Double Edge Fitness
This podcast is dedicated to showcasing to our members and any of our listeners who are interested in how this northern Nevada gym operates. Our mission is to inspire others to bring health and wellness home to truly make a difference in the household with the ultimate goal of making Reno the healthiest city in the country.In this podcast, we will be talking about things that are on our mind and answering questions from our members and our listeners to provide a unique listening experience.
Double Edge Fitness
Unlocking Better Sleep: The Science, Strategies, and Myths for Healthier Living
Unlock the secrets to better sleep and revolutionize your health and productivity. In this episode, I'm Derek, your guide through the science of sleep and its profound effects on both body and mind. We'll explore the crucial role sleep plays in cellular repair and immune support, and why those in high-stress jobs, like the Washoe County Sheriff's Department, must pay heed to their sleep habits. Discover the surprising link between short-term sleep loss and the onset of symptoms resembling type 2 diabetes. This is a wake-up call to prioritize sleep for a healthier, more balanced life.
Ever wondered why you're wide awake at dawn while your sibling thrives at midnight? The answer lies in understanding your chronotype, and we’ll dive deep into how aligning your work and lifestyle with your natural sleep patterns can enhance every facet of your life. From the early birds to the night owls, knowing your chronotype can help you avoid fatigue and increase productivity. Join us as we share practical tips and personal anecdotes on optimizing sleep schedules, managing stimulant intake, and creating a perfect sleep environment to ensure you wake up refreshed and ready to seize the day.
Sleep isn't just about the hours logged under the covers; it's about quality and consistency. We'll bust common sleep myths and provide insights into the use of supplements like melatonin and creatine, especially for those juggling shift work. Learn the nuances of sleep management through heat and cold exposure and the role of exercise in promoting restful sleep. As we address the potential pitfalls of sleep aids, hear a firsthand account of overcoming sleep challenges during the pandemic. Your well-being is at the heart of this episode, and we're here to support your journey to better sleep and health.
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all right, my name is Derek. Well, I am the owner and coach one of the coaches at double-edged fitness. You might have Fitness. You might have heard of us, might have heard of us involved in doing some fitness health opportunities for Washoe County Sheriff's Department. We've been working with your guys' association for the last two years running. A six-month I won't call it a challenge, it's not a challenge, but a six-month health and fitness program specifically for Washoe County has been a part of the gym for the last two years.
Speaker 1:With that we have seen quite a bit of success and, as a part of that going on, some things that were asked of me to do to help Washoe County and to hopefully influence everybody at Washoe County, educate and inspire and do all the cool things health and fitness coaches do, I guess is to put together video content and various topics that are specifically pertinent for you all, your job and so forth. So one of the first topics that was asked for me to do was to put together some education information as it relates to sleep. Sleep is a big topic for everybody, not just you all doing a very high stress job that oftentimes goes through seasons of pretty challenging sleep situations. Sleep is just a vital, vital component for everybody's health, but it is something that has come up as a educational point to help you all. So I'm not going to blabber on for too much longer, but I put together this slideshow. This isn't my first time videoing, but this is my first time doing a video with slideshow education. So if you're listening to this in podcast format probably won't matter to you too much much, but I am doing a video for the first time with a slideshow and some education here. So I'm gonna go through this and any questions or anything comes up. I believe you all have information on how to contact me. I'm happy to help with questions, I'm happy to answer them and if you don't have that information, we'll make sure that you have access to get it. However, information is shared up there at the Washoe County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 1:All right, so sleep. Why is it vital for your health? See if this works. Boom. All right, the importance of sleep. So sleep is key for physical health, cellular repair, immune support, metabolic function. It's important for your mental health. I don't know if many of you have ever gone a couple days without sleep. I'm willing to bet you have, but you can definitely tell pretty immediately, just from one night of poor sleep that your physical performance, your energy levels, your mental health, clarity, increased anxiety. You can notice these influences pretty immediately when it comes to sleep deprivation. Those are kind of the short term, very acute acknowledgements of sleep deprivation.
Speaker 1:When it comes to your long-term health and health span, chronic sleep deprivation and sleep issues can lead to some pretty significant reduction in your quality of life. It can increase your risk of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is basically a descriptive word for things like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's, dementia. So metabolic syndrome is when our bodies are no longer functioning optimally which can lead to these diseases, which usually start with the onset of type 2 diabetes, which is very, very prevalent in society nowadays. And very interesting, a study was done subjecting people to three to five days of sleep deprivation, I believe. If I recall correctly, they were restricting people to five hours of sleep per night and just after three to five days, taking a healthy person who did not have raised blood glucose levels, they were able to get those people to have a diagnosis of being type 2 diabetic based on their blood glucose levels. That's, just from three to five days of sleep deprivation you can increase your body's ability to manage blood glucose appropriately pretty dramatically. You compound that over time it can be pretty powerful in reducing your health span and leading to metabolic syndrome, like I stated above. So when it comes to weight management, body composition, metabolic health, I mean sleep is just super important.
