Fix Your Sleep Issues with Dr. Michael Breus

If you struggle with sleep and you want to fix your sleep issues as fast as possible, this episode is for you. We are joined by my friend, Dr. Michael Breus, known worldwide as the Sleep Doctor. He was featured in the Miracle Morning documentary. You may have seen him on the Diary of a CEO podcast. And today, he is sharing with you how to fix your sleep issues because when I was going through the most difficult time in my life, literally, after enduring 800 hours of chemotherapy, I was sleeping 2 to 4 hours a night for roughly 6 months. And I called Dr. Michael Breus to save me, to help me, because I didn't know what to do. If you struggle with sleep issues, you've been there, right? It's your brain doesn't work right, your energy is low, your mood is a mess. Dr. Michael Breus is possibly the most qualified person in the world to help you fix your sleep issues so you can get back to the person that you know you are, you know you're capable of being. You just got to get a good night's rest. It's my good Pleasure to introduce you to my good friend, Dr. Michael Breus, the Sleep Doctor. What up, Sleep Doctor?

How's it going, brother?

Dr. Michael Breus, man, we've done this quite a few times.

I know. I'm excited to do it again.

Yeah. Well, I just, I don't know. You were in the Miracle Morning movie, and I think your career really helped it take off.

I was going to say that was the moment. That was the moment. Everything sprang just from that. That's right. Absolutely.

Actually, here's what I was thinking about to start this out. I don't know if I know this about you, and it might just be because I've forgotten. But how did you get into your field of expertise? How did you become the sleep doctor, world-renowned sleep expert? Yeah.

So, there's a couple of stories that go along with that one. So, one is how did I get into sleep medicine as an origin story? Then, there's the how did I become the sleep doctor story, right? So, the origin story is one that's very serendipitous. I was interested in sports psychology. I went to the University of Georgia. Go Dawgs. And, uh, I got my PhD there in, in clinical psychology. And I was very interested in sports and working with athletes and all that kind of cool stuff. Uh, and I was trying to get an internship. So, when you get a PhD, you then do a year-long internship or, or residency where basically you're practicing all the stuff that you learned, but you're being monitored. So, you don't screw anybody up. Yep. And the number one sports psychology, uh, internship in the country, believe it or not, was at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, for what I was interested in.

Okay.

I was interested in eating disorders and athletes, trying to combine the two kind of areas. Right? But I couldn't get in. Um, only the Harvards and the Yales and the Princetons of the— I mean, Georgia's a top 20 program, but it ain't Harvard.

Yeah.

Um, but they had a sleep track fully funded that was available. And so I, I looked into it. I'm like, what is, what is a sleep track? And it turned out they just needed somebody who'd ever worked in a sleep lab. Well, I'd never worked in a sleep lab, but I had worked in the electrophysiology lab and they used the exact same equipment. So I said, I'm gonna sell myself as a sleep guy.

Nice.

And then as soon as I get there, I'm gonna transfer. Right? I mean, they can't stop me. Like, once I'm there, I'm there. So, I get in, sell myself as a sleep guy, get there, raise my hand. Yes, Dr. Bruce, I want to transfer. They said, hey, here's the deal. You have to stay where you are for 6 months because that's paying for your existence here. Then after that, you can go to any part of our program that you want. I'm like, this is awesome. How tough could it be? I sleep every night. 3 days later, I completely fall in love with clinical sleep medicine.

Wow.

And I know I'm never going to change my path. Dude, I help people. This fast. It's unbelievable. You change someone's sleep and you change their life. It is that fundamental.

Well, and I think that one way to understand how true that is, is if you've ever struggled with sleep, how screwed up every area of your life is. I called you in 2020 when I was suicidal. I was going through the worst time in my life. I had gone through 700 hours of chemo, and I think that's what caused it. I don't know. There's no way to exactly know. Essentially, I was sleeping 2 to 4 hours a night for like 6 months. I was a mess.

I remember.

In fact, I was such a mess that I forgot that I could call you. I was talking to Joe Polish as a friend and he's like, how are you? And I'm like, dude, I'm the worst I've ever been. I want to die. And he's like, have you called Dr. Michael Breus? I'm like, dude, I totally didn't even think about that. And I'm like, I have his number. He was in the Miracle Morning movie. And you helped me. You helped me with

that.

You know, the, I mean, all the things that you help with, but mindset, supplementation, you know, all the different strategies,

the whole

thing. Let's dive right into that and then we can circle back to how you became the sleep doctor.

Sure. But that's a more interesting story.

Exactly. Immediately give folks, um, what I think, why sleep is important. I think we know everything functions off that, but what are the keys to good sleep?

So I think it's more simple than people actually think it is. Like, let's be fair. Everybody's already been able to figure out how to do this activity.

Right. There you go. They were born knowing how to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know,

But that's what's so interesting about it is because people say to me all the time, well, shouldn't my body just automatically know how to do it?

Mm-hmm.

