076: Round Table: Dr. Jay Wiles & Biohacker Babes (Lauren Sambataro & Renee Belz): Nutrition, Circadian-Centric Meal-Timing, Fasting, & Biohacking Tech

Welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. My name is Molly McLaughlin, and I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. Each week I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper.

Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training.

Welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. Today's episode is very different than any episode we've done so far. And I really hope you enjoy this format is a round table format. So you're gonna hear a lot more voices than you usually do on our. And we get into certain things around overall health and wellbeing.

And because it's, the sleep is a skill podcast, you're gonna hear things around, uh, circadian meal timing, some other things that you can do to, for instance, balance your blood sugar ways to think about some of the data that you might be getting. Certainly, you know, that sleep is a skill is looking at that intersection of technology, accountability and behavioral change.

So we're gonna go a little bit deeper on all things metrics and from some of these specific subject matter experts in various areas that I think you're gonna really enjoy. Now a little bit of background on each guest, Dr. Jay Wiles, he is a clinical health psychologist, HR V subject matter expert co-founder and chief scientific officer at Hanu health.

And just a side note, I have been beta testing, their new product through Hanu health, which helps you look at your HR V and modulate your HRV throughout the course of the day. Super cool tech. And I think you're gonna really enjoy that. Once more people have this in their hands, it's really, really. But Dr.

Jay is currently working as a health behavior coordinator at the WJB Dorn VA medical center in Columbia, South Carolina, and the Greenville outpatient VA clinic. He has specialized training in health behavior, coaching health assessment, nutritional interventions for mental and physical health motivational interviewing applied psychophysiology and consultation.

Dr. Wild works as a consultant for companies, organizations, practitioners, and individual patients on nutritional psychology, health behavior change applied psychophysiology and health promotion disease prevention via complementary and integrative practice. He's also board certified in Tai Chi for rehabilitation, and then some dear friends of mine, the biohacker babes that includes Lauren Santero and Renee bells, Lauren and Renee grew up in a health driven family that prioritized the fundamentals of wellness.

And self-care their father, gene, Sam, the original biohacker and pioneer of holistic dentistry. And quick side note. He has been on the podcast. Definitely recommend checking out that podcast, where we go deeper into sleep apnea and certain things available that you can use to help support your sleep apnea or to get it diagnosed.

Taught them the importance of individualization experimentation from a very young age, Renee, a certified and nutritional consultant and holistic lifestyle coach with a master's degree in nutrition and Lauren, a Broadway performer, corrective exercise specialist and functional health. Feel a strong passion and drive to not only share each of their journeys towards wellness, but their strategy and motivation to discover their own bodies through the world of biohacking, their podcast, the biohacker babes.

I had the opportunity to actually be on one of their episodes and highly suggest, checking out their awesome podcast, aims to create insight into the body's natural healing abilities, strengthen your intuition and empower you with techniques and modalities to optimize your health and wellness. And I am also participating in this round table.

And I think, you know, a little bit about my background as the creator of sleep is a skill. The company that is on a mission to help transform the conversation around sleep on the planet. All right. Without further ado, let's jump into the podcast. I think you're gonna really enjoy some of the conversations that we get into, and we're gonna do some more round tables in the future.

So if you have any questions that you would like to have answered from myself from Dr. J HR V expert and creator P new health, as well as biohacker babes and their immense knowledge in the area of health and wellness. Absolutely send those on over to us. You can go to sleep is a skill.com and in the lower right hand corner, we have a little sleep bot.

We like to call it and you can submit any of those questions there. So I get a lot of questions around sleep supplements, and I'm very hesitant to just throw out a whole laundry list of possibilities. One, I don't think it's the most responsible thing to do. I really do believe in testing to see what types of supplements make sense for you.

And two, because I really truly believe that most of the things that you can do to improve your sleep are behavioral, psychological environmental in nature, and often don't cost a dime. However, there is one supplement that I personally take every day and that I do feel quite comfortable with suggesting for most individuals to experiment with because of a couple of reasons.

It's high safety profile and high rates of deficiencies in our modern society. Some put the numbers as somewhere around 80% of the population being deficient in this one area. And that is magnesium. So magnesium has been called the calming mineral and some report that magnesium can increase GABA, which encourages relaxation on a cellular level, which is critical for sleep.

Magnesium also plays a key role in regulating our bodies stress response system. Those with magnesium deficiency usually have higher anxiety and stress levels, which negatively impacts sleep as well. Now before you go out and buy a magnesium supplement, it's important to understand that most magnesium products out there are either synthetic or they only have one to two forms of magnesium.

When in reality, your body needs all seven forms of this essential sleep mineral. So that's why I recommend a product from my friends over at bio optimizers, they have created something called the magnesium breakthrough and taking this magnesium before bed helps you relax and wake up, refresh and energized.

And while we don't recommend that you go two nuts on looking at all the sleep stage classifications on all your wearables. I will share anecdotally that many clients have reported improvements in their deep sleep trend numbers. Again, I don't want you going nuts on the sleep stage classification numbers on your wearables, but I do wanna let you know about that because I know that many of you do reach out on questions of how to improve your deep sleep.

So I also love that bio optimizers offers free shipping on select orders and they offer a 365 day money back guarantee on all their products. Plus they have a customer satisfaction rating of 99.3%. Very impressive, and you can get 10% off magnesium breakthrough. Again, this is the same magnesium that I use every single night.

And finally, you can get 10% off magnesium breakthrough. Again, that's the magnesium supplement that I use every single night by going to www dot mag M ag. So mag breakthrough.com/sleep is a skill and be sure to use the code. Sleep is a skill for 10% off. All right. This is a long time coming. I have been so, so excited for what all of our platforms are gonna experience.

Like, I feel like I'm talking to Hanu, but I'm not just talking to Hanu. I'm talking to two other podcasts right now. And to three other podcasters health and wellness influencers, biohacking extraordinaires that's because we, this is a round table. And if you're watching on YouTube on the ha. Welcome. If you're listening on all the podcast platforms welcome, uh, this is a round table of four.

Well, I'll say three extraordinary people. I don't know about myself. Uh, but three, at least extraordinary individuals who had like expertise in backgrounds in like all sorts of cool diverse areas. And that's why we really wanted to get this together was because we wanted to provide you with just like a really cool, like easygoing, like banter, reque, Q, and a style podcast with just the four of us.

And so welcome all three of you, uh, because I don't, won't throw myself into that mix. Glad to be here with Molly McLaughlin, Renee and Lauren, who are the biohacker babes. It's good to be here. Yay. Thanks for doing yes, I. Indeed. Thank you so much fun. Love this so much. Incredible. It's gonna be so much fun because I think that all four of us just come from unique, diverse backgrounds.

We have just different levels of expertise and knowledge and understanding. But one thing I think that all four of us would agree on are like we're people who have a background in something, but we like to practice what we preach and we test things like crazy. And so I just feel like that diverse experience and knowledge would just make for a really fun podcast, which is why we did this.

So welcome to you all. I think it would probably be best served that we all introduce ourselves and like, what is our platform? What's our background and expertise, even though to my recollection, I think we've all been on each other's respective podcast. Is that right? I think we've all been on each other's podcasts, right?

Think yes. Almost. Yeah. And you were maybe on twice, so the biohacker babes, right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Right. As well. So a repeat, it's not a great like cross pollination. It just makes a lot of sense. So totally. How about we run down the list? I can finish this off because I've been the one who's been chattering the most already.

Um, but how about Molly? You take it first and then we'll go Molly, Renee Lauren, cuz that's who I see on the screen right now.  perfect. Okay. Well, one I'm so happy to be here. I think this is just incredible such, uh, admiration for all the work that you all do. So this is just gonna be awesome. Uh, my name's Molly McLaughlin.

I own a company called sleep as a skill that helps people optimize their sleep through a blend of technology, accountability, behavioral change. Uh, we do have a podcast called the sleep is a skilled podcast where we bring on different sleep experts every single week to help people optimize their sleep in various, uh, areas of their life.

And we also have a weekly, uh, newsletter it's, you know, 206 editions or so of that every Monday for years, uh, online courses, et cetera, but, uh, really, really on a mission to help. It to really transformed the conversation around, sleep on the planet. So the more I can do that, uh, it's just an honor. And to do that today is gonna be awesome.

Yes. Awesome. Thanks Molly. And I will say like, Molly, you are, and I told you this, when we podcasted last, like you were like my go-to sleep person. So like, when it comes to like all things sleep, I'm like, what's Molly got to say on this. So I, you know, before we, we, uh, got onto this, uh, episode or recording, I was like, Molly, I want to know if you know anything about this and we'll talk that that's kind of the teaser we have for a question coming up.

Cause I'm super curious. And I feel like Molly will have at least some level of knowledge on it, so that's awesome. Oh, totally. Well, the feeling is mutual with you all too. It's I'm really not just saying that. It's like, you're my go-to HRV person. My biohacker babes. I talk about them all the time. They're fantastic.

