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Sleep is the fundamental layer of mental and physical health.
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If there s one thing that we should all be doing is working toward sleeping long enough and deeply enough.
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There are a number of risks to not getting enough sleep, but the primary one is a...
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It s going to be powerful, so let s go ahead and dive in.
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Until you are sleeping long enough and deeply enough,
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80% of the nights of your life, you are functioning suboptimally.
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And what s the biggest risk then if we re not getting enough sleep?
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Okay, so there are a number of risks to not getting enough sleep.
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Deficits in learning, deficits in the immune system, reduction in testosterone and estrogen in both men and women, so disruption of hormones, disruption of gut microbiome, increased cancer risk, there are a bunch of things.
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The severity of those things depends on a lot of other things, too.
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Prior health, other health conditions, context, age, occupation.
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If you re not getting enough sleep and you re a high-rise construction worker, it s different than if you re an office worker.
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We need to sleep enough.
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Now, what s enough sleep?
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This is an interesting question.
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Enough sleep has been argued.
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It s six hours.
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Other people, it s seven hours.
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Other people, it s eight hours.
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It s basically waking up without an alarm clock and feeling rested.
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Insomnia is actually a medical term.
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nowadays and insomnia is essentially diagnosed as falling asleep during the middle of the day due to lack of sleep at nighttime.
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But many people who are having trouble sleeping at night are not falling asleep during the middle of the day.
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They re dealing with grogginess or crankiness or other effects of having fragmented sleep.
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What are the main causes of not being able to fall asleep?
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Is it rumination?
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Is it traumas that you re holding on to?
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Is it arguments?
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Is it self-doubt or insecurities?
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Is it you nap too much?
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Is it the foods you ate too late?
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Like what would you say are the main causes?
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of not being able to fall asleep?
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All of the above.
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But the primary one is a failure to turn off your thoughts.
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And I think that might provide a good anchor point for us to talk about some protocols.
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Really a excellent night s sleep begins in the morning.
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I talked about this on the previous episode, so I won t go into detail, but everyone should get as much bright light in their eyes, ideally from sunlight, first thing in the morning, 10 to 30 minutes outside, depending on how bright it is.
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Eyeglasses or contact lenses are fine.
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Don t wear sunglasses if you can do it safely.
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If you wake up before the sun rises, turn on bright lights, then go outside once the sun rises.
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If you have no access to sunlight, use a daytime simulator or similar like a ring light and get that light in your eyes.
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So that s all of that in a compact form.
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Caffeine, you can inhibit falling asleep with caffeine.
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You have to figure out when your threshold is.
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For me, I can drink caffeine up until about three, even four o clock in the afternoon and sleep like a baby.
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And still sleep well.
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Yes, and Matt Walker, our good friend Matt Walker, would say that my sleep isn t as good as it would be had I cut caffeine out earlier.
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By like 11 or 12.
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Yeah, AM.
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Right, and I want to acknowledge, you know, Matt is the Michael Jordan of sleep science, and so I m not gonna- You re the LeBron James.
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Well, no, no, and in fact, thank you for the compliment, but no, I m not.
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I know a lot of the science and the protocols, but that s Matt s wheelhouse.
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And so if he says something, it s true.
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And if I say something and our opinions conflict, it s likely to be something that the data are still emerging or in that case, default to Matt being correct.
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Because I just out of due respect for his expertise.
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So caffeine, you know, for some people they can have a two o clock espresso, 2 p.m.
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espresso.
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Some people it s 4 p.m.
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Some people can drink caffeine at 8 p.m.
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and fall asleep.
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But there I would say it s problematic because you re disrupting the architecture of sleep and the brainwaves associated with sleep, the chemicals and so forth.
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So get that morning light.
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Cut your caffeine off at a time that allows you to fall asleep.
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That morning light also sets a timer on your melatonin rhythm, so you have this gland in your brain called the pineal gland.
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That pineal is the source of melatonin.
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Melatonin makes you sleepy, but it does not keep you asleep.
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Melatonin starts to rise in the late evening and continues into the night and then eventually tapers off.
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This is naturally occurring melatonin release, not supplemented melatonin release.
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The fastest way to slam melatonin to the pavement and eliminate it in your system is to look at bright light for, I hate to tell you this, even a few seconds.
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So, you mean at night?
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At night is typically when melatonin rises.
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It s when it s released in the bloodstream and when it has this effect of making us sleepy, it does a number of other things too.
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You want more melatonin at night, is that right?
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You do.
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And if you wake up in the middle of the night or it s 8 o clock and you decide you want to go to bed at 9 or it s 9 o clock, you want to go to bed at 10 and you go into the bathroom and you flip on the bright lights, your melatonin levels just got crushed.
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So having lights on is the worst thing you can do.
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Yes, and it doesn t matter if it s blue light, red light, purple light, green light, bright lights inhibit melatonin very acutely and therefore you want to avoid exposure to bright lights at night if your goal is to be asleep.
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So the simple rule that governs all this stuff is when you want to be alert, get bright light in your eyes, ideally from sunlight.
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So that s true in the morning and throughout the day.
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And when you want to be sleepy or asleep, avoid bright light in your eyes.
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Now, many home environments don t allow you to have zero lights.
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And that s not actually necessary.
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You can just dim the lights in the evening.
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Ideally, you also avoid overhead lights because the neurons in the eye that trigger this melatonin suppression and so forth, they reside in an area of the eye that views upper visual space.
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So you could have desk lamps and just dim those down.
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If you re gonna work on a screen, dim it way down.
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Will blue blockers help?
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Yes, but if the light is bright enough, you re still gonna inhibit melatonin, right?
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So how bad is watching TV at night?
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If the TV isn t too bright and it s farther away.
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Yeah, and maybe you wear blue blockers.
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I mean, some people take this to the extreme.
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They wear sunglasses.
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I think that s a little extreme.