Well, it kind of does, but most people put roadblocks in front of the, mm-hmm, the body with, without even necessarily meaning to. Simple one, caffeine, right? And look, caffeine's in everything. It's in chocolate, by the way. I, you can eat as much chocolate as you want. There's nothing wrong with chocolate. Um, you know, there's caffeine, there's, uh, nicotine, there's all these different things that come across alcohol, cannabis, like lots of different things can influence the body. Yeah. Depending upon what you ingest. And by the way, that's not the only thing that you have to think about. You have to also think about stress and your mindset, right?

That's the biggest one, I think, for most people.

I would argue it's the biggest one for everybody. Yeah. When I start to see patients, and, and I think you can, I think you can track this, tracks for you, is 75% of a patient's sleep problem is fear or anxiety.

Yeah.

Some level of that, either fear that I'm never going to sleep again or that they're going to be massive consequences to me If I don't sleep. I remember, if it's okay to share, one of the things that you said to me was you were afraid that you weren't going to heal if you didn't sleep.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. That my cancer would come back and I would die and leave my family. Right. So, that spiral. So, then when I wake up at 3 in the morning, I'm like, I'm going to die. It's literal.

Exactly. Yeah. And so, that's a great example of how fear can— and by the way, You're still here.

Yeah.

You didn't go anywhere. Thank God. Yeah. Right. We all like having you around. Um, and, and it's important for people to start to understand that there's, there's the environment, then there's your physical, and then there's your mental. And all 3 of those, they don't have to line up perfectly. I wanna be very clear, sleep will happen, right? I, I, somebody said something the other day that I thought was a great, uh, way of thinking about sleep. Sleep is a courier to your next day.

Hmm.

That's all it is.

Hmm.

It's just a transportation vehicle. A lot of shit happens while you're being transported, but it's merely a transportation vehicle. And by the way, you get to practice every night.

Yeah.

Right? So it's— and you don't have to take a night off.

Yeah.

A lot of people do, which is probably a bad idea.

Not good.

But generally speaking, there are about 5 to 7 principles that I think people can follow.

Okay.

Let me give people a 5-step plan that I think will cover a majority of that. Step number 1, wake up at the same time 7 days a week.

Amen. Preach, brother.

So, this turns out to be very, very important, not only to have a good Miracle Morning, which is one of the reasons why we want people to do this, but also it gives you a level of circadian consistency. So, let me break that down or double-tap on that so that the audience understands. So, there are 2 systems in the brain that help you sleep. One is called your sleep drive. That's the thing that makes you feel sleepy. The other is called your sleep rhythm that tells your body it's bedtime, right? Yeah. So, when those 2 are not doing the things that they need to do, That is when you have some pretty significant problems, right, with sleeping. So here's what's interesting is when you look at the biology of it, waking up at the same time every single morning, sunlight comes in and hits your eye, sends a signal to the back of your brain to turn off the melatonin faucet in your head.

Mm-hmm.

But it sets a timer for exactly 14 hours later. Maybe not exactly, but pretty close.

Yeah, roughly.

Right. Um, which is called the melatonin phase response curve. So I want everybody to think about what I just said. The time that you wake up directly determines when melatonin turns back on. So, if you wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning, 5 days a week, and then Saturday you sleep in until 8, melatonin doesn't start for 2 more hours at night than when it did Monday through Friday.

So, you can have trouble falling asleep.

Exactly, right? So, consistency gives the body that opportunity to continue to have that happen. And by the way, the more consistent sleep that you have, The greater the quality improves.

Mm-hmm.

Right. It, the, the body wants to stay. Right. Mm-hmm. And so it's doing all these great things. So step number 1, 1 wake-up time. Step number 2 is to stop caffeine by 2:00 PM. Uh, caffeine has a half-life between 6 and 8 hours.

Mm-hmm.

So if you can stop at 2, that maybe stretches you to 10, and then at least half of it is out of your system. Here's a sneaky little un— unpopular factoid is the quarter-life of caffeine is 12 hours. Which means 25% of the caffeine that you have ingested in the day is still in your system 12 hours later. So as an example, if you had 4 cups of coffee throughout the day and you took your last cup of coffee, let's say at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, guess what? 25% of that, or 1 full cup, is floating around your head at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Wow.

So that's problematic. So if you can push that caffeine earlier and earlier. Step number 3 has to do with alcohol. Lots and lots of people drink. I don't have any problem with drinking. I like bourbon, champagne, a beer every now and then. Sure. But at the end of the day, alcohol destroys stage 3-4 sleep. Now, why is that important for somebody, for example, who's recovering from a situation like cancer? Stage 3-4 sleep is where all the physical restoration occurs. The last thing you want to fuck with is stage 3-4 sleep, right? That is super duper important and alcohol obliterates it. It makes you fall asleep. And so a lot of people say, yeah, oh, well it makes me feel sleepy. It must be okay for my sleep. Like, why would my—

The quality. Yeah.

