The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #125 SPECIAL ROUNDTABLE EDITION Featuring Dr. Dave Rabin and Mollie Eastman!! The relationship between mental health, sleep and nervous system regulation!

Starting point is 00:00:17 Today's episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro. Apollo is the leading doctor recommended wearable technology. Apollo's award-winning smart vibes AI works effortlessly behind the scenes, automatically integrating into your life to deliver gentle, personalized vibrations that activate your vagus nerve, helping you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up balanced, focused, and ready each day. Not only that, but the Apollo Neuro is the first and only wearable that improves your HRV. Apollo is effortless. Simply wear it throughout the day and night and let it do the work

Starting point is 00:00:52 for you. It's safe for anyone and everyone with no side effects and is the only wearable that can be worn anywhere on your body. Optimal health requires both the mind and body to be in line and Apollo is the key to establishing that connection. Check the description below to save $90 with my special discount. Take control over your health today with Apollo Neuro. All right everybody, to the Dylan Timeli podcast. I have such a treat today. This is not a normal type of show. I have a virtual roundtable, two of my favorite people in the world. First, I just want to fill everybody in on the type of discussion. We're going to really get into the neuro side of things of sleep, its effect on our overall health, how these tie in together. I've got two of the best experts on the planet to get into

Starting point is 00:01:40 this. I'm going to talk about all the ways that I'm screwed up and how they've helped to fix me. and it's going to be a blast. So I have first Molly Eastman. She hosts sleep as a skill. She is one of the prominent figures that discusses sleep, along with other aspects of health. Don't get it confused. She is a wealth of knowledge in a variety of places, but she is a specialist in sleep.

Starting point is 00:02:03 And then, of course, I have everybody's favorite neuroscientist, Dr. Dave Rabin, is the end-all, be-all for me on everything neurorelated, mind-body and spirit connection. He's got the Apollo, an amazing new book coming out. And together, we are going to try to help people improve their stress, their sleep, and their overall well-being. So thank you guys for taking the time today. I'm really looking forward to this. We're not trying, Dylan. We're doing about this.

Starting point is 00:02:33 Thank you, Dylan. Do or do not. There is no try. That is easy. What a gate. All Star Wars. Louis Yoda. Yoda wisdom.

Starting point is 00:02:44 You know where I was reminded of that recently? It was at our local ice cream shop. A good bull. There was a sign that a sign with that message from Yoda. And then underneath it said no free tastes. Yeah, exactly. We're speaking all things health at the ice cream store. I love it.

Starting point is 00:03:05 You never know where you're going to find it. No, no, it's everywhere. It's prevalent. All right. So, all right. Now, I've spoken with both of you at great lengths on my own show in private. You guys have talked together as well. You're both experts in your field. I really want to start hitting home right now on the effects that sleep is going to have neurologically, how it's affecting our moods, our levels of stress, and then how that correlates into our metabolism and things that you're going to see on

Starting point is 00:03:37 blood panels and some of the big problems that we encounter in today's world and what causes problems with sleep and stress intertwined. And then we'll talk about how we deal with it. So Molly, why don't you go ahead first and just talk about some of the key components here that you're finding are affecting sleep negatively. Oh, how much time do you have? The keys is the keys. The things that are affecting sleep negatively. One of the things that I like to start with that can sometimes be confusing for people, but I think makes a lot of sense, is that in 2001, the EPA did a study and they found that the average person was spending around 93% of their time indoors, and that has divorced us from these rhythms of nature. So when we're

Starting point is 00:04:21 divorced from these rhythms of nature, we really lose this diurnal rhythm. And when we learn, lose this, this kind of acted by day and at rest at night piece, this makes a big problem for really a lot of aspect of sleep. Okay. Dave, you want to correlate in off of that? Yeah, I mean, Molly got straight to the point, I think, right, which is that all living beings, mammals especially, we'll zoom in on for a moment, live by a circadian rhythm. And that rhythm is their day and night cycle rhythm. And it's a that's supposed to be synchronized with nature. So we are, we're, we're, we're, we're, we can get down to the physics of it, right? Like, we're vibrational beings. Every cell has a at which it's doing stuff. Our breath rate has a rhythm or heart rate has a rhythm. And we have a

Starting point is 00:05:09 day and night cycle rhythm. And women have a monthly menstrual rhythm, right? And there's all these different rhythms and phases of aging and growth. And so day and night is one of the most important that regulates our overall functioning of our nervous system to know that between this time and this time, we should have high energy and be awake and alert and ready to learn and ready to hunt and ready to do all the things that require tons of energy. And then at these times, we should be rampant, the body down for rest and recovery and nourishing and reproduction and digestion and like all of that important stuff, right, all the healing stuff. And so when we get exposed to lots of different kinds of stimulation from the environment, number one, nowadays, probably being your smartphone,

Starting point is 00:05:52 this is like sending blue light into your brain all the time at incredibly high levels of, of information, right, information bombardment consistently. You know, that's overstimulating the nervous system and disrupting our natural rhythm because we're supposed to just be receiving light from the sun. Now we're getting light from screens and not just smartphones, right, but all screens we're getting light from. And we're getting light from artificial lights that are non-screen, artificial lighting. And all those, all those lights, unless they're made to not have blue light, have blue light. And blue light disrupts melatonin and circadian rhythms and our relationship with natural rhythm, right? So that when we start to do things that restore natural rhythm, that's when

