How to Sleep for Peak Mental Performance with Dr. Shane Creado | Jim Kwik

Okay, Kwik Brain, we have a great episode for you today. Today we're going to answer the question, how do you sleep for peak performance, especially when it comes to learning? And we have a very special guest today. We have Dr. Shane Criado. He's a psychiatrist, board certified, a medical doctor, really focusing in the area of sleep.

That's right.

He's also the author of the bestselling book Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes: The Cutting-Edge Sleep Science That Will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage. And there's a quote on the back here from our friend, brain doctor Daniel Amen. He says, Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes is one of the best books on sleep I have ever read. It is practical, actionable, and will help you perform at higher levels than ever before. I highly Recommend it. My friend, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Jim. It's such a pleasure to be here with you today.

Yeah. So, Dr. Criado, you've been a real resource for me with my sleep journey. And so I wanted to invite you to be on our show to share your insights and instructions with our community. For those of you watching on YouTube now, I just want to mention on YouTube, we always put the unedited longer version of our show. So if you're listening to this on iTunes or you subscribe on Spotify, also listen and subscribe to us on YouTube also as well. I'm wearing this shirt and it says sleep mode.

I love it.

You know, it has one of those things where it's, you know, airplane mode. It has that button that you swipe and it has the green there. I have my sleep mode shirt on, and this is actually my super outfit that I kind of go to sleep in. But thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Jim. And that's so right when you talk about sleep mode and our devices. I always refer to sleep as our mini vacation every 24 hours. And that's what I want people to take back. Have fun with, with sleep. The harder you try, the more likely you are to fail because trying wakes the brain up while sleeping is the most vulnerable thing we do. And allowing ourselves to enjoy the time leading up to sleep in a meaningful way as our mini vacation, our sleep boat, is a great way of going about it.

I love that mini vacation. That's something— that's a great reframe on our perspective. You know, as human beings, we get to decide what, uh, what to focus on and also what things mean. And what a great meaning to put behind sleep. sleep. Because some people, they have anxiety around it. They're struggling with insomnia. It's been a challenging time of recent. So some people have this higher levels of stress and they're waking up multiple times at night. Some people have sleep conditions like I do with sleep apnea, obstructive disorders where there's a block in And airflow.

And so how does—

let's talk about the brain and then I wanna get into the tactics, 'cause you have some wonderful tactics on how to help people not only sleep faster, but also stay asleep and get higher quality sleep. You wrote this book all about performance. Let's talk about the relationship between sleep and performance. Whether it's physical or mental performance, when somebody is not getting a good night's sleep, how are they performing? And when people are getting optimal sleep, because it's different than just getting a good night's sleep and really optimizing sleep for performance with the kind of athletes and producers that you work with.

Absolutely. So that's a critical concept to understand is it's not just about how much sleep you're getting. As people in doctors' offices will say, how much sleep are you getting? And that's it. The quantity is important, Jim, but also the quality of that sleep. If you have sleep apnea, pain, anxiety, disrupted sleep, then it's not good quality sleep. You're going to wake up feeling miserable. And the third piece is the timing of sleep as well, your circadian rhythms. So some people want to catch up on the weekends. We call it social jet lag. But actually that's a terrible thing because every weekend You're essentially switching time zones and then going back on Monday, which is catastrophic for brain health as well as whole body health. So if you have less than adequate sleep or poor quality sleep, or your timings are all over the place, it's going to have a profound impact on your brain health. And we see that as direct impacts of sleep loss, whether it's the quality or timing or quantity. On our SPECT imaging at Amen Clinics. So interestingly, chronic sleep problems look very similar to concussed brains on SPECT imaging and very similar to chronic alcohol use on SPECT imaging. So the areas involved are the frontal lobes, the temporal lobes, and the top part of your brain or the parietal lobes primarily. Now, what do those areas do? The frontal lobes help you with your reaction times, your planning, concentration, sustained attention, executive functioning. How do you manipulate the concepts you learn to apply them practically? Also rational thinking and suppressing impulsive thoughts.

