Dr. Allison Brager: Improve Sleep Efficiency & Resilience

Summary

Highlights

• Dr. Allison Brager debunks myths about East vs. West Coast sports team advantages. 🏀
• Discover why certain genetic markers can make you a night owl – and why that’s okay. 🦉
• Insights into how extreme environments like Antarctica impact sleep patterns. ❄️
• Learn how caffeine can be a strategic tool to manage sleep inertia. ☕
• Explore the potential of using gene editing to enhance sleep in extreme conditions, like space travel. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• Understanding circadian rhythms can boost athletic performance – it’s not just about what time you sleep, but also when you're most active. 🕒
• Resilience in sleep isn't about a strict routine, but adaptability to various environments and situations. 🛌
• Genetic components play a significant role in whether you're a night owl or a morning lark. 🧬
• Short naps can enhance wakefulness without interfering with nighttime sleep – keep them under 30 minutes. 🌞
• Consistency in sleep patterns can help consolidate sleep and optimize brain function. 🧠

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction to Dr. Allison Brager and Her Focus on Sleep In this chapter, Dr. Andy Galpin introduces Dr. Allison Brager, a neuroscientist with a career dedicated to studying sleep, particularly sleep resilience. The discussion aims to explore the science and strategies to enhance human performance in various aspects of life, such as sports and daily activities. Dr. Brager's work focuses on making sleep more efficient and effective, which is vital for overall performance enhancement.
• 01:30 - 07:00: Misconceptions About Sleep and Circadian Advantages in Sports This chapter explores the various misconceptions about what effective sleep means and how the understanding of sleep can be leveraged in the context of sports and other high-performance fields like military and space exploration. Allison, through her extensive research, discusses her findings on the significance of effective sleep, emphasizing the importance of tailoring sleep strategies to individual needs. The chapter highlights the diversity in sleep requirements and clocks among individuals, covering examples from athletes, military personnel, and people in extreme environments like Antarctica and space, thus offering insights into how proper sleep can potentially enhance performance.
• 07:00 - 15:00: Chronotypes and Their Effects on Athletes This episode focuses on understanding sleep needs and optimizing sleep for performance, particularly for athletes. Allison, a distinguished scientist with extensive field experience, shares insights from her research and practical applications in real-world scenarios. The discussion emphasizes how chronotypes, or individual biological rhythms, can affect athletes' performance. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how to use this knowledge to not only survive but thrive in their respective fields.
• 15:00 - 25:00: Sex Differences in Sleep: Research and Findings The chapter features a discussion with Dr. Allison Brager about sleep, specifically addressing sleep myths. It begins with the host expressing gratitude to Dr. Brager for participating in the episode and expressing interest in dispelling common sleep myths. The host mentions the geographical biases in sports as a segue into the discussion, highlighting the disparity in perceptions and attention given to different regions, particularly East Coast bias versus West Coast challenges.
• 25:00 - 30:00: Impact of Cultural and Environmental Factors on Sleep The chapter discusses the impact of geographical location on the performance of East Coast and West Coast teams in sports, particularly focusing on NFL teams. Contrary to popular belief, East Coast teams do not have a significant advantage over West Coast teams. This insight is supported by a well-known study conducted by Stanford sleep researchers, indicating that cultural and environmental factors influence sleep patterns and subsequently, athletic performance.
• 30:00 - 39:00: Sleep Aids and Technologies for Better Sleep The chapter discusses how West Coast teams may have a circadian advantage in terms of game timing, playing during their biological peak times in mid-morning or early evening, which could benefit their performance.
• 39:00 - 45:00: Strategies for Developing Sleep Resilience The chapter discusses the performance impact and injury risks in sports, particularly focusing on comparisons between East Coast teams like the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles. Defensive and offensive linemen are specifically noted to be less prone to injuries. The discussion takes a skeptical turn when data integrity and potential biases are questioned, highlighting distrust against presumed affiliations with East Coast sports franchises.
• 45:00 - 54:00: Unique Sleep Challenges in Extreme Environments The chapter delves into the unique challenges people face with sleep in extreme environments. Although the transcript provided seems to veer off topic, mentioning sports teams and discussing sports injuries, such as brain or soft tissue injuries, it lacks pertinence to the sleep challenges implied in the chapter title. Therefore, a proper summary cannot be generated from the given text alone, suggesting that a portion of the relevant material might be missing or not transcribed.
• 54:00 - 72:00: Sleep Optimization for High Achievers In the chapter 'Sleep Optimization for High Achievers', the discussion revolves around using data analysis on athletes' time spent on injury reserve and concussion data. Initially, the only data available was the weeks athletes spent on injury reserve, but recent access to concussion data, made public due to an NFL lawsuit, has added depth to these analyses. The speaker's wife assists with the analysis due to her superior skills in the area. This chapter highlights the importance of analyzing health and performance data to optimize sleep and performance for high achievers.
• 72:00 - 79:00: Understanding Short and Long Sleeper Genes The chapter explores the concept of short and long sleeper genes, examining why sleep duration varies among individuals. It touches upon the potential competitive edge that sleep duration could offer, humorously referencing a Miami Dolphins fan in the context of statistical data on sleep patterns. The chapter raises questions about the significance of sleep duration differences without delving deeply into the molecular mechanisms.
• 79:00 - 92:00: Practical Advice for Sleep Extension The chapter explores the impact of circadian rhythms on performance, particularly in sports, highlighting the distinction between correlation and causation. It emphasizes the robustness of the circadian clock, regardless of whether one is a morning or evening person, suggesting its potential influence on outcomes like winning games.
• 92:00 - 112:00: Dr. Allison Brager's Athletic Background and Hometown Influence The chapter delves into Dr. Allison Brager's exploration of rhythms in endocrine function and behavior, focusing on how these rhythms are predictably tied to the circadian clock. It highlights the physiological processes influenced by the circadian clock, especially in relation to performance attributes that are affected by cortisol levels. Cortisol begins to rise upon awakening, which correlates with peak alertness levels throughout the day.
• 112:00 - 117:00: Conclusion and Resources for Further Learning The chapter discusses the correlation between timing and peak levels of alertness, focusing on a time window between 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. It highlights how training or competing during this window can optimize performance by leveraging the body's cortisol peak, which is instrumental in mobilizing energy reserves and enhancing attention, vigilance, and focus. The content integrates insights on physiological factors, physical performance, recovery, and cognitive aspects.

Dr. Allison Brager: Improve Sleep Efficiency & Resilience Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 the science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport play and life welcome to perform i'm Dr andy Galpin i'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the human performance center at Parker University and today I'm speaking with Dr allison Bger allison is a neuroscientist who has spent most of her career focusing on sleep and specifically sleep resilience which is one way of thinking about how do we become more efficient and effective with sleep regardless of the
• 00:30 - 01:00 situation classic examples of that her research has looked at everything from athletes traveling from one coast to the other coast military individuals sleep on Antarctica and in space as well as just a ton of research for regular people and how do we just become the most effective we can what effective sleep is is actually something I learned a lot about today and something that you will pick up on as Allison shared what that actually means how do you determine it how you can actually become more specific and precise to your individual
• 01:00 - 01:30 sleep needs and overall how to better think about sleep for not only surviving but thriving allison is a fantastic scientist her publications are numerous but she spent so much time in the field dealing with individuals that I think the true value you're going to get out of this episode is understanding how that information that she has gleaned from her research actually manifests itself in the practical real world scenario and so I learned a ton i know you're going to learn a ton about
• 01:30 - 02:00 becoming a resilient and highly effective sleeper so with that all said I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Dr allison Bger dr allison Brager thank you so much for coming out there's a lot of cool stuff I want to get into today i I was hoping we could start off actually with dispelling a huge sleep myth mhm i'm from the West Coast you're from the Midwest as you are well aware there is a huge East Coast bias for sports teams we all know that the West Coast gets no love we get unfair placements and and
• 02:00 - 02:30 things um can you please confirm and share with the rest of the world that there is in fact a huge advantage for East Coast teams that it is easier that they win more that everything is better and and and the West Coast teams are truly at a disadvantage it's actually the opposite no no during the regular season it's actually the opposite so what's that that's the classic NFL study that was done by some famous uh Stanford sleep
• 02:30 - 03:00 physicians in the '9s that we sort of reconfirmed uh in the late 2000s uh but this idea that West Coast teams at least during the regular season are playing games that are more attuned to their circadian peak than their circadian trail so basically what that means is uh if you just control for biological time they're playing games more in their midm morning um or early evening and so that's what gives them this advantage uh
• 03:00 - 03:30 in terms of performance which has been correlated with injury risk so they're five times less likely especially if you look at like defensive linemen offensive linemen um to less likely to get injured compared to the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles and all the above so I'm sorry i can't help you with this all lies i refuse to believe your data this you're clearly bought by big East Coast sports i get it i don't trust
• 03:30 - 04:00 it i I'm actually a huge San Francisco 49ers fan myself even worse even worse get out i uh I coach Fred Warner he's a good friend of mine but outside and I tell him he he knows this he knows I hope he loses every game of the year but that he wins the MVP i just like I'm open with my rooting on that one in terms of the injuries actually this is sort of interesting is there a particular type of injury is it brain injuries or soft tissue or hamstrings or did it sort of just be across the board
• 04:00 - 04:30 with something like that that was a great question and so we more or less just looked at um number of weeks spent on injury reserve yeah uh that was the only available to us at the time um but we actually were able recently to get some of the concussion data uh because that was something that came out of the NFL lawsuit is they had to start publicly recording when players had gotten concussed um during a game and stuff so we're my uh no pressure to my wife she's trying to help me with those types of analyses now she's much better
• 04:30 - 05:00 at statistics than I am well I hope she doesn't screw it and I hope she's not bought by big East Coast like like you are we get some real data out of this um she's a Miami Dolphins fan so I don't know she can have it she can No no one's scared of the Dolphins uh why why does it actually matter how much of a winning advantage is it what like what are we talking about and any insights into We don't have to necessarily go into like deep molecular mechanism but you're welcome to sure but like why in the world would someone playing a few hours
• 05:00 - 05:30 outside of their optimal range actually matter how does that transfer I guess into winning a game that's a big leap from small thing to winning a football game right i mean that's a great question because these are correlative they're not causitive relationships um but it does speak to the robustness of the circadian clock right so in general uh regardless of if you're a morning person an evening person for the most part the circadian clock and the daily
• 05:30 - 06:00 rhythms of endocrine function behavior um and all the physiological processes associated with the circadian clock um are predictable and a lot of these performance attributes have to do with rising levels of cortisol in the morning right when we upon awakening that's when cortisol begins to rise and the circadian clock begins to reach peak levels of alertness and then peak levels
• 06:00 - 06:30 of alertness are reached roughly around 11:00 a.m to 1:00 p.m depending on who you are um and so if you are training if you are competing during that time um you're capitalizing on that peak of cortisol which is obviously going to mobilize energy reserves um and contribute to those aspects of attention vigilance focus um and all the above so it's probably a combination of every physiological factor physical performance recovery cognitive that's
• 06:30 - 07:00 all combining um and I appreciate you saying that just correlation but those correlations have been shown in the NBA the NHL Major League Baseball i think it's pretty well established at this point that that is a a real phenomenon yeah i I mean I also think too right there's a huge genetic component and that's a lot of what I've studied my whole life is the genetics of sleep physiology and circadian physiology is I do believe people select for their sport based on if they're a morning person or evening person like I grew up a gymnast
