Shawn Stevenson - How to Sleep Smarter

When it comes to health, there is one criminally overlooked element: sleep. Good sleep helps you shed fat for good, stave off disease, stay productive, and improve virtually every function of your mind and body. That's what Shawn Stevenson learned when a degenerative bone disease crushed his dream of becoming a professional athlete. Like many of us, he gave up on his health and his body until he decided there must be a better way. Through better sleep and optimized nutrition, Stevenson not only healed his body but also achieved fitness and business goals he never thought possible. Shawn has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Men’s Health magazine, ESPN, FOX News, and many other major media outlets. He is also a frequent keynote speaker for numerous organizations, universities, and conferences. To learn more about Shawn visit TheModelHealthShow.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 p.m. And my third day, 6:00 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it. Waiting weeks on a big bank for capital? Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

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  On October 2nd.

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  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

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  With great power comes great deniability.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

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  This is The Ed Mylett Show. Recruit, build, lead, and compete at edmylett.com.

• 1:51Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Mylett. We've got a wonderful program for you today with a guest that I've been chasing down here for a couple of months, and I finally locked him in here at the house. And so this gentleman to my left hosts the number one podcast on all of iTunes in the health space called The Model Health Program. He's also a best Selling author of this book that we're going to talk about a lot today called Sleep Smarter, which is a topic that has an awful lot to do with your wellness overall, your fitness, your mental health, your ability to perform in business is a topic that's understudied, underappreciated, and this is an expert here on all wellness, but particularly sleep as well. So I have the great Shawn Stevenson with me here today.

• 2:30Shawn Stevenson?

  Very nice to be here.

• 2:31Ed Mylett?

  Great to have you, like really, really excited about this. So Shawn is, as I told you, he's not only written this book and he's an expert on all areas really, health and wellness, he's a nutritionist too by trade. And he got into kind of the nutritional space. It's interesting how you ended up getting here, right? Like this theory I always tell everybody is life happens for us, not to us, right? And you had a really interesting situation happen to you. So when you were in college, this sort of got you into the space, right? Something happened to you in college where you ended up getting diagnosed, am I right about this with, tell them a little bit about what happened and how you ended up even getting into this space, what you get diagnosed with?

• 3:07Shawn Stevenson?

  So I was diagnosed with this so-called incurable spinal condition, degenerative disc disease and degenerative bone disease. And so when I was 20, my physician at the time told me that I had the spine of an 80-year-old man.

• 3:18Ed Mylett?

  80-year-old?

• 3:19Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes, not, and not a healthy 80-year-old because there's some 80-year-olds out there who are like killing it. But I wasn't one of them, you know? My spine was, you know, I had two ruptured discs, my L4 and L5S1, and so that was causing the sciatic pain.

• 3:32Ed Mylett?

  Do you know how you did it?

• 3:33Shawn Stevenson?

  So I thought it was some kind of trauma, you know, just from, you know, school, work, lifting weights, whatever, I didn't know, but it was because of the degeneration and instability of my spine because the tissue of my bones and my disc were so brittle, basically.

• 3:46Ed Mylett?

  So there was something technically genetic with it?

• 3:49Shawn Stevenson?

  That's the thing, and so that's one of the things we want to talk about as well, you know, what we've been studying for the last decade plus is something called epigenetics. And so this is looking at control above your genes. And so just because you have a genetic predisposition for something doesn't mean that it has to happen. If you think about a genetic program like this, like I wasn't born with the condition, right? I wasn't, I didn't have degenerative spinal issues when I was five.

• 4:12Ed Mylett?

  Good point.

• 4:12Shawn Stevenson?

  Something happened and turned it on.

• 4:14Ed Mylett?

  Turned it on?

• 4:15Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes, and so for me, it actually started a little bit earlier than that, and this was at track practice, you know? For those who know about the NFL Combine. When I was, you know, fifteen, sixteen years old, I ran a four, five forty. Wow. And so, things were looking good for me with college and Yeah. I just started having all these injuries. I actually broke my hip at track practice just running because my bones were so brittle. But nobody stopped to ask, how did this kid break his hip just from running? Yeah. And it wasn't until four years later when I got that diagnosis. You're kidding me? Yeah. And so was that, were you thinking, I may end up in a wheelchair? I may end up not being able to walk? That's exactly, that's exactly it. And I was terrified, you know, to get. And here's the thing, man. A lot of people hear about the placebo effect. Yeah. Right? Where you believe that something is going to happen when you take a medication. For example,

• 4:59Shawn Stevenson?

  there are studies done where folks take a placebo of a cancer pill, like a chemotherapy drug. Yeah. And they proceed to have their hair fall out simply by the strength of their belief, right? Yeah. A lot of people don't realize that placebos are thirty-three percent effective in clinical trials across the board on average. That's crazy. So you have to account for the fact that the placebos are going to have an effect. Sure. And so what happened to me was the opposite of placebo. It's called a nocebo effect. Nocebo. So this is where you get a negative injunction that something bad is going to happen. You believe it and you begin to have those symptoms. And so Okay. I went from a nuisance of a pain to chronic debilitating pain after I got that diagnosis. And I asked my physician at the time, is there anything I can do about this? You know, like, what do, and being an athlete, I'm like, let's go. Like, how do we fix this? Right. And he literally was like, I'm sorry, son.

• 5:44Shawn Stevenson?

  There's nothing you can do about this. This is something you're just gonna have to live with. My goodness. Yeah. Like a lifelong death sentence. Exactly. Exactly. And so this really sent my world spiraling, you know, and it took about two and a half years. By the way, there's a good happy ending to this, you know, but two and a half years go by and I'm reserved to literally laying on my floor most of the day. Wow. I was embarrassed. I wore a back brace. I went to a nightclub with a back brace on, man, you know, in college. Nobody wants to date and do with a back brace. And I was like the, you know, I was the cool guy, you know? Yeah. And so it just really messed with my identity. I'm sure. And I gained a lot of weight by being so docile. So I gained about fifty pounds. That's hard to picture now. Yeah, you know. This guy's abs are.

• 6:26Ed Mylett?

  Freakish.

• 6:27Shawn Stevenson?

  And even growing up, like I was the skinny kid in my family. And so, but I had, we all, there was that fat gene and it got turned on.

• 6:33Ed Mylett?

  The fat gene got turned on too.

