The Human Performance Dr Explains HRV, Performance Anchors & Hydrogen Water | Dr Andy Galpin - Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There's a really big hype going on right now on hydrogen water.
What is your take on this? I can speak pretty well on this
actually, but does seem at this point to potentially have some
sort of an antioxidant benefit. Is it better than any regular
antioxidant? I don't know.
Talk to me about sleep. We are spending globally 60 plus
billion a year on sleep and it is getting worse.

(00:21):
The question is why? I'm Doctor Andy Galpin.
I am a human performance scientist.
I was hired as a professor at 27and then was promoted to full
professor at 36. You mentioned heart rate
variability. It's become quite a big topic
now of conversation. Is this a good indicator of
health or not? Because mine's always very low.
Yeah. Should I be worried?

(00:42):
No. OK.
Low doesn't mean anything. My advice with HIV is you should
pay attention to it. The variability is what matters.
But if people want to increase their HIV, what would you
suggest? Nothing will improve HIV more
than sleep. How should we be looking at our
sleep levels? You'll never find one
explanation for why sleep is still getting worse, but one of
the things to consider are the environmental factors.

(01:04):
If you have this light spring thing that's happening
throughout the globe, you have this CO2 stuff in people's rooms
because we're living in more concentrated areas.
Because a lot of people wake up at like 2-3 AM and can't get to
sleep. Super comedy.
It's actually like pretty easy to fix.
Really, what do people do? One of the biggest ones is
actually. If you are a regular listener to
the show or live well, be well or this is your first episode

(01:25):
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(01:45):
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and I pride myself in doing thatfor the show because it's so
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to get them to be bigger and to bring more helpful information
to your ears and your eyes. I really would love to ask you
to subscribe to the show. Thank you.
I think like starting at the beginning for most people.

(02:07):
I think that's where I always like to start when it comes to
health. What I've seen and what I know
from people that write into the show is that people really want
to to live well. They really have.
Most people have the urge to think they're doing the right
thing, to want to do as much as they can, even if they don't
have very much. But where would you say most
people should start if they wantto to have good performance and

(02:31):
live well and be well, which is the whole reason I named the
show that. Yeah, sure.
Well, I think the fact that they're listening, tuning in,
following on social media already says they want that
step. Yeah.
And whether they realize it or not, they're going to take that
step because they've already made the big step, which is to
care. Now, what do you do?

(02:52):
My journal advice here is find the thing that is what we call
the biggest performance anchor. So imagine that we're maybe not
here in London, but imagine if we were in San Francisco or some
other city that has a lot of up and downs and you're driving
your car down the hill and you want to go faster.
People's first inclination is tohit the gas pedal, the

(03:13):
accelerator. But my first coaching step is,
let me look at the brake first, because if you are going down
the road and you're going downhill and then you hit the
accelerator, you will go faster.But if your left foot is on the
brake, you'll go faster, but notas fast as you could.
And two, you're going to put more wear and tear in your car.

(03:33):
You're going to break down sooner.
And so the first step to going faster is actually just removing
that anchor, that brace. What is that?
What's hitting that brake pedal?And if we can move that, you'll
go faster and you'll have less wear and tear.
And then if you want to go faster on top of that, now we
can hit the accelerator where most people start with, you
know, in the the shorter version, the rapid fire question

(03:56):
you asked about hacks and tips and things, those mostly fall
into the accelerator category. And they're awesome if you're
truly at that level. But what are the foot on your
brakes? They're different for everyone.
These anchors are the things that you hate the most about
yourself. That's within your control.
The thing that is actually legitimately your worst health
activity or habit or status. And don't do anything else

(04:20):
besides that a goal. Deal with that.
Now, maybe this is obesity, maybe this is mental health,
Maybe this is a a eating practice or a micronutrient or
like, what is the thing that you're struggling the most with?
And go do that. And so if your sole focus is

(04:41):
simply saying, OK, it's my body composition I don't like the
most, like, OK, then that is your first health practice.
It is maybe your body composition is fine, but you
think it is. And maybe really this is a
mental health fine. Go address that, whatever our
case is. And I'm really truly saying that
as a not a non answer, it's a genuine answer because I coach a

(05:02):
lot of people and this I'm telling you, this is the exact
approach we take. And I coach professional
athletes in every sport, the highest paid contracts in the
NFL, in golf, in baseball, the Cy Young winners, the, the MVPS.
And we coach a load of regular humans too, men, women, 30, 50

(05:26):
years old, seven years old, likewe coach a ton of them.
This is the exact system we use.I, I can't be more direct and
honest with that answer when I say we have changed countless
lives. I, I think I said earlier about
climbing Mount Everest. We had somebody that did that
like no athletic background, no nothing.
And we got him to Mount Everest.We've had tons of just general

(05:46):
people who are like starting their fitness journey, right.
I don't know what to do at all. And I'm just started and I went,
OK, fine. So we have these like elite high
performers. That's what like I love the most
personally and that's what I do.But within the people that I
have directly and we are still coaching, we've done this.
Like this is exactly what we do.And we're not perfect, but we've

(06:09):
had a lot of success because that's where we start.
If our aptitude, whether you're it is your money or your time or
your resources or your mental bandwidth or your grit allows
you one particular goal, always start with the thing that's the
biggest thorn in your side. And just if that takes a year, I
don't really care because if we think about it took a year, but

(06:31):
now I'm got this thing that's been driving me nuts for 10
years, 1520 years out of the way, we got the next 30 to start
going to chase accelerators. Like we just have to think on a
little bit of a larger timeline with this and more be more
realistic. So we always give our clients,
of course, you know, six week and six month goals, but we also

(06:52):
put them year long programs and then decade long programs so
that they understand. Hey, look, I know you're
concerned about AB and C, but the reality of it is this is
your biggest problem over here. It's D Give us the six months
and then we'll come back, we'll get you AB and C.
But if we can unlock this thing over here, this is immediate
versus delayed gratification stuff, right?

(07:14):
So this is your sleep or whatever your case is.
That's that's where we're going to go now.
Like candidly can get pretty complicated figuring out what
that performance anchor really, really is.
But I guess maybe the lesson we could distill the most out of
this is try to be a little more focused when people do 30 or 40
things or maybe even 3 or 4. And this is also classic like

(07:38):
marketing and everything, right?You say 12 things, no one does
anything. If you say one really clear
thing, someone might do it. So use that message on yourself.
Like this is my thing. I'm just working on this.
I'm just working there like a really specific singular focus.
You have much more likelihood ofsuccess by doing that.

(08:00):
Now, last thing I'll say on thatis sometimes people have to RIP
the Band-Aid off with lifestyle.And it's like, all right, I got
a clean house because I can't just work out because my eating
is also terrible. And that's when I eat bad, then
I don't want to work. Oh, OK.
Like, I get it. Sometimes we got to like RIP the
lifestyle off the Band-Aid, but in that particular case, it's
still one thing. It is saying I'm overhauling

(08:21):
lifestyle like that's still, youcan still do it, distill it down
to one goal. I'm not worried about body comp.
I'm not worried about this. Like I'm just cleaning house.
And so I'm going to not be around this friend anymore.
I'm going to not do this thing at night anymore.
I've got to work on fine life, but I'm overhauling lifestyle
and the results will come later because I know this is the right

(08:43):
process. So we will still frame that as
like 1 focus for now. And this would be an action
focus versus an outcome focus, but we'd still call that one
thing. It really reminds me actually of
work where I always try and do my hardest thing in the morning,
like the focus on the and the thing that I always want to put
off. But actually if I just sit down
and do it and I commit time to it, then it doesn't feel that

(09:06):
hard. Yeah.
Yeah. What's the one thing that if you
finished today, would make your life better?
Exactly. Right, this is classic Tim
Ferriss. Right.
Yes, yeah. Just nail it right?
So I read, and maybe that was merereading it incorrectly on X
former Twitter, that you had this profound gratitude at
becoming a professor so young. And you wrote in that tweet
that, you know, you were on foodstamps when you were growing up

(09:30):
and now being a full professor at 27 or 28.
And I think you wrote that at 36, you had this, like, immense
amount of gratitude. So I kind of just want to start
there. I would love you to just tell
everyone who you are and like share a part of your story.
Sure. I'm Doctor Andy Galpin.
I am a human performance scientist.
And yeah, I was hired as a professor at 27.

