Here's the problem with magnesium

supplementation when it comes to sleep.

The first thing to note is that most

forms of magnesium don't cross the brain

barrier and sleep is produced by your

brain. So, how can something that

doesn't get into your brain affect brain

process? All you're doing is creating

probably expensive urine.

However, there is one form of magnesium

that seems to have some evidence in

favor of it which we can speak about.

But it doesn't stop there. There's so

much new evidence that we have including

this myth of 8 hours. my fear about

giving melatonin to kids. Why you keep

waking up in the middle of the night and

the invention of the first new class of

sleeping medication that I actually

favor and most people are not aware of

it.

>> Okay, let me write this down.

>> Matthew Walker is back and the

worldrenowned sleep expert and

neuroscience professor

>> is sharing brand new research to combat

the sleep loss epidemic and help you get

the perfect night's sleep. So society,

we have struggles with sleep at night

due to many reasons, but no one teaches

us this stuff. And it's things like say

you go to bed at 11:00 one night, 1:00

a.m. the next night, then 10:30 p.m. the

next night. And it's remarkable how many

people do this, but studies have shown

that you are statistically 49% more

likely to prematurely die versus those

people who were most regular in terms of

going to bed and waking up at the same

time. And worse, they had a 57%

cardioabolic disease risk increase.

>> What the

>> science really teaches us that there are

four pillars of good sleep. And then

there's this incredible new study

looking at sleep banking. And this is

remarkable for people who are facing a

sprint at work or a medical doctor about

to go on call for the next 40 hours, new

parent. And we can go through all of

that. But if you were to push me to say

the three most impactful things that you

can start doing tonight to start

sleeping better, it would be

I see messages all the time in the

comments section that some of you didn't

realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you

could do me a favor and double check if

you're a subscriber to this channel,

that would be tremendously appreciated.

It's the simple, it's the free thing

that anybody that watches this show

frequently can do to help us here to

keep everything going in this show in

the trajectory it's on. So, please do

double check if you've subscribed and uh

thank you so much because in a strange

way, you are you're part of our history

and you're on this journey with us and I

appreciate you for that. So yeah, thank

you

Dr. Matthew Walker. Here in front of me,

I have these cards which I'm going to

reveal a bit later, but these kind of

hold what you consider to be the four

pillars of great sleep. But you also

spend much of your professional career

just studying the brain generally to

understand human performance and how we

can change our lifestyles and also

introduce some of these new sort of

treatments to improve how our brain

performs. And I want to talk about all

of that as well, but to start for anyone

that is unfamiliar with you and has been

hiding under a rock,

how do you summarize who you are

professionally,

the sort of academic references you're

drawing on, and the experiences and

research you've done so that the viewer

listening at home understands the full

world that you operate in, study, and

have experienced.

>> I am a neuroscientist by trade, but my

specialty is sleep. the effects of sleep

on the brain and the body. And I've

probably spent about the past two

decades trying to understand exactly why

do we sleep? Because 50 years ago, the

crass answer to the question, why do you

sleep was the following? You sleep to

cure sleepiness,

which is the factous equivalent of

saying, well, you eat to cure hunger.

No, you don't eat to cure cure hunger.

you eat to support all sorts of

physiological and biological benefits.

But now, and this is not due to my

research, is this all of the incredible

colleagues whose sort of shoulders that

I stand on, we've now had to upend the

question. We now have to ask, is there

any major physiological system in your

body or is there any operation of your

mind that isn't wonderfully enhanced by

sleep when you get it or demonstrabably

impaired when you don't get enough? And

the answer now seems to be no. There is

no such system. Even down to the level

of your DNA,

your sleep and how you are sleeping or

not sleeping will change the very DNA

nucleic alphabet that spells out your

daily health narrative. And we can see

it all the way up to society. Sleep can

change the fabric of society, can change

how we interact with other people. It

can change our belief systems. can

change how lonely or sort of hypersocial

we are. So to your question, I'm a sleep

scientist by trade and I suppose my

mission has been trying to reunite

humanity with the sleep that it seems to

be so bereft of.

>> We had a fantastic conversation last

time and my audience valued it

tremendously. I know that cuz we we

often survey our audience and we we get

to see some of the the backend stats and

this conversation about sleep is

particularly personal to everybody

listening because when we surveyed our

audience ahead of this conversation

today about 75 or 80% of the direio

audience struggle with sleep for a

variety of different reasons. So we

actually asked them a thousand of them

their questions to ask you today. But

also the other reason I really wanted to

chat to you is the science of sleep I

mean as is the way of science is always

evolving. We're learning new things and

even since we spoke last time, there is

new sleep science which we're going to

talk about today and one of those

particular things we're going to talk

about is going to be demonstrated using

this jar because I always want to know

what the updated sleep science is so

that I can be a better sleeper because I

agree with everything you've said about

how foundational sleep is in my life.

>> And um I didn't know this at the start

of my career. I didn't know this even a

couple of years ago, five years ago. I

didn't know. I thought sleep was one of

those things you could just take it all

or leave.

>> Yeah. I mean, and it's not your fault in

so many ways because if you didn't know

what I know, you would just think, well,

when I sleep, my body is dormant and my

mind for the most part is blank. So, is

it so catastrophic to lose, you know, an

hour or two of sleep? And you know, you

have to then think about from an

evolutionary perspective, it is such an

idiotic idea to sleep because when

you're sleeping, you're not finding a

mate, you're not reproducing, you're not

caring for your young, you're not

foraging for food, and worst of all,

you're vulnerable to predation.

>> So on any one of those grounds, and

especially all of them as a collective,

sleep should have been strongly selected

against in the course of evolution.

And my point is that, and it's often

been said that if sleep doesn't serve an

absolutely vital set of functions

plural, then it's the biggest mistake

the evolutionary process has ever made.

And we now realize it didn't make a

spectacular blunder. But really, I guess

to the point of it is sleep is not a

passive state. It's an incredibly active

state both in the terms of the brain and

the body. And so you should not feel

sort of you know remiss or ashamed that

you didn't value the importance of sleep

because firstly as a subjective sense

you just think well my mind was offline

for a while. Second we also know that we

don't teach the importance of sleep in

education and doctors themselves you

know there's a great study and they what

they found was that medical doctors

across I think it was about 11 different

curricula around the world they will

only receive about 1.2 two hours of

education on sleep, but it's a third of

their patients lives. So there's a

collection of sort of almost perfect

storms that have happened to keep

society ignorant of the importance and

the value of sleep. I think that's why

we often so short change it together

with also something terrible which is

stigma.

that people are so proud to say, well,

I've been eating really healthy the past

couple of months, or, you know, I've

been going to the gym, you know, three

times a week consistently for the past

year. No one is ever going out into

society and saying, you know, I I've

been getting 8 and 1/2 hours of sleep

consistently every night. Because if you

did, people would say, really? And

there's a there's a slight edge to the

really which is that if you have time to

sleep then you must not be busy and if

you're not busy you must not be

important.

So can you do me a favor and for the

listener at home can you tell me what

the different groups of people that are

listening to this conversation right now

are seeking from the extreme end being

sleep apnnea. I get no sleep. I'm an

insomniac to the other end where maybe

they're looking for marginal performance

gains. Like what are the what are the

cohorts of people you see and the

reasons why they're so interested in

your work? They listen to your podcast,

they read your books. What are the

cohorts?

>> Firstly, we have the collection of

people who have insomnia. Those people

who have other sleep disorders like

sleep apnoa which we can speak about.

