" THE CITY SLEEPS BUT I’M WIDE AWAKE LOST IN CONCUSSION ORBIT ".. tips to regain a restorative slumber again.
Meet Satish Kumar a software engineer turned sleep Coach, who joins us to unravel the importance of quality rest. From night-time awakenings to the interplay between our circadian rhythms and the sun's pattern, we engage in a profound discussion on how to harness the power of sleep for optimal health.
This episode peels back the curtain on societal expectations of productivity and health-focused routines of top performers. We share strategies to quiet the mind and realign with nature's clock, for better sleep even when our brains are healing from injury. Dive into the relationship between emotional wellbeing and the rest we get—or don't—revealing the crucial role sleep plays in cognitive function and decision-making.
After my own brain injury I dreamed about partying all night in Ibiza and being able to handle it! Well I knocked that off the bucket list 6 years after my injury. I do need to have a sleep routine though to navigate the balance between PC syndrome which you will learn in our podcast! Enjoy the tips and I hope you gain some insight on how you can also improve your own sleep routine.
Follow Satish Kumar - Your Brain On Sleep to learn more knowledge beyond the podcast!
https://yourbrainonsleep.com/about-me/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourbrainonsleep/
Buy Oura Ring To Track Your Sleep & Health @ https://ouraring.com/membership
" THE CITY SLEEPS BUT I’M WIDE AWAKE LOST IN CONCUSSION ORBIT ".. tips to regain a restorative slumber again.
Meet Satish Kumar a software engineer turned sleep Coach, who joins us to unravel the importance of quality rest. From night-time awakenings to the interplay between our circadian rhythms and the sun's pattern, we engage in a profound discussion on how to harness the power of sleep for optimal health.
This episode peels back the curtain on societal expectations of productivity and health-focused routines of top performers. We share strategies to quiet the mind and realign with nature's clock, for better sleep even when our brains are healing from injury. Dive into the relationship between emotional wellbeing and the rest we get—or don't—revealing the crucial role sleep plays in cognitive function and decision-making.
After my own brain injury I dreamed about partying all night in Ibiza and being able to handle it! Well I knocked that off the bucket list 6 years after my injury. I do need to have a sleep routine though to navigate the balance between PC syndrome which you will learn in our podcast! Enjoy the tips and I hope you gain some insight on how you can also improve your own sleep routine.
Follow Satish Kumar - Your Brain On Sleep to learn more knowledge beyond the podcast!
https://yourbrainonsleep.com/about-me/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourbrainonsleep/
Buy Oura Ring To Track Your Sleep & Health @ https://ouraring.com/membership
Hi, satish, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm really excited to have you today because you know, as you're aware of, I've had a pretty traumatic brain injury and Sleep is a huge issue for a lot of survivors, so I'm looking forward to diving into learning more, a little bit, about sleep. I'm curious if you can explain what you do and how you got into studying sleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, thank you all for having me. It's, it's nice to be here on your podcast and, yeah, the how I got into sleep was like a pure like accident. Right, my background isn't engineering on the software engineer and for a Long period of my life, like I wanted to to look at peak performance for myself. Right, I was like really On the edge of like cutting edge, of like peak performance and what it. What does it look like for somebody, especially as I like went into my 30s and I knew that, like Usually, people experience like it decline as they age in In general, like overall performance, right, and health, and I wanted to stay ahead of the curve. So in my early 30s, I started looking at, well, what can I do to stay ahead of the curve and what's gonna keep me on the edge in terms of performance. And so that led me down on the path of like learning more about like the human body, how it works. Like we, we come into this life and we have a Beautiful machine that we doesn't come with a user manual, right, like nobody tells us like, hey, here's what you need to do and here's how this machine, complex machine works. It's probably the most complex system or human body, is like one of the most complex system that exists like in the world and we have no manual and we kind of have to wing it and rely on people Code-on-code doctors that are professionals, but they are, they're studying these in parts, right. So I went down like this path of like really understanding what makes Somebody function optimally, and it it wasn't the linear path because they're like it's taken me down like different paths and I was like code-on-code, a biohacker I don't like to use that term anymore because I don't resonate with it as much but I was one of the early people like in that community and trying to really understand what can I do to like improve performance and through During my journey, what I realized at some point was that a lot of the fancy things that I was doing I've spent like Tens of thousands of dollars like learning from professionals, trying different modalities, gadgets and all these things, you name it.