The quality is crap. And again, it, the, one of the processes that goes on during stage 3-4 sleep is a washing machine for your brain, right? So there's this thing called the glymphatic system, and this is a really weird statistic, but many people don't know it. But when you fall asleep, your brain shrinks by like 2 or 3 millimeters. Cerebrospinal fluid comes in and mixes it around. That's how all the beta amyloid and tau get out of there.

Wow.

Yeah. So

it's, I don't know what beta amyloid and tau are.

I'll tell you. So beta amyloid and tau are the 2 proteins that if they build up in your brain, they wrap around the nerves. That's called Alzheimer's disease.

Wow.

Yeah. We don't want that.

Okay.

Right. So we want the washing machine to work and get that beta amyloid and tau out. So we want as much stage 3, 4 sleep as we can, which means alcohol is a problem. Mm-hmm. But we still wanna be able to enjoy an adult beverage every now and then. So here's the rule is you wanna stop alcohol 3 hours before bed. You want to have limited yourself to 2 drinks and you want to have a glass of water in between each drink. This fills your stomach up, gets the process of moving it through your system, and then when you wait for about 3 hours, that should be enough time for 2 drinks to get out of the system.

Got it. Okay.

Step number 4 has to do with exercise. The best way to improve sleep quality is exercise. You've been a big exerciser for a very long period of time. You know and understand that. You got to tire the body out.

Yeah.

If you don't tire the body out, it doesn't sleep very well. But you can't exercise too close to bedtime because you'll cause increase in core body temperature. So, a lot of my cyclists, they can't cycle late at night. And some of them have even tried to cycle and then get into a cold plunge to drop their temperature. It doesn't work as well as they would hope, certainly not on the regular. So, what I tell people basically is exercise daily, but stop exercise 4 hours before bed.

Okay.

And the last one is an easy one. It's a morning routine. Which I know you love. I call it the 3 15s, and it's something that you could do as you're doing your Miracle Morning. So, all I ask people to do is swing their legs over on the bed, put their feet on the floor, and take 15 deep breaths, just waking up the respiratory system.

Okay.

Right? I want them to drink 15 ounces of water, and I want them to get 15 minutes of sunshine. I ask that they do it all together, if at all possible. So, if you don't want to breathe in your bedroom, walk outside to a nice hardback chair If even possible, take your shoes off and put your feet on the earth.

Yep.

It's called grounding. There's not a lot of data, but it feels really good, so you might as well do it. Um, and 15 minutes of sunshine is the exact amount of time that your body needs to start creating vitamin D. And vitamin D turns out to be a circadian pacemaker and helps keep your body on that pace.

Hmm.

So those are the 5. Step number 1, wake up at the same time. Yeah. Step number 2, stop caffeine by 2. Step number 3, stop alcohol 3 hours before bed. Limit yourself to 2 drinks. Step number 4, exercise daily, but stop 4 hours before bed. And step number 5 is while doing your Miracle Morning, do my 3 15s.

I love that. I love it. I've got a question on that and where this fits in. I'm not a scientist, and so, I practice the science of common sense. I'm like, that makes sense to me, right? So, one thing, and I'm sure I actually read about this, but It's eating before bed. So, from my non-PhD, I will often tell people, if you eat right before bed, then your body isn't getting to rest while you're sleeping. It's actually you're burdening your digestive system with a ton of food. That is correct. And for me, I'm like, that's when I feel like I was hit by a truck in the morning. It's usually when I ate too close to bedtime and my body worked all night, then I woke up. Where does that— what does that play and how do you advise eating?

That 100% tracks. Okay. So, you're correct. You have earned your now sleep doctor degree. Yeah, exactly. Your new sleep doctor degree for sure. So, it's interesting. So, number one, there's a couple of factors in here. So, first of all, if you haven't eaten all day, going to bed starving is a terrible idea.

Okay.

This does not include people who are doing fasting. That's a whole separate wheelhouse. We're not going to go there.

Okay.

For just regular folks out there who are not necessarily doing fasting, you need to have had something in your stomach, right? If you're waiting until 9 or 10 o'clock at night to have your latest meal, that's going to be definitely problematic. Number 2, what you eat matters.

Yes.

Look, I love buffalo chicken wings, but I got to tell you something, brother. If I watch a game late and I'm eating them at 10 o'clock at night, I'm done, right? Like, my sleep is screwed. I wake up feeling like crap, like all of that kind of stuff. So, you want to be thoughtful about that. And then, the amount turns out to be important as well as the macros that you're eating.

Yeah.

Right? And so, carbs will make you feel sleepy, protein will make you feel more alert. So, what happens for some of my patients is if they're doing strict keto and they don't get to eat until 9:00 at night, they're up till 11:30, 12:00 because they've all been doing is protein.

Yeah.

So, you want to be thoughtful about how you want to do things. I think the biggest issue that I think people don't know about is sugar limits the production of melatonin. And so, when you have a big piece of cake or pie or ice cream, which, by the way, ice cream is my kryptonite. I absolutely will never turn it down when offered. It'll mess up your sleep pretty bad.

Totally. That makes sense. I mean, it spikes your blood sugar as well, right?

