Top Sleep Experts Share BEST Tips to Fall Asleep Faster, Boost Deep & REM Sleep & Biohack Your Circadian Rhythm: Best Of Sleep!

In this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, the best of sleep. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Hey, welcome to the Best of Sleep episode. Hopefully, this is not one that puts you to sleep but maybe helps you sleep later on. I do know some people who lull themselves to sleep with a podcast. Hopefully, there's enough interesting information in here to where that doesn't happen for you. I occasionally do lull myself to sleep listening to the Daily Audio Bible. That guy's voice kind of knocks me out. But hopefully, I have enough very interesting content for you on this show to where you don't have to go to sleep while you're listening in. So, I have some of the most compelling content I've ever recorded on sleep that I'm about to unleash in one giant episode. So, if you're ready, we're going to jump in and we are going to start with Andrew Bustamante, former covert CIA officer, the so-called everyday spy. I interviewed him on his secrets to sleep, recovery, fitness, nutrition, relationships. You're going to learn about his pre-sleep routine, why he avoids new information 90 minutes before sleep, why THC and diazepam are not recommended sleep aids, and a whole lot more. Here we go.

My body never responded to meditation increasing sleep performance at night. Acupuncture, acupressure, reflexology, those things never really resonated with my body. So, those were all practices I kind of let go to the wayside where like self-massage or trigger point massage all have resonated very well. Those are things that my body does respond to.

So what would an ideal pre-sleep or pre-rest routine look like for you now?

One of the things that I do on a regular basis before, uh, before I try to lay down, I, I make sure I'm not looking at screens. And I don't look at screens for two reasons. One, I do believe there's something to the whole, you know, blue light, uh, effect on, on stimulating the brain. But more importantly, I don't want to get my brain into a position where it is starting to absorb new information in the last 90 minutes of the day because the brain, the brain only has two switches, right? It's either learning something new or it's indexing something that it's already learned. Well, the whole idea behind sleep is to let sleep be a period where you're indexing. So the last thing I want to do is, is supercharge my brain with things that it's learned new right before bed. So I don't want to read the news. I don't want to scroll through social media. I don't want to be, you know, I don't even read a book before bed because I don't want to instigate any new creative thoughts in those last 90 minutes.

Ben Greenfield: That's interesting. That's interesting. And by the way, I have a different approach. Even though I, like you, avoid blue light due to the suppression of melatonin and sleep drive, I will often study either a problem that I want to solve such as re-reviewing an email about some problem during the day I haven't yet solved or read a book that isn't super stimulating but typically involves something like self-improvement, sometimes a book that's got new and interesting information in it that I then want to consolidate during sleep relying on the old adage to sleep on something that allow your brain to kind of tick into problem-solving mode while you're asleep. So, although I'm very careful with stimulation, social media, checking for new emails, letting the world push new information to me versus information I've self-selected that I want present, when I'm going to sleep, I still am okay with presenting myself with information prior to sleep that I actually want my brain to subconsciously work on during sleep.

So, I don't think we're that different actually then because where you're self-selecting business and personal growth concepts that you're going to take with you into that indexing phase because your indexing phase is also the phase where new neural links are created and disparate ideas are also subconsciously connected all through sleep. That makes total sense. For me, because I have two young children, I think what I have— what I've come into the habit of is those last 90 minutes of the day are really spent with them. So then, I get the neural connections, I get the memory boost, I get the connection satisfaction of basically taking my wife and my children as the final things with me to bed. So I get to retain those memories, I get to retain those, those moments, plus I get to build that relationship with my family in a closer way right before bedtime, which is doing the same thing for all of them, right? It's permanentizing or cementing memories with Dad for my 7-year-old daughter and memories with Dad for my 11-year-old son and, and memories with children and bedtime routines with my wife. So, we're having similar benefits but using it in a different way. Not new information, but information that I am prioritizing as something I want to retain.

Ben Greenfield: And a lot of that happens, that memory, that learning consolidation, that emotional processing during REM sleep. You know what's interesting, Andrew, is you know that the two things that a lot of people— I'll give you a more precise clue, supplement with or take prior to sleep. That absolutely crushes your REM sleep cycles, thus crushing your ability to do learning process, emotional processing, memory consolidation, et cetera. You know what the two things are?

I'm on the edge of my seat.

Okay. Number one, THC. A lot of people use these edibles now prior to sleep. Really? They decrease your sleep latency. They cause you to fall asleep very quickly, but your sleep architecture, if you do use a wearable or something like that to track sleep, REM sleep drops by 10 to 15%. And, this is why people who use THC-rich cannabis prior to sleep report less dreaming because they actually are dreaming less. The other one is diazepam, anything like Valium, unfortunately also very commonly prescribed for sleep. But, both of those give you sleep, but it's not the type of sleep that you need if you want to be a complete human, especially in the emotional memory and learning departments.

How interesting, man. Yeah, I actually— it's interesting to me that people would ever seek out to reduce REM sleep because REM sleep is the sleep that most people are pursuing.

Yeah, yeah. I think the reason is that when it comes to sleep latency and the fact that Valium and THC can increase— or I'm sorry, decrease sleep latency, the amount of time that it takes you to fall asleep Many people like that sledgehammer-like effect of not having to sit with their thoughts right prior to sleep, the anxious racing thoughts that keep them up. Obviously, there are alternatives, cognitive behavioral therapy, short inhales, long exhales, or some form of breathwork. Some people meditation, some acupressure, both of which obviously didn't work for you but work for some people. It's just easier for a lot of people to chew on a gummy or pop a pill, but unfortunately, you get decreased latency but non-REM versus with practice and kind of using other tactics, you can have decreased latency and still have your REM sleep.

Hopefully, you enjoyed that interview with Andrew. All the shownotes as well as full episodes with each of the guests you hear, you can find at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BenGreenfieldLife. Best of Sleep, BenGreenfieldLife.com/BestOfSleep. Next up is Dr. Daniel Gartenberg. This one was called the best sleep podcast ever. We went into sleeping better, hacking sleep, sleep cycles, insomnia, sleep apnea. You're going to learn what to do if you wake up in the middle of the night, why people have insomnia, and one of the top research-proven benefits for helping with that and a bit more. Here we go.

A lot of guys, especially increasingly as they age, do wake up in the wee hours, literally and figuratively, I suppose in this case to pee, and then get back into bed and sometimes struggle to go back to sleep. Now, I've installed red light bulbs in my bedroom, so if I do have to flip the lights on to go find the bathroom, it's not disrupting melatonin too much. And, I'll often take some kind of inhibitory neurotransmitter. I don't know if you know, I own a supplements company called Kion. We have something called Kion Sleep, so I'll take a dose of that or sometimes a little inositol or ashwagandha or something, and I find that to be helpful in getting back to sleep. But for midnight or wakings in the early mornings, do you have any tips for people who want to get back to sleep after that's occurred?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think one thing is also not to freak out just because you woke up in the middle of the night to pee. It's sort of normal to wake up periodically throughout the night. We only think of it as problematic if it's like really a lot of times, like more than twice, and also if you're up for more than like 5 minutes. And this is something where sometimes when you think about it too much, like, oh, this is so horrible, it actually makes it worse because sleep is all about like letting go and not dwelling on what's currently going on. So also, I guess, just is it really that big of a problem, first and foremost? Now, if you are up for you know, more than 30 minutes, say, that could be problematic. And there's a couple things that you can do. You know, you want to stay hydrated, definitely, to get more deep sleep, but you could try to push the, the drinking a little bit earlier in the day. That's one of the main recommendations for this problem. If you want to also try to consolidate your sleep more because you're waking up a lot in the middle of the night, what's often recommended is, counterintuitively, to push your bedtime a little later, which will basically build up your homeostatic sleep drive, which is one of the main processes of sleep, you know, which is related to like the buildup of, uh, adenosine, which is all based on like, you know, you know, coffee suppresses that. So you're basically making yourself more tired so you're less likely to wake up in the middle of the night.

