The Sleep Doctor - Dr. Michael J. Breus Reveals the Secrets to Better Sleep, More Energy, and Better HealthThe Sleep Doctor - Dr. Michael J. Breus Reveals the Secrets to Better Sleep, More Energy, and Better Health

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This is the beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Ross. What's happening, friends? Before we jump into today's conversation, if you've been struggling with sleep, waking up exhausted, or feeling like you just can't turn your brain off at night, you're going to want to pay close attention to this episode. My guest today is Dr. Michael Bruce, better known as the sleep doctor. He's one of the world's leading sleep experts and has spent decades helping people understand the science of sleep and how it impacts every area of our lives. We talk about simple, practical strategies to improve your sleep, increase your energy, and create better overall wellness through the power of sleep. I walked away from this conversation with a completely different perspective on what it actually takes to feel and perform at your best. I think you will, too. Let's get into it with Dr. Michael Bruce, aka the Sleep Doctor. Dr. Bruce, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Sav. I'm excited to be here, brother. You know, I'm so excited to have you here. It's so wild. We were chatting here before the episode on how I actually discovered you and found you. Shout out to D. CEO Wildly successful podcast. A little biased. I love podcasts, but you are the podcast guy. I, you know, I've been called worse. I, but after spending two weeks listening to that episode, I, I learned a lot about sleep. And as luck would have it, as the way, you know, the, the way the world works out and how tiny this place is that we're on. You and I ended up on the same cruise ship on the same week for an event called Summit at Sea, of which you had the privilege of doing a few sessions on. I did not get that memo that you were actually on the ship until I'm walking through the casino with, with a cocktail around 6pm and you've got a circle of people around you, very small, intimate crowd, leaned up against a slot machine, answering any question about sleep. And I said, wait a second. Is this really happening right now? Is he literally right there? And you're like, any more questions? And I go, yes. Are you available for podcast interviews? So talk about good, good, good timing. Exactly. We have great timing. Clearly the universe wanted us to get together. I agree. I, I, I agree with that. But yeah, Summit at sea. What a great four days at at sea. Have you been to any summit events before? Anything? I had never been to a summit event before, and so it was a real privilege to be able to address that audience. And what a great group of people. For folks out there who don't know what Summit at Sea is, this is how I describe it to people. It's like Burning man meets Davos meets TED Talks. Like all three in the same place, but you just happen to be on a boat on your way to Bermuda. Right. Like that was. That was what it was to me. And I had so much fun. I had a blast. It's great. I did. I did too. I had heard about it years ago, but it was invite only, which it still kind of is. They screened everybody out, which is fantastic. Yeah. But I saw an Instagram ad and I go, summits back again. And I hit somebody up, and somebody hit me up, said, let's schedule a call. And well, you know what I do. Podcasting is extremely popular. Entrepreneurs, founders, conscious community. Somebody on this ship wants to start a podcast. So I. I made the very bold decision to jump on a couple weeks right before, actually. But I. With the ship leaving here out of Miami, even though it didn't leave the first day I got on it, I got on Wednesday, we were still there. Thursday was weird. After all the cruising that I've done, like, we're still in Miami, but either way, yeah, it was. You're exactly right. Never been to Burning Man. Have absolutely no desire to go hang out in an RV in the dust in the middle of the desert. But I appreciate people that do. But I didn't have one awkward conversation. And to have 2,000 people on a ship and not run into one awkward conversation where you're like, how do I get out of here? I was, you know, I was really grateful for just some brilliant minds, incredible sessions. I gotta say, Shout out to Ben Gleave. I don't know if you had a chance to go to his show on Thursday night. He killed it. Wow, was he funny. Wow, was he funny. And I heard he's got a show coming out soon. Yeah, it launched actually May 28th. Ben checks in the mail, buddy. It launched on YouTube, the first ever late night talk show. It's called Good Night with Ben Gleb. I think he's on episode probably five or six now. And the studio is at his house. And how he does it, he'll do a pre party, he'll do the little studio and like studio audience that can fit in that area in his house. And then he does like a post party out by the pool and has camera crew. He's got a very unique approach. I think it's definitely going somewhere. But I love that he roasted me at the end of that show on the ship because I had my podcast suck hat on and as a fellow comic, I just let him roast me and I continue to ask answer ridiculous with ridiculous answers so that he can just continue to roast me. So hopefully that episode, I don't think it's aired yet, hopefully it makes, I'm definitely gonna give it a listen. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's get into this sleep topic that is very, very popular with a majority of people. If you're listening to this right now, you're, you're probably one of two individuals. You sleep really good or you don't, right? And, or maybe you're in the middle, you just sleep a few hours a night. My mother called me this morning. I was up at 3am I don't know why

I go, well, you wake up at 4: 5:50

30, so you were pretty damn close, Susie, you know, but I, I was excited for to this conversation with Dr. Bruce because he's gonna break down why the who, what, why and where of our sleep. You're, you're recognized internationally as the go to source for being a sleep expert. I know you've got a sleep test that you run people through that our listeners are gonna be able to take advantage of. We'll get you that information in just a little bit on here. But let's kick things off by talking about why sleep is important. Not just because we want to feel good, but why is sleep important? So this is such a great question and I've been giving it a tremendous amount of thought. So, and this is, this may not be the answer that you're looking for, but it is the answer that I have slowly come to the conclusion of, right? So when you think about sleep, right, it's this fundamental biological process, right, that occurs in every living creature. Anything that has a nervous system will sleep or have some period of non activity, right? And you start to wonder like, why is that, that process so important to everything else that goes on in my life? Number one, sleep affects every organ system and every disease state. Literally everything you do, you do better with a good night's sleep. There is not a single function in the human body that does better without good quality sleep, right? So we know it's fundamental, but I