There's another disorder called restless

leg syndrome. It's a terrible disorder

where your legs start to feel as though

they've got this sort of creepy crawly

feeling and you've constantly got to

massage them and move them. It's a

terrible disruptor of your sleep. All of

these disorders are marketkedly

undiagnosed, by the way. And then you've

got another collection of individuals

who they don't have any sleep disorders,

but they are either doing things that

will dismantle their sleep. So, either

they're taking on things into themselves

like alcohol, caffeine, THC that aren't

the sleep helpers, even though sometimes

they think they are. And then you've got

perhaps the internal things that will

prevent you from sleeping well. Things

like stress and anxiety. And then you've

also just got life itself that can get

in the way. And then moving from the

sleep disorders realm to the I don't

have a sleep disorder, but I'm probably

not doing it right quote unquote when it

comes to sleep. Then you've got the

people who are obsessed about getting it

right and they are the bio optimizers.

this sort of the you know the biohackers

and then you've also got I work with a

lot of high performance individuals who

are really trying to just scratch out

those last couple of percentages either

if it's in business or often we're

working with professional athletes.

These are the people for whom two or

three percentage point changes can be

tens of millions of dollars or they can

be the difference between standing on a

podium at the Olympics or not. And so

there's there's a broad collection of

wonderful characters.

>> And since we last spoke, is there now a

lot of new sleep science and

understanding as it relates to sleep

performance and these three categories

of sleep deficient sleep disorders,

lifestyle factors and then the

optimizers.

>> Yeah, I think there's there's a broad

collection of new evidence that we have.

But maybe let me come on to the middle

group. You know, I used to say that for

people who were deficient in their

sleep, that sleep wasn't like the bank,

that you can't accumulate a debt. Oh,

here we go. Okay. So, what we can see

here is that the jar used to be full,

full of sleep credit when you're

sleeping well. And then during the week,

I'm short sleeping. So, maybe I'm only

getting five hours a night. So, I'm

constantly going into debt. So, I'm

losing all of this wonderful sleep

credit and my system is building up this

collateral debt. And then we used to

think that sleep was not like the bank.

That once you've gone into debt,

unfortunately,

the lid is closed and even at the

weekend, if you try to pay it back, you

can't put back credit into the system.

However, there was a study published

from what's called the UK Bioank, which

is this incredible data set. It's

revolutionary. And they studied in this

particular research uh paper over 90,000

individuals. And what they did was they

essentially split them down into those

individuals who were short sleeping

during the week and then short sleeping

at the weekend. And they compared them

to those individuals who were short

sleeping during the week, but then long

sleeping at the weekend. They were doing

catch-up sleep.

>> That's me.

>> And that's so many individuals. It turns

out if you look at the data, it's it's

remarkable how many people do this this

catch-up sleep behavior. But what was

amazing is that in the people who were

short sleeping during the week but long

sleeping at the weekend, they had a 20%

reduced cardiovascular disease risk

relative to the people who were short

sleeping during the week but also short

sleeping at the weekend. Now, to be

clear, both of those groups had a higher

cardiovascular disease risk than people

who were sleeping sufficiently during

the week and sleeping sufficiently

during the weekend. So, I'm not saying

that it's a completely free lunch. But

for the first time, we realized that at

least one system, major organ system in

your body is like the bank, which is

that if your heart at the weekend

you can

just keep putting credit back and your

system doesn't suffer as much

>> for your heart.

>> For your heart.

>> Okay.

>> But again, many of the other major

physiological systems don't show that.

So work by people like Kenneth Wright at

the University of Boulder, Colorado,

he's shown that your immune system

doesn't rebound after long sleep at the

weekend, your regulation of blood sugar,

your cognitive ability. So that's one

way in which I've changed my mind

regarding sleep in the bank. But there's

a very different new set of data that

has changed my mind completely about

this idea of sleep and the bank. Now

what we've just discussed here is to say

I went into debt and then I was hoping

to try and pay it off with credit at the

weekend.

>> So the jar represents the debt that you

have the sleep.

>> Correct. Yeah. And what I'm trying to do

is force more coinage

in at the weekend to see if I can offset

the debt that I created and get back to

net net neutral by the end of the

weekend. Now, it turns out you can't do

that even if you sleep for as long as

you want. But here's this new remarkable

data. It came from um Walter Reed

Medical Army Institute, a researcher

called Thomas Balkan. And what he was

interested in was flipping the direction

of the question. Not if I go into debt,

can I pay back with credit, but what if

I know in future I'm going to face a

debt, an upcoming debt, can I do sleep

banking?

>> Oh, so if I've got a big thing coming up

where I'm traveling across the world and

I know I'm going to be sleep deficient,

can I sleep a lot before it to create a

What would the financial analogy be? The

financial analogy would be, let's say

that we're coming up to Christmas.

>> Yeah.

>> And you're going to spend lots on, you

know, presents and all sorts of stuff.

So, I know that in October and November,

I'm going to tighten my financial belt.

>> I see.

>> So that when I go into the sort of

Christmas period and I'm spending a lot

more money, my bank account isn't hit as

hard. I don't go into as much of a sort

of a debt situation because I've built

up credit. So you can create sleep

savings.

>> Correct. It's a sleepsaving system. So

essentially, you know, what he was able

to do, not just put the jar to full, but

he was actually packing in even more

so that you almost got this wonderful

overflow of sleep.

>> How did he know?

>> He didn't. It was the experimental

hypothesis.

>> And but how did they prove it?

>> So what they did is that they woke you

up to a period when you're going to have

two or three nights of either no sleep

or marketked sleep reduction. And in the

week beforehand with these army

cadetses, instead of being limited to 8

hours of time in bed, they were able to

get 10 hours of time in bed and they

could sleep all that they want. And so

they went from probably an average of

about 7 7 and 1/2 hours of sleep to

about 8 and 1/2 almost 9 hours of sleep.

So they were extending their sleep

duration

and so that they had built up this

buffer. It's almost like a sort of a a

sleep safety net that's in place so that

when you go into the tumble of sleep

deprivation,

you're sort of almost bolstered and

you're lifted higher and therefore your

degree of impermanment that you suffer

under conditions of sleep deprivation is

significantly less if you banked sleep

beforehand versus those people who were

just sleeping normally and then faced

the deprivation. they went down much

further in terms of their cognitive and

mental performance.

>> So he gave them challenges and tasks to

do correct in two different groups. One

group had sleep savings saved up from

sleeping well the previous week. One

group didn't.

>> That's right.

>> And they performed remarkably different.

>> So both of them were impaired relative

to a sleep rested person. However, the

people it's sort of you know how how

much of a drop

>> in your cognitive performance do you

suffer? And what he found was that

people who had built up this credit,

this savings account of sleep in the

days, in the week beforehand, they

suffered about 40% less of an impairment

relative to the people who had not

created any savings plan. Now, they

weren't in debt. They were just net

neutral.

>> But boy, did they drop quickly. Whereas

those people who'd had some cash in the

sleep credit system, they didn't fall

anywhere near as far. But this is

remarkable for people like you were

saying who are facing, let's say, if

I've got a sprint at work or I'm a

medical doctor, I know I'm about to go

on call for the next 40 hours. You're a

military, aviation, all of the new

parents. All of these circumstances are

places where now we know athletes is a

great example. When we work with a

athletes, people like Michael Grner have

demonstrated that athletes sleep

terribly typically the night before a

huge performance. No matter, you know,

of course, they're nerves.

>> But what you can do is you can have them

bank sleep in the days before when

they're not as nervous and therefore

their performance doesn't suffer as much

even though they know they're going to

be deprived.

