THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Shawn Stevenson - How to Sleep Smarter

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

When it comes to health, there is one criminally overlooked element: sleep. Good sleep helps you shed fat for good, stave off disease, stay productive, and improve virtually every function of your mind and body. That's what Shawn Stevenson learned when a degenerative bone disease crushed his dream of becoming a professional athlete. Like many of us, he gave up on his health and his body until he decided there must be a better way. Through better sleep and optimized nutrition, Stevenson not only healed his body but also achieved fitness and business goals he never thought possible. Shawn has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Men’s Health magazine, ESPN, FOX News, and many other major media outlets. He is also a frequent keynote speaker for numerous organizations, universities, and conferences. To learn more about Shawn visit TheModelHealthShow.com

This is the Edmila Show. Recruit, build, lead and convey to Edmila.com. Welcome back to Max Out with Edmila. We've got a wonderful program for you today with a guest that I've been chasing down here for a couple months. And I finally locked him in here at the house. And so this gentleman to my left hosts the number one podcast on all of iTunes in the health space called the Model Health Program.

He's also a best selling author of this book that we're going to talk about a lot today called Sleep Smarter, which is a topic that has an awful lot to do with your wellness overall, your fitness, your mental health, your ability to perform in business is a topic that's understudied, underappreciated, and this is an expert here on all wellness, but particularly sleep as well. So I have the great Sean Stevenson with me here today. Very nice to be here. Great to have you, like really, really excited about this.

So Sean is, as I told you, he's not only written this book and he's an expert on all areas, really health and wellness. He's a nutritionist too by trade. And he got into kind of the nutritional space. It's interesting how you ended up getting here, right? Like this theory I always tell everybody is life happens for us, not to us, right? And you had a really interesting situation happen to you. So when you were in college, this sort of got you into the space, right? Yeah. Something happened to you in college where you ended up getting diagnosed. Am I right about this with?

Yeah. Tell them a little bit about what happened and how you ended up even getting into this space. What you get diagnosed with. So I was diagnosed with a so-called incurable spinal condition, degenerative disc disease and degenerative bone disease. And so when I was 20, my physician at the time told me that I had the spine of an 80 year old man. 80 year old. Yes, not a healthy 80 year old because there's some 80 year olds out there who were like killing

it. Right. But I wasn't one of them. You know, my spine was, you know, I too rubbed your disc, my L4 and L5S1. And so that was causing the sciatic pain. Do you know how you did it? So I thought it was some kind of trauma, you know, just from school work, lifting weights, whatever. I didn't know, but it was because of the degeneration

and instability of my spine, because the tissue of my bones and my disc were so brittle basically. So there was something technically genetic with it. That's the thing. And so that's one of the things we want to talk about is well, you know, what we've been studying for the last decade plus is something called epigenetics.

And so this is looking at control above your genes. And so just because you have a genetic predisposition for something doesn't mean that it has to happen. Okay. If you think about a genetic program like this, like I wasn't born with the condition, right? I wasn't, I didn't have degenerative spinal issues when I was five. Good point. Something happened and turned it on. Turned it on. Yes. And so for me, it actually started a little bit earlier than that. And this was at track practice, you know. For those who know about the NFL Combine, when I was, you know, 15, 16 years old, I ran a 4, 5, 40. Wow. And so things were looking good for me

with college. And I just started having all these injuries. Actually broke my hip at track practice just running because my bones were so brittle. But nobody stopped to ask, how did this kid break his hip just from running. It wasn't until four years later when I got that diagnosis. You're kidding me. And so were you thinking I made up in a wheelchair? I've not been able to walk there. That's exactly it.

And I was terrified to get, and here's the thing, man. A lot of people hear about the placebo effect, where you believe that something is going to happen when you take a medication. For example, there are studies done where folks take a placebo of a cancer pill, like a chemotherapy drug, and they proceed to have their hair fall out simply by the strength of their belief. A lot of people don't realize that the placebo is a 33% effective in clinical trials across the board on average. So you have to account for the fact that the placebo are going to have an effect.

Sure. And so what happened to me was the opposite of placebo. It's called a no-cebo effect. No-cebo. And so this is where you get a negative injunction that something bad is going to happen. You believe it and you begin to have those symptoms. And so I went from a nuisance of a pain

to chronic debilitating pain after I got that diagnosis. And I asked my physician at the time, is there anything I can do about this you know like what and being an athlete like let's go like we fix this right and he literally was like I'm sorry son there's nothing you can do about this this is something you're just gonna have to live with my goodness yeah yeah yeah yeah long death sentence exactly exactly and so this really sent my world spiraling you know and it took about two and a half years about there's a good happy know, and it took about two and a half years.

There's a good half-ending to this, you know, but two and a half years go by and I'm reserved to literally laying on my floor most of the day. Wow. I was in there. I wore a back brace. I went to a nightclub with a back brace on there, you know, in college. And I was like, you know, I was a cool guy, you know. And so it just really messed with my identity. And I gained a lot of weight by being so douse-outs, I gained about 50 pounds. That's hard to picture now. Yeah, you know, these apps are freakish.