Speaker 1:So sleep deprivation can disrupt hormones, hormones that regulate stress, appetite, metabolism. It can be extreme with cortisol disruption and most the time when we are chronically sleep deprived, cortisol and your stress hormone is elevated pretty significantly. And I'm just one little caveat here on cortisol lots of folks out there and the health and fitness space will say no, you could never have raised cortisol. That's complete crap. Cortisol elevations and undulation throughout the day is totally normal, totally healthy. It's the chronic being chronically raised for long periods of time outside of our normal cortisol. What you want to say, not circadian rhythm, but our normal cortisol process in our body.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure many people, if you fall in a category of having a terrible night's sleep, you notice it can disrupt your appetite. It does play an effect in how your hormones, such as ghrelin and leptin, which are your two hunger and satiation hormones, are affected. I notice for me personally, when I'm sleep deprived one I want to eat more and I want to eat more very carb, carbohydrate rich foods. It's when I'm craving basically crap food and I'm not satisfied by it. So again, that's kind of an acute representation of a couple nights poor sleep that you can notice your appetite being disrupted pretty quickly. You do that for long periods of time. Well, you can surmise that sleep disruption is going to lead to an unhealthy body composition weight gain, body fat. A sleep deprivation can affect other hormones that regulate your metabolism, such as insulin and growth hormone. Chronically elevated blood sugar is going to get your pancreas involved in pumping out insulin more often to keep your blood sugar levels as regulated possible, as much as possible, and increased insulin production can lead to pancreatic overload and eventually smoke your pancreas and ultimately you end up with type 2 diabetes. So these are not meant to be fear driven insights, but they're meant to just what is possible when we're not taking care of our sleep. All right, yeah, I want to make sure not trying to drive fear, but I'm trying to drive education.
Speaker 1:Understanding and Understanding the negative sides of sleep deprivation and not having quality sleep, I do think is very, very important when it comes to the sleep hormones for men and women. Your sex hormones testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. Your testosterone, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. Your testosterone levels rise during deep sleep, primary stages, deep sleep, stage three and four slow-lapse, slow-lapse, slow-lapse sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation during these stages can lead to a pretty significant decrease in testosterone levels. Studies have shown that just one week of sleep restriction, five hours per night, can lower testosterone by up to 15%, which, as we know, can affect your mental health, affect your mood, your libido. It's going to impair muscle rebuilding and ultimately, it can affect your bone health. Having chronically depleted testosterone is a big deal.
Speaker 1:I'm going to throw this in right here. This isn't a get on TRT right away type of deal. Right, lots of variables to work with your healthcare provider on when it comes to managing your hormones. I know right now in society it's hot to just jump into a TRT clinic and get pumped full of exogenous testosterone to overcome. Some of this Could be a short-term fix, could have long-term consequences that a lot of people don't know about and don't understand. So I will implore you to have a educated discussion with your healthcare provider and I say health care provider, not somebody who is running a men's clinic, men's clinics all of you out there can come at me for that comment. I'm not a fan. I am a fan of people working with somebody who truly understands the full scope of what's going on when you start doing hormone replacement therapy. So I'm just going to throw that plug in there as a word of caution to be very mindful of if, when you go down that road, hrt, like I said, it's going to affect your sleep, muscle loss, decrease bone density over time, so sleep and testosterone production are hugely.
Speaker 1:So sleep and testosterone production are hugely have a pretty significant relationship In women. This also applies to men, but it's more women. Just to make sure we all understand, men and women both have testosterone, estrogen and progesterone in their body. There are different ratios because of biology, so we have all those hormones. When it comes to HRT hormone replacement therapy it's a much different equation for women than it is men. But again, work with your health care provider. I'm not one of those. I just happen to have some knowledge in this area. But with women not getting enough sleep, you're gonna have a hard time balancing your estrogen production, which regulates reproductive health, supports your mood stability.
Speaker 1:Sleep deprivations will lead to menstrual irregularities, which can lead to weight gain and mental health, mood, anxiety and various things like that. When it comes to progesterone and sleep quality. When it comes to progesterone and sleep quality, progesterone comes with calming effects, so having too low of progesterone can lead to inadequate sleep. It can cause irregular cycles for women and mood swings and fatigue when progesterone is too low. So all these and sleep these three hormones and sleep the big deal Something to be aware of and something to be mindful of. All right.
Speaker 1:So let's understand sleep architecture. What is sleep architecture? Sleep architecture is the blocks of sleep that take place during the circadian rhythm, getting your sleep cycles in. So you have non REM sleep and you have REM sleep cycles. Each sleep cycle goes about 90 minutes and is four to six cycles per night. In an ideal situation, your deep sleep is more restorative sleep. It's non REM.
Speaker 1:Cognitive consolidation is REM sleep. So REM sleep the way I understand it to be explained, it's when your hypothalamus is offloading. So your hypothalamus is like in a computer. It's like your RAM, random access memory. It's all the stuff that right now, my computer is using RAM to make this video. It's stuff that's happening right now. With that, it needs to offload it and store it to a hard drive. So during REM sleep it's gonna take all the information of the day and offload it into long-term storage of your brain. So those REM cycles, like a cleaning, wind down process for your brain to well function better. So you need REM cycles, you need deep sleep cycles and again, we usually get four to six of these per night.
Speaker 1:All right, our circadian rhythm is our natural wake and sleep cycle and this is, from a biological standpoint, pretty governed around the sun and the moon, right? So most of our sleep cycles, in a healthy world, you're going to sleep during a bulk of the night. You're going to be awake during the bulk of the day, right? So with that, getting morning light exposure, sunlight, preferably within the first couple hours of waking up, can help set the tone for your circadian rhythm, right. And this circadian rhythm is very individualized and we'll get in that a little later as far as there's a genetic component to it that I've recently learned about and it makes sense and it does matter. And then, when it comes to evening, limiting light, particularly blue light, will help set the tone for your body to go to sleep. So diminishing light in the evening, increasing light in the morning, this is gonna help guide your circadian rhythm and your sleep cycles.
Speaker 1:All right, where you got the chronotypes from dr Matt Walker and dr Andrew Huberman on the Huberman lab podcast is. It's a six-part series, it's like 12 hours long, very long series on sleep and this is where I picked up. Well, this is where I picked up a lot of the content in this thing, to be honest. But this is where I learned about chronotypes which influence circadian rhythms. So everybody has their own chronotype when it comes to sleep. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Back in our early days before, we had constant light switches and this and that if everybody slept at the same time every single day, well, lots of things wouldn't happen or your whole tribe would get killed. So having people with different chronotypes that function on different time periods in the 24-hour period is a human trait, basically for our survival as a species, if you will.
