The Longevity Loop Podcast
Hey, I'm Brent Wallace, and it's exciting to share my podcast, The Longevity Loop, with folks who are interested in the topic of anti-aging and longevity science who, at the same time, are dedicated to growing their longevity-focused business, whether that be a brick and mortar clinic or an eCommerce endeavor. I'm 100% all in on helping people who run clinics and businesses that focus on helping folks live longer and healthier lives. It's my mission to help spread the word about living longer and helping others live healthier lives.
In each episode, I chat with bright people who know a ton about living longer and staying young while also knowing how to operate a profitable business.
We talk about health spans and the technologies behind them while also digging into how they get more customers for their businesses and what tricks have worked best for them.
I hope that you, the listener, love listening to all the valuable knowledge of what others are doing in today's longevity economy, hearing about what's working for these experts, and where they might need a little help. It's like getting the inside scoop on running a successful anti-aging business while learning some excellent tips for living a longer, healthier life.
If you're into staying young and healthy, or if you've got a business that helps people do that, you'll love this podcast. We keep things simple and fun, so you don't need to be a scientist to understand what we're talking about.
Join us and learn how to live longer and grow your business simultaneously!
The Longevity Loop Podcast
Unlocking Better Sleep: How Sleep Extends Life
Quality sleep is the foundation of longevity and overall wellness, serving as "the tide that rises all boats" for physical health, emotional wellbeing, and cognitive function. Devin Burke, founder of Sleep Science Academy, shares his expertise on optimizing sleep for health and longevity, breaking down the science of sleep cycles and addressing misconceptions about sleep requirements.
• Sleep directly impacts telomere length, which affects our lifespan and healthspan
• During sleep our brain's glymphatic system cleans out beta-amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's
• Most people with chronic insomnia get stuck in trying to control sleep, creating anxiety that prevents natural sleep
• The concept of "bed dread" describes how many people develop a toxic relationship with sleep and their bedroom
• Morning light exposure (natural or artificial 10,000 lux light) is crucial for regulating circadian rhythms
• Short 20-minute naps or full 90-minute naps are optimal; anything in between can leave you groggy
• Sleep efficiency (percentage of time in bed actually spent sleeping) is more important than total hours in bed
• Creating mental space during the day to process thoughts prevents racing mind at bedtime
Sleep Science Academy has a 97% success rate helping people with chronic insomnia through their holistic approach that addresses both physiological and psychological aspects of sleep. Check out Devin's new podcast "Your Sleep Coach" for more sleep optimization strategies.
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Do you want your longevity business to crush it this year? You are in the right place. Every week, we're diving deep into cutting-edge longevity science and profitable business strategies. You'll discover what's working right now for top clinics and get practical ideas to boost your own business. I'm your host, brett Wallace, and this is the Longevity Loop Podcast. All right Devin. Welcome to the Longevity Loop Podcast. All right Devin. Welcome to the Longevity Loop Podcast. We are live.
Speaker 2:And I am excited to talk sleep with you. Thank you so much for the invite. It's good to see you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good to see you too, man we were just discussing just right before we went to hit record on the show here. Yeah, it's nice to catch up. To hit record on the show here. Yeah, it's nice to catch up. You're there over in Utah, there enjoying the benefits of mountains and the outdoor lifestyle. Well, I am here in Austin sweating it out already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, it's a great place. Austin's a great place, and also outside of Park City is a great place as well. So just for reasons yeah, exactly Exactly, outside of Park City is a great place as well. So just for reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, exactly, that's the thing is like. I always want to figure out that arbitrage of like living in a great place during the summer and then living in a great place during the winter which Austin definitely checks that winter box but the summer it gets a little hot, so at some point that'd be cool to live in the mountains, either Colorado, utah, something like that. So I guess that's a conversation for another time. But I did want to welcome our audience though. This is going to be a comprehensive, pretty comprehensive show. Talking to Devin Burke, he is the founder of Sleep Science Academy and so, as you can guess by Devin's company's name, it's all about sleep and getting the best sleep of your life, which Devin definitely knows a lot about. So in this podcast today we're going to really provide a structured approach to really exploring the intersection of sleep science and a little bit on.
Speaker 1:My specialty is longevity and if you've been following the longevity, you know news and everything. You always know. Anything from Peter Tia to Brian Johnson always talks about. The foundation of a longevity and a long, healthy life is sleep. That's like the most baseline thing you can do, probably other than exercise. So it's awesome to have you on Devin to discuss this thing. So one thing you know we've known each other for a while now, but it's fun doing research. I'm like, hey, you know, like looking up you. One of the things that I found was you're considered one of the top 25 health coaches in America and that's a pretty incredible distinction there. Yeah, could you share the journey that has led you to become such an expert and passionate about sleep science?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it was actually. It was eight years ago. I was well, first and foremost, I studied a lot of different things before I studied sleep, so I've always really been interested in the human body, human performance. So I got into a doctoral program to be a physical therapist right outside of when I graduated college. But I realized I'm like, ah, that's just, I just didn't feel, didn't feel aligned with what I wanted. And so at the time I discovered health coaching and this was about 15 years ago and actually maybe even longer, and I didn't know what health coaching was. It wasn't really a big thing back then. It was kind of like a new, upcoming, I guess, profession. And so I started to study nutrition, holistic lifestyle, through a health coaching program based in New York called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. They're still around.
