THE SLEEP DOCTOR: MICHAEL BREUS PhD.

Improving your sleep is life changing in almost every way: energy, focus, performance, immunity, longevity, and sanity. World renowned clinical psychologist and best selling author Dr Breus shares invaluable ideas and tools to live healthier, happier, and longer. The Sleep Doctor is IN!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
What is the one thing you can do to improve
just about every aspect of your life? Your energy, sharpness, performance,
your immunity and longevity, even your sanity. It's something that
every single one of us does every day of our lives,
but we too often do it poorly. Well, today I've
got the world renowned sleep doctor, Michael Bruce. He says

(00:33):
we can't achieve true wellness without conquering sleep problems. I
was sleep deprived for about years. I was fooling myself
that it wasn't damaging my mind and body. But I
have seen the light and I have used many of
the ideas and practical tools that doctor Bruce has pioneered
as a clinical psychologist and best selling author. His books

(00:56):
include The Power of When and the latest one Energize,
How to go from Dragging ass to Kicking It in
thirty Days. I do love the title. His website, The
Sleep Doctor dot com, is loaded with all kinds of
great info. So here we go a coveted appointment with
this sleep doctor. Well, Michael, I don't believe in regrets,

(01:18):
and I've long ago given up trying to improve my past.
But if I had known about the stuff that you
have been espousing for the last twenty years, I probably
would live longer because before you get into this, this
was a very ignored space, and you were a pioneer,
and so there wasn't as much info out there. And
so for about twenty five years when I hosted College

(01:39):
Game Day, I got buy in about four or five
hours of sleep a night, night after night, week after week,
for months at a time, for twenty five years, because
I just I felt he was required. I was getting
by an adrenaline and caffeine. But I feel like I
took years off my life by doing that. So the
good news is, I don't think you've taken two off

(02:00):
the back end of your life, and there's lots of
room for improvement. So I don't want you to worry.
Um And as I think we've talked about before, I'm
a huge college football fan, and this year my team
is doing quite well. I went to the University of Georgia,
so we're being the champions last year and looking pretty
good this year. I'm watching a lot of college football.
My friend, these are good days for the dogs. Yeah,

(02:22):
all my friends who are Georgia fans at a great
time in Indianapolis last year for the championship and they
might get a sequel this year. In working with college
football teams and athletes, sleep Michael has become such a
huge topic, and the players sleep is monitored and they
are expected to report that data, required to report that

(02:43):
data every day, and if they miss sleep, they're chewed
out like missing a tackle in a practice. That's awesome.
I love that stuff well. And here's the thing that
a lot of people don't think about is, you know,
when you're talking about you know, Division one, Division two,
Division three, you know, kids who are athletes like these
are elite kids right like the and and they're they're

(03:03):
top highly tested for things like steroids and things of
that nature. And so if you're looking for the edge,
it's in sleep. Um And a lot of people never
think about it that way. But if you are a
well slept athlete, I can show you reams of data
to show people getting their personal best on you know,
days when they're well slept, on world records. I mean, honestly,
some of the athletes I've worked with historically, the difference

(03:25):
between being on the podium or off the podium in
the Olympics is how you slept the night before. Almost
every time. It got me thinking because some of us
just try to get by, but athletes need to achieve,
you know, peak performance, and a lot of what you
write about is how to optimize your performance whatever you're doing,
based on getting enough sleep and getting enough quality sleep. Yeah,

(03:45):
And that's the big thing that is important for people,
you know who are listening to think about is we're
not just talking about quantity of sleep, but we're actually
talking about quality of sleep, right, And so while minutes
or hours are important, at the end of the day,
it's what are you getting in those minutes that I
would argue is probably much more important before you came along,
and web MD had nothing on on sleep at all,

(04:08):
before you became the kind of O G Sleep expert
and web m d. But I think in in we
talked about athletic culture and military culture, even a hard
charging business culture, so many areas of of I'll just
talk about men's culture, sayings like, you know, sleep is
for the week. My brother heard that as a marine
again and again, or I'll sleep when I'm dead. That's

(04:31):
kind of like the frat house bro culture. Come on out.
I mean, people who are just fighting the idea that
the sleep was even necessary to get by, and we're
seeing that lesson less nowadays. Um. And I don't know
if that's because kids who are younger are smarter than
we were, um, and they're like, hold on a second,
I want my sleep, Like I feel much better, I

(04:52):
perform better when I sleep. Um. I think they're more
interested in balance in their overall lifestyle, and so I
think that's kind of coming through it. But to be fair, look,
I'm fifty four years old. I mean, you know, my
dad walked into the room at you know, six thirty
in the morning banging a punch of pots and pans
to wake my ass up in high school, right, Like
that's what happened back then. It was none of this,

(05:13):
oh honey, hit the snooze button three times, you know.
It was like, get your ass out of bed and
do your chores. So I think generationally we're talking about
very different kind of universes. But you're right, there used
to be a culture where you were you were a
whim if you got if you wanted to go take
a nap, or you said you were too tired to
do something. Yeah, nothing could be further from the truth.

(05:34):
By the way, I love the saying that you have
that that that sleep is a domino, maybe the lead
domino in a bigger conversation about wellness. If you can
get people to understand that that whether you're eating right,
not drinking too much, not smoking, working out, getting your
steps in, managing your stress, if that sleep piece of
it isn't right, can you be at a well person.

