086: Round Table 2: Dr. Jay Wiles & Biohacker Babes (Lauren Sambataro & Renee Belz): Deep Dive Into Circadian Rhythms, Sleep Architecture, & Sleep Trackers!

Welcome to the Sleep is a Skilled podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin 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 episodes. 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. J 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 cool.

But Dr. J is currently working as the 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. Wilds 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 complimentary and integrative practices. He's also board certified in Tai or 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 Mateo, 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 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, 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 a g. So mag breakthrough.com/sleep is a skill. And be sure to use the code. Sleep is a skill for 10% off. All right, we are back for part two of our biohacker round table. I am really excited to be taking the rains today and pick your brains, Dr. J Molly and my fellow BB Renee. So last time we chat a lot about what we ate for breakfast.

It's insane that it took almost an entire episode to talk about our morning meals, but really awesome. So we're gonna keep it super simple today, but if you didn't hear that episode, we talked about fasting, some glucose, some circadian timing, meal timing, really interesting. I wanna dive into. Sleep. The other side of the circadian rhythm perspective conversation.

We'll talk a little bit about sleep architecture, what we're each doing to organize our, not only our sleep, but our entire day and how to optimize. Uh, we know this is highly personalized and what's gonna work for one person won't work for the other. But since we have four of us, maybe we can kind of cover the spectrum and cover some ground with each, um, each of our different choices.

And I think just some intention behind it. We'll really kind of share the why and the reasoning behind these choices so that we can educate our respective audiences on what goes beyond the, those daily choices. So, Let's start, well with just basic, basic sleep architecture. Molly's is your sleep guru. Do you wanna kick us off like some basic sleep habits?

How do you think about putting together your sleep? And I would say let's start with like a, an everyday, like a weekday workday. You're at home in your normal environment. Then we can branch out to like travel, social engagement, all the extras that kind of throw us off. And then the rest of us can go and Molly can tell us what we're doing wrong with our Exactly.

Is this a free consultation? Things sleep? Well, before we started recording, I can share that I woke up today to a 61 readiness score. So just in case anyone is wondering, there are variations for all of us as it relates to certainly our health and our sleep. So I'm having to share all the things and I'm so excited to continue to learn from you guys.

So, um, he's human . Oh my God. I was like, am I gonna be OK for this podcast? Like, so of course all the bio hacks I'm throwing back all kinds of things, Keto nesters, all, you know. So here we are. Um, but I share all that because, uh, I really, truly believe. Sleep is a skill set and that there's so many things that we can continue to learn to improve our sleep, and for all of us that we can continue to learn, optimize, and improve because it really is a reflection of also our generalized health and wellbeing, the results with our sleep.

So, Remind your question with sleep architecture, I guess I can one, begin with what we think of for actual sleep architecture. For sleep staging, presumably. Right. And I guess the first thing I'd love to call out, I'm sure people are to have a general familiarity, I'd imagine with some of the different sleep staging that we might go through throughout the course of the night.

Just some quick primer. We tend to, you know, as we're going in from that kind of more light sleep and transitioning to, uh, different stages of sleep on the first half, we tend to have a higher ratio of deep sleep on the first part of our night. Oscillating it through those sleep cycles with little bits of re but then the ratio, uh, shifting over into the early morning hours into more rev heavy sleep and.

Part of our game is to look at what is the quality of that sleep? How can we make a difference with ensuring that we're getting that kind of optimal sleep architecture? But with that one thing I wanna say, cause I'd imagine many of our listeners might be a little bit more, um, uh, data leaning presumably.

And so if they are listening and they're saying, Yeah, I know I wanna know more because I'm not getting enough deep sleep on my aura, Woo bios strap, apple, all the things, or I wanna improve my rem or what have you, The thing I wanna always put out there is that the least accurate information on our hand in w risk based trackers are those sleep stage classifications.

So if anyone is stressed out, if for any way, shape, or form about what's coming up on those numbers, One thing I would say is that there's still, and it's not to say there's not value. I'm obsessed with the wearable data and what have you, but what we're instead training for, if that's, um, a, a thing that we're looking at is deviations from baseline.

And of course, you know, Dr. J Wildes is fantastic for that from a, uh, HR B perspective and the same thing. It kind of applies for our current thinking of wearable data interpretation. And what that looks like is, say you normally. I don't know, 30 minutes of deep sleep each night. Suddenly something happens and you're logging an hour and a half and there's been this new change.

We wanna get into that specific, um, shift from that baseline versus getting hung up on those specific numbers. Because I see a lot of people doing that and bringing about a bit of a nocebo effect, uh, where, you know, they're waking up in the morning and they say, Oh shoot, I had these bad spores, and how am I gonna get through the day and all that stuff.

So that would be something. Molly, Molly, can I, can I stop you and ask you? Yes, please. Can I ask you something real quick? Yes. Cause I'm very genuinely curious. So is your point, like if we're looking at sleep architecture, we're looking at, let's say the amount of time or percentage of time, say, on the aura or whoop for each different sleep stage.

Do you think that it's more like those A, those numbers may not be super accurate, but maybe they're consistent? Or do you think even consistency is a little bit up for. Well, um, so good question, good distinction because then there are questions of what happens when they update their algorithms. Do things kind of, uh, shift there?

How we like to at least think of it generalized is that within each specific wearable that you can kinda chart and measure your specific baseline that is emerging. Say for, for instance, for your REM baseline and your deep sleep baseline, for instance. And then noticing if there is that deviation, but not cross comparing against different wearables.

Cause I'm sure many of you have all seen that we have very different readouts on whoop versus bios, strap versus aura, and you kind of lose your mind if you try to do too much of that. But that there could be information just from noticing major changes that are occurring and working backwards from there.

But also noticing that there are really some value coming from some of the other metrics that are on these wearables. And certainly I know we'll get into HR V, but that one alone being really, really helpful and arguably as a metric of recovery, really helping to provide more information about how recovered were we throughout the course of the night, which is really one of sleep's primary.

See, I think that's a really valuable point because a question that's always posed to me is they're like, I see so much like inconsistency between wearables. Yeah. So a lot of the biohacking community, I mean all, all four of us, I mean, I've got five different things. No, four, four Aura, garment. Yeah. Uh ha.

And, and the one that I'm generally looking at is I'm kind of almost always comparing sleep stages between Aura and between Whoop. And the one thing that I get almost, and this is very consistent, is that my, uh, deep sleep on Aura is typically my rim on Whoop. And my rim on Whoop is like my deep sleep on Aura.

It's like this weird little flip flop in between. Yeah. And I'm like, if you look at the total time I was asleep, and you look at the awakenings and, and all the other metrics, they're actually pretty one to one. They're very comparable. Yeah. But then when you look at. The sleep architecture and of itself, if you were just to take that and that alone, you would say, Oh man, these are highly inconsistent.

Is one wrong is one right? Are they both wrong? It's just a really interesting thing if people are, are looking and trying to compare data sets from, from different wearables, it's just completely different algorithms. You make a great point actually, because one thing that people can have a bit more rest assuredness with of the validity of the information is that they have a higher degree of accuracy for are you sleep or are you awake?

