Interview: Sleep Smarter with Shawn Stevenson

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You'Re listening to Optymyze with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is br. Welcome back to the Optimized podcast. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Shawn Stevenson, who wrote a great book called Sleep Smarter. The subtitle is 21 Proven Tips to Sleep. Your way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger success. It's a fantastic book and if you need to read one book or you want to read one book to optimize your sleep, frankly, I think this is the one. This is the one to pick up. It's really well written. It's simultaneously like, it's just, it's fun, it's smart, it's practical, and yet it's a simple guide to doing what works. So check it out. And I just learned that the audible version of this book just launched and launched to number one. And you know, in 30 seconds of talking to Sean, I just loved his voice, so you'll love it as well. So check out the audible book. And then he's also got a podcast that is super popular in health and fitness. It's called the Model Health show, where you can learn more about Shawn. But with that intro, Sean, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for doing all you do, Brian.

Thank you so much for having me on. This is exciting.

Right on. Well, let's start at the top. You described sleep as the secret sauce. Why is sleep the secret sauce?

Oh, my goodness. So I was a little bit biased in the other direction at first. Being a clinical nutritionist, I wanted to believe that food was everything. And so even the movies. The name, like food matters. I'm like, yes, it does. So to believe that sleep trumped the impact that food has on our system trumps the impact that exercise has on our system combined was a tough pill for me to swallow. And the research just shows that to be the case. I mean, hands down, it's not even close. It's not that food doesn't matter or that exercise doesn't matter. It's just that sleep is that component that has such a huge impact on us that most of the population just has no idea about it. I know that I didn't. I was not trained on any of this information. And I went to a traditional university and what I put forth in the book was talking about how sleep literally impacts your genetic expression, how it impacts your DNA. We're talking about what kind of copies get printed out of you, you know, whether you're getting really amazing copies of you or like when it's a copy of a copy of a copy and it just looks like what are those inkblot tests? And just trying to. What is that? You don't even know anymore and you start to lose yourself. And it's really fascinating research. But the thing is, sleep also isn't a very sexy topic in and of itself. So a lot of people even ask me, why would you write a book on sleep? And even when I was with my publisher, it was just like, they were like, well, we really think if you did this weight loss book, it would just. I'm just like, no, this is the key. We're talking about weight loss. This is the actual key. So this is the angle that I found to make it sexy. And also my brand itself being somebody who can actually take something that might be mundane or even complex and make it simple and entertaining and something that you actually resonate with. And one of those big catalysts was this connection with weight loss, which I would love to share really quickly, if that's okay.

Yeah, I was actually going to ask you for some of your favorite research, so please do.

