The Rich Roll Podcast - How To Sleep Smarter With Shawn Stevenson

Episode Date: March 21, 2016

You cannot underestimate the value of an incredible night's sleep. On the rare occasion I awake from 8 hours of dead to the world slumber, everything is better. I am more present, alert and productive. The quality of my interactions with family and friends is significantly enhanced. Colors are brighter. My mood is sunnier. And physically, I feel amazing. So I can't help but wonder: what would my life be like if I could sleep that well every night? Intellectually, we all know sleep is super important. But most — including myself — fail to acknowledge just how crucial sleep is to every aspect of our daily lives. Traditionally, sleep is the first thing I compromise when I get busy. Sleep is for whimps! But I've completely changed my tune on this issue. As I age, achieving optimal sleep quality has become increasingly elusive. And I have become more attuned to the extent to which my day is negatively impacted by sub-optimal sleep. So I have recently committed to experimenting with a number of techniques and strategies (some obvious, some not) to improve what I now understand and appreciate is absolutely essential to living a balanced, healthy and optimally productive life. I'm happy to say it's working. This is a long way of saying that I have been thinking alot about sleep lately. So I'm excited to share this conversation on the subject with sleep expert Shawn Stevenson. A wellness evangelist and host of the Model Health Show podcast, Shawn also recently authored Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success*. I had a great time on Shawn's podcast about a year ago (click here to listen), so it was fun to explore his compelling personal journey with wellness and dive deep into the subject of sleep. Specific topics include: * Shawn's struggles with health & depression * hitting rock bottom as a catalyst for change * environmental epigenetics * strategies to combat preventable illnesses * the effects of sleep on your daily life * sleep as a force multiplier * the relationship between cortisol & melatonin * the benefits of early morning activities on cortisol levels * sleep & temperature regulation * optimizing cortisol rhythm through light therapy * sex & sleep * the health impact of sleep deprivation * magnesium & melatonin supplements * addressing chronic insomnia Shawn is a great guy with a velvety voice custom made for podcasting. But more importantly, this conversation is packed with practical advice, powerful tools and helpful information that will enhance your appreciation for sleep and just might impact your daily life experience profoundly. So pay attention. Take notes. And enjoy. Peace + Plants, Rich

It's not about the amount of sleep that you get. It's about the quality, you know, so that making the time on the mattress valid because people out there and right now sleep for eight hours a night, but they still wake up feeling like a wreck. That's Shawn Stevenson. And this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. What's happening, you guys? What's going on? How are you? This is Rich Roll. I am your host.

Welcome to The Rich Roll Podcast, the show where each week I sit down with thought leaders, paradigm-breaking minds and personalities across all categories of wellness, health, nutrition, entrepreneurship, creativity, artistry, athleticism, etc. Why? To hopefully help you and me access, unleash, unlock our best, most authentic selves. So I appreciate you guys tuning in today. I'm going to do something a little bit different. I know I've talked about this before, but I'm just going completely off script. And I'm just going to riff this intro. I know I said, if you're a longtime listener, you know that I said this earlier, maybe a couple months ago, and then I got scared. And I went back to scripting my intros. And I was listening to one the other day, and just it felt so like stiff and stilted. And when the theme of your podcast is being real, open, authentic, and honest, it just

feels like it strikes a false note. So I'm dispensing with the script today as an experiment. So hopefully this isn't too boring or doesn't go too much into the weeds. But I just thought, hmm, let's see what happens if i just uh do this a different way so today on the show i got sean stevenson he is the uh host of a podcast called the model health show i was a guest on his show quite some time ago he's a he's a really cool guy he's got a new book out it's called sleep smarter so we're going to talk a lot about sleep today sleep strategies he's also got an interesting personal health story that we're going to get into.

It's Sunday morning when I'm recording this. By the time you're listening to this on Monday, if you listen to it right away, I'm going to be en route to New York City. a panel on vegan athletes along with David Carter, the 300-pound vegan, Dr. Michelle McMacken, both of whom have been guests on this podcast. And it's open to the public.

It's right on Washington Square, Washington, yeah, Washington Park, Washington Square Park South, whatever that road is right there. Anyway, you can find out more about the event at richroll.com forward slash appearances.

It's a big auditorium. I think it seats like 450 people. I think there's still open spaces. So if you're in New York City and you want to connect and enjoy a really cool event, please come and see us. I thought I'd give you guys a quick community update. If you're following me on YouTube, you saw my community video. We got the teepee up. Tyler turned 21, my eldest. You know him as the former podcast producer. Him and his girlfriend are moving into a gigantic teepee on our property. That got erected the other day and we celebrated his 21st birthday two nights ago. And it was amazing. We did a formal tea ceremony. We had a small group of about 20 people. We all went around and like honored him. And it was a really kind of beautiful evening of music and, you know, just an intimate experience. And it made me reflect on my own 21st birthday party as a stark contrast of me, you know, doing multiple shots and ultimately projectile vomiting all over the place. And just how much more mature this young man is compared to where I was at his age.

And I'm just super proud of him. proud of him. And I think it's, you know, something that's endemic to a lot of younger people, the millennial generation, at least a lot of the millennials that I've met, much more interested in important things than perhaps my generation was. But if you're interested in kind of getting a little bit of the behind the scenes on how I'm living on a daily basis, you can check me out on Snapchat. I've been doing a lot of stuff there, just kind how I'm living on a daily basis, you can check me out on Snapchat. I've been doing a lot of stuff there, just kind of sharing snippets of my daily life. My avatar there is IamRichroll, I-A-M Richroll. And also YouTube. I made this promise at the beginning of the year that I was going to do a video a week. And I've sort of fallen off a cliff on that for a couple reasons.

The first and foremost is that it takes a lot of time to edit these videos. Like I think I spent almost eight hours editing the last one. And for me to find an opportunity to carve out that much time to make a quality video, it's just I realize it's not happening. I've been filming a lot, and I just haven't found a moment to sit down and compile it and put together anything interesting that would be worth sharing. And I think that brings me to one of my major character defects, which is control freakism. I'm trying to do everything myself, everything from editing this podcast, producing it myself to shooting all the video and then editing the video myself. And I'm under the, you know, sort of tell myself,

yeah, but no one else can do it. Like you're the one who knows your vibe and that's how you're expressing, you know, your point of view creatively, et cetera. But the truth is, you know, if I want to be putting out content on the regular, I need some help, right? So I guess what I'm saying is I'm kind of putting it out there. I'm looking for people who can perhaps assist me, wizards in audio engineering, wizards in video editing, technology wizards, etc. And I don't know what that looks like right now. I haven't really fully conceptualized my exact needs. I'm just perhaps recognizing on a public level that I could use a little bit of help and putting it out there. So more on that as it develops. All right, so we got to pay a few

bills here on the podcast. So why don't we do this? Today's episode is brought to you by. All right, so today's show, sleep, Sean Stevenson. Sleep is super duper important. We all know this intellectually. On a personal level, sleep is something that I've struggled with. Of course, when I'm training super duper hard, I sleep really well. But when I reduce my training load, or I increase my workload, my professional responsibilities, and the stress that comes with that, my sleep gets compromised. And when my sleep is compromised, the quality of my work product is compromised. The quality of my interactions with the people in my life is compromised.

Nothing goes quite so well when I'm not sleeping well. So this is really personally important to me. And I've had my ups and downs with trying to figure out how to dial in my personal equations so that I can get the most out of those evening hours. And so this is a really interesting conversation about those tactics, about those strategies, certain things that we can all do to improve the quality of our evening hours, those sleep time hours, and really leverage sleep as a force multiplier. Sean's a good dude. Interesting talk. So let's do this. Sean, man, thanks so much for making the trip all the way out here. I know I live in the hinterland and you schlepped all the way from Hollywood, so I appreciate it. It's my pleasure, man. This is

exciting. I had so much fun doing your podcast and it's been a long time coming to meet you in person, so it's great to meet you. Excited for all the cool stuff that you have going on. Thank you, man. And it's an exciting time for you, man. Yeah, it is, man. Like I was saying, if this was two years ago, I think I would have been a little bit overwhelmed, but I just feel incredibly ready. I feel prepared for the mission at hand. Right. What is the mission? The mission is to help the world sleep better, man.

Uh-huh. You know? We've gotten into a situation where sleep has become an enemy, and it's actually one of the most fundamental. And here's the thing, you know, if you just get right into it, if it wasn't necessary, we would have evolved out of it a long time ago. Right. You know? But this is where your body changes. True. get right into it, if it wasn't necessary, we would have evolved out of it a long time ago. Right. You know, but this is where your body changes. I wish we could. True. You know, we could be, it could be an X-Men situation, you know, where we mutate out of it. But the reality is, it's where our body changes the most, you know, it's the anabolic state, you know, so we're missing out on a whole lot of juiciness, which, you know, of course,

we'll talk about today. Right. I want to unpack all of that sleep stuff of course that's going to be the focus today um but before we uh before we do that i thought it would be cool to kind of take it back a little bit sure hear the the the uh the superman origin story where's all this coming from like well the first question i have is before we even get into that i want to know just on a personal level, because we're both fellow podcasters in the same space, how the podcast journey has been for you. Okay. How did this begin? How did you decide to start a podcast, and what has the journey kind of meant to you? Sure, yeah.

Yeah. Well, my story is just to kind of give a brief snapshot. I got into the health field out of my own desperation, trying to figure stuff out with my own health, which when I was 20, I was diagnosed with degenerative bone disease, degenerative disc disease. And basically, you know, I was told there was no cure, you know, there's nothing I could do about it. And I was experiencing this intense pain every day, just this sciatic nerve pain shooting down my leg. Well, let's dig into that a little bit because it is interesting how that occurred, right? It happened in track practice. Oh, yeah. You were like 15. Yeah. That was like the preview. That was the preview of things to come. And so 15 years old, at this point, I was the youngest in my class you know and so I'm a sophomore before football season that year I ran a four or five forty yard dash which is like NFL time you

know and I'm just a kid and so football season's over I'm going in track season and I'm ready to go like let's see what I can do and this was about two weeks into the season I was doing a 200 meter time trial and this is just me and the coach And I'm coming off the curve into the straightaway and my hip broke. And I didn't know that it was my hip. I just thought I pulled a muscle or something. And me being a hardheaded guy, I kept coming to practice for like two days

before I went and got a scan done. And there it was floating off in space. The tip of my iliac crest had broken off. Right. That's like the very kind of top edge of your hip bone. You got it, man. But nobody stopped to ask the question, how did this kid's hip break very kind of top edge of your hip bone. You got it, man. Right. And, but nobody stopped to ask the question, you know, how did this kid's hip break? It was just standard of care. Right. It's like, you don't have osteoporosis at age 15, or at least you're not

meant to. Right. And there was no trauma involved. So this is, you know, a lot of elderly people see this situation, but a lot of people think that people fall and break their hip. In reality, they, they, they break their hip and then they fall. And so this was happening to me. And fast forward to the diagnosis when I'm 20, finally, I get some feedback, but it was all bad. People say it's all good. It was all bad. And that journey led me to 50 pound weight gain over the course of two and a half years, definitely dipped into some depression and depression has a lot of different faces. So my version of depression was, um, very withdrawn, you know, uh, went into a life of seclusion and mad in video games and, um,

really struggling with being embarrassed, you know, because I was always like the athlete, you know? And so, and so ultimately it all changed when I decided, funny enough, and this is so simple, Rich, and this happened with you, I decided to change, you know, I decided to get well. But backing up from that, the initial diagnosis or the kind of recommendations that you were getting from the various doctors that you were seeing were unanimous in that there was nothing that could be done and your life was you know going to be uh just about taking medication and trying to you know deal with the pain but there was no cure to what ailed you right this is what is effectively known as a nocebo effect you know where you're giving it and people know about a placebo effect

and this is sort of a positive injunction from somebody who you trust saying that a positive thing will happen. And so a placebo effect is giving a negative injunction and saying that this bad thing is going to happen. Or, you know, it's when that situation where, you know, you have one month to live type of thing and people who might have walked into the hospital are now wheelchair bound within 24 hours. You know, and so I believe them and my body and my mind, my life was showing it. Right. Like it's just resignation to this fate and a sense of powerlessness. Yeah. And it becomes learned helplessness because you start to create a self-fulfilling prophecy when you truly believe that there's nothing you can do. But luckily, I had this blueprint earlier on in life that I was special, you know, like all of us really

Feel, you know if we dig deep down we all feel that way and I just remember my grandmother saying that, you know I was going to do all these amazing things. I was so talented and I was just looking at myself You know, I was holding this pill bottle because I had to take medication just to sleep Due to the pain and I was just like, this is not my life. This is not what I signed up for. And that's the night I decided to get well. And I'm a very analytical person for the people who we have crossover with our shows, know this, you know, and so it wasn't just the clouds parted in like a unicorn came out with a piece of cake for me, you know, it was like, what, what am I going to do to make this happen? And so I really embarked on three specific things, which was studying everything that I could

about nutrition, really getting involved in exercise and movement in a big way, which that had been taken off the table because, you know, well-meaning physicians will tell you, you know, be careful, bed rest, don't do anything. And it's out of of number one there's a legal aspect there too yeah they don't want it on their hands yeah yeah so and it's it's a situation you can understand because a lot of people can mess their self up you know and they don't want that on their hands but the other side of the of the situation is your body requires movement in order to heal itself so if it's an acute situation where you know you're just now hurt of course take a day or two off and let the inflammation go down but you need to do what you can you know, you're just now hurt, of course, take a day or two off and let the inflammation go down.