Starting point is 00:06:33 kind of like get sleep back in in on track and back to health but it's hard because we have to first eliminate a lot of the things that disrupt that rhythm in the first place okay so what i always like to do like i said it's talk about my my problems and then correlate this now we fix it so this is a really good question i think for you both to answer back to back here so in relation to sleep so i i have a tendency a bad one to stay up late two three a m and i and i have so much to do that I should be sleeping till 10 or 11, but obviously it's not going to work with work, right? So I'm only sleeping, and it's not good sleep either to go to bed that late. And, you know, I've maybe six hours if I'm lucky. And so I guess my question is, one, for people that tend to

Starting point is 00:07:20 stay up later, how negative effect does that have on the sleep quality? And what is your recommendation on fixing circadian rhythm? And then in turn, how does that affect someone mentally throughout the day? Is it causing like lack of clarity, brain fog, inability to stay focused. What are some of the things that really have a negative effect for staying up too late and having the improper circadian rhythm? Because like you were saying, it's not where it's supposed to be in the sleep cycle. Yes. Well, real quick, I think some people like this term that kind of came up in popularity around COVID, but actually it does have thumb research, which is revenge, bedtime procrastination. and the fun little label, but ultimately it points to this procrastinating on the thing that serves us.

Starting point is 00:08:08 By the way, the way I got into sleep just for context was because I did everything not to do around sleep and used to be an extreme night owl, all kinds of issues with sleep. So it's not, I know it intimately. But this tendency to steal time from our day and often that's filling into our sleep opportunity. So just, you know, one concept to maybe have in the back of our mind. But at the same time, I think overall, whether it's going to bed too early, going to bed too late, one of the things I see every single day for people is the sleep inconsistency. So often like a yo-yoing is what it looks like. So I work with a lot of people with wearable data.

Starting point is 00:08:48 So I get to see what the actual results look like with their sleep day in, day out. And what I often see is maybe one of those nights, like you were speaking to, where people, they stay up later and they're pushing, maybe they're researching, they're reading, whatever the heck they're doing. And then they stay up too late. So then it cuts into their sleep opportunity. They don't have as much sleep. They build up sleep pressure.

Starting point is 00:09:11 So then that subsequent night, often, many times we see a change in the following night of what time they go to bed. So what we see there is sometimes people will say, oh, I got to get this under control. I'm going to go to bed super early tonight, which sounds really logical and like you are being responsible. and getting things on track. But unfortunately, this is the exact pattern or some variation of it that I see all the time where people are then making up for that sleep,

Starting point is 00:09:39 getting an overabundance of sleep. And so then they keep being in this vicious cycle of now not having enough sleep drive, sleep pressure, adenosine buildup throughout the course of the day, so that they're sleepy when their regular bedtime that they would like to have comes around. And what this all points to is this poor sleep consistency, of routine nature to sleep. And sleep loves consistency. If you don't get much else out of what I'm talking about,

Starting point is 00:10:04 just that, that the more consistent you can be with sleep, and especially in recent years, we have more research to support this concept that at certain times, while it might seem counterintuitive, if you are met with this opportunity of, do I sleep in later to make up for kind of cope with this lost sleep, or do I maintain consistent wake-up time? Actually, it appears that maintaining that consistent wake-up time, even if you get kind of a rough, you know, stretch of night or two, overall, it tends to actually support us so that we're not continually weakening that circadian pulse and that strength of that circadian rhythm.

Starting point is 00:10:42 Excellent. Dave. Yeah, it's really interesting because consistency is a key signal to the nervous system of safety, right? Consistency provides familiarity. It provides something we know that's repeatable over and over. again that we don't really have to think about so much. And that's like one of the critical factors that allows deep in REM sleep to happen. And deep and REM and sleep in general, because sleep is our most physically vulnerable state of existence, right? We're basically unconscious for the deepest

Starting point is 00:11:14 parts of it and sometimes, you know, physically paralyzed for some of the deepest parts of REM sleep. So we're, you know, we're pretty vulnerable during those states more than any other. So for us to be able to access those states, we have to feel safe and that consistency of rhythm around sleep and wake time is so incredibly important because it allows us to just be able to know that, you know, around this time we're going to bed, around this time waking up, and you can just outsource that and you don't think about it that much anymore. And if you don't hit it exactly, it's okay. But the point is that you have these kind of consistent markers in the day that you can like save points almost that you can like, you know, pin to and around so that you can feel

Starting point is 00:11:56 your body knows the familiarity of lining down at that time. It knows when to release the melatonin that starts the wind down process. And ideally, it's changing a little bit, right? Because it's aligned with the sun and the season you're in. Speaking of other rhythms and cycles, right? Like our sleep patterns during the winter are definitely different than those during the summer. And that's okay. And I think that's what I think gets to answer your question, Dylan,

Starting point is 00:12:19 about deep and REM sleep and total sleep because there are, you know, when we talk about sleep requirements for different people, we know that women, generally speaking, need about an hour more sleep than men. And when they're pregnant or breastfeeding, they probably need even more than that, more than men. And generally speaking, people, we talk about people needing between eight and nine hours of sleep at night to be as like healthy adults. But if you're getting mostly light sleep and not getting deep and REM sleep, it doesn't really matter that you're getting your eight hours or nine hours a night as much because your quality of recovery is not as good. And so all of our like emotional memory

