The School of Greatness - 122 The Key to POWERFUL Sleep for Ultimate Human Performance with Shawn Stevenson

Episode Date: January 7, 2015

"Sleep is something that our genes expect of us." - Shawn Stevenson If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, links Shawn mentions, and more at www.lewishowes.com/122.

This is episode number 122 with sleep expert and best-selling author, Sean Stevenson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. I want to introduce you guys to the man of the show.

His name is Mr. Sean Stevenson. Very excited about this episode because I was just, you know, obsessed with learning about all the facts that Sean knew about sleep. And I can't wait to talk to him even more. I'm going to probably hire him and bring him out to my place and have him actually set me up with a sleep sanctuary, something we're recovering on this show. And he's going to be talking about all the different things that I need to do to optimize my sleep so that I can run more efficiently throughout my day and really achieve greatness in everything I do. For me, my goal is to have it all, to have it all in business and health and relationships

and be able to give back. And I realized that sleep is such an important, critical factor to achieving that greatness and to achieving getting to the next level in everything we do and constantly progressing and growing. We've got to sleep to grow. Sean's got a very interesting story. He was 20 years old and he was diagnosed with an incurable spine disease, actually, spinal condition, degenerative disc disease. And that's when his process and journey began about how to basically heal himself the doctor said he wasn't going to be able to and he used uh the next 10

year plus years learning about how to master his body and realizing the importance of nutrition health and sleep to heal himself so important and. I'm very excited to dive into this episode and introduce you to the one and only Sean Stevenson. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. I've got my man, Sean Stevenson's on. What's up, Sean? Hey, what's going on, Lewis? How you doing, man? We're both in cold weather right now. You're in St. Louis, 10 degree weather. You said I'm in New York, 20 degree weather, snowing, but we've got warm hearts today, man. Yeah, exactly. You know why we've got warm hearts? It's because we're sleeping well.

Oh yeah, man. It's all about the good sleep, man. The vitamin S, for sure. The vitamin S. I like that. I am excited about this. I actually did an episode probably a year and a half ago about sleep with Amir. You know Amir? Yeah, yeah. He's a friend.

Yeah. I love Amir. And I felt like I got some great insights at that point. I felt like I got some good habits at that point. I felt like I got some good habits in place. I learned a lot. But then as I was diving into your information in your book, I realized there's so much more to learn about sleep and reconfirming the importance and power of sleep for the rest of our lives. And if we want to achieve real greatness and have it all, lives. And if we want to achieve real greatness in our, uh, and have it all sleep is one of the foundations for that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the, the reality is that it's something that our

genes expect of us, you know, so we're talking about something at a deep, deep level, uh, part of our evolution, you know, and you know how it is today. We've got like a thousand things going on. And if sleep is one of them, that tends to be the thing that we omit, you know, not understanding that by lacking on that high quality sleep, we're actually going to be just demolishing our ability to achieve at a high level in everything else, you know? So it is definitely a secret sauce, man. And the thing is not at one point in the book, do I say, you need to get blank hours of sleep. It's not about getting nine hours of sleep or eight hours. It's about improving the quality of sleep that you are getting. And that's really where I focus on is what are the leverage points that we can use to make sure that we're getting into that deep stages three and four sleep more frequently so we can get

up and live our life to the fullest when we're awake. So you say three and four stages, how many stages of sleep are there? So in the, in the common conversation, there's four stages of sleep stages, one and two, that's known as REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. This is when you're getting your dream on. This is where your, your, uh, short-term memories get converted into your long-term memories. So REM sleep is really, really important that you just being able to take the stuff even you're learning right now and it becoming a part of you, right? So that's stages one and two. Stages three and four, that's known as deep sleep or non-REM sleep. This is known as the anabolic state, right? And anabolic means building up of. Catabolic is the opposite. Catabolic is the breaking down of. Just being awake is catabolic, period, Lewis.

Even if we're just sitting around watching television, our body is breaking down rapidly. So we need this anabolic state to keep things balanced. And so this is when your body is producing all of the growth hormone, the human growth hormone in particular, and the repairing hormones, enzymes to rebuild you and make you better. This is stage three and four, you said? Yeah, this is stages three and four. So this is where we want to focus on what can we do and what does the research show that we can do to get ourselves in stages three and four more frequently?

And that's really the secret sauce right there is in leveraging that every single day. And it's really quite simple, actually. Break it down for me. All right. So let for me. All right. So let's go. All right. I'm just going to give everybody a real powerful tip they can walk away with today. So there was a study done at Appalachian State University and they took exercisers, right? So exercise is important in this equation too. They split them up into three groups. Group number one exercised at 7 a.m. Group two exercised at 1 p.m.

Group three exercised at 7 p.m. What they discovered was that group A, who exercised early in the morning, spent up to 75% more time in deep sleep, right? No way. That's the data. So exercising in the morning. Why did I work out at 10 p.m. last night? That's probably why I couldn't sleep. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Many people have that same experience. You know, that's,

you're turning your body on, you know, exercise is, it's, you've heard of this, you know, it's a big catch word now. Everybody's talking about cortisol, right? Cortisol, this stress hormone. It's not that it's bad. It's just when it's out of balance. Cortisol is the opposite. It's the antithesis. It's the arch nemesis of melatonin. Okay. So melatonin is like the get good sleep hormone. So if you're up exercising, cortisol is high. Melatonin is rock bottom, right? So it's going to take some time for your body to sort that out. So, but here's the thing. This does not mean that you need to get up and hit the gym in the morning at all. This is not what I'm saying. You just need to do some form of physical activity in the morning. So this could be doing some yoga. This could be doing some rebounding. Since it's cold here in the STL right now, I've got my rebounder in my office and I hop on that in the morning for 10 minutes. You're talking about a trampoline. Yeah, mini trampoline. According to NASA, the best form of exercise. And they're literally rocket scientists, you know what I'm saying?