• 07:00 - 07:30 uh we always practice at night we didn't necessarily compete at night uh but I was always coming home from gymnastics practice at 9:00 p.m doing my homework going to bed my parents are both night owls um so and I know I you know did the 23 and me raw data analysis i'm a night owl uh but I I bet it's like that with other sports as well like right boxing MMA probably pre-select for night owls um same with uh NBA uh and NHL players
• 07:30 - 08:00 you know how much of a an effect does it have if you are mismatched so there actually is data to show that there is a significant effect um there was a study that came out I can't remember how many years ago but it was in current biology and they were looking at rugby players um and they were looking at it in relation to chronotype and they essentially found that if you had greater interindividual variability
• 08:00 - 08:30 in chronotype on a team you were more likely those to win rugby matches because you weren't a sensitive I get it yeah yeah because you're not just playing games at night like an NBA or an NHL team you're playing games either in the morning the afternoon or the evening now I imagine it would probably be the opposite for NBA or an NHL teams i don't know if anyone's actually done this analysis you probably want less interindividual variability in chronoype
• 08:30 - 09:00 and you want to pre-seelelect for more evening types so we got to start genetically screening people for our draft process i mean you know Gatka is one of my favorite movies i'm not going to say it's like the be all end all but uh every you know I try to every student that I I teach I always try to expose them to uh you know that movie for that reason yeah it's super interesting when it comes to chronotype there's clearly
• 09:00 - 09:30 as you talked about there are some known genetic components to that i've always been interested though of how much of that do we know at this point we may not know much regarding habituation throughout life right so if your parents were night owls do you simply become a night owl because of genetic components or because you just simply got brought up in a culture that was like that language that was like that you know your parents say "Oh I'm just a night person." Things like that yeah do we have any insights into like how much play is genetically predetermined versus
• 09:30 - 10:00 systemally grown into the person's behavior i don't know of any data that exists but I mean I could say that would make sense right because if you're used to being in a household who eats dinner extremely late I mean my parents are Eastern Europeans so like we never do anything on time or early right so like dinner was around 8:39 and guess what i'm still an 8:30 9 p.m eater like I go
• 10:00 - 10:30 to the gym and then I eat really late but I also go to bed really late and then sleep in and you know wake up late too um and whether or not that's nature versus nurture yeah i mean I'm we do know at least from adult sleep habits for example that um the sleep habits that are instilled in you as a child whether good bad or ugly do carry on with you into college and then when you are an adult and able to make your full decision so um a lot of um behavioral
• 10:30 - 11:00 sleep physicians will will tell you that that like that's why it's so important for parents to establish bedtime routines and be the examples of good hygiene for their children because that will have a lasting impression when those kids do become of age and can make their own decisions today's episode is sponsored by AG1 ag1 is a vitamin mineral drink with probiotics prebiotics and adaptogens initially I was extremely skeptical of AG1 as I am with all supplement
• 11:00 - 11:30 companies but after months of discussions with their lead nutritional scientist and the general team at AG1 I've been impressed by AG1's commitment to sourcing the highest quality ingredients and constantly updating their formulas to have the right ingredients in the optimal amounts by now it is abundantly clear that the gut microbiome plays a critical role in everything from body composition to bone health to mental health and the probiotics and prebiotics in AG1 help to promote a healthy gut microbiome improve digestion reduce food cravings and
• 11:30 - 12:00 increase short- chain fatty acids which play a critical role in regulating metabolism and immune responses it's for these reasons and many others that I personally take AG1 almost every day now it's of course not a replacement for eating whole healthy foods but it is a great way to make sure that you're plugging in any gaps in your nutrition to improve your energy bolster your immune system and just generally help promote a healthy gut microbiome and more if you'd like to try AG1 you can go to drinkagg.com/perform to receive five
• 12:00 - 12:30 free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 again that's drinkagg.com/perform to receive five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 today's episode is also sponsored by EightLe eight makes smart mattress covers with cooling heating sleep tracking and more i've personally been sleeping on an EightLe mattress cover for years now and it's absolutely glorious i love it so much that I hate traveling away from home
• 12:30 - 13:00 because it means I can't sleep on my Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra as you'll hear me talk about endlessly on this podcast there really is nothing you can do that makes more of an impact on your health and performance than getting tremendous sleep and getting great sleep requires having your body temperature drop a couple of degrees at night and that's hard to do on your own the eight sleep has been a gamecher for me because I run hot at night or as my wife calls it I'm a furnace if I don't have something like an eight sleep helping me cool down I'll wake up in the middle of the night
• 13:00 - 13:30 overheating and not feeling great this is something I've also found in many of the people that I coach especially those who are really physically active the eightle pod 4 Ultra has two times more cooling power yet is virtually silent and it has highfidelity sleep tracking and even has snoring detection that'll automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve air flow and stop your snoring if you'd like to try eight go to eight at eight.com/perform to save $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra asleep currently ships to the US Canada the UK select countries in
• 13:30 - 14:00 the EU and even Australia again that's eight.com/perform do we have any insights on how changeable chronotype is right so if you say got a job and they said Alisonson like you have to be into work at 7:00 and whatever the case is and you had to change that how long would it take you to shift in a position where you didn't feel horrible getting up at 5:00 a.m versus 8 a.m or wherever it went over time you normally are you like a midnight to 8 sort of person I am
• 14:00 - 14:30 yep my preferred is 11:30 wake up between 7:30 and 8 so if that got shifted by two or three hours um I guess two-part question can you actually change your chronoype and then obviously you can adjust that time independent of changing chronoype so the second question then is how long would it take you to truly I mean it probably take you a few days or a week to where you're like not waking up feeling terrible but you would not be optimized would be my assumption how long would that take so I come from the camp of researchers you know nature over nurture um and I I'll
• 14:30 - 15:00 use uh pre-clinical animal models as an example um we have engineered transgenic mice to be extreme early morning owls or extreme early morning larks um or extreme night owls um all through manipulation of the circadian molecular clock um and you can present them with different stimuli in the environment you know in the circadian world we call them
• 15:00 - 15:30 zeite gabers so you can present them with repeatable predictable photoic information or non-photic information such as food some type of rewarding stimulus exercise social stimulation etc but as soon as you remove that predictability of that zeitgeab or time cue then the organism will revert back to its genetic natural rhythm um and I think the same is true in humans i use you know again anecdotal evidence um but
• 15:30 - 16:00 being in the military at one point I was a company commander uh in a leadership position and um in order to establish rapport and camaraderie with my brigade commander he is an extreme morning person and he works out at 5:00 a.m so what that meant is I had to wake up every day at 4:00 a.m to then get to the gym to work out with him at 5:00 am again it wasn't mandatory but I knew it's you know just part of the process
• 16:00 - 16:30 of being his subordinate um and during that time I would find myself if I didn't go to bed exactly at 8:00 p.m if I didn't keep all those other non-photic things in my life stable such as when I ate uh how much I was hydrating throughout the day etc Like I got sick pretty often because my body just biologically fights against being a morning person so in that particular case again you were able to get through
• 16:30 - 17:00 it but you were not thriving exact oh I was not thriving i wasn't even optimizing i was just trying to stabilize surviving survive exactly through the day exactly i mean that's why I tell people like at the end of the day I will never be anyone important ever in the military even if I wanted to because I am a night person and things such as the military pre-select for morning people and I am not that person and I will never be one of the issues with those
• 17:00 - 17:30 historical organizations right academia is its own little thing right that's why I thrived actually in academia right land night owls yeah I'm the opposite like I'm a morning person big time and I would hate I'd hate the 11 p.m meetings i hate just all that stuff right i'm like but I'm actually wondering if we've done ourselves quite the disservice in those organizations of of saying no like I mean obviously we're hopefully we're past the point where waking up early is a badge of honor and do those things but
• 17:30 - 18:00 is that actually that is that culture still pretty true in the military i would say it's pretty true i think people who are night owls are considered to be lazy yeah I still I I know I get judged for being a night owl in the military but you hold your ground pretty good right i do well I mean I it's mine's supported by science you know i take no prisoners i'm not going to I don't care what other people think you know so you're going to you're going to roll in four hours after everybody else but you'll stay there four hours later exactly exactly and get your stuff done
• 18:00 - 18:30 yep yep going back to your your mouse studies uh we were laughing earlier this morning about uh how you got a little bit of a a shout out during the uh State of the Union yeah yeah yeah um maybe it' be easier would you mind sharing a little bit about what I'm talking about because it's quite funny yeah so um one of the transgenic mouse models I worked on um as a posttock at Morehouse School of Medicine was the four core genotype mouse line was a mouse line created by Art Arnold out here actually in UCLA um
• 18:30 - 19:00 and what it is is it's a divergence of chromosonal sex with hormonal sex and the purpose of developing this mouse line is it presents a unique way to look at the influence of chromosomes so sex chromosomes versus hormonal release of testosterone and estrogen on just physiology and behavior so it actually worked out to be an elegant mouse model it's very elegant exactly to look at sex
• 19:00 - 19:30 differences in sleep uh so to understand how sleep pressure builds differently amongst biological males versus biological females um and you know bottom line of doing using the sophisticated mouse model is we know that a lot of sleep traits um are due to this it's called the SRY gene so the testes determining gene um that is responsible for diff sex differences in
• 19:30 - 20:00 the accumulation of sleep pressure across the waking day and then the presentation of daytime sleepiness uh so bottom line being that biological males are more prone to daytime sleepiness um whereas females are not and then biological females although they have greater difficulties entering sleep itself at night uh the quality and the efficiency of their sleep is greater
• 20:00 - 20:30 than males how could you have answered that question without that model i mean we were only answering the hormonal piece of it really so how would you do without it so my postoc mentor that was his I guess landmark study as a postoc at Northwestern with Dr fred Turk uh so Dr dr kimma Paul that's who I worked with as a postoc he essentially would um remove the gonads of these adult mice right so stopping circulation of estrogen and
• 20:30 - 21:00 testosterone but you couldn't see these nuance differences and like that's why you needed the chromosonal sex and the genetic manipulation piece um of it and it's important to realize that like biological sex differences are really complicated it's not just hormonal sex it is also chromosonal sex that seems to play the greatest role on physiology and behavior i actually want to go back to some of those findings right about sleep pressure and and sex differences but the
• 21:00 - 21:30 reason this came up I guess in that speech was this was one of the examples of wasteful spending is that a fair way that it was characterized correct yes and uh and you and I and I'm sure many people on your team had a good laugh at that right like it's really unfortunate and we're not going to spend too much time here but it's very unfortunate that uh a title of a paper a title of a study section can get cut when really there is tremendous value for all of us behind that with very little attention paid to who's doing it what's happening and
• 21:30 - 22:00 category is i mean you know so social political norms aside like men and women are different and like these animal models exist to understand biologically why men are and women are different and then when it comes to treating things such as sleep disorders or managing sleep disturbances which you know 70% of the world if not more suffer from that's how you target and to address them is
• 22:00 - 22:30 through the lens of biology but I mean that's just my own humble opinion and now and now you can't even study it because great okay um let's get back to some of those findings that was an animal model how do we know anything about how much that or how little that is actually going to transfer over into human models do we have any data on sleep pressure sleep inertia some of those other things you brought up that look like they're different based on chromosomes alone what do we know about the uh impact on humans so honestly I
• 22:30 - 23:00 haven't really seen much in the literature um I mean I'm sure you can look at like single nucleotide polymorphisms um in the SR gene for example but honestly I don't know if anyone has investigated that per se um I mean I guess you can look at um like interex individuals in individuals so someone who has like for example androgen uh deficiency syndrome
