Mark Bell's Power Project - Proven Sleep Hacks to Boost Your Health

Starting point is 00:00:00 When you sleep, your brain is literally like cleaning itself of the proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's disease. We have very strong data showing the correlation with sleep disruption and increasing risk of cancer. I've said before, if you're getting five hours of sleep and religiously taking creatine, you're a f***ing idiot. It's not a weak thing to get enough sleep because in the hours that you now need to work, you'll be more focused, you'll be more efficient. Your mind will be sharper. Your communication will be better. Your mood. Alcohol is another animal. It helps sleep onset. It's terrible for sleep duration.

Starting point is 00:00:30 One thing you can do right now is eat better and get sleep and really make that a focus every day of your life. Let's just say you're eating fantastically for your body type and for who you are, but you're not exercising or sleeping well. Who cares? and for who you are, but you're not exercising or sleeping well, who cares? A lot of people who, let's say they don't pay attention to health podcasts or this stuff, right? They, you know, they'll be on screens. They'll be up a little bit later. Even my mom now, she's 60 something. I try to tell her, hey, go to sleep earlier, but she's watching Nigerian movies until 1am, right? And you got to wonder, as you get older, first off, it's harder to get as much sleep as you used to when you were younger, but the amount of repair that goes on to the brain

Starting point is 00:01:10 with quality sleep, and you continue to miss out on that as you get older, it's scary to think about America's becoming more obese and overweight. There's all these things that are impacting people's sleep. It's a problem, right? So 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 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 beta, tau. We know that on one night of shortened sleep, they can measure levels of amyloid in cerebrospinal fluid.

Starting point is 00:01:49 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 the, you know, in, in cerebrospinal fluid, the more likely there will be to clump up and aggregate and form these plaques in the brain. Right. So you definitely want to make sure that you're optimizing your sleep. And what's, what's, I think what I thought,

Starting point is 00:02:19 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 with the processes that are going to be the most restorative, right? So we know that 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. 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,

Starting point is 00:03:13 thanks to the glymphatic system. And that happens earlier on in the night during slow wave sleep, 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 um so yeah I mean generally just making sure that you're that I think to optimize sleep one of the things that I think seems to be uh the most salient among you 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

Starting point is 00:03:54 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 like 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. I sleep with one of those like sleep bed cooling systems. Yeah, We use eight sleep. Yeah. Those bomb. Um, and, uh, and yeah,

Starting point is 00:04:28 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, that's a really big one is building up sleep pressure over the course of the day. That's like a concept where, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:40 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, but seemed to suggest that resistance training really more so than aerobic training taxes the nervous system in a way that builds sleep pressure more than aerobic training does. Wow. Yeah. That's really cool.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Yeah. So resistance train, another reason to resistance train. Yeah. Right? But yeah, sleep is crucially, crucially important. Yeah, I found that, you know, right before I get to bed, I I almost feel myself getting into bed. I don't know if you guys have any idea what I'm talking about, but it's almost like a sensor. My body just wants to lay down, just really wants to lay down.

Starting point is 00:05:33 And the second that I lay down, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly. I sometimes have a hard time staying asleep. I'll wake up and fidget and move around and stuff. Interesting. Other than that, I sleep pretty good, especially more recently. I've really improved my sleep quite a bit. The mouth tape has helped a lot. I think getting myself to breathe hard

Starting point is 00:05:51 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. I used to be 330 pounds. Wow. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:09 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 cognitive trauma. Is there a connection between that and dementia and Alzheimer's or not? There is. Yeah, I don't want to – because I haven't looked into the literature in a while, but there is a connection. I mean, you want to make sure that you're allowing your body to get into 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 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

Starting point is 00:06:55 sure that you're, that you're sleeping well. And what, what qualifies as a, like a bad night of sleep? Cause like we hear it's like, Oh, you should strive for eight hours, but it's 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.

Starting point is 00:07:31 Oh, yeah. These tech devices are so addictive. And now we have very strong data showing the correlation with sleep disruption and increasing risk of cancer, of increasing risk of cardiovascular disease. So I just shared this the other day. The World Health Organization, who everybody seems to be looking towards right now. So I like to use people's own data. If you really want to listen to them, listen to this.

Starting point is 00:07:54 They tracked about 700 men for 14 years to see what would happen if they were consistently sleep deprived. And they found that when men were not getting sufficient amounts of sleep over this 14-year study period, they had twice as many heart attacks as people who got enough sleep and four times as many strokes. All right?

Starting point is 00:08:18 There's something absolutely miraculous that sleep does that nothing else can do. And what it is, some of the things is that nothing else can do. Yep. You know, and what it is, some of the things is, is that it's, it's the primary sleep is the most anabolic state you could be in. Just being awake is catabolic. All right. We can produce and trigger the anabolic secretion of hormones.

Starting point is 00:08:37 Absolutely. But you get the biggest skeet skeet of HGH. When you start to sleep. Let me just start doing this show. Skeet skeet skeet of hgh when you go to sleep let me just start doing this skeet skeet so incredible this is the thing you know and so if you're not honoring that and leveraging that you're missing you're missing out yeah you're missing out truly and so as far as some strategies tips what i mentioned about the screen curfew that's kind of like a pulling off the band-aid that's a little bit difficult. What I did was in my practice, because I saw it was such a big issue with people coming in, their nutrition is on point.

Starting point is 00:09:12 They're moving. They're doing a lot of stuff right, but the weight isn't coming off like everybody else. Or we're not getting their blood sugar normalized, or we can't get them off their lisinopril for their heart disease, whatever it is. And so once I got their sleep dialed in, everything got better. And here's the big takeaway. Knowing all these people I'd worked with at this point, that people want change, but they don't want to change that much, right? So they want change, but they don't want to change that much because they are comfortable with who they are, even if they're not happy with who they are. So I dug into the research to find what are some actionable

Starting point is 00:09:48 things people can do to improve their sleep without turning their lives upside down. And so here's a very simple one. Appalachian State University researchers, they did a study to find out what's the best time of day to exercise if you want to improve your sleep quality. what's the best time of day to exercise if you want to improve your sleep quality? And so they had exercisers to train at three different times exclusively. At 7 a.m. for one phase, at 1 p.m. for another phase of study, and 7 p.m. in the evening for another phase. They found that the morning exercisers spent more time in the deepest,

Starting point is 00:10:18 most anabolic stages of sleep. They had more efficient sleep cycles. They tended to sleep longer. And this is often overlooked. I don't talk about this much. These folks had a higher decrease in their blood pressure in the evening, which is correlated with an activation of that parasympathetic nervous system and turning off that fight or flight, all from working out in the morning. This doesn't mean that you can't work out another time, but there's something that happens by you getting up and being active in the morning

Starting point is 00:10:43 that is just like your genes expect it of you, right? And this is, if you think about evolutionary biology, what will we be doing? When the sun comes up, you get out, you get busy because you're not going to be fucking around at night because you could die, you know? And so when you do that, you're helping to set your cortisol rhythm, right? So we have the, and I would see this, we would do certain tests where we could see people's cortisol was elevated in the evening and too high and too low in the morning. We would call them tired and wired because cortisol is kind of this get up and it's not bad. It's when it's produced at the wrong times and wrong amounts, it can be problematic, but you need cortisol skied out in the morning. And so exercise helps that rhythm to get going. So you