Speaker 1:I was actually sorry to interrupt, but I was actually a graduate of Integrative Institute of Nutrition as well. So, my gosh, something I didn't know yeah, yeah, so that.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of my transition from physical therapy into, like, this whole world of, as you know, they do a really great job of introducing you to a lot of different things. It's not just necessarily from India, although I have studied with some Indian gurus, but like Tony Robbins and Brendan Burchard and all different types of programs and courses and seminars, and so then I was attracting a lot of high performing individuals, people that run businesses and companies and families and decision makers, and it was more of a health and performance coaching. Most of them had trouble with their sleep, and there was one person that really had trouble with his sleep and he's like listen, I don't want to take sleeping medication. What do you know about sleep? And honestly, brent, I didn't know anything about sleep.
Speaker 2:I was like sleep, like I don't know, you just put your head on the pillow, and so I was like, give me a week, let me see if there's anything. I'll do like massive research and see if there's anything available besides sleeping pills. I found this thing called CBTI it's cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and I was like, okay, that's interesting. It's more of a psychological approach, talks about sleep hygiene and something called sleep restriction or sleep scheduling, and I started to kind of dive into a little bit of the underpinnings of the psychology of what helps someone sleep.
Speaker 2:I knew about the physiology, but it was really the psychology that when I started to study, I was like, long story short, started experimenting with some things that I was learning from that approach, as well as something called ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy and some mindfulness, and it was sort of a blend of these different techniques and we started to help this person. I was like, all right, well, if I can help this person who was really I mean, he was in it then maybe I could help more people. And so that kind of set me on a rabbit hole of studying sleep science, getting some certifications in sleep, continuing kind of to develop our formula and protocol, continuing to test different things with different clients that had sleep challenges, continuing to get better and better results, and then once I really sort of cracked the code and I was consistently getting great results for people, that's when I founded Sleep Science Academy and that was about eight years ago.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice. So I know you categorize people into three sleep buckets, right, or three general areas that these people are, and these people are people with minor sleep issues. And then the second bucket would be the biohackers looking to optimize, which I would probably consider myself part of that bucket. And then those with the chronic insomnia. So it sounds like perhaps what led you to just focus on the people with chronic insomnia is that first experience there with that individual.
Speaker 2:It was really because that's the most painful place to be when you're really having trouble falling asleep. When you're having trouble staying asleep, no matter what you do, what supplement you take, even if you're taking heavy medication, and you're still not sleeping, it really does. It's such a painful thing to experience so that, yeah, I just kind of fell into helping people in that realm that have tried the medication, had tried the supplements, have tried the sleep hygiene and the things that a lot of people talk to. I'm sure we'll talk about some of this stuff on podcast, which can be really helpful for the other buckets.
Speaker 2:But if you find yourself in that chronic insomnia bucket, which is people that have trouble either falling asleep or staying asleep more than three days a week for longer than three months and it's affecting their life that's the technical definition for chronic insomnia the things that work for everyone else actually can be the things that keep people in that bucket stuck, which can be so frustrating. When you're in that bucket because you're like, well, my room's cold and dark, I'm not eating for two hours for bed, I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses, I'm taking magnesium, I'm taking a hot bath, and what's kind of interesting is if you ask somebody that's in that bucket what they do to sleep, they're going to give you like this huge list of all of these things that they feel like they have to do and they're still not sleeping. And if you ask somebody that's kind of in one of these other buckets maybe not the biohacker bucket, but the other bucket where people just it's not really an issue but they're not really optimizing it they're like what do you mean? I just lay my head on the pillow and I close my eyes and go to sleep, and so they do literally nothing and sleep happens. And this other, these other people are doing everything and it's not happening.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of the information and the recommendations is very contextual within each of these buckets. So I'll make some caveats, depending on when we're talking about hey, how do you improve the quality of sleep or insomnia, what bucket this would be good for and what bucket it wouldn't be good for, because it is important to have that distinction.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah, I can imagine people could probably self-assess what bucket they're in, you know, just based on the sleep that they're getting and you definitely know if you're chronic and that definition of chronic sleep, you know problems, or chronic insomnia as you put it. They have a definition that you just gave out which is awesome you know three more, three or more months, three times a week or more, and then you can kind of self-diagnose like, okay, I have a chronic sleep condition. So that's a real helpful, helpful thing to know. So sleep this is such a great conversation already Like I'm so excited about this. Sleep is just so amazing.
Speaker 1:I say that I've never really had an issue sleeping, but I do put an extra emphasis on that second bucket there, that biohacker bucket, let's call it, where you know I'm doing the magnesium, I'm doing, you know, the glasses and no screens and really trying to optimize. You know not eating for a certain window before bed and really trying to optimize that, and I do it from a longevity perspective, right. So kind of combining these two together, you know blending. We know that they're very interwoven, right? You can't have longevity without having great sleep, and then getting great sleep equals longevity. I did come across a podcast that you did in the past Longevity Codes. I think it was in 2021, 2022. And you really went into the longevity sleep connection. There. You talked about the sleep advantage for health and longevity. What are some of the key mechanisms through which quality sleep does impact our longevity and health span?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Matt Walker has this great quote. He's and Matt Walker is an amazing sleep scientist.
Speaker 2:He says sleep is the tide that rises all boats and in boats one of those boats is is physical health and longevity. The other one is emotional health, right, relational health, performance. Literally, when we're getting sleep, all of those things, when we're getting enough sleep and enough quality sleep, all of those things are improved. And when we're not getting enough sleep or enough quality sleep, all of those things are negatively affected. So, as far as longevity goes, well, we know that it's during the night that all of our cells are repaired. It's during the night that there's something called the glymph system. It's like the lymph system for the brain. Actually, there's a liquid that washes over your brain and washes away beta amyloid, the plaque that builds up, that creates Alzheimer's and dementia.
Speaker 2:There's so many things when we are asleep. There's so many things that are taking place that we just don't even realize. When we're not getting enough sleep, all-cause mortality, everything from heart attacks to diabetes to obesity. That's a contributor to all of these lifestyle things that most people take people out right. Heart attacks, diabetes, obesity these are the things that shorten people's lives and all of that is directly connected.
