Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: In this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, the Best of Sleep. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond. Hey, welcome to the Best of Sleep episode. Hopefully this is not one that puts you to sleep, but maybe helps you sleep later on. I do know some people who lull themselves to sleep with a podcast. Hopefully there's enough interesting information in here to where that doesn't happen for you.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:42]: I occasionally do lull myself to sleep listening to the Daily Audio Bible. That guy's voice kind of knocks me out. But hopefully I have enough very interesting content for you on this show to where you don't have to go to sleep while you're listening in. So I have some of the most compelling content I've ever recorded on sleep that I'm about to unleash in one giant episode. So if you're ready, we're going to jump in and we are going to start with Andrew Bustamante, former covert CIA officer, the so called Everyday Spy. I interviewed him on his secrets to sleep recovery, fitness, nutrition, relationships. You're going to learn about his pre sleep routine, why he avoids new information 90 minutes before sleep, why THC and diazepam are not recommended sleep aids and a whole lot more. Here we go.

Andrew Bustamante [00:01:32]: My body never responded to meditation, increasing sleep performance at night, acupuncture, acupressure, reflexology, those things never really resonated with my body. So those were all practices I kind of let go to the wayside where like self massage or trigger point massage all have resonated very well. Like those are things that my body does respond to.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:52]: So what would an ideal pre sleep or pre rest routine look like for you?

Andrew Bustamante [00:01:57]: Now, one of the things that I do on a regular basis before I try to lay down, I make sure I'm not looking at screens. And I don't look at screens for two reasons. One, I do believe there's something to the whole blue light effect on stimulating the brain. But more importantly, I don't want to get my brain into a position where it is starting to absorb new information in the last 90 minutes of the day. Because the brain, the brain only has two switches, right? It's either learning something new or it's indexing something that it's already learned. Well, the whole idea behind sleep is to let sleep be a period where you're indexing. So the last thing I want to do is supercharge my brain with things that it's learned new right before bed. So I don't want to read the news, I don't want to scroll through social media, I don't want to be, you know, I don't even read a book before bed because I don't want to instigate any new creative thoughts in those last 90 minutes.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:52]: That's interesting. That's interesting. And by the way, I have a different approach. Even though I like you avoid blue light due to the suppression of melatonin and sleep drive, I will often study either a problem that I want to solve such as re reviewing an email about some problem during the day I haven't yet solved or read a book that isn't super stimulating but typically involves something like self improvement. Sometimes a book that's got new and interesting information in it that I then want to consolidate during sleep. Relying on the old adage to sleep on something that allow your brain to kind of tick into problem solving mode while you're asleep. So although I'm very careful with stimulation social media checking for new emails like letting the world push new information to me versus information I've self selected that I want presentation when I'm going to sleep, I still am okay with presenting myself with information prior to sleep that I actually want my brain to subconsciously work on during sleep.

Andrew Bustamante [00:03:58]: So I don't think we're that different actually then because where you're self selecting your self selecting business and personal growth concepts that you're going to take with you into that indexing phase. Because your indexing phase is also the phase where new neural links are created and disparate ideas are also subconsciously connected all through sleep. That makes total sense for me because I have two young children. I think what I've come into the habit of is those last 90 minutes of the day are really spent with them. So then I get the neural connections, I get the memory boost, I get the connection satisfaction of basically taking my wife and my children as the final things with me to bed. So I get to retain those memories, I get to retain those moments. Plus I get to build that relationship with my family in a closer way right before bedtime which is doing the same thing for all of them.

Andrew Bustamante [00:04:58]: Right?

Andrew Bustamante [00:04:58]: It's permanizing or cementing memories with dad for my 7 year old daughter and memories with dad for my 11 year old son and memories with children and bedtime routines with my wife. So we're having similar benefits but using it in a different way, not new information, but information that I am prioritizing as something I want to retain.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:20]: And a lot of that happens. That memory, that learning consolidation, that emotional processing during REM sleep. You know what's interesting, Andrew, is you know that the two things that a lot of people. I'll give you a more precise clue, supplement with or take prior to sleep. That absolutely crushes your REM sleep cycles, thus crushing your ability to do learning process, emotional processing, memory consolidation, et cetera. You know what the two things are?

Andrew Bustamante [00:05:48]: I'm on the edge of my seat.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:50]: Okay, number one, THC. A lot of people use these edibles now prior to sleep.

Andrew Bustamante [00:05:54]: Really?

Ben Greenfield [00:05:55]: They decrease your sleep latency, they cause you to fall asleep very quickly. But your sleep architecture, if you do use a wearable or something like that to track sleep, REM sleep drops by like 10 to 15%. And this is why people who use THC rich cannabis prior to sleep report less dreaming because they actually are dreaming less. The other one is Diazepam, like anything like Valium, unfortunately also very commonly prescribed for sleep. But both of those give you sleep, but it's not the type of sleep that you need if you want to be a complete human, especially in the emotional, memory and learning departments.