Starting point is 00:12:52 consolidation, all of our short-term, long-term memory storage, all of the, like, when the body takes out the trash of the waste of the cells, a lot of that happens during deep and REM sleep. So we have to get those sleep stages, which requires, you know, even more of an emphasis on safety, and I think that's where consistency becomes really important. And, you know, Michael Bruce talks about this too, right? Like, when you start to get to, and I think the literature shows when you start to get to about 21 days of consistent practice, that your circadian rhythm starting, to reset around that new pattern, which is why the Apollo has a 21-day challenge, because within 21 days, you can easily get at least 20 minutes more sleep in night that's concentrated in deep

Starting point is 00:13:31 in REM sleep. So that consistency to your point is like spot on. And I think if you actually get more deep in REM than your total sleep time is not to be as high all the time. So like I will, like maybe this isn't the best for my long-term health, but once in a while I, and probably comes from my training in the hospital, I will, I like to work till 2 or 3 a.m. too. So I'll stay up till 2 3 a.m. at work and I'll allow myself to have one morning of sleeping in a little bit, but like an hour or two, just to make sure I get like six hours. But then I'll go back to my consistent rhythm afterwards and it just kind of restores and it's just fine. But, you know, I don't usually find that I have to make that up at any other time. Yeah. I just want to underscore

Starting point is 00:14:14 that real quick in case because one of the things I see when we talk about insomnia, there's over 100 sleep wake disorders and insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, early Morning Awakening. It's an interesting one because that's a group where we might actually think about sleep and communicate our goals with sleep a little bit differently than other sleep disorders. Because often, just speaking in generalities, commonly a lot of insomnia acts of long-term insomnia, they know a lot about sleep. And actually, sometimes it can freak them out more. And I've been there to learn more. And then, oh, no, well, I only got this amount of sleep last night. And now I'm going to throw everything off and a lack of self-reaching.

Starting point is 00:14:52 resiliency and relating to that ability to kind of get back on track and trusting that ability in their body. So I appreciate what, you know, Dr. Day's speaking to because it's a big deal in that group. A lot of what we're almost, you could almost think of it like exposure therapy to being exposed to times when you're not going to get perfect sleep. And orthosomnia as a whole conversation when we talk about tracking, you know, really being okay with periodically not getting you know, 99 or whatever on these sleep trackers and that sort of thing. And then oddly that we're loosening up of the grip and speaking to the safety point can fill into improved results, at least in that group commonly. Yeah. When I sleep, I mean, I can pass out on the drop of a dime, man. Like,

Starting point is 00:15:41 you don't, it takes me like this. It's like the wake up in five and a half hours. And Queenie put a clock next to me so I'd stop looking at my phone to check the time because what happens is I look at the phone and I see 100 notifications. And then I start looking at one, look at two, look at three. And then before you know it, you're up, you know. And the phone is the detriment. What I've tried to do is I have the mattress where you can turn the massager on and I flick it on and it kind of helps me go back to sleep. Just that nice, because I do it when I get into bed and it gives you a nice little rhythm to try to do it.

Starting point is 00:16:14 The problem is, as you know, if you're waking up at 8.30 or 9, even with a sleep mask on, it doesn't seem. I can sense the sun somehow and it makes it hard to go back to sleep. And I think that it's just not natural. I think is without getting into science or without getting into anything, it's just not really natural for your body. And I know there's studies both ways and everything. But I think that that's what it comes down to is you're just going against the grain. One of the things that I try to do, and I'm curious for both of you ways to wind yourself

Starting point is 00:16:46 down properly and then start your day off properly to get into the right rhythm is I always get outside right away, even though it's not early enough and it gets too damn hot here like today, but getting outside and getting in the sun early, I'm trying and I'm curious what you guys recommend on the wind downs at night because the day, like you said, we have a tendency to work late and that's not really a great great way to wind down. It's because your mind's still going. And I have a tendency to look at screens, whether it's computer or phone. And then because I want to relax, it's like, okay, I'm looking at my sports scores or stuff on my, phone and it's not really relaxing. So I try to, I've used different types of supplements don't work.

Starting point is 00:17:27 When I use the Apollo, it certainly helps, but I still have the mind that I have to get under control. So I'm wondering for you guys, morning, night, what's some of the best ways without having to take supplements or medications? What are natural free things that we can do that are healthy, safe, and effective for both of you? Well, real quick, I'll just jump in with the point that So on my podcast, I've asked now over 300 people what their morning routine and their nightly routine. And so you see different, you know, all kinds of variations with everyone, myself included. But across the board, one of the things that seems to come up is more of that rhythmic nature, that bringing us up regulation by day and down regulation by night.

Starting point is 00:18:12 And really, if we have this opportunity, of course, is always outliers in certain parts of the globe where you get the weird periods or 24 hours of, done and all the things, but for most of the time, mostly, when we can follow these rhythms of nature, when we can start our day with bright light exposure outside, an app I often recommend. It's called Meistercadian app or if there's other apps, right, you can actually just log and see you how much lux is in your environment. You don't have to do this for a long time often, but just to get the sense of it, because commonly people have no idea. I know I didn't before I got into all this, that the different, like I'm behind a window right now,