Right. They're not that smart. They're just rocket scientists. Right, exactly. So, you know, you can do something like that. You can do Tabata, which is just four minutes of exercise. You can do, this could be when you hit the gym, you know. It's just, what we're doing is we're helping to reset your body's natural, normal cycle

of cortisol. And we're designed, we've been evolving to have a big spike of cortisol in the morning for the sole purpose of doing activity. So we want to encourage that because this will make it go down in the evening so we can get better sleep. So it's just one strategy. We've got 21 in the book and just making it all real life, doable, easy things for people to implement. Now, is there a strategy for how to or when to work out in the morning? Let's say I'm going to do a five minute workout, yoga, stretching, rebounding, something five to 10 minutes around, I'm assuming that's kind of like the timeframe that you could do for this to be effective.

Is it like, okay, right when I wake up, roll out of bed, go next to my bed and start doing push-ups and rebounding? Or is it give yourself 30 minutes? It could be if that feels sexy to you. Sure. Is it okay to wait an hour or two? Well, what it really boils down to is, and you know this too, and you've probably had many people on your show talking about this, is just creating that morning ritual. had many people on your show talking about this is just creating that morning ritual. You know, so if it feels good to you to roll out of the bed, you know, like a ninja, like a karate man and start doing pushups right next to your bed, go for it. You know, if that feels good to

you. But for me, you know, I probably get to the exercise portion, maybe 45 minutes into my morning. The first thing I do upon rising is I do what we call having my inner bath. You know, so this is where I go and drink about a liter of high quality structured water. And I've been doing that ritual for about 10 years, maybe longer. And from there, I'll use the bathroom, then I'll do a little bit of reading, meditation, and then I'll get to my exercise. And so that's kind of how my day starts every single day. And it just kind of puts me on that template for a powerful day, but also setting me up for high quality sleep that night as well.

And how important is hydration for your body to sleep and recover? Wow. I mean, this is where we really get into the game here. You know, it's the real basic, simple things. You know, we have this common idea in our world today, even in our lexicon, that water is just H2O. So H2O, whatever water it is, it's just H2O, but it's not just H2O, it's H2O with other things dissolved into it. So water is known as a universal solvent, right? So water can basically become anything that it's exposed to. For example, this is why if you put some Kool-Aid, like you put some Tang, I don't know if they

still have Tang, but they put some Tang into your water and it kind of like changes its color, it integrates itself. That's what water does with us. It becomes us. It's so powerful to understand this. So the quality of water you're drinking is of the utmost importance. Really? So you can't just have tap water?

You can, but I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. It's not the optimal thing. I did a master class on this very subject on my show and really breaking down and talking about this because according to the research, and this was just done a couple of years ago, about 49 million Americans, they studied their water supply. And this is ranging from like San Francisco to New York. And what they discovered was that they have about 40 different known medical compounds are coming through their water faucet. Okay. So we're talking about antidepressants. We're talking about chemotherapy drugs. We're talking about things like Lipitor,

cholesterol lowering medications. And this is a result of a process called, you know, of runoff. So basically people are consuming these drugs, then they're pissing it out and it's making its way back through the water cycle and ending up coming through your faucet. Now, this is not going to be alarming because, you know, the conventional media is just going to say it's not in doses that are high enough to affect you. But still, I'd still want to know if I'm drinking someone else's chemotherapy medication. You know what I'm saying? So just understanding that, that the tap water system here, it's definitely a great gift because you can go to your water and you can drink it and not die for sure. But the standards right now need to be elevated because we're dealing with things that

have never existed before, you know, so that you can definitely do things better. So I highly encourage people for your home faucet, definitely get yourself an RO system, reverse osmosis system, or, you know, you can do upgrade things and maybe get spring water like we have here at our office. We get it delivered from Mountain Valley. Pretty much anywhere across the country is going to have somebody that can deliver that. And spring water is coming from an aquifer, which is like an underground lake, right? And it's never been tampered with by man. So that water is more alive and vital than the very processed water that's coming through our faucet. So I hope that makes sense. And what about just bottled water? Bottled water. That's another great thing

to kind of dive into is just, you know, there's, there's, there's good. And then there's not so good when it comes to the bottled water. Um, if anybody gets serious about their health, they probably been one of those people like myself that will literally go to a vending machine and buy bottled water, right? Because we think we're doing the healthier thing. But what the research shows is that currently there's something, there's a compound called bisphenol A or BPA that's found in a lot of plastics, right? And again, water is known as a universal solvent. So if water is exposed to this plastic, this BPA in this plastic, it's going to become that substance, right? So, and if you've ever

like left a water bottle in the car for a while and you drink it and it's kind of warm and it tasted differently, that's because you're drinking, you're tasting the plastic, right? Now, plastic doesn't biodegrade, it photodegrades. So, just light hitting the plastic will break it down. You're basically drinking a plastic tea because water is a solvent. So here's the issue, Louis, really, really quickly is that bisphenol A is a xenoestrogen. Okay. So it's literally like you're consuming an estrogen supplement or an estrogen drug. It attaches to estrogen receptor sites in your body. For women, this can lead to estrogen dominance or estrogen related cancers like breast cancer, fibroid tumors. Okay. We see a lot of that in my

clinic. For men, this can depress your secondary sex characteristics. So lighter voice, decreased size of your testicles, loss of body hair, belly fat and fat ending up on weird places on a male's body. So like your butt getting really big. So these kinds of things, you know, it's just, we've accepted them as normal, but they're not normal. So if you're getting bottled water, you want to get something that's bottled in glass, ideally, and don't freak out if you have to drink something that's in plastic, but just don't make it a habit, you know, and I'm just, just sharing the, what the research shows and, you know, just kind of stacking these things in your favor can really help to give you that little one to 2% edge that, that everybody's looking for. Every advantage

matters, man. That's for sure. I mean, if you want to achieve greatness, you gotta, you gotta have all the edges. So let's talk about fat loss and the importance of sleep with fat loss. First off, you say that, you know, sleep, sleeping more and exercising less is actually going to get you better fitness results can you speak into that absolutely so it was a study it was published in the canadian medical association journal and they had individuals they they separated them into two groups group one was the control group they slept eight hours eight plus hours a night, and they had the same exact diet and exercise. Group two, same exact diet and exercise as group A, but they sleep deprived them. They got less than six hours of sleep each and every night. What they discovered over the course of the study is

that group number two, who was sleep deprived, lost far less weight and far less body fat than the control group. And the only difference was the amount of sleep they were getting. Same exact diet, same exact exercise. So that tells us right there in black and white that sleep is really the force multiplier. It's that thing that can really help to get the results from the nutrition and the exercise that we're doing. And you know this too, and the exercise that we're doing. And you know this too, like just being an athlete, when we walk into a gym, we're actually in better shape when we walk in the door, right?