• 6:34Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, and so, you know, gaining all this weight definitely slipped into some depression.

• 6:39Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Shawn Stevenson?

  And it wasn't until, and this is really important, but a lot of people miss this, and I know you know how powerful this is. It wasn't until I really hit rock bottom and I realized like I have a choice to make. I'm just, literally, I don't care about living anymore.

• 6:54Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 6:54Shawn Stevenson?

  I wasn't like thinking about taking my life, but I just didn't care.

• 6:57Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Shawn Stevenson?

  I just got to that point, or I'm gonna do something about it. And I decided to get well, you know, and most people never do that. It's more like wishful thinking, we'll see what happens, I'll give this a shot, I hope this works, I'll give this a try. I decided, no matter what, I'm going to get well. And so, and it wasn't like, you know, Unicorn came out, the clouds parted, like, it wasn't that kind of a moment, but I felt this renewed energy, like I'm gonna figure this out. And I'd actually gone to school initially, pre-med, when I first went to college. But I hate, I actually hated science. And so, I dropped out of that, and it's because of a movie, Boomerang, with Eddie Murphy.

• 7:36Ed Mylett?

  Yes, of course.

• 7:37Shawn Stevenson?

  I got into marketing, and so, like, I was like, this is what I'll do, but fate had other plans for me, brought me back to science. And so, when I was in college, we were taught pharmacology, right? There's a problem, you take a pill, like, we were taught a lot about sickness. We weren't taught about health, right? And so, I decided to learn everything that I could about health, and I became just obsessed.

• 7:57Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Shawn Stevenson?

  And, long story short, six weeks later, after making that decision, I lost 28 pounds. The pain I've been experiencing for two and a half years was gone. Nine months later, I went and got a scan done of my spine, I regenerated my tissue, my two ruptured discs had retracted on their own.

• 8:12Ed Mylett?

  Oh my gosh.

• 8:13Shawn Stevenson?

  And I got my life back, not back, it was better than it had ever been.

• 8:16Ed Mylett?

  It was better than prior. That's amazing, because there's so many people, I think, that are watching this, that they get to that point too, where they just don't care. You're at that point where you just don't care.

• 8:24Shawn Stevenson?

  Learned helplessness.

• 8:25Ed Mylett?

  Learned helplessness, exactly right. And that the power, like really, this is an oversaid thing in sort of the personal development world, but like the power of making an actual, real decision. I mean, a real one, which is what you did. Literally altered your life.

• 8:39Shawn Stevenson?

  Done.

• 8:40Ed Mylett?

  And it was really interesting because if you look back in hindsight, always, life happens for us, not to us. It's interesting because your whole wellness background and nutrition background, and obviously this debilitating diagnosis prepares you for being the number one guy in this space now, right? This is the number one guy in the nutritional health wellness space in the entire internet, in the entire world, number one guy, right? But it's also interesting that the marketing thing helps you too. Because you've got a program, you've got a market, right? So if you didn't take the marketing detour, maybe the podcast isn't as big, maybe you haven't helped as many people as you've helped.

• 9:11Shawn Stevenson?

  I like to say life qualifies you. Right? Life doesn't call the qualified, life qualifies the called. And so it wasn't my intention to do this work, but life was really qualifying me. Because not only, once I had this experience of something so-called incurable, no longer being a part of my life, when I would hear other people say, you know, cancers, diabetes, heart disease, that these things were incurable, I could take a firm stand in knowing like, whatever created you, to think that something's outside the power of actually being able to heal you from whatever this is, is just stupid to think that something is incurable.

• 9:45Ed Mylett?

  I want to tell everybody something about this because this man's obsessed with health. He's obsessed, he's also gifted because he's got this background and he's got a brain to be able to digest this stuff and process it. But this topic is fascinating to me, where we're going now. This book right here, it's called Sleep Smarter. And I want to tell you one thing about this, this book isn't 20 pages, it's a comfortable read. I read it in a day. I read the entire book in a day. And the reason was I could not stop reading it because I'm fascinated with rest and recovery too. So like, we're both fit guys, we're both not 15 years old anymore either, right? And it's interesting because people will ask me often, how often do you train? And I train my legs five days a week. And I always think when someone tells me that, like, do you not understand the recovery process? Do you understand resting?

• 10:30Ed Mylett?

  So I train hard when I train. But I think one of the reasons I'm relatively fit is that I rest and recover with my muscles too. I didn't think about it though through the prism of sleep. And so there's a lot of information out there about nutrition. You can pick a diet, you can pick a workout. There's not a lot of information about sleep and how important it is to your health, your wellness, your productivity, clarity of thinking, longevity, energy, all of it. And so, and I want to talk now about some specifics. So first things first, why does sleep matter? Like what's the big deal about sleeping? And we talked about it being one of the three pillars of the change for you. But in general, for someone who's out there that thinks, I don't have a degenerative condition.

• 11:11Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Ed Mylett?

  So I work hard, I want to kill it, I want to work. And I know that not more sleep is necessarily better than less sleep. It's how you sleep, I think. But tell me, why does sleep matter? Let them first understand that principle.

• 11:24Shawn Stevenson?

  Let's talk about three specific categories. Number one, the very visceral connection of your body composition.

• 11:29Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 11:30Shawn Stevenson?

  University of Chicago did a study recently, blew my mind. I hope you're ready to have your mind blown. This is crazy. So they took exercise, I'm sorry, they took dieters.

• 11:39Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 11:40Shawn Stevenson?

  Conventional calorie restricted diet, what I was taught in a university setting to have patients do. And they monitored their results. Now, they tracked everything and they allowed them at this phase of the study to get eight and a half hours of sleep. Another phase of the study, they take the same exact people, same exact diet. They're not exercising more, they're not cutting any more calories, but they sleep deprived them.

• 12:00Ed Mylett?

  They deprived them of sleep.

• 12:01Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes, so now they take away three hours of sleep, they're getting five and a half hours. At the end of the study, they compiled all the data and they found that when individuals were well rested, they lost 55% more body fat, simply by getting more sleep. Now, I'm telling you, we mentioned this when we were talking, but my book is called Sleep Smarter, Not Sleep More.

• 12:20Ed Mylett?

  Not Sleep More, right.

• 12:21Shawn Stevenson?

  It's really, the longer people sleep, they're going to have a tendency to hit the sleep cycles accurately. You don't need to do that. There are people who are getting six hours of sleep that are crushing it, crushing people that are getting nine hours.