Uh, so be sure to follow all these podcasts if you're not already following them. Yeah, totally, absolutely amazing. Yeah. I love it. Love it. I think you're an next Renee. You want me to go next? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean ditto to everything. I mean, you guys have the best podcast. I love honey health and sleep is a skill and Molly knows that she has my favorite health newsletter or E letter in the world.

Aw. That's always learned such great tips. And I know I've boxed you last night with like more sleep questions. So I can't wait to hear what you said about that. Yes. I just got back to you, which I got so excited about Renee is doing all kinds of cool stuff with her sleep. So more to come. It's so fun. And now, now you've got, you've peaked my interest.

I wanna hear what she doing. We'll talk about that later. We have time. Yeah, we go there. Um, Yeah. So about me. I'm Renee bells. I'm a biohacker babe, along with my sister Lauren and our goal with the podcast of the biohacker babes is really to empower people to be their own. Biohacker just like you said, Dr.

J we're always testing new things and we really wanna empower people to feel like they have the ability to test things and try new things out and be a biohack. Excited for this conversation. Awesome. Awesome. And I, I, I mentioned how much I love Molly's podcast, but that doesn't mean that I don't love your podcast because I listen to your podcasts all the time.

So like Renee and Lauren are like, my go-to is like, oh, what's the cool new, like biohacking gear out there. What's the cool, like lab testing. That's out there right now. You guys always have it covered.  oh, thanks. And Dr. Jay, I heard this morning, I was listening to one of your podcasts and you did drop the biohacker babes in there.

So I always appreciate that. Oh, listen. I try to do it wherever I can. Like if I can drop any of the three of your names into something, like I truly try to do it. So it's like, if, if anybody hears me on bins, podcast, bin Greenfield, like anytime I can throw that in there, I try to do it. I'm trying to drive awareness to you guys and make you famous now I'm kidding.

I, I gotta make myself famous first.  you're famous. It's a group effort, you know, I love it all. Cool. Hi, I'm Lauren San Pitero. Other half of the biohacker babes. Um, just a little bit more about the podcast we release every Monday and our motto is empowering you to be your own biohacker. So we really care about sharing the tools and the resources.

So you can answer your own questions. Um, we always like to say that we don't have the answers for you. We, we certainly can walk you down that path and help you get there and figure out your own health puzzle. So that's a lot of fun and I have a great partner to do that. And yeah, so I'm a health practitioner.

I started out as a personal trainer. Um, I studied with the check Institute. So that was my background, but now primarily doing functional health coaching lab testing. And I started the nutrition program with levels health. So a lot of my clients are using CGMs these days, which is awesome. Very passionate about that biohacking tech and, uh, just revealing the metabolic health side, which I think a lot of us don't feel, but maybe are experiencing some imbalances.

So yeah. Excited to hear. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad to have you here, Lauren, and that's really exciting about levels program. I actually did not know that they were doing that and I think that's brilliant because that technology is going to, I mean, it's a, it is a game changer. Like it's just an absolute game changer.

And so I think that if people know how to interpret it, how to use it, man, like that is a really incredible tool. So I'm excited to hear more and learn more about that side of things from you as well. So, awesome. Yeah. The interpretation piece, I think is. Level, cause we're all obsessed with biohacking tech here, but it's like, how does the consumer kind of sort through the data because it's a lot, so I'm hoping that Hanu next level has glucose monitoring in it too.

Cause that, so now it's interesting. Well, I'll throw in, I'll throw a teaser out there and say that there have been so many talks between Hanu and levels already. So sure. Leave everybody with baited breath because there's, I mean, we're talking about like glucose metabolic control, cortisol health, and then we talk about overall autonomic nervous system regulation.

These are so intertwined that it would only make sense that there's some level of partnership and collaboration. So. We'll see, we'll see all cliff hanger. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me quickly introduce myself. Um, Dr. Jay Wildes, I just go by Jay. I only throw the doctor in there for a small level of credibility.

That's about it. Uh, I try to keep things informal, but I'm a clinical health psychologist, uh, by trade. That's my discipline with more of a focus or I would say even a specialization. Psychology performance psychology, and then take it even a step further to the field of stress physiology psychophysiology and probably most well known for my work in as a subject matter expertise in heart rate variability in biometrics, I'm the chief scientific officer and co-founder of ha health.

We're a wearable health technology company. I host the ha health podcast. Uh, and then I also co-host the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast, I guess, has been Greenfield life now with Ben Greenfield and, uh, just have a lot of fun just like studying and learning and providing good quality education. At least I hope good quality education to distill some of the myths just around biometrics and stress and performance.

And so I'm just really excited to be a part of this round table. Um, because for me, like the one thing that I've really wanted, um, out of my podcast, but also too, just in general is just like a lot more powerful female voices, like in the field of health and wellness and performance and biohacking. And so for me, it was like a no brainer.

I was like, I know three incredible women who I can get to be a part of this that will make for a really good, well rounded discussion, because I think with a round table, like if you just have a bunch of dudes, which I've been a part of plenty of times, like there's just a missing component there. And especially in my field, when we talk about mental health and wellbeing and stress, uh, yes, it impacts both males and females, but in the health and wellness community, a lot of the times the strategies and therapeutics are more pointed towards males.

So for me, I was like, yeah, this is gonna scratch my own itch because I feel like it is such an underserved thing like in my community. And I guess in all of our community, uh, in regards to not having women. So. I'm glad that it's, I'm kind of glad that this time I'm the only dude, so glad to have three amazing women here.

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. Woo. Great. Thanks. All right, everybody. So one thing I wanted to do, uh, was introduce ourselves, but I love starting off like round tables with just a fun, like question that we throw out there just as a bit of banter. And one thing that I know we've talked about offline, but now we can talk about it while we're being recorded.

Is this whole concept of people are always interested in food and nutrition, but they're more interested in like, what are you doing for your own food and your own nutrition? And I get this question, ask all the time and I really enjoy answering it because mine does tend to vary. The answer that is today is probably a little bit more of a common day for me, but it does vary at times.

And it's, what's your typical breakfast or better yet more specifically? What did you eat today or maybe what did you not eat? So I'm curious to you all and feel free to jump in whenever you want to. What'd you have to eat today. For breakfast. And we should clarify that it's 12 o'clock now east coast.

Yes. But let's say breakfast what'd you eat for breakfast? Yeah. Or first meal of the day  first meal. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So, um, I started with a base of grass fed Greek yogurt, and I just added a ton of stuff in there.  it's like, how much can I squeeze? How many nutrients can I squeeze in there? Um, basic things like chia seeds, some protein powder, uh, this gut microbiome powder and a lot of other micronutrients, super foods.

I just squeeze it all in there. Make like little parfait in the morning. Nice. Fancy. I love that. I love it. Is that, is that your typical. No, it's always different. So this question is hilarious to me. Question, uh, clients ask me all the time, what I eat and I'm like, I don't know. It depends on the day. And I, I know that's really concerning.

Depends on what's on sale for me, frustrating, but I've worked really hard on my intuitive eating and, and finding like a nice rhythm of diversity and cycling different macros and types of food. And so I'm at a point where I can just kinda listen to my body and give it what it needs on any particular day.

And so it's a little bit of a surprise and there's not always a structure to that anymore. There was at some point, but no, I, I rotate that I do eggs and greens and sausage in the mornings. Sometimes it's a shake. Sometimes bone broths. I don't know. Depends on, yeah.  yeah. Well, so one thing that I always find interesting about meals and I kind of have like two different, almost like competing perspectives on this, that like on the one hand, like I love variety and I feel like there's enough evidence and research to say that variety is really important.

On the other hand, I love simplicity. So it's like, I've actually been toying around with this idea of like eating the same thing for lunch every single day, because I won't have to think about it. And like, I don't have time to like plan and prep. It's just like, if I have. Two cans of sardines, one avocado, and then something else like normally raspberries, which is actually, I'm kind of showing my hand here.

That's what my lunch has become. Uh, it's two cans. Two is like two things, a wild plant, uh, sardines, a avocado, and then like a little, like couple of raspberries, like that's my lunch each day. Like I like that simplicity, but I'm also like, uhoh am I gonna like overtrain my system or at least train my system to think like, this is it.

This is all you are to expect. And could that have problems? I'm curious for both of you too, for Renee, since your expertise is in nutrition, like, do you see pros and cons benefits to like that approach? Or like, is that okay to like have just like a bunch of consistency in order to have. I mean, you went like high nutrients on that one.

So , I tried, I tried I bonus meals a day, seven days a week. Maybe we could run into some problems, but if like lunches is the meal that you have the most trouble with. And I would say that for any client, if that is the meal of the day that you struggle with and you're gonna fail, if you don't do the same thing every day, like just be consistent at yeah, I like that.

And well, that, that honestly has been my mindset around this for me. I'm okay with varying what I eat for breakfast and dinner, especially. Dinner is much more of a communal family type thing. My wife and I always cook together. Our kids are always actively engaged in that process. So I don't want an oversimplification there just simply, because I think the community and relationship piece might get a little bit lost, but the lunchtime it's like, I'm here in my office.