(05:57):
There's no universe. I would argue you can. You cannot
do wellness without sleep. I would argue there's three big
areas that you can't do wellness without You can't do
wellness and without breathing properly, you can't do wellness without hydration,
and you can't do wellness without sleep. I think all
three of those are dominoes. But I agree that is
kind of my new idea now is like I look

(06:17):
for those things that are so basic in health and
wellness that if you get that right, several other things
kind of click into place. Right, And I think that's
what you're referring to here is if you're interested in
weight loss, there's no universe you're gonna lose weight if
you're sleeping four and a half hours a night. It
just isn't gonna happen, like your body, your physical body
would not allow for it to happen because it's like

(06:38):
I need to use those resources, right, So you know
it wants to get make you hungry and forage for
more food and all of those types of things. And
so yeah, getting sleep right really it gets everything right.
I mean I tell people all the time, everything you do,
you do better with a good night sleep. Right. It
doesn't necessarily guarantee wellness if you neglect with the other
things we're talking about, but you can't have it without
at least addressing that. I think that's important. Um, your

(07:03):
original book is Beauty Sleep. There the first book. We
have a copy here. This is from about fifteen years ago.
I love the fact that you have that, so believe
it or not. That is my first book. But it
was titled something different when it came out in paper
in a hardcover, So in hardcover it was called good Night,
the Sleep Doctor's thirty day Program to better sleep and
better health. And to be honest with you, dude, it

(07:23):
didn't sell very well, and so the publisher came back
to them They're like, we want to go with your
original idea, which was Beauty Sleep, because what I wanted
to do was show people how you could, you know,
aesthetically look better based on getting better sleep. And so
they're like, absolutely, let's throw that in as the title,
and the book actually performed better with the new title,
same same content, like literally same pages and everything. But yeah,

(07:45):
that's my first We'll get to a lot of things,
the chronic types, which is something you pioneered, how you
stay asleep, how you wake up in the morning, all
those things, but just getting to sleep in this book,
I remember reading the line I can't turn my mind off.
I just cannot shut it down. It's impossible for me.
And that resident at that time is before I sort

(08:06):
of embrace meditation as an idea and stretching before bedtime.
Your work and others have have shown me the way,
but so many people Michael's I just can't. So much
is going maybe now more than ever. I can't shut
my mind off with everything that's on my plate. Well,
and and here's what I would tell you is I
think you're correct. I think it is more now than

(08:27):
it has ever been before. I mean, if you think
about it, there's a lot more crisis is crises or
crisis is I'm not sure what the plural of crisis
is going on now than ever before. Right We've got
financial crisis, we've got pandemic crisis, we've got social media insanity,
we've got an election coming up. Like, there's so many

(08:49):
things to make people stressful right now that, to be
honest with you, I'm surprised that anybody's getting a good
night's sleep. Here's here's an interesting statistic for you. Since
the pandemic, there's been a I believe it's a twenty
three percent increase in sleeping pill prescriptions written. Shocking. I
mean the first I was gonna ask you being short

(09:09):
of medication, because many people's first instinct, I got a problem,
take a pill, I didn't matter what it is, and
something is basically getting to sleep. There's plenty of products
out there that that say they're gonna do it with
no side effects short of medication, which is not something
I embraced in general. What what are the best ways
to get us to shut our minds down and then
get off to a good good night's sleep. So there's

(09:31):
a lot of different things, but I want to start
out by saying one thing to for for listeners out there,
just to be super duper clear um that Chris and
I are not saying that if you're currently taking a
sleeping aid that that's a bad thing. That is not
what we are saying. But what we are saying is
is that there are alternatives out there. If you need
a pill to sleep, and that's a relationship that you

(09:51):
have with your doctor. We have tremendous respect for that,
and we're not saying to change that in any way,
shape or form. But what we are saying is is
there alternative that anologies that might be healthier in the
long run for some situations. If you're a bipolar, uh,
you know individual and you need ambient to help you sleep,
take your damn ambient. Okay, Like I want to be

(10:12):
very clear about that. There's no pill shaming going on here,
but it would be let's be fair. If I go
into the sleep lab and I look at a patient there,
I can actually tell by looking at their brain waves
if they're on a medication. Because pharmaceutically induced sleep and
natural sleep are two different animals. They just are. There's
no kind of getting around it. So when we start

(10:33):
to start to think about how do we give people
a better night's sleep, there's really three different areas that
I like to look at before we get into pills
and prescriptions and things like that. Right, So number one
is your environment. Could there be something going on in
your environment that could be making your sleep worse? Absolutely
believe it. So this is gonna sound crazy. There's actually

(10:54):
a study showing that if you have your laundry laying
around your room, that it's hard to turn your brain
off because you look at it and you're like, oh shit,
I need to do that, or you have, you know,
a laptops sitting there. So really making your room more
conducive for sleep absolutely positively helps, especially for people who
tell me they can't turn off their brain because they're

(11:14):
always looking for some other piece of stimuli something along
those lines. So step number one, look around your environment.
Could there be something in your environment that's causing an issue?
Is it too loud? Is it too light? Um? Is
your bed partner disrupting you? Is there an animal in
the bed whatnot? That's area number one. Area number two
that I like to look at our actual physical deficiencies, right,

(11:36):
and so I say, talk to your doctor, get some
blood work. You want to look for three different things
you want to look for do you have a deficiency
in vitamin D, in magnesium or in any form of iron.
Any one of those three will absolutely make your sleep worthless. Um.
And so if you're low in those, it doesn't make
sense they give you, you know, ashwaganda or ambien when

(11:57):
all you need is a magnesium You know what I'm saying.
So I like to really only give people the things
that their body needs and requires. So number one, if
you got any deficiencies, let's fix those deficiencies. Wait a
couple of weeks and see how your body reacts and
se if it sleeps better. Right again, it just might
be that you're not getting enough vitamin D. Believe it
or not, there's that that can definitely happen. The third area,

(12:18):
which which really focuses in on that I can't turn
off my brain, is cognitive behavioral therapy, so cognity. And
I'm trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and many psychologists are um.
And So what cognitive behavioral therapy is is is where
we change your behaviors in terms of we tell you
what time to go to bed, what time to wake up.
We might even make it a shorter period of time,

