DO THIS Every Day To Improve Sleep, BOOST ENERGY & Destroy Fatigue! | Shawn Stevenson

There's a huge connection with cortisol and sleep and our metabolism. If cortisol levels are elevated, then it tends to suppress our melatonin, which we need so we can really wake up refreshed and our body is truly healed more than any other factor. There isn't a supplement, there isn't a superfood, there isn't some fancy exercise or trick or tactic or hack that you can do to replace sleep when it comes to really empowering this major operating system for your being alive. Specifically, we're talking about your brain. And so what we know right now is that just one night of sleep deprivation, just 24 hours sleep debt, which is not uncommon, we see a dramatic decrease in function in your brain in specific areas. So this is another issue where we're mistaking doing work for actually being effective, where we're burning the midnight oil. If we've got 10 things to do when sleep is one of them, we'll eliminate the sleep or reduce the sleep. and not understanding that we're not being as effective doing the work that we're doing. It's gonna take us longer, we're gonna make more mistakes, things that we're gonna potentially have to come back and clean up after it's all said and done. And so when we're well rested and we're bringing our very best self to the table, we can execute, we can have more creative thinking, something known as divergent thinking can manifest itself, we can be more efficient and overall just do a better job. We know what it's like when we feel good, I think that a lot of people struggle because they simply don't feel well. You know, we don't do well because we don't feel well and we're not showing up as our best selves. And not only that, we see this come across in our professional lives but also what about our academic lives? What we see now across the board when we compile a lot of different studies is that students who identify as poor sleepers or that tend to be sleep deprived on average have a full letter grade lower in their GPA, all right? So this is again, something that's put into culture as, you know, you need to work harder, you need to sleep when you're dead, sleep is for the weak. They are simply not true. We really need to take a good look at this because it's creating a lot of abnormal behaviors. This is something that is outside of everything else that we can talk about. It's built into our genes for us to sleep. If you really think about it, this is a state that we're in when we are the most vulnerable, to be honest. And since we're so vulnerable, and if there's no benefit from it, we would have evolved out of it a long time ago. But the truth is, humans, more than any other creature, we really need this sleep to improve the function of our brain. This incredible brain that we have is really fortified and supported more than any other thing that we do. via the sleep that we get. One of the first things that we see clinically when we're sleep deprived is an increase in cortisol. And cortisol is this glorified stress hormone, but it's so much more than that. It's really gotten a bad name in the press, but we need cortisol. Cortisol helps our thyroid to function. Our thyroid is really a master regulator of our metabolism. And so we need cortisol for that to function. It's really part of our kind of get up and go energy. But here's the issue is that when cortisol is produced at the wrong time and in the wrong amounts, it can definitely cause some big problems for us. And being that sleep deprivation increases our cortisol, this can lead to a whole slew of problems. Clinically, we would call folks tired and wired when their cortisol was too low in the morning and too high in the evening. And so with cortisol being low in the morning and having an abnormal cortisol rhythm, it would be difficult to get out of bed. Just such a huge pain and you have to just try and will yourself out of the bed in the morning. And I lived that firsthand. And it took several hours just to even get that fog out of my psyche. And in the evening, on the other hand, we'd be wired. When cortisol should be on a normal decline, it'll be elevated. And so we're just up. Even if driving home from work, it's 4:00, 5:00, sun's coming down, it's just yawning, like, I'm gonna get to bed early tonight. but 10, 11 o'clock rolls around and you're just up. This is surfing the internet, reading, eating, whatever the case might be, because of cortisol being produced at the wrong time. Now how does this relate to our muscles and our metabolism? There's a huge connection with cortisol and sleep and our metabolism. When we're sleep deprived and cortisol is elevated, this is a stress response by the body. there's a huge connection between our sleep, cortisol and our metabolism. And being that when we're sleep deprived, we have elevated cortisol. So one of the first things that happens, this is a stress response. It's a heightened state of a survival need by our bodies to generate more fuel because if we're up, we need more fuel to function, specifically for our brains because there's a reduction in glucose even reaching our brains when we're sleep deprived. And so cortisol has this very interesting ability to go and make fuel out of your most valuable machinery for your metabolism, which is your muscle. Cortisol can literally break down your muscle and turn it into glucose and use it as fuel. It's a process called gluconeogenesis. And one of the big triggers for this, it's not something we're doing with our diet, it's not something we're doing with our exercise, it's something that we're doing with our sleep. and being that muscle is your body's fat burning machinery, it's incredibly valuable to retain that muscle. And muscle is expensive. It's very expensive to carry around on your frame. You're gonna burn more calories just by having more muscle on your frame, whether you're at rest or you're active. And so losing your muscle simply by being sleep deprived, this puts us into this habitual state of trying to work out and work off and diet and deprive ourselves and fight our biology and all we really need to do is just lay our butt down and go to sleep. One of the most fascinating things that's been coming forth in the research in the last couple of years is this interesting connection between our gut health and the health of our sleep. We have what's known as this enteric nervous system located in our belly that has many of the same attributes as our brain, about 30 different neurotransmitters, different hormones, and specifically in relationship to our sleep, there are two very important ones that have a lot of dancing going on in your one of those is serotonin. And so we know that serotonin has a big role in our feeling of happiness. It's kind of this feel-good neurotransmitter, but it's also a big player in our sleep because serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. And that's this glorified sleep hormone that has a big role in regulating and controlling our sleep cycles. And so if we're not producing adequate serotonin, we're not gonna be producing adequate melatonin. Alright, so that's number one. Number two, melatonin itself. And I was blown away because when I was in a traditional university, I was taught that melatonin, which is this glorified sleep hormone, is produced by your pineal gland end of story. But it's not the end of the story. You have 400 times more melatonin potentially in your gut than you have in your brain. that should just stop us in our tracks right there. Because when we think about sleep, we think about something that's in our head, in a sense, and it's really starting in your belly. And you can actually have a pinealectomy, the removal of your pineal gland, which I don't recommend. And what research has found is that your levels of melatonin still stay relatively the same in your gut. And so now we know this enteric nervous system, that there are certain bacteria in your gut that communicate with the cells that produce these sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters. Researchers at Caltech and UCLA have already confirmed this. And so when we're trying to fix our sleep, oftentimes we need to fix our gut. And how do we go about doing that? Number one is protecting this incredible microbiome. Even Hippocrates says that all disease starts in the gut. And today we've really just looked past this and not understanding that this rainforest really, of different bacteria and viruses and fungi and all these different things that sound bad, we actually should have a symbiotic relationship with because we have trillions upon trillions of these microbes in and on our bodies that help us to experience incredible health. And with our gut microbiome, just like a rainforest, we know that there are certain species that are endangered There are some that are thriving. There are some that are even extinct that should be there in a healthy, kind of sovereign environment that's going on inside of our bellies, helping to regulate everything. What we want is to experience this symbiotic relationship with this friendly flora and keeping them in charge. But this, quote, bad bacteria can take control of our vessel. And there was research published in the journal Cell that looked at