THE SLEEP DOCTOR: MICHAEL BREUS PhD.

that it wasn't damaging my mind and body. But I have seen the light and I have used many of the ideas and practical tools that doctor Bruce has pioneered as a clinical psychologist and best selling author. His books include The Power of When and the latest one Energize, How to go from Dragging ass to Kicking It in thirty Days. I do love the title. His website, The Sleep Doctor dot com, is loaded with all kinds of great info. So here we go a coveted appointment with

this sleep doctor. Well, Michael, I don't believe in regrets, and I've long ago given up trying to improve my past. But if I had known about the stuff that you have been espousing for the last twenty years, I probably would live longer because before you get into this, this was a very ignored space, and you were a pioneer,

and so there wasn't as much info out there. And so for about twenty five years when I hosted College Game Day, I got buy in about four or five hours of sleep a night, night after night, week after week, for months at a time, for twenty five years, because I just I felt he was required. I was getting by an adrenaline and caffeine. But I feel like I took years off my life by doing that. So the good news is, I don't think you've taken two off the back end of your life, and there's lots of

room for improvement. So I don't want you to worry. Um And as I think we've talked about before, I'm a huge college football fan, and this year my team is doing quite well. I went to the University of Georgia, so we're being the champions last year and looking pretty good this year. I'm watching a lot of college football. My friend, these are good days for the dogs. Yeah, all my friends who are Georgia fans at a great time in Indianapolis last year for the championship and they

might get a sequel this year. In working with college football teams and athletes, sleep Michael has become such a huge topic, and the players sleep is monitored and they are expected to report that data, required to report that data every day, and if they miss sleep, they're chewed out like missing a tackle in a practice. That's awesome.

I love that stuff well. And here's the thing that a lot of people don't think about is, you know, when you're talking about you know, Division one, Division two, Division three, you know, kids who are athletes like these are elite kids right like the and and they're they're top highly tested for things like steroids and things of that nature. And so if you're looking for the edge, it's in sleep. Um And a lot of people never

think about it that way. But if you are a well slept athlete, I can show you reams of data to show people getting their personal best on you know, days when they're well slept, on world records. I mean, honestly, some of the athletes I've worked with historically, the difference between being on the podium or off the podium in the Olympics is how you slept the night before. Almost

every time. It got me thinking because some of us just try to get by, but athletes need to achieve, you know, peak performance, and a lot of what you write about is how to optimize your performance whatever you're doing,

based on getting enough sleep and getting enough quality sleep. Yeah, And that's the big thing that is important for people, you know who are listening to think about is we're not just talking about quantity of sleep, but we're actually talking about quality of sleep, right, And so while minutes or hours are important, at the end of the day, it's what are you getting in those minutes that I would argue is probably much more important before you came along,

and web MD had nothing on on sleep at all, before you became the kind of O G Sleep expert and web m d. But I think in in we talked about athletic culture and military culture, even a hard charging business culture, so many areas of of I'll just talk about men's culture, sayings like, you know, sleep is for the week. My brother heard that as a marine again and again, or I'll sleep when I'm dead. That's kind of like the frat house bro culture. Come on out.

I mean, people who are just fighting the idea that the sleep was even necessary to get by, and we're seeing that lesson less nowadays. Um. And I don't know if that's because kids who are younger are smarter than we were, um, and they're like, hold on a second, I want my sleep, Like I feel much better, I perform better when I sleep. Um. I think they're more interested in balance in their overall lifestyle, and so I think that's kind of coming through it. But to be fair, look,

I'm fifty four years old. I mean, you know, my dad walked into the room at you know, six thirty in the morning banging a punch of pots and pans to wake my ass up in high school, right, Like that's what happened back then. It was none of this, oh honey, hit the snooze button three times, you know. It was like, get your ass out of bed and do your chores. So I think generationally we're talking about

very different kind of universes. But you're right, there used to be a culture where you were you were a whim if you got if you wanted to go take a nap, or you said you were too tired to do something. Yeah, nothing could be further from the truth. By the way, I love the saying that you have that that that sleep is a domino, maybe the lead

domino in a bigger conversation about wellness. If you can get people to understand that that whether you're eating right, not drinking too much, not smoking, working out, getting your steps in, managing your stress, if that sleep piece of it isn't right, can you be at a well person. There's no universe. I would argue you can. You cannot

do wellness without sleep. I would argue there's three big areas that you can't do wellness without You can't do wellness and without breathing properly, you can't do wellness without hydration, and you can't do wellness without sleep. I think all three of those are dominoes. But I agree that is kind of my new idea now is like I look for those things that are so basic in health and wellness that if you get that right, several other things