And even growing up, like I was the skinny kid in my family. But there was that fat gene, and it got turned on. The fat gene got turned on, yeah. And so getting all this way definitely slipped into some depression, you know. And it wasn't until, and this is really important, but a lot of people missed this,

and I know you know how powerful this is. It wasn't until I really hit rock bottom and I realized I got the choice to make. I'm just literally, I don't care about living anymore. I wasn't like thinking about taking my life, but I just didn't care. I just got to that point. Or I'm gonna care about living anymore. I wasn't like thinking about taking my life, but I just didn't care. I just got to that point, or I'm gonna do something about it.

And I decided to get well. And most people never do that. It's more like wishful thinking. We'll see what happens. I'll give this a shot. I hope this works. I'll give this a try. I decided no matter what, I'm going to get well.

And so, it wasn't like, you know, a unicorn came out, a clouds party, like it wasn't that kind of a moment, but I felt this renewed energy, like I'm gonna figure this out. And I'd actually go into school initially pre-med when I first went to college, but I hate, I actually hated science. And so I dropped out of that, and it's because

of a movie boomerang with Eddie Murphy, I was remembered, of course. I got in the marketing, and so like, I was like, this is what I'll do, And so I dropped out of that and it's because of a movie boomerang with Eddie Murphy. Yes. I remember that, of course. I got in the marketing and so like I was like this what I'll do. But fate had other plans for me brought me back to science. And so when I was in college, we were taught pharmacology, right? Yes. There's a problem you take a pill.

Like we were taught a lot about sickness. Mm-hmm. We weren't taught about health, right? So I decided to learn everything that I could about health and I became just obsessed. Yeah and long story short six weeks later after making that decision I lost 28 pounds the pain I've been experiencing for two and a half years was gone. Nine months later I went and got a scan done in my spine I regenerated my tissue my two rupture disc head retracted on their own. Oh my gosh and I got my life back not back it was better than it ever. It was better than

prior. That's amazing because there's so many people I think that are watching this, that they get to that point too, where they just don't care. Yeah. You're at that point where you just don't care. And I've helped this. It's learned helplessness. Exactly right. And that the power like really is an over said thing in sort of the personal development world, but like the power of making an actual real decision. Yeah. I mean, a real one, which is what you did literally altered your life. Done. And it was really interesting because if you look back at hindsight, always life happens for us, not to us.

It's interesting because your whole wellness background and nutrition background, and obviously this debilitating diagnosis prepares you for being the number one guy in this space now, right? This is the number one guy in the nutritional health, wellness space, and the entire internet and the entire world. Number one guy, right? It's also interesting that the marketing thing helps you too. Because you got a program, you got a market, right? So if you didn't take the marketing detour, maybe the podcast isn't as big, maybe you haven't helped as many people as you've helped. I like to say life qualifies you.

Mmm, right. Life doesn't call the qualified, life qualifies the called. And so it wasn't my intention to do this work, but life was really qualifying me because not only once I had this experience of something so called incurable, no longer being a part of my life, when I would hear other people say, you know, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, that these things were incurable, I could take a firm stand and knowing like, whatever created you, to think that something's outside the power of actually being able to heal you from whatever this is,

is just stupid to think that something isn't curable. I want to tell everybody something about this, because this man's obsessed with health, he's obsessed, he's also gifted because he's got this background and he's got a brain to be able to digest this stuff and process it, but this topic is fascinating to me where we're going now. This book right here, it's called Sleep Smarter and I want to tell you one thing about this. This book is in the 20 pages. It's a comfortable read. I read it in a day. I read the entire book in

a day. And the reason was I could not stop reading it because I'm fascinated with rest in recovery too. So like we're both fit guys, we're both not 15 years old anymore either right? And it's interesting because people will ask me often how often do you train? I train my legs five days a week and I always think when someone tells me that like, do you not understand the recovery process? You don't understand resting. So I train hard when I train, but I think one of the reasons I'm relatively fit is that I rest and recover with my muscles

too. I didn't think about it though through the prism of sleep. And so there's a lot of information out there about nutrition. You can pick a diet, you can pick a workout. There's not a lot of information about sleep and how important it is to your health, your wellness, your productivity, clarity of thinking, longevity, energy, all of it. And so, and I want to talk now about some specifics. So, first things first, why does sleep matter?

Like, what's the big deal about sleeping? And we talked about it being one of the three pillars of the change for you. But in general, for someone who's out there that thinks, I don't have a degenerative condition. Yeah. So, I work hard, I want to kill it, I want to work. And I know that not more sleep is necessarily better than less sleep. It's how you sleep, I want to kill it, I want to work, and I know that not more sleep is necessarily better than less sleep, it's how you sleep, I think.

But tell me why does sleep matter, let them first know understand that principle. Let's talk about three specific categories. Number one, the very visceral connection of your body composition. Okay. University of Chicago did a study recently. Blue my mind. I hope you're ready to have your mind blown. This is crazy.