>> Sleep is so important, isn't it? And I

think everybody now knows that because

of people like yourself or really, you

know, you were the real pioneer in

pushing the subject into the world. I

remember when you first went on Joe

Rogan's show, the amount of my friends

that sent me that episode and then sent

me your book was just staggering. It was

like that was the catalyst moment, I

think, in society for the mainstream to

really start talking and caring about

sleep. However, there's still so many

people struggling um because of all the

factors that you talked about when we're

talking about group two who have those

lifestyle factors, the stress, the

psychological factors, the trauma, etc.,

etc.

What can we give them, those people, the

people that really really struggle,

maybe they haven't got a disorder. We'll

come to the people with sort of sleep

disorders later and we'll talk about

optimizers. But what what is the new

information or advice that we can give

them that will help them once and for

all sleep 8 hours a night and get their

life back?

>> If you were to push me to say what are

the three most

impactful things that you can start

doing tonight to start sleeping better,

it would be the following.

Digital detox.

>> Okay, let me write this down. Digital

detox. Okay, what does that mean?

>> 1 hour before bed,

try to limit

activating social media engagement,

email, and text messages that are going

to trigger you.

>> It's fine to listen to a podcast, you

know.

>> Thank God for that.

>> You heard it here, folks.

>> Right from that book.

>> But it's also good to like and

subscribe, would you say? I would say

that you know like and subscribe and

then just click here so that you get the

latest notification you get that bell

just click on the bell icon so that you

>> so it's not a problem of blue light a

quick aside we've been taught this myth

of the blue light effect

>> from devices and it really is a myth

because an incredible Australian

researcher a guy called Michael Gradazar

has almost singlehandedly

changed the the what I think of as being

the zeitgeist for a while after a very

influential paper which is a great paper

and what they showed was that 1 hour of

iPad reading before bed ended up

impairing your melatonin it disrupted

sleep it reduced the amount of dream

sleep and even after they stopped

reading the iPad the blast radius impact

on your dream sleep lasted a week it's

almost like the drug needed to get

washed out the system that even when you

you'd stop using technology for an hour

before bed the impact of that technology

ology even though you'd stopped using it

could still be seen in the echo of sleep

disruption for a week later. It was a

very influential study in a very

prestigious channel.

>> When was that a while ago?

>> That was probably about 10 years ago.

But then Michael Gretazar, this

incredible Australian researcher started

to say, well, I can't replicate these

findings.

And what he was discovering is that it's

not the blue light that's the problem.

Now, the blue light will change aspects

of your melatonin. And melatonin is a

hormone. It simply tells your brain and

your body when it's nighttime, when it's

time to fall asleep. It doesn't

participate in the generation of sleep.

Melatonin is like the starting official

at the 100 meter race. It brings all of

the races to the line and it begins the

timing of the race, but it doesn't

participate in the creation of the race

itself. That's a different set of

chemicals.

>> It doesn't make you go to sleep. It

doesn't make you and if you look at what

we call meta analyses where we gather

together all of the individual studies

on a topic and we put them in a big

statistical bucket. What they found is

that melatonin will only improve the

speed with which you fall asleep by

about um 3.4 minutes and it will only

increase the efficiency of your sleep by

about 2.2%. So not much more than

placebo. Um, so melatonin is it it's now

the placebo effect is the most reliable

effect in all of pharmarmacology. So you

know maybe no harm no foul I would say

and don't forget I will come back to the

three but when it comes to melatonin be

careful more isn't always better and you

run the risk of confusing your morning

brain into a dense nighttime fog. And

what I mean by that is

10 milligrams or 20 milligrams of

melatonin is what we call a supra

physiological dose, which again is just

a fancy medical term to say it's a size

of magnitude of melatonin that your body

would never naturally release. It's far

greater. So melatonin is the signal of

darkness. And normally by the morning

hours, our natural release of melatonin

has stopped and you're down to zero

levels again

>> in the morning.

>> In the morning. So, you wake up and your

body no longer has the signal of

melatonin saying it's night, it's night,

it's night. But if you've dosed yourself

with 10 milligs or 20 milligs of

melatonin, you run the risk of saying,

well, yes, I know it quote unquote

knocks me out. But the problem is in the

first, you know, 3 or 4 hours of the

waking morning, you're struggling

because you're in this fog of a hormonal

melatonin, a hormonal signal saying it's

still pitch black. No, it's not. It's

bright light outside, but your body is

fooled into thinking it's pitch black

because you've dosed yourself too high.

And no wonder you're reaching for two or

three cups of coffee in the morning. So,

what what dose of melatonin should I be

taking?

>> Somewhere between probably about 0.1 to

3 millig.

>> And do you advise melatonin for people?

>> Yes, in two conditions. The first or

circumstances I should say. The first is

when you're going through jet lag.

Wonderfully helpful. But timing is

critical. You need to create that sort

of that artificial signal of night

because let's say that you and I here in

Los Angeles, we're both going to fly

back to London tomorrow and London is 8

hours ahead. So, we fly overnight. We

arrive in London and then that first

night, let's say we decide to go to bed

uh or I decide to go to bed in the hotel

at midnight. The problem is here in Los

Angeles and my body clock, it's still

400 p.m. because London's 8 hours ahead.

So, my melatonin is not going to rise

for probably another 6 or 7 hours. So, I

need to artificially hijack my melatonin

system and tell my brain, "Oh, no, it's

not 400 p.m. It's instead it's

midnight." And so, there under

conditions of jet lag, very helpful. The

second is if you have a circadian rhythm

disorder. Let's say that you're someone

who has a an advanced circadian phase.

What that means is you're someone who

really can't get sleepy until 3 or 4 in

the morning and you would prefer to be

sleeping throughout most of the day. So

you you're almost nocturnal.

>> Is that a genetic disorder?

>> And yes, it's a genetic disorder in

part.

>> How many people have that? probably one

to two% of the population have a very

severe adv what we call an advanced

circadian phase disorder but their

melatonin can also be helpful because

once again their melatonin part of their

problem is that their melatonin is very

delayed so they don't get the signal of

oh it's night until maybe 4:00 in the

morning you and I we start to get our

signal of melatonin depending on our

chronotype by somewhere between about 9

10 or 11 p.m. they may be delayed by 5

hours. So if we can give them melatonin,

we can artificially try to fool their

brain into thinking it's actually

earlier in their biological rhythm. So

they sleep earlier and they're more in

sync with the rest of society.

>> How does someone know if they're that

type of person if they have that

disorder? Is there there's not a way to

test, is there?

>> Well, what we typically do is we will

bring you into a laboratory and we will

measure your innate level. So we will

shut out sort of all windows. All clock

faces are gone and we just let you run

your natural rhythm.

>> And they have the same rise and fall in

melatonin just like you and I do. Except

where it's doing that rise and fall of

melatonin on the 24-hour clock face is

radically different.

>> Okay?

>> For you and I, it's, you know, 910 p.m.

11:00 p.m. at night when we're starting

that melatonin crescendo.

>> For them, it's 4:00 in the morning. So,

we can measure it. It's not in their

minds. It's not their choice. It's a

biological edict.

>> Are you concerned that melatonin is

becoming more and more popular as a way

to solve lifestyle issues that have

caused sleep impairment? Because I'm

seeing loads of, you know, I'm an

investor, so I see lots of companies now

pitching me different products that have

melatonin in them as a sort of

day-to-day sleeping supplement.