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Now, candlelight and moonlight, surprisingly, doesn t seem to block melatonin.
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Now, maybe a really bright moonlit night, full moon, the lunacy associated with the full moon might actually be due to a suppression of melatonin and an increase in alertness.
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So those are the things as it relates to light.
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Then there s this issue of people who have trouble staying asleep.
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So they can fall asleep fine, but they wake up at two or three in the morning.
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I happen to do this.
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If I go to bed around 10.30, I tend to wake up around three and I use the restroom.
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Yeah, I tend to drink a lot of fluids and I have to use the restroom.
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This is true at every age.
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This is not just some aging related thing.
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That s fine.
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I just keep the lights dim and use the bathroom and then you go back to sleep.
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Very normal, very healthy.
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One of the best things I ever did for my sleep was to keep my phone out of the room so that when I wake up at three in the morning, I just didn t start scrolling the newspapers is typically what I would read online.
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And then you re just waking up your brain, not just by the light, but by the content.
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You re activating it again as opposed to going back to sleep.
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Exactly, and sometimes there s a comment and you re like, why is this?
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Your thinking is not very good in the middle of the night.
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The other thing is you wanna keep the room cool.
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So in order to fall asleep, your body has to undergo a drop in temperature of one to three degrees.
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There are a couple of ways to accomplish this.
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One is keeping the room cool.
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The other is to...
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And that s ideal actually, because you can put a hand or a foot out.
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We actually lose a lot of our heat through what s called our glabrous skin.
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So the palms of our hands, the bottoms of the feet.
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I always put my feet out of the sheets and just let them feel the cool air.
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That s right.
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And that s a great way to cool off your core body temperature.
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You re probably doing that unconsciously in your sleep as well.
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If the room were too warm, the only way for you to cool off would be for you to put your hand in a bucket of cold water and generally people don t have that accessible.
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And then you re gonna go pee if you re doing that too.
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Right, exactly.
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And then of course there are all these products nowadays of things that cover, that cool the bed.
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I m supposed to try one of these soon.
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I haven t tried one yet.
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I tend to just keep the room cool.
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What do you keep it at?
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I keep it around 67, 65.
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That s a little cooler than what I do.
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I put it at about 67, 68.
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But I tend to wake up hot in the middle of the night, like throw the comforter off, and go put some cold water on my face.
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So don t obsess over waking up too much.
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And if you do, try and stay away from screens.
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Or if, you know, some people will read a book, dim light again, and then falling back asleep.
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Some people are waking up at two or three because they are going to bed too late.
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Their melatonin has run out.
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So imagine that you re naturally somebody who should go to bed early, around nine, but we all have this ability to push.
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forward and stay awake if we have to.
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Much easier to stay awake than to force yourself to go to sleep.
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Very hard to force yourself to go to sleep.
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So let s say your system, you start releasing melatonin around 9 p.m., but you stay up until 11.
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Then you get into bed, you fall asleep around 11.30, and at three in the morning you suddenly wake up.
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Well, that s because your melatonin tapered off and there s a wakefulness that s occurring.
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And so,
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Ideally, you would start going to bed earlier.
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Now, there s a lot of discussion out there about so-called chronotypes, so night owls, morning people, people that follow a more typical schedule.
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Typical would be going to sleep somewhere between 10.30 and 11.30, waking up somewhere between 6.30 and 8.
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Then there are the people that like to go to bed at 2 a.m., sleep till 10, and then there are people that like to go to bed at eight and wake up at four.
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Huge variation out there.
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It tends to change across the lifetime.
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Yeah, you re a season of life for years.
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That s right, and adolescents and teenagers tend to stay up later and want to sleep in, and there s actually some evidence that they can learn better if they are allowed to use that schedule, but most schools won t adhere to that schedule.
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You gotta wake up at six and go to school at eight or whatever, yeah.
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Once you enter adult life, you re generally somebody who s
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gonna have to learn how to go to bed early and wake up early, or at least wake up early.
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Now, naps, you should feel comfortable, the data say, naps, you should feel comfortable napping for 90 minutes or less at any point throughout the day.
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as long as it doesn t interfere with your nighttime sleep.
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So some people like me, I love naps, but it doesn t interfere with my nighttime sleep.
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It doesn t?
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It does not.
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So you can take a 60 minute nap?
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Generally 20 to 45 minutes.
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And then you fully fall asleep or you re kind of like awake and just resting?
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I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime.
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In like a minute?
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I can fall asleep at a gun range, yeah.
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What?
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Can we sleep sitting up, too, like this?
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Oh, yeah.
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Plane, anywhere.
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That s a gift.
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It is, although it could reflect that I m pushing my system a little too hard.
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But it is useful at times.
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Incredible.
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So you can fall asleep right on a plane or... Anywhere.
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Leaning against a subway station and anywhere.
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If I need sleep, I m going down.
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That s incredible.
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Yeah.
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So the other thing is that during sleep, a number of things happen and we can talk about slow wave sleep and REM sleep, but one of the most important physiological functions of sleep is to clear out some of the cellular debris that accumulates throughout the day.
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The cellular debris,
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creates cognitive deficits.
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It actually may be related to the aggregation of proteins and things that relate to dementia and Alzheimer s.
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It s the so-called glymphatic system.
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The lymphatic system is a system of moving through immune cells and clearing out of debris from the body.
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The glymphatic system is a kind of a
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an equivalent system that exists in the brain that involves so-called glial cells, which are support cells, but also do many things actively.
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They re not just doing support.
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The glymphatic system is like a washout of the brain s debris.
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And that system seems to function best when feet are slightly elevated above the brain.
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There s some interesting data from University of South Carolina coming out now.
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that show that if you can get your ankles elevated a little bit higher than your chin, that s great.
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So.
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When you re sleeping?
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While you re sleeping.
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What s it do for you?
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It increases the glymphatic clearance.
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And there s some data that it can improve function of the brain.