But you need to do what you can, you know. And so at two and a half years, I was way past doing what I can. So I just started what I could. You know, I started riding elliptical and then doing some walking. Then I got to jogging again for the first time in over two and a half years, picked up the weights. And before you know it, man, long story short, but the big thing was the nutrition and the recovery, which this was the big sleep component. I lost 28 pounds in six weeks. And this pain that I've been experiencing for, man, it's even hard to talk about every single waking moment of my life for two and a half years

was gone. And nine months later, I ultimately got the scan done showing that I regenerate the tissue. I had two herniated discs that retracted on their own. I grew half an inch in my height that I lost three fourths of an inch in height. And my physician's just like, hey, buddy, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. Right. Was it the same doctor who gave you the initial diagnosis? This was the fourth doctor. Nothing could be done? Yeah. So the initial doctor, you know, he was long gone. But and he was the guy that I asked, does this have anything to do with what I'm eating was in kind of uh sketchier circumstances right bad neighborhoods and you know kind of hard scrabble uh type of existence and basically a diet that was comprised of you know fast food and processed food right yeah yeah ultimately yeah you know it's

um you know a lot of people in this country you know because we're in this field we forget sometimes that so many people are operating from survival, you know, and just eating whatever they can. And there's no distinction between food. It's just if you can eat it, it's food. So I wasn't I didn't know what I didn't know. And so ultimately, I asked the question, you know, what is my spine actually made of? What are my bones made of? And my template for my eating habits was created early on, just like all of us, you know, and so my grandmother loved me to pieces, but she,

you know, she wanted me to be happy while my grandfather was a hunter, you know, and she had her own garden and all this stuff. And so I had that around me, but I decided that I want to eat fish sticks and macaroni every day, you know, and she let me do that. And it was very difficult for me to eat other things, man. This is real talk. Like I hardly ever shared this story. I didn't eat a salad until I was 25 years old, man. I swear, this is true story. I tried to eat it once. I would eat broccoli, you know, if it had cheese on it early on, then I evolved out of the cheese. And so, but what happened was i started juicing you know to reset my palate and so this was shortly after coming out of that that darkness with my you know with my spinal condition and so i started to make green smoothies and juicing just getting that

information into my body because you know that food isn't just food it's information you know but that moment what you were 20 when this when you had this sort of light bulb moment? No, 20 is when the diagnosis happened. 22 is when I kind of woke up. So from 15 to 20, you're dealing with a situation where you're not even sure what exactly is wrong with you. Yeah, string of injuries, yeah. Then at 20, you get diagnosed with what it actually is, and there's nothing you can do about it. you get diagnosed with what it actually is and there's nothing you can do about it. And at 22, you have your fed up, you know, moment where you're like, I'm done with this. I'm going to try to resolve this on my own.

I mean, what, other than pain and, you know, just being sort of at that place where you can't tolerate the idea of not doing anything about it. place where you can't tolerate the idea of not doing anything about it. I mean, was there something that occurred that gave you the idea that you could take control of this? I mean, what motivated that? Yeah, that's a great question. Sometimes rock bottom is a good place to be, you know, because it's really, it's just up from there. And so about a week prior, I received the last word on whether or not there was a chance that I could get well. Like this was the last doctor, the best doctor who would be able to, you know, all these people were telling me he's going to be able to help you. And he said he couldn't help me. So it was either give up or do something about it. And also, you know, like I mentioned, my grandmother, and I also had

a son, you know, I had a young son. And just the fear of not being able to do the things I'm doing with him today, you know, I was like, I'm not going to be able to teach him how to play baseball and, you know, all this stuff. I mean, I was in a bad way, man. I was walking around with a back brace, you know. And so it was a catalyst for change. You know, your environment can be both. You know, it can be something that helps to bring you down or elevate you, depending on your perspective. And so I wanted to be everything that I could for my son and to live up to the potential that my grandmother saw in me and also that I saw in myself as well. And what was the first thing that you did? I mean, did you go online and start researching bone health?

Or what was the, thing that you did? I mean, did you go online and start researching bone health? Or what was the initial? The first thing I did was the lowest hanging fruit, which for guys, it's exercise. So I went to the gym and started to get on the elliptical and get on the stationary bike. Exercise is a low hanging fruit. And I knew I needed to change the way I was eating because I just ate Papa John's the day before. Shout out to Peyton Manning, Super Bowl, Papa John's. But the bottom line was, that was what my palate was set for. So what I started to do was, again, low hanging fruit, I just changed the ingredients, you know, instead of eating a burger from McDonald's, I go to Whole Foods and get, you know, pasture raised, blah, blah, blah,

sprouted grain, buns, and organic oven fries and broccoli, you know, and drink water like it was going out of style. So just making small changes that are obvious. Like everybody knows it's better to eat broccoli than go to McDonald's. True, true. So it was those baby steps. But I mean, I'm also, if I get the information, I go full in, you know. And so I don't know if I shared this with you.

Eventually, just maybe it was about two years into it. I went 100% raw vegan for three entire years. Oh, I didn't know that. I mean, we talked a little bit about vegan stuff on your show, but I don't recall you mentioning that. Yeah, man. I mean, I went in and I live in St. Louis. It's cold, man. Cold winters, green smoothies, but I did what I had to do, you know, and it really, again, putting that information into your body really changes you. But early on, it was those small things. And that evolved into, yes, changing my course of study in school to biology, kinesiology. And I tell people this all the time, I want to know what you know. I learned about half of a percent of what I know in school, you know, so I just dove into books, you know, and dove into online research and started to find stories of

people who were in a similar situation who recovered, you know, and one of the biggest questions again was, what are my bones made out of? And what comes to mind when you think of bone health? What mineral? Well, calcium. Exactly, dude. And everybody knows that, but there's like 200 other things involved that are equally as important. You know, magnesium, silica, sulfur-bearing amino acids. I wasn't getting any of that stuff, man. Did you have low bone density throughout your entire body or was it localized to your hip region? What was so crazy is I came across this book and to answer the question, yes, it was localized for me. But I read this book called Acid and Alkaline, which there's a lot of shaky science as far as that goes. But it just changed my paradigm because I remember

learning about that in biology, but it had no relevance to me and my body. And in the book, I believe the author's name was Herman Nayara. It's a really old book, really small book. And it said that when your body is deficient in calcium, it will first rob it from your hips and your spine. And I was like, what? He knows me. Like he's been following me around. Well, also, if you're eating a very acidic diet, then your body is going to leach calcium it has to your body works

on the acid your body works on a hierarchy of needs so if it needs to clot your blood and needs calcium to do that your your hips aren't aren't as important as important as keeping you alive so that's just how the system works interesting so protracting out from that i would presume that if you did not take the steps to try to mend this on your own, that eventually that bone density issue would have spread out of your hips into the rest of your body. Absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's quite amazing that through pretty simple stuff, you were able to not only resolve the pain but actually correct the spot. resolve the pain but actually correct the spot. I mean, it is that Ayurvedic principle of the body's incredible power and capacity for

self-healing when you treat it right. Like the body knows what to do. Exactly. If you can give it the right information, it will do it on its own. Yeah. It's too simple, Rich. But for me, it was my genetic predisposition which is towards the degeneration of my spine and my hips. Oh, there are other people in your family that have it?

Yes. And so for other people, their genetic card might be diabetes or heart disease, whatever the case may be. And this is something I actually talk about in the book is understanding, and I know you've talked about this as well, epigenetics. And understanding that we all have genes for bad stuff. You know, it's just some of some of us never had them activate, while others of us are living with it constantly. You know, it's really about the environment outside of ourselves and in our bodies that we create, that determine whether or not a gene is expressed. It's really that simple. Yeah, that idea of, well, I'm just genetically predisposed to have this, and there's nothing that I can do is now quickly being, I mean,

I'm no expert in this area, but it's sort of quickly being superseded by this idea that you can control the expression of these undesirable genes through environment and lifestyle. Yeah, that was kind of like, for a couple decades, like the dark ages of science. And that led to a lot of strange decisions, you know, proactive breast surgeries, you know, and just removal of breasts because of a gene potential problem being there, even though the person has expressed the disease yet, you know, and this fear that's created around that, but also it's a fear for surgeries, fear for creation of medications. Like if you have this problem with this particular gene, we can create a drug for that.

And guess what? We've got like 20, 25,000 various genes. That's a lot of opportunity for medications. Not trying to create no conspiracies theories here, you know, but it's just understanding that, you know, there's a bigger thing at play here. You know, but it's just understanding that, you know, there's a bigger thing at play here. And we all know this intuitively that. You if you if you get here and so, by the way, only about five or less percent of us are born with a true dis discombobulation with our genetic printout.

Basically, we're born with a mutation of some sort, you know, and the rest of us get here with pretty good cards to do what we're going to do. But it's through our lifestyle factors that determine whether or not so if somebody is like, you know, I get cancer at 30. Why didn't you have cancer when you're five? You know, it's just a question to ask. Well, probably because you were exposed to carcinogens or genetic program kind of ran its course. And then we get into a conversation about telomeres and things like that. But it's really fascinating to think about it. If you step back and look at the bigger picture. Have you done the 23andMe thing and gotten your gene map and all that? I have not. I have not, man. So many people have been on me.

I would think you would be a candidate for that. You'd be all over that. Yeah. I've been all over sleep. So you know, for the past five years, and that's all I've been digging into, you know, I've done a lot of other self quantifying experimentation as well, which I, I can't wait to talk about this stuff. I'm still doing some testing, you know, and looking at a lot of stuff to do with the gut. And man, in the Krebs cycle, and just there's so many cool things that we can monitor now. But man, the more that I learn, the more that I know that we don't know anything. And the more that I know that we just need to do basic stuff. Like you can get too crazy with the testing.

And I'm currently in that right now. Just constantly doing tests on yourself. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to just live your life when you're doing that, I think. Taking the quantified self a little bit too far sometimes. Yeah. I know what that's like, but all right, man. So, so you heal yourself. I mean, that must've been an incredibly empowering experience to have. I mean, and that I assume rooted you in this life path of making health and wellness kind of your mission, right? Absolutely. You know, when you have, when you're told that there's something that's incurable, and then you see that thing turned around, you have an extremely powerful presence, you know,

and I was able to come from a different place when I was speaking to people, you know, because that was really the birthing of my career when I kind of turned my health around. People at my university, I was still in school at the time, started coming up and asking like, what did you do? And I remember this teacher, I was walking out of class and he stopped me. He was like, what did you do? You look so healthy. Like it was a problem, you know? And it wasn't like I looked like a guy who lost weight. I looked really healthy, you know? And so I started working with my professors and faculty and students And so I started working with my professors and faculty and students and just kind of taking over my university at the time and helping people to get well, helping people to do the things that I was able to do and more. So that got me into researching diabetes and cancer. And I've got some before and afters with breast cancer scans, for example, on some of the episodes of my show that are just shocking, man, what can happen in one month by transforming your lifestyle, you know,

and, you know, ultimately, you know, opening up my practice, working with thousands of people. And then that led to speaking and going all over the place and doing that. And this is where the podcast manifested. Now we're going to answer the first question, right? So I was doing this TEDx talk in Las Vegas and a funny story. So right before me was the co-founder of Zappos. Tony Hsieh.

Not Tony Hsieh. It was another guy. I forgot his name. Sorry, guy, if you're listening. And the mayor of Las Vegas was right right before me the mayor at the time and this guy was like you know story to be the mob boss lawyer you know um and he made this weird law that if anybody did a movie in las vegas he had to be in it very interesting character right and that's like out of a movie in and of itself he was a a movie-like figure, you know. And so I did the TED Talk.

And actually, so this was like 2010. And so the name of the talk was How Chocolate Can Save the World. And so this was before, like, everybody was going bananas on chocolate and cacao and this whole thing. So everybody knows about that now. But afterwards, I was coming off stage. And this couple came up to me who ran this really popular online magazine, they were like, we're starting this podcast, and we're looking for a face of the podcast. And I was like, Okay, sounds cool. What the hell is a podcast? You know, and so that was my initiation into it. And for about almost two years, I did the Be Well Buzz podcast.

And so I got my feet wet there, you know, making all my mistakes, making it so that the editing takes twice as long as the show itself. And ultimately evolved as I built my own brand and started the Model Health Show, which is my show. And luckily, I was doing a keynote for this chiropractic event. And the emcee was a radio producer. And she was like, I've got to have you in, got to work with you. So I came in and we just really clicked. I was like, Hey, you know, I'm going to start this show. What do you think about doing the show with me? And so that's where my co-hosts and I connect. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. And have you always done it in that super swank studio?

No. At first it was just me and my microphone, you know, and just trying to imagine that I'm talking to people because I was a speaker, you know, and so I was just trying to channel that. But now, yeah, then having the opportunity to be in a studio, a major studio for major production of, you know, nationwide radio was a huge advantage and a gift and a blessing for sure. But that was the opportunity that I had. We still came out of the gate very strong because I made all the mistakes, you know. So after about a year, the podcast just took off and then we started to do the millions of downloads and we started with a couple hundred a day, you know. And then now we're up trying to get to rich roll status. Come on. And how long have you been doing video of it because that's something a lot of people have been asking me oh you should you should video

the podcast we're we're doing a little i'm gonna video i'm videoing some of it right now um and i'm interested in that but i'm not sure if that's i don't know fun fact you might have been our first video podcast oh really yeah i remember we had some technical stuff yeah it was because we were trying to figure it out you know but has that been good for you or do you think that some here's here's what i found is that the the video podcasts that do well are the ones that are with people who are big on youtube of course you understand so like i had on bob proctor i had on eric thomas who's just huge on youtube and so automatically when those videos get uploaded with their names, but then we get so many new followers as well. It's a different audience.

