The Health Hunt: Real Healing Journeys, Everyday Wellness & Expert Tips

Ep 33 - The Sleep Doctor, Dr. Michael Breus: Why You're Tired, Stressed, and Sleeping at the Wrong Time

• Sandi Magder and Daniel Schuman • Episode 33

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Sleep is one of the most important and misunderstood pillars of health. We've spent a lot of time discussing sleep on The Health Hunt, including an entire three-part sleep series, but for this conversation we decided to bring in one of the biggest names in the field.

Dr. Michael Breus, better known as The Sleep Doctor, has spent more than 25 years helping people understand and improve their sleep. In this first part of our conversation, we explore why sleep is so foundational to health, how poor sleep impacts everything from memory and mood to relationships and longevity, and some surprising symptoms that could be signs your sleep isn't as healthy as you think.

We also dive into one of Dr. Breus's most fascinating concepts: the idea that not everyone is designed to sleep, wake, and function the same way. Some people thrive in the morning, some come alive at night, and understanding your unique sleep type (your chronotype) may completely change how you think about your energy, productivity, and overall health.

Whether you're someone who wakes up refreshed at dawn, struggles through every morning, or simply wants to sleep better, this episode is packed with insights that may change the way you think about sleep forever.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why sleep is the foundation of overall health
• The difference between sleep quantity and sleep quality
• Surprising signs and symptoms of poor sleep
• Why sleep affects memory, mood, focus, metabolism, and relationships
• Sleep disorders people often overlook
• The connection between sleep and long-term health outcomes
• Why some people seem to function on very little sleep
• Dr. Breus's four sleep types: Lion, Bear, Wolf, and Dolphin
• The genetics behind sleep timing and energy patterns
• Why your sleep patterns may change as you age
• How understanding your sleep type can improve your daily routine

Take Dr. Breus's Sleep Type (Chronotype) Quiz

Connect with Dr. Michael Breus:
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Text us your thoughts, questions, or takeaways. We read every message.

All views, opinions, and commentary expressed on The Health Hunt Podcast are solely those of the hosts. They are shared in a personal capacity and do not represent the views, policies, or positions of any current or former employer, including any organizations with which the hosts may be professionally affiliated.

Connect with the Health Hunt

Sandi Magder

Welcome back to the Health Hunt, a human, humble, and humorous exploration of how to level up your health. Now, if you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that sleep is one of our favorite topics and pastimes. In fact, we dedicated an entire three-part series to it back in episodes six through eight. Because we both experienced firsthand just how much sleep impacts every aspect of health, from energy and mood to recovery, metabolism, and overall quality of life. But today, we're bringing in the big guns. Our guest is Dr. Michael Bruce, better known as the sleep doctor. He's become one of the most recognizable voices in sleep health and has recently appeared in some of the biggest podcasts in the world, helping millions of people better understand the science of sleep and how to improve it. To say that we were excited about this interview is an understanding. And this is going to be a multi-episode series. In the first part of our conversation, we dive into why sleep is so foundational to health, some surprising signs that poor sleep would be affecting your life, and one of Dr. Bruce's most fascinating concepts, chronotypes. Are you a lion? A bear? I could understanding your chronotype completely change the way you think about your energy, productivity, and sleep. Now, as you know, the Health Hunt Podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. We're not medical professionals, and nothing shared should be considered medical advice. Always consult your health care provider before making changes to your health. Now let's jump in with Dr. Michael Bruce, the sleep doctor.

Meet Dr. Michael Breus, The Sleep Doctor

Dan Schuman

All right, hello everyone. Today is an episode that is very special to us. I first met Dr. Bruce back in Austin, Texas in 2021 at a conference. And since then, he's become not just a friend, but someone I personally turn to when it comes to all things sleep. So having him join us on the health hunt is something I genuinely am grateful for. For those who may not know, Dr. Bruce is one of the most recognized sleep experts in the world. He's a double board certified clinical psychologist and clinical sleep specialist, a diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, and a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In fact, he's one of only a small number of people globally to have passed the sleep medical specialty boards without attending medical school. Super impressive. He's been named a top sleep specialist by Reader's Digest and one of the most influential voices in sleep. Also the author of five books. And beyond that, he's worked with major brands Aura Ring, Purple Mattress, Calm, I even think Princess Cruises. Yep. And he's spoken in stages around the world from hospitals to Fortune 500 companies to events with Tony Robbins. So with over 25 years in private practice, Dr. Bruce has helped thousands of people optimize their sleep. And today he's here to help us do the same. Dr. Bruce, welcome to the Health Hunt.

