099 Mollie McGlocklin: Sleep Is A Skill

The last few months I've realized how important sleep quality is for testosterone, and therefore energy, mood, strength, libido, and success in life. Mollie is the founder of Sleep is a Skill, a company and podcast that aims to optimize your sleep. She shares a wealth of info on sleep optimization.

Transcript

Anything we can be doing for our health and well-being,

Both physical and mental health,

Is to really prioritize this foundation of sleep.

Really what we're looking to do is to kind of create the environment that was just naturally present to us for thousands of years and really hunter-gatherer day.

Sleep is a skill in our modern society.

I certainly didn't know this when I couldn't sleep,

That our circadian rhythm exists on a spectrum and that you can either have a weak circadian rhythm or a strong circadian rhythm.

Weak circadian rhythm means like you're not that in sync with the sun.

One of the most impactful ways to improve our sleep quality is to become very,

Very connected to this light topic.

Even our organs need to have time to sleep,

Which is an interesting phenomenon.

How do we bring this back really to the basics of our sleep as it relates to how we were when we were hunter-gatherer days?

Today's guest is Mai McLaughlin.

Mai is the founder of Sleep is a Skill,

A company that helps people optimize sleep.

She also has an excellent podcast.

And I've gotten into this topic of sleep this year because from all of these different angles,

Actually from different guests we've had on the podcast,

Whether it's speaking about strength or the psychology of violence or libido and sexual energy or longevity,

This topic of sleep keeps coming up.

Quite a few guests have mentioned how important sleep is for all of these things,

Reaction time,

Sports performance,

Mental performance,

All of us,

Right?

It affects your hormones,

It affects testosterone,

Which is something we speak about quite a bit on this podcast.

So I had to know more about sleep.

I've known Molly for a few years.

I knew she had this company and this podcast.

I started checking it out and I had no idea there's so much to know about sleep,

Which is why I wanted to have her on the podcast to see if we could boil this down and take some of her knowledge.

And I mean,

She's done a lot of research for all of us who want to know how to sleep better but maybe don't want to spend all that time.

Fun fact,

I've known Molly for quite a few years.

Her fiancé Blake Eastman was one of my very first podcast guests like six or seven years ago.

If you go all the way back into my archives in the podcast,

However you listen to the show and look at some of the negative episodes,

Those negative episodes are from my old podcast Questions for People.

That was before I had the Ruano podcast.

That was a fun name,

Questions for People,

But it wasn't good for branding so we changed the name.

But it was one of my very first episodes.

I probably sound pretty nervous in those episodes but it was a fun one.

But I also know Molly because her and Blake ran an event space in New York City where Blake would hold his nonverbal classes,

Also poker classes.

And Molly helped run that space and in that space,

I actually held my very first men's event,

The Mask on Underground Symposium,

Which was recorded and asked the name of my Facebook group as well because of that event.

So I've known Molly for quite a few years and when she started this company on sleep a couple of years ago,

I started following it and only recently am I really appreciating the wealth of knowledge in sleep because it affects so many things.

There are so many things that we speak about here on the podcast.

One that it boils down to is the optimization of the production of testosterone,

Which affects so many things that affect our masculinity obviously on the physiological level.

Now on the psychological level,

If you do want to explore your testosterone expression,

You can check out the Mask on Archetype Challenge.

It's the program that I have.

It is a 21-day program with 21 missions and 21 lessons designed to help heighten your mask on archetype,

Which is the expression of testosterone in your psyche or in your life.

One of the things that we take advantage of is the Winter Effect,

Which is a psychological phenomenon or hormonal phenomenon actually where your actions can actually spike testosterone and the production of androgen receptors in your nervous system.

If you want to check that out,

You can go to ruwondo.

Com slash archetype.

And if you want to learn more about sleep as a skill,

You can go to sleepasaskill.

Com and I highly recommend Molly's podcast if you want to binge more on specific sleep topics that we couldn't get into in this episode.

But right now,

You're listening to episode 099.

This is the 99th episode,

99th interview of the Ruondo podcast and we have Molly McLachlan from Sleep as a Skill.

The Ruondo podcast is an exploration of the unconscious and the game of life.

Be sure to visit ruwondo.

Com to get a preview chapter of my upcoming book,

Infinite Play and free access to my content library.

Enjoy the show.

All right,

Molly McLachlan,

You did it.

We did it across the world,

Across time zones.

Yeah.

Last time I saw you was about a year ago,

Right?

Was it in Chiang Mai or about a year ago you were in Chiang Mai?

It was in Chiang Mai.

Yes,

Exactly.

We were in Chiang Mai around,

I want to say like November,

September,

November-ish.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really nice.

So you miss the cold weather.

I'm all bundled up for our one cold month.

Yes,

I totally get that.

Well,

I'm in Vegas for like the one cold month at the moment,

So I feel you.

I've been very dramatic about it.

There's blankets.

There's all kinds of things.

I hear it.

And you're in your bedroom,

Which we're going to talk about.

Yes,

We are.

Absolutely.

Cool.

So I think I saw that you're doing something with sleep a while ago.

I must have been on Instagram and I was like,

Oh,

That's cool.

I mean,

There's probably a lot of people with insomnia or something,

But I didn't think it applied to me at first because I was like,

I sleep fine.

I mean,

I don't think about it much,

But this year sleep has come up so many times.

Like I had a podcast guest who came on speaking about violence and he was saying like the best thing cops could do is get better sleep.

And then I had a strength coach on and said,

The best thing for your testosterone is get sleep,

Better sleep and like sleep,

Sleep,

Sleep keeps popping up.

So I finally started listening to your podcast and I had to find out because it seems to be the one thing that I haven't paid attention to in my life.

Sure.

So super excited to have you here.

Awesome.

Well,

I love that,

Um,

Through that kind of interesting path,

You've come to this place of exploring sleep,

Which I think is a really cool place to begin.

Um,

And I can share in that story with you because for me,

Sleep was not a focus at all in my life for many,

Many years.

It's part of the story and part of the creation of sleep as a skill is that for a big chunk of my life,

I was doing all of the things really not to do for your sleep.

Uh,

You know,

Time and time again,

Going to bed pretty much as the sun was rising,

Had a lot of labels for myself around sleep.

I thought I was a night owl,

A short sleeper,

A bad sleeper,

A,

All of these sort of things,

But just like label rich.

Right.

And,

But I still didn't think it was a big thing in my life of all the things to be conscious of it wasn't that until I went through a period of insomnia while traveling internationally.

And that was suddenly my levels of stress and anxiety and all that really manifested by not sleeping.

And it was not until that point that I had a whole new found relationship to sleep and understanding of what life looks like when you are not able or who have an experience where you can not control your sleep in the same way you might think of your ability to,

You know,

Just naturally do it.

And so now having gone through that and then seeing the other side of,

You know,

Now having sleep that I had never thought was possible for me,

If such consistency and length of sleep and normalcy to my sleep and all of those sorts of things that my life looks and feels so different.

So I'm very,

Uh,

Shouted from the rooftops about the difference.

And um,

But I think where you're standing is a fantastic place to begin because suddenly it's looking newly at this thing that had just seemed like banal for so long.

