Most Replayed Moment: Better Sleep Doesn't Always Mean Longer Sleep! Fix These Habits Today

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/c55bf288af023f32

Uh
Talk about being able to
Change your behavior.
And break a habit.
It is
Nothing in the context of someone who is ensnared by an addiction of sorts.
There's nothing it's a completely different conversation. Yeah.
What is it like growing up with a mother who
you observe at a very young age. You were how old?
I'm in my whole life.
Your whole life. Yeah.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
As a child
When you
When you see a parent, someone you love.
That is in that is sort of grip by addiction. What is that like?
Yeah, I mean I think it uh
At a fundamental level
Um
You just feel deprioritized, I think.
Generally. You know, like you
You know, I I think you feel
Um
You know, you're you're j you're unsupervised, number one.
There isn't
a lot of supervision, you know, so you end up like really having to
Defend for yourself.
Um
My dad worked a lot, you know, he was
Definitely workholic, um such a good man, um so much integrity and and
But
I think that was his form of escape.
But it kind of weeds.
You know
You gotta figure out how to eat. You gotta you know, you know, you gotta figure out how to do a lot of the basic stuff on your own.
So you develop
A lot of independence, I think, but
Yeah.
It's hard to
Um
you know form emotional attachments I think um
As an adult, unless you really
work through that. You know, because you're you're
Afraid that
you're not gonna be taken care of.
What did you come to understand about your mother's addiction and what she was
struggling with.
If anything at all.
Yeah, I mean I think what was so sad about
That time period is is
You know, I think it was well understood.
You know I I think
Um
A lot of
Those
behaviors I think to a degree are normalized. And I don't know that there the connection between depression you know, she was
It's no question. She she had
massive seasonal effect disorder, which one of the reasons why I'm so interested in, you know, um
kind of everything related to to light and and just the opportunity there for
for for health, but
Um, you know, she had major depressive disorder and
You know, it's not
diagnosed pro properly.
I don't even remember I have no idea if she ever even went to the doctor to
you know, to try to get treated.
Um
So
You know, I I I think
The
The biggest thing.
That I learned is that
We can actually make choices.
Um, and I and I know that there are
You know, when you look at regions of the brain
understand that people are predisposed, but I think there's a lot of things that we can we can actually control.
to
reduce our vulnerability to
Um to some of these diseases.
How was that experience?
defined and shaped you when you look back and connect dots.
Yeah, I mean I just
I always
Yeah, I was very competitive.
High level F
athlete representing um the US. And and so there's definitely trying to understand my own body and my psychology so I could perform my potential, but
There's no question that like this whole
Everything that like underpins the work that I do is is trying to
To understand
You know, how we can
improve our own situation so we can
Um
you know self ac actualize and and live
Our potential.
And um
So that was
I always
You know, felt
Um
So bad.
Yeah, for my mom.
Why.
Yeah, that she wasn't able to
Come the version.
Of self.
Like wasn't able to relax.
And she has so much.
Can't believe you did this to me.
Ha.
Would you like a tissue?
Thanks.
Yeah.
You're very um you're a very special person makes
Makes sense.
incredible drive and mission to you. I didn't I didn't know any of those uh what you've just said, but I've never talked about that publicly, so I'm just
Yeah.
What a what a wonderful way to ch channeled such a unimaginable
Pain.

Fix.
You know, hundreds of thousands of people's
other lives and help them get closer towards their own
Potential.
Yeah.
And I I never want to like
project my values onto other folks, but
But I think that's always been
Like at the core of
Like why I do what I I do is and the reason why I coached for so long is
I just love seeing people.
like realize their potential or understand their potential, knowing that we're always of course a work in progress. But
I just
Like I want
Like everyone to be able to wake up and feel
You know, be
energetic and and be able to like really really live
The things that you you care about.
You know, and and just
And understanding, I think, the path to that.
