148: Exploring Mold's Impact on Sleep and Circadian Rhythms with Mollie Eastman

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

All right, everyone, here we are. It's another day. I don't know what day it is because I'm recording this on Thursday. I don't know when it's coming out, but I'm really, really excited about this episode. We've never done anything on sleep specifically before on the show, but I know from so many clients that I worked with over all the years that one of the big symptoms that comes up, along with all the other things, is I can't sleep. There's this insomnia component that comes with it, and it's kind of this vicious cycle because if you're not sleeping and your body's not getting into the place that it needs to to detox anyway, and then we're getting hit with other things is making us not sleep, and it's like this vicious cycle that. That just kind of keeps going. And so, you know, while we know I'm going to set it up at the top, while we understand that environmental exposures and toxicities will have an impact on this, the purpose of this talk is not necessarily, like, how to stop the exposures and all that stuff in order to fix the sleep. The really where we're going to here is we're in a space where we know something is impacting our sleep. What are some things that we can do to kind of help reverse that a little bit in the short term with the understanding that everyone who listens to the show knows that you're breathing this stuff in on a constant basis. You're going to be fighting an uphill battle. So we'll kind of like, set that stage there, and then that's where we're going to go. So with all that said, I'm really excited. Today we have Molly Eastman on. She is the creator of Sleep is a Skill and the host of the Sleep is a skill. PodC Sleep is a Skill. It's a company that optimizes people's sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability, behavioral change. So it's really, really cool and an awesome, just, like, learning skill set I think, that every person needs. But like, this community specifically, in some cases, it's like very, very necessary. And so that's why I'm happy to have Molly on. So Molly, thanks for joining us. How's it going?

It's going really well. Thank you so much for having me excited to touch on this today because I'm so excited. You know, I think it's so important, the work that you're doing because it's one of those components and one of the reasons why I name this company Sleep is a skill because I think people that have dealt with long term sleep difficulties, myself included, that was part of the genesis of this, of this company, can be frustrated by this, the kind of over simplicity of some of the sleep recommendations that people will come across. And oftentimes we find that it really is a skill set to develop. And there are certain things that we can do with sleep 101 to kind of educate and take away those practical things. And there are times where you're peeling a lot of layers back and mold and environmental concerns can often be a component of that. And one of the things that I'll also share is one of the unique elements of our company is that we do require every person we work with does have to wear an OURA ring to participate in our program. So because of that, we've amassed a large, very large database of OURA Ring users. So we've been able to see what are some of those things that do move the needle for people, depending on if they're having difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep. You know, those 2am 3am wake ups that can be so frustrating, or the early morning awakenings where now you're you woke up too early, now you're just up and frustrated that that's the case. So no matter where those people are at, so we can get really measurable improvements in their sleep with those metrics. And so with that we can talk about how often I will see some of those metrics being impacted by something in their environment, mold being so commonly one of those components. And I will say that one of the unique groups that we have a lot of, we do a lot of work with, is with high stakes poker players. And I share that only because they're a really unique group that happens to be in an environment, often a casino, that is designed on purpose to confuse our circadian rhythm. And I mention them just because while they might be an extreme example, many of us are dealing with some form of that in our own lives that we might not even realize just because it's so common how we're managing our health and well being so we'll definitely talk about some of those things that could support people while they're dealing with what they might be dealing with, with whether they suspect it's mold they're dealing with mold, the remediation of that and then of course how the aftermath of being. Having been exposed for so long.

Love it. I grew up in Vegas. That's.

I even, I even got it when World Series of Poker was big. I mean I wasn't high stakes by any means, but I go in and play like tables or whatever.

Oh my God. Well, I lived in Vegas for two years during COVID so that was. It wasn't part of the plan. But we had my husband, he has a couple companies in poker and nonverbal communication. So he's the guy for spotting tells at the poker table for high stakes players when they like final table. And now they want to mitigate their own tells but then also be able to spot the tells of the people at their table. So because he has a background in psychology and forensics, was a professor out of Manhattan, cuny and so applying that. So he's got a couple companies in poker and then the non verbal communications are reading people. So all under the umbrella of behavioral change, which really at its core is a lot of the work that we do as sleep as a skill. Because you can learn all these things. But if we aren't bringing these behavioral change practices into play, it's sort of like just nice to know.

Love it. That's super awesome. It's another conversation. I'm so interested in that stuff. I think it's so cool. And then I would sit there and extra shows and be like. And then I'd be the table, like what is this guy doing? What does this mean? Or is he just scratching his nose for no reason? Like maybe a niche? Maybe he's telling me something. It was so ridiculous.

Oh, I think it's a great exercise in awareness, personal awareness, both for yourself and then reading, you know, the people in your environment and then to take it at. At the table. It applies this interesting kind of set of variables that you can learn a lot about yourself and how you respond to some of these variables and then take them out into the rest of the world. So it's a really cool area.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Well, before we get into everything, why not. Why don't we just start with a background on. On you and sort of your origin story. Everybody has one and that's why they're doing what they're doing. At least Most people that are on the show.

