Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Shawn Stevenson on How to Get the Best Sleep of Your Life

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

In this episode I interview Shawn Stevenson, author of the popular book Sleep Smarter and host of the The Model Health podcast. He’s also a super smart and super nice guy so I was excited to get him on the show to talk specifically about the subject of sleep. While I’ve written a bit about it on Muscle For Life and Legion, I haven’t really dived into it here on the podcast. Everyone knows that getting enough sleep is important, but not everyone knows just how important it really is, especially for us fitness fanatics. Sleep insufficiency has been linked to car crashes, industrial disasters, and medical and other occupational errors. It increases the risk of chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity, and cancer, and it dramatically reduces our quality of life and productivity. Research shows that inadequate sleep can slow down weight loss, lead to weight gain and muscle loss, and reduce testosterone levels. The bottom line is that your sleep hygiene is like your diet - it’s either working for you or against you, regardless of whether you realize it. In this interview, you’re going to learn all about what good sleep hygiene really is, and what you can do start doing tonight to get some of the best sleep of your life. That doesn’t necessarily mean sleeping more than you already do. In fact, you may even be able to sleep less, but feel more rested every day. You can get there by improving the quality or efficiency of your sleep. If you have your sleep efficiency is really dialed in, you shouldn’t need to spend more than 6 to 6.5 hours in bed every night, and in this interview, Shawn explains why and how to get there. If any of that sounds interesting to you, then I think you’re going to enjoy the interview. Here it is. 17:40 - How do you know if you're sleep deprived? 18:50 - Can you make up for lost sleep with taking a nap? 20:34 - What are some strategies for getting good sleep? 25:10 - What is cortisol and melatonin, and how does it affect our sleep? 29:45 - How does light from our cell phones and tv's change our sleep patterns? 34:47 - Does caffeine and pre-workout affect your sleep? 38:55 - How can we change our bedroom environment to allow better sleep? 47:04 - What's the best room temperature to sleep in? 53:02 - What are the benefits of getting proper sleep? 59:07 - Does eating a meal near your bed time affect your sleep? 1:01:28 - How can people connect with you and find your work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because

on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy

something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Mike Matthews, and I am back with another episode of the Most Full Life Podcast. Now, in this episode, I interview Sean Stevenson, who is the author of the popular book, Sleep Smarter, and host of the very popular The Model Health Podcast. He's also a super smart and super nice guy, so I was excited to get him on

the show to talk specifically about the subject of sleep, because while I have written a bit about it on both Muscle for Life and Legion, I haven't really dived into it here on the podcast. Now, everyone knows that getting enough sleep is important, but not everyone knows just how important it really is, and especially for us fitness fanatics. For example, sleep insufficiency has been linked to car crashes, industrial disasters, and medical and other occupational errors. risk of chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity, and cancer, and it dramatically reduces our quality of life and productivity levels. Research shows that inadequate sleep can also slow down weight loss, lead to weight gain and muscle loss, and reduce testosterone levels. So the bottom line is that your sleep hygiene is pretty much like your diet. It's either working for you or against you, regardless of whether you realize it.

And in this interview, you're going to learn all about what good sleep hygiene really is and what you can start doing tonight to get some of the best sleep of your life. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to sleep more than you already do. In fact, you may even be able to sleep less than you currently do, but feel more rested every day. And you can get there by improving the quality or the efficiency of your sleep. As you'll see in this interview, if you really have your sleep efficiency dialed in, you shouldn't need to spend more than maybe six and a half hours in bed every night. And that's something that Sean has helped many, many people achieve. You don't need

anything special to get there. I myself sleep six to six and a half hours every night. And I can do that because my sleep quality is very high. And I know that because I've used, you know, those sleep tracking devices that let you see not just how much you're sleeping, but how that sleep breaks down in terms of the different phases of sleep with deep sleep being the most important for rejuvenation and recovery, which is something that Sean breaks down in this interview. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, then I think you're going to enjoy our talk. And here it is. Hey, Sean, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. It's my honor to be here, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to get you on the podcast because I've written a bit about

sleep and the importance of sleep, but I haven't really spoke much about it. I haven't done a deep dive like what we're going to do, but it is something I get asked about fairly frequently. People asking if I get X number of hours of sleep a night, is that enough? Or how do I know if I'm getting enough sleep or not? Or how can I get better sleep? And then also just for me personally, I'm interested in the whole discussion because like I was telling you before we were recording, for the last year, I probably averaged maybe five and a half hours of sleep a night. And the reason why I did that is because I guess I'm kind of a workaholic kind of person and I thought it'd be a good idea if I could just get some more time.

Like if I could just never have to sleep again, I probably would take that over anything. Like I would take that to be my superpower. That'd be my superpower of choice. If I could just never have to sleep again, live two lives almost or live an extra third or whatever. But anyways, previously I, you know, I was sleeping six, six and a half hours a night and that was though normal. But anyways, previously, I was sleeping six, six and a half hours a night. And that was so normal.

Like whether I would wake up before my alarm and I would be rested and I did totally fine in my training. There were no signs that that wasn't enough sleep for me. And that was for a few years. And then I was like, oh, maybe I, hey, if I feel good on six, six and a half, maybe I'll feel good on like five and a half. And not so much. Didn't really work out. So like one of my little new year's resolutions is I have to get, I have to get more sleep. I have to make it more of a priority, but now I'm even questioning previously because I'm getting older now. Like, I don't know, three or four years ago, six, six and a half was totally fine, but I don't know if you've had this before, but I almost feel like my decision on how much sleep

I want to get or my thought, my ideas about like, I don't like sleeping. I mean, it's not, I just, I just, it just, I would prefer to sleep as little as possible. Tends to mess with my sleep almost. Like I wonder if I've just kind of Jedi mind tricked myself into, you know what I mean? But like physically there are going to be ramifications over time. So I have a personal vested interest in this conversation as well. So quick, quick question and just elaboration. When you did that experiment of taking more sleep off, what was the symptom that you experienced? Because you kept trucking through and doing great in your work, but what was the thing you experienced? I experienced it in my training actually. So my workouts, I wasn't progressing much. Like I really kind of hit a rut where weights that were previously, everything started feeling heavy. My workouts just were quite like the perceived exertion rate, you know, was going up in my workouts despite, you know, doing more or less the same stuff as I was doing previously.

