3 Keys to Keep Your Health Strong Forever | Michael Breus

Roughly 75% of the United States is not sleeping well.

Do you feel like health and wellness has turned into a luxury industry that is seemingly impossible to keep up with?

Everybody knows how to sleep, knows how to drink water, and knows how to breathe, or so they think they do.

In this episode, we will discuss what you can and maybe even should do as a first step to work on your health, especially your brain health. We're gonna talk about the fundamentals here. You can't have any of the things we wanna have without these 3 fundamental Before you choose all those different add-ons and those biohacks that we've talked about, this is how to really truly optimize your longevity of your mind and your body.

Here's what ends up happening is after about 3 weeks of doing this, your body just starts to do it. You don't need the alarm system anymore.

How do you detect if you're dehydrated?

Hydration is all based on your salt-water balance within your system.

Is water water?

Number one, always look on the label and you want to look at the sodium count before you drink it.

Mouth taping has become very popular practice.

When air is going through your mouth, it's like putting leaded gas into your car.

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. As a sleep doctor, Dr. Michael Breus speaks to a multitude of health enthusiasts in every major field and has more or less the same conversations daily. The latest trends say that you must read every article and research and try every new technique or gadget available in order to be well, but often you end up feeling lost and confused because the suggested methods change so fast that you don't even know if what you're doing is still being recommended. Today, Dr. Bruce will be sharing his secret to a real long-lasting wellness, and believe it or not, it all comes down to just 3 simple Simple things, but these are big and impactful. Remember, you major in the major things. I'm excited to announce that Dr. Bruce will be one of our featured speakers at our mega, mega annual event. Join thousands of other brain enthusiasts in LA, March 6th, 7th, and 8th. It'll be the biggest gathering we've ever done. The faculty is amazing. The exhibits are absolutely incredible. So many surprises. You could meet Dr. Bruce. He'll be signing books there also as well. He's written many of these books, some of my favorites, limitlesslive.com. And his latest book we're talking about today is called Sleep, Drink, Breathe: Simple Daily Habits for Profound Long-Term Health. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bruce.

So I have a different subtitle. I want, I wanna change it right here, right now.

Let's do it.

Here it is. Sleep, Drink, Breathe: Wellness Is Too Complicated. That is like the message, right? So first of all, as always, thank you for having me on the pod, Jim. I certainly appreciate it. Everybody on the pod who listens knows Jim and I have been friends for a very long time. He is an important person in my life. I am fortunate to be an important person in his, and we have really had a great journey together, and we're going to have many, many more years together. So it's always great to hang out with a friend and have a great conversation. So thanks, Jim.

So this is not going to be scripted. You know, you and I, Michael, go back way back. You've been so supportive. We've had you on the podcast. You're probably one of our most, most brought back guests for sure. And you speak at our events, which is amazing. We just did the Limitless Learner virtual broadcast that went out to—

That was cool.

Hundreds of thousands of individuals. And you've helped me and my family personally. So I'm a client of yours also as well. You helped me through You know, especially a lot of sleep issues. I have some very severe sleep apnea, travel a lot, get jet-lagged. And yeah, you're— I appreciate you being in my corner. So jumping into this, you share a lot of statistics and research in the book around what happens to our bodies, and our brain is part of our body, obviously, when we are suffering from lack of sleep, dehydration, and incorrect Breathing. Uh, while it might seem incredibly obvious, can you maybe give us some, uh, some hard truths about why most people ignoring these simple things that can have a huge positive or negative impact on us in the long term, especially our brains?

No question about it. So first of all, thanks for the question. It's a good one. So here's the thing. Everybody knows how to sleep. Knows how to drink water and knows how to breathe, or so they think they do, right? So here's what's kind of interesting is these are what we call automatic behaviors. You kind of have to do them whether you like it or not, which makes most people think, oh, my body's just on autopilot, right? I can just breathe. I'll get thirsty and then I'll drink. And then whenever I go into that room in the back of the house, I'll close my eyes and I'll sleep. You and I both know there's often challenges in that department as well, right? And so what people think is that these are automatic behaviors that our body should just naturally do and do them appropriately. Here's what I would say is that's true. However, if we just pay attention to how we do these 3 things, we actually level ourselves up at the most fundamental level. You can't have brain health without sleeping, without hydrating, and without breathing. You know this.