Speaker 2:I've tried it right, and having done all of these things, I realized that a lot of these things that are like promoted code-on-code as like things that you need like to be functioning well, are really only Putting a patch on some things that are like fundamentally Out of place right, and so for me, one of those things was like sleep. When I, when I started, I actually one of the gadgets that I'd invested in Early on in like my biohacking journey this is before I had like any awareness on. Sleep was like the ordering because I did it, because it was like Very new and I'd seen a lot of people that I follow have it like people like Peter and Ia and and Ben Greenfield they were talking about it. This is like about this is the first generation now running right, like going back to 2016 or 17, and I was curious about it. I was like, okay, let me get this and see what, what this is all about.
Speaker 2:And once I started Bringing more awareness, then I realized how much of like a lot of things, other things that I was doing like in terms of taking supplements and and like biohacks, like code-on-code biohacks, like bulletproof coffee or a bunch of other things that I was doing at that time, like light therapies and things like that and All those things were really only making a marginal, like very marginal difference if I had my basic style down right.
Speaker 2:So the basics of health are to me are breath, sleep, nutrition and movement. If we don't eat, we die right, and that's like that. Our breath is what keeps us alive, and right after breath, the most fundamental thing is sleep, and that's what I realized through my journey and once I recognized, like, how important it was and how Much of a difference it made in my life, then I realized, like there's something here that I can share with other people to help them, help bring more awareness really into how much of how we feel and how we experience life Really comes down to how much we're able to rest, and sleep is the primary form of rest that we give our bodies.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Yeah, I found that too after my concussion, like I needed so much sleep. I was sleeping like 16 hours a day when I first had my concussion and then now it's like anywhere from 8 to 12, depending on the day. But I also have like a lot of fatigue from overstimulation. But I'm curious too to ask you like is there, you know, can you oversleep, do you think?
Speaker 2:I don't think you can oversleep. I know that there is some. It's my personal opinion, right? I think our bodies and my thought process is that our bodies are really innately intelligent to know when they need to be in repair mode and when they need a lot more rest and repair than they usually do. So when you say you are sleeping like 16 hours after your concussion, that makes sense to me, right, because a concussion is like a critical injury to a part of our body that's like vital, and so your natural response of your body is going to want to shut down as much resources as possible on other things and focus on repair and regeneration, true yeah, so in those cases, I don't think there's anything called like oversleeping.
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean typically if somebody's just like if I would say if your body, if you're sleeping and your body needs it, it's not oversleeping. I don't think you can actually oversleep your bodies. The intelligence that we have within our bodies are way more than what we can comprehend. We may not always be able to explain why that happens, but I trust the intelligence of the body.
Speaker 1:That's really awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I felt like really unsure about my sleep when I was first having my concussion, because I used to go, go, go and then be fine off of like five hours of sleep, almost, you know.
Speaker 1:And then now I would be like a walking zombie if I did that now, but like I literally would do something for an hour and then I need to sleep, and then I'd do something for an hour and I need to sleep, and it was like I was so frustrated because I was like what the fuck? I want to keep going, you know, and I had to like stop and rest for these periods of time. But another thing that happened in my journey and it happens now quite often is that like I wake up in the middle of the night and I cannot shut off or go back to sleep. So I'm wondering in that case if somebody's having like these periods of okay, they wake up in the middle of the night and it's, you know, they're lying there for two hours do you recommend that they get up and do something else, or is there something else that you recommend?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So before I answer that, I want to touch on something else that you shared which I think is like really important.
Speaker 2:We have this expectation that, like that we're machines that need to be on and working and being productive and doing stuff all the time right, and I think it's one of the things that like are the way we've structured modern society is like put this unrealistic expectation that we're like on all the time right.
