Sleep, Light, Alarms, Caffeine, Night Shifts, Naps, Sleeping Positions & More With Shawn Stevenson.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. I hope you're ready to geek out on sleep, because today's episode is a doozy when it comes to sleep. I think that may be the first time I've ever said the word doozy on a show before. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, as your neurons are firing, you're producing more adenosine. The more that you're producing is starting to nudge your body to go to sleep or to take rest. So all these processes you're doing, it's that byproduct that says once it builds up in your system, you need to get some sleep. Your entire system, your nervous system, your endocrine system, can link up with light exposure outside, completely outside of what's coming through your eyes. A lot of your audience is already going to be up to speed on the fact that upwards of 95% of your body's serotonin is located in your gut.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness.

His show provides you with everything you.

Need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And as we all know, sleep can be kind of confusing. And I get lots of questions about sleep that I haven't really addressed too much on the show before. Things like, are there substitutes for sunlight? Right? We all hear that you're supposed to get lots of sunlight, but are there biohacks? Are there ways to get your sunlight without being in the sun? Or what does it mean to be, say, like a fast caffeine metabolizer versus being a slow caffeine metabolizer? And how does that affect sleep? What's the ideal nap length? Right? Are you supposed to sleep for 20 minutes? Is 90 minutes gonna kill you if you sleep that long in the afternoon for your siesta? What if you're a. You work graveyard shift, you're a night shift worker, right? Like, how can you limit the damage from something like that? What's the ideal position to be sleeping in? Side back stomach? Should you use an alarm? And if you use an alarm, what kind of alarm should you use? Right? Like one of these fancy sunrise alarm clocks or some Kind of self quantification device that wakes you up at the right time. There's so many things we can dive into when it comes to sleep, so I figured, why not dive into it? And I wanted to get a guy on the show who actually just wrote one of the best books on sleep that I've ever read. It's called Sleep 21 Proven Tips to sleep, your way to a better body, better health, and bigger success. And the author of that book is a guy that I had the pleasure of hanging out with and meeting in Austin, Texas last year. And actually he's the host of a very popular podcast as well. His name is Shawn Stevenson. Sean Stephenson. And Sean is the host of the Model Health show on itunes. The Model Health show, if you haven't seen it, is the show on itunes where Sean is on the COVID art for the podcast, showing off his six pack abs. So the guy obviously knows what he's talking about. We all know that that's an immediate sign of credibility. But Sean does not just have six pack abs. He's been in Entrepreneur Magazine, Men's Health Magazine, espn, Fox News, all over the media. He's got a degree in business biology and kinesiology from the University of Missouri. And now what he does, in addition to podcasting, in addition to writing, is he founded the Advanced Integrative Health alliance, which is a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations around the world. And of course, most importantly, in addition to the six pack, he just wrote this really good book. So, Sean, welcome to the show, man.

Man, thank you so much for having me. I'm cracking up over here because of the icon image, because when we met, you were like, oh, you're the guy with your chesticles out.

Yes, that's right.

What do you know? And then you turned around, you changed your podcast image, like a couple weeks after that to where you were barebacked. And I was like, you see that it works.

Have you showing me up. Apparently you gotta be shirtless on your podcast art.

That's mandatory.

We live in an era of Snapchat, where bathroom selfies and shirtless cover art is what it takes to be successful. So what made you want to write a book about sleep, man? Why sleep?

Well, this really. It really began with my own experimentation. You know, we might. I think we did talk a little bit about this when we spoke before, but, you know, just a really quick snapshot of it. So, diagnosed at 20 years old with degenerative spinal disease and degenerative bone disease. And so basically, my first physician he told me that my spine was the spine of an 80 year old person when I was 20 and there was no cure. Get ready young man, because it's going to be a long ride and something you're going to have to deal with. And fast forward two and a half years later, 50 pound, weight gain, chronic pain, a lot of medication, wearing a back brace, you know, all while trying to, to go to school, you know, trying to get my degree. And it was a really, really tough time. And things didn't really start to turn around until I improved my sleep. And here's why this matters, is that I did eventually, that two and a half year mark, I decided I'm going to really take this into my own hands and do something about it. So I changed the way that I was eating. I started to embark on a lot more exercise and movement. Even though they were saying to be careful, don't do this, don't do that. Bed rest, bed rest. Your body doesn't heal unless it has a reason to, you know, so your body requires movement in order to heal itself. So that's part one. But the assimilation of nutrients, the regeneration of your tissues, the vast majority of that takes place when you're at rest, specifically while you're asleep. And sleep is known as the quote, the anabolic state. For humans, just being awake is catabolic. You know, we could argue that during certain phases of meditation we can get into more of an anabolic state, but just being awake for the average person is very catabolic and it's just the way it is. So we need that sleep and recovery. So once I was able to start to change some of the things in my daily ritual, all of a sudden I start to sleep better. And mind you, I was helping to keep Tylenol PM in business, man, at that time, like I was popping those pills every single night just to get what I thought was a couple of extra hours of sleep, you know, one to two hours of additional sleep because the pain would wake me up and. But I didn't understand that I was really sacrificing my sleep quality and also leading to some really weird side effects that I didn't know until years later were attributed to taking, you know, the prescription medication as well as the over the counter stuff like restless leg syndrome. You know, this was before it had a sexy pill to go along with the name. So I'm just laying there in bed, trying to go to sleep and my legs are like active, you know, I'm just like, go to sleep legs, you know, and it just, it was so weird and nobody really gave me an answer. You know, when I talk with my physician about what it was, it didn't have a, quote, diagnosis yet. And so, you know, long story short, once I started to change my sleeping habits every, it's like the floodgates open and everything started to improve so fast to the degree that I lost about 28 pounds in the next six weeks. The pain that I've been experiencing for the past two and a half years was virtually gone. And the people who know my story, you know, eventually fast forward the good happy ending when nine months later, when I got a scan done of my spine, I was able to regenerate some tissue, actually grew half an inch when I had lost about three fourths of an inch of my height. And you know, my physician was just like, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And that was the birthing of my career. And so that was the first part for me. But when I started my clinical practice, which I ran for over a decade, I saw about, at the five year mark, all of these amazing success stories, you know, and we had around, right around 89% reversal rate for people with type 2 diabetes, you know, so essentially helping them to get off their metformins, insulin, things like that. But there was always this category, this class of people who wouldn't get the results everyone else was getting. And it wasn't a lack of trying, because that's the first thing as a trainer, you would think, and also as a practitioner, you know, in health, is that the person isn't doing the thing. You know, you're not following the program, but a lot of times that's not the case. You know, sometimes that's the case. You know, there are people who are like sneaking honey buns under their shirt, you know, and, and doing stuff behind closed doors. But for the most part, people are honestly trying to do their best and get the result. And so I finally remembered, like, I, I'm not thinking about sleep problems because I'm sleeping so well and I'm healthy, right? Let me ask these people about their sleep. And it blew my mind. I could not, it was just like automatic. Everybody that I talked to who weren't getting the results, well, we'll just say 99%. There was like a handful of people who were sleeping to what I thought at the time, well, but people were getting less than four hours of sleep. They were waking up habitually multiple times during the night to go pee or they've got a snoring partner or they have sleep apnea and all these things that people weren't telling me in the initial forms that they were supposed to fill out. And so that sent me on a quest to find out how to help these people to improve their sleep quality immediately. And again, man, once we did that and really locked in some. Some of these strategies we're gonna be talking about today, it's as if the floodgates would open, man, and sometimes they would get results faster than people who didn't have sleep issues. You know, it so quickly changed. The things that were going on, from their insulin sensitivity to weight loss to improving their cardiac function, just so many things changed. And once that happened, man, I had to tell the world about it. And so that kind of birthed a couple episodes of my show. And I saw it, got a bunch of downloads. So I was like, people want to know about this. So that's when I first wrote the book, and here we are today.

Yeah, and I failed to mention this in the introduction, but you and I had a really fascinating discussion a few months ago on the Ben Greenfield Fitness show about how you essentially simulated stem cell injections without actually getting stem cells injected through the use of some of these things like aloe vera gel and colostrum and chlorella and different things that you use to regenerate your spine. And that's obviously a whole different rabbit hole. But for those of you listening in who want to hear about that part of Sean's journey, just go to the show notes for this episode@bengreenfieldfitness.com SleepSmart that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com SleepSmart because hand in hand with what Sean and I are about to talk about when it comes to sleep, I'd recommend you go and listen to that episode that we did, which is entitled Lightning Speed Healing Hack or Overpriced Fad? What you need to know about stem cells. So go listen to that if you would like. But in the meantime, Sean, first question that I have for you about sleep is whether, with all these different hacks and modalities and the things that you write about in the book, are you tracking sleep or quantifying slee at all? Do you use any of these devices?

