The Importance of Sleep Consistency; The Best Sleep Position; Skipping Leg Day Could Kill You

In this Episode we discuss:

Dr. Michael Breus, The Sleep Doctor, and his emphasis on sleep CONSISTENCY for overall health. 

The best sleep position for brain detoxification 

The link between strong leg muscles and longevity. 

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

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Welcome to the podcast. I'm John Tesh with Gib Gerard, and we're gonna talk about a few things today Gib, and chief among them is a topic that we we address this a lot on transformation Tuesdays. We do and if you are not a part of transformation Tuesdays, let's just do a quick commercial, because you can find it first of all@tesh.com that's our website, tesh.com you'll see transformation Tuesdays on the pull down every week on Tuesday. That's how that works. At 10 o'clock Pacific Time, we get together for a half hour, 45 minutes, and we just riff about all the all the curated pieces and all the information that we find on the radio show and on the podcast every single week. And a lot of it is just how to make you a better person. Our whole thing is getting you from the place you are to the place you want to be, and dealing with the issues that keep us from transforming into that, into that person that we all want to be. And the nice thing that we're doing with transformation Tuesdays, and it's why it's named, it's how on Tuesday, and it's about transforming you. It's why we called it that genius. Um, the whole point is that we figure out what, because you tell us what will make you get to that place, what it is that's stopping you from getting that place. So we interact with you guys on Facebook. We have conversations with the chat on transformation Tuesdays. We draw from our decades of experience doing intelligence for life, of reading all of the latest research and reporting on it, and we draw from that to help people break through the blockades that they have in their mind, in their life, in their habits that are keeping them from being as excellent as they want to be. We've We've jokingly called intelligence for life, life coaching on the radio. This is a little bit. This is less on the radio and more on the life coaching blockade. I like that. Yeah. I just think of it as getting unstuck. Because when you're, you know, I'm of a certain age, and when you start talking about blockade health issue, oh no. Oh that, yes, yeah. Hey, let's, let's start off with a friend of ours. His name is Dr Michael, Bruce, and he has, he has trademarked to this phrase, this descriptor of him, because it's true. He's known as the sleep doctor, and we've talked many times. You hear us talk more about it, to talk many times about what are the best ways, first of all, how important a good night's sleep is, which we'll we'll dig into with the science of just a moment. But also, what is, what's, what's the best way to be consistent about your about your sleep. How important is consistency? Here's Dr Bruce to talk about that. Do you want to know the secret to getting good sleep? No, it's not your diet or caffeine intake or even how much you sleep. What's going to have the biggest impact on sleep quality is actually consistency. So what does that mean? Means going to bed and waking up at about the same time every day, plus or minus about 10 minutes. The reason for this is that your body is governed by these things called circadian rhythms. They help control your body temperature, your immune systems, your hormones, metabolism, cognitive functions, honestly, the list goes on and on, and the more consistent those rhythms are, the more efficient they work in your body. So if you want to learn more, click the link below. I'll click the link below for you so but, but for somebody like you who has three kids under the age of 13, how, how do you and I guess we can sort of extrapolate that into people who have crazy jobs and and who are even shift workers, how do you maintain your consistency? Right? So I mean what he's talking about there, right? What's best is a consistent sleep schedule. What's best is that we go to bed at the same time every day, and we wake up at the same time every day. And that is really hard to do if your life is any more complicated than that, of a certain kind of banker, right? If you're a shift worker at all, or if you have jobs and tasks that require late nights and like, talk about me having kids and how that disrupts it. It can be hard to do that every single day. So one of the things that I lean on, and especially as we age, right? I try to wake up at the same time every day. So I wake up, you know, between 530 and six every day, whether I can sleep in or not, that doesn't mean that I don't sleep in sometimes, but I have sort of gotten that habit whether you have three kids in your bed, right? Okay, I got that habit because, you know, we're just finally out of the stage where the kids are waking up, you know, consistently in the middle of the night, and where they will actually sleep in if they stay up late. So I just got used to that, and it helps me get tired at the right time. And if I can anchor that wake up time, it anchors my go to bed time, right? I get sleepy, all of my rhythms align. And does that mean that I never stay up past midnight? No, of course, I stay up past midnight all the time. Does it mean that I never that I never adjust this at all? I never sleep in No, but I'm trying to wake