think it's actually got a bigger role. And I'll tell you what I think it is. So I was listening to this fellow who was kind of a philosopher kind of guy and he said, he said the currency of life is time. And I thought, well, that makes sense to me, right? Where I spend my time is kind of how I lead my life. I'm down with that. Currency of life is time. Okay? Then he said, and this is from Buddhist teachings, he said, the currency of time is attention. So where I focus my attention is where I'm going to spend my time. And where I spend my time is going to be how I accumulate my life. This is all making a lot of sense to me. I would argue sleep is the currency of attention. Okay, so here's the deal. You can't pay attention to something when you are tired, right? You have not. You don't have the ability to focus. We know that ADD ADHD gets much worse when you're tired. We know that anxiety gets worse when you're tired. Literally, everything gets worse when you're tired. And so when we think about what are the things that we could do to our bodies that could have such a dramatic effect across our lives, I would argue you can't really find much that would have a bigger effect than sleep other than breathing and hydration. All right, so let's dive right into it here. Someone's listening to this right now and they're like, I am so glad I found this episode because I sleep like shit. It's not good, it's inconsistent, it sucks. What are some things people can start with today, right now, tonight, to start implementing, to start improving the quality of the sleep that they have? So I have a five step plan that I think your audience would really benefit from. So I'm going to roll through five things. None of them will cost you a dime. All of them will help your sleep, and you can start all of them today. Okay? So step number one is to choose one wake up time and stick to it seven days a week. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. This sucks, okay? Nobody likes this idea. Everybody wants to sleep in on Saturday, sleep in on Sunday. Let me explain to why this is not a good idea. Why every single day, even if, even if you're not having an early work day, like let's say some days for work you have to be there early and some days you don't, you still need to get up at the same time, seven days a week. Here's why. When you're. When you wake up in the morning, sunlight hits your eye. You have a special cell in your eye called a melanopsin cell. Sends a signal to the back of your brain to turn off the melatonin faucet in your head, right? So what I just said was the time at which you wake up when sunlight hits Your eye turns off melatonin, but it also turns it back on approximately 14 hours later, which is called the melatonin phase response curve. So the time that you wake up directly affects when melatonin is produced in your body. For folks who don't know this, melatonin is kind of that key that starts the engine for sleep. If you ain't got no melatonin, you ain't sleeping. Okay? So if you want to do yourself a favor, waking up at the same time produces this hormonal reaction at the same time in the evening time time and help set your body up for better sleep. To be clear, Sebastian, if everybody just followed that one tip and nothing else that we talk about, you're gonna. You're looking at between a 20 and a 30% improvement in sleep quality in the course of about three to four weeks. All right, step one, wake up at the same time every day. Yep. Step number two, stop caffeine by 2pm Right? So caffeine is a half life, between six and eight hours. A lot of people don't realize that. A lot of people tell me, oh, Michael, I can have a cup of coffee and fall right asleep. You probably can, but the sleep you're getting is dog shit, right? So at the end of the day, it's a quality issue. Caffeine is a stimulant. I don't care what anybody says, you can't have it close to bedtime. So if you stop caffeine by 2pm Gives you about eight, nine hours before bedtime. Because most people go to bed around 10 o' clock, should be okay. So step number one, pick one, bedtime. Step number two, stop caffeine at 2pm Step number three has to do with alcohol. Okay? So there's a really big difference between going to bed and passing out, right? So we don't like the passing out. We do like the going to bed. But look, I like whiskey, I like, you know, I like beer every once in a while or something like that. So how do we still maintain an adult beverage and get a decent night's sleep? Stop alcohol three hours before bed, limit yourself to two drinks and have a glass of water in between each one, right? So have a glass of wine. That's what I've been missing. That's what I'm telling you, brother. Trust me, people love this rule and it works really well. I want to be very clear, if you avoid alcohol altogether, that's going to give you the best quality sleep. But if you just want to, if you're out with friends and you're watching the World cup or you're hanging out with your buds or girls or whatever, and you want to have a drink or two, there's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that you do it in a smart way so it doesn't really just completely screw up your sleep. Step number four has to do with exercise. The single best way to improve sleep quality is with some level of cardiovascular exercise. You don't have to run a marathon, but I'm talking 25 minutes of cardio. It can even be just walking, like it doesn't really matter. But you can't do it too close to bedtime because it increases your core body temperature and you need your core body temperature to go down in order to sleep. So what I tell people is exercise daily, but stop exercise four hours before bed. Okay, the last tip has to do with waking up. It's kind of a morning routine. So when people wake up in the morning, here's what I want you to do. A lot of people don't know this, but sleep in and of itself is a dehydrative event, meaning you lose almost a full liter of water from just the humidity in your breath. So you don't want to caffeinate when you wake up. You want to hydrate first. So when you wake up in the morning, I want you to swing your legs over to the edge of your bed, take 15 deep breaths, grab a bottle of water, roughly 15 ounces, go outside and drink your water while getting 15 minutes of sunshine. Now, some of your listeners are like, oh, California doctor Sunshine Guy. Yeah, I know, yeah, every, all the woo woo ness of it all. I get it. There's real data here to prove to you that it's important. Fifteen minutes is the exact amount of time most people need for their body to manufacture vitamin D. And it turns out that vitamin D is a circadian pacemaker and helps keep your sleep cycle rumbling along at just the right pace. So if you follow this five step plan, which is wake up at the same time every single day. Step number one, step number two, stop caffeine by 2pm Step number three, stop alcohol three hours before bed. Step number four, exercise daily, but stop exercise four hours before bed. And step number five is to give the sun a high five every morning, get 15 minutes of sunshine and drink 15 ounces of water, hopefully outside. Dude, your life is going to be fantastic. There were three 15s. I thought it was two. So every day I was like, I'm getting that 15 ounces