kind of click into place. Right, And I think that's what you're referring to here is if you're interested in weight loss, there's no universe you're gonna lose weight if you're sleeping four and a half hours a night. It just isn't gonna happen, like your body, your physical body would not allow for it to happen because it's like I need to use those resources, right, So you know it wants to get make you hungry and forage for

more food and all of those types of things. And so yeah, getting sleep right really it gets everything right. I mean I tell people all the time, everything you do, you do better with a good night sleep. Right. It doesn't necessarily guarantee wellness if you neglect with the other things we're talking about, but you can't have it without at least addressing that. I think that's important. Um, your original book is Beauty Sleep. There the first book. We

have a copy here. This is from about fifteen years ago. I love the fact that you have that, so believe it or not. That is my first book. But it was titled something different when it came out in paper in a hardcover, So in hardcover it was called good Night, the Sleep Doctor's thirty day Program to better sleep and

better health. And to be honest with you, dude, it didn't sell very well, and so the publisher came back to them They're like, we want to go with your original idea, which was Beauty Sleep, because what I wanted to do was show people how you could, you know, aesthetically look better based on getting better sleep. And so they're like, absolutely, let's throw that in as the title, and the book actually performed better with the new title,

same same content, like literally same pages and everything. But yeah, that's my first We'll get to a lot of things, the chronic types, which is something you pioneered, how you stay asleep, how you wake up in the morning, all those things, but just getting to sleep in this book, I remember reading the line I can't turn my mind off. I just cannot shut it down. It's impossible for me. And that resident at that time is before I sort of embrace meditation as an idea and stretching before bedtime.

Your work and others have have shown me the way, but so many people Michael's I just can't. So much is going maybe now more than ever. I can't shut my mind off with everything that's on my plate. Well, and and here's what I would tell you is I think you're correct. I think it is more now than it has ever been before. I mean, if you think about it, there's a lot more crisis is crises or crisis is I'm not sure what the plural of crisis

is going on now than ever before. Right We've got financial crisis, we've got pandemic crisis, we've got social media insanity, we've got an election coming up. Like, there's so many things to make people stressful right now that, to be honest with you, I'm surprised that anybody's getting a good night's sleep. Here's here's an interesting statistic for you. Since the pandemic, there's been a I believe it's a twenty

three percent increase in sleeping pill prescriptions written. Shocking. I mean the first I was gonna ask you being short of medication, because many people's first instinct, I got a problem, take a pill, I didn't matter what it is, and something is basically getting to sleep. There's plenty of products out there that that say they're gonna do it with no side effects short of medication, which is not something

I embraced in general. What what are the best ways to get us to shut our minds down and then get off to a good good night's sleep. So there's a lot of different things, but I want to start out by saying one thing to for for listeners out there, just to be super duper clear um that Chris and I are not saying that if you're currently taking a sleeping aid that that's a bad thing. That is not what we are saying. But what we are saying is

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

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

no kind of getting around it. So when we start to start to think about how do we give people a better night's sleep, there's really three different areas that I like to look at before we get into pills and prescriptions and things like that. Right, So number one is your environment. Could there be something going on in your environment that could be making your sleep worse? Absolutely

believe it. So this is gonna sound crazy. There's actually a study showing that if you have your laundry laying around your room, that it's hard to turn your brain off because you look at it and you're like, oh shit, I need to do that, or you have, you know,

a laptops sitting there. So really making your room more conducive for sleep absolutely positively helps, especially for people who tell me they can't turn off their brain because they're always looking for some other piece of stimuli something along those lines. So step number one, look around your environment. Could there be something in your environment that's causing an issue? Is it too loud? Is it too light? Um? Is your bed partner disrupting you? Is there an animal in

the bed whatnot? That's area number one. Area number two that I like to look at our actual physical deficiencies, right, and so I say, talk to your doctor, get some blood work. You want to look for three different things you want to look for do you have a deficiency in vitamin D, in magnesium or in any form of iron.

Any one of those three will absolutely make your sleep worthless. Um. And so if you're low in those, it doesn't make sense they give you, you know, ashwaganda or ambien when all you need is a magnesium You know what I'm saying. So I like to really only give people the things that their body needs and requires. So number one, if you got any deficiencies, let's fix those deficiencies. Wait a couple of weeks and see how your body reacts and

se if it sleeps better. Right again, it just might be that you're not getting enough vitamin D. Believe it or not, there's that that can definitely happen. The third area, which which really focuses in on that I can't turn off my brain, is cognitive behavioral therapy, so cognity. And I'm trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and many psychologists are um.

