TMGP Ep 08 with sleep expert and biohacker Riley Jarvis part 2

oo another white boy with a podcast pronouns Jim bro another white boy with a podcast you want to see the video it went viral hi gains gurus and welcome to tmgp the muscle growth podcast episode 8 I am your host Rosco and today we are welcoming biohacker Health Guru and sleep specialist Riley Jaris onto the show for the second portion of his two-part episodes Riley is a sleep consultant who has helped High performers achieve more out of their personal and work life using cuttingedge scientific lab testing strategies and techniques to hear more about Riley and get his first portion of this two-part episode please feel free to check out tmgp episode 7 for more sleep improving related value in today's episode we can look forward to sleeping tips achieving sleep Nirvana optimizing sleep and Recovery improving your sleeping environment waking up rituals circadian rhythms Advanced sleeping techniques and hacks falling asleep faster sleep supplements sleep tracking and more let's jump right into part two of Riley Javis on tmgp do you mind chatting about sleep optimization and some of your tips for optimizing sleep and how and how we can make our environment better for sleep and that kind of thing sure so sleep has many different forms uh we have deep sleep we have REM sleep ideally we want to be able to fall asleep fast and stay asleep for you know 7 to nine hours or whatever we need uninterrupted because when we wake up in the middle of the night that is going to have a negative impact on how we feel the next day and our recovery we're not going to be able to recover as much for tosterone to build muscle and everything else so um what I call it is sleep Nirvana what that is is the ability to fall asleep within 5 to 10 minutes stay asleep uninterrupted for 7 to n hours and wake up with an abundance of energy that lasts all day long without the need to take any stimulants whatsoever and when you hit that place recovery is going to be magnificent for you during the Deep Sleep phases we're going to get human growth hormone release which is extremely important for Recovery of our muscles um and just muscle muscle growth pro protein synthesis in general testosterone and so and so many other things um and we're just not going to rely on caffeine pills to just get through the day the second thing is for Sleep optimization what we can do so first is some of those supplements that I mentioned but for Sleep environment there's a couple things I'll start with the Lowa fruit first the first thing is we want to have a cold bedroom um environment temperature Celsius I would say 16 to 18 it's cold but just scientifically they show this is best we also want it to be pitch black so ideally you would want it to be so black or you can't see your hand in front of you you have to be realistic at the same time and if you're not that get close to as bad as you can but having your bedroom also in a separate area from where you do your work so your bedroom Associates your brain to sleep it's kind of your safe fa think commit like a ritual and then your work your desk will be outside of there and then creating that as a separate ritual and people think they can use their wellpower and stuff like that to get over it but they just show them through science that over time it just makes sleep more difficult that way another thing that you can do is we want to make sure along the lines of life is making sure that there's no um light being emitted from Electronics inside of our bedroom so things like cable boxes fans alarm clocks any lights that are turned on we have these light receptors around our eyes that are called mopin receptors and they can detect light at a pretty subtle level so even if you have these lights shining in your bedroom they can you know reduce your sleep quality in some way so instead what we want to do is ensure that our um sleep ironment is good put on like duct tape masking tape whatever you have to do to keep those covered the next thing is we can use a smell so like a diffuser with essential oils the two in particular are lavender to relax and the other one is frankincense and this this probably the best essential oil that you can get for just general properties DET toxification and everything else for the body low of inflammation so I like to combine those two together plus it smells just really good put that on for a timer keep it on all night see what works best for you um what else you can do for Sleep environment 1 hour two hours ideally before you go to sleep you want to get blue light blocking glasses the best brand for this exactly the best brand for this there's many on the market but again if you're looking for best results they're called uh true dark and they're called the true dark Twilight Classics and they're red they make you look like X-Men and they're not you know very comfortable in the beginning or you know to see the world in red is not so comfortable but you kind of get used to it and then over a while you prefer to put them on because there's just less light coming into your eyes once you do that you can also use um another application for your computer called Iris tech.co this will reduce blue light from your computer screen from your MacBook even from your phone screen flicking rate and all these other different things so that's one equally it's all about the morning routine so when we first wake up we want to expose our eyes to sunlight night uh usually within about an hour of waking up and if it's cloudy outside we want about 30 minutes of the outside exposure if it's sunny outside we only need about 10 or 15 minutes look up at the sun don't wear sunglasses obviously don't look directly at the sun too long that'll hurt your eyes but if you can have at least you know look 30 degrees away look up look down just try and get as much sun into your eyes as you can once our body gets that sun that sun goes into our Master Clock tells our Master Clock or Master Clock tells our hormones and our organs okay guys it's time to start turning on once they know when to turn on the timer is set so once it's 12 hours or whatever circum rhythm is there's genetic components that too then it knows when to fall asleep now our bodies are kind of these outdated you know monkey machines and we have to give it all the right input as much as possible so it knows when to sleep it doesn't know when to do it automatically because we're we live in a day and age where you know our bodies are not too much different from our ancestral environment where we you know our biology adapted to light from the sun from the moon or from potentially fire and that was it but we have these artificial forms of light that they're our mind is not used to and our body isn't used to and it's causing us a lot of issues it's called The Savannah principle if anyone's interested there is an evolutionary psychology book called by beautiful people have more daughters and it's fascinating it talks a lot about these things and why we do certain things in modern day Society um it's it's interesting because it brings kind of this pop science um thing to it and explains a lot lot of reasons why so it's one I recommend but um yeah just focusing on these core principles there's a ton more that we can look at but just in terms of environment these are quick quick ones people can start using that's epic and and I'm so excited to to start implementing some of those I know that we also mentioned some um less loow hanging fruit ones like uh mouth taping and wearing a wearing a mask let let's go into some of the the more Advanced Techniques if you will for for Sleep optimization sure so a couple of them would be um hitting them off once you do these low HPR things the ones I said before then we can look at these other ones the first one would be an Epson salt bath before we go to bed um so epol is Mak knees and relaxes the body also from the heat of a hot bath our body is going to slingshot in the other direction and actually go go to a more cooler internal environment when that happens we're actually able sleep better cuz while we sleep we want our