Which is not a good idea either right before bed.

So, you mentioned what you eat matters. What would you recommend? So, let's say it is like for me, I try to eat dinner between 5 and 6. I'm going to bed at 9. So, I've got 3 hours to digest my meal.

Yeah. I do what I call the 3-2-1 rule. Okay. 3 hours before bed, stop all food and fluids. Yeah. 2 hours before bed, stop all work. 1 hour before bed, stop screens if you can.

Amazing. And I was gonna ask you, so you just answered that essentially, right? So stop screens an hour before bed. Um, the, uh, so if you do have to eat before, you know, if you're like, ah, I didn't eat, I was whatever, and now it's 9:00 PM and I'm going to bed at 10:00, what, what would you recommend somebody eats?

Great question. So I would say there's a couple of different ways you could go about doing it. It depends upon how many calories you took in, but I would say probably some type of a smoothie. Would probably be your best bet. Not a high fruit smoothie with a lot of sugar in it. Something more like with, uh, like maybe like a peanut butter banana kind of thing. Yeah, it's gonna have some sugar in it. Everything's gonna have some sugar in it.

Yeah.

Um, but you want to keep it more towards that side of things. I think that would be a good thing. Sometimes just having a protein shake, it's not the worst idea in the universe.

What about— so what I'll do a lot, um, is I'll do an avocado with salt.

Oh,

that's a great fat and salt. No carbs, no sugar.

Yeah. So That's my late-night snack.

Okay.

Right? So, I thought you were asking about dinner, but if people want a snack, I like a 250-calorie snack that's 75% carbs and 25% protein. So, I would take the avocado and I'd put it on a rice cake.

Okay. Now, why carbs? See, that's counterintuitive.

I know.

So, this is where my common sense science is going to fail. No, it's going to fail, right? Meaning, which is like, to me, carbs are what you take when you need a bunch of quick energy to burn.

Yep.

So I'm thinking at night I wouldn't want that. So how does that work?

So one of the things that seems to happen is when your body begins digesting the carbohydrates, it seems to, for whatever reason, draw enough energy to start making you feel sleepy.

Hmm.

And so I think it's the process of the digestion more so than the carbs itself, but carbs do require a certain way that your body digests, and that could be an energy, uh, portion from that.

Yeah.

Other than that, um, I'm not 100% sure. I can tell you that a lot of times it depends on the carb, right? So, if it's a carb where, like, if you take a sugar packet and you throw it in your mouth, that's not going to work. You know what I'm saying? I'm talking about eating an apple.

Yeah.

Right? So, it's all packaged in fiber, carbs, you know, all the good stuff that you want. And actually, an apple would be a perfect snack before bed. I also like, I mean, if you wanted to have a scoop of ice cream, you could, but you would probably want it to be dairy-free. You probably want to have as little sugar in it as possible, which doesn't sound like ice cream to me.

Yeah. Yeah. What's interesting, in the same way that you mentioned how important it is to wake up at the same time every day, for me, that goes with diet, right? So, meaning I'm eating at the same times every day, including the dinner time. So, it's not sporadic where I'm like, oh, one night I'm at 7, one night I'm at 9. No, I literally, I'm on this regimented, you know, it's just like, and it's, it just makes it easy that like, I know that I eat, so I'm able to fall asleep.

Also, I want to be clear that the regimented eating actually helps with circadian consistency. So, one of the things that our body knows it's time to do things based on the cues that we give it. Light is one, exercise is another, food is a third. And so, keeping the timing of your meals consistent is a fantastic way to be able to make sure that you're getting good sleep.

Got it. So, I think I want to ask you, it's interesting we haven't covered this because the number one cause you mentioned of people struggling with sleep is stress, is fear, right?

Yes.

How do you recommend that people address that? So, let's say real quick scenario, right? Stressful day, a million things on my plate. Maybe I even fought with my spouse, right? There's just so many things and I got a million things in work and finances aren't good, right? It's just like the average person's life, sadly.

Yeah.

And now, I hit bedtime and I have my approach. I want to hear yours first, and if it makes sense, I'll maybe contribute to it. But yeah, so what's your approach? Like, what do I do when I head into my bedroom to go to bed?

Got it. So, first of all, I want to take half a step back and say, in that situation, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is probably the place to start, which is what we worked on together, actually. I use the principles of that in a lot of our discussions and conversations. So, let me just double-tap on what is cognitive behavioral therapy for folks. So, cognitive behavioral therapy is where you change the way you think about sleep.

Okay?

In the scenario that you presented to me, it's a freaking disaster day and all I want to do is escape and get some rest, but I can't turn off my brain because it was a disaster day.

Yep.

Right? Totally understand that. where cognitive behavioral therapy comes into play. And I want to be clear, this doesn't happen overnight. This takes time. You start to think about your sleep differently. Let me give you some examples, and then I'm going to give you some faster ways to fix your sleep versus taking the time for cognitive behavioral therapy. And these can both be used in conjunction with one another.

That's great.