You can't have—

well, you can't have any of the things we want to have Without these 3 fundamental aspects, what I kind of call the DNA of wellness. Um, it was kind of interesting. Uh, well, let me give you some hard stats. Um, 'cause you asked for them. We think now roughly 75% of the United States, just looking at the United States now, I've got stats for all over the world, but just looking at the United States, we think that roughly 75% of the United States is not sleeping well.

Wow.

75%. That's 3 in 4 people.

Right.

It was either snoring, potentially sleep apnea, insomnia, uh, what I call just disordered sleep, caffeine abuse, uh, misscheduling. I mean, it goes on and on and on, but that's an easy one to kind of look at. Let's take a look at, for example, hydration. Um, very, very interesting statistics when you start to learn about hydration. And here's the thing. Most people turn to me and they're like, Michael, I get my water. Right? It's no problem. I get my ounces and I think I'm good to go. The way you get your ounces determines absorption, right? So a lot of people will turn to me, and this is a very common relationship between sleep and hydration, which is kind of interesting, is a lot of people, it's 8 or 9 o'clock at night and they were like, oh crap, I forgot to get all my water. And they go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. They drink a ton of water. Number one, their body can't absorb it. But number two, it makes them— forces them to use the restroom. multiple times throughout the night, which is hyper-disruptive to sleep. So, if they just got their hydration a little earlier in the day and were sipping instead of gulping, we now save sleep at night. Same holds true with breathing. When we look at breathing and breathwork, people are like, Michael, come on, I breathe naturally all day long. Think about it like this, and Jim, you know this better than anyone. There are certain breathing techniques that can help relax you. And then there are opposite breathing techniques that can elevate your energy, right? So we can use breath as one of the fundamental guides for our sympathetic and our parasympathetic nervous system, which becomes again how we function throughout the day. So when we look at how are people breathing, we could actually say that most people are what we call shallow breathers. So they're just using about half of their lung. When you do that, you actually force your heart to beat twice as fast. So by not having an extended breath, you're actually putting a greater load on your heart. And for folks out there who have heart disease, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, things like that, it's not a great idea to do that. So all of these things are things that we think we're doing okay, but unfortunately we might be able to just level them up a little bit better and the results become exponential, right? So if you get your water earlier in the day, you can sleep throughout the night, right? Like, it's kind of cool when you start to look at how these things are all related. And how they all work together. I'll be honest with you though, this wasn't my idea to like launch into the wellness community and say, hey, we need a starting line, right? I was reading a book by our friend Joe Polish called Life Gives to the Giver. And in one of them, he talks about this idea called dominoes. And I really resonated with this idea. And for him, the way he describes a domino is it's a skillset that you have, and once you complete it, it kind of opens up other skill sets for you, right? So as an example, in, in the limitless world, reading would be one of those fundamental things that then allows you to have brain health, knowledge, so on and so forth, right? So reading might be a domino in the world of limitless, right? So I started to think to myself, I'm like, well, what could it be for overall wellness? Like if we were really trying to break it down, what are the things that a body cannot live without? And if it does it well enough, it should be okay. And that's where I came up with sleep, drink, breathe.

So let's break this down. Let's start with sleep. You mentioned 75% of individuals have challenges, which is— it sounds right to me. You know, our team— I know, isn't that crazy? Absolutely. And that affects your memory, that affects your focus, everything that we teach. So many people struggle to stay asleep through the night, maybe waking up without knowing why. Is there a way that you recommend that someone listening who's struggling in this area or as a family member or team member, friend, to identify and address these subtle triggers that disturb their sleep? And what role maybe does, does breathing play in maintaining a restful night?

