The 3 Most Important & Effective Sleep Ingredients To *Finally* Get The Full, Restful Night Of Sleep Your Body & Brain Craves.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, taking creatine as a potential additional support for inducing sleep, supporting better and deeper sleep, it's shown that if you spend too much time in bed and you can't go to bed quickly, it can actually interfere with later sleep processes.

Could I stack with ketones? I mean, really, in my opinion, in my own anecdotal testing thus far, the answer is yes. Especially on an active day.

Wake up to my alarm and be like, you know what? I want to go back into a lighter state, sleep state. Think about this. And I actually went back to sleep and almost like processed it for a while.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

All right, you got guys. This is officially it. You've probably seen me on social media talking about how I have vastly simplified my personal sleep protocol. And the way that I've done that is by taking just three teeny tiny white capsules of this new stuff called.

Whoever thought of this name wasn't very creative Sleep. It's the Kion Sleep supplement that I have been popping now. And as far as, like, how fast I fall asleep, how long I stay stay asleep, how good my restfulness scores are, it's. It's pretty shocking. Like, more than I actually even anticipated after having kind of like, studied up on a lot of the ingredients that are in this thing. So my guest on today's podcast has joined me multiple times. We did a really comprehensive show on pretty much everything that you need to know about protein powder and amino acids. I'll link to that one in the show notes. We also did a show on about his background and everything from kettlebells and meditation and ketogenic donuts and a whole lot more. That was a fun episode, too. And I'll link to that one in the show notes as well, which are all going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sleep Podcast. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sleep podcast. If you haven't guessed already, my guest on today's show is the great, the wonderful, straight out of Boulder, the man himself, Angelo Keeley, the co founder and CEO of Kion and my friend and a great guy, father, husband, and somebody who is now helping a whole lot of people sleep better. Welcome to the show, Angelo.

I love being here, man, and it's an honor.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, if we would have waited a couple of weeks, we could have done it while we were just like sitting in an ice bath or a hot tub or, I don't know, swinging some kettlebells with one hand holding the microphone in the other up here at my pad. I can't wait to see you in a few weeks, man.

I know, man. I can't wait to be there. Yeah, it's been too long. It's been really long since I've been to Spokane. I feel like you've been to Boulder and you were at the retreat.

Last year and stuff. But I haven't been up to Spokane in a while, so I'm stoked to see you and Jessa and the boys.

Yes. Come visit Spoke. Compton Spoke has extended. We actually are doing just opening the kimono for folks. We're doing a really cool steak and Meet a Palooza video while Angelo's up here. So, Angelo, probably not a good idea to bring any of your vegan friends. They might go hungry, but we'll have some carnivore action to go around.

So anyway, I ate all my vegan friends.

Oh.

That was nice of you. I'm sure they were tender. Okay, so we're gonna talk about sleep, man. Let's talk about sleep before we lose all of our plant loving listeners. So you and I have gone back and forth. Gosh, I don't know how many phone calls we've had about how can we help people sleep better? What are the things that are actually proven in human clinical research to support sleep and support slee the right way? What are the things that you can consume that help you to sleep? But unlike say, THC or high dose melatonin or Valium or Diazepam or an antihistamine, don't keep you drowsy the next morning or just like f with your sleep architecture big time, even if you are sleeping. So we've gone back and forth and back and forth. And then last month we finally brought to the masses this crazy effective sleep supplement that I want to talk about. But I don't want to put the cart before the horse, even though I don't understand what that means, because I drive a car and I want to talk about sleep. First of all, because I think it is important. Despite this perhaps being slightly boring for people, I want to get into laying out some of the baseline of why sleep is important. But before we even do that, I would love to just get a quick catch up on you and in particular what you've been up to in the realm of sleep. Because what you've shared with me is that you've Been diving in pretty heavily, like sleep research and even like psychoanalysis and sleep and dreams. So fill me in, man.

Well, man, just like you said, we've been going back and forth on this for. Even before we kicked off the sleep supplement project. It's been like years, right? We've been talking about sleep and trying to figure out.

If Kion makes a product in sleep, why would we do it, how would it work, why would it matter? And you know, from that perspective, it's just important to not just be looking at research and not just be being kind of like ultra technical about it, but like really thinking about what sleep means for people and why it matters. That said, I already loved to sleep. I think was intrigued by sleep and intrigued by dreams and tracked my sleep. So it's really just been like a deepening of that. And you know, I think what some people don't realize is, you know, it's not just like you and I talking about this. We have like researchers and scientists and people bringing us ideas and all different types of studies. And so to be able to really participate in that and break it apart and have super constructive dialogue, you just have to. You have to immerse yourself in it. So it's been awesome and I've loved it. And then honestly, separate from that.

I did about two years ago. I've always been interested in.

Being a better person and that there's potential for different types of therapeutic models to support with that, whether they're.

Just talk therapy or somatic or some type of drug induced therapy. Just always been curious about that and how to get better. And I did engage. I got this opportunity to engage in three times a week psychoanalysis. And I've been doing it for the last two years now. And it's not like the most traditional Freudian thing.

Definitely like of that tradition and very. It's been intriguing and it's really enhanced my dream life. It's gotten to the point where, you know, I intentionally try to go to sleep to remember what my dreams are when I wake them up to journal about them.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay, so I want to hear a.

Little bit more about that, talk about them in therapy. It's been really intriguing.

So tell me, like, because where I'm at, Angelo, is like, I know I dream. I sometimes have like certain dreams that recur. Like one is me wandering through some massive city with some friends, like trying to solve some puzzle, but it just like never ends. And then I get re. Injected back into that dream. It seems like on a weekly basis. I'm sure there's. There's some thing that I need to resolve in my life that my brain just keeps coming back to and trying to process. But despite me knowing and hearing about the value of keeping a dream journal, that you can just like wake up and write it down before forget it, or if you wake up during the night, write it down before you forget it. I just don't do it. But it sounds like you are actually doing that and getting benefit out of it.

I am. And I think there's two ways of responding to, in that about why it may be important. One would be more mechanistic and theoretical. Like, yeah, when you dream, it means this and you need to dissect it in this exact same way. And to be totally honest, through my own process of doing this work, as well as studying the history of dream interpretation from Freud up into more contemporary, like empirical studies, we still don't really know what it is. I mean, there's definitely. It seems like there's very strong significance of.

Either some form of processing emotional valence of memories in REM dreams. Like, it seems like there's a pretty strong sense of that. The degree to which, like, it needs to be interpreted in certain ways or what the things mean or the they like veiled.

More distressing thoughts that you don't feel comfortable with bringing up in your regular consciousness. And thus that's why your dream does it, but you only remember part of it. I don't know about all that. What I can say though now, personally, kind of my second approach to the question is absolutely.

Through the process of bringing more of my thoughts that I have in my mind. But maybe I wasn't as comfortable saying or thinking about or admitting or talking through by bringing them out verbally and talking about them. And then in the same way doing that with my dreams. So acknowledging what my dreams are, writing about them, thinking about them overall, it's influenced a process for me of being more comfortable with myself, being more clear about what I'm feeling, being more clear about maybe what certain sensations I have at different moments are actually reflecting certain feelings or emotional states and ultimately.

Being.

A better husband, being a better dad, being more emotionally present. So, you know, is it. Does it all go down to the dreams or does it, you know, is it more about the talk therapy? You know, I can't. I haven't been doing some kind of clinical study.

No, I mean, I'm sure it's multimodal. Yeah, it's like when somebody, whatever, switches to a low carb diet. Yeah. Maybe it's that their macros have been adjusted, but maybe it's also that they're not eating pizza on Saturday nights and drinking beer for dinner every night and, you know, having, know, oatmeal with oodles of maple syrup for breakfast or whatever. So there's obviously a lot of factors. But do you literally keep. Is it just, like, a journal and a pen by the bedside?

