What is going on? You know, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com. And in today's podcast I'm doing another solo episode. I don't have a guest on. I'm going to talk a little bit about optimizing sleep quality. I've been in a prep now for several months. I'm trying to optimize my sleep quality. I've done a few things to do so. So I want to kind of peel the curtain back a little bit deeper on what those techniques and tactics are for truly improving the quality of your sleep.
Because as we all know, that is incredibly important, which ties in very nicely to our November Keto brick giveaway, which is going to be the eight Sleep Pod 3 cover mattress setup system combo thing. So I'm super excited about that. Let's dive into the podcast, talk about sleep optimization, talk about how you can win this, this giveaway and just optimize your sleep in general. So here we go today. I've got another little announcement about a promotional giveaway, so I can't start all
these off the same way. We've done a few giveaways now. They've all been super freaking awesome. We've had the squat rack, the kayak, the coaching. Last month we gave away a $5000 sauna. Stephanie Rye won that one. So congratulations to you, Stephanie. I hope you would love the sauna that is shipping out to you this week. So when it comes to these giveaways, we're trying to make them on brand kind of in the whole biohacking, health improvement, nutrition, fitness, Wellness space.
And I got to thinking, what would be a great giveaway for the month of November? And we're kind of getting a little late start because it's already started, but anybody that has already purchased bricks in November is already entered to win, so no worries there. But I got to thinking, what would be great for November and I'm in a competition prep right now? This is my last month of competition prep.
My sleep has not honestly suffered too much because of the prep itself, but my sleep suffers a lot in general because I'm constantly stressed about everything. I'm I'm waking up early to hit the ground running and get the day started with business stuff and I don't go to bed early enough. So I have really tried to dive into sleep optimization. As such a kind of want to fold in a little talk about the importance of sleep.
So sleep is absolutely critical from a training we all know that sleep is critical first and foremost, like we all inherently know that to be true. Yet we seldom live in line with those beliefs because because of life, I guess. So when it comes to sleep optimization, sleep quality is more important than sleep quantity. You know, most of the studies show that you're supposed to get between 7:00 and 8:00 hours of sleep a day. I never get that much sleep. I'm typically in the five to six
hour ballpark range. So I've really tried to optimize my sleep quality because my quantity is lackluster. As such, what has worked well for me in optimizing my sleep quality, especially as it pertains to this competition prep and being as depleted as I am, is as follows. I turn my temperature, my thermostat, down to about 6566, no more than 67 degrees, about an hour before I go to bed so that I'm sleeping in a Thermo regulated state. Cool. The cooler temperature is key.
You don't want to sleep. If you're hot. It's going to be much easier to fall asleep and get into a deeper sleep. If you're in a cold surrounding, I will mouth tape. So mouth tape. I learned about that through Mike Muscle. Basically what you're doing there is you are ensuring that you are breathing nasally as you sleep. If you fall asleep and then start opening your mouth, moving around your tongue blocks your airway.
As is often the case, you will not fall into as deep a deep sleep or get into REM sleep near as efficiently. If you tape your mouth shut so you are forced to breathe nasally, you can bypass that issue. It's kind of like a mild form of sleep apnea in a sense. So I've been taping my mouth shut with like a simple cheap micro pore tape and that works wonders. I don't try to look at screens or anything my phone or anything stimulating about an hour or two before I go to bed.
But if I do I was trying to wear like a blue light blocking pair of glasses to help with those blue light rays that I can increase melatonin production there at night and just avoid being overly stimulated before going to bed.
Another thing I'll do is I will sometimes have a slight bolus of sodium before bed, and that will ensure that the fluid that I have subcutaneously I get soaked into my muscle tissue and is less likely to cause me to have to wake up throughout the night multiple times to excrete that in urine. So you don't want to be waking up too frequently to urinate throughout the night because that's obviously going to inherit your inhibit your deep sleep as well.
Another thing I'll do is I will try and wind down via some lifestyle practice that gets me out of work mode and into rest and relaxation mode. This could be something as simple as having a glass of tea with my wife Crystal, reading a non or a fictional book of some sort, something that's not business related and just simply winding down.
Like here lately we've been just kind of talking about our homesteading operations and kind of what we're wanting to do there as a way to wind down in the evening, and that has been great. Speaking of tea, I will often times drink a like an herbal, non caffeinated tea before going to bed. You don't want to drink too much right before you go to bed because that's obviously going to encourage you to urinate throughout the night. So often times have like a it's not melatonin, but it's like a
Valerian root tea. And I'll have that prior to going to bed, and that knocks me out big time. Some people use CBD. I've never really played around with that from a sleep standpoint. A lot of people use THC. I've never really played around that from a sleep standpoint. Many people use and abuse melatonin and there are conflicting studies out on that. Some suggest that if you take a lot of supplemental exogenous melatonin, it's going to inhibit your natural production.