of water in and I'm going out on my egg chair on my balcony. I'm getting that sunshine into. But who would have known there was a third one? Get up, kick your legs over the side of the bed and take 15 breaths. That's right. Which we also forget to do quite frequently. Breathe. I know, it's remarkable. It's remarkable. And you know, here's the funny thing, and I love the way you're, you're, you know, crafting this episode because what we're, what we're looking at here is like, what are the things, what are the practical things that we need to do in order to understand sleep and in order to change our sleep? Because a lot of times, if I'm honest with you, when I'm on a podcast, sometimes we just talk about sleep theory all the time and what's going on. I like how you're zooming in on the practicality of it all because I think your listeners are probably, you know, interested in that practicality aspect. Yeah, yeah. Like let's get down to the nitty here where, you know, tell me how to sleep better, tell me how to feel better. I mean, these are all things that we all crave. Or at least you should be, you know, if you're, if you're listening to this episode. Okay, so a couple of things. Yeah. Good luck telling these Cubans down here that you need to stop drinking Cuban coffee at 6pm Forget. Right? Have a dog in that fight. I try. I definitely, I, I shouldn't be able to drink caffeine at all anyway. It should be banned from my life. But I just bought a new espresso machine so that's out the window. But I don't dare have a cup of coffee after even 11 o' clock in the morning. Fear of, of, of insomnia, which I've only suffered from a few times. Enough to go, I never want to do that again. It's always before a big keynote. I don't know why is that? Because my brain's going bananas. So very common. That's super duper normal. It's this anticipatory anxiety that you have before giving a big lecture. Or I'll tell you when I have a hard time sleeping, which is kind of amusing, is if I have a next day flight at like 8 o' clock in the morning. That's when I have a hard time sleeping the night before because I'm waking up starting at

4: 16:11

30 thinking like, oh shit, I'm going to miss the alarm. Or you know, like doing that like so so that's usually what it is. Is that some level of anticipatory anxiety that's kind of fueling that. But it's, that's perfectly normal. Like, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even bother. That happened to me and I was trying to figure out. It happened to me last year in Dallas. And I thought, I did have a few beers, I, I, that, that afternoon, but it was, I was in bed by like 8 o' clock because I was like, you know, tomorrow's talk day. And I did have, I got upgraded. So when after lunch I was like, let me have a coffee. And I had a coffee about two o', clock. And I was like, well, that had to be the culprit. And. But then my mom goes, you are just excited about your talk, honey. And I go, you know, I didn't even think about that. You're pro. Great. But. Well, it's probably a combo between that level of excitement of giving a keynote, which is always fun. I definitely enjoy it. Yeah. And then just, you know, nervousness about talking in front of a large group of people or things like that. Well, those nerves definitely weren't there. It was at Dallas Cowboys headquarters, but not for the Cowboys, and Jerry Jones wasn't there. So I had no excuse, See. Then it should be a walk in the park for you, bro. Yeah, absolutely. Was it, was it you that I heard on the episode of the Diary CEO say something about naps and caffeine? Yeah. So I created this thing, I call it the Napa Latte. This thing works like a charm. Okay. So if, let's say you had a really crappy night, you only got four hours, like what we're talking about, you know, and, but you got to perform the next day. This is a fantastic tool that I use with a lot of my CEOs. So you take a cup of drip black coffee, maybe five, six ounces, right. Throw in three ice cubes, merely to cool it down, slug it, and then take about a 20, 25 minute nap. So here's why. Here's the science behind why this works so well. So when a cell eats a piece of glucose, something comes out the back end. One of those things is called adenosine. Adenosine works its way through your system, goes to a very specific receptor area in your brain. And as adenosine accumulates, you get sleepier and sleepier and sleepier. But if you look at the molecular structure of adenosine and the molecular structure of caffeine, they're off by one molecule. So Caffeine will fit into the receptor sites that normally would be able to process through the adenosine and make you sleepy. So here's what ends up happening. You go to sleep, you burn through some adenosine. Caffeine is waiting in the wings. It pushes itself in, blocks the adenosine from the adenosine receptor. You're good for four hours, guaranteed. Every time. It's miraculous. But I want to be clear. You probably don't want to do an apple latte every day. Um, that's probably doesn't show that you're doing the healthy thing in terms of your sleep. Yeah, yeah, okay. So. But here's what I think, though. When I drink, well, I'm not the. I'm not the norm, but when I drink an iced coffee, cooled coffee, it is almost instant. Like, let's go feeling. Especially with iced coffee. I don't know what it is about iced coffee, but iced coffee is just like rocket fuel. So I don't know that I would drink iced coffee and be like, let's go take a nap. But are you. So you're talking about, like, if you're dragging ass and can barely keep your eyes open type deal, pound it and then go hit the pillow for 20 minutes and you wake up and you're golden. Exactly. But iced coffee is different because a lot of times, for example, when you go to the coffee shops, it's not just that they take the drip black coffee and throw in ice. It's that they've done some kind of a brew or it's like a nitrous brew or. That's not what I'm talking about. You want black drip coffee. The reason is it's got the most caffeine in it. So black drip coffee's got more caffeine than espresso, more caffeine than cappuccino. Really look it up. It's unbelievable. So a black. A cup of black drip coffee, about a six, seven ounce cup, is about 100, 110 milligrams of caffeine. And so that's kind of what you're doing, is you're just basically giving yourself that quick hit dose to see if you can, you know, kind of kickstart yourself. Napa latte, folks. Put that in the show notes. You heard it there. Yeah, we're here. But not every day. No one needs a Napa latte every single day. It's only in a pull cord in case of emergency. Exactly. So you. There was a lady on Summit at Sea when you and I first Met you were doing your Q A. And she. I tried not to laugh. I was having a cocktail, though, and I kind of might have laughed underneath my breath. But she had a question, and she said, when I go to sleep, while I'm sleeping, I beat the shit out of my partner unintentionally. And you had an incredible solution for her that almost sounded foolproof. Let's talk about that. So. Well, I'm not sure exactly which one you're talking about, so you may have to remind me. It was the. It was the exercise. Like the aerobics weight. Yeah. So. So what? I thought that's what you were talking about. So when you've