206: Dr. Daniel Gartenberg, Sleep Scientist, Founder of SleepSpace: How CBT-I, Sleep Tech, and Holistic Support Can Transform Your Sleep Journey

 Welcome to the Sleep As a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep as A Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world. Thinks about sleep.

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Each week I'll be interviewing world-class experts, ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health, and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.

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This week on the Sleep As a Skill Podcast, I'm joined by Dr. Daniel Gartenberg, sleep scientist, Ted speaker with over 5 million views and founder of sleep space. Daniel is on a mission to change how we detect and treat sleep disorders, especially insomnia and sleep apnea using smart tech, real-time data and behavioral.

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Science. His work is backed by over $3.5 million in research grants, and he's developed one of the most accurate non wearable sleep tracking systems available today. We dive into how his own struggles with insomnia and sleep apnea shaped his career. The surprising truth about why most sleep trackers fall short, why you might have sleep apnea and not even know it, especially if you're a woman.

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So stay tuned and how CBTI, AI and Accessible Tech could help rewrite your sleep story, tune in to hear what happened when his sleep scientist became a new dad, and what it taught him about compassion. Consistency and the future of rest. Now we're gonna jump into the podcast, but first a few words from our sponsors.

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And welcome to the Sleep is a Skill podcast. I am very excited to have my guest here today. Thank you so much, Daniel, for taking the time to be here.

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Thank you, Molly. I'm so excited to talk to you about everything. Sleep.

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Yes. Um, I know we have a lot to discuss. I know even before we hit record, we're getting into the weeds and all kinds of fun topics, but maybe it would just be a great place to begin to start at the beginning.

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How did you find yourself into sleep? What is part of your passion and ties to this huge and important topic?

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Yes, I found myself in this space. Dealing with almost every, uh, major sleep issue. Myself personally, I, yeah. Yes. I think a lot of us relate to that. Um, yeah, so it began in high school, but I was honestly a bad sleeper since I was a baby.

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Uh, some people are sort of born with. Tendencies that make them a bad sleeper, whether it's, you know, for me in particular, it was colic, uh, which led to being a very bad sleeper and other habits. I think as a young child, I had a racing mind. Um, and then I had something called delayed sleep face syndrome in high, which is actually very common.

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Sure. Uh, Wendy Drexel gives a great TED talk about this. Yeah. Uh, at the school start time is actually completely. Wrong for teenagers biological clocks. So, uh, for whatever reason, high school usually starts super early and grade school usually starts late later. Uh, it should actually be the opposite 'cause as we're teenagers.

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You're more likely to become a night owl. There's an evolutionary biology reason for this to possibly break away from your parents during this time. Yeah, and I was dealing with insomnia for quite some time in high, in, uh, college, in high school. And I ended up taking a course, um, by, uh, um, uh, Juliana 10 and, uh, Kiara Elli, uh, at the University of Wisconsin where I went to, uh, undergrad.

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And that just got me hooked on sleep. And since then, I, you know, ended up studying it for my dissertation work. I studied, uh, vigilance, which is how people lose attention from being fatigued. And I ended up recently identifying that I, uh, after I gained 20 pounds from having a kid and everything, yeah, I have a mild case of sleep apnea now.

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So I'm dealing with a lot of the things and I've learned a lot. And basically 20 years of studying sleep.

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Wow. Oh, I so appreciate you too, sharing your journey from your formative years, but also even more recently, I so appreciate that because so many, it's not like we learn about sleep and then we're just done.

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There's gonna be different times in our lives. Like you pointed to having a kid, changes in weight, hormones, all stress, all kinds of things can bring about where we might have thought, oh, we're, we're good to go in this area. And then surprise, surprise. Something happens. So really appreciate you kind of humanizing this topic.

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So I know you've been at the helm of really creating some solutions for people, and maybe we can begin there. Like what has been part of taking this passion and then turning it into some systems for people? How have you done that and what does that look like?

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Yeah, so you know, it actually began with something called the Quantified Self Movement.

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Yes. Oh, Kevin Kelly. So good. Yes.

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So. You're aware of the editors of Wired Magazine. Uh, Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf started this, uh, when they identified in Palo Alto, Sanford area, that there were people starting to use wearables to track their sleep. Yeah. And there were some people go really deep, you know, these are like data scientists, uh, in like the, um, late.

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Uh, you know, zeros in the two thousands and, you know, 2010 sort of peaked a little bit. Um, and so I was actually one of the organizers of the quantified self Movement when I was in grad school. I ran the DC chapter. Wow. You know, there were so many interesting things about sleep. I was trying to track my sleep with a hexo skin at the time.

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I'd actually developed one of the first apps on the app store. It was called Proactive Sleep back then. Wow. And I was tracking exercise, mood, sleep, all these things. Um, and so, you know, I, I always believed that technology could improve sleep and it's sort of not done that quite yet, in my opinion.

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Yeah.