• 23:00 - 23:30 something like that um but I don't think that's been characterized enough in in humans tough study to pull off i will say um so a few months ago when was that it was about a year ago i presented at the NSCA conference that's geared towards tactical populations and I did this whole deep dive lecture i'm sure some people appreciated it but a lot of people were like "Okay where's she going with this?" Um but I was I started with the four core genotype model and then I
• 23:30 - 24:00 transitioned into uh the studies we know about women in sleep and what's crazy is like all this work that was done by Dr for Rachel Rachel Manber at uh Stanford University and Dr terry Lee um at Yale University is like it was done in the 80s and it just stayed in this vault for like 45 years until quite honestly wearable companies and you know I'll give a shout out to Whoop like
• 24:00 - 24:30 recognized that we need to focus on like female differences in sleep uh and a lot of people think that that research is unknown or unheard of but actually it was done in the 80s yeah and it was done in a very robust controlled nature but you know it was just forgotten for like 45 years what do we actually know about sleep differences between men and women and what I actually want to know about is chromosonally yeah yeah so
• 24:30 - 25:00 when you tease out the hormones how is it that a a particular whether it's a polymorphism or some other activity at the level of uh the genome how is that actually manipulating manifesting itself into sleep mhm any idea what mechanisms could possibly there if it's not endocrine so in terms of mechanism of action um we know that again there's differences in sleep pressure and if you unpack the onion uh sleep pressure is manifest from
• 25:00 - 25:30 increasing levels of adenosine production uh extracellular adenosine production within the brain particularly the basil forbrain which is a wake promoting area um so if sleep pressure is accumulating quickly uh which seems to be the case uh in biological males by way of the testes determining gene then there's more rapid accumulation of extracellular adenosine and the only way
• 25:30 - 26:00 to pay off that increasing sleep pressure is through daytime sleep yeah um and so with females right it it just essentially means their rate of accumulation of sleep pressure uh is lower which means that the production of extracellular adenosine would be lower now whether that's been studied it hasn't but like hypothetically just knowing with all the you know myriad of studies around accumulating sleep
• 26:00 - 26:30 pressure and extracellular denosine um we predict that's the mechanism of action i mean that that's the closest we can come right at this point right is it fair is it a trope i certainly know that it feels like the guys that I know versus the girls that I know you guys fall asleep fast yep oh yeah is that actually been demonstrated do we know that so that's been demonstrated again in these pre-clinical transgenic mouse models um using the four core
• 26:30 - 27:00 genotype it's also been demonstrated in in human studies um so in those studies that were done in the 80s by Terry Lee and Rachel Manber that's exactly what they found is sleep onset for men is much quicker but then when you look at time to restorative sleep so that entry into um stage three non-REM and then REM sleep it is uh the latency is quicker for females so it might take them longer
• 27:00 - 27:30 to fall asleep but to get that restorative sleep it's much quicker and then much more efficient across the night do we have any teological or evolutionary guess as to why that setup is there i mean I think it all goes back to child rearing right like who's responsible for children right men are responsible for propagating children but you know women like they are the caretakers and I think these are these built-in neurochemical neuro anatomical circuits that exist because of you know
• 27:30 - 28:00 relationships between who actually takes care of the child how much of it is if you know psychology versus biology there right so the the classic thing you'll hear is like oh women ruminate more they think about stuff more they're paying attention or is it simply any host of cascades haven't kicked off yet the the pressure isn't high enough do we have any idea what uh I'm I'm sure it's both are contributing but well I think that's uh the psychological aspect from my lens is a part of that biological
• 28:00 - 28:30 um blueprint right is because females are going to have greater vigilance and across the day well what neurochemically is vigilance it's increased acetylcholine release and um activation of acetylcholine areas of the brain like the basil forbrain um that are going to lead to that but again I see the world in from the lens of nature versus nurture so I'm not I'm not a very good
• 28:30 - 29:00 uh colleague in in departments of psychology well you have a degree in psychology I have an undergraduate degree in psychology but really it's neuroscience it's all neuroscience And so I was fortunate enough that you know I did go to a university that really um thrived on its neuroscience curriculum so well nonetheless I heard you're a psychologist and what I just heard you say was uh psychology is just misunderstood physiology i get it i get it that's what you said dr bger said it
• 29:00 - 29:30 holding my stamp to that acetylcholine um is that a total concentration issue that generally is higher or is it a receptor density or is it both do we have any idea what are actually the sex differences between acetylcholine um that's a good question i mean the studies that I know exist on sex differences um focus on one particular area which is the basil forbrain right that is the the seat of
• 29:30 - 30:00 major acetylolonergic production and release and activation within the brain and then there's like cascading effects on other areas um but no I I I actually think this is the land of great unknown i mean there haven't been a lot of studies on sex differences and and physiology and behavior and if there were they were done again in the 80s and 90s and now you know you got me curious about going back onto PubMed and Google
• 30:00 - 30:30 Scholar and and looking this up but yeah I mean uh the stuff that has been done since then a lot of it is questionnaires yeah right it is it's like pretty low fidelity stuff which is good and helpful but I mean you need self-report i mean with our sleep studies that we do in humans now right we always have an objective endpoint endocrine or um even a behavioral cognitive measure but it's always paired with self-report and sometimes the self-report data is what lends the more interesting findings
• 30:30 - 31:00 so women men fall asleep differently we get that what about total duration and waking up time any sex differences that are notable there so I'm happy you asked that because I feel like there have been that data has been taken a little bit too far on social media that men that excuse me that women need more sleep than men there is a difference in total sleep time between men and women that was found again in these studies in
• 31:00 - 31:30 1980s and it's about 25 minutes to 30 minutes different but I come from this lens is that clinically significant and that I can't answer that but I feel like in social media that has been people have taken that information and a brunt with it that you know women need to spend I think I saw something recently because women take this long to fall asleep they need to be in bed for 9 and a half hours uh versus a guy who you
• 31:30 - 32:00 know falls asleep quickly they only need to be in bed for eight and I think at a certain point like that's just going to create anxiety around the act of sleeping that it's going to be more harmful than helpful i assume then also based on this men nap more than women do yep yeah yeah no we know that like we know that experimentally we know that anecdotally um you know you just look at
• 32:00 - 32:30 cultures around the world that have siestas uh and or you know it's adopted and celebrated that like people nap during the day is we know that men in general cross cultures uh are more prone to daytime sleepiness do you know if and transgenic mice too oh you know name there um are people napping more or less or the same than we have historically that I don't know i mean I feel like at
• 32:30 - 33:00 least in the last 10 years that stigma around napping has been uh reduced I would say i mean it still exists in the military i don't think it's it's going away we actually um my colleagues and I from Walter Reed we have a paper that we published in the um flagship journal of sleep about around it's called the stigma of workplace napping and we strategically anonymously took quotes from senior leaders in the military and I mean we
• 33:00 - 33:30 were flabbergasted they were like "No if my employees nap they're lazy like they're not productive." And I'm like "You're okay i just whatever." Yeah no comment there but um yeah I I feel like the stigma has been reduced um but I would say I would argue that earlier in you know generations decades earlier that napping was still more celebrated than it is today i mean
• 33:30 - 34:00 I know for example President Eisenhower or then General Eisenhower used to nap like in the middle of worldwide conflict in World War II he took a nap every day probably very beneficial yeah for sure absolutely what do we know about successful versus unsuccessful napping in terms of a nap um it has to be 30 minutes or less we do know that with the exception being a night shift worker or someone who has chronic insufficient sleep right um the recommendation there
• 34:00 - 34:30 is 90 minutes to complete a full sleep cycle um but historically what the clinical data has shown is if you are someone who normally gets sufficient sleep and you take a nap that is longer than 30 minutes then you're more likely to have issues with sleep onset that night um or just have issues with regularity in your your sleep um but
• 34:30 - 35:00 there's also data to show that a 20 to 30 minute nap is sufficient for immediate improvements in mood athletic performance even cognitive performance do you have any sense of what percentage of people nap i don't I would imagine it's it's fairly low right yeah I would I would think it's fairly low except when you're talking about these microcosms of cultures right like professional athletes it seems to be completely acceptable and celebrated of of napping um and I'm sure there's a few
• 35:00 - 35:30 ring leaders like you know I know LeBron James you were just talking about that he's a huge proponent of daytime naps and I I've heard that he takes multiple naps across the uh the waking day but it depends on the culture right i can tell you in my workplace very very few people nap you know I struggle napping like it just does not work for me it doesn't work for me either um if I have had a string of nights of insufficient sleep
• 35:30 - 36:00 or if I'm traveling I will lie down and like close my eyes for a bit but I think it's just a nature of being like a highly functional ADHD person i can't If I happen to fall asleep accidentally or even on purpose during the day I'm going to just feel horrific the whole rest of the day i'm going to feel terrible yep is that just a good indication that I just shouldn't do it or are there ways that I could change that so I feel feel better when I wake up or should I just avoid it so it's
• 36:00 - 36:30 interesting you say that because um one of the things that has become more popular is this idea of a nappuccino or like having caffeine prior to a nap um and I learned anecdotally that this was adopted by the trucking industry in the 1970s and the reason behind it is right like a cup of coffee or any caffeine preferably not an energy drink uh before a nap um it takes about 20 minutes for
• 36:30 - 37:00 the adenosine receptors in your brain to be impacted um so in that 20 minutes you can take a nap and then wake up feeling boosted or less groggy um than you otherwise would without the caffeine um and that has been experimentally tested in in the lab too what circumstances need to happen for somebody for you to say "Hey you should consider napping right?" How does somebody know that they should think about napping is there
• 37:00 - 37:30 anything that you say "Hey if AB and C is going on you might be a good candidate for napping or is this something they just need to go figure out?" So I mean in the populations I work with right like I work in a world where most people I'd like to think I'm a good example but again that's also why I'll never really amount to any you know position well I I think you've already I think you've already amounted to plenty of pretty good positions within the military but most of which we can't even talk about so yeah exactly um is um
• 37:30 - 38:00 chronic insufficient sleep right if you are not getting sufficient sleep so most people between seven and nine hours a night depending on who you are um you need to nap or you should nap um or engaged in um some sort of like 20 minute non-activity throughout the waking day to help offset that accumulating sleep pressure right because you're already waking up in the morning with a high level of sleep pressure uh because you weren't able to
• 38:00 - 38:30 effectively release it at night when you sleep while we do recommend in those populations like hey try to get 20 to 30 minutes I understand that some people can't get in that mental head space but that's why we have things like technology now to assist um I mean I'll give a shout out to our dear friends at Shiftwave i think that is going to be a great tool especially for the tactical populations I work with to help them get
• 38:30 - 39:00 into that headsp space of just turning their brain off um and getting into that meditative deep breath state even if it's for like 10 to 15 minutes i spend most of my recreational time paying attention to wildlife it's a huge passion of mine if we can go out and where I live blacktail deer and elk and like that's that's what I spend most of my passion time on if you hang around people that do that hunters and um conservationists and outdoors and biologists and stuff
• 39:00 - 39:30 they can take a three-hour nap in the middle of the day like nothing right just nothing they can go lay down and they're just gone for hours every time I try that I lay there on the side of a mountain and it's like rolling around there's like zero chance this happening i think I know your answer here but I would assume that u not a not a healthy behavior that they have with sleeping for three hours a day in the middle of the day is is that a fair characterization of a poor sleep strategy so I'm going to actually challenge you on that because that's how