up at the same time every day. It helps me keep that circadian rhythm in line. And by the way, like when I was in my 20s, I'm thinking about college, right? You think about college, your sleep schedule is terrible. Some nights you're up all night. Some days you're asleep until 1pm I mean, like I used to sleep in. I would come home from college on the weekends, and I would sleep in until like 1231 o'clock. So when you're in your 20s, you can do that. And as you age, you can't recover as quickly well. I think you know and my my secret weapon, and I've been told this by so many of my friends, I finally figured out how to do. It my secret weapon. If I do, I'm the same way my alarm got clock goes off three times between 530 and six, that's when I have to get up. But if I if we have a dinner party or something like that, or even a concert that we go to or it's one of those things where I know that I have trained myself to I can take a 20 minute nap. I know how to do it, and my body is used to it. The trick for that, though, is not to take it too soon to when you're gonna go to bed at night, right? Because then you can't then you can't sleep. Yeah, but yeah again, so more sleep is better if you're getting between seven to nine hours, even if you break it up and get naps, that's okay, but, but the ideal thing for your body, for the way that you deal with your hormones, the way that you digest food, the way that you produce belly fat, right? So if you can get in the same habit when he talks about circadian rhythms, it's not just you waking up and being tired. It's when your cortisol peaks. It's when your different hormones, it's when your insulin peaks. So all of your abilities to digest food and exercise and regrow muscle and and deal with the onslaught of high glycemic foods that we eat and processed foods. All of that, even your ability to manage to deal with your mood and and your ability to choose what food to eat is affected by that circadian rhythm. So if you can, if you can normalize that as much as possible. And a lot of the healthiest people do the same things every single day. They wake up at the same time. They have the same habits. They eat the same meals, and because it aligns so well, yeah. And you know what? One of our favorites, neuroscientist, Dr Andrew Huberman, always talks about how important, and he's just he talked about recapitulation. He talks over and over again about how important it is to get a sunlight into your retinas, not to look directly into the sun, but to the left or the right of the sun, to get sunlight morning light into your retinas, just to make sure you're telling your brain, okay, time to cast off the melatonin and and start increase the cortisol and then your body. I've noticed this with I try to, I'm better now I try to eat at the same time, yep, every day. And that way, my digestive system knows when it's time to go to the bathroom, you know? And it tends to happen the same time every day. Same thing with your sleep is it? When you train your body to know, know that it's going to wake up at a certain time? There's a thing called exp, what's it sounds like? XP, alludious, but it's not. It's that. Remember that thing where it's like you you wake up before the alarm clock goes off, Phantom alarm syndrome. Now it's not that, but it said, Well, I'm gonna look it up. Okay, when that next time you're talking? Yeah, but it is that thing where, where your body will. You won't even need an alarm clock. Your body will just wake up. As opposed to the more you can regulate yourself like that, the more you can regulate when you're eating, when you're sleeping, all of that again, all of your body processes begin to align and do better that way. And you're going back to what Dr Huberman said, you know, you want that cortisol, that melatonin, to go away and that cortisol to peak at the right time. And we see this in the unhealth of people who work the third shift. Now, sometimes that can't be avoided. We need third shift workers, and we appreciate it, but if you are switching days and nights, you have to be really proactive in how you are exposing your body to the frequencies of light associated with sunlight, and how dark it is when you are sleeping, because all of those things influence when your cortisol spike is so at some point during the day, your cortisol, your stress hormone, is going to spike. If you get out of bed and you get indirect sunlight, or direct sunlight, you know, you step outside, if you have a balcony, if you have a backyard, whatever, you step outside and you get those first rays of sun as you're trying to wake up, that cortisol spike will be at the ideal time, which is the first couple of hours that you're awake, and then you are easing your way for the rest of the day into into sleep. If you wake up in the morning and you're in a dark room, and you get you go down into the garage, and then you're in a dark it's dark there. And then you drive straight to an office, and you don't actually ever get out into the sunlight. And then you're in the office all day, or in the factory or wherever, and then you come out into the into the evening sun, you never get lined up with the sun. Sun's influence on your cortisol and your circadian rhythms, and that will mess with you. So going to sleep at the same time every night, waking up at the same time every day, and making sure that you get that direct sunlight is a great way to regulate all of your hormone systems. That's awesome. Awesome. I