While we're in darkness, melatonin is referred to as that vampire hormone or hormone of darkness that's much more complicated than that. But it is facilitated by darkness. And so in order to have a sufficient rise up of melatonin, we want to be sitting in darkness for an extended period of time leading up to bedtime. You're listening to the high performance our podcast helping you optimise your health performance and longevity. My name is Angela Foster, and I'm a former corporate lawyer and high performance health coach. Each week I bring you cutting edge bio hacks, inspiring insights and high performance habits to unlock optimal health performance and longevity. So excited that you've chosen to join me today. Now let's dive in.
Hi friends, I am super excited to introduce you to my friend and fellow podcaster. Molly Eastman she is the creator of sleep as a skill she's also the host of the sleep is a skill podcast. If you are having any problems sleeping, then you are going to gain valuable insights. In this week's episode, we talk about everything in terms of how to optimise your sleep, which trackers are the best how accurate they are and a whole lot more. He is literally a wealth of knowledge about all things sleep, which definitely check out Molly's podcast, sleep is a skill. I've also had the pleasure of going on that show and he's super fun. As you'll find out in this week's episode. You can also join Molly and me and a host of other experts at the Dragon flight live a women's edition conference in Colorado. This November, I will put a link and a discount code in the top link in the show notes for this episode. But for now, let me introduce you to Molly's
so monthly it is so great to finally be here with you today. I know it's taken us a while to get this in the calendar. But I'm super excited to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I know we we were chatting before we hit record. And I'm sure our struggle will be to hit on all of our topics because I could just talk to you for a long period of time. I'm very excited for this conversation.
Me too. Me too. So let's kick off with how did you just seat and kind of introduce how did you get into? I know we were just talking offline that you work a lot with poker players. But how did you get into sleep?
Yeah, great question. And I hope that it serves for the listener to underscore that no matter where you might be at with your sleep, that there's absolutely I'm a stand that there's always things that we can do across the board to uplevel our experience of our sleep. And that was certainly my part of my story. So how I think of my life at this point is really a three part series I think of it as before I went through truly a real sleep breakdown. And it was probably one of the lowest periods of my life. It was just a combination of all the things that weren't working in my life. At the time, I was a serial entrepreneur in Manhattan, burning the candle at both ends, and went through this period of insomnia that absolutely changed the course of my life. But before that, what it looked like was a lot of labels and near narratives around my sleep. So I would say things like I'm a short sleeper, I'm a night owl, I'm a bad sleeper, it's in my genes asleep when I'm dead, you know, kind of all of these ways of relating to my sleep is something that's fixed, and that it's just really about kind of surviving this problem. And so I actually didn't, you know, think that there was much to look at there because of course, it was just a given that that's how life had always been for me. And it was probably how it always would be. And that was, you know, kind of the outlook. And it wasn't until that period of insomnia that was really my rock bottom in my life. That, you know, no pun intended, sort of acted as a wake up call. And I shared with you a little offline. You know, I've had really close family members in my life that have gone through a kind of a pathway where they found themselves really dependent on pharmaceuticals, and particularly for sleep. Especially so when this happened to me it was very scary moment and thinking, oh no is this now my future is this something that now I'm going to be dependent on a pill to fall asleep for the rest of my life. And so that was very, very scary to me, having seen the struggles that you know, other family members had gone through, it really lit a fire under me to get up under what wasn't working in this area. So I really, I tend to have a bit of a obsessive nature, it's probably partly why I was having such a problem with my sleep, you know, that kind of type of mind. And so went down the rabbit hole on this topic. So on the on the bright side of that was that it completely changed the course of my life What I discovered around this area of sleep and what really fascinated me and probably will likely speak on some of this was this world of Chrono biology, the science of time and how time affects our biology and discovering that how I'd been managing my life really was not setting me up powerfully to get great sleep and along the ways had missed a lot of signs that how I was managing life was not working, you know, I'd had shingles in my 20s, I had the beginnings of an ulcer, a lot of, you know, rising anxiety, all these things that we're pointing to that something wasn't working. But with that, not correlating it with the sleep component. So as I go down the rabbit hole completely end up transforming how I'm relating to my life, how I'm managing my life, and out of that process, begin to overtime, restore the workability in my sleep, but not only get it just how had been before, but actually get it to, you know, quantifiably optimal states, where it can actually point to the numbers of being on the right side of the bell curve, of, you know, the my sleep performance. And first of all, I'd never thought that was possible for myself. So when it started getting to that, it was something where my whole life was shifting, I couldn't stop talking about it, just, you know, just naturally was sharing galore. And then, so small groups kind of start, you know, kind of forming around this topic just kind of organically. And then from that place, then sleep is a skill kind of was born from this realisation that this is an area that I truly believe that we're missing the mark and not speaking about in a way, and leveraging some of the latest science that really is, I believe, completely groundbreaking for how we're managing our days and our nights. And so on the other side of that, then what started growing was sleep as a skill. So we have online courses, we have a weekly newsletter we've been sending for over almost five years. Top sleep podcasts are the number two sleep podcast. So we've got lots of experts coming on to share, you know, advice. And so for free people can start just you know, really up levelling this area of their life. We're now in hotels, or in luxury hotels at Casa chip, or Ianis, and, and others. And so we're starting to get this message out. And to your point, you mentioned poker. So we work with a lot of high stakes poker players in particular. So I share all that because no matter where the listener might be at with their sleep it whether it's, you know, feels resigned, it's just always going to be like this, or, you know, maybe not even thinking about it that much and just kind of open, I promise that there are things that we can do to help support just the curiosity and intrigue and standing that sleep really is a skill.
Awesome. I love that. Let's dive in. So yeah, cuz he is this guy. I love the way you call it that. Okay, so let's start with how much sleep should we be getting? Because I think that this is something that plagues a lot of people, they worry about it, they hear about risks of dementia and things like that, if you're not getting enough sleep, we know it affects performance. You know, I think that Matthew Walker said, it's probably the greatest performance enhancing effect that is actually legal, and it's free, in terms of terms of what's legal. So it's pretty amazing what sleep can do. But there seem to be some variances between how much people feel they need, how refreshed they are. And certainly when I've looked at genetic testing, for example, people seem to be categorised as someone who needs a bit longer people who are in that classic kind of seven to nine hours. And then even some people who seemingly need less. And I've seen there was a massive study, I think when they took they had to wait for really for the technology to catch up to process the data. And it seemed like from these 1000s and 1000s of people, six and a half hours seeing the optimum. But then there was like, well as it actually these people were living much healthier lives, and therefore they didn't need as much sleep. So I'm curious where you come out on that, like, how much sleep do we really need?