Hmm.

So when they're not working properly, then you're going to have slowed processing speeds, slower learning, slower retention, You're going to have difficulty with executive functioning, difficulty multitasking, planning, prioritizing, organizing things, to name a few.

Yeah, that could be pretty debilitating when you're trying to go to school or be a parent, run a business.

Exactly. And that goes to show in our population in the US, sleep loss is a major, major factor contributing to to all sorts of ailments. Also the top 5 causes of mortality in this country directly related to sleep. And 69% of high school students do not get adequate sleep. It's associated with lower GPAs, increased dropout rates as well. And then the temporal lobes, which are our learning centers, are also profoundly impacted by sleep loss. And they help you with regulating your emotional pendulum.

Mm-hmm.

But also new learnings, as you well know, new learnings, language, word retention. So it's kind of like a double whammy with sleep loss. Your processing concentration doesn't work. Your rational brain doesn't work. Your temporal lobes don't work, so you get quickly overwhelmed. Think emotional resilience, but not the good kind of emotions you talk about when it comes to learning, but the bad kind. Easily overwhelmed, frustrated, giving up more easily. And then those centers can't work properly to retain information. So Matthew Walker did a good study finding that people with even one night of sleep loss, their learning centers in the temporal lobes drop by 40%. Wow.

And that's, that's not, that's not a little bit. That is a lot. And so wherever people are with their, with their sleep, they could probably improve it or they know somebody who can improve it. What is, what would you, what suggestions, where, where do you start with somebody when they're, when they're struggling in some way?

First, I want people to know that even if they're not struggling with a sleep problem, they might not be getting that optimal sleep. And even in elite athletes, Stanford University has done a lot of sleep extension studies where they extend an athlete's sleep by 30 minutes. and see what happens to their performance. Of course, they don't want to sleep deprive athletes and say, well, you'll do terribly in this year's Olympics, but let's do this experiment on you. That's not going to work. But when we see 30 minutes of sleep extension in Stanford athletes, basketball shooting accuracy increases by over 9%. Tennis players have a 4.2% increase in hitting accuracy. Your sprint times improve, your peak performance improves, your reaction times improve as well. They've done more studies on strategic napping. NASA has done a few studies as well. Napping has been shown to increase— just a 26-minute nap can boost your alertness by 54% and your performance by 34%.

Wow.

So there are certain people throughout history, even Leonardo da Vinci, who were very strategic nappers. And it's all well and good to say, well, you need your siesta, or you don't need it if your boss doesn't understand the value of good sleep. But strategic napping involves being in sync with your total sleep need and your rhythms, your natural circadian rhythms. So the first thing I would say is, Jim, is to know yourself. Know the difference between tiredness And sleepiness. Most people don't know that difference. So tiredness is if you've run a marathon, you're exhausted, but you're not sleepy. Some of my NBA guys who have a night game, they're tired, but they're not sleepy. Their endorphins are surging. Their adrenaline is going through the roof. You're not going to be able to sleep unless you are sleepy. The other thing is not to always trust those fitness trackers because they're not perfect. No one is perfect. But to know how much sleep you think you need in order to be refreshed in the morning, that's better than any fitness tracker out there. So assuming someone doesn't have a serious underlying sleep disorder or chronic pain that destroys their sleep. Or a very noisy snoring bed partner or a pet that constantly jumps up and down. Accounting for those factors, counting how much sleep you need for your brain is something you can do starting today. Have a fixed wake-up time. Find when you're feeling sleepy, then get into bed. And in the morning, estimate how much sleep you got. Now, most people, most adults need between 6 to 9 hours of sleep. My elite athletes, they need closer to 10.5 or 12 hours of sleep, but teenagers generally need around 9 hours of sleep. And that window, 6 to 9 hours, is variable. So I say 90 minutes is one sleep cycle. So 7.5 hours of sleep is 5 sleep cycles. If you count your sleep in terms of sleep cycles, figure out what works best for you. Lock in your waking time all days of the week and count backwards. If my wake-up time is 7:30 in the morning and I need 7.5 hours, then I know my sleeping time should begin at 12:00 AM. But at 11:00 PM, my winding down routine needs to begin because my brain isn't a light bulb and I cannot just switch it on and off. So a calming routine, a warm shower, brush your teeth hopefully twice a day, meditation, writing down your to-do list so that you don't worry about that while you're in bed. And when you notice that you're feeling sleepy, that's when you get into bed. I always tell people to wear dark glasses or dim the lights, be romantic at home in the evening because it allows your natural melatonin levels to rise. So quantity, timing, and quality. And of course, if you do have a serious issue like snoring or stopping breathing or acting out your dreams or sleep talking or sleepwalking, it might need further investigation with a sleep doctor. And that's what I do as well, correcting sleep issues. But then how can I boost your performance, whether you're a CEO or an elite athlete, to get you to the next level?

