Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
The Ultimate Free Health Hack: Why Sleep Matters
What if I told you there's a free supplement that could boost your focus, balance your hormones, build more muscle, burn more fat, lower stress, strengthen your immune system, improve your mood, memory and metabolism – all while slashing your risk of heart attack, dementia, depression, diabetes, obesity, low testosterone and burnout?
The latest research reveals sleep might be the single most important factor in your overall health, yet it remains chronically neglected. In this eye-opening episode, we dig into the science of why sleep matters more than you think and how poor sleep wreaks havoc on your body, both visibly and invisibly.
Did you know just 4-5 nights of sleeping under six hours can reduce your insulin sensitivity by 20-30%, making you metabolically behave like a pre-diabetic? Or that consistently sleeping less than five hours doubles your risk of dementia and death? For men, just one week of poor sleep can drop testosterone levels equivalent to aging 10-15 years biologically.
We share practical sleep hygiene tips that don't cost a penny but could dramatically improve your health: from maintaining consistent wake times (even on weekends) to creating the optimal sleep environment. We explore how your circadian rhythm affects everything from digestion to hormone production, and why tracking your sleep can provide valuable insights for optimization.
Whether you're struggling with energy levels, workout recovery, weight management, or mood, this episode provides the blueprint for using sleep as your most powerful health tool. Get ready to transform how you think about rest – because when it comes to health, sometimes the most important work happens when your eyes are closed.
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Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to Hacking Health Podcast. I'm your host, ben Connolly, with Dave Kennedy. Yo, what is up everybody? Welcome back.
Speaker 2:What's up?
Speaker 1:What's going on? Dude are you?
Speaker 2:good, good I.
Speaker 1:Uh, I still need to get my lift in for today, but I'm good, I'm good doing good, getting ready for vacation I, I wasn't, uh, I almost was at the point where, like I did not have the capacity to get a lift in today, and then I was like oh, fucking load of bullshit. So I did, 30 minutes before I started sorting the stuff out, um, so got mine in you know, you know I was talking this weekend.
Speaker 2:I lifted with my cousin who came over and my cousin is, you know, he's like my brother from another mother. Well, really, we're obviously like from separate mothers but very, you know, obviously close together from a genetics perspective and so it's funny because my whole mom's side of the family is all like giants. I'm 6'4" and I'm the shortest person in my family and so all like giants I'm. I'm six four and I'm the shortest person in my family. Okay, and and so you know, michael's like six four as well, so him and I are basically at the same height and, um, he, he's a great guy like, he's basically my brother.
Speaker 2:Like I never had, you know, I was the only child and so I'd always go in the summertime. My um grandparents owned a farm where they, you know, had um, you know, um, cows and corn and everything else, just straight up, like you up middle of nowhere, farmland and stuff like that, and so I'd go out to the summer times and I'd go work on the farm with my cousin. So we became best friends and everything, and his family and our family are very close and their kids are all in the same age as ours, and whenever we're around, we just go to each other's houses, but Michael has always been substantially stronger than me, um, which which has really always pissed me off, and so, like he's never beaten me in an arm wrestle. Still this, I'm sorry, I've never beaten him in an arm wrestle and I I didn't try it this time, I, because last time I did, I I literally jacked my shoulder up for a year, um, so I'm like I'm not gonna do it, but I can say that I was actually stronger, uh, than him, uh, as lifting.
Speaker 2:However, one of the things like his training routines are very unique. Like he's got really big. You saw the picture of he's got really big arms and he does legs and everything, does deadlifts and everything else, but his one he, the way he splits up his training routines, I actually found very interesting. So he's got one day that's just dedicated to deadlifts and I'm like I kind of like this idea, like just doing deadlifts all day, like this sounds great to me, like like that's my kind of lift. So I was like, well, maybe I could ask ben, you know, can I just have like one day that's just deadlifts and then one day that's just squats, like you know like you know like that can help break my leg day problem out a little bit right. You know like I can do deadlifts all day. I love deadlifts. If I don't have any supplemental workouts that I have to do after that, if I'm just doing deadlifts, that sounds great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that sounds great, except for the couple of days that come after that and how fucked up you would be and the inability to literally do anything else.
Speaker 2:But hear me out, hear me out. But my lifts are just deadlifts, like. So I feel like if I do like 10 deadlifts, right, you know, like I'm getting that the muscle, you know I'm hitting the muscle the amount of times that I need to and I love deadlifts. So it's like to me this sounds like a perfect leg day, like that's all I do is just deadlifts okay, I mean I do.
Speaker 1:We are at the point where we need a new training block and I will get that ready for you coming back. So I guess we will continue this conversation, uh, via text and see what we come up with so, so, so then.
Speaker 2:So then what if I just did entire days that are just chest? I'm just kidding. Uh, I can't. I don't like the just one isolation muscle muscle group. It's not enough time throughout the week to grow. I'm just joking that. But the deadlifts, though the deadlift day and then the squat day, I think would be a good idea because I can intermix them.
Speaker 1:Just deadlifts, just deadlifts so okay, talk me through his, talk me through his deadlift day, like he has a day that's just deadlifts. But like, like, what does that entail? Just like so his routine.
Speaker 2:I would do mine differently. His routine is, you know, he basically um, builds up to where he can get to like uh, like the one to three rep range, and then kind of stays at that for a bit and then and then, and then that's then he's done right. So he kind of like goes, you know, throws from some 45s on, does a couple, throws 45s on, does a couple, throws 45s on, does a couple, until he gets to, and I think is his. His set is around 455 and you can do 455 for, like you know, two, and then he'll take, you know, like a three or four minute break, does you know deadlift for one, and then he'll take, you know, like a three or four minute break, does you know deadlift for one, and then he'll maybe come back down and do like one more set.