I do. I have a journal that's specifically for recording dreams. Well, I would say specifically for. I've adapted it some. Yeah. It's a journal specifically for dreams. So I don't include, like, planning and.

I don't know, like, cool ideas for business or things like that. It's really just for. For dreaming. Sometimes I'll journal it before I go to bed, but that journaling will be more dreamlike, like poetry or almost like a prayer to dream. Actually, explicitly, like, praying to dream in writing. And then when I wake up in the morning, writing down whatever those dreams are journaling about, maybe what they mean to me, but without any agenda. There's no formal process I'm following. I'm just kind of doing that. One other thing I've done, too, is other points in my life where I find myself.

Colloquially. Colloquially, as we would say, fall asleep. Like, I'm kind of, like, not conscious of what I'm doing. One of those places for me is overeating at dinner. Like, I've got the rest of my day is, like, pretty dialed in. For some reason, I still have this thing at dinner where it's like, I'll eat enough and I still want to eat more. I've literally brought my dream journal, like, to the table and, like, write about what I'm feeling right then, and kind of try to involve, like, different states of my consciousness in that, because something's happening where I go kind of unconscious. Or, you know, if you find yourself kind of emotionally reacting in certain relationships, like, maybe there's some way you talk to your wife and, like, man, I won't do that. But you, like, do it. Like, I bring my journal to those moments and try to connect it somehow. Whether or not dreaming will actually impact that, I don't know. But it's working for me.

Yeah, I'm sure that part of it is just the mindfulness component in general. Like, anytime that you're more mindful chewing your food, breathing, paying attention to your bites, finding what I've been calling lately, the space between the notes, which is, of course, not just relevant to music, but also relevant to eating and looking people in the eyes and listening to someone's voice and driving in your car, finding the space between the notes everywhere. When you're actually having to write down, you actually are just paying more attention mindfully, period. But then the other thing that I'm curious about. Oh, and by the way, my hack for the eating is I just always have ketones and aminos waiting in the wings and I do those after dinner and I'm good if I know I have those waiting in the wings. I just know, like, I don't have to eat all this food so I don't wake up hungry later on tonight. However, I haven't tried the dream journal thing, but one other question for you regarding the dream journal. Do you. If you dream and you wake up at night, do you start journaling right away or just wait until the morning and journal at all?

It depends. I actually had an experience. Guy had some pretty crazy dreams this last week. And on Monday night I woke up. I typically wake up like around 5, but I woke up earlier, like at like 4:30 from the stream. And I just got up and I. And I started journaling then and.

But it's interesting. It was kind of like a more. It was like a more stimulating, like really weird dream. And I didn't know what the things meant. I was kind of uncomfortable with it. I was like, I don't want to write this down. Like, I don't even like, like that this is in me kind of thing. And I think that's what made me like, dude, you just gotta like, go for it. Like write it out. Like talk about what it is with yourself. Whereas on Tuesday night I had. I had a pretty intense dream, but it was like really pleasant and harmonious and it like, there was lots of sense making, like it made a lot of sense to me and I found myself actually wake up to my. I set an alarm, wake up to my alarm and be like, you know what, I want to go back into a lighter sleep state and kind of think about this. And I actually went back to sleep and almost like processed it for a while and then got up about 90 minutes later and journaled then. So I don't.

Yeah, you're making me want to journal my dreams, Edge. I will try. Maybe when you come up here, that can be my impetus. You got to hold me accountable and just like make me drag my dream journal to the dinner table. Or you could just like sit in a stool by my bed kind of like Freud, and just like, kind of sit there watching me sleep. Because if I know you're watching, you know, and I'll wake up. And you would be willing to do that for a friend, right?

We'll offer you this invitation if you're interested in it. Start doing your dream journaling now. And then we get there, we can talk about it. Because that's another thing I used to realize when people talk about their dreams, I'd almost be like, oh, I don't know, it almost freaked me out, like, getting into other people's hearing about their dreams. And now I feel more open to it.

And, yeah, okay.

It's almost cool. It's like talking about people. Like, talking about kind of. I don't know, it's another thing to connect on. So I would love it if we could do that.

Well, my dreams are also super complex and seem to go for a really long time. So I have to tell you, I may use the voice memo function on my phone. I don't know if that's cheating, but, you know, getting up in the morning, you know, wandering around, making coffee, I might just start talking my dreams to myself. I could do that, Right?

Totally do it.

Then I'll send it to you to transcribe.

What comes up, though, is now, like, I want to try that. Because I'm like, how? I wonder how, like, the somatic processing of writing versus, like, the oral expression of it might even be different.

So I'm sure. I'm sure it is. Well, I'll go get my psychiatry degree and then come back before our next show and let you know. Okay, so based on all that, you know, all this dreaming and everything, like, I know I have my theories, but I want to hear yours. Like, why do you even think that? Not specifically why we dream, because you kind of alluded to that a little bit, but why would you say based on what you've learned with this deep dive you've done into sleep research and kind of turning yourself into a sleep ninja the past year or so, why do you actually think we sleep? And bonus points if you can talk in, like a. What's his name? Like a Matthew Walker kind of English accent. As you. As you explain.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know if I can hold that any.

If I tell you, I'd be sleeping. Okay, sorry, go ahead.

I'll keep my normal okay accent for my response. One of the most interesting things about sleep is that we do it so much, you know, on average, eight hours a night for our whole life. Well, a lot more when we're younger. And yet we still know very little about it. And surprisingly like both how it works, why we do it, its purpose, and surprisingly, even compared to other bodily. We were studying circulation, we were studying how the heart works, breathing 200 years before. And really we didn't really get into sleep until.

I think Freud kind of brought it up in terms of like he said he was doing a scientific study on it. He wasn't really like we were just doing clearly what we were just talking about. Dreams was not scientific, but he thought he was doing scientific. It wasn't. But then in the 20s, with the development of the EEG, suddenly there was the ability to actually measure brain activity. 1920s, 1924 I think, I think guys, Hans Berger, he was a German physiologist who originally developed it. And the way the EEG works is that it measures brain activity.

In very large chunks. So it's not like it's measuring exactly how this neuron fires. Instead it's measuring overall brain activity in the entire brain, which is how we have since determined the different stages of sleep, the types of the frequency, meaning like how fast and the amplitude how big the waves move across different groups of neurons firing in our brain is really like only in the last hundred years. So it's kind of a, it's been behind other, you know, bodily studies of bodily function. In the summary of all that research, there's a few different hypotheses that have come up about why we potentially sleep. Obviously it's homeostatic and it doesn't take a genius to observe that you delay your sleep and you stay awake for a really long time. You feel like you need to sleep that much more and you do. And even if you don't have enough sleep for many days during the week, there is a need and a true bodily function of getting catch up sleep over the wake over the weekend. So clearly there's a relationship where sleep serves a purpose of refilling or recovering from some type of behavior that happens or processed in the body that happens during being awake. What exactly that process is or are there many processes? I think is that's the real question. The two most I think seriously considered are brain energy reserves. So literally the brain being able to refill its energy reserves.

And when you say brain energy reserves, are you referring to like the amino acid pool, Creatine phosphate, ATP, like all the above?

Glycogen stores? It's literally glycogen stores. But adenosine does play a very interesting role in this, but really it's about glycogen stores. So the brain, unlike other organs, actually contains its own kind of private glycogen stores and glial cells that the rest of the body doesn't have. And it specifically has that so that it can make sure that the brain keeps running and going. But basically.

As those glycogen stores are reduced, which is similar with the rest of the body, adenosine is released and adenosine naturally has this kind of sleep inducing effect as well as it encourages more blood flow into those cells. So.