body temperature to cool down not heat up the second thing is um we can wear socks to bed for some people that has shown to improve Sleep Quality the third one is we can raise the head of our bed where our pillow is like our actual bed frame up by about 3 in and this is going to help us sleep because while we sleep there's something knows our lymphatic system it kind of acts as the drainage or these internal these internal garbage truck cleaners that come through our body and so if you're sleeping flat it's hard for that kind of drainage process to happen but if we sleep on an angle we're we're slightly on an incline it kind of drains potentially these toxins or at least helps get rid of those from our brain and goes more towards you know um exit passageways through urine stool um and things like that so that is also shown to help improve Sleep Quality as well you can also wear a sleep mask is really nice uh man to sleep is a good one you can do things like uh um frequencies so brain.fm is an app on your phone um and you can wear headphones just like we are now and you can listen to the sleep mode for you know 30 minutes one hour before you go to sleep that's one you can also get an Acu ACU pressure mat and it's a basically a bunch of these spikes on the mat that will release endorphins a really good company for that is called the shack teamat it's it is painful when you get on it but you lie in there for 20 minutes and your body completely relaxes and sometimes myself and other clients have actually fallen asleep on the mat because before you know it's like you get a massage all these um endorphins company you you really start to feel your body going into a deeper and deeper State especially if you combine that if you want to start stacking things combine the brain.fm sleep mode with the um acupressure mat and you'll get a lot of benefits um that way just try not to fall asleep or you'll wake up a couple hours later with with Spike holes all over your back which has happened a few times to me but it's a good thing and those are usually good sleeves but um those I would say are some of the more advanced without going too advanced that people can start using it would having a slightly thicker pillow or two would that be enough to get those benefits or would you actually want your bed to be at a angle going going down entirely it's a good question I think you know putting your um the head of your bed like the frame actually up on blocks or whatever you can do everyone has a different setup would be good I don't think the you know a higher cloth potentially it would I mean who knows but your body in a way instead of just you know the top part of your body going up kind of all has to go up in unison and I think that's where the having the mattress elevated is probably best okay what kind of elevation would you say like 5° 2° 10° I would Elevate the head of your bed up by 3 in so you know it probably be you know 5° 7° something like that okay so you wouldn't be just sliding out have to you don't want to slide you don't want to sleep on a slide you sleep exactly okay cool um how would you recommend falling asleep faster so falling asleep faster um a couple things so make sure you do the thing in the morning where you expose your eyes to sunlight make sure you wear blue light blocking glasses 2 hours before sleep reduce all blue light as much as you can before you go to bed um make sure your body's relaxed do deep breathing meditation whatever you have to do to make sure your your mind's really quieted down also in terms of work you want like thre hour evening routine to truly wind down because if you're working until right before sleep or looking at a screen that's going to be difficult to really settle down so you can do all these Advanced things but if you don't do these basic ones then and it's going to be so much more difficult to fall asleep now in terms of the supplements you can use to fall asleep melatonin of course you can use 5htp Aline Gaba these are some of the quickest ones that you can use to get to sleep and some of those relaxation tools to fall asleep as well also not having caffeine anytime after 12:00 p.m. is generally a good go-to as well um in terms of those supplements I think did we mention CBD as well in our in our kind of um topic discussion no not yet so CBD you can use but it's Case by case for everybody some people it works great for others it doesn't and so I never tell people to take it just because it's something that it's a hit or miss for some people but it may help improve your sleep to get to sleep but in terms of Sleep Quality you know anything within that family is shown to reduce Ram sleep same with alcohol too it might feel like you're getting better sleep but you're not conscious of it but if you set yourself up to a sleep stud or sleep tracker you'll notice the sleep will actually go down over time like on average not just one night but just over time and how do you recommend staying asleep for longer so staying asleep longer a big one is going to be a blue light so that's major also a big one is their subconscious mind for a lot of people they dream for a lot of people their minds are racing and while they're sleeping you could have a thought that is in a dream that causes your heart rate to elevate your cortisol to increase and that's going to cause you to wake up at 3:00 a.m. so in order to reduce that we want to make sure before we go to sleep our brain is almost completely emptied out because it's what when it's on that empty tank it's like a computer when there's all these applications on a computer that's taking up all the RAM and all all the bandwidth and then we go to sleep in that way it's got to deal with all this excessive stuff so we want our mind to kind of be like a blank slate before we go to bed and one of the best ways to do that 90 minutes before bed we take our journal and we as a cathartic exercise we write down everything that comes to mind it could be a drawing it could be a to-do list it could just be a random word you want it to be a truly free flowing activity and when we do that you'll find at the end of the exercise for some people it might take 5 10 15 minutes maybe longer you will find your mind is a lot more emptied and because it's emptied down now your brain has more bandwidth to start consolidating memories from the past recovering and everything else so that been shown to improve it to also fall asleep stay asleep longer um a big one people don't realize is blood sugar so when our blood sugar we want our blood sugar to kind of be like up and down just slightly so like plus one minus one homeostasis where we wake up though is somebody's blood sugar goes like plus five minus5 or plus 10 minus 10 and how that happens is before we go to sleep we have a bunch of like sugary Foods could be a dessert or even dinner time we have too much or just in general our body is just so you know not insulin um sensitive you could say or is not adapt it's just not adapted to blood sugar in general and it goes with a cortisol too so what happens when a cortisol comes up we need insulin to bring it back down from our pancreas when our blood sugar is low let's say it's at minus5 minus 10 we need cortisol and adrenaline to bring it back up now our body is always trying to do homeostasis to go in the middle now if we're doing this up and down and our body is only used to like plus one minus one now we have to tap into these backup generators in our body and it kind of sounds the alarm Bells like uhoh there's an emergency that's happening right now we have to tap into these backup reserves when it doesn't have to be and it's just going to stress our body up more and once that happens our blood sugar goes low we need cortisol and adrenaline to bring it back up cortisol and adrenaline will cause us to wake up in the middle of the night so this won't be something where you wake up one hour into to sleep it might be but for a lot of people it's waking up at 2 3 4 a.m. in the middle of the night another thing that goes on top of that is the first four hours of sleep someone sleeps eight hours it's more dominant to be deep