So it's a great question. So first of all, there's a lot of things that can happen in the middle of the night. And, you know, it's interesting, Jim, I just I've been on a tour basically for like 3 or 4 weeks, live event after live event after live event. I keep getting asked one of the same questions, and I think it addresses this issue that we're talking about here, which is, what do I do if I wake up in the middle of the night? Or what can I do to prevent waking up in the middle of the night? And then if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night, what do I do to deal with said situation? Because this is This is arguably the second most popular question that I get across the board. Believe it or not, the first one is, what bed should I buy? Which is kind of funny for a sleep doctor. But when we look at this, I want to explain to everybody, this is the biology. So your core body temperature rises, rises, rises, it hits a peak, and then it begins to drop. When it drops, it sends a signal to your brain to release melatonin. Remember guys, melatonin is that key that starts the engine for sleep.

Yeah.

You gotta have it, but it's not the only thing that you need. Then your core body temperature continues to drop, drop, drop. Then at some point your body has to heat up, otherwise you go hypothermic. When it heats up, you automatically go into a lighter stage of sleep and almost everyone on earth wakes up. Here's the difference. Some of our listeners, when they wake up, they roll over and they go back to sleep within 30 seconds. Unfortunately, a large portion do not. Right. And so number one, I want everybody to know and understand this is a natural occurrence. You did not do anything wrong to make yourself wake up in the middle of the night, hopefully. Now, as we mentioned earlier, if you drink about, you know, 30 ounces of water right before you go to bed, well, then I think it probably is your fault for waking up in the middle of the night. If you're drinking caffeine past 2 PM, Well, then you might be having some reasons why it's waking you up. If, for example, you drink alcohol within 2 to 3 hours of bedtime, well, then that's also probably on you, right, for knowing and understanding how some of these environmental factors can affect your sleep. But if you didn't do those things, you're going to wake up anyway. The real issue is, what do I do to get back to sleep? So in the book, we actually address this very issue, but I'm going to give everybody some simple tips now. But there's a lot of good stuff in the book for you to understand. The first thing I tell people to do is if you can avoid it, don't pee. Now, I wanna be clear, if you gotta go, please go to the bathroom. But a lot of people, they wake up and they don't actually have to go. But when they go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position and they walk across the room, it elevates their heart rate. And what most people don't know is in order to enter into a state of unconsciousness, you need a heart rate of 60 or below. So, what I have people do, and this is getting to the breathing part for you, is I have people help put themselves back to sleep. So, if you got to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom, but when you come back, you got to lower your heart rate. My favorite way to do that is with something called 4-7-8 breathing. Now, we talked about this at your event last time, which was actually fun. We had people doing 4-7-8 breathing. This is an important aspect. To understanding how can breathing help relax our body and allow us to fall back asleep. The thing about 4-7-8 that I like so much is it actually does 2 things at the same time. Number one, you're counting. So you count 1, 2, 3, 4 to breathe in. You count to hold till 7, and then you count to 8 to push your breath out. But while you're counting, you can't think of anything else. Right. And what ends up happening for a lot of people is they get what I call monkey mind. And you can't stop your brain, but if you're counting, you can't think of those things. Also, if you're breathing while you're counting, that's lowering your heart rate. So basically you're kind of getting a combo platter of things to help you out in the middle of the night, distracting your brain and lowering your heart rate. And if you can get to 10 to 12 cycles of this, it works fantastic. Then you just kind of come with the breath, and then all of a sudden, before you know it, the natural sleep cycle is taking over and you fall right to sleep.

I know you have a lot of fans listening to this episode because we've had you talk about sleep, and I know a lot of people have listened to our episode where you talk about chronotypes.

Yes.

And we'll put links to all of this in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. Everyone should be going there for a summary and deeper insights and resources. I'll put Joe Polish's episode. That we had interviewed there. But so we've talked about chronotypes, and most people know their chronotype, you know, that you categorize people as either bears, wolves, lions, dolphins. How does hydration and breathing, does it vary across these chronotypes? It does, actually.