Oh, totally, yeah. Um, I think mine hopefully will be helpful to the listener because it's really a story of my relationship with my sleep. I now truly think of my life in a three part series of, you know, how life was before I had truly my sleep breakdown, what that looked like, and then the, the aftermath of that. So in. For many years as a kid, high school, college, I had a lot of labels and narratives around my sleep. So I would say things like, I'm a short sleeper, I'm a night owl, it's in my jeans, I'll sleep when I'm dead. You know, kind of just this way of relating to my sleep as a fixed state. It's just how it is. So I just got to survive. That was how I sort of acted and not correlating as I would get more and more extreme with my behaviors. I'd be going to bed later and later and later, waking up later and later and later and being justified and righteous about it the whole time and saying, well, you know, I make my hours, so who cares? What's the big deal? Just, you know, sleep in later. Um, and so at the as that would progress, not noticing or correlating these kind of deleterious effects that were happening in my own life. So heightened anxiety, beginnings of an ulcer, shingles in my 20s, you know, a number of things that were kind of screaming that the ways that I was managing my health and wellbeing was really not working. But it wasn't until as a serial entrepreneur in Manhattan, burning the candle at both ends, that when I went through this period of insulting insomnia that it changed my life forever basically. And what happened was I had this real breakdown. And of course these often these things don't come out of, you know, in a vacuum. There's a lot of stressors and things in. And certainly also in my environment, I did have mold in the environment that I was in, in the lead up to this. So that was a component as well. And, and when I went through this process or period of insomnia, it was a real kind of. It was the fear, I guess I could say during that period was intense because I came from a family of a lot of people with a lot of mental health issues, a lot of pharmaceutical use, and a fear that, okay, this is the moment, this is where I'm going to go down this path of I'm going to have to now take a pill to go to sleep and this is going to be my future and I'm stuck like this, you know, I'm broken. All of these kind of thought patterns that were certainly not helping the situation and expanded the length of time that I was dealing with this insomnia. So I went to the doctors and left with sleeping pills and kind of in that moment realized that if I was going to change this or get up under this, I was going to need to take real action and take responsibility for this area of my life. And it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me because it really turned my life upside down. As I started going down the rabbit hole to explore what are those things that can really make a difference with your sleep? One of the biggest things was learning about chronobiology, the science of time and how time affects your biology. And a lot of ways, especially in the mainstream conversations of health. It's a much newer concept. Only in 2017 was a Nobel prize given for this topic of circadian rhythm. And it's a massive importance in our health and well being and how intricate it can be. So as I started to discover these things, it was like, why are we not all talking about this? And as it started to slowly heal, my sleep and my sleep became not only back to where it was, which I shared wasn't that great. Instead getting to these improved levels of sleep that I didn't even think were possible for me then just, I couldn't stop talking about it. So what ended up emerging was these small groups. These small groups grew into online courses. The podcast, which we now have the number two Sleep Podcast, a five year long running newsletter that goes out every Monday called Sleep Obsessions.

Just this whole kind of creation from one of the darkest and lowest periods of my my life. So I share all that. Not to just share all that, but to say that if anyone is listening and no matter where you might be at on that spectrum of slee difficulties, whether you're in the camp where I was and just, you know, kind of stopped you in your tracks or you just kind of would like to improve it or it's not as great as you would like it to be or what have you. No matter where you are, I'm confident that there are things that we can do to improve your sleep and your sleep results. And that's part of my mission on this planet is to help support people and getting back in the driver's seat with their sleep.

Yeah.

And can we, can we do like a sleep 101 for people? So why is it important to be sleeping the way that you're Supposed to be sleeping.

Well for the why? You know, I assume that this is a kind of savvy listenership that's aware of the importance of sleep. But it is also helpful, I think, for a lot of us to hit on just the areas of life that are impacted when sleep is not working. And it turns out that it's just about every domain of life is impacted. And we struggle to find a single area of life that is not measurably impacted when you are not getting enough sleep. And in recent years, even more information has come out of, say, the interaction of your cardiovascular health. Certainly tops is one of the really impacted areas as well as your cognition. So your ability to be productive, do all the things that you've got to do the following day massively impacted, as well as things like the awareness. Only in 2012 do we discover something called glymphatic drainage with a G instead of lymphatic drainage with an L. Glymphatic drainage with a G is kind of the cleansing properties, cleansing process of your brain while you're sleeping at night. And that really seems to happen largely during deep sleep sleep. So if you're not getting that consistently, that's another measurable impact to the brain and your brain health, which does seem to have correlations in large scale studies of a possible correlation with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia. So there's neurological impacts both long term and short term.

So those are add to that real quick on that. So there are also studies that are out that are, that are essentially talking about the term of inhalational Alzheimer's or type 3 Alzheimer's, which is Alzheimer's type symptoms that is not actually true Alzheimer's in the way that that is originally been thought of. It's breathing in environmental biotoxins that are triggering Alzheimer's symptoms. Right. And it's reversible. So that's what Dr. Dale Bredesen does a lot of work in that area. He calls it recode. I've done some trainings and stuff with him with his group. But that type of Alzheimer's onset is a reversible type of onset. But tying back to cognition, brain fog, brain detox. Right. So if we're in a space where we're breathing and our nose is going straight up there, it's very close proximity. Right. And you're getting exposure to that stuff and then we're not allowing our body to drain the brain the way that it needs to in the sleeping cycle. Do you see a connection when the deep Sleep piece isn't happening, the glyfatit drainage isn't happening the way it's supposed to. And people are maybe complaining of brain fog. Is there movement there? Once you start getting them to kind of into that deep sleep mode, does the brain fog start to subside?