Like I need to just kind of get going. Like I just wanna have, I know what I'm eating. Like I also do this with dress as well. And I know a lot of like Silicon valley tech entrepreneurs have done that. It's like, they just had the same things they wear every day. And I basically have like 20 of this type of VRI shirt.

And then like 20 of like the jewelry shorts that I'm wearing right now. And like, I don't think about it. I go, uh, it's the same thing I wear at the gym. It's the same thing I wear all day to the work. I mean, I change because I do get a little sweaty sometimes. However, it's like the same exact thing I'm changing from one thing to the same thing almost so.

Okay. Well, that's good to know that I'm not completely wrecking my system. Yeah.  yeah. I'm I mean, I would add in, you know, do you run an IgG food panel just to make sure you're not, you know, creating any issues there? I have to say I've never seen sardines come up on anyone's IgG panel, so that's good news.

Ah, that is good. I have seen avocado come up though. Avocado and eggs seems like the big one. I always see. Oh. Oh for sure. Because most Americans are eating that seven days a week, right? Yeah. You think? Okay. For breakfast, I don't wanna eat the cereal, the pancakes, the bagel. What do I. Eat eggs. Right. And then they're eating it seven days a week for 10 years and they're like, oh, now I can't eat eggs.

Yeah. So yeah. That's definitely those . Yeah, no, it's, it's interesting. I could eat eggs every single day. And there was a time in my life where that is. That's literally what I broke every single fast with every morning was four or five whole eggs cooked in coconut oil or, you know, avocado oil. And I would go and get tested for it.

And I was like, boom, spiked up on it. I was like, uhoh need to titrate that down. So it's interesting. And you know, I've heard some kind of conflicting things about that, that it's like, maybe that even though you're having kind of more or less this immune response to, uh, to the foods that you're continuously eating, that that's not inherently a bad thing, but then you start to hear the reverse of saying, no, it actually kind of is like, you're starting to cause some immunosuppression.

Like, do you guys have any thoughts on that? I know I'm kind of derailing us, but this is all interesting information. I, I would say something that could be helpful is to rule that issue out is avoid that food for four to seven days and then do the IgG test. Mm. Because certainly if you do the IgG test on Tuesday, what you had on Monday, commonly will come up.

Yeah. Which you're right. Can like skew the results. So I would say to get like a really clean picture, if it's a problem, three to four, seven ish days, just cut it out and then test it, especially with like gluten or dairy, something like that. That makes sense. I just wanna add it. I see a lot of my clients love to do volume, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I think just for food, diversity and motivation for switching things up, it can be helpful and people will follow their avoid list.

They'll avoid it for the six weeks. Like bio recommends, they retest and then all of their super foods are now on their avoid list. They're like, ah, oh yeah. Yeah. I've noticed that too. Like, okay. Science is telling us moderation and continue to rotate. Yeah, more simple than we think makes so much sense.

Yeah. Okay. Well, cool. Sorry for the derail there. Renee, what did you eat today? What'd you? How what'd you eat for breakfast? Yeah. Speaking of eggs, I that's what I had today. Um, it's only nine 30 in the morning for me, so it was kind of like a get up and start running for the day. So I just had two fried eggs cooked in grass, fed butter.

Nice. Yes. Quick and easy. Some protein and fat, but I'm like Lauren, you know, I'll mix it up sometimes. It's, I'll do a shake sometimes I'll do some chicken, sausage, bacon, love bacon. Nice. But just try and mix it up in eggs. I always do. I would say no more than four days a. Yeah. That's and because you don't want to have kind of those spikes in IgG.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, because like, that is my, one of my greatest fears in life is to not be able to eat eggs.

that would be a bad day. What's that, uh, disease like that's caused by ticks, um, that like will, can result in you like becoming like extremely nauseous when you eat red meat. And even like, you can't keep it down. I, I don't know what it's called or remember it, but that is like my biggest fear, because like, if red meat, like if my grass fed meat or like steaks ribeyes, if that was taken away from me is, is a bad, bad day.

But I forgot what that disease is called, but it's a tick, like born disease. Not for me, not for me. That, that sounds terrible.  that does sound terrible. Exactly. All right, Molly. Why'd you eat for breakfast? All right. All right. Well, after all the cautionary tales on eggs, it's a good reminder on this call that I need to diversify a little bit.

Cause I love my eggs. I love 'em. Um, I did have, I've been upping the number of eggs I've been having too. I am all of, you know, five foot two, and yet I did have four eggs today. Man. Look at me. Great. And anyone listening? I know, look at me. I'm really trying to, you know, bring up the pro it up.  I know, I know.

I know. Um, and I, you know, for anyone listening, of course, I know there's a lot of, kind of preconceived notions about different types of foods and eggs and too much of this too little that what have you, but, um, I will say certainly I am personally a big fan of that, uh, in alignment. The other thing I had with it was base culture.

If you know, the, um, base culture bread, which I. Really, um, that's probably one of my guilty pleasures right now. I'm trying to work it out. I'm trying to get rid of as many things like in a bag or a box as possible, but I love base culture. So I had a slice of that, which is fantastic. And seemingly so far, Lauren, maybe you can share, but I have not seen any change at all in my CGM when having that.

So that's been fantastic. I know. Have you guys all tried this base culture? I have not. I know, I know about it, but I have not tried it, but it sounds like it's been a game changer for you, even though you called it a guilty pleasure. So I'm a little bit worried. Yeah. What's it made from. So it has, um, I wanna say, uh, I think, um, arrow flour, um, then it has apple cider vinegar, really clean ingredients and, you know, keto friendly, very low carb.

Um, it's like kind of my go-to fun thing, but in end, it's literally just flat lines on the CGM, which is fantastic. So it's found a way to get myself some sort of semblance of like a slice of toast, you know? Uh, so big fan of that, check it out if anyone hasn't, but do they sell that like normal, like retail stores, like whole foods are sprouts or do you have like order online whole foods?

Got it. You can order online. Um, whole foods has it for like, you know, it. 10 bucks a low for something. So it's definitely a little bit of a markup for average. Yeah, exactly. So it's not the very affordable sale items like you were discussing. There's a big percentage of our grocery budget has been going to base culture lately.

Right? Well, it's like, Hey, if you're paying $6 a gallon, you might as well buy bread or, you know, a resemblance of bread for 10 bucks. Like, why not? Oh my God. I mean, seriously check out the ingredients on this. Um, so if you're going to have a slice of bread, like that's, that's my fun thing. And anyway, um, but what I would like to speak to more, so cuz certainly, uh, the biohacker babes are nutritionist extraordinaire.

And so can speak to that with more clarity. Uh, for me it's more about the timing of the meal timing piece and component. That really is important to me do say in alignment of course, with your choice, uh, uh, so. One thing that I find really, really fascinating. And maybe this could go along with what you're speaking to with the consistency piece.

It sounds like you're wanting to have less, um, thinking going on throughout the course of the day, which I am right there with you. Uh, so the automaticity from a circadian perspective, there seems to be a lot of value to one establishing consistent meal times throughout the course of your day and sticking to those, whatever they may be.

That's great. And yet even better, uh, if you are able to make this happen, seems to be, if you can front load more of your calories on the first half of the day, of course there's bioindividuality and a number of things that can come up for different individuals and social obligations. And what have you.

If you can front load a number of those from a strategic perspective. And a lot of this is coming out of the research from Dr. Satin Panda of the Solk Institute, decades of research, um, and seems really compelling for this concept that even if you're beginning, so general rule of thumb, leaving yourself about an hour after you first wake up to kind of, you know, sleep inertia, come, come to a more awaken state throughout the course of the day, and then begin your, uh, intake of food to then signal to the body that we're going to be doing a number of things.

So we're gonna be expanding this energy. We're doing this for a reason. And even from an ancestral perspective, um, the thinking is that you would likely have only been able to really eat during sunrise or sunset historically anyway, because post sunset, we didn't have refrigerators. You couldn't go hunting, uh, in the middle of the night in the dark.

And so what's likely is most of your food would've been consumed during daylight hours. So with that, uh, the more consistent you can be with that, the better. And then the philosophy on volume seems to be one that you could play with something like, uh, eat for like a king for breakfast, a queen for lunch and a peasant or pulp, or for dinner has been some of the call outs.

Now, certainly Lauren, I would love to hear some of your thoughts on that from a CGM perspective or certainly Renee too. Um, just thinking of the levels piece, but, uh, you know, it's something that when people do start playing with this, one of the things that I often see is every client I'm working with is wearing at least the or ring, if not other, um, if we're could say brands on here, um, or other sleep wearable trackers.

Okay. So, uh, and then one of the things that we often see is when they do make some version of this shift, now it doesn't have to be dogmatic, but playing with making your meal timing a bit earlier on in the day, shifting the volume a. Then we seem, seem to see a lowering of heart rate, uh, throughout the course of the night, somewhat of an improvement on H V depending as long as we're kind of nailing the macros and a number of other things, and then an alignment with that.