what happens to our gut when we're sleep deprived. And so what the researchers did was they took stool samples from test subjects and tracked what happened with their microbiome when they changed time zones, jumping through various time zones via a flight, and what happens before and after, basically turning their sleep cycle upside down. What they discovered was when these folks were taken off of their normal routine of sleep, changing time zones, somewhat sleep deprived, they see an immediate increase in bacteria in their gut that is typically seen in folks who are diabetic and obese. and this began with folks who were of normal health. And you see this change happen. The good news is after getting back on a normal sleep cycle, it all went back to normal with their microbiome. But you've got to think about how many folks are perpetually living this basically social jet lag because they're constantly and chronically changing their sleep cycle, bouncing around up and down, not understanding what it's doing to their microbiome. and so what we want to do is really make it so that it's very livable and comfortable for these friendly flora to be running our vessel and not the pathogenic quote bad bacteria. We do all need and have a certain percentage of those guys, but we don't want them running the show. So that's number one is really just getting on track with our sleep to support our microbiome. Number two in supporting our microbiome is eliminating things that kill our good bacteria. A couple of those things that is now very well known chlorine from our water supply. Chlorine is a very strong antibiotic. Yes, we do want something to clean our water supply. Absolutely. But there are better methods. And so right now, if you're using a municipal water supply, you might want to think about getting in a reverse osmosis system, but just blatantly consuming chlorinated water like you're not going to drink water from a swimming pool. That's gross. But we're taking a little it's diluted bit of that every day if we're just drinking from our kind of conventional stuff coming through our faucet. So that can be damaging your microbiome. So get yourself a good water filter or start drinking spring water. Another strategy is in support of the good bacteria is making sure that we're getting in some resistant starch. So this is a type of carbohydrate fraction that's not really digestible for us as humans, but it is great food for our friendly flora. so getting in some resistant starch. It's pretty easy if you're just eating a wide variety of vegetables and fruits and things like that. And so a couple of these sources of resistant starch that might sound a little bit exotic are things like Jerusalem artichoke, tiger nuts, and these are not actually nuts from tigers. These are a certain food that you could find at a lot of health food stores today. And unripe bananas even are a great source of resistant starch. So again, you can get a lot of that via your just eating a diverse array of fruits and vegetables, but those are a little bit more concentrated sources of resistant starch. And outside of that, we want to make it unfriendly for pathogenic bacteria by not giving them the food that they love the most, which is sugar, right? Specifically sugar from processed foods. Remove that food supply and it starts to allow that population of bad bacteria and good bacteria to start to turn in your favor. And one other thing to support our gut microbiome is to be a little bit more judicious in our use of antibiotics. Anti literally means against, biotic means life. They're not paying attention to which jersey your bacteria are wearing, whether it's a good guy or bad guy. Many of them are full spectrum and they're gonna kill a lot of your bacteria in your gut. And what we tend to see, and I've even experienced this in my childhood, is a very blatant overuse of antibiotics for everything, even if it's not bacterial. If it's a viral issue, you know, a lot of physicians still today are still giving these things out. There is some placebo effect. You know, on average, clinical trials placebos are about 33% effective. But what they're doing is they're killing off bacteria and oftentimes they're not getting replaced. So if you are taking an antibiotic, if it's actually needed, be sure that it's needed, make sure that you're taking a probiotic along with it. But if you can, avoid taking them in the first place. Use them when they're truly needed because they can be great, they can be life-saving, they can be transformative for your health, but do not abuse them. Another huge aspect as far as supporting our gut, which is going to support our sleep, is making sure that we're getting in plenty of good sleep nutrients. So these are nutrients that have very powerful roles in creating sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters. And these are simple things a lot of us hear a lot about on a daily basis, but we don't think about our relationship to sleep. One of them, for example, is vitamin C. We hear about vitamin C for inflammation, for supporting our immune system, but it's critical for our sleep as well. Public Library of Science published some data that found that folks who tend to have more interrupted sleep, that wake up more often, had this consistent vitamin C deficiency. And by addressing this vitamin C deficiency, getting their levels back up, they were able to eliminate those disruptions in their sleep. And so you might think that I'm probably getting a lot of vitamin C in my diet already. Why would I be deficient? It's important to know that there are many different forms of vitamin C. Just like the B vitamins, there are many different forms of that. There are many different forms of vitamin C, vitamin D as well. And so we have to understand that we want to get an array of all of them. All right, now, what does that look like? You might think that vitamin C is probably pretty easy for me to get. I'm probably getting it from a lot of sources. but you're probably not. It's one of the biggest deficiencies that we're seeing today because it has so many roles in being an antioxidant, in dealing with inflammation and dealing with stress. So we need a little bit more. We need good sources of vitamin C and also the form that you're getting it in. If it's synthetic, fortified in some kind of random bread or orange juice, that was my source. When I was growing up, I would go to like guzzle these quarts of orange juice that my mom would give me and thinking that I'm getting my vitamin C that way. And it can be a very denatured and just not something that's easily assimilated by your cells when you're not getting it from a natural, real whole food source ideally. So what are some good sources of vitamin C? Some of these are seen all the time, kiwis, peppers, oranges, lemons, all the citrus family. Of course, absolutely. You are going to get some vitamin C in vegetables as well, you know, green leafy vegetables. But then there are some superfoods, right? These quote superfoods that are very, very concentrated, extremely high, sometimes 20 times more vitamin C than you might see in an orange. Foods like camu camu berry, amla berry, or acerola cherry. So these are all things to look into and make sure that you're getting your vitamin C levels up to par to help to optimize your sleep. And another one that was published in the journal European Neurology found that calcium was critical to supporting your REM sleep and a deficient in calcium led to interruptions in your REM sleep. Why does this matter? REM sleep is where you're doing a lot of something called memory processing. This is where you're converting your short-term memory, things that you're learning right now, getting converted into your long-term memory. And if you're not able to have sufficient REM sleep or it's disturbed, this can really affect your memory. And something as simple as getting plenty of healthy sources of calcium again, Green leafy vegetables, it's going to be a consistent theme throughout. This is a great source of calcium. We got sesame seeds, there's so many good sources. But my big recommendation is to get a wide variety of foods that have all of these things built into it. That's the beauty of food, is that it has so many of these different co-factors and nutrients that we're looking for with all of the little things that make them work when it comes to the interaction of those foods and your cells. There's this old adage that says, if you want to watch your weight, make sure that you're not eating too late at night. And for years, I just didn't agree with this. I didn't think that it had any real grounds. But then I saw the research on how eating late can potentially affect your cortisol levels. If cortisol levels are elevated, then it tends to suppress our melatonin, which we need to really gear shift and take us through our normal sleep cycle so we can really wake up. refreshed and our body is truly healed and our mind is healed. And a really interesting study that was conducted by researchers at Deakin University in Australia found was that when folks were eating at night, they would have a response by cortisol being produced, which is kind of normal. When you eat a meal, there's a bit of a stress response because your body's going