Yeah. So this is why I really love talking with you. You know, I've done so many different interviews, especially the past year or two years actually, on this topic, and, you know, because I know that you're somebody who is tracking this stuff in a lot of. A lot of different ways, a lot of different experimentations for myself. I err on the side of the old faithful, which is just paying attention to my body, you know, and specifically how I look, feel and perform. And I know myself very well, you know, I'm one of those people, especially being in this field. And I know you the same way. I know I'm very in touch with my body and how sensitive things are, you know, so if I take a certain supplement, I'll notice a difference, you know, and most people might not notice, especially right off the bat. So I'll notice a little bit of, if I don't sleep well, a little bit of cognitive impairment, you know, so I'm not as sharp, the energy levels are low obviously and you know, simple things like. And also I'll just, I'll put it like this. Emotional inconsistency, you know, so I'll notice that I'm a little bit more irritated by traffic, by my kids, by requests for my wife, which are ongoing anyway. So it's like why would I get an attitude about it, you know, So I would, I start to catch myself and see that I'm just, I'm not really on my game. And so those are some of the big ones. Also I notice because I do some type of training every day and my balance will be noticeably impaired. I kind of do a little bit of a test every day before I start training and just fooling around on the stability ball or something like that. And I'll notice the days that I don't get the high quality sleep, which is very, very rare, that I'm not able to keep my balance as efficiently. So I err on the side of that because for myself personally, which I want to definitely hear what you're doing on this front and what you found to be. But for me, I'm like gadget free when I'm in that bed.

Yeah, I too went gadget free for a very long time. And then even though I shoo constantly being plugged into something because I wanted to stay away from Bluetooth signals and wifi signals while sleeping, I now am quantifying sleep. So before what I did was I would wake up and I would take my heart rate variability or my HRV measurement because what I found was that even though like you mentioned, when I'm just listening to my body, I can tell when you know a poor night of sleep is going to lead to me getting injured or ill.

Right.

Like you just feel those things building up, especially like consecutive poor nights of sleep. What I found was that I could predict two to three days in advance. Not just neuromuscular lack of recovery that could lead to poor sleep, but also a greater risk for injury or illness. When my heart rate variability would begin to dip low in the morning, days in advance of me actually getting injured or ill. And what I'd find is if I'd push through low heart rate variability, a low heart rate variability morning score, that even if I felt good for a few days pushing through it, if I ignored that score and just listened to my body right without paying attention to that score, I for some reason, it's so, so easy to stay tuned to our musculoskeletal system. Like, am I sore? Do my joints hurt a little bit? Do I need a recovery day off? But sometimes you don't realize when your neuromuscular system isn't quite as recovered. And so that's what I was doing for a long time. But now I use a device that I just discovered and I've got no financial affiliation or anything with this company. But there's this ring called an aura ring, and it measures like your temperature, your respiration, your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your steps. You know, it's like a, like a Fitbit on steroids, basically. But the cool thing is it has a computer built into it, which means that you can put it in airplane mode while you are asleep and not get exposed to any type of Bluetooth radiation or anything like that. And in the morning, you simply open up your phone and you sync it to your phone and it shows you sleep latency, rapid eye movement sleep, non rapid eye movement sleep, sleep cycle, sleep efficiency, at what point during the night your heart rate dropped the lowest, which I never realized is actually that is supposed to be consistent. And if your heart rate drops its lowest later on in the night, like at say 4am or 5am, and you're usually dropping your lowest at like 1:30 or 2am it's actually a sign of poor recovery or a poor night of sleep. So now I am kind of geeking out on sleep cycles and I recently wrote a whole article on it. I'll link to it in the show notes for this podcast that you and I are doing. But yeah, I've kind of gone past the unplugging stage and I am now quantifying and tracking. I kind of like that concept of the combination, right, of listening to your body and then better living through science.

But yeah, I love it, man. And that speaks to. It speaks to something really important too, because it was a sleep expert. His name was Phil Gurman, Dr. Phil Gurman. And he basically found over the years that. And compiled studies showing that over time, people who are basically getting less sleep than. That's optimal, you know, say, getting six hours of sleep a night instead of eight or whatever it is. And by the way, at no point in time in sleep smarter do I say you need to get blank hours of sleep, because it's really not about the hours, which we'll come back to. But he said that people begin to feel like they've adapted to the sleep deprivation across the board, and they essentially. We get used to it. And I know that I've done that throughout my lifetime as well. But if you look at how we actually do on tests of mental alertness and performance specifically, they start to go downhill. And also our biomarkers, you know, so even though you feel like everything is normal, those things do start to go downhill. And again, this is why I love talking with you, because it's like having that balance of both. Yeah, so. Yeah, man.

Yeah. Interesting. Now, speaking of science, you talk about sunlight. You have a whole chapter on light during the day. You talk about getting more sunlight during the day, and I like how you go into how that helps to normalize your circadian rhythm, how that exposure to blue light during the day can help you to sleep better at night. Interestingly, and I don't. Did you see the recent study that just came out that showed even that exposure to blue light or sunlight during the day actually diminishes your sensitivity to things like Kindles and E Readers and phones and stuff like that at night, it decreases how damaging they can be.

Wow. No, I have not seen that one yet, man. You gotta forward me that.

Yeah, I will. It's very interesting. But basically it goes into the fact that you get less of the melatonin suppressing effect that phones and Kindles and stuff can have if you get a bunch of sunlight or blue light during the day. So it's all about not just absence of blue light at night, but presence of blue light during the day. And I know you get into sunlight in the book, but I'm curious if you've done much experimentation or if you've looked into blue light boxes or in ear phototherapy or any of these glasses that produce high amounts of blue light or. Or any ways to kind of like simulate sunlight.

Yes. Yeah, definitely. I've experimented with quite a few things, but I want to point out really quickly why this matters, you know, and I know you talk a lot about this stuff too, but exposure to sunlight so this is one of the things that, in essence, it. It, quote, can help to, quote, reset your, your cortisol rhythm. All right? So your circadian clock a little bit. And so, you know, humans, through evolutionary biology, we've had a very predictable light and dark pattern. And obviously today we can essentially simulate a second daytime by coming home and just blasting every single light. We don't even think about it, you know, and it's just a part of our culture. And so your body really starts to get out of sync with what's real and natural, what your genes expect you to do. And so exposure to sunlight does a couple of things, or even some of these hacks we're going to talk about. But one of the things that it does is it increases your body's production of serotonin, which. Serotonin is like the opening act for melatonin, all right? So it's a precursor that it should be produced more abundantly at a certain time of the day. And it sets the tone for melatonin production later on. If you're not getting that sun exposure, you're not getting that adequate serotonin. And oftentimes we, when we hear about serotonin, we tend to think about depression because of, you know, serotonin, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or some of the popular antidepressant drugs. And so that's focusing on this kind of feel good neurotransmitter. So sunlight does that, number one. Also sunlight, strangely enough, increases your production of cortisol. All right? And it might sound like a bad thing, but cortisol is not a bad. It's not a bad guy, all right? It's getting drugged through the mud in media. It's just when it's out of balance, you need cortisol. It helps you do a lot of stuff. But what's been so interesting and what I cited in Sleep Smarter was there was a study, and it was published in the Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience that found that individuals who were exposed to sunlight in the early part of the day decreased. They found that they had decreased levels of cortisol later in the evening as compared to when they didn't get adequate sunlight. So it literally helps your cortisol levels to drop in the evening. All right? So again, it's. It's resetting that, that circadian clock. Slash your cortisol rhythm. Because cortisol is really, if, if there's one of our hormones out of the 50 plus that we know about so far that is disruptive to sleep, it's Cortisol. Right. We want cortisol to be peaked in the morning. And, you know, according to research, we're talking around between 6 and 8am to be at its peak. And then it gradually drops as the day goes on. But if it's high at night, it's. What's so interesting is that they have. It has like an inverse relationship with melatonin. So if cortisol's elevated, melatonin is suppressed and vice versa. So this is why the light therapy, specifically sunlight therapy, is so important. But what do we do when that's not viable? And one of the examples that we talk about in the book and this was done on office workers and they found. Which was so crazy, man, because, you know, a lot of people are living like, in cubicle dungeons now with work and, you know, they don't have. And I. I remember when I was in college and working like in a. In a call center or whatever it was. And they found that. And so they did this study and they. In the study, they found that they. The office workers who didn't have access to natural light through windows.

Right.

Got about 173% less exposure to natural light on average. And on average, those office workers slept for 46 minutes less each night. And they had more reported physical ailments, more depression, things that you would probably expect.

Right.

And so that really speaks to the importance of just even. It doesn't have to be directly on your skin, but just having it in your room, really important thing. So. And so my office, you know, I got a bunch of windows here, plenty of natural light. So even when it's cold outside, I'm getting some access, you know, even through my photoreceptors. But you've got to be careful with getting sunlight through the window directly on your skin.

All right, so you get. It's primarily UV A that you get through glass, right?

Exactly. So UVA can cut through glass, whereas UVB isn't really able to penetrate. But even this depends on the time of year, if UVB is even making its way to you. And so there's like a chart or it's a website. You can kind of plug in and see, you know, like, how far you are from the equator, the time of year, all this stuff. It'll tell you specifically. Is UVB even getting to you? Because UVA is associated more with the cancer and the photo aging of the skin. UVB is the one that's responsible for the. Essentially, this is what the research says. But I know that there's more pieces to this, but responsible for the conversion of your cholesterol into vitamin D. All right, so that's what we want more of, and we want the balanced spectrum. So if you're getting sunlight through your skin, onto your skin, through glass, then you might want to be careful about that. I mean, a little bit would probably be okay, but that's something we don't necessarily want to do. So what do we do? We can employ some of these really cool things. And the coolest thing that I found and what I found to be most effective for myself, I actually learned in our conversation. You mentioned it to me and I was like, man, that's super interesting. And I went and started to research it. And this was back when we. When we had dinner together with Aubrey. With Aubrey Marcus. And, you know, so he's the founder, CEO of On it. Amazing, amazing guy. We had a great time.

Kind of a loser.

