Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: How Prof. Danny Eckert invests in rest

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

If you're not sleeping well, you're not performing to your full potential. Investing in rest is one of the best things you can do. But how? The best person to help you appreciate and improve your sleep as a foundation for improvement in every aspect of your life is today’s guest, Professor Danny Eckert, who is recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on sleep. Professor Eckert has been actively involved in human sleep and respiratory physiology research for over 20 years. He is a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Senior Research Fellow and Mathew Flinders Professor at Flinders University in South Australia.  Danny currently serves as Director of the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health and Deputy Director at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute.  He leads a comprehensive research program that focuses on identification of the causes of sleep apnea, optimisation of existing therapies, and development of new tailored therapies.  He is most well-known for his pioneering respiratory work which has led to a new precision medicine therapeutic framework to understand and treat sleep apnea, and for his research on the role of arousal mechanisms on sleep apnea. He has published more than 150 articles in the leading sleep and respiratory medical journals.  Danny’s previous appointments include Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Principal Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia and Assistant Professor within the Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School in Boston. So in this eye opening and insightful discussion, Danny answers all of your sleep questions, including: What is good quality sleep? What happens to us when we sleep? Why is sleep so important? What are the benefits of good sleep? How much sleep do we need? What are the impacts if we undersleep or oversleep?  How do our iPhones, TVs and other devices affect our sleep? What is the relationship between sleep and breathing? What impact does meditation and napping have on sleep and its benefits?  What impact does sleep have on our mental health, mood, depression, body organs, performance, memory, creativity, weight and immune system? Can we recover from the ill effects of prolonged sleep deprivation?   What do we need to do and what not to do to optimise sleep and its benefits? How do we need to set up our sleep environment and sleep routine? What position should and shouldn’t we sleep in? And the growing epidemic of Sleep Apnea: What is it? The risk factors, effects, and what can you do about it. This is a really informative discussion that definitely won’t put you to sleep! But if you’re looking for a good book to read before you grab some well earned zzzz’s, you can grab a free copy of my award winning book ‘Get Invested’, which is the prequel to my book The Freedom Formula, by going to https://bushymartin.com.au/books Get Invested is the leading weekly podcast for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full ‘self, health and wealth’ potential. Hosted by Bushy Martin, an award winning property investor, founder, author and media commentator who is recognised as one of Australia’s most trusted experts in property, investment and lifestyle, Get Invested reveals the secrets of the high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and the world around them. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We also know that, you know, four out of ten Australians are getting inadequate sleep. So, I mean, this is a big problem and it's, you know, that has profound effects on everything. You know, every cell in the, or every organ in the body is adversely affected if we're not getting enough sleep. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time, their skills and their money and the benefits that this has created you see the truth is that everyone invests every minute every day we're investing our time our skills our energy and

our money in something some of us are investing consciously some unconsciously sometimes for good sometimes for bad sometimes for no impact get invested will help you to start living by design not by default i'm going to help you to make it happen not let it happen you'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more work less and leave a living legacy by investing now listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash get invested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested.

Hi, Freedom Fighters. Do you or have you ever suffered from memory loss, brain fog, stress, depression or anxiety, obesity, lethargy and exhaustion, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke or cancer? How have you or do you alleviate these ailments and maladies? My guess is probably some kind of medical intervention or a drug of some kind. But what if there was a simpler underlying cause to all of these myriad conditions that's right before our eyes, but we just fail to see it? Both a cause and a solution that's often overlooked, or worse, ignored.

Have you guessed what I'm talking about? If you haven't fallen asleep, then I'm talking about sleep, or the lack of it. Sleep deprivation is a major underlying cause of all of these conditions. But the good news is that reversing it and getting good quality sleep is also the solution to preventing most of these conditions. According to the Sleep Health Foundation report by Deloitte's Access Economics, titled Asleep on the Job, Counting the Cost of Poor Sleep, The impacts of insufficient sleep include increased risk of chronic diseases, impacts on mental health, impaired judgment, increased risk of accidents and reduced productivity. And guys, how are your testicles? Because according to sleep research, men who sleep five hours a night or less have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep seven hours or more.

In addition, as you'll hear from our guest today, men who routinely sleep five hours or less a night will have a level of testosterone which is that of someone 10 years their senior. So a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade in terms of that critical aspect of wellness. And research shows equivalent impairments in female reproductive health caused by a lack of sleep. well what is the cost of the australian economy of inadequate sleep well in 2016-17 the deloitte's report confirmed that inadequate sleep was estimated to cost the australian economy 66.3 billion dollars in that year alone and the stats on sleep deprivation are also eye-opening

The Deloitte report confirmed that 4 in 10 Australian adults or that's 7.4 million people frequently suffered from inadequate sleep in the 2016-17 financial year And in that same year sleep deprivation was directly linked to over 3,000 deaths There were 394 deaths a year from falling asleep at the wheel of a vehicle

or from industrial accidents due to a lack of sleep and the remaining deaths are heart disease and diabetes deaths that are linked to sleep disorders. And sleep deprivation has been shown to be a major contributing cause to the tragic accidents at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown in Ukraine in the 1980s and the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion disaster, both resulting in the loss of many lives.

And in the investigations that followed those disasters, poor judgment as a result of extended shift work and loss of vigilance and tiredness from inadequate sleep was attributed as a major cause of those disasters. So to set the scene on the importance of sleep, let's share some thoughts from another sleep specialist, Russell Foster. If you're an average sort of person, 36% of your life will be spent asleep, which means that if you live to 90, then 32 years would have been spent entirely asleep. Now what that 32 years is telling us is that sleep at some level is important. And yet, for most of us, we don't even give sleep a second thought. We throw it away. We really just don't think

about sleep. And so what we'd like to do today is to wake you up, or should I say put you to sleep, to change your views, to change your ideas, and change your thoughts about sleep. So to start this sleep journey, let's start by going back in time and look at how our attitudes to sleep have changed through some historic literary quotes. Let's start with this one. Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber. Any ideas who said that?

No? Well, it was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and that was penned back in the late 1500s. And here's another one. Oh sleep, oh gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee? Yes, that's Shakespeare again from Macbeth. And from about the same time as this quote, sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Extremely prophetic, this was by Thomas Decker, another Elizabethan dramatist.

But if we jump forward 400 years, the tone about sleep changes significantly. Thomas Edison, at the beginning of the 20th century, said, Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days. And if we also jump into the 1980s, some of you may remember the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was reported to have said sleep is for wimps and of course the infamous gordon gecko from wall street said money never sleeps what did we do in the 20th century that changed our approach to sleep we've almost universally used thomas edison's light bulb to invade the night

and now we occupy the dark and in the process of this occupation we've treated sleep as an illness as something to be avoided, minimized, and eliminated? How many times have you caught yourself saying, if only there were more hours in the day? Many of us now treat sleep as an enemy. Many of us barely tolerate the need for sleep. And at worst, many of us think of sleep as an illness that needs some sort of a cure.