Some changes in bodily temperature and respiratory rate. So that's an interesting thing to play with. And then I think just for the body to be able to anticipate, because there's really a, um, a process that the body's going into to be able to gear up for the really taxing process of digestion. And if you're able to know when that's gonna happen, that can be really valuable.

Mm.  oh, fascinating stuff. Mm-hmm , you know, one thing. Yeah. One thing that's super interesting. And I'd love to hear Renee and Lauren your take on kind of like the, the whole idea of kind of like fluctuations and metabolic health and, and blood sugar. The one thing that I think like tends to confuse both myself and just a lot of people is like, there's.

There's so many different. I don't know if it's, if it's a good way of saying it, but like dogma views on kind of like food timing, and then also volume. You have some individuals who are like, okay, so lunch should be like the biggest heaviest meal. And then some are like, now actually you want to have a really large car heavy.

Dinner, because that can help with sleep. Yeah. And then some like are saying no, oh Matt. And it's just all over the place. It's mess. So it's like reconciling kind of like, what is the actual go to, I think comes down to what you mentioned earlier, which is like, bioindividuality like, for me, my, the typical like biggest meal the day, like sometimes it is dinner depending on the day of the week.

Like, especially if like we're hosting and having people over and we're, you know, doing a large family dinner, but for the most part, like it's typically more stacked towards lunchtime. And the reason for me there is because I have just found that I tend to sleep better. I have better overall recovery if I don't have such a heavy meal.

And especially probably the most important thing would be timing. Like if I eat generally three, four, Five hours prior to going to bed like that is that's the best for me in, in regards to overall sleep. So it just feels like, uh, sometimes it can be confusing for people. So I appreciate you like clarifying that Molly and I will tend to agree for you, especially for me, like more of a heavier loaded, like front of my day, as opposed to the back end of my day.

I just see better overall results, both objectively and subject. Yes. Two things I'd wanna add to that too, or that if anyone's interested in this, cause to your point, it can get confusing, but then this other person says, skip breakfast. And, uh, what do you do? So, uh, if anyone wants to, uh, you know, kind of research a bit more about this two, uh, terms that you could look up would be one.

Circadian rhythm, intermittent fasting, and really, that's just a fancy series of words to mean eating between sunrise and sunset and, you know, largely doing that. Of course not getting crazy. Cause every so often social engagements or whatever mm-hmm , uh, certainly our society's more tipped towards back loading are calories towards later.

Um, so exploring that, and then the second one would be early time restricted feeding where in some of those it's looking in certain studies, um, often participants are ending their meals at around like 2:00 PM, 1:00 PM, things like that so much earlier on in the day. And you're really kind of. Flipping instead of skipping breakfast, you're skipping dinner.

Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. I'll throw two things in there. Um, one is, I remember Thomas DeLauer talking about some really interesting research on skipping breakfast. Molly remembers this yes. From BI, um, uh, bio Congress. Yes. This was the first time I had heard this a couple years ago. How he said you are better.

The research was showing you're better off either skipping breakfast completely or sitting down and having like at least a four to 500 calorie breakfast. Mm-hmm  the people that woke up and had like one to 200 calories, right? Like the, the bite of almond butter or something that was their breakfast.

Their basal metabolic rate was actually lower than the people that had a big breakfast or skipped breakfast altogether. Mm-hmm. So that was an interesting thing. And I wanted to echo that, cuz that was so good. I really loved his talk. Uh, and one of the other things that he, I liked that he spoke to is this concept of it.

Historically people talking about cheat meals and, you know, cheat dinners and all these things. And he was making an argument for, if you're going to have a cheat meal, uh, kind of like you were saying those higher caloric intake, you know, you're really going nuts, uh, to have that as a cheap breakfast. So he was talking about having like, you know, um, these splurge breakfasts and go and all that.

I'm trying to remember some of the crazy things he was mentioning, but I'm in, you know, Really going nuts. And Steve, what would happen from that perspective? Cuz then it's important to think about how glucose and insulin are on our circadian rhythm. Um, so there are differences based on the timing that you have, even the exact same food and how your body will risk.

Bond to that. So there was an interesting argument with that too. I thought was cool. Well, it seems like too, from an energetics perspective, if you were gonna have, you know, let's say your cheat breakfast, well now you have actually much more of an opportunity throughout the day to actually utilize that energy so that you can mobilize it.

You know, whether it's exercise or in whatever fashion. I mean, it could be if you're eating the wrong things, but you're eating high caloric, like, you know, going out to waffle house or whatever and eating ginormous breakfast. Well, that's just gonna really make you sluggish for the boat majority of the day.

But if it's a high calorically dense meal, um, that. Say quote, unquote healthy, but it's early in the morning. And even if it is more or less cheating, because you include, let's say some more processed carbs or whatever, whatever it may be from an energetics perspective, it seems like you're gonna be able to mobilize that energy better than if you do it at the end of the day.

And while now I'm just getting into bed, which we know we burn a lot of calories while we're sleeping, but also too, we do it in a different fashion and it sits and, and metabolizes very differently. So I, yeah, I think from an energetics perspective, that seems to make a lot of sense. And when I share here in just a second, like how I break my fast, I'm wondering what Thomas DeLauer would have to say about it.

If he thinks that it's an okay thing or because of the context of how I typically break my fast, if that is okay. But before I jump into mind, I'm wondering, does anybody else have any other thoughts or should I tell you? Yeah, I have a lot of. I have a lot of, I know, I wanna know. Lauren has to say yes, please go on, go all the science.

I'm so fascinated by it. Like, I wanna read it all day long and all the stuff you shared, Molly, like that stuff is stacked and so powerful. But when I'm looking at CGMs and actually what's happening over a 24 hour period, you sprinkle in life and everything just gets blown to pieces. Yeah. In an ideal world, like if we lived in a video game and we could just schedule our days and hours and meals, perfectly sure.

I think eating like a king in the morning would be awesome. But most of my clients, they have kids they're running to work. They're busy. They don't have time to, to cook something, let alone sit. And, and then when we get into the inter written fasting conversation, sure. Most people want to skip dinner because they see the benefits of that in the literature.

But they're like, that's the only time I have with my family. And I can't sit down with my kids and, and have them see, like mommy's not eating dinner, you know? So I think all the messages that can send social implications. Yeah. Yeah. So many social implications. And then, you know, just metabolic health in general, there's so many variables.

Like it's not just about the glycemic response from food. And it's so funny to think. We used to rely on the glycemic index for like how our health outcomes would be. But like they left out of that index, like stress, environmental toxins, poor sleep exercise, like all the things that actually affect your blood sugar, even more than food.

So what happens with an ideal day of food, regardless of all those other variables, I mean, you have to meet client where they're at. And so I think with all of this nutrition, dogma, I, I think we have to let it go and just worry about ourselves is like, that's the big advice because every single person is different and every person's lifestyle or desires and goals and the ways that they wanna run their day are just so vastly different.

So starting with the science is a fabulous way. To begin, but then like how do we make it work? Because I think everyone here would like compliance and consistency is gonna be, is gonna Trump. Anything else? Any advice that you give a client? Yeah. Yes. Well, and a couple of things too, with that, like we had, um, uh, uh, reps from levels in Nutri sense on the podcast.

And one thing I thought was interesting with both companies from all the information and data they're seeing, seemed to be, um, kind of a through line where even the idea of, if you can move up the last meal of the day, just a little bit earlier than you might normally do. Playing with that. So they, what they had called out is like, maybe normally you, uh, have your last bite of food at around 7, 7 30.

What if you were to see, is there any workability in making it 6, 5 30 things of that nature and they were playing with that to see, could you one almost have your cake and eat two? No unintended, hopefully not cake. Uh, but  so how can you, how can you make it so that we can just give yourself, um, sufficient digestion time if possible, but 110%, because what, um, A lot of these things from a circadian perspective are very much outside of how we are now living.

So this is a holistic problem, especially the one I'm tackling with sleep because so many people are living upside down worlds. They are doing exactly counter to what we would've done for thousands and thousands, millions of years, uh, when we would be outside in nature, be so active being, you know, present to that sunlight and know the effects that that would have on CGM and a number of other things.

And then instead. You know, kind of in more dark lit environments, we're maybe not eating until much later and we're back loading so much of that activity. We're turning on all the lights, then we're getting all of our activity, our cortisol pulse rising later, I mean just is a lot there. So there are a lot of maladaptive, um, things at play.

So even if there was just the, a little bit of that awareness that, okay, maybe I'm not gonna suddenly become this early time, restricted feeding loon, but maybe I could start moving just a little bit earlier and see, are there any effects that are worthwhile enough for how I feel the next day, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. I mean, the experimentation is the biggest. Thing, like, just try it. Yeah. If you try it and then you say, okay, it really, it doesn't work then like we move on and we find something else. Yes, yes. Yeah.  it is the absolute beauty of having all of these amazing like biometrics and self quantification tools at our disposal.