Speaker 2:And if we look at like even, for example, like elite athletes, they're training for like a short periods of time in a day. They're not performing at their peak all the time. Most of their time is spent in like in training and recovery right their actual performance, like if they have a game night or whatever, it's like an hour and a half or two hours in a week, maybe sometimes twice in a week, but other than that, they're usually spending their time in like rest and recovery. So if that's true for an elite athlete, why would it not be? Why would we expect ourselves to be on, switched on and like be able to churn out stuff all the time? I think it's just an unrealistic and unhealthy expectation that we put on ourselves just because everybody does it.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I think it also depends where you live too. I found like, because I've traveled a lot and I've been to different countries, and I find that certain countries will have naps during the day and it's acceptable, but here they look at you like you know, in Canada, you're lazy, what are you doing? Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. It's just I think it's been normalized and I want to. The reason I like highlighted that was like just to bring awareness to the fact that like it's even in India I grew up in India and it's common in Spain for people to just like take nap in the middle of the day and because it's normal for our energy levels to drop, it's normal for our bodies to want to rest before we go and do something else.
Speaker 2:It's just our biology and anytime we we know that we're fighting our biology and we're fighting like four billion years of evolution. Right, we think we can outsmart four billion years of evolution, but really we're paying a price over the long term.
Speaker 1:I love this because you're allowing me to let go of my guilt. I have so much guilt for not going and going and going. I have two kids, so it's hard right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think it's our own expectation, right? So I mean, what a blessing. So I want to address the other part of the question that you asked is like what do I do if I wake up in the middle of the night? Is that your question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so typically I do one of two things. Usually. I try to like, if I wake up, sometimes, let's say, to go to the bathroom, I'll come back lay down in my bed and see if I can fall asleep within like 10 minutes and most of the times I can and then I'll fall asleep. But if I can fall asleep in 10 minutes I would just wake up, I would go to my living room and I would just do it like a 20 minute meditation. Usually when I do that it clears, like my mind. Whatever is like racing. Usually people can go back to sleep because their mind is like racing right Now there are other cases where that happens, but typically it's because, like there's something going on in your head.
Speaker 2:So for me what's worked is meditation, just like leaving the room, not being in the bed, getting out, going somewhere else, sitting down 20 minutes clear my head and then most often when I come back, that helps me and I've shared that with people I've worked with and it's helped people that I've worked with as well. So that would mean my like first recommendation Now there are some people that have like a dysregulated circadian rhythm right Like those are circadian rhythm controls or governs when we're alert and when we're in an accident and ready to rest, right. So if somebody's got like a circadian rhythm that's out of alignment, that could cause cortisol spikes, like doing different parts of the night and that could definitely wake you up, and in that case it's more of like, how do I align my rhythm of my body with, like the environment that I live in so that we're living in sync with what's in our environment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really common, I think for brain injury as well, like the quality of sleep, and you know it's just, it's kind of all over the place. So I'm just wondering, like is there any general supplements or anything like that that you recommend as well?
Speaker 2:I don't, actually I don't recommend supplements as like the first step to address sleep, because no-transcript People, you can take all kinds of supplements, right, but then usually are you really addressing the problem or are you putting a temporary fix on something that's like more deep rooted. So there are cases where some supplements may help, but it's not a blanket thing like oh, if you have trouble sleeping, take these supplements right. I've seen people recommend like things like melatonin and other things, and it's not the first thing that I reach for. Like I try to help people first get everything else in place right and then, if they're still having trouble, then we can look at what else can you do on top of it, and not reach for supplements as the first fix. Because it's easy this is the world we live in today Like give me I have a problem, give me a quick fix, can I take a pill? And like solve this.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I had a bottle of melatonin next to my bed all the time I would take like three pills because it just would put me out, and I was so frustrated and I was just like, oh my God, I want to sleep tonight, you know. So I've heard that's not the best option, but I did do that for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, sometimes you got to do what you got to do, right, yeah, and eventually you get your way out of it. I mean, melatonin is a great, it's actually an amazing thing. It's an amazing molecule, it's an antioxidant. It does a lot of other things in our body. But typically our body produces like about 0.3 milligrams of melatonin, roughly right. And then you see, if you look at a pill, like an average pill has like three or five grams. That's like 10 to 15 times the time the amount of melatonin your body naturally produces. So it is going to have an impact, right, even though it's going to help you to sleep, it is going to have an impact. You're probably going to wake up groggy next morning if you take melatonin, which has happened to me. So there's a cost associated with all of these things. And if your circadian rhythm is aligned, then your body will naturally produce melatonin when it's time for you to sleep. You don't really have to take something, but there are cases in extreme circumstances where it's required, and then eventually the goal would be to wean off of those so you can get back in alignment.