• 12:32Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 12:32Shawn Stevenson?

  But this is just an example of like how much sleep matters. The question is, it should be, how is that possible?

• 12:38Ed Mylett?

  Correct, yep.

• 12:39Shawn Stevenson?

  So here's why. Number one, I mentioned human growth hormone.

• 12:42Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 12:43Shawn Stevenson?

  This is a very anabolic, muscle sparing, energizing hormone. So, human, kids have a tremendous amount of

• 12:50Ed Mylett?

  They OD on it, right?

• 12:51Shawn Stevenson?

  This is why they're running around crazy, have all this energy.

• 12:54Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 12:54Shawn Stevenson?

  And so, when we get around eighteen to twenty, we have a pretty noticeable drop, you know, in the clinical research, in the HGH. My argument is not because you're eighteen, it's because we stop abiding by a sleep schedule, right? We're out of the house, right? You can't tell me what to do anymore. And so, we start to really mess with our sleep.

• 13:12Ed Mylett?

  So, behavior will necessarily age.

• 13:13Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes.

• 13:14Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 13:14Shawn Stevenson?

  Now, age is a factor, but it's not, in my opinion, the biggest factor.

• 13:17Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 13:18Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, it should take some more time before that noticeable decline happens.

• 13:21Ed Mylett?

  It fall off a cliff at that age, right? Which it shouldn't, it should be.

• 13:23Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, exactly. There's a pretty sharp decline. Now, here's another thing, and this should be pretty mind blowing for folks as well.

• 13:30Shawn Stevenson?

  You know about, of course, everybody knows about melatonin now.

• 13:32Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 13:33Shawn Stevenson?

  For, in regards to sleep.

• 13:34Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 13:34Shawn Stevenson?

  It's also a really powerful fat burning hormone.

• 13:37Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 13:37Shawn Stevenson?

  Right, so, Journal of Pioneers Research, now,

• 13:41Shawn Stevenson?

  this is really fascinating. Melatonin, it increases your body's mobilization of something called brown adipose tissue.

• 13:47Ed Mylett?

  What's it called?

• 13:48Shawn Stevenson?

  Brown adipose tissue.

• 13:49Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 13:50Shawn Stevenson?

  Or you can call it BAT for short, right? So, this is brown fat.

• 13:53Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 13:53Shawn Stevenson?

  Right? Brown fat operates much like muscle, in that it burns fat. So, it's a type of fat that burns fat. So, when we think about we want to burn fat, lose weight, what we're trying to get rid of is white adipose tissue. You know, that's the kind of gooey stuff

• 14:08Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 14:09Shawn Stevenson?

  that people are trying to target. Brown adipose tissue, naturally, we don't carry that much on our frame. There's some by your sternum, a little bit on your back, your shoulders, but we don't really carry that much. It's activated via cold. That's one of the things, that's why cold thermogenesis is such a big thing.

• 14:22Ed Mylett?

  I'm big on it.

• 14:23Shawn Stevenson?

  And also, melatonin.

• 14:25Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 14:25Shawn Stevenson?

  Right, this sleep hormone. And if you're not getting a dark cycle, you're not producing melatonin adequately.

• 14:30Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 14:30Shawn Stevenson?

  And so, this is another reason why getting more optimized sleep, folks were losing more body fat. And by the way, in the study, I said, they lost fifty-five percent more fat, not weight.

• 14:40Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, fat.

• 14:41Shawn Stevenson?

  That's the key.

• 14:41Ed Mylett?

  You're talking about body fat. Okay, so, let's talk about this for a minute. Let's talk about melatonin, let's stay on that for a second. Should you be getting more sunlight in order to get melatonin? Does that affect your introduction of melatonin into your body, getting sunlight? Are they not related?

• 14:53Shawn Stevenson?

  That's a powerful question.

• 14:53Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 14:54Shawn Stevenson?

  Most people don't think about this, but this is why I said, a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning.

• 14:58Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 14:59Shawn Stevenson?

  Sunlight starts the process.

• 15:00Ed Mylett?

  It does.

• 15:01Shawn Stevenson?

  So, it was Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience did a study, and they found that folks who were getting more optimal sunlight during the day, Number one, they had reduced cortisol levels in the evening. And cortisol is like the Joker to melatonin's Batman. All right, so if cortisol is elevated, melatonin is suppressed.

• 15:20Ed Mylett?

  Got it.

• 15:20Shawn Stevenson?

  And vice versa.

• 15:21Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 15:21Shawn Stevenson?

  So that's number one. So they found that cortisol levels were lower at night.

• 15:24Ed Mylett?

  Tell people what cortisol will do to you if it's elevated.

• 15:27Shawn Stevenson?

  This is another reason that that study was so profound is because of the impact of cortisol. When you're getting more sleep. Cortisol has this really interesting ability to break down your valuable muscle tissue and turn it into energy. Turn it into glucose. So you can work so hard to build this muscle and lose it because you're not getting adequate sleep. Right? And so it's a process called gluconeogenesis. And it's a stress response because when you're in, you know, cortisol is kind of glorified stress hormone.

• 15:52Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 15:52Shawn Stevenson?

  It's not a bad guy. It's just when it's produced in the wrong amounts and at the wrong times.

• 15:57Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 15:58Shawn Stevenson?

  All right, so gluconeogenesis, that's glucose creation.

• 16:02Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 16:02Shawn Stevenson?

  Break down your muscle tissue and muscle is your body's fat burning machinery.

• 16:06Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 16:07Shawn Stevenson?

  That's the thing. This is why people who carry more muscle on their frame naturally just burn more energy. They burn more calories.

• 16:12Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 16:12Shawn Stevenson?

  It's such a valuable commodity that you will lose or have to continuously work harder to maintain. If you're not getting adequate sleep and that's really the key. So cortisol. Now sunlight does another really interesting thing. So it increases your body's production of serotonin.

• 16:25Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 16:26Shawn Stevenson?

  And everybody's probably heard of serotonin. It's kind of this feel good neurotransmitter. Serotonin is a precursor or opening act for melatonin. So it's converted in your body into melatonin. So if you produce adequate serotonin, you're going to be doing pretty good in that melatonin department.

• 16:42Ed Mylett?

  Okay, so that's a big reason why we want to control our sleep. Now let's get into the sleep. Actually, I don't want to get to the sleep environment. I want to go through one more thing. There is an effect that I've never thought of when it comes to wellness and even sleep. And the melatonin factor, all that into one, which is involves your gut.