Okay. So they took exercise, I'm sorry, they the study recently. Blue in my mind. I hope you're ready to have your mind blown. This is crazy. So they took dieters, conventional calorie restricted diet what I was taught in a university setting to have patients do, and they monitored their results. Now, they tracked everything, and they allowed them in this phase of the study to get eight and a half hours of sleep. Another phase of the study, they take the same exact people,

same exact diet. They're not exercising more, they're not cutting any more calories, but they sleep to bribe them. They deprive them of sleep. Yes, so now they take away three hours of sleep they're getting five and a half hours. At the end of the study, they compiled all the data and they found that when individuals were well-rested,

they lost 55% more body fat, simply by getting more sleep. Why? Now, I'm telling you when we mentioned this this when we were talking, but my book is called Sleep Smart and I sleep more. Not sleep more. It's really the longer people sleep, they're going to have a tendency to hit the sleep cycles accurately.

You don't need to do that. There are people who are getting six hours of sleep that are crushing it. Crushing people that are getting nine hours. But this is just an example of how much sleep matters. The question is, it should be, how is that possible? Right? So here's why. Number one, I mentioned human growth hormone.

This is a very anabolic muscle sparing, energizing hormone. So kids have a tremendous amount of experience. They owe me on it. This is why they're running around crazy at all this energy. And so when we get around 18 to 20, we have a pretty noticeable drop in the clinical research in the HGH. My argument is not because you're 18, it's because we stop abiding by sleep schedule, right?

We're out of the house, right? You can't tell me what to do anymore. And so we start to really mess with our sleep schedule. So it's behavioral, not necessarily age. Yes. Now, age is a factor, but it's not, in my opinion, the oldest factor. The oldest factor. Okay.

You know, it should take some more time before that. Because it's a full-alcoholic. It's a full-alcoholic habit at that age, right? Which it shouldn't. It should be. Yeah, exactly. It's a pretty sharp decline now. Okay.

Here's another thing, and this should be pretty mindful of folks as well. You know about, of course, everybody knows about melatonin now. Yes. For in regards to sleep. Yes. It's also a really powerful fat burning hormone. Yes, good. So, Journal of Pineal Research.

Now, this is really fascinating. Melatonin increases your body's mobilization of something called brown adipose tissue. What's it called? Brown adipose tissue. Okay. Or you can call it fat. Okay. All right.

So, this is brown fat. Brown fat operates much like muscle in that it burns fat. So this is a type of fat that burns fat. So when you think about we want to burn fat, lose weight, what we're trying to get rid of is white adipose tissue. You know, that's the kind of gooey stuff that people are trying to target. Brown adipose tissue, naturally we don't carry that much on our frame. Just somebody, your sternum, a little bit on your back, your shoulders, but we don't

really carry that much. our frame. There's some by your sternum, a little bit on your back, your shoulders, but we don't really carry that much. It's activated via cold. That's one of the things. It's why cold thermogenesis is such a big thing. I'm big on it. And also melatonin, right? This sleep hormone. And if you're not getting a dark cycle, you're not producing melatonin adequately.

Okay. And so this is another reason why getting more optimized sleep folks were losing more body fat. And by the way, in the study, I said they lost some 55% more fat, not weight. Yeah fat. That's the one. Okay so let's talk about this for a minute. Let's have a melatonin.

Let's stay on that for a second. Should you be getting more sunlight in order to get melatonin? Does that affect your introduction of melatonin into your body, getting sunlight or are they not related? That's a powerful question. Okay. Most people don't think about this, but this is why I said a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning. Sunlight starts the process.

It does. So it was innovations in clinical neuroscience did a study. And they found that folks who were getting more optimal sunlight during the day, number one, they had reduced cortisol levels in the evening. And cortisol is like the joker to melatonin's Batman. All right. So if cortisol's elevated, melatonin is suppressed and vice versa. So that's number one. So they found that cortisol levels were lower at night. Tell people what cortisol will do to you. Oh man. This is another reason that

that study was so profound is because of the impact of cortisol when you're getting more sleep. Cortisol has this really interesting ability to break down your valuable muscle tissue and turn it into energy, turn it into glucose. So you can work so hard to build this muscle and lose it because you're not getting adequate sleep, right? And so it's a process called gluconeogenesis. It's a stress response because when you're, you know, cortisol is kind of glorified stress hormone.

It's not a bad guy. It's just when it's produced in the wrong amount and at the wrong time. So gluconeogenesis, glucose creation, break down your muscle tissue and muscle is your body's fat burning machinery. That's the thing. This is why people who carry more muscle in their frame naturally just burn more energy, they burn more calories. It's such a valuable commodity that you will lose or have to continuously work harder to maintain if you're not getting adequate sleep and that's really the key. So cortisol.

