Ep. 12 - Sleep...What you need to know

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okay, welcome to episode 12 . Another one of the foundational episodes for general health and well being is your sleep. I know, I know you've heard this your whole life. You spend a third of your life sleeping. Well, it's true, right? You can't, you can't argue that one. So then why is sleep so important and why if you don't get enough of it, do you feel terrible?

📍 📍 we're going to discuss some various topics. I'm not going to get super detailed on any of this. I'm just going to give you an overview because, again, this is foundational, right? where do we get good sleep? Starts with the mattress. I know, you're so tired of seeing all the mattress stores and the mattress commercials and everybody on podcasts and YouTubes are all selling mattresses.

But think about it. You're laying in it for a third of your life. I mean, you're actually Laying in it. That's that's a long time so if you're sitting all day at work and laying all Night in your bed, then the two most important things you should have is a good chair and a good mattress. Mostly the mattress not the whole bed.

Just the mattress. I Have my personal opinions on what mattress is better for you I will actually put the name of it in the description of what I use and what I believe is the best you can get. But at least do your research for you. What do you weigh? How tall are you? How do you like to sleep?

Because once you know that, then, or you determine those factors, then you can actually figure out what mattress is better for you.

It's amazing that people will spend 10, 000 on a vacation, but they will complain when they buy a bed that's 2, 000. Matter of Fact, you just spent 10, 000 to sleep on someone else's mattress somewhere, and it was terrible. why not spend 2, 000 for your mattress?

That's totally awesome. And a really good mattress will last you a very long time. Some of them. You probably won't have to replace . Your pillow is also just as important. And that should support your neck in such a way that's best for you. Not just general public. You need to know what's best for your shoulder size.

Are you a side sleeper? Your back? Should you sleep upright? Upright, which is basically at an angle. Uh, fully flat, a little bit of both. It matters. It also matters what the mattress is made out of. And the pillow is made out of. Do you do better on straight organic cotton fill? Or are you better on foam?

Well, how would you know until you go find out? So those two are essential because you are actually putting your head on it and your whole body on it. And so if you're tossing and turning a lot and you don't get really good sleep, it could be your combination of both of those or at least one of those.

Your sleep routine is probably, they consider, you know, the science doctor people that deal with sleep, they think that sleep routine is so important. And it is. It's very, very important. And, uh, it can make for much more productive sleep. But is it the most important thing? I don't think so. It's a part of it.

You could have the best sleep routine ever and have a crappy mattress and sleep like crap. , sleep routine is just one more piece of the puzzle. your sleep routine is actually, uh, very... important in the sense that you're not dealing with, let's say, body rest, laying down and, and being horizontal with, with gravity, etc.

But it's more your brain. It's things like light. your sleep routine should be something that works for you to calm you down and get you into your circadian rhythm. By the way, diet is about the best way to optimize your circadian rhythm because not only does it affect how you feel, when, what time of the day.

It also puts you into a circadian rhythm if your diet's very good. It helps you get into that. So now, with a sleep routine, plus your diet, boy, you can get some great sleep. For me now, and how I eat, I am up very early, with tons of energy, and I crash at 940. what about how dark your room is? Everybody talks about this now.

It's the new buzzword is, you know, black out your room. Well, you don't have to go spend thousands on blackout shades and that kind of thing. Just wear a face mask. I actually really like wearing my face mask. It's comforting, too. And it doesn't get hot. My eyes don't sweat. Nothing like that. And I can use it when I need it, and I'm used to using it.

So if I went anywhere and put it on, I'll probably fall asleep because I'm used to wearing it. That's an easy way to get... Light reduction without spending more than 15 bucks. The temperature of your room is really, really important. And your body regulation matters. Just one degree higher than what your body should be resting at can impact your sleep.

you want your room colder so that you are technically colder.

Whether you're under the sheets or above doesn't matter. Fan on, whatever. make sure that your temperature is cooler than you might think. You'll get used to that. It's not a big deal. It's not gonna kill you. You will feel better from sleeping in a slightly cooler area in your home. Sound is a big one.

A lot of people use a fan or a sound machine, these kinds of things, if you need those, they're fantastic. And some of them actually nowadays, they are using frequencies while you sleep, which can help you stay asleep if you have insomnia or sleep issues. And then also they can, stimulate your brain in such a way that not only are you sleeping, but you actually are repairing your brain better.

So frequencies are one of my favorite things to think about. Learn about, talk about your whole life. And every single aspect of every part of life is a frequency one way or another because it's all energy and everything is energy. So I currently use now a sound machine, which I really like, and I'm using it under a mode that does not sound like a fan.