Oh my goodness. This is. There was so much that I couldn't quitei couldn't put all of it in the book. But this really fascinating study was done at the University of Chicago. Mind blowing. Just please hear this, guys. So they did this study where they had individuals on a calorie restricted diet. They're monitoring their weight loss. All right, so calorie restricted diet, monitoring everything, just kind of traditional stuff. In this phase of the study, they're getting eight and a half hours of sleep. Another phase of the study, same exact diet, monitoring everything, counting calories. Now they sleep deprived them five and a half hours of sleep. At the end of the study, they found that when the individuals were getting eight and a half hours of sleep, they lost 55% more body fat. Right, 55%. I didn't say weight. Actual Body fat, you cannot get that from beating the crap out of yourself in the gym. You can't get that from dieting for even a month. You can't get that kind of result. So my question immediately is, first of all, it's fascinating and people are like, wow, well, I didn't know sleep mattered that much with weight loss or fat loss. But I'm always like, why? Why does this matter? How did this happen? Well, there's a couple of key components, and I'll share some of them with you. So, number one, human growth hormone. Human growth hormone is also considered the, quote, youth hormone. And it's one of the things that it does, is protective over your lean muscle tissue. So we know about, when we hear hgh, we tend to think of, like, Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, Jason Giambi, Mark McGuire, I live in St. Louis, so he was a big deal. Mark, you let me down. But anyway, so please understand that human growth hormone is something we endogenously produce within ourselves, and they weren't taking it to make them bigger. It doesn't necessarily make you bigger. It makes you recover faster and it protects your lean muscle. It's muscle protective and it gives you. It doesn't directly give you energy, but it acts on that channel when we get into conversation about mitochondria and all that stuff. So you have the experience of a lot more energy, and you need that energy if you're going to train, if you're going to do all the stuff necessary to hit a baseball 450ft. So that's one of the big things. Human growth hormone, you get the greatest secretion of that during this anabolic window of sleep. All right? You can't get that anywhere else. Squats are awesome, fasting is awesome. But you get the biggest secretion from sleep. Another thing, check. This is really crazy. And nobody's talked about this yet. A lot of these ideas I'm pushing out in the culture, you know, some of these things I've been talking about for years, you know, with the blackout curtains and all this stuff, now it's popular culture and just like, well, I've heard that before. Well, maybe I had something to do with that. I'm just gonna put that out there. But also, what is the deeper connection? What is the real deep. Why? Why does this actually work? And that's what I hope people can walk away with today. So, melatonin, everybody has heard about melatonin. It's this glorified sleep hormone. Well, I just came across a study just a couple months ago. That found that melatonin has some really powerful fat loss. Alright? So check this out. So melatonin has been found to increase your body's ratio of something called brown adipose tissue, or bat. All right? You can call it bat fat like Batman. It's bat fat. Alright, so brown adipose tissue. Brown adipose tissue functions more like muscle in the fact that it burns white adipose tissue. So brown adipose tissue. And is this kind of quote good? Really good body fat. All right, and the white adipose tissue is the fat that kind of like the gooey stuff that we all just kind of want to get rid of. So by increasing your level of brown adipose tissue, it immediately increases your metabolism. Melatonin does that. All right, so, and here's the thing. If you're not on a normal sleep cycle, normal sleep rhythm, you don't have optimal sleep cycles. You're not producing optimal melatonin. You're missing out on all those fat burning capacities. Another one really quickly. Cortisol. Cortisol is very destructive for your muscles if it's not producing the right amounts. Cortisol's not a bad guy. It's just when it's produced at the wrong time and when it's too much. All right? It's this process it can do called gluconeogenesis, where basically it can break down your lean muscle tissue, which again, muscle is your body's fat burning machinery. So kind of like the brown adipose tissue, if you lose muscle, you lose metabolic firepower and cortisol can break your muscle down. So optimal sleep helps to reduce your cortisol levels. And also, it's just a big intimate relationship. Maybe we could talk more about it. Last two things. Super quick. Leptin. Stanford University found that one night of sleep deprivation dramatically suppresses your leptin. And leptin is your body's satiety hormone. So you're immediately going to be more ravenous the next day. And you will notice this. Everybody's had this experience. When you're sleepy, especially if you're up late, you're not going to go and like make a salad. If one o' clock in the morning you're watching how to Get Away with Murder. Hell, hold on, let me pause. I'm gonna go make a salad. Make some broccoli. No, you're gonna go get some chips or some ice cream or some cookies or some snackies, you're gonna go get a snacky poo on. Because that's really what our biology is gonna compel us to do because of suppression of leptin and increase in ghrelin, which is our hunger hormone. I can go on and on, obviously, but those are just some of the principles that should make it a lot more attractive and engaging to know that, hey, getting optimal sleep is actually going to help to transform my body.

So good. And that same attitude and kind of humor and distillation of, hey, this is what you need to be thinking about is what the book is all about. Which is one of the reasons why I loved it so much. And frankly, if that wasn't enough to sell you already, then I don't know what's up. But if you're listening to this, you already know that there's so much potential here. And again, I love that quick breakdown. Obviously, we can talk about that for a lot longer. For now, check out the book for more data on that and the podcast, et cetera. I'd love to hear kind of the number one tip and then I'll get into some other ideas. But what's your number one tip? Knowing that we're now inspired to optimize our sleep, what's the number one tip? Wow.