>> I think I'm really torn. I've been on

both sides of this argument and I'm

cautious about it for two reasons. The

first is in pediatric populations here

in the United States.

>> Pediatric

>> Yeah. So the people's use of melatonin

in kids is increasing. So in pediatric

populations it's increasing

exponentially. And in fact, if you go

down the sort of the supermarket aisles

here in America, often if you go into

sort of the the health sort of food

section, there's this big purple

section. That's the melatonin section.

And a large proportion of that is there

dedicated to gummies for your children

with melatonin.

And there was a study that was published

about three years ago that showed here

in America over the past 10 years there

has been a 53%

increase in poisonous overdose

admissions to hospitals of melatonin in

the past 10 years. 503%

increase. So firstly, we've got to be a

bit careful. The second reason is that

melatonin is a bioactive hormone and

it's also involved in reproductive

development. And there studies done back

in the 1970s I think where they were

looking at juvenile male rats which is

to say male rats who are going through

adolescence

and they were dosing them with high

amounts of melatonin and what they found

is that that stunted the development of

the testes of the testicles and it

caused testicular atrophy. Now, these

were very high doses, but we've got to

be a little bit careful. We think we

say, "Well, melatonin is a natural

hormone, so anything natural is safe."

Melatonin overall in terms of its safety

profile is very safe. It's actually a

very good antioxidant.

But you've got to be careful because

things like for example testosterone

supplementation in males what we know is

that if you're injecting testosterone

after a while after maybe 18 months or

so the testicles themselves will stop

producing their own testosterone and

even if you stop the administration of

the exogenous testosterone the injection

the testes never return their function

of producing testosterone.

Now, we don't have any evidence yet that

that's the case that if you keep taking

melatonin at high dose, your body, the

fear would be shuts down its own natural

production of melatonin. I've seen no

evidence of that. In fact, I've seen

evidence the contrary that even after

about 6 months or even 12 months in

certain small cities, when you stop

melatonin, the production starts again

naturally. It seems fine. Problem is,

people haven't been taking melatonin for

just 12 months. They've been taking it

for years.

We've got no idea what happens after

years.

>> That was my hesitation when the first

time someone offered me melatonin is

from doing this podcast and speaking to

smart people like yourself, I've come to

learn this sort of principle that if you

start making something for your body in

terms of a hormone, if you start sort of

um consuming something externally like

testosterone, your body will say fine, I

don't need to do this. It will try and

return to that level of balance where

the quantities in your system are

maintained, which means it kind of

learns to shut down. And I always think

about the case of testosterone because

men know that if we start injecting

testosterone then we're going to have to

pretty much do it forever.

>> Yeah.

>> Um if we want those levels to be the

same.

>> Yeah. That's the worry is that there are

no free lunches in biology and usually

if you fight biology you typically lose.

>> There's always a tradeoff and some of my

friends often like talk to me about like

these miracle things or this thing or

take medafanol and everything will be

fine and da but what's the trade-off?

And I get most concerned when they say

there isn't one

>> cuz then I go we don't know it.

>> Yeah, you've got to be careful because

absence of evidence is not evidence of

absence.

>> Be very careful when you're doing that

deal with with your physiology. So to

come back to sort of the three things,

the first thing we were mentioning is

digital detox and don't worry about the

blue light. Worry about light in

general. I'll come on to that because

that's the second. But Michael Gratazar

as I was saying what he found is that

the blue light doesn't really disrupt

your sleep. It's a combination of first

these devices that we use are attention

capture devices and they are designed to

fleece you of your attention economy and

they do it ruthlessly well. They've

spent tens of millions of dollars

designing these products to do that. So

what happens is that these devices

become hugely activating and as a result

they essentially will be a mute button

on your sleepiness. So you could be

there, you get into bed, it's 11 p.m.

You think, I am so tired. I was falling

asleep on the the the couch watching

television and then you get into bed,

you start going onto social media and

then you start doom scrolling and then

you get into this what we call bed

rotting where you just sit there and now

you look at the clock and it's no longer

11 p.m. It's 1:00 a.m. and you've just

done sleep procrastination. Now it turns

out that it's yes that that these are

attentiongrabbing devices that will mute

your sleepiness, but you have to be of a

certain personality type. He found not

all of us are vulnerable to this sleep

disruption of devices. You have to be

someone who is perhaps neurotic, someone

who has high impulsivity or someone who

is perhaps high anxious. If you are of

any of those kinds, you should be really

careful about your use of technology in

the bedroom. Now, for me to, you know,

sit here and say, look, put your phone

in the car, in the garage, and that way,

you know, that's what I would love

because what we've learned to do in this

modern era is the first thing when you

wake up, what is it that you do?

>> No, no comment.

>> Lots of you.

>> You,

>> it's just you and I, Stephen. Um,

>> I grab my phone before my eyes are even

open. And what happens is this sort of

small tsunami of anxiety washes over you

because as soon as you unlock the phone,

it's everyone else's agenda for your day

but your own. And it's a terrible way to

wake up. Have you ever had the

experience where you've got to wake up

for an early morning flight? And it's a

critical flight. You know that that

night is not going to be a good night of

sleep. It's going to be a shallow kind

of sleep. It's what we call anticipatory

anxiety. You are anticipating an anxious

event in the morning. And studies have

shown that when we create this

anticipatory anxiety, the amount of deep

sleep that you have drops significantly.

You don't sleep as well. And therefore,

if we just do this little sort of

version, this lit version of the morning

flight, which is we know that when we go

to bed and we put our phone down, we

know that when we wake up every morning,

we're just going to open it up to that

hit of anxiety every morning. No wonder

our sleep can start to get shallow. Now,

I'm not going to sit here and say,

"Well, don't take your phone into the

bedroom because the genie is out the

bottle and no matter what I say, it's

not going back in anytime soon." And a

friend of mine, Michael Brander, has got

this beautiful uh framework where he

says you can take your phone into your

bedroom. It's fine.

But you can only use your phone

standing up.

>> What's his name?

>> Michael Grande. He's brilliant.

>> Mind his own business.

>> And and what happens is that you you're

there and you think after about seven or

eight minutes, I'm just I'm just going

to have a bit of a sit down here. as

soon as that phone goes away. So I would

say that digital detox is the first

friend that will really help your sleep.

The the second is regularity. And we'll

come on to regularity when we speak

about you know what really makes for

good sleep. If you were to only do one

thing, not three things, but just one

thing. Go to bed and wake up at the same

time. No matter whether it's the weekday

or the weekend, regularity is king.

>> Okay. So that's the third pillar. That's

correct. Regularity.

>> Okay. And then I have

the T for timing.

>> Correct.

>> Which we'll go through these. Um

quantity, which we've talked a little

bit about already, and quality.

>> Correct. So when I looked at the

science, for me, I created this

framework of the four macros of good

sleep. You've heard of the three macros

of food, macronutrients, fat, protein,

carbohydrate. To me, there are four

macros of good sleep. And it's QQQRT.

QQRT and it stands for quantity,

quality,

regularity,

and timing. And think of it less like

pillars, but the four legs of a chair.

And if any one of these becomes

unstable, the chair will topple over.

So, I'll probably start with the one

that people have heard me bang on about,

which is quantity. 7 to 9 hours. This

myth of 8 hours is nonsense. It's a

wonderful range. 7 to 9 hours. And what

we know is that using that sweet spot of

7 to 9 hours, when you get less than

that, the shorter your sleep, the

shorter your life.