There'S been pretty clear studies across many years that when you have increased periods of wakefulness that.

Your glycogen stores in the brain. So I want to be really clear too. What's also interesting, all the study of sleep is that we're basically combining human studies that are more. They're either measuring the actual.

Reported behaviors and experiences of humans in scientific studies or EEG observation. And then we're combining that with more mechanistic studies within animals. So anytime we're talking about like this is happening in the cell in this exact way, there's almost none of that that's happened in humans. It's almost always happened in animals. But luckily all animals sleep as well. And mammals and birds also have non REM and REM stages of sleep which we can get into. So it's actually, it's a pretty good model to be going and forth between trying to observe what's happening in an animal and what's happening in a human.

Yeah, and by the way, the glycogen thing is super interesting because a lot of people, especially people who hear about how good the ketogenic diet is for cognition, assume that the brain's primary source of fuel is ketones. You hear that all the time. Like, oh, the brain loves ketones. And if you feed it glucose, the analogy here the most is it's like putting a bunch of chihuahuas with machine guns in your brain running around. But the fact is like the brain actually has glycogen stores like the liver, like the muscles. A lot of people don't realize that it will actually break down glycogen as well as rely upon lactic acid, similar to a lot of your muscles, as a source of glucose. And technically if you look at trace needs, like I've seen data all over the place, but it's like somewhere in the range of like 30 to 60 grams or so that your, your brain will actually need as a daily fuel, thus dictating that like especially for an exerc individual who wants proper neural function and bioavailable glucose substrates for your neural cells, you technically are going to really short yourself from a cognition standpoint if you're eating fewer than like 30 grams of carbohydrates on a daily basis, which many people who do like a ketogenic diet do. And granted you can get some gluconeogenesis from protein, et cetera, but it's kind of interesting to think about the fact that the brain actually needs sugar. Some people don't think about that, and I think other people will use that as an excuse for a tough day to eat Snickers bar at the end of the day because, you know, you gotta, gotta feed that brain. But then the other interesting thing that I find is like, you know, how you feel like kind of a cognitive pick me up after you've worked out. And, and a lot of that is obviously like epinephrine and norepinephrine dopamine. You know, I checked the box. Dopaminergic response, you know, all the good things that happen. But it is interesting because the Cori cycle will take lactic acid and convert it into glucose. And what also happens during exercise, and the one kind of exercise that really makes this happen is blood flow restriction training. Like when you, when you tourniquet the arms and legs, you get this huge dump in, in what's called vegf, which is vascular endothelial growth factor, along with brain derived neurotrophic factor. So you have both these molecules rush to the head, increase blood flow to the head, all the lactic acid gets converted into glucose that rushes to the head. And literally like doing a workout, and especially workout that produces an appreciable amount of lactic acid, literally is like a gasoline tank for the brain, which is really interesting to think about. And then the last thing I'm just kind of thinking as you're talking, then I'll shut up, is.

I mean, you're.

Right on point about all these things.

Yeah. Anecdotally there's a lot of people who seem to benefit from using like I do ketone esters and amino acids before bed. And what do both offer? Well, they offer an alternative substrate to glucose. And that's interesting because obviously there is going to be a little bit of a cortisolic response to going hypoglycemic in the evening. And so if you can stave that off not only with adequate carbohydrates with dinner, but then maybe throwing in some alternative substrates like amino acids or collagen or ketones or MCT oil, it is Kind of a hack, if you look at this from a brain glycogenic standpoint. So just kind of a rabbit hole. But I thought that was interesting as you were describing that.

And I think everything that you just went into is totally around this frame of brain energy reserves. The exercise, I mean, is specifically around actually supporting these glycogen stores as well. And then, yes, the ketone esters being this other potential support. I also think what is really interesting about this is, and I haven't gone enough deep into all the research about why creatine potentially supports sleep. I feel like you've honestly done more of that than I have. But the fact that the increase of sleep, not only these other inhibitory neurotransmitters, like GABA being the primary, but really like adenosine being this primary function that induces these deeper delta waves, seems very closely tied somehow to taking creatine as a potential additional support for inducing sleep, supporting better and deeper sleep.

I think creatine is also just basically based upon that energy availability equation. I mean, it's just as we talked about in one of our last podcasts, where we talked about creatine. It's an amino acid. It's an essential molecule in cellular ATP synthesis. And so any tissues that have high demand for glucose, including the brain, including the muscle, are going to be in a more stabilized state or at least experience fewer fluctuations in metabolic rate when the creatine pool is available. And, yeah, there are some studies directly that use EEG analysis and creatine and find that it specifically enhances delta brainwave activity with creatine supplementation. That's not right before bed, because your body store creatine. You can literally take just like creatine on a daily basis, like 5 grams to keep your levels topped off. And it's yet another feather in the cap of creatine that I think a lot of people are unaware of. And again, I'm gonna use this analogy just because it makes me sound cool and smart not putting the cart before the horse, or the horse before the cart, I don't remember. But anyways, it is kind of cool when you start to think about, okay.

The trailer before the truck.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if I've got, like, a really good sleep supplement, and we'll talk about some ingredients here in a little bit, like, what else could I stack it with to make the ultimate fuel? Like, if I am somebody who exercises a lot, say, or is a highly glycolytically active athlete, could I stack with creatine? Could I stack with amino acids, could I stack with ketones? And I mean, really, in my opinion, in my own anecdotal testing thus far, the answer is hell yes, especially on an active day.

And I think the thing about something like stacking with something like a creatine, which doesn't have as much sleep study as some of the other ingredients that we'll talk about later that are why they gotten created, got put in kion sleep, is that all these ingredients, including creatine, they're supporting your body in such a way that it allows the natural sleep process to work on its own.

It's not like you're doping your brain to get it to fall asleep or to go into some specific mode. You're basically just giving it what it needs.

Right. Or like the argument with melatonin, possibly putting something into your body that from a, from an endocrine or hormonal standpoint may downregulate something your body might be making Anyways, like that. I know that was a discussion we had early on. We didn't want to create a scenario of dependency or downregulation of something that you should be making naturally, especially for.

Something you want to take every day. I think that's the biggest point around something like melatonin. It actually can have really great benefits if you're specifically trying to reset your circadian clock.

Right.

Because that's what it's most tied to. And thus if you're going to have, I know you've written extensively on this, like, if you're going to do some type of intense travel, like internationally, that's actually the time to try to use it when you're trying to reset that clock. But if you're trying to give your body what it needs every day to just sleep well and you're practicing overall pretty good sleep habits, I think there's more risk than there is benefit.

Yeah, yeah. Now, do you do much tracking or in some of the research leading up to developing this sleep supplement, did you use a aura or a whoop or start to study like, you know, sleep stages, speed and amplitude of waves during sleep, like any of those type of things or did you find anything interesting?

Are you. I mean, personally, Yes, I use a sleep tracker and I've tracked, you know, as we started to practice with this supplement on our own, I tracked my own sleep to see how it improved both my deep sleep and my stage three deep sleep, as well as my stage three non REM deep sleep as well as my REM sleep. And it improved both in Terms of actually how the brain wave patterns work and why different wave patterns are associated with different stages of sleep. Yeah, extensively. Is that something you want to get into?

Yeah, I would love to get a, a little bit of an overview for folks in terms of what we're actually trying to target when it comes to these sleep stages and what kind of would be a gold standard from a sleep stage standpoint or from a wave standpoint during sleep.