sleep in the second 4H hour phase of sleep it's more dominant to be REM sleep and so if we're waking up in the middle of the night we're going to be tapping into that later 4our REM sleep which we need to feel mentally recharged fully recovered sharp be able to get you know things done and stuff like that if we don't get that then we're going to resort to caffeine which is going to stress out our body more Elevate our cortisol and adrenaline and that downward cycle continues the other one why people wake up in the middle of the night is just going to the bathroom too much so the obvious one is don't drink liquids you know two hours three hours before bedtime try and save more of those throughout the daytime don't just save it till the end of the day when you feel thirsty the next one is um we want to make sure our hormones are optimized and when our hormones are optimized we'll be able to to retain our fluids in our body easier meaning we won't have to wake up to go to the bathroom a quick hack excuse me you can do for this though is you can use pink um pink him and sea salt yes but I'm more towards Celtic salt or Redman's Real Salt and when we do this our body will be able to hold on to those fluids a lot easier it's a hormone called aldosterone and once we do this we'll find we don't wake up as much in the middle of the night so are you telling me that my Epic Adventures and my really cool dreams are potentially not optimal and that it would be better to to wake up having just been blank and you know that gray or nothing uh kind of feeling sometimes it's a good question dream like if we can hack our dreams and go into lucid dreaming states where we're flying you know we all know what that D dream feels like and when we're in those States chances are we're sleeping very well because our brain is in that deep sleep in that recovery State and everything else it's more so when we have these stressed out feelings um before we go to sleep and those manifest into nightmares or manifest into negative things that Spike our cortisol and then caus us to wake up in the middle of the night so what I would I would argue that if we are able to remove those negative feelings before we go to sleep that almost leaves more room for the positive dreams like lucid dreaming the dreams that we do want to have to go into those deeper sleep States um because you know bad dreams you know if we have them time to time sure but if it's happening consistently there's something probably happening to your subconscious that you haven't fully released or processed yet and writing stuff down as a short-term approach I mean that can work but making that a consistent thing can be good obviously people can do forms of therapy somatic experiencing EMDR EFT stuff like that but um that's a long okay so you're actually saying that um lucier dreaming where where you're having like you're in the dream move for example flying or doing something really cool like that you got some superpowers yeah like those are my favorite dreams saying that that's actually a sign of of good sleep typically it can be not all the time but like if you wake up in a lucid dreaming State you might find your eyes are watering and you just had the best sleep ever just anecdotally that's true in terms of the science lucid dreaming has sometimes been shown to be uh not as deep sleep States but most of the time it is okay and as you mentioned that nightmares are bad because of the spikes and cortisol and waking up if I'm having nightmares for example and they don't wake me up is that still really bad or is it fine because it was still lucid and I didn't wake up it's a good question I think if you are and you also have to Define like what is waking you up because we not we might not be consciously waking up but we could have gone from a deeper sleep state to a lighter sleep phase because of that happening we we might not even know it so it you kind of you can't judge until you wake up and you have to see well how do I feel did I have nightmares and I'm full of energy or did I have nightmares and I'm not full of energy It's usually the ladder where people are like man I had nightmar last night I could not sleep like this one thing was giving me anxiety and it's always the most random thing it's just this basic thing you're worried about and it leads on this whole um it's almost like someone takes magic mushrooms and goes down that trip whatever frame of mind you went into it with usually will manifest into something bigger or whatever you know you're holding on to or avoiding or something like that so um I think it could go both ways but I don't know exactly you've just got to have the philosophy from tone and Pumba of Hakuna Matata it means no worries okay that's right that's and uh can you get back to your REM sleep quickly like for example if you do wake up in the middle of the night and need to go pee can you then uh get back to that Ram sleep quickly for example what I tend to do is if I do wake up in the night I'm always like very um aware that I should be asleep and what I try and do is do you can tell me if this is completely ridiculous and if it's just Placebo but again we know Placebo can work in some instances is I actually keep my eyes as shut as possible and try not to let light and things in and I go and I I do my business all while like s inting as hard as I can and then I find that that doesn't wake me up too much provided that that everything goes without needing to turn on a light or or anything like that and then I can get back to sleep very quickly yeah so with that um it's ideal to not have any lights on if you wake up to go to the bathroom and some people are really good at seeing feeling feeling the dark where they have to go um and that's like most ideal if you have to go to the bathroom and ideally not turn your light on some people do that when they really don't have to um and that's definitely going to affect your REM sleep I think that's probably one of the worst things you can do is turn the light on in the middle of the night because that's going to stimulate cortisol when cortisol should be low it's going to reduce your melatonin and just a lot of other things and then that'll just lead to more um you know conscious awake brain waves then you're going to have to get back into the Rhythm in that way so the best thing is if you wake up in the middle of the night try and go back to sleep there's a couple things here though if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't fall back asleep the worst thing to do is just sitting there looking at the ceiling thinking about the thoughts and those thoughts lead to more thoughts and other thoughts and it's just with your thoughts you spiral and so in that case to distract yourself with other things outside of your thoughts can be one of the fastest ways to fall back asleep so there was an old adage of um uh this woman who would go and and she would say when she wakes up in the middle of the night the best thing she would do is just go sweep in the dark and she would sweep and sweep until she felt tired and then she would go back to bed you know it goes back a long time and I don't think that's you know it's 100% true but what you can do is for example like an audio book like or a relaxing meditation or something like that in the background while the lights are off you hit the play button that's playing maybe set it on a timer which a lot of these apps have and then you know set it for one or two hours and then you'll fall asleep and that thing will will naturally go off too but um that's really good when you can just listen to someone else's narration or someone else's voice that's great now if you can get to sleep pretty fast but it's still disrupted your sleep if it's possible to set your alarm clock or extend your your wakeup Time by like you know an hour if you can an hour and a half if you can um that's another one of the best ways to extend REM sleep is just improve increase the time that you're you're actually asleep so on that one if I was to say say for example this morning I woke up half an hour early like half an hour before my alarm and I woke