(09:51):
I obtained tenure, I think at 32and then was promoted to full
professor at 36. So pretty crazy considering I
think the, the post you're referring to is, was when I was
promoted to full professor. And that means a little bit
different things in different areas of the world.
But in the states where, where Iwork, that's there, there's kind

(10:15):
of you start off as an assistantprofessor.
Once you're promoted and you achieve tenure, you're called an
associate and then the highest achievement you can get is full
professor. And so that was the post I made
once I was a promoter to that level and why I made that for,
for plenty of reasons of gratitude.
But I didn't even know what a professor was when I was a kid.

(10:38):
And I didn't, I didn't, I didn'tknow what a PhD was.
I didn't know any scientists. I didn't know any lawyers.
I didn't know any doctors. Like I didn't know anybody like
that. And so it was, this is whole new
world going into, it wasn't likeI, I grew up in the country and
it's just like we farmed hay andwe logged and we just like did

(11:01):
things like that. And man, if somebody had their
own gutter company, it was like,oh, that person made it, you
know, like, like that was a hugething where I'm from.
And then then did like have all these academic achievements and
to be a doctor. I'm like, well, like, how did
this all happen? So always have and always be
super grateful and fortunate forall that.
So how did you get into it? You know, when I read like going

(11:24):
from food stamps to a full professor, I mean, it's an
amazing journey and it's so inspirational.
But I how did you get there? Well, because I grew up in the
country, you know, my parents, like, like everyone I grew up
with, I was super fortunate in the sense that, you know, my
parents were super positive. There's no anger, no violence,
no alcoholism, like there's nothing like that around.

(11:45):
But we were country kids. And so it was sort of like, hey,
all those city people have advantages.
They got all this stuff and like, we don't even know what to
say because you don't even know how to describe it because
you're just like, they got just things we don't have right.
And so there's a little envy andadmiration.
It's but my parents were like, do whatever you want to me and
my brother and my sisters, but you're not going to do what we

(12:07):
did, right? So you guys can be teachers or
coaches, like whatever the heck.You don't care what you do, but
you're not going to have to haveto live the lifestyle that we
had to do. So my dad was a construction
worker and you know, my mom did whatever waitress and like all
these things and then try to raise children.
And and so there was in that twothings were instilled and there

(12:30):
were words that were different, but it took me many years to
realize those words didn't matter.
What mattered was the two foundational principles that
they gave me, which was one, hard work in the sense that the
city kids got everything else. And so if you want to compete
with them, you have to work harder than them.
Everyone I grew up was like that.

(12:50):
All my friends, my coaches, we all were cleaning horse stalls
before going to school and then we're going to football practice
and then after that we're going home and cleaning more stalls.
Like that's just a super normal thing.
Or I came from like the hours myparents worked.
I, I wish I could say like I'm disciplined like, but I don't

(13:11):
know anything different like, and everyone I grew up with was
that same way. And things like stealing and
cheating were like biggest sins where I was from, Like you could
have nothing, you could lose, you could do whatever.
Fine, people more talented that happens.
But being out prepared or finding shortcuts like these

(13:32):
were the cardinal sins. So that was all just work hard,
right? It was if you lose because
you're under prepared, that's embarrassing.
If you lose because you got tired, that's embarrassing.
If you lose and you have to takefrom somebody else, that's
embarrassing because that's all just saying, you know,
philosophically, you didn't workYou you had the ability to work

(13:52):
harder and you didn't. That's your fault.
So I was fortunate where that kind of environment was a
positive thing for me. That was empowering.
That wasn't demeaning to me or that wasn't like put that wasn't
empowering. Like, hell yeah.
I have the ability to to do whatI want.
If I just work hard, Great. Super inspirational.
I'm very aware that's not alwaysthe case for other people in

(14:13):
situations like that. Sometimes it's the opposite and
they're being held down and but for me, it was totally
empowering for my personality and my siblings.
The other thing they gave me wasambition.
It was I wanted to want more because they told me I should
want to want more. And when you combine hard work
and ambition, that that's everything I have.

(14:36):
And then of course, an enormous amount of luck along the way,
like in every facet of everything, but that's really
all they gave me. And the words they used were go
to college. And the words they used were
have a real job. Like they didn't know anything
about college. They didn't know what it really
was, but it that was their way of going ambition and the the

(14:59):
city kids, the losing sports. That was their way of saying
just work hard, right? And so again, I had to translate
that later in life to go, Oh, I get it.
And so I had that and they said,you're going to college no
matter what, again, for ambitionpurposes.
And so I said, all right, I was talented at sports.
I played college football. I knew I was going to have that

(15:20):
ability to play college sports. And now I had to figure out like
what I was going to do with my life with that.
I didn't want to be a sport coach.
I didn't want to be a a strengthconditioning coach or a trainer.
But I like if I can be in this world somehow, what would that
be? And so once I got to college, my
own abilities were mediocre. And this was great because this

(15:44):
meant if I did things really well training wise, recovery
wise, nutrition wise, then this was going to directly translate
into more playing time, more accolades, like more reward.
If I didn't though, any day of the week, some kid could have
shown up from the one of the thebig Division One schools, which
happen all the time to us and take my spot and I was gone.

(16:05):
And where I'm from, kids don't go to college period.
And they definitely don't go to college and play sports.
So I was terrified of losing that.
And so my entire goal in collegewas personally just to get as
good as I possibly could. So I'm like, I'm going to learn
exercise, science and Physiology, whatever.
It's like I want to train more because I want to play football.
That's like as far as really I had to go mentally.

(16:26):
And then it was very easy for meat the time to tell a story of
saying, well, you're learning more about Physiology and
science and stuff like that's going to be valuable, right?
I don't know, because no one where I'm from knows that stuff
like that's just cool number oneand great.
So then after that, I, I will shorten the story, I guess at
this point, but it was just trying to figure out, OK, now
how do I make this a profession?And so being able to craft that,

(16:49):
I was able to look at the landscape and, and see that I
felt like I had a pretty good grasp of sports.
And I was already coaching professional athletes at
probably age 2223, really elite level All Stars, top draft picks
in the state's Major League Baseball players, NFL players.
So I felt like like strength conditioning, I really

(17:12):
understood really quickly, but Ididn't see anybody who had that
same knowledge and also understood molecular science and
biology and biochemistry and Physiology.
So I thought, man, I have this down.
Let me kind of walk away from this a little bit, this strength
conditioning piece and let me goexplore more muscle Physiology
and biochemistry and let me go as high as I can go with that
and get a PhD in that. If I do that, I can walk out

(17:35):
having this combination of two things, which is I can directly
coach people on the floor. I can put together and have put
together training programs for people to clown, literally climb
Mount Everest, to win UFC World Championships, to win the
Olympics in in many different sports.
I can do those training programsand have and physically coach
those people on the floor. At the same time.

(17:58):
I can develop entirely new biochemical methods of measuring
single proteins and single muscle fibers.
That's going to be a valuable skill set to combine.
And so I did that and that turned out to to really launch
this entire career that I've created, which is what I do now
to this day. So that is the long version of
of really how I got here. As someone who has spent a long

(18:20):
time studying the mind body connection, I'm constantly asked
what do I use to track my healthsince April?
You've probably seen if you're watching the show, me wearing a
piece of tech on my arm and thatis no watch because I genuinely
believe it has been one of the most thoughtful and mind aware
pieces of tech that you can wear.
Unlike most wearables that focusjust on your steps or your

(18:41):
sleep, No watch is a bit different.
It gives you real time insights into your nervous system, the
invisible engine that calibrateseverything from your stress to
your sleep, to your recovery, your rest, and ultimately your
health. With its stress recovery metric,
it doesn't just show you how long you were stressed for, but
also how long you recovered. It shows you your homeostatus.

(19:02):
And that to me is where real health begins.
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(19:23):
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(19:45):
understanding yourself in the most mindful way is one of the
most powerful things that you can do for your health.
And this little gadget helps youon your journey.
I think that's so inspiring because I think you said two
things at the beginning, which Ifeel has like kind of streamed
through into your work, which isconsistency and hard work.