And, um, I noticed, uh, I got sick a few times last year and I don't normally, maybe I'll get one kind of mild little cold thing a year. Um, but I got sick several times last year, not like super sick, but it's just not normal. Um, and I noticed like I had more little nagging aches and pains like in joints and stuff, um, which is obviously related to the training because I do a fair, like a lot of my stuff is kind of just heavy compound lifting. So, um, and I had a sense that my body just wasn't recovering as well as, you know, when I was getting more sleep and yeah, those are the main, those are the main things. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. So this is, these are common things, but these are usually people are subject to these things with a little bit more sleep than what you were getting. You know, when people start to kind of ratchet back and and cut away into their sleep time.

So there's a couple of things here. And, you know, there's there's a lot of different camps out there, a lot of different arguments. But I'm really sticking to what the studies say. I'm really sticking to the facts. I'm really sticking to what actually works. You know, there are anomalies like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he's like, six hours is what you need. If you need more than six hours, you need to sleep faster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? That's his whole thing.

And, you know, even he's changed his pitch on this stuff too, you know, recently. Has he? Yes, in an interview he's saying, you know, that's like the bare minimum. A lot of times, you know, it's more than six is closer to seven hours of sleep, uh, especially as you get it, get gotten a little older. And that's one of the things you mentioned as well, because when we're younger, we can, we can quote get by. And it's because we've got hormones like Greek gods when we're young, you know, like all of these things are really pushing forward and to get right to the heart of the matter. You know, I talk a lot about,

you know, epigenetics, nutrigenomics, what's going on at the cellular level. And some of these responses that the body has when you're younger, even against that, that stress is in order for you to push the culture forward, to push the population forward, In order for you to push the culture forward, to push the population forward, literally giving you additional energy so that you can procreate. Because historically, we would have been having babies a lot younger than a lot of people who kind of make a decision to have a baby when you turn 30 or whatever the case might be. So we get all of this extra insurance. But here's the issue. And there's a study that I actually this was published by University of California, and they found that sleep deprivation is one of those epigenetic triggers. And what it does is this literally shortens your telomeres. telomeres are basically, and I don't know if you talked about this on your show before, but basically at the end of your chromosomes, and this is where you're containing, this is where

your genetic information, your DNA is contained that has basically information for printing out copies of yourself. Good copies are really crappy copies. And at the end of them, there are these little telomeres that keep your chromosome basically from unwinding or your DNA from unraveling. I'll put it like that. And as you age, the telomeres get clipped off. They get a little bit shorter and shorter and shorter as your cells divide. And so they found that sleep deprivation is something that's an epigenetic trigger that accelerates the loss of your telomeres. And basically that ages you faster. So to put that in a little nutshell is when you were sleep depriving yourself, when you're younger, you can get away with it, but you're accelerating the point when

you can't get away with it. Right. And this is why today we're seeing so many people in their 20s experiencing chronic illnesses. You would normally see in 60 year olds, 70 year olds, 80 year olds, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease. I had people. I just saw, I just saw, uh, it was, I mean, they were linking, they were talking about a study, but it was, I believe it was colorectal cancer. It's also because millennials, our diet is generally shit as well. So you have like, you know, shit sleep, shit diet, smoking, alcohol, blah, blah, blah. It's just like a perfect storm of shit to just kill you basically. Right. And so all of those things are known epigenetic influences as well, you know, but the biggest component here and what my argument is, and again,

with the proof to back it up is that sleep is more impactful on your genetic expression than your diet and then your exercise combined. And it's because of the huge influence that it has on your hormones. And the biggest thing, and another thing that you experience, the influence it has on your immune system. All right. So if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. This is when your body produces the vast majority of reparative enzymes, anabolic hormones, the things that enable you to train and to recover and to keep training. Because you know that we don't get in shape when we're working out. We're really breaking our body down.

Right. And that's a catabolic experience. And you need anabolic. Anabolism is happening mainly during sleep, specifically the stages of deep non-REM sleep. And so if you're not going through those cycles, and here's what the issue was for you. And so for everybody, when they ask the question, how much sleep should I get? We need to stop thinking in those terms. It's really about optimizing your sleep cycles and how many complete sleep cycles you're getting. And your sleep cycles are anywhere from like 75 minutes on the low end to like 120 minutes. And you need to be getting a minimum of about four of those every single night. And so for some people it's between four and six of those, but the average person is four and five. And so with

that, you're going to be cycling through all these different stages of sleep and different brainwave patterns that have that elicit programs for each one of those stages. So when you're in, we'll just say, um, stage two of the non REM sleep. And so for people that are like, what is this REM sleep anyway? So REM sleep, that's rapid eye movement sleep. This is where literally your eyes are darting around, moving rapidly and kind of irrationally all over the place. And that stage corresponds with beta brainwaves. So this kind of like even a waking state of your brainwaves, alpha and theta, right? And this is also where you're doing a lot of dreaming, but why does that matter is because there's also memory processing happening then. So this is converting your

short-term memory, like stuff that you're learning right now into your working short-term memory and eventually your long-term memory. So for people that are cutting away their sleep, trying to perform better at their job, you're literally messing up your, your ability to remember things. And I'm not saying that we can't, but your brain and your body has to work harder at doing that. And all of that starts to decompress and puts more stress on your system. So the point I want to get to with the non-REM sleep, there's three stages of non-REM sleep. And anybody could just go to Dr. Google and kind of look this stuff up. And I do talk about it in my book as well, but each one of those stages, this is known as the anabolic state when we're talking about non-REM sleep. And the deepest, most anabolic

stage of sleep, that stage three deep sleep is where you're really getting that nice dose of HGH, right? This human growth hormone, the greatest secretion of that is happening while you're asleep. And so if you're interrupting your cycles, man, so if you're like, oh, I'm just going to take another hour off my sleep, see what happens. You might be cutting out a whole chunk of your healing. It could be one third of it or whatever. Yeah. A whole chunk of your memory processing, a whole chunk of your recovery. And last thing is that huge hit to your immune system because it's kind of like a changing of guard happens. The vast majority of your immune system is located in your gut. And so your gut bacteria cascade, your microbiome, every single day as the day goes on and you're awake,

more of these opportunistic bacteria kind of start to wake up and take hold if you don't go to sleep and reset that system. And researchers out of Cornell University found this out. And so you literally have to sleep in order to keep your immune system strong. And that's why you start to notice those things like the colds and the lack of recovery. And it's really that simple. So what I want to tell people to do is target getting four to five complete sleep cycles every single night. And that's generally for most people is going to be around seven-ish hours of sleep, seven and a half for some people.