You know, requires
Some work, you know, in terms of making sure that your
attending to some of these non negotiables that we're talking about. And I think
sometimes it takes folks time to connect those dots and there's a lot of wonderful learning that
comes with that.
But I think if I can kind of help accelerate
Some of that wisdom and
Keep people from experiencing
I think some of the pain that I felt
You know, it's worth it to me.
It's the most incredible incredible thing that you've committed your life to because
mean you are both aware that there's gonna be a ton of people who are
Either
on a path towards such an addiction, or are currently
enthralled by such an addiction and the work that you're doing, the message you're spreading.
is going to prevent and lift some of those people out of that situation which has
has a wonderful karmic effect on the world and I think
If there's anything that we can convert our pain into.
It is it is exactly that.
I'm gonna talk about alcohol. Mm-hmm
I've recently quit drinking alcohol. I think it was about three to four months ago now. Um
It was so interesting. I had a conversation with some of my best friends. I've I said this on a podcast a couple couple of months ago.
And
One of my friends was
An alcohol. So he
managed to um quit alcohol and he's writing a book about it. And then as I look across the group of my other friends, none of them are alcoholics, but
They're all sort of casual drinkers. And we were sat there together around this table having dinner.
And he was telling us about this book he's writing about quitting alcohol.
And I was sat there thinking.
That book that he's writing doesn't necessarily resonate with me.
Because
I've never had I never felt like I've had an addiction or really to be honest any problem with it.
I'm such I was such a casual drinker. I would have
Maybe one glass of wine a week, if that. There's probably months I've gone without any alcohol at all. So I couldn't think of a reason to quit.
So really I was saying to him, is there another book that someone else could write for me?
that just takes those people that are r those casual drinkers that are right on the fence and just gives us a reason
To nudge over the other side.
And because I have this podcast, I thought you know, I'll just try and quit and see if
See what the implications are for my life.
Alcohol, health, circadian rhythms.
What you what's your perspective on all of this?
What?
I
I like to think about it. I love this the the principle of non neutrality.
Right.
And and this is
how I like to think about behaviors and and how
kind of always thought about it is if you've got
A s a series of behaviors.
We talked a lot about about sleep.
Um
And and you know, physiological things and you've got the psychological things and
They're either going to support
your your values, kind of who you want to be in this world, or they're not.
And and I think that's the lens with which
I look at alcohol, you know, in what way is this supporting my values?
of growth and impact and and presence and
compassion and um
Tolerance, you know, the the things that are like core to who I want to be in this world.
And and I think when you look at it through that lens, uh the choices become really clear to me.
Um, if you're honest with yourself and you have some degree of self awareness
Understand what you care about.
I think
Choices.
become
a lot clearer. Like there's way, way more clarity about
How to live
Your life.
Um in in the micro.
which is really what we're talking about, these just mini choices throughout the day.
Does it
Does it does it support who you want to be in the world or d does it not? And and there's very little gray actually.
And the grey are excuses, in in my view.
And and we can rationalize and make stuff up.
you know, all day long, right? To to to make ourselves feel better. But
When you can step back from all of that.
And look at it.
Really
You know.
taking yourself kind of out of the equation.
And look at it from a a very objective standpoint.
Um
You know.
I think a choice like alcohol becomes very clear.
But it helps me to socialise.
Christian.
Yeah, if if you need alcohol.
to bond or to
you know, form a connection.
There's probably something else going on that is unaddressed.
And
From my perspective.
Is there such a thing as
Such a small dose of alcohol.
But it doesn't matter.
In your opinion.
Yeah, I mean I think it depends on who you are.
Um
And I I think there's a lot of individual variability there as as well. I know restra rest veratrol is is something that's talked about a lot and there's
Uh
You know, th uh suppose there's in wine and grapes there's resveratrol and that's been linked to
um enhanced uh health and and well being. But I think you'd have to drink like ten bottles or something to get the amount of respro resparatrol to actually make a um uh to to make a dense.