Interesting. So that's kind of back to the same kind of theory as sleep deprivation therapy for insomnia.

Yeah, and I, I just want to be clear that, you know, sometimes sleep deprivation therapy gets a bad rep because sometimes— and there's no medical device advice, it's not medical advice or anything, I just want to stipulate that— but there's also, there's sleep deprivation therapy, but there's a less draconian version which is sleep restriction therapy, where you're not being like so severe with it. Basically, they usually do that for older populations, um, and I just always have in the back of my mind that this tool where if I'm having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep to make sure I go to bed tired and to possibly push back the bedtime a little bit if I'm ever teetering on issues falling asleep, staying asleep.

Yeah. It actually is a good point. If I'm hunting or I've got a very busy day and I have one of those nights where I fall asleep and it's like my head hits the pillow and my sleep latency is 1 to 2 minutes, it's actually pretty seldom. That I wake up to pee. So that's actually a good point, just making sure you're not overnapping, over-resting, or possibly even oversleeping, and instead going to sleep when your body actually needs to go to sleep. That kind of makes intuitive sense. Related to insomnia, you know, in addition to sleep restriction therapy, are there any research-proven methods for that that you really like?

The reason why I've been studying it is again because of this deep sleep thing and the glymphatic drainage that's going on and its relation to Alzheimer's Alzheimer's disease and related dementia, because people with insomnia are more likely to get less deep sleep, so they're more likely to get Alzheimer's disease. And that's why— how I got these grants with the National Institute of Aging. And the main theory for why people have insomnia is something called the 3P model. And so this is a good framework for thinking about it. And so the P's are basically predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors that make you have insomnia.

Say that one more time.

Predisposing, predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating. So the predisposing factors are sometimes you just sort of have a biology that's more likely to be hyper-aroused. I think my, my wife might be one of these people.

Yeah, I'll, I'll raise my hand.

Yeah, so sometimes you're born with just sort of like a worrisome thinking style, or it's in your DNA somehow. So there's a little bit trait-like to have like maybe a more negative thinking style, or maybe, you know, you can't afford to not live by the train tracks and the train is waking you up every night. That, that would be another example of a predisposing factor, sort of like things you can't really control, whether it's your biology or just the circumstances of your life. So that pushes you into more likelihood of having insomnia, say. It kind of builds up on each other. And then you have a precipitating factor, which almost everyone can relate to. And, you know, it's like your dog dies, you know, you're dealing with a death in the family, you have some work stress, and that night you have a particularly hard time falling asleep, which is pretty common. Almost all Americans have periodic insomnia. And so that would be a precipitating factor, and that can push you over the edge to having a night of insomnia, for example. And then what happens is you start building behaviors around that instance of insomnia, and these are the perpetuating factors. An example of that might be spending too much time in bed because you think, oh my God, in order for me to get, uh, the recommended sleep of 7 to 9 hours a night, I need to spend 10 hours a night in bed because I'm up so much of that time, right?

Or take some kind of a mega nap in the afternoon.

Exactly, that would be another example of that. So you're not able to sleep and then you're making it worse by taking a nap. And that's why, if you— I love naps, I'm with you on like, for the optimizer biohacker as a as a lever. But if you have insomnia, for example, that's why they say you should never, never nap. Now, to address this, the recommended treatment isn't a drug. Um, and if the drug companies would— there's a place for the drugs in certain situations. And again, this is not medical advice, but I've never seen a study where a drug company will compare their drug to cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And the reason for that, I'm pretty sure that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, based on the literature, would blow it out of the water. Wow. Essentially, because with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, which is the recommended treatment, you're really addressing the issue at its core with thoughts, behaviors, and feelings around your sleep. And we also, we actually have a cognitive behavioral therapy, or we have a module based on these premises within our software.

Yeah, I saw that. I didn't check it out yet, but, but, but in brief, how does CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy actually work?

So it's usually 4 modules. Um, one is the sleep compression thing that we've been talking about. Another one is stimulus control, which is doing things to associate your bed with sleeping. The main thing that you've probably heard, save your bed for sleep and sex only, is— comes from like stimulus control. I'm trying to do like super stimulus control, like using Sounds to make that relationship even stronger, and that's part of what we're validating in our studies. And then the other one is like your standard sleep hygiene, which is sort of like, uh, we actually use that as a placebo in our study. Then cognitive training, so address active thoughts that form around sleep, like the fact that I just can't sleep, you know, there's nothing I can do, I have a brain chemical imbalance, like addressing a thought like that with a therapist. And then, the final thing, there's actually 5 I guess, is training relaxation. So, it's ridiculous that not every human being in school is trained how to reduce their heart rate. So, we'll actually do Yoga Nidra, progressive muscle relaxation, body scans.

Long exhales would be another that comes to mind for me like a 4-8 or a 4-7-8 type of breathwork pattern.

Yeah, we did a 4-4-4, the box breathing. We added that based on reading your book, but I'll try to add the 4-8-4.

I think it's more effective honestly. And being a Christian, I actually like to pray when I do it. So, I'll do breathless prayer sessions where, for example, 4-count in, "Oh Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God," 8-count out, "Have mercy on me a sinner." or something like that, or, you know, breathe in, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, breathe out, I will not fear. So I'll just like pull different Bible verses, which for me also tends to help with ruminating thoughts, because rather than your thought patterns going towards what neurotransmitter deficit or imbalance you might have that's keeping you awake at night while you're doing your breathwork, instead your thoughts are focused on almost like a mantra, you know. So, and I know some yoga nidra sessions will use mantras as well, but the mantra kind of keeps your mind from focusing on other ruminating thoughts if that makes sense.

Totally. And yeah, we recommend praying in the app as well as one of the things that you can do. And my wife does something similar with a more Jewish faith, but yeah. Okay. That's definitely a good practice.

A couple of other things I just wanted to briefly address in the time that we have left. This question I didn't want to talk about too much in the earlier parts of my podcast because so many people simply rely upon popping a pill or worse yet sledgehammering themselves to sleep with some kind of diazepam type of approach. When it comes to pharmacological or supplemental remedies or interventions for sleep, are there any that you think have particularly good research behind them or that you would recommend or use yourself?

Yeah. So, I'm with you where I'm trying to basically not use the trazodones. And there's always a time and place for that, you know, talk to your doctor. And even like the idea of having that option there is sometimes helpful for people that when they have like a really serious problem, for example. But I'm always trying to be all natural or to, if I'm going to use something, cycle it out and in so I don't become dependent on it. And then there's also things that just aren't going to have any negative impact. Such as like magnesium or GABA, which, you know, I think can be beneficial to some degree. I think there's some evidence that, you know, there's some weak effects for those things, and so it could be a reasonable supplement. Also, like, even things like, you know, for some people— and I used to do this more with like marijuana, for example— you know, CBD and CBN in particular is something that I might recommend to somebody that's particularly wound up and anxious Just because they don't have the psychoactive component as like a THC, for example, so it's not going to negatively impact REM. So that's the main thing with the THC. Yeah, aspect is there's a pretty strong evidence that you're going to hinder your REM sleep with THC. But since CBN, CBD are not psychoactive, popping like a pretty large dosage of that, like a 25 milligram or whatever, will, you know, bring in your relaxation without the negative effects.

