WHOOP Podcast - Taking Your Sleep to the Next Level with Dr. Allison Brager

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by Dr. Allison Brager. She is a neurobiologist with expertise in sleep and circadian rhythms who works to examine the mind and body’s resilience to extreme environmental stress. Kristen and Allison will discuss misconceptions about sleep trends (2:35), ideal sleeping conditions (6:12), the relationship between light and melatonin (10:35), manipulating our circadian rhythm (12:40), sleep consistency (16:55), circadian rhythms and the metabolic system (23:10), behaviors that can disrupt sleep onset (28:42), and how naps impact sleep patterns (35:40).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. This week's episode, WOOP, VP of Performance Science, our principal scientist, Kristen Holmes, is joined by Dr. Allison Brager. She is a neurobiologist with expertise in sleep and circadian rhythms, who works to examine the mind and bodies resilient.

to extreme environmental stress. Kristen and Allison discuss misconceptions about sleep trends, the ideal sleeping conditions, think cold, dark, and quiet, the relationship between light and melatonin, circadian rhythms and sleep, Allison offers tips on how to manipulate

and regulate your circadian rhythm, the importance of sleep consistency, behaviors that can disrupt sleep onset, and the positives and negatives and negatives around napping. Are you thinking about joining whoop? You can visit our website. That's whoop.com.

Sign up for a free 30-day trial. That's the full whoop experience, hardware, software, analytics, you name it, and you get 30 days to decide if you like it. If you have a question, what's answered on the podcast? Email us, podcast at whoop.com.

Call us 508-443-49-2 and we'll answer your questions on a future episode. Without further ado, here are The Fearless Kristen Holmes and Dr. Allison Brueger. Taking your sleep to the next level with Dr. Allison Brueger. Okay. Hello.

Let's do it. I think this is our third installment of sleep. It is. And actually, it's nice to finally do it in person. I know. This actually is our first recording in person. It's so exciting. And I don't have to worry about my internet connectivity, crapping out and all that.

Middle of nowhere, North Carolina. I know. I know, we did have some challenges. And your background was just classic, you know, cabin. Yep, cabin in the woods. Yep. Maybe to start, I really want to talk about the ideal conditions for sleep. And maybe, you know, I think that I love the fact that sleep is being elevated, you know, lots of conversations about sleep, about sleep, how to get good sleep.

What are the conditions for good sleep? Maybe we can start. Where do you think the conversation maybe goes a little wrong? That is a great question to ask. I think number one, which there really is no scientific basis for it. And honestly, when you think about the physiology of sleep apnea, is the mouth taping. That's one thing that I don't know how that became popular and who put that forth. But, I mean, the concept makes sense in that you want to teach yourself to diaphragmatically breathe.

Right. But wear that mouse tape during the day when you're idle and not talking to people, not at night when you're sleeping, when you're desperately always trying to get air, no matter who you are as a person. So I think that's, you know, when you talk about conversations gone wrong, People have great concepts, but they just, you know, scientifically, they just, they don't hold. It's just unfounded. Yeah. Just unfounded.

A little bit more in the mouth taping because this is interesting. We actually see, so I've just seen in the data, and this is just antic data. So obviously I'm very careful, but, you know, very in the sense of people, non-sleep apnea, so they don't have any sleep conditions or sleep disorders. So they're just like kind of typical people who are not getting into deeper stages of sleep, mouth tape, and all of a sudden are getting, you know, significantly more restorative sleep. What do you think is happening? Well, so that's, that really is the trigger between like going from shallow breath to diaphragmatic breathing.

I guess I'm not saying that mouse taping doesn't work, but it doesn't work for everyone, especially if you are an athlete or if you're in the military or somebody who's prone to sleep apnea. Right. That's sort of, to me, a recipe for disaster. Got it. But who knows, my mind can be changed. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's no understanding that it's not a panacea.

And certainly if you have a sleep condition or disordered sleep in some way, you know, math-thabing actually could be counterproductive. So always seek a medical professional. When engaging in any of these, you know, more extreme kind of modalities, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we finally got evidence now for the micro-sleeping. So this idea, again, great concept of sleeping in 20 to 30-minute bouts across the 24-hour period that's aligned with your drops in core body temperature.

