. So

we'll just have a surgeon go to his house and give him propofol at night and eventually kill him. Like, so I don't think anybody's going to kill themselves CBD, but it's more of a, I'd rather try to figure out the underlying problem than trying to gloss over it with the drug that I guess you're going to take the rest of your life to fall asleep.

Like that doesn't really make any sense. It's kind of like I'm lifting. When I do a certain lift, I get some shoulder pain. So I'm just never going to do that lift again. Okay any sense. It's kind of like I'm lifting. When I do a certain lift, I get some shoulder pain. So I'm just never going to do that lift again. Okay. Well, that's, I guess that's one option or I'm going to put something on my shoulder that numbs it so that I can do it, but the pain's not going anywhere.

Or we can figure out, well, what's going on with your shoulder that you're having so much pain during that lift. And let's go to the source of the problem and fix it. Let's not cover it up with this thing that numbs your shoulder. I mean, maybe right before a competition or something that's appropriate. But for a long-term solution, there's better solutions, I think, than drugs to help with individuals who struggle to initiate sleep. There's lots of questions.

Are you sleeping on the right schedule? You know, are there things we can do to better manage your anxiety? And if the question is, yeah, it's my anxiety that's the problem. the right schedule? You know, are there things we can do to better manage your anxiety? Like, and if the question is, yeah, it's my anxiety, that's the problem. I've tried some different drugs, but I found that CBD seems to do the best for my anxiety. Okay, well, now we're treating anxiety, not sleep. And I'm not advocating that CBD be used to treat anxiety. I'm just saying that you're using it for a purpose that's not, I knock myself out at night. That's the real purpose. And there's not really any studies that have ever shown substances of whatever they are prior to bed improve performance the next day. And that's what a lot of people will tell you. Oh, I don't want to take this drug,

but man, I got a big job the next day, so I've got to take it or else I won't perform. Okay, well, show me one study that shows anything improves your performance the next day. That's often a mental construct. It's a security blanket. Oh, I can't sleep without my teddy bear. If I have my teddy bear, I sleep great and I can really get at it the next day. Okay. Do you really think the teddy bear makes you sleep better? There's a lot of kids that do. And for a lot of people, that pill, whatever it is, is their teddy bear. Yeah. I love your simplified view of all this. I think it's really, really helpful.

I'm a simple guy. One of the things I really enjoyed that I heard you say previously on some other shows was people talking about how I have a hard time getting to sleep. Like, I can't get to sleep at 10. I lay in bed until 11. And then you were just like, well, try going to sleep at 10 i lay in bed until uh 11 and then you were just like well try going to sleep at 10 and 30. yeah i'm never hungry for lunch at 10 but i am at noon like okay well maybe noon's when you should head to the restaurant you know what i mean like it is interesting how people decide these things and so yeah it's just and that's that and that kind of capitalizes on that fear i'm scared to

go to bed at 11 like i need my sleep because matt said if i don't get it i'll get dementia so there's this weird push and pull sometimes the information about the sleep creates more anxiety about it you know oh my god i had no idea that if i didn't sleep these terrible things would happen so now you're going to bed and somebody's got a gun to your head, fall asleep now or I'll shoot you. Like that's a tough situation to be in when you're trying to sleep. So I, like millions of other people will lean on caffeine to help throughout my day. Yeah, I'm noticing that if I do cut back, I'm not the, you know, the, the dad falling asleep, trying to, you know, watch a movie at the end of the night. Um, however, when I do feel more tired throughout the day, I'm like, Nope, I'm going to have another cup of coffee or I'm going to have a monster. I'm going to load up on caffeine cause I got to get my job done. But then of course, at the end of the day, it's the huge crash. And then that leads to, I don't know if I try to limit my caffeine anytime after about 12 o'clock. I know enough that it's going to impact my sleep if I

take it after that. Sometimes I will. Sometimes it'll come in the form of a Coke Zero that has about 48 milligrams of caffeine. I'm conscious of this. I guess my question is, I mean, should I just totally attempt to try to get rid of all caffeine to help my sleep and help my energy? Or, hey, dude, just have a cup of coffee and, you know, you're going to be fine. Like, which one is it? I would, I would vote for B. I mean, I do think that there are people who say I drink a whole pot of coffee at night when I'm watching, you know, my favorite team play and it doesn't affect my sleep. I bet it does. I bet you just don't, you're not aware of it. And awareness of sleep and reality of sleep are really two different things. I mean, ask any wife, he says he sleeps great. My God, he sounds like a