Yeah, I've found similar, you know, THC. Not only do you get horrific deep sleep cycles, but you get zero dreams whatsoever, which makes me think that there's probably very little either emotional resilience or learning and memory consolidation taking place. So I'm not a big fan of that, especially as you've noted, Dan, the alternatives for the endocannabinoid system, CBD and CBN, I think are safer, they're better for sleep. And in fact, you know what, I do use supplemental interventions for sleep. I take magnesium like you mentioned, and then I take CBD and that Kion Sleep that I mentioned, which is just a few inhibitory neurotransmitters and L-theanine. And if I am traveling, I'll include melatonin, but if I've traveled across multiple time zones or come back across multiple time zones, that, that stack works well for me. But I mean, you know, there's Oh gosh, Dr. Andrew Huberman, he has a stack that he recommends and you'll have other people who will utilize more like a natural herbal approach like St. John's wort or ashwagandha or reishi or some type of adaptogenic approach. I think it does come down a little bit to what works well for you, but I think we could establish at least I would say, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, that many of these sledgehammers like the pharmaceutical interventions or marijuana and alcohol, despite fooling you into thinking that you might be getting a night of rest, are really not doing you many favors in the sleep department.

Yeah, exactly. So you might be— it, they induce a hypnotic state that you're not consciously aware. So you perceive that you're sleeping, but your brain's— the quality of your sleep, your brain is more awake.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I, I wanted to give you a chance to share any final little-known tips or hacks or tactics you personally would recommend or found helpful for enhancing sleep. The inception idea was fascinating. Are there any others that would kind of fall into that category, whether it's some sort of dream therapy or consciousness manipulation or anything like that that you've messed around with?

Yeah, so I'll bring in my, uh, mad scientist toolbox right here. So The other thing we test in our lab is deep sleep stimulation. And this is where I actually got my start doing transcranial direct current stimulation when I was working for the Naval Research Labs and Air Force Research Labs. So this work started where you could basically zap the brain with electricity in order to induce different brain states. And later it became known that you can play sounds that entrain this delta brainwave. It's basically like a whooshing sound at 1.2 Hz. And so, 1.2 Hz is the oscillation of your slow-wave brainwaves. And, we showed in a lab and in a peer-reviewed paper that when we play these tones at just the right time and intensity during sleep, we could increase the delta wave sleep, the slow-wave sleep. Oh, wow. Then, we instantiated it in the SleepSpace app. I haven't validated it in sleep space yet. That's what I'm trying to do now.

Can you do it in sleep space?

We do it in sleep space, but it hasn't been validated.

How do you do it?

So if you're wearing an Apple Watch, we'll estimate your sleep stage and then play the delta frequency when you're more likely to be in a deep sleep. And then, oh wow, we'll also estimate it with if you place your phone on your bed or use the smart bed mechanism.

Oh, so if I'm, if I'm using the smart bed, I can do that. And do I need to press any specific setting on the SleepSpace app?

You just have to turn on the deep sleep stimulation in the settings.

Oh, easy. Okay, I'm writing that down right now. I'll mess around with that. Okay, so that's cool. Anything else?

Yeah, and so, you know, playing sounds like very precisely on your side of the bed I think is an important thing, and associating those sounds with sleeping. Because if you do have a sleep partner, like my wife, I think she has more sensitive hearing, um, you know, she likes the sound a little lower than I do, for example. So like having sounds to associate with sleeping is something that I'm a firm believer in. And I think you're privy to this, we have our— this whole ritual with our lights turning red in the wind down. Uh, I know you do it when you wake up, but we actually have our whole light environment turn red during that wind-down period. And honestly, a big thing is like knowing where you are in your circadian rhythm and having that metacognition of like, okay, you know, if I'm in like a grant writing deadline or something, I'll actually push like a third wind as like a night owl and know that I need to be like that for like a week because sometimes we just have like work habits and things that we have to get done. But having the metacognition of like, oh, I'm going to do this for a little while and then I'm going to get my sleep back and get into a more relaxed state of consciousness is really important. And knowing when you're like having struggles with falling asleep and staying asleep and doing that protocol when you're having those issues. And, you know, it's sort of like, I imagine like a ladder where, you know, first you're trying to make sure you can fall asleep and stay asleep. Actually, before that, you're trying to rule out any underlying sleep issues like restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea. Then you're trying to improve your sleep efficiency. And then after all of those things are completed, at the top of the ladder is making your sleep efficient— uh, sleep quality as good as it could be and optimizing your consciousness.

When you say optimizing your consciousness, what do you mean?

Basically trying to incept yourself.

Okay, okay, like what we discussed, that would be an example of optimizing consciousness? Yeah. Okay, okay, got it. By the way, I should throw in there, I thought of it when you were talking about the red light manipulation. There is, uh, a website I recently found a couple of weeks ago, bluelightdiet.com, and they have a blog post there called the Circadian Control Panel. That walks you step by step for your iPhone on how to put a Quick Shortcut button. And so, I've got 4 shortcuts on my phone now on the home screen. One is wake, one is red, one is blue for super alertness, and then one is sleep that automatically just turns off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, shifts it to red. It's super convenient and it's just a simple shortcut. So, I'll link to that in the shownotes if people want to do that to their phones because I found it to be just super convenient. One button when I'm ready to go to bed, I push the sleep button and boom, everything's out. But then I can push the red button if it's like 7:00 PM and I'm still tooling around on my phone and doing things. So, that doesn't disable any of the network, all it does is turn the screen red. Then later on, I can press the sleep button and that goes screen even more red and dim and then turns all the networking capabilities off.

I love that. And I mean, what happens to, I think, a lot of people is they go to use their phone and then they end up looking at Instagram, for example. So to have that one button, and I have it, I have a similar, not, I want to check out what you just mentioned, but having a shortcut where you just do one button into like the sleep thing makes it so you're not, I'm eventually going to make it so with an NFC tag you can activate it without even opening your phone. I think that'll be like the next level of some of the stuff.

Stuff. Yeah, that would be super cool. All right, very last thing, because I told my kids I'd ask you— both of them sleep with their dogs. Any comments on pet sleeping or whether that totally throws the sleep wearable recognition fully out of whack? I imagine it does, but you okay with pet sleeping or not? I told them I was interviewing you, they said to ask.

So, you know, generally most doctors would say no pet sleeping and try to find a way to get the pet to sleep sort of by you and not in your bed. Dogs are definitely better than cats since, you know, cats are nocturnal after all. So they're gonna be swatting you in the face while you're sleeping and whatnot. And, you know, running around at night 'cause it's when they're supposed to be active and hunting. I appreciate that having the comfort of a warm body next to you can relax you and possibly help with your sleep quality by bringing, you know, bringing you into a more relaxed state. So, I think there is something to that, but the animal can also definitely cause problems. So, I'm not strongly against sleeping with the dog, and if it works for you, then all the power to you. But generally, they can also disturb your sleep sometimes as well.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, that makes sense. My theory is similar to when I used to co-sleep with infants and I would actually sleep better is similar to the research the HeartMath Institute has done on how the heart rate variability or heart's electrical signal of the horse jockey and the horse will align when the jockey enters the stable and they'll both be kind of in the same brainwave state based on that. That if a pet is resting in bed with you, there's a chance that if that pet is resting, their own rested heart signal may actually somehow be something that you pick up via the electromagnetic signal emanated by the heart, which actually has an electromagnetic field, and that Therefore, by being in the room with another rested mammal, it might actually somehow affect your brainwave patterns to sleep better. That's, that's a theory of mine, but I guess it depends on how active your dog is in the evening because that could obviously backfire on you.