into high gear to try to convert this food stuff into you stuff. And what they found was that when folks were of a normal BMI, normal weight, kind of healthy individuals would eat a meal, they'd have about a 5% increase increase in cortisol at night with eating this evening meal. For folks who were clinically obese or overweight, when they would eat a meal, they would have on average about a 51% increase in cortisol. And that is just shocking to understand that you can have such a stress response when eating a meal. And knowing that cortisol is really an antithesis or an enemy potentially of melatonin being produced, it can blunt that response. And so if you're trying to get great high quality sleep and you're eating late at night, this can blunt melatonin. And so to address this, we want to look at potentially having a curfew or a cutoff time when we are eating a meal, especially if we have a higher BMI. Because the real catch 22 here is that it's very difficult to lose weight when we're not getting great sleep. And we're not getting great sleep. It's very difficult to lose weight. And so it's a really vicious circle that a lot of people find themselves in. They're trying to get this weight off. but to do it, they have to improve their sleep. And having great sleep can be a little bit more challenging when you have a heavier BMI or you're clinically obese or overweight. And right now there are millions of people who are struggling to lose weight because they're battling with their sleep quality. Unfortunately for so many people, they're struggling to change their body composition to lose weight because they're struggling with their sleep and they're struggling with their sleep because they're carrying around too much body fat. and this vicious circle takes place and it can be heartbreaking for many people. And so for us to truly empower people and to help them to transform their own bodies, we need to not just support them with their nutrition or with their exercise or with their stress management practices, we really need to support people in optimizing their sleep. The University of Chicago did a really fascinating study looking at how much our sleep can impact our weight loss. And they took individuals and they put them on a typical calorie restricted diet but they sleep deprived them and tracked all their metrics. That's just one phase of the study. Another phase of the study, they take the same people, they're on the same exact diet, they're not cutting any more calories, they're not exercising more, they're simply getting more sleep. They allow them to get eight and a half hours, so three more hours of sleep, and they compile all the data. At the end of the study, they found that when folks were well rested, they lost 55% more body fat. Simply by sleeping. And so for me, that's just mind-blowing because when we think about 55% increase in body fat loss, not weight by the way, actual body fat, I'm thinking you got to exercise more, you got to keep cutting calories and restricting and being careful. No, you simply need to lay down and go to sleep. This is something that for a lot of people, we can't wrap our minds around because We believe in our culture that in order to get something, we have to do something. It has to be hard. We have to be proactive. With exercise, we're doing something. With managing our meals and doing meal prep, we're doing something. But sleep, it's doing nothing. And getting so much reward, it's kind of counterintuitive. But here's the truth. Ironically, sleep is something where you have to do more than a lot of other things in our world today. because you have to stop what you're doing and our FOMO, right? Our fear of missing out and go to bed. It's not an easy task today when there's so much to do, there's so much distraction, there's so much coming at us to actually stop and to give your body the sleep that it needs. It's not a simple task. It might not be a sexy topic. It might not be something as sexy as that latest, greatest, newest workout or diet, but it's the thing that can transform your body the most. and my question is automatically when you hear a study like that, how? How can sleep have such a huge impact? And the how really has to do with how your sleep impacts your hormone function because your hormones are really the name of the game when it comes to changing your body composition. When you're asleep, this is when you produce the vast majority of human growth hormone. All right, kids have a ton of human growth hormone. That's why they have so much energy and they seem to be just very anabolic and growing. For us as adults, we understand that this human growth hormone, also known as the quote youth hormone, is produced during deep delta wave sleep. This is when we get the greatest secretion. And if you're slighting yourself or you're cutting your sleep short or you're not really doing the things to set yourself up for great sleep, going through your sleep cycles naturally and getting plenty of time in that deep delta sleep, you're missing out on one of the most muscle supporting, energizing hormones that you have that's a big fueling source for your metabolism. So that's number one. And number two, when we're looking at how does our sleep influence our hormones and our fat loss, another hormone that's influenced is melatonin. All right. Melatonin we think about in context of sleep and regulating our sleep, but it is a very powerful fat burning hormone as well. and study that was published in Obesity Reviews found that melatonin actually increases the mobilization and production of a type of fat that burns fat. It's something called brown adipose tissue or BAT for short. And it burns the fat that we're typically trying to get rid of. When we think about losing fat, we're thinking about white adipose tissue. And so melatonin is key in increasing and mobilizing this brown adipose tissue, which is going to help you to burn fat. But if you're not spending time getting your sleep, if you're not adhering to conditions of darkness. We need these conditions in order to produce melatonin. You're missing out on a huge metabolic boost. And one more hormone that's being heavily influenced by our sleep quality is leptin. Stanford researchers found that just a short sleep debt, one night of sleep deprivation, dramatically suppresses our production of leptin. And leptin is this really powerful satiety hormone that helps to keep our appetite in check and it's ironically produced by our fat tissue. Our adipose tissue is producing leptin to help tell our cells that we've had enough. And so when it's suppressed, we're going to have some issues with our appetite. We're going to have a production of another hormone known as this hunger hormone called ghrelin. And keeping these two things regulated depends heavily on whether or not you're getting adequate sleep. One of the most fascinating recent discoveries is how much our brain craves sleep in order to detoxify itself. So what we're seeing is that we have this lymphatic system throughout our body. It's really this kind of extra cellular waste management system that we're all endowed with. And in school, I was taught that this lymphatic system didn't have a pump necessarily, and so it was moved through movement. And also there's the blood brain barrier. So this didn't make its way to detoxifying and supporting the elimination of metabolic waste from your brain. brain. So now we know that the brain has its own kind of closed system, and this is called the glymphatic system, which is a little shout out to the glial cells that help to control it. And this system is helping to get rid of all of these metabolic wastes that accumulate in your brain. Now, you've got to understand, your brain is doing millions of processes every second to give you life, to give you thought, to help to regulate all these different functions literally from your head to your toes. And there's a lot of waste that result from that. And also old cells are needing to be displaced and moved out to make room for new cells. And so what we're seeing in conditions like Alzheimer's, for example, which is at epidemic proportions, one of the signs now that we're seeing very clearly is that it's an inability of the brain to detoxify itself. And so this isn't a small thing. and what we're also seeing is a state of chronic sleep deprivation that's becoming a cultural norm. And what I want people to understand is that this glymphatic system is 10 times more active when you're asleep than when you're awake. So it's really doing this deep cleaning when you're sleeping. In fact, your brain actually shrinks in size during sleep because of all of the waste removal that takes place. and if you're not getting adequate sleep, you're not giving your brain the opportunity to do its house cleaning that really helps to keep you healthy. When addressing improving our sleep quality, I always want to start with the low hanging fruits. What are some simple things, an easy on-ramp that all of us can do that are clinically proven to improve our sleep quality, but we don't have to turn our lives upside down to get the benefit. One of those things is simply optimizing the time that you're working out. Today, a lot of folks are exercising, but research now indicates that the