Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Sara Mednick on How to Restore, Recharge and Reinvigorate Your Brain and Body EP 161

Starting point is 00:00:00 coming up next on the Passion Struck podcast. They think our culture is designed to sort of start the hustle in the morning and didn't just ramp it up all day long. So at the end of the day, people are frazzled. They're not just exhausted, but I think they're frazzled because they have been revving themselves up all day long and they haven't done enough to bring that balance of the restore activity. So by the end of the day, they kind of expect that sleep is going to take care of all their woes, right? But they're so revved up and so frazzled that you can't get to sleep. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you

Starting point is 00:00:51 and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 161 of Passion Struck. Recently recognized as one of the top most inspirational podcasts in the world.

Starting point is 00:01:32 And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. If you're new to this show or you would like to introduce this to a friend or family member, we now have episode starter packs, both on the PassionStruck website as well as Spotify. These are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organized by topic that gives any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything that we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed the shows from last week, I interviewed Vice Admiral Sandy Stowe's who spent over 40 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, 12 of them at sea, and we discuss a master class from her on leadership and go through

Starting point is 00:02:20 her book Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass. We also had on my Naval Academy classmate and friend, Steven Conkley, who was a Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and repeat Amazon best selling author of over 20 Thriller novels. In addition to that, my solo episode last week was on the topic of meditation, but specifically how meditation can bring on self-transcendent states.

Starting point is 00:02:45 So if you haven't checked any of those out, please go back and listen to them. I also wanted to thank you for your continued support by giving us ratings and reviews. And if you love today's episode or any of the ones that I mentioned, it would mean so much to us if you could give us a five star rating and review. They have such a huge impact on growing the popularity of this show, which is now routinely one of the top 20 health and fitness podcasts in the world. Now, let's talk about today's incredible guest. Professor Sarah C. Mednet is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of the Hidden Power of the Downstate, which was

Starting point is 00:03:21 released in April, as well as the book Take a Nap Change Your Life. She is passionate about understanding how the brain works and the autonomic nervous system. Dr. Bendic's seven bedroom sleep laboratory works literally around the clock to discover methods for boosting cognition by napping, stimulating the brain with electricity, sound, and light and pharmacology. Dr. Magnek was awarded the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2015. Her research has been published in leading journals such as Nature, Neuroscience, the Proceedings from the National Academy of Science, and she's been covered by all major news outlets. We discuss how after getting a bachelor's in dance,

Starting point is 00:04:06 she discovered the passion for neuroscience and sleep. Why she wrote the power of the downstate in a 10 by 12 high? We discuss what the downstate is and why it is so vital. She discusses how the sympathetic and parasympathetic work in conjunction and why it is so vital that they actually work in harmony. Alternate ways outside of our nighttime sleep that we can achieve the downstate, the role that chronic health and discrimination play in our overall health, how sleep impacts diseases

Starting point is 00:04:36 such as Alzheimer's disease and so much more. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let the journey begin. I am totally ecstatic to welcome Dr. Sarah Medneck to the PassionStruck podcast. Welcome, Sarah. I'm so great to be here. Thank you for having me. As I mentioned before, the show I have wanted to have you on this podcast for a very long time, because I think the science that you're doing is so helpful to millions of people as sleep is the number one thing that I think impacts cognition and performance. I wanted to start out

Starting point is 00:05:22 today's interview maybe in a different way. My girlfriend got her undergraduate in dance and later joined the medical profession. And so I thought it might be interesting for the listener to understand how you went from a dance background to being one of the foremost experts in the world, a neuro-science, and especially sleep. Thank you so much for asking that question because I always launch right into the science, but I think people's individual paths are so important as well.

Starting point is 00:05:58 I got my BA from Bard College, and it was drama dance, and it's always just drama dance dance even though my focus was drama. So I was a theater major and my whole life I thought I was going to be an actor. And then once Bard was over and I went to New York City and I started living the life of a real actress, which is like basically waiting tables, I came to the conclusion that I didn't necessarily have what it took, not talent-wise, but I didn't have, my last name wasn't Scorsese, and there is different parts of the things that help people make it

Starting point is 00:06:36 in the world of theater. So I thought, you know what, this is heartbreaking, but I have to hang this up and find something else to do. I wanted to start taking classes and get a master to read something, but I wasn't hang this up and find something else to do. I wanted to start taking classes and get a master's degree and something, but I wasn't quite sure in what. So I got a job working in Bellevue mental hospital and I was working in the psych ER

Starting point is 00:06:55 and I met many people with, it's the worst day of their lives, right? They're brought into the psych ER of a very famous mental hospital and I was fascinated by what was going on in these people's brains because they were behaving and thinking things that seemed so different from me. I started pursuing the idea of studying schizophrenia specifically, but then once I got into graduate school and I went to a lecture by a guy named Robert Stickgold who really was establishing his research at that time on creating the first real methodologies for

Starting point is 00:07:34 how we could understand the role of sleep on cognitive processing. And I was hooked. I got super excited by it. And he was studying nighttime sleep. And he was studying night time sleep. And he would have people testing on memory tasks at night, and then have them sleep in the lab overnight, and then test them again the next morning. And he had EEG to measure their brain activity.