small animal having his head cut off at night. The difference between the perceptions of those two things. So I think caffeine does negatively impact sleep, but I also think it's perfectly reasonable to have a latte in the morning if that's something that you like. Or for a lot of athletes, I mean, caffeine is a performance enhancing drug for sure. So if you pick your spots with it, you've got a kid who's on the swim team, taking that caffeine 30 minutes before you compete or before you exercise probably does help. And certainly if you've got a deadline tonight and you're just not feeling it, caffeine can be a very reasonable thing to kind of help you push through it.

We just want to watch out for excessive. I drink monster full throttle Red Bull energies all day long. I've seen young athletes. In fact, a couple of bodybuilders have some strokes because of it. But I mean, they're drinking tons of caffeine. Like, how can you even have time to consume that many? That becomes their water, so to speak. So I'm a fan of caffeine i like it i

just think that we like you said we want to have a cutoff time that okay it's lunchtime or you know afternoon that's when i cut off and try not to have it later in the night but um you know so having reasonable expectations of it i think are are just fine. Yeah. I had a couple of enablers, enablers, can't speak today. Somebody I look up to, and then my brother, both of them have a bunch of kids. And I just, one day I was asking like, man, like I'm having a lot of caffeine. Like, do you guys have a lot of caffeine? And both of them just laughed right in my face because they're like, dude, without it, I can't even, you know, like operate or I can't do anything for my entire day. And so that's why I was just concerned that I may, am I having too

much? And then the other thing also is because I can fall asleep, you know, at the drop of a hat, like, like, okay, caffeine doesn't affect me. You know, I, I can be that person that can have like coffee at, towards the end of the day and still be able to get sleep. Yeah. So that's why I was asking because I'm just like, am I screwing up? Should I just try to ditch it completely? But then I'm like, well, shit, I just had some today. And I think we're having an amazing podcast. And I'm like, maybe it's because I'm having the coffee. We're having a great conversation. But it goes along the lines of that anxiety that we were just talking about. I'm overthinking it. So I just need to, yeah, just chill out for a minute.

You know, it's interesting. You know, that's one of the fun things about the trackers is you can do these experiments. You know, if you're watching this right now thinking, I don't buy it. I think alcohol is fantastic for my sleep. Then do the experiment, like consume your big alcohol at night for a couple of weeks and take a look at what the score is on your monitor, whatever it is. And they score it in different ways, you know, 86% or you scored a 55, like there's a different platforms have different ranges. And then for the next two weeks, don't have the caffeine, don't have the alcohol,

sleep in the cold bedroom or the hot bedroom and see, because, you know, we're talking in generalizations, but everybody watching this is an individual, you know, who's got a different body chemistry, different mental makeup, different life circumstances. So, you know, we have to be very careful when we apply generalizations to people. So if somebody says to me, like, I don't know, I tried the different temperatures. I seem to be sleeping and feeling better in a warmer environment. I think that's probably the right thing for you, especially if you can show me look at the data, Chris, like here's my cold environment data. Here's my warm environment data, like it's so much better, and I feel better. So to me, that's what's fun sort of about some of this technologies, we can run our own experiments. And we did one time I actually did an experiment with a group

called precision nutrition. And a bunch of the members did temperature a bunch of them did alcohol and a bunch of them did light and so i chose to be in the alcohol group because i don't drink a lot so every night i've had two beers at night like 10 o'clock sitting there you know and every now and then i'd forget my wife be like oh you forgot your beers i'm like oh god i'm gonna sit there like chug a beer or two right before i went to bed which is like oh god, God, it was awful. But I thought the alcohol would have the biggest effect on sleep. And we found in this non-scientific study that the people who were exposing themselves to colder temperatures had the bigger improvement. So it was fun.

I didn't feel like my sleep was good on the alcohol, but it was kind of cool to do the experiment and look at the tracking data on both of them. It was clearly a difference for me anyway. Yeah, I'm really digging the non-blue light. I don't know what they're called, but they're the light bulbs that are just, they don't put out that blue light. Really digging that. I've heard that the lights that kind of simulate the sun going down aren't beneficial. I'm curious what your take is on that because I want one of those because I think they look kind of cool. But not if it's going to emit blue light and then just really just be like something pretty to look at and not actually beneficial.