Yeah.

So for you as the catalyst,

It was traveling and like,

I guess time zone changes.

It definitely was.

That was,

Um,

I think the straw that broke the camel's back,

But really what was there.

And I think what happens for a lot of people when they are struggling with their sleep is,

Um,

Certainly not coming out of a vacuum like,

Oh,

Life is great.

And then suddenly I just can't sleep.

And it's things that we're doing that are kind of a mismanagement of our lives,

Of our stress levels and a number of things.

And so for me,

My example,

Um,

Was living in the middle of Manhattan,

Kind of like burning the candle,

Both ends and the cliche kind of entrepreneurial way.

Um,

Riding the waves of the financial insecurities around entrepreneurship,

The ups,

The downs all around.

And my stress,

How it was really manifesting was began to be going to bed later.

Um,

I was getting sick more often.

I wasn't kind of connecting all of these things that just my wellbeing,

My health and wellbeing was really,

Um,

Floundering or to say the least.

And then it was not until that tipping point.

Um,

When I went,

When I was began traveling and then really bringing the time zone changes into the mix,

Which I hadn't had a ton of experience with up until that point.

Um,

And then just having,

You know,

Days on,

On end of really just this inability to sleep,

Just the laying there,

Laying there.

And this continued for with,

You know,

Levels of different differing levels of severity,

Um,

For months until the end of the big element of this was that we were my,

Um,

Uh,

Boyfriend and I were actually setting up to travel for quite some time.

The plan was okay,

Like no return ticket.

Like this is the,

This is what's happening,

Telling all of these people about it.

This is the plan and actually having to return early because of the sleep problem.

Um,

So it was that big of a deal.

You told me you stopped your travels soon.

I didn't ask why.

Well,

Cause it's sort of an uncommon thing,

Right?

Why you couldn't sleep.

That's why you stopped.

Uh,

And it was a scary thing at the time.

Cause I was,

I was actually in the same cause when you're in it,

Looking back,

I can see,

You know,

It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

It's such a,

Um,

You know,

Kind of,

Uh,

The irony,

There's such a wake up call when you can't sleep because I had to really change so much about my life to,

Um,

Restore homeostasis and workability,

But it really took getting to that point.

And um,

Uh,

I'm so grateful on the other side of it really.

It's it was,

But yeah,

It was,

It was a wild ride,

Honestly.

Hmm.

Yeah.

That's the thing.

I mean,

I didn't think much about sleep until recently.

So I was like,

Wow,

So many things affect sleep and sleep affects so many things.

It's like this one like linchpin between it's like,

Yeah,

It's like the one thing to focus on if you want to go across the board and improve things.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I,

Um,

And I make,

It's almost kind of a controversial becoming less controversial,

But still somewhat controversial,

Uh,

Stamps that I really truly believe that out of anything we can be doing for our health and wellbeing,

Both,

Uh,

Physical and mental health is to really prioritize this foundation of sleep in our lives and starting there.

And then from there,

Cause you know,

Many of us were,

We go into the new years and we,

We joined the gym,

We get the nutritionists,

We do these things around health and wellbeing.

We take Epsom salt baths,

We,

Whatever we do for wellbeing.

And yet sleep has not been in the mainstream to be something that,

Yes,

I'm going to transform this this year,

What have you with that same type of energy.

And what's really interesting from a,

Um,

Uh,

From a results perspective is that when we do have that suffering of sleeps,

It's so insidious and it's effects of all those other things that we're saying we want to take on,

Whether it's,

Uh,

You know,

To,

To lose weight,

You know,

It's going to affect glucose levels,

For instance,

Of one element of the many things that it will impact if you have insufficient sleep.

So those,

The glucose levels will go up and it makes it more challenging for us to maintain consistent patterns of our blood sugar.

Uh,

If we are looking to build muscle,

That's gonna impact that testosterone,

Like you spoke to,

Uh,

So,

And then just from a motivation perspective,

When we are sleep deprived,

One of the first things that does tend to get cut is that early morning trip to the gym or,

You know,

The,

The mindfulness that we might have around the food choices that we're going to make those often can go out the window.

I know those are kind of smaller examples,

Um,

But you know,

Certainly compounded that can create a whole different type of life.

And then there's many,

Many longterm,

Um,

You know,

Effects that this can have from a physiological perspective,

But then also of course,

A psychological perspective,

Uh,

And adding to levels of stress and anxiety,

Inflammation,

Uh,

From a biometrics standpoint,

A raising of a heart rate,

A lowering of HRV,

Uh,

Often,

Um,

Instability and thermoregulation,

Just a number of things that kind of go awry if we don't pay attention to this area.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

Um,

Colonel Grossman,

Who was the guy who was on speaking about violence,

Who was saying that if you miss a night of sleep,

You're legally drunk the next day in terms of like coordination impairment.

I was like,

Whoa,

Okay.

I mean,

I've never thought of that on the nights that I've pulled all nighters,

But I guess maybe I could have seen that in the way I was driving or something like that.

It was kind of a big deal,

Like.

Kind of a definitely totally kind of a big deal for sure.

And just,

Uh,

The choices that we're going to make,

How we're going to show up,

How we're going to be with people from an interpersonal perspective.

Um,

But then from a results perspective,

You know,

Certain studies looking at people's,

Uh,

Responses to certain questionnaires after a night of sleep deprivation,

Uh,

You know,

The,

Their,

Their error rate tends to go up.

And then certainly this from a safety perspective can come about with driving with pilots,

With,

Um,

You know,

Just any sort of interaction that could have been machinery,

All of that.

Um,

But then just on our day-to-day stuff,

Even for the remote workers from home,

Uh,

Your cognitive abilities,

Your productivity,

I'll have certain,

Uh,

Clients.

I tend to attract a lot of,

Um,

Sort of like biohackers or tech heavy people.

And so they'll come out with all their stats of showing when they link up their poor nights of sleep with the aura ring or the whoop or bio strap or dream or whatever they might be tracking with.

And then some of their,

Uh,

Time trackers,

Just insufficient,

Uh,

Work results and work quality on following nights after sleep deprivation.

So,

You know,

Just lots of little,

Um,

Experiences of how this could,

Uh,

One have,

Uh,

Some negative results in our life,

But then on the flip side of it,

All the positive results that can come when we do really normalize and,

Um,

Optimize for this area.

Yeah.

If someone asks you about the trackers,

Cause I was very resistant.

I mean,

I have one now,

But I was very resistant because I guess I romanticized not using technology and stuff,

But I've already been wearing it for like three weeks or something.

And I've recognized like things I never really thought of.

Like I found out smoking pot is terrible for my sleep,

Even though it makes me fall asleep.

Like my sleep score is 10 points less,

Um,

On nights that I do it.

It's like,

I mean,

I guess I could have thought of that.

I do wake up tired.

Um,

But actually,

I mean,

One thing I was wondering is how much can,

I mean,

The score that these different devices give,

Have you found that it really is consistent between devices?

Can,

Can sleep really be quantified?

Yeah.

Great question.

Um,

And so that's the unfortunate truth is if you are tracking,

I really do have some of these clients that will be tracking and I've been one of them by the way.