Dr. Michael Breus

Thanks to you. I appreciate you, bro. And great to see you, Sandy. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for supporting my work.

Sandi Magder

We're excited to have you here. And I just want to say, like, um, for everyone who doesn't know, he is the sleep doctor. That is literally his handle all over social media and his website. So big things.

Dr. Michael Breus

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, you know, what every every time a social media came out, I was like, I'm gonna grab the sleep doctor. And before I knew it, that's who I was.

Sandi Magder

So he's also a smart business person. Okay, noted.

Dan Schuman

So let's start here. We'd love to zoom out a bit, but you become one of the most recognizable voices in sleep medicine. How did you actually get into this field in the first place? And what drew you specifically to sleep?

Dr. Michael Breus

Great, great question. So if I'm honest with you, this was not my first choice. So I went to the University of Georgia, Go Bulldogs, where I was getting my PhD in clinical psychology. And I was super duper interested in sports psychology. So I wanted to work with athletes and work with the sports mindset and do all this kind of fun stuff and make them run faster and throw harder and all this kind of cool stuff. Um, and so while I was at the University of Georgia, I studied both clinical psychology as well as sports psychology. And at the end of your clinical studies, you do a year-long what's called residency or internship, where basically you take all the stuff that you learn in class and you apply it to different clinical populations. And so I was really interested in a program that was at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in sports psychology that was looking at eating disorders in athletes. So that way I was kind of combining my clinical with athletics. I thought it was really, really cool. Unfortunately, I couldn't get in. Georgia was a top 20 program, but it wasn't Harvard or Princeton or one of those big, big, big programs. But I noticed that they had a sleep track that was fully funded. And I worked my way through graduate school in the Department of Electrophysiology. So I'm the nerdy guy that knows how to take apart any machine that can take any values from you, like EEG or EKG or things like that and put them back together. It turns out that those are the exact machines that they use in the sleep lab. So I was like, I know what I'll do. I'm gonna sell myself as a sleep guy. And then as soon as I get there, I'm gonna transfer right into the Sports Psych program. Because just because you're not letting me in through the front door doesn't mean I'm not gonna be in your program. It just means you haven't figured out yet that Michael's gonna be in your program. So I sold myself as a sleep guy, got there day one, raised my hand. Yes, Dr. Bruce. I said, I'd like to talk to you about transferring. And they said, we had a feeling that you were going to do this. So here's the deal: you're funded through the sleep lab, which means the first six months you're here, you've got to be in the sleep medicine lab. But after that, you can go and to any part of our program. You can do anything you want. I'm like, how tough could this be? It's sleep for God's sakes, right? And so I got in and I gotta be honest with you, by the third day, I absolutely fell in love with clinical sleep medicine. When I help somebody, it's foundational. When you change your sleep, you change someone's life. It's unbelievable how rewarding as a clinician you get to do this. You know, I'm not a sleep expert, I'm a sleep doctor. There's a really big difference between those two things. Sleep experts are people who do a lot of research, you know, they work and they create overwhelming theories and they kind of go along those lines. I don't do that. I pressure test all of those ideas in the real world with real humans and make sure that they work. And my goal is simple help people sleep better. Now, to be honest with you, how I became the sleep doctor, that's how I became a sleep doctor. How I became the sleep doctor is a little bit different. I started the brand back in 2008, and the goal was always very simple was I wanted to be able to provide evidence-based information to consumers before they got to my office. Because nine times out of 10, if you're sitting in my office, some doctor has already figured out that, hey, you've got signs and symptoms of narcolepsy or sleep apnea or restless legs, or you walk and talk in your sleep, or something is kind of going on. I don't know if you'd believe this. There's 88 different sleep disorders out there. 88 ways you can screw up your sleep. Like it's unbelievable. And so I started studying, now, gosh, going on, 10, 12 years ago, not just sleep disorders, but what I call disordered sleep. So you don't have apnea, you don't have narcolepsy, but you wake up and you feel like crap. How do you fix that, Michael? And that's really what I've been focused in on for quite a long time. Now, don't get me wrong, I can treat sleep disorders, apnea, narcolepsy, all that kind of fun stuff. I use that, I since I'm a PhD, I work under an MD's license. So I usually work in an office setting to do something like that. But I've really focused a tremendous amount of my efforts as of late trying to educate people on uh the research surrounding sleep, what I've discovered working with my patients for the last 26 years about sleep. I've been super fortunate, as you mentioned. I've written five books. I've been on a lot of podcasts. One, this is one of my favorites so far. And um, you know, it's been really exciting. It's been, it's been a wonderful, wonderful career. My son always says something to me that I never realized until fairly recently. He's like, Dad, you being a sleep doctor is literally the best door cracker I've ever seen. You know, and I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, as soon as somebody finds out you're a sleep doctor, they circle around, right? And people have got questions. And so I love having the opportunity to be on podcasts, to do television, write books, and just be able to educate people about how to sleep better, how to overcome sleep difficulties, or even how to optimize the sleep that you get.