To sleep is to be perceived by many as weak and lazy. I was certainly guilty of this for decades where my incessant workaholism meant that I survived on very little sleep for years on end wearing my sleepiness as some sort of twisted badge of pride and it's only been in recent years that my thinking on this has reversed and I now love sleep and reap its plentiful rewards and our ignorance about sleep is really quite profound

why is that? why do we abandon sleep in our thoughts? Well, it's because we think we don't do anything much while we're asleep. Sleep is a complete waste of our precious time, right? Wrong. Actually, as you will hear from our expert guest, Professor Danny Ecker today, sleep is an incredibly important part of our biology. And when you're asleep, despite common thoughts to the contrary,

our brain doesn't shut down. In fact, some areas of the brain are actually more active during the sleep state than during the wake state. So if it isn't obvious, why do we sleep? It won't surprise you that there's no consensus on this, and the truth is that there are dozens of different ideas about why we need to sleep. One of the key reasons we need to sleep is the restoration idea. Essentially, all the stuff we've burned up during the day, we restore, we replace, and we rebuild during the night.

And indeed, as an explanation, this goes way back to Aristotle over 2,300 years ago. But it's also supported by modern-day neuroscience, where it's been shown that within the brain, a whole raft of genes are turned on during sleep. And those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. Another key reason we need good regular quality sleep is its beneficial impact on brain processing and memory consolidation.

Respected scientific studies have repeatedly shown that if, after you've tried to learn a task, you're sleep-deprived, your ability to learn that task is absolutely diminished. It's massively impacted. Sleep studies have revealed a 40% deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep. To put that in context, it would be the difference in a child acing an exam versus failing miserably. That's a 40% drop.

And the quality of our sleep has also been shown to have a significant impact on ageing and dementia. It's no secret that as we get older, our learning and memory abilities begin to fade and decline. But what sleep scientists have discovered is that a physiological signature of ageing is that your sleep gets worse, especially your deep sleep. And evidence suggests that the disruption of deep sleep is an underappreciated factor that's contributing to cognitive decline or memory declining in ageing and in Alzheimer's disease as well. So sleep and memory consolidation is strongly correlated. However, it's not just the laying down of memory and recalling it. What I find really exciting is research that demonstrates that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a good night's sleep.

In fact, it's been estimated to give us a three-fold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity, and as you know from last week's episode with Wade Kingsley, your level of creativity will be your make it or break it skill in the radically uncertain, rapidly changing days ahead. So learn to sleep well, my friends. Sleep's not an indulgence or an extravagance. It's not some sort of thing that we can take on board casually or fit it in if we've got time. It's fundamental to every aspect of our lives and it's becoming increasingly obvious that the quality, quantity and regularity of our sleep will have a big impact on the level of success or otherwise that we achieve in every aspect of our lives.

So stop taking it for granted, stop stealing from it and cheating it and instead embrace sleep as a great gift and your biggest friend. Not a foe to be fought and eliminated as much as possible. And the best person to help you appreciate and improve your sleep as a foundation for improvement in every aspect of your life is today's guest, Professor Danny Eckert who's recognised internationally as a leading sleep specialist Danny Eckert has been actively involved in human sleep

and respiratory physiology research for over 20 years now Professor Eckert is a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Senior Research Fellow and Matjie Flinders Professor at Flinders University in my home state of South Australia. Danny currently serves as Director of the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health and Deputy Director at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute. He leads a comprehensive research program that focuses on identification of the causes of sleep apnea, optimisation of existing therapies and the development of new tailored therapies.

He's well known for his pioneering respiratory work, which has led to a new precision medicine therapeutic framework to understand and treat sleep apnea, and for his research on the role of arousal mechanisms on sleep apnea itself. He's also published more than 150 articles in the leading sleep and respiratory medical journals. danny's previous appointments include professor of medicine at the university of new south wales and sydney principal research scientist at neuroscience research australia an assistant professor within the division of sleep medicine brigham and women's hospital at harvard medical school in boston so in this eye-opening and insightful discussion danny answers all of your key sleep questions including what is good quality sleep what happens to us when we do sleep why is sleep so important what are the benefits of good sleep how much sleep do we need and what

are the impacts if we under sleep or over sleep how do our iphones tvs and other technological devices affect our sleep? What's the relationship between sleep and breathing? What impact does meditation and napping have on sleep and its benefits? And what impact does sleep have on our mental health, our mood, depression, body organs, performance, memory, creativity, weight and our immune system? He answers, can we recover from the ill effects of prolonged sleep deprivation? what do we need to do and what not to do to optimize sleep and its benefits how do we need to set up our sleep environment and our sleep routine what position should and shouldn't we be sleeping in and he gives us a rundown on the growing

epidemic of sleep apnea he talks about what it is what are the common causes what are the risk factors the effects and what can you do about it now this is a really informative discussion that definitely won't put you to sleep but if you're looking for a good book to read before you grab some well-earned z's you can grab a free copy of my award-winning book get invested which is the prequel to my book the freedom formula and you can get them by going to bushymartin.com.au forward slash books and hopefully they won't put you to sleep now in closing we want you to start taking sleep seriously like time you can continue to treat it as your biggest enemy and suffer the consequences or you can embrace it as your greatest friend and enjoy all of the self health

and wealth benefits that come with it and you'll hear in detail from danny that if you have good sleep it increases your concentration attention decision making creativity social skills and every aspect of your health. If you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and even your tendency to drink and take drugs. As Jim Butcher, the fantasy writer says, sleep is God, go worship. And we recommend that you do the same. And always remember to fall asleep with a dream and wake up with a purpose. thanks for not falling asleep just yet before you enjoy this great eye-opening to eye-closing discussion with professor danny ecker

hi freedom fighters now if you've been listening to get invested for any length of time you'll know that i believe that sustainable success lies at the intersection of self health and wealth where self is our mindset and mental health health is about our daily rewarding rituals and happy habits and wealth is about investing in our financial freedom. So today we're focusing on the underrated and often unrecognized and overlooked discipline that's fundamental to any achievement in all of these things and that's our sleep. And as my great-grandmother who lived until she was 103 always used to say, early to bed, early to rise makes you healthy, wealthy and wise. Good framework to start it off. So to discuss the importance of sleep to every

aspect of our lives, we're joined by a leading sleep specialist, Dr. Danny Eckert. So welcome and let's get invested, Danny. Thank you. Good to be here. Danny, been looking forward to having this chat for quite some time, given just how foundational and fundamental sleep is to everything we do. But to kick things off, for those who haven't heard of you, can you just give us a very quick rundown on who you are, what you do, and most importantly, why you do what you do? Yeah, sure. Look, I am, as you said, a sleep scientist, and I've been in this field for 20 years now.

