The Best Time Of Day To Exercise, Have Sex, Take Supplements, Read A Book, Take A Nap & More!

Deep da da da da ba deepa ba ba ba Deep da ba ba. Unique New York. Unique New York. The Human Torch was denied a bank loan. The Human Torch was denied a bank loan. How now, brown cow? The arsonist has oddly shaped feet. Oddly. I guess any of you who have not seen Anchorman with Ron Burgundy are missing the joke. It's my warm up. That's how I warm up my voice. This is Ben Greenfield, back at you with another podcast. Perhaps I'm a little bit too bored this morning. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

If you time them and you stick to that time, your whole body gets much more consistent. And it's just like any machine. The more consistently you use it, the more it will produce for you. The biggest thing that I get from people is I'm a lion. I'm up at 5:30. Why can't I go for a run, Michael? Like, why shouldn't I be working out? Then nobody else is awake. That's actually a great time for you to be creative. That's a good time for you to plan out your day. When you're starting to get tired, around 3:30, 4:00 in the afternoon, if you can, and go work out, then you'll actually get an extra boost of energy that'll help carry you through.

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, and I have a question for you. It's not a trick question, it's not a cocktail party question, or maybe it is, but it is this. Do you know your chronotype? Your chronotype? Until two weeks ago, not only did I not know my chronotype, but I actually wasn't quite sure what a chronotype was. And it turns out I am what is called, based on the opinion of my guest today and the research that he's done, a lion chronotype with actually a tendency to delve quite heavily into bear category. I'm right on the edge of being a lion. And you know, if you're listening in, you might be a wolf, in which Case. Michael Bruce, my podcast guest says you should try working out at 6pm and not 6am or maybe you're a lion like me, in which case having a wine or a beer or a cocktail pretty close to when we're recording this episode between about 5:30 and 7:30pm will minimize your chances of sleep disruption from alcohol. Or you might be a dolphin, which means you should actually schedule any big presentations or work tasks for around 4pm or you could be a bear, in which case if you shift dinner from like 6 to 7:30pm could accelerate fat loss or stave off late night snacking. All sorts of interesting tips that I picked up when reading Michael's new book called the Power of When. And actually it's got quite the subtitle, the Power of When. Discover your chronotype and the best type to eat lunch, ask for a raise, have sex, write a novel, take your meds, and more. You ever run into anybody, by the way, that's supposed to do all those things at the same time?

I really hope not.

Could be awkward.

I mean, you'd have to be having sex with your boss while eating lunch, typing and taking some form of medication. I guess it's possible, but you could pull it off. You might be able to.

You have to be equipped with one of those old school machines where there's like the guy in the parade playing like 10 instruments at the same time, that type of thing. Well, Michael, I know you're a sleep expert. You have a private practice where you work with a lot of athletes and celebrities. I know you train sleep doctors. I think it's kind of cool though, you work with like airlines and hotel chains and mattress manufacturers and you develop like CDs for, for, for hotels that help people fall asleep. And I know, I think you were on, Were you on the Dr. O show this morning?

Yeah, actually yesterday I was on the Dr. Oz.

So. So you, you get around when it comes to sleep. And this book is kind of a cool little. You know, I like these books that fall into like the life hacking category, and this one definitely does. So. So first of all, of course, the, the most important question, are we, you and I, based on our chronotypes, are we actually recording this interview at the correct time of day?

Well, I'm a wolf, so this is a perfect time of day for me. And you hear a lion. So you're moving more into the kind of groggy greatness, like, this will be a good time. You won't necessarily be super analytical right now, but you'll be a lot of fun. You'll be relaxed and you'll be ready to take on new ideas. Brainstorming is great for you about this time of day, but for me this is my more analytical kind of get to it. So we're actually this is a perfect time for the between the two of.

Us and I just finished carrying a sandbag around because I've got the page folded over in your book where towards the end of the book you have this. Cool. If you're going to just skip the whole book, not that I recommend that, and flip to the very end of the book. There's a master clock for each graphic. And you say that one of my best times to train for strength is at 1600 hours, which based on my non military training calculations is 4pm I actually just finished a sandbag based workout and you're gonna be proud of me. Not for a tmi, but I had sex this morning.

Perfect.

I've been having sex in the morning instead of in the evening. My wife loves it. She's getting used to it. We actually matched up our chronotypes. I know this sounds super non romantic based off of off of not reading the book, but we figured out that we actually have pretty enjoyable sex like between about 8 and 10am she's more of a wolf, I'm a little bit more of a lion. And then I also because I learned in your book that a lion releases so much cortisol in the morning that for me to be drinking coffee in the morning, I'm almost wasting the cortisol that coffee is giving me. So I switched 3 days ago I ordered a bunch of bags of decaf, I switched to decaf and so now I'm doing a big cup of decaf coffee in the morning and then I'm having a little bit of coffee in the afternoon after my nap when my energy kind of naturally slumps a little bit.

See, you're really taking practicing full bore. I love it.

Yeah, I like to implement. I'm a man of action. Where'd this stuff come from in the first place? Because I hadn't heard of chronobiology that much. I know it's not like a woo concept, but what's the research history on this stuff? Sure.