Oh, fantastic question. I think that's where it's helpful for people to get rooted in because sleep duration is a big question. It's often where we begin, as we're looking to improve our sleep as getting a sense of well, how much sleep are we getting? And is that enough? So a very large study did come out fairly recently that put it in terms of kind of a U shaped curve, where it's still called and harkens to this conversation of seven to nine hours. But within that seven to nine hours, that's where that U shaped piece comes into play. We're finding that as we start to deviate too, too greatly from either sides of kind of those goalposts or the you piece, then we can see some deleterious effects as we move very far away. And that also applies to too much sleep to kind of hypersomnia to getting large quantities of sleep. But you know, we want to question the why why is that happening? So So when we start deviating too too far from there, then we do see problems emerge. Now to your point, there actually did seem to be some kind of coupling near that seven hour kind of line of that you. And this is where it gets so nuanced because I hope that for the listener, this is for these recommendations are for a healthy adult. Now, lots of dynamic nature to sleep quantity need throughout the course of our lives, both by age by gender, but then, of course, by lifestyle and food intake and all these elements of kind of what that sleep hunger, if you will, almost the same way we think of hunger for food, our sleep, hunger and hunger for getting sufficient sleep based on how we're managing our lives. And with the idea that as we age, there's likely to be some changes in total sleep duration and need as well, I have something that I think add some layers to this so that we don't get too lost in the sleep duration component. And I hope for most people, one of the things I see. Because we do have one of the sharing with you one of the largest databases of ordering users from a sleep optimization perspective outside of research. So we see a lot of different ways that people are managing their sleep. And one of the things I see is, there's tends to be for most people a lot of variability in the timing of their sleep. So even if you're sitting here thinking, Okay, well around, I probably averaging whatever, you know, a little over seven hours or something, for example. But then we look at these numbers. And often there's so much variability in the timing of that sleep and the regularity of that sleep in a number of things that point to the quality of that particular sleep. So I would have people take on that until we actually bring in some of the foundational components of how they're managing their sleep, that sleep duration piece might be more second, you know, down the wrong on the things that we would be looking at. Because once we bring these kind of pieces into play, then we can start to ensure that the quality of that sleep really matches our endeavours, if that makes sense. So what I would say about all of this is something that came out recently was around sleep age, which is really kind of fascinating. It's this idea of leveraging AI to look at people's sleep performance, and then assign an age to the readouts of this. And I think this gets a bit more nuanced just beyond the sleep duration piece, so that people don't get lost in the weeds of that instead have some more context. So sleep age, one of the things that we would see is based on that performance of an individual using AI to kind of assign an age. So if we, if we got Angela Foster, sleep read out, then we could say, alright, so she's sleeping like a 28 year old, and what would be the kind of components of someone that sleeping like that, versus sadly, many people, it's that they get their read out, and they're actually sleeping like an older person, then they're kind of chronological age. So what brings into that into play, some of the biggest features of that seem to actually be sleep, fragmentation being a really important component of this fragmentation. So meaning just like as any waking up, has been waking up. And so this is where I hope that it inspires some curiosity around getting in depth on the quality of our sleep, because some people and I've seen this a lot to people will say, Oh, well, no matter what I manage life, so that I always get my fill in the blank eight hours or what have you. But then we look at their sleep. And in order to get those eight hours, they're having all kinds of odd behaviour, or lots of, you know, wake ups, and they're sleeping in later to account for these things. And that's where the duration is insufficient. Because that fragmentation we know is such a hallmark of kind of older sleep, if you will, or older person's way of managing their sleep. And I also believe that just since it's normal, and kind of on the bell curve doesn't mean that it's optimal. And I think that there's ways that we can disrupt how it's always been to, and start to change what we see and think of for older sleep. So some other ways to think about this topic.
Yeah, really interesting. So I want to kind of circle back on to that fragmentation in a moment. I guess, when we're stuck to when we're tracking it. The biggest question for me then is, how much can we trust the device that we're looking at? Because my understanding is with aura, they were around 60%. Now, I think that they something like 85% and everybody freaked out when the the beta came in, and they were like, What the hell happened to my deep sleep? Yeah, where did it go? It was actually it was always like that. But how much can we trust this for the metrics of data? Because I know they're very good at like HRV resting heart rate, body temperature, and also showing you the duration although often I've heard people say I'm watching TV and it thinks I'm asleep. So maybe whatever I still, but what about when we look at REM sleep and deep sleep and light sleep? Can I tell you with any accuracy?
I am so glad you asked this question because for years, I've been trying to sound the alarms and I would see actually, you know, like big thought leaders in the space and doctors and people that are showing their or stats are not just it's not to make it exclusive to aura. So all of these hand and wrist based trackers, no matter what you might be using to say if you've got your Garmin, you've got your bio strap, you've got your, you know, whoop band, you've got whatever it might be. We do know one thing for certain as of right now, and now this might changes in 2023, things could shift down the road. But right now, the sleep stage classifications for consumer grade wearables are the least accurate metrics on these wearables that you can look at. And unfortunately, it's the area that I almost always see people often leading with, so they'll send me you know, messages and say, Oh, no, my deep sleep is 30 minutes help, what do I do and kind of very concerned in making real decisions and choices and kind of setting up their lives in accordance to this data. And my concern there is how we want to think about this hand and risk based trackers are making their best guess as it realised as it relates to sleep stages. And when we say sleep stages, what you what you pointed to deep sleep, REM light sleep and kind of the break up of this. Really, right now the only way we have to truly understand what sleep stage we're in is a brain based wearable. So using more EEG type data, and then correlating that with other complex data around how, you know, you pointed to things like motion, and looking at things like heart rate, and HRV. And all those things can help us understand what sleep stage we're in. But without the brain based information, then it's really their best guess. So with for instance, Aura ring, proclaims and has certain studies behind us putting it as one of the higher kind of degrees of accuracy based out of different wearables, with their new update, and even with their new update, though, it still puts them right around the 80% mark for accuracy in that area. So what I would say for people with that is that you can look at the overall trends and kind of pan out, I certainly wouldn't make a lot of decisions on a daily basis, based around what you know, is coming back to you for your day readouts of your breakdown of your sleep. But just the panning on seeing if you're wildly kind of deviating from your established baseline. And I will say it takes some time for many of these wearables to kind of learn about you, if you've just purchased one of these takes a little bit of time. But you get your baseline and if you're really deviating then to kind of take no but to not lose your mind. Now, what I would say is those other metrics you pointed to, very wise to put a little bit more stake into those since they tend to be in around the 90 to above percent accuracy, meaning for things like that heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, HRV, blood oxygen, as well as just simply Are you asleep? Or are you awake? Although you have pointed to times when you know doesn't always get that necessarily, right. But it tends to be pretty high marking for its ability to tell those things. And we can learn a tonne about our habits and behaviours as it relates to those readouts.
And what about that's really helpful, thank you. What about like, when we look at wheat, for example, we will tell me it's normal. You're having however many wake ups an hour, or a never ever shows me a wake up? Right? So I seem to be like, go to sleep wake up. And that's certainly how I feel. Yeah. Whereas I do see clients that in this fragmentation pattern that you're that you're speaking of, they're where they are getting wake ups on or and they're quite visible, because they show like quite white blocks that are significant. What's the difference there? What is we've showing? And is that like, How accurate is that data, because it seems very different than aura.