(12:40):
which would seem very counterintuitive for many of my insomniacs
where I tell them to go to bit later, not earlier.
But there's a technique within cognitive behavioral therapy that's very
that works quite well. The other thing that we do
not just looking at the behaviors. We look at your thoughts, right,
and that's where the I can't turn off my brain
really comes into play. So what are you thinking about

(13:00):
when this is happening? Are you thinking about work stuff?
Are you thinking about sleep? Are you? And so what
we do is we address those individual thoughts and we
make sure that they're real. Right. So, as an example,
one very common thought that I hear from people is
if I don't get X number of hours of sleep,
my entire day is going to be ruined the next day.
The truth of the matter is you've never I mean,

(13:22):
let's be fair, you've gotten bad sleep before many, many,
many times, and your entire day wasn't toast because of it. Right,
But we catastrophize, We make these things seem like they're
bigger than they really are. Um And so a lot
of times this cognitive behavioral therapy works very well. Now
there's a problem with cognitive behavioral therapy which is there's
not enough therapists. Um, there's a lot of people out

(13:44):
there who do have a need, but not off theirs,
believe it or not. They now have digital cognitive behavioral
therapy which has been shown to be effective and an
effective methodology of administering it, which I gotta be honest
with you that I didn't think there was any universe
where somebody could learn CBT from you know, uh an animation,
But um, it is. Actually they have done the studies

(14:04):
and it looks like it's working quite well, and I've
had several patients use it and believe it or not,
that is actually by prescription, so your doctor can write
you a prescription for digital cognitive behavioral therapy that would
actually be covered by your insurance. Crazy enough, so kind
of cool it is. You talk a lot a lot
about behaviors. When to get up, when you go to bed, consistency.

(14:26):
You say it's important when to stop drinking caffeine? Is
it eight hours before bedtime? Alcohol a few hours before.
I mean, those are some things that are very structured,
and I believe I have great power for a lots
of people who are struggling. M for those of us
that don't embrace a regimented routine quite as enthusiastically. Um,
those things are tough, but I do understand that that

(14:48):
that all of them are important when when combined, Yeah,
they are. And you know what I did, um, Chris
was I created what I call a five step plan,
which I think is super easy. If it's okay, I'll
walk through it for your audience to learn a little
bit more about it and to be honest with you.
Number one, my five step plan will not cost you
a dime. Um, you don't have to give me your
email for it. Um, you don't have to do anything

(15:09):
for it. Just listen and you will see that it
makes a lot of sense. Now we can get really detailed,
but we're going to go through just the top part
of the surface of five different things. So step number
one is to choose one wake up time and stick
to it. Now you notice I said wake up time
and not bedtime. Okay, and I said stick to it
meaning seven days a week. Okay. Now, if people get

(15:33):
one thing from this entire conversation, do this because this
will have the biggest effect on your overall sleep cycle
because it will keep your circadian rhythms in line. I
wake up every single day somewhere between six o eight
and six thirteen. I don't know why, but that's the
time that my brain clicks and wakes up. But the
consistency of that allows me to actually be able to

(15:56):
fall asleep a lot easier. Let me explain the signs
behind why. When you wake up in the morning and
light hits your eyeball, it sends a signal to your
brain to turn off the melotonin faucet in your head. Now,
the good news here is that's great because then you
kind of get rid of brain fog and start your day.
But what people don't know is it also sets a
timer for fourteen hours later to start melatonin again. Ah,

(16:20):
so this is interesting. And here's the big aha moment.
Your brain can't tell time. Now, that's gonna sound strange
that I say that, but follow what happens. If you're
waking up at six am six am during the week,
fourteen hours later is eight pm. That's when melatonin kicks off.
You're in bed by ten thirty. Everything's awesome, right, able
to fall asleep pretty easily. But if you instead of

(16:41):
waking up at six, you wake up at eight, two
hours later, your brain can't tell time, so it doesn't
start your melotonin until fourteen hours later, So that two
hour difference in the morning is actually happens in the evening,
so your your brain is not even creating melotonin at
that point until ten thirty at night, which means you're
not going to call asleep until almost midnight. So keeping

(17:03):
the consistent wake up time does so much for you biologically,
it's insane. Now just pick one and follow it. Now.
I will have in the latter part of our conversation,
we're gonna talk about these things called chronotypes, which is
a genetic predisposition, and we'll tell you when those times
should be. But for the moment, just understand that wake
up at the same time every single day, seven days

(17:23):
a week is what you want to do. Step number
two is caffeine. You want to stop caffeine by two pm.
Why because, as you mentioned earlier, caffeine has a half
life between six and eight hours, So if you stop
it two by ten, most people will have at least
half of it out of their system. Awesome. Step number
I'm drinking green tea, but I'm not gonna go to
bed till midnight, so I don't don't scull you're shape.
Now you're doing okay, I love it. I love it.

(17:46):
Step number three has to do with alcohol. Um, and
this is a great rule for if you want to
drink and still get a decent night sleep. So I'm not,
as you've already noticed, I'm not the sleep doctor to
say never have a drinking caffeine, never have any alcohol. Right,
I'm gonna show you how to do it and still
get good sleep. So you want to limit it to
two drinks, and you want to stop drinking three hours

(18:07):
before bed. So step number three is to stop alcohol
three hours before bed. Let me explain why. When you
get past the second drink, your body starts to feel
a buzz. There's nothing wrong with feeling a buzz. But
when you do that, your brain spikes this stuff called
cortisol because it doesn't know what's going on. Now you're
an energetic drunk. This is not ready for you to

(18:28):
go to bed right, Because let's be fair, there's a
really big difference between going to bed and passing out right,
and that's what happens to a lot of people. And
let's also be fair. Did you know alcohol is the
number one sleep aid in the world. More people drink
themselves to sleep than any single other thing. And it's
why I don't like to think that I'm not passing out.
But listen, all of us feel like you know, I

(18:51):
just I just want to have a nightcap. I just
gonna help me wind down. It's gonna sel my brain down,
and all that one is great. I don't have a
problem with one nightcap. If you want to have a
bourbon um, you know, an hour before bed, I don't care.
I think it's fine. It will cause some level of
physical relaxation, but it can't be your fourth bourbon. You
know what I'm saying, because when you have so much.