Now, sunlight does another really interesting thing. So it increases your body's production of serotonin. Okay. And everybody's probably heard of serotonin. It's kind of this feel good neurotransmitter. But serotonin is a precursor or opening act for melatonin. So it's converted into melatonin. So if you produce adequate serotonin, you're going to be doing pretty good in for melatonin. So it's converted in your body into melatonin. So if you produce adequate serotonin, you're going to be doing pretty good in that melatonin department.

Okay. So that's a big reason why we want to control our sleep. Now let's get into the sleep. Actually, I don't want to get to the sleep environment. I want to go through one more thing. There is an effect that I've never thought of when it comes to wellness and even sleep and melatonin factor all that into one which is involves your gut. So can you just and by the way what I don't want to do there's so much in this book there's 21 essential strategies in here we're gonna touch on like three you got to read the book to get the rest of them right but involving that talk a little bit about gut health and how that affects all of this as well I just want people

because for me it seems to me lately the more I'm reading about all wellness, all health, more and more of it seems to start to get tied to the gut. More and more things seem to be messed up in that area and most people that cause dis-ease in their body, so to speak. So can you speak to that just for some? Oh man, it's an absolute epidemic.

Towards the end of my clinical practice, we've seen so many cases of Crohn's and Calitis, you know, IBS and you know, it's really somewhere that I shifted my focus of my practice. Today we're not going to be able to break down literally what's going on with a microbiome and how to fix that, but we're going to relate this to sleep. And so your gut is actually, when we talked earlier about melatonin, right, a lot of people, I know I was shocked to find this out. I had no, when I was taught this in school, you produced melatonin from your pineal gland end of story. But it's just not true, right, which is in your brain. Yes.

You have 400 times more melatonin in your gut than you have in your brain, right? And they did a study and they actually were doing pinealectamies, so taking the pineal gland out and the levels of melatonin still remain stable. Okay. So there's something missing in our communication about melatonin. So sleep in many ways starts in your gut. It does. And so there are interchromophant cells that are in a gut that are producing kind of sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters.

And so here's another way that this matters. This was a really interesting curve ball that I saw where we've got serotonin, when I talked about earlier, which is the precursor to melatonin. So I don't want to lose people here. I'm with you. So serotonin, the vast majority of everybody serotonin,

over 80 plus percent is located in your gut. In your gut as well. So we've got this dance happening. Okay. And your gut. And it's related, and this was our research coming from UC Berkeley, and also Caltech specifically. Okay. Looking at how certain bacteria in your gut communicate with cells

that produce these sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters. So to put a bow on this, we have to take care of our gut microbiome, right? The bacteria, which some people get a little weirded out by that I know I did, you have more back, you have upwards of 10 times more bacteria cells and you have head cells. Most of them in your gut and it's supposed to be that way, supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. But for many of us has become like a parasitic situation. We have lower level funguses, bacteria, opportunistic, bacterias running our ship.

And they're not producing those adequate hormones and neurotransmitters to make sure we get great sleep. So I want to leave people with this real, since we're on this topic, three quick strategies. Yeah, how do you do it? And so I call these good sleep nutrients. And so these are specific things you consume that impact your sleep.

So one of them, this was public, I'm sorry, the public library of science, right? The PL, PLO, S journal. Anything I say people can triple check me, by the way. And so what they found was vitamin C funny enough. We know about this for the immune system. Folks who are deficient in vitamin C had a tendency towards being the people

who had more interrupted sleep. So they woke up more frequently, simply by nutrient deficiency. Okay. So also magnesium, which is responsible for over 300 biochemical processes in the body, it's a huge component of the sleep. And so magnesium is deficient,

which is the number one mineral deficiency in our country today. You're going to have interrupted sleep or lower quality sleep. And lastly, as far as taking care of the microbiome, we just have to really, this is more about avoiding, avoid the things that kill your gut bacteria. So process sugar for the most part. I'm not saying you can't have pancake. Of course.

At some point, but that needs to be in the exception out the rule. Because you're feeding the opportunistic bacteria. Chlorine, you need to be mindful of that. What has chlorine in it? Our water. OK. If it's tap water.

Chlorinated water, it's used as, by the way, I would rather have chlorine in the water than drinking recycled sewage, right? Sure. And so a lot of people don't realize, like, 40 million households across the US were tested, and they found not significant amounts, but trace amounts, but enough to freak you out

of chemotherapy drugs, of antidepressants, of heart medications. The question is, why would this be in our drinking water? Yeah, right. This is literally coming through 40 million Americans tap water. And it's because people are, right, the cycles, people are pissing in the water. And it's eventually kind of making this work out to you. Oh, right. So I want chlorine in the water.