And So what cognitive behavioral therapy is is is where we change your behaviors in terms of we tell you what time to go to bed, what time to wake up. We might even make it a shorter period of time, which would seem very counterintuitive for many of my insomniacs where I tell them to go to bit later, not earlier. But there's a technique within cognitive behavioral therapy that's very that works quite well. The other thing that we do

not just looking at the behaviors. We look at your thoughts, right, and that's where the I can't turn off my brain really comes into play. So what are you thinking about when this is happening? Are you thinking about work stuff? Are you thinking about sleep? Are you? And so what we do is we address those individual thoughts and we

make sure that they're real. Right. So, as an example, one very common thought that I hear from people is if I don't get X number of hours of sleep, my entire day is going to be ruined the next day. The truth of the matter is you've never I mean, let's be fair, you've gotten bad sleep before many, many, many times, and your entire day wasn't toast because of it. Right, But we catastrophize, We make these things seem like they're bigger than they really are. Um And so a lot

of times this cognitive behavioral therapy works very well. Now there's a problem with cognitive behavioral therapy which is there's not enough therapists. Um, there's a lot of people out there who do have a need, but not off theirs,

believe it or not. They now have digital cognitive behavioral therapy which has been shown to be effective and an effective methodology of administering it, which I gotta be honest with you that I didn't think there was any universe where somebody could learn CBT from you know, uh an animation,

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

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

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

makes a lot of sense. Now we can get really detailed, but we're going to go through just the top part of the surface of five different things. So step number one is to choose one wake up time and stick to it. Now you notice I said wake up time and not bedtime. Okay, and I said stick to it meaning seven days a week. Okay. Now, if people get one thing from this entire conversation, do this because this will have the biggest effect on your overall sleep cycle

because it will keep your circadian rhythms in line. I wake up every single day somewhere between six o eight and six thirteen. I don't know why, but that's the time that my brain clicks and wakes up. But the consistency of that allows me to actually be able to fall asleep a lot easier. Let me explain the signs behind why. When you wake up in the morning and light hits your eyeball, it sends a signal to your

brain to turn off the melotonin faucet in your head. Now, the good news here is that's great because then you kind of get rid of brain fog and start your day. But what people don't know is it also sets a timer for fourteen hours later to start melatonin again. Ah, so this is interesting. And here's the big aha moment. Your brain can't tell time. Now, that's gonna sound strange that I say that, but follow what happens. If you're waking up at six am six am during the week,

fourteen hours later is eight pm. That's when melatonin kicks off. You're in bed by ten thirty. Everything's awesome, right, able

to fall asleep pretty easily. But if you instead of waking up at six, you wake up at eight, two hours later, your brain can't tell time, so it doesn't start your melotonin until fourteen hours later, So that two hour difference in the morning is actually happens in the evening, so your your brain is not even creating melotonin at that point until ten thirty at night, which means you're

not going to call asleep until almost midnight. So keeping the consistent wake up time does so much for you biologically, it's insane. Now just pick one and follow it. Now. I will have in the latter part of our conversation, we're gonna talk about these things called chronotypes, which is a genetic predisposition, and we'll tell you when those times should be. But for the moment, just understand that wake up at the same time every single day, seven days a week is what you want to do. Step number

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

drink and still get a decent night sleep. So I'm not, as you've already noticed, I'm not the sleep doctor to say never have a drinking caffeine, never have any alcohol. Right, I'm gonna show you how to do it and still get good sleep. So you want to limit it to two drinks, and you want to stop drinking three hours before bed. So step number three is to stop alcohol three hours before bed. Let me explain why. When you get past the second drink, your body starts to feel

a buzz. There's nothing wrong with feeling a buzz. But when you do that, your brain spikes this stuff called cortisol because it doesn't know what's going on. Now you're an energetic drunk. This is not ready for you to go to bed right, Because let's be fair, there's a really big difference between going to bed and passing out right, and that's what happens to a lot of people. And let's also be fair. Did you know alcohol is the number one sleep aid in the world. More people drink

themselves to sleep than any single other thing. And it's why I don't like to think that I'm not passing out. But listen, all of us feel like you know, I just I just want to have a nightcap. I just gonna help me wind down. It's gonna sel my brain down, and all that one is great. I don't have a problem with one nightcap. If you want to have a bourbon um, you know, an hour before bed, I don't care. I think it's fine. It will cause some level of

physical relaxation, but it can't be your fourth bourbon. You know what I'm saying, because when you have so much. Here's and here's the science is the when you stop drinking and when lights out are that period of time will determine how much alcohol affects your sleep. So if you stop drinking three hours before lights out, so you go to a dinner at six thirty, seven o'clock, you have a glass of wine. At seven twenty, you have your second glass of wine to finish your meal. Um,