Not sure if that's the case or not. Again, the jury's still out. I do not use any melatonin supplementation when it comes to supplementation, I just try to ensure that I'm not consuming caffeine or any stimulants several hours before going to bed. Like if I have an afternoon cup of coffee, I'll typically have it no later than about 2:00 PM if I'm wanting to fall asleep
early. Another really important thing as it pertains to light is to ensure that you wake up with the sun and expose yourself to that blue light early in the day. And then kind of reset your circadian rhythm, your clock, your biological clock, so that you are inclined to wake up with the rising of the sun and starts to increase. Melatonin production naturally and start winding down as the sun sets, which is harder to do when times are changing.
But definitely try and structure your day around the rising and setting of the sun if at all possible. So those are some of the things that I've been doing to improve my sleep quality when it comes to tracking sleep. I've got the aura ring and I've got the Garmin watch. Interestingly enough, they are constantly at odds with one another. The Aura ring shows less deep
and REM sleep than the watch. I would venture say that the Aura ring is probably more accurate because it fits more snugly around my finger, so it's going to have more access to the capillary veins and measure that. HRV recovery and sleep. Probably a little bit more accurately than the watch, but I'm all for not being a slave to wearables in general. So all that said, what else could I do to optimize sleep? Actually, one more thing I
forgot here. These last few months in the competition prep, I have actually been sleeping in a separate bed than Crystal, and that may sound strange to some of you. You may be like, oh you going through some marital issues. That's not the case at all. Crystal and I are better than we've ever been, but we are definitely sleeping in separate beds right now. And interestingly enough, all of my sleep data like doubled in quality after moving to a separate bed.
Some of that is likely due most certainly due to the fact that we've got Rigel. He's a year and a half old now. He sleeps in his own bed, but sometimes throughout the night she'll bring him into the bed with us and we have a big bed. We have a king size bed, but even with the movement throughout the night, her getting up and moving, getting him bringing him in, that's enough to disrupt my sleep, even if I'm not consciously waking up. So that has inhibited my deep and REM sleep.
So I made the decision to move to the guest bedroom here these last few months of prep and my sleep has tremendously improved. Plus Crystal likes to sleep hotter than I do. I like to sleep colder than she does, so we're constantly at odds with one another. One with regards to what to set the thermostat to, whether or not to have a fan going full speed or not, things of that nature, things that come with having a spouse and sleeping with them. There's just different preferences there.
So all that said, those are the things that I've incorporated personally to improve my sleep quality. But I'm constantly on the lookout for other ways to ramp that up and prove it even further, Which is why I've been very intrigued by the Eight Sleep Bed Mattress Pod cover combo system. My bed, that King Bed that I was talking about, it's about 10 years old now, which they typically say is the lifespan of a good bed.
So I'm somewhere in the market for a new bed and I've been hearing about this eight sleep pod for a while now. I've heard about it on several podcasts. I've heard about it from several influencers, several prominent people in the space. I started doing some digging on it and I'm liking what I'm seeing this far. So I figured we would make that 8 pod sleep cover the giveaway for the month of November. So I did some digging on this sleep cover. I'm just going to read you some
specs here. So they've kind of redone their website a little bit as of late, but basically it supposedly increases up to 34% more deep sleep, up to 32% more improved sleep quality, up to a 19% increase in recovery. It's got a dynamic heating and cooling system that heats and cools each side of the mattress separately. So if you're sleeping with your spouse or significant other, you can have one set to a warmer temperature, 1 set to a cooler
temperature. That's incredibly appealing to me. You can preset the bed to your preferred temperature so that it is waiting for you when you crawl into bed, which is also very very cool. There's a sleep deeper while your pot adjust temperature as you sleep so your body is going to Thermo regulate naturally as
you sleep. The cool thing about this sleep cover is that it measures that as you sleep and then it adjusts accordingly to keep you in a set homeostatic set point so your body stays in that deeper sleep longer and can get into REM sleep more efficiently. So that is super cool as well. You're not going to like for me I'll get hot throughout the night I'll kick a cover off. All that is inhibiting my ability to get quality quality sleep.
