Mark Bell's Power Project - Everything You Need To Know About Sleep Supercut - Louisa Nicola, Max Lugavere, and Hostage Tape

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's going to be hard to really make progress too if you're just sleep deprived in general. What does some of the literature kind of show on that? Like in terms of, I guess let's just take like academics, something that no one cares about. But what does the literature kind of show when people are like sleep deprived and they're trying to take tests and they're trying to get through school and stuff like that? Oh, look, sleep deprivation is now known as a carcinogen. Okay. Oh, really? It's really, really, really bad.

Starting point is 00:00:27 And I always say that even being awake, when you think about the brain, it's like being awake is like low-level brain damage because your brain repairs during sleep. So does your body. When it comes to sleep deprivation, there was a study that we need to talk about, and I talk about it so often in every

Starting point is 00:00:45 podcast. They took a group of healthy men, healthy individuals. They had no mild cognitive impairment, nothing. And they deprived them of sleep. And this sleep deprivation in this study was six hours. You think about that. Like I work with a lot of portfolio managers on Wall Street and they're like, Louise, I'm only sleeping four hours. so they're severely deprived of sleep yeah so six hours of sleep deprivation for one week that's all and guess what they found they found a three percent change in their genome what does that mean we'll get a bit further into it we have around 25 000 genes or,000 genes in the human genome. Now, when these subjects were sleep deprived, they saw a dysregulation in 711 genes. So 711 out of 20,000 genes is around 3% change. And what they found was half of the genes that were upregulated and other half were downregulated.

Starting point is 00:01:42 and other half were downregulated. The ones that were downregulated were the immunity genes. So the genes responsible for immune function, they were downregulated. So they were switched off essentially. The ones that were upregulated were the genes responsible for growth of tumor cells. Damn it. So chronically depriving yourself of sleep

Starting point is 00:02:04 is not just interfering with cognitive functions. We know that road accidents are happening due to sleep deprivation, due to reaction time and not even seeing a car when it's coming. So that's one thing. That's how I got into my first car accident. I was like sleep deprived coming back from work. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and the next thing I hit a car. I was like 19 at the time. That is really scary. at the time yeah yeah but see that's what's happening and um inhibition control like we can't control that and your brain goes into damage control mode yeah and remember your brain is not

Starting point is 00:02:37 here to survive evolutionarily past the age of 40 so we you know it said you know it used to say okay we're done with reproduction when 40 years old we're you know, it's, you know, it used to say, okay, we're done with reproduction. We're 40 years old, we're done with it. We don't need to survive after that. So just the fact that we are wanting to survive past 40 and not only that thrive, it takes a lot of fuel, brain fuel, I call it. And if you're sleep depriving yourself, you're just, you're just behind the mark in every, every way. So you're not just getting behind on these cognitive functions. You're also disrupting your genome. That's scary.

Starting point is 00:03:12 What about THC or wine? No. Absolutely terrible. Both? Yes. So alcohol. What about both together? That's what I try and tell my athletes.

Starting point is 00:03:23 They're like, yo, Louisa. How do you deal with that? They're like, I'm just, you know, I'm doing tell my athletes. They're like, yo, Luisa. How do you deal with that? They're like, I'm just, you know, I'm doing it to relax. I'm like, hey, stop. That's the hardest thing I have, getting my athletes to stop the marijuana. Alcohol, they're like, no, no, I don't do that during game season. But they'll have, you know, marijuana. And with alcohol, it turns out that it actually blocks the REM sleep

Starting point is 00:03:47 and it blocks deep sleep. Especially if I have a glass of wine, my REM sleep just plummets to the ground. And that's because ethanol, which is the active ingredient in alcohol, is a sedative. What's a sedative? When you go into surgery, they pump you with propofol, which is a sedative and it knocks you out. Obviously that's to a much higher degree. But so if this is a sedative as well,

Starting point is 00:04:11 then what is it doing? So it's knocking you out. So you may be thinking, well, I'll have some alcohol and I'll just knock myself out. No, you're sedating yourself and you're not getting into sleep. And it turns out that no amount of alcohol, which people on Instagram hate me for this. No amount of alcohol is safe for the brain. There's so many studies that show that you can get atrophy of the brain from drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. Hey, you said it. I'm happy. Which is seven, moderate amounts is seven drinks for women and 14 drinks for men. That's moderate? A week. Oh shit. Okay. I'm like,