Yeah, he's the big Lou. Big L. Throw up the L for him. But you mentioned the buds, the earbuds.

Oh, yeah, the. The in ear photo therapy.

Yeah, the.

The human charger.

Yeah. And so I. It probably took me and that during that time I just agreed to my. My book deal with Rodale. And so I was looking for little small things that I can add to the mix because the book was probably pretty much done already. And so I start to experiment with those. And just recently on the first part of my book tour, you know, I did coast to coast, man. So I went from St. Louis to the West coast, so LA and San Diego, and then went all the way to New York City. And this was during the time change as well. So it's just like, wow, this is going to suck. But everything worked out great by employing the strategies in the book, but also doing that light therapy, especially during the days, and just even the days before I would get on an airplane. And when I got to New York City, crazy enough, I got the best sleep of the entire trip, which was just mind blowing. And one of the things that. From that study or one of the studies, and I think you mentioned it before too, is like there was a Finnish study and they found that light exposure in the ears and they tracked using an fmri, like literally looking at the brain. And they had, I think it was like 50 people. Maybe it's 100, but I think it was 50 people in the study. And they split them in half. And part of. Part of the one group got the earbuds with the light and the other one had the earbuds without. And they Discovered there was significantly increased activation of the sensory motor areas of the brain and the visual areas of the brain for the people who had the light in the earbuds as compared to the placebo group who didn't have any activation. So that's proof positive that your brain and your, your entire system, your nervous system, your endocrine system, can link up with light exposure outside, completely outside of what's coming through your eyes. Super powerful.

Yeah, it's really interesting. It's the same reason that like your skin has photoreceptors and if some, if there's even like a little bit of light in the bedroom, it can disrupt your circadian rhythm. That's why when I'm at like a hotel, my bedroom is already pretty good. But when I'm at a hotel, I unplug the TV and I unplug the alarm clock and I just limit as much light as possible because they've shown that even something as small as a pen light on like the back of your knee can stimulate the photoreceptors on the skin and disrupt sleep. And it's specifically artificial light, right? Like if you're sleeping. You know, people ask me this, they're like, well, what did our ancestors do with stars right in the moon? Most of those are pretty absent of blue light, of artificial light. So that's, that's the difference is that starlights are different than say, like the little bright little light that comes off the tv, you know, power button in the hotel room. So the other thing that's interesting, you know, I know that a lot of night shift workers, for example, they're using these blue light boxes and there's a difference between the ear and the eye when it comes to like the intense blue light therapy. They've shown that you can actually create what's called photo oxidative stress or free radicals from blue light that can damage the rods and cones, like in any and the retina from these blue light wavelengths produced by these super duper light, like blue light boxes that a lot of night shift workers or office workers will use now. And that's another advantage of using something like in ear light therapy or another one that they have now. I interviewed these folks a few months back, but it's intranasal light therapy and they'll use this a lot of times for like Alzheimer's. It's actual LED or laser lights. It's very, very attractive. Look, of course, but it's up your nose. I don't know if you've seen those before, but that is a cognitive performance hack, meaning it induces wakefulness and an increase in alpha brainwave production. But it's also something that has been shown to increase blood flow in the case of traumatic brain injury, concussion, Alzheimer's, stuff like that. It's really interesting. And it's literally a light that you stick up your nostril.

Crazy, man. And it's also, you know, that's not as inconspicuous as the earbuds though, you know?

Oh yeah, the earbuds just looks like you're listening to music, like you're rocking out to your tunes. The, the nose thing, that's a little bit harder to.

If I walk by and see somebody doing that, I'm gonna, I'm gonna question their reality, you know, But I mean.

Like these people are talking about using it like, as, like a, like a pre workout hack and you know, for. Before you step on stage to speak, things like that. It's called low level light therapy or intranasal light therapy. It's really interesting. I'll link to the podcast that I did with these folks in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com SleepSmart but super interesting stuff. And by the way, Sean, you mentioned the apps that can measure the UV index, the amount of UVA versus UBV or UVB exposure you're getting. For those of you listening in, I know there's a bunch of phone apps out there. And before I publish this episode, I'll go and find some of them for you and put them in the show notes. Sean, I wanted to also ask you. Well, I want to ask you a lot of stuff, but one of the things I wanted to ask you was you talk about caffeine in the book and you mention avoiding coffee or caffeine for six hours before bedtime. Based on the research that coffee can disrupt circadian rhythms or induce wakefulness at night. Do you have any thoughts, thoughts on genetics? Because a lot of people now will test their metabolism and you, you can through like 23andMe, for example, do a test and you can find out whether you're a fast caffeine metabolizer or a slow caffeine metabolizer. Do you have any thoughts about, like, whether that would influence this recommendation?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. And it's so difficult to make. I, I really can't stand it. The cookie cutter recommendations, you know, even of getting eight hours of sleep, like that's supposed to solve the problem. And you know, just to speak to that really quickly, you know, it's It's. It's a lot like what's going on with our understanding of the calorie today. And there was a. And what's so crazy is that this was a nutrition professor who did the Twinkie diet, you know, and he did, in fact, lose weight by eating 1200 calories of Twinkies.

Right.

But I love to see if he eats that way. What happens with him in a couple of years, you know, with his. You know, with his biomarkers and whether or not he makes it, you know.

Because it's not just about your weight on the scale.

Right, exactly, exactly. I mean, it. Like what's contained in that calorie? What is it going to do to your blood sugar? What is it doing to. To inflammatory cytokines that might get activated in your body? What is it doing to your brain? You know, there's so many different factors that come.

I can tell you my brain would be pretty happy if I was eating Twinkies. I remember those. Remember the little, like. Like the. I think it was the red ones with the white filling? Those keep me happy for. Yeah, you're right. For a couple minutes.

What about the chocolate? Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I used to go to the bakery. There was this, like, this bakery. I remember it was, like, halfway between me and tennis practice. And so on the way to tennis practice, I would always pull in. This was all through college. And I grabbed. I pull into McDonald's, get the big Mac and supersize it. I'd take about 30 minutes to digest and then just head off and just smash the tennis courts for like three or four hours. And on the way back from tennis, I'd always stop off at this bakery in Lucent, Idaho, and I'd get a Twinkie, and I'd go back and forth between the white ones with the flakes on them and the red ones with the cream filling. Yeah. The little brown ones.

I'm pretty sure there's still a part of your liver right now that's made of a Twinkie. I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah. Man, it's so crazy because our obsession with the calorie has really put us in a bad way. But we know today especially, and it's really starting to hit the mainstream, that it's the quality of those calories that is actually more important than the calorie itself. The calorie does matter. Just like the hours of sleep you get definitely matters, but the quality of those hours matters so much more. And so there are people who are sleeping smarter for six hours, who are doing phenomenally better than people who are getting eight or nine hours of sleep, who are waking up feeling like a pinata after the party because their sleep quality is so compromised. So one of those really interesting things is what's going on with caffeine. And caffeine is such a. It's such a storied thing in our history. You know, there's been a long relationship with humans and caffeine, and it's not going anywhere. And my job is not to try to take that away. I'm a fan of caffeine, all right, but it's really in how we utilize it for sleep. And there's definitely a variance here, depending on your metabolism for caffeine. So what's going on with caffeine? Well, in Sleep Smarter, I cited a study, and this was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. All right? And so they had participants to consume caffeine literally right before bed, three hours before bed and six hours before bed. And what they discovered was that what they discovered was even at six hours out, there was a measurable objective loss of one hour of sleep shown via a sleep monitor. And so they tracked objective and subjective. So subjective, the people thought, hey, I got my regular eight hours of sleep, or whatever it was. But in fact, the sleep monitor showed that they lost an hour of sleep by consuming caffeine six hours before bed. Why is that? Well, caffeine has this really interesting thing. It's called a half life. It has a half life of about eight hours for the average person. So what that means is if you consume a 200 milligram cup of coffee, eight hours later, 100 milligrams is still active in your system, and then eight hours after that, 50 is still active in your system. And caffeine is a very powerful nervous system stimulant. And this is part of the reason that it can disrupt your sleep quality is that if your nervous system is lit up, then you're not going to. You're not going to go into your natural sleep cycles the right way. And so this is what we really need to focus on, by the way, I'm going to throw this in parentheses here, is to focus on getting quality sleep cycles and not eight hours of sleep. So our sleep cycles are approximately like 90 minutes for the average person again. And so I recommend a minimum of four complete sleep cycles. So this is REM sleep and non REM sleep. So more anabolic sleep in all the stages in between.

So four, four of those like, and those Sleep cycles last. Like we did a podcast with guy who worked, works with like professional soccer teams for sleep. I believe he said 75 to 90 minutes is about how long each of those cycles from like rapid eye movement to non rapid eye movement sleep and then back up take place. So you're recommending four per night?

Four minimum.

Okay, four minimum, yeah.

Minimum, yeah.

Because I think what he said, he said like five of those sleep cycles per 24 hours. And he said he didn't care. He was like, yeah, if you get three at night, then that means you're going to take a big, you know, big long nap in the afternoon to squeeze in as much of those other two that you missed during the night. And he said he'll even step back and look at it for like traveling athletes who have some days that are just crap days where they're not going to get much sleep. And he'll add up like he'll take a full week and he'll just say, okay, get 35 cycles over the course of seven days. And that's what's more important than say like X number per day. He had some really interesting thoughts on this.