Why Sleep Is the Foundation of Health

Dan Schuman

Well, thank you for that. The good news is we're not gonna go through all 88 sleep disorders on this podcast. We'll cover maybe just a couple. But Michael, you mentioned something. When you change someone's sleep, you change their life. Can you unpack that just a little bit? And if the only thing you improved about your health was sleep, what would improve just generally about your health?

Dr. Michael Breus

Got it. So those are two different questions. I'm gonna answer them uh both a little differently. So so when you change someone's sleep, you change their life. I I've actually, you know, I'm glad you asked me this, Dan, because it's something I've been thinking about for a while lately. And you know, one of the things that's that's interesting is I was I was listening to some podcasts and some philosophy and reading some books on stoicism and all that kind of interesting stuff. And one of the things they said is the currency of life is time. That makes sense to me, right? Where I spend my time as I accumulate time, that that encompasses what my life is. So the currency of life is time. Then this is from Buddhism, not from me. They said the currency of time is attention. So where I focus my attention is where I'm going to spend my time, and where I spend my time is accumulated to be my life. I would argue, and I think I've got a pretty big argument that sleep is the currency of attention. Okay. If you don't sleep, you can't attend. You have no short-term attention, you have no long-term attention. If you've got ADD and you don't sleep, you're off, you're way out there, right? Other two things that I think are super important in this are hydration and breathing, right? If you don't, if you can get those three things right, and a lot of people are like, Michael, why did you write a book called Sleep, Drink, Breathe? Like it's like this should be obvious to people. Like, don't we do all that stuff automatically? We do, but if you do them right, you get so much more out of life. And sleep in particular, it affects every organ system and every disease state. Literally everything you do, you do better with a good night's sleep. Now, when you look at what areas in particular does sleep have an affinity for or affect on, it's pretty global. So cognitively, we know that, for example, during REM sleep is when you move information from your short-term memory to your long-term memory. So we know it affects your ability to cognate, to remember facts and figures and be able to speak intelligently. We know that it affects things like reaction time, right? So we know that when you're sleep deprived, if we stick you in a driving simulator, you look like you're drunk if you've only lost an hour and a half's worth of sleep. So we know it affects all kinds of physicality, right? An emotional one is another big one. We know when you're not well slept, you are an emotional pain in the ass, right? Like my daughter, when she was eight years old, she said something to me, which I thought was really funny. She was like, Dad, when people don't get enough sleep, they're a grumpy fish. I'm like, you got it. You nailed it, Carson. Like, that's exactly what it is. And so sleep really does affect every single aspect of our lives. It affects our sex lives and our libido. It affects our emotions and relationships.

The Modern Sleep Crisis: Are We Sleeping Less or Sleeping Worse?

Dr. Michael Breus

I mean, guys, I can tell you very easily, I've saved more marriages as a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a marital therapist just by getting people sleeping back in bed together. It's it's kind of remarkable, being honest. Wow. Fascinating. Pretty cool.

Dan Schuman

So the bigger picture here really about sleep and the epidemic of sleep. How serious is the issue of sleep today? And are people sleeping less or just sleeping worse?