This is where we can really go down the rabbit hole. So and I've got a lot of clients that almost, you know, identify like biohacker identification process. So they've got lots of different wearables, and some of them to the point that I would actually have clients that had entire spreadsheets where they were cross referencing all of their different wearables, sometimes four or five wearables at once in a night. So I don't advise to do that. And my big advice would be to not cross compare against wearables, since they have such different algorithms. Now, it's frustrating because it's like, well, then which one do you believe? You know, how do we make I'm meeting over these things. But what I would say is within each wearable, you're logging and noticing those major deviations. Now I will say with, for all of us, there are wake ups that we are having throughout the course of the night that we just aren't aware of. And so we are, you know, kind of moving around and, you know, changing positions, and there's these kind of micro wakeups, that we're just not mentally logging into our memory. And that's perfectly normal, we see that. And yet, what I will say is, for things like aura ring, when I do see lots of those kind of ticks of awake time, that's actually largely truly being logged by aura, and, and registering as wakeups, then those are often signs for us that, first off, we want to always discount any sort of, you know, kind of sleep pathologies that might be at play, particularly very notably, respiratory issues that might be coming up that are just so often go undiagnosed or unrealized. And knowing that there's over 80, different sleep disorders that exists today. So we're making sure that we're not missing some of those that can often occur throughout the course of the night for people. So you know, making sure that we do get into the right hands, if we do suspect that we have some sort of disorder that's at play that could be at the source of some of those wakeups. And most commonly, is some form of sleep apnea, mild, moderate, or severe. And even outside of sleep apnea, there's something kind of in between their upper airway resistance syndrome. That can also be another kind of descriptor of how we're breathing throughout the course of the night. And is a super common reason for those wake ups, even if the person doesn't totally remember those wake ups. And we see that a lot too, especially if there is long time. You know, maybe apnea is or disordered breathing, because unfortunately, when that's the case, many people are so sleep deprived. And they're the ones that people say, Oh, I don't have a problem sleeping, I fall asleep, just like the minute my head hits the pillow, I'm asleep, which is often a red flag for us that something might be actually problematic in their sleep that's making them that sleep deprived, that they're falling asleep with that much that quickly. So all those things to say that if we are seeing a lot of those ticks of wakeups, throughout the course of the night, making sure that we did not take the steps to eliminate any possibility for sleep apnea, especially to I will say, in the sleep community, a lot of there's alarms being sounded for women, in particular over the age of 40 as being kind of a missed group for diagnosing of this problem, because often they don't exhibit in the same way that we might have historically thought of sleep apnea. So it's not necessarily, you know, overweight, really loud snoring, you know, neck circumference, all of those things that we used to think and still apply, of course, for sleep apnea, but it's not exclusive. And for women, we see that often even if you didn't have sleep apnea before maybe you tested when at a certain age and then post 40 We can see with hormonal shifts and change in you know, even say for instance, how the the muscles in your tongue, that alone can shift how much blockage is happening of your airway. And then you might be dealing with sleep apnea, which is wildly going to augment problems with hormonal function and other things that we're looking to get to the source of for overall health.
If you listen to this podcast, you're probably like me, you want to have high energy every day to achieve everything you want to while also protecting your healthspan and longevity. And for the last six months, I've been taking a supplement called NAD region by biostat labs. Not only does it contain a powerful combination of niacin, amide, NAD three and resveratrol, which support NAD also known as the molecule of U, it has spermidine in it and spermidine helps inhibit many of the hallmarks of ageing. It also supports better cognition, improved memory, heart health and circadian rhythm. And I'll tell you what I've noticed since taking NAD region is consistently high energy, which is a huge bonus, given that I'm always juggling the demands of running both my businesses alongside my kids and all of their activities and my daily workouts. And I've also noticed a lot of new hair growth which is common with spermidine. The beauty benefits are of course always welcome. So after experiencing all these benefits, I wanted you to experience similar ones. And so I've arranged a very special offer with our sponsors biostat labs when you buy two bottles of NAD region biostat labs are giving listeners of this show a free bottle of GED aid, their glucose supplement that contains the very best in green Ian's for all around metabolic health IT NAD region in the morning in a fasted state before my workout to amplify the autophagy boosting effects. And then gda just before my most carb heavy meal of the day to blunt the glucose spike. To get your free bottle of Gd aid and all the energy and health promoting benefits of NAD region, head over to biostat labs.com forward slash Angela. And when you purchase two bottles of NAD region biostat labs will send you a free bottle of GED aid. That's biostat labs.com. Forward slash Angela to get your exclusive offer. I'm inviting you to join our newly opened high performance health Facebook group where we're all about unlocking our utmost potential. If you are a fellow biohacker, a coach or a woman with an entrepreneurial spirit, looking for peak performance in our community of ambitious women is just for you. But it's not just about connecting with like minded women, it's about empowering each other. We have weekly live training Q and A's and a bunch of other exclusive content that I don't get the chance to share anywhere else. You biohack some exploring plus extra nuggets of wisdom from my podcast guests, and so much more. It's free to join, simply click the top link in the show notes or go to Angela foster.me, forward slash h P h. That's Angela foster.me. Forward slash HP H or click the link in the show notes. And once inside, send me a message so we can connect personally, I can't wait to see you. Okay, so if you're seeing those wake up was on aura, they've probably genuinely are wake ups. And you should get those checked. Before you do anything that we're about to talk about why?
Yes, I would say especially to your boys you nailed it with. And I see that a lot when I see a lot like it's just a whole sprinkling of those little wake up signs. We absolutely want to make sure that we want to eliminate the sleep disorder piece and make sure that we're not overlooking that, because anything else we're going to do is sort of just like, you know, peripheral if we're not dealing with that, because it's so egregious and so disruptive to our overall health and well being and really a true life or death situation because we know that over time, this wildly upticks our rates of cardiovascular health, neurodegenerative diseases, emotional regulation, you know, there's so many both on the short term, and certainly the long term that can get disrupted. And this also applies to I have this a lot to work with couples that point and just sort of this casual, funny, light air around Oh, well, you know, my wife is a snore. And you know this. And if we are dealing with even just light snoring throughout the course of the night, we want to get that tested. Because that even in and of itself can have some sort of range of disordered breathing. So we want to deal with it. And there's really cool things that we can do now to address things like that. So even snoring, for example, there's daytime treatments now, like, for example, like sight OSA is a daytime treatment, where it's pretty much like a glorified 10s unit that you put onto your tongue, around 20 minutes throughout each day, there's kind of a sequence of how you're administering that. And that can address just even it's FDA cleared in the United States for snoring, and then also for mild sleep apnea. And then in trials for moderate to severe sleep apnea. So hopefully that will be applicable to those groups as well. So I'm saying that because no matter what we might be dealing with an even if it's just falling in the domain of Oh, innocent snoring, that's a big, big deal and can be really disruptive and can be part of the reason for some of those wake ups that you're seeing
also. And that's really good to know, and that there's stuff coming out to help people. What can we do then? So it sounds like whoop, seems to track normal wake ups. So maybe unless you're seeing loads and loads and loads, right, or for extended periods, but or if you're seeing those white blocks in the night, actually, really definitely you should be paying attention to those because it doesn't pick up these tiny little movement ones. So they might show you moving, it seems to be able to distinguish is what I was picking up there. So seriously. Great, yes.
Especially on aura, as opposed to SharePoint. Whoop, we'll see a lot more of those little brief ticks. And so it seems to land a little bit differently to how auras picking those up. So just manage that accordingly. And so we want to get some of those, certainly those number of ticks down. But especially if you see on something like aura, just where the way they're plucking out their information that's a bit more meaningful.