I I don't think that's the argument. Um
So yeah, I I don't know that really any amount of alcohol is is gonna be
is gonna be helpful. And we know from the literature that just one to two drinks
Uh will can have
you know, negative implications um on on health. So
Um it's actually I I don't know that any
Like even in a moderate amount of alcohol is good for you.
What's the implications for our circadian rhythms that we've been talking about?
Yeah, it's mainly because it impacts sleep. It's going to impact when you go to bed and when you wake up.
Um, so I think that's the biggest the biggest impact. And I think again when we go back to melatonin.
Um
You know, it it's
When you're
disrupting that that sleep onset offset, um, that's going to
Uh
Obviously have all the
downstream negative effects that we we've already spoken about. So I suppose if we're drinking, we were staying out later, so we're exposing ourselves to to light.
Um
So yeah, there's lots of uh we may be eating later. Uh there's other
Um
behaviors that accompany drinking that kind of
Well you know.
pile on the the negative effects.
I was reading some research from the Sleep Foundation and it says that a two thousand seven study with twenty nine young adults found that moderate doses of alcohol
Up to one hour before bedtime reduced melatonin production by nearly twenty percent.
That's the study on alcohol and melatonin in young adults. A two thousand eighteen study of four thousand nine hundred and eight
Finnish participants found that sleep quality was w r was reduced by nine point three percent after one glass of wine and by twenty four percent after two glasses of wine.
And by almost forty percent.
Thirty nine point two percent.
After three or more glasses of wine.
or an equivalent amount of alcohol.
Yeah.
Which is
Really, really staggering that your sleep quality will could dip forty percent after three glasses of wine.
Oh yeah.
It's I mean we see
It is we just finished this analysis actually looking at alcohol.
and markers of recovery. So heart rate variability and heart rate. And literally with every drink, it is just there's a linear relationship in the decline. Like in it is significant.
Um so I mean.
Yeah. It's we're talking about.
Even one drink.
um will produce clinically significant
reductions in heart rate and heart rate variability.
This was maybe the most compelling.
motivator for me to quit alcohol was
When I got my weep the first time, and then I think it was someone's birthday or something, so we went out and I had a glass of wine or something.
I woke I woke up the next day, looked at my heart rate variability, which is the a measure of how well I'm gonna be able to deal with stress and load and all those things the next day, how well my body's gonna be able to deal with life.
And it was flashing red.
Which is like a warning. And and it says on there, when I clicked on the flashing red thing, it was like
Did you have a really stressful day?
Are you sick or did you drink alcohol last night? And I felt
So targeted.
I was like, how does this thing know that I had one glass of wine last night with my friends? Why is something flashing red with inside of me?
People keep diaries on week, don't they? They keep like the week journal, I think it's called. Yeah.
So It's a goal mine of information, actually. Really. Yeah.
What have you learned from that in terms of uh alcohol? I imagine that's where a lot of the confusions start. Yeah, maybe we see a six for
percent reduction in
Next day recovery.
after alcohol.
On average.
So this is, you know, one drink to ten drink, you know, it's just basically looking at the the average.
is six percent.
Okay, so the average of okay. So if someone's have it if someone was bing binge drinking it, they could have a thirty or forty percent reduction. Yeah, but it kind of
W and we we might and and that sp specific data point might
We might have controlled
For
You know the
the 30 drinks are, you know, it's it's probably somewhere in the range of five drinks, you know, per night. And and the average recovery reduction is six, six percent.
And that's relying on self reporting, right? So I wonder if there's biases in what there might be, yeah. People that had ten drinks think they had four. But I I think yeah, exactly. I don't really remember how many drinks I uh I had, so Yeah.
I had.
Interesting.
Super interesting. The other thing we obviously drink is coffee.
Yes.
Caffeine. Surely there's a correlation between d circadian disruption. Yeah. So that's definitely one of the circadian uh kinda it definitely can disrupt circadian rhythms if we're having caffeine
You know, within
eight to twelve hours, I would say, of when we int to sleep. Um it's gonna impact our sleep onset, of course.