So approximately 15 years ago is when we started to see research in this particular area come out. And chronotypes are nothing new in a certain sense. Everybody out there has heard of chronotypes. So everybody out there has probably heard of an early bird or a night owl. Right. And that's a popular vernacular for what I call a lion or a wolf. So here's kind of how the whole thing started out is I've been practicing for 16 years. I'm an actively practicing sleep specialist. I have a PhD in clinical psychology and I'm board certified in clinical sleep disorders. And my specialty is insomnia. And I enjoy working with my insomnia patients. It's hard, but you know, it's good work. And about two and a half, three years ago, I had a couple of patients and quite frankly, my techniques weren't working. And I'm not a big drug guy. Supplements, I think, can be used sparingly, but it can be quite effective. But I'm not a big pharmaceutical fan and so I try to do everything without that. And whatever I tried on this one woman in particular didn't work very well. And so I'm kind of like a dog with a bone. I wanted to dig in and check it out. And so I said, well, explain more to me. And she said, it's not that I have a hard time falling asleep and it's not that I have a hard time staying asleep. She said, I sleep at the wrong times. And I was like, all right, hold on. I got a 12 year old and I got a 14 year old and both of them do the same thing. They'd like, if it was up to them, they'd go to bed at 1 and they'd sleep until 11, right? And so I started talking with her about it and I said, well, if you could have your ultimate work schedule, what would it be? And she said, I wouldn't get into work until like nine and I would stay until seven. And I said, well, what's going on at work? She says, I'm about to get fired. And she was serious. I called her boss and he said he's fed up with it. She came in late all the time. She would fall asleep in morning meetings. She wasn't being productive. He didn't know what was wrong with her, but he liked her as a person and he thought she was a great employee and he wanted to keep her, but he just wasn't sure if he was going to be able to. So I said, let's do an experiment. I said, let's have her come in two hours later and leave two hours later and let's do this for seven to 10 days and see what happens. And at the end of the ten days we spoke and he said, she's alert, she's responsive, she's productive, she Gets involved in meetings. Now I don't have to worry about her at all. He said, it's fantastic. And I was really surprised because I talked to some of her family members and they were all like, oh, mom's a much nicer person to be around now. She got along better with her family, with her partner, with her kids. Like, it was unbelievable. And so I said, okay, so there must be a little bit more to this than that. So I really started to dig into the literature because we know that the early bird types and the late night types only make up about 15% of the population in each one of those categories. So there's 70% of the population that were still out there. Really?

So. So there's not people that are. That are early birds or night owls, but I guess I've always thought everybody was either an early bird or a night owl. And what you're saying is that's not the case?

That is not the case, actually. So it turns out that this is all based genetics. The PER3 and the PER2 genes. The length of those genes determines your sleep drive and also determines the timing of your sleep. And that's all a chronotype is. It's a classification of the timing of your sleep patterns. So is that.

Does that influence sleep length as well? Like, is that the same gene that's responsible for guys like, you know, Bill Clinton saying they can sleep four hours and be just fine?

Exactly. And you could actually, if you really wanted to, you could go in and test it. I mean, it would probably cost a gazillion bucks, but you could definitely go in and do some of that kind of genetic work.

You can't just do with 23andMe or something like that.

I haven't seen. I actually, I did 23andMe, and I didn't see it on there, but I want to try. I want to get in touch with them and see if we could, because that would be really cool. Be able to sell your sleep genes. That would be a lot of fun. I know that they do one thing for restless leg syndrome and periodic limb movements genetically, but I don't know if they've.

Why can't they do the useful stuff?

I know, right?

I mean, not. I mean, I guess I just insulted everybody with restless leg syndrome, but I'm. Seriously, this sleep thing would be super interesting.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I started digging into the literature, trying to figure this stuff out. And so what I discovered was that historically, that was the only two things that ever got measured, was early morning and late evening. And it was called the morningness or an eveningness sort of proclivity. And I just didn't buy it. I didn't think it was the only thing that was out there. And so digging more, digging more. And what I discovered was there's actually four types. So there's early morning people that I call a lion, and that's what you are. And so my lions actually and I developed an assessment tool so that people could figure this out. So anybody that's listening, if they want to go to the powerofwenquiz.com, you can figure out what it's free. You get a report, you get the whole thing. But my lions are very interesting people. So they're my early risers, they're my go getters. These are the coos. Oftentimes they're my entrepreneurs. These are the people that like to go from A to B to C, like to get it done and accomplish tasks. They love to work. And what's interesting is on the social side of things, sometimes they feel a little alienated because they can't stay up that late. A lot of my lions are going to bed at 9:30 at night and they're like dinner and a movie, Are you kidding me? Like they can barely make it through dinner. And so that in and of itself is kind of interesting aspect to lions is. And a lot of people have what we call lion envy. They wish that they could get up that early and be that productive and not get as much sleep.

I have whatever opposite lion envy would be. It's when my wife is able to sleep in and my house sleeping in means like 8am My wife is able to sleep until 8am and I'm up at 5:30am wishing I hadn't gone to bed at midnight.

Yeah, you're the classic lion by every stretch of the imagination. So lions are my early folks. Then in between are my bears. And so bears are more extroverted. They're this affable, lovable character type of person. These are the people that you sit down with lunch, and they've always got a funny story to tell or they know all the gossip at work. Bears like to get things done, but they like to play as well. So bears have a really decent work life balance, if you will. They like to play hard, they like to work hard. These are the people who are, you know, standing at the keg, passing out the beer or buying drinks at the bar, what have you. But they're really the glue that kind of keeps society together. Then we have the late night people, which I call wolves. And I chose wolf as a representation because wolves are actually very nocturnal creatures and they hunt at night. They're loners and my wolves are my loners. These are the people that are highly creative. These are my artists and my writers and my actors and my musicians. They're very introverted people, generally speaking. Because you know what? Society really doesn't know what to do with these people. Right?

Yeah. Well, I actually have two, I have two friends who had fallen to that category, both of which have been on this podcast. Tai Lopez, who, when I go and visit him in la, it's so annoying because I find it hard to hang out with him because he has breakfast at like 2pm, right? And then he, he will be getting ready for dinner at about 10:30pm, right, to head out to dinner. And I'm, you know, while I'm wearing my blue light blocking glasses, taking melatonin and you know, curling up to go to bed. And then Tim Ferriss is another guy who will, you know, begin writing a book at midnight and write from midnight until 4am or 5am when he says he has the most productivity. And again, I've always, and I've even been guilty of telling these guys that perhaps they're breaking their circadian rhythms, but it sounds like what you're saying is that that is their chronobiology.