time of day you exercise can have a huge impact on your sleep quality at night. Appalachian State University researchers did a really fascinating study to find out the time of day that you exercise, does it have an impact on your sleep quality in the evening? And so they had exercises to train at three exclusive times throughout the study. First phase, 7:00 a.m. exclusively. Another phase at 1:00 pm in the afternoon. And then the final phase was training exclusively at 7:00 pm at night. They compiled all the data and they found that morning exercisers, number one, spend more time in the deepest, most anabolic stage of sleep, which is fascinating in and of itself. Number two, they have more efficient sleep cycles. And that's what we really want for sleep. It's not always necessarily sleeping more, but it's sleeping better. Number three, they tended to sleep longer. and number four, they also had a greater drop in their blood pressure at night when they exercised in the morning, about a 25% greater drop in blood pressure at night on average. That's really correlated with an activation of what's known as your parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and digest nervous system, and turning off that fight or flight sympathetic. And the question is, what do we do with this data? Do we all just stop what we're doing and start working out in the morning? Absolutely not. If you find that it fits better in your schedule that you hit the gym after work, you don't have to stop doing that. But what I encourage you to do is to get a little bit of exercise in to start your day. Because what this is doing is something that we call a cortisol reset and getting your cortisol elevated to a normal place in the morning so that it can get on a normal rhythm and come down in the evening. And so this could be simply five minutes of exercise to start the day, right? This could be a power walk, a yoga session, this could be jumping on a mini trampoline, also known as a rebounder. do some little lymphatic work as well. This could be doing some superset, doing Tabata, which takes just four minutes, but do something to get your body active in the morning because truly a great night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning. Another very simple tactic that we can do to improve our sleep quality is to mind the temperature in our sleep environment. Our body goes through this process of something called thermal regulation. and our body temperature changes throughout the day. And based on what we're doing, when I was in school, I was taught 98.6 degrees. That's the human temperature. And your temperature actually fluctuates quite a bit throughout the day. And there's actually a drop in your core body temperature in the evening, naturally, to help to support sleep. And the release of sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters is kind of on that same track that goes along with that reduction in your core body temperature. With that being said, if your environment is not conducive to that shift, if it tends to be a little bit hotter, you're going to have a more difficult time getting the optimal sleep that you really need. And we all know what it's like when we're sleeping, we're too hot. It just doesn't feel very good. And researchers have found that on average, people with clinical insomnia tend to run hotter in the evening. And so there was a Dutch study that was done and they fitted test subjects with sleep issues with these ThermoSuits that lowered their temperature just one degree Celsius, just one degree. And what they discovered was that they woke up less often and they spent more time in the deepest, most anabolic stages of sleep simply by cooling them off. It's just that powerful. So what do you need to do? Get it cooler in your environment. If you have access to a thermostat, which is such a great gift that we have access to today, you can put it on a timer or simply turn it down a little bit before you go to bed. and what researchers collectively have agreed upon is that it's going to be between 62 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit for ideal sleep. Now, for some folks, it might sound a little bit nippy, and I'm not saying you can't still use your covers or have your fancy pajamas, your flannel, whatever you're rocking, and get yourself nice and tucked in, but you just don't want to overheat the environment. It's really as simple as that. And if you're somebody who tends to run a little bit hotter and you've got a significant other that's just not with it, with turning the thermostat down too much, you can even get something that you lay over your side of the bed called a chili pad that can cool you off and it runs cold water and it has been transformative for some people and their relationships by utilizing that chili pad. So there's lots of different strategies, but the bottom line is cool off your environment to improve your sleep. A great night of sleep truly does start the moment that you wake up in the morning and actually getting access to natural sunlight can show up for you when you lay your head down in the evening to go to sleep. So, innovations in clinical neuroscience found that simply getting some sun exposure in the morning led to reduced levels of cortisol in the evening. So, test subjects across the board were having reduced cortisol simply by getting some access to natural light. Now, here's a couple of things to understand. Exposure to sunlight actually increases cortisol when you're doing it during the day, which is not a bad thing. This is something your genes expect. It's something of a natural connection that humans have had with nature since the beginning of time. so that's number one. Also, sunlight increases the production of serotonin in your system. And serotonin is the kind of opening act or precursor for making melatonin. So this sleep hormone is going to be assisted by getting access to sunlight in the morning. When working to improve our sleep quality, something that is massively overlooked is just dealing with our psychology, dealing with this inner chatter. because for a lot of us, when we go to bed or when we're trying to go to bed, we've just got so much going on in our minds that just kind of keep us alert and keep us awake. And it's just a state of affairs today where there's so much going on, so much distraction, so much stress, and we've got all of these tabs open on the windows of our minds. And what we really need to do is to be able to not turn the computer off, but to minimize all of those tabs that are not necessary and just keep open the tab for sleep. how do we go about doing that? The greatest solution that we have access to is meditation. And the American Academy of Sleep Medicine did a study to find out the impact that a meditation practice would have on issues related to sleep deprivation in folks who struggle with sleep, AKA insomniacs. And so what they did was they put these folks through a mindfulness meditation practice for a few weeks. And at the end of the study, they found that by simply having a meditation practice in the morning, nearly every test subject had improved sleep latency, meaning they fall asleep faster, they woke up less often, they had better, more efficient sleep cycles, and they tended to sleep longer overall simply by implementing a meditation practice. Because what does that do? It really starts to give us some empowerment over managing all of the chaos that can be going on in our minds. And this does not mean not having thoughts. It simply becomes a practice where we can focus on one thing, right? Zoom in and focus on sleep, for example. And so I can't state this enough in how valuable a meditation practice is, not just for our sleep quality, but for our life overall. My morning routine is very special to me. It's really the catalyst for my day. It sets the blueprint for how things are going to go. And I've been doing the same routine for about 15 years, and it's pretty simple. but these pieces are potentially life transforming for folks as well when they implement these things. So the first thing I do upon rising is I take what I call an inner bath. Now for the most part, a lot of folks were going to take an exterior bath or a shower and we're going to present ourselves to the world. But my argument is isn't the inside more important? And taking this inner bath basically means drinking some high quality structured water to start my day. And I drink about 20 to 30 ounces. And what this is doing is really helping to flush out a lot of metabolic waste products that are accumulated during sleep. When you're sleeping, this is one of the longest times that you go without hydration, but it's also one of the times that your body is doing a tremendous amount of processes to rebuild you and bring you back better. And it's giving your body an assistance in flushing out this waste. And so that's one thing that I do. And it also gives us really cool benefit is something called water induced thermogenesis. You actually get a boost to your metabolism by simply drinking water. And it's one of the things that really sets the template for me to start the day. So that's number one. The next thing that I do is I do something for myself to invest in me, some personal development. And this