Like it's, it's, it's incredible. And I know Lauren and Renee, we both talked about it on the episode that we recorded. I just remembered this. Um, it's just kind of all coming back to me that, you know, it's, it's great that we have that at our disposal, but sometimes I think it gets overused misused, or maybe just misunderstood.

And so this is why we need, like, people like you, Lauren, who like are coaches and can really help, uh, things becoming, not overly prescriptive because I find that that's a really, really bad problem in the health wellness optimization biohacking community is that we hear someone else is doing something.

And so therefore we take that as, oh, man, that. The, the religion we must follow. It becomes overly prescriptive. And the next thing we know, like our hormones are erect. We feel sluggish. We have no libido, we're not sleeping well. And we're like, well, but Ben Greenfield did it. I'm throwing bin under the bus cuz a lot of people love to follow bin.

Uh, but Ben Greenfield does it. So therefore I must do it and it becomes this overly prescriptive thing. And next thing we. Not working out well for 'em. So I really appreciate that. And again, I love that we have this stuff at our disposal, but also too, this is the reason why we have experts and coaches that can come and help to tinker and tailor and really curate an experience for you that is best for you and learn from the things that aren't working, because sometimes we're gonna try it, even if it is prescribed by someone else, who's an expert in it and it's not gonna work, but Hey, well, you know, no harm, no foul.

Hopefully let's go back to the drawing board. Try again. Yeah, yes. One last thing I wanna say too, about the timing piece, cuz I hope it doesn't throw people off and say, oh well that's too extreme. I, I'm not gonna participate in that. The actual kind of, uh, call out from, uh, the circadian code from Dr.

Sachen pan and other thinkers in the circadian minded way of being aware of the timing of your food is a bit more gentle than, you know, what we're discussing of totally skipping dinner, because it's really just between sunrise and sunset. Um, and actually one of the call ups from, um, Dr. SA Panda is from 7:00 AM to about 7:00 PM, which isn't that wild.

And actually I think there's something to be aware of, of one of the things that I've find I've found because every client I'm working with are all wearing, uh, at least an aura ring. So we see on the ground exactly what's happening with their sleep. And then, you know, in alignment with their behaviors.

So with that, one of the things that we've seen is that many people are just unaware and I'm sure you guys all see this too, um, of the extra bites that we might be taking throughout the course of the night past that perceived last meal. And so that's one of the things that becomes really interesting for many of the clients I work with is then they see, oh, I guess I didn't even realize I had the extra, you know, Bit of popcorn with the Netflix at nine 30 or whatever, the entire bowl buttery salted popcorn at 10 popcorn.

I'm also calling myself out because I love popcorn. That was a, my wife and I like go to cheat snack. It is, I would eat it every day if I could, but I know I'd pay for it. Yes. So that was the, one of the biggest changes I swear that I made in my own personal life is not having that like nightly routine.

Yes. Um, so I'm just saying that because it can be relatively small changes, but we might not realize that just that whole act and kind of turning on the digestive process just might send counter cues to our body and particularly the results with our sleep that we might not wanna get in for so many people I work with that are just so distraught over what feels like their lack of agency to impact their sleep when they start to realize, oh, okay.

Trade out a little bit of that, um, kind of mindless snacking, and then suddenly I'm able to fall asleep with these have way less, uh, wake up, et cetera, et cetera, for them often that's a very meaningful, and maybe it takes some time change, but it's not totally out of the bound. So that's my last thing around it doesn't necessarily have to look so extremist either agree with that.

Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I love how your, uh, discussion on what you eat in the morning for breakfast. Molly sparked that entire discussion. That's awesome. That's round tables, like question number round table number. And this is the question that we just derived as a round table crew, not even the ones that were submitted to us.

I love it. Oh my gosh. That is awesome. All right, I'm gonna, I'll try to truncate, uh, what I, no, I mean, I'll just say what I'm gonna say. Mine has the way I, the way I what's a good way of saying this. The way that I normally break my fast is very different from you all. And so I'll just leave it at that, but then I'll say what I did today and then what I normally do.

So I will say that the thing that has always been, I won't say always, but more recently than not has been effective for me is a generally a 14 to 16 hour fast. So I normally will stop eating around 6:00 PM, ish, uh, sometimes 6 37, depending on how late I got home. And then I will normally eat around 12, 11 30, 12, sometimes 1230, depending on the day.

Sometimes there are days where I'll just blast through and I've forgotten to eat, uh, just because busy work life, whatever, whatever excuse you throw in there. But my normal, and so I will say. That's my normal day, but the fasting purist would not say that I break my fast at like my lunchtime meal. They would say I break it earlier.

And here's why, and this is why I was curious about the whole Thomas Delau thing. I'm like, oh, I wonder what he thinks about this because technically I technically break my fast earlier with a very low caloric. Amount of intake. This is what I do. So I always am in the gym normally around five 30, 6:00 AM.

I do weight, weight training, resistance training, and almost immediately following I will drink a protein shake. That's normally one scoop of, uh, Keon way. Um, I'm gonna sound like a commercial for Keon right now. And I promise I'm not, it's just I'm I know a guy, uh, uh, the second thing I put in is two scoops of colostrum from Keon and then two scoops of VI.

I think it's what vital farms collagens, uh, is that the name of the brand? Maybe vital proteins, vital proteins. That's it? Yeah. Vital proteins. And so I am technically breaking my fast after my workout. That's all the amount of calories I have in again, because of what I'm doing, because I'm expending a lot of energy.

I'm burning a lot of energy throughout the course of my workout. Then maybe the effects are different than if I were SED. Ate a breakfast that's really low calorically dense, and then kind of proceeded throughout my day with a lot, not a lot of physical exertion. Maybe I'll stop there before I get into like how I normally break my fast.

And I'm just curious, cuz I see Lauren's like got a face of like I gotta answer. I got an answer. So go ahead, Lauren.  listen, you do what works for you. I love it. I would be curious from a CGM perspective, what's then happening with your glucose. Cuz what I see a lot is when the second you break your fast, you hit play on the rollercoaster, the rollercoaster day and hopefully it's a kitty rollercoaster.

We don't wanna adult rollercoaster ups. And downs' I love that with exercise. We know glucose is being released to the muscles, but we don't release insulin. So we're not actually harming metabolic health when you see spikes. But we know exercise as a stressor, food can be a stressor. And so what happens when you put two stressors together it three, see like what happens.

On your, yeah. And here's the thing. So here's the other variable after throwing. Cause it's three stressors that I throw in because it's workout. And so when I'm wearing the CGM, when I'm wearing levels, we'll see increases in glucose, drink a shake. And it normally isn't like from where I'm at post workout that you see this huge spike post Brandly.

I don't know if it just kind of like it goes up and kind of stays up with food and maybe it would've come down sooner if I wouldn't have food, but here's the kicker. Lauren is. As soon as I'm done, I guzzle that drink. Boom. It goes down and I'm in a sauna for 20 minutes because I always do a post workout sauna.

So, okay. Now we have glucose staying up and goes up. And so my idea theory in talking with many individuals that who are kind of very much, you know, like in line with, with this line of thinking, I will say, or experts in this area would say that again, because I've expended so much energy, you expect this increase in glucose, but again, you don't have these large scale fluctuations in insulin.

The same thing that you receive with the hormetic stress are very different than the shake. I think that's kind of more conventional changes in, in insulin and uh, in glucose, but then in the sauna again, you're gonna have that spike in glucose. So like. I think from, if you had no context and you would just see this on a CGM, like, it doesn't look very great, right?

Because it looks like uhoh got like this spike of, of glucose and then it kind of just stays up. And sometimes when I go into the sauna or if I do a coal plunge, which I don't do immediately after, uh, a workout anyway, it's normally like four to six hours afterwards. We still see this really big spike, like, is this potentially damaging?

So like what say you, like, what, what is, what's kind of your response there? Do you think this is not so good? Or do you think because of the context it's.  I think your data is gonna give us the answer. And I think you probably, no, not probably you are insanely resilient. And so you probably recover from this mm-hmm , but like we would look at your glucose.

You eventually come back down it's whether or not it triggers the, the adult rollercoaster, which for a lot of people it does because they don't know how to downregulate. They don't know how to manage their stress. And so if they do that first initial stressors, then it's the rest of the day is ruined. I bet that your day is not ruined from that.

And I I'm pretty sure your data would, would show that. So you are indeed correct. Um, so what ends up happening is that I receive these large scale spikes or what looks like large spikes in glucose when I'm enduring these physiological stressors. And then afterwards, not only does blood glucose go back down, but it goes normally like a little bit lower than where my baseline threshold is not in a hypoglycemic way.

I feel amazing. I mean, because for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel so good. And then one of the things that I normally will follow it, especially if I'm doing like a lot of like really intensive work, if like, I need some, just a lot of like, if I need to be very cognitively like focused because it's a cognitively demanding task, I'll actually use some keto, Esther.

So like before this podcast, like I still haven't eaten it. Me too at one o'clock I'll I'll throw down like a cap full or two of like KEYone eight or HVM N and like, I feel so on point and a lot of times that's good because I feel really cognitively sharp. I feel energetic, but it's also too, like. I could probably go with the rest of the day until dinner and not eat anything.