But you can just use them with, with each other.

Yeah.

So, as an example, when you look at cognitive behavioral therapy, you're looking at what we call cognitive distortions. Things like, if I don't sleep, If I don't get at least 8 hours of sleep, I'm going to make a mistake at work tomorrow and my boss is going to fire me. There's really no reality in that situation. However, you're so sleep deprived and you're so stressed, you don't know that.

Yeah.

Right. And so you tell yourself this story and you begin to spin yourself up, like what we were talking about before. This spiral just goes—

I'm going to die because I am not sleeping and I'm going to lose my job or I'm going to— yeah, on and

on. All of that. First of all, one of my mantras is sleep is a lot like love. The less you look for it, the more it shows up. Right?

I like that. Yeah.

Right. So when you're out there looking for that perfect person, you never find them.

Yeah.

As soon as you stop looking, they show up.

Yeah.

Sleep is exactly the same way. The more you try to sleep, the harder it is to sleep.

Yeah.

Now, within cognitive behavioral therapy, there's a second, uh, field of therapy called ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy. This is a little bit different. Cognitive behavioral therapy has some strict rules, some strict guidelines that you go through, but this ACT therapy is more like, hey, if you don't sleep tonight, you're going to be okay. It's acceptance,

right?

Acceptance turns out to be incredibly important when it comes to sleep because as soon as you have acceptance, your heart rate drops and you fall asleep.

Yeah.

There are 3 ways to get somebody to fall asleep, and all 3 must occur at the same time. You have to lower your temperature, you have to lower your heart rate, and you have to lower your anxiety. If you don't do those 3 things, there's no universe that you're sleeping.

Yeah.

ACT therapy is one of those ways that it can help you do that because it, it has a lot to do with acceptance. But let's take a look at your situation. Let me give you some fast tips that, of things that people can use in the beginning of the night, or which is the more case that I hear, Michael, what do I do if I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and I can't fall back to sleep?

Yeah. Right. And the older you get, the more you end up peeing in the middle of the night and you just, Can't not wake up at 3 in the morning. It's like, how do you get back to bed after? Yeah,

right. It's, it's a big deal. So lots of different things are going on here. So one of the things that I tell people all the time is don't go pee. Yep. You heard it here. Don't go pee. Now I want to be clear. If you honestly have to go to the bathroom, I really do. Like somebody called me up one day and like, should I wear Depends? No, no, no, no. That's not what we're talking about. What I want you to do though, is do you really need to go pee? Because remember the heart rate thing? Like you need your temperature to come down, your heart rate to come down, and your anxiety to come down. What do you think happens to your heart rate when you go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position and walk across the room?

Yeah.

Your heart rate goes up. So when you come back, you have 2 issues. Most people, when they wake up at 3, here's what they say. I'm up. I might as well go pee.

Mm-hmm.

That's the problem.

Mm-hmm.

If you really, if you gotta pee, you have

to

go, please go pee. Yeah. But if you don't have to pee, don't pee. And how do you tell? Most people sleep in the fetal position on their side. So if you roll over to your back, count to 20. If you still have to pee, please get up and go pee.

Hopefully you've fallen back asleep by the 20th.

A lot of times that's what happens. So step number 1, don't go pee. Step number 2, don't look at the clock.

Yeah. Oh yeah, thank you.

Dude, this is such a big one. People instantly do the mental math. Yep. There's nothing you can do to stop it. Yeah. You instantly do the mental math.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden you're pissed.

Yeah.

Right? You're like, oh my God, here I am again.

Yep.

This happened again. Oh, I didn't, I didn't fall asleep last night. I bet I'm not going to fall asleep tonight. And here's the other thing that a lot of people don't realize is your brain is inherently negative when you wake up in the middle of the night. Think about it. If you got woken up at 3:00 AM, would it be a good scenario? Never.

Yeah.

Never. Right. Nobody's walking in at 3:00 AM and saying, happy birthday.

Yeah.

You got a raise.

It doesn't happen. I love you.

Right. That shit doesn't happen at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah.

What happens at 3 o'clock in the morning is alert. So, when your body alerts, you are naturally going to be spinning negative.

Yeah.

Right? I learned a long time ago, it's very hard to stop your first thought. You can definitely stop your second.

Yeah.

Right? And so, once you notice that you're being negative, remember, I'm being negative in the middle of the night. This is not going to be helpful for me.

Yeah.

Don't look at the clock. Step number 3, Michael, I didn't pee. I didn't look at the clock, but I'm still awake. What do I do? My favorite technique is called 4-7-8 breathing by, uh, Dr. Andrew Weil. So, Dr. Andrew Weil, Harvard-trained naturalist, developed this technique. But what's great about it is it drops your heart rate to 60.

Hmm.

60 is the magic number to yet enter into a state of unconsciousness.

Hmm.