(19:13):
Here's and here's the science is the when you stop
drinking and when lights out are that period of time
will determine how much alcohol affects your sleep. So if
you stop drinking three hours before lights out, so you
go to a dinner at six thirty, seven o'clock, you
have a glass of wine. At seven twenty, you have
your second glass of wine to finish your meal. Um,

(19:34):
and then it's eight o'clock. You're done. You're not getting
in bed till eleven. You're good to go. Like it's
not going to have an effect. But if you kept
drinking and got made that time frame shorter, it's gonna
have a huge effect on your sleep, specifically stage three
four sleep, UM, which is your physical restoration. The other
thing it does is it makes you have to pee, right,
because once you pee once and you're drinking, you break

(19:55):
the seal. Right, you're peeing all night long, which is
disruptive to the to your sleep as well. Right. Step
number four is the area that you love, which is exercise.
Exercise daily for better sleep. I'll tell you a funny story.
I was on stage well actually got to meet Tony Horton.
So I'm sure I know you know who Tony Horton is.
Some of your listeners may not. He's the fellow that

(20:16):
developed this awesome program called P nine X a long
long time ago. And the guy's in the sickest shape
I've ever seen, sixty years old. And he came. I
would call him high energy time. He is high energy,
And I asked him, I was. I was fortunate enough
to be in the audience and talk with him um.
And then I came up and gave my lecture and
I said, Tony, how many days a week should you exercise,

(20:39):
and he turned to me and he said, Michael, how
many days a week should you sleep? And I was like,
got it right. And so daily exercise is really what
we're shooting for. But what we don't want is core
body temperature to raise too close to bedtime because we
know that your body has to cool down to get
to sleep. So exercise daily. But step number four is

(20:59):
to stop X size four hours before bed. Step number
five is a wake up routine. Only have to do
three simple things, and I call it the three fifteens.
So you do fifteen minutes of deep breathing, right, So
fifteen deep breaths just to wake up your respiratory system
kind of bring you present. You want to have fifteen
ounces of water. You want to hydrate before you caffeine.
Eate please, much better for you. And then you want

(21:22):
to have fifteen minutes in the sunshine because that turns
off that melatonin faucet and it gives you exactly the
right amount of vitamin D that you're probably gonna need. So,
as as a quick summary, step number one wake up
at the same time every single day. Step number two
stop caffeine by two pm. Step number three stop alcohol.
Three hours before bed. Step number four exercise daily, but

(21:43):
stop exercise four hours before bed. And step number five
is the three fifteen fifteen breaths, fifteen ounces of water,
and fifteen minutes in the sun. I feel okay about
that check list. The last part to wake up. That's
very much in line with what I like to do.
Stretching and exercise would be the fourth thing for me.
Arety consistent of the other stuff too. You've got me
scared though, because and they're not too distant future, I

(22:05):
and the tennis team at ESPN A're gonna be broadcasting
the Australian Open, but from Connecticut, so it's sixteen time
zones away. I've done this two years now. What you
just ran through is daunting because people who are operating
the third shift, the overnight shift, I don't know how
they do it. It's incredibly disruptive. So you're going to
bed whenever you're getting up. The matches began about three

(22:26):
thirty am here on the East Coast. They might end
at nine o'clock, I mean, and then you try to
get sort yourself out and get back on a normal
schedule on your off days, and it's it's rough. I mean,
for people who are who are working those night shifts.
Is there a quick way to feel like you're still
part of the human race even though you're out of
step with a lot of people. So here's the good

(22:48):
news is if you ask me this exact same question
like three or five years ago, I wouldn't have a
great answer for you. I give you a couple of
websites to go to and I tell you, hey, download
a little bit information about this or that. Ship work
has really started. We've done a lot more research about
this in the last five years because we're seven manufacturing economy.
The Internet is always on blah blah blah, bitcoin, whatever

(23:10):
it is. Something's going seven and so shift work has
become quite an interesting environment. So Number one is there's
an app for that. Believe it or not. It's called
time shifter t I M E S H I F
T E R. We can put it into the show
notes for people UM and full disclosure, I am an
investor and I helped design time shifter UM. But this

(23:33):
is actually where you put in your shift and it
will tell you, using four different things, how to shift
on and off almost seamlessly. So you'll use light caffeine napping,
and melatonin in very particular order based on your shift
or your travel UM and what you're doing. So, as
an example, if you're gonna be doing the Australian Open,

(23:54):
I would shift you to Australian time and I'd leave
you there for the number of days that you needed
to be on Australian time, and then if you had
like a two day or three day off weekend, I
would rotate you to your you know, normal time, and
then I would rotate you back Tom Sunday. UM. If
that's kind of what if that's what you're doing UM.
And we do that with people all the time, athletes, UM,

(24:15):
at journalists quite a bit because you guys are here,
there and everywhere also UM, and and you're doing it
from a completely different universe. You're not even there on
you know, you're in Connecticut while you're doing the Australian Open.
So I would actually use time shifter for you, UM
to shift you UM. But those are the four things
that you need. There's hope I never heard about that.
I will I will definitely put that in the show

(24:36):
notes and check it out and share with my colleagues.
What you said is important because the quality of sleep,
no matter what shift you're on, is so challenged because
I'm holding on my phone here, but but devices and
the expectation that you are to be looking at your
email at midnight and aware of what's coming in at
five thirty and you're never off on so many people