Yeah, I mean, I think there is definitely some stuff going on subconsciously with frequencies that we as scientists just don't understand yet, and it wouldn't surprise me if that, you know, I think we do resonate with each other's frequencies in some ways that it's just hard to study. But, I think there has been research— I mean, there is research showing exactly what you just said where our bodies can sync up to one another.

Ben Greenfield: One of my favorite ladies, multi-time podcast guest, biomechanist Katy Bowman who sleeps on the floor in a furniture-free home. I interviewed her about building a better butt and smartphone solutions and of course her sleeping habits, how she approaches bedroom furniture. And sleep, how she transitions to sleeping on firm surfaces including the ground. Great to sleep on a sheepskin. Here we go.

Obviously, there's sleep too, right? We're in that position arguably for around a third of our lives or so. And, I'm just curious how you arrange the sleeping environment. If you're also just sleeping on the floor with these cushions propped under your head or what's it look like in terms of your bedroom or your sleeping environment?

Yeah, same. So, I am a ground sleeper just like I'm a ground sitter. And I am happy to use chairs when they're out and about. I don't make it a point to only do that, but I want to make sure that I'm always comfortable to be able to sleep.

You mean you don't stand on the airplane the entire time?

No, no. Okay. Although I will get up and try to walk around just a little bit. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I will squat in my seat though just to stretch out for a longer flight. So, I have been known to do that only when people I know are sitting by the side. But, yeah, I sleep on the ground. So, we have sheepskins and so we roll them out and make our bed on top of that and then sleep on what would be— so, it's firm, it's much firmer than any mattress or futon, but it still is comfortable, right? Because it's got some, it's got some warmth, you know, that if you're worried about sleeping on a cold floor and you've got your cush, I find it to be nice and comfortable, but I'm able to get out of my position better. So like the way I try to explain it is let's say that your particular body because of its being in repetitive shapes. It has a hard time getting out of essentially what is a chair shape. Even though you can stand up, if we really broke down what's happening in your joints, for many people, their hips really don't come out of flexion. Their pelvis, like if you— people deal with what's called an anterior tilt, forward tilt of their pelvis, that is a hip that's not standing up all of the way. The hip is still sort of in a chair. Even if you get your legs straight, the pelvis is coming forward. So, there's just this little bit of chair residue, chair baggage, I've called it different things that's left over in your body. And for many people when they get into bed, even if you lay out on your back, I guess that you lie down on your back, because of the cushion, you're still sort of able to keep some of those flexions in your body, they're being— coddled is not the word that I want, but the cushion is sort of supporting you where your body is right now where the ground is much more of a taskmaster and it makes those parts stretch out, which is why it's really uncomfortable for people when they first start because you can't continue to stay tense in certain areas. So, I sleep on the ground in that way. And then, I don't have a big heavy pillow. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, and I took 18 months to go from— my neck was really stiff all the time. And I was like, "Why is my neck so stiff?" And then, as you said, our sleep environment is a third of— on the best days, it's a third of your day. And so, I was just realizing like, "Oh, I am sort propping myself up in a single position and keeping my neck from moving. So, in the same way, if you've been in a car ride for a long time, the hips are stiff, my neck was stiff and it just didn't make sense to me. And then, I just was looking around at, "Well, what are other cultures doing?" And I just realized, "Oh, of course. I need more movement even during my sleep time. I need more what I call pressure-related movement." I need my joints need to be able to go to a broader range of motion than what my bedding will allow. And, that goes for my neck too. I need to be able to be more— it's like tenderizing a piece of meat. I need to be more supple. I need to be able to fold myself up. And, that's why I sleep the way I do. And, that's why a lot of my training that I would do is really just making my tissues more supple in general, not only stronger but more supple. Supple too. That's so important piece because then you can really adapt to whatever surface you're being given as a human.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I'm building a new home in Idaho right now and I've been thinking about doing one of those wooden slatted beds as a slightly harder, more biomechanically favorable sleep surface. I guess there's that one guy, Liver King, Brian Johnson. I think he caught some social media attention for claiming that he also sleeps on some kind of a wooden slatted bed. And, it kind of makes sense.

Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield. It does seem kind of uncomfortable to just toss out that I'm on this super fancy organic eco-friendly mattress right now. And, it's nice and it's cushy, but sometimes I do think, gosh, this is too cushy, especially when I go camping now or I go hunting and it takes me at least 3 or 4 days sleeping on the ground in the tent where my body finally feels comfortable in that environment. For you switching from not using a pillow to kind of going lower and lower and lower in terms of your pillow height, how long do you think that adaptation would actually take for somebody who wants to go pillow-free or even for somebody who wants to maybe ditch the bed or start to sleep on a harder surface? Is there a certain period of months because they talk about minimalist footwear, not to kick that horse to death. And sometimes, it's 3, 4, 5 months, sometimes up to a year before somebody's feet are adapted to not using big built-up cushiony shoes. Is there kind of a way that someone can ease into this adaptation period or something they should expect as far as adaptation period to go pillow-free or cushion-free in the beds?

Yeah. I mean, I think the thing to remember is it's always stepwise and it's exactly like transitioning from conventional to less supportive footwear. So much of that time period really depends on you and where you're starting and then what you're doing to help you with transitioning. So, the same thing was for minimal footwear. Like, you wouldn't put on just minimal shoes and go running, right? That would be the equivalent of just like jumping out of your bed and sleeping on the floor all night. And, I think a lot of people have done that in camping Or, they go even to someone else's house and sleep on a different bed and they're like, "Oh, my back's wrecked or my knees hurt." I'm never going to camp again. That sucks. Yeah, that's right. And, that just shows that's too big of a leap. You are essentially moving all of the time. It's a misnomer to think you're in a sedentary or an exercise category. That's a helpful way of sorting it on the big scale, but on a cellular level, you're always under the effects of some load due to gravity and your position. You're creating the load to yourselves. So, you're about to engage in 8 hours of some form of loading your body in a novel way. So, the things that I recommend would be to start sleeping— if you are so adapted to a particular mattress, even sleeping on the other side of it is going to cause your loads to be different, especially if your mattress has been shaped by a different body, you know, like if you're swapping sides with somebody. Or, if you have a guest bedroom that you don't really like that bed that often because it's kind of uncomfortable, spending a couple nights there, that would be another way of—

Hopefully not because you've had a fight with your spouse, hopefully by choice.

I mean, whatever. At least you could reframe it. You could reframe it. It's like, "Well, at least I will work on my loads.

This is a biomechanically favorable argument.