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The studies that are happening now that I m aware of, I m in touch with that group, are mainly geared towards people that have had head injuries.
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So concussion and TBI.
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of various kinds, but they also are seeing interesting effects in typical folks that don t have any traumatic brain injury.
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So I put a pillow underneath my ankles when I fall asleep to get a little bit of that elevation.
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And then during the day, if ever you can t get a nap or you are going to get a nap,
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Put your ankles up on the couch and lie down on the floor.
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That itself can get some of the clearance of the glymphatic system.
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And that helps you sleep better?
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It helps you just clean out the system?
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It helps your brain function better when you wake up from sleep.
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Interesting.
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That s what the data are starting to show.
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That s cool.
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You know, some of the things I described, like the light viewing, is baked into the neuroscience literature, hundreds of papers, published papers.
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Some of the things like the glymphatic system, it s kind of cutting edge, it s on the way, but because the safety margins of raising your ankles are so large, I mean, there s nothing dangerous about that.
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How long do you need to do it for to get the benefits?
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Oh, I think these are immediate benefits.
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Two minutes or ten minutes?
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You re doing this the whole night that you re asleep, your ankles are elevated.
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If you wake up and you happen to kick the pillow out, it s not the end of the world.
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But the idea is that you don t want to be sleeping with your head above your ankles either.
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There is some evidence that when people travel on planes and they re sleeping in chairs, that that s not equivalent to the kind of sleep they d get when they re lying flat.
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independent of all the other things that are happening.
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And we know this because there are great sleep labs at Stanford School of Medicine, at UPenn, back east and elsewhere, where people actually go into a clinic and sleep either upright or at different angles.
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And they re looking at all this at the level of data.
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Okay, so here s one for you.
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What s the best...
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position to sleep on your back, on your side, on your stomach?
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Ah, great question.
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And it really truly depends.
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And it probably depends on how hot you run.
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So I tend to run really warm.
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A lot of the cooling of the body occurs from the palms and bottoms of the feet, but also from the upper back and scapulae, because we accumulate what s called brown fat there.
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It s not the blubbery fat that s under the skin.
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It s like a furnace.
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Actually, you can increase the density of brown fat by going into cold water repeatedly for one to three minutes several times each week.
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It means your furnace actually burns hotter.
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It allows you to be in cold temperatures more comfortably.
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Some really beautiful data just published on this.
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So I don t like to sleep on my back because I start heating up.
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That s right.
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So I tend to sleep on my side.
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I sleep in that, what is that?
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It s like soldier position.
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But then again, there s some people that have shoulder issues and then they can t do that.
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I m relatively flexible through my shoulders, not super flexible, so I can do that.
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It really depends.
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Now, of course, if you re sleeping on your stomach, how do you elevate your ankles?
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You know, it starts becoming a little bit, you know,
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We are not just science experiments.
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And so you have to, you have to assume that you re not going to get everything exactly right.
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But keeping the room cool, keeping the cool being under a warm enough blanket, but then extending a hand or an ankle out so that you could cool off during the middle of the night.
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That s going to be good.
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Keep the room dark, although complete pitch black doesn t seem to be as good as having a little bit of light somewhere in the room.
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But you don t want a bright blue light or red light anywhere in the room that s going to wake you up.
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Some people like me have very thin eyelids, exceedingly thin eyelids.
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Some people have very thick eyelids.
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So some people are more bothered by a light in the room than others.
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It really varies.
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So you have to just tune things to your particular environment.
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I m curious about the neuroscience before you go to sleep.
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How do we set our minds up to, you were saying before about a lot of people, it s hard for them to sleep because they can t shut their mind off.
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Is there something we should be thinking before we shut it off to set our sleep up?
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for success mentally, and then to really build into the next day, where we wake up feeling clear-minded and without this brain fog, where we have more motivation, where we have more energy and excitement towards the next day, and then doing that in a pattern every night.
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Is there any science around that?
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Is it like listening to a hypnosis?
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That could be very helpful.
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Which will help you clean out whatever s going on through the day and get clear and ready for the next day, but also fall asleep so you re not thinking about it.
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Is there anything that can help you have better dreams, so that you sleep better?
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What have you found there in the neuroscience?
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Yeah, so glad you asked this question.
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There s some really interesting data from a guy named Chuck Charles Zeisler, who is at Harvard Med.
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He s done beautiful studies on sleep in humans for many decades, and really fantastic studies.
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physician and researcher.
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They observed something interesting, which is that about 90 minutes or so before your natural bedtime, there s a spike in alertness, planning, and almost anxiety that all people undergo, and it s a normal, healthy pattern.
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The idea, and it s a just-so story because we don t really know, I nor Chuck Zeisler nor anyone else was consulted at the design phase as we say, but we assume this came about because prior to going to sleep we need to shore up everything for safety.
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lock things down, make sure everything s in its place because we are very vulnerable in sleep.
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Nowadays, this might manifest as you need to go to bed at 10.30 because you have to get up at six, et cetera, and then right around 8.30 or nine, you start finding yourself running around doing various things.
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Many people worry about that and they think, oh, I m really stressed because I actually need to go to sleep and here I am wide awake.
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It tends to subside very quickly.
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So just the knowledge that that s a normal, healthy spike in alertness and activity, I think can help a number of people.
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I m gonna make sure I mention that.
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The other thing is preparing the mind, as you said, turning thoughts off.
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Turning thoughts off is a skill.
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We ve talked before, gosh, almost a year or more now,
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ago about Yoganidra, which is, there are many, many Yoganidra scripts available on YouTube free of cost.
2
SPEAKER_00
The ones I particularly like are the ones by Kamini Desai, K-A-N-I-D-R-A.
2
SPEAKER_00
M-I-N-I-D-E-S-A-I, Kamini Desai.
2
SPEAKER_00
I just really like her voice.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know Kamini, never met her.