But some people require more. Some people need more closer to nine. Some people can get by with less, closer to six. You know, but I do recommend- And for that, do you recommend tracking in some way? Like, you know, because you have all kinds of apps and gizmos and things that will, I mean, I've tried different ones. So like, I was curious how much deep sleep I was getting on average, and it was maybe four hours of deep sleep a night on average, for example. tech when it comes to my sleep, you know, and I'm a fan and proponent of self quantification for sure. But for me, and being somebody that's been teaching this stuff for half a decade easily, as far as sleep is concerned, and working clinically over 15 years, my bedroom is like

a sacred space. I'm keeping as little tech in my bedroom as possible. I'm not trying to deal with any kind of EMFs and that kind of thing. And there are some that you can operate without Wi-Fi, you know, that can track your information. And I'm actually working with a company now to try to, you know, do a little experimentation. But for me, I just go off of, and this is what kind of answered one of the questions too, how would people know if they're sleep deprived? I go off of how I feel and very, what I really want to encourage people to do is start to pay attention to yourself again. We're usually running around, we're so external and we're not just, we live inside our body. How can you not know if something feels a little different? Because that's just

feedback from your body that you need to change if you're not feeling your best. And so I know this for certain, of course, number one, just feeling refreshed when I wake up in the morning. Is it very difficult to get out of bed? That's a good marker. Number two, after just kind of even getting out of bed and get moving, is it taking a long time to get out of this, what we call clinically sleep inertia? Like we're getting out of that kind of pull that wants to tell us to get back into bed. And outside of that, our energy through the day, when we start to get into our workouts and we start to get into our day and get into work, are we just dragging ass? Are we actually feeling good? And then another thing is, do we have that sleep inertia kick in

during the day where we feel so compelled that we have to take a nap. Now, we could do a whole talk just on naps alone, but... That's all I wanted to ask you about. I mean, is there a quick, like, can you make up for lost sleep at night by taking a nap? Do you recommend napping? Okay. I would give, I would compare napping, a good nap to taking a good supplement. Yeah. It's good. It doesn't replace real food. All right. And generally for most people, the strong desire, physical desire to take a nap is due to them getting poor quality sleep and not cycling through their sleep cycles correctly at night. All right. Now a good nap is a good nap. Sometimes your mind and body just wants to

shut down like a good Sunday nap and just get a little bit more time in. But that can also, for some people, can mess up your sleep cycles. So with the nap, it can definitely be a supplement. If somebody did get a crappy night's sleep before, definitely, if you can set aside 20 minutes during the day to get you a power nap in, go for it. But we're also forcing a hormonal change, you know, and can throw people off for the long term. So I would recommend most times, if it's just a slight sleep deprivation, just stay up, do your normal stuff during the day. And we could talk about some of these strategies to ensure you get great sleep that night so you get fully recovered. So that's another marker is the sleep inertia. If you feel like you have to take a nap, chances are your sleep quality is not that great.

Digestion, immunity. If you're finding yourself getting sick, chances are you're not getting that high quality sleep. Everybody, you know, gets sick every now and then. But generally, most people and myself included, I hardly ever see anything like that. And I know if something's creeping up on me and nine times out of 10, it was some kind of issue going on with my sleep and my sleep schedule. Great. Well, then, yeah, I mean, maybe if you want to just jump into some strategies for getting really good sleep. Sure, sure. The first one is I like to have the low hanging fruit, first of all, and even, excuse me, this timing of your

exercise is going to be something that can help with your sleep quality. So Appalachian State University did this study that I cited in Sleep Smarter in my book, and they had exercisers to train at three different times throughout the study period. And they had them train exclusively in the morning. Then the second period, they had him train exclusively in the afternoon at 1 p.m. And in the morning, it was 7 a.m. And then the third phase of the study, they had him train exclusively at night at 7 p.m. And they found that the people that were training at 7 a.m. in the morning spent more time in the deepest, most anabolic stage of sleep. They tended to sleep more, so they had longer sleep time.

And they had a 25% greater drop in blood pressure at night. All right. Simply from exercising in the morning makes your blood pressure drop more at night. What, how is that possible? Well, really what that is, you're falling in sync with the natural kind of durnal pattern or circadian rhythm of the earth. And that sleep. Wake up and do stuff. Yeah. And what it is, is by you exercising in the morning, that's, first of all, that's what our ancestors would be doing. Not necessarily exercising, but getting up, doing work, hunting, gathering, that kind of thing. But today we got to manufacture that stuff. So what we call this clinically is a cortisol reset. So a lot of

people will see when we call them tired and wired, where their cortisol is too low in the morning and it's too high in the evening. So this is why it's causing them issues getting to sleep and staying asleep because their cortisol is too high. So to get their cortisol reset, to get the cortisol elevated in the morning, simply getting up and doing even four minutes of exercise. Do a quick Tabata and you're going to be able to ensure that you're going to stack conditions for you to sleep better at night. All right. So some people, this would be, you know, if it's your gym time to hit the gym in the morning, go for it. You just haven't been doing it. But if people are working out in the afternoon, that's OK. You can still get this. And I did a year experiment because I've been a morning exerciser for, you know, over 10 years. But in preparation for the book, I had to test it out and see. So

for an entire year, I got up in the morning. I did maybe around five, 10 minutes of exercise, most times just kind of jumping on this rebound or my mini trampoline. And then I did a full workout at like 4 p.m. in the early evening slash afternoon. And everything improved. Because for guys, it's like, we don't want to mess up our gains by some kind of random workout in the morning. Am I going to be able to perform later? My testosterone went up, my strength numbers went up. Um, my reaction time went up, everything that you can mark, everything improved. All right. And so this five minutes of exercise in the morning didn't impact my training later. And I continued to sleep great, even though I was kind of worried about it because it's

like if I if I'm working out later, is it going to mess with my sleep? And not at all. It's because I did the other things as well that we're going to talk about. So number one is get some morning exercise in, even if it's just three or four minutes. Do some activity to get your cortisol reset. Cool. I like it. That's great.

I myself have worked out in the morning for years and years and years, but recently now I'm doing a couple workouts after work and then a couple morning workouts. But yeah, I mean, I guess if I look back over it, my workout schedule has been a bit random. Even I actually even tried when I first, I moved from Florida, Virginia and I was like, yeah, I want to start working out later for that even reason of like you have more energy later. But looking back on it, I when I would hit the bed at night in training early, I just felt more ready to sleep, I guess, is the way to describe it. So anyways, that might be why. Got it. Yeah, man. And a lot of people experience that.