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

disruptive to the to your sleep as well. Right. Step number four is the area that you love, which is exercise. Exercise daily for better sleep. I'll tell you a funny story. I was on stage well actually got to meet Tony Horton. So I'm sure I know you know who Tony Horton is. Some of your listeners may not. He's the fellow that developed this awesome program called P nine X a long long time ago. And the guy's in the sickest shape I've ever seen, sixty years old. And he came. I

would call him high energy time. He is high energy, And I asked him, I was. I was fortunate enough to be in the audience and talk with him um. And then I came up and gave my lecture and I said, Tony, how many days a week should you exercise, and he turned to me and he said, Michael, how many days a week should you sleep? And I was like, got it right. And so daily exercise is really what

we're shooting for. But what we don't want is core body temperature to raise too close to bedtime because we know that your body has to cool down to get to sleep. So exercise daily. But step number four is to stop X size four hours before bed. Step number five is a wake up routine. Only have to do three simple things, and I call it the three fifteens. So you do fifteen minutes of deep breathing, right, So fifteen deep breaths just to wake up your respiratory system

kind of bring you present. You want to have fifteen ounces of water. You want to hydrate before you caffeine. Eate please, much better for you. And then you want to have fifteen minutes in the sunshine because that turns off that melatonin faucet and it gives you exactly the right amount of vitamin D that you're probably gonna need. So, as as a quick summary, step number one wake up at the same time every single day. Step number two stop caffeine by two pm. Step number three stop alcohol.

Three hours before bed. Step number four exercise daily, but stop exercise four hours before bed. And step number five is the three fifteen fifteen breaths, fifteen ounces of water, and fifteen minutes in the sun. I feel okay about that check list. The last part to wake up. That's very much in line with what I like to do. Stretching and exercise would be the fourth thing for me.

Arety consistent of the other stuff too. You've got me scared though, because and they're not too distant future, I and the tennis team at ESPN A're gonna be broadcasting the Australian Open, but from Connecticut, so it's sixteen time zones away. I've done this two years now. What you just ran through is daunting because people who are operating the third shift, the overnight shift, I don't know how they do it. It's incredibly disruptive. So you're going to

bed whenever you're getting up. The matches began about three thirty am here on the East Coast. They might end at nine o'clock, I mean, and then you try to get sort yourself out and get back on a normal schedule on your off days, and it's it's rough. I mean, for people who are who are working those night shifts. Is there a quick way to feel like you're still part of the human race even though you're out of

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

it is. Something's going seven and so shift work has become quite an interesting environment. So Number one is there's an app for that. Believe it or not. It's called time shifter t I M E S H I F T E R. We can put it into the show notes for people UM and full disclosure, I am an investor and I helped design time shifter UM. But this is actually where you put in your shift and it will tell you, using four different things, how to shift

on and off almost seamlessly. So you'll use light caffeine napping, and melatonin in very particular order based on your shift or your travel UM and what you're doing. So, as an example, if you're gonna be doing the Australian Open, I would shift you to Australian time and I'd leave you there for the number of days that you needed to be on Australian time, and then if you had like a two day or three day off weekend, I would rotate you to your you know, normal time, and

then I would rotate you back Tom Sunday. UM. If that's kind of what if that's what you're doing UM. And we do that with people all the time, athletes, UM, at journalists quite a bit because you guys are here, there and everywhere also UM, and and you're doing it from a completely different universe. You're not even there on you know, you're in Connecticut while you're doing the Australian Open. So I would actually use time shifter for you, UM to shift you UM. But those are the four things

that you need. There's hope I never heard about that. I will I will definitely put that in the show notes and check it out and share with my colleagues.

What you said is important because the quality of sleep, no matter what shift you're on, is so challenged because I'm holding on my phone here, but but devices and the expectation that you are to be looking at your email at midnight and aware of what's coming in at five thirty and you're never off on so many people are not in their heads saying, yeah, that's how I made to feel that way by my employer. I'm not allowed mental downtime, right and so and and that's that's

a big one. So let's let's let's break that apart, because there's at least two, maybe three different things that are disruptive of your sleep in that scenario. Right, So number one is you get an email at five o'clock in the morning. So first of all, that's completely inappropriate for anybody to be sent even let's just be very very clear unless you're on and that's like part of your job description. Here's what's happening is an early bird, what I call a lion, is your boss and they're

up at four thirty in the morning. So they're just pounding things away, and you've got to stop that feeling to say, I want my boss to think I am Johnny on the spot and I'm gonna be able to answer that email, and I'm a great employee. Relax, Okay, Number one, negotiate that with your boss. Hey, if you're gonna send me emails at five am, I don't have a problem with it, but I need to be clear with you. I'm not gonna start looking at them until eight fifteen or eight thirty or whatever time is that

we negotiate and come throue. So number one, pull the pressure off of yourself, right, because there's definitely pressure to be felt. Okay. Number two, the proximity of the device is going to be a problem, right, And so what do I mean by that? Do not sleep with your phone next to your head? Okay? Like this is this is sleep one oh one guys. Okay. And and if one person out there is thinking in their head, oh but my phone is my alarm clock and it's the