Speaker 2:If you're not getting enough sleep or enough quality sleep, your risk of all of those massively increases when you're getting enough sleep.
Speaker 2:Not only is it allowing your physical and mental body to be restored, but it's also your telomeres are that you want your telomeres to be nice and long, and there's a lot of research that shows, genetic research that shows that people that get enough sleep and let's talk about what enough is so cause that's a little bit of a. For some people, enough could be six and a half hours. For some people, enough needs maybe it's eight and a half, nine hours. But when you're getting the proper amount of sleep for your body, it protects your telomeres. It allows your body to restore, to clean out the cancerous cells that we all have floating around in our bodies so that we can live long, healthy, energized, productive lives. It's, I mean, it's one of these things that most people just don't really think about because we're not conscious when we're doing it. But it's so, so critical and it is one of those things that when you really focus on and you focus on improving the quality of that sleep and getting enough of it consistently, it's so worth the effort.
Speaker 1:So I want to double click on something you just said there, because this I mean, even for me, I've got the whoop strap, so I feel like I've got the data that shows. Okay, you slept enough last night. Your sleep need was seven and a half hours or whatever, but you said that differs for different people, right, it could be six, six and a half hours to eight hours. Is there a way to tell? Maybe if you don't have the data back up, or maybe even the data is making me askew, thinking I'm getting better sleep than I am Is there a way to kind of tell that, hey, I'm in this camp here that I need a little bit less sleep, versus I'm someone who needs a little bit more sleep?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is. So one of the ways is just do you wake up feeling refreshed? Do you wake up feeling actually refreshed? And most people, to be honest, say no, I don't. That's mostly because they're not getting enough quality sleep. And it also depends on your lifestyle. So it depends on your unique genetics.
Speaker 2:So there's, we're born into this world with a certain set of genes. Some of those genes are connected to sleep. Some of those genes are connected to you know how well we sleep, what time we sleep. So you can kind of look at your unique sleep genetics to kind of give you the appropriate time that would be optimal for you. And also, it's just your sleep duration is going to change over the course of your life. So, for instance, if you're an elite athlete, you're going to need more sleep. If you are an elite mental athlete, like a chess professional or something like that, you're going to need more sleep. As you age, your sleep architecture changes, yes, so depending on how much stress physical or mental stress you have in your life maybe you're going through like a really difficult time in your life you're going to need more sleep, that's. It really does fluctuate. But generally speaking, if you wake up and you feel, you feel refreshed and you feel like your body and your mind has been restored. You're probably getting enough sleep.
Speaker 1:I guess that's a great metric. Just to say, hey, I'm feeling refreshed because a lot of times you know and we can talk about alarm clocks right now too, but you know what your thoughts are on those but when my alarm clock goes ever since we had our first child to reclaim my day back, I have to get up at 4.30, 535, 530, wake up really early before my son wakes up, because that's my time to really re. You know, read, get my time back. However you say that that's the right way to say it. But you know, to buy back my time, I guess. And so I know that when I was first doing it, I wasn't changing my bedtime, I was just like, you know, 930, 10 o'clock, that's good enough, I'll just wake up, I'm just going to be tired. And I resigned myself to thinking, hey, I'm going to be just tired, I'll push through it. It's cool, even knowing these sleep principles, right. But the thing that really changed me, you know, just talking about waking up refreshed is that I've made sure my bedtime you know the whole thing shifts like this, right? So all of a sudden I'm waking up earlier, but I'm also going to bed a lot earlier now. So now most nights I go to bed around 8 pm and that 530 doesn't really feel, where the five o'clock doesn't feel quite as early, and I do wake up refreshed.
Speaker 1:But the one thing I will say that I do use an alarm clock. I have an Apple Watch that is pretty non invasive as far as you know, because it vibrates on my wrist and then sometimes I'll wake up. You know, just right before, like five minutes before I wake up, you know, and I don't know if that's my subconscious mind or I'm waking up because I am well rested and that's. You know that thing. And again, using the data of the whoop, you know, I kind of came to those bedtimes.
Speaker 1:What do you think about using an alarm clock and waking, naturally with that refreshed attitude? And also the other caveat, like you said, a professional athlete, I know the days that I go for a really long run or bike ride or a gym workout, I will need probably an hour more sleep because I'll wake up and I'm going to be sore. And you know, part of that recovery I'm like, hey, I need to go back a little bit earlier tonight because that's what I'm able to adjust is what time I go to bed versus what time I get up, just because the time that I need to work, just what are your general thoughts on that alarm clock, natural waking up, feeling refreshed, those type of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, first you're doing it right If you're going to really surrogate our surrogating clock to really tune and set that we want to wake up the same time every single day and if you're waking up right before your alarm clock, that is a healthy sign that you've trained your circadian clock to wake up at that time and that you're probably getting enough sleep if that's happening consistently for you. And so it's not ideal to wake up to an alarm. It's not ideal In an ideal world and this isn't everyone's world and it's not reality, because we have jobs and we got to be places and we have to get up. But you would be waking up when your body naturally wants to wake up. So you're not using an alarm, it's just kind of naturally happening for you and you can train your body to go to bed a little bit earlier, wake up a little bit earlier.
Speaker 2:There is ways of kind of shifting your circadian clock and that takes time and it can be painful to do for some people, but you can do it. You can do it and I think I'm a big believer of going with what's natural. So for some people some people are more evening type people, some people are more morning type people. Some people are somewhere in between their chronotype that's like your sleep genetics is your natural chronotype. It's best to try to honor that Now again, some people can't honor it because of their job or because of their lifestyle or because of something that's going on in their world. But it's kind of like you're born into this world with certain genetics to be a certain height.