Speaker 2:One thing that I do realize around brain injury and sleep is that it can be a tricky situation because for you to heal from brain injury you need sleep, and then the very thing that you need to recover is also affected because you have an injury that you're recovering from, a brain injury. So it can be a tricky situation to get out of because it's kind of like a cap's 22. And it does affect, depending on like what part of the brain is affected, depending on how intense the injury is. It could affect, like the quality of sleep, the stages you get, like REM sleep, deep sleep. There's all these different types of effects that it can have and I think it varies based on the type of injury and the individual.
Speaker 1:Yeah and again, like you said, we're not machines right. Which society makes us feel like that? What are the potential consequences of poor sleep on my cognitive function, emotional wellbeing and physical health?
Speaker 2:Great question. So cognitive function is this has been like well studied, right? So there was there been like a few studies done, like a couple of things. That come to my mind is there was one study done on sleep deprivation. So there was like three groups of people, I believe One is a group of people that got like regular sleep, and then there's the control group, and the second group was people that had seven hours of sleep for a week, and then the control group at eight hours or more. The second group was seven hours of sleep for a week, and then the third group was sleep deprived for 24 hours. So what they found was that there was obviously a significant drop in cognitive function in the group that was sleep deprived for 24 hours, right. But what was interesting is that people who slept for seven hours during the week prior had about the same level of drop in cognitive performance as somebody who had just stayed up for 24 hours without any sleep, compared to the people that had slept eight hours or more.
Speaker 1:Wow, that short period is really affecting you then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like that. One additional hour of sleep is creating the same impact as not sleeping for 24 hours. Now, if that same person was like sleep deprived for 48 hours, their performance will probably start dropping way more. But at 24 hours it's the same as like losing an hour of sleep over a week, right? So it does have a huge impact on cognitive function and I would say, like the most important aspect of that, or critical aspect of that, is that on decision-making right, so it affects our decision-making abilities. So that's how it affects cognitive function.
Speaker 2:In terms of emotional wellbeing, this is also like really interesting one, because sleep regulates one of the things that happens during sleep. It regulates the connection between, like the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Right, so you can think of like the amygdala as the gas pedal and then the prefrontal cortex as the brakes, right, it's like a super analogy. And your amygdala's job is to always scan your environment for threat responses, right? So it's like always scanning the environment and saying, well, this is a problem, you're gonna die, you gotta get out of here, this guy is gonna kill you. There's a lion over here.