You know, that's a tough one. That's a really tough one because there's 21 strategies in the book. And I'll preface this before I give the tip. I'll say that it's really going to be unique to you, whatever that thing is, because we have to. And that's what I really pride myself on in my practice over the years, was helping people to find that thing that fits with their lifestyle so you don't have to try and turn your whole world upside down just to get the result. That's why the book is called Sleep Smarter, Not Sleep More. All right? Because it's not trying to get people to change too much in their life, but just how can I tweak this thing over here that can pay a big dividend when I lay my head down at night? So with that said, if I could, I'm gonna give two. All right?

You can do whatever you want.

All right, let me give a super low hanging fruit and then one that I feel is the number one most important super low hanging fruit. If you time your exercise right, this will show up as better sleep. All right? And not just better sleep. I'm talking about improved human growth hormone production, improved blood pressure, all this stuff. Okay? So Appalachian State University did a study and they had exercisers train at three different times over the course of the study period. In phase one, they trained at 7am in the morning, phase two, 1pm in the afternoon, right in the middle and phase three, 7pm in the evening. At the end of the study, they found that the morning exercisers had more optimal sleep cycles. Their sleep cycles were more efficient, they tended to sleep longer, they spent more time in the deepest, most anabolic stages of sleep, where you're producing human growth hormone. And they found they had a 25% on average decrease in blood pressure at night as compared to the other two groups. And what that means is basically when your blood pressure is decreased in the evening, it's a symbol of an activation of what's known as your parasympathetic nervous system or your rest and digest system. It just gets you out of that busyness and that kind of anxiety and hyped up feeling so you can actually get great sleep. So if you get some exercise in in the morning, this is gonna help you to sleep better at night. So the quote to take away is that a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning. And this doesn't mean you need to turn your whole world upside down. Because if you're not a morning exerciser, who's going to the gym, you don't have to do that. Literally just four or five minutes of exercise can help to get this effect. Okay, so what does that look like? Well, this could be five minutes of jumping on a rebounder, which is what I did today. I did 10 minutes jumping on a mini trampoline, which NASA said is the best exercise for humans and they're literal rocket scientists. Or you could do some body weight exercises, four minutes for Tabata, which is 20 seconds on of exercise, 20 seconds of rest. You could just do body weight stuff, grab a kettlebell, do some swings, go for a power walk, do some power yoga, just do something to and how this works because again I'm the why person is it helps to reset your circadian timing. It helps toit' swe'll call it this, it's called a cortisol reset because your cortisol should be peaked between 7 and 8am and then gradually decline through the day. A lot of people, clinically we call them tired and wired where their cortisol is too low in the morning and too high at night. So this helps to reset it. By getting up and getting that exercise in, that cortisol is gonna get going. So that's a low hanging fruit. Get at least five minutes of exercise in in the morning. If you can get a full workout in, more power to you. But Just do that. It's going to give you more, pay off big dividends. So that's low hanging fruit, little bit tougher because of really, I'm just going to say the word. We're addicted, all right? We're addicted to our technology. I love my iPhone, I love my Mac. I'm talking to you on this. It's amazing. But we have an understanding. My Mac and I, we have a good relationship now. Whereas, you know, before I'd be up at 1 o' clock in the morning doing the laptop lap dance like a lot of people, you know. And here's the thing I break down in the book, actually, the neurochemicals involved in this addiction and why it's so difficult when you hear this. But here's the thing. Only in the last hundred years have we been able to really have artificial light at night against like 2.5 million years prior to that. All right? Only it's a snapshot. And so we have not evolved to be able to handle this. And so Harvard researchers have confirmed that blue light exposure, specifically, which is definitely emanating from your screens, from your tv, your laptop, your iPhone. And a lot of people might be like, well, it looks like a lot of colors. Well, the blue light is the strongest and it's also the most similar to sunlight and how it impacts your circadian timing. And a good example is like if you've ever been walk into a dark room and you see somebody on their laptop or their phone and you see this blue light just emanating off of them or like a whitish blue light, that will tell you right there. But because it's light around us, you can't really tell. So that blue light is very troublesome. And I'm just gonna give you guys the ratio. So basically every hour of device use in the Evening correlates with 30 minutes of melatonin suppression in the research. All right, so if you're on your, you just say you watched a two hour movie right before, literally right before bed. Your melatonin is suppressed for an hour, all right, so you can be physiologically passed out from exhaustion, but your sleep is going to be horrible. You can get eight hours of sleep and still wake up feeling like a ran over stuffed animal or something. I don't know, I don't know why that came up in my mind, but I don't never mind. I can go to that track. So you can wake up not feeling great doing the cookie cutter information out there. You need to get eight hours of sleep and you're okay, it doesn't work that way. It's really getting optimal sleep, sleeping smarter. So we need to give ourselves a break. A screen curfew is gonna be the optimal thing, and I'm gonna give everybody a hack, too. So number one, I recommend 60 minutes. That's tough. That's real tough. 