>> Short sleep predicts all cause

mortality. Now, we say that there's the

minimum of 7 hours of sleep. And some

people have argued perhaps correctly

that look, if you look at these

mortality curves, there's not much of a

percentage difference between sleeping

six hours versus the seven that you're

telling me is minimum. So 6 hours is

just fine. So all of this nonsense and

rhetoric is is is silly from you. And I

think they've made a conflation

because

7 hours is the minimum amount of sleep

that you need to survive. Because the

way that we quantify what minimum is is

based on whether you die or you don't

prematurely,

the amount of sleep that you need to

survive is different than the amount of

sleep that you need to thrive. And

people will conflate the former with the

latter. So you've got to be careful when

people are sort of touting on social

media saying, "Well, no, but look, you

there's not much difference between my

sort of survival rate on 6 hours versus

7 hours." You may have a just as much of

a long life, but the quality of your

life will be very different. So that's

quantity 7 to n hours. And is that does

it change for parents, by the way?

Because I've met so many parents that

seem to be functioning better than me

and they've got four they're having like

four or five hours sleep. Did evolution

not give parents any leeway or anything

when they have kids that suddenly their

brain changes and now they can survive

with less sleep? The evidence doesn't

suggest that once you go through

parenthood, you get some magic sort of,

you know, immunity shot that makes you,

you know, resilient and not vulnerable

to a lack of sleep. And in some ways you

could argue because we used to, you

know, live as a collective tribe and we

would share duties at that point, you

know, mother nature doesn't really worry

too much about you now because you've

already procreated and you've passed on

your genetic code. So you are now the

the sort of the you know the not

particularly well you know cured for

individual through evolution. It's your

offspring gets

>> so it sacrifices you in a way. I mean

that's what we see in the animal

kingdom. Did you see that documentary

about the octopus?

>> Yeah, it it was just I mean I thought it

was beautiful documentary but um

>> the TLDDR for anyone that hasn't seen it

is once the octop and I'm going to

completely butcher this so please ignore

um once the octopus has given birth it

dies. Basically it doesn't move out of

that hole and it dies. Is that a rough?

>> Well, I don't know if if it dies, but

its level of of active life.

>> I searched, does the octopus die after

reproduction, and it says yes. Female

octopuses die after their eggs hatch.

After laying eggs, a female stops eating

and devotes all of her energy to

protecting and oxygenating them until

they hatch. Once they do, she dies

shortly after, a process called semiol

parity, meaning they reproduce only

once. This death is triggered by hormone

changes from the optic gland similar to

mamalian proterty glands. And males die

shortly after mating as well, usually

within a few months.

That is wild

>> in some ways. It's, you know, it's it's

tragic and it reminds me I'm so glad

that I'm not an octopus. But

but but coming back to it, so for there

doesn't seem to be some you know magic

cloak of invincibility that you put on

when you go through parenthood.

Certainly what we know is that the

number of individuals who can survive on

6 hours of sleep or less and show no

impairment in either their brain or

their body rounded to a whole number and

expressed as a percent of the population

is zero.

So quantity matters but it turns out

that we got it wrong in thinking that

was the only thing because then came

quality. So QQRT quality is defined in

sleep science as two things. The first

is something that your sleep tracker

will measure which is the continuity of

your sleep. Meaning do you sleep in one

or two nice long bouts throughout the

night? That's good quality of sleep,

nice continuous bouts versus your sort

of sleep is very fragmented by all of

these awakenings. That's very poor

quality of sleep. And the way that you

can measure it in your sleep tracker is

just by looking at the app. And there'll

be something called sleep efficiency.

Sleep efficiency is defined as the

following. Of the time that you're in

bed, what percent of that time is spent

asleep? And what we like to see is you

north of 85% or above. So, this is kind

of like the users's guide to sleep

trackers. What I want to see is 85% or

more. If you're less than that, we need

to have a conversation. That's number

one, good quality of sleep. The second,

which is what sort of what these

trackers can't really do, but I can do

in the sleep laboratory when you look

like a spaghetti monster cuz I put

electrodes all over your head. I can

measure the quality of your big, deep,

slow brain waves of deep non-REM sleep.

And that is a second measure. The power

of those big slow brain waves. That's a

second measure. And quality seems to be

as predictive as quantity in making a

difference not just to your all cause

mortality but quality even more than

quantity when it comes to mental health

has been showing the bigger signal. So

again it's not that quantity doesn't

matter. You do have to get sufficient

amounts of sleep but quality as much as

quantity should be paid attention to and

I haven't said that enough.

>> Mhm.

>> The next is where we came to in our sort

of three things that I was saying. The

first is digital detox. Then next thing

I said is regularity.

This is somewhere where I've also

changed my mind on. I've doubled down on

regularity. There was a study that also

came out of that same data set that I

described. It's called the UK Bioank

data. And now they didn't look at 90,000

individuals, but they looked at 60,000

individuals. And they decided that they

were going to compare and split them

into quartiles. So the most regular to

the second most regular to then sort of

the third most regular and then the

final quartile was those who were the

least regular.

>> And what does regular mean in this

context?

>> Good question. highly regular

individuals plus or minus 15 minutes in

terms of going to bed and waking up at

the same time. In other words, a total

wiggle room of 30 minutes.

>> Oh, okay. So, if I'm always going to bed

at 9:00 p.m. and I do that 5 days in a

row, I'm regular timing really.

>> So, so it's it's regularity in terms of

when you're going to bed and waking up.

>> So, it you're right, it's timing in a

way, but I'll come on to why there is a

separate t for timing in just a second.

But regularity here was okay, plus or

minus. So, let's say you go to bed at

8:45 p.m. one night and then 9 and then

9:10 p.m. and then you're back to 8.

That's beautiful tight timing. I like

that. Whereas the those people who were

least regular, they were 90 to 120

minutes desperate. They were going to

bed, let's say, at 11 one night, then 1

a.m. the next night, then they were

going to bed at 10:30 p.m. and then they

were going to bed at 12:30. They were

all over the map. So what they found was

that those people who were most regular

versus least regular, so they compared

the extremes of these two, those people

who were most regular had a 49%

relative decrease in all cause

mortality. So they were 49% less likely

to prematurely die than those people who

were least likely to die. They had a 39%

cancer mortality risk reduction. Great.

they had a 57%

cardioabolic

disease risk reduction. So that was

stunning. That regularity was incredibly

powerful as a predictive signal of your

different forms of mortality. That

wasn't the best part of the paper

though. They had also measured quantity

as well as regularity in these same

individuals. So then they decided to

say, well, I'm going to take our measure

of quantity and regularity and we're

going to put them both in the same

statistical bucket and do a Coke Pepsi

challenge to see which one wins out in

terms of predicting all cause mortality.

We all bet in the sleep field, at least

I did, it was going to be quantity. I

was wrong. Regularity beat out quantity

in predicting all cause mortality and by

quite some margin. Now that doesn't mean

that you can now go away and say, "I'm

going to start sleeping 4 hours." but

incredibly consistent 4 hours. You need

both quantity and quality. But goodness

does regularity seem to carry a massive

signal. So coming back to those three

things, I would say digital detox, just

go to bed and wake up at the same time.

And the final thing is light. In this

modern world, we are a dark deprived

society.

We get what I call junk light at night.

So you've heard of junk DNA. Well, we

get junk light at night.

We don't need all of this light and it

fools our brain into thinking it's still

daytime outside. So no wonder as a

society we have some struggles with

sleep at night. Now that's due to many

reasons. Stress, too much caffeine,

alcohol, THC. But excessive light is one

of the easiest things that you can do.