100% yes. And there are studies to support this. Things like, you know, error rates on certain tests that people, participants will take when they are well slept, when they're getting quality sleep versus sleep deprived. And the error rate often goes through the roof for people. Also emotional, emotional regulation. So this applies very much to my poker players when they're, you know, dealing with tilts and the experience of high stakes situations and being able to emotionally regulate is really, it's, it's linked quite strongly with the quality of that sleep that we're getting. But particularly as you're pointing to that deep sleep, which as we know, important. Maybe one of the first practical takeaways so far in this conversation is that as people are managing their sleep, some of us might think that we can move around the timeline of when we fall asleep and when we wake up and still shake out to around similar sleep architecture. But in many, many studies it appears that that doesn't seem to hold true. Instead if you go to bed a bit later, which is so common even I've found a blind spot for a lot of people where they think, oh, I'm pretty, I'm pretty regular and then I look at their stats on their wearables and then we often find that there can be very clear patterns where, you know, the weekends or certain times where they're going to bed much later, waking up much later. Now the problem with that is if you go to bed later than your normal time, then we find that seems to lob off a bit of that deep sleep. And then because you might think, well just, you know, we'll change the ratio over, but it doesn't seem to work like that. Seems like you're cutting off some of that deep sleep possibility, which to your point is massively important for our brain health and many other fallout areas. So then the flip side is true for the people that are waking up early and cutting off, you know, to get to the gym or whatever they're doing, then that can seem to cut into rem, which is almost, can be referred to, has, you know, been commonly referred to as things like your inner therapist or the process of helping to support emotional well being among many other things. But one of the important things that it does and so for cutting off that morning piece, then that can impact that side of things. So both are so important for just that regularity factor.

It's funny, you said I was thinking about my ring and when I kind of see stuff and I see that if my sleep is cut down a little bit, like I'm not getting full, you'll say I'm not going eight, maybe I'm going like six and a half or something like that, that the REM drops off. Like the REM is lower. So does REM typically happen at the back end of your sleep cycle and then deep is in the middle of the early. Is that how it works?

Exactly. So you can look at kind of the architecture of sleep. And certainly to your point, if you're, if you're someone that has a wearable, then you can take a look at that on your wearable. And this the common approach. And there's a lot of questions on the theories as to why this is. Is deep sleep first because it's the most important or is that just. Are there other reasons why that would be prioritized first? A little unclear, but yes, you do seem to go into a higher ratio of deep sleep on the first half of the night. Also correlates with. If you are managing this thing called circadian rhythm entrainment, which we can get into some of the practical takeaways for that, then you're helping to support your body temperature regulation and other things so that you can get into that really deep level of sleep where your heart rate's getting nice and low, your body temperature is getting nice and cool, and you're able to just be in that totally relaxed state so that the body can go to work on that kind of reparative properties across the board. Now many another practical takeaway, one of the reasons that I see people being interrupted in that deep state sleep on the first half is because of very just common which feel like, you know, innocent behaviors of say late night eating poor, a lack of awareness of the temperature component, the massive impact of temperature component, both in what you're doing throughout the course of the day, your behaviors, ice baths, saunas, stress, other things and then going to sleep and then also your sleep environment of how you've optimized that or not optimize that. But certainly one of the most common, alcohol, THC and eating late. Those will often give your body extra homework, if you will, to be dealing with Now. It's. I mean, even the process of digestion sends all of this blood flow to the stomach. It's like all of A sudden they've got this extra. The body's got all this extra work to do versus being able to, one, focus in on that glymphatic drainage. And we spoke to the massive importance of that. Two, all the other reparative properties for the gym workout you just did, and all these other things that the body would like to be able to tend to. It is now being split in its resources to handle those kind of pieces of the puzzle you gave it.

Yeah, that makes sense. You know, you said something a couple minutes ago when you were comparing regulating emotional response and like poker players until.

Just to like make the connection. Because I think if I just want to make sure I like verbalize it. Yeah, the very high emotional decisions and things that are happening in people that are going through this scenario in their house, right? The stuff that's going on with how they're interacting with their spouse, with their family, with trying to figure out how much money they need to spend on something, like all of that stuff. When you said that, I was like, you know, I feel like people who are going through this are constantly in that tilt, right? I even talk to clients, they're like, they're on, they're on full tilt. It feels like like everything is coming at them. We don't know how to handle it. And then there's interpersonal relationships that get taxed on that, right? It's, it's, how do I handle this? How do I talk to this person, this person's not supporting me, all of that stuff. And so, you know, I feel like everyone generally knows, like, don't make big decisions when you're like seeing red, right? Like, take a breather, don't get that email and immediately smile back with everything you want to say, like, leave it, come back, look at it tomorrow or something. And so, you know, that component of this, I think is really important, like regulating that emotional response component and what's going on. I mean, if we're only looking at two benefits of trying to figure this stuff out. It's getting your brain right so you can think and navigate this stuff as well as you can. And then it's helping your decision making process, which you're going to have a whole lot of those to make under high stress with everything that's going on, just to kind of frame like the importance of some of this stuff that we're talking about.

So well said and so important. Actually, I just got off a podcast with the creator for the Apollo and, you know, decades of working in the realm of from a therapeutical approach from and neuroscience backing of just the, the simple importance for anyone with their sleep of feeling safe. And certainly if we have it, that we can't even safely breathe our air, that is at odds with our ability to feel safe to fall asleep. So we do have to do a lot of work with, okay, while I'm dealing with this, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. There's things that I'm working on. There's. We're going to get through this. Because one of the biggest things with sleep and anxiety and things we see in general when some of these mechanisms can get tripped up is the thinking that this is permanent or it's always going to be like this, or now I'm broken or now something's, you know, really wrong here, so I can't possibly get sleep. And we want to live in the world of gray where yes, we are dealing with that mold and we are dealing with potentially the aftermath or wherever they might be in on that journey and supporting the fact that we, for thousands and thousands of years from an evolutionary perspective have been designed to be able to sleep. We can still sleep. And this is where if people are finding that psychological component really at odds. Cbti, Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is wildly efficacious as far as an approach for people to help kind of poke holes in their thought patterns. Because many of us, you know, you're, you're sleep deprived, you're just not doing so well. Full tilt, as you said. And our thought processes are not always at their best. Now one other important piece I'll bring in is new research around something that's being called the mind after midnight. And what that is is something to be aware of just for anyone that so common where we might wake up in the middle of the night or something happens. You couldn't fall asleep and now you're up later than you normally would be. Now they call it the mine after midnight. But whatever your timeline is, you're late, late night. And what they're finding is that our emotional regulation capacity seems to be not so hot during those, during that time to the point that measurable where we see suicidality, so suicide rates going up, periods of time, you know, the way that people are weighing in on some of the levels that they bring into these studies, some of the questions that they'll bring in, the way people are looking at themselves in their lives are altered in those late nights. So we really are diurnal creatures meant to be active by day and at rest at night. And when you do find yourself awake in those late hours, my suggestion would be to bring in the framework to not believe a lot of what's coming out of your mind in those hours and kind of just create a personal agreement with yourself that you're not gonna go down those rabbit holes that can often come up. Now I know that's easier said than done, but just be aware that you're not alone in it. Can. Something can feel very heavy and a magnitude in at 2am when tomorrow at 12pm it's gonna look and feel a lot different.

