WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.440
Here's the problem with magnesium supplementation when it comes to sleep.

2
00:00:03.440 --> 00:00:07.520
The first thing to note is that most forms of magnesium don't cross the blood brain barrier

3
00:00:07.520 --> 00:00:13.200
and sleep is produced by your brain, so how can something that doesn't get into your brain affect

4
00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:16.560
brain process? All you're doing is creating probably expensive urine.

5
00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:23.040
However, there is one form of magnesium that seems to have some evidence in favor of it,

6
00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:27.280
which we can speak about, but it doesn't stop there. There's so much new evidence that we have,

7
00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:31.760
including this myth of eight hours, my fear about giving a melatonin to kids,

8
00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:37.040
why you keep waking up in the middle of the night, and the invention of the first new class

9
00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:40.720
of sleeping medication that I actually favor, and most people are not aware of it.

10
00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:47.280
Matthew Walker is back, and the world-renowned sleep expert and neuroscience professor

11
00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:52.320
is sharing brand new research to combat the sleep loss epidemic and help you get the perfect night's

12
00:00:53.280 --> 00:00:56.800
sleep. It's a society. We have struggles with sleep at night due to many reasons,

13
00:00:56.800 --> 00:01:02.160
but no one teaches us this stuff, and it's things like, so you go to bed at 11, one night,

14
00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:07.520
one a.m., the next night, then 10, 30 p.m., the next night, and it's remarkable how many people do this.

15
00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:12.880
Look, studies have shown that you are statistically 49% more likely to prematurely die,

16
00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:17.200
versus those people who were most regular in terms of going to bed and waking up at the same time,

17
00:01:17.200 --> 00:01:22.880
and worse, they had a 57% cardio-metabolic disease risk increase.

18
00:01:22.880 --> 00:01:26.320
What the? Science really teaches us that there are four pillars of good sleep,

19
00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:30.880
and then there's this incredible new study looking at sleep banking, and this is remarkable for

20
00:01:30.880 --> 00:01:35.040
people who are facing a sprint at work or a medical doctor about to go on call for the next 40

21
00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:39.680
hours, new parents, and we can go through all of that. But if you were to push me to say the three

22
00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:44.400
most impactful things that you can start doing tonight to start sleeping better, it would be...

23
00:01:47.360 --> 00:01:54.560
Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you

24
00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:58.560
for listening and tuning into the show, week after week, means the world to all of us, and this

25
00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:02.880
really is a dream that we absolutely never had, and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

26
00:02:03.440 --> 00:02:07.200
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

27
00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:12.160
And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this broadcast

28
00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:17.520
regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do

29
00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:22.640
everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to

30
00:02:22.640 --> 00:02:26.800
deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the

31
00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:36.480
things you love about this show. Thank you. Dr. Matthew Walker. Here in front of me, I have

32
00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:41.360
these cards, which I'm going to reveal a bit later, but these kind of hold what you consider to

33
00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:48.160
be the four pillars of great sleep. But you also spend much of your professional career just studying

34
00:02:48.160 --> 00:02:53.920
the brain generally to understand human performance and how we can change our lifestyles and also

35
00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:58.320
introduce some of these new sort of treatments to improve how our brain performs. I want to talk

36
00:02:58.320 --> 00:03:03.040
about all of that as well. But to start, for anyone that is unfamiliar with you and has been hiding

37
00:03:03.040 --> 00:03:10.480
under a rock, how do you summarize who you are professionally, the sort of academic references

38
00:03:10.480 --> 00:03:15.440
you're drawing on and the experiences and research you've done so that the viewer listening at home

39
00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:20.960
understands the full world that you operate in study and have experienced.

40
00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:27.040
I am in your scientist by trade, but my specialty is sleep, the effects of sleep on the brain

41
00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:32.400
and the body. And I've probably spent about the past two decades trying to understand exactly

42
00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:40.400
why do we sleep? Because 50 years ago, the crash answer to the question, why do you sleep?

43
00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:46.880
Where's the following? You sleep to cure sleepiness, which is the fact your equivalent of saying,

44
00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:53.520
well, you eat to cure hunger. No, you don't eat to cure hunger. You eat to support all sorts of

45
00:03:53.520 --> 00:03:58.720
physiological and biological benefits. But now, and this is not due to my research, this is all of

46
00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:04.320
the incredible colleagues who sort of shoulders that I stand on. We've now had to upend the question.

47
00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:10.080
We now have to ask, is there any major physiological system in your body or is there any

48
00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:15.440
operation of your mind that isn't wonderfully enhanced by sleep when you get it or demonstrably

49
00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:22.320
impaired when you don't get enough? And the answer now seems to be, no, there is no such system,

50
00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:29.120
even down to the level of your DNA, your sleep and how you are sleeping or not sleeping,

51
00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:36.400
will change the very DNA nucleic alphabet that spells out your daily health narrative.

52
00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:42.000
And we can see it all the way up to society. Sleep can change the fabric of society,

53
00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:48.000
can change how we interact with other people, it can change our belief systems, it can change how

54
00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:55.360
lonely or sort of hypersocial we are. So to your question, I'm a sleep scientist by trade and

55
00:04:55.360 --> 00:05:00.480
I suppose my mission has been trying to reunite humanity with the sleep that it seems to be so

56
00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:06.480
bereft of. We had a fantastic conversation last time and my audience valued it tremendously,

57
00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:11.120
I know that because we often survey our audience and we get to see some of the back end stats.

58
00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:14.960
And this conversation about sleep is particularly personal to everybody listening because

59
00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:20.480
when we surveyed our audience head of this conversation today, about 75 or 80% of the

60
00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:25.920
diavisio audience struggle with sleep for a variety of different reasons. So we actually asked

61
00:05:25.920 --> 00:05:30.080
them a thousand of them their questions to ask you today. But also the other reason I really

62
00:05:30.080 --> 00:05:35.040
want to chat to you is the science of sleep. I mean, as is the way of science is always evolving.

63
00:05:35.040 --> 00:05:39.760
We're learning new things and even since we spoke last time, there is new sleep science which we're

64
00:05:39.760 --> 00:05:42.800
going to talk about today. And one of those particular things we're going to talk about is going

65
00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:49.040
to be demonstrated using this job because I always want to know what the updated sleep sciences

66
00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:52.560
so that I can be a better sleeper because I agree with everything you've said about how

67
00:05:53.200 --> 00:06:00.800
foundational sleep is in my life. And I didn't know this at the start of my career. I didn't

68
00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:04.400
know this even a couple of years ago, five years ago. I didn't know. I thought sleep was one of

69
00:06:04.400 --> 00:06:10.640
those things you could just take it or leave. Yeah. I mean, it's not your fault in so many ways

70
00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:16.720
because if you didn't know what I know, you would just think, well, when I sleep, my body is dormant

71
00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:24.080
and my mind for the most part is blank. So is it so catastrophic to lose an hour or two

72
00:06:24.720 --> 00:06:31.280
of sleep and you have to then think about from an evolutionary perspective, it is such an

73
00:06:31.280 --> 00:06:37.120
idiotic idea to sleep because when you're sleeping, you're not finding a mate, you're not reproducing,

74
00:06:37.120 --> 00:06:41.120
you're not caring for your young, you're not foraging for food, and worse of all, you're vulnerable

75
00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:46.640
to predation. So on any one of those grounds, and especially all of them as a collective, sleep

76
00:06:46.640 --> 00:06:52.560
should have been strongly selected against in the course of evolution. And my point is that,

77
00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:57.520
and it's often being said that if sleep doesn't serve an absolutely vital set of functions plural,

78
00:06:57.520 --> 00:07:01.600
then it's the biggest mistake the evolutionary processes ever made. And we now realize it didn't

79
00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:08.960
make a spectacular blunder. But really, I guess the point of it is, sleep is not a passive state.

80
00:07:09.600 --> 00:07:16.480
It's an incredibly active state, both in the terms of the brain and the body. And so you should not

81
00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:22.720
feel remiss or ashamed that you didn't value the importance of sleep because firstly,

82
00:07:22.720 --> 00:07:26.640
as a subjective sense, you just think, well, my mind was offline for a while.

83
00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:32.320
Second, we also know that we don't teach the importance of sleep in education. And doctors

84
00:07:32.320 --> 00:07:36.400
themselves, you know, there's a great study and they, what they found was that medical doctors

85
00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:41.680
across, I think it was about 11 different curricula around the world. They will only receive about

86
00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:51.440
1.2 hours of education on sleep. But it's a third of their patients' lives. So there's a collection of

87
00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:59.200
almost perfect storms that have happened to keep society ignorant of the importance and the

88
00:07:59.200 --> 00:08:05.600
value of sleep. I think that's why we often so short-change it together with also something

89
00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:13.280
terrible, which is stigma, that people are so proud to say, well, I've been eating really healthy

90
00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:18.000
the past couple of months or, you know, I've been going to the gym three times a week consistently

91
00:08:18.080 --> 00:08:24.880
for the past year. No one is ever going out into society and saying, you know, I've been getting

92
00:08:24.880 --> 00:08:29.760
eight and a half hours of sleep consistently every night because if you did, people would say

93
00:08:29.760 --> 00:08:36.640
really. And there's a slight edge to the really, which is that if you have time to sleep,

94
00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:42.240
then you must not be busy. And if you're not busy, you must not be important.

95
00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:49.680
So can you do me a favour? And for the listener at home, can you tell me what the different

96
00:08:49.680 --> 00:08:55.440
groups of people that are listening to this conversation right now are seeking? From the extreme end

97
00:08:55.440 --> 00:09:01.440
being, sleep out in the air, I get no sleep, I'm an insomniac, to the other end where maybe they're

98
00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:05.280
looking for marginal performance gains. Like, what are the cohorts of people you see and the

99
00:09:05.280 --> 00:09:08.800
reasons why they're so interested in your work? They listen to your podcast, they read your books.

100
00:09:08.800 --> 00:09:12.800
What are the cohorts? Firstly, we have the collection of people who have insomnia,

101
00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:17.680
those people who have other sleep disorders like sleep apnea, which we can speak about.

102
00:09:17.680 --> 00:09:22.320
There's another disorder called restless leg syndrome. It's a terrible disorder where your legs start

103
00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:26.320
to feel as though they've got this sort of creepy, crawly feeling and you've constantly got to massage

104
00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:31.600
them and move them. It's a terrible disruptor of your sleep. All of these disorders are markedly

105
00:09:31.600 --> 00:09:39.360
undiagnosed, by the way. And then you've got another collection of individuals who they don't

106
00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:46.480
have any sleep disorders, but they are either doing things that will dismantle their sleep. So

107
00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:53.200
either they're taking on things into themselves, like alcohol, caffeine, THC, that aren't the

108
00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:59.680
sleep helpers, even though sometimes they think they are. And then you've got perhaps the internal

109
00:09:59.680 --> 00:10:03.600
things that will prevent you from sleeping well, things like stress and anxiety.

110
00:10:04.240 --> 00:10:11.200
And then you've also just got life itself that can get in the way. And then moving from the sleep

111
00:10:11.200 --> 00:10:16.400
disorders realm to the, I don't have a sleep disorder, but I'm probably not doing it right,

112
00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:22.080
quote unquote, when it comes to sleep. Then you've got the people who are obsessed about getting

113
00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:30.640
it right. And they are the bio optimizers, the bio hackers. And then you've also got, I work with

114
00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:36.160
a lot of high performance individuals who are really trying to just scratch out those last

115
00:10:36.160 --> 00:10:41.760
couple of percentages. Either it's in business or often we're working with professional athletes.

116
00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:49.280
These are the people for whom two or three percentage point changes can be tens of millions of

117
00:10:49.280 --> 00:10:55.280
dollars or they can be the difference between standing on a podium at the Olympics or not. And so

118
00:10:55.280 --> 00:11:01.040
this is a broad collection of wonderful characters. And since we last spoke, is there now a lot

119
00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:06.560
of new sleep science and understanding as it relates to sleep performance and these three

120
00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:10.800
categories of sleep deficient sleep disorders lifestyle factors and then the optimizers?

121
00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:17.680
Yeah, I think there's there's a broad collection of new evidence that we have. But maybe let me

122
00:11:17.680 --> 00:11:23.840
come on to the middle group. You know, I used to say that for people who were deficient in their

123
00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:31.520
sleep, that sleep wasn't like the bank that you can't accumulate a debt. Oh, here we go. Okay.

124
00:11:32.400 --> 00:11:37.840
So what we can see here is that the jaw used to be full full of sleep credit when you're sleeping well.

125
00:11:38.480 --> 00:11:44.240
And then during the week, I'm short sleeping. So maybe I'm only getting five hours a night. So

126
00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:50.560
I'm constantly going into debt. So I'm losing all of this wonderful sleep credit and my system is

127
00:11:50.560 --> 00:11:57.200
building up this collateral debt. And then we used to think that sleep was not like the bank that

128
00:11:57.200 --> 00:12:05.760
once you've gone into debt, unfortunately, the latest closed and even at the weekend, if you try

129
00:12:05.760 --> 00:12:13.680
to pay it back, you can't put back credit into the system. However, there was a study published

130
00:12:13.680 --> 00:12:19.680
from what's called the UK Biobank, which is this incredible data set. It's revolutionary. And they

131
00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:26.160
studied in this particular research paper over 90,000 individuals. And what they did was they

132
00:12:26.160 --> 00:12:32.480
essentially split them down into those individuals who were short sleeping during the week and then

133
00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:37.120
short sleeping at the weekend. And they compared them to those individuals who were short sleeping

134
00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:41.600
during the week. But then long sleeping at the weekend, they were doing catch up sleep.

135
00:12:41.600 --> 00:12:46.960
That's me. And that's so many individuals. It turns out, if you look at the data, it's remarkable

136
00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:52.080
how many people do this. There's catch up sleep behavior. But what was amazing is that in the people

137
00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:58.160
who were short sleeping during the week, but long sleeping at the weekend, they had a 20% reduced

138
00:12:58.160 --> 00:13:03.280
cardiovascular disease risk relative to the people who were short sleeping during the week,

139
00:13:03.280 --> 00:13:10.640
but also short sleeping at the weekend. Now, to be clear, both of those groups had a higher

140
00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:15.760
cardiovascular disease risk than people who were sleeping sufficiently during the week and

141
00:13:15.760 --> 00:13:20.480
sleeping sufficiently during the weekend. So I'm not saying that it's a completely free lunch.

142
00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:27.040
But for the first time, we realized that at least one system, major organ system in your body

143
00:13:27.040 --> 00:13:32.080
is like the bank, which is that if your heart at the weekend,

144
00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:43.440
you can just keep putting credit back. And your system doesn't suffer as much.

145
00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:49.920
For your heart. For your heart. Okay. But again, many of the other major physiological systems

146
00:13:49.920 --> 00:13:54.080
don't show that. So work by people like Kenneth Wright at the University of Boulder, Colorado,

147
00:13:54.080 --> 00:13:58.400
he shown that your immune system doesn't rebound after long sleep at the weekend,

148
00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:04.480
your regulation of blood sugar, your cognitive ability. So that's one way in which I've changed

149
00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:10.240
my mind regarding sleep in the bank. But there's a very different new set of data that has changed

150
00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:17.040
my mind completely about this idea of sleep and the bank. Now, what we've just discussed here is to

151
00:14:17.040 --> 00:14:24.000
say, I went into debt and then I was hoping to try and pay it off with credit at the weekend.

152
00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:30.720
So the jar represents the debt that you have, the sleep bread. And what I'm trying to do is force more

153
00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:41.520
coinage in at the weekend to see if I can offset the debt that I created and get back to net, net

154
00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:47.200
neutral by the end of the weekend. Now, it turns out you can't do that even if you sleep for as long

155
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:53.920
as you want. But here's this new remarkable data. It came from Walter Reed Medical Army Institute

156
00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:59.280
a research called Thomas Balkan and what he was interested in was flipping the direction of the

157
00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:07.920
question. Not if I go into debt can I pay back with credit. But what if I know in future I'm going

158
00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:14.960
to face a debt and upcoming debt? Can I do sleep banking? Oh, so if I've got a big thing coming up

159
00:15:14.960 --> 00:15:19.200
where I'm traveling across the world and I know I'm going to be sleep deficient, can I sleep a lot

160
00:15:19.280 --> 00:15:26.480
before it to create a what would the financial financial analogy would be? Let's say that

161
00:15:26.480 --> 00:15:33.040
we're coming up to Christmas and you're going to spend lots on, you know, presents and all sorts

162
00:15:33.040 --> 00:15:39.520
of stuff. So I know that in October and November I'm going to tighten my financial belt. So that

163
00:15:39.520 --> 00:15:45.760
when I go into the sort of Christmas period and I'm spending a lot more money, my bank account

164
00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:52.800
isn't hit as hard. I don't go into as much of a sort of a debt situation because I built up credit.

165
00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:59.280
So you can create sleep savings. Correct. It's a sleep saving system. So essentially what

166
00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:09.120
you was able to do not just put the jar to full but he was actually packing in even more

167
00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:21.840
so that you almost got this wonderful overflow of sleep. How did he know? He didn't. It was the

168
00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:28.000
experimental hypothesis. And how did they prove it? So what they did is that they walk you up to a

169
00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:34.480
period when you're going to have two or three nights of either no sleep or market sleep reduction.

170
00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:41.200
And in the week beforehand with these army cadets instead of being limited to eight hours of

171
00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:46.720
time in bed, they were able to get 10 hours of time in bed and they could sleep all that they

172
00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:52.720
want. And so they went from probably an average of about seven seven and a half hours of sleep to

173
00:16:52.720 --> 00:16:59.440
about eight and a half, almost nine hours of sleep. So they were extending their sleep duration.

174
00:17:00.400 --> 00:17:06.880
And so that they had built up this buffer, it's almost like a sort of a sleep safety net

175
00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:11.840
that's in place so that when you go into the tumble of sleep deprivation,

176
00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:18.240
you're sort of almost bolstered and you're lifted higher and therefore your degree of

177
00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:23.920
impairment that you suffer under conditions of sleep deprivation is significantly less if you

178
00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:29.760
banked sleep beforehand versus those people who were just sleeping normally and then face the

179
00:17:29.760 --> 00:17:34.800
deprivation. They went down much further in terms of their cognitive and mental performance.

180
00:17:34.800 --> 00:17:39.120
So he gave them challenges and tasks to do correct in two different groups. One group had

181
00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:43.280
sleep saving saved up from sleeping well the previous week. One group didn't. That's right. And

182
00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:49.680
they performed remarkably different. So both of them were impaired relative to a sleep rested person.

183
00:17:49.680 --> 00:17:56.080
However, the people, it's sort of how how much of a drop in your cognitive performance do you

184
00:17:56.080 --> 00:18:02.240
suffer? And what he found was that people who had built up this credit, this savings account of

185
00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:10.560
sleep in the days in the week beforehand, they suffered about 40% less of an impairment relative

186
00:18:10.560 --> 00:18:17.920
to the people who had not created any savings plan. Now they weren't in debt. They were just net

187
00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:23.040
neutral. But boy did they drop quickly. Whereas those people who'd had some

188
00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:29.920
cash in the sleep credit system, they didn't fall anywhere near as far. But this is remarkable for

189
00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:35.200
people like you were saying who are facing let's say if I've got a sprint at work or I'm a medical

190
00:18:35.200 --> 00:18:41.360
doctor, I know I'm about to go on call for the next 40 hours. You're a military aviation. All of

191
00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:47.200
the new parents, all of these circumstances are places where now we know athletes is a great example

192
00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:52.640
when we work with athletes people like Michael Granner have demonstrated that athletes sleep

193
00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:57.920
terribly typically the night before a huge performance. No math, you know, of course the nerves.

194
00:18:58.640 --> 00:19:03.760
But what you can do is you can have them bank sleep in the days before when they're not as nervous.