What a great question. So it actually does vary across. So as an example, most people out there know I used to be a wolf. I seem to be transitioning as I get older, but I've always been the night owl, Wolfish kind of person. When you're a person like me, what ends up happening in the morning time, you don't want to do anything. You certainly don't want to hydrate. You certainly don't want to wake up at the right time. You certainly don't want to do any type of breathing exercises, right? And so we see that these night owl people, number one, if we tell them to do these things in the morning, forget about it. It's never going to happen, right? But if we can address some of those issues later on, then sometimes they'll come around. So motivation often is a big issue for some of my wolves. Like me, right? We don't see the sense in it versus a lion. Lions, it's kind of hard to get them to do anything but all of the stuff that I ask them to do. They are really in it to win it. And they're, they're looking for a lot of those hacks and things like that. So we definitely see different motivational aspects to it. Also, to be fair, um, I would argue that bears are probably some of the best sleepers since their chronorhythm has them going to bed at, you know, roughly 10:30, waking up at roughly 7:30. So I think there's some differences there. Also, I would argue from a hydration standpoint, there's definitely some differences. So as an example, lions and dolphins, they have a tendency to worry about water. It's kind of interesting if you talk to any of them before, if you ask them, hey, how much water have you had? They're like, oh, they know their exact ounces. Like it's all kind of, you know, kind of almost stressful for them. Whereas when you talk to a wolf about it, they're like, Yeah, I lost my water bottle this morning. Not really sure where it's at. So again, we see a lot of differences in terms of motivation. Uh, we see a lot of differences in terms of activation. And so for folks out there, one of the easiest ways that you can understand more about your chronotype and kind of what to do with it is to start with your sleep schedule. And that's one of the things we talk about in Sleep Drink Breathe is if there's one thing that you probably really want to do is figure out what your chronotype is. and try to sleep based on the chronotypical guidelines that I give you. This isn't stuff that I made up. This is the real deal. We've interviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of people to understand how this works. And so what's great about it is it gives people guideposts to start to understand what's going on. But chronotypes turn out to be pretty fundamental as well.

Let's go into hydration a little bit more. So your brain is mostly water. We know that even being a little bit dehydrated could affect your reaction time, your thinking speed, so much in terms of our cognitive performance. Is there— 2 questions. How do you detect if you're dehydrated before the obvious symptoms kick in? And then, is water water, right? There's all kinds of water. You go to the stores and there's alkaline water and then there's reverse osmosis water.

That's right.

Some people talk about putting some kind of mineral or sea salt or you know, what we call hydration multipliers or lemon or something. Yeah.

So, all right. So that was a big question and there's a lot of different parts to it. So I'm going to start from the back and you might have to remind me about some of the stuff in the front. So the first thing is, is water water? That's a great question. And so one of the things that we do in the book is we go through the different types of water that are out there. I know that sounds like a crazy thing to say, but there's a difference between mineral water, spring water, Tap water, um, something called hydrogen water. Um, then there's these additives that you can add to water, things like LMNT, Liquid IV, what we call hydration multipliers. So let's break some of this stuff down so that people can understand it. And by the way, we talk about it a lot in the book. So the first thing let's talk about is these hydration multipliers. So what does that mean? What these are is these are powders that people pour into their water that are usually salt and different minerals. Now—

Magnesium, potassium.

Magnesium, potassium, calcium.

Sodium.