When the workout is over, you're in worse shape than when you came in, right? Because you've broken your body down. If I was to take you in and get a full blood panel done, a hormone panel, it would look like your biomarkers for inflammation would be sky high. Your stress hormones would be off the charts. I might even get you diagnosed with a disease or an illness, but all you did was just do a great workout. The change that happens with your body doesn't happen while you're in the gym. It happens while you're asleep. And again, this is where,

and this is the biggest takeaway for everybody, is that sleep is the anabolic state. This is where you get all the leverage point and all the secretion of anabolic hormones to keep you youthful. And when I mentioned human growth hormone, just really quickly, this is so important. HGH, when people hear that, they tend to think of like Barry Bonds, right? Or Marion Jones. This hormone is secreted by your pineal gland. It's an endogenous hormone. Your body can produce it, right? But it needs the right conditions to do so. When we reach about the age of 20, we have a big decline in HGH. This is known as a youth hormone. This is why kids have so much freaking energy, right? Just the other day, like, no, this morning, my son, I'm just standing there in the kitchen making my lunch and he comes in and he's stabbing me with his Ninja Turtle size.

And he's just running in the room. He runs out and he comes back and does it again like 20 times. It's like, how does he have so much energy? He's got HGH pumping through his body like crazy. We don't have to have that decline happen, right? But what we do is, it's not that it stops producing, gets getting produced because we get older. It's because when we get older, we stop deciding to sleep. Right. It's like, mom, you can't tell me I'm not going to go to bed anymore. You don't have control over me anymore. And we're like, I'm this big adult and I'm just going to stay up and watch every episode of my favorite show on Netflix ever. Right. It's just like, we just try and break the rules when these are not rules of your parents anymore.

These are rules governed by nature, you know? And if you don't follow the laws of your body, you're going to get pain. So just to kind of wrap all that up, one of the biggest issues with people, you know, really wanting to get into the shape that they want to be in is dealing with cravings. Love that sugar.

Yeah. And it's just, here's the most profound insight about this is that just 24 hours of sleep deprivation leads to about a 6% decrease in glucose reaching your brain. So basically, when you're sleep deprived, you get dumber, right? We start to make poor decisions. Our ability to process information is hindered, all right? And so there was actually a study. They did a physician study, okay? And they found that they had the physicians do a certain task. Sleep deprived them for 24 hours, had them do the same task. It took them 20% longer, and they made 14% more errors

doing the same exact thing, but now they're just tired. So this leads to the, it's not about just doing work. It's about being effective, right? And we tend to put sleep off so we can get stuff done, not understanding that we're doing a crappier job at it. So when your brain is deprived of this glucose, if you've ever had a muffin, if you've ever had a Twinkie or any chips, if you've ever had any cookies, your brain remembers that it can get a very viable and powerful source of immediate carbohydrates from that source. Energy. Yes. To get that sugar back to your brain. Because with your biological evolution, with your brain losing that energy, this could mean death because you might be unable to procure your food or to

avoid danger, you know, or just to protect yourself because you need to be sharp. So this will lead you to going and grabbing those snacky type foods, you know, because nobody ever, if you, if somebody out there has done this before, please tell me, because I've never met a person like this. Nobody's ever been up at two o'clock in the morning, like, you know what? I want a salad. Go and make a salad at two in the morning. People just don't do that. You know, you go for the cookies or the, or the chips or something like that, you know, And this is talking about, Lewis, our willpower versus our biology. So, and it was as simple as you retired,

and you're trying to make sure that you stick to your new year's resolution and you're getting in shape and taking care of your body. But if you're fatigued, you're gonna find your hand in that bag of Cheetos and you got orange fingers. So it's really about stacking the conditions in your favor again, so that you don't have to put your hand in that bag of Cheetos and you got orange fingers. So it's really about stacking the conditions in your favor again so that you don't have to put your willpower versus your biology because your biology is going to win out in the long run. This is fascinating stuff. Can

you speak into coffee then? Is coffee and caffeine, I should say, support us and living optimally and helping us sleep at night if we drink it in the morning, let's say, or do you think it doesn't support us? I'm a fan. I'm a fan of caffeine. I'm a fan of people enjoying their go-to source for caffeine, which could be chocolate, could be coffee, could be tea. I just had some delicious yerba mate tea right here. So I'm coming from a place of love and admiration for this compound. But the reality is that there was a particular study that was done, and I cited this in the book as well. And I talked to people about having a caffeine curfew. And this was published in the Journal

of Clinical Sleep Medicine. So they had individuals consume caffeine literally right before bed, three hours before bed, and then six hours before bed. What they discovered was that even out at six hours before sleep, they had measurable loss of their ability to get into deep stages of sleep. So measurable loss of time in stages three and four. And remember, that's our goal is to get into stages three and four more frequently and stay there. So even drinking caffeine out six hours beforehand could inhibit that. So what do we do about this? Number one, simple fix is that you have a caffeine curfew, right? You just back up the time that you have your caffeine fix. So have it earlier in the earlier part of the day.

Why this is so important and why this even matters, Lewis, is that our bodies have something called a half-life of about eight hours with caffeine. So what does that mean? Well, this means that after eight hours, half of the caffeine that you consume is still in your body. Okay. So if you had a large mocha smoker latte. Love those mocha smokers.