195
00:19:03.760 --> 00:19:08.800
And therefore their performance doesn't suffer as much even though they know they're going to be

196
00:19:08.800 --> 00:19:13.520
deprived. Sleep is so important isn't it? And I think everybody now knows that because of people

197
00:19:13.520 --> 00:19:16.560
like yourself or really, you know, you were the real pioneer in pushing this subject into

198
00:19:16.560 --> 00:19:20.720
the world. I remember when you first went on Joe Rogan's show the amount of my friends that sent

199
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:24.880
me that episode and then sent me your book was just staggering. It was like that was the catalyst

200
00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:29.840
moment I think in society for the mainstream to really start talking and caring about sleep. However

201
00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:36.080
there's still so many people struggling because of all the factors that you talked about when

202
00:19:36.080 --> 00:19:39.600
we're talking about group two who have those lifestyle factors, the stress, the psychological

203
00:19:39.600 --> 00:19:46.800
factors, the trauma, et cetera, et cetera. What can we give them? Those people, the people that

204
00:19:46.800 --> 00:19:49.920
really, really struggle. Maybe they haven't got a disorder. We'll come to the people with sort of

205
00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:55.760
sleep disorders later and we'll talk about optimizers. But what is the new information or advice

206
00:19:55.760 --> 00:20:02.240
that we can give them that will help them once and for all? Sleep eight hours a night and get

207
00:20:02.320 --> 00:20:10.080
their life back. If you were to push me to say what are the three most impactful things that you

208
00:20:10.080 --> 00:20:17.920
can start doing tonight to start sleeping better, it would be the following digital detox.

209
00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:23.200
Okay, let me write this down. Digital detox, okay. What does that mean? One hour before bed,

210
00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:34.640
try to limit activating social media, engagement, email and text messages that are going to trigger

211
00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:43.920
you. It's fine to listen to a podcast. You heard it here folks. It's also good to like and

212
00:20:43.920 --> 00:20:49.040
subscribe, would you say? I would say that like and subscribe and then just click here so that you

213
00:20:49.040 --> 00:20:53.600
get the latest notification. You get that bell. Just click on the bell icon so that you

214
00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:03.040
so it's not a problem of blue light. A quick aside, we've been taught this myth of the blue light

215
00:21:03.040 --> 00:21:08.640
effect from devices and it really is a myth because an incredible Australian researcher,

216
00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:16.240
a guy called Michael Gradesar has almost single-handedly changed what I think of us being the zeitgeist

217
00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:20.880
for a while after a very influential paper, which is a great paper and what they showed was that

218
00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:26.720
one hour of iPad reading before bed ended up empowering your melatonin, it disrupted sleep,

219
00:21:27.360 --> 00:21:31.680
it reduced the amount of dream sleep and even after they stopped reading the iPad,

220
00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:37.040
the blast radius impact on your dream sleep lasted a week. It's almost like the drug needed to get

221
00:21:37.040 --> 00:21:42.080
washed out the system that even when you'd stop using technology for an hour before bed,

222
00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:47.760
the impact of that technology, even though you'd stop using it, could still be seen in the

223
00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:53.040
echo of sleep disruption for a week later. There was a very influential study in a very prestigious

224
00:21:53.040 --> 00:21:58.400
channel. That was probably about 10 years ago, but then Michael Gradesar, this incredible Australian

225
00:21:58.400 --> 00:22:04.800
researcher, started to say, well, I can't replicate these findings. And what he was discovering is that

226
00:22:04.800 --> 00:22:09.440
it's not the blue light, that's the problem. Now the blue light will change aspects of your melatonin

227
00:22:09.520 --> 00:22:14.560
and melatonin is a hormone. It simply tells your brain and your body when it's night time,

228
00:22:14.560 --> 00:22:18.080
when it's time to fall asleep. It doesn't participate in the generation of sleep.

229
00:22:18.080 --> 00:22:22.800
Melatonin is like the starting official at the 100 meter race. It brings all of the races to the

230
00:22:22.800 --> 00:22:28.160
line and it begins the timing of the race, but it doesn't participate in the creation of the race

231
00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:32.000
itself. That's a different set of chemicals. It doesn't make you go to sleep. It doesn't make you,

232
00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:36.320
and if you look at what we call metronalysis, where we gather together all of the individual

233
00:22:36.320 --> 00:22:40.960
studies on a topic, and we put them in a big statistical bucket, what they found is that melatonin

234
00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:47.760
will only improve the speed with which you fall asleep by about 3.4 minutes, and it will only

235
00:22:47.760 --> 00:22:53.920
increase the efficiency of your sleep by about 2.2%. So not much more than placebo.

236
00:22:55.520 --> 00:23:02.320
So melatonin is, the placebo effect is the most reliable effect in all of pharmacology.

237
00:23:02.320 --> 00:23:07.440
So, you know, maybe no harm, no foul. I would say, and don't forget, I will come back to the

238
00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:14.880
three, but when it comes to melatonin, be careful. More isn't always better. And you run the risk of

239
00:23:15.760 --> 00:23:22.720
confusing your morning brain into a dense night time fog. And what I mean by that is

240
00:23:24.080 --> 00:23:29.520
10 milligrams or 20 milligrams of melatonin is what we call a super physiological dose,

241
00:23:29.520 --> 00:23:34.560
which again is just a fancy medical term to say, it's a size of magnitude of melatonin

242
00:23:34.560 --> 00:23:40.640
that your body wouldn't have a naturally release. It's far greater. So melatonin is the signal

243
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:46.400
of darkness, and normally by the morning hours, our natural release of melatonin has stopped,

244
00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:52.640
and you're down to zero levels again. So you wake up, and your body no longer has the signal

245
00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:57.440
of melatonin saying it's night, it's night, it's night. But if you've dosed yourself with 10

246
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:02.480
milligrams or 20 milligrams of melatonin, you run the risk of saying, well, yes, I know it,

247
00:24:03.360 --> 00:24:08.480
quote unquote, knocks me out. But the problem is, in the first three or four hours of the waking

248
00:24:08.480 --> 00:24:15.120
morning, you're struggling because you're in this fog of a hormonal melatonin, a hormonal

249
00:24:15.120 --> 00:24:20.560
signal saying it's still pitch black. Now, it's not. It's bright light outside, but your body is

250
00:24:20.560 --> 00:24:25.200
fooled into thinking it's pitch black because you've dosed yourself too high, and no one

251
00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:29.760
do you're reaching for two or three cups of coffee in the morning. So what dose of melatonin

252
00:24:29.760 --> 00:24:37.120
should I be taking? Somewhere between probably about 0.1 to three milligrams. And do you advise

253
00:24:37.120 --> 00:24:43.120
melatonin for people? Yes, in two conditions. The first or circumstances I should say, the first

254
00:24:43.120 --> 00:24:50.000
is when you're going through jet lag, wonderfully helpful, but timing is critical. You need to

255
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:55.200
create that sort of that artificial signal of night, because let's say that you and I here in

256
00:24:55.200 --> 00:25:01.360
Los Angeles, we're both going to fly back to London tomorrow. And London is eight hours ahead.

257
00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:07.680
So we fly overnight, we arrive in London, and then that first night, let's say we decide to go to

258
00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:14.000
bed or I decide to go to bed in the hotel at midnight. The problem is here in Los Angeles,

259
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:20.560
and my body clock, it's still 4 p.m. because London's eight hours ahead. So my melatonin is not

260
00:25:20.560 --> 00:25:27.120
going to rise for probably another six or seven hours. So I need to artificially hijack my melatonin

261
00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:34.160
system and tell my brain, oh no, it's not 4 p.m. It's instead, it's midnight. And so they're

262
00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:40.480
under conditions of jet lag, very helpful. The second is if you have a circadian rhythm disorder,

263
00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:46.560
let's say that you're someone who has an advanced circadian phase, what that means is you're

264
00:25:46.560 --> 00:25:51.440
someone who really can't get sleepy until three or four in the morning, and you would prefer to

265
00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:56.400
be sleeping throughout most of the day. So you're almost nocturnal. Is that genetic disorder?

266
00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:59.680
Yes, it's a genetic disorder in part. How many people have that?

267
00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:05.360
Probably one to two percent of the population have a very severe and what we call an advanced

268
00:26:05.360 --> 00:26:10.800
circadian phase disorder. But their melatonin can also be helpful because once again,

269
00:26:10.800 --> 00:26:14.960
their melatonin part of that problem is that their melatonin is very delayed.

270
00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:20.320
So they don't get the signal of, oh, it's night until maybe four o'clock in the morning.

271
00:26:20.320 --> 00:26:25.840
You and I, we start to get our signal of melatonin, depending on our chronotype, by somewhere

272
00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:32.080
between about nine, 10 or 11 p.m. They may be delayed by five hours. So if we can give them melatonin,

273
00:26:32.080 --> 00:26:37.840
we can artificially try to fool their brain into thinking it's actually earlier in their biological

274
00:26:37.840 --> 00:26:42.720
rhythm. So they sleep earlier and they're more in sync with the rest of society.

275
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:45.760
How does someone know if they're that type of person if they have that disorder? Is there,

276
00:26:45.760 --> 00:26:50.800
there's not a way to test, is there? Well, what we typically do is we will bring you into a laboratory

277
00:26:50.800 --> 00:26:56.880
and we will measure your innate level. So we will shut out sort of all windows or clock faces have gone

278
00:26:56.880 --> 00:27:03.680
and we just let you run your natural rhythm. And they have the same rise and fall in melatonin,

279
00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:09.280
just like you and I do, except where it's doing that rise and fall of melatonin on the 24-hour

280
00:27:09.280 --> 00:27:16.080
clock face is radically different. For you and I, it's, you know, nine, 10 p.m. 11 p.m. at night when

281
00:27:16.080 --> 00:27:20.640
we're starting that melatonin crescendo. For them, it's four o'clock in the morning. So we can

282
00:27:20.640 --> 00:27:25.840
measure it. It's not in their minds. It's not their choice. It's a biological eating.

283
00:27:25.840 --> 00:27:31.120
Are you concerned that melatonin is becoming more and more popular as a way to solve

284
00:27:32.080 --> 00:27:38.000
lifestyle issues that have, of course, sleep impairment? Because I'm seeing loads of, you know,

285
00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:43.120
I'm an investor. So I see lots of companies now pitching me different products that have melatonin

286
00:27:43.120 --> 00:27:50.000
in them as a sort of day-to-day sleeping supplement. I think I'm really torn. I've been on both sides

287
00:27:50.080 --> 00:27:56.800
of this argument and I'm cautious about it for two reasons. The first is in pediatric populations

288
00:27:56.800 --> 00:28:04.560
here in the United States. Pediatric? Yeah. So the people's use of melatonin in kids is increasing.

289
00:28:04.560 --> 00:28:11.200
So in pediatric populations, it's increasing exponentially. And in fact, if you go down the sort

290
00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:17.280
of the supermarket aisles here in America, often if you go into sort of the health sort of food

291
00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:22.320
section, there's this big purple section. That's the melatonin section. And a large proportion

292
00:28:22.320 --> 00:28:30.560
of that is they're dedicated to gummies for your children with melatonin. And there was a study

293
00:28:30.560 --> 00:28:36.080
that was published about three years ago that showed here in America over the past 10 years

294
00:28:36.080 --> 00:28:44.160
there has been a 503% increase in poisonous overdose admissions to hospitals of melatonin

295
00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:51.520
in the past 10 years, 503% increase. So firstly, we've got to be a bit careful. The second

296
00:28:51.520 --> 00:28:58.080
reason is that melatonin is a bioactive hormone and it's also involved in reproductive development

297
00:28:58.080 --> 00:29:03.440
and the studies done back in the 1970s, I think, where they were looking at juvenile male rats,

298
00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:08.160
which is to say male rats who were going through adolescence. And they were dosing them with

299
00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:15.920
high amounts of melatonin. And what they found is that that stunted the development of the testicles

300
00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:21.440
and it caused testicular atrophy. Now, these were very high doses. But we've got to be a little

301
00:29:21.440 --> 00:29:27.120
bit careful. We think we say, well, melatonin is a natural hormone. So anything natural is safe.

302
00:29:27.120 --> 00:29:32.480
Melatonin overall, in terms of its safety profile, is very safe. It's actually a very good antioxidant.

303
00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:38.000
But you've got to be careful because things like, for example, testosterone supplementation in

304
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:45.040
males. What we know is that if you're injecting testosterone, after a while, after maybe 18 months or

305
00:29:45.040 --> 00:29:52.080
so, the testicles themselves will stop producing their own testosterone. And even if you stop the

306
00:29:52.080 --> 00:29:58.880
administration of the exogenous testosterone, the injection, the testes never return their

307
00:29:58.880 --> 00:30:04.000
function of producing testosterone. Now, we don't have any evidence yet that that's the case that

308
00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:09.120
if you keep taking melatonin at high dose, your body, the fear would be, shuts down its own natural

309
00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:13.760
production of melatonin. I've seen no evidence of that. In fact, I've seen evidence that

310
00:30:13.760 --> 00:30:19.680
contrary that even after about six months or even 12 months in certain small cities, when you stop

311
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:25.680
melatonin, the production starts again naturally. It seems fine. Problem is, people haven't been

312
00:30:25.760 --> 00:30:31.280
taking melatonin for just 12 months. They've been taking it for years. We've got no idea what

313
00:30:31.280 --> 00:30:36.720
happens after years. That was my hesitation when the first time someone offered me melatonin is,

314
00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:40.720
from doing this podcast and speaking to smart people like yourself, I've come to learn this

315
00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:45.680
principle that if you start making something for your body in terms of a hormone, if you start

316
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:51.520
consuming something externally, like testosterone, your body will say, fine, I don't need to do

317
00:30:51.600 --> 00:30:55.680
this. It will try and return to that level of balance where the quantities in your system are

318
00:30:55.680 --> 00:31:00.160
maintained, which means it kind of learns to shut down. I always think about the case of testosterone,

319
00:31:00.160 --> 00:31:03.520
because men know that if we start injecting testosterone, then we're going to have to pretty much do

320
00:31:03.520 --> 00:31:08.720
it forever. If we want those levels to be the same. That's the worry is that there are no free

321
00:31:08.720 --> 00:31:14.960
lunches in biology, and usually if you fight biology, you typically lose. There's always a trade-off.

322
00:31:14.960 --> 00:31:19.040
Some of my friends often talk to me about these miracle things, or this thing, or take

323
00:31:19.040 --> 00:31:23.360
my daffinol, and everything will be fine. I gave up on what's the trade-off, and I get most

324
00:31:23.360 --> 00:31:29.200
consigned when they say there isn't one, because then I go, we don't know it. Yeah, you've got to be

325
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:37.600
careful because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Be very careful when you're doing

326
00:31:37.600 --> 00:31:44.880
that deal with your physiology. To come back to the three things, the first thing we were mentioning

327
00:31:44.880 --> 00:31:50.400
is digital detox, and don't worry about the blue light. Worry about light in general, I'll come

328
00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:54.320
on to that because that's the second, but Michael Grades are, as I was saying, what he found is that

329
00:31:54.320 --> 00:32:00.400
the blue light doesn't really disrupt your sleep. It's a combination of first, these devices that we

330
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:07.360
use are attention capture devices, and they are designed to fleece you of your attention economy,

331
00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:13.280
and they do it ruthlessly well. They've spent tens of millions of dollars designing these products

332
00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:20.880
to do that. What happens is that these devices become hugely activating, and as a result, they

333
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:26.640
essentially will be a mute button on your sleepiness, so you could be there, you get into bed at 11 pm,

334
00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:31.440
you think, I am so tired, I was falling asleep on the couch watching television, and then you get

335
00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:35.360
this bed, you start going on to social media, and then you start doom scrolling, and then you get

336
00:32:35.360 --> 00:32:40.000
into this what we call bed rotting, where you just sit there, and now you look at the clock,

337
00:32:40.080 --> 00:32:45.040
and it's no longer 11 pm, it's 1 am, and you've just done sleep procrastination. Now,

338
00:32:45.040 --> 00:32:51.440
it turns out that it's yes that, that these are attention grabbing devices that will mute your

339
00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:57.680
sleepiness, but you have to be of a certain personality type, he found, not all of us are vulnerable

340
00:32:57.680 --> 00:33:03.760
to this sleep disruption of devices. You have to be someone who is perhaps neurotic, someone who

341
00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:10.480
has high impulsivity, or someone who is perhaps high anxious. If you are of any of those kinds,

342
00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:16.720
you should be really careful about your use of technology in the bedroom. Now, for me to sit here

343
00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:23.120
and say, look, put your phone in the car, in the garage, and that way, that's what I would love,

344
00:33:23.120 --> 00:33:29.840
because what we've learned to do in this modern era is the first thing when you wake up,

345
00:33:29.840 --> 00:33:38.480
what is it that you do? No, no comment. It's just you and I.

346
00:33:39.840 --> 00:33:44.160
My groundway phone before my eyes are even open. And what happens is this sort of small

347
00:33:44.160 --> 00:33:49.760
tsunami of anxiety washes over you, because as soon as you unlock the phone, it's everyone else's

348
00:33:49.760 --> 00:33:54.160
agenda for your day, but your own. And it's a terrible way to wake up. Have you ever had the

349
00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:59.280
experience where you've got to wake up for an early morning flight, and it's a critical flight?

350
00:33:59.280 --> 00:34:03.920
You know that that night is not going to be a good night of sleep. It's going to be a shallow

351
00:34:03.920 --> 00:34:10.960
kind of sleep. It's what we call anticipatory anxiety. You are anticipating an anxious event

352
00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:16.560
in the morning. And studies have shown that when we create this anticipatory anxiety,

353
00:34:16.560 --> 00:34:21.360
the amount of deep sleep that you have drops significantly. You don't sleep as well.

354
00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:28.400
And therefore, if we just do this little sort of version, this L-I-T-E version of the

355
00:34:28.400 --> 00:34:32.400
morning flight, which is we know that when we go to bed and we put our phone down,

356
00:34:32.880 --> 00:34:36.800
we know that when we wake up every morning, we're just going to open it up to that

357
00:34:36.800 --> 00:34:41.920
hit of anxiety every morning. No wonder our sleep can start to get shallow.

358
00:34:42.560 --> 00:34:47.040
Now, I'm not going to sit here and say, well, don't take your phone into the bedroom,

359
00:34:47.040 --> 00:34:51.120
because the genie is out of the bottle. And no matter what I say, it's not going back in any time

360
00:34:51.120 --> 00:34:56.560
soon. And a friend of mine, Michael Granda, has got this beautiful framework where he says,

361
00:34:56.560 --> 00:35:02.080
you can take your phone into your bedroom. It's fine. But you can only use your phone

362
00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:10.000
standing up. What's his name? Michael Granda. Tell him to find his own business.

363
00:35:11.920 --> 00:35:15.520
And what happens is that you're there and you think after about seven or eight minutes,

364
00:35:15.520 --> 00:35:20.160
I'm just going to have a bit of a sit down here. And as soon as that phone goes away,

365
00:35:20.160 --> 00:35:26.240
so I would say that digital detox is the first friend that will really help your sleep.

366
00:35:26.240 --> 00:35:32.560
The second is regularity. And we'll come on to regularity when we speak about what really makes

367
00:35:32.560 --> 00:35:39.680
for good sleep. If you were to only do one thing, not three things, but just one thing, go to bed

368
00:35:39.680 --> 00:35:44.320
and wake up at the same time, no matter whether it's the weekday or the weekend, regularity

369
00:35:44.320 --> 00:35:50.960
is king. Okay, so that's the third pillar. That's correct. Regularity. Okay. And then I have

370
00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:58.880
the teeth for timing. Correct. Which we'll go through these quantity, which we've talked a little

371
00:35:58.880 --> 00:36:05.840
bit about ready and quality. Correct. So when I looked at the science, for me, I created this

372
00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:09.600
framework of the four macros of good sleep. You've heard of the three macros of food,

373
00:36:09.600 --> 00:36:15.200
macronutrients, fat protein carbohydrate. To me, there are four macros of good sleep. And it's

374
00:36:15.200 --> 00:36:34.320
QQRT, QQRT. And it stands for quantity, quality, regularity, and timing. And think of it

375
00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:39.920
less like pillars, but the four legs of a chair. And if any one of these becomes unstable,

376
00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:45.520
the chair will topple over. So I'll probably start with the one that people have had me bang on

377
00:36:45.520 --> 00:36:51.680
about, which is quantity, seven to nine hours. This myth of eight hours is nonsense. It's a wonderful

378
00:36:51.680 --> 00:36:58.400
range, seven to nine hours. And what we know is that using that sweet spot of seven to nine hours,

379
00:36:58.400 --> 00:37:02.640
when you get less than that, the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.