Now there's still some people that do have some spotty things if you have, um, arrhythmias and other things might get in the way of that a bit. Um, also different drugs that we might be taking can kind of, um, kind of dena that a bit, but largely that piece seems to score nicely as compared to PSGs kind of our goal standard for sleep kind of grading, if you will.

And so with that, at least knowing were you asleep, where you awake, And I think that one actually often can be helpful for people that might have a. Almost going into the grouping of known as paradoxical insomnia, where we think that we're not sleeping and yet we're still squeezing out some sleep. Now, not to say that that's putting a cap on, Oh, just be satisfied with that.

We wanna get to the source of why you're not feeling the sense of, you know, trans, uh, shift in your, in your consciousness because really what's happening when you're going asleep. But that can help ease some anxiety sometimes for people I've seen to know, okay, I am getting some sleep. Maybe I have some work to do.

But that can be a helpful one too. Also, um, as consumer grade trackers, certainly none of them are able to, uh, diagnose things like sleep apnea or what have you, but there might be signs that it would be worth checking for sleep apnea. So now that many of them have the blood oxygen readouts, if we're seeing those dip, we're seeing frequent wake up.

If we're seeing a lot of changes in the kind of restfulness scores or movement, there's a lot of things that we can give enough indication that's worth testing. Hmm. And so with these inconsistencies between the trackers, cuz now people's heads are probably spinning even if they already had two trackers.

Yeah. What are some other like symptoms that we can maybe attach to or bring awareness to and maybe other side of the spectrum from the paradoxal insomnia where you're feeling like you're not sleeping. Other side where people are like, I sleep great and maybe they have checkers, maybe they don't, but like, are there any, any indications that we are getting good or poor, deep sleep, good or poor REM sleep or like disruptions in that sleep architecture between stages?

I guess this is Molly. You're gonna get all the, all the questions today when I jump in real quick, but Renee, jump in. Just one thing. I think for anyone listening, like you said, if your head is spinning. If you're not like a crazy nerdy biohacker, like the four of us were like, I wanna see the four different trackers and learn about the metrics and everything.

If you're not into that, please just pick one device. Yeah. And stick with that and be consistent with that. Yeah. Like that is plenty of information. It's just that, Yeah, We like to compare. I also wanna be able to speak to, maybe Aura is best for you, or maybe Bios shop's best for you. Like, I wanna know the ins and outs, but for most people, pick one thing.

Stick with it. Yeah. I've actually seen some deleterious effects of people being really overly fixated. I've had clients come in that have spreadsheets where they're logging and cross comparing all of them and they're, you know, it's really giving them some anxiety and over fixation when there is meant to be some, uh, variability in sleep night to night, there's changes.

And so if we really get ourselves, you know, overly concerned that. Cause its own problems. So I think that's a great and really important point. And then some other things that we might wanna be aware of. Say if you pick your one tracker and a couple of things to take a look at. One, like I said, not overly fixating on the sleep stage classifications.

So you know, those are kind of the least accurate. But noticing trends and huge, um, shifts, but also some of those kind of readiness indicators. Looking at the heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, uh, HIV and those and, and other things along with sleep. You know, blood, oxygen readouts. Also things where people say, Oh, I'm fine.

Sleep optimization is not for me. I fall asleep immediately. That's actually one of my biggest things that I hear so, so often. And that's the biggest red flag for me, that something might be up with your sleep if you do fall asleep in 45 seconds or what have you. Um, cuz that can be a clear sign for sleep deprivation.

And potentially I think I am a stand that I really believe that eventually every single one of us will be tested for sleep apnea. Um, because, you know, there's so many instances where maybe it's, it might not even be into the moderate or severe side of things, but there might be mild signs of this, or even upper airway resistance syndrome, some version of, you know, mouth breathing or difficulty where we're not breathing in a way that's allowing us to get to that fully rested state and getting to those deeper, um, stages.

So I think down the road that will be something that will all kind of screen to the same way we test our blood pressure and other things. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Yeah. Dr. J I'm curious, what have you learned from either devices or just non device tracking about your different sleep stages and what can you offer As far as advice?

Yeah. You know, it was really interesting because to Molly's point, if you look at the review of literature, especially when they're trying to characterize can we accurately identify sleep staging in terms of time, percentage of time, um, you know, it's, there's just a lot of inconsistencies there. So, very similar to Molly.

I don't place as much weight on that. I will look at that, uh, when I wake up in the morning, but I tend not to pay as much, much attention to it as I do. Uh, just overall quality of sleep. And the one thing for me too is that I am always someone that first go subjective, then go objective, not objective, then subjective.

Because objective, then subjective. That's a lot. I sound like Dr. Seus , but going objective, then gotta write a children's. Yeah, right. It's coming out all on Hrb. The kids will love it. Uh, I'll, so I'll try it with my kids first. Uh, but the, the one thing that I wanna always make sure that I'm doing is not like looking at the data first and then allowing that to become a self-fulfilling prophecy throughout the day.

So I wake up and like the first thing I do is like, I'll go, I'll get up generally, um, after I've checked Hrb, I actually really do that first. I will go and, and, and by check hrb, I actually mean with Hanu. Not like, look at my Aura floor, my or hrv. Uh, I will actually go into the shower, uh, and I'll take a cold shower every single morning, and it is my moment to check in and like I check in every single day.

It is a non-negotiable, and when I mean by check in is I just say, Do I feel rested? Like, is that simple as that? Do I feel rested? And very, I would say maybe 85% of the time, Whatever my subjective feel is won't fairly match up with whatever my objective data is. And that's great. I mean, that's good for a lot of the sleep tracking, you know, biometric, you know, whatever hardware, software platforms out there, it means that they're doing a pretty good job.

But for me it's like always check in subjectively and then I, and this is, this is going. Make 100% sense when I say it. But my go to is really looking at heart rate variability first. And the only reason that I do that is because it's my lens. It's what I view kind of everything from a biometric perspective from, But I also work out in the morning.

So for me, it is a great mechanism for me to check in and say, Okay, during my sleep period, did my nervous system recover in the expected direction that I. That I was looking for, and if not, isn't enough for me to modify my workout accordingly. 90% of the time, it has not been affected enough for me to say, I'm going to modify my workout accordingly.

Sleep did what sleep was supposed to do, It helped me to recover, which is like, sleep is the foundation. Hopefully Molly's gonna be cheering in the background saying outta all the pillars of health. And I, and I, and I stand with that. I tell people all the time, like, who come to me, who come to Hanu? It's like, Listen, you can do all of these great things for your nutrition, your exercise protocol for stress.

But if sleep is impaired, and for so many people, it is, especially the hard chargers, the health optimizers, if you'll, because they're like, you know, I'll sleep when I die. I mean, it's like, no, you won't, you'll die because you didn't sleep. And if they, And, and for, for me, it's really like, let's get that squared away.