Starting point is 00:11:27 get that cortisol peak and it can gradually decline as the day goes on. So get yourself some morning exercise, even if it's just five minutes. You could do a Tabata. It takes four minutes, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest, do some squats or some pushups back and forth. on 10 seconds rest, do some squats or some pushups back and forth. You could do some yoga, go for a power walk, just do something active in the morning to help to get that cortisol going. So that's number one, very practical. You could still have a later day workout. That's okay. But take advantage of that cortisol rhythm reset. So that's number one, very practical. The folks listening to this probably have some form of exercise program already, you know, but get something in in the morning. Number two, this is to be 1000 with you guys, this is the biggest thing. And it's so

Starting point is 00:12:20 overlooked, like we're not even at a place where society even remotely understands this. so overlooked. Like we're not even at a place where society even remotely understands this. None of the things that I'm saying matters if you're not, if you don't have the raw materials to make your sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters, which is made again from food. All right. So if we're talking about serotonin, serotonin, we're talking about protein structure, amino acid structure. Serotonin is a precursor to making melatonin. Melatonin isn't just a sleep hormone. That's a very rudimentary understanding of it. It is a master regulator of your whole circadian clock, your whole circadian timing system of your body. Melatonin is regulating, controlling a lot of your genes.

Starting point is 00:13:10 All right. But serotonin is the, is the opening act for it. It's the precursor to make it. And so, but all, all of the above are made from amino acids, right? So one of them is tryptophan and we have clinical trials. This is evidence-based. If you are getting adequate amounts of tryptophan, it is going to improve your sleep quality, right? So what I call these are, these are these good sleep nutrients. If you're deficient in any of these things, this can be, you can have the best mattress. You could have your blue light blocking glasses. You can exercise in the morning. If you're deficient in these things, your sleep isn't going to be as good, period. And so what are some of the other ones?

Starting point is 00:13:49 So I mentioned tryptophan, but one of the most interesting, and this was published in the Public Library of Science, so PLOS, PLOS One, vitamin C. Vitamin C is critical for regulating your sleep cycle. So they found that test subjects who were deficient in vitamin C had less efficient sleep cycles and they tended to have more wake after sleep onset. So they would wake up more frequently during the night. Getting the vitamin C levels up helped to address this. What the fuck can't vitamin C do, man? It's just, it's really amazing. You know, Linus Pauling won a Nobel prize for his work with vitamin C. It's just like it never happened or something. So now here's the thing. You could take another supplement for it.

Starting point is 00:14:29 Food first. There are great botanical sources of vitamin C. Obviously, we know the generals, the citrus fruits. But also, you got to be mindful of sugar for yourself. Kiwis, bell peppers, broccoli. But then there's this category of superfoods, which this, man, marketers screw everything up, man. Everything is not a superfood, but I'm talking about the stuff that has so many benefits, peer-reviewed evidence that it's just like, this is a game changer. One of those is called camu camu berry, C-A-M-U-C-A-M-U, camu camu berry.

Starting point is 00:15:02 It's the highest botanical source of vitamin C ever discovered. And man, I mean, I can go on and on with the studies with one of these crazy studies with camu camu berry. They gave rats like the worst shit. They just gave rats like high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil. Like that was their diet, like the worst shit ever. And they made it taste good so the rats would eat it. And of course, the rats, they had insulin, had insulin they developed insulin resistance obesity all this stuff when they gave them camu camu berry it basically halted these negative effects of insulin resistance it improved their insulin sensitivity even even eating this

Starting point is 00:15:35 shitty food this is a real peer-reviewed published study you know so yeah camu camu berry is one of my favorite things you can get in like a powder you know unless you want to go down to south america and go into the jungle and find some so something like this then yeah that's it yeah camo camo berries if you can of course try and get it organic you know reputable sources it's cheap too yeah well hopefully this one's a good one i should say well i mean i could tell you the kind that I use, but I don't know if we're plugging. You can tell us all about it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:16:10 So, Paleo Valley is the company that I get it from. There you go. Paleo Valley. Because they don't have any binders, fillers, any of that stuff. It's just a great vitamin.

Starting point is 00:16:19 It's called Essential C Formula. They do stuff the right way. And I know that they are listening to my show for years because I talk about camo, camu berry. Amla berry is the second botanical source and acerola cherry. Those are my three favorites. And they made a formula with that. Quick question. They didn't pay me. The tryptophan is that, did you suggest that people like supplement tryptophan at night or something or? Food first. Food first. That's pretty easy to get from, you know, people know about like turkey. Yeah. It's like synonymous, but also,

Starting point is 00:16:40 easy to get from, you know, people know about like Turkey. Yeah. It's like synonymous, but also, you know, chicken,

Starting point is 00:16:46 um, you're going to get some with there. There are some plant sources that have a notable amounts of tryptophan, but it's mostly going to be in, in animal foods. Gotcha. There's this thing within like hustle culture and work culture and entrepreneurship culture where it's like, you know,

Starting point is 00:17:02 I'll sleep when I'm dead. I have too much work to do. Don't waste time sleeping. Got to wake up and grind before everybody else. I get it. And working hard is super necessary, but you can work hard in a more efficient fashion and you'll be more productive if you're well rested. It is not a pussy thing. It is not a weak thing to get enough sleep because in the hours that you now need to work, you'll be more focused. You'll be more efficient. Your mind will be sharper. Your

Starting point is 00:17:29 communication will be better. Your mood dealing with people will be better. When it comes to exercise, you're not going to get in like sleep will help you not get injured as much because your body's going to, your body's going to move better. You're going to have better reflexes. And the way you stick to your diet, it's going to be easier because as we know, you body's going to move better. You're going to have better reflexes. And the way you stick to your diet, it's going to be easier because as we know, you're not going to have these wild cravings as much if you're well-rested. Hey, Pavarocci family, shut your mouth. No, not really, but kind of. You should keep your mouth shut when you're asleep. Now, on the podcast, we've been talking about the importance of nasal breathing for years. And

Starting point is 00:18:03 we've been talking about using mouth tape during your sleep for years as it's going to help your sleep quality because you're going to be breathing through your nose. We had James Nestor, author of Why We Sleep. Actually, that was Matthew Walker. But James Nestor, author of Breathe. We had Patch McEwen. We've had so many people talk about the importance of taping your mouth and breathing through your nose when you sleep for your sleep quality, which helps your recovery, which helps every aspect of your health and fitness. So hostage tape, if you want to get some of this to help you sleep better, and it also stays on your face, if you're a bearded man, which is one of the big problems with mouth tape, head to hostage tape.com slash power project. And there you can actually

Starting point is 00:18:38 get the power project annual deal, which will give you a year supply of hostage tape, 55 cents a day for tape pretty much. And you'll be able to save $150 along with getting two tins a year's supply of hostage tape, 55 cents a day for tape pretty much. And you'll be able to save $150 along with getting two tins, a year's supply of tape and a blindfold. That is going to be something that you want to get your hands on. Links in the description along with the podcast show notes. Shut your mouth. Yeah. It'll be easier to make choices. It'll be easier to handle stress during the day. Muscle gain will be easier. Everything will be easier. Your hormones will be in better alignment towards whatever the thing is that you're working towards.

Starting point is 00:19:14 So it just does so many things that it's not a great idea to mess with your sleep in a negative way. And if you are someone that likes to get after it and likes to get up early, there's absolutely no problem with that. You just have to make sure that you go to bed early, just like a little kid, you know, are you going to bed early enough? Each person is probably going to be a little different. I don't know how much I believe or biased, you know, some of the information about like, it has to be eight hours. I think that that might be something that makes people kind of worried and makes it hard for them to sleep. So, but like whatever amount of time you can get to sleep that represents something more or better than what you used to do is the aim. And I think it's something that you should look into. Something so simple in terms of sleep would be just to get yourself an eye mask.