Getting back to this around kind of how sleep works and what we're talking about in terms of the waves is if you go back to what I was talking about earlier around the eeg, which is basically putting electrodes on your head and measuring what, what the neuronal activity is, there are different frequencies and amplitudes. So speed frequencies, like how often the wave is going as well as amplitudes, meaning how big they are. In a waking state, we call it a beta wave, and it's around 14 to 30 hertz. So this is the highest frequency, it's the most often that it's going to. And the waves are very small, like they're very short. They're not like these huge amplitude waves. They basically represent a lot of activity across the whole brain that is desynchronized, which would make sense. Like in your waking state, you're having to. You're having to deal with all different types of activities, all different types of processes, all at the same time. So your brain is firing in different ways across the entire brain all at the same time.

Right.

The next state is if you say, for example, lie down and close your eyes or begin like a breathing meditation, your brain will go into what we call alpha. And alpha is a slightly lower frequency. It's 9 to 13 hertz. And again, that's kind of like the frequency of how often these things happen in a minute.

After that is when we actually talk about what sleep is and sleep begins with. We've talked about different stages of sleep in the past, but now we've really gotten down to there's basically four stages of sleep.

Okay. And I should note, by the way, before you get to sleep, stage alpha can still be super relaxing. Like some people will use one of these light sound machines like a brain tap or a New Calm or something like that, or even a meditation or a yoga nidra session. And sometimes they'll be just an alpha. But if you're like super hyped up and in beta during a lot of the day, even something as simple as like a 20 to 30 minute shift into Alpha can be kind of like refreshing just from a nap standpoint. But you're right, like it's, it's not yet actual sleep. It's kind of like just like, you know, a quick stepping away from full beta or at least a beta alpha combo.

Yeah, I would say it's 100% what you described. It's definitely more relaxing. And actually a lot of the kind of initial studies that have been done around GABA and L Theanine really relate directly to this. So helping people.

Reduce beta and increase alpha, which is a much more calm feeling, but it's not unconscious. And also meditation kind of lives within the alpha and the theta states. So it's somewhere between alphas may like those initial stages if you're doing yoga, Nidra, if you really go into deep meditation, you can start to go into the theta state, which theta also overlaps with. What is stage one sleep. The stage one, two and three are all non REM and REM is just rapid eye movement. Meaning, like in REM sleep, if you look at someone, their eyes are literally like moving a lot rapidly.

And that's not happening during the first three stages.

That is not happening during the first three stages. So stage one, which is we call theta, the hertz go down even a little bit more. They go down to 4 to 8 hertz. So it's clear, like from beta to alpha to theta, the hertz, there's a lower frequency. And this stage is defined by what we call hypnagogic hallucinations. Or maybe when you feel like you're falling and you have those kind of like hypnic jerks. But the hypnagogic hallucinations would be.

Like more ultra realistic visions or little like ideas or things that you see. It's not like bizarre REM dreams that we associate more with like traditional dreaming.

Right. But this would be like literally not like restless leg syndrome, but like when your leg kind of jerks or you feel your partner kind of twitch, like that's the type of thing that's happening in that stage one.

Yes, exactly. And this theta stage, the stage one, which is theta, is pretty short. It's like 5% of your sleep. Well, 5% of an adult. It changes over the course of your life, but it's pretty short. It's like a few minutes. Then you move into stage two sleep, which is around the same hertz. It's still like theta waves, but you start getting these things called sleep spindles and K complexes. And so if you actually look at the eeg, if you're looking At a beta and an alpha wave eeg, they're pretty consistent. Like, it's just these, like, little lines like you would assume. Whereas in stage two, you get these sleep spindles where it's like it. It bunches up really quickly, and then with K complexes, it'll shoot up really high. So it's some type of processing in the brain that is. That's occurring in these kind of bursts of activity in that way. And what's interesting is, like, this stage two sleep makes up like the bulk of our sleep. And you're pretty deep in here, but you're not at your deepest stage. After that, you move into stage three. And in the past, deep sleep, which is stage three, was broken apart into stage three and stage four. But since then, as they've analyzed more EEGs, it's just gotten simplified into stage three. And that's what we call the delta wave, which is the slowest wave. It's less than 4 hertz and it has the highest amplitude. And I think what's. What's most interesting about this is if you go back and compare this to the beta wave of wake, which is like 14 to 30 hertz, it's really fast. It's these little tiny waves shaking really fast. And you maybe equate that to like, white noise, just like buzzing. These much less frequent but higher amplitude waves represent the neurons in the brain acting in greater coordination and moving more slowly together. So it's almost like the difference of white noise and a symphony playing all together. Like a symphony is warming up during wake with white noise. Everyone's kind of doing their own thing. And then the stage three delta is the whole symphony playing slowly in perfect coordination together. And that's why we call the delta stage synchronized brain activity. And the beta unsynchronized. It's like kind of chaos versus very.

It almost like when you go to the orchestra and they're warming up in the pit, and then eventually they start playing and it's all synchronized, but it sounds like it just all. Even though they're doing something and they're getting ready to do something, it hasn't quite synced up yet. And you're saying it's stable. Stage three, that's when everything kind of syncs up.

Exactly. And then kind of bizarrely.

The stage three quickly goes back through, like, stage two and stage one. And then you land in rem. And REM is just not like those other stages of sleep. A few things change from a wave perspective. Suddenly you get beta waves again. So the brain activity Looks like you're awake, but you're clearly asleep. The other thing that happens is that your body becomes paralyzed. Basically certain functions occur in the brain that control all your motor movements and ensure that you're paralyzed. And the reason for that is because your brain is so active and this is the part when you are most likely to dream and like more bizarre, like weird dreams. And it makes sense that your body needs to be kind of paralyzed because otherwise you'd be acting them out and moving around, et cetera. So basically this whole phase, so going from stage one all the way to REM is about 90 minutes, and then we do it again, and then we do it again, and then we do it again.

And so when people say sleep cycles, those are the cycles they're referring to.

Those are the cycles that they're referring to. And the only, the main changes that occur in the cycles over the period of night is that progressively so earlier in the night the non REM sleep is longer and the REM sleep is shorter. And progressively through the night that switches and the REM becomes longer and longer and the non REM becomes shorter and shorter.

So arguably then, if the non REM becomes shorter and shorter as the night goes on, you might actually say that you dream more like kind of like after midnight or closer towards the wee hours of the morning than you do in your early phases of sleep.

Yes, you are spending more time in REM sleep and thus have more opportunity to dream.

Interesting. That's fascinating. So when people are tracking and they're looking at this stuff, that's basically everything that they see. And obviously we just had daylight savings time, which kind of throws a little bit of a wrench into this equation. It's great for, I think it was like a World War War I or World War II strategy to save on fuel by allowing people to have more daytime light. But obviously for about the first week that thing kicks in, it messes with circadian rhythms and they show them there's impacts on sleep, there's impacts on kids function, there's impact on productivity, there's even an impact on the overall GDP and the economy just from work loss and people's sleep getting a little bit crazy. But in terms of these, these circadian rhythms, do you actually see a significant shift forwards, backwards amount of time split in each cycle? Did you look at anything like that.

Is your question, with changes to daylight savings time?

Well, I guess more specifically, what are circadian rhythms and how do they affect sleep?

So circadian rhythms are bigger than sleep. I'd Say, that's the most important thing to say. First. Circadian rhythms naturally are. All animals that live on planet Earth have lived on a planet that's been dictated by cycles of day and night. And I'm saying thus, but it seems pretty obvious. Like all animals then actually have daily rhythms. And whether those rhythms include sleep at night and awake during the day or the inverse, they all have some kind of cycle like that. They also have cycles around metabolism, they have cycles around digestion, they have cycles around hormones, et cetera, that can be impacted by sleep, but also to some degree, actually operate on their own. So circadian rhythms, sleep is one thing that they impact. And circadian rhythms actually function inherently within animals and within humans on their own, outside of even cues of light and darkness. So if you take an animal and they've done these studies where you literally take them out of the natural environment and you put them only in dark, literally, you will still see these cycles occurring. And you can measure actual the brain activity in similar ways we were talking about earlier. Based on that, that said, light is probably is the number one most important thing that cues the circadian rhythm. There are other things like we talked about earlier with melatonin. You can actually hack it and support it by.