Not saying that's good or bad, it's just a thing that happens. So, no, I, I don't go through that roller coaster typically, but, you know, I don't think that that's commonplace. Um, but I also don't think that most people are, you know, working out at five 30, 6:00 AM and then doing a sauna and, you know, still eating, you know, whatever type of meal that I eat.

Like it's just not commonplace, but for the people listening to here, they might be interested. Like if they do see these crazy fluctuations in glucose, like, should we stop halt the process? Or like, do we need to, again, look in context and look in the more longer term play of what happens throughout the day is what you're saying.

Right. Zooming out, zooming out is always gonna be helpful. Like you can't, you can't tell anything from like a really narrow lens. Yeah. Just step back. Yeah. Ex yeah, exactly. It's, it's the same thing with heart rate variability. And it's the same thing. Like if you were just to take a snap. Of 10 minutes of heart rate variability, as you all know, with wearing a Hanu, you're gonna see ebbs and flows, ups and downs streaks in and outs of heart rate variability.

And it's gonna happen, not even on a 10 minute phase. I mean, the EPO could be two seconds. You see it fluctuate 10 points up and 10 points down like HR V is a very, and that's, and that's a good thing. You want variability of variability because it means you're adjusting well, if you start to see a stabilization, especially in a downward trend, well, that's, that's what you can be a little bit more, you know, alarming per se.

So I think the same thing goes with that one, everything in context and everything over a course of period of time and learning kind of how your body responds in certain situations, all important. So hopefully that's a good takeaway for all, all of our listeners. Yeah. Well, I also just pulled up the notes from Thomas Del's speech to see if I could get some answers.

Cause I always use Otter. I'm like such a nut, uh, impressive. Hasn't used otter.ai, highly recommend for any of these talks so that you can just didn't use that before Otter dot it's so good. It transcribes everything that people are saying. And so then I have the pictures of the, of the thing. So one of the thing, and again, this might not, he didn't, I don't think quite go into this.

He certainly didn't go into the sauna and all that piece, but he was talking granted, this was like two years ago. He's always in the research. Maybe things have changed, but at the time he was talking about, um, experimenting. Before he was. So now in this talk, he was now playing with skipping a bit more of the later dinners doing the early breakfast, but he does it after his workout so that he can have the benefits of the fasted workout and BDNF mm-hmm

Um, so he was kind of speaking to that. Don't know if that's still the case. Maybe things have shifted. Um, yeah. It's it's the field of nutrition things change on a moment to my moment basis. Totally. It's gonna send out a tweet out window. Wait one minute. Yeah. And hear one thing and a tweet next minute.

Another it's it's crazy in the field of nutrition. Yeah, exactly. Wellness in general, man. It's it's crazy. It's a, it's a good thing though, because we're learning we're growing, but I can understand from the everyday consumer, it's like super frustrating. Cause it's like, well, you know, in 2017, totally. Like it was all about keto.

Everyone should be keto. I don't care who you are. Like, you're gonna go to hell if you're not on keto and now it's like, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe not. So it's. It's CRA it's crazy to me. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I know we have been bantering for like a Chrome, a large amount of time on all good things. I love this round table.

Yeah. Be a regular thing. These are great. I hope people enjoy it as much as all of us are enjoying recording it.

Do, can we do this every week? Yeah. All right. Every week it's it's on calendar Sunday. So Hey, listen. If people want it, like I will. I, I mean, again, I love doing it. I learned so much from you all, like, this is it's incredible. Same. Yeah, same.  all right. So let's jump into like some user submitted questions.

And so one of the things I'll prime, everybody listening, right. Is that probably like the week of, or maybe the week before, whenever, like we do the next round table, because we're gonna do another one. Um, all of us will send out like on our social media platforms, maybe even our email newsletters, however we decide we want to do it.

We'll send out kind of this prompt of like, Hey, what do you want us to talk about during the round table questions? And you've got someone, you know, HRV and stress and sleep, but we've got nutrition and exercise experts. What do you want to know? And so we've compiled a few amazing questions. I don't think we're gonna get to all of these, but I mean, in the time we have, cause we don't have a ton, ton of time.

Maybe we can get to two of 'em. We'll see. Maybe we can get to more depending on how long-winded we get or maybe we just get to one. We will see. Uh, but we got some questions that we compiled and I'm really excited. The first one. Selfishly want to ask this one? Um, it actually came through my Instagram.

And so I, I have to ask this one because I am so curious and the reason I'm so curious is because Lauren and Renee, when you guys came onto my podcast on the ha health podcast, we talked very briefly about this. And I wanna say, we even mentioned Molly's name during this discussion because Molly, I think we're gonna have a lot to say about this one as well, but one of the things that stuck out about the question I'm gonna ask is that I think, and again, this is just the primer.

I think Lauren Renee, you guys actually might have a. A slightly different and maybe new, more nuanced view and approach of this because of your dad. So here we go. Oh, here's question. It's what are your thoughts on mouth tape? I recall hearing that there are some potential reasons for not using it. And so again, you'll have to remind me, I believe there was just maybe one or two comments you guys made about.

Yeah. It's probably not the best thing for everybody or maybe something to that extent. So, correct me if I'm wrong. So have at it. I am so excited to hear your response on this. Oh, oh yeah. Oh no, no. I would hear the cause I love their deaths. Amazing. I start the ran a it's your turn. Yeah. All right. I'll start.

And maybe, and maybe Renee would be helpful to tell a little bit for our listeners who may not know a little bit about your dad's background and kind of where you got this. Uh, he is amazing. Yeah, he is really good. He's been on our podcast too. Such a fan to have him on. Ha I, I, I don't know why we haven't made this connect.

Well, yes, we'll introduce you. Love it. Do that. That's good. Yeah. So our dad, um, AKA like the OG biohacker, who kind of got learned night into biohacking as somewhat as kids. Um, but he's been a biological dentist for 45 years, which if anyone's not familiar with that, uh, biological or holistic dentistry, there's no mercury fillings, no root canals, no fluoride safely removing the silver fillings.

So it's, um, a little different than traditional dentistry, but anyways, he has moved into the sleep apnea space and does a lot with this. A lot of like at home sleep studies like Molly does. And so as far as the mouth taping, we all, I think we all would agree at times. It is helpful. Maybe during the day, if you are a mouth breather, right.

We would, we do wanna train ourselves to be breathing through our nose. Mm-hmm  the problem with mouth taping at night is if you have sleep apnea, Or obstructive airway issues. You're slapping your mouth shut, which is where you are trying to get oxygen while you're sleeping. So this can be really dangerous if you have sleep apnea, right?

So when you have sleep apnea, your body is trying to compensate to get that oxygen. So it ends up clenching your jaw. You grind your teeth together to open up the muscles in the neck, in the airway to try and get any oxygen in, right. Cause we need oxygen to survive. So that is what's happening. And a lot of people that have sleep apnea also have a lot of obstruction in the nasal.

Um, passage by. So if that is not cleared out now you're blocking the second hole to get Erin. And now you can have some really severe issues. So I'd say if you're not sure if you have sleep apnea or any of these issues work with someone like Molly, get tested, work with a biological dentist. Um, you can also just play with it during the day.

So maybe put that mouth tape on and then you go do a workout. Are you able to breathe through your nose? Are you really struggling? Mm-hmm  so that would be my pro tip is try it during the day before you try it at night and be cautious with that. Yes. I so appreciate that because I think there's been sort of a blanket, um, uh, portrayal of the excitement or the intrigue.

And I do also realize that some people maybe even listening are still like, what is Mount table? What are you even talking about? Uh, so there's might have been a good thing to talk about, but, uh, I just, I dunno, I feel like, oh, by design, like all our listeners are like now people of course probably listening, probably anyone probably listening to this probably knows, but it's, it's still surprising to me how many people I'll just, you know, drop that too.

And they're like, I have no idea what you're saying and that sounds so out there. Good call. Explain. Good call. Thanks Molly. Yeah. So yes, no, totally a hundred percent. So, um, one in, so a little definition of what that could look like. There's a lot of products now in the market, or even just using like 3m tape that you could put on your mouth while you're sleeping with the thinking and certainly with a big advent or a big uptick in popularity since, um, James nester's book breathe came out.

Um, and a lot more awareness of how this could potentially help support nitric oxide, proper breathing throughout the course of the night, not mouth breathing, the adverse effects that could have for your sleep quality and health, et cetera, for certainly during, uh, sleep specifically, but then also throughout the course of the day.

And I think in that for some groups of society, the excitement of that, one of the things that has been lost in the, in the verbiage, um, is the cautionary side of that. And because I think there are so many people running around that are absolutely unaware that they have sleep apnea and could be doing themselves a disservice, uh, with that really problematic Molly, one of my, do you, do you know, if there are any numbers on like the percentage of individuals who may have undiagnosed sleep apnea, so like they just don't even know it, but they're just kinda walking around doing, living their everyday life, sleeping the way they are or not.