Speaker 2:And if you're trying to, you know, do something, that you're trying to be an NBA player and you're four foot tall, yes, it's possible, it's a little bit you're you're, you're swimming upstream, is what I'm saying. Yeah, so if you can honor your natural body's rhythm and if you can do things to support your natural body's rhythm, like getting up at the same time, like making sure that you have sun first thing in the morning, watching the sunset, getting outside, getting your feet on the ground, these are like really simple, easy to do things that really help train our body to know when to start to get sleepy, release melatonin and then also when to wake up, so you can again, you can train yourself to be more of a morning person, even if you're not. But I tend to tell people, listen, if you're not a morning person and you're forcing it and you're never waking up refreshed, even if you're getting to bed earlier, then maybe you want to think about it in a little bit of a different way. So.
Speaker 1:I've got a question there and I've never really found an answer for this. But you talked about sunlight and I hear a lot of people talking about get sunlight first thing. But a lot of times it's just not feasible. Like, where I live is pretty even days and nights. I mean, obviously there's there's shifts, but when I was living in the pacific northwest, during the winters it's gray, it doesn't get light till 7, 7, 30, 8 o'clock and if you're waking up at, say, five, like I do, is there an alternate way to get sunlight? I've seen, like brian johnson, have like the 10 000 lux light or something to that effect. What do you think about waking up with that kind of light, or maybe just waiting till the sun comes up? Or is there some way to get that natural light when there's not sun available?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can. You can definitely hack it with one of the blue lights, these Lux blue lights that are designed specifically with that light frequency. So you can totally do that. And it's you want blue light in the morning, you know the sun has one of the you know the frequencies of the sun is blue light and it's you want blue light in the morning, you know the sun has one of the. You know the frequencies of the sun is blue light.
Speaker 2:And so, as long as the device is designed for that purpose, it has been shown to really help people that are in those situations where the sun is they're waking up way before the sun. It helps with mood, helps with energy, just like you don't want that light right before you go to sleep. So it works the opposite way. It can be super helpful first thing in the morning. So for people that do live in the Northwest or wake up really early before the sun, that can be helpful and you can sort of just flick it on when you're brushing your teeth or kind of hack it in a way that doesn't make it add to another thing that you have to do. But I have heard a lot of people that have implemented a light like that say it makes a big difference for them when they consistently use it.
Speaker 1:That's great, that's great to know, because I just don't know. You know there's just so much stuff and people talking about it and you're like, well, I guess this works, but still artificial light and I imagine sunlight is the best. But yeah, like you said, it's just not always an option. So it sounds like the 10,000 lux is that the kind of minimum that you're looking at?
Speaker 2:There's different. I mean, listen, there's so many different companies out there that make so many different products, which makes it a little bit challenging to decide. I always am a big believer in look at the science and look at okay, well, what does this light give, the certain frequency that is needed first thing in the morning, and with a quick little research you'd be able to say, yes, okay, they invested in that, they know about this. The truth is, some companies it's just BS, it's marketing, and there's some companies that really do invest. They have the right bulbs with the light frequencies and the right amount of flux and all those things.
Speaker 2:So, if you do, I don't have a company that I could recommend, but I know from personal experience. I used to use one because growing up, I grew up in Philadelphia and I would wake up really early to go to basketball practice and then after school I'd have another basketball practice and in the winters, literally I wouldn't really see the sun and I would get depressed Seasonal I guess they call it sad or seasonal affective disorder and I was using a light like this and it massively, massively helped my mood big time, and so I know that they work and this was like man, this was a very long time ago, so the tech probably wasn't even that great back then, but it does make a difference for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's one of those questions, like I said, like you always hear people talking about getting sunlight in the first amount in the morning, but if you're an early waker that's just not feasible. So it's nice to know there is an alternative. If you are in the bucket, like me and it's something I actually don't have you know, I'll just wake up and I'll just go through my morning routine of breathing, exercises, meditating, but I'm sure a light while I'm brushing my teeth or something like that, would be super helpful as far as like kind of getting me awake and towards the day, you know, as far as like mood. And then also, you know, like you alluded to, helping your circadian rhythm, as far as getting to go to sleep later in the day too. I know that that also helps their sleep debt. That's something that you've discussed quite a bit in your work. Can you explain exactly what sleep debt is and can it be repaid? You know, that's another thing that I always hear, like people talking about it, and it's like yeah, you can, no, you can't.
Speaker 2:And how does?
Speaker 1:that impact our long term health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's something called adenosine that builds up in our bodies. Adenosine is a chemical that creates what's called sleep pressure, or you can think of sleep pressure as your body's hunger or drive for sleep. And, funny enough, caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors. That's what gives you that sense of alertness Adenosine. If you're not getting enough sleep, or enough quality sleep, every single night, that adenosine essentially gets flushed out. And so if you have a couple of challenging nights of sleep, you're not flushing all that adenosine out of your system and it kind of carries over into the next day.
Speaker 2:And there are two buckets of thought on this. Hey, can you repay sleep debt or is it something that you can't be repaid? And, honestly, depending on how you look at it, can you go back in time and change things? No, you can't right, so it just depends on how you're looking at it. So I don't think necessarily there are things you can do to offset it. You can't really repay. So what could you do to offset it? A nap would be an incredible thing to offset it, to relieve some of the sleep pressure. But for people again, people that have insomnia, napping is something that you don't want. You want that sleep pressure, that adenosine to continue to build up. So it's one of those things that it depends, it depends on how you're looking at it.
Speaker 2:But that's why, again, that's why with caffeine you don't want to have it too late in the day, because it blocks that adenosine receptor and we want that sleep pressure to build up and then we want it to get flushed out and rebuild again up for the next day.