I love it, man. Precisely. And I'm, I'm definitely in the same, in the same boat with that. Because with that, when I'm saying a minimum four, I'm looking at the higher end. So the 90 minute versus the 75. So that's somewhere around six hours of sleep as a minimum. But depending on your lifestyle, depending on your activity level, you know, then we're going to look at getting in an additional 1 additional sleep cycle which is going to take you up around the seven to seven and a half hour mark.

Right.

And that's where a lot of adults are going to fit into that spectrum. So, and here's one of the crazy things and why I'm even mentioning this is that you can still feel groggy in the morning if you're waking up and you've got adequate rest, but it's in between, your alarm goes off and we're going to talk about this later, your alarm goes off in between one of your sleep cycles.

Right.

And so that can make you feel still tired and groggy trying to get up and go turn off your alarm clock. So we want, if we can time things up a little bit better, it's going to make us feel better when we get up in the morning. So with the half life, so we already covered that, but also understanding, so what is caffeine doing? So we already mentioned it's a powerful nervous system stimulant. But also there's this compound, and it's called adenosine. So all day, while you're awake, all day, every day you're awake, and your neurons in your brain are firing. And there's a lot of stuff going on, obviously. Like, we're talking about trillions of things, like, every second. And there's a neurotransmitter byproduct, and that's what adenosine is. And so for a long time in science, it was just kind of like, oh, it's just a byproduct. It's a waste product. Until more recently, they discovered that this is really important in regulating your sleep cycles.

Right.

Because as the. Your neurons are firing, you're producing more adenosine. The more that you're producing is starting to nudge your body to go to sleep or to take rest. So all these processes you're doing, it's that byproduct that says once it builds up in your system, you need to get some sleep. And it fits into a certain receptor site that starts to make you sleepy. Now, caffeine has this very interesting ability. It looks so similar to adenosine. It can fit into adenosine receptor sites, so you can just start to build up and accumulate all of these byproducts. And even though you should be getting sleepy because those receptor sites are filled with caffeine, you don't really notice. So you're tired, but you don't know it, you know, and so that's what's really going on kind of in a little bit of a deeper level with what caffeine is doing to our body. So can we kind of find a way around this? Or better yet, just to talk about the original question, what about people who have a different caffeine metabolism? Absolutely. You know, my kind of blanket recommendation is to consume your caffeine in the early part of the day. So I recommend before noon. But for some people who have a very fast caffeine metabolism, they can take it a little bit later into the afternoon. But for those, a lot of people have a slower metabolism for caffeine, and they might need to take it out overall, period, you know, because it's one of those things that's really screwing up their energy and their sleep, thus is causing problems with their health, you know, be it their ability to lose weight or what's going on with their heart or whatever the case may be because of caffeine, and they don't even know it.

Yeah, yeah. And what I've found with caffeine, I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer, as is, I think the whole country of Italy who all do espresso at night with dinner and they're just wired differently over there. They also do copious amounts of wine each night with dinner and then they sleep like babies. But basically what I've found for myself is that I can do coffee and I've experimented with my sleep cycles. I can do it as late as 4pm And I'm generally about a 9:30 to 10pm sleeper. And once I go past about 4pm, even though I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer, it affects me pretty drastically. So that would kind of agree with that six hour timeframe that you talk about. But I've noticed with people, because I have some clients who have done this genetic testing and they're slow caffeine metabolizers. If they do anything past like that morning cup of coffee, like if they do anything with lunch, which is technically like fricking like you know, 10 hours before bedtime for most people, their sleep cycles are affected. So I think that even in my personal experience, even if you've done genetic testing and you show that you're a fast caffeine metabolizer, that six hour range is still somewhat accurate when it comes to, again, like you mentioned, Sean, you might go to sleep, but you might notice that you spend, if you're quantifying say 10% of the night in deep sleep, whereas you're supposed to get like 18 to 22% of the night in deep sleep. So yeah, it definitely plays a key role. Now are you familiar with the use of theanine to combat the effects of caffeine? If you do have caffeine at night, have you come across this?

Yes, yes. And again, it depends on the person of how effective it's going to be. But I want to mention something really quick so I don't forget. Is that what used to get me Because I would definitely, you know, first part of the day, that's when I do my caffeine and I'm more of a tea drinker so the pu erh or you know, the yerba mate or the green tea. But and I, I didn't know what was going on. This was, you know, probably, I don't know, three or four years ago. But every now and then in the evening I have some kombucha and I didn't tie it together. And it took me like a month to realize whenever I Would have one in the evening, it would screw up my sleep. And I thought maybe it was something in the food that I ate or I just couldn't put my finger on it. We've got to remember that those are caffeinated as well, you know, so watch out for the kombuchas as well. So anything with caffeine, if you're sensitive to it, it can cause issues with your sleep cycle.

Yeah, because that's made from tea. Yeah, it's a good point. A lot of people don't realize that, but yeah, the theanine, it's interesting because that there is a variety of studies that have shown that if you do have caffeine late at night, maybe you have that oh crap moment where you realize that Starbucks handed you the caffeinated rather than the decaf. You can use theanine to combat the effects and you can actually take theanine in like a capsule form or in a supplement form to combat the effects of caffeine. The other thing, when it comes to the adenosine that you talked about, and this is something that I do, I don't know if you've, if you've experimented much with this, Sean, is I'll do what I call an adenosine reboot where I keep decaf coffee, like really clean Swiss water processed, you know, chemical free decaf coffee around. And for every month that I drink coffee, like caffeinated coffee, I switch to decaf for a week.

Right.

So I still get all the flavor, I get all the antioxidants, I get all like the anti Alzheimer's, anti diabetes effects of coffee. But what happens is when you quit taking it for like the caffeinated coffee for about seven to 10 days, you rebuild your sensitivity to adenosine. So it's really interesting that you can actually kind of, kind of drink coffee all year long, but maintain pretty good sensitivity to caffeine and also not, not f up your adenosine receptors.

Exactly. And a lot of people know that experience of, you know, when you first have coffee and it's just like this amazing Jedi moment, you know, like this exists and you can do anything and then as you start to abuse it a little bit or consistently use it, it's not as effective. You don't get that same feeling. It's not that same. You know, when we first met it was like this. And now it's like.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, it's because. So it goes from that one cup does it to now I need two, to now I need four and I'VE worked with people over the years, man. There's a guy that I work with, he was knocking down 13 cups a day and I'm just like, how are you? How are you even walking? You know? And it's really important for us to understand that this is, again, this is a very powerful nervous system stimulant and to kind of put it in its proper place because I think we can all utilize it and take advantage of it. But cycling it is really a valuable thing, whether it's even in a supplement. A lot of supplements, pre workouts, you know, to go supplement free or pre workout free or switch to something else.

Yep.

For a time period. I mean, you can do many times, many periods. So in the book, I recommend different ways. So you can do like during the week, maybe you're on for four days and offer three, or you do like. And that's what I tend to do as well, Ben, is I'll be on for maybe a month and I'll take a week off, you know. And so either way, cycling it is going to get you a lot more bang for your buck and that good feeling so your body doesn't start to lose its sensitivity to the cat.

Yeah, cool. All right, so I got some other things I want to talk to you about. You actually mentioned the alarm, so I figured we could just jump into this right now because I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about this and the type of alarm to use. So there are, of course, these alarms now that will wake you up when you're in your optimal sleep cycle. And then there's the idea that you might keep your windows open so the sun wakes you up. And then there's another type of alarm clock called the sunrise alarm clock that just like gradually glows, you know, in the morning and gradually wakes you up. What's your take on alarm clocks? What, what are your recommendations? What do you use if you use one? And are you a fan of these ones that wake you up during what they claim is your. Your ideal part of the sleep cycle in the morning?

Yeah, Good question, man. So just to talk about. So what do I do? Many years ago I got, and this is more so for the other side of the equation, not the morning time, but the evening time of not having that glaring light coming from your alarm clock making ugly faces at you. You know, that all of us know from our own lives and popular culture. And so it had a. It has a complete dimmer shut off. So they don't even make this alarm clock anymore. It's from Sony, but. And you can still find some. It's just a little bit more investigation to find with a complete dimmer shut off. So I do have an alarm clock. One of the important things is it's across the room. So I actually have to get up and go turn it off constant, you know. But here's the thing. Probably once every two to three weeks, will it even go off? Because my body is in sync with. With everything.

You wake up before it even goes off. Basically, yeah.

The early. I mean, the latest that I've. It was. I was actually yesterday, my alarm was set for 5:45 and I got over the clock. It was 5:44, you know, but generally it's probably 10, 15 minutes before the alarm glows, goes off that. That I'm up. And so I think we want to get to a place where we don't need the alarm clock. But I think they're brilliant ideas, especially with the kind of sunrise alarm clock, especially if you're following the strategies of blacking your room out. I think it's really, really essential, actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so this is the thing. And you mentioned this earlier, actually, about. What about the sunlight? I mean the stars and the moon and.

Yeah.

Humans have evolved.

Ancestors had. What about the caveman forever?

Well, of course you're going to. You're going to throw those things in there. But these are things we. It's not about. So what's now.

Caveman didn't have an iPhone.

True.