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Um, you know, we have these things that give us information, our sleep, about our sleep, but.

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You know, once we know what the Aura or the Fitbit says, what do we actually do about it? Right? So my passion has been on the what do we do about it aspect. And I built a series of solutions and I totally agree with your assessment of sleep across the life cycle. You know, I thought I had it down when I was a biohacker.

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Um, yeah. And then it kind of slipped away from me. You know, I shouldn't. You know, I only have so much willpower and I have the stress of running a company as well. Uh, I'm not one of these like crazy biohackers that, you know, obsessively optimizes myself. I'm a guess a little bit more of a mad scientist where

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yeah, I let

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myself slip a little bit, I guess.

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I

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understand totally.

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So I believe in creating technology that does more than just tracks. It goes beyond tracking to actually enhance it in various ways, and it's a complicated. Uh, question of how to do that.

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Absolutely. Well, one, I think we can all relate to that. I mean, I dealt with that myself just this past year of like mounting stress and then suddenly there were certain nights where then my sleep was suddenly I'm dealing with things that I hadn't dealt with with my sleep and changing my hormones and bringing to from the topic of, for women in our late thirties and changes that start to happen and then how that shows up in our.

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Sleep. And it was a humbling experience for me of like, oh, okay, I'm not done. Gotta keep, keep learning the skillset of sleep. And so really appreciate that and sharing of that. So what have you created for people where it's starting to bridge that gap where instead of just data for data sake, like actually getting in there and fundamentally making a change?

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Yeah, so my, my theory was always, was always sort of more on. How do we augment the specialists?

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Yeah.

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So I wasn't trying to replace the specialists. Um, and I got a series of grants from the National Institute of Health, basically trying to show that when we make technology that augments the recommended treatment for insomnia, which is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, as you know.

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Yeah.

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Um, the problem is there's literally like. A thousand, maybe 2000 trained people in behavioral therapy for insomnia, which is why there's this huge health gap. I mean, the medical system has failed us miserably when it comes to our sleep health. So yes. You know, doctors, very few know about sleep. They may be get two hours of didactic training on sleep.

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Yeah. There are, you know, specialists. Mm-hmm. But as I mentioned, you know, the CBTI kind of behavioral therapy for insomnia specialists, usually a psychologist is few and far between. You know, there's sleep centers, they're mainly dealing with apnea. Um, and there's not that many sleep centers either. Right.

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But 80% of people with obstructive sleep apnea are undiagnosed. And the bulk of people with insomnia turn to addictive substances or, um, you know, things like Ambien, which might hinder their slow wave sleep. Their deep sleep, and then they get Alzheimer's disease, which is Yes, sort of what I was studying.

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So, wow. I'm trying to figure out how to, so we ran a randomized controlled trial with this grant on older adults showing that when, uh, they used our software that when a psychologist used our software sleep space. They did better on remission metrics, um, for insomnia on the insomnia severity index, which is mm-hmm the gold standard, uh, measure.

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Um, they did better when they used sleep space than when they didn't, and then also they did better on both compared to a placebo of sleep hygiene. Um, so that was our recent, uh, randomized control trial. Okay. But there's a lot more a about all that.

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Sure. Amazing. Okay. So fantastic. So you've delved into that and then seeing what can really move the needle for people.

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And you created an app, if I'm correct, right? Yeah.

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So it's an app. It integrates with all the wearables, but it also has a wearable sensor of the phone. Mm. Because I'm actually not a big fan of wearing things while Sure. Yeah. I sleep necessarily. So, um, we actually detect micro motions through a mattress.

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You can also put it on your bedside will integrated with, or a whoop apple watch, so it'll track your sleep. But what's unique about it is almost every tracker analyzes the sleep after the sleep has occurred. There's a few exceptions to this. I'm created one of the few exceptions where we'll measure your sleep stage every 30 seconds.

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And then actually adjust sound based on that. Um, we call it a dynamic sound machine. Um, sure. And I gave a TED talk about, uh, this thing called deep sleep stimulation. Mm-hmm. Um, we implemented that to some degree within our system and ran some studies on it. But basically the gist of it is imagine you have, we call it a sleep journey.

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You have ocean waves that play or a meditation during your wind down. All your lights turn red. We'll integrate with smart lights. Then a sound machine will play in real time using something called a temporal convolutional neural network. Uh, we've instantiated this model on the iPhone or Apple Watch, or the Android phone.

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Um, we'll measure sleep every 30 seconds and ramp up a sound machine based on that. And then, uh, also try to wake you up in a lighter stage of sleep with a sunrise wake up. Um, and so that's what I've built to augment typical CBTI. And then it has the AI coach and integration with the um, CBTI expert. And you can create dynamic contents for different programs and stuff like this.

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'cause people have different sleep challenges.

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Sure. Absolutely. And this is something too that can serve, there's different options, if I'm correct on the price point. So if some people have felt maybe out of the conversation in certain trackers or there's subscriptions and they're expensive and all these different things, if I am accurate, if, if I'm right on this, you have some accessible price points, right?