Originally, I wanted to be a cyclist, actually, so I did a lot of mountain biking when I was at school and raced world championships and Oceania Games and wanted to be a professional cyclist. But, you know, along the way, I was also very interested in medicine and the human body and physiology and had this sort of crossroad period of my life when I finished my undergraduate training in exercise physiology where I had the choice to kind of stick with the exercise physiology world or move into this new sleep and respiratory physiology world, then, you know, very quickly I realized that, yeah, sleep is actually the other end of the spectrum of, you know, exercise when you're pushing your body as hard as you can and where the

physiology is most interesting and it turns out the body's sort of most vulnerable. Sleep is the other extreme of that where, you know, it's quietest but also it's most vulnerable and, in my opinion, most interesting. So, yeah, that's kind of been my journey and, you know, originally trained and grew up in Adelaide and then finished my doctoral training at the Repat Hospital in Adelaide and then moved across to Boston to the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School and spent six years there. And that was, as you can imagine, just, you know, fantastic experience and life-changing. And then came back to Sydney and spent eight years in Sydney where I built a, you know, state-of-the-art sleep research facility and built a team there. And in the last couple of years, I've relocated with my family back to Adelaide to take over as director of the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health. And we now have, you know, one of the largest sleep groups in the planet and run a six-bed dedicated sleep research facility, you know, really trying to figure out, you know, why people get these common sleep disorders and what we can do about it in terms of coming up with new therapies and treatments and why I do it.

I do it because I love it. It's interesting. And, you know, I always wanted to do something that fundamentally helps others and makes a contribution to society. And this has been a good fit. Yeah, perfect. Well, you've given us a really good Breeders' Digest flying visit on your journey so far. I'd love to sort of circle back and dig into a little bit of that if I can,

particularly around that sort of transition point from the cycling to sleep. I mean I can probably sort of understand that as a young man that cycling and the physical side of things would have been pretty exciting. Talk us through what led you into that and then talk us through around the time of what made you start to head in the other direction. Yeah, look, I mean, I was always, you know, came from a family of, you know, three brothers and a couple of stepbrothers as well. And so, you know, sport was always important in our family as it is in many Australian families. And, you know, I played AFL football and was keen to do that for a long time as, you know, when I was in high school.

But then, you know, just got interested in this mountain biking thing with, yeah, sort of a friend that lived around the – or worked in the bike shop down the road and, you know, soon enough I just – I was hooked on this, you know, pushing your body as hard as you can. And, you know, very soon after, I was, yeah, doing it for, spending many hours riding my bike and making this a real focus. And so, you know, all through my high school years and into my early, you know, university days, you know, this was still a real focus. And, yeah, like you said, it was exciting. I got to travel around the country and do a little bit of overseas travel and, you know, it was a great way to, yeah, not only get fit but also, you know, see a bit of the country and, you know, those lessons in life of the discipline, the training, you know, it's made everything else in life pretty easy really compared to pushing yourself as hard as you can riding a push bike. But, yeah, in terms of the crossroads, I guess for me it was – well, actually it was when my mum got unwell. I was, you know, 18 and my mum was diagnosed with cancer and basically I realised that there was more to life than riding a push bike. And so it did.

It made me reprioritize things and, you know, I took a year off after high school and raced my bike around the country and, you know, I was the junior uphill champion when I was younger and got all these great opportunities, but that was the crux of it. mum got on well, I refocused and spent a lot of time looking after her, actually, towards the end, and that really, you know, pushed me towards this medical research career, really, was that moment, and I guess, yeah, to take that a little further, you know, I was still doing exercise physiology when I was at university and I, you know, during that time and I finished my degree and I had a job lined up at the Sports Institute at SASE here in Adelaide as an exercise physiologist and I was going to do more research

in that area. Okay. Yeah, so that was kind of the crossroads where I was due to start on Monday this job at the Sports Institute and do some further research there in exercise physiology. But on the Friday before, I was offered a job at the Repat Hospital. You know, when you finish your undergrad degree, you sort of – I was applying for a lot of different things,

one of which was a sleep and respiratory research assistant, a job at the hospital here at the Repat. And, yeah, and I had this weekend. And, look, long story short, they offered me this three-year research assistant position And I had this weekend of deciding, well, am I going to go down and be a sports scientist or am I going to, you know, give this sleep and respiratory medicine thing a go? And it was a difficult weekend. And I, you know, so due to start my new job on the Monday morning and I went to the head of the exercise physiology at SASI there and just said, look, I've been offered this other job and I don't quite know which one to take.

Can I take a walk? And long story short, I, you know, obviously picked the sleep one and the very good people that inspired me. And after a year, I was inspired to do further study and research. It's a fairly seminal moment, I guess. What was it that tipped you over in terms of going, right, I'm going to go down the sleep research path rather than a sports scientist? Can you remember? Look, I remember it was an agonizing weekend. And at that point, my mum was still alive and I spent the weekend with her.

down the beach just you know where she lived so thinking about it and talking it through and and it was tough because you know there are it's a there are a few opportunities in this sports science area and you know I was very fortunate to have that that that opportunity but so I knew what I was giving up by sort of closing off that door and that that made it difficult but I guess at the end of the day you know you've got to take some risk and try new things if you want to, you know, get ahead and enjoy life and this was very much one of those moments. So it was just, you know, actually when I said I went for a walk on that Monday morning, I did but I walked down to speak to some of my university lecturers at Underdale UniSA

campus at those days and they also helped sort of push me in that direction, just said, you know, you've got to take this hospital job and that's what I did. Can you remember why they thought that was a better route than the sports scientists? I'm just interested because both of them are very appealing pathways, really. Yeah, look, it's true. I guess they could see, you know, it was pretty rare to have a sort of a three-year research job straight out of your undergrad training at that stage. So I guess they could see that opportunity.

And, yeah, I mean, even though it was a small unit at the time, I think some of my lecturers knew how good a scientist, you know, the people were working in that unit. And so I guess that was part of their advice that they gave me was to head in that direction. Okay. And was sleep or your understanding of sleep something that was a personal passion or was more opportunity driven? The opportunity came up to become a sleep research assistant and then your passion for the understanding and study of sleep arose from there or was it something prior to that? You know, when I said I wanted to be, you know, a cyclist when I was in my teenage years, actually I also wanted to be a sleep scientist. No, no, the reality is, you know, not surprisingly, it was by chance that it came up.