Yeah, you could go together. You could go together. I suggested people that— I transitioned where I went from a bed to a single mattress low. I'm in the Pacific Northwest where I think you are as well too. So, we had to really watch for mold. Sleeping on the ground can be really a mold issue depending on where you live. So, slept lower on the ground and then went to a futon. So, I just slowly got closer to the ground and I played around with different surfaces. And then, as far as the training part, you really want to be working on mobility and then nooks and crannies mobility because there's mobility in the general sense of your hamstrings and your hips and your shoulders. What we don't get a ton of are what I categorize as pressure-related movements. For a lot of other people, they might categorize it by the tissue they think they're working on when they do them. So, that would be foam rolling fascia, rolling on fascia balls like Tune Up Fitness balls or things like that where you're applying pressure into the nooks and crannies of your body that don't often deal with having to change their position due to pressure being applied. Bodywork is also something that fits into that category. So, sleep surfaces are surfaces, right? So, the pressures that you're going to get on them are going to be whole body. Different joints are going to feel different. So, get on the floor more often before you transition to floor sleeping. I used to do a before-I-go-to-bed tenderizing practice where you roll all of your parts all over the ground.

By the way, that's me in the morning. I do morning tenderizing, 15 minutes every morning, the hardest foam rollers I can find, the most uncomfortable massage balls. And, I interviewed this guy named Joel Greene who calls it maintaining young muscle where you're reducing a lot of those fascial adhesions and kind of getting the body used to a little bit of that discomfort of being against hard objects. I swear by that protocol every morning, 15 minutes. Basically, it's just self meat tenderizing.

Yeah. I swear by that too, but I feel a lot of it comes while I'm sleeping. Yeah. And so, it's the same thing. When you think about bodies, human bodies have been interacting with high amounts of pressure through interacting with the ground. So, take everything that you think about minimal footwear and what your foot needs to stretch out its parts, that goes for your whole body on the ground too. Vitamin texture as I call it, It's the same thing only it's not as easy as just swapping out a new pair of shoes. You have to take yourself down physically and you have to get used to these parts being able to spread out. Those movements aren't listed in a book of movements that you need, but I categorize them in a particular way. We definitely need pressure-related movements throughout our body and it comes through interaction with surfaces. And, you can make it in a supplement format where you're approaching it with an exercise mindset and supplement that way. But, it's also something that comes with more floor living. It's also something that comes with more floor sitting. And then, bonus, when you sleep on the floor in the way that we do now, it always allowed us to be in smaller homes more comfortably when we had younger kids because think of all the square footage of a house that's allotted to sleep time only. Just the footprint that is under most people's sleep time equipment. So, for us, we hang it up every day and it gave a room for cartwheels, an exercise room, and off like what office.

So, that's really— Ben Greenfield: That's such a good point. Yeah. I mean, you're making a good case here for saving a lot of money in Airbnb so you can get the zero-bedroom Airbnb and just travel with your sheepskin and use the garage. It's interesting though because it is important for that one-third or I guess if you're one of those Silicon Valley execs who has biologically inferior need for sleep apparently, one-fourth or one-fifth of your life is spent in that position.

So, it's something to think about.

It's also unfortunately probably a good way for me to lose any mattress sponsors ever for this podcast for all time. But regardless, it really makes me think a little bit more about my sleeping surface and at least giving an attempt to expose my body to a little bit more of a hard, possibly even slightly uncomfortable surface during sleep.

Scott Sher is up next.

And again, all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BestOfSleep.

Scott knows a lot about GABA, gamma-aminobutyric acid. And sleep hacking.

That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter.

That's a big word. You're about to learn more. Here we go.

So, when it comes to sleep, is there anything that you personally do besides Tro Calm or Tro Zzz for sleep that for you is just a game changer? And, this is kind of relevant to me right now because I'm working on a new book and there's a big chapter on it with a whole bunch of updated sleep hacks. So, I'm kind of behind the scenes asking some of my guess what their personal sleep hacks are?

Sure. So, from a product perspective, I'm actually more of a Tro Calm guy because for me, as soon as I fall asleep, I'm good. It's a matter of falling asleep for me. And so, that's the type A personality, the perseverating thoughts, the thought diarrhea as it were as you were describing before. So, my thoughts to patient would be Tro Calm in this case.

So, I'll take Tro Calm a couple hours before bed, Oh, a couple hours before.

Yeah, yeah. I find that actually I could take it right before bed too, but I really like having it on board for a couple hours. It lasts for about 3 to 5 hours for me. So, I like having it right before that sort of wind-down period when I'm with my kids and I'm relaxing and I want my mind to be sort of off work, phone away kind of deal and just having it as sort of an evening. So, what people will do oftentimes is take Tro Calm instead of drinking a glass of wine with dinner or having their beer or whatever it might be as their wind-down. So, I like to use it that way. Overall, it's sort of like my wind down for the evening. But, for me, actually, Dr. Ted Attakoso, who's been on your podcast before, he probably gave me the single most important piece of advice that I've ever received from sleep. He calls it his sleep anchoring technique. And, what this means is it basically changes the perspective on the importance of sleep. Instead of saying that your day starts when you wake up, say to yourself, your day starts when you go to bed.

Your day starts. See, I've always heard it like your night starts when you wake up with ample light exposure, but this is interesting. Keep going.

Yeah. So, the idea here is that if you consider going to sleep as the start of your day, not the end of your day, then you're going to treat it with more respect and with more care and take care and protect it on a day-to-day basis whenever you can. Because your day starts when you go to bed, not when you wake up. Now, of course, when you wake up, you have your morning routine, you have your sunlight exposure, you have your grounding, anything else that you do. But, if you just focus on that but you forgot about the other 8 hours you just went to bed, it's not going to help as much, right, as you know. So, if you think about your day starts when you go to bed as opposed to when you wake up, that's the frame shift that helped me. I mean, I'm a doctor, right? I had In medical school, my friends and I wore shirts that said, "Sleep is for quitters." Okay. So, I didn't think sleep mattered for a long time. And, even through my 30s, I didn't think it mattered. I thought I could be up in the middle of night, do what I need to do, and just work the next day. But no, I mean, like many people, I crashed and burned. And, when I turned 40, it's not going to happen anymore, right? So, most of us can get away with it for a period of time. So, that's the first thing and that's the major thing for what I tell my patients. That's what we tell people at Transcriptions. Because, again, we have great formulas here that can help you with anxiety, they can help you with stress, they can help you with sleep. But, what you should be doing is thinking about what is this whole sleep architecture that we were talking about. So, you asked about my personal thing, so I can give you my personal if you'd like.

Yeah.

So, for me, what I'll typically do is an infrared sauna. I have an infrared sauna in my house. When I found out that I was going to have 4 kids, we thought we were going to have 3 and somehow we ended up having 4.

Wait, quadruplets?

No, no. I have 3 kids. I had 3 daughters and then my 4th was a surprise. Okay.

Okay.

I understand. Yes. Yes. And so my oldest is 13, my youngest is 6 now, and 3 girls and my youngest is a boy. But when I found out that we were going to have a 4th kid, I was like a very small house living in Northern California at the time. So I bought myself an infrared sauna and it's been, I think, one of the best purchases that I've ever made. By far. So, I'm in there most nights. I spend about 30 minutes in there. Typically, we do some reading, some meditation, some relaxation exercises of some sort during that time. And then, after the sauna, I'll typically take a temperate shower, so not too hot, not too cold. We'll do my sleep stack of supplements, typically some magnesium, some glycine, sometimes Tro Zzz when I'm traveling, but I don't take Tro Zzz unless I'm traveling typically because I don't need it. And then, I have what I call my Pavlov's dog routine. And Pavlov's dog is, for those who don't know, this is an experiment done where they would ring a bell and give food to a dog and the dog would salivate and the dog would eat. And then, eventually take away the food, just ring the bell, the dog would salivate. So, the idea for me for my sleep routine is do the exact same thing for the last 10 to 15 minutes every night. And that's Sleep, it's basically going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, stretching, and getting into bed with my eye mask on, having a sound machine on, doing gratitude, and then just done.