Starting point is 00:20:06 An eye mask is so awesome. I've been wearing an eye mask for probably like a decade, and I'll whip that bad boy out on planes. Like, I don't care. I got no shame with that one. I'll just put it on. Having the room that you're in dark is really important, but it's very difficult to have it like dark, dark. I even have, I got like blackout shades. I got all kinds of stuff.

Starting point is 00:20:31 But none of them actually block out all the sun. And if you don't want to spend money on a bunch of curtains and shades and try to figure out this weird configuration of how to make your room pitch black, and try to figure out this weird configuration of how to make your room pitch black, then all you got to do is throw something on your eyes to help block out the sun. So that's been huge for me. Those are very inexpensive. I have to add on to what you mentioned. So you've mentioned eye masks before.

Starting point is 00:21:02 I ended up buying one on Amazon, and it was decent. I used it for a bit, but I stopped because it wasn't super comfortable. Blue Blocks, I ended up getting their Remedy eye mask. And what's been happening has, I know I told you guys how my circadian rhythm has me wake up every day at like 6.23 on the dot. Well, now I'm waking up at 7.16 on the dot. And it's because what happens in my room, I don't have blackout shades. So when the sun starts to come up, my room gets a little brighter. And I wake up at that same – I used to wake up at that same time. But using the eye mask, I naturally sleep more.

Starting point is 00:21:35 And I feel more rested when I get up when my eye mask comes off. So some people are going to look at that and be like, oh, now you're getting up later, blah, blah, blah. But I appreciate having good sleep. And if it allows me to sleep a little bit longer and more efficiently, that's what my body needs. And I'd rather take that extra, what, potential hour of sleep to be more productive and sharper during my days. And I have noticed that. I am thinking clear. I have a little bit better clarity. And I know we're doing all these things where we're always like, yeah, I feel better. I feel better. But truthfully, like I do feel a bit better with that extra sleep that I'm getting. The eye mask that you bought, is it just a little bit more expensive than some of the regular ones you can get? Well, that's the one.

Starting point is 00:22:18 Yeah, that's the one from Blue Box. The remedy mask. It's maybe more comfortable and stuff. It's more comfortable because I had this one from Amazon that was like $20-something. And it's versus other eye masks, like normal eye mask is more expensive. But it wasn't as comfortable as this one and it didn't stay on as well as this one at night. This one, it has like spaces in the eyes. And it's not like directly just smashing your eyes.

Starting point is 00:22:41 Yeah, the real cheap ones aren't great because they don't allow, I think your eyes need to kind of breathe. That sounds kind of funny, but your eyes, like they, you don't want anything on your eyeball. I don't think ever really. So when your eyes are closed, I think it's good to have that space. I have an eye mask that's probably a little similar to that. And I do wake up, you know, getting a little

Starting point is 00:23:05 freaking eye boogers out of my eyes, but not nearly as bad as when I had like a cheaper version. Wait, so when you had a cheaper version, you have more eye boogers? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was just like gross. I don't know. I don't know if it's because like something was like in my, you know, on almost on my eyeball or what it was. Yeah. That one is that one is super comfortable. We don't have the code for you guys, but they're a great company. So if you guys want to get some eye masks from them or anything else, check out Blue Blocks. Yeah, B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com.

Starting point is 00:23:34 And actual glasses like that that have that annoying ability to change the color of everything that you're looking at at night can also help. What have you noticed for yourself? What I noticed, and I'll talk a little bit more about it, is like I have blue blockers and they're also from blue blocks. But initially there is this annoyance of wearing the yellow tinted blue blockers because everything you look at is now tinted.

Starting point is 00:24:00 Like you're trying to watch some TV, you're trying to look at your phone, and it's tinted. But by using it consistently, i people have say oh it doesn't work blah blah i get tired quicker like i truly start to fucking doze off way quicker when i quicker when i have my blue blockers on versus when i don't it makes a big difference for me too and i found myself like i have them on and then i'm trying to like look under them and like read my phone and stuff and i'm like god you know what just put your fucking phone away so at the very least it's just a cue that like your day is over uh-huh so whether they work from like a real scientific standpoint or not i don't know how much it matters it's like

Starting point is 00:24:40 a placebo effect you know like you know that you're getting ready for bed you put them on it's part of the routine uh then what's going to come next after that is you're probably going to like brush your teeth, use the bathroom, maybe get into particular clothes, maybe get naked, who knows what you're going to do when you go to sleep. But that's, it's a cue, you know? And so for me, I don't know how much of the blocking of the light uh what it's done to me like in terms of hormones or something like that but uh it's definitely helped i put them on for about an hour before i go to bed and it also makes watching tv like not as enjoyable because the tv is like weird colors but you can watch tv still um so yeah I found it to be really useful. It's like, I'll try anything

Starting point is 00:25:25 cause like my sleep sucked for so many years. Um, I do want to rewind and add this along with getting morning sunlight. I'll also do my absolute best to get out obviously during different parts of the day, but I try to get out before a little bit before sunset and take a walk and get some of that sunset and also get out at night. Because it's like there's also learned this from Hoover men as far as the circadian rhythm. He had this great doctor on that talked about it. But your body starts to get triggers that the sun is setting. It's time to wind down and get ready for bed. So it's one of those, you know, there are these things you get to help you get your day started.

Starting point is 00:26:04 Cold plunge, coffee movement. Well, there's also a cooling down or a, uh, a wind down routine. And one of those things that I do to wind down is I get outside during sunset. I try to take a walk. My body knows what's happening. Your body's super smart. It's, it's really wild. Oh yeah. Imagine if you got up every day and you just kept seeing the moon, you'd be like, what the fuck? Isn't it Alaska? Yeah, there are certain areas that don't have any daylight for X amount of days or whatever. That shit. And it crushes everybody.

Starting point is 00:26:33 It's really, it's difficult. Yeah. Yeah, no. I used to mess with the blue blocking glasses, but having a prescription, it's sometimes, you know, it's just annoying. But I, yeah, I can't say I did or I didn't notice anything, but that's only because when it's time to go to sleep, I'm out like pretty quickly. Like it's, I'm pretty lucky for, to have that. But what I don't have is I wouldn't stay asleep. You know, I'd get up every so often until, like I mentioned recently,

Starting point is 00:27:03 I have the combination of the Breathe Right strips, mouth tape, and air purifier. And then, of course, the eight-sleep mattress, which is amazing because trying not to sleep on that thing is really difficult now. But with the combination of those four things, I'm able to stay asleep quite a bit longer. We talked about it in the prior episode, but how is it that you built up to the mouth tape? Because, you know, we talk about mouth tape, but you added in certain things that have been super helpful. Yeah. So at first, you know, just like a lot of people, I was very resistant to it. Like I was like, there's no way.