Speaker 2:What I would do is I would build up to hit my top range and then I would then go down in rep range or go down and wait and up in rep ranges, so getting more into like the five to 10, and then eventually, you know, to muscle failure you know in like the 10 to 10 to 12 deadlift area. So I kind of just fully exhaust, uh, the glutes and hamstrings from that side. But you know, I'd also have to incorporate, you know, some quads as well and obviously, unfortunately, calves, um, so it couldn't be just deadlifts, but I think, like if I just made my glutes, my glutes and hamstrings workout just deadlifts, I think I'd have a much better time.
Speaker 1:And I'm legs, I'm just saying okay, you might have a much better time, but you said his upper working set is 455, and your upper working set is more than that. So it seems that the way that we do things is better for overall strength. Just saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true. No, there's no question, but I'd just be doing deadlifts, okay well, I want the people to vote.
Speaker 1:So anybody who thinks that they should just do deadlifts, tweet us and we'll work this out. We'll that they should just do that, let's tweet us and we'll work this out. We'll get. We'll let the public vote on your next program, but that'd be rough if we let that the people just do your, your whole next program.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right, it's, it's got like. You know the. The exercise would be like the, uh, like standing one leg, you know, up in the air. Glute, have you?
Speaker 1:seen the video a couple people have sent me recently the coaches and the um. They have the, the client, who's a female in the squat rack and there's a band coming from the top and her back foot's on the band and her front foot is also on the band but she's doing like lunges on the band. So she's like the instability of the balance and I'm like, fuck all this shit, like trying to attach yourself into the thing, like there's no way. I did notice. So I saw recently um brett contrarious. He's known as the glute guy, so I respect what he says and he was talking about.
Speaker 2:He's talking about doing deadlifts only for his entire workout no, but he was talking about bulgarian deadlifts.
Speaker 1:So I think we all know how we feel about bulgarians, but squats and I was like right, this bulgarian deadlift thing should be something that we should look at. So I mean, if you want to leave the hoose?
Speaker 2:well, just like our discussion prior to the podcast starting on whether or not you should get a pendulum squat or not, and my answer was absolutely not, this also sounds like an absolutely not type of decision I was.
Speaker 1:I was coming on with the hope that you would tell me yes, to buy it. I was literally just in the gym downstairs.
Speaker 2:It's like I don't know where I put this, the reason I'm telling you not to buy it is because I'm your friend and I'm giving you some great advice. Like I bought a pendulum squat and then I got rid of the pendulum squat, like it's the most horrible. Like talk about, like I'm not an ego lifter, but like this destroys any thought pattern that you're strong in any way, shape or form like and finds on it.
Speaker 2:I got like 10 pounds on and I'm fucking crying and then I'm hating life and the rest of my day's ruined, like because I can't walk. Like like to me that doesn't sound like a good day. Like I'm not accomplishing anything. Like yeah, I did a 10 pound pendulum squat, you know, and for for four reps, you know, and and I'm murdered, you know. Like like it was the biggest shatter to my weightlifting journey ever. Like I thought I felt like this is why I hate legs day. Honestly, this is probably what. This is probably what caused it. I probably got caught because the because the damn pendulum squat. Do not ever you're listening to me on this podcast don't ever try a pendulum squat. And it's not because it's not an amazing movement it's probably the best movement for your quads ever made but it just messes you up. Like you're gonna have like some major mental issues after this. Like you're just not gonna be able to get over.
Speaker 1:You got ptsd from lifting I, I think, I want, I think I want one, and I'll say this and we can move on, because this is not what we're talking about today. But um callum, who I've talked about a lot. Like he's, I've been obviously watching his videos on a story and I didn't count the weight, but there was at least four full plates on his pendulum squat. So like, whatever that 445 pound plates, whatever that is 180, it's all right. Yeah, four full plates. I mean, he's a big boy.
Speaker 2:That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:I'll try and get the video and I'll send it to you. Stand by for the pen zoom.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and I'll say I just want to do a quick shout out Like I've watched so many like fitness influencers in quotation marks and how they talk about like, oh, you should be doing it this way, you should be doing it this way. Like I think, uh, dr mike from rp fitness like really kind of put it in perspective. He's like you know these these science-based influencers, he's obviously an md, he's very, very knowledgeable. Um, you know he, he understands, he's just a really smart guy. You know. He basically said look at what arnold did, look at what ronnie coleman did, look what jake hutler did, look at all of these these folks do and they're not doing these science-based lifts and they're absolutely massively huge. He's like if you're putting tension on your muscles and you're bringing your muscles close to failure, it doesn't matter what position you're in or what you know specific movement you're in. He's like you should do it with some decent form and technique so you don't injure yourself, but at the end of the day, like doing a, like I saw nippard had this one where he's basically like laying on the ground and he's got, uh, you know the, the rope and he's using the rope to do a single arm lat pull, pull down right from from the rope. And I understand why he's showing that because you know like you're isolating your lat muscle there. But it's not any better than just doing a lat pulldown, a single arm lat pulldown from the top or double lat pulldown. You're doing the same thing. You're using the same exact isolation movement. It's just you're doing chest supported versus something else. So is it a little bit better? Maybe, but is it gonna give you a 5% increase in muscle mass? No, is it gonna a five percent increase in muscle mass? No, is going to give you a point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. One percent, maybe, like, like.