Starting point is 00:07:56 And he was showing that you needed to have about six to eight hours of sleep at night. For one, I didn't really want to sit there and watch people sleep all night, because that would mean that I wouldn't be sleeping. So I didn't really want to sit there and watch people sleep all night because that would mean that I wouldn't be sleeping. So I didn't really want to do overnight research. But the most important thing was that his research could not explain why people who were nappers got so much out of the nap. And that became my question. Let's set up a nap lab and let's do the same cognitive tests, but now test people in the morning and the evening

Starting point is 00:08:27 and give them a nap or no nap and then look at the different stages of sleep in the nap and see what we could find. And what we found was that the performance improvement after a nap was as good, was as high in magnitude as that of a full night of sleep. And we were able to associate which sleep stages were associated with what kind of memory improvement and it led to a whole new area of doing sleep research using a nap instead of a full night of sleep. Yes, which was really the back story for your first book, which was really groundbreaking on what naps can do for you to basically help you function better in the upstate, which we're going to talk about more today. So I thought it was really interesting when I was reading the epilogue that you wrote this book in a 10 by 12 hut. What's the backstory on

Starting point is 00:09:22 that? It was the beginning of the pandemic. My wife and I have separate houses. I live in San Diego and she lives in Hudson Valley, New York. And when the pandemic hit, suddenly my kids were home from school and I was having to teach online and all that stuff was happening. I was kind of stuck with the kids in San Diego and then there was a little opening of a window where suddenly there was a little bit of travel

Starting point is 00:09:50 allowed in June. I took the kids to New York and my wife said come here and stay here with us here in New York. It's this very safe little village and I'll build you a hut and you can write your book in this hut and she was good to her word. And so I created, she created this beautiful little space for me to spend the pandemic writing a book. Well, it's interesting when you hear where authors write because some like it loud, some like to be in a library,

Starting point is 00:10:20 some like to be in a hut, some like just absolute peace and quiet. That's what I like when I'm writing, but each one of us has a different way of doing it, but I think that's an interesting story. You open the book by discussing the principle of systems and harmony versus disharmony and why we need to get our systems and harmony. As we talked about a little before we got on the podcast, I have had some major trauma associated with my time in the military and some physical assaults outside of it. And what I have found in the medical system today

Starting point is 00:11:01 is that they are treating the majority of people in a silo-based system that is all protocol-based, I think it gets down to the way they're doing medical coding. And it's really, in my perspective, hindering the way that they should be treating you, which is holistic and personalized. And why do you think that is the case? And why do we need, based on your research, to switch up this approach? Yeah, I think your personal story is one that many people share, that difficulty. Not being seen as a whole system, but being seen as a heart issue, a kidney issue, a sleep issue, and nobody even talks about sleep issues in the medical world,

Starting point is 00:11:44 right? And we're not seen as one system where everything is actually one part of one body, right? We're all in everything that we do affects everything else. Why that is is probably because the medical world in science is deductive, right? It basically tries to and reductive and it tries to reduce the problem to a small quantifiable problem. And that means not considering all the ways in which you're eating affects your sleep and your exercise affects your eating and your heart is not just pumping your blood around but it's also responding to stresses in your life. And so it's part of your cognition as well. I

Starting point is 00:12:25 mean, how many, if you look at the average number of hours that doctors in medical school experience any education for sleep, any kind of sleep education, it's average two hours out of their entire medical school period. And that's crazy, right? I mean, this is a thing that people, every single human that they treat sleeps, and every single human sleeps for about a third of their life. And yet, there's so little basic science in the medical school to teach as people just about sleep. But you have to go to a pulmonologist kind of learn about sleep apnea. So it's an interesting time because I think sleep is suddenly becoming at the forefront of many just regular people's minds. And it's actually bringing a new consideration

Starting point is 00:13:16 to science and to medicine that actually this is a very large component of metabolism, cardiovascular health, stress, aging. Yes, I'm glad that more people are listening to you and Andrew Huberman and some of your advice on this. And I've been glad to see everyone from Tom Bilyu to Dan Harris is now getting entrenched in this on their podcast as well, which is great because I think we need to be getting the knowledge out there. on their podcast as well, which is great, because I think we need to be getting the knowledge out there. I did want to show the audience your book, so they know what it looks like and they can buy it. But I think if we're going to talk about the power of the down state, you need to understand what is the down state and why is it important? So the down state is a concept that I developed in my lab based on my own research or my lab's research and a lot

Starting point is 00:14:06 of other people's research that really encapsulates all of the restorative processes that we can engage in on a daily basis, both in the daytime and the nighttime, to restore and replenish our resources. And it comes with this idea that we are rhythmic animals and plants, bacteria, all animals on the planet are rhythmic, meaning that we have periods of upstates where we're super active and downstates where we need to replenish those resources that get used in the upstate. The downstate comes from a sleep concept that I can also talk about, but it really is sort of a umbrella concept of all of the different restorative processes that we need to engage in.