Ben. That's awesome. I love the Pavlovs. I'm the same way to the extent to where I try to choose things for the Pavlov's dog routine that I can replicate when traveling. So, if it's lavender essential oil, I don't use an oil diffuser anymore. I just sprinkle it on the pillow because I can do that same thing when I travel. The sleep mask, easy. The red light headlamp that I use to get around the room at night for the red lights, that's easy to bring to the hotel room. Putting the pillow underneath the back of my knees and breathing for about 5 minutes with 4 in, 8 out before rolling over into a side sleeping position. I can replicate that in the hotel. So, I try to not be dependent on any large bulky sleep technologies that if I'm on the road traveling again because I travel so much, I'm going to feel like I'm not getting my adequate sleep routine that I can replicate because I can't exactly call down to the front desk and ask them to bring me, I don't know, a BedJet air conditioning unit or a ChilliPad for sleep. So, I try not to be dependent on that stuff.

Ben Greenfield: I'm totally with you. So, I have my long routine, which is when I'm home, and then I have my short routine when I'm traveling. I mean, this is something you've dialed in so much because of how much you travel, but it's just certain techniques or certain things that I will do that just trigger my brain to know that this is time to get to sleep. And I think the biggest part for me actually is taking those 30 seconds or a minute when I'm in bed and just doing a full body scan, doing a small gratitude practice, and just being comfortable and grateful for the day and setting intentions for the next day too, right? So, it's really important for me. So, nothing fancy there really, but I like the fancy tools as well when I can. When I have them, of course.

Yeah, the body scans are pretty incredible, the so-called Yoga Nidra or non-sleep deep rest protocols. There's not many voices that I don't find kind of grinding for those, but there's one lady on YouTube. And, I've got YouTube Premium, which I think is the ultimate life hack just using download tons of stuff, view it online ad-free. They still don't have the ability to take your downloaded videos and make playlists out of them, which I think they need to add at least that can be used in offline mode. So, Tip to anyone who works at YouTube, make playlists downloadable and available offline. But anyways, this lady, Allie Boothroyd, I think is her channel, she has non-sleep deep rest protocols that range from 20 minutes up to a full 8 hours. And, when I flew back from Qatar the other day because I just got back from India, I did her 8-hour on the plane with noise-blocking headphones. Incredible. And, Usually, what'll happen is if I wake up at 4:00 a.m. or whatever, I want to kind of lull myself back to sleep. I, of course, pop a Tro Calm, Scott, but I'll lay back and do her— it's the 2-hour one if I want to lay in bed until 6:00 or so. And, it's incredible. You aren't actually sleeping but you're in this drool coming out the side of your mouth, non-sleep deep rest state. And, because you're scanning your body, I think this is why it works is my working hypothesis at least. You can't think about work when you're thinking big toe, breathe, next toe, breathe, next toe, breathe, small toe, ankle, heel, back of knee. So, it just kind of keeps your thoughts from racing. But, her voice in particular is incredible. And, what I do, I'll get a little techie on you here, Scott. This will be the pro tip. There's another app called SleepStream. And it plays white noise. It blocks out a lot of ambient noise. And, a lot of times these Yoga Nidra sessions, there's long periods of just silence in between what the person says is the next cue. So, if the kids are up and awake getting ready for the day and I'm not ready to get up yet or the dogs are barking or the rooster is crowing, which usually starts about 4:30, this SleepStream app, I can play it simultaneous to the Yoga Nidra. And, just like my cheapo headphones, and it'll block out ambient noise while I'm still able to hear the Yoga Nidra voice. So, that's what I'll do if I just need to use some kind of a sound to lull me to sleep. I still like that. There's an app called the NuCalm that's also really good, but for Yoga Nidra, combining something like Ali's Yoga Nidra tracks with the SleepStream app, it's incredible.

Ben Greenfield: Do you have one headphone going in one ear? How does that work? Is it also both being piped in your ears at the same time?

I have the SleepPhones, They're like the soft— they're like $20, I think, on Amazon. But, they're good for side sleepers if I tend to roll on my side. And, if I happen to have forgotten to get those out before bed, I'll literally just use my old-school Apple white wired headphones and put those in. But yeah, no, it layers over. So, the SleepSpace white noise layers over the Yoga Nidra. So, it's not coming through two separate speakers. Both those tracks are coming through both headphones into both ears. Cool.

You're doing a real-time mix, man. That's cool. I dig it. Yeah. The old Apple old-school headphones when I travel too for the white noise. I find that helps a lot. And, I have a free app that I use for the white noise piece of things too.

Ben Greenfield: The other hack for this, and this is something I learned from Luke's story, those underwater swim headphones that are— they use bone vibration to transmit sound. You can have in your regular headphones and then in your underwater MP3 player that you're using on dry land, you can pump out what Luke told me is he'll play Joe Dispenza meditation tracks while playing NuCalm and he'll play the NuCalm through his regular headphones and play the Joe Dispenza meditation tracks through his bone vibrating headphones if you want to call them that. And, that's another way to layer. So, all sorts of different ways to sleep if you like many other people can't turn the brain off at night or at least stop up the brain diarrhea.

I love that. Yeah, I've used NuCalm before. I like it. And I'm a big fan of Sam Harris's Waking Up app as well. And so, some of his longer meditations and I've had a couple of friends learn how to splice those things together with various other tracks like NuCalm and other things. This is getting fancy, but it's interesting to play around with. I think the body scans are great for the reasons you mentioned, Ben. It's a way to get out of your head a little bit and it's a way to just kind of let everything relax. And that's typically what you need is you just need your your brain to shut off enough so you can start jumping into deep sleep, which is what all of us need to do in that early time when we get into bed.

Remember, the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BestofSleep.

Next up, from a lightning round Q&A with me, daytime napping, how I have alternatives to a nap that allow me to get through a full sleep cycle without necessarily falling asleep, and a whole lot more as well as a few of my favorite relaxation technologies. Here we go. Now, related to this idea of brief spurts, brief bouts of exercise during the day, this has also been looked at when it comes to sleep deprivation. Came across another really interesting study that looked at the effects of sleep loss, and they're trying to figure out what kind of exercise could allow for you to stave off The Detrimental Effects of Sleep Deprivation. So, they looked at everything from glucose management to mitochondrial respiratory function to tiredness and cognitive function. And, what they found was that brief bouts of high-intensity exercise, we're talking 10 to 30-second all-out powerful bouts of exercise throughout the day could mitigate the detrimental physiological effects of sleep loss. And again, this doesn't take much. This can literally be kind of similar to the squat concept, every hour doing 30 burpees or just like going up a flight of stairs as fast as you can. Or even though I got a green screen back behind me during this podcast, which hopefully they're using to make me look like I'm next to the Eiffel Tower or underwater with the bubbles, uh, I've got a Carol bike, right?

Also not a sponsor of this podcast, but anyways, the Carol bike is cool because it, it is basically a quick sweat-free workout.