Taking.

That specific hormone to actually support your circadian rhythm reset. But yeah, so if you get inputs of light at different times, it will impact how your circadian rhythm functions. And this actually has a lot to do with why people in Nordic countries can end up actually having different types of circadian rhythm disorders. It has to do with why, when you travel over long distances, like why jet lag happens. And especially with something like jet lag, like our bodies adapted over time to be able to maybe travel over a time zone in a day or travel over maybe a couple time zones in a couple days or something, but not travel all the way around the world.

I don't know. I've got medallion status on Delta. I think I've actually evolved as a human being due to my extent of airline travel.

I don't doubt that with you, Ben. I would not doubt that out that the amount of travel that you've done and the amount of. In one experiments you've done, you might have. You might have fundamentally changed your genes. But yeah, it's very difficult to. Basically, the impact of light, which are called phase shifts or phase advances, phase delays or phase advances when the light is introduced, can dramatically kind of mess up how your circadian rhythm works. So overall, what your circadian rhythm does is it tells your body when certain things should happen and basically holds back the need to feel like you need to be tired until it thinks you need to be tired. So if you have a delay with that, then if you have an issue with that, then it will dramatically hamper sleep. I think that a lot of the types of things that we're talking about today, and even the formulation of kion sleep is not directly to shift circadian.

Rhythm like melatonin would do, for example.

Yeah, I think circadian rhythm is going to be way more about really good daily sleep habits, like when you go to sleep and when you wake up, exercise. It's kind of like broader behavioral things that will have a bigger impact on that unless you literally have some kind of significantly altered medical issue.

Yeah. That being said, I'd be remiss not to mention that when we're talking about jet lag and circadian rhythmicity, obviously light exercise, meal, when you get to where you're going, preferably with a lot of protein in it, the first time that the people eat in the new section of the world that you happen to be in, et cetera, et cetera, there's a lot of these sleep practices. But the one that I think is important that sometimes flies under the radar for people is how impactful the gut biome is on circadian rhythmicity and on jet lag. I think that in the same way that a lot of people will use melatonin and I've even referred to that before as like a melatonin sledgehammer the first couple of nights when you get to where you're going. Same thing with the biome actually traveling with some type of like a well formulated probiotic because of the link between the biome and jet lag. Seems to do a really helpful job for a lot of people in terms of re regulating that circadian clock. But again, these are not things that would be like every night type of scenario. This, you know, these are examples of, you know, this is why we're laying down a body of knowledge for you guys in this podcast is be like, okay, so you travel and maybe you're exercising less when you travel, maybe you need less brain food, so to speak, and your travel stack. But let's say like anxiety and stress is higher and you're jet lagged, while your, your sleep stack might be like kion sleep with melatonin, a probiotic and like a little CBD or phosphatidylcholine for the stress component. Or maybe you're just in your normal environment so you're rocking it, you're training hard. So in that case you could like use kion sleep and combine it with like some creatine, some ketones and some aminos. So that's what I love is like, at least in my initial testing so far, you kind of like get your base foundation needs met with kion sleep and then you can just kind of like go on and like throw any other little fun things in there there that you want to. But that's what I think I really want to get across to people. This is pretty foundational. But there was one thing, Angelo, that when we were talking about the purpose of sleep, we did talk, speaking of brain energy reserves about that, but we didn't talk about was one of the things that I think is important that we should touch on. And that's the idea of how you actually, especially if you're learning or you're studying, there's something that happens with like learning during sleep, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And this is an example of significant clinical research specifically on humans actually performing tasks. So people being given a task to try to memorize a set of figures, information, organized information, actually everything from being able to just memorize information to actually memorize information and then pull insights out of it. Like say you're trying to go through a task of solving problems that involves memorization, but then also being able to discover that there's maybe like a cheat code to it or a simpler way of doing it. All of these are dramatically improved by sleep and in most cases sleep that night. So it's not the kind of thing where it's like you can study really hard and then not sleep and then study really hard and not sleep and then sleep a bunch over the weekend and then it's going to make up for it. No liter literally you have to sleep the day of when you were trying to perform that task to improve your memory. Interestingly, both memory and the ability for kind of more creative insight problem solving potential. Interestingly though too, I think in earlier sleep research there was a lot of excitement around the idea of like wow, maybe you could listen to foreign languages while you sleep and actually be learning while you sleep. And they did studies on and it didn't work, but something that they have more recently done and I think there's a lot of promise for it, like man, I wish I could be part of one of these studies or you know, I don't know, hire someone to do it for me is if you participate in certain types of learning or memory based activities during the day and you have a sensorial cue. They've, they've mostly done this with scents like, so they have a specific scent that you smell and then at certain stages of your sleep they reintroduced the scent. They had markedly improved memory of what you had studied earlier in the day, the next day. So there's actually ways of cueing the.

Part of your brain cueing in this case via olfactory receptors.

Yes. And actually queuing the brain then to actually even more deeply process and store that memory. So, so just purely there's benefit to sleeping. It's very clear. But also there might be really exciting new ways of improving your memory more.

Yeah, that memory thing, it's so relevant. You can literally, if you're studying for a test where you have a specific type of music or a specific type of scent like lavender, peppermint or cinnamon or whatever, even a specific type of supplement that you have consumed when you're studying that you then take again when you're on the test. It's really interesting, interesting how much that increases your ability to be able to recall the thing that your body associates with that sensory stimulus. So I just think that's absolutely fascinating. Then the other thing that's super interesting when it comes to learning and memory consolidation, a little bit more woo. But I do this like I will program my subconscious before I go to sleep if I have a problem. You know, like when, when people tell you they're going to walk on something or they're going to, you know, maybe pray about something. You know, the same thing for sleeping on something. Like you can literally just kind of of program your subconscious to hum away at something while you're sleeping and then wake up and have insight into the answer. And I do that very often. I'll tell people, hey, I'm going to get back to you tomorrow. And then that's something that I won't even write it down. I'll just before I fall asleep, just think about that email or think about that problem or think about that question.

Dude. I mean when you say that, I feel like you're already doing a form of like this dream journaling type activity I was doing before. But rather than like taking the dreams and then interpreting them like during your day life. Right. You're taking day problems and sending them back kind of into your sleep world, which I've also definitely experimented with in terms of kind of like deeper emotional stuff. Which is very interesting that both non REM and REM are tied to different types of memory consolidation. And REM is the one that's the most tied, as far as we can tell, to, as I mentioned earlier, reducing emotional valence of memories. And that is why people with PTSD have such issues around their REM sleep. But another thing I think you're going to love, I don't know if you've heard this story, but it's been pretty well documented. Thomas Edison actually had this style or this.

Oh, yeah, I think I know what you're getting at. Yeah, tell this story. This is fascinating.

It's so interesting. So he had this approach where he would sleep on this bench, this kind of uncomfortable bench in his lab, and he'd hold ball bearings in his hand. And then when he hit a certain stage of sleep, which I think was like really actually passing from the stage one to the stage two sleep, it would make it to where he dropped his hand.

And the ball bearings would drop and it would wake him up. And I think other people have used this as well. That actually, in that stage, that stage one sleep, which is this kind of lighter theta, which also is tied to certain stages of meditation, you can get very clear, direct, Direct insight to solve problems.