380
00:37:02.640 --> 00:37:09.360
Fuck. Short sleep predicts or cause mortality. Now we say that there's the minimum of seven hours

381
00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:14.000
of sleep. And some people have argued, perhaps correctly, that, look, if you look at these mortality

382
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:19.760
curves, there's not much of a percentage difference between sleeping six hours versus the seven that

383
00:37:19.760 --> 00:37:25.120
you're telling me is minimum. So six hours is just fine. So all of this nonsense and rhetoric

384
00:37:25.120 --> 00:37:35.280
is silly from you. And I think they've made a conflation because seven hours is the minimum

385
00:37:35.280 --> 00:37:41.920
amount of sleep that you need to survive. Because the way that we quantify what minimum is,

386
00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:49.280
is based on whether you die or you don't prematurely. The amount of sleep that you need to survive

387
00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:56.080
is different than the amount of sleep that you need to thrive. And people will conflate the

388
00:37:56.080 --> 00:38:00.080
former with the latter. So you've got to be careful when people are sort of touting on social

389
00:38:00.080 --> 00:38:04.800
media saying, well, no, but look, there's not much difference between my sort of survival rate

390
00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:10.720
on six hours versus seven hours. You may have just as much of a long life, but the quality of your

391
00:38:10.720 --> 00:38:16.800
life will be very different. So that's quantity seven to nine hours. And is that, does it change for

392
00:38:16.800 --> 00:38:21.040
parents, by the way, because I've met somebody parents that seem to be functioning better than me,

393
00:38:21.040 --> 00:38:24.800
and they've got four, they're having like four or five hours sleep. Did evolution not give parents

394
00:38:24.800 --> 00:38:29.440
any leeway or anything when they have kids that suddenly their brain changes and now they can

395
00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:34.880
survive with less sleep? The evidence doesn't suggest that once you go through parenthood, you get

396
00:38:34.880 --> 00:38:42.640
some magic sort of, you know, immunity shot that makes you, you know, resilient and not vulnerable

397
00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:48.720
to a lack of sleep. And in some ways, you could argue because we used to, you know, live as a collective

398
00:38:48.720 --> 00:38:55.040
tribe, and we would share duties. At that point, you know, Mother Nature doesn't really worry too much

399
00:38:55.040 --> 00:39:03.040
about you now, because you've already procreated and you've passed on your genetic code. So you are now

400
00:39:03.040 --> 00:39:10.080
the sort of, you know, the not particularly well, you know, cared for individual through evolution,

401
00:39:10.080 --> 00:39:15.920
it's your offspring that gets. So it sacrifices you in a way. I mean, that's what we see in the animal

402
00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:21.040
kingdom. Did you see that documentary about the octopus? Yeah, it's just, I mean, I thought it's

403
00:39:21.040 --> 00:39:25.760
beautiful documentary, but the TLDR for anyone that hasn't seen it is once the octopus, and I'm going

404
00:39:25.760 --> 00:39:32.720
to completely butcher this, so please ignore, once the octopus has given birth, it dies, basically,

405
00:39:32.720 --> 00:39:38.640
doesn't move out of that hole and it dies. Is that rough? Well, I don't know if it dies, but it's

406
00:39:38.640 --> 00:39:44.400
level of an active life. I searched, does the octopus die after reproduction? And it says yes,

407
00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:50.000
female octopuses die after their eggs hatch. After laying eggs, a female stops eating and devotes

408
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:56.320
all of her energy to protecting and oxygenating them until they hatch. Once they do, she dies

409
00:39:56.320 --> 00:40:04.080
shortly after. A process called semi-low parity, meaning they reproduce only once. This death is

410
00:40:04.080 --> 00:40:10.160
triggered by hormone changes from the optic gland, similar to mammalian prochurchary glands,

411
00:40:10.880 --> 00:40:18.560
and males die shortly after mating as well, usually within a few months. That is wild.

412
00:40:18.560 --> 00:40:23.680
In some ways, it's tragic and it reminds me, I'm so glad that I'm not an octopus,

413
00:40:23.760 --> 00:40:35.360
but coming back to it. There doesn't seem to be some magic cloak of invincibility that you put on

414
00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:41.520
when you go through parenthood. Certainly, what we know is that the number of individuals who can

415
00:40:41.520 --> 00:40:47.840
survive on six hours of sleep or less and show no impairment in either their brain or their body

416
00:40:47.840 --> 00:40:52.080
rounded to a whole number and expressed as a percent of the population is zero.

417
00:40:53.360 --> 00:40:59.440
So quantity matters, but it turns out that we got it wrong in thinking that was the only thing,

418
00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:08.720
because then came quality, so QQRT. Quality is defined in sleep science as two things.

419
00:41:08.720 --> 00:41:13.280
The first is something that your sleep tracker will measure, which is the continuity of your

420
00:41:13.280 --> 00:41:19.200
sleep, meaning do you sleep in one or two nice longbouts throughout the night? That's good quality

421
00:41:19.200 --> 00:41:25.840
of sleep, nice, continuous bouts. Versus your sleep is very fragmented by all of these awakenings,

422
00:41:25.840 --> 00:41:30.240
that's very poor quality of sleep, and the way that you can measure it in your sleep tracker

423
00:41:30.240 --> 00:41:34.640
is just by looking at the app, and there'll be something called sleep efficiency.

424
00:41:34.640 --> 00:41:39.840
Sleep efficiency is defined as the following of the time that you're in bed, what percent of that

425
00:41:39.840 --> 00:41:46.160
time is spent asleep. And what we like to see is you north of 85% or above, so this is kind of like

426
00:41:46.160 --> 00:41:52.480
the user's guide to sleep trackers. What I want to see is 85% or more, if you're less than that,

427
00:41:52.480 --> 00:41:57.840
we need to have a conversation. That's number one good quality of sleep. The second, which is

428
00:41:58.560 --> 00:42:02.480
sort of what these trackers can't really do, but I can do in the sleep laboratory when you look

429
00:42:02.480 --> 00:42:07.680
like a spaghetti monster because I put electrodes all over your head, I can measure the quality of your

430
00:42:07.680 --> 00:42:14.480
big, deep, slow brain waves of deep non-rem sleep. And that is a second measure, the power of those

431
00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:22.000
big, slow brain waves, that's a second measure. And quality seems to be as predictive as quantity

432
00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:29.840
in making a difference, not just to your all cause mortality, but quality even more than quantity

433
00:42:29.840 --> 00:42:36.160
when it comes to mental health has been showing the bigger signal. So again, it's not that

434
00:42:36.160 --> 00:42:41.760
quantity doesn't matter. You do have to get sufficient amounts of sleep, but quality as much

435
00:42:41.760 --> 00:42:48.880
as quantity should be paid attention to. And I haven't said that enough. The next is where we came

436
00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:52.720
to in our sort of three things that I was saying. The first is digitally talks. Then the next thing I

437
00:42:52.720 --> 00:42:59.280
said is regularity. This is somewhere where I've also changed my mind on. I've doubled down on

438
00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:04.000
regularity. There was a study that also came out of that same data set that I described. It's called

439
00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:10.160
the UK BioBank Data. And now they didn't look at 90,000 individuals, but they looked at 60,000

440
00:43:10.160 --> 00:43:16.880
individuals. And they decided that they were going to compare and split them into quartiles. So

441
00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:24.160
the most regular, to the second most regular, to then sort of the third most regular. And then the

442
00:43:24.160 --> 00:43:28.560
final quartile was those who were the least regular. And what does regular mean in this context?

443
00:43:28.640 --> 00:43:35.120
Good question. Highly regular individuals plus or minus 15 minutes in terms of going to bed and

444
00:43:35.120 --> 00:43:38.400
waking up at the same time. In other words, a total wiggle room of 30 minutes.

445
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:41.680
Oh, okay. So if I'm always going to bed at 9 p.m. and I do that five days in a row,

446
00:43:41.680 --> 00:43:47.760
I'm regular timing. So it's regularity in terms of when you're going to bed and waking up.

447
00:43:48.480 --> 00:43:53.840
So you're right. It's timing in a way. But I'll come on to why there is a separate T for timing

448
00:43:53.920 --> 00:44:00.640
just a second. But regularity here was, okay, plus or minus. So let's say you go to bed at 845 p.m.

449
00:44:00.640 --> 00:44:06.160
one night and then nine and then nine 10 p.m. and then you're back to 8 feet. That's beautiful tight

450
00:44:06.160 --> 00:44:12.800
timing. I like that. Whereas those people who were least regular, they were 90 to 120 minutes

451
00:44:12.800 --> 00:44:18.320
disparate. They were going to bed, let's say at 11, one night, then one a.m. the next night,

452
00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:23.120
then they were going to bed at 10 30 p.m. And then they were going to bed at 12 30. They were all

453
00:44:23.120 --> 00:44:30.160
over the map. So what they found was that those people who were most regular versus least regular,

454
00:44:30.160 --> 00:44:36.720
so they'd compared the extremes of these two, those people who were most regular had a 49%

455
00:44:37.600 --> 00:44:44.080
relative decrease in all cause mortality. So they were 49% less likely to prematurely die than

456
00:44:44.080 --> 00:44:52.560
those people who were least likely to die. They had a 39% cancer mortality risk reduction. Great.

457
00:44:52.560 --> 00:45:01.840
They had a 57% cardiometabolic disease risk reduction. So that was stunning that regularity

458
00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:07.520
was incredibly powerful as a predictive signal of your different forms of mortality.

459
00:45:08.160 --> 00:45:13.280
That wasn't the best part of the paper though. They had also measured quantity as well as

460
00:45:13.280 --> 00:45:18.800
regularity in these same individuals. So then they decided to say, well, I'm going to take

461
00:45:18.800 --> 00:45:23.280
our measure of quantity and regularity and we're going to put them both in the same statistical

462
00:45:23.280 --> 00:45:28.720
bucket and do a Coke Pepsi challenge to see which one wins out in terms of predicting all cause

463
00:45:28.720 --> 00:45:34.320
mortality. We all bet in the sleep field, at least I did, it was going to be quantity. I was wrong.

464
00:45:35.040 --> 00:45:41.200
Regularity beat out quantity in predicting all cause mortality and buy quite some margin.

465
00:45:41.200 --> 00:45:45.360
Now that doesn't mean that you can now go away and say, I'm going to start sleeping four hours,

466
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:51.600
but incredibly consistent four hours. You need both quantity and quality, but goodness does

467
00:45:51.600 --> 00:45:57.280
regularity seem to carry a massive signal. So coming back to those three things, I would say

468
00:45:57.280 --> 00:46:02.880
digital detox, just go to bed and wake up at the same time. And the final thing is light.

469
00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:10.560
In this modern world, we are a dark deprived society. We get what I call junk light at night.

470
00:46:10.560 --> 00:46:16.640
So you've heard of junk DNA. Well, we get junk light at night. We don't need all of this light

471
00:46:16.640 --> 00:46:22.160
and it fools our brain into thinking it's still daytime outside. So no wonder as a society,

472
00:46:22.160 --> 00:46:27.920
we have some struggles with sleep at night. Now that's due to many reasons stress, too much caffeine,

473
00:46:27.920 --> 00:46:34.960
alcohol, THC, but excessive light is one of the easiest things that you can do. So for the next seven

474
00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:42.960
days, just do me this experiment. If you can, set an alarm one hour before your normal bed time.

475
00:46:42.960 --> 00:46:49.600
When that alarm goes off, turn off, and I do this myself, turn off almost all of the lights in your

476
00:46:49.600 --> 00:46:54.880
house. When you say all of the lights, do you mean the little red light on my smoke alarm? No,

477
00:46:54.880 --> 00:46:59.920
that's fine. But you know, so my wife and I one hour before bed, almost all the lights, we've got

478
00:46:59.920 --> 00:47:04.000
sort of this little set of this sort of light that goes around the television, the back of the

479
00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:08.880
television. So it kind of looks like the television's cool and illuminated. I will set that down to

480
00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:15.920
about 5% of brightness and all of the rest of the lights out. So you can kind of just still see some

481
00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:21.520
illumination. So I'm not sort of, you know, looking desperately on cool and in front of everyone,

482
00:47:21.520 --> 00:47:25.440
I'm tripping over things because it's complete black, you know, then start cooling the house

483
00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:31.920
or the room as best you can to around about 67, 68 degrees Fahrenheit or about 18 degrees Celsius.

484
00:47:31.920 --> 00:47:36.640
We can speak about temperature, but just do this experiment for the next seven days, one hour before

485
00:47:36.640 --> 00:47:42.560
bed, the alarm goes off. You switch off all of the lights and ask the following question,

486
00:47:42.560 --> 00:47:50.000
do you feel sleepier? Is it so horrific? Does it make you feel more sleepy as a result? But don't stop

487
00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:55.680
there. What you've gone and done is the first positive experiment, which is you've gone from

488
00:47:55.760 --> 00:48:02.080
the no intervention lights are on to then the matte intervention, which is now the lights are off

489
00:48:02.080 --> 00:48:07.440
for an hour before bed. Don't just ask, is my sleep better when the lights were out for an hour

490
00:48:07.440 --> 00:48:13.680
before bed? Once that seven day period has finished, go back to doing what you were doing before,

491
00:48:13.680 --> 00:48:18.960
which is keep all of the lights on and ask yourself, did my sleep get better when I did the

492
00:48:18.960 --> 00:48:24.320
intervention and did my sleep go back to being worse when I stopped because I'm trying to teach you

493
00:48:24.320 --> 00:48:29.680
by directionality in the experiment. Does that make some sense? Yeah, so you get to basically do

494
00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:34.320
an AB test. Correct. You get to see both sides of the equation with that, it's more

495
00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:38.320
positive than just one direction alone, because who knows, it could just be a placebo effect.

496
00:48:39.200 --> 00:48:46.000
So regularity coming back to it is critical. So we've spoken about QQR, quantity quality,

497
00:48:46.080 --> 00:48:54.320
regularity. On the regularity. Regularity point. Why? What's going on in our brain that's making it

498
00:48:54.320 --> 00:48:59.840
from a whole mental perspective or other that's making it important for us to sleep at the same time?

499
00:48:59.840 --> 00:49:05.600
It's a bloody great question. People don't respond to rules, they respond to reasons not rules,

500
00:49:05.600 --> 00:49:10.400
so let me try and explain the reason behind the sort of the rule. When it comes to regularity,

501
00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:16.640
we have something called a circadian rhythm that we've spoken about, and there's a clock that sits

502
00:49:16.640 --> 00:49:23.600
inside of your brain deep in the middle of the brain. So we have, it just turns out, a brain here.

503
00:49:24.960 --> 00:49:30.320
Lovely. Okay, so we've got one of these hemispheres here, and then I'm just going to take out

504
00:49:30.320 --> 00:49:36.080
what we call the sub cortical sections. So these are the areas that are below the sub cortex. So

505
00:49:36.080 --> 00:49:39.840
here is the brain. So there's the front of the brain, the back of the brain, top of the brain,

506
00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:44.160
and here's the brain stem. And it turns out that right in the middle of the brain,

507
00:49:44.160 --> 00:49:50.400
right here, there's an area called the hypothalamus. Now here, this structure here, this is the thalamus,

508
00:49:50.400 --> 00:49:55.760
this is the sensory gate of your brain. So all of your five senses sound touch taste smell,

509
00:49:55.760 --> 00:50:02.080
they all flood into this gate called the thalamus. And then the thalamus will decide whether it sends

510
00:50:02.080 --> 00:50:07.360
those sensory signals up to your cortex. And when it sends the signals up to your cortex,

511
00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:12.880
you start processing them and you become consciously aware of the external world. Now as we're

512
00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:18.080
falling asleep, just as an aside, what's interesting is that this gate, the sensory gate, the thalamus,

513
00:50:18.560 --> 00:50:25.120
once we start to fall asleep, the gate will close shut. Now your eyes are technically still seeing,

514
00:50:25.120 --> 00:50:31.200
your ears are still hearing, your tongue is still tasting. But because the gate of the thalamus,

515
00:50:31.200 --> 00:50:37.040
the sensory gate closes shut, those signals that are coming into your brain are no longer sent

516
00:50:37.040 --> 00:50:42.240
up to your cortex. So you stop perceiving the outside world, which is just simply a different way

517
00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:52.720
of saying you've fallen asleep. Now the hypothalamus, you've heard of hypothermia, that means lower.

518
00:50:53.280 --> 00:50:59.360
So here's the thalamus. This area here is called the hypothalamus. And it's a tiny structure,

519
00:50:59.360 --> 00:51:06.080
but within that structure contains a nucleus. And that group of cells, the nucleus, has a fancy term

520
00:51:06.080 --> 00:51:12.960
and it's called the super chiasmatic nucleus. But the super chiasmatic nucleus is your master 24-hour

521
00:51:12.960 --> 00:51:21.760
clock. Every cell in your body has a clock inside of it. But this is the master clock. It's like

522
00:51:21.760 --> 00:51:26.000
Lord of the Rings, there's one ring to rule them all. Well, there's one clock to rule them all.

523
00:51:26.560 --> 00:51:33.120
And here in the super chiasmatic nucleus, you get the 24-hour rhythm of being awake and being

524
00:51:33.120 --> 00:51:40.320
asleep, being awake and being asleep. How does your brain keep quartz-like precision 24-hour

525
00:51:40.320 --> 00:51:48.320
clock time? How does it do that? The way it does that is that it uses signals such as light and

526
00:51:48.320 --> 00:51:56.160
dark from your eyes from your eye. And so when light comes through the retina, it tells the hypothalamus

527
00:51:56.160 --> 00:52:01.600
it's daytime. And therefore you should be awake. And its rhythm starts, it's awesome sort of

528
00:52:01.600 --> 00:52:06.160
upswing. And temperature can do this and feeding can do this also to different things. But for the

529
00:52:06.160 --> 00:52:12.800
most part, light is the principal governor that essentially acts like electrical, I should say,

530
00:52:12.800 --> 00:52:19.680
photon fingers that pops the wristwatch dial out and resets it precisely for 24 hours every single day.

531
00:52:19.760 --> 00:52:25.680
Because if you're left in the dark with no signals of light, your clock isn't precise. It

532
00:52:25.680 --> 00:52:30.800
drifts to about 24 hours and 15 minutes. So you start going forward a little bit every single day

533
00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:35.200
if you go into a cave and people have done this experiment. The thing that keeps it precise is light.

534
00:52:35.920 --> 00:52:42.160
So you need light to keep a beautiful 24-hour rhythm. But one of those things that's under the

535
00:52:42.160 --> 00:52:48.960
control of your 24-hour rhythm is your sleep, wake, cycle. What if I'm doing exercise? Exercise is a

536
00:52:48.960 --> 00:52:53.680
wonderful entrainer of your circadian rhythm as long as you're doing it at the right time.

537
00:52:54.560 --> 00:52:59.920
So if you're starting to exercise at three or four in the morning, that's not good because that's

538
00:52:59.920 --> 00:53:05.120
an activity signal that's going to confuse the brain into thinking it's the active period which is

539
00:53:05.120 --> 00:53:10.160
normally because we're a diurnal species the day. And it's the same thing coming back to my point

540
00:53:10.160 --> 00:53:17.280
of regularity using light as the best way to help with that regularity because light

541
00:53:18.160 --> 00:53:24.240
if it's artificial at night falls your brain into thinking that it's daytime still outside.

542
00:53:24.240 --> 00:53:28.640
I mean, is there any such thing as non-artificial light? I mean, I guess with the sun, but I mean,

543
00:53:28.640 --> 00:53:34.560
is there a type of light that I could use at night like candles or something? Or yes, below 30

544
00:53:34.560 --> 00:53:40.240
luxe is not going to necessarily do you a disservice. Probably below 50 luxe. Now luxe

545
00:53:40.240 --> 00:53:46.800
LUX is just a measure of light intensity and you can download on the app store a free luxe meter.