So the fact that it auto Thermo regulates as I sleep is a big big you know, liking point for me when it comes to waking up. It's got this gentle rise system with a gradual temperature change and a subtle chest level vibration. I'm just reading this off here on the side of the pod, so I hate waking up to a blaring alarm clock. So much so that I bought an alarm clock that basically wakes
me up via light. Like it gradually gets lighter and lighter and lighter, and it's got birds chirping and whatever kind of soothing sounds I want it to play because I hate a blaring alarm clock. This is even cooler because it temp the temperature will increase to wake me up and it'll have subtle vibrations. So sometimes I'll sleep with a sleep mask, especially if I'm traveling.
So in that situation, the light doesn't really do me much good because I've got a sleep mask on, but this thing vibrates and then gradually gets warmer, so that's pretty cool as well. You can just set the time that you would like to wake up and then it'll gradually get warmer and start to vibrate to ease you into the day, which is a big plus as well.
It's also got tracking metrics, so it's got an app, It's got the full blown dashboard, so rather than having to wear a bunch of wearables, you just simply sleep in the mattress. And it tracks your deep sleep, your REM sleep, all that good stuff. So if you want that data, you've got it accessible via the Eight Sleep Pod app, which is pretty cool as well. And it does all this.
I'm not exactly sure the technology, but I think it's it's got water that it runs through a system and that is how it is Thermo regulating the pod cover. So you basically fill up this canister of water, it heats and cools that and circulates it through the pod cover, which is pretty slick as well. So all that to say, this is going to be the giveaway for the month of November. I know everybody's in a little different state as it pertains
to their mattress and bed needs. Some of y'all listening and watching may already have an outstanding mattress, in which case you would just be needing the Pod 3 cover, which is the main thing that Eight Sleep offers. So if you win the giveaway, we'll get you fixed up with the Pod cover with whatever size fits your mattress. If you are in the market for a new mattress, we will outfit you with a new mattress as well because Eight Pod 8 Sleep also
offers a mattress. So we can just do a bundle deal there. They have a pillow set. I'll throw that into the mix. They have the application which I was talking about. There's a 12 month minimum membership on that. So I'm going to cover that 12 month cost for the application and memberships.
You get all the bells and whistles that come with this package deal and basically what it boils down to is depending on whether you have a smaller mattress or a larger king size mattress, the value of this giveaway is going to change accordingly. But whoever wins this giveaway, I'm going to fix you up with whatever mattress you have or need, whatever pod cover size you need for your mattress or like I said, if you need a new mattress, we'll get you fixed up
with that as well. So the range of the value in this particular giveaway is anywhere from like 2500 bucks to like 5000 I believe, depending on if you get a king size mattress and pod cover. So I'm super excited about it. Like I said, I'm in the market for new Mattress and Sleep System myself, so whoever wins this, I'm probably going to be hitting you up and asking you how you like it because I want your feedback because if it's great, I'm going to get one for
myself. I've had several clients that have the eight Sleep Pod cover and they all swear by it. I've had several friends that have had it, they all swear by it. So I am definitely sold on it as a sleep solution. Super excited about this giveaway like I am with all the giveaways. I'm trying to find things that are massive value adds for Y'all. Not just some spindly little, you know gift, but something that's truly valuable.
The sauna we gave away last month was $5000 sauna with all the bells and whistles, infrared, near, far mid. Like everything, I was super excited to call up Stephanie and tell her she won and just hear the excitement in her voice as she won something extravagant like that. The same is going to hold true with regard to this Eight Sleep
system. I'm super excited to offer these giveaways through the Keto brand and business, and hopefully y'all are as excited about them as I am so how the giveaways work. In case you didn't know, this is going to be the giveaway for the month of November. Every $10 spent on ketobricks@ketobrick.com will enter you in a chance to win the giveaway. At the end of the month, or rather the beginning of December. We will randomly draw that
winner. We'll send them an e-mail, we'll give them a call, we'll ship them this Eight sleep system free of charge on their part, and they're just going to get this awesome system that they can integrate into their life right off the bat. We're also going to give you away, give away a free month supply of bricks. Whatever flavor you choose or desire, we'll get you fixed up with that. So yeah, that's pretty much how
the giveaway works. You have to be in the continental US for us to ship you this eight Sleep mattress, so let that be known. But yeah, every $10 spent throughout the entire month of November, counting all the ones that occurred before we announce this giveaway 'cause I can go back and retroactively gather those orders are going to be entered in a chance to win this eight sleep system. So head on over to ketobrick.com, Snaggy some bricks at whatever flavors you want.
We got several flavors in stock right now and you will be automatically entered to win this giveaway. And best of luck to you all. I hope you win because I'm super excited about it. Hopefully y'all are super excited about it and we'll just keep rocking these giveaways. Y'all. So thank you all for tuning in. Appreciate all the love and support and we'll talk to you next time.