Speaker 2:So for me it's like I really stopped looking at like all of these like crazy ass, like muscle movements and things like that, and I always go back to like just the raw deadlifts and you know, bench presses and everything else, and then obviously the supplemental ones to burn out the muscles, the muscle failure. That is just true. The results speak for themselves. People that lift volume and heavy and everything else, they get bigger. So that's the thing it's like. It doesn't matter what movement you're using If you want to do that one and you want to look cool in the gym or not cool in the gym, I would say, then go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2:But I would stay away from, like, all of these crazy ass movements that just create so much complexity for what you're doing. Then it's usually not beneficial and I consider myself an experienced lifter. At this point I would say I'm an experienced lifter. I would agree I'm not laying on the fucking ground and pulling back for a lat pulldown. I'm going to a lap pull down machine and pulling that pull down, like I feel the contraction. My lats I got pretty good lats like my lats are looking pretty good and I haven't done that movement once. So, like you know, like I just don't see the point in a lot of those. But again, if you want to do it, cool, cool.
Speaker 1:Same thing for pendulum squats sometimes, yeah, an overcorrection, like I agree, and I actually saw some, so they posted something about it recently and he was just like all this, you know, vanity, bullshit as an excuse not to train hard because you're training optimally, and all this shit. Like I agree with that and I do think it's an overcorrection. And I've been there myself. Like I remember again to talk about callum, like I remember whenever I first started coaching and we were over in n10 and we were learning just about different things and banning different things and it was like it was. It was cool and it was exciting because it was new, um, and there was what felt like a new stimulus.
Speaker 1:But it's not practical day to day. Like if you're into that and you have the time and you want to do that, then that's fine. But I specifically remember the leg press in jimco, me trying to band the fucking thing with a big thick green band and I was like pulling it out so far and I had to be like at the seat and then round the back and then the whole way down and round the amount of times in here took my fucking finger off trying to like a fully, like, fully tense at the end of its resistance green band to get it around the leg, press and then try and get it off again. So I get it to an extent and I think, yes, train hard, train safely and supplement some of those things and if they do feel better for you, but don't live as a like, you need to fucking all these bands and set it up and you're taking a pathogen and you need to move all the equipment to be optimal well, I'll say there are one.
Speaker 2:Like you should try them out. Like you should try them to see what feels good for you. Because, like, for example, the one that you you showed to me, to me, is by far the most superior lat raise that has ever been designed. And that's where you put, you know the the cuff on your wrist and you do a cross body. You know a lateral raise cause you're keeping the tension in the stress position. You know of that muscle, so it keeps constant tension on your lat as you're moving up and so to me that's a very superior lat move because I can feel the stretch and I can also feel, you know, the isolation in my lats and I'm not using any other muscles as part of it. So for me, like, like that makes a lot of sense. And could you do the same thing with dumbbells? Absolutely, but my preference is because I feel it's a better movement for me is using the cuffed, you know lat raises with the cables or a lat raise machine that does the same thing, where it keeps the tension on you know the entire time, throughout the whole movement. So it doesn't mean don't leverage, you know things that that work good for you. I'm just saying like, if you think you're going to gain an extra five or 10% muscle by using some crazy thing, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:And what's actually very interesting is Nippert actually they did a study is Nippard? Actually they did a study and there was a study released and Nippard was like all about and I love Jeff Nippard, he's great, like just phenomenal. I love his workout videos and everything else. Natural bodybuilder he looks great, you know. He's phenomenally smart. I think he was taught by Dr Elaine Norton as well, whom a huge fan of by Elaine. But you know Nippert was talking about his whole premise was the stretch position in the muscle is far superior in building muscle than not in a stretch position. And they did some data studies where they looked at the stretch position versus non-stretch position and basically the results were negligible. There was no major different results from the stretch position to non-stretch position were negligible. There was no major different results from the stress position to non-stress position.
Speaker 2:It all came down to the volume and load on the muscles and coming as close as you can or you know within. You know three to four. You know rp, rep ranges, you know um or like a 8 rpe. You know to get to get to that point where, um, you know the muscle really had that substantial growth. So you know, like the, the stretching position is overly used, I think, in the lifting community um, about how superior it is when it really isn't.
Speaker 2:It's, it's really, you know, we're always looking for these hacks to to build muscle faster. When it just comes down to it, you just have to load weight up and you have to tax your body and be intense with it and good things will happen. If you look like mike menser, for example, mike menser was big on like, just doing, you know, one hard ass set for your muscle group, but his intensity for that was insane, right, like I mean, the guy would do 30 reps, you know, or he'd do three, but they're the most three intense reps he's ever done in his life, where he's about to die, you know. And then that would be his workout, right. And so you can still get the same results with the intensity if it's matched equally to that. So it just comes down to intensity of the workout. Putting your muscles through that to get that stimulus to grow the muscles, and then everything else after. That is just what's best for you agree.
Speaker 1:Couldn't have said it better myself. Are we going to continue to talk about training or do?
Speaker 2:you want to talk about this topic, okay, so now we'll get into the actual topic of today. So right.
Speaker 1:so question what if I told you there was a supplement that could boost your focus, balance your hormones, build you more muscle, burn more body fat, lower stress, strengthen your immune system, improve your mood, memory and metabolism, all while slashing your risk of heart attack, dementia, depression, diabetes, obesity, low testosterone and burnout?
Speaker 2:So initially, when you said, but it can reduce your heart issues, I thought you were talking about cocaine.
Speaker 1:but no, I'm just kidding Never tried in my life to throw it out there. It's a joke.
Speaker 2:Just a joke. Never tried in my life, but yeah, that would be an amazing supplement. What is it? I it? I already know the answer because we talked about this beforehand. But what is it? What's the answer?