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Yes. I mean, my whole thing is only charge people when it works for them. So we actually have a, a 30 day free trial with, uh, sleep space.com/sleep is a skill. Amazing. And so you can try it for 30 days for free. After that, it's 9 99 a month or, um, oh, doable. 49 99 a year. And we make a little bit to keep the lights on and of course, yes, even challenging sometimes.

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Um, and then, you know, if they want, they can level up with various other solutions. Um, you know, we have accessible ways to get at home, sleep tests, um, for sleep, things like sleep apnea. And then I have this little phone charger that activates and smart light. That activates other, uh, features of the app as well.

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Oh, wow. Okay. Very cool. So people could be using this app and so maybe it's out of their price point or they're not interested in tracking to your point of rent wearing something or what have you. So then they test out using sleep space for 30 days. They get this value from it, they keep going, and then.

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Could there be certain signs from, and I know it's not diagnostic necessarily, but could there be signs from the app that they might wanna get checked for disorders? Yeah. So we'll

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measure snoring. Mm-hmm. So, um, you know, we're doing a lot of sensing on the phone, basically, like the phone is actually a better sensor in some ways than any wearable you'll ever buy.

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Hmm. So there's actually two accelerometers in every iPhone. Most and accelerometers are motion sensors. Um, so it's a very accurate motion sensor, more accurate than any aura. Whoop, Biot, Strapp. You know, I've tried 'em and worked with 'em all. So, um, you know, you can only get so much accuracy without wearing something.

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But the idea is, uh, we put the position, the phone in such a way by the side of your bed. Um, that it's can measure the sound on your side of the bed and also the micro motions through the mattress. Um, and we use that to play sounds more precisely on your side of the bed. 'cause like my wife like, sounds much louder than I do, honestly, when I'm sleeping.

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Oh my gosh, yes. Navigating

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the partner is like a whole thing. And

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yes, I.

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When you throw the baby in the mix, that causes a whole nother thing.

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Another reason to check out, uh, Dr. Wendy Drexel, she's actually one of our most popular podcasts around sharing the covers her book and how to share the covers well and thoughtfully, so I love that.

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It sounds like you've thought of that.

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Yeah. And there's a, uh, I had an article split Blankets, not beds, but sometimes it's nice to cuddle up your loved one as well. Like Yes, that's an important thing as well, and. There's really beautiful stuff with like our heart rates sink together when we sleep. It's a real bond thing, you know?

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Totally. A hundred percent. Yeah. We had, um, you've probably seen that crazy robot, sleep robot. Have you seen that thing?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Som necks or something. Yes, yes.

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Yeah, I know. Something along those lines. Som knock, som necks, something along those lines. Yeah. And we had had them on the podcasts and they were speaking to different research around syncing up heart rates with like mother and child or father and baby and whatever.

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So yes, I mean, it's a

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real thing. I mean, think about like when I'm watching my baby all the time. Sure. I'm like belly now. It's like. It's real. You know, the baby's really sensing that beat of the heart. It's such like, yes. Primal prim. Yeah. Thank, primal.

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Yeah, totally.

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Actually the deep sleep sound is sort of a similar frequency as that.

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I always sort of think that there's some aspect to that and it's almost similar to like the frequency of a boat, of a ocean wave too. Mm. So, uh, you know, playing the delta, this is a whole. Deep aspect of the technology of like, there's some evidence that if you play a sound at the same pulse rate as a delta brainwave, that it primes the brain state.

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Uh, it's very hard to do that though. Um, and you probably need to actually wear something to do it accurately, estimate it to some degree and have a paper showing that you can do it to some degree, but, Hmm. Um. The problem with playing sounds throughout the night is if you play the sound too loud, it can easily do more harm than good.

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Yeah. So

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that's the thing with this, with the technology is it's hard for the tech to do, to not do, first off, you gotta know yourself, but sometimes the tech can do more harm than good.

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Mm-hmm. Yes, I absolutely get that.

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But anyway, so we'll measure snoring to go back to the topic. Yeah, sure. And like for example, once, uh, we measure snoring.

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We notice the person snoring, you can listen to it at night. 'cause a lot of times it's like the wife or the husband being like, you've gotta hear this. Yes. Because they have no idea what they sound like. Um, and so that's often the first step in someone getting on this path to actually solving this issue.

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Hmm. I had no, my wife was complaining that I was snoring when I gained some weight. I didn't really think that I would have sleep apnea, but. I use this at home sleep test called westburn. Mm-hmm. There's other ones that you can try as well.

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Sure. Uh,

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there's a bunch of them out there, but, you know, around 2015, the FDA sort of changed some of the rules with billing for this, some of this stuff, so.