(20:07):
But you, you talk about this a lot.
You know, I think what I love about the word that you do is it
can be so into the details. And into the specifics, but it's
also very broad to the masses where it's like actually forget
the overwhelm where we are. Start with these simple things
and consistency and hard work are like 2 of the things that
you talk a lot about. And I feel like that's actually

(20:28):
just been innate within you since you were a child.
Yeah, again, I wish I could takecredit.
Like I wish I could be like, oh,here's a like, I don't know any
different. Like I really don't know any
different. I'm going to get lazy and
everything like everybody else does.
Of course, I know plenty of people that work way harder than
I do. But yeah, like that was, that
was a foundational principle that I, I may be the easiest way

(20:50):
to to grasp. It is I don't know that I'm any
better at executing those thingsthan anybody else, but I don't
have any other setting that saysyou should care about something
more. That is the thing that's like,
that is my ground truth of like it's something I really care
about and I don't know why. Well, I, I know, I know why.

(21:11):
So I never have to go back when or thinking about whether I
should care about that. I always know I should have some
again, I fail a lot and like whatever, but I'm, I don't have
to question whether or not that's a principle worth
striving for. I want to add one more little
thing, if I may. Yeah, something I think is
really important on this journeyis, you know, I have the my PhD

(21:33):
in human bio energetics and I mentioned I've done some stuff
like biochemically and in the molecular science side of the
world, but I was terrified of all that stuff as an undergrad.
I was terrified to take chemistry.
I got AC in chemistry like as anexercise scientist, right.
And then I got into my masters and I'm like, how do I avoid

(21:54):
biochemistry? I don't think I can pass like
I'm little was terrified. I'm like, I don't think I can
pass this class. And then getting in a PhD
program, like when it got into the exercise science classes,
I'm like, OK, fine. Like I'll be all right here, all
right, because training stuff. And then when it came into the
any like the genetics courses, the molecular bio stuff, I'm
just like literally going like, I'm not going to pass these

(22:16):
classes and just barely getting by on all of them.
And I think that's important. I always really want to share
that because I almost didn't getin the field at all because I
was simply terrified of taking chemistry as an undergrad
thinking like I'm not going to pass this.
And literally I barely did. Like I barely got through.

(22:36):
So those words were terrifying to me.
Those courses were terrifying tome.
And I was just very lucky. I had a combination of two other
things. One like enormous arrogance and
just being like, like, I'll figure it out, right?
And I had some other people thatwere with me, Doug Larson, my 20
plus year friend, just being like, dude, you like, doesn't

(22:57):
matter. Like we're going to go do it or
whatever. But had he not been there, I
wouldn't have done it. And like my career path would
have changed. And then many people along the
way of with similar things. So if you ever have something in
your way like that, I just can'trecommend enough to go after it
because I would never be here had I not.

(23:18):
And I barely got through. And now I have an entire company
that does biochemistry and we dolike all these things.
And I'm telling you right now, if you have article, I never
took organic chemistry. Like I never took it.
I luckily got away. I remember actually getting my
PhD program and they're like, oh, you haven't taken O chem
yet. You have to go back and take it.
And I was like, OK, but I'm, I admitted and they're like, yeah,

(23:40):
you're in the program, but just take it before you get here.
And I was like, and I didn't take it and then nobody double
checked and I was like, sweet. So like I never took organic as
I was like, I can't. And I almost for sure knew I
couldn't pass organic chemistry.So when, when you look at people
that are like have degrees and accolades and stuff like I have,
they're probably not that much more than you.
And I promise you if you are to take an IQ test or anything

(24:03):
else, like you guys would find me very average to below
average. My wife would hammer me and has
hammered me on every cognitive test we've ever done in my life.
And she's an elementary school special Ed teacher.
So I, I don't like, I don't wantanyone to think titles or jobs
or things like that are too outside of their stretch.

(24:23):
I reiterate, I got super lucky in a bunch of different ways of
my life. I worked really damn hard and I
just did it for a long time. I don't think those three things
are that obtainable for most people in this position, so I
hope that that message lands. It really does, listening to
you. So I remember going to my
biochemistry classes after changing my career.

(24:45):
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I graduated school
not feeling that intelligent because I didn't realize I was
neurodivergent. And so I just zoned out of a lot
of my classes at school because I didn't understand how my brain
worked and I had ADHD and dyslexia.
And so you can imagine doing biochem with dyslexia.
I mean, I renamed so many enzymes.

(25:07):
And I think I, you know, I remember just switching a career
that I had a successful career in a completely different
industry when I was young and going, it was like a Legally
Blonde moment, like walking into, into the, into the class
and sitting in biochem and beinglike, I don't, this is Japanese
and immediately wanting to drop.And it wasn't until I had a talk

(25:27):
with my professor six weeks later that she told me that she
thought, you know, I was dyslexic and actually to take me
through that process. And that changed my life.
And I think a lot of people, andI know this, I could look up to
a lot of people and think, oh, they've just got it really easy.
But it's actually, I worked so goddamn hard to get through that
degree, to get through my biochemistry exams and all of my

(25:50):
lectures. And it didn't come easy.
But now it doesn't feel easy. But now it's more easier because
I've done it for 10 years. So I understand that landscape
so much more. But for me, it was complete.
I mean, no one from my family came from science.
So if it was completely foreign to me, I had no one else to ask.
So I remember just being like, Idon't know how I'm going to get
through this, but the like the determination to get through was

(26:11):
kind of proving it to myself rather than anyone else that I
could do it. And I think it's so important to
have these conversations becauseeven me listening to you saying
that is an amazing thing for me to hear that I wasn't just on on
my own going through that revelation myself.
And I think that's the thing. Those hardest moments actually
have the best outcomes because when you have grit and when you

(26:33):
really work hard, you know, getting that scroll when I pass
biochem and getting first, whichI thought was just unattainable
for me and was better than any job I'd ever done in my life.
That was a big thing is unexplainable.
Exactly. So one thing I also think that I
love that you speak about is your nervous system, and I think

(26:55):
that gets overlooked a lot when it gets to health.
How important is that when it comes to health and performance?
Well, I actually think we have done a disservice by teaching
the broad people to focus on systems and Physiology because
the reality of it is, number one, I'm a muscle guy, so I
always think muscle is more important than the nervous
system. Always.

(27:15):
But whether it's your immune system or lymphatic system or
endocrine system, it doesn't really know that it's a system
and it doesn't care. It's interacting, it's all
working together. You can't, it's really hard to
separate out your nervous systemfrom your Anetron system or that
from your muscle system. And so I think maybe I'll just
translate what you're saying a little bit more.

(27:36):
The way that I would maybe position that question is more
like we have an allostatic load,we have a general stress load
and we'll sometimes we'll call this nervous system, but it is
far more than just the nervous system per SE.
It is a way of saying we have toappreciate and recognize the
totality of things going on in our Physiology has a net sum and

(28:01):
you may not realize what's adding, contributing, or
deleting from that net sum. We will break these down into
what we call visible stressors and hidden stressors and
stressors. Reminder does not mean bad like
stressor, just like stressors are what cause adaptation,
stressors what make you happy. Stressors are what like improve

(28:22):
your physical health, right? So this is like a very much a
good thing. But you have visible stressors,
which are things that you are aware of.
You see, you feel, you know, youdidn't eat today, you know you
ate too much today, you know youhad a cigarette today.
You know, like you will know andget a visceral response to these
things. Hidden stressors are doing the

(28:42):
same, positive or negative to the same or even a more extent,
but you won't directly know themso you don't necessarily know
your vitamin C is getting low. No one wakes up and goes oh God
glutathione is just off today like you have.
You have no idea. Right.
I'd love if they did, but yeah. But they might go like, man, I
have a headache or I'm just brain fogged.