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

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

Somebody out there is gonna say, oh, I can't put it in a different part of the house. What if my child calls me in the middle of the night, blah blah blah. Okay, Number one, if you have a land line, then your child will call on the land line. Okay. Number two, When was the last time that that actually occurred? Never? Okay never? So I imagine I can assure you if people need to get in touch with you in the middle of the night, there will be a way that they can do it. But you don't have to have

phone sitting next to your head. That's super duper tempting. But here's the bigger problem is the engagement with the phone. Now, you were probably thinking I was gonna say, oh, the blue light from the phone is having an effect on your melotone and bla blah, right, which is true. But I want to be clear about something. Blue light isn't as big a deal as a lot of people make

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

It's not just the light, it's the engagement. So as an example, if you're hanging out on your phone, scrolling away before bed um, trying to get your high score on candy Crush or something like that, I got a news flash for you. You ain't trying to go to sleep, Okay, So what I and and so here's what I'll tell you though. But let's say you want something to distract you turn on the TV. Yes you heard it here, folks, The sleep doctor said you can fall asleep with the

television on. Yep, I'm going to repeat myself one more time. You can fall asleep with the television on. I'll tell you why. I have to say this, Chris, because my wife falls asleep with the TV on every single nime just TV. Okay, phone bad though, right, Okay, right, Well i'll tell you why. There's there's two reasons why. Number one, the lights all the way across the room, but more importantly, the engagement. When my wife is watching TV, she's not

watching it, she's listening to it. She watches with her eyes closed, right, and she's all she's doing is listening to just enough of an old episode of Seinfeld or something like that to be a distraction to turn off her brain. Which was kind of where we started this conversation, right, was talking about people who can turn off their brain at night. So using different distraction techniques are perfectly fine. Here's the good news. The TVs have got a time

are built into the software. If you can't figure it out, ask your kid. That's what I did, and my son showed me exactly where it was, and we turned it on. And you can even turn the brightness levels down, so you don't have, like you know, lit up like crazy in your bedroom. You can be very accommodating and still be able to handle that. Um. So we talked about the blue light, we talked about the engagement, and we talked about moving the phone across the room. All of

that are distractions, I would argue to your sleep. Um. And so if you can remove electronics, it's gonna be overall a great thing. I get it. If it causes you more stressed to do that, start with it across the room, do that for two or three weeks. Then put it out right outside your door. Do that for two or three weeks, and then kind of walking down the hall. I'm not gonna lie. I'd have to be having a sleep emergency to put the phone in another room.

I get it. You're not supposed to tap it to see what time it is, but you know I do. I do sometimes want to figure out if I got an hour more to sleep, if we got two hours more to sleep. But I don't have that kind of internal alarm clock that's as well defined as yours is getting up at the exact same time. I need that alarm sometimes. So yeah, yeah, no, Well, let's well let's talk about that. So Number one, if you got up at the same time every day, you wouldn't you you

would be completely finely tuned. Just as an f y I for everybody out there listening, it takes somewhere between three and five weeks of getting up very close to the same time and then your body just starts to naturally do it. It will self adjust. So just for your own edification, it is possible right to do okay.

Number two, Um, when you've got an alarm, Um, if you have a bed partner, you maybe it want to be pretty careful because if you get up at a different time than your bed partner, your alarm goes off. Your be pissing somebody off pretty much every single morning. Right. If you've got people who get up at different times, that can that can certainly be an issue as well. Right, So thinking through some of the some of the logic driven stuff and just sort of the housekeeping of it

all can definitely be a factor as well. You have a lot in your book energize about relationships, relationships involving people of the different chronus types. So let's get to the different chronus types. Um. I mean, there's a lot of you mentioned lions, that's the early birds because lions hunted first light, and I get that. And then there's the wolves, who are a nocturnal right, you said you

were a wolf I saw in one interview. I thought I was gonna be a wolf when I went to the Sleep doctor dot com and took the test, ended up being a bear, which is sort of the middle of the bell curve. Right, that's like the most people. And then there's the dolphin, who the people who should come see you who have serious insomnia problems. Yeah. So

so what you did was, yes, you correctly identified. So what I did was let me just give everybody the kind of the cheat code here, right, And so if you've ever been called an early bird or an eyed owl, that's what we're talking about. Those are chronotypes. Those are actually genetic predispositions for your sleep and sleep schedule. Sorry, there's a siren going on if you can hear that. Um. So these are predispositions for your sleep schedule, and it's

genetic so you can't change it. Right. And so some people say, oh, I want to be an early bird. I want to wake up every morning at four thirty in the morning and kick the day's ass. Bad idea, unless you are genetically an early bird. Otherwise you're gonna do this for a couple of weeks. So that's right in there, along with hair color, eye color. It is just some part of your DNA that can't really be modified or worked around. No, you can. You could modify it,