Speaker 2:It's a primal part of the brain and its job is to keep you alive. And then the prefrontal cortex's job is to override these threat responses and logically and say it's not a threatening situation, it's okay, it's gonna be fine, right? So this is how we operate. All the time the amygdala is constantly looking for threats and then the more executive part of our brain is saying, overriding these signals and saying it's fine, you don't have to worry about it, this is not a threatful situation. Now, the connection between these two areas of the brains are strengthened when we sleep, so sleep deprivation loosens the connections between, so the connections are not actually that strong, which means your prefrontal cortex cannot override. So people tend to be more like in their fear response when they're sleeping deprived.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I did not know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then physical health. It affects physical health in different ways. Like decision making is one of those things. Like when it comes to physical health you're talking about, like movement, food choices, and again, when you are constantly sleep deprived and fatigued, it's gonna be hard for you first to make the right choices in terms of nutrition and food. It's gonna be easy for you to give into a temptation and reach for something that is probably not necessarily the healthiest, and it's a spiral which then leads to like not being able, not having the energy to be able to work out or take care of yourself physically, fatigue, or like making poor choices on those things which eventually, overall, is gonna cause a dip in, like, your overall physical wellbeing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I noticed too. When I haven't slept I can't go to the gym, like it's just, it's not an option for me. I won't go, I don't have a option. But I do like to go to Ibiza once in a while and go dance with David Guetta, but the freaking party started at 3 am. So I guess once in a while that's okay like a treat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's I mean what we do one day doesn't determine much in terms of our like long-term health outcomes, right? So if what you do 80% of the time is really what counts and then you have to live a life, a little way it's finding the balance between doing what's you know what's right for you and also having some fun and like living life. And I find I mean I constantly like I'm finding the balance, like living here in Tulum and going out and doing stuff, cause my usually my natural bedtime would be like 10 pm and if I'm out and doing stuff I know I'm not gonna be in bed at 10 pm. So I try to balance it out and like make sure I'm in bed by 10 pm more often than not. And I know I've noticed like, especially this year in the beginning of the year right January, february I had some, I had my birthday which I celebrated for like over a week and I had friends come over.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of stuff going on and I realized that my sleep took a hit for about two or three weeks and I could feel the effects of it and I accepted it. It's like okay, is this the month of the year where a lot of stuff is going on, so I'm gonna give myself the permission to not be as sharp as I would be like functioning at a lower capacity. It's a trade off and I chose it, consciously, made it, and I, once that phase was over, I'm like all right, let's get back on track and like get back to the levels that I know I can be if I'm like fully rested and taken care of myself.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, and you live in like party central. It must be kind of hard to avoid some of those parties sometimes. Yeah, so also too. Like we kind of talked about this a little bit. But like, can you explain how sleep contributes to the brain's healing process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So not just the brain, right? Sleep swear. Our entire body undergoes repair and healing, and the brain's like obviously a big part of it. There's a few things that come to my mind, like neurogenesis, right, Like the quality of sleep and rest determines how we can grow new like brain cells and new brain pathways, and so that's one way how brain affects I mean sleep affects the healing process, Cause if you have brain injury, you prop you there's probably some level of like neurodegeneration that's happened and you would want to repair and have like new brain cells or new pathways or whatever. And all of that stuff happens during sleep. So that's one. The second thing that comes to mind is around myelin. Are you familiar with myelin and myelination?
Speaker 1:No, I'm not. Can you explain that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so myelin is this like protective layer around our nerve cells. That's really important for our brain health. And so there's a lot of like all these processes right, like for myelination, for example, like the formation of that protective layer, it's triggered by certain genes and transcription factors. And a lot of these genes and transcription factors they're not like turned on all the time, because it's kind of like a switch right, like hey, I turned the switch on for this, go repair the brain. And the switch to repair this thing is not on all the time. It's. Usually there are environmental factors that determine when this switch is on, and a lot of these genes that upregulate myelin and myelination they're activated during sleep. So if you're sleep deprived, then you're not these genes that need to be turned on and upregulated in order for the healing to happen within the myelin is not happening. So that's one thing I can think of and the reason this is relevant to brain injury specifically, because there is some myelin damage that happens during in certain types of brain injuries. And then the third thing I can think of is the glymphatic system. So our brain is like normally producing as a result of, like normal brain metabolism. We're producing certain things that need to be cleared away from the brain, like once in a while.
Speaker 2:And have you heard of like amyloid plaques?