It's a totally different demographic of people, people that are on YouTube versus people that are listening to podcasts. Exactly. Yeah, anyway, just something I'm thinking about. All right, well, where does sleep come into the picture? Like how did you latch on to sleep as the thing that you really wanted to focus on and write a book about? Yeah, man. Again, I'm a very analytical person. So first of all, seeing this in my clinic and seeing people would come in.

And we had right around an 89% reversal rate success for type 2 diabetes. So helping people to get off metformins and things like that in conjunction with working with their physician. And so I would get a lot of referrals from physicians in my area and we were just rocking it, man. We're doing so well. And what's the basic protocol for this reversal? First of all, you have to understand everybody's different, you know, like we have some people that I can't even believe they're walking around, you know, 400 plus blood sugar, sugar you know and then there's people who are just barely in that diabetic range almost pre-diabetic and but the the approach is somewhat the same you know so it's looking at how extreme their issue is but number one is education first you know but i have to make it

fun you know and so i break out the blackboard and break it down like this is exactly because they don't get that kind of treatment or experience with their physician a lot of times. Not like they don't care, but just the time factor. And are physicians in your experience hip to the fact that it can be reversed at all? Now. I mean, now it's different. Now, even like a couple couple years ago, I would think about managing it. Yeah, a couple years ago, not so much things are changing now, like this headlines in the news now, you know, and this so many stories of people getting off their medications

and successfully, you know, being reversed, you know, or, you know, the C word, you know, and they're, they're actually free of the illness. And so helping them to understand the disease. So insulin is really driven by a function of what's going on with generally carbohydrate intake slash protein intake and turning on insulin, but just doing it haphazardly. It's not that carbohydrates are bad or proteins are bad or any of these macronutrients, but that's just a piece of nutrition, as I know you talk about on your show as well. And so it's really about helping them understand that especially these processed carbohydrates that they tend to be eating are driving this insulin dysregulation. And so now we need to just kind of flood their body with micronutrient rich carbohydrates, proteins, fats, you know.

And so it's really kind of that simple. But here's the trick, though, and I'll just tell you straight out. It's the art of getting the person to do it. Right. That's the thing, right? It's less about the knowledge or the understanding of what to do. It's in the implementation. Exactly.

Because I could treat them allopathically, too, And like, you know, here, take this bitter melon, take this, you know, um, Pauly Arco tea, you know, and start treating symptoms and incur, you know, stack conditions in their favor at the same time. But ultimately if they're not going to do it, what's the point? So that's where the real work is for the master practitioner is making it so that it's approachable and doable for the person. So what is the super secret to getting people to actually do the right thing? Dude, this is, and it's so simple, man. And you know, this already is just caring.

You know, it's just being there with the person and saying, I got you, you know, like, we're going to do this together. I care about you and getting them connected to what matters to them. A lot of people, sometimes this issue, it could be a result of just pure lack of education. Sometimes it could be lack of attention, you know, and finding out what that root root cause is. And a lot of times these illnesses, people feel very isolated because you can't see a lot of these things. You know, it's an internal struggle for me specifically, like the issue with my back. Like when I was a kid and somebody would say their back hurts I'm like man up you know like what are you talking about and then I got totally

broken down and doesn't look like anything's wrong with me except I'm gaining a little weight you know maybe I'm pale you know not feeling that well but generally I look fine like you know get on with your life not understanding that pain that I'm going through so making helping people to feel significant helping them to feel like they're not alone, helping them to feel like they're connected to something bigger than themselves. So just some, this woman's popping to mind and she had two kids, you know, and she was a single mom and she wanted to be there for them, you know, so really finding a creative way to link that up strong, like this is going to take you away from your kids if you don't do this. Right. But you can't live with these people or be around them 24-7.

And I would think that cultivating community and accountability on a daily basis is really going to make the biggest difference in terms of getting them to actually stick to a protocol. Let's be clear. This is not scalable. It's not scalable. So I would. I mean, how many people can you possibly treat in that way with that level of, you know, empathy? Yeah. This was over 10 years clinical practice, man, every day, you know, and seeing generally

about five people a day because I would generally spend about an hour with people. And I would involve my family in it. You know, pretty much all of my clients would meet my wife. We would go to their house, help them to prepare food, all this stuff. I can't believe I used to do that. But it was very time intensive, but it was very rewarding. But ultimately, it did, for sure, take its toll on me because it's like a spiritual kind of emptying out and not getting filled up myself. Well, you take on all of their energy.

You know what I mean? You have to. You have to take on their struggle. I think that every hospital in the country should have a preventative medicine wing and have that wing staffed with not only doctors who are seeing patients and providing the kind of care and information that's required to deal with these chronic lifestyle illnesses, but also have people that can do the outreach, you know, that can either do the visits or create, you know, weekly meetings where these people come in and

they can support each other. It's about the follow-up and the accountability because you're talking – you're trying to tell people that they have to change their – they only have to do one thing. They have to change their entire life. You know what I mean? Most people aren't going to do that and you can scare them. But I think if you empower them and give them the tools and the resources that will allow them to step into that and feel supported in that regard, then they can make that jump. But I think there has to be a strategy and a way to do that that is scalable. Absolutely. It's happening now. Because of right now, because of you, because of my platform,

Because of like right now, because of you, because of my platform with podcasting, with YouTube videos and, you know, this quote new media. There are so many physicians that listen to my show. It's crazy. That's great. You know, and I just got a message from this guy. Maybe he's listening now. John Kim. And he's been a really avid follower of my show. And he just started his residency.

He's been a really avid follower of my show and he just started his residency. And he's just like, you know, he shared his story with his own health recovery for following some of the stuff we talk about. And he's just looking at looking to share that with the rest of the world, with all of his patients. But it's the system itself is broken. You know, where working at a university, I got the I had the opportunity to work with a lot of nurses. And just seeing their before and after, like year one before you're going to school, doing the clinicals and all that stuff, to four years later, and they are beat down. And they haven't even started their job yet. And the system is just, it's broken, man, where we're not taking care of the people who are taking care of us.

But just to kind of take a step back as well. And that's a big component with sleep as well, you know, and seeing that the shift work. Oh, my goodness, man. I never understood that. I never understood that idea of young doctors having to do the 72 hour, you know, on call thing and being exhausted. And there's kind of this perverse pride in how long they can work without sleeping. And you're talking about taking care of sick people. Oh, no. You want to be on your game. Like, why are we doing this?

Why is this system set up like this? Just because it always has been and it's kind of a hazing thing? Like, I don't understand the logic behind it. There is no logic and people just don't know. Like, when you go to the physician, generally, you're're so messed up you don't care what's going on with them just help me you know but there's a study done in the lance it was published in the lancet it was a study done on physicians and they had them to do a task right so they did this task sleep deprived them for just 24 hours they came back to do the same task they made 20 more mistakes

of course all right doing the same exact. They made 20% more mistakes. Of course. All right. Doing the same exact thing. And it took them 14% longer to do the exact same thing. All right. So that speaks to the fact that there's a difference between doing work and being effective. You know, and this can be across the board for if you're an entrepreneur or you're a healthcare provider.

People don't want you showing up. They want the best of you. You know, and it really boils down to this whole thing. Especially if you're getting rolled into the operating room. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But again, you've talked about this as well. Iatrogenesis being one of the leading causes of death in our country with accidental things happening.

But that story, we don't even want to open that book. We just want to help to facilitate healing for everybody involved in the healthcare system, healing the healers. And, you know, what was the catalyst for the book, just to kind of step back on that was, you know, working my practice, seeing people very successful with, whether it's helping them with, you know, high blood pressure, getting off lisinoprils or statins or whatever it was, seeing this incredible success. But then it was like a thorn in my side. There's always this group of people, maybe it's 20% of the people that would not get the result and it would drive me nuts. Like I would be up late at night, ironically, before I really understood about

sleep, just worried, like, what is wrong? Like what is going on with this person? And so I started to ask deeper questions and really analyzing people's lives a little bit deeper as far as looking at their stress, looking at their career, you know, what was their work life like, their relationships and their sleep. And when I start to ask you about their sleep, man, it blew my mind. I could not believe people operating like that. And as soon as we got their sleep together, it's like the floodgates would open and all of the results that other people were getting and then some, in some cases, would just start happening. And so that was number one. But then also with my show being a good training ground, I was about 50 episodes in and I looked at the analytics for my shows and the three episodes I did on sleep were like in the top 10. So I was like, people want to know about this.

were like in the top 10. So I was like, well, people want to know about this. And so that was the catalyst for initially writing my first book, which became a number one bestseller. And then that brought the attention of all these major publishers to make it into what it is today. So that's where it all came from. Gotcha. Interesting. So let's talk about sleep then.

All right, let's do it. And we can talk about it from, I'll just chime in with my own personal experience with sleep i mean clearly you know you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that when you have a great night's sleep you feel better and you're more productive and you're more efficient in what you do uh you know i know that when i wake up i know immediately upon waking up whether i had a good night's sleep or not, and when I have had that great night of sleep, I know it's going to be a great day. Everything is different.

Every aspect of my day is better, from how I interact with the person behind the cash register to how I manage dealing with traffic to how efficiently I respond to emails or phone calls, whatever. Every single thing flows better. My stress level is more reduced. You know, it's not even – it's almost not even worth talking about it. But the thing is, like, I'm 49 now, and I found that sleep is becoming trickier than it used to be. becoming trickier than it used to be. And if I'm training a lot, and making sure that I'm getting in, you know, my hours every day, working out, then my sleep is pretty balanced, and it's pretty good. But being an endurance athlete who is known for doing, you know, a pretty heavy workload, I've acclimated to that load. And now I'm not training for any races so my workload my training

load is much reduced from what it was in previous years and so for me to go out and do what for a lot of people would be a pretty heavy load doesn't really feel like i did that much right and so sometimes i feel like i have to go out and kill myself physically to ensure that I get a great night of sleep. And if I don't work out or if I have a stressful day or I'm not doing certain things that I know you're supposed to do to ensure a good night's sleep, I have a restless night of sleep. I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and I'll just get up and go to work or do something I know is unhealthy to try to make the most of the hours. But I guess the thing that I'm getting at is as I age, I'm much more in tune with the fact that sleep is becoming more of a struggle than it ever used to be. And so maybe that's a good launching off point to talk about all this stuff. There's a lot there. So the first thing was I call sleep a force multiplier.

So it makes everything in your life exponentially better, like you just mentioned. But then the other side is when you're sleep deprived, it makes everything exponentially worse. So the reverse of it's like the reverse flash of everything you said, right? And so it's important to understand that that wherever you lie on the sleep spectrum, it's going to make your life a whole lot better or a whole lot not so better. And the second thing is you point out a really interesting phenomenon, which is your body really gets, it loves to find patterns, you know, like with your training and you have gone, your whole thing is like you are the brand, like ultra, you know? And so you've done things with your body

that the average human isn't even close to, you know? And so your body is going to get set with a template that's going to respond to that, you know? And so, but what's happening here, and number one, so this is the most important fundamental thing is that it's not about the amount of sleep that you get. It's about the quality, you know?

So that making that time on the mattress valid because people out there right now sleep for eight hours a night, but they still wake up feeling like a wreck, you know, so it's getting the most quality REM state or whatever it is. And so for you, you've probably set your hormone pattern to, you know, there's one we can just talk about really quickly is cortisol. So cortisol has gotten a really bad name in the media lately. You know, it's like cortisol has done everything wrong. Cortisol is making me fat. Cortisol has got me stressed out. Cortisol has gotten rid of my favorite snack at Whole Foods. It's all cortisol's fault, you know. But in reality, cortisol is so important to our survival.

It's just a regulatory hormone. There's 50, there's around 50 hormones that we could talk about. Why is this one singled out as a problem? And this, this hormone actually allows us to kind of, to work out, for example, you know, your body's going to secrete more cortisol when you exercise, but your art art through evolutionary biology, we're supposed to have a normal kind of cortisol rhythm. Like when we're lined up with nature and cortisol is supposed to peak in the morning, we'll just say around 8am and slowly decline as the day goes on. But if you're up running at night, you know, guess what? Cortisol's up. And here's what's so interesting is that cortisol

and melatonin have an inverse relationship. So when cortisol's up, melatonin is down, right? You want melatonin high at night, right? Yes. Yeah. And it's not that melatonin makes you sleep. It helps you to get that really rejuvenative sleep. You know, it's the get good sleep hormone, not the sleep hormone. And so this is another reason why, again, people can pass out from exhaustion, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually recovering and getting those normal sleep cycles. I'll push myself to total exhaustion and then I'll have that great night of sleep. But then it's such a good night of sleep that that night I don't sleep so great because I'm almost over rested. And then the cycle just repeats itself and repeats itself.

Well, you're the perfect candidate to apply the strategies in the book just to stack conditions in your favor. Let's get into the strategies because I need help. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. So since we're talking about exercise, let's

go to the low-hanging fruit again, especially for us guys, you know, we should do the low-hanging fruit one. So there was a study done at Appalachian State University and they took exercises and broke them up into three groups. Group A exercised at 7 a.m., group B 1 p.m., and group C exercised at 7 p.m. at night.