So, and it's exactly what it sounds like. You slowly breathe in for a count of 4, you hold for a count of 7, and then you exhale gently for a count of 8, all done through the nose. Now, why does this work? It's very interesting, but when you push for 8, you actually click on the parasympathetic nervous system. Okay? There's documented evidence about it. It's called— there's a whole maneuver that it's called. But trust me on this one, when you push longer than you hold— and by the way, you don't have to hold the whole 7. So, for example, I've got some clients who will draw in for 4, hold for 5, and then push out for 6.

Got it. Okay.

Right? So, as long as we've got that kind of ratio, is that it? Slowly inclines. Yeah. You're gonna be in good shape. Now here's the key is you need 20 cycles. Here's the problem. I lose count.

Yeah.

This happens to me, right? I'm in the middle of the night. I, I'm trying my own damn stuff. Yeah. 4-7-8 breathing.

Yeah.

Right. And I'm like, oh crap, I lost count. My anxiety goes up, my heart rate goes up, my temperature goes up. Now I'm pissed.

Yeah.

So I figured out a technique. What I do is I take my hands and I make gentle fists and I put them by my side. Ah, you

just

stick out a finger for a cycle. Stick out a finger for a cycle. Once I get to 10, I wrap 'em back and I'm at 20. Usually, I'm asleep before I get there.

I love it.

Right?

I love it. Yeah.

So, 4-7-8 breathing, 20 cycles. But there's one more caveat that turns out to be the kicker. When you're breathing, you want to picture a number. So, when you're breathing in, you picture a 4, then a 3, then a 2, then a 1. Then you picture a 7, a 6, a 5, a 4, a 3, a 2, a 1 for the hold. And then when you push out, you picture the number in your head because you can't You can't count and be worried at the same time. It's actually impossible.

Interesting.

So, we're distracting the brain with the counting, with the digits, right? And then the breathing is actually lowering their heart rate. It's a twofer.

Love it.

So, we distract the brain, we get the biology on, and we're going. Okay, Michael, I've listened to you. That 4-7-8 thing, it's awesome. It kept me relaxed. I feel good, but I'm still— I still didn't fall asleep. What, what, what do I do here? There's something called non-sleep deep rest. We used to call it yoga nidra. I think it's still called that.

Okay.

All it is is lying with your arms crossed, relaxing. When they do the studies, it turns out that that's rejuvenative. It's not as good as sleep, but if you do that for an hour, it's worth about 20 minutes of sleep.

Just laying on your back, like in the mummy position, essentially. Yeah.

Just lying there and relaxed.

Yeah.

If you're just— the key factor is not getting upset. And that's where the negativity part comes in. You got to stay positive. So, what I tell my— I have a little mantra that I tell myself. So, if I get through my whole 4-7-8 and I still haven't been able to fall asleep, I'll just say, you know what? For some reason, my body seems to want to be awake right now. I'm okay with that. I'm going to relax. I'm going to do some more gentle breathing and I'm going to think about some pleasant thoughts. Dude, within 3 to 5 minutes, I'm done.

Yeah. Well, you talked about the ACT. What's it stand for again?

Something commitment therapy. Acceptance.

Thank you.

Acceptance commitment therapy.

Thank you. So, acceptance is a big thing that I teach in terms of like finding inner peace. And I always say acceptance is the key that unlocks the door to inner peace.

And I like that.

And resistance is the cause of all emotional pain and turmoil. And, you know, sure. So it makes sense with sleep. Sleeping. Exactly.

It's exactly the same.

Yeah. It's like, oh, it's this time. Oh, it's— I'm honestly right. Like you're resisting reality and you're therefore creating turmoil and stress versus accepting reality as it is.

Yeah.

Um, what are your thoughts on, uh, mouth tape?

I think it's the second stupidest idea I've ever heard.

Okay, I'm gonna— we're gonna have to go out. All right, so let me

tell you. So mouth tape is problematic for multiple reasons, and I'll tell you why. The number one reason that mouth tape is problematic is because most— 94% of people will sleep with their mouth closed as long as they don't have nasal congestion. The reason people sleep with their mouth open is because they have nasal congestion. Fix the root of the problem. Mouths are meant for eating, not for breathing. There's no filter. You get unfiltered air coming straight in. So every particulate that's flying around your house is now inside your lungs. This is not what this was designed to do.

Hmm.

Right? Um, and so then people say, well, of course, then we should tape it shut, Michael. So then all the air is just going through my nose. Couldn't agree with you more. But have you been, uh, you know, screened for sleep apnea? So most people have never—

sleep apnea. I don't even know what it is. I've heard of it a million times. What is it?

Sleep apnea is a situation where you stop breathing in your sleep. You stop for a period of 30 to 90 seconds, then you wake up gasping for air. By the way, this can happen hundreds of times a night, and, uh, there's well-known treatments for it. If you don't get it treated, you will end up with a major cardiac problem. So when you stop breathing, Right? Your heart rate slows down to conserve the oxygen that's in the system, and then your brain says, oh shit, there's no more air. And so your heart rate speeds up in order to breathe. So your heart rate is slowing down, speeding up, slowing down, and speeding up.

Mm-hmm.