Speaker 2:No, okay, so this is like a protein. That's that about like 20 or 30 years ago it was kind of like a big thing because people found out that, like people who have Parkinson's and other brain degenerative diseases, alzheimer's, they have an accumulation of this amyloid plaque in their brain. So they were like this is the thing, this is bad, this protein is bad, this is what causes brain damage. That was like the first reaction, but over time, what we've learned is that these proteins are not a problem, because these proteins are just byproduct of normal brain, like metabolism, and in people who have healthy sleep function, there is a drainage process where the brain gets rid of these particles every night when we sleep, and it's kind of like a drainage system for the brain. And when people don't sleep well, that's when they develop like these regenerative diseases, because these particles that are supposed to be cleared every night are now accumulating because people are not sleeping well. So those are like some of the things that I can think of in terms of how sleep contributes to the brain's healing process.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's so fascinating because I didn't know any of that. So, thank you, you're welcome. What about the key components of healthy sleep routine, like what? Would be sorry, I cut that out. What are the key components of a healthy sleep routine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, right. So it starts in the morning, right Now. The first thing I would say is how much of light exposure you're getting, how much of sun exposure you're getting during the day. It's really important to get sun exposure, direct sun exposure, right, like not through a window within the first 30 minutes of waking up, because it's gonna really calibrate your internal clock to the outside world so it starts there, right, and there's other things. So some of the other things are winding down I would say would be like one thing like when do you like do you have an off switch?
Speaker 2:Some people don't have an off switch. They go from like working and into doing something and then just go like lay in their bed. There's no process of like wrapping up your workday, especially now after COVID, where we're not even in an office environment. Like a lot of people, a lot of us work from the same place that we live, so work because of an extension like into your life. So you're like constantly there doing stuff and having like a wind down routine to say like, okay, this part of my day is over, now I'm going to focus on rest and recovery and like other things like whether it's social stuff or being spending time with your kids or cooking or whatever it is, but clearly having like a demarcation between work and when work is actually done, I would say that's really critical.
Speaker 2:Exercise is really important as a part of sleep routines, healthy sleep routine, right? The preferred time and the optimal time to exercise, to have a healthy sleep routine is during the day, during the day, in the morning, especially because the closer you work out to your sleep time, you're going to have a higher cortisol levels circulating in your body, which is like the opposite of what we want, right? So our cortisol levels normally peak in the morning. So the first two to three hours after waking up are usually the best time to work out. So that would be another thing that would be a component of a good sleep routine. Let's see your food timing. Alcohol, obviously right. Like how first in terms of food, like how close to your bedtime are you eating? Ideally you would want to have, like your last meal at least three hours before your bedtime and ideally no alcohol at least for about five hours before your bedtime. If you have to have a drink, I would say if your bedtime is like 10pm, have a drink no later than like 5pm, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've noticed that too with my if I have one drink I really like mezcal and that was my thing in Mexico, but if I had one drink I'd be up all night and I was like I've only had one, like what is this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, alcohol has such an impact on sleep. Even if it's just one drink, it can really affect it, and I've noticed that too. Like I rarely drink, I'm not a big alcoholic, I mean big fan of alcohol and I had some friends over and was celebrating. So there was a couple of nights, like this year, earlier this year, I had like a couple of glasses of wine, like one glass of wine on a couple of nights and I noticed like really and it was not even like close to bed, I was like three or four hours before my bedtime and even then it affected my sleep. So I realized like that just one glass or one drink can still have like a significant impact on the sleep quality.
Speaker 1:One thing, though, with living in Canada, too, is it's really gray here in the winter time. I have a really hard time being here because there's like no sun, like this is the first week that it's actually been sunny. So if I'm living in Canada and I'm waking up in the morning consistently, then do you suggest still going and sitting outside for the within the first 30 minutes?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because even if you're outside, there is a lot of like light and photons. That's your brain calibrate.
Speaker 1:Can you just repeat that sentence? I'm going to cut that out. My phone dropped.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no problem, yeah, so even if you're living somewhere that's really cloudy and overcast and you're not really don't have sun, doesn't come out, it's still beneficial to get that morning light exposure, even if it's overcast and cloudy, because there's still light and photons coming through and your body will still benefit from that exposure first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then working out too. You think first thing in the morning when you wake up it's good to go and work out. Within how long would you recommend?
Speaker 2:I would say within the first two to three hours of waking up.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's ideal.