Uh,

But,

Uh,

But certainly people that have been tracking on four or five different devices across the course of a night.

Um,

And then seeing certainly things that just do not align.

Um,

So,

But they're coming from within the standpoint that right now,

Um,

You know,

In 2020 and beyond,

Or certainly in 2020 at the moment,

The gold standard is the polysonogram for sleep.

Uh,

Now any of the trackers that are really on the market at the moment,

Certainly do not from a particularly sleep stages perspective.

So when any of these trackers that are on the hand or the wrist,

Um,

Are saying,

You know,

Deep sleep,

Light sleep,

REM sleep,

All this stuff,

Um,

It's their best guess.

So they're out of their algorithm of some of the things that we tend to know about are indicative of those stages.

Um,

But which is very different than the polysonogram and then being able to look at brainwave States and understand it's,

They're pretty distinct,

Um,

At least for understanding right now.

So,

So what I tell clients is to not pay too,

Too much attention,

Honestly,

Right now to the sleep stages,

Because some of them,

I mean,

When they've been compared in studies,

It's like a coin toss of their ability to tell these sleep stages,

But that doesn't mean that they are not useful.

And what I mean by that is that,

Um,

Some of the more advanced sleep trackers,

What they tend to be pretty good at,

And most of the trackers tend to be pretty good at is knowing,

Are you asleep or are you awake?

So they tend to get that pretty dialed in for the most part.

Um,

So,

So one,

It can be helpful with knowing of kind of just some of our basic stats of how much sleep are we getting the times and the consistency of that sleep,

How many wakeups are we having?

Um,

But then what I like is to look at some of these other trackers where they'll be pulling in some of your biometrics around your overall health and how your body is performing while you're sleeping.

Cause that can give us some insight to around the quality of sleep.

So if it's pulling,

Um,

Your HRV and,

Uh,

What your HRV is looking like throughout the course of the night and for people that are not familiar with HRV,

It's heart rate variability and just the time between,

Uh,

Heartbeats.

And essentially we're,

Uh,

It's our currently one of our gold standard readouts of the autonomic nervous system and kind of understanding the stress level of the body.

Um,

You know,

Which can be a number of things,

Not just mental stress,

But the physical stress,

Um,

Environmental stress,

If you got mold in your space,

If it's,

You know,

Dusty,

Uh,

Or,

But from a physiological perspective,

Have you been working out a ton?

Is your body kind of,

You know,

Worn down a bit?

Are you getting sick?

Um,

Are you eating certain foods that are not agreeing with your body and then your HRV is going down as a result?

Um,

A number of things.

And it's a really advanced,

Um,

Complicated metric.

Like you could take entire courses just on HRV.

So I'm kind of simplifying some of it.

It's not always,

You know,

Down is bad,

Quote unquote or up is good,

Quote unquote.

It's,

There is more,

There's certainly more nuances.

Um,

But so when you see some of like that readout,

That can be really helpful for understanding the quality of our sleep and our health,

As well as our heart rate throughout the course of the night and what that,

Um,

Arc looks like.

Additionally,

When we have some of the trackers that will pull temperature,

Uh,

Thermal regulation is really intimately connected with the quality of our sleep and our ability to get our,

Um,

Body temperature at a nice low point throughout the course of the night,

Particularly of course,

To,

Uh,

Lead into deep sleep and deep sleep is where we're going to benefit from things like growth hormone.

And if we're talking about,

You know,

Uh,

Weightlifting or just,

You know,

In general,

Um,

Being able to heal.

And if we're lucky looking at testosterone levels,

That tends to be that first half of the night in the deep sleep period.

Um,

So,

So if you're connected to that temperature element,

That can be really helpful also for women.

Um,

Not only are we mindful of circadian rhythm,

But we're mindful of,

Uh,

In freadian rhythm.

So cause we have a few,

You know,

We have this extra rhythm to be aware of,

Which is about a 28 day cycle.

And throughout the course of that,

There might be entire times,

Um,

You know,

So when we're going through,

For instance,

And this is for women of menstruating age,

Uh,

That are going through luteal phase,

Then we tend to see our body temperature up and elevated throughout the course of the time.

If you don't,

If you're not aware of that,

Then you might be concerned.

Am I getting sick?

Is there something wrong with my sleep,

My environment,

But when we're tuned into our rhythm,

Then we can know and to expect for that.

And then things to do behaviorally to prepare for that.

Another one is respiratory rate.

Now that can be really helpful with sleep.

Um,

Because I've actually had some clients that have been able to see that they were falling outside the normal bell curve for their respiratory rate.

And as a result,

Enough that it had them go to a sleep lab or some people have gotten the at home sleep labs,

Which certainly are even popping up more in popularity with COVID and kind of stay at home orders and all those sort of things.

So there's lots of ways that we can track a test to see if there's any sort of sleep apnea president,

Either mild,

Moderate or severe.

Uh,

And so from that place,

You can also then,

You know,

Treat that accordingly,

But some of these trackers can actually serve as a nice tip off to that being,

Um,

Something to be aware of.

Uh,

Another thing is even if you don't have sleep apnea,

Your respiratory rates might not be where you want them to be either from,

Uh,

Your health levels or if you're taking certain drugs.

Um,

So things like benzodiazepines,

Um,

Hypnotics,

And then certainly there's some other drugs that will,

Um,

Impact that.

And one of the most popular ones being alcohol,

Uh,

To shift and raise that respiratory rate,

Meaning the amount of breaths that you're taking per minute while you're sleeping.

And so naturally as much as,

Um,

Possible within a,

Within a healthy range,

We're looking to,

Uh,

Make that a bit easier and having slow the breathing while we're sleeping.

And also things like anxiety can raise that.

Um,

If you're,

You'll see that shift throughout the course of the time while you're tracking,

But all of those things together,

We can kind of put together this,

I think,

Fun puzzle.

This is my things that I'm into my levels of fun,

Uh,

To understand what's kind of going on with someone's sleep.

Gotcha.

Well,

I'm glad there's people like you think it's fun because I'm like,

Wow,

This is a lot of things to keep track of.

Fun puzzle,

I think.

Yes.

But I hear you.

Yes.

Absolutely.

So what's the tracking number,

Like the sleep score that most of these trackers,

They're basically taking all of these metrics and making an estimate.

Like there's some algorithm that comes up.

Yes.

Thank you for bringing us back to that.

So to answer your original question,

Um,

What we tend to currently do is stay within each tracker for the trends that each tracker is pulling for.

So depending on the tracker,

They might have,

For instance,

Different ways of pulling HRV.

There's a kind of different metrics that you can utilize with that,

Um,

Different source points.

There's different algorithms that they're using.

A lot of them are proprietary,

So we don't quite know exactly what those look like.

So the best course of action at the moment is really just to keep them,

Um,

Kind of gadget,

Uh,

Independent.

And so you're,

Uh,

Just looking at just your trends on one of those and not trying to cross reference too,

Too much.

Um,

And,

And looking to go for some trackers that have had some decent studies behind them,

Comparing them to polysonic groups so that you know that you're not working with something that's um,

Again,

That coin toss effect.

But in general,

If your score is going up,

That's probably a good thing,

Right?