2
SPEAKER_00
These are free scripts.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re Yoga Nidra scripts that last about 20 minutes.
2
SPEAKER_00
They involve some breathing, some meditation type stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
But they teach you to turn your thoughts off, which is really wonderful.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because a lot of people, they just get stuck in this rumination.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, is there an ideal protocol prior to sleep?
2
SPEAKER_00
It depends because some people find they have their greatest clarity after the kids are asleep and they re sitting there.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I wouldn t say don t work or do work.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, you do wanna avoid strong stimuli before sleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
So do you really want to watch, you know, a politically charged or a violent movie right before sleep?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that depends on how triggered you tend to be by politics or violence.
2
SPEAKER_00
Some people aren t triggered, other people are.
2
SPEAKER_00
But,
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, that aside, you don t want to go to bed either too hungry or too full, because that can inhibit your sleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
So for most people, that s going to be finishing your last bite of food about two hours before bedtime.
2
SPEAKER_01
We used to think that aging was a one-way street.
2
SPEAKER_01
You couldn t do anything about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
We now know from studying twins that 80% of your health in old age is up to you, how you live your life.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right, your community, your positivity, your thinking, your food, the sleep you have, like all those things, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and the reason that they work, we discovered, is because they turn on the longevity genes.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the breakthrough.
2
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
So now we re artificially tweaking these longevity genes.
2
SPEAKER_01
genetically or with supplements or hopefully medicine soon.
2
SPEAKER_01
Gotcha.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you could do it in more natural organic ways is what I m hearing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, right now that s what we ve got.
2
SPEAKER_01
And even if you just do the five obvious things, things like skip meals and don t smoke and exercise, that ll get you an extra 14 years on average.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s that big.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s not even using high tech.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s just, there s no technology, just like living a good life.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right.
2
SPEAKER_02
So what are the main things to turning on the longevity that anyone can do without technology, without money, you know, science?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we, we ve, first of all, don t smoke.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
That ll damage your DNA.
2
SPEAKER_01
That ll accelerate the aging process.
2
SPEAKER_02
Does that include like e-cigarettes and all these other
2
SPEAKER_02
Vaping, does that also?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, I m a big advocate for putting nothing artificial in your body, including vaping.
2
SPEAKER_01
My mother died from lung cancer, so I m pretty militant about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t think vaping is as bad in terms of the number of chemicals getting into your body, but we ve seen recently it s probably not healthy anyway.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so no smoking.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s one.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s one.
2
SPEAKER_01
Next one is don t eat so much.
2
SPEAKER_01
Eat less often.
2
SPEAKER_01
So not malnutrition, of course.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to get too thin.
2
SPEAKER_01
But this three meals a day plus snacks is ridiculous.
2
SPEAKER_01
In the future.
2
SPEAKER_01
You look great.
2
SPEAKER_01
I need to get rid of that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, you re also working out.
2
SPEAKER_01
But someone like me who s not an athlete, the most exercise I do during the day typically is typing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Three meals a day is too much.
2
SPEAKER_01
Actually, one meal is enough for someone like me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m now 50.
2
SPEAKER_01
So my metabolism is way down.
2
SPEAKER_02
You look like you re 37.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thanks.
2
SPEAKER_02
You might need glasses.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re like 100 and you re looking 37.
2
SPEAKER_02
You probably reversed the aging.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, I m glad I don t look 80 because that would really be bad for my message.
2
SPEAKER_02
Okay, so we got no smoking, eating less.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Next one would be the obvious, high intensity interval training.
2
SPEAKER_02
Lose your breath once in a while.
2
SPEAKER_02
Lose your breath?
2
SPEAKER_02
What do you mean?
2
SPEAKER_02
Just by like working out like- Yeah, become hypoxic.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell your body that you re being chased by a saber-toothed tiger or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
The reason all of this stuff works in terms of the diet and exercise, it s not that your blood flows more or that being hungry is just healthy for the body.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s actually that your longevity genes get turned on by these things.
2
SPEAKER_01
And why does that happen?
2
SPEAKER_01
Why does it happen in humans, in mice, even in yeast cells for bread and beer?
2
SPEAKER_01
The reason is that the body senses adversity and says, crap, we got to fight back.
2
SPEAKER_01
We might die next week without food, and we re running away from tigers and lions.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s what this survival network, this longevity gene does.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it turns it on when it feels like it s in survival mode.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
2
SPEAKER_01
We want to be in survival mode, and we spend our whole lives
2
SPEAKER_01
trying to reduce our adversity.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Being comfortable.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Don t be hungry.
2
SPEAKER_01
Don t be puffed.
2
SPEAKER_01
Don t walk
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, valet your car, roll your suitcase, don t carry it, for goodness sakes.
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve done the worst.
2
SPEAKER_01
No wonder we re getting sicker and sicker.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re in a world of convenience.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s the worst thing we could do for our bodies in terms of longevity.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, those three things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
The other two, let s see, what else is there?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, the type of food you eat is important.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a big debate, of course.
2
SPEAKER_02
Let s say plant-based is going to extend the telomeres, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
If you re eating leafy greens, that s what I ve heard.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, among other things, it s also going to have a couple of really important types of molecules.
2
SPEAKER_01
One are the monounsaturated fats, fatty acids.
2
SPEAKER_01
You get that from olive oil and avocados.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those are great.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we ve just learned that that s a really important trigger for a certain longevity.
2
SPEAKER_01
Olive oil.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think when I had Gundry on, he was like, I drink a cup of olive oil a day or something like teaspoons of olive oil.
2
SPEAKER_02
He s just eating it.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s like I m trying to get as much in as I can, putting it on everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, let s get back to that because there s a new discovery as of a week ago that says we think we understand how that works.
2
SPEAKER_01
But in olive oil, there s also what are called the other important component of a plant-based diet are polyphenols, which are the molecules that plants make when they re under adversity, when they re stressed.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I believe that we ve evolved to sense when our food is running out.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we get that signal when our plants are stressed.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you don t want to eat plants that are like this white liquid lettuce you can buy, Californian lettuce.