So for the next 7 days, just do me this

experiment. If you can set an alarm 1

hour before your normal bedtime. When

that alarm goes off, turn off, and I I

do this myself, turn off almost all of

the lights in your house.

>> When you say all of the lights, do you

mean the little red light on my smoke

alarm or

>> No, that's fine. But, you know, so my

wife and I, 1 hour before bed, almost

all the lights, we've got sort of this

little set of this sort of light that

goes around the television, the back of

the television, so it kind of looks like

the television's cool and illuminated. I

will set that down to about 5% of

brightness and all of the rest of the

lights out so you can kind of just still

see some illumination so I'm not sort

of, you know, looking desperately uncool

uh in in front of her when I'm tripping

over things cuz it's complete black, you

know. Then start cooling the house or

the room as best you can to around about

67 68° Fahrenheit or about 18°C. We can

speak about temperature, but just do

this experiment for the next 7 days. 1

hour before bed, the alarm goes off. You

switch off all of the lights and ask the

following question. Do you feel

sleepier? Is it soporific? Does it make

you feel more sleepy as a result? But

don't stop there. What you've gone and

done is the first positive experiment

which is you've gone from the no

intervention lights are on to then the

Matt's intervention which is now the

lights are off for 1 hour before bed.

Don't just ask is my sleep better when

the lights were out for 1 hour before

bed. Once that 7-day period has

finished, go back to doing what you were

doing before, which is keep all of the

lights on and ask yourself, did my sleep

get better when I did the intervention

and did my sleep go back to being worse

when I stopped? Because I'm trying to

teach you birectionality in the

experiment. Does that make some sense?

>> Yeah. So, you get to you get to

basically do an AB test.

>> Correct. You get to see both sides of

the equation. And with that, it's more

proof positive than just one direction

alone. because who knows it could just

be a placebo effect. So regularity

coming back to it is critical. So we've

spoken about QQR quantity quality

regularity

>> on the um regular

>> regularity point. Why what's going on in

our brain that's making it from a

hormonal perspective or other that's

making it important for us to sleep at

the same time?

>> It's a bloody great question. People

don't respond to rules. They respond to

reasons not rules. So let me try and

explain the reason behind the sort of

the rule. When it comes to regularity,

we have something called a circadian

rhythm that we've spoken about. And

there's a clock that sits inside of your

brain deep in the middle of the brain.

So we have it just turns out a brain

here.

Lovely. Okay. So we've got one of these

hemispheres here. And then I'm just

going to take out what we call the

subcortical sections. So these are the

areas that are below the subcortex. So

here is the brain. So this is the front

of the brain, the back of the brain, top

of the brain, and here's the brain stem.

And it turns out that right in the

middle of the brain, right here, there's

an area called the hypothalamus.

Now here, this structure here, this is

the phalamus. This is the sensory gate

of your brain. So all of your five

senses, sound, touch, taste, smell, they

all flood into this gate called the

phalamus. And then the phalamus will

decide whether it sends those sensory

signals up to your cortex. And when it

sends the signals up to your cortex, you

start processing them and you become

consciously aware of the external world.

Now, as we're falling asleep, just as an

aside, what's interesting is that this

gate, the sensory gate, the phalamus,

once we start to fall asleep, the gate

will close shut. Now your eyes are

technically still seeing, your ears are

still hearing, your tongue is still

tasting, but because the gate of the

phalamus, the sensory gate closes shut,

those signals that are coming into your

brain are no longer sent up to your

cortex. So you stop perceiving the

outside world, which is just simply a

different way of saying you've fallen

asleep. Now the hypothalamus, you've

heard of hypo sort of hypertension or

sort of you know hypothermia or that

means lower. So here's the phalamus.

This area here is called the

hypothalamus. And it's a tiny structure

but within that structure contains a

nucleus. And that group of cells the

nucleus has a fancy term and it's called

the supraismatic nucleus. But the

superismatic nucleus is your master

24-hour clock. Every cell in your body

has a clock inside of it. But this is

the master clock. It's like Lord of the

Rings. There's one ring to rule them

all. Well, there's one clock to rule

them all. And here in the super

chaismatic nucleus, you get the 24-hour

rhythm of being awake and being asleep,

being awake and being asleep. How does

your brain keep quartzlike precision

24-hour clock time? How does it do that?

The way it does that is that it uses

signals such as light and dark

>> from your eyes

>> from your eye. And so when light comes

through the retina, it tells the

hypothalamus it's daytime and therefore

you should be awake. And its rhythm

starts its awesome sort of upswing. And

temperature can do this and feeding can

do this all sorts of different things.

But for the most part, light is the

principal governor that essentially acts

like electrical, I should say, photon

fingers that pops the wristwatch dial

out and resets it precisely. So, 24

hours every single day. Because if

you're left in the dark with no signals

of light, your clock isn't precise. It

drifts to about 24 hours and 15 minutes.

So, you start going forward a little bit

every single day if you go into a cave.

And people have done this experiment.

The thing that keeps it precise is

light. So, you need light to keep a

beautiful 24-hour rhythm. One of those

things that's under the control of your

24-hour rhythm is your sleep wake cycle.

>> What if I'm doing exercise?

>> Exercise is a wonderful entrainer of

your circadian rhythm as long as you're

doing it at the right time. So, if

you're starting to exercise at 3:00 or 4

in the morning, that's not good because

that's an activity signal that's going

to confuse the brain into thinking it's

the active period, which is normally

because we're a dional species, the day.

And it's the same thing coming back to

my point of regularity.

Using light as the best way to help with

that regularity because light if it's

artificial at night fools your brain

into thinking that it's daytime still

outside.

>> I mean is there any such thing as

non-artificial light? I mean I mean I

guess with the sun but I mean is there a

type of light that I could use at night

like candles or something or

>> Yes. below 30 lux,

>> right,

>> is not going to necessarily do you a

disservice. Probably below 50 lux. Now,

lux lux is just a measure of light

intensity. And you can download on the

app store a free looks meter. And if

you're an idiot nerd like me, you're

going all over the house at night and

you're sort of putting it in different

location, you're seeing any kind of

white spots here where you know the

looks is too high, but you need to drop

that that looks. By the way, it's a

great way if people want to say, "Look,

my REM sleep is deficient. How can I get

more REM sleep?" There's a great study

where they did something similar to what

I'm telling you now. 90 minutes before

bed, they turned down the lights to

below 30 lux, and they pulled out all of

the blue light. And just that trick of

dropping the lights down 90 minutes

before bed, below 30 lux, making it warm

yellow light, increased their REM sleep

by 18%. Wow,

>> it's a huge margin. So, no need for

pharmarmacology. But to your question,

why is regularity

important? Well, I told you that light

is one of the signals that can create

regularity. It turns out that your

behavior is another thing that will tell

your brain. So, meaning when you go to

bed and wake up at the same time, it

acts like an anchor. It anchors your

circadian rhythm and it tells you almost

like a scene in a movie. This scene is

now complete. A new scene starts. This

scene is complete. A new scene starts.

So every time that you're going to bed

at the same time and waking up at the

same time, you are feeding the super

chaismatic nucleus, the master 24-hour

clock in your brain, you're feeding it

signals of regularity.

And when it feeds on signals of

regularity, it improves the quantity and

the quality of your sleep. Your

circadian rhythm likes consistency. It

likes regular signals. When you feed it

signals of light, of activity, of waking

up, going to bed, you improve the

quantity and the quality of your sleep.