Oh yes,

Of course.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes.

Um,

So the only reason I was saying the,

Um,

Looking within the gadget is that I've had some people that really start like,

You know,

Losing it,

Trying to compare,

But my whoop says this on my HRV,

But then my Orring says this and my Biostrap says this and my dream says that and dah,

Dah,

Dah.

Um,

You know,

So,

So one,

Um,

Ensuring that none of these,

Uh,

Things are impacting our,

Our wellbeing and that we're actually checking in and noticing the trends to your point.

Cause the trends are really what we're trying to look at.

Not a day to day basis because sleep will is dynamic and you'll have a great night one night and maybe an okay night the next night,

But we're looking for the overarching trends,

Um,

Particularly with those biomarkers.

So you start working out and people can be frustrated because they start working out their HRV stays the same,

Stays the same.

But if you come back in three months,

Then you and you're continuing to work out,

Then often you'll see this nice gradual,

Um,

Positive shift in your trends.

So absolutely.

Yeah.

The HRV is interesting.

I mean only the Orring tracks that tracks that right.

Like none of the bands do.

Um,

So whoop,

Um,

We'll track,

Uh,

HRV for you and um,

Yeah,

And a bio strap.

And uh,

So some,

And there's some other ones that are looking to come out with that.

Apple has a little bit of,

Um,

HRV,

But they kind of pull it in a different way.

So there's different ways that you can pull HRV.

Um,

So,

So,

And we do see,

Um,

Upcoming talk of certain gadgets having upgrades in the future that presumably we'll have some extra bells and whistles.

And even,

Um,

The Fitbit,

I believe,

Uh,

One of their newer ones,

Um,

Is pulling that too.

So we're going to start seeing a lot more of HRV for sure.

Cool.

Cool.

Yeah.

Cause I'm like,

It was a huge jump for me to wear a band.

Like I really don't want to wear like a ring.

Um,

But my girlfriend makes fun of me a lot because I never taken,

I always overtrain.

I never take enough rest days.

It'd be really good for me to have like a score.

Sure.

But,

Uh,

So about the gadgets,

Right?

There's so many sleep gadgets.

I had no idea how many sleep gadgets.

Um,

I,

You got your,

You got your blue light blockers,

Red light.

I want to ask you about that,

But it seems like overall,

Like all of these sleep gadgets are trying to get us back to living like cavemen.

I mean,

Is that,

Thank you.

Yes.

Oh,

You're so good.

I literally,

To your point around,

Um,

The,

The popularity around sleep in this year,

Particularly like,

You know,

You're hearing more about it for many people or in this health community and certainly with,

Um,

COVID,

Uh,

This year alone,

I've been on like 79 different podcasts on the topic of sleep.

That's how crazed,

Um,

You know,

So,

And difficult and unfortunate the sign of the times has been on,

Um,

You know,

People are really struggling with this area,

But few,

Uh,

Podcast hosts have so,

Uh,

Eloquently gotten to that point,

Which is really,

Despite the fact that we're talking about all this different tech,

Really what we're looking to do is to kind of create the environment that was just naturally present to us for thousands of years and really hunter gatherer days.

So absolutely.

So,

So actually it's a kind of random thing,

But I bought my girlfriend a teepee kind of as an inside joke.

I won't go into it,

But it was around the time I started listening to your podcast and I started sleeping in it.

I mean,

It's just like a tent in our front yard and,

Um,

It was before I had the band.

So I actually wasn't tracking my sleep,

But I think it's been,

I think I've slept better,

Uh,

In the tent versus not the tent,

But then I was thinking like with all of these gadgets,

I mean,

Do you recommend this to people if they can get out of the city and then just move on to a farm that'll actually just like solve everything?

Great question.

Yes.

So,

Um,

We,

There's certainly some pretty interesting studies that have looked at exactly that question and had groups of people,

Um,

Going into basically camping mode.

And so they took them out into the wilderness and then for an extended period of time,

They're just living on the rhythms of nature basically.

So being dependent on sunrise and sunset,

A little bit of fire.

But besides that,

What they would find is that even people that were self-proclaimed night owls,

Oh yeah,

I only go to bed past whatever,

Midnight,

All these things over time,

Their,

Um,

Their sleep latency improves from a perspective of moving back earlier and earlier,

Uh,

Their bedtime.

And it just sort of was this natural evolution that seemed to happen the same way,

You know,

You travel internationally and,

Um,

You have a little bit of jet lag,

You're a little funky for a few days,

But over time you just sort of naturally adjust to your destination spot.

And uh,

What we see for people when they live within the rhythms of nature,

Yeah,

It really takes care of a lot of the thinking of this.

Uh,

Because right now we're trying to hack something because we're so much of these indoor creatures where,

You know,

These zoo animals that have suddenly gone inside and,

You know,

Stats from,

Uh,

The world health organization in 2016 basically cited that the average person was staying inside about 90% of their day.

And that was 2016.

So it's likely post pandemic and all these things that the numbers are even higher of that percentage.

And the reason that relates to sleep is that so much of the environment would pull for these rhythms naturally.

So if we were to think back on hunter gatherer days,

Then you would,

For most of it,

We were living out within nature.

So many of us were sleeping much closer to the ground,

If not on the ground,

Uh,

Which is cooler.

And so that kind of,

That's almost the thinking or the thought around,

Say like a chili pad or a bed jet or an eight mattress,

All these like,

You know,

Fancy things we might bring into cool or sleep environment.

It's mimicking pretty much sleeping on the cold ground,

Essentially.

Uh,

So we're sleeping on the cold ground and the sun comes up and then,

So that light acts as the primary cue for our master clock,

Which is,

Uh,

Our super charismatic nucleus directly clinic connected to our eyes.

And that is taking in the influence around,

Um,

Of that light and then making meaning of that.

So if I stop with melatonin production shift over to cortisol,

But then not only when the sun is present,

Then of course,

When that's there,

Then what happened,

The environment,

Uh,

The temperature warms up in your space.

So then that was the secondary cue is that the temperature is now warmer.

So now,

And that impacts the peripheral clocks.

Um,

So basically within our,

Um,

Uh,

Virtually every cell within our skin has the,

The photo sensory lights elements so that it can take in light,

But it can also sense of course the temperature.

And that's another cue of what time it is.

So then you have only this extended period of time when light is present.

That's when you're doing all this activity,

Your body temperature is much higher.

You,

You know,

For most of the day,

You're not certainly not surfing on whatever,

You know,

You're not on your phone,

You're not on your laptop,

Just sitting sedentary for the most of it.

We're outside under that light and then active.

So then our body temperature would be nice and high throughout the day.

Um,

And then when the sun would set,

Then that would serve as kind of that final cue.

There's whenever sunsets,

There's that,

Um,

Presence of infrared light,

That pinky element to the sunset.

And that's another cue that tells us,

Right.

It's time for her to,

You know,

Um,

Begin the process of kind of winding down,

Cooling our body temperature.

All this was,

Um,

Happening naturally.

And then when darkness would be present,

Not only would,

Uh,

The,

The shift in that darkness produce more melatonin,

But then the temperature would be cooler because the sun's gone.