546
00:53:46.800 --> 00:53:51.360
And if you're an idiot nerd like me, you're going all over the house at night and you're sort of

547
00:53:51.360 --> 00:53:55.920
putting it in different looking and you're seeing if any kind of white spots here were, you know,

548
00:53:55.920 --> 00:54:01.440
the luxe is too high, but you need to drop that that luxe. By the way, it's a great way if people

549
00:54:01.440 --> 00:54:06.640
want to say look, my REM sleep is deficient. How can I get more REM sleep? There's a great study

550
00:54:06.640 --> 00:54:11.040
where they did something similar to what I'm telling you now. 90 minutes before bed,

551
00:54:11.680 --> 00:54:17.200
they turned down the lights to below 30 luxe and they pulled out all of the blue light.

552
00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:24.480
And just that trick of dropping the lights down, 90 minutes before bed, below 30 luxe,

553
00:54:24.480 --> 00:54:31.360
making it warm yellow light, increased their REM sleep by 18%. Wow. It's a huge margin. No need

554
00:54:31.360 --> 00:54:38.720
pharmacology. But to your question, why is regularity important? Well, I told you that

555
00:54:38.720 --> 00:54:44.720
light is one of the signals that can create regularity. It turns out that your behavior

556
00:54:45.600 --> 00:54:51.600
is another thing that will tell your brain. So meaning when you go to bed and wake up at the same

557
00:54:51.600 --> 00:54:58.160
time, it acts like an anchor. It anchors your circadian rhythm and it tells you

558
00:54:59.040 --> 00:55:05.120
almost like a scene in a movie. This scene is now complete. A new scene starts. This scene is

559
00:55:05.120 --> 00:55:09.520
complete and you've seen starts. So every time that you're going to bed at the same time and

560
00:55:09.520 --> 00:55:14.880
waking up at the same time, you are feeding the super chiasmatic nucleus, the master 24-hour

561
00:55:14.880 --> 00:55:21.280
clock in your brain. You're feeding it signals of regularity. And when it feeds on signals of

562
00:55:21.280 --> 00:55:30.400
regularity, it improves the quantity and the quality of your sleep. Your circadian rhythm likes

563
00:55:30.480 --> 00:55:36.320
consistency. It likes regular signals. When you feed it signals of light, of activity,

564
00:55:36.320 --> 00:55:40.960
of waking up, going to bed, you improve the quantity and the quality of your sleep.

565
00:55:41.520 --> 00:55:46.080
That's the reason behind the underlying rule. So having a TV in your bedroom is a terrible idea

566
00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:51.280
then, because if on that behavioral point, if I'm getting in bed, but then I'm staying up for

567
00:55:51.280 --> 00:55:56.320
three hours watching Netflix, my brain is going to be quite confused about like the behavioral

568
00:55:56.400 --> 00:56:00.800
pattern of what I'm doing in my life. It's not going to associate the bed with sleep. It's going

569
00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:05.920
to associate the bed with movies. That's one of the problems that we call conditioned

570
00:56:05.920 --> 00:56:11.600
arousal, which sounds a lot more salacious than it actually is. It's a term that we use in

571
00:56:11.600 --> 00:56:18.480
sleep medicine, which may explain insomnia. So with insomnia, let's say that the first time you

572
00:56:18.480 --> 00:56:22.480
go to this thing called a dentist and you get in the chair and it's kind of cool, you're reclined

573
00:56:22.560 --> 00:56:28.080
back and you know, you think this is fine. But then after about 14 or 15 visits,

574
00:56:28.800 --> 00:56:33.280
when you get into that chair, you are no longer looking forward to getting into that chair.

575
00:56:33.280 --> 00:56:39.360
Why? Because you've learned the association that being in that chair typically leads to a bad

576
00:56:39.360 --> 00:56:47.680
outcome. Now, the same thing is true with the bed. If you start associating the bed with anything

577
00:56:47.680 --> 00:56:53.520
other than sleep, and we give you a pass in terms of sex, but sleep and sex, anything other than

578
00:56:53.520 --> 00:57:00.560
that, you start to learn that this thing called my bed is this place where I'm awake, where I work,

579
00:57:00.560 --> 00:57:06.400
where I eat, where we have conversations, where I watch television. And so, you know, if I were to,

580
00:57:06.400 --> 00:57:11.840
and again, I'm stealing my grandmother's point, but if I were to say to you, bed sleep, bed sleep,

581
00:57:11.840 --> 00:57:20.000
bed sleep, bed sleep, bed sleep. Okay. If I were to say bed scroll, bed eat, bed work, bed sleep,

582
00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:29.600
bed TV, bed, you're confused. Because there's no predictive signal. You've never bound an association.

583
00:57:29.600 --> 00:57:37.440
Now, the way this works to your disadvantage in insomnia is the following. The insomnia event

584
00:57:37.440 --> 00:57:42.800
that begins the insomnia is typically not the thing that maintains the insomnia. So let's say that

585
00:57:42.800 --> 00:57:49.840
I had experienced a really difficult bereavement, and that triggered a form of insomnia,

586
00:57:49.840 --> 00:57:56.400
where I couldn't sleep because of the bereavement. Gradually, the bereavement is not the thing that's

587
00:57:56.400 --> 00:58:02.880
going to maintain my insomnia. It's because every time I have been going to bed over the past month,

588
00:58:03.840 --> 00:58:09.200
I have not been sleeping. I've been wide awake in my bed. So now, because your brain is such an

589
00:58:09.200 --> 00:58:14.400
incredibly associative device, it learns the association that my bed is the place where I'm always

590
00:58:14.400 --> 00:58:21.200
awake. And what do we then do? We need to break that association in insomnia. So what we do is we say

591
00:58:21.200 --> 00:58:25.840
the 20 minute rule, if you've been in bed for about 20 minutes, and it's just not happening for you,

592
00:58:25.840 --> 00:58:30.000
don't worry. Don't listen to idiots like me that doom and gloom and disease and sickness and

593
00:58:30.080 --> 00:58:35.760
one bad night is not going to be a problem. It's just not. So just say, look, tonight is not my night.

594
00:58:35.760 --> 00:58:42.160
I am not, however, going to lie in bed awake because very quickly, my brain starts to learn

595
00:58:42.160 --> 00:58:46.240
the association that my bed is the place where I'm wide awake. I need to break that association.

596
00:58:46.240 --> 00:58:52.320
So go to a different room in dim light, just read a book, listen to a podcast, whatever it is,

597
00:58:52.320 --> 00:58:56.640
and the rule of thumb is the following only return to bed when you are sleepy.

598
00:58:57.280 --> 00:59:02.320
And so there's no time limit. And that way you gradually re-learn the association that my bed

599
00:59:02.320 --> 00:59:07.600
is the place where I always get consistent sleep because otherwise it's the dentist's chair,

600
00:59:07.600 --> 00:59:13.520
you walk into your bedroom and you look at your bed and it's your nemesis and you convince yourself

601
00:59:13.520 --> 00:59:18.240
even before you get into bed, I'm not going to sleep because that's the place where I always don't

602
00:59:18.240 --> 00:59:23.760
sleep. And by the way, if you suffer from the 3M awakenings, my first question is how do you know

603
00:59:23.760 --> 00:59:30.960
it's 3AM? And that's your first problem. Looking at the clock does two things. It makes you more

604
00:59:30.960 --> 00:59:38.240
anxious. And second, because your brain is such an incredibly associative device, you start to then

605
00:59:38.240 --> 00:59:44.640
decide that 3AM is the time when I need to wake up. If you keep looking at the clock, you keep

606
00:59:44.640 --> 00:59:49.760
reinforcing that it's 3 or 4. And sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning is like trying to remember

607
00:59:49.760 --> 00:59:55.920
someone's name. The harder you try, the further you push sleep away. Sleep is something that happens

608
00:59:55.920 --> 01:00:02.880
to you. It's not something that you make happen. And so at that moment, the best advice if you don't

609
01:00:02.880 --> 01:00:09.200
want to get out of bed is do any one of the following, meditation, just do a guided meditation,

610
01:00:09.200 --> 01:00:15.360
you can download apps. Next, if that's not your thing, that's okay. Do box breathing. You can sort of

611
01:00:15.360 --> 01:00:21.760
inhale for five, hold for six, exhale for seven. There's all sorts of different numbers, but you

612
01:00:21.760 --> 01:00:26.880
can do breathing exercises. The third, if you don't like that, is a body scan. So close your eyes,

613
01:00:26.880 --> 01:00:30.880
start at the top of your head. Feel as, you know, do I have tension in my forehead? Do I need to

614
01:00:30.880 --> 01:00:35.760
relax it? What about my neck? Do I need to move through your body and gradually go down? How

615
01:00:35.760 --> 01:00:40.960
am I shoulder blades feeling? I just relax down into the bed and gradually down into the chest,

616
01:00:40.960 --> 01:00:47.840
into the move through and just relax. If none of those things feel fun, the next thing you can do

617
01:00:47.840 --> 01:00:52.400
is take yourself on a mental walk. There's a great study from my university, at the University of

618
01:00:52.400 --> 01:00:58.240
Berkeley, California. And we didn't do this study, Alison Harvey did it. By the way, counting sheep,

619
01:00:58.880 --> 01:01:04.880
bad idea, makes your sleep worse. It turns out, why is that? Because with every kind of little

620
01:01:04.880 --> 01:01:09.920
bleeding cotton wall ball with a strange look on its face that leaps over the fence that you're

621
01:01:09.920 --> 01:01:15.760
counting, you're reinforcing every minute of sleep that you're not getting, and it seems to make

622
01:01:15.760 --> 01:01:21.120
matters worse. But what she found was that there's an alternative. If you think about a walk that you

623
01:01:21.120 --> 01:01:26.800
know in great vivid detail, so for me, it's going to be walking the dog. So I go over to the shelf,

624
01:01:26.800 --> 01:01:31.040
I open the door, is it the red lead or the, I'm going to go with the blue lead today. So I clip the

625
01:01:31.040 --> 01:01:34.880
dog in with my right hand, I open the door with my left hand, I take a left down the stairs, I look

626
01:01:34.880 --> 01:01:42.400
at it's that level of, I want you 4K detail in terms of granularity. And what's common about

627
01:01:42.400 --> 01:01:49.760
every method I've just described, meditation, box breathing, sort of body scan, going on a mental

628
01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:57.600
walk, all of these things having common that you get your mind off itself. In that particular

629
01:01:57.600 --> 01:02:02.960
example where she asks you to vividly think about a journey that you know, what did she find in

630
01:02:02.960 --> 01:02:09.680
the study? What she found is that that increases the speed with which you fall back asleep significantly.

631
01:02:10.480 --> 01:02:17.600
Because as I said, it's so, you know, her work to me demonstrated that it is so like that name,

632
01:02:17.600 --> 01:02:23.440
because the moment I stop trying to remember someone's name, what happens?

633
01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:29.040
You remember it. I remember it. And so when you do these types of exercises where you're getting

634
01:02:29.040 --> 01:02:35.200
the mind off itself, the next thing that you typically remember is your alarm clock going off

635
01:02:35.200 --> 01:02:42.640
in the morning. Is this why people listen to very vivid sleep stories and why I listen to serial

636
01:02:42.640 --> 01:02:48.720
cure documentaries? Serial killer documentaries, true ground documentaries, I should say that's

637
01:02:48.720 --> 01:02:56.720
a bit more nice to palette. I don't know of them. My suspicion is that they may be doing your

638
01:02:56.720 --> 01:03:03.200
deep sleep a disservice. And stick up for me in the comments. If you listen to true crime to fall

639
01:03:03.200 --> 01:03:09.200
asleep, please write it below in the comments section. If you find it subjectively wonderfully

640
01:03:09.200 --> 01:03:18.000
pacifying and calming and there is not death, naming, blood and limbs being distributed at high

641
01:03:18.000 --> 01:03:23.360
velocity all over the scene, I would say it's great. But if it looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie

642
01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:30.480
or sounds like one, maybe harm and foul rather than just in my ears. But yes, so you know,

643
01:03:31.200 --> 01:03:37.520
we forget that to the best of my knowledge, the meditation company called Calm, now I have no

644
01:03:37.520 --> 01:03:42.240
affiliation with them. They were doing somewhat well. But what they realized is that they wanted

645
01:03:42.240 --> 01:03:46.000
people to sort of meditate in the morning. When they looked at their usage statistics, people

646
01:03:46.000 --> 01:03:51.200
were meditating in the morning. But then there was a huge swath of usage right before bed.

647
01:03:51.200 --> 01:03:55.520
People were self-medicating their state of insomnia. And then through a stroke of genius,

648
01:03:55.520 --> 01:04:01.680
they realized when we were young, we used to love falling asleep to our parents, reading those a

649
01:04:01.680 --> 01:04:08.720
story. Why is that any different when we become adults? So they created sleep stories. And they

650
01:04:08.720 --> 01:04:13.120
went from struggling as a company, I think, to becoming the first, well, one of the first

651
01:04:13.120 --> 01:04:19.120
billion dollar valuation health companies out there. They became a unicorn. And now they can,

652
01:04:19.200 --> 01:04:24.800
they've got people like Matthew McConaughey, they've got Harry Styles, and then occasionally they've

653
01:04:24.800 --> 01:04:30.240
got a, you know, an unfortunate British sleep scientist with a bad voice. But you can listen to

654
01:04:30.240 --> 01:04:35.280
these sleep stories. And they are wonderfully separate. Why? Because they get your mind off itself.

655
01:04:36.240 --> 01:04:42.000
We talked early on about melatonin. And there are other supplements which people talk a lot about.

656
01:04:42.000 --> 01:04:47.200
One of the ones that's become really popular is magnesium. I've heard Ashawaganda and I've

657
01:04:47.200 --> 01:04:51.120
heard magnesium a lot. Yeah. Is there any efficacy to these? Are these useful?

658
01:04:51.760 --> 01:04:55.920
The first thing I would say is that if you're suffering from sleep problems and you're looking to

659
01:04:55.920 --> 01:05:02.240
supplements, you're stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. Okay. What you need to do is think

660
01:05:02.240 --> 01:05:08.720
about the fundamentals, regularity, watch your caffeine intake, make sure you're not drinking too

661
01:05:08.720 --> 01:05:14.800
much alcohol, get regular, dimmed down half the lights, digital detox. Any one of those, but

662
01:05:14.800 --> 01:05:20.720
especially all of them combined, are going to get you log orders of better sleep than reaching for

663
01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:27.520
the latest supplement bottle of whatever it is. The second thing to say is think about it from

664
01:05:27.520 --> 01:05:33.280
a logical standpoint. If there were really some supplement that promises to be the Shangri-La

665
01:05:33.280 --> 01:05:39.600
of all resplendent sleep at night, the drug companies would have been all over it decades ago.

666
01:05:40.160 --> 01:05:44.640
To put it in context, it took George Lucas, I think, about 30 years to amass something

667
01:05:44.640 --> 01:05:49.840
like four billion in revenue from the Star Wars franchise. It took Ambien 22 months.

668
01:05:51.280 --> 01:05:56.800
That's how big a business sleep farmer is. Ambien is a sleep pill. Ambien is a sleep pill.

669
01:05:57.440 --> 01:06:03.120
Magnesium, if you dig into it, and I did a deep dive about three years ago because I kept hearing

670
01:06:03.120 --> 01:06:08.560
it too, this magnesium magnesium. The first thing to note is that most forms of magnesium, magnesium,

671
01:06:08.560 --> 01:06:16.240
oxyde or magnesium citrate, most of these forms of magnesium don't cross the blood brain barrier.

672
01:06:17.280 --> 01:06:24.240
And sleep is produced by your brain. So how can something that doesn't get into your brain affect

673
01:06:25.120 --> 01:06:30.000
a brain process number one? There is one form of magnesium that seems to have some evidence

674
01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:36.320
in favor of it. It's called magnesium L308. But if you look at the literature, where did this story

675
01:06:36.320 --> 01:06:41.920
come from? It turns out that about 30 years ago, they started looking at people who had disrupted

676
01:06:41.920 --> 01:06:46.160
sleep and they were to assess their blood work. And what they found is that some of those people

677
01:06:46.160 --> 01:06:52.400
were magnesium deficient. And when they supplemented them with magnesium and they became magnesium

678
01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:59.600
normative, the sleep got better. But that's very different than saying, look, you and I were

679
01:06:59.600 --> 01:07:06.800
currently magnesium normative. And then dosing myself with high volumes of magnesium, am I

680
01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:11.200
imagining that that's going to make my sleep better? The analogy would be, let's say I developed

681
01:07:11.200 --> 01:07:17.440
this incredible new oxygen saturation machine. And you say to me, well, but Matt, my blood oxygen

682
01:07:17.440 --> 01:07:24.880
saturation right now, looking at my device, tells me it's 98.6%. It doesn't matter how fancy

683
01:07:24.960 --> 01:07:29.840
or good my machine is, I'm not going to get you past 100%. You're already at ceiling level.

684
01:07:30.480 --> 01:07:34.800
And that's the problem with magnesium supplementation. If you're magnesium normative,

685
01:07:35.360 --> 01:07:39.440
all you're doing is creating probably expensive urine at that moment in time.

686
01:07:40.640 --> 01:07:46.320
Now, there may be an indirect benefit of magnesium in that it does seem to relax muscles.

687
01:07:47.280 --> 01:07:53.920
And when the body is in a state of relaxation, it sends a signal of relaxation back up a branch of

688
01:07:53.920 --> 01:08:00.080
nerves called the vagus nerve that goes up to the brain and signals to your brain. You're starting

689
01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:06.000
to relax down and you get a state of quiescence. And that's very helpful for sleep. So magnesium

690
01:08:06.000 --> 01:08:12.400
may still have an indirect benefit on sleep through its relaxation kind of policy that it instantiates

691
01:08:12.400 --> 01:08:18.720
in the body. But overall, magnesium is not really moving beneath if you look at the studies.

692
01:08:19.600 --> 01:08:26.080
Ashwagandha is different. Ashwagandha and another compound called phosphatidile

693
01:08:26.080 --> 01:08:34.400
serine, phosphatidile serine and Ashwagandha, both of these supplements seem to help do one of two

694
01:08:34.400 --> 01:08:40.320
things. They either ratchet down the fight or flight branch of your nervous system. And they

695
01:08:40.320 --> 01:08:46.640
can also reduce the amount of cortisol that the body is releasing. That's important because

696
01:08:47.520 --> 01:08:51.520
I see a lot of people coming to the sleep center where I'm at and they have what I call the

697
01:08:51.520 --> 01:08:58.000
tired but wired phenomenon. Where they come to me and they say, I am so tired. I am so, so tired.

698
01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:03.840
But I'm just so wired emotionally and from a nervous perspective that I can't fall asleep.

699
01:09:03.840 --> 01:09:08.800
And let's say that you've done, let's say, you know, an onstage event. And it's incredible. You've

700
01:09:08.800 --> 01:09:14.160
got that onstage buzz. You come off stage at 11 p.m. and normally you'll be fast asleep.

701
01:09:14.160 --> 01:09:20.880
But you know you are so wired. It doesn't matter. You are tired as tired as can be but you're so wired

702
01:09:20.880 --> 01:09:25.280
you can't fall asleep. That's the fight or flight branch being switched on. And you just can't

703
01:09:25.280 --> 01:09:30.800
fall asleep. You need to push it back off. Phosphatidile serine and Ashwagandha will both push you back

704
01:09:30.800 --> 01:09:36.640
over into the more quiescent what we call parasympathetic nervous system branch. That's good.

705
01:09:37.440 --> 01:09:43.840
However, they also will reduce cortisol and cortisol is a wake promoting hormone.

706
01:09:43.840 --> 01:09:49.760
Cortisol is fine. We get a bad rap. You need to have your cortisol start to spike a few hours

707
01:09:49.760 --> 01:09:56.000
before bed and it helps with the waking up process. It's wonderful. Every day we have a cortisol

708
01:09:56.000 --> 01:10:01.440
spike that starts happening before we wake up. It's one of the things that helps us wake up

709
01:10:01.520 --> 01:10:06.960
and then it builds us to this beautiful crescendo mid-morning where you should be awake and

710
01:10:07.680 --> 01:10:14.400
not needing caffeine. And it drops before bed. And then it starts to peak in the middle early

711
01:10:14.400 --> 01:10:18.800
afternoon and in fact usually peaks the late morning hours I should say. And then it will start

712
01:10:18.800 --> 01:10:25.520
it's awesome sort of downswing. And what you see is that right before you go to bed, cortisol should

713
01:10:25.520 --> 01:10:31.840
hit its lowest point what we call it's nidia. It's lowest trough. What's interesting by the way

714
01:10:31.840 --> 01:10:38.480
just as an aside is that in somnia we can classify it usually as at least one of two different types.