I have so many questions, but I can't ask them all. The amount of time both of my parents work swing shifts in graveyard in Vegas and the complete like shift of your sleep windows and I mean it's just, just like so interested, but it's not, it's not what we need to be talking about right now.

Okay, well, one thing I would say really quickly to anyone that not only. So I'm so sorry that they had to deal with it because that can be so impactful and hopefully they were able to find a nice, you know, structure for themselves and cadence. Some people can aim to thrive as much as possible. That can really be a struggle. And if anyone's listening, that is a shift worker or many of us are still living like shift workers and not even really realizing that. And what that is looking like is one important call out. And I've actually been talking about this a lot on social media and in our newsletter because just on Monday.

In the US there was a ban on incandescent lights, halogen lights, a lot of types of light bulbs only really allowing LED lights. Now this is creating a lot of kind of stir in the circadian community. What this, you know, the practical takeaways here are that 200 and almost 250 circadian scientists all kind of came together and they are calling for warning labels on light bulbs used at night. And the reason for this. And they've got mountains and they're citing almost 2700 peer reviewed or pieces of evidence and studies, many of them peer reviewed. And they're citing this to make the argument that we know that the World Health Organization, National Toxicology and others and NIH et cetera have now confirmed the carcinogenic risk of electric light at night. And that certainly is a big hit for shift workers. But we also see the impacts of diabetes, we see the impacts of cancer rates, particularly prostate and breast cancer and other fallouts, deleterious effects for health and well being, depression. All of these Things that really get augmented the more we're living outside of those rhythms of nature. Kind of living our own proverbial Vegas lifestyle. Believe me, I live there. I also was in Manhattan, another kind of Vegas adjacent type, you know, lifestyle. Totally get it. And yet if we can look to how can we move and shift our lifestyle to be more representative of how we used to live when we were living more connected to nature. Now I'm not expecting everyone to move out into nature, but where there are actual studies where people find that they take people camping that said they were super night owls, like the, like the me of a bunch of years ago, I would be, oh, I'm extreme night owl. That's just how it is. It's in my genes. You take those very same people camping and you take them connected to the rhythms of nature. Bright lights by day, zero artificial nights at light lights at night. And their melatonin levels and cortisol levels start to, they start to go earlier. So they're moving earlier so that your sleep on time is moved earlier. So you have to be really careful of if you are someone that has an identity around being a night owl, which is exactly what I did, and, or, you know, particular identity around the type of sleep that you get now. Because we might not be realizing how much our environment is and our behaviors are playing a role into that. Like your parents with the shift working. Call out.

Yeah, I mean, this is all really interesting. I want to. So let's start trying to get into maybe some specific things now that we've set the stage. So the first place that I go to is like, how do we prepare and set up a sleeping environment? That's something that's, that people can do. That's an easy thing to do. I've done some tweaks just from things that I've seen around as well, but that was one thought. And then the next thing I'd love to get to is some of the kind of like therapies that people in this, in our world are dealing with. You know, like sauna and possibly, you know, red light or maybe like, you know, all that stuff. When are optimal times to do those things in order to like, can it help? Or is it just you do them so they don't hurt? Right. Like, when does all that happen? But I think, I think kind of like coming out of this thing. All right, so these are the ideal sleep environment setups and maybe some things that can augment and improve, you know, maybe even beyond that.

Perfect. Okay, so we do offer a free downloadable PDF that people can get. That's called the Optimized Bedroom. 17 high tech, low tech ways that people can optimize their sleep environment. Which also is very important to include the places that you're hanging out in the hours before your bed before you get into your bedroom too. So you do want to do your due diligence in shifting over those kind of living environments and then your bedroom because you want to create an environment where you have very amplified duality to your day. Very bright and kind of warm if you will experience by day. And that kind of reflects into your body temperature. And then in the evening post sunset, you want very.