So then those two things together and we weren't,

We didn't have refrigeration.

So we weren't able to just like snack,

Which is another confusing huge,

The body of like,

If we're eating,

We must need energy.

We must be doing something.

Uh,

So,

So not having any of that present,

Just automated this process.

So you didn't have to think about it.

Now we want to kind of have our cake and eat it to have technology,

Have,

You know,

Temperature controlled spaces or whatever we want.

Um,

But then how can we kind of marry the two so that,

Uh,

This is more automated,

So we don't have to struggle with our sleep so much.

Yeah.

It's just really ironic,

Like looking at humanity,

Like the industrial revolution brought us into cities and messed up our sleep.

But then what comes,

What has come from that,

Which is like laptop lifestyles is really the only thing that allows you to return to nature.

I mean,

Unless you,

I mean,

Unless you're just really rich and don't have to work,

Like,

It's funny,

But the thing that,

You know,

Like you and I make our income off of our,

Like our screens that,

That mess up our sleep.

So it's like,

How do you,

Very confusing thing.

Yeah.

It's very paradoxical because,

You know,

I'm standing here and saying like,

Oh,

Okay.

So sleep is a skill in our modern society.

It really didn't used to be a particularly much of a skill because for thousands of years it was just sort of,

That was kind of something that was pretty much handled or you know,

There's other stressors that impacted sleep.

Certainly if you're under attack,

All kinds of other things that,

You know,

Wasn't all fairies and you know,

They certainly didn't have comfy mattresses and all the things that we also take for granted now.

But but certainly the strength,

This is the important part,

The strength of their circadian rhythm during that period,

Which can exist.

I certainly didn't know this when I couldn't sleep,

That our circadian rhythm exists on a spectrum and that you can either have a weak circadian rhythm or a strong circadian rhythm.

And,

You know,

So I'm standing here making the argument that many of us certainly in modern society are most likely falling somewhere closer to that weak circadian rhythm.

So all of this is to try to strengthen that,

But yes,

Still be able to have our tech and you know.

Weak circadian rhythm means like you're not that in sync with the sun.

Is that?

Yes,

Exactly.

That's really all that means.

So if our circadian rhythm is this 24 hour rhythm and and essentially as diurnal creatures,

We're meant to be active during the day and at rest at night.

So then if your circadian rhythm is kind of out of whack,

So an example of that would certainly be like shift workers.

And that's why they're listed as a possible carcinogenic working as a shift worker by the World Health Organization.

Cause it's so seems to be damaging to your health and well-being to be out of that sync.

Then when you are out of that sync,

Then what what's challenging about that is now certain times that would be so linked up like in the camping example,

It's so clear like you're outside.

It's so bright,

You know,

You're out in the elements and then when it's dark,

It is dark,

Like you can't see a thing.

And that's kind of just like,

There's no question about it.

Whereas in how many of us are living and using myself as an example,

I used to wake up late.

I would be like tired,

Zombie dragging.

I would not even want to put on much of the lights.

I might have a headache or something and then it's not until later on.

I get some coffee,

Whatever.

I'm like dragging around.

And then by the time I'm finally kind of like coming to,

Then it's time to turn on all the lights in the environment and then shift over into evening.

But now it's as bright as can be.

So it's mismatching for our cues that we're trying to create because the reason these cues are so important is when these cues are present,

There's the body is really trying to stay like an organized well-oiled machine.

And what it's meant to do is during the daytime hours is having certain amounts of cortisol release,

Certain hormones are present so that we can take on our day,

Have the energy that we need.

And then shifting into the evening,

It's really automated when you're in tune with that.

So when you have that strong circadian rhythm,

Your heart rate starting to go down in the evening,

The activity in your brain is starting to kind of just dim and you're just chilling out and it just all kind of works that way.

And then melatonin is present and then you're able to kind of relax and drift out to sleep.

But for many of us,

It doesn't quite look like that and there's much more bleeding into,

There's a question of the clear divide of day and night.

Yeah,

It's interesting because a lot of ancient schools of thought like Ayurveda or Chinese medicine,

They have pretty strict prescriptions of an hour before midnight is worth two hours of sleep afterwards or something like that.

They have all these dogmatic sayings which are kind of being confirmed now by science like many thousands of years later.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Well,

It's really interesting stuff.

So a couple of the things that has made even before COVID sleep come up more and more in kind of articles and a talking point was one,

In 2017,

The Nobel Prize had gone to three guys around understanding circadian rhythm and kind of its importance.

And so getting some attention onto our understanding of that from a chronobiology perspective.

And then the second one that was really important was beginning to have more and more of a mass conversation around something that was kind of discovered fairly recently around glymphatic drainage.

And so some of us might be familiar with lymphatic drainage,

Nice massages and what have you,

But glymphatic drainage is basically the cleaning out of the brain during sleep and particularly during deep sleep.

And the reason that that's important is that every single day we're just as a process of living,

Doing the things that we got to do,

We're building up basically toxins in our brain and they,

But the washed out process,

Like the janitorial process,

Like that happens if you use a building as an analogy,

Every night the janitors might come in and clean and we don't think much of it and you just come back and everything's like sparkling and clean.

Well,

The brain really is looking to do the same thing while we're sleeping.

But what happens is when that doesn't occur,

When we're not setting ourselves up for optimal deep sleep,

Which is in the first half of the night and particularly tends to favor some of those earlier times,

Like you were speaking to in the Ayurvedic element,

Then the challenge can be that we're not basically super soaking our brain as much with this kind of glymphatic process.

So then the problem seems to be a link up between Parkinson's,

Alzheimer's,

Dementia.

So it's some of these neurodegenerative diseases because we see some comparison of something called amyloid beta plaques.

They're just these plaques,

Hardened plaques that kind of accumulate on the brain and then it really disrupts with some of our neurological functioning.

So it seems to be a really correlation that looks pretty clear or something we want to be really mindful of that to facilitate that deep sleep.

But if we are having variable sleep schedules like many of us do nowadays and we're going to bed later some nights,

When you go to bed later,

The body still tries to keep that sleep architecture fairly consistent.

So when you do that,

You might be lobbing off some of that deep sleep potential that would have been present if you were going to bed a bit earlier.

Same is true on the flip side.

If say you need to get up early or you've just happened to wake up and you're up,

Then that can lob off some of the REM state.

So rapid eye movement that tends to happen on the later half of the night.

So either way,

It's how can we begin to prioritize the consistency of these sleep schedules so that we're not impacting those.

And to your point,

Some of this is very ancient and has been talked about for quite some time.

So if you sleep too late,

You're basically cutting into your brain janitor's work schedule.

Yes,

Pretty much.

And then that's the problem.

Yeah,

It's good to know because that brain janitor so far kind of like the same concerning part of like,

You might have relatives or people that you know with things like Parkinson's,

Alzheimer's,

Dementia.

And the challenge is that it's difficult to go backwards.

How do you remove that plaque versus preventative and actually facilitate that happening every single day versus that buildup because we don't quite know how to remove it now.

You have lots of other theories,

But it's much harder to do that than it is to prevent it.

Actually,

Have you heard of,

Are you familiar with Montauk Chia?

Have you heard of him?