Sometimes vitamin C. Absolutely. So the question becomes, is this a good idea or is this a bad idea? Number one, always look on the label and you wanna look at the sodium count before you look at anything else, because a lot of these are loaded with sodium and that's how they get you to retain water. Hydration is all based on your salt-water balance within your system. And so, when your system gets saltier, your system holds water, and when it doesn't have as much salt, it releases water. So, that's one of the ways you can also know, by the way, that you're hydrated or dehydrated. As an example, look at the color of your urine. Sounds weird, but believe it or not, in India, they have these color charts in every public restroom so you can because it's easy to get dehydrated in the heat of India and not realize that you are. You want your urine to be a, a very light yellow, if at all, almost kind of like a buttery color. If it gets more concentrated, that's a sign that, hey, I might be dehydrated. Now, there's also this thing called the skin tugger test where you take your hand and you pinch skin like this, and then you drop it. And if it expands back in less than 2 seconds, then that means that you're probably well hydrated. Now, to be fair, if you're 65 years old, your skin might not have that much elasticity. And so, you could do this test, think you were dehydrated, and you might not be. So, it has a little bit of differences based on your age. So, what I tell my folks who are in my age range, 55, 56, and older, is look at your urine color, do the skin test to try to understand, and also notice when you're thirsty. A lot of people just brush it off and they're like, ah, my mouth's a little dry, but that, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm thirsty. Your brain is trying to tell you, hey, something's going on here. When we talk about brain health in particular, and we talk about hydration, I'm so glad you brought up the fact that the brain is actually mostly water. So when our body becomes dehydrated, believe it or not, your brain shrinks. Okay. Like it physically shrinks. And when it does that, the matter wraps around the nerves, and that's when migraine headaches start, and that's when cluster headaches start, right? So hydration turns out to be a huge problem in a lot of people, and they don't even know it. They're like, oh, I got a headache again. Drink some water. Again, all that is doing is your brain is trying to tell you it hurts up here, I need some more space, right? So it's amazing when we look at these things, and Again, a lot of people don't even think about the sip versus gulp idea and then looking at the different types of waters. I will tell you this, getting back to the different types of waters, tap water unfortunately is not a great idea anymore. You know, the government puts fluoride in the main water systems for people's teeth, which now we know the data is that that is not a great idea. So, at the very, very minimum, One of the things I did was I went through all of the different types of water filtration systems out there so people can understand from a cost perspective and then from a filtering perspective, what do you want? Me personally, I went to Target and I bought one of those Brita filters, Brita pitchers with the filter, and I put tap water in that and that's where I get my tap water from. The rest of my water I get from bottled water. Let's talk about bottles for half a second because, man, nanoplastics are everywhere. So you really want to be drinking your water, if at all possible, from steel or from glass. Try to avoid plastics and especially try to avoid water that's been contained in plastics, right? So you want to look for water that's in bottles and preferably colored bottles. You might have noticed there's like these big green bottles that say something like Mountain Valley spring water. Those are some of the best types of water that you can possibly put into your body. Right now, again, you don't have to spend a ton of money. Go to Target for $20, you can get a Brita filter and then some extra filters. You drop one in every 3 months and you're good to go. If you want to go the extra step, you can get some fancy water as well. Back to the hydration multipliers, looking at the salt, you really don't want more than about 500 milligrams of sodium. Some of them have 1,000, and that can be actually kind of damaging, also increase your blood pressure. So the first thing I do is I look at the types of sodium or the amounts of sodium and choose one that's a little bit lower. Then I start looking at things like what you're talking about. So magnesium is a good hydration multiplier from the standpoint of we sweat out most of our magnesium. So this is another good idea in terms of replenishment. And the final thing I want to talk about in terms of hydration multipliers is it's not something you would ever use every day, right? So you would pick times where it would make intuitive sense. So I'm a runner. And so if I run 3 miles during, during my normal day, I'm not going to use a hydration multiplier for that. But if I have a long run on Saturday and I'm going to try to do 10 miles, you bet I'm going to load up and have like that LMNT or the Liquid IV or something like that in my water bottle. Does that make sense?

It does. I mean, your level of activity, the temperature that you're out in, if you're in a sauna, I mean—

That's a great So, that's a great point too, is temperature, daily temperature, or again, if you're in saunas, we sweat out so much of this water, we really need to make sure that we're replenishing it. That's a great point, Jim.

That makes sense. Let's, let's go back to sleep. Uh, specifically in our community, we, we had questions about napping and—

Oh yeah, let's talk about that.

I'm curious about the research on napping. Uh, you know, potentially it could help accelerate some, some learning and some integration. Uh, but is it dependent? I mean, Naps, is it dependent on age or stage of life?

Oh, there's a whole host of things.

So, how would you recommend even people approach napping? Because some people feel like they've tried it and they're more tired after a nap. You know, you hear those.

Okay, let's lay out the rules for the nap, which also I actually, I address in the book. So, if folks want to know more, grab the book.

Highly, highly recommend that.