• 39:30 - 40:00 human that's how humans used to sleep before Thomas Edison uh commercialized electricity like so that was like multifphasic sleep was what through the course of human evolution used to practice and honestly if you look at ind indigenous communities they still practice that um where they have like four hours of sleep at night and then there's four hours of wakefulness and then they have morning you know sunrise
• 40:00 - 40:30 activity and then they have a 3 four hour period in the middle of at the afternoon now it makes sense when you look at the circadian clock right because there's two circadian peaks and two circadian trails throughout the 24-h hour period the first dip obviously is in the middle of the night uh that's when you know core body temperature driven by the circadian clock is its lowest between 2 and 4 a.m but then there's a second dip in the circadian
• 40:30 - 41:00 alertness signal in the middle of the afternoon for most people between 2 and 4 and so that's why it is good to push people towards sleeping or napping during this time but and people who you know live off the land and live a more indigenous lifestyle um they're just catering to their natural circadian rhythm uh pre you know industrialized uh exposure and do we think that those people can be perfectly
• 41:00 - 41:30 healthy is there any reason to think that that is actually a problem no I don't think there's an issue at all to be honest with you i mean it's you're not fighting against human evolution and biology right because if you look at most chronic disease states in the country it's because of fighting against evolution and biology and also too like it goes back to your point of I think there is evidence um for as limited as there is between people who are one chronoype and then tried to be
• 41:30 - 42:00 the other chronotype and looking at morbidity and mortality perfect example shift workers right people who do night shift work um have uh an estimate of a 15 years decrease in their lifespan 15 15 years so there's a large-scale epidemiological study that looked at cancer rates as well as was longitudinal study of lifespan of night shift workers um or rotating shift workers and um
• 42:00 - 42:30 their lifespan was reduced by 15 years they had significant increases in cancers across the board so not just a particular cancer but all different types of bodily cancers um and then even the World Health Organization has labeled shift work as a level two carcinogen oo and it it goes back to fighting against our you know evolution and biology and what our genetic program is how do they generally define shift work
• 42:30 - 43:00 what hours of work is it overnight or is it like swing shift like what counts as shift work when we say shift work we're usually talking about people who start work at 11:00 p.m work the graveyard shift right 11 p.m get off 7 a.m today's episode is sponsored by Element element is an electrolyte drink mix that has an ideal electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium but no sugar hydration is critical to performance both physical and mental performance countless studies have shown that even a slight degree of dehydration even as
• 43:00 - 43:30 small as 1% can lead to decreases in physical output and mental performance we also know that electrolytes are critical to proper hydration which I've been harping on for years but you can't do that proper hydration by only drinking water you need to get the right amount of electrolytes in the right ratios and that's why I'm a huge fan of Element in fact many of you will probably remember that I featured Element in my YouTube series on optimizing hydration nearly 5 years ago i featured Element in these videos
• 43:30 - 44:00 because their blend of 1,000 milligs of sodium 200 milligrams potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium really is unique and different than any other electrolyte on the market and it has great scientific support i use Element constantly particularly when I'm sweating a lot and I routinely make it a part of my clients optimization programs if you'd like to try Element you can go to drinklmntt.com/perform to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix again that's
• 44:00 - 44:30 drinklmnt.com/perform to claim a free sample pack today's episode is also brought to you by Parker University parker is the only university in the world dedicated exclusively to human performance and it's also my new academic home i first heard of Parker after attending their Neurocon seminar and was stunned i've been to countless clinics and conferences and nobody is even close to Parker seminars the speakers the setup and the experience are frankly jaw-dropping all their seminars are great but the upcoming
• 44:30 - 45:00 Miami show which is June 6th through 8th is going to be extra special it's featuring special guests like my friends Dr gabrielle Lion and fitness expert Jeff Cavalier and plenty more but on top of that I'm actually hosting a personal co-seminar that's all about the practical side of strength training and that blends perfectly with the Parker program so imagine going to a phenomenal lecture on how the nervous system works and then popping over and lifting weights with me personally all access tickets are on sale now but at a special rate of only
• 45:00 - 45:30 $249 but these will increase as the dates get closer so do not wait and yes you heard that right $249 gets you full access to the entire Parker seminar exhibit hall nightlife events plus a learning and lifting in the gym with myself and Dan Garner to see the exact schedule full list of speakers and get signed up visit parkseminars.com one more time that's parkseminars.com i can't wait to see you there we have dealt I've actually in our um a
• 45:30 - 46:00 number of our companies we've dealt with a lot of surgeons um emergency medicine nurses uh firefighters police and they have to work at some point there are better and there are worse policies for that we've seen some people where they like 4 days day shift 4 days night shift right yeah you can't design a worst possible setup for those individuals so if somebody has to work night shift because we have to we need it right we need surgeons and we need physicians and nurses and so
• 46:00 - 46:30 military we win our nation's wars at night we need people who can operate at night how do how do you then set them up for least amount of failure if they have to work night shift so that it's funny you asked that because I feel like I'm back in my dissertation defense in graduate school um but I think that's where the power of genetics and like our these genetic screening tools come into play is in this circumstance why not pre-seelelect people who are more
• 46:30 - 47:00 optimal at night um for these types of positions um I I know it like in medicine like that might be a little bit more controversial but again like going back to communities like where the ones I work in is like I would want to have people who are good at operating at night to win our nation's wars to reduce casualties to you know increase combat effectiveness things like that are there tools to screen for that do you know are there are there markers are there tests can we do where
• 47:00 - 47:30 if somebody wants to just do this on their own so they want to figure out Hey um I'm considering taking this job it's a night shift job or not like I want to know if I'm there do you know of any effective tools for that stuff i mean you just spit in a tube and send it off to the lab for analysis it's that's all it is i mean there's robust known genetic markers you know single nucleotide polymorphisms that are linked to being a morning person an evening person i mean we know those per two snips that's the that's the gene the
• 47:30 - 48:00 circadian clock gene per two per two um and that can be any genetic company or is there a particular ones that that sell kits that test for these that are better than others to the best of my knowledge most of these genetic screening companies will will test for this snip okay and it is it's uh almost as simple as that one marker that is yeah well it is because that's what you know what's been identified in pre-clinical animal models and again has been shown in large scale um genome genomicwide studies in humans is yeah
• 48:00 - 48:30 changes in the circadian clock genes which one was that one again just uh per two per two okay so per two is uh associated with an evening chronotype and per one is associated with a morning chronotype what percentage of people are evening versus morning versus somewhere in the middle so we know most of this not from the genetic work but from this robust questionnaire that's been around for honestly 40 years it's called the
• 48:30 - 49:00 morning eveningness questionnaire i mean there's a a newer modified version of this that um Dr till Roenberg has created to uh include social influences um but based on just again largecale epidemiological population based studies of this questionnaire about 80% of us are intermediate types meaning right we normally go to bed or prefer to go to bed around 1000 p.m wake up around 6:00 a.m yeah you have 10% of the population
• 49:00 - 49:30 who are like me who are more evening types now I'm not an extreme evening type i feel like I used to be uh but as I've gotten older right my clock is now phase advancing like most people when they age yeah um who prefer to go to bed around midnight 12:30 wake up 8 8:30 and then the other 10% are these people like you who are the morning types who prefer to go to bed at 9:00 and wake up at 4:00 a.m you know that's how my wife is it's I would like to go to bed earlier than that but yeah nine o'clock we'll just
• 49:30 - 50:00 say nine o'clock yeah yeah if you ask my wife she'd be like "Is your wife a night owl?" No she's more of a night owl she was when like when we first met she was uh 11:30 like 11 right wake up at 6:00 sort of thing and now over the years like she's drifted way down towards me where she's there i'm definitely like if I especially if I didn't have kids like 8:00 I'm in bed like a thousand% and she's just like "No like not going to happen." Like get up we have to go do whatever the the likelihood of us like
• 50:00 - 50:30 watching a movie or something after the kids go to bed zero like it's just not going to happen it's funny because um well I'm a geo bachelor but like when I do get to spend some time with my wife it's the same way it's just I have to like motivate her to I am your wife essentially like I have to motivate my wife to like a 4hour shift between you guys when you want to get up and do stuff yeah where I am in North Carolina and she's in Florida um by the time she's going to bed I am which is around
• 50:30 - 51:00 like 7:45 8 i am just leaving the gym to go home and eat dinner and have an extra two 2 and 1/2 hours of my day before I go to bed are you like my wife where we will be silent for like 30 minutes mhm like in bed or whatever and I'm like finally like time to go to sleep and then some like there has to be some deep conversation happen like it's just like a like talk about some big thing i'm like "Oh my god." Like but she's like always does that it's It's a bad cliche
• 51:00 - 51:30 but are you are you like that too i I am yes yeah and she's just like "Stop." Like "Stop talking to me." Yeah and then I'll just like drift off into sleep in the middle of the conversation oh I'm gone like I'm definitely gone in that conversation it's like so many times I've fallen asleep in the middle of her story because I'm just like I can't yeah i'm done for yep no that's Yeah that's me too all right i fit that stereotype fantastic i was asking you earlier about people that have this uh not quite polyphasic but multiple sleep several hours of
• 51:30 - 52:00 sleep throughout the day in the world I'm coming I come from that's often because of sunlight right where you're you're out doing stuff yep you head back towards camp and then by the time you get back and do stuff and then you only have four hours or five hours before you got to get back up again feed the horses do things yeah so you can get out before sunrise right yep so then you have three to four hours of sleep and you're going to sleep more there i know you've done a bunch of work in of course the military tons of groups in
• 52:00 - 52:30 there you've done stuff with astronauts right you've done stuff in Antarctica right so how do you handle it when you have when light is either not the queue it's not there at all times you're up in space it's there at all times how do you manage a sleep schedule when light is completely eliminated from the equation or maybe not eliminated but you know what I mean like it's completely off of schedule yeah so that's actually what speaks to
• 52:30 - 53:00 the robustness of the sleep system is like work in these extreme environments and I'll use our study in Antarctica as an example so honestly to date that is probably the coolest project that I got to be a part of how could it not be um so we did essentially a year-long longitudinal assessment of sleep down um it's it was actually in collaboration with the Argentinian Navy uh so they have this Navy base down there called Belgron 2 and it's actually the southernmost point in the world uh and
• 53:00 - 53:30 what's interesting is six months of the year like they have access it's kind of like being stationed on the International Space Station is you have access to food water resources and then medevac uh but the other six months of the year if something happens medically they have to figure it out right so there's a lot of stress during the winter because they don't have access to food resources or any contact with the outside human world you can't get a plane in and out because of weather you can't Yeah because of the weather um and
• 53:30 - 54:00 so what we did was we used acttographs which you know still are clinical grade measures of sleep two weeks worth of acttograph data translates to a night of um in in a sleep lab so a night of polyynography yeah this is this is a wrist wearable exactly and and and it's extremely durable i mean we've taken these wearables out into combat zones um and they've come back working completely fine so uh they're made to withstand these extreme conditions and what we
• 54:00 - 54:30 found is the structure of sleep across this time being stationed in Antarctica does change from the summer to the winter so for example in the winter there's fewer sleep episodes but the sleep episodes are longer and then in the summer there's more sleep episodes but the sleep episodes are shorter but when you look at overall daily 24-hour sleep amounts they're the same winter versus summer and what's really interesting is
• 54:30 - 55:00 that also lends to changes in um physiology blood pressure um and cognitive performance too so we also measured blood pressure down there so we did um four times a day they did blood pressure measurements because they wanted to catch like you know predicted times of the circadian peak versus circadian trough um and then same with the gold standard for vigilance which is the psycho motor vigilance test oh yeah like none of these parameters change