up feeling quite energized is it best to then get up and start your day or is it best to be like oh I've got half an hour left to go back try and get back to sleep what is your recommendation on waking up slightly early or an hour early even do you recommend trying to force yourself back to sleep or do you recommend getting up and and getting out of bed and getting your day started good question um so if you wake up and you have energy then it's best to get up and get your day started the reason why is because we have you know different sleep rhythms different sleep waves and our sleep cycles run in 90minut Cycles so we go from lighter sleep to REM sleep deep sleep non-rm sleep and the cycle repeats itself so we go up we go down we go up we go down if we wake up and we have energy chances are we probably woke up at the end of a more wful sleep cycle and that sleep cycle probably ended there's a couple different things it's just more the fact that your body had energy then you um you were probably towards the end of that now if you wake up and you don't have energy then it might be best for you to get more sleep if you're awake through you know a good portion of the night but if you just wake up you know and a half an hour early an hour early it's probably a good chance that you're that's when your body should be waking up because it's got enough sleep as it should maybe you need another full you know 90 minute sleep cycle but in that case it would be disadvantage contagious to sleep for 30 minutes because you would be going to a deep sleep State and then in half an hour you'd be in the middle of that deep sleep State and you would feel groggy for the rest of that day okay and sorry I had a question now on on waking up um oh so if you wake up in the night or you you just can't get to sleep at all and like no matter what you try you try listen to audiobook you try whatever and you're not falling asleep is it good to just stay still close your eyes and just lie there just just rest as hard as you can or are you completely wasting your time should you go try and be productive or or something like that if you absolutely can't get to sleep why would you say to people that are suffering with insomnia and and no matter what they try they try the supplements they're trying everything but that particular night they sleep is just 2 hours for example lying awake in bed and then starting to spiral on stress about not being able to sleep and they got a big day the next day for example what do you suggest to those people in those cases like if you've tried everything and you still can't sleep and like you said you've tried all the supplements you've tried all the hacks and you still can't and you gave it you know a really high Fighting Chance then in those cases yes it's best to get up make the best use of that day and this is where supplements can help you because if you wake up or that night and you know using supplements to because now your body's going to be more inflamed your mind's going to be more foggy it's probably going to be a day where you need more caffeine you need more stuff to focus you need to take some stuff to lower body inflammation that day you're probably going to crave a lot of sugary Foods because your hunger hormones Le in a grin are just going to be off so we all have those days sometimes um but as long as that's not the standard and it's just sort of a one-off thing then in those cases you can um you know do something like that and then maybe have a nap in the afternoon and then plan for the next day go to sleep like a one or two hours early and you probably will want to because you might be exhausted that day so can you uh that's a very interesting topic uh now that you mentioned going to bed slightly earlier can you make up for a bad night's sleep the following Night by adding an extra hour or two onto your sleep for the next day or like maybe maybe you can't completely make up for it but can you make up parts of of the sleep the Sleep debt as it's called I believe yeah so they say sleep debt like a bank account like you know if I lost three hours of sleep could I sleep another three hours and get it back and feel the same Matthew Walker in the book why was asleep he he looked at some of this and the answer is basically no we can't but if you like people know anecdotally if they didn't get a good sleep they woke up and then they went to bed earlier they do feel a lot better the next day compared they the the day they didn't get sleep but in one interest in finding is if you did not sleep well let's say on a Thursday night even if you slept well on Friday Saturday Sunday night by Sunday you still would not be fully recovered and we're talking about a Thursday sleep like where you really didn't sleep well you went out you drank alcohol it will take you a couple days to recover and even then you won't fully um be 100% mentally recharged and compared to if you didn't have that in the first place so recovery takes longer than people think I totally totally agree with you on that one let's while talking about Matt Walker it is Matt Walker right let's let's discuss his uh I've done I did his master class on sleep but I've also found it very interesting and he's brilliant and he's one of the top sleep scientists in the world um however I found that some of the data that he was using for his information were sleep studies done um where they basically took two different groups of people I don't know again why they only used too I know that it's very difficult to get participants for studies but basically what they did was they they did the participants and they said here you guys get eight hours of sleep and then the other group they forced them to wake up after 5 hours and I was thinking that there must be better ideas for trying to figure out what the best sleep is like I think it's quite obvious that if you forcing someone out of their sleep mud sleep that that was going to be really bad and the study showed that that was really really bad for their health for their well-being for all those biomarkers and everything would it not be best to try and figure out what and basically they were trying to decide is five hours or eight hours sleep better um but I think like we discussed for some people 5 hours actually might be better than 8 hours like eight hours could be over sleeping for some people and I'm not saying that you must try and uh get as little sleep as possible that's not what I'm saying at all but what I'm saying is obviously if you're forcing someone out of their their sleep that's that's not going to be good would it not be better to do a study where you let people sleep as long as they want to and then and then seeing how different hours of sleep per different people affects them and then having kind of like a more person dependent uh study yeah I think that would be way better those studies might exist too but waking people up you know whether with an alarm clock at a certain time or with um you know when a nurse will come in and wake you up like an actual sleep study plus an environment like that isn't your your actual sleep like you're sleeping on your back when someone might sleep on their side or their stomach it's not their house it's not their mattress it's like going to a hotel and not sleeping well so to and that's where sleep trackers like an oring and stuff like that are really good sure it's not as accurate as a sleep study but we can detect Trends plus it's their regular environment day-to- day and then when we take averages of that we can get a couple years of data instead of one night of data in a sterile hospital bed so I think there is where it has a lot of advantages but um you know on that note I think it's uh it's a good way to do it and what I should also say is everyone has a different chronotype so everyone's biology genetically um is more of a nighttime person or more of a morning person and this could be plus or minus usually about two hours throughout the day so some people genetically uh should be going to bed earlier and waking up earlier other people should be going to bed later and waking up later and if they don't