There's somebody in Europe who finally did a study where they put people on a schedule like that for two weeks. And what they found is just like you find with the other data on anabolic hormones, is that their growth hormone and their testosterone levels are essentially zero by day three into doing that schedule for two weeks. So, again, everything in moderation, right? Yeah, yeah. And that comes, I think, with the sleep routine too. Yeah, yeah.

So for folks leading into bed, you know, what would you say are kind of those optimal conditions? So we know that even with blue light kind of working into the late evening could potentially impact your sleep onset, so your ability to kind of fall asleep and maybe more of your ability to kind of stay asleep. What are some conditions leading into bed that impact our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep? So number one is anxiety, right? Any sort of anxiety you have leading up to bed will manifest itself when you sleep or you're

trying to sleep. I think we all know that. You know, in working with military populations, that's the first thing that cognitive behavioral therapists for insomnia have to really, you know, challenge these veterans or, you know, active duty folks to do is to just shut their brain off because they're not people who are used to ever shutting the brain off from danger. a second thing you know it goes back to the basics right like the cool dark quiet that like honestly my cabin in the woods is like the perfect place for getting a good night's sleep because it is super dark and there's you know it's super quiet yeah just the crickets just it literally is just the crickets and sometimes a coyote or something outside yeah and you get it cold

cold enough down there in North Carolina. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, with AC and stuff. Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. And what's the optimal temperature would you say? I know it probably varies for individuals and, you know, there's probably even some, you know, some sex differences there potentially, but what would you say? So right now, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 66 to 68 degrees. That's more or less the consensus that came out. A lot of it was actually pioneered by the fatigue management group at NASA. As you can imagine, they sort of do a lot of discovery-based science because that's, you know, one of the other big challenges is faced sleeping. Do you have anything, you know, just for your nighttime routine that you kind of

square by that may be a little out of the box? Yeah, I mean, it's like candlelight. Like I literally, I mean, I love the like aromatic smell of canned. candles. You and Sammer. Yeah. Oh, he is like that too. He's such a cutie. I totally forgot. I totally forgot about that. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to, like, sometimes I'll bring candles with me and, like, put them in the hotels. I'm sure that's not, you know, what the hotel staff wants to hear. But, yeah, that's part of it is, like, creating the candlelight environment.

Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah. There's something, I think there's probably an evolutionary basis of, you know, just the being by the fire at night, you know. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's actually how, for me that habit started was in graduate school because I was in a biology department in grad school so we would actually take turns helping the ecology students with their research most of it was like tropical research in Costa Rica so when we would be in these research stations that had zero electricity like zero running water things like that we would actually have to like once the sun set because it's as close as possible to the equator so the sun would set every day

at 6 p.m., and we would have to spend, like, the last three or four hours, you know, and candlelight playing cards or, like, Domino's keeping ourselves entertained. And I just remember, like, do I think, yeah. Well, I mean, that's a day, like, that's literally, like, all there is to do, because there's no electricity. I love that. But I just remember having, like, the greatest sleep there, and I started adopting that practice afterwards, and then obviously, like, being a circadian researcher, I was like, oh, this makes

sense. Yeah, so minimizing light into the lead-up to bed is just really critical. So would you say a couple hours before you intend to sleep is really the optimal amount of time to start to, you know, decrease, create that dim, you know, that dim environment. Yeah, I would say about 90 minutes. I mean, you know, not everyone like realistically has a few hours before they lead up to bed, but I would say at least 90 minutes. And talk about the relationship between light and melatonin. So I don't think folks really appreciate like how critical of a hormone melatonin is. You know, in addition to obviously making us sleepy, it also has loads of other benefits. So maybe just talk about the role of melatonin just in general for

health. And how do we kind of set ourselves up to have like an optimal like release of melatonin? Yep. So melatonin, yes, it is, we call it the hormone of darkness, which means that, that, you know, it helps consolidate sleep. But it's also going in to have these indirect benefits of restoration and regenerative recovery by virtue of stimulating inabolic processes. We also know that melatonin, especially coming from tart cherries,