Not really,

No.

He's got this like healing resort out of Chiang Mai,

But he's got this dark room retreat where you basically live in pitch black for three weeks or one to three weeks.

And it's supposed to like have this like crazy healing effects because you actually sleep,

People end up sleeping 12 hours a day because there's no light.

I was wondering if you come across things like that,

Like total dark room.

Yeah.

So I love that you're saying that.

So one,

There's a great book called Chasing the Sun that I highly recommend that does really in-depth looks at understanding both the power of the sun for our health and wellbeing,

Vitamin D perspective,

But also mood,

Sleep,

Circadian rhythm.

And then on the flip side of the sun,

Of course,

Is darkness and the importance of cultivating that.

And so they've looked at certain studies where they've gone to great lengths to remove any signs of the time within there to see what will happen for people in darkness around their sleep.

And they do find,

So in some of these studies anyway,

Like one pointed to that,

To your point,

Certainly with almost this effect of sleeping quite like augmented sleep for quite some time.

But then over time,

If given enough time to be in there,

Then we seem to still find a rhythm even within there.

It's less clear certainly than if we were to have a bright sun and then darkness,

But we do start to then have some sort of counter on the rhythm.

This rhythm is so important to the body's function because even our organs need to have times to sleep,

Which is an interesting phenomenon.

Like the pancreas needs to kind of sleep,

Quote unquote,

At certain times throughout the night or day,

Depending on the part of the body that needs to just kind of have some off time.

But so when you have some of these extra special situations where you're say in total darkness,

Yeah,

It will certainly impact things.

People that have become blind experience different difficulties around their sleep or changes.

So because light,

And this is if people get nothing out of what I'm saying on any of this,

One I'd certainly leave it that one of the most impactful ways to improve our sleep quality is to become very,

Very connected to this light topic because it's the top on one of the main frameworks that we kind of stand in with sleep as a skill is circadian rhythm entrainment,

Which is something that you can look in a chronobiology textbook or what have you.

And the first most important thing is light.

So from a routine perspective,

One of the things that we want to do is to start cultivating lots of light during the day,

But particularly during the first beginning of your morning.

So Dan Pardee is a great sleep researcher that had popularized something called sunlight anchoring.

And you want to anchor the timing of when you're exposed to the sun first thing so that you basically wake up,

You're exposed to that.

And that ceases any of that leftover production of melatonin and shifts you into cortisol to kind of take on the day,

But that also has a real seemingly formula to when you're going to get sleepy later.

So you can use that strategically,

Whether it's jet lag and,

Or you're trying to stave off jet lag,

You know,

You need to stay up later for a certain thing,

Or I work with certain poker players and they might have tournaments.

And so needing to help ensure that they're more cognitively alert later and can not be,

You know,

Kind of drowsy,

Then we can strategically then expose them to light later on in the day.

So you can swing this to however you want to swing that pendulum of your,

Your sleep.

But it very is very much is dependent on that light first.

Can you speak on,

You mentioned,

I mean,

Circadian rhythm,

But then there's infradian and then ultradian.

Could you explain what that is?

I saw that in your podcast list and I was like,

I don't know what that word means.

Yes.

So looking at some of these different rhythms,

Essentially,

Ultradian is pulling in some of these other rhythms that we want to be present of.

So for instance,

If we're looking at the season elements of things,

So seasons are going to be particularly important too,

For our health and wellbeing and understanding that at certain parts of our of certain parts of our year.

So for instance,

This is very present right now for people with sleep is that in the winter months,

And I get this question a lot because people are now saying,

Particularly,

You know,

I'm in America right now.

And what we'll see for people is that the sun is setting around four 30 five,

You know,

Depending on where you might be.

And then suddenly they're,

They're trying to maintain this awareness of sunrise,

Sunset,

The light,

The dark,

All these sorts of things.

But then what do you do?

So essentially what we're trying to do is allow for more time for sleep in the,

In those different types of seasons.

So what's important during that period of shoot,

I'm losing light during what's important during that period is you want to actually be mindful of what how can you cultivate more sleep during these different types of seasons?

Also shifting your types of foods that you're eating during that and having the more kind of connected going back exactly to what you said before,

Around this question around how do we bring this back really to the basics of our sleep as it relates to how we were when we were,

You know,

Hunter gatherer days.

So essentially,

Like the foods that we're eating,

We want to have those mimic the same seasons that we would because it's also on a microbiome level.

So the microbiome is even kind of having this presence and that's acting as yet another cue to those rhythms.

So it's basically getting connected to all of those things.

And also further on the rhythms topic,

It's getting connected to moonlight rhythms.

So those are even some of those things that will impact from certainly for women that used to be actually one of the things that I mean,

If you really want to get out on because some of these topics get a little out there,

But you know,

Even just that used to be one of the things that there was an argument that women were much more linked up in some of their menstruation because of the lunar cycle,

Essentially.

So then that light would be present and that light would influence the times that people would be up a little bit later.

And there's actually the root element of the word lunatic comes from lunar.

So all of those rhythms were basically trying to be present if that makes sense.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean,

As far as like astrological ish things like the moon stuff is the only thing.

I mean,

There's data that there's more murders and car crashes on full moon nights.

And it makes sense if all the women in the world are ovulating,

They might as well have a little more light to procreate.

I mean,

It just makes a lot of sense.

It certainly does.

Yeah.

You know,

And also so going back to,

You know,

This topic of how intricately intimately connected we are to light.

So if we had for thousands of years been really evolved from a perspective of when the sun would set beyond maybe just some fire,

Which is very warm,

Like rich of light.

So beyond that,

We weren't really exposed to much other light besides the moon.

And the moon can put out a low lux output.

And it's similar to,

So one of the recommendations,

And this is a crazy thing,

Is that even some of the key studies and advisors for NASA,

For astronauts of how to maintain their circadian rhythm while in space,

Because the sun is basically rising and setting every about 90 minutes for them,

Depending on the,

You know,

Shuttle or the arc of the placement of the shuttle.

But essentially,

To how do you maintain this 24 hour schedule if the sun is rising and setting every 90 minutes?

Well,

One of the suggestions,

Of course,

You can't mimic this in a shuttle,

But outside of that is candlelight.

And the reason being is that it's such a low lux output.

And it's almost reminiscent of if anything else would be moonlight.

So we're trying to mimic that.

And so of course,

Astronauts can't necessarily have candlelight in space,

But what they can have is dynamic lighting.

And so they'd go to great lengths to really ensure that that's kept super,

Super on schedule.

That dynamic lighting versus static lighting.

And static lighting is what many of us kind of have going on in our,

You know,

In our little apartment or hunkered down for COVID or on lockdown or whatever life might look like.

And we might just kind of have the same type of lights on throughout the most of the day.

And then you go to bed and you just sort of turn those off like shortly before.

And that's so quote unquote static lighting can be really detrimental for our melatonin production.

So when they'll measure melatonin,

I'm actually just in the process of measuring my cortisol and melatonin for a couple of different companies to get a sense of,

You know,

Just the arc of that throughout the course of the day.

But you know,

That's something you can very,

It's very measurable.

And we see that it's very much influenced just by that one element,

Even forgetting the temperature thing.