got somebody who's lying next to you. So first of all, let's back up for half a second. If you have somebody lying next to you who's basically acting out their dreams and their arms are flying and their legs are moving or they're talking or things like that. So, number one, that is not normal. I just want to be very clear about this. If this happens more than, let's say, once a month when somebody is really sleep deprived, it's probably worth talking about with your doctor, right? Because there's several things that could be a little bit more serious that could be going on. However, what happens with a lot of people is if you've had a couple of drinks, right? Then all of a sudden the paralysis mechanism that usually goes on during sleep is kind of a little bit less wonky. And so you start moving around. So what do I have people do is I take ankle weights and wrist weights. So remember back in the 80s when everybody was doing the aerobics and they would attach weights to themselves. Jane Fonda Fonda. Exactly. So now they have all these sporting goods stores like Play It Again Sports, and all these things where you can go and get used equipment. They are loaded with these ankle weights and these wrist weights. So you can do that also, you can use the weights for being. A lot of people tell me that they only snore, for example, when they're lying on their back. And so this is a way that we can help them move positions to their side is by using ankle weights and wrist weights, or the opposite. If I've got a stomach sleeper, which is really bad for your back, I have people use ankle weights and lie on their back, and it's just enough to keep them in the right spot. Talk about mouth tape for a second here. I told you that I had a dentist friend of mine recommend to. I don't know why he recommended it. He said something about the shape of the roof of my mouth and sleep apnea. And he had lost a close cousin of his in his early 50s to sleep apnea. Died in his sleep. And he was like, hey, check out this mouth tape called Hostage Tape. I started utilizing it. I also got braces after that, and I stopped grinding my teeth. And I don't know what else happens, but you and I were chatting before this, and you were like, hold up. Terrible idea. So let's talk about. So it's. It's really fascinating to me that you had a dentist friend tell you to use mouth tape based on the story you just told me. And I'll explain why. The reason that I am vehemently opposed to mouth tape, to be clear, I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, the only thing that's more stupid than the 5am club is mouth tape. Okay? Right. Like, this is a terrible freaking idea. And I'll tell you why. Because most of the people that are using mouth tape are using mouth tape because they sleep with their mouth open, because they snore. Right. What they have not done is how to test for sleep apnea. That's why it's so interesting to me, the story that you told about the dentist, because I have no problems with mouth tape. As long as you've been tested for sleep apnea. I think mouth tape is the dumbest fricking idea in the universe. If you have not been tested for sleep apnea. And if I'm going to be really honest with you, I think it's disgusting that somebody would use the word hostage when we have real people who are being held hostage in different parts of the world. Right? Like, I don't think it's funny. I think it's disgusting. So for me, personally, I have a hard time with the company naming itself that and the product itself, because I don't think they also warn people. Yeah, that's. That's extremely, extremely valuable and good information. And I, and I most definitely do agree with you. How does one get tested for sleep apnea? Great question. So here's the good news is it's not a hard thing to do. It used to be such a pain in the ass to get sleep tested. So what would used to be is you'd have to go to your doctor, they'd have to give you a referral, you'd have to go to a hospital or a private lab, spend the night all there, 27 electrodes added to your body, spend the night in a lab all of that has changed. So as soon as Covid hit, nobody wanted to go to the sleep lab anymore. Not a big surprise there. And all of the equipment manufacturers really started to do a good job of making portable sleep test. So now there are actually several different portable sleep tests on the market that any sleep doctor can prescribe and get and get it for you. And just to give people kind of a general idea, it should be about$200 or less out of pocket, and many insurance companies actually cover it as well. Now, here's the even better news is it's not big. You stick something on your wrist or your hand, you go to sleep, you wake up in the morning, and the data jumps over to your phone via bluetooth, goes to the cloud, and then you have an appointment online with a doctor or a respiratory therapist. You actually never even have to leave your house. So, and, you know, full disclosure, my company, sleep doctor, this is one of the things that we do. We literally do 5, 600 of these a week. So the goal here is to get as many people tested, so that way we can find out who needs treatment and then be able to hopefully help them find the right appropriate treatment. Now, I will tell you, Sebastian, a lot of people avoid getting a sleep test because they think I'm going to end up on a CPAP machine. You read my mind. Is it on my face? Well, it could be if it was cpap, but, you know, that's a problem. So, full disclosure. I personally, Dr. Michael Bruce, have obstructive sleep apnea. I stop breathing in my sleep 24 times an hour. That's a bunch. Yeah, that is a bunch. And I'm not a heavy person. I'm not a big person. A lot of people think sleep apnea is a big person's disease. I want to be very clear that's not the case right now. Do bigger people have a greater likelihood of having sleep apnea? They do. When you have more weight on your body, it definitely compounds the situation to make the situation potentially worse. But you don't have to have a CPAP machine to treat your sleep apnea. Now, I will tell you kind of a funny story about me adapting to cpap and why I adapted very quickly. But I also recently just got an oral appliance, which is a completely different form of treatment, and I really like it. So a CPAP machine for folks out there who don't know, well, let's back up for half a second. Sleep apnea is a situation where your throat collapses in the middle of the night. You Stop breathing in your sleep. This can happen tens, twenties, hundreds of times. As I just disclosed. It happens 24 times an hour to me. Right. And so we have to do something in order to fix that. A CPAP machine is a mask that you wear on your face with the tube to an air compressor. Just pushes air up your nose, and when it hits that area, it just ever so slightly opens it up and shoots air down to your lungs and you breathe all night long. However, you are sleeping with a hairdryer blowing up your nose all night long. Okay? It is not the sexiest thing in the universe. It definitely takes some time to adapt to it. Now, here's the funny story is I took one day to adapt to cpap, but let me explain why. So we just recently got a French bulldog puppy. And we have. We have another dog who's also a French bulldog, and