• 55:00 - 55:30 seasonally and I do believe it's because of the fact that like under you know complete observational um study that the sleep system didn't change regardless of what was changing in the environment like that's just how robust our sleep system is biology figured it out exactly yeah it got there right we talk a lot about when we coach people we we try to avoid using sleep
• 55:30 - 56:00 optimization right what we really try to go after is sleep resilience right i want you to be able to have effective quality sleep independent of all these things i I think one of the things we have helped people with a lot is I don't want you to have to have a 90minute routine and a 45minute breath work session and have everything perfect for you to have a reasonable night of sleep mhm you become super sensitive right we will need to be more resilient against that sounds like that's exactly what you're talking about that anarchist yeah and so um I mean so back in the the
• 56:00 - 56:30 military sleep lab we've done these types of studies too right because we've done very well controlled um either acute sleep deprivation to mimic combat operations like what we're exposed to when we're deployed or uh chronic sleep loss and we actually find when you go back to self-report um even if someone had a really poor night of sleep objectively right but they are convinced that they got restorative sleep or that they have high sleep resil resiliency their next day
• 56:30 - 57:00 performance on objective tasks such as the psychoot vigilance tests will be better than someone who rates themsel as not being resilient to sleep deprivation so you know you go back to that debate of biology versus psychology i mean I yes I still sit in the biological camp but I understand there are psychological influences don't you waver on me Dr breaker no no no no how long is that tail going to last in other
• 57:00 - 57:30 words I mean you've been outspoken about this there's a difference between clinical deficiencies right whether this is because you have a sleep disorder or because you're in a special situation where you legitimately have sleep restriction whatever's going on going from that to okay sleep is not the same thing as going from good to great sleep right and there's huge performance advantages of going from good to great sleep yep but at the same time you also just told me even if I have a terrible night of sleep if I think I'm okay I
• 57:30 - 58:00 perform the best so if I sleep like [ __ ] all the time if I just think I'm fine am I going to be okay like where where's the line here you know what I like what's the where's the breaking point i I will say with confidence just from the studies we've done the breaking point is 72 hours so yeah yeah it is a very shortterm effect I will say um and you know to quote like the godfather of sleep medicine at Stanford University Dr william C dement who uh passed away two years ago at the age of 98 he used to
• 58:00 - 58:30 say like sleepiness makes you stupid because it is true it's like this false sense that you're okay but objectively you're performing horribly and that's really what we see like in studies we've done and then even those endocrine studies where you're getting insufficient sleep and there's an immediate drop off in circulating levels of testosterone by day three the system is at its max um I mean we even found that with a study my my colleague uh Dr tracy Jill Dodie did um back at Walter
• 58:30 - 59:00 Reed where essentially caffeine will help stabilize your cognitive performance under insufficient sleep up to 3 days and then after that caffeine stops working like there's no amount of caffeine that can replace lost sleep only sleep can replace lost sleep so it would be fair then to characterize it as saying have if you have a bad night of sleep or two don't worry about it yeah past that though we need to start making changes exactly yep and that's um you
• 59:00 - 59:30 know I get asked this question all the time is it good to keep the same sleep schedule like say you're getting insufficient sleep on the weekdays versus you know keeping that same schedule on the weekends i come from the camp that like I believe in sleep banking and trying to replace sleep pressure or build up on anticipated um sleep pressure as much as possible so
• 59:30 - 60:00 for me I work with populations where they're getting insufficient sleep during the work week and so they need to disrupt their circadian rhythm on the weekend to bank on that sleep to uh make up for loss sleep but also prepare them for the week ahead um and there is some data now I know there's a study that came out a few months ago um again large-scale population study that found that people who sleep in on weekends um if they are getting insufficient sleep on weekdays have a 20% reduction in uh
• 60:00 - 60:30 risk for cardiovascular disease are there frameworks in which you can do it where it doesn't mess up circadian rhythm so the obvious example would be and you're not saying this to be clear if you wake up at 5 in the morning during the week then hey it's okay to stay up till four o'clock at night on the weekends as long as you sleep till noon that that's not what you're saying no I'm not clarify what you mean by like banking or extending out on the weekend
• 60:30 - 61:00 so we don't get misinterpretations here yeah that is true so um what I mean is you're going to keep one of those things the same usually right you hope so yeah so in this circumstance if you're going if you're waking up at 5:00 a.m and say you're going to bed at 11:00 p.m on the weekdays then if you go to bed at 11:00 p.m on Friday night and Saturday night but now you're sleeping in until 8 or 9 that's what I'm talking about so you're
• 61:00 - 61:30 keeping one of the two things consistent now I don't think this would probably work in people who you know use Friday night go to the club stay up really late um and then try to sleep in um I mean I know in the the clinical world when you look at like um cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia for example um when those behavioral sleep medicine physicians are trying to extend sleep um they do it in 30 minute intervals so that is something we do know about the
• 61:30 - 62:00 circadian clock is that um you can do things in 30 minute increments over an extended period of time to reduce the amount of physiological stress on the system i wanted to actually ask about on a similar note sleep in space okay um I know you're in the process of hopefully becoming an astronaut yourself hopefully yes you're waiting back on that we'll see maybe maybe we'll have you back after you spent a year in space but um how do you think about how do how do we
• 62:00 - 62:30 handle sleep in spacing and when we've lost not only light but a thousand other cues um so first question on this do people in space sleep okay is it a huge problem what's it look like up there so anecdotally from what I've heard it it depends so um for example um Colonel Frank Rubio uh we had him uh he actually gave a a leadership lecture to those of us at work from the International Space
• 62:30 - 63:00 Station when he was waiting to come home because as you know he was up in space for the longest of any human ever um at the in the International Space Station he said he slept great how long was he up there for it was over a year way over a year yeah yeah like I understand like that the psychological Yeah uh demands the current astronauts are facing right now is difficult but you know he talks about that as well just you know missing important family events and what whatnot
• 63:00 - 63:30 but he said that he slept great in space um I've met a few other astronauts who said that it was the opposite for them and then there's lingering effects back on planet Earth such as um difficulties with injuries and maintenance of REM sleep for example um it makes sense to me in terms of a microgravity environment impacting sleep because just like with other sensory
• 63:30 - 64:00 systems of the nervous system what is this the epicenter of sleep maintenance and sleep continuity is the phalamus right the phalamus is the gateway for sensory information uh and there's a direct connection between your vestibular balance system and the phalamus that's going to influence sleep states um I mean again this hasn't really been studied at a deep physiological level in space but
• 64:00 - 64:30 hypothetically what we know about the circuitry of the vestibular system and how it synapses on the phalamus that's what I predict is what's influencing these um changes in sleep architecture with uh microgravity they have light taken care of for the most part correct yeah they have I mean that's one thing is a lot of what we know about the influence of flight and photoic information on human physiology behavior and performance actually comes
• 64:30 - 65:00 from honestly NASA um they have a really fantastic crew and they always have of like sleep and circadian fatigue scientists um my friend Dr um Aaron Flynn Evans she's one of the main fatigue scientists for NASA and she comes from that you know body of training at Stanford and Harvard um who you know have been the founding fathers and mothers of of sleep physiology and medicine what do they do for physical sleep are they tying them down to the
• 65:00 - 65:30 side of the space station so they're not floating around like what is actually happening because to your point about the phalamus when when you just look at pressure differences right there's a physical pressure that changes when you spend your entire day erect and then you go horizontally right fluid shifting you have a whole host of things that are happening this is one of the things that's actually I've seen in the research recently about problems with sleep related obesity that are not just airway blockage right you have fluid shifting you have other things that are
• 65:30 - 66:00 going on that are real problems so how do they handle that stuff do they sleep horizontally that wouldn't matter right so my understanding is they're sleeping vertically and it's like you're velcroed in essentially so it's um that's that's my understanding of it so I know I'll report back to you once I'm up there i want direct report we want to actually do a a follow-up episode from the Well they do so when I went for selection the first time and we went to uh mission control there is a
• 66:00 - 66:30 phone and you know their day is very structured and scheduled but they do have time where they can use this phone in the space station and call down to like their family and they'll use it to like watch a movie and stuff with their family so nice yeah I'll use that time for a podcast perfect well I'm going to hold you to that have you thought at all about sleep in Mars yeah I mean I have so that's um that's why I think it's going to be
• 66:30 - 67:00 personally like more important than ever for NASA if we want Mars to actually be a viable feasible thing you are going to need physicians and you are going to need scientists and obviously engineers right behind that to lead that mission um because you know physiology in extreme environments as we just talked about with the work we've done in Antarctica even all the work we've done in in active combat zones in the military is
• 67:00 - 67:30 it is very different um and we need to understand those nuance differences um and also understand nuance differences between men and women right because it's going to have an impact there do you think it could be part of the screening process for those folks that go out there so oh absolutely I I mean I think when it comes for training for Mars and and full disclosure so the class of astronauts that um I was part of in 2020
• 67:30 - 68:00 like that first class selected um is hypothetically the first class to prepare for um Martian exploration um I think they're going to look at health above all else i mean skill set and talent is important but I feel as if the talent is less important than finding an incredibly healthy person who does not have any family history of any disease whatsoever or just is you know
• 68:00 - 68:30 genetically very healthy so I've been saying for a long time Mars is not going to be a rocket problem it's a physiology problem it's a physiology problem absolutely yep what would you do personally to prepare for that would you just figure it out along the way or is there any sleep resilient stuff you could do is there any different training or any other stuff you would do in preparation for Mars i don't know if this sounds far-fetched but I wouldn't
• 68:30 - 69:00 treat it any differently than these you know pre-clinical mouse model transgenic studies we used to do right or I have done is you have to first understand the physiology and behavior uh you have to break it down and then again study sex differences in this behavior because it's going to impact males and females differently um and then that's where you use the power of pharmaceutical neutrautical and genetic interventions i
• 69:00 - 69:30 mean even to the point of I think it's necessary and sufficient at this point to use things like crisper and gene editing to like I mean it it becomes like the ultimate biology physiology problem having that opportunity to explore Mars i mean sure you want these people to live long healthy lives after they're done with the space program but at the end of the day you also have this person who has
• 69:30 - 70:00 this mentality that they're willing to be like yeated off the planet um into the unknown so you know I feel like people like me who are willing you know and who have wanted to be an astronaut like their whole life you know we're we're willing to accept some pharmaceutical or neutrautical or genetic interventions um in order to get the job done yeah i mean I guess what you're saying is if you're 95% of the way there and there's
• 70:00 - 70:30 just a couple of things that are stopping you why not exactly take those and get all the way out there yeah exactly well I fully support that do you know of any um animal models that are doing things like that like gene editing uh probably obviously not for Mars but for other aspects of sleep are you aware of any clinical trials happening or people tinkering with that or labs that are working on stuff so in regards to space exploration I don't know that but I will say like crisper and gene editing to better understand fle sleep
• 70:30 - 71:00 physiology has been a thing um I think that's really what you see now um when you look at like the evolution of using pre-clinical animal models to understand mamian physiology is behavior right it's like I came from the generation where we were still working with these transgenic mouse models um you know just through sophisticated breeding of hetererozygous and homozygous mice to hope and pray you get the genotype based on Darwinian you know hereditary genetics that you are