Starting point is 00:27:37 Like my nose is always stuffed up at night. Like I can't do it. But what I noticed right away was when you tape up your mouth and your only way that you can get oxygen in your body is through your nose, your body's like, well, shit, we have to clear this out now. And I noticed that my nose would clear up pretty quickly after I put on the mouth tape. I used the SomniFix because it has that breathing hole or whatever. like I used the SomniFix because it has that breathing hole or whatever. I tried not to use it but you kind of you feel

Starting point is 00:28:07 like claustrophobic for a little bit and it's just like oh my gosh like I'm not gonna be able to do this but then eventually you break through it. So initially the Breathe With Right Strip didn't work for me and when I say didn't work I mean like it didn't help my

Starting point is 00:28:24 snoring at all like it still like snored like crazy. And it irritated my skin. It was kind of weird. The mouth tape by itself, it helped suppress the sound of me snoring, but I still snored. And I still woke up in the middle of the night having to go pee quite a bit. So I stuck with it, but it didn't quite like solve my sleepless issues um and then i got an air purifier and then i brought back the breathe the right strips and now the combination of those three things has really helped like a ton because i'm no longer snoring which is insane because i've

Starting point is 00:28:57 been snoring my whole life and um this morning i woke up and i was just like man i haven't been waking up in the middle of the night peeing. Like, I'm not sure if I'm just completely out, out. And my body's like, fuck it, we're not getting up. But that or I know when you tape your mouth and you're not breathing through your mouth, it's like a natural diuretic or something like that. I think I'm not diuretic. Is that the right word? No, no, no. When you're breathing through your mouth, it's a natural diuretic or something like that. I think I'm not diuretic. Is that the right word? No, no, no.

Starting point is 00:29:25 When you're breathing through your mouth, it's a natural diuretic. I'm not sure if that's the right term, but whatever it is. Yeah, diuretics help you pee. Okay. So then it helps you not pee when you're breathing through your nose. Yeah. So by doing that, I haven't been getting up in the middle of the night to pee, which is freaking cool. I think when you're not sleeping well, you will wake up frequently to pee, which is freaking cool. I think when you're not sleeping well,

Starting point is 00:29:46 you will wake up frequently to pee, and when you pee, you won't even have to pee that much. And so you know that you're sleeping deep, either if you don't wake up at all, obviously that would be good, but if you wake up and you pee and it seems like it goes on

Starting point is 00:30:01 for like four minutes, that's how you know you've been sleeping pretty damn good, Like the awesome powers pee. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That was in the morning for sure. You know, that's the, that is one thing that a lot of people mentioned though. One thing is like, I ask people quite a bit, do you wake up with a dry mouth in the morning? Like, is your mouth dry? Because you know, we talk about using mouth tape, but you should be able to sleep with your mouth closed. So, you know, we talk about using mouth tape, but you should be able to sleep with your mouth closed. So, you know, if you don't use mouth tape and you're waking up in the morning and you don't have a dry mouth and you're typically breathing through your nose, good for you. You

Starting point is 00:30:33 don't need to do the mouth tape thing. With respect to sleep, like for me, the last few months in correcting that, I just threw everything at it, you know. So in that list would be both CBD and CBN. CBN? Yeah. So CBD helps with sleep onset. CBN helps with sleep duration. Okay. It's in the family of, you know, those endocannabinoid receptor simulators.

Starting point is 00:30:59 Does the CBD have THC in it? No. No. Actually, gosh, your brother would probably know that. Sometimes it has tiny amounts. Dosages? I kind of tend to do a lot on that. So they come in these little bottle droppers and

Starting point is 00:31:13 it says just do one dropper. I'll do like three of whatever the bottle droppers are. Yeah, but so CBN is a cousin of CBD and I've noticed it definitely helps with middle of the night like that 2 a.m. waking thing definitely helps with that. And then along with that, for me, megadosing oleamide, so I'll do like a gram and a half of oleamide. Oleamide?

Starting point is 00:31:35 Yeah. What is that? So it's another endocannabinoid antagonist. It's kind of in that family, but oleamide seems to really help with sleep induction helps with quality of sleep and then along with that I will do just flat out works is

Starting point is 00:31:54 lavender on the soles of the feet and then on the forearms really works and just go down the check box one thing that really helps a lot I'm just curious about lavender, though. I don't remember his name, but somebody had mentioned that it can, like, suppress testosterone or elevate your estrogen levels or something like that. And just because somebody mentioned it, I've gotten all the lavender away from my son.

Starting point is 00:32:20 Like, we threw it all out of the house. But that's why I was just curious about that. If there's any concern. I haven't studied that. So I don't have an answer for that one thing. I know that it does help with sleep and anything that helps with sleep. It definitely does. We had this like combination of essential oils for him. He could be freaking out.

Starting point is 00:32:37 And then we'd have a little combo of things and he would rub it on his feet. It's like totally different baby. But then i looked and i'm like lavender get it out of here just because just because i i don't know but just in case i don't want to mess with anything of his as far as his development i wonder though like even so like yeah because i know what you're talking about the lavender stuff but when it comes to sleep if lavender which one's more beneficial especially if lavender let's say it does do a little bit of testosterone suppression but during sleep we have all these other things going on what if it's

Starting point is 00:33:10 massively actually it's just great for your sleep and you get all this recovery and it's not gonna like it's not you're not gonna have those effects all day long yeah and also what about like that makes a lot of sense what about the effects of like alcohol you know like some people are like man if i have a drink it actually helps relax me it helps me sleep and then the science kind of says different but people's uh empirical evidence i think means something sometimes people will say yeah i'd like to smoke some pot and a lot of people it helps chill me out and it helps you know and then again there's there's some research but who knows how the research being is being done. Uh, whenever I, I'm very resistant to research a lot of times because I will, uh, a lot of times say,

Starting point is 00:33:52 well, that ain't me. Like I, the research that they do on people, I think is usually not done on people that are maybe as active as me. Um, so maybe I'm foolish in saying that, thinking that I get a pass from that, but I'm usually like, well, I don't know, you know, like even, uh, I was going back and forth with Stan Efferding more recently about, you know, running and trying to maintain size and this and that. And I was like, I'm just going to see for myself, you know what I mean? Like we can go back and forth on this all day, but I ain't like those other people that you're talking about. And I want to see what I'm actually able, able to do. And if I lose a little muscle mass, I don't like those other people that you're talking about. And I want to see what I'm actually able, able to do. And if I lose a little muscle mass, I don't care. And I'm not, you know,

Starting point is 00:34:29 I can admit it, but what, what do you think, you know, in terms of somebody getting to sleep and, and maybe not making it a huge habit, but having a little bit of alcohol or smoking some weed or something like that. Just anecdotally speaking people people that I know that smoke weed prior to sleep, sometimes it's the thing that helps them. It's the thing. Nothing else worked, and then that worked. I have a couple of friends I'm thinking of that they just like to get to sleep. I have a friend who's an attorney.

Starting point is 00:34:59 It's a really stressful job. And for a while, that was the only thing working for him. stressful job and for a while that was the only thing working for him he was you know you hear this thing nowadays of like people waking up like at 2 30 and they're just pegged adrenaline pegged from 2 to 4 a.m which is um a thing it's a lack of clearing cortisol and all that and that's the thing that helped him and then um yeah so you think that kind of alcohol is another animal um i just don't like it at all anymore just because i found the negatives far outweigh the positives but um you know definitely helped you get to sleep i found most people it wakes them up in the middle of the night so it helps sleep onset it's terrible for sleep duration um but it's great for thermogenesis while you're sleeping,

Starting point is 00:35:47 which in college we called the sweats. So there's that. After I read Matthew Walker's book, you know, it's kind of laying out a similar thing where like, like, no, like kids,

Starting point is 00:35:58 you know, I have a 13 year old and you know, she just like most 13 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. 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? Or should we try to get on somewhat of a schedule where it's like, Hey, like it's summertime, but anything past 9am, like we got to get up and get moving. Or is that kind of, you know, like I said, being detrimental and kind of taking away from the whole, you know, purpose of letting her get her sleep? Yeah, I think that the most important things are, number one, to have a schedule.