Starting point is 00:18:50 If I just, you know, after this conversation, go outside, the Lux is going to shoot through the roof just by getting beyond that window. And we might think, oh, well, what's the big deal? And I don't think we're that much different in certain regards. I mean, this is elite. But if you think of a bird, right, and you put a tarp over it and then expect it's going to thrive, we think we're so, you know, without getting any sort of stunlight continually, we think that we're more divorced from that sort of way of being. I would argue that we're not that far up. We need these kind of elements of nature to inform us. And then we can use those as a blueprint of where we put what we call kind of photo biology, zeitgevers or time givers. And those can often look like that light, dark timing, temperature timing, meal timing, exercise timing. And I like to put in just for a component of this, like the impact to these is thought timing. And so when you speak about, you know, know, the phone piece and what have you, actually having those upregulatory conversations, those engaging conversations. We don't want to cut those out entirely, but put those by day

Starting point is 00:20:01 when we need to handle certain things. And then the juxtaposition at night of the down regulation aspects of thought. And the last thing I'll say to that is that we had one of the sleep coach for the Olympics on the podcast a couple of times. And one of the things that he really noted was in the for your question around the evening and down regulation a lack of novelty being the thing that we're really going for just boring not to make a you know mis- Thinking yeah right just familiar stuff and it doesn't have to look fancy it doesn't have to be lotus position necessarily I mean my husband I love the office and we've seen every single episode so it's very familiar and safe you know and now there's a whole stack and things that you could do to bring in safety and

Starting point is 00:20:48 routine and joy and peace and all that, but it might look different for each person. Yeah, I love the idea you mentioned, because I don't think people think about it so much this, the way that we're talking about, which is like the amygdala, which is the fear center of the brain is not just sensing fear, it's contrast detection, right? So it detects newness and unfamiliarity and novelty, uncertainty. And when you're trying to fall asleep, you don't want novelty, you want to lack an absence of novelty, because novelty is stimulating by nature, right? It makes the amygdala tune in and be like, we should probably pay attention to this, and we don't want that. That's why it's often so hard for people to fall asleep the first night.

Starting point is 00:21:29 They're in a hotel, even like a really nice new place, but it's because it's new, right? And then after a few days, you start to settle in. So, so yeah, but I think that really highlights the amygdala at the core of a lot of how we think about sleep as being something that requires safety. And when you start to think about safety in that way, you start to realize all the different things that make the body feel or perceive that it might be unsafe, which gets me to my favorite, which is having thoughts about how you cannot sleep for some reason or how there's something wrong with you that you can't sleep that maybe we came up with on our own or maybe somebody told us that there was something wrong with us that we can't sleep. But those thoughts are directly

Starting point is 00:22:11 activating to the amygdala because they make us, if there's something wrong with you, then you actually become a source of lack of safety to yourself, right? And so those are, those are directly inhibiting to access to sleep. So one of my favorite routines for people to do, and I did this myself many years ago for many, many years and it was very helpful, was just to remind myself, rather than, like, notice when I'm having thoughts about why I can't sleep or why I might be struggling with sleep, and then just remind myself, instead of thinking about those thoughts, remind myself that my body was born to sleep a third of my life and that my body loves sleep and I love sleep and imagine myself like close my eyes and imagine and breathe like I'm sleeping

Starting point is 00:22:53 and imagine I'm sleeping right now. And then sleep just started to come more easily because you're just resetting the thought loops that are the disruptive fear-inducing thought loops. And you could do that with it. That's like the whole practice of meditation. That's just like one iteration of meditation that we can apply to sleep to redirect your attention to something that you can control, which is like rewriting your story around how you relate to sleep as a safe thing. Yes. And we've all talked about this and Dave, you've written about this.

Starting point is 00:23:22 You know that this is my favorite thing to get into is connecting mind, body, spirit together. And I feel that sleep plays like a massive role in that regard when we're looking on a charge of what's most important to make that connection and to, to do that. Now, I have tried to read a little bit before bed, which tends to help, like, read a prayer for me. I know that's not for everybody, but that's kind of what I've tried to do. But what type of role, how big of a role is sleep in that full ability to bring health into, like, full alignment? How big of a role do you guys feel that plays in determining the direction

Starting point is 00:24:03 of our health? And when we're looking at diseases and inflammation and cortisol, all and it's the most important. We can stuff you right there, right? Most, most important role. The foundational thing. You struggle to find if you go to PubMed and put sleep end, just about anything that's important to you, your longevity, aging, cardiovascular health,

Starting point is 00:24:26 fertility, diabetes, your waistline. I mean, the list is endless of really good mountains of research in many aspects of health and well-being. And I think it's one, I'd hope, one of the reasons why we're starting to have a bit of a sleep renaissance and maybe it's the combination of getting conversations like this out. So I appreciate you having a forum for this. Maybe wearable. Something seems to be in the air where people are beginning to get the message of how important this is.

Starting point is 00:24:57 And, you know, Dr. Dave spoke to glymphatic drainage. Glymphatic drainage with a G versus lymphatic drainage with an L is, you know, really it was only covered around 2012. and now our understanding of how this helped cleanse the brain, predominantly the first half of sleep, largely around deep sleep. And when we see that, there's a huge impact on cognition. So previously when we think about possible correlations and linkups with neurological disorders, like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, we might not have thought that there could be things that maybe could do decades in advance

Starting point is 00:25:32 to support general health and well being in that area in the terms of, cognition and yet it looks like sleep could be one of those things among many other things that can make a difference for your house. Sleep, getting good deep sleep and good overall sleep architecture definitely prevents dementia. It's like probably the single best thing that we could do on a regular basis that would prevent us from getting dementia because it clears amyloid protein plaque out of the cerebral spinal fluid. So we now know that. Like that's pretty darn cool, right? Like that's the time where the most amyloid plaque that builds up over the course of the day of using our brains and our brains being