Dark, dim to dark in the lead up, but totally dark while you're sleeping. And you want it to be cool and progressively cooler throughout that time. So in the future this will be circadian aligned smart homes will definitely be a piece unless you're concerned about EMFs and which you or you're in kind of the camp of where we are now where you need to manually create this for yourself so you would wake up and you can change the temperature in your space if that is available to you. Just you know, having a difference between day and night. You're getting all of your activity, your movement out throughout the course of the day. That includes ice baths can be done on the, ideally on the front half of your day a bit more because oddly, I know that might sound confusing, but that's because of leveraging that paradoxical warming effect that happens thereafter exposure to cold plunge or cold temperatures. Because then the body will almost kind of over swing and bring us to this warming effect also much depending on your exposure level, kind of this excitatory effect that happens thereafter of dopamine and more of this awake promoting response that we want to have on our first half of the day. So you can leverage all of those things. And then on the flip side in the evening, what you're doing to create your environment is that you are being really facile in your ability to get rid of just about any sort of that electric light at night. I mentioned the warning labels on traditional light bulbs. That's not just being said to just be said. It's a really big deal because the presence of those lights are suppressing your melatonin production. And we want you bathing in melatonin in the hours leading up to bed so then you have a sufficient production of melatonin and kind of melatonin pulse in the evening. And it's so dependent on light, but it is also dependent on things like the three kind of time givers that I'll touch on with velocity will be light timing, temperature timing and meal timing. And you know, I've already touched on the light and the temperature. But the last one, and there are others, these are called Zeitgeist, which is really German for time givers. But there are others, but these are just really impactful ones that I see time and time again where if you are eating in darkness in the evening, that seems to be disruptive of your ability to produce sufficient melatonin and that can kind of be at odds with your kind of bodily response because your organs are all on on clocks and times. So what you're looking to do is create that workability there where in the evening, dark, cool and almost a fasted state are giving, you know, your digestion a bit of a break. If you want to learn more about that, some great research you can cite is out of the Salk Institute. Dr. Sachin Panda wrote the book Circadian Code. Great resource to learn the timeline of how the time that you eat tells your body things about what time it is, what to be doing when. And if you are eating later consistently into the evening, then that can impact your ability to both fall asleep and often very commonly impact your wake ups throughout the course of the night. So I do suggest that if people have it available to them to get continuous glucose monitors to support kind of normalizing that and minimizing those wake ups. But that environment, you're getting it as dark as possible. You could use red lights, amber lenses, you know, you can also do amber blue blockers, Red blue blockers, no clear ones, unfortunately they're not sufficient to block enough of that melatonin or disruption of the what we're trying to have the goal of producing melatonin. So you're doing those things in the evening. You could also bring in sauna to your point around the temperature piece because the sauna then has that paradoxical cooling effect thereafter. But you're just playing with leaving enough of a buffer time to lower heart rate, etc. If you don't have sauna, then a hot bath, hot shower and other things of leveraging the temperature piece. But then once you get into bed, then highly suggest if available to you, a cooling mattress pad. I see those make just such a measurable difference for people with their stats in such a short period of time. So lowering of heart rate, improving of heart rate variability, HRV and other metrics, less sleep fragmentation, et cetera. Now you might want to play with which ones have More because there can be concerns around molds, you know, the water. And so certainly you'd want to do your due diligence to set yourself up powerfully for that EMF, etc. But so one of the ones that I support is Chilipad. And so that one has. Has been tested for the EMF output. As long as you're managing the fact that you know any mold concerns there that can make a big difference in your measure, measurable output in your sleep, but also temperature, just lowering it as much as possible, 60 to 67 degrees is some of the recommendations from the Sleep Foundation.

60 to 67 degrees, that is cold.

That is cold now. So that's a big shocker for a lot of people. So what we see with that, and that can often be paired with the cooling mattress pad. Now we think about that, and it can be like, oh, my gosh, why are we such divas? Why would we need all this? But if you hearken back to thousands of thousands of years, it's only been in recent modernity that we're in these kind of insulated beds and trapping our heat with, you know, foam mattresses often or kind of these very foreign things that in the past we would have likely, our understanding is sleeping pretty much on the ground, which would have been the coolest place in your environment, which is kind of a natural chili pad, if you will, because that would have been very naturally cool. There's also a theory. Now, this is a theory, but the why that weighted blankets can be kind of calming to us. There's a theory that, you know, weighted hides or things that we used to. We likely use for blankets in the past could have had that kind of calming effect. Now, that's theoretical, but we certainly know that you would have had a very clear difference in temperature by day and into the night. And that's really what we're trying to get to. We want a difference because right now most of us are living in a static environment that's very zoo like. We're indoors, same temperature, pretty much, same lighting. And we have no clue how much that's massively impacting our circadian rhythm and the deleterious effects that that brings.

That makes a lot of sense. So is it less about. I mean, maybe it's not. Is it less about the actual temperature degree number and more about a variation in sort of where you are during your day versus night?

Very important point. Especially if. Because this. These specifics could change. If you're in Vegas and you're someone that you know is outside Most of the time. And it's hard. Vegas is a bad example because half the time you can't really live there without AC.

But 15 right now.

Exactly. But maybe not Vegas, but if you're in a very hot environment, you know, close to the equator or what have you, and for many, many years people are existing without ac, so maybe fans or what have you, and they're experiencing more of the swings of both the day environment, that massive amount of light that in summer can get to 100,000 lux or so. So they're getting very, very bright light exposure as well as a much higher temperature. And then it markedly drops in the evening. So you are looking for that swing to your point.

Got it. Cool. Does, does the sauna sort of trigger that swing a little bit? Because then it's like a spike that you're going before you come down. Is that, is that a way to kind of manufacture that swing a little bit? Because we live in our houses and our temperature 75 all day or whatever you set it at.

Yeah, exactly. Yes. And so that's why, you know, those two pieces, the cold therapy and heat therapy can be really, really valuable to helping bring about a little bit more variability of that body temperature. Because our bodies do everything possible to kind of maintain that homeostasis and that certainly applies to body temperature. And by flexing a little bit of that hormetic stressors, that can create a bit of that change. Now of course, as always, would it be nice if we could just have like this protocol that works for everyone? Certainly there are times there people are wildly stressed or sick or other reasons why you might not want to put a hermetic stressor in to play like a sauna, like a cold plunge. So in those cases, maybe it's something gentle, maybe a nice warm bath or things of that nature. So you, when you're listening to these call outs, it's always important to one being in your own N equals one component and get curious and hopefully measure. I do really suggest, where possible, if people are interested in measuring their sleep to get in the game of it, using a wearable, having it on airplane mode, etc. Or if you're really just not in the wearable conversation, even an old school sleep diary sleep log that can give us a lot of insight around what is really going on with your sleep and ways that we can kind of get another angle in at impacting it.