It is actually, you know, I mean, they're actually, believe it or not, they're following their circadian rhythms. Now some people are super, super wolves. You know, Tim Ferriss, it sounds like he would kind of be a super wolf because he does all that stuff super late at night. But it's pretty interesting. There's a fourth category also, by the way, and I call them dolphins. And I used dolphins as a representation because many people don't know, but dolphins sleep uni hemispherically. So half of their brain is asleep while the other half is awake and looking for predators and swimming. And I thought that was a great representation of my insomnia patients. And so these are my highly intelligent people, type A personalities for sure. But sometimes they've got a little bit of obsessive compulsiveness to them and they can't get out of their own way. You know, they're obsessed with the details. A lot of times they're not as productive as they want to be because they're getting frazzled, you know, by the morning. And they're not great sleepers, by the way. And so their sleep deprivation can really take A toll on them. So, anyway, got through to the point of creating this assessment tool, which is again, the quiz. And once I had the quiz and I could kind of figure out what people were, I had remembered that this woman, her family said that they liked her better, that she was in a better mood and she was nicer and she was more productive and all these things. So I said, if I know your chronotype, then I actually know your hormone balance going on a 24 hour cycle. Because we know that hormones actually work on a fairly fixed circadian rhythm depending upon what the hormone is. Testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, neurotransmitters, same way, serotonin, epinephrine, norepinephrine. So then I decided to match those substances with activities for your chronotype. And I thought this would just be kind of a fun, interesting exercise. And it turned out to be. I literally found over 350 studies out there that have started to look at these different aspects of this. So this is a super well documented thing. And the research has really been only going on for about the past 15 years, which is when I started to practice. So it's kind of been something that I've been keeping my eye out on the outside of it. And the really interesting research that's gone on with this that I think really kind of spiked everybody's interest was the research with cancer patients. And so what they discovered was that if they supplied people with chemotherapy at very particular times in their circadian cycle, it was actually more effective.

Interesting. Yeah, I remember that part in the book where you talk about, well, you have a section of the book that is the best time to take medications and also the best time to be vaccinated. And I know that there are a few people probably trying to scream and leap through the podcast right now saying there's no good time to get vaccinated. Mercury. But in terms of this idea behind how people respond best to medications or to supplements, how does that work exactly?

And so I'm glad you actually brought that point up. So, number one, I'm not a vaccination person, but there are a lot of people out there who do get vaccinated. And so the reason that I have that in the book is for those people who want to walk down that path, at least I want to show them the research that's been there. You know, my feelings about that are not what is, you know, are not proposed based on the fact that I have it as a category here in the book. But you're very, you know, you're very astute to realize that what I'm trying to accomplish here is get people to understand that there actually is a right time to actually take medications and to do these types of things. So it's kind of fascinating. I'm gonna turn to that section in the book right now because it's so chock full of stuff. Honestly, if I tried to keep 250.

Studies, that's an extremely dense book. Page 160, for example. Dude, I have so my method when I take a book and if you guys follow me on Snapchat, you know this because as I read, I read five to ten books a week and I'm constantly underlining and then I take photos on Snapchat. For anybody who, who follows me on Snapchat, you always see what I circle first. And BenGreenfieldFitness.com Snapchat is my unashamed promo that I'm going to throw in right there. But anyways, you have on page 160, for example, the best time to take a pill.

Yes, absolutely. So when you take a look at those types of things, different medications are. So let me back up for a second. So when you look at doctors historically and they say take this twice a day, what do people generally do? They take it in the morning when they wake up and they take it in the evening when they go to sleep. And if they say take it three times a day, what do they do? They take it with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Number one, when you look at the half life of the medications and you start to understand what's going on, number one, disease doesn't work on that schedule. Disease has a circadian rhythm of its own. All disease has different circadian rhythms of their own in which they are growing and then they subside, and then they grow and they subside. And so being able to look at the situation that's going on and placing the appropriate pharmaceutical supplement, what have you, in conjunction with the situation can actually help the situation in terms of healing. So it gets really interesting really quickly. You know, when you look at things like I've got in here, something on arthritis, we know the joints are stiffest between 8 and 11am because your immune system goes into overdrive at night, increasing inflammation. Right. So we understand more about why we've got stiff joints in the morning. Things like asthma attacks are actually on a very circadian cycle. They happen between 4 and 6am so if you have children who have asthma, you know, be sure that you've got a puffer on their nightstand because you may wake up in the middle of the night, hear them gasping, and it's 4 o' clock in the morning. It's not with this.

Sorry to interrupt, but you look at something like the realm of natural remedies. And so like arthritis or asthma, from what I understand, both can respond relatively well to something like fish oil. Would this mean, for example, if you're more susceptible to arthritic attacks or the effects of asthma in the wee hours of the morning, but you're taking, say, fish oil with breakfast, you might shift it to.

Dude, you're right there. You get it. Exactly. You should be taking your fish oil at night.

I could have written the book, I'm telling you right now. What about the one about. I believe you talk about, like, mice and their response to ethanol, like a poisonous ethanol solution, and how they responded, depending on the time of day, that they were injected with this solution in a different way based on their circadian biology.

Yeah. So alcohol is really interesting in general. So there's a reason that they call it happy hour, because your circadian rhythms are such that you will actually be happier when you have ethanol in your system at a particular time. So there was a really interesting study where they took, I think it was mice, actually, and they gave them alcohol in the early morning, and then they looked at them across a period of time. Actually, I think this was humans. And what they found was, is that if you want to have, if you want to be buzzed all day, drink two Bloody Marys or two mimosas in the morning and you will stay buzzed much longer than if you drank two mimosas in the afternoon or evening. And some of that has to do with your metabolic process, and some of that has to do with your circadian rhythmicity. And how are you processing the alcohol? Where is it going in your head? What's going on in your head? That kind of stuff. So it's pretty amazing, actually. I mean, there's almost nothing. My favorite one is coffee, because so many people drink coffee and you already said you've switched to decaf in the mornings because you're starting to realize that you can actually. Because all you're doing is double dipping there. Cortisol is so much more powerful than caffeine, and that's what wakes you up in the morning. So if you wait to have your cup of coffee about maybe two, two and a half hours after you wake up, you'll be surprised because that's when the cortisol is coming down and then it can give you that lift Again. And then you're so much better off.

But that's because I am a lion. What about like a, like a wolf, would that mean that, that a wolf would want to have their caffeine when they wake up, even if that's noon?

No, they wouldn't. They would really want to wait this two and a half hours. Because see, here's where it gets interesting. So the cortisol rhythm is the same in terms of when it starts, when you wake up, but what you. When. But you wake up at different times based on your chronotype. Right? So a lion's gonna wake up at 5:30, whereas a wolf might want to wake up at 8 or 8:30. Right.

Okay, got it. So no matter what chronotype you are, you wait a couple of hours at least for the cortisol to subside. So like mid morning, or if you wanted to like, like early afternoon, for example, which is, which is actually what I've been doing would be your coffee time.