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Mm-hmm. It's now people think you have to go to a sleep lab and get connected to all these things. It's not like that anymore. Right. Um, and, uh, so this is, you know, something that we'll do is we'll tell people they should actually get, um, diagnosed. I went through this whole process with the Westbrook device and I ended up, um, for myself, I ended up getting an MAD made and so, Hmm.

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Sure.

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Head on over to eight. Sleep and use the code. Sleep is a skill, all one word at checkout for a discount. I am so glad you pointed to and reminding the listener, or maybe just sharing for the listener the fact that it doesn't have to be an arduous task necessarily anymore. It doesn't have to only look a particular way.

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Like you can only go into a sleep lab and be all hooked up and it can be intimidating for a lot of people or feel like, you know, maybe expensive or you only got one shot, or what if I don't sleep, or all the pressure and all that. Whereas now we can also have at-home tests for at least certain types of sleep disorders.

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And then if it peaks our interest or we suspect other things, you know, then they can certainly of course check out in lab. But there are these things available now and doesn't have to be such a big. Thing. And so more people, you know, you probably saw Apple Watch coming out with their sleep apnea testing just announced and withings with the the pad that people can now sleep on to also test for sleep ap, I mean, it's just going to be so prevalent.

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There's gonna be so many people that will soon be diagnosed that we're just running around having no clue. But to your point, it sounds like your product can help make this available for people and help illuminate if they might. Be wanting to check something like this out. Right.

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No, yeah, totally. And the accessibility, you know, 80% of people are undiagnosed with sleep ap.

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Yes. It's wild. It's, I think possibly the most, the biggest public health issue that can actually be prevented. Like we have solutions for this problem. It's not like, you know, heart disease where like. We, we can't, we don't know how to solve it. You know, some aspects of it and heart disease has come a huge way, or cancer might be a better example.

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And bidirectional relationships with the heart disease and, you know, sleep apnea. Oh, yes.

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So who's strongly related to Cardiometabolic Health? I mean, yeah. I mean, I think almost anyone who's like 10 pounds overweight. So I think that, you know, so about, probably around 30 million people have undiagnosed sleep apnea, like around 10% of the.

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US population have sleep apnea and 80% of those people are undiagnosed. Um, but I think probably one in two has suboptimal breathing. Hmm. So, yeah. You know, as you're aware, the threshold for being diagnosed with sleep apnea is five or more hypopnea per hour. So that's literally you are choking Yes. In the middle of.

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Five or more times per hour. Now I don't about you, but I don't wanna be choking four times an hour. I don't wanna be choking three times an hour. A healthy person should probably have zero to one HYPOPNEA per hour. Yeah. And I think it's probably the number one cause of not getting enough deep sleep or REM sleep, um, is suboptimal breathing throughout the night.

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So I'm trying to make that a bigger thing. And as you're also aware, probably. It's actually related to insomnia. There's a new thing. Esa, um, comorbid in insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea, because about half the people that have obstructive sleep apnea also have insomnia, right? 'cause these things come together oftentimes,

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right?

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Which can be so. Disturbing is so frustrating for people, and especially if they don't know that that's what they're dealing with, and now they're just waking up throughout the course of the night, maybe having difficulty falling asleep and they finally get asleep. Then they're waking up with all that choking that you mentioned and yet maybe aren't clear on the source.

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'cause I mean, how many people do we speak with that think it's just the problem is that they have to go pee so often throughout the night or what have you. Right. Like the misattribution error.

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Totally. I mean, yeah, they don't realize that the peeing. Yeah. Is actually symptom of light sleep from apnea.

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Right? That's one of the signs. And that's right. Maybe, I mean, I would like the signs that people don't know. Yeah, please. Like acid reflux. Like, that was me. Um, I kept having really bad acid reflux and I think that was, um, a sign for me obviously being a little bit overweight and I, you know, recently I'm learning more, um, you know, grinding teeth.

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Sure. The dentist can probably see this to some degree. Um. You probably know some, there's, there's a bunch of typical signs, uh, feeling like having a dream of like not breathing throughout the night or waking up, guessing, obviously snoring, erratic snoring in particular. So if it's a rhythmic snoring, I'm thinking more deviated septum or something like this when it's like jagged and I actually have a YouTube video where I just record an example.

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Oh, nice. Listen to that. Oh, that's

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helpful.

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For anyone who wants to try, uh, just like listen for themselves what it sounds like. Do you have any other, I know there's more, there's, there's a question. Oh, sure.

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Totally. Morning headaches that fatigue signs of

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bragging,

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falling asleep, you know, at the movie theater or just on your couch or what have you.

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Just these situations that maybe usually warrant that level of fatigue throughout the day. You pointed to the teeth grinding, certainly we can see that for a number of people. We've also been speaking on things like tongue ties. Your, what you called that about the deviated. Septum. So some of these things that can potentially go along with some of these respiratory based problems and in a big bucket.

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I, I have a high alert allergy to dust mites and that, that was a nice hack for me with the allergy. Oh my god,

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you're just like my husband. So my husband had almost the same thing, allergy to dust mites, and then discovered mild sleep apnea as well. And he was having acid reflux before he discovered that.