you know, no one, well, maybe people do, maybe if you want to be a sleep scientist, I was saying that tongue in cheek, but no, it was not on my radar at all, and it really, you know, I remember being in there, and so, yeah, it was a surprise to me that I've ended up here as well, but, you know, I love it, I love what I do, it's interesting, and it really was, you know, the people in that interview panel that i ended up you know becoming my my supervisors and colleagues that inspired me and and got me interested in this topic and uh it was um yeah so it was it was an interesting and uh serendipitous uh landing well tell me a bit you sort of uh if you'd sort of reflect back uh across your life so far what's life event do you believe brought about your greatest change

today well yeah i mean i i greatest change so yeah i mean that that was obviously a pivot point career-wise at a young age you know i mentioned a little bit about my mom getting unwell that was you know for a young person to lose their mom that was a big deal and uh you know it made me refocus on uh you know what's important in life and and what my priorities were and as well as doing things that i wouldn't have otherwise done while mom was alive like going out and getting a motorbike license and, you know, buying a motorbike and doing those things that I wouldn't have otherwise done. But, you know, yeah, look, you know, change is – can be exciting and, you know, I've

obviously travelled around a bit in my career and I've always enjoyed that. And so, yeah, you know, combination of all those things, I think. Yeah, okay. Well, let's jump to the future for a minute. I'd love for you to paint us a picture of your ideal lifestyle you know what are you doing with who where when what does that look like for you yeah look I I have a family and a wife that I adore and a job that I that I that I absolutely love you know it does not feel like going to work every day. It's fun going to work and working with the people I do. So for me, I'm in my early

40s and I feel very fortunate to be in the position I'm in. And yes, I've made some deliberate choices along the way to land in this place. But in terms of the future, we're continually evaluating that to make sure that, yeah, I'm getting enough time and energy, you know, good quality time to enjoy being with my family and making the most of those times whilst, you know, having a rewarding and enjoyable and, you know, contributing at work in an area that I feel is important and ultimately helping others and, you know, helping the community. So as long as I keep doing those things, I'm happy.

Okay. Well, just on that in terms of it's more around sustaining that great lifestyle that you're currently enjoying, what are you or will you be investing into to maintain that long term, Danny? Yeah, I guess the priorities are looking after my health and well-being. I am useless to anyone else if I'm not looking after myself. And as a sleep scientist, I do practice what I preach and so, you know, not always be the case. But now, you know, I make sure I get enough sleep. I make sure I get enough, you know, exercise and, you know, I try to eat well and, you know, so that's the key.

and, you know, being organised, getting systems in place so that I can be as productive and as happy as I possibly can be. Yeah, love it, love it. You mentioned some great stuff there around the systems side of stuff that's going to, I guess, continue to main the sort of the habits that will maintain the awesome lifestyle that you've got. If we talk about success for a minute, But what would be your definition of sustainable success, Danny?

Look, sustainable success for me would be doing, you know, waking up every day and doing something that you are enjoying, feel is important, and having fun along the way. I think that would be my very simple definition of, you know, sustainable success. Yeah, brilliant. And it sounds very much within that definition. That's exactly how you're living your life right now.

So love your thinking around that. That's awesome. Well, I'd love to delve now into your favourite subject and one that I've got a personal interest in because it's a work in progress for me, Danny. I'll be honest in saying that for many years as a very career-orientated professional, I treated sleep as almost an enemy.

and it was expendable. What's that old saying, I'll sleep when I'm dead? That was pretty apt to probably 20 years in my existence until my mid-30s when I had a major, I had an early life crisis at that stage that was a real wake-up call for me that then I'd re-evaluated everything at that point in time. But I'd love for you, because I know it's a challenge that a lot of Australians have, is one, getting enough sleep, two, appreciating how important sleep is.

So I'd love for you to just expand on that subject a bit for us and talk about, well, let's start with defining what good quality sleep is. Can you give us a rundown on what that looks like? Yeah, look, good quality. I mean, sleep is fascinating at all levels, you know, despite what, you know, some people perhaps might think that, you know, you go off to sleep and things shut down and you wake up feeling refreshed. It's, you know, and you're in this kind of comatose state. It's a very dynamic process with, you know, actually lots going on and, you know, we're

learning more and more about that as time goes by and the science evolves. But, you know, basically good sleep for an adult is getting enough. And so, for adults, the recommendations are between seven to nine hours a night is what we require for, you know, happy, healthy, optimal life. But we also know that, you know, four out of 10 Australians are getting inadequate sleep. So, I mean, this is a big problem. And it's, you know, that has profound effects on everything. You know, every cell or every organ in the body is adversely affected if we're not getting enough sleep or we're getting disrupted sleep, perhaps due to a sleep disorder or another medical condition that's perhaps back pain or something that's interrupting our sleep or sleep apnea or insomnia or one of these common sleep disorders. You know, every organ is adversely affected in the body and actually every cell in the body is potentially adversely affected.

So, you know, profound, profound effect on the human body and our function. So, yeah, sleep is important as it turns out. Yeah. So let's talk about some of those effects. Can you expand on, you know, you've made it clear it affects every cell in our body effectively. I'd love for you to just to really bring that to the fore for the listeners to understand. And let's do the flip side. If you're not getting enough sleep, what impact is it having?

Can you talk about some of the actual impacts that flow on from that? Yeah, and I guess just to put some numbers on it. So, you know, you stay awake for 19 hours in a row. So, you know, getting up early, working through the day, you know, perhaps staying up later than you should. by the time that 19 hours rolls around you're performing at a blood alcohol concentration equivalent of 0.05 so you know you're legally intoxicated after being awake for 19 hours you extend that to 24 hours it's 0.11 so so you know that's that's just one acute you know period of not getting enough sleep and and i guess to take some other examples if if you

take a healthy 20-year-old individual and you put them in the sleep lab and restrict their sleep for five to five hours for five nights in a row, and then you measure their blood glucose before and after that, at the end of that five days, that person is now in a pre-diabetic state. So that's, you know, you might think, well, five hours is not too bad, but actually that cumulative sleep knowing that we should be getting sleep seven to nine is is uh messing up your glucose control and and you know really putting you in a state where you're you know in pre pre-diabetic state another one you take a 20 year old healthy male put them in same conditions five hours a night um for for five nights in a row and you measure their testosterone levels it's as though that healthy

20-year-old has actually aged over a decade. So, you know, messing up the testosterone levels enormously. Maybe that's better for society, I don't know, but, you know, for sport and well-being and, you know, for, you know, optimal performance, probably not. Wow. So, and that's just a, that's less than a week. You can effectively age 10 years as far as testosterone is concerned and you can be in a pre-diabetic state that's uh that's a big impact in a very short space of time yeah these effects are big and and you know in in in our busy societies now and and yeah you mentioned yeah periods we weren't getting enough sleep equally you know when i was at university writing you know doing your getting your reports in and all that kind of thing and and we've all

had periods we've got deadlines and we've had to push it and and and sleep often and um you know is the thing that goes, you know, 17% of Australians are shift workers and that places all sorts of demands and stresses on people's opportunity to sleep. All these things, you know, immediately the next day can affect our mood, our attitude, our ability, you know, so a night of sleep deprivation, this air in the brain called the amygdala that is, you know, part of this limbic system which controls our, you know, our emotional response, so we're much more reactive, much more likely to make rash decisions after those nights of sleep deprivation. Let's sort of delve into that a little bit more then because the subject of mental health

is starting to receive a lot more focus in recent times. Can you sort of expand a bit on the impact of sleep on mental health? Look, very interconnected. And in fact, you know, sleep disruption, insomnia is one of the criteria for mental health issues and depression. So, these things are bi-directional related. So, if you are sleeping poorly, then, for example, if you've got sleep apnea, depression is much more common. And equally, if you've got a mental health disorder, that can affect and disrupt your sleep and, you know, you find yourself in this vicious cycle of, you know, things getting worse on both fronts. So, very interconnected, but on the upside of that, it's obviously also a potential to intervene. So, you know, by prioritizing sleep and getting enough time for it and, you know, if you do have a sleep disorder going off and getting it treated, there is potential to, you know, improve mental health, mood and well-being by optimizing and prioritizing sleep. Okay.