Speaker 1:Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. One thing I was just listening to yesterday on Gary Brekka's podcast was he talks about the role of creatine and how that can actually help if you've had a poor night's sleep. You know not using it as a crutch, of course, but can really help with that during the day is using creatine, as it's something that can help with sleep debt there. So, but yeah, that's a good distinction, though. As far as not taking a nap, if you do have chronic insomnia because that's usually my way of dealing with if I'm really feeling tired or I got up too early or I didn't have a great night's sleep I will take a nap and I always try to take it a little bit earlier in the day, but that's a good distinction. If you do have chronic insomnia, don't do that, because it sounds like you're just going to be making it harder on yourself the next night, that night that you're taking a nap 100%.
Speaker 2:You want that sleep pressure to build up. It doesn't. If that adenosine doesn't get totally flushed out throughout the night, depending on which bucket you're in, dictates. Hey, do I take a quick 20 minute nap. And here's the thing with napping when you nap, either take a 20 minute nap or take a full hour and a half nap. And the reason for that is it takes about 90 minutes for a complete sleep cycle and it takes about 20 minutes for most people before they start to get into those deeper delta REM stages of sleep. Often, if you've maybe you've had this experience, brent, where you've slept past 20 minutes, but not quite 90 minutes, and you wake up and you're a little bit like groggy and foggy and you're like, oh my God, I'm like more tired than when I went to sleep and that's because you're waking up out of a deep sleep cycle and it's not ideal. So 20 minutes or 90 minutes, minutes, wow.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, I've. Yeah, that's funny, I don't have any data necessarily. There's like, oh, those are those days. But yeah, sometimes I absolutely feel that it was like, man, it's really hard to get up and you're just kind of foggy the rest of the day. Yeah, that must be. What it's been is that I've slept longer than 20 minutes, but not that 90 minutes which my naps never take 90 minutes. But yeah, that's a great little tip right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so 20 minutes for most people is a sweet spot, and for me I'll usually put like a timer on for 25 minutes, because it takes usually about five minutes to kind of start to drop into that first stage of sleep and then you're down, but you're not getting so deep into the sleep where when you wake up you're just completely like out of it and that can happen.
Speaker 2:To be honest, that can happen for people when they wake up, and this is where it gets a little bit confusing with the advice of waking up feeling refreshed, because if you wake up out of a deep sleep cycle because of an alarm, you're going to feel even if you got enough sleep and you get enough quality sleep you're going to feel foggy and groggy and like tired. It's going to feel like you just came out of like a nap that you spent too much time in, and so the cycle that you wake up out of also dictates how you feel, and that doesn't necessarily always mean that you had poor sleep. If you wake up feeling foggy and groggy, you might be just waking up in the wrong cycle feeling foggy and groggy.
Speaker 1:You might be just waking up in the wrong cycle. So is that something you could train? You're talking about, the very consistent wake-up time trains your body, or eventually trains your body. Is that something your body would naturally take as a cycle? It's like knowing this I'm waking up at 5 am every day, weekends included. Will your body adapt to know that that will come into a sleep, a lighter sleep cycle then, or is that just something that's just completely out of your control?
Speaker 2:No, I believe your body adapts. Now how it does it and how long it takes to adapt, I think depends on the person it does, and we know that most of our delta deep sleep happens in the first two cycles of sleep and for most people that happens before midnight. So it's again. There is. We are connected to the tides and the moon and this all and the magnetic forces of the earth, and that has an influence on our circadian, our body's natural clock and sleep-wake cycles. So there is some other external factors there as well, but our bodies are incredible. They're so adaptive. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:You can get away with not sleeping enough or getting enough quality sleep for a short amount of time, but eventually it catches up. And this is something that people really want to be mindful of, because a lot of times people get in these bad habits of time. But eventually it catches up. And this is something that people really want to be mindful of, because a lot of times people get in these bad habits of like oh, I only need five and a half hours or six hours. You know, in my twenties or whatever, I used to do that and I was fine and then they're continuing to do that and that's when they really start to notice weight gain. They start to notice daytime fatigue. Their hormone levels are dropping and it's just because maybe you could get away with it when you're 20, in your 30s or in your 40s or 50s.
Speaker 1:It's just your body needs more sleep. Yeah, that's something I always hear people talk about that when they're younger. I feel like I needed more sleep when I was younger, to be honest, than I do now, and maybe that's just how I feel. Or maybe I get better sleep now because I do have those you know quote unquote biohacks, blackout curtains, and you know the supplements and stuff. But that's interesting to know that. I mean just people different stages throughout your life, you're going to have different sleep needs. You know, as you being a new father and me being a fairly new father, that's something that definitely affects. You know, with the deep sleep, especially because if my kiddo is not going to sleep immediately, I can always see the direct impact on my deep sleep. And that rings true because if it's, you know, if I'm kind of getting woke up time and time again before that kind of midnight hour, so to speak, my deep sleep is shot and you know there's no way to really recover from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, the body's resilient. It's designed to have a time period, like when we have young children. To you know, it's like it's biological. So a lot of times people freak out oh my god, god, I'm not getting sleep. I need to get me to sleep. My boots keep getting thrown off Like it's I'm a wreck and it's like your body, our bodies are so resilient and that time passes right.
Speaker 2:Our kids get older. You're, you're not getting waken up so much to. If you're a woman to breastfeed or if you're a father to, you know, soothe and nurture. So it's like that. That's going to pass.