2
SPEAKER_01
You want these colored vegetables that have been a little bit stressed, a little bit dried out.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wine is a perfect example.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s full of polyphenols, one called resveratrol that we ve worked on for 20 years.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it activates these longevity pathways really well.
2
SPEAKER_01
So stress your food.
2
SPEAKER_01
Organic.
2
SPEAKER_01
I am for a plant-based diet, but I do eat meat occasionally.
2
SPEAKER_01
It tastes pretty good.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s very clear.
2
SPEAKER_01
Dan Buettner is right.
2
SPEAKER_01
When you go to the longest-lived places in the world, Sardinia, the Okinawa Island in Japan,
2
SPEAKER_01
They re not eating all meat.
2
SPEAKER_01
And actually, we know that if you eat a lot of meat, you shut down some of these longevity pathways.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you actually, you might look good and grow muscle.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s great when you re young.
2
SPEAKER_01
You want to find a mate.
2
SPEAKER_01
You want to look good.
2
SPEAKER_01
You want to feel good.
2
SPEAKER_01
But in the long run, I don t think that s healthy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Really, so cutting down less and less meat, at least.
2
SPEAKER_02
Having more plants is the way to go.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s what I ve done.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was on an Okinawa diet in my 20s and 30s.
2
SPEAKER_01
Which is what?
2
SPEAKER_01
Just rice and leaves?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a bit of rice.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ve got to watch out for white rice because it ll spike your sugar.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a lot.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s a lot of tofu, miso soup, green leafy vegetables, dark greens for these phytochemicals.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then what else was it?
2
SPEAKER_01
There was a bit of fish.
2
SPEAKER_01
OK.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
But also what s important is not a lot of food.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, these days, I m stopping eating when I m about 60, 70% full.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m trying to skip breakfast and lunch.
2
SPEAKER_02
I just never feel full until I m like eating so much and then I m like, okay, I m full.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, you re a young, active, hungry man.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, here s one of the things.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think one, when you eat slower, you start to get fuller.
2
SPEAKER_02
You start to feel it.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I m the youngest of four.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so as a kid,
2
SPEAKER_02
We didn t have a lot of money growing up in a small town in Ohio and there wasn t that much food.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I learned to like grab and just shove it in my mouth.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that became a habit that I ve kind of stuck with.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I m not starving anymore.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like the food s available at any time.
2
SPEAKER_02
I can afford it and I have it all the time.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I think it s reconditioning my mind or a habit or routine of like, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
I m not scarfing my face down right now, but it s that mindset of...
3
SPEAKER_02
What if I m going to go hungry?
3
SPEAKER_02
For sure.
3
SPEAKER_02
We all suffer from that.
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, not all of us, but those of us who grew up in regular families, we were told to finish our meals.
3
SPEAKER_02
Right.
3
SPEAKER_02
Don t leave anything on the plate.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s hungry kids everywhere.
3
SPEAKER_02
My wife grew up in a very poor family.
3
SPEAKER_02
And even when she was a student, she could barely afford food.
3
SPEAKER_02
She would scrounge and buy potatoes.
3
SPEAKER_02
And at the dinner table, she ll kill me for this, but
3
SPEAKER_02
she will eat like it s going to all go away tomorrow.
3
SPEAKER_02
But I have to remind her and everybody, everyone should know this, there s always going to be another meal.
3
SPEAKER_02
There will be another meal, don t worry.
3
SPEAKER_02
But we re conditioned to eat food when it s in front of us.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a mental conditioning and it s also like you ve
3
SPEAKER_01
Either your body s tricking you or it s your brain or it s your gut or something is tricking you like, I m still hungry.
3
SPEAKER_01
Even though you ve had 2,000 calories in 10 minutes, you re still like, oh, there s food.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like turning something on where you re like, I want to eat that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know why that is.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s the reason that we re here.
3
SPEAKER_02
Our ancestors put on fat and they survived the famine.
3
SPEAKER_02
We don t have famines anymore.
3
SPEAKER_02
Thank goodness.
3
SPEAKER_02
But we ve descended from those people.
3
SPEAKER_02
So we ve got the genes in our brain that say, eat, eat, eat.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think it turns that gene off.
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, you can take certain types of food.
3
SPEAKER_02
I drink a lot of tea and coffee, hot water even, just to fill up my stomach.
3
SPEAKER_02
That works really well.
3
SPEAKER_01
OK.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hot water, not cold water.
3
SPEAKER_02
I just like the feeling of hot water.
3
SPEAKER_02
Cold water isn t as, I actually, it might be something about the heat.
3
SPEAKER_02
I ve never thought about it, but for me, that s what works.
3
SPEAKER_02
So when I get a little bit hungry at lunchtime, I ll just, I m basically drinking tea.
3
SPEAKER_01
Warm water, tea, yeah, you put it like some, interesting.
3
SPEAKER_02
But it s a fight all the time.
3
SPEAKER_02
You know, I fly a lot and people are bringing nuts.
3
SPEAKER_02
Nuts and cookies and ice cream.
3
SPEAKER_02
And you gotta fight it.
3
SPEAKER_02
And it s really hard to fight.
3
SPEAKER_02
How do you say no?
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, I do.
3
SPEAKER_02
But how do I do that?
3
SPEAKER_02
So, I ve trained myself to fight it and the best thing that I do besides saying can I have a cup of tea is what do I want to look like next week?
3
SPEAKER_02
What do I want to look like a year from now?
3
SPEAKER_01
What do I want to look like when I m 80?
3
SPEAKER_01
So, you tell yourself that, you ask yourself the question.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it s also how do you want to feel tonight, tomorrow, next week when you re 80?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like look like and feel combination is powerful.
3
SPEAKER_02
Because your mind is saying, now is important.