715
01:10:38.480 --> 01:10:43.040
There's actually multiple but let's just say there are of those multiple. There are two types.

716
01:10:43.040 --> 01:10:48.640
One is called sleep onset in somnia. I can't fall asleep. The other is sleep maintenance in somnia.

717
01:10:48.640 --> 01:10:55.120
I can't stay asleep. When they've looked at people's cortisol on a 30 minute by 30 minute

718
01:10:55.120 --> 01:11:00.880
basis on the 24 hour clock face we go through just what we described. Just before we wake up we get

719
01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:07.520
this rising cortisol. It peaks late morning and then it drops down and right before bed our cortisol

720
01:11:07.520 --> 01:11:13.600
is almost at its lowest point. Within somnia patients they show exactly the same thing. A beautiful rise

721
01:11:14.560 --> 01:11:19.840
in the late morning hours it starts to come down but then you see two anomalies.

722
01:11:20.800 --> 01:11:27.680
Right before bed it goes back up and then in the middle of the night even when it's starting to rise

723
01:11:27.680 --> 01:11:32.720
it will have this abnormal spike right in the middle of the night too. And what we believe is that

724
01:11:32.720 --> 01:11:38.560
that may in part explain sleep onset in somnia cortisol should be coming down and it should stay

725
01:11:38.560 --> 01:11:43.120
low right before we go to bed but then it jumps back up and in somnia patients I can't fall asleep.

726
01:11:43.920 --> 01:11:49.200
And then it continues to stay low throughout the first half of the night but then it also spikes

727
01:11:49.200 --> 01:11:55.520
in in somnia patients I can't stay asleep. I've had so many founders speak to me and say why

728
01:11:55.520 --> 01:12:00.080
didn't this particular ad that I ran on this platform work for me. Maybe the copy wasn't good the

729
01:12:00.080 --> 01:12:03.600
creative wasn't strong but usually the problem is they're not having the right conversation

730
01:12:03.600 --> 01:12:08.560
because that ad never reached the right person. And if you're in B2B marketing that is much of the

731
01:12:08.640 --> 01:12:14.000
game and this is where linkedin ad solves that problem for you. Their targeting is ridiculously

732
01:12:14.000 --> 01:12:20.800
specific you can target by job title, seniority, company size, industry and even someone's skill set

733
01:12:20.800 --> 01:12:27.120
and their network includes over a billion professionals about 130 million of them are decision-makers

734
01:12:27.120 --> 01:12:31.600
so when you use linkedin ads you're putting your brand in front of the right people and linkedin

735
01:12:31.600 --> 01:12:36.480
ads also drive the highest B2B return on ad spend across all ad networks in my experience.

736
01:12:36.480 --> 01:12:43.440
If you want to give them a try head over to linkedin.com slash diary and when you spend $250

737
01:12:43.440 --> 01:12:49.840
on your first linkedin ads campaign you'll get an extra $250 credit from me for the next one

738
01:12:49.840 --> 01:12:55.600
that's linkedin.com slash diary terms and conditions apply. We were talking about

739
01:12:55.600 --> 01:13:00.160
regularity timing and all these things in quality and quantity but one of the things I learned from

740
01:13:00.160 --> 01:13:07.040
your work is that that last hour is potentially the most important hour of me being in bed.

741
01:13:07.040 --> 01:13:12.560
And I say this in part because my girlfriend should have about six hours, six and a half hours

742
01:13:12.560 --> 01:13:17.440
sleep she sleeps very very well perfect sleeper but she'd always get up really really early and

743
01:13:18.560 --> 01:13:22.240
in part that was because of the guilt that I talked about but I had a conversation with her

744
01:13:22.240 --> 01:13:25.600
about the guilt and I said just stay in bed as long as you need to stay in bed like just have

745
01:13:25.680 --> 01:13:32.800
that extra eight hour and in part that's because I learned that the further we go in sleep the more

746
01:13:32.800 --> 01:13:38.320
REM we're getting yeah okay can you explain that to me with these four blocks why that last hour

747
01:13:38.320 --> 01:13:42.400
is particularly important and why we shouldn't be jumping out of bed or why we should be using

748
01:13:42.400 --> 01:13:46.480
certain sleep devices to wake us up when we're at the end of that last hour of REM.

749
01:13:46.480 --> 01:13:54.160
Absolutely so here we have the four blocks of sleep so when we first fall asleep we go into light

750
01:13:54.160 --> 01:14:00.560
non rapid eye movement sleep stage one this is the stage of sleep that if I wake you up out of it

751
01:14:00.560 --> 01:14:07.520
you say I wasn't sleeping now it's just that you're just in that transitional phase this beautiful

752
01:14:07.520 --> 01:14:14.000
liminal state between the windows of wakefulness and true sleep so this is your bridge between the

753
01:14:14.000 --> 01:14:19.040
waking world and the sleep world and it doesn't last for very long maybe just 10 or 15 minutes at

754
01:14:19.120 --> 01:14:25.680
tops then you get into the workhorse of sleep this is stage two non REM sleep 50 percent of your

755
01:14:25.680 --> 01:14:32.320
night is spent in stage two non REM sleep I don't like the word light non REM sleep I've often

756
01:14:32.320 --> 01:14:37.760
used it but it's not really it's we do a lot of cognitive processing in stage two non REM sleep it's

757
01:14:37.760 --> 01:14:44.000
good stuff it's not just the stage that you have to go through from sort of you know deep non REM

758
01:14:44.560 --> 01:14:50.080
sleep to go back to stage two in order for you to get to REM but I'll come to that so we have fallen

759
01:14:50.080 --> 01:14:56.320
asleep 10 minutes yeah now we're in stage two non REM sleep we'll stay there for about 15 or 20

760
01:14:56.320 --> 01:15:02.560
minutes then if it's in the first couple of hours of the night we go down into the very deeper stages

761
01:15:02.560 --> 01:15:09.200
of deep non REM sleep this is where the brain wave patterns slow down but the brain waves become

762
01:15:09.200 --> 01:15:16.320
incredibly big huge big powerful slow brain waves this is where you get an enormous amount of

763
01:15:16.320 --> 01:15:23.360
restoration recovery of many of your major physiological systems physical recovery physical

764
01:15:23.360 --> 01:15:29.280
recovery but mental tune yeah it's during deep sleep that you take newly minted memories that

765
01:15:29.280 --> 01:15:34.720
you've learned and you hit the save button on those memories so that you don't forget deep sleep

766
01:15:34.720 --> 01:15:41.760
essentially is going to future proof the information that you just learned today it transfers

767
01:15:41.760 --> 01:15:47.680
information from a short term storage vulnerable reservoir to a more permanent long term storage

768
01:15:47.680 --> 01:15:53.280
site it's during deep non REM sleep when we have this communication so think of those deep

769
01:15:53.280 --> 01:15:58.320
powerful slow brain waves like long wave radio station when you used to tune into a radio station

770
01:15:58.320 --> 01:16:05.920
the car you get huge ability for information transfer across long distances across huge paths

771
01:16:05.920 --> 01:16:11.840
in the brain it's amazing so we've gone from light non REM then we go down into deep non REM

772
01:16:11.840 --> 01:16:17.280
we'll stay there for about 15 or 20 minutes then we'll start to rise back up again we'll go back

773
01:16:17.280 --> 01:16:23.840
into stage two non REM sleep wait we've gone from one two three to two yes so we've gone think about

774
01:16:23.840 --> 01:16:31.280
it more almost like a roller coaster ride so we go from light non REM and then we go down

775
01:16:31.280 --> 01:16:37.440
into stage two non REM then we go down into deep sleep and then we're going to rise back up into

776
01:16:37.440 --> 01:16:44.400
light stage two non REM sleep we're going to stay there and after about 70 80 minutes you're going

777
01:16:44.400 --> 01:16:50.880
to pop up and you'll have a short REM sleep period oh okay like this and this is beautiful so this

778
01:16:50.880 --> 01:16:56.720
is what we call a hypnogram I'll put this on the screen for anyone lovely so what I'm describing

779
01:16:56.720 --> 01:17:02.400
here is this roller coaster ride so we fall in sleep light stage one non REM go down into stage two

780
01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:07.680
then you go down and you have a heavy period of deep non REM slow wave sleep stage three

781
01:17:08.640 --> 01:17:13.120
and then and that's what you see on your sleep tracker is deep sleep this is light sleep this is

782
01:17:13.120 --> 01:17:19.040
deep sleep stage two non REM sleep light sleep stage three non REM sleep deep sleep but then

783
01:17:19.680 --> 01:17:24.080
you'll start to climb back up and then you may pop up and you'll have a short REM sleep period

784
01:17:24.080 --> 01:17:29.440
here after about 70 or 80 minutes so you'll have about 10 minutes of REM sleep and then back down

785
01:17:29.440 --> 01:17:36.160
you go again you go down into non REM sleep and then up into REM down into non REM sleep and you'll

786
01:17:36.160 --> 01:17:42.480
go up into REM down into non REM sleep and up into REM so what's interesting however is that the

787
01:17:42.480 --> 01:17:49.600
ratio of non REM to REM changes now there's a myth out there and it's a bit of a problem

788
01:17:50.640 --> 01:17:57.440
we humans have a 90 minute average non REM to REM cycle so we go down into non REM sleep

789
01:17:57.440 --> 01:18:01.600
and then up into REM sleep every 90 minutes then we go back down into non REM sleep and then

790
01:18:01.600 --> 01:18:06.800
up into REM sleep so we go down into non REM sleep and then up into REM in this 90 minute cycle

791
01:18:07.520 --> 01:18:15.680
the problem is that it's on average 90 minutes it ranges from 70 minutes to 120 minutes from

792
01:18:15.680 --> 01:18:20.320
one individual to the next so you know these devices that you may have seen tried to sort of

793
01:18:20.320 --> 01:18:27.120
you know entrepreneurship they say I'm going to wake you up at the ideal moment in your 90 minute

794
01:18:27.120 --> 01:18:32.080
cycle so that this thing that sits on my bedside I tap it when I'm the lights go out and then it's

795
01:18:32.080 --> 01:18:36.400
going to go on it's 90 minute cycle it's going to figure out the perfect moment to wake you up

796
01:18:36.480 --> 01:18:42.960
it's nonsense because my sleep cycle may be 75 minutes yours may be 105 minutes it's got

797
01:18:42.960 --> 01:18:47.840
no idea because it's using a hard coded 90 minute cycle it's it's in some ways nonsense

798
01:18:48.560 --> 01:18:54.720
but we go down into non REM sleep and up into REM sleep every 90 minutes what changes however

799
01:18:54.720 --> 01:19:01.600
is the ratio of non REM to REM within those 90 minute cycles as you move across the night

800
01:19:01.600 --> 01:19:06.560
such that in the first half of the night the majority of those 90 minute cycles are comprised

801
01:19:06.560 --> 01:19:12.960
of lots of deep non REM sleep and very little REM sleep but as you push through to the second half

802
01:19:12.960 --> 01:19:19.520
of the night now that seesaw balance shifts over and you spend much more of your time in REM sleep

803
01:19:19.520 --> 01:19:24.000
in the second half of the night and particularly just as you said in the last two hours of the night

804
01:19:24.640 --> 01:19:29.120
why is this consequential well just as you said and you spoke about for your girlfriend let's say

805
01:19:29.200 --> 01:19:33.440
that you know I normally go to bed for argument's sake and I'm not saying this is the ideal time

806
01:19:33.440 --> 01:19:38.480
but I go to bed at midnight to make the math easy and I wake up at 8 but tomorrow I've got to catch

807
01:19:38.480 --> 01:19:43.760
my flight back home so I'm going to wake up two hours early so I'm going to wake up six rather than

808
01:19:43.760 --> 01:19:49.920
eight I've lost two hours of sleep so how much total sleep if I lost well I've lost 25% of my total

809
01:19:49.920 --> 01:19:58.400
sleep two hours of my eight hours 25% well yes and no I've lost 25% of my total sleep but I may

810
01:19:58.400 --> 01:20:05.360
have lost 50 60 70% of all of my REM sleep why because REM sleep comes in the second half and

811
01:20:05.360 --> 01:20:09.520
then particularly those last couple of hours of sleep so that's why it's not just academic that you

812
01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:15.040
understand the sleep cycle relationship but it's also pragmatic because it can impact the amount

813
01:20:15.040 --> 01:20:21.280
in fact the easiest way if people said how can I get more REM sleep I would say just sleep 15

814
01:20:21.280 --> 01:20:27.440
minutes later into the day than you normally would do and you will disproportionately bias yourself

815
01:20:27.440 --> 01:20:31.680
towards getting significantly more REM sleep and why does REM sleep matter?

816
01:20:32.640 --> 01:20:38.080
REM sleep is a brain state firstly that is incredibly active in some in fact some parts of the brain

817
01:20:38.080 --> 01:20:43.680
particularly if I were to show you these deep emotional centers of the brain as I call this brain

818
01:20:43.680 --> 01:20:51.440
apart so we've got these sort of deep emotional centers in the brain that sit and in fact the sort

819
01:20:51.600 --> 01:20:57.280
of the more just underneath in here tucked in inside just next to your brain stem at the top of it

820
01:20:57.760 --> 01:21:02.000
and these emotional centers are called the amygdala and you have one on the left and one on the

821
01:21:02.000 --> 01:21:07.040
right side of your brain that part of the brain together with a memory structure that runs alongside

822
01:21:07.040 --> 01:21:12.080
it called the hippocampus those two parts of the brain form what we call the limbic system and

823
01:21:12.080 --> 01:21:17.360
you may have heard of the limbic system the emotional centers of the brain those can be up to 40%

824
01:21:17.440 --> 01:21:22.720
more active when you're in dream sleep than when you're awake dream sleep dream sleep is rapid

825
01:21:22.720 --> 01:21:28.080
eye movement sleep REM sleep so REM sleep is the state now it depends on how you define dreaming

826
01:21:28.800 --> 01:21:33.440
if you define dreaming as any mental activity reported upon awakening then you dream in all

827
01:21:33.440 --> 01:21:37.680
stages of sleep like non-rem sleep deep REM sleep so what would what would that sound like well

828
01:21:37.680 --> 01:21:41.600
if I woke you up and said Stephen just tell me what was going through your head and you said well

829
01:21:41.600 --> 01:21:45.440
I was just thinking about the next time you're going to come in and wake me up that's just a dream

830
01:21:45.440 --> 01:21:52.640
thought what the most people think of dreams as the dreams that we have from REM sleep from

831
01:21:52.640 --> 01:21:57.600
rapid eye movement sleep that's why we call it dream sleep dreams from rapid eye movement sleep

832
01:21:57.600 --> 01:22:03.920
are florid the narrative in fact last night when you fell asleep and you went into dream sleep you

833
01:22:03.920 --> 01:22:12.480
became incredibly psychotic excuse me now before you reject my diagnosis of your nighttime psychosis

834
01:22:12.480 --> 01:22:17.600
let me give you five good reasons when you went into dreams sleep last night you started to see

835
01:22:17.600 --> 01:22:22.800
things which were not there so you were hallucinating second you believed things that couldn't possibly

836
01:22:22.800 --> 01:22:30.160
be true so you were delusional third you became confused about time place in person so in psychiatry

837
01:22:30.160 --> 01:22:37.200
we call that being disorientated fourth you had wildly fluctuating emotions something that we

838
01:22:37.200 --> 01:22:43.440
call being emotionally labial you're all over the place and then how wonderful you and I because

839
01:22:43.440 --> 01:22:48.720
I include myself now as being psychotic you and I we both woke up this morning and we forgot

840
01:22:48.720 --> 01:22:53.680
most if not all of that dream experience so we're suffering from amnesia if you were to experience

841
01:22:53.680 --> 01:22:58.480
any one of those five symptoms whilst you're awake you'll be seeking some degree of psychological

842
01:22:58.480 --> 01:23:03.120
help but for reasons that we're only now understanding it seems to be a normal biological and

843
01:23:03.120 --> 01:23:09.040
psychological process so what are the reasons why do we dream we dream for at least two different

844
01:23:09.040 --> 01:23:17.760
reasons the first reason is emotional first aid REM sleep is what I've defined as overnight therapy

845
01:23:18.640 --> 01:23:23.520
and it's during dream sleep where your brain takes difficult painful emotional experiences

846
01:23:24.240 --> 01:23:29.040
and it acts like a nocturnal soothing balm and it just takes the sharp edges off those

847
01:23:29.040 --> 01:23:34.720
difficult painful experiences so that you come back the next day and you have a memory of

848
01:23:35.360 --> 01:23:41.600
an emotional event but it's no longer emotionally you don't have that same visceral regurgitation

849
01:23:41.600 --> 01:23:49.200
of that same emotional charge why is REM sleep able to do this overnight therapy this deep

850
01:23:49.200 --> 01:23:55.520
potentiation why is REM sleep able to sort of strip the bitter emotional rind from the informational

851
01:23:55.520 --> 01:24:03.120
orange as it were the reason is the following dream sleep REM sleep is the only time during the

852
01:24:03.120 --> 01:24:09.360
24 hour period where the brain shuts off a stress related neurochemical called noradrenaline

853
01:24:10.080 --> 01:24:15.040
now you've heard of the cystic chemical downstairs in your body called adrenaline or upstairs in

854
01:24:15.040 --> 01:24:20.480
the brain we don't have adrenaline we have noradrenaline REM sleep is the only time where it's

855
01:24:20.480 --> 01:24:26.720
completely shut off and what we put forward is a theory called overnight therapy where your brain

856
01:24:27.680 --> 01:24:32.320
has as I told you these emotional centers and these memory centers the emotional centers the amygdala

857
01:24:32.320 --> 01:24:37.760
the memory centers the hippocampus you reactivate those structures when you go into dream sleep

858
01:24:38.480 --> 01:24:43.920
so your brain gets the chance to reactivate and replay and reprocess emotional experiences

859
01:24:43.920 --> 01:24:50.240
however it's doing it in a quote unquote safe neurochemical environment because that stress

860
01:24:50.240 --> 01:24:56.320
chemical of noradrenaline is completely shut off so it's the ideal neurochemical therapy

861
01:24:57.200 --> 01:25:02.640
for stripping the emotion from the memory and we put forward a theory that perhaps the quintessential

862
01:25:02.640 --> 01:25:09.440
disorder where this fails is PTSD because when you speak to those patients not only do we see

863
01:25:09.520 --> 01:25:15.920
that their REM sleep is disrupted when you speak to those patients they will say look I just can't

864
01:25:15.920 --> 01:25:23.200
quote unquote get over the event what they mean by that is the war veteran who is now going to the

865
01:25:23.200 --> 01:25:28.240
supermarket and they come outside and they're in the car park and the car back fires and they

866
01:25:28.240 --> 01:25:34.720
instantly have the flashback to the the sort of detonation on the military field and what's

867
01:25:34.720 --> 01:25:40.640
happening there is that the brain has not stripped the emotion from the memory so every time they

868
01:25:40.640 --> 01:25:47.440
relive the memory they regurgitate that same emotional reaction so no wonder we proposed that

869
01:25:47.440 --> 01:25:53.280
the brain then comes back the following night and says look I'm sorry sleep I've still got this

870
01:25:53.280 --> 01:25:58.720
trauma memory can you do your trick of stripping the emotion from the memory and it fails again

871
01:25:58.720 --> 01:26:02.800
so in the next night it comes back and says I'm sorry to bother you but I've still got this

872
01:26:02.800 --> 01:26:07.120
emotionally charged memory please do your trick of stripping the emotion from memory it fails

873
01:26:07.120 --> 01:26:13.360
again this sounds like the broken record of repetitive nightmares that we see in PTSD

874
01:26:14.320 --> 01:26:21.360
why could this be happening levels of noradrenaline in the brain in patients with PTSD are too high

875
01:26:22.000 --> 01:26:26.240
and I was at a conference some years ago where I was presenting this theory we just presented this

876
01:26:26.240 --> 01:26:31.440
theory it was a theory it was in search of data and it turns out at the same conference it was one