can't, I still can't find the word. And I will eventually. You actually did a piece on the TV show about it. Oh no, and it sounds like XP, allidocious, but it's, there's another word for us, because precision waking, yeah, where your body becomes precise about the time it wakes up. Let's move on to to what happens to your brain when you sleep. Okay, you know. And there's, there's a lot of this new information coming out now about people like, Oh no, you remember, I guess it must have started, I don't know, maybe a decade or so ago. And I used to, I fell for this where it was like, people would say, you know, how you doing? I'd say, I'm exhausted. Why? Wow. Well, I worked a 17 hour day, right? It used to be a badge of courage, yep. And now we understand that if. If you don't sleep, then, then you're not cleaning out your brain. Yep, yeah, all of the metabolic byproducts that of your neurons firing throughout the day have to be, have to be taken away. And that is one of you know, as the as people study sleep, so intentionally, it's one of several of the benefits of sleep, and it's one of the most important ones, which is your brain cleaning out the byproducts from cellular metabolism. There is a very specific way that you can clean your brain while you sleep. It's it's how you sleep. And listen to this, the way you sleep could be clogging or cleaning your brain. Here's the science. Your brain has a waste removal system called the glymphatic system that's most active during sleep side sleeping enhances this bleeding process by up to 25% compared to other positions. This system removes toxic proteins that can lead to neurodegeneration. Proper sleep position can improve memory consolidation by 20% and reduce brain inflammation. It helps clear proteins linked to Alzheimer's and may speed recovery from concussion. Your brain literally detoxifies better in certain positions. Isn't that strange? Start sleeping on your right side with your head slightly elevated. Use a cervical pillow to maintain proper spine alignment and avoid stomach sleeping, which restricts blood flow to the brain. I feel, I feel like, I mean, I have tried before to sleep on my stomach, yeah? And it's like, it's suffocating. There are a lot of people who can do it, though, but it's dangerous. Sometimes. If I'm tossing and turning stomach, sleep is actually really good. I don't know if it's because it deprives me of oxygen. I'm actually passing out, yeah, but I can sleep with my stomach, but I after, after doing some of the research that we've done, I have started actively sleeping, falling asleep on my right side, and it makes a huge difference in how and how awake and rested I feel the next day. You know, one of the things, as we talked earlier about the transformation Tuesday group that we're with, and it's, it's, it's a tremendous half hour, 45 minutes. And again, you can sign up at Tech comm. Transformation Tuesdays is, you know, when we finish, when Gib and I finish teaching, we actually take some some questions. And a couple of the questions that came up a few weeks ago were about, you know, how can you tell if you have a sleep apnea, and how important that is? Yeah, one of the big problems with with diagnosing Sleep apnea is if you don't have a partner in bed with you, right? And so then, now they do have, you know, we have, we have the Apple Watch, and we have the aura ring, and there's actually a device that you that you can put next to you that will, that will record, you know, weird Sleep Sounds, but sleep apnea is basically, it's an obstruction, right? And so in the middle of the night, and it happens to people. It can happen even if you are a healthy person, but it can happen mostly to people who are overweight, who have a lot of a lot of belly fat, or who have high blood pressure. And it's really a it's a paradox, because it's, it actually causes high blood pressure, because what's happening is you stop breathing. And sometimes people stop breathing for, like, a minute and a half, yeah, and then, and they gasp, and start to start breathing again, and your heart has to work overtime right order to compensate for that lack of oxygen. So one of the big symptoms, apparently, is if you're, if you're in bed for eight hours, and you feel like you slept, and then you but you wake up and you're exhausted all day, that is a big symptom of sleep after and it is these CPAP machines, you know, they're very small now there, and there's other things you can do there. There are other there's, there's other types of exercises you can do that can, that can help you ameliorate this, but, but if you, if you a lot of people, I have two, two of my friends who who passed away at a young age, who just, they had symptoms, not of this, but of other stuff, other stuff, heart symptoms. And they just, they just didn't want to go to the doctor, sure, but there are Michael, Bruce and and our friend Christopher winter. They both lead to sleep studies, or many sleep studies in your town, if you feel like, or you feel like your partner may be gasping in the middle of the night, you need to get checked out. Gotta get it will kill you. It will, it will. And, like you said, it becomes this feedback loop, right? So being a few pounds overweight can exacerbate symptoms of sleep apnea. So maybe you have not had sleep apnea, and you get into your 30s, your 40s, your metabolism starts to drop, and you've gained a couple of pounds, happens to literally everybody, and all of a sudden now your sleep