we got a puppy. And the puppy sleeps in the bed, and he likes to work his way up in the middle of the night, and he likes to fall asleep in between my wife and my pillow. And he loves to put his head on her pillow. So which end of the dog do you think I get all freaking night long? And it's a bulldog, so it's not like he doesn't have gas. Yes. Okay. When somebody said, hey, Michael, we're gonna stick a mask on your face and put clean. Let's go. Right. It's just like. I mean, so I literally adapted in 24 hours. I think I might be the only person I know who's ever adapted that quickly. But also, don't forget, I've been putting CPAP machines on people for 25 years. So, like, I really do understand the ins and outs of it. But I also want to be clear. I just got an oral appliance, which is a mouth guard that treats sleep apnea instead of sleep of cpap. And now I'm using that for when I travel. And I'm going to tell you something. It's fantastic. Like, have you done a sleep test since. I have, and it actually works. So that's the whole point is. Oh, great point, Sebastian. Thank you for bringing that up. Is you want to do a sleep test after the treatment time period for maybe three or four weeks to make sure that the treatment is working for you. So you end up having a second test to prove that either the cpap, the oral appliance, or whatever it is, weight loss, whatever it is that you're doing can be helpful. That's another one that we should just briefly touch on. Is that GLP1s. There's even a GLP1 now that if you have sleep apnea, you can get a prescription for it. It's called Zep bound. And this is one of the symptoms that you can use with your doctor in order to get qualified to get a GLP1. So we've got a lot of new interesting things happening. Oh, and this is really cool. In about 18 months, there's gonna be a pill, of course. Right. But think about. Think about how many more people we can treat if we have a pill versus a hairdryer blowing up your nose all night long. Right. Like, the compliance is the. Is the biggest problem. And look, I get it. I got apnea. Like, I got a CPAP machine. I totally understand where people are coming from. So this is really what we're talking. What we're really seeing here is science is breaking through now, and I think it has a lot to do with AI. I think it has a lot to do with some of those things. But we're really going to start seeing more and more good things happen in medicine, specifically sleep medicine. I'm pretty excited about it, if you want to. Yeah, I am, too. I'm excited about the future in AI and everything out medicine and life and technology is improving. All that's the positive side of things. We can always. What's Tony Robbins say? What's wrong is always available, so is what is right, you know? All right, so if you're listening to this right now, first of all, I'm going to link all of Dr. Bruce's links in the show notes. I'm going to link all of his links in the show notes. How many times can I say link? Show notes? That's the description of this podcast episode you're listening to right now. I'm gonna make it super easy, so follow him, connect with him. There'll be a direct link to his website and the sleep test as well. I'm going to grab one. I know my good friend Jessica has grabbed one. I don't know if she's done it yet, but we'll use this episode to hold her accountable. Yeah. And you know what I'll do, Sebastian, is if you and her get sleep studies done, I'll come back and we can go over the study together with your audience if you want. Let's go. All right, I'm texting her after I sent her a screenshot right before we jumped on here. Oh, good. Let's go. So, yes, absolutely. That would be fantastic. So stay tuned for part two of that. So a couple things before we close out here that I want to talk about that or touch on, rather. That stuck in my mind. One being from the episode that I heard on Dire to CEO. The other one I had briefly asked you about during your Q and A. Random walking into your random Q and A on. On Summit first, being pillows. I know that was the last part of the episode where you went down into Stephen's bedroom, which sounded super awkward on a podcast. But. But pillows are very, very important. I think I may be up for a new pillow after this conversation on here. But pillows have a lot to do. In fact, my mom was. She's 79, very active, but, oh, my shoulder, my shoulder, my shoulder. And I sent her a occupational therapist. It's in one of my networking groups. She goes, I need one visit with mom and she'll be good to go. Went over there, did the cups, did some stretching, did this. She goes, and a new pillow as well. And it was one of those pillows that has a. Has a. It was. It's kind of like a. Like a. It looks like a. Like a. Like a ticket. Like a. Like a, you know, a raffle ticket almost, but it's got a hole in the middle, so. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that one. It's not for side sleepers, but it was funny. My mom's like, do I put my nose down? And I go, no, mom, you don't sleep face down on a pillow. But I say that to say this, pillows are very vital to good sleep. Let's talk about why. So, look, I think equipment matters, right? So I'm a runner, right? And when you're a runner and you go for a run, you can run in flip flops with the boombox on your arm, but your time's gonna suck, right? But if you've got your Asics on and your dry fit wear and some good tunes, you know, you can click off and you can, and it actually helps your performance. Sleep is exactly the same way. Okay, so what is the equipment? Pillows, mattress, sheets, comforter, temperature. Right? All the things that are in the environment, they matter. Nothing matters more than the pillow. Now, a lot of people would argue, oh, the mattress matters more, it's bigger. No, no, no, no, no. Trust me on this one. Because here's the thing is, number one, pillows wear out much quicker than mattresses do. You should be replacing your pillow about every 24 to 36 months. Unless it's a solid block memory foam pillow. Those have a tendency to last for about four years. Five years. But you should be replacing it because here's what happens is let's say you're a side sleeper. If you don't have a pillow that makes up for this space between the outside of my shoulder and my ear, my head is going to drop, which is going to cause tension in my neck. And that sends a signal to my brain that there's tension in my neck. It doesn't allow me to get into deep sleep if there's tension in my neck. Right. And so what we want is we want our nose to be basically in line with our sternum, right. Whether we're a side sleeper or a back sleeper. And if you're a back sleeper, your pillow would be much flatter, right? Because if you, if you had that big one for the side sleeper, push your chin all the way into your chest, you'd barely be able to breathe, right? So fit the pillow for your starting sleep. Position is number one, number two, squishy or firm. Which one do you prefer? Right. And now get yourself right in the right spot. Me personally, and I don't have any affiliation with this company, I like this pillow called Coop. Coop. This is a company that has done a great job. I personally use their pillows and they may end up working with us because I like them so much, but we don't have