So well yet any data on that? Yes. Yes. So there are some, there's an uptick in even a, uh, idea of that certainly around the third of the population, having difficulty breathing disorders while sleeping. And could that be even more. Uh, individuals that have some variation of that. So that might not just be sleep apnea.

That might be some disordered breathing, because there are certainly categories of this. So mild, moderate, severe. And so, uh, there's a lot of different studies and ways of speaking to this, depending on what, you know, categorization you're putting that into. Um, but then certainly with the discussions of, could that be far more reaching than we even realized with even an asterisk, I just was at an event, um, at Stanford that was really focusing in, on sleep apnea.

One of the things that they spoke to was a underserved group of the population that they were really looking to identify, um, being more women over the age of, I think the callout was around 40 and up that are, they have some different characteristics to be on the lookout for, for sleep apnea that is often going unseen and often even, um, slender women, maybe athletic, what have you, but, uh, outside of the bounds of what you might think of as people with sleep apnea.

So I'm saying all this, because there could be a lot more individuals that are dealing with disordered breathing. So what, um, Renee and Lauren are speaking to is. So crucial to have a little bit more reverence for that process versus just, oh, it's this new fad. Let me, you know, just do it because yeah, well, you know, it's, it's become ubiquitous in the health optimization, peak performing biohacking community.

Like if you wanna sleep well, you take the advice of, you know, said influencer that says you must wear mouth tape. Yeah. And again, this is just kind of how things gets passed down as a prescription by the individuals. Um, and it's not because these individuals are being malicious it's that people like trust them and that's fine.

Like that's okay. Like most of these people are providing really legitimate resources and ideas and protocols, but it's not that it's for every single person. Um, and one thing to kind of point and highlight that you were talking about. Patrick McCune talks to with me all the time about this. And I think this is super fascinating.

Yes. That there's a very, very high correlation between individuals who have a low CO2 tolerance and undiagnosed sleep apnea. So you can find your low CO2 tolerance or maybe just overall CO2 tolerance by doing like a CO2 tolerance. Tests, uh, that looks for dysfunctional breathing, doing something like bolt score, which is the body oxygen level test.

We actually have that built into the Hanu app. Um, that's my little shameless plug for the day. Uh, but it's a great kind of mechanism. And if we know that if we're like under 10 seconds for your bolt score, then the level of dysfunctional breathing is very, very high. And so doing things like engaging in breath, work, CO2 breath, uh, type tolerance, breath holds, you know, to the extent that you can do them can really help to increase overall functional breathing and can therefore help to reduce the deleterious impacts or effects of sleep apnea.

Not saying it'll cure it, but again, I think that people just go to straight away like, oh, mouth tape is good. So therefore I must use it, but I like that there are these caveats. I've got a question that I wanna follow up with two of them. Um, but I'm curious, cause I know Lauren, I haven't heard from you yet.

I'm curious if you have anything to, to say even more than what we've, what we've already talked about or have we kind of covered the basis of the, the caveats. I think you guys covered everything. I just wanted to add. I feel like it's such a teachable moment for health seekers and biohackers when we trust an influencer or a health professional.

I think, I think it's up to us to remind people that like it's individualized, we have to come back to the biochemical individuality and sure. I'm all for an N one of N of one experiment. Try it. But like, remember to be curious, look at your data, continue to ask yourself, like, is this true? Is this true for me?

Is it working for me? Like, do I have evidence to support that? And I think because mouth tape, I mean, you could just get a piece of masking tape if you wanted to. So it's relatively cheap as opposed to some of the devices I have that are just insanely expensive. People are gonna see me using it and go buy it tomorrow, you know, but someone immediately would go, oh, I can mouth tape tonight.

Sure. Mm-hmm  but don't today decide I'm gonna wear this for the rest of my life. Like we have to keep teaching people to be really curious and to listen to their bodies and make sure it's right for them. That's all. Yeah. Makes sense. So I have two questions to follow up. Um, the first one would be, let's say, theoretically, we have the ability to rule out any dysfunctional breathing and we have the ability to rule out that yes, sleep disorders, sleep apnea is not a problem if it works for the individual, which kind of maybe me answering my own question.

But is there the opportunity for someone or should someone, or maybe should someone not wear mouth tape every single night? If all of those things have been ruled out, do you guys have any thoughts or take on that? And the reason I ask is because for all I know I do not have any breathing problems. I do not have sleep apnea for me.

I wear mouth tape every single night, and I'm not using this as a way to promote like, yes, you should go do it. We just had the conversation as to why you shouldn't listen to me if I did say that, but is there potential problems that could arise, even if I know that there's no. Underlying conditions or problems.

I would just say, come back to your data again and listen to your body. Like, if you feel great and your data supports that, go for it. But if you're like, oh, I'm waking up kind of tired, but I'm gonna keep doing it. Like, I don't know.  like, sure. Right. That's why not? Yeah. I would say, yeah, ditto to that check your data.

Is your HRV, you know, increasing is your time in deep sleep increasing or, you know, your respiratory data decreasing. Um, if there's no changes in data and like Lauren said, you're not even like feeling anything then. Yeah. Maybe like, why are you doing it? Um, I would also wonder we are supposed to be breathing through our noses when we sleep.

So should we be relying on this mouth tape or do we feel like we could train ourselves? You wear the mouth tape for a year. Does that train your body to then sleep without the mouth tape? I don't know. That's it's a beautiful philosophical question. Renee, if a tree falls in a forest, but you aren't there to hear it.

Did it make a sound ? No, it's really, it's a, I think that's a legitimate question. I'm not even sure if I've thought about it that way. And now I'm kind of like scratching the head a little bit. Like our ancestors weren't using mouth tape. But, well, actually I guess I get into the stuff, but they also had much wider jaws, right.

Jaws were built to fit all 32 teeth. Their airways were much larger. Right. Well, comes to question. Oh, go ahead, Molly. Oh, I was just gonna echo. Yeah. Cuz I, I think that's a really good point that Renee's bringing up that there are entire individuals that they have entire practices around helping to, uh, discover.

Do you need a tongue tie surgeries? Do you need to then work on certain muscles in your face? Um, again, one of the, uh, sleep events that I went to that had sleep surgeons present were speaking to, if you do have undiagnosed sleep apnea, how literally your face shape can change. Mm. Once they, um, really identify that, change your breathing.

So even from a beauty aesthetic perspective, that can shift also, this brings about the importance of addressing this for kids because that can literally, um, you know, affect the skull shape and the formation of that from the beginning. So that's something to really be aware of. Um, and then I will say, cause I don't, you know, there's also, I mean I mouth shape basically every single night.

Um, and I have tested that with a couple different devices. One, the sleep image, ring, Renee, this will be on your boxer. Uh, when do you,  when you take a look at that. Uh, so, so you can case this is a repeat. Uh, so the sleep image ring is FDA cleared and they will, it is actually is, um, diagnostic for sleep apnea.

Uh, so you can get this through your doctor and it also looks at HIV. So Dr. J you might be interested in that one, if you haven't looked at that one and. So that one, you can get a bit more data around the quality of your sleep. So I have tested that with, um, with mouth shape and without, uh, and then west ver is an interesting product too.

That is wearable. They have had some improvements upon there too, based on their first model and their newer model. Um, but now wearing that one can give you a bit more data than some of the current wearables in different ways. Uh, so I would say they're just kind of filling some of the gaps that some of the other wearables are doing.

So it can show you things about your sleep position throughout the course of the night, your breathing, your snoring levels, um, and then speak with some sleep professionals, uh, to go over your data. And then if it looks like you might have signs of sleep apnea with them, then they can get you an at-home sleep test to further actually diagnose that.

Um, but so you can test all that, especially with Westbury. You could do it like if you wanted to every single night, it's not the most comfortable, cuz it's not like a true wearable wearable, but, um, you could hypothetically do that and then test a little bit more and see if it's working for you or not.

Hmm. Interesting. Can I throw something in there? Um, you mentioned children. So, yes, children. Um, if anyone wants to see some wild pictures, Google healthy, start for kids. Um, it's a program where they're expanding, you know, the jaw they're fixing, I guess the structure of the teeth opening the airway. But the before and after photos of these kids going through the program, I mean their jaws go from like this, for anyone watching the YouTube video like this, to like this and like a year it's wild.

Amazing. Yeah. And obviously like the structure as a child, that's, what's setting us up for her adulthood. That's why so many adults have all these problems. Like we shouldn't need to, to get our wisdom. Teeth taken out. Humans are, have evolved to have 32 teeth, but these kids are being born with these narrow jaws and then we can't fit them.

So healthy start Google it. The pictures are crazy. Wow. That's so good. Really interesting. And maybe if you have a kid, you might be able to find a dentist in your area that does that. Yeah. That save a lot of trouble.  yeah. Well, just to kind of wrap us up on the mouth taping piece, I'm gonna follow up with one question I have for all of you.