• 16:59Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Ed Mylett?

  So can you just, by the way, what I don't want to do, there's so much in this book. There's 21 essential strategies in here. We're going to touch on like three. You got to read the book to get the rest of them, right? But involving that, talk a little bit about gut health and how that affects all of this as well. I just want people, for me, it seems to me lately, the more I'm reading about all wellness, all health. More and more of it seems to start to get tied to the gut. More and more things seem to be.

• 17:24Shawn Stevenson?

  Messed up in that area and most people that caused dis-ease in their body, so to speak. So can you speak to that just for a second? Oh man, it's an absolute epidemic, you know. Towards the end of my clinical practice, you know, we've seen so many cases of Crohn's and colitis. Yes. You know, IBS and you know, it's really somewhere that I shifted my focus in my practice. Today, we're not going to be able to break down literally what's going on with the microbiome and how to fix that. Yeah. But we're going to relate this to sleep. Okay. So your gut is actually, when we talked earlier about melatonin, right? A lot of people, I know I was shocked to find this out, I had no, when I was taught this in school, you produce melatonin from your pineal gland, end of story. Okay. But it's just not true. Okay. Right, which is in your brain. Yes. You have 400 times more melatonin in your gut than you have in your brain.

• 18:09Shawn Stevenson?

  Hmm. Right, and, and they did a study and they actually were doing pineallectomies. So taking the pineal gland out and the levels of melatonin still remain stable. Okay. Okay, so there's something missing in our communication. Yeah. About melatonin, so sleep in many ways starts in your gut. It does. And so there are interchromophin cells that are in the gut that are producing kind of sleep-related hormones, neurotransmitters, and so here's another way that this matters. Uh, this was, um, a really interesting kind of curve ball that I saw. Where we've got serotonin, what I talked about earlier, which is the precursor to melatonin. So I don't want to lose people here. Yeah, I'm with you.

• 18:52Shawn Stevenson?

  So serotonin, the vast majority of your body serotonin, over 80 plus percent is located in your gut. In your gut as well. So we've got this dance happening. Okay. In your gut and it's related, and this was our research coming from UC Berkeley and also Caltech specifically. Okay. Looking at how certain bacteria in your gut communicate with cells. Yes. That produce these sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters. Yes. So to put a bow on this. Yep. We have to take care of our gut microbiome. Okay. Right, the bacteria, which some people get a little weirded out by that, I know I did. Right. You have more bac, you have upwards of 10 times more bacteria cells than you have ed cells. Okay. Most of them are in your gut. Okay. And it's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. Okay.

• 19:37Shawn Stevenson?

  But for many of us, it's become like a parasitic situation. Where we have lower level funguses, bacteria, opportunistic bacterias running our ship. And they're not producing those adequate hormones and neurotransmitters to make sure we get great sleep. So I want to leave people with this real, since we're on this topic, three quick strategies. Yeah, how do you do it? And so I call these good sleep nutrients, right? And so these are specific things you consume that impact your sleep. So one of them, this was public, I'm sorry, the, um, uh, public library of science, right? The P L, P L O S journal. Anything I say, people can triple check me, by the way. Yep. And so what they found was vitamin C, funny enough, we know about this for the immune system.

• 20:18Shawn Stevenson?

  Folks who are deficient in vitamin C had a tendency towards being the people who had more interrupted sleep. So they woke up more frequently, simply by nutrient deficiency. Okay. So also magnesium, which is responsible for over 300 biochemical processes in the body. It's a huge component of sleep. Okay. And so when magnesium is deficient, which is the number one mineral deficiency in our country today. Okay. You're gonna have interrupted sleep or lower quality sleep. And lastly, as far as taking care of the microbiome, we just have to, really, this is more about avoiding. Avoid the things that kill your gut bacteria. So processed sugar, for the most part. I'm not saying you can't have pancake. Of course, right. At some point, but that needs to be in the exception, not the rule. Okay. Because you're feeding the opportunistic bacteria. Okay. Um, chlorine, you need to be mindful of that, right?

• 21:03Shawn Stevenson?

  What has chlorine in it? Our water, you know, if it's tap water. Okay. Chlorinated water, it's used as, and by the way, I would rather have chlorine in the water than drinking, you know, recycled sewage, right? Sure. And so a lot of people don't realize, like, 40 million households across the US were tested. And they found not significant amounts, but trace amounts, but enough to freak you out, of chemotherapy drugs, of antidepressants, of, um, heart medications.

• 21:34Shawn Stevenson?

  The question is, why would this be in our drinking water?

• 21:35Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, right.

• 21:36Shawn Stevenson?

  This is literally coming through 40 million Americans tap water. And it's because people are, right, the cycle. People are pissing in the water. And it's eventually kind of making this one back to you. So I want chlorine in the water.

• 21:46Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 21:47Shawn Stevenson?

  If we're doing the practice that we're doing now, which I think it could be improved. But bottom line, chlorine is antibiotic.

• 21:52Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 21:53Shawn Stevenson?

  All right, it kills stuff.

• 21:54Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, so you need some in there.

• 21:55Shawn Stevenson?

  Your microbiome, guess what? You know, these are bacteria, so. And I'm not, I'm not saying you need some. I think that there's a better way we can go about treating our water. But if you had to decide.

• 22:05Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, take the chlorine.

• 22:06Ed Mylett?

  Take the chlorine. So those of you that are listening here, you're more simple. You've got these onens, right, that are controlled in your gut. And one of the things, if you're having a hard time sleeping, is you need to check your gut health. And you need to read the chapter in his book on gut health. Because it is directly related to your serotonin and your melatonin in your body. And helping you sleep at an optimal level. Let's continue to talk a little bit more about sleep. And so a couple of tips you have for sleep that I love is being cool.

• 22:31Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Ed Mylett?

  So what does that mean? Like, I sleep with a thing called a chili pad. I actually have in my bed. Are you recommend those?

• 22:36Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes, it's in the book. It's in the resources in the way.

• 22:39Ed Mylett?

  I know it is. So I just want to make sure they know this, but I'm not pumping that or not. But how important is it to be, like, let's talk about how do I sleep better? So I get my gut health together. I got, it starts when I wake up in the morning, taking in more sunlight, preparing through my day. But give me a few things. Like, I know you talk in the book about sleeping cool. And also being cognizant of your caffeine intake and when you take it too, right? So talk about those two things real quick.