Yeah, that's actually. It's kind of funny because there's like this book you and I have been talking about recently or emailing back and forth, the Road Less Stupid, which is a great business book, but a big part of that book is related to thinking time, like carving out actual thinking time. And even though he doesn't get into the concept of an Edison, like light non rem dream state to solve problems, it is interesting because arguably, if you're sitting there, as this author, I forget the guy's name who wrote the book. Book the Road Less Stupid. I think it was like Keith somebody, I want to say. Anyways, if people look it up on Amazon, you'd find it. So he's sitting there with a pen and a journal, holding a pen in his right hand, just like minimally distracted, probably in a significant alpha zone, I would think, and probably achieving something close to like that non rem dream state that Edison was getting into in terms of just shifting the body into, or the brain specifically into an undistracted state of being better able to solve problems. I actually like, since I read that book, I've actually carved out time in the morning to just like sit there and freaking, like, not be productive and just think, like, not even with the intention of meditating or praying. Like, literally just sit there and think about stuff or think about problems or think about relationship difficulties. And it's. I mean, it's it's one of those things where a lot of people be like, oh, I need more thinking time. Like, I need another hole in the head because I can't fabricate an hour in the day. But usually the people who say that actually do need to have more thinking time or meditative time because they're going to find some things that they're doing that they probably shouldn't be doing or discover more efficient ways to go about what they're doing to free up time. So. Yeah, that's really interesting, though. I'd heard that story about Thomas Edison before. It's just fascinating, isn't it? Yeah.

And that guy, Keith Cunningham is that author.

Yeah. That's a great.

It doesn't have anything to do with.

Sleep, but it's a great book.

Look for anyone who hasn't checked it out.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I actually would love to start to talk about.

We know about sleep hygiene right now. I've honestly kicked that horse to death on the show before. Keep your room cold. Keep things quiet. Don't do business in bed. Don't even keep intellectually stimulating books on the nightstand. Wear earplugs or play sleep noises like Brain FM or nucalm or. Or Sleep Stream. Like, we've talked about a lot of that stuff before, but when it comes to specifically shifting the brain.

Using nutraceuticals or chemicals or supplements, I mean, that's something that you've taken a deep dive into. So I'd love to hear that story and what and why you actually settled on as the go to things to actually shift the brain into the state that you would want it shifted into for getting the sleep quality and the alignment of the rhythms that you've just gotten done explaining.

Yeah, absolutely. And before I go too much in that detail, I just want to name again, we have a team of researchers and look through all different types of potential ingredients, potential impacts, mechanistic studies, human behavioral studies. Like.

Yeah. You mean it? You mean actually worth it? You mean at Kion we have that? Yeah.

Yeah.

I think some people think like, you and I just like go on walks and read Men's Health magazine and be like, oh, this would look good in a bottle. But it's a. There's. There's a lot more to it.

Oh, people really like this. We should make this thing because that's like, what's hot or something. No, it's like we're like, we really are trying to make the best thing and we're trying to learn about it in the process too. Like what what do we want to take? You know, like, what actually makes sense to you and me that is worth ingesting every day and making that foundation of our daily sleep habits? So there's a lot of different interesting mechanistic studies that you can look at in animals. But I think what's most interesting is what we want as humans. Like, what's going to make us sleep better. And there really are, like three key components that come up again and again. The first one, and these are all things that we can measure. The first one is sleep latency. So when we get in bed, can we just go to sleep? Or does it latency, meaning how long it takes you, or does it take you a really long time to even fall asleep? Because if it does, then you're kind of wasting that time in bed. And not only that, actually, it's shown that if you spend too much time in bed and you can't go to bed quickly, then it can actually interfere with later sleep processes as well. So you definitely want to get in bed, fall asleep.

The way I think about it, by the way, is latency is late. Like you think, like, late. I fell asleep later than I wanted to, so I had high sleep latency. So if you have low sleep latency, fall asleep faster. High sleep latency takes longer time to fall asleep.

Exactly. The second one is sleep disturbances. So that would be, do you end up waking up a lot during the night, or do you have kind of more consistent sleep throughout the night? And it is the case that the younger you are, typically during your sleep cycles, you have less sleep disturbances. And the older you get, kind of the more like chaotic average sleep every night becomes in terms of waking up multiple times, different sleep cycles, getting disrupted, et cetera. And it's very clear that being able to actually stay consistently asleep in both non REM and both non REM states. And the REM state is critical to overall sleep quality, which, you know, sleep apnea is like the best version of that, where people sleep basically all night, but they're waking up multiple times throughout the night, and it's disrupting all of the processes that are occurring in sleep. And then the third one is sleep quality. And sleep quality is really measured most of all by what people report when they wake up. So, like, when I wake up, do I feel groggy? Do I feel well rested? Do I feel sharp? And am I able to perform skills better than I would have been if I had a worse quality sleep? So that's really what we targeted. That's the main Focus.

Right. So latency disturbances and quality, overall quality.

Yep. And then when we take that frame, the next big kind of idea or question is, is this for people with lots of sleep problems? Are you trying to, like we were talking about earlier, like, is it for jet lag or, or is it like. No, we're literally just trying to support ourselves in sleeping better every night and what are the optimal ways that we can support that? So when you take that perspective, it really does become like a nutritional perspective. Because when you think about it, it's like to sleep better. It's all the daily habit stuff that you've gone through so many times in podcasts and blogs. It's like removing artificial light, exercising, but it's also nutrition. And so how can we supplement, which is the purpose of dietary supplements, how can we supplement our diet to achieve, ensure that we have everything that we need to have the best sleep that we can every night? And how can we ensure that these nutrients that we're taking in aren't going to cause other problems, that they're really going to basically give us what we need, not create side effects and ultimately lead to lower sleep latency, reduce sleep disturbance and overall sleep quality. When you take that approach and you look at every ingredient out there, there's only a few that really do it and there's some that are really hot and cool and that people talk about and that you think like, oh, you got to put that in there, like melatonin or magnesium. When you review the research, that's just not, that's just not what comes out.

Yeah, and there were, by, by the way, just real quick, there were two. Well, yeah, I'd say two other big things for me that you didn't mention that would be a, like there's some stuff I can take that makes me sleep like a freaking princess. But it's like till 10am When I'm not groggy anymore. And that's like, like super high dose melatonin. Unless I just blast myself with blue light devices. And then any of those like CBD supplements that are full spectrum or contain any amount of THC in them, like, yeah, you sleep great, but you gotta do a lot of the stims in the morning and then get on this cycle, like stimulating during the day, then trying to knock yourself out again at night. That was one train that I didn't want to create and wanted to get off of. And then the other thing was I wanted something that I could take, but if I stopped taking it, it wouldn't give Me, like insomnia withdrawal. It wouldn't be like, oh, I'm on trip traveling. I forgot this. I'm screwed now because I have some dependency on something that my body quit making because I was taking this. Like those were two other super important things for me, at least totally.

Which I think is basically summed up on what can, like, what can we use regularly for long term improved sleep quality. I want to use this every day, not have issues from it. It's going to make my life better.

And with that, there's really three ingredients that came out that had more research behind them and that once we started practice, once we started using them as well, consistently and in combination, they proved to have the most benefit. And those are.

I promise we didn't plan this. Every time I say it, I'm like, I can't believe it. Only because, like Kion Aminos is our hero product is these are all three amino acids and they're theanine, gaba and tryptophan. And they each have distinct reasons about why they work so well.

But you know, just quick review of the research basically is tryptophan. While it almost sounds, you know, like.

Cliche, I mean, I just think about like my, when I was younger, people talking about like turkey, warm milk. Yeah. But really it's like, yeah, that's why, that's why it's talked about that way. It's like creatine, people. You know, everyone wants some new, super sexy, you know, way to get strong. It's like, man, creatine works. That's why it's been studied for like 40 years and has all this research. Tryptophan is very similar to that. It has so many studies behind it. And there was a great recent meta analysis about a year or two years ago that looked at all of them and that concluded very clearly that 1 gram of tryptophan daily, which is also tied to like kind of general nutritional guidance as well. But 1 gram of tryptophan around 30 minutes before bed directly contributed to reduced sleep latency, reduced sleep disturbance, and overall quality of sleep.