It's sort of just noise and it's a specific type of noise that it encompasses all the frequencies at once. So it basically is neutral. I used to use a fan, and I still can. Fans run by electricity that is dirty coming out of your plug. The motors that are in fans are... never running the exact same speed all the time, so the noise is actually all over the place.

So if you were at a meter, the sound coming out of a fan, it doesn't, the needle doesn't just sit in one spot, it's bouncing all over the place. The quality of the electricity can change the frequencies of that sound because the spinning blades can change, your fan Can help you go to sleep or stay asleep, but also may not be helping you sleep very well So a sound machine might be better for you and there are a lot of them 10 bucks up to 120, 150.

You can also use an app on your phone or iPad or something like that. Those devices should be more than five feet from where you sleep. They shouldn't even be in the same room, but if you have to, then they shouldn't be near your head at all. Uh, that's one of the worst ways to get low quality sleep.

Matter of fact, some people, it's insomnia and they don't even realize it. It's their phone that's doing it. Why do we have a phone in our bedroom anyway? So sound can be a definite factor. Anything you can use to drown out your background noise, dogs and birds, and all this kind of thing that might annoy you.

Well, sound machines can be great, and learning how to place them in the room can be even more beneficial. Playing with the different frequencies that you can use , you know, you don't do it every night, change the frequency. You want to do a few nights in a row with one frequency sound to get used to it, to find out if that's a good one for you.

Otherwise, you're changing every single night, you're never going to know.

ersonally. You know, it's not: 1940

, it's better when you're unclothed. It also lets your skin sort of breathe. It's not what I, it's a bad term, but everybody understands what that means. Get a chance to air out your skin. You're always touching something. So if you can sleep without clothes and Even though you have covers on you, you're not touching every part of your body and it's actually pretty good for you.

Feels great. You're not constricted when you're turning over while sleeping. You don't get constricted and cut off blood supply and stop yourself from moving if you need, if your body needs to move because you will find sometimes if you, uh, record yourself at night with a camera, you'll see how much movement you really do.

And some of that movement is caused because you have hot spots or pressure points in your body where your skin is touching the mattress. And so it wants to move.

If you drink alcohol. anytime near bed or even somewhat in the daytime. It can lower the quality of your sleep by up to 40 percent. Alcohol is a disruptor. Eric, you don't understand. I can't relax. Well, there's lots of other ways to learn how to relax. There's a lot of things that are inhibiting your ability to relax that I just talked about.

So maybe alcohol is not a great thing for you to do. Alcohol seriously messes up your body. We're gonna talk about alcohol coming up in the next couple episodes for sure. It is detrimental to your circadian rhythm, to your energy production, your mitochondria, et cetera. So there's other things that you can consume if you need to go to sleep quicker or easier.

And alcohol is not one of those that you need. There's other things that you can do. Look 'em up. There's lots of different things.

Food before bed and the type of food you should not be eating anywhere near sleep. . Some people will snack and then go to bed. That's terrible. Why do you eat? Why do you sleep? Do you eat while you're sleeping? No, because you're not supposed to. You are supposed to be shutting your body down for a short hibernation period.

Not having to deal with a piece of pizza, or ice cream, or a huge glass of milk, or anything before bed. Your body should have dealt with dinner way earlier ... The type of food matters. Some foods are very energetic to the body, or stimulating, like caffeine and sugar. That's the difference between alcohol... Depressing you and putting you to sleep and hot spicy food that will keep you awake.

Food has energy and has qualities to it that are immeasurable. As cold food is different than hot food.

Exercise before bed. Never a good idea. Unless, for you, puts you in a state where you can go to bed. You can go to sleep. It's fine. But for most people it keeps them up. Because you've excited your body. You've got byproducts. in your muscle, in your blood, in your lymphatic system, and you are not optimally set up to go to sleep.

You just woke yourself up for 45 minutes. Blue light, you've heard it all constantly every day. You can't go anywhere without everybody talking about blue light. Of course it's a problem, but all light is a problem. That's why the sun goes down and you go to sleep. That's why you get tired when the sun goes down.

You ever notice, when the sun comes up, kids wake up? And when the sun goes down, kids want to go to sleep. Because they're closer to their circadian rhythm than we are . We force ourselves to stay awake.

All light is a problem. Blue light just happens to be more of a problem than the rest. Because it's the opposite of yellow. So the warmth of the light is basically the Kelvin. The light bulb was Designed to mimic the sun . So that's about 2, 700 Kelvin. That's that yellow light we've grown up with forever.