And you check that by blood or saliva or how's?

Yeah,

So that one right now for me,

So I have biohazard bags in my refrigerator right now of little vials of saliva.

So you're spitting into that throughout the course of the day.

So but then you could also do one popular one is called the Dutch test.

And that one is basically a dried urine analysis test.

And so basically you pee on a stick a bunch of times throughout the day to see the arc of your cortisol and seeing,

You know,

Certainly for me when I wasn't sleeping,

My cortisol was going up closer to bed,

Which is the exact opposite of what you want to do.

And so,

You know,

Kind of good luck sleeping if your cortisol is going up right around then.

So we're trying to optimize for that,

But yeah,

There's,

And there's certainly a lot of different companies that are coming out to help make this testing element of things a bit easier.

And then also gamified.

So then you test once,

But then you start bringing in different behavioral changes or environmental changes then measure again and then see what your what the difference can be in a couple months later.

Gotcha.

So as far as like things for a person to do,

I'm sure there's,

And there's so many,

And I'm sure that it's,

I'm sure you customize to a certain degree for every client,

But what do you do,

Especially as a business owner?

It seems that the number one thing that kills sleep,

If you work for yourself is,

Is like the productivity thing,

Right?

Like a lot of work is if you have an online business is on the screen,

Maybe you work late at night,

Whatever.

So I see you're in a red room right now.

Could you share like what your lifestyle is like for now?

Yes.

Great question.

So I will say for me this actually ended up in a lot of ways not to be cheesy,

But setting me free from my obsessive ways as a entrepreneur,

Because what what this brought for me was a bit of balance to my life,

I guess you could say.

So what I mean by that in practicality is that really aiming to make my days almost like the Amish,

You know,

So you're like,

You have only a certain number of hours of sunlight and then so you're kind of working and that's like the ultimate productivity hack because you know that you don't have all day,

Which used to be how I would think of my,

My days that I could work all day until the night and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And yet this way I'm looking to mainly get the bulk of my things done before sunset.

And of course there might be situations where,

You know,

You're still kind of spilling over into post sunset.

And so,

So with that one,

We want to control the light element of things.

So I use things like Iris is a nice tool on your laptop and it will change your laptop to all red.

And you know,

That's in the nighttime,

So it makes you'd be surprised how infinitely less fun your computer is when it's all red.

And so the excitatory dopamine hits that come from blue light which are,

You know,

Certainly studied of that effect and the kind of addicted effects that you know,

The blues and greens have for us is not present with that.

So you can use that,

But you can also,

So one of the ways that I try to speak about it being like day mode and night mode.

So for night mode,

Well first for day mode,

You're in kind of,

That's your active period throughout the time,

Throughout the day.

Also taking on like cognitively heavy loads.

So also those things that might be stressing us out,

Training ourselves to either handle it,

Think about it,

Take actions on those things that we might be ruminating on previously and you know,

While we're laying in bed or what have you,

We're taking action during the day,

But then aiming to really start from a path Lothian perspective,

Training ourselves that when darkness is present that basically that's becomes the time for kind of like rest and relaxation.

Another cue for that,

And I think probably one of the other things that's out of the norm that we'll do is one,

Certainly queuing up when the sun's setting,

Say putting on the blue blockers and really shifting over the lighting in the space to,

You know,

Red light or candles or what have you,

Very dim.

And so that kind of takes care of it in a lot of ways because your physiology then is now being guided by the environment.

And so I'll track things like my HRV,

Like I have one gadget called the leaf.

So it's basically like right over my heart throughout the course of the day.

And I'll notice too,

How you know,

When I'm really queued up on these things that in the evening that my heart rate is coming down nicely,

But that also is facilitated by meal timing,

Which meal time is a really interesting one for circadian rhythm and for that process.

So we'll try to aim to end our last meal nice and early.

So what that looks like,

I like early time restrictive feeding,

Which really has you ending your last meal around pretty aggressively early.

It's probably not practical for a lot of people,

But it's like two,

Three,

Three thirty four rounds throughout that time zone.

But for the more a bit livable approach would be like the five or six.

And the reason that that's important is that again,

Since that glucose acts on a circadian rhythm,

Then you're not having some of the extra spiking that can happen because the body's ability to kind of handle that later on in the evening can be a challenge.

And so during that period,

You can essentially shift over to having a more stabilized blood sugar if you're moving your meal timing earlier.

So we look to do that and then that kind of helps with the fasting.

So then the evenings then really look much more like relaxing.

You know,

The lights are present,

Then lowering of the temperature in the space.

And then also being mindful of something that we refer to as thought timing.

So certainly just from a pragmatic perspective that obviously we're not putting on like horror movies or something,

Thrillers,

All that sort of stuff that might be a little charge.

But the thing that's on the thought timing thing that I think is really interesting,

There's one gadget called EBBB and that one will cool your prefrontal cortex and essentially yeah,

So you strap it to your head.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And one of the reasons I'm not saying everyone needs to get the EBBB or anything,

But I often referenced that one because they have some interesting clinical trials around the efficacy of that from a perspective that chronic insomniacs tend to have trouble regulating,

Or they'll find that the brain matter being a bit warmer than someone that's able to easily fall asleep.

And so the thinking of that is that just with that overactivity in the brain,

That it's a mismatch for being able to kind of rest,

You know,

Go off into sleep.

So it's really,

I think very interesting because it helps you,

Or at least certainly I think it can lend to giving more reverence or respect for the effects on a physiological level to our thoughts and just how they can actually heat us up or cool us down.

So being mindful of those and so there's other processes that you can certainly bring into your evening to kind of cultivate lighter type of thoughts.

That's really fascinating.

It's like you could actually chill your thoughts.

Like you can literally chill on your brain.

Oh my God,

No one has said it like that,

But yes,

Actually chill your thoughts.

Exactly.

And I think what's really helpful that there's other gadgets like the Muse headband is meant to be like a group guru in your pocket is kind of they're saying that's supposed to when you're meditating,

Kind of guide you back.

If you've gone off course it's kind of,

You know,

Nudge you back,

But it's doing it from a perspective on your brain.

So it's basically reading the elements of where your brain activity is at and then helping to kind of calm that down.

And only actually just like last week,

I want to say they just released their sleep tracking element of that.

They're in the midst of some different trials to start comparing their stats to polysonogram.

So that's,

And so I think we're really on the precipice of,

You know,

Harkening back to your kind of original,

Some of your original questions around these sleep trackers.

I do foresee that some of these in the future will have more accuracy and you know,

As it relates to where is our brain at from a kind of Hertz output and one tracking that before bed because it's really challenging to go into that dream state to unconscious really kind of state of sleep if you're all activated.

So we can help train that.

Yeah.

I mean,

This is my last question.

Actually,

It's funny.

It's reminding me like I used to be really into traditional martial arts and there's this like a guru guy that used to follow who taught like Filipino weapons fighting and he would put his hand on someone's head and if their forehead was too hot,

He wouldn't train them.

So it's probably like your mind is scattered.

It seems like such bullshit.

That's so interesting.

Wow.