It's kind of like when you're running a race. Okay. So if you ever watched like the Olympics were just on, right? And you watch them and you notice how on some of them they're staggered and their starts, right? So as they go around the corner, there's one person, and then 10 yards, there's another one, and then 10 yards, another one before the gun goes off. That's kind of like chronotypes, right? And so the lion is all the way at the front and the wolf is all the way at the back. And once the thing yells start, then everybody, you kind of follow your chrono rhythm, like with cortisol. And again, we start to see a dip about two hours after anybody wakes up, depending upon the time you wake up.

Interesting. And then back to wolves. Even though every circadian type, every chronotype should wait to have the coffee, you mentioned how alcohol in particular is quite detrimental to the wolf. Why is that?

So when you take a look at wolves in general, number one is so. Okay, so let me back up for a second. So when you look at a wolf in general, these are the people just to remind everybody, like, to get up late. They're like the Tim Ferrisses of the world. They're up late, late, late at night. And so one of the things that happens with wolves in particular is that their ability to metabolize alcohol is less because there's not enough time in the day, right? And so they're drinking late and they're staying up late, and then they have to wake up the next day at their normal time. And so a lot of times they haven't metabolized all the alcohol out of their system, which is part of the reason that they have a hangover. Also, we know that alcohol keeps you out of the stages three and four sleep, which is the physically restorative sleep. Also, alcohol's a diuretic. And especially for wolves, who are not big water drinkers to begin with, they're already a little bit dehydrated. They drink alcohol. You know, once you break the seal, you start peeing. You're gonna be peeing all night long. You become dehydrated, you fall asleep, or in some cases, pass out. And then you're kind of on this wheel because your brain isn't getting through all the alcohol quick enough because you have to get up at a particular time. So wolves kind of have the worst of all of the categories as far as drinking is concerned.

Gotcha. And is part of that based off of this, this enzyme that you talk about, this alcohol dehydrogenase?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, so basically, you would make more alcohol dehydrogenase in the evenings versus the mornings. So you'd break down alcohol more quickly in the evenings, no matter what chronotype you are. But if you are a wolf, just because of your lifestyle, that alcohol is gonna be hanging around your bloodstream more at night. And so of all the chronotypes, a wolf would wanna be the most careful with their alcohol consumption.

That's exactly right. And that explains why when people drink earlier in the day, when theyit actually lasts longer.

Okay, got it. Now, I wanna back up for a second because there were a couple other questions that I wanted to ask you when you were talking about just the whole lion bearer dolphin, wolf thing in the first place. The first is that this quiz, you of course have the quiz. And I'll link to it, by the way, everything you guys are list, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com PowerOfWen and I'll link to everything that Michael and I talk about. But in addition to the quiz, you talk about, I guess, a more scientific way of potentially determining your chronobiology based on temperature. Can you go into how one would do that?

Sure. So if you want to get really into it, you can start taking your core body temp, not your core body temperature. You can take your regular temperature. And what we see is we know that their core body temperature rises and falls at very particular times. And that's what actually runs your sleep cycle. So many people out there may not Realize that your sleep cycle is completely based on your core body temperature cycle. So if you wanted to, you could actually take your temperature every hour that you're awake. And as you're. And throughout the night, right before you're about ready to go to sleep. And what you'll start to see is you'll start to see the fall in core body temperature, and then you can actually match it up to your chronotype.

Okay. And you have instructions for that in the. I do, but you're just using a basic oral thermometer.

Yeah, you can use that. Or an ear thermometer is probably a little bit more accurate. The most accurate would be a rectal thermometer, but I don't think anybody's out there gonna do that.

Well, I mean, honestly, if you're not drinking a cup of coffee anyways, a rectal thermometer might be a good, good pick me up in the morning. Good way to wake up. It's like. It's like the coffee enema we've talked about before on the show. Oh, dear. Okay.

Not going there.

Yeah, we don't go there for now. I won't ask you about whether it's better for a wolf or a dolphin to stick coffee up there, but.

But I will not answer that question.

But I do want to ask you, and this has nothing to do with sticking coffee up your butt, about Thomas Edison, because you, you talk about when you discuss the history of biotime and kind of like, you know, how we, how we went into all this in the first place. You, you say that, that the most disruptive event in the history of biotime occurred in 1879 with Thomas Edison. What exactly was that and why?

Yeah, it was the adventure of the light bulb. So what he did was he made it so that everybody could change their biotime socially. Right? And so as soon as we had the light bulb, you could stay up late, you could work, you could party, you could hang out with your friends, you could do all these different things. And so everything became very, very different once the light bulb was invented. The second big thing that affected biotime quite a bit was the event of mass transportation across long distances. Right? So the ability to fly trains, steam engines, things like that. Where your brain started in one time zone, your body ends up in another one, and your brain hasn't had a chance to catch up yet. Naturally, your body will catch up approximately one time zone per day. But having being able to go from LA to New York and cross three time zones, your brain doesn't necessarily have A chance to catch up. So the light bulb was certainly the most disruptive. And what's really interesting is if you look back at Thomas Edison's quotes about sleep, you find that he said that as the future comes forward, man will need less and less sleep. He thought sleep was a complete waste of time, which I thought, I find fascinating because now when you look at the research, sleep is arguably the most critical thing other than eating, that you can do and obviously breathing. But you can't do anything without a good night's sleep. It affects every organ system, every disease state. If you're thinking about wellness, if you're thinking about health, if you're thinking about any of those things, you can't do it without sleep.

That'd be interesting to see if he had that gene you were talking about, that PD gene. So maybe he didn't give a crap about sleep because he could get away with four hours of sleep a night, by the way.

Maybe he was like a lion that had a very low sleep drive and he was like a Donald Trump and he's only sleeping three, four hours a night.

Have you heard about how people who have that gene that makes it so they're able to, I guess, go through their, you know, the normal 90 minute sleep cycle? I guess from what I understand, they achieve that sleep cycle more quickly. They do go through more sleep cycles during the night. Have you heard that they also tend to have more lucid dreaming and night terrors? Or is that just urban legend?