Do you sleep as your performance In your book, you say sleep optimization is the last frontier in peak athletic performance. And that very rings true with a lot of clients we probably share also as well, that have to be at their best. They want to feel their best. They want to look their best. They want to perform their best. So this calming routine is— so you started about an hour before Bedtime?

Yes, around an hour before bedtime. Some people say even 1.5 hours. It just depends on your availability, and we need to be realistic about it as well. But I always say, irrespective of whether it's 30 minutes or 90 minutes before bed, it needs to be a consistent routine because we essentially have to train our brains to know we're going into mini vacation sleep mode. And then when we wake up in the morning as well, the last thing I want you to do is go to your phone, check your emails, get updated on things. Give yourself another hour or 90 minutes to get up to speed, shower, brush your teeth, have your breakfast, drive to work, and then start. Because if you start activating your brain as soon as you wake up, you're forcing your brain to— your body to release more cortisol, the stress hormone, which Anyway, peaks early in the morning and then you're potentiating it every time you wake up. So now you have higher cortisol levels, which may circulate a little earlier and earlier, thereby causing you to wake up too early in the morning or in the middle of the night.

So we talked about your evening routine. And again, this is not about being perfect. You know, the goal is we, you know, because life is not perfect. Sometimes life and learning is messy and it happens to the best of us. The goal is just to advance and to do what you can do with what you have, and it'll be enough. In the morning, so we did your evening routine, but in the morning then you don't check your devices. Is that for you personally?

Not for the first 30 minutes at least. And I never have my work emails on my phone.

Yeah, we talk about that a lot with regards to how it could retrain your brain for distraction and reaction.

But that's—

it's interesting when you talk about cortisol levels also as well. So in the evening time, you're looking to go in that parasympathetic rest and digest. You talked about taking a warm shower, maybe a warm bath, Epsom salts with the magnesium.

Yes.

And when your core body temperature is cooling, it kind of triggers your body. It's time to sleep. So you have these triggers. So that's temperature. And then you mentioned light also as well. What about building out this sleep area or the sleep sanctuary? You and I, you recommended a weighted blanket. Is that something that you, that you find as effective for individuals?

Yes. Yes. Weighted blankets are helpful for certain people, especially light sleepers. So the weight needs to be around 10% of your body weight. And it needs to be hopefully hypoallergenic material because anything that increases your allergies, sensitivities will increase inflammation, which will worsen your sleep. So hypoallergenic, 10% of your body weight. And there are also cooling weighted blankets out there, which might be good for certain people who get hot in the middle of the night, women who are in that phase of perimenopause or menopause. With hot flashes, because typically the research shows, Jim, that the temperature needs to be 66 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal sleep.

Okay.

And then people know that there's, there's devices. Some people in our community, they have devices like that, that reduces the temperature of your, of your, like a mattress pad, or even these, these weighted blankets could come in that form also, also as well. So you have light, you have temperature, you have— what about noise? I mean, you mentioned about a snoring bed partner or dogs, maybe your pets that walk around. Do you recommend like a white noise machine or is that— or earplugs or?