Um even if we're
All you know, tired enough where we have
you know s we're sleep deprived. Um we
Mike.
might fall asleep, but but it it will invariably end up
disrupting or fragmenting our sleep. So we're not kind of getting into that deeper stages of sleep. We're not achieving the sleep quality that um that is gonna lead, you know,
allow us to wake up feeling restored and refreshed. So timing of caffeine is really important.
All of this conversation makes me have a huge amount of empathy for
Shift workers.
And when I say shift workers, I don't I don't mean people working, you know
Warehouses. I mean
Doctors, nurses.
Firefighter firefighters.
The police.
Um truck drivers.
People that are
Baking.
Yeah, anyone who's up between the hours of
you know, for more than two hours between the hours of ten PM and four AM is considered a shift worker.
So it's yes, there's a lot of a lot of individuals walking around who are shift workers, but people who are
You know.
literally up during the biological night. Um
You know, it's it's a huge sacrifice. We know those folks.
On average.
are going to die fifteen years sooner. It is
you know, shift work is considered a carcinogen.
by the World Health Organization.
It's you know, shift work is um
those folks make an enormous sacrifice.
They're gonna die fifteen years sooner.
On average.
I mean that's terrifying.
I know.
Is anybody is anybody trying to s solve for that?
Yeah, I mean that's a lot of the work that
I do is is looking at shift work, you know, trying to understand

you know, can we deploy to
offset some of the the the impact of of being awake during the the biological night and you know
How much you're eating is a lever, you know, really thinking about
when we're eating protein.
Um
You know, when reviewing lights
Um
Yeah, what what did the
What's the cadence of of
Of
you know, on off
Um, so we minimize the disruption to circadian rhythms. I mean the the fact is like
the roster size at these hospitals are just simply not
Big enough to be able to
Uh.
I think deploy schedules that
mitigate some of the
the risk associated with this disrupted circadian rhythm.
But it is frightening and um
You know, there is a lot of work to try to
understand how we can mitigate some of the the negative effects.
But it's
It's it's
It's a tough problem.
The solve.
It's not just I guess it's not just that those individuals will die
You know, on average fifteen years earlier, but the
quality of life, I imagine, won't be as good because
If they're not sleeping.
Yeah.
I mean mood depression, suicide. I mean it's
It's it's
It's higher.
You know, for for folks in
in these professions.
You know, who are
having to operate counter to
The naturally dark cycle.
So let's talk about that then mental health, depression, suicidality.
Mm-hmm.
What's the correlation there between it? Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting research. I mean
You know, one is just you know, we talk about just the lay person, so getting outside of shift work and we come back to shift work.
You know, if you look at um
This
most folks experience social jet lag.
Right, which is basically characterized as
Um
You know a a big uh
difference between our weekday sleep schedule and our weekend sleep schedule, right? So pretty much anyone, you know, between twenty and
Twenty to thirty probably is, you know, kind of falls into this bucket of of having social jet lag.
But one of the things that we one of r a research study we saw looking at specifically a social jet lag in
college students they saw that for every hour of
variability between weak
day and weekend schedules, they saw a 17% increase in non-suicidal ideation. So these folks aren't committing suicide.
But
They're
fantasizing about
committing suicide and that increases seventeen percent. And this was more pronounced in individuals who were already vulnerable.
So kind of
Coming back to
Circadian disruption.
being present in a hundred percent of mental health issues. We can see where
Shift workers would be
Extremely vulnerable.
Right, to mental health issues.
Given that
their variability and we look at the WHOP data.
It's basically random.
in terms of looking at their sleep wake time.
It's so variable that it is like we can't even see a pat. It's random.
Which is
Frightening.
Why is that frightening?
Well because you know, the more variability
You have like
The more
psychological and physiological
Uh
you know, negative consequences there'll be.