But for some people that are listening, they're like, I already work out in the morning, but my exercise, I mean, my sleep is crappy. Yeah. So that's not the solution for me. Again, this was a low hanging fruit. Sure. And I talk about 21 and these were just 21. I have more of the clinically proven strategies to help people improve their sleep quality,

not necessarily sleeping more, but sleeping better, improving those sleep cycles and sleep rhythms. And so morning exercise is a key component. But if you're doing that and then you're, you know, you're working out at 7 a.m. and then, you know, you're up at midnight that night watching Game of Thrones or whatever, I think a new season's coming out, that's going to mess up your sleep. You know, like you can interrupt this process at many different points along the line. So another strategy here that during the day that we're missing out on that can help to kind of reset that sleep rhythm is getting access to sunlight. And there was a study, and this was published in Innovations in

Clinical Neuroscience, and they found that people who get sunlight in the early part of the day, so what's recommended is basically between 6.30 and 8 a.m. sunlight, sun exposure, they had a much lower drop in their cortisol in the evening. All right. So getting sunlight in the morning drops your cortisol lower in the evening. All right. And so what's the big deal when I keep talking about cortisol? Cortisol is so important and so valuable, but it's gotten a bad name. It's kind of like the person who actually wrote the foreword for my book, Dr. Sarah Godfrey, she's Harvard trained, MIT trained, that kind of thing. She calls cortisol the bad boyfriend, right? It's just like, you know, they still kind of have this attraction.

They're still kind of, you know, interesting and that kind of thing. They're doing some things for you, but it can mess your life up if you spend too much time with them kind of thing, right? So that's basically the summary with cortisol. And I don't want to just make it like a bad boyfriend, but just, you know,

somebody in your family that they're great as long as they don't drink, right? As long as they don't go too hard, they're great to be around and add value. Right. So, and I've never talked about cortisol like that before, but I think it's a good analogy. No, it's a good analogy. I think everybody listening, at least most people are going to know cortisol, but it's the stress hormone. It's one of our stress hormones, but this is the most popular. So there's also all these catecholamines, you know, people know about adrenaline, noradrenaline, this kind of thing. But cortisol really gets the baddest rap and it's not fair.

Cortisol is a problem when it's produced at the wrong time and in the wrong amounts. And so if it's elevated in the evening, it's very biologically, that's not accurate in how your body should be working. Because cortisol makes you up, right? That's like. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it suppresses melatonin. That's the other thing.

Melatonin is this glorified sleep hormone. And why do people say that? Well, it actually helps for your body to manage and modulate those sleep cycles we've been talking about. If you don't have melatonin produced properly, you're not going to go in and out of your sleep cycles properly. And again, you might get eight hours of sleep and you're still going to wake up feeling tired. All right. So we've got to make sure cortisol is low in the evening and melatonin is high. So another one of the ways to do that is getting light exposure, specifically the sunlight, preferably on your

skin, but at least having it coming in through the windows, even on an overcast day, because you have your optical receptors pick up that light, and it sends information to your brain and nervous system that sets that rhythm. All right. And so there's also for people that are like, well, I work in a cubicle dungeon during the day, I just can't do that. Well, first of all, that's not true. There's always a way. Yeah. It's just, maybe it's just a five minute break or whatever. Right. We literally putting ourselves in a box, right? If we're working in this kind of cubicle dungeon, but there are clinically proven, uh, light devices, right? So light therapy devices that are used to treat things like seasonal affective disorder. So there are light boxes.

There are visors. You could put on these visors that shoot this kind of daylight spectrum of light into your eyes. There are even earbuds because there are photoreceptors in your ear canal. It's so crazy. And there is so much research coming out of backing this, just putting this light into your ear, helping to improve your sleep quality by doing it at the right time. All right. So there's different hacks we can use, but ideally maybe you wake up and you go outside and do some exercise then, right? If it's not stack it, you just said it, man. Yes. Stack the conditions. You can knock it all out in that nice little chunk. You know, even if you got, if you got a meeting, a morning meeting, you can go for a walking meeting. Uh, but sometimes,

you know, it just depends on where people live. You know, we've got different conditions and things like that. But there's always a way that we can tweak things and adjust things to get what we want. So that's part one. We're talking about the morning. Now let's move into the evening. increase one of the things it does is increases cortisol sure what's going to happen at night well harvard researchers confirm that that light exposure from our artificial light you know not moonlight artificial light devices tvs and stuff you got it you got it so they're calling it light pollution today and what it does is it elevates your cortisol and suppresses melatonin the exact opposite thing you want does that apply to not just blue light but like any light so it's different artificial light something so you know all of these organizations send me stuff all the time now uh sleep related gadgets so nasa scientists so they reached out uh the company that they use and they've got biological light for improved

natural sleep. Right. So I'm not trying to plug them. I don't really know them that well, but, um, they're sending me this stuff and basically it depends on the lux. So the power of the light and also depends on the color of the light. This is key because not all of these various spectrums of colors impact your body the same way. So the blue, bluish white spectrum. So when you think of blue in our, in our culture, we attribute that to being cold, right? But if you look at something like the Kelvin scale, blue is very hot. All right. And so red is cold. If you flip it and put it on, if you look on the Kelvin scale, we tend to think of red as hot, but as far as this exposure for us, red light hardly had any impact on elevating cortisol and suppressing melatonin

compared to the blue and white light. All right. So, and what they found was that blue and white light exposure, like just from being on our laptops at night or watching television, suppresses melatonin. Every single hour you're on your device, it suppresses melatonin for an additional 30 minutes. So there's kind of the marker. And I'm just giving you the summary of what that looks like. It's basically that those are the amounts. And so what can we do about this? Number one, you can give yourself a little bit of a screen curfew.