Speaker 1:So the adage, if you will people being superstars, if they wake up in the morning, hit it hard in the morning and their early morning, the morning, and they're early morning risers and attack today like uh, early bird gets the worm kind of lingo, it's all bs. It's all bs being productive during whatever hour of the day. It needs to be what works best for you. Now I some of you might know both me and my brother. Some of you might not. Well, most of you probably don't, to be honest, but my brother and I are completely different chronotypes. I'm an early morning chronotype. He's a nighttime chronotype. He functions great in the afternoon and the evenings. I am terrible in the afternoon and evenings. I function great at 4 to 7 am. That's genetic tendencies. We come from the same gene pool, so understanding your chronotype is very important. So, dr Matt Walker, he talks about morning, evening, intermediate chronotypes. Those are people that can adapt to either end of the 24 hour period. And then you have this biphasic the people that, uh, function really well with getting a nap. I know folks that they take their midday nap every single day. I'm not talking about just older people, I'm talking about people my age in the 30s 40s that do really well with it, can fall asleep. They can take a 30, 40 minute nap and kick butt for the next block of time for the day. I've never been a napper, terrible at napping. I've tried napping, not something I do. So there is a genetic tendency for each of these coronatypes, including people at nap.
Speaker 1:Morning types. These people naturally alert and productive in the early morning, now oftentimes peak mental and physical activity before noon. This is me. This is me. I'm early morning type. I wake up pretty naturally before 4 am every single day. I do coach the morning classes at both of our locations.
Speaker 1:I love working out around 7 am. It's's one of my favorite times to train. My body feels great and every afternoon, since as long as I can remember, I get tired pretty early in the evening. So this has been me since as long as I can remember. Then you have the evening type. These people are feeling awake and alert into the late evening. This is my brother. He can work out in the afternoon, feels great. He can do complex his complex assassinize. His most productive time for work is in the afternoon. He feels great. But let me tell you he doesn't like mornings, so any more than I like evenings. This isn't something that you can train now. You can do it for periods of time. There was a time I worked swing shift for almost a year and when I was going to college it sucked, but I had to do it right.
Speaker 1:Sometimes life and work come with obligations outside of the set chronotype of your body and there's ways to work with this, work around it and overcome it to a degree. But it's also, I mean, you're combating your biology and it could end up not being great long term. So working within your chronotypes as much as you possibly can is more ideal. All right, intermediate people they can fall asleep between the mornings and evenings. It can be flexible. They have a little more flexibility there. They can adapt easily to changes in schedules.
Speaker 1:Quite a few people in my life that I know kind of this way. I think I know quite a few morning people because I coach a lot of morning people that are in our 5 am classes every single day and there's a lot of people in the evening. But in general, you know, I've met people in all these chronotypes that I'm getting at, not gonna blabber on right. So what's interesting is the nappers. I got one of these in my life. They take a little nap every day. They get up, crush, work, crust coat, coaching in the afternoons. They're fine. Then coach in the morning fine, but they like that. That very interesting.
Speaker 1:So they one of the big things to take away from all that is, when possible, trying to align your lifestyle and your work, your job with your chronotype is gonna set you up for being optimal at your job, optimal at your family obligations. So building that, building your life as much as you can around your chronotype, is well, it's optimal, right. If you're working against it and doing things against your natural clock, it's going to lead to well, like it says. It's going to cause fatigue. It's going to lead to well, like it says. It's gonna cause fatigue. It's gonna lead to sleep deprivation ultimately, which is gonna start leading towards negative consequences.
Speaker 1:All right now you might be wondering how do you know what chronotype you are? One. Well, if you live life long enough, you might know of a period of time where you're able to sleep and function on a naturally occurring schedule for your body. If you didn't have any other obligations, when would you want to go to bed? When would you want to wake up? When would you want to work out? When would you want to do things that require like? If you had to take a test, what time of day would be the best time of day for you to do that? There is a test that you can search search by dr matt walker. It's just dr matt walker's chronotype test and it's like 30 questions that you fill out, but it's basically asking you these questions that I just asked you and it gives you rating on what your suggested chronotype is. There's no blood work, there's no finding genes and stuff specifically tied to this. I don't think, not totally sure on that, but innately you can figure it out right. So it's a good thing to journal on and understand for yourself, especially when you get opportunities for maybe shift change for you guys, picking shifts that work better for your chronotype. My grandfather was a cop, 30 years, love working swing shift and For as long as I can remember, that was his sleep cycle and routine and yeah, so it worked. It worked.
Speaker 1:What are some protocols to optimize your sleep? So first, getting eight hours of sleep. You hear that through and through, over and over, year over year. That's like gold standard. Right, getting eight hours of sleep per day or per night is the goal, and I tend to agree. But setting yourself up for an allocated time in bed of seven to nine hours, so well, I think that range that seven to nine hours of time there comes down to when you fall asleep.
Speaker 1:So me personally, I set myself up for being in bed for eight hours. I don't like being in bed past 8 pm. My alarm is set for 4 am so I'm giving myself a sleep opportunity window of eight hours every single day. That's my. It's a big goal of mine. It's something that I do prioritize Most of the time in the bed with the kids reading books around 7, 7.30. And hopefully we're falling asleep by eight and then I have that opportunity for sleep for seven to nine hours. I will tell you the majority of my sleep because there's going to be waking periods and you're going through these 90 minute cycles, so there's going to be waking periods during that time. My total time in sleep is usually when I get six and a half to seven hours of time in sleep from my eight hour opportunity for sleep, I feel pretty awesome. So, getting eight hours of actual sleep, I would have to give myself a sleep allocation time of probably around 10 hours to pull that off. But my body wakes up naturally usually before 4am and as long as I put myself in bed before 8am or 8pm the night before, I feel great.