stressful events in our lives as well because
I'm assuming that's
Absolutely managing stress.
throughout the the day, uh and and the degree or or even during the night, um, can
Uh
Definitely
Increase your tolerance for stress. So, you know
Deploying
breath work, for example, um as you know
On demand.
self regulation tool to pay down
in the moment stress.
can be and to activate the parasitic branch of the nervous system can be really powerful.
So, you know, I kind of call these mini moments of deactivation. So doing that proactively for folks who are in these high stak stakes, high stress environments.
i is an amazing strategy.
Um,'cause lots of those folks again, if you think about just baseline
When you are
Engaging in shift work and you're awake.
during the night, your system is humming at a
uh uh a kind of a stress level that is
above what would be normal, right? Like your your system is having to work.
so much harder to maintain homeostasis because you're doing
Exactly the opposite of what your body wants to do.
So all the kind of biological preferences are being
um bypassed, right, when you're up during the the biological night. So
S
pay down some of that stress.
You know.
These mini moments of deactivation are
absolutely critical for that population.
So that means
Uh just literally taking thirty seconds where you're doing
The physiological side, for example, which we know has emerged as being the most efficacious breathwork technique in the moment to reduce not only
in the moment anxiety and stress, but actually, you know, your perception of anxiety and stress like in the future. What does that say?
The physiological side, it's basically a double inhale followed by an extended exhale.

Perfect.
Exactly right.

Crying. Um it's it
You know, you kind of do that double double inhale follow by an extended exhale.
But that like reduces
stress in the moment in a really powerful way. And if you do that, you know
Five.
10 times, you end up activating the parasympathetic branch. So you're reducing your heart rate.
Um
And uh
And and
you know, kind of doing that throughout the day is is a great way to um mitigate negative stress accumulation.
There's a
Pretty unfortunate paradox, a pretty tragic paradox in the fact that
our shift workers, some of them like doctors especially. Mm-hmm.
Are the people that we need to be
Most focused. Firing and off cylinders. Exactly. Yeah.
But those are the people that are
From what I've learned today about the circadian rhythm most likely to
suffer with things like focus and sleep and all of those things that are imperative to showing up well. Yeah. I mean there's a relationship, you know, we we know that
With every forty five minutes of sleep.
Deprivation accrued.
on the woo platform, we see a five to ten percent next day decrease in mental control.
Mental control. Executive function.
So we we measure this um
with an M back and a Stroop.
So these kind of uh
Performance tests.
To measure executive function.
And we see for every forty five minutes of sleep that accrued, we see
Up to ten percent.
decrease.
And what does executive function mean for people that are
Our ability to make decisions.
Okay. Use the word they're sleep at.
Mm.
What is sleep that you're going to do.
What you need.
versus what you actually got.
And that's highly
individual, right? And and that's one of the
kind of beautiful things on the Woo platform is that
We learn your your body, we learn how efficient sleeper you are.
We learn what your optimal sleepwake time should be. And we basically
Tell you how much time you need to spend in bed.
So a lot of the work that my my team has done specifically
at Whoop is to try to understand, you know, what is this relationship to of sleep debt to
Other performance metrics that we care about, right? That tell us a story about
someone's ability to kind of function in their environment.
One of the studies that we did
Um, was looking specifically at business executives, so
CEO types. Um, and we we basically looked at um it was this this one was a six month study.
Um looking at two different cohorts uh
but you know, I think equal distribution between men and men and women.
And and what we saw was for every forty five minutes of sleep to debt accrued in these business leaders, we saw a
Five to ten percent decrease in next day.
Executive function.
So the leader's ability to make decisions.
In the presence of sleep debt.
Um
you know, gets gets worse the more sleep debt you accrue.
We did a follow up study.
And this one was
Wild. So we basically looked at
Um, it was roughly it was about seventy uh
business executive CEO types, and we looked at um all of their objective markers.
I've sleeped at being one of them. And we look at
That
psychological safety.
Of their direct reports.
during team meetings.
And define psychological safety for how um
How safe you feel to show up in your environment.