If you have a large one of those, just say it's 200 milligrams of caffeine. Eight hours later, it's 100 milligrams that's active in your system. And it's a very powerful nervous system stimulant. So even if you go to sleep, part of your body is going to be still lit up, right? So you're not going to get into stages three and four. Wow. All right. And so, and by the way, everybody's metabolism is slightly different. So eight hours is the average.

So somebody might have a faster metabolism for caffeine. Somebody might have a slower metabolism and they just can't even handle it, period. You know, and they don't understand why they're not getting the sleep that they want. They just need to lay off the caffeine, period. But my biggest recommendation is just to have a curfew for it. You know, I recommend people, if you're trying to get to bed around 10 or 11, cut off the caffeine around two o'clock, right? Or even earlier, preferably. So I tend to have mine in the early part of the day. But it's still, it's a wonderful, great tool and gift that we've had for thousands of years, but we need to

respect it because it is a powerful stimulant, you know? So caffeine is good. We just need to have that curfew. And some people abuse it and they have, you know, three, four cups throughout the day and then they rely on it. And I've been, you know, for many years, I guess, well, I guess I should say my whole life, I've never really been into caffeine except for when I was a kid. I would drink lots of pop and I guess we say soda in St. Louis, but pop in Ohio. I drank a lot of pop and then decided in college to just cut all caffeine out. And what I noticed, you know, I don't know the studies behind this. Maybe you can speak into it.

But what I noticed is that my body didn't need it anymore once I cut it all off. And I felt like I had this unlimited amount of energy whenever I wanted it. I could just tap into my natural energy of passion and inspiration for what I was up to in my life and live in that space as opposed to I need something to give me the energy to then do something. Wow. that's powerful. Yes, that's definitely a reality. It's because your body, so what's happening with caffeine, honestly, it's just, it's like a false stimulant. You know, it's not you. And people can get dependent on that feeling.

And what happens is when you're just without caffeine, as you go through the day, your body is breaking down. It's producing a compound called adenosine. So adenosine is the product that our body produces as we just kind of go through the day. And as this happens, more and more these levels go up, we start to get tired because they fit into certain receptor sites that say, I need to relax, recover so I can come back even better. When you're using caffeine, it fits into certain receptor sites that say, I need to relax, recover so I can come back even better. When you're using caffeine, it fits into those receptor sites. So your body just keeps producing more and more of this compound, but you never stop. You don't stop to relax and reset. You know, so you get this false sense of being alive and vital, but it's not real. You know,

and people know this because when they go cold turkey off of the caffeine, they have all these physical ailments, headaches, extreme fatigue, and just don't want to deal about life itself, you know, and we can get dependent on these things so easily, man. Um, so I just want to commend you for even doing that because it's, it's quite a step. Yeah. And I'm definitely not perfect. I mean, I, I'll have like a cappuccino every now and then I love the flavor of it as well. And you know, I would say, um, I haven't been able to let go of the cravings of sugar. There are definitely times where I'll have more of it and other times where I have less. But that's something I would love to have a better balance of and eventually let go of refined sugar all in all at some point. I want you to walk me through the perfect sleep system for a human being from when they wake up to when they go to bed, what their routine should be, what they should or shouldn't have for foods or drinks, the types of workouts they should do.

And just give a general sense if you want to, but give like a routine from wake up time to sleep time. And then also the conditions of your sleep environment. I know you talk a lot about the habitat you sleep in and the importance of being in a completely dark space and all these other things. So if you can walk us through, what would the perfect human being look like if they slept and lived like X? Wow. Well, obviously there's no perfect, but I mean, what would it be like the perfect pattern for someone to be able to get the optimal amount of sleep that could set them up for the best advantage? All right. This is quite a challenge, you know, because everybody is different.

Sure. Sure. But I'm going to walk you through what an ideal day could look like. All right. So most importantly is understanding that we are a part of nature, All right. So most importantly is understanding that we are a part of nature, contrary to popular belief. We are not elves or orcs or whatever. We are humans, right? And we exist here on this planet as a part of this, it really helps to point towards women and this feminine energy and just understanding their cycles and how it just lines up with nature automatically. And how also when women are living in the same space, their cycles will start to line up. That's so interesting. Girls always say that, that they're friends, they start to have the same cycles, right? Right. This is well known, but we don't really dive in and look at that any deeper because what's going on is your body is synced up with the circadian or durnal patterns of the globe

and its rotation around the sun. And this is really, really important to understand because you are part of this. You can't take yourself out of the system. So to line up more with nature, we would normally be getting up earlier, you know, and some people are going to be hearing this like, nah, I'm a, I'm a night person and that's all good. You know, however, just I'm taking you through what the ideal situation would look like. So we'd be waking up early in the morning. Can you give me a time of time range? So I'd say somewhere around six o'clock, right? And, but this is even going to vary depending on the time of year, you know, the, the, how far you are from the equator.

There's so many little factors here, but just generally right around six o'clock. And I don't like to get into definites with anything because everything is, is open and on the table for people to choose from. So you get up, you get up early in the morning. And of course, we do the dehydration, super hydration, inner bath. We do a little bit of meditation. And by the way, this is so critical, not just for your sleep health, but for your success in your life. Today, we live in such a busy society. We're constantly on. There's so much coming at us. We need time to decompress and to process. This is why meditation is so valuable. And I don't even call it meditation often. I call it brain training. You know, we cited studies in the book from UC Berkeley and just showing what's going on with the brain, you know, when you're sleep deprived and also when you're meditating. And what's been shown is that individuals who meditate in the morning sleep better at night, right? So doing a little bit of meditation can help to improve your sleep quality in the evening as well.

Ideally, you get some sunlight, some sun exposure first thing in the morning as well. And this helps because, again, it's helping to set that durnal pattern. When your body is exposed to the sun, we're kind of like plants, Louis. We're not into the ground, but we're walking, talking. We do photosynthesis. Sunlight, we convert that into vitamin D. And here's something cool is that sunlight is turning what into vitamin D? It's turning cholesterol in your body into vitamin D.