Let's make sure that we're optimizing or at least just getting things rudimentary based level down in the sleep category. And then we'll take it from there. So yeah, I, I, I tend to learn a lot. Um, Out my sleep from subjectively checking in and then comparing and matching that with the objective data. And again, I just use heart rate, resting heart rate, and then heart rate variability as my foundation to then determine what do I need to do differently.

And if I had a poor night's worth of sleep, well now I'm going to really focus on how can I throughout the day prepare for sleep the next. Mm. Cool. So do you have a time routine in the morning? Like, are you doing a checkin then 30 minutes later checking your devices? Do you have any sort of structure in that way?

Yeah, a hundred percent. So for me, like my, I'll take my shower, do kind of like my morning, um, you know, brushing of the teeth, that's that sort of thing. I'll go downstairs and I almost like I, it will generally be about an hour before I check any data, any data whatsoever. So like when I put on HA in the morning, for instance, like I'll turn the app on and then I just kind of.

Put it in the background. I don't need to look at it. Mm-hmm. , I don't want it to persuade me to do anything different just yet because I know I'm gonna go spend an hour downstairs getting mentally prepared, doing some breathwork, doing some reading, like just kind of engaging in some journaling. All of those things are extremely important for me to do prior to any other type of input, like looking at data, looking at emails, looking at whatever news platform or whatever it may be.

I have to have that period of time. So it's generally about an hour, but then I do take, I would say, maybe 10 to 15. To digest all of the data, which may sound like a lot. And if you spend to 10 to 15 minutes looking at data, that that is a lot. Most people are not gonna spend that per day. But I'm really digging into the nuances.

And for me, and again, not to shameless plug, but this is gonna be on my podcast too. It's gonna be everybody's podcast I'm spending most of my time on ha because I'm looking at some of the nuances of the breathwork practice that I did, and I'm looking at some of the really more important data biometrics, uh, related to hrv, but it's very delayed for me.

Yeah, that's great. Really helpful, proper programming rather than having the numbers dictate your day. You got it. You got it. Yeah. What about you, Renee? Yeah. Well, I will throw in a little bit of experience with my sleep data and maybe throw a question out to the three of you, something that I have seen.

So yes, REM sleep we know is not accurate. We wanna look at the trends, and that is one trend that I really see shift like quickly. Number one thing, alcohol. My REM sleep will be like 10 minutes. It's just like, Yeah, I also don't get much REM sleep until I hit hour seven of sleep. So if I sleep seven hours, I get very supposedly minimal REM sleep.

If I can sleep eight or nine hours, I'll get maybe an hour or two of REM sleep. So I'm gonna throw this back at you all. What do you think? Is there a way to shift REM earlier? Do we think that the trends just don't even matter when it's based off of time in bed or time spent asleep? What are our thoughts?

Should I take this up? Um, that's a great Molly question. Okay. Yeah. Can I pack another question in there just for context? So we were uh, speaking to Dr. Andrew Hill yesterday and he mentioned, Oh, what happened tomorrow? I think, yeah. Oh, amazing. So the deed actually really like consolidates your memory of your dream.

So like curious with the, the differences across the devices not being so accurate for ram, like if you are getting enough deep sleep, are we ensure that you are getting Ram and maybe we can't really count on what your devices are telling you. So is there anything in like, just paying attention to the deep sleep to give us more context there?

Yeah. Okay. So as far as kind of breaking down and looking to optimize individual stages, one, I think it's getting connected to what are some things that might potentially negatively impact our ability to get some of these deeper stages. And there's so many things that that would involve so that both on the first half of the night, which, you know, we can generally say that for most people is more deep, sleep rich.

And then generally say that on the second half of the night, more REM rich. Uh, but finding what are some of the things that would, uh, influence that. This is a kind of a longer conversation, but a couple things that I can throw out. If we're talking about REM Renee, I know you were mentioning that on, on the first part of that rem, we know that if we're having that in the early morning hours, there tends to be some changes in our body temperature from that point on, you know, so getting to some of these, uh, lowest points of our body temperature and then beginning to slowly go up as we prepare to kind of prepare to take on the day essentially to move into wakefulness.

So for some of us, and I deal with this with, uh, a lot of say like chili pads, sleep, um, eight number, uh, eight mattress or what have you. Sometimes if we are moving too cold into the early morning, and I love the colds, but, uh, believe me, but the, if we're having two cold into those very early morning hours, that might influence some rem So there's some interesting new studies coming out around temperature and what that might do to, uh, impact, say like the amount of REM or many people I often hear, That they wanna improve their deep sleep and they just, you know, say that, um, assuming that they're not getting enough deep sleep, when there might be a little bit of both.

So the temperature piece and optimizing for that is a big one. Also, Renee, I think you are testing for sleep apnea. Is that correct too? Or any, So I think that's like a, an ongoing, exciting thing. Yeah. Can be an. Yeah. So, well, two things. So I have been testing the, the Chill Sleep doc pro. Yes. And I did notice that they recommend that your REM hour, you bump it five degrees warmer.

Yes. So I've been playing with that, which is really interesting. Great. Um, and then when it wakes you up, the bed is like so hot. It's like on fire. I'm like, well, of course awake now sweating. I wake up and kicks you outta bed. Yeah, yeah. Like, and I have the same one that, that you all do the, the doc pro. It gets up to like, what, 113 degrees?

And I'm like, Wow, my goodness. Like I'm wake up, I'm a sauna. Sweating. Wow. I mean, it gets you, it gets your butt out of bed for sure. It does. I don't wanna lay in that. So I've been playing with that. And then I did also, so empower sleep, which Molly, you introduced me to them, which is super exciting. It's.

You can probably speak to it better, but it's a ring. Yeah. To check for sleep apnea. So you do three nights, you can do consecutive or randomly, and it's looking at obviously much more than the aura ring, but they can detect, Yeah. Not a lot of upper airway resistance. They said they can like maybe hint. You would need an uh, like a more official sleep study like in center.

Yeah. But definitely sleep apnea, they can rule that out or say yeah, you need further testing. Yes, cuz they're using um, so they're a company and that is utilizing the sleep image ring and that's FDA cleared to test and uh, be diagnostic for sleep apnea. So more and more as we have the ease of use to be able to test for both sleep apnea but also sleep quality cuz they are pulling a bit of HRV information.

So, you know, Dr. J might be an interesting one for, um, you to connect with their companies to very cool to, or the sleep image ring at least, and potentially empower sleep. But ways that we can many times over test for how we are performing for our sleep. Not just one night. Like, and this is kind of their argument, um, in power sleep is.

The same way we do test for blood pressure. We don't just do one test in your whole life and then just go off of that. You take many, many tests cuz many things can impact that Same thing for sleep apnea. If you eat late, if you drink alcohol, if you put on some weight, if you know changes happen in your musculature or even tongue muscles and other things, then you know, instances of apnea or apnea like events can go up.