What of all of this stuff?

Yeah.

What are like the couple things that have the biggest impact on our sleep quality? There's a Lot of things here. It's, we can't do 100 things right. Anytime we try to sit down, like we're going to do, I mean, even me, I'm like, I want a sauna, I want a red light, I know I want to work out. And then you end up doing none of it. Because it's just like, if you have to pick like the one or two things that seem to have the biggest impact on the readings that you're looking on the back end for previously quality, like what, what are those?

Okay, so the most important thing, if you get nothing out of what I'm saying, please make it this. It's that we'd like to bring about a bit of an anchoring protocol to the start of your day, which can sound counterintuitive. You might think of sleeping at night. We want to start your day with your consistent wake up time. Seven days a week, plus or minus 30 minutes is kind of the general wisdom right now. And so say it's seven o', clock, we want you having seven o' clock across the board. Really seven days a week. If you have a really rough night, that's where people are like, oh well, of course, I got to move it out a bit. That would be so cruel and unusual punishment. And yet we find that you can of course swing it out a little bit. But we'd suggest that in most cases, if you can not swing it out much more than say like 45 minutes, maybe max an hour if it's a really crazy night. But by keeping yourself tethered on that anchoring system of that consistent wake up time, this helps support the circadian rhythm piece that we've been speaking to. These clocks that are in every cell and organ of your body, trillions of peripheral clocks, and they're all being kind of tuned by the master clock in your brain, the superchismatic nucleus. What's the most important thing that impacts those clocks? Light. So by having consistent light timing, you're anchoring that anchored wake up time with something called sunlight anchoring. And this is coined by a researcher out of Stanford, Dan Party. And what he has kind of coin the sunlight anchoring is so, so crucial because you're bringing about that light exposure. You have to physically go outside to really get this benefit. And you have to not be wearing sunglasses, hats, all the things. Of course we don't want you injuring your eyes or anything that hurts naturally. But ideally in a safe way, you are getting light exposure directly into naked eyes. And by doing that, we find that that Helps helps kind of tune this these clocks and help support the proper cortisol pulse by the morning. And then that oddly sets almost like an imaginary countdown that around 16 hours or so after that bright light exposure, then you'll be getting sleepy in the evening. So if you want to be getting sleepy at a certain time, which for most of us is earlier than you know, our current time, usually we're kind of creeping out. If anything, then that's what you want to start getting connected to is when are you getting your first bright light exposure and connecting that and marrying that to the wake up time as much as possible.

How long is the first light need to be?

Yeah, so bare minimum, I'd say around 10 minutes for most people. Now that is a super super broad brushstroke because it does depend on where you are on the globe, what time of year it is, what cloud coverage is outside, etc. Etc. But half the time people say oh it's cloudy outside, I'm in Seattle or whatever, why bother? No, you still absolutely want to get outside consistently because almost always most times and you can measure this, you can get free downloadable apps like Lux or Light Meter that you can measure the lux output in your environment. And you'll almost always see see that even on a cloudy day it's usually a few thousand lux outside, which is much more. The average light environment inside is around 500 to 700 lux. That's like in this weird twilight state where your body thinks that you're just in this static twilight time zone and that can be very confusing to your clocks and the ability to fall asleep with ease and stay asleep. So physically getting in the outside if it is really cloudy or if it's in the winter when and you're in a northern latitude location, northern latitude locations, then you're having much weaker sun exposure then you actually do have to stay outside longer. I know it's like a bad news insight but we're looking to you can leverage and when it's colder, the cold exposure piece so you can know that you're getting some of your cold exposure.

Or out in your bathing suit for a house.

Exactly. Wim Hof.

Yes. Yes, that is my official recommendation.

Love it. All right, I have two more things that I wanted to wrap up. First thing, let's start here. What's your favorite sleep device for tracking Oura ring?

Yeah, for 2023 right now, you know there's a lot coming so things can change. But the simplicity of Oura ring, the validation studies, we actually just had them on the podcast, which was exciting and they were speaking to their new rollout of their new sleep stage classifications, which they were comparing against 1500 nights in a sleep lab. And so now they've their sleep stage classifications are validated about 80% accuracy for sleep stage classifications. Now that sounds like oh, but turns out that for PSGs, which are the gold standards, polysonogram sonography for your sleep, the agreement between experts seems to fall around 83 to 85% and that's the gold standard. So one call out I would always say with wearables is that don't get too crazy about the sleep stage classifications because it's always its weakest data point and areas to to reference. However, this new rollout does make it much, much more accurate and validated with those nights in a sleep lab. So I would suggest that. But I also really like the readiness page for that which pulls in things like hrv, heart rate variability, heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygen and all of those can be really helpful for managing our nervous system. And anyone that's dealing with mold or environmental concerns or heavy, toxic, you know, a toxic load, then knowing these metrics can be really helpful to understanding are we just beyond like you can often see your environment and how it's serving you based on some of those metrics because they're so nuanced.

Yeah. And as far as. So I have an ordering too. Mine's old though. It's probably like three or four years old. Is there any difference in like the new rings and the sensors and stuff that are in them or is the updates really happening more on the software side that's getting into it or is there a need to sort of upgrade like aging devices at any point?

Yeah, I know, I know I've because I've been a part of Oura ring for years and years. And so the new Gen 3 is where you will get some added benefits. So kind of the rollout of this improved algorithm, you will get the improvements around. There is the subscription model that they now have on the newer ones, which some people don't like. Some people like the subscription model, not that much of a couple bucks a month, but you do get added benefits from kind of like meditation, breath work, all those sort of things, but also the blood oxygen readout and other capabilities, daytime heart rate information and other things, things that you're not getting as much on the older models now. And for some people, they don't mind that that's fine for them. But depending on what you're looking for if you are looking for the mass or kind of maximal, maximizing the value out of that, then I would suggest upgrading if available.