follow that exact schedule then it's very possible their overall performance and well-being won't be as good as it could be okay let chronotype I think is incredibly important so let's let's elaborate some more on that and would you say like what is more important like listening to your also how do you find out your chronotype I think we mentioned something about biomarkers and DNA tests so let's get into that as well as what would you say is more important sticking to your chronotype or sticking to a consistent um time to go to bed what or or they both equally important what was your thoughts on all of that so number one what what is your chronotype well your chronotype is basically think of it as your sleep Rhythm or um another thing is like your sleep animal sign is what they call it so it's basically like everyone they say to sleep you know 8 hours they might might say you know go to bed at 10 p.m. wake up at 6:00 a.m. and that's great for a lot of people and that seems to be the average on a typical work week um and then they also say for every one hour of sleep before midnight equals two hours of sleep after midnight there's there's a lot of Truth to that too but a lot of them speak in um a lot of platitudes and generic cookie Color Solutions that aren't for everybody so you're genetically um different than your friend when you should wake up and when you should go to sleep so what we can actually do is um the most optimal solution is finding out what your chronotype is so how do you know what time you should go to bed and what time you should wake up you can do a quiz it's called the powerof when quiz.com it's one by Dr Bruce it's a free one you can find out what your sleep animal sign is that way it will give you sort of a schedule to follow um that's in alignment with that the the best thing and the second thing you can do is um a genetic test and when you do a genetic test you'll know for sure are you more of a night 10 person or you more of a morning person and that's one thing that I do with my clients when we're able to do it that way we're able to find out exactly how should we um design their routine their morning routine their afternoon routine their evening routine based on these times and then when we find out those exact times then we make that consistent so we we find out what their type is first we know what the best time they should go to sleep when we look at the oring and stuff to detect these Trends and then we make that the consistent schedule of when they go to bed but this is where it's an issue for people because of their job because of modern day Society we're forced to wake up extremely early but the majority of us are actually night owls um nighttime um dominant so as a result of that we our environment we've been adapted this environment to wake up go to work extremely early and then maybe go to bed early but actually we'd be better off sleeping in a couple extra hours going to bed a couple hours later and we would feel so much better as as a result of that but you know for people have freedom or a job that designs to do that they can do that wake up with an alarm clock um honoring their body's natural rhythms and doing it that way but that would be the best way to do it figure out what you are and then be consistent around what that actually was absolutely and um I would love to chat to you after this and see if I can get one of those genetic tests through through your company what's the name of your company again the Sleep consultant consultant.com Zak okay and they do the genetic test and you can tell me exactly what genetically I should be doing exactly so I when I look at the genetic test I'll be able to look at and see nighttime person morning person and many other things in your biology for example like the foods you should be eating the exercise you should be doing um even interesting things like in terms of genetics and behavioral stuff like IQ EQ creativity educational attainment language ability mathematic ability just stuff that's interesting to know and then stuff that's more vital for your performance day to okay I'm super Keen to to hopefully get get that done um but like you know obviously people are social creatures and on the weekends and things so say they have an early chronotype where they should be going to bed at 10: or 11 or 12 whatever it may be but then on Friday Saturday they go out partying until or socializing or whatever they want to do until early hours of the morning that kind of thing how bad is that for for them and would it be better for them to maybe shift their chronotype a little bit to be slightly later um to maybe mid night on on most nights and then on the Friday and Saturday only go out to one then it's only one hour shifted for example on the weekend because your body probably doesn't give give any I'm I'm trying to find nice words for it um doesn't care about uh the day of the week for example so do you think it would be best to try and like if you are going to be going out on the weekends I'm not saying you need to or you should but if you are would it be best to try and have a slightly more aligned sleep time good question and I would say yes and the more the less of a variation kind of like the blood sugar that you can have with your natural sleep rhythms and then let's say the weekend comes around and let's say you extend it by just one or two hours opposed to you know typically going to bed at 10 pm and then doing a weekend Bender at till 5 5 AM that's gonna take a really long time for you to recover and for some people that's a week and they know exactly what that feels like and then they're doing it again the next night and the next night and they wonder why they never feel 100% it's a lot better to stay within a narrow window of what your natural time is however if your body is genetically a morning person you should be going to bed at 9:30 10 p.m. and then the weekends you know you go to sleep at 1 am that could be a bit of an issue but people usually morning Larks know who they are because when they go out with their friends they're they get tired and they and they can't drink as much or they have to go to sleep earlier so if you look back over the last 10 20 years especially in particular like earlier on um not not when you like in the midle and your body was in puberty and stuff like that and as you were developing because you know that's just a different time hormonally and everything but once things are stable you know past the age of like 2021 then trying to figure out what exactly um you are it's not always the case but it sometimes is um but instead of just guessing testing again can be the best way you mentioned a very important topic there that I think is neglected by a large portion of the world which is alcohol and drink um do do you mind just elaborating and telling us and I know how bad alcohol is and I'm sure you know how bad it is is just telling the the audience exactly how bad it is for your sleep and for your hormones and your body your brain everything basically yeah for sure um if people want to take a deep dive on this you can just listen to the Andrew huberman just put in YouTube Andrew huberman alcohol and he goes like two and a half hours of all this and you will never never want to drink alcohol again after what he talks about but just some high points um in terms of sleep alcohol is going to directly reduce your REM sleep you like the quality of your REM sleep and a lot of people will drink to kind of um put the brakes on before they go to bed to quiet their mind and something but again first principles where does that calmness come from when we drink alcohol well that's a neurotransmitter in our body in our brain that's called Gaba now we can naturally do Gaba without the negative effects of alcohol and again there's stuff in the body that's happening with our heart rate and stuff like that that makes us feel relaxed but in terms of the brain um if we supplement with pharmagaba we're we're putting the brakes and we're slowing down the anxi the anxious thoughts of our brain um without the negative effects of alcohol so I'm not saying don't drink