Andrew Bustamante [00:06:32]: How interesting, man. Yeah, actually it's interesting to me that people would ever seek out to reduce REM sleep because REM sleep is the sleep that most people are pursuing.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:45]: Yeah, yeah. I think the reason is that when it comes to sleep latency and the fact that Valium and THC can increase or I'm sorry, decrease sleep latency, the amount of time that it takes you to fall asleep. Many people like that sledgehammer like effect of not having to sit with their thoughts right prior to sleep. The anxious racing thoughts that keep them up. Obviously there are alternatives. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Short inhales, long exhales or some form of breathwork. Some people, meditation, some acupressure.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:17]: Both of which obviously didn't work for you but worked for some people. It's just easier for a lot of people to chew on a gummy or pop a pill. But unfortunately you get decreased latency. But non REM versus with practice and kind of using other tactics, you can have decreased latency and still have your REM sleep.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:38]: Hopefully you enjoyed that interview with Andrew. All the show notes as well as full episodes with each of the guests you hear you can [email protected]/Best of Sleep BenGreenfieldLife.com/BestofSleep. Next up is Dr. Daniel Gartenberg. This one was called the best sleep podcast ever. We went into sleeping better hacking sleep sleep cycles, insomnia, sleep apnea. You're going to learn what to do if you wake up in the middle of the night. Why people have insomnia. And one of the top research proven benefits for helping with that.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:12]: And a bit more. Here we go.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:14]: A lot of guys, especially increasingly as they age, do wake up in the wee hours, literally and figuratively, I suppose in this case. Two, pee and then get back into bed and sometimes struggle to go back to sleep. Now, I've installed red light bulbs in my bedroom, so if I do have to flip the lights on to go find the bathroom, it's not disrupting melatonin too much. And I'll often take some kind of inhibitory neurotransmitter. I don't know if you know, I own a supplements company called Kion and we have something called Kion Sleep. So I'll take a dose of that or sometimes a little Inositol or Ashwagandha or something. And I find that to be helpful in getting back to sleep. But for midnight or wakings in the early mornings, do you have any tips for people who want to get back to sleep after that's occurred?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:08:58]: Yeah. So, I mean, I think one thing is also not to freak out just because you woke up in the middle of the night to pee. It's sort of normal to wake up periodically throughout the night. We only think of it as problematic if it's like really a lot of times, like more than twice. And also if you're up for more than like five minutes. And this is something where sometimes when you think about it too much like, oh, this is so horrible, it actually makes it worse because sleep is all about like, letting go and not dwelling on what's currently going on. So also, I guess just. Is it really that big of a problem? First and foremost now, if you are up for, you know, more than 30 minutes, say, that could be problematic.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:09:43]: And there's a couple things that you can do. You know, you want to stay hydrated, definitely to get more deep sleep, but you could try to push the drinking a little bit earlier in the day. That's one of the main recommendations for this problem. If you want to also try to consolidate your sleep more because you're waking up a lot in the middle of the night. What's often recommended is counterintuitively to push your bed bedtime a little later, which will basically build up your homeostatic sleep drive, which is one of the main processes of sleep, which is related to the buildup of adenosine, which is all based on coffee, suppresses that. So you're basically making yourself more tired so you're less likely to wake up in the middle of the night.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:35]: Interesting. So that's kind of back to the same kind of theory as sleep deprivation therapy for insomnia.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:10:40]: Yeah. And I just want to be clear that sometimes sleep deprivation therapy gets a bad rep because sometimes. And there's no medical advice, this is not medical advice or anything. I just want to stipulate that. But there's also. There's sleep deprivation therapy, but there's a less draconian version, which is sleep restriction therapy, where you're not being like so severe with it. Basically they usually do that for older populations. And I just always have in the back of my mind that this is tool where if I'm having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep to make sure I go to bed tired and to possibly push back the bedtime a little bit if I'm ever teetering on issues, falling asleep, staying asleep.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:28]: Yeah, it actually is a good point. If I'm hunting or I've got a very busy day and I have one of those nights where I fall asleep and it's like my head hits the pillow and my sleep latency is like one to two minutes, it's actually pretty seldom that I wake up to pee. So that's actually a good point. Just making sure you're not over napping, over resting, or possibly even oversleeping and instead going to sleep when your body actually needs to go to sleep. That kind of makes intuitive sense related to insomnia. In addition to sleep restriction therapy, are there any research proven methods for that that you really like?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:12:01]: The reason why I've been studying it is again because of this deep sleep thing and the glymphatic drainage that's going on and its relation to Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. Because people with insomnia are more likely to get less deep sleep, so they're more likely to get Alzheimer's disease. And that's how I got these grants with the National Institute of Aging. The main theory for why people have insomnia is something called the 3Pmodel. This is a good framework for thinking about it. And so the P's are basically Predisposing, Precipitating and Perpetuating factors that make you have insomnia.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:48]: Say that one more time.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:12:49]: Predisposing, Predisposing, Precipitating and Perpetuating so the predisposing factors are sometimes you just sort of have a biology that's more likely to be hyper aroused. I think my wife might be one of these people.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:05]: Yeah, I'll raise my hand.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:13:09]: Sometimes you're born with just sort of like a worrisome thinking style, or it's in your DNA somehow. So there's a little bit trait, like to have like maybe a more negative thinking style or maybe, you know, you can't afford to not live by the trains, train tracks, and the train is waking you up every night. That would be another example of a predisposing factor, sort of like things you can't really control, whether it's your biology or just the circumstances of your life. So that pushes you into more likelihood of having insomnia. Say it kind of builds up on each other. And then you have a precipitating factor which almost everyone can relate to. And it's like your dog dies, you're dealing with a death in the family, you have some work stress, and that night you have a particularly hard time falling asleep, which is pretty common. Almost all Americans have periodic insomnia.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:14:04]: And so that would be a precipitating factor. And that can push you over the edge to having a night of insomnia, for example. And then what happens is you start building behaviors around that instance of insomnia. And these are the perpetuating factors. An example of that might be spending too much time in bed because you think, oh my God, in order for me to get the recommended sleep of 7 to 9 hours a night, I need to spend 10 hours a night in bed because I'm up so much of that time.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:35]: Right. Or take some kind of a mega nap in the afternoon.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:14:38]: Exactly. That would be another example of that. So you're not able to sleep and then you're making it worse by taking a nap. And that's why if you. I love naps. I'm with you on like for the optimizer biohacker as a, as a lever. But if you have insomnia, for example, that's why they say you should never, never nap. Now, to address this, the recommended treatment isn't a drug.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:15:02]: And the drug companies would. There's a place for the drugs in certain situations. And again, this is not medical advice. But I've never seen a study where a drug company will compare their drug to cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And the reason for that, I'm pretty sure that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, based on the literature, would Blow it out of the water, essentially, because with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, which is the recommended treatment, you're really addressing the issue at its core with thoughts, behaviors and feelings around your sleep. And we actually have a cognitive behavioral therapy or we have a module based on these premises within our software.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:46]: Yeah, I saw that. I didn't check it out yet. But in brief, how does CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy actually work?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:15:53]: So it's usually four modules. One is the sleep compression thing that we've been talking about. Another one is stimulus control, which is doing things to associate your bed with sleeping. The main thing that you've probably heard, save your bed for sleep and sex only comes from stimulus control. I'm trying to do super stimulus control using sounds to make that relationship even stronger. And that's part of what we're validating in our studies. And then the other one is your standard sleep hygiene, which is sort of like we actually use that as a placebo in our study. Then cognitive training.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:16:30]: So address active thoughts that form around sleep. Like the fact that I just can't sleep, there's nothing I can do. I have a brain chemical imbalance addressing a thought like that with like a therapist. And then the final thing, there's actually five, I guess, is training relaxation. So it's ridiculous. Like that we. Not every human being in school is trained how to reduce their heart rate. So we'll actually do Yoga.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:17:00]: Nidra progressive muscle relaxation body scans.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:04]: Long exhales would be another that comes to mind for me. Like a 4, 8 or a 4, 7, 8 type of breathwork pattern.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:17:10]: Yeah, we did a 4, 4, 4, the box breathing. We added that based on reading your book. But I. I'll try to add the 4, 8, 4.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:20]: I think it's more effective, honestly. And, you know, being a, being a Christian, I actually like to pray when I do it. So I'll do breathless prayer sessions where, for example, four count in, you know, O Lord Jesus Christ, son of God. Eight count out, have mercy on me, a sinner, or something like that. Or breathe in. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, breathe out, I will not fear. So I'll just pull different Bible verses, which for me also tends to help with ruminating thoughts, because rather than your thought patterns going towards what neurotransmitter deficit or imbalance you might have, that's keeping you awake at night while you're doing your breath work, instead your thoughts are focused on almost like a mantra. And I know some Yoga Nidra sessions will use mantras as well, but the mantra kind of keeps your mind from focusing on other ruminating thoughts, if that makes sense.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:18:06]: Totally. And yeah, we recommend praying in the app as well as one of the things that you can do. And my wife does something similar with a more Jewish faith. But yeah, that's definitely a good practice.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:20]: A couple of other things I just wanted to briefly address in the time that we have left this question. I didn't want to talk about too much in the earlier parts of my podcast because so many people simply rely upon popping a pill or worse yet, sledgehammering themselves to sleep with some kind of diazepam type of approach. When it comes to pharmacological or supplemental remedies or interventions for sleep, are there any that you think have particularly good research behind them or that you would recommend or use yourself?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:18:52]: Yeah, so I'm with you where, you know, I'm trying to basically not use the trazodones and there's always a time and place for that. You know, talk to your doctor and even like the idea of having that option. There is sometimes helpful for people that when they have like a really serious problem, for example. But I'm always trying to be all natural or to if I'm going to use something, cycle it out and in so I don't become dependent on it. And then there's also things that just aren't going to have any negative impact, such as Magnesium or GABA, which I think can be beneficial to some degree. I think there's some evidence that there's some weak effects for those things, and so it could be a reasonable supplement. Also, even things like for some people, and I used to do this more with marijuana, for example, CBD and CBN in particular is something that I might recommend to somebody that's particularly wound up and anxious just because they don't have the psychoactive component as like a THC, for example, so it's not going to negatively impact rem. So that's the main thing with the THC aspect is there's a pretty strong evidence that you're going to hinder your REM sleep with THC.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:20:14]: But since cbn, CBD are not psychoactive, popping like a pretty large dosage of that, like a 25 milligram or whatever, will bring in your relaxation without the negative effects.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:29]: Yeah, I've found similar THC. Not only do you get horrific deep sleep cycles, but you get zero dreams whatsoever, which makes me think that there's probably very little either emotional resilience or learning and memory consolidation taking place. So I'm not a big fan of that. Especially, as you've noted, Dan, the alternatives for the endocannabinoid system, CBD and CBN, I think, are safer. They're better for sleep. And in fact, you know, I do use supplemental interventions for sleep. I take magnesium, like you mentioned, and then I take CBD and that kion sleep that I mentioned, which is just a few inhibitory neurotransmitters and L theanine. And if I am traveling, I'll include melatonin.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:10]: If I've traveled across multiple time zones or come back across multiple time zones, that. That stack works well for me. But I mean, you know, there's. Oh, gosh, you know, Dr. Andrew Huberman, he has a stack that he recommends. And you'll have other people who will utilize more like a, you know, natural herbal approach, like, you know, St. John's Wort or Ashwagandha or Reishi or some type of adaptogenic approach. I think it does come down a little bit to what works well for you.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:35]: But I think we could establish, at least, I would say, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, that many of these sledgehammers, like the pharmaceutical interventions or marijuana and alcohol, despite fooling you into thinking that you might be getting a night of rest, are really not doing you many favors in the sleep department.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:21:53]: Yeah, exactly. So you might be. They induce a hypnotic state that you're not consciously aware, so you perceive that you're sleeping, but your brain, the quality of your sleep, your brain is more awake.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:06]: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I wanted to give you a chance to share any final little known tips or hacks or tactics you personally would recommend or found helpful for enhancing sleep? The inception idea was fascinating. Are there any others that would kind of fall into that category, whether it's some sort of dream therapy or consciousness manipulation or anything like that that you've messed around with?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:22:32]: Yeah. So I'll bring in my mad scientist toolbox right here. So the other thing we test in our lab is deep sleep stimulation. And this is where I actually got my start doing transcranial direct current stimulation when I was working for the Naval Research Labs and Air Force Research Labs. So this work started where you could basically zap the brain with electricity in order to induce different brain states. And later it became known that you can play sounds that entrain this delta brainwave. It's basically like a whooshing sound at 1.2 Hz. 1.2 Hz is the oscillation of your slow wave brain waves.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:23:13]: We showed in a lab and in a peer reviewed paper that when we play these tones at just the right time and intensity during sleep, we could increase the delta wave sleep, the slow wave sleep.