3
SPEAKER_02
And you ve got to train yourself to say, tomorrow and the next year is just as important.
3
SPEAKER_02
And that s more important.
3
SPEAKER_01
So is that the fourth thing or the fifth thing?
3
SPEAKER_02
The fifth thing I didn t mention.
3
SPEAKER_02
There are a couple of things.
3
SPEAKER_02
Let s divide it up.
3
SPEAKER_02
One is get good night s sleep.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sleep is everything.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then surround yourself by friends and people who will take care of you.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s like the blue zone way, too, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like be around a good community, get lots of rest and naps, move a little bit, eat healthy, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, these are things that most people should know, but they don t do.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you and I are here to motivate people to do that.
3
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_02
But the research that I discuss in the book is how to take that to a new level, how to optimize those things, and add some science in there.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sleep is probably the single most effective thing that you can do to reset both your brain, but also your body health, of course, as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t say that flippantly against the notions of diet and exercise.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, both of those are fundamentally critical.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if I were to take you, Lewis, and I were to deprive you of sleep for 24 hours, deprive you of food for 24 hours,
3
SPEAKER_00
or deprive you of even water or exercise for 24 hours, and then I were to map the brain and body impairment that you would suffer after each one of those four, hands down by a country mile, a lack of sleep will implode your brain and body far more significantly.
3
SPEAKER_00
The only one I would probably lose out on is oxygen.
3
SPEAKER_00
At that point, I ll give it up, you know, sleep will take the silver medal, oxygen definitely gets the gold, but thereafter, sleep seems to be paramount.
3
SPEAKER_01
Over sleep, of sleep, food and water, sleep is the most important thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would say, yeah, you know, I used to say that sleep was the third pillar of good health alongside diet and exercise, but I think the evidence has suggested that I was utterly wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
That sleep in fact is the foundation on which those two other things sit and you can do Wonderful things in those two mains don t domains, but if you re not getting sufficient sleep Those things tend to be far more futile as a consequence.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so what is sufficient sleep then?
3
SPEAKER_00
So right now we recommend somewhere between seven to nine hours for the average adult.
3
SPEAKER_00
Once we know that you go below seven hours of sleep, we can start to measure objective impairments in your brain and your body.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, the number of people who can survive on less than six hours of sleep without showing any impairment rounded to a whole number and expressed as a percent of the population is zero.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hmm, without any impairment, what does that mean?
3
SPEAKER_00
So if I can measure lots of different operations of your brain, let s say your cognition, your attention, your learning and memory, also your moods and your emotions and your anxiety or downstairs in the body, I can measure aspects of your cardiovascular system or your blood pressure, or I could measure your immune system or your metabolic system, how it s regulating your blood sugar and your glucose.
3
SPEAKER_00
Um,
3
SPEAKER_00
I can measure this sort of pinwheel, this kaleidoscope of health metrics on Lewis Howes, and then I can see when I keep dialing you back with less and less sleep, at what point do I see at least one of those things demonstrating a breaking point?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s very rare for us to be able to find any individual who can go below six hours of sleep and not show some kind of impairment.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a great, even frightening, demonstration of this is that he took a group of perfectly healthy individuals
3
SPEAKER_00
and they limited them to six hours of sleep a night for one week.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then they measured the change in their gene activity profile relative to when those same individuals were getting a full eight hour night of sleep.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what happened?
3
SPEAKER_00
And there were two critical findings.
3
SPEAKER_00
The first was that a sizable and significant 711 genes were distorted in their activity caused by that one week of short sleep.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s, you know, in some ways I think about this, Lewis, because it s,
3
SPEAKER_00
It s reality.
3
SPEAKER_00
We know that almost a third of the population is trying to survive on six hours of sleep or less.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s not just total sleep deprivation, which doesn t happen very frequently.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a common occurrence.
3
SPEAKER_00
What I found most interesting was that about half of those genes were actually increased in their activity.
3
SPEAKER_00
The other half were decreased.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, those genes that were suppressed were genes associated with your immune system.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you became immune compromised or immune deficient.
3
SPEAKER_00
Those genes that were increased in their activity, or what we call overexpressed, were genes associated with the promotion of tumors, genes that were associated with cardiovascular disease and stress, and genes that were associated with long-term chronic inflammation within the body.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I make that point just because, you know, many people, I think, have this concern about things such as genetically modified embryos or even genetically modified food.
3
SPEAKER_00
But when we don t get sufficient sleep, we are unwittingly performing a genetic manipulation on ourselves.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, if we don t let our kids get the sleep that they need, then we re inflicting a similar genetic engineering experiment on them as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is crazy.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what if you ve been sleeping less than six hours a night for years?
3
SPEAKER_01
What is that saying to your genes?
3
SPEAKER_01
And is there a way to recover the gene damage and reverse and go back to a healthy genes, healthy body, healthy life?
3
SPEAKER_00
So firstly, we know that short sleep duration, so using that sweet spot, and we can speak about oversleeping or excess sleep, because I think that s an interesting part that hasn t been spoken about too much, but using that recommended CDC amount of seven to nine hours of sleep, there is a simple fact, firstly, across the lifespan, which is the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.
3
SPEAKER_00
That short sleep predicts all-cause mortality.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then we can dig a little bit deeper and start to sort of ask, you know, exactly what is going on?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why is there such mortality risk caused by insufficient sleep?
3
SPEAKER_00
And what we know is that a lack of sleep and typically getting certainly less than six hours of sleep is associated with a high risk of cardiovascular disease, high risk of diabetes, high risk of stroke, high risk of dementia.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I would love to double click on that and go into the Alzheimer s disease risk, because that now evidence is very, very strong.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then downstairs in the body, we know that there is links between a lack of sleep and certain forms of cancer.
3
SPEAKER_00
After, if I were to take you and limit you to let s say four or five
4
SPEAKER_00
five hours of sleep for one week, your blood sugar levels would be so disrupted that your doctor would classify you as being pre-diabetic.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s not a lifetime, that s just one week.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s an even more interesting experiment that I think speaks to the subtlety of this.