is really good for muscle recovery. Melatonin is also a byproduct. People don't realize this of serotonin, which you know, can affect gut health, it can affect mood. So that's another factor to consider, too. But, you know, the real key with melatonin is what you get in pill form is nowhere near the, you know, internal production and release from the pineal gland. In the sleep field, we have this acronym called Dilmo,

which stands for a dimlyte melatonin onset. And that's truly what you need in order to optimize your melatonin. Melatonin release is dim light, i.e. candles, dim light at night. Not bright artificial lights like streaming into the retina. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, that's what we do in our sleep studies when we do like sleep manipulation and sleep deprivation. That's how we're able to make people fall asleep in the middle of the day. It's just, you know, exploiting the dim light levels in the environment. So when you want to be alert, lots of bright, natural, and artificial light, when you want to be sleepy, darkness. Yep, exactly. Dark as you can get.

Yep. Let's talk about manipulating our circadian rhythm a little bit. So just because we shift our circadian rhythm doesn't mean that we've positively adapted to that shift in circadian rhythm. So maybe talk about how do I know kind of optimizing the timing of that release of melatonin, and is there such a thing? I mean, sleep consistency, right? That's the first, that's truly the only way to optimize the release of melatonin is, you know, we have this body full of clocks and they are super sensitive and receptive to external cues. So the more predictability those clocks have in the day from, you know,

when you're eating or when you're training or when you're working, the more likely they will, you know, release melatonin. or cue the onset of melatonin release at that time. Now, not everyone can be so lucky to have a stable schedule, myself included. That's the irony of being a sleep researcher. I used to spend a lot of time. In the military. Yeah, in the military.

I spend so much time traveling, right? So when you're talking about jet lag, I mean, I always say you can't cure jet lag completely. There always is going to be some lingering effect. But you can reduce the consequences of jetlight through these hacks of dim light exposure. That's truly the best thing you can do is, you know, when you're flying, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, make sure you're staying up, no matter how tired you are, pass when the sun sets, or make sure you're rising as soon as the sun rises in the morning, especially if you're on a redline flight. Yeah, in the new time zone.

And then on your flights, you know, just manipulating, trying to like assimilate to whatever. that new time zone is. So, for example, if it is, you know, 3 p.m. in the afternoon when you're on the flight, but the flight, you might be, you know, it might be dark on the plane. Like, you want to expose yourself to bright light. And then when the sun starts to go down, that's when you can actually sleep when you're on the plane. So trying to, like, match that timing is really important. Yep. No, absolutely. Yeah. Just mimicking the conditions as much as possible through light. I mean, obviously, exercise can help facilitate the process too. So when you land maybe in the morning, getting out and going for a run, even though it might

be the middle of the night in your, you know, your home time zone. Right, yeah. And you might be just super sore from, you know, how you're sitting on the plane, but yeah, you need to. And the meal times, you want to assimilate, you know, have the same sort of thing as you're traveling, try to, you know, on your way over if you can eat in the kind of the time zone that you're traveling in. That's ideal, right? Yep. No, absolutely. And no alcohol. And no alcohol. Yeah. And being smart about your caffeine, too. You know, just knowing, all right, when I need to when I need to fall asleep in my new time zone, I need to make sure that I'm tired enough to

facilitate that and we don't want to make, add caffeine to the mix to kind of complicate that process. Related to sleep consistency, this is obviously an area that, that you've done a ton of research, my team and I do lots and lots of research around sleep consistency. And we do start, we do see that at 30 minutes of variation, we basically see that as equal to a 42% increase in the odds of having an abnormal HRV. So there's some real physiological repercussions of an unstable sleep wake time. And we also found looking at sleep onset offset in military operators. It's published in military medicine in May. We saw that the more disrupted sleep wake time basically correlated with psychological,