So we want to have, there's, it's in behooves us to be able to test frequently to see if there are changes. Also hormonal shifts. Things like using T RT seems to up the chances of more instances of sleep apnea, even if you didn't have that present before or if it was mild and can up the amount. So there's, it's layered and that's where I really believe that that is one that we need to be testing more frequently for because that's just a such a common one surprisingly, that I see so much of, especially in the changes of our.

Face shape and many other issues. So it gets very detailed and layered there. Uh, but then of course there's a ton of other things that could be impacting our sleep quality and then not allowing us to get to those deeper levels of sleep and then could be impacting, you know, the ability to get, uh, sufficient rem and deep sleep.

So then that can go to some of the things that, um, you guys are all very aware in, so blood sugar regulation, and so having, um, stability there, you know, the quality of your environment, your sleep environment, light exposure throughout the course of the night. I mean, and I don't mean to say these things that we might know, but I think sometimes we say, Oh yeah, there's a little bit of light in my room, but who cares?

Not a big deal. But those things can come up. Again, again, are there sound issues? Are you sleeping next to someone who's snoring? All of these things can impact, uh, the, the depth of that sleep that we're able to get into. Yeah. I'm excited for you to talk to Dr. Hill because he is saying that he doesn't think light is.

As big of a problem as people are making it out to be. So I think you guys are have a risk. It's really healthy debate that Yeah. Out at the end. . Well, and I'm really excited, speak with him. , you know, and I, I'm so, you know, just value some of the work that he's doing in this realm of, uh, ways that we can improve even things like tbi.

And I was hearing from some of the Peak Brain Institute reps that they're seeing things that look akin to TBI with, um, people that have long covid, you know, so really interesting. And I've been seeing a ton of that for people long covid and changes in their sleep patterns, uh, for women of menstruating age changes in their hormonals, um, in their cycle.

Uh, so. The, what they're doing to then, uh, address the brain itself and then how could that be impacting things like sleep and other recovery elements is super excited. But yes, I'll have to talk to him about the light piece for sure. Yeah, so many variables. Yeah. I just wanted to come back to the testing piece that you mentioned.

I did a home sleep study with my dad and you know, if I had just looked at one night, I could have, you know, self-diagnosed. So this is exactly what's wrong with me. I did four nights in a row with four very different sets of results, which is really interesting. I found that even four nights wasn't enough to come out with any kind of hypothesis or really like path forward with actionable.

So I probably need to do seven plus nights because there are so many variables. So, um, I just thought that that was really interesting. I think we have a long way to go with testing, so I'm gonna offer like a giant setback that is not a biohacker thing at all. When it comes to sleep architecture, especially when I am traveling, and I'm only mentioning this, Oh, my dog is very thirsty, , Hey, really?

I'm only mentioning this because my fiance Jeremy didn't know about it. And it seems so simple, but because he didn't know, I'm gonna tell you on the Apple phone, if you have an Apple device, they have the sleep wake setting. Is everyone familiar with this? Yes. So he had never heard of it. Yeah. And he's, you know, when we travel, he's just like, I'm gonna set my alarm at whatever time I have to wake up.

I'm like, No, I'm gonna set my alarm for a certain amount of time. In bed. And for me it's the time in bed when I'm traveling cuz I like to buffer it a little bit cuz there's variables unknown. Like temperature like 65 is not the same in a hotel room as it is in an Airbnb friend's house. So I have to allow a little extra buffer because potential wake up since it's an unknown environment.

But generally if I allow for eight hours and 15 minutes on this sleep wake alarm, then I'll be able to get through all of my sleep stages with a little extra buffer for the unknowns potential wake up. And I thought it was interesting cuz I was talking to Jeremy about it. He was like, No, just set my alarm for the same time every day.

I'm like, you're potentially waking yourself up in the middle of this sleep cycle. And I wanna give my best, my body the best chance possible to get through those sleep stages. Cause like me, uh, just like Renee. I notice my REM sleep really happens very late in the morning. So if I wake up at six or earlier, it's like I don't get it, um, if I allow myself to sleep in.

So that's been sort of like my grace and my biohacking. I'm like, Okay, this is just what works a little bit better for me. With my chronotype, I know that I have to get those hours to get rem. So, you know, I don't know with these metrics if it's accurate or not, but I do remember my dreams better if I allow that extra time into like the full architecture of the night.

Mm. What is the sleep wake thing on the Apple device? So you can set an alarm at certain times or at the very top of the page. You can dial it in, it's gonna hold your like total sleep and it'll dial. So like if you wanna bump your wake up time earlier able uh, set your bedtime earlier. I'm doing this visual that I know not everyone can see me, but is it kinda looks like a clock?

Is it sensing something? No, no, no. It's just ensuring that you're getting total number of hours. Sleeper will just say in bed, Oh, I can ensure like I'm gonna get eight hours. Rather than saying, Oh, I have to wake up at six 15 to get to the airport. I'm gonna set my alarm. I don't know how many hours I'm getting cause I'm off traveling, whatever.

You can say, I absolutely want eight hours in bed time. This is time I have to go to bed. This is the time I have to wake up. I thought you monitoring the sleep stages. Yeah. I thought you meant it was like one of those devices, you know that will sense what part of your sleep cycle you're in to make sure it doesn't wake you up during rem.

That's what I was like, Yeah. The iPhone, No ai, not a biohack thing at all. Ok. No, but so I think that might, I mean like every. Basically everybody's got an iPhone. So I think that's a really like, just easy strategy that people can take advantage of. Like so with Whoop, which is really interesting, they have like what's called sleep coach.

Yeah. And so basically you can set it for the exact time, You can set it for the sleep goal. So once you've hit your goal, then it will wake you up. And then, or when you're in the green, which is like their kind of, you know, top notch recovery, you see either green, yellow, or, or, or red. And so for me, I normally do exact time when I'm at home.

It's 5:00 AM Uh, but uh, the thing I love about it is that I have both my chili pad getting up to like 113 degrees, which is gonna wake me up, but also, like I don't have any sound that wakes me up, it's just the vibration on the device. And that just feels so much more gentle than an alarm going off in my ear to kinda rattle me.

I'm curious, Molly, do you have any thoughts on that? Like, especially like the haptics that wake you up, uh, like on Loop or even like the sleep coach quote unquote, that they have built into their app? Sure I do. So one, some of the generalized rule of thumb for the wake up time is that we're looking to create a life where we largely do wake up at, around the same time with a margin that moves out, kind of plus or minus, say like 30 minutes, maybe maxed if something was really crazy the night before into like a 40 something minute range, but largely swinging with that 30 minutes earlier or 30 minutes later.

But the reason for. Is that we're aiming to anchor ourselves from that generalized wake up time. And that is irre. Regardless of what happened the night before, is really the recommendation. Even if that sounds very harsh,  almost, or like not loving to our body or what have you. But the thinking for that is then there's actually, while on the short term we might feel a little more tired, maybe we need a little nap or something to get us through the rest of that day, that by doing that, that keeps us more aligned with our circadian rhythm or strengthening that circadian rhythm.