I would recommend earplugs if you have other things going on in the room, if you're not sleeping alone and you are a light sleeper. Traditionally, I'll say earplugs and even an eye mask or a weighted eye mask. Unless you have blackout blinds and there's not even a chink of light from under the door or on your standby light on the TV. Some people are way more sensitive than others to, to light, to sounds, to textures. And so if we can kind of prevent any of that external stimulation, then your brain will learn to sleep. There was a recent study looking at white noise machines and other Noise. It helps some people, doesn't help others. I wouldn't say that that's something we need to try first, maybe 30 or 40 recommendations down the line and then maybe consider it.

Sure. So what would you— what would your top 5 be then? Your top 5 recommendations? And again, everyone's individual, just like diet. Some people, they love kale, but some people, they just can't handle Kale, either the taste of it or maybe it just doesn't agree with their digestive system. But just in general, having done this for so long, working with clients, especially whether it's remedial issues or it's performance issues, right, for optimization. So you would say that if you were going to bring it down to like 5 things that people could work with, with their teams, with their families?

So know yourself, know how many hours of sleep cycles you need for 24 hours. Keep your wake-up time locked in all days of the week and have those calming routines as your mini vacation.

Mm-hmm.

And if you have to go out late at night with your friends, you want to socialize, everyone's been locked up for a really long time, then if you're losing out on 2 hours of sleep, That Saturday night, wake up at the same time Sunday morning you've been doing the whole week, but then make up for those hours of sleep you lost with a strategic nap at 12 or 1 PM for that, the amount of sleep that you lost, and then wake up and continue your day. And that way you're making up your total sleep time without pushing yourself into jet lag mode. I also say your bedroom environment is key. Your bedroom is your cave. It's not an extension of your living room. And we need to train our brains to associate the bedroom and the bed only for sleep and sex with your partner, like nothing else. So you really—

Not for entertainment, not for checking emails and doing work stuff, not for studying, but because it gets anchored. Your environment gets anchored to that activity for sure.

Exactly.

And be process-oriented rather than outcome-oriented. Stop looking at the clock or your watch all the time. Stop tracking your, your sleep so obsessively that it sabotages your sleep. Follow the process, be consistent, and the outcomes will follow. Victor Frankl spoke about paradoxical intent where he said, maybe if we stop trying so hard, we'll be able to calm our nervous system down. to function better. He taught a patient with severe social anxiety who had pools of sweat in his hands to have fun with it and say, let's see how much sweat I can generate in my hands today before the party. And eventually his anxiety subsided and he could— he stopped sweating through his palms. And the same applies to sleep.

Yeah, some people have, just like with their diet, they get so, um, uh, so much anxiety around it With men, everything that they— that maybe it negates the benefits that could come from eating that way. Same thing with sleep. That's interesting. What about our community of Brainiacs? They want to be limitless and they want to know about supplements. Do you recommend supplementation? I mean, again, this is— I recommend everybody talk to their health practitioner, obviously. But are there certain supplements that are your Yes.

Yes. I like supplements in the right doses, right? For the right reasons, for the right duration. A lot of people take over-the-counter sleep medications. They can increase your risk of dementia because they block acetylcholine as well as they're antihistaminics. So they can worsen your restless leg syndrome and worsen the quality of your sleep. Some medications for sleep can be addictive. So all in all, medications for sleep need to be used short-term. Your provider recommends it, but I still want to go the underlying factors way, the integrative functional approach to sleep. Find all the underlying factors like vitamin D deficiency. So the first supplements I think of would be the things to correct any deficiencies. So vitamin D needs to be over 60 to 80, not within so-called normal ranges, 30 to 100, because the lower ranges, you might have some profound adverse effects or not really good benefits. So above 60 is where your vitamin D needs to be. And if not, you need to correct that with vitamin D3 and K2 for better absorption. Iron is needed to make dopamine in your brain and is also needed to make hemoglobin. Therefore, thereby boosting dopamine. So new learning, concentration, executive functioning, but also oxygen delivery to the brain. So if your iron levels are low, if your ferritin levels are low, those need to be corrected. I like magnesium. Magnesium has been shown to promote deep sleep. And in deep sleep, Jim, we flush out toxins that build up during the day. So think beta amyloid and Alzheimer's disease. Through the G-lymphatic system, a drainage system that was discovered just a few years ago. And dream sleep is involving consolidation of our memories. So we need both deep and dream sleep. And some sleep medicines block one or the other and then it causes an imbalance and people feel terrible the next day.