4
SPEAKER_00
because there is the largest sleep study that s ever been conducted, and it happens actually to around 1.6 billion people across 70 countries twice a year, and it s called Daylight Savings Time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now in the spring, when we lose just one hour of sleep opportunity, firstly what we ve seen is that there seems to be a 24% increase in relative heart attack risk the next day, which
4
SPEAKER_00
Stuns me and what s fascinating in the fall in the autumn when we gain an hour of sleep.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a 21% reduction in heart attacks, so it s bi-directional and that s just one hour of sleep and you see
4
SPEAKER_00
There was some great recent data, you see a very similar profile regarding that daylight savings shift for road traffic accidents on our streets.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve heard about this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tragically, suicide rates as well.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then even more recently, what we discovered is that
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during that spring time shift when you lose an hour of sleep the sentencing of federal judges is significantly harsher because their mood and their emotion is that much worse because of that one hour of lost sleep that they dole out harsher sentences
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So, you know, we can walk, you know, you can ask the question, what about a lifetime?
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We don t even have to ask about a lifetime of short sleep.
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We can ask about these really, you know, one week of short sleep or even one night of one hour of lost sleep.
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And I think that s how fragile our brains and our bodies are to this thing called a lack of sleep.
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And you could then ask, well, you know, why are we so sensitive?
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Because I can go without food for 24 hours and I can go without water for 24 hours.
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You know, I m still not too bad.
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I m in fairly decent shape.
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Why is sleep the exception to that rule?
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And the answer seems to be this.
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human beings are the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent good reason.
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Why is that?
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And it s such a unique thing, and what that means is that Mother Nature, through the course of evolution, because no other species does this without real need for survival, and I can speak about some of the exceptions, but
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Human beings are strange like this.
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In other words, Mother Nature hasn t have to face the challenge of coming up with a solution called sleep deprivation, because she s never faced it in the course of evolution.
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And so there is no safety net in place here.
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And that s why we think human beings implode so quickly and thoroughly, mentally, cognitively, and physically, caused by insufficient sleep.
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And why do you think, why is the majority of people bad at getting good sleep?
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Is it we re distracted?
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Is it we think we need to be doing more?
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Is it we re stressed and worried about the past and the future?
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Is it, you know, what, we just want to work harder?
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What is the main cause of why we get poor sleep?
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That s such a fundamental question.
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And in some ways it s all of the above plus.
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So I think the first, and I ve thought about this a great deal, why are we suffering this global sleep loss epidemic that we re under right now?
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I think the first thing is that, unfortunately, sleep has an image problem.
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That, you know, the PR agent for sleep should be fired because we associate sufficient sleep with this concept of being lazy, of being slothful.
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And that s a terrible disservice to this thing called sleep.
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And it is very different to things like diet and exercise.
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You know, I think a lot of people like to virtue signal with, you know, what they eat.
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And they certainly are very proud to tell you, you know, I work out five times a week.
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I m in the gym at this time of morning.
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And, you know, all of which I think are great and to be applauded and supported.
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But we have the very opposite.
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We have this almost, you know, well, we, we don t.
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Some niches of society have this sleep machismo attitude.
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You know, this kind of, you can sleep when you re dead mentality, which by the way, based on the evidence is mortally unwise.
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Yeah, it will lead to both a shorter life and a life that is significantly less healthy.
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So I think the first thing is we need to change our cultural appreciation of sleep from something that is a waste of time to something that in fact is an incredible investment.
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It is probably the very best and the most freely available democratic and painless health insurance policy that I could ever imagine.
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I think the next thing is the way that we work in society.
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We are working for longer hours, and before the pandemic people were commuting increasingly longer amounts of time.
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What that meant was that people were leaving the house earlier, they were arriving home later, and no one wants to shortchange time with family or Netflix or whatever is your poison.
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And so the one thing that has become squeezed like vice grips in the middle of the night is this thing called a sufficient bout of slumber.
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But then there are plenty of people who give themselves the opportunity to get enough sleep, but they can t obtain it.
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And that is where things such as insomnia or sleep disorders, things like snoring come into play.
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And you touch up, and I know that you ve spoken, and I m so grateful for what you ve done regarding discussions of mental health.
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We know that one of the principal roadblocks to getting this thing called a good night of sleep is anxiety.
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Stress, worry, anxiety, regret, all those things.
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Resentment, holding on to all that stuff.
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It is, that is toxic to sleep.
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You re absolutely right.
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And in fact, anxiety and physiological stress is our principal model for the explanation of insomnia right now.
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It s not the only cause, but it seems to be one of the principal causes.
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And in modern society, it s become so easy, and I m not finger wagging, I m just as guilty.
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We are constantly on reception, but rarely do we do reflection.
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And unfortunately, the time when most of us do reflection is when we turn off the light and our head hits the pillow.
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And that s the last time.
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I don t know about you, Lewis, but at night in the dark, thoughts are not the same thing.
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Concerns become twice as big or 10x the size of concerns.
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I start to worry, I ruminate, I catastrophize.
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Yet in the light of day, those things seem very different.
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And so we can speak about sleep tips perhaps later on, but certainly getting right with your emotions and your anxiety is key to good sleep.
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And that s one of the things that prevents sleep.
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I also think that there is a, an issue at the public health level.
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You know, we ve had in many first world nations, wonderful government mandates regarding health, regarding drink driving, regarding
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you know, safe sex regarding drugs and alcohol and even food and even inactivity and sitting.
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When was the last time you heard of a first world nation provide a public health message and memorandum regarding sleep?
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Never.
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And I don t remember one either.
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So from every level at, you know, at a public health, global, you know, government level down to a workplace level, you know, we lured the airport warrior who s flown through four different time zones in the past three days.