but you'd have to modify it every single day. You'd have to take melotone and then use light to shift your circadian rhythm every single day. And by the way, people do that UM all the time, but it's not necessarily recommended. Right, So a lion is the earliest form. Wolf is the late form in between we call a bear. That's you, which is what I wish I was UM, and the problem children or the insomniac we call a dolphin. Now let me explain to you why I wish I

was a bear. So, first of all, fifty of people are bears, so one and two people is a bear. But here's why um. Bears have the perfect schedule because everything out there works on a bear schedule, the nine to five work schedule. It's perfect for a bear, right, get up around seven seven thirty, go to bed around ten o'clock. Work from nine to five. Everything works great

if you're a wolf like me. I don't even like to get up before seven thirty eight o'clock most of the time, right, whereas a bear can get up significantly early and a lion can get up much much earlier. So kind of understanding all of those things. And by the way, we've had almost two million people take the quiz now and we've learned that there are early bears and there are late bears. I saw that there. There's glad glad you said that intergestion. Yeah, the late So

wait a minute, I can't. I can say I do my best work. I have to function at midnight. I have to be at my sharpest at the end of a football game at midnight Eastern time. So it's very hard to to think of myself when someone's got to

shut it down again. But I'm glad that you You got very specific in the book, and I would definitely encourage people to pick it up and then figure out how how a bear is going to coexist with a lion or a or a dolphin or something, because that's when you're living with you said, You're sleeping right next to somebody and you love them more than anybody else. And but there's that sort of potential collision. Well, absolutely, and look, let's be fair, like not everybody ends up

in bed with somebody that's the same chronotype. Now, I'll be fair. I was lucky. Um we didn't realize that. But both my wife and I are nighttime chronotypes. And and we know this now because when I remember when we were dating, uh, twenty four years ago, Um, I would pick her up at eight, we'd have dinner reservations at eight thirty. We finished dinner by like ten. We'd go to the movies from ten thirty to twelve thirty.

Then we go off for a drink or dessert afterwards, we get home at two, right, and that was perfectly normal for us. I went out with another girl, not since then, but wore then. Who wasn't There's no universe where she could stay out until two o'clock in the morning. Right, But I you know, I didn't think about I mean, you're young and dating, you don't think about it. But now when you're married, like life sets in. Like there's some interesting aspects to this. And I'll be honest with you.

The big question that everybody asks, intimacy when if if I'm an early bird and my pronotype as a night owl, when do we have sex? So, if you don't mind, I'll do a little bit of information about that because I have a feeling your listeners who want to know. Is that cool? I'm not going to object to you talking about sex now, Okay. So so here's what's interesting. And by the way, take the chrono quiz so you know what you are so that this information can be

valuable to you. So you need five hormones to successfully be intimate. You need estrogen, progesterone two stopsterone, adrenaline, and cortisol. I'll need to be elevated and melatonin, the sleep hormone needs to be lowered. Okay, So seventy four of people like to be intimate somewhere between ten and eleven thirty at night, and there's polls and things like that. What do you think their horn profile looks like? It's the opposite, right, Melotonin is high and all those other things are low.

That is hint number one. Um, if you are in bed with somebody who is biologically male, okay, Hint number two what a most men wake up within the morning an erection If that's not Mother nature telling you when to use that thing. I don't know what is, Okay, So what we look at is testosterone levels. So here's what happens. Men wake up in the morning with their highest level of testosterone of the entire day. Okay, So it makes intuitive sense. That would make more sense to

be able to be intimate early in the morning. Here's what we discovered after giving this information to a lot of different chronotypes is UM, connection is better. UM. And so when people now to be fair, wake up in the morning, go brush your teeth, throw in some mouthwash, then come back into bed with your partner and right and then sort of see how it works. Performance is better for men across the board. Erectile function is better, um,

Ejaculatory function is better. But also connection is better. And so it's very very interesting looking at women, m orgasm actually occurs more in the morning time than it does in the evening time. Again, very very interesting. But I will tell you the funniest aspect of the entire study is we did we when we were surveying people and getting all this data, we did a different male versus female and women had very specific times based on their chronotype of when they wanted to be intimate for men.

Believe it or not, it was whenever it's offered, I'm down and and not surprising, right, but but actually data driven, right and so but if you think about it, you know, there's it's very interesting. So in the book, what we did was we created a matrices so you can put your chronotype across one and your partner's chronotype across the other.

And I give you an early evening time and an early morning time to run the experiment for yourself, right and say, hey, hon, you know, buddy, let's figure it out. And so there you go, like, just give it a shot, and so to see what happens. You might be surprise at number one, it gives a little variety to your sex life. But number two you may actually perform better. Also, just as an edification, in the book, we have two other matrices, one for lesbian couples and one for gay couples.