Speaker 1:Sleep consistency is a big one. Your body gets into routine and habit, so having the same bedtime window and same waking time window is pretty vital for training your body on its circadian rhythm. If you have pretty crazy work hours, which I'm willing to bet many of you do, having that structure might be very difficult when you're on your shift. But for as much as you possibly can, having some structured time to go to bed and sleep is vital. You can use sleep tracking devices. I personally use Whoop. We actually ran Whoop with the last group of you guys on the health and fitness program that we did. It's pretty profound the data we were able to collect on both sleep resting, heart rate, hrv, over the course of that six months of training. How much things improved during that time.
Speaker 1:But using a sleep tracking tool like Whoop or the 8 Sleep Mattress is on my bucket list of things to purchase. It's pretty pricey. It's a mattress cover that can track your sleep, your sleep quality, and it provides heating and cooling elements to facilitate better sleep during specific sleep cycles of the night. It's pretty awesome, but it's just not in the cards at the moment. But it's one of my goals and it is something that I've heard a lot of smart people say they've benefited from in a great way, from Elon Musk, peter Attia, andrew Huberman and quite a few other folks out there who I don't know their names off the top of my head, but they attest to the eight sleep being a great tool for facilitating quality sleep. So if you've got some extra cash laying around that you you wanna blow, it might be worth looking into, especially if sleep is an issue for you. I'm fortunate enough that my sleep's pretty good.
Speaker 1:Other sleep things having your room cool it is suggested. It says down here, 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit is the optimal temperature to facilitate good sleep. Dark, no lights in your room. Right, having blackout curtains, um, the least of light is absolutely possible. I have small kids. They like having night lights on the house. Our house isn't perfectly pitch black, but it. You know well my situation there. So having a quiet room is this is interesting. Yes, a lot of research suggests your room being quiet, like not having a lot of noise. But since my kids were born we've used white noise for sleep and in our house it has become a tool and significant necessity for the whole house to sleep. So we do use white noise. We use it's a stream, a stream going down the hills, really nice, calming. We keep it at a low level but it does help us sleep. So, yeah, take that for what it is. Some people like it super quiet. Us personally, we like white noise in the background.
Speaker 1:Reducing, reducing stimulant intake that is pretty obvious. Not having stimulants, especially for bed, before bed, yeah, just don't do it. And I'm going to talk about caffeine later in relationship to bedtime and what that does with sleep. It is suggested that you have a routine that helps you engage in relaxing activities before bed and this not be blue light producing. So I know a lot of folks will turn on a TV show, wind down, fall asleep. The goal would be to dim your lights, not have TV or external stimulants like that phone, ipad, this and that I confess I'm one of the worst afternoon evening scroll a little bit too much on the phone. It is a habit I would like to break. But yeah, we all got things going on that were not perfect. But getting rid of that stuff, having that evening routine that is more in line with reading an actual paper book, just doing some relaxing stuff, some mild stretching, these things, you know, having that can help facilitate falling asleep and getting into your sleep cycles quicker. Limiting alcohol and caffeine I'm going to get into both of these later. But caffeine's interesting and I would say do not have caffeine eight to 10 hours before bedtime. 100% agree with that. Caffeine is interesting and I would say do not have caffeine eight to ten hours before bedtime. 100% agree with that.
Speaker 1:Caffeine's mechanism of action is going to disrupt sleep. Even if you are a caffeine addict, you process caffeine. You're one of those that say, like me, caffeine doesn't affect me. I could have coffee, energy drink, whatever right before bed, fall asleep. You might be able to fall asleep, but I can tell you your sleep quality in those four to six sleep cycles aren't going to be the same. And this goes with alcohol. People are like oh, I have a couple of drinks, wind down, fall right asleep. Your sleep quality goes to SHIT. The quality in those sleep cycles diminish dramatically from any alcohol consumption, but especially in excess of more than two drinks. So something to be very mindful of, and we'll get into that a little later.
Speaker 1:Exercise does enhance sleep quality. This is a fact. Regular routine, both strength and aerobic and aerobic exercise, hands asleep your body is going to want to recover. It is going to want to sleep to rebuild and replenish what took place from exercise. But one caveat and I found this to be very true for me. If I do very intense workouts, there is a very good chance my sleep that night is going to be absolutely terrible. For instance, this past Sunday I did a bunch of box step-ups with a 65 pound backpack. I'm training for some specific and it was hard. It was one of the most intense workouts I've done in a little while and my sleep that night was absolutely wrecked. And I did everything Good nutrition, no alcohol, everything good the rest of the day. But the intensity of that workout was pretty extreme and it did disrupt my sleep at night.
Speaker 1:Also, avoiding very intense workouts before your sleep time, workouts before your sleep time. So you know, 40 hours before bed maybe not hitting the super intense workout. And this is all individual. I've sovers, you know, going on years now in the fitness space. I've seen people worked out great in the afternoon but they usually don't go to bed till 10 or 11 o'clock at night. So if they're hitting a 6 pm class in home, you know their body has a wind down time to be able to overcome that training stimulus and wind down into sleep. Me, for instance, I go to bed, you know, seven, eight If I hit a hard workout and I've done this before. Hitting hard workout between, like you know, the afternoon, it will disrupt my sleep that night, too close to my bedtime, and it just doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1:Your bedroom environment like I said earlier, 60 to 70 degrees in the bedroom is the ultimate temperature for sleep. Now this does vary for men and women. Most of you who live with a partner at home have somebody in your house spouse will know that there is thermostat control issues. I happen to live with my wife and we have varying understandings of what the thermostat needs to be controlled at or set at. I like the house cooler, she likes the house warmer, but we do sleep and come to a consensus that 67 degrees at night is a pretty good temperature for the whole house. One of the cool things about the 8 sleep is it can have independent sides. That moderate temperature for you individually so one can be a little warmer, one can be a little cooler help facilitate good sleep for both of you, based on what your body enjoys the most as far as sleep temperature. All right.