Group A spent up to 75% more time in the deepest, most rejuvenative stages of sleep. So exercise early in the morning. Yes. I got that covered. Now, this is a caveat for everybody. This doesn't mean you need to hit the gym, per se. You can train in the afternoon, which I spent the last year until about two months ago, which I've been a morning exerciser, like as long as I can

remember since I've been well. But this last year I trained an afternoon just to see all the different benefits because I actually did that for a study in my book. And man, yes, reaction times are faster. Strength was greater in the afternoon because I do a lot of, you know, strength training stuff, you know, so it was really interesting to see that. But I, every morning I still did some activity. It's the key is doing some activity, your body has evolved to do activity in the morning, because we're not nocturnal creatures. So help to encourage that cortisol spike by exercising in the morning. This is the key is you're just encouraging that normal cortisol

rhythm. So get up and just be going for a walk, right? It can be just anything as long as you're moving your body. Five minutes of jumping on a rebounder, do some Tabata, you know, do some body weight squats and pushups, do a power yoga session, you know, just do something to get that rhythm going and guaranteed it's going to help you sleep better. Is there a distinction between aerobic exercise versus anaerobic exercise? From the research, most of the research is actually done on, on aerobic exercise, showing the benefits. So I'm just going to put that out there, but I'm a firm believer in both. Right. You know, so. Right. Yeah. I was just curious, like if you, if you, if your early morning workout was, you know, hitting the gym and doing heavy lifting versus going for a run, does that have an impact on cortisol?

It does. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It does. And then plus with that, you're going to get the benefits of increased secretion of growth hormone as well, which that's one of the big players with sleep is the secretion of human growth hormone, you know, that you get, and this is right in the range recover overnight. Yeah, this is in the range too. And this is another tip is, so exercise in the morning is one tip. We got to come back to this though. It's another important caveat. Another one is getting what's known as this quote, money time sleep. So what's said is that timing your sleep is like timing an investment. If you invest in something at the wrong time, a lot, you're going to get pain. If you invest even a little bit at the right time, you're going to get some reward. And so this money time window is, according to the research, between 10 a.m. and 2,

I'm sorry, 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. at night, all right? 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. To get your best. That's the window to get your most restful sleep. Exactly. And why is that? It's because melatonin is going to be potentially at its peak, and so is the secretion of human growth hormone and also reparative enzymes that are released in the body. And so your body is actually doing that when it starts to get dark outside for repairing you, you know, to secrete all these reparative hormones and reparative enzymes to do processes. So what will happen, though, is if you ignore that, because, you know, we might be driving home from work at six, seven o'clock at night and you're like, I'm going to get, you're yawning, like I'm going to get to sleep early tonight. And then you get home and you start doing stuff, watching Netflix, getting on the laptop, lap dance, browsing through the internet. And next thing you know, it's 12 o'clock and you're like,

I'm just not sleepy. That's called the energy second wind. And all of us have had this happen before. And what happened was all of those reparative functions that were going to be used to heal you while you're asleep are now effectively helping to keep you awake. It's a waste of energy. But also, I want to make it clear that that is not cut in stone, that this 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. It depends on the time of year. It depends on how far you are from the equator. It's all kind of other different factors. Bottom line, if you get to bed within a couple hours of it getting dark outside, you're going to get more benefit.

Basically, just being in tune with your natural circadian rhythm. You said it, man. The rhythms of the planet. You said it. Again, it's just too simple. And what is the scientific term for the most restful phase of sleep? Is it your REM state? Is that what you're trying to get into?

So REM sleep, so there's, depending on which expert you talk to, is four to five different stages of sleep. I really just focus on the two main stages that people know about. So REM sleep is rapid eye movement sleep. This is where you're getting your dream on, right? And then non-REM sleep or deep sleep is where you're getting the most anabolic phase of sleep. So there's a lot of function going on with REM sleep. One of them is memory processing. So this is where our experiences for me, even everybody listening right now, this gets converted into short-term memory,

something more solid, and then possibility for long-term memory. But if you're not getting high quality REM sleep you're not going to really process and make this a solid part of who you are like our thoughts and the information we pick we pick up actually does become a part of our brain like a physical structure and it's so important for people to understand that and they get myelinated and you know they actually become something real so that's one of the functions there and also just kind of and people ask me about dreams since I've been doing all this research on sleep and the greatest theory that we have people we still don't know look just be clear about that but the greatest theory that seems to have the most

to back it up is that this is a subconscious processing of situations and emotions and so people think like you know my dream is trying to tell me something, you know, like my sister's pregnant or whatever. I dreamed about fishes. No, these are movies that your own amazing, crazy mind is making up, you know? So that dream is you, you know? If you're dreaming like I'm flying with Captain Jack Sparrow and, you know, Shaquille O'Neal, that's your crazy mind making this stuff up. but somehow you're trying to process subconscious data and make sense of it all so the complexity of the subconscious mind is baffling wow yeah i mean just to kind of you know give an analogy on that think about when you have a dream and you're having a conversation with somebody in your dream and you're waiting for them to respond

to some question that you ask them and you don't know what they're going to tell you and then they answer it and you're surprised but that's your brain telling you that like that's how fractured and complex that is crazy yeah right i can't imagine we've even tapped the surface of really understanding how all that works again the more you dig into this the more you realize how much we don't know. And you realize this is going to be an eternal thing with humans trying to figure out how we work and why we're here, you know? But just to go back to, I don't want to forget this. There is some benefit to exercising in the evening, but the early evening, you need time for your core body temperature to come back down. This is another reason that your

sleep can be disturbed is that your core body temperature is elevated. So I cited several studies showing that if your core body, because, so what happens is we'll just say around 9 PM, your body goes through a process of thermal regulation where it lowers your core body temperature to facilitate the best environment for sleep. Right? And we all know how it feels when you're hot, when you're sleeping. It just doesn't feel good, you know? And so that's one of the things to understand. You want to make sure, so basically give yourself about four hours

for your core body temperature to come back down, unless you want to go ahead and do the superhero thing and take a cold shower. Get into an ice bath or something. Or whatever, you know? Then you can help to bring it down. But other than that, just make sure you get a four-hour window before you go to bed. I run really hot just physically.

Like in Ayurveda, I would be pitta-pitta. Me too. Same thing. And I have this thing with my wife. She's vata. Mine too. So maybe you're having this same debate or battle that i'm having but she likes the bedroom fairly warm and she gets cold really easily but i'm always boiling hot so

she'll be under all these covers and i'm sleeping on top of the covers and i'm like it's boiling in here and she's like i'm freezing and so i love a cold bedroom yes and the quality of my sleep is 10x when the room is cold but my wife can't really do it that way like she's like so we have this thing and and it's tricky you know like i want to sleep in the same bed with my wife but i need to feel good too i need to make sure that i'm getting a good night's sleep and and as i age and this issue is really becoming more you know kind, kind of a thing for me, I'm trying to figure out how to address this. And one of the things that I've been doing is I sleep outdoors. I sleep, we have a flat roof on our house that's right off our master bedroom. And, you know, it's really warm out right now,

even though it's February, it's really warm in Los Angeles. And I've been sleeping on the roof like not in a tent i have a tent too i'm gonna break out the tent but i just pulled a mattress out on the roof and i've been sleeping on the roof and i've been sleeping amazing holy moly and it gets cold you know it goes down in the 40s at night but i just have a bunch of blankets yeah and i'll even wear wear like a beanie on my head and i have a great night of sleep yeah we're all there with you right now. What is going on? We're all in the, in the, um, pseudo tent with you right now. That's so awesome, man. Um, so what's happening in, by the way, so just a really quick solution. Oh, I got to share this man. Shocking. This was shocking. I just did an episode of my show talking about sleep and relationships and my goodness, the research was just so sobering.

So right now, one in four couples don't even sleep in the same bedroom. And that number is growing rapidly. It's like 10 times more than it was like 100 years ago. So one of the big solutions for the temperature thing, well, first of all, it's really about having conversations without it being in the heat of the problem. Because when our sleep is interrupted, when you're sleep deprived, your best friend can look like your worst enemy. Yeah. And we've had like bickering over this. Yeah, look.

So now we have good communication over it because she understands. I understand where she's coming from. She understands where I'm coming from. It's not an intimacy issue. It's a completely different issue. Yeah. And there was actually, there's a four week study done and they followed couples. It was a relationship study. And they found that whenever couples would have a poor night of sleep the night before, there was like, um, 14% greater chance of them having a conflict the next day and not getting resolved. And what's happening in UC Berkeley

looked at this and they did some brain imaging scans. And so the amygdala is like lit up, right? When you're sleep deprived and the parts of your brain, the prefrontal cortex is cold, right? That part of your brain is kind of shutting down. That's the more human evolved part of your brain. So you're going to be less likely. And it's a part of your brain responsible for decision-making, distinguishing between right and wrong, social control. And even we can start to say things like compassion even you know kind of higher order functions whereas animals can have empathy and sympathy but being able to say i understand how you feel so to perspective take it's going way down because the amygdala is all about survival of self so all it cares about is itself

and a lot of those tired arguments we don't even remember what they're about. Like if you ask five days later, like, what was the problem? You don't even remember because it's usually over nothing. And so that situation with the cold bedroom in particular, Kelly Starrett, you know, Dr. Kelly Starrett. I've never met him personally, but I know who he is. Yeah. He's top three smartest people i've ever talked to right this guy's just like a jedi when it comes to being able to see what's going

on with the body just by looking at you and he sleeps with the chili pad right so he actually has this chili pad on his side of the bed because even with the room being cold and his wife getting uncomfortable it still wasn't enough for him because he runs really hot. And he's like, that was his life. That's how he solved it. That's interesting. What is a chili pad? So it's just, it's something that you could lay down on your, on your existing mattress

on your side of the bed and just helps keep you cool. Right. Really simple. I should, uh, can you just buy that somewhere on Amazon or whatever? Go to, go to Dr. Google, you know, and ask for the chili pad. Is that, so how, how have you resolved this with your marriage? So my wife is actually from Kenya. So it's all about heat.

So even coming here, she doesn't like cold at all. And so it was just because I would rather, honestly, I would rather have the room at like 60 when I go to sleep. So it's a compromise. So we keep it at like 69, 70. And I make sure and I'm a warm body person. So I'm just like, use me, you know, so she snuggles up with me and she's warm within a couple of minutes, you know, and so and that's what I actually put in the books, the different sleeping positions for couples and that kind of thing as well.

So that's been it's worked for us thus far. All right. So we covered exercise, exercising in the morning. We talked about different core body temperature issues. What are some of the other strategies? Okay. Let me give one more low-hanging fruit so we can get into some deeper stuff.

And this, again, Captain Obvious here, is to make sure you get some sunlight during the day. All right. And so what the research found was that this helps encourage that normal cortisol rhythm we talked about, but was also found in the research is that by getting some early morning sunlight. So we're talking about between like six and 8am is the most beneficial as far as optimizing your cortisol rhythm. It actually helped to lower your cortisol at night. Right? So this is the huge takeaway headline for the show.

A good night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning. So making sure that you're getting that great high quality sleep is going to help to set your circadian timing and make sure that your cortisol is going down at night by you getting sunlight during the day. And this opens up a whole can of worms, even talking about sunlight exposure, because it also depends on what time of year it is with the UVA and UVB. Right. And how do you differentiate from people that live, you know, in the Bahamas or Hawaii versus people that live, you know, in Alaska, right, especially in the wintertime, the lack of sunlight and all of that, I'm sure that has a

profound impact. Absolutely, man. And there are certain parts of the world where, you know, with that minimal sunlight, there's a lot more seasonal affective disorder, a.k.a. SAD. And so some of the treatments are using light boxes. Right. And now they have, like, light buds for your ears and visors and things like that. Light buds for your ears? Yeah. What is that? I've never heard of that.

Ben Greenfield. Do you know Ben Greenfield? Yeah, I know Ben. All right. He's always got your ears? Yeah. What is that? I've never heard of that. Ben Greenfield. Do you know Ben Greenfield? Yeah, I know Ben. All right. He's always got crazy ears. Yes. So he's the one who put me on to the earbuds that shoot light into your ear. And this actually, so what's so interesting about the human body is that we have photoreceptors

everywhere. So it's not just our eyes. Our skin actually has photoreceptors that pick up light and they send information to our brain that, hey, it's daytime, produce more cortisol, produce more serotonin, more daytime hormones. Those things all set the template for our sleep at night. So serotonin gets converted into melatonin. So sun exposure, instant upgrade in serotonin, it's going to help you sleep better at night. Cortisol translation with his relationship with melatonin. So pretty much anywhere you're exposing intense light.

And the benefit with the thing in your ears is really simple. It's that it would look pretty weird if you're walking around with a visor that's shooting a blue light down the street. Or on the airplane. That's what Ben usually uses it for when he's traveling. It's around people who stick those bad boys in. Or if you're changing time zones or something like that, I would imagine that might be helpful. To help to optimize. Do they actually, can you listen to music too?

Or are they just shoot light? No, I think I asked him the same question, or he just told me. But yeah, it's just light. But I mean, what time of day would you use that? You would only want to use those in the early part of the day, right? Yes, exactly, exactly. This could be, again, when you're changing time zones, or're on a flight and you're just not able to get that sun exposure, or maybe you're in a cubicle dungeon because of your job, you know? And so these are

all things that can be effective. But the bottom line is none of these fancy gadgets are as effective as just getting some high quality sunlight, you know, as much as you can. And this doesn't mean, so let me give this little caveat. So through glass, we can illuminate the room and get it through our optical nerves. And that's, that's the most important during the winter time when it can be a little bit harder to get sun exposure. But if you're sitting by the window, letting the sun directly hit your skin, that might not be a good idea. Because UVA and UVB, UVB helps to balance it. But UVB is the one that helps to essentially convert your cholesterol into vitamin D. All right, this is the most beneficial for our health. UVA is the one for photo aging and potential cancer issues. And UVB doesn't make it through glass very effectively. UVA, boom,

right? So you have to go outside. Yeah, ideally. I mean, maybe a couple of minutes is okay, but you just got to be careful with that. Is there an optimal time window in terms of the extent of exposure? I mean, is there like a sweet spot, like five minutes versus an hour? It depends so much on your complexion, the time of year, the time of day. It just really depends. It's just really about being smart, not being afraid of the sun. First, that's the bigger issue is what's happened in the media and the sun allows us to have life on the planet, you know,

but now it's super bad. We got to wear like an SPF 3,900, you know, bulletproof, uh, lotion, you know, to go outside. So it's gotten a little bit ridiculous. The sun is actually your friend, but you have to respect it. You know, again, like our ancestors didn't have glass windows, you know, and, and greenhouses or whatever that they're hanging out in, they were out in the sunscreen either. Exactly. And now we've seen like a hundred percent, I'm sorry, a hundred times increase in skin cancer from just a few decades ago it's just gotten crazy and but you know you already know this like a lot of those conventional suntan lotions have carcinogens in them you know which is crazy i may be like a pariah

uh in this but i don't use sunscreen. Me neither. You don't? No. Well, you're a pretty dark, complex guy. Yeah, I've got a little protection, but I can get burnt. Yeah. I can, I can.