• 23:02Shawn Stevenson?

  Absolutely. So as far as being in a, being cool, this is in relationship to something. Our bodies have a process called thermoregulation.

• 23:10Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 23:11Shawn Stevenson?

  Thermoregulation. When I was in school, again, this is like the miseducation of Sean Stevens. All right, so in school, we're taught, you know, optimal human body temperature is 98.6 degrees, right?

• 23:20Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 23:21Shawn Stevenson?

  Your body temperature changes a lot through the day. Like, if I was to track your, your metrics, you know, take your temperature, test your blood sugar after a great workout, like every, like, we can get you diagnosed with something. And all you did was just do a great training session, right?

• 23:34Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 23:35Shawn Stevenson?

  So your body temperature changes a lot. And during the evening, there's a natural drop in your core body temperature to facilitate sleep. There's a correlation of release of certain neurotransmitters and hormones related to that drop. So if your environment is too warm, your body has to work harder to try to cool itself. And it can basically throw a monkey wrench in that process.

• 23:54Ed Mylett?

  Okay, so cool down. So how do you get cool? Use a chili pad or not have too many blankets over you?

• 23:58Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, you know, the basic thing is, you know, we live in an environment today where we're very fortunate. Where we can literally, we have a thermostat, right? And so researchers conclude that it's approximately right between 62 and 68 degrees.

• 24:11Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 24:12Shawn Stevenson?

  Is optimal for sleep.

• 24:13Ed Mylett?

  I gotta tell you, along those lines, at least for me, I think I did, I think I took caffeine in too late at night. The other thing for me is when I bought this chili pad, I could not get over how much deeper and better rested I felt that when I woke up, when I was cooler, when I slept, I couldn't, that one thing alone was a, and almost everybody I know who uses one, or at least is cognizant of temperature in the room.

• 24:34Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Ed Mylett?

  Says that's a huge thing when it comes to rest.

• 24:36Shawn Stevenson?

  It can be that one thing that's game changing. So I'm gonna back this up by studies, right? So there was a really cool study that was done on insomniacs, alright? So these are people with chronic sleep issues. And what they did was they put them in these thermo suits to drop their skin surface temperature just one degree.

• 24:52Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 24:53Shawn Stevenson?

  At the end of the study, they compiled the data and these folks were falling asleep and staying asleep just about as long as folks who do not have insomnia.

• 24:59Ed Mylett?

  That's awesome.

• 25:00Shawn Stevenson?

  So you've got Ambien?

• 25:01Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Shawn Stevenson?

  Or you can cool?

• 25:02Ed Mylett?

  Cool yourself down.

• 25:03Shawn Stevenson?

  Your ass off, right?

• 25:04Ed Mylett?

  Okay. What about caffeine? Talk about caffeine.

• 25:06Shawn Stevenson?

  Caffeine, wow, yeah. So, full disclosure, I love caffeine.

• 25:09Ed Mylett?

  Me too.

• 25:10Shawn Stevenson?

  I'm a fan.

• 25:10Ed Mylett?

  Me too.

• 25:11Shawn Stevenson?

  But it's how we use it in our culture and it's been used for thousands of years. Like it has a really interesting resonance with the human body. And so caffeine, so let me just, first of all, start with the study. So they took individuals in this study to find out how caffeine specifically affects sleep. They gave them caffeine literally right before bed, three hours before bed, or six hours before bed.

• 25:33Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 25:33Shawn Stevenson?

  And tracked the results. Even six hours before bed was enough to cause some serious issues with their sleep cycles. To the degree that folks. Subjectively, they thought that they slept for eight hours, but they lost one full hour of sleep. By having caffeine six hours before bed.

• 25:51Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 25:52Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay, and so what's going on there? Caffeine has a half-life, it's called a half-life, for about eight hours on average.

• 25:58Ed Mylett?

  Alright.

• 25:59Shawn Stevenson?

  So this means after eight hours about a, you say if you have a 200 milligram cup of coffee. A hundred milligrams, half, after eight hours is still active in your system.

• 26:08Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:08Shawn Stevenson?

  And that can keep your nervous system pretty lit up for a lot of people, so. And it depends on your metabolism for it, everybody's kind of unique. But in general, you know, I recommend if you're gonna have caffeine, have it early in the day.

• 26:18Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:19Shawn Stevenson?

  Early afternoon, especially in the morning. Give your body time to metabolize and process it. And some, for some folks, that might be the thing that they need to avoid completely because they might not have an efficient metabolism.

• 26:29Ed Mylett?

  Okay, let's talk about two more things in the coming sleep. This is wonderful, by the way, because even for me, like, my caffeine intake is too late in the day. It's too late in the day, it's affecting my sleep. I think I'm asleep and I'm not, right? I'm not getting deep sleep.

• 26:39Shawn Stevenson?

  That's the thing, yeah.

• 26:40Ed Mylett?

  Let's talk about color in the room. So how important is it for it to be dark to help you get into deep sleep compared to light in the room? Is there an impact of those two things?

• 26:48Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes.

• 26:48Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:49Shawn Stevenson?

  To produce melatonin, you need two requirements.

• 26:51Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:51Shawn Stevenson?

  One of them is darkness.

• 26:53Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:53Shawn Stevenson?

  Alright, the other thing is a cycle. Like, it has to have a consistent cycle.

• 26:59Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:59Shawn Stevenson?

  So some folks that do night work, for example, but they can get their room totally dark, and they have a consistent night ritual, whether they're creating their own nighttime, they can produce melatonin, but they need the darkness.

• 27:10Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 27:11Shawn Stevenson?

  And so just to back that up, Cornell University, this study, it knocked my socks off. But I geek out on this stuff, so.

• 27:18Ed Mylett?

  It's not geeked out, it's awesome. It's validation, people hear stuff, especially in the world days, like, prove it. You prove it every time you make a point.

• 27:24Shawn Stevenson?

  So they took, they took their test subject, they put him in an otherwise dark room, and they took a light the size of a quarter.

• 27:30Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 27:30Shawn Stevenson?

  Fiber optic cable, and put it behind their knee.

• 27:32Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 27:33Shawn Stevenson?

  That small light was enough to disrupt their sleep cycle.

• 27:35Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 27:36Shawn Stevenson?