What about the areas of creativity, problem solving, and even memory? What impact does sleep have on those things, do you know? Yeah, well, memory consolidation happens during sleep, and in particular we think it happens during these dreaming sleep phases, rapid eye movement sleep. And, yeah, so, you know, nice studies my colleagues did down the hall where I was in Boston to sort of figure that out. You take away that REM sleep component and people do not consolidate the memories and the learnings that have taken place during the day anywhere near as well.

So, it is fundamental really and, you know, some of these disorders like sleep apnea can really disrupt and take away that rapid eye movement sleep period. So, yeah, fundamentally important. And I guess the obvious flow-on, and you've touched on this already with the pre-diabetic exercise, is that it's going to clearly flow on to weight control, I assume. And from what you're saying already, it probably also has an influence on our immune system, does it? Yeah, exactly. For the immune system to be functioning optimally, you need to get enough sleep. And absolutely, if you look on average, you ask people, you know, how many hours per night on average do you sleep?

And they answer less than, you know, six. They are much more likely to be obese. So it is, you know, at that level, it is, and equally, they're much more likely to die earlier too, actually. So, you know, it's fundamentally important to optimal function, getting enough sleep and getting quality sleep. what uh with some of these impacts and you know if we're talking five hours a night for five nights has obviously some fairly serious uh impact straight away is it recoverable so if i deprive myself of sleep for uh for a number of years and then i then the penny drops and i suddenly adopt really healthy sleeping habits uh can i um reverse some of those impacts or they are

Are they long-lasting, do you know? Yeah, well, the science is unresolved in that area. But what we know in practical terms, you know, many of us have what's called social jet lag. So during the week, we perhaps don't get enough sleep during our busy working week hours and then try to catch up on the weekend. You know, it's a very common phenomenon in today's society.

And yes, and we all feel that, you know, assuming we've got enough sleep over the weekend, We're refreshed and ready to go by Monday morning. But, you know, when we do these studies in the lab and we actually, you know, take these people that are chronically sleep-restricted during the week and then take them into the lab and give them 10 hours a night for three nights in a row, some of these glucose and blood control and blood pressure and these sort of things are recovering after those three nights, but often not fully. And as you can imagine, these effects are probably cumulative. So you do it, you know, again and again for long periods of time. You get increased inflammation in the body and it does have all those other deleterious effects to the body that, you know, likely do add up over time. And hence, that's why people that, you know, at big population study levels, if they're not getting enough sleep, then it is having that adverse effect in terms of shortening your life, you know, more likely to be obese, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, that increased inflammation, which is so closely associated with the autoimmune disorders and whatnot, if sleep deprivation is leading to high levels of inflammation, then that alone is going to have very serious impacts on most organs of the body, I would have thought, Danny. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned the immune system there and it's kind of ironic that our hospitals are some of the noisiest, most terrible places around for sleep because they've got lights on and things that go ping and people coming in and out all the time to do these potentially unnecessary checks on blood pressure in the middle of the night and things. So there is, you know, there's a body of work that's going on now, you know, recognising the importance of sleep and in this setting, you know, doing simple things, you know, there's a lot of scope to redesign these hospitals to make them quieter and perhaps reprioritise, you know, just because they've done those routine checks, you know, you could probably reprioritise those and carve out some of those so that you didn't interrupt the sleep so much. And, you know, people when they were in hospital could probably be out a lot quicker and recover, you know, much more quickly if we did, you know, make some more space. And even giving, you know, even simple trials where they've given people earplugs and eye masks can actually help in terms of improving their recovery times and all these sort of things. So it's, you know, it's pretty powerful stuff. Okay. Well, let's set the benchmark if we can.

I'd love you to paint a picture of the perfect sleep. What does it look like? And then flow that into some do's and don'ts in terms of what we should be doing to promote really good quality sleep and what we shouldn't be doing to adversely impact on sleep. Can you sort of paint that out for us? Yes. So I guess the perfect night of sleep is, you know, if we think about what we call sleep hygiene, You are sleeping in a place where you've got a comfortable bed and sleeping environment, so good temperature, so optimal sleep, 20 to 24 degrees Celsius is optimal. It's dark, it's quiet, you've got the devices out of there, so there's no devices in the bedroom.

and I guess on an ongoing basis you're getting to sleep at roughly the same time but it seems the data suggests that actually waking up at the same time every day is sort of more associated with optimal performance and well-being. So having that routine is key and then waking up basically wanting to jump out of bed and alert and ready to go because you've had that enough sleep, You're in a good routine, and your body thanks you for it. And so do your friends and family and colleagues. Yes.

Well, and talking about if you're sort of going through a full cycle and you are getting up regularly at the same time, does the style of alarm that you use, does that have an impact? I'm going to get quite granular here for self-interest as much as anything because most people have got their iPhone plugged in next to their bed and they use the alarm on that to go off and that makes a hell of a racket at the best of times. What are your thoughts around that waking up process?

Look, it's interesting. I'll just talk about it from a personal point of view. So unless I'm catching a flight, which I don't have to do too much these days, or I've got something I absolutely have to do at a certain time, I don't use an alarm. I just wake up naturally. And it's interesting, you know, I'm an early riser, so I wake up at five every morning or sometimes a touch before,

but I go to bed early. And so, you know, when you do have these alarms, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, we've all got things to do. They serve a purpose and we need to use them when necessary. But, yeah, getting back to your earlier question of, you know, what is optimal sleep and stuff, you know, your body's waking up when it knows it needs to, you know, ideally you can do that without an alarm because, you know, when you do get these alarms, you do get a big burst of your heart rate goes up, you get this big sort

of adrenaline push when it goes up. So, you know, nothing particularly harmful of that other than it's, unless you've got some pre-existing medical conditions and things and in rare circumstances that can be harmful. But, you know, otherwise it's, you know, people do ask about, you know, the stage of sleep. Does it help to wake up at, you know, certain stages? So we have the light sleep, we have deep sleep

and then we have dreaming or rapid eye movement sleep. And it turns out that we, you know, we tend to have lighter, more of the rapid eye movement dreaming sleep where you tend to wake up more easily in the early morning hours anyway, that deeper sleep tends to come in the early half of the night. So it probably doesn't matter that much is really the truth of the matter.