Speaker 1:you already know sleep yeah, okay, and I think that this is the most overlooked thing and actually truthfully, again to talk about myself in a in a like this is the continued experiment.
Speaker 1:The reason I want to talk about this is because my shit so I'm not here telling you that, like I have, absolutely okay, recently, mine has been shit, so I'm not here to tell you that I have it all worked out.
Speaker 1:I'm here to tell you that this is something that I have observed, that I have, I guess, let the ball drop on the quality and the quantity that I have gotten. I'm going to talk through why it's important and ways to manage it, and I am publicly announcing right now that I'm going to do better in terms of my sleep, because I think again from a quick Google beforehand, it shows that one in five adults now claim that they sleep for five hours or less per night. And a little bit further into Google, in cybersecurity, 40% believe that less than six hours sleep equals adequate performance, and while that is fine, I think that the thing that frustrated me within that the most is that adequate like adequate. Fine, but how do we make it more optimal across the board? And consequences whenever it comes to lower sleep twice, the risk of dementia and death for less than five hours, not into that and truthfully again, like there was a couple of nights recently that I've been getting five hours or even less, and then an increased risk by 20% of heart attack for less than six hours of sleep, plus 10 to 15% drop in testosterone after just one week of five hours per night, which is equivalent to basically adding 10 to 15 years of your biological clock testosterone wise.
Speaker 2:So it's interesting, sleep is something I absolutely neglected pretty much my entire life, um, up until, I would say, probably when we first met five years ago, six years ago how many years has been five years ago? Um, and so you know, like my career. Well, first of all, you know, coming out, you know when you're a teenager, you don't even care about sleep, you don't even think about it. You know you're doing whatever, you're staying up till two, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning playing video games. You wake up at six o'clock, go to school. You're tired and exhausted, but I feel like you can recover from that. Like your body is, is okay during those those pieces.
Speaker 2:And then in the marine corps obviously didn't sleep a lot either. Like, so you know, long nights, long days, your, your hours are all messed up, your circadian rhythm's all messed up, your, your internal clock. Because I'm working night, sometimes I'm working 24 hour shifts another day, you know. So you know the, the sleep priority really, uh, and then, obviously, when I got out of the military, being in cyber security is probably one of the worst um industries for sleep, uh, because you know, in order to progress, you know, in this field I feel like you have to become a subject matter expert in whatever you're training for, and so I would spend my days at work, working, and then I'd come home and I'd teach myself new things, new traits, new skills, whether it was coding or building new tools. I'd stay up until 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, a lot of times with consumption of alcohol to help me code, or to listen to some trance music and from there get some coding in, and I'd wake up and do the same thing every, every day, you know, every day, and feeling just like total crap.
Speaker 2:And what was interesting is, you know, my body definitely showed that right. I mean, I had cardiovascular issues, um. I had health issues, I had obesity issues, um. All of these things started to creep up very quickly because of my habits and a large percentage of that was because of my lack of sleep. And you know, there there are some, there's, there's a specific um, like gene or part of our DNA that some, some people have that they, they can work and function, uh, without a lot of sleep, um, but it's a very small percentage. I'm going to say it's like 3% of human beings have this gene where you only need 5 or 6 hours of sleep and it's equable to 7 to 8 hours of sleep, but most people on average need minimally around 7 hours to 8 hours of sleep is the good baseline for that and for me. I didn't know what that was, but what really helped me understand that was for one.
Speaker 2:The whoop tracker was was phenomenal for me to understand, like my recovery scores when I was recovered or not. It bases things off of resting, heart rate, heart rate variability and how much sleep you actually get throughout the night. That equates to deep sleep, ie REM sleep as well as other stages of your sleep cycle, and what I noticed when I got more regular sleep is I recovered more and I felt more energetic throughout the day and everything else started to fall in line. So, for example, my blood work came back substantially better. Now I have hypogonadism, which means I don't produce enough testosterone through my testes Sorry for TMI. So I'm not going to be talking about the size or texture of my testes. I'm talking about my testes don't produce enough testosterone.
Speaker 2:So for me, sleep didn't necessarily help with that, because I have a diagnosable issue for testosterone production. My levels were in the low 200 ranges and what's interesting is I actually did a little bit of a test where I stopped taking testosterone because I figured you know one. At the time when I started taking testosterone I was overweight, I wasn't sleeping, I had all these issues. So could I course correct it through, you know, nutritional aspects? Could I course correct it through supplementation of you know, give my body the right nutrients that it needs for testosterone production ie, b12 and things like that.
Speaker 2:Because of my lifestyle changes, of sleep and working out, would my testosterone levels increase. And so I went cold turkey on testosterone for about a month and my testosterone levels were still low, unfortunately. So that didn't work for me. But for some people it does work right. So some people, if you're in the 200s or 300s, just by getting good sleep and by putting your body through rigorous exercises and being more active, your testosterone levels will naturally increase substantially because of that. So it has a lot of health benefits and, to be honest with you, from a health perspective, sleep is by far the number one, biggest thing that you can do to help yourself and help your body and help your hormonal balances. As you mentioned the laundry list of things that it does. We need sleep.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I think that there's definitely trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even for people now who are a little bit more in tune with their blood work and their testosterone levels. It's like how much of this has come from so many years of neglect around sleep solely and everything that sort of comes along with it, and I think it can be done. Collect around sleep solely and everything that sort of comes along with it, and I think it can be done. Your buddy Jack that has the Darknet Diaries podcast. He did a post on his increased levels of testosterone, naturally from managing his sleep and his nutrition and other bits and pieces. So there's a lot to be said for doing it that way. It fucks up a lot of things. I mean we're going to try and get through all of this today, but maybe it's going to be a two-part podcast.