Starting point is 00:14:52 Well, I find this whole concept of the upstate and the downstate truly fascinating. And one of the things I wanted to ask is, why are we only as good in our upstates as we are in our downstates? And I think this has a corollary to Newton's Third Law of Action and Reaction. Yes, exactly, right? When you consider a rhythm, every rhythm has an upstate and downstate, meaning that if you think about a wave, the wave crashing on the beach is a system that first does an internal drawing in of its

Starting point is 00:15:27 resources and drawing in of all the energy and pulling into itself back into the ocean before it crashes and has this outward activation. And this is the same as any rhythm, right, that you have this inward drawing in and outward expression of activity. This is what a rhythm is, is that there's an up state where the wave is crashing and a down state where it draws in. And it goes up and down and up and down and up and down. We have this same system of ups and downs

Starting point is 00:16:01 in every cell in our body. We have these little clocks that are basically looking for a time where it should be active and at time where it should be dormant. And these cells group together. They form processes in organs where a cardiovascular system has an upstate and a downstate. Our metabolism has an upstate where it's at its prime. The resources are primed and ready for eating and a downstate where we should stop eating and give it some time to restore itself and replenish its resources. Our brains also have this upstate and downstate where our frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that does all this executive function and attention and big thinking. That brain area actually has a period where it's at its most

Starting point is 00:16:50 powerful and then it starts to recede and it goes into the down state where it can replenish itself. So at every level of analysis, you can actually see that these systems have the same kind of idea of activity and repose. And not considering your downstate, not considering these rhythms is a good example of what we do all the time, right? What society is doing, which is emphasizing time in the upstate and not prioritizing time in the down state. Yes, well, I think that gets into a good topic of what of the reason we're not doing that is because of this chronic stress that we're putting on ourselves that's leading so many people to burn out

Starting point is 00:17:39 or in toxic work environments, or in toxic relationships. What is the impact of that chronic stress on our system? So stress is a really interesting topic. In some cases, it's a use shape, right? Where low, low stress is bad. If you can't get off the couch and you're just like a worm, kind of lethargic, but some amount of stress is good and it really primes you to excites you and it gets you challenged, right? And it sort of makes you do things you've never done before. And that's called you stress. And that's at level of which you are performing at your

Starting point is 00:18:16 best. You're just pushed slightly outside of your comfort zone. But then we get into the too much stress, which has been going into distress. And distress is where you are unable to balance the amount of incoming demands on you, with having enough time in the down state, right? That you're sort of, you have an over amount of upstate stuff, and you're not devoting enough time to processing it, calming down, replenishing your resources before another upstate hits you. And you can see that as a model across all these different levels of analysis that you

Starting point is 00:18:55 need to have this balance between your restorative processes that help you get over all of the stress that we take in every day. And if you don't, then that stress just lingers. And it basically kind of grows and compounds on itself. And that's really where we see chronic stress is this kind of very sort of quiet, low level of just a amount of stress that we're not adapting to, we're not dealing with it, we're not processing. Yes, and before we get off of this topic,

Starting point is 00:19:31 I wanted to talk about another type of stress and that's something you write about racism. Why is racism now being found also because medical health issues? It's such an important topic. We have stress from all different areas. You can have, and of course I said that there's good stress, but the idea of these small injustices and inequities that

Starting point is 00:19:55 happen to people, the microaggressions, the kind of disrespect that happens, these are all things that keep your hackles up. And this feeling of having injustice or not being fair or fairly treated. All of these systems that are structural, right, that are systemic, but also on a day-to-day experience. This builds up your upstate stress response, right? I call these two different systems, the stress response of the autonomic system,

Starting point is 00:20:25 which is usually called the sympathetic nervous system. I call this in the book, the REV system, because it rebs you up. And its sister system is the parasympathetic system in medical terms, but I call it the restore system, because what it does is the second you're revving up, the restore system comes in and wants to calm you down. And that's a very healthy balance to have. But when you have death by a thousand cuts, which is this kind of microaggressions of just these little things going on in your life, where you realize that you're being unfairly treated or you're being judged by the color of your skin or your sex or your religion or your sexual orientation. Any of these experiences increase rev.

Starting point is 00:21:08 In the same way that a stressful experience such as combat or falling down and injuring your body, these are all stressful experiences that actually create a very similar stress response and they rev you up. So the amount of down state restorative processes that you need is almost impossible to find when you're living in a state of constant racism or sexism or whatever it is that is sort of filling your day to day and makes you feel abused or unfairly treated.

Starting point is 00:21:42 You have a topic like today's that you would like to see us cover? You can reach us at Momentum Friday at passionstruck.com. Keep your emails concise. Use a descriptive subject line. That keeps things easy for us. Reach out to us if there's a topic you're interested in learning about. There's something that maybe you're going through, any big decision that you're wrestling with, or perhaps you just want a new perspective on work, love or life. Whatever's got you staying up at night, hit us up at Momentum Friday at PassionStruck.com. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous now back to PassionStruck. It really

Starting point is 00:22:21 comes down to any form of discrimination, including racism. Poverty. Poverty, exactly. And that was something I found that was pretty interesting in the book, is you mentioned that basically the environment that you are brought up into can have a major influence on the harmony of your systems. And I'd like you to explain that a little bit because I thought it was quite interesting how if you're born into an affluent family, it could be very different from being born into poverty.