I get on it, I can do a quick 10 to 15, 20-second max burst during the day. And it's really cool that if you're sleep deprived, brief bursts of high-intensity exercise can stave off the effects of sleep deprivation. Let's face it, it's also good to know because it's kind of hard to want to go to the gym when you're sleep deprived for a long formal 40 to 60-minute workout. But just knowing that if you just tell yourself, okay, I'm going to get through this day of sleep deprivation, I'm going to do whatever, 10 burpees every half hour. That can have a really significant impact on glucose tolerance, respiratory function, what's called protein synthesis, because sleep deprivation can lower your ability to be able to build and maintain muscle. So these are all cool little hacks when it comes to sleep deprivation. Now, what's interesting is you can stack on top of this the two compounds that I have found to be incredibly effective for allowing you to have good cognitive function in a state of sleep deprivation. So one, we've got a clue about from a recent study that came out February 28th, 2024. One single dose of creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in what's called cerebral high-energy phosphates, right? These little energetic phosphate groups available to your brain during sleep deprivation. And what they did in this was they gave subjects a high single dose of creatine.

I'll give—

tell you exactly how much in a second. And what it did was it improved cognitive performance and processing speed. And the author said partially reverses metabolic alterations and fatigue-related cognitive deterioration in a state of sleep deprivation. That's pretty cool that just creatine can do that. Now here's the only problem. They were using 0.35 grams per kilogram. Well, pound is, or a kilogram is 2.2 pounds, right? So if you do the math, that means a guy like me has got to be taking north of 25 grams of creatine to stave off the effects of sleep deprivation. And I don't know why they did this in the study, probably because it was logistically easier, but they gave these people in this sleep deprivation study, 21 hours of sleep deprivation, by the way, that whole dose at one time. I don't recommend that. That's a fast track to disaster pants. And for anybody who's used creatine, you know what I'm talking about. So in order to do this effectively, you would have to take your standard 5-gram dose of creatine. And by effectively, I mean not spending the day on the toilet and pulse that throughout the day. Like you wake up, you've only had 2 hours of sleep, you take 5 grams of creatine, a couple hours later you take 5 grams of creatine and you keep going until you get up to around, rough math, 0.35 grams per kilogram. Don't worry, I'll put that number in the show notes. Just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/475 and it'll be over there. But anyway, so creatine pairs very, very well with another compound that I think because it simulates the type of DNA repair and cellular repair mechanisms that would normally happen during a night of sleep can be a really, really good thing to stack with creatine. And that is NAD+. Any day that I'm sleep deprived, I take extra NAD+ and I take extra creatine. Try it. The next time that you haven't gotten as many Zs as you want. I guarantee you're going to notice a big, big difference. So, NAD is a pretty easy supplement to find these days. So is creatine. You could use— the ones I use are the BioStack Labs NAD, and I use, of course, because I'm affiliated with the company, the Kion creatine. And that's the stack. So, 5 grams of creatine, but you got to pulse that throughout the day. Do the rough math, 0.35 grams of creatine per kilogram of body weight. Now, of course, a lot of people in a sleep-deprived state are also curious about the effects of napping. And this was another kind of cool paper that came out recently. They looked at the association between daytime napping and the cognitive and physical performance detriments and fatigue that occur after sleep deprivation. Now, the conclusion here was pretty straightforward. After a night of normal sleep or partial sleep deprivation, a daytime nap between 30 and 60 minutes long has a moderate to high effect on the improvement of cognitive performance and physical performance and the reduction of perceived fatigue, meaning that a nap is a huge weapon in your weapon box, tool in your toolbox for combating the effects of sleep deprivation. Now, I know many of you, because I've talked with many people about this, you have trouble taking a nap. It's hard to turn your brain off in the middle of the day. And, um, it's difficult to just shut down, or you're groggy and fatigued when you wake back up from the nap, and it's hard to start the day again. Now, here's the deal. I take a nap almost every day. As a matter of fact, I have instructed my team not to schedule phone calls, consults, work, etc. for me between the hours of 2 and 4 PM. That's not because I'm taking a 2-hour nap. It's because after lunch I tuck away, and by the time I get up from 40 to 60 minutes of napping or some of the alternatives to napping that I'll describe to you in a second, I need some time to jump in a cold bath, do some stretching, get back up, go through some more work before I'm ready to turn on the phone and jump back into a formal scheduled consult or something like that because I don't like to jump right into a phone call with somebody when I'm still digging the nap goo out of my eyes. So anyways, what I do is with lunch, I will consume an adaptogen. I like adaptogens because unlike, let's say, weed or marijuana or CBD or melatonin or something like that, they allow your body to turn down the dial a little bit without leaving you fatigued afterwards. Some of my favorites are reishi extract. I'll stir a little bit of reishi extract into the cup of bone broth or water that I have with lunch. There are other adaptogenic blends by a company called Four Sigmatic Mushrooms. I like some of their stuff. There's adaptogens like shilajit, which actually a lot of people use for energy, but I like it after lunch. It seems like it helps me tone things down a little bit. Cool thing about adaptogens is they'll kind of turn up the dial if you need the dial turned up, turn it down if you need the dial turned down.

So anyways, reishi is good.

Ashwagandha is another really, really good one. Tulsi, astragalus, any of these common adaptogenic herbal blends are really good. And I'll put a few of my favorites in the show notes. But basically I have that with lunch and then sometimes I can't sleep. Because I've got like 800 emails and the 4 phone calls from that morning and a podcast coming up and I can't turn my brain off. But what I do is I have a few little tools that I have sprinkled around that I use to be able to shut my brain down in the afternoon. One is NuCalm. It is a sound app that can simulate in a short 20 to 30 minutes almost a full sleep cycle even if you're not sleeping. I didn't really believe it. I interviewed the guy on my podcast. I look at some of their sleep spindle data, some of the research that they presented on the show, and I feel incredibly refreshed even with a 20 to 40-minute NuCalm session, even if I don't fall asleep. Another one would be this gal I follow on YouTube, Ali Boothroyd. She has fantastic yoga nidra tracks, which I think Dr. Andrew Huberman has made popular by calling them non-sleep deep rest protocols. And very similar to something like the NuCalm, kind of simulates sleep without actually sleeping, even though sometimes I do fall asleep. I've even downloaded Ali's 8-hour Yoga Nidra track and use that on an airplane for a long airplane flight. So anyways, Yoga Nidra would be another one that I like. And then the last one that I use quite a bit for my afternoon nap is this device called the Sensate.

It's—

think of this like a vibrating purring cat sitting on your chest. It ties to your app, the Sensate app on your phone. You select an audio track, and they're all very soothing. They range anywhere for 10 to 30 minutes, and then you put it on and the thing vibrates in conjunction with the audio track. It's incredible.

Uh, it'll lull you back to sleep if you wake up at 2 AM.

It's great for an afternoon nap. I love to use it on airplanes.

It's pretty affordable.

And what's cool about it is that about every month they add a couple new tracks to the app, so you can constantly be kind of changing things up so your brain doesn't get used to a certain audio sequence and start to engage in what would be called anticipation of the actual audio, which can keep you awake because you know what's coming up next in the song versus your brain being in a little bit of a confused state about what part of the audio is coming up next, so you relax a little bit more. So, those are a few things that I'll use is the NuCalm, the Yoga Nidra, or the Sensate device. And, what I like about any of those tools is they're also fully portable for when I'm traveling because I also nap when I travel. So anyways, Head nod to napping, and it's a fantastic way to combat the effects of sleep deprivation. Next up, Louisa Nicola. I interviewed her about easy ways to get smarter, the best jet lag hacks, why cold water is better than cryotherapy, weed before sleep. That was interesting. And today, we're going to dive into managing sleep during travel and even sleeping on a plane.