is messed up. And when your sleep is messed up, not only are we not cleaning out all of the byproducts from from the day, which will lead to early dementia and lead to potentially to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, but we're also now messing with the hormones that we were talking about earlier in the show, which means that we are going to be more likely to reach for high glycemic foods, and we've actually interviewed Dr Bruce before. I don't have a clip for this show, but we've interviewed Dr Bruce before, and he's talked about how when you are sleep deprived, and sleep apnea makes you sleep deprived, you're going to reach for the high sugar foods, the cakes, cookies, things like that, where your body because your body wants the simple, the simple energy that comes from these readily available energy sources. In order to increase the energy in your brain, it's a poor substitute for sleep, and if you never make up for sleep, you will continue to crave those, again, high glycemic foods, foods that increase your blood pressure or your blood sugar very quickly, because your brain thinks it needs the energy. And as a result, you're gonna you're gonna gain a little bit more weight, which is gonna make it harder to reduce the sleep apnea, and it becomes this vicious cycle where it becomes really hard to upset that apple cart and you do need medical intervention. That's really, that's really, really good. We've that's it for the sleep for now, if you have questions, you can post them here on the podcast, but we're always going to be talking about sleep off and on on this podcast, and also all of your health. It is because if you don't get that right, then your relationships fall apart. You're going to be lousy at work. You know, you're going to gain weight around your middle you know, all of that stuff. We came across an interesting interview with with Simon Sinek, who talks about something that, that we preach all the time, and that and that Gib works on every single day in the in the gym. I'm not as good about this, but I do know as a cancer survivor how important it is to make sure that the large muscle groups in your body are trained to make sure that they're strong. Also at 72 years old, I've caught my 15 inch sneaker foot on the side of a stair before and taken a couple of nice falls. Fortunately, I'm in pretty good shape, and I didn't break too many things. But if you don't have some meat and some muscle on your thighs and on your hips, it's true, your large muscle groups, you're not going to live as long. And so here's, and that's a that's a pretty straightforward statement that's also supported by Peter Attia, another one of our favorite guys. Here's Simon Sinek, who is asked, What are your what are the most important organs in your body? Listen carefully. What are the most important organs to keep strong for longevity? Like we know the data, right? So I'll tell you what they are, right? Number one heart, obviously, that makes perfect sense, right? You gotta have a healthy heart if you want to live a long time, right? Second one lungs. Gotta have healthy lungs to live a long time, cardio and all the rest of it, right? Don't smoke like we know that makes perfect sense. Do you know what the third most important organ is? I didn't know, I was gonna say the brain, but the thighs, thigh muscles are the the so if you have a healthy heart, healthy lungs and healthy thighs, statistically, you're more likely to live longer. I know I said the same thing. Thighs. Do you want to know why? Yeah, we can. We can tell you why? Yeah, because a couple of reasons. First of all, there are studies on twins. And the twin that lived the longest and then had the the healthiest life were the ones with the large, large muscle groups, and also those muscles burned like, now, what is it like? Glucose? Thank you. Well, there's, what is the what is glycogen that's, that's what's stored in the muscles, right? Yeah, that is, that is that is readily available carbohydrates that your muscles can draw upon on your own. And why is that so important? Okay, so thick thighs save lives, right? The thicker you make that up. No, it's an internet thing. Don't look it up, but. But the point is that the thicker your thighs are, the more likely you are to live longer. And it's for it's for two big reasons that we've hit on, and one is false, right? You're going to be if you if your legs are strong, you're going to be more stable your your hip joint, which is, you know, I watched this happen to my grandmother. I watched her break her hip and then decline in health all the way to her death. And that is not uncommon. Yes, yeah, so that's not uncommon. So if your leg muscles are strong, you're less likely to break your hip. That means your femur is going to be strong. You're less likely to engage in that sort of life ending or beginning of end of life injury. So that's one we get that that makes sense. So the stronger your legs, the more stable your base is, the less like you are to fall, or when you do fall, the less likely you are to be seriously injured. The other one is what we've just hinted at, which is big muscles. Skeletal muscle in general, is a great way to eat sugar in your blood, right? And the bigger the big muscle groups. And the thing is that the thighs and the glutes, those are the biggest of the big muscle groups. Think about what your glutes are compared to what your chest is, right? And chest is pretty big, but it's nothing compared