877
01:26:31.440 --> 01:26:36.160
of those incredible moments you get hairs on the back of your neck there was a psychiatrist from

878
01:26:36.160 --> 01:26:41.360
Puget Sound which is just outside of Seattle on the west coast of America and he had been

879
01:26:41.360 --> 01:26:47.520
treating his war veterans in the Veterans Administration with a blood pressure medication called

880
01:26:47.520 --> 01:26:53.520
Prasasin now it turns out that Prasasin it's a generic drug because it's the Veterans Administration

881
01:26:53.520 --> 01:26:59.360
so it's cheap and it crosses the blood brain barrier when Prasasin gets into the brain one of the

882
01:26:59.360 --> 01:27:05.920
things that it does is shut down levels of noradrenaline why was this interesting what he was

883
01:27:05.920 --> 01:27:10.480
perplexed by is that he was saying I'm giving this blood pressure medication to my war veterans

884
01:27:10.480 --> 01:27:15.280
with PTSD it's not helping too much with their blood pressure but they're all coming back saying

885
01:27:15.280 --> 01:27:20.560
all of those repetitive nightmares they're starting to go away and I'm sleeping better and I'm

886
01:27:20.560 --> 01:27:28.080
feeling better what he had done was inadvertently treated their high levels of noradrenaline

887
01:27:28.080 --> 01:27:33.920
which were preventing the brain from kind of stopping those levels of noradrenaline down and

888
01:27:33.920 --> 01:27:39.760
processing the emotion from the memory it was too high in those PTSD PTSD patients but by treating

889
01:27:39.760 --> 01:27:44.960
them with this drug he'd inadvertently brought the levels of noradrenaline down during REM sleep

890
01:27:45.760 --> 01:27:50.800
and then it ultimately became one of the only prescribed medications in the Veterans Administration

891
01:27:51.040 --> 01:27:57.520
for repetitive nightmares because why the brain had finally got down into a quote-unquote safe

892
01:27:57.520 --> 01:28:04.560
chemical state because noradrenaline was too high but he treated them with this drug so he had

893
01:28:05.200 --> 01:28:12.240
data that was in search of a theory I had a theory that was in search of clinical data and so I

894
01:28:12.240 --> 01:28:17.040
raced to him after he gave his presentation I said I think I know why you're finding what you're

895
01:28:17.040 --> 01:28:21.920
finding I flew him down to Berkeley we spent all day together we went out for a dinner together

896
01:28:21.920 --> 01:28:26.960
and I just had ultimately he went on to do clinical trials in it it's not a cure all for everyone by

897
01:28:26.960 --> 01:28:32.640
the way it doesn't work for everyone but and I would say that there is now a better treatment for

898
01:28:32.640 --> 01:28:39.840
nightmares if you're suffering from nightmares and it's called image rehearsal therapy or IRT

899
01:28:40.640 --> 01:28:45.360
and it works through an incredible mechanism of memory that we actually had discovered about

900
01:28:45.360 --> 01:28:53.520
gosh 20 years ago now called memory reconsolidation so when you learn information it would be

901
01:28:53.520 --> 01:28:58.960
oh let's take a word document wouldn't it be just daft if you opened up a word document you started

902
01:28:58.960 --> 01:29:03.440
typing in you know all of this information you hit save and then you come back tomorrow and you

903
01:29:03.440 --> 01:29:08.720
double click on the document and word of shit you out you can't edit the document that's a really

904
01:29:08.720 --> 01:29:16.160
bad information storage system it's a bad idea your human memories are just like this you form

905
01:29:16.160 --> 01:29:22.720
new memories then you sleep and you save them but when you come back and you reactivate that memory

906
01:29:22.720 --> 01:29:29.120
when you recall a memory you bring it back into this opened up states like double clicking on the

907
01:29:29.120 --> 01:29:35.200
memory and the memory becomes fragile and malleable once again so you can update and edit that memory

908
01:29:35.280 --> 01:29:39.280
and then the next night you re-save it it's called re-consolidation so the first night

909
01:29:39.280 --> 01:29:46.240
I save it that's consolidation then I reactivated I modified and then the next night I re-consolidated

910
01:29:47.200 --> 01:29:53.840
so coming back to nightmares it turns out that you can do this with trauma patients who have nightmares

911
01:29:53.840 --> 01:29:59.120
caused by trauma for example let's say that you got into a horrific road accident and you went

912
01:29:59.120 --> 01:30:04.000
through your breaks failed you went through the red light you got t-bound it was just traumatic

913
01:30:04.400 --> 01:30:10.240
all traumatic and what you do with the therapist because you're having these repetitive nightmares

914
01:30:10.240 --> 01:30:17.120
of reliving that same car crash every night you work with them and you tell them the dream

915
01:30:17.120 --> 01:30:23.120
you recall the dream actively out loud but then working with a therapist what you do is you modify

916
01:30:23.120 --> 01:30:28.960
the outcome so instead of me saying the breaks failed now in the new scenario with your therapist

917
01:30:28.960 --> 01:30:33.760
you say well you look down and there's a manual handbrake in the car so you realize that you

918
01:30:33.760 --> 01:30:38.640
can actually just gradually start applying the handbrake and you bring the car to a safe halt

919
01:30:38.640 --> 01:30:43.760
and you go to the side of the road and there's no accident and what you're doing is you're re-opening

920
01:30:43.760 --> 01:30:51.200
back up that trauma memory and you're rewriting the narrative and then you sleep and you update

921
01:30:51.200 --> 01:30:58.720
that memory and by recalling and rewriting the memory each and every waking day you end up

922
01:30:58.800 --> 01:31:05.360
dissipating the severity of your trauma nightmare every single night and it's called image rehearsal

923
01:31:05.360 --> 01:31:10.320
therapy for nightmares it's incredibly powerful it's probably more powerful on the presence

924
01:31:10.320 --> 01:31:16.160
in drug that I spoke about and I'm guessing people don't sleep and also have nightmares for a variety

925
01:31:16.160 --> 01:31:21.040
of reasons relating to trauma generally it's a good question perhaps which is in some ways

926
01:31:21.760 --> 01:31:28.160
what's the difference between a bad dream and a nightmare because all of us will have bad dreams

927
01:31:28.960 --> 01:31:34.080
bad dreams are usually things that happen infrequently maybe you have them once every month

928
01:31:34.080 --> 01:31:39.200
every couple of months yeah the definition of nightmare disorder is that you have to have these

929
01:31:39.200 --> 01:31:46.320
dreams frequently maybe at least twice a week they have to wake you up out of your sleep

930
01:31:46.320 --> 01:31:53.600
and you have vivid recall plus it has to cause you some kind of daytime distress where you're not

931
01:31:53.600 --> 01:32:00.960
feeling good about the day it's causing you mental anguish and furthermore if it starts to lead

932
01:32:00.960 --> 01:32:08.480
to hopelessness or a sense that your life is not worth living you absolutely need to go and see

933
01:32:08.480 --> 01:32:15.200
someone and here's what we've discovered about nightmares short sleep duration not getting

934
01:32:15.200 --> 01:32:23.120
enough sleep sleeping less than six hours predicts by about 100 to 150% higher percentage chance

935
01:32:23.120 --> 01:32:30.880
of you having suicidal thoughts attempting suicide or tragically suicide completion that's

936
01:32:30.880 --> 01:32:40.640
bad sleep it turns out that nightmares so if short sleep has 150% higher likelihood of suicide

937
01:32:40.640 --> 01:32:50.480
ality having nightmares has an 800% higher likelihood of suicidal tendencies associated with it

938
01:32:50.480 --> 01:32:57.440
now we don't think that nightmares are causing suicidal tendencies that's not what we believe

939
01:32:57.440 --> 01:33:03.840
we believe however nightmares much more than disrupted sleep nightmares seem to be the canary

940
01:33:03.840 --> 01:33:10.160
in the coal mine nightmares are this distress beacon that leaks from our electrical static of

941
01:33:10.160 --> 01:33:18.080
sleep at night and it is incredibly sensitive to your suicidal tendencies your suicidal attempts

942
01:33:18.080 --> 01:33:24.320
and as I said suicide completion as well nightmares are a biomarker if you are having

943
01:33:24.320 --> 01:33:30.080
distressing nightmares that are waking you up you need to go and speak to someone about it

944
01:33:30.080 --> 01:33:34.640
it's absolutely paramount because there are good effective ways that you can dissipate those

945
01:33:34.640 --> 01:33:40.800
nightmares I'm trying to understand whether it's a malfunction or it's a signal I guess it might

946
01:33:40.800 --> 01:33:49.040
be both it's a very good question which is is it adaptive or is it mal adaptive is it a good thing

947
01:33:49.040 --> 01:33:54.960
to have a nightmare or is it a bad thing to have a nightmare we don't quite have the answer to that

948
01:33:54.960 --> 01:33:59.360
but let me come back to I told you there were two functions of dream sleep and we're still in the

949
01:33:59.360 --> 01:34:06.000
first one which is emotional first aid and it turns out that your thinking is incredibly astute

950
01:34:06.000 --> 01:34:12.240
we believe that at least normative dreams not nightmares nightmares may be the system failing

951
01:34:12.240 --> 01:34:17.520
just as I spoke about in PTSD with repetitive nightmares and in fact repetitive nightmares are

952
01:34:17.520 --> 01:34:23.040
so consistent in PTSD that you can't receive a diagnosis of PTSD without having repetitive nightmares

953
01:34:23.040 --> 01:34:30.000
that's how sort of diagnostic they are but dreaming normative dreaming even if the bad dreams

954
01:34:30.000 --> 01:34:35.680
is beneficial how could I make that claim there was a study done by a late sleep scientist a

955
01:34:35.680 --> 01:34:41.360
woman called Rosalind Cartwright and she was studying people who had gone through a difficult period

956
01:34:41.360 --> 01:34:47.120
let's say bereavement or very bitter divorce and they had become depressed because of that experience

957
01:34:47.680 --> 01:34:52.800
and around the time of the experience she was seeing them as a therapist and she was having

958
01:34:52.800 --> 01:34:57.840
them do dream recall so she was having them create dream diaries every single night

959
01:34:58.400 --> 01:35:04.000
and then she tracked these patients for a year and it turned out that roughly half of them by 12

960
01:35:04.000 --> 01:35:09.600
months later had remitted from their depression they got better they'd got past their depression

961
01:35:09.600 --> 01:35:16.000
the other half was still depressed so then she took that data and she went back with those two

962
01:35:16.000 --> 01:35:21.760
groups and she said is there anything different about their dreams and it turned out that there was

963
01:35:22.480 --> 01:35:27.440
both of those groups of people whether they could free of their depression or they stayed in their

964
01:35:27.440 --> 01:35:31.680
depression both of them were dreaming at the time both of them were having REM sleep both of them

965
01:35:31.680 --> 01:35:37.200
were dreaming what was the difference then those individuals that went on to gain remission

966
01:35:38.000 --> 01:35:45.200
to their depression and get better those people were dreaming of the events itself at the time

967
01:35:45.200 --> 01:35:49.920
that they were happening whereas those other people who didn't go on to gain clinical remission

968
01:35:49.920 --> 01:35:55.680
they were dreaming they just weren't dreaming of the experience is itself in other words

969
01:35:55.680 --> 01:36:01.680
it's not just sufficient to have REM sleep it's not just sufficient to have REM sleep and be dreaming

970
01:36:02.160 --> 01:36:06.880
you need to be dreaming of the difficult painful experience that you're going through

971
01:36:06.880 --> 01:36:11.600
to gain that clinical resolution damn so if I something going on in my life I need to think about it

972
01:36:11.600 --> 01:36:19.040
before I go to bed yes and no what you have to realize is that it's taken us

973
01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:25.280
depending on who you believe 3.4 million years of evolution to develop this thing called

974
01:36:25.280 --> 01:36:33.520
hominid sleep and dreaming and REM sleep I think that that evolutionary millions of years

975
01:36:33.520 --> 01:36:41.600
probably understands what the correct blueprint playlist of dream experience is and should be for

976
01:36:41.600 --> 01:36:46.320
me at night and therefore I don't need to worry about it I shouldn't try to force anything

977
01:36:46.960 --> 01:36:52.560
that's the first function of dream sleep is that it's emotional first aid and we've got good

978
01:36:52.560 --> 01:36:59.760
data for that but there's a second completely independent benefit of dreaming dreaming is a form

979
01:36:59.760 --> 01:37:08.800
of informational alchemy dreaming is creativity now I told you that during deep non-rem sleep we take

980
01:37:08.800 --> 01:37:14.400
new memories that we've learned and we fixate them like amber sort of setting a fossil in and we do

981
01:37:14.480 --> 01:37:20.960
that during deep sleep that saves the individual pieces of the new stuff then comes along REM sleep

982
01:37:20.960 --> 01:37:27.280
which happens after deep sleep and the second phase of memory processing happens that's where REM sleep

983
01:37:27.280 --> 01:37:32.560
starts to fuse all of the things that you've recently been learning with this entire back catalog of

984
01:37:32.560 --> 01:37:40.080
information and so you wake up with a revised mind wide web of associations that is capable of

985
01:37:40.080 --> 01:37:47.040
defining solutions to previously impenetrable problems so you know it's almost it has like group

986
01:37:47.040 --> 01:37:51.360
therapy for memories that REM sleep gathers in all of the information that you've learned during

987
01:37:51.360 --> 01:37:56.800
your day and everyone gets a name badge but unlike the waking logical connections that you make

988
01:37:56.800 --> 01:38:04.080
already REM sleep is like a Google search gone wrong that you insert let's say diary of a CEO

989
01:38:04.080 --> 01:38:10.880
and it takes you to page 20 this is dream sleep and it's about some field hockey game in Utah

990
01:38:10.880 --> 01:38:17.120
and you think hang on a second but how on earth is that well there was someone who had you know they

991
01:38:17.120 --> 01:38:21.680
had found a diary that had been lost you know a long time ago and the guy who had found it was a

992
01:38:21.680 --> 01:38:27.760
famous CEO and the town of this sort of you know Utah as he was watching so it's a distant non-arvious

993
01:38:27.760 --> 01:38:33.920
connection but it turns out that that's what dreaming is all about it's almost as though we go to

994
01:38:33.920 --> 01:38:39.680
sleep with the pieces of the jigsaw but by way of dreaming we wake up with the puzzle complete

995
01:38:40.400 --> 01:38:46.000
and when you start to fuse things that should should not normally go together but when they do

996
01:38:46.000 --> 01:38:52.240
every now and again cause a marked advance in evolutionary fitness that is the biological basis

997
01:38:52.240 --> 01:38:58.000
of creativity it's the reason that no one has ever told you look Stephen you should stay awake on

998
01:38:58.000 --> 01:39:04.320
a problem they don't they tell you to sleep on a problem and in every language that I've been

999
01:39:04.320 --> 01:39:12.640
quite about to date from you know from French to Swahili that term sleeping on a problem or

1000
01:39:12.640 --> 01:39:19.280
something like it exists my point being is the benefit the creative benefit of sleep transcends

1001
01:39:19.280 --> 01:39:25.920
cultural boundaries it's a common experience of homo sapiens there is an invisible tax on sales

1002
01:39:25.920 --> 01:39:30.160
people that no one really talks about enough the mental load of remembering everything like meeting

1003
01:39:30.160 --> 01:39:35.680
notes timelines and everything in between until we started using our sponsors product called pipe

1004
01:39:35.680 --> 01:39:40.800
drive one of the best CRM tools for small and medium-sized business owners the idea here was that

1005
01:39:40.800 --> 01:39:45.840
it might alleviate some of the unnecessary cognitive overload that my team was carrying so that they

1006
01:39:45.840 --> 01:39:50.240
could spend less time in the weeds of admin and more time with clients in person meetings and

1007
01:39:50.240 --> 01:39:56.400
building relationships pipe drive has enabled this to happen it's such a simple but effective CRM

1008
01:39:56.400 --> 01:40:01.600
that automates the tedious repetitive and time consuming parts of the sales process and now our

1009
01:40:01.600 --> 01:40:06.400
team can nurture those leads and still have bandwidth to focus on the higher priority tasks that

1010
01:40:06.400 --> 01:40:12.000
actually get the deal over the line over a hundred thousand companies across 170 countries already

1011
01:40:12.000 --> 01:40:16.400
use pipe drive to grow their business and I've been using it for almost a decade now try it

1012
01:40:16.400 --> 01:40:23.360
free for 30 days no credit card needed no payment needed just use my link pipe drive dot com slash

1013
01:40:23.360 --> 01:40:30.800
CEO to get started today that's pipe drive dot com slash CEO just give me 15 seconds to explain how

1014
01:40:30.800 --> 01:40:35.440
you can build a viable business online the people I see winning in life don't have a perfect plan

1015
01:40:35.440 --> 01:40:39.600
they just take the first step and then the next and then they keep going they stay obsessed and

1016
01:40:39.600 --> 01:40:45.360
they stay consistent and stand store a platform I co own and one of our sponsors is the best first

1017
01:40:45.360 --> 01:40:50.400
step to help turn your knowledge into income it only takes a couple of minutes to launch your business

1018
01:40:50.400 --> 01:40:55.680
and start selling digital products coaching memberships all communities online without any tech

1019
01:40:55.680 --> 01:41:01.280
headaches or endless setup thousands of entrepreneurs creators and risk takers you stand to take control

1020
01:41:01.280 --> 01:41:06.720
of their future because Stan is for entrepreneurs for those willing to put in the work and bet on

1021
01:41:06.720 --> 01:41:12.560
themselves if you're ready to start building join us launch your business today with a free 14

1022
01:41:12.560 --> 01:41:20.160
day trial at Stephen Bartlett dot Stan dot store what is the most important thing we haven't talked

1023
01:41:20.160 --> 01:41:24.800
about as it relates to the personas of those people that are probably listening right now and for

1024
01:41:24.800 --> 01:41:28.720
the reasons why they might have clicked you know that they're probably looking again we have the

1025
01:41:28.720 --> 01:41:32.320
optimizers we have those that have bad sleep habits and then we have those that have real sleep

1026
01:41:32.320 --> 01:41:35.600
disorders what is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about

1027
01:41:35.600 --> 01:41:43.200
for them it may be the dystopian future let's talk about the dystopian future what is a podcast if

1028
01:41:43.200 --> 01:41:48.160
it does not contain at least in this day and age a dystopian future what is the dystopian future

1029
01:41:49.200 --> 01:41:53.600
probably the most spectacular discovery that has happened since you and I last spoke

1030
01:41:54.480 --> 01:42:01.840
is the discovery of what we call the genetic short sleepers these are individuals who by way

1031
01:42:01.920 --> 01:42:08.800
of a genetic mutation can survive on as little as 6.25 hours of sleep in other words 6 hours and

1032
01:42:08.800 --> 01:42:17.040
15 minutes of sleep and they show zero impairment in the brain or their body they can do just fine

1033
01:42:17.600 --> 01:42:23.520
on six hours of sleep I know where this is going and we have four genes that we've identified

1034
01:42:23.520 --> 01:42:29.360
now the first two genes the first one identified was called the deck two gene DEC two gene the

1035
01:42:29.360 --> 01:42:34.800
second was called the ADRB1 gene which I granted I know it sounds like the next radio hit

1036
01:42:34.800 --> 01:42:43.520
album but it's not the next radio hit album and these genes allow these individuals to get away

1037
01:42:43.520 --> 01:42:48.160
with an amount of sleep that normally would cause predictive disease and sickness just as we've

1038
01:42:48.160 --> 01:42:56.480
spoken about so at this point probably some people listening are thinking I think I'm one of those

1039
01:42:56.480 --> 01:43:03.840
people just to put it in context your the probability that you will be struck by lightning in your

1040
01:43:03.840 --> 01:43:17.520
lifetime is 0.0064 highly unlikely the chances of you having the ADRB1 gene is 0.004 and the

1041
01:43:17.520 --> 01:43:22.000
DBR1 gene is the short sleeper gene is one of the short sleeper genes so in other words you are

1042
01:43:22.000 --> 01:43:27.600
statistically more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime then you are to have that

1043
01:43:27.600 --> 01:43:35.040
short sleeping gene so the probability is is low by the way why is this the case why do they