Starting point is 00:26:09 stressed out from day-to-day activity gets actually cleared and digested and broken down. And that stuff is the stuff you don't want to accumulate and sit around, right? Because when it sits around, it glums together and kills cells. So getting that great sleep architecture, ideally, which is not without substances, like some supplements can be okay if they're dose and the right kind, but prescriptions, sedatives in hypnotics and alcohol, all impair access to those deep in REM sleep states. And that's probably in part why we see the people who take benzodiazepines and opiates and alcohol have increased risks of dementia when those substances are used long term. Because they're also not getting deep in REM sleep where you need to clear, and the early, you know, the good, good architecture that allows you to clear your body to clear all that waste. And so, yeah, but I think that amygdala piece is really important because safety is at the core of how we, get the body into a state that it allows its maximal waste clearance functioning to happen, which the downstream result is preventing horrible outcomes that we none of us want like dementia, right? When we think that like we make it so complicated in a lot of ways,

Starting point is 00:27:16 but trying to break down what's happening with each individual diagnostic category, but that's not necessarily what matters, right? Like it's not about the name of the specific diagnosis or kind of dementia because when you really look at what's happening to the cells in those disorders, they're all breaking down and getting screwed up the same way. It's all accumulation of misfolded protein. It gets accumulated because the body's not clearing enough waste, right? So there's like common mechanisms now that we understand that help us also understand why sleep is so important and how to prevent some of these things we never knew we could prevent before. And technology can now help, which is really exciting. Like Apollo is actually improving deep, is the first technology

Starting point is 00:27:54 that has been proven to boost deep and REM sleep architecture in people just by wearing it, Like there's nothing that you can wear that just boost your deep and REM sleep percentage of, you know, architecture over time and improves your body's ability to get deep quality rest when you're in bed. So like that's not going to be the first technology of its kind, right? Like hopefully we see lots of technology and starts to be working in the same way where we can improve the way that the body's functioning as like a AI assistant to your to your health system, right? Not to just your essays and schoolwork, but like actually to your body's ability to maintain. its own circadian rhythm like AI can help with that. It can run in the background and we're unconscious, you know? Yes. You know, I love these because we get deep into it. We get a really nice thorough explanation. I'm going to do it on a different angle. I'm going to do it on the obvious.

Starting point is 00:28:43 So like, for instance, it's very common understanding and sense that when you have a nice, good sleep, you generally don't wake up groggy. You don't kind of have this. It takes you forever to get out of bed feeling. You look at something and it's very clear. If you don't sleep well, You're groggy, you have trouble getting up, you don't want to get up. If you look to read something, it's not setting in. Like, it's not absorbing. I read prayers in the morning when I wake up and when I have a bad sleep, I don't absorb it. My eyes start to fall down.

Starting point is 00:29:13 I don't do well right off the bat. And so it's like also when you take a drug, even over supplementation, like way, this is way back. So, you know, this is prior time for me. but I would sometimes take NyQuil at night to try to help me sleep, even when as far as to take Xanax at night or muscle relaxers that I had for injuries. And you wake up feeling like you had a party night, like you were up all night drinking. You wake up feeling horrible.

Starting point is 00:29:41 Now, I told you guys, I did like a nervous system reset last week. And I went to bed at 10.30 and woke up at 8 o'clock and they were knocking on the door to wake me up. But I haven't slept like that, and I think since high school. And it was the best feeling ever. Now, of course, I fell right back into. staying up late. But the point is, is some of these things are quite obvious to people, yet we still do it. And I see the alternatives now. And that's where I want to shift to in talking about this. So obviously, I have the Apollo on and Dave, I want to talk to you about that because my problem

Starting point is 00:30:13 with the Apollo is I'm so focused wearing it during the day and I get so intertwined at night as I pass out without putting it on. When I wear it all day to help me throughout the day and don't use it. I want to talk about using it at night more so. And then Molly, I want to tie that into how that correlates with aura, how we look at these results, how we interpret them and see how it's impacting us and the things that we need to be looking at. Maybe we'll touch on HRV because a lot of people still don't know about it, don't know what it means. Think of the lower numbers better. Like, there's confusion on it. So I'd like to discuss all of these, how it works together. And the proper ways to utilize this to get the best out of it. So Dave, like talk about how do we wind down with the

Starting point is 00:30:56 Apollo? How should we use it? What mode should we be on and when? And to get the most out of it. And then Molly, maybe you can talk about interpreting the results and an understanding. You can both talk about some of the data points that we're looking at. Because it's confusing, man. You pull these things up, but you don't even know what the hell you're looking at. And you look for reference ranges or things that might not even be accurate. For sure. Yeah, I'll do a quick overview of Apollo and then I'll pass to Molly. But I think the Apollo is a technology that we developed that's in the same context and based on the same understanding of circadian rhythms we've been talking about this whole time that Molly first started talking about where the body operates on a day and night cycle.

Starting point is 00:31:35 And it likes to be on a day and night cycle that's consistent with the sun and the moon. And that is our baseline. So when you asked Molly earlier about what should people be doing to help them feel more energized during the day and wake up more easily and fall asleep at night and have an easier time go to bed at night. What did she do? She told you what we tell all our patients and what we try to do our best ourselves, which is that she curates her environment, right, to be more energizing and more wakeful and to do more wakeful and focus related activities that require more energy during the day. And then she has more relaxing, more soothing, line down type activities that happen at night, which probably goes down to her lighting and the kinds of music she listens to,

Starting point is 00:32:18 and the kinds of things that might be on her TV or where her phone is located in her house, right? Who she talks to at different times, everything. And so we have the ability to curate the surroundings that we, and that's a very special opportunity that we've been afforded as human beings. So that in aligning that curation and the music, for example, with our bedtime.