30 minutes minimum. Give yourself a screen curfew before you go to bed. I know people listen right now. I know you're like, the last thing I do is get off my phone before I go to bed. Usually it's like, I really should get to bed and get off your phone. Or after this, after this last episode, I'm going to go, oh, one more, one more, one more. All right, I've been there. But what that's going to show up. I like to feel good. That's why I put the priority on kind of blocking out that fomo, right, that fear of missing out that acronym, because that's what it really is. And putting a priority on our sleep and understanding. Again, I'm going to be. My metabolism is going to be running better. My ability to think clearly, my memory, my ability to be efficient, my productivity, all this stuff, and I've got the science to back it up. It's going to be better the next day. So here's what we do. So give yourself a screen curve. You have to fill it with something of greater, equal value that could be connecting with your spouse, your significant other, your kids, playing a game maybe. You know, what happened to games? What happened to Pictionary? Let's do it. Let's have some fun. That's offline. Reading a physical book, for example, these amazing old relics, you can break out one of those intimate relationships. You know, if you're in a relationship, hopefully you know, that's when you're doing it. But if not, that's a whole nother book, whole other story, but just hooking up. That and also the chapter nine in the book talks about specifically why it's called Sleeping Together and all the benefits that orgasm has on your sleep. And we break the science down in that chapter. But here's the hacks I'm just going to throw out for you guys really quickly. So, number one, Harvard researchers, they confirmed that, yes, the blue light is the most disruptive, but other spectrums of light are not as harsh. So they found that blue light was twice as suppressive to melatonin and disruptive to your sleep cycle than green light. And they found that red light is basically negligible in how it impacts your melatonin so what have we been exposed to throughout human history before artificial light? If we did have light at night, what color was it? It was red and reddish, this reddish orange hue from fire. So what these amazing companies have found. So Apple already on all the iPhones now and even the new iPhone, they put a tool called Night shift that pulls out the most troublesome blue light from your screen, all right, Based on when it gets dark in your area and it does it automatically. And they did this. Apple, this is, we're talking billion, billion, billion, multi billion dollar company. They're not doing this for just no reason. You know, it's because the science is really thick that it is hurting you. And I think they're doing a proactive thing like the McDonald's thing where it's like, I know I'm the one buying this cheeseburger, but it's your fault, McDonald's, you know, it's like I've been using this device. I didn't know that it was potentially causing me to have cancer. All right? And we talk about that in the book as well. The World Health Organization has come out and said that shift work, so working overnight is a Class 2A carcinogenic because it contributes to cancer so much. But that's a whole nother track. So get yourself use that on your device. If you have Apple product on your computers, it doesn't matter if you have Windows, Mac, whatever the case might be your laptops desktop immediately if you don't have this yet, it is a treasure. I've been using it for years. It's called Flux F Lux. Just go to Google, type in F lux. It takes just a couple seconds. It'll get put on your computer and it does the same job as night shift, pulling out the most troublesome spectrum of light from your screen. Before I even wrote the book or really had the initiative to even do it, I was telling people about flux in my clinic for people who work on the computer who get migraines and they would come in, they're like, oh my migraines are gone. Just because it's pulling out that intensity from your field of vision. Also there's blue light blocking glasses that you can wear. Like if you're watching a movie or just the ambient light around you, there's cool ones and then there's some ones that look kind of dumb. But you know, this is for science, not social points. And so those are some hacks. So number one, the big thing is the low hanging fruit. Get some exercise in the morning, a little bit Tougher. But the most important and powerful thing that can have the biggest impact packed on your sleep is giving yourself a screen curfew and or using some of these blue light blocking devices.