You know, I actually don't know the answer to that question. It's definitely something that we can, we can think through. You know, lucid dreaming is a skill set that you can, almost anybody can develop. I've had lucid dreams before. It's funny because I oftentimes have people ask me, you know, is there a way to train yourself to become a lucid dreamer? And there are a couple people on the Internet who claim to be able to do that. I've never tried any of their coursework or anything like that. I would argue that the people that would probably be the most likely to be lucid dreamers through the chronotypes would probably be wolves. And that would be because wolves have a tendency to sleep more than all of the other chronotypes. They just sleep at the wrong times.

Okay, got it. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I want to ask you some more questions about chronobiology. Obviously you talk about a lot of stuff in the book when it comes to everything from like you mentioned, like vaccinations and you get into things that honestly we probably won't talk about on this show, like asking for a raise or negotiating at work. Not that that stuff's not important, but I wanted to kind of focus on more of the health related stuff.

Sure.

So let's start with this. Let's start with the good stuff. You have a whole sex chart in your book. I do, like I mentioned. And the best time to have sex. So get into this. Why is it that different people have, have a different best time to have sex?

So first of all, we need to look at when are people actually having sex on a regular basis. And what's really interesting is roughly 73% of the time or 72% of the time actually. It's not because people are feeling desirous. It's. They're already in bed, their work schedule is consistent with their bed partner or their, their bed partner just happens to be available.

So literally only guilty as charged.

Right. You know, like you get in bed, you got less clothing on, you know, your partner's right there and you're like, hey, you interested? Hey, sure. You interested? All right, let's go.

Right. I'll just slide my hand over here. It's so easy. And you're not wearing anything and. Yeah, I hear you.

Right. And it works. Here's what's fascinating. So what are the hormones that you need for sex? You need testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, vasopressin, oxytocin and cortisol. Right. You want all of those fairly high in order to have good amount of sexual activity. And what do you want to have? Low Melatonin. So what do you think is the profile of an individual at 11 o' clock at night? The exact opposite. Yeah, right, the exact opposite. Your melatonin is high and all of those other things are low. So I'm thrilled that you're having sex at early in the morning because it actually makes more sense to do it that way.

Now what about for like a wolf? Like that wouldn't be true for a wolf.

Right, I know. That's the, that's the cool part. That's why I made the chart. Because a lot of people aren't necessarily married to a person or having sex with a person that is of their same chronotype. So that's why I actually created the matrix. Now, I will tell you one thing that the research showed that was very interesting is quite frankly, men really don't care. They'll have sex whenever they're offered. As opposed to women. Women have A much greater variable in terms of that lions, which is what you are, have their strongest sexual desire in the morning, which, by the way, shouldn't be a big surprise because you know what happens to most men early in the morning, right? They have. They wake up with morning erections, so their testosterone is high. You know, we're starting to see already signs of that happening. So if you're a wolf, what do you do? Right. Well, if you're a wolf, you might be somebody that can have sex at night. But if you're married to a lion, then maybe what you do is, is you have it later on Saturday morning. So 10 o', clock, 11 o' clock in the morning. If you don't have kids running around, it makes it a lot easier to be able to do stuff like that. The other thing that you can do is you can still have sex at night, just have it a little bit earlier in the evening depending upon your bed partner. So you're a lion and you said your wife is a wolf, is that correct?

Yep.

So you're gonna, you're gonna be getting tired. What time do you normally, you know, naturally get tired? 8:30.

Hold on, I have to shift to the wrong part of your book. Cause I'm looking at the f fight with your partner compatibility chart. I need to find which. I'm not joking, there actually is one in there. I need to get to the sex with your partner. Okay, so you've got a heterosexual couple, male lion and female. I think my wife tested as, like she tested as a bear with a high, high tendency towards wolf status. Right. Like, like almost a wolf, but not quite type of thing. So it looks like in this book.

I have to remind myself, 9:00pm or.

7:30Am yeah, 9:00pm or 7:30am the ideal times for sex. And I've tried both of those. And I mean, gosh darn it, you're actually pretty accurate with that. So it's weird. Your book gave me permission to talk to my wife a little bit more about morning sex in and of itself.

The book is worth it just for that, right?

Yeah. And you, of course have the masturbation rhythm in there as well. And I just let folks get the book if you want to delve into that. Okay, so the next one that I wanted to ask you about, that I touched on briefly here was weight training. Weight training, like the best time for different types to weight train.

And why. So you know, when you look at training. Well, first of all, there's training for strength, right. And then there's more Cardio, there's yoga. I actually go into yoga in this one as well. So it just kind of depends upon what yourwhat, your flavor is.

Let's say like hypertrophy, muscle growth, strength training, that type of thing.

Okay, so if we're looking at hypertrophy, like sort of what is the muscle growth rhythm, if you will, There was a study out of Finland that showed us that muscles grow actually at almost any time, but the strength of the muscles actually change with circadian rhythm. So muscle volume increased in morning training and in afternoon training. But there's something called the muscle strength rhythm. And this is actually very, very interesting. So I'm actually going to read you, I'm going to take a piece from the book and it actually looks at your testosterone versus cortisol ratio. So what you want to have is you want to have a ratio that's actually working. So right here it says it's not the concentration of testosterone matters, but the ratio of cortisol to testosterone. So the ratio of C to T that is most favorable for strength is afternoon for lions, early evening for bears, late evening for dolphins and wolves in terms of working out. So what you want is lower testosterone, higher cortisol, and where does that happen during the day? Also what's interesting for wolves out there is your pain tolerance actually gets worse and worse the later you go. This is part of the reason why a lot of my wolves are not people who like to work out because it hurts them more, their pain tolerance. They have less and less tolerance for pain. And when you're strength training, you're ripping muscle. And so there is a decent amount of injury that can go on if you're not careful, obviously.

So you want a low C over T. You want a low cortisol to testosterone ratio to optimize your time of day for strength training.

That's correct.

Okay, so a dolphin is 8pm A lion is like a morning person, is not contrary to what you might think the morning, but actually 2:30 to 5:00pm, right. A bear 4 to 7:00pm and then a week wolf, 6 to 7:00pm and.