Starting point is 00:32:42 So it's calming and soothing music and not energizing in new music. That helps the body know, especially if it's the same song, Every night, we do this for babies, right? And it helps them wind down and start to naturally allow entry into sleep states because of the familiarity. So we wanted to create something like that for people that didn't require music and didn't require your ears or your eyes or any other thing because those were already being used and people were still struggling with sleep. So

Starting point is 00:33:08 we realized that soothing touch is one of the fastest pathways into the safety nervous system. In large parts you're studying music, MDMA, and other touch-related healing techniques that work with the safety pathway and the vagus nerve in the brain. And we found that soothing touch activates the vagus nerve immediately. And so started composing soundwave songs, using sound waves for the skin and the touch receptors in the base, like subwoofer frequency range instead of the ears. So to the body, Apollo is music and it feels like a mom like rocking and shushing a baby back to sleep or like being in the womb, like the idea is that it kind of reminds the body through the skin of a familiar feeling of safety that is much slower and deeper and more soothing at night and right

Starting point is 00:33:54 right before bedtime and then in the middle of the night and then is much more energizing and vibrant during the day to give you more energy but still feel safe and in control in your own body. So it's all about circadian rhythm regulation and just giving the body the right signals that align with your goal energy states. And for the app, you just, you can do it on van, but you just, and if you have an iPhone, you can try it by doubling the app on the iPhone, Apollo app now and joining it with us. But you can basically just set your bedtime and your wake up time and it will keep you awake between those times and keep you asleep between the times you want to be asleep. And that's it. And when you just get that consistency down with whatever

Starting point is 00:34:32 tools you have, this being one of them that actually boost your deep and REM sleep, you know, effectively via aura and total sleep via aura from the study that's coming out should be this year, hopefully in a thousand people. But we can actually see that people strongly benefit as much as Ambien or other leading prescription sleep aids from using tools like Apollo. So this is really, really exciting. Now there's other options, right? You don't need to rely on some of these sedative sleep aids that cause.

Starting point is 00:34:58 Like Ambien has terrible side effects, right? Like you, I've had patients who have eaten the entire contents of their refrigerator and then woken up with a sinkful of dishes, you know, and they have no idea. And then they gain like 50 pounds in a month. They have no idea what's going on. And we're like, you were sleep eating, right? Like, who needs that? No one.

Starting point is 00:35:15 No one needs that. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, real quick, because that's such a soapbox conversation for me. The long-term use of these different medications of benzos and D drugs for sleep. But of course, there's exceptions and what have you in certain situations, but they're really not approved for long-term use than the way that we're seeing them.

Starting point is 00:35:35 So if he's dealing with that, I do just want to put out a couple different resources or one key resource. sources, Benzo Information Coalition, or a nonprofit dedicated solely to helping to educate around some of the perils of utilizing these things over the long term and what can come up. So I'm so glad you spoke to that. And I'm so happy that we're starting to see more things that could be from a more holistic approach that can make a difference with our sleep because so often people hate some of the stuff I'll often say around sleep because it's like, oh, okay. So mostly it's boring stuff.

Starting point is 00:36:10 Mostly it's doing the same thing fairly repeatedly. And of course we're going to have spontaneity here and there. But a lot of it is can we maintain a level of routine to our days and to our nights? And so having something else external that could help support that experience is exciting. Because really in our modern day and age, we need a lot of that to support that. So what do we see with wearables, lots of things? Now, granted, wearables might not be for everyone. There's certain use cases.

Starting point is 00:36:42 You're just bringing to wearable trackers, right? Yes, wearable trackers. Yes, thank you. Good distinction. Wearable sleep trackers. As opposed, I can't imagine that there's many people that couldn't wear an Apollo. Is there? Right? No, I mean, Apollo works, like has a partnership with ORA, so they work really well together.

Starting point is 00:36:58 But, yeah, I mean, Apollo can work for anyone who's trying to make their sleep better. Right? Like young or something. You don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't have to look at the data either.

Starting point is 00:37:07 The data is like an. optional part of Apollo. The main purpose is just to help you sleep better. If you want to look at the data and see your sleeping improvements, you can. But it's cheery. It's not about like, you know, you slept terrible last night, fix it, or else I'm going to tell you you slept bad again. I get it. Again. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what we'll, you know, there's a starting group that might do well with some wearable sleep trackers that the whole design is to open up and maybe get some sort score. There might be periods of time where a little data vacation or updating could make sense for some groups. However, mostly what I'm seeing in the group that I'm with is often

Starting point is 00:37:45 really empowered if, you know, kind of educated in looking at the data in a way that can work for them. So what I mean by that is things like aura, whoop, there are certain brain-based trackers. There's other things that you can do to get this information. But on a daily basis, You get to see certain things not only around your sleep and some of this can really act as red flags of where you might want to get tested for sleep disorders. I am a bit bullish on that. I would love to see everyone tested not just once but multiple times throughout the course of their lives for sleep disorders. Kind of akin to how we would get blood pressure tested whenever, just do it one time and then make all kinds of recommendations off of that for the rest of your life. As something like sleep apnea, very prevalent is very dynamic and it will shift and change throughout the course of your life.