That's the reason behind the underlying

rule. So having a TV in your bedroom is

a terrible idea then because if on that

behavioral point if I'm getting in bed

but then I'm staying up for 3 hours

watching Netflix my brain is going to be

quite confused about like the behavioral

pattern of what what I'm doing in my

life. It's not going to associate the

bed with sleep. It's going to associate

the bed with movies.

>> That's one of the problems that we call

con it's called conditioned arousal

which sounds a lot more salacious than

it actually is. It's a term that we use

in sleep medicine which may explain

insomnia. So with insomnia, let's say

that the first time you go to this thing

called a dentist and you get in the

chair and it's kind of cool. You're

reclined back and you know you think

this is fine. But then after about 14 or

15 visits when you get into that chair

you are no longer looking forward to

getting into that chair, are you? Why?

because you've learned the association

that being in that chair typically leads

to a bad outcome.

Now, the same thing is true with the

bed. If you start associating the bed

with anything other than sleep, and we

give you a pass in terms of sex, but

sleep and sex, anything other than that,

you start to learn that this thing

called my bed is this place where I'm

awake, where I work, where I eat, where

we have conversations, where I watch

television. And so, you know, if I were

to, and again, I'm stealing Michael

Grand's point, but if I were to say to

you, bed sleep, bed sleep, bed sleep,

bed sleep, bed sleep.

>> Okay. If I were to say bed, scroll, bed,

eat, bed, work, bed, sleep, bed, TV,

bed,

>> you

>> confused.

>> Yeah.

>> Because there's no predictive signal.

You've never bound an association. Now

the way this works to your disadvantage

in insomnia is the following. The

insomnia event that begins the insomnia

is typically not the thing that

maintains the insomnia. So let's say

that I um had I experienced a really

difficult bereavement and that triggered

a form of insomnia where I couldn't

sleep because of the bereavement.

Gradually the bereavement is not the

thing that's going to maintain my

insomnia. It's because every time I have

been going to bed over the past month, I

have not been sleeping. I've been wide

awake in my bed. So now, because your

brain is such an incredibly associative

device, it learns the association that

my bed is the place where I'm always

awake. And what do we then do? We need

to break that association in insomnia.

So what we do is we say the 20-minut

rule. If you've been in bed for about 20

minutes and it's just not happening for

you, don't worry. Don't listen to idiots

like me that doom and gloom and disease

and sickness and one bad night is not

going to be a problem. It's just not. So

just say look tonight is not my night. I

am not however going to lie in bed awake

because very quickly my brain starts to

learn the association that my bed is the

place where I'm wide awake. And you need

to break that association. So go to a

different room in dim light. Just read a

book, listen to a podcast, whatever it

is. And the rule of thumb is the

following. only return to bed when you

are sleepy and so there's no time limit

and that way you gradually relearn the

association that my bed is the place

where I always get consistent sleep

because otherwise it's the dentist chair

you walk into your bedroom and you look

at your bed and it's your nemesis and

you convinced yourself even before you

get into bed I'm not going to sleep

because that's the place where I always

don't sleep and by the way if you suffer

from the 3M awakenings my first question

is how do you know It's 3:00 a.m.

And that's your first problem. Looking

at the clock does two things. It makes

you more anxious.

>> Yeah.

>> And second, because your brain is such

an incredibly associative device, you

start to then decide that 3:00 a.m. is

the time when I need to wake up. If you

keep looking at the clock, you keep

reinforcing that it's 3:00 or 4. And

sleep at 3:00 in the morning is like

trying to remember someone's name. The

harder you try, the further you push

sleep away. Sleep is something that

happens to you. It's not something that

you make happen. And so at that moment,

the best advice if you don't want to get

out of bed is do any one of the

following. Meditation. Just do a guided

meditation. You can download apps. Next,

if that's not your thing, that's okay.

Do box breathing. You know, you can sort

of inhale for five, hold for six, exhale

for seven. There's all sorts of

different numbers, but you can do

breathing exercises. The third, if you

don't like that, is a body scan. So,

close your eyes, start at the top of

your head, feel as you know, do I have

tension in my forehead? Do I need to

relax it? What about my neck? Do I need

to move through your body and gradually

go down? How are my shoulder blades

feeling? I just relax down into the bed

and gradually down into the chest, into

the move through just relax. If none of

those things feel fun, the next thing

you can do is take yourself on a mental

walk. There's a great study from my

university, uh, the University of

Berkeley, California,

and we didn't do the study. Allison

Harvey did it. By the way, counting

sheep, bad idea. Makes your sleep worse,

it turns out. Why is that? Because,

well, with every kind of little bleeting

cotton wool ball with a strange look on

its face that leaps over the fence that

you're counting, you're reinforcing

every minute of sleep that you're not

getting, and it seems to make matters

worse. But what she found was that

there's an alternative. If you think

about a walk that you know in great

vivid detail. So for me, it's going to

be walking the dog. So I go over to the

shelf. I open the door. Is it the red

lead or the I'm going to go with the

blue lead today. So I clip the dog in

with my right hand. I open the door with

my left hand. I take a left down the

stairs. I look. It's that level of I

want you 4K detail in terms of

granularity.

And what's common about every method

I've just described, meditation, box

breathing, sort of uh body scan, going

on a mental walk, all of these things

have in common that you get your mind

off itself.

>> In that particular example where she

asks you to vividly think about a

journey that you know, what did she find

in the study? What she found is that

that increases the speed with which you

fall back asleep

>> significantly

because as I said it it's so you know

her work to me demonstrated that it it

is so like that name because the moment

I stop trying to remember someone's name

what happens

>> you remember it

>> I remember it and so when you do these

types of exercises where you're getting

the mind off itself the next thing that

you typically remember is your alarm

clock going off in the morning.

>> Is this why people listen to very vivid

sleep stories and why I listen to serial

killer documentaries?

>> Serial killer documentaries,

>> true crime documentaries, I should say.

That's a bit more uh nice to pallet.

>> I don't know of them. My suspicion is

that they may be doing your deep sleep a

disservice. anything

>> stick up for me in the comments. If you

if you listen to true crime to fall

asleep, please write it below in the

comment section.

>> If you find it subjectively wonderfully

pacifying and calming and there is not

death, naming, blood, and limbs being

distributed at high velocity all over

the scene, I would say it's great. But

if it looks like a Quentyn Tarantino

movie or sounds like one, maybe harm and

foul rather than

>> I mean just in my ears

>> but yes. So you know we forget that to

the best of my knowledge the meditation

company called calm now I have no

affiliation with them they were doing

somewhat well but what they realized is

that they wanted people to sort of

meditate in the morning and when they

used looked at their usage statistics

people were meditating in the morning

but then there was a huge swath of usage

right before bed people were

self-medicating their state of insomnia

and then through a stroke of genius they

realized when we were young we used to

love falling asleep to our parents

reading us a story.

Why is that any different when we become

adults? So they created sleep stories

and they went from struggling as a

company I think to becoming the first or

one of the first billion dollar

valuation health companies out there.

they became a unicorn and now they can

they've got you know people like you

know Matthew McConnA they've got Harry

Styles and then occasionally they've got

a a you know an unfortunate British

sleep scientist um with a bad voice but

you can listen to these sleep stories

and they are wonderfully soporific. Why?

Because they get your mind off itself.

>> We we talked um earlier on about

melatonin and uh there are other

supplements which people talk a lot

about. One of the ones that's become

really popular is magnesium. I've heard

ashwagandha and I've heard magnesium a

lot.

>> Yeah.

>> Is there any efficacy to these? Are

these are these useful?

>> The first thing I would say is that if

you're suffering from sleep problems and

you're looking to supplements, you're

stepping over dollars to pick up

pennies.