Yeah, it's really a good kind of primer in for basics, but let's talk napping. So number one, anybody out there who feels like they have a hard time falling asleep at night, don't nap. Okay? Remember, there's 2 systems in the brain for sleep. One is called your sleep drive. The other is called your sleep rhythm. If you nap, you lower sleep drive, especially in people with insomnia. So once again, as kind of an overall statement, If you are somebody who has a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep, napping is probably not the best idea. However, let's say that you only got 5 hours of sleep last night. Well, you probably are going to need some type of a supplemental nap during the day, literally to function. So let's talk about the types of different naps that you can take if you're sleep deprived, and then I'm going to end it talking about the types of nap that you can take to help your frontal cortex. Okay, so when you're sleep deprived, And you're looking at those kinds of naps, you want to keep the naps as short as possible. Um, but because what ends up happening is you get this thing called sleep inertia, and when you wake up from the nap, you feel awful. So when you, when you have only had 5 hours of sleep, you want to take a short 25-minute nap with an alarm to wake you up before you start getting into the deeper stages of sleep. That'll burn through the adenosine, which is actually the chemical in your brain that makes you feel sleepy. Enough for you to be able to start to feel awake and refreshed. If you had the time to do an hour and a half nap or a 90-minute nap, that's what we call a full sleep cycle nap. That could be good. But remember, number one, you got to have 90 minutes. And number two, if you wake up from it, you could feel pretty logy. So again, I'm pushing people more towards this 25-minute nap, if at all possible. Now, to be fair, between 1 and 3 in the afternoon, siesta time in Latin American countries, Every single person on Earth has a small biological event. Their core body temperature rises for about a quarter of a degree centigrade and then drops, and a little bit of melatonin is released in our brain halfway through the day. By the way, this is why we feel sleepy after lunch. It has nothing to do with a big pasta dinner or anything like that. A couple of things I tell people to do. Number one, if you're feeling sleepy during that time, go outside and get some sunshine. That actually stops the melatonin from being produced so you don't feel as logy. But if you are feeling like, hey, I've got to sit down and I'm going to do some reading, or I've got to sit down and really have some heavy thinking going on, one of my favorite kind of naps— I do 2 different kinds. One I call the nappa latte. This is one where you take a little bit of caffeine, like a cup of drip black coffee, put in some ice cubes, drink it, and then take a 20-minute nap. Wake up, you are good to go, and you are firing on all cylinders. And you want to give a presentation, you want to read a book, you want to do what you want to do, you are primed for business. If caffeine isn't your thing, that's okay too. You can still, um, do something like with a green tea or a matcha or something that's got a lighter amount of caffeine. Or if there's something out there that you find that gives you a little bit more energy, you could do it that way. But I always find that that's one of those ways to do things that works out really, really well for people. This 15 to 20 minute nap just before I'm about to do something that's fairly cognitive really can kind of be that great reset. And to be clear, you don't always have to fall asleep during your nap. Um, there's a lot of data looking at something called yoga nidra or non-sleep deep rest, which is where lying in a dark room in the quiet actually turns out to be rejuvenative. I mean, to be fair, it's not as good as sleep. But sometimes we just kind of need a break, right? And, and, and it's important for our brains to get a break, right? And so we, when I talk with you and we always talk about brains and brain health, it's also important to remember that brains need a break. And if you give your brain a break throughout the daytime, even if it's just one, you'll be surprised at how much better it works.

So we know there's some critical elements for, for good brain health, obviously sleep. where you're cleaning out the beta amyloid plaque, the sewage system kicks in.

Yes.

You consolidate short to long-term memory. Sleep is so very important. You dream, you know, it's that kind of slow brainwave state. We talked about hydration for the brain. If you're dehydrated, just boosting— staying hydrated could boost your reaction time, your thinking speed, all that. But the other important key is oxygen. I was just going to say, breathing, right?

So what's the fuel for the brain, right?

Right. And so as we age, our Lung functionality, it decreases. I saw as much as 40%. What can we do daily to make sure we maintain our lung capacity and maybe even train ourselves out of the shallow breathing?

Yes.