Starting point is 00:04:45 seven drinks. You can have that all in one go. I've seen some girls like, you know, you can just do seven shots. And I'm like, I, that's not me.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Like I'm, I'm terrible with alcohol. I'm, I'm a real cheap date actually. I'm a lightweight. I'll have a glass of wine and I don't really drink. If I do, I'll have a glass of wine and I don't really drink if I do I'll have a glass of wine

Starting point is 00:05:06 but even that just sends me you know so I don't know how some women are putting down five drinks or seven drinks

Starting point is 00:05:14 so you can have those seven drinks one a night yeah and so many women are and you can have he's laughing at you yeah

Starting point is 00:05:23 yeah there's a lot of people that drink often okay are you one of them is that what you're laughing at you. Yeah. There's a lot of people that drink often. Are you one of them? Is that what we're laughing at? That's an inside joke. That's an inside joke. I don't know. But tell whoever it is that's drinking that they're wreaking havoc on their sleep patterns.

Starting point is 00:05:39 And we also know that just one night of sleep deprivation can build up amyloid. What's amyloid? It's one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. It's a protein once it clumps together. So it's necessary. It's in our brain. But if we don't clear it out during the night, which happens during deep sleep through the glymphatic system, then we're just going to get a buildup of amyloid and that's not good. Power Project Family, how's it going? Now we talk about sleep all the time on the podcast because it's one of the biggest things that helps you with your health and fitness, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, everything. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep for such a long time now because the technology behind the mattress allows you to track your heart rate, the amount of times it takes you to fall asleep,

Starting point is 00:06:19 your tosses and turns, your heart rate variability. It changes its temperature through the night based off how you sleep, but not only yourself, but maybe your partner on the other side of the bed. It is an amazing mattress. Andrew, how can they learn more? Yes. Head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's 8 spelled out E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. Along with more information, you guys will actually save $150 off of your entire order automatically. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. There are some things I think that would be wise though for people to do for people that are struggling with their sleep. Obviously using the tape is super easy to do and

Starting point is 00:06:57 I'm encouraged to do it every night because it's simple enough. You know, I did mention every once in a while I won't tape, but for the most part, I'll do it and it stays on. I don't have any problem with it. I don't have to really mess around with it. And then you showed me the other way of putting it on. That was really helpful because it's so sticky. It would like stick to each finger and I was trying to get off one finger and trying to get on the other one. And then when I'm trying to put it on to run, sometimes I'm not smart enough to stop running.

Starting point is 00:07:21 I'm trying to like do it while I'm running and it will kind of stick everywhere. But I do think there's some other things that people can do, um, to help enhance their sleep. And I think it's a good idea just to push your cardiovascular a little bit. So you can do that through lifting weights and you can do that through many, many different means, but I think people should get their heart rate up a little bit, get the heart rate above one 20 and see if you can kind of like ride that out or above 110, whatever feels appropriate for you and see if you can kind of keep that elevated for a couple of minutes at a time. to incorporate some nasal breathing into your training and just have appropriate rest in between sets that kind of only allows you to nasal breathe during some of your training. And we've talked about it here on the show. We actually feel like that would be a pretty safe way for you to train. It would keep the weights in line. It would keep your sets and reps in line where

Starting point is 00:08:21 you wouldn't be like redlining, you know, a lot of times. A natural governor. Yeah. A lot of times we're governor. Yeah. A lot of times we're training, like we're just going so hard. So finding ways to get yourself to breathe hard during the day, I think would be a really excellent way to help you to, uh, have the kind of reverse of that when you sleep. And that's to really just calm the hell down. Right.

Starting point is 00:08:40 Right. But I also want to add into there, like, this is something that takes time. It was like, when I started nasal breathing, with jujitsu, it didn't feel good. It feels horrible. It feels horrible. It feels really, really difficult. I feel like it didn't pass out at times. It doesn't feel like you can get the amount of air that you typically would if you're going like that, right?

Starting point is 00:08:57 So it's going to feel a little bit uncomfortable. But like you're saying, if you can push your nasal breathing capacity during the exercises you do, and this can be some low-insensity cardio. This could be you doing a little bit of kettlebell work. Maybe it's just a walk. Could you, I mean, during a walk, hopefully you're not breathing through your mouth during a walk. Hopefully it's not hard for you. Yeah, yeah. If it is.