Is there a normal amount? Is there an amount that's considered like okay, I Know if see some people will get up to use the bathroom? But is there a kind of acceptable range that if it happens once or twice, it's okay or why would you come
on that really important colour because I also don't want to be leaving people with any sort of neuroses or fears because we see that being one of the biggest drivers of kind of insomnia or difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or early awakenings is this perception of sleep is something's wrong and kind of perfectionistic tendencies is just often, you know, kind of errors, its self as it relates to how we're thinking about our sleep. So that's a really important call out. So it is normal to have a wake up or to throughout the course of the night, it starts to be problematic when we start to think about how long we are now awake. And if we're having long stretches of time, you know, over 10 to 15 minutes now where you're actually fully awake. We want to understand the why that that's happening. And I will say that across the board, for many people that I work with them, as we start addressing all the things that you know, the big heavy hitters that we can bring in to help support sleep, often even those numbers go down. But don't you know, lose your mind. If you're having a wake up and go into the bathroom throughout the course of the night. That's not necessarily a concerning call out.
Okay, great. Thank you for for clearing that up. Yeah. So that being said, then when we're looking at optimising sleep, and yes, someone who, for example, is seeing these micro wake ups, what are the key things that they can do, or anyone, in fact, can do to improve the quality of their sleep?
Sure. So first off, the one of the most common reasons where why people come our way is for wake ups. So you're not alone for anyone if they are listening and dealing with some sort of wake ups or number of wake ups. And if if we're starting there, knowing that here in lies the the skill set piece of sleep, because there are they could land is, oh my God, there's so many reasons for wakeups. But I hope that it lands is Oh my God, there's so many reasons for wakeups in a positive way, because it actually puts it less in the domain of Oh, I'm just someone that wakes up a lot throughout the night. I'm a light sleeper I'm of this some of that. And instead that there's a number of things that we can address to understand the why. So first off, what are just some of the most common reasons for wake ups, we can start with probably the least sexy one, but one of the most impactful places for people to begin, which is sleep regularity. And almost never do people want to hear about this one, because it really does require a total lifestyle shift. Because it requires us really mindfully we have people do this in our programmes of just sitting with their calendar and what they're learning about the things that impact our circadian rhythm. So we talked about strengthening circadian rhythm. And so how they can design their days from the moment they wake up, and what time is that wake up such that they can commit to that seven days a week, and what would inspire them. And that includes, you know, the weekends or wherever their normal deviations might arise. And I also find a blind spot for a lot of people with this. And that's not really me, I don't really, you know, have too many deviations from my wakeups. But then I look at their stats. And almost always we see this roller coaster ring, at some point throughout the course of their week where they just fall off course, and not realising how much that alone can disrupt their sleep quality, because it kind of part of the impact of this is that if you do sleep in an hour and a half, two hours in some place throughout the course of your night, or throughout the course of your week, then it can result in what's kind of referred to as social jetlag where you didn't get on a plane, but you are experiencing jetlag like symptoms because of that deviation and the regularity of your wakeups. So just continuing to touch
it, they'd be there. Like let's say, for example, you're an early riser, you got up somewhere between I don't know, let's say someone wakes up at six every day in the week. How much latitude do they have to wake up a bit later in the weekend?
Great question. So our recommendations are to have it largely seven days a week, the same week of time plus or minus 30 minutes. So that's kind of your
time is quite tight. That's what I always say to people, but it's reassuring to hear it from you because it is tight. They're like renewing, I'm like 30 to 60 maybe but I wouldn't go over an hour, but actually yeah 30 is okay, that's interesting. But then someone like say they're lonely when you're wiser when they go for a gym workout. Okay, so like me for example, I go at 5am this is the bit where I struggle is then you go out for dinner with friends, and they are staying out late. So now you're going to bed at midnight. Now, that's five hours. So are you still better off getting up at the same time and napping later? Or like,
exactly, she'll sleep? Oh, such a short sleep. So really important question. And this is this is really where kind of the rubber meets the road of Oh, nice idea. But then when you put it into practice, like what you just said, that's where people often things start kind of unravelling. So really good, call it. So what we want to do is one, design a lifestyle where hopefully, as much as possible, we can capture some of your, you know, things that are important to you, whatever your lifestyle might include, that we can kind of help support some of that workability with being in alignment with the rhythms of nature, as well. So how can we kind of reconcile that and make it as consistent as possible. So I say that because sometimes I'll have people that you know, are coming in huge night owls, and they've been going to bed at 2am. And so for us as we work in a kind of a process of starting to get more consistency and regularity. For them, we might begin with moving things back to midnight for across the board. And that's helps encapsulate their lifestyle and some of the things that they're doing, and then eventually, we might be moving it back more consistently, but safe, you know, they have more evening, you know, work schedule, or certain things that we might have to incorporate. The biggest thing is consistency across the board for these things. Now optimal 100% is to align with the rhythms of nature, and to make the not just for a whoo perspective or a nice to have, but we know that the World Health Organisation lists shift working as a possible cancer causing agents. So there's a very real Fallout when we start deviating from those rhythms. We are designed by, you know, 1000s of years to be linked up with those rhythms. So I say all that because what we want to do is start to ensure that we are kind of marrying ourselves to those rhythms as consistently as possible, and then choosing a wakeup time that supports that cause right now to answer your question. So hopefully, we've if we've decided that 5am really is encapsulates, for that person that wake up time where most of the time they can adhere to that, then every so often, if something does come up, and you are out later, the suggestion is this, you mentioned Matthew Walker. And he also echoes this kind of thought process where it's almost the Do Nothing effect, or the Do Nothing method. And so what the Do Nothing method really looks like is that you are continuing to wake up at a round your same wakeup time. Now, you might swing that out, say that 30 minutes, maybe it's a wild wild night, and you really are running on very little maybe would move it out and say like 45 minutes or so to account for that kind of change. But largely, you're keeping things anchored at that consistent wakeup time. And while that might seem like cruel and unusual punishment on the front half, on the long term, so it's setting you up powerfully to get right back on track in your evening, to get you back to your consistent bedtime. Because let's think about the opposite. If we then say, Oh my God, it was a wild night. So I'm going to sleep in until whatever 738. And now I'm running around three hours later. So it's like I just hopped on a flight from I was kind of American centric, I guess, in this example, but New York to LA. And so three hour time difference. Now you're having to deal with that jetlag problem. And there's also something known as metabolic jetlag. So now, you might be getting hungry later, too. So now you're throwing all of your signals off. So maybe you're eating later now, and many people can relate to this too, right. That's how many of us manage our weekends. And so we'll sleep in, and then I'm not hungry for my breakfast at my normal time. So I'm going to do a later brunch, then, of course, the dinner gets moved out or snacking. So those are other signals that are counter to what we're looking to create. Now, we might see people having more caffeine to account for that rough night. They might be taking long naps to account for that rough night. Or they do this other thing where they'll say, Oh, I'm so tired, I'm gonna go to bed early. And then that can also be problematic because that's where some dysfunctional sleep patterns can come in. Because now they find that I'm so tired but why am I just laying here and then that can start to breed these problematic relationships with the bedroom and their sleep and how and the results so instead we do the Do Nothing effect now you can do like any time still leverage things like naps, and in a strategic way still very short and on the early half of your night. There are always Asterix to everything one of the times we might suggest where you avoid naps is if you are dealing with really chronic and insomnia and you've got some big, you got some problems in your relationship to your sleep pressure, and the ability to know that you are both tired and able to fulfil on actually falling asleep with ease. So that might be a time when you want to avoid naps. But for many people, if you're not dealing with that, just leveraging naps in a mindful way. So putting them in the earlier side and kind of more in the power nap domain, I would say like 25 minutes or so. Sometimes, if you are going longer, we'd always suggest that you'd never go over a sleep cycle, which is around, you know, say the 90 minute mark or so. But I would say that's very, very rare. And most of the time you're looking to keep things earlier. And this is very different with shift workers, they've got a whole other way of managing things. So the suggestion, Angela, to the question, then is that you still maintain around your same wakeup time. And we might all think we might have examples of this of like the friend that no matter what time we go out, they always wake up at around the same time, that's actually what we're looking to do, we're trying to train to be like that friend, maybe that person as you if you're listening, if that is you, I know, sometimes it can feel like a frustrating thing, it's actually tends to be a really good sign, because that means that we're entrained to have very workable and measured clocks. And when we think about all this, it's not just like, we're trying to set up all these ridiculous rules for ourselves, it's actually for a reason that we know that there are trillions of clocks in every cell and organ in our body. And all being really kept on time by our master clock in our brain, the super charismatic nucleolus I know you do different, you know, educate people on this topic. And it's so so crucial, because that piece is linked up directly to our eyes. And so that's one of the reasons why there's some very clear indicators that help us keep all of those clocks on time. And it does always begin with the light dark cycle that is the most powerful one. And this is known as a Zeitgeist or a time giver that tells the body what time it is and what to be doing when So think of your body like that it's in your your eyes, as if it's sampling the environment all throughout the course of the day. And in the sampling process, you are looking to help facilitate telling it what time it is and what to be doing when it's not just applying to light. That's just a really impactful one. But it also applies to the meal timing piece, when you're exercising the temperature in your environment, the temperature that you're creating in your bodily environment. You know, there's so many things that can tell us what time it is and what should be doing when. And so that is where the power comes in that when you learn what those things are, then you can leverage them accordingly.