As your true most authentic self.
And what we saw is again for every forty five minutes of sleep that the leader had.
There is a
significant decrease in psychological safety.

So they felt less safe in their environment.
To show up as their true self.
When their leader.
had forty five minutes of sleep debt.
A crude.
And and some of these folks were carrying a couple hours of sleep debt. So and there was a linear relationship between the amount of psychological safety and the amount of of sleep that the leader had. So what was so interesting and I think compelling about this research is that
The leader had no idea.
They couldn't perceive their own cognitive, physical, and emotional declines.
Right, but that's what's so insidious about sleep deprivation is that
You can't really tell.
when you're operating at a lower level.
You just adapt.
to that lower level of functioning.
But everyone around you can feel it.
Right, just with how you hold you f hold your face.
How you emote.
um the kind of eye contact you make.
how tolerant you are.
Um
And you and you think about how
Sleep deprivation, you know, it
Did uh
And I think this is really what this research surface is. It's just it's not
Just sleep deprivation just doesn't impact me, right? It's gonna impact every single person I come in contact with.
And from a business perspective, just from a sheer like numbers perspective.
Google.
um did a study called Aristotle and they looked at cycle they looked at a bunch of different metrics related to team performance. And what emerged in that study is being most predictive of team performance was
was the degree to which the team had psychological safety.
felt safe in their environment to kind of show up.
as their as their true self. And they brought in
to the tune of four point five million dollars more.
than teams who are lacking.
Psychological safety.
So this is like a really
important concept that I don't think a lot of people
talk about, but when we go back to this concept of the principle of non neutrality, right? And
What are behaviors that
promote, enable you to live your values.
and and sh kind of show up as as your your best self as consistently as possible.
Minimizing sleep debt.
is right there at the top of the list.
It's fascinating.
And as it relates to sort of accident and injury, is there a correlation between
sort of injury of oneself and accidents you commit on others.
Yeah correlation between that and sleep debt.
very well established that um the more sleep that uh you're you're carrying
you know, the more accident prone you are. Um
You know the the
That
the the more risk you're gonna take. Um
And uh yeah, we see this in in the medical field. We see this um, you know, in in you know, just car accidents and
Yeah, it the list goes on and on.
Car accidents. A two thousand sixteen study by the Foundation for Traffic Safety found that drivers who reported that they usually sleep four to five hours per day.
had five point four times the crash rate.
Of drivers who usually sleep for seven hours or more.
A day.
Which is
Horrifying.
Yeah.
I know it's it's uh
Yeah, I mean we look when we think about
Yeah, sleep. It's it's
We're not getting better at it.
As a society.
And I and I think we're we're kind of coming at this conversation from the long the wrong lens. You know, we're telling folks just to spend more time in bed.
without addressing the behaviors that are actually enable us to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Yeah, that's
To me that's
That's the conversation and and it's not about spending more time in bed. And yeah, that might be
What needs to happen, but it's it's about
You're not gonna get there for folks who
True.
are not thinking about all the circadian things that we're talking about and um
You know, some of the environmental stuff, the cold, dark, the quiet, yes, that matters, but um, but at a foundational level.
I think folks are not engaging in the behaviors that are going to enable us to pay down this sleep deprivation.
The other study that I found that was super interesting, um, was that a two thousand twenty one study found that less than seven hours of sleep
is associated with increased risk of injury.
And if this is sustained for at least fourteen days, the risk of muscle and bone injury is one point seven times, almost two times higher.
Yeah. So as someone that goes to the gym a lot and likes to work out.
If I have a
High sleep debt. Mm-hmm.
then I'm much more likely to get an injury, almost two times more likely to get an injury if that's sustained. Which is crazy.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, and it you know I'm
So grateful that
I think
Folks are finally realizing that
Sleep is the greatest natural performance enhancer to that.
we have on this planet. Um
Yeah.
It's and that is certainly.
Super evident in all the research that we're doing.
What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.
Uh