Right. So there's two things going on. There's the quality of the light. Like what is the visible spectrum? And one of the things your viewers can do or you all can do, which is a lot of fun, is go on Amazon and buy something called a spectroscope. I don't have mine here, but it's about this big. And it looks like a tiny little telescope. When you take it and look at a light bulb, it'll show you the spectrum of colors that are coming out of that light bulb. that light bulb. So if you buy one of those light bulbs that you're describing, you should be able to take the spectrometer and look at it and see red, orange, yellow, a little bit of green, and then purple. Like that little part of the spectrum should be absent. Or if you have blue blocker glasses, what's fun is look at a regular light bulb and you see all the colors and then put

the lens of your blue blocker glasses in front of the spectroscope, the blue-green should disappear if the glasses work. So what's cool is you can sort of develop not only the change in the character of your light, meaning during the day you want all kinds of blue-green light to stay awake. In the evening, you're right, you want to get rid of it, either through changing your lighting or changing what allows the light into your eyes. The other thing is the intensity of the light. So we want bright light during the day, dim light during the night. So you're right. If you're dimming a light that's got blue-green in it, it's better, but it would be best to have

bright light with blue-green in the morning and sort of dimming light without blue green in the evening to be ideal. So, you know, the alarm clocks they make that in the morning, they get brighter and brighter next to your bed can be really helpful ways for adults and kids to wake up more effectively. And I would think, oh, you'd think I'll sleep right through that because it's quiet. Well, it does make a sound eventually. It's amazing how many people wake up to light. Or I remember one time I was setting a bread machine to make bread every morning. I mean, I don't think any alarm has ever woken me up better than the smell of like fresh bread coming into my bedroom. I'm like, Oh God, I just would wake up immediately like bread and butter now.

Like, so anyway, if you're, if you're, if you're carbs in the evening, that might not be the best thing if you're trying to avoid that. So I think all those things are great. But just keep in mind, we can measure the intensity or the frequency of our light with those little spectrometers. You can also get an app on your phone or buy on Amazon something called a lux meter, where if you hold it up, it'll measure the amount of light in the environment. where if you hold it up, it'll measure the amount of light in the environment. So if you're homeschooling your kids, let's homeschool your kids in a very bright light and brightly lit environment in the morning. In the evening, we want to really tone the light down and you can actually get really scientific about it, which is kind of fun if you're into that kind of thing. How does somebody become a patient of yours at your sleep clinic?

Yeah, so my web page is Seville Neuro and Sleep. So it's C-V-I-L-L-E-N-E-U-R-O-A-N-D-S-L-E-P. Or you can just type in Dr. Winter and Sleep. And my guess is my clinic would come up. And since the pandemic, we're 100% telemedicine. So there are avenues for doing that. Now I'm based in the state of Virginia, so we have to be careful about regulations that govern state to state. But a lot of those things have been suspended for the pandemic. So, you know, we can figure out if we're an appropriate person for you. And if we're not, we can find you somebody who's good, who is, who's in your network or nearby where you live. What inspired you to write Arrested Child?

nearby where you live. What inspired you to write a rested child? I see a lot of kids and, you know, I wrote my first book because I felt like I was dealing with sleep and adults in a different way than maybe other people would maybe more relaxed, you know, uh, way. And, and, but there's good books about insomnia and sleep disorders in adults. You know, Matt Walker's books, good brand Peterson wrote a great book and it misses lots of of stuff out there bill de ment wrote a wonderful book called the promise of sleep which i love um but when you look at kids and sleep there's a lot of books but they're about how to get your baby to sleep through the night then once you're done it's kind of like okay you're good until menopause well you're not like there's a lot of things happening in between getting a kid to sleep through the night menopause if you've got a girl or you know

whatever retirement if you've got a boy, I guess. But, you know, to me, like, that was just a vacuum. Nobody was talking about these things. And they're some of the most common conditions that doctors see in kids. And they're just missed or misdiagnosed all the time. And that, coupled with the pandemic and getting ready to go back to school and early start times and kids being overscheduled. I just didn't feel like there was a great dialogue about that. So I wrote the book and it was a real passion project. I appreciate you giving it some light.