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And yeah, it's, it's one of those things where not wild. It's not like he's alarmingly overweight or something, you know? Just, I think it's so important for us to normalize this. Right. And you know, I think we might have thought of this kind of archetype of what the person looks like with sleep apnea. And we're so disrupting that now and seeing that just about every, I mean, I always say so bias because I will call out my bias that I would love to see just everyone tested for sleep apnea.

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Yeah. Right. And not just one, but hopefully it should be part of

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the GPS protocol. Anyone who's like, I'm sure you're interested, I'm learning more about this recently. So many women

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Yes.

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Who are completely healthy. Yeah. Yeah. Have upper airway resistance. Yeah. Um, and you know, this is basically women's physiology.

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They're less likely to have the full on hypopnea, uh, because this, um, definition of course was created by men for men in a way. Yes. Yeah. Um, so. There's probably a lot of women that sort of, maybe like a smaller jaw. Mm-hmm. Uh, totally healthy and stuff, but they are definitely have upper airway resistance, um, which is hindering their sleep quality.

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Have you. I'm sure you've looked into some of this.

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Absolutely. Yeah. We've done a lot around kind of these myofunctional conversations too, and that also, but for women, looking at what things look like commonly before perimenopause and then during and after, and how some of their risk profiles can shift and so.

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Looking at upper air resistant syndrome being such a missed component for so long. And even if people, we've seen a number of individuals that had sleep tests years and years ago and because they were judging them kind of on a different set of systems and you know, ways of kind of a framework that is a little different now where we have a bit more nuance nowadays where we might say, oh, okay, well maybe it's not exactly sleep apnea, but upper air resistance syndrome.

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We have signs for that. Can we. You know, look more deeply into that and explore that. And then also women as their, the risk profile going up as they navigate through perimenopause and beyond. And that's a big one. Like I was at Stanford for the sleep event and they were kind of sounding the alarm on what they deemed to be the most at risk population that are kind of overlooked population.

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And that was the. Women over around 40 and beyond that often is assuming that they wouldn't be a candidate for sleep apnea and yet very much could be, even if they were tested before and were negative, they could develop it, which is such an interesting thing.

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Yeah, I mean, I'm learning more about this. I think there's hormone shifts in perimenopause and menopause, especially around like gaba.

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Um, yeah, definitely. When you have sleep apnea, you have less gaba, which is the most common inhibitory neurotransmitter. Um, so, you know, the, and more other people know more about this aspect of it than me. I'm a, I'm just an experimental psychologist. I'm not a nutritionist or, uh, neuroscientists. But, um, yeah, I think that, you know, this population of people, you know, we have this archetype of.

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Someone with sleep apnea is fat and lazy and it's just not. So we have to change that,

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just not so, and I appreciate what you said too, but the challenges that appear, so then we might be dealing with sleep apnea and then it's paired with insomnia. And to your point, we might see, unfortunately, so on this topic of GABA people, then historically, at least in the past, and sadly we.

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Still see this people going, being prescribed things like benzos or Z drugs, and then that can act in this area of the brain responsible for gaba, which could even further augment some of our problems and shift our breathing. So, you know, it could be a big, big topic. So I'm so appreciative of someone like yourself trying to help support people.

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So back to utilizing your app, and then I'm excited to hear how you're managing your own sleep. So we'll transition to that in just a second, but putting a kind of a bow on this big, big topic. For people listening that are saying, okay, well maybe I'll test out this app. Maybe I haven't been tracking per se, or I wanna get into this conversation so they can expect to get information back about how they're sleeping, as well as information on their snoring or their partner snoring, and then even delve into this testing piece too, and maybe sleep coaching as well.

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Yeah, so we also have 30 sleep coaches that have expertise in every aspect of sleep, and I think some of 'em have been on your uh, podcast before as well.

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Fantastic. I love that.

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We have experts in, you know, baby sleep training, which is a whole field in and of itself that yes, I'm learning about through personal experience.

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We finally got it under control mainly, but, you know, oh, well I'm glad to hear

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that I, that's an area that I always say like, I do not touch the topic of kids. You know? It's just such a huge, yeah. As of now, anyway, we eventually, I'm sure we'll delve into that, but right now it's just such a big topic, so I acknowledge you for navigating that successfully.

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We figured it out now. We, we had some setbacks, but

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yeah.

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And then, uh, you know, everything from how to address nightmares to interacting more with your dreams, to, you know, issues falling asleep, staying asleep. A lot of, uh, we, a lot of our content and coaches speak to the biohacker. That's sort of who typically resonated with most.

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Um, they're sort of the enthusiasts in, in this space. Um, but we're, I'm really trying to find a holistic solution that combines the best, um, behavioral and non-addictive, um, safe pharmacological interventions with FDA approved sleep testing. And, you know, I, I've looked at this a lot. I've trying to, I'm trying to find like non melatonin substances that Mm, yeah.