(29:05):
Like what is going like you won't know them.
And so you may you may not even have a physical sensation, by
the way, like you could just be happening and you don't know
what's there. And so when we like, we want to
think about this is everything has a, a tax to it.
And in Physiology, there's no free passes.
Everything you're doing if it's going on or in your body, if it

(29:27):
is an action you're taking, it's, you're going to pay some
price to that. And we just have to be a little
bit more strategic and meticulous with understanding
that cost. And so there are various tools
that people will use that give you an estimate of that total
allostatic load. And most of those tools measure

(29:48):
the nervous system. That's my very like long winning
answer to saying that is why I got there is they're trying to
approximate an estimate and saying what is the total
physiological load in this person right now?
And if it's high or low, you don't necessarily know why.
So it's a non specific measure. It could be emotional or mental

(30:08):
stress. It could be physical, could be
environmental, could be something in the air like it
could be, you wouldn't know, butit's saying, OK, we're going to
measure the quote UN quote nervous system typically as
something like resting heart rate, reaction time, vertical
jump, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, there's eye
movement, there's lots of insulin markers, glucose

(30:30):
markers. There's lots of ways we can
measure that. And we would generally call
those like a nervous system one,but they're not really that
they're, they're a systemic loadmanagement system.
And so the last part about that is people will tend to pay
attention to that a lot because they're wanting to either
understand total status, which is a way to say like, do I need
to recover more now? Do I need to back off more in my

(30:53):
shot? Like, can I, can I learn
something about my Physiology that maybe I'm overloading or,
or ignoring because I'm not in tune of my Physiology or I'm
expressing too much grit right now and something's going to
break, so I want to stop that from happening.
Or as a prognostic tool, such asto say, we know when you get to
X level, then you start making less progress, you start getting

(31:16):
hurt more, you start having moreemotional blow UPS.
And so let's just watch you and let's predict that happening.
Then we'll pull the throttle back before that happens.
So it can be a reactive or a proactive tool.
I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favor.
Please subscribe to the show. This helps it grow more than you

(31:38):
know. And I'm so bad at asking this
from you. I'm so bad at thinking about
this, but you know, my goal was 100,000 to get to on YouTube and
I really want to bring you more content and better guests and
bigger episodes. And we can only do that with
your help together. So please do hit subscribe.
Thank you. I'm really interested in the

(31:59):
nervous system itself called central nervous system.
But I think because I have overlooked it for so long.
And so now I have to become moremindful of, of where I am
because I think I have a very strong mindset to override
signals and I can easily reach burnout very, very quickly.
I'm very kind of single lens from where I want to go and
nothing will stop until my body says, well, then that's it.

(32:20):
So now I've tried to become moreaware of that.
And you mentioned something thatwhich I'm really interested in,
which is heart rate variability.It's become quite a big topic
now of conversation. A lot of people, especially if
they're wearing trackers, are aware of the heart rate
variability or if they're doing certain workouts, they're always
looking at the HIV. Is this a good indicator of
health or not? Because mine's always very low.

(32:43):
Yeah. Should I be worried?
No. OK.
So low doesn't mean anything to me.
Great, good answer. I don't know what wearable
you're using. Every one of them is different.
Not only is their technology different, but their their The
calculation that they used to derive the number is different.

(33:05):
And so if you were simply comparing a number or a score,
it is irrelevant to anybody elsebecause of that fact alone.
Even let's let's say you're using the exact same wearable
devices as a friend of yours, it's still almost irrelevant
because your normal homeostatic range differs.
In fact, we have a paper in review right now that I Co wrote

(33:27):
with some of the folks at WHOOP and where they looked at I think
it was 22 million data points or2 million days with HIV score
over time. There's also other published
research. We've done this before in the
past we've used stuff. What you have to consider is, is
it a general health metric? Yes, resting heart rate is as

(33:51):
well. BMI is as well.
It is a real metric and it is generally associated with
health. When you have people that start
getting HIV is very, very low atis almost always associated with
poor health and the higher HIV is generally associated with
better health. And there is probably 50 plus
years of research on this. So if you ask is it a real

(34:12):
metric? Absolutely.
When you ask should I be concerned about your low score?
That's why I quickly said no. I don't know your normal
homeostatic range. I don't know what device or
tracker you're on, and I don't know what's normal for you.
There are genetic factors. Probably 20 or so percent of HIV
is just simply genetic and I don't know if yours is being

(34:37):
measured appropriately or properly.
Last thing I'll say on that is, again, I don't know what context
low means to you because when I get this from people and
clients, I'll get wildly different answers right past
this one. I'm like, what does low mean?
And so low typically means something like Oh my friend has
AB and C like that, That doesn'tmean shit.

(34:58):
Where should it normally sit though?
I mean, I feel like men and women are also going to be very
different here. Well, OK, yeah, yeah, again, we
have some a little bit of data on men and women and that it is
true men and women are a little bit different and HIV does
change with age. That said, the more research
coming out suggests that it's not as big of a change as
lifestyle. So when we see changes in time

(35:20):
via age, it's generally because of worsening health patterns and
activities than it is the age per SE.
And in fact, in the paper that I'm discussing that'll be out.
I think it'll be Open Access to you will see a different curve
in men and women. And again, at least according to
the WOOP data. So this is again, specifically
coming from WOOPS stuff. It dips during menopause and or,

(35:44):
or I should say 40 to 50 year orso age because we didn't confirm
it's in menopause and those individual people, it's like the
menopause window, right? But then it rebounds and goes
right back up. So are the numbers different?
Yes, for sure. But when you ask like where
should it be? Again, if you were to pick a
WOOP device and an or device or our device or Morpheus or

(36:05):
anybody else, the scores are wildly different.
And so there is no like number. If you contrast that to like
resting heart rate, I can give you exact numbers because every
device is going to say the same thing.
Everyone uses the same equation.It's not the same for HRV.
So if you use a Morpheus device,which is if you care about HRV,

(36:26):
like that's one of the the gold standard ones to use, you might
get a score of 20 and that's phenomenal.
And if you use an aura ring, a 20 would be terrible.
So it's like you're literally talking different equations and
calculations, not even algorithms.
Like if you get the exact same data in the back and they're
using different calculations of heart rate variability, where

(36:47):
something like resting heart rate, there is only one
equation. How many beats did you beat in
one minute? That's that's the whole equation
right now the technology is different, but the equation
itself for heart rate variability is, is different.
So devices use them differently.So it's a very difficult thing.
So my advice with HIV is you should pay attention to it.

(37:08):
The absolute number, like payless attention to the
variability is what matters. And so if you like, what device
do you do you mind sharing your although I mean I'll just break.
You down? I have no watch.
OK, so you don't use. What do you use for HIV?
I have this brand called No Watch.
No watch. And they are a tracker and they
are, they're amazing. It's called compassionate tech

(37:31):
but it basically isn't as it gives you a rate every four days
as a baseline as opposed to every single day, which I prefer
because then it doesn't make me obsessive.
Does it give you like an averageof the four days?
Yeah. OK.
A far better way to interpret that.
So generally what we will say isyou need 21 to 30 days to
understand where your baseline is.

(37:52):
And then the individual day likealmost has no bearing.
So if you wake up today and it'sdown 10% or whatever off.
So I again, I don't know that company at all, but my
assumption is they're giving youit every four days to say, hey,
let's normalize the data a little bit, which is a great way
to approach it. Generally, if we see a change in
HRV that's not consistent for seven plus days, I don't care if

(38:17):
it is consistent for seven or more days, then we might like
start to pay attention. Like something may be happening
here. But one thing you'll see really
consistently is the standard deviation that happens with HIV
for each individual person, the magnitude of that deviation
differs and, and that's an important distinction.
So let's just say you and I havethe exact same device on and

(38:38):
like, what's the number? Like give me a score that you
would get on yours. It ranges between 10 and 13.
OK, again, I don't even know what that means because I don't
know the units. And HRV.
Well, for this device, I don't know what they're using.
OK, yeah, so the units can be different, right?
But. My resting heart rate is great.
What's your resting heart rate? 45.
OK. That's, that's pretty decent.

(38:58):
And what's do you have any idea of like your average overnight
respiratory rate? No.
OK, that that's more important. Oh, OK.
I'd probably pay attention to that.
So let's just say 10 to 15. And that's, I assume based on
how you're saying it, that's a bad score on that device.
OK, fine. So if let's say mine is 80, OK,
Now if I wake up tomorrow and instead of being at 80, I'm at

(39:21):
75. So I'm down 5 absolute units.
And let's just say your average,just to make math easy on yours
is 15 and you wake up tomorrow and you're at 10.
We both are down 5 absolute units.
But who actually had something happen and who didn't in this
case? Me or you?
Both of us. No, nothing happened in me at

(39:44):
all, even though we both went down 5 units.
This is why it matters in your case, going from 10 to 15, I'm
making this all up, right? Or going from 15 to 10
represents a 50% drop. That's a huge change for me.
Going from 80 to 75, I don't know what that number is, but
that's a small percent, right? And so when we see that change,

(40:07):
when I say like your normal standard deviation, you don't
have anywhere to go. And so my guess is your
deviation is within one or two every day.
Why you can't drop 12, You don'thave 12 to drop, but I can drop
12 and it still maybe doesn't mean anything.
I might not have any actual change in my allostatic load
until I drop 20 to five points or more, which is more of a

(40:30):
typical thing by the way. So even interpreting with from
person to person this again, there's why it say like it gets
really complicated. Generally, roughly here is not
perfect, but roughly the healthier the person, the more
stable their HRV in in response to stressors.