Starting point is 00:22:52 Yeah, I mean, it's not to say that, you know, that there's any difference in love in those cases, but it's a matter of scarcity and it's a matter of safety. One of the key concepts of the book is this balance between the Rev and the Restore systems. A really interesting idea that's positive by Julian Thayer and his colleagues is that we are born into this world in a very revved up system that doesn't have a lot of restore abilities.

Starting point is 00:23:22 We don't quite have our ability to calm ourselves down when we're babies and hence we come into the world screaming and crying and we need parents, we need care that takes care of us and feeds us and make us feel loved and safe. And the more we have those experience of safety and love and no drama around us and just feeling safe, the more we build up this ability to self-soothe, to calm ourselves down, to make ourselves feel like we have people around us who take care of us. And that builds up this area of the brain,

Starting point is 00:23:56 I talked about this frontal cortex, which allows us to sort of calm ourselves down when we need to. This brain area grows throughout adolescence when you start to feel the experiences of challenge and you can meet those challenges, right? You can actually beat whatever bully is kind of bothering you, but also you can make the right grade. You can learn to read and write. You can get to college and do well. You can get your first job. All those things where you're self-act actualizing and finding agency in yourself

Starting point is 00:24:26 is another way that you can build up this frontal lobe and calm down your stress response. So, if you consider somebody who is born into poverty, who is born into a situation where there may not be the kind of care, there may not be the kind of safety that we're talking about, they may live in a world that either has violence in the home or else just doesn't have enough food. It has parents who are stressed who work a lot, so maybe they spend more time by themselves. All of these things create a difficulty of creating that structure of safety and building up that network of being able to say, structure of safety and building up that network of being able to say, I'm safe, I'm loved, I can self-sude, I can self-regulate.

Starting point is 00:25:09 It's not to say that there's this deterministic thing of like, if you have a bad childhood, it just means that your balance is not as your balance is harder to access than somebody who was raised in an environment where these questions were never a problem, right? They never had these issues. Even the amount of safety in a home and the amount of noise in a home, the amount of the education systems, right, all these different things translate

Starting point is 00:25:39 to somebody who is able to self-regulate. And so, of course, as soon as possible that that person can learn to self-regulate and take care of themselves, the better. Yes, well, that brings me back to the topic of oneness or unis that you all so bring up in the book. And it's interesting because earlier this week, I had Gretchen Rubin on the podcast. Sounds like you're familiar with her. She is a huge studier of human nature and it was interesting. She pointed out during the discussion and all her studies of human nature, the greatest challenge that we have is knowing ourselves. And in the book, and I'm going to read it so I make sure I get it right. You state that the secret to a long, happy life is discovering how to incorporate the

Starting point is 00:26:29 unis of you with the universal principles that govern life on earth. Why is that so important and why does modern culture deny rest? Often, Lee is an essential human right. This is really specifically an American kind of question because I think America has this kind of interesting battle between universal principles, the idea that we're all one and that we all kind of actually follow the same laws of nature and this idea of individualism because I think as a culture we're constantly trying to biohack our way to our own personal best. And that's something that is obviously

Starting point is 00:27:09 a benefit of being American, but I think it also means that people are constantly trying to override some very basic principles of life that I think if there was an appreciation of actually we're all just the same and these universal rhythms command you too. And you're just one of nature's creatures. There will be a lot of energy and mental energy saved that you could just say, well these are my rhythms that are commanded by the sun and the moon. And these other rhythms that are also part of being human and an animal, those are the things that I can control. There's that idea, these universal rhythms in the seventh and the moon, but then there's all

Starting point is 00:27:49 of these rhythms that are part of you and your body, and they're also the rhythms that are part of you and your personality that you may be somebody who likes the night more than the day. You may be somebody who is really into nature and exercise and versus somebody who wants to go to a gym. Those are all the individual characteristics that kind of can guide your behavior and make you figure out like what is my best rhythm and how to adapt my behaviors so that all these rhythms coincide with each other and I can kind of work them together and resonate with them. But I think that there's also a whole bunch

Starting point is 00:28:27 of universal rhythms that just come with being human that are so important to also abide by. Yeah, it leads me into an episode I did a number of weeks ago, it was a solo episode where I was talking about hustle culture and how much harm it's doing to us because our work-life balance gets completely out of whack. And when I was in my early 20s, stationed in Spain, one of my good friends was a Spanish fighter pilot.

