Tracking your sleep with Petteri Lahtela

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where we'll connect with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health and your life. Now today's show is all about this cool thing that I spotted on my buddies, Dr. Isabella and Michael Wentz. They had these really funky rings on. I'm like, what the heck are those? You know, and they said they were OURA rings and I'm like, like the mood ring. Turns out, no, it's O u r A, it's an Oura ring and it's this super cool device that can track all sorts of stuff which we're going to talk about today. But more importantly, I'm going to talk about why you'd want to do that in the first place. So today I'm going to talk about sleep. And I know that I've talked about this before, you know how I feel about sleep. But we're going to look at it very differently today because I finally got the info on night owls versus early birds. So we're going to be talking about that and how you know which one you are and how you know when the right time to go to sleep is and how long you should stay asleep, how much sleep you really need. Plus, I'm going to share a little something about a shift my fiance made that makes it impossible for him to keep weight on. I have to watch him. So I tell them, don't tell people that, they won't like you. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about Petri Lautella and I had to work on that name a bunch and not sure I still have it quite right. But he's finish. So he is the CEO and co founder of Aura. He's one of the inventors, he's a serial entrepreneur and he's big into creating high tech products that he then takes out internationally. So his whole thing is about how to, you know, maximize performance, create great physiology and products that people love. That's what he's put together here. So he's really got the world's first wellness ring. It's cool looking, it's comfortable to wear and the technology is going to blow your mind. And really it's just one of those things because I always believe what you measure, you can improve and that can massively change your life. With that data, you can actually do something with it. All right, so I am excited to introduce Petri Lautella to you today. All right, let's do it. Petri Lautella. Did I get that right?

Yes.

Okay. Welcome to the show as I am so glad you're here with me today. And Petri's coming to us from Finland. Super excited to have you here because, um, if I had to pick one thing to help people change their health, it would be sleep. And I've always been harping on sleep. In fact, the ring that you're one of the inventors on, this aura ring I got for my son early on I saw someone wearing them. So I'm, I'm super excited to talk about sleep and what we can do about it and how we can improve it with you today. Very fun. So let's dive in just with getting the big pink elephant out of the room with why does sleep matter?

Yeah. There are of course multiple sources for research based data why sleep is important. But I would like to concentrate on the, let's say, most important fact, which is that sleep is for recovering from daily mental and physical strain. So that is why we concentrate with this product to measure sleep quality and also how restorative sleep we get. And it's not only about sleep, but also understanding what happens in our body while we sleep. So it's not only measuring about sleep quality and the restorativeness of sleep, but also understanding how our body reflects our daily lifestyle.

All right, well, what is happening in our bodies when we sleep?

Most importantly, our vital functions balance during the night and also toxins are flushed away from our brain. So all the hormonal balance, immunolog system, also autonomic nervous system, they balance from the load of our daily life. From the physiological perspective, it doesn't matter whether it's mental or physical load that we are going through in our life. From the physiological perspective, it's the same thing. And understanding those, it's very valuable because it provides us understanding what we can do to improve.

So it's been interesting. I've worked with hundreds of thousands of people over the years and one of the biggest things that I've seen with people is they tend to steal from sleep, is they are not getting. And I'd love to hear from you what you see as the what, how much sleep we need and how to know how much sleep we need. But I just see so many people are short sleepers and think they're doing fine. And my fiance is a great example. When I met him, he was sleeping five to six hours a night. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, that's. This isn't gonna work. And now he's sleeping eight to nine hours a night. And what's been so interesting is we didn't really shift his diet much. I dropped his carbs just a little bit and upped his fat a little bit. But the biggest change was sleep. And he's having trouble keeping weight on now because of it. So hopefully that'll motivate people listening who are struggling with weight, since we know that sleep is a big thing here. But how, you know, how much sleep do we really need?

Yeah, that is a really good question. And based on the research done so far, the only kind of a common recommendation is that the adults should sleep from seven to nine hours. But then we need to take into account that we are all unique and our life situations change over the time. And of course lifestyles are different as well. So basically in the normal daily life context, there is no such thing that we could say that how much sleep we need. So basically the only thing that can tell us how much sleep we need is our body, so what kind of physiological responses it reflects during the night. So this is good point that you came up with this. The understanding that already after two nights with bad sleep quality or far too short sleep, it raises our blood pressure and also insulin levels 20% or so. So if that continues for a long time, then we develop insulin, insulin resistance and hypertension and that kind of things. And of course starts to affect our weight gaining and so on. So it's so important to understand how our body uniquely responds to our lifestyle and then get our sleep patterns right and sleep behavior right.