  Alright, but this, we need to take a step back here. Because when people keep hearing me talk about sleep cycle.

• 27:41Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 27:41Shawn Stevenson?

  And sleep smarter, not sleeping more.

• 27:44Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 27:44Shawn Stevenson?

  It's really about optimizing those sleep cycles, so what does that mean? Sleep cycles are determined by changes in your brainwaves.

• 27:51Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 27:51Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay, and so there, and there's more to this than this, but just to simplify, we've got gamma waves, which is, sometimes happens during waking state. Most of us are hanging out in beta. Then we move to alpha, then we move to theta, and then delta is deep anabolic, non-REM sleep.

• 28:07Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 28:08Shawn Stevenson?

  We need to efficiently cycle through these.

• 28:10Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 28:10Shawn Stevenson?

  Over and over through the night.

• 28:12Ed Mylett?

  All right.

• 28:12Shawn Stevenson?

  Most of those sleep cycles are about seventy-five to a hundred and twenty minutes, depending on the person.

• 28:17Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 28:18Shawn Stevenson?

  And so what I recommend for people is a minimum of four complete sleep cycles, which is around six hours.

• 28:23Ed Mylett?

  Okay, good, that's what I get.

• 28:24Shawn Stevenson?

  All right, but making sure that we're optimizing that.

• 28:27Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 28:27Shawn Stevenson?

  All right, and so, how do we do this? That's all of these small things.

• 28:31Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 28:32Shawn Stevenson?

  Being cool, darkness.

• 28:33Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 28:34Shawn Stevenson?

  If you're, you know, if you're exposed to light in the evening, for example, it can throw, specifically throw off your sleep cycle.

• 28:39Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 28:40Shawn Stevenson?

  Alcohol too close to bed can be an issue for some people.

• 28:42Ed Mylett?

  Do you believe in, um, a couple of things, by the way, this is so good for me. I hope you're, you're driving in this, you're going, I wish I were writing all this down, you're gonna go replay this again, but I'm just curious, I haven't asked you this. What do you think about the blue light stuff?

• 28:53Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Ed Mylett?

  So, if you don't know what I'm talking about right now, this, this is, this is powerful, I'm just curious your opinion about it. What about blue light? So, tell them what that is, real quick, then we'll finish with a fun thing on sleep, but tell them what blue light means and how you feel about it. I don't know how you feel about it.

• 29:07Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, I've, I've been talking about this for, again, about five years.

• 29:10Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 29:11Shawn Stevenson?

  So, a lot of folks have heard about this by now, you know, but...

• 29:14Ed Mylett?

  A lot haven't, though. Most haven't that are listening to this.

• 29:16Shawn Stevenson?

  Again, I look to the research instead of just like, you know, this might be a problem, but, so Harvard researchers confirm that blue light exposure from our favorite devices, you know, our smartphones, television, laptops, does in fact elevate your cortisol at night.

• 29:31Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 29:31Shawn Stevenson?

  Which, they tested during the day, doesn't impact you during the day. It's because your body's expecting a nighttime cycle.

• 29:38Ed Mylett?

  Got it.

• 29:39Shawn Stevenson?

  So it elevates cortisol and suppresses melatonin.

• 29:41Ed Mylett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:42Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay, and so, according to their numbers, every hour you're on your device at night, without some kind of a protection or strategy, it suppresses melatonin for thirty minutes.

• 29:52Ed Mylett?

  Wow!

• 29:53Shawn Stevenson?

  And so, you can go to sleep because you're exhausted, but your melatonin can still be suppressed.

• 29:58Ed Mylett?

  Got it.

• 29:58Shawn Stevenson?

  And you're not gonna efficiently go through those sleep cycles that we talked about.

• 30:01Ed Mylett?

  So what do we do? Get off our phone, or is there something else that we should do?

• 30:03Shawn Stevenson?

  There's a couple of things. So, let's be real, like, text is not slowing down.

• 30:06Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 30:07Shawn Stevenson?

  I'm not a Luddite, you know what I'm saying? I love my, I love my iPhone, you know?

• 30:10Ed Mylett?

  Me too, yeah.

• 30:10Shawn Stevenson?

  Um, there are some, and the thing is... I don't, from my perspective, the research is not conclusive how effective it is. But I'm just gonna throw this out there.

• 30:20Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 30:20Shawn Stevenson?

  Because for a lot of folks, anecdotally, they say it does help a lot.

• 30:24Ed Mylett?

  Good.

• 30:24Shawn Stevenson?

  Which is using some kind of blue light suppressive device. So on all of their devices, for Apple, the iPads.

• 30:30Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 30:30Shawn Stevenson?

  iPhones, they have a tool called Night Shift.

• 30:34Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 30:35Shawn Stevenson?

  Which pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light, the blue light.

• 30:38Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 30:38Shawn Stevenson?

  This kind of white light, strong light, and kind of cools your screen off.

• 30:41Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 30:42Shawn Stevenson?

  And so you could just set that on, set it and forget it.

• 30:45Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 30:45Shawn Stevenson?

  And then for your laptops, desktops, there's a tool called Flux, it's totally free. You just go to Dr. Google, type F dot L U X, and I've been using it for about five years.

• 30:54Ed Mylett?

  What a, what a great tip. And I do want to say this to you, both those devices work. And the other thing is, really, trying to get off that device within some window before you're asleep, not just for the melatonin factor, for the deep sleep factor, but also for quieting of the mind factor.

• 31:09Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes.

• 31:10Ed Mylett?

  If the last things you're doing before you go to sleep are worrisome, stressful, task-related things, it's just much harder to get to sleep when you're doing that. So I try to give myself some runway.

• 31:20Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes.

• 31:20Ed Mylett?

  Before I sleep, and I know that you do too. Here's the good news, this is adult time, by the way, the next ninety seconds.

• 31:25Shawn Stevenson?

  Wait, before we get to that, since we're talking about the mind, I gotta throw this in there for people. Because there are a lot of people listening to your show.

• 31:32Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 31:32Shawn Stevenson?

  Who want to be optimized in their performance.

• 31:34Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 31:35Shawn Stevenson?

  In their focus, in their energy. And so, and I'm a nutritionist, I was like, food is everything, but it's just not. Your sleep matters more.

• 31:44Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 31:44Shawn Stevenson?

  Than your nutrition and your exercise combined, if you're not doing it properly. So, I want to share this study, so, this is published in the Lancet. And they took physicians, and they had them to complete a task.