Starting point is 00:36:53 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'll 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. So if school's coming for your daughter, we need to

Starting point is 00:37:42 figure out, okay, what does that schedule look like? And you've hit on a couple of 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

Starting point is 00:38:24 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,

Starting point is 00:39:03 you know, is really not set up for them to succeed. You add 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 drop them off at a friend or grandparent's 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

Starting point is 00:39:47 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. But I'm going to, 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 rebuilding and restructuring your body in a positive way. 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.

Starting point is 00:40:28 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 like have a propensity to sleeping later at night. There has to be some other developmental things that these kids are missing out

Starting point is 00:40:55 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 I, you know, to me, I'm that, you know, to me, I'm like a 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 in all these different domains. They don't care. 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

Starting point is 00:41:32 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.

Starting point is 00:42:02 Listen, I can't make you taller. I can't make you really. 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, never hurts to start, but it's really about the long term play here. But to answer your question, 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. And the other big one is mental health. We see tremendous amounts of anxiety.

Starting point is 00:42:39 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 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

Starting point is 00:43:27 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, 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. How detrimental is it to not get good sleep? Because, you know, we're all trying like diets, we're out there exercising, you know, we're working so hard and we're our work day and so on and you end up with a lot of stresses. How detrimental is it to, you know, be getting five hours of sleep and six hours of sleep and maybe not trying to,

Starting point is 00:44:12 maybe not being able to follow the principles that you're, you're mentioning at the moment. Well, let me put it this way. It's life changing. In other words, if you want to live a short life, be miserable, especially in the latter part of your life with lots of heart disease, being overweight, obesity, susceptibility to viruses, novel viruses, metabolic syndrome, diabetes. I mean, you name it. Flaky skin, hair loss, periodontal disease, loss of tooth structure and supportive structures around the teeth. I mean, I don't know how, you know, to make it, paint it any worse. But for example, people that have sleep issues, when they go on

Starting point is 00:44:52 a diet, 70% of their weight loss is muscle mass. I mean, yeah, it's like you can't function if you're not sleeping well. You can't, your personality may be different. You may be a different person. Sleep essentially determines your destiny. It really does. It's big. It's one of the pillars of health. And if you don't, that's why you got to spend a lot of time. You got to work on it.

Starting point is 00:45:13 It's not guaranteed. Yes, we're sleepers. We sleep like babies, although babies these days aren't sleeping that well because of a variety of factors because of our environment. But we really got to work at it. Just like, you know, you want to have good muscle mass, you want to have a low BMI, you want to be smart, you want to be sexy, all these things. Sleep, you got to work on it. You got to verify it, you got to test it, and you got to know a lot about it.

Starting point is 00:45:37 And that's why I like the Oura Ring. It's a great entry into that whole segment of what I just referred to as knowing a lot about your sleep. So it's pretty accurate, and it kind of gives you, I don't typically like trackers, but it's great data and it really does. I highly recommend it. I wish I was on their payroll. I always tell people nice things about the Oura Ring. I have no association with them. There are a lot of other trackers I really dislike. Oura Ring is the only thing I'm using right now. And I wear it all day long, and it's not a great tracker for activity. In fact,

Starting point is 00:46:13 you have to input all your activity, Mark knows this, because it's not recording that, but it's a great sleep tracker. It's wonderful. And it really will get people started in the right direction. Well, since we're talking about sleep trackers, the Oura Ring, you kind of said there are others that you don't like. So what are the others that you think are kind of crap? Well, I'll try not to mention names, but, you know, things like the Apple Watch, Fitbit, all these motion based sensors that aren't recording. Like it's all about the algorithm and this ring is was developed in I think Finland somewhere in Scandinavia and their algorithm really works well I have tested my sleep as you can imagine I

Starting point is 00:46:56 worked for a startup that was developing a camera that would give the same results as a regular sleep study in a hospital. And so we were testing sleep all the time. So my sleep has been tested probably 40, 50 different times in the conventional way. So I look at the data that I get from this, and it's not perfect, but I think it's the best out there. It correlates very closely to how I test my sleep. I also wear an oral appliance that if I take it out, my apnea has come back because my airway collapses.

Starting point is 00:47:31 So I can test with and without. And then also when I mouth tape, there are differences on the aura ring that you can pick up. So, I mean, Fitbit, they've got things that go underneath your mattress. There is one, and I mentioned this in my book on sleep, and it's not available anymore, but there are other apps out there that are similar. One of the great simple apps, and it's not based on movement, it's based on sound. It's a recording device that in the morning you can just play,

Starting point is 00:47:59 and there are several apps that do this, that plays back how much snoring you've done in the middle of the night. And you don't have to listen to the whole night. You just listen. It tells you when you were snoring and then it gives you an idea of what it sounds like. That's a great app. I mean, those are free typically. So a good snoring app is great.

Starting point is 00:48:14 But right now, the apps that measure how much movement there is in bed, that's not that accurate. Movement isn't. You can still sleep well and have some movement. Power Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat, if you're trying to stick to a nutrition plan, if you're trying to get fit, pretty much if there's anything you're trying to do for your health, we know that sleep is the biggest determining factor to help you get from point A to point B. That's why we've been sleeping on eight sleep mattresses for probably more than two years now. And the main reason is the technology behind the Pod Pro. Now the Pod Pro is like the Tesla of beds. It will change its temperature based off of how you're sleeping during the night.

Starting point is 00:48:55 And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they can have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here. And I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat. That doesn't happen anymore because of the Eight Sleep mattress and I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover and you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of Eight Sleep. But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and the Eight Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to eightsleep.com slash powerproject, and you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order.

Starting point is 00:49:30 Again, eightsleep.com slash powerproject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. On that weed thing I got to mention, there's two things. If you're someone who smokes, if you smoke close to bed, our Eight Sleep Mattress tracks that shit, right? So I've done that before, smoking close to bed to see, is this house going to fuck up my sleep? Heart rate's always a little bit higher. My HRV is always a little bit lower.

Starting point is 00:49:55 It's like my sleep is never as good by smoking before bed. So don't think that because a lot of people nowadays smoke weed to sleep. It's because they like smoking weed. It's an excuse. They like smoking weed. Yeah, yeah. not it's not good for your sleep and also eating too close to bed right okay yeah i just love it yeah yeah he's like yeah it's just an excuse and eating close to bed up sleep too if you just try eating a little bit away from your bedtime, let's say you sleep at 8.30 like me,

Starting point is 00:50:29 try eating at 6, you know, instead of eating right before you go to sleep. Well, they say because your body's working to digest the food. Exactly. And you're kind of like working. You're not supposed to be working. I mean, I'm guilty of that. I eat like a fucking Thanksgiving dinner before I go to bed.