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They were on email at two and then they re back in the office at six, you know, we, so we need to.
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We celebrated those people.
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We did, you know.
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And the funny thing, by the way, is that after about 20 hours of being awake straight, you are as cognitively impaired as you would be if you were legally drunk.
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Now, I would never, you know, as a CEO say, I have got this fantastic team of people, they re drunk all of the time.
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But we do say, I ve got this fantastic group of people.
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They just are at it all hours.
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They are dedicated.
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They re always working.
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They spend minimal time sleeping.
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They re just all out.
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They love this project.
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But we ve got this strange mentality.
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And then I think it comes down to, even within schools, we ve got this incessant model of early school start times.
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Super early, isn t it?
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It s incredible.
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We ve got to be there, what, 6.30 or 7.00 or something?
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6.30, 7.00, 7.30.
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And that data is actually very powerful.
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What we found is that when we delay school start times, first academic grades increase, truancy rates decrease, psychological and psychiatric issues decrease.
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But then what we also discovered is that the life expectancy of students increased.
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And you may be thinking, well, hang on a sec, you know, how do you measure that?
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And the leading cause of death in teenagers 16 to 18 is actually not suicide, that s second.
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It s road traffic accidents.
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And here sleep matters enormously.
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And I ll give you one example.
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It was in Teton County in Wyoming.
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They delayed their school start times from 7.30 in the morning to 8.55.
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By the way, what are we doing trying to educate our children at 7.30 in the morning?
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No, I can t think.
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Yeah, I mean, I remember being in school and being every day was hard for me.
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Every day I was tired, every day I was hard to focus or I d be irritable or wanted to like, you know, jittery or something, but it was like so hard to focus.
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And then you re at lunchtime.
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and then I eat and I m tired again afterwards and you want me to focus and pay attention at a desk.
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It s like, that doesn t work like that for me.
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Especially when I don t sleep or very little.
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Well, for any sort of developing brain, it doesn t work like that.
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And for some people, to make a 7.30 a.m.
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start time, school buses will begin leaving at six o clock or 5.30 in the morning.
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That means that some kids are having to wake up at five, 5.15.
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This is lunacy.
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And what we ve understood from the academic grades, and I ll come back to the car accidents in a second, when sleep is abundant, minds flourish.
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And when it s not, they don t.
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And what we ve discovered with the road traffic accidents in Teton County, when they made that shift,
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The only thing more remarkable than the extra one hour of sleep that those kids reported getting was the reduction in car crashes.
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The following year, there was a 70% drop in vehicle accidents.
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And to put that in context, you know, the advent of ABS technology, anti-lock brake systems, that dropped accident rates by 20 to 25% and it was deemed a revolution.
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Here is the simple fact of getting enough sleep that will drop accident rates by 70 percent.
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So, you know, I need to get off my soapbox, but what I would say is this.
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I think if our goal as educators is to educate and not risk lives in the process, then we are failing our children in the most spectacular manner with this incessant model of early school start times.
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Is anyone listening to this that you ve been speaking about this too, and they re actually adopting this new model, whether it be work time or school time or just, you know, integrating this, do you know systems that are integrating this?
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There have been some, and I think I ve tried to do this in the education domain, I ve tried to do this within medicine, because the way that we train residents is almost inhumane.
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Actually, it s not almost, it absolutely is inhumane, and the statistics there are stunning as well.
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And then I ve tried to do it in the workplace too, because I do a lot of speaking events at Fortune 500 companies.
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And at first, I think I took the wrong approach where I was really speaking a little bit more about sort of the compassionate approach, you know, why it s good and kind for people to gift them more sleep.
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Because I see sleep as a biological necessity.
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And if it s a biological necessity, then I think it s a civil necessity.
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And if it s a civil necessity, sleep is a civil right.
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But what I would say is that that wasn t particularly well-received.
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You know, I d go into business companies and say, your employees, you know, they re desperate for more sleep.
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They will be happier and healthier.
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Or I would speak about medicine and I would speak about, you know, what it was doing to the patients and the harm, and it would fall on deaf ears.
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What I then realized is that if you re going to change large organizations, you have to speak in their currency, which is money.
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Yeah, you need to and then I would describe the medical malpractice lawsuits that would come and the cost savings within medicine firstly and Then administration started to change the tune because before that, you know There was almost this old boys network in medicine where we went through residency and it s almost a hazing
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And despite armed with incredible data to the contrary I think the mentality ten years ago when I started trying to do that was My mind s made up.
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Don t confuse me with the evidence It s because they went through that themselves and so they want to pay it back or something I think so.
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I think there s some of that I went through hell.
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So everyone else has to go through hell.
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Yeah
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Right, it s a rite of passage, you know, if you are tough enough, you ll make it through.
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It s kind of like boot camp, which I don t think we need to do anymore.
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And then within business, you could describe, you know, the Rand Corporation did an independent survey a couple of years ago, and what they found was that insufficient sleep will cost most nations about 2% of their GDP of their gross domestic product.
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So here in the U.S., that number was $411 billion of lost productivity due to insufficient sleep.
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In Japan, it was $130 billion.
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My home country, the U.K., it was over $50 billion.
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So if I could solve the sleep loss crisis within the workplace, I could almost double the budget for education in the U.S., or I could halve the health care deficit.
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So when you speak about money, then people start to listen.
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So that s how I ve tried to communicate.
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But, um, and I don t think I m a, I don t think I m a particularly good communicator and I ve been sometimes bull in a China shop as I probably have been for the first, uh, however long we ve been, uh, talking, but it s just because I m so, you know, I m just desperately passionate about this thing called sleep.
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And some years ago before I started trying to, I wrote a book and then I ve been doing podcasts.
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Sleep was the neglected stepsister in the health conversation of today.
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It was a second citizen.
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And I was so sad to see the disease, the sickness, the harm, the lack of productivity, the impact on education that a lack of sleep was having.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.