you still have to enjoy life and everything else and it depends on what your goals are and everything else and I'm not telling any anybody what to do but if you can keep alcohol down to a minimum you're you're going to get better sleep as much as possible if you are going to have alcohol having a supplement with it called NAC or glutathione or um you can have like uh charcoal like coconut charcoal is a really good one to minimize those effects and would you take that every day as a potent antioxidant yep El glutathione yeah yeah it's good to take as opponent antioxidant um now if your goal is muscle growth I'll give a quick hack here it's a bit more advanced on days you work out you do not want to take glutathione or NAC that's going to reduce your muscle gains the same thing is after a workout you don't want to have a cold shower cold Morin you always want to expose to heat or like a sun or something like that so on days that we do not work out we can have glutathione and stuff if you know if we want to grow muscle um the other thing is glutathione as a supplement does not pass the blood brain barrier NAC called anical cysteine does so I like to go for NAC because it's a bit more um Downstream and we can Target that plus it passes the blood brain barrier I like to combine that sometimes with glutathione again glutathione has different forms you have liposomal es glutathione acetyl um and stuff like that s es glutathion is usually the best it's typically oral but um you can do ones that are spray or gels that you put in your mouth to but um it's all good but combining that with NE is good at the same time don't want to have too too much of it but you can have higher amounts or over time but especially around drinking absolutely I think I hope that that information doesn't get used uh as an excuse to drink more but I'm sure that that'll help the people that are going to have hopefully only one or two so yeah we mentioned uh in our little pre-discussion about mouth taping and sleeping with the fan on sleeping naked uh sleeping with uh Fabrics like cotton and silk not chemicals and using natural detergent and uh the last one some plants like you mentioned Devil's claw and top three plants for sleep do you mind just touching on on those topics briefly sure uh so starting with our environment going a bit more advanced we can use an air purifier those are really good you can go from cheap you'll probably have to replace the filter frequently to one that's more advanced uh Advanced one that's good as like Austin Air or you can get one it's called the air molecule both of these are you know upwards of $500 to $1,000 but a great investment and the filters in there will sometimes last three to five years so you actually save money in a lot of ways um and they're just such great companies with great reputations second one is plants we can get uh different kinds of plants um for our sleeping you could just simply Google uh plants that help me sleep better because everywhere in the world has different vegetation but um Devil's claw and a couple of these other plants particular that look like cactuses that don't maybe aesthetically look like a jungle um depends on what what you're looking for but they um can be really beneficial as well going onwards though uh mouth taping can be very good because we're breathing through our nose it's not for everybody that self-experimentation seeing what works best for you um sleep Mass are really good you can also look at things like um uh T an advanced one is you know EMF so electromagnetic frequencies when you go to sleep put your phone in airplane mode you can o set your Wi-Fi in your house on a timer so when you fall asleep um Wi-Fi is off when you wake up Wi-Fi is on a really cool device for this and kind of Step that happens um in the air it's called somatic s so a v d i and they're kind of this uh cool device that goes beside your bed that really helps with the emfs to reduce them and so much more so that's another cool little Gadget um and sleeping naked you know sleeping naked is good too so um again Case by case ideally we want our bodies to be cool while we sleep so when we sleep naked without big sweaters and stuff like that on us um that will be more prone to a good sleep and everything for some people just psychologically too they feel more free when they sleep in naked and that's good too but for other people maybe they feel vulnerable um not as safe while they sleep so when they dream or while they sleep that won't be as good so that's where sort of that personal preference comes in but the core principle of we want our internal body temperature to be cool while we sleep we don't want to be sweating while we sleep um that's going to be a really good one to go with now if people want to you know keep their body cool they can use two devices on the cheaper end you have something called a chili pad which kind of like blast cold air under your sheets while you sleep and the second one which is a lot more expensive is called an eight sleep and that's kind of like a thing that sits on your mattress and in real time tracks your body temperature will give you a sleep score and will essentially um provide coolness and it it separates the Ben into two so if you have a partner in bed one can go warm one can go cooler and you can really customize your sleep that way but that's multiple thousands of dollars one day one day one day the the other Gadget you mentioned was sense . a yeah so it's called Sensei so senns doai and what they do is they're really revolutionary and they just came out probably in the last six months or so and they've been working on this device for a long time but they will help your brain um become more calm become more peaceful become more focused um by using something called neuro feedback back um which is really people can just Google and see what this is but it's kind of um rewiring your brain sort of in a good way with your brain waves to give yourself more of the good brain waves um other things such as something called heart rate variability as a trainer to increase your heart rate variability to become more peaceful have better thoughts um make your body more resilient you have something else in there called photobiomodulation which is again it's this headset that goes on your head and does all these at one time while you kind of play games on your phone and kind of acts like red light um for your brain to help um shift it more efficiently and to give your brain more energy and everything that goes along with it sorry did you mention um fabrics and and detergents yet so detergents we always want to make sure it's natural anything that synthetic that we put onto our body is likely going to go through our skin into our bloodstream and our body it's going to absorb these toxins in our fat cells or out ofos tissues so what we want to do is reduce any source of that as much as possible and have I and there's extremes with this and I again we have to be ideal uh or realistic but you can use natural detergent is always going to be best um having clothes that are um naturally just not with a lot of chemicals on it you can buy clothes that are EMF protectants um there's many different clothing lines for this and then you can also just get clothes in general that don't like emit or um pick up a lot of you know just things from the air you know cotton and linen is all good and this where personal preference comes in like how does the clo feel how does it breathe things like that um but beyond that just making sure it's it's all natural silk silk a good one as well yeah silk is a good one as well for some people silk doesn't breath too well but it definitely feels and on that note of uh the the toxins and things there's a lot of hype to do with um receipts is is there any validation in in that or is that just nonsense like receipts you get from a store like after you purchase yeah I hear a lot of stuff about receipts um but this kind of go it's a big topic it's a can of worms because it's like tea bags you know they say with tea bags they soak the tea bags in a white dot which give it the white color then when you heat