Yeah, okay. Now, that's very good to know, mate. You touched earlier on, you know, 17% of Australians are shift workers. I'm taking it from what you said that that's a bit of a challenge when it comes to the impact of sleep. Can you talk us through what that means? yeah look it is and and you know because we've got the two things that send us off to sleep fundamentally every night is uh you know we've been awake for longer and we build up all these

chemicals in the body that that are pushing us towards sleep so you know simply the longer you're awake the tireder you get basically so we call that homeostatic sleep drive um and so that's one thing that gets you off to sleep but you've also got this body clock or circadian rhythm And, you know, we've got all these clocks in our body, as it turns out. One is in the brainstem, is the sort of central clock or the conductor of the orchestra, if you like. And then you've got all these other clocks all spread around the body. And that, you know, if you're a shift worker, that turns out that clock system is kind of slow moving. And that's why we get jet lag and things.

You can pretty much only adjust that clock, you know, at best an hour a day. And so if you're jumping around schedules, your body just doesn't cope very well with it. And as it turns out, you know, all sorts of functions, you know, growth hormone is only released during deep sleep. And if your homeostatic sleep drive as well as your body clock aren't well aligned, then you're not getting the optimal release of all these things. And even now they're starting to learn, you know, when you take your medications, when you do certain things, there's certain windows within your body clock and your time of day where you get better effects of these drugs and certain activities. So, you know, yes, being a shift worker disrupts those processes and, you know, humans, as it turns out, love routine and shift work presents a challenge for that and is associated. with adverse health consequences as a result. What about, I know this myself,

I'm quite open to the old mid-afternoon siesta on occasions where I'll grab 15 or 20 minutes because I just hit this wall sort of mid-afternoon quite often and I'll go, I'll just have a quiet nap, the old grandpa nap. Is that a good or bad thing in the context of its impact on the general quality of your sleep, particularly when you go to sleep at night. Yeah, look, great question.

And how do you feel after you've had one of those naps? Oh, refreshed as. Yeah. It really does charge the batteries. Yeah, exactly. And so, and that's the truth. And it could be very useful for these shift workers. It creates a great little, yeah, rejuvenator

or, you know, it does increase your alertness and performance just in that 15, 20 minutes. And that's probably about the right time, actually. 10 to 20 minutes is probably optimal for a daytime nap. Any more than that, you start to get what's called sleep inertia, which, you know, those of you who have tried napping during the day is where you just feel groggy, you feel worse than you started off with. So if you go too long, you get sleep inertia bad. But these short, brief naps, and that's why you sort of hear it in these road safety campaigns now, you know, pull over, take a little nap.

You know, before I studied sleep, I would have never done that. But now I've done that on long drives now. And, you know, that 10-minute power nap is all you need to get going again. Now, in terms of what it does now, the only exception, we wouldn't recommend that. And this is an issue often for sort of retirees or people that do have the opportunity to sleep a bit more during the day. If you start having these naps on a regular basis during the day, then it can start to affect your sleep patterns at night and you can, you know, create problems at night. So not recommended unless you kind of need a circuit breaker, whether it be shift work or you've, you know, you haven't had enough sleep for whatever reason the night before. okay well an allied subject uh because i again i'm sort of quite focused on my health these days

and i'm a relative newcomer to transcendental meditation where i just do two 20 minute meditations uh one early in the day and and one late afternoon ish and they're purely just 20 minutes uh and and you don't actually fall asleep during those exercises but but you are pretty much turning your system down for that period of time. Is that a – will that have any impact on sleep? Is it a benefit or a deterrent? Any thoughts around that? Yeah, look, those – you know, mindfulness, meditation,

those kind of practices, particularly if people are having, you know, issues getting off to sleep or staying asleep, they can help, you know, hugely in terms of quieting the brain down. I mean, sleep is, yes, it's a physiological, biological process, but it's also a behavioral one. And so, yeah, and, you know, if we've had a busy day or, you know, lots going on in our mind, we've got to turn that off so that we can let the physiology do its thing because otherwise our brain can override these natural sleep processes. So meditation can be, you know, great in that lead up to sleep and winding down. And, yeah, you know, meditation in the morning for other reasons could be a great way to sort of, you know, map out the day and sort of get you focused and ready for the day ahead. And, you know, we know that meditation can help sort of almost – well, yeah, it fundamentally sort of does result in plasticity of the brain and new connections and, you know, better thinking and more creativity and all these sort of things.

So plus on both. Okay. Okay. In the lead up to sleep, so let's talk about the routine before you go to sleep. You've already mentioned some great stuff in relation to quiet, dark room, 20 to 24 degrees, optimal temperature, no devices. Let's talk about devices for a minute. Why would scrolling through Facebook on my iPhone or having a TV in the bedroom or other things be detrimental? yeah and and so one they're taking away time where you should be sleeping so you're cutting into your sleep opportunity so that you know first and foremost we know how much time you

can waste on these things and um so that that's the first but you know biologically um when you've got one of these devices particularly when it's up against your face so actually you know we don't recommend putting tv or any of these sort of things in the bedroom but um actually the devices are worse than television because they're closer to your eyes and they emit this blue light. And the blue light that comes out of these devices tells the hormone melatonin to shut down. So melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that releases in the hours in the lead up to sleep. And it's one of these chemicals that builds up that helps us get off to sleep. So by having that blue light emitted from the devices you're turning you're basically telling the body

it's time to go wake up you know this it's an alerting signal and and you're stopping those natural biological processes that help us get off to sleep so you're uh you know it's making it harder let's jump into melatonin for a minute because i i i've got one of those brains that never stops danny and uh one of the ways i've uh learned to sleep better is to i actually take uh melatonin in in a liquid format under under the tongue uh i also take gabba uh before i go go to bed and that has had a significant impact on improving the quality of my sleep is is that a good or bad thing though long term because if if i'm artificially supplementing that is that likely to have impacts on my body's own ability to monitor those key hormones etc

yeah i mean this is individual conversations that probably we have with you know your doctor um and equally for others but but you know look in general terms melatonin is uh You know, it is a naturally occurring hormone and in low doses, you know, it's pretty, you know, it doesn't really have any major side effects. So, it's, you know, it's pretty safe from that perspective. Interestingly, it is important when you take it. So, it sounds like for you, you're taking it at a time that is helpful and it's useful. You know, it can help change the timing of the body clock and it can have, you know, maybe a mild sleepy effect. But, you know, it's mild.

But if you take it in the wrong time of your body clock, it can actually have a counterproductive effect and sort of make sleep patterns worse. So not many people kind of realise that. And that's, again, just to do with the biology of how this all works. So, you know, yeah, taking it the right time, you know, can be helpful. Probably not particularly harmful, but, yeah, with all these things, it's worth a check with your doc.

Yeah, sure. And we make the point here we're not prescribing or diagnosing anything in what we're talking about today. So I'll put the big disclaimer right there, Danny. Danny, one other thing I'd love to delve into if you're able to put some colour around this as well is the position that we sleep in. Does that have any impact?