So then you are getting tired at around the same time versus if we allow it to really swing far out. Cause we went to bed late, so we're going to. Uh, waking up a lot later. Then not only is there that kind of social jet lag, you know, we didn't get on a plane, but we're having a symptomology of jet lag, but also metabolic jet lag, cuz then you're likely to not be hungry for a little bit later.

And all these things kind of get thrown out. And then what else gets delayed is delayed sleep onset. So then the time that we get sleepy and the evening gets moved out. So now we're just dealing with jet lag but not really adjusting for it. So really part of. I think I'm, uh, I'm kind of developing this thing, almost a kin, you know, 75 hard, where you have like these set things that you do every day for 75 days.

I'm putting something like that together for sleep. And so I'm still workshopping this, this is like, uh, happening as we speak. But, um, one of those things being that set wake up time being one of like the, the cardinal things that you would do, uh, every single one of those things that you'd have to do for 75 days.

But with that, you have that range, that kind of grace period. So to Lauren's point, sometimes when. You things have changed from the night before, you're going to bed a little bit later. Then ideally if you're setting your alarm for the furthest side of that latest wake up time, so then cuz you still might wake up around your same time, the stronger your circadian rhythm is, the more likely you do actually just continue to wake up at that same time regardless.

And that's actually what we're training for. And I know people can get so frustrated, they're like, I can't sleep in. It's so annoying and what have you. But actually that's a really good sign and I really like that to hear that because that's a sign that you have that strong circadian rhythm. So it's really what we're training for without too much variance.

I love that. I would love to swing to like our worst selves and when we do get off, any of us when we're traveling or just wake up not feeling well or something changes, what are like maybe top two things that each of you do to get back on track? And I'll start with Dr. Jay or Renee, if you wanna jump in, we'll swing back to our sleep expert.

And you wanna go first? Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So there are a couple things. So I was trained back in, I guess that was my residency in a form of sleep therapy. Um, that I'm sure Molly, you are very well aware of. I'm called C B T I or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. And I received this training and working in a sleep clinic, uh, with a lot of veterans who experiencing sleep related, uh, problems, difficulties.

A lot of it was comorbid with chronic pain. Um, cause chronic pain caused them to. Significant impairments in sleep. And one of the notions behind cognitive behavioral therapy, which kind of ties directly into our last conversation, is that we want to do what we can to increase sleep drive. So like that inner motivation to say like, I can't wait to like get back to bed.

Not so that it will inhibit a prohibit anything that you do during the day, but so that like when the time comes, and again, I've delayed the gratification that is, you know, napping or sleeping throughout the day, which is kind of a core part of C B T I when I get to the bed. Like I'm really excited for it to happen.

So I think for me, um, all that to say is like, it's a mindset thing. Like if I get up and I'm like, Oh goodness, I have. Had a pretty rough night worth of sleep. I'm not, that's not gonna impact my day. Like I'm go, like that's, that's just my mentality, like grit, perseverance, go. And that may be a good thing some days, bad thing other days, but I always keep in the back of my mind.

It's like again, a mindset thing that when the time comes and 9:00 PM is arrives this evening, like I'm going to really, really enjoy just like getting and snuggling up in bed and just closing the eyes and allowing myself to drift off because I know that my sleep drive is gonna be like 100% at that point in time.

And so for me, like if I've had a bad night of sleep and I again, remain consistent in sleep time, uh, to bed time awake, like that sleep drive keeps me motivated. And I feel like almost always get a great night's sleep the night after. Not every single time, but almost every single time. So that's one thing.

The other thing would just be overall down regulation of the nervous system throughout the day. So for me, If I have a poor night worth of sleep, I tend not to be as lethargic as I do, like amped up, um, like overly amped up. Like my nervous system is in hyperdrive because my body is stressed, my mind is stressed cause I didn't sleep super well last night.

So for me it is taming that line through different breath regulation techniques, down regulation, the nervous system techniques like biofeedback or maybe some sdr or maybe some meditation. I just sprinkle that more throughout my day. They're already kind of an innate. Habit of mine. They, I just do them throughout the day, kind of at set times, but I like to include more of it throughout the day.

And then for me, again, just a great way to calm the nervous system down. Um, kind of just stay in the moment instead of being so like, just driven. And then, because if I do that and I stay kind of ramped up, then the fatigue will really set in generally later in the afternoon, like three, four o'clock. Then it goes from like hyper drive because my nervous system's amped up to like crash at like three or four.

And again, like I don't wanna start taking a nap at three or four in the afternoon. And I used to do that, like, I would just say screw it. Like I'm, I'm taking my nap at three or 4:00 PM I take it for whatever, 30, 45 minutes, sometimes an hour. And the next thing I know it's uh, you know, I go to bed at nine and I see the clock and it's 10, 11, 12, 1 uhoh, bad nights worth of sleep again because I screwed things up.

So that all to say, yeah, I think that those two things have been the most helpful. I love that. So awesome. Yes. Excitement for sleep. That's right. For sleep. I love that. Yeah. I'm always excited for. It's same, um, you know, I saw your face, Renee. You're like, who isn't always excited . I know why I, Paige, Well, I can, um, I can step in as a person that would have, uh, so if anyone listening has dealt with sleep anxiety, sleep anxiety can be a whole thing where you actually like, and this was something that I dealt with in the kind of origin phase of why I even created this company, was just such a lack of a sense of agency, of my own ability to get to sleep each night.

And I would have a sense of dread for the night approaching and just like, ugh, here we go. Another night gonna be sta staring at the ceiling. You know, Blake's gonna be asleep next to me sleeping like a baby, and I'm gonna be so mad and I'm gonna be, you know, just like real. And, and I can laugh about it now, but at the time it felt so like, up, like frustrating, scary, like, is this always gonna be like this?

All of those things. So what I, and when that, when that wasn't working, I would bring in a lot of new things and change so many things if I didn't sleep well. So that's why I would love to parallel with one, um, thing that I love that Dr. Matthew Walker speaks to, and I'm sure a lot of people have read his, like, why we sleep and, you know, um, different kind of thought leader in that area.

And one of the things that he speaks to is the, the do nothing method after you didn't sleep well for the night before. And what he means by that is that with the do nothing method, you continue, you still get up at about the same time you, you know, with that little swing that we talked about, a little bit of that variance, but largely same time, you're not waking up instead of 7:00 AM wake up, you're now waking up at 10:00 AM You're not doing that.

You're still waking up at around the same time. Then you're not then doing some of these other things that we might do. Cuz many of us will say, Oh, that night was horrible. I need extra coffee. If it's biohackers, maybe extra nicotine gum, whatever, , we did all these things, right? Which, you know, I've certainly been guilty of at different points.

But, uh, I will say that we largely tried to minimize some of the stimulants. We largely tried to not have too many extra naps like Dr. J was speaking to. And then we aim to not do something that a lot of us might do, which is, Oh it was so rough last night, I'm gonna go to bed early. Uh, cuz then that can also be a recipe for upset because now we're, our body's not ready for that.