could be an audio book, this could be a podcast, but most of the time it's reading a physical book. And I'll spend, you know, 10 to 20 minutes on average doing that and just feeding my mind. to start the day because it's not just about feeding your body and the nutrition side, but what about that brain nutrition? And so that's really one of those things that helps to kind of set that blueprint for where things are going for me. The next thing that I do is I take some time to do some meditation. And my mother-in-law taught me meditation about 15 years ago. And I remember when I first met her, she said this statement that really stuck with me. She said that if she could give the world one thing, it would be meditation. And at the time, I was just like, why wouldn't you give me money? Like, why meditation? I didn't get it. I didn't understand until I took a class with her, and it transformed everything for me. You know, prior to learning meditation from her, I was impatient. I was. easily frustrated. I was disorganized. I was just not the best me. I was disconnected from who I really am. And by sitting with her and learning these different techniques, it really helped to incorporate me with me. And I got to really be aware of who I am in my innermost thoughts. And through this practice, it really helped me to become aware that I was aware. and to really step into my own power and to take ownership over my thoughts, over my mind, my body, my actions. So it is one of the greatest gifts for sure that I've ever been given. After my meditation, then I do some exercise. So to get the benefits with my sleep, but also to get some metabolic benefits as well with this post-exercise oxygen consumption. Basically burning more calories through the day by getting this exercise session in the morning. so whether I hit the gym, whether I do a home workout or simply just doing five minutes of some Tabata or jumping on my rebounder, hitting a little power yoga session, but just something to get my blood flowing, something to really get my body alive and awake and ready for the day. And so that's how I really start my day. And from there, I shift over to eating some real food, Focus, no distraction, writing time and getting the most important thing done to start my day as far as the workload is concerned. It's like the Brian Tracy Eat the Frog. I do the most impactful, biggest thing to move the needle to start the day and knock over that domino. And that's my morning routine. So just the word love in and of itself, if you look at what does that mean in certain character traits, compassion, devotion, support and what self-love really is, is just directing those character traits towards you. You know, self-devotion, self-compassion, self-support and today, more than ever, I just think that it's one of the most overlooked and under-invested things for us to really be our best selves. You know, it's a big health epidemic stemming from our lack of self-love in my opinion. If you even look it up, like the definition of self-love, It tends to come along with this idea or belief system that it's something about vanity or that it's a lower tier quality to have. And so there's a big conflict of interest just historically. And you got to think about where that idea comes from. In a scriptural reference, we're looking at folks who are more academic, who are more successful telling other people not to be that way, right? You be happy with what you have. Don't strive for more, right? And today we live in a culture that we are very desensitized to what really creates self-love because we're hyper exposed to social media. It's constant comparison. And for the human psyche, it's like a whole different terrain. There's always been issues with self-love and comparison throughout human evolution. Of course, you know, you see the people around you, maybe the neighboring tribe or your friend, and you're comparing yourself, but today you're comparing yourself to everybody at once, chronically, and seeing what you don't have. And it's difficult to reference back and to look within to see the good things about yourself. And part of the reason we struggle with self-love is that we know ourselves. So we're with ourselves all the time. And those qualities of self-compassion are more difficult because we know our flaws. and we don't see ourselves in the same light. We might have compassion or devotion towards someone else. And how this all relates back to our health is it's a chronic stressor. It's just an immense amount of stress that was put on our, on our, on our nervous system, our endocrine system. When we're looking at these things and seeing this constant comparison of what we're not, we're releasing stress hormones. We've got a little dopamine action going on because we're seeking and looking to find how good everybody else's life is and how ours sucks. And it creates this kind of strange feedback loop of addiction to not being enough. And so, number one, chronically stressing us. And number two, being so hyper exposed, it can actually debilitate us from taking action. It's kind of like the work from Barry Schwartz, the paradox of choice. and when we have too many choices, if we have a couple, we like choices. If we have a couple of choices, it's good. You know, it makes us feel good. We like to have options, but when we have too many options, we tend to buy for nothing because it's just too much. And so it can debilitate us. Right. So this lack of self-love today, influenced by our culture, leads to hyper, hyper stress in our body. elevated cortisol, which potentially can lead to issues with our health, inflammation, body fat, and then also really debilitating us from taking action to change it. And working to cultivate more self-love for ourselves, it really starts with doing a little bit of a housekeeping internally and externally. And since social media is such a drag or such a barrier to us experiencing more self-love, to clean up our social media feeds. You can get rid of or block or unfollow the people that make you feel crappy. You can take control and eliminate the stuff that makes you feel like you're not enough. And so that's one of the action steps is to do some social media housekeeping. Another big thing is really paying attention to the things that you take for granted. Because the things that we're good at, the things that are our gifts, that tend to come natural to us, we devalue because they come natural to us. Somebody could be really great at speaking and sharing thoughts with their friends, but they don't really see the value in that because it just comes natural. And so they might not put a valuable label on themselves as far as being somebody who's a motivator or a speaker or a coach just because, oh, this is just what I do. You know, so taking an inventory and being honest about the things that you're really good at. and not, of course, not over valuing and seeing things that aren't necessarily really there. You know, like, I'm a great singer, but you're actually not. It's just the shower, it's just the, you know, the atmosphere or whatever. But even that, you know, there's examples like William Hung from, was it American Idol, I think? And he ended up getting a record deal. You know, he's like the worst singer ever, you know, there's still value there, but just doing an honest assessment about the things that you're good at. and praising those things, giving yourself some acknowledgement, which can be so difficult to do because we're taught to not do that because it seems like it's vanity. So taking that self-inventory, there's this very distinct presence of this voice that we all carrying around, but we don't talk about it because if you talk about this voice in your head, you can sound like you have some clinical issues, you know, you have some psychological problems, but we all have this voice in our head. And this voice can either be supportive or it can be damaging to us. And the question really, when we listen to stuff from like Eckhart Tolle, for example, and he's got this displacement is called your ego, but there's a presence that's always listening to that voice, and that's who we really are. And so starting to pay attention to that language that you're using towards yourself. And for a lot of us, and myself included, historically, I would talk down to myself. You know, I would, instead of being reassuring or supportive or compassionate, be aggressive, harsh, nasty. And so many of us are living like that. We're talking about billions of people every day with this negative voice in our heads. And we never take the time to acknowledge it and just like, wait a minute, why am I talking to me like that? And once you become aware of this other voice and paying attention to what it's saying, you can start to change that conversation. Awareness is the key. it's the first domino. It's starting to change the way that you speak to yourself and begin to speak to yourself in a sweet manner. And to have compassion and to be supportive of yourself because this is you. There is nothing else that's more important than this in pushing yourself forward. And of course there can be some tough love there. You know, we all need that from time to time. But beating yourself down and negating your innate value as a