I don't burn easily, but I'm out working out in the sun, and I just don't like putting those chemical lotions on my body. Yeah, yeah. And I'm not super fair-complected, and this is not something that I'm any expert in.

Right. It helps, you know, the melanin. But it's basically built in sun protection or sunscreen in a way. But the darker you are, the more sunlight you actually need because your body has a buffer against it. And so paying attention to those small things, but also just easing your way into sun exposure because your body will adapt to it as well. So, yeah, those are the low-hanging fruits. So now we can get into some more of the – We're going to get geeky now on how to really dial it up.

What are the biggest mistakes that people make, well-intentioned people make in terms of their relationship with sleep. I mean, I would imagine there's more low-hanging fruit, like having your laptop in bed and things like that, that we all kind of know it's probably not a good idea to watch a movie right before you go to sleep or something like that. Yeah. So this is the one that I would bring to the table later, you know, because it's a pain point for a lot of people. Our technology, like a lot of people, their phone is their best friend, you know, like they literally kiss their phone goodnight and instead of their spouse and like sit it down next to them every night before they go to sleep, you know. And it's awesome. Like I love my iPhone. I love my Mac. It's enabled me to

connect with so many people and write my book, you know, but we have to keep this in perspective. You know, this has only been possible for the last few decades when we've got, and this is like literally a page in a 50,000 page book, you know, of humanity at this level, you know, being a homo sapien. And so what we found is that this light exposure at night, and I think a lot of your listeners already know this, our devices are kicking out this blue spectrum of light that's especially troublesome. What Harvard found out was that it's not just exposure to light at night, it's the color and the lux. so how intense the light is and the color so they did color a study with green light versus red light and they found that the red light

exposure wasn't i'm sorry it was uh green light and blue light let me take that back the red light was the best but they didn't use that in the study but they found that the green light was like um three times less intrusive on causing your body to secrete cortisol and rinsler polytechnic did a study and they found that two hours of ipad use before bed suppresses melatonin you know so again you can pass out that doesn't mean you're going to get that great sleep right so now we get into that place of like taking our toys away and i don't i'm not into that you know so number one hacks using those, uh, blue blocking glasses, lights, glasses that actually blackout.

So you can watch your, you can watch your movie in bed as long as you're wearing these. I'm not saying it's the best idea, but it helps, you know, it helps. And also with our devices, uh, getting apps like flux F dot L U X that pulls out that troublesome spectrum and basically cools off your screen automatically based on your time zone. Oh, wow. That's cool. I've never heard of that.

So it just automatically changes the color temperature of the- You got it. It's a super easy app, and it does it automatically based on your time zone, based on the time of year. It's F dot L-U-X, and anybody can get that on your- Right. I'll put a link in the show notes. Yeah.

It's a sweet app. I've been using it for a couple years. But also, then outside of that would be the- and by the way, you got to make sure that they're actually the blue blocking glasses and there's a difference. So, and one of the things also with daytime light exposure, which go back really quickly through our eyes, you know, so if you're wearing sunglasses just for the sake of fashion, you're missing out on something that again, that's going to help you sleep better at night. And if they're not blue blocking shades,

it's actually opening up your pupil and allowing even more of the harmful UVA light to get into your eyes. And you can cause what's known as sunburn of the eye. And a lot of extreme snow athletes and people who ski a lot know about that. You know, so you got to actually make sure you protect it. I thought any good sunglass took care of that.

No, man. They've got to actually. And just check with the manufacturer, you know, to make sure that they're actually blocking out that spectrum of light. So what I found in the research, Rich, is, and this is, we know this already, is that we're addicted. You know, we're addicted to our devices. And we're getting like a little bit of a dopamine hit, you know,

because what dopamine is, we've, in science, science thought for a while that was about satisfaction and pleasure. Pleasure is a better word. But it's not about that dopamine is about seeking. Okay, so when you have this dopamine hit, it makes you seek for the pleasure. And the internet is perfect for that, you know, so if anybody out there is like, you know what, I'm just gonna check my Twitter for a minute. I'm just gonna check Instagram for a minute. I'm just going to check Instagram for a minute. I'm just going to check Facebook for a minute. And then 30 minutes later, you've been sucked into the Internet. Black hole click leads to another click.

And yes, and you got to see this constant seeking. But here's the other side of it is the Internet. The Internet also gives you instant gratification. So you get a little opioid hit every time you find something. So you're scrolling. I want to see what's the next thing on my Instagram feed. And you keep finding more stuff. So the internet is perfect for addiction. So real talk, the only way to really move beyond this for the average person is you have to implement something that's of equal

or greater value and start to do it gracefully. You know, you don't necessarily want to go cold turkey with this. And so this could be, man, it's really tough, man, because we've got all these Facebook friends. What about your real friends, your family, you know, your loved one, your spouse, and connecting with them instead of being on your device before you go to bed, creating real harmonious relationships. And another great idea is have sex, you know, and actually I'd have a chapter about that too, that orgasm has been clinically proven, which you know, this again, I'm just, the expert is just affirming what you already know. Yeah, exactly. And I think about the movie, um, the Avengers, the last movie and Tony Stark, you know, the Iron Man character, um, he's having issues sleeping.

And so I was writing the book then. I was like, oh, this is interesting. I wonder how he's going to deal with this. Only time he got some sleep was when he got some pepper, you know, which was his lady, his love interest. You know, so Pepper and him hooked up and he fell asleep. But then he had a crazy nightmare, almost killed Pepper. So but bottom line is it's all in the media that, especially for guys, but women and men, we release a cocktail of chemicals, a cocktail of hormones when we have an orgasm. One of those being oxytocin. And so oxytocin is known as the cuddle hormone or the love hormone. And women do

oxytocin really well, especially just even being around other women and connecting and talking, you know, girl talk. And guys, not so much. We do get some oxytocin when we hug, when we're in close proximity with people that we care about. But women do it a lot better. For us, we get much more of a kick when we have orgasm. And another one is prolactin. This is a big one. And so it, that word even says lactation. So that's related to, uh, milk production. And so both women and men have a secretion of prolactin. And what's been so, what's been

fascinating is that, uh, what they found was that, and I don't recommend laboratory animal studies, but they injected animals with prolactin and immediately become sleepy. All right. And so here's what's so crazy is that men secrete four times more prolactin when they have orgasm with their mate than when they have it by themselves. All right. So this is why guys have a tendency to be known the ones to go to sleep. Whereas if it's through masturbation, they're probably just going to go get a bowl of cereal. Right. Interesting. Prolactin, who knew, right? Yeah. Crazy stuff, man. And that's just a couple of them. I mean, we've got vasopressin, we've got norepinephrine, which is seen as kind of a stress hormone in a way, but it actually helps to regulate your sleep cycles. In particular, it helps to regulate and get normal REM sleep. And

we talked about how important that is. All that is happening through orgasm. So yet another reason for everybody to get a little closer and, you know, get off your device and, you know. Right. Well, if your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your wife or husband or whoever is out of town and you're laying in bed and you're tempted to pull up the Netflix. Is there any study that shows the difference between reading a book versus watching a movie and what that impact is? I've never looked at that directly. It's just kind of Captain Obvious. If you're reading a book, and here, I actually did look into some of this as far as what's going on in the brain

when you read. Because I don't know if you've ever had this experience. I was, for a time, I thought that reading fiction was not productive, you know? And so I stopped doing that. And I just like all about nutrition research, biology, marketing, you know, just all this stuff, this data, you know? And when I started to read fiction again, it really helped me to number one, sleep better. And also I became a lot more creative, you know, which was so fascinating to see. And so what's happening in parents worldwide know that reading the kid, the book before bed kind of helps that whole process. You're literally turning off that analytical side of your brain, right?

And you're getting in more of the creative side of your brain. Yes. Yeah, I can only read fiction at night. I can't read nonfiction at night. I just, I don't, for whatever reason, like that's always been my practice. And I sleep, you know, like, look, I mean, everybody knows this. If you read a good book at night, you're going to sleep better than if you're watching a movie. And just think of the sound design itself.

If you're watching an action movie and there's explosions and, you know, loud noises and you're dozing off, you're going to wake up every time, you know, something happens. Yeah. I mean, again, it's not that I don't do that. It's rare now. It's not that I don't do that. It's rare now, but we think of watching TV as something that's very lackadaisical, very laid back, and I'm not doing anything. Yeah, it's very passive activity, but nothing can be further from the truth as far as what's going on with your brain. There are parts of your brain that are lighting up like crazy based on watching that.

If you're laying in bed watching television, this is also another strategy is creating a sleep sanctuary, you know, an environment because humans, again, we're always looking for patterns. Your body's always looking for patterns and cycles like we talked about earlier. And so when you go into your bedroom, if you're known to work in your bedroom, watch television in there, parts of your brain, neurons that fire together, wire together, they're automatically going to start clicking on like, hey's time to be up you know so get that stuff out of your sleeping environment at least and couples who have a television in their bedroom according to the research it was an italian study um have 50 less sex and of course they're going to be those anomalies who are like hey that's not true well yes you know you you know, you do it whether, you know,

if there was an earthquake going on, you know. But the bottom line is, right, but for a lot of people, they know this. And so a lot of people, like especially guys, are going to hear this. And they're going right now. They pause the podcast to get the TV out of the bedroom. But it's a distraction, you know. And, again, it creates that neural association of television time, disconnecting from my partner, disconnecting from life. And we all can escape into a good movie.

I just saw driving in today. I saw this big billboard for like Fast and Furious theme park, something at the theme park. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. You know, I think Vin Diesel is awesome. But I'm not going to be the guy who's doing that on a consistent basis. You know, everything needs to have its place. But if you are, here are the hacks for watching a movie late. Make sure you're rocking those glasses.

Try and do it a little bit earlier so you can give yourself maybe an hour or so to let your brain and your nervous system and your endocrine system switch gears. But a really grave mistake is being on the device and going right to sleep. Yeah, we got rid of the TV in the bedroom forever ago. And then we got rid of TV altogether. So we don't even have it in the house. But it's not about the villainy of the device. It's about your relationship to the advice to the device and having healthy boundaries around it and understanding the impact of all of these things on our mental well being. Absolutely. Not just our sleep, but every aspect of how we navigate our day. Absolutely.

You just said it. You just said it. All right. So what else? Let's talk about the impact of food on sleep. Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness. When to eat.

And I have a really bad habit of eating at night, late at night. Hey, check this out. And I know it's not good, but I'll pass out if I have a lot of food right before I go to bed. This is fascinating. Check this out. So there was a study done, and what was found was that a person of normal, you know, BMI, body fat percentage, body weight, when they

eat a meal, anytime, whenever you eat a meal, you're going to get about a 5% increase in your cortisol level. And that's normal. It's because eating is a sort of a hormetic stressor, sort of a stressful event, because there's a lot of intense action of like trying to make that into you and also making sure you're not putting anything in there that can take you out. Right. So it makes sense. Okay. Well, what's crazy is that somebody who is overweight when they eat a meal, and this is just really shocking when somebody is overweight and they eat a meal, they're getting about a 51% increase in cortisol. All right. So versus five for a normal person. Yes. And so eating late at night, if you're overweight, guess what? Again, cortisol and melatonin, guess what's going to happen? Cortisol spike, melatonin is going to

crash. All right. So this is where the concept has validity of not eating late at night. If you want to lose weight, you're not trying to lose weight, man. You don't got to worry about it. When I was at my leanest, you know, doing all this experimentation, crazy stuff, 4.7% body fat. I was eating late every single night, right before bed, eating some whole grain cereal and a banana, you know, every night. And my body, I was super lean at that time. So it's not about that as far as, you know, what's going on with changing your body fat or anything like that. But your sleep, however, it can definitely be impacted by eating late at night. One of the issues is what are you

eating? So if you're eating something that can keep your blood sugar stable, it's all good. All right. But if you're eating something that's going to generate a glycogen spike, or I'm sorry, glucose spike, and then a crash crash that crash can pull you out of your normal stages of sleep right so eating cake versus right eating a honey bun you know a zinger right eating a bowl of beans or something like that right yeah even better i would say to eat something higher fat right fats are like you're taking like your met would you say your metabolism like a fire some simple carbohydrates or even some more complex carbohydrates can be like putting some papers onto that fire. And it's going to spark really bright for just a second, but it's going

to fade away really quickly. Eating fats is sort of like putting a nice big log onto your fire, your metabolic fire just kind of burns a lot more steady. So, you know, eating some guacamole, you know, with some veggies or, you know, eating some guacamole, you know, with some veggies or, you know, some nuts or something like that before bed, that's probably a much better go-to. What about when you just gorge at night and you just pass out because all your blood is in your gut? How bad is that? Hey, it happens. I'm not saying I've never done that. I know I have. I know I have. But again, it's that difference between passing out and actually getting deep rejuvenative sleep. So if you're doing that, you're preventing yourself from actually accessing that optimal sleep state. supposed to be used to repair your brain, to assimilate basic nutrition through the day, to get rid of metabolic waste, which we need to talk about. Your body has to do all those

processes. If it has to send so much of its energy to try to digest food that you just went ham on, it's going to hurt you. It's going to take away from all those other processes. So this detoxification thing is huge, man. So you know about the lymphatic system, which is your body's extracellular fluid. And this is essentially how your body's moving metabolic waste out of your system. You know, your big detoxification organs like your skin, it's going to help to push through your skin, your colon, your kidneys are another important elimination channel. But your lymphatic system is that extracellular fluid you have four times more lymph than you have blood, right? So it's a big deal Now here's the issue when it comes to your brain. There's a blood-brain barrier So the lymphatic system doesn't go there. It literally goes up to like your neck and that's it

And so there's something called the glymphatic system And this is a little shout out to the glial cells in your brain that modulate and control the basic lymphatic system of the brain. And what's been discovered is that, and so your brain is doing so, we're talking about millions upon millions of processes every second, right? There's a lot of cell growth, a lot of metabolic waste products that are produced, and your brain has to get rid of that stuff and get it out of your body because it's taking up space. So what's been discovered is that your glymphatic system is 10 times more active when you're sleeping. 10 times more active.