So here's a couple things to think through on this. So the biggest thing that I get from people is I'm a lion. I'm up at 5:30. Why can't I go for a run, Michael? Like, why shouldn't I be working out then nobody else is awake. That's actually a great time for you to be creative. That's a good time for you to plan out your day when you're starting to get tired around 3:30, 4:00 clock in the afternoon if you can and go work out, then you'll actually get an extra boost of energy that'll help carry you through till 9:30, 10 o' clock at night. So what I do is I use exercise to leverage to be able to keep lions awake a little bit longer. So that's one of the reasons that they are. I don't want them working out in the mornings, I want them working out in the afternoons or evenings. Also, to be honest with you, nobody should be working out at 6am And I'll tell you why. Your muscles aren't warm, your joints aren't stretched out, you have a highest proclivity for injury is hurting yourself early in the morning. So unless you're a super stretcher and you know you can really get your joints rolling and stuff like that, you know, and you're doing like a 35, 40 minute stretch before you run or lift or whatever it is you do, you have a far greater likelihood of hurting yourself by working out in the morning.

Okay, got. What do you do in the morning?

What I do in the morning is I have actually have a whole morning routine, but I'm so I'm kind of interesting. I'm a wolf with a fairly short sleep cycle, so I only need six and a half hours of sleep. So I go to bed at midnight and I'm up at 6:30. And there's pros and cons to that, but both my kids have to wake up about that time for school and my wife likes to sleep in. And so I actually am getting the kids ready. So I'm laying out their clothes, getting breakfast ready and so I get them off to school and then when I come back it's around 7:30. Then I start to do email because that's my time to try to do more creative ish types of stuff, not necessarily analytical stuff. And then I go work out around 9:30, 10 o'. Clock. And a lot of times it works out really well for me. But when I, when do I.

But that's not. But working 9:30, 10 o' clock isn't in the book.

I understand when I perform my best.

I'm just calling you out, man.

You're welcome to do so when, when I perform my best in terms of get my best strength, when I run my fastest times, it's always, always in the evenings.

Yeah, yeah, I've noticed the same thing. And you know what the sad thing is, is that a lot of athletic competitions that involve strength training they actually take place in the morning. I know, super annoying. Because they've done other research that has shown that. I don't know if you've seen this. Athletes who train at the same time of day as when their competition is going to take place are generally going to do better in that competition compared to athletes that train at a different time of day. So my method, because I've been, you know, I've been competing in varying events and events that do indeed involve strength for, you know, over a decade. What I'll do is I train when my body temperature peaks and testosterone peaks and grip strength peaks and reaction time peaks. I do my hard training in the afternoon to the early evening. But when the race is rolling around, generally about one to two weeks out, I start to throw in some hard morning sessions just to get my body used to getting its ass out of bed and going hard in the morning. Despite it not being, based off of what you've written in your book and. And what I've kind of noticed in the literature, unfavorable for chronobiology.

Yeah, and you're right to do so. Like, it actually makes a lot of sense to do it that way.

Is it different with cardio, though?

It can be a little bit different with cardio. So it depends upon what you're trying to do with the cardio. So there's a couple of different rhythms. Like I have a whole section on go for a run, which is kind of, I think it'll equate to cardio. So, you know, if you're trying to burn fat, then actually you might want to work out in the morning. Because if you work out on a fasting stomach, there's no place for your body to get the energy from other than your fat stores. And so being able to eat up some fat, then you might want to be working out earlier in the morning. Again, if you're going to do that, then you're going to want to stretch really well. You're going to warm yourself up really well. You really have to be careful because my biggest concern is people getting injured in the morning. Right. But you know, if you're trying to get your best time, then what you're going to be looking at again is for a lion, 5:30 dolphins actually do great exercising in the morning. 5:30, 5:30pm Sorry, 5:30pm Yes, I apologize. But my dolphins work out great in the mornings around 7:30 in the morning. Because with dolphins, because they're a little on the neurotic side, they're not great sleepers in general, this is a great way to start your day. There's a lot of people out there who, when they exercise, when the endorphins and the enkephalins kick in that runner's high, if you will, that actually can set them up for a really good day. And dolphins can use that because it calms them down. Whereas, you know, my wolves, I'm still telling them, you know what, I really think it makes more sense for them to work out at night. And again, it's hard to get them to do anything in the morning.

Yeah, my go to has always been easy aerobic cardio. And for me it's actually usually these days the sauna. So I do like hot, cold contrast. I do about a half hour of sauna and then I do an icy cold plunge after the sauna to kind of clear the head. But also to increase the one thing I know that cardiovascular aerobic exercise in the morning has been shown to increase. And that's a brain derived neurotrophic factor.

Absolutely.

For enhanced neural firing the rest of the morning. And I get what you're saying in the book about the potential for more joint impact, less warm joints, injury, et cetera, from chronic repetitive motion in the morning from most chronotypes, except that dolphin chronotype that you talk about. But I think it depends, right? For me there's a difference between pounding the pavements for 30 minutes and getting my heart rate up with say yoga and deep breathing in the sauna for 30 minutes.

Absolutely, absolutely. No, I totally agree with you. And actually I have a whole section on yoga as well. So when are you going to be the most flexible? When are you going to be the most relaxed? When are you going to have the most mind, what I call the mind body connection. And so yoga is, first of all, a lot of people don't even understand how important yoga can be in a conditioning regimen and is actually very hard physically to be able to do. And so understanding that, it's really good. I know a lot of people like to do yoga at sunrise, but again, especially if you're doing more advanced yoga or you're getting into really deep poses, you have to be very, very careful because it's super easy to get hurt just because your body's not warm.

You just destroyed everybody's sun salutations, man.

I'm not saying don't do them, I'm just saying do yourself a favor.

You have to rename them, Rename them afternoon moon salutations. So another thing I wanted to ask you speaking of the moon is sleeping in. You are not a fan of sleeping in. I don't really have this problem anymore because I just wake up at the same time whether it's a Saturday or a Sunday or, or Monday, you know, days ending. And why I'm pretty much up at the same time each morning. But you are not a fan of this whole weekend sleep in thing. Why is that?