all sorts of measures of psychological functioning. So there's a clear psychological impact of lots of variability, and this has been well-documented in lots of literature, but we also are seeing these clear perturbations in physiology once we get outside this 30-minute window, which seems so stinking narrow and kind of impossible, right? Yeah. Modernity challenges in so many ways, but this is, I think, probably one of the biggest issues. Maybe talk a little bit about the impact of sleep-wake time on kind of metabolism. And, you know, we obviously see this manifest in cardiovascular parameters, as I just mentioned in her variability. What are some other potential levers we can pull if this very, this, you know,

sleep-wake consistency is, like, not achievable. And I know this is an area that you spend a lot of time in. Yeah. Well, honestly, it's no different than what we talked about with jet lag, right? You have to be willing and able to manipulate those external cues, because at the end of the day, that's what happens when these external cues are misaligned. When you're going to bed at the, you know, 30 minutes later or 30 minutes earlier, those external views are being misaligned. So you have to factor in, okay, when am I having caffeine or should I have it now?

What types of meals you eat in the nutritional content of those meals, even exercise, those are ways that you can manipulate the schedules. And, you know, that's something we definitely do within the military, given the rapid time zone shifts. And that's what we, you know, recommend now are these holistic practices that go a long way. Yeah. And, you know, just, you know, we're talking like 30 minutes again, that's like just seems really narrow. Like, what about for folks who, you know, are just making, have choice, you know, but are kind of making decisions to kind of, be misaligned. And I think it's fine if you make those choices, just kind of understanding the physiological and psychological ramifications. Like, what do we have a sense of like the, and maybe

if you can just talk about some of literature, like, I think ShiftWorks a really good example of, you know, just this compound effect of just these large, you know, bouts of kind of misalignment. And those are kind of more obvious examples. But what about just the 30 minutes, you know, here or there every night. Like, do we, is that going to, do you think that has the same sort of impact or? Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, it's, whether it's work related or just lifestyle related, it's going to have

an impact because, again, the circadian clock, health is optimized through routine and things happening essentially down to the minute. Like, that's how precise the circadian clock is. And we know that because, you know, perfect example. you have a structured routine, you're going to bed the same time every day and you're waking up the same time every day. You don't need an alarm at a certain point. Right. Totally. If you wake up at set your alarm for 7.30 and you have a structured routine, you're going to start waking up at 728, 729 without setting an alarm. Yeah. But it does. It definitely has a long-term impact.

You know, in the sleep field, we call that chronic sleep restriction. The circadian field, we call it chronic circadian misalignment. And once you reach that chronic state, I mean, you have to do, you have to put in work to get it back homeostasis. Yeah. You know, we say for every night of sleep loss, it takes two days of recovery. Well, it's the same with circadian rhythms. Yeah. I feel like it's, it's hard to get folks on board. Yeah. You know, we just look at our data, like that's, yeah, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, when you look at, you know, military operators, I mean, I think for those folks, like, it's so variable that it's almost random in the data. There's sleep awake time.

Like, it's, like, it's like kind of frightening. Yeah, that's terrifying. And we look at it when we look at our member base, too, it's, you know, there's still well below, I think, what would be even average, you know, sleep, you know, sleep, you know, sleep, you know, so it's definitely an area that I think for members listening, you know, if you're like, oh, I'm doing everything to optimize, you know, but really, really dial in on your sleep wake time. And you can find it in the weekly performance assessment. You can see kind of your night-to-night variability. We don't actually store those data, which is a shame because it would be really fun to do more research on that. But folks can see that on a weekly basis, and you want to just try to, again, make

that sleep-wake variability as narrow as humanly possible to optimize everything that you're talking about. Yeah. And I think people, you know, on their own, will self-discover that, you know, that's the beauty of having, going back in your history and seeing what your recovery was and you can, you know, do a, to use a military term, an after-action review to see why that was. And over time, that should be manifest in yourself, you know. Yeah, an ARR. Yeah. Yeah. I love that concept, too, like, and I think that's what's so powerful about the weekly performance assessment,

the monthly performance assessment is that you can really look back and see these kind of trends. And now with behavioral impacts, you can start to see what behaviors are kind of laddering up, you know, in a positive way, you know, what maybe is contributing, you know, to maybe negative trends. And you can start to make more conscious choices, which I think is really exciting. Yeah. And it's, I think it's nothing to stress about necessarily. It's just like, I think an informed choice is certainly a better choice. Oh, no, absolutely.