Dr. Michael Breus

Such a good question. I think both. I think people are sleeping less and worse. Um, and and it is it is an epidemic, you know. And and here's part, there's there's a couple of different problems. So, number one, sleep deprivation or not getting either the quantity or quality of sleep that you're looking for, it's different for every human, right? And so, as an example, if I sleep seven hours, I'm great. But for example, Sandy, if you sleep seven hours, that might be awful for somebody like you. So it's very personalized. So, first of all, I feel like people need to understand what their own personal sleep need is. And it's not just a quantity game, it's a quality game as well. I would argue it quality over quantity in most cases. I got people who come to me all the time and they're like, Michael, I don't get eight hours. Am I gonna die? Well, you're probably gonna die, but it's not gonna be from not getting eight hours of sleep, right? I mean, I've got a lot of people who get six and a half hours, six hours of sleep, but it's so high quality that they function at a really good level. Now, to be fair, six hours is probably not enough for most people. American Academy of Sleep Medicine looks at a range somewhere between seven and nine hours, seems to kind of be the sweet spot for people. But believe me, there are plenty of people who function on a little bit less and they do quite well. Now, what's interesting is when somebody turns to me and they say, Hey, Michael, I need more than nine hours of sleep a night, that's a big red flag. That usually means there's a quality problem. So they could have an underlying sleep disorder. They could have sleep apnea as an example, uh, which by the way, I was personally just diagnosed with sleep apnea myself. I stopped breathing in my sleep 24 times an hour, right? That's almost once every three minutes. And so that's pretty, pretty interesting. Sleep can also be more of a quality issue in other aspects as well. So, for example, sometimes people don't get into the depth of sleep. Depression is another one. If somebody tells me, hey, Michael, I need nine, 10 hours of sleep, one of the first things that's going off in my head is could they have narcolepsy, could they have depression, could they have an undiagnosed sleep disorder? So when you start to really think through the idea of sleep and its importance in our lives, quantity and quality, I think, are things that people really need to take into some sort of perspective.

Dan Schuman

Well, Michael, welcome to the Sleep Apnea Club. I'm raised my hand. I'm definitely a part of that club for many, many years. If we've talked about it one-on-ones. So, last question about just kind of this bigger picture. Is this sleep epidemic a global issue? Is it particularly um in the United States? And within that, is like if you lived in New York City, a busy city with a lot of sounds, is that where the worst people sleep? And then in blue zones, the best sleep is gotten? Like, like how how does that look?

Dr. Michael Breus

It's a great question. So I happen to know Dan Butner, the guy who discovered all the blue zones. Um, and uh it's it's pretty interesting. You know, here's what there's there's a couple different things. So every year there's a poll done of which cities are the best to sleep in and which cities are the worst to sleep in. And you're correct. It does have a lot to do with noise, but it also has to do with air quality. It has to do with stress levels, things like that. But I'm if I'm super duper honest, since 9-11, very few people have slept fantastic. As soon as 9-11 happened, I mean, the calls, I mean, book solid for months and months and months and months. Stress is probably the biggest factor. And don't forget, stress can come in all forms of shapes and sizes, right? It can be physical stress, it can be mental stress. There's something called you stress, which is happy stress, like I'm about to get married. Oh shit, I have to plan a wedding, you know, that kind of stuff, right? And so there's all kinds of different stress out there. And so I'm not convinced that it's in one particular area or country, but like as an example, I'm pretty sure very few people are getting a good night's rest in the Middle East right now. I'm pretty sure that when you go to areas where there's high conflict, whether that's international or domestic, I think that we see definitely see people not sleeping well. And here's where it gets even scarier these are the people we need to sleep the best. These are the people that need to are making worldwide decisions. Our military is a fantastic example of a group that, and to be clear, a lot of folks in the military are aware of these data. They are working hard to get people to sleep better, but it's not easy to sleep in a submarine. It's not easy to sleep in a tank. It's not easy to sleep when you've got a gun in your hand and you're going out there and after somebody. So I would tell you that it really is all over. Um, it just depends upon your level of stress and how you how you cope with it. I I think I could make this the argument where 70 to 75% of problems with sleep are stress related.

Dan Schuman

I was thinking about that same thing when I was looking at NASA, the uh astronauts in Artemis. How is sleeping in there, you know?

Dr. Michael Breus

So sleep in space is such an interesting idea. It's kind of fascinating. Uh, I've I've actually had the opportunity to work with uh a couple of astronauts, and um one of my friends is one of the sleep specialists who deals with them. Sleep in space is not as great as you might think it would be. A lot of people are like, oh, it sounds great. I'm floating around in zero gravity. It should be fantastic. It doesn't work that way. They actually have to put them in sleeping bags and kind of velcro them to the side of the fuselage so you can feel some level of pressure on your body because when there's no stress on your body, your body doesn't actually know how to react to that. Also, for example, if you're on the space station, people don't know this. The space station is moving at 17,500 miles an hour. So they get a new sunrise and sunset about every, I think, 80 to 90 minutes, right? When just think about that for a second. Like your circadian rhythms are screwed. So I worked with a group that actually sent a lighting kit up to the International Space Station and they created zones. So that way they knew there was a morning shift, an evening shift, and a night shift, and things like that. I mean, again, sleep is kind of one of those crazy ubiquitous things that whatever environment that you happen to be in, you really need to be thoughtful about how you sleep. And I think I can give your listeners some very solid pieces of advice that they can do that won't cost them a dime, uh, that can help them sleep no matter where they are.