Right. If we're doing the practice that we're doing now, which I think it could be improved. But bottom line chlorine is antibiotic. Okay. All right. It kills stuff. Yeah. So you need some in there. Your microbiome, guess what? Yeah. You know, these are bacteria. So. So I'm not, I'm not saying you need some. I think that there's a better way we can go about treating our water. But if you had to decide, yeah, you know, take the chlorine. Take the chlorine. So those of you that listen to your more simple, you got these

onens, right, that are controlled in your gut. And one of the things if you're having a hard time sleeping is you need to check your gut healthy. You need to read the chapter in his book on gut health because it is directly related to your serotonin and your melatonin and your body and helping you sleep at an optimal level. Let's continue to talk a little bit more about sleep. And so a couple of tips you have for sleep that I love is being cool. So what does that mean? Like I sleep with a thing called a chili pad.

I actually have in my bed. Are you recommend those? Or those of you who have a book? It's in thing called a chili pad. I actually have in my bed. Are you recommend those or those of you in the book? It's in the resources in the wind. I know it is. So I guess we'll make sure they know this. But I'm not pumping that or not. But how important is it to be like,

let's talk about how do I sleep better? So I get my gut health together. I get it starts when I wake up in the morning, take it in more sunlight, preparing through my day. But give me a few things. Like I know you're talking the book about sleeping cool and also being cognizant of your caffeine intake and when you take it to right so talk about those two things real quick Absolutely, so

As far as being in being cool This is in relationship to something our bodies have a process called thermoregulation. Okay thermal regulation When I was in school again, this is like the miseducation of Sean C. So in school, we're taught, you know, optimal human body temperatures 98.6 degrees. Right? Yes. Your body temperature changes a lot through the day. Like if I was to track your metrics, you know, take your temperature, test your blood sugar after a great workout, like every, like we can get you diagnosed with something. I know you did was just do a good training session, right? Okay. So your body temperature changes a lot.

And during the evening, there's a natural drop in your core body temperature to facilitate sleep. There's a correlation of release of certain neurotransmitters and hormones related to that drop. So if your environment is too warm, your body has to work harder to try to cool itself and it can basically throw a monkey wrench in that process. It's a cool down.

So how do you get cool? Use a chili pad or not have too many blankets over you? Yeah, the basic thing is, we live in an environment today where we're very fortunate where we can literally, we have thermostat, right? And so researchers conclude that it's approximately right between 62 and 68 degrees, is optimal for silly things.

I gotta tell you, along those lines, at least for me, I think I took caffeine in too late at night. The other thing for me is when I bought this chili pad, I could not get over how much deeper and better rested I felt that when I woke up, when I was cooler, when I said I couldn't that one thing alone was a, and almost everybody I know who uses one or at least is cognizant of temperature in the room

says that's a huge thing when it comes to rest. It can be that one thing, because game changing. So I'm going to back this up by studies, right? So there was a really cool study that was done on insomnia acts. All right. So these are people with chronic sleep issues. And what they did was they put them in these thermosuits to drop their skin surface temperature just one degree.

Okay. At the end of the study, they compiled the data and these folks were falling asleep and staying asleep just about as long as folks who did not have inside. So you've got ambient or you can cool cool your stuff. Okay. And so what about caffeine? Talk about caffeine. Wow. Yeah. So full disclosure. I love caffeine. Me too. I'm a fan. Me too. But it's how we use it in our culture and it's been used for thousands of years. Like it has a really interesting resonance with the human body. And so caffeine, so let me just first of all start with study. So they took individuals in this study

to find out how caffeine specifically affects sleep. They gave them caffeine literally right before bed, three hours before bed, or six hours before bed, and tracked the results. Even six hours before bed was enough to cause some serious issues with their sleep cycles, to the degree that folks, subjectively, they thought that they slept for eight hours,

but they lost one full hour of sleep by having caffeine six hours before bed. Okay, okay. And so what's going on there? Caffeine has a half life, it's called a half life for about eight hours on average. Alright. So this means after eight hours about a,

it just saves you have a 200 milligram cup of coffee. A hundred million milligrams, half, after eight hours are still active in your system. Okay. And that can keep your nervous system pretty lit up for a lot of people. So, and it depends on your metabolism for it. Everybody's kind of unique.

But in general, you know, I recommend if you're gonna have caffeine, have it early in the day, early afternoon, especially in the morning, give your body time to metabolize a process. And some folks that might be the thing that they need to avoid completely because they might not have an efficient metabolism. Okay, let's talk about two more things that it comes to sleep.

This is wonderful, by the way, because even for me, like my caffeine intake is too late in the day, it's too late in the day, it's affecting my sleep. I think I'm asleep and I'm not, right? I'm not getting deep sleep. That's the thing. Let's talk about color in the room.

So how important is it for it to be dark to help you get into deep sleep compared to light in the room? Is there an impact of those two things? Yes. So produce melatonin, you need two requirements. One of them is darkness. Okay. The other thing is a cycle.

Like it has to have a consistent darkness. Okay. All right. The other thing is a cycle. Like it has to have a consistent cycle. Okay. So some folks that do night work, for example, but they can get their room totally dark. Yeah. And they have a consistent night ritual whether they're creating their own nighttime. Yeah.

They can produce melatonin, but they need the darkness. Okay. And so just to back that up, Cornell University, this study, knock my socks off. But I geek out of this stuff. So it's not geeked out. It's awesome. It's validation.