Scott Sherr [00:23:26]: Oh, wow.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:23:27]: Then we instantiated it in the Sleep Space app. I haven't validated it in sleep space yet. That's what I'm trying to do now.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:34]: Can you do it in Sleep Space?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:23:36]: We do it in Sleep Space, but it hasn't been validated.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:39]: How do you do it?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:23:40]: So if you're wearing an apple watch, we'll estimate your sleep stage and then play the delta frequency when you're more likely to be in a deep sleep. And then we'll also estimate it with if you place your phone on your bed or use the smart bed mechanism.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:54]: Oh, so if I'm using the smart bed, I can do that. And do I need to press any specific setting on the SleepSpace app?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:24:01]: You just have to turn on the deep sleep stimulation in the settings.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:05]: Oh, easy. Okay, I'm writing that down right now. I'll mess around with that. Okay, so that's cool. Anything else?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:24:09]: Yeah. And so, you know, playing sounds like very precisely on your side of the bed, I think is an important thing. And associating those sounds with sleeping. Because if you do have a sleep partner like my wife, I think she has more sensitive earth hearing. You know, she likes to sound a little lower than I do, for example. So like having sounds to associate with sleeping is something that I'm a firm believer in. And I think you're privy to this. We have our, this whole ritual with our lights turning red in the wind down.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:24:44]: I know you do it when you wake up, but we actually have our whole light environment turn red during that wind down period. And honestly a big thing is like knowing where you are in your circadian rhythm and having that metacognition of like, okay, you know, if I'm in like a grant writing deadline or something, I'll actually push like a third wind as like a night owl and know that I need to be like that for like a week. Because sometimes we just have like work habits and things that we have to get done. But having the metacognition of like, oh, I'm going to do this for a little while and then I'm going to get my sleep back and get into a more relaxed state of consciousness is really important. And knowing when you're like having struggles with falling asleep and staying asleep and doing that protocol when you're having those issues and you know, it's sort of like I imagine like a ladder, where first you're trying to make sure you can fall asleep and stay asleep. Actually, before that you're trying to rule out any underlying sleep issues, like restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea. Then you're trying to improve your sleep efficiency. And then after all of those things are completed, at the top of the ladder is making your sleep quality as good as it could be and optimizing your consciousness.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:09]: When you say optimizing your consciousness, what do you mean?

Daniel Gartenberg [00:26:11]: Basically trying to incept yourself.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:13]: Okay, okay. Like what we discussed. That would be an example of optimizing consciousness.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:26:18]: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:18]: Okay. Okay, got it. By the way, I should throw in there. I thought of it when you were talking about the red light manipulation. There is a website I recently found a couple of weeks ago, bluelightdiet.com and they have a blog post there called the Circadian Control Panel that walks you step by step for your iPhone on how to put a quick shortcut button. And so I've got four shortcuts on my phone now on the home screen. One is wake, one is red, one is blue for super alertness, and then one is sleep that automatically just turns off wifi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, shifts it to red. It's super convenient and it's just a simple shortcut.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:55]: So I'll link to that in the show notes if people want to do that to their phones, because I found it to be just super convenient. One button. When I'm ready to go to bed, I push the sleep button and boom, everything's out. But then I can push the red button if it's like 7pm And I'm still tooling around on my phone and doing things. So that doesn't disable any of the. Any of the network. All it does is turn the screen red. Then later on I can press the sleep button and that goes screen even more red and dim.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:19]: And then turns all the networking capabilities off.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:27:22]: I love that. And I mean, what happens to. I think a lot of people is they go to use their phone and then they end up looking at Instagram, for example. So to have that one button and I have it. I have a similar. Not. I want to check out what you just mentioned, but having a shortcut where you just do one button into like the sleep thing makes it so you're not. I'm eventually going to make it so with an NFC tag, you can activate it without even opening your phone.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:27:50]: I think that'll be like the next level of some of the sleep stuff.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:53]: Yeah, that would be super cool. All right, Very last thing, because I told my kids I'd ask you, both of them sleep with their dogs. Any comments on pet sleeping or whether that totally throws the sleep wearable recognition fully out of whack? I imagine it does, but. You okay with pet sleeping or not? I told them I was interviewing you. They said to ask.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:28:09]: So generally most doctors would say no pet sleeping and try to find a way to get the pet to sleep sort of by you and not in your bed. Dogs are definitely better than cats, since cats are nocturnal after all. So they're going to be swatting you in the face while you're sleeping and whatnot, and running around at night because it's when they're supposed to be active and hunting. I appreciate that having the comfort of a warm body next to you can relax you and possibly help with your sleep quality by bringing you into a more relaxed state. So I think there is something to that. But, you know, the animal can also definitely cause problems. So I'm not strongly against sleeping with the dog, but. And if it works for you, then all the power to you.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:29:00]: But generally they can also disturb your sleep sometimes as well.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:04]: Yeah, that makes sense. My theory is similar to when I used to co sleep with infants and I would actually sleep better, is similar to the research the Heartmath Institute has done on how the heart rate variability, or heart's electrical signal of the horse jockey and the horse will align when the jockey enters the stable and they'll both be kind of in the same brainwave state. Based on that, that if a pet is resting in bed with you, there's a chance that if that pet is resting, their own rested heart signal may actually somehow be something that you pick up via the electromagnetic signal emanated by the heart, which actually has an electromagnetic field. And that therefore, by being in the room with another rested mammal, it might actually somehow affect your brainwave patterns to sleep better. That's. That's a theory of mine. But I guess it depends on how active your dog is in the evening because that could obviously backfire on you.

Daniel Gartenberg [00:29:54]: Yeah, I mean, I think there is definitely some stuff going on subconsciously with frequencies that we as scientists just don't understand yet. And it wouldn't surprise me if that. You know, I think we do resonate with, with each other's frequencies in some ways that it's just hard to study. But I think there has been. I mean, there is research showing exactly what you just said where our bodies can sync up to one another.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:18]: One of my favorite ladies multi-time podcast guest biomechanist Katie Bowman, who sleeps on the floor in a furniture free home.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:27]: I interviewed her about building a better.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:29]: Butt and smartphone solutions and of course, her sleeping habits, how she approaches bedroom furniture and sleep, how she transitions to sleeping on firm surfaces, including the ground. Greatest sleep on a sheepskin. Here we go.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:43]: Obviously there's sleep too, right? Like, we're in that position arguably for around a third of our lives or so. And I'm just curious how you arrange the sleeping environment. Like, if you're also just like sleeping on the floor with these cushions propped under your head or what does it look like in terms of your bedroom or your sleeping environment?