What about then, when you talk about the circadian alignment, the thing I travel with every single year is this time of year in the UK. Our winters are so different than our summers, right. So now we're working up towards like the longest day of the year, I think is 21st of June, it's super, super low. So when we're having dinner, everyone feels really wide awake, the sun is still streaming in through the windows, you go out for a walk, it's still really light, right until half 910 o'clock at night. So for someone like me, who I always wake up, and I find it frustrating, and now I realise that you're I know it but when someone else says it to you, it validates it even more, right, because I'm like, I know I should get up because I'm awake. But when you're tired and you've been out, it feels hard, because I will naturally wake up at five and I find that really difficult to resist. So it actually has the opposite effect where it makes me think I really want to go out and go for dinner because I know that there's a bunch of people, for example, that are night owls, and they're gonna go out really late. And I'm gonna feel like the party pooper because now I'm looking at the clock going, I'm not gonna get enough sleep because I can't sleep anymore. If I want to I just my body clock wakes me up. So that's kind of its own problem, which we can talk about. But also, what about the fact that it's so light? I feel like what is normally seven to seven and a half hours in the winter can easily become six to six and a half hours in summer because of this change. What circadian alignment should we be following? Should we be thinking of the equatorial Sun cycle or?
Good question? 100% Yes, this is where it gets really layered. Because you know, people love to have just like really bite size recommendations and say, Oh, well, you do this always across the entire year. And to your point. Our bodies are not designed like that there are seasonal nature, but also where we fall geographically on the globe really, really matters. And this kind of goes into the domain of health geography, which I think is a really fascinating concept of where you choose to reside can yields effects on our health and well being. So we can look at things like for instance, a very clear one is with Ms. And Ms rates being higher in northern latitude locations versus southern are closer to the equator locations with speculations onto the why for that, but the theory is that when we start moving away from the equator, that we're getting less kind of connection to vitamin D, so less powerful sunlight at different points throughout the course of the year. This is impacting our overall health, but particularly those mitochondrial based diseases. And so that this seems to be a very real thing for us to think about is what are we dealing with health wise, and is our environment pulling for great health all throughout the course of the year? So I mean, I will say that and not everyone necessarily needs to do this or has this available, but I personally did even move based on that exact concern, I was living in Manhattan, and most of the winters would just be, you know, look a particular way and you'd have less access to sun and then you would have that really dramatic shift to your point in the summers, where it's brights for so long. So I've moved to Austin to have higher kind of rates throughout the course of the year of sunlight exposure, and the ability to kind of live this indoor outdoor lifestyle. So just you know, bringing in the context that there is that factor that when you are clear on what are your struggles with your new environment. Now, of course, there's lots of things you can do to offset these concerns. But knowing am I going to continue to choose to live in this environment? Or would it make sense to move to another environment, if that's available to me? Granted, I get that that's not always available. So what do we do if that's not available, then we get really curious about these daily changes in the environment that we are choosing to live in. So that circadian 24 hour rhythm that each person has we're diurnal creatures, which means we're meant to be active by day, and at rest at night. So when we do fun, what we're seeing is that some many people are phased, delayed, and pushed out, so they're not getting sleepy until later. And what we're seeing in many studies, especially more recently is that while there might be this kind of genetic drift, it's referred to as a drifting of some people being a bit more late leaning, and some people being early leaning, there's more evidence, it's starting to come out that some of us based on the way that our societal function is set up, or society is set up in modernity, that were skewing later. And some of us might even be more sensitive to some of these changes. And that is part of the reason why we're seeing more and more people that are that late leading the night owls that you're speaking to. So part of just even the behavioural piece is how can we design a life where we're facilitating things that really work for our environment, and our goals and prioritising sleep and health as much as possible. So you know, a lot of people I work with will start to start hosting certain things. So they'll have things that they're, you know, kind of known for their weekly brunches, monthly brunches. Or they'll have kind of happy hour type, you know, lineups of things that are just moving things earlier to help have it all. So because we certainly don't want to cut out social connection. Super important. One of the other things that I pull in as a recommendation, we had a great anthropologist on the podcast that pointed to how we're social creatures, and we know that loneliness and poor sleep are connected. So those seem really, really important. So we want to feel like we're part of some sort of tribe that's important to us. So how do we do that and still prioritise our sleep? So this anthropologist had actually studied the Hudson tribe, and would find, you know, kind of how sleep had been managed in hunter gatherer tribes, and how can we leverage that information now, so what he came up with is what he calls this is David Samson. He calls it your sleep capital and your social capital. So that most of the time you're managing your sleep capital, say, you know, 80 90% of time I was in parados principle, and you're pretty good at that. It's pretty dialled in, you're making you know, deposits into your sleep capital. But every so often, you're prioritising your social capital, and you might know that that's going to take out you know, some reserves of your sleep capital, but we know that that's important for us to invest in every so often. So that might be the time where it's the wedding of the close friend and you're going to be staying up much later or friends are going to be coming over and staying with you. So you're Sleep is going to be a little bit funky during that period. But we can think of it as an important investment in our social capital. Because this is the time of the year where in historically and seasons to your point that we might have deviated we might have had, you know, a summer solstice celebration, and we would have stayed up later celebrated and had less sleep during that particular time. And that was, you know, kind of just something that we would invest in, because we're feeling closer connection with the people that are important to us. And then long term, we can make an argument that that's important for overall sleep. So there's some ways to think about that disruption. But then I would also say, this is where it's important for us to design an environment for us that pulls for great sleep so that you can kind of keep things on track that work for you, even when some of the environmental shifts are happening. And sadly, some manmade shifts for like, you know, daylight savings time and things that have us skewing our kind of dark light cycle in a way that's manmade, and wouldn't naturally be happening to such egregious points. So that's where you want to have control of, say, your bedroom environment and making it totally pitch black, we're looking to have it that you don't, you can kind of pass the hand test, you put your hand up in front of your face in your bedroom. And if you could still see your hand kind of keep moving on, you know, blacking out whatever you need to do. So that's totally black, that your environment leading up to that is really customizable, that you're able to get that really nice and dark, using just candles or red light largely and how that
unfolds. But they speak for about an hour or an hour and a half before how long would we use that?