The Truth About People Who Only Need Four Hours of Sleep

Sandi Magder

Okay, listeners and us. So I'm a forensic accountant by trade. And so I'm a very curious person. I don't like things that don't make sense to me. And one of the things that kind of comes up all the time that drives me insane, and also just for a backstory, I am not a morning person. I am not someone who wakes up excited. All I can think about is when I get to sleep in, and we'll talk about that later because I know I shouldn't be doing that. But so are there people who can actually be high functioning on four hours of sleep? Is that a thing?

Dr. Michael Breus

It's super duper rare. There are people who would genetically are what are called short sleepers. But I'm gonna be honest with you, is every time I talk about this, there's somebody in the audience who thinks that they're a short sleeper. It's like 0.005% of the population. It's a very, very small, and it's genetic. This isn't something that you get to figure out. It's literally something that happens to you. So are there people in the universe that sleep from midnight to 4 a.m.? You bet there are. But the question becomes: is that a genetic disorder that's going on? Or are they doing that to themselves because they're watching Game of Thrones too late or, you know, whatever?

Sandi Magder

Okay. Well, actually, I this is a short aside, but I dated a really horrible human that apparently had this. And so I looked it up. I heard it was a thing. And he seemed to only need to sleep four hours. But again, I didn't trust him based on his terrible human.

Dr. Michael Breus

Well, you know, I mean, I I'm really, I can understand that. You know, somebody's only sleeping four hours. What are they doing the other 20?

Sandi Magder

Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of jealous. I would like to add time. That's literally manufacturing time, but we can move on from this.

Dr. Michael Breus

You don't trust me on this one. One of the things that I'm most known for are these things called chronotypes. And you guys know a little bit about my chronotypical system. But one of the things we discovered was once you actually follow your chronotypes, and for folks out there, a chronotype is actually your genetic sleep system that's in your body. You've probably heard of it called early bird or night owls. There actually aren't three, there's four. But if I get you in your kind of chronotypical swim lane, as I call it, believe it or not, sometimes your sleep will condense. And so people who used to need eight hours of sleep, they do great on six and a half or seven if they know their chronotype and they follow those guidelines.

Sandi Magder

I'm here for that.

Dr. Michael Breus

Yes, you are, my dolphin friend.

Surprising Symptoms of Poor Sleep

Sandi Magder

For everyone listening, we're gonna get deep into the chronotypes because that is some fascinating stuff. So I just want to go through this because one of our goals here is to really encourage people to advocate for themselves. And so part of that is understanding symptoms. When you go to the doctor, you may go in for one thing that's bothering you, but potentially there's other underlying conditions and you don't have a whole bunch of time with your doctor. So, what are one or two potential symptoms that somebody might exhibit that indicate that they're getting less than ideal sleep or poor sleep quality that they wouldn't necessarily associate with sleep issues that they could maybe bring to their doctor?

Dr. Michael Breus

Sure. So the the one that everybody associates is, of course, snoring, right? Let's let's bypass that one. There's a lot of people who snore, they have apnea, they don't have apnea, things like that. One that people don't think about is morning headaches, as an example. If you wake up with the m in the morning with the headache, that's actually potentially a serious sign of sleep deprivation from something like sleep apnea. Because you're not getting enough oxygen to the brain. And it literally hurts your head when you do this. And so for people who have migraine headaches that kick off when they wake up in the morning, or more or just morning headaches that fade within a couple of hours of them waking up, or they have to have caffeine in order to get rid of their headache in the morning. Those are all signs and symptoms of potentially sleep apnea or caffeine addiction. Same, by the way, holds true with nicotine. I've got patients who would wake up in the middle of the night to smoke, right? Like that's problematic for sure. So one thing I tell people is, you know, if you wake up in the morning with a headache, that is not okay. You need to definitely kind of think through that one in particular. Another one is just an overall level of sleepiness. And, you know, a lot of people will say, Michael, I got four kids, or Michael, I got two jobs. Like, of course I'm tired all the time. Let me tell you something. There are lots of people out there with four kids and two jobs, or who are 80 or 90 years old and they feel great, okay? And they're doing just fine. If you have a level of sleepiness, which by the way is different than fatigue, right? So fatigue is my bones hurt, like I don't want to move. Sleepiness is I can't keep my head up, my eyes keep closing all the time. That's when we really want to start thinking about could I have potentially an underlying sleep disorder? And the other thing I think is important that people need to think about is the opposite, which is not sleeping, right? And so we used to call insomnia what we call a door handle diagnosis. And what that means is as the doctor has their hand on the door and they're absolutely going out the door, that's when the patient says, Hey, doc, by the way, I don't sleep so well. They're already behind in their in their patient. So they grab their prescription pad and they write, here's your sleeping pill, come back in 30 days. This is kind of a disaster waiting to happen. Okay. Insomnia is absolutely, positively something that could actually be leading to something different. To be clear, if you are healthy, your body will sleep and you'll sleep just fine. You'll wake up feeling reasonably refreshed. If you don't, this could be a window into something else that's going on. Let me explain. I've got, and this is a wild case I'm gonna tell you about. I have a patient who has something called REM behavior disorder. So during REM sleep, you're completely paralyzed. Do you want to take a guess as to why you're completely paralyzed? Turn around. It's obvious. So you don't act out your dreams.