Get off your device a little bit before you plan on going to bed. I know for many years, man, when I had my health problems when I was younger and in college, I would literally fall asleep with the TV on and eventually wake up and go to bed. Or I would, last thing I would do is turn off the TV and go get into bed. I'm like, I really should get some sleep. I got to get up and go to class in the morning. and go get into bed. I'm like, I really should get some sleep. I got to get up and go to class in the morning. And so a lot of people are living like that. We've got to stop. We've really got to stop and get ourselves in check with that. And plus our dreams will be weird. We'll have that weird Wayne Brady, Bobby Brown treat with Mike Tyson. But anyways, and the other thing is we can utilize some of these great technological hacks that we have, which is like these lights, you know, using these lights, if we're going to stay up and we're like hanging out, playing a game, you know, reading or whatever the case might be, stuff like that are on your laptops and desktops. Please put everybody, if you've not done this yet, this is totally free. Go to F dot L U X,

just Google it, type in F dot L U X. So it's Flux. It's a free app. It is totally free and super easy. A couple of clicks. It installs in your computer. I've been using it for I think about four years now. Same. from your screens automatically when it gets dark outside and it puts it back in your screen when the light comes back on on the planet. But here's the thing is that you can easily disable it if you need to check a design or something like that. But it's going to save you a lot of issues with cortisol problems and melatonin. It's not perfect because we're still stimulated on our device, but it's a hack. And also there's blue light blocking glasses. There's lots of cool stuff we can use. So that's another big thing. There's a lot out there in the media about this. So a lot of people listening, probably like, you know, I know that already, but hopefully I've tied in some deeper,

given that belief, some greater legs to really understand why it's so important. And plus one of the people that really helped to push that in the culture was me. You know, I've been pushing this stuff out there for five years now. And even folks like Arianna Huffington, you know, use my book and her research. She's got an incredible book on sleep health as well. But my book is really dedicated to, you know, she's telling a story. I'm dedicated to giving you the strategies, right? Here's what works. Try these things, put these five, then like each thing has five different ways of implementing it, you know, because we still have to find out what works for us. We don't want to we don't want to be the sleep police.

You know, we want to still enjoy our life. And like you said, you want to live more and sleep as little as possible. And I get that. You know, so what we want to do is stack conditions in our favor. So the time we do spend horizontal is really going to help. It's the most efficient sleep we can get, so to speak, I guess. Exactly. So we can really live our life. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you

are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. So can you touch on caffeine? Because especially among us fitness people, a lot of us have caffeine, whether it's coffee or pre-workout or whatever, it's obviously popular. Yeah. Full disclosure. I'm a fan of caffeine. I enjoy caffeine. That's my one vice. I don't even, I don't even drink alcohol.

It's not a bad vice to have, but it can be, you know, just like anything, you know? Um, but that whole talk of like, uh, anything in moderation, that's just BS because like, uh, cocaine in moderation can be a problem. You understand? So we have to, everything has a different point at which it can begins to become disabling. And so with caffeine, what it really is, is not so much just the amount, but the timing of it.

And this is key. So caffeine has what's called an eight hour half-life, all right? It has a half-life of eight hours. So basically for the average person, after eight hours, just say you have a 200 milligram cup of coffee, okay? 200 milligram, I'm sorry, with 200 milligrams of caffeine. Sure, yeah. And that's like a small cup of coffee and nobody gets a small cup of coffee. Yeah. All right. But 200 milligrams after eight hours, half of it is still active in your system. All right. So 100 milligrams is still active in your system. That can be enough. And for many people, it is to disrupt your sleep quality because caffeine is a very powerful nervous system stimulant. All right. And I break down in the book how it works and we can talk about it if we have time, but it affects something called adenosine, which is nudging you to go to sleep and it fits into those receptor sites for adenosine. And basically your, your body's building up this adenosine as a by-product of you being awake and they should be plugging in to these receptor sites to make you sleepy.

But caffeine is sitting in those receptor sites. And so all of these products are building up and basically you're tired, but you don't know it. That's the power. And then it also stimulates you as well too, right? So you have that double effect. Yes, that's number one, is that effect is you're tired and you don't know it, but also it is a nervous system stimulant. So it can effectively light up your nervous system like a Christmas tree. And so one of the studies that I cited was they had individuals consume caffeine immediately before bed, three hours before bed, and even six hours before bed. And six hours before bed, having caffeine was enough to pull away, literally cut away an hour of the person's sleep. So what, let me make

that clear. So basically the person thought that they got eight hours of sleep, but it was only seven according to the sleep devices, sleep monitor devices that they were using that actually tracks. So they lost a full hour of their sleep because of the caffeine, right? So even six hours out. So simple thing is if you're going to have caffeine, get your caffeine kick in in the morning. So your body has some time to basically detoxify and break it down. And I'm going to give a little hack. I think this might actually be the first time I've ever shared this publicly, but tyrosine, there's a supplement you can get in a supplement form. Tyrosine can actually help to buffer the effects of caffeine. And basically, like we talked

about adenosine and the receptor sites, they kind of kick that stuff out and allow for the adenosine to do its job. All right. So, but that can be a whole show. I don't want people taking a supplement or a drug to try to treat a symptom. But that's just in a spot case. That might be something you might be interested in. You just go to Dr. Google and check out tyrosine and, you know, so just something a little extra thing to throw out there. Cool. Yeah.

And it also kind of makes sense, like with what you were saying in terms of circadian rhythm to have caffeine early in the day when your body's getting up and going as opposed to later when it's supposed to be winding down, even just naturally, right? Yes, exactly. And guess what it does? It also elevates cortisol. Sure. That's another thing about the caffeine, you know, that we don't think about. And so again, if you're doing that too late in the evening and your cortisol levels can't drop, it could be a problem. Totally. What about, like, so I'm just coming off the top of my head, things about like, what's an ideal what

how do you have your bedroom set up in terms of you mentioned earlier no electronics uh do you have how you know nazi about it are you how do you have it set up oh man you know in our culture and i even enjoy this when i'm on the road you know i'm about to travel for a speaking event in the philippines example. And the hotel room is probably going to have a TV in the room. So it's such a cool experience to lay in your bed and watch TV. That's like when you really made it. I remember when I was a kid, we didn't have a television in our bedroom. You could forget about it. But as I got a little bit older, got to in my preteens, then we started to have the TV in our bedroom. I didn't want to come out, you know, just having that TV in your bedroom

is really awesome. The issue, obviously we've been talking about the screen exposure before bed, but also is our neural association. So your brain is always looking for patterns. And I think many of us listening, we had the experience of having a bedtime ritual when we were kids. We'd get ready for bed. Maybe moms would get us into the bathtub, maybe read a story if you had that kind of thing going on. Maybe, I don't know, you're doing some homework or having a little talk with your parent or grandparent. I don't know what your sleep ritual looked like, but many of us had them. I know I had them for a small chunk of my life when I lived with my grandmother, and it was an awesome thing. I always just kind of drifted