You know, I'm saying, like. Like that's my take on. It is like caveman didn't an iPhone. He didn't have street lights outside his. Outside his room at night. You didn't have cars driving by. All these issues that potentially create a need for blackout curtains. I don't think that if you're living in a completely ancestral environment, you need blackout curtains. When I go camping, I don't take blackout curtains because I'm not getting exposed to a bunch of artificial light when I'm out there. And so I don't need to shift forward that morning cycle ensure that I'm not getting exposed to light quite so early in the morning. But man, if you live in modern society, like 99 of people, in my opinion, should use blackout curtains or like a blackout sleep mask or both. Because you get exposed to artificial light at night, right?

Absolutely. You mentioned earlier about. And there was a. It was a study done by Cornell University, actually. And so they. The room that the participant in the study slept in was dark. It was a Dark room. Except they put a fiber optic cable behind their knees just the size of a quarter. And that light was enough. Okay. Otherwise dark room. That light shining onto their skin was enough to change their core body temperature and to also impact their, their melatonin as well. All right. So they literally were able to impact their melatonin secretion by putting a light onto, onto their skin. And same thing for all of us. Our skin has photoreceptors that pick that information up. So if you've got your neighbor's porch light, those LED street lamps outside of your house. And recently. So we moved probably maybe six or seven months ago. And so now there are no street lights around. And I just kind of pointed my intention on doing that. I'm not one of those guys to go and, you know, hide out totally like 20 minutes from the mall. You know, it's still not that bad. But you know, I literally live in an area where we only have moonlight and the light from the stars and it just depends on the, the evening as well. And I don't have blackout curtains anymore. But in my old house when we lived in the suburbs, we definitely had blackout curtains. And I noticed that of everything that I talk about and that I share and all the clinical data to back it up, the thing I noticed viscerally myself immediately is when I got those blackout curtains, I slept so good, you know, and so I definitely recommend people do that. And if you do have the blackout curtains. Yeah. And definitely look into having that alarm clock that gradually has the, the light come on. You know, it's a little bit of a cue for you to, to start to wake up. I think that's really important.

Yeah, I, I'm now using the alarm that wakes you up like it, during, during your optimal sleep cycle. But the way that you do it is you, you set a time frame, right. So I'll, I'll know, hey, I'm going to bed at X time tonight. So I want, let's say I'm going to bed at 10, right. So I want to wake up sometime between 5:30 and 6:30. I want to get, let's say seven and a half to, to eight and a half hours of sleep. And so I'll say, okay, so at some point between 5:30 and 6:30, wake me up, but ensure that I'm up around like my rapid eye movement sleep or up around my light sleep cycle when you wake me up. And that generally keeps you from being drowsy at all when you wake up. And then see, we have chickens we have roosters. And roosters don't know if I've gone to bed at 9 or if I've gone to bed at 11:30pm Right. And that's the thing that sucks about roosters is they're getting up at 4:30 or 5 regardless of what you did the night before. So I use. Dude, I use binaural beats. So I've got this app called a sleep stream app that blocks out all ambient noise and that kind of lulls your body through the normal sleep cycles during the night. And then I've got blackout curtains and I've got the sleep mask, and then I've got that alarm that gradually wakes you up. And that's the way that I roll. And it works pretty well for me versus doing that alarm. But I agree with you. Getting to the point where your body just naturally wakes up when it should wake up works pretty well too. Unless you have a flight to catch. You have a flight to catch. That sucks. So a few other questions for you about sleep. A lot of people work graveyard shifts or night shifts. And of course, you know, it's no secret that that's not good for you. We've, we've talked before, like on my podcast, about how it creates fluctuations and everything from, like, blood sugar to high cortisol to decreased melatonin. Like, I don't think we need to get into the fact that graveyard shifts and night shifts are bad for you, because a lot of people know that already. But as far as mitigating the damage, do you have tips for people who work graveyard or night shift as far as, like, fighting against some of the potential damage that that can cause?

Yes, definitely. Man. You know, I can't, I can't do an interview or a podcast or, you know, any type of social media stuff, even a post without somebody asking about it, you know, and I mean specifically not by the host, but in the comments section, you know, what about people who work shift work? You know, because this is what I have to do. You know, I've got to support my family. I've got to. This is just what my job is giving me. And so I'm just gonna be straight up about this. If your number one focus in your life is your health, then you need to get a new job. You know, there's really. That's the ultimate way to combat this and to, to find a way around this. And I'm not saying this without having a place of compassion. I actually specifically, it was difficult even writing this chapter because, and I mean, it really Hit me a lot. I've been able to work, you know, working at a university for so many years with a lot of nurses and a lot of pre med students and seeing them before and after, you know, or their friends, you know, and what doing the clinicals and working the shift work does to their body. And it's just so sad, man. It's so, so hard to see. But this was a long time ago, before I really again dove into understanding about sleep. And now today, even, but even also for the last few years, I'll ask any nurse that I come across or that I've worked with in the last few years. So at your hospital or in your office or on your floor, out of every 10 nurses, how many are fit? And usually the answer is one or zero. All right.

Yeah.

The most I've ever heard is two.

Depends on, on the, on the type of, of hospital too, or the type of medical setting. Right. You go to like a plastic surgery facility, they're all hot.

Yeah. Gorgeous.

Yeah. But yeah, I agree not to offend any of our listeners who are nurses. And, and, and again, it's tough because we need night shift workers. Right. Like it's, it's like somebody's gotta be there at night. But, but yeah, so what, what can people do?

Yes. And so this is to, to my point, which is if your life is dedicated to service and you're doing this because you love it, and you're doing this because you want to help people and you want to be there in those situations in the ER or whatever the case may be, you know, our firefighters, our police officers, our physicians, our nurses, and a lot of other public safety workers who are operating at night, it's a very tough situation. And even I talk about in the book that even if you're doing it a couple days a week and then you're getting back on a normal schedule, it's basically the same as far as the results of stuff you've already talked about on the show. Same level of cancer, diabetes, you name it. And I don't know if you talked about this before, I just want to throw this one statistic out though, really quickly before we talk about some solutions. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified shift work as a Class 2A carcinogen. Right. So this means it's lumped in with lead exposure and UVA radiation as a cancer causing agent. So this is serious business. So what can we do to combat this? Well, I mentioned number one, if this is not about service and your passion, get a new job. We've got to stop lying to ourselves that this is the only thing that I can do in my life and there's not another way. I promise you there's another way. You know, when I was in college, for one phase, I was literally working at a three, I had to be at work at three o' clock in the morning. So this means I'm up at 2 o' clock in the morning and working at a casino. Actually, when I, when I first went, went to this particular school and man, I, I just told myself this is the only work that I can get right now. And I, because I was so exhausted from my life and from school and from this, it was, it was very difficult to get out and find another job. But it's putting your locus of focus on, stop telling yourself or making excuses that this is the only thing you could do. You could do something about it. So. But if this is about service, bottom line is this, you've got to do everything else. Right. I gotta just make that clear. So following all the different strategies that we talk about, definitely employing some phototherapy, definitely blacking out your room, that is a must. If you're sleeping during the day, you absolutely must black your room out to the degree that you can barely even see your hand.

So that means, like, even if you come home during the day. Right, you're totally blacking out the room.

Yes, yes. You've got to make it as dark as possible because your body's not producing melatonin unless it's dark.

And so do you take melatonin too?

Now that's.

Do you recommend that for shift workers who get home like during the day to take melatonin?

I wouldn't take that consistently. Definitely not. I mean, there's a lot of other supplements I turn to first, but with melatonin, so what they found, and you know, right off the bat, we think that, well, maybe if we take it too much, your body might start to lose its ability to use it. No, actually we've, we found that it's not that your body won't be able to produce it, it's the fact that your receptor sites start to downregulate for melatonin if you take the supplement too often. Right. So we don't want that to happen. So melatonin is something that would be in a spot treatment case. So if it was travel, if it was every now, now and then, instead let's use precursors, you know, so the 5 HTP, the L tryptophan, or we can go with the Herbal thing. So chamomile tea is something really gentle. Valerian is, is pretty strong for some people, you know, so things like that as another supplement. But bottom line, produce melatonin naturally. You need to get it as dark as possible in your bedroom.

Gotcha.

Another thing would be to just follow the other basic stuff. So make sure that you're sleeping in a cooler environment. Make sure that, you know, you're optimizing your nutrition as much as you can. You know, we do a whole chapter, and I think we're going to talk about this today, dedicated to essentially fixing your gut, to fix your sleep, and to try to do everything you can to support your microbiome, because that's gonna have a huge impact on your sleep quality. So. And we can just go on and on and on. There's so many different things that you definitely need to do that you don't have the wiggle room other people have because you're not living a normal life or what. What your genes are expecting you to live.

Yeah, two. Two thoughts I have on or. Well, three I have on the night shift thing that, that I recommend to a few of the folks I work with on night shift. First of all, we mentioned the. The light therapy. And like I mentioned, I'm not a fan of the blue light boxes. But for people who work night shift, like during the night, when you're working, trying to fool your body into thinking that it's the day is really important. And that's not necessarily something that you want to do during the entire night shift. Right. As you're getting close to the end of the night shift, you would want to do things like take out the blue light blocking glasses. Right. To limit your exposure to artificial light and begin to use some of the things you just talked about, Shawn, like chamomile and valerian. But you're almost like fooling your body towards the end of your night shift into thinking that the sun is setting and that it's time to go to sleep. And then the other thing that I recommend, in addition to using blue light blocking glasses and in addition to using blue light producing devices, like early on in the night shift, and this kind of disagrees with what you just mentioned, but I actually like the concept of microdosing with melatonin. I spoke with Dr. Kirk Parsley, who developed this supplement called Sleep Cocktail, and we talked about some of these issues with melatonin and how you actually don't want to, like you mentioned, Sean, make your receptors for melatonin less sensitive to melatonin. And he seems to have come to the conclusion that microdosing a lot of melatonin supplements are 3, 5, 10 milligrams. He's got like 0.3 milligrams in his supplement. And he says that that's, that's basically based on research. Not enough to desensitize you to melatonin, but still enough to kind of like gently lull your body into the deeper sleep phases that you might not get in the absence of melatonin.