Katie Bowman [00:31:04]: Yeah, same. So I am a ground sleeper, just like I'm a ground sitter. And I am happy to use chairs when they're out and about. Like, I don't make it a point to only do that, but I'm just, I want to make sure that I'm always comfortable to be able to sleep.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:19]: You mean you don't stand on the airplane the entire time?

Katie Bowman [00:31:23]: No, no. Although I will get up and try to walk around just a little bit. Sometimes I do. I. Sometimes I will squish, squat in my seat though, just to stretch out, you know, for a longer flight. So I have been known to do that only when, you know, people I know are sitting by the side. But for, yeah, I sleep on the ground. So we have sheepskins and so we roll them out and, you know, make our bed on top of that and then sleep on what would be.

Katie Bowman [00:31:50]: So it's not, it's firm. It's much firmer than any mattress or futon. But it still is comfortable because it's got some, it's got some warmth. You know that if you're worried about sleeping on a cold floor and you've got your cush, I find it to be nice and comfortable, but I'm able to get out of my position better. So, like, the way I try to explain it is, let's see, that your particular body, because of its being in repetitive shapes, it has a hard time getting out of essentially what is a chair shape. Even though you can stand up, if we really broke down what's happening in your joints, for many people, their hips really don't come out of flexion. Their pelvis, like, if you have people deal with what's called an anterior tilt forward tilt of their pelvis, that is a hip that's not standing up all of the way, the hip is still sort of in a chair. Even if you get your legs straight.

Katie Bowman [00:32:48]: The pelvis is coming forward, so there's like just this little bit of chair residue. Chair baggage, I've called it. Different things that's left over in your body. And for many people, when they get into bed, they're not even. Even if you lay out on your back, I guess you lie out on your. Lie down on your back because of the cushion, you're still sort of able to keep some of those flexions in your body. They are being. Coddled is not the word that I want, but.

Katie Bowman [00:33:20]: But the cushion is sort of supporting you where your body is right now, where the ground is a much, much more of a taskmaster. And it makes those parts stretch out, which is why it's really uncomfortable for people when they first start because you can't continue to stay tense in certain areas. So I sleep on the ground in that way. And then I don't have a big heavy pillow, you know, like, I. Oh, really? Yeah, I've gone down. I mean, and I took 18 months to go from. My neck was really stiff all the time. And I was like, why is my neck so stiff? And then, you know, as you said, our sleep environment is a third of, you know, on the best days, it's a third of your day.

Katie Bowman [00:34:04]: And so I was just realizing, like, oh, I am sort of propping myself up in a single position and keeping my neck from moving. So in the same way, if you've been in a car ride for a long time, the hips are stiff. Like my neck was stiff and it just didn't make sense to me. And then I just was looking around at like, well, how. How do human. Like, what are. What are other cultures doing? And I just realized, like, oh, of course, like, I. I need more movement.

Katie Bowman [00:34:29]: Even during my sleep time. I need more, what I call pressure related movement. My joints need to be able to go to a broader range of motion than what my bedding will allow. And that goes for my neck too. I need to be able to be more. It's like tenderizing a piece of meat. I need to be more supple. I need to be able to fold myself up.

Katie Bowman [00:34:52]: And that's why I sleep the way I do. And that's why a lot of my training that I would do is really just making my tissues more supple in general. Not only stronger, but more supplement supple too. That's so important piece because then you can really adapt to whatever surface you're being given as a human.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:09]: Yeah. I'm building a new home in Idaho. Right now. And I've been thinking about doing one of those wooden slatted beds as a slightly harder, more biomechanically favorable sleep surface, I guess. There's one guy, liver king Brian Johnson, I think he caught some social media attention for claiming that he also sleeps in some kind of a wooden slatted bed. And it kind of makes sense. It does seem kind of uncomfortable to just like, toss out that, you know, I'm on, like, this super fancy, you know, organic, you know, eco friendly mattress right now, and it's nice and it's cushy, but sometimes I do think, gosh, this is too cushy, especially when I go camping now or I go hunting, and it takes me at least three or four days sleeping on the ground in the tent where my body finally feels comfortable in that environment. For you switching from not using a pillow to kind of going lower and lower and lower in terms of your pillow height, how long do you think that adaptation would actually take for somebody who wants to go pillow free or even for somebody who wants to maybe ditch the bed or start to sleep on a harder surface? Is there a certain period of months because they talk about, like, minimalist footwear not to kick that horse to death, and sometimes it's like three, four, five months, sometimes up to a year before somebody's feet are adapted to not using big, built up, cushiony shoes.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:33]: Is there kind of a way that someone can ease into this adaptation period or something they should expect as far as adaptation period to go pillow free or cushion free in the beds?

Katie Bowman [00:36:44]: Yeah. I mean, I think the thing to remember is it's always stepwise, and it's exactly like transitioning from conventional to less supportive footwear. So much of that time period really depends on you and where you're starting and then what you're doing to help you with transitioning. So the same thing was for minimal footwear. Like, you wouldn't put on just minimal shoes and go running. Right. That would be the equivalent of just like jumping out of your bed and sleeping on the floor all night. And I think a lot of people have done that in camping, or they go even to someone else's house and sleep on a different bed and they're like, oh, my back's wrecked, or I'm.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:20]: Never gonna camp again. That sucked.

Katie Bowman [00:37:22]: Yeah, that's right. And that just shows, like, that's too big of a leap. You are essentially moving all of the time. It's a misnomer to think you're in a sedentary or an exercise category, that's a helpful way of sorting it on the big scale. But on a cellular level, you're always under the effects of some load due to gravity and your position, like you're creating the load to your cells. So you're about to engage in eight hours of some form of loading your body in a novel way. So the things that I recommend would be to start sleeping. Like, if you are so adapted to a particular mattress, even sleeping on the other side of it is going to cause your loads to be different.

Katie Bowman [00:38:11]: Especially if your mattress has been shaped by a different body. You know, like if you're swapping sides with somebody or if you have a guest bedroom that you don't really like that bed that often because it's kind of uncomfortable spending a couple nights there. That would be another way.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:26]: Hopefully not because you've had a fight with your spouse. Hopefully by choice.

Katie Bowman [00:38:29]: I mean, whatever. At least you could reframe it. You could reframe it. It's like, well, at least I will work on my leg loads.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:34]: This is a biomechanically favorable argument.

Katie Bowman [00:38:37]: Yeah, you could go together, you know, you could go together. You could. I suggested people that, like, I transitioned where I went from a bed to a single mattress low. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, where I think you are as well too. So we had to really watch for mold. Sleeping on the ground can be really a mold issue depending on where you live. So slept lower on the ground and then went to a futon. So I just slowly got closer to the ground and I played around with different surfaces.

Katie Bowman [00:39:09]: And then as far as the training part, you really want to be working on mobility and then like nooks and cranny mobility, because there's mobility in the general sense of like your hamstrings and your hips and your shoulders. What we don't get a ton of are what I categorize as pressure related movements. For a lot of other people, they might categorize it by the tissue they think they're working on when they do them. So that would be like foam rolling, fascia, rolling on fascia balls, like tune up fitness balls or things like that where you're applying pressure into the nooks and crannies of your body that don't often deal with having to change their position due to pressure being applied. Body work is also something that fits into that category. So sleep surfaces are surfaces, right? So the pressures that you're going to get on them are going to be whole body, different joints are going to feel different. So get on the floor more often before you transition to floor sleeping. Like I used to do a before I go to bed tenderizing practice where you roll all of your parts all over the ground.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:24]: By the way, that's me in the morning. I do morning tenderizing. 15 minutes every morning. The hardest foam rollers I can find, the most uncomfortable massage balls. And I interviewed this guy named Joel Greene who calls it maintaining young muscle where you're reducing a lot of those fascial adhesions and getting the body used to a little bit of that discomfort of being against hard objects. I swear by that protocol every morning, 15 minutes. Basically it's just self meat tenderizing.