Speaker 2:So just, I always tell people just stay calm, just accept it, do the best you can If you can get a nap in during the day to kind of offset that. It can happen, but it passes right. The last thing we want is to get stressed out about it and a lot of times people we and we actually work with people a lot of moms that they develop chronic insomnia from having kids, because they're up breastfeeding, their kids are not sleeping and then eventually, through sleep training or just because the kids get old enough, their kids are sleeping through the night. But now they're not. They're still not sleeping. Now they're getting worried about it, they have anxiety about it and it's full full blown chronic insomnia. We have a lot of cases like that at Sleep Science Academy of moms. That kind of fall into that pattern and we're able to help them get out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure that's a thing. I mean my wife definitely. That happened to her. You know where she trained out of good sleep, you know kind of into bad sleep. You know just being, I guess, lighter sleep cycles probably evolutionary, I'm guessing. Just because you're tuned into that baby there's like, is the baby moving? Does he need fed? You know something like that. So one thing we're talking about I've got a question that I don't know the answer to as well but one thing we talked about before we went live was me and you have worked together in a marketing sense and one of the things that you're ranking number one for keyword now is deep sleep music, which is super cool. I was super stoked to hear that. You know that my help helping you with your marketing got you to that place where you're ranking really well.
Speaker 2:Number one? Not really well, I'm like literally number one on Google for that.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love that when that happens, because it's hard to get to number one. You know it takes serious work to get there. But I guess my question is sleeping music, noise machines, all those type of things, a fan some people use how are those conducive to sleep or maybe not conducive to sleep? Does that? Because one thing we do sleep with the sound machine to kind of drown out noises around. But I always can't help but thinking like is that just at some level subconscious, keeping me awake just because it's noise and maybe disrupting sleep? What about deep sleep music or a noise machine or a fan, something to help, I guess, drown out, you know, exterior sounds, or maybe just need that to go to sleep? What's your thoughts on all that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can be really helpful, especially if you live in a city or if you live in an area where there's a lot of outside, you know, noise that would disrupt your sleep, and there's different types of frequencies. There's white noise is probably the most common one that most people are aware of, but there's actually a lot of other types of noise that are great as well, like brown noise, pink noise. So, depending on the frequency of the tone, the frequency of the tone gets connected. They name it with a color, for whatever reason, and so now a lot of these you know, quote unquote white noise machines. They also have pink noise, they also have brown noise. They have different types of noises and different types of noises or frequencies impact us in different ways, and for some people it's extremely helpful. For some people it's not so helpful. So it really depends like to tell people don't you never, you never want to have to rely on something to have your environment be a certain way in order for sleep to happen naturally and easily. So some people are like they're, so they get so reliant I need my pink noise machine. Now they're traveling with their pink noise machine or their white noise machine and it's like okay, that's, that's. We never want to get to that point where we feel like have to have complete silence, or I have to have white noise or pink noise or brown noise in order to sleep, and there's a lot of research that shows that it can help. It can help us relax, it can help us fall asleep, it can help us get into deeper stages of sleep, and so it's very interesting. Not only noise. There was actually a study that just came out recently but smell and certain scents, smelling essential oils I think it was 226% increase in brain performance through. Wow, yeah, it was. I literally just was reading the article before we we jumped on here because it caught my eye. I was like wait, what that's insane. And so, so, yeah, so sound.
Speaker 2:Our environment definitely impacts the quality of our sleep, without a doubt. Light, the amount of light, the type of noise, the you know, air quality, the temperature. The two big ones, Brent, are temperature and light Sound. Of course, if you're living in an environment where it's really noisy, and of course that's going to affect our sleep quality, we don't want a lot of light. But again, this is the thing and you know this from having a child if you train your baby to only sleep in a blackout room, then whenever you travel you need to kind of like have this blackout little tent that you put them in, so like we're actually training our son to be able to sleep with some light in the room, to take naps with some light in the room. Just because it's you can become hypersensitive or oversensitive to light, to sound, and it just makes it a little bit more complicated. So I think that that goes for adults and it also goes for children, because we're really just big kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, right, because we're really just big kids. Yeah, yeah, right. So with just and just real quick, just back on the sound thing, because one thing came up does it matter if it plays all night? Or, and probably maybe it doesn't matter at all? Or I know ours has a timer that it will like fade out after like two hours or something is. Is there any difference to having to play all night versus, or is that just a preference?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it's just a preference. If, if it's really loud and if you're like wearing headphones or something, of course you could that could damage your hearing. I don't at least to my knowledge, I don't know there's any research that says having music play all night soft music or white noise or something is going to be detrimental to your sleep.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's a good little rule of thumb there too. So one thing that you talk about in your work, that you go way beyond just basic sleep hygiene and even, like you mentioned, the CBT-I Could you outline some of the key components of your holistic approach there? Your holistic approach there, because your success rate is phenomenal I think you say you have a 97% success rate with the people that come to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and these are people that have literally been chronic insomniacs for decades and are on, in some cases, like five different medications, and in eight weeks, we're able to help their body remember how to sleep naturally, with nothing.
Speaker 1:It's pretty cool, it's incredible.
Speaker 2:It is and it's not. Honestly, it's really simple. So a big part of the work that we do is look at patterns, pattern recognition. So what are you doing in your behavior, as well as in your psychology, that has the body not being able to fall or stay asleep? And a lot of times, what we found is there's some very common patterns that people fall into that they're not even aware of, that keep them stuck, in some cases for three to five decades, and relying on medication. And the first one is trying to control sleep.
Speaker 2:People try to do things to force sleep, and sleep is something that happens. We're born knowing how to do it, just like we're born knowing how to breathe. We don't have to think about our hair growing or our nails growing. Those things just happen. Sleep is something just like that. It happens, and a lot of times, people that are not sleeping well, they're very anxious about it. There's a lot of hyper arousal and they're doing things to try to force and control it, whether it's take a pill or some type of even healthier things like meditation or hot shower. They feel like they need to do something or they won't sleep, and so really, what we help people do is look at well, where are you trying to control or force something that isn't in our control and how can we let go of those things to create a higher opportunity for sleep to happen? So we look at a lot of times people have control issues connected to sleep.