Starting point is 00:09:14 If it is. I don't think most people realize that, though. I think people are still walking and running, and they're breathing through their mouth, and they don't realize that, oh, shit, I should keep it shut and do my nose. I think part of the challenge, too, is it's a quantity over quality thing. You know, because one of the things that Nestor talks about is just because you think you're getting more volume of air into your lungs, you actually get more oxygenation of your blood by breathing through your nose because of the capillary actions create this nitric oxide reaction

Starting point is 00:09:43 that allows the blood to take up the oxygen much more effectively than it does through even though that might feel better. Exactly, it might feel better, but it's a quantity over quality thing. Absolutely, and this is also one thing that Patrick mentioned. Patrick mentioned that even as he started

Starting point is 00:09:59 trying to breathe more through his nose, it took time for that to feel good. It's like if you're someone who perpetually or breathes a lot through his nose, it took time for that to feel good. It's like if you're someone who perpetually or breathes a lot through your mouth, when you start focusing on breathing through your nose, there's little muscles in here too that probably don't get that much action. So they will develop over time and it'll be much easier to do that. That's why I just want people to understand that this isn't some like, for some people it's going to be, Ooh, this feels great. But for some people breathing through your nose when you're sleeping or when you're doing a lot of other

Starting point is 00:10:27 things, maybe may very well be quite uncomfortable. My sister's quite overweight. And right now for her, like I'll, I'll see her at my mom's house. And when she's walking around her mouth's like this, she doesn't even realize she's breathing through her mouth. And I have to continuously remind her, Hey, Hey, you know, shut your mouth, right? And if you're someone who's not like, maybe you're not thinking about it, or it's not something that's been at top of mind, you could be working at your computer. And I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but I'm remembering when I was like 24 or 23, when I was with one of my exes, I was, I was wearing some beats headphones and I was at the computer and she's like, why are you breathing so loud? And I'm pretty sure my

Starting point is 00:11:03 mouth was slightly open when I was doing some work on my computer. So these are, these are things you sometimes don't think about and don't even realize you're doing, but if you can become more cognizant during your day to just try to keep it here, that'll make it easier at night. And it's also interesting too, because I think a lot of people, you know, you're right. It's might not be comfortable, but it's important to push yourself through those comfort zones. I mean, you know it through training, you know it through, you know, any sort of progress that you ever try to make. If all we do is stay in the thing that we're used to or the things that we're comfortable with, then it's really hard for us to get better or grow or to progress, you know? And so I think that that's an important component. And it's trying it too,

Starting point is 00:11:39 right? This is something that's non-invasive, it's inexpensive, and it's something that everybody can try it. It's not as dangerous as people think. Like the people that, it's amazing. Like we all see the comments of people who are like, they think this is so dangerous. I have allergies. Right. And like they're not. You're going to kill people.

Starting point is 00:11:56 They're not going to wake up. Like, well, what if you have a stuffy nose and you just don't wake up? Like you're going to wake up. Right. But it's something that's non-invasive. That's easily something you can try just to see how it goes. Right. And you preach it all the time about just being able to try things. Right. As far as sleep is concerned, do you have any suggestions for people when it does come to that, especially as you get older, since quality sleep is harder

Starting point is 00:12:18 with age? Yeah. It's so important. I mean, when you sleep, your brain is literally like cleaning itself of the proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's disease. Like amyloid beta, tau. We know that on one night of shortened sleep, they can measure levels of amyloid in cerebrospinal fluid. They found that on just one night of shortened sleep, there's a 30% increase in amyloid in cerebrospinal fluid and about a 50% increase in tau, which is not necessarily reflective of what you see in brain but I mean, the assumption is that the more there is in cerebrospinal fluid, the more likely there will be to clump up and aggregate

Starting point is 00:12:58 and form these plaques in the brain, right? So you definitely wanna make sure that you're optimizing your sleep. And one of the things that I find super fascinating about sleep is that it tends to be front-loaded with the processes that support your immediate survival, right? Like immediately, because like, think about like if you were on the run or something, or if like your sleep was disturbed midnight, your body wants to, I think from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes a lot of sense that sleep would be front loaded