Katie Bowman [00:40:51]: Yeah, I swear by that too. But I feel a lot of it comes while I'm sleeping. And so it's the same thing when you think about bodies. Human bodies have been interacting with high amounts of pressure through interacting with the ground. So take everything that you think about, minimal footwear and what your foot needs to stretch out its parts. That goes for your whole body on the ground too. Vitamin texture, as I call it. It's the same thing, only it's not as easy as just swapping out a new pair of shoes.

Katie Bowman [00:41:23]: Like you have to take yourself down physically and you have to get used to these parts being able to spread out. Like we just don't. Those movements aren't listed in a book of movements that you need, but I categorize them in a particular way. We definitely need pressure related movements throughout our body and it comes through interaction with surfaces. And you can make it in a supplement format. Right. Where you're approaching it with an exercise mindset and supplement that way. But it's also something that comes with more floor living.

Katie Bowman [00:41:54]: It's also something that comes with more floor city. And then bonus, when you sleep on the floor in the way that we do now, it always allowed us to be in smaller homes more comfortably when we had younger kids. Because think of all the square footage of a house that's allotted to sleep time only just the footprint that is under most people's sleep time equipment. So for us we hang it up every day and it gave like a room for cartwheels, an exercise room and off like what office?

Ben Greenfield [00:42:26]: So that's really such a good point. Yeah, I mean you're making a good case here for saving a lot of money in Airbnb. So you can get the zero bedroom Airbnb and just travel with your sheepskin and use the garage. It is kind of. It's interesting though because it is important for that 1/3. Or I guess if you're one of those Silicon Valley execs who has a biologically inferior need for sleep, apparently 1/4 or 1/5 of your life is spent in that position. So it's something to think about. It's also, unfortunately, probably a good way for me to lose any mattress sponsors ever for this podcast for all time.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:59]: But regardless, it really makes me think a little bit more about my sleeping surface and at least giving an attempt to expose my body to a little bit more of a hard, possibly even slightly uncomfortable surface during sleep.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:14]: Scott Sherr is up next. And again, all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/ BestOfSleep Scott knows a lot about Gamma GABA. GABA? Gamma Aminobutyric Acid and sleep hacking. That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. That's a big word. You're about to learn more. Here we go.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:33]: So when it comes to sleep, is there anything that you personally do besides Tro Calm or Tro ZZZ for sleep that for you is just like a game changer? And this is kind of relevant to me right now because I'm working on a new book and there's a big chapter on it with a whole bunch of updated sleep hacks. So I'm kind of like behind the scenes asking some of my guess what their personal sleep hacks are.

Scott Sherr [00:43:57]: Sure. So from a product perspective I'm actually more of a Tro Calm guy because for me as long as soon as I fall asleep I'm good. It's a matter, a matter of falling asleep for me. And so that's the type A personality, the perseverating thoughts, the thought diarrhea as it were, as you were describing before. So my thoughts to patient would be Tro Calm in this case. So I'll take Tro Calm a couple hours before bed.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:21]: Oh, a couple hours before.

Scott Sherr [00:44:23]: Yeah, yeah. I find that actually I could take it right before bed too. But I really like having it on board for a couple hours. It lasts for about three to five hours for me. So like having it right before, like that sort of wind down period when I'm with my kids and I'm relaxing and I want my mind to be sort of off work, phone away kind of deal and just having it as sort of an evening. So what people will do oftentimes is take Tro Calm instead of drinking a glass of wine with dinner or having their beer or whatever it might be is their wind down. So I like to use it that way Overall, it's sort of like my wind down for the evening. But, you know, for me, actually, Dr.

Scott Sherr [00:44:57]: Ted Achacoso, who's been on your podcast before, he probably gave me the single most important piece of advice that I've ever received from sleep. He calls it his sleep anchoring technique. And what this means is it basically changes the perspective on the importance of sleep. Instead of saying that your day starts when you wake up, say to yourself, your day starts when you go to bed.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:20]: Your day, see, I've always heard it like, your night starts when you wake up with ample light exposure, but this is interesting. Keep going.

Scott Sherr [00:45:27]: Yeah. So the idea here is that if you consider going to sleep as the start of your day, not the end of your day, then you're going to treat it with more respect and with more care and take care and protect it on a day to day basis whenever you can. Because your day starts when you go to bed, not when you wake up. Now, of course, when you wake up, you have your morning routine, you have your sunlight exposure, you have your grounding, anything else that you do, but if you just focus on that, but you forgot about the other eight hours, you just went to bed, it's not going to help as much. Right. As you know, so if you think about your day starts when you go to bed as opposed to when you wake up, that's the frame shift that helped me. I mean, I. I'm a doctor, right.

Scott Sherr [00:46:09]: I had, in medical school, my friends and I wore shirts that said, that said sleep is for quitters. Okay. So I didn't think sleep mattered for a long time. And Even through my 30's, I didn't think it mattered. I thought I could be up in the middle of night, do what I needed to do and just work the next day. But no, I mean, like many people, I crashed and burned. And when I turned 40, it's not going to happen anymore. Right.

Scott Sherr [00:46:29]: So most of us can get away with it for a period of time.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:32]: Yeah.

Scott Sherr [00:46:32]: So that's the first thing. And that's the major thing for what I tell my patients. That's what we tell people at Transcriptions, because again, we have great formulas here that can help you with anxiety, they can help you with stress, they can help you with sleep. But what you should be doing is thinking about what is this whole sleep architecture that we were talking about? So you asked about my personal thing, so I can give you my personal. If you'd like.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:54]: Yeah.

Scott Sherr [00:46:56]: So for me, what I'll typically do is, is an infrared sauna. I have an infrared sauna in my house. It's when I. When I found out that I was going to have four kids. We thought we were going to have three, and somehow we ended up having four.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:09]: Wait, quadruplets?

Scott Sherr [00:47:10]: No, no. I have. I have three kids. I had three daughters, and then my. My fourth was a surprise.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:17]: Okay, okay, I understand.

Scott Sherr [00:47:18]: Yes, yes. And so My oldest is 13. My youngest is 6 now and 3 girls. And my youngest is a boy. But when I found out that we were going to have a fourth kid, I was like a very small house living in Northern California at the time. So I bought myself an infrared sauna. And it's been, I think, one of the best purchases that I've ever made by far. So I'm in there most nights.

Scott Sherr [00:47:38]: I spent about 30 minutes in there. Typically, we do some reading, some meditation, some relaxation exercises of some sort during that time. And then after the sauna, I'll typically take like a temperate shower. So not too hot, not too cold. We'll do my sleep stack of supplements, typically some magnesium, some glycine, sometimes troz when I'm traveling. But I don't take troz unless I'm traveling, typically.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:01]: Okay.

Scott Sherr [00:48:01]: Because I don't need it. And then I have what I call my. My Pavlov's dog routine. And Pavlov's dog is for those who don't know. This is an experiment done where they would ring a bell and give food to a dog, and the dog would salivate and the dog would eat and then eventually take away the food. Just ring the bell, the dog would salivate. So the idea for me for my sleep routine is do the exact same thing for the last 10 to 15 minutes every night. And that's sleep.