Yeah, you. I'm right on the same page with you. I specifically mentioned that too, is that it's also the amount, you know, so a lot of supplements are like sometimes like a hundred times more melatonin than what your body would be producing itself. You know, it's totally, it just, it's mind blowing. And so, yeah, definitely having those smaller amounts. Yeah, I think that that's actually a viable thing.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So night shift. Do everything right and get a new job if you have to. But that being said, I, I won't put this out there. I appreciate all the nurses, all the doctors out there.

Yes.

Go out of their way, but I mean, if anything, you know, try and, try and have some of your life where you're working night shifts and, and some of your life where you're not, if possible.

Quick, man, I've got to throw this out there too. This is super, you know, because this is such an important topic, man. You feel the same way that I do, that we really need to have more. I think that our society has failed. It's failed. Are the people who are taking care of us, you know, who are working these night shifts and just ignore the fact that they're devastating their help, you know, trying to serve us. And so I recommend a strategy which. This would take a massive makeover of our, of our culture for this to happen. But instead of having seniority run the, the table as far as, like, if you're going to work night shift for the next 10 years, it should be. If so, especially if it's about service where people are maybe two months on the overnight shift, in 10 months off, you know, because your body does an amazing. It's so resilient and it can do such an amazing job of cleaning house if it has a nice chunk of time to do it, three days off isn't going to do it. And the research shows that. So if we can maybe restructure things, you know, with our police officers, with our firefighters, with our emergency care technicians to where they're getting A solid part of the year where they can be a normal human being and their genes can do. And you can do what their genes are expecting them to do. I think is gonna result in a big, big shift in all of the negative things that you've talked about on your show before.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Restructuring culture to allow for night shift workers to get some day shifts, too. A lot of day shifts. Okay. So another thing that you alluded to just a little bit ago was the link between gut bacteria and sleep. I found this section of the book fascinating. I think everybody knows that if your gut is messed up, it's going to mess up many areas of your life. But I'd like to specifically hear you expound a little bit on what you found regarding the actual bacterial profile of the gut and its effect on sleep.

Oh, man, this was. So this was probably the most fun that I had writing the book. And a lot of the stuff that I talk about in this chapter, I personally didn't even know about for, until about maybe two years ago. And a lot of your audience is already going to be up to speed on the fact that upwards of 95% of your body's serotonin is located in your gut. All right? And serotonin is actually produced by the interchromophen cells that are in the intestinal mucosa in your belly. All right? And we talked about earlier how it's a precursor to melatonin. So serotonin's function in your body and the ability of these cells to produce it is really, really important. And what was also so interesting, and you mentioned this already, and there were researchers from. It was Caltech, and they discovered that certain bacteria in your gut play an important role in the production of serotonin that we've already been talking about. So the bacteria in your gut are literally communicating with the cells that produce your serotonin. So that's part one. Part two is like a game changer. Everybody needs to understand this from this day, from this day forward. And it really changed my thinking just tremendously when I found this out. So a big part of this sleep equation and what we've even been talking about is melatonin. Right, Right. So melatonin is the, quote, sleep hormone, but it's really more like a get good sleep hormone. It helps your body by regulating your sleep cycles and, and supporting healthy sleep. So when we think about it, we oftentimes think about the pineal gland, because this is what we're told in popular culture, your pineal gland is producing Your Melatonin. Well, this is the big news flash is that it's been discovered that your gut has been found to contain at least 400 times more melatonin than your pineal gland.

Holy cow.

And you can actually get pinealectomy, you know, have your pineal gland removed, which I don't, I don't, I don't recommend that, you know, might not be a good day if you have that done. But what was found is that even if the gland is removed, your body still maintains about the same level of melatonin in your gut. All right, so we've got to change our whole equation around when we're talking about melatonin, you know, right off the bat. And so again, research has found that our bacteria in our gut are communicating with the cells that maintain and produce these important sleep related hormones. And also one other quick part I'm going to throw in here before we talk about the bacteria specifically is that UCLA researchers, they actually found that there's this really interesting connection between your gut and your brain. All right, so, and specifically it's linked up via your vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve connects your belly to your brain, but there's other organs along that path. And what UCLA researchers were found, and this is shocking, is that 90% of those fibers from your vagus nerve is carrying information from your gut to your brain and not the other way around. So your gut is largely sending information to your brain and it's going to automatically be determining processes.

Really. I didn't know that it was that skewed towards the gut sending information to the brain versus the brain to the gut. So it really is 90% gut.

Exactly, exactly. And this is why it's called the second brain. It's often referred to as the second brain and it's. But the technical name is the enteric nervous system. And your enteric nervous system has more neurotransmitters and brain related hormones in like your peripheral nervous system. Like just, it's, it's crazy how much, quote, brain tissue in a way is located in your belly. So what do we do to support this? Well, we already talked about how the, the bacteria is communicating with those cells and produce these things. And we have to understand this overarching thing, which is, number one, we have 10 times more bacteria that live in and on our body than we have human cells. So you're mostly bacteria, which is weird. Super weird. But we want to make sure that in our microbiome, so in our gut, that the friendly flora that have the greatest synergy with human tissues are running your ship. All right? Because the unfriendly bacteria that are oftentimes, they're called the opportunistic bacteria.

Right.

Can cause a lot of damage to your cells. And it's. But I also want to say this too, because I used to really be caught up on unfriendly bacterium. Like, why is it even there? Why do we have E. Coli in there? You know, you actually need a little bit of that.

It's a.

But it's about balance, you know, so I refer to, and I give the example of these, quote, unfriendly bacteria being kind of like the incredible hawk in, in the Avengers. You know, he's needed, you know, he's necessary to take down.

Yeah.

You know, to take down Loki. But if, if there were all hawks there, we'd. Everything would be messed up like it would go to hell in a handbasket super fast. So we want to have the right balance, so we want to support our bacteria. And this is basic stuff that I know Ben has just drilled down on so many different times. Avoiding agricultural chemicals, simple, you know, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, processed foods with the, you know, excessive sugars, processed sugars that are going to feed bacteria, chemical additives, things like that, that just have no business being in our food. Repeated antibiotic use, chlorinated water, these basic things are going to, Avoiding them is going to help to support that healthy microbiome. But then we can of course get into the conversation of what do we do outside of avoiding the problem. What can we do to support them? So they're doing the job they're supposed to do.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, when it comes to the microbiome and especially the gut, you know, I'm all about testing. I'm a huge, huge fan of everybody at least once a year getting like a stool panel, right. Like a, like a three day poop panel where. And I do this once a year look at bacteria, yeast, fungus, parasites. I recently also sent in a little, little Q tip swab of my, my fecal matter to the American Gut Project, which actually looks at how the balance of what are called like pharmacytes and bacterioids and all these different bacteria in your gut compare to the general population. And that's, that's more of the, of just, you know, there's not a lot of value to it at this point other than just seeing how you compare. But they're building up a database to be able to see like how people eat actually affects their gut Bacteria and whether certain people of genetic, you know, ancestry have a different microbiome than other folks. But yeah, like, I think in my opinion, anybody who's not sleeping well, who has insomnia and doesn't quite know why it's happening, I think they need to get a gut test because it's not like I had parasites before. I don't know if you ever had parasites, Sean, but they hatch like every two weeks they hatch, and they hatch based on moon cycles. It's just, it's creepy. And every time they hatch, you get insomnia. You're up all night and you kind of know, like, not to gross people out, but, like, your butthole itches a little bit and like. Yeah, and it's really weird. You almost feel as though something is living inside of you. And it's crazy. But for me, it was just because I did so much travel to Asia for a while, like doing triathlons, swimming in water, you know, swallowing amoebas and parasites and stuff like that. And I had to do a full on a really, really nasty tasting, like, Chinese herbal cleanse. And then I had to rebuild my bacteria. You know, I did probiotics in the mouth and also probiotic enemas, right, where you literally, you make a probiotic enema. The probiotics, you ferment them in coconut water on the kitchen counter for like six hours, and then you shove them up your butt and you go and hang from an inversion table, right, for like 20 minutes. And that was how I repopulated myself after killing off the parasites. But that might sound excessive to a lot of folks listening in, but I mean, like, like you just said, Sean, I mean, when it comes to, like, serotonin, melatonin, sleep, yeah, gut bacteria is super important.

No, this isn't. This is the Ben Greenfield podcast, man. People are. They know. They already know what's going down here, man. That's. And that's.

You get into all sorts of other stuff in the book about, like, you know, fecal transplants and some of the other stuff when it comes to, to gut bacteria and sleep. But I'll, I'll leave that to folks to discuss when they read the book because there's a couple of things I want to ask you. Are you being really generous with your time? So I want to take every advantage of it here. So a couple other things, Sean. First of all, the ideal sleeping position. Does it exist? Is there an ideal sleeping position that they've found to be the best for most folks, man?