(24:57):
are not in their heads saying, yeah, that's how I
made to feel that way by my employer. I'm not
allowed mental downtime, right and so and and that's that's
a big one. So let's let's let's break that apart,
because there's at least two, maybe three different things that
are disruptive of your sleep in that scenario. Right, So
number one is you get an email at five o'clock
in the morning. So first of all, that's completely inappropriate

(25:19):
for anybody to be sent even let's just be very
very clear unless you're on and that's like part of
your job description. Here's what's happening is an early bird,
what I call a lion, is your boss and they're
up at four thirty in the morning. So they're just
pounding things away, and you've got to stop that feeling
to say, I want my boss to think I am

(25:40):
Johnny on the spot and I'm gonna be able to
answer that email, and I'm a great employee. Relax, Okay,
Number one, negotiate that with your boss. Hey, if you're
gonna send me emails at five am, I don't have
a problem with it, but I need to be clear
with you. I'm not gonna start looking at them until
eight fifteen or eight thirty or whatever time is that
we negotiate and come throue. So number one, pull the

(26:01):
pressure off of yourself, right, because there's definitely pressure to
be felt. Okay. Number two, the proximity of the device
is going to be a problem, right, And so what
do I mean by that? Do not sleep with your
phone next to your head? Okay? Like this is this
is sleep one oh one guys. Okay. And and if
one person out there is thinking in their head, oh

(26:24):
but my phone is my alarm clock and it's the
only way I can wake up. Bullshit. Okay, go to
Target and buy an analog alarm clock that you can
put right next to your bed. It'll be six bucks,
I guarantee it. You say, put the phone across the room, Michael,
You say, I am, I wanted to a night stand?
Isn't good enough? I don't put it next to my
head on the pillow. But a night stands bad idea.

(26:44):
Night stands a terrible idea. Why because here's what happens
when you wake up between two and three thirty in
the morning, which, by the way, a lot of people do.
It's the first thing that you do. You grab your
phone and you want to know what time it is.
That is not information that you need to know in
the middle of the night. It's all the way cross
the room, or better yet, in a different part of
the house. You're going to be in much better shape. Now.

(27:05):
Somebody out there is gonna say, oh, I can't put
it in a different part of the house. What if
my child calls me in the middle of the night,
blah blah blah. Okay, Number one, if you have a
land line, then your child will call on the land line. Okay.
Number two, When was the last time that that actually occurred? Never?
Okay never? So I imagine I can assure you if

(27:25):
people need to get in touch with you in the
middle of the night, there will be a way that
they can do it. But you don't have to have
phone sitting next to your head. That's super duper tempting.
But here's the bigger problem is the engagement with the phone. Now,
you were probably thinking I was gonna say, oh, the
blue light from the phone is having an effect on
your melotone and bla blah, right, which is true. But
I want to be clear about something. Blue light isn't

(27:46):
as big a deal as a lot of people make
it out to be. Okay, Here's what's really interesting is
the amount of blue light that you're exposed to during
the day directly determines how much blue light changes your
melotone in production at night. So a lot of people
don't know that, okay, And and there are lots and
lots of different solutions, but I want to be clear.
It's not just the light, it's the engagement. So as

(28:09):
an example, if you're hanging out on your phone, scrolling
away before bed um, trying to get your high score
on candy Crush or something like that, I got a
news flash for you. You ain't trying to go to sleep, Okay,
So what I and and so here's what I'll tell
you though. But let's say you want something to distract
you turn on the TV. Yes you heard it here, folks,

(28:29):
The sleep doctor said you can fall asleep with the
television on. Yep, I'm going to repeat myself one more time.
You can fall asleep with the television on. I'll tell
you why. I have to say this, Chris, because my
wife falls asleep with the TV on every single nime
just TV. Okay, phone bad though, right, Okay, right, Well
i'll tell you why. There's there's two reasons why. Number one,

(28:51):
the lights all the way across the room, but more importantly,
the engagement. When my wife is watching TV, she's not
watching it, she's listening to it. She watches with her
eyes closed, right, and she's all she's doing is listening
to just enough of an old episode of Seinfeld or
something like that to be a distraction to turn off
her brain. Which was kind of where we started this conversation, right,

(29:14):
was talking about people who can turn off their brain
at night. So using different distraction techniques are perfectly fine.
Here's the good news. The TVs have got a time
are built into the software. If you can't figure it out,
ask your kid. That's what I did, and my son
showed me exactly where it was, and we turned it on.
And you can even turn the brightness levels down, so
you don't have, like you know, lit up like crazy

(29:35):
in your bedroom. You can be very accommodating and still
be able to handle that. Um. So we talked about
the blue light, we talked about the engagement, and we
talked about moving the phone across the room. All of
that are distractions, I would argue to your sleep. Um.
And so if you can remove electronics, it's gonna be
overall a great thing. I get it. If it causes

(29:57):
you more stressed to do that, start with it across
the room, do that for two or three weeks. Then
put it out right outside your door. Do that for
two or three weeks, and then kind of walking down
the hall. I'm not gonna lie. I'd have to be
having a sleep emergency to put the phone in another room.
I get it. You're not supposed to tap it to
see what time it is, but you know I do.
I do sometimes want to figure out if I got
an hour more to sleep, if we got two hours

(30:19):
more to sleep. But I don't have that kind of
internal alarm clock that's as well defined as yours is
getting up at the exact same time. I need that
alarm sometimes. So yeah, yeah, no, Well, let's well let's
talk about that. So Number one, if you got up
at the same time every day, you wouldn't you you
would be completely finely tuned. Just as an f y
I for everybody out there listening, it takes somewhere between
three and five weeks of getting up very close to

(30:42):
the same time and then your body just starts to
naturally do it. It will self adjust. So just for
your own edification, it is possible right to do okay.
Number two, Um, when you've got an alarm, Um, if
you have a bed partner, you maybe it want to
be pretty careful because if you get up at a
different time than your bed partner, your alarm goes off.
Your be pissing somebody off pretty much every single morning. Right.