Molly's already answered it, but I'll, I'll reiterate her answer just in a second. Uh, but uh, you know, I, I have worn mouth taped now nightly for probably the past, maybe. Two years, three years. I don't know. Time is a weird thing for me right now. Like having started a company plus the pandemic. Like, I don't know what time is anymore.

Yes. I have a four year old second that, yes. It's probably actually been more than two years. It's probably been like four or five. I, but again, yeah, time, time is weird for me initially, because again, I'm a big biometric guy. Um, I was looking at a couple of different things. Um, so I was looking at it from yes, a sleep architecture and staging perspective, but then also looking at it from a recovery perspective as well, obviously sleep and recovery very much interconnected.

So when I say recovery, I was looking at other types of biometrics related to respiration rate, of course, heart rate variability and resting heart rate. And I noticed a pretty profound effect when I started wearing. Tape now did, was that profound effect, like, you know, me going from a hundred millisecond, like HRB to like 250?

No, but it was pretty consistent. And the way I kind of tested this was to look at again, sleep architecture and staging all those other biometrics that I just mentioned. And I looked at, what does it look like with mouth tape and what does it look like without it? And I kind of ran some, you know, in of one experience, uh, or experiments and checked the data that way.

And I did see kind of those good, those shifts. And, uh, and for me it's been effective. The one thing that I will say, and I have gravitated to this is that I used to wear all like the som fix that like actually goes. On the mouth. Um, so the tape goes over the lips, but where the last like year and a half, maybe two years, uh, since then I've been wearing my tape, which is Patrick's brand.

They go around the lips, which just provides a nice little seal by pulling the lips together. And I've found that I like it a lot more because number one, if for like something happens and I need to like, say there's an emergency and the kid calls me into the room. I don't have to waste the tape by pulling it off.

And then it's, you know, now it's void. I can't even use it. I can actually go in and talk to 'em, even though it's a little bit weird, they're like, dad, what is that around your mouth? Uh, but, but I'm okay with that. I like it that way, but then also too, I wonder. And again, I'm curious, Lauren, Renee, do you think having something like that, that doesn't actually seal the lips together may potentially mitigate the effects, um, that could be problematic for someone with sleep apnea?

Or do you think even that is probably taking it too far? Like if you know, you have a diagnosable sleep apnea, dysfunctional breathing, you still should stay away from it, period. Like, do you, do you think that makes a difference or do you think it's like, eh, hands off still? I don't. I'm just wondering, like what kind of adaptation is it forcing on the body?

Yeah, maybe it is kind of encouraging your body to breathe better. I, I don't know. Yeah. I, I like it. I wanna try that tape. I know that  good. It's good. I like the too can send it to you all. I have a bunch of them, so I should just send you all back. Everybody is gonna like start emailing me now that listen to this podcast.

Can I have a pack too? Give it to you

better than the ones Renee and I were sent this tape that is in the shape of lips. I was like, Ooh, cute branding. Really horrible for wearing through the night.  right. Yeah. Not a fan sticky, sticky. Like I drink water. If I wake up to go to the bathroom, I was like, oh, this is terrible. So dad. Yeah. But to answer your question, I would think so.

I would think that would be better. Yeah. Yeah. I like the, the VO bio two VO, two, one. That's like the shape of an I or an H. Yeah. Have you seen that one? Yeah. Is that Andrew Olson's brand? I know he has a brand. I, I don't know. You can wear it either way, a woman outta Austin. Yeah. You know? Oh. But feel like maybe that would be a good way to break it in, because I feel like if you really needed to mouth breathe, like you could push that thing off.

Yes. It's like a stretchy fabric, right? Yeah. Cause the one that James nester recommended was like surgical tape, like 3m surgical tape. Like when you put that on, like it, it it's, it like, it hurts kind of when it comes off.  SOS. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's intense. Yeah. It it's more intense. So I think there's know some good options out there other than 3m surgical tape.

It's cheap 3m circle, surgical tape, but you know, the other ones are quite comparatively. The other thing you could try is, um, when you are gonna play with mouth tape at night is to use some kind of nasal spray before like a, I really like a, um, clear xylitol nasal spray or like our gen 23 silver nasal spray, just to like make sure that that's like cleaned out mm-hmm  cause sometimes that's a simple.

A simple thing. It's not like full blown sleep apnea. It's just like, oh, there was a little bit of congestion and now it's gone and. The mouth tape board. That's interesting. Yeah. I actually use a nasal strip as well. I mean, I just kind of throw everything there. Yeah. I do the nasal strip plus the, my tape, and then I've got my, you know, eye mask on.

I know I'm gonna start talking. Molly's gonna be like, don't do that. No, hopefully everything I said thus far is OK.  what is your wife thing? No's so good. So my does the exact same thing, um, which is funny. No there, right? I know we, there, she doesn't do the, uh, nasal strips just because like, they're very adhesive as well.

I like the way that they open, but like when you go to peel those off and I get the sensitive ones, uh, like it hurts. Like it's not fun. It can like dry out your skin, the magnetic ones have you, the magnetic ones. I've seen those. And I have been tempted to buy them because Instagram knows and they will market those things like crazy to me.

I maybe I should just do it. Cause now I've got Molly's approval. I know, I know they are wild. They really will. Span your whole, I mean, your face shape almost looks different. Suddenly your, your nose is like augmented. The brain I've seen called intake breathing. Is that the brand intake? Exactly. I'll try it out.

I get marketed them all the time. Their acronyms are beautiful. They know what to do. They know, know what they're doing. So  oh, totally. I know. I was just on a podcast called the sleeping around podcast, which is just such a clever name. And, uh, so, oh, it sounds a little podcast though. I dunno. I know it does sound very question.

Like what is happening here? Right. Um, but they were sponsored by, uh, airway stints, which I haven't tried, but that one is another one where you can literally have a stint in there. So yes, so many different things for nasal dilators. The, but the magnetic ones, I have never experienced anything as dramatic as that.

So that could be something to play with. That's cool. I'm picturing you get like a Shrek nose. Is that what I, it really does feel like, oh my God, I never realized my nose. Well, it's like the old adage of your parents saying you keep making that face. That'll get stuck. Like you gonna get guys, I dunno, the effects to that.

I don't wanna beauty problem for people. Exactly. I know we need to wrap things up cause I know we need to get going. I feel like we could go on, on, we went, we gotta one. Oh my fun. But it was, it was so much fun. The one point of question I do wanna ask, cuz everybody heard that I do wear mouth tape every night.

I know Molly. You said you wear em most nights. I'm just curious Lauren and Renee, is that a part of your practice or protocol? Like do you guys actually wear mouth. I where it ran. I rarely do. Yeah. I should be a better biohacker and do a consistent experiment.  there you go. Be a great, I have plenty experiment answer.

I have my data. Doesn't change in my bedside table and I have plenty. I should do it. Yes. Right, right. And I'll send you some bio tape to add one more on there to, to test. Oh, nice. Amazing. Wait. But right now, what did you say? Your data? My data doesn't change with the mouth tape. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta say so.

Cause I've seen so many people test this. I've seen some people that dramatically you'll see a shift with their respiratory rate, et cetera, et cetera. Other people, I cannot see where they start started taping and stop taping. It's absolutely the same. Yeah. So that's another, what Lauren was saying, what Renee's spoken to with Dr.

Jay, what you're speaking to is like the data can be so helpful for helping to, you know, all these different bio hacks you could engage in to decipher what might make the actual sense for you to engage in and not. Yeah. Well, if you're, if you're objective and subjective data do not change, don't waste your time in your money like that money and put your money, food or whatever, whatever.

Totally. Totally agree. Yeah. Well, plus my husband is like to face culture. My husband's like, are you gonna do this every night?  right Ryan. Oh my gosh. That's funny. All right, everybody, man, this has been a blast. I, I, I cannot wait for the next one because there are some questions in here that I'm like, I was dying to get answered.

And I know, I think he even teased like the one that I wanted to like pitch over to Molly, but Hey, everybody was going to tune in next time, because they're curious as to what this question is, and I guarantee you, like, you can bet on it. I am saving that one. Cause I wanna know about it.  about full moons again.

I'm gonna leave it right. Full moons. Maybe we can do it on a full moon. Right. Who knows or prep? That's it. I like it. I like it. Yeah. Right. Well, Hey, all of you. That was a lot of fun. Thanks for putting this together and coming together and I can't wait for the next one. Oh, you're awesome. Thanks Jay.

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, I know. I feel like you were our leader on this and this was fantastic. Yeah. And, and we'll see if, if people like the cadence, I don't mind doing this, but if we wanna like switch it up and like someone else kind of like guides and drives totally cool by me. Like we'll, well, we'll figure it out.

I said, switch it up and just test it out. And if we find some format that we like better than others, there we go. Love. It sounds like fun. Fantastic. Love that. All right, everybody. Well on all platforms, thank you again for tuning in. We're really excited to do this and to do it again and again and again, hopefully.

So everybody take care. We'll catch you all soon. Thanks. Thank you. You've been listening to the sleep is a skilled podcast. The number one podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out something that I call Molly's Monday, obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep head on over to sleep is a skill.com to sign up.