And your brain cells actually shrink about 60% to open up channels even further to get rid of waste. What they've discovered is that Alzheimer's appears to be a disease where your brain is lacking the ability to remove those wastes. Interesting. Crazy stuff, man. Yeah, that's crazy. Just speaking to the fact, again, we have to make sure we're optimizing our sleep because we're accelerating our aging. Another thing, since we're here in California, University of California found this out that sleep deprivation is one of the biggest triggers for the accelerated loss of your telomere length. Oh, that's interesting. So we're talking about accelerating your aging. You know, it's not just something that, oh, this is, you know, I know I'm tired.

I know I'm lacking sleep. You're literally shortening the time you're going to be here. Yeah, it's proactively aging you. Yeah. Interesting. And we know that there's a lot of things that can turn that around. We know about telomeres, for example, can add length back onto your telomeres. There's so much there that can be done, but you don't want to accelerate it.

So just a couple of little extra things for people to be aware of. What happens metabolically, bi biologically when you're extremely sleep deprived let's say you've pulled two all-nighters in a row or you know like literally you know at that level of like insanity like when you haven't slept like it is weird that we haven't been able to figure out a way to sidestep sleep and take care of ourselves and opt out of it, but we haven't. And it is true. Like, that's the one thing. Like, actually, you'll go clinically insane where they do these studies.

I'm sure you've read all these, right, where they literally wake people up every time they're about to go into REM state. They wake them up, and then they just turn into crazy people. Yes. to go into REM state, they wake them up, and then they just turn into crazy people. Yes, yeah. They're sleeping, but they're never accessing that state, and over a protracted period of time, they turn into raving lunatics. Yes, yeah. It's scary, man. It's scary.

A guy comes to mind that I came across. He was trying to set the Guinness World Record. I think he had gotten to, like, I don't remember. This was a couple years ago. Nine days or something like that. Without sleeping at all. Yeah. And he ended up going crazy.

You know, he lost it. He ended up in a home. So it's not something to play with. But what's going on? So, man, there's this term that's becoming popular now called sleep debt. Right. And I'll be very clear with this. A little bit of debt is OK.

Like your body is very generous in recovering from that. But once you start to build up that sleep debt, it's like being in debt to I mentioned the mob lawyer, you know, like to the mob, like cousin Vinny. You know, like it's going to be difficult for you to be able to pay that back. So we want to avoid those long-term stretches of being sleep deprived. And it's not just even about that. It's, there was a study done with nurses, for example, and, and, you know, I mentioned this earlier, but there's about a 50% greater risk of breast cancer for work for women who

work overnight than the nurses in this particular study, right? 50% greater risk of breast cancer for women who work overnight, the nurses in this particular study, right? 50% greater risk of breast cancer, right? And the World Health Organization also has said that shift work is a class 2A carcinogen, right? So they come out and said that. And why is this? Look, dude, this is another crazy thing is that melatonin could quite possibly be our

most powerful endogenous anti-cancer hormone that we produce, right. So if you, again, you're out of sync with nature, you're not going to be producing that properly. And so one of the issues in the study was that it wasn't just women who continuously work overnight, but even women who do it a couple times a week and then get back onto a normal cycle. Just that interruption continuously was enough to have their numbers almost as bad as people who just work overnight, period. So what I'm really pushing for is changing the system. You know, if your job requires you to be up at night because you love it and you want to be of service, that's one story. But if you're just saying like, you know what, it's the only time

I can work. It's the only job that I can get. I promise you there's another job, you know what? It's the only time I can work. It's the only job that I can get. I promise you there's another job, you know, but if this is something about service and you doing this thing that you love, we've got to find a better way. And one of those options is, and I'm pushing for this, you know, with kind of what I'm doing right now, because our firefighters, our police officers, if you look at the statistics with their disease rates from being sleep deprived, it's crazy. And of course, what we just think about the decision- their disease rates from being sleep deprived, it's crazy. And of course, what we think about the decision making and how many lives are lost, you know, especially through just accidents, you know, and our health care professionals of a lot of that's based on seniority, you know, right out of the gate. But how about instead of somebody working for five years on the graveyard shift, how about everybody gets a stint of it? Maybe it's a month long and that's just kind of rotated.

Because if you've got 11 months for your body to fix itself, to pay back that sleep debt, you're straight versus a month of just continuous sleep deprivation. Well, not sleep deprivation, but not being on your normal sleep cycle off of off of your balanced approach yeah well i think before you can even i i agree with you i think that the systemically we need a lot of changes but i think in order to even get into the conversation about changing the system you got to change the the conversation uh and the psychology around sleep. And we all know that there is this kind of cultural, what's the word for it? I'm sleep deprived, I can't.

You know, imprimatur around, or kind of there's this sort of false pride that goes with not sleeping. Like I'm working you know i'm hitting it hard you know like i'm a hustle i'm hustling you know 24 7 and all of that like i don't need sleep and i'm up i'm up this early and i stay up this late and i'm getting more done than you and if you want to like succeed you got to get on my page right right and that's a broken idea there's a hashtag no science doesn't support it no way

no it's just like you know hustle your face off until you know i sleep when i'm dead paradigm right but no you'll just be dead you know that kind of talk is just going to accelerate the day that that's going to happen but the idea behind that is that you're more productive because you're you're working harder and you're foregoing to get more done. But over – and you may, during that 24-hour period, you may get more done because you didn't sleep. But if you look at your year, how much did you get done? Because you have to pay that debt off. So you're either going to oversleep the next day or you're not going to be productive the next day.

So I think in terms of long-term productivity and your ability to continue to do what you do that you're so passionate about, if you prioritize sleep, you'll end up being more effective. And I think the thing is, is that it's that idea of, well, if I'm not suffering and I'm not in pain, then I'm not working hard enough and I'm not getting enough done. And it's changing that mentality and that idea to get people to understand that you don't have to suffer. Actually, if you're in a flow, like if you're doing it, if you're well rested and you're focused and you're efficient, you don't have to be in pain. You don't have to inflict that pain on yourself. And that's a broken equation. That doesn't mean that you're more productive or more efficient.

Here's a rogue idea. You can love yourself well. You know, you can love yourself healthy. You don't have to suffer and struggle to be healthy. And a lot of people have that idea. Like if it doesn't hurt, then it's not good for me. If it's not hard and painful, it's not good for me. Or I'm not working. I'm not pushing myself hard enough. Yeah. There's such thing as called working smart as well. Working hard is undoubtedly a facet of being very successful in life. But again, it was clear earlier, there's a difference between being effective and just doing stuff, working. Because a lot of people mistake, I'm working, I'm getting stuff done with being effective. They got to spend a lot of time cleaning up problems and also

making a lot of mistakes along the way, of course, and then being able to clean those up. But it's going to take you longer ultimately. And you're not showing up as your best self. What if, what if you actually have your best self showing up and the ideas and again, every day, every day, we talked about the prefrontal cortex being responsible for problem solving, right? You don't have as much access to that part of your brain. If you're sleep deprived, just 24 hours sleep deprivation is going to take away about 6% of glucose reaching your brain. And 14 to 12% of that is from your prefrontal cortex. So that part of your brain is starving, right? So you're getting dumber, cortex. So that part of your brain is starving, right? So you're getting dumber, right? Just by the second. And also it's an evolutionary thrust for us to get glucose back to your brain. So guess

what you're going to do? Cookies, cake, honey buns, zingers, chips. If you've ever had carbohydrates in your life, your brain knows I can get sources of glucose back to my brain very quickly. And why is that? This is because if this was, you know, through our evolution through, you know, just say a couple hundred years ago, if your brain isn't optimized and working at its highest potential, this could mean you can't procure your food. You can't avoid danger. You can't seek shelter because you're not as sharp. You can die. So this is why you have this willpower versus your biology. Like I'm going to eat great food. I'm going to follow what Rich Rose telling me to do. I'm going to exercise every day. Then all of a sudden you've got

yellow fingertips, you know, a yellow, orange, cheesy poo fingertips because you just crushed that bag of Doritos. Right. And you, and then you're just like mad at yourself and the guilt sets in, you know? And so, and it at yourself and the guilt sets in you know and so and it's really because you put yourself in a position and a lot of people don't know this it's because you're sleep deprived that you would even go for that in the first place your willpower can't stand up against your biology long term period did you come across anything in doing all this research for this book uh where you found something completely counterintuitive or that really surprised you that you didn't expect? And there's so many things. And I was actually

going to share something from the nutrition aspect that it did surprise me. It did surprise me. And so this was actually in the book. And it was a crazy study that was looking at, it was kind of weird, fecal samples from people before, during and after bouts of jet lag from a 10 hour flight. And this was finding out how your bacteria actually affects your sleep. Okay. And your health overall. And so the jet lag participants showed an increase in a type of bacteria known to be more prevalent in people with obesity and diabetes when they're jet lagged. Okay. So their bacteria literally kind of changed guards. All right. And those levels dropped back to normal once their normal sleep cycle, uh, got back on track. And so that

took me into researching what's going on with your gastrointestinal track. And so when you're sleeping, there's like a changing of the guard that happens to basically clean up all of the stuff from the day. Right. The cleanup crew comes in. So jet lag is really a stand in just for sleep deprivation. Yes. Right. And basically what you're saying is that sleep deprivation impacts the quality of your microbiome.

Exactly. Exactly. And this is, again, this can be happening on a daily basis for people. Exactly. And this is, again, this can be happening on a daily basis for people. And they're wondering why, because, man, a lot of your life is a result of what's going on in your gut. You know, about 95% of your serotonin is located in your gut. You know, and this is that feel good hormone. And serotonin gets converted to melatonin. Check this dude did you know so melatonin um pineal gland all right that's not the whole story man so this is another this is another surprising thing actually a large chunk so you can have a pineal ectomy like they can go and take that gland out and you can still retain your levels of melatonin in your body because it's also stored in your belly. Crazy pants, right? Yeah. I would not have known that. Yeah. So like your body has this really amazing system that's connected intimately to what's going on in your gut. And it's really regulating what's going on with your sleep, your ability to modulate your body fat percentage, all this stuff

by what's happening in your belly. So there are certain sleep nutrients that I talk about in the book. And this is, again, it's just like eating real food. And these are like precursors to a lot of other things, you know, so we need to be very aware of that and also helping to support the microbiome in our gut. So eating prebiotics, not just taking like probiotic supplements, which are cool, but you know, eating foods that are probiotics, but also prebiotics because basically high fiber foods. Yes, pretty much pretty, pretty simple, you know, eating foods that are probiotics, but also prebiotics because basically high fiber foods. Yes, pretty much pretty, pretty simple, you know, so Jerusalem, Jerusalem artichokes is one, um, onions, garlic, these are prebiotics as well. So, um, any type of, uh, you know, sprouted stuff, you know, things that have that life. Broccoli sprouts is another one, you know, so those are prebiotic things that your body can help to help those probiotics to flourish.

You can't just take probiotic pills and expect them to do their job. Right. So for people that are listening that are unclear on that, we all know about probiotics, populating your gut with these cultures of bacteria but it's kind of a band-aid solution really what you should be doing is focusing on prebiotics which are the foods that will actually propagate your gut yeah uh with the with the microorganisms that are healthy for you yeah right so it's much more powerful to focus on that than taking a prebiotics probiotic supplement. Yeah. I mean, you could take them to your head to you become a probiotic, which I love the I'm a very big student of lexicon, you know, just like breaking down like probiotic means for life. Antibiotic means against life, literally, you know, and I know that I took many rounds of antibiotics when I was a kid.

You know, just imagine that damage is done to your microbiome. And so, so many people, especially your audience and my audience as well, are very aware of this and have been proactive in helping to create a healthy belly. You know, but it's so deep, the story, that we're just now starting to understand how powerful it is, even in relationships with sleep. So there's also your vagus nerve. And so the vagus nerve is essentially linking your gut to your brain. But what research has found is that about 90% of that data is going from your gut to your brain. So your belly is telling your brain what to do a lot yeah there's studies on that uh they've done studies on cravings with chocolate and things like that and uh you know taking cultures of microbiome uh microbiome cultures from people

or animals that crave a certain food and putting them into the guts of other people that don't and seeing how those cravings change. It's amazing. I mean, essentially, the message is the quality of your microbiome impacts. It sort of hijacks your nervous system and sends signals to your brain about what to eat, what to do, and how you feel and all that. It's amazing. It is, man.