It puts an extra load on the heart. Over a couple of years, that turns into an irregular heartbeat because the musculature is different. Once you get an irregular heartbeat, you end up with atrial fibrillation. Now there's no turning back.

Hmm.

Now you're in, you're looking for, uh, you're gonna have to get cardioverted. You're gonna have to get an indwelling pacer. Like there's a lot more issues. And by the way, all of this could have been avoided if you just decided to do a sleep study. But here's what's interesting is people don't want to do a sleep study because they don't want to end up on a CPAP machine. So the treatment for sleep apnea is a machine that you wear on your face. Now, I want to be very— I want to disclose fully here for everyone, I have sleep apnea. So I stop breathing in my sleep 26 times an hour. Yeah. I had no idea.

Okay.

I felt like crap. And I talked to my doctor and she said, hey, Sleep Doctor, have you done a sleep study on yourself lately? And I was like, you know what, I don't care.

I don't need to. I'm the Sleep Doctor.

Well, here's the funny thing is I used to do studies on myself all the time because whenever we got new equipment at the lab, I did— I wouldn't try it on a patient, I'd try it on me.

Yeah.

I haven't had a lab in like 10 years, so I hadn't really done one in a while. I do a sleep study. So, it was really funny. I called the guys over at Sleep Doctor because that's one of the things that sleepdoctor.com does is we can actually provide sleep studies anywhere in the United States for under $200. So, I called up one of these my guys there. And I'm like, hey, send me a study. So, he sends me a study. I wear it the next night. I, I, gimme the results. He gives me the results. I said, there's something wrong with the study. Clearly, I can't have sleep apnea because also I don't look like somebody that has sleep apnea. A lot of people who, who have sleep apnea, or what people think people look like who have sleep apnea, is that they're larger people. Mm-hmm. That they're obese or that they're bigger or that they're just heavier, bigger people. Mm-hmm. Because when you add adipose tissue, it will crush the windpipe.

Mm-hmm.

And increase sleep apnea. So, a lot of times what we can do is we can fix the sleep apnea Um, by helping people lose weight. This is one of the reasons why there's a GLP-1 that's specifically now used for sleep apnea.

Interesting. Okay.

Anyway, I've digressed off of the point. So, when we look at sleep apnea, it's a deadly disease if left untreated. When you tape your mouth shut, you have no idea if you have it or you don't, and it can progressively get worse and worse, and you again have no idea. By the way, at least a few people have died from mouth tape for asphyxiation.

Interesting.

Also, a lot of people who do mouth taping, especially when they're snoring, has to do with when they've been drinking alcohol because alcohol Alcohol increases that snoring. And so their bed partner's like, oh my God, you've been drinking tonight. You better put on your mouth tape. And then we have a real problem on our hands.

All right. So you've given a ton of tips today. If somebody wants to keep learning from you—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you mentioned sleepdoctor.com, which they can also go there to get a sleep test. What's the best way to learn more from you or handle their sleep problem in the way that you have an expertise to help them do?

Of course. So there's a couple of different ways. My YouTube channel, I say, would be a great place for people to swing on over and check out. We have over 1,000 videos on there. Everything you can imagine about sleep, I have hopefully educated people on. And I'm excited because I get to do new videos all the time because that's the best part about sleep medicine is it's ever-changing.

Always evolving. Yeah.

Dude, it's so cool. We learned something brand new about narcolepsy last month. Yeah. How did that happen?

Wow.

So, it's fun to be able to do that. So, YouTube is a good place. I'm on all the social media and the channel is all the same. It's The Sleep Doctor.

Okay, easy. And I have one more question for you that I almost forgot, which is a big one for me and people listening, I would imagine, and watching, which is supplements. In fact, you asked me if I was taking melatonin and I said, I don't like taking all this synthetic crap made in the lab. Most of my supplements I take are whole food, vitamin C.

As they should be.

Yeah. From cherries or an orange. But you recommended erbitonin, which was made from grass, and I still take that to this Good. You

should.

Yeah. So, what are the sleep— and I'll tell you what I take, actually. I'll just tell you. So, 90 minutes before bed, I take organic valerian root. I take magnesium. I take lithium, which I found helps for the mood. Like, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm very much at peace from the lithium I took before bed. So, it's a little interesting kind of strategy. And then, one of the biggest ones that's a been a game changer for me. And I just recommended it to a friend who tracks his sleep, and he said he averages 20 minutes of REM sleep a night. He took this supplement the other night, first night, 2 hours of REM sleep. He's like, I've been tracking my sleep for years. I've never gotten 2 hours of REM sleep. And it is a capsule CBD and CBN oil, a blend of the two.

Yep.

And so, those are my main supplements that I take. Oh, and then the ergotonein 90 or 30 minutes before bed. So, that's what I take. What do you recommend and any critique on those?