• 31:55Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 31:55Shawn Stevenson?

  Alright, sleep deprived them, had them come back and do the same thing.

• 32:01Shawn Stevenson?

  Here's what happened, they made twenty percent more mistakes doing the same exact thing.

• 32:05Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 32:05Shawn Stevenson?

  And it took them fourteen percent longer to do the same exact thing when they're sleep deprived. And this is not uncommon in the world of physicians, and it's not uncommon in our world, right? So, there's a big difference between doing work and being effective.

• 32:16Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 32:17Shawn Stevenson?

  And we're taking away so much of our effectiveness because we're sleep deprived. UC Berkeley did brain imaging scans, actually looking at what happens in our brain when we're sleep deprived, just a short sleep debt of twenty-four hours, right? And so, the first thing they saw was a cooling in the activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of your brain responsible for decision-making, social control, distinguishing between right and wrong. That part of the brain literally starts to turn off, alright? And correlated with an activation in your amygdala, right? This is the more primitive part of your brain that's responsible basically for your fight or flight system and is concerned about survival of self, right?

• 32:55Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 32:55Shawn Stevenson?

  This is when you tend to say something you don't really need to say. You'll make decisions, you'll hook up with the person you weren't, you know? Like a lot of decisions happen with your food choices, right? When you're sleep deprived, when you're tired. No, but tell me if I'm wrong.

• 33:07Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Shawn Stevenson?

  I've never heard one person who's up two o'clock in the morning binge watching on, you know, Game of Thrones.

• 33:13Ed Mylett?

  Let's eat some broiled chicken and rice.

• 33:14Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, can you throw me some broccoli, right? I'm just got to, this is when you go get the cookies and the ice cream, you know, like it never happens, you know? So.

• 33:23Ed Mylett?

  Thank you for sharing that, by the way, and as an absolute fact, you're so right about that. By the way, that's just 24 hours of deprivation too, right? That's not weeks or months of it like some of us are going through. And so we were going to talk about this adult time. Here's the good news. Before you go to sleep at night, there is one thing you can do to help you sleep deeply that everybody would enjoy doing. This is for you adults out there, so tell them what that one thing is that can help you sleep.

• 33:43Shawn Stevenson?

  So, listen, you know, there's this term in culture, right? In the movies, right? Somebody's sleeping together, right? I was like, when I was a kid, I hear that, I was like, but you're not sleeping, right? Well, come to find out, your sex life has a huge impact on your sleep life and vice versa. Your sleep has a huge impact on your sex.

• 34:03Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 34:03Shawn Stevenson?

  And so when you have an orgasm, you release a cocktail of chemicals that all improve sleep, alright? So oxytocin, for example. Oxytocin has a direct correlation to reducing cortisol, alright? So we talked about how cortisol can be a problem with your sleep. Oxytocin knocks that right out.

• 34:23Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 34:23Shawn Stevenson?

  Prolactin is another really interesting one. So there was a study I started in Sleep Smart, and this was done on laboratory animals. And so they injected them with prolactin and they become sleepy immediately, right? So when you have an orgasm, you produce prolactin. Now here's a little fun fact. When males tested, when they have an orgasm by themselves.

• 34:44Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 34:44Shawn Stevenson?

  Versus having orgasm with their partner, you release four times more prolactin with a partner.

• 34:49Ed Mylett?

  With a partner.

• 34:49Shawn Stevenson?

  Than you do by yourself. This is why I guess, you know, somebody masturbates and they're like, "Go eat a bowl of cereal and watch cartoons" or whatever. Versus, you know, you're with your partner and they're like, you know, you're sleepy all the time.

• 34:58Ed Mylett?

  You're sleepy.

• 34:59Shawn Stevenson?

  When you have an orgasm. So, we've got that, we've got norepinephrine on and on. Norepinephrine is a player in optimizing that sleep cycle we talked about. It's related to REM sleep, right? REM sleep is where you get your dream on, but also REM sleep is responsible for something called memory processing.

• 35:16Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 35:16Shawn Stevenson?

  This is where your experiences even from today, what people are learning about, it gets converted to your short-term memory.

• 35:21Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 35:22Shawn Stevenson?

  And that's one of the places that really gets hit hard with sleep deprivation and also, you know, drinking too close to bed. By the way, I just gotta throw this in here. So, alcohol does in fact help you fall asleep faster. Period, end of story, bar none. The small issue is that it creates something called a REM rebound effect. So, this hap- since you're processing memories while you're sleeping, this is why you can have that experience. I know this will never happen to you. Where you wake up, you don't really remember what you did.

• 35:49Ed Mylett?

  Don't even, yeah.

• 35:50Shawn Stevenson?

  When you might drink a little bit too much, right? And this is because your REM sleep is disrupted. And so also, this is why we have this concept of a hangover. It's not because you didn't sleep, it's because your REM sleep was so disrupted, your sleep cycle, period.

• 36:02Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 36:03Shawn Stevenson?

  And so, what I recommend people to do is not to not drink, it's just like, employ some simple strategies. Make sure you're getting hydrated.

• 36:09Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 36:10Shawn Stevenson?

  Right? Nature's solution to pollution is dilution, right? So, drinking some water to help dilute, support your liver. Maybe have a little bit of a curfew, you know, give yourself maybe, you know, an hour or two before you go to bed, you know, when you finish drinking. You know, just small things. There's several things you could do to not turn your life upside down, but still.

• 36:26Ed Mylett?

  And the big thing is, the big thing is have a big O before you go to bed at night. And even better is do that with somebody else and you get four times the hit, right?

• 36:32Shawn Stevenson?

  There you go.

• 36:33Ed Mylett?

  I love that. That's like, that's so, so good. Such good news for so many of you out there. I give you another reason to have that conversation with your partner. I know you have a headache, but we want to sleep deep tonight, so.

• 36:42Shawn Stevenson?

  Get off your phone 30 minutes.

• 36:44Ed Mylett?

  Exactly.

• 36:44Shawn Stevenson?

  Hopefully, you know.

• 36:45Ed Mylett?

  All this stuff is related. The wine does help, but I get your point. About the wine. So, okay, I'm with you on that. So this is awesome. So what I want you to do number one is I want you to get sleep smarter. I want you to get the book. We've talked about this enough times. Here's how popular this thing is on Audible. This is two years later. This book is still the number two seller on all of Audible last month. So this is, that's a credit to you. It's such a powerful topic.