Yes, very good point. So ideally, so certainly throughout most of the year, we're trying to still keep this aligned with those rhythms. So post sunset, but to your point, there's certain times throughout the year where things really debate and I also work with clients, say in like Sweden, or hi parts of Alaska, where there's times all day, it's bright, or all day, it's dark. So what do we do that, so then you're still looking to keep an extended period of time. So I often suggest for people that that would be kind of bare minimum, that we're at least getting a couple hours before bed, where it's, you know, really, really turned down. But for most of us, I really like to see even a little bit more. So you know, three hours or so, where we're having really, really dim lighting. And we're looking to have low Lux output, you can even test this with different apps, so Lux or light metre, and just ensure that you're in a really, really low Lux environment. And largely that does come from candles or red lights in your in your space using things like blue blockers, if you do have anything that brings in any of that blue light, and looking to block out any of that blue light, ideally. And this includes just going through your space, any of those leftover little light bulbs, or a little nightlight, or just those kind of pervasive things that we've started to, you know, not even think about as being problematic can really be disruptive to our melatonin production and many studies. So looking to have sufficient time where we're think of it as bathing in darkness, for you know, some of these key hours before bed. Why? Because while we're in darkness if you know melatonin is referred to as that vampire hormone or hormone of darkness. It's much more complicated than that. But it is facilitated by darkness. And so in order to have a sufficient rise up of melatonin, we want to be sitting in darkness for an extended period of time leading up to bedtime.
Interesting, do you know what I think I'm gonna give you some, just so people can practically put this in, right? So when we can put this into some context, how are we going to change this visit? So what I took away from that is for someone like me who's an early morning tight, right, I've done the question as it says early morning, I've done a DNA test. It says early morning. Yeah, I know not everyone does this, but everyone can go online and look at Jeunesse there's plenty of them. If you track with an aura ring, it tells you your chronotype it tells me early morning, right? So aura keeps nudging me to go to bed. Whoop has a thing where it wants me to sleep, I don't know, five 910 hours all the time, which is kind of annoying, or never does that to me. I don't know how real that is. But I find that extremely frustrating. Can we touch on how real that isn't? And I'll come back to my question. Because actually, that's a point people, many people do use whoop, and I love it for so many reasons. But I find that annoying that I can never ever seem to get that to their sleep need.
Yeah, no, I think that I personally find that a little concerning and I think can kind of create some disordered sleeping at times where people are just pulling for purely that sleep duration. It's kind of it's perfect. We kind of started the conversation like with that. And but then we also got into how nuances can be and so it's not just about that sleep duration. It's how much fragmentation it's the regularity of one You're going to bed when you're waking up all of those things. So if just looking at that one metric, I think that can be really problematic and also make people feel like a failure. And it can lend itself to performance anxiety and a very real way. That was part of my story with my sleep was kind of sleep anxiety. And I started to relate to myself as did something like break in me along the way, is there something wrong with my sleep? Is this how it's always going to be and I would set myself up with such kind of stress and panic over my sleep. And so that would be the self fulfilling prophecy. And thinking that I was doing such harm to my health and well being the real fine line to both prioritising sleep, knowing that it's important, but also knowing that all of us are gonna have a rough night periodically, and knowing that that's totally normal, and that we are resilient, it's simply when we're, over time chronically, you know, doing things that maybe unbeknownst to us, or knowingly, are impacting our sleep results. So instead, what I hope people can be left with is that we're shifting our focus, you know, so using myself an example, when I was really struggling with my sleep, I've focused so much on the nights, and it would be like this battle, okay, I've gotta be prepared. And I have, you know, the earplugs and the eyemask, and the books and the whatever. And I'm like, Okay, I'm going into battle basically, is how is related to it, like, oh, this better workout, okay,
and, and then of course, then you're never gonna sleep basic
sleep like that. So we're looking at someone on the potty, I don't remember who it was. But somebody used the analogy of surfing, which I really liked. And they would say, that great surfers would do all of this work to kind of set up the conditions for great surfing. So they would, you know, check out the whether they would see the location where it be for great surfing, then they would go and drive and they would have the, you know, the the gear on and the right board and blah, blah, blah, but then they would go out into the water. And then they would just kind of hang out there just like you know, trust that a wave would come. And that's kind of how we want to think about sleep. So we want to shift our attention to the day all the things that we have in our control. And it does really begin from the moment you wake up as part of the things that can impact your sleep results as wife, if you got nothing else out of what I'm saying, Please begin with having a consistent wake up time because you do have a say about that you might not have a say as much about when you fall asleep and the wakeups for a while anyway. But you do always have a say about the wakeup times. So begin there, and then Pair that with bright light exposure physically outside. So those are two anchoring pieces. So sunlight anchoring. So you want to do that within about 30 minutes of wake up. Now I know sometimes if you're getting up egregiously early, and it's not the sun hasn't risen at that point. Some of the recommendations would be to still have yourself aligned with these rhythms. So still having kind of red light exposure until the natural sunrise time now there is a conflict in that. So some people will point to having, you know, kind of sad lamps or bright light exposure. But heed
the mountain talk about the fact that the light that you use, that it's not red light, and you need if you if you can't get outside, so like in the UK to use your example, we're doing the school run in the dark, so there's no chance Yes. So you'd like a ring light is bright enough. But are you saying actually you could keep them dim until like, I'm just curious, how do you wake person get that circadian entrainment.