Well, so someone has one bad night of sleep, what happens the next day with them? Like how does this relate to how they perform that next day?

Yeah, one night is something that we can stand and of course we humans are really flexible. But if it prolongs then poor sleep, it really affects our mental, cognitive and physical performance. And so it's both physical and mental effect. So mood shifts, stress and anxiety, and we even lost coping skills and, and it seems that we are socializing less and we have concentration problems and everything like that. The sleep deprivation itself, it's a huge thing. In United States alone, it causes $66 billion lost in productivity and accidents and illness and premature death and so on.

Really.

So, yeah, it's really a huge thing. So sleep deprivation alone, and it also, it causes over 80,000 car accidents per day in America. So those microsleeps because of sleep deprivation, they are huge thing and it's something that we could prevent by understanding our sleep patterns and how much sleep we really need so that we can really recover from our daily mental and physical load.

And I find like I have a son recovering from a brain injury, so he's needed a lot more sleep. I definitely, when I'm under stress, I know I need more sleep and I will sleep. I'll, I'll go more towards the nine hours than, than eight. I can't do seven, I'm wiped. If I do seven, I have to do eight to nine. So we all have our thing, but someone who isn't a good sleeper, what can they do?

Yeah, so they are multiple things that we can try. But again, we need something that could reflect that, how those changes we do, how they affect our sleep quality. So since we are all unique and lifestyles are different, so we need to kind of have the way to listen to our body that how our lifestyle habits and daily rhythms and overall behavior affect our sleep. So they are, for example, this rhythm, your bedtime rhythms and wake up rhythms. It has huge effect in the sleep quality and also the restorativeness of sleep because the sleep pattern is very much affected by, if your bedtimes are changing a lot, then you don't get that much deep sleep and REM sleep. So also it's connected to your chronotype, which is like your, it's very unique for each one of us. It's deep in our biology. So we cannot change our chronotype and we should live according to our chronotype. So go to sleep in the right time for us.

So a chronotype. So there really are genetically early birds and night owls.

Yes, they are. And actually our product also it helps people to find what is their chronotype and when they should actually go to sleep so that they get the best possible sleep quality and so on.

So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the oura ring. And I want to spell, spell this correctly because remember when I was first googling and I was spelling it wrong, it's o u r a ring.com aura ring o u r a ring.com so how does it find out how? You know, I think about this and it's this cool looking ring. I got one for my son right away, I've got one on order. It's this cool looking ring that can track your sleep, right? But how does it know? You know, I keep thinking how does it know? How does it know what time you should be going to sleep, what your chronotype is? How does, how can it tell these things?

So it learns about you continuously. So whenever you wear it and you should actually wear it 24 7, so it starts to learn about your body responses. It learns your nighttime resting heart rate curves. So actually it measures your every beat and the time between the heartbeats and also the pulse amplitude variation, breathing rhythms and many other things. Also your body temperature variation during the night, between the nights and all the movements. So it can understand your sleep quality and body responses in high detail. And when you do it continuous measurement for the weeks and for months and even years, then you start to see patterns. And then even after few weeks of use, then it can start telling you that what would be optimal bedtime for you because it learns that if you go to sleep this time you get this kind of sleep quality. And so it gathers long term data and then can reflect back to you that what would be the best for you.

So is this how it improves your sleep? By telling you when your best sleep periods are and how long you know, how much time you need? How does it, how does it help you? Because I've seen tracking devices before. I wore one on my forehead for a while, but I kept waking up in the middle night and throwing it, which, you know, so but I couldn't really understand how it was helping me, you know, so yeah, how does this help?

Yeah, so, so one thing which is unique for our product is that it measures that how restorative sleep you get, so how well you recover during your sleep. And then based on that it gives you daily target for your activities, for example. So it's the only product in the market that can really help you adjust your daily activity levels and intensities based on how well you have recovered during the night. So it is, it's kind of a direct analogy to top athletes, how they exercise and they recover, then exercise again recover so that they can maintain their capacity, even improve their capacity and performance over the time.