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Can push people in the right direction. When they're dealing with a sleep issue. And I believe in the idea of combining a behavioral solution like my software with something like CBD from CBD Distillery, um, which I know you've worked with Yeah. The past, um, to, you know, something more like a, a GABA intervention with MD Bio Wellness.

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Which is, which is a company that I'm, I'm playing with right now as well. So I'm trying to combine a lot of things together to give the like ultimate 30 day solution for your specific sleep issue.

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That's so great. I appreciate that too. And you know, 'cause there, there is an exciting area to delve into around C-B-D-C-B-N, some of these conversations and it doesn't have to all throw the baby out with the bath water of some of the kind of put lumping things with.

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THC or what have you, CBD can be its own bucket and can play nicely potentially.

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I'm like not a big fan of the th as you know, I'm sure it hinders REM sleep, the psychoactive component. Um, so, but CBD doesn't have, doesn't have,

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yeah.

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Active. That's not gonna happen. And there's good evidence, you know, it's anti-inflammatory.

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Yeah. And you're not gonna get addicted to it. And it's not, um, the safety profile is really good. And I almost don't wanna say this, but 'cause it could hinder what I'm about to say, but the placebo effect is huge.

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Yes. Um,

‍

so if you combine something that is safe and somewhat effective. With the behavioral stuff.

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Mm-hmm. Which can sometimes be a little onerous. Onerous. Mm-hmm. Um, and actually getting at the root of the problem with something like an at-home sleep test, I think that that's a winning solution for people. Um, and it can be done very cheap 'cause the medical system is too much of a mess to deliver this to people.

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So true. Any call outs on dosage that you suggest for people as far as the topic of CBD, or is it by individual in your estimation?

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I mean, I think it's, uh, it seems to be like the science is showing that it's maybe a larger dose than you might think.

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Yeah.

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Uh, like you can take a lot of CB, D and like I was talking to one researcher the other day, and I mean, he was like.

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I think like 500 milligrams or, or something like that, which is a large, but the, right, I mean, I think the thing to do with this stuff is you start out with one, you know, usually these, you know, it comes with, you don't wanna take 10 pills at night probably. Right? But, uh, you start off with a smaller dose and you know, you're not gonna overdose on, you know, C, B, D.

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Right? Um, so. That's, that's my current perspective.

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I love that. No, so well said. Amazing. Okay. So, so appreciate you sharing about some of these things that people could explore to navigate their own sleep. And we have every person that comes on the podcast share about how they're navigating their sleep.

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And I know you've already alluded to certain things that you've had kind of new breakthroughs around and new changes, new parent, all of that. So excited to, to learn more from you. So our first question is, so far to date, or at least right now, what is your nightly sleep routine looking like?

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Yeah, so now my sleep routine is actually somewhat yoked to my baby's sleep routine.

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Oh, I bet. Yeah. So I have a

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whole ritual for him, you know, putting him to bed. He usually goes to bed around seven. Um, and we'll have, I think it's really important actually. Um, well, I'll read him a bedtime story and it's like part of my routine too, to some degree. Like I'm reading myself this bedtime story as well.

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Um, and everything will be read in our whole apartment, basically totally from 7:00 PM onward. Mm-hmm. Uh, we don't want it read to the extent that like, I have to squint to read his book. Um, but basically as dimly. Readily lit as possible. Yeah. Readily is a word, but

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I love it. It totally fits, fits on this podcast.

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Yeah.

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Amazing.

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And we try to keep it that way. Um, I'll put him to bed, you know, usually we'll eat dinner, talk about our day. Um, you know, my, my wife will go to bed early, read a book. I'll actually, 'cause I have no time anymore.

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Yeah. I'll do

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something called a third wind. Um

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Okay.

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But I'll actually u usually do a little iteration of work after all this.

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Sure. You know, after dinner I'll do a little iteration of work. It actually, I try not to do something that'll like stress me out too much. Yeah. So it's usually more like an, a more enjoyable part of my work.

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Hmm.

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Um, and then, um. I'll either do a box breathing exercise or just listen to ocean waves through my app.

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I love that.

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And I'll start that out a little bit before I go to bed. And then, um, basically at, at when I go to bed, uh, you know, I'll do my wash up thing, you know, brushing the teeth. That's part of the ritual.

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Yeah. Um,

‍

get my MAD put it in.

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Yes.

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And then put my phone in the, in the sound machine thing, um, while I have the nano on to make sure that I listen to the baby if he needs me.

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Oh, sure. So that's aspect of it.

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Oh, I bet. Oh my gosh. And did you see changes once you started using the oral appliance for as readouts on the sleep space?

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Yeah. Oh, oh, sorry. Okay. So here's a really important takeaway for everybody. Yeah. The pulse oximeter on almost every consumer wearable is not gonna give you granular enough data.