It's an amazing world. And they're just beginning to understand. I mean, so, yeah yeah i really want to um do you know these uh uh these professors at stanford the sonnenbergs um they're doing a lot of research on the microbiome i'm trying to track them down to get them on the podcast that would be sweet man yeah you know um speaking of the gut and the and the vegas nerve kelly starrett again and he was, because he read the first book, and he was like, if there's one more point that I could add, because there's 21 strategies, and I shuffled them around to make them 21 still. But he was like talking about body work, in particular gut smashing, to help encourage the parasympathetic activation, which is your rest and digest system. So what do you mean gut smashing to help encourage the parasympathetic activation, which is your rest and digest system. So what do you mean gut smashing?

All right. So this is basically massaging the vagus nerve. We're just getting in there on what's called like a princess ball, those little balls you might see in the bin at Walmart or something, and making sure that it's got a little give in it. And you basically get down on the floor on that bad boy and roll around on it and work on that musculature in your abdominal region. And wow, it works. It does work. It's like a little parasympathetic hack. You lay on your belly with the ball underneath you and roll, roll back and forth on that.

And if you find, and this is according to Kelly, again, top three smartest person I've talked to New York time, bestselling author, supple leopard, you know, I, super smart guy. But yeah, you just get down there. If you find a spot that's a little bit, you know that spot. Like if you're working with a foam roller, for example, and you just hang out there when you find that spot. So it's shown to be effective. And then that got me into looking at body work overall. There's so much data. And we know this, like sometimes if you get a massage, we'll fall asleep right on the table, you know, because you're activating these pathways for more positive

sleep hormones and a deactivation of stress hormones just from that. Also acupressure, just from that also acupressure you know so there's um one it's the uh it's a it's a spot right below the palm of your hand on the outside of your wrist and this spot on your body if you it was been found that if you um act with acupressure you just pinch this spot and so they manipulated this in the study and they found that there was a greater urine show up or I'm sorry urine deposit of melatonin which is basically saying that your body's producing more of it right so crazy how long would so literally what you're saying is when you're getting ready for bed just press on that region could work in the study they were manipulating it all night long so basically hook somebody up to this so they can measure

their brain waves and all that good stuff too. But the metabolites, that was the word. So melatonin metabolites were showing up more in their urine from manipulating that spot. So there's little points on your body that can change things. Obviously, massage, self-massage. So one of the practices that I do is I just sit for a while, maybe five minutes, and I'll roll my foot around on a tennis ball before bed and just kind of work on that and, you know, put some pressure down on it. And, yeah, I mean, again, these are those little things that just stack conditions for a better night's sleep. Right. Interesting. What else?

Put on your PJs. Oh, my goodness, yes. my goodness yes pajamas like blackout curtains let's talk about the pajamas all right so we talked about earlier footy pjs if we got to mind our core body temperature you know there was a study done and they um they put on these basically these cold suits that just lower the person's body temp by one degree without lowering their core body temperature. And they found that they had a radical increase in their level of deep sleep during the night just from being one degree cooler. So you've got to be careful with what you're wearing to bed and also the restriction. So I don't know.

Do you know about Dress to Kill, Sidney Ross Singer? Wow. Their research is crazy. Him and his wife. And this was done, this Harvard study, right? And they found that women who wear bras habitually have this radical increase in incidence of breast cancer. And this is kind of, once you think about it, it makes sense because you're cutting

off the lymphatic system, you know? And so ladies and us guys too, for, you know, socks and tight underwear and things like that. But for the ladies, when you're taking off your bra and you see that indentation on your shoulders and your back and under your breasts, and that's a clear cut indication of a restriction of your lymphatic flow. That's not good. That's like squeezing a water hose. It could potentially bust. So we need to be mindful of that. And I'm not saying this is like the throw your bra away podcast. This is more so just be aware of it and use your time at night in particular to go bra free. And for guys, we don't want to heat up the jewels as much as well. Basically, what you're saying is sleep naked.

That's a good option. That's where we're going. That's a good option. And you could actually secrete more oxytocin just by being close to your partner. But then there's just you wear loose fitting clothes, you know, where some, you know, some girls can wear, you know, boy shorts, a T-shirt, things like that. It's really as simple. And also socks. For people who get cold, a great solution for your wife is, of course, to make sure she's wearing some nice warm socks. Because our appendages tend to get cold faster.

But make sure that they're like wool, you know, like more of a soft-fitting sock, not something squeezing. Like if you peel your sock off and you can see the Nike sign on your leg, that's not that good. That's just like the bra. Exactly. Exactly. So just things to be aware of. So make sure what you're wearing to bed does matter. So make sure that you're doing something smart there as well.

I've become very sensitive to light. And so I wear like an eye mask now when I sleep. And that seems to be helpful to me. Yeah. now when I sleep and that seems to be helpful to me. And the other thing is I've experimented with white noise in earbuds to sleep

and the problem with this, all of these things are helpful to me, but then I become dependent on them. Yeah, yeah. And it's like if I can't find my eye mask at night, then I'm like, then I feel like naked or like I'm not going to be able to fall asleep it's so funny i remember the first time i seen an eye mask was my grandmother

and i'm just like yeah it used to be like an old people thing but now it's kind of come back an older lady thing you know mommy dearest type thing you know but yeah now there are a lot of people especially a lot of guys now now who are rocking the eye mask. And that's, that's a, it's a advantage, you know, but again, your skin has photoreceptors. So if you're sleeping in a room that, you know, your neighbor's porch light or the street lights are beaming into your room, there's internal lights in your bedroom, you know, maybe from your alarm clock from a computer screen whatever like even that light this right here from your macbook that's charging and if it were if we're dark in here we can read a book by that light like it's pretty strong you know and so we want to take the approach and that's what i recommend and this was the number one thing that i saw the biggest example of changing my sleep was getting my room blacked out.

So getting some blackout curtains. I mean, there's some that cost a lot, but they don't cost that much. And get your room as dark as possible. And this is, again, this is how we evolve sleeping in darkness. You might see on a movie, you know, I just, I don't know why. My 15-year-old son was watching The Ridiculous Six. It's Adam Sandler movie. Yeah. Right. Oh, my God. It was the most ridiculous. It was The Ridiculous Six. And so, you know, they're all sleeping, but there's like a campfire or whatever.

That's not a typical thing. You know, like you're attracting potential problems by having the fire, you know. So he's like a saboteur he's doing like the making the fire whatever and um it was a big issue for people in our in our thinking that you know our ancestors were sleeping with lights we don't really stop to think about wait a minute they were sleeping in complete darkness because they didn't have electronic devices or nightlights. But now today we do. And so there was one study that I cited that found that people who sleep in a completely lit room at night had like a 60% increase in incidence of being nearsighted. And then for people who slept with a nightlight, and this was a study done on kids, it was like 30% increase incident. And then people who slept in complete darkness was like 6% of the kids in the study group. So the numbers are crazy. Those aren't the exact numbers.

That's weird. How does that impact your eyesight with your eyes? Just because the photoreceptors in your eyes are getting stimulated all night long? I don't think that this study was looking at all of the factors. There's so many other things that could be an issue. It could be the parents. You know, they can't see at night. So you know what I'm saying? It's just like it could be a genetic predisposition.

So there's a lot of other factors to look at. But I just thought it was interesting enough to just note like, wow, that's a really interesting correlation that if you sleep with your room completely room completely lit up you're gonna have a higher chance of not being able to to see so crazy stuff like that but bottom line get some blackout curtains i promise you you'll thank me and i'm even bringing up the thing about the night lights because you know there are people out there that are scared of the dark, right? This is a messed up story, but when I was a kid, my little brother was,

he was an infant, so I'm five years older than him. So he had to be maybe six months old until I was about five. My mother and stepfather took us to the drive-in and I was supposed to sit in the back seat and not watch. They wouldn't see Freddy Krueger, man.

Can you believe this? The original Nightmare on Elm Street yeah that bothered me for years right poor parenting alert yes absolutely you know but um and I never shared it I never talked about that but that really bothered me so I was kind of scared you know and um there's a lot of like Instagram memes out there about you know people being scared of the dark like when you're washing your eye you know your face when you're in the shower and just like you gotta try to do it really quickly you know so there's a lot of people that are scared but this is a disconnection from from us you know like we come from darkness you know we come from that it's a part of who we are you know so it's my encouragement to people to work on that because it is something, you know, to be at one and to not live in a hostile universe, as Einstein would say, you know, and to cultivate a relationship of the dark, I understand. I identify with you. I have compassion. But please understand, watching, keeping the TV on while you're going to sleep, it's's awesome. But the biggest thing that's hurting you might be that addiction to light at night. Yeah, it's interesting.

When I'm in a hotel room, because hotel rooms you can always black out completely. Like I always wake up. I don't really need to set an alarm. Like I just wake up early no matter what. But when you're in a hotel room and it gets completely pitch black like that, that's the only time where I worry about oversleeping. I'll have a deep sleep because of the darkness. It really is profound. You just said it, man.

That's what happened for me. And a lot of people have that experience when they go on vacation or whatever. When they travel, they sleep better. And when they get home, their sleep sucks. I've had many people tell me this working in my clinic. and they're just like, I don't know what it is. You know, I've got all this routine, but it's a lot of times it's getting the room dark. You know, it's really as simple as that. All right. We got to wrap it up in a minute here, but what have we not covered yet? Oh man. I mean, there's so many, I mean, if somebody is listening to this and they're,

they're struggling with sleep or they have some kind of persistent insomnia, or maybe it's just even mild issues with getting a sound night of sleep, you know, what are the top level kind of things that people can look into and work on that we haven't already covered? Awesome. One thing that jumps right to mind is utilizing magnesium. All right. So there was a study done. 100% of the people in the study that were diagnosed with chronic sleep problems, which AKA is insomnia, 100% of them were magnesium deficient. And what was found clinically is that once the magnesium levels were treated and elevated,

their sleep improved. All right. So, but here's the issue. were treated and elevated, their sleep improved, right? So, but here's the issue. Taking an internal magnesium supplement because magnesium kind of pulls more water to your bowels, it's going to cause disaster pants, right? You can end up with diarrhea, right?

And so your limit of getting your levels up might not be able to get treated that way. Magnesium sulfate, aka Epsom salt. Like a lot of people know that that's supposed to help you to heal sore muscles, relax you, get better sleep. That's one step in the right direction, but topical magnesium.

And there's something that I use called Ease Magnesium. I've been using it for three years. It is phenomenal, man. Like I just did a test group of, I think it was 11 or 12 women and one of them had like some chronic anxiety and i didn't they just took the program i have a 14-day makeover in the book and they just did that and she was like as soon as she started using the magnesium

it just changed the game for her you know that's interesting yeah i've never i've never heard of that topical application but we use the calm product yeah you know so you know we drink it at night or put in warm water yeah i went crazy on the calm yeah for a while back in the day but it would you know again the the uh the bowel issue doesn't doesn't it doesn't have a problem with it i push it well how much how you push with the sports and the running i push the nutrition you know right yeah so you're just what're just putting like four times. I mean, you know, it's like it recommends two teaspoons, you know, so maybe I'll use like one heaping tablespoon or something like that.

So topical. So why does this work? Well, hormone creams, for example, what you put in your skin is in your body. But I know people out there have used probably some magnesium. They might see some magnesium oil or something and they'll flake up on their skin, it might be like a tester at Whole Foods or something. That's not all bioavailable, you're not getting a lot of that. So this is basically 99.999% bioavailable, and your body will only use as much as it can. And instantly, man, like you feel a sense of, of calm, better sleep for some people, the ATP, you know, the energy currency of the body, it's actually MGATP what we're operating

on. So magnesium is combined with ATP, right? People don't hear about that. So it's important in your production of energy and creation of you actually experiencing energy as a human being. So it's important in your production of energy and creation of you actually experiencing energy as a human being. Magnesium is super important, but the issue is that it's a stress buffer. It's anti-stress, basically, mineral. And we're exposed to so much craziness. So it gets zapped from our body very quickly. So we need a continuous supply.

So getting your magnesium levels up can help a lot. Topical magnesium, ease magnesium. And yeah, I mean, you can put a link in the show notes show notes and it's in the book of course so that's one on the other side of the problematic nutrition melatonin supplement the research is getting pretty murky on this man and there was a period like 15 20 years ago maybe or maybe not even that long ago, where everybody was taking it. If you were flying, if you were going to change time zones, you had to take your melatonin. And then it kind of, I didn't hear so much about it anymore. Fell out of favor a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, what does the science say about that? So, first of all, we talked a lot about it. Melatonin is a hormone, man. Just because you can get it at a natural food store. Yeah, it just doesn't sound like a good idea because you're messing with your body's own internal regulatory system. This is exactly what the studies are showing. So what happens is, and there was one study I cited in the book, was that people who were taking a melatonin supplement, and by the way, it's usually much more what's coming in a supplement than what your body actually needs or produces on its own.