People hear stuff, especially in the world, they're like, prove it. You prove it every time you make a point. So they took their chest subject. They put it in an otherwise dark room, and they took a light the size of a quarter, fiber optic cable, and put it behind their knee. That small light was enough to disrupt their sleep cycle. But we need to take a step back here. Because when people keep hearing me talk about sleep cycle and sleep smarter, not sleeping more, it's really about optimizing those sleep cycles. So what does that mean? Sleep cycles are determined by changes in your brain waves. And so there's more to this in this,

but just to simplify, we've got gamma waves, which is sometimes happens during waking state. Most of us are hanging out in beta. They're moving to alpha, they're moving to theta, and then delta is deep anabolic non-rim sleep. Okay. We need to efficiently cycle through these over and over through the night.

All right. Most of those sleep cycles are about 75 to 120 minutes depending on the person. Okay. And so what I recommend for people is a minimum of four complete sleep cycles, which is around six hours. Okay. Good. That's what I get. All right. But making sure that we're optimizing that. Okay. All right. And so how do we do this? That's all of these small things. It. Yes. Being cool. Darkness. Okay. If you're, you know, if you're exposed to light in the evening, for example,

it can throw specifically throw off your sleep cycle. Alcohol too close to bed can be an issue for some people. Can you believe in a couple of things, by the way? This is so good for me. I hope you're driving in this. You're going, I wish I were writing all this down. You're going to go replay this again, but I'm just curious. I haven't asked you this.

What do you think of the blue light stuff? If you don't know what I'm talking about right now, this is powerful. I'm just curious to your opinion about it. What about blue light? So tell light stuff? Yeah, nice. So if you don't know what I'm talking about right now, this is powerful. I'm just curious to your opinion about it. What about blue light? So tell them what that is real quick. Then we'll finish with a fun thing on sleep. But tell them what blue light means

and how you feel about it. I don't know how you feel about it. So I've been talking about this for again, about five years. So a lot of folks have heard about this right now. But most haven't, that are listened to this. Again, I look to the research instead of just like, you know, this might be a problem, but so Harvard researchers confirm that blue light exposure from our favorite devices, you know, our smartphones, television laptops does in fact elevate your

cortisol at night, which they tested during the day, it doesn't impact you during the day. It's because your body's expecting a nighttime cycle. Got it. So Elevates, cortisol, and suppresses melatonin. Okay. And so according to their numbers, every hour you're on your device at night, without some kind of a protection or strategy,

it suppresses melatonin for 30 minutes. Wow. And so you can go to sleep because you're exhausted, but your melatonin can still be to sleep because you're exhausted, but your melatonin can still be suppressed, but they're not going to officially go through those sleep cycles that we talked to. So what do we do? Get off our phone or is there something else that we should do? There's a couple things. So let's be real. Like text nice slowing down. I'm not a nutty nutty. You know what I'm saying?

I love my I love my phone. You know. Um, this is huge. There are some and the thing is I don't from my perspective, the research is not conclusive how effective it is. Right, I'm just gonna throw this out there. Sure. Because for a lot of folks anecdotally, they say it does help a lot, which is using some kind of blue light, suppressive device.

So on all of their devices, for Apple, the iPads, iPhones, they have a tool called Night Shift, which pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light, the blue light, this kind of white light, strong light, and kind of cools your screen off. And so you could just set that on, set it and forget it. And then for your laptops, desktops, there's a tool called Flux, it's totally free.

You just go to Dr. Google, f.lux, and I've been using it for about five years. What a great tip. And I do want to say this to you, both those devices work, and the other thing is really trying to get off that device within some window before you're asleep, not just for the melatonin factor, for the deep sleep factor,

but also for quieting of the mind factor. If the last things you're doing before you go to sleep are worry some stressful, task-related things, it's just much harder to get to sleep when you're doing that. So I try to give myself some runway before I sleep. But I know that you do too. Here's the good news.

This is adult time, by the way, the next 90 seconds. But before we get to that, since we're talking about the mind, I got to throw this in there for people because there are a lot of people listening to your show who want to be optimized in their performance, in their focus, their energy. And so, I'm a nutritionist. I was like, food is everything, but it's just not. Your sleep matters more than your nutrition and your exercise combined if you're not doing it properly. So, I want to share this study. So, this is the purpose in the Lansing. And they took physicians and they had to know complete a task.

Okay. All right. Sleep deprived them, had them come back and do the same thing. Here's what happened. They made 20% more mistakes doing the same exact thing. Okay. And it took them 14% longer to do the same exact thing when they're sleep deprived. This is not uncommon in the world of physicians. And it's not uncommon in our world, right?

So there's a big difference between doing work and being effective. Sure. And we're taking away so much of our effectiveness because we're sleep deprived. UC Berkeley did brain imaging scans, actually looking at what happens in our brain when we're sleep deprived. It's a short sleep debt of 24 hours, right? And so the first thing they saw was a cooling

in the activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is a part of your brain responsible for decision making, social control, the distinguishing between right and wrong. That part of the brain literally starts to turn off. And correlated with an activation in your amygdala, this is the more primitive part of your brain that's responsible basically for your fight or flight system. And it's concerned about survival of self.