Some sleep on their back, some on their left side, some with our right side, some toss around like washing machines. Is body position and how we sleep have any impact on the quality of the sleep and its benefits? Look, it certainly can. And again, most people, you know, going back to those earlier statements about, you know, turn the lights off, go to sleep, wake up and, you know, think not much has happened throughout the night. Turns out we wriggle around a lot at night. You know, if you put an infrared camera and you actually just count the number of times people move around per hour, it's a lot.

You know, 20 more times an hour for some people, these little movements are going on. So, you know, and it turns out if you sleep on your back, if you are vulnerable to sleep apnea, as many of us are, this, you know, very common condition where the throat area is kind of narrowing or closing off, That's much worse when people are on their back. And so, you know, being on the side can certainly help many people to restore their breathing if they're vulnerable to sleep apnea or maybe just snoring. Maybe, you know, people just snore on their back, which also, you know, means you're working harder to breathe and can certainly disrupt the bed partner if that's relevant. So, you know, yes, sleeping position can be important. Okay. And you touched on it there as well, the relationship between sleep and breathing. Can you talk about the impact of sleep on breathing and vice versa? Because breathing is something that we do involuntarily, generally. Can you talk to us about what the interplay is between those two? yeah look uh you know when when we go off to sleep um yes automated breathing process um

but many of us you know it turns out a billion nearly a billion people around the planet are estimated to have you know obstructive sleep apnea you know this common condition that uh really plays havoc on sleep and um by closing off that throat area anywhere from the back of the nose to the sort of back of the throats, narrowing and closing, so these people are not getting enough air through, they're often snoring, and all the things that we've talked about of, you know, not getting, you know, that happens with not getting a good night's sleep, this is important, or this happens for these people, so, you know, over a million Australian adults have this condition, so, you know, that's where you're literally not getting

enough air, and oxygen levels are going down, it's placing stress on your heart, and, you know you're waking up many times throughout the night without even knowing it and uh yeah not surprisingly um often feel pretty rotten the next day and you know more likely to crash your car and have all these other other sort of consequences so yeah look it's it's um breathing and and and and sleep is you know obviously we we need that to happen and and when it doesn't uh it's bad you know put simply yeah okay the um uh let's delve well before we do that there's something that i just want to close off on the general conversation around sleep and that is we talked about too little sleep and you've talked about the sort of ideal uh you know between seven to

nine hours and two questions that flow out of that does that change with age number one number two can you oversleep? And if you sleep too much, is that a good or bad thing? Yeah, really important questions. And so getting back to that earlier question that I sort of posed, when you ask people on average, how many hours per night do you sleep? And I mentioned bad if you say less than six. Well, actually, it's also bad if you answer at a... So they've asked this question literally to millions of people around the planet. And when they answer that and they also answer more than nine that's also associated with lots of adverse health outcomes including premature um death and all those sort of things so so and that we don't

really know why that is you know we understand this you know we're learning more and more about all the stresses and the impact on the body with inflammation that we talked about when you don't get enough sleep but why you know being in bed for too long might be bad for now recognizing this is only asking people you know so this is their self-reported response so whether they are actually getting nine or more hours we don't know and um whether but so it may be a reflection of other other issues going on so often uh you know depression uh can can lead to long periods in bed and and and so there might be other comorbidities you know the studies as best they can they try to sort of take account of these things but there might be other things that you know by answering

that question there might be other things that are coming into that but you know getting back to how much um we need and what the recommendations are what you know varies across the lifespan um those that are parents you know our newborns they need a lot you know their first few months of life they're sleeping 14 to 17 hours a day is the recommendation and infants 12 to 15 toddlers you know 11 to 14 preschool 10 to 13 um school age kids you know 9 to 11 hours a night Now, teenagers are supposed to be getting 8 to 10 hours a night. Many of them don't. A recent study out of Canada showed that only 15% of teenagers were getting that recommended.

You know, this time in their life when they're supposed to be growing and thriving and learning and, you know, they're chronically missing out on average, teenagers. And so, yeah, you know, adults 7 to 9 and, you know, once you're over 65, 7 to 8 is the recommendation. so you mentioned a really important point there because at that very formative age as a teenager when you are soaking up the skills that are potentially going to set up the rest of your life and you're cheating yourself on on sleep and therefore and not either mentally or physically putting in a position where you're absorbing and and learning and and optimizing the situation that

that is going to have some long-term effects i would have thought potentially yeah and and you can imagine i mean doing those sort of studies are hard because you're going to follow up people for a long time but there you know there is emerging evidence that yeah your sleep patterns when you're younger uh will you know predict your uh insomnia and mental health 15 years on you know so so these kind of signals are coming through now so it is it is a crucial window so yeah all the parents out there listening uh you know getting those sleep patterns in early for for kids and And reinforcing as best we can is an important thing to do. Absolutely.

You've touched on sleep apnea a few times, and most of us know what it is, but there will be some that don't. Can you, given your expertise in this particular area, can you break it down into what actually is sleep apnea? What are the types? What are the causes? What are the risks? and most importantly, how can you prevent and treat it if you are suffering from it?

Yeah, sure. So sleep apnea, most common form is obstructive sleep apnea where that throat and back of the nose area is actually, so that area is actually surrounded by a bunch of muscles, 25 or more little muscles and that allows us to swallow and speak and move this throat area around and do all the things we need to do as well as breathing, of course. But, you know, when we go off to sleep, all the muscles in the body relax and these are no exception. So, you know, these people or some people will already have a slightly narrow airway

and as these muscles relax, they can actually, you know, restrict airflow and actually close off completely if they get too relaxed. And so what happens in sleep apnea is you still, obstructive sleep apnea, you're still trying to breathe, you're still making efforts to breathe, but that air just isn't getting through. You're not getting enough air into the lungs and therefore to the rest, you know, enough oxygen to the rest of your body. And so these events can happen for, well, they need to last for at least 10 seconds, but they can last for minutes actually. And in severe cases, you know, people are having more than 100 times per hour their airways closing off and they're not getting enough air.

And waking up, you know, 5 or 10 seconds at a time, going back to sleep and it's happening again and again and again and again throughout the night. So that's obstructive sleep apnea. Now, the other one is less common. It's called central sleep apnea. And this is where actually the signals from the brain to tell you to breathe are misbehaving. And it's quite common in people who've also got some heart disease or other issues going on with their cardiac function. And that is where they just, you know, because when you're asleep, carbon dioxide controls your breathing. And, you know, with some of these other conditions, they can cause those signals to be disrupted

and you're just basically not, you know, the brain's no longer telling you to breathe in the way it should and that can cause low oxygen problems as well. Wow. Yeah, oxygen deprivation would be having some major impacts on the brain but all the other organs of the body as well then. Look, exactly. And in terms of causes, look, middle age and aging is one of the big causes. Obesity is a major cause for obstructive sleep apnea, but thin people get it too.