I'm not. Well, so the data now shows that if you sleep in more than 30 minutes, you can actually shift your circadian rhythms. And so you stay up late Friday night, sleep in Saturday, stay up late Saturday night, sleep in Sunday, you end up with Sunday night insomnia and what we call social jet lag. Right. And so your body now doesn't want to go to sleep when it's Sunday night and it certainly doesn't want to wake up no matter what your chronotype is. So the consistency, your sleep system and your circadian rhythms in particular, love consistency. And the anchor is your sleep and your food times. Right? And so when you wake up, what I have people do when they wake up in the morning is pull their feet over the side of the bed and take five to 10 really good, solid deep breaths, get the respiration going, increase your heart rate, reach for a glass of water because you're again, you're dehydrated and do it while getting direct sunlight exposure. So it cuts off that melatonin process. So maybe in front of a window, walk outside, preferably wear a robe. I always have to tell people that because you never know and then kind of start your day right. And so understanding how you kind of move yourself through your day then when you're having your meals is what guides, continues to guide your circadian rhythm. So by doing that process in the morning, we stop the melatonin faucet and we get you going. Depending upon whatever time you want to wake up. Lions, it might be 5:30, wolves, it could be 8:30. Same process can apply. But then when you have your meals, if you time them and you stick to that time, your whole body gets much more consistent. And it's just like any machine, the more consistently you use it, the more it will produce for you.

I guess that's where napping comes in handy. Like, I'm taking my kids to a fight tonight and it'll last like 11, you know, they'll sleep on the way home. And frankly they're 8 years old, they'll sleep until 11 if I don't get them out of bed. But me, I'LL wake up at six, I guarantee tomorrow morning. So that's where something like for me to settle down for a nap at like 1 or 2pm or something like that will help rather. So you're saying that would be a better strategy than like me just say like waking up at 6 and then falling back asleep until 8?

Oh yeah. You'll be miserable if you wake up at six and fall back to sleep too late. I mean, I don't know if you do that anymore, but every time I try to do that, I feel like crap all day.

Rarely. I've occasionally done it when like on vacation in some remote island where you just don't care and you can go out on the beach at noon and have a cocktail.

Right.

So another thing that you talk about is jet lag. And you have, I mean, I know you've worked like I mentioned, with, with hotels, with airlines, et cetera. And whenever I get a sleep researcher on, you know, so many people listen to the show travel or deal with a lot of the effects of jet lag. What are some of your your jet lag tips, your jet lag systems?

Okay, so there's a couple things that.

If you're and feel feel free to dive into the nitty gritty detail, by the way.

Sure. So a couple of things that you know straight out of the gates is, you know, some people are going to be more affected by jet lag than others. And remember, the direction of travel tells you a lot. East is least and west is best. Okay. And so if you're traveling east, you're basically telling your body to go to bed earlier, which is fine for a lion, but doesn't work very well for a wolf. If you're traveling west, all you're doing is asking your body to stay up later, which is relatively easy for most people. Lions might have a little bit of a hard time with it, but all the other chronotypes can do it. So direction of travel has something to do with length of travel, also has something to do with it. Hydration turns out to be one of the biggest factors in terms of the amount of jet lag that you're going to have on the back end, as well as light exposure. Now, I actually work with a guy who created a jet lag app. It's going to be coming out soon. Plug in your times of travel. You plug in your current sleep regimen and he asks you a few questions about your chronotype and he will actually tell you when you should use caffeine, melatonin, and light therapy in order to reduce your jet lag. And me personally, I've gotten my jet lag down to roughly a day, depending upon the length of travel. So I do a lot of work in Denmark, and So that's a 14 hour flight from LA. And so it's quite a few. It's quite a difference in terms of time zones, I think it's eight or nine time zone differences. And I can get there and be rolling in a day and I can get home and be rolling in a day just by strategically putting my light therapy. Right. So to cut off the melatonin and then to place the melatonin in like a melatonin supplement and using caffeine sparingly.

What's the name of this app? Or is it just not. Is this.

It's not out yet. It's not out yet. But when I. When we get it, I'll definitely make sure that I let you know about it. And we can do a whole. We can do a whole podcast on jet lag if you want.

That'd be sweet. It sounds actually pretty killer. So you're just basically saying hydration and light are the two biggies.

Hydration and light are the two biggies for me. I try not to drink alcohol in the air. There's so many reasons why it's not. It's just not such a great idea. But, you know, one glass of wine and a.

And a Valium for a flight to Hong Kong, you know how to do that?

Yeah. Well, so here's. So it's funny that you say that. So I had a patient who came in and he had gotten Ambien from his medical doctor. And he asked me, you know, can I use it? And I was like, yeah, of course you can use it. I said, but, you know, be careful. I said, you. The biggest thing you have to make sure of is wait till the plane takes off.

Oh, yeah.

And he was like. He was like, why? And I'm like, just trust me on this. Do it. So they're on the taxiway, and he's sitting in first and he gets a glass of wine and he pops his Ambien, right? Because he thinks he's ready to go. And they get, you know, delayed and so. And they keep refilling his glass of wine because, you know, in first, that's all they do. And also in three glasses of wine later, he realizes he hasn't fallen asleep, so he pops a second Ambien, right? So now ends up with mechanical difficulties. They roll it back and they Literally had to put this guy in a wheelchair to get him off the plane.

Yeah, ambient alcohol, I get what you're saying. I can kind of sort of one up that because put earmuffs on your kids parents. Occasionally when I will go on long flights, I'll do slightly higher dose edibles, right? Like 15 to 20 milligrams of like a good CBD rich THC indica blend. And I had one in which I took it about 40 minutes before. So you go through security, right? It's in your system. Got on the plane and then they had one of those mechanical issues where they actually deboard the plane. And so I'm just like wandering around the gate high out of my mind. I did make it back onto the plane, but I was, I was wandering around the airport mostly standing in the little news aisles where they have the crunchy snacks and just deliberating which crunchy snack to buy next. You know, the, the sugar snap peas versus the dark chocolate covered almonds versus the crunchy bananas versus anything that looked good.

Here's what's interesting. When you look at things like CBD and THC and air travel and things like that, right. Is number one, you want to actually, if you're looking at this and you're trying to figure this out, let's say you're in a state where medical marijuana is legal or you have the prescription, or let's say it's even recreational and you want to utilize this in a particular way for you. So number one, know your strains, right? You need to understand are you an Indiga based or are you Sativa based? Sativa is going to give you more energy. Indiga's make you, you more sleepy. So when you're taking it and you're going into a long flight, do you want to fall asleep in the beginning of the flight or do you want to fall asleep in the end of the flight? So again, thinking about this and being strategic with it can actually be very beneficial. You really want to avoid THC when you're up in the air. And the biggest reason is because the oxygen isn't that great. Because all that's happening is the air continues to get recirculated. There's a lot of carbon dioxide up there, so you're already not getting great air. And so when you've got THC on board with that, it can, it can, it can make you very disoriented very quickly.