a deal with them yet. But I'm just letting everybody know that this is a really good company and there's a couple of reasons why. So as an example, with the pillow that I like for them, there's a zipper on the side where I can pull stuffing out or put more stuffing in. So you can actually customize or self adjust your pillow. That turns out to be such an important feature. Like, if only feature you get on your pillow is that it happens to have a zipper on it, you're in great shape because you can really do a lot with that. The other thing is they have some with unique shapes. Like there's one that's like a half moon shape. I really like that. Or something with a gusset. So when two pieces of fabric come together and you sew them together like on the seam of a pillowcase, right. That's called a knife edge where two pieces come together. But if they came together where there was a piece of cloth in between the two of them, that's called a gusset. When they do that, we get much more of the stuffing towards the end, which means we have more support towards the neck, right. And so believe it or not, the head weighs about eight pounds and if you keep putting it on the same, you know, fluffy stuff forever and ever, that kind of, that structural integrity begins to degrade. So I oftentimes tell people, look at the fill you want to look at for something like maybe a shredded latex would work really well if you're a hot sleeper. Shredded memory foam is terrible, but shredded latex will go well. Also they make synthetic downs as well. But you want to avoid overstuffed pillows and get them that are just the right height for you. And again, if you can pull stuffing in or out, that's the best. I love it. All right, cool. So we'll link up Coop. Shout out to Coop. Good pillows on there. Are there any pillows that are on Amazon that people could be like, I'm listening to this right now. I can pull up Amazon and buy a pillow. So I believe that Coop sells on Amazon, so you should be able to find that pretty easily there. Also, one thing I would tell people that we hadn't mentioned about pillows that is kind of a trick is I love putting a pillow between my knees. I'm a side sleeper. And so people should realize that you, if you put a pillow between your knees, what you're doing is you're preventing your hips from crunching in and causing low back pain. So as an example for some people who tell me, oh, I've got low back pain, I say, hey, try putting a pillow between your legs. You might be surprised. It actually can be quite helpful. So some people will have more than one pillow. If I'm honest with you, dude, I've got like four pillows on my bed. I'm like Frickin MacGyver with my pillows, right? Like I've got, I got one because I'm a side sleeper, but, but I think I'm a superman. I like to extend my arms. Some people are like the sold, unlike the Superman. So like I can't have a pillow that's too thick here because then it'll jack my head one way. But then my hand, I've got to lay it on a pillow. Then I put a pillow over my head because the dog is, you know, you get it? Yeah, whatever works. They also have those like pillow blocks you can put between your, your, your knees as well too, right? Oh yeah, I like those. And some of them will actually put a little velcro strap. So that way the big thing that I hate is when I put a pillow between my legs. But then I turn, I have to refit the pillow, you know, in the middle of the night. It's kind of a pain in the ass. But I found this one pillow that's got a velcro strap so it attaches to your. I mean, dude, I, I look like the tin cup guy, you know, when he walked out of the, the Winnebago with all the stuff all over him. Like some might, you know, you never know. What is it about the other side of the pillow that's chilly that just is so refreshing? And I can go, I don't know what it, I mean, that's number one. It's a great saying. I'm cooler than the other side of the pillow. But why have you, have you, is there any research behind that? So remember, we lose most of our heat through our head and through our feet. And so our heat have a. Our heads have a tendency to have a lot of heat them and so anything that helps us dissipate is going to be better. So we will, depending upon the material of the pillow itself and what it's made from, it can retain heat or it can express heat. And we obviously want it to express heat. You bring up an important point though, one that we hadn't mentioned yet, which is they now make thermo regulatory sleep gadgets that you can actually put in your bed. So as an example, there are toppers that you sleep on top of that have a tube that go through them and can run either hot water or cool water through them. So full disclosure, I work with a company called Orion Sleep and we make one of these toppers. They're awesome for menopausal women, like for women who are having hot flashes in the middle of the night or things like that. So if you've got, if any audience members out there have got partners that have got that, or you yourselves are a hot sleeper, this is definitely something that I personally have found. I use one myself. And I'm going to be honest with you, it was a game changer for me. And a lot of my patients really find that this ability to cool themselves lower while they are sleeping keeps them in a deeper stage a bit longer and they wake up feeling significantly better. So there's something to the cooling of it all. And the nice part is, is you don't need a doctor's prescription for it. You can go out and you can buy, I mean there are several companies that make these devices, but you can go out and buy them and without a prescription. Orion, you said the name is the name of the company Orion, like the constellation. So, so you said there's water running through how. In the. How's the water getting there. So there's a. There's actually a water pump that sits beside your bed and that you load it in there. It's actually aesthetically like, I was like, oh, do I really want a water pump in my. In my bedroom? Yeah, but it's really beautiful. Like, my wife looked at and she's like, actually it matches with the, you know, so who knows? The decor. It was. I said that the same thing too. I ordered a steam room on Amazon. It's my favorite appliance that I have in the house. Absolutely the best seven bucks I've spent. I'm in that thing every single day. I mean, so I don't know how much. I don't know how sleep as steam rooms are correlated with. So we can talk about steam and sleep because there's a little bit of data to show that if you slightly elevate core body temperature about 90 minutes before bed. So, Sebastian, as an example, if you took a steam about an hour and a half to

two hours before lights out for you. So let's say lights out is 10: 40:01

30. If

you took a steam at like 8, from 8 to like 8: 40:05