human being, it's not going to serve you or anybody else. The number one way to not achieve your goals is to not have any. And it's the biggest force that we have as human beings that's different from every other creature on the planet is this gift of foresight. And we have certain parts of our brain that are wired up to help us to move towards the thing that we carry top of mind. For example, we have the reticular activating system. We have millions of bits of data coming in every microsecond. that are being filtered through our RAS, this reticular activating system. And this is such a great tool and resource we have because we go insane from all of the data coming out and constantly thinking about where is my toe in relationships. And so when I said that, you probably thought about your toe. It's just like, was it not there before? No, your attention was put where it needed to be at the time being filtered by this reticular activating system. And so with the reticular activating system, we give it commands. So it's always filtering out and bringing in data that we hold top of mind. So things that we feel are priorities and are important, survival needs, absolutely. But also the things that you think most about. So if your goal is to lose 20 pounds and it's something that you think about, and you're holding it top of mind. And it's a very specific goal with a very specific number because a lot of people will misuse these systems and just say, I just want to lose weight. It's not giving our systems in our brain, a reticular cortex, reticular activating system, these different parts of our brain, very specific instructions. I want to lose 20 pounds. And I'm thinking about this, it's top of mind and it's my vision. And the more that we can start to see that and cultivate that, Our brain is literally going to start to filter out and find data in our environment to support the thing that we are holding top of mind. If we don't do that, if we're not clear on what we want, we're going to get a lot of random stuff happening. Even worse, if we're holding top of mind these negative thoughts about ourselves. So I can't lose weight. You're going to filter in and find more data to affirm, yes you are correct, you can't lose weight, you suck at it. or if you're holding top of mind this idea that, you know, I don't have support or that I'm not smart enough, whatever it is, you're going to find data to affirm that. The number one driving force of the human psyche is to stay congruent with the ideas that it carries of itself. This is how we're wired up. We're always going to find what we're looking for. And so using this power to our benefit by getting clear on our goals, giving ourselves permission, this is the biggest thing, giving ourselves permission to actually want what we really want is going to lead us there faster than we know. It is a sad state of affairs that we have to give ourselves permission to actually want what we want. We're programmed at a very young age to want what society wants us to want, right? Whether it's our parents who mean well, whether it's oftentimes mean well, whether it's our friends, whether it's our community at large. Now we have social media and my mother-in-law calls these borrowed desires and we're bringing in all this data. It's just like, I might want to have that. I probably should have that. And we're not really listening to this kind of internal guiding system that we have that for many of us, we have lost this Essence or lost this drive or lost the ability. to be honest about what we want because we feel that it might be shunned by the people that we care about. We might not get the support that we're looking for and also it might not meet the standards of what's accepted in society. Now here's the thing. Many of the great people that we talk about, they are the ones who are thinking about and articulating and expressing goals that are outside of the paradigm of what is deemed to be possible. right? You think about somebody like Elon Musk and he's like, yeah, we're going to put tunnels under the street in LA, right? Or this idea about, you know, whether it's PayPal or Tesla and just kind of thinking about things that are not currently present. When we do that, when we start to express our ideas, oftentimes they're going to get shot down. And so, but to experience greatness, to experience the real joy and to express the gifts and talents and capacity that we have in ourselves, we have to give ourselves permission and to look within and to be honest about what we want. Not what somebody else wants for us or what we believe we could possibly have, but what do we actually want? And when we do that, we're giving ourselves permission and power to actually have those things manifest in our lives. So many people today is kind of like an epidemic. going on right now when folks are feeling like, you know, I don't know what I'm passionate about, right? There's a big moniker out there about follow your passion, do what you're passionate about, follow your bliss. And for many folks, they just feel like, I don't know what that is. I would follow my passion if I knew what it was. I'm just trying to figure it out. And so what are some action steps that we can actually get connected to that, that thing that really fuels us and lights our fire? Because we all have it. and a couple of exercises to do and things that I've done for myself as well and also advice for my clients over the years. Number one, it's really simple, is just looking at what are things that you enjoy doing? We negate that because we tend to think that there is no value in it, especially if it's something that you're good at. You know, maybe you really enjoy painting and it's something that brings you joy. you get lost in it and you don't see any, anything bigger from it because it's just something that you do or that you might be, have a little bit of a proclivity towards. But this might be something that can sustain your livelihood if you give yourself permission to actually, hey, maybe these paintings that I'm doing could bring value and joy to other people. You know, let me create a little online store. And so another action step, when we're taking inventory about what we're good at, just writing, literally writing down, you know, like, I'm a good connector of people, or I'm a good speaker, or I'm good at playing the guitar. You know, things that you have a natural kind of gift in a proclivity towards. Write those things down, because chances are you're going to find some gift within those things. You're going to find your passion in things that you tend to be good at, but you might not see it as something that can be your passion or your gift that you're following, because it just seems like it's just something that comes natural to you. So write down things that you're good at. Just make a list. Just sit there and be honest. Nobody else is going to be judging you. You don't have to feel like you're like Kanye West and your head is just, you know, bigger than your body. And you're just giving yourself permission to be honest. Like, you know what? I really am good at coaching people. I really am good at research. I really am good at taking care of my kids, whatever it might be. You know, just write those things down. So number one is taking the inventory. The second thing is writing down things that you really, really love to do. Things that time just disappears. And this could be everything from painting to watching movies to spending time with your kids to, you know, writing, whatever the case might be. Write those things down. What do you just love to do? because for some of us, we might think, well, I love to play video games. I know that I'm wasting massive time in my life, but hold up. Pump the brakes. Do you know that there are people, there are actually hundreds of thousands of people that are sustaining their livelihood because of video games, right? I'm talking about people who play them, and then it stretches out to Millions and millions of people who are in the industry. of creating and playing video games that are living incredible lives, just working on stuff that they're passionate about. So do not negate the fact that you loving to play video games is this something that it can't be something that you follow as a passion. All right? When I was in college, I actually was getting into like video game tournaments just to pay my little college apartment rent. You know, there are ways to go about finding that passion, the thing that you love to do, and sustaining your livelihood and making an income. and potentially making a dollar while making a difference as well, because you can inspire other people. There are kids right now who have millions of followers on YouTube just doing video game tutorials, right? And they're getting ad money from YouTube. These kids are getting checks, you know, simply because they're passionate and they're willing to put it out there. All right? So take an inventory of things that you're good at and also take an inventory of the things that you really love to do that you just get lost in. Those are two good strong ways to just get this stuff out of your head and onto paper and start the dialogue within yourself to acknowledge what you're really passionate about.