Well, it's good. It leads me to the last question I had on this, which is what readings are the most important ones to even be looking at? Right. So is it.

Yeah, you know, do we need to.

Know what my daytime heart rate is, for example, or like when you're looking at this, like what is the stuff that's actually like important for what we've been talking about today?

Yeah. Well, I will say sleep is very complex because different people might be dealing with different things. If you suspect you might have sleep apnea, which by the way, sleep apnea current estimations around one in four people, but that can go massively up and there's a thinking that there's a lot of underdiagnosed people. If you're dealing with sleep apnea and if you're using a CPAP and then you're in a moldy environment, that's definitely a big problem because you're pulling in all that mold and what have you. But for the sleep apnea people, then looking at metrics like how restful. So the restful indicators on the OURA ring can show if you've got a lot of movement going on, if you've got a lot of those little spikes of awake time throughout the course of night, even if you don't remember them. But if you see a lot of those little spikes of being awake throughout the night, then that can be indicative possibly of a respiratory issue or sleep disorder. Now do know that there's over a hundred sleep disorders. So if you suspect you have a sleep disorder, definitely, you know, speak with a sleep professional. Sadly, don't expect that your MD will know much about this. They get on our on average about two hours of training in sleep, sadly even out of Harvard Medical School. So you do want to go to a sleep specialist on those topics. But that could be for. Is there, is there flags for disordered breathing? Of course consumer grade tech can't diagnose that, but that can raise the red flags that we really want to get you tested. But then for other people then we want to be. I often recommend people be mindful of HRV heart rate variability. The reason for that is it's a metric of recovery. So it's giving us a sense of how well recovered were you second to second to second as you were sleeping throughout the course of the night. And we can get a sense of some of your trends, your baseline and then when you're deviating from your baseline either on a positive perspective, you're improving those HRV trends. And so what are we doing with that and how can we support that in the future? Or what are we doing that's really having us kind of tank and supporting those pieces?

Is there a target HRV number? I've always looked. I know it's so different for people like, like people who are really athletic and like have higher ones than people who aren't, aren't. But is there some sort of range or like if yours is like, like low in this range and there's some sort of stressors happening, if yours is in here, that's kind of, you know, it can range between this 20 or 30 and that's kind of normal. And if you're up here, you're like Olympic athlete or something like that.

Yeah, so funny I just said ig live on this exact topic earlier today. But what I'll say about the HRV piece because people can get really stressed out about the HRV baseline of their, their numbers and especially you can fall into compare despair. So ideally don't compare too much to other people because they've got a whole other different set of things at play. Ideally trying to find your own baseline and then there's certain protocols around how to think about when you're deviating from that baseline. So for instance deviating around 20%, that can be a sign like a drop, that can be a sign that something is impeding your ability to recover. If you're dropping on 40% or more, that can be almost like an, you know, red stop sign that we want to get clear on what is impeding our recovery mechanisms and helping to support that. Whether it's, you know, stopping any extreme exercise you might be doing. Some of those hormetic stressors that we were speaking to, potentially certain types of foods can flare up kind of allergies, sickness, other things. But back to your kind of specific question. One of the things I can share too is that on different wearables, if you're like a Whoop user, Apple or you know, what have you, then particularly both Whoop and Aura have done a nice job of showing some of the average as far as the user base. Now you can make the argument that these user bases might be more health inclined. So is that representative of the population? Unclear a little bit ago or surpassed around a million users. So it's a particular data set. But some of the medium readouts that we've seen for certain people with HRV numbers has been around 27 for mediums if that helps for people to not freak out too much. However, that's like a very generalized statement because you can look at some of their charts and graphs and find your age range, gender and kind of where you're falling now that's just to compare against that group. Instead. A couple things that we can be aware of is yes, there are Olympic athletes that are in the hundreds or more, right. Like you know, very, very high hrv, very high heart rate variability. Also age as we particularly in for children, for teenagers and you know, 20s, much higher HRV readouts often than when we start going into 30s, 40s and beyond. And what I'll say with all that is that we do know that when we get in markedly lower HRV range that can be common of mental health disorders. So that's an important call out. We're still unclear on like what does that mean? Is that just happened to be one of the components or you know, still a lot of questions about the why for that. But it is important to be aware that if you are seeing that struggling HRV then kind of being stuck in that chronic stress response state can be indicative of that. Is it environmental, is it physiological, psychological? That's kind of the unpeeling that we got to do.

You're saying 27 is the median from the mass. From the mass data.

Yes. So that's with OURA Ring and that is just one of the, one of the call outs that has been pulled out as far as the user base of Oura Ring users. Now if you. Then they'll show it in other means. So I often share that one just to kind of help calm people's nerves a little bit just because people get really concerned about this HRV piece. Now if you want to get more nuanced and they'll show it in other ranges where depending on your age group, gender, etc. There are a lot of differences in HRV. So you can get more of a sense of where you're falling. Now that. But that can be across a user base of say like teenagers into. We've got certainly people that are using OURA ring that are in their 80s, 90s. So that is a big sweeping, you know, kind of use case.

It is. But it's just interesting because I for some reason was always like it, it needs to be 40 or something around there because I was always like in good shape. I'm like, I feel like this is it. And then like I started seeing, I was like, I'd be In the high 20s, I'd be in the low 30s. And then one night I'd spike to like 50 for some reason. And then like next night, do you, when you're looking at stuff, if you have a one random night, because that happens sometimes you're like, oh man, my HR is 55. It's 60 today. I just crushed sleeping. And I. But like, you don't really notice anything that you did differently in the day. Like do you see that happen without any, without any direct correlation every now and then, or is there always like something that's going on and we just don't know what it is?