Yeah. And, you know, like the, I always go back, like, the beauty of the WOOP platform is the competition, competitive nature of having different friends and, you know, platforms that folks you're competing with. So, you know, you want to win the weekly whoop score. Yeah. That's where you start is with sleep consistency. So, circadian disruption is, is, is, you know, the underlying etiological factor for metabolic syndrome.

And it's been suggested that it actually should be called instead of metabolic syndrome, circadian syndrome. What are your thoughts about kind of circadian rhythms and metabolism and how to, I think that's another area just when I talk to folks, like not really considering kind of the timing of their meals, for example, but, you know, just how that misalignment basically is contributing. to kind of metabolic factors. Yeah, so, I mean, most people don't use that, know this because, you know, they haven't spent the last 10 years in the lab studying this.

Yeah, totally. Finite cellular level, but circadian rhythms and the circadian clock truly controls all those metabolic processes from the level of hormones down to the cellular level. So even if we consider the hormone of hunger and satiety, ghrelin, there's a circadian-driven release in grelin. There's a circadian-controlled factor to insulin release and insulin sensitivity across a 24-hour period. You want to be insulin-sensitive. Yeah.

Yeah, there's certain time points that, well, I was studying this in mouse models, but even in mice, You know, they have a very robust rhythm and insulin sensitivity throughout the day. And that's not just like muscle tissue. That's other tissues as well to include the brain. So when you're eating, when you are more resistant, when you're more insulin resistant, that puts huge amount of stress on your body, right? So this is got what we're talking about is that there's going to be time periods during the day where you are going to be kind of metabolically primed to digest food in that mechanistically,

it's the insulin, right, that is going to be, I guess, ready to carry the glucose to like all the muscles, right? And then sometimes it's, you know, it's going to be more primed to do that versus others. So maybe just talk about, like, what can folks do to kind of, because this all relates to sleep, right? Like, if we're not doing, if we're not eating kind of during these kind of optimal times throughout the day, that's going to impact. our sleep onset potentially, it's going to impact our ability to stay asleep also. And that's like one of the areas that I think our members really struggle with most is how do I stay asleep? Yeah. You know, and maybe just talk through kind of how do we should be thinking about

our food during the day and the lead up to bed and how that might impact their sleep. Yeah. I mean, one of the, you know, first things, and not everyone has this and, you know, this is something I don't recommend for elite athletes, but for the rest of us, intermittent fasting, right? That's one great way to make the insulin release as sensitive as possible. The second thing is coffee, right, or any sort of caffeine. Maybe on the fasting just before you. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you know, eating during the day, you said make it really pronounced.

So eating during the day, and then as soon as the sun goes down, you're fasting. Yep. Yeah, yeah. So that's, I mean, it goes back to human evolution, what we used to do thousands of years ago. And, I mean, I would spring up mice and rats, but that's literally what they do, too. Like, they have the most optimal circadian health of them all when, you know, they don't have predators and they're, like, in their cages. Right. Right.

On their own is they basically fast for 12 to 14 hours, and then they have a period where they eat. And again, this is on their own volitional control. Right. And then they go to sleep. And humans were no, we're not special. Yeah. Right. Mammals do.

So you want to make sure that we're not digesting food when we're trying to sleep. Exactly. I mean, that's really what the mice, you know, anyone who doesn't have access to a fridge, for example. Right. They're basically eating during the day and then just fasting throughout the night and maybe the role of digestion and sleep would be good to just hit on real quick. Yeah.

The other thing, let's talk about blood glucose, right, is you don't want to have a high level of blood glucose. So if you are, you know, you have to eat because I remember, and you remember this too at one point during your highest period of training, like I'd wake up in the middle of the night starving, like just have insomnia from being starving. So I would have to eat low glycemic food, that way I don't spike my blood glucose. That does, that goes a long way too. Right. So for folks are training, that's just a great kind of hack. Like you want to make sure that you're keeping, if you're going to eat in the lead up to bed, because you maybe just didn't eat enough calories during the day and you don't want to wake up hungry, just low glycemic foods

ideally. So like, you know, full-fat yogurt type walnuts, you know, so maybe some kiwis in there, raspberries that have the serotonin, which, you know, can. Exactly. Kiwis, yeah, people forget about that, cashews. Yeah. Yeah. I mean even like, so there's a study that came out recently, like warm glass of milk.