off to sleep. It was a normal pattern. Now today we don't do that anymore. We don't have a sleep ritual. We just kind of stumble into it, right? It's just more so like, I really should get to bed. Or, oh yeah, or frantically like, oh shit, I better, I need, and then, then you're like, I need to fall asleep. I need to go fall asleep fast or I'm going to be fucked. And it's stressful, right? It turns sleep instead of this beautiful, attractive, seductive, amazing thing, we turn it into a problem, right? And it's as simple as creating a strong neural association to having great sleep and having it be a great experience. So creating an evening ritual. And so if your bedroom has been an entertainment hub where you're going and watching TV,

there's a strong neuro association for your brain that when you go into your bedroom, it's time to watch TV, even if your intention is to go to bed. And so I could break this stuff down. This is not a joke. I could break it down to the degree, like some people might be like, well, when I walk into my bedroom, I could just tell myself it's, but when I'm saying it's a strong neuro association, I'm talking about, depending on how long you've had your TV in your bedroom, myelin. So myelination is basically insulation over these nerve pathways have been laid down so thick that even if you think you're trying to go in there and go to sleep, your brain is literally lighting up certain parts of your brain that are going to keep you up. And it's potentially,

even when you do go to sleep, if you don't turn the TV on, potentially that can interrupt those sleep cycles. Wow. Okay. Because this is the point of physiology. This isn't somatic. This isn't psychosomatic. It's not psychological. It's, this is very physical is very physical yeah very very physical it's like yeah if you can think a thought and change that then you can think a thought and maybe like you know double your testosterone production or something right right right my bicep has a new bicep yeah because because i just boosted my t just now but that's really what it is you know and of course every physical thing does have a psychological, emotional, mental component to it for sure. Sure. But for some people, that psychosis is rooted in something very physical, right?

And so to stack conditions in your favor with the television, for example, you just want to get that bad boy out of your room. And also I did cite because, you know, I'm a basic psychology. There's like the carrots and the stick. You know, some people are more motivated by reward. Some people are more motivated by pain and punishment. Crazy as it sounds. We're all motivated by each in different ways. But I'm a rewards-based thinker.

And so there was a study that I cited in Sleep Smarter. This was a study that was done on Italian couples. And they found that couples who had a television in their bedroom had 50% less sex. they found that couples who had a television in their bedroom had 50% less sex. All right. So getting your TV out of your bedroom could be a huge double wind transformation in your, in your sex life. All right. So, but some people, again, there are the anomalies, you know, and people are gonna be like, I have a TV in my bedroom. I'm doing it like a bunny, Sean. It's not an issue for me. Why am I talking about you? You probably do it, you know, in the, I don't know. What if you got rid of the TV then?

Maybe get rid of the TV and then it's like, it actually becomes a problem or something. Exactly. A higher quality problem. So, but for a lot of people, what it is really, it's number one, the impact that it has on our health. And if you're not feeling good, you know, chances, you know, it can start to decrease the opportunity for that to happen. And also it's a distraction, you know, and not being able to connect with the people, the person that you most want to connect with in your life. And so that's another big thing we talk about on my show, you know, with, uh, it's, it's called the model health show. So we talk about all things that create this and give people this model for a healthy life. And that includes your relationships as well. I truly do believe this, man. And I'd say this every opportunity I get. I believe that your relationships are the number one most influential thing on your health and your success in life. Hands down, not even close.

and so to cultivate that and work on that especially part of that bedtime ritual maybe instead of being on your device and scrolling through instagram maybe you actually talk to your significant other huh what a concept you know like you guys talk or you know maybe the possibility of sex happens prior to you you know whatever like most people have sex out of convenience right crazy as it sounds especially if you have kids, you got a job, you got all this stuff and that it can be a component, you know. And so especially for guys like whatever, whenever we could get it in, it doesn't matter. But it's we want to move away from that and have it to be like a natural part of life like it used to be for a lot of people before things change. like it, quote, used to be for a lot of people before things changed and you got so drone-like in your processes. So creating a sleep sanctuary, create a place that when you walk into your bedroom, it's like where two things are happening only, sleep or sex, and that's it. And that's

kind of the environment that I encourage people to create. A big part of that also is getting artificial light exposure, making sure that it's not getting into your bedroom. So getting yourself some blackout curtains, if you live in an area where you would be exposed to that kind of thing from street lights and cars and things like that. Because another study, and this was from Cornell University, and they had the subject to sleep in an otherwise dark room. So they're in a dark room and they took a light that was just the size of a quarter and put it behind their knee. That's the only light in the room. And just it hitting their skin was enough to disrupt their sleep cycles. All right. Talking about sleep cycles being the thing, right? So it can change their core body temperature and disrupt their

sleep cycles. Absolutely nuts. And it's like, how is that possible? Well, your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light and they send information to your brain and your endocrine system that tell, basically are trying to tell you what time it is. Your body's always trying to figure out what time it is, right? And the more that we can stack conditions in our favor to help our body to be in sync with the natural durnal pattern of the earth, the healthier we're going to be. Yeah. I'm still, that's amazing with the to be yeah that oh i'm still that's amazing with the light i'm really surprised that's like any devices again that yeah if whether and it's not just phones but it could be other things that blink and and you know just throw out light get it

out just so you want you want more or less pitch black then yeah exactly unless unless it's natural light okay moon if there's some moonlight coming in humans have evolved with that and if you look at you can go to you know dr google or there's also a chart in my book and look at a lux chart you know l u x and you see how moonlight as compared to even the dimmest artificial light it's not even comparable how little effect that it has on your body interesting i mean it makes sense of course i guess from an evolutionary perspective um and official light, it's not even comparable how little effect that it has on your body. Interesting. I mean, it makes sense, of course, I guess, from an evolutionary perspective. And what about temperature?