(40:51):
Generally the opposite happens. So even if somebody came in and
on that same device had an 80, but they wake up tomorrow at a
40 and then they're at 1:15, I might look at that person and
go, that person is worse than you who's 15 every single day on
that thing. And so it's not just the number
that matters, but it's also the variability that happens.

(41:14):
That's a bigger signal to me than the number.
So when my initial answer to youwas no, don't worry, be worried
about it. It's all the stuff I laid out.
I don't know that device. I don't know if that's been
validated. I don't know the data behind
that. I don't know what technology
they're actually using. I don't know what calculation
that they're using. I don't know what that number
means. I don't know what units they're
using. And then I don't know your

(41:35):
variability in HRV. So overwhelming majority of the
time with something like HRV, it's fine.
It's not good enough of a metricfor me to go missing all that
information alone. That's a problem.
We see people all the time who function really, really well but
have a low HRV on a tracker and we don't see any other signs and

(41:57):
signals of nervous system overload or systemic overload or
anything else. And so it's another one of my
like classic dual answers. It is an important metric.
It has been validated HRV on itssurface for many decades.
It's highly associated with cardiovascular disease,
mortality, cancer, like tons of things at this.
And we use it in every single person at absolute rest at our

(42:20):
coaching practices at all of them.
But there's a lot of context there.
So you've mentioned this already, but that thing gives
you a lot of like maybe anxiety may may or may not be the right
word, but I just probably wouldn't use it.
That's why I use this one because I don't have to check it
every day and it gives me a muchmore comprehensive score than

(42:42):
all the time having to check if I want to increase my.
I mean, I think travel is a big part of a bit of a lower HIV for
me. But the people, yeah, jet lag
and, you know, that's coming in from Seattle to London.
But if people want to increase their HIV, what would you
suggest? Yeah, first thing is, going back

(43:03):
to earlier conversation, remove any performance anchor that will
do it #1 so if you have a negative health practice.
So when people lose weight, HIV tends to go up.
When people eat higher quality food and their HIV tends to go
up. When people exercise, it goes up
a ton. Very few things will increase
HRV more than exercise. Those things will all shoot it

(43:23):
up. If you have, well, in fact, I'll
add a moment. Nothing will improve HRV more
than sleep, especially if you have a a clinical or subclinical
sleep disorder, which is really far more prevalent than people
realize. Those big, huge practices will
rocket shoot HRV up. Past that, we can start getting

(43:45):
into some smaller impact stuff, but that is the overwhelming
majority of time the people thatwe have doubled HRV in or had
huge improvements in that, that actually had problems with HRV.
It's because usually one of those 3 or 4 big rocks is being
taken care of. The ones that will move at the
most for sure will be against sleep and exercise.
And if you have to hedge, this is probably when endurance

(44:10):
cardiovascular like type of exercise does seem to win a
little bit. You're more likely to see
improvements when you see that go up, and that may or may not
also be associated with a lower resting heart rate, but those
are the biggest ways to move it.What about cold plunges and
saunas and things like that? Because that's becoming huge.
Yeah, but they're not going to have even closeness impact as

(44:30):
those other ones I said, so you can actually look.
So HRV will change with cold in a non common sensical way.
So if you get in the HRV, you get into a cold plunge, you will
see HRV drop actually immediately.
And this is exactly what it should be.
So maybe I'll back up a quick second.
HRV heart rate variability is again, this indirect marker of

(44:51):
autonomic nervous system. And your autonomic nervous
system is in multiple parts. But the easy way to think about
it is just in two parts. Although again, there's, there's
more than this. You rest and digest.
There's also freeze in there. Then you have your, your, your
sympathetic drive, right? So parasympathetic rest and
digest and sympathetic Dr. is arousal and up regulation and

(45:12):
fight or flight and things like that.
Great. HRV is telling us kind of where
on that balance you are, how much of balance of sympathetic
and how much of balance of parasympathetic, right?
So we tend to say a low HRV is sympathetic, like you're more
switched towards that side. It's not an on and off button,
right? It's a gradient here.
And higher HRV means more parasympathetic, more down

(45:34):
regulated. So when we say these things like
a really low HIV is associated with poor health, it's generally
because that's associated with somebody being stuck in the
sympathetic Dr. This could be stress, this could be, you know,
poor sleep. This like, OK, so that hopefully
that kind of connects the picture a little bit of what's
going on. So if you get into a cold water

(45:54):
or anything like that, your HIV will drop immediately.
This is going to shoot you into sympathetic Dr. This is why you
get out and you feel you're exhilarated.
Your adrenaline has gone up. Cortisol doesn't go up much
actually, like a huge misnomer. It doesn't really change that
much after cold in men or women like in humans at least to be
clear on that one. But adrenaline will go way up,

(46:18):
like way up and HIV will drop down considerably.
But if you look at that person, 30 minutes, 6090, up to several
hours, 3 to 4 hours plus HIV will climb in those three hours,
four hours, five hours post coldand will generally climb for at
least three plus hours. And it will go way past

(46:39):
baseline. And so if I wanted to hack a
test, I would say, OK, take yourHIV and let's just say it's 20
and get in the cold water. You get out of the cold water
might be 10. Again, I'm making numbers up
here, but an hour later, insteadof being 20, you might be at 30
and two hours later you might beat 40.
So it'll have gone way up. That didn't really change your

(47:00):
Physiology. This is just a compensatory
response to going into a huge sympathetic Dr. and now you have
this parasympathetic rebound. It's the exact same thing that
happens with cortisol and exercise.
You go exercise right now. Cortisol goes up in the few
hours post exercise. It'll come way back down in a
compensatory response. That's what it's supposed to do,

(47:23):
right? That's exactly what we're
looking for. It's the exact same reason why
taking a hot shower or a hot bath at night gets you really
hot, but then your body has thiscompensatory cooling and you
have to cool down to fall asleep.
So getting really, really hot actually helps you get colder to
fall asleep. It's like hormatic stressors,
right? Like very classic over response.

(47:45):
So the question really though isif I chronically did ice plunges
or cold plunges or something like that, would I chronically
improve my HRV? And I don't think that we really
have any data to suggest it's a really going to be a strong
effect. If you like cold plunges from
probably, you know, like different topic we can go into
at some other point fine, but that's not and it wouldn't

(48:07):
compare nearly as much as sleep and exercise.
Sauna does seem to be pretty effective at that.
And chronic sauna use has more data.
It has data on, there's observational studies on it,
there's randomized controlled trials, we have epidemiology on
it. There's enough there.
In fact, there's enough molecular mechanism stuff there

(48:28):
to say, OK, generally associatedwith positive health and
probably a really good thing. So I'd probably be more
comfortable saying, OK, if you want to use.
And again, it's not sauna, it's hot.
So it's sauna or any other methodology of that.
But the way to think about that is you can get hot with exercise
too, and exercise does a lot of other things for you that just

(48:52):
sitting in a hot sauna doesn't do.
So if we're looking at pecking order again, I will really go
back to exercise and sleep for sure.
And, of course, mental health. And nutrition.
Yeah, but if you're already doing those things, or like my
grandfather, he doesn't exerciseand never wouldn't know where to

(49:14):
start. But he uses the sauna like,
great. It's better than nothing.
There are positive things there.The only thing I would really
caution one against is saying, oh, the sauna is more important
than the exercise, or I don't need to exercise because I'm in
the sauna, or I don't worry about my sleep, I'm doing my
sauna like it. The problem we have with these
hacks and stuff, not to call a sauna hack, but you get the

(49:36):
point, is when they exceed the baseline stuff.
So that's I think the most appropriate way to think about
this. I love that you're talking about
the baselines because I think sooften and I've been sold into
this narrative a lot of the times and I have sometimes have
to weave myself out of it of going, wait, where are we on the
basics? Where we are we on nutrition, on

(49:57):
sleep, on exercise, even just ondaytime light Because you know,
I can be in the studio all day. Or if I'm writing and I haven't
been outside, I've spent 90% of my time indoors.
And then I'm worried why I'm feeling anxious.
It's not because I'm like missing a supplement routine.
It's because I literally haven'tdone the basics to feel good.
With our professional athletes, it's funny what we call these Ed

(50:19):
DS, so everyday drills. So in American football, there's
these classic drills that football players will do every
single practice, right? And they're like, they're the
everyday drills. It's like really it is 6 year
old, 8 year olds, like it's, it's the really the absolute
basics, right? Regardless of what sport you go
into, golf, baseball, there's a certain set of things that they

(50:43):
will do really consistently thatyour 6 year old, again, 8 year
old is probably doing as well. We do the same thing with our
clients. What is your everyday drill?
And maybe you're not hitting a golf ball a certain way or doing
a footwork drill, but we have the same thing, right?
So it's like your EDD is like, do we get outside yet?
Do we do the basics? Do we drink water?
Do we do this? Whatever, right?