This is when you tend to say something you don't really need to say. You'll make decisions, you'll hook up with the person you weren't. You know, like a lot of decisions happen with your food choices, right? When you're sleep deprived of your tire. No but tell me if I'm wrong. I've never heard one person who's up two o'clock in the morning binge watching, you know, game with the bones and you're like, you know what, yeah, can you throw me some broccoli? Right? I'm just going to cram you. Oh, you know, game with the whole thing. It's like, broiled chicken rice. You know what? Yeah, can you throw me some broccoli?

Right? I'm just going to cram. This is when you go get the cookies and the ice cream, you know, like in the past. You know, so. Thank you for sharing that, by the way, and that is an absolute fact. You're so right about that.

By the way, that's just 24 hours of deprivation, too. That's not weeks or months of it, like some of us are going through. And so we're going to have this adult time. Here's the good news. Before you go to sleep at night, there is one thing you can do to help you sleep deeply that everybody would enjoy doing. This is for you adults out there.

So tell them what that one thing is that can help you sleep. So listen, you know, there's this term in culture, right? In the movies, right? Somebody's sleeping together, right? I was like, when I was a kid, I hear that, I was like, but you're not sleeping, right? Well, come to find out, your sex life has a huge impact on your sleep life.

And vice versa, your sleep has a huge impact on your sex. And so when you have an orgasm, you release a cocktail of chemicals that all improve sleep, all right? So oxytocin, for example. Oxytocin has a direct correlation to reducing cortisol. All right, so we talked about how cortisol can be a problem with your sleep.

Oxytocin knocks that right out. Prolactin is another really interesting one. So there was a study outside in sleep smart and this was done on laboratory animals. And so they injected them with prolactin and they become sleepy immediately. Okay. So when you have an orgasm, you produce prolactin. Now here's a little fun fact. When males tested, when they have an orgasm by themselves versus having orgasm with their

partner, you release four times more prolactin with a partner. With a partner. And you do by yourself. This is why I guess somebody masturbates and they're like, you go eat a bowl of cereal and wash cartoons or whatever. Versus, you know, you're with your partner, and they're like, you know, you're sleepy all the time, you know, when you go, when you have orgasm.

So, you've got that, we've got a Norpp and Eferna, on and on, Norpp and Eferna is a player in optimizing that sleep cycle we talked about. It's related to REM sleep, right? REM sleep is where you get your dream on, but also REM sleep is responsible for something called memory processing. This is where your experience is even from today where people are learning about, it

gets converted to your short-term memory. And that's one of the places that really gets hit hard with sleep deprivation and also, you know, drinking too close to bed. By the way, I just got to throw this in here. So alcohol does in fact help you fall asleep faster. Period in the story, bar none. The small issue is that it creates something called a REM rebound effect.

So since you're processing memories while you're sleeping, this is why you can have that experience. I know this never happened to you. Well, you wake up, you don't really remember what you did. Don't even, right? When you might drink a little bit too much, right? And this is because your REM sleep is disrupted. And so, and also, this is why we have this concept

of a hangover. It's not because you didn't sleep, it's because your rimsleap is disrupted and so and also this is why we have this concept of a hangover it's not because you didn't sleep it's because your rimsleap was so disrupted your sleep cycle period right and so what I recommend people to do is not to not drink it's just like employ some simple strategies make sure you're getting hydrated right nature solution to pollution dilution right so drink it some water to help dilute, support your liver, maybe have a little bit of a curfew. You know, give yourself maybe, you know, an hour or two before you go to bed, you know, when you finish drinking. You know, just small things.

There's several things you could do to not turn your life upside down, but still. And the big thing is, the big thing is have a big O before you go to bed at night and even better is do that with somebody else and you get four times the hit, right? You go. I love that. That's like, so, so good. Such good news for so many of you out there. I give you another reason to have that conversation

with your partner. I know you have a headache, but we want to sleep deep tonight. So get off your phone 30 minutes. Exactly. Hopefully, you know. All this stuff is related. The wine does help,

but I get you a point about the wine, so okay, I'm with you on that. So this is awesome. So I want you to do number one. I want you to get sleep smarter. I want you to get the book. We've talked about this enough times. Here's how popular this thing is.

On Audible, this is two years later, this book is still the number two seller on all of Audible last month. So that's a credit to you. It's such a powerful topic. My blowing. And you're such an expert on this, right? I want to finish up though with Winnie.

