Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPSnacks: Sleep Solves Everything with Hala and Jordan | Mental Health

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

#YAPSnacks is a new series of bite-size pods hosted by the YAP team aimed to provide you with key information and actionable insights. Tune in to hear Hala Taha and Jordan Paris discuss why sleep is so important for your health and productivity, and hear their top tips for getting a better nights rest. If you're interested in this topic, go back to episode #12, "Unlocking the Power of Sleep," featuring sleep psychologist, Dr. Daniel Gartenberg. If you liked this episode, please write us a review! Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com  

Hey everyone, you're listening to YAPSnacks, a new short series of bite-sized, digestible, and actionable content hosted by the YAP team. Today, I'm joined with fellow podcaster Jordan Parris, who is the host of Growth Mindset University and who has come on board as my Yapsnacks co-host. This week on Yapsnacks, we are talking all things sleep. One of my most popular episodes was number 12. It's called Unlocking the Power of Sleep with Dr. Daniel Gartenberg. It feels like I just uploaded this yesterday, but it was actually about a year ago. And every time I log into the back end of my platform, I check out my analytics and I see all these people who are listening to this show. And I think it's actually new listeners who are just searching for sleep content on iTunes and Spotify and then just landing on this episode.

And it made me realize that this is a topic that we've got to talk about. And it seems like a lot of people are looking how to improve their sleep. And, you know, we might be facing a sleep crisis right now. I thought that we could talk about, you know, some of the benefits of sleep, what happens when we don't get enough sleep. And then maybe give everybody who's listening some actionable insights on how to improve their sleep. I am serious about sleep. It is a non-negotiable plans are canceled or declined. Yeah, I don't.

except when we met up in New York and I was like, yeah, this is like one of those times where, you know, hollow wheel and get to see each other, like, rarely. You know, there's not many opportunities to do so living a thousand miles away. But I said, I was like, tonight I'm more than happy to work all night, even though I, you know, I would never do that otherwise. Yeah, just to give you guys some context, we did some LinkedIn videos and it was the first time we ever met and I work a full-time job so I could only do it like after 6 p.m. And we ended up recording our last video is like 11 p.m. or something super late. Yeah. And then I had to go back from catch the train out of New York back to Pennsylvania because I was staying with my family that particular weekend. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Well, we got it done and it was really popular at least. So that worked out. So how much sleep do you typically get every night? Yeah, absolutely. I get between seven and eight and a half hours. I would probably say the average is seven and a half hours. I start winding down at, I mean, you're supposed to start winding down really, like after six o'clock, like I'm, you know, five, six o'clock, like I'm done work. I'm done, you know, I exercise at 7 a.m. I'm not moving anymore. But then nine o'clock, you know, I'm really, really starting to power down. And by 10, 10.30, I am in bed. Everything's done, you know, teeth are brushed and I am ready to go to sleep. and Tuesday, Thursday, Thursday, I get up at 6.35 a.m. every other day, I get up between 7 and 7.40 a.m.

Usually, average is probably like 7.15. So, yeah, between 7 and 9, and that works really well for me. And it's, you know, there's this, so many people hollough, they're like, I don't, no, I don't need sleep. I'll sleep when I'm dead, you know, the hustle culture, entrepreneurs. And there is, you know, there's this really small subset of the population. that does function well on five hours of sleep. And that small subset is about 0.0%. Exactly. Yeah. Nobody's exempt from sleep.

I agree. So based on your description, it sounds like you're a sleep role model, and I am the exact opposite of that. I really need to work on my sleep. It's something that I made as a resolution for 2020 to get more sleep and to be in bed by 11 p.m. every night, but I've already broken that role. And for example, like the day before yesterday, I wanted to sleep at 1.30 a.m. and I had to wake up at 6 a.m. And I had to function at work. And, you know, I'm getting away with it right now, but there's going to be a point where I'm not going to get away with it anymore. And so I really need to figure this out. And for me, it's a matter of like needing to learn how to delegate more, let go more, only do things that are high priority. And also just like forcing myself to sleep because I'm so passionate about my podcast that I just love to work on it. at night and I just have to force myself to stop sometimes.