Now there's two real camps on this piece. Now, I will say and it's actively kind of a discussion point. Now I will say from a lot of academia, the call outs are to leverage the sad lamps or kind of bright light exposure in your space shortly thereafter, waking and that kind of brings about that excitatory response. So if you're going to do that, then I would also suggest as much as you can offset that with red light exposure, because never in nature, would we be exposed to that amount of bright light and blue hues of light in such a kind of alien fashion, like we just would never have had that happen. So please, at least aim to kind of offset that with red light exposure when you do that. Now. So more of the purist or the biohackers will say, Okay, well that's not in nature. So instead, you'd want to have red light exposure throughout that whole part of the morning until the natural sunrise occurs that you're getting that real sunlight in your eyes, you're physically getting outside for that. And then you're really trying to align yourself with these rhythms. There's a lots of variants on this and also I want to call it you know, I share that I work with poker players and oftentimes they're akin to shift workers and shift workers. We really often have to ogg or we have to create a full light exposure timing for themselves. That's really not super natural. So what that would look like is we're having to set up the bright light exposure with the light boxes and the red light. And we're timing and timing out when that would be for them, and then having to really decide when their sunset would be. So we're all kind of making that up for them to align with their own circadian rhythm. So this is where it does get layer, there's, you have to really get one interested in learning about this piece of circadian rhythm and treatment, the physics of light, and how it light is very different, depending on where you are in the globe. Also, your light needs based on your skin tone, the Fitzpatrick scale that you fall on. So for a vitamin D component, that's a big piece of getting great sleep, vitamin D bring that precursor to serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin. So if you're not getting that, at the right times that can be disrupted. Also, either, as I'm talking to you, right now, with these windows behind me, this is kind of problematic for a signalling pathway, because this is breaking up some of the light and it's making it more blue light, Rich. And so that is another reason why all of us want to physically aim to be getting outside as much as humanly possible throughout the course of the day to get actual, natural, bright light exposure as much as we possibly can. So this is where we want to get curious and then find out what works for us to keep ourselves on our type of schedule that we've created.
Should we do this before it? Well, I was gonna ask you to do a really quick walkthrough, which I'd like to do just for five minutes, because I think I help people practice it. And then they can go and find more about you and how they can engage with your courses your material. Before we do that, is their shift work sounds complex. I've worked with shift work as it is, isn't that they? Sometimes they're doing nights I know a lot of people that listen to this show are actually medics or nurses and practitioners and they are having that disruption. What can they do if they're working nights, and then they're coming home, they're arriving is bright sunshine, and then they might have tea days off, and then they're going back into that night shift? How can they kind of pretend that answer?
Oh, so good, I'm so glad you're pointing to the very underserved group of the population. Okay, so a couple of resources one, I would suggest getting the app the shift, shift work app. So it's a it's by the creators of time shifter. So the shift app is basically leveraging are the same algorithms that NASA uses to keep their astronauts on time. It's using that algorithm for whatever your shifts are. And so you can populate those into the app. And then it will help kind of bring a rundown of when you should be getting bright light exposure when you should be in total darkness if you're using things like caffeine, or melatonin or certain things, when to dose those or when not to. And so that's helping you guide in advance of your ships and changing of shift which rotating shift worker shift work schedule is very, very complex and can be really problematic if we aren't aware of what we can do to help facilitate that. So I would definitely suggest that that's a great new resource that we've only just recently had access to. So I highly suggest people use something like that. Another book that's helpful for shiftwork. It's called the sleep fix. And this was actually written by an ABC correspondent that was a shift worker, and went through a whole struggle of asleep herself. And so then started, you know, like any great journalist, kind of learning what all the things are, that from kind of a research backed perspective, can be leveraged to improve your kind of shift work lifestyle, which brings me to the word lifestyle is that ideally, we're looking to create a lifestyle around this shift work to kind of schedule as much as you humanly can. So what is really beneficial is if we do have a consistent schedule, that's one of the best and easiest ways in which say, maybe easy, but a easier way to navigate shift work is that now that becomes your new lifestyle where you you know, go to bed at your consistent 3am or what have you. And so that becomes just how you manage even on the off days, you don't just try to go back to how things are you're trying to really keep that and embrace that and say what how could I kind of design a life where that is facilitated and I respect that bedtime as much as anyone else would their normal bedtimes. So because that that consistency is so key, because once we start having all that variability, then hormone disruption just as a complete mess, and then if certainly those those clocks get very, very confused. So that would be one place that you can begin to where it's rotating, then you want to be even more in this conversation, to try to do as much as you can to leverage that, but also really advocating, we're trying to get more education out for employers of just how disruptive that rotating shifts can be. And so where possible, how we can kind of keep things regular for shift workers, because that's a big component.
Yeah, massive. I think Matthew Walker was talking about the fact that if we have know that we have night owls, and we have early morning types of why are we not doing it? Like if I'm awake early in the morning? Why would you not take me and put me there early when a night owl is really going to struggle at that time, and vice versa? For me, I'm just, I think that was one of the problems for me as a corporate lawyer, where I then struggled with like, depression and things like that after I had my kids and bipolar episode. And because basically, I was completely out of circadian alignment. Corporate Law is all about nothing, it doesn't matter how early I went to the office, nothing would get started before about 10am. And so it was hoped a hopeless thing of just thinking, I'm going to try, I'm going to try and get away on time. And then you'd be there all night into the early hours of the morning, which has gone long beyond I'm now moving into when, you know, 3am, I'm still working, but my body clocks kind of ready to wake up. And I just think it's crazy. And it has profound, as you say, health implications for people, right?
Absolutely, yes. So it's so great that you're become aware of what really seems to work for you and leveraging that and really aiming to as much as possible design a life that facilitates and works into that. And sometimes it really does mean making tough choices and decisions about what we're saying yes to what we're saying no to to facilitate, you know, overall health and well being I think this has been this afterthought, or a nice to have for a long time, this sleep performance. But now we're starting to understand in more and more research just how crucial this is. So if there are certain things that are happening in your life, that aren't helping to facilitate those, that kind of important foundational piece of well being then sometimes we do have to make the harder calls, which sounds like you did.
So, before you go, let's do a really quick walkthrough for a kind of practical thing. Also, let me give an example. And I'll say the takeaways that I've taken, and people and start putting this to practice. So for me being an early morning type, one of the things I picked up on with you, that was getting up at the usual time and sticking to that and maybe actually changing my social engagements and being proactive about it. And saying, rather than turning down invitations saying, Actually don't why don't we do brunch, because that's something we can both do. If you if you wake up a bit later, and you go to bed later, that's the thing you can still hang out together, I definitely took that away as a practical thing, which is good. The other thing I noticed was with the yesterday, I never do this, normally, I did a workout at three o'clock in the afternoon. And consequently, last night, I found it really difficult to be as tired, it was way too invigorating. I'm used to doing that at 5am. I skipped it and I did it at 3pm in the afternoon three to four. It's quite an intense workout. And it's interesting looking at what happened because first of all, I didn't feel tired. So I found myself shifting my bedtime, I just couldn't feel quite as sleepy. And then Auro reported my heart rate being elevated for longer at night, it took longer for my resting pulse to come down. So clearly I was out of sync with everything I talked about right by thinking think of your biology, and I was out of sync. So I think it might be helpful then less just like if we use me as a study or tells me when the midpoint of my night is. It sounds like I should be doing a lot of these things earlier with consisting at times and moving them earlier. Would that be what you would say? Like? I'm just curious, what would you say? Like how would I practically implement this?