Yeah, this is another really simple kind of hack that we can utilize. So there's one study that they tested people with chronic sleep issues, so AKA insomniacs. And they found that every insomniac in the study had a problem with their something called thermoregulation, right? So their ability for their body to modulate, to cool down when it's supposed to. So for a lot of us, we, and I was taught this in college as well, that human body temperature should be 98.6 degrees, end of story. That's just not true. Your temperature modulates throughout the day a lot. If you're working out, for example, your temperature goes up. That's normal. But we have this thermogenic response. And so in the

evening when the sun starts to go down, our core body temperature literally starts to go down as well. And that when the core body temperature goes starts to go down as well. And that, when the core body temperature goes down, it elicits certain kind of these sleep programs, right? Increase in reparative enzymes, hormones start to change in accordance with that drop in your core body temperature. So all that to say that if your body has to work harder to drop that core body temperature down, it could impact your sleep quality. And so what they did with these insomniacs was they put these cooling caps on their head that just lowered their temperature just one degree. And that was enough to almost eliminate all, literally they slept more, they fell asleep faster and slept more than people that were not

insomniacs that had, that were quote normal people. All right. It's absolutely crazy. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say more. They slept more. They slept as much, but they fell asleep faster, which is crazy simply by cooling their head. So that's that saying of like cooler than the other side of the pillow. You know, like your head likes to be cool, especially is one of the things. And so making sure that the environment around you in your bedroom is cool. Do you have a temperature that you like to keep your bedroom set at? This is going to depend on the person, but experts recommend, you know,

scientists across the board between 62 and 68 degrees is the ideal room temperature. Okay. Between 62 and 68. And so for some people, that's going to sound super cool and chilly. It's like, I can't do that. But while we get cold, it tends to be the extremities. So just make sure you wear some nice warm socks and you should be good to go. But also we know in some of those same people, they'll know like if they're too hot trying to sleep, it sucks. Like it's like the grossest thing and the most uncomfortable thing if you're too hot yeah so consistently we'll all wake up if i if uh the temperature's not low enough or um like my wife she had bought a duvet that was too thick for me it just i would i would wake up sweaty so and but it would mess up and then once i uh i mean i she she of, she liked it. So at that time I was like, okay, then she can use that and I'll just use a sheet.

And that was fine for me. And then I was sleeping fine again. Yeah. And that's one of the big things with couples as well is some, a lot of times, not just some of the time, a lot of times they're going to enjoy different temperatures. And so there's something called the chili pad, and this can actually cool off one side of your bed. You know, you can basically put it on one side of the bed and you can lower that temperature so that the other person doesn't have to suffer in a way. And so

my wife is actually from Kenya. And so there is no such thing as cold days, really, right? It's like warm and hot. And so for her, she really does not enjoy the cold, but she's seen the benefits. She's seen how much better she does sleep when it's cold. Her issue in a lot of people is getting up in the morning when it's cold, not when they get out of those covers. So what I do in the morning is I get up first and she gets up five or 10 minutes after me, after I go and turn the heat up. Right. And it was a simple, easy fix. We battled about this a little bit for years. Yeah.

And now we're at a really good place with it. So that's what we want to do. Shoot for that kind of temperature, you know, maybe just drop it down right before you go to bed. Yeah. And that's going to help with your sleep quality. Yeah. I mean, my thermostat, it has a little scheduler thing in it.

I could just, you know, I have it, but I actually don't have it set as cold as you're saying. I think it's set to like, I don't know, 70, 71. Hey, that's better than 80 or 78, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I wouldn't be able to sleep like that. I would wake up every hour probably. Where we're at right now is like the end of that spectrum. So we're at 68.

But if I travel and I'm by myself, I will knock that. Yeah, why not? Right. I mean, I love it. I love sleeping. It's really cold in the room. Yeah. But my wife, I mean, she's pregnant now.

She weighs a little bit more. But previously, she's a small girl. She weighs 100, 105 pounds. So for her, you know, what's comfortable for me is cold for her. Right, right. So it's just finding that happy medium. And, you know, even with this, there are so many other things to stack in your favor.

And I know we've covered a lot and we're getting close here on time, but that's really what it is, is experimenting and finding out the things that work best for you because everybody has their own unique kind of, um, health type or sleep type and also genetic expression. But I do recommend for people to stack as many conditions in their favor that they can, so they can kind of get this great sleep thing on automatic. Yeah, I think, I think I totally agree. And so then let's close with, before we get to where people can find you in your work stuff, let's close with what are the big benefits that are, cause you know, with the modern living being, there's so many things now that are vying for our attention and vying for our time and so many different, you know, with modern living being, there's so many things now that are vying for our attention and vying for our time.

And so many different, you know, entertainment, things ranging from entertainment to, you know, hanging out to work to whatever. I mean, I know I've run into this again. Like I've said in the beginning of the podcast, I'm just that person where I wish I didn't have to sleep at all. I wish I could just plug myself into the wall. You know what I mean? That'd be amazing. So what are, what are the, what would you say are the, are the big benefits for people out there that maybe they aren't sleeping enough right now?

Like what are the type of things they can look forward to if they take the time to, let's say, read your book and really put together a little plan and start caring about it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, we talk about, that's a great question, man. caring about it? You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, we talk about, that's a great question, man. Um, when we talk about, uh, in depth, the impact that it has on your brain function in depth, the impact that it has on your, uh, your tie in kind of, you know, your hypothalamus

tie in with how you're reading the environment, your perception of reality and your endocrine system. All right. So that kind of tie in and how you speak, how you feel, you know, your emotional fitness We talked about how this impacts your performance in the gym and also in athletic performance So we can talk about so many different areas and but what I'm gonna share is something very visceral for people Yeah, and we all want to look good, you know, nobody's waking up in the morning. There's like, you know what? I want to look so ugly today. I'm just going to, I'm going to make people bags under my eyes. That's when I walk by and just like, I want to look diseased.

That's really what I'm going for. I want to look sick. Yes, that's it. That's you're the sickest guy I've ever seen. Literally. Is that good? So we all want to look good. And so there was a study that was done recently by the University of Chicago.