You know, I know we've talked about sleep apnea in the past and how that affects sleep, but what are we talking about when we're talking about breathing, lung capacity, and functionality? Are you tired and frustrated of struggling with forgetfulness and longing for greater mental retention and clarity? I have a special invitation for you to watch my free 3-part memory power video training where you'll discover the secrets to effortlessly recall crucial information, details, experiences, remembering what you read, giving a speech without notes, and remembering names, transforming you into an exceptional mental achiever. You'll also discover 10 powerful ingredients to supercharge your brain. So don't miss out on this life-changing opportunity. Simply click the button or go to jimkwik.com/power.

Well, so as we get older, our lung capacity and our lung functionality begins to deteriorate. It's just kind of how it is. And so, you're absolutely right in identifying this. Now, in some cases, the deterioration ends up in something called emphysema, COPD. Usually, that has to do with smoking, things like that, but that, of course, affects lung function. Sometimes, as we age, lung function changes due to something called sleep apnea. You and I have had many discussions about what is sleep apnea, how does sleep apnea work. But also, when people are just kind of Thinking about generalized, like, how do I keep my lungs in shape? You're absolutely right. Most people are shallow breathers. So in the book Sleep Drink Breathe, we actually have a plan. And so what I have people do is they pull out their phone and they set an alarm on their phone at 5 different times throughout the day. At each one of these times when the alarm goes off, number one, I ask you to drink some water so that way I can start you on your hydration journey. No problem. But another thing I do is I introduce a new breathing technique. All of these techniques that you'll learn across the 3 weeks are all designed to help maintain or increase your overall lung capacity. So again, now, and I want to be super duper clear, it's not like these are hard. All I'm going to ask you to do are things like, you know, take 15 deep belly breaths in, right? So when you breathe, you don't want your shoulders to rise when you breathe. You want your body to expand when you breathe, right? That's what a belly breath is. So we teach people about things like that. So it's really actually kind of fun. And by the way, it's super easy to do. And once you start doing it these 5 times a day, your body sort of gets into this rhythm and starts to do it for you. So, you know, a lot of people that are like, oh, Michael, 5 times a day, I gotta look at my phone, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. Here's what ends up happening is after about 3 weeks of doing this, your body just starts to do it. You don't need the alarm system anymore. You're just— now it's become part of you. And now you really can be limitless because you've got all the different componentry that you need to get your brain to function appropriately. As you just said, sleep is so, so, so critical for brain function between REM sleep, between deep sleep, where we see the glymphatic system scooping out all the proteins, REM sleep, where we move information, short-term memory to long-term memory. Dreaming, where we get a lot of our creativity. I mean, it's just so essential. Hydration, of course, brain shrinking and relaxing. And then of course, the breathing aspect, that's how we get our fuel. Let's talk for a second about air quality for a minute, because I think that's something that's worthwhile and important. In the book, one of the things we do is we look at air filters to give people an idea. If you want to buy a small home unit for your bedroom in particular, we talk about some of those. Me personally, I bought like a $30 unit off of Amazon just for the bedroom. A lot of people don't realize it, but that's the room you spend about 7 or 8 hours in. And so, the quality of that air needs to be good.

I want to build on the breathing. There's certain benefits of nasal breathing. Mouth taping has become very popular practice.

Yeah, let's talk about it.

What can you tell us about any benefits that come from mouth taping and what is the proper use here? Is it Good for everybody, or is it—