So cholesterol is super important and super valuable. And a lot of people are in fear of this cholesterol whole phenomenon, but we can come back and talk about that if you want to. So we get some sun exposure. Then we go into our day and of course, oh, I'm sorry. Don't want to leave out the exercise. We do some physical activity. Then we go into our day, create, do work, do good work, share time with our family, have a little bit of caffeine, preferably before two or noon. And then from there, moving into the evening, we'd start to kind of wind down. And this is important to have transition, right? So we can find many,

many different ways to decompress. I would recommend right around, and matter of fact, let's not even chance this. Rensselaer Polytechnic did a study. And what they show was that two hours of iPad use right before bed was enough to drastically kick people's melatonin right in the crotch. So your melatonin would get hit rock bottom by you being on the iPad right before bed, right? And this is because of the blue light spectrum that's coming out of our devices. So I would recommend if you're trying

to get to bed at 10 o'clock, for example, and I'm going to say why 10 is important just a minute, get off your devices before eight, okay? No cell phone. What about TV, watching a movie? There's hacks for this, but generally, again, if you're going to play at a high level, yes, you know it. Exactly. And so we talked about that in the book as well, wearing these orange tinted shades. And our brains are always looking for ways to create neuroassociations. When I put those shades on now at night, I get tired immediately. Wow. Because my brain is just wired up that when these go on, it's time to get sleepy time happening. Where can I get these shades? Just go to Amazon.

Just go on Amazon. Just type in orange tinted shades. There's like a thousand. You get the fancy pants, blue blocker ones. Or you can get like some construction worker ones that are like five bucks. Which ones do you have? I have all of them. Which ones do you use?

I use the mid-range ones. I use the blue blocker ones pretty frequently. They look a little bit cooler because before I had the construction worker ones, people would come in. You know, if somebody came over at night, they'd be like, are you were you building a birdhouse? You know, so, yeah. And so I put those shades on if I'm going to be watching a movie or if I'm going to be because, of course, life happens. I'm going to be doing some extra work. I've got to tend to a client or whatever the case may be where I'm going to be

on my device. But just think if you're going to be on your phone, scrolling through things, have the glasses on. Yeah. And also there's apps that you can get on your devices. No way. There's one called Flux, F.Lux. And it automatically takes away that more damaging blue spectrum of light from your screen. Shut up. Which can continue to work. Yeah, and it's awesome. It just pulls it off and it does it automatically based on your time zone. What's it called?

F-L-U-X-X? Yes. No, F dot L-U-X. F dot L-U-X. I'm downloading this as we speak. So Flux is awesome. It's another little hack that we can use. And so the reason I've been saying 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock to get to bed is it's what we call money time. So sleep is like timing and investment. It doesn't matter so much how much you invest. It matters when you invest. If you invest at the wrong time, you get pain, right?

If you invest at the right time, even a smaller amount of money, you can get some great success, right? So what the research shows is that between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., we're getting nearly double the impact of these anabolic hormone secretions, right? So if you're getting yourself in bed, you know, and getting some of that money time hours, you're gonna be getting twice the benefit in that timeframe. So this leans towards people, you know,

instead of staying up late to finish something, getting to bed early, then getting up early. So getting to bed early and getting up early to finish that task rather than staying up late. So that's why the money time and why I keep on saying 10 o'clock is important. That's interesting. I just had a, you know, the previous interview

on the podcast, we had Eric Thomas on. He said he goes to bed at nine and gets up at like three or 3.30 AM. That's extreme. He's like, I get up earlier than everyone else and I go to bed earlier than everyone else. That's awesome, man. And the thing is, it's going to show

in the results in his life. You know, and many of the great people who are out doing powerful work have these kinds of rituals, you know, and even Gary Vaynerchuk, I just heard something from him. He's like, people think that I'm like just grinding and crushing all the time. I am when I'm awake, but I'm getting my sleep. You know, I think he said he aims to get like seven hours of sleep a night or something like that. Especially as we get older and our hormones change, we've got to pay attention to this stuff

and leverage this because it's not about the short game. If you're in it for the long game, having these strategies are so important to living a great, powerful life. So 10 o'clock, lights out. I don't want to make it like prison like lights out back at boarding school man but ideally yeah you know you're going to get to bed a little bit

earlier now here this is what i do personally you know i i leave the door open for especially occasions you know i leave the door open for change especially during the summertime there's more daylight hours so i tend to go to bed a little bit later you know and um leave the door open for change, especially during the summertime, there's more daylight hours. So I tend to go to bed a little bit later, you know, and so I play around with that. But generally, I want my day to be powerful. I want my day to be valuable and impactful. And I want to feel good all day. So this is why I have my sleep pattern. For myself personally, I go to bed at around 1030 and I wake up at six or I go to bed during the summer. I go to bed around 10 and wake up at 5.30. Interesting. Wow. What about the last time you should be eating or what should be eating or drinking before you go to sleep? That's a great question. This is going to be a-

Because I got those midnight munchies all the time, man. This is going to be a big game changer for a lot of people. You've probably heard this statement before, you know, if you want to lose weight, don't eat late at night. Yes. illness many years ago, which I'm fine now, but when I was diagnosed with this illness and then I recovered my health, I ate late at night all the time. And this was when I had the lowest body fat percentage that I've ever had. So this was around 5% body fat. And I ate late at night every night. And so it just like, that doesn't make any sense. And this is because, so here's what the data shows. Individuals that are of a normal or healthy BMI or body fat percentage that eat late at night or at any time when you eat, you get about a 5% increase in cortisol. Okay. So we talked about this already. Cortisol is like the Joker and melatonin is like Batman,

right? These are like mortal nemesis. It's like they're enemies, but they're not really. But just to kind of paint that picture for everybody. So if cortisol is up, melatonin is down. If melatonin is up, cortisol is down. So when you eat a meal, if you're healthy, healthy BMI, body fat percentage, you eat a meal, you're going to get a 5% increase in cortisol. That's normal. Now, here's where the real issue is. If an individual is overweight or obese, when they eat a meal, they're getting about a 51% increase in cortisol. So right there in and of itself is telling you, when you consume food and you're overweight, this is where we get into

trouble about eating late at night because your cortisol is going to go sky high, melatonin is going to crash. So when you go to sleep, you're not going to get that high quality sleep that you want. And you're going to wake up and you're going to be tired. You know, it's really a tragedy that we're waking up tired, right? And so we're going to set our template for the day of wanting to eat more carbohydrates simply because we're not getting enough sleep, right? And it creates this vicious circle. So this is why we really want to pay attention to this, you know, as far as this, the timing of food. So with that said, I would recommend if you do have a goal of cutting off some pounds, you probably want to do, you probably want to have a little bit of a curfew for what you, for when you stop eating. Now, what foods do you eat?