Speaker 1:So metabolic wreckage. What does that mean From a hormonal standpoint? What does lack of sleep mean? It reduces your insulin sensitivity, which is basically how your body processes insulin moves its glucose through your bloodstream. In the cells your blood sugars will stay elevated, which is not what you want. Body will store more fat, especially around the belly, and increased risk of insulin resistance and type two diabetes. The connection here and I think that this is key whenever it's put like this, I think it really hits. So just four to five nights of sleep of under six hours sleep can reduce insulin sensitivity by 20 to 30%, making you metabolically behave like a pre-diabetic Not saying that you are a pre-diabetic, but your metabolism will act like you are. The other thing is increased cortisol level, which is your stress hormone, which is good in some instances and we'll talk about that later, but generally stress hormone helping you feel energetic alertness, and it will manage inflammation Again, again, whenever it's elevated over a longer period of time, increased fat storages, breakdown of muscle tissue and it suppresses your immune function, which, again, we do not want.
Speaker 1:Uh, leptin and ghrelin hormones. So you may be in this and I find that the best example for this for me personally is a night that you don't sleep at all, so a night that you don't have zero sleep, and the next day you just you feel hungry all the time and you can't really like, you can't really suppress your appetite. So your leptin is a hormone that sort of manages your society, your satiety, which is the, I guess, the signal of feeling full and your ghrelin hormone is your hunger hormone, so it's the one that signals that you are hungry, and they get all fucked up whenever you don't sleep. Essentially, for me, I guess the best way I can put this is you. You it's like this insatiable hunger all day, but you create things that your body feels is going to give you energy, so like sugary foods, snack foods, carbs, which obviously aren't going to fill you. So you fall into this cycle of just wanting those foods and then you don't feel full throughout the day. So they got all jacked up as well, without sleep. Um, that's from a hormonal level.
Speaker 1:Uh, you mentioned their circadian rhythm. I think that that's something that is important to talk about, because what the fuck is that essentially? Um, essentially the your body's internal clock, and it runs roughly on a 24-hour cycle and it sort of is dictated by light and dark and it looks at when you have the most energy, when you should do specific tasks, how your body digests food, how your body metabolizes food, how it does literally everything. It is controlled by your scn, which is your brain I'm not going to translate that word Supracasmatic nucleus which is basically your brain's master clock, and it controls your circadian rhythm. Okay, the best way again to put this is if you think about and you know we've heard Andrew Herbman say this a million times over about that morning light. Basically that's a signal to your brain that it's morning and it's the start of your circadian rhythm. So you know the tip on that is to get out and get some daylight.
Speaker 1:Obviously we've spoken before, you know, in the winter months, whenever it's like dark for longer, having a sad lamp or something to sort of mimic that light to give you the signal that it is time to be awake, and then evening darkness. So again, you know we've talked about wind down routine. You know dim lights, no screen time, like all those things that are going to help you get into that sleep state and start the production of melatonin in your body. And you will have heard us talk about melatonin before as a supplement. Again, it is produced naturally in your body and it is the thing that sort of promotes that sleepiness and it should start to release in your body in the evening and is the thing that will make you feel tired and then it peaks, you know, depending on the person, between 1 to sort of 2 am in the morning. So the. The light will signal the cortisol and that's the stress which we want as the alertness and the energy in the morning, and then the darkness and even will.
Speaker 2:It will signal the time to wind down and the production of melatonin and it's interesting because, uh, people often equate cortisol to a very negative effect, right, and you actually, your body needs cortisol. There's a very specific reason for cortisol, um, and you don't want your cortisol levels to remain high. You know, in perpetual reality, you know throughout the entire day and you know so. If you have high levels of cortisol, that can be bad, right, but there's a balance to everything. It's like, uh, you know, like they came out recently, the study that you know, vitamin D is like the most amazing supplement ever blah, blah, blah. However, if you take too much vitamin D, you know, everything within moderation for balancing things, it's like same thing for, like, testosterone. Like you know, running 1,000 of testosterone is great, but running 5,000 of testosterone is not great. You're going to have a lot of cardiovascular issues and a lot of other issues with your body. It puts everything off of the system. So we're trying to create a synchronous balance with all of our hormones and chemicals and circadian rhythms and everything else here that goes along and that comes through. You know, regularly scheduled things that we can do I eat, sleep really kicks off the repair process for our bodies and all the things that it needs to get done, and that's why, if you actually look at a lot of the newer data studies are coming out around like sleep aid medicine.
Speaker 2:They're not great for you Like. Like, there's not great, you know they they don't. You know it may help you fall asleep, but the type of sleep that you get um is showing some pretty negative um benefits. Like, for example, there's been some have been linked to to um higher risk and probability of Alzheimer's disease. Um, you know, there's certain things that don't get shut off in your body through these, these chemicals and drugs. Um, so there's there's a lot of things to think about. The only one that I've seen that actually has some decent data to fall asleep on, that is non-addictive or habit-forming and is fairly decent, is Trazodone, and that one is fairly okay from the data that we've seen. But again, hopefully you don't need sleep aids to get to sleep and if you're sticking to certain criteria like hey, I don't have caffeine after what's the BC family?
Speaker 1:2 pm at the latest, like to 12, if you could.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so 2 pm or 12, 12 to 2 pm, you know. Caffeine intake, you know, so that your andesine receptors have time to chill and actually, you know, bind to your circadian rhythm. Um, you know. And then also certain things that you can do, like getting some good amount of light in the morning to really kick off that process. So you know it's interesting.