Hmm.

So magnesium promotes deep sleep. I like melatonin only to help people fall asleep. as an adjunct or a helper to the winding down routine we already discussed. And melatonin in very low doses, 1.5 milligrams or 1 milligram. GABA is a great supplement. L-theanine, lemon balm extract, 5-HTP. 5-HTP is needed to make serotonin and melatonin go hand in hand. Those are some of my favorite sleep supplements. I actually designed a sleep supplement for Dr. Amen called Put Me to Sleep, where we have the magnesium and the low-dose melatonin and the GABA and the B6, because B6, vitamin B6, is needed to make serotonin as well. So those are my favorites. There are other ones like tart cherry extract. Nobiletin is one I've really been interested in lately, which stabilizes our circadian rhythms. There's a lot of good ones out there. Just be careful. Don't take too many at one time and be sensible about it, just as you are with medications, dosing, timing, regularity. Don't just take a supplement on some nights where you feel you're sleeping bad because then you've struggled for 1 or 2 hours and then you take the supplement. You're forcing your brain into jet lag there again.

Yeah. What about, what about foods? Are there certain You know, when we talk about brain nutrition, I always prefer people to get it from their whole foods. But are there certain foods like something people should be conscious of at dinnertime, not in terms of what they're eating, how they're eating, when they're eating?

Yes. So what you do in your waking hours is as important as what you are doing while you're asleep. So just as I said, locking in a wake-up time and a winding down routine before bed. I want people to lock in their exercise at least 30 minutes most days of the week at a fixed time and their mealtimes, whether you're intermittent fasting or doing 3 meals a day, it doesn't matter. But those timings have to be locked in as well and preferably not eating at least 3 hours before your desired bedtime. And I always say avoid the processed foods, have more meat and greens and minimize carbs. Because carbs get converted to sugar, which means more inflammation. But there's one exception. For my elite athletes before a major competition, the average athlete may lose out on 2 hours of a night's sleep the day before a big game or match.

Because of nerves or?

Because of nerves. The cortisol is surging, their adrenaline is going, they're replaying what they've learned about their opponents. They're preparing for the next day, but it's going to sabotage their performance. So in those instances, I want to calm their frontal lobes down, their prefrontal cortex. And so I say, have a nice carb-rich meal, have a slow carb, have sweet potato fries, have a nice pasta, because it's going to calm their frontal lobes down. It's going to allow them to fall asleep, release that sugar throughout the night.

Mm-hmm.

And thereby another reason why people may have high cortisol levels in the middle of the night and they wake up too early is if they go into low blood sugar levels in the middle of the night and then their brain says, oh wait, there's low blood sugar levels. I know what will increase it. Cortisol, the stress hormones will, will release more sugar and then people can wake up.

So is that the carbs? Is that allowing them to have the sugars through the night or maybe having some honey or tea or? Something like that.

Absolutely. So the carby, carb-rich food, if they're not taking it every day, it relaxes the frontal lobes, helps them fall asleep a little easier. But typically avoid any meals 3 hours before your desired bedtime because blood flow gets diverted there. The gut produces 75% of your neurotransmitters. So if your gut is super busy, your brain will be busy too. It's going to be hard for you to fall asleep.

Yeah.