And now we have that frustration and we might actually find that we're now going to bed later, then we originally planned or we fall asleep and now we're waking up at the wrong time because that body clock is not aligned. Or we're kind of moving like sloths and we're not getting outside and getting sunlight and all those things.

So instead with this do nothing method, you do what you normally would do. Which I know can sound very like, are you kidding? But it can really be an investment in resetting all of those things that we're speaking to. Yeah. That's amazing. I, So I'm like the opposite of Molly's problems. My sleep problems were that I would sleep too much.

Too much hyperopia. Yeah. With like chronic fatigue syndrome in my twenties. Yeah. But now I really still follow like what I learned from you, Molly, like sleep capital versus social capital. Like this is a big thing for me. I think trying to go to bed at the same time and wake at the same time is my biggest struggle.

Yeah. And I used to get like upset and stressed about it and anxious. Yeah. Now I just do my best and accept. That's just kind of how my lifestyle is. You know, I say the blessing and the curse of living in Las Vegas. I always have visitors. . Yes. Every other weekend there's people in town. We're going out to dinner.

My 10:00 PM bedtime is now 11, maybe midnight. It happens. Yeah. So I really kind of just, I get as much sleep when I can. I know that some nights aren't gonna be great. I almost think of it a little bit as like the way I approach nutrition, right? The feast and famine cycling. Yeah. I naturally do that. Like during the week I'm maybe more in like that famine phase.

The weekend's a little bit more feasting cuz I'm going out. So that cycling seems to work really well for me in the nutrition, the sleep, even stress, right? That hormesis like my hanu. Some days it's great, some days it's not. But like I think that balance kind of like the Goldilocks principle seems to work well for me.

I know the circadian rhythm gods are like, No, this is not what we want you to do. But you know, that's just how it seems to roll for me. I really appreciate that Renee. And I was gonna say like I think I started this podcast saying, let's share the why. Cuz I think the personalization, we can go through all the science and what the circadian rhythm gods was just hilarious.

I've never heard that.  love it. If it works for you, like who else can argue that? And I'll say for myself, like I do try to follow that 30 minute swing that Molly introduced, but Sunday is typically my only day that I can potentially sleep in. And I do let myself sleep in up to an hour later than what I normally do during the week.

And you could say like, Oh, that's gonna throw off the rest. But I have like, I treat it as, A treat, and we could make the analogy to food, like, you're gonna have a treat day, not a cheat day. You're not cheating on your nutrition or your diet. You're choosing one intentional day that you're gonna do something different knowing that you're gonna get right back on.

So I sleep in an hour later on Sunday, and then I know like I have to get adequate light and especially movement, like lots of movement so that I do go to sleep at the same time Sunday night and not shifting that window like you said, Molly, which I'm just gonna screw everything up. So that seems to work for me, even though I feel like, oh, if I just like read the science and be like, That's bad, Lauren, but know th self.

Right. I don't know. You can tell me differently. Yeah, no, I, Well, and I think, um, that's where I think that this whole thing goes into the gamification of it. The, I hope the interest and hopefully fascination with getting intrigued by, you know, or results, what's working, what's not working, Testing different things, learning different things.

And also having the freedom to adjust. So one thing that we do in our courses is we create something called a, um, circadian crafted day. And so we have people really look at their calendar and see what works for them and in their stage of life. Like certainly I see different trends with my, you know, mid 20 year olds clients than we see with our 45 and over clients or what have you with how they're designing their day.

And we're also really making the argument, it's also kind of like a life design conversation too. You're really sitting and saying, if I was to create my ideal day, What would this look like and what could I commit you and be excited about waking up at around the same time? And, and maybe that means design.

So one thing I've been doing, I have kind of like summer hours, you know, the sun sets so much later I moved to Austin. I'm doing a lot more socializing over here. I mean, my God, the community over here is nuts. Uh, so I have moved my bedtime for the summers and, you know, kind of for the social capital piece a little bit later than I, than I used to, and certainly later than I would in the winter months.

So there's this possibility to design things and see if you have certain trends. Maybe we might be moving the bedtime out like a little bit, maybe half an hour later. So just kind of makes it so that it's consistent ish across the board. And then you just have it in your brain, like, Oh yeah, I always go to bed at, fill in the blank.

Um, you know, 10 30, 11. What have you also, I mean, we're not even talking about shift workers or rotating shift workers. My God, there's so much that thoughtful, meaningful design of our day comes into place. And then all those things that you spoke about. Then utilizing the tool set of sunlight movement, you know, cold therapy, heat therapies, all of these things to help swing us in a particular way that we might wanna.

Yeah. I love that idea of design, like we are the architects of our day. We can create the movie, we can write the narrative. It's like so empowering. We have agency. Yes, Dr. Jay, you have to go speak to another audience. So I wanted to give you another opportunity if there's anything else you wanna share about your sleep, something you've hacked or optimize that maybe could resonate with someone in one of our audiences that you wanna share with us for you.

Yeah, yeah. You know, there's been, there's so many things that, you know, I think all the biohacking community, myself included, can do, you know, to help better optimize their sleep. But for me, like my, my go to one that is again, One of my non-negotiables, but I would say that I'd probably drop everything. Um, in order for this one, uh, to stay would just be limiting input before bed.

I mean, and limiting input by cutting off social media, cutting off tv. The only input I have is a book in my hand. I'm okay with that. Uh, you know, even if it's a Kindle, I'm okay with that. If it's on the warm, you know, the warm light mode. Uh, for me that's, that's, that's about it. And I think that that is like my go to.

Like if I don't do anything, I'm going to limit input and it's going to help with sleep. But I do have to run. I love you all and thank you so much for this. I hope that you guys continue to rock it and I'm gonna listen to the rest, uh, when we publish it. I'm excited. See, Right. So we won't talk about you.

Yes, exactly. And we won't have any fun plug plugging ha and won't have

so much. Hi. There's never three. Yeah, and then there. Then never three. Yes. Maybe we can go around the triad and kind of say the same thing. Something else that has really helped us optimize or maybe a personal struggle that maybe would speak to someone like no audience. They're like, That's me. I need to do that.

Yes. Well, so as far as a personal struggle piece, I'm actually dealing with that right now. I'm in the midst of a personal struggle of I just moved to Austin, we've got this, you know, new place. We love it and the bedroom is causing me some things for my sleep quality. So hacking some of this. So a couple things to share.

Um, and I dunno if this is what you were meaning, but  I'll just share what I'm dealing with, you know, So there was, you know, um, the ability for the temperature piece. There was some things for a heat wave over here and issues with getting the temperature right. So just. I'm sharing this in case anyone's has this sense of, ugh, I'm the only one struggling with this.

I, you know, certainly myself and many clients find that they, when they go into different sleep environments, you can learn a lot about your sleep based on where you're at. You know, we just all came back from a conference and it's likely we saw different things happen in our hotel rooms that we might normally see at home.