Speaker 1:Next, supplements for sleep. Magnesium has always been touted as a great, great supplement to help support relaxation and calming, specifically magnesium glycinate. So if you go and you buy a magnesium supplement, there's like five, maybe six different magnesium strains, each one having its own purposes, but glycinate magnesium glycinate is the best one to support sleep and the 200 to 400 milligram range. Do you take this before sleep? I would. I would take this in the afternoon before sleep. Actually, all these I would. I do take magnesium this in the afternoon before sleep. Actually, all these I would. I do take magnesium supplement. It has a couple of different strains in it. I don't know if I'm hitting these protocols but, again, I'm not trying to overcome major sleep issues, so I'll get to the one that I'm using currently. It's here at the bottom. Promotes calmness and relaxation.
Speaker 1:Now, one thing I wanna caution when it comes to supplements and sleep. Don't add all these at once. Take one, try it for about six weeks would be my suggestion. Be consistent with it for about six weeks and see if that's helping. If that's not helping, you can either add a second one potentially, or just try something different, a different supplement. Do it for a period of time, because if you dive into adding a bunch of things at once, you don't know what's working. You know why I want it and get expensive, but I just I try to be very intentional with my supplement intake. So I want to know, you know, do I just do I not need this? All right, honestly, didn't heard of this one. Epigenin, api, g and I in 50 milligrams of that can help calm your mind for sleep initiation. So the first three there, all these goal promoting relaxation, more of a wind down into sleep.
Speaker 1:Melatonin I'm not a huge fan of, I don't Like melatonin. But there are smarter people out there than me. Dr Andrew Huberman suggests micro dosing. A small dose of melatonin can help. What happens is your body naturally produces melatonin to initiate sleep. So if you're having issues producing melatonin initiate sleep, a small dose of melatonin can help initiate sleep. This could be a big deal for people that are working you know, swings, graveyard and you're trying to fall asleep during the day, kind of combating your natural sleep circadian rhythms. This can help.
Speaker 1:I would just be very cautious. Do your research on melatonin. It can have some long-term adverse effects. Me, when I've used melatonin in the past, I have the wildest dreams. My sleep quality does not feel great, I'm groggy and clunky the whole next day. It's just not a supplement and children using melatonin should be an absolute no-no. Everything I've done research wise when it comes to children using melatonin. I've done this for my own kids. It's an absolute no-no for me. Talk to your pediatrician if you got kids and using melatonin. I would just be very cautious about that. All right. Big reason why is it can be a hormone disruptor, melatonin. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Currently using glycine, I'm taking about four grams per day in the afternoon to see if I can't notice any improvements in cognitive function. So glycine is an amino acid that can help enhance my understanding, increase your quality of REM sleep and help your neurons whatever's going on there offload. I believe it can facilitate that interaction between your hypothalamus and the rest of your brain and cleaning up some of the clutter there, if you will. I don't know, it is interesting enough for me what. I've looked into it to give it a try. So I'm currently doing six weeks of glycine eat every day and seeing if I personally notice any improvements in my sleep, specifically related to feelings of my brain working better throughout the day. All right, so that's me right now. That's why I added it to this deal is it's just something I'm currently using to see if I can improve my sleep quality when it comes to supplements for sleep.
Speaker 1:What about supplements when we don't get great sleep? So I've taken creatine forever. I think it is one of the best supplements people can take. So many health benefits for taking creatine when it comes to our long term health, muscle bone muscle density not necessarily maintaining your bone density all the time there's been research showing that creatine taking can help initiate glucose uptake in your muscles, so you don't have as much blood glucose going around. This can help prevent metabolic disease.
Speaker 1:Taking creatine can help in some when it comes to mental health, potentially in regards to you know, dementia, various things by increasing ATP production in your brain. So, know, dementia, various things um, by increasing ATP production in your brain. So your brain's basically functioning better. Because I've taken creatine for so long, I don't know one way or the other. I guess I could stop taking it and see if I feel, uh, worse. But benefits of taking it are just so heavy. I just take creatine. I take five grams a day. Three to five grams is suggested dose for a healthy individual who doesn't have any kidney things going on. Again, those are things you can talk to your doctor about, but for a healthy individual, I suggest three to five grams of creatine per day for many aspects. Now, this is one thing to be mindful of with creatine.
Speaker 1:So as the day goes on, adenosine builds up in your brain. As it's building up in your brain body, it is creating what is called sleep pressure. So the more throughout the 24-hour cycle adenosine is building up in your body is going to get, you're going to get more tired, tired and tired when you go to cycle. Adenosine is building up in your body. You're going to get more tired, tired and tired when you go to sleep. This adenosine offloads Creatine. May this pressure building up in your body from adenosine, this sleep pressure, if you will, we'll get into this with caffeine, but caffeine doesn't stimulate anything. It blocks adenosine so you don't feel tired. That's what happens there. It goes and binds to adenosine receptors, allowing you to not get much sleep pressure build up over the course of a day.
Speaker 1:And well, if you have like what's it called I don't know if it's restless leg syndrome, but if you find yourself getting nighttime cramps, creatine can help with that is uh, one thing with creatine can help with that. One thing with creatine is your muscles will retain more water. Your muscles will be fuller. This is healthy, this is good and with that it can reduce things there. So something worth looking into, especially maybe if you're in a season where sleep isn't perfect related to job, creatine could be something that can help support you during that time.