How many hours before you sleep? So if we're again, trying to get to bed around 10 o'clock, I'd say be done eating at eight o'clock. So now what kind of foods do we eat? There's a lot of variation in the research as far as this goes, but I'm just going to give people some general things to look at. Number one, if you're consuming, to give people some general things to look at. Number one, if you're consuming, for example, a higher carbohydrate meal, if you do that right before you go to bed, just say you eat a high carbohydrate meal at nine o'clock, what's going to happen is you're going to get a big spike of glucose. And then while you're sleeping, you're going to bottom out. You can go hypoglycemic. It's going to, you're going to have a crash and crash, and that can be enough to pull you out of sleep.

Or you can wake up really groggy or whatever, right? Yes, exactly. And also, for some people, this is going to maybe pull them out of sleep, and then they go and they're caught in that situation where they're looking in the refrigerator to kind of just get themselves back to sleep. They can't go back to sleep. Right. All right? So that's one situation. However, if you eat carbohydrate, a high carbohydrate meal further out, you know, so two, three hours before bed, you can drop your blood sugar down and it'll stabilize and you can go to sleep just fine.

So what I recommend is if you're going to be eating closer to your bedtime, eat a meal that's higher in fat. All right. So carbohydrates are basically like taking paper and putting it on your metabolic fire. It's going to burn really bright, really pretty, really, really big, but just for a second. Okay. Then it's going to be gone. So have some bacon before bed. Bacon is cool. Bacon is fine. So fats are like putting a log onto your metabolic fire, you know, burns really slow and steady. It doesn't get this big spike, but it's going to be there and just kind of keeping you nice and level.

Interesting. That's interesting. I actually had bacon last night around 10.30, and then I literally laid down. I thought I was going to be awake because I was going to go to bed before midnight. I'm in New York City right now, so it's kind of been going out a lot. I started snoring within about 10, 15 minutes. And I rarely snore, but I realized I was like dozing off and I was like, whoa, okay. See, I've got to put a new chapter in the book now, bacon. Bacon for bed. Bacon. Now here's another thing. I woke myself up a couple of times and

then something triggered in my mind about what I wanted to create for today. And I started thinking and my mind started working and I don't know, I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs are listening. They think a lot at night. So how does, and then it took me until about 3am to go back to bed. So how does, cause I checked my phone and I started like putting notes down of what I wanted to create. I was messaging my team.

So how does, if someone can't sleep say they're like they try to go to sleep every night but it's just like hours and hours of agony or they're just thinking what are some things that someone can do if they're having a trouble going to sleep in the moment and let's say you know let's say they didn't follow the the patterns that you're supposed to do but it's like okay now it's time to sleep they realize they did everything wrong um they you know they're still looking at their phone. Everything else is wrong. What is something that they can shift into to give them the best advantage? Okay. There's several things that you can do here, but you just said it starts with having

the ritual in the first place. But if you get out of that ritual, there's a few things. So number one, I would say to utilize the anti-stress mineral, right? So this is magnesium. And people storied for many, many hundreds, if not thousands of years about taking Epsom salt baths, right? It relaxes you, heals sore muscles. Just basically, you're pretty sleepy when you get out of an Epsom salt bath. So you can do that. You can go take a bath in Epsom salts. Or I use a magnesium

spray. And it's right there by my bedside. It's right there by our mutual friend, John Lee Dumas' bedside. I actually checked that out when I went to his place. He's got it right there. Right before bed, slather that stuff up on your body. And so what the research shows is that individuals who are diagnosed with clinical insomniacs, right? So these are individuals with very, very strong sleep problems. Across the board, 100% of the time, they're deficient in magnesium, okay, in this particular study. So this is the, magnesium is a mineral that helps to calm you down, calm your mind, calm your body, right? So I would slather up with some of that. So that would be the first thing. Second thing is

I would employ some meditation, you know, and basically switching your mind to a different gear. It's wonderful to have that muse hit you because when you got up, you were inspired. That's wonderful. But also it's like going to bed. Every night before I go to bed, I stand there right by my bedside and I thank all of life for making this day possible and for all of the things that I've accomplished.

But then I also, I close the day. I let everything be done right in that moment this day is complete and I shut it all down and I get into bed now that doesn't always mean that I'm going to stop thinking of ideas or thinking about different things but generally I just created that that pattern so if you find yourself in bed and just kind of tossing and turning you got these ideas going on this is a wonderful time to employ some meditation. And I actually talk about a brief meditation in the book that you can do while lying down. And it's like a body gratitude type meditation. And what that can do is you won't necessarily fall asleep right away. For some people, they don't even make it

to, because you start at your toes and you work your way up your body, focusing your attention there. But some people don't even make it five minutes without falling asleep. But what it does is it shifts your brain waves into states that are closer to sleep, closer to what sleep looks like. So right now, Louis, we're both in a beta mental state. So this means we're just kind of awake. So the next stage that we can kind of get to is shifting over to theta, which a lot of people that meditate get into theta within a few seconds. And when you get closer to theta

and then alpha and delta with your brainwave states, this is getting you more and more anabolic hormone production. Okay, so even though you're not asleep, you can still get some of those sleep benefits from meditation, right? So there's a couple of strategies right there. But asleep, you can still get some of those sleep benefits from meditation, right? So there's a couple of strategies right there.