Well, first and foremost, kind of weird. It's just like you just lay down and you go to sleep. Why does it matter? It actually matters. It actually matters a lot because your sleeping position can impact obviously that thing that we know about pretty is it's very, on the surface level is the stability of our spine. But also it impacts the blood flow to our brain, it impacts our hormone production, it impacts our joint integrity, our ligament integrity, it impacts our heart function and blood pressure, Our digestion is impacted, our oxygen supply, inefficient breathing is impacted. All these different things are impacted by the way that we're laying down. You know, so we do want to mind our sleeping position. And you know, in the book, in this specific chapter, this is called play your position. And so instead of telling people what to do, I try to focus on what to do to make it better. And most experts are going to say sleeping on your back is the ideal way to go about it because of the spinal integrity and especially for people with snoring and sleep apnea, things like that, it's actually worsened by laying on your back. Oh yeah, right. And so I've seen this also my wife, which I've, I've talked about this on my show. So it's, it's legal for me to mention this, guys, I'm not throwing her out there, She's a petite woman, but she could snore like a, like a straight up bear. Like a grizzly. Right? She's grizzly.

Yeah.

And it's only when she's amazing.

It's amazing the sounds that, that, that hot, small women can make when they're sleeping. They fart, they snore. It's crazy. Everything, everything becomes ugly once the hot woman falls asleep.

Exactly. It's like, who are you? Yeah, you know, when you look over.

At him, but Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Exactly. And this is what I call meeting your, your partner's sleep alter ego. You know, that's, that's a whole interesting thing that happens when you guys get together. But so as far as laying on your back, it's great for a couple of things. Number one is like cosmetic issues. Another thing is like your skin health for like, you know, when I was younger, like just smashing my pillow into my face, I was prone to breakouts on the side that I slept on, you know, the most, which was so crazy, but I never pieced it together. So cosmetic stuff, so not accelerating wrinkles and allowing your skin to breathe, that kind of stuff and avoiding breakouts. But the deeper things are things like acid reflux is helped a lot by sleeping on your back. But what the issue is is that laying on your back is not comfortable for a lot of us at all. And some of the strategies on making that a little bit better is, number one, we want to make sure that we're not using a huge pillow, all right. Where your spinal integrity is going to be thrown off. So you're laying on your back and your head's propped up. And if you just even put your head like as we're standing or sitting right now, and then you just pretend you got a pillow behind your head, automatically you're tucking your chin down a little bit. And if you were to walk around in that position all day, you're probably going to have some problems with your spine. All right. Specifically with the, your cervical spine. So we've got to make sure that our pillows are supporting that little space in between our neck and our head and not over extending or pushing our head down towards our body too much.

Right.

So that's, that's one thing and. Well, I mean that's pretty. Laying on your back is pretty simple and to the point. So. But the other thing though, and they.

They make a. I don't know if you've seen this. They actually make special pillows now that allow your neck to be in the optimal position. If you are a back sleeper. Yes, they're. What are they called? They're, they're. There's. They're like Dr. Somebody's pillows. I think they're Dr. Not Dr. Scholl's. I'll, I'll find them and put a link to them because I have a couple. They, they sent me to refer review and I'm not a back sleeper. So for me it was kind of like meh. But apparently a regular pillow puts your neck in a flexion position when you're sleeping. And these allow you to be in a position that does not compress spinal nerves while you're asleep. If you're a back sleeper, really interesting pillow. I'll find a link to it and put it in the show notes for folks. Exactly. Now I'm a side sleeper. I sleep on my side pillow tucked between my knees. I, I feel like a million bucks when I sleep in that position. But I did an interview with that guy I mentioned, Dr. Littlehales, and he works with a lot of athletes, like pitchers and tennis players and throwing athletes. He's a big, big fan of. If you are an athlete who uses one specific arm, predominantly you sleep on your non dominant side. Right. You sleep on Your non dominant side, which apparently puts less pressure on that arm that you would be using during competition, leaves a little bit less compressed. And he swears by that, by like training your body, if you're an athlete, to sleep on the specific side. That's the opposite side of what you'd be using during. During competition and training.

Yeah, but here's the. That's going to be virtually impossible to maintain that position, you know, because your, your body will definitely. You're going to cut off blood flow and you're going to. Potentially, if you are able to stay in that position for eight hours, you're probably gonna.

Yeah, I've tried it. I gotta. Even though I'm a side sleeper, I gotta shift like left side to right side throughout the night.

Yeah, that's what's normal, you know, and so his recommendation is a tough one, but I get it. This is what the problem can be with sleeping on your side. And there's a way to do it better. Like you mentioned throwing the pillow in between your knees instead of focusing on having a huge pillow under your head, which you can. Again, there's a, there's pillows for side sleepers as well. But what's so good about sleeping on your side? It's also clinically proven to help with digestive issues like acid reflux and heartburn. But this is for a lot of people, it kind of simulates our template. You know, we're kind of curled up in the fetal position. And what I love about is that it's a quick fix for snoring. All right, so just changing over and sleeping on your side can be a very, very quick fix for people with low to moderate levels of snoring. You know, there's some chronic issues that might be something with, you know, the breathing pathway or some obstruction or something like that, but generally simply getting your. And I've heard this before, you know, just working in this field for so many years. There's a woman and she, she started. She's always been a side sleeper, but when she started sleeping on her back when she got pregnant and she just couldn't sleep any other way because how the baby tended to lay in, in her body. And after she had her baby, she just continued to sleep on her back and her husband was complaining. She sent me a message about it that her husband kept complaining about her snoring. She's like, I've just trained myself to sleep on my back. I don't know what else to do. And it was so simple. It's like, train yourself to sleep on your side. Again, you know, there's no reason to not work on it. And it's largely a matter of just, oh, there's the old. There's the old tennis ball trick where you can basically stitch up a pocket on the back of your T shirt or put a T shirt with a pocket on it backwards and stick a tennis ball in there. And every time you try to tip over on your back, it's not gonna. It's not gonna allow you to do that, you know, so you could train yourself to do that. For most people, we don't need to do that. We don't need to do little doggy tricks, but just training yourself by getting in the optimal position. If you wake up, you know, as you're shifting positions at night, just get yourself back into the optimal position that you want to be in and find ways to make it more comfortable. And lastly, the other side is sleeping on your belly. A lot of people just. That's just how they feel best. I talk about how to do it better. It's not the best place to sleep, especially if you have issues with digestive issues, heartburn, things like that. But what you understand about laying on your belly is that if you're laying down on your. On your. On your anterior side on your belly, and you got your head cocked to one side smashed into a pillow, and again, just walk around like that for a couple of hours, you're going to have neck problems, you know, so we've got to find a way to make it a little bit more advantageous. And so I recommend just simply shifting your body a little bit and bringing. Raising one knee up to also take some pressure off your spine. Because if you're laying straight as an arrow with your face smashed into a pillow, you're definitely going to be hyperextending your lower back as well. So lift your knee up on either side and. Or you can stick a pillow under your hips. You know, there's so many different things you could do to make the that position better. So instead of telling people which way to sleep more. So how can you make it a little bit better?

Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, the name of that pillow is the Dr. J pillow. Dr. J pillow. I'll link to it in the show notes for those of you who want to check it out. But you know that that's another reason I'm a big fan of tracking your sleep cycles, like seeing how long you spent in deep sleep, REM sleep, non REM sleep, light sleep, how long you spent awake because if you do experiment with your sleep positions, I think a little bit of quantification can be helpful, you know, and I that you know, for everything from supplements to sleeping positions. You know, I think yet another reason I gotta get you on the, I gotta get you on the techno geek bandwagon here at some point, Shawn. Anyways though, I've got a couple other quick questions. Number one, are you on board with this idea that, that if you take a nap for longer than 60 minutes, you're screwing yourself over and you're messing up your sleep cycles versus taking like quick 20 to 30 minute naps that don't allow you to get into to non rapid eye movement sleep? Like what's your take on napping?

Yeah, no, I, I'm definitely not in that camp. I think that your body really, it's, it's just listening to your body again and if you need a longer nap, then do that. And so from, from my perspective, I'm more of the sleep until you feel good enough to wake up, you know, versus you know, trying to, I'm just gonna get this, I'm gonna set my alarm and that kind of thing. But also we've gotta understand the first thing is chances are when we require a nap, like we cannot operate normally without taking a nap. Chances are your sleep quality sucks, you know, especially the night before if you're tired the next day and you feel like taking a nap, but every now.

And then a good sleep quality sucks or you're an athlete. Like I know so many athletes who just need that extra recovery, they need that extra sleep cycle. I'm one of them. I sleep seven to eight hours a night and I have to, you know, unless I sleep more than eight hours a night, I have to get that post lunch sleep cycle in. I just have to. Or else my performance sucks.

Yes, so that was what I was, exactly what I was about to say. Because of the fact that a good nap is just a good nap. If you're, especially if you're more active, if you've got a lot of other stuff going on, even your, even mental performance can require you to need more sleep, you know, and so even if you're taking in a lot of information, you're studying, you're maybe working on a book, which will make you, you know, extremely energized but also very tired because your brain processes all of that stuff while you're sleeping. You know, this is the first, one of the most important things is this pro, it's called memory processing actually, where even as Everybody's listening right now. When you sleep tonight, this is where it's going to get converted into your short term memory. And if you're lacking, especially specifically during REM sleep, if you're lacking in getting adequate REM sleep, this is what happens when we drink alcohol. Our REM sleep is called a REM rebound effect. And to the degree, and we all know, like, if you drink too much, you might not remember exactly what happened.