Sandi Magder

Yes, we don't want people doing that.

Dr. Michael Breus

That's we don't. Wow. Right. Okay, that's why your body is paralyzed. So here's what gets interesting. So I have a patient who uh showed up and um he had uh he was acting out his dreams. And so the story, it's kind of interesting. So I'm originally from a small area outside Atlanta called Sandy Springs, Georgia. And uh at the time it was a decent sized hunting community. And if you're a hunter and you shoot a doe and you don't kill it, you either have to slit its throat or crack its neck. It's the most humane thing to do. He woke up with his wife's head ready to crack her neck. Okay? Now, the first question you're gonna say is, Did he kill her? Good news, no lives have been spared for me to tell you this story. And the second question people always ask me is, are they still married? She is a patient woman. Okay, let me tell you this. But here's what the treatment was. With one medication called clonazepam at a half a milligram, we were able to completely silence the behavior. But here's where it gets interesting and where sleep becomes a window into something more different and potentially more serious. In 35% of the cases of REM behavior disorder, it's a precursor for Parkinson's. So if you're not sleeping well, something else could definitely be going on. And it is not worth it to just avoid your sleeping and say, I'm probably tired because of this or that. Get it looked at, get a sleep study done. By the way, now sleep studies can come to your house. You don't even have to go to the hospital any longer. I can I can send one for less than 200 bucks and hit your doorstep.

Sandi Magder

I mean, I I know you have a pretty good sleep study, like you said, um, that you send to the someone's door. You can buy that from your website, correct?

Dr. Michael Breus

Yeah, 200 bucks. It's less than 200 bucks. We have doctors who will go over the whole study with you. It's not like a do-it-yourself kind of thing. Like it's because here's what happened. It's kind of funny is when COVID hit, nobody wanted to go to the sleep lab anymore. Nobody wanted to sleep in the bed that somebody else had just been sleeping in. So all the technology ramped up really quickly. And now there's quite a few different people who are really pushing sleep studies out there in a good way. Again, I'm always advocating for more assessment. Now, what's interesting is a lot of people don't want to do a sleep study because they're afraid that they're gonna have sleep apnea and end up on a CPAP machine, right? And that's not the way I want people to look at it. Okay. There are a lot of options for how you sleep and what you sleep and how you treat sleep apnea. Let's figure out if you've got it first. Then the level of severity oftentimes will help us understand what you need and what you don't.

Sandi Magder

This is good stuff. I mean, I really appreciate you mentioning the headaches because I feel like people don't usually go to the doctor for a headache and attribute it to sleep. So that's a very important one. You could go down a rabbit hole of seven different doctors regarding your brain and it's sleeping.

Dr. Michael Breus

And here's another one: depression. A lot of people don't think about depression and anxiety, but guess what? Those are both related to sleep, highly related to sleep. If you ain't sleeping, I can assure you you're gonna be more depressed if you have depression, or you're gonna be more anxious if you have anxiety. This

Discover Your Sleep Type: Lion, Bear, Wolf or Dolphin

Dr. Michael Breus

is good stuff.

Sandi Magder

Okay, so you mentioned the chronotypes, which I'm excited about because I really want to get into it. So can you walk us through? You mentioned there's four. Can you walk us through what they are?