Speaker 2:So I saw a very interesting study of why children like nightlights. And it's because, you know, through thousands and thousands of years of evolution, you know, we would build fires at night to scare away large animals, and so our bodies became accustomed to having a little bit of light while we sleep and that was a sense of protection from animals and things like that, right, which is very, very interesting. You know, however, our bodies typically don't respond well to large amounts of light at night because it throws off our skating room, thinking that it's still daylight. So, you know, our skating room's like whoa, you know. Like you know you woke up at eight, there's a lot of light, and it's 8 pm and there's a lot of light.
Speaker 2:What's going on? Like are you in a different time zone? You know, like do I need to stay up later? And so your body thinks it needs to stay up later. Yeah, that's why you know they have a lot of the the light options on your phone to kind of get rid of certain colors, the blue colors, to kind of get rid of that specific piece of it. But you want to start to get into habits that allow you to fall asleep and get a good amount of sleep and prioritize sleep, um, within your journey, because that will make you much more efficient and healthier to live longer, for much, much longer, much longer periods of time. There's some really good studies that show just the impact that sleep has a lack of sleep has on wreaking havoc on your body and how many years it actually cuts off on your life, um, if you're not getting good sleep. And so a huge, huge, huge benefit is sleep.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan and, to be fair, you haven't nailed it recently. Like you know, there's a lot of you know, checking and screenshots and hitting prs in terms of your sleep, which is is a good metric to look at. But again to go back to circadian rhythm, I think a good point on this is that it's not the same for everybody and you can. You know, it's based on your chronotype of your body and there's a lot of things you can do to look at it. I'm not getting into what the different types of chronotypes are, but things to look at. If you're not looking at it from a tracking, if you're not tracking it with a fitness tracker or whatever, just being a little bit more aware of how you feel throughout the day, so are you groggy in the morning but alert at night? So whenever you get to sleep, like is that? Whenever you sort of wake up, do you crash it daily or crash after dinner? Um, do you work on that sort of nine to five rhythm and then do you struggle to get to sleep or focus energy throughout the day? For me, you'll have this on whoop, on aura. It tells you roughly like where your optimal had this pulled up earlier. Um, it tells you roughly where your, your sort of natural circadian rhythm, should be and trying to be in line with that, which I think is actually a really cool feature within that, and mine was slightly off what I would imagine that would have been. Now I don't know whether it is just adapting to how I have been sleeping, um, but it is good to have a look at that to see how online you can be with that and try and not be off as much as possible, because obviously you know if it is slightly off based on what your, your days need to look like in the time you need to get up, then you need to sort of adapt it. It's not. It is flexible to an extent, but it's not infinitely flexible.
Speaker 1:And another good tool or app on that is the rise science app. So if you rise, science is the website, um, and it basically it shows you how you should sleep, based on your activity throughout the day, plus what you should be doing throughout the day and when you manage the best tasks, so when you should have your you know the most energy to get the most focused tasks on, when you potentially have a dip in energy throughout the day and the things that you should do with within that. So, again, there's plenty of stuff that you can look at within that. What you want is cortisol to spike in the morning, as I said. To spike in the morning, as I said, you know, extended elevated cortisol is not good, but you do want cortisol to spike in the morning because it's the thing that will basically mobilize energy within your body and it's the thing that will like you're alert, you're focused and you're good to go, and then, obviously, on the opposite side of that, we want to make sure that melatonin is starting to release and and um be produced. You know, later on in the evening, make sure you're getting the good quality sleep. And I'll touch on a lot of things that you mentioned there about the lights and other bits and pieces, because we're seeing that we can, that we can do that we can do to get that.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest piece on this and this is something that I've I've tried to hit home with pretty much everybody um that I worked with over the past two years is the consistency. So it's not always just about getting more sleep. It's about getting like wake time and sleep time, um, and Matt puts on this on the call that he did for us recently. You know, we all know that we have a time that we should get up at or we have to get up at, based on the shit that we have to do throughout the day. So you know, if you've got to be at work and everything you need to do before that, then you need to get up at a certain time. That's fine.
Speaker 1:But as adults, we don't have a bedtime. We don't have a set bedtime. You know, harper goes to bed at 7.30. So we bring her to bed at 7.30, read a book and she should be asleep by 8 o'clock. As a kid you have a bedtime. As an adult, you fucking do whatever you want. But keeping those two things in line more importantly the wake time than the sleep time having that consistency around those two times, is going to be the biggest driver for the quality of the sleep that you have.
Speaker 1:Instead of, you know, sometimes waking up at five, sometimes waking up at nine, sometimes going to bed at 10, sometimes going to bed at 2 am, that's the thing that's going to fuck you up the most.
Speaker 1:Um, for me, what I have done and what I'm going to do moving forward, is give myself a window between 9 pm and 5 am.
Speaker 1:That that's my window to sleep and try to stick to that as best possible.
Speaker 1:And I think that I want to mention on this side is a thing called social jet lag and so essentially, if we're talking about keeping your wake time the same every day, that does include weekends, because you get people who maybe get up early, you know super early, 5am, throughout the week and then at the weekend they're maybe laying into eight or nine o'clock and essentially, if you think about that of waking up in, say, ohio, you know monday to friday, but then waking up in texas on saturday and sunday, like that jet lag that you would feel in a three hour time difference, you will feel that in your body based on the times that you're getting up.