Starting point is 00:28:56 And I will always remember, after knowing me for a few months, he goes, I just have to say, you guys live to work, whereas we spaniards work to live. And when I look at the differences in the culture, and it's a lot of European cultures like that, I do think he's right, and we are in this constant, a zone that we have to be the best, and we're striving for this recognition, or materialistic things, or something else,

Starting point is 00:29:23 that we don't take that needed rest throughout the day that could be so beneficial to us. And that's one of the things I thought was so interesting in the book is you typically think of achieving the downstate when you're asleep at night, but you bring up that there are many ways that you can do it during the day as well. And I was hoping you could talk about a few of those. I so relate to what you're saying about this idea of pushing ourselves, we emphasize the upstate and we don't emphasize the importance of the recovery. So how can we bring more of this kind of recovery time during the day? Because I think our culture is designed to sort of start the hustle in the

Starting point is 00:30:06 morning and didn't just ramp it up all day long. So at the end of the day, people are frazzled. They're not just exhausted, but I think they're frazzled because they have been revving themselves up all day long and they haven't done enough to bring that balance of the restore activity. So by the end of the day, they kind of expect that sleep is going to take care of all their woes, right? But they're so revved up and so frazzled that you can't get to sleep.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Your mind is racing, your heart is still racing. It's a lack of consideration for sleep, I think that we put too much of a burden on sleep. And so what we have to do is think about what we can do during the day that gives us a dip into the down state. So by the time we get to sleep, yes, sleep is sort of the natural down state that all animals use, but there's many moments of down state we can get to during the days. I have a program in the book that's called the Downstate Recovery Plus Plan. And it's a four week program where every week is devoted to one of the four domains. The autonomic nervous system is week one, sleep and circadian rhythm is week two,

Starting point is 00:31:23 exercise is week three, and eating is week four, because all of these different systems all interact with each other, and you can really maximize down states with all of these systems. So for the autonomic nervous system, one of the key elements is your breathing, and I'm sure you've heard about James Nester's book, Breath, right? Well, he and I have a lot in common in terms of my thinking because Breath is the root of all restorative function. Breath is the thing that you can control that suddenly can calm down that red response. So any slow, deep breathing practice that people have where they get into a state of resonant breathing,

Starting point is 00:32:07 such as six breaths of minute breathing. And that's five seconds on the inhale, five seconds on the exhale. That enhances your restore activity and calms down rev. You can imagine that their stress breathing is that panicky breathing, fast breathing, shallow breathing, that's the rev breathing. So when you harness your really slow deep breathing, you're sending a signal to your mind

Starting point is 00:32:33 and your body that you got this, right? You have control of the situation and you can self-regulate. So any kind of a daily practice that allows you to go into meditation, yoga, tai chi, any of these things where you're just practicing slow deep breathing. That 10 minutes a day in the middle of the day, doing small meditations that can actually bring your whole system into a state of oneness, a state of calm, that's very helpful. And then from there, there's like seven different action items that you can choose from. In the sleep category, there's a lot, but one of the things I talk a lot about is the importance of the restorative sleep,

Starting point is 00:33:13 which happens in the first part of the night. And that is because you're slow way sleep, which is that really restorative sleep, that comes on at the end of your long day and your body just goes deep into restorative mode. And that occurs during slow wave sleep. Now, if you don't go to sleep early and catch that slow wave sleep train, what happens is that you start getting into REM sleep mode because that's driven by a circadian rhythm means it turns on at an hour of the day, whether you've gone to sleep earlier late. So it pushes out your slow-wave sleep abilities. So really trying to get to sleep at like 10 o'clock is a great time or even earlier if you can, because then it maximizes the amount of that deep slow-wave sleep before you get

Starting point is 00:34:03 into REM sleep mode. For exercise, there's so many things that we need to do to exercise. The REM system, you can ramp up your REM system with exercise. And the reason why that's so important is that the restore system comes after that. So here's a way that you can specifically ramp it up in order to enhance the later restore function. So what time you exercise is also really important. If you're exercising too late in the day, you rev yourself up and then you stay revved up and then it becomes very hard for you to get to sleep. But if you take your hit exercise that really pushing that

Starting point is 00:34:47 sympathetic drive up to, and you push that into the morning time, then you give your day enough time to decrease in that rev activity, reduce your heart rate, reduce your body temperature, and get this really nice restorative boost that aligns with that slow wave sleep period. And that means that these two systems resonate with each other and you get even greater restorative function. And let's like end on eating. Eating is a very powerful way to regulate your upstates and downstates.

Starting point is 00:35:23 The beginning of eating actually starts your metabolic upstate. So eating earlier in the day and then not eating later in the day is actually very good for regulating a very strong metabolic system, which gets all of it eating in during the height of its metabolism in the upstate and then completely shuts down and it allows for deep restorative work during the upstate and then completely shuts down and it allows for deep,

Starting point is 00:35:46 restorative work during the downstate. If you try to eat at night and if you try to start snacking, say at midnight or something, which is usually your friend of lobes turned off at that time, what do you feel like eating ice cream and chocolate and all the worst things, right? And that makes a lot of sense because you don't have a self-regulation at that hour either but that's also really waking the bear and you create this really big burst of sympathetic drive in the middle of the night which makes it hard to get to sleep. So all of these systems are interacting. Once a week you just start to adapt one habit during week one, and then you add a second habit during week two, and you add a third and a fourth and week three and four.