1044
01:43:35.040 --> 01:43:40.480
get away with this and we've discovered now by using sort of genetic manipulations we understand

1045
01:43:40.480 --> 01:43:46.560
why first thing is that they have a much stronger wake drive during the day so you and I and all the

1046
01:43:46.560 --> 01:43:51.840
rest of our mere mortals will have these kind of like oscillations in our consciousness throughout the

1047
01:43:51.840 --> 01:43:56.560
day where we'll have dips where we feel a bit sleepy and we're dragging and then we'll kind of get

1048
01:43:56.560 --> 01:44:02.080
they don't have that they have it's like a light switch like a dimmer switch you and I we make sort

1049
01:44:02.080 --> 01:44:07.840
of go up to like 80% brightness when we're awake and then sometimes we'll flicker and then we'll go

1050
01:44:07.840 --> 01:44:13.360
down and we'll have pretty solid sleep maybe sort of you know down to 20% but the lights are not

1051
01:44:13.360 --> 01:44:20.000
quite off you know sleep is it's good but not amazing these people have an all-enough

1052
01:44:20.000 --> 01:44:26.160
thing phenomena they are all a hundred percent bright light throughout the day and then and they

1053
01:44:26.160 --> 01:44:33.200
can maintain 17 18 hours of wakefulness no problem and then when they sleep they sleep hard

1054
01:44:33.840 --> 01:44:38.400
they have much more efficient sleep remember we spoke about sleep efficiency and I want to 85

1055
01:44:39.280 --> 01:44:45.680
almost all of their time at night spent in solid stable sound sleep and the depth of their sleep

1056
01:44:45.680 --> 01:44:50.960
they have is greater so they're awake more throughout the day they build up a stronger wakefulness

1057
01:44:50.960 --> 01:44:55.840
drive which is called a denocene which means that when they sleep they sleep harder throughout

1058
01:44:55.840 --> 01:45:01.120
the night which means that they can then be awake for more powerful since during the day second

1059
01:45:01.120 --> 01:45:06.240
they don't suffer from jet lag what the what do you mean they don't suffer from jet lag

1060
01:45:06.320 --> 01:45:11.360
because of their strength of wakefulness drive when they are circadian misaligned it's as though

1061
01:45:11.360 --> 01:45:16.960
they haven't traveled between time zones they can just stay awake they have a strong drive for

1062
01:45:16.960 --> 01:45:22.720
wakefulness who are these people they are these genetic short sleepers and do they pass these

1063
01:45:22.720 --> 01:45:26.560
genes onto their children yes they do and so their children have the same they're heritable

1064
01:45:27.280 --> 01:45:34.160
can I have well firstly let's take a step back before I get to the dystopian this tells us something

1065
01:45:34.160 --> 01:45:39.760
above and beyond biological fascination it says there is a profound statement in evolution

1066
01:45:41.200 --> 01:45:49.200
mother nature has figured out a way genetically to zip file sleep zip phone you can compress eight

1067
01:45:49.200 --> 01:45:54.080
down into six you know on your computer you can get a collection of files you group them all together

1068
01:45:54.080 --> 01:45:59.920
and then you say compress these files and you compress them and you zip them into a single file

1069
01:45:59.920 --> 01:46:06.320
and it's dense it's packed and it takes up less amount of volume do they have the same life

1070
01:46:06.320 --> 01:46:14.480
expectancy they seem to from everything we can tell so somewhere along the way through genetics

1071
01:46:14.480 --> 01:46:20.560
evolution is figured out how to go from eight and compress it down to six where's the dystopia

1072
01:46:20.560 --> 01:46:25.440
well we've all heard of CRISPR which is this genetic editing manipulation tool that

1073
01:46:25.520 --> 01:46:29.680
a lab next door to mine at UC Berkeley discovered Jennifer Downer she won a Nobel Prize for it

1074
01:46:30.720 --> 01:46:37.840
is there some future and I hope not is there some future where we started genetically engineer

1075
01:46:37.840 --> 01:46:44.640
people from a need of seven to nine hours down to a need of six imagine the reduction in health

1076
01:46:44.640 --> 01:46:49.760
curve burden cost because right now the burden of insufficient sleep is vast

1077
01:46:50.720 --> 01:46:56.320
insufficient sleep will cost most nations about two percent of their GDP here in America it's

1078
01:46:56.320 --> 01:47:02.720
$411 billion of cost caused by insufficient sleep in the United Kingdom it's about 40 billion

1079
01:47:02.720 --> 01:47:09.120
dollars in Japan it's 50 billion dollars solve the sleep loss epidemic which I've been trying to

1080
01:47:09.120 --> 01:47:14.880
do by saying you know sleep enough and you could you know cause massive financial disruption

1081
01:47:14.960 --> 01:47:22.000
in the good way but here if you start to genetically engineer people could you reduce the burden

1082
01:47:22.000 --> 01:47:27.840
that is caused by people currently who need seven to nine and take that burden away because they

1083
01:47:27.840 --> 01:47:34.080
no longer need seven to nine why did you say I hope not well I hope not because I think here's

1084
01:47:34.080 --> 01:47:39.040
the following that happens it's not that I'm against that idea I would love for the burden of

1085
01:47:39.040 --> 01:47:43.360
disease and sickness to be reduced and people not to suffer from that and if I could find a way to

1086
01:47:43.360 --> 01:47:48.320
do it genetically I would and you could think about people arguing well imagine the productivity

1087
01:47:48.320 --> 01:47:54.480
benefits I made huge upside of that you know people are being more productive and they're probably

1088
01:47:54.480 --> 01:47:59.120
spending more so from a capitalistic society it's the perfect it's the adman's dream because when

1089
01:47:59.120 --> 01:48:04.160
you're asleep it's antithetical to a capitalistic society why because you're neither producing nor

1090
01:48:04.160 --> 01:48:08.880
consuming that's very cynical and I don't buy into that but nevertheless so all of these things

1091
01:48:08.880 --> 01:48:13.840
would be marked the better would they not be if we genetically engineered this way why do I fear

1092
01:48:13.840 --> 01:48:21.120
it I know for a fact that as soon as six becomes the new eight everyone starts sleeping for

1093
01:48:22.480 --> 01:48:27.360
and now I'm just in back into the same battle again because six is the minimum that you need and

1094
01:48:27.360 --> 01:48:31.600
they say well if that's the minimum then I'll sleep for and when I find the next gene that allows

1095
01:48:31.600 --> 01:48:35.600
you to get away with four hours of sleep then they say well that's great so then I can go down to

1096
01:48:35.600 --> 01:48:42.320
two and it's a form of almost this sleep currency you know inflation that I'm always fighting a

1097
01:48:42.320 --> 01:48:49.360
battle and at some point I'll always be on the wrong side of that battle crazy these people with

1098
01:48:49.360 --> 01:48:56.480
this gene can thrive on four to six hours sleep without any negative effects that most of us

1099
01:48:56.480 --> 01:49:03.280
would experience dress it's so you know what is going on there and what we're seeing is this

1100
01:49:03.840 --> 01:49:11.600
this incredible density of sleep and this epic drive for wakefulness they are more efficient sleepers

1101
01:49:11.600 --> 01:49:17.280
they can get done what you and I take eight hours to do they can do it in six and I guess you

1102
01:49:17.280 --> 01:49:21.840
is there a way to easily test this like it's going to allow them yeah so if you've ever done you know

1103
01:49:21.840 --> 01:49:26.800
I think you know all of those genetic testing kits out there where it and a lot of them will allow

1104
01:49:26.800 --> 01:49:31.440
you to download your raw data what you need to do is download your raw raw data and then there's a

1105
01:49:31.440 --> 01:49:35.600
company I think it's called Prometheus again I have no affiliation with them I don't know how

1106
01:49:35.600 --> 01:49:42.720
valid they are but then you upload your raw genetic data into their model and then it will list and

1107
01:49:42.720 --> 01:49:47.120
it will rip it apart so normally those genetic services they give you a nice PDF and it's kind of like

1108
01:49:47.120 --> 01:49:53.840
maybe 15 pages of all of the main stuff and it's this Prometheus is kind of like the you know the

1109
01:49:53.840 --> 01:50:00.960
old school kind of scientist nerdy they will just give you this kind of raw just kind of jenky

1110
01:50:00.960 --> 01:50:06.800
you know 50 page report the interface is terrible but you can go in there and you can search to see

1111
01:50:07.840 --> 01:50:14.480
you know what form of the deck two gene do I have or what form of the ADRB1 gene do I have

1112
01:50:14.480 --> 01:50:19.360
and it will tell you are you a genetic short sleeper or are you not and you can find out

1113
01:50:19.920 --> 01:50:24.320
I've been thinking a lot lately about about certain diet states as well and whether they have an

1114
01:50:24.320 --> 01:50:28.000
impact on sleep we're talking about circadian rhythms there I was thinking about fasting a lot

1115
01:50:28.000 --> 01:50:34.960
and also think me myself and jack over there are in ketosis right now I wonder if you when you

1116
01:50:34.960 --> 01:50:39.520
think about brain performance and sleep and different sort of states do you think much about fasting

1117
01:50:39.520 --> 01:50:48.480
or yeah ketosis or yeah it's a mixed bag if you look at it certainly what you eat will change

1118
01:50:48.480 --> 01:50:56.960
how you sleep but perhaps more powerfully is how you sleep dramatically changes how you eat and how

1119
01:50:56.960 --> 01:51:02.000
you dispose of those calories and what happens inside of your body when you are under slept

1120
01:51:02.720 --> 01:51:09.840
but so I have lots of cravings when I've short slept yes you have and the reason why is first the

1121
01:51:09.840 --> 01:51:16.240
two appetite hormones called leptin and ghrelin will go in opposite directions so they sound like

1122
01:51:16.240 --> 01:51:21.200
hobbits I know and I've got some Lord of the Rings thing here but leptin is the signal that says to

1123
01:51:21.200 --> 01:51:27.600
your brain you're full yeah you're you're satiated don't eat anymore ghrelin is the opposite

1124
01:51:27.600 --> 01:51:32.800
it kind of makes your stomach tummy growl and it says you're hungry you're not full you need to eat

1125
01:51:32.800 --> 01:51:40.400
more when you are under slept leptin which says you're full stop eating that hormone is impaired

1126
01:51:40.400 --> 01:51:47.360
drops away so you lose the I'm full signal and worse still the ghrelin signal which says I'm hungry

1127
01:51:47.360 --> 01:51:56.320
that increases and so now you have about a 30 to 40% increased hunger drive and the final part of this

1128
01:51:56.320 --> 01:52:02.560
is that when you are under slept and taking on board calories the way that you dispose of that energy

1129
01:52:02.560 --> 01:52:10.640
is different your body has a higher predilection when you are sleep deprived to disposing of calories

1130
01:52:10.640 --> 01:52:17.520
as fat rather than storing it for example as glycogen in the muscles oh so when I'm under slept

1131
01:52:17.520 --> 01:52:23.360
um that's why you know you're more likely to get belly fat correct and what's worse is that there

1132
01:52:23.360 --> 01:52:28.800
was a great study where they looked at people who were dieting and either getting sufficient sleep

1133
01:52:28.800 --> 01:52:33.840
or not getting sufficient sleep what was fascinating is that both of those groups whether you are

1134
01:52:33.840 --> 01:52:39.520
well slept or not well slept you both lost weight in fact you lost about the same amount of weight

1135
01:52:39.520 --> 01:52:44.640
so you think okay so that's fine the problem was if you looked at what you were losing there was

1136
01:52:44.640 --> 01:52:52.240
an issue those people who were dieting but not getting sufficient sleep 70% of all the weight that

1137
01:52:52.240 --> 01:52:59.360
they lost came from lean muscle mass and not fat in other words when you're not getting sufficient

1138
01:52:59.360 --> 01:53:08.400
sleep you keep what you want to lose which is fat and you lose what you want to keep which is

1139
01:53:08.400 --> 01:53:13.760
muscle oh gosh damn it's important isn't it the sleep stuff but coming back to ketosis by the

1140
01:53:13.760 --> 01:53:20.800
way I would say when people go into a fasted state usually what we see is that the sleep gets shorter

1141
01:53:21.840 --> 01:53:26.640
and I'll say I sleep almost more efficiently I'll sleep for maybe just four or five hours

1142
01:53:27.280 --> 01:53:33.200
but I feel more alert and more awake now some of that has to do with the ketosis

1143
01:53:33.920 --> 01:53:40.800
when you are calorically deprived the brain starts to realize that something is wrong because you

1144
01:53:40.800 --> 01:53:47.840
are lacking calories you're going into starvation so it drives on a chemical called a rexin a rexin

1145
01:53:47.840 --> 01:53:53.440
is awake promoting chemical and it forces your brain to release much more of this wakefulness

1146
01:53:53.440 --> 01:54:00.080
chemical called a rexin so now when you're fasting it's easier to stay awake for longer and your

1147
01:54:00.080 --> 01:54:08.000
brain will deliberately stop you from sleeping as much it's not because it wants you to sleep less

1148
01:54:08.000 --> 01:54:15.200
it's because the only time during our evolutionary past that we experienced short sleep was when

1149
01:54:15.200 --> 01:54:19.680
we were in a caloric deficit and the reason came comes back again to this idea that you have to

1150
01:54:19.680 --> 01:54:25.360
stay awake longer because you're not finding food now your brain doesn't know you've deliberately

1151
01:54:25.360 --> 01:54:30.320
decided to fast which is a good thing in lots of ways but that's one of the reasons that when

1152
01:54:30.320 --> 01:54:36.000
people are fasting they'll say my sleep goes to packing a hand basket you know it's really really

1153
01:54:36.000 --> 01:54:41.280
short so when I'm in ketosis now and I'm like in on my way in and my sleep will reduce to about

1154
01:54:41.280 --> 01:54:47.600
five five six hours my whoop scores plummet yeah until I kind of come out the other end which might

1155
01:54:47.600 --> 01:54:52.720
take a couple of weeks and then my sleep scores seem to stabilize again but that initial transition

1156
01:54:52.720 --> 01:54:57.120
period it looks like it's having a physiological shock it is and the shock is this chemical

1157
01:54:57.120 --> 01:55:01.840
rexin which is this wake promoting chemical which will force you to stay awake in a very solid

1158
01:55:01.840 --> 01:55:08.720
fashion by the way case in point people with narcolepsy this sleep disorder where they inadvertently

1159
01:55:08.720 --> 01:55:13.360
and uncontrollably fall asleep during the day they have the opposite I just telling

1160
01:55:13.360 --> 01:55:17.840
or I was just telling you that when you are fasting your brain dumps out this chemical

1161
01:55:17.920 --> 01:55:23.680
rexin to force you awake in your wide awake people with narcolepsy when we've studied their brains

1162
01:55:23.680 --> 01:55:30.560
they have a deficiency of this brain chemical erexin so they can't stay awake in a stable fashion

1163
01:55:30.560 --> 01:55:35.680
they have the opposite of your fasting problem your wide awake because you've got too much erexin

1164
01:55:35.680 --> 01:55:41.760
they've got too little erexin and therefore they can't sustain stable wakefulness during the day

1165
01:55:41.760 --> 01:55:49.120
so the constantly falling asleep this story of a rexin has led to the invention of the first

1166
01:55:49.120 --> 01:55:53.840
new class of sleeping medication that I actually favor and most people are not aware of it

1167
01:55:53.840 --> 01:56:00.320
it's a new class of we're on to essentially web 3.0 of sleep medication web 1.0 where the

1168
01:56:00.320 --> 01:56:07.920
benzodiazepines things like Xanax and Valium not great for sleep the second wave the web 2.0

1169
01:56:07.920 --> 01:56:14.480
those were things like Ambion Linester Sinata both of those drugs worked in a very similar way

1170
01:56:14.480 --> 01:56:22.800
where they go up to your cortex and they tickle a receptor called the GABA receptor GABA and it's

1171
01:56:22.800 --> 01:56:28.480
the major neuro inhibitory transmitter of the brain so when these drugs flood your brain they just

1172
01:56:28.480 --> 01:56:34.160
hit the red light and they stop neural firing of the cortex essentially they sedate you

1173
01:56:34.720 --> 01:56:42.800
and sedation is not sleep but when you take an Ambion you mistake sedation for sleep it's not quite

1174
01:56:42.800 --> 01:56:49.680
the same it's not naturalistic sleep but after we've realized by way of the story of narcolepsy

1175
01:56:49.680 --> 01:56:54.480
that narcolepsy patients they don't have this chemical erexin and they're falling asleep

1176
01:56:54.480 --> 01:57:01.040
inappropriately during the day well think about what insomnia is at night insomnia is almost the

1177
01:57:01.040 --> 01:57:08.160
opposite of narcolepsy which is that narcolepsy patients they're falling asleep during the day

1178
01:57:08.160 --> 01:57:13.840
when they want to be awake insomnia patients are awake at night when they want to be asleep

1179
01:57:14.720 --> 01:57:20.640
so what they realize is that what we can do if this chemical erexin this wakefulness volume

1180
01:57:20.640 --> 01:57:27.440
button in the brain is a problem in insomnia patients what if we were to just develop a drug

1181
01:57:27.440 --> 01:57:32.960
that doesn't sedate the cortex like Ambion instead it goes down into the brainstem where the

1182
01:57:32.960 --> 01:57:41.280
center for erexin is and these new drugs and they're called the Dora's drugs D-O-R-A small S

1183
01:57:41.280 --> 01:57:46.560
and to class of drugs there are three FDA approved and I'll try and spell them out for you

1184
01:57:46.560 --> 01:57:54.240
they're called Suverexant, Lomberexant and Dariderexant exactly why my synapses are filled with

1185
01:57:54.240 --> 01:58:00.400
things like those things but there you go the three FDA approved drugs and what they do is they

1186
01:58:00.400 --> 01:58:05.680
act like a clever set of chemical fingers they go down into the brainstem where this sort of erexin

1187
01:58:05.680 --> 01:58:11.120
is being released and they just dial down the volume on a wakefulness and then they take a step back

1188
01:58:11.120 --> 01:58:16.240
and they allow the antithesis of wakefulness to come in its place which is this thing called

1189
01:58:16.320 --> 01:58:24.960
naturalistic sleep now if you look at that there's clinical data they absolutely make you sleep for

1190
01:58:26.000 --> 01:58:30.160
not necessarily a longer period of time but you're awake a lot less so you've got nice sleep

1191
01:58:30.160 --> 01:58:36.800
efficiency more continuity but I as a scientist could be very skeptical and I could come along and

1192
01:58:36.800 --> 01:58:42.960
say okay so this new drug it increases your total sleep time improves your sleep efficiency

1193
01:58:42.960 --> 01:58:51.440
but I have four words yes and so what just because I've added sleep to your night how do I know

1194
01:58:51.440 --> 01:58:55.840
that that's functional sleep how do I know that that's useful sleep couldn't it just be like

1195
01:58:55.840 --> 01:59:01.840
junk DNA it could be just junk sleep well they did a study where they looked at what we call the

1196
01:59:01.840 --> 01:59:06.960
glymphatic system in your brain there's a cleansing system in your brain that kicks into high gear

1197
01:59:06.960 --> 01:59:13.840
during deep non-rem sleep and it flushes the brain of all of the metabolic toxins two of which are

1198
01:59:13.840 --> 01:59:18.400
things called beta amyloid and tau protein which are the culprits of Alzheimer's and that's why we

1199
01:59:18.400 --> 01:59:23.760
note that sleep is so important because at night it's a good night sleep clean it's a power cleanse

1200
01:59:23.760 --> 01:59:29.600
that washes away the Alzheimer's toxins so they did a study heavens knows how they got these people

1201
01:59:29.600 --> 01:59:35.760
to participate but they brought them in they were 50 years or older and in the morning and the night

1202
01:59:35.760 --> 01:59:42.720
before they had a lumbar spinal puncture and they siphoned off cerebral spinal fluid so they could

1203
01:59:42.720 --> 01:59:48.800
measure how much of the metabolic detritus was in the brain before sleep and in the brain after

1204
01:59:48.800 --> 01:59:55.280
sleep including the metabolic waste product sort of including beta amyloid and tau protein

1205
01:59:56.160 --> 02:00:02.800
and they either had one of these drugs the doras drugs or they had a placebo and