It didn't suppress melatonin production. It suppressed or down-regulated your body's receptor or produces on its own. It didn't suppress melatonin production. It suppressed or down-regulated your body's receptor sites for melatonin. So basically, overuse of melatonin supplementation will eliminate your body's ability to use melatonin, which is scary. So we have to be aware of that. And this is one of the things that a lot of people,

natural pill popping, they'll go right to the melatonin. And crazy dreams all the way to really crazy interrupted sleep patterns. Further and further addiction because it does work for some people to help to keep them asleep. Again, that doesn't mean they're getting natural sleep cycles. So here's what we do. Very simple. We start with what's natural first, you know, time tested, clinically proven things, herbal type stuff. So chamomile tea is the softest thing to go with. Research to back it up. Kava kava, little moderate, you know, studies to back it up. Then we get a little bit stronger with val valerian, right? It's a known sedative, you know. But then we can get into more of the isolated chemicals that are precursors to melatonin. So things like 5-HTP, L-tryptophan. So this allows your body to actually still do a

step to produce melatonin, you know. And 5-HTP is pretty solid stuff. So you would take that in supplement form? Exactly. But start natural first. And again, following all of the strategies in the book, you probably won't even need this portion. But a lot of people, even when they come to my clinic, if it was, you know, it's like, how can I have more energy? Or what can I do to improve my sleep? What can I take? What can I take? You know, it's everybody's question. And we need to stop looking at things like that and look at what's the underlying cause.

Just knee jerk Medicaid. Yeah. Right. I mean, do you know the stats on how many people are on sleep medication? Oh, my goodness. Crazy, right? It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

And it's still growing. This is why this work is so important to me, to help to change the conversation. Because, man, Dr. Sarah Goffrey wrote the foreword for the book and she mentioned it. So I kind of didn't go down that road talking about the pharmaceutical angle. But, man, it is scary, man. And what's happening is radical increase in mortality rate. Just taking like 20 sleeping pills a year can. Yeah, I saw that in your book.

And there's no indication that it's actually improving. It's not giving you sleep quality. Exactly. That's the thing. Which is the one thing that's why you're taking it and you're not getting that. Because in our society, we've been taught that it's the time on the mattress. It's not the quality of sleep and how you actually feel. And the big issue overall, Rich, with how we've got this crazy battle with sleep is that we don't understand that we're getting so many benefits

that we don't have to work for. Like in our society where it's like you have to work hard and you've got to do more to get the result, sleep is where you do nothing. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, as an athlete, you're always trying to figure out how to recover more quickly, recover more effectively. And there are just endless conversations around the nutrition aspect of that or the training aspect of that. But far and away, the most profound way to expedite your recovery is to have an amazing night of sleep yeah that trumps all everything you know and then some but we don't we're not really talking well we're talking about it now but i mean right yeah we should be talking about that more yeah uh the final question i have

for you is is what what is going on with people that have chronic insomnia you know there are those people that just can't sleep and they've been dealing with this for their whole lives or, you know, for the better part of their adulthood that just struggle tremendously. I mean, are these steps and tools and resources in the program in your book? Does it address that? Or are there some people that have some kind of you know chronic medical condition that they're that there's no known sort of solution for that's rare again that's rare if we're talking about a genetic program that's gone haywire you know from early on that's rare uh it's generally what i found is that there's a triggering event in most cases and so it's kind of digging around and

finding out psychologically yes yeah absolutely and so for a lot of so it's kind of digging around and finding out what psychologically. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And so for a lot of people, it's like, Oh, I slept well when I was a kid, but then when I got to high school or when I got to college or when, you know, my, my husband went away for the military or, you know, all these different stories that I've heard that were a catalyst for that feeling and being disconnected from a normal sleep cycle. So what's going on there? There's a number of things, man. I mean, we could do a whole nother show talking about it, but it could be simple. You know, I share one story. There was a guy who came in from France. He was a new student at the university I was working with and he wanted to get in shape.

And he was, he just ran. That was his thing. He was a runner. And then he would also run at night most times, you know, in the evening. And so basically I just did an overhaul. And it came out. He looked like it too, man. He was so pale. You remember that movie Powder? He looked like that guy. Wow, that's super white.

And so he was like so pale. And he wanted to get stronger. He wanted to get healthy. was like so pale and he wanted to get stronger. He wanted to get healthy. And after doing the, you know, a deeper introspection and with myself and find out, you know what, I need to start asking these questions. I found out he sleeps less than four hours a night and it's just been that way for years. So we did an overhaul on his lifestyle factors. Number one, I stopped him from running for a little while to help to, you know, get his circadian timing back on track. And we changed the way that he was eating. And at the time, you know, I was really into raw foods. So we pulled

back on things that can be more kind of inflammatory, a lot of dense foods that have a lot of hormones in them. And what we did was just a really short, intense, superset weightlifting in the early part of the morning. All right. So and then we sprinkled in a couple other things, you know, the supplementation, like I mentioned earlier, with some of the softer things. And a week later, he came to see me and he was like, I don't know what you did. I slept like a baby, you know, and he slept for eight hours. How long did that take?

He said it was two days later after we met. Two days later, he went from sleeping four hours to eight. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And man, his body changed like crazy, man, over the upcoming months and seeing him at the university. It changed his life once he got to sleep together, you know, but his story is different, you know, and also, but it was really the catalyst. Like I got in there and I let him know that that wasn't okay. So a lot of people,

they just go on about their life and they don't really make a big deal out of it. Are there people though that can function? Everybody can function. Well, yeah, but I mean, not just adequately, but function well. At a high level.

Four or five hours of sleep because you hear it every day, right? People are like, oh, I sleep four hours. I'm great. You know, that's just the way I've always been. They're not showing up as their best self, period. I mean, we have to be honest about that. It's just not, that's not how we're wired up.

You know, you can absolutely crush, like, they're, you know, a friend of ours, Gary Vaynerchuk. He, you know, he kind of got by on that no sleep thing. Yeah, well, Gary Vee is, yeah, I mean, he prides himself on that. You know what I mean? It's go, go, go all the time. And I look at that, and it's inspirational, but I'm also thinking, how balanced is this guy's life? Is he going to flame out?

I talked to him, like, sitting right next to me. I was asking, so what's the deal, man? He's like, hey, man, now I'm playing, I'm looking at playing the long game. Because he was doing that with his business, but now he's doing that with his health he's like people don't know man i'm still getting like seven hours of sleep you know and he hired his trainer to stay on him like he brings his trainer with him everywhere now because like i know what i won't do like i'm not going to work out unless somebody's like pushing me and telling me to do it like hey get up and do it gary um but another person another

model in our sphere shailene johnson you know like she's somebody who's like you know we can have it all you know and putting a priority on her health her family is her big thing and her business is crushing you know like she's crushed it 10 times over you know so we can do all of this stuff it's really about it's not about managing time first of all like she's crushed it 10 times over, you know, so we can do all of this stuff. It's really about, it's not about managing time. First of all, like that's an illusion. Like time's just going to happen. You know, you can manage yourself within time. And if you're just scheduling, I even put it on your schedule. Like this is my sleep time. Like if you schedule in your sleep that this is the time you're going to get sleep, I promise you those hours that you're awake, you're going to crush life.

You're going to do so much better in everything because it's a force multiplier. Yeah, and time is a fluid concept. You know, I think the more I think about it, the more I'm really convinced that time is much more expansive than how we define it and understand it. Because when you're sort of in the flow of what you do or you're taking care of yourself or you're sleeping well and you're checking all the boxes, you get everything done that you need to get done. And then some, even if on paper and on your schedule or your calendar, it doesn't look like it's going to make sense.

Yeah, you just said it, man. There's a weird equation that takes place. And it requires a little faith and trust, but that's been my experience. Yeah, oh just said it, man. much stuff going on today, you know, that we didn't have before. We didn't have a few decades ago. So we have this concept called inner chatter, you know, so a lot of people, and there's this great quote that says, my bed is this wonderful place that I go to remember everything that I was supposed to do. Right. And so it's just like brain on, if we've got all these windows open, how do we consolidate, how do we close those windows down or just minimize them so we can go to sleep, you know, and just open up the most important, which is sleep time, you know? So this is another issue with insomnia is just having all of this constant stimulation

and inner chatter. And I talk about these different issues too. So it could be an issue with just hormone imbalance, period. You know, your hormones can be broken in a way. And so somebody's estrogen can be off and influencing what's going on with, you know, progesterone and this balance could be an issue, obviously, with cortisol. It could be an issue with this crazy P word, which is parasites, you know, so which are some parasitic infections can be nocturnal. You know, so some of these creatures are nocturnal. So it's so many different factors that could be taking place. You know, some people waking up at the same exact time every night, and I know that's speaking to some people.

It could just be that your hormone rhythm that we talked about, and you're getting a secretion of cortisol at the wrong time. And so here are some things that you can do to help to try to reset that. You know, it's really that simple, you know, getting up early and doing some exercise, getting some sunlight, making sure that at night, we're not stimulating over stimulating ourself, you know, eating good sleep nutrition through the day, making sure that we're having intimate connection, you know, love, doing some self massage, doing some partner massage, getting professional massage, being careful with another whole nother subject is with alcohol and the timing of alcohol. I'm not against alcohol at all. But the timing of things, you know, stack the conditions in your favor, and that's what it's really about

because your body knows how to fix this stuff. It can sort it out just like we talked about with healing a chronic condition with maybe it's your heart or your blood sugar, whatever the case may be. The same thing with your sleep. It's really about stacking the conditions and understanding your unique phenomenon and your, quote, insomnia is different from the next person. But I think the first step is not identifying yourself with that label, you know, that I'm an insomniac. And just say, you know, I have some issues with sleep that I'm working to fix right now, you know, to start to break that bond. And changing the mindset and the approach from this idea that you get ready for bed

when you're getting ready for bed as opposed to getting ready for bed when you wake up in the morning and being mindful of the decisions that you make throughout the day to set yourself up to have a good night's sleep. Yes. Said perfectly. Cool, man. Thanks for talking to me. Hey, man.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it was great. I learned a lot. And this is an area that I need work on. So this was really great. And I appreciate it, man. I'm excited for the book.

It's called Sleep Smarter. It's coming out March 15th. That's right. Yeah, man. You excited? I'm beyond excited, man. Very cool. I'm beyond excited.

How long are you in L.A. for? I'm here for two days. So the next two days after excited. How long are you in L.A. for? I'm here for two days. So the next two days after today. What else are you doing here? And then headed to San Diego to hang out with Shailene Johnson on the way. And then my buddy Pat Flynn. Going to hang out with him a little bit. All the podcasters.

I know, right? We're like this little weird family. Yeah, it's cool. You know, it's awesome. Well, good. I'm glad there's good weather for you out here. Oh this is night and day i literally was shoveling snow uh yesterday so and now i'm out here sweating which is crazy cool man well uh i'll put a link up to pick up the book um on uh in the show notes of course and if people want to connect with you and dig on you

the best way to do that you and dig on you, the best way to do that, first and foremost, is check out your podcast, The Model Health Show. If they want to learn more about you, it is the Sean Model. The Model Health Show. The ModelHealthShow.com.

We've changed everything. Yeah, I know. That's the old one. So yeah, TheModelHealthShow.com. And we do, like you said, we do videos of the podcast. Right. You can hang out in the studio with us.

So you're on YouTube with all of that as well. And you're easy to find on Twitter and Facebook. What's the Twitter? At Sean Model. S-H-A-W-N Model. One word. All right. Anything else coming up?

That's it, man. All about the book, right? It's all about Sleep Smarter and getting the word out and helping the people that you care about to start sleeping better too. So we all can show up better for each other and, um, our health and our happiness and our success is going to improve exponentially because of that. So it's exciting, man. Great talking to you. Thanks Rich. Peace. all right i hope you guys enjoyed that don't forget to check out the show notes at richroll.com on the episode page for this episode to help take your education your infotainment beyond the earbuds uh plant power tuscany this is our retreat in Italy in May.

I said it last week. We're officially sold out. However, a couple people dropped out. A couple spots opened up. We're going to the wait list on that. I'm not sure if they've been filled yet or not. I don't think so. So if you're dying to go, you might

want to reach out to our producer Mel and see if there's still some opportunity there. You can reach her through the website, ourplantpowerworld.com. You can click on email and that'll go directly to Mel. Also, we're going to have a second retreat in the same location in October. Dates and details are still pending, but I'll let you know as soon as we know what's up with that. A couple announcements. Julie and I just launched our new online video course with MindBodyGreen. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Conscious Relationships, all about how to have a deep, intimate relationship with your partner, how to attract a soulmate, how to cultivate true,

lasting intimacy, and even how to have an awesome fight, which is very important, right? Proud of this course. You can find a link in the show notes or go to mindbodygreen.com. Click on video courses on the upper left-hand side of the homepage. And you'll find my course sitting alongside my other two courses, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and The Art of Living of living with purpose really enjoyed making these courses and i think they're beneficial so check those out uh if you haven't already subscribe to my youtube channel youtube.com forward slash rich roll also snapchat uh doing a lot of stuff there having fun sharing uh videos of kind of what i'm doing throughout the day. It's I am Rich Roll. I am Rich Roll on Snapchat. For all your Plant Power and RRP swag and merch needs,

visit richroll.com. We've got signed copies of Finding Ultra and the Plant Power Way. We've got cool, groovy t-shirts and tech running tees. We have nutrition products. We have sticker packs. We have fine art prints, all kinds of cool stuff. Also, sign up to my newsletter if you want to be on the in on upcoming deals and announcements and stuff related to the podcast and appearances.

And please keep sending in your questions for future Q&A podcast info at richroll.com. Thanks so much to Sean Patterson for all his help on the graphics on this episode, Chris Swan for production assistance. Theme music was done by Analema. That's my boys band. And thank you so much. That's it, you guys. I'm going to be coming at you from New York City, most likely next time. And I hope you enjoyed this program, and I look forward to bringing you great new content. How did I do on the unscripted intro and outro? Was this okay? Should I script it next time? Should I keep it loose? Let me know. Peace. Plants. ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you.