Speaker 2:A lot of times there's a lot of negativity. The relationship around sleep is very toxic. People have what we coined bed dread, like literally there are people that dread going to sleep, like I love going to sleep, I can't wait to get in bed, it's an amazing time of the day. There are people that loathe it. They'll do sleep procrastination, they'll do like it's just. The relationship to their bed is so toxic. So we have to heal that relationship and help them understand that the bed is a place of safety and not of frustration.
Speaker 2:And so there's a lot of work that we do around that, helping people reframe their thinking around sleep and also beliefs. There's so many people that come to us and they say, well, my parents didn't sleep, my grandparents didn't sleep, my brothers don't sleep. It must be some kind of genetic and oftentimes, almost always, it's actually a learned behavior that's passed on. So people stay in bed too long, not asleep, and that's one of the counterintuitive approaches that we implement is if you're not sleeping, you don't want to stay in bed. You want to actually get out of bed because if you're awake you're anchoring wakefulness to your bed and bedroom and so we want to do that. So there's a lot of counterintuitive things that we do that logically don't make sense. But once you understand the mechanisms of the human body and also the emotions and psychology around sleep, it just really helps people be free of all these patterns and then sleep happens.
Speaker 1:What's funny that you mentioned, you know that, that resistance to the bed dread, which is such a great term, I feel like with our toddler it's like that he doesn't want to go to sleep, right, he wants to keep on playing with his Legos or his Play-Doh he's in a big Play-Doh phase now. So really, like you said, creating that environment of safety, you know, warmth, like he's going to get a story, and really encouraging him where, like, bed is like something he really wants to do because naturally he doesn't want to sleep, he wants to stay up, just because he doesn't know the value of sleep, until he absolutely crashes. Right, then he'll just crash, but that's just something like I can imagine, like people never really getting that reinforcement and then that just stays with them for the rest of their life, like you said. So just training our toddler is it's a big challenge, you know but also knowing like, hey, like we have to get this, you know, make it nice and cuddly, make the room cool. You know, making sure that.
Speaker 2:You know, make it nice and cuddly, make the room cool you know, making sure that you know he's equipped with the right things so he can learn his sleep rhythm and getting to know that. So that's a real gift to give your kids to really put in the effort to create that healthy association with naps and with the bed and bedroom and or crib or whatever is a real gift because you're really setting them up for for a healthy relationship the rest of their life. And a lot of times and very often, people that struggle from childhood with sleep issues it's because they really didn't get that type of nurture, nurturing attention, or their parents just didn't know Right, and so there's all this, even from childhood, like almost like trauma around, around around the bed and sleep. And so it is funny though, I watch our son he, he fights it as well. He's trying to keep his eyes open and he's, you know and you see him. It's like they're fighting it. They're like no, I want to stay awake, it's so funny.
Speaker 2:So it is, it is a funny thing, but it it is, it's so important. It really is one of those things. I think that when you set your, your children up from the beginning with these healthy associations, just you're really setting them up to win the rest of their life, whether you know, especially with sleep, because it's such a cornerstone. Or healthy eating, like not giving your kids a bunch of sugar, right, like what I was bad as a kid, it's like hot dogs and mac and cheese and you know it's just like. You know God bless my mom, so it's so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's one of these things. I think that, and if we treat ourselves like we treat our children, that's also a really amazing frame of mind to take. Like you know, reading a bedtime story, most people don't create the space to give themselves the opportunity to wind down and let go of the day and, you know, do something enjoyable or relaxing to then allow sleep to naturally happen, and that's something in this hustle culture that I think is starting to shift a little bit, and a lot of people still are. They don't really create the space to, to really honor that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like it's a lot of you just don't know, you don't know. So that seems to be shifting from my perspective as well. You know, you hear the importance of sleep and it's not. You're not like this badass, I can get away with four hours of sleep. Now people are like man, you're, you're dumb, why are you doing that? You shouldn't do that, you know. So it's no longer necessarily bragging rights, at least with some of the circles and the people that I hear.
Speaker 1:But one thing I want to touch on before we wrap this up is wearables and trackables. Right. So I know you partner with Oura Ring. I've got a Whoop strap. There's Chili Pad, there'ssleep.
Speaker 1:There's so many things on the market now that even just the basic iPhone, I think, if you have your phone in your room which obviously I'm sure you don't recommend, I don't recommend, but with the trackables and the metrics right, there's just so many different things to track when you help people or what you'd recommend to people. How should people interpret this information? Is there specific data points that they should be looking for? I know with mine, you know I've got the deep sleep, how much I'm awake, my REM. You know all these things. Are there some of those kind of high level points that they should be looking for to improve, or is it just I don't know, or what do you even think about them? I mean, obviously I'm sure you recommend them, since you do work with Aura. What would you say about the metrics to look out for and what can be improved or should be?
Speaker 2:ignored your sleep, unless you're working with a professional like us, because it can create more anxiety and frustration. You're just trying things as things aren't working. You're getting more frustrated If you're in the bucket of optimization and longevity and you want to just maximize that time that you're in bed. It's essential, it's so helpful. Now, they're not. Obviously, nothing's 100% accurate, but what we're looking for is precision. Is it consistent? And so that consistency helps us see trends and patterns in how our day and our behaviors and our things that we're doing and not doing, how they are affecting the quality and depth of our sleep. So we always look at, first and foremost, you want to look at total sleep time. So how much time are you actually asleep? So many people are under the impression well, I was in bed eight hours, so I was asleep for eight hours. No, exactly what I used to think. Yeah, me too, really. And so it's. Even if you look at your so, let's say you start to track using an Oura Ring or Whoopstrap you'll see that there's quite a bit of awake time, even if you're not conscious that you are awake. And the reason for that is because every 90 minutes when we complete a sleep cycle, we're essentially kind of coming up out of sleep, we're just not conscious. So there is a period of the night where you're actually essentially you're awake, you're just not conscious that you're awake. Now sometimes we might come into consciousness because we have to use the restroom or for whatever reason. We had a glass of wine and our body temperature shifted, and so looking at total sleep time is one of the metrics.