I've never heard that,

But that certainly is in alignment with this and the fact that there's,

You know,

That they've gone through the process of these studies to kind of validate,

You know,

The findings of that.

That's,

You know,

That seems like kind of that back to that ancient wisdom,

If you will.

Yeah.

Cool.

So last question I actually meant to ask you this earlier,

But so when I did a,

I was in school and I did have trouble sleeping in my life.

I've had periods of insomnia.

It's always been from thinking too much,

Which we're talking about now.

Is there any,

Besides chilling your brain,

Literally,

Is there,

Is,

I mean,

I'd imagine this is probably a big topic that comes up with people who can't sleep.

Like do you have any mindfulness tips or like is this,

This become a big part of the sleep packing process?

Yeah.

So one of the things that,

Um,

So what I like to do with people is more address the days first from a perspective of,

Um,

Because one of the things that can be challenging is if we're setting up our whole day in a way that's off a line,

It's out of alignment with those rhythms that we're speaking to that kind of,

If we do live in alignment with those two,

As much as possible,

Obviously we're not all gonna,

Like we said,

Move off into the woods or something,

But within our day to day life,

Um,

Live within alignment,

Those rhythms,

A lot of this gets taken care of in the activity of the brain tends to calm.

You know,

I'll see this for myself.

I'll still,

No matter I'm doing,

I'm talking about sleep day in,

Day out and I'll still,

There'll be certain nights where,

Oh,

Let me just finish this one email or something.

And then,

Uh,

The correlation between those type of nights and then my,

Uh,

Difficulty with sleep latency versus all the other one I know to do all the things,

It just sort of happens naturally.

Um,

So,

And so the reason I say this is that it can help with,

Um,

When we are in those hyper aroused state and we,

You know,

Might be ruminating or stressing a little bit more than we might normally,

If we,

Uh,

Don't think about it until we get into bed,

Then we can often be kind of set up in a way that's not as powerful as it could be.

So if we end,

It can also add to that stress level.

Cause then it's like,

Okay,

Will myself to sleep,

Make myself fall asleep,

Like,

And then whenever we put that sort of pressure,

It's like that Chinese finger trap.

And you're kind of just like stuck in there.

And the harder you try to fall asleep,

Then the more stuck you are.

Um,

And yet what tends to,

If,

If we first address all of those other things,

Right.

And then we've got them outside first thing in the morning,

Getting that morning sunlight there,

You know,

Um,

Active throughout the day,

They've got the body temperature up,

Their exercises moved to earlier in the day.

We might have them doing things like cold therapy,

Heat therapy,

Like saunas,

Um,

Uh,

You know,

Certain types of foods that they're eating,

The meal timing,

Uh,

All of these things.

Right.

Um,

And then if they're still having some of those troubles before bed,

Um,

And,

And this can certainly be in alignment.

We want to set up,

Um,

Within a few hours before the bedtime.

And also this depends on the level of stress that many people are under.

We need a little bit more time to kind of wind down,

Um,

You know,

So kind of,

You know,

Situationally dependent,

Um,

But really setting up those powerful end,

Um,

Uh,

Routines or rituals to our day can be super,

Super effective.

And there's decent studies where almost the same way with sleep training for kids,

Um,

Or,

You know,

Babies or what have you,

We have lots of cues.

So okay.

Now we like,

We sing the lullaby,

We do the petting,

We do the lights or,

You know,

All these things I clear,

I do not work with kids or do any of those sort of things in case that wasn't,

Um,

Obvious.

But so we do,

But we do the same thing for adults.

Now the other thing that's really important is,

Uh,

Breathing.

And uh,

So from that perspective,

Again,

Since I have kind of a nerdy,

Uh,

Edge to my content that I don't get too,

Too much into the meditation,

Which can be so valuable,

But I bring it in from a,

Um,

Literal perspective where you can actually watch the impact.

And for some people,

I think just the why can help them.

Uh,

When we see if you're,

If you're watching your heart rate,

When we do some of these,

Um,

Breath work.

So a really easy one is like box breathing.

Um,

You know,

So like the,

And a lot of Navy seals,

Uh,

Or we'll speak to just being able to utilize this cause it's both easy and visual.

So you're kind of visualizing.

So one of the examples is like four,

Four,

Four.

So breathing in for four,

You trace the side of the box,

Holding for four,

You trace the top of the box,

Breathe out for four,

Trace the side of the box,

Hold for four,

Trace the bottom of the box,

And then you just keep doing it.

Um,

And the whole point of that is that if we're slowing,

Um,

The breathing,

Extending the out breath,

Then that lowers the heart rate.

So for certainly like my more nerdy folks that want to be able to see,

Okay,

What really happens is it's just like,

Woo,

Woo,

Just breathing.

Or can I actually see an effect?

You can totally see an effect,

Uh,

Which I think can be really empowering because then you can sort of see,

Wait a minute,

If I shift my breath and extend that out breath,

Then I can literally watch the heart rate go down.

Cause again,

The out breath is when our heart rate goes down and the in breath is when our heart rate goes up.

So you're wanting to try to extend that.

So some great resources for that are,

Um,

Uh,

Breath,

Um,

Uh,

The book by,

Uh,

James Nestor or,

Uh,

The oxygen advantage.

Uh,

So a couple of those are kind of good starting places to kind of learn some of these habits because certainly for going into an anxious state or cortisol levels are a little heightened or what have you,

The breath can be a nice antidote to that.

And then another thing we can do is,

Um,

And that has some studies behind it is,

Uh,

Gratitude.

And that,

Again,

I don't know if that can land,

Certainly the old me that like,

Okay,

Give me the goods would say that gratitude.

Oh my God.

Uh,

There's some decent studies from positive psychology of the impact of that as a nightly ritual and then to be able to help augment sleep time.

So I've been doing a daily practice where every day I email I'm on date like 2,

200 and something of daily gratitude emails to friends and family,

And just kind of help stay accountable and doing that process each night.

And then I'll do it,

Um,

With my boyfriend at the end of the night.

And it kind of can help kind of shift the,

Or reframe your day and going into your night into a positive space.

Yeah.

It'd be really interesting if these bands could like give you a gratitude score.

It's like,

Oh,

You're only 82% gratitude grateful today.

I love that.

Who knows?

It doesn't seem that crazy.

Um,

No,

It doesn't.

Cool.

Well,

Molly,

Thank you so much.

I mean,

So much great information.

I'm definitely gonna recommend.

I've been recommending your podcast to people because sleep is so important.

I had no idea.

There's so much to sleep.

I'm really glad that there's one place I could find everything.

Cool.

I'll share,

I'll share more about my,

My tent experiment.

Maybe like,

Yes,

I love it.

Absolutely.

Please keep it coming.

That stuff is so cool.

And the more we can have kind of fun with it and be experimenting with it versus for many of us,

You know,

If we're not experimenting or playing,

Then it might be resignation or a sense that we can't make a difference with it or what have you.

And,

Um,

What you're demonstrating is so wonderful because it's,

There's so much we can continue.

It's dynamic.

It's really changing in our life.

So,

Um,

What can we do to make a difference with it?

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well,

Thanks.

Well,

Thank you.

I appreciate the time.

What's your favorite crime?

Thank you.