Oh, that is so good. We are geeks at the Johnson family and we're doing a lot of this stuff, but you turned me on to some of this other stuff. Like I didn't have the black curtains going on. And we may want to talk about just the fact that your skin can actually see. I mean that was just awesome. But it's so powerful. You know, just to highlight again really quickly that your number one tip in the book was you got to value sleep.

Right?

You gotta, you gotta actually see the value in it. Which is why we could have talked about the science. And you do in the book for quite a bit, you know, just to sell us on it. I love that exercise tip. I do that. But I'm excited to do it more consciously. And then I call it Digital Sunset. So when the sun goes down, we shut everything off and our four year old son says those lights disrupt our melatonin. It's hilarious. So we've got, you know, those, you know, those goofy red lights and the ridiculously looking construction orange glasses, you know what I mean? Not the good looking ones.

I've got a collection, man. I've got a collection.

Yeah, but those are such good tips and hacks and I really appreciate you so perfectly articulating what we can do today to get some significant benefits. I'm looking at my list of other ideas. Caffeine. I love the way you describe the effects of caffeine in our bodies. Can you walk us through that?

Okay, sure. And a full disclosure, I'm a fan of caffeine. I really, really enjoy. I'm a connoisseur of teas. I like teas a lot. My wife is a big connoisseur of coffees. And then of course there's supplements and things like that that you'll find caffeine in. I'm a fan of caffeine. Humans have been using it for thousands of years and there's an affinity there. And caffeine has a really interesting resonance with the human body. So now here's the issue. Here's the issue. One study that I cited in the book found that taking caffeine in even six hours out before bed was enough to cause a measurable objective measure using sleep monitor loss of a full hour of sleep. So somebody thinks they're sleeping for eight hours, but they're missing an entire hour of that sleep because their sleep cycles are disrupted from the caffeine. Right. So this is where we get in this whole. And we start to trick ourselves. Like, I know I'm getting great sleep, but I'm on this caffeine all the time. And then I need the caffeine the next day to get me going and to keep me going. And it becomes this vicious circle. So what we want to do is have a caffeine curfew and just get it in the early part of the day. We're all different in our metabolism for caffeine. And also the source of the caffeine matters, which a lot of people don't think about, and I know I didn't. So if it's coming from green coffee beans or from green tea, or black tea or coffee, it's all gonna be different how it influences your body. But we know for certain that synthetic caffeine. All right, so something created in the laboratory is going to impact your body way differently. That's where you're going to experience more of that crash in lower grade stuff, like really crappy coffee. Right. Just got to say, the best part of waking up Folgers is in your cup. Yeah, okay, so that was the marketing, but we want to go for better stuff, higher quality stuff. That's really the first thing there. And also give yourself a little bit of curfew. I recommend to make sure that you're done prior to 2 o'. Clock. If you're sensitive to caffeine for other people, they can maybe, you know, if they're trying to get to sleep at, you know, 10, 30, 11 or whatever the case may be, you know, 4 o' clock can be okay, but as long as it's a smaller amount. All right. Because here's the thing, and this is probably what we really got to about it. Caffeine has a half life of about 8 hours. Alright? So what that means is if you consume 200 milligrams of caffeine, eight hours later, about 100 milligrams is still active in your system. And then eight hours of that, half of that is now active in your system. So it's 50 milligrams still active in your system and so on and so on. So some people have a faster metabolism where the half life is shorter, but it sticks around. It's a very powerful nervous system stimulant. All right, so we just have to be understanding of that. Use caffeine with respect. And also I recommend cycling it so that you actually get that nice feeling when you have it and you don't become desensitized to it. And so, yeah, there you go.