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you social media wise? Yeah. At Sports Sleep Doc. S.P. excuse me. S.P.O.R.T. S.L. T S L E E P D O C. It's on Instagram and Twitter. Um, I'm mostly active on Twitter. So S P O R T S L E E P D O C. So we work with, I work with a lot of professional sports organizations to help their athletes

sleep and perform better. So that's where that came from. But I'm mainly a clinical doctor, not, not, not even that huge of a fan of sports. Actually. I just love adjusting a baseball player's sleep and watching him hit more home runs. That's a lot of fun for me. Awesome. Thanks again. Have a great rest of your day. Hey, my pleasure. You guys really appreciate it. That was awesome. Thank you so much.

Hey, y'all have a good day. You as well. Let me know when it launches and now we'll promote it all over the place. Sounds good. Awesome. Absolutely. See you guys. See ya. I'm supposed to get some sleep. That was

so good. Holy shit. What's up? I couldn't coax him on the quietest question. Well, maybe I can edit it to where it's like just all the good stuff and then none of that like that's why she wants to talk

but she'll be more awake I'm joking you just fall asleep before you know she can nevermind that was good yeah he had a lot of great a lot of great insight a lot of great information and i think uh one of the main things that i liked that he was talking about was like yeah investigate it look into it look into what's

going on with your sleep but uh also um you know maybe don't sweat. There's only so much you can do about it. There's only so many things you can look at and investigate. Just take a look at it and have an approach where you're trying to solve solutions one thing at a time. Over a period of time, I'm sure you'll come up to something that is assisting you to sleep better than you were maybe in the past. Yeah. The big thing that I think that we talked about in this episode, I really want people to think about is all the habits that you have in terms of your food, your exercise, the times you get to sleep, what you're doing at night, like how much you're on your phone, how much you're on your TV. If you do a lot of things

like going out at night a lot, think about that. And then if you do have issues, maybe in terms of like mood disorders and stuff, maybe try to see if you can change some things as far as your daily habits, because that might just be the thing, right? And then also both of you, when you guys are talking about not owning the problem, not saying I am depressed or I am this or I am that, and instead, you know, changing that outlook, because that can change a lot of things as far as your belief is concerned. People are always looking for ways to get better, ways to have an edge. And just the simplest thing is thing is I know everyone's against it and they don't want to listen to it, but just don't bring your phone into your bedroom. Just keep it out.

I know people don't like that kind of dialogue when you tell them not to do something, but the urge to be on your phone, especially if you're a younger person or a computer, I think it's just too great. So even if those things are in your room during the day and you utilize them, then that sounds fine to me. But later on in the day, I think it's a good idea. I still talk to my kids often about, you know, putting their phones in the kitchen. They don't always listen to me, but it's a message that I just continue to give to them. And, you know, I notice sometimes, you know, if I wake up in the middle of the night and get some water or something like that, it might be like one in the morning. I see like their, you know, their lights on in their room, you know. So it's just another distraction. And there's probably not a lot of great reasons to be up until one in the morning.

But, you know, they're young and hopefully they'll learn from that over a period of time. But I think a lot of times these things are things that we are. He mentioned anxiety, right? And he mentioned how people are having a hard time sleeping. And he said one of the biggest destroyers of your sleep is anxiety. So if you're choosing what you are, you're choosing to stay up later than you should watching TV or messing around on your phone, you are delivering more anxiety to your front door than you can handle each day.

So, you know, I just think it's good to have some awareness of these things and look at them, take some ownership, say, Hey, I, I need to look into making some changes and I want to see if these changes actually do anything and then give them a legitimate shot and see if they work. Yeah. Mark, when it comes to like diet and nutrition, you, you also don't like to take things away from people. You want to just give them more things to eat so that way they don't feel like they have to give anything up. And what you said about the phones and giving that up. Yeah, you're right.