And it was so fascinating, such a powerful exclamation mark on this whole thing. And today, two-thirds of our population are either clinically obese or overweight. And so there's been a big battle that we've been in as a culture, as a society. And things are not moving in the right direction yet. But there's a big shift that is starting to happen now, thanks to podcasts like this one. But what they did was they put people onto a kind of conventional calorie-restricted diet. And this is what I was taught in a typical university setting, which those diets generally don't work that well anyways. But calorie- diet and they tracked everything and they allowed them to

get eight and a half hours of sleep per night. Okay. So diet, eight hours of sleep. Okay. So now another phase of the study, same exact diet. They don't do anything different in their life, except they sleep deprive them. Now they're only getting five and a half hours of sleep. At the end of the study, they tracked their fat loss results, not weight loss, fat loss results. And they found that when individuals were getting adequate amounts of sleep, that three hours of additional sleep, they lost 55% more body fat simply from getting more sleep. Nothing else changed in their life, just more sleep equated to 55% more loss of body fat. And just to make this clear, you cannot get 55% drop in body fat

or 55% greater drop. If you're doing like eight CrossFit workouts every five days, you just can't get those kinds of results. So the question is why, why is this so powerful for change? And it's goes back to the things we've been talking about, the impact it has on cortisol, the impact it has on melatonin, the hunger as well. It's a known thing. Obviously, if you don't sleep enough, you're you, most people are experiencing increase in appetite and depending, like I haven't seen that study. Uh, I don't know if I have, I don't know if it's that one. I mean, I've, again, I've written a bit about this, so I've

read a bit of the literature. But let's say in this case, if diets were being reported, like in food journals, that stuff can be, people can fudge and not necessarily get it right. So you can easily have people that they're just more hungry. They're sleeping five and a half hours and they're more hungry and they're just more likely to overeat. Exactly. Yeah. You just said it perfectly, you know, and that wasn't seen, that wasn't a part of this particular study because they're monitoring their food, but people can lie, number one, but also for not in the context of this study that was done by Stanford University. And they found that just one night of sleep deprivation is enough to plummet,

like crash your leptin. And leptin is your satiety hormone. And when it's not produced properly, you're just going to be ravenous. Like you're going to want to eat everything, especially simple carbohydrates, crunchy, salty things, sugary things, because your body is like a survival response and it needs to get energy in to keep you, your brain wired so that you can basically make it through life. You know, that's how we're hard wired is for survival, but we don't want to live there. We want to move into thriving and not surviving. And so taking all this data in and understanding that sleep is that secret sauce. It's like the missing component for a lot of nutrition programs and exercise programs that

actually get you 55% that gets you better results and helps to optimize everything. So that's really the kind of closing point, that visceral connection for people to understand how valuable our sleep is. Yeah, I think that's a great point to close on. And I totally agree. I'm inspired. I'm going to see, I mean, again, I guess in my case, how much sleep do I ultimately, ultimately need? But this was something this year that I was like, I guess in my case, how much sleep do I ultimately need? But this was something this year that I was like, I'm going to be objective about this and kind of take my feelings about, you know, sleeping, whatever, out of it. And see really how much sleep do I need to feel. Because the experiment didn't go so well last year.

Previously, I mean, I'd say I didn't notice any effects from if my average sleep, let's say average was six and a half hours. I didn't at that time notice any negative effects at all. So that I don't know if that that may be enough. Maybe that was then and this is different now, but I'm gonna find out. Awesome, man. Yeah, I personally, you know, and just being in practice for so long, six and a half would be solid. It'd be super solid, especially if you're stacking conditions and making sure your sleep cycles are optimized. You know, I've got high performing executives that I work with that same thing, you know, they're getting their six hours of sleep,

but their six is better than other people's nine, you know? So it's just funny because previously I was doing a lot of these positive things that you're talking about and I still do like, I don't do, I was exercising first thing in the morning. Um, I also am eating, well, no, I guess that doesn't really change. Well, I'm eating more food, larger amounts of food closer to bedtime, which is probably bad, right? For, for sleep quality. That's a whole other. Okay. Well, anyways, I have experienced what you're talking about. So maybe, maybe I can even get some of your time outside of all this. And I'd be very curious. Yeah. I mean, you, since you brought up the point, man, people are going to be like, I want to know, but really quick bottom, bottom line with this one is I'll share two quick things.

So two of the major factors that can break apart your sleep, uh, that sleep cycle we've been talking about where you're shifting from all those different brainwave states and different levels of sleep is cortisol and irregulation of your blood sugar. All right. So abnormal blood sugar levels, if it's going too low or going too high. So just be aware of that. Definitely. So large amounts of carbs. Yeah. But this is the thing. It's the timing even of the carbs. Like I said, we could do a whole other show just on this topic alone. If you're having some nice, especially higher quality carbs, eat maybe two to three hours before bed.

That actually can help many people sleep better. But if you two to three hours before bed, that actually can help many people sleep better, right? But if you're eating them right before bed, you're going to get a little bit of a kind of blood sugar spike, and then you're going to go hypoglycemic while you're during sleep, and that can interrupt that sleep cycle. You might not wake up, but it can throw that whole system off. So we have to pay attention to those kinds of things as well. And it's not like you can't eat something late, but generally when we're eating late, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I never have. I've never been up at one o'clock in the morning like, you know what?

I really feel like making some broccoli right now. Broccoli with butter, it sounds amazing. Let me just steam it up and wait. Yeah. You're going to go grab some chips or some cookies or some kind of snacky type of things. And that's just kind of the nature of the beast and part of that survival response where your body needs to get more blood sugar to your brain. That's essentially starting to starve, you know, so just 24 hours sleep deprivation leads to 6% drop in glucose reaching your brain. So, again, that whole thing with nutrition is a huge component. And I did a whole chapter dedicated to that. Actually two chapters dedicated to that in the book and how that all ties our sleep health as well.

Okay, great. Well, let's just end with where can people find you in your work and where can they find your book? Uh, you already said the name of it, but if you just want to remind everybody. Sure, sure. So people can find me definitely the place that most people know about me from is from my show, the model health show. And you can listen to that anywhere that you're listening to this amazing podcast, you could find me on that platform as well.

And very, very honored to say, we've been featured dozens and dozens of times as the number one podcast in the health and fitness category in the US. So very fortunate and grateful for that. And definitely you can check that out. And online, it's themodelhealthshow.com. So it's themodelhealthshow.com. We've got videos to the episodes. I do some pretty epic articles. My social media stuff is there.

I like to do a lot of stuff, especially on Instagram. And you could pick up the book, Sleep Smarter, anywhere you buy books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, all that good stuff. But also you can go to sleepsmarterbook.com and we actually have a free, and I don't talk about this enough. I've started to remember to talk about this more, but I did 21 videos that go with each of the 21 chapters that you get as a bonus when you get the book from sleepsmar smarter book.com. That's great. All right. Well, thanks a lot for taking the time, Sean. It was super informative. Uh, I mean, I, I I've learned and I'm inspired, uh, which is, which is great. And I know it's

going to answer a lot of the questions that I get. So now I have something when I get those questions, I can be like, this is your guy, check this out. So, um, I appreciate you taking the time and, uh, yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release kind of like four to six new articles a week.

And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at MuscleForLife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.