And could you clarify real quick for people, when you say tryptophan, are you talking like 5 HTP, which a lot of people hear about, or are we just talking about just tryptophan?

L tryptophan, the essential amino acid.

L tryptophan.

Yeah. So 5 HTP is an interesting ingredient that we did consider as well. And it's actually tryptophan has a precursor of 5 HTP and 5 HTP is a precursor of serotonin. And serotonin is a precursor of melatonin. The reason why we went with tryptophan over 5 HTP is because way more research, way more proven benefit it. And no, no, like, no to very limited documented side effects. Whereas with 5 HTP, it's kind of more clouded and people having issues with it. It created other types of. Yeah, just issues. I know lots of people can't take it.

I go back, reach my wife out, like, she gets just like crazy dreams and can't sleep and she's like in and out and super restless. And I, that's actually what I was concerned about when I got some of our initial batches to test. I'm like, is this gonna do what 5 HTP does? But it doesn't like it. It literally more produces. Like, you know, I've talked about this. People have been watching my social media. I'm like, I don't take the key on sleep until I'm at least 15 minutes out and already in bed from my planned sleep time. Because otherwise I get like turkey dinner syndrome almost right away. Like, it's too much for me. If I take it, like right before I read my kids their bedtime story or whatever, I will literally like fall asleep in their bed while I'm reading them the story.

Which is honestly a remarkable best of both worlds because typically if you take an ingredient like that, that is that.

That sedating, you're gonna feel like terrible the next day. Like there's no way something does that. But what's interesting about the choice of tryptophan and then the very limited side effects, if any, is that, and this is the way that I'm interpreting it. So this is, I'm getting into speculation here because there's not enough research of it comparing it against 5.8htp, but that it actually gives your body the core nutrients that it needs, which you could get tryptophan from eating a bunch of poultry, drinking tons of milk, like doing other things. It really is, it's just an essential amino acid. It gives your body the opportunity to process it, to turn it into the appropriate amount of five HTP and serotonin and melatonin and to regulate, to basically self regulate itself. You're not kind of like 5 HTP is not a drug, but. But.

You'Re getting closer to the direct impact itself versus allowing your body to process it. Now someone can make the exact argument on GABA because we put GABA directly in the formula. That said, with gaba, GABA is A much more mild while it's very predominant and it's basically the primary inhibitory transmitter.

It just doesn't have those kinds of effects.

Basically, it lightly inhibits these other activities of the brain versus kind of the intensity of maybe tons of serotonin.

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I think gab again, that's why I've described on the stove many times before. It's like that inhibitory neurotransmitter. It's why people like the glass of wine before they go to bed. Right. A lot of people these days, they will either target the endocannabinoid system them by hitting a vape pen or taking CBD or using some edible to help them fall asleep, or they will also have alcohol. A glass of wine. You know, I was gonna say mug of beer, but that's kind of old school. What can of. I don't. I'm not a beer guy. What do you even drink beer out of a growler? A beer, a. A glass of beer? I don't know.

I never drink beer. I don't know.

Yeah. Anyways though, so you do that and.

Then we're gonna alienate the vegans and.

Beer drinkers too, right? And you get a little bit of a GABA release. Problem is it just. Just Fs with your sleep architecture big time. So, yeah, just like the pure GABA seems to work. So the tryptophan and the GABA are interesting, but then the last component is really interesting, the theanine. Because for the longest time that's what I've recommended to people to combine with their coffee to like get. Make coffee. Give them like this alpha brainwave focus, long buzz without the crash and to kind of like upgrade a cup of coffee. Like, you have your coffee, but you take about 100 milligrams of L theanine with it. It. And so I think a lot of people associate lthean as being like this focus, creativity, wake you up, you know, hone you in the zone. Nootropic. They don't really associate it with sleep, but holy cow, like, especially when combined with the GABA and the tryptophan. Like, it's like you. You can almost feel your brainwave kind of like just shift. Like, and it's, It's. It's kind of weird.

It's actually very interesting about both theanine and gaba both can be used during the day very consistently. And I mean lower doses of tryptophan as well, specifically for mood regulation. And really there's tons of EEG Studies specifically around theanine, moving your brain from the beta to the alpha, as well as gaba, which we described as part of the body's natural process of moving into sleep. So you don't jump from the beta 14 to 30 Hz just immediately into the theta 4 to 8. You actually go through that alpha process. So, I mean, mechanistically it makes sense. But then on top of that, there's very clear studies for the theanine of directly improving sleep latency, minimizing sleep disturbance, and improving sleep quality as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you know, I did a few screenshots of my sleep score after I, after I started taking this stuff, and it was like 90, 99, 90 and. And just super duper interesting. Like, I actually didn't expect it to work that well when I first got it. Sometimes that happens, you know, like, we're looking at the human clinical research, we're seeing what they say stuff does, but it's kind of, honestly, it's kind of fun to like, get the final bottle and try it. Like, you feel like a pioneer kind of when you're like, all right, well, here we go, let's see how this stuff works. Did you experience the same thing when you got your first bottle?

Totally. And even before that, like, hacking it together, you know, with like the individual ingredients and trying it, it's fun. But. But when you actually get the final bottle and you get it, I mean, there's another point too. It's like we can try to buy really nice ingredients through. I can try to buy really nice other ingredients over the counter, but I know all the highly detailed sourcing and that we're literally buying the nicest, absolute highest quality tryptophan, theanine and gaba. And when I took it the first time, I was like, man.

That'S that, like dank, theanine, gaba and tryptophan, like, gosh, it is like, like quality.

Yeah, it. It's crazy. I think, Yeah. I think the term dank is not in my vernacular, at least wasn't until you used it. Now it is. It's dank, baby. Should have called it Keon Dank. The, the interesting thing that you alluded to though, there, I think a lot of people don't understand this. Like, we really do look for high quality, like, big time. Like, and that, that's a differentiating characteristic. And, you know, we don't have to, you know, make this a commercial per se. But, but can you just touch on that briefly just so people freaking get It.

Yeah. I mean, I'll just give a perfect example of it so that I don't go too much into, I don't know, bragging or something. When you choose Gaba, there's tons of different gabas you could choose. Look at the actual research. It's all done on pharma Gaba. And Pharma Gaba is a lot more expensive. I don't know, like, at least somewhere probably between 3 and 10 times more expensive as a raw ingredient than just buying other forms of Gaba. The other forms of Gaba, though, I tested them too personally, they didn't really work.

And there's just not even the scientific literature under them to support them. So it's about making choices like that where that really is the highest quality ingredient and on other ones where it's maybe not branded or studied in that specific way, like pharma is. We're pouring over the quality specs of these raw ingredients. And we're the most like. Everyone we work with thinks we're like the most annoying company because we're just so neurotic about every little spec and every quality thing. And why is it like that? If it's cheaper, it's like, why is it cheaper? I mean, if it's more affordable, because we can buy in bulk or something, that's great. But there better be. We don't want sacrifices on anything. I mean, I'm taking this every day.

Yeah.

You know, I don't. I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to sacrifice that, and I don't want to put that in the body of any of my friends or family or any of our customers. We just, We're.

Yeah.

Just really robust. And so that's raw ingredient testing, you know, the actual finished product testing to just degrees that other people don't.

I think, typically think they need to pay for and invest in. And we.

We do. Yeah. I mean, same thing for the creatine, same thing for the whey protein, same thing for a bar, same thing for the coffee. Like, that's what I like is like, because my pantry is just like a giant freaking, like, keon billboard. And. And yeah, I know part of it is I get a good deal on this stuff because I. I co founded the company with you. But, you know, part of it is like, that's why we did this. We wanted to scratch our own itch and just say, hey, the basic stuff, we don't want to break the bank. We want to be high quality. We want it to work. So we want some for sleep, we want some for immunity, we want, we want some for muscle building. Building. We want something for, for fat loss and carbohydrate management. Like, and just like the basic stuff, but then like.