There's other anatomical reasons why you might get it. And, you know, men get it, you know, twice as more frequently or more than women. Why is that? Well, look, it's interesting when you go into the physiology. um the the airway in men tends to be a little longer so you've got a longer tube that that um just may in itself might be more vulnerable to collapse just because you got more of it um the other you know the other reasons we think are important are um pre-menopausal so actually after menopause women uh the rates of sleep apnea become much more uh similar to men um so something

to do with the with the sex hormones estrogen progesterone and things you know they stimulate breathing and they probably protect women from having sleep apnea as well probably other things like the way we distribute our weight so men tend to to store it on their bellies whereas women you know around the hips and that when you go off to sleep and you know your your respiratory muscles and things relax if you've got a big belly that pushes down and lowers the amount of air in your lungs and that can also um have effects on the uh on the upper airway too and make it more collapsible so all of those things together are probably what uh you know make it more common in men than women to sort of bring the whole sleep discussion to to a head then

danny for those that that are suffering poor sleep or they always feeling tired and and suffering of these other things, or whether they're aware or not aware that they may be suffering from apnea, sleep apnea of either of those types you spoke about, what should people do? What's their course of action? First thing is to talk to your doctor. Yeah, so if you're worried about your sleep or you feel like it's affecting your function, have a conversation with your doctor.

You know, in Australia and many places throughout the world, but in particular Australia, we We have fantastic sleep doctors in this country and, you know, a lot of the sleep medicine field, a lot of the innovations have come out of Australia. So we do have, you know, great access to care and some of the best people on the planet to, you know, manage these problems. So, yeah, like all health things, first point of call is to have a chat with your doctor and as well as doing the other things. You know, if you find, you know, you've gone through all those behavioral things of making sure the bedroom's quiet, you're getting enough sleep, and you're still feeling like you're not waking up refreshed or you're having some of these other issues we talked about, then, yeah, I would encourage people to have a chat with their doc. Yeah, yep. Always a great place to start. Well, look, I feel like we could talk about sleep until we put the listeners to sleep, Danny.

it's a it's a a subject that i think is finally starting to get the sort of recognition that it needs in terms of people understanding just how important it is to our longevity and our enjoyment of life generally uh so i really appreciate your thoughts on that and i know that's going to um get anyone who's listening to this to start thinking very seriously about how some how something as simple as the because it is pretty simple if you break it down the getting good quality sleep can be two aspects and other issues that you might be suffering in your life may all trace back to the quality and the the pattern and the behaviors that you put around sleep so i appreciate you enlightening us on that today mate but i'm going to jump now

straight into what I call the ambush round, or the bushfire lightning round, where there's just five quick questions that the listeners always love to glean your words of wisdom on. So to kick off on the first one of those, what's your favorite quote and why, Danny? Look, hard to narrow it down to one, but some of Martin Luther King's wise words I always find pretty inspiring so i kind of like this one so you know if you can't fly then run if you can't run then walk if you can't walk then crawl but whatever you do uh you know keep moving forward so you know i like that that one of just sort of keep keep on going you know keep pushing doing the best you can yeah that's a cracker that is a good one uh on the literary field then what's

the top book that you'd recommend people read and why you know i i um i read a lot at work so so i i tend to read for for pleasure so i i so so look i i would say read what you enjoy and and and that lesson also transfers to the rest of your life do what you enjoy and uh and and so yeah i i i tend to read things like uh the moment i'm reading keith richard's biography so you know i wouldn't recommend that to everyone but it's uh yeah i i read the switch off he's a really interesting guy man i one of the other guests on the podcast uh used to be a interviewer for uh the rolling stones magazine yeah and he told uh because i'm a mad stones fan of a big music fan actually and He told some really interesting tales about the perception of Keith Richards

versus the reality of Keith Richards, and what you see is definitely a very different person. He's actually a very intelligent, very clever guy behind the scenes, but he portrays this sort of drug-rattling... Rock and roll persona. Rock and roller. Yeah, so I reckon that would be a pretty interesting read, old Keith Richards. Yes, it's worth a read.

Yeah, definitely. Now, this one's a little bit left field, but most Aussies believe that they pay too much tax. So I'd love you to share what's the top legal thing that you've done to minimise the tax that you've paid, Danny? I am going to take a pass on that because I, you know, as an academic I just pay my tax every year that I'm supposed to. So my life is pretty easy on that front.

Pretty simple. I just do what I'm told. Yeah, yeah. well the uh my good accountant keeps telling me that uh uh if you're paying tax that means you're making money so that can't be a bad thing my grants are funded by a tax I have money so I you know I try to use it wisely yeah awesome okay the good answer the uh next question revolves around uh what what's the worst and the best piece of an investment advice that you've ever received Now, I know you'd said earlier that you're not doing a lot of investment, but you'd probably pick some things up along the way.

What would you consider to be the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've received today? Look, again, yes, probably not my area of expertise, but on a personal level, you know, you've got to live somewhere. And so for us, you know, buying and paying off our house as quickly as we can and has worked well for us. So that simple old one is the best. And look, I did have a managed fund at one stage when I was younger and then that financial crisis hit and that was the end of that short trial I had with that. So that was the worst scenario I had. Pretty simple for me on the money. Yeah, no, that's easy.

No, that's good. And the final one, what's a personal habit that you believe contributes most to your success generally? Personal habit? Look, I think for me it is about pleasant perseverance, I think. That's how I operate. And, you know, goals in mind, inspired by what I, you know, what I'm trying to achieve, keeping the big picture in the forefront and just, yeah, pleasantly persevering towards that goal. That's how I operate. I love that expression and I've never heard it before, mate.

Big believer in patience, persistence and perseverance to achieve anything in life, but pleasant perseverance. That's a really good way to describe it, actually, mate. thanks for sharing that. That's brilliant. Okay, final question, and it gives you an opportunity to really summarize the key messages that we've been talking about today. If I gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of these 7.7 billion odd people that are currently alive in the world, and I gave you 60 seconds to talk, what would you say? Look, above all, I would say be kind uh you know be kind to to your fellow humans and if if you are in a in a position where and and recognizing that not everyone is around the planet if you are in a position to

make a positive contribution or help others then you gotta you got a responsibility and an ethical and moral obligation to do that you should and you should do it to the best of your ability and And of course, if sleep helps you get there, then make sure you get enough sleep so that you can have a happy, healthy life up there with the other two pillars of health with exercise and diet. Love that. Been a great conversation, mate. I think very timely one, given the challenges that a lot of us are facing with the ongoing

onslaught of the post-pandemic world that we live in and the uncertainty that creates. Certainly very important, I think, to focus back on the simple thing that's right under our nose, and that's sleep. So really appreciate you coming on today to share that message. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Danny. Talk again soon. Bye for now. Get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes.

just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. Or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow. Thanks for watching!