20, I bet you'd sleep better. I bet I would, too. Yeah. Think about it. It's almost like, what are your routine? Going. Going for a night swim. We were kids. You just slept so good that night. Oh, absolutely. One thing I forgot to talk about. And then we'll get to the last things I want to chat about. A lot of people like to get up in the middle of the night, grab a glass of water, and use the bathroom. You are str. You strongly oppose that. And there's a reasoning behind it. Let's talk about it. So, number one, don't go pee. Now, look, I'm gonna be honest with you. If you have to pee, please go pee. But here's the issue is you need three separate bodily functions to go in a downward motion for you to fall asleep. You need anxiety to go down, you need heart rate to go down, and you need temperature to go down. Those three things, once they reach very particular points. That's when your body can enter into a state of unconsciousness. But if it's above those thresholds, you don't. Right? So guess what happens when you get up and walk across the room to go pee. Your heart rate increases, your core body temperature increases. And if you grabbed your phone and looked at your phone while you were going to do this, you instantly do the

mental math, and now you're pissed off, right? It's 3: 41:18

30 in the morning. I wake up at this time every single night. This is pissing me off. I get back into bed, Sleep, sleep, sleep. You try to force yourself to sleep, dude. In the history of time, nobody has ever forced themselves to sleep without something called anesthesia. Okay. Like, it just doesn't work that way, right? Your, your heart rate is going in the opposite direction of the direction that you want it to go in. So the reason I tell people not to go to the restroom is because most of the time people don't actually have to go stop fluids about an hour and a half before bed. Make sure you void before you go to sleep. You might be surprised at how you don't actually need to go. But a lot of people, they say, I'm up, I might as well go pee. And so my theory is, no, if you don't actually have to go to the bathroom, lie there, relax. And here's my favorite tip, is to do something called 4, 7, 8 breathing. This is a unique breathing technique. I did not develop it. Dr. Andrew Wilde, Harvard trained naturalist, super smart guy, came up with this, believe it or not, for the Navy SEALs. And it's a slow breath in through the nose for a count of four, hold for a count of seven, and then lightly push out for a count of eight. Now let me explain briefly what all this does. So this actually turns on something called your parasympathetic nervous system. This is the rest and digest part of your nervous system, that exhalation. So slow breath in. Right. Again, must be slow. Hold. Let the carbon dioxide build up in your system, then push all of that out. Now, when you breathe in, you have much cleaner, bigger air coming through and you're breathing significantly better, which lowers your heart rate. When you extend the lung and you use the entire lung, your heart rate drops by almost 50%. And so that's where we start moving in the direction of getting to that heart rate of 60 or below to enter into a state of consciousness. You know, I have to laugh when you, when you talk about that. And I think back on mouth tape. Do you have any idea what a, it is to do that breathing technique with mouth tape on? Sometimes I do. And I always think, if Dr. Bruce could only see me now attempting to do what's actually, actually going to put me back to sleep. But yeah, that's really funny. Even with the facial hair, you do mouth tape. That's impressive. Yeah, I could do it. Yeah, it, it wasn't, it didn't take getting used to. Of course. I, I Don't know what it was that was. I think it was the teeth grinding. But after my braces, that might have gone away too. I don't know. Because if you can create more space in the roof of your mouth, that helps out with this whole process. From what I. From some, from what I've heard. So, sleep test. We're going to figure it all out and we're going to get you back on. We're going to evaluate this thing on your. Okay. Very popular supplement talked about these days is magnesium. I learned a lot about magnesium. And I learned there's not just one magnesium either. From when I first heard you talk on here, let's talk about magnesium. What it does for the body, what it does for sleep, and what people need to be utilizing and leveraging when it comes to magnesium. Because I completely did not read about the right dosage and I was magnesiumed out for a couple days. I may have OD'd on magnesium. The good news is, is you can't be on magnesium, thankfully, although you will get tremendous diarrhea. That's a whole nother story. We can talk diarrhea and you wake up feeling like you're walking through wet cement. Yeah. You feel like crap, right? So let's back up for half a second. Let's talk about magnesium. So number one, most Americans are actually deficient in magnesium these days. So it turns out that our soil has been what's called over tilled, meaning that the, the minerals have actually been pulled out so many times that there's nothing left to come up through the root stalks. You could eat a freaking bushel of kale and still not get enough magnesium. So I'm out there to tell you most people need magnesium. Okay? That's number one. Number two, there are 13 different types of magnesium. I didn't even realize there were 13 different types of magnesium. Still, I got into this business to start to understand it. But we do know that if you have a magnesium deficiency, you have a far greater likelihood of having arousals throughout the evening and much lighter quality sleep. Right. And if you already have insomnia on top of a magnesium deficiency, you're really in trouble because it makes the insomnia significantly worse. Okay? So I think I've made the case that magnesium is probably a good idea here right now. Which one of the 13 should you go for? So, full disclosure, I ran a double blind, placebo controlled study on something called upgraded formulas magnesium. Okay. And this is. A guy came up to me, paid me 75 grand to run a trial for him. And I. I'm going to be honest with you, I thought it was going to be total bs. I thought we weren't going to get anything. This magnesium, it's unbelievable. It has an absorption rate that's significantly higher than most others. And it really seems to have a large effect on deep sleep, which really, for folks out there to remember, deep sleep is that physical restoration. So as we feel older, our deep sleep has a tendency to subside. Magnesium supplementation is one of those things that I think can be helpful. And this particular brand of magnesium is the one that I tested and is the one that I personally take and I give to my kids and to my wife and to my patients. So upgraded formulas, magnesium. I personally. We were talking earlier, I take my magnesium in the morning time because I'm one of those people where I can't remember to take pills but once a day. So I take half of the normal dose in the morning time and that seems to work out just fine for me. Some people will split the dose, have half in the morning and half at night. But be careful when you take your first couple of doses of magnesium, because that's what Sebastian and I, we were talking about is sometimes, you know, just based on body size and amount and things like that, you could end up with more magnesium than you need. And that can cause things like you really feeling low key the next day, diarrhea in the evening, loose stool, things like that. Yeah, I thankfully didn't have the latter part, but I definitely felt like I was. Yeah, like I hadn't slept at all. Like I slept. According to