to your glutes and thighs. So these are big muscles, and they're easier to work and get bigger, and when they are strong and thick, they will eat the sugar in your bloodstream. So most of us, we eat in the in the standard Western diet, we're eating a lot of high glycemic processed foods. Try to cut some of that out. You know, that's always going to be better, but, but even the rock has a cheat day, where they where he eats high glycemic foods. And what that does is it spikes your blood sugar, right? It spikes your blood sugar quickly. And normally what happens is your pancreas then responds and releases insulin to get your blood sugar back down. That creates that sugar crash. It's not fun. It doesn't feel good. But if you've got a lot of skeletal muscle, and particularly in your lower body, the skeletal muscle is. Actually going to consume that sugar, because it's constantly needing to eat, and that will actually reduce the amount of insulin that you have to release. It reduces your insulin insensitivity, which is a precursor to diabetes, and makes you less likely to have the metabolic diseases that lead to a shorter life. So metabolic diseases being Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer and type two diabetes, so that it's all super helpful in regulating your blood sugar and keeping you on that and that healthier plane of the highs and lows of a high glycemic diet. Now you can also help yourself by eating a lower glycemic diet, foods that are higher in not in refined carbs, but complex carbohydrates that have more fiber in them, foods that are higher in protein will all and healthy fats will all help you avoid those, those big surges in blood sugar. Yeah, that's really good. And you know, it was funny. What why you're describing that I saw on the news. It was the during the inauguration one of the balls, Mike Tyson and Jake Paul were together at the one of the inauguration balls, and He squatted with Tyson. Tyson was on his shoulders, right, yeah. And Jake Paul squatted, yeah. So there's a guy with some thigh muscles, yeah. Well, and by the way, you know I coach, you know this, I coach Little League Baseball. My daughters play soccer, my son plays soccer. And I spend a lot of time coaching kids, and one of the things that I spend a lot of time teaching kids how to do is engage what I call the kinetic chain, which is you can always throw it. Pitchers will tell you this at every level of Major League at every level of baseball, that the stronger legs are, the stronger your arm is, right, your arm gets tired quickly. Your legs can pitch for 70 pitches, yeah. So the key is to engage your legs in how you push the ball. Your kinetic chain is the difference between great athletes and people who look uncomfortable when they're throwing the ball. Dates, how much the pitchers it comes from the from, oh, yeah. Hitting is that's like when you watch, when you watch rowing, yeah, right, when you watch, watch that it's all in the legs. It's all in the legs. Yeah, they're pulling with their legs. Yes, it is. It is a it is a great way to increase your athleticism. But more than that, it is a great way to increase your longevity. I know a lot of you are trying to make the high school team right now, so you're just trying to make it to next to next year, and this is a great way to do it. And if you're thinking right now, oh my gosh, I gotta do something about my about my butts and my that's a strength in my large muscle groups. You can start with this, and you can Google it. It's just a wall sits. Just do a wall sit. Be careful, if you haven't done one before, make sure you have a chair or something to hold on to, to get out of it once you get into it. But it's very, very easy. Put your back up against the wall, get into a 90 degree angle. Make sure you have nice foot wear on or not socks, or maybe even bare feet, and see how long you can hold that wall sit for. So wall sits are great for a couple of reasons. One is that it does it strengthens the lower muscles, the lower body muscles, but it also is isometric, which means you don't move while you're doing it, which which is helpful for maintaining the stability of your joints. So if you're like, Oh, my knees hurt all this. It's what's great about that as you get into a comfortable position and you hold it so it's less stress on your knees than things like squats, and if you have the mobility for it, body weight, squats are a great way to get started on increasing the amount of muscle mass in your and you can do that, by the way, when you're waiting in line for something. I mean, don't worry about people thinking you're nuts. People already think I'm nuts. They're going to die before you Yeah, because you're doing your squat, I do body weight squats every time I'm in line somewhere, and it makes people uncomfortable. Yeah, that's your job. All right. Thank you guys for being with us for the podcast. Thank you Gib Gerard, and again, if you'd like to hang out with us live time, just check out transformation Tuesdays. If you go to tesh.com you'll see it there. Also you can sign up on Thursday. We basically do spirit, soul and body. Spirit, mind, soul, I Thursday, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a mind body soul, mind body soul, mind body soul, spirit, mind and body. Anyway, it's three of those. It's all about how I got healed from from cancer using the word of God. That's on Thursdays. It's all available@touch.com and we'll see you on the next podcast. You.