A lot of people don't want to do that. So what's something that we can replace just so that way somebody can be like, you know what, actually, that's actually I can probably do that. Like, let's start there. Yeah. Just being a better human. I think that's some good motivation being, you know, having better decision-making. I mean, just look at all the things that sleep impacts, being healthier, having more energy, being more excited about stuff. Your decision-making skills will be better. Most of the things in your life, Your decision making skills will be better. Most of the things in your life, maybe even everything, I think everything in your life will be a little easier if you're well rested. So as boring as it is to say, hey, like, you know, you got to treat this as being important. But I guess also look at things as if are you actually all in or are you not, you know, is somebody actually a better person than you, or do you have the ability to rise up and maybe be similar to them or to maybe be a much better version of yourself? My wife and I got talking about this yesterday. Cause we went

into the ocean. She's preparing for a, um, uh, escape from Alcatraz swim coming up because she's fucking crazy person. And she was like, man, I just, I really hate the cold. And I was like, I kind of, I don't hate the cold, but I don't really love cold water. Like I'm not going to necessarily just dive into cold water. But I said, I wonder like if I went in first and just didn't care, didn't make any noise and didn't show any emotion, if you would be able to do the same thing.

And so that's what we did. I went into the water and yeah, I wanted to scream a bunch of times, especially when the water hit my back and stuff like that. But I just went in. Yeah, it felt cold. But just having a mindset, I'm like, my mindset doesn't have some extra ability over your mindset. Like we're relatively, as humans, we're relatively similar. I know there's some massive differences between us, but there's also some insanely, there's also an insane amount of things that are very similar. And then she was able to get in the water the same way.

And so I think when we're thinking about sleep, if you're telling me I want to be a bestselling author and you were coming to me for some reason for help with being an author and you wanted advice on your training and some other things, sleep would be a place where I would start. And that would be something that you have to treat like everything else. All your other practices need to line up. If you have a specific goal, you need a lot of things to match up to get you to go towards that goal. And so sleep would be a massively important thing. People that claim they're all in on powerlifting are all in on physique transformation are all in on bodybuilding. If they're shortchanging their

sleep, they're not looking into their sleep. They're not working on getting it better. I would just say you're not as interested as you thought you were. Yeah, absolutely. And there is a lot of easy stuff that people can do that were mentioned in this podcast. I mean, trying to get to sleep at the same time, but the temperature of your room, set that thermostat a little bit lower. You know, see if you can get something to get cooler sleep. That'll be really helpful for you. So, yeah, just cold bed is legit, too. cold bed is legit too. Yep. Yep. We're going to be trying out some stuff soon too. And hopefully if it helps us out, we might be able to get some stuff for you guys also, but just, you know, keep in mind, try to do everything you can from your nutrition, to your exercise, to your temperature, to the light, to your phones, very simple things can massively change your life. It's sometimes hard to have that, that discipline. But I,

I think I mentioned this on the show before I heard Clint Eastwood say it. I think he's in a movie like that's coming out in a couple of weeks. He's 90 something years old and people asked him like how he got ahead, how he was able to be such a savage and how he's able to, he just said, I work eight hours a day. You know, he doesn't, I'm sure he had times in his life where he would take his work home and he would, right. And he would do all these things. But his whole point there was that I'm not sacrificing the recovery process of all this. This is, this is just as important as the doing, you know, you going out and running and being a savage and going and run hills or you going out and training, whatever it is that you're doing, that part of being a savage, there's going to have to be a recovery process to that.

And hopefully you take that seriously enough that you can do that and you're going to notice that you're going to advance further and further and further. It's going to be that much easier to get to where you want to go. Andrew, want to take us on out of here? Yes, sir. So everybody, we need to get more sleep and we can get more sleep by having more time and we get more time by not having to do our own cooking and cleaning and shopping and all that. All that mess that's involved with cooking your meal prep and staying healthy. So have somebody else do it. Head over to eat right foods.com links to them down in the description below,

as well as the podcast show notes, a promo code power project 25 or 25% off your first order and promo code power project for 10% off every order. After that hit them up ASAP, follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power project on Tik TOK and Twitter. Tik TOK is finally getting some traction over there. So please support the Tik TOK for the podcast.

Thank you to everybody that already has really appreciate you guys. My Instagram and Twitter is at, I am Andrew Z and SEMA. Where can people find you? I don't see my in yang on Instagram and YouTube and see my yin yang on Tik TOK and Twitter. Mark, let's all sleep together more.

Yeah. Wait, what? Yeah. More. Yeah. I like that. I'm at Mark smelly bell.

Strength is never a week. This week is never strength. Catch you guys later.