Starting point is 00:38:32 Even if you didn't have symptoms of that before, it might show up as you age and things change. We can see signs of possible sleep disorders, lots of restlessness, you know, lots of movement showing up on your wearables. If we're seeing kind of fragmentation throughout the course of your night, lots and lots of wake-ups, and often that maybe you don't even remember, that can be another sign that we might want to get tested and make sure we're not stepping over some of those sleep disorders. But then even beyond that, I would also say, of course, in that sleep category, worry, we can make lots of information, see and glean information around, are we spending too much time in bed? That's another really common one. Ironically, when we're dealing with things like

Starting point is 00:39:13 insomnia, a lot of people will spend inordinate amounts of times in bed to try to squeeze out a little bit of sleep. And then they start having kind of counterproductive experience and relatedness with their bedroom. They're actually the one group that if you travel, as opposed to most of us, will experience what Dr. Dave was speaking to that first night effect when you're traveling, where you, you know, just, you're not sleeping the best. Insomniax sometimes can be the only interesting group because they don't have prior history related to this new space where they might actually sleep decent because they don't have all that negative, you know, kind of conversation in the background. This is all the big nuance of sleep, right? But with our wearables, when we look at things

Starting point is 00:39:54 like heart rate, respiratory rate, heart rate variability, body temperature, blood, oxygen. You mentioned HRB, you know, really the time between our heartbeat. And it can give us somewhat of a proxy or an estimation of how our nervous system is faring day to day and moment to moment, second, second. And what's interesting is now some of these wearables will also show us your daytime dress, which can get a little layered because sometimes people now get stressed about the stress metrics. Which can get very meta. But what's really cool about that is, is it can speak to what we've been chatting about around these rhythms of if we can kind of have a bit more of a pulsing of engagement to say the least or, you know, activation by day and then a clear kind of sloping down into the evening of down regulation and all those kind of connected metrics. The body temperature is starting to pool, heart rate starting to pull to lower.

Starting point is 00:40:55 And then heart rate variability starting to, to your point, go up a bit from your baseline. as opposed to some people that will get confused. It's supposed to go up and it's supposed to go down. It's a longer conversation, but ultimately we're looking to find kind of your baseline. And then from your baseline, if we are seeing trends where it's dropping consistently below that, it just might give us pause to see,

Starting point is 00:41:17 is there something that's impeding our ability to recover, but it's markedly dropping. We really want to kind of take a look. And then in the other regard, if it's going above our baseline, that often is their blanket statements, but often a sign that there's, we've been able to kind of recover throughout the course of the night. There are exceptions, arrhythmia, certain, say, if you get surgeries or kind of instances where

Starting point is 00:41:39 the body is kind of forcing a parismpathetic response, you might see some abnormalities, but mostly you can pan back, pan out, look at your trends, and then really get a clear whole slew of information around how you're faring as it relates to your daytime stress load and your nighttime stress load. And often they're very much troubled. Because I guess what I'll end with is that largely how we are by day gets mirrored in our night. So how we are by day tends to get mirrored in our night.

Starting point is 00:42:09 And you can see that with the connection with ORA and Dexcom to the tune of, I think it was around 75 million to demonstrate the connection with metabolism and plate. You can look at your DGM data and overlay that with ORA ring and see, I'm spiking and crashing my glute. glucose day all throughout the day. And it's also happening at night. And it's correlating with some of those wakeups that I'm having consistently as a example, right? So yeah, it allows you to get really deep into this information and then make it practical so that we can ultimately not have to think

Starting point is 00:42:44 about it that much. One thing that, Molly, we've talked about this multiple times and you've brought it up multiple times is like the over data. We have to be careful, but we do want the data. So you have to use the data as a tool, not as something that you just live and die by. It's just there to give you guidance so we know what to fix, but don't let it dominate your thoughts or it's going to have an adverse effect. Everything I do is based on data, but I've learned how to temper what I'm reading and looking at and going, okay, dude, like this is what you need to fix. Just chill and do it. You know, you have to talk to yourself and tell yourself that. So don't let our tools that are helping us actually go against us.

Starting point is 00:43:25 Just be careful with that, you know. And so there's one more question I want to ask you guys because you would know this better than anybody. And Dave, every time I've ever seen you do an interview, talk with you doing interviews on here, you always have a wired set on. And it's, I know why,

Starting point is 00:43:40 because of the EMF and the protection. I get asked constantly about aura, about Apollo, about wearables. And I think it would be good to end on this. Could you just clear up some confusion? on EMF concerns with certain wearables. And if it is something that people need to be aware of or worried about when it comes to specifically, especially Apollo and ORA,

Starting point is 00:44:03 but anything in general, things that come up constantly in comments that I see that are like, kickbacks or serious questions are what about the EMF with these? Yeah, I think this gets into what I wanted to mention is a good setway from our prior conversation about trusting your body, right? Like data is measured is a way that we're trying to measure what's happening in the body with feeling, that we're actually feeling, right? So it's not, it's a way to observe certain patterns. But every time you measure something that's happening in reality, you're getting one degree of separation away from what's actually happening. Right.

Starting point is 00:44:39 There's somebody now observing what's happening and trying to quantify it. And so when we measure that, you lose a little bit, right? That's why every single test that we have in medicine has a false positive and a false negative. in a false negative rate, there's a chance when you run any test, whether it's a wearable or whether it's a blood test, that that test is going to incorrectly be positive or negative, right? There's a certain small percentage that that's going to happen every time. I think that's not really taught well.