But generally, you just want to set yourself up for a good night's sleep in the first place by stacking the conditions, doing everything else. But I'm glad you asked that question because a lot of people was like, what do I do if I wake up? The biggest thing, matter of fact, none of those things were the biggest thing. The biggest thing is don't worry about it.

Don't be hard on yourself. Let it go. You're up, it's okay. You know, our ancestors would wake up from time to time in the night. Maybe there's a noise, maybe there's some animals, maybe, you know, just even to have sex, you know, it's okay. And by the way, that can be a good strategy to get back to sleep. Yeah. All right. Even if, if you don't have somebody in your life, it's still okay. You could, you know, you can still take care of yourself, but you know, if you don't have somebody in your life, it's still okay. You could still take care of yourself. But if you've got a partner, I actually wrote a chapter about this and how having an orgasm for men and women is a powerful tool. And this is why it's called, quote, sleeping together, right?

And for putting your body into a different state for the purpose of falling asleep. So I don't want to take that off the table. Let me ask you about this. Is sex, ongoing dose of sex, let's say, is that valuable and important in your sleep? Or if you don't have sex or have an orgasm, is it going to hurt your sleep? Wow, that's a great question. So it's really interesting. And what's the optimal number? I'm just kidding. Well, I looked at many different studies about this and what the research shows is that initially not having sex can actually improve your sleep quality, but just for a short amount of time,

you know? So, well, let's, let's not even get into that. Let's first focus on why this even works. All right. So during orgasm, we release a cocktail of chemicals, both men and women. Norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and also a hormone called prolactin, right? And so this gives us like this cascade

of feel-good hormones and help us to relax. And there was a study done that they actually, you know, this was an animal study. And they, when injected, they actually use mice in this study. When they were injected with prolactin, the animals immediately got sleepy, all right? So, and this is something that adults produce during orgasm, all right? And putting all this stuff together and understanding how powerful of a kind of a natural stress reducer, and for some people, a sedative, you know, can be, it's definitely a valuable thing. Now, how much to have? Honestly, the more sex you have,

the better your health is going to be, you know, and this is just across the board. I know a lot of guys are like, yes, tell her I got to let my wife listen to this episode, but also women as well. You know, this helps with stress reduction. As a matter of fact, I cite in the study, I mean, in the book, there was a study done conducted with 2,632 women. They found that 39% of those women that masturbate do it in order to relax and to improve their sleep quality. Okay. So across the board, this is healthy for everybody. And then for men, there's added benefit of much, much lower incidence of testicular cancer as well. You know, so prostate cancer when having more frequent ejaculations. So there's so much benefit in having a healthy, happy sex life, you know, but at the same time,

I mean, it could be one of those things that we leverage in order to, you know, let our partner know that, hey, this is going to improve my health, baby. Exactly. I love it. Yeah. Very cool. Man, there's so many more questions I want to ask you. I want to get to a couple more.

I feel like I could ask you about this and listen to you talk about it for days because this stuff is fascinating to me. What is your habitat like? Kind of go over it briefly. You don't have to go into detail, but like talk about the room setting itself. Yeah. And maybe even like the sheets, the type of bed, you know, does that all play a factor? Well, you know that this is my craft. You know, this is where I've spent the last decade and a half in research, you know, and just understanding human psychology,

human physiology, anatomy, and looking at ways to leverage this stuff and creating the life around me so that all this stuff is on automatic. I really, what I call it is, Louis, is stacking the cool, you know, stacking the conditions in your favor so that you can't help but get the result that you want. We are not just a product of our environment. We're creators of our environment, right? And so consciously creating some of this stuff can really give you some huge leverage points. We just talked about sex. I've got to piggyback on that, right? By letting people know that what the research indicates is that couples who have a television in their bedroom have 50% less sex, right? Right there in of itself is enough for you to immediately go get that TV out of your room. And understand it's a distraction.

It's a distraction from what's most important in our lives. If you're in a relationship and you have a significant other, you have a husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, somebody that you care about deeply, and you've created your bedroom environment to be kind of like a workstation or somewhere that you watch television, it's a distraction from your relationship. And also humans, we have this very quick ability to create neural associations to things. So let me give you an example. Your brain is always trying to free up energy so it can do other things. Have you ever like left your office or left an appointment, Lewis, and then you've driven home and you don't remember like how you got home? You don't remember that drive?

Yeah. You were like, well, what happened? Right. How did I get here? This happens for a lot of us. And this happens all the time is because once you've done that pattern a few times, your brain just puts that on autopilot, right? It's always looking for things to match up and link up so that it can just free up space to do other things. Our brains do this very, very quickly

with our bedroom environment. So if your brain has a neural association that when I go in my bedroom, this is time to do work, this is time to get on my phone, this is time to watch television, this is time to argue, you're, this is time to watch television, this is time to argue, you're creating that neuroassociation in that space. So I encourage people to create, I call it just a sleep sanctuary. Create a sleep sanctuary where the only two activities going on in your bedroom are the two vitamin S's, sleep and sex, right? So get your daily vitamins in, right? So these are the two things, the two conditions that should be met. So what does that look like? When you think of a sanctuary, what do you think of, Lewis? In terms of my bedroom or in general? No, just a sanctuary in general.

A calm place, calm, loving, safe environment that you can create what you want from love it love it so what about physically are there any things in this sanctuary that you would see i think it depends on the setting of what specific sanctuary i'm creating but in just a normal sanctuary i would say i't know, just comfortable setting, somewhere I can relax comfortably, sit comfortably, easy colors on the eyes, like easy mood. So neutral, more neutral or light than hard colors that distract me. I like that. I like the fact that you brought up the colors. So for a lot of people, when they think of a sanctuary, they think of green, they think of plant life. So that's one of the things that is actually implemented in my protocol, which is having some plant life, some plants in your bedroom. Because, you know, so I actually looked into it.