Yeah, of course. So, I'm very staunch about my supplementation. And when we were talking about your supplementation, I want everybody out here to understand you're a very different human. I know quite a bit about your medical history, quite a bit about what's going on. So, I made very specific recommendations. Giving more general recommendations for supplementation for sleep, here's my theory. Do Blood work first. Remember, supplementation is, is the idea that we're not getting something in our diet, so we need to supplement it. I want to know what you're not getting enough of, and let's figure out if you can get it in your diet first before we start popping as many pills as there are out in the universe, which becomes unnecessary. Love it. Um, the blood work that I ask people to do is, is fairly specific. Um, there's several different areas that if you have a deficiency, a true deficiency, it will have a big effect on your sleep. Iron is one of them.

Interesting.

Vitamin D is another. Uh, melatonin is one. Magnesium, less evidence, but still one that I would look at. Uh, and I would stick to those 4.

Okay.

I would stick to those 4. So you do blood work on that, and if you are out of range, you want to fix that first.

So they go to their doctor and just say, hey, I want blood work to measure these 4 elements.

Believe it or not, you don't even have to go to your doctor. Okay. You can— there's a website called Fullscript. Where you can go on and you can actually order your own bloodwork. You've seen— I can't imagine you haven't seen there's a lot of companies out there now.

Function Health.

Function Health is one where you can go and get a ton of bloodwork done. So, this is not that because it's much, much smaller. It's only 4 tests, but this will allow you to have an understanding. If you are deficient in any of those, there are recommended daily allowances to get you back to your clinical baseline. Here's the thing that's crazy, dude. 25% of the people that show up on my doorstep, if I have them do that and we just fix their deficiencies, everything gets better. Literally a quarter of my patients, I just send them for blood work through Fullscript. And then they do the blood work, then we have the ranges and things like that for them to look at. Then they'll come back and they'll ask me like, what should I take? And we look at some of those. We make— we clear it with their doctor. By the way, that's another thing that a lot of people don't know about is supplements can interact with other medications.

Mm-hmm.

And it's very important to know and understand that. As an example, Melatonin interacts with birth control. Yeah, you heard it here. Birth control, every SSRI on the planet, high blood pressure medication, and diabetes medication. So, before you go willy-nilly popping a bunch of pills, this is a good reason to do blood work and talk with your medical provider to make sure you're not doing anything that could interact. Those are the areas that I would start to look at. You can never go wrong with omega-3s, right? As you get older, it's— Mm-hmm. Basically, it's fat for your brain, which is a really good thing. So, I can tell you what my stack looks like is— and I'm not a big supplement person. I went, I did my blood work, I saw what I was deficient in, and I take the Nordic Naturals omegas with vitamin D because it's all in one pill because I get pill fatigue.

Yeah, yeah.

There's just too many to swallow. And I have one magnesium that I take. Now, magnesium is interesting because you can't find a lot of good data on magnesium and sleep. And another problem is there's 13 different types of magnesium. So like people like, Michael, which one do I use? I actually ran a clinical trial, a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial. So I had a guy come up to me and said, I got the best magnesium on earth, makes people have tremendous deep sleep. This is going to be fantastic. And I was like, give me $75,000 and we'll run a clinical trial or leave me the hell alone. He handed me a check.

Nice.

He was right.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Upgraded Formulas Magnesium.

Okay.

It's not— doesn't have anything to do with upgraded coffee. Upgraded Formulas Magnesium. He's a flow dynamics engineer and he was really concentrating on absorption and he developed a formula that absorbs like nothing I've ever seen.

Wow.

I mean, we did a double-blind placebo-controlled study. So, there was a sham bottle of stuff that people took versus his. We saw an increase that was dramatic. Like 40% increase in deep sleep.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, there was a lot of things that made sense. But again, when you're looking at these things, if you're deficient, it's going to improve it. But if you're not deficient, taking magnesium is just going to give you diarrhea if you take too much.

Got it.

Right? Now, your stack is interesting. And again, a lot of it is based on your background and my understanding of your medical situation. I want to double-tap on the CBD/CBN because I think that's an important one because a lot of people, I think, look at that. I want to be very, very clear. CBD lowers anxiety and helps with inflammation. CBN helps with sleep.

Okay?

If you have anxiety or inflammation and it's affecting your sleep, CBD is a great, great source. CBN is really, I would argue, the bigger, better cannabinoid for sleep.

And that makes sense with my layman's understanding, which is CBD helps you fall asleep, thus lowering your anxiety and your stress. CBN helps you stay asleep, which is exactly what you just said.

Right. So, CBN lowers your what's called arousal threshold. So, you don't get aroused as easily any longer. There's at least 2 studies.

Not sexually aroused. You mean

aroused in terms of your brain?

Okay.

Got it.

Cool. Well, this has been a mini masterclass, as always, in sleep, Michael. And I really appreciate you. The Sleep Doctor on all your social medias, sleepdoctor.com or thesleepdoctor.com.

Both.

Both. Yeah, of course. MiracleMorning.com or The Miracle Morning, just in case.

Exactly.

Awesome, brother. Hey, I appreciate you. I'm so grateful we did this.

Yeah. So am I. Thanks again.

Take care.

Sweet dreams.