Dr. Michael Breus

So just to give everybody the background, what we're talking about here is the idea of early bird versus night owl. So I'm a mammal, not a bird. So I decided to rename the category system and I discovered what I consider to be kind of a fourth pronotype. So early birds, I call them lions because who wouldn't want to be the king or queen of the jungle? I mean, let's be fair, right? And lions are my kind of early morning optimists. They wake up without an alarm clock at like 5:30, 6 o'clock. To be clear, I don't like these people. Okay. Like they're so it drives me crazy. It's like, come on, are you serious? No, thank you. But these are oftentimes my COOs of a company. They're not the CEOs, they're the COs, they're the operators, right? And you know if you have a lion in your life, when you look at your email when you get in, if somebody sent you an email at 5:45 or 6 o'clock in the morning, you're dealing with the lion. I can assure you of that, right? Again, these people like to make a list and go from step one to step two to step three every single day. Good people, they make up about 15, one five percent of the population. The middle people, we used to call them hummingbirds. I don't know why we called them hummingbirds. It seems like such a dumb idea. I called them bears. This makes up 50 to 55% of the population. So one in two people turn out to be a bear. By the way, being a bear is the best. I wish I was a bear. Um, because quite frankly, the nine to five works perfect for a bear. They can get up around 7, 7:30, they go to bed around, you know, 9:30, 10 o'clock, and they're doing great, right? The night owls, we call them wolves. That's me. I've been that way my entire life. Ever since I was an adolescent, I just kind of got stuck in that. And I like to stay up until, you know, two and sleep until 12. That changed a little bit, by the way, as I've gotten older, as we were talking before we came on. When you hit a certain age, you kind of start to go backwards a little. We'll talk about that in just a second. But the night owls, that's where I find a lot of my creatives, my artists, my actors, my musicians. Because if you know a creative, they don't get their idea at two o'clock in the afternoon. They get their creative juices flowing at two o'clock in the morning. And that's when all the kind of interesting, fun stuff happens. Now, I'm gonna be very honest with you. I haven't really told you anything that you didn't already know. I mean, let's be fair. All I did was rename early birds and night owls and hummingbirds right in the middle. What I'm most famous for is the fourth chronotype, which I call a dolphin. Now, people always ask me, like, why'd you choose dolphin? So I chose dolphins because in the animal kingdom, dolphins sleep what's called unihemispherically. So only half of their brain is asleep while the other half is awake looking for predators. And I felt like that kind of describes this group of people who are never quite asleep. These are my people who are usually self-diagnosed insomniacs. They do have a tendency to run closer to a lion's schedule, an earlier morning schedule, but not all the time. But they have a tendency to be a little bit more on the OCD side of things. They kind of function at a little higher frequency. Things are moving, moving, moving for them. They like to get shit done. Um, but they are always thinking that they need more sleep than their body actually looks for. And here's what's fascinating is once you know what your chronotype is, this isn't just kind of like a, oh, that's a fun quiz or idea that I can figure out. What you can do is this is all based on biology and specifically two hormones and when they kick off and turn on are off during the daytime and evening time. So when melatonin turns off and cortisol turns on, if it's 90 minutes ahead of the rest of the world, you're a lion, right? That's when lions kick into gear at 5:30, 6 o'clock in the morning. If it's kind of on par with the world, you're a bear. If it's late, you're a wolf. If it's irregular, you're a dolphin. Okay. Now, here's the thing is Michael didn't just come up with this idea. This is genetic. If you mapped your human genome, which by the way, it used to cost a million dollars to do. Now I think it's like 200 bucks. You can see if you look in the specific area of the human genome called the PER3 area, you'll see that there's something called a single nucleotide polymorphism or a SNP, which means that the building blocks flipped one way, makes you an early bird, flipped another way, makes you a night owl. If they're regular, you're a bear. And if there's an irregularity, you can be a dolphin. Now, I also want to tell people one more thing is sometimes you can be a dolphin by circumstance. So what do I mean by that? Menopause. Okay. When women go through menopause and their hormones go cuckoo, guess what? You become a dolphin relatively quickly because of this hormonal dysregulation. Because remember what I'm saying here is this is all based on when your hormones kick on and kick off. You can also look at it based on your core body temperature cycle, which also follows this chronotypical behavior. Now, here's the cool part. Once you know what your chronotype is, you follow a very regular pattern for all your other hormones. So the book that I wrote is called The Power of When U-H-E-N, meaning when you should do certain things. Guys, I can tell you the perfect time of day to have sex, eat a cheeseburger, ask your boss for a raise, take a nap, drink a cup of coffee, go to bed, have alcohol. Like it's unbelievable. This is the biggest unlock that you can do for your health and your body ever.

Sandi Magder

And I I can tell you, Dan and I both took the test on um Michael's website. And first of all, it's like four questions. So I was shocked at how in four questions it could get to the core of my soul. Like I was.

Dr. Michael Breus

So I want to be clear. I want to be clear. It's shorter for dolphins because they're much easier to identify.