the tea bag up a lot of those toxins will get emitted into the water it's all these things and I think there's validity to it for sure so I would say there's some truth to it I personally haven't looked into it too too much with the receipts but I'm sure there's something there okay and sleeping with the fan on is that something that you recommend yeah for so for some people it there's a lot of personal preference with this the fan will keep things cooler so as a result of that it's really nice it also acts as white noise so if you if you have noise coming from the outside or the white noise provides a safe of um a sense of safety for some people so in that way it can be beneficial too um but yeah those those fans in general will also um might be annoying to some people and they they won't sleep on that so with a lot of my clients we'll try it out for a week or two and see how they go and um but most most react quite quite good to it I mean I'm in Canada now it's cool so we don't need one but the moment summer hits or I'm going down south I might put a fan on and is it fine to leave it on the whole time the whole night and also is it okay if it blows on your body or do you prefer would you recommend oscillating or not directly on you I like the oscillating the best when it's on your body what you'll sometimes find is you're there's all this air going on you you almost wake up kind of not almost feeling not winded but congested or a lot of this you know because there's stuff while we sleep like with our mucus and everything else it might drought our our mouth or nose so as long as it oscillates that's typically going to be your best bet or keep it like off you so you're getting air flow in the room but it's not directly on you so there's a lot of variations you can do but oscillating is generally a good bet let's talk about um testosterone optimization and cortisol management sure so testosterone there's a couple different areas we have total testosterone free testosterone free testosterone is the one that's a bioavailable for our body and total testosterone is important uh we also have sex hormone binding globulin which can make our free testosterone low because it binds to it and free testosterone should be about you know 1 to three% of what our total testosterone is if someone's so there's a couple different cases if someone's total testosterone is low then that's a different case than if someone's total testosterone is high but their bioavailable free testosterone is low if their total testosterone is low I would say you know it's a it's a it's a big three-hour conversation but basically the foods you eat can get absorbed into the building blocks that create testosterone so the question is well are those building blocks getting assimilated for your hormones to use if they're not there's something wrong with your gut um are your testes you know working with your adrenal glands and the gland in your brain to produce enough testosterone because you know you have lsh um and FH and these all kind of correlate with each other as well so um for a lot of what I will just say how do we improve dis Ostrum going to the gym getting enough sleep assuming enough hours of sleep you can use some of these natural testosterone boosters that I mentioned getting rid of the sugar getting rid of the alcohol getting rid of the junk food once we do that our testosterone is going to be in a very good place once we are at that place and our testosterone is still low and we did blood test and everything then we can have another conversation but up until that point most people aren't doing these things they say their testosterone is low they want to do testosterone replacement therapy or something or who knows going anabolic steroids um but there's so much you can do on the natural side without taking a lot of these other things um and then if that still doesn't work then we can find to in the process do lab testing look at these other elements and see what exactly is going on Upstream so there's testosterone replacement therapy is one option and then there's also the hormone replacement therapy with peptides and those kind of things so your recommendation is sort out your lifestyle factors first do the supplementation do everything in your power but then obviously and especially for older people I'm sure sure you'd agree like maybe 40 50 it's probably best like at that stage that testosterone would have declined n naturally and it might be if they're suffering from low testosterone it is actually a chronic condition and potentially they must look at other options exactly if those guys who are older they're going to the gym they're eating right they're maybe taking some of the natural supplements they're doing cold showers they're doing you know sauna two three times a week and we look their blood and it's still lower than they want to be or they want to get back to testosterone levels to when they were 18 years old let's say a lot of entrepreneurs want that then that's Aver ation to have about testosterone replacement therapy um to help boost that in that way and I think in that way it's good but the thing is when you do that you have the risk of becoming infertile not being able to have children so at that point they may have already had children already especially when you get older so someone to do it in their 20s considering all these other factors that are available it's it's in my opinion at least it's really not worth it you want to try everything possible and only then and you want to try but if you do everything in your in naturally possible you're probably going to be able to even double your testosterone like I've seen it so many times so those are some epic tips for optimization of testosterone what can we give the listeners for uh cortisol management while understanding that cortisol is catabolic stress is catabolic it's all really bad a little bit of stress is good but overall uh chronic stress is definitely bad and high stress levels also probably quite bad for you so to keep testosterone sorry cortisol low stress low there a couple different things one is your perceived stress like how do you reduce just the obvious things how do you reduce stress in your external environment that's triggering this cortisol to be elevated is it your job is it a relationship is it things that you have going on how do you make systems build systems in your life so that doesn't have to happen in the first place once you get that figured out you can start then you know eating a Clean Diet like if you're eating a poor diet not getting sleep and all these basic things we talked about your stress is going to go up so much higher even and your perceived stress is going to go up so much higher because everything is going to be out of balance compared to if you have those things figured out so get the diet down get the supplements down get the Sleep down once you do that then you can look at things like um EPS andol bass flow tanks you can do Spa uh coal plunges are incredible for stress at the end of your shower a warm shower spike it to cold for 1 minute and put the cold on your face your collar bone at the back of your head at the brain stem these are the most important where receptors are in your body that will trigger a lot of the benefits and also sauna steam sauna dry sauna try doing that for five times a week for 15 20 minutes and see how you feel your and combine that with coal plunges going to the gym doing cardio on hormonal level and these other areas you are going to do a lot for stress cortisol and leaving time for recovery and that's kind of all you need and when you do that you can still drink alcohol or coffee or whatever you want to do but you don't rely on it as a crutch to just get to the next day it's it's something that you know it's based on your own attention where it's not controlling you you're controlling it absolutely so we're coming to the end of our value packed episode here but I would like you just to quickly touch on while you're on diet so just touching more on diet and then uh Basel metabolic rate as well and maybe your active BMR as well sure so with diet we