Yeah, great question. So I get asked this quite a bit, and I think it's important. We do address it in the book, but let's talk about it now. So mouth tape— 94% of people will close their mouths when they fall asleep. There's a lot of data to look at that. However, in recent years, we— that number has started to change a little bit, and I think I understand why. We know that the air quality is not as good, which is causing a lot of nasal congestion, and that's Actually forcing people to drop their mouth open to breathe. So when your nose is stuffed, your mouth opens up because you got to get air coming through. Here's where the problem comes in. That air is not filtered, right? When air goes through your nose, there are cilia, there's mucus, there are turbinates that will warm the air, that will take out all the bad stuff and allow it to get into your lungs. When air is going through your mouth, it's like putting leaded gas into your car. Okay, it is not a good idea. So we really want your mouth to stay closed. Okay, what are the different options that we can do in order to do that? Mouth tape has been around for a long time. However, it's become more popular lately because it's a simple way to keep your mouth shut at night. However, I'm going to be here to warn you cautiously. If you think you have sleep apnea, you should not tape your mouth shut because when you tape your mouth shut with sleep apnea and you stop breathing in your sleep, You're going to wake up and you're going to force yourself to breathe, and you're going to rip that tape off, and you're going to rip all the skin off of your lips off, and it's going to become very, very painful, and it's going to become a worse situation than when you started. Want to be clear, mouth taping is fine for people who don't have sleep apnea, but if you have sleep apnea, get your sleep apnea treated. Um, you're going to be much better off. Uh, mouth tape does not treat sleep apnea in any way, shape, or form. Now, also to be fair, a lot of people are using mouth tape incorrectly. So first of all, it's never a horizontal strip. It's a small vertical strip that goes from the center of your nose to the middle of your chin. That's it. And you can use just M3 micropore tape. You can buy it at the local drugstore. I think it's like $4. Okay? Don't fall for the marketing of, oh, we've got this special tape that does— I've never seen any tape that does anything other than make people's lips stick together. So I'm pretty sure you don't have to go out and buy the most famous mouth tape that there is. But once again, if you've got sleep apnea, probably not the best idea.

There's so much to talk to you about this. What I also love is in your book, you also have a sleep, drink, breathe plan, a 3-week plan, so that everyone who gets a copy can benefit step by step. So you really make it super simple. To end the episode, I I like to ask our guests, is there one thing that you are currently studying or learning about that you are particularly excited about?

There's a lot of things. You know me, I kind of, I have a lot of things cooking on the plate right now. I'm starting to learn more. Well, I'm excited about the book to be able to help people kind of find the starting line for wellness. So that's really the push for probably the next 3 to 4 months, maybe even a year. But I'm starting to look into things like plant medicine. One of the areas that I think is very interesting is cannabis, psilocybin. How do they have effects on sleep? So I'm going to be doing deep dives in the next coming years. Might be my next book. I'm not sure just yet. Also, as I'm getting older, I'm 56 years old, I'm starting to really look at sleep in people my age and older. So that's been one of the highlights that I've been focusing on over on my YouTube channel at thesleepdoctor.com. So if people want to check that out, if you— I personally have been able to find some really interesting idea sets surrounding sleep at ages, you know, 50, 55, 60, 65. How is it different? What are the different issues to address? So that's been fun. I'm trying to think of anything else. You know, I get to hang out with you in March. I'm pretty excited about that. That's going to be fun, dude. We're going to have a great time. So I think that's another thing on my list that I'm excited about.

Amazing. Yeah, people, I love for people to come and meet Dr. Bruce in person. We'll be doing book signings. We'll have his books there also as well. Again, limitlesslive.com for all the details. And where do people get a copy of their book, Sleep, Drink, Breathe?

So if you head on over to my website, thesleepdoctor.com, or just sleepdoctor.com/book, you'll see it. And if you get a chance to get it before it comes out December 3rd, There's all kinds of fun preorders and fun stuff for people to check out, and you'll enjoy it, I promise.

Awesome. Well, I can't recommend your work enough. It's helped me. I've sent you so many clients. You helped my family, so I really appreciate that. And I just want everyone to remember that good brain health or health in general doesn't have to be super complicated. By focusing on these 3 fundamental bio-behaviors, right? Sleep, hydration, breathing. You could take significant steps towards optimizing your health and your overall longevity. So as always, you can find out more on how to fuel your brain's potential on our YouTube channel where we post the extended versions. This is definitely longer, so definitely join us there. Join our 1.7 million subscribers and make sure you follow Dr. Bruce on social media. We'll put the links in the show notes again at jimkwik.com/notes.

Thanks, Jim.

You could also tag me @JimKwik. Let us know what you think about this episode. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and leave a comment under the episode. I read every single one, so let us know your thoughts.

I wanted to just add something in if I'm allowed to. I just started using your Kwik Brain supplement and I'm finding it to be extremely helpful. So I don't know if folks out there have had the opportunity to check it out, but I've checked it out and I've actually started giving it to my family. So Wanted to let you know.

Thank you. People could go to kwikmind.com, K-W-I-K mind dot com. And this is your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Until next time, be limitless.