And then now everything's gone to these fluorescent and LEDs. And a lot of them, we want the white light because we can see better. But what you don't understand is by doing that in your home, you've converted the ability for your body to be in circadian rhythm over to being morning. and midday. Midday is more white light.

Morning and evening is more yellow light. So you turn your light on in your bedroom to read a book before bed, and your blastin blue light, or a cool temperature light, white light, it's going to keep you up. It's fact. Your brain functions off of frequencies even flavor is a frequency. It's all picked up by the brain.

Your brain basically reads frequencies and interprets them and tells you what they are. So light is one of the five senses, yeah? That means that if you excite your brain, you're not gonna relax. So your bulbs in your home should be lowered. Your lights should be lowered on dimmers as much as you can. Or start turning off your lights before bed, an hour before bed, or flip the color over if you have the ability to change the color.

And then in your bedroom, it should be a yellow light.

If you don't get enough sleep, there's, these are just a few of, well, there's about 10 things. But these are really important reasons why you need to make sure that you're getting good sleep. Of course, just good sleep As a whole, you Just feel better, right? It's just part of the whole thing. But there's some really serious consequences to not getting enough sleep.

And since I've changed recently, the way I diet, my eating , and I get up early and go to bed early, my energy is probably 40%, at least 40% more than it was previous. Absolutely, without a doubt. My sleep is a lot better. My brain fog has lowered. I just. I'm more in tune, I'm going to say with nature, but what I really mean is just day to day, all day life, it's just feels better.

Everything feels better. So your energy during the day, if you just have lack of energy during the day, one of the reasons is you're not getting enough sleep. So everything I'm talking about right now is just associated with not getting enough sleep.

I'm not talking about health from the nutritional standpoint, diet, exercise, these kinds of things. This is just sleep. It's proven. If you don't get enough sleep, okay, let's just get it out there, the whole eight hours thing. Eight hours is the average. There's a lot of research showing that you need eight hours.

There's a ton. Matter of fact, 7 to 9, very, very good. 7, not as good as 8. 9, pretty darn good for most people. Actually, some people do need 9. I know people who need 10, 11, and they get it. Know people that do 5, and they do just fine. Maybe they get 5 because of other factors are holding them back. Some very, very few people, but some of them do only need a short amount.

So if your energy is low during the day, it's a definite indicator that you're not sleeping enough or well enough. So not only time, but quality. Your cognitive functions can definitely lower, and those can do all kinds of crazy things. In your daily life, your cognition is what keeps you aware from all different factors.

Things you need to do, things you need to stay away from, safety, productivity, all of it. It's all cognitive, okay? So if you don't get enough sleep, your cognition decreases.

That cognition decrease actually causes 6, 000 car accidents per year because people are too drowsy while driving. This isn't even just falling asleep, this is just drowsy. Like they say, you know, buzzed. Driving is the same as drunk driving. Well, drowsy driving is the same as sleep driving.

It actually costs, the economic impact is actually 411 billion dollars annually. Because people have a lack of sleep. In quality. That cognitive ability to conduct day to day activities at work. Or anywhere, for that matter, is lowered enough that they can calculate 411 billion dollars a year. Also, it works like this.

You've all heard about how doctors or some people have to work a full night shift or something like this. They have to work multiple shifts or whatever.

At about the 16 hour mark of being awake and not going to bed, it can have a performance reduction the equivalent. of a blood alcohol percentage of 0. 05. 0. 08 is legal limit. So basically it's like you are, after 16 hours, it's like you've had alcohol and you're buzzed. So your performance is down.

It causes all kinds of mental health problems because your cognitive functions are impaired. If you don't sleep, Enough or well enough, the quality, I'm not getting into REM and light sleep and all of this. I'm just saying quality as the, as the quantitative measure , for all of those factors. You don't repair the brain as much.

You don't compartmentalize the things in the brain that it's trying to do. It's like you've been running your computer. Four weeks on end and you're having all these issues and nothing's functioning properly and you go, Well, I don't understand why this isn't working well. Well, you haven't shut it down in two weeks.

ou about before they found in: 2019

It can even alter Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Yeah, your digestion can be all messed up. So if you have digestion issues, sleep quality can actually make your digestive issues worse. Reflux, IBS, standard diarrhea or standard constipation. Remember we talked about before a couple episodes ago, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system.

I also talk about the fact that your gut has its own neurons attached to the brain. It's the second brain. So if your brain isn't getting sufficient rest time to handle all of its problems and issues from the day, it will affect your gut through those neurons. It's a two way communication. Think about that.