Speaker 1:But again, I take it for the laundry list of other health benefits outside of this. Just so you know, the only need is creatine monohydrate in its simplest, purest form. This is a very cheap supplement to manufacture, so most places that sell it like this it's not a very cheap supplement to manufacture, so most places that sell it like this it's not a very expensive supplement. There's not a lot of money to be made in the supplement scam industry out there. So when you see a supplement company adding any sort of proprietary blends or their creatine's better than this creatine, it's all crap. All the studies, all the research for over dang 30 years now has been done on simple creatine monohydrate. You don't need anything outside of that. Right Been in this industry a long time. I see the supplement companies saying why theirs is better than X. No, they're saying it's better than X, adding their proprietary blend to it to sell it at a higher profit margin, when the reality is it's all crap. Creatine monohydrate is all we need.
Speaker 1:So some special considerations for people who have to work on shifts and outside of their chronotype, if you will. So irregular sleep cycles can lead to metabolic health issues. This is proven to be true and is something to be very mindful of. But some deals to overcome this is getting some light. So say, you're at the work graveyard and you just slept all day. You need to create a false circadian rhythm, so having bright lights when you wake up to go to work at nighttime, having bright lights stimulate that in the morning. Creating an artificial daytime can help keep you your circadian rhythm, inverse of the sun and the moon. Naps can be a big deal for people who have to work these. You might find that taking strategically placed naps can help offset some of the challenges when it comes to working shift work schedules, obviously because you're trying to sleep during the day. Sleep masks, blackout curtains, these various things can help dramatically because you need to create artificial nighttime. Again, melatonin can help get your body moving in a schedule inverse to the night and daytime structure that naturally occurs in the world. Again, I'm not a fan of melatonin, but it can be a tool when used in moderation and maybe help facilitate some of this.
Speaker 1:There's another thing I wanted well, when it comes to schedules, so sleep schedules, I know a lot of folks and this is I'm just I'll admit it's most likely impossible right, you work four days on three days off, or three days on four days off, and then you have to adjust back to normal life. So I've heard from many folks you, you work graveyard, graveyard, graveyard, and then your next day you basically either sleep a little bit or force a 24-hour wake time to get back into a normal cycle for a couple days on. That can be very difficult and just something to be very mindful of, because I know during those days off you can spend time with family, kids, this and that, get other things done when the rest of the world's awake. It's just something to be mindful of. That short term, week by week swing and sleep schedules especially say you're early morning chronotype, like me, and you're trying to work graveyard. It's just something to be mindful of as far as your health, something to be mindful of. There's a big circadian rhythm in a very short period of time. In a perfect world, if I had to work graveyard, in my mind I would want to. That would be my schedule. But again, I understand. The world doesn't work like that. Schedules don't work like that, kids sports don't work like that, nothing works like that. So it makes it near impossible. So just do yourself a favor. During that time when sleep is chaos, try to do everything you can, health and nutrition wise, to offset the negative impacts of what's happening from sleep the best you can. That's my advice there.
Speaker 1:Next Myths and he kept sleep on the weekends. Regular, consistent sleep is better than playing the sleep deprivation game, for you know, five, six in a row and then, oh, I'm going to sleep. You know, 20 hours a weekend, catch up. That's not a winning game, although I do know, for I want to say anecdotally, with myself getting a couple extra hours of sleep when I've had a couple days where my sleep wasn't great, I feel much better. But I wouldn't treat that as a rule of sleep deprivation for days, catch up sleep. Sleep deprivation for days, catch up sleep. I'd really just try to build a structure that allows you to sleep in a more consistent schedule.
Speaker 1:Alcohol helps with better sleep. That's complete garbage, Absolutely false. In no way, shape or form does alcohol improve sleep. Not at all. It's very different to your REM sleep and alcohol is poison to the body. Zero health benefits from it. Now, folks that work a really stressful job might find having one or two drinks helps. Call what do you want to say? Sedate the stress response that's maybe going on.
Speaker 1:To help facilitate wind down, I will say yes, okay, I get it, I get it, but I would truly try to avoid it and figure out another tool or trick to help facilitate that wind down time. Lots of times it's the act of drinking something and there are a lot of non-alcoholic options out there that can trigger your brain into saying it is downtime. I just got off work. I usually crack a beer, pour a little whiskey. You could swap that out with a non-alcoholic beverage to trick your brain into. It is now time for me to wind down. I'm not a huge meditation person, but if you are or I've tried it, you know meditating another great way to try to wind down various other tools. I just wouldn't use alcohol if you want to maximize your sleep and sleep opportunity, because alcohol, well, it's garbage.
Speaker 1:Exercising before bed can disrupt sleep and, like I said, this is related to intensity. I do know that low intensity walking, light intensity workouts before bedtime can actually support sleep. Okay, again, that's intensity equation that I've noticed over the years with folks including myself. So just being mindful of the intensity, but you can do some movement and facilitate your body into a restful state. Stretching, I will say, going back to movement before sleep, doing some stretching Not trying to just light stretching, foam rolling, these kinds of things. Doing it as part of that 30 to 60 minute wind down time before bed. That can really help with sleep.
Speaker 1:All right, dive a little deeper into alcohol and sleep. Alcohol reduces your REM sleep. That is a restorative sleep where your brain is consolidating and cleaning out. Alcohol reduces this and it's going to start impairing your ability to handle memories, your emotional well-being. For me, the biggest thing I notice when I have a couple drinks the next day, usually my anxiety is increased significantly. So I am very aware that when I'm anxious, if I'm anxious from something throughout the day, I'm not going to have a drink to deal with that anxiousness because it's going to mess up my sleep and the next day is going to be even worse. So using alcohol to deal with anxiety is a terrible, losing idea. So don't do it again. I just to be firsthand having a drink or two, I will fall asleep, definitely fall asleep, but the sleep is garbage the quality of sleep and there has hardly ever been a time that I've woken up the next day feeling better than I did not drinking Another deal.