Yeah. They isolated the proteins that show that they have sleep promoting proteins and not just a glass of cold milk, like a glass of warm milk, because that, you know, the heat creates enzymes that which activates its proteins. Right, right. Yeah. That's so cool. All right.

And you're going to talk about caffeine. So maybe, like, let's hit on all the behaviors. We talked about, you know, cold thought quiet. We talked about all the circadian behaviors, so really just that creating that all the alignment around these cues that we know are going to impact our circadian rhythms. So that's exercise and light exposure, light restriction, meal timing, sleep wake time. So we hit on like a lot of the big things. Talk about just some of the other behaviors that can impact sleep onset and our ability to

stay asleep. So what are those kind of those big ones? Yeah. So caffeine is a big one, right? You know, it doesn't matter how tolerant or sensitive you are, the half-life of caffeine. is six to eight hours. So it's going to be in your system for that long. And based on your genetics, if you're a slow metabolizer,

it's going to be in there for like 10 and 12 hours. Working out right before bed, that's a huge one. I mean, moderate exercise fine, but high-intensity training, you know, you have to stop that at least three or four hours before bed. We now finally have studies that have done it right now to show with high-intensity training, you know, it takes three or four hours for your core body temperature to re-normalize and stay. Same with your cardiovascular system to renormalize.

And there's probably, if you're working out kind of that late, you're probably exposed to light, too. So there's just like a confluence of conditions that make sleep onset really tough. And if you can even be so tired. And I think this is with caffeine too, like, oh, I'm not affected. Like, I can fall asleep. It's because you probably carry in a lot of sleep debt. But I think invariably, you end up having a more fragmented sleep experience. Is this what you've seen in your research with caffeine? Yep. No, absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, we just rev a little higher in terms of your heart rate and a little bit more depressed heart rate variability. Exactly. Yeah. You know, caffeine can be beautiful for, you know, neuroprotection and things like that. It's just you have to put that away afternoon or so. Right.

Can you talk about creatine? Oh, yeah. And sleep? There's been some new research around that as well. And yeah. Yeah, that's actually... Just a neuroprotective and it made me think of creatine. Yeah, no.

Actually, I think... So I have like a little concoction before I go to bed and creatine's part of it. So creatine, people think of it as like, you know, building muscle mass. It's really just energy source for human life. It's like part of contributing to the powerhouse of the human cell. And when we sleep, that's actually where we replenish all those basic energy reserves to include creatine. So there's some research now to suggest that, you know, having creatine right before bed

essentially pre-feeds the cells and gets them like prime for anabolic processes, which, you know, can continue to thrive during sleep because what it does is it increases slow wave sleep. So that's a relationship between slow-wave sleep and creatine. is when your slow-wave sleep is high, then creatine production and storage is high. And you can use creatine supplementation to sort of facilitate that process. Nice. Again, it's good for other things, too.

Like, you know, if you've had a TBI like me or had a concussion, it's really great for neural protection as well. I don't know if this has been published yet, but I know there's a study that has been ongoing looking at concussion or traumatic brain injury in children and creatine supplementation in the experimental group and no creatine supplementation in the control group. Yeah. And it seems as though the experimental group is seeing some huge recovery benefits relative to the control. Yeah, I definitely have seen that research. I totally believe it because the thing about concussion or TBI recovery, I did a little bit

of this in animal models, is right after you have that brain insult. you have to let the brain sleep. Like that's one of the myths about concussions is you can't keep that person awake. You have to let them sleep as much as possible, especially within that first 72 hours. That's the healing, right? Because you get to allow the body to shut down.