Starting point is 00:50:41 Yeah. Just because I like to eat full. You know, even in shred mode, right? I would always, it's habitual, definitely. But I would figure out something that I like, right? So before bed, even in shred mode, if you're a snacker and you got to eat something, watching TV,

Starting point is 00:50:59 I would pick something that takes work to eat, right? So like something like peanuts are a bad choice because you can smash down handfuls of them. Pistachios are an excellent choice because you got to eat one motherfucker at the time. Unless they're already cracked open. One pistachio. And then I would do stupid shit like I'd measure my cereal and whatever, like half a cup and one at a time. But pistachios were a trick for me. Things I know through experience are tricks that you learn over the years that you can't read out of a book. People are like, oh, you're eating all those calories before bed? Yo, man, it works for me things i know through experience or tricks that you learn over the years that you can't read out of a book you know yeah people go you're eating all those calories for bed yo man it works

Starting point is 00:51:29 for me uh-huh all right maybe i won't eat them like them but i'll eat them before bed because i want them and i'm ripped people talk about how as soon as they hit the pillow they pass out they just never been me even when i was a kid before all the training and stuff like that and so yeah what would you suggest if you were advising somebody with that issue? I think if you could find a book to read or do something like a puzzle or like a crossword puzzle or something kind of calm, something easy. Even aside from that, go outside, do some grounding, just go outside barefoot, get the cold grass on your feet

Starting point is 00:52:07 and just look at the moon for a little while like just something that's just like where you can uh just really try to like just calm down and get away from other stuff i don't think you need like a lot of it like i think 20 minutes of it and if it doesn't seem to work you can go back to it you can also like journal um we're fans of these glasses that are like red slash orange ish uh what that does for me i don't know how well it works with you know uh the hormones in your body and all that kind of stuff um but i do know it like i can't read my phone when i have them on oh okay you know i can i watching tv i can kind of watch tv but like kind of watch TV, but like, it's not as enjoyable. So it's like, all right, well, I'm kind of fucked. I'm just going to go to bed. Okay. And if you put them on about an hour or so before you go to bed, um,

Starting point is 00:52:55 yeah, I've found those things to be really helpful. Okay. When you, sorry, I was just, when you actually like hit the bed, like what's happening? Like, is your mind just racing? Like, are you thinking about literally like everything all of a sudden? What's going on there? Yeah, it could be what I did in the day, what I need to do tomorrow. If I'm in a super motivated kick, I could be thinking about what I want to do with my life, and it just kind of never stops. Yeah, just usually stuff like that, I would say.

Starting point is 00:53:21 He's thinking about Goldberg. Right. It's happened before for sure so like when you have like opportunities where whether it be your i mean i doubt this happens but like you're waiting for maybe somebody in the gym or you're you're driving somewhere or you have any passive time you're probably just knowing you right now you're probably listening to a podcast you're doing something that's like i'm'm not going to waste this time. I'm going to better myself. Yeah. Which means you're probably never actually with just yourself. Very rarely. Until that morning or I mean that nighttime happens, right? So then you're just, that's the first

Starting point is 00:53:55 time where your mind's like, hey bro, I got some shit I need to tell you. So my recommendation is like if you can just spend whatever amount of time that you can afford throughout the day with literally nothing and then let your mind yell at you for that moment you know it's not going to be very long and it may or may not help but i've just noticed that a lot of people are like oh i mean as soon as i touch the bed that's when my brain wakes up it's like well that's the first time you put your phone down too yeah you know and i'm not saying that's what you do but just knowing you you're motivated person you're probably always going to be trying to learn something or trying to communicate with the people that you work with or that you're coaching and stuff yeah exactly so

Starting point is 00:54:32 like maybe spend i don't know even 10 minutes just like all right i'm just gonna fucking go ahead brain tell me what you want me to hear and then go from there it is very i actually i think there's probably something to that because yeah i'm pretty much interacting with people all day long like most most probably you guys are too. So for me, it is the first time actually alone to myself. And I think I valued that a lot as a kid growing up and only child. So it's almost like my way to revert back to that before I have to restart that process of being social again. So yeah, I'm going to try that. Thank you. That's awesome. Quick question. Um, how much caffeine do you think you have a day?

Starting point is 00:55:08 I usually have a cup of black coffee in the morning and then for my lifting pre-workout 250. Not too bad. Our last guest was in grams. Remember? He had grams of caffeine. Really?

Starting point is 00:55:22 We were like, what? Your pre-workout, what time do you think you should take it when you lift in the evening? Recently, it's been right after I get off of my last client, which is like seven or eight. Seven or eight? Yeah. Man, I think two of your biggest movers would be trying to find a pre-workout that potentially

Starting point is 00:55:43 doesn't have caffeine in it, especially at nighttime, because you, you probably don't want to really fuck with too much caffeine for most people after 2 PM. Even though like some people are like, I could drink a cup of coffee and go to sleep. That sleep quality is not going to be as high as if you just kept the caffeine earlier in the day. So why are we trying to help him and make him better? Because we want him to be the freak freak.

Starting point is 00:56:03 He's already a freak. We want him to be a freak freak. This is going to be disastrous. be a freak this is gonna be disaster this is gonna be amazing everyone's gonna be pissed off at us yeah like dude that last little chip i needed was just sleep thanks guys but dog not not wwe champs huge so one the caffeine limit that after 2 p.m if you can okay so because there are pre-workouts that are made there are versions that are non-caffeinated. Yeah, non-STEM. Or non-STEM. And the first thing would be when you wake up, do you get sun immediately or are you like indoors? It's pretty much all indoors because I'm just going from the house straight to the car and driving where I need to go. I would suggest, and it's made a big difference because like I notice it because my circadian rhythm now is super consistent.

Starting point is 00:56:42 I feel extremely tired at the same point of time every single day, and I'm usually asleep now. I used to go to sleep at like midnight or 1. Nowadays I'm asleep at like 9, 3, 10. Really? Okay. And I never used to be someone who would be like, I can sleep early. I was not that guy, right?

Starting point is 00:56:56 And it's because every single morning I make sure to get morning sun in my eyes. We learned this from Huberman, right? Andrew Huberman. Get that morning sun in your eyes immediately. Maybe take a walk or just go stand outside and make sure you're in some sunlight. And then I always get evening sun because what that does is it tells your body, oh, it's morning time. Let's start the adenosine pump. It's something that gets higher as you go through the day. And then once you're ready to sleep, adenosine is high. When you sleep,

Starting point is 00:57:18 adenosine goes down, but that sunlight starts that pump. And then when you, if you're able to get yourself outside, when the sun is starting to set maybe 15 minutes in the evening, when sunset happens, that also triggers your body. Oh, sun setting. Okay. It's time to start feeling tired. But if you're indoors the whole time and you're not really getting outside and getting sun that can fuck with your circadian rhythm. And when I started doing that, I noticed every single morning I get up at literally like six 23. It's it's every, I look at my clock every morning. It's like six 23 or six 24. I don't use an alarm because my rhythm is so fucking consistent and I still get tired

Starting point is 00:57:57 at the same time every day. And having that consistent circadian rhythm, like whenever like I'm in that, I'm just like, wow, I feel fucking amazing. So the caffeine and sunlight, I think would be your biggest movers. Obviously there's the blue light blockers, which are great and everything else, but those would be, those are the big movers right there. Yeah. Especially within my own control. Oh yeah. That's great. Thank you. That's awesome. I never, I've never actually heard of the sunlight one before. Yeah. Andrew Huberman talks about that all the time. Honestly talked about it when he was here and everyone go, go find Matthew Walker's podcast. It's, it's, it's on, it's on Apple and everything, but he has multiple episodes on sleep, which if you listen to it, it's there short episodes, 15 to 20 minutes. And he goes over how alcohol affects sleep, how light affects sleep.