(31:03):
If you've got people who get up at different times,
that can that can certainly be an issue as well. Right,
So thinking through some of the some of the logic
driven stuff and just sort of the housekeeping of it
all can definitely be a factor as well. You have
a lot in your book energize about relationships, relationships involving
people of the different chronus types. So let's get to

(31:24):
the different chronus types. Um. I mean, there's a lot
of you mentioned lions, that's the early birds because lions
hunted first light, and I get that. And then there's
the wolves, who are a nocturnal right, you said you
were a wolf I saw in one interview. I thought
I was gonna be a wolf when I went to
the Sleep doctor dot com and took the test, ended
up being a bear, which is sort of the middle
of the bell curve. Right, that's like the most people.

(31:45):
And then there's the dolphin, who the people who should
come see you who have serious insomnia problems. Yeah. So
so what you did was, yes, you correctly identified. So
what I did was let me just give everybody the
kind of the cheat code here, right, And so if
you've ever been called an early bird or an eyed owl,
that's what we're talking about. Those are chronotypes. Those are
actually genetic predispositions for your sleep and sleep schedule. Sorry,

(32:08):
there's a siren going on if you can hear that. Um.
So these are predispositions for your sleep schedule, and it's
genetic so you can't change it. Right. And so some
people say, oh, I want to be an early bird.
I want to wake up every morning at four thirty
in the morning and kick the day's ass. Bad idea,
unless you are genetically an early bird. Otherwise you're gonna
do this for a couple of weeks. So that's right

(32:29):
in there, along with hair color, eye color. It is
just some part of your DNA that can't really be
modified or worked around. No, you can. You could modify it,
but you'd have to modify it every single day. You'd
have to take melotone and then use light to shift
your circadian rhythm every single day. And by the way,
people do that UM all the time, but it's not
necessarily recommended. Right, So a lion is the earliest form.

(32:53):
Wolf is the late form in between we call a bear.
That's you, which is what I wish I was UM,
and the problem children or the insomniac we call a dolphin.
Now let me explain to you why I wish I
was a bear. So, first of all, fifty of people
are bears, so one and two people is a bear.
But here's why um. Bears have the perfect schedule because

(33:14):
everything out there works on a bear schedule, the nine
to five work schedule. It's perfect for a bear, right,
get up around seven seven thirty, go to bed around
ten o'clock. Work from nine to five. Everything works great
if you're a wolf like me. I don't even like
to get up before seven thirty eight o'clock most of
the time, right, whereas a bear can get up significantly

(33:35):
early and a lion can get up much much earlier.
So kind of understanding all of those things. And by
the way, we've had almost two million people take the
quiz now and we've learned that there are early bears
and there are late bears. I saw that there. There's
glad glad you said that intergestion. Yeah, the late So
wait a minute, I can't. I can say I do
my best work. I have to function at midnight. I

(33:57):
have to be at my sharpest at the end of
a football game at midnight Eastern time. So it's very
hard to to think of myself when someone's got to
shut it down again. But I'm glad that you You
got very specific in the book, and I would definitely
encourage people to pick it up and then figure out
how how a bear is going to coexist with a
lion or a or a dolphin or something, because that's
when you're living with you said, You're sleeping right next

(34:19):
to somebody and you love them more than anybody else.
And but there's that sort of potential collision. Well, absolutely,
and look, let's be fair, like not everybody ends up
in bed with somebody that's the same chronotype. Now, I'll
be fair. I was lucky. Um we didn't realize that.
But both my wife and I are nighttime chronotypes. And
and we know this now because when I remember when

(34:40):
we were dating, uh, twenty four years ago, Um, I
would pick her up at eight, we'd have dinner reservations
at eight thirty. We finished dinner by like ten. We'd
go to the movies from ten thirty to twelve thirty.
Then we go off for a drink or dessert afterwards,
we get home at two, right, and that was perfectly
normal for us. I went out with another girl, not
since then, but wore then. Who wasn't There's no universe

(35:02):
where she could stay out until two o'clock in the morning. Right,
But I you know, I didn't think about I mean,
you're young and dating, you don't think about it. But
now when you're married, like life sets in. Like there's
some interesting aspects to this. And I'll be honest with you.
The big question that everybody asks, intimacy when if if
I'm an early bird and my pronotype as a night owl,
when do we have sex? So, if you don't mind,

(35:23):
I'll do a little bit of information about that because
I have a feeling your listeners who want to know.
Is that cool? I'm not going to object to you
talking about sex now, Okay. So so here's what's interesting.
And by the way, take the chrono quiz so you
know what you are so that this information can be
valuable to you. So you need five hormones to successfully
be intimate. You need estrogen, progesterone two stopsterone, adrenaline, and cortisol.