Starting point is 00:36:29 I think it was a great section, and I'm glad you didn't spill all the beans because we want people to read the book. I was excited that as I read through them all, that I was doing many of these things already, and one of the big things I have really focused on has been circadian rhythm. I have a very habitual sleep pattern that I've developed. So I try to get into bed at 9 o'clock.

Starting point is 00:36:53 I then read, you know, for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on how tired I am. But basically the second I start feeling tired, I'll just shut off my blue blocker like that I have and go to bed. But I get up early, I get up at 5 a.m. But what I do is the second the sun starts coming up, I will go outside for five to 10 minutes and just be out in the natural light. And then at the end of the day, I try to get out towards the late afternoon, early evening, as we're approaching dusk, so I catch the tail end. And I find when I'm habitual about doing that, I seem to have much sound or sleep,

Starting point is 00:37:31 which seems to coincide with your research. Yeah, you are what I call a downstate naven. And I am so happy to hear that you're taking all of these pieces of scientific fact or data and you're applying them. We talk about the paleo diet, right? Like who knows if this is really the way people ate in the paleo times, but this is definitely the way they behaved.

Starting point is 00:37:56 If you think about the 4.5 billion years that we've been on this planet, these systems of light that light influences the, it's the downbeat of your upstate, the morning light, right? That the blue, specifically the blue light from the sun in the morning tells every part of your body, all those different clocks, it's the conductor that taps on the podium and says, all right, let's begin. And then as you said, in the evening, that sunset that has no more blue light in it also is a message to your circadian rhythm and to all of those systems that it's time to go into the down state because every cell in our body has a little clock in it that's looking for some place to hang a tat and say, okay, this is the beginning of the upstate and this is the beginning of the downstate. Keeping your habits regular and really consistent with when you do what you do, whether it's getting up and going outside or exercise or executive function thinking using your brain, these help your body prepare you because just as any thing about the time that you regularly eat lunch, right before that, you start to get these hunger pains. That's not because

Starting point is 00:39:13 there's a time of day that's specific for lunch, it's that that's what you normally do and your body is setting the whole body up to receive food, right? And it's getting itself ready to receive food. So that's the same with everything that you do that your body needs to get ready to do whatever it's going to do. It just kind of hums along because it knows, okay, now we're going to do this great. I'm going to prepare for that. So if you do things out of consistency or if you do sort of like things more randomly, it's very hard for your body to know what to do and it actually causes more stress.

Starting point is 00:39:54 Absolutely the case. Well, I'm gonna take us. It may be technical for some of the listeners, but I was gonna dive a little bit deeper into some neuroscience. So I started getting interested in the Vegas nerve. A number of years ago when I read D Dacker Keltner's book, The Compassionate Instinct, where he really went into how much value this has in regulating so many aspects of our body wouldn't know. And in Susan Keynes' most recent book, I was able to interview her on the podcast as well, and she brings it up again as being so important in the body's

Starting point is 00:40:25 ability to understand sorrow and longing. But what I wanted to ask is maybe you can explain what the vagus nerve is through your experience and why it's so important for our bodies. Sure. So the vagus nerve is a cranial nerve. It is the major pathway whereby all the information from your body goes to communicates to the brain. So the brain is taking in all the information from your body, but also all the information from all the other brain areas. And it's assessing how you're feeling and what your reactions are. For a long time, there was this idea that everything happened in the brain. But the truth is, is that the body tells you a lot about how you're feeling, whether you're feeling safe, whether you're feeling nervous,

Starting point is 00:41:14 that feeling of nervousness, where you have to go to the bathroom before you have to do a presentation or something like that. That's your guts. And that is because the vagus nerve is connected to your guts, and it's a direct connection because the vagus nerve is connected to your guts, and it's a direct connection from the gut to the brain through the vagus nerve, right? Or if you get scared, your heart starts beating and your hand starts getting sweaty, before you even realize what happened, you get the hackles up, that's your body through the vagus nerve telling your brain something is up, before you have a conscious thought about it. So a lot of important information and we are discovering in my own lab, coming as a neuroscientist,

Starting point is 00:41:52 there was a general, I mean, there's a very strong bias towards thinking about cognition, all the different processes that support cognition as being just from the neck up. In my lab, decided to start also assessing how the body was doing via looking at the cardiac system, because the cardiac system is strongly modulated by the vagus nerve. The cardiac system is sympathetic in that it suddenly speeds up when you're getting nervous or a speed up when you start having doing intense exercise, but the vagus nerve comes in and that's the mode of your restore action. That's the one that can calm it down and inhibit the sympathetic activity. So when we are looking at the autonomic system and specifically looking at the restore

Starting point is 00:42:39 parasympathetic system, we measure ECG. And that's because, and specifically, we look at heart rate variability, which is kind of a buzzword. And I feel like it doesn't often get really well explained for people. And if you'd like, I can just give a quick explanation about that. Yeah, because I thought that portion of the book where you had at the time, your research assistant conduct that study where not only, I've done a number of sleep studies, but not only did you have the EEG, you had the EKG on as well. I thought that was pretty fascinating. Yeah, so it was my graduate student,