Scott Sherr [00:48:28]: It's basically going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, stretching, and getting into bed with my eye mask on, having a sound machine on, doing gratitude and then just done bed.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:42]: That's awesome. I love the Pavlovs. I'm the same way to the extent to where I try to choose things for the Pavlovs dog routine that I can replicate when traveling. So if it's lavender essential oil, I don't use an oil diffuser anymore. I just sprinkle it on the pillow because I can do that same thing when I travel. The sleep mask, easy. The red light headlamp that I use to get around the room at night, or the red lights that's easy to bring to the hotel room. Putting the pillow underneath the back of my knees and breathing for about five minutes with four in eight out before rolling over into a side sleeping position.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:17]: I can replicate that in the hotel. So I try to not be dependent on any large bulky sleep technologies that if I'm on the road traveling again because I travel so much, I'm going to feel like I'm not getting my adequate sleep routine that I can replicate because I can't exactly call down to the front desk and ask them to bring me, I don't know, like a bedjet air conditioning unit or a chili pad for sleep. So you know, I try not to be dependent on that stuff.

Scott Sherr [00:49:41]: I'm totally with you. So I have my long routine, which is when I'm home, and then I have my short routine when I'm traveling. I mean this is something you've dialed in so much because of how much you travel. But it's just certain techniques or certain things that I will do that just trigger my brain to know that this is time to get to sleep. And I think the biggest part for me actually is taking those 30 seconds or a minute when I'm in bed and just doing a full body scan, doing a small gratitude practice and just being comfortable and grateful for the day and setting intentions for the next day too. Right. So it's really important for me. So nothing fancy there really, but I like the fancy tools as well when I can, when I have them, of course.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:23]: Yeah, the body scans are pretty incredible. The so called Yoga Nidra or non sleep deep rest protocols. There's not many voices that I don't find kind of grinding for those, but there's one lady on YouTube and I've got YouTube Premium, which I think is the ultimate life hack. Just you can download tons of stuff, view it online ad free. They still don't have the ability to take your downloaded videos and make playlists out of them, which I think they need to add at least that can be used in offline mode. So tip to anyone who works at YouTube, make playlists downloadable and available offline. But anyways, this lady, Ally Boothroyd I think is her channel. She has non sleep deep rest protocols that range from 20 minutes up to a full eight hours.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:04]: And like when I flew back from Qatar the other day, because I just got back from India, I did her eight hour on the plane with noise blocking headphones. Incredible. And usually what will happen is if I wake up at 4am or whatever, I want to kind of lull myself back to sleep. I of course pop a trochalm. Scott, but I'll lay back and do her. It's like the two hour one. Right. If I want to lay in bed until six or so.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:29]: And it's incredible. You aren't actually sleeping, but you're in this drool coming out the side of your mouth. Non sleep, deep rest state. And because you're scanning your body, I think this is why it works is my working hypothesis. At least you can't think about work when you're thinking big toe, breathe, next toe, breathe, next toe, breathe, small toe, ankle, heel, back of knee. So it just kind of keeps your thoughts from racing. But her voice in particular is incredible. And what I do.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:01]: I'll get a little techy on you here, Scott. This will be the pro tip. There's another app called Sleep Stream and it plays white noise. It blocks out a lot of ambient noise. And a lot of times these Yoga Nidra sessions, there's long periods of just silence in between. What the person says is the next cue. So if the kids are up and awake getting ready for the day and I'm not ready to get up yet, or the dogs are barking or the rooster is crowing, which usually starts about 4:30, this sleep stream app, I can play it simultaneous to the Yoga Nidra and just like my cheapo headphones. And it'll block out ambient noise while I'm still able to hear the Yoga Nidra voice.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:38]: So that's what I'll do if I just need to use some kind of like a sound to lull me to sleep. I still like that. There's an app called the nucalm that's also really good, but for Yoga Nidra, combining something like Ally's Yoga Nidra tracks with the Sleep Stream app.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:52]: It's incredible.

Scott Sherr [00:52:53]: Do you have like one headphone going in one ear? How does that work? Is it also both being piped in your ears at the same time?

Ben Greenfield [00:53:00]: I have the sleep phones. They're like the soft. They're like 20 bucks I think on Amazon. But they're good for side sleepers. If I tend to roll on my side and if I happen to have forgotten to get those out before bed, I'll literally just use my old school Apple white wired headphones and put those in. But yeah, no, it layers over so the sleep space white noise layers over the Yoga Nidra so it's not coming through two separate speakers. Both those tracks are coming through both headphones into both ears.

Scott Sherr [00:53:29]: Cool. You're like you're doing a real time mix, man. That's cool. I dig it. Yeah, I'll use the old Apple old school headphones when I travel, too, for the white noise. I find that helps a lot.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:39]: Yeah.

Scott Sherr [00:53:39]: And I have a free app that I use for the white noise piece of things too.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:42]: You know, the other hack for this, and this is something I learned from Luke Story. You know, like those underwater swim headphones that are, they're vibrant. They use bone vibration to transmit sound. You can have in your regular headphones and then in your underwater MP3 player that you're using on dry land, you can pump out what. What Luke told me is he'll play Joe Dispenza meditation tracks while playing nucalm and he'll play the new calm through his regular headphones and play the Joe Dispenza meditation tracks through his bone. Vibrating headphones, if you want to call them that. And that's another way to layer. So all sorts of different ways to sleep.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:22]: If you, like many other people, can't turn the brain off at night or at least stop up the brain diarrhea.

Scott Sherr [00:54:29]: I love that. Yeah, I've used NuCalm before. I like it. And I'm a big fan of Sam Harris's Waking Up app as well. And so some of his longer meditations. And I've had a couple friends learn how to splice those things together with, with various other tracks like NuCalm and other things. This is getting fancy, but it's, it's, it's interesting to play around with. I think the body scans are great for the reasons you mentioned, Ben.

Scott Sherr [00:54:47]: It's like it's a way to get out of your head a little bit. And it's a way to just kind of let everything relax. And that's typically what you need, is you just need your, your brain to shut off enough so you can start jumping into deep sleep, which is what all of us need to do in that early time when we get into bed.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:02]: Remember, the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/ BestOfSleep Next up, from a lightning round Q and A with me, daytime napping. How I have alternatives to a nap that allow me to get through a full sleep cycle without necessarily falling asleep. And a whole lot more, as well as a few of my favorite relaxation technologies. Here we go. Now, related to this idea of brief spurts, brief bouts of exercise during the day. This has also been looked at when it comes to sleep deprivation. Came across another really interesting study that looked at the effects of sleep loss.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:40]: And they were trying to figure out.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:41]: What kind of exercise could allow for you to stave off the, the detrimental effects of Sleep deprivation. So they looked at everything from like glucose management to mitochondrial respiratory function to, to tiredness and cognitive function. And what they found was that brief bouts of high intensity exercise, we're talking like 10 to 32nd all out powerful bouts of exercise throughout the day could mitigate the detrimental physiological effects of sleep loss. And again, this doesn't take much. This can literally be kind of similar to the squat concept. Every hour doing 30 burpees or just like going up a flight of stairs as fast as you can, or even though I got a green screen back behind me during this podcast, which hopefully they're using to make me look like I'm next to the Eiffel Tower or underwater with the bubbles. I've got a Carol bike.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:37]: Also not a sponsor of this podcast.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:39]: But anyways, the Carol bike is cool because it's is basically a quick sweat free workout. I get on it. I can do a quick 10 to 15, 22nd max burst during the day. And it's really cool that if you're sleep deprived, brief bursts of high intensity exercise can stave off the effects of sleep deprivation. Let's face it, it's also good to know because it's kind of hard to want to go to the gym when you're sleep deprived for a long formal 40 to 60 minute workout. But just knowing that if you just tell yourself, okay, I'm going to get through this day of sleep deprivation, I'm going to do whatever, 10 burpees every half hour that can have a really significant impact on glucose tolerance, respiratory function, what's called protein synthesis, because sleep deprivation can lower your ability to be able to build and maintain muscle. So these are all cool little hacks when it comes to sleep deprivation. Now what's interesting is you can stack on top of this the two compounds that I have found to be incredibly effective for allowing you to have good cognitive function in a state of sleep deprivation.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:40]: So one we've got a clue about from a recent study that came out February 28, 2024. One single dose of Creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in what's called cerebral high energy phosphates. Right? These little energetic phosphate groups available to your brain during sleep deprivation. And what they did in this was they gave sleep subjects a high single dose of Creatine. I'll give tell you exactly how much in a second. And what it did was it improved cognitive performance and processing speed and the author said partially reverses metabolic alterations and fatigue related cognitive deterioration in a state of sleep deprivation. That's pretty Cool. That just Creatine can do that.