And usually our hope is that it's the other way that we are getting our best sleep at home. And then, you know, these one offs where it's not as great. I had the opposite. My sleep was better while traveling when we're just, So this is a sign that something is not working in my sleep environment. So, couple things that I'm of to share that I'm doing right now.

One, I am getting kind of a high level sleep, like air purifier, so when air quality is stagnant, so we're in a particular type of room that's kind of the stagnant air. So dealing with some of that and Wow. So that could. Yeah. Quick question for you. Have you seen the new headboard that's an air purifier?

Oh, actually I haven't seen that. Renee breaking news. Tell me everything. Breaking news. I meant to send it to you yesterday. Sorry. Didn't mean to cut you off. I was just like, No Air Puration. It is called Air Tool Up. No affiliation. I just heard about it yesterday. Well, I love you guys. Love it is a headboard.

Okay. That is our purification system. For you. Gosh, come on. I don't know. Hery here first folks. Amazing. So Molly, you're gonna do a, a deep dive. Let us know if it's legit. I will circle back and then I'll put it on my wedding registry. Got you Lauren. So that's kind a cool thing if you're having air issues maybe.

Anyway, and this is what I think is so great cuz we're at a point in time where, uh, if you're dealing with something and we really get in the conversation about it, we share, we get curious instead of just saying, Oh, I guess this area, this place I'm in isn't great. And you know, kind of lower the bar for what's possible.

Then we get in these conversations, we hear solutions, we take these new steps, um, and then we have the opportunity to really improve some of our results. So it's an interesting one. I one change that already improved some of my sleep results is an odd one. I haven't had this one before, but, um, literally the changing of the sleep sheets and bedding that I had had, um, which I never had that make such an impact or measurably make such an impact.

But for whatever reason, this new set that I got from this company, I won't say their name, but, um, they had sent these sheets, so curious. I don't, Nice. But, um, I think more prone towards a type of sleeper that maybe needs some of that extra heat, um, or, you know, does well with that. So I did not do well with that.

So once we're moving that actually there was a noticeable change in my sleep results, so that was a new one. So I'm saying all this because my hope is that by getting curious, by really taking the time to optimize, I just moved. Suddenly been traveling a bunch. So really now that we're a little bit more settled, taking the time to improve this environment you do on the front end, you know, make the investment that you've gotta make and then you're, then you get to reap the rewards of setting up an optimal environment for yourself.

So I think there's the opportunity for us to all continue to do that and, and look, I think how amazing for you as an educator to keep having these opportunities to learn, like, believe me, for being the martyr for us. But like sleep is a skill, folks is certainly is a skill. I know when you think that you've got it, like, okay, yeah, I've got this dialed in, we're good here.

It's a formula. You have the chili pad and then sometimes you know, there's some of those benefits that work and there's some certain environments that there are other things to consider. So yeah, really important. Yeah, I love that you just brought up sheet. Because I would guess the average person isn't like, Hmm, how do I fix my sleep?

Like, let me buy sheets. Yeah. Um, I read a study yesterday. I'll send it to you later, Molly. Um, yeah, please. They took two groups, two different types of sheets, I wanna say. One was like organic cotton and one was some different material, I'm guessing more cooling. That group had reported 40% better sleep out of the change versus the cotton sheets.

That's a big shift. Yeah. Uh, significant interest. I never heard of them before, but, Oh, very cool. Yeah. I definitely spend that my way. Was it like of the subjective experience or objective or both? I, yeah. I don't know if were actually using sleep data. Okay. I don't wanna say they were, but, um, Let me check.

Let me check. Yeah. No, and that goes into that realm of just really almost. Sleep detective, uh, taking the time to set the, And then you don't have to think of, you know, we don't wanna be overly fixated on these things so that it's problematic, but, you know, just taking the time to see, is everything workable?

Is there workability here? And then once we do get that workable, like Renee, I know you've mentioned that you and Ryan have taken a lot of time to kind of set up your optimal bedding and everything's like, you know, the sleep oasis and doing that. Now you have good vibes around your, your bedroom experience from the sounds of it.

And we can all kind of do that. Yeah, I would say the only downside to that is it makes it harder to travel. Yes. So like, I have hacked my bedroom at home. So that, I would say, you know, something to share with the audiences is learning how to hack your sleep and traveling. Yeah. Things that have worked for me.

Number one, always travel with an eye mask. You just don't know what the lighting situation is gonna be. There's gonna be a weird light or a weird window. Always, always have an eye mask. Now I'm traveling with the man. Cooling eye mask. So if I go to a place where it's hot and I sleep hot, so I'm really sensitive to that.

Okay. The only thing is I do need a fridge or a freezer or an ice pack to keep them cold, but I do notice if it's really hot, I put those on my eyes just to fall asleep for like 30 minutes and it cools me down a little bit. Nice. That's a good hack. Good ear earplugs. I use like the noise canceling earplugs, um, because sometimes my fellow biohacker babe likes to play her sound machine really loud.

Lauren, I love sound machines and I always have a sound machine, but she just likes it louder than me. So the hack is, she gets her sound machine, I put my ear plugs in. It works great. Win-win. So I think little bit, I'm sorry I don't like your waves. They're creepy to me. So we battle this out. . I have nightmares when I listen to your waves, so, Oh my God.

Ear plugs. It is, I think it's good to be able to have these dialogues, especially at least, you know, when you have. New roommates for different things that you're going to, you know, vacations, whatever, you know, or new relationships that we had. Um, a sleep expert, Wendy Drexel on the podcast who wrote an entire book sharing the covers about, you know, the importance of having these conversations.

Because once you get workability, then maybe there are some changes that, you know, one or both of us has to make sometimes warranting what they call kind of a sleep divorce. And that's not, you know, it's kind of a charged term, but, you know, maybe it needs some rebranding, but sometimes it does make sense for us to be in separate bedrooms if we are having totally different sleep schedules, shift working or sleep abne.

We got, you know, machines going and other things. So sometimes, or even for a temporary period of time until we get things handle. That that separation piece might make sense for sake of getting great sleep and being able to be fully functioning human being the next day. And what would that actually benefit our relationship on the other side of it.

But I think not enough as of us are having those conversations. Instead, we only just deal with the ramifications now, like it's three in the morning, we wake up, get to the storing person and uh, or the loud whatever, you know, sound machine or this, that and the other. So having those conversations, finding the workability is.

Yeah, maybe like coffee and a sleep debrief the next morning with your, whoever you've been sharing room with, what didn't. Yeah, that's what worked. What didn't learn what you share for myself? Well, I'm learning that I need to have like a set number of variables that can change when I'm traveling. Because you kind of mentioned that Molly, like I used to always sleep so much better in a hotel because it's generally very dark.

They have blackout curtains. I can crank the ac. It's generally a small space where I know it's gonna cool. But this past weekend at the Biohacking conference, we just had an interesting situation. So Renee and I had reserved your room. Yes. And then Jeremy was like, I wanna come. So it was like, okay, Jeremy's gonna come into the room and now Ryan's like, I'm gonna come too.