(51:04):
Like we, we tend to give our athletes 2 to 3 Ed DS and we
check in on them and then we give our clients the same thing,
right? And so we will actually use that
same terminology for our lifestyle and health practices
with our pro athletes too. So we'll say, for example, you
might be a professional athlete and we'll say, all right, did

(51:25):
you do your Ed DS? And that might literally mean
did you walk outside this morning?
Did you, did you drink water before you, you got on your
phone? OK, great.
But we're using like sporting language to, to connect to them
more. So Ed DS might not connect with
with like the average person. But my point I'm trying to make
is even with our pro athletes, we are still daily going over

(51:48):
the basics of lifestyle. Did you drink water when you got
up? Did you say, did you write
something nice down today? Did you say something nice to
somebody? Whatever.
Like the two or three things we that are most important for
them. And then they have their actual
like on field Ed DS too. But those things are really
critical. We all miss, as you perfectly
said. We all miss on those big basic

(52:09):
things all the time. And like the ones I loved
always. Like did you say something nice
to your wife today? No damn.
I'm so happy you said that because I always say, did you
say something nice to yourself? That's the one that I always
say. So I'm glad that we're on the
same sink then. And this wasn't a question that
I had in, but it's actually justpopped into my head because as
we're talking about the fundamentals, you know,

(52:29):
hydration, you just mentioned, which so many people overlook,
there's a really big hype going on right now on hydrogen water.
What is your take on this? OK.
I can speak pretty well on this actually.
Now I have to disclose conflict of interest here.
So we are actually doing a studyright now in my lab with a
company called Echo Water. And so I can't speak anything

(52:51):
about that. That's an ongoing project.
Echo has a flask that it makes that actually generates hydrogen
water that they sell. So I know this research very
well. In preparing for that study,
we've looked at this. The easiest way to explain
hydrogen water is it's not alkaline water, OK?
So hydrogen water is a like, if you talk to a chemist and like,

(53:14):
you know this very well, it's a very funny term.
Some people will call it molecular water and the same
thing you're like, that doesn't even like, that's a nonsensical
word. Like of course it's molecular
like what? Anyways, hydrogen water, OK, so
confusion #1 is just like givingit a truly awful name.

(53:35):
OK, so many years ago alkaline water became a rage and for the
most part scientists pushed backhard and they'd rightfully so
because it turned out to be mostly nonsense.
And most of these things do right?
So that's a good stance to have is nonsense until proven
otherwise. We actually ran an alkaline
study, like a six week study in my lab many years ago and we

(53:55):
found the same thing. Like did nothing for performance
at all of any kind. All right, so hydrogen water and
molecular water are not alkalinewater #1 alkaline water is
literally giving you water that's at a different pH.
And the assumption is, oh, you'll drink it, you become more
alkaline. I eat less acidic, and that
should have more positive healthbenefits because being acidic is

(54:18):
bad. Two major problems with that.
One, ingesting a little bit of alkaline water becomes
immediately changed to the acidity level in your body,
particularly in your stomach. So it does nothing. 2, being
acidic is not bad. Your body has a natural pH that
it runs in different areas. Your stomach has a different pH
than your in the fact, if you look at the pH in your arteries

(54:39):
versus your veins, they differ slightly.
That's a good thing, right? That's the way that you clear
bicarbonate. Even in your mouth. 100% like
the pH in, in all the orsis in your body, in your ears, in your
nose, in your mouth. Vaginal pH is different, right?
So it's everywhere and it shouldbe different, right?
Things work better at a certain temperature in a certain acidity

(55:00):
level. And so if you're actually too
alkaline, you'll see breakdowns as well.
Not good. OK, now let's set that aside.
What hydrogen water or molecularwater is attempting to do is a
very, very easy chemistry. It's saying if we can add more
hydrogen protons. So quick chemistry for folks,
hydrogen is H plus, right? That's also the same way saying

(55:22):
like proton, now pH, the word, the term pH stands for two
things we won't get in this debate, but one of the ways you
can interpret pH, the acronym ispotential hydrogen.
And so the way that chemistry work in the pH scale will make
something alkaline versus acidicis the the exchange between H

(55:44):
plus and OH, negative. Why that matters?
If you take an H plus again, it's got a positive charge and
you take an OH that has a negative charge and you put them
in the same room, what's going to happen?
They equalize. There you go, right, Because
they're going to, they're going to come together.
The negative and the positive will balance each other out

(56:05):
because they have strong Infinity for each other.
And they're going to make water H2O, right?
So 2 hydrogens and one oxygen pulling them apart gives you
those separate things. OK, great.
So if I were to give you a big bolus of hydrogen plus, which is
again pure acid, and that's in an environment with a bunch of

(56:26):
OH negative, you'll take that acid, you'll take that alkaline,
and it will all become neutralized because you'll just
make a neutral inert water. This is the rationale.
If we gave you hydrogen water and other water with a bunch of
extra H plus into it, it will run around your body picking up
a bunch of OH negatives, converting it into water.

(56:48):
Now why that is a potentially a good thing is oxidative stress
breaks down tissue, breaks down DNA, breaks down anything.
Again, this is a good thing. This is what scavenges your body
of broken down tissue. It fights off infections.
It's important for clotting. It does a ton of things, but
excess amounts of oxidative stress are detrimental to

(57:11):
mitochondria and again, every tissue in your body.
So the working assumption thought process theory here is
if there is too much oxygen stress going on and we can bring
in extra hydrogen, we can neutralize that potential effect
and also produce water, which isgreat.
So it should be quite hydrating.But the real thing is a cellular

(57:31):
stress. So the available human research
and there actually is some humanresearch, there's not a lot of
high quality human research. There's not a lot of placebo and
randomized trials on it. But again, we are we're doing
one right now. It was more impressive than I
anticipated to be quite candid. I was like, OK, there's
something here. Now most of the research is pre

(57:53):
preclinical, meaning non human and molecular based and all that
stuff. Interesting part of the story,
you don't throw it out, but we don't put as much stock in that
as we do human research. And so the human research is
emerging what it looks like it does.
Again, thinking through the chemistry a little bit here,
nothing to pH. You don't drink hydrogen water

(58:15):
to change your pH. As we already explained to the
alkaline story, it's not what it's doing, but it does seem at
this point to potentially have some sort of anti-inflammatory
potentially, but more importantly directly an
antioxidant benefit. So here are the outstanding
questions. Does it do anything to your
performance? How much do you have?

(58:37):
How, how long from when it was activated between that and
ingestion? Does a preparation matter for
it? Does it actually make you better
in the long term? Is it an acute effect or a
chronic effect? If so, how?
And we actually have some some things we think that are
happening there that I won't even share yet.
But it's not the stuff that mostpeople are are talking about.

(58:59):
If it's potentially working, does it work in young people?
Does it work in old people? Does it only work in people who
are unhealthy? Right.
And it is generally true to to complete the story, oxidative
stress itself when excessive is associated with poor health
effects. OK, when you smoke, when you
don't sleep, when you are in exposed to environmental

(59:21):
pollutants, oxidative stress gets really, really high.
So are the potential benefits exclusive to people who are just
kind of in a really highly oxidative stress state?
So somebody who is exercising a lot, drinking clean water,
eating clean food and they're at, they're not overly exposed,
are they still going to see the same benefit?
We don't know the answer to really any of these questions.
So at this point I would say, doI recommend it?