There is an undeniable truth about our nervous system which is that our states of alertness and calmness set us up to be better or worse for certain kinds of events. So, for instance, if you want to sit down and do focused work, if you're too calm, too sleepy, that's not good. Your mind will drift. Similarly, if you want to relax and have a meal, if you're too stressed, if you're too alert, that's not good for all sorts of reasons as we know as well. So, one of the things my lab has really been focused on is to try and figure out what are the levers, what are the entry points for people to be able to deliberately adjust their level of alertness and calmness in this kind of seesaw-like fashion. And then to just elaborate on the seesaw analogy a little bit, try and imagine oneself not as this seesaw, but you're a person on the seesaw. So you're right all day long, basically you're moving back and forth. You're kind of surfing this seesaw between alertness and calmness. And one of the places where we see pathology, acute stress turns to chronic stress, or acute stress turns to chronic fatigue is when the hinge on the seesaw gets too tight. And the thing gets locked at one side.

Yeah.

Okay.

And- A lot of people are locked.

In the stress state.

Locked in the stress state or locked.

In the fitness state. Thank God there's too many people I.

See walking around too calm and relaxed.

Right.

Because the hardest thing to do, and that is an active process, to be in the mid to surf the seesaw.

Yeah.

This is what we, you know, the reason just a simple seesaw doesn't work as an analogy is because it's an active process. You're literally making adjustments all the time.

Like surfing.

Exactly. And what happens in sleep is it's as if we get to climb off the seesaw and relax for the night and then get back on there and we're able to surf the seesaw again. So we know there are a couple sort of foundational truths that can emerge from this model of how the brain works and how the mind works, which is that if we don't sleep, the hinge gets very loose on the seesaw. like stress, stress, stress, stress, exhaustion, stress, stress, stress, exhausted, it kind of bangs back and forth. And it gets harder to surf this seesaw. And so sleep is sort of the foundational element of all waking states. We often think about sleep as its kind of own thing, but sleep is the thing that allows you to deliberately access waking states in a really directed way.

We're gonna get really deep into sleep.