Starting point is 00:13:29 with the processes that are going to be the most restorative, right? So we know that the, when you first go to sleep, that's when you get that initial pulse of testosterone, of growth hormone, right? Which is like super reparative to the body. of growth hormone, right, which is like super reparative to the body. Similarly to the brain, to the anatomy of the brain, that's when you see this swoosh of cerebrospinal fluid go throughout the brain, cleansing itself basically of these proteins, like amyloid beta, thanks to the glymphatic system. And that happens earlier on in the night during slow-wave sleep,

Starting point is 00:14:02 which tends to be front-loaded again towards, like, bias towards the beginning of sleep. It's like later in sleep when, like, the more emotional regulatory processes take place. Like, you know, you get more REM sleep, which is associated with, like, better emotional regulation and the like. So, yeah, I mean, generally just making sure that you're, that I think to optimize sleep,

Starting point is 00:14:31 one of the things that I think seems to be the most salient among, you know, whether it's like the reading I've done or the sleep experts that I've talked to, you just want to make sure that you're, you know, as being as consistent as you can with your sleep schedule. I think that's a big one, making sure that you're sleeping in a room that's as dark as possible. We're now seeing evidence to suggest that even low-level light exposure at an intensity of about five lux is associated with worse cognitive function the next day. So making sure that your room is as dark as possible. Cooler temperatures, I think, tend to support better sleep.

Starting point is 00:15:03 I sleep with one of those sleep like, sleep bed cooling systems. Yeah, we use Eight Sleep. Yeah, those are bomb. And yeah, diet, I mean, healthy, having a healthy dietary pattern, I think, is associated with better sleep. Making sure that you're, another thing that's a really big one is building up sleep pressure over the course of the day.

Starting point is 00:15:22 That's like a concept where, you know, when you do things that tire out your body, it puts more pressure on the brain to get to sleep at night. Like you're sedentary all day. There's going to be a lot less of that. So it's going to make insomnia more likely. And I think there was a study that came out recently, small study, you know, but seemed to suggest that resistance training, more so than aerobic training, taxes the nervous system in a way that builds sleep pressure more than aerobic training does. Wow. Yeah. Resistance train. Another reason to resistance train. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:57 But yeah, sleep is crucially important. Right before I get to bed, I almost feel myself getting into bed. I don't know if you guys having any idea what i'm talking about but it's like a almost like a sensor like my body just wants to lay down you know just like really wants to lay down and the second that i lay down i usually fall asleep pretty quickly i sometimes have a hard time like staying asleep i'll wake up and fidget and move around and stuff but interesting other than that i sleep pretty good especially more recently i've i've really improved my sleep quite a bit the mouth tape has helped a lot i think getting myself to breathe hard i think was something that was necessary for me because i think i had sleep apnea previously because i used to be really fat and bloated used to be 330 pounds so a lot of the

Starting point is 00:16:40 a lot of weight loss has helped but i think there is a side of a little cardiovascular i think can go a long way a little bit of that training can help too yeah for sure but sleep apnea yeah i'm glad that you've got that under control because that could be a risk factor for for you know cognitive is there a connection uh between that and dementia and alzheimer's or not there is yeah i don't want to you know because i haven't like looked into the literature in a while but there there is a connection i mean you want to make sure that you're allowing your body to get into those deeper, you know, those deeper modes of sleep, deeper phases. And I think the issue with sleep apnea is that it basically prevents, it precludes like those deeper, you know, levels of sleep. Where you're repairing and restoring yeah yeah so that's just like my you know from what i remember from you know whatever it was two years ago that i last looked into that literature but uh but yeah you want to make sure that you're that you're sleeping

Starting point is 00:17:35 well and what what qualifies as a like a bad night of sleep because like we hear it's like oh you should strive for eight hours but is like six hours okay is it like four hours to drop off like where do you think yeah yeah i think it's like it's it's a range it's generally seven to nine i think is like the i think what the american psychological association tends to tends to recommend um you need more earlier on in life people that are like older tend to get by with less sleep. You know, I love having a good eight or nine hours. Like I can, I'm a good sleeper, yeah.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Everything You Need To Know About Sleep Supercut - Louisa Nicola, Max Lugavere, and Hostage Tape

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