(59:44):
No, not per SE. We'll we'll see what our study,
you know, comes up with that. Again, that that's funded by
that company Echo, like very important.
This is conflicts of interest. So we'll see, we'll see where
the data shake out in our study.We'll see where if other folks
are funding studies and and getting those things done, I
don't know. It's plausible.

(01:00:06):
Is it better than any regular antioxidant?
Does it does does it outperform vitamin CI?
Don't know. Like does it outperform just
eating more antioxidant rich foods?
I don't know. So the question in in science
and performance is always OK compared to what?

(01:00:26):
And I can give you 1000 productsthat can show some efficacy or
effectiveness in a, in a controlled trial, especially at
the molecular level. Like if you know anything about
molecular or biochemistry, you can make a trial work right?
Like it's pretty easy, but is itvery?
Important to say. Really easy to make that happen.

(01:00:47):
So we'll see. It's been a pleasure to where I
can say work with that company has been phenomenal.
They are super transparent and like they, I really think that
they're, they're in it for the openness and just like make sure
the product works. So good on the people at Echo
for being like that, but we'll see.
I think it's so important that you said all those other things.

(01:01:07):
I think it's an it's an interesting area.
I've watched a few talks on it recently.
But I do think, you know, peoplemight hate me on YouTube for
this and write comments. But if you're living like a high
keto diet, which doesn't have many fruits and vegetables and
antioxidants and trying to drinkhydrogen water, is there going
to be a benefit? And you're living in a city that
is full of pollutants. Yeah, I don't.

(01:01:28):
Know. You know, it's all context,
isn't it? I think that's the most
important thing. So I'll say one more thing,
sorry to interrupt you. Most of what I've seen thus far
in the social media and podcast regarding molecular water and
hydrogen water is complete garbage.
Most of the effects are greatly exaggerated if not flat out lied

(01:01:51):
about and the impact how to use it are incredibly inappropriate
use. So that is very, very fair
criticism of the field and I andI think I have no problem saying
that because that field has thatproduct specifically has done
itself a huge disservice. So people that are being like,

(01:02:12):
man, is that all nonsense. You're right to think that
because most of what I have personally, I'm just saying what
I've seen and again, starting tolook into these products prior
to our study, those claims are egregious to flat out fraudulent
to be candid. And so I don't know if this is a
case where the pun here, this isthe throw the baby out with the

(01:02:32):
with the hydrogen water situation.
We'll see. But I think it is fair to say
like this has been a a really inappropriately positioned
product thus far. And that at the same time, there
is some, there is actually some research behind it.
It's not a complete scam, but many people that are associated

(01:02:54):
with these types of products arecomplete scam.
So it takes me to recovery and sleep.
I can't not have you here and talk about sleep.
I know that's such a big thing for you.
And in our five questions for sub stack, which we put out the
day before, I asked you what youchanged your mind on in the last
year and you spoke around sleep.So I, I can't wait to get into
this with you. So you've mentioned continuously

(01:03:17):
there's four basic pillars, you know, and sleep is one of them
to really look at when it comes to human performance.
But just like good general health.
And that's something that I've changed my mind on a lot in the
last five years. You know, I used to always think
I had to get up at 5, you know, the 5:00 AM club and be part of
that kind of hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, go, go,
go. And the more I worked, the

(01:03:38):
better I was. And actually I'm realising that
and that's probably not the bestway to look at things,
especially for performance. So talk to me about sleep.
How should we be looking at our sleep levels?
And is there like a specific time that we should be trying to
hit every night or is that also a load of garbage?
OK, so there's a lot to think about.
We just published a study this weekend.

(01:03:59):
Congratulations. And it is Open Access, so people
can go read this and you can putin your, your sub stack or your
newsletters if you want, on all the environmental impacts or all
the things that in the environment that impact your
sleep. So this is led by actually a, a
British guy, Greg Potter LED this, this paper in this up.

(01:04:21):
So you can see all the details of what I'm about to rattle off
in that individual paper. There's figures and there's
actually a table we include thatgives people specific
recommendations for where to setall these environmental factors.
OK, I'm answering the question this way because we are spending
globally 60 plus billion a year on sleep and it is getting
worse. It's one of the few areas of

(01:04:44):
health that has a huge financialimpact, but at the same time is
getting significantly worse. People are aware of obesity.
People are paying attention to other things.
I'm not saying we've solved those problems by any means, but
there is some hope there and there is attention.
We're spending more in sleep than ever and it's getting worse

(01:05:06):
than ever. And so the question is why?
My, my dear friend Matt Walker, he works with me at Absolute
Rest, my company, and he's been speaking about sleep for years.
He's he, you know, his book cameout and people were like, he
really turned the world's lightson to sleep.
So people are aware and we're spending money, but it's getting

(01:05:28):
worse. So the question is why?
In that paper we make, I think, a pretty compelling argument as
to some of the many, many reasons sleep, like anything, is
multifactorial. There, you'll never find one
explanation for why sleep is still getting worse.
But one of the things to consider are the environmental
factors. The world.

(01:05:50):
There's actually satellite imaging data that are make it
really clear the world is getting brighter and there is a
splash that happens. Actually light that goes up
splashes off of the clouds effectively in the atmosphere
and comes occurring back down tothe world.
The our, our physical temperature around the world is
changing. Technology is changing lights in

(01:06:12):
the home, engagements like there's all these things and all
the paper that are changing. People are living in cities more
why this matters. There's really clear data on
things like carbon dioxide concentrations in your bedroom,
in your house, in working environments, not from a green
light, but simply because you'rein a closed environment.
You're, you inhale O2, you exhale CO2.

(01:06:35):
If a bunch of people are in a room with a closed window set,
CO2 levels rise. If ventilation is poor, if a lot
of people are in that, you're going to have a higher CO2
concentration. If that gets to a certain level,
you see really, really strong changes in sleep onset sleep
quality. All architects of sleep.

(01:06:56):
So R.E.M. And all your various end stages,
next day arithmetic, next day executive function, next day
subjective sleep and arousal andand wakefulness all change
dramatically when CO2 levels in the room rise too much.
So you have all these things happening and people are like,
oh, it's AB and C. But the environmental factors

(01:07:17):
alone, again, I'm not even talking about ozone layer.
I'm literally just talking more humans in the same space is a is
a difficult thing to deal with. So you have this light spraying
thing that's happening throughout the globe.
You have this CO2 stuff in people's rooms because they're
living in more concentrated areas.
We talked in the rapid fire thing about the world is more
engaging, people are going to beon some type of device one way

(01:07:39):
or another and so simply procrastination.
People just don't want to go to bed because the living world is
really entertaining and so you're going to put off going to
bed. People are working at home more,
which means people can work in different time zones much more
effectively. It would be really difficult for
me to run my companies 10 years ago.
Now all of my companies are remote.

(01:08:01):
We're out here in the UK with absolute rest for our first time
ever, but we have clients acrossthe world.
We can do that because of the Internet, because of video
meetings. So because of that, your
expectation as an employee is tobe more available during
different times, right? Especially if you're trying to
raise money or you're whatever, you need some, you're going to

(01:08:24):
be more available in off times that didn't happen in the past.
So at night, for the most part, you were going to be left alone.
You're pretty much expected to answer Slack or whatever at any
time. So boundaries have completely
changed. So I can go on and on and on and
on. You also have, it's getting

(01:08:45):
better. It used to be at 80%, it's now
down to 70%. But at least the data in America
will show 70% of true clinical sleep disorders go undiagnosed.
We have actually huge, huge areas that are called sleep
deserts, right? So we people are maybe like

(01:09:06):
aware of food deserts and stuff.We have sleep deserts going on,
which are these concerted areas of extreme light, like in a city
and sound. Because now the world works more
overnight. So restaurants are open later,
services are open later because the Internet and things are
changed. So it's harder to get more sleep
in these sleep deserts. The sleep disorders persist

(01:09:28):
because there have been really no changes in technology for
medical sleep testing in 50 plusyears.
It's all the same. You have sleep hospitals, but if
you run the numbers right, you have hundreds of millions of
people with sleep disorders and you have a few thousand sleep
physicians. So each sleep physician is
responsible for 10s of thousandsof diagnosis per year.