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Data, yes. It tells you anything about sleep apnea. Yeah. Um, I'm happy that Apple is surfacing this now. Mm-hmm. But they almost did a disservice in the past. Yeah. Just example. Um, apple outputs, pulse ox symmetry data. I think it's like every hour, but that's like totally inconsequential one. Exactly. You have to, I know, keep measuring it multiple times a second for it to be consequential basically.

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Yeah. Uh, so like a lot of times people come to me and they're like, my O ring says my pulse socks is 95 the whole night. It's like, it doesn't mean anything. I

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know. It doesn't mean anything. I know. So that's

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why you really need to get the these at-home sleep tests to answer that question.

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Absolutely. The

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answer is no.

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I didn't get any difference in the, in my app, but I did retest my at-home with my at-home sleep test. Sure. And I went from like an a HI of like 10. Mm-hmm. So I can a HI of like four to five basically. Oh, good.

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And how about on the snoring amount? Uh, did that and

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my wife says I never snore with the thing when I, when I wear the thing.

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Yeah.

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When you wear the thing.

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And actually, I sometimes will try not.

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Yeah.

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Because I'm that crazy math scientist That'll harm yes. She'll say like, I snored that night. You know what I mean? Okay.

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And would that show up on the app too? At least the snoring part? Maybe. So I would be able to listen to it. Yeah.

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Okay. Okay. Just wanna see as people as they have these interventions, because we've seen that with, um,

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we didn't show up on the pulse ox, but you, it would show up on the snore.

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Snoring. Okay. Yeah. 'cause it's been interesting. We had Snore lab on the podcast and they were speaking to that different like, you know, introvert Yes.

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Nor lab. Super

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legit. Very similar to Snore Lab. Yeah,

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very similar. Okay, cool. Amazing. Okay, well love that. Did we get the full picture of your evening sleep routine or did I interrupt some of that? No, that's

‍

pretty much it. Yeah. Okay.

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Beautiful. Okay, amazing. And then for your morning sleep routine, we say that with the thinking that how you start your day could impact your sleep.

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What might we see there?

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Yeah, so if I'm waking up not naturally, which is, you know, honestly. The right way to do it is naturally you, you know, wake up when your body wants to wake up.

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Yeah.

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That's not the case anymore with the going

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on. Yeah, I bet. Totally.

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So I wake up unnaturally now. Um, and so it's, I do 5 28 hertz gradual wake alarm clock.

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Nice. Nice. So it starts out almost imperceptible. Mm-hmm. And it ramps up. I set it to a 10 minute period and it like a 10 minute window. Sure. And that allows me to get a little extra sleep, like maybe a couple minutes extra when I am extra tired.

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Mm. Basically, yeah.

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Then the lights will actually go, um, from red to super bright, and then the lights in my bedroom will be super bright.

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And then I have a bunch of chores I have to do basically for, for my wife.

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Okay, fantastic. But that consistency sounds like it's there and as we know for CBTI, opting can be supportive for our sleep. So that sounds great. Any light callouts or anything for you in the mornings or?

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Yeah, I mean I used to do, right now it's the Life X Smart bulbs.

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They get pretty bright when I wanna really take it to the next level. In winter time I'll use something like a ux. Um. By my workstation. That's a nice hack that I like. Um, any 10,000 lux level lamp will work. There's a bunch of them. Um, so, so that's a reasonable, I like that hack too. I like the safe, uh, natural kind of things.

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But yes, obviously the best thing is, you know, you can't tell right now, but I'm outside in the sunlight. Um, so 30, absolutely 30 minutes is sunlight would be key.

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A hundred percent. Yeah. No, that was a big part of when I moved here to Austin, it was just for, one of the reasons was for the ample amount of sun and days of sun and being able to easily and comfortably, I should say, be outside of, you know, a bit more than I grew up in Maine of all places, and so the winters would be kind of brutal.

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Yeah, I hear you. That's a really good call. Amazing. Okay. And so then what might we see on your nightstand or maybe if you're traveling or something kind of proverbial nightstand or in your ambiance or space?

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Yeah, so the cool thing is about my setup is I have my phone out of arms reach. Mm, yeah. Foot of my bed, so totally.

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You know how like Arianna Huffington takes it to like the next level?

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Yeah. So the tucking in. Yeah. Yeah.

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She gets like a love a bed for her phone. Uhhuh.

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Yeah. Tucks

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like outside of the room.

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Yes.

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Respects. But yeah, I'm using the phone as a sense, like the phone is important part of my tech stack. Totally. But I also wanna navigate the addictive, you know, this thing is like Right, it's a slot

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machine.

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Yeah.

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Part of what I'm trying to do is navigate that tension, and so basically the phone is at the base of the bed out of my, I can't just grab it in the middle of the night, so there's nothing on my nightstand except for my MAD in a book, basically. Um,

‍

good. Yeah. I, we've been seeing and a water. Totally.