So obviously, this is such a huge thing because sleep is tied to all of it. But now I want to kind of finish with you, right because You're this expert. You're obviously incredibly articulate. You're doing something you're chasing in your life You're real passion like you're obsessed with wellness you're obsessed with health So I think that's one of the reasons you're just so incredibly successful, right? But there's more to it than that so if you were talking to this audience This is someone who's built this incredible practice,

it's not by mistake you're the number one person in this space, right? That's not number 19, which would still be pretty damn impressive, right? But number one in this space, so you become the best in the world at something. Like, how have you done that? Like, talk to someone about becoming elite,

becoming an elite performer, getting to the top of something. Is it just that you've chased your passion or are there other things, or the way you think, the way you process information, your identity? Like, what would you tell someone, listen, this has been the key, some of the keys to you becoming you? Wow, that's that's powerful question. Yeah.

You know, the first thing that's jumping to mind is, you know, when we go to school, we're taught what to learn, right? We're not taught how to learn. Okay. And so I'm a big advocate. And what I've done is finding a way to learn faster, right? Becoming a great, somebody who's able to assimilate information. And here's what I'll just tell you how I do it. I really want to answer my next question. How do you do it? So whenever I'm reading a study, whenever I'm reading a book, I'm thinking about how can I teach this? As I'm consuming the information because it's not about me. You know that I do that too? Keep going, but I do that too. I didn't know I did it, but I do.

You cannot do anything of great success if this is about you. And so my passion is not about learning and being great in this field. It's about helping people. And changing that story, like I wanna make sure that I mean it breaks them all. Look at you, you're just right there. Just changed you. You're good, keep going. When I think about these kids, you know, who are in cancer treatment centers right now,

you know, and how things can be better, and our system is broken, you know. Our, we've got some amazing physicians and many of them are my friends, you know, and now they're shifting more to integrative medicine, functional medicine, because the way that we've taught historically, you know, because the way that we've taught, historically, you know, in conventional medicine the last few decades, we're terrible at chronic illness. Everything is gone up. How?

If we're so smart and good at what we do, you know, and the truth is, if you take a really smart person, which these are the best of the best, and you teach them a wrong thing, they become world-class and doing the wrong thing. And so that's what really drives me, man, is. I could see it all over your face. It actually is coming down your face.

It's doing whatever we can do to help to facilitate the next generation. And I know that so many of our problems in society, with violence, with just this big dichotomy that we're experiencing right now, has to do with, people don't do well because they don't feel well. And so instead of me getting out and protesting, that's not my path. And my path is how can I get people healthier so we can have great conversations.

So we can meet each other and have more compassion. It's very difficult to have compassion when you're sleep deprived. It's very difficult to have compassion when you're dying inside because your body's experiencing chronic illness. All of those things drive me to be the best possible. Yeah, and so I was not expecting yeah, I was not expecting to say that I'm glad that you got so I'm glad you showed that because it's the real you and I'd say you the first time we talked you inspired me Look at you. You're still thinking about it, right? The first time we talk brother you inspired me like I knew right when we talk like that We're kindred spirits. And I wanna thank you for today,

but really not for today, I wanna thank you for the last 10 years of your life, the work you've done, and what you're gonna do the next 10 years, you're, by definition brother, you're really a world changer. Like you change people's lives. Like think about that.

This guy starts out, he had a real interesting upbringing that we talked about a little bit where he was raised in pretty good environment than a really bad environment. Then he gets this degener starts out, he had a real interesting upbringing that we talked about a little bit where he was raised in pretty good environment, then a really bad environment, then he gets this degenerative disease. And you turn this life altering for some people would be life ruinous diagnosis into not only you turning around your own life, but then you've been spired and helped millions of other people get well and change their own lives.

And I just want, I hope that Sean gives you hope and gives you inspiration that if you chase your passion in life, if you learn to learn faster, if you think about learning things in order to give to others, all these great keys you're giving you, you get that kind of emotion on your face about what you do in your life and the difference you make. You can be a world changer just like this man right here to my left. And so I don't want the relationship with you to end today because I want folks to get well and healthy. And I know science changes, information changes, and if you're following him, you'll be on the cutting edge

of wellness and health and energy for the next decade if you follow Sean. And so they can find you at your podcast. Yeah, the model health show. The model health show. And then on social media, how do they find you? Or you under Sean Stevens? Yes, there's already under scores

I mean you should find me but I'm at Sean model S.H.A.W. in model Sean model on social media I mean really thank you for today like I I told you read this book and in one full sitting without putting it down And then like today we could have gone three more hours because everything you say you back up with studies You back up with facts, but it comes from this heart, man, it comes from this place of passion. So God bless you brother. All of you that listen, thank you so much. We really enjoyed it. Those of you that are listening, always ask, I bring you the best people in the world

at what they do. I just brought you the greatest in the world when it comes to health and wellness and particularly in sleep in this endeavor. Go get his book and in my case, if you're watching this on YouTube, make a like, give it a comment and if it's on an audio podcast,, make a like, give it a comment, and if it's on an audio podcast, please anywhere you are, give it a review, it'll hope it move up the rankings, I sure would appreciate it.

God bless you and max out everybody. This is the Ed Mila Show, compete, lead and kick ass. Build your best body, business, and life at Edmila.com