In my experience, you know, the five hours of sleep that you mentioned there, the, you know, even under seven for me, it's the quickest way to depression. I just, and I almost feel throughout the day, Hala, that I'm like more susceptible to negative thoughts that just pop up. My way of thinking is just so much more pessimistic and negative when I'm on less sleep. I'm not like a great person to be around when I don't have my sleep. It was actually funny, funny story. When I was coming back from Israel, we had a weird, we left for the airport at 2 a.m. had a flight at 6 a.m. Israel time. And then, you know, the flight is, gosh, I mean,

we were going to Austria and that's about three and a half hours. And then back from Austria to New York to JFK is I think it's about nine and a half hours. So I, and then with the time change, too, you know, it's a, I think from Israel to New York, about a seven hour time difference. And I, so I calculated it out and I went 42 hours without sleeping. And I got back and my mother picked me up. I was, I was like delirious. I don't have, I barely have, like, memory of being in the back seat of the car there. And I was literally, like, laying down, you know, no seatbelt. And I, and I slept the whole car ride home.

But, and my sister and my mom were, like, telling me things I said. And I was like, it's horrible. I felt like, hell. Well, they say that 19 hours without sleep has been shown to, be impairment equal to 0.05% blood alcohol content. So it's still safe enough to drive, but you're basically as if you've had a couple drinks. And so at 42 hours, you were like wasted. Yeah. It has real effects on your memory too. I don't have the research, but even over time, I mean, because, I mean, think about it. Like during sleep, one of the things that goes on is

essentially memory consolidation. And if you're not, like, if you're not sleeping, you're not consolidating, you know, in your memories and you're just, you're just not, like, storing as many memories if you're not sleeping. Yeah. I know sleep definitely has so much impact on our mental states. It definitely makes us more sensitive to our own pain. And it also makes us unable to relate to others. So we basically reduce our ability to have empathy.

And we make riskier and rash decisions. And so it's just really bad for our person. personality and our ability to be positive and to make good decisions. And for our ability to get on here on a podcast and perform. I before, like the day before an interview, I got to get that sleep, right? I got like really good sleep too. I can't go to bed at 1 a.m. I can't get six hours of sleep.

I got to remember as much information as possible. I got to have as much information as possible. Like I can be able to pull from off the. top of my head. I got to be able to remember that. I got to have time to consolidate while I'm sleeping on all the things I studied over the, you know, over that day in the previous week, you know. So it's just of the utmost importance to me. It's, you know, it fits right into my top priority in this world, which is health and, and just high performance. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call

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Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed, is all you need. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the health issues that arise from a lack of sleep. There's lots of chronic diseases that come from a lack of sleep.

Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. Obesity for sure, yep. Mm-hmm. And how about sleep and exercise? I find that if I don't get enough sleep, first of all, I'm not productive during the day. Second of all, I always end up skipping my gym class because I'm just too tired. And so I just feel like it's just like a vicious circle. You don't get enough sleep.

You're not productive. You don't get exercise. You get fat. You get disease. Yeah. Nothing good comes out of it. Yeah. And I'll be very, you know, I say, you know, I decline plans because of sleep.

But actually, tonight is one of those very. you very rare exceptions where I'm going to be out till about 11 p.m. tonight. And my 7 a.m. workout class the next morning at F.45, I still need to get my 7 to 8 hours of sleep. So I might not be there. I might have to, and I have some other things going on in the morning. I might have to do it at 12, 15 and do that class. and said if I do it, if I get any time to do it at all. So you can see how, like, if I were to do this every single Wednesday, you know, be out till 11 p.m. every single Wednesday, I'd be getting less workouts in and I'd be, yeah, I'd be missing things. Yeah, totally. Let's talk about how to improve our quality of sleep. Are there any tricks that you do to get a better night's rest?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, glad you asked. Yeah, I have, looking at them right now, my reading glasses that are prescription, they are also blue light blocking glasses. But then I can't use my reading glasses to watch TV. I used to do that when I first got my glasses. And then I totally like screwed up my eyes and they had to like go. I had to not use my glasses for a little bit so they could adjust back. But now I have just regular probably $15, $20, actually like maybe $10 blue light blocking glasses, just non-prescription that I got on Amazon.

You just look at blue light blocking glasses. And so if I'm going to be watching TV past like 6 p.m., I will be wearing those blue light blocking glasses. If I'm on my phone past that time, if I'm on my computer past that time, which I not always am, I've got one of my two blue light blocking glasses on. So because for every minute that you are exposed to,

blue light, for every minute that you're staring into your phone, that you're staring at the TV at night, you're delaying the onset of melatonin two minutes. And that's from, I picked that up from Dr. Sean Stevenson. And he has this great podcast called The Model Health Show that I listen to a couple times a year. I don't listen to it all the time. But so it's really, so it's really important that if you're going to be staring at screens at night, that you have those, you're protecting yourself so that you don't delay that onset of melatonin, which of course is what gets you to sleep. I think it's also really important to also pay attention to the temperature of your room. So I think the suggested temperature is like 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeah. And that's because your body temperature decreases to initiate sleep. So that's why you really need like a cool room to help your body signal to your brain that it's time to go to bed. Yeah. And you're just helping your body. body get to that lower temperature. So Sean Stevenson, and I don't know what's right. You say between 60 and 67. 60 sounds a little cold, but 69 is what Sean Stevenson says. I think 67's great, too. I've heard that before. So I'll, you know, right before I go to bed, I walk out and bring the