Speaker 1:Depending on your age, this is going to be more prevalent, but sleep apnea can be increased. Alcohol can have a pretty heavy influence on your risk of developing sleep apnea. So getting sleep apnea is no joke. Lots of health issues can come from sleep apnea and it's something to be very mindful of. So basically, alcohol is simply poison. I still have some drinks. I like hanging out with the friends having some drinks. The best piece of advice I could give you on this is to be very intentional with your drinking. I'm going to have two drinks on this day because of such-such date night with my wife. Whatever right, just a casual, mindless drinking that takes place in society is not good and I would just suggest getting very intentional with it, know and understand your trade-offs with it and just be very mindful when you're consuming alcohol.
Speaker 1:Caffeine and sleep. So caffeine, like I said earlier, blocks adenosine. Doesn't allow, so it doesn't allow the adenosine to build up to create that sleep pressure so that we want to fall asleep, right. So this is going to reduce more of our deep sleep and we're not going to get as good of quality of sleep. Interesting thing about caffeine is for most people it has a half-life of five to six hours. So if I take 300 milligrams of caffeine, my body will be able to process potentially 150 milligrams over the next six hours. Then you half-life that, so over the next six hours. Now we're at 12 hours. I'm at 75 milligrams left in my body. Then you half-life that again. So we're at 18 hours. I now have 37.2 milligrams left and then, once I hit 12 hours, from that 300 milligrams of caffeine, I am down to 17 and a half milligrams of caffeine left. That was very, I guess a simplified caffeine intake breakdown of basically after 24 hour period there's still going to be caffeine in my body is what I'm getting at. You're not going to purge it all.
Speaker 1:So if you're a heavy caffeine user, all right. I can't remember off the top of my head what is. I think it's 300, but actually it's probably lower than that. Let's look it up real quick. Um, caffeine in coffee all right. So an eight ounce cup of coffee on average has 95 milligrams of caffeine. I don't know about you. When was the last time you poured eight ounce cup of coffee? Not me, now I'm usually 12 ouncer, right there. I suspect where the 300 came from is that a couple times when I've done the math, I usually consume about 300 milligrams of caffeine per day, right? Um, and most the research is around consuming 400 or less milligrams of caffeine per day, right? So, depending on what you're intaking caffeine from, if you're just doing some coffee, you're getting 95 milligrams roughly on average per eight ounces. So you can do the math, kind of figure that out. But understand there's a half-life Over the course of 24 hours. You're not going to deplete all the caffeine out of your body, so it's not like it's a fresh start. No caffeine in the body every 24 hours. Over 10 years of drinking caffeine, you're going to have a chronic buildup of caffeine in your system. That it is a good idea to do what's known as a caffeine holiday.
Speaker 1:I'm all for coffee, I'm all for caffeine, I'm a fan of it. It just needs to be used intentionally, right? I think caffeine is one of the best pre workouts you can do. You know, eight to twelve ounces of coffee, black coffee, or maybe a little 2% milk is one of the great pre workout. I actually just love coffee. There's painting on who you want to research and find your evidence for there's plenty of evidence supporting that good, healthy, roasted, not full of garbage coffee can some pretty quality health, positive health outcomes.
Speaker 1:But either way I'm not going to get the minutiae of all that. I'm just not anti-caffeine is what I'm getting at. I'm anti-overusing caffeine and if you're caffeine sensitive you should be more mindful of how much caffeine you drink before bedtime and be very intentional about that. I happen to one. I genetically tested. I am a high caffeine metabolizer and I just know from experience. I deal with caffeine pretty well, but I still am very mindful and do try to limit that to 300 milligrams per day and the majority of that comes from coffee. I mean a majority. That is the only place it comes from. I do like coffee and I just try to. I am always done with my caffeine intake by usually 10 11 am. So just be mindful of your caffeine, all right, and don't drink it right before bed. That's what I'm getting out there. Let's come back right. Sleep trackers.
Speaker 1:We use the whoop on the last group that we ran through our fitness program. This is my whoop. I just want to show you a couple things. So right here there's the stress monitor and my whoop device. You can see it right there on my wrist. I've worn this for years. I'm kind of an objective data nerd and um, hold on happening here. Sorry, almost stopped recording. That would have been bad. But yeah, whoop, right here. I love it, I use it. We got great uh data from the last group that went through your guys's fitness program and this is just a screenshot of me a couple nights ago.
Speaker 1:So this is showing what the stress monitor is gauging stress off. It's based on your hrv, your heart rate variability and your resting heart rate or your heart rate during said time. So it gives you kind of a stress score and it shows undulations in your stress and your body for various reasons. So you can see right here this night and this was last Saturday night I had some drinks with some friends. We were carving pumpkins, had the kids over, blah, blah, blah, had some drinks. Look at my stress deal. It is going whack-a-doodle all night long. Next day I had no alcohol, did everything, perfect good sleep hygiene. Look at how flatlined my stress is that night. It's a massive difference and I can tell you in how I felt the next day. It was a massive difference and I've seen this repeated over and over and over. There's no way for me to cheat and lie to my body if I had some drinks.
Speaker 1:It literally this thing picks it up and it just gives me very objective data and visual effects of behaviors that negatively impact my sleep. Some things I track with it it's lots of things, but just when it comes to sleep sleep consistency you can see right here that my bedtime, like I said, is usually between 730 and 8. That's pretty consistent. This is the last six months. So this is my average bedtime month by month for the last six months. This is my average wake time morning by morning for the last six months. So I'm very consistent there, right? And then this shows my sleep efficacy. So having a sleep efficacy score with these things above 85% is pretty good, right? It's pretty darn good. 85% is pretty good, right, it's pretty darn good. So that is where I have been trying to get to with improving my sleep and that is what I am seeing over a six month period that I have actually been able to improve it and sleep efficacy.