(35:46):
I'll need to be elevated and melatonin, the sleep hormone
needs to be lowered. Okay, So seventy four of people
like to be intimate somewhere between ten and eleven thirty
at night, and there's polls and things like that. What
do you think their horn profile looks like? It's the opposite, right,
Melotonin is high and all those other things are low.
That is hint number one. Um, if you are in

(36:09):
bed with somebody who is biologically male, okay, Hint number
two what a most men wake up within the morning
an erection If that's not Mother nature telling you when
to use that thing. I don't know what is, Okay,
So what we look at is testosterone levels. So here's
what happens. Men wake up in the morning with their
highest level of testosterone of the entire day. Okay, So

(36:32):
it makes intuitive sense. That would make more sense to
be able to be intimate early in the morning. Here's
what we discovered after giving this information to a lot
of different chronotypes is UM, connection is better. UM. And
so when people now to be fair, wake up in
the morning, go brush your teeth, throw in some mouthwash,
then come back into bed with your partner and right
and then sort of see how it works. Performance is

(36:54):
better for men across the board. Erectile function is better, um,
Ejaculatory function is better. But also connection is better. And
so it's very very interesting looking at women, m orgasm
actually occurs more in the morning time than it does
in the evening time. Again, very very interesting. But I
will tell you the funniest aspect of the entire study
is we did we when we were surveying people and

(37:16):
getting all this data, we did a different male versus
female and women had very specific times based on their
chronotype of when they wanted to be intimate for men.
Believe it or not, it was whenever it's offered, I'm
down and and not surprising, right, but but actually data driven,
right and so but if you think about it, you know,

(37:38):
there's it's very interesting. So in the book, what we
did was we created a matrices so you can put
your chronotype across one and your partner's chronotype across the other.
And I give you an early evening time and an
early morning time to run the experiment for yourself, right
and say, hey, hon, you know, buddy, let's figure it out.
And so there you go, like, just give it a shot,
and so to see what happens. You might be surprise

(38:00):
at number one, it gives a little variety to your
sex life. But number two you may actually perform better. Also,
just as an edification, in the book, we have two
other matrices, one for lesbian couples and one for gay couples.
Because the hormone profiles are different chronotypes and circadian rhythms,
which is just now beginning to be explored adequately. It

(38:21):
hasn't been. I mean you say that there is not
just the best time to wake up or go to
sleep or have a drinker, have sex. But virtually any
sort of activity, you can tell someone based on their
chronotype and the detailed chronotype, what's what's the best time
to do that most efficiently or optimally. There's no question
about it, and the data is really consistent. We had

(38:41):
over two d and twenty studies in the book about
every I mean, I can tell you the best time
to day to write a book. I can tell you
the best time and day to have a conversation with
your child. I can tell you the best kind of
conversation to have a difficult conversation with your spouse. Um,
there's really because what we do is we because it's
all about hormones, right, And so here's what happens is
if you're a lion and you wake up at five

(39:04):
o'clock in the morning, guess what your meltonin turns off.
All your other hormones turn on, and it's very predictable
within the next twenty four hours. If you're a wolf,
the exact same predictability happens. It's just like three hours later, right.
And so once you start to know what the hormone
schedule is, all you do is plan your activities when
your hormones will naturally be hid. So people tell me

(39:24):
all the time. I do this with athletes constantly, right,
And so if I've got an athlete who's ready to
perform um, the first thing that we try to figure
out is when what time of day are you competing? Right,
because it could be very different depending upon what time
zone you're in, what what sport you're playing. Right, If
you're a golfer, you might be playing on the dawn patrol,

(39:45):
whereas if you're an n c A football player, you
may not start until six o'clock at night on East
Coast time, right, And so there are very different performance
times that can go through there for for particular athletes,
and depends upon the sport and things like that. But
it's super cool. Yeah. The book Energize You, you co
wrote with Stacey Griboth, is one of the gurus of
soul cycle, and it talks just about which an energy

(40:07):
and lack of it and the need forward and the
desire to optimize It is such a huge topic right now,
and sleep is a component of it. But other than
getting quality and quantity of sleep, what kinds of things
should people be focusing on to sort of maximize their energy. Yeah,
so it's interesting. So there's a couple of different things.
If you start to look in the literature, I would
say within the last five to seven years, intermittent fasting

(40:29):
has really become significantly more popular and certainly something that
people can learn from and getting good. Don't tell me
that's bad. Please, please don't tell me that's bad. It's great.
It's great. In fact, in the new book Energized, we
dedicate almost a third of the book to intermittent fasting,
and we've talked to people about how to fast, and
believe it or not, you can fast based on your chronotype. Um,

(40:52):
and it actually makes it more effective. So it's kind
of cool. Um. So I think intermittent fasting is absolutely
one of those great ways to number one, have more energy.
People don't realize this, but food kind of slows you down.
Um um. It really kind of makes you a little
logi and a little slow and things like that, whereas
not having food for prescribed periods of time can be

(41:12):
very beneficial. I just want to be super clear about
one thing though, for any listeners out there. If you're
interested in trying intermittent fasting and you've been diagnosed with
an eating disorder. That's a terrible idea. You need to
speak with your doctor who is treating your eating disorder.
Intermittent fasting is not for people with anorexia, bulimia, or
any types of eating disorders. That's a whole different conversation

(41:34):
that you need to have with your doctor. Yeah, thanks
for clarifying and explaining. I don't generally address to things
to people who are struggling. If you're struggling with something
like that you mentioned earlier, folks who might be struggling
in various ways and mental health issues, obviously, deal with
the doctor. Get that get that stuff sorted out before
listening to advice. It's for for everybody because it's doesn't

(41:56):
doesn't work across the board. So absolutely so regulating food in,
take sleep, what else, movement um. And so that's what
Stacy helped me with. So, as you mentioned Stacy Griffith,
she is one of the founding trainers at Soul Cycle. Awesome.
Like you want to talk about energy, Holy crap, this
woman has got more energy than anybody I think I've
ever seen. And if you ever tried taking one of

(42:17):
her classes, She's still instructs all over the country. But
she's based, I believe in New York. Her classes sellout
in like two minutes, UM. And I've been to some
of her classes. It's like a disco dance party, but
you're sweating and cycling and all this kind of crazy
fun and so and so, when Stacy and I got together,
we started talking about it and I said to her,
I said, well, tell me what the problem is for

(42:38):
most of your patients. And she said, most of my
patients tell me they're exhausted. Like are they sleeping? She's like, well,
kind of sort of, maybe we need to talk about that.
And I said, you know, a lot of my patients
tell me that they're exhausted, but they are sleeping. Well,
and she's like, well are they moving? You know, I
don't know. And so like, I'm gonna ask your patients questions,
and you're gonna ask my patients questions, and now we're
gonna start to figure it out. And so we did.