Speaker 1:What about improving the environment in your bedroom to get a better quality sleep?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's also a really important aspect. So, in terms of setting up your environment bedroom, I would say well, first thing is your lighting, not just in your bedroom, everywhere, right? So you would want to have light that's more like closer to sunlight or closer to fire, rather not sunlight closer to fire than the blue LED lights that we have, like your. I would recommend that, if you really are concerned about the quality of your sleep and even optimize your environment, that after the sun goes down, the lights in your house should all be like warm lights, no bright lights, and as dim as possible, like the minimum amount of light necessary. Right, because it's the low light is gonna send signals to our brain that it's time to wind down and it's time to produce melatonin. And when you have like really dark or deep, bright overhead lights that are LED, especially LED lights, they are confused, they're sending confusing signals to your, to your brain and your body. Right, because your body's like well, I'm tired, it looks like it's probably sleep time, but then you have this artificial light that's saying sending a different signals. It's kind of conflicting. So that's the first thing. And then, specifically in the bedroom, I would say same thing, like keep the lights low after the sun goes down, like really low lights and warm lights.
Speaker 2:And the temperature is another factor. I like it like my bedroom to be really cool. I like it between, I guess, like 68 and 70 in terms of Fahrenheit and I would say like 16 and 18 in terms of like Celsius. That's how I like to sleep, and the cooler your environment is, the easier it's gonna be for your body to fall asleep, because one of the things that happens as we go to sleep is our cold body temperature drops and having like an external environment is gonna allow our core body temperature to drop easily, easier. So that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:And then I would say obviously you want it. You want it to be as dark as possible, right, if you can get black out curtains and shout out all the light, do that. Leave all your electronics outside your bedroom, like your electronics shouldn't be in your bedroom your phone, your iPad or whatever it is that really should not be in your bedroom by your bed, especially. So I would say that's gonna be another thing. And then your the level of like noise outside, noise that can come into your bedroom. That's gonna affect your sleep. So if you live in a place where it's like loud, or you're living in like downtown somewhere, it's it's gonna be having an effect right, like you hear silence or an ambulance or cops or whatever and all those things can affect you. So you would want to have, like ideally, a, an environment where you're not woken up by outside noises. So I would say those are like the key things in terms of setting up your environment in your bedroom you know?
Speaker 1:another thing I had a question about was music frequencies, because I actually had a roommate in Tulum and she would always play these music frequencies at night and sometimes, honestly, it drove me nuts because it was like a little bit too loud, but then I got used to it. Now I'm at home I'm like oh, I missed that. Do you think that that actually helps you kind of fall into a deeper sleep?
Speaker 2:are you talking about vinyl beats?
Speaker 1:yeah, or any type of like different frequencies. You know there's a lot of different hurts that you can find on Spotify, like you'll have a lot of playlists that'll say, you know, sleep playlists or something like that yeah.
Speaker 2:So, by the way, it's can be really helpful when they're played to headphones, right, like if you play them on speakers they're really not gonna do anything. Meant to be listened to headphones because the way they work is through cancelling frequencies. So Delta for sleep, delta would be a really good frequency to start with and then eventually people go into actually. Theta is where people start, because it's kind of like the transition between the waking state and dream state. So theta or Delta would be would be good frequencies for using. I would say start with like Delta and then eventually you could. If you have something that's like playing as you're sleeping, then you could start off with like a theta and then transition into a Delta. If not, I think theta would be like the, a good brain wave.
Speaker 1:And yes, they're, they're effective if as long as you play them on on headphones, they're effective and they will help you, your brain transition into that state okay, you know one thing I always worry about, and I don't know if you know much about this, but you know, having the Apple AirPods or something like that. You know, I've heard that there's, you know, certain things within the AirPods that affect your brain as well, so I was always worried to use my headsets yeah that's my kids.
Speaker 2:They sneak the phone and stuff like that, and so I was thinking about maybe just shutting off the whole power, so they can't do that yeah, I mean in Canada you probably can get away with it because you can eat cooler and you don't have to run like AC or things like that yeah, true, and I'm curious too, like how can someone track and monitor their sleep patterns?
Speaker 1:and also, like, if they're in this really shit routine and not being able to identify, is there anything that you can recommend that people can you know address their problems? I mean, I know that they can reach out to you, but you know, I know that we continue to have these patterns and we're not like aware of what we're doing. So I'm just wondering if you have any suggestions for for those yeah.