Starting point is 00:45:03 So, like, a lot of people outsource the truth to their wearable devices and their data, but the data is just an observation that is off, you know, for sleep and HRV and heart rate is mostly correct for most people, but for deep sleep and REM sleep and actually sleep-sleeping, it's incorrect for many people. It's only about 65% accurate at best deep sleep and REM sleep. So, you know, we need to be looking at these things. We need to be taught how to look at these data correctly and to understand what the truth comes from feeling. So if you wake up feeling good and rested, I get this with my patience all the time and I talk about it in the book that I've coming out a simple guide to being alive. But these stories about people who, so many people

Starting point is 00:45:45 who I've met over the years, who tell me that their tracker data is, telling them that they sleep terribly, but when I actually ask them how they feel, they say they feel fine. And so I'm like, well, did you actually sleep badly or is it more likely that your tracker had an error? And you're actually trusting the data more than you're trusting your own self. Like, try sleeping without the tracker for a few weeks and see how you feel. Like, take an old-school sleep diary. And I would tell you, like, at least 50% of those people don't come back for another point. Because they are so attached to the data, right? And so I think like with the going back to the Bluetooth and trusting your body piece and headphones, for me, like, I haven't seen, I look a lot of

Starting point is 00:46:24 research. I haven't seen a lot of good clinical research studies showing that EMF that comes out of our phones and our headphones and at the levels that we are exposed to causes any significant problems for people long term. But I know, I know that I get headaches from using Bluetooth headphones and for putting my phone close to my head. And I don't, I don't like getting headaches. and I don't like to think about what's happening in my brain when my head hurts from putting this thing next to it. And so that's enough for me. And so I just stick to my wired headphones that don't give me headaches. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:55 I know. But I'm not waiting for the data and tell me that it's screwing me up. It's going to be too late by the time that happens. I love it. Yeah, real quick, I'll just say that on the conversation around wearables and data and trust of your body tests, I was just in a piece in New York Post all around looking at a deep dive around orthoomnia. So people are thinking that, oh, maybe that's me. That could be more information.

Starting point is 00:47:18 And ultimately, everything I do day and day out around sleep and wearable data is this very fine line of both educating and then educating from a place that ultimately we don't have to think about it. So it's a very tricky thing because you can automation. Right? It's a little, it's hard to balance that. Because often when sleep isn't working, we want to effort, especially. especially like we're achievers and we say, well, just give me the information. I'll read the books. I'll do the things. And oddly, this can often backfire. But so you're really important points. So what I would stand in is this concept of sleeping skill and there is conversations and there's elements of some of the things that we've been speaking out today that often harken back to ways of being that maybe just would have happened naturally if we lived a bit more in rhythm with nature.

Starting point is 00:48:12 And a lot of it is that. And I think that's what Apollo is really speaking to is to have this sense of safety, well-being, that often comes in the simple things, in observing sunlight, you know, kind of down-regulation and quiet evenings and all these things that maybe we've moved away from. Getting cuddles.

Starting point is 00:48:32 Well, doesn't there like a hug feature too? Yeah. So come on. And Apollo and ORA also have airplane mode. So all wearables. that are worth their salt have like now have an airplane mode in them so you don't get any Bluetooth or radiation you can wear them all the time there's no Bluetooth no EMF at all really from those devices so that's great so now like devices are getting designed around our needs

Starting point is 00:48:56 finally absolutely and when it comes to sleep in EMFs largely even if we're you know oh look at that okay very well we're in focus mode Dave Dylan loves focus mode is it I wonder this guy But ultimately when it comes to sleep, we don't really need too much going on that we could argue. And so whether you're just saying a little conservative, there's not much that we need to have in our kind of fear. To David's point, that the companies that are being thoughtful around this often provide ways so that we can have that airplane modes because of peace of mind, which is really what we're going for asleep. Yeah, I love it. You guys are amazing. I love doing this.

Starting point is 00:49:38 We should try to do it more often. And, you know, I was joking with Molly because I said, oh, I sent my mom and my wife to go get their nails and toes done for Mother's Day. And I said, and I'm just going to work. But this is just fun. It's not work. It's just a pleasure and it's fun. And it's fun. And it's helpful. And I hope that people really take the things that we're teaching to heart and prioritize something like sleep, prioritize their mental health. and listen to people that are taking time out of their day on a Friday to record when I know that, you know, we all have certain things family-wise and things that are going on, but we want to put this information out for everybody. I appreciate you guys tremendously. I will link everybody where to follow you. And these are, remember everybody, I bring on experts like this that are the best at what they do for a reason and they're trying to really make a difference significantly for all of us. So Molly, Dave, thank you for not just this, but every single thing that you do and for being

Starting point is 00:50:41 such good friends with me personally and the things that I get to learn from you selfishly on my own that I get to share with everybody else. So I appreciate you guys thoroughly. I really do. Our pleasure. Thank you so much. I so appreciate the work you do. And thanks for creating a forum to talk about my favorite topic on the planet. So really important. Really important. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Well, I love you guys. You know that. And I want to thank everybody for listening. So stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dr. Dave Rabin, Molly Eastman, and Dylan Jameli, signing off.

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #125 SPECIAL ROUNDTABLE EDITION Featuring Dr. Dave Rabin and Mollie Eastman!! The relationship between mental health, sleep and nervous system regulation!

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