Ben Greenfield [00:58:24]: Now here's the only problem. They were using 0.35 grams per kilogram. Well, pound is, or a kilogram is 2.2 pounds, right? So if you do the math, you know, that means a guy like me has got to be taking north of 25 grams of Creatine to stave off the effects of sleep deprivation. And I don't know why they did this in the study, probably because it was just logistically easier. But they gave these people, in this sleep deprivation study 21 hours of sleep deprivation. By the way, that whole dose at one time. I don't recommend that. That, that's a fast track to disaster pants.

Ben Greenfield [00:58:57]: And for anybody who's used Creatine, you know what I'm talking about. So in order to do this effectively, you would have to take your standard 5 gram dose of Creatine. And by effectively I mean not spending the day on the toilet and pulse that throughout the day. Like you, you wake up, you've only had two hours of sleep, you take five grams of Creatine. A couple hours later you take five grams of Creatine and you keep going until you get up to around. Rough math, 0.35 grams per kilogram. Don't worry, I'll put that number in the show notes. Just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/ 475 and it'll be over there.

Ben Greenfield [00:59:28]: But anyway, so Creatine pairs very, very well with another compound that I think because it simulates the type of DNA repair and cellular repair mechanisms that would normally happen during a night of sleep, can be a really, really good thing to stack with Creatine. And that is nad. Any day that I'm sleep deprived, I take extra NAD and I take extra Creatine. Try it the next time that you haven't gotten as many Z's as you want and I guarantee you're gonna notice a big, big difference. So nad's a pretty easy supplement to find these days. So is Creatine you could use. The ones I use are The BioStack Labs NAD and I use, of course, because I, I'm affiliated with the company the Kion Creatine. And that's, that's the stack.

Ben Greenfield [01:00:11]: So 5 grams of Creatine, but you gotta pulse that throughout the day.

Ben Greenfield [01:00:14]: Do the rough math.

Ben Greenfield [01:00:14]: 0.35 grams of Creatine per kilogram of body weight. Now, of course, a lot of people in a sleep deprived state are also curious about the effects of napping. And this was another Kind of cool paper that came out recently. They looked at the association between daytime napping and the cognitive and physical performance detriments and fatigue that occur after sleep deprivation. Now the conclusion here was pretty straightforward. After a night of no normal sleep or partial sleep deprivation, a daytime nap between 30 and 60 minutes long has a moderate to high effect on the improvement of cognitive performance and physical performance and the reduction of perceived fatigue. Meaning that a nap is a huge weapon in your weapon box, tool in your toolbox for combating the effects of sleep deprivation. Now, I know many of you because I've talked with many people about this.

Ben Greenfield [01:01:09]: You have trouble taking a nap. It's hard to turn your brain off in the middle of the day and it's difficult to just shut down or you're groggy and fatigued when you wake back up from the nap and it's hard to start the day again. Now here's the deal. I take a nap almost every day. As a matter of fact, I have instructed my team not to schedule phone calls, consults, work, et cetera. For me between the hours of 2 and 4pm that's not because I'm taking a two hour nap. It's because after lunch I tuck away and by the time I get up from 40 to 60 minutes of napping or sleeping. Some of the alternatives to napping that I'll describe to you in a second.

Ben Greenfield [01:01:43]: I need some time to jump in a cold bath, do some stretching, get back up, go through some more work before I ready to turn on the phone and jump back into a formal scheduled consult or something like that. Because I don't like to jump right into a phone call with somebody when I'm still digging the nap goo out of my eyes. So anyways, what I do is with lunch I will consume an adaptogen. I like adaptogens because unlike let's say weed or marijuana or CBD or melatonin or something like that, they allow your body to turn down the dial a little bit without leaving you fatigued afterwards. Some of my favorites are Reishi extract. I'll stir a little bit of Reishi extract into the cup of bone broth or water that I have with lunch. There are other adaptogenic blends by a company called Four Sigmatic Mushrooms. I like some of their stuff.

Ben Greenfield [01:02:30]: There's adaptogens like Shilajit, which actually a lot of people use for energy. But I like it after lunch. It seems like it helps me tone things down a little bit. Cool thing about adaptogens is they'll kind of turn up the dial if you need the dial turned up. Turn it down if you need the dial turned down. So anyways, Reishi is good. Ashwagandha is another really, really good one. Tulsi Astragalus.

Ben Greenfield [01:02:51]: Any of these common adaptogenic herbal blends are really good and I'll put a few of my favorites in the show notes. But basically I have that with lunch and then sometimes I can't sleep because I've got like 800 emails and the four phone calls from that morning and a podcast coming up and I can't turn my brain off. But what I do is I have a few little tools that I have sprinkled around that I use to be able to shut my brain down in the afternoon. One is Nucalm. It is a sound app that can simulate in a short 20 to 30 minutes, almost a full sleep cycle, even if you're not sleeping. I didn't really believe it. I interviewed the guy on my podcast. I look at some of their sleep spindle data, some of the research that they presented on the show, and I feel incredibly refreshed, even with a 20 to 40 minute new calm session, even if I don't fall asleep.

Ben Greenfield [01:03:33]: Another one would be this gal I follow on YouTube, Ally Boothroyd. She has fantastic Yoga Nidra tracks, which I think Dr. Andrew Huberman has made popular by calling them Non Sleep Deep Rest Protocols and very similar to something like the nucalm kind of simulates sleep without actually sleeping, even though sometimes I do fall fall asleep. I've even downloaded Allie's 8 Hour Yoga Nidra track and use that on an airplane for a long airplane flight. So anyways, Yoga Nidra would be another one that I like. And then the last one that I use quite a bit for my afternoon nap is this device called the Sensate. It's think of this like a vibrating purring cat sitting on your chest. It ties to Your app, the Sense8 app on your phone.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:16]: You select an audio track and they're all very soothing. They range anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and then you put it on and the thing vibrates in conjunction with the audio track. It's incredible.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:28]: It'll lull you back to sleep if.

Ben Greenfield [01:04:29]: You wake up at 2am it's great for an afternoon nap. I love to use it on airplanes. It's pretty affordable. And what's cool about it is that about every month they add a couple new tracks to the app so you can constantly be kind of changing things up so your brain doesn't get used to a certain audio sequence and start to engage in what would be called like anticipation of the actual audio, which can keep you awake because you know what's coming up next in the song versus your brain being a little bit of. In a little bit of a confused state about what part of the audio is coming up next. So you relax a little bit more. So those are a few things that I'll use is the new calm, the Yoga Nidra or the Sensate device. And what I like about any of those tools is they're also fully portable for when I'm traveling because I also nap when I travel.

Ben Greenfield [01:05:10]: So anyways, head nod to napping and it's a fantastic way to combat the effects of sleep deprivation. Next up, Louisa Nicola. I interviewed her about easy ways to get smarter, the best jet lag hacks, why cold water is better than cryotherapy, weed before sleep. That was interesting. And today we're going to dive into managing sleep during travel and even sleeping on a plane.

Ben Greenfield [01:05:35]: Related to the the idea that we were talking about earlier regarding sleep, I would imagine that a lot of these folks that you're working with get derailed when they're traveling to tournaments or events or they're doing with jet lag. Like what, what are some of the big dial movers for you when it comes to managing things like sleep during travel or jet lag?

Louisa Nicola [01:05:56]: Well, first of all, you have to adjust your sleep schedule. So they're like gradually shifting the sleep schedule before departure.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:03]: I know. It's a pain in the butt though.