(43:00):
We developed a movement program. I should say Stacy really
developed a movement program. UM. And and I want to
be clear, this is an exercise. This is movement. So
what it is is when you use your phone, UM,
you take uh five times a day an alarm would
go off very small and you're gonna stop what you're
doing for five minutes. That's it. I'm not and this
I want to be clear. This is not an exercise routine.

(43:21):
Nobody should be breaking a sweat. This is literally about
moving your body right. So one of the things we
know is when we sit for too long, um, we
swell and inflammation sets in and then we get stiff
and then we feel like crap and we don't want
to move around. I mean, let's be fair, sitting is
the new smoking. Guys. We want to stay up and down,
you know, we want to be moving quite a bit.
And so it Stacy taught me was five different types

(43:45):
of movements that you can be done throughout the day.
So there's a bounce, there's a shape, there's a stretch,
there's a balance, and there's a build and there are
different times for different prototypes. But again, what we're having
people do is just you know, stand up and shake.
You know, like you ever seen a dog when they
get up after they've been lying from the I remember
when they do that whole shaky thing and they're immediately

(44:05):
awakened lots of I mean, I kind of feel energetic
when I just did it right, and so like that's
the kind of thing that we're talking about. But it's
a movement schedule and it's super easy to do. You
got me fired up? Are you? And we'll we'll close here.
Are you optimistic about the future of sleep and being
able to spread the word and and having people increase

(44:25):
their wellness at a time when I think, unfortunately, when
you look around on several fronts, America is not getting healthier.
It's getting less healthy almost by the month in so
many ways. And it's never too late. But how sleep
fits into this this whole component of fitness, wellness, and
then ultimately longevity because we'd like to live not just longer,
but high quality years. Yeah. Absolutely, so I think sleep

(44:48):
is critical, critical, critical for all of that. And I
think if you don't um well, let's let's mol me
back up. If you think you're not sleeping well from
a quality standpoint, talk to your doctor, you mean, dately,
maybe do a sleep test. Number one, we need to
rule out do you have sleep apnea, which, by the way,
eighteen percent of the population, I mean, that's one in
five people has that. Do you have NARCALYPSI do you

(45:10):
have restless leg syndrome? Do you have insomnia? I mean,
if if all we did was take the percentages of
the population of those four things, that's like six of
the population. Okay, right, So number one, if your sleep
isn't great, talk with your doctor about it. That you
could have a sleep disorder which could be easy to fix,
and then you're back on the road to recovery. Okay,
let's say that that's not the case. You don't have

(45:32):
a sleep disorder, but you have what I call disordered sleep. Okay,
So it's not apnea, an arcalypsy, restless leg syndrome. It's
hold on a second, bro, I got six and a
half hours last night, and I feel like crap, what's
that all about. That's the quality side of things. And
if we've already ruled out things like sleep apnia, then
we start to look at like we're talking about before,

(45:53):
environmental issues, UM bed partner issues. If you've got a
snoring bed partner, or if you snore, that could be
something that you want to tell packle. So there's a
lot of different things that we need to do. But
if you don't really focus in on sleep, here's what
I can tell you is going to occur. You're certainly
gonna die earlier, You're certainly gonna die less healthy. Um.
And and that that trip along the way, it's going

(46:15):
to be a nightmare. And I'm not using that as
a pun or the fact that it's Halloween today, um,
but the fact that nightmare is the right word to use,
because here's what happens when people don't sleep well. What
we start to see is cardiovascular changes, pretty dramatic ones,
very very quickly early on. So if you're waking up
falling asleep, waking up falling asleep, your heart rate is
going up and down, which causes an irregular heartbeat, which

(46:38):
can lead to something called atrial fibrilation, which can lead
to heart attack, stroke, death. Not fun stuff. Stuff we
don't want anybody to have. So if you're thinking about, okay,
I got a lot of things I gotta do. I
gotta lose weight, I gotta reduce my pain, I gotta
get my mood, and better sleep will do all of
it for you. Again, it's a fundamental domino of health,

(46:59):
of illness, of longevity, of sanity. I would argue with you, know,
um And and here's the thing. If you're out there listening,
and at any point in this conversation you said, you know,
I really do need to do something about my sleep.
You do, Okay, you do. Don't blow it off, because
here's the thing. People use sleep as the shock absorber

(47:20):
of their life all the time right there, Like, Oh,
I'm having a crappy day at work, I'm just gonna
stay up longer and work more. You know, Oh, I
got into a fight with my spouse. I'm going to
go to bed early so I don't have to deal
with them. That's not how you use sleep. Okay. Sleep
is a biological function. I swear to you, if you
use it right, it will be the biggest gold mine
you have ever found for your overall health and wellness.

(47:42):
I promise. Now. That was a strong exclamation point to
our conversation. I'm so grateful for Michael's time and his
wisdom and passion for improving our health through sleep. I
suggest you check out his instagram at the Sleep Doctor,
also his best selling books, and his website, The sleep
doctor dot com is all kinds of good stuff. They're

(48:02):
including ratings on things that impact our sleep, like mattresses, pillows,
and sheets. After the interview, Michael gave me one last
tip for travelers that I never would have thought of.
At hotels, choose queen beds, not rooms with kings. Most
hotel mattresses aren't great, right, He says, smaller queen beds

(48:24):
sag less and hold up better than kings. And also
art is popular, so they're slept on less. Told you
his ideas are comprehensive. I'm gonna try that one as always.
Thanks of a co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and the
team and Octagon for editing the episode. I'll talk to
you soon. Moore season five follower