>> Okay.

>> What you need to do is think about the

fundamentals.

Regularity.

Watch your caffeine intake. Make sure

you're not drinking too much alcohol.

Get regular. Dim down half of the

lights. Digital detox. Any one of those,

but especially all of them combined are

going to get you log orders of better

sleep than reaching for the latest

supplement bottle of whatever it is. The

second thing to say is think about it

from a logical standpoint. If there were

really some supplement that promises to

be the Shangrilar of all respplendant

sleep at night, the drug companies would

have been all over it decades ago. To

put it in context, it took George Lucas,

I think, about 30 years to amass

something like 4 billion in revenue from

the Star Wars franchise. It took Ambient

22 months.

That's how big a business sleep farmer

is.

>> Ambience is what a sleep pill.

>> Ambient is a sleep pill. Magnesium, if

you dig into it, and I I did a deep dive

about three years ago because I I kept

hearing it too. This magnesium,

magnesium. The first thing to note is

that most forms of magnesium, magnesium

oxide

or magnesium citrate, most of these

forms of magnesium

don't cross the brain barrier and sleep

is produced by your brain. So, how can

something that doesn't get into your

brain affect

brain process? Number one, there is one

form of magnesium that seems to have

some evidence in favor of it. It's

called magnesium L308.

But if you look at the literature, where

did this story come from? It turns out

that about 30 years ago, they started

looking at people who had disrupted

sleep and they would assess their blood

work. And what they found is that some

of those people were magnesium

deficient. And when they supplemented

them with magnesium and they became

magnesium normative, their sleep got

better.

But that's very different than saying,

"Look, you and I, we're currently

magnesium normative and then dosing

myself with high volumes of magnesium.

Am I imagining that that's going to make

my sleep better?" The the analogy would

be, let's say I develop this incredible

new oxygen saturation machine, and you

say to me, "Well, but Matt, my blood

oxygen saturation right now, looking at

my device, tells me it's 98.6%."

It doesn't matter how fancy or good my

machine is. I'm not going to get you

past 100%. You're already at ceiling

level.

>> And that's the problem with magnesium

supplementation. If you're magnesium

normative, all you're doing is creating

probably expensive urine at at at that

moment in time. Now, there may be an

indirect benefit of magnesium in that it

does seem to relax muscles. And when the

body is in a state of relaxation, it

sends a signal of relaxation back up a

branch of nerves called the vagus nerve

that goes up to the brain and signals to

your brain you're starting to relax down

and you get this state of quiescence and

that's very helpful for sleep. So

magnesium may still have an indirect

benefit on sleep through its relaxation

kind of policy that it instantiates in

the body. But overall, magnesium is not

really moving the needle if you look at

the studies. Ashwagandha

is different. Ashwagandha and another

compound called phospatitile serarene.

Phospatidile sererearine and ashwagandha

both of these supplements seem to help

do one of two things. They either

ratchet down the fightor-flight branch

of your nervous system and they can also

reduce the amount of cortisol that the

body is releasing. That's important

because I see a lot of people coming to

the sleep center where I'm at and they

have what I call the tired but wired

phenomenon where they come to me and

they say, "I am so tired. I am so so

tired but I'm just so wired emotionally

and from a nervous perspective that I

can't fall asleep." And let's say that

you've done, let's say, you know, um, an

onstage event and it's incredible.

You've got that onstage buzz. You come

off stage at 11 p.m. And normally you'd

be fast asleep, but you know, you are so

wired. It doesn't matter. You are tired,

as tired as can be, but you're so wired

you can't fall asleep. That's the fight

orflight branch being switched on and

you just can't fall asleep. You need to

push it back off. Phosphatidal sererine

and ashwagandha will both push you back

over into the more quuscent what we call

parasympathetic nervous system branch.

That's good. However, they also will

reduce cortisol and cortisol is a

wakeromoting hormone. Cortisol is fine.

We It gets a bad rap. You need to have

your cortisol start to spike a few hours

before bed and it helps with the waking

up process. It's wonderful. Every day we

have a cortisol spike that starts

happening before we wake up. It's one of

the things that helps us wake up and

then it builds us to this beautiful

crescendo midm morning where you should

be awake and not needing caffeine

>> and it drops before bed

>> and then it starts to peak in the sort

of middle early afternoon and in fact

usually peaks at the late morning hours

I should say and then it will start its

awesome sort of downswing and what you

see is that right before you go to bed

cortisol should hit its lowest point

what we call its nadia its lowest

trough.

>> Mhm.

>> What's interesting, by the way, just as

an aside, is that insomnia we can

classify usually as at least one of two

different types. There's actually

multiple, but let's just say there are

of those multiple, there are two types.

One is called sleep onset insomnia. I

can't fall asleep. The other is sleep

maintenance insomnia. I can't stay

asleep. when they've looked at people's

cortisol on a 30 minute by 30 minute

basis on the 24-hour clock face, we go

through just what we described. Just

before we wake up, we get this rise in

cortisol. It peaks late morning and then

it drops down and right before bed, our

cortisol is almost at its lowest point.

With insomnia patients, they show

exactly the same thing. A beautiful rise

in the late morning hours. It starts to

come down, but then you see two

anomalies. Right before bed, it goes

back up.

And then in the middle of the night,

even when it's starting to rise, it will

have this abnormal spike right in the

middle of the night, too. And what we

believe is that that may in part explain

sleep onset insomnia. Cortisol should be

coming down and it should stay low right

before we go to bed. But then it jumps

back up in insomnia patients. I can't

fall asleep. And then it continues to

stay low throughout the first half of

the night, but then it also spikes in

insomnia patients. I can't stay asleep.

>> I've had so many founders speak to me

and say, "Why didn't this particular ad

that I ran on this platform work for me?

Maybe the copy wasn't good. The creative

wasn't strong." But usually the problem

is they're not having the right

conversation because that ad never

reached the right person. And if you're

in B2B marketing, that is much of the

game. And this is where LinkedIn ads

solves that problem for you. Their

targeting is ridiculously specific. You

can target by job title, seniority,

company size, industry, and even

someone's skill set. And their network

includes over a billion professionals.

About 130 million of them are decision

makers. So when you use LinkedIn ads,

you're putting your brand in front of

the right people. And LinkedIn ads also

drive the highest B2B return on ad spend

across all ad networks in my experience.

If you want to give them a try, head

over to linkedin.com/diary.

And when you spend $250 on your first

LinkedIn ads campaign, you'll get an

extra $250 credit from me for the next

one. That's linkedin.com/diary.

Terms and conditions apply. We were

talking about regularity, timing, and

all these things and quality and

quantity. But one of the things I

learned from your work is that that last

hour is potentially the most important

hour of me being in bed. And I I say

this in part because my my girlfriend,

she would wake, she'd have about six six

hours, six and a half hours sleep. She

sleeps very very well. Perfect sleeper,

but she'd always get up really really

really early. And in part that was

because of the guilt that I talked

about. But I had a conversation with her

about the guilt. And I said, "Just stay

in bed as long as you need to stay in

bed. Like just have that extra eighth

hour." And in part that's because I

learned that the further we go in sleep,

the more REM we're getting.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. Can you explain that to me with

these four blocks? Why that last hour is

particularly important and why we

shouldn't be jumping out of bed or why

we should be using certain sleep devices

to wake us up when we're at the end of

that last hour of REM.

>> Absolutely. So here we have the four

blocks of sleep. So when we first fall

asleep, we go into light non rapid eye