Sandi Magder

Okay, well, spoiler alert, everybody, I'm a dolphin. Probably no shock there based on the first 25 episodes of this podcast. But it was it was actually fascinating to me. But also, I mean, I recommend everyone do it because again, it's not a time-consuming, even if you're not a dolphin, but the report that you get is phenomenal. It identifies your traits. It it, like Michael says, it goes through, gives you almost an entire protocol for how you can conduct your day to be in line with your uh prototype. So it's definitely worth your time. And it was fascinating information.

Dr. Michael Breus

And it's super fun because you can start to learn things. Like one of my favorite ask things that people ask me about is like, when should I drink coffee? When should I have alcohol? Is another, let's talk about alcohol for half a second because that's always a good one. Now, not that I'm not, I'm no teetotaler. Okay. Look, I like bourbon, I like scotch, but I know that there's certain times when my liver is going to be able to metabolize it better than others. So there's a hormone called alcohol dehydrogenase, and um it kicks off earlier for lions and later for wolves because it's on a circadian cycle. And that's really what we're talking about here is people have these four different circadian rhythms. Now we have an overall circadian rhythm. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything bad about that. And believe it or not, all your organs have their own circadian rhythms. Your brain has like you have almost 300 different circadian rhythms in your body. But once you kind of lock into this idea of a chronotype, you would be shocked at how well you can plan things out and make it work

Why Your Sleep Patterns Change With Age

Dr. Michael Breus

for you.

Sandi Magder

Okay, just one last question on this, because you mentioned that it can change with age. When does that happen? Because I remember my grandparents used to wake up super early and I was like, one day I'm gonna be older, and the best part of that will be I will be a morning person. It hasn't happened yet.

Dr. Michael Breus

So it depends upon how deep in the chronotype of it you are. Um, however, for me, it changed a little bit. Uh, well, it changed a lot of it right around age 50. So I'm 58 years old, and right around age 50, all of a sudden I was like, I can't sleep later than 6:30, 7 o'clock, which was terrible because I used to be able to sleep until 11 on the weekends, and it was great. Like when my wife and I first met each other 26 years ago, we're both night people. I'd pick her up for a date at 8. We'd have dinner starting at 8:30 to 9:30. We'd go to the movies from 10 to 11:30, 12 o'clock. Then we go out for a drink or dessert afterwards. We get home at one o'clock in the morning, and it was great. I couldn't do that now if my life depended on it. Okay. Like I'm eating at 5:30, 6 o'clock, and I'm like, honey, where's dinner? Let's go. Let's go out, you know? And so it does change over time. Now, here's a little interesting fact is part of it is a slight shift in your circadian rhythm, but more interesting, it has a lot to do with your eyeball. So it turns out that the lens in your eye, as you get older, begins to yellow and not as much light can come in. Remember, we were talking about cortisol and melatonin? Melatonin cannot be produced in the presence of light. So light turns out to be a very big influencer of our chronotypes as well as our circadian rhythm.

Sandi Magder

I haven't heard any of this stuff before. So this is fascinating, and thank you for bringing it to us and our listeners.

What's Coming in Part 2

Sandi Magder

Sure.

Dan Schuman

I'm just gonna say one thing before we um move over to the next topic. I was very quiet during this topic because I'm a bear, so I'm glowing and I'm feeling very good about myself. You should, dude. I'm telling you, being a bear is the best.

Dr. Michael Breus

I wish I was a bear.

Sandi Magder

What a fascinating conversation. Now, as the resident dolphin on this podcast, I have to admit that chronotype discussion completely changed the way I think about sleep. And if you're anything like Dan and I, you're probably already wondering whether you're lion, bear, wolf, or dolphin. If you'd like to find out your chronotype, we'll link Dr. Bruce's chronotype quiz in the show notes so you can take it for yourself. It's really a good time. And once you do that, we would love to hear from you. Head over to Instagram. We are the healthhunt underscore podcast on most social media sites. Send us a message, comment on our post for this episode, or tag us in your stories and let us know your chronotype. You can even write it in the sky. Did the results describe you perfectly, or are you surprised by what you learned? And don't worry, we are not done yet with Dr. Bruce. In the upcoming episodes, we're tackling one of the most common sleep complaints on the planet, the infamous 3 a.m. wake up. Dr. Bruce explains what's actually happening biologically, why so many people experience it, and he shares practical strategies to help you get back to sleep. We'll also dive into sleep optimization, wearables, naps, and some of the biggest sleep myths people still believe. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast, leave us a rating and review, and share this episode with a friend or family member who could use a better night's sleep. Thanks for listening to the Health Hunt. Until next time, keep hunting for better health and sweet dreams.