Starting point is 00:43:10 who's now a professor in Kentucky, and she's gone on to do amazing research on the autonomic nervous system and also disparity research, which is really important. So this HIV signal, what is it? Well, in a system that's very healthy and is a system that can quickly adapt to environmental changes, right? So if there was a real tiger in the woods, you could start running immediately, right? And if you realize that that tiger in the woods was actually, or in the jungle,

Starting point is 00:43:38 I guess is where tigers are, but if you realize it was not actual tiger, it was just like a little bird or something, you could suddenly be like, oh, I'm such an idiot calm down, right? And calm your heart rate down instead of all the blood being shunted to your extremities, it can go back to digesting your food or calmly thinking through your thoughts. So that ability to very quickly and flexibly adapt to your environment can be measured in the variability of your heart rate. So your heart is not a metronome. It doesn't just have a specific timing for each heartbeat. It actually has variable times between each heartbeat.

Starting point is 00:44:15 And what that variability stands for is that your heart rate can speed up really quickly if it needs to, and it can slow down very quickly if it needs to. So the more variable your heart rate variability, the stronger your vagus nerve, the stronger your restore system. So when we were looking at that in the laboratory, what we found was that first of all,

Starting point is 00:44:37 the most the time of day of this whole 24-hour cycle, where we have the strongest vagal activity is during slow wave sleep that deeply restorative sleep time. And instead of what everybody else was showing was that it's all about the brain activity that's creating all these memory benefits, what we were showing is that actually the autonomic activity was also playing a huge role in not only the restorative functions of sleep, but also in all of the cognitive benefits that we've been showing. And that was really my first insight

Starting point is 00:45:13 that while there's so much more to our body, then we had believed. And also the fact that the parasympathetic restore activity was coupled with this restorative slow wave sleep time and that that was when it really was enhanced, brought in this idea of resonance, right, where two systems that are kind of have shared upstate and downstate rhythms actually enhance each other's processing. Maybe you can actually really work on changing your behaviors so that you can increase this resonance, right? Increase the way in which your restorative system couples

Starting point is 00:45:51 with your slow-wave sleep system. Very fascinating research for sure. So much more we're discovering about the body every single year. It's really amazing. And I am glad we're able to bring so much of this to the audience. And one of the other topics I wanted to bring up is especially since I've experienced traumatic brain injuries. One of the things I am most concerned about later in life is developing Alzheimer's. And I recently have seen some data that in 2019, there were 50 million cases of Alzheimer's, but they're predicting by 2050 that there will be 152 million. And it was interesting for me to read that,

Starting point is 00:46:33 and I wanted to understand our sleep disorders more correlated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and if so, how? So this is a really important question, and I think that people at this point are really getting that same message that got that, wow, the sleep, for some, you know, let's explore why is the sleep that I'm getting in my 40s and 50s correlating with my risk for dimension Alzheimer's in my 60s and 70s? One of the main mechanisms that we think is leading is the mediating factor in this correlation.

Starting point is 00:47:09 Is a system that was very recently discovered by a Danish neuroscientist, Matja Medegard. She found in her research that the brain has a system that washes extra leftover proteins. These proteins that are left over in the brain due to just general upstate processing. And they kind of get leftover as detritus of just daily processing. During sleep, we had the system that washes the brain of these proteins. And when you don't sleep well, these proteins can accumulate. And over time, these proteins can accumulate and over time these proteins can then become the

Starting point is 00:47:45 plaques and tangles associated with dementia and Alzheimer's. So you see it on a daily rate where even one night of sleep deprivation produces a level of increase in proteins that doesn't necessarily just get washed away immediately with the next night of recovery sleep, But then you also see this long term a fact of the accumulation of poor sleep on increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer's in people's 70s. Yes, I wanted to ask, is there a stage of sleep that were most conducive to promoting the glumphatic cleanse? Well, unsurprisingly, it's during slow wave sleep, right? That's the part time where you have,

Starting point is 00:48:27 and you know, you have this major system that washes through your brain. So the question is, is the glimphatic clearance specific to the sleep, slow wave sleep mechanisms in the brain, or is it related to that parasympathetic increase that you also see occurring during slow wave sleep? And there is some research to show that it may be more important that you have a high amount of parasympathetic activity than just that you have slow wave sleep. Basically, the idea is can you engage in restorative processing throughout your day and also get good sleep to maximize the amount of this clearance that happens naturally at night. And can do, not just getting slow waves sleep,

Starting point is 00:49:25 but a lot more we can do in terms of increasing our restorative function during the day as well, increasing HRV, doing HRV biofeedback, engaging in slow deep breathing, making sure that we give our cardiovascular system a break, all these different things that I talk about in the book that will also reduce these plaques and risks for dimension Alzheimer's. Well, thank you for that great explanation. And I think it's important for so many people to understand this. And if the listener wants yet more information on this, I had two great people on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:50:00 One of them is a neurologist named Jay Lombard, and he is an expert on Alzheimer's and ALS, and he's looking at all kinds of different mechanisms to clear these amyloids sleeping one, but there are magnetic ways to do it, almost like an MRI that can clear it and sound waves and other things. And the other person I interviewed is Dr. David Vago, who's a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt. And he's studying how meditation is proving that it can also help with the glumphatic systems.