Speaker 2:Looking at the quality of your sleep and the quality of your sleep. Really there's different stages of sleep. Delta sleep is the deepest stage of sleep, and then there's REM sleep, which is dreaming, where we're dreaming, and both stages are super important. Light sleep is super important. So all stages of sleep are important. But looking at your sleep staging is a great indicator of how what you're implementing whether it's supplementation or lifestyle management, behavior management or whatever you're doing how that's going to impact your sleep quality.
Speaker 2:Then looking at your resting heart rate is a great thing. Your heart rate variability. How are you recovering from stress? Are you getting into restful sleep or is it restless sleep? These metrics, our heart rate variability, can give us an indicator of how much stress we're experiencing and are we actually getting into a deeper stage of body and mind recovery. So those are really some good metrics to look at. You could also look at sleep efficiency. Sleep efficiency is time in bed, asleep, and that's a great thing to look at. Just to make sure, ideally, if you're getting over, I want to say, well, 90% sleep efficiency is like amazing. But if you're 87 and above 87% sleep efficiency and above above that means that you're doing a really good job with when you're in bed, you're actually you're sleeping, versus tossing and turning.
Speaker 1:So those are, I feel like yeah, that that's some good like a template to put over what I because, like I said, I go to bed around eight o'clock most evenings and I get around, get up around five to five 30. So that's nine to nine and a half hours in bed. But what I always say, what I always see, is that my actual sleep is usually seven and a half to eight hours. Usually there's been an hour hour and a half of awake. I'm consistently into the 90th percentile, if not a hundred, on my whoop strap. So I think my efficiency is pretty good. But that distinction was when I made that shift of like, oh yeah, of course I'm in bed for eight hours, I'm getting eight hours of sleep. It's just such a misnomer, you know. You just add at least an hour to that. So, yeah, that's a. It's a funny one. So if someone's listening to this podcast, they walk away with one thing they could do tonight. What would you recommend to get a great night's sleep?
Speaker 2:digest their day, all the things that happen, it's often when they lay their head on the pillow and that's really the last thing that you want. So create some space throughout your day to process what's going on in your day, to release some of the stress or the tension that may have built up just from living a life on this planet in this time, because it really your day, your night reflects your day, and so when we focus on taking care of ourselves during the day, it really helps set us up for an amazing night of sleep. So don't bring your day into your night and create some space to sort of do some mental processing and emotional processing so that when your head hits the pillow and it's quiet, that really we don't want that to be the first time that you're reflecting on all the conversations you had, all the things that happened during your day, because that's just going to keep your body in more of a little bit of a stress state and it's not going to allow you to get the best sleep that you can get.
Speaker 1:So you say those things are you talking about, like journaling, meditating, any of those things. Just, however, maybe a walk, yeah, just however. Maybe a walk is like a you know, I guess people are going to deal with it differently but just some sort of space that you give yourself in order to process those thoughts and the day or whatever's worrying you, so when you go to bed you're not thinking about it as much, that's it?
Speaker 2:Cause the number one thing that keeps most people up is is their mind, is their, their racing mind're thinking about all the things they didn't do or wanted to do, didn't get to, or all the things they're going to have to do tomorrow or get to do tomorrow.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so we call it at Sleep Science Academy. Nexting like going from the next thing to the next thing, and most people, all day, they're going from a meeting to picking up their kids from school to a phone call to this. There's often isn't enough space between the next thing. So, even creating five, 10 minutes, it doesn't have to be a long two minutes where you're not on your computer, you're not on your phone, you're just. You can just close your eyes, focus on your breath, get outside, get some sun on your skin, drink a glass of water If you have the space, meditate or take a walk, do something, listen to some music, something that's going to like fill you up, versus constantly putting out energy. Most of us, most of the time, we're just putting out energy all day and there needs to be a little time where we're cultivating some of that energy, or else there's a lot of energy that we need to sort of cultivate to get the body in a state of relaxation, for then sleep to happen at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah, that's some awesome advice. That's some really awesome advice. So what's next for you and the Sleep Science Academy? Do you have any new projects going on research or offerings that people listening can look out for or a way to find out more about Sleep Science Academy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so we so I was telling you before we jumped on HitRecord we launched a new podcast called your Sleep Coach and there's a lot of great information on that podcast, and then we also launched a certification program for people that want to learn our protocol and our approach, how we're getting 97% success rate for people that have chronic insomnia for decades. So we're training doctors, we're training health coaches, we're training therapists, we're training anyone who really wants to learn these tools and go out into their community or into their networks and share them, how to get results, consistent results, and so that's a really exciting project and we're looking forward to really getting this protocol to as many people as possible, to get it out to the people that really need it.
Speaker 1:Man, that's really cool. And what was the podcast name? Again, your Sleep Coach. Your Sleep Coach, okay, cool, and I imagine that's on Apple Podcasts, spotify, all the normal outlets there, it is Any podcasting streaming service that you listen to you'll be able to find it Well Devin.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. I learned a lot and thanks for coming on about an hour with us today just going over all the cool stuff to help you get a good night's sleep. With that said, thanks everyone for listening in and we'll see y'all on the next episode. This is the longevity loop podcast.