Louisa Nicola [01:06:04]: It's such a pain. But you have to. So that's the first thing that we figure out. Like where are you traveling to and how can we adjust the sleep schedule 72 hours before departure.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:16]: Now when you're adjusting the sleep schedule, are you adjusting these so called, what they call them like zeitgebers, like when you eat, when you get exposed to light, when you exercise. You're doing all of that in the time zone of where you happen to be traveling to?

Louisa Nicola [01:06:29]: Absolutely. We're adjusting everything because food is very big as it relates to circadian rhythm. It basically tells your body that you're awake or that you're preparing for sleep. And then we do, you know, adjusting for light as well.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:42]: How many days in advance?

Louisa Nicola [01:06:44]: 72 hours. So three days.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:45]: Okay.

Ben Greenfield [01:06:46]: Okay. So three days in advance you start to adjust your schedule for where you're going and then what?

Louisa Nicola [01:06:50]: Yeah, so then once we get onto the plane, that's the next thing we. Depending on how long the ride is we try and advocate for eating minimally. I won't say completely not eating. If it's a three hour flight, then don't eat. But if you are, we encourage all of our athletes to take their own food. And you can, you can take, you know, people think you can't take food, but you can.

Ben Greenfield [01:07:16]: People think you can't take food on airplanes?

Louisa Nicola [01:07:19]: People listen to me. Are we allowed to like take food past the security? I'm like, of course you can.

Ben Greenfield [01:07:26]: Maybe not a milkshake, but yeah, but yeah.

Louisa Nicola [01:07:31]: So take your own food. Once you're on the plane, you're still going to stick to your schedule of time zones. So you're going to sleep. If it's 11PM in your time zone and you're on the flight, you're going to sleep at that time as well. You can try. If you can try and sleep, you can take some sleep aids if you need. The second third thing is over hydrating. So not just hydrating, I want you to drink more water and electrolytes than what you would on the ground.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:02]: Now we should issue a disclaimer here like don't get hyponatremia. You don't want to over, over hydrate. As you know from triathlon. That's like, it's more often than dehydration that sends people to the medical tent. So, so be careful, don't, don't dilute your fluids. But what do you think? Because I, I'm right on board with you, Louisa, about avoiding food on airplanes, especially the actual airplane food, but eating in general, not only due to the circadian issues that you talked about, but also the microbiome disruption that's been shown in literature, especially for long haul flights. But one, one thing that I always keep in my bag. I'm curious to hear your take on this because it seems to have a little bit of a potentially like a DNA or a radiative protective effect would be ketones like drinkable ketone esters or something like that to kind of keep the appetite satiated during the flight.

Ben Greenfield [01:08:45]: You ever mess around with something like that?

Louisa Nicola [01:08:47]: I do. I was taking Ketone IQ and I travel quite often. Tomorrow I'm flying to Europe, which is crazy. So I'm on that. You know, I'm doing this to myself as well. I'm. For the past 72 hours I've been on Europe time, so I'm also taking ketone iq like ingestible ketones. And what I'm also doing is I don't know if you do this do you ever take a greens powder with you as well?

Ben Greenfield [01:09:11]: Well, to be honest with you, I find that greens powders make me super duper regular. So I don't do them on a long haul flight because I just don't like spending lots of time in the airplane bathroom. So no, I, I don't use greens. You like those though for a flight?

Louisa Nicola [01:09:27]: I do because what I'm trying to do essentially is also eliminate or decrease, I wouldn't say eliminate, decrease the amount of inflammation. So we're getting, already getting like. Yeah. So you have to remember as well your oxygen isn't as great, it's pressurized. So we need to do anything that we're going to be able to decrease the amount of inflammation that we have. Water, obviously, electrolytes. I take a greens powder with me as well just to help with that. And then I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses.

Louisa Nicola [01:09:58]: I always say don't rely on blue light blockers at home, you know, because they're not going to be doing, they're not blocking blue light 100%. But when you're on the flight, especially.

Ben Greenfield [01:10:08]: On the skins, photoreceptors, they're not blocking any of that.

Louisa Nicola [01:10:11]: No, exactly. But when you're on a flight you need to get as much help as you need. So these blue light blockers are going to help you getting a sleep mask, getting earplugs, getting whatever it is to make you feel comfortable and at ease on that flight.

Ben Greenfield [01:10:26]: Okay, that makes sense. And I mean the ketones, those will kind of modulate the NF kappa B pathway to a certain extent and have a little bit of an anti inflammatory effect. But the other two things I like is I'll use hydrogen tablets in all the water that I drink just because that's kind of a selective antioxidant that allows me to get some anti inflammatory action without needing to go take green poops in the bathroom. And then the other one is NAD. Like NAD has some really good properties, especially even as far as making you feel better when you get to where you're going. So I actually there's some companies that make NAD patches and I'll just like slap one on my inner thigh or like the back of the arm, you know, an area of hairless skin. And I find that NAD works fantastically. Do you ever use nad?

Louisa Nicola [01:11:11]: I've done, I've never used the actual NAD patches, but I can see an.

Ben Greenfield [01:11:17]: IV for the whole flight.

Louisa Nicola [01:11:18]: Yeah, I was going to say I can see that, that would actually help. But then again, like it's got to be able to penetrate the cell NAD. And does the patches do that?

Ben Greenfield [01:11:28]: Yeah, yeah. They've got some pretty good data on actually. I mean the oral bioavailability of NLR and nmn. Yeah. Even like NAD or NAD plus it's pretty decent. But intravenous transdermal or even suppository based delivery, you get way better cellular delivery. So.

Louisa Nicola [01:11:47]: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [01:11:47]: Yeah, I wouldn't recommend the supposity on the plane. You don't want to be clinching the whole time. But you know what's interesting is I've tried a lot of these tactics and the thing that seems to be the biggest dial mover for me, Louisa, and I catch some flack for this, but I put in my bag like before I go through security, an actual like jogging suit that's lined with silver fabric that's essentially like a wearable Faraday suit. And after I go through security, because you can't go through security honor as you look like a ghost and you freak everybody out and you gotta do the whole pat down.

Louisa Nicola [01:12:19]: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [01:12:20]: But afterwards I put that thing on and it's like a full body hoodie and pants. I think there's a few different companies that make them. Mine is No Choice is the company that makes it. And it's got a full zip up hoodie. And since I started using that thing especially for long haul flights, my amount of jet lag has plummeted. It's crazy. And it's just like a full body, like a Faraday suit. You ever seen these?

Louisa Nicola [01:12:44]: No. I just wrote down No Choice. I want to have a look at it because I travel so often.

Ben Greenfield [01:12:48]: Yeah, it's, it's crazy. I mean I was shocked. And even has little, little plugs in the cuffs of the pants so that when you get to where you're going they have little alligator clips and you can ground to a metal object like when you're waiting for your bags or whatever in baggage claim. So you get like this massive amount of grounding and earthing. And again like it's not the most fashionable item to wear on a plane, but it seems to work really well.

Louisa Nicola [01:13:15]: So is it compression as well?

Ben Greenfield [01:13:18]: No. Well, they have like long johns that you can wear underneath them, but they're not compression gear per se. I'll usually have compression socks on and then pull that thing over it. Now sometimes when I get to where I'm going, I feel really good if I can jump in a cold body of water or do like some cryotherapy or something like that. But whether or not it's related to sleep or jet lag. I'm just curious, is there anything to the idea of heat therapy or cold thermogenesis when it comes to mental performance?

Louisa Nicola [01:13:45]: Yeah, I was just going to add on that when you get to your destination, one thing that we get everyone to do depending on what time it is. Like if it's early morning, we always get somebody to get off the plane and go for a run. It's like a mandatory, like get off the plane and exercise. It's going to get you. The fastest way for you to adapt to the time zone is through exercise.

Ben Greenfield [01:14:06]: All right, folks, that was the best of sleep.

Ben Greenfield [01:14:07]: Hopefully you're still awake. If so, you can visit the show [email protected]/BestOfSleep or you can leave your own questions, comments, feedback and more. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/BestOfSleep thanks so much for tuning in. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfield.com. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mentioned.

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