Well, I wanted to ask you this kind of bonus question on naps, because I'm fascinated by this, because especially when I look at the research and just field testing this for the past few decades with learning and then taking some kind of non-sleep deep rest or nap afterwards to help people to consolidate the information. But when people are taking a nap, is there an ideal— you talked about the 90-minute cycle.

Yeah.

Is— should naps be 90 minutes or can people get benefit from a 20-minute nap or a 30-minute nap?

Yes, they can. So there are studies that have looked at 20, 25-minute, 26-minute, 30-minute naps with good benefit. It depends on your sleep cycle. So I always say if you need to make up for a sleep deficit that you're carrying, Then you need to do that chunk like I described to you if you are laid out on a Saturday night. But typically what I do with my athletes and some patients as well is a strategic nap, just because you can boost your learning and your retention of information.

Yeah.

So in those cases, a 25 or 30-minute nap is great. Now, if you go into the 45-minute mark to the 60-minute mark, You're actually forcing your brain to wake up, wake up out of a deeper stage of sleep. So you may feel a little groggy, a little slow, a little lethargic. Whereas if you get that 25 to 30 minute window, some people even need 15 minutes if they have shorter sleep cycles. But if you're waking up in that window, then you're waking up out of a lighter stage of sleep. So you've gotten the refreshing sleep that you needed and you're waking up alert and refreshed. Now, in certain situations before major professional exams or competitions, those who hopefully are not drinking coffee every day, we can do a caffeine nap and take the caffeine just before you get your nap. Set your alarm, whether you're sleeping or not. If it's a deep rest, that's fine because you'll be waking up more alert. Your brain is recharged.

Gotcha.

I look at sleep as a recovery tool, as a recharging And then you'll be more alert and able to retain more information at a quicker pace than you normally would.

Yeah, our community is all about that, every little advantage that they could get. And so this is an amazing conversation about peak learning and peak performance by using modality that some of us, we don't put our attention to, which is that of getting proper sleep. But there's definitely a science and an art So, um, Dr. Criado, thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing this wisdom. I would recommend everybody take a screenshot of this. I actually bought 2 copies of your book. You're watching this on video, and I would, um, I would love for everybody, as I asked you to do this, take a screenshot of this video or this, uh, audio that you're listening to and tag us both in it. And what I want you to do is I want you to Share your favorite sleep advice or one sleep tip. Because when you teach something, it's called the explanation effect. Something you just learned, you explain it to somebody else, maybe online, so your fans, your followers, your family, your friends can benefit from it also as well. And because we'll see it, I will repost some of my favorites. And I'll actually gift 2 copies out to those randomly who post just as a thank you. And Dr. Criado, where can people find you on social media?

My Instagram is Peak Sleep Performance. It's one word, Peak Sleep Performance, or my website, shanecriado.com. People want to engage me for conferences or workshops for sleep optimization and work with me. And Jim, I'm so grateful for this opportunity and the community because sleep in a study a few months ago out of New Zealand, when they compared quality sleep versus nutrition and exercise, sleep came out on top. Yes. Because all those 3 things go hand in hand. And the cool thing is sleep is free. We're born with it. It's completely modifiable. It's completely within your control if you know how to use it as a performance-enhancing tool.

Yeah. And it's a mini vacation. Yes, it is.

You get to go on vacation a good 30 times, 30 times a month. And so I encourage everybody, sleep matters, especially for your gray matter. So make sure at night you turn on your sleep mode. Dr. Criado, thank you so much for being on our show. Everyone, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can watch the entire conversation unedited. Leave us ratings as you often do. Make sure you post.

Thank you.

Tag us both in there. We'll put the show notes with all of those great supplements also as well, and links that Dr. Criado talked about at jimkwik.com/notes.

And we'll see you in our next episode.

Take care.

Hi, Kwik Brain.

It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this, because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's Learning as well. Number two, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing. Because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: three one zero two nine nine nine three six. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question, and I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.

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