I guess not fancy, but efficacious. But the fact that it's not fancy and we're not using like some fringe superfood from the Amazon, it's affordable, right? It's, it's not going to break your bank. I don't even remember what's a bottle of kion sleep cost right Now.

It costs 59.95 if you buy one, but if you subscribe, you get 10% off. And actually if you use the bin code, you get 20% off for life.

There we go. I don't know what is, but.

Well, it's not a bin code, actually. I think if you just go to getkion.com BenGreenfield then you can get 20. You can get 20% off that, right?

So that's like six bucks. So. Yeah, like around 50 bucks. So basically, and it's three capsules. I've tried taking more. I don't get more of an effect from more like three is the sweet spot. So that's basically like 50 bucks for a whole month of amazing sleep. And but the interesting thing, Angela, I don't know if you've tried this, but have you taken any before a nap? Because I started to pop it before my nap. Just theorizing that, hey, like you mentioned, theanine and Gabby don't make you drowsy. Tryptophans, it's something that you can totally have during the day. It just kind of shifts you into that like afternoon siesta mode. And it's working for me right now to lay down for a nap. But if my brain is buzzing and all wired up from what I've done for work that morning, it literally just like shifts me into that same state, but for a nap. Because I nap typically like 20 to 40 minutes and I wake up and I'm good to go and ready for like this second day that nap gives me, but it doesn't make me drowsy. Have you popped any before nap?

I hadn't done it until you actually brought it up to me and then I did try it and, and it makes a lot. It worked great. And it makes sense again because of this alpha wave hypothesis that it's by taking these ingredients, you're reducing your beta and increasing the alpha and so just really quickly moving into this calmer, more focused space and allowing your body to really enjoy those first two stages of sleep. It makes a lot of sense. So I get to intellectually why it works.

Works, yeah. Yeah, totally. Okay, so let me think. We covered the L theanine, the gaba, the tryptophan, what it's actually doing to your sleep stages, what it stacks well with meaning. Like, if you're an athlete, you could toss some creatine, some aminos, and some ketones in there. If you're, like, a hardcore exercise enthusiast, if you're traveling, toss a little melatonin and CBD in there on top of it. And then, I mean, really, if you've got your light, your sound, your. Your silence, your avoidance of business in the bedroom. I mean, like, this is pretty much it. Like, I feel like, at least for me personally, at this stage in my life, I feel like I've actually decoded sleep. Like, it's not a mystery to me anymore at all. Which sounds dumb because I'm, like, in the fitness and health sector, and I've been in it for 20 years, and I'm just now getting this figured out. But, like, this. This seems. This seems like it was like the last feather in the cap for me once we came out with this.

I love to hear that, man. And I mean, really. And especially from you, where it's like, you have. You've experimented with so many things, you've tried everything, and yeah, man, it's awesome to hear that for someone like you, it works. It works for me. It's amazing. I mean, I've been on it for.

Quite a while now, and it's the best sleep of my life.

Honestly. Like, that was really what I wanted to cover as far as. As. As everything on Sleep dreams. The ingredients in this stuff. I don't know if there was anything else that you wanted to add in, Angela. I did want to mention to people again, I'll put all the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com sleep podcast. Although that discount, if you want to go straight and get it. Getkeown.com BenGreenfield so, Angela, if there's anything you want to add in, let me know. But then, like, we kind of have to keep up our tradition here. And before we do actually part ways, you have to at least give people, even if just a very, very short one, a little taste of your beatboxing. Just because, like, that's. That's our thing, right, bro? Okay.

Yeah, I should. I should have prepared, like, I don't know, like, a more mellow.

Sleeping podcast.

Oh, wait, you don't need to be talking. That's. That's mine. I. I just crushed it. The one.

The one thing I will add that I think is important is around how this product works with other products, because we've started to get those questions like, hey, can I take this with aminos? Can I take this with creatine? And clearly you've just endorsed that. That's safe, Ben. It is. And I would just name that all Kion products we formulate in such a way so that people can take all of them. And so there's not any kind of major contraindications that occur between the. So it's totally safe to take with all the other products.

Right. You're not going to wake up with explosive diarrhea from a tryptophan overdose if you stack this with 10 grams of amino before you go to bed.

Yeah, that doesn't happen to me. That's what I'll say.

Anecdotally.

Anecdotally. And on that point, I think there's one more thing maybe to highlight about how we think about product formulation. There are lots of other good ingredients, and I didn't mean to say anything bad about magnesium earlier. Magnesium is a great, great supplement for lots of different reasons. Just the clinical studies around sleep, it's just not there. There like these other ingredients are. And it honestly plays on similar mechanisms of action around gaba. They just aren't necessary to put into a sleep supplement. But that doesn't mean. Don't take.

No, I can't take magnesium with this. I take magnesium. I take magnesium and I take it at night, but I don't take it because of the data I've seen on sleep. Like, well, I'll shoot straight with you. I take it because it makes my stool soft the next morning. And I know magnesium's good for a lot of other stuff, but I literally just use it because it makes me poop better the next morning.

Yeah, it's a good reason. I think a lot of people do it for that, honestly. And on that point, too, the reason why, because we could have included something like magnesium or a host of other ingredients, is we just don't include things. And I feel like we get this feedback sometimes. Like, well, I looked at this other product and it's got like 10 ingredients. Why don't you have all 10 ingredients? It's like, well, because those other seven ingredients didn't have the scientific studies behind them on real human beings. Maybe they had, like, very limited studies on animals and didn't even make enough sense to include them. Like, it's just not something that is really clearly effective and safe for us to take every single day. What I would say some other brands may do and that we work really hard not to do, is not just put something in because it sounds good, or to put something in at a dose that's not real. If we put in 100 milligrams of tryptophan only, which some other brands do, or some herb or botanical, chamomile or valerian root, because it's got cool, traditional heritage and it makes sense as something to support sleep. But we just kind of make up an amount to put in and suddenly it's like, oh, cool. It's got all these other things in it. But there's no clinical studies behind it that actually show that it works or that it works at that amount. There's a meta analysis showing 1 gram of tryptophan is when it really. It has this impact on sleep. We're not going to put in less. So just saying again, we put in the right amount. We don't fairy dust and put in things just because we put in the right amount of the right ingredients that actually make sense science to make people's lives better.

Yeah. And again, not to throw anybody under the bus, but you can take a whole bunch of studies, put them all together, make something that looks fancy, sprinkle a little bit of this and a little bit of that in, and say that is for a particular need. But that's just not what we do. We look at the human clinical research that shows that it actually works, which I love. And don't get me wrong, I'm cool with the whole, oh, this has been used in ayurvedic medicine for. For thousands of years or whatever. But that's just. We just decided not to do that at Kion, which I'm totally cool with because it seems to be working for people and it works for me. And now I'm sleeping. And now I just came up with a great idea. I think our next supplement should be called Kion Poop and just open it up. It's just like a whole ass load of magnesium. Yeah. Keon Poop. Actually, that is a good idea. Maybe. Maybe we should. Maybe we should grab that URL just for. Yeah. Somebody grabbed kianpoop.com and. Angela, you want to beatbox us out?

Yeah, I'll beatbox this out. I'm trying to do something more gentle.

Okay.

Fresh.

Yeah, baby.

Sleep well. Sleep well. Good night, Everybody. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sleep Podcast for the show Notes until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield with Angelo Keeley signing out from Ben greenfieldlight.com.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed, and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. If you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be. And just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.