So we ended up having four of us sleeping in a room, which. Like physically so evenly was not a lot, but energetically it was a lot to navigate. Yeah. And I was on my cycle and I can't believe it's taken me 38 years to realize that my sleep is different when I'm on my cycle. But you know, it's perfect storm and when other variables are outta place.

That was really highlighted that that kind of tipped the scale for me. Yeah. And it was interesting cuz I was sleeping with the chili pad cuz they allowed, they let us borrow it for the weekend. It was bone chilling. Yes. So too far on the cold. Too much. Yeah. So that was a variable that was outta my control.

And then I was cycling, that was another variable. So I'm realizing like I really need to control as many variables as possible and keep them limited. So like if you're prepared, like with the sleep mask, which I always do, I also travel with those true dark dots where you can cover like the, those are so helpful.

And then just preparing ahead of time. So now I know like, If I had looked at my cycle calendar ahead of time, maybe I would've said, you know, this is not gonna be ideal to be in a room with four people. Yeah, right. Sometimes you just have to spend more money because it sucks when you don't sleep. But you know, I normally sleep better than a herself.

It's just preparing ahead of time. You said something else that maybe you think about being away versus home. Like usually home is better sleep. I have a client that goes to bed really late and I'm really trying to shift that for her when she has company and she has company quite often, she goes to bed earlier because all of her friends go to bed earlier.

So I'm like, how do we just always have company around? Like, Yeah, I just moved to Vegas. She will always have company. Oh my. I'm gonna send her to your Yeah, I know. But I thought like the takeaway is Oh wow. Like living in community and kind of syncing up with your friends and your, She was able to get that social time and get to bed.

Yeah. Early. So like really kind of checking in with your people and for her, like that's. That's what she needs. Like that's her kryptonite being alone. So like how do we move towards community? Yeah. Because for her, that helps. Whereas for some people it would be, you know, engaging with too many people would kind of tip the scale on the wrong day.

So yeah, a couple things about that. One, one thing we do is we have something called the sleep sabotages list, where we have people give a self-assessment on 17 areas of life, zero to 10 on kind of workability, and we can see what's working, what's not working. So, you know, fitness, health, um, romantic relationships, family relationships, uh, finances, you know, all these different things.

And when we see certain things that maybe are showing, again this self assessment, which you can learn a lot about a person based on how they're, you know, thinking about their life. But when you see things like friendships, family, relationships, what have you, scoring consistently really low and feeling like they don't have the ability to shift that, that can be really disempowering.

And we know that loneliness is correlated with poor sleep results and also mental health issues and other things. So that gets into more of this own. And you know, people often want, Okay, well just tell me the supplement and like the five things I gotta do to improve my sleep. But often it's more layered than that.

You can't divorce the experience of your life and how fulfilled you feel, how part of a group you feel where social creatures and even despite the fact that many of it's become the norm to be divorced for many other individuals. But that's not how we're biologically heard wired. So yes, a hundred percent.

And I think the only tricky part is, I love that example cause it's such a positive group from the sounds of it. I often hear the opposite, where people are like hanging out with friends and then they're going so late. So that's where we have to almost enact what we call kind of sleep leadership almost.

And being the one to leave the party right at a certain time that's workable for you, but have it all, you know, so you're still engaging and still having fun with people. And I think that this is like an ongoing art form, believe me. But I think if we even have that in the background of what could life look like if we both still go to the thing, you know?

So we're still connecting and that's so important for our wellbeing, but then we still lead the thing at a time that's somewhat in alignment with our generalized bedtime, um, and what that could do for us. And then real quick, two other things. We do know there's, there's data on a couple of things as far as travel.

One's called the First Night Effect. And so the first night effect is just almost being prepared that for most people, for or for many people will find that the first night when you are traveling, you might have more difficulty sleeping. Um, and to not be like flabbergasted when that is the case. And the thinking is it's more hardwired that we'd be a bit more on alert.

You're in a new environment, is it safe, is it not? You know, all that. And the only, uh, asterisk to that is that one asterisk is that there can be a paradoxical response for people that are more, um, identified insomniacs and that transition. So not being in a stressful environment that they've kind of linked up their bedroom as like, you know, a place of upset and not sleeping and poor results.

They go into a new space and then they actually sleep better. So that's one call out, but for many of us, it the other side. Yeah. So it's, it gets layered, but to not beat yourself up if it goes a particular way when you are traveling and just aim to get things back on. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I really love that.

But I also love this idea of like the leadership. I know I've been in a lot of social situations and maybe it's around like-minded people and biohackers that I never wanna be the first person to say goodbye at the end of the night. I know Molly, I've do You do it. And it's really interesting cuz you think, I don't wanna be that person, but I know that leader tends to act like a magnet and suddenly everyone's leaving and it's.

Maybe we can challenge ourselves to be the first one, be the leader to leave. Because maybe a lot of other people are like, I wanna leave, but you know, I don't wanna be the first one. Fomo hundred. You can be that magnet. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, and genuinely I never would've thought, cause I used to skew so late and I always used to think of all the fun happening at night, but now my life looks so different that my favorite thing, like even on that conference was go with morning walks.

You guys know Sam, We would walk to air one and get like coffee and have the food and the whole thing and the sunlight and just, you know, it's, my whole experience of what I like to do has shifted much more to daylight hours. Not exclusively, but those are some of my favorite times. So I want to covet those where possible and to still, And sometimes I don't wanna villainize cuz sometimes we, we've talked about social capital and investing in the time with friends and it's sometimes a rarity that would have all of us together.

So we wanna make sure we're capitalizing on that. But just striking that balance. Yeah. Yeah, totally. You were the opposite of a vampire. You were like the daylight hours. So, I mean, the daylight hours. I know. Wanna talk about 180? I used to be the night Queen. Oh my God. So it's just still flabbergasting to me that it looks like that now.

So it's, It's why you could be Queens of the night and the daytime. I think the challenge is be the life of the party early on, and then be the leader to guide everyone home . Yes, Yes. Have a consistent schedule wrap up. Totally. Exactly. This was a lot of fun. Of course, we had one simple question, small topic, and it took us here.

So always so fun to hear what all of you are doing. And Dr. Jay who left us, but oh gosh, I love you guys so much. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight and I'll just speak to all of our audiences. If you have any follow up questions or anything particular that anyone brought up, there's some fun resources.

I'll allow the new headboard, Renee, that we'll have to share. Yes. Thank you, Renee. So good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. , anything else you wanna chime in about before we wrap up? Thanks for hosting, Lauren. Great. That's what I was gonna say. Question. So good. Yeah. I appreciate it and I just appreciate the, this forum that we're kind of creating to have fun.

Um, you know, going in deeper on what things can look like in, in our own life and learning from each other. It's just really great. So thank you. Yes. Oh, you're so welcome. Such a pleasure. And I'll just pose a question to everyone listening. Let us know what you wanna hear about next. We will be doing more.

Woohoo. All thank you. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to The Sleep Is A Skill 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.

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