Yep. And if you disrupt that slow wave sleep, because we've done this in animal models, like if you, in that 72 hour period, disrupt it, then you increase the amount of damage to the brain. You don't get the short term or the long term recovery. Right. But yeah, sleep is absolutely essential, and creatine can help facilitate that process.

I love that. Alcohol. Oh, yes. Yeah. Everyone's favorite topic. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I spent, we talked about this before, five years that sort of did my PhD dissertation

on was how alcohol and cocaine separately, like through different mechanisms, disrupt the circadian cloth. Yeah. And mouse models, not human models. Right, right. It's all the same, right? Yeah. No, alcohol is...

I feel I'm pretty certain cocaine disrupts that. Oh, yes, absolutely, yes. I will go on the record saying that with no scientific evidence. Exactly. But yeah, I mean, alcohol is so disruptive because you're not going to get that restorative sleep. It might feel like it psychologically, but, you know, physiologically, you're never going to get that. Being unconscious and getting into deep sleep, it's totally two different things. Yeah, and what we find with alcohol is, and this is what we very good.

carefully studying in animal models, is it literally prevents the photic input from reaching the circadian clock. So what it does is the alcohol competes with one of the receptors that is responsible for creating this, you know, circadian responsiveness to light. It actively blocks those receptors and the appropriate neurochemicals from binding to those receptors. That's insane. I've actually never heard that.

Yeah, I mean, the research we did in graduate school, you know, just like most scientific stuff, it gets buried in the libraries and the journals that nobody ever reads. Which is such a bummer. Like, that's actually so interesting. Yeah. So alcohol competes with the photic input. Yeah, yeah. So it's through the neurochemical glutamate.

So there's... Oh, got it. Yeah, yeah. Because when you, you know, not to get too specific, but when you're exposed to light and that light travels to the retina, there's a release of glutamate. which glutamate them binds to the circadian clock and the hypothalamus. And so what happens with alcohol is it directly competes for binding to those receptors within the hypothalamus.

Dang. That's really cool. Cocaine does something similar, but it's actually through serotonin and dopamine. Okay, right. But they both block photic and actually nonphotic input too. I wonder it's how it impacts melatonin. So...

So... Mechanistically. I mean, it would... I forget the exact mechanism, but alcohol definitely has a direct impact on the release of melatonin, not from the pineal gland, but the upstream trigger from... There's a serotonergic path... There's a serotonin pathway that precedes the release of melatonin and the alcohol blocks that. Okay.

Dang. So should adults feel sleepy during the day? Yes, absolutely. It's circadian rhythms, right? The robustness in the clock, it dips in the middle of the day because our core body temperature dips in the middle of the day. So that is the optimal time to take a, it's a short siesta and how short should it be, how long should it be, when's the timing in relation to when I intend to sleep, give us the rundown.

So 20 to 30 minutes, no more than that. Okay. And why? It varies, mostly because you don't want to go into a full sleep cycle because then you're going to start feeling groggy. And then also you might shift your circadian clock to, depending. So you basically will disrupt your kind of natural sleep when you're going to release melatonin.

You'll shift that. Yeah, exactly. Now we get outside that 30-minute window. Right. Exactly. And then, you know, it does vary from person to person, but you've got to find that time of day where you're actually sleepy and actually just take a nap. You know, the thing about napping is, you know, once your body gets that low point in the

middle of the day, you can pretty much fall asleep anywhere. Yeah, that does happen. But it's just, it's all about a cultural thing, right? It's reducing this cultural stigma about napping. I think it's much better today than what it used to be. But, yeah, I think workplaces. And then even just stay at home, teleworking, even in the military, that has been reduced, the stigma around that. And for folks who they don't know, we've got this beautiful little haptic alarm, you can set your alarm.

Exactly. Yeah, that thing has been great too. It's just amazing, yeah. It doesn't disrupt anyone. Right, exactly. Awesome. Allison, thank you so much. Of course, absolutely. It's always such a pleasure talking to you. This is just such a cool conversation. Lots of new nuggets of info. Thanks again to Dr. Allison Brager for joining the podcast, discussing all things, sleep and recovery.

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W-W-Acessaries. And that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green. Thank you.