Speaker 1:Quality of your sleep, not necessarily the duration so are you of your sleep, not necessarily the duration. So are you hitting your sleep cycles? And this is just an objective data point that allows me to experiment with different things sleep protocols, wind down times. Obviously I know that alcohol consumption dramatically reduces my quality of sleep. Excessive training, not getting enough recovery, my calories, my nutrition If my calorie intake for me is off, if I'm not getting enough high quality calories to help recover from training, my sleep will then be off.
Speaker 1:These are all things I've experimented personally over the years and I've just found that getting enough protein, carbohydrates and fats in my diet eating well to support how I live my life is vital for my sleep. Not eating a huge meal before bedtime affects my sleep. So I really try to make sure I eat. Most of my food is consumed at least two hours before bed. It's not always perfect, but I do really try not to eat large amounts of food before bed. I think most people kind of know that rule of thumb, if you will.
Speaker 1:A couple other things that I didn't hit on in this is carbohydrates can be very important for your sleep. So making sure that you're getting a balanced diet. I'm not an anti-carb person. I'm an anti-garbage carb person. Eating quality carbohydrates, quality protein, quality fats, making sure you get enough fiber in your diet for digestion. Your gut and bowels are very active at night. These things can all help support and promote quality sleep. So basically, what I'm getting at is the healthier you live your days, the better you're going to sleep at night. The better you sleep at night, you're going to probably be more inclined to live healthier during the days. These things, I guess, work as a yin and yang relationship with your long-term health and it is something that I highly encourage you to put effort into understanding and working through scenarios for you individually to help you optimize your sleep the best that you possibly can.
Speaker 1:And the other thing I want to touch on that I recently heard was over the prescription medication like Ambien and whatnot. It can help with maybe some short-term sleep deprivation issues or insomnia types types of situations, but the long-term sleep deprivation issues or insomnia types of situations, but the long-term use of those drugs have pretty negative side effects when it comes to sleep quality over time and potentially other health negative outcomes. But, like all pharmaceutical drugs, you wanna be very intentional working with your healthcare provider on the management of those drugs. I know this is a non-issue for y'all, but C marijuana has been shown not to improve quality of sleep. It can sedate you, you can feel like you're getting a great night's sleep, but it's not sleep. Studies and research has not shown marijuana, thc, to have positive outcomes when it comes to improving sleep quality. So again, I know a lot of folks none of you guys, I don't think but I do know quite a few people rely on marijuana infused to help facilitate sleep and they might feel like they're sedated longer and they probably are. But the quality and restorative nature of sleep and improving your brain health and your metabolic health doesn't seem to have the same outcomes. Seem to have the same outcomes.
Speaker 1:Me, for instance, when we were going through COVID you can imagine my business was getting slammed upside the head. I was very stressed out during that time and my sleep was absolutely awful during that time. I did try. I tried small amounts to help sleep and I will say it sedated me. But I felt absolutely terrible that I felt better the next day, with less hours of sleep, if you will, and just letting my body kind of deal with it, and then I just well, I ended up going to therapy working on some stress management tactics, because my number one tactic for stress management is physical exercise and when I'm really stressed I tend to overdo it in that department, which leads me to negative sleep, which leads me to body being broken down, and yeah. So I had to work on other stress management techniques to facilitate better sleep and recovery in a smarter way.
Speaker 1:Last thing I want to bring up is the use of heat exposure and deliberate cold exposure. When it comes to sleep, I do heavily believe in heat exposure and sauna. We have a sauna here at the gym, I also have one at home and my wife really loves using the sauna before bed to help her sleep and it has been a huge positive for her. For me, it comes to in the evening sauna, as long as I keep it at a lower temperature. What happens is it raises your core body temperature. Your body has to overcome that by cooling off, and your body actively cooling itself off will start facilitating that cooling scenario required to fall asleep, because to fall asleep, your body is going to move blood from the core of your body out to its extremities to cool down. So, using hot tub, hot shower, bath, sauna. These things can help improve your sleep quality, your ability to fall asleep.
Speaker 1:Caveat of sauna it does dehydrate you. Getting dehydrated before bed not a great idea. So you want to make sure you're hydrating sufficiently throughout the day, because then you get out of the sauna, you chug 16 ounces of water and then you're waking up to go pee. So just be mindful of that equation there. When it comes to cold water, get cold exposure, deliberate cold exposure and cold plunging. Doing that before bedtime probably not a good idea because it's going to cool you. Your body is going to want to heat itself up, which is going to be the inverse of what your body wants to do to fall asleep. I find cold water exposure to be best in the morning. I love getting in a cold plunge first thing in the morning. It just gives me a nice dopamine kick, gets blood flow, forces your body to wake up in a fantastic way. So on nights that I haven't had great sleep and I coached 5 am class and I want to jump start that, I'll get in a cold plunge immediately upon waking and it does act as a crutch to get me through the work day um, with a positive attitude. If you will. It is a. It is a good tool for that. I just wouldn't do cold before bed. I would do that more in the morning and then heat exposure towards evening.
Speaker 1:Hope you guys got some value out of this. And yeah, we got questions. Feel free to reach out to me. Um, sure, mine will be available. Make it available for you. And yeah, no, I'm super excited. There's specific topics anybody wants to learn or learn more about. When it comes to health and fitness, I am down to research it. I am down to put in work and cut through the weeds of everything out there in this health and fitness space, the best that I possibly can to give you the best research and understanding of how to improve your health and fitness. Alright, so, without going on any longer, thank you for everything that you guys do to serve our community. And yeah, get sleep. No-transcript.