Totally? Yeah, great question. So a couple of things for people to be aware of is, I think, loosely mentioned this concept of Zeitgeist errs or time givers and how time givers tell our body what time it is and what to be doing when and how we can help leverage those to kind of improve the ease to your point by which we're falling asleep and staying asleep and the quality. So the first most important one being the light dark cycles. And so leveraging those setting up our environment to pull for those, and that we have that level of consistency and respect for that we're not deviating with manmade kind of interruptions of artificial lights at night, etc. And so when we with all of this, we're looking at very clear day mode and night mode. And so it's again, I mentioned we're a diurnal creatures who are meant to be active by day and at rest at night. So you want a high amplitude of bright light exposure by day so bright days dark nights, is what we're looking to create. So during that bright day part, that high amplitude piece, what can we put in there we want wake promoting activities it during that time, so that would be meal timing is a wake promoting activity, so it does take energy effort. And presumably if we're eating it's to, to take that end energy from the food that we're eating and expend it somewhere. And that's a big problem I see for a lot of people is that they're eating some of the bulk of their calories late into the evening when you're doing nothing. And we're about to just like lay and go to sleep, which is a big, big problem, because that really disrupts a kind of our clocks and our quality of sleep. So you start to take inventory of your light, dark cycle, what are the next most important things is your temperature, and what not only just ambient temperature, but then what are the things that you're doing that could be disrupting your bodily temperature at the wrong times. So then that could be that meal timing, it could definitely be the exercise timing like you spoke to. So we're looking to keep these things on the first half of the day, ideally, so that they're circadian aligned. And then in the evening hours, when we're looking to kind of rest and digest down regulate what would facilitate that. So that it would be things like giving our digestive system a bit of a break. So we can lower our heart rate, lower body temperature up tick, or HRV, and help to facilitate melatonin production. We just had Dr. SACHIN panda on the podcast, highly recommend checking him out. And one of the things he pointed to was this kind of seesaw effect, when you're eating, and you're looking to produce melatonin at night, then we want to have the pancreas kind of asleep, if you will. And then if we do the opposite, which a lot of us do is that we're eating just kind of casually throughout the course of the night, that can turn on the pancreas at the wrong times and then disrupt melatonin production is one of his call outs and their findings. So we want to facilitate that so that we can get sufficient melatonin production so that you can both fall asleep with ease, but also stay asleep with ease. So you have plenty of kind of melatonin reserve to get you throughout the course of the night. And so that meal timing piece is going to be a big component of that exercise. Huge one, because of course, what does that do to body temperature tends to raise our body temperature. Now, this is why this one gets a little layered. Because we do find that people can be aware of where their kind of cortisol levels are. So if you are dealing with really high cortisol, then maybe for for that individual, then it might make sense for having a bit of a gentle movement in the first half of the day. And then but still keeping their main bulk of their exercise on the front half of the day, and then just kind of dose it accordingly. So just being aware that there could be some bio individuality. But largely, if you think back to hunter gatherer days, what's likely we would have woken up with the sun, and then you'd only had a few hours of sunlight. And so that's likely when you would have gotten most of your movement throughout the course of the day, and then the sun would set it's kind of was like party over the first real biohack being fire really in a lot of ways because that all, you know, kind of artificially extended our days. And that was one but you know, you'd only get that for an extended period, a short period of time for most of history. And so now this is where we've thrown ourselves way out of whack by this ability to have 24 hour scheduling, including 24 hour, blue lit gyms and 8pm workouts and all of that we have to just kind of, you know, skew back to the blueprint of nature. And does that align?
Yeah. Do you think that your body is intelligent enough that for example, I mean, I think it is. But I was just curious you what you think that if you walk out a certain time every day, right, and you're eating at certain times, right and knows the regularity. So now you throw in a workout. And it was quite an intense workout I did. It's like Hello, like, this is what we normally do in the morning. And that gets me going for the day. And now you're doing this for three o'clock in the afternoon. Okay, let's like ramp up the energy. And that's what it certainly felt like because I had all this energy.
Oh, totally. Yeah, it's a big deal. Because I'm just do know that sleep loves consistency. And that doesn't even just apply, you know, I was leading with the the wakeup emphasis, but that also applies to all of these things so that it likes the consistency of certainly the meal timing piece, because then it can prepare for digestion, which is a taxing process on the body so that the digestive process can really truly prepare. That's why we tend to get hungry at specific periods of time. If you're listening and you're saying, Oh, well, that's not for me, I'm always hungry at night. Not possible, just know that we can actually have a say on what time the body is getting hungry. So we can kind of move or those meal timing elements often are a bit earlier for most people is what we see being beneficial. But you can move your meal timing and then that will impact when you get those hunger pangs because the body is trying to keep you on time. So that's what's really fascinating so that digestive clocks are very real. And you know is only this still kind of a new thing for us to be thinking about. It's it's just in 2017 that the Nobel Prize was given for or this kind of more rich understanding of circadian rhythms and the functionality of circadian rhythms. So, you know, we're going to see more and more information coming out about this topic. So I think it's just a matter of time where it starts getting more into the mainstream of then how to practically apply it.
Amazing. Thank you so much this has been, I think you've given us so many practical tips, I think it's probably the most practical, focused episode we've recorded on sleep. Thank you so much.
Oh, well, thank you. And I as a tips that I still appreciate that because it truly is my mission on this planet to share as much kind of practical takeaways for people in the area of their sleep. So if anything was unclear, please don't hesitate to reach out it really is my favourite topic on the whole planet. So I'm always happy to kind of clear up any of the confusion, or hopefully just even inspire curiosity around this thing that we do a third of our lives on average, 26 years, that sadly, at least in America, the average doctor is getting around two hours of training in. So you know, that's, that's in general in practice, and certainly not outside of specialty. But you know, it's it's really an important area that I think has been overlooked for a long time. So even just the interest in this area is a big deal.
Amazing. Thank you so much. Where can people come and find where they find you connect with you, Molly, please share.
Yeah, absolutely. So at sleep is a skill.com. There's lots of steps that you can take. So once again, if anything was unclear, we have a little bot on there. So you can ask any kind of questions. So we can help facilitate just getting some answers there. And then we have a sleep assessment you can take and then it will kind of auto trigger some things that you can do right away to help support support your sleep. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter called Sleep obsessions aim to have the most obsessive sleep planet, sleep newsletter on the planet is the goal. So we're doing that every Monday for almost five years. So we've, we haven't missed a Monday. So please join in. And we respond to every single email. So if you have anything that you're experimenting with your sleep, like to put in kind of reader information to see if you have like screenshots of your stats or what have you, we can include those. And then we have our weekly podcast with sleep experts to help facilitate getting in this conversation. And then if you're really struggling, we have online courses and one on one opportunities to help gamify is really part of our goal. So we do every person we work with does wear an aura ring as of 2023. So with that, then we can really measure how you're coming in. And then all that we can do to transform your numerically. So really, both objectively and subjectively your sleep experience.
Amazing. Thank you so much. We will link to all of that in the show notes. This was so much fun. Thank you so much.
Oh, thank you is your pleasure as always and excited for more kind of partnerships to come. It's what you're doing is so complimentary to what we do asleep is a skill so I really appreciate the work that you are doing.
Thank you, Molly. Yeah, I'm excited. Thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you.
If you enjoy this podcast, visit female bio hacker.com and be part of a special community of women looking to optimise their mind, body and spirit. If you're tired of sifting through countless websites and books to find the answers to your questions about nutrition, fitness, hormones, mindset, spirituality, and biohacking the search is over. I've done the research for you. And every week we go live with in depth masterclasses q&a calls and monthly challenges to help you transform your life. And when you join the collective you'll have access to a wealth of information, including deep dive master classes and biohacking toolkits on our members favourites like metabolic flexibility, gut health, stress and resiliency and stepping into your most empowered self. Get Access and be coached by me and my team and level up your health, career and life all for less than $1 a day. Go to female bio hacker.com or click the link below to get started. And I'll see you on the inside