Starting point is 00:58:41 Very amazing podcast, all very short. Matthew Walker's podcast. Don't let yourself get all screwed up over it, though. That's true. Just take some of the tips and some of the information and apply wherever you can. And you don't need to get crazy about this. But like having the phone out of the room or putting it on airplane mode or something, you know, all these things can be really helpful. Try not to use your bed, you know, where you're just sitting there texting and scrolling and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:59:12 So that way your brain and body knows like, hey, when I go in there, I'm down. I'm going to sleep, that kind of thing. I noticed – I think – I don't know if you did too, but you have your notifications on silence at certain times, yeah? Yeah. That's a feature I definitely haven't used, but I've been seeing more people use that. You enjoy that? because like if if i'm i mean i have it open for like my mom or people who like if they direly need to get to me they can get to me but outside of that i i don't because like uh especially at night it's like uh i gotta sleep you know what i mean and this this is the thing like there are a lot of athletes out there who are elite, like you are elite and you are doing all these things. But I think that like if your sleep got handled, number one, you, you're going to probably be more efficient when

Starting point is 00:59:55 you're working and having ideas during the day, but then you in the gym and rolling, like everything just gets that much sharper. That's why it's scary that your sleep is the way it is right now. Because like Mark said, the effect on your cravings, whenever I get good sleep, man, my cravings are like I can handle that easily. But when my sleep gets a little fucked, I'm like I want to hammer and stuff my fucking face. It's like the feelings there way more. So that's why I'm so big on sleep for people because it has a cascading effect on everything that you're trying to do, including the business stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why like I'm, I'm so big on sleep for people. Cause it, it has a cascading effect on everything that you're trying to do, including the business stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that's, I mean, as far as diet goes, that's so true. Whenever, if I've been just always at the end, at the end of the day, when I feel the most tired,

Starting point is 01:00:37 you know, from a, from an inconsistent and lack of sleep schedule. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can ruin kind of decision-making skills. It can make you kind of grumpy, you know, like that's the word, that's the shitty part of it. Like someone just catches you on a day where you, you were a little more tired and that's their first experience with you or something. It's like, oh shit. Although we can barely tell you're working off of two hours. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're killing it right now. The energy, the caffeine. Sorry. You're killing it right now. The energy, the caffeine.

Starting point is 01:01:03 Sorry. How do we actually teach people to do this sort of back and forth trial and error process? Because the human brain does need some structure. So when I'm coaching this, I essentially use what I would call structured flexibility. I don't care what it is. But to me, the proof is in the pudding once you start the process. So you start with this structure and then we have to be flexible. We have to look and see, does Schmeck's sleep, hunger, mood, energy, and cravings stay in check or not? And or are you losing fat? And ideally, if sleep,

Starting point is 01:01:36 hunger, mood, energy, and cravings are in check, that tells us we've got hormonal balance. If we're losing weight, and the only way to really know if you're in a calorie deficit to truly know is if you're losing weight. Now, if you got those two things going on for you, that's a good start. The third thing would be that your vitals and blood labs are also optimized. So from my perspective, I don't care if you're eating Twinkies all day. If Schmeck is in check, calorie, you're losing weight, and your blood labs and vitals are optimizing, then that's the right diet for you. Right. And also one other thing here that frustrates the hell out of people, that's only going to be the right diet for you for a short period of time. Because just like you said,

Starting point is 01:02:15 on days when you don't get sleep or you're extra stressed, that same approach that works for you on the days when you do get good sleep or don't have stress may not work for you here. But in time, by having this structured flexibility approach, the paleo diet or the keto diet or the intermittent fasting diet gets tweaked and adjusted. And in the end, you end up with a paleo you diet, a diet that is paleo-esque maybe or keto-esque, or maybe you have to get rid of that diet altogether because it simply does not work for you. Instead of the industry trying to cram down the throat that you have to do this keto diet. And if it failed for you, you didn't have enough willpower. For me, I go, if it failed for you, maybe you didn't have enough willpower. Perhaps that's something,

Starting point is 01:03:00 but more likely than not, it stressed out your metabolism and a stressed metabolism is always going to win the will of willpower, the war of willpower, always. You cannot beat it. And so this to me is a smarter way to do it, but it does take some time. I think guys like us, we've done this for years and years and years, right? So we've gotten to a place where we can do this naturally, but most others have not. And so I think we have to have that nuanced conversation of teaching them this process. how powerful it can really be. And the more that you can develop skill set to deal with stress, to be able to take on stress and have it not have a net negative impact on you is huge. You know, I know a lot of people, they work their nine to five job. Maybe it's not the most ideal job position that they dreamt of when they were young. And they come home, they kind of feel the stress of the day,

Starting point is 01:04:06 sometimes the stress of the week. And they eat dinner and maybe they were well-meaning almost the whole day. Maybe they ate pretty good the whole day. Maybe they're on track to be in a caloric deficit for the day. Maybe they were on a specific plan. But once they eat their dinner, they're still hungry for something else. And because they were deducting and taking away calories from the body that the body needs, now it's, you know, Thursday night and they want to enjoy themselves and they want to sit down and watch TV for a

Starting point is 01:04:35 while. And they end up self-sabotaging their own plan when they were really doing a great job. They did a really good job for most of the week. And now the wheels are starting to fall off. And then they see Friday, like, I'm going to go have some drinks. You know, then they're just like, F it. I'm just going to go for it. And the whole week, the whole from Thursday onward, you know, kind of falls apart. How do you help people to be able to like jujitsu off their all the different stress that they're dealing with in a day? How do you help them to develop a skillset that allows them to take on these things so that they can have

Starting point is 01:05:12 a mind that is more in control of the circumstances that are going on every day? Yeah. Well, the first discussion is to help people understand that the metabolism is a stress barometer. It is measuring and responding to stress. Once they understand that, the next discussion is, well, let's discuss what stress is, because a lot of people think stress is just emotional. Stress is not just emotional. We talked about one form of powerful stress. The calorie gap is a big form of stress. Sleep deprivation is a stress. Eating too much or too little is a stress. Exercising too much or too little is a stress. And so once we have those conversations, then we say, what can we do to take stress off the barometer? I call this rest-based living. It basically says,

Starting point is 01:05:57 we have lots of tools that will lower stress hormones and take stress off the system. Some of those would be walking. Some of those would be sauna therapy, contrast hydrotherapy, massage, physical affection, sex, orgasm, that kind of stuff. Time with pets. Aren't some of those things stresses as well, though? Absolutely. And see, this is another nuanced thing. So with sauna, for example, right? It's a eustress. It gives you a little bit of a challenge to help your body adapt. Now, if you're doing sauna every day for two hours, this is turning it back into a dieting mindset. If you're doing it enough, but not too much, that is what we're looking at here. But we have lots and lots of tools. So you're right. Sauna, while you're in the sauna, raises cortisol levels. Once you get out of the sauna, you lower those cortisol levels. And by the way, how would you know if it's too much or not? Schmeck goes out of check or not.

Starting point is 01:06:55 That's why I always teach this to my clients. By the way, art, we know coloring, painting, sculpting, anything you do, creative pursuit tends to lower stress hormones. And so what we want to do is put enough you stress in. This would be things like sauna, enough exercise, but not too much. These kinds of things that we want all the things in their physical affection, creative pursuits, massage, meditation, tai chi, yoga, so long as it's relaxing in yoga and not super, you know, Bikram power yoga, all these things that give us a woosah effect, right? It's like woosah, relax. And we know that it's working and we're not overdoing it when the metabolism speaking to us and saying, hey, my sleep is good. It's not fragmented and difficult. My mood is stable. My energy is predictable. I am not having hunger that is out of my control.