(01:09:50):
Like you have no chance, right? You you want to get a sleep test
done, What do you do? You find a sleep hospital, you
pay £5000, you wait four months to get in and they check you for
apnea or not and then send you home like so.
You you can just imagine whetherthis is a behavioral issue, work

(01:10:12):
expectations, you're on your phone too much, this is an
environmental issue, air qualityor there's too much light or
it's too loud. Whether this is a a pathological
issue? Yeah, like a lot of people wake
up at like 2-3 AM and can't get to sleep.
Had that. Had that question the other day
when I was around a table at a wedding and three people woke up
at 3:00 AM and just like couldn't get back to sleep.

(01:10:33):
Extremely common and we deal with that and we handle that a a
lot of ways. It's actually like pretty easy
to fix. Really.
What? Do people do?
Well, there's, there's a handfulof things.
OK, it's, it's always, again, I will generalize this can be many
different things, but a handful of reasons why that happens.
Like actually this is in our paper too.
You can go read some of these things.
But I'll link this in the show next.

(01:10:54):
Yeah, yeah, number of things that can be happening here, one
of the biggest ones is actually your pre sleep heart rate will
predict this is so a lot of the people you're familiar with the
concept of wired and tired. Yeah, right.
Oh yeah, far too well. Great.
So winding back just a touch here to settle context when
people think because you asked this question and then I'll come

(01:11:17):
right back to here of what is sleep?
Is it just a number like a duration?
OK, Sleep duration is one of themany components of quality
sleep. OK.
So the total time, right, the average human 7 1/2 hours like
is enough total time for a health perspective, for optimal
performance, we're probably looking at more.

(01:11:38):
For peak physical performance, certainly more.
But let's just say you can get by 7 1/2 to 8 hours total.
But that's only one of the components.
Component #2 is actual daytime function.
Are you sleepy? How's your inertia the next day
getting out of bed? How hard is it or how groggy?
Is your brain sharp the next day?

(01:11:59):
Are you feeling energy throughout the day?
That's component #2 right? So I don't even really care
about the numbers. If you're like, no, I wake up,
feel phenomenal. I'm on point all day blah blah
blah. OK so your your subjective
nature is number 2 #3 is qualityand this is how long did it take
you to fall asleep? Your sleep onset?

(01:12:19):
Did you wake up at all throughout the night?
If so, why? How hard is it to go back to
sleep? What's the people will focus on
sleep stages? Deep sleeping room.
Massively overrated. Like in general, throw those
things entirely away. If you're getting those from a
tracker, throw that entirely away.
What you want to pay more attention to are things like

(01:12:40):
your stability, fragmentation, positional awareness, how how
move, how much movement are you having?
Those things actually determine architecture.
But like the sleep staging is like almost entirely nonsense at
this point, so that's not the appropriate way to think about
it. Quality is that other stuff.
Then there's also regularity, the simple fact of like how

(01:13:01):
consistent are you at going to bed and waking up at the same
time. This can have as much or more of
an impact than quality or duration it can have.
You also then have timing, whichis what time of day are you
waking up and what time of day are you going to sleep?
Any of these independent factorscan be your problem.

(01:13:22):
So the person who wakes up at 2-3 in the morning, let's just
assume because there's so much to go over here, let's just
assume they're not having changes in regularity and that
their timing is normal so that they're going to bed at say 10
or 11 and waking up at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.
But two or three, they're still shooting like, OK, the walk into

(01:13:42):
that time matters. So when I started this answer, I
told you about that heart rate wind down.
OK, well one thing that predictsthis is, and I went immediately
to wired and tired because a lotof times what happens at night
is people are extremely tired, super fatigued, like a sleep
pressure is really high. So they'll fall asleep pretty

(01:14:02):
quickly or regularly, but they'll shoot up between 2:00 to
3:00 in the morning. Really common number by the way,
like almost always because they've hit those first few
hours of critical sleep window, they're not actually down
regulated. And so they get too close to
that sympathetic Dr. window and they get kicked into arousal.
And now they don't have strategies and techniques to get

(01:14:24):
back down into a parasympatheticDr. They don't recognize it and
so now they're up and up and up and up.
Always happens at 2:00 to 3:00 because it is that 3 to 4 hours
post sleep where you've hit a critical threshold.
Brain has done what it absolutely has to do and now
you're you hit that threshold ofawakening.

(01:14:45):
It can be some other things likeblood glucose, Dr. cortisol and
so on and so forth. But for the most part, this is
almost always driven by actuallya poor down regulatory routine.
We will see this in people's heart rate data.
We actually just had this happen.
Where was I? Just at Costa Rica just before
this, at The Four Seasons with some clients down there, ran

(01:15:05):
through all their data really consistently.
See this, you will see a heart rate irregularity and their
heart rate is being too high in the 90 minutes prior to sleep.
Sleep onset is fast 5 minutes. They fall right asleep, sure,
exhausted, tired, but shoot awake at that time.
The nights that they that they had this happen versus the night

(01:15:25):
that they don't haven't were 100% predicted by that priest
sleep heart rate in that particular person.
That's all we had to go solve. And so this is a classic example
of this is a extremely high level individual.
Everyone would know this person like very famous person and
we're like, hey, you have to do this down regulation routine and

(01:15:48):
this person was like 0 chance I'm not doing yoga, I'm not
doing breath work. Like could not be less
interested in these things. Showed the data and said I don't
it's not about the breath work of a yoga whatever.
Do whatever you want. Just make your heart rate go
down part of bed. Oh, I don't need that.
I'm so tired and I fall asleep easy has nothing to do with
that. So people will conflate the

(01:16:10):
exhaustion with down regulation.Sleeping and falling asleep is
not down regulated per SE. Those are different pieces.
And so in this particular case, it is very often one of a few
things. Let's assume also, by the way,
it's not a, a menopause or perimenopause situation where
it's any hot. Those are, you know, different
answers, but that in that particular case was that issue.

(01:16:34):
And so we actually have to have that person go through a wind
down thing. And again, that wind down thing
can look different. It doesn't have to be breath
work. It can be any number of things
that are more aligned with your personality.
If breath work is your thing, like great, but we got to find a
way for your heart rate to come down prior to sleep and then

(01:16:54):
you'll actually walk into sleep with a higher or lower, sorry,
higher HIV, lower heart rate, more prepared for sleep.
Your onset may or may not change, but that 2 to 3:00 AM
waking up thing almost always goes away.
Well, I love that. I feel that that is something
that so many people struggle with.
I'm going to link all of that inthe show notes.

(01:17:14):
There's so much more I want to talk to you about, but we have
to finish. And I have to leave you with one
last question. And I want to also link absolute
rest because I know you're here in London.
It's just we're doing the quickest turn around ever for
this episode to get this out. But I got to give you in the
squad a huge shout out. I'm, I'm generally pretty like
low demand, but I I was very demanding with you on this one

(01:17:37):
and I had a huge ask and you guys delivered so.
We'll deliver it. Yes, we are here.
Absolute rest in the UK for thismonth, October.
That's it. So.
Maybe we can have a time to joina Round 2 because honestly the
amount of stuff. We still haven't spoke.
About Oh no. But the crew.
Is here so. If you live in London or want to
come to London for the month, this is the only time outside of

(01:17:58):
America you work with, work withour team and absolute.
So I'll let you get your question, but thank you very
much for letting me do that and for turning this around.
No, I'm so happy. I'm so happy we finally had this
conversation. So I always ask one last
question for all of my guests, which is what does live well be
well mean to you? I think it's a state of joy,
which is if you are in joy, experiencing joy, I don't think

(01:18:24):
you can live or be well without that.
And I think part and parcel to that is you have to have some
semblance of health, some semblance of community, some
semblance of purpose. And those can come in lots of
different forms or fashion, but I think it would be difficult to
live or be well without that. And I think if you had all those
things, but you weren't experiencing joy, I don't think

(01:18:46):
you'd feel well or live well. I.
Can't agree more. Thank you, Andy.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Human Performance Dr Explains HRV, Performance Anchors & Hydrogen Water | Dr Andy Galpin