Because the hormone profiles are different chronotypes and circadian rhythms, which is just now beginning to be explored adequately. It hasn't been. I mean you say that there is not just the best time to wake up or go to sleep or have a drinker, have sex. But virtually any sort of activity, you can tell someone based on their chronotype and the detailed chronotype, what's what's the best time to do that most efficiently or optimally. There's no question

about it, and the data is really consistent. We had over two d and twenty studies in the book about every I mean, I can tell you the best time to day to write a book. I can tell you the best time and day to have a conversation with your child. I can tell you the best kind of

conversation to have a difficult conversation with your spouse. Um, there's really because what we do is we because it's all about hormones, right, And so here's what happens is if you're a lion and you wake up at five o'clock in the morning, guess what your meltonin turns off. All your other hormones turn on, and it's very predictable within the next twenty four hours. If you're a wolf, the exact same predictability happens. It's just like three hours later, right.

And so once you start to know what the hormone schedule is, all you do is plan your activities when your hormones will naturally be hid. So people tell me all the time. I do this with athletes constantly, right, And so if I've got an athlete who's ready to perform um, the first thing that we try to figure out is when what time of day are you competing? Right, because it could be very different depending upon what time

zone you're in, what what sport you're playing. Right, If you're a golfer, you might be playing on the dawn patrol, whereas if you're an n c A football player, you may not start until six o'clock at night on East Coast time, right, And so there are very different performance times that can go through there for for particular athletes, and depends upon the sport and things like that. But

it's super cool. Yeah. The book Energize You, you co wrote with Stacey Griboth, is one of the gurus of soul cycle, and it talks just about which an energy and lack of it and the need forward and the desire to optimize It is such a huge topic right now, and sleep is a component of it. But other than getting quality and quantity of sleep, what kinds of things should people be focusing on to sort of maximize their energy. Yeah, so it's interesting. So there's a couple of different things.

If you start to look in the literature, I would say within the last five to seven years, intermittent fasting has really become significantly more popular and certainly something that people can learn from and getting good. Don't tell me that's bad. Please, please don't tell me that's bad. It's great. It's great. In fact, in the new book Energized, we dedicate almost a third of the book to intermittent fasting, and we've talked to people about how to fast, and

believe it or not, you can fast based on your chronotype. Um, and it actually makes it more effective. So it's kind of cool. Um. So I think intermittent fasting is absolutely one of those great ways to number one, have more energy. People don't realize this, but food kind of slows you down. Um um. It really kind of makes you a little logi and a little slow and things like that, whereas not having food for prescribed periods of time can be very beneficial. I just want to be super clear about

one thing though, for any listeners out there. If you're interested in trying intermittent fasting and you've been diagnosed with an eating disorder. That's a terrible idea. You need to speak with your doctor who is treating your eating disorder. Intermittent fasting is not for people with anorexia, bulimia, or any types of eating disorders. That's a whole different conversation that you need to have with your doctor. Yeah, thanks

for clarifying and explaining. I don't generally address to things to people who are struggling. If you're struggling with something like that you mentioned earlier, folks who might be struggling in various ways and mental health issues, obviously, deal with the doctor. Get that get that stuff sorted out before listening to advice. It's for for everybody because it's doesn't doesn't work across the board. So absolutely so regulating food in, take sleep, what else, movement um. And so that's what

Stacy helped me with. So, as you mentioned Stacy Griffith, she is one of the founding trainers at Soul Cycle. Awesome. Like you want to talk about energy, Holy crap, this woman has got more energy than anybody I think I've ever seen. And if you ever tried taking one of her classes, She's still instructs all over the country. But she's based, I believe in New York. Her classes sellout in like two minutes, UM. And I've been to some

of her classes. It's like a disco dance party, but you're sweating and cycling and all this kind of crazy fun and so and so, when Stacy and I got together, we started talking about it and I said to her, I said, well, tell me what the problem is for most of your patients. And she said, most of my patients tell me they're exhausted. Like are they sleeping? She's like, well, kind of sort of, maybe we need to talk about that. And I said, you know, a lot of my patients

tell me that they're exhausted, but they are sleeping. Well, and she's like, well are they moving? You know, I don't know. And so like, I'm gonna ask your patients questions, and you're gonna ask my patients questions, and now we're gonna start to figure it out. And so we did. We developed a movement program. I should say Stacy really developed a movement program. UM. And and I want to

be clear, this is an exercise. This is movement. So what it is is when you use your phone, UM, you take uh five times a day an alarm would go off very small and you're gonna stop what you're doing for five minutes. That's it. I'm not and this I want to be clear. This is not an exercise routine. Nobody should be breaking a sweat. This is literally about

moving your body right. So one of the things we know is when we sit for too long, um, we swell and inflammation sets in and then we get stiff and then we feel like crap and we don't want to move around. I mean, let's be fair, sitting is the new smoking. Guys. We want to stay up and down, you know, we want to be moving quite a bit. And so it Stacy taught me was five different types of movements that you can be done throughout the day.