Speaker 1:So trying to keep that as uh, as regular as possible, including the weekend. There's a lot of people within the chat and in the community and on the calls recently saying the biggest shift in that is yes, okay, maybe you don't want to get up at 5 am at the weekend, but doing that and maintaining it makes the rest of the week and your focus and how your days and how your energy is managed and how you process and digest food. Everything is controlled by your circadian rhythm and your sleep pattern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that that has really helped me again as a tracker um. What was really interesting, um, and it actually just happened to me now and I was able to actually diagnose it based off of my tracker um, I woke up one morning and I can feel it a little bit where my my heart is pounding fast and I and I had this happen. I've had it happen a few times throughout the past several years and I never could figure out. And so what will happen is I'll start to feel like my heart feel like it's starting to race a little bit and it'll last for like a couple of days and I don't know why. Right, and you know, I've had heart surgery before and I had what's called lone atrial fibrillation and I know what that feels like. It's different. My heart would flutter and then it would spike up and my heart would just be like I'm running a marathon. It's very different. This is more of like my heart's just racing and I get sweaty and stuff like that throughout the day, and I didn't know what the issue was. And just recently it actually happened to me this weekend. It was funny because I was doing deadlifts and I get really lightheaded as I'm doing it and I looked at my tracker for the sleep and my resting heart rate shot up by like 60% and my but what was crazy is my, my heart rate variability because my heart rate was so high was like 105. And it made it look like my my heart rate variability is like the best it's ever been in my entire life. It was obviously a an anomaly there, and what was interesting that I was able to finally correlate it to that I wasn't able to before was I recently just increased my dosages of T3, t4, levothyroxine because I have a partial thyroid.
Speaker 2:I had to get my right thyroid removed and so I'm on supplementation for thyroid medicine and I got my blood work back done recently and the doctor had suggested that I increase my, my levothyroxine um uh prescription and he gave me a few options. He's like well, you can go to, I'm at 25 right now. And he's like you can go to 50, see how you work there, then go to 75 cf either. And he's like the max I would go is 100, you know, um, just to see where your levels are at. He's like so why don't you, you know, do one of those suggestions? So for me I'm oh, I'll just go to 100. And so probably a bad idea. But the thing was, yeah, you know me, I'm just like, hey, I'm just going to go max because more thyroid medicine is better, right.
Speaker 2:But what happens is it takes like three or four weeks for the thyroid medicine to really get into your system and to really, you know, feel the benefits of it to normalize your thyroid levels. So why I was never able to correlate, that is because, again, it's like three or four weeks. It's not like I'm taking a pill and all of a sudden that same day something happens. And so what ended up happening was like I was able to correlate what was coming from my whoop data and my sleep scores to my direct correlation of when I started taking the medicine with the thyroid stuff and realizing that, hey, my body probably doesn't need that much thyroid medicine. Now I've talked to my doctor about it and I also read a lot of studies on this, and what can happen is it's kind of like a new baseline for your body. So what will happen is you'll get this for a couple of days and then your body baselines and you're back to normal. You'll get this for a couple days and then your body baselines and you're back to normal.
Speaker 2:So you know, I actually I dropped it down to 75 um just to kind of, you know, see if that's a sweet spot and get my blood work done again. But all those symptoms seem to have completely gone away. You know, no racing heart or anything like that after after I started doing that. But it was interesting because I was able to track a lot of these, these stats that I'm able to get from wearables. My blood pressure pressure stayed the same. That was fine. It was never in a dangerous spot. My resting heart rate substantially grew faster because of that. So there's a lot of great things you can do and I think tracking sleep is important. That's why I really like.
Speaker 2:So I have a Garmin, I have a Whoop, I've tried the Apple Watch, I've tried the Oura Ring, I've tried the Ultra Human Ring. Whatever your flavor is, I personally think Whoop does a great job. They're the best at showing just a quick biological clock of everything that's going on your strain, your recovery and your sleep. So when I wake up in the morning, it gives me a stat saying hey, here's how you perform in your sleep and my recovery still might be shit because I put my body through a lot of stuff the day before, but at least I know my sleep is good, right, and so I might know that, hey, maybe I need to take a little bit easy today or maybe I need a rest day. I'm not using the data to say, hey, I need a rest day, based on how I'm feeling, but it's a good baseline to understand what's going on in your body. And I just actually got unlocked yesterday. So after 30, I think it of sleep scoring, it gives you your biological age, your, your, your metaphysical age, based on on your health scores, and it has me at 38 and I'm 42. Um, so I think that's pretty damn good. Um, you know, right now, so I'm a 38 year old, you know physically 42, 42 actual age wise and like 14 mentally. So you know, it's like you know I'm, I'm, I'm kind of in the different areas there from a biology perspective, but it's a good day to understand.
Speaker 2:And especially the sleep stuff is really important. I'm obsessed with ensuring I get good sleep. I'm very, very meticulous and you know me, when I first started that was not my thing and I was like I'm good at 6 hours, I'm good at 6 hours, I'm good at 6 hours and you're like need more, you need more. Like I can tell your score is like you need more and so you know I'm meticulous with that. Like if I go to bed. If I go to bed at 11 30, I know the next day I don't have to wake up until like 7, 30 or 8 just to get enough. You know, sleep in or I go to bed. My normal bedtime is usually around 10 or 10 30. You know I wake up around 7 or 6 30. That's a good amount of sleep for me, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, agree, and I'm gonna. We'll wrap up the sleep hygiene and the things that you can do that don't cost anything, to just fucking sort your sleep out. And then I think we'll do a part two on this, because I have lots of things to take into consideration, like when you travel and lots of other shit. I think it's it deserves the the air time. Um, I think to to sort of wrap this up on the whole, like sleep is the best thing categorically that you can do in terms of improving your health overall. It is also free and there are things that you can do that also are free that will help improve the quality of your sleep. Number one is setting those boundaries around your sleep, like time-wise, so sticking to a regular week time and bedtime In terms of sleep hygiene and sort of setting yourself up as best possible, a bit essentially working from being asleep and backwards the the environment that you sleep in.