Related to the, the idea that we were talking about earlier regarding sleep. I would imagine that a lot of these folks that you're working with get derailed when they're traveling to tournaments or events, or they're dealing with jet lag. Like, what are some of the big dial movers for you when it comes to managing things like sleep during travel or jet lag?

Well, first of all, you have to adjust your sleep schedule. So they're like gradually shifting the sleep schedule before departure.

I know, and that's a pain in the butt though.

It's such a pain, but you have to. Um, so that's the first thing that we figure out, like, where are you traveling to and how can we adjust the sleep schedule 72 hours before departure?

Now, now, when you're adjusting the sleep schedule, are you adjusting these so-called— what they call like zeitgebers— like when you eat, when you get exposed to light, when you exercise? You're doing all of that in the time zone of where you happen to be traveling to?

Absolutely. We're, we're adjusting everything because food is very big as it relates to circadian rhythm. It basically tells your body that you're awake or that you're preparing for sleep. And then we do, you know, adjusting for light as well.

How many days in advance?

72 hours, so 3 days.

Okay, okay. So 3 days in advance, you start to adjust your schedule for where you're going, and then what?

Yeah, so then once we get onto the plane, that's the next thing. We, depending on how long the ride is, we try and advocate for eating minimally. I won't say completely not eating. If it's a 3-hour flight, then don't eat. But if you are, we encourage all of our athletes to take their own food. And you can, you can take, you know, people think you can't take food, but you can.

Um, people think you can't take food on airplanes.

People listen to me, are we allowed to like take food past the, um, security? I'm like, of course you can. Yeah, maybe not a milkshake, but yeah, but yeah, um, so take your own food. Once you're on the plane, you're still gonna stick to your schedule of time zones. So you're going to sleep— if it's 11 PM in your time zone and you're on the flight, you're going to sleep at that time as well. You, you can try— if you can try and sleep, you can take some sleep aids if you need. The second— the third thing is overhydrating. So, not just hydrating, I want you to drink more water and electrolytes than what you would on the ground.

Now, we should issue a disclaimer here, like don't get hyponatremia. You don't want to overhydrate. As you know from triathlon, it's more often the dehydration that sends people to the medical tent. So, be careful. Don't dilute your fluids. But, what do you think because I'm right on board with you, Louisa, about avoiding food on airplanes, especially the actual airplane food, but eating in general, not only due to the circadian issues that you talked about but also the microbiome disruption that's been shown in literature, especially for long-haul flights. But one, one thing that I always keep in my bag, I'm curious to hear your take on this because it seems to have a little bit of a potentially, uh, like, like a DNA or a radiative protective effect, would be, uh, ketones, like drinkable ketone esters or something like that to kind of keep the appetite satiated during the flight. You ever mess around with something like that?

I do. I was taking Ketone IQ, and I travel quite often. Tomorrow I'm flying to Europe, which is crazy. So I'm on that, you know, I'm doing this to myself as well. I'm— for the past 72 hours I've been on Europe time. So I'm also taking Ketone IQ, like ingestible ketones. And what I'm also doing is— I don't know if you do this— do you ever take a greens powder with you as well?

Um, well, to be honest with you, I find that greens powders make me super duper regular, so I don't do them on a long-haul flight because I just don't like spending lots of time in the airplane bathroom. So no, I, I don't use greens. You like those though for a flight?

I do, because what I'm trying to do essentially is also eliminate or decrease— I wouldn't say eliminate, decrease the amount of inflammation. So we're gonna already getting like— yeah, so you have to remember as well, your oxygen isn't as great It's pressurized. So we need to do anything that we're, you know, going to be able to decrease the amount of inflammation that we have. Water, obviously, electrolytes. I take a greens powder with me as well just to help with that. Um, and then I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses. I always say don't rely on blue light blockers at home, you know, because they're not going to be doing one— they're not blocking blue light 100%.

But when you're on the flight, especially on the skin's photoreceptors, They're not blocking any of that.

No, exactly. But when you're on a flight, you need to get as much help as you need. So these blue light blockers are going to help you. Getting a sleep mask, getting earplugs, getting whatever it is to make you feel comfortable and at ease on that flight.

Okay, that makes sense. And I mean, the ketones, those will kind of modulate the NF-kappa-B pathway to a certain extent and, and have a little bit of an anti-inflammatory effect. But, the other two things I like is I'll use hydrogen tablets in all the water that I drink just because that's kind of a selective antioxidant that allows me to get some anti-inflammatory action without needing to go take green poops in the bathroom. And then, the other one is NAD. Like, NAD has some really good properties, especially even as far as making you feel better when you get to where you're going. So, there's some companies that make NAD patches.. And I'll just like slap one on my inner thigh or like the back of the arm, you know, an area of hairless skin. And I, I find that NAD works fantastically. Do you ever use NAD?

I've done— I've never used the actual, um, NAD patches, but I can see that—

IV for the whole flight.

Yeah, I was going to say, I can see that that would actually help. Um, but then again, like, it's got to be able to penetrate the cell, NAD. And does the patches do that?

Yeah, yeah, they've got some pretty good data on actually, I mean, the oral bioavailability of NR and NMN. Yeah, even like NAD or NAD+, it's pretty decent. But intravenous, um, transdermal, or even suppository-based delivery, you get way better cellular delivery. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend the suppository on the plane. You don't want to be clinching the whole time. But you know what's interesting is, um, I've tried a lot of these tactics and the thing that seems to be the biggest dial mover for me, Louisa, and I catch some flak for this, but I put in my bag before I go through security an actual jogging suit that's lined with silver fabric that's essentially a wearable Faraday suit. And after I go through security because you can't go through security on earth, you look like a ghost and you freak everybody out and you got to do the whole pat-down. But afterwards, I put that thing on and it's like a full-body hoodie and pants. I think there's a few different companies that make them. Mine is No Choice is the company that makes it. It's got a full zip-up hoodie. And since I started using that thing, especially for long-haul flights, my amount of jet lag has plummeted. It's crazy. And it's just like a full-body, like a Faraday suit. You ever seen these?

No, I just wrote down No Choice. I want to have a look at it because I travel so often.

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I was shocked. It even has little, uh, little, uh, plugs in the cuffs of the pants so that when you get to where you're going, they have little alligator clips and you can ground to a metal object, like when you're waiting for your bags or whatever in baggage claim. So you get like this massive amount of grounding and earthing. And again, like, it's not the most fashionable item to wear on a plane, but It seems to work really well.

Is it compression as well?

No. Well, they have long johns that you can wear underneath them, but they're not compression gear per se. I'll usually have compression socks on and then pull that thing over it. Now, sometimes when I get to where I'm going, I feel really good if I can jump in a cold body of water or do some cryotherapy or something like that. But, whether or not it's related to sleep or jet lag, I'm just curious, is there anything to the idea of heat therapy or cold thermogenesis when it comes to mental performance.

Yeah, I was just going to add on that. When you get to your destination, one thing that we get everyone to do, depending on what time it is, like if it's early morning, we always get somebody to get off the plane and go for a run. It's like a mandatory, like, get off the plane and exercise. It's going to get you— the fastest way for you to adapt to the time zone is through exercise.

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