Starting point is 00:50:36 Please check out those episodes. Now, I think we've got time for one more question. Yesterday, I interviewed Dr. Katie Milkman. She's a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and in our discussion, she said that 40% of fatalities are preventable, but the reason they happen is because people do not do behavioral change. And so what I wanted to ask is obviously sleep is a habit that many people fail to keep a regular schedule around. Why do you think it's so difficult for people

Starting point is 00:51:11 to maintain constant habitual rhythms around sleep and what's your recommendations for people to find that behavioral change? A hugely important question because you could tell people up and down what to do and if it doesn't become a habit it's not going to happen, it's not going to benefit them. So what is the science around habits is that the smaller the change, the less dramatic, the adaptation, the easier it is to implement. And so creating these kind of micro habits or micro changes, right? These idea of just adjusting yourself,

Starting point is 00:51:50 not in a way that makes you feel like you're having to really situate yourself as a new person with new people and new everything, but just say like, I'm just going to move the needle just a little bit for a whole week. I'm just going to stick with just this thing. And these habits can take up to six weeks to really get one I'm just going to move the needle just a little bit for a whole week. I'm just going to stick with just this thing. And these habits can take up to six weeks to really get one habit down. And so really engaging, not just this idea, I'm going to throw myself into

Starting point is 00:52:20 these changes and try to revolutionize my life. I think that's the benefit, a plan that has that asks you to sort of, what's the easiest thing on this list that you can do that would really work within your life and within your personality. Those are the kind of changes that stick. And then also doing the work to ask yourself, why are you not making these changes, right? And there is a great way to do that, writing, doing some good writing for yourself, asking yourself, what are the strengths that you have that can help you make these changes? What are the parts of you when you have found a challenge and you have met that challenge? What parts of you came up that allowed you to meet that challenge? What was the thing that you can rely on now when you're trying to increase your

Starting point is 00:53:05 down state? What is that trait in you that you can rely on now when things get tough? Because especially in the nighttime, that executive function is basically shut down. So you really don't want to have to sort of think your way through this. You want to create a habit so that you just kind of stick with this and you don't rely on effort to do it. Well, thank you for that answer. And I think you're right in some any ways. Sarah, you were amazing. And I'm sure the audience would love to know more about you. What are some of the best ways that they can do that? I have a website, Sarah metnic.com. And there's a contact sheet that people can get a hold of me. And I give talks to corporations and to book groups

Starting point is 00:53:52 and any of these kind of things. You can always just get a hold of me through email or by contacting my agent. But also, I'm on Twitter, Sarah underscore Mednic. And I do like to post a lot of stuff there. And I'm trying to learn Instagram, but that's also a slow process. And that's just Sarah underscore Midnick underscore downstate. But thank you so much for this opportunity. It's such a pleasure talking to you. You're welcome. And if you can teach me Twitter, I can teach you Instagram.

Starting point is 00:54:20 All right, you've got to deal. Well, thank you so much again for coming on the show. Thanks, it was really fun. I thirdly enjoyed that interview with Sarah Madnuck and wanted to thank Hachiko and Sarah for the honor of her being a guest on the show. And all things Sarah will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

Starting point is 00:54:40 Please use our website links if you buy any books from the authors featured on the show. All the proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube. At JohnRMiles, please check it out and subscribe. Avertisers, deals and discount codes are all in one convenient place. At passionstruck.com slash deals, please consider supporting those who support the show.

Starting point is 00:55:01 I'm at JohnRMiles, both on Instagram and Twitter, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. And if you wanna know how I manage to book all these amazing guests, it's because of my network. Go out there and build those relationships before you need them. And almost all the guests on the show subscribe to the show and also give us feedback

Starting point is 00:55:20 on additional guests that we could bring on and topics that I can cover during my momentum Friday solo episodes. So come join us. You'll be an smart company. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast with Carrington Smith, author of the best-selling book, Lumen. Carrington combines wit and wisdom to share her journey through the shit of life, to a life bursting with joy, opportunity and hope. I didn't have my bit more about life, bursting with joy, opportunity, and hope. I didn't have my job as about being out there in public.

Starting point is 00:55:50 I lost my means creating an income. I lost my friendship circle. I was too busy hiding out and shame of like how I appeared. This whole thing about being pretty. Boy, this thing when it happened to me really got to me because of that deep wound that's so wound from childhood. Here I was. I looked like

Starting point is 00:56:08 a monster at this point. Truly, I'm not saying that. I looked like a monster. The fee for this show is that you share it with your friends. When you

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Sara Mednick on How to Restore, Recharge and Reinvigorate Your Brain and Body EP 161

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