Starting point is 01:07:53 I'm also not having cravings that are out of my control. And all of these things, and there's a lot more that we can do. It's just that most people go diet or exercise, diet or exercise. In my way, there's looking at this, there's three blocks we should consider with metabolism. I call it the four M's of metabolism. There's mindset slash mindfulness, right? That's all this stress reducing stuff. There's also movement. This is walking. We're not built to run. We're built to walk. And that should be considered different than exercise. And we now know this through research that things like meat are a whole different category for us metabolic. So there's mindset, movement, meals, what we eat,

Starting point is 01:08:37 and then metabolics, all the things that move the metabolism. That would include drugs, exercise, supplements, that kind of thing. What most people are missing here is they only go meals and metabolics, meals and metabolics. That's all that matters. Diet and exercise, diet and exercise. Not realizing that too much or too little of either of those stresses out the metabolism. So now what we need to do is add in the mindfulness component to take the edge off the stress barometer and, in my opinion, component to take the edge off the stress barometer and, in my opinion, plenty of walking. Even that can be too much, though, for some people. We've seen nurses, construction workers, people like that, that even walking can be a little bit too much of a stress. The proof is in the pudding. Each person's stress barometer will respond a little bit differently based on

Starting point is 01:09:23 what they're doing, but this is a more full picture in my mind of dealing with the stress. Instead of making it all about diet and exercise constantly, we need to add these other two buckets in there as well. And I guarantee you, if we had to triage these and say, hey, rank one to 10, where you are on mindfulness, how well you're doing with that and all those stress reducing activities, how much, how well are you on walking? How are you on meals and how are you on metabolics? What will happen is people are going to score very low or maybe not even be aware of the movement piece and the mindfulness piece. And that tells you everything you need to know right there, in my opinion. This is actually a cool thing that anybody in the audience can do, because I think sometimes

Starting point is 01:10:04 it's necessary for people to test things out so they can understand the difference. There'd be nights that I would remember to use it and I'd wake up in the morning and because we have the eight sleep, which tracks our sleep and also use the aura ring, like you could see the difference in terms of your quality of sleep. But then the nights that I forget to use it, first off, when I would wake up, I would feel the difference because I'd wake up with a dry mouth because my mouth was open. But I also wouldn't feel as rested as the night that I actually used a mouth tape. So I think it's cool if any of you guys want to test this on yourself, just grab some tape, sleep. You'll probably have great sleep.

Starting point is 01:10:42 Do that for a few days. And then sleep a night without taping. See how you feel in the morning because you'll notice the difference. And you can even track the difference in terms of your sleep quality. Yeah, the amount of people that we have who are giving reviews where they've got a whoop band or they've got an aura ring or something that's tracking themselves, and they're showing us the results of, wow, this is how much better I slept. And this is data that's showing, wow, I slept so much better because of Hashi's tape and

Starting point is 01:11:09 taping my mouth shut. 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 I'm encouraged to do it every night because it's simple enough. I did mention every once in a while I won't tape. But 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

Starting point is 01:11:38 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. 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 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 120 and see if you can kind of like ride that out or above 110 whatever feels appropriate for you and see if

Starting point is 01:12:13 you can kind of keep that elevated for a couple of minutes at a time maybe at first maybe you're only able to do that for two or three minutes at a time, maybe you can start 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

Starting point is 01:12:45 where you wouldn't be like redlining. You know, a lot of times- You're a 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

Starting point is 01:12:57 to help you to have the kind of reverse of that when you sleep. And that's to really just calm the hell down. Let's just say you're eating fantastically for your body type and for who you are, but you're not exercising or sleeping well. Who cares? Or if you're not exercising or if you are exercising but you're not sleeping well, no one cares. Stop posting. 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.

Starting point is 01:13:31 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. Oh, really? It's really, really, sleep deprivation is now known as a carcinogen. Oh, really? It's really, really, really bad. 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.

Starting point is 01:13:58 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 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.

Starting point is 01:14:20 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. So six hours of sleep deprivation for one week. That's all. And guess what they found? They found a 3% change in their genome. What does that mean?

Starting point is 01:14:39 We'll get a bit further into it. We have around 25,000 genes or 20,000 genes in the human genome. bit further into it. We have around 25,000 genes or 20,000 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. 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.

Starting point is 01:15:15 The ones that were upregulated were the genes responsible for growth of tumor cells. Damn it. So chronically depriving yourself of sleep 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 ever first car accident i was like sleep deprived coming back from work i closed my eyes for a few seconds the next thing i hit a car i was like 19 at the time yeah yeah but see that's what's happening

Starting point is 01:15:49 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 here to survive evolutionarily past the age of 40 so we you know it said you know it 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 behind the mark in every way. So you're not just getting behind on these cognitive functions, you're also disrupting your genome. That's scary. Everything else, I really caution against melatonin. Why? Can you explain it? This is good.

Starting point is 01:16:39 Because it's a hormone. I mean, I'm not going out there and just taking estrogen. I'm not just going out and getting enough. You know, in Australia, you have to be under the age of 60. You have to be prescribed melatonin. Good for you guys. Yeah. So what happens? Because a lot of-

Starting point is 01:16:54 It's interesting though, vitamin D is recommended a lot, right? And it's a hormone, right? It is. But this is a bit different. I think that it has major correlations in the growth of kids as well so there's a lot of mothers out there just giving their kids melatonin it's a naturally secreting hormone that gets secreted in response to darkness um and if you over stimulate the pineal gland to keep you know producing it'll it'll not produce it naturally there's just things

Starting point is 01:17:24 that we can do by going out and getting sunlight every single day. A lot of stuff is so interesting because we take stuff to rev ourselves up, you know, and then to take something to calm back down, kind of depending on what it is, I guess we kind of view as bad. But to me, if you're drinking a cup of coffee in the morning and you're taking a pre-workout to get yourself fired up to work out and you need to take some melatonin here and there, I don't see really the major harm. What if it's like – I've heard some people recommend like taking it earlier. Do you think that that would be of any –

Starting point is 01:17:57 In the day? Yeah, like not taking it like midday but like taking it – because I think the fear is that you're kind of throwing off your whole cycle cycle but what if you were to take it at like five or six p.m and you go to bed at like nine or something like that i don't know well everybody's different the way that we you know metabolize different vitamins is different but here's the thing the biggest issue with melatonin is a lot of the labels now say okay this is five milligrams when in actual fact it's 100 times the amount they just So they're lying on the labels, first and foremost. So you may be taking 500 milligrams. You don't know what you're taking. That's the first thing. That's why supplement control is something that we need

Starting point is 01:18:34 to be speaking about, making sure that your supplements are going through third-party testing two or three times, being double certified or triple certified if you can. double certified or triple certified if you can. But, you know, taking it, you know, at 5pm, depending on what dosage you have and everything, it might just start to get you sleepy. But I, the only time I will take it is when I'm traveling to and from Australia just to get back on the time zone. So I've been, I got to Australia five, got to America five days ago from Australia, got to America five days ago from Australia, landed in LA and I supplemented with just 2.5 milligrams, as it says on the bottle, for three nights. And that got me back on track.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Proven Sleep Hacks to Boost Your Health

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