Yes, really great call out. So HRV is so confusing for. For many reasons because there's so many factors that can be at play. Also there are kind of paradoxical responses that can further complicate this. 1. If people have AFIB or any certain heart complications and their readings can be all over the place and that can be confusing. But then also when you're injured, so we see people that get surgery or you know, they've had some sort of injury and then they'll see corresponding peak in their HRV thereafter, which super confusing because you'd be like, oh well, aren't I recovering? I just got injured. You would think it would really tank. Now some of theories around that can be that the body is almost forcing a parasympathetic response. And that could be the why that we're seeing that forced improvement in HRV and almost kind of like it's almost taking over the controls and helping to support that you are going into that parasympathetic response. It's really indicative of an improved HRV response. So more sympathetic. Sympathetic when we're dropping very. This is blanket statements and often more parasympathetic when it's raised. One thing that I can often say that for a lot of women, and particularly of men's reading age, that they might not have realized a very clear hidden pattern can be around their cycle and how much their hormonal shifts will show up in those HRV responses. So much so that we were excluded from a lot of studies for many, many years just because it was so clear. Those changes, depending on where we are in our cycle, that would impact hrv. The general piece there is that women tend to have a lower hrv, higher heart rate on the second half of their cycle. Again, these are way general statements, but that is enough so that then they would often be taken out of different studies. So hormonal changes can show up and that can certainly be at play for men, especially with this widespread epidemic of lower testosterone and other things and stress responses and not getting enough sleep. And.

So, so there's a lot of these components and then you can get into the psychological piece. We had a doctor on the podcast that referred to HRV as your joy score. To further complicate things and not to get people have them be stressed out about their score. Oh, I don't have enough joy now. But there is a component of a happiness factor, a stress of safe. Are we at ease? Are we able to kind of calm those nerves? That can be a certain component. But we do know that one of the most direct pieces of or ways to impact HRV in a, in the short term is breath related, which can sound so like simple, but there are training modalities. So like the Leaf LI F is an HRV trainer that will buzz when you're going into stress state and then that will be a prompt for you to shift your breathing. So you know, I've got poker players running around with, with wearing different HRV trainers so that they can be aware when they're going into stress. Dates change, their breathing change, you know, other things. Sometimes dehydration can cause low hrv. Talking, standing, other things can cause low hrv. So this is where it gets super nuanced. But it can be really fascinating because it can be another almost. One of the experts I just had on the IG live called it your check engine light when it's really, really tanking. And then you can. It behooves us to explore what, what might be at odds there.

Awesome. I think that's a good place to, to call it for the day. So hopefully everybody got a lot of this. I mean it's, it's learning about how we sleep, why things are happening and not that you have to change every single thing that you're doing. But I like that we got to like one big thing you could pull on is just sort of anchoring delight and, and that's an easy thing that anyone can do. Right. And so if we can help to increase this stuff a little bit. We talked at the top about how that can help with some of the symptoms that are coming through and try to navigate all of that a little more. But sleep is. Sleep's super, super important. I've. I've made an effort. I wake up partially because I have kids. I'm not allowed to sleep later. So seven days a week, my wake up time, it doesn't matter even if I, even if I go out and have it, have a night which doesn't happen very often. Two little ones, but at the same time whether or not I was up late or not. So it makes me regulate my sleep because I can't if I want to. But it's actually nice because now on if there is a night where we go out and like go out to dinner or whatever and we don't get to bed for an hour or two later, I still wake up like at the same time, like without an alarm, like I'll just wait.

Amazing. Yes. That's the goal. To be like Brian. Exactly. To have that kind of consistent wake up time.

If anyone gets anything out of this, the goal is to be like, be like Brian.

Well, people complain about that, right? Like you go out and you know, I don't know, you go to Vegas and then everyone's out and about. And then some people are like, I can't sleep in. I'm always gonna wake up at 6am or whatever. And it can be frustrating. But that's actually a really good sign and kind of measurement system of your circadian rhythm health.

There you go. Well, that's exciting. I'm glad I got it. I got a gold star today.

Awesome. Well, where people find you. Let's wrap it up. You have, you clearly have so much more to share and I were like cutting it off. So if people want to hear more about all this stuff, where do they find you?

Sure. Yeah. @sleepisaskill.com is kind of the best place for all these things. There you can take a sleep assessment and you'll get information dealing with exactly what you are dealing with with your sleep. So that will be sent back to you to help support you wherever you're at. That will also give you that optimized bedroom environment that I spoke to, that downloadable PDF as well as you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. Love. Love interacting with people from the newsletter. So it's called Sleep Obsessions five years strong every Monday. We never miss a Monday. So I'd love to have you on there. You can also share like what you're, you know, experiencing with your sleep. And often we can share some of screenshots or other things to you know, encourage others and find what you know, crowdsource really what other people are experiencing or learning with their sleep. And we are also on our Sleep as a Skill podcast where all podcasts are available and then on social, probably most active, I would say on Instagram, but we are also available on YouTube, LinkedIn, all the other platforms as well.

Awesome. Well, thanks for taking some time today. I really appreciate it.

Yes, thank you. I so appreciate the work you're doing. You know, the enthusiasm and just curiosity that you're bringing to this area. It's so, so crucial and just, you know, overlooked or maybe not even considered in the, in the journey to improve our health and wellbeing so often. So you're really a pioneer. Really, really acknowledge you.

Well, thank you for that too as well. This is super awesome. Maybe we'll figure out another way to do something else. I'm so into this stuff.

So amazing.

All right. Awesome. All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most. Sam.