Well, I believe what you measure you can improve. And so I love this because I know over the years it's been difficult to convince people about how important this is. And also I've had clients, I had a lot of clients who were in the entertainment industry. So they were on stage late at night. You know, they were, they were in Broadway shows or they were in rock concerts. And you know, then you try to get them to go sleep. Creatives don't sleep at night. They're. They're night owls, you know. So this all makes so much more sense that you can actually figure out when your best time is. Know when you're getting restorative sleep, know how much sleep you really need. That's, that's amazing information that can help you really nail your performance. So I love what this is about and I just want to let all the listeners know. You can, you can find out more about this. Grab one of these. They're super cool looking too, so it's fun. Jewelry@oura ring.com O U R A ring.com I first saw Michael and Isabel Wentz had them on. That's where I first learned about them. And I'd love to ask you one more curveball question over here. And it is. What do you think the one thing you do every day and it's just one thing that, that you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life. So what's that one thing you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life?

Being with my close people, with my daughters and wife, spending time with them. That's, that's the time that, when I can relax from my thoughts of work or everything else in my life. So being together with my loved ones and best is to go to the nature to have some hiking with them or, or playing with them outside or something like that. So that's, that's the best I've, I've.

Decided that the year 2017, I like to do a word every year and this is the, the year of connection. So I'm right there with you. It's my biggest focus this year because I've kind of looked at everything in life and went, that's, that's what's made the biggest difference for me is being with my people, as you said. So I totally appreciate that. All right. I want to remind everybody to go to auraring.com o u r a ring.com this is a super cool thing. And again, what you measure you can improve. So this can give you information that can help you not only have more energy but also lose weight. This is like a sleep is one of the biggest things that impacts your aging and and your weight. So this is one of the key things that you want to turn around. So make that commitment in 2017. And I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate it. Now, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question. So stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I take a listener's question. And I've been grabbing these off Facebook. You can go over to facebook.com forward/jj Virgin official. Look for the little blue check mark to say that know that that's me and leave a question there. And what I do is I try to match the questions with the show. So of course, I found a great one about sleep from Sarah in Reno. And she says, jj, I work late nights in the casino and I'm wondering what I need to do because I come home and I can't seem to fall asleep. All right, I'll tell you. When I used to see a lot of clients one on one, it seemed like I had all of these Broadway actors and actresses and rock stars. Those were like a big group of my clients. Then I also had news anchor people. So talk about opposite ends of the spectrum, right? We had some people who are getting off of work between, you know, 11pm and 1am and some people starting work between 3 and 5am but, you know, the rules all apply the same. This is where we're going to use light, temperature and basically your general, like, mood in order to pull things off. Because let's say, let's take the Broadway actresses and actors and the rock stars and someone who's working, say, in a casino that's super noisy and stimulating when.

You drive out of there.

Now we got to lower it down. You get into your car, cool down the temperature and put on some soothing music to start taking it down. Get into your house, get the lights down low, take a hot bath, use Epsom salts. They're very calming. Magnesium helps you calm down. Take Some sleep candy. So I use my sleep candy, which is theanine. Theanine helps boost gaba, which helps you calm down. And it's got five HTP and melatonin. So that's gonna help get your melatonin up. And that pineal gland triggers release of melatonin when. When it's dark. So that's why we wanna get things dark. And that's got a nosetol, a calming B vitamin that helps you sleep. And B6 helps make all of these things happen, helps your pathways to make these brain chemicals. So you get home, you take a hot bath, you cool your house or apartment down 65 to 68 degrees. You put some lavender in your bath, maybe spray some lavender oil or on your pillow or put it on your pulses. Do the things you need to do to calm yourself down. Nothing stimulating. No tv, no phones, nothing. That's going to light up your neurons. Everything's calming you down. And then the other thing that you need to put in here is just shift your time, the. The time that you sleep. So when I lived in Japan, I actually had to work late at night. I taught an aerobics class at like 9pm well, since I taught the aerobics class, I think I taught it from 8 to 9pm And I'd get home and I'd be like, ah, too wired. I'd go to bed at midnight. So I knew that I was getting up at 8. Now here I go to bed between 9 and 10am I get up at 6. But if I'm going to bed at midnight, I'm not getting up at 6, I'm getting up at 8. So you just have to flip your time to a little bit shift of a time zone. And it's ideally, you're one of those people who Petri talked about was a night owl. And this type of thing suits you. I know I'm not a night owl. I'm a morning person. So I have to create a lifestyle where I can do the things I really like to do in the morning. And I know that I'm not going to be productive at night because at night I'm just done. All right, now, if you'd like to submit a question, just head over to my Facebook page at JJ Virgin Official and I would so appreciate it if you could jump over to Stitcher or itunes and leave a review. Plus, while you're there, subscribe and share it with your friends. Helps so much. I so appreciate it. All right, this is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you to listen live courageously. Show up, step up. You are stronger than you think.

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