Yeah, I actually disagree with you because the only time that I will watch a movie ever is when I'm on an airplane. And so if I have a transatlantic flight and I have some THC in my system, any of those, like new superhero movies are amazing, amazing to watch. We digress though. I'm making myself sound like a pothead. I'm really not. But I have used that to help long flights go by before. You also mentioned before we turn away from jet lag, about how you can cure jet lag through the stomach. What do you mean by that?

So I work with the NASA sleep specialist. His name is Smith Johnston. He's amazing, amazing researcher. And they looked at fatigue, they look at fatigue countermeasures. Because on the space station, which is where he keeps where most of his people are and he has to keep tabs on them, the day changes every 45 minutes. Right. Like they're moving around every 45 minutes is. It is a sunrise then sunset for them. Right. And so it's very, very different. And you know, if you become disoriented up there, that's how people die. Right. Like you can't make mistakes in space. Right. It's not like being terrestrial. And so a lot of the things that he was talking about was in this. And so what he's talking about here was. Here it is right here is I recently took a dream vacation to Hawaii, a five hour time difference from Boston going west. I followed the NASA Bruce plan to the letter and I felt a lot better after two days and was fully functional on day three of the week long trip. And so what some people will do is they'll actually start eating on the schedule of the place that they're going. And that actually helps eating on the.

Schedule of the place that you're going before you get there or when you.

Get there before you get there. So as an example, if you're going to China, right? Then you start eating on a schedule that would be consistent with the times that you would eat in China.

Okay, gotcha. Which is pretty simple math. You just go to Google, you say what time is it here? And is it like one day before, two days before or how do you do it?

Usually I tell people to start doing it three to four days before and it actually works out very well. And it's one of the easier ways to help with really like transatlantic, like big flights, that kind of jet lag. That can actually be very helpful as well. I agree.

Yeah, I'd recommend you guys, if you get the book read pages and you Travel Read page 315 and 316, because you have all sorts of stuff in Here. Like wearing sunglasses all day until the flight when you're traveling west. But then when you're traveling east, when you get off the plane wearing sunglasses. So that light is not exactly disrupting the circadian rhythm. And I mean, like, for me. I don't know about you, Dr. Bruce, but I've found light, food and exercise to be the biggest triggers. What do you call them? Zeitgeist?

Zeitgebers.

Yeah, zeitgebers. That's my fancy word of the day. Like things that trigger your circadian biology. Like, if you exercise at your regular time of day when you get to your destination, eat at the regular time when everybody else is eating at the destination. And if you must, fast until that occurs, fast until it's time. And then exposure to a whole bunch of light when it's light where you're traveling. And limitation of light. Extreme limitation of light up until that point.

Yeah, no, you got it.

Sweet. I could go work for NASA now, right?

Yeah. You want me to find you a job? I know. I mean, I can tell Smith all about you.

I'm happy. Unless I get to go to space. I'll take you on. So the last thing that I wanted to ask you. Because it's something we have not touched upon that much before on the show. But something that I've kind of always wondered. But you, as a sleep researcher, I'm sure would be very well informed on this daylight savings time. Like, I've always wondered what that does to the body. Because technically it is kind of like, you know, flying out of a time zone. Is it just not a big deal at all because it's only an hour or. What's the deal with daylight savings time?

The number one day for traffic accidents is the day after we lose an hour of sleep every year in America. The number one day for morning traffic accidents.

Wow.

So I would argue with you that it's not the best idea. First of all, there are several states that don't even participate in daylight savings. I lived in Arizona for 10 years, and there's enough sun there. We don't have to have any more daylight. So we don't even participate in daylight savings. But, you know, it was. It was an agrarian concept, I believe, set forth by Ben Franklin, if I'm not mistaken. To be able to get. Have more sunlight, to be able to work more, to be more productive. And, you know, now we don't really. We don't necessarily need it. Personally, I think daylight savings is a waste of time. I'm not sure why people do It. And you know, it's great because, you know, one time of year you get an hour more sleep and one time a year you lose an hour of sleep. And so that's the bad part. And so for me, I don't like daylight savings time. I'm always very cautious that next Monday because that is the number one time for traffic accidents. So I would say it's pretty detrimental.

Interesting. Have they done much research on daylight saving times and like what it does to your biology or anything like that?

They really haven't. It's just like going one time zone, basically. And so we know that the body will self adjust within a day. So there really hasn't been a ton of research in that area in particular. Particular other than the driving statistics.

Okay, so just basically stick to your usual schedule. Have your meals at a regular time, exercise at a regular time. Yep. Get lots of light in the morning, limit light at night, and you'll generally adapt to daylight saving times more quickly.

Yeah. Stay off the road.

Okay, got it. Cool. Well, I mean, the book is jam packed. I mean, you have like over 50 different activities in here about, you know, falling in love, calling a friend, like I mentioned, fighting with a partner, seeing a therapist, pigging out, having a snack, learning something new, memorizing, playing games, binge watching TV shows, buying stuff. I mean, you go, you go on and on. So it's really interesting. And like I mentioned, I mean like the little things I'm implementing now that I've read the book, some of the stuff I was already doing. Right. I was already training for strength in the evening, for example, but you know, shifting to decaf coffee in the morning and then regular coffee later on in the day, Having sex in the morning instead of sex in the evening, or at least, you know, sex in the early evening if I am gonna have sex in the evening. And once my blood pressure goes through the roof, I guess I know when I need to take my blood pressure medication too. There's even that. And when to get vaccinated. Dr. Bruce, thank you so much for writing this book and for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us.

No, thanks for having me. I was excited to talk with you because I enjoy, you know, your depth and the way you like to get into things. I think it's fun and I think it's interesting and I think it's, I think it's great for your listeners. So thanks for having me on the show. It's been a blast.

Awesome. If you guys want to get the book or get access to the quiz or anything like that, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com PowerOfWen that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com powerofwen and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield perky in the afternoon because I'm a lion. Along with with Dr. Bruce 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.