So good man. And then. Is it adenosine? Is that how you pronounce it?

Oh, yeah, adenosine. So that's a lot of people don't. And I. Again, I didn't know this either. And it's just fascinating because we just take it at face value. I know caffeine gives us energy. It makes us feel like we're not tired when we're tired. Well, this is how it actually works. So adenosine was thought for years to be just some throwaway byproduct of metabolism, but it's actually far more than that. So adenosine builds up in your tissues, and as your body is doing all these processes through the day, and there's actually receptor sites for adenosine that when those receptor sites start to get filled, it begins to nudge you to go to sleep. Alright? So adenosine is a buildup product that once those receptor sites starts picking up enough of it, it will tell you to go to sleep because your body is tired. Alright? It's a marker of you being physically tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally, everything. All right. Caffeine has this really interesting ability. It's very similar in its biochemical structure to adenosine. So it can fit into those adenosine receptor sites, and your body will continue to produce adenosine, even though you should be. And it should be nudging you to go to sleep. But it's. Those receptor sites are filled, so you don't know that you're tired. So caffeine doesn't. Well, it does give you energy. It's a different track. And how to kind of break that down, the different types of things going on in caffeine, but one of the big ways is it gives us the illusion that we're not tired when we are tired. And it's a pretty great magic trick. Caffeine is like the David Copperfield of substances out there or whoever you're into Criss Angel. What's the other guy? I don't know. But David Blaine is the David Blaine of substances. But the bottom line is just using it with respect, understanding the impact that it has on your system. And I think we can get along for sure with caffeine if we use.

It the right way, right on. Just like your Mac and your iPhone. I want to respect your time because we're running up against a hard stop here, but we've already covered. We've simultaneously scratched the surface of your wisdom in general and particularly in this book. And yet we've covered a ton. So so much more we could talk about. But let's wrap it up and point people again. Sleep smarter 21 we talked about a couple of the strategies, proven tips to sleep your way to a better body, better health, and bigger success. Find it on Amazon or wherever you get books and that new Audible release which Sean narrates. And yeah, I interviewed one of my friends, Pilar Gerasimo, who has an equivalently magnetic voice on the feminine side. So I imagine your Audible book will be fun to listen to. And then of course the podcast the Model Health Show. Sean, just thrilled to be connected. Appreciate you sharing your wisdom and look forward to more.

It's totally my honor and privilege and thank you so much for connecting. I'm really excited to know you and I love the title of your show, period. It's what this is all about. And by the way, so we've got I don't tell people this often enough. I did some videos. I did 21 videos for each chapter of the book and you probably don't even know this because my wife is like, why don't you tell people? And I worked so hard to get this done, but it was in the midst of the book launch and all the travel. But there's a you can get the whole video series for free. When you get the book, just go to sleepsmarterbook.com and you can get that video series bonus for free there as well with a copy of Sleep Smarter.

That's amazing. So sleepsmarterbook.com awesome. Thank you, Sean.

It's my pleasure, man. Take care of Isn't it a bit.

Odd we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class.

On how to live?

For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up. Then imagine that guy me, connecting those ideas to other great things books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do as something we call Philosopher's Notes, where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF. 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing.

You've got a personal trainer?

I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus modern science plus common sense plus virtue plus mastery plus fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.