• 71:00 - 71:30 hoping for now we can actually go in and directly manipulate the genome uh through gene editing or um like in as a postoc when we were doing that skeletal muscle physiology project we were using um a transgenic mouse model where we just had to give the mouse doxycyc so the antibiotic to either turn on or turn off genes oh because you had already put something in there and you just had to activate it i didn't put it in there but the you know the group at Southwestern
• 71:30 - 72:00 that had created these genetic mouse models yeah that's a whole another world of like molecular genetics that I don't understand and I just really appreciate that they're clever and intelligent enough to do something like that but you know there are a number of people who sleep poorly and there's a select number of people who sleep horribly but somehow get away with it mh right and you talked about earlier and I know that there's plenty of studies that look at a lot of people
• 72:00 - 72:30 who think they're getting away with it aren't right so cognitive function is way lower even u despite people's perception Yeah of their cognitive performance right they're like significantly lower that's that's been shown many many times right so we argue this all the time when you're like if we look at your data and your your numbers are not great but you think and your perception is high there's a good chance that it's not actually as as high as you think yep but there are those select few right those people who can get away with a few hours of sleep per night right four or five or probably is probably
• 72:30 - 73:00 more appropriate do you think it's realistic at all for us to be able to engineer something like that so could we figure how how much do we know about the genes behind those is there a phrase for people that sleep for four hours a night and actually like get away with what do we call them i mean we could uh so they're short sleepers short sleepers yeah so um that gene was isolated and discovered in a pre-clinical mouse model and again population uh genomewide study uh in humans I'd say 1015 years ago it's
• 73:00 - 73:30 called the deck gene DEEC um so those are individuals who are able to sleep four hours um again hypothetically what I think is going on is like they're reducing their extracellular adenosine really quickly because that's really what it is is like how quickly can you reduce sleep pressure that's what determines your physiological set point for sleep so I need for example myself I'm like an 8.2 probably 8 and 1 half
• 73:30 - 74:00 hour sleeper so I know my sleep pressure dissipates very very slowly but in these individuals it dissipates very quickly how much actual work has been done on those individuals in terms of physical performance obviously we know like long-term they don't die earlier that's like the clinical markers we have but are they really physically performing at their best or their cognitive function is high like is there actually been reasonable research on that no there hasn't i mean I would love if I had money to do that work I would i mean like US presidents are a great example
• 74:00 - 74:30 like just historically anecdotally what we know about most US presidents is they don't really sleep a lot but again they were sort of you know self- selected it just I would say the same with military leaders right they're self- selecting because of genetics like when you get to that level I think we know this in sports too right that's why one of my favorite books is the sports gene um because it really talks about how your genetic blueprint can sort of guide you
• 74:30 - 75:00 into what sport you play and what sport you excel in i know that there was actually some stuff that came out recently on uh President Trump and they were able to assess his sleep duration simply by his online activity oh yeah I do remember that yeah right so like he's one of these guys that apparently legitimately does and I know there's there's lots of um lots of people talked about President Obama as well as like working these right Stanley Mcrist like Admiral Mcrist was known to be a two three hour sleeper I mean I see that
• 75:00 - 75:30 even in my own workplace too right like folks you work with is there a way that you could get to that right so kind of what I'm getting at on the back of that thing is saying like hey can we number one be more resilient be more efficient and then will that actually allow me to shorten my hour demands down to a reasonable is that what's happening with these presidents are they just hyper efficient is their sleep architecture is their sleep resilience is their sleep stability just way higher or are they kind of the same and it doesn't matter it's actual presidents
• 75:30 - 76:00 right it's just people that that get away with it or they just the same and they just can get away with way less hours no it's more efficient right because that's what the again these preclinical animal models that we can glean into is like the sleep pressurees dissipated really quickly so there's uh a significant increase in slowwave activity um very quickly and it's extended for a period of time um because that at the end of the day that's the manifestation of dissipated sleep pressure is stage three non-REM sleep or
• 76:00 - 76:30 slowwave activity um but I do think it's one of those things again it has to be guided through the lens of biology and it can't be trained right is because it breaks down to differences is and the um architecture of the neur neuronal circuitry and the neurochemistry um and I don't think any amount of training or you know behavioral intervention could um lead to a physiological change of
• 76:30 - 77:00 that significant capacity too much just indogenous natural function exactly that have to be manipulated let's go the opposite direction okay sleeping a lot mhm um you have made the case I have made the case that high performers you're probably looking at more like eight and a half to nine maybe nine and a half hours of sleep right and that's been shown many many times yep i'm going to spend a lot of time on that but before we get there really quickly what about past that point what do we know about people sleeping routinely 9 and a
• 77:00 - 77:30 half hours 10 hours usion is that's not a good thing yeah so actually my buddy Michael Graner at the University of Arizona he's looked at that right it's like it's not good to be on either tail end so insomnia hyperomnia as it's called is just as bad as insomnia and if you look at morbidity and mortality in those individuals who get who need 10 11 hours of sleep because their rate of dissipating sleep
• 77:30 - 78:00 pressure is just so low like they suffer from the same health outcomes as someone who obviously willingly short changes their sleep because of life why does somebody need 10 10 and a half 11 hours of sleep is that a insanely inefficient sleep pattern or are they sleeping that because of other reasons um I guess another way to think about it is when they wake up the next day and they still feel tired right it's like I slept nine hours I still feel tired
• 78:00 - 78:30 probably something is happening I assume right yeah i mean my assumption is there's there there's a physiological disruption there mixed with for example we know people who are clinically depressed for example um do fall in this category of hyperinsomnia um and so um and and some of that again can be is physiologically rooted um but
• 78:30 - 79:00 you know compounded by life trauma too that's could be contri contributing to that clinical depression um but that's where I think we most often times see um these issues with hyperinsomia is they're usually also associated with some sort of um mental health condition as well particularly clinical depression interesting or someone with chronic pain like fibromyalgia for example yeah that makes sense how much do we know if any about cause and effect there which direction oh that is like that is still
• 79:00 - 79:30 to this date a constant debate in the sleep medicine community so um I've been going to the annual sleep medicine conference now since 2006 i've only missed one that was the year I was competing in the CrossFit games um but besides that like that's still one of the centerpieces um of the meeting is like is chicken or the egg is it the sleep manifestation of then depressive symptoms or do the
• 79:30 - 80:00 depressive symptoms contribute to the sleep symptoms and every year there's new data presented uh not just in pre-clinical animal models but in human studies as well that no it's it's so complicated and nuanced um and even with you know the ability to effectively treat clinical depression now not just with pharmaceuticals but also with um for example um transranial electrical stimulation or transmetic
• 80:00 - 80:30 stimulation um there's still just not a consensus in terms of you know is it the sleep or is it the depression um more than likely it's a combination of both it's got it's got to be right in some people you could certainly see a bunch of chronic poor sleep led to poor health effects and certainly you can see the opposite something else happened in life created mental health concerns and then because of that you can't sleep like you could certainly see the only reality here is there's room for both yep like both are are potential causes
• 80:30 - 81:00 so trying to isolate and say one is always driving the other one is is it's honestly it's quite nonsensical right now where we're going to go yeah i mean we see the same thing you know use uh in my community with traumatic brain injury it's like we know from the clinical studies like this one study we did at Walter Reed that if you have a mild even just a mild traumatic brain injury it's going to lead to long-term changes in sleep architecture um but then you have
• 81:00 - 81:30 all the lifestyle factors that uh also are influenced by that right like using alcohol to cope with the lack of sleep or difficulties with sleep now that weren't in existence prior to traumatic brain injury um the inability to regulate stress and how because of that inability to regulate stress that's going to impact sleep it's right you can never have things in isolation
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• 83:00 - 83:30 momentous.comperform to get 20% off your order again that's live momentous.com/perform to get 20% off how do we create more efficient sleep so when somebody says Allison I've got A and B job whether it's going on like six and a half seven is just the most realistic thing can I get more efficient in that time yep and I'll give you a little bit of a pass here you can skip past all the basic hygiene stuff right like cold dark room yeah we get it
• 83:30 - 84:00 all that yeah yeah what past that can we do i mean I think that's where the circadian system really takes over right like I talked earlier about these time cues or zeitgeabers when you have predictable time cues in your environment uh and this isn't just a human and I mean we see this in in mouse and rodent models as well once that time Q is presented that behavior will then follow that time Q um so if you are eating at a particular time um
• 84:00 - 84:30 if you're engaged in social stimuli at a particular time if you're viewing sunlight at a particular time then at night right if you're now exposed to dimmer light at a particular time you have eaten dinner at a particular time and then whether you have a sleep hygiene routine or not but you are now going to bed at a particular particular time like your brain will now
• 84:30 - 85:00 consolidate sleep into that period of time i work with a bunch of entrepreneurs a bunch of business owners uh e executives for sport teams and things like this right we get this question constantly so let me frame you with a theoretical that's actually not at all a theoretical i just don't want to say the person's name example and uh I'm going to give you a ton of incomplete information okay but just do your best to what what something could look like i will also give you more caveats for you this is maybe not the
• 85:00 - 85:30 optimal system or best system but hopefully what you'll provide for us is just one example of what it could look like fair game sure all right awesome so you got an individual and they're going to flat out say midnight is when I'm going to go to bed and I got to be up at 6 okay that's that's the rules of the game period right whatever it takes um I will get into bed at about 11:50 and the alarm is off at 6:00 and I'm and I'm getting up and out of bed period yep i have hundreds of millions
• 85:30 - 86:00 of dollars closer to billions actually on the line mhm so I need my cognitive function to be at its highest i want to perform well physically but that's my second year priority right yeah so cognitive function is this person's top but we'll not accept low energy will not accept terrible physical performance in the gym yep is going to train every day we'll do some conditioning we'll do some lifting do a variety of stuff right uh also has children mhm right so we'll pay
• 86:00 - 86:30 attention to the children from like 3 to 8:00 or so and then because he's working with kids from 3 to 8 or playing with his kids and being very present he's definitely going to go back to work at 8:00 it's going to happen right um 8 to 10:30 or so maybe up to 11 is back to work and then 11 to midnight is shower wife situation uh before I start asking you questions any more critical information you have to know about this person i do want to know if they think they're a
• 86:30 - 87:00 morning or evening person um this person will tell you doesn't matter doesn't matter okay they're whatever is going to take to make this is the schedule um but I would say has he's certainly self-induced himself to be a morning person whether he is there or not like Gotcha that's the think very much military business like you got to be in the office by seven like that's just what you sort of do yeah yeah gotcha um stimulants are on board pharmaceuticals are on board don't care uh doesn't drink alcohol excessively but whatever it
• 87:00 - 87:30 takes to perform the best doesn't want to compromise long-term health doesn't want to die earlier any of those things yeah um but if you say take a take melatonin great if you say don't take melatonin great you say drink caffeine great like doesn't care whatever it's going to take to get the job done okay so that said um let let me just do like a theoretical kind of highlevel thing waking up at 6 anything that he should particularly take do don't do for the first I'd say he'd give you 45 minutes
• 87:30 - 88:00 in the morning right anything that would jump out on your list of like critical stuff to do at that time frame to get going cognitively well since stimulants are uh allowed I mean caffeinate right because what we know from our clinical studies is the easiest way to reduce sleep inertia in the morning that groggginess is to caffeinate as soon as possible as soon as possible less less than 200 milligrams because 200 milligrams we know from our randomized clinical trials we've done numerous