Speaker 1:So preference would be a cool room or a cold room. I know that you use the eight sleep, so being able to control that is is hugely beneficial. Um, the room as dark as possible. I recently in the house the blinds aren't completely blackout and it's obviously light at nighttime at fucking 9 30 when I'm going to bed. So I started wearing an eye mask, which is very frustrating at the start because I'm like get this fucking thing off me, but in terms of the darkness and the quality of sleep it has improved. I find a warm shower or if bath, if that is your preference helps, because what that will do is it will heat up your body and then what your, your sort of internal core temperature will try and cool itself down and dump out as much heat as absolutely possible, so it will cool you down internally.
Speaker 1:Another thing to take into consideration is is the timing of your meal before you go to bed. So ideally, two to three hours before you go to bed, is is your last meal, because you think about the process of digestion. Number one it's activity in your body. Number two if you, if you've ever had a heavy meal that, like meat sweats, is the prime example of this. It heats up your body because it's it's expending so much energy trying to um, trying to actually digest the food. It will control your blood sugars and which means you get better quality of sleep, less disruption around your REM sleep and less wake time throughout the night.
Speaker 1:Um, backwards again from that is obviously the, the, the caffeine, um, and again, you know I have heard it time and time again and you and I have said and I can know, I can do it too, yes, I can go to sleep, I can fall asleep, but it's the quality of the sleep, that is, is what's sacrificed within that. So there's a lot you can do within that and in the next episode we'll talk about supplementation. Once you've nailed that, if you do still struggle with it because I realize people do plus all the other things that we can take into consideration, because I realize people travel for work and there's a lot of things to sort of unfuck and take into that, and then I'm going to set everybody a bit of a challenge whenever it comes to sleep. But you're going to have to wait and tune in for part two on that yeah and uh.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the biggest things that I can, I can just express is, like find what works for you. Um, it's, it's just like weight training, resistance training, like you get in through a habit, you you start to like it, you start to do it, or you start to get into a regimen and that becomes kind of your new norm, you know, and then start to look at supplementation and things, how you can do it, like, for example, taking magnesium at night, or you know other things that might actually give it away.
Speaker 1:They have to wait the next one. I know we just want to talk about supplements. You love talking about supplements all the time, I know, but. But.
Speaker 2:But I was saying but the one last thing I would say is, like, um, one of the things that I that I invested in that I really appreciate is my eight sleep um, which is a mattress that it's a, it's a cloth that goes over your mattress. You make multiple different sizes, so regardless of the size that you have, and it automatically adjusts the temperatures throughout the night. So it has a water system and it's crazy because I I I've only filled it once. I've had it for a year and a half. You don't have to keep like filling it up and things like that. You just have to put a new filter in once a year. So it's very no like no maintenance whatsoever and it automatically analyzes your sleep and tries to improve um the temperatures to help you with your sleep as you're going on.
Speaker 2:And the new one that just came out with the new model, I think it's like the pod three or pod four or whatever pod five. Yeah, it has uh speakers built into it to help with like sound and noise and things like that to help you sleep better throughout the night. Um, like white noise and other things um that can help you sleep. And it also um has like snore adjustment stuff. So if it detects your partner or you snoring, it automatically adjusts it so you're not snoring anymore. So some good, good benefits there, um.
Speaker 1:But I will tell you, my sleep scores have substantial, by the way to interrupt because I've been him and anna about for fucking ages and matt and I have talked to death. Um, recently, new bed, new mattress, he did the same. Um, we had the conversation and actually we were talking. I was like, right, we're just gonna fucking order. And then two days later they released the five. It's not I don't think it's shipped until the end of july, but I am, I am in for one because, like I'm, I mean, at this point I'm sold off yeah, I mean I I've seen in the stats like the stats don't and it sends me a daily.
Speaker 2:It's called autopilot. It sends me a daily text message letting me know how my sleep score was and what it adjusted to help me sleep better. And you know, like. So what you typically want is you want, when you're going to bed, you want the bed to be a little bit warm, and then, as you fall into a deeper sleep, you want it to be cooler to help more with your sleep. So it drops your temperature down. And then, as you start to wake up, you want it to be a little bit hotter, a little bit warmer. So it puts you through these cycles as you're going through, and adjust your body temperature specifically to what your body needs for the best amount of sleep, and it's great.
Speaker 2:Now there are days where, like hey, maybe I'm super cold and I crank the temperature up for my app really quick. There's days where I'm super hot, like in the summertime specifically, and I drop it down. A couple Results may vary and you may change it as you go along, but something like that and they also make a full bed as well that you can buy. One of the best investments I've ever made was going through 8Sleep and I've tried a number of them. There's 5 or 6 different brands out there. I know um sleep number makes one, uh, a few others eight sleep by far gold standard. It's like the whoop of of your sleeping app, like it's phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I um I'm in for one. So, uh, once it ships, I will do uh, after a month I will do a review and we'll have a look at my sleep, but we'll leave it there. Um, we will continue this episode as a part for sleep and we'll go through all the other bits in terms of how to navigate general life and take these things into consideration whenever you're on the move, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:All right, well, hey, thanks for this week's podcast. This one was super duper important. You know, sleep is one of those critical aspects of anybody's life, so make sure you're getting enough sleep, make sure you're tracking it, and catch us for more tips next week. Next time, same place, same place.
Speaker 1:See you next week.