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Yeah. That's been quite this through line that we've seen out of all these episodes that often the people that are doing pretty well with their sleep often don't have a ton of things that they're almost dependent on or reliant on. You know, maybe they have a few key things, but it's been interesting.

‍

Some of the people that are maybe still struggling a bit with their sleep often have this huge, you know, arsenal. Yeah. Right.

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Oh yeah. I've definitely had that with, you know, I've done like hundreds of. Consults with people that struggle.

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Yeah, there's

‍

definitely, um, sleep is about letting go and you have it in your own body's ability to do it.

‍

Yes. You don't necessarily need anything else to do this natural process, you

‍

know? Ah. I love that you say that. I think that's such an important reminder. 'cause when we can be in the throes of it, we, our brains can play tricks on us and then think, oh, well maybe I used to be able to sleep and then fill in the blank.

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Then I had a kid, then I had surgery, then I had, you know, menopause, whatever the heck people say. So I think that's an important reminder. We can sleep. Okay. So having said that then the last question would be so far to date, what would you say has made the biggest change to your management of your own sleep?

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Yeah. So it's changed throughout my lifetime. Yeah. So I guess the answer to this in college would've been more, um, um, conceding or succumbing to the facts that I am a night owl.

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Yeah.

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Building my schedule around that chronobiology.

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Yeah. Um,

‍

but, uh, so that was one of the big ones then, um. Later on it became more sound, light and temperature.

‍

So pitch black, right. Temperature, not too much light. Optim really optimizing the bedroom for Yeah. Sex only. That's it. Yeah. Uh, it's like all the stimulus control things. Yes. Then, you know, in the past, well with the baby, really the main variable is getting the baby to sleep.

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Yeah. Predicted

‍

my sleep more than anything else.

‍

Um, but before that. It was really getting at the root cause of the sleep disorder that I had, which is yes, sleep. Yeah. You know, you can do any stack you want, but if you're not treating the root cause of something like sleep apnea with A-C-P-A-P or an MAD, uh, there's other things too that, um, you know, we can get into another time maybe.

‍

Yeah. But, um, you know, adding all the hacks or the cold plunges or the red letter or whatever, they're not gonna do that much.

‍

Um, totally. I.

‍

So it's like getting at the root cause first, and then maybe you can sprinkle in some of the biohacks after.

‍

Exactly, yes. I've had so many conversations with different biohackers and I think, I wanna say Dave Asprey has been a big proponent of your product, right?

‍

Yeah. And in your app, right? Because I wanna say maybe, was it during Covid? I can't remember. But I feel like he did different features of your app and offerings over the years. Right. And so lots of different conversations with biohackers and they're so, and they want to often know what they can do to make a difference, but I think it's just.

‍

Goes back to what you said. There's been such a lack of proper education around this thing that we do a third of our lives. So on average, 26 years are spent to sleep, and yet we're not helping to support people to make some of these fundamental changes that nowadays we can maybe under 200 bucks we can test you at home and change your life, you know?

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Yeah. So, yeah.

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Yeah. With the whole thing with Dave and like total respect to Dave and everything, but I think sometimes the biohacker

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Yeah. Will

‍

speak to the biohacker. Um, and you know, what I'd recommend to the biohacker is very different than someone that's actually dealing with a sleep disorder. So well

‍

said.

‍

It's so much of like knowing yourself, like

‍

yes

‍

know thyself. And then go from there. And that, that's sort of what preach to people. Oh,

‍

that's so important. Yeah. And we're trying to really help distinguish more of our content too, because some of the things that we might be speaking to from an optimization perspective would be very inappropriate in a lot of ways for someone dealing with insomnia or certain other sleep disorders are beyond.

‍

So, yeah. Perfect example

‍

is insomnia. Don't nap optimizer. Take a para advocate, help concrete, uh, example.

‍

Yeah, totally. A hundred percent. So well said. Uh, well, I know we've only just scratched the surface and I definitely want people to be able to check out your offerings, products, et cetera. So what are the best ways for people to do that?

‍

Yeah, so we've activated this 30 day free trial for anyone listening right now. It's just sleep space.com/sleep is a skill. Get it for 30 days. Cancel any time, no harm, no foul. If you do 31 days and you contact me, I'll also give you a refund, so,

‍

oh, very generous. I appreciate that. Human element. Yeah.

‍

Amazing. Well, we'll be sure to put all that in the show notes and just thank you so much for your time and also your vulnerability in sharing your own sleep journey. I mean, that's so I can so relate to exactly what you're sharing and you know, just the difference that you're making for so many people is so evident.

‍

So really appreciate it and more to come.

‍

Thank

‍

you, Maui. Awesome. You've been listening to The Sleep Is A Skill Podcast, the top podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out the Sleep Obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet.

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Fun Facts. I've never missed A Monday for over five years in counting, and it contains everything that you need to know in the fascinating world of sleep. Head on over to Sleep as a skill.com/newsletter to sign up.

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