• 37:05Shawn Stevenson?

  Mind blowing.

• 37:06Ed Mylett?

  And you're such an expert on this, right? I want to finish up though with winning. So obviously, this is such a huge thing because sleep is tied to all of it. But now I want to kind of finish with you, right? Because you're this expert, you're obviously incredibly articulate, you're doing something, you're chasing in your life, your real passion, like you're obsessed with wellness, you're obsessed with health. So I think that's one of the reasons you're just so incredibly successful, right? But there's more to it than that. So if you were talking to this audience, this is someone who's built this incredible practice. It's not by mistake. You're the number one person in this space, right? Like that's, that's not number 19, which would still be pretty damn impressive, right? But number one in this space. So you become the best in the world at something like, how have you done that? Like,

• 37:51Ed Mylett?

  talk to someone about becoming elite, becoming an elite performer, getting to the top of something. Is it just that you've chased your passion? Are there other things there? The way you think, the way you process information, your identity, like what would you tell someone, listen, this has been the key, some of the keys to you becoming you?

• 38:07Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow, that's, that's powerful question.

• 38:09Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 38:10Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, the first thing that's jumping to mind is, you know, when we go to school, we're taught what to learn. Right? We're not taught how to learn.

• 38:18Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 38:19Shawn Stevenson?

  And so I'm a big advocate and what I've done is

• 38:24Shawn Stevenson?

  finding a way to learn faster, right? Becoming a great, somebody who is able to assimilate information. And here's what, I'll just tell you how I do it. I haven't really shared this before.

• 38:31Ed Mylett?

  My next question, how do you do it?

• 38:33Shawn Stevenson?

  So whenever I'm reading a study, whenever I'm reading a book, I'm thinking about how can I teach this? Right? As I'm consuming the information because it's not about me.

• 38:43Ed Mylett?

  You know that I do that too? Keep going, but I do that too. I didn't know I did it, but I do.

• 38:46Shawn Stevenson?

  You cannot do anything of great success if this is about you. And so my passion is not about learning and being great in this field. It's about helping people. And changing that story. Like I want to make sure that, I mean, it breaks my.

• 39:00Ed Mylett?

  Look at you. You just changed right there. Just changed you.

• 39:07Ed Mylett?

  You're good, keep going.

• 39:12Shawn Stevenson?

  When I think about these kids, you know, who are in cancer treatment centers right now, you know,

• 39:19Shawn Stevenson?

  and how things can be better, and our system is broken, you know. Our... we've got some amazing physicians, and many of them are my friends, you know. And now they're shifting more to integrative medicine, functional medicine. Because the way that we've taught historically, you know, in conventional medicine the last few decades, we're terrible at chronic illness. Everything has gone up. How? If we're so smart and good at what we do, you know, and the truth is, if you take a really smart person, which these are the best of the best, and you teach them the wrong thing, they become world-class at doing the wrong thing. And so that's what really drives me, man, is...

• 39:56Ed Mylett?

  I could see it all over your face. Actually, it's coming down your face.

• 40:00Shawn Stevenson?

  Is doing whatever we can do to help to facilitate the next generation. And I know that so many of our problems in society, you know, with violence, with just this big dichotomy that we're experiencing right now, has to do with, people don't do well because they don't feel well. And so, instead of me getting out and protesting, that's not my path. My path is how can I get people healthier, so we can have great conversations, so we can meet each other and have more compassion. It's very difficult to have compassion when you're sleep deprived. It's very difficult to have compassion when you're dying inside because your body's experiencing, you know, chronic illness, you know. All of those things drive me to be the best possible. And so, I was not expecting, I was not expecting to say that.

• 40:43Ed Mylett?

  I'm glad that you got, so I'm glad you showed that, because it's the real you. And I'd tell you, the first time we talked, you inspired me. Look at you, you're still thinking about it, right? The first time we talked, brother, you inspired me. Like, I knew right when we talked, like, that we're kindred spirits.

• 40:58Ed Mylett?

  I want to thank you for today, but really not for today. I want to thank you for the last 10 years of your life, the work you've done and what you're going to do the next 10 years. You're, by definition, brother, you're really a world changer. Like, you change people's lives. Like, think about that. This guy starts out, he had a real interesting upbringing that we talked about a little bit, where he was raised in a pretty good environment, then a really bad environment. Then he gets this degenerative disease. And you turn this life-altering, for some people would be life-ruinous diagnosis, into not only you turning around your own life, but then you've inspired and helped millions of other people get well and change their own lives. Like, and I just want, I hope that Shawn gives you hope and gives you inspiration, that if you chase your passion in life, if you learn to learn faster, if you think about

• 41:43Ed Mylett?

  learning things in order to give to others, all these great keys he's given you, and you get that kind of emotion on your face about what you do in your life and the difference you make, you can be a world changer, just like this man right here to my left. And so, I don't want their relationship with you to end today. Because I want folks to get well and healthy, and I know, science changes, information changes, and you're gonna, if you're following him, you'll be on the cutting edge of wellness and health and energy for the next decade if you follow Shawn. And so, they can find you at your podcast.

• 42:10Shawn Stevenson?

  It's called The Model Health Show.

• 42:12Ed Mylett?

  The Model Health Show. And then on social media, how do they find you? Are you under Shawn Stevenson? Are there any underscores or anything?

• 42:17Shawn Stevenson?

  Type in, you should find me, but I'm @ShawnModel, S-H-A-W-NModel.

• 42:20Ed Mylett?

  ShawnModel on social media. I mean, really, thank you for today. Like, I, I told you, read this book in, in one full sitting, without putting it down. And then like today, we could've gone three more hours, because everything you say, you back up with studies, you back up with facts, but it comes from this heart, man. It comes from this place of passion. So, God bless you, brother. All of you that are listening, thank you so much. Really enjoyed it. Those of you that are listening, always ask, I bring you the best people in the world at what they do. I just brought you the greatest in the world, when it comes to health and wellness, and particularly in sleep and this endeavor. Go get his book, and in my case, if you're watching this on YouTube, make a like, give it a comment, and if it's on an audio podcast, please, anywhere you are, give it a review. And I hope it move up the rankings, I sure would appreciate it. God bless you, and max out, everybody.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  This is The Ed Mylett Show. Compete, lead, and kick ass. Build your best body, business, and life at edmilet.com.