• 88:00 - 88:30 circumstances under conditions of acute sleep deprivation chronic sleep deprivation um even looking at genotype for example 200 milligrams is the ceiling effect for caffeine so like two cups of black coffee so if you go to three or 400 you're just hitting the gas pedal you're not going Yeah it's right okay so 200 um within the first few minutes of getting up correct anything else i mean obviously sunlight yeah right that's a that's a given um he'll work out whatever time he'll work out in
• 88:30 - 89:00 the morning he'll work out in the afternoon whatever when should he train so that's why I asked if morning person evening person um I mean if I was him I would probably train in the morning right because now you're capitalizing on that rise in cortisol so you're going to optimize your training um more so than you would in the afternoon and then you're going to get that extended you know cognitive mood energy to be more productive in uh
• 89:00 - 89:30 the latter half of your your morning um as your cortisol continues to rise okay makes sense anything else we should consider in the morning or should we move throughout the day i would say during that time too it you know depending on where this individual lives like vitamin D supplementation i mean even if you are getting natural sunlight uh you know if you're up in Boston or New York uh like a lot of Wall Street executives it's not you know it's good to supplement with vitamin D okay um
• 89:30 - 90:00 anything he should be doing specifically throughout the day or not doing until that 3:00 uh goes gets kids and sort of all there so again um with strategic caffeine dosing that's why you know we had done all those studies uh in randomized clinical trials so you can supplement with 200 milligrams of caffeine every four to six hours as needed mhm um you can even do 2 to 4 hours as needed stopping at least 6 to 8 hours before bedtime okay so he'd be
• 90:00 - 90:30 good to take uh he could have his 6:00 caffeine and then maybe have it again at noon or even like 9:00 in the morning if he wants and do it again at noon right and then maybe uh maybe even again at like 3:00 or 4 as long as Yeah because that's within the 8 hour time window before before midnight yeah before midnight okay um he's going throughout the day he's going to go back to work like I said at 8:00 yep and he's not going to stop until an
• 90:30 - 91:00 hour before mhm he goes to bed are they any best practices any things he can do either during that 3-hour work window or right after it what can he do to make sure that when he gets into bed at 11:50 he is asleep by midnight or close to it and has the highest quality six hours possible well so that's why like he's not going to have it like a full-on sleep hygiene routine and here's the thing that sleep hygiene routine that 90-minute routine isn't necessary if you're keeping everything else in your
• 91:00 - 91:30 environment consistent uh but in order to help facilitate that sleep so you have like a 10-minute sleep onset um that's where I blue light blocking glasses right as you're working that's what it I would have this individual wear because now you're still promoting that dim light melatonin onset to then let that individual go to sleep so while he's still aroused from work activity he can mitigate it some exactly right because you're still going to have brain activity and gamma beta activity it's
• 91:30 - 92:00 not going to be anywhere close to alpha but um at least you're you're not disrupting the dim light melatonin onset through um not having blue light blocking glasses anything that uh he should take from a food or a supplementation or drug or anything maybe you don't have to go too far into drug without knowing more medical history there but like Yeah um anything that you should take either you know 8:00 9:00 midnight or right before bed or or just sort of stay away as much as
• 92:00 - 92:30 you possibly can so it is okay to eat there are believe it or not sleepromoting foods so very recently there was isolated a um uh protein factor in believe it or not warm milk warm milk warm milk that is sleeppromoting um other sleepromoting foods that have been studied in randomized clinical trials include things like um kiwis um well we already
• 92:30 - 93:00 talked about tart cherry extract um that's good for skeletal muscle recovery so that's something I would I would take y um in addition to to working right yep um any or a what do you call um slow release protein like a case and wave protein yeah yeah okay and any other um maybe are there any common mistakes that they're making that are that are maybe disrupting the sleep um you know we talked about melatonin earlier right so what about chronic t use of melatonin
• 93:00 - 93:30 for someone like this is like "Hey I want to make sure I get to sleep quickly so I'm going to take 10 migs of mel melatonin every night." Yeah you don't need melatonin and actually that melatonin will prevent you from entering the restorative stages of sleep so not a good So yeah at night like if you want to take anything to help influence sleep maintenance it would be magnesium bioarbonate um so a powdered form of magnesium it's going to have greater bioavail availability um but that would be a a good thing that also helps offset
• 93:30 - 94:00 um loading of the central nervous system throughout the day especially if this individual is you know doing strength and conditioning as part of their their physical fitness routine um but no melatonin does not work as a nighttime sleep aid it acts as a phase shifter but not as a nighttime sleep aid yeah and it can have um negative impacts on sleep architecture if not dosed appropriately what about any tools or technologies any
• 94:00 - 94:30 uh brainwave stuff he could do or not do you mentioned the shift wave chair earlier but anything else like that or you feel like as long as you're like this would be a pretty good setup for this person if they keep having these time cues and keep working in this environment environment night after night like again the brain will remember and consolidate those time cues to then help promote efficient sleep so just build the pattern yep exactly patterns are everything um I mean I would say the
• 94:30 - 95:00 last hack right like we talk about the cool dark quiet room um but believe it or not taking a hot shower before even like a fiveminute hot shower before bed that's going to right compensatory mechanism is to cool you so right don't cold plunge before bed i always tell people that that is one social norm that has become popular and you know that mouth taping so um tell tell me about the cold plunging and
• 95:00 - 95:30 mouth taping big fan of it but it has to be the right time of day if you think about it right you take a hot shower compensatory mechanism is your body wants to cool down yep right if you cold plunge compensatory mechanism is your body wants to warm up you don't want to go into bed warm you want to think of sleep as a state of hibernation and essentially that's what happens at sleep right is like there's a significant drop in core body temperature and the greater the drop in core body temperature the greater the propensity to spend in deep
• 95:30 - 96:00 restorative non-REM right and REM sleep right um so mouth taping like general consensus American Academy of Sleep Medicine like understand that nasal breathing is promoting the parasympathetic nervous system that's fine but if you're going to mouth tape like do it during the day to train your diaphragm to activate appropriately to then be able to breathe through your nose at night and not your mouth when
• 96:00 - 96:30 you're asleep the idea is right when you're asleep I mean you're not unconscious but you're in a subconscious state um and you need every bit of air you can get into your system and depending on what sleeping position you're in especially if you're sleeping on your back or if you're sleeping on your stomach you're not going to have the cool the full capacity to activate your diaphragm to take in air so if you're limiting the ability to take in
• 96:30 - 97:00 air through your mouth because you don't have a well-trained and strong diaphragm then you're setting yourself up for risk of apneaike episodes right um what about nasal dilators oh those are great yeah any reduction in mouth breathing and increase in nasal breathing will promote restorative sleep um and nasal dilators can help with that process okay so if you're going to use something up there opt more towards just helping air flow through the nose rather than blocking it through your mouth
• 97:00 - 97:30 that's a better approach how did you handle the jet lag last night right how do how would this guy or anybody else um when we're let's just say that the normal person is you know traveling once a month or so for two or three days right and let's just assume at least a three-hour change obviously if you're going a one hour difference it's not a big deal but um what can we do best to enhance if you don't want to call it jet lag fine like because it's probably not that but you get it time shifting like that multiple hours and I still got to do my business meeting I got to do my
• 97:30 - 98:00 work I got to do whatever I perform the next day well it's a whole process right and you know I'll give a shout out to my friend Andy uh uh who is the CEO of Flykit uh or Fountain Bio um actually his chief science officer Clayton and I we started in the same sleep lab as undergraduates at Brown University yes such a it's such a small world in human performance but it was an intentional process right like so what's in this fly kit is there are a certain pack of
• 98:00 - 98:30 supplements that promote um or that reduce inflammation uh so combination of fish oil high dose vitamin B um part cherry extract things like that um I also wore the blue light blocking glasses that are in the kit on the plane um you know I don't really watch TV or movies that's I know that seems like I'm a weird like psychopath but I just used them and I was reading right um and then
• 98:30 - 99:00 when I got to LAX um on the way to the hotel that's when I took the melatonin uh but I only ever take melatonin when I travel and that's only within the first day or two um to help coax my system into adjusting but once I'm adjusted I stop taking melatonin how much do you take typically what's an effective dose for you so uh effective dose for me honestly is 1 milligram but like anything over three is is that we find to like not it's the
• 99:00 - 99:30 ceiling effect really we've seen a lot of people you'll see a lot of recommendations of like five to 10 when we use it one would be about the high end as well like it actually really much more than that you're you're not getting right really anything we stay pretty low also stays around it's supposed to have a halflife like everything does but when you consistently dose it it stays around for a long time yeah oh well I will tell you so I'm one of those believers like I
• 99:30 - 100:00 think Oliver Sax is like this like he always in order to believe the things he studied neurochemically he would take them themselves so I went into since you went out to North Carolina I went into one of those um country Dollar General stores you know on the drive to work and I found a 20 Oh a 20 block of melatonin oh I took it
• 100:00 - 100:30 oh my god I was [ __ ] up for like two days oh I I believe you i don't Yeah I do not care what I was worried i was actually worried at first about taking it because I again I live alone so I called my wife i was like "Oh honey if I don't wake up in the morning like call 911." But I but they literally It was a twob block pack too so like some idiot could have taken 40 of them yeah like 40 that's so much but I took the 20 and I
• 100:30 - 101:00 was It took me I was like brain dead for two days we used to measure I was telling you this morning like we used to measure uh urinary melatonin so this is a metabolite right it should be metabolized it should be very minimal we don't need more but we did it and I would probably say I don't know over 10 times we saw people that were 20 to 30x upper range reference range values for melatonin and you're like whoa mhm like we don't have any sleep problems to fix here the reason you feel like a zombie all day is because you're sedated yeah
• 101:00 - 101:30 like you were sedated with melatonin constantly yep and just removing melatonin from them all of a sudden all their years of sleep testing issues gone right it's like just gone they're like "Oh you're just walking around sedated." Yeah and plus too they probably weren't getting the effective entries into deep restorative nonrem sleep you know nothing yeah yeah like they were on the classic stimulant um sleep drug cycle yep feel like terrible oh yeah yeah take a load of stimulants then you can't get
• 101:30 - 102:00 to bed so you take a load of sleep alcohol or Yeah just break that cycle so let's talk about sleep extension sure sleep banking what's the proper way to think about this why do I even care about it when is the best way to use it who should be thinking about it obviously all of us want to extend our sleep right right yeah you have parents it's like yes I would love to sleep more not going to happen so make your most convincing argument for how much do I need here and what are
• 102:00 - 102:30 the best principles around sleep extension so again it's that 20 to 30 minute rule right because that if you're extending sleep within a 20 to 30 minute um period then it's not providing additional physiological stress to the circadian system right because that's that's a delicate balance of uh maintaining or satisfying the sleep homeostatic system which is sleep amount and then circadian system which obviously influences sleep quality y so
• 102:30 - 103:00 that's the one way to start now sleep extension we use it in many different forms so napping serves as a form of sleep extension right you use napping essentially to repay off sleep debt um so if you're in an insufficient sleep state typically we would start with okay take a 20 to 30 minute nap now if you can't nap um because you aren't that person then that's when we go to okay
• 103:00 - 103:30 let's either put you to bed 30 minutes earlier or extend your sleep by 30 minutes earlier um or later in the morning um again that's done in a 30 minute interval um so typically what's practiced and folks um who do cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia who are trying to extend somebody's sleep is they'll have that individual um go to bed early 30 minutes or wake up later 30 minutes uh for a period of a week or two and then after that period
• 103:30 - 104:00 of time they extend it by 30 minutes here and there um I know you've talked about this before on the protocol it's it's physiologically impossible because the circadian timing system will not let you go from 5 hours to 8 hours it is not that simple um you know I see this a lot with soldiers who I've commanded and stuff who are now out of the army and that's the question they usually hit me up the most about is like "Hey ma'am like I'm trying to get eight or nine hours i know I need that and like why can't I just get eight or nine hours?"