Speaker 2:So in terms of patterns and resetting, what I suggest is really usually people have like a dysregulated circadian rhythm. Most people, when they have sleep trouble trouble with sleeping they have a dysregulated circadian rhythm and one of the best things you can do to like really get back that back on track is to go on a camping trip for like three to five nights. Leave all the electronics behind, go somewhere in nature. Go on a camping trip if you can, and just when you're on a camping trip and you're out in nature and you don't have your electronics, you're gonna wake up with the sun and go to bed with the sun. You're gonna spend a lot of time outdoors. Hopefully you can spend time barefoot and just being in that environment for five days.
Speaker 2:It's not that hard for us to get in sync with our environment.
Speaker 2:All we need to do is go spend time in nature, and so that's doing that for like three to five days. For somebody who's like struggling with with sleep cycles and like having consistency and things like that will really help, because when you do that for five days, when you come back, you're automatically going to like start feeling sleepy, what like right around the same time, like around nine or 10pm, and then it will be easier to keep that up and then wake up with the sun and be in sync with that. So that's one of the best things they can suggest. If you can do that, then wake up, watch the sunrise every day, watch the sunset every day and then get barefoot. And if you can watch the sunrise and the sunset barefoot, even better, and do that for about like a week or two and it's going to allow your body's clock to reset right and then you're going to be more in sync with nature and over time then you can take that back into your life and like build your life around it.
Speaker 1:I love that suggestion.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and then what was your other question?
Speaker 1:How can you monitor? Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I've been using an ordering, like I said, since like 2016 or 17, and I'm biased to it. It's great. I like the fact that it fits on my ringer. I mean, it fits on my finger and it's easy. It doesn't bother me when I go to bed.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of other devices that you can use to track sleep. There's the Whoop, and then there's Apple Watch that does it. I'm sure there's like other brands like Garmin and other companies that make these wearable devices that can help track your sleep. My personal favorite is the other ring, just because it's on my finger and it's the easiest thing. I don't want to have something on my wrist. I also have an Apple Watch and I don't like wearing my Apple Watch to bed. It doesn't feel natural to me, whereas the ring feels less invasive for me, so that's my preferred way.
Speaker 2:And then a lot of these devices also come with like, their own apps, and you will start learning patterns and things like that and this is one of the things that I help people with is like the apps kind of like dumb it down for you for like. So it's applicable to information and the things that they give you is more generally applicable for majority of the people and what I do when I work with people and help people is really go down another level and get past, because the algorithms have to dumb it down for everyone and they can make it individualized for everyone and that's what the app is common for everybody. So I help people look at like what's happening with them and then really, beyond the algorithms and the scores these apps give you, really look at the underlying data to see what's happening during your sleep, how your body is recovering, what is working, what is not working, and help them really optimize that. So it's more like a personalized attention to based on, like, your individualized data.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I'm curious how much do these or rings cost?
Speaker 2:I think the the current generation one is three. Let me look. I'm looking at an audience 300 or $400.
Speaker 1:But if you're going to be feeling amazing and you're going to be keeping track of your sleep, then it's definitely worth it.
Speaker 2:I've actually lost two rings and I've always replaced them right away, so this is like my third or fourth ring. So, yeah, it's $300 and it's it's one of the best things you can make in into your help. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I've learned so much on this podcast. I love it and it was so fun. So thank you so much for all the information and I'm excited for people to kind of gain some insight on do how they can improve their sleep. So also, how can people work with you and where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. My handle on Instagram and username is your brain on sleep, so that's how you can find me and if you want to work with me, reach out to me. I'm limiting the number of like in people that I work one in one on one setting with because I'm transitioning more to a more kind of like an online course. I'm going to come out with a new online course when people can learn a lot of the things, the fundamental things, that I'm sharing, that I'm teaching people through an online course at their own pace and then, if they want to work with me on top of that, then I offer additional stuff. But, yeah, find me on Instagram, follow me and reach out to me if you have any questions and, and thank you for having me. I'm glad you learned a lot from it and I hope your listeners also get a lot of value out of this.
Speaker 1:I think they will for sure. It was amazing and I hope to see you into the room again soon. Cheers.