Crazy, huh?

I want to touch a little bit again on What impacts your quality of sleep and getting to sleep and these kinds of things. I'm going to go back just a little bit to the sleep routine. This is really important. You might find this interesting and we all know that devices are really impacting our lives in many negative ways.

And a lot of people who finally give up these devices feel better, their life quality gets better. So check this out. These are the top bedtime rituals that people have. Okay? 52. 7% of the people are watching TV before bed, or they use it to go to sleep in their, in their bedroom. That's over 50% of the people.

So think about you're watching something, your brain's trying to interpret this, and then you want the brain to slow down and go to sleep. It doesn't work that way. You're trying to let your brain do as little as possible so that you can fall asleep sleep. . 32% shower or bathe before bed. 23% talk to their partner.

20% of the people read a book. 18% of the people will unplug from all devices Awesome. 16% will check their email before bed. Why do you have to check your email before bed? 16% will also do breathing exercises. Another 16% will read on your tablet. Why are you reading on an electronic device? You know that's bad for your eyes.

Just get a book.

15% Use a sleep app. Well, I bet you 15% of those people, if they would learn how to go to sleep properly, have a good mattress, learn a sleep routine, good darkness, temperature, sound, clothing, alcohol, all the other things, you wouldn't need a sleep app. 14% will have a drink. That's alcohol. 11% will eat very specific foods before bed.

10% will exercise before bed. I just don't understand that one. And 9% will do yoga. Okay, I can kind of give you the yoga thing. Alright, sort of. And then, end it with this. This is how crazy we are with stuff before bed on our tablets and phones and stuff.

The average amount of people will look at YouTube before bed.

So the average people, this is what they're scrolling and looking at for social media before bed. Almost 50% of them will look at YouTube. About 40% Facebook . Why are you on Facebook? And then 33% on TikTok. Why are you on Facebook and TikTok before you go to bed? Half that stuff is so emotionally driven that You're exciting yourself before bed.

I mean, really? There's no other thing that you want to do before go to bed is to look at Facebook and Tik TOK. I'm not saying they're not awesome apps. I'm just saying, why are you doing it for bed? Instagram, 27% of the people are looking at Instagram before bed. Are you looking at pictures of super calming stuff ?

Snapchat 15% of the people Twitter 15% of the people 10% of people read it literally on social media Before bed, it's a national problem and everybody knows it

Nothing about looking at a device and then reading those or looking at those sites will help you go to sleep There are so many studies proving two things. This is a thing now. This is what they're studying. If for the first hour you wake up and you do not look at your phone or tablet or computer, just do anything else other than looking at those.

People are happier, their brains are better, they're overall better in all kinds of areas. And then the same thing for bedtime. It's like, I think it's longer than an hour, I think it's like two hours, they said. Just turn those things off. Just, you don't need them. You spent all day looking at them anyway.

Why are you looking at them before bed and as soon as you wake up? Is there something that important that you need to do? That you need to see? Really?

Here's a thought. Maybe just getting up and praying or praying before bed. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or whatever religion you want to be. Prayer. Proven to help your brain and your mood and your outcome for that day, either at the start of the day or at the end of the day. How about if you don't believe in prayer, it's Speaking all the gratitude that you have in your life.

Naming off the things that are positive and wonderful in your life. acknowledging to yourself that you're alive, you're doing well, you're happy for a house, car, family, food, Gratitude and being in that gratitude state when you wake up or go to bed is the It's life changing for most people that do it.

But it works. It's a whole brain wavelength thing, which is all frequencies, right? So, this is just an overview of sleep and why this is important. If you, maybe, there were some things in here you didn't think about or even know about. Or maybe I just sparked you again to start paying attention more to your sleep.

Oh, one last little quick one. Uh, everybody wants to lose weight, you know. Well, do you know leptins, not lectins, but leptins actually are the hormone that your stomach and your brain work with to tell you to stop eating. Like, you've had enough, it's done. And we usually push past that and do whatever we want, because most food tastes good.

Uh, but that leptin says, stop eating. Well. If you don't get enough sleep, or quality sleep, you can dysregulate leptin. So you will gain weight, , you'll overeat, and you'll eat the things that you shouldn't be eating. So your diet, impacted by your sleep.

So maybe I should leave it at that one. People who are struggling to lose weight, or fat, trying to keep their diet under control, trying to stop eating sugar and carbs, and all the stuff you know is bad for you, well, guess what? You don't have the power to do that with just your brain. You have to have this hormone called leptin to tell you to stop.

So, think about that one. I'll leave you with that. Till next time, take care.