That happened to me last night, actually. I had. Well, I'm like, I'll be straightforward. I had weed and whiskey last night. Like, I just, I just did. I smoked up and I had like a shot of whiskey and a glass of kombucha and my REM sleep was at 8% this morning, which is like nothing. Right? My, my little quantification app told me, hey, your REM sleep sucked. You're going to need to make an adjustment, you know, get extra, extra sleep tonight, et cetera. I know what it was from, right. And I was in bed for eight and a half hours. Right. So I was sleeping. And I wouldn't have really necessarily known this. Like, I can tell I'm a little bit more fatigued than I should be today. But yeah, I mean, that's a really good point. That if your REM sleep sucks, you may find that you have to take longer naps. And it's not necessarily because you need more recovery from athletic performance or something like that. It's because you're not optimizing your sleep cycles because of, you know, like you mentioned, Sean, you know, too much alcohol before bed, for example.

Yeah, it's like the movie the Hangover. You know, everybody did, did a little something and then they did not remember what happened.

Yeah.

And so it just depends on the level there. You know, it's not that alcohol is intrinsically bad for us, it's just what it can do to your, to your sleep cycle. And this interesting thing with this rim rebound effect that happens. But, you know, so we want to mind all of these small things. But also understanding if you require more sleep, then you've got to give your body that extra sleep, whether it's at night or if you get that power nap, which again, my recommendation, if your body requires that sleep because you are, you know, performing outside of your norm. Your norm, then you need to sleep until you're not sleepy anymore. That's my 2 cents on the matter.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I've always, I've always gritted my teeth against that recommendation to never sleep longer than 20, 30 minutes. For a nap. I get in bed for a nap. I curl up. I use a biomat, produces infrared rays and it grounds you and earths you, which I know you talk all about grounding and earthing in the book, but man, I curl up on that thing and I just sleep as long as I need to sleep after lunch. And I typically will automatically wake up after 45 to 60 minutes. Feel like a million bucks. I don't care. I'll give a. Give a finger to the people who say that it's too drowsy afternoon, because I swear by it. Last question for you. Morning exercise versus evening exercise and the effect on sleep cycles or sleep. What's your take on that? What did you find when writing the book? Because a lot of people who are listening in their exercise enthusiasts.

Yes, yes, yes. So great study was done by Appalachian State University, and they had exercisers train at three different times. So part one, they, they trained at 7am in the morning, part two, 1pm, part three, 7pm and these were exclusive times when they were training specifically at those times over phases of the study. And what they discovered at the end of the study was that when the morning exercisers, when they were exclusively working out in the morning, they were able to have more efficient sleep cycles. They slept longer. They tended to sleep longer. And they had about a 25% drop in their blood pressure at night as compared to the other times. And that is, it's sort of an indication of an activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. And so which is the quote, rest and digest system. So training in the morning equates to sleeping better at night. And this is one of the things that I'm really working to push into popular culture is that a great night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning. And. But then.

So do you think that's the absence of the evening exercise or the presence of the morning exercise?

It's the presence. I love that question, man. I love talking to you, man. But it's the presence of the morning exercises because it's one of those things that helps to reset and click up that, that cortisol rhythm that we talked earlier.

Just like, just like you should get sunlight exposure in the morning, which makes sense because I swear by morning exercise. But I also, I'm a two a day, right? Like I, I personally do like. So you're probably familiar with this, Sean, that, like your parasympathetic nervous system kind of predominates in the morning, right? Your, your pooping system, your rest and digest system, even though you get that little dump in cortisol. I'm a big fan of Mark Sisson, who I had in the podcast. He calls it easing into your day.

Right?

Like he'll do like an easy paddle board or a walk in the sunshine with a dog. I like to do like a little bit of yoga or deep breathing or like a really easy swim or something like that. And then later on in the evening, evening, I'll smash it. Not in the evening, like 4 to 6pm or so. And I think from what I've seen, and you might know this, you may have even talked about in the book, I think it's something like two or three hours before bed is when you would want a super hypercortisolic, sympathetic nervous system stimulating type of workout to have ended in order for it to not disrupt sleep.

Exactly, exactly. You know, there's so much in there. And I actually did an experiment. This experiment ended about three months ago, but I had to find out for myself. So for an entire year, I trained in the afternoon. And I've been a morning exerciser since, I don't know, over 10 years, easy. And I wanted to find out, of course I wanted to look at this. The strength gains, the. The increased reaction time. And I saw that stuff training in the afternoon versus the morning, which was pretty amazing. But I wanted to make sure that this wouldn't influence my results, you know, my ability to accomplish my goals as far as my training and the strength gains and all that stuff consistently. If I worked out in the morning and afternoon by just to get a little kick in that cortisol encouragement in the morning. And so five to 10 minutes of exercise in the morning is what I did for the past year. And it in matter of fact, it seemed to make everything better when I trained in the afternoon. So this would be 5 to 10 minutes of some body weight exercises or jumping on. The thing I did the most was jumping on this rebounder. You know, this mini trampoline that I have here in my office, which, you know, NASA, these are literal rockets.

My grandma has one of those that I jump on when I go to her house. Like, I don't. I don't have one at my house, but she has one. And when I visit her and I feel kind of dumb when I do it, but at the same time, like, it gets stuff moving in the morning. It's kind of cool.

Dude, NASA has said that rebounding is the best exercise for human beings. All right, These are literal rocket scientists. All right, what it's doing, of course, is really great for working your lymphatic system. And in a strange way, it's making your cells, all the cells in your body kind of do little push ups because you're so much more of your weight is pushing down when you're in contact with the rebounder. And then when you come up off the rebound and your feet are off of it, you're essentially weightless. And so it's this G force that gets created and it's, it's just incredible, man. It's really, really great form exercise. So. But anyway, so I'll do that for five to 10 minutes. You know, throw on a podcast and.

That'S in the morning.

Yeah, every. And I did this for an entire year, whereas I would have normally went to the gym in the morning or worked out at home. And so, or like I said, body weight exercises, Tabata or something a little bit more parasympathetic in a way. So I go for like a power walk for 10, 20 minutes. What else would I do? There's so many different options you can throw in here, but get some form of physical activity in in the morning and that's going to translate to better sleep at night, even if you train in the afternoon.

Got it.

The other issue though is with training in the afternoon slash early evening and not making it too late. And so there are going to be people listening right now their jiu jitsu class is like at 8pm it's just what it is. And they're finding that I'm not as recovered, like I'm doing something that I love, but I'm tired, I'm needing more supplements. My body fat is not the place where I want it to be. Chances are you might be having some issues with your sleep because of the time of your training. And so what it is, number one, there's a process called thermoregulation. Your body has a natural drop in its core body temperature in the evening to help to facilitate better sleep. So there are certain things that your body does, certain processes that kick on when it starts to get a little cooler in the evening. So you don't want to have your core body temperature be too elevated. And there's lots of things that you can do to bring it back down after working out, which you know that can be. And I know Ben has talked about this stuff about playing around with your body temperature, but so we want to make sure that that's one of the things we're minding is that core body temperature elevation, but also that increase in cortisol too late. And again, it's the antithesis of melatonin. So you don't want our cortisol to be high at 10 o' clock at night and you're planning on getting to bed at 11. It's not going to happen because you can physiologically pass out. You can, you can be physiologically laying down and unconscious, but that doesn't mean you're getting your normal sleep cycles because melatonin can be suppressed for, you know, an hour or two later after you falling asleep. Yeah, so that's what we got in mind.

That's why probably my worst night to sleep are Wednesday nights when I have men's tennis because not only do does tennis go until about 9:30pm but they're super duper bright LED lights on the tennis courts. And it's just, I treat that like night shift night. I'll get in and when I'm driving home I'll do melatonin. I'll typically take CBD and this sleep cocktail when I get home and just, just like do everything I can to shut down all that cortisol that built up from the evening exercise. But that's really interesting. So it comes down to ideally get in a morning exercise session and then if you want that good 12 combo, avoid like hypercortisolic sympathetic nervous system based exercise within about two to three hours prior to bedtime.

Exactly. You want to be finished two to three hours before bedtime.

Yeah, makes sense. Dude, we covered a lot. And you cover even more in this book. So folks, I've been taking notes furiously as Sean, as I have been talking and I'm going to link to all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com SleepSmart. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sleepsmart. Sean's book is called Sleep 21 Proven Tips to sleep your way to a better body, better health and bigger success. He obviously knows what he's talking about. He put a lot of work into this book and it's a good thing. So Sean, thanks for coming on the show man and sharing all this stuff with us.

Hey man, it's totally my pleasure. Anytime. And of course guys, you gotta check out Ben's appearance on my show. I gotta have you back on, man. There's some things I wanna talk to you about. You sent me stuff, CBD and so I'm gonna start experimenting with that. And guys, so you can check, check me out@themodelhealthshow.com and you can find sleep smarter at anywhere you buy books. And we're@sleepsmarterbook.com as well, or Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the usual places. And Ben, it's always a pleasure. And this is probably one of the one of my favorite interviews because of the fact that you are truly a pioneer and somebody's doing great work in this field. Man, I just appreciate you. So thank you.

Not a pioneer, just a nerd. Just a nerd. You're a nerd pioneer.

All right, Cool.

Well, folks, thanks for listening in again. BenGreenfieldFitness.com SleepSmart to grab the show notes. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield with Shawn Stevenson signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.