So that's the way I think about it. and all of this serves as an entry point to discussions about plasticity, et cetera. But one thing to emphasize is that the seesaw and surfing the seesaw is not a brain thing, it's not a body thing, it's a brain-body thing, or more appropriately, as you said, a body-brain thing. It's a loop. So we can't say that our states of alertness are because of what's going on in our head, because we've also got adrenal glands that releasing adrenaline. We can't say that states of calmness are just about relaxing the mind because it also involves turning off a number of systems in the body. And, the nervous system is really what is responsible for that. And so, what's exciting is that there are now entry points where one can adjust the level of alertness or calmness. That one can get better at surfing the seesaw, as I'm referring to. I've never really described like that but.

I think that's very good description of something I've learned to do to actually manage my brain and my physical states. And I developed all sorts of techniques over the years that work for me, and they're different for different people. But, you know, for example, if I'm like working on a project, I'm just foggy and stuck, I'll like take a steam and I'll jump on an ice bath. That'll change my state.

Right. Well, the adrenaline from the ice bath will definitely put you in a more alert.

Or I meditate, or I'll do yoga, or I'll get a massage, or I'll go sit by a river. There are mechanisms that I've learned that are ways to change my state. And then even using food to change your brain states and using supplements and using all kinds of hacks essentially to regulate the thing that we feel like we can't regulate. Because a lot of us feel powerless at the effect of our minds. and the effects of our cognitive states. And we don't realize that there are all sorts of doorways that we can use to actually enter different brain and mind states by certain techniques, whether it's breathing or, you know, hot and cold therapy or all the things that I mentioned. So from your experience, you know, how do people start to learn those things? And what are the, what are the most important things you come across that are important for helping people to regulate that process, that seesaw, they're surfing instead of getting stuck.

Yeah.

So, there are approaches that are going to work very quickly, and there are approaches that are going to be slower. And, you might say, well, I just want the fast ones. But, the sort of health of the seesaw, if you will, the integrity of the seesaw, and the ability to surf it relies mainly on a couple of foundational elements. And these are going to be slow acting systems in the body that I don't want to bring in too many analogies, but the way I think about it is like if your well-being, if you will, is sort of like a boat on the shore and the tide has to be in for the boat to get off the shore. And so there are things that you can do on a regular basis that establish a basic ability to operate the seesaw, to surf the seesaw. and certainly sleep is going to be the number one variable.

It's amazing. Many people don't understand that.

It's a non-negotiable thing. I think that many people are afraid to acknowledge it because people have now, once you really appreciate how vital sleep is and how great life can be if you're getting good sleep and how terrible it is for our health, both immediate and long-term, if you're not. I think then it creates its own sleep anxiety. And so one of the things that I've been very active at, I've had that for sure. Yeah, where you think, to be fair, the body and brain are resilient. If you don't get a good night's sleep every once in a while, it's fine. You can manage that. Certainly new parents do just fine over time, although it's challenging. But there are a few things that really help with sleep. So in terms of, and there are a lot of causes of insomnia and things. So they're the basics, like, avoiding caffeine in the afternoon if you're caffeine sensitive, et cetera. But one of them is to start to understand that this state of sleep is not something that you should be able to drop into unless you do a couple of other things properly. And based on the research done in part by my lab, but mainly a guy out at the National Institutes of Mental Health named Samer Hattar. the director of their Chronobiology Unit, he's done these beautiful studies showing that light exposure early in the day, getting bright light exposure ideally from sunlight within an hour, ideally within 30 minutes of waking up, is vitally important for getting sleep later that night. And the reason is, is it basically once every 24 hours you're going to have a spike in cortisol. It's non-negotiable. It's built in your genome. It's going to happen.

So, do people in Arizona sleep better than people in Seattle?

Well, they do, actually. And, a lot of people in Seattle need light boxes because if you live in an area where you can't get sunlight first thing in the day, feel free to flip on artificial lights. But, you want, basically, the rule is you want as much bright, ideally natural, but if you can't get natural, artificial light would be fine early in the day. And, what that does is it basically times this cortisol spike to wake you up. That spike in cortisol isn't to stress you out, it's to wake you up. And then it sets a timer on your melatonin release. So 14 to 16 hours after your bright light exposure, you're going to get a pulse of melatonin, which is the hormone, of course, that promotes sleepiness and puts you to sleep independent of any supplementation of melatonin. Light inhibits melatonin through a direct pathway through the eyes to the brainstem and then up to the pineal. well-established pathway. So, the number one thing is get bright light exposure to your eyes. So, no sunglasses, eyeglasses or contacts are fine early in the day. How long? Well, it depends on how bright. So, anywhere from two minutes to 10 minutes. Ideally, you're not looking at your phone during that time. Ideally, it's sunlight, but if you wake up before, you know, flip on a bunch of artificial lights and then get outside once the sunlight is out. Just outside taking a walk. You're not looking at the sun, right? You're not looking directly into the the sun, you don't want to burn your retinas out. Indirect exposure is fine, but there's a class of neurons called the melanopsin ganglion cells that reset your circadian clock and time things nicely. They time the cortisol the time the melatonin. So that's the number one thing for, I wouldn't just say for sleep, but also for optimizing levels of alertness throughout the day. The other thing is that you really want to avoid bright light between the hours of 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. If you're on a standard schedule, shift workers is totally different. The reason is Sammer's lab and a guy named David Berson at Brown University have shown that bright artificial light of any color, blue blockers or no, if there's bright artificial light, it activates a pathway in the brain involving this brain structure called the habenula. When I was an undergraduate, actually someone asked in neuroanatomy, what's the habenula do? No one knew. the Habenula is involved actually in generating our feelings of disappointment. It suppresses dopamine release for several days afterward. Now, if you have to go to the bathroom or you have to pull an emergency trip to the supermarket or something in the middle of the night, you don't have to worry about crushing your dopamine long term. It's a chronic thing. But you really want to dim the lights in the evening starting at about 10:00 p.m. and- so you're saying those blue blocker things that doesn't work? Well, the blue blockers will work, but if the lights are bright enough, it doesn't matter what wavelength they are. And this is because these melanopsin cells, these neurons in the eye, they do respond best to blue light, but they're very broad spectrum, the wavelengths that they will respond to. You can shine bright red light on one of these cells and it will signal to the brain time to wake up.

Amazing.

So, it's really key to just dim things down. And I always say blue blockers are terrific, but you don't want to wear them during the morning and.