So there's a bounce, there's a shape, there's a stretch, there's a balance, and there's a build and there are different times for different prototypes. But again, what we're having people do is just you know, stand up and shake. You know, like you ever seen a dog when they get up after they've been lying from the I remember when they do that whole shaky thing and they're immediately awakened lots of I mean, I kind of feel energetic when I just did it right, and so like that's

the kind of thing that we're talking about. But it's a movement schedule and it's super easy to do. You got me fired up? Are you? And we'll we'll close here. Are you optimistic about the future of sleep and being able to spread the word and and having people increase their wellness at a time when I think, unfortunately, when you look around on several fronts, America is not getting healthier. It's getting less healthy almost by the month in so

many ways. And it's never too late. But how sleep fits into this this whole component of fitness, wellness, and then ultimately longevity because we'd like to live not just longer, but high quality years. Yeah. Absolutely, so I think sleep is critical, critical, critical for all of that. And I think if you don't um well, let's let's mol me back up. If you think you're not sleeping well from a quality standpoint, talk to your doctor, you mean, dately,

maybe do a sleep test. Number one, we need to rule out do you have sleep apnea, which, by the way, eighteen percent of the population, I mean, that's one in five people has that. Do you have NARCALYPSI do you have restless leg syndrome? Do you have insomnia? I mean, if if all we did was take the percentages of the population of those four things, that's like six of the population. Okay, right, So number one, if your sleep

isn't great, talk with your doctor about it. That you could have a sleep disorder which could be easy to fix, and then you're back on the road to recovery. Okay, let's say that that's not the case. You don't have a sleep disorder, but you have what I call disordered sleep. Okay, So it's not apnea, an arcalypsy, restless leg syndrome. It's hold on a second, bro, I got six and a half hours last night, and I feel like crap, what's

that all about. That's the quality side of things. And if we've already ruled out things like sleep apnia, then we start to look at like we're talking about before, environmental issues, UM bed partner issues. If you've got a snoring bed partner, or if you snore, that could be something that you want to tell packle. So there's a lot of different things that we need to do. But if you don't really focus in on sleep, here's what I can tell you is going to occur. You're certainly

gonna die earlier, You're certainly gonna die less healthy. Um. And and that that trip along the way, it's going to be a nightmare. And I'm not using that as a pun or the fact that it's Halloween today, um, but the fact that nightmare is the right word to use, because here's what happens when people don't sleep well. What we start to see is cardiovascular changes, pretty dramatic ones,

very very quickly early on. So if you're waking up falling asleep, waking up falling asleep, your heart rate is going up and down, which causes an irregular heartbeat, which can lead to something called atrial fibrilation, which can lead to heart attack, stroke, death. Not fun stuff. Stuff we don't want anybody to have. So if you're thinking about, okay, I got a lot of things I gotta do. I gotta lose weight, I gotta reduce my pain, I gotta get my mood, and better sleep will do all of

it for you. Again, it's a fundamental domino of health, of illness, of longevity, of sanity. I would argue with you, know, um And and here's the thing. If you're out there listening, and at any point in this conversation you said, you know, I really do need to do something about my sleep. You do, Okay, you do. Don't blow it off, because here's the thing. People use sleep as the shock absorber of their life all the time right there, Like, Oh, I'm having a crappy day at work, I'm just gonna

stay up longer and work more. You know, Oh, I got into a fight with my spouse. I'm going to go to bed early so I don't have to deal with them. That's not how you use sleep. Okay. Sleep is a biological function. I swear to you, if you use it right, it will be the biggest gold mine you have ever found for your overall health and wellness. I promise. Now. That was a strong exclamation point to our conversation. I'm so grateful for Michael's time and his

wisdom and passion for improving our health through sleep. I suggest you check out his instagram at the Sleep Doctor, also his best selling books, and his website, The sleep doctor dot com is all kinds of good stuff. They're including ratings on things that impact our sleep, like mattresses, pillows, and sheets. After the interview, Michael gave me one last tip for travelers that I never would have thought of.

At hotels, choose queen beds, not rooms with kings. Most hotel mattresses aren't great, right, He says, smaller queen beds sag less and hold up better than kings. And also art is popular, so they're slept on less. Told you his ideas are comprehensive. I'm gonna try that one as always. Thanks of a co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and the team and Octagon for editing the episode. I'll talk to you soon. Moore season five follower