• 104:00 - 104:30 person so I have to like explain to them this whole gradual process and they're there now but it took you know months you know six seven months for them to get there so usually is it fair to say 30 minutes per four weeks or 30 minutes per week like how how 30 minutes per week yep is that Yeah but even to that that's going to have uh a ceiling effect where at most you're probably looking at extending sleep by two hours at most y the other form of sleep
• 104:30 - 105:00 extension and this is something that we've studied in the lab again like we do lab studies to mimic what possibly could happen in combat situations is letting people sleep in for as long as they want um past their normal bedtime so usually we find that most people if they have like a two-eek period to be on their own you know or essentially like say they're on vacation or the equivalent of being in a scientific
• 105:00 - 105:30 study on vacation um they'll sleep for about anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour past their normal bedtime um and then when you put those individuals through a period of full-on sleep deprivation so we're talking about 40 hours of wakefulness all the way up to 62 hours of wakefulness sustained uh the rate of decline in their cognitive performance even their physical performance uh the rate of decline is less because they had that
• 105:30 - 106:00 sleep on the front end um to help um offset the um the sleep pressure how long do they have to bank that for is that a two week it's a two It's a It's a 10-day protocol we were using yeah so sleep an extra hour or so for 10 days and then if you were then to go into a situation when you are literally awake for 40 or 50 or 60 straight hours that sleep deprivation is going to have consequences but what you're saying is
• 106:00 - 106:30 that sleep extension prior to means you won't drop as far exactly now if you're chronically insufficiently slept uh before that point like you're definitely going to drop i can tell you that from when I was deployed so we did uh the longest I was awake was is almost 3 days but yeah we were um outside the wire with some people um and I was awake for legitimately two days so but that's where I used the strategic caffeine dosing strategy for the most part i mean
• 106:30 - 107:00 I still felt like I was completely drunk right you know the last 24 hours of being awake um but I used caffeine gum and even tried dipping for the first time which uh it's disgusting i hate that habit i uh I remember old hearing old stories of people pilots i think this was in World War II where they would take tobacco and put it like in their eyes oh wow but you know what i mean I'm not going to lie I felt like slightly
• 107:00 - 107:30 ill after I dipped for the first time and I felt I had like a little buzz but then that sleep deprivation kicked in yeah yeah yeah how does the military handle it in situations like that is just get through it just do whatever it is just get through it you know they are getting smarter about it um I think that you that's great about um you know the team of individuals I've worked with over the years is um that knowledge has now been taken out to the field and and I mean there's commanders out there who are now using all these you know evidence-based
• 107:30 - 108:00 science-based DoD back science principles to like be more effective in combat so it it is it's been really cool when it comes to sleep extension do people typically have an easier time sleeping in or going to bed earlier so that's actually where I think chronotype comes into play right is so for me my sleep extension would be right sleep in later um for you you might want to go to bed early that's that's I would pick that a thousand times over a
• 108:00 - 108:30 thousand every time like sleeping in is a struggle to me now albeit one of the things you just mentioned earlier is something we hear consistently which is when people say "Oh I can't sleep in." Mhm it's usually because they think that that's going to happen tomorrow right it's just like "Oh this thing happened i'm on vacation then like I woke up early." Well of course you did because you've been sleeping you've been waking at that at that time for 400 consecutive days it's going to take a few weeks for you to really consistently be able to sleep
• 108:30 - 109:00 in right right yeah so a sleep extension protocol is unlikely to be like again sleep in tomorrow when we've worked with people and we're trying to truly extend their baseline sleep so say they're getting an average of six and a half hours yeah we want to get them to an average of seven that is a at least a two week thing yeah that it takes to get to that night after night as soon as you get off that schedule you got to restart you know we have yet to find anybody who couldn't do it if they zoom out on time frame it is usually I tried it couldn't sleep in i tried it
• 109:00 - 109:30 again today it didn't work at all i just can't sleep in like no no your your your physiology takes some time right yeah to adjust i mean that's the thing right a lot of people want the quick fix right um you know just like it takes dedicated time to build muscle you just you have to trust the process right excellent i got one more question for you if uh you'd be so kind sure maurice Clarrett um oh okay boom boom mancini i could go on and on
• 109:30 - 110:00 what the hell is in the water in the air what is it about Youngstown like you come from this place you were uh uh I mean you're still active you still do the CrossFit competitions um first pole vault female pole var in the state of Ohio in the state of Ohio yep i'm assuming then first to to go compete collegially um knocked on the door of the Olympics what is it in that city you guys just produce super athletes for this random little city in Ohio what's
• 110:00 - 110:30 going on there it's so funny you say that well because you know there's that 30 for30 documentary Youngtown Boys right with Jim Trussell and I don't think I realized the community of athletics I grew up in until I went to college like I thought I was an average athlete right but then okay let's unpack my high school like I went to a big football feeder school youngsttown Boardman bernie Kosar went to my high school right yep yep um quarterback in our strength and conditioning room in high school and we didn't have like
• 110:30 - 111:00 really phenomenal strength and conditioning equipment and in fact I would say it was kind of like very bare bones equipment but you go into that strength and conditioning room and you'll see like 50 people from my high school who played in the NFL i mean my graduating class alone I graduated with 711 kids i would say 40 of them went on to play division one sports male and female actually that's
• 111:00 - 111:30 underestimate probably like 60 or 70 uh one um almost made it to the Olympics in swimming we had a WNBA player and then oh we had three kids in my graduating class who did actually play in the NFL and won Super Bowl rings yeah it's outrageous my brother's class had an NFL player i mean my So my great uncle was a Golden Gloves boxer he actually um he refed a Mike Tyson fight years ago my
• 111:30 - 112:00 other great uncle Lucy um he was a linebacker for the Giants uh but yeah it's like one of those things you don't realize until you go to college you're like "Shit I actually I guess I am an elite athlete but I always thought I was average because of growing up there." It's It's insane how what you think could be your baseline you go out into the world and you're like "Wow I guess I you know in this one capacity I am better than other people." And I had
• 112:00 - 112:30 no idea i'm I'm demanding more answers here uh my wife went to Long Beach Poly right modern day there's these schools in different areas in Florida stuff like "Oh yeah they put out 40 or 50 division one athletes every year great well you're in LA right there's 3 million people in a 20 mile radius youngsttown Ohio like what in the world how is it kelly Pavle like the list goes on and on so my dad is a butcher and uh he used to sell meat to Kelly Pavle so that's my
• 112:30 - 113:00 Kelly Pavle got all his meat from my dad so Oh there you go i I want genetic tracing i want some answers out of that city you know what it's the grit mentality right like no it's not isn't it no it's not you are drugging kids you're you're genetically crispering them you're doing something i don't care what you say about I grew up in the country i grew up my graduating class was like 70 kids not 700 and we probably had I don't know three or four kids ever in my high school play college football oh yeah i was like the second probably the first or second person to ever do it
• 113:00 - 113:30 well second or third you got you got 50 NFL players every year at your school it's unbelievable well in the area right you know like um because that's just Youngsttown Boardman where I went there's you know five other schools Maurice Clarrett right there like Warren Harding um Colonel Mooney also produced phenomenal athletes um I mean that's what I think you're taught early on growing up there probably still now um but back when I was in high school we had the highest murder rate in the
• 113:30 - 114:00 country like people never believe me but when I was a sophomore in high school we literally had the highest murder rate in the country and my mother like she worked for welfare so she was like in the center of that on the east side of Youngtown um in this plaza she worked in like that's where most of these murders happened um so I think you learned early on that like your ticket out of I mean because really to that area too i mean
• 114:00 - 114:30 what is considered middle class in Youngsttown is consider considered poverty everywhere else so like I you know in all honesty like grew up like lower middle class um and so you learn that your ticket out of town is being good at sports like it yes I love school um and so that helped but at the end of the day like my goal in life was to be an astronaut or an athlete right and I was able to at one point accomplish that and be an athlete but that's all you
• 114:30 - 115:00 think about growing up there it's like well LeBron too right yeah he's just that that whole man you know sports is king there i get it well I I uh when next time when you tap in here from Mars or wherever else you come in I I want answers about Youngstown i'm not letting you up for this so well just ask uh what's his name bruce Springsteen since he has that song of course yeah um thank you so much for coming out here i know it was a long trek and uh really
• 115:00 - 115:30 appreciate everything there's fascinating stuff and uh it's been a long time we've known each other for many many many years oh my gosh yeah i mean it's all through science right and then we all went our separate ways in academia and then outside of academia and Yep and it's always nice to see another scientist who's a true meatthead yeah exactly oh I I embrace being a meatthead right that's my book thank you so much of course i hope you enjoyed that conversation today with Dr allison Bger if you want to see more about Allison read more of her work grab her
• 115:30 - 116:00 book or follow along with any of her resources please check out the show notes for direct links thank you for joining for today's episode my goal as always is to share exciting scientific insights that help you perform at your best if the show resonates with you and you want to help ensure this information remains free and accessible to anyone in the world there are a few ways that you can support first you can subscribe to the show on YouTube Spotify and Apple and on Apple and Spotify you can leave us up to a five-star review subscribing and leaving a review really does help us
• 116:00 - 116:30 a lot also please check out our sponsors the show would not exist without them and their exceptional products and services finally you can share today's episode with a friend who you think would enjoy it if you have any content questions or suggestions please put those in the comment section on YouTube i really do try my best to read them all and to see what you have to say i use my Instagram and ex-profiles also exclusively for scientific communication so those are great places to follow along for more learning my handle is Dr andy Galpin on both platforms we also
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