my aura ring, I've slept eight hours, which is great information, by the way. And it also told me my chronotype. Did I say that right? Yes, you did. You did. So aura is, I think, probably the best out there in terms of trackers. But remember, trackers are not diagnostic. So when we talked about sleep tests earlier, it would be almost impossible for you to diagnose sleep apnea with an OURA ring as an example or an Apple watch or things like that yet. However, 18, 24 months from now wouldn't shock me at all if you and I are having a conversation again. And I'm saying, hey, dude, you check out this new tracker and see what it does. And so I think we're going to get there, but I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think we're there yet. Cool. Well, stay tuned, everybody. Yeah, pun intended here on a podcast. All right, last, last thing, as we close Things out here. Cannabis. I briefly talked to ask you about this on the cruise ship, but I'd had a few tequilas, so I forgot what your answer specifically was. The one thing that did stick was that there is no such thing as indica and sativa anymore. In your opinion on here. I had heard, and the reason I asked that question was because I had heard that cannabis does in fact affect your sleep. REM sleep, specifically. Let's talk about that. For those that like to get into the little wacky tobacco before they go to bed. Absolutely. So there's lots and lots of people out there who use cannabis to help them maybe take the edge off, relax a little bit before bed, de stress, things like that. Right. So, so the question becomes, is this an appropriate sleep aid? How often should I do it, and what is it actually doing to my sleep? Right. So within cannabis. So I've written more about cannabis than almost any other sleep doctor in the country. I am a fan. I use it. So I live in California. It's recreationally legal here, so I'm not doing anything wrong. But at the same time, we want to be thoughtful about how we use this. There's a difference between recreational use of cannabis and medicinal use of cannabis. Right. So when you go to the dispensary and if you're purchasing a product to help you with sleep, the big constituent that you want in there is cbn, as in nighttime. Okay. That is part of the cannabis plant. It's actually oxidized thc. It's old weed, basically. But that's one of those things that can definitely help lower your arousal threshold and help you fall asleep. However, Sebastian, you are 100% correct in that THC increases your heart rate and lowers your REM sleep. So you don't want to get wildly high before bed. That is not the object of the game here. Right. So what you're looking at is probably like 3-5mg of THC, then more like a CBD CBN combination with it all wrapped in a gummy. Right. That's kind of what you're looking for there. Now, if I had to, like, create my own perfect CBD blend. If you were. I think it would probably lean a little bit more on the indigo side. But like we were talking before, almost every cannabis brand now is a hybrid because of the way that they've all been produced for such long periods of time. So it's. It's going to be hard to find something that's going to have those indigo qualities to it in. In just that versus, you know, a hybrid that's going to have a little bit of sativa content to it, which might make you feel a little up or a little, you know, sideways. Yeah. So generally speaking, I don't have a problem with cannabis, but I want to be clear, if you have to smoke every night before you go to sleep, you have a big problem on your hands. You need to think through that idea. Yeah, that's great advice. I read something not too long ago a few weeks ago, about a 5 to 1 ratio did have THC, and I want to say it was CBN, but there are no psychoactive effects, meaning you're not going to get stoned from those gummies. And they're specifically designed from an indica, plant environment, whatever you want to call a plant. Right. Specifically designed to interact with your brain for sleep. You know anything about that? Well, so here's what I can tell you is there is some new research that's been going on. There are a couple of people out there who've got decent labs that are trying to do this. We haven't had a breakthrough yet. Are we close? I definitely think so. Like, I mean, I know there's people I like. I have friends here in California who are doing significant, like, hardcore cannabis research, like really smart guys who are working with pharma and things like that. So will we get there? I think we will, but I just don't think we're there yet. Y Dr. Bruce, thoroughly enjoyed our conversation here. Friends, you listen into this. It is is both of our hopes that you learned something that you didn't know, that you didn't know, which I'm absolutely positive happened, and that you're going to improve your quality of sleep. Start implementing these strategies. Dr. Bruce is the best in the biz when it comes to helping you catch those Z's, so make sure you check him out. All of his links are going to be in the show notes, which of course is the description of this podcast episode. I appreciate your time, Dr. Bruce. I loved hanging out with you. I look forward to having another conversation after I get this sleep test going here. I'm going to definitely take you up on that offer. Any final thoughts for our listeners? Well, I think the one thing for people to remember is sleep is flexible. Right? So you're not doing it wrong. You can probably do it a little bit better. Remember the five step plan from the beginning of our pod, and if you can't remember it, rewind, go back and listen to it again. Every step in it is free and every Step in. It works. Sebastian really wants you to gain the knowledge to be able to change your life. That was part of the discussion that we had before the pod even started was let's have really good practical information on here. So I think that is number one. Number two is don't take sleep too seriously. Okay? So many people freak themselves out over their sleep. Here's the good news. You get to practice every night. It's literally the only thing you get to do every single day. You get to practice every night. You'll get better. You'll get better. You get better. Some nights are good, some nights are not so good. Relax. Sleep is flexible. I promise you you're going to be okay. If it is bad, talk to a sleep doctor. There are a lot of us out there. If you can't find one, reach out on my website. We'll find somebody local in your area. Love it. Great. Final thoughts. Thanks again, Dr. Bruce. I'm almost confident I don't want to speak for all of our listeners and our audience, but I'm pretty sure this episode did not put you to sleep. I hope not. But I do want to wake everyone up. At least it better tonight after you listen to the episode right before bed. And you're like perfect timing on here. Let me grab the magnesium and go to the bathroom before I go to bed. Thanks again for your time, Dr. Bruce. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. And I just want to wish everybody sweet dreams. That's a great way to end an episode. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and we sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast launch lab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.