thermostat down from 73 to 69 or 70. And then I wake, it is pretty cold in the morning. I'm not going to lie. It's really cold in the morning. When I get up to that. And then I just put it back at 73. I think something else to keep in mind is that, you know, sometimes I fall asleep with the lights on. And I do this a lot because I'm the type of person who just works, works, works, and then I just like pass out. And that's terrible for you. It is. Absolutely terrible because you need to get your body used to when it's time to sleep and dark signals it's time to sleep.

I would definitely suggest to no matter what try to turn off the lights at a consistent time every night. try not to fall asleep with the lights on. I have this friend, God bless her, who, you know, always complain about getting up in the middle of the night. And I'm trying to like diagnose this with her over like a period of a couple weeks. And she's like, then I find out she falls to sleep, falls to sleep with the TV on every night. And I'm like, duh. Like, what are you doing? You're literally stimulating cortisol, the awake hormone, the entire. night. Like, what are your blue light, this alien-like blue light is emanating from this gigantic TV onto you the entire night. Of course you're going to get up. And so what does she do? She tries

not going to sleep with the TV on and bam, it works like a charm. Like quick, easy fix. You know, my dad, you know, whenever we're, if we're on a vacation somewhere and, you know, we're traveling and I, uh, the rare times we end up having to like, share a room who'll like have the TV on and and I just I get he knows I get so mad. I'm like trying to go to sleep and the stupid TV is on and I cannot sleep with the TV on. I actually stopped. I used to like always go on trips with my friends and whatever and it's becoming harder and harder now because they all like to sleep with the TV on and I literally cannot fall.

I can't fall asleep if the TV is on. I just can't do it. Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe for you and I, too, it's more, we get a double dose. It's more than just the cortisol stimulating. It's also the fact that we just get worked up about it. Yeah. I get really worked up.

My heart starts beating and like, oh. And there's some obvious other things that you should do, like caffeine intake. Trying to reduce that caffeine intake. I think one cup of coffee a day, max, early in the morning when you first wake up. Max. I got something to say about that. I'm so glad you bring it up because, and everyone's body metabolizes caffeine differently, but the average, the half life for caffeine is six hours. So let's say, you know, you consume, and this is low, you know, you consume 140 milligrams of caffeine at, let's say, you have a, you know, you have a noon coffee, right? You know, at noon. And so six hours. later at 6 p.m., you still got 70 milligrams of caffeine buzzing around at your system. And then six hours later, at midnight, right? Midnight? Yeah, yeah, it's midnight. You then have

35 milligrams of caffeine still buzzing around when you should, you should well have been asleep for the past two hours. And, and yeah, you may, there's a difference between going to sleep and knocking out, passing out. You know, you can, you can very well go to sleep. Go to sleep. sleep at 10 o'clock with, you know, 45 milligrams of caffeine buzzing around in your system. You could very well knock out and, you know, no big deal. But you're not hitting all of your optimal, you know, sleep cycles. You know, there's different part. You're just really screwing up your sleep. And then you wake up the next morning and people wake up the next morning and they wonder, why do I feel so restless? I just got, you know, I just got eight hours of sleep. I feel restless.

Yeah. And it's not just coffee. It's also like, teas. For example, I had Yerba Mata for one of the first times the other day. I was wired. I was so wired. I didn't sleep until like three in the morning that night and I was like so screwed for the next day. You've got to be careful when me. Check out what things have caffeine. Even Tera Mousseau has espresso in it. And I always can't sleep if I have Taramisone. Yeah. Even even chocolate, you know, dark chocolate will have about about a quarter of the amount of caffeine as coffee does. So if I have any caffeine, it's at, you know, 9 a.m. and I'll have a little bit of dark chocolate.

And it's just such a marginal amount that, and it's just perfect. But, you know, as I was saying, you know, people wake up restless in the morning. And then they're like, I need, I need all the more caffeine. You know, I'll double. I got to have, you know, I got to have three cups of coffee. I got to have like 300 milligrams. And then, and so it's just this vicious, vicious cycle where you're always, tired and wired. Yep. All right. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode about sleep. If you're

interested to learn more, head over to episode number 12 featuring Dr. Daniel Gartenberg, where he talks a lot more about the things you can do to improve your sleep. This is Halle and Jordan, signing off. Peace.