want to eat Foods obviously that we've heard before that are not processed and don't think of diet is like follow ketogenic or follow this follow that all of us are genetically different the best way actually is do a genetic test find out genetically what are the best foods that your body will agree to because again it's a it's personalized unique approach find out what your biological blueprint is and then kind of eat Foods around that and don't eat diet for the sake of like 3 teaspoons of this three cups of this that gets complicated think about a template so every meal that you have you want to have one protein one carb one fat one seasoning so it could be a grass-fed steak with some broccoli for the fat you might have an avocado you might put on some olive oil on that or like a salad with olive oil and then for seasonings you might put on like sea salt with um you know just other things you might mix in like sweet potatoes if you wanted to have carbs that way as a post meal but balancing those things in a full way is great the second thing with DED is we want to cut all gluten dairy especially grains for people who have sensitivities grain can be a massive one so grains could be granola porch oatmeal quinoa brown rice um those are big secondary things in diet it's not for everybody and I don't want someone to just eat you know eat like rice and rice and chicken all the rest of your lives but having things for example like nightshades are a family so potatoes uh Tomatoes eggplants peppers can be uh night shades no sorry those were night shades but faat foods can be inflammatory for some people you can just Google what these foods are but um I would just say in general drink enough water drink half of your body weight that's in pounds in ounces of water per day making sure that water is not tap water you want to make sure it's filtered ideally is reverse osmosis and or making sure it's clean and then you want to make sure that you have um Whole Foods organic fruits you want to make sure they're not spray they don't have chemicals pesticides and stuff like that on them not GMOs inside the meats and stuff like that buying really good sources ideally from a local farm and then you know you're you're going to give your body the right building blocks um and then you're going to be in a really good place and then you were saying part two so the BMR is your metabolism so your bmr's yeah so your basil metabolism rate is basically you know if your goal is to lose fat we are always losing fat or we have something known as our metabolism and that will not just beond when we're going for a runner doing exercise which a lot of people believe but it's actually turn on all the time now our base metabolism rate is different for everybody in fact some people are losing fat while they're sleeping other people are not so you might know some people that are able to just keep fat off while they're sleeping they don't you know go for massive Marathon runs they don't just eat salads all the time and they're able to maintain this well there's something to that the more muscle we have in our body the higher our basil metabolism rate is going to be so if your goal is to reduce fat don't just go for Marathon runs because you're probably going to turn skinny fat when we run for long distances we're going to be burning muscle at the same time so we want to be building muscle up keeping testosterone up and then um uh keeping our fat low and how we do that is we eat the Whole Foods we if we got to do cardio you can do like 10,000 steps per day try lifting weights try aiming for strength um always each each um workout progressive muscle overload try and increase the weight just a little bit each um time you go back to the gym for that muscle group and you're slowly going to get stronger you're going to get bigger um depending if you're a male or female what your goals are and you're going to be able to maintain that muscle and have a really good hormonal environment that just naturally promotes fat loss and keeps muscle on again the effortless experience of doing all this while we're sleeping opposed to having to go to the gym do all these intense exercises or or something else we make it easy for ourselves by working smarter not harder absolutely and I think to end off I would love you to please uh give give us that analogy on the car and the human and basically with regards to the amount of time that you need to sleep for examp for you said it way better than that I'm going to say no so I want you just to rephrase it but basically it was about someone getting nine hours of sleep that might be necessary for them because they are needing more sleep due to high inflammation and inefficient uh and it's inefficient it's similar to like a bad car whereas someone else might be getting seven hours and that's more than enough for them you had a really cool car analogy and I would appreciate it if you could just finish off with that and then any closing thoughts you have um or any words of wisdom or advice for for our listeners sure so the analogy he's speaking of is he asked me do people need like N9 Plus hours of sleep is getting more sleep actually better than not getting you know enough sleep and what it is is this current state of our body you might need need 9 plus hours of sleep or eight plus hours of sleep because your body inside is so inflamed and things are happening inside of your body that cause you to need more recovery just to get back to Baseline versus somebody else might only need six or seven hours of sleep to fully feel re recharged because their inside body is just more healthy it's more efficient it's able to sleep deeper not sleep longer not as deeply the quality of the sleep is is much higher for them so as a result they might not need as much of that um versus the other person they require that because their body is just inefficient and this is similar to a car like I was seeing like a car from the 1980s if your body is running like a car from the 1980s and it's clogged up it wasn't wellmaintained it's going to need a lot more recovery to just bring it up to Baseline versus if your body is running as this efficient machine you're not going to need as much Rec recovery to fill up your fuel tank you'll need less because the quality is higher things more optimized things recover faster in a shorter period of time and as a result when you wake up you're able to just continue on your day as such I'm not saying to anyone just you know aim for five or six hours of sleep it's a general overall philosophy and principle of maybe you need seven and a half or eight hours of sleep genetically and there's a genetic component too some people genetically just need six other people need nine but a massive opponent is from the environment because their bodies it's state is just so poor and we need way more sleep than we actually we actually do absolutely that's such a cool analogy and then to finish off anything anything else from your side closing thoughts yeah I'd say this a lot of people focus on the external so they read books they focus on tips tactics all this internal stuff and that's really important but in my opinion I've said it before focusing on the internal first because when you when you focus on the internal first by increasing the resiliency of your body not seeing health is this or sleep as this thing you just put under the rug you get on with it and then you can overcome it with willpower instead making that a priority and seeing this as an investment in yourself because when you invest in that it's going to pay you back dividends in the days weeks months to come where you can hit your goals so much faster and those same external tactics that you were doing do you execute those at two out of 10 or do you execute those at 10 out of 10 and if you're executing those at 10 out of 10 then you're going to get to where you want to go from point A to B way faster way more easily than you ever thought was possible what a fantastic wrap up thank you so much Riley Jaris thank you rasco I appreciate it goodbye gains gurus thank you for listening and see you on the next episode of tmgp