1206
02:00:02.800 --> 02:00:08.880
fair enough when they took this new class of medication the web 3.0 the doradrug their sleep got

1207
02:00:08.880 --> 02:00:15.040
better but what they also found is that not only did their sleep get better but they had cleansed

1208
02:00:15.040 --> 02:00:22.240
the brain the next morning of more beta amyloid and tau protein than the placebo group in other words

1209
02:00:22.240 --> 02:00:29.680
it wasn't just epiphenomenal junk sleep it was beneficial sleep it was adaptive useful sleep

1210
02:00:29.680 --> 02:00:35.200
because that drug induced sleep had washed away more of the Alzheimer's proteins and it was the

1211
02:00:35.200 --> 02:00:42.240
first demonstration and they've now replicated it in animal models that this is a sleeping pill

1212
02:00:42.240 --> 02:00:48.160
that isn't this advantageous which we know to be the case for things like ambient in fact ambient

1213
02:00:48.160 --> 02:00:54.320
there's a recent study that showed that it decreases the cleansing pulsing fluid by about 30 to 40

1214
02:00:54.320 --> 02:00:59.680
percent at night but this is a new class of medications that does the opposite and this is new

1215
02:00:59.680 --> 02:01:05.600
and this is new the doras drugs do are as small as the problem is that a lot of insurance companies

1216
02:01:05.600 --> 02:01:12.320
here in the United States currently do not reimburse some do and I believe that it's some of these

1217
02:01:12.320 --> 02:01:17.920
of the three doras drugs not all of them are available in Europe or in the UK and because they're

1218
02:01:18.000 --> 02:01:23.520
just so expensive and if you pay out a pocket it can be up to four hundred dollars a month

1219
02:01:24.160 --> 02:01:28.400
for these medications now some in summary of patients when I go to them and say at the end of a

1220
02:01:28.400 --> 02:01:33.040
shockingly bad month of sleep if I went to them and said look if you gave me four hundred dollars now

1221
02:01:33.600 --> 02:01:38.400
could I I could wave a magic wand and eradicate all of that bad sleep over the previous month

1222
02:01:38.400 --> 02:01:42.560
would you like to give me four hundred dollars most of them would say absolutely take my money

1223
02:01:42.560 --> 02:01:47.520
but still people are being priced out at this stage but the doras drugs please look into them if

1224
02:01:47.520 --> 02:01:53.440
you're struggling with insomnia as well as CBTI. I didn't realize there was so much new science

1225
02:01:53.440 --> 02:01:58.880
and research that had been discovered on how to sleep well what's going on in the brain and also

1226
02:01:58.880 --> 02:02:04.800
some of the lifestyle factors that have made sleeping so hard for so many people and with that in mind

1227
02:02:04.800 --> 02:02:09.120
I want to do something that I've never done before which is a world first for the dorasio is I'm

1228
02:02:09.120 --> 02:02:14.320
going to put a link below because I think this is a particular episode where if you share this

1229
02:02:14.320 --> 02:02:18.720
conversation with some of your friends who particularly struggle with sleep or asleep optimizers

1230
02:02:18.720 --> 02:02:23.760
or who have sleep disorders they'll get a ton of benefit from it so what I'm going to do is in the

1231
02:02:23.760 --> 02:02:27.680
description of wherever you're listening to this podcast right now there is a link and if you click

1232
02:02:27.680 --> 02:02:32.800
on that link and you'll see that you've got your own personalized link to share this episode and

1233
02:02:32.800 --> 02:02:36.880
those of you that share this episode whether it's on your story on social media or in a WhatsApp

1234
02:02:36.880 --> 02:02:42.480
group or wherever on email with your friends you will collect points for every person that listens

1235
02:02:42.560 --> 02:02:47.680
and I will reward those and you'll see as you click on the link who have shared it the most

1236
02:02:47.680 --> 02:02:50.560
I'm part I say this because so many of you come up to me in the street and they came up to me

1237
02:02:50.560 --> 02:02:55.680
after I'll ask conversation and they said um that conversation you did with Matt Walker was so amazing

1238
02:02:55.680 --> 02:03:00.160
I sent it to my aunt and she now she did this and she's changed this and blah blah blah and she's

1239
02:03:00.160 --> 02:03:05.040
now sleeping well and then all the downstream impacts of that have been profound so I'm going to

1240
02:03:05.040 --> 02:03:09.200
create this little system to encourage all of you to share it with someone that is struggling

1241
02:03:09.200 --> 02:03:14.480
at the moment with sleep because I do believe I do believe that sleep is upstream from so many of

1242
02:03:14.480 --> 02:03:19.440
the downstream symptoms that ruin our lives whether it's relationship issues whether it's libido

1243
02:03:19.440 --> 02:03:23.920
issues or whether it's creativity issues I mean I was reading through your work and I saw your

1244
02:03:23.920 --> 02:03:29.040
conversation with Rogan not so long ago where you talked about the fact that a sleep deprived

1245
02:03:29.040 --> 02:03:33.920
person has their genes fundamentally working differently you talked about 700 genes working differently

1246
02:03:33.920 --> 02:03:39.600
yeah 711 genes are distorted in their activity caused by a lack of sleep some genes that are

1247
02:03:39.600 --> 02:03:44.960
overexpressed that are related to cardiovascular disease or stress or inflammation and other

1248
02:03:44.960 --> 02:03:50.400
genes that are impaired which are associated with your immune system so you become immune deficient

1249
02:03:50.400 --> 02:03:54.800
and it can be a downward compounding spiral if you're such a person that's really continually

1250
02:03:54.800 --> 02:03:59.200
struggling with sleep and building up some of that sleep debt so that link is below check it out

1251
02:03:59.200 --> 02:04:03.120
and we have a closing tradition on this podcast with Alaska sleeps a question for the next

1252
02:04:03.120 --> 02:04:08.320
the question left few is what did success bring you that you never could have dreamed of

1253
02:04:12.160 --> 02:04:23.280
it brought me two things one beneficial one lesser beneficial is that I have now the chance and

1254
02:04:23.840 --> 02:04:33.840
gifted the chance to fly around the world and try to speak the word of sleep because the physiology

1255
02:04:33.840 --> 02:04:40.800
of it is so silent and I used to lament why me because there are so many other much better sleep

1256
02:04:40.800 --> 02:04:45.760
scientists in the world than me and a friend after I was saying like I don't understand why

1257
02:04:45.840 --> 02:04:54.000
me in pasta syndrome and he just told me to shut up and accept that it's you and instead ask the

1258
02:04:54.000 --> 02:04:59.920
question what are you going to do with it and I changed how I embrace that so I've been so fortunate

1259
02:04:59.920 --> 02:05:06.640
that my life after publishing the book that you're holding change forever and almost all for the

1260
02:05:06.640 --> 02:05:15.680
better and I'm so fortunate I've lived a life of such fortune by way of the sleep mission I would say

1261
02:05:15.680 --> 02:05:24.160
though that there is also and I suspect you may experience some of this too when you raise

1262
02:05:24.160 --> 02:05:32.800
your head above the public parapet don't be surprised if shots are fired and if you're someone who

1263
02:05:32.800 --> 02:05:45.200
has even the vaguest hint of insecurity comments will do your lovely disservice and so I think

1264
02:05:45.200 --> 02:05:51.360
there's a degree of kind of vulnerability and insecurity that you can develop by way of

1265
02:05:51.360 --> 02:05:56.480
becoming someone who is in the eye of the public that had I not been in the eye of the public

1266
02:05:56.480 --> 02:06:01.680
I probably wouldn't have been you know as self-conscious about whether it's you know

1267
02:06:01.680 --> 02:06:08.080
your intellect or your voice or your you know disastrous you know boy band haircut whatever it is

1268
02:06:08.800 --> 02:06:15.200
I would say that's the only slight downside overall I am the most fortunate human that I know

1269
02:06:15.760 --> 02:06:20.880
I am so gifted by way of this thing called sleep it's a love affair that's lasted me almost 25

1270
02:06:20.880 --> 02:06:27.360
years and I believe it's the most beguiling topic in all of science and it is treated me so well

1271
02:06:28.080 --> 02:06:38.080
do you happy more than you could imagine at this moment in my life I am the happiest I've been

1272
02:06:39.520 --> 02:06:48.560
why I have a a piece that I found in life for reasons that I can share or not share and go ahead

1273
02:06:48.560 --> 02:06:58.560
and share the my life you know I found my person and and she is she appeared like lightning from

1274
02:06:58.560 --> 02:07:12.480
a clear blue sky never saw her coming and it's interesting that I've never been able to be more

1275
02:07:12.480 --> 02:07:22.240
myself even with myself than I have with her every day she makes me want to be a better person

1276
02:07:23.680 --> 02:07:32.560
and I have found peace that I have never had before but you've never had before

1277
02:07:33.520 --> 02:07:42.320
no did you have peace last time we spoke I wouldn't say I was without peace I didn't know this type of

1278
02:07:42.320 --> 02:07:48.560
peace and I never believed in this notion of the one you know I was a scientist from a heart

1279
02:07:48.560 --> 02:07:56.880
knows empirical kind of guy and I just did not imagine it would be such I didn't think there was

1280
02:07:56.880 --> 02:08:03.520
such a one I would have told you if you told me that two years ago you'd give me your love story

1281
02:08:03.520 --> 02:08:11.760
of certainty I would have thought you're misguided and that you know you just need to put down

1282
02:08:11.760 --> 02:08:15.440
whatever substances you're using because you're delusional because there isn't such a thing

1283
02:08:15.520 --> 02:08:28.640
she's a gift and I hope I never take her for granted I doubt it there's an incredibly sad story

1284
02:08:30.320 --> 02:08:37.040
of a gentleman called Clive Wearing and Clive is a famous individual in the neuroscience world

1285
02:08:38.000 --> 02:08:46.720
and Clive was the man who the movie Memento was based on which is a movie where a man has

1286
02:08:47.360 --> 02:08:50.880
brain damage and he has profound amnesia and from that moment forward he can never

1287
02:08:50.880 --> 02:08:58.720
make any new memories whatsoever he's dense the amnesic and he was a real life individual he

1288
02:08:58.720 --> 02:09:04.080
contracted a virus that destroyed his memory centers and from that point forward he could no

1289
02:09:04.080 --> 02:09:10.400
longer make any new memories and he lived in just two or three seconds of time and that spotlight

1290
02:09:10.400 --> 02:09:15.280
of consciousness just moved forward in time he had no recollection of the past he had no anticipation

1291
02:09:15.280 --> 02:09:21.360
of the future and the only thing the only person that he remembered and he would recognize this

1292
02:09:21.360 --> 02:09:26.320
is wife so he could have spent this whole three hours speaking to you and then you would walk out

1293
02:09:26.320 --> 02:09:30.720
the room for five minutes and you would walk back in and you'd say hi Clive nice to meet you and

1294
02:09:30.720 --> 02:09:36.320
you'd say hi what's your name had no recollection the only person that he remembered was his wife

1295
02:09:36.960 --> 02:09:42.240
but the problem was he never remembered how long it's been since he lasts or his wife

1296
02:09:43.200 --> 02:09:48.560
and so every time that she would walk into the room after being out of it for five minutes

1297
02:09:48.560 --> 02:09:55.760
he would jump out of his chair and he had this incredible elation and he would run and he would

1298
02:09:55.760 --> 02:10:02.240
hug her and kiss her and I think sometimes we take our partners for granted and the only time

1299
02:10:02.240 --> 02:10:09.920
we realize how precious they are is when they're gone and I often think about that that complacency

1300
02:10:10.480 --> 02:10:14.960
can be one of the greatest negative forces in a relationship and I always think about Clive

1301
02:10:14.960 --> 02:10:20.960
wearing even on the days where I'm having a bad day or I'm in a bad mood and I'm not myself or

1302
02:10:21.200 --> 02:10:26.880
just don't want to be around someone I always try to remember his reaction and when my wife walks

1303
02:10:26.880 --> 02:10:33.760
back in from work where I see her you know first thing I try to remember how his reaction was and

1304
02:10:34.560 --> 02:10:41.360
how I truly feel at the time despite the blanket of negative stress trying to drown that feeling out

1305
02:10:42.160 --> 02:10:51.360
it's a beautiful thing I think about that a lot as well in what way just the part of I'm way more

1306
02:10:51.360 --> 02:10:59.440
cognizant now on a frequent basis almost on a weekly basis of how I'm going to feel when my time

1307
02:10:59.440 --> 02:11:06.640
is up as it relates to my romantic relationship like I think even like mid-argument I will now think

1308
02:11:06.640 --> 02:11:09.280
and then this actually happened like a couple of days ago wasn't really an argument we're just

1309
02:11:09.280 --> 02:11:14.400
disagreeing about something I literally said amid a dispute that we were having I said we're

1310
02:11:14.400 --> 02:11:19.520
going to regret this so much and what I meant was when that date when that phone call rings and

1311
02:11:19.520 --> 02:11:23.920
someone gives me bad news that either I'm going or you're going I'm going to regret that this 30

1312
02:11:23.920 --> 02:11:28.480
minutes was wasted doing this yeah I'm really going to regret it how much would you give to have

1313
02:11:28.480 --> 02:11:32.880
that 30 weeks back and everything you know we're fucking arguing about I don't know some chocolate

1314
02:11:32.880 --> 02:11:36.800
whatever it might be some trivial thing it's actually really helped me because in the midst of

1315
02:11:36.800 --> 02:11:41.760
those storms thinking through to that moment when you get that phone call in like your ill or

1316
02:11:41.760 --> 02:11:48.640
I'm ill and some we're not going to be around much longer it liberates you from the pettiness that

1317
02:11:48.640 --> 02:11:54.480
a sense of immortality can create and that pettiness results in the complacency that you're describing

1318
02:11:54.480 --> 02:12:00.320
that like I did I took you for granted yeah so it's a nice little mechanism now for me to go is

1319
02:12:00.320 --> 02:12:05.920
this an important thing is this really important and I have to provide nuance there which is this

1320
02:12:05.920 --> 02:12:10.880
doesn't mean don't address things correct yeah I was just about to say the conflict is critical you've

1321
02:12:10.880 --> 02:12:15.600
got to fight well but let me mean versus you in the problem like me and you versus the problem

1322
02:12:15.600 --> 02:12:22.640
versus me just going at you yes you have to be fighting for each other not fighting against each

1323
02:12:22.640 --> 02:12:29.440
other yeah exactly and that you have to try to then in that context of clivewearing don't shy away

1324
02:12:29.440 --> 02:12:36.480
from conflict if you need to have the conversation often it's like the gym if you do it well you

1325
02:12:36.480 --> 02:12:41.440
even on the days when you kind of go into the gym you think I don't want to do this or I don't feel

1326
02:12:41.440 --> 02:12:47.520
good you always come out feeling better than you did before and with conflict if you do it well

1327
02:12:48.240 --> 02:12:53.360
you typically it may not be the hour after or even the day after but if you do it well you typically

1328
02:12:53.360 --> 02:12:59.600
are better as a couple after than you were before the conflict as long as you do it well so I'm

1329
02:12:59.600 --> 02:13:08.080
not saying don't have conflict what I'm saying is clivewearing story to me of how he loved his wife

1330
02:13:08.080 --> 02:13:12.960
with an intent that I'd never experienced before until I met my much better half

1331
02:13:14.640 --> 02:13:21.440
prevented me from resentment resentment is the barrier that will keep you from reparation

1332
02:13:22.000 --> 02:13:28.480
and a future of I think equanimity because when you resent someone it means that you haven't

1333
02:13:28.480 --> 02:13:34.560
processed you haven't moved forward and resentment usually comes by way of I think a poor choice

1334
02:13:34.560 --> 02:13:40.800
of things such as did I win the argument did you win the argument it's not about point scoring

1335
02:13:40.800 --> 02:13:46.880
at least and I've done that before I've been guilty of all of that behavior but now with this

1336
02:13:46.880 --> 02:13:52.640
person that I cherish most you know I think of his lessons and it's not that we don't have conflict

1337
02:13:52.640 --> 02:14:00.560
we do it's just that I value the person far beyond the conflict afterwards and I always want to reach

1338
02:14:00.560 --> 02:14:05.200
out with an olive branch because it's not worth it just as you said when that call comes

1339
02:14:06.480 --> 02:14:11.200
you know I I think of that sometimes when I have a bad day let's say someone you know I come back

1340
02:14:11.280 --> 02:14:18.240
to my car and my car has been rear-ended when it's been parked or you know I was coming here

1341
02:14:18.240 --> 02:14:25.440
to fly out and we were four hours on the tarmac waiting and there's a guy in front of me who's

1342
02:14:25.440 --> 02:14:32.960
getting all agitated and giving the the ground staff all sorts of vitriol and I was thinking look

1343
02:14:32.960 --> 02:14:39.120
when you're on your deathbed my good fellow are you going to look back at this day and think gosh

1344
02:14:39.120 --> 02:14:44.560
you know I remember that one day when I was on that flight coming out to LA and it was four

1345
02:14:44.560 --> 02:14:50.480
hours delayed no of course you're not so if you're not stressing about it when you're dying

1346
02:14:50.480 --> 02:14:58.800
why are you stressing about it now it's just not worth it live thank you thank you so much I mean

1347
02:14:58.800 --> 02:15:03.040
I can't thank you enough for the profound impact you've had on so many millions of people

1348
02:15:04.000 --> 02:15:10.800
being the the chief torch bearer of the subjective sleep and creating a movement around sleep

1349
02:15:10.800 --> 02:15:14.960
but also heightened awareness of ourselves and our struggles and that is something that you'll

1350
02:15:14.960 --> 02:15:18.960
never understand like you'll never understand the full magnitude of the many millions of people

1351
02:15:18.960 --> 02:15:23.600
you've positively impacted but I mean even though you'll never get to meet them all and you'll

1352
02:15:23.600 --> 02:15:29.280
never get to hear all of our thank yous they are very very real people and they are they

1353
02:15:29.760 --> 02:15:33.520
them themselves are these little ripples through the ocean where their children and then the

1354
02:15:33.520 --> 02:15:37.520
generations to come get to sleep better and enjoy their lives and live a happier healthier life

1355
02:15:37.520 --> 02:15:42.640
because of the work that you do so it's some incredibly important work Matthew and I hope

1356
02:15:42.640 --> 02:15:46.720
you long continue it and along long continue being the conduit of this very important information

1357
02:15:46.720 --> 02:15:51.120
to people like me and my audience can appreciate you more thank you so much for saying that I

1358
02:15:51.760 --> 02:15:58.720
can't lay claim to any such affirmations but I would say that I stand on the shoulders of giants

1359
02:15:58.720 --> 02:16:04.160
and that I am simply relaining all of the incredible work of all of my colleagues in the field and

1360
02:16:04.160 --> 02:16:08.880
all of those who came before me I'm just the mouthpiece and not a particularly good one at that

1361
02:16:08.880 --> 02:16:13.520
and for all of their work it's really the appreciation that I give to them so thank you for

1362
02:16:13.520 --> 02:16:22.800
giving me the opportunity to say that make sure you keep one about to say to yourself I'm inviting

1363
02:16:22.800 --> 02:16:29.520
10,000 of you to come even deeper into the direvacio welcome to my inner circle this is a brand new

1364
02:16:29.520 --> 02:16:33.680
private community that I'm launching to the world we have so many incredible things that happen

1365
02:16:33.680 --> 02:16:38.800
that you are never shown we have the briefs that are on my pad when I'm recording the conversation

1366
02:16:38.800 --> 02:16:43.120
we have clips we've never released we have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also

1367
02:16:43.120 --> 02:16:49.920
the episodes that we've never ever released and so much more in the circle you'll have direct access

1368
02:16:49.920 --> 02:16:54.240
to me you can tell us what you want this show to be who you want us to interview and the types

1369
02:16:54.240 --> 02:17:00.000
of conversations you would love us to have but remember for now we're only inviting the first 10,000

1370
02:17:00.000 --> 02:17:04.160
people that joined before it closes so if you want to join our private close community head to

1371
02:17:04.160 --> 02:17:09.920
the link in the description below or go to doccircle.com I will speak to you then

1372
02:17:19.920 --> 02:17:22.000
you