And again, NASA discovered that there's a plant. It's actually called a snake plant. And that's one that I have in my bedroom. Will help to convert more carbon dioxide into oxygen at night. So it literally helped improve the air quality in your bedroom. I'm buying a snake plant right now. So that's just one. There's many other different plants that give the, they have the synergy with us, you know, so, um, plant life and also running water. Uh, so some people like having those little fountains, it's like magic for them. That's

what I was going to say. Like having some type of fountain would be trickling waterfall, you know? Right. Or of course it can be maybe something you play on an MP3 player with some speakers or something. Um, and I, this is not something I do personally, but for some people, it's like the secret for them. It's like the, the most amazing thing. It really helps them. Um, so starting to create more things that are in the environment, uh, for a sanctuary. So, and also when it's dark, then it's dark, Right. So I highly encourage people, if you take one thing away from this today is to get some blackout curtains for your bedroom. That was the number one thing that immediately boosted my sleep quality. And I had the connection. I was actually on vacation a while back. It was like, I think maybe it was my honeymoon, I believe. I think,

yeah, it was my honeymoon. And so we had these blackout curtains at this nice hotel and I got the best sleep of my life. And we're, of course, thinking it's because we just got married, we're on vacation. But quickly, as soon as we got back, my sleep quality got depressed again. And so partially, this is because your skin has something called photoreceptors, right? And this is, we tend to think it's just our eyes that see, but our skin can see. And we know this because again, it can pick up sunlight, literally change your skin color, right? So if there's light in your room at all, your skin is going to be picking

that up and sending messages to your brain to secrete more daytime hormones. Okay. So this could be light from the street light outside, your neighbor's porch light, even lights that are in your room itself. You want to eliminate that stuff if you really want to improve your sleep quality. And this is something that you don't have to change your whole life to do. Just get it dark in your bedroom, sleep whenever you want to. You don't got to follow the money time things. Any of the stuff that I've said, just do that one thing. And it's going to immediately boost your sleep quality. Wow. I love it.

I mean, I could go on and on and hear about this. But I want to let people digest this, these vitamins, and take it in because it's a lot you covered here. And if people want to learn more, they can definitely pick up your book, which is called Sleep Smarter, 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, Better Success by Shawn Stevenson. And also make sure to check out Shawn's podcast, which is called The Model Health Show. It's on iTunes. It's one of the top health podcasts. And I know you interview a lot of great friends of ours as well. So check out both those.

Sean, this is incredible. I appreciate it. I want to ask you two final things. First, I want to acknowledge you for your commitment and your dedication over the last 10 plus years to becoming a master at this. It's obviously evident of your experience through your own physical ailments, through your own physical challenges that you faced, that this was a calling for you and you are a true master at explaining it and sharing and making it easy for people to understand and accessible. So thank you for that gift that you've given to the world. I want to ask you two final questions. What are you most grateful for recently in your life? Wow.

Well, Louis, thank you. I appreciate that so much. What I'm most grateful for most recently in my life is my wife, for sure. And just seeing her growth and seeing her passion and her dedication to just becoming a better version of herself inspires me so much. And she's just an amazing human being. She's an amazing woman. She's an amazing mother, amazing friend. And I'm just so grateful for her and just seeing her recently really just stepping into another level. And when she steps into another, another level, I'm automatically right there, um, following suit. Um, so I'm, I'm very, that's the

thing that I'm definitely most grateful for. It's actually hard to talk about. I'm very, uh, very, very grateful for this right now. I love that. That's awesome. Final question of the show is what's your definition of greatness? question of the show is what's your definition of greatness? Wow. Um, my definition of greatness, um, would really, I think it would be two things. Um, first of all, living a life without regrets. Um, I really feel that once you get to a place in your life that you are grateful for everything that you've been through, you know, the good stuff and the not so good stuff, you know, the, the, maybe the, the quote, bad things that have happened to you and you wouldn't trade it in for anything. You would still go back and say, I wouldn't change

anything in my life because I am at peace and I am happy about the person that I am today. I think that that's greatness. And that's part one. Part two is just every day growing, at least just a little bit, every single day making process. Because the reality is, if you're not growing, you're dying. Life, there is no stagnation in life. So just every single day making progress in your life, to me, that's greatness. Sean Stevenson, thanks so much for coming on, my man. Hey, thank you, Lewis. It's an honor.

I appreciate you, man. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to pick up a copy of Sean's book called Sleep Smarter, The 21 Proven Tips. And you can get all this info back at the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 122. We'll have it linked up.

We'll have Sean's website linked up there and all of his other tips about sleep and then show notes of what we covered in this episode over at lewishouse.com slash 122. If you enjoyed this episode and this information, do yourself a favor and just start applying a few of the tips. Do some of the things that Sean mentioned. You don't have to do everything, but do something. Get the blackout shades, get the sunglasses at night, do whatever you got to do. Go to bed a little earlier. Don't eat as

late. Do whatever you got to do to apply something tonight and make it a daily or I should say nightly habit for yourself to take action on and create that ritual for yourself. Whatever it is to help you get better sleep, start doing that right now. Apply this information. If you guys are just coming on here to consume and you're not taking action, you're missing the point. Okay. So I want you guys to continue to grow. I want you to continue to progress in your life and your business and your health and your relationships. That's what this school of greatness is all about. So please do yourself a favor and apply one, two, three things that you can to support you with your sleep that really connected with you and

landed with you from what Sean was talking about. And go ahead and let me know over on Twitter at Lewis house, what you're actually taking action on or, uh, connect with Sean. We'll have all of his social media accounts linked up at lewishouse.com slash one, two, two, and let him know what you're doing as well. If you enjoyed this, please share it with your friend. If you have a friend who is sleep deprived or has, you know, has to drink coffee all day long, they're at work, they're at a cubicle and they're not